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Transience


By:  Arthur C. Clarke


    The forest, which came almost to the edge of the beach, climbed away into
    the distance up the flanks of the low, misty hills. Underfoot, the sand was
    course and mixed with myriads of broken shells. Here and there the
    retreating tide had left long streamers of weed trailed across the beach.
    The rain, which seldom ceased, had for the moment passed inland, but ever
    and again large, angry drops would beat tiny craters into the sand.
    It was hot and sultry, for the war between sun and rain was never-ending.
    Sometimes the mists would lift for a while and the hills would stand out
    clearly above the land they guarded. The hills arced in a semicircle along
    the bay, following the line of the beach, and beyond them could sometimes be
    seen, at an immense distance, a wall of mountains lying beneath perpetual
    clouds. The trees grew everywhere, softening the contours of the land so
    that the hills blended smoothly into each other. Only in one place could the
    bare, uncovered rock be seen, where long ago some fault had weakened the
    foundations of the hills, so that for a mile or more the sky line fell
    sharply away, drooping down to the sea like a broken wing.
    Moving with the cautious alertness of a wild animal, the child came through
    the stunted trees at the forest's edge. For a moment he hesitated; then,
    since there seemed to be no danger, walked slowly out onto the beach.
    He was naked, heavily built, and had course black hair tangled over his
    shoulders. His face, brutish though it was, might almost have passed in
    human society, but the eyes would have betrayed him. They were not the eyes
    of an animal, for there was something in their depths that no animal had
    ever known. But it was no more than a promise. For this child, as for all
    his race, the light of reason had yet to dawn. Only a hairsbreadth still
    separated him from the beasts among whom he dwelt. The tribe had not long
    since come into this tribe, and he was the first ever to set foot upon the
    lonely beach. What had lured him from the known dangers of the forest into
    the unknown and therefore more terrible dangers of this new element. he
    could not have told even had he possessed the power of speech. Slowly he
    walked out to the water's edge, always with backward glances at the forest
    behind him; as he did so, for the first time in all history, the level sand
    bore upon its face the footprints it would one day know so well.
    He had met water before, but it had always been bounded and confined by
    land. Now it stretched endlessly before him, and the sound of its labouring
    beat ceaselessly upon his ears.
    With the timeless patience of the savage, he stood on the moist sand that
    the water had just relinquished, and as the tide line moved out he followed
    it slowly, pace by pace. When the waves reached towards his feet with a
    sudden access of energy, he would retreat a little way toward the land. But
    something held him here at the water's edge, while his shadow lengthened
    along the sands and the cold evening wind began to rise around him.
    Perhaps into his mind had come something of the wonder of the sea, and a
    hint of all that it would one day mean to man. Though the first gods of his
    people stay lay far into the future, he felt a dim sense of worship stir
    within him. He knew that he was now in the presence of something greater
    than all the powers and forces he had ever met.
    The tide was turning. Far away in the forest, a wolf howled once and was
    suddenly silent. The noises of the night were rising around him, and it was
    time to go.
    Under the low moon, the two lines of footprints interlaced across the sand.
    Swiftly the oncoming tide was smoothing them away. But they would return in
    their thousands and millions, in the centuries yet to be.
    The child playing among the rock pools knew nothing of the forest that had
    once ruled all of the land around him. It had left no trace of its
    existence. As ephemeral as the mists that had so often rolled down from the
    hills, it too, had veiled them for a little while and now was gone. In its
    place had come a checkerboard of fields, the legacy of a thousand years of
    patient toil. And so the illusion of permanence remained, though everything
    had altered save the line of the hills against the sky. On the beach, the
    sand was finer now, and the land had lifted so that the old tide line was
    far beyond the reach of the questing waves.
    Beyond the sea wall and the promenade, the little town was sleeping through
    the golden summer day. Here and there along the beach, people lay at rest,
    drowsy with heat and lulled by the murmur of the waves.
    Out across the bay, white and gold against the water, a great ship was
    moving slowly to sea. The boy could hear, faint and far away, the beat of
    its screws and could still see the tiny figures moving upon its decks and
    superstructure. To the child - and not to him alone - it was a thing of
    wonder and beauty. He knew its name and the land to which it was steaming;
    but he did not know that the splendid ship was both the last and greatest of
    its kind. He scarcely noticed, almost lost against the glare of the sun, the
    thin white vapour trails that spelled the doom of the proud and lonely
    giant.
    Soon the great liner was no more than a dark smudge on the horizon, and the
    boy turned again to his interrupted play, to the tireless building of his
    battlements of sand. In the west the sun was beginning its long decline, but
    the evening was still far away.
    Yet it came at last, when the tide was returning to the land. At his
    mother's words, the child gathered up his playthings and, wearily contented,
    began to follow his parents back to the shore. He glanced once only at the
    sea again. Without regret he left them to the advancing waves, for tomorrow
    he would return and the future stretched endlessly before him.
    That tomorrow would not always come, either for himself or for the world, he
    was still too young to know.
    And now even the hills had changed, worn away by the weight of years. Not
    all the change was the work of nature, for one night in the long forgotten
    past something had come sliding down from the stars, and the little town had
    vanished in a spinning tower of flame. But that was so long ago that it was
    beyond sorrow or regret. Like the fall of fabled Troy or the overwhelming of
    Pompeii, it was part of the irremediable past, and could rouse no pity now.
    On the broken sky line lay a long metal building supporting a maze of
    mirrors that turned and glittered in the sun. No-one from an earlier age
    could have guessed its purpose. It was as meaningless as an observatory or a
    radio station would have been to ancient man. But it was neither of these
    things.
    Since noon, Bran had been laying among the shallow pools left by the
    retreating tide. He was quite alone, though the machine that guarded him was
    watching unobtrusively from the shore. Only a few days ago, there had been
    other children playing beside the blue waters of this lovely bay. Bran
    sometimes wondered where they had vanished, but he was a solitary child and
    did not greatly care. Lost in his own dreams, he was content to be left
    alone.
    In the last few hours he had linked the tiny pools with an intricate network
    of waterways. His thoughts were very far from Earth, both in space and time.
    Around him now were the dull, red sands of another world. He was Cardenis,
    prince of engineers, fighting to save his people from the encroaching
    deserts. For Bran had looked upon the ravaged face of Mars; he knew the
    story of its long tragedy and the help from Earth that had come too late.
    Out to the horizon the sea was empty, untroubled by ships, as it had been
    for ages. For a little while, near the beginning of time, man had fought his
    brief war against the oceans of the world. Now it seemed that only a moment
    lay between the coming of the first canoes and the passing of the last great
    Megatheria of the seas.
    Bran did not even glance up at the sky when the monstrous shadow swept along
    the beach. For days past, those silver giants had been rising over the hills
    in an unending stream, and now he gave them little thought. All his life he
    had watched the great ships climbing through the skies of Earth on their way
    to distant worlds. Often he had seen them return from those long journeys,
    dropping down through the clouds with cargoes beyond imagination.
    He wondered sometimes why they came no more, those returning voyagers. All
    the ships he saw now were outward bound; never one drove down from the skies
    to berth at the great port beyond the hills. Why this should be, no one
    would tell him. He had learned not to speak of it now, having seen the
    sadness that his questions brought.
    Across the sands the robot was calling to him softly. "Bran," came the
    words, echoing the tones of his mother's voice,"Bran - its time to go".
    The child looked up, his face full of indignant denial. He could not believe
    it. The sun was still high and the tide was far away. Yet along the shore
    his mother and father were already coming toward him.
    They walked swiftly, as though the time was short. Now and again his father
    would glance for an instant at the sky, then turn his head quickly away as
    if he knew well that there was nothing he could hope to see. But a moment
    later he would look up again.
    Stubborn and angry, Bran stood among his canals and lakes. His mother was
    strangely silent, but presently his father took him by the hand and said
    quietly, you must come with us Bran. Its time we went. The child pointed
    sullenly at the beach. "But its too early. I haven't finished".
    His father's reply had no trace of anger, only a great sadness. There are
    many things Bran, that will not be finished now. Still uncomprehending, the
    boy turned to his mother. "Then can I come again tomorrow"?
    With a sense of desolating wonder, Bran saw his mother's eyes fill with
    sudden tears. And he knew at last that never again would he play upon the
    sands by the azure waters; never again would he feel the tug of the tiny
    waves about his feet. He had found the sea too late, and now must leave it
    forever. Out of the future, chilling his soul, came the first intimation of
    the long ages of exile that lay ahead.
    He never looked back as they walked silently together across the clinging
    sand. This moment would be with him all his life, but he was too stunned to
    do more than walk blindly into a future he could not understand.
    The three figures dwindled into the distance and were gone. A while later, a
    silver cloud seemed to lift above the hills and move slowly out to sea. In a
    shallow arc, as though reluctant to leave its world, the last of the great
    ships climbed towards the horizon and shrank to nothingness over the edge of
    the Earth.
    The tide was returning with the dying day. As though its makers still walked
    within its walls, the low metal building upon the hills had begun to blaze
    with light. Near the zenith, one star had not waited for the sun to set, but
    already burned with a fierce white glare against the darkening sky. Soon its
    companions, no longer in the scant thousands that mankind had once known,
    began to fill the heavens. The Earth was now near the centre of the
    universe, and whole areas of the sky were an unbroken blaze of light.
    But rising beyond the sea in two long curving arms, something black and
    monstrous eclipsed the stars and seemed to cast its shadow over all the
    world. The tentacles of the Dark Nebula were already brushing against the
    frontiers of the solar system....
    In the east, a great yellow moon was climbing through the waves. Though
    mankind had torn down its mountains and brought it air and water, its face
    was the one that had looked upon Earth since its history began, and it was
    still the ruler of the tides. Across the sand the line of foam moved
    steadily onwards, overwhelming the little canals and planing down the
    mangled footprints.
    On the sky line, the lights in the strange metal building suddenly died, and
    the spinning mirrors ceased their moonlight glittering. From far inland came
    the blinding flash of a great explosion, then another, and another fainter
    yet.
    Presently the ground trembled a little, but no sound disturbed the solitude
    of the deserted shore. Under the level light of the sagging moon, beneath
    the myriad stars, the beach lay waiting for the end. It was alone now, as it
    had been at the beginning. Only the waves would move, and but for a little
    while, upon its golden sands.
    For mankind had come and gone.


THE END