A. E. van Vogt - Resurrection.pdf - A. E. van Vogt - widez2

RESURRECTION

by A. E. van Vogt

THE GREAT ship poised a quarter of a mile above one of

the cities. Below was a cosmic desolation. As he floated

down in his energy bubble, Enash saw that the buildings

were crumbling with age.

"No signs of war damage!" "The bodiless voice touched his

ears momentarily. Enash turned it out.

On the ground he collapsed his bubble. He found

himself in a walled enclosure overgrown with weeds. Several

skeletons lay in the tail grass beside the rakish building.

They were of long, two-legged, two-armed beings with skulls

in each case mounted at the end of a thin spine. The skele-

tons, all of adults, seemed in excellent preservation, but when

he bent down and touched one, a whole section of it crum-

bled into a fine powder. As he straightened, he saw that

Yoal was floating down nearby. Enash waited until the his-

torian had stepped out of his bubble, then he said:

"Do you think we ought to use our method of reviving the

long dead?"

Yoal was thoughtful. "I have been asking questions of the

various people who have landed, and there is something

wrong here. This planet has no surviving life, not even in-

sect life. We'll have to find out what happened before we

risk any colonization."

Enash said nothing. A soft wind was blowing. It rustled

through a clump of trees nearby. He motioned towards the

trees. Yoal nodded and said, "Yes, the plant life }ias not

been harmed, but plants after all are not affected in the

same way as the active life forms."

There was an interruption. A voice spoke from Yoal's re-

ceiver: "A museum has 'been found at approximately the

centre of the city. A red light has been fixed on the roof."

Enash said, "I'll go with you, Yoal. "There might be

skeletons of animals and of the intelligent being in various

stages of his evolution. You didn't answer my question.

Are you going to revive these things?"

Yoal said slowly, "I intend to discuss the matter with

the council, but I think there is no doubt. We must know

the cause of this disaster." He waved one sucker vaguely

to take in half the compass. He added as an afterthought,

"We shall proceed cautiously, of course, beginning with an

obviously early development. The absence of the skeletons

of children indicates that the race had developed personal

immortality."

The council came to look at the exhibits. It was, Enash

knew, a formal preliminary only. The decision was made.

There would be revivals. It was more than that. They

were curious. Space was vast, the journeys through it long and

lonely, landing always a stimulating experience, with its

prospect of new life forms to be seen and studied.

The museum looked ordinary. High-domed ceilings, vast

rooms. Plastic models of strange beasts, many artifactstoo

many to see and comprehend in so short a time. The life

span of a race was imprisoned here in a progressive array

of relics. Enash looked with the others, and was glad when

they came to the line of skeletons and preserved bodies.

He seated himself behind the energy screen, and watched

the biological experts take a preserved body out of a stone

sarcophagus. It was wrapped in windings of cloth, many of

them. The experts did not bother to unravel the rotted

material. Their forceps reached through, pinched a piece of

skullthat was the accepted procedure. Any part of the

skeleton could be used, but the most perfect revivals, the

most complete reconstructions resulted when a certain section

of the skull was used.

Hamar, the chief biologist, explained the choice of body.

"The chemicals used to preserve this mummy show a sketchy

knowledge of chemistry. The carvings on the sarcophagus

indicate a crude and unmechanical culture. In such a civili-

zation there would not be much development of the potential-

ities of the nervous system. Our speech experts have been

analysing the recorded voice mechanism which is a part of

each exhibit, and though many languages are involved

evidence that the ancient language spoken at the time the body

was alive has been reproducedthey found no difficulty in

translating the meanings. They have now adapted our uni-

versal speech machine, so that anyone who wishes to need

only speak into his communicator, and so will have his words

translated into the language of the revived person. The re-

verse, naturally, is also true. Ah, I see we are ready for

the first body."

Enash watched intently with the others as the lid was

clamped down on the plastic reconstructor, and the growth

processes were started. He could feel himself becoming tense.

For there was nothing haphazard about what was happen-

ing. In a few minutes a full-grown ancient inhabitant of this

planet would sit up and stare at them. The science involved

was simple and always fully effective. ~

.... Out of the shadows of smallness, life grows. The

level of beginning and ending, of life andnot life; in that

dim region matter oscillates easily between old and new

habits. The habit of organic, or the habit of inorganic.

Electrons do not have life and un-life values. Atoms form

into molecules, there is a step in the process, one tiny step,

that is of lifeif life begins at all. One step, and then dark-

ness. Or aliveness.

A stone or a living cell. A grain of gold or a blade of

grass, the sands of the sea or the equally numerous ani-

malcules inhabiting the endless fishy watersthe difference is

there in the twilight zone of matter. Each living cell has in it

the whole form. The crab grows a new leg when the old

one is torn from its flesh. Both ends of the planarian worm

elongate, and soon there are two worms, two identities, two

digestive systems each as greedy as the original, each a

whole, unwounded, unharmed by its experience. Each cell

can be the whole. Each cell remembers in detail so intricate

that no totality of words could ever descibe the completeness

achieved.

Butparadoxmemory is not organic. An ordinary wax

record remembers sounds. A wire recorder easily gives up a

duplicate of the voice that spoke into it years before. Mem-

ory is a physiological impression, a mark on matter, a

change in the shape of a molecule, so that when a reaction

is desired the shape emits the same rhythm of response.

Out of the mummy's skull had come the multi-quadrillion

memory shapes from which a response was now being

evoked. As ever, the memory held true.

A man biinked, and opened his eyes.

"It is true, then," he said aloud, and the words were

translated into the Ganae tongue as he spoke them. "Death

is merely an opening into another lifebut where are my

A. E. van Vogt - Resurrection.pdf

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