"Boy," said Herb, "you're topnotch robots, if I do say so.”
Gary snarled at him across the table. "Pipe down," he warned.
"Maybe you aren't robots anymore," Caroline was saying. "Maybe through all these years you have become real entities. Your creators must have given you electrochemical brains, and that, after all, is what the human brain amounts to. In time those brains would become real, almost as efficient, probably in some instances even more efficient than a protoplasmic brain.
And brain power, the ability to think and reason, seems to be all that counts when everything is balanced out.”
"Thank you," said the Engineer. "Thank you very much. You are so kind to say so. That is what I have tried to tell myself.”
"Look here," said Gary. "It really doesn't matter, does it? I mean, whether you are robots or independent entities. You serve the same purpose, you follow the same dictates of conscience, you create the same destiny as things that move and act through the very gift of life. In many ways, to my mind, a robotic existence might be preferable to a human existence.”
"Perhaps it doesn't really matter," agreed the Engineer. "I told you once that we were a proud people, that we had inherited a great trust, that we had carried out that trust. Pride might have kept us from telling you what we were, but now I am glad I have, for the rest will be easier to understand.”
"The rest," said Tommy in surprise. "Is there more?”
"Much more," said the Engineer.
"Wait a second," rumbled Kingsley. "Do you mean that all you Engineers were created by a race that flourished three billion years ago, that you have lived through that space of time?”
"Not all of us," said the Engineer. "My people made only a few of us, a few to man each ship. We ourselves have made others, copies of ourselves. But in each new creation we have tried to inculcate some of the factors which we find missing in ourselves. Imagination, for one thing, and greater initiative, and a greater scope of emotional perception.”
"You yourself are one of the original robots made back on Pluto?" asked Caroline.
The Engineer nodded.
"You are eternal and immortal," suggested Kingsley.
"Not eternal nor immortal," said the Engineer. "But with proper care, replacement of worn-out parts, and barring accident, I will continue to function for many more billions of years to come.”
Billions of years, thought Gary. It was something a man could not imagine.
A human mind could not visualize a billion years or a thousand years or even a hundred years. Man, in general, could visualize not much beyond the figure four.
But if the Engineers had lived for three billion years, how come they had been unable to create a hypersphere, why hadn't they probed out beyond the universe to learn the laws of inter-space? Why must this work wait for the arrival of the human mind?
"I have answered that before," said the Engineer, "and I will answer it again. It is because of imagination and vision… the ability to see beyond facts, to probe into probabilities, to visualize what might be and then attempt to make it so. That is something that we cannot do. We are chained to mechanistic action and mechanistic thought. We do not advance beyond the proven fact. When two facts create another fact, we accept the third fact, but we do not reach out in speculation, collect half a dozen tentative facts and then try to crystallize them. That is the answer to your question.”
Gary looked startled. He hadn't realized that the Engineer could read his undirected thoughts. Caroline was looking at him, a smile twitching the corners of her mouth.
"Did you ask him something?”
"I guess I did," said Gary.
"Did you ever hear from the other Engineers?" asked Kingsley. "The ones who were in the other ships?”
"No," said the Engineer, "we never did. Presumably they have by now found other planets where they are doing the same work as we. We have tried to get in touch with them, but we have never been able to do it.”
"What is your work?" asked Gary.
"Why," said Caroline, "you should know that, Gary. It is to prepare a place for the Engineers' people to live. Isn't that right?" she asked the Engineer.
"It is right," said the Engineer.
"But," protested Gary, "those people are dead. There is no sign of them in our solar system and they certainly didn't start out looking for some other planet. They died off on Pluto.”
He remembered the chiseled masonry that Ted Smith had found. The hands of the Engineers' creators had cut those stones, billions of years ago… and today they still were on Pluto's surface, mute testimony to the greatness of a race that had died while the solar system's planets still were cooling off.
"They are not dead," said the Engineer, and his thoughts seemed to have a particular warmth in them.
"Not dead," said Gary. "Do you know where they are?”
"Yes," said the Engineer. "I do. Some of them are in this very room.”
"In this room,' began Caroline, and then she stopped as the significance of what the Engineer had said struck home.
"In this room," said Herb. "Hell, the only people who are in this room are us. And we aren't your people.”
"But you are," declared the Engineer. "There are differences, to be sure.
But you are much like them, so like them in many ways. You are protoplasmic and they were protoplasmic. Your general form is the same and, I have no doubt, your metabolism. And above all, the way your mind works.”
"That," said Caroline, "was why we could understand you and you could understand us. Why you kept us here when you sent the other entities back to their homes.”
"Do you mean," asked Kingsley, "that we are the direct descendants of your people… that your people finally took over the planets? That seems hardly possible, for we know we started from very humble beginnings. We have no legends, no evidence pointing to such a genesis.”
"Not that," said the Engineer. "Not exactly that. But I suppose you have wondered how life got its start on your planet. There are many planetary systems, you know, where life is entirely unknown. Planets that are fully as old as yours that are barren of all life.”
"There is the spore theory," said Kingsley, and as he said the words he pounded the table with his massive fist.
"By Lord, that's it," he shouted. "The spore theory. Your people out on Pluto, only a few of them left, with the planets still unfit for habitation, knowing that they faced the end… couldn't they have insured life on the young planets by the development and planting of life spores?”
"That," said the Engineer, "is what I thought. That is the theory that I hold.”
"But if that were the case," objected Caroline, "why should we have developed as we did? Why should a life form almost duplicating the Engineers' people have developed? Surely they couldn't have planted determinants in the spore… they couldn't have seen or planned that far ahead. They couldn't possibly have planned the eventual evolution of a race re-creating their own!”
"They were a very ancient people," said the Engineer, "and a very clever people. I do not doubt that they could have planned it as you say.”
"Interesting," said Herb. "But what does it make us?”
"It makes you the heir of my people," said the Engineer. "It means that what we have done here, all we have, all we know is yours. We will rebuild this city, we will condition it in such a manner that your people can live here. Also that whatever the other Engineers may have found or done is yours. We want nothing for ourselves except the joy and the satisfaction of knowing that we have served, that we have done well with the trust that was handed to us.”
They sat stunned, scarcely believing what they heard.
"You mean," asked Kingsley, "that you will rebuild this city and hand it over to the people of our solar system?”