The accuracy of the prophecy was easy enough to explain: The broad trends of the future were easy enough for a wise man to see even two centuries ago, and Amblick had been a wise man.

  What most disturbed Garol was the last part of the prophecy. “Only one of you shall live to see the end,” the old man had said. “And that one shall not know whether his God won or lost the final battle.”

  Who is the last one? I was the youngest one there, will I therefore live to see the end?

  And then he laughed at himself. The fact that he was youngest hardly mattered. What mattered was that he was on very high somec levels, one up for twelve down, now, and he would certainly outlive any of the others. For curiosity, he scanned the biographies of the members who had still been alive when Amblick died. All were dead.

  All? He realized with alarm that his parents had gone on somec when he got the privilege, and would inevitably have kept the same somec level he kept.

  They wouldn’t be sixty subjective years old yet, surely they, too, were alive.

  But their biographies could not be wrong.

  He read them. His parents hadn’t died on Capitol. A century ago, they had joined a colony ship together and had voluntarily quit the use of somec. They had given up immortality, and when Stipock’s new planet analyzers were just going into use, they had gone out into space to settle a new planet.

  Garol knew there was only one reason they would have quit somec. Except for those caught in a crime, no one on high somec levels ever went to the colonies, only the misfits and the despairing nonsleepers ever volunteered to give up the hope of somec forever.

  Garol’s parents had changed their minds. They had believed again. They had given up somec and all the sins of Capitol, and had gone to a place where none of those sins would be possible.

  They had gone more than a century ago, and so the computer listed them as dead, though in fact they might now still be in space on the way to a very distant assignment. When they landed, though, they would live out their normal lives in hard work and perhaps frequent danger. They would die hundreds of years before their colony qualified for somec.

  Garol was indeed the last of the Church of the Undying Voice left on Capitol.

  And the prophecy spoke to him.

  Garol Stipock could not sleep. The memories of childhood were relentless: they kept pressing him awake, making him restless and uneasy, alternately too hot and too cold. The impulse was irresistible.

  He arose from his bed. He took a towel and covered his head, bowed and knelt and then began to speak to God. He spoke the words he had learned to speak in childhood, and because he was tired he overcame the feeling that this was preposterous, that he was a scientist, that he knew better. God had been speaking directly to him in Amblick’s voice; and now Garol wanted the Voice to tell him what to do.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” he kept saying. “I can’t accomplish anything.

  What can I do?”

  And because he was tired he was not surprised when the Voice spoke to him.

  He knew the voice he was hearing was Amblick’s; but he felt, nonetheless, that behind the voice he knew was the Voice he did not know, and it spoke to him with fire, shouting in his mind.

  “Everything you have done is worthless,” said the Voice.

  Stipock withered in despair.

  “I have given up talking to men and trying to persuade them. They were too wise. They will not listen to me.”

  But I will listen, Stipock cried out in his confusion.

  “You least of all,” said the Voice. “God is silent and so men believe that he is dead, but it is not true. The Undying Voice no longer speaks, but only because the Unsleeping Sword is unsheathed. If men had repented I would have spared them; but they chose to eat the fruit of the tree of life, not knowing that every taste of that fruit brings death so much closer. The end is near. The end is soon. But nothing you can do will hasten or postpone the end by one hour or one day.”

  Stipock felt the words as blows, and the pain of the Voice’s fury made him weep, for mankind that had lost all hope of mercy, for himself who had lost all hope of meaning.

  “Then why should I go on living?” he asked.

  “Because your death,” said the Voice, “would accomplish even less than your life.”

  And because Stipock was unable to accept utter despair, he shouted defiantly, “Who are you to judge what’s meaningful and what isn’t? Men refused to listen to you, and now you want to destroy them! A God who can only be worshipped by the ignorant and the weak has to keep men ignorant and weak in order to keep ruling them!”

  There was silence, and Stipock reeled under the impact of it. I’m insane, he thought. I’ve become as mad as Amblick was, crying out prophecies at the point of his death in a vain hunt for some purpose in life.

  And just as he had persuaded himself that the voice was a hallucination, it came again. This time it spoke, not with the fury of Amblick shouting prophecies, but with his mother’s voice, a gentle voice when he mas small.

  “Garol,” said the Voice that loved him, “Garol, I only point the way for men to be happy. Is it my fault that whenever they gain more light and knowledge they use it to destroy themselves?”

  “No,” he answered.

  “Garol, my son, my child, my little boy, trust me. It is in my hands. Trust me.

  Trust me.” And Garol climbed into bed, and with trust me ringing in his head, he slept.

  He awoke in the morning and remembered the experience of the night before, and laughed at himself for a fool. The Church of the Undying Voice program was still on the computer. He erased it, with a twinge of grief for his parents, who had reverted to religion and chosen certain death in the colonies.

  Yet he could understand how it had happened. Even last night, as he had hallucinated the Voice, he had known it was all in his head. But hallucinations can be very convincing, more convincing than reality. No wonder his parents were fooled. The religion of childhood never really lets go. Garol Stipock, for all his wisdom and understanding and science and self-possession, was still the little boy who had heard too many sermons and believed too many lies.

  He dismissed the events of that night. But they still had their effect on him.

  Because he no longer cared much about the planned revolution; he was bored at the thought of going to the pointless, endless meeting of the conspirators.

  He stayed away from them. He concentrated again on physics. And even if he did not feel he was really accomplishing much, he was at least enjoying himself.

  Mother’s Little Boys found him working out a problem on his computer when they broke in to arrest him.

  “Arrest me? What for?” he asked.

  “What for?” the leader of the Little Boys asked. “Treason, of course?”

  Stipock looked puzzled. “But, gentlemen, I changed my mind about the revolution. I’m no longer involved.”

  The Little Boys looked at each other, bewildered. Then they burst out laughing. “Changed his mind,” they said as they took him to prison. “No longer involved!” It was hilarious.

  As they laughed, Garol knew there was no hope for him. He’d be deported at the very least. Why hadn’t he quit the conspiracy sooner? Why had he believed so long that it would do any good?

  “Why, God, didn’t you tell me sooner?” he asked ironically. But today he wasn’t tired, so the only answer he got from God was a low chuckle in his mind. Garol didn’t get the joke, but he laughed right along. Whatever the punch line was, when he finally understood it, he knew it would be good. No one could tell a joke like God.

  The Stars that Blink

  If the goodman of die house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.

  Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

  —Matthew 24:43-44

  The Governor owned a telescope, and knew how to use it. It was far from being the most powerful telescope in the colony, but the others were photographic, and the Governor’s was the only scope on Answer that one could look through with the naked eye.

  And he looked. Other men might relax with liquor and conversation, or in rough games, or with books, or with sex, but the Governor’s diversion was looking at the stars.

  Answer was only three hundred years old, as a human colony. But it was a good world, and already the original 334 inhabitants had grown to more than five million. Families averaged six children. There were no natural predators, and disease was rare and never killed. Here where some never reached, of course, lives were still short, few lived more than a hundred years. But the Governor, who was only forty, could still remember when there hadn’t been a building over two stories tall in the world Now he stood on the top of the government building, watching the sky. He lived, with his wife and the four children who remained at home, in a suite at the top of the building. It was luxurious by the standards of Answer, a separate room for each of them, and the cooking and eating were not done in the same place. Luxury. Opulence. But not exorbitant, dozens of rich families on Answer lived better than he.

  Indeed, he was Governor not so much because he was the most outstanding man on Answer, but because he was willing to take the job. And he was willing to take it because it did not take all his day or all his mind. It left him hours and thoughts of peace, and paid him a good living, and gave him and his family respect, and besides, he was quite a good governor and he knew it. He was respected, and his judgments and decisions were honored and obeyed without trouble. They hadn’t had to call a legislature since he had been elected.

  After the day, however, of duty, he came up here.

  “Why do you watch the stars so much?” one of his assistants had asked him one day.

  “Because,” he answered, “they never fall asleep when I talk to them.”

  But it was a good question, and he wondered at the answer.

  He knew that around many of them (and he could name which ones, and point them out, and say how far away they were) orbited the planets of the Empire. Billions and billions of people, it was difficult for him to comprehend. He knew that if he could count all the stars he could see through his telescope in one year, it would not equal the number of people in the Empire. And yet when he thought of people, he could only think of Answer, where whole continents were still uninhabited, where no city had more than thirty thousand people, where farms were still being carved in virgin land and mines were still discovering untouched metal. The Empire may be large and old, but here mankind was new, was small, was still humbled by the vastness of a planet, even though men had conquered the far greater distances between stars.

  And as he watched the sky, the Governor imagined he could see the starships like threads spanning the reaches between suns. They made a web, and in it he was caught.

  We dance on the web of starships, he said to himself (or to the stars), and think they make us free. But it’s the absence of starships that frees us.

  Once, once the ships liberated us, and we left overcrowded Earth to discover that far more beautiful and productive and homelike planets were available just for the taking. Odd, that Earthbred man should discover so many places that were more like Earth than Earth was. But had there ever been such grace as the mountains of Answer? The clear water that sang or shouted or roared its song through mountains and across plains and in shattering waves against the shore? Had there ever been stone like this? he thought, touching the rough, shining stones of the government building.

  The starships brought us here, but now let the web be cut. Let us stand alone on our world, and find our own way around the sun, and if time should come when we want to go visiting, then let us rebuild the links. Until then, why can’t the stars be mysterious, their movements miraculous, their light a gift of the gods? Why can’t this telescope be a discoverer?

  Those with somec lived long enough to see the stars move. Yet none of them, the Governor was sure, none of them ever looked. Someday soon a ship will come to Answer, he realized, will come with an inspection team from the department of colonization and- declare us ready to enter the Empire on equal status, and suddenly somec will come, and I will be put on a high level, and those just under me a lower level, and so on until the majority of the people get no somec at all. Then the governorship will not go to the only man willing and able, it will go to the greediest and most ambitious, the ones who crave immortality of the easy kind and aren’t willing to live forever by making an indelible mark in the hearts of men. The peace of Answer will be gone.

  Instead there will be jealousy and hatred.

  But then, the Governor thought, then I will be able to see the stars move. I will be able to live for centuries and know that the constellations are not where they were, that this star and that one are drifting together.

  And if I live long enough, shall I see the stars, one by one, flare up, dazzle for a moment in the sky, and blink out?

  He watched the sky, and a light appeared. It moved perceptibly. It moved irregularly. It was a starship. It set up orbit around Answer.

  The Governor went downstairs to the offices where the all-night skywatchers worked. They looked up at him as he came in. “Good you’re awake, Sir.

  Starship. REnS-455-t, and they request permission to land a party to meet with you.”

  “Of course.”

  The crew of the starship did not look like an inspection team. They were worried, obviously, as they approached the Governor.

  “Is something wrong?” the Governor asked.

  “You’re a colony, right?” the captain asked in return.

  “Probably not, after the next inspection. I assume you’re not inspectors?”

  The captain shook his head. “We have a warship. Loaded with weapons. I warn you, there’s still a crew up there, if something happens to us. We’re prepared to blast this planet out of the sky.”

  The Governor’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “And you’re from the Empire, making threats to a loyal colony?”

  The captain looked ashamed. “You wouldn’t blame me, if you’d seen what we’ve seen.”

  “What have you seen?”

  “Capitol,” said the captain. “It’s dead.”

  “Of what?”

  “Terminal humanity, I suppose. It was a revolution. That bastard usurper, Abner Doon—”

  “Usurper?”

  “You’ve been away from the news for a long time. He began messing with somec. And the nonusers got angry and there was a revolution and they killed all the sleepers.”

  “All!”

  “And they’ve been seizing starships wherever they landed, all over the Empire. The Rebels, too. Killing the crews and smashing the somec. It’s mad.

  Do you realize what it’s doing? There aren’t any starships going, between planets anymore! And Capitol, Capitol slit its own throat. The revolution started there, and now they have no food, and there are only a few survivors, and they can’t last long. Cannibalism. The planet’s dead. A place of savages trying to survive in metal.”

  “And you?”

  “Where could we land? We tried stopping at Garden, but even they’ve gone crazy. Tried to shoot us down. We went as far as we could, trying to find a colony that didn’t have somec yet, where they wouldn’t be part of the revolution.”

  The Governor smiled. “We’re not part of any revolution.”

  The captain relaxed then. “Thank God. We’ve come so far.”

  “You’re welcome to come down.”

  “We won’t have to live on charity, you know,” said the captain. “We have some things you could use. We have enough somec to supply the top people of your world for ages. And our computer knows the formula. And we have a braintaper. And more than two hundred tapes. You can go full status right now, with our equipment. All we ask is to be able to stay on somec ourselves.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” the Governor asked.

  The captain laughed. “Such a sense of humor.”

  The Governor thought for a moment. “Let me go up to your ship. Let me see this equipment.”

  The captain looked perturbed. “Of course we have it. How could we have gotten here without it?”

  The Governor only smiled. “I didn’t doubt that you had it. I only wanted to see it.”

  They led him to their landing craft and took off. The acceleration was surprisingly powerful. The Governor had never traveled so fast in his life.

  And then they did the slow dance of docking, and the Governor experienced weightlessness, and the stars shone without twinkling through the window of the crah.

  This is what it feels like, he thought, to be in space. No wonder men have clung so long to it. And he wanted to go with them to another star.

  And soon I will have immortality within reach. I will see the stars move. And he wanted to have his brain taped and go on somec immediately and watch until the stars blinked out.

  But then, as the docking slowly moved to completion, he knew that he would not accept the somec. Knew, in fact, that he would continue the revolution.

  Not with hatred. Not with blood. But because there were trees on Answer that had never been touched, mountains that had never been seen. Who needs immortality, when every day is still full to overflowing? The long sleeps of somec are only useful to those who are bored, who hope that by skipping over time they will live long enough to see something new.

  Do I need to see something new? Only the end of the stars. And somec will never let me live so long as that. Because if we let it come to Answer, there would soon be hatred, and before long a revolution, and I would be one of the sleepers who was killed.

  They led him aboard the huge starship, and he walked among the weapons, and they took him to the room where the braintaper was. “If anything went wrong to the braintaper, what would happen?” the Governor asked dubiously.

  “Well,” the captain said with a laugh, “nobody’d want to take somec. If you take somec without a braintape to be played back into your head, you might as well be dead. All your memories gone.”