Marvells Of Utopia

by Brian W. Aldiss


They had been lovers  centuries ago. Circumstances had  caused them to part  for
different regions of the galaxy. Both served where they were most needed.

For all the invisible nanoservants in their blood, both were now becoming  ready
for euthanasia. But something in their  love was timeless. At the peak  of their
passion, they  had commemorated  themselves in  hologram. Still  in that plastic
cube they lived and  moved as they had  once been, for ever  in passionate love,
for ever perfect, clear of brow, and careless of the world.

It was the thousandth anniversary  of the Reformed Planets' Secretary  General's
'Stay your hand!' speech,  as it had become  known. On that occasion,  the human
race, severally and corporately, intellectually and emotionally, had decided  to
be  better people  and discard  the bogeymen  of the  past. It  was a  fantastic
operation in behavioural manipulation. And it worked.

So now the two aged lovers were called upon, from their different regions of the
system,  to converse  together for  the peepers.  They met  and embraced  -  not
without the trace of tears. Millions watched.

'I admit  I had  forgotten you  for a  whole century,'  she said.  'I regret it.
Forgive me!'

'"A hundred years should go to praise thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze,"'  he
quoted, with a smile.

She gave her old creaking laugh. '"An  age at least to every part, And  the last
age should show my heart.'"

'What marvellous memories we have!'

'Marvellous indeed!'

They began to reminisce about those times  when human life had taken a turn  for
the better, and when humanity had managed to lift itself from its birth-planet.

She wore a  white bandage dress,  signalling her age  and comparative fragility.
She opened this part of the conversation.

'It's a glorious  and grand story,  very surprising to  those who were  alive to
play  a part  in it,  all those   centuries ago.  I'm talking  to my  friend  in
Marsport, where  he was  born. Dearest,  why aren't  you living  on a light-grav
satellite at your age?'

He said, 'I'm just tidying a few matters up. I won't be here for long.' His face
was clean and without whisker, his  flesh taut, his eyes bright but  sunken. 'So
let's see what we can remember of those ancient days of early space-flight.

'One  thing  is  sure,  our  minds were  less  clear  then  -cluttered  like old
boxrooms... Our imaginations were occupied by all kinds of imaginary  impossible
creatures. Do you remember that strange period?'

She said, 'The human race must have  been half mad. Or I suppose one  should say
half sane.  The unfortunate  generations who  lived out  our first  thousands of
years of human existence... well, they were still mired in dreams of a sub-human
past. Nightmares, you could say.'

'Breaking away from  Earth helped the  process of clarification,'  he said. 'The
Earth was supposedly haunted by -oh, ghouls and ghosts and long-legged beasties,
vampires,  leprechauns,  elves,  gnomes, fairies,  angels...  All  those fantasy
creatures besetting early human  life. I suppose they  were bom of dark  forests
and old houses, together with a general lack of scientific understanding.'

She said,  'You could  add to  that long  list all  the world's  false gods  and
goddesses, the Greek gods, who gave their names to the constellations, the Baals
and  Isises  and Roman  soldier  gods, the  multi-armed  Kali, Ganesh  with  the
elephant's head, Allah, Jehovah  with his beards and  rages, dusky hags such  as
Astarte  -  oh, an  endless  stream of  imaginary  super-beings, all  supposedly
controlling human destiny.'

'You're right, sweetest, I forgot them.'

'The mere idea of Heaven made it a Hell on Earth...'

'How long ago it seems! They  were all creaking floorboards in the  cellarage of
the brain, inheritances from our eo-human days.'

'And  what,'  she  said,  and  her  voice  faltered  slightly,  'what  will  our
descendants make of us in another million years?'

He cast his  gaze downwards, showing  a sign of  weariness. '"Ever at  my back I
hear Time's winged chariot drawing near...'"

'"Yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity". It's a consolation really,
my love.'  She leant  forward and  stroked his  cheek, in  an ancient gesture of
affection between women and men.