Zelazny, Roger - Novel 07 Read Online Free

and
because of this I have decided to take this time to tell you exactly what that
word means. Human. Do you think Leakey and the others were right, that it was
East Africa where some hominid first took his thumb and got a grip on the
humanity business?"
                   "It is quite possible. We may never know
for certain, but there is evidence—"
                   "I will spare you the trouble. The answer
is yes. That is where they did it. But they were not entirely unassisted in the
matter—at that point, and at many other points far earlier in time."
                   "I do not understand...."
                   "Of course not. Your education was based
on admirable presumptions of regularity and an unavoidable eschewal of the
teleological. You are a victim of your own sound thinking. There is no way you
could have arrived at the proper conclusions, short of being told. Yet the
answer is teleological: the human race was designed to serve a particular end,
and that end is now in sight."
                   "Mad! Ridiculous!" Van Duyn said,
and the dark man gestured toward the city.
                   "Can you make things move again?" he
asked.
                   Van Duyn lowered his head.
                   "Then hear me out. Suspend judgment until
I have finished the story. Are you hungry?"
                   "Yes."
                   The other reached into his satchel.
                   "Sandwiches, wine, lemonade, chocolate,
coffee ..." He unfolded a cloth and spread the food upon it. "Eat,
and listen."
                   "Ages ago," he began, "a
particular creature was selected to develop into the dominant life form on this
planet. It was given certain breaks and certain challenges, all of which, when
utilized or overcome, marked it indelibly with particular traits as it moved
along the road to a higher sentience. Its course was directed through many of
the situations recently determined by archaeologists and anthropologists to
lead up to the hominids and beyond, to bring about the dominance of this planet
by the gregarious killer ape. It was necessary to produce a life form of this
sort which would achieve a communal existence and acquire the ability to
manipulate its environment in such a fashion as to give eventual rise to an
urban life style and an inevitable state of high industrial development."
                   Van Duyn shook his head, but his mouth was
full and he had no choice but to listen as the other went on:
                   "This was desirable solely because of the
physical alteration of the world which would come about as a by-product of such
a civilization's normal functioning. The agents of mankind's development sought
the evolution of an environment characterized by the presence of such compounds
as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, methyl mercury, fluorocarbons 11 and 12,
tetrachlo-roethylene, carbon tet, carbon monoxide, polychlo-rinated biphenyls,
organic phosphates and numerous other industrial effluents and discharges which
characterize the modern world. In short, they devised the human race as a
planoforming agent, designed and programmed so perfectly that it would not only
do this job for them, but would self-destruct when it was completed."
                   "But why?" asked Van Duyn.
"What purpose would this serve?"
                   "The human race," said the other,
"was so designed by beings from another world. I do not know what events
finally destroyed their own planet, though I can make some obvious guesses. A
few of them escaped and came here. The Earth apparently filled the bill as a
suitable world, if certain changes could be effected. There were too few of
them to set about the massive job, so they assured the development of the human
species to do it for them. They have been sleeping all this while, in stasis
chambers aboard their