Free Galaxies Like Grains of Sand by Brian W. Aldiss Page A

imprinting the systoles of young alligators on wolf embryos.
    “I have a message from our daughter. She is on her way here from Union, and wants us to fly to meet her. Will you come with me?”
    “Gladly. And I’m sorry if I was being cranky.”
    She laid a hand gently on his sleeve as they proceeded through the home.
    “I wish we could travel into the future as easily as we travel through the air,” he said. “I long to travel into the future and see how certain current events resolve themselves.”
    With a slight show of impatience, Wangust said, “Recall the equations. Consciousness can travel only into the past, the paved way, and return only to the present. There is no future. The future is unmade, a way unbuilt. Tomorrow does not exist until tomorrow. The equations explain.”
    “The equations have not taken everything into account; that’s the conclusion I have come to.” He set his face into stubborn lines. “I will sail into the future.”
    Yalleranda, skipping behind barriers of gossamer, checked his pace, letting the old man’s words whisper to him. Everything was boundless, all was possible; he alone would do a million million things when he grew up that no one else had ever done. He knew how to jump that barrier. Why should not this ancient crust of manhood hurl himself into some remote future, full of gold and high buildings and apples stuffed with stoneless dates?
    He crouched concealed behind a furred honesty as the man and woman climbed into their flying machine. It rose into the air vertically, like a lift, making the air momentarily visible.
    The summer home faded away about him, ebbing like a dying tide of light. He stood alone in parkland, ankles deep in grass, face upturned, mouth open, blinking, wondering.
     
    From the airborne machine as it rose, more and more territory came to view, flattening in amazing fashion. Five miles above the ground, they hovered. They could see in the distance the dark finger of burnt lands, where machines still played their paralysed battles. Elsewhere, all was green.
    Chun Hwa remembered. He said, “When you were last away, one of the scunging machines ran amok. The house intercepted it and turned it away. We traced it until it plunged into a ravine and was dead. They are still active after all these centuries; only their programming is a little awry.
    “We should send an expedition into the burnt lands to remove their solar receivers and de-activate them.
    “After that day, I dreamed that the programming of the whole universe was a little awry. And there were other universes where circumstances turned out better.”
    Ignoring his remark, Wangust continued to gaze down on the fertile landscape. “That is all our work, the work of the simple, uncoordinated Solites. When we first came here, the entire land was dead. When you arrived, it was still as black as desert, supporting only cacti and camels. With our hands and our empathies, we established that beautiful harmonious world of seeds, insects, birds, animals, spirits. Now they are self-sufficient, and promote their own green wave, farther and farther. There’s no stopping it now.”
    “Yes, yes. We did a fine job of patching.”
    “That green wave will join with the green wave growing from the coast, where Cobalt’s new city confronts the sea at Union Bay. Isn’t that forgiveness of sins? Can you still pretend we have accomplished nothing? Could we have accomplished anything better?”
    He smiled at her and put an arm about her shoulder, but would say nothing, would not say what he thought.
    Turning slightly, he said, “You have every right to be pleased. Now you can be more pleased, for a ship is coming up from the coast.”
    Once he had flown his own ship, had driven at night on glowing wings above the burnt-out bulk of the planet, changing things, immersed in the taste of his task. He had seeded sterile and stormy oceans, to watch them later flash with phosphorescence like dawn in a dark sky. The