The Lord of the Sands of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

neither like a metropolis with an exploding population nor like a bristling military base. But of course it was both.
    “Welcome to Triton, Orville.”
    Orville turned. One of his youthful operators was smiling. With a blank, professional expression, the other operator brought Orville a robe and placed it on his naked body.
    “How are you feeling? Any discomfort? Any nonspecific anxiety or hostility? Feelings of panic?”
    “My condition is excellent. I am happy to be awake. I wish to fulfill my purpose.”
    “That’s splendid,” said the operator. “But we’re in no hurry. We want you Messengers to get thoroughly acclimated to Triton. First, would you like to try eating? Of course, you don’t require nutrients, but I’d like you to put your food privileges to good use.”
    “An excellent idea. I’m born, now for my first meal. Wait—it’s not breast milk, is it?”
    With a look of amusement, the young man gestured toward the exit. “You seem quite easy to communicate with. I’d like to join you. Order anything you wish—but I can’t offer you breast milk.”
    And Orville’s life began. Many other Messengers were awakened at the same time, and spent their first days being initiated into the mysteries of daily life. The expert AIs assigned to look after them were masters at socializing newly awakened cyborgs. Some Messengers, unable to tolerate being treated like children, soon transferred out of the facility. But Orville doggedly stuck with his operators. He sensed it might indeed be a problem if he put his clothes on backward or greeted someone from a distance of thirty meters, or for that matter three centimeters. So he learned to dress himself and to greet others from a distance of three meters; in the process he encountered his own levelheaded yet irrepressible nature. Before long he was ready to enter the world outside, the world of people.
    He was assigned a place to live and personal property every bit as good as the average citizen. Triton was built for comfort—as much as its distance from the Sun allowed—and Orville fell in love with it. But the existence of this pleasant city was itself based on something far from pleasant. The decision to build on Triton was made in the shadow of extinction.
    Sixty-two years ago, human life on Earth was annihilated.

    Triton Central Council, Sol System—this was Orville’s outfit on humanity’s principal stronghold. Three centuries before, when techniques of interplanetary communication and administration were perfected, some had predicted capital cities would cease to be necessary for centralized government. But the capitals survived; humans are political as well as social animals. Of course, the opposite urge—to avoid certain members of the community—was as strong as ever, and there were countless self-governing free cities scattered throughout the system, but only beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
    As part of their training, Orville and his fellow Messengers were assembled at a facility run by the Central Council’s Sol System Recovery Command. The human general standing before them wasn’t recounting dry history. She was speaking of a tragedy that had struck her own family.
    “We call the enemy ETs. At first it meant extraterrestrials, but once the fighting started, they were Enemies of Terra. After we lost Earth, they were simply Evil Things. We’ve attempted to end this war on thousands of separate occasions. We tried ceasefires. We tried negotiating. We tried surrendering. Tried to expel them. Tried to quarantine them. Nothing worked.
    “Forty-six years ago, we tried extermination. At first it seemed to be working. Our projections had Sol System liberated within a decade. Then they attacked with weapons of mass destruction, including a giant reflector in geosynchronous orbit above Earth. Except for some of the archaebacteria, the biosphere perished. We spent six months reterraforming our home planet, but it looked like we’d need three