From the Ocean from teh Stars (64 page)

had nothing more to say, and launched forth on the dissertation he had
waited many years to make.

"Alvin," he began, "for twenty years you have been my pupil, and
I have done my best to teach you the ways of the city, and to lead you to the heritage which is yours. You have asked me many questions, and not
all of them have I been able to answer. Some things you were not ready to learn, and some I did not know myself. Now your infancy is over,
though your childhood is scarcely begun. It is still my duty to guide you,
if you need my help. In two hundred years, Alvin, you may begin to
know something of this city and a little of its history. Even I, who am
nearing the end of this life, have seen less than a quarter of Diaspar, and perhaps less than a thousandth of its treasures."

There was nothing so far that Alvin did not know, but there was no
way of hurrying Jeserac. The old man looked steadfastly at him across
the gulf of centuries, his words weighed down with the uncomputable
wisdom acquired during a long lifetime's contact with men and machines.

"Tell me, Alvin," he said, "have you ever asked yourself
where
you
were before you were born—before you found yourself facing Etania
and Eriston at the Hall of Creation?"

"I assumed I was nowhere—that I was nothing but a pattern in the
mind of the city, waiting to be created—like this."

A low couch glimmered and thickened into reality beside Alvin. He
sat down upon it and waited for Jeserac to continue.

"You are correct, of course," came the reply. "But that is merely
part of the answer—and a very small part indeed. Until now, you have
met only children of your own age, and they have been ignorant of the
truth. Soon they will remember, but you will not, so we must prepare
you to face the facts.

"For over a billion years, Alvin, the human race has lived in this
city. Since the Galactic Empire fell, and the Invaders went back to the
stars, this has been our world. Outside the walls of Diaspar, there is
nothing except the desert of which our legends speak.

"We know little about our primitive ancestors, except that they were very short-lived beings and that, strange though it seems, they could re
produce themselves without the aid of memory units or matter organizers.
In a complex and apparently uncontrollable process, the key patterns
of each human being were preserved in microscopic cell structures actu
ally created inside the body. If you are interested, the biologists can tell
you more about it, but the method is of no great importance since it was abandoned at the dawn of history.

"A human being, like any other object, is defined by its structure—

its pattern. The pattern of a man, and still more the pattern which specifies a man's mind, is incredibly complex. Yet Nature was able to pack that pattern into a tiny cell, too small for the eye to see.

"What Nature can do, Man can do also, in his own way. We do not know how long the task took. A million years, perhaps—but what is that? In the end our ancestors learned how to analyze and store the information that would define any specific human being—and to use that information to re-create the original, as you have just created that couch.

"I know that such things interest you, Alvin, but I cannot tell you exactly how it is done. The way in which information is stored is of no importance; all that matters is the information itself. It may be in the form of written words on paper, of varying magnetic fields, or patterns of electric charge. Men have used all these methods of storage, and many others. Suffice to say that long ago they were able to store themselves—or, to be more precise, the disembodied patterns from which they could be called back into existence.

"So much, you already know. This is the way our ancestors gave us virtual immortality, yet avoided the problems raised by the abolition of death. A thousand years in one body is long enough for any man; at the end of that time, his mind is clogged with memories, and he asks only for rest—or a new beginning.

"In a little while, Alvin, I shall prepare to leave this life. I shall go back through my memories, editing them and canceling those I do not wish to keep. Then I shall walk into the Hall of Creation, but through a door which you have never seen. This old body will cease to exist, and so will consciousness itself. Nothing will be left of Jeserac but a galaxy of electrons frozen in the heart of a crystal.

"I shall sleep, Alvin, and without dreams. Then one day, perhaps a hundred thousand years from now, I shall find myself in a new body, meeting those who have been chosen to be my guardians. They will look after me as Eriston and Etania have guided you, for at first I will know nothing of Diaspar and will have no memories of what I was before. Those memories will slowly return, at the end of my infancy, and I will build upon them as I move forward into my new cycle of existence.

"That is the pattern of our lives, Alvin. We have all been here many, many times before, though as the intervals of nonexistence vary according to apparently random laws this present population will never repeat itself again. The new Jeserac will have new and different friends and interests, but the old Jeserac—as much of him as I wish to save—will still exist.

"That is not all. At any moment, Alvin, only a hundredth of the

citizens of Diaspar live and walk its streets. The vast majority slumber in
the Memory Banks, waiting for the signal that will call them forth onto
the stage of existence once again. So we have continuity, yet change—
immortality, but not stagnation.

"I know what you are wondering, Alvin. You want to know when
you will recall the memories of your earlier lives, as your companions
are already doing.

"There are no such memories, for you are unique. We have tried to keep this knowledge from you as long as we could, so that no shadow
should he across your childhood—though I think you must have guessed
part of the truth already. We did not suspect it ourselves until five years
ago, but now there is no doubt.

"You, Alvin, are something that has happened in Diaspar only a
handful of times since the founding of the city. Perhaps you have been
lying dormant in the Memory Banks through all the ages—or perhaps
you were created only twenty years ago by some random permutation.
You may have been planned in the beginning by the designers of the city, or you may be a purposeless accident of our own time.

"We do not know. All that we do know is this: You, Alvin, alone of
the human race, have never lived before. In literal truth, you are the
first child to be born on Earth for at least ten million years."

☆
CHAPTER THREE

When Jeserac and his parents had faded from view,
Alvin lay for a long time trying to hold his mind empty of thought. He
closed his room around him, so that no one could interrupt his trance.

He was not sleeping; sleep was something he had never experienced,
for that belonged to a world of night and day, and here there was only
day. This was the nearest he could come to that forgotten state, and
though it was not really essential to him he knew that it would help com
pose his mind.

He had learned little new; almost everything that Jeserac had told
him he had already guessed. But it was one thing to have guessed it,
another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.

How would it affect his life, if at all? He could not be sure, and un
certainty was a novel sensation to Alvin. Perhaps it would make no
difference whatsoever; if he did not adjust completely to Diaspar in this
life, he would do so in the next—or the next.

Even as he framed the thought, Alvin's mind rejected it. Diaspar might
be sufficient for the rest of humanity, but it was not enough for him. He
did not doubt that one could spend a thousand lifetimes without exhaust
ing all its wonders, or sampling all the permutations of experience it
could provide. These things he could do—but if he could not do more,
he would never be content.

There was only one problem to be faced. What more
was
there to do?

The unanswered question jolted him out of his reverie. He could not
stay here while he was in this restless mood, and there was only one
place in the city where he could find some peace of mind.

The wall flickered partially out of existence as he stepped through to
the corridor, and its polarized molecules resisted his passage like a feeble
wind blowing against his face. There were many ways in which he could
be carried effortlessly to his goal, but he preferred to walk. His room
was almost at the main city level, and a short passage brought him out
onto a spiral ramp which led down to the street. He ignored the moving
way, and kept to the narrow sidewalk—an eccentric thing to do, since
he had several miles to travel. But Alvin liked the exercise, for it soothed his mind. Besides, there was so much to see that it seemed a pity to race
past the latest marvels of Diaspar when you had eternity ahead of you.

It was the custom of the city's artists—and everyone in Diaspar was an artist at some time or another—to display their current productions
along the side of the moving ways, so that the passers-by could admire
their work. In this manner, it was usually only a few days before the
entire population had critically examined any noteworthy creation, and also expressed its views upon it. The resulting verdict, recorded automatically by opinion-sampling devices which no one had ever been able
to suborn or deceive—and there had been enough attempts—decided
the fate of the masterpiece. If there was a sufficiently affirmative vote,
its matrix would go into the memory of the city so that anyone who wished,
at any future date, could possess a reproduction utterly indistinguishable
from the original.

The less successful pieces went the way of all such works. They were
either dissolved back into their original elements or ended in the homes
of the artists' friends.

Alvin saw only one
objet d'art
on his journey that had any appeal
to him. It was a creation of pure light, vaguely reminiscent of an un
folding flower. Slowly growing from a minute core of color, it would
expand into complex spirals and curtains, then suddenly collapse and
begin the cycle over again. Yet not precisely, for no two cycles were
identical. Though Alvin watched through a score of pulsations, each time

there were subtle and indefinable differences, even though the basic pat
tern remained the same.

He knew why he liked this piece of intangible sculpture. Its expand
ing rhythm gave an impression of space—even of escape. For that reason,
it would probably not appeal to many of Alvin's compatriots. He made a
note of the artist's name and decided to call him at the earliest opportu
nity.

All the roads, both moving and stationary, came to an end when
they reached the park that was the green heart of the city. Here, in a
circular space over three miles across, was a memory of what Earth had
been in the days before the desert swallowed all but Diaspar. First there
was a wide belt of grass, then low trees which grew thicker and thicker
as one walked forward beneath their shade. At the same time the
ground sloped gently downward, so that when at last one emerged from
the narrow forest all sign of the city had vanished, hidden by the screen
of trees.

The wide stream that lay ahead of Alvin was called, simply, the
River. It possessed, and it needed, no other name. At intervals it was
spanned by narrow bridges, and it flowed around the park in a complete, closed circle, broken by occasional lagoons. That a swiftly moving river
could return upon itself after a course of less than six miles had never
struck Alvin as at all unusual; indeed, he would not have thought twice
about the matter if at some point in its circuit the River had flowed up
hill. There were far stranger things than this in Diaspar.

A dozen young people were swimming in one of the little lagoons, and
Alvin paused to watch them. He knew most of them by sight, if not by
name, and for a moment was tempted to join in their play. Then the
secret he was bearing decided him against it, and he contented himself
with the role of spectator.

Physically, there was no way of telling which of these young citizens
had walked out of the Hall of Creation this year and which had lived
in Diaspar as long as Alvin. Though there were considerable variations
in height and weight, they had no correlation with age. People were
simply born that way, and although on the average the taller the person, the greater the age, this was not a reliable rule to apply unless one was
dealing in centuries.

The face was a safer guide. Some of the newborn were taller than
Alvin, but they had a look of immaturity, an expression of wondering
surprise at the world in which they now found themselves that revealed
them at once. It was strange to think that, slumbering untapped in their
minds, were infinite vistas of lives that they would soon remember. Alvin