From the Ocean from teh Stars (65 page)

envied them, yet he was not sure if he should. One's first existence was
a precious gift which would never be repeated. It was wonderful to view
life for the very first time, as in the freshness of the dawn. If only there
were others like him, with whom he could share his thoughts and feelings!

Yet physically he was cast in precisely the same mold as those children
playing in the water. The human body had changed not at all in the
billion years since the building of Diaspar, since the basic design had
been eternally frozen in the Memory Banks of the city. It had changed,
however, a good deal from its original primitive form, though most of the
alterations were internal and not visible to the eye. Man had rebuilt
himself many times in his long history, in the effort to abolish those ills to
which the flesh was once heir.

Such unnecessary appurtenances as nails and teeth had vanished.
Hair was confined to the head; not a trace was left on the body. The
feature that would most have surprised a man of the Dawn Ages was, perhaps, the disappearance of the navel. Its inexplicable absence would
have given him much food for thought, and at first sight he would also
have been baffled by the problem of distinguishing male from female.
He might even have been tempted to assume that there was no longer
any difference, which would have been a grave error. In the appropriate
circumstances, there was no doubt about the masculinity of any male
in Diaspar. It was merely that his equipment was now more neatly packaged when not required; internal stowage had vastly improved upon Na
ture's original inelegant and indeed downright hazardous arrangements.

It was true that reproduction was no longer the concern of the body,
being far too important a matter to be left to games of chance played
with chromosomes as dice. Yet, though conception and birth were not
even memories, sex remained. Even in ancient times, not one-hundredth part of sexual activity had been concerned with reproduction. The disappearance of that mere one per cent had changed the pattern of human
society and the meaning of such words as "father" and "mother"—but
desire remained, though now its satisfaction had no profounder aim than
that of any of the other pleasures of the senses.

Alvin left his playful contemporaries and continued on toward the
center of the park. There were faintly marked paths here, crossing and
crisscrossing through low shrubbery and occasionally diving into narrow
ravines between great lichen-covered boulders. Once he came across a
small polyhedral machine, no larger than a man's head, floating among
the branches of a tree. No one knew how many varieties of robot there
were in Diaspar; they kept out of the way and minded their business so
effectively that it was quite unusual to see one.

Presently the ground began to rise again; Alvin was approaching the
little hill that was at the exact center of the park, and therefore of the city itself. There were fewer obstacles and detours, and he had a clear view to
the summit of the hill and the simple building that surmounted it. He was
a little out of breath by the time he had reached his goal, and was glad
to rest against one of the rose-pink columns and to look back over the
way he had come.

There are some forms of architecture that can never change because
they have reached perfection. The Tomb of Yarlan Zey might have been
designed by the temple builders of the first civilizations man had ever
known, though they would have found it impossible to imagine of what
material it was made. The roof was open to the sky, and the single cham
ber was paved with great slabs which only at first sight resembled natural
stone. For geological ages human feet had crossed and recrossed that
floor and left no trace upon its inconceivably stubborn material.

The creator of the great park—the builder, some said, of Diaspar
itself—sat with slightly downcast eyes, as if examining the plans spread across his knees. His face wore that curiously elusive expression that had baffled the world for so many generations. Some had dismissed it as no
more than an idle whim of the artist's, but to others it seemed that Yarlan
Zey was smiling at some secret jest.

The whole building was an enigma, for nothing concerning it could
be traced in the historical records of the city. Alvin was not even sure
what the word "Tomb" meant; Jeserac could probably tell him, because
he was fond of collecting obsolete words and sprinkling his conversation
with them, to the confusion of his listeners.

From this central vantage point, Alvin could look clear across the
park, above the screening trees, and out to the city itself. The nearest
buildings were almost two miles away, and formed a low belt completely
surrounding the park. Beyond them, rank after rank in ascending height,
were the towers and terraces that made up the main bulk of the city.
They stretched for mile upon mile, slowly climbing up the sky, becoming
ever more complex and monumentally impressive. Diaspar had been
planned as an entity; it was a single mighty machine. Yet though its
outward appearance was almost overwhelming in its complexity, it merely
hinted at the hidden marvels of technology without which all these great
buildings would be lifeless sepulchers.

Alvin stared out toward the limits of his world. Ten—twenty miles
away, their details lost in distance, were the outer ramparts of the city,
upon which seemed to rest the roof of the sky. There was nothing beyond

them—nothing at all except the aching emptiness of the desert in which
a man would soon go mad.

Then why did that emptiness call to him, as it called to no one else whom he had ever met? Alvin did not know. He stared out across the
colored spires and battlements that now enclosed the whole dominion of
mankind, as if seeking an answer to his question.

He did not find it. But at that moment, as his heart yearned for the
unattainable, he made his decision.

He knew now what he was going do do with life.

☆
CHAPTER FOUR

Jeserac was not very helpful, though he was not as
un-co-operative as Alvin had half expected. He had been asked such
questions before in his long career as mentor, and did not believe that
even a Unique like Alvin could produce many surprises or set him prob
lems which he could not solve.

It was true that Alvin was beginning to show certain minor eccentrici
ties of behavior, which might eventually need correction. He did not join as fully as he should in the incredibly elaborate social life of the city or in the fantasy worlds of his companions. He showed no great interest in the
higher realms of thought, though at his age that was hardly surprising.
More remarkable was his erratic love life; he could not be expected to form
any relatively stable partnerships for at least a century, yet the brevity of
his affairs was already famous. They were intense while they lasted—but
not one of them had lasted for more than a few weeks. Alvin, it seemed, could interest himself thoroughly only in one thing at a time. There were times when he would join wholeheartedly in the erotic games of his companions, or disappear with the partner of his choice for several days.
But once the mood had passed, there would be long spells when he
seemed totally uninterested in what should have been a major occupation at his age. This was probably bad for him, and it was certainly bad
for his discarded lovers, who wandered despondently around the city
and took an unusually long time to find consolation elsewhere. Alystra,
Jeserac had noticed, had now arrived at this unhappy stage.

It was not that Alvin was heartless or inconsiderate. In love, as in
everything else, it seemed that he was searching for a goal that Diaspar
could not provide.

None of these characteristics worried Jeserac. A Unique might be

expected to behave in such a manner, and in due course Alvin would
conform to the general pattern of the city. No single individual, how
ever eccentric or brilliant, could affect the enormous inertia of a society
that had remained virtually unchanged for over a billion years. Jeserac did not merely believe in stability; he could conceive of nothing else.

'The problem that worries you is a very old one," he told Alvin,
"but you will be surprised how many people take the world so much for
granted that it never bothers them or even crosses their mind. It is true
that the human race once occupied an infinitely greater space than this
city. You have seen something of what Earth was like before the deserts
came and the oceans vanished. Those records you are so fond of projecting
are the earliest we possess; they are the only ones that show Earth as it was before the Invaders came. I do not imagine that many people have
ever seen them; those limitless, open spaces are something we cannot
bear to contemplate.

"And even Earth, of course, was only a grain of sand in the Galactic
Empire. What the gulfs between the stars must have been like is a night
mare no sane man would try to imagine. Our ancestors crossed them at
the dawn of history when they went out to build the Empire. They crossed
them again for the last time when the Invaders drove them back to Earth.

"The legend is—and it is only a legend—that we made a pact with the Invaders. They could have the Universe if they needed it so badly,
and we would be content with the world on which we were born.

"We have kept that pact and forgotten the vain dreams of our child
hood, as you too will forget them, Alvin. The men who built this city, and
designed the society that went with it, were lords of mind as well as
matter. They put everything that the human race would ever need inside
these walls—and then made sure that we would never leave them.

"Oh, the physical barriers are the least important ones. Perhaps there
are routes that lead out of the city, but I do not think you would go along
them for very far, even if you found them. And if you succeeded in the
attempt, what good would it do? Your body would not last long in the
desert, when the city could no longer protect or nourish it."

"If there is a route out of the city," said Alvin slowly, "then what is
there to stop me from leaving?"

"That is a foolish question," answered Jeserac. "I think you already
know the answer."

Jeserac was right, but not in the way he imagined. Alvin knew—or,
rather, he had guessed. His companions had given him the answer, both
in their waking life and in the dream adventures he had shared with
them. They would never be able to leave Diaspar; what Jeserac did not

know was that the compulsion which ruled their lives had no power over
Alvin. Whether his uniqueness was due to accident or to an ancient de
sign, he did not know, but this was one of its results. He wondered how
many others he had yet to discover.

No one ever hurried in Diaspar, and this was a rule which even Alvin
seldom broke. He considered the problem carefully for several weeks,
and spent much time searching the earliest of the city's historical memo
ries. For hours on end he would he, supported by the impalpable arms
of an antigravity field, while the hypnone projector opened his mind to
the past. When the record was finished, the machine would blur and
vanish—but still Alvin would lie staring into nothingness before he came
back through the ages to meet reality again. He would see again the endless leagues of blue water, vaster than the land itself, rolling their waves
against golden shores. His ears would ring with the boom of breakers
stilled these billion years. He would remember the forests and the prairies,
and the strange beasts that had once shared the world with Man.

Very few of these ancient records existed; it was generally accepted,
though none knew the reason why, that somewhere between the coming
of the Invaders and the building of Diaspar all memories of primitive times had been lost. So complete had been the obliteration that it was
hard to believe it could have happened by accident alone. Mankind had lost its past, save for a few chronicles that might be wholly legendary.
Before Diaspar there was simply the Dawn Ages. In that limbo were
merged inextricably together the first men to tame fire and the first to
release atomic energy—the first men to build a log canoe and the first
to reach the stars. On the far side of this desert of time, they were all
neighbors.

Alvin had intended to make this trip alone once more, but solitude was not always something that could be arranged in Diaspar. He had
barely left his room when he encountered Alystra, who made no attempt
to pretend that her presence was accidental.

It had never occurred to Alvin that Alystra was beautiful, for he
had never seen human ugliness. When beauty is universal, it loses its
power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emo
tional effect.

For a moment Alvin was annoyed by the meeting, with its reminder
of passions that no longer moved him. He was still too young and self-
reliant to feel the need for any lasting relationships, and when the time
came he might find it hard to make them. Even in his most intimate
moments, the barrier of his uniqueness came between him and his lovers.
For all his fully formed body, he was still a child and would remain so