From the Ocean from teh Stars (73 page)

goal had been obvious; when they left the pattern of streets and went into
the park, they could only be heading for the Tomb of Yarlan Zey. The
park contained no other buildings, and people in such eager haste as
Alvin and Khedron would not be interested merely in enjoying the scenery.

Because there was no way of concealing herself on the last few hun
dred yards to the Tomb, Alystra waited until Khedron and Alvin had disappeared into the marbled gloom. Then, as soon as they were out of
sight, she hurried up the grass-covered slope. She felt fairly sure that she could hide behind one of the great pillars long enough to discover what
Alvin and Khedron were doing; it did not matter if they detected her
after that.

The Tomb consisted of two concentric rings of columns, enclosing a
circular courtyard. Except in one sector, the columns screened off the
interior completely, and Alystra avoided approaching through this open
ing, but entered the Tomb from the side. She cautiously negotiated the
first ring of columns, saw that there was no one in sight, and tiptoed
across to the second. Through the gaps, she could see Yarlan Zey looking
out through the entrance, across the park he had built, and beyond that
to the city over which he had watched for so many ages.

And there was no one else in all this marble solitude. The Tomb was
empty.

At that moment, Alvin and Khedron were a hundred feet under
ground, in a small, boxlike room whose walls seemed to be flowing steadily upward. That was the only indication of movement; there was
no trace of vibration to show that they were sinking swiftly into the
earth, descending toward a goal that even now neither of them fully
understood.

It had been absurdly easy, for the way had been prepared for them. (By whom? wondered Alvin. By the Central Computer? Or by Yarlan
Zey himself, when he transformed the city?) The monitor screen had
shown them the long, vertical shaft plunging into the depths, but they had followed its course only a little way when the image had blanked
out. That meant, Alvin knew, that they were asking for information
that the monitor did not possess, and perhaps never had possessed.

He had scarcely framed this thought when the screen came to life once
more. On it appeared a brief message, printed in the simplified script
that machines had used to communicate with men ever since they had
achieved intellectual equality:

STAND WHERE THE STATUE GAZES—AND REMEMBER:

DIASPAR WAS NOT ALWAYS THUS

The last five words were in larger type, and the meaning of the entire
message was obvious to Alvin at once. Mentally framed code messages had been used for ages to unlock doors or set machines in action. As for
"Stand where the statue gazes"—that was really
too
simple.

"I wonder how many people have read this message?" said Alvin
thoughtfully.

"Fourteen, to my knowledge," replied Khedron. "And there may have
been others." He did not amplify this rather cryptic remark, and Alvin
was in too great a hurry to reach the park to question him further.

They could not be certain that the mechanisms would still respond to the triggering impulse. When they reached the Tomb, it had taken them
only a moment to locate the single slab, among all those paving the
floor, upon which the gaze of Yarlan Zey was fixed. It was only at first
sight that the statue seemed to be looking out across the city; if one
stood directly in front of it, one could see that the eyes were downcast
and that the elusive smile was directed toward a spot just inside the en
trance to the Tomb. Once the secret was realized, there could be no
doubt about it. Alvin moved to the next slab, and found that Yarlan Zey
was no longer looking toward him.

He rejoined Khedron, and mentally echoed the words that the Jester spoke aloud: "Diaspar was not always thus." Instantly, as if the millions
of years that had lapsed since their last operation had never existed, the
waiting machines responded. The great slab of stone on which they were standing began to carry them smoothly into the depths.

Overhead, the patch of blue suddenly flickered out of existence. The
shaft was no longer open; there was no danger that anyone should ac
cidentally stumble into it. Alvin wondered fleetingly if another slab of
stone had somehow been materialized to replace the one now supporting
him and Khedron, then decided against it. The original slab probably
still paved the Tomb; the one upon which they were standing might only exist for infinitesimal fractions of a second, being continuously re-created
at greater and greater depths in the earth to give the illusion of steady
downward movement.

Neither Alvin nor Khedron spoke as the walls flowed silently past
them. Khedron was once again wrestling with his conscience, wondering
if this time he had gone too far. He could not imagine where this route
might lead, if indeed it led anywhere. For the first time in his life, he
began to understand the real meaning of fear.

Alvin was not afraid; he was too excited. This was the sensation he
had known in the Tower of Loranne, when he had looked out across the untrodden desert and seen the stars conquering the night sky. He
had merely gazed at the unknown then; he was being carried toward it
now.

The walls ceased to flow past them. A patch of light appeared at one side of their mysteriously moving room, grew brighter and brighter, and
was suddenly a door. They stepped through it, took a few paces along
the short corridor beyond—and then were standing in a great, circular
cavern whose walls came together in a sweeping curve three hundred
feet above their heads.

The column down whose interior they had descended seemed far too
slim to support the millions of tons of rock above it; indeed, it did not
seem to be an integral part of the chamber at all, but gave the impression
of being an afterthought. Khedron, following Alvin's gaze, arrived at the
same conclusion.

"This column," he said, speaking rather jerkily, as if anxious to find something to say, "was built simply to house the shaft down which we
came. It could never have carried the traffic that must have passed
through here when Diaspar was still open to the world.
That
came through
those tunnels over there; I suppose you recognize what they are?"

Alvin looked toward the walls of the chamber, more than a hundred yards away. Piercing them at regular intervals were large tunnels, twelve of them, radiating in all directions exactly as the moving ways still did
today. He could see that they sloped gently upward, and now he recognized the familiar gray surface of the moving ways. These were only
the severed stumps of the great roads; the strange material that gave them
life was now frozen into immobility. When the park had been built, the
hub of the moving way system had been buried. But it had never been
destroyed.

Alvin began to walk toward the nearest of the tunnels. He had gone
only a few paces when he realized that something was happening to the
ground beneath his feet.
It was becoming transparent.
A few more yards,
and he seemed to be standing in midair without visible support. He
stopped and stared down into the void beneath him.

"Khedron!" he called. "Come and look at this!"

The other joined him, and together they gazed at the marvel beneath
their feet. Faintly visible, at an indefinite depth, lay an enormous map—
a great network of lines converging toward a spot beneath the central
shaft. They stared at it in silence for a moment; then Khedron said quietly: "You realize what this is?"

"I think so," replied Alvin. "It's a map of the entire transport system,
and those little circles must be the other cities of Earth. I can just see
names beside them, but they're too faint to read."

"There must have been some form of internal illumination once,"
said Khedron absently. He was tracing the lines beneath his feet, following
them with his eyes out toward the walls of the chamber.

"I thought so!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Do you see how all these
radiating lines lead toward the small tunnels?"

Alvin had noticed that besides the great arches of the moving ways there were innumerable smaller tunnels leading out of the chamber—
tunnels that sloped
downward
instead of up.

Khedron continued without waiting for a reply.

"It would be hard to think of a simpler system. People would come
down the moving ways, select the place they wished to visit, and then
follow the appropriate line on the map."

"And what happened to them after that?" asked Alvin. Khedron was silent, his eyes searching out the mystery of those descending tunnels.
There were thirty or forty of them, all looking exactly the same. Only
the names on the map would have enabled one to distinguish between
them, and those names were indecipherable now.

Alvin had wandered away and was circumnavigating the central pillar. Presently his voice came to Khedron, slightly muffled and overlaid
with echoes from the walls of the chamber.

"What is it?" called Khedron, not wishing to move, because he had
nearly succeeded in reading one of the dimly visible groups of characters. But Alvin's voice was insistent, so he went to join him.

Far beneath was the other half of the great map, its faint webwork
radiating to the points of the compass. This time, however, not all of it
was too dim to be clearly seen, for one of the lines—and only one—was
brilliantly illuminated. It seemed to have no connection with the rest of
the system, and pointed like a gleaming arrow to one of the downward-
sloping tunnels. Near its end the line transfixed a circle of golden light,
and against that circle was the single word
lys.
That was all.

For a long time Alvin and Khedron stood gazing down at that silent
symbol. To Khedron it was a challenge he knew he could never accept—
and which, indeed, he would rather did not exist. But to Alvin it hinted at the fulfillment of all his dreams; though the word Lys meant nothing
to him, he let it roll around his mouth, tasting its sibilance like some exotic flavor. The blood was pounding in his veins, and his cheeks were flushed as by a fever. He stared around this great concourse, trying to
imagine it as it had been in the ancient days, when air transport had

come to an end but the cities of Earth still had contact with one another.
He thought of the countless millions of years that had passed with the traffic steadily dwindling and the lights on the great map dying one by
one, until at last only this single line remained. How long, he wondered,
had it gleamed there among its darkened companions, waiting to guide
the steps that never came, until Yarlan Zey had sealed the moving ways
and closed Diaspar against the world?

And that had been a billion years ago. Even then, Lys must have lost
touch with Diaspar. It seemed impossible that it could have survived;
perhaps, after all, the map meant nothing now.

Khedron broke into his reverie at last. He seemed nervous and ill at
ease, not at all like the confident and self-assured person that he had
always been in the city above.

"I do not think that we should go any further now," he said. "It may
not be safe until—until we are more prepared."

There was wisdom in this, but Alvin recognized the underlying note
of fear in Khedron's voice. Had it not been for that, he might have been
sensible, but a too-acute awareness of his own valor, combined with a
contempt for Khedron's timidity, drove Alvin onward. It seemed foolish
to have come so far, only to turn back when the goal might be in sight.

"I'm going down that tunnel," he said stubbornly, as if challenging
Khedron to stop him. "I want to see where it leads." He set off resolutely,
and after a moment's hesitation the Jester followed him along the arrow
of light that burned beneath their feet.

As they stepped into the tunnel, they felt the familiar tug of the
peristaltic field, and in a moment were being swept effortlessly into the
depths. The journey lasted scarcely a minute; when the field released
them they were standing at one end of a long narrow chamber in the
form of a half-cylinder. At its distant end, two dimly lit tunnels stretched
away toward infinity.

Men of almost every civilization that had existed since the Dawn
would have found their surroundings completely familiar, yet to Alvin
and Khedron this was a glimpse of another world. The purpose of the
long, streamlined machine that lay aimed like a projectile at the far
tunnel was obvious, but that made it none the less novel. Its upper portion
was transparent, and looking through the walls Alvin could see rows of
luxuriously appointed seats. There was no sign of any entrance, and the entire machine was floating about a foot above a single metal rod that
stretched away into the distance, disappearing in one of the tunnels. A
few yards away another rod led to the second tunnel, but no machine
floated above it. Alvin knew, as surely as if he had been told, that some-