The City and the Stars (20 page)

They heard him to the end without interruption or questioning. When he had finished it was very late, and Alvin felt more tired than he could ever before remember. The strain and excitement of the long day had told on him at last, and quite suddenly he was asleep.

When he woke, he was in an unfamiliar room and it was some moments before he remembered that he was no longer in Diaspar. As consciousness returned, so the light grew around him, until presently he was bathed in the soft, cool radiance of the morning sun, streaming through the now transparent walls. He lay in drowsy half-awareness, recalling the events of the previous day and wondering what forces he had now set in motion.

With a soft, musical sound, one of the walls began to pleat itself up in a manner so complicated that it eluded the eye. Hilvar stepped through the opening that had been formed and looked at Alvin with an expression half of amusement, half of serious concern.

“Now that you’re awake, Alvin,” he said, “perhaps you’ll at least tell me what your next move is, and how you managed to return here. The Senators are just leaving to look at the subway; they can’t understand how you managed to come back through it. Did you?”

Alvin jumped out of bed and stretched himself mightily.

“Perhaps we’d better overtake them,” he said. “I don’t want to make them waste their time. As for the question you asked me— in a little while I’ll show you the answer to that.”

They had almost reached the lake before they overtook the three Senators, and both parties exchanged slightly self-conscious greetings. The Committee of Investigation could see that Alvin knew where it was going, and the unexpected encounter had clearly put it somewhat at a loss.

“I’m afraid I misled you last night,” said Alvin cheerfully. “I didn’t come to Lys by the old route, so your attempt to close it was quite unnecessary. As a matter of fact, the Council of Diaspar also closed it at their end, with equal lack of success.”

The Senators’ faces were a study in perplexity as one solution after another chased through their brains.

“Then how
did
you get here?” said the leader. There was a sudden, dawning comprehension in his eyes, and Alvin could tell that he had begun to guess the truth. He wondered if he had intercepted the command his mind had just sent winging across the mountains. But he said nothing, and merely pointed in silence to the northern sky.

Too swiftly for the eye to follow, a needle of silver light arched across the mountains, leaving a mile-long trail of incandescence. Twenty thousand feet above Lys, it stopped. There was no deceleration, no slow braking of its colossal speed. It came to a halt instantly, so that the eye that had been following it moved on across a quarter of the heavens before the brain could arrest its motion. Down from the skies crashed a mighty petal of thunder, the sound of air battered and smashed by the violence of the ship’s passage. A little later the ship itself, gleaming splendidly in the sunlight, came to rest upon the hillside a hundred yards away.

It was difficult to say who was the most surprised, but Alvin was the first to recover. As they walked— very nearly running— toward the spaceship, he wondered if it normally traveled in this meteoric fashion. The thought was disconcerting, although there had been no sensation of movement on his voyage. Considerably more puzzling, however, was the fact that a day ago this resplendent creature had been hidden beneath a thick layer of iron-hard rock— the coating it had still retained when it had torn itself loose from the desert. Not until Alvin had reached the ship, and burned his fingers by incautiously resting them on the hull, did he understand what had happened. Near the stern there were still traces of earth, but it had been fused into lava. All the rest had been swept away, leaving uncovered the stubborn shell which neither time nor any natural force could ever touch.

With Hilvar by his side, Alvin stood in the open door and looked back at the silent Senators. He wondered what they were thinking— what, indeed, the whole of Lys was thinking. From their expressions, it almost seemed as if they were beyond thought.

“I am going to Shalmirane,” said Alvin, “and I will be back in Airlee within an hour or so. But that is only a beginning, and while I am away, there is a thought I would leave with you.

“This is no ordinary flyer of the kind in which men traveled over the Earth. It is a spaceship, one of the fastest ever built. If you want to know where I found it, you will find the answer in Diaspar. But you will have to go there, for Diaspar will never come to you.”

He turned to Hilvar, and gestured to the door. Hilvar hesitated for a moment only, looking back once at the familiar scenes around him. Then he stepped forward into the air lock.

The Senators watched until the ship, now moving quite slowly— for it had only a little way to go— had disappeared into the south. Then the gray-haired young man who led the group shrugged his shoulders philosophically and turned to one of his colleagues.

“You’ve always opposed us for wanting change,” he said, “and so far you have won. But I don’t think the future lies with either of our groups now. Lys and Diaspar have both come to the end of an era, and we must make the best of it.”

“I am afraid you are right,” came the gloomy reply. “This is a crisis, and Alvin knew what he was saying when he told us to go to Diaspar. They know about us now, so there is no further purpose in concealment. I think we had better get in touch with our cousins— we may find them more anxious to co-operate now.”

“But the subway is closed at both ends!”

“We can open ours; it will not be long before Diaspar does the same.”

The minds of the Senators, those in Airlee and those scattered over the whole width of Lys, considered the proposal and disliked it heartily. But they saw no alternative.

Sooner than he had any right to expect, the seed that Alvin had planted was beginning to flower.

The mountains were still swimming in shadow when they reached Shalmirane. From their height the great bowl of the fortress looked very small; it seemed impossible that the fate of Earth had once depended on that tiny ebony circle.

When Alvin brought the ship to rest among the ruins by the lakeside, the desolation crowded in upon him, chilling his soul. He opened the air lock, and the stillness of the place crept into the ship. Hilvar, who had scarcely spoken during the entire flight, asked quietly: “Why have you come here again?”

Alvin did not answer until they had almost reached the edge of the lake. Then he said: “I wanted to show you what this ship was like. And I also hoped that the polyp might be in existence once more; I feel I owe it a debt, and I want to tell it what I’ve discovered.”

“In that case,” replied Hilvar, “you will have to wait. You have come back much too soon.”

Alvin had expected that; it had been a remote chance and he was not disappointed that it had failed. The waters of the lake were perfectly still, no longer beating with that steady rhythm that had so puzzled them on their first visit. He knelt down at the water’s edge and peered into the cold, dark depths.

Tiny translucent bells, trailing almost invisible tentacles, were drifting to and fro beneath the surface. Alvin plunged in his hand and scooped one up. He dropped it at once, with a slight exclamation of annoyance. It had stung him.

Some day— perhaps years, perhaps centuries in the future— these mindless jellies would reassemble and the great polyp would be reborn as its memories linked together and its consciousness flashed into existence once again. Alvin wondered how it would receive the discoveries he had made; it might not be pleased to learn the truth about the Master. Indeed, it might refuse to admit that all its ages of patient waiting had been in vain.

Yet had they? Deluded though these creatures might have been, their long vigil had at last brought its reward. As if by a miracle, they had saved from the past knowledge that else might have been lost forever. Now they could rest at last, and their creed could go the way of a million other faiths that had once thought themselves eternal.

H
ilvar and Alvin walked in reflective silence back to the waiting ship, and presently the fortress was once more a dark shadow among the hills. It dwindled swiftly until it became a black and lidless eye, staring up forever into space, and soon they lost it in the great panorama of Lys.

Alvin did nothing to check the machine; still they rose until the whole of Lys lay spread beneath them, a green island in an ocher sea. Never before had Alvin been so high; when finally they came to rest the whole crescent of the Earth was visible below. Lys was very small now, only an emerald stain against the rusty desert— but far around the curve of the globe something was glittering like a man-colored jewel. And so for the first time, Hilvar saw the city of Diaspar.

They sat for a long while watching the Earth turn beneath them. Of all Man’s ancient powers, this surely was the one he could least afford to lose. Alvin wished he could show the world as he saw it now to the rulers of Lys and Diaspar.

“Hilvar,” he said at last, “do you think that what I’m doing is right?”

The question surprised Hilvar, who did not suspect the sudden doubts that sometimes overwhelmed his friend, and still knew nothing of Alvin’s meeting with the Central Computer and the impact which that had had upon his mind. It was not an easy question to answer dispassionately; like Khedron, though with less cause, Hilvar felt that his own character was becoming submerged. He was being sucked helplessly into the vortex which Alvin left behind him on his way through life.

“I believe you are right,” Hilvar answered slowly. “Our two peoples have been separated for long enough.” That, he thought, was true, though he knew that his own feelings must bias his reply. But Alvin was still worried.

“There’s one problem that bothers me,” he said in a troubled voice, “and that’s the difference in our life spans.” He said no more, but each knew what the other was thinking.

“I’ve been worried about that as well,” Hilvar admitted, “but I think the problem will solve itself in time when our people get to know each other again. We can’t
both
be right— our lives may be too short, and yours are certainly far too long. Eventually there will be a compromise.”

Alvin wondered. That way, it was true, lay the only hope, but the ages of transition would be hard indeed. He remembered again those bitter words of Seranis:
“Both he and I will have been dead for centuries while you are still a young man.”
Very well; he would accept the conditions. Even in Diaspar all friendships lay under the same shadow; whether it was a hundred or a million years away made little difference at the end.

Alvin knew, with a certainty that passed all logic, that the welfare of the race demanded the mingling of these two cultures; in such a cause individual happiness was unimportant. For a moment Alvin saw humanity as something more than the living background of his own life, and he accepted without flinching the unhappiness his choice must one day bring.

Beneath them the world continued on its endless turning. Sensing his friend’s mood, Hilvar said nothing, until presently Alvin broke the silence.

“When I first left Diaspar,” he said, “I did not know what I hoped to find. Lys would have satisfied me once— more than satisfied me— yet now everything on Earth seems so small and unimportant. Each discovery I’ve made has raised bigger questions, and opened up wider horizons. I wonder where it will end….”

Hilvar had never seen Alvin in so thoughtful a mood, and did not wish to interrupt his soliloquy. He had learned a great deal about his friend in the last few minutes.

“The robot told me,” Alvin continued, “that this ship can reach the Seven Suns in less than a day. Do you think I should go?”

“Do you think I could stop you?” Hilvar replied quietly.

Alvin smiled.

“That’s no answer,” he said. “Who knows what lies out there in space? The Invaders may have left the Universe, but there may be other intelligences unfriendly to Man.”

“Why should there be?” Hilvar asked. “That’s one of the questions our philosophers have been debating for ages. A truly intelligent race is not likely to be unfriendly.”

“But the Invaders—?”

“They are an enigma, I admit. If they were really vicious, they must have destroyed themselves by now. And even if they have not—” Hilvar pointed to the unending deserts below. “Once we had an Empire. What have we now that they would covet?”

Alvin was a little surprised that anyone else shared this point of view, so closely allied to his own.

“Do all your people think this way?” he asked.

“Only a minority. The average person doesn’t worry about it, but would probably say that if the Invaders really wanted to destroy Earth, they’d have done it ages ago. I don’t suppose anyone is actually afraid of them.”

“Things are very different in Diaspar,” said Alvin. “My people are great cowards. They are terrified of leaving their city, and I don’t know what will happen when they hear that I’ve located a spaceship. Jeserac will have told the Council by now, and I would like to know what it is doing.”

“I can tell you that. It is preparing to receive its first delegation from Lys. Seranis has just told me.”

Alvin looked again at the screen. He could span the distance between Lys and Diaspar in a single glance; though one of his aims had been achieved, that seemed a small matter now. Yet he was very glad; now, surely, the long ages of sterile isolation would be ending.

The knowledge that he had succeeded in what had once been his main mission cleared away the last doubts from Alvin’s mind. He had fulfilled his purpose here on Earth, more swiftly and more thoroughly than he had dared to hope. The way lay clear ahead for what might be his last, and would certainly be his greatest, adventure.

“Will you come with me, Hilvar?” he said, all too conscious of what he was asking.

Hilvar looked at him steadfastly.

“There was no need to ask that, Alvin,” he said. “I told Seranis and all my friends that I was leaving with you— a good hour ago.”

They were very high when Alvin gave the robot its final instructions. The ship had come almost to rest and the Earth was perhaps a thousand miles below, nearly filling the sky. It looked very uninviting; Alvin wondered how many ships in the past had hovered here for a little while and then continued on their way.

There was an appreciable pause, as if the robot was checking controls and circuits that had not been used for geological ages. Then came a very faint sound, the first that Alvin had ever heard from a machine. It was a tiny humming, which soared swiftly octave by octave until it was lost at the edge of hearing. There was no sense of change of motion, but suddenly he noticed that the stars were drifting across the screen. The Earth reappeared, and rolled past— then appeared again, in a slightly different position. The ship was “hunting,” swinging in space like a compass needle seeking the north. For minutes the skies turned and twisted around them, until at last the ship came to rest, a giant projectile aimed at the stars.

Centered in the screen the great ring of the Seven Suns lay in its rainbow-hued beauty. A little of Earth was still visible as a dark crescent edged with the gold and crimson of the sunset. Something was happening now, Alvin knew, beyond all his experience. He waited, gripping his seat, while the seconds drifted by and the Seven Suns glittered on the screen.

There was no sound, only a sudden wrench that seemed to blur the vision— but Earth had vanished as if a giant hand had whipped it away. They were alone in space, alone with the stars and a strangely shrunken sun. Earth was gone as though it had never been.

Again came that wrench, and with it now the faintest murmur of sound, as if for the first time the generators were exerting some appreciable fraction of their power. Yet for a moment it seemed that nothing had happened; then Alvin realized that the sun itself was gone and that the stars were creeping slowly past the ship. He looked back for an instant and saw— nothing. All the heavens behind had vanished utterly, obliterated by a hemisphere of night. Even as he watched, he could see the stars plunge into it, to disappear like sparks falling upon water. The ship was traveling far faster than light, and Alvin knew that the familiar space of Earth and sun held him no more.

When that sudden, vertiginous wrench came for the third time, his heart almost stopped beating. The strange blurring of vision was unmistakable now: for a moment his surrounding seemed distorted out of recognition. The meaning of that distortion came to him in a flash of insight he could not explain.
It was real, and no delusion of his eyes.
Somehow he was catching, as he passed through the thin film of the Present, a glimpse of the changes that were occurring in the space around him.

At the same instant the murmur of the generators rose to a roar that shook the ship— a sound doubly impressive for it was the first cry of protest that Alvin had ever heard from a machine. Then it was all over, and the sudden silence seemed to ring in his ears. The great generators had done their work; they would not be needed again until the end of the voyage. The stars ahead flared blue-white and vanished into the ultraviolet. Yet by some magic of Science or Nature the Seven Suns were still visible, though now their positions and colors were subtly changed. The ship was hurtling toward them along a tunnel of darkness, beyond the boundaries of space and time, at a velocity too enormous for the mind to contemplate.

It was hard to believe that they had now been flung out of the Solar System at a speed which unless it were checked would soon take them through the heart of the Galaxy and into the greater emptiness beyond. Neither Alvin nor Hilvar could conceive the real immensity of their journey; the great sagas of exploration had completely changed Man’s outlook toward the Universe and even now, millions of centuries later, the ancient traditions had not wholly died. There had once been a ship, legend whispered, that had circumnavigated the Cosmos between the rising and the setting of the sun. The billions of miles between the stars meant nothing before such speeds. To Alvin this voyage was very little greater, and perhaps less dangerous, than his first journey to Lys.

It was Hilvar who voiced both their thoughts as the Seven Suns slowly brightened ahead.

“Alvin,” he remarked, “that formation can’t possibly be natural.”

The other nodded.

“I’ve thought that for years, but it still seems fantastic.”

“The system may not have been built by Man,” agreed Hilvar, “but intelligence must have created it. Nature could never have formed that perfect circle of stars, all equally brilliant. And there’s nothing else in the visible Universe like the Central Sun.”

“Why should such a thing have been made, then?”

“Oh, I can think of many reasons. Perhaps it’s a signal, so that any strange ship entering our Universe will know where to look for life. Perhaps it marks the center of galactic administration. Or perhaps— and somehow I feel that this is the real explanation— it’s simply the greatest of all works of art. But it’s foolish to speculate now. In a few hours we shall know the truth.”

“We shall know the truth.”
Perhaps, thought Alvin— but how much of it shall we ever know? It seemed strange that now, while he was leaving Diaspar, and indeed Earth itself, at a speed beyond all comprehension, his mind should turn once more to the mystery of his origin. Yet perhaps it was not so surprising; he had learned many things since he had first arrived in Lys, but until now he had not had a single moment for quiet reflection.

There was nothing he could do now but sit and wait; his immediate future was controlled by the wonderful machine— surely one of the supreme engineering achievements of all time— that was now carrying him into the heart of the Universe. Now was the moment for thought and reflection, whether he wished it or not. But first he would tell Hilvar all that had happened to him since their hasty parting only two days before.

Hilvar absorbed the tale without comment and without asking for any explanations; he seemed to understand at once everything that Alvin described, and showed no signs of surprise even when he heard of the meeting with the Central Computer and the operation it had performed upon the robot’s mind. It was not that he was incapable of wonder, but that the history of the past was full of marvels that could match anything in Alvin’s story.