As lawns
went in Serenth it was reasonably luxuriant. It averaged perhaps one blade of
grass per square inch, enough to give the ground a fuzzy green tinge. Normally,
a passer-by would do no more than appreciate that general effect.
Midax, however, had noticed
something else, something he had never expected to see, but which he
straightaway understood.
It meant goodbye to all previous
days. It was a cut-away point in history, screening off all moments up to and
including the moment before. On the past side of that barrier, he had been
living a life which, despite all its discontents, shone now in a sudden
retrospect of pearly light, out of reach, idyllic – replaced by the new
knowledge which slithered against him.
Alas, I cannot un-see what I see
–
Midax’s ability to register
detail was what had put him at this focus of destiny. Every Serenthian was born
with the ability to recognize in individual detail every stalk, petal or
leaf of each separate plant in the known and visited world: that's to say, literally every
single separate thing that grew in Serenth itself and in the surrounding hills
of Sycrest. But this item-awareness was perhaps keener in Midax than in
most. At any rate it was he who made the discovery, here on Rheddon Avenue, on
this quiet evening of Day 143,206,645:
Two blades of grass had fused
into one. That was all. Two separate clean-lined blades had ceased to be. And
where the pair of blades had formerly stood, just one rather coarse and smudgy
blade existed. One tiny change.
As of this instant, the world
will never be the same.
Midax had never thought that he
would ever happen to live through one of those rare vertiginous moments called
“historic”. Now his skin prickled with the truth while his imagination soared to comprehend its implications for the world he knew - for the habitable land that encompassed all of Sycrest
out as far as the Blerdon, the vague boundary, about forty miles distant, where
the diminishing influence of the Time-Tree fell below the level necessary to
nurture the complexity called “life”. How tiny, that oasis of complexity now appeared; how helpless before the coldly implacable fate now in store!
Sycrest lay powerless as it
awaited its doom. Nothing could prevent the onset of the Winter of Simplicity,
of which the grass-blade fusion was the first sign – the Winter of Simplicity,
which folklore had named, in brutal accuracy, Sparseworld.
A mythical condition, said
skeptics whose disbelief had grown with the ages. A mere bogey to frighten
simpletons –
Until this evening. Now, proof
had appeared. Now Midax must bear the news to the authorities.
Why? Why must he believe? Just a pair of grass-blades
fused - must the implication be so dire?
No room for doubt, nor indeed for
any surprise at the rapidity of his own understanding. He had no choice but
to understand, though he reeled at the perspective. The deeper the truth, the more adapted it was to one’s deep self;
and complexity was the most fundamental topic of all.
Complexity. An affinity for it, a
knack for gauging its precise degree, and a warning instinct for changes in its
trend, were natural talents for a people who dwelt in one isolated
life-spangled patch surrounded by millions of miles of smoothness. Sparseworld
is on its way. Midax set his limbs in motion.
He must force himself first of
all to carry out a check. A few minutes could be spared for this. Briskly he
wandered up and down and across this section of avenue, examining his
surroundings while repressing a pit-of-the-stomach disorder that sent him
paging through his mental dictionary for the obscure word fear.
Finally assured that the rest of
the lawn was normal, he next gazed at the trees which lined its border. He
examined them in dread lest he see any of them devolved into crude lollipop
shapes.
No, thank the Fount, the trees
still had twigs and leaves, complex as ever.
Not that this was any real
comfort. According to all the legends, Sparseworld was destined to approach
stealthily, and furthermore the Olamic Institute, which had always known that
this nightmare was no legend, had always taught that it would start with a
deceptive trickle of minor changes.
Midax began loping back up the
avenue, back towards the Institute building. His eyes swept the scene like
searchlights as he ran a weaving route, examining structures on both sides,
noting with relief the unimpaired complexity of cornices and façades. Further
up the hill he took the time to jog round in a full loop, to face back for one
last comfortable view over the city. Anything peculiar? Distant spots of
reassuring motion: airmills’ giant propellers, spinning with stroboscopic
verve, furnishing the breezes for bright-coloured sails, scudding along
frictionless canals. Thank the Fount, the same old kaleidoscopic pattern as of
yore. It would be a while before Sparseworld smudged all this.
If only his glance could have
rested there. Unfortunately, to be realistic, he must continue to lift his
eyes. Above the city’s far edge, into the up-curving dimness beyond, his spirit
was quelled by the sad fact that perspective is not to blame for the blurring
of far-off things, here in this world of Korm. Not mere distance but a real
lessening of detail is what turns those clouds into mere round bubbles, and, as
for the ground beyond the Blerdon, milky smoothness reigns, save for rare
mineral discolourations where the universal pre-atomic kolv is alloyed
with occasional drifts of more advanced matter. Or save for the even rarer
fissures or cracks in the englobing surface, such as the oft-studied Silver
Stain is supposed to be; or, saddest of all – some thirty thousand miles away –
the dull patch called Icdon, which, millions of days ago, used to be a city.
Midax could visualize the
Icdonians sprawled like crude abandoned dolls among the sagging waxlike lumps
that used to be buildings: people, or rather former people, eyes half-closed
showing an occasional flicker from the embers of their souls, all fine detail
of personality lost as if a novel were abridged to a paragraph.
He shook his senses free of these
horrors, refusing to shudder at the fate of Icdon, the impending fate of
Serenth. Instead, in defiance and irony, he actually found reason to smile.
For he was once again approaching
the Olamic Institute threshold and he still had that coin of freedom jingling
in his pocket.
This time they would have to let
him buy.
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