During the next few hours Midax’s
thoughts repeatedly coiled back to what he had seen, as he brooded about what
might have happened to that plane. Or to the space around the plane. Or maybe
to his eyesight.
Not that he really expected to
understand the event at this early stage. He wasn’t so naïf as to assume that
the stuff thrown at him in the first few days of his training would make much
sense.
What mostly concerned him was the
choice he had made; roughly speaking, to “play along” rather than to “make a
wave”. Courtesy and caution had restrained him from immediately spouting
awkward questions; restrained him from the hot pursuit of the blatantly weird.
Nevertheless, lingering doubts
about “playing along” made him wonder if his next snap decision might go the
other way.
Two hours had been allotted to
the trainees for their stint at the top of the tower. They would willingly have
stayed longer. The experience of watching the Luminarium floor never palled;
nobody consulted a watch during that timeless time, for one’s mind was too busy
taking dives into the panorama – until, eventually, the humdrum recall bleated
from a loudspeaker next to the elevator opening: “Time for lunch, you people!”
Overwhelmed by what they had
seen, the trainees wandered back towards the lift. During the descent, Stid
Orpen put the general relief into words:
“About time too! I hardly had a ‘What!’
left in me.”
Mezyf Tand agreed, “The mind can
only boggle so much.”
“Until it’s recharged,” remarked
Midax.
“Which is why we’re heading for
the canteen,” opined Mezyf. “They must want us well-fed for the next
bogglement.”
Re-entering the main building
they were shown into a pillared hall, which gleamed white from the glossy
ceiling and the immaculate cylinders which supported it. Here, again, was the
perpetual newness of the very old. The canteen was so ancient that it had no
style. Its clinky hubbub seemed more or less eternal. Midax’s wandering glance
fell on a particular quartet of diners, who had wheeled their tables together
and were arguing. One disputant held a board aloft; he was scribbling a diagram
to illustrate his point. Midax, as he watched the gesticulation and sensed the
joviality, rejoiced anew – this was what Splasher society should have been but
wasn’t; this was the companionship of equals, amid the wit-studded brilliance
of the life of the mind. And he was in it, he had found his real home at last,
he was where he belonged – the assurance shone from all directions. But…
An inevitable fear took up its
quiet position:
Never before had his hopes been
raised so high, and therefore –
Never before had he had so much
to lose.
Well, be
it so! If the stakes were raised, his stature must grow with them! The
alternative was not to play at all.
Ultrisk was saying, “Go and grab
any free tables you like, they’re all well-stocked; and you’ll have an hour and
a half till your next fixture, which is in Room L44. Be seeing you then.” The
group scattered. Some in twos and threes, some alone, went to look for
unoccupied tables. Midax found a table and sat alone.
What really is all this, he
wondered; what exactly was he in?
No other organization on this
scale had ever existed. So much was evident from the jangle and bustle of the
canteen around him, never mind the sights and signs he’d seen earlier. The
Olamic Institute stood absolutely alone in the history of Korm.
To be sure, there were other
institutions of long duration, for example the Observatory; but the Observatory,
though it had existed from time immemorial, was run more or less like a family,
or like a club managed by a group of friends. Small enough, in other words, to
bear the stamp of individuals. Contrast that with this:
This Olamic Institute, the
constructor of the Luminarium; the defier of Sparseworld; the one true example,
in aeons of Serenthian history, of the might of a corporation….
Precisely as he’d intended, he
had let himself in for something big. The biggest there was. All of which was
fine, provided he could sniff where he was going.
A whirr of wheels drew his
attention to a table approaching his own.
Driving with his right palm on
the control ball at the end of the chair-arm was the imposing figure of Waretik
Thanth, tallest and gravest of the trainees.
At this moment Midax’s mood was
unsuited to bright conversation; conversation, nevertheless, was imminent – Waretik
was enquiring with a tilt of the head; Midax gestured his permission; the
tables rolled together.
Observing the big man with
exclusive attention for the first time, he noticed that his uniform seemed a
few sizes bigger still; perhaps widened to allow for extra pockets and linings
for storing surveyor’s gear. The uniform’s cloth was the standard Olamic
silver, but in Waretik’s case its brightness had receded from notice, as if
sunk in the extra folds; blurred into the undefined greyness of manner which
robed the fellow. Perhaps here was someone who at heart was as determinedly
serious as Midax himself.
“Nothing scribbled yet, I see,”
said Waretik, nodding at the blank board swinging beside Midax’s table.
“And you?”
“I’m the same. Haven’t taken a
single note.”
“Too much to scribble,” suggested
Midax. “Our vapours need condensing first.”
“Quite so; it’s like trying to
map a swirling fog. I want to check something, if you don’t mind.”
“Go on.”
“I want to check that you saw the
same thing that I did. A phenomenon,” said Waretik, pronouncing his words with
care, “apparently situated up on the Luminarium roof. In other words, in its
sky. A detail only just visible from where we stood; at our binoculars' limit of resolution….”
“Go on,” urged Midax.
“A line of steerable mirrors,
moving so as to create a ripple of light that seemed to be traversing from one
side of the Luminarium to the other.”
“Steerable mirrors… and you want
me to confirm your sighting?” Midax was about to shake his head when in a
revising flash it came to him that he had seen what Waretik was talking
about. The memory – stored unnoticed at the time – now unwrapped itself startlingly
fresh, recalling to him, crisp and clear, mirrors in a long line! Stretching all
the way across the Luminarium roof and turning in their sequence, in such a way
that one after another of them received light from the Time-Tree, one after
another reflected that light down, onto the landscape, to create an effect as
if a bright source, a kind of moving sun, were traversing that roof-sky….
“Yes, I saw it.”
Waretik’s brow cleared. “Good. It
looks as though I was right to trust my eyes. Did you trust yours?”
“As a matter of fact the effect
didn’t register with me at the time. I suppose when so many big things crowd
the scene, some get missed.”
“Yes,” scowled Waretik. “Makes me
wonder what I may have missed.”
“Now it’s my turn to tell you
what I saw.” Midax grabbed this opportunity to disburden himself of the mystery
of the aircraft that zigged and zagged “and then its path got somehow pulled
(while I looked at it), pulled straight, pulled far – further, in fact, than the entire available space inside the Luminarium…. As if the whole set-up’s
bigger inside than it is outside!”
Waretik muttered, “Remarkable.”
“You remember it, then?”
“Now that you have mentioned it,”
said the surveyor disgustedly, “I saw what you saw without consciously
observing it. I did what you did, in other words. You ‘saw-without-seeing’ the
steerable mirrors; I ‘saw-without-seeing’ the movement of the plane. But my
lapse had far less excuse – I’m supposed to be a qualified observer!”
Midax became more than ever
conscious of a pressure steering every turn of the conversation like an
intelligent breeze: even the monotony of Waretik’s voice and manner – for which
Midax’s erstwhile Splasher set would have pronounced the fellow dull – counted
here for a sinewy narrowness, a positive strength. What a day this is, each breath, each word conducive to adventure, and
yet, he told himself, I don’t need to
pinch myself to know it’s real. No
dream-magic, just a bunch of like-minded comrades at last.
More tables nearby were being
vacated, soon creating enough free space for others to roll up to join Midax and Waretik: namely Stid, Sennwa, Mezyf and another
trainee, a confident, chin-jutting youth named Davlr Braze, who broke in to the conversation with “To be sure, what
we have seen is stunning, but when you really get down to it, what isn’t? Don’t
you think so, smooth Splasher-fellow?”
“If I deserved that epithet smooth,”
Midax replied, just ruefully enough to deflect any malice, “I would have
thought up a crisp rejoinder by now. But I haven’t, so I don’t.” His
expectations – confirmed (click!) by Davlr’s stumped expression and the others’
grins – ratcheted forward another notch.
Davlr moped, “You’ve refuted me
by not refuting me.”
“You’d better give up,” advised
Stid.
“Go on a long voyage, Davlr, to
forget,” advised Mezyf.
“Go on Stid’s expedition!”
suggested Sennwa.
Davlr asked what this was,
whereupon they all started to play again with the idea of a voyage into the
wilderness of Outer Matter.
That, in turn, led to another
discussion of the possibility of finding intelligent life somewhere upon Outer
Matter’s englobing surface.
This meant that “the wilderness
lights” were argued over, yet again.
Were they mere storm-flashes, or
could they be artificial? “But then,” said Midax, supporting the sceptical
views of Davlr and Waretik against the “believers” Mezyf, Sennwa and Stid, “why
haven’t these extra-Sycrestian intelligences made an effort to contact us? For
instance why haven’t they built a giant lamp to signal across the wilderness?”
“Because they’re as lazy as we
are,” suggested Sennwa.
“No civilization can stay lazy
all the time,” Midax objected. “Consider our own cultural masterpiece: I mean,
the big box we were gaping at this morning. It is surely visible at cosmic
distances – or it would be, if there were an Observatory out there looking in
our direction. The aliens might not know what our Luminarium is, but they’d see
it as a rectangle of colour, and they’d know it was artificial. Since we can’t
see anything equivalent….”
He left it there. On no previous
day of his life would he have dared to do this. One of the basic principles of
conversation among the Splashers was that you must always cap a witticism with
another witticism, never with a serious note. Otherwise you risked being
followed by a deadly silence, or worse, the word TURGIE, meaning boringly un-smooth. Here, though, one could trust
in better things; here he was living as never before.
Davlr Braze seemed to be
supporting Midax now:
“Besides, how would life exist
without a Time-Tree? Let’s face it, ever since Icdon went dead, we Serenthians
have been alone in the Universe. A universe,” – pause for effect – “as empty
and smooth as a Splasher’s brain.”
Insult!
“But not,” Davlr went on, “an ex-Splasher’s,
I’ll concede.”
No insult after all.
“Score one-all,” acknowledged
Midax, brows raised.
The others all smiled. Full
circle, honours even. The end of the lunch-break chimed just then.
What a terrible mistake it would
have been, to point out that Splashers weren’t stupid, just flippant, idle and
mostly purposeless; that they must have brain, to carry out their
very-occasional duties. If he had said that, he would have told the truth but
missed the point. Far better to stay quiet and appreciate the greater truth,
that purpose is the real breath of
life.
They found their way to Room L44.
Lecturer Inellan, sitting on a corner of the desk up front, and eyeing the
ceiling as the trainees entered, had made a point of freezing his posture in
the act of reaching for a light-switch. He was very obviously staying his hand
until all of them had found seats. It was a hint at the importance of not being
late, and/or the importance of Lecturer Inellan. Fair enough, thought Midax as
he found a place at the end of the second row just as Inellan’s finger
twitched.
A holographic show began. One
moment the class saw, filling the room, inch-sized globes of light suspended in
the dark; but a second later the pattern swapped over into a reversed blaze: dark
globules suspended in bright air.
The light and the dark continued
to alternate. Meanwhile the voice of Inellan droned:
“This diagram depicts the
alternating sequence of matter-universes and space-universes.
“Ours, which in the cycle counts
as Universe Six, is, of course, overwhelmingly a matter-universe, reaching
solidly to infinity, only rarely interrupted by globes of space like Korm. Indeed
we cannot prove that there are any spatial globes apart from Korm in our
universe, though the isotropic principle makes it overwhelmingly likely….”
Midax had to admit to himself, he
was impressed by the presentation. He had never heard anything so concisely or
so confidently explained. When the holograms were switched off he was eager and
impatient for whatever might come next.
“Any questions? Or comments?”
asked Inellan.
Midax leaped in with, “If we know
this much, then surely we’re bound to win the fight against
Sparseworld?” He spoke eagerly, his mind racing; then he saw that Inellan’s
face was bearing an odd look.
“Why?” the lecturer asked.
The rest of the class had gone
still.
“Why?” echoed Midax. “Because,
simply going by how much you’ve already found out (though Fount knows
how you discovered the pattern that whole universes make) surely there
can’t be any problem which you can’t solve!”
He had no presentiments to warn
him; sure-footedly he was leaping and swinging from topical branch to branch,
trusting his weight to the rope which Fate had braided for him. After all there
should be a reason for one’s possession of a leaping mind. One should be able
to use it to swing from theory to observations to conclusions… But from a
completely different direction, and with total command of his subject, Inellan
replied easily:
“The Fount does know how. That’s
the point. We acquire our knowledge of all this through psychology, looking
back into our noumenal selves, revealing the latent truths which our minds were
born with. (Some of us are better at doing it than others!) Apart from that we
don’t do anything. Cosmology isn’t an experimental science, you know! How
could we go poking around the universe to obtain our facts? And why should we? We’re
born with what we need inside ourselves – due to the fortunate fact that we’re
born in the light of the Fount, and the Fount does, as you and I both
put it, know.”
“But all this….” began Midax.
The special silence, which had
fallen so heavily on the class, suddenly suggested something to him.
They were humouring him.
Mentally he squared his
shoulders. He couldn’t just let it all go, couldn’t accept mere introspection
as a method of exploring the cosmos. “Doesn’t the Observatory – ”
“Forget the Observatory,” said
Inellan. “Their work is just cosmography, not cosmology. Just descriptive
science.”
“Then do you mean to say that we
don’t actually study our world, we do not even look at it, when
constructing our theories?”
“Exactly,” smiled Inellan. It was
rare to see him smile. “The inhabitants of Universe Seven will be more your
type. They’ll do like you say. They’ll
have no choice but to study and rely on observation for data with which to
construct their theories, since they’ll be so much further from the Fount. Midax,
I think you’ve been born a universe too soon!”
Chuckles from several quarters. Incredible
how fast the whole thing was turning sour. Though in practical terms Midax
was in no trouble, a dire mood was germinating fast inside him. And at that
moment his eyes registered the luminous logo on the desktop in front of him.
“-8”.
That’s what it said today. Minus
Eight. Eight days to go.
But not if he escaped.
Could he get up and leave? All of a
sudden nothing but this urgent question remained. His sense of proportion was
gone. His mad Splasher desire for smoothness and perfection had been thwarted. This
time, he had not perceived the chuckles from the class as good-natured; the
stakes had been raised too high – raised right up into the “all or nothing”
trap, the perfectionist trap, where the first setback (those little laughs,
those misunderstandings about research) swung him right over from the “all” to
the “nothing”. The amazing result being, he would get out while he could
(if he could), throwing away the entire position he had yearned so long
to gain.
Meanwhile the lesson had resumed
and Inellan was saying, “The points raised by Midax Rale may be covered in more
detail later on, as I intend to return to the topic of comparative cosmology if
we have time. For now, let us turn to the physics of light….” but Midax was no
longer listening. He had risen from his chair, ignoring startled looks. Still
scarcely able to believe what he was doing, he was making for the door. Mere
minutes ago his hopes had been soaring, his nature trusting, his commitment
spiking up to infinity; now he was back to walking alone – provided that they
let him out.
<<<previous chapter<<< .......... >>>next chapter>>>