Man of the World by Robert Gibson

18:  entry

Sure enough, during the small hours, he kept a lamp burning while he stared at the ceiling in washed-out horror as if the future were a predator which had already pounced and was leaning over him, slavering as it pinned him to the mattress by the paw of its dread certainty and the equal certainty of his own ignorance.  The numbness of it – he was unable even to toss and turn while he waited for those unfair jaws of tomorrow to gulp him. How time had flown, he thought feebly. Flown and left him at this brink. With almost no more hard knowledge than he had possessed before, how did they expect him to cut the right figure? He mourned the coming birth of his soon-to-be-jelled self.    
    Then he rallied somewhat. Had he really gained no hard knowledge? Well, so be it; in which case the soft knowledge he had gained, the reflexes now programmed into his way of thinking, had better see him through.
    But what assurance have I, that I shall ever get out of that absurdly huge box?
    None whatsoever.
    But think: in any case, Sparseworld is coming; so there’s no security anywhere, anyhow.
    Get some sleep you fool.
    He awoke when the view from his window revealed a grey flicker low in the air over Serenth.
    At this early hour the Time-Tree’s beat was only just picking up once more, re-accelerating into early morning. Things seemed somehow less absurd in the morning. I know how one is able to trick oneself, Midax thought, into positions from which one cannot back down. Well, such tricks have to be played. Otherwise some things would never get done.
    As instructed, he left his silver uniform aside and he dressed in old clothes.
    Then he emerged from his room and went to the bulletin board.
    Here, for the umpteenth time, he confirmed his exact hour of Entry. His name was third on the list. Not long to wait. No one else was present – all good-byes had been said. Even if he were to meet anyone he knew, talk must be kept to a minimum on this day.
    He went back to his room and spent a miserable few minutes staring at the clock.
    Then, still without seeing or speaking to anyone, he went out through the rear door.
    His hour had struck. The cold air gave him a non-cowardly excuse to shiver.
    His legs marched him along the road. A quarter of an hour through silent country.
    Everything, he thought furiously, everything on the course has been to do with acclimatization and nothing to do with knowledge. A series of pressure-tricks, including this hypnotic count-down to his own personal zero-hour.
    Not to worry.  It wasn’t his business to worry.  The authorities must know what they are doing – that’s why they are the authorities. (Pipe down, irony; sardonic thoughts must end – this is not the time for them, as the mile-walk brings me at last to the front step of the Portal.) Well, this was it. The door of decision, the door into the only building that was placed right against the glass wall of the Luminarium.
    He faltered on the patio in front of the six-storey structure.
    Huge, the thing was.  Insignificant of course compared to the glass wall itself, but the contrasting opaqueness of the Portal glowered on the last few seconds of final approach. Its nicknames – the Entrance, the Exam Building, the Judgement Hall – varied according to the commentators and the angle from which the structure was seen; but to all who came to it on their Day Zero, when they confronted its bulk from directly in front, the procession of tags curled back to the one name, simply, The Portal.
    You were never prepared for it. You had never been allowed in for a preliminary look. The only time you ever went in was now. Now, when you must go not only in but through.
    So you could never cheat.
    Midax wondered only very briefly, what cheating might entail. Regretfully he set aside the idea. Cheating meant preparation, of a sort, whereas this actual entry stage was a part of the course for which no one was ever prepared. His pulse pounding in his ears, Midax went up to the great door.
    Before he could reach it or touch it, a man-sized entrance-within-the-entrance hissed aside.
    Beyond, as far as he could tell, was a nondescript cluttered space. He could see no one but he had no doubt that this structure was inhabited.
    Over the threshold he stepped. The door hissed shut behind him and he stood in what seemed shaped like an enlarged lift-cage crammed with dials and piping, all arranged around a patch of standing-room in front of a massive chair. It came to him with a rush of near panic that this was no lobby or entrance hall, this was it, the room where things happened.
    Ah yes, seated in the chair was a figure, motionless and silver-garbed.
    The figure’s head began to glow like a fading red sun; it turned toward Midax. In that moment he could not have spoken to save his life. Three other figures – similarly attired in what Midax now saw were reflective suits, bubble-auras likewise around their heads – came forward out of the complicated shadows.
    Meanwhile he recognized the seated figure as Jaekel, and he imagined making one last effort to converse. I’d like to compare notes at this point, with someone who’s just emerging; what a pity you haven’t arranged this. No, he did not dare, and anyway he could frame his own stock reply: “The candidates must enter the Luminarium with an open mind.” He smiled to himself as they motioned him across the narrow space towards another door: this speechlessness suits them, and perhaps, come to think of it, it suits me too.
    A notice was printed on that next door:
    LIGHT-LOCK CHAMBER.
    Meekly he went into it.
    Then that door, like the previous one, hissed shut behind him. Now he was physically alone – although when he turned he found he could still see the other figures through a viewplate.
    But the other direction… that was where he must concentrate, as the final door began to hum and slide.
    A slit appeared and widened, allowing the inner light of the box realm.
    He turned one last glance back at the viewplate, at the Keepers presiding in their judgement hall, in their shiny suits around the Examiner’s throne –
    I’ll be back, vowed Midax with a shouted inner vow –
    Then that final door, opening further, compelled his full attention. Far too late, he wished he had broken silence after all. This was a moment when Midax’s courage failed him – though no one knew it but he. His mind screamed: he should have asked point blank what would happen if his entrance were witnessed by those Inside, for it was a fair question, what would the inhabitants of the Luminarium think if they glimpsed him in the act of stepping through? Would he be – what was the word – a ghost to them? Or could they grab him on sight and interrogate him about the Project? Ha ha – a lot he could tell them! Now he fully appreciated the point of having been kept in the dark – and his smile was an outward sign of mastery over brief panic.
    Bright sunshine flooded into the light-lock chamber. At the very last, the voice of Jaekel behind him crackled, “Out you go, Midax Rale. Farewell and good luck.”
    Well, what was there to be afraid of?
    Answer: the whole business –
    Ah, come on, step out you fool, anything’s better than to be fetched back as a failure. Besides, haven’t you learned your lesson from the Great Complication? It has made you a dead man anyway. So why make a fuss now?
    Without another thought he took the step which brought him across the last threshold and into the Luminarium. During the seconds while the door was rolling shut behind him, he kept touch with its sliding surface with the fingers of his left hand, and when the door was still, he did not let go of it but took a couple of side-steps, keeping within the recess – a kind of porch – while he scrutinized the landscape which, reassuringly, contained no drastic difference to what it had seemed from the other side of the glass wall.
    Still touching the Portal surface with his fingers, he now edged wide of the threshold altogether. He inched onto some grass that grew up to the wall beside him. This appeared to be a lawn that belonged to the inner porch: enclosed by a railing, the grass extended to a gate at the far end.
    He had every right, he told himself, to his ultra-cautious way of movement. Yet he must let go of the wall sooner or later. He did so as soon as he reached the junction with the lawn’s boundary railing: now touching that instead of the wall, he made a right angled turn and walked forward, away from the wall, over the grass.
    He began to sense more of a difference.  Such dense grass his boots had never trod before. The air seemed thicker too. Trees waved at him in a softly humming wind, from the edges of a meadow some fifty yards off, while beyond them the scrubby area of Larmonn Common looked brighter than it had ever seemed from Outside. Yes, everything shone at him just a bit more vividly than before. This, he supposed, was to be expected, now that the glass wall was behind him instead of in front.
    So perhaps – given the absence of any shocks so far – it was time to dare to look back.
    He turned his head and saw with a rush of relief that he could still see the Portal, its tall dark outline the same from this side as from the other. Deep down, perhaps, he had expected to find himself the victim of some one-way trick, whereby all connection to the outside world suddenly vanished as soon as he was Inside, but fortunately this was not so: it was good to see that the Outside was still visible as ever, though now inaccessible and inaudible. He could even spot – yes, there they were, some Institute people on the Outside, looking in! Was not that Alsair himself, talking to some students? Yes – he, Midax Rale, could give a wave to Alsair!
    An instinct stopped him from doing so.
    He did think of going over to stick his face against the great glass wall, with some notion that he might try to mouth words through it. Again, some instinctive reticence held him back from such bravado. No one had ever behaved that way. And while Midax would not have minded being the first to do so, he knew he was not here to play games.
    He turned forward again. He was in the box, so he might as well explore it. It was something to do while he waited for the Thing to happen.
    It was a relief that the landscape was so recognizable. (Of course, if it had not been, one would have to query the point of all the rote-learning of features during his training course.) The only difference lay in the brighter light and the thicker air, and of course the proximity –
    Now he had reached the gate at the end of the lawn. He unlatched it and walked through. Increasingly confident, sufficiently so to take a further step, he broke his last finger-contact with the gate –
    He almost shrieked as the entire view was transformed.
    The landscape seemed to ignite and the world to sparkle as thousands upon thousands of mirrors flashed, mirrors which must have been hidden under boughs, behind bushes or in the angles of stones. Juggling their rays, the myriad reflectors curdled the air with their rippling lights. Calm yourself, you bedazzled dope – you were told about the mirrors. Get a grip, Midax Rale. The Luminarium was constructed for the very purpose of concentrating and complicating light, and you’re in it.
    He steadied himself, his eyes adjusting to the sparkles. He waited for about a minute while his mind learned to ignore them. He’d had a shock but once his eyes had adjusted, he felt in some way stronger than before. He saw a track and set out upon it.
    Looking over his shoulder he could still discern, through the box-world’s glass wall, the distant Institute building and beyond that the skyline of Serenth. Much cheered by the fact that these reminders of home were yet visible (faded though they now seemed), he also felt that some gratitude was due, on his part, towards Fate or the authorities, for the fact that he was being given this period in which to adjust.
    Perhaps the entire business will prove easier than I’d thought. Yes, easy; why not? For a great, illuminating suspicion now occurred to him. As he trod the pathway in this training ground, this hothouse of mirrored complexity, the idea grew and grew, and blossomed into the strongest of hunches: that the Olamic Institute’s aim and role had been not to explain things but to prod him into inventing his own explanations.
    That might be why they had told him so little. He must invent the answers.
    Build up a portfolio of answers and be ready to wave one at any problem.
    If one doesn’t get you through, try another. To have grasped this so quickly gave him a heady, Splasher-style swagger.
    I can now work out why I haven’t seen anybody in here yet. Our rays don’t yet meet - that’s why. We’re still on different ray-systems. Yes, whatever precisely it may mean, I bet the answer lies in that direction: the reconciliation of different systems.
    I’ll get clicked in soon enough.
    As a matter of fact he did catch an occasional flashing glimpse of almost transparent inhabitants whenever he happened (he supposed) to look fortuitously along a reflected ray. Yes – of course that was it – he was after all in a version of the Light-Tank magnified a million times!
    However, he was in no hurry to achieve full vision.
    No indeed; absolutely no rush to click in properly. To enjoy this pleasant and interesting stroll was all he wished for at the moment.
    Over the next hundred yards, the ground roughened, while the heat of the air increased with a swiftness which made him stop and wipe his brow. He had known, of course, that conditions varied quickly in this crammed patchwork of terrain types. Clouds passed overhead, and their shadows seemed to be kindred air masses around him, of differing temperatures… He took stock of where he was: Larmonn Common, that was it: and this hundred-yard stretch of it was strewn with miniature crags, interspersed with tough bushes and wiry grass. The path had grown faint.
    He resumed his walk, slanting inward onto more grassland, further and further from the glass wall.
    Curving past a hillock, he came abruptly into view of one of this box-realm’s tiny villages – Thilpar, he remembered, was the name. He walked over the surrounding meadow until he stopped among the group of houses. Occasional flickers hinted at human shapes ambling along the pavements. He raised an arm in greeting but as far as he could tell no one could yet see him, any more than he could properly see them. Then came a special moment, a skin-prickling, freezing moment in which he did see them all, the strollers around him, men and women and some oddly miniature people… The wonder of it all, and especially of the little ones, dazed him. Had they seen him too, in that moment? Again – another flash! But they were still walking by as if nothing had appeared amongst them. No, they had not seen him.
    So – time to pull out an explanation from the sheaf – The reason I can begin already to see them, is because the outside built the inside, not the other way round, so the advantage is mine.
    When he became properly locked in to their network of rays, then they would see him, all right.
    Not that his present advantage was all that great. His sight of them, on and off, was so fragile, that as he moved they winked out and in like glints of frost on a pavement.
    Find a room. That’s the first practical step. Somewhere to lodge, and wait, while my eyesight learns to catch the rays. Not a problem, surely. I can take what I like, while no one can see me.
    Perhaps his vision was growing tired – for his glimpses soon died away and he stood in an apparently deserted street.
    A “Room to Let” sign hung outside a gate.
    Gate and door swung open at a touch. A sign in the lobby pointed up stairs. He found the furnished room, the ideal place to hide while he waited.
    Or – maybe he was making a mistake. Maybe it was not good to choose the first place he happened to come across. Time spent in picking the best lodging site before the “jelling” could be time well spent. Afterwards, it would be too late. Opportunities within reach now would stretch beyond his grasp when the jelling occurred and the world became immeasurably larger. So, indecisively, he went downstairs again.
    Out in the street once more, he felt strange. Had the process started already? There was something a bit wrong with the light. His shadow – yes, that was the trouble: it had slid somewhat, elongating to the side of him.
    He looked up and – choked. The sun was no longer at the zenith.
    Midax shook with a psychic ague at this slewing of the cosmos: how could the sun be not at the zenith? His brain asserted command: don’t worry, that’s not the real sun, it’s just that you’re starting to give more notice to the image-sun created by the roof-mirrors of the Luminarium. The real sun meanwhile remains unmoving above and beyond it, and don’t you forget it.
    He knew, though, that he would and must forget it. 
    As the hours went on, the brilliant meandering reflection indeed did supersede the paler disc of the true fixed Sun.
    Knowing now that he must hurry, Midax jogged towards the next village, following a notion of his that the further you were in when you jelled, the more likely you were to obtain a good start in life. It could be analogous to the privileges he had enjoyed in Serenth as a result of his birth so close to the Time-Tree.
    He felt a stiff breeze, and heard some peals of thunder. A mile off, gauzy veils of weather, alternating sunshine and hail, gradually drifted closer and thickened into more alarming air-cells. For the first time in his life he shrank from exposure to the elements; then he reminded himself that he was only in a big box after all.
    He rounded a corner and suddenly two figures were immediately ahead of him on the path. Two people he could see perfectly well, by means of ordinary steady vision. One of them looked round and beckoned him and he quickened his pace. His sleeve was grabbed and the other’s face looked into his with a grin. “Caught up with us, have you, Midax?”
    It was Jolld Tontrar, trainee; the youngster who had buttonholed him after Inellan’s “jelling” lecture and who had congratulated him about something or other; and who had also been on the Blerdon picnic; not a friend, but at any rate a reminder of reality.
    “Of course,” rasped Midax. “You got in only an hour before I did. Well, and who’s this fellow?” he added.
    “He’s a native! Look – he hasn’t noticed us yet!” Jolld pulled the arm of his unwitting companion and Midax saw that the man wore a bleared, slow-witted expression. “I’ve been walking beside him for hundreds of yards. Interesting experiment – he’s visible to me when I am this close, but not the other way round – I could probably trip him up without his being aware of me.”
    Midax said sharply, “Don’t try it, Jolld. The outside built the inside – we have advantages; we mustn’t misuse them; we’ve been warned against experiments like that… But anyway, why call him a native? I recognize him now – he’s Davlr Braze.”
    It was disturbing to see the difference in Davlr. The fellow wore a different style of clothes, but, more than that, was invisibly clothed in a whole new manner of life: the way he stood, the way he peered, it was obvious that he was in a world of his own. Literally. “I take back what I said,” said Midax in a lower voice. “He is a native now.”
    As soon as he politely could, he distanced himself from them both.
    Perhaps the logical move might have been to band together; but he had the distrust one feels in certain dreams, in which it is no use seeking the familiar because, out of sheer dream spite, it can blur into something else. In fact Midax would no longer even have willingly raised a hand to wave across the street at another entrant, not even one of the Institute staff who had decided to undergo the test themselves and whose reactions it would be tempting to observe. He’d play it his way from now on, which meant he'd play it alone.
    The path became easier as he emerged from the Larmonnian Badlands into sight of Zard Pond. Two exquisite hamlets, Dranl and Heism, lay on opposite shores of the furlong-wide sheet of water. This seemed a nice area in which to put down roots.
    Shrouds of mist hung in the middle distance. These curtains of vapour were now lit from a low angle by the “sun” – the moving reflection of the real fixed zenith Sun which Midax could hardly see any more. The effect was a kind of evening which had its own validity, quite as peaceful, in its own way, as the diurnal waning of the Fount in Serenth. The heart-shaped pond between the villages of Heism and Dranl glittered in the light of the sinking orb; a tiny promontory (called the Cape of Serorn, Midax knew) cast a lengthening shadow over the water. Amid this quiet scene, Midax hiked the final yards towards Dranl, where he had decided to stay.
    In spirit if not in size, Dranl was a spacious neat-looking town: wide streets; pleasant, unpretentious detached houses. The as-yet ghostly hints of population gave it a mien of quiet thriving: arrow-flicks that told of wheeled vehicles on the roads; slowly thickening shapes of pedestrians passing Midax as he strolled the streets. The time was near, he told himself, when he must do the clever thing. Time well spent now would affect his whole future. He had not yet jelled: he could still see the mirrors (when he thought to do so) – the millions of little bright cups, the glint in every nook. As long as he continued to see them, he would remain aware that he was in the big box, but that would soon change. Already now and then he happened to look along a ray – and in doing so he slotted into the common vision and received a foretaste: the box-world became huge, boundless in that moment, and, ceasing to be the Luminarium, became none other than “the world”. Henceforward this must happen more frequently until it forced persistence of vision, so as to combine the glimpses cinematically and to jell.
    When that happened, he'd forget the real world outside, and would experience instead how the reflectors in the box were angled to create their own global reality… unquestioned, self-justifying. He’d be home here, unconsciously plugged into the reigning grid of ever-rebounding sight, and his real training would have begun.
    He picked out a lodging house in Dranl, one which had a spare room. He trod the threshold and mounted the stairs. This time he did not hesitate: he stayed the night.
    No one saw him – no one could see him, yet. Next morning, although when he opened his eyes he briefly wondered where he was, the room soon teetered into focus and he knew his memories had survived the night, which meant he was not quite home, yet.
    He made to sit up but he flopped back.
    Grimly, he tried again. This time he managed to stand, but he knew the change was very near.
    After breakfasting in silence and invisible isolation, he went out into the street.
    Because the core of Dranl town nestles upon a hill, he could enjoy a view over the countryside around, but as far as further was concerned… he peered to check whether he could still see outward through the great glass wall and to Serenth beyond… and as he made this effort, his head swam. He tottered, blearing at the stretching, leaping hallucination that came upon him: the mad spin of a thread which matched the term “horizon”. This was it, this was the inpouring of new distance. Serenth and the true Outside in an instant were all washed away, swept off to oblivion, and equally drastic changes occurred Inside: hills were magnifiying as he watched into mountain peaks –
    Pincers of terror gripped Midax. The great glass walls he’d known had now absolutely run off and fused behind the world’s back so that the glass box was no more, and a far bigger vision had taken its place.  Whips of light cracked out the message that this was the real world. Well, all this was what was meant to happen; but fulfilment of intention did not make the shock any less cruel.
    Now his training must take over, to save his reason.  His eye duly got accustomed to the distance effects, and his emotional awareness assured him that he was still the same old Midax Rale. Thus, his mind was not overthrown; but he was tired. Having witnessed the fantastic jelling process, he had had enough.  Curiosity notwithstanding, he was desperate to curl up.
    One last flicker of the old keen intellect: All right, we’re supposed to believe that the scenes have knit round into an edgeless world, but suppose I were to walk ten miles in an absolute straight line…
    He did not have the energy to pursue the idea. Even the effort to keep awake was defeating him. And he must not collapse out here.
    Great blobs of blackness assailed his vision as he broke into a staggering run. He fought against the blanket of unconsciousness – Please! I must remember the truth just long enough, to get to a hospital. Here, one must obey the rules for being born –
    He kept awake by asking stupid questions as he ran, and answering them himself. What had happened to the sparkling? Where had all the mirrors gone? Answer: he had become a part of it all; that’s why he could not see the mechanism any more. But wait – did not a few glitterings still remain? Not for much longer; they were popping into nothing even as he looked. People would start to notice him any moment now, for everything was rushing together towards the threatened coherence, and he must not get caught out here. Yet the jelling wasn’t over by any means; there was a whole lot more of it to come – in fact, the most important part of it was still to happen.
    The setting sun, sinking beyond a ridge of mountains, pursued him with low-angled beams as he lurched through the front door of the hospital. He crept towards a bed in a room grown vast. In fact the ward bustled with more people than he had noticed in the entire town when first he arrived in this part of the world. He heard strange squallings from the beds; fear pawed at him as he collapsed onto a bed of his own.
    Two faces bent over him, grinning and foreshortened, delightedly mouthing inane sounds. Trying to talk back, all he managed was a gargle and a dribble.
    “Good night, little love,” a voice said, and the heads turned away, but then they could not resist another fond look.
    Midax helplessly stared back at the huge smiles hovering over him. The room, enlarging duskily, seemed full of such looming lips, teeth, orbs of face… What was left of his mind now knew that it had been fooled utterly. Mirrors, indeed! The game was far twistier than he had ever supposed. He figuratively ran, along brittle branches of suspicion in a forest of panic till one of the branches snapped and he fell into certainty – amidst much smearing of vision, thorns of emotion, where his memory set was torn away from him and so he finally lost himself.
    He waved his limbs feebly in his cot while his proud parents, Ultrisk and Kmee, cooed and clucked. The blank, minuscule, clean-slate mind stared back at them in weak terror. The next stage was to lose the use of his eyes: the bending faces skidded, dimmed; but he could still hear the voices for a while.
    Little newborn Midax Rale screamed – and then dozed, sucking his thumb.

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