Man of the World by Robert Gibson

35: sparseworld

Somebody was tugging his arm, so he let himself be pulled. Doubtless to a debriefing room, he thought at first, or at any rate to some sort of processing room. Unless he was merely about to be shown the outer door. Then – ah, his sleeve had been let go: looks like they want me to sit here in the corner, out of the way.
  He sat in the alcove where he happened to be, acutely aware of being unwanted. Really I ought to make a move of my own.  Unfortunately his gumption had quite drained away and besides, he had little trust in his own judgement now; everything seemed so dim and confusing.
During the actual moment when he’d faced the adverse verdict he had stood tall, but when the spotlight turned elsewhere he was left deflated.  The dismal truth was, he had not only reached the end of his road, he had been tipped off it like so much garbage.
Drained of hope, and almost of pride, he therefore slumped; the blanket of despair settled softly over him, inviting him to huddle in his new smallness. Accept, accept! What else was there to do?
If you have to, thought Midax, you can get used to anything, though admittedly he had no idea – as yet – precisely how he was going to exist from day to day as a reject, a parasite or tramp.
Yet, some deep part of him continued to thresh and heave defiance in the old way he had; he had always been the sort to spit out facts which he refused to ingest. So what if the authorities had rejected him? He could reject them. For he was out of it all – whatever “it” was – and did not need “it”, or them. He clenched that thought, and, unsure how much or whether it was true, he found himself tasting an odd relief, like the silence which pervades a station after a noisy express has roared through. Odd, very odd, he thought, lifting his head and staring at nothing in particular: it was as though that departing "train" carried with it all concern for his personal doom, and its recession made the Hall seem a small place.
  Which, actually, it was! Hmm… he did not feel so crushed after all!  His glance idled over the pale officials in his field of view. They looked overworked; need he envy such people? If I amount to nothing, Midax wondered, doesn’t that mean that I can creep off?
  He watched side-doors which kept opening and closing. A dim bustle continued around him, as batch after batch of trainees shuffled in for judgement. With cold pity he watched them. Finally when yet another lot had been herded round a corner out of his sight, he turned his attention back to the staff.
  Most of the officials’ time was being spent in watching screens, and Midax paid some attention to those. He saw peculiar threads of contorting light, and he overheard snippets of talk such as, “cut the threads… cut them… when’s the best moment…” What, he asked himself, could these incomprehensible activities matter to him now? He, the rejected one, need no longer care.
  Yet when one member of staff passed close by, Midax rose and took a step forward.  The man saw him and threw him a tired glance. “You wanting something?”
  “Information, if not courtesy.”
  The fellow pressed knuckles to his pale forehead. “Huh. Nowadays, less of both.” It was an apology of sorts. “Short-staffed,” the man muttered on. “Squelched, you might say…”
  “I am free to leave?”
  “Any time.” Then with a sigh the official added: “Not that we’re pushing you out, you understand. Feel free to wait here till your memories recover. Then you can have a shot at finding your own way home…”
  Home? Yes, he had a home. It came back to Midax all of a sudden: his rooms, his front door, his house in Serenth; his real, original home address, the place that had been his before any involvement in the fantastic caper called Life.
  “It shouldn’t be hard,” the other man continued, “to get your bearings. The streets of Serenth are still lit, despite the onset of Sparseworld.”
  Midax’s thoughts skidded while comprehension scraped its bolt in the cellar of his mind, and up from that cellar thumped recognition of that term SPARSEWORLD, portentous, doom-laden, no surprise after all; and sadly he need only go outside for it to become quite clear.
  The official watched Midax. “You remember, don’t you? Now excuse me, I must get on with my work.” And he walked away, leaving Midax to the continuing upwaft from the basement of his being, where information had lain dormant during the interlude of "life". Well, he needed the truth, though he could have done without the warning whiff of heartbreak.
  The hum of a partition door made him turn and he flinched at the sight of the Gnos, successful old Xanesif and his sister, ushered by their respectful Bearers from the briefing room, their heads held high, solemn wonder shining from their faces.  Their de-briefing had taken some hours; they must have been of great use to the authorities. Midax shrank back into the corner shadow. He was relieved that they did not glance in his direction as they started towards what he realized was the main exit. Credit to them.  I had my day, and now it’s their turn for stature and good repute. Obscure folk who obeyed the rules while I was becoming rich and famous by cheating! How can I complain? It is right that I be brought low while they reap their reward.
  Quietly and inconspicuously he trod after the pair. Nobody took any notice of him. His innards trembled like jelly, his head thudded – he was a man about to return home after a near-lifetime of absence… about to see what his home had become. He passed a twenty-four-hour wall-clock. The hands pointed to nine. Close by the clock, a portion of wall hummed aside, and an opening yawned: the door to outside. Midax’s stomach, already queasy, fluttered like a panicky bird as he glimpsed a blueness with black granular flickerings – the sky of Sparseworld.
  He emerged through the Portal main door and onto the steps, where he halted to stand alone and unnoticed while he tried to take in what he saw.  An infinity, yes, he had expected that. An infinity, though, which somehow did not stretch out but, instead, closed in. Beneath that flickery sky, a landscape cowered. A new condition of nature had taken over from from the one he had known.  At first he tried to tell himself that it was simply getting dark, but no, it was too blurry for an ordinary evening. Even if the hour had been right – and it wasn’t – things ought not to have this sort of dimness. Somehow things were deconvolved. And the strangest thing of all was the sharp yet welcome dread, a sort of satisfied fear, which it aroused in him. Welcome because of how it must expunge all matters in which he used to come off worst. What could his own failures mean now? Nothing at all. The dim and fateful blur which had befallen the world, this real world, put him back on the same starting-line as everyone else – no matter what the authorities might think of his low score in their training program. How could one's score count for anything in the cataclysm of Sparseworld?
  Yes, a struggle on different terms must now begin. He knew that even before his eyes had registered much of the landscape's lessened detail. He felt it in his bones. Though he was still a reject, still a failure, in a hilarious sense the world’s disaster could have been designed to suit him, to give him one last chance.
  A voice behind him shouted:
  “Hey! You! Stop!”
  He did not move, did not turn his head. Instead he froze. If anyone reprimanded him for not answering he would just tell them, my name is not 'Hey you'.
  More voices: “I said he could go!” “But he failed the test!” “Then why keep him?” “He hasn’t been wiped!” Midax guessed that the people who were shouting at each other weren’t getting up from their chairs. They wouldn't leave their tasks or their instrument boards. No running feet could be heard.
  “And he didn’t just fail – he had a negative score!” “Well then, wipe him and then out with him!” “Who is he, anyway?” “Rale? Wasn’t he the one who –” “WAIT!” That last was the voice of Jaekel, the Judge herself. It put a stop to the others, pronouncing:
“We’re so near the end, we might as well stop the amnesia treatments now. Let him go as he is. He can’t do any harm now.”
  Midax un-locked his muscles, for his spark of hope could pass unquenched between the drops of any fear; he could resume his walk across the slab of step to descend at last onto the soil of –
  Sycrest.
Ah, that golden name.  Picture-album of glorious memories! A magnificent oasis of habitable land, eighty miles across, where matter was complex and atomic in nature, forming compounds and mixtures, minerals, soils and living things… but where was all that light and colour now?
  It persisted, but only in the mind’s eye. The land had become monochrome. Largely empty and stark, it was drenched in that special hushed lateness he had sensed at first glimpse – that mighty sense of Evening which had nothing to do with the time of day or the pleasant horizon glow he used so often to admire in that box called Life. Here had never been a horizon, and now here was zenith Evening, and a thump in the mind announced that this was no contradiction, for in this real world to which he had come home, the real sun was always overhead – though never before had he seen it so dim at the hour of oh-nine. As he stared, memory faltered under present sight.  Brace yourself, he told himself as he peered about: be careful what you assume. Things have undergone mighty change. Most carefully, then, he kept one hand in contact with the Portal wall, for his more childish self was suddenly loath to admit that he was really out and had lost his last connection with his illusory old Life. Eyes must strain to adapt to the new kind of regressive dimness around him. What are those pale runnels which I see? Covered they are, like garden cloches, laid along the ground like a system of seemingly endless pipes. And what is that phosphorescent glob trickling forward inside one of them? And who are those people standing like mums and dads at school gates at four o’clock?
  All the harder it was to answer these questions, as the blurriness of things was more severe than could be accounted for by lack of light alone. In fact, the suspicion grew on him, that the dimness itself was not primarily a literal lack of illumination but rather the mind’s translation of the slumpy part-meltedness of forms: such as his first few glimpses of trees which seemed, as his glance fell on them, to be lollipops; and some walls which had sagged into rounded ridges. Thus, rather than merely failing light it was most seriously the detail that was decreasing, while his eyes and brain were fobbed off with the idea that it was getting "dark" because that was the only way the human brain could cope with Sparseworld...
  But no. He shook himself. ‘Seeming dark’ was ‘dark’, surely. Might as well be, anyhow, for what else counted but the seeming? And one could only take on board so much, without capsizing the raft of consciousness.
With an effort he forced himself to move through this – this dark. He took sidling steps, slow and careful, while he trailed the fingers of his right hand along the Portal wall. That process of that adjustment which had been the point of his training - that Sparseworld-adjustment called making do with less: now’s the time to get on with it, Midax Rale! Edge yourself along this wall. Coax yourself to submit to impressions. Take one step at a time and peer at the waiting people if you like but do not expect too much; they are not waiting for you but for their loved ones who are due to emerge from their stint of Life as you have done from yours. Parents waiting outside the school gates...
  Presently, like a sleepy boatman who bumps into a rock, Midax woke to fuller alertness. His eye had caught a pair of dim figures who had detached themselves from the crowd of watchers and were approaching him with purpose in their stride. Approaching him? Could it be, after all, that he was awaited? The pair’s course took them past the dazzle of a ground-lamp which briefly lit their faces from below; Midax’s eyes strained at that pair of faces with a surge of longing and continued his incredulous stare as they left the small glare-zone of the lamp and came into the woozy dimness within arm’s length of him, where they stopped.
  “It’s all right, son,” spoke the man. “We’re not ghosts – not here. No more than you are.”
  “Father! Mother!” His voice cracked. Possessed by the rightness of his crazy impulse, he surrendered to the urge to hug these people. “This is impossible!” he muttered as he finally drew back.
  “As to that, I’m not sure,” reflected Ultrisk with a happy grin, a star-like contradiction of the dark. “What’s changed, after all? We’re still what we were. So what if Life is over? Our relations, our feelings, grown in the box, remain the same – so what the heck?”
  Kmee added, “Things happen, their effects remain… We’ve been in a world which has made you our son.” She smiled and added, “So that’s that.”
  “I give up. Gladly,” said Midax. He stood with his arms at an angle as if carrying a suitcase-sized mystery. No way to ignore the contradiction in all this. On the one hand, the certain knowledge that “mother” and “father” had no literal meaning outside the Luminarium box, no biological meaning here in the real world of Korm, in the oasis of complexity called Sycrest, where human beings were born from the fractal curl of the rocks of the courts of the Time-Tree. Parenting was an illusion of the box-world. And yet, on the other hand…
  Kmee went on, “Really, after all, we can only wonder whether all has yet been said, about who or what any of us are…”
  Midax settled for this. The cosy, woolly, yet open-ended thoughts expressed by Kmee comforted him as he allowed his “parents” to lead him away from the Luminarium wall.

They passed through the gathering of other waiting relatives who were keeping watch on the Portal door. A few dim faces called greetings to Ultrisk and Kmee, congratulating them on their retrieval of their “son”. Ultrisk and Kmee replied, “Hope yours gets out soon,” and alternatively, “Not to worry, you’ll be soon going in to join yours.” Knowing nods. Side-glances at the darkling landscape. Midax did not call out to anyone though he half-recognized a few. He narrowed his focus to his mother’s and father’s presence, as if he could bring back some secure flavour of childhood days and of a world which had little to do with the present eerie surroundings. Thus for a while his curiosity remained passive, defensively muted rather than aroused by the sights he saw.
  Gradually, his observation became keener as they passed on into open country. Presently they came to some of the wobbly parcels of light which trickled along the fibrous cylinders or cloches that lay along the ground. As the luminous blobs rolled along those fat pipes, their passing glow dribbled successively upon whatever they passed: the grass, rocks, trees and the occasional buildings, to reveal, in their passing light, dreadful new simplification of almost every single thing. Grass now existed not so often in individual blades and more in streaky smears as of green paint on the land. Those blades which did still exist were in tufts that had become extremely rare.  And the trees (Midax noted as he passed a few) were covered with one papery all-embracing leaf, a thin grey cellulose wrapping, which rather resembled a young child’s lollipop-scribble of a tree. Rocks, milestones and stelae, wooden sheds and wooden houses had sagged rather alike: lumpy things, all, smoothing towards a smoother boulder-like appearance.
  A few stalwart stone buildings stood out mostly unaltered, but the trend was unmistakable. Forms, except the most massive, were melting down, decomplexifying, debasing.
Accepting all this in a mental crouch, so as to present a smaller target to whatever might next obtrude to blow his mind, Midax fell further into Sparseworld-survival-mode: the reduced range of thought, the drowsy awareness, the emotional filter which allowed only generalised feelings to trickle through.  So for example he accepted as natural the fact that Ultrisk and Kmee had not discussed with him where they were going. He lived in the moment. The moments were enough, each of them crying to him that the world was closing down.
  Nevertheless they presently came alongside an inspiring exception. He squared his shoulders as he admired the great stone building of the Olamic Institute. Some wakeful vigour returned to his mind while they skirted the magnificent pile, seemingly more or less still crisp and un-blurred, for the sight thumped its parcel of exciting memories onto the mat of recollection and allowed his mind to rummage among ghosts of feeling from way back, from beyond Life to his pre-Life, to the days of his pre-Entry training.
Ah, but - he jumped at a mental barb, a jab of the torment of those long-gone days - he'd then had to cope with the Great Complication! Could it be, that the GC was not quite over yet?
Might he conceivably see her again?
  Yes, it was possible, but only if she failed her test too. Only if she joined him among the rejects, were they at all likely to meet. And the chances were hugely against that!
  Or was this reasoning faulty? He wasn’t sure, but, anyhow, her failure was not a thing he could decently wish for, even if it were possible to imagine seriously that Pjerl Lhared could fail.
Led by his parents, he continued on his way. Rounding into sight of the Olamic’s front, he made out a few score figures dimly camped upon its wide lawn. More figures were arriving there. Ultrisk and Kmee however took no notice of these gathering campers. They continued in the direction of the city.  Midax, asking no questions, followed passively. The inexorable future would take care of itself.
So the Rale family strolled down Rheddon Avenue, under the almost lightless Sun. They progressed from one ground-lamp to another, from one circular glow to the next; meanwhile the moving luminous globs in the pipes continued to trickle past them, and Midax in his vague absorption began to grasp how this piped system of rolling-lights must feed the fixed ground-lamps with dribblets of energy, presumably carried all the way from the waning Fount itself in the centre of Serenth. The lines of illumination made it possible to see quite far into the city, while in the opposite direction he could make out a long file of incoming pedestrians, destined, he suspected, to swell the numbers camped on the Olamic lawn.
  Ultrisk made a gesture and the trio of Rales halted.
  Midax still did not question anything, did not say, “Why have we stopped?” He saw what they were looking at.
The dismaying beauty of the Luminarium skymark got at his feelings suddenly and made him blench. How its exterior semblance had changed! Whereas it used to be an almost invisible outline in his old pre-Life days, when the great glass box was just about transparent, now, against a much darker sky, it glared as a frighteningly solid-looking cake of light. Terrible evidence of a bloated energy gap! Proof of concentration inside, and attenuation outside, the box-world; proof that it was doing its job, and that the end must be really close.
  Midax looked at Ultrisk, and Ultrisk nodded. Midax's sense of shock shock was borne off in a surge of silent wonder; fear diluted in a flood of awe.
Father looked son in the eye:
  “Time is short, you may well guess. Perhaps instead of coming out here you would rather have gone home to your house in Serenth. Sorry, but –”
  “I understand. Not enough time to go home.”
He had been keen to see his old house, but the weight of events was too huge for personal disappointment. In fact, in an odd sense he did not need that homecoming, because not much difference remained between merely imagining that one was doing such a thing, and actually doing it, here in Sparseworld where the hibernation of thought and action caused them both to be furled into one closed bud… In any case he had already seen enough to give him a good idea of what his home street must now be like. One lumpy row of deconvolved masonry must look much like another.
Only two structures remained relatively immune to Sparseworld: the Luminarium - and the Olamic.
He looked towards the latter, and his father noted the direction of his gaze.
“It looks,” Ultrisk went on, “as though Kmee and I have spent so much time waiting by the Portal for you, Midax, that we’ve rather lost touch with what is going on around the Olamic. People are streaming towards it, gathering there in larger numbers than before. I’m starting to wonder whether we may be within minutes of the end. If that’s so, I wouldn’t care to get caught out too far away to heed the final summons.”
  Kmee had been gazing raptly at the Luminarium.
  In a dreamy tone she said, “Just fancy the thought of us all crowding in there, and darkness outside…”
Her words helped Midax at last to grasp the fulness of the idea: The Luminarium – a refuge for all.
  “All of us,” remarked Ultrisk, “except those poor devils who failed their test.”
  Poor devils was an idiom which made Midax briefly smile, for it showed that, despite enforced amnesia, those speech habits which had been learned in the box-world persisted outside. But next into his drowsy head whumped a far heavier thought: My father and mother do not know that I have failed the test.
On top of that one, a thought that weighed heavier still: I myself am behaving as though I were unaware of what the penalty is sure to be. Isn’t it about time I faced it? Exclusion from the last refuge! They won't let me in!
All the more reason why my parents must not know. I cannot bear that they should know what’s in store for me. Heavens, he must get away from his kindly mum and dad before they deduced the truth from something he said – Must find some excuse to go off on my own…
  As a preliminary, Midax steered the conversation towards the topic of others like himself: the recent emergers from Life. It was, after all, reasonable for him to be interested in what his fellow-graduates might be doing. “Those freshly out of the box,” he began, “those like me, in other words… how do most of them employ their time? What sort of things do they do?”
  Ultrisk chuckled at that. “A lot of them soon feel an urge to walk back towards the box, to gaze back into it from outside; you see them mooning away… I suppose they want to see if they can catch a glimpse of a face, or hold their memories of a way of life… We’re forced to forget how to talk about it – but we go on thinking about it.”
  “I’m glad you said that, Father, because I, too, feel that impulse to have a look.”
  “You do, eh?”
  “Yes, right now I want nothing more than to rush back and gaze through the big glass wall!”
“Perhaps there’s still time for you to have a go,” Ultrisk shrugged, “and really you don’t have much else to do. Go on, you might as well. I can see you’re hoppingly keen.”
  Kmee put in, “It’s over a mile off. Are you ready for such a walk on your own? Considering how long it has been since you were out here in the real world, and how much things have changed?”
  “I feel,” said Midax truthfully, “full of energy now.”
  Ultrisk raised his brows. “Is that so? Well, congratulations on that! I mean, you should see some of the dodderers who come tottering out of the Portal…”
  Maybe they should cheat more, Midax did not say.
  With amused pride, Ultrisk and Kmee watched him go. For them, it was like indulging the enthusiasm of a scatterbrained teenager. They stood for a few moments fondly gazing after him as he loped back up the avenue with intermittent bursts of speed. Soon they too would head back in that direction, but they sensed that he preferred to be given a head start.
  “Just look at him!” remarked Ultrisk, shaking his head. “Running in this! He’s got something special, that one.”
  “He’s a Splasher, remember,” Kmee shrugged. “Born very close to the Fount.”
  “Well, for that matter, you and I are Rales, too, I suppose – in the Luminarium order of things anyway,” mused Ultrisk. “Though in Serenth we weren’t born from the Rale rock.” He frowned, attempting a flash of analysis amid the grey Sparseworld gloom which shrouded and stifled most thought.
  “It’s too confusing,” remarked Kmee. “Stop it.”
  So he let the subject drop. The puzzle slipped from both their minds, deadened in the fug of Sparseworld and the dull bass-note mentality of evening, closed to cleverness. But for Midax it was different.
  Sprinting up the avenue with a fuming cone of desperate ideas erupting inside his head, Midax was fired up by explosions of discontent, and as a result his consciousness was not sparse at all: it was ignited by the urgent problem of how to keep his from parents the heart-breaking knowledge that he had failed his test, and moreover, how was he to push away that shame from himself? Mere determination not to feel it – was that enough? His current burst of energy – it wouldn’t last for ever: he had better conserve some of it. He slowed his run to a gasping trot. Then to a walk.
  For want of a better idea he had taken the direction which would eventually bring him back to the Luminarium glassite wall, though – despite his excuse to Ultrisk and Kmee – he had no particular urge to look through it. In fact, what could be worse? What would be more certain to bring himself heartbreak, than to look back at Life? Either he would merely see the un-jelled landscape which would emphasize the finality of what he had lost, or he might happen to look along a ray and catch a live glimpse of people and scenes, making the loss more vivid still.
In any case what did it matter where he went and what he did? Night was falling upon Sycrest. His future would shortly be extinguished. The rest of mankind might have a chance, but not he; his failure in the test, if it meant anything, must surely mean that he would be debarred from taking shelter in the Luminarium.
  Inescapable conclusion: a dark end awaited him.
  He was tasting that thought when he heard the immense clang of a gong.
  It swelled, pure and clear, interrupting every act within a range of several miles. It rang out through the wan evening, spreading Assigner Alsair’s last summons to his people.
  The air took minutes to cease quivering. Meanwhile, out of the hundreds of people in the world, one face smiled. It was that of Midax Rale, as he recalled an ancient proverb: ‘there is never a right time to strike the Gathering Gong’ – in other words, no plan can be executed with perfect timing; sometimes one must choose to act without being sure. A wry joke that would never be made again. A jocular reference to the event which must raise the curtain on the last act of history… now with supreme irony the proverb became a literal comment upon the predicament of the person who must have actually struck the gong – for it must have been Alsair, the Head of State, and he must have done so on his own responsibility, and what a lone decision that must have been! Midax in that moment was probably the only person in existence who could harbour such a sympathetic thought just then. He could empathize with that class of responsibility. Here in the finale of the world, feeling a kinship with a lone decision-maker, the Discoverer for a moment forgot his own woes.

III

Alsair slowly opened his hand; the crumpled control switch fell to the ground.
  One of the Assigner’s attendants started forward and bent to pick up the switch, but Alsair waved him back: there was no point in collecting museum pieces in a world with no more time to visit museums; the relic was left as litter on the scanty grass.
  The Gong could only be struck once. Alsair could only hope that he had timed the action well; he would soon learn how well.  If it had been done too early, the crowd would become restive and hard to manage. On the other hand if the act had been left till some moment too late into the Winter of Simplicity, it must lead to the loss of those who had strayed too far off into the night to retain that minimum complexity which they needed to return to the gathering.
  Correct or not, Alsair at any rate felt focused by what he had done. And no authority existed to dispute with him or gainsay him. Tactically, he was on his own. No precedent could guide him; no cultural memory, except the vaguest of myths, bridged the eon between one Sparseworld and the next. In that gulf of time, organized bodies of knowledge on the topic of cosmic cycles had long decomposed into snatches of lore, falling far short of the accumulation from many examples which might have turned his task into a science. So although the Luminarium had been used again and again, with various topographies, histories, cultures – the lessons had been wasted, lost in Time.
Alsair noticed that a pale man had appeared at his elbow.
  “The creeping has begun,” said the fellow, watching the crowd.
  Alsair nodded, his gaze following that of Brenbl Jnab, Luminometrician, whose filmy eyes were continuously noting the rate at which the press of people had begun to bulge outwards. Brenbl was able to quantify the sight, whereas all Alsair could conclude was that a general movement was underway, the giant human amoeba steadily extruding a pseudopod in the direction of the glass box Portal.
“Talk to them, sir,” urged Brenbl. “Smartly, sir, or we’ve lost it.”
  “I know,” said the Assigner gently. He took a step forward and raised both arms. His lungs filled with power. He boomed to the crowd:
  “Careful, careful, people, think before you blunder in there.  We are approaching the hour when the light from the Fount will drop below that which is necessary to supply the mirrors in there. You know what that means.”
  A minority heard him, turned their faces to him, and thus caused others to turn likewise. Elbows dug, bodies jostled, in an effort to halt. The people milled and shuffled, as a whole neither decisively heeding nor decisively ignoring the Assigner, but some earlier momentum persisted enough, that the crowd still flexed in the direction where the last strong light was to be found.  Alsair saw this and said, “Yes, yes, you want that light over there, but what’s going to happen when the Fount dies? What’s that moment going to bring you? You all know!” He raised his voice further and almost howled the prefix:  “Un! Un! Un! The light in there will un-corrugate, vision will unravel, their world will un-jell!”
  Some of his message got through to them. He was the Assigner, after all. Though they could not bear to wait any longer, though they could hardly be expected to think much, he made them hesitate. It was worth his while to speak on and not give up his determination to convey to them what a traumatic event the imminent un-jelling would be for anyone inside the Luminarium when it happened. “You don’t want to suffer their vision on top of yours, do you? Reflect, then, on how vital it is that we enter at exactly the right moment.”
  Brenbl whispered, “I think you've done it, sir. I think we may be all right. Will you give the order for the prophets –”
  “Not quite yet. In a few minutes. Stop fretting, will you? Leave this to me.”
  Hundreds more citizens would soon be arriving from further afield. The Gong had summoned folk from wherever they were, from all over Sycrest. The rate of the expansion of this crowd must soon peak, and then drastically fall. Alsair watched it happen. He scrutinised, with more care than he had ever bestowed on any sight, the mass of his people who were moving across the lawn, around the Olamic building, and in the direction of the glow that spilled onto the ground in front of the Luminarium Portal… and he saw in every face the shining desperation which up to this moment had not been openly admitted, we must get inside or else.
  With an accumulation of fears of the dark, and with no remaining distraction from the familiar details and complications of life – all those dear little things whose departure stripped bare the deepening gloom – the people were close to a stampede. Luckily, they were also somewhat ginger about it, wincing at the event’s sharp-edged finality, so that they did not after all literally stampede, but instead stumbled ineptly along, enabling Alsair to keep in the midst of them, maintaining his flow of persuasive reassurance, avoiding total loss of their attention, keeping some control. Above all he must not let them force admittance to the Portal on their own terms. That could spell disaster for all. It was his duty to influence and deflect and steer, in a balancing act which he was able to perform up to the point where the crowd drew up at the end of its slow march.
  The pool of humanity now lapped against the front step of the Portal itself, and stared with uneasy longing at the glow from the open door.
Not yet terrified enough to force their way in past the Assigner and his staff, who faced them from the raised porch, the population of Sycrest - some hundreds of human beings – appeared both large in concentration and small in frame, surrounded by outer dark. Especially it looked small to one who could stood back and raise his hand to eye-level, as the Assigner did, so as to cover with his palm almost every person in existence apart from those other hundreds currently ‘doing their Life’ inside the Luminarium.
  Alsair then lowered his hand but continued to gaze, reflectively.
  Brenbl, getting impatient, began, “Now do we give the order –”
  “No! We would lose some late arrivals.”
  “Delay too long and you’ll lose the lot, Assigner.”
  “Don’t think I don’t know that.”
  Everything now depended upon the self-control of the more ordinary members of the crowd, which is to say the average human material – those who had never become Olamic trainees, and who now formed the key category here, because they had it in their power to spoil the occasion. As soon as their fear of the darkening became stronger than their nervousness at the refuge which awaited them, they were going to charge the Portal. Either that or go crazedly wandering, to lose themselves in the night… Meanwhile people continued to arrive in a reduced trickle to enlarge the edges of the crowd, or incipient mob.
  Alsair felt keen sorrow at the idea that even a single willing human might be denied the chance of refuge, and he ached with hope that everybody would manage to come. His conscience never stopped needling him: might he have organized things better? But on the other hand how could he, or anyone in his place, be expected to be sure? The rate of onset of Sparseworld had never been precisely known. He had had to rely on his own personal judgement; “instinct” (to fall back on an unhelpful word). He had struck the Gong when the time seemed ripe, when the landscape had dimmed to the point which sufficiently alarmed him; that was all. (Though of course the “dimness” was an illusion; the lofty Sun was as bright as ever, and it was only the mind which so translated the congealing sparseness of everything, that the dearth of complexity became a dearth of light. Or so he understood… what did it matter anyway?) The main question was, did he have regrets? No, he could not know enough for that, either. End this brooding!
He filled his lungs – for it was time to roar out again to his people:
  “YOU ARE EXPECTED!”
  This seized their attention.
  He continued:
  “We are going to time this absolutely right! Time it so that, when you go in, you, in some legendary fashion, will be EXPECTED. You are aware, aren’t you, that they KNOW? You ought to be! Yes, in there, in Life, from their folklore, they know. In their hearts they have always known that this time will come, that the moment will come that the light from Outside shall play upon their world and their dead shall live. Consequently you, by your presence, will play for them a confirming role – if things go right, if the timing is right and you help them instead of confusing them. They shall need your help, to face the last things. And in being of help to others you will comfort and help yourselves. But - first they must be PREPARED.”
  A voice yelled profanely, “Frunks, Assigner, you mean they aren’t ready yet?”
  Alsair came unusually close to losing his temper. He almost snapped out loud, You fool, just what do you suppose are the criteria for judging speed of response to this once-in-an-eon situation?
  Nevertheless he kept his voice steady as he replied:
  “Trust me, it really is all in the timing. Or if you can’t trust me, trust Brenbl’s staff – they are monitoring the light-levels as we speak. But this isn’t to say that your question was not valid – ask me more, ask me anything you like.” (That was one way of playing for time.) “Here stand I and my staff around me, ready to answer you one by one. You first,” he pointed at random… and the gesture began a movement. The worriers, the would-be trainees, failed applicants and the far more numerous non-trainees, pushed towards him, demanding to know at long last about the whole historic plan: insisting that he come clean, tell the truth, make it all clear: Was it possible for them all to crowd in there?  That was the main, the overwhelming question. Would there be room, and if there wasn’t, who would have priority? Could all of them remain conscious during the night of Sparseworld, and if not, how many could? Was the whole thing designed to reward successes, or to condemn failures, or perhaps to compensate failures?
  Alsair entered upon the busiest few minutes of his career, speaking in fast snatches, giving probabilistic replies where exact ones were impossible. With the scurrying support of his staff he interpreted the data as he received them from the luminometrician at his side, who in turn constantly received, from colleagues still at work inside the Portal, summaries and projections based on the scores of all the tests so far, which had assessed humanity’s readiness for the coming ordeal. To a large extent the result was a mess, yet the crowd sensed he was doing his best - they were getting something out of it, some straws of meaning to snatch at, and enough of them realized that without him they'd get nothing.
One tall, lean man elbowed his way forward to plead: “Assigner Alsair, consider my case – I was marked down for cheating but I nevertheless –”
  “I recognize you, Midax Rale. A trier of short-cuts.”
  “Yes, but, after listening here, I am truly convinced –”
  Alsair shook his head. Midax gulped and continued:  “Sir, I am convinced that a cheat may after all be able to perform service!”
  Alsair tiredly drew breath, and instead of dismissing the fellow he snapped, “Such as?”
  Talking glibly for his life, Midax said: “Short-cuts, valuable at a time like this. Jelling and un-jelling, with the rapidity needed to dot around, to warn all the box-world’s peoples that the end is nigh. You need me, Assigner.”
  Alsair snorted, “Then what took you so long to make your offer?”
  Midax looked stumped, appalled that he had no idea how or in what tone to continue the dialogue.
  Alsair meanwhile, glancing at Brenbl, gave a string of orders.
  “Run and tell the prophets that we’re running out of time and they had better make their move. And you might as well take this cheat with you and put him on the team.

Brenbl took Midax by the sleeve and they hurried away, their heads down, leaving Alsair to square his shoulders once more at the assemblage crowd, thinking:  The only people whom I really shall reject are those die-hards who scorn what we have done. They and their poison will be shut out – but Midax Rale isn’t like that... Alsair’s expression clouded as he lifted his eyes to glare at those far worse who now lurked on the edges of the crowd.
...Midax meanwhile allowed himself a surge of awareness. Like one who has been fleeing from a predator is able (when sure of his escape) to reflect upon the full terror, Midax could now, at long last, dare to picture what he had managed to evade. To be shut out in the eonian night of Sparseworld, deprived of the common hope of mankind: that was what he need no longer face. The relief had left him too stunned to whisper thanks. Vowing wholehearted devotion and intelligent support to the regime that had reprieved him, he strode beside Brenbl up the Portal steps, while fierce gratitude jarred his very bones, as if every stride he took were pulverising his old carping self. Henceforth how wonderfully amenable he would be! Sipping so humbly at the cup of existence! Obeying both the letter and the spirit of whatever the authorities required! For no matter how dubious the future, at least he had been finally assured that he would face it together with everybody else.
  Or almost everybody else. Not the poisonous ones.
  Midax guessed at, just as Alsair knew, the category of the ultimate rejects. Be happy, he told himself, that you are not in that group, not any more. Be glad and accept… and make sure you keep to that sound resolution. How? By refraining from asking any more awkward questions. Such as, “What was the point of the Judgement, then? If failures like me are not excluded, then what was the test for?”  Keep the brow smooth, and presently an answer comes:
  The tests were primarily practical rather than moral. They provided necessary psychological data for the decision-makers of Serenth, to use as they ponder how best to make their play while the end draws.
Meanwhile, as he marched with Brenbl into the Portal, a brightness ahead showed him a level of light which he had almost forgotten existed, and which led him to believe for one gut-tightening moment that they were going straight through – that he was being whisked back Inside - back to Life there and then. Brenbl however turned left, towards a partitioned area, and darkness re-enfolded them. Someone had shut a door behind them. Straining to re-adjust his eyes, Midax made out a row of panels which glowed egg-yolk orange.  Each glow was at the head of a bed. A robed person sat upright on each bed. Close to them, standing, were men and women in uniform, holding luminous boards.
One of these supervisors, a tall man with beetle brows, turned to peer at the two who had just entered. “Whom have you brought us, Brenbl? A late recruit? Ah, I see who it is.” The speaker turned away again.
  Brenbl said in a low tone to Midax, “This is Klari Lupt, Director of Stasis Section.”
  Klari thumbed at a bald old man with a full white beard who was sitting dopily on the nearest bed. “We’re having trouble with this last one. Should we proceed without him?”
  As if he had vaguely heard the words, and grasped that they concerned him, the old man lifted his head out of his hands and stared around, looking woebegone and confused.
  Brenbl replied, “Alsair can hold the crowd for a few minutes more.”
  Klari Lupt bent forward. He raised his voice at the old man. “Hear that, Boalo? We have a few minutes. We haven’t got forever!”
  Midax’s choking gasp must have sounded amusing. He heard chuckles all around him. He paid no heed to that. In the end-game of life when the pieces are few and their powers great, here he had come into the actual presence of the ancient philosopher whose teaching had founded the Shapers’ College and the system of transcendent beliefs which had coloured the Luminarium box-world! And more? Were the ideas more than a prop for that scene? Midax almost bubbled as he cried out at the perplexed old man: “Boalo, you were right” – the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. “I knew it all along,” he tritely declared, thinking, Please echo my cry of faith, Please confirm your doctrine, that love is not a lie, that when it speaks of uniqueness, of permanence and transcendent truth, it is validating a glory that is more than a dream; no mere mechanism of propinquity -
“Boalo has found a believer!” a woman spoke, and more bystanders laughed aloud. Another said, “But Boalo doesn’t look too keen. Isn't the afterlife to his liking?” “Rale, go on, wake him up!” growled another voice, a male. Everybody was noting the philosopher’s face, remarking on its gleam of response. “You’re doing us all a service, Midax,” said yet another wry observer. “You’re waking him up.”
The Director did not intervene with any reproof. Instead, he listened, as keenly as Midax, for the philosopher’s reply.
  In a quavering voice – with an ordinariness that was electrifying – Boalo spoke:
  “I know that what I taught was true. Although, as I wake, I know that I must add to it.”
  Midax stood, head bowed, eyes squeezed shut. He hugged this moment as if he were a confession by the universe.  I have just now heard him, Boalo himself, confirm that it is true. I have seen the man with my own eyes; I have heard him with my own ears; what more reassurance can I want? All those doubters who disbelieved in the authenticity of the dialogues… “interpolations”, my eye! Boalo wrote them and he sticks to them. I see him right here, I hear him right now.
  Klari Lupt addressed the oldster. “Good, you stand by your doctrine. That’s fine. Now,” he pointed, “Midax, stand him in line, will you? And stand in line yourself.”
  With patience and reverence Midax helped the sage to his feet, took him by the sleeve and began to pick his way through the ward, towards a waiting-line. The going became easier as the light was slowly increased by the authorities, to allow for the gradual adjustment of the awakened sleepers.
  Boalo, as they went, muttered to Midax, “I wanted this. I volunteered.”
  “Wanted what, Your Wisdom?”
  Boalo glanced sharply at Midax’s face. “I volunteered for stasis.”
  “You mean… er, how long have you been here?”
  “Wanted time to elapse,” continued the oldster, “wanted to see what had become of my handiwork – and what do I find, having dreamed away the millennia? One believer.”
  Midax said hoarsely, “But in the box, your ‘handiwork’ endures.”
  “I hope you are right.”
  “If it's the truth it cannot help but endure.”
  Boalo smiled at that. “And you accept it as the truth, on my say-so?”
  “I accept it because it has shaped my life. Shaped me. Without it, I would not be the same person.”
  “How has it shaped you?”
  “A woman…”
  Boalo smiled again, austerely. “She was your proof, eh? I too had a fortunate experience of that kind.”
  “Here we are, here’s the queue,” said Midax, seizing upon an excuse to shut the lid on this glorious conversation before his gains should evaporate.
  Boalo waved, as if at a gathering of chums. “A fine queue. Klalel and Rezram Pamek. Monto deRoffa…”
  Midax’s stupefied expression went un-noticed. This was the end of ordinariness, the very end; anything could happen henceforth. Now it was the great explorer he faced, the old portraits come alive in the form of a black-bearded apparition, wiry and swarthy, with hands on hips and amusedly staring.
DeRoffa’s accented voice said, “Nothing wrong with your memory, Boalo.”
  “I should think not,” snorted the older man. “I knew you well before either of us Trained.”
  Bursting into a lagoon of calm acceptance, Midax’s consciousness floated in the company of these great ones of the past, while he asked himself serenely: was it not natural that they should obtrude at this late hour upon this sparsening world? A world the ingredients of which were clotting apace into fewer and greater lumps; a world where that which remained was bound to be, in every sense, big.  And as for me, I need not be shy, I can hold up my head among them, for in Life did I not out-Roffa deRoffa? Midax now had the confidence to open his mouth in this august company:
  “Do any of you happen to know,” he ventured to ask, “what we are waiting for?”
  “A good question,” deRoffa growled. “And another one is, who are you?”
  “Name of Midax Rale. Dead only a few hours.”
  The explorer showed bright teeth behind his buccaneer’s beard. “A likely trouble-maker, then, else they would not have sent you to join this queue.” He grinned around at the company. “Trouble-makers all, are we not?”
  “Speak for yourself, deRoffa,” said the statesman Rezram Pamek, looking down his famous aquiline nose.
  “Yes, I thought I had better speak before you did,” remarked deRoffa with silken insouciance.
  “Foff. I am only two centuries out of touch. You are five.”
  “And here is this new customer, this Rale who is more in touch than any of us.”
  Midax cut in, “Why aren’t we making some move? I thought that once the Gong had sounded –”
  “I guess they’re fishing for one last recruit,” drawled Klalel Pamek, deceptively colloquial for one who had penned the immortal phrases of the Constitution of Larmonn. “Though you’d think that five prophets would be enough.”
  “Maybe not quite enough,” Rezram suggested. “Fellows like we are symbols when viewed at height, but…”
  “I get you,” said Klalel. “We’re not so good when it comes to lower-altitude reassurance. They’ll prefer someone with contemporary clout. Some popular, well-known, respected establishment figure, more solid than a mere legendary hero… More like Midax, here; I take it you are... ha!” he interrupted himself, “look who’s coming to join us!”
  At the other end of the low, dim room, in a sudden fan of light from an opened door, a trio appeared. Two men were holding up a third between them, and Stasis Section Director Klari Lupt was striding forward to greet the arrivals.
  Midax, unable to restrain his curiosity, left his queue and followed the Director, to where yet another wonder met his eyes and slipped a message of rightness into his brain, filling him with the conviction that an appropriate, wise, necessary thing had been done.
  “We fished him out, just like you said, Klari,” grinned one of the agents. He was holding up the sagging frame of World President Waretik Thanth.

Klari Lupt said, “Welcome to the team, Mr President.”
  “Oh no you don’t,” grimaced Waretik, raising his voice from its previous rambling mutter. “Didn’t you hear what I just said to these goons of yours? I’ve done my stint!” His voice was all of a sudden jubilant. “So don’t ‘Mr President’ me! I quit while I was ahead; I died in my sleep, full of years and honour, as the saying goes – so you can –”
  “Your years are wearing off,” interrupted the Director. And it was strikingly true that the premature wrinkles in the President’s face were smoothing as the seconds ticked by. The effects of Luminarium existence were now drying away, ephemeral as a brief wetting from a shower, leaving Midax to wonder: to which do I react - the old or the new? The deleted rank or the man himself? The man who ordered my death under rules which no longer apply, or the personality whom I see before me re-framed in joyful release?
  The Director of Stasis was adding, “And your stint is not quite over, I’m afraid.”
  Waretik demanded, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
  “It means we need a bit more from you.”
  “My memory is returning in detailed fashion, Klari. I know your style in stratagems. I want no part of whatever you’ve cooked up this time.”
  Brenbl Jnab cleared his throat. “Ah well, you see, we already have enough great leaders from the far past. We need one of recent vintage too. An inside expert. A figure of power…”
  Klari Lupt finished bluntly, “Therefore, Waretik, we need you to go back.”
  With a vehement shake of the head Waretik repeated, “Died in my sleep. Full of years and honour.”
  “Honour!” jeered a voice, piercing and feminine.
  All heads turned. A trim silhouette had appeared in the other doorway. In the extra light that suddenly streamed into the room, the figure’s bold, smart, heedless approach personified scorn.
  “Whom have we here?” breathed Klari Lupt.
  “Throw her out,” suggested Brenbl, surprised at his boss’ dithering. “What does it matter who she is?”
  Klari spoke thoughtfully, “Yes. But the Assigner warned me, everything that happens in these last minutes must be for a reason.”
  “In that case, he’s slipping. Is this Alsair’s idea of crowd control? But,” Brenbl shrugged, “rope her in if you have to – this is your department – only I suggest you hurry!”
  Klari quietened him with a hand on the arm.
  The woman – she was young, pretty, dark-haired, dressed in blue skirt and jacket – marched up to Waretik Thanth and jabbed a finger at his chest.
  “You had me killed! What did you think you were doing, you rascal?”
  “Sorry, Mezyf,” sighed the late President inanely. “Reasons of state…”
  The simple delight which Midax Rale felt at once more seeing Mezyf Tand, was followed by an amazingly obvious thought. However much Luminarium time may have gone by, it was actually only a few hours of his time since he had last seen her, so a mere fragment of a single day was all that straddled the hugeness of death for both of them, and for Waretik too. And in that short interval they’d had judgement, and emergence into this wintering reality… so much, so terrifyingly much had happened, yet all that was somehow framed – bracketed – by Mezyf: yes, Mezyf before, and Mezyf after; enfolding, with the mild toasty comfort of moderate affection, the entire catastrophe! Ordinariness rearing its head in a contrary vote against the powers of the universe! Good old Mezyf! Killed, was she? Midax cleared his throat:
  “That reminds me, Mr President. You had me killed too.”
  Discoverer and President gazed at each other.
  The lips of murderer and victim trembled – then both men suddenly guffawed, convulsed by the hilarity of it all. It was all just too much: the pomposity of Fate, all that moral capital squandered, and the end of it all was that here they now stood in Klari’s stasis ward, doubtless about to be given another ludicrous task to perform. Hand on chest, Midax and Waretik fairly tottered in their gasps of laughter.
  Klari Lupt and Brenbl Jnab watched dubiously, uncertain whether to interrupt and reprove. Mezyf Tand did not share their hesitation.
  “I don’t see what’s so funny!” With louder indignation she emphasized: “I don’t see what’s so funny about killing people who disagree with you!”
  “The incongruity,” Midax gulped, his chest heaving. Might as well let it out, he thought; why fear to express the merriment he could not help but feel? The show was just about over, the curtain coming down, and the entire cast of life’s emotions, finished with the parts they had played, were entitled to come forward, holding hands, to take their final bow – and laughter definitely stood in their line.
  Mezyf did not see it that way. Perhaps she had not yet recognized Midax, and saw nothing except the ex-President at whom her accusing finger still pointed. She next turned her disgusted expression to Klari Lupt, and told him:
  “That man needs watching, Mr Director. If he’s going back in, I’m going with him. I insist on keeping an eye on him.”
  “Quite right,” agreed Klari with a look as though he were blinking away smoke. Then he turned and put on a public voice. "Gather round," he addressed everyone in the room. "All of you.”  He gestured, to include Mezyf Tand in the circle – having decided to “rope in” this latest nuisance, as Brenbl phrased it.
  It was time to summarize the schedule of the End. Recapitulating to the “prophets” the measures they must take, Klari spoke without any particular concession to the newcomers, Midax and Mezyf; they had barged their way into the process and must grasp as best they could how to fit in with the agenda of finality.
  “Appear at first to a select few. Start the rumours; quicken the expectations. Remember that timing is vital. Do not try to anticipate the set-piece of the statues…” (The what? thought Midax.) “Remember also, that we cannot know beforehand exactly how severe Sparseworld will be inside the box. If conscious life survives anywhere, it will do so in Serorn. Specifically, in the Valley of Zednas in Serorn. That’s the default-focus of the mirrors; that’s where what’s left of the available light-energy will linger. Now you know that legends have long been planted to help people in that direction when the time comes, but as you must appreciate, a legend does not suffice to organize an evacuation. You, Mr President, might make a big difference.” Klari Lupt swivelled as he spoke. “If you can facilitate the logistics of shepherding the inhabitants to the Valley - the Valley of Judgement, the Valley of Zednas, or whatever they may call it by this time – as soon as the de-jell occurs, then you will be doing all mankind a great service. How about it? Can you go back, re-use your authority and do this for your people? If you agree, we may still have time to arrange it so that you didn’t die in your sleep after all – that you just went into a temporary coma –”
  “Do I really have to?” murmured the President. “I got out so smoothly, on such a high note; my life is a thing shaped and done. A thing achieved! And now you’re asking me to risk spoiling the ending…”
  Klari said, “You score won’t be affected, if that’s what you’re worried about. You don’t get Judged twice.”
  “Oh, all right, all right.” Waretik’s eyes skidded around. “You’re asking me to go through the living-dying process again, but at least it won’t be for long, will it?”
  “It certainly will not be for long.”
  Midax interposed, “I have a practical question. For the President.”
  “Go ahead,” the Director nodded.
  “Waretik, was the L2C organization still in existence when you left?”
  “The what?”
  “Don’t say you’ve forgotten already! It’s the reason you had me assassinated.”
  “Oh, that.” Waretik passed a hand across his forehead. “Sorry, slipped my mind – possibly, yes…”
  “Use anything you can,” cut in Klari, “in the time available. Midax’s point seems to me to be worth following up.”
  Waretik sighed, “How long have I got?”
  “The same as the prophets. At the most, half an hour of real time. Of course that may turn out to be a few weeks of Luminarium time.”
  “Let’s get it over with.”
  “Brenbl,” said the Director, “see to it.”