Man of the World by Robert Gibson

37:  the silver stain

                                        I

Midax stood in the gentle dip of ground, the twilit dell into which he and other leaders had shepherded the world’s folk. So, he thought, my job done, my mission accomplished, here I finally am, in… what was the name? It had a name, this scene! Where the end of days was meant to happen, and had happened. His lips pursed, he sought the datum in his memory.  At length he managed to murmur, “The Vale of Zednas.” That was the historic name.  The effort it cost him to recall it showed that it had spent its force: legend now fulfilled, “Zednasvale” during the past few hours had faded from the language, to be replaced by a starker term:
    “The Glimmer-Place”.
    That more aptly signified the last pool of light in the known universe.
    A shrinking pool.  Each hour that passed decreased the level of illumination to perhaps ninety-five percent of what it had been an hour before.  The ever slower dimming gave human eyes some allowance of time in which to adjust, and right now it was still light enough to walk without stumbling, and to recognize faces; no colour remained, however, except for dull red.
    By the residual glow of this final evening Midax contemplated the nineteen hundred or so recumbent forms around him. Here lay most of humanity.  The people whose multiple reflections had filled the world of Life with their millions were here and now reduced to one small-town’s worth of real individuals, brought to drowse in the Glimmer-Place as refugees from universal darkness.
    Not quite everyone dozed.  Scattered amongst them were a dozen wakeful forms: the exceptions, like Midax himself, blessed or cursed with an extra store of life-energy.  Such was the legacy of birth close to the Fount or of some other twist of fate. Evidently this select few were able to retain full personal complexity even while the Winter of Simplicity tightened its grip.
    How long their animation might outlast the Fount’s ebb, none knew.  Nor how, in the long run, it could possibly profit them.  Midax was inclined in his bleaker moments to guess that the curse of such survival outweighed the blessing. A scary whiff of Time’s enormity hinted to his brain that trillions of hours might have to pass before his own energy trickled away sufficiently to equalize him with the somnolent majority of humankind. No records of precedents existed; no scrap of knowledge gave any clue as to how long he might have to wait for oblivion or, alternatively, for a rebirth of the Fount and the dawn of a new world.
    At any rate, he told himself, I have the other Wakefuls to talk to.  I can approach them when I get desperate.  We few must support each other through the aeons.
    As yet he made no such approach. An instinctive solemnity restrained him: respect for the awe that the other conscious few must likewise feel. They, like he, must be overwhelmed by Reality’s hush; they must be sorting themselves out the same as he. Leave them to it for a while, he told himself; there’d be time enough to confer; indeed, over-plentiful time.
    Meanwhile he began to step between the recumbent forms, and as he wove his way he fought down a growing envy. They were the well-adapted ones; why was he denied their peace? Purpose! his inner voice cried. I must believe that some reason exists for my wakeful continuation! Even here in this dim finality, surely something constructive remains to be done. Some plan or ideal to which I can devote myself. A meaning to give colour to the victory of darkness.
    It was hard, though, to think constructive thoughts in this Winter of Being, hard to provide one’s own brightness of purpose and meaning when the world had none left to give. The only source of colourful brightness that remained was personal memory – so thank goodness his mind’s eye was not dimmed, thank goodness it could open a window for him to look back on the course of his life, to keep his feelings in touch with blue skies, lively faces, sunsets, green fields… all the bright past which the dark future could not wipe from the record. Futures can only succeed pasts, not obliterate them.  Page succeeds page in time’s book - but the reader can flip back through the pages.
    However, his mind’s eye did more than gaze pastwards: it also roved in the present.  Beyond the circle of the Glimmer-Place, his attention probed into the dark surround.
    He imagined, though he could not see, the north wall of the glass box-world maybe a hundred and fifty yards from where he stood, and the western wall with its Portal a somewhat greater distance away, and the other walls, and the glass roof of the great enclosure. And outside the Luminarium altogether there brooded the silenced city Serenth with its stilled Fount, he knew; and he knew of the entire land of Sycrest that was now strewn with melted-down shapes, humpy in the dark, the blurred and stubby effects of the Winter of Simplicity.  He jerked his head to shake off the direness of that vision. Here in the Glimmer-Place, what was left wasn’t much, but it was better than that…
    Here after all some wan glow remained, and by it he could see the remainder of life. So infinitely precious, his few fellow watchers and the drowsing multitude! And just then, right next to him on the ground at his feet he saw a curled form which he recognized.
   It was a woman, and his heart gave a special tug, not because she was the destined One, but because she wasn’t.  Admiration, with a contradictory mix of pity and envy, stirred Midax to the depths as he gazed down at Mezyf Tand. The poor dear thing – the lucky thing! Her eyes were slightly open slits; he wondered if she would blink if he waved a hand in front of them. He did not try. Elegant, stockinged calves which gleamed in the twilight, ended in the crude work-shoes with which she had tramped across Zanep to this resting-place. He thought: Mezyf never stopped trying, never gave up on the job. I wish… What in the world did he wish, could he wish, now?
    He left her lying there and continued to move, to search – he now knew it was a purposeful search he was carrying out; and he wasn’t the only one; some of the other watchers were likewise shuffling and stooping around to identify their loved ones among the drowsers.
    When at last he found Pjerl Lhared, he crouched on the ground beside her and stared at her for a long stretch of time. As with Mezyf, he noted her slit-open eyes and slow tranced breathing, but Pjerl had not drawn up her knees – instead she lolled: as was her wont, remembered Midax with a momentary flash of humour that went out like a spark. Would she loll for ever from now on, in this rag-doll style? Careless though never vulgar, she had somehow ensured that she was elegantly draped on the mossy rocks, with her face tilted quizzically up at the sky… her lips parted as if she were about to formulate some question.
    Midax sat to contemplate the woman who had done so much to shape his life. Tenaciously his thoughts went round, and round, and round. Why wasn’t Pjerl awake? She’d been a Splasher, like he himself, had she not? Ah, but probably not really one of the gang. Probably not born close enough to the Fount. But she had been so much an individual… so vivid… Yes, but for that matter even President Waretik Thanth himself, having finished his last task, had lain down and drowsed…
    An indeterminate period later, he noticed that one of his fellow Wakefuls had approached him. An aged figure who lowered himself to the moss on the other side of Pjerl. For yet a while, both men sat in silence with the sprawled woman in between.
    At length, Midax said:
    “Well, you were right. You were absolutely spot-on right; full marks for all that stuff about the one and only Other Half whom one knew Before Life and would know again After. You hit the mark, Boalo.” And having said that, Midax looked up and glared. “Only – so what?”
    “So nothing,” the ancient philosopher retorted. “I simply uttered the facts. Proceed thence as you wish.”
    Midax’s face fell. He gave a slow nod:
    “I reckon my next step will be to look for what’s beyond the beyond.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Can’t you guess? You’re the philosopher!”
    “A very old, out-of-date philosopher, but even if I were the sharpest thinker in history I could not think my way out of Sparseworld.”
    A period of silence followed this retort.
    Midax next remarked in a softer murmur:
    “They called me Discoverer – and I haven’t finished.”
    Boalo emitted a kind of flat, appreciative hiss. “I like your spirit. But – there’s nowhere to go.”
    Midax heaved himself upright. He looked down upon the lolling Pjerl and the seated Boalo. “Yet more goodbyes,” he muttered. “If light ever returns, I may choose a different Other Half next time.” He glanced back over his shoulder… and then he added more loudly, “But never mind that now. The thing to do is to avoid being crushed by the weight of the wait. Understand me? Some sort of action is required.”
    Boalo’s old head bobbed in the dimness.
    “Good,” said Midax. “You’re not trying to argue.” And he began to step away among the bodies. Now he gazed with more concentration, aiming to approach and identify the other eleven Wakefuls.
    He must not hurry, though. He must not antagonize anybody. Something in the quiet air, and in the imperceptibly dying light, forbade the notion of hurry – made it offensive. Besides, there was no need. The great thing – the treasure beyond price – was to have something to do. A plan. And he had a plan. Or at least the shred of one. A word to hang on to. The word was “discovery”. It was in his nature, and it was all he had left.

                                       II

He made his way through the Glimmer-Place, sometimes raising a hand in greeting to the nearest Wakeful; sometimes he received a pale gesture in return.  Four figures who thus answered him, he went past without distinguishing who they were; the fifth was a person he recognized.
    Jolld Tontrar.
    Jolld, awake when far better folk slept.  Midax exhaled in mild disgust at such mediocre luck. If he’d had the choice, he would certainly not have chosen this fellow who had bullied him at school.  That was long over with now – but by all accounts Jolld had never achieved anything noticeable since.  Admittedly he had improved in his later schooldays, but had never become friend-material. But down with these useless reflections; what did such stuff matter now? A name known from one’s past, a remembrance of better days – that was the correct light in which to view Jolld.
    Take it slowly; continue your rounds; you may find someone whose wakefulness makes better sense. Someone more in Boalo’s class. Surely the likes of Jolld ought not to be tops in vitality.
    At length, though, as he approached the finish of his “rounds”, Midax had to conclude that there seemed no rhyme nor reason to the allotment of that extra life-force which could keep one wide awake at the end of things. Apart from Boalo and Jolld, there were none among the Wakefuls whom he recognized from the bright days.  Meanwhile drowsers as eminent as World President Waretik Thanth and Examiner Jaekel lay in that very state of reduced consciousness into which Jolld Tontrar by rights ought to have subsided. Midax took a poor view of Fate’s performance.
    A count of the standing and upright-sitting figures told him that, including himself, there were seven men and five women still awake. One of the women, a plump lady called Brinna Nayen, turned out to be a married sister of his recent landlady Frann. Oh well, three connections out of eleven… it could have been worse. And the twelfth, the last one?
    Towards this as-yet unrecognized figure Midax trudged with arm raised in greeting. The man turned - to reveal the sharp features of the recent Governor of Orame.
    Midax hailed him: “Harlei Ollamdl!”
    “Or Harlei Dapron,” the man said, shaking hands in the gloom. “Which Harlei should I be?”
    “Make up your mind,” grinned Midax. “It’s your identity.”  His wit, and the other man's, were like squeaks in the gloom.
    “Okay. I think you’re right: Ollamdl was my best reflection. I can think back to my time in the gubernatorial mansion in Farao –”
    “Come on, we need a plan,” said Midax. “Let’s get back to the others. We need to concert our way ahead through a mighty dark future.”
    Ollamdl smiled at the other’s sudden haste, but he obeyed, following Midax to where the rest of them had begun at last to gather.
    Hesitantly, the group of Wakefuls had begun to coalesce. They had no actual hope, but neither were they yet ready for despair. The hesitation they felt in common came from a powerful urge not to disturb the darkness.  Midax felt this reluctance too, but he thought he could ‘see through it’. When the group was complete, he began to address it in calm tones:
    “We’re afraid, aren’t we, of doing this too soon, of shooting our bolt, so to speak, and then finding that we have nothing left?  To discuss our ideas and plans too soon, brings the risk that we exhaust them all, leaving nothing more to say; after which, time will hang so heavily it will crush us.  So of course we’re afraid! But there is one big thing we can do, one enterprise which we can eminently undertake, fit and wide-awake as we are: we can explore.”
    “Excuse me, Mr Discoverer,” said Harlei Ollamdl dryly. “Explore what?  The dark?”
    “We can walk in the dark!” cried Midax. “Blind people – remember in Life there were blind people? – they did it! So can we!”
    He could almost hear their thoughts humming over that. Flooding into him as the seconds passed was a great pride in these people. None of them were complaining of a lack of practical means; they could, for example, have protested that they did not possess flashlights or torches, yet not one person questioned why these gadgets were not available in the austerity of the Last Vale.  When, at length, a query broke from someone’s lips, it was more general:
    “But why?” asked Brinna.
    Midax, approving her honest wish to know, replied: “You mean, what good will exploration do us? A fair question.  As for the answer, I think we’ll have to feel our way to it.  This much I know: that we have it in us to do some big thing.”
    The moment the words had left his mouth he sensed, with a far-off intuition, that they were a turning point, whereby a run of success has curved over its peak. He could feel in his bones that these people would follow him for a while, because they possessed that stoical courage of which he’d felt so proud a moment ago, but, ultimately, he was going to be left on his own…
    Or did he feel that merely because he, Midax, still at heart the arrogant Splasher, lacked faith in others?
    Maybe he was underestimating them, but –
    Fact is, the other Wakefuls might be less Wakeful than I.  Less discontented, and more adapted to this existence. They might, in other words, already be partly drowsy, whereas he was not drowsy at all but hungry for action. So what suited him might not suit them, and vice versa. In which case, that gave reason why, in the long run, he was on his own –
    Anyway, time would tell, after he made his move.
    Even for the dynamic Midax Rale, however, it was far from easy to take the first step to leave the Glimmer-Place. That movement was a wrench to muscle and mind. Just one foot westwards and panic almost set in; shapeless fears tossed empty parcels in his head, meaningless vacuity wrapped with useless weight, thunking against his resolve. He batted free of the heebies by means of a literal physical action: he walked to a dry bit of scrub, and crack! snapped off a long piece of stick, plodded to the edge of the Glimmer-Place and across the penumbra and into the dark, using the stick to feel his way.
    Was anyone following?
    Dr Sooskler’s voice called out: “The rest of you go, but I shall stay to keep an eye on the drowsers.”
    So – some were following him, though the Doctor wasn’t.
    Over his shoulder Midax called: “Right, Doctor, good thought, you do that. The rest of you –” He heard definite steps behind him: the rest – or some of them – good people, fine people – were following. “Slowly does it,” he spoke into the dark; “we have all the time in the world.”
    Jolld’s voice said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
    “I haven’t a clue,” Midax replied cheerfully. “Go back if you want. Do your best to drowse. Or follow me and have a chance of some action.”
    No audible reply to that. He was aware of mutterings, whisperings… anyhow, the footsteps continued to follow.
    He’d got these folk out of their doldrums, if nothing else. If he never accomplished anything more than that, already it was something.

                                     III

It was slow work, finding one’s way, negotiating the topography and vegetation. Memory informed him of the broad lie of the land: the geography of the old Wide World, and the origin of that geography in the compressed layout of the Luminarium. He managed to follow a route through what used to signify the northern land of Zanep, and, next, through its adjacent continent of Larmonn, towards the Luminarium’s West Wall.  Tap, tap went his stick and those of his followers along a gravelly path.
    He guessed that his followers were strung out in a long line; perhaps some were hanging back, more than they needed to, but he had assumed so far that none would wish to become separated.  Frequently those who were temporarily separated would call out, and they were answered in a spurt of babble which enabled the stragglers to rejoin…
    Now, however, a few minutes had gone by and he had heard no voices.  
    One whispered suddenly close to his ear.
    “I can guess what you’re up to,” said Boalo.
    “Oh?”
    “You’re aiming for the Portal. You want to take us all outside.”
    “And what would be the point of that? Out of the dark into yet more dark?”
    “I haven’t yet worked that one out. But it’s what you aim to do, is it not?”
    “Think what you will, philosopher. When the –”
    “YEOWWW” screamed a voice, probably Brinna’s. She must have swung to the left of the group, so as to become the first to see what came into view around the flank of a patch of woodland, but a moment later she was no longer the only one to spot the churning frightfulness –
    “Lights! Lights!” cried several in their terror.
    Midax then saw the gleaming disturbance: the spotty brilliance of dots, their arc-like motions at human height.  “They’re just torches!” he cried.  For hand-held torches were what they must be, poking their beams from beyond the Luminarium glass wall. Just a bunch of sweeping, whirling flashlights on the other side of the wall which must now be very close. But he had to agree it was horrible, this evidence of lights where no light should be. Lights held by what? He almost shouted at them, idiotically, “Who are you?” – as though sound could pass through the glass that enclosed the box-world. Some of the others in his group did shout such demands.
    Harlei Ollamdl gagged, "Ugh!  This changes things!  If something’s gone screwy out there, then far from mixing ourselves with it we should go back, if need be to form a human wall to guard the Drowsers; they’re humanity and they’re helpless!”
    You think what’s out there might come in? wondered Midax.
    Aloud all he dared say was, “You may be right, Harlei; we can only follow hunches. Go back, then, if you think that’s the best move.”
    “What about yourself? I suppose your hunch leads you in a different direction, as usual, Discoverer Midax.”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “Sorry, then.  Sorry if I'm letting you down; but I am going back, as you suggest.”  And not only Harlei Ollamdl but all of them, it seemed, were going back, to judge from the diminishing footsteps – leaving Midax alone.
    Not quite alone, he realized as a voice asked:
    “And you? Nothing firm to say?”
    “Not yet, Boalo,” he answered. “How about yourself?”
    “Discovery can take many forms,” said the philosopher. “What you’re about to try, I may also try – but later.”
    “So you’re with the others.”
    “Right now I am, like the rest, going back to the Glimmer-Place. The remaining ingredients of life are few; peace is an essential one of them.”
    “You’re sure it won’t soon be the only one?” asked Midax lightly, sensing the strangeness of this dialogue which, for all he knew, might be his last. “The peace of a deeper death? But never mind – you’re an enlightened man, Boalo; I wish you well; I wish all of you well.”
    The tap of a stick as the other shifted position – “This is goodbye, then?”
    “It is, for I am headed for the Portal.”
    “Supposing it’s locked and you can’t get through?”
    “I bet it’s not locked. Not the inner door, anyhow. I admit, I wish Jaekel were awake; as it is, I’ll manage on my own. Give my regards to Jolld and Harlei and Brinna and Doc and the others.”
    “Go then,” grated the philosopher’s voice; “it is as though you believe you have the power, by sheer force of pretence, to enlarge all options.”
    “Sounds delusory, all right,” laughed Midax softly; "goodbye then, Boalo.”
    “Goodbye, friend Midax.” The philosopher waited awhile, listening to the steps of the Discoverer as they receded into the enveloping darkness, and meanwhile re-arranging his ideas like counters on a board, again and again, but however much he tried he could not make them add up to more than the sum of their parts; wearily he turned and began his blind hike back to the Glimmer-Place.
    As for Midax, the winking torch-lights beyond the Wall offered him shifty help forward, pointing his way intermittently towards the Portal as they spilt random flashes across his path. 
    When he reached the great building, however, its bulk occluded the mysterious dot-lights beyond it so that he stumbled against the threshold.
    He felt his way until he found the door. It was open. He had hoped it would be; after all, why close it? Besides, everyone had been in too much of a hurry to take refuge in the box-world. The difficulty would occur later on: for he would no doubt find, when he had penetrated the building, that on its other side the outer door would be closed.
    Well, he’d solve that problem when he came to it.
    Meantime, no point in hesitating now, eh? Admittedly it would be terribly dark in the Portal, but no blacker than the outside. Go on in, he told himself.
    On the other hand, there’s darkness and darkness. The blackness which he had already faced out in the huge box-world was one thing; a more tightly enclosed darkness inside the bulk of a building was quite something else.
    He realized bluntly at that point what it was that he felt.  No word other than Fear could describe his state of mind.  It could not be argued with. All he could do to counteract it was to clutch with yearning at a mental picture.  It was a radically simple picture of himself as a diagrammatic stick-man, creeping across blank desolation, towards a boundary.
    Bolstered by this image, he stole into the great building.
    Arms outstretched, he felt his way.
    To begin with he advanced obliquely leftwards. Presently his fingertips touched a smoothness which he then felt with his palms and identified as one of the Portal structure’s inner partition walls.
    He followed this, and when he touched other solid material, metal or plastic, he felt around it till he re-joined the wall. Except for not being able to see, he felt that he was having an easy time of it; the procedure seemed quite straightforward; blindness might even be in some sense a help insofar as it should allow him not to see the Judge’s Throne...
    Moreover he continued to draw support from his new inner picture, the idea of the stick-man walking across dark emptiness towards a hopeful boundary.
    He was leaning all the weight of his morale upon that self-image now.
    He might be fooling himself, perhaps to a pitiful degree, but that was the way he was made: postpone fear, appreciate each moment as it came; if you were neither keenly looking forward to your destination nor willing to consider retreat, what else was there to fix upon but the present moment? All the same, he would be glad to have got past this particular room. He guessed from its echoing width that it was the one which contained the Throne. A pity that he must make some noise as he moved –

                                     IV

The flashlight beam caught him full in the face. Dazzled, he heard the tread of boots and the rustle of sleeve: someone stood close and a bit above him. Terror zinged through Midax’s head, chased by the yet more petrifying hope concerning the countenance behind that torch-beam:
    If that's who I think it could be, I might actually achieve my purpose!  Nothing for it but to ask.
    “Is that you, Mapennel?”
    “Yuch.” A sound of disgust, speaking across lifetimes. “Right, Midax. Even in this universal hash-hush you always have to be one step ahead, don’t you?”
    Hash-hush?  The Splasher Chief’s jagged assault upon ears accustomed to the subdued tones of the Glimmer-Place knifed too effectively for any misunderstanding.  Clear was the message that, in all this hush, life’s shapeliness slumps into hash.  And the identity of the speaker was in no doubt.  Nevertheless, reacting with annoyance to the other's sardonic wordplay, Midax said irritably: “Shine that thing on yourself, will you?  I might as well be sure.”
    The hand which held the light turned it aside to play upon the shape and features of Mapennel Deen. “Good enough?”
    “Under the circumstances,” replied Midax slowly, “and making due allowances for how spectral you’re bound to look…all right.  What about the rest of your gang?”
    “They left this to me. I think they’re somewhat scared of you.”
    “Of me?”
    “You and your lot, creeping towards us without lights…”
    “Hah.  Scared, are they?  Whereas you’re not going to blanch before anything.”
    “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” mused the Splasher chief, “but I’m beginning to sense how things work in the hash-hush… For instance, you saps don’t have torches, do you?”
    “Or maybe we just like to sneak around in darkness.”
    “No, it’s not that. You really don’t have any option, do you?”
    “No,” Midax admitted.
    “I thought as much. Having relied upon a jelled world for all your supply of stuff, you’re left skint when the entire show un-jells and melts away like a lost dream. Awkward for you; whereas we Splashers, we exiles who weren’t supposed to be good enough to be allotted space in your stupid dream-box, we have access to some real tools.”
    “Say more,” demanded Midax, becoming too interested to sneer at the other’s boasting. “Tools…?”
    “Equipment stored at the Olamic and at the Observatory, some of it still functioning.”
    “Point taken, Mapennel,” he conceded.
    To consider the “stupid dream-box” from the point of view of those excluded, the spurned outsiders, who in retaliation now spurned the spurners, was an effective way to refute any apprehensions of invasion felt by the wakeful remnant in the Glimmer-Place: for it was now clear that the exiled Splashers wouldn’t enter the box even if they were begged on bended knee – 
    Midax went on:
    “This stored equipment you mentioned, Mapennel: you say some of it’s functioning. How much of it is really still good?”
    “The items buried deepest in the vaults, they’re still usable. Perhaps a tenth of the whole. Though that ‘good’ tenth will eventually fuse into lumps like the rest, I dare say.”
    Trawling for support, Midax remarked, “The Observatory is what interests me.”
    “Great crunching cosmos, you have an interest – you can be interested in something, in the midst of this curdled sparseness?”
    Mapennel’s sardonic mode did not fool Midax one whit; clearly the Splasher chief felt genuine, profound relief. So did Midax himself, as Mapennel added, “Let’s get there.”
    As a child will suck on a lollipop, the minds of Discoverer and of Splasher had eagerly started to lick at that word “Observatory”.  Any graspable objective - now that Reality had become so sparse, had been reduced to so few ingredients - any lode of significance must sparkle with reassurance beyond price; thus "Observatory" had become the magic word that beckoned with promise of a place where one might feel that one was somewhere not merely but vitally existent.
    “Lead on,” said Midax.  A thought occurred to him then, impelling him to vow to himself that he would never embarrass Mapennel, never allude to the fellow’s earlier loss of nerve at being shut out in Sparseworld.
    Thus resolved to be a friend and ally, he followed the other’s swinging torch-beam through the rest of the Portal interior until they arrived at the other side. The final door submitted to a casual push. Evidently the Splashers had mastered the locks, out of curiosity or a desperate pride.
    “Welcome back to the outside world,” said Mapennel drily.
    They stepped altogether out of the Portal and into the greater darkness. Mapennel flashed his torch around, while Midax felt a colder and more substantial breeze here than the one which had wafted against his cheek inside the Luminarium box-world. At some distance, the firefly-lights of the other Splashers’ torches glowed diminutively.    Mapennel Deen turned, and shone his light back through the door from which he and his companion had just emerged. “Might as well close it,” he said. “Might as well be tidy.” He snickered at that whimsy.  Midax then understood more clearly than ever that the Splashers could have absolutely swarmed into the box-world if they had wanted to – that their own contempt had formed the only barrier against their entry.  Such confidence these people had!  Indeed, he, Midax, would never, never mention the wailing of outcast Mapennel Deen on the evening of Entry, and even to himself he would class it as fury, not fear… for (his mind raced ahead) it seemed that Splashers either must believe that they would never devolve; that their energy was such that they would survive amid the outer dark until the Fount revived in some unimaginable future aeon; or alternatively they believed that they would not survive, that they would indeed devolve via drowsiness to mere lumps, but so would everyone, the dwellers in the Glimmer-Place included, in which case Splashers might as well keep their pride, might as well meet their fate outside the box.
    Either outcome might be true.
    “Now for the Observatory,” said Mapennel.
    “You sure it’s no use asking your folk…” Midax gestured towards the other torch-bearers.
    “I told you, they’re leery of you. For the time being anyway.”
    “All right.” An invisible shrug – and he followed as the other set off. “Could use a torch for me, though.” Even one’s sentences seemed clipped by the dark.
    “Spares enough, where we’re going.”
    Mapennel proved an efficient guide, competent to wend his way among the congealed fences, fused hedges and defunct light-cloches which the odd torch-flash revealed as strewn across the landscape. Their walk seemed to take them about an hour. It became, for Midax, a lollipop-hour, with himself as a microscopic insect crawling along the narrow bit towards the rich round goodness at the end. The image equalized the starkness inside and outside his skull.
    “Here we are,” said Mapennel Deen, whose sentences likewise became more basic as time slipped by.
    “I remember,” said Midax.
    Torchlight playing on the front steps and on the porch of the Observatory brought him a stunning memory of that day more than a lifetime ago, when he had first approached the place to seek employment, in vain, from cosmographer Sayor.
    The structure was now somewhat changed. Parts of the outer ornamental stonework – he hoped that was all – had run down in gobs like melted candlewax, to form mounds on the steps.
    “Don’t trip,” warned Mapennel.
    “I won’t,” said Midax. Telegraphic dialogue was apt for these elemental surroundings.  They picked their way up the steps and pushed at the Observatory door.  It swung inward.

                                        V

Midax would have preferred to enjoy some minutes of reflection while Mapennel’s light played over the interior of the main chamber.  So much to see, all at once!  The great altazimuth refractor, the gimballed chair, the sketch frame, the filing cabinets of data and the book-lined shelves. He could have used the time to soak in the nostalgia of the place.  After all, it had supported a way of life he had yearned to make his own, once upon a time.
    Unfortunately, a horrific sight cut across the mood.  Rising from a stool, a shape like a troll was revealed in a burst of lightning, possessing a gash-mouthed bullet head atop a cylindrical body.  It loomed and bent forward to peer at the visitors.
    Midax was then given a moment in which to master his nerves - as the monster seemed to hesitate.
    At the same time Midax sensed that he was also being watched from the side, by Mapennel, who was regarding him with sour glee.
    “This," explained the Splasher Chief, "is, or was, Kren the apprentice cosmographer.  Please greet Kren politely.”
    With a voice that faltered, Midax managed to say: “How do you do, Kren. I saw you once, long ago, when I came to ask Sayor…”
    No response came.
    “I doubt if he can understand you,” said Mapennel.
    Midax gazed from one to the other.  Experiencing a jumble of emotions, he could do naught but listen to, and accept, Mapennel's continuation:
    “While his boss (and other folk like you, Midax) scuttled into the dream-box, Kren volunteered to remain behind to look after the Observatory.  In my opinion he's a hero.  He’s a Simplenn now, of course – that’s what Sparseworld does to those who are not immune – but my guess is, he knew he’d have to pay that price.”
    Conquering his revulsion, Midax said: “I agree.”
    He forced himself to advance. He had met Simplenns before, in the old old days, after all.  He had, moreover, stood up for their right to be respected; but this one here had had a proper human past… whence came the sharper pity and the horror.
    “Kren,” said Midax loudly, “I need stuff from here, stuff from the vaults. Sayor would approve. Show me down there, please.” He turned to Mapennel and added: “And now I need to borrow your torch.”
    “Here you are,” muurmured the Splasher, handing it over. “Look, you’ve got through to him!  He’s moving.”
    The clumping Simplenn descended the stairwell, its left arm-stub brushing the stone blocks of the spiral curve as though it did not know of the safety railing.  But of course the railing was no great use to it now, as it had no fingers… Midax, following, endured another pang of pity.  Yet on the other hand he felt some solace in having apparently brought a renewed sense of participation to the Observatory’s faithful guardian.
    They arrived in the vaults. The air had a kind of tang. Physical, but also a whiff of the hope that the Winter of Simplicity had not yet penetrated quite so severely into this nether fastness.  On a hunch, Midax tried a light-switch.  Behold, the faintest of glows from a ceiling-bulb! Hardly enough to read by, yet he shivered in exultation. Now to find where things are. Room-plan? Catalogue?  “Kren! I need to know where…”
    The stubby creature shuffled, understandingly, towards an alcove. Midax approached, shone his torch on a wall-plan, and smiled. “Thank you, Kren.  Now for some fetching and carrying, if that’s all right with you.”
    The creature slowly lifted its arms above its head as if to say, I’ll show you what I can do.
    Midax began to organize. “A further supply of torches down here, I see. Take one up to Mapennel, will you, Kren, while I root around a bit? Here, take this one to him, and this one for yourself, and ask him to come down.”
    From what used to be a hand the Simplenn formed a mitten-like flap and grasped the two flashlights. Midax nodded thanks; Kren departed on his errand.  A few minutes later Mapennel's voice sounded from the stairwell – “Just what are you up to, Midax? You’ve got him really excited now.”
    You too, Mapennel, if I am not mistaken. “Weren’t there things called skaterprows, long ago? If they still exist, they’ll be packed away here.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” said the Splasher chief.
    But whether you know or not, you will help – despite your veneer of studied indifference – yes, you will help as eagerly as the Simplenn with the fetching and the carrying, because meaning and purpose are now the rarest and most precious commodities in existence.
    In sure awareness of the benefit to all three beings, Midax was able to direct the preparation and assembly of the skaterprow without alluding to what it implied. A moment is a moment, eternal in itself, in which to suck the lollipop of present comfort, and thus the Observatory, though perceived in separate hues by different people, was licked in unison by all three minds.  Moreover the comfort rayed ahead: “hoping for the best” where “the best” is able to swim at large in the dark future's depopulated pond.
    So passed the hours of labour, until the skaterprow stood ready on the outward road.

                                       VI

The chin-rest had to be adjusted upwards to Midax’s height; when this was done, the frame could be fastened to the two platforms, and those platforms to each other, so that the whole thing looked like an upside-down tuning-fork, man high, mounted on a pair of skateboards.
    Mapennel had angled a row of flashlights to illuminate this stretch of road, showing the start of the way, and to light up the standing vehicle from crown to base. He stood back and watched as the Discoverer stepped up onto his chosen vehicle. Kren, also, stood back, unable to show emotion with his almost featureless blob of head, but nevertheless suggesting, with a repetitive waving of stubby arms, some mournful comprehension that success must mean farewell.
    Midax positioned himself, chin on rest, facing into the aerodynamic cowl.  Before setting off he must make a number of tests.
    His right hand clicked a side-switch to test the on-off “ligaments”: one click to loosen the connection between left and right platform, so that he could swerve the vehicle by motions of his legs; another click to firm the connection once more, resuming rigidity for the long haul. He did not expect to have to do much steering for most of the time. The main task, when challenging infinity, was to keep on, and on, and on in the same direction until such time as the vast reaches of Outer Matter might condescend to show some fractional change –
    To travel so significantly far that one might get to eyeball some real perspective displacement of the cosmic view: that would be the prize.
    It could only be done, if at all, by one who carried within himself a supply of the Fount’s energy to last an enormity of days alone while skating on the never-ending smoothness of the hollow globe of Korm.
    Hence the pivot midway up the vehicle's structure, that allowed it to swing into horizontal rest for the pilot's sleep.  Midax tested that, too. It worked: and so the last excuse for delay was gone.
    He stepped off the platform just to make one last offer to Mapennel, though he knew it would be refused.
    “I could wait, if you like, while we construct a second of these things.”
    “No, thank you,” said Mapennel. “I am not the stuff of which explorers are made, and besides I think you’re crazy, but I know the value of what you have already done.”
    “The value of what I have already done,” echoed Midax, knowing that this was the most significant compliment that he, as an ex-Splasher, was ever likely to get from his former crowd. “And is there no value, then, in what I am going to do?”
    “What are you going to do? Tell me again.”
    “Try for the Silver Stain.”
    “Daydreams!” said Mapennel. “And even if you get there, how will that help you, or anyone? Are you so important, are you going to repaint the picture of reality, all by yourself?”
    “Let’s say, I hope to voyage a long enough distance, to give that picture a larger frame.”
    “That will be a long voyage indeed,” said Mapennel grimly.  He held out his hand. “I don't know what to say, so I'll let you to have the last word.”
    Midax knew, though he did not say, that he had repaid Mapennel and Kren for the help they had given him – that he had paid them in the coin of Purpose, the one surviving currency, more precious than gold or gems had been in Life.  He shook the proffered hand and said, “We’re quits at last, your gang and I.”
    It was not anatomically possible to shake hands with Kren, but he did walk over to the Simplenn and say: “This machine is named after you. Its pilot may see what has never been seen. If so, you will have made it possible.”
    Then he turned, strode back to grip the skaterprow, pushed it at a run in order to give it momentum, and jumped on.  Headlights stabbing at the darkness, the Krenarc slid away.

                                     VII

In the old bright days before the onset of Sparseworld, the land of Sycrest formed an island of complexity that extended for a radius of approximately forty miles out from the city of Serenth. Therefore, in those days, had Midax skated along the same road he was using now, he would have had forty miles over which he must slide before he reached the Blerdon, the boundary where frictional matter gave way to pre-atomic frictionless kolv.
    Now, however, the difficulty of that first stretch had greatly eased, for the distinction between Sycrest and what lay outside it was far less sharp than before. The road, right from the start, was exceedingly smooth.  What with this lack of feature and the lack of visibility, Midax actually could not tell when he passed the Blerdon; he only knew after a couple of hours had gone past and from the fact that his flashlights no longer showed the presence of a road at all, that he must be beyond that line, and into the everlasting monotony of Outer Matter.
    Still more hours passed. His darkened home had receded many score miles behind him when his brain suddenly comprehended that he himself was no longer in the dark. Perhaps he never had been? Calmly amazed, he looked over his shoulder. One sole diminishing smudge of grey might possibly mark the location of Sycrest; a distant, subdued blur, an almost nothing. Meanwhile, shining quite normally over the immense, bleak, silent, smooth surface of the world that englobed it, the Sun spoke its eternal day. Then how had there ever been nights? Nights had existed because, realized Midax, the human mind, within the zone of the Fount, is apt to translate certain contrasts into “light” and “dark”. Now, skating in blank immensity, he was far beyond the region where those issues of pro- and anti-complexity had ever held sway.
    It was not quite true to say that Outer Matter was featureless.  Minor discolorations, rare shades, showed up at distances on the milky, hazy vastness, and might betoken actual mountain ranges of kolv, for the non-atomic matter was not always smooth. Also there were the wilderness lights, those occasional, much-debated flashes. 
    However it remained true for all practical purposes that out here the only complexity within reach under the Sun was himself, Midax Rale, riding on the Krenarc, a moving dot traversing a cosmic distance.  Somehow he found himself to be sustained in this loneliness.  An inner "pointiness" in the kolv-material and the distances around him, a nourishing hint that stuff is always more than itself, helped him up the staircase of awareness towards the sniff of transcendence.
    Discovery, after all, was the shape of his life, and perhaps, therefore, this final voyage was inevitable.  What other finale could there be for him?  His muted thoughts and feelings clicked into the huge, spiritual monotony of the journey, the positive emptiness in which - he now reflected - he was fortunate to be.  His fate could be favourably compared with that of the Watchers in the bedimmed Luminarium and (still more) with that of the Splashers stuck in their living death amid the deconvolved blurriness of Sparseworld.  And was it possible that, by his present deed, he was doing something for all these people?  He could not imagine how, but he allowed the idea to rest un-sorted in his head.  Also he sometimes caught himself wondering whether, on some utterly remote day, a cosmos distant from now, he might meet Mezyf and Pjerl again in unpredictable renewed aliveness.  By that time he ought to have formed his choice between them!  After such bouts of loving speculation he would rest awhile: rest altogether from personal thoughts, for they tended to pale and subside into contemplation of the surrounding All, that peaceful mightiness which beat down on his head and breezed in his face and slid forever under the Krenarc.  In these stupendous surroundings his awareness of what plainly is became sufficiently immense to dwarf even the Rale ego and the Rale destiny. Generalities took over, and he played at mental reconstruction of the origin of this Universe Six: first, there must have been the primal Solidity, the all-pervasive Matter, without Time or change; then, an instant or an aeon later, it was wrenched by left-over forces from Universe Five, and thus began the Big Seethe wherein bubbles appeared, voids or globes of Space in universal Matter – these were the Worlds, such as Korm. And besides the Worlds there were cracks, fissures in the solidity, some of which were doubtless doomed to remain forever unseen because they merely extended from nowhere in particular to nowhere else in particular, but others, more fortunately, happened to link World to World.  These better-placed cracks might, who knows, be seen by the inhabitants of one of the Worlds which were thus linked… Midax hoped that the cosmic mark he was heading for, the “Silver Stain”, would turn out to be an opening to one of these fissures. Of all the theories he had heard, that was the one he liked most. 
    Ten years of skating might get him there –
    Personal thoughts, after a while, returned to his mind, though in a more general sense than before, via large speculations, huge hunches that led from Universe Six and other Universes, to the idea that each successive cosmos might somehow channel into an Ultimate Universe, the heir to them all.  That would be the fulfilment of all their qualities, the integration of all dreams.  Ah, then, maybe, it would be clearly seen how what will be unified in the Ultimate Universe is at present scattered piecemeal through the others; yes indeed, women in U6, but no childbirth; childbirth in U7, but no explanation of romance; romance explained in U8, perhaps, but something else unexplained; and so on: a phenomenon in one cosmos and its justification in another.  Never any chance of grasping the whole picture, until the Ultimate arrives.
    Well then, from all this it now seemed reasonable, indeed inevitable, that a fellow’s universe must contain stuff that did not make sense.  What a waste of time, then, to get hopping mad at stuff that did not make sense!  How great to accept, even to welcome it all, nonsense included.

                                      VIII

Four thousand days and more had passed, when the rock-hard ego and metabolism of Midax Rale brought him, with life and individuality preserved (though purged of mental small-talk), into the penumbra of the Silver Stain.
    For a while it had become increasingly clear that the aspect which made the Stain visible over cosmic distances was indeed the light from a crack or fissure in Outer Matter. The closer he came to it, the less he had to look upwards towards it on the world's vast curve and the more it became a ground-feature approaching ahead of him: an opening thousands of miles wide, signalled by a lambent haze which, he realized, must rise from out of the fissure.  He guessed that the radiance must originate from a sun at its other end, another central sun which lit a different hollow World; that is, a real Somewhere Else.
    Apart from the light, would he be able to glimpse any feature of that Somewhere Else when he approached the edge of the Crack and looked over?
    Time will tell, thought Midax in renewed hunger for discovery: once I get to peep over the edge I might be able to decide – might, if I’m lucky, see something to indicate what’s true; namely, a yet brighter light at the other end of that long crack. Yes, the glow of an illuminated bubble of air which could signify another inhabited World.
    Which would mean that the long crack itself is the route to that other World!  Might that way be traversable? Why not?  It won't be a question of falling down a hole: for assuming that the physics of Universe 6 is constant, the force of levity of the space inside the fissure will press a traveller to adhere to its surface… so that when one starts upon that journey, the end will no longer be “down”, merely immensely far away.
    Still, the change had better be handled carefully...
    Two hundred or so days later, Midax stirred the muscles of his right hand to click that loosening of the structure of Krenarc which allowed him to steer.  Next, the long slow manoeuvre: to curve to the right, so as to ensure that he would arrive alongside the great precipice instead of shooting prematurely over its lip.
    In addition to a change of direction he would need a diminution of speed, if he were ever to stop.  The frictionless kolv underneath him would not allow him to brake, but that need not be an insoluble problem: the theories he liked best all agreed that the Big Seethe early in the universe must have mixed trace elements of atomic matter around the edges of the cracks in Outer Matter, and if those favourite theories were true, he would, when the time came, depress the magneto-grit lever, which should permit him to decelerate. 
    Finally he would stop and get down from the vehicle, and, self-contained as ever, walk - yes, walk again at last; move his own limbs to meet his destiny.
    The equivalent of weeks later he had stepped off the Krenarc and was crawling on all fours, each move closer to the razor-sharp line which cut the ground away just a few yards ahead.
    The echoing stillness around him was hardly more colossal than the fallow field in his mind.  Questions and answers used to grow in it; now they didn't. Instead, enormous themes held sway, huge aches of awareness.  The most basic was a strange fatigue which had at last got to him.  No one had ever travelled so far; he had reached what no other human being had reached; hardly surprising if he were drained by a passionate elation of the moment.  But also it was the first hint that his inner energy supply was not limitless; that though he was born close to the Fount, he might not go on forever without food and drink; that in consequence he might never get back home.  He didn't know how long he would last.  Medical lore did not extend to the effects of a cosmic voyage; all he could tell was, that his inner store was, for the first time, sufficiently depleted for him to notice.
    Midax Rale shook his head. He was now just a few inching pulls from the lip of the Silver Stain. No subsequent end could take this achievement away.  Whether he ever managed to return to blurry Sycrest, or whether he deconstructed and fused into some low-energy lump on the way forward or back from here, it mattered little: for he had learned the word “death” during his time in the Luminarium, learned that it was not the end because neither was birth the beginning.
    Midax crawled forward until he looked over the edge and saw –

>>>epilogue>>>