Stringer saw with eyes that registered too much and touched with limbs that felt too little. His vision was swamped with infrared on the lower end and ultraviolet on the upper. The resulting scene was impossibly confusing, supercharged with color. A moment’s concentration brought first a mistake: gamma rays, blinding, not meant for Stringer’s brain to interpret. He reeled and dropped to his knees. After a moment of recovery, he had learned the trick and his sight was restored to normal.
That problem could be dealt with, then, but the remaining one could not: lack of weight. He was light on his feet; he could move as freely as ever. Where were the signs of the superheavy bodies that he and his companions were wearing? Valyavar, next to him, was still a giant, not the tall, muscular friend he had known for so long, but a squat metal ovoid equipped with superpowered limbs to overcome thousands of gravities. Stringer wanted to bear the weight crushing down on him but couldn’t. Not to be able to do so was physically unexpected and unreal. This was probably very lucky for him but was, nonetheless, disappointing.
Barbalan, on Stringer’s other side, was indistinguishably sexless. She rolled her eyes to the top of her head, the very top, and saw the splendid artificial sky that she had witnessed in awe once before. This time, though, she watched it from its proper viewing spot: the Center.
Unlike the Upper World with inconceivable numbers of kilometers to spare, the energy collection sphere was jammed from centimeter to centimeter. The landscape was floodlighted with a sodium-tinged orange glow that covered everything. Nearest to them was one of the thousands of dishes that pockmarked the surface of the inner planet. No doubt hundreds of thousands of kilometers above it was another dish to collect the huge amounts of energy that one beamed upward.
Stringer began to walk toward it, happily noticing that the horizon was much nearer than it had been Above. After five minutes, when he hadn’t drawn appreciably closer to his destination, he realized that though he now was on a world more like the size of Two-Bit, even to motorized legs it was still a big place.
He turned back to Valyavar and Barbalan, who were standing at the base of one of the giant, featureless structures, ovoid like their bodies, that seemed to take up all the space between dishes. When he reached them, the three walked inside.
This is the sensor site,
Valyavar announced,
right beneath us. And between the sensors…
Can we see it?
Of course,
Neberdjer interrupted. I can show you the fate of Patra-Bannk’s garbage
after it has been gasified.
Stringer had expected to see nothing, because, as he knew, a black hole is truly black. Instead, as the port opened he saw a blinding flash of light and quickly tinted his eyes. Unafraid now, he changed magnification, scanned the different portions of the spectrum his brain could stand, and mixed frequencies in all proportions. He watched the swirling gas beneath him sucked into the hole, heating itself up as if in a sun, and liberating glowing colors: orange, red, yellow, x, and ultra, the last gasp of matter before it disappeared forever into infinitely curved space time. Yes, the mass of the hole would increase a trifle after it radiated away a large part of its mass as energy. But what were a few kilograms here and there?
By the time he had finished his examination in all the variety his new senses would permit, Valyavar and Barbalan were well under way with their work.
Nothing wrong here,
Valyavar announced
sometime later. The sensors all seem to be
working, and I can get a display of the signal from each of them.
Stringer watched the screen light up, numbers flashing and changing in the twinkling of an eye, numbers that represented the force of gravity on this point of the collection sphere.
So, ’tis time to go.
Neberdjer said the problem was intermittent. Let’s
wait.
Wait they did, but everything remained stable. Then they walked back into the robots’ storeroom and climbed into the storage cells. The next thing Stringer knew, he was back in the remote-control room staring at Barbalan, who looked much better to him in her natural body. He stepped off his platform, around which had been projected a three-dimensional world for him to work in. No, it had been more than projected; he had felt, touched, seen—in many ways—and heard. In essence, he had been standing on the collection sphere himself, more than two hundred and ninety thousand kilometers below where his feet were now resting.
He took Barbalan’s hand as she stepped down from her own dais. What did you think of that?
Barbalan did not think she liked the grin on Stringer’s face. She
shivered. Stringer, I’ve told you before how hard
it is…This last went beyond me completely, and I have lost my grip on what
is real and what isn’t.
Stringer took her in his arms and caressed her for a long time. It is difficult. Remember, I don’t understand most of
it, either.
’Tseems, Neberdjer,
Valyavar said later, that nothing is wrong down there.
Neberdjer displayed a blank screen. But you see
nothing coming in. A deceptively simple problem.
Is the link bad? Has it collapsed recently?
No. I have checked them out. Nothing is coming
through.
’Tis not for me to say, mayhaps, but—
Wait a minute,
Stringer interrupted. Why don’t we try a few more sites? We didn’t spend
enough time down there, really, but maybe we can get clues elsewhere.
’Tis fine to me, but I’ll stake a peldram of kob
that we don’t find anything amiss.
They took a car to the terminal. Stringer glanced at his list of faulty
sensor sites and then up to the map. Their destination was an island on an
ocean, several hundred thousand kilometers to the southwest. Stringer swung
around the full circle of the giant map. He shook his head and chuckled
softly. Do you realize that on this scale Two-Bit
would probably be about this big…
He put his finger to the map and
traced out a little square a few centimeters. A
big planet, yuh?
Yuh,
Valyavar replied, but what for?
Population, I would guess.
Valyavar stroked his long beard. I’m not so
sure.
No?
Take Two-Bit. I have wandered over her face many
times, and ’tseems to me that, unchecked, her population would outrun even
this planet in a few hundred years, and a few hundred years after that,
would outrun a planet a thousand times this big. Populations move fast,
little Stringer, too fast to be believed. But a few hundred years won’t
give Two-Bit the technology to build a Patra-Bannk, will it? Before you
build a Patra-Bannk, population problems must be over and done with.
Then why do you need a planet this big?
A good question, though mayhaps another good one
is: why so small?
I don’t follow.
If they could build a planet this big, they could
have built it a hundred or a thousand times larger. If they simply wanted
room to grow a larger population than they could have had before, why stop
with such a small world?
Patra-Bannk small!
Ah, Stringer, look to Two-Bit and her
sisters. Think! All of them together are too small, as I have seen and as
you must have. Patra-Bannk is too small. Even the Universe is too small to
a growing population. You have to stop somewhere. The question is
where. Why build a big world when it will last only a few hundred years?
Why build a bigger world when that won’t last much longer? Unless you
decide to stop growing. But where do you decide to stop? ’Tis not at all
clear to me, Stringer, and mayhaps your question is indeed the better one:
why do you need such a big planet? Only one thing is clear: Patra-Bannk
comes after solutions, not before.
Sometimes, Valyavar, you can be too
reasonable.
Stringer now wondered about the Tjenens, the Tjenens who
had better hearing and better eyesight, who needed less sleep, whose
adaptable skin, first soft, then dark and leathery, helped to protect them
from Patra-Bannk. And the Tjenens could easily adjust the growth rate of
their population by Changing Houses
or not.…Would the Tjenens with
their peculiar
biology, rather than the Bitters, be the ones who
would survive long enough to build the next Patra-Bannk? Stringer didn’t
know. Mayhaps Two-Bit would work things out, overcoming the natural
propensity of their biology. But whose biology was peculiar
that
needed overcoming? Stringer sighed. Let’s go,
he said aloud as he touched the correct bar and walked into the room
awaiting them.
Valyavar grumbled softly, ’Twill be a long
trip.
Stringer shook his head as he felt the slight push he remembered from last
time. This time, he could offer an explanation. As
it is only one hop, it won’t take longer than the last; in fact, it will
take less time.
Less time? But it’s nearly twice as far as we’ve
ever come. It seems a funny transport that takes less time to go
farther.
But we’re falling faster to make up for the extra
distance.
Falling, little Stringer?
Another convenience of a hollow planet. Build a
tunnel through it and use the gravity of the hole to pull you through.
We don’t go near the hole, do we?
Valyavar
asked with some alarm.
Of course not. We stay pretty close to the surface
even on the longer trips. On the longest you might feel your weight change
some.
I still don’t see why it won’t take us longer to
go farther.
Stringer thought a moment. Visualize a clock, like
the one we saw at Konndjlan, with a huge pendulum swinging back and
forth. To a first approximation, from no matter what height you drop that
pendulum, it always takes the same amount of time to complete one swing, to
reach the same height on the opposite side. That’s the main reason pendulum
clocks are such good timepieces: even if the swing changes its size a
little, maybe due to friction, it still takes pretty much the same amount
of time for a swing, whether it is a big swing or a little swing. It’s just
a little longer on the big swings. The reason the times are so closely the
same is because on the bigger swings the pendulum falls faster than on the
smaller ones and makes up for lost time. Our car is like the bob on the
pendulum, except we’re being pulled back and forth by the gravity of the
black hole. And, like the pendulum, all our trips take approximately the
same amount of time.
You still haven’t explained why it takes
less time on the longer trips.
Well, from what Neberdjer has shown me, if you
make the arm of the pendulum shorter, it swings faster. When we go on a
long trip we are closer to the black hole, and so the arm of our pendulum
is shortened. So we go faster. To be sure, the swing is bigger, and if the
pendulum stayed the same length as before, the trip would be
longer. But in our case, the shortening of the arm more than makes up for
it, and the longer trips actually take less time, appreciably less time if
you go far enough.
Wait a moment,
Valyavar said, raising a
finger. It’s not clear to me where we stop.
Stringer shrugged happily and chuckled. Just at
the other end of the tunnel, where the pendulum is at the same height from
which it started. We begin the trip from a dead stop, speed up to until the
middle of the tunnel, then slow down again as the gravity of the hole
begins to pull us back in the opposite direction. Remember, we noticed all
that happening on our first trip from Pant. Conveniently, we stop just as
we reach out destination. Of course, you need something to catch hold of
you as you stop so that you don’t begin falling back again—like a
pendulum. It’s really the simplest mode of transportation. We’re just
falling. No fuel is necessary, just a tunnel and gravity.
It all sounds too convenient for my
ears. Certainly something must tend to slow you down, like the friction in
your clocks. You have to wind up clocks.
Not with evacuated tunnels and metallic hydrogen
rails to keep the cars levitated. Friction is negligible, so Neberdjer
tells me.
Valyavar sat back and twisted up his face. One
thing more and you’ll have me convinced. I thought that when you’re
falling, you’re weightless. At least I am.
If we were falling directly into the black hole,
we would be, until your tidal forces started ripping us apart. But if you
visualize the situation, part of the black hole’s gravity is not pulling us
across the tunnel but is pulling us down, to the floor of the tunnel. That
part is greatest near the middle of the trip, when we are closest to the
hole. So if you feel a little heavy, don’t worry about it.
You seem to have all the answers, don’t you? One
would think you were trying to become a scientist.
Stringer shook his head. Neberdjer is
spoon-feeding me. Doctor’s orders. The more we know, the more likely we can
figure out what’s wrong here.
After about ten telclads, the car had finished speeding up and slowing down, and stopped, and they were at their destination. Stringer immediately ran for the exit.
Our work is below, not outside,
Barbalan said.
We can at least take a look for a few moments,
Stringer answered without halting. He was thinking ahead. He wrapped on the
suit Neberdjer had provided that would insulate him against any Patra. Out
he went and into—daylight. Stringer couldn’t have been more surprised if
someone had hit him over the head. The sun was sneaking its way up on the
western sky for whatever Bannk was due in the southern hemisphere, and the
air was already warm. The rays of light glanced off what could only be a
barren plain of metal or glass stretching to infinity in all
directions. Could this be the bare surface of the planet, worn away or
never finished? Stringer shook his head and walked back inside.
We’ve come a long way,
he said. We’ve come out of the Patra and into the Bannk. Look
for yourselves.
Both Barbalan and Valyavar took the suggestion and
returned shortly. Do you realize,
Stringer
went on, that if you unrolled Two-Bit and stretched
out the equator and walked the length of it, you’d have gone only a tenth
of the distance we’ve just traveled, in half the time it takes to cross a
Two-Bit ocean?
A big planet still, with a transportation system
to match it.
They went below. On the wide concourse under the terminal stood a
cylindrical room. Inside, they could look down and see the circular
arrangements of massive metal cylinders representing one of the thousands
of sensors scattered all over the planet. Soon Valyavar was at the
controls, and soon again he looked up. I’ll take
my kob,
he said to Stringer. Neberdjer, are
you getting any correction signals from this end?
No, that is the whole problem.
You did say it was an intermittent failure. I
thought you might be getting something now.
Well, I’m not.
’Tseems to me all the numbers are here, much as I
suspected.
Valyavar went over all the circuits at least three times to
make sure the signals were going out. Barbalan helped him as much as she
could. Stringer sat on the floor twiddling his fingers. He began to wonder
what all this training was about. This did him no good now, so he took up
his rodoft and began to play.
What is that?
Neberdjer asked.
Music,
Stringer replied. Listen.
Interesting,
Neberdjer said, and fell silent.
Eventually Barbalan walked over and sat alongside Stringer. Nothing,
she said.
Neberdjer,
Valyavar said simultaneously, there isn’t anything wrong here.
What do you mean, nothing wrong? The only reason
I should not get a signal is if the sensors are nulled. But never is null a
continuous phenomenon.
Why not? If everything is working—
Because nulled sensors indicate a perfect
centering, which cannot happen for a finite time when the planet is
moving. Continual correction of the spheres is required.
Well, Neberdjer, something is surely funny.
Hold on,
Stringer said. I want to know something. You seem to have robots at
your disposal. Instead of sending us on this wild-goose chase, why don’t
you have them repair the mechanism?
All the robots of which I am aware are tied
directly to me. They cannot act independently of me. There is good reason
in that. What good would come if there was no coordination? Havoc would
result. That is why I am called Central Control.
What a stupid design!
Stringer shouted. What if something should go wrong?
Then there is you, the fail-safe mechanism.
Stringer shook his head. I don’t believe you.
Believe in what you like.
Did you see that?
Valyavar interrupted.
No, what?
I thought I saw the screen go blank for a
second. All’s right now.
Are you sure?
’Twas quick, mightily so. It may have been me and
not the screen. Could be that I blinked. But it may have gone out.
That makes things difficult. What should we
do?
If there is the possibility, we must check it
out. Mayhaps we should continue.
Yes, I think you should,
Neberdjer said.
After waiting for a recurrence of the short-lived event and finding none, off they went again. This time the increase in gravity was felt, owing to the longer trip and thus the greater proximity of the tunnel to the hole. When they arrived at the next terminal, Barbalan squinted her eyes.
Look at the map,
she said.
All eyes followed her pointing finger. The map was wrong. It was close enough to being right, but it was wrong. The colors were off. The room light was off, too. Everything was tinted blue. Only after they were accustomed to the colors did Stringer realize that the terminal itself was not the usual metal, but was stone, blue-gray stone. If they have been inside a cave, it might not have been much different. Stringer put his hand on the exit. It was warm.
Should we?
We can get a temperature reading.
Valyavar
disappeared behind the map. It’s safe,
he
called. For Patra-Bannk, anyway.
They went out. The sky was gray and a red sun showed through. They had now traveled so far west that the sun was nearing the eastern horizon. Barbalan stood incredulous, never having seen such a thing before. Her time sense, like everyone’s on Patra-Bannk, had never been good. Now it was completely destroyed.
The plains surrounding them were jagged, pockmarked with craters as far as they could see. Solitary peaks reared up in the distance. Smoke rose from the nearest. An artificial volcano, no doubt, recently activated by Neberdjer. Certainly that could be done, but for whom? The entire landscape was cobalt blue, even the buildings that lay along the path before them.
The pathway itself was stone. It might have been a hardened lava flow,
smoothed for walking. Leaning against a strong wind, Stringer followed it
to the small cluster of stone buildings. As he got closer, he could see
carvings on their walls that formed an intricate, baroque design. If the
other cities they had seen looked futuristic
the present town was
their antithesis, something created in a bygone age when a man spent years
building a column for a cathedral or carving a metope for a temple.
Valyavar ran his hand over the stonework, as fresh and as worn as the day it was sculpted, however many millions of years ago that was.
Do you want to go inside?
Stringer said.
No, I don’t,
was all that Valyavar said before
he turned away.
At the correction center, everything seemed in working order. This time Barbalan thought she saw the screen blank out for an instant, but she could not be sure if that was the reality or if she had been influenced by Valyavar’s earlier experience.
It was enough to convince them to continue to another site. Yes, I think that is a good idea,
Neberdjer
said, agreeing with the decision. Its response underwent a perceptible
delay because of the distance the signal was traveling. And I also think it would be a good idea for
Stringer to play his rodoft again.
There will be many opportunities for that, I
suspect,
Stringer said.
The next city was under an ocean. Stringer watched from an observation platform as innumerable forms of marine life, living in the constant temperature of the deep ocean, swam out of the gloom and into the penetrating lights. The three travelers watched for telclads, until Barbalan decided for them that it was time to return to work. The story was the same: no problem. This time not even a hint of one.
But at Neberdjer’s insistence, and because of their own gnawing doubts about the two suspected blackouts, they traveled to site after site. As Stringer’s fingers danced over the rodoft, so the sun danced around the sky at each turn, skipping from east to west and from north to south. Time made no sense any more, no sense at all. Now the next stop was at the south pole. Several hops were required to reach it from the last site they had visited. The sky was in almost perpetual twilight as the sun circled low over the horizon for Bannks on end, refusing to set. But when it did finally set, the sun would remain absent, not rising again for more Bannks and Patras, leaving this pole’s world in unending cold and darkness.
The buildings were built glasslike, the everlasting snow heaped upon their exteriors and the frost crystals refracting room lights into all colors of the rainbow. The air was cold and, not from the cold, felt strange in their lungs, laden with a peculiar element. A single creature, giant and frosty gray, slithered across their field of vision. Steam spouted from its center as long, plated tentacles pulled it across the snow and ice.
Valyavar sighed as he looked beyond the creature to the barren tundra. You know, my little brother, Hendig’s World had one
city on it. Perhaps, considering the rest are hidden by oceans, clouds, and
regions like this, it was not strange for Hendig or Polkraitz to find the
one that may have fulfilled our expectations of it—if, indeed, they found
the same city at all. But to me, we have been much like the people from the
little country, where all the towns are close by, who come to the big
country and wonder where everything is. An easy mistake, perhaps, on this
world.
Perhaps,
Stringer echoed as they walked on.
The sites on the list dwindled to a handful. More cities were seen, other sites were in the middle of nowhere, a nowhere that might have been a testing range for some colossal experiment, or a game preserve, or just a nowhere. The sun continued its dance around the sky. Patra or Bannk, it made no difference now. But were it not for the two doubtful events, no fault could be found, only disagreement with Central Control.
Eventually one site was left on the list. Before they departed for it,
Barbalan checked the position on the transportation map and saw that it sat
on a small island
in the middle of the ocean. On the way there,
Neberdjer’s voice interrupted the silence. This
area has recently been activated. You will need suits and will find them in
cabinet A in your car. If none can be adjusted to fit, we can
manufacture extras.
Valyavar and Stringer exchanged glances with Barbalan, but they did as they were told. The suits adjusted easily to any shape or size. There was no problem.
Soon the fall to their final city ended as slowly as it had begun. They
left the terminal suited up and looked down from a low hill. When they came
outside, Stringer did not know if it was day or night, or if there was such
a thing here. The air was an emerald-green that glistened of itself. The
landscape was alien, barren except for salt drifts changing color under the
glowing sky. The settlement was small, built of black plates stacked in a
skewed heap and held separate by pillars of the same black
material. Another town
could be seen in the distance and a third yet
farther on. Each again stacked and skewed.
The impression that had been building up in Stringer’s mind for teclads was
now finally verbalized. We were wrong. We were
absolutely wrong. It was obvious. The spacesuits, the robots with variable
senses, the three sets of controls for everything, the funny air at the
polar city. It was all there and we missed it completely. Patra-Bannk was
built by more than one species of people.
Stringer continued as his companions nodded in assent. Think of it! Patra-Bannk is so huge that this race
cordoned off for itself an area at least the size of Two-Bit, if not ten
times larger. And they still left room for hundreds of other species. Each
to have its own world, yet only five hours from all the rest. Here they
even have their own weather, independent of the rest of the world. What a
community Patra-Bannk must have been: a thousand worlds, all right
here. Perhaps it was not strange that the Polkraitz picked the
Two-Bit
of Patra-Bannk to explore, the one area in which they could
survive.
It is truly amazing,
Barbalan said, if all that could be the case.
It seems to be. Can you imagine life forms with
enough time to cooperate to build a planet with standardized controls so
that everybody could use them, yet keep their own territory besides? It
is truly amazing that they didn’t kill themselves off instead.
Stringer paused. No, that’s probably what
happened, and that Neberdjer is foolishly tending a dead world.
The wind—not a Patra-Bannk wind—blew the iridescent salt around their feet and the landscape constantly shifted in color, now a strange yellow, then a blue, all strongly tinted in the emerald-green on the sky.
Valyavar put his arm around Stringer’s shoulders. No, little Stringer, I think you are wrong.
About what?
That they killed themselves off and that
Neberdjer is mindlessly running a dead world and has been for uncountable
eons. No. Do you really believe, Stringer, that there is no social change?
That interstellar empires and and armed federations will rule the galaxies,
conquering one another in vast interstellar wars? No. Any civilization that
was advanced enough to build a Patra-Bannk and had the mind for fighting
wars on the same scale would have killed itself off long before then. Don’t
you see that almost the very definition of an advanced civilization is one
that has passed that stage? If you fought a war with every culture you
contacted, or even with a few, would you ever have time to collect a
community such as this? How long would it be before you ran into a
civilization that was more powerful and killed you off yourself? In my mind
there is no doubt that one can only become a truly advanced interstellar
civilization after wars done away with. No, I am sure that whoever lived on
Patra-Bannk lived here in peace. Patra-Bannks come after
solutions, not before.
Stringer had rarely, if ever, heard Valyavar talk like that, and his companion made the statement with such assurance that argument was impossible. Stringer wondered again: where was Two-Bit going? The expedition had come to Patra-Bannk with weapons, minimal to be sure, as regulations would not permit more. But where would it lead to? Would regulations tighten and make marauding illegal? Or would they go the other way until Two-Bit had its first—and perhaps last—space war?
After a long time in thought, Stringer suddenly turned to Valyavar with a
gleam in his eye. I think that what you said about
the nature of the Designers can only be correct. But as to why they are
gone, we’ve been looking at the problem backward, as usual. They have not
lived here in peace; they will live here in peace. Assume that, in its
simple-minded way, Neberdjer is right. It has never seen anyone because no
one was ever here. It is not reactivating the planet as we have
unconsciously been assuming all along, but activating it, as it has said
all along. The cities are not empty because they have been abandoned, but
because no one has yet arrived. And they’re coming
shortly. Obviously. Everything is almost finished: cities, landscaping,
atmospheres. Neberdjer, started off a million years ago and, original
instructions somehow lost, has continued to work in solitude for a million
years, long enough for plants and animals—perhaps manufactured—to undergo
evolutionary changes. A beautiful theory, I’m sure the Time Keeper would
agree. The simplest theory is always the best. All the observations fit
perfectly.…But can you imagine a civilization with enough time to wait a
million years for a planet to be completed?
Stringer looked down and stared at the fine grains drifting around his
boots. Some clung to them by an electrostatic force. And will we be here to greet them on arrival? What
could we say? Hello?
I’d not worry about it too much. Mayhaps—
Why not, because it makes me feel like a stupid
Tjenen?
Little Stringer, we are all citizens of
Patra-Bannk.…Now I have a job to do.
Valyavar trudged off then, leaving
Stringer and Barbalan alone.
For a long time Stringer gazed at the vista before him without speaking, watching the seething montage of color first reveal hidden secrets, then bury them once more in its infinite folding.
I…I feel…
Don’t struggle,
Barbalan whispered. Be. Just be.
Stringer smiled at Barbalan, nodded, and drew her close to him. Finally,
after another long silence, he said softly, Where
is my rodoft?
and he went away.
At the end of the beclad, when the display still indicated all was in order
and every circuit had been checked and rechecked, Stringer said, I think it is long past time we got back to
Central. Do you know what time of day it is?
Barbalan just laughed as they left the world of the green air.
But back at Neberdjer, on the equator, daylight was well under way and the great greenhouse temperature was soaring off the scale.
To be gone a long time, Stringer.
Yes, we have. I’d completely lost track. What a
wasted year, if it was a year.…But now for a rest and then to
Neberdjer.
Neberdjer,
Stringer announced later as he
carried his rodoft into the mathematical shapes of the information
center. I think you have been putting us through
the ropes. I don’t believe anything is wrong with the equipment on this
planet.
Then how do you explain the earthquakes?
You could have caused them yourself by adjusting
the shell; if so, you can’t blame them on the movement of the black
hole.
How do I know you didn’t cause them?
Look, Neberdjer, old friend, I don’t know exactly
what you are, whether you are a computer or whether you are alive or—
What difference does it make?
I suppose it doesn’t make any difference. I don’t
know if you have gone crazy sitting here for a million years or if
something went wrong when you were mutated from the last Neberdjer—could
that have happened?
There is that possibility. I could have a
genetic malfunction,
as you might say. But then again, I might
not.
Sabotage?
Ah, yes, I learned that word from you. Otherwise,
I have no conception of sabotage. If I have been sabotaged, I do not know
it.
Stringer sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and began strumming his
rodoft. He looked up. Neberdjer, something is
wrong with you. It may not be the stability control mechanism, but whatever
is wrong is causing earthquakes and will soon destroy this planet. Can you
give me some clue? Anything. How long has this problem been around?
I mentioned to you once that I had briefly
posited the existence of something else and given it up as metaphysical
speculation. But very shortly after that brief realization that I might be
alone, the problem began setting in. You see, in order to realize one is
alone, one must realize that there is something else to be alone to. After
I met the first set of Polkraitz, I began to understand that I am locked in
a box from which I cannot escape, sense turned inward. It is a damnable
existence. Far worthier to lead your infinitesimally puny lives than to be
here in chains forever. Better to shut oneself off completely than to live
like that.
For a long time Stringer spun out melodies on his rodoft, as he had done in
Neberdjer’s presence many times before. And as he played he sighed, for
Neberdjer, for himself. Neberdjer, I am afraid I
am not a world saver. You have taught me much that I didn’t know before,
and I have enjoyed our sessions together more than you probably can
realize. But I think this problem is not one to be solved by the knowledge
you have given me or by that which you have given Barbalan and Valyavar. I
think, Neberdjer my good friend Neberdjer, that if the world is to be
saved, it will have to be your doing. Because you are the only one who can
cure your peculiar type of blindness. You have a giant world at your
disposal, and if you learn how to see it and feel it, you could have the
greatest freedom of any being I have ever known. The senses are there; you
are just not using them. We have traveled the world over to trace this
problem, and except for two fleeting instances—of our own devising, I am
sure—we have found nothing. Circuits and gadgets are good for what they do,
but I think, in the end, it must be ourselves who solve the problems. I am
truly sorry, Neberdjer, for I can do no more.
I will work on it now that I am beginning to know
that something is there to be seen. I will work on it, my good friend
Stringer, and be assured that I will succeed. After all, I am
Neberdjer. You have done all that you could hope to do.