Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (24 page)

 
          
 
In a few months he would present his first
report to Diaspar.

 
          
 
Though its contents were still uncertain, he
knew that it would end forever the sterile isolation of his race. The barriers
between
Lys
and Diaspar would vanish when their origin
was understood, and the mingling of the two great cultures would invigorate
mankind for ages to come. Yes even this now seemed no more than a minor
by-product of the great research that was just beginning. If what Vanamonde had
hinted was indeed true, Man's horizons must soon embrace not merely the Earth,
but must enfold the stars and reach out to the Galaxies beyond. But of these
further vistas it was still too early to be sure.

 
          
 
Calitrax, chief historian of
Lys
, met them at the little jetty. He was a
tall, slightly stooping man, and Rorden wondered how, without the help of the
Master Associators, he had ever managed to learn so much in his short life. It
did not occur to him that the very absence of such machines was the reason for
the wonderful memories he had met in Grevarn.

 
          
 
They walked together beside one of the innumerable
canals that made life in the village so hazardous to strangers. Calitrax seemed
a little preoccupied, and Rorden knew that part of his mind was still with
Vanamonde.

 
          
 
"Have you settled your date-fixing
procedure yet?" asked Rorden presently, feeling somewhat neglected.

 
          
 
Calitrax remembered his duties as host and
broke contact with obvious reluctance.

 
          
 
"Yes," he said. "It had to be
the astronomical method. We think it's accurate to ten thousand years, even
back to the Dawn Ages. It could be even better, but that's good enough to mark
out the main epochs."

 
          
 
"What about the Invaders? Has Bensor
located them?"

 
          
 
"No: he made one attempt but it's
hopeless to look for any isolated period. What we're doing now is to go back to
the beginning of history and then take cross-sections at regular intervals.
We'll link them together by guesswork until we can fill in the details. If only
Vanamonde could interpret what he sees! As it is we have to work through masses
of irrelevant material."

 
          
 
"I wonder what he thinks about the whole
affair: it must all be rather puzzling to him."

 
          
 
"Yes, I suppose it must. But he's very
docile and friendly, and I think he's happy, if one can use that word. So Theon
believes, and they seem to have a curious sort of affinity. Ah, here's Bensor
with the latest ten million years of history. I'll leave you in his
hands."

 
          
 
The Council chamber had altered little since
Alvin
's last visit, for the seldom-used
projection equipment was so inconspicuous that one could easily have overlooked
it. There were two empty chairs along the great table: one, he knew, was
Jeserac's. But though he was in
Lys
,
Jeserac would be watching this meeting, as would almost all the world.

 
          
 
If Rorden recalled their last appearance in
this room, he did not care to mention it. But the councillors certainly
remembered,
as
Alvin
could tell by the ambiguous glances he
received. He wondered what they would be thinking when they had heard Rorden's
story. Already, in a few months, the present had changed out of all
recognition—and now they were going to lose the past.

 
          
 
Rorden began to speak. The great ways of
Diaspar would be empty of traffic: the city would be hushed as
Alvin
had known it only once before in his life.
It was waiting, waiting for the veil of the past to be lifted again after—if
Calitrax was right—more than fifteen hundred million years.

 
          
 
Very briefly, Rorden ran through the accepted
history of the race—the history that both Diaspar and Lys had always believed
beyond question. He spoke of the unknown peoples of the Dawn Civilizations, who
had left behind them nothing but a handful of great names and the fading
legends of the Empire. Even at the beginning, so the story went, Man had
desired the stars and at last attained them. For millions of years he had
expanded across the Galaxy, gathering system after system beneath his sway.
Then, out of the darkness beyond the rim of the universe, the Invaders had
struck and wrenched from him all that he had won.

 
          
 
The retreat to the solar system had been bitter
and must have lasted many ages. Earth itself was barely saved by the fabulous
battles that raged round Shalmirane. When all was over, Man was left with only
his memories and the world on which he had been born.

 
          
 
Rorden paused: he looked round the great room
and smiled slightly as his eyes met Alvin's.

 
          
 
"So much for the tales we have believed
since our records began. I must tell you now that they are false—false in every
detail— so false that even now we have not fully reconciled them with the truth.
"

 
          
 
He waited for the full meaning of his words to
strike home. Then, speaking slowly and carefully, but after the first few
minutes never consulting his notes, he gave the city the knowledge that had
been won from the mind of Vanamonde.

 
          
 
It was not even true that Man had reached the
stars. The whole of his little empire was bounded by the orbit of Persephone,
for interstellar space proved a barrier beyond his power to cross. His entire
civilization was huddled round the sun, and was still very young when—the stars
reached him.

 
          
 
The impact must have been shattering. Despite
his failures, Man had never doubted that one day he would conquer the deeps of
space. He believed too that if the Universe held his equals, it did not hold
his superiors. Now he knew that both beliefs were wrong, and that out among the
stars were minds far greater than his own. For many centuries, first in the
ships of other races and later in machines built with borrowed knowledge, Man
had explored the Galaxy. Everywhere he found cultures he could understand but
could not match, and here and there he encountered minds which would soon have
passed altogether beyond his comprehension.

 
          
 
The shock was tremendous, but it proved the
making of the race. Sadder and infinitely wiser, Man had returned to the solar
system to brood upon the knowledge he had gained. He would accept the
challenge, and slowly he evolved a plan which gave hope for the future.

 
          
 
Once, the physical sciences had been Man's
greatest interest. Now he turned even more fiercely to genetics and the study
of the mind. Whatever the cost, he would drive himself to the limits of his
evolution.

 
          
 
The great experiment had consumed the entire
energies of the race for millions of years. All that striving, all that sacrifice
and toil, became only a handful of words in Rorden's narrative. It had brought
Man his greatest victories. He had banished disease: he could live forever if
he wished, and in mastering telepathy he had bent the most subtle of all powers
to his will.

 
          
 
He was ready to go out again, relying upon his
own resources, into the great spaces of the Galaxy. He would meet as an equal
the races of the worlds from which he had once turned aside. And he would play
his full part in the story of the Universe.

 
          
 
These things he did. From this age, perhaps
the most spacious in all history, came the legends of the Empire. It had been
an Empire of many races, but this had been forgotten in the drama, too
tremendous for tragedy, in which it had come to its end.

 
          
 
The Empire had lasted for at least a billion
years. It must have known many crises, perhaps even wars, but all these were
lost in the sweep of great races moving together toward maturity.

 
          
 
"We can be proud," continued Rorden,
"of the part our ancestors played in this story. Even when they had
reached their cultural plateau, they lost none of their initiative. We deal now
with conjecture rather than proven fact, but it seems certain that the
experiments which were at once the Empire's downfall and its crowning glory
were inspired and directed by Man.

 
          
 
"The philosophy underlying these
experiments appears to have been this. Contact with other species had shown Man
how profoundly a race's world-picture depended upon its physical body and the
sense organs with which it was equipped. It was argued that a true picture of
the Universe could be attained, if at all, only by a mind which was free from
such physical limitations—a pure mentality, in fact. This idea was common among
most very ancient religions and was believed by many to be the goal of
evolution.

 
          
 
"Largely as a result of the experience
gained in his own regeneration, Man suggested that the creation of such beings
should be attempted. It was the greatest challenge ever thrown out to
intelligence in the Universe, and after centuries of debate it was accepted.
All the races of the Galaxy joined together in its fulfillment.

 
          
 
"Half a billion years were to separate
the dream from the reality.

 
          
 
Civilizations were to rise and fall, again and
yet again the age-long toil of worlds was to be lost, but the goal was never
forgotten. One day we may know the full story of this, the greatest sustained
effort in all history. Today we only know that its ending was a disaster that
almost wrecked the Galaxy.

 
          
 
"Into this period Vanamonde's mind
refuses to go. There is a narrow region of time which is blocked to him; but
only, we believe, by his own fears. At its beginning we can see the Empire at
the summit of its glory, taut with the expectation of coming success. At its end,
only a few thousand years later, the Empire is shattered and the stars
themselves are dimmed as though drained of their power. Over the Galaxy hangs a
pall of fear, a fear with which is linked the name 'the Mad Mind.'

 
          
 
"What must have happened in that short
period is not hard to guess. The pure mentality had been created, but it was
either insane or, as seems more likely from other sources, was implacably
hostile to matter. For centuries it ravaged the Universe until brought under
control by forces of which we cannot guess. Whatever weapon the Empire used in
its extremity squandered the resources of the stars: from the memories of that
conflict spring some, though not all, of the legends of the Invaders. But of
this I shall presently say more.

 
          
 
"The Mad Mind could not be destroyed, for
it was immortal. It was driven to the edge of the Galaxy and there imprisoned
in a way we do not understand. Its prison was a strange artificial star known
as the Black Sun, and there it remains to this day. When the Black Sun dies, it
will be free again. How far in the future that day lies there is no way of
telling."

 
          
 
Alvin
glanced quickly around the great room,
which had become utterly silent. The councillors, for the most part, sat rigid
in their seats, staring at Rorden with a trancelike immobility. Even to Alvin,
who had already heard the story in fragments, Rorden's narrative still had the
excitement of a newly unfolding drama. To the councillors, the impact of his
revelations must be overwhelming.