Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (6 page)

 
          
 
The creator of the great Park sat with
slightly downcast eyes, as if examining the plans spread across his knees. His
face wore that curiously elusive expression that had baffled the world for so
many generations. Some had dismissed it
as no more than
a whim of the artist's, but to others it seemed that Yarlan Zey was smiling at
some secret jest. Now
Alvin
knew that they had been correct.

 
          
 
Rorden was standing motionless before the
statue, as if seeing it for the first time in life. Presently he walked back a
few yards and began to examine the great flagstones.

 
          
 
"What are you doing?" asked
Alvin
.

 
          
 
"Employing a little logic and a great
deal of intuition," replied Rorden. He refused to say any more, and
Alvin
resumed his examination of the statue. He
was still doing this when a faint sound behind him attracted his attention.
Rorden, his face wreathed in smiles, was slowly sinking into the floor. He
began to laugh at the boy's expression.

 
          
 
"I think I know how to reverse
this," he said as he disappeared. "If I don't come up immediately,
you'll have to pull me out with a gravity polarizer. But I don't think it will
be necessary."

 
          
 
The last words were muffled, and, rushing to
the edge of the rectangular pit,
Alvin
saw that his friend was already many feet
below the surface. Even as he watched, the shaft deepened swiftly until Rorden
had dwindled to a speck no longer recognizable as a human being. Then, to
Alvin
's relief, the far-off rectangle of light
began to expand and the pit shortened until Rorden was standing beside him once
more.

 
          
 
For a moment there was a profound silence.
Then Rorden smiled and began to speak.

 
          
 
"Logic," he said, "can do
wonders if it has something to work upon. This building is so simple that it
couldn't conceal anything, and the only possible secret exit must be through
the floor. I argued that it would be marked in some way, so I searched until I
found a slab that differed from all the rest."

 
          
 
Alvin
bent down and examined the floor.

 
          
 
"But it's just the same as all the
others!" he protested.

 
          
 
Rorden put his hands on the boy's shoulders
and turned him round until he was looking toward the statue. For a moment
Alvin
stared at it intently. Then he slowly
nodded his head.

 
          
 
"I see," he whispered. "So that
is the secret of Yarlan Zey!"

 
          
 
The eyes of the statue were fixed upon the
floor at his feet. There was no mistake.
Alvin
moved to the next slab, and found that
Yarlan Zey was no longer looking toward him.

 
          
 
"Not one person in a thousand would ever
notice that unless they were looking for it," said Rorden, "and even
then, it would mean nothing to them. At first I felt rather foolish myself,
standing on that slab and going through different combinations of control
thoughts. Luckily the circuits must be fairly tolerant, and the code thought
turned out to be 'Alaine of Lyndar.' I tried 'Yarlan Zey' at first, but it
wouldn't work, as I might have guessed. Too many people would have operated the
machine by accident if that trigger thought had been used."

 
          
 
"It sounds very simple," admitted
Alvin
, "but I don't think I would have found
it in a thousand years. Is that how the Associators work?"

 
          
 
Rorden laughed.

 
          
 
"Perhaps," he said. "I
sometimes reach the answer before they do, but they always reach it." He
paused for a moment. "We'll have to leave the shaft open: no one is likely
to fall down it."

 
          
 
As they sank smoothly into the earth, the
rectangle of sky dwindled until it seemed very small and far away. The shaft
was lit by
a phosphorescence
that was part of the
walls, and seemed to be at least a thousand feet deep. The walls were perfectly
smooth and gave no indication of the machinery that had lowered them.

 
          
 
The doorway at the bottom of the shaft opened
automatically as they stepped toward it. A few paces took them through the
short corridor—and then they were standing, overawed by its immensity, in a
great circular cavern whose walls came together in a graceful, sweeping curve
three hundred feet above their heads. The column against which they were
standing seemed too slender to support the hundreds of feet of rock above it.
Then
Alvin
noticed that it did not seem an integral
part of the chamber at all, but was clearly of much later construction. Rorden
had come to the same conclusion.

 
          
 
"This column," he said, "was
built simply to house the shaft down which we came. We were right about the
moving ways—they all lead into this place."

 
          
 
Alvin
had noticed, without realizing what they
were,
the great tunnels that pierced the circumference of
the chamber. He could see that they sloped gently upward, and now he recognized
the familiar gray surface of the moving ways. Here, far beneath the heart of
the city, converged the wonderful transport system that carried all the traffic
of Diaspar. But these were only the severed stumps of the great roadways: the
strange material that gave them life was now frozen into immobility.

 
          
 
Alvin
began to walk toward the nearest of the
tunnels. He had gone only a few paces when he realized that something was
happening to the ground beneath his feet. It was becoming transparent. A few
more yards, and he seemed to be standing in midair without any visible support.
He stopped and stared down into the void beneath.

 
          
 
"Rorden!" he called. "Come and
look at this!"

 
          
 
The other joined him, and together they gazed
at the marvel beneath their feet. Faintly visible, at an indefinite depth, lay
an enormous map—a great network of lines converging toward a spot beneath the
central shaft. At first it seemed a confused maze, but after a while
Alvin
was able to grasp its main outlines. As
usual, he had scarcely begun his own analysis before Rorden had finished his.

 
          
 
"The whole of this floor must have been
transparent once," said the Keeper of the Records. "When this chamber
was sealed and the shaft built, the engineers must have done something to make
the center opaque. Do you understand what it is,
Alvin
?"

 
          
 
"I think so," replied the boy.
"It's a map of the transport system, and those little circles must be the
other cities of Earth. I can just see names beside them, but they're too faint
to read."

 
          
 
"There must have been some form of
internal illumination once," said Rorden absently. He was looking toward
the walls of the chamber.

 
          
 
"I thought so!" he exclaimed.
"Do you see how all these radiating lines lead toward the small
tunnels?"

 
          
 
Alvin had noticed that besides the great
arches of the moving ways there were innumerable smaller tunnels leading out of
the chamber—tunnels that sloped downward instead of up.

 
          
 
Rorden continued without waiting for a reply.

 
          
 
"It was a magnificent system. People
would come down the moving ways, select the place they wished to visit, and
then follow the appropriate line on the map."

 
          
 
"And what happens then?" said
Alvin
.

 
          
 
As usual, Rorden refused to speculate.

 
          
 
"I haven't enough information," he
answered. "I wish we could read the names of those cities!" he
complained, changing the subject abruptly.

 
          
 
Alvin
had wandered away and was circumnavigating
the central pillar. Presently his voice came to Rorden, slightly muffled and
overlaid with echoes from the walls of the chamber.

 
          
 
"What is it?" called Rorden, not
wishing to move, because he had nearly deciphered one of the dimly visible
groups of characters. But
Alvin
's voice was insistent, so he went to join him.

 
          
 
Far beneath was the other half of the great
map, its faint webwork radiating toward the points of the compass. But this
time not all of it was too dim to be clearly seen, for one of the lines, and
one only, was brilliantly illuminated. It seemed to have no connection with the
rest of the system, and pointed like a gleaming arrow to one of the
downward-sloping tunnels. Near its end the line transfixed a circle of golden
light, and against that circle was the single word "
LYS
." That was all.

 
          
 
For a long time Alvin and Rorden stood gazing
down at that silent symbol. To Rorden it was no more than another question for
his machines, but to
Alvin
its promise was boundless. He tried to imagine this great chamber as it
had been in the ancient days, when air transport had come to an end but the
cities of Earth still had commerce one with the other. He thought of the
countless millions of years that had passed with the traffic steadily dwindling
and the lights on the great map dying one by one, until at last only this
single line remained. He wondered how long it had gleamed there among its
darkened companions, waiting to guide the steps that never came, until at last
Yarlan Zey had sealed the moving ways and closed Diaspar against the world.

 
          
 
That had been hundreds of millions of years
ago. Even then,
Lys
must have lost touch with Diaspar. It
seemed impossible that it could have survived: perhaps, after all, the map
meant nothing now.

 
          
 
Rorden broke into his reverie at last. He
seemed a little nervous and ill at ease.

 
          
 
"It's time we went back," he said.
"I don't think we should go any further now."

 
          
 
Alvin
recognized the undertones in his friend's
voice, and did not argue with him. He was eager to go forward, but realized
that it might not be wise without further preparation. Reluctantly he turned
again toward the central pillar. As he walked to the opening of the shaft, the
floor beneath him gradually clouded into opacity, and the gleaming enigma far
below slowly faded from sight.