Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (57 page)

“I don't like it.”

“Arms?” Gluckman wanted to know.

“I suppose so,” said Briggs uneasily. “Sidearms anyway.”

“In fairyland?” Laura Shawn smiled.

But it wasn't as light and pleasant as it seemed, and if it went on this way, Briggs realized, it could top a note of hysteria. They were clinging to reality with a thin hold, and the meeting was pointless and becoming too long.

“We go down now,” Briggs said. “Go to your stations.”

They were relieved, and they didn't want to talk about it. They went to their stations, and the starship slid down its electromagnetic web until it rode its anti-gravatic tensors a foot above the planet's surface. Then they opened their airlocks and went out.

3

The air was sweet as honey. When the sun shone, it was warm and beneficient and in the shade it was seventy degrees Fahrenheit. They had landed upon a broad meadow, half a thousand acres of meadow where the green grass was cropped an inch high; but when they examined it, they saw that it bent upon itself and controlled and conditioned itself. Through the meadow, winding lazily, a little river took its way, and the banks of the river were lined with a million flowers of red and blue and yellow and every other color. Bees hummed among the flowers and the air was full of their fragrance, and here and there about the meadow was a tree heavy with blue or golden fruit. About a half a mile down the river, a filigree bridge crossed it.

They had been five years in the starship, so at first they just stood and looked and breathed the air. Then some of them sat down on the grass. They all wept a little; that was to be expected. If they had faced danger or horror or the unbelievable, their reaction would have been different. It was the beauty and the peace, almost unendurable, that made them weep. They felt better when they had discharged some of their emotion.

They walked around a little, but mostly they sprawled on the grass and listened to the soft breeze blowing. No one said anything and no one wanted to say anything. A half hour went by, and Briggs said, “We can't just stay here.”

“Why not?” Laura Shawn wanted to know.

They were all thinking, as Briggs also thought, that it was a dream or an illusion or that they were dead. It was a bubble that could burst, they were thinking; and Briggs said,

“Gluckman and Phillips—go into the ship and follow us!”

Then the other five set out on foot, with the great shining starship sliding behind them on its magnetic web. They walked to the filigree bridge, which seemed to be made of crystal lace, and they crossed the river. A little road or pathway, full of dancing light and color, led up and over the brow of a low hill. On the other side of the hill was a garden and in the center of the garden a building that was like a castle in fairyland or a dream, or the laughter of children, if a building can be like the laughter of children.

If the building was like the laughter of children, then the garden was like all the dreams that city children ever dreamed about a garden. It was about a mile square, and as Briggs led them on a winding path through it, it appeared to open endless arms of delight and wonder. There were the fountains. Golden water from one, pink water from another, green water from a third, a rainbow of colors from a fourth—and there were hundreds of fountains, ornamented with dancing, laughing children carved out of stone of as many different shades as the water showed. There were nooks and corners of secret delight. There were benches to rest on that were marvels of beauty and comfort. There were hedges of green and yellow and blue. There were beds of flowers and bold beautiful birds, and there were drinking fountains to quench the thirst of those who used the garden.

Gene Ling bent to drink at one of these. They watched her, but they didn't try to stop her.

“It's water,” she said. “Clean and cold.”

Then they all drank. They didn't care. Their defenses were crumbling too quickly.

Gluckman brought the starship to rest in front of the building, and all seven of them went inside together. As they entered, music began, and they stopped nervously.

“It's automatic,” McCaffery guessed. “Body relay or photo electric.”

Their momentary nerves could not contend against the music—an outpouring of sound that vibrated with welcome and assurance and sheer delight—that filled them with a sense of innocence and purity. Wherever they went in the building, the music was with them. They went into an auditorium large enough to hold a thousand people, but empty, and with a great silver screen at one end. They wandered along empty corridors, lined with colorful and masterful murals of naked children at play. They looked into rooms full of couches, where the music made them drowsy almost immediately, and there were other rooms that were dining rooms, playrooms, classrooms—all recognizable and all different. In each case, they sensed that this was how it should be, and in each case, the memories of earth which they used for comparison became crude and senseless and ugly.

They left the building and went back to the starship.

4

With its viewplates open, the starship moved across the planet's surface, a hundred feet above the ground. They saw gardens as beautiful and more beautiful than the one they had been in. They saw forests of old and splendid trees, with colored paths among the trees. They saw mighty amphitheatres that could seat a hundred thousand people and smaller ones too. Buildings of glass and alabaster, pink stone and violet stone, green crystal. They saw groups of buildings that reminded them of the Acropolis of ancient Athens, if the Athenians had but a thousand years more to work and plan for some ultimate beauty. They saw lakes where boats were moored to docks, ready for use, but small boats, pleasure boats. They saw bathing pavilions—or so they surmised—playing fields, arbors, bowers, every structure for beauty and delight that they had ever imagined.

But nowhere did they see a living man, woman or child.

5

After nightfall, after they had eaten, they sat and talked. Their talk went in circles, and it was full of fear and speculation. They had come too far; space had enveloped them, and although their starship hung a thousand feet in the air above a planet as large as the Planet Earth, they felt that they had passed across the edge of nowhere.

“Just suppose,” Carrington said, “that all our dreams had taken shape.”

“All the memories and wishes of our childhoods,” said Frances Rhodes.

“Taken shape,” Carrington repeated. “Who knows what the fabric of space is or what it does?”

“It does strange things,” Gene Ling, the physicist, agreed.

“Or what thought is,” Carrington persisted. “A planet like this one—it's a fairy land—it's the stuff of dreams—all the dreams we brought with us from home, all the longings and desires, and out of our thoughts it was shaped.”

“Who was it said, we will make the earth like a garden?”

“Oh, I don't buy any of that,” Briggs said, more harshly than was called for, because he found himself leaning toward the madness of their theories. “I don't buy it one bit! It's metaphysical bosh, and you're all falling for it. You don't think a planet into existence.”

“How do you know?” Laura Shawn asked dreamily.

“How do I know? I know. I know the fact and the substance of dreams and the fact and the substance of matter, and-the two are different!”

“And we trap a curve of space and go from tomorrow into yesterday—is that real?” asked Gene Ling.

“This planet is real,” Briggs insisted.

“Without people?”

“Or cities?”

“Industry? You don't spin palaces out of thin air—or do you, Briggs? Where is the industry?”

“Who cultivates it?” Carrington, an agronomist and in mental agony over this. “Who tends a million flower beds? Who fertilizes it? Who plants? Who crops the hedges?”

“And who paints the murals of earth children? And who carves the statues of earth children?”

“Why must they be earth children?” Briggs said slowly and doggedly. “Why must man be a freak of the earth, an accident on one planet out of a billion? Is the sun an accident?”

Carrington said, “I could swear by all we believe in that those flower beds were tended yesterday. Where are the people today?”

“If there is any today—”

“Enough of that,” Briggs snapped. “We've seen only a tiny corner of this world. Tomorrow, we'll see more of it. Eight hours sleep won't hurt any of us, and maybe it'll clear some of the metaphysical cobwebs away.”

Tomorrow came, and at the speed of five hundred miles an hour, the starship raced across the planet, a thousand feet high. They sat at the viewplates, and looked at gardens and lakes and golden, winding rivers, and palaces and all the joyous beauty that man had ever imagined and so much that he had never imagined. They watched it until it became unbearable in its glowing abundance, and then the sun set. But they saw no people. The world was empty.

That night, they talked again; and when they had talked themselves close to the edge of madness, Briggs ordered them to silence and sleep. But he knew that he was not too far from the edge of madness himself.

6

On the third day, the starship came to rest on the edge of a lake, whose shores were marked with pleasure houses and dream places. They could think of no other names for the buildings. Phillips and Gluckman remained with the ship; Briggs led the others down to a dock that appeared to be carved out of alabaster, and he selected a boat moored there large enough to hold them all. As they took their places in the boat, it stirred to life with the strange, haunting music of the planet, and the music washed away their fears and their cares, and Briggs saw that they were smiling at some inner fulfillment.

“We could remain here,” Laura Shawn said lazily.

Briggs knew what she meant. Five years in the starship had merged all their secrets, all their memories. Laura Shawn was a product of poverty, unhappiness, and finally divorce. Her scientific triumphs had left a string of emotional defeats behind her. She had never been happy before, and Briggs wondered whether any of them had. Yet there were happy now—and he himself, too, for all of his struggle to preserve in himself a fortress of skepticism and wary doubt. Doubt was an anathema in this place.

The boat had a wheel and a lever. The lever gave it motion; the wheel steered it. There was no sign of a propeller; it glided through the water by its own inner force; but this was not disturbing since their own starship rode the waves and currents of magnetism and force that pervaded the universe. So it was, Briggs thought to himself, with all the mysteries and wonders that man had faced from his very beginning; they were miracles and beyond explanation until man discovered the reason, and then in the simplicity and self-evidence of the reason, he could smile at his former fear and superstition. Was this planet any more wonderful or puzzling than the web of force that held the universe in place and order? And when the explanation came, if it ever did, he was certain it would be simple and even obvious.

Meanwhile, he steered the boat across the lake, and as they skirted the shore, building after building welcomed them with music and invited them to its own particular pleasure. He ran the boat through a canal bordered with great, flower-bearing trees, into another lake, where the water was so clear and pure that they could see all the gold and red and purple rocks on the bottom and watch gold and silver fish swimming and darting here and there. Then they entered a winding river, placid and lovely and bucolic, and they had gone a mile or so along this river, when they saw the man.

He stood on a landing place of pink, translucent stone, where there was a circle of carved benches, and he waved to them, almost casually. “Did we also think him into being?” Briggs asked caustically, as he turned the boat toward the dock. They rode to the mooring, and the man helped them out of the boat onto the steps that led up to the dock. He was a tall, well-built man, smiling and pleasant, his brown hair cut in the page-boy style of the olden times on earth. He was of indeterminate middle age, and he wore a robe of some light blue material, belted at the waist.

“Please—join me and make yourselves comfortable,” he said to them, his voice warm and rich and his English without an accent. “I am sorry for these three days of bewilderment, but there were things I had to do. Now, if you will sit down here, we can relax for a while and talk about some problems we have in common.”

His four companions were speechless; as for Briggs, he could only say, “Well, I'll be damned!”

7

“Call me Smith,” he said. “I don't have a name in your sense of the word. Smith will make it easier for you. No you're not dreaming. I am real. You are real. The place we are in is real. There is no reason for fear, believe me. Please sit down.”

They sat down on the translucent benches. He answered the thought in their minds.

“No, I am not an Earth Man. Only a man.”

“Then you read our minds?” Frances Rhodes wondered, not speaking aloud.

“I read your minds,” Smith nodded. “That is one reason why I talk your language so easily.”

“And the other reason?” McCaffery was thinking.

“We've listened to your radio signals many years—a great many years. I'm a student of English.”

“And this planet,” Briggs whispered. “Do you live here, alone?”

“No one lives here,” Smith smiled, “except the custodians. And when we knew you would land here, we asked them to leave for a little while.”

“In God's name,” Carrington cried, “what is this place?”

“Only what it appears to be.” Smith smiled and shook his head. “No mystery, believe me. What does it appear to be?”

“A garden,” Laura Shawn said slowly, “the garden of all my dreams.”