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turned back toward the tower, still it seemed that he had moved hardly a step
closer to it, in spite of all the distance covered.
The pebbles and rocks that made up the surface of the plane were now larger
than those onto which he had first stepped. Looking down at them, the wealth
of the Encyclopedia's knowledge flowed into him and he identified them as the
detritus of an old lava flow, dark igneous rock that had over centuries been
exposed to extremes of temperatures; unti I, cracking under the
succeeding expansions and contradictions of their composite materials, the
solid rock had decomposed and broken into many pieces-pieces which were later
covered by a sea, and tumbled one against the other until their sharp edges
and corners had become rounded.
His mind encompassed all this-or did it only create it as an explanation, out
of the storehouse of the Encyclopedia? In any case he found himself
understanding the geological ages that had made the surface he walked on; and
without knowing how it could be possible, he realized that the tower toward
which he was headed had been built on what had been an island during the
period of the shallow sea that had rounded off the rocks. Inconceivably, it
had been built before the waters rose to cover the lava plain of cracked and
broken stones. Ancient it therefore
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411
was, as ancient as the human race itself; and what was within it, drawing him
to it, was as ancient.
But it was still a long way off; and he was more concerned with the discovery
of its creation. For in fact, it was his dream made real. He had created it
only now, but as surely as he had . . .. .1
chaos in which he had found himself. He had created his body and those
of his companions and their horses. He had created the thick cloud layer
overhead that hid a sun that he had chosen to be a duplicate of the star of
Old Earth; illuminating this world that was itself a duplicate of Old Earth;
more so than any of the terraformed planets of the Younger Worlds.
He had built it, here in the Creative Universe, that was only a Creative
Universe because with the Encyclopedia's help, he had brought it finally into
being. For without the ability of the Encyclopedia's knowledge available to
his own creative unconsciousness, he could not have made any of this. A poem
could not be written without a knowledge of what made poetry-the images, the
shapes and the language. Without a knowledge of what was required to produce
such works, no original painting could be painted, no cathedral built.
In the creation of the very tower toward which he now made his way, a
knowledge of the forces of gravity upon its structure, and of the materials
that made its walls, was needed.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the tiny figures waiting behind him
now seemed to stand somewhat above him, and in fact the plain between them now
had dipped downward, as if he had descended onto the old sea bottom that
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stretched level until it rose again in the far distance to the higher land of
what had been an island when the tower was young. Looking ahead once more at
it now, he saw that the sea floor approaching it, which had earlier seemed
level to his eyes, actually rose and fell, gradually, in swells and hollows,
before it reached the former island of the tower, and that he was now
gradually ascending the slope of one of the nearer rises.
Sure enough, a little farther on, when he looked back again, the plain seemed
to have descended toward the horizon behind him, and the group he had left
there was indistinguishable now from the edge of forest behind them.
He turned his face forward and went on-and an unexpected
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Gordon R. Dickson
shadow swept briefly over him, so that he looked up, startled; even as he
heard what the Encyclopedia's knowledge now within him identified as the harsh
cry of a raven.
Mixed with that cry was something he could not quite be sure he heard. It was
as if a sound that was soundless had still somehow managed to signal itself
upon his ear. It was like the resonance of a heavy bell, struck twice.
Something that somehow echoed back to the time when he had been Paul Formain.
Yet it did not belong to the memory of that time, but to the future still
before him.
Like a warning note, it reminded him of the possible passage of real time. He
did not know whether his time spent here was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]