Clarke, Arthur C - SSC 04 (9 page)

           
Well, Father, now I know how you
felt: time has gone full circle. Yet I hope that I have learned from the
mistakes we both made, long ago. I shall remember you when I go over there to
the flagship
Starfire
and say goodbye
to the grandson you never knew.

First published in
Super Science Stories
, July 1949

Collected in
The Other Side of the Sky

Many and strange are the universes that
drift like bubbles in the foam upon the River of Time. Some – a very few – move
against or athwart its current; and fewer still are those that lie forever
beyond its reach, knowing nothing of the future or the past. Shervane’s tiny
cosmos was not one of these: its strangeness was of a different order. It held
one world only – the planet of Shervane’s race – and a single star, the great
sun Trilorne that brought it life and light.

Shervane knew nothing of night, for Trilorne
was always high above the horizon, dipping near it only in the long months of
winter. Beyond the borders of the Shadow Land, it was true, there came a season
when Trilorne disappeared below the edge of the world, and a darkness fell in
which nothing could live. But even then the darkness was not absolute, though
there were no stars to relieve it.

Alone in its little cosmos, turning the same
face always toward its solitary sun, Shervane’s world was the last and the
strangest jest of the Maker of the Stars.

Yet as he looked across his father’s lands,
the thoughts that filled Shervane’s mind were those that any human child might
have known. He felt awe, and curiosity, and a little fear, and above all a
longing to go out into the great world before him. These things he was still
too young to do, but the ancient house was on the highest ground for many miles
and he could look far out over the land that would one day be his. When he
turned to the north, with Trilorne shining full upon his face, he could see many
miles away the long line of mountains that curved around to the right, rising
higher and higher, until they disappeared behind him in the direction of the
Shadow Land. One day, when he was older, he would go through those mountains
along the pass that led to the great lands of the east.

On his left was the ocean, only a few miles
away, and sometimes Shervane could hear the thunder of the waves as they fought
and tumbled on the gently sloping sands. No one knew how far the ocean reached.
Ships had set out across it, sailing northward while Trilorne rose higher and
higher in the sky and the heat of its rays grew ever more intense. Long before
the great sun had reached the zenith, they had been forced to return. If the
mythical Fire Lands did indeed exist, no man could ever hope to reach their
burning shores – unless the legends were really true. Once, it was said, there
had been swift metal ships that could cross the ocean despite the heat of
Trilorne, and so come to the lands on the other side of the world. Now these
countries could be reached only by a tedious journey over land and sea, which
could be shortened no more than a little by travelling as far north as one
dared.

All the inhabited countries of Shervane’s
world lay in the narrow belt between burning heat and insufferable cold. In
every land, the far north was an unapproachable region smitten by the fury of
Trilorne. And to the south of all countries lay the vast and gloomy Shadow
Land, where Trilorne was never more than a pale disc on the horizon, and often
was not visible at all.

These things Shervane learned in the years
of his childhood, and in those years he had no wish to leave the wide lands
between the mountains and the sea. Since the dawn of time his ancestors and the
races before them had toiled to make these lands the fairest in the world; if
they had failed, it was by a narrow margin. There were gardens bright with
strange flowers, there were streams that trickled gently between moss-grown
rocks to be lost in the pure waters of the tideless sea. There were fields of
grain that rustled continually in the wind, as if the generations of seeds yet
unborn were talking one to the other. In the wide meadows and beneath the trees
the friendly cattle wandered aimlessly with foolish cries. And there was the
great house, with its enormous rooms and its endless corridors, vast enough in
reality but huger still to the mind of a child. This was the world in which
Shervane had passed his years, the world he knew and loved. As yet, what lay
beyond its borders had not concerned his mind.

But Shervane’s universe was not one of those
free from the domination of time. The harvest ripened and was gathered into the
granaries; Trilorne rocked slowly through its little arc of sky, and with the
passing seasons Shervane’s mind and body grew. His land seemed smaller now: the
mountains were nearer and the sea was only a brief walk from the great house.
He began to learn of the world in which he lived, and to be made ready for the
part he must play in its shaping.

Some of these things he learned from his
father, Sherval, but most he was taught by Grayle, who had come across the
mountains in the days of his father’s father, and had now been tutor to three
generations of Shervane’s family. He was fond of Grayle, though the old man
taught him many things he had no wish to learn, and the years of his boyhood
passed pleasantly enough until the time came for him to go through the
mountains into the lands beyond. Ages ago his family had come from the great
countries of the east, and in every generation since, the eldest son had made
that pilgrimage again to spend a year of his youth among his cousins. It was a
wise custom, for beyond the mountains much of the knowledge of the past still
lingered, and there one could meet men from other lands and study their ways.

In the last spring before his son’s
departure, Sherval collected three of his servants and certain animals it is
convenient to call horses, and took Shervane to see those parts of the land he
had never visited before. They rode west to the sea, and followed it for many
days, until Trilorne was noticeably nearer the horizon. Still they went south,
their shadows lengthening before them, turning again to the east only when the
rays of the sun seemed to have lost all their power. They were now well within
the limits of the Shadow Land, and it would not be wise to go farther south
until the summer was at its height.

Shervane was riding beside his father,
watching the changing landscape with all the eager curiosity of a boy seeing a
new country for the first time. His father was talking about the soil,
describing the crops that could be grown here and those that would fail if the
attempt were made. But Shervane’s attention was elsewhere: he was staring out
across the desolate Shadow Land, wondering how far it stretched and what
mysteries it held.

‘Father,’ he said presently, ‘if you went
south in a straight line, right across the Shadow Land, would you reach the
other side of the world?’

His father smiled.

‘Men have asked that question for
centuries,’ he said, ‘but there are two reasons why they will never know the
answer.’

‘What are they?’

‘The first, of course, is the darkness and
the cold. Even here, nothing can live during the winter months. But there is a
better reason, though I see that Grayle has not spoken of it.’

‘I don’t think he has: at least, I do not
remember.’

For a moment Sherval did not reply. He stood
up in his stirrups and surveyed the land to the south.

‘Once I knew this place well,’ he said to
Shervane. ‘Come – I have something to show you.’

They turned away from the path they had been
following, and for several hours rode once more with their backs to the sun.
The land was rising slowly now, and Shervane saw that they were climbing a
great ridge of rock that pointed like a dagger into the heart of the Shadow
Land. They came presently to a hill too steep for the horses to ascend, and
here they dismounted and left the animals in the servants’ charge.

‘There is a way around,’ said Sherval, ‘but
it is quicker for us to climb than to take the horses to the other side.’

The hill, though steep, was only a small
one, and they reached its summit in a few minutes. At first Shervane could see
nothing he had not met before; there was only the same undulating wilderness,
which seemed to become darker and more forbidding with every yard that its
distance from Trilorne increased.

He turned to his father with some
bewilderment, but Sherval pointed to the far south and drew a careful line
along the horizon.

‘It is not easy to see,’ he said quietly.
‘My father showed it to me from this same spot, many years before you were
born.’

Shervane stared into the dusk. The southern
sky was so dark as to be almost black, and it came down to meet the edge of the
world. But not quite, for along the horizon, in a great curve dividing land
from sky yet seeming to belong to neither, was a band of deeper darkness, black
as the night which Shervane had never known.

He looked at it steadfastly for a long time,
and perhaps some hint of the future may have crept into his soul, for the
darkling land seemed suddenly alive and waiting. When at last he tore his eyes
away, he knew that nothing would ever be the same again, though he was still
too young to recognise the challenge for what it was.

And so, for the first time in his life,
Shervane saw the Wall.

In the early spring he said farewell to his
people, and went with one servant over the mountains into the great lands of
the eastern world. Here he met the men who shared his ancestry, and here he
studied the history of his race, the arts that had grown from ancient times,
and the sciences that ruled the lives of men. In the places of learning he made
friends with boys who had come from lands even farther to the east: few of
these was he likely to see again, but one was to play a greater part in his
life than either could have imagined. Brayldon’s father was a famous architect,
but his son intended to eclipse him. He was travelling from land to land,
always learning, watching, asking questions. Though he was only a few years
older than Shervane, his knowledge of the world was infinitely greater – or so
it seemed to the younger boy.

Between them they took the world to pieces
and rebuilt it according to their desires. Brayldon dreamed of cities whose
great avenues and stately towers would shame even the wonders of the past, but
Shervane’s interests lay more with the people who would dwell in those cities,
and the way they ordered their lives.

They often spoke of the Wall, which Brayldon
knew from the stories of his own people, though he himself had never seen it.
Far to the south of every country, as Shervane had learned, it lay like a great
barrier athwart the Shadow Land. In high summer it could be reached, though
only with difficulty, but nowhere was there any way of passing it, and none
knew what lay beyond. An entire world, never pausing even when it reached a
hundred times the height of a man, it encircled the wintry sea that washed the
shores of the Shadow Land. Travellers had stood upon those lonely beaches, scarcely
warmed by the last thin rays of Trilorne, and had seen how the dark shadow of
the Wall marched out to sea contemptuous of the waves beneath its feet. And on
the far shores, other travellers had watched it come striding in across the
ocean, to sweep past them on its journey round the world.

‘One of my uncles,’ said Brayldon, ‘once
reached the Wall when he was a young man. He did it for a wager, and he rode
for ten days before he came beneath it. I think it frightened him – it was so
huge and cold. He could not tell whether it was made of metal or of stone, and
when he shouted, there was no echo at all, but his voice died away quickly as
if the Wall were swallowing the sound. My people believe it is the end of the
world, and there is nothing beyond.’

‘If that were true,’ Shervane replied, with
irrefutable logic, ‘the ocean would have poured over the edge before the Wall
was built.’

‘Not if Kyrone built it when He made the
world.’

Shervane did not agree.

‘
My
people believe it is the work of
man – perhaps the engineers of the First Dynasty, who made so many wonderful
things. If they really had ships that could reach the Fire Lands – and even
ships that could fly – they might have possessed enough wisdom to build the
Wall.’

Brayldon shrugged.

‘They must have had a very good reason,’ he
said. ‘We can never know the answer, so why worry about it?’

This eminently practical advice, as Shervane
had discovered, was all that the ordinary man ever gave him. Only philosophers
were interested in unanswerable questions: to most people, the enigma of the
Wall, like the problem of existence itself, was something that scarcely
concerned their minds. And all the philosophers he had met had given him
different answers.

First there had been Grayle, whom he had
questioned on his return from the Shadow Land. The old man had looked at him
quietly and said: