From the Ocean from teh Stars (70 page)

Hall of Creation to sleep until the city called him forth again. But that
would be a kind of death, and he was not ready for that yet. He was still
prepared to go on collecting all that life could offer, like a chambered
nautilus patiently adding new cells to its slowly expanding spiral.

In his youth, he had been no different from his companions. It was
not until he came of age and the latent memories of his earlier lives
came flooding back that he had taken up the role for which he had been
destined long ago. Sometimes he felt resentment that the intelligences
which had contrived Diaspar with such infinite skill could even now,
after all these ages, make him move like a puppet across their stage.
Here, perhaps, was a chance of obtaining a long-delayed revenge. A
new actor had appeared who might ring down the curtain for the last
time on a play that already had seen far too many acts.

Sympathy, for one whose loneliness must be even greater than his
own; an ennui produced by ages of repetition; and an impish sense of
fun—these were the discordant factors that prompted Khedron to act.

"I may be able to help you," he told Alvin, "or I may not. I don't
wish to raise any false hopes. Meet me in half an hour at the intersection
of Radius 3 and Ring 2. If I cannot do anything else, at least I can promise you an interesting journey."

Alvin was at the rendezvous ten minutes ahead of time, though it
was on the other side of the city. He waited impatiently as the moving ways swept eternally past him, bearing the placid and contented people
of the city about their unimportant business. At last he saw the tall figure
of Khedron appear in the distance, and a moment later he was for the
first time in the physical presence of the Jester. This was no projected image; when they touched palms in the ancient greeting, Khedron was
real enough.

The Jester sat down on one of the marble balustrades and regarded
Alvin with a curious intentness.

"I wonder," he said, "if you know what you are askmg And I wonder
what you would do if you obtained it. Do you
really
imagine that you
could leave the city, even if you found a way?"

"I am sure of it," replied Alvin, bravely enough, though Khedron
could sense the uncertainty in his voice.

"Then let me tell you something which you may not know. You see
those towers there?" Khedron pointed to the twin peaks of Power Cen
tral and Council Hall, staring at each other across a canyon a mile deep. "Suppose I were to lay a perfectly firm plank between those two towers
—a plank only six inches wide. Could you walk across it?"

Alvin hesitated.

"I don't know," he answered. "I wouldn't Uke to try."

"I'm quite sure you could never do it. You'd get giddy and fall off
before you'd gone a dozen paces. Yet if that same plank was supported
just clear of the ground, you'd be able to walk along it without difficulty."

"And what does that prove?"

"A simple point I'm trying to make. In the two experiments I've
described, the plank would be exactly the same in both cases. One of
those wheeled robots you sometimes meet could cross it just as easily if
it was bridging those towers as if it was laid along the ground.
We
couldn't, because we have a fear of heights. It may be irrational, but
it's too powerful to be ignored. It is built into us; we are born with it.

"In the same way, we have a fear of space. Show any man in Di
aspar a road out of the city—a road that might be just like this road in
front of us now—and he could not go far along it. He would have to turn
back, as you would turn back if you started to cross a plank between
those towers."

"But why?" asked Alvin. "There must have been a time—"

"I know, I know," said Khedron. "Men once went out over the whole
world, and to the stars themselves. Something changed them and gave
them this fear with which they are now born. You alone imagine that
you do not possess it. Well, we shall see. I'm taking you to Council
Hall."

The Hall was one of the largest buildings in the city, and was almost entirely given over to the machines that were the real administrators of
Diaspar. Not far from its summit was the chamber where the Council
met on those infrequent occasions when it had any business to discuss.

The wide entrance swallowed them up, and Khedron strode forward
into the golden gloom. Alvin had never entered Council Hall before;
there was no rule against it—there were few rules against anything in Diaspar—but Uke everyone else he had a certain half-reUgious awe of
the place. In a world that had no gods, Council HaU was the nearest
thing to a temple.

Khedron never hesitated as he led Alvin along corridors and down
ramps that were obviously made for wheeled machines, not human traffic. Some of these ramps zigzagged down into the depths at such steep angles that it would have been impossible to keep a footing on them had
not gravity been twisted to compensate for the slope.

They came at last to a closed door, which slid silently open as they
approached, then barred their retreat. Ahead was another door, which
did not open as they came up to it. Khedron made no move to touch the

door, but stood motionless in front of it. After a short pause, a quiet voice said: "Please state your names."

"I am Khedron the Jester. My companion is Alvin."

"And your business?"

"Sheer curiosity."

Rather to Alvin's surprise, the door opened at once. In his experience,
if one gave facetious replies to machines it always led to confusion and one had to go back to the beginning. The machine that had interrogated
Khedron must have been a very sophisticated one—far up in the hier
archy of the Central Computer.

They met no more barriers, but Alvin suspected that they had passed many tests of which he had no knowledge. A short corridor
brought them out abruptly into a huge circular chamber with a sunken floor, and set in that floor was something so astonishing that for a mo
ment Alvin was overwhelmed with wonder. He was looking down upon the entire city of Diaspar, spread out before him with its tallest buildings
barely reaching to his shoulder.

He spent so long picking out familiar places and observing unexpected vistas that it was some time before he paid any notice to the rest
of the chamber. Its walls were covered with a microscopically detailed
pattern of black and white squares; the pattern itself was completely ir
regular, and when he moved his eyes quickly he got the impression that
it was flickering swiftly, though it never changed. At frequent intervals
around the chamber were manually controlled machines of some type,
each complete with a vision screen and a seat for the operator.

Khedron let Alvin look his fill. Then he pointed to the diminutive
city and said: "Do you know what that is?"

Alvin was tempted to answer, "A model, I suppose," but that answer was so obvious that he was sure it must be wrong. So he shook his head
and waited for Khedron to answer his own question.

"You remember," said the Jester, "that I once told you how the city
was maintained—how the Memory Banks hold its pattern frozen forever.
Those Banks are all around us, with all their immeasurable store of information, completely defining the city as it is today. Every atom of Diaspar is somehow keyed, by forces we have forgotten, to the matrices
buried in these walls."

He waved toward the perfect, infinitely detailed simulacrum of Di
aspar that lay below them.

"That is no model; it does not really exist. It is merely the projected
image of the pattern held in the Memory Banks, and therefore it is ab
solutely identical with the city itself. These viewing machines here enable

one to magnify any desired portion, to look at it life size or larger. They
are used when it is necessary to make alterations in the design, though it is a very long time since that was done. If you want to know what Diaspar is like, this is the place to come. You can learn more here in a
few days than you would in a lifetime of actual exploring."

"It's wonderful," said Alvin. "How many people know that it exists?"

"Oh, a good many, but it seldom concerns them. The Council comes
down here from time to time; no alterations to the city can be made un
less they are all here. And not even then, if the Central Computer
doesn't approve of the proposed change. I doubt if this room is visited
more than two or three times a year."

Alvin wanted to know how Khedron had access to it, and then re
membered that many of his more elaborate jests must have involved a
knowledge of the city's inner mechanisms that could have come only
from very profound study. It must be one of the Jester's privileges to go
anywhere and learn anything; he could have no better guide to the secrets
of Diaspar.

"What you are looking for may not exist," said Khedron, "but if it
does, this is where you will find it. Let me show you how to operate the
monitors."

For the next hour Alvin sat before one of the vision screens, learning
to use the controls. He could select at will any point in the city, and
examine it with any degree of magnification. Streets and towers and
walls and moving ways flashed across the screen as he changed the coordinates; it was as though he was an all-seeing, disembodied spirit that could move effortlessly over the whole of Diaspar, unhindered by any
physical obstructions.

Yet it was not, in reality, Diaspar that he was examining. He was
moving through the memory cells, looking at the dream image of the
city—the dream that had had the power to hold the real Diaspar un
touched by time for a billion years. He could see only that part of the city
which was permanent; the people who walked its streets were no part
of this frozen image. For his purpose, that did not matter. His concern
now was purely with the creation of stone and metal in which he was imprisoned, and not those who shared—however willingly—his confine
ment.

He searched for and presently found the Tower of Loranne, and
moved swiftly through the corridors and passageways which he had al
ready explored in reality. As the image of the stone grille expanded be
fore his eyes, he could almost feel the cold wind that had blown cease-

lessly through it for perhaps half the entire history of mankind, and that
was blowing now. He came up to the grille, looked out—and saw nothing.
For a moment the shock was so great that he almost doubted his own
memory; had his vision of the desert been nothing more than a dream?

Then he remembered the truth. The desert was no part of Diaspar,
and therefore no image of it existed in the phantom world he was explor
ing. Anything might lie beyond that grille in reality; this monitor screen
could never show it.

Yet it could show him something that no living man had ever seen.
Alvin advanced his viewpoint through the grille, out into the nothingness
beyond the city. He turned the control which altered the direction of
vision, so that he looked backward along the way that he had come. And
there behind him lay Diaspar—seen from the outside.

To the computers, the memory circuits, and all the multitudinous
mechanisms that created the image at which Alvin was looking, it was
merely a simple problem of perspective. They "knew" the form of the city; therefore they could show it as it would appear from the outside.
Yet even though he could appreciate how the trick was done, the effect on Alvin was overwhelming. In spirit, if not in reality, he had escaped
from the city. He appeared to be hanging in space, a few feet away from
the sheer wall of the Tower of Loranne. For a moment he stared at the smooth gray surface before his eyes; then he touched the control and let
his viewpoint drop toward the ground.

Now that he knew the possibilities of this wonderful instrument, his plan of action was clear. There was no need to spend months and years exploring Diaspar from the inside, room by room and corridor by corri
dor. From this new vantage point he could wing his way along the out
side of the city, and could see at once any openings that might lead to
the desert and the world beyond.

The sense of victory, of achievement, made him feel lightheaded and anxious to share his joy. He turned to Khedron, wishing to thank
the Jester for having made this possible. But Khedron was gone, and it
took only a moment's thought to realize why.

Alvin was perhaps the only man in Diaspar who could look unaf
fected upon the images that were now drifting across the screen. Khedron
could help him in his search, but even the Jester shared the strange ter
ror of the Universe which had pinned mankind for so long inside its little
world. He had left Alvin to continue his quest alone.

The sense of loneliness, which for a little while had lifted from Al-
vin's soul, pressed down upon him once more. But this was no time for