[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The moons had set and the pale false dawn was beginningto glow far to the east, a rainbow light like an aurora, which he supposed wasreflected from the faraway glacier he had never seen; would never see; never caredto see.He sniffed the wind and as he drew it into his lungs a strange, angry suspicioncame over him.Last time they had destroyed the ship; this time they would destroyhim, and his work.He slammed the dome and locked it; double-locked it with thepadlock he had demanded from Moray.This time no one would approach the computer,not even those he trusted most.Not even Patrick.Not even Camilla."Lie still, beloved.Look, the moons have set, it will be morning soon," Rafemurmured."How warm it is, under the stars in the wind.Why are you crying, Camilla?"She smiled in the darkness."I'm not crying;" she said softly, "I'm thinkingthat some day we'll find an ocean and islands for the songs we heard tonight, andthat some day our children will sing them there.""Have you come to love this world as I do, Camilla?""Love? I don't know;" she said tranquilly, "it's our world.We don't haveto love it.We only have to learn to live with it, somehow.Not on our terms buton its own."All across Base Camp, the minds of the Earthmen flickered into madness,unexplained joy or fear; women wept without knowing why, or laughed in sudden joythey could not explain.Father Valentine, asleep in his isolated shelter, woke andcame quietly down the mountain, and unnoticed, came into the Hall in New Skye,mingling with them in love and complete acceptance.When the winds died he wouldreturn to solitude, but he knew he would never be wholly alone again.Heather and Ewen, sharing the night duty in the hospital, watched the redsun rise in the cloudless sky.Arms enlaced, they were shaken out of their silentecstatic watching of the sky (a thousand ruby sparkles, the brilliant rush of lightdriving back the darknesses) by a cry behind them; a shrill, moaning wail of painand terror.A girl rushed toward them from her bed, panicked at the sudden pain, thegushing blood; Ewen lifted her and laid her down, mustering his strength and calm,trying to focus sanity (you can get on top of it! Fight! try!) but stopped in thevery act, arrested by what he saw in her frightened eyes.Heather touched himcompassionately."No," she said, "no need to try.""Oh, God, Heather, I can't, not like that, I can't bear it--"The girl's eyes were wide and terrified."Can't you help me?" she begged."Oh, help me, help me--"Heather knelt and gathered the girl in her arms."No, darling," she saidgently."No, we can't help you, you're going to die.Don't be afraid, Laura darling,it will be very quick, and we'll be with you.Don't cry, darling,don't cry, there'snothing to be afraid of." She held the girl close in her arms, murmuring to her,comforting her, sensing every bit of fear and trying with the strength of theirrapport to soothe her, until the girl lay quiet and peaceful on her shoulder.Theyheld her like that, crying with her, until she stopped breathing; then they laidher gently on the bed, covered her with a sheet, and sorrowfully, hand in hand,walked out into the sunrise and wept for her.Captain Harry Leicester saw the sun rise, rubbing weary eyes.He had not takenhis eyes from the console of the computer, watching over the only hope to save thisworld from barbarism.Once, shortly before dawn, he had thought he heard Camilla'svoice calling to him from the doorway, but it was surely delusion.(Once she hadshared his dream.What had happened?)Now, in a strange, uneasy half-doze, half-trance, he watched a processionthrough his mind of strange creatures, not quite men, lifting strange starshipsinto the red sky of this world, and, centuries later, returning.(What had theybeen seeking, in the world beyond the stars? Why had they not found it?) Could thequest after all be endless or even come full circle and end in its beginning?But we have something to build on, the history of a world.Another world.Not this one.Are the answers of another world fit for this one?He told himself furiously that knowledge was knowledge, that knowledge waspower, and could save them--"--or destroy.After the long struggle to survive, will they not seek oldanswers, ready-made from the past, and try to re-create the desperate history ofEarth, here on a world with a more fragile chain of life? Suppose, one day, theycome to believe, as I seemed to believe for a time, that the computer really doeshave all the answers?Well, doesn't it?He rose and went to the doorway of the dome.The shuttered window, made smallagainst the bitter cold, and high, swung wide at his touch and he looked out atthe sunrise and the strange sun.Not mine.But theirs.Someday they will unlockits secrets.With my help.My single-handed struggle to keep forthem a heritage of true knowledge, a whole technology to take them back to the stars.He breathed deep, and began to listen silently to the sounds of this world.The winds in the trees and the forests, the running of the streams, the beasts andbirds that lived their own strange secret lives deep in the woods, the unknown alienswhom his descendants would one day know.And they would not be barbarian.They would know.If they were tempted toexplore some blind alley of knowledge, the answer would be there, ready for theirasking, ready with its reply.(Why did Camilla's voice echo in his mind? "That only proves that a computerisn't God.")Isn't the truth a form of God? he demanded wildly of himself and of theuniverse.Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.(Or enslave you? Can one truth hide another?)Suddenly a horrid vision came into his mind, as his thoughts burst free fromtime and slid into the future, which lay quivering before him.A race taught togo for all its answers here, to the shrine which had all the right answers.A worldwhere no question could ever be left open, for it had all the answers, and whatlay outside it was not possible to explore.A barbarian world with the computer worshipped as a God.A God.A God.A God.And he was creating that God.God! Am I insane?And the answer came, clear and cold.No.I have been insane since the shipcrashed, but now I am sane.Moray was right all along.The answers of another worldare not the answers we can use here.The technology, the science, are only atechnology and a science for Earth, and if we try to transfer them here, whole,we will destroy this planet
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]