A Far Sunset

TWO

That evening, when at last he managed to get to sleep, Poul Mer Lo had nightmares. He dreamed that he was encased in a transparent tube. He dreamed that there was a heavy hoar frost all over his frozen body, covering even his eyes, choking his nostrils, sealing his stiff immovable lips. He dreamed also that he dreamed.

And in the dream within a dream there were rolling cornfields, rippling towards the horizon as far as the eye could see. There was a blue sky in which puffy white clouds drifted like fat good-natured animals browsing lazily on blue pastures.

There was a dwelling—a house with walls of whitened mud and crooked timbers and a roof of smoky yellow reeds. Suddenly he was inside the house. There was a table. His shoulder was just about as high as the table. He could see delicious mountains of food—all the things that he liked to eat best.

There were toys. One of them was a star ship on a launching pad. You set the ship on the launcher, cranked the little handle as far back as you could, then pressed the Go button. And off went the star ship like a silver bird.

The good giant, his father, said: ‘Happy birthday, my son.’

The wicked witch, his mother, said: ‘Happy birthday, darling.’

And suddenly he was back in the transparent tube, with the hoar frost sealing his lips so that he could neither laugh nor cry.

There was terror and coldness and loneliness.

The universe was nothing but a great ball of nothing, punctured by burning needle points, shot through with the all-embracing mirage of stillness and morion, of purpose and irrelevance.

He had never known that silence could be so profound, that darkness could be so deep, that starlight could be so cold.

The universe dissolved.

There was a city, and in the city a restaurant, and in the restaurant a specimen of that vertical biped, the laughing mammal. She had hair the colour of the cornfields he remembered from childhood. She had eyes that were as blue as the skies of childhood. She had beautiful lips, and the sounds that came from them were like nothing at all in his childhood. Above all, she emanated warmth. She was the richness of high summer, the promise of a great sweet harvest.

She said: ‘So the world is not enough?’ It was a question to which she already knew the answer.

He smiled. ‘You are enough, but the world is too small.’

She toyed with her drink. ‘One last question, the classic question, and then we’ll forget everything except this night… Why do you really have to go out to the stars?’

He was still smiling, but the smile was now mechanical. He didn’t know. ‘There is the classic answer,’ he said evenly. ‘Because they are there.’

‘The moon is there. The planets are there. Isn’t that enough?’

‘People have been to the moon and the planets before me,’ he explained patiently. ‘That’s why it’s not enough.’

‘I think I could give you happiness,’ she whispered.

He took her hand. ‘I know you could.’

‘There could be children. Don’t you want children?’

‘I would like your children.’

‘Then have them. They’re yours for the begetting.’

‘My love … Oh, my love … The trouble is I want something more.’

She could not understand. She looked at him with bewilderment. ‘What is it? What is this thing that means more than love and happiness and children?’

He gazed at her, disconcerted. How to find the truth! How to find the words! And how to believe that the words could have anything at all to do with the truth.

‘I want,’ he said with difficulty, and groping for the right images, ‘I want to be one of those who take the first steps. I want to leave a footprint on the farther shore.’ He laughed. ‘I even want to steal for myself a tiny fragment of history. Now tell me I’m paranoid. I’ll believe you.’

She stood up. ‘I’ve had my answer, and I’ll tell you nothing,’ she said, ‘except that they’re playing the Emperor Waltz … Do you want it?’

He wanted it.

They danced together in a lost bubble of time…

He wanted to cry. But how could you cry with frozen lips and frozen eyes and a frozen heart? How could you feel when you were locked in the bleak grip of eternity?

He woke up screaming.

The donjons of Baya Nor had not changed. The blackhaired, wide-eyed noia by his side had not changed. Only he had changed because the conditioning—thank God—had failed. Because men were men and not machines. Because the grief inside him was so deep and so desolate that he, who had always considered himself to be nothing more than a blue-eyed computer, at last knew what it was to be a terrified animal.

He sat up in bed, eyes staring, the hairs at the nape of his neck twitching and stiffening.

‘My name is Paul Marlowe,’ he babbled in words that his noia could not understand. ‘I am a native of Earth and I have aged four years in the last twenty years. I have sinned against the laws of life.’ He held his head in his hands, rocking to and fro. ‘Oh God! Punish me with pain that I can bear. Chastise me! Strip the flesh from my back. Only give me back the world I threw away! ’

Then he collapsed, sobbing.

The noia cradled his head upon her breast.

‘My lord has many visions,’ she murmured. ‘Visions are hard to bear, but they are the gift of Oruri and so must be borne. Know then, Poul Mer Lo, my lord, that your servant would ease the burden if Oruri so decrees.’

Poul Mer Lo raised his head and looked at her. He pulled himself together. ‘Do not sorrow,’ he said in passable Bayani. ‘I have been troubled by dreams. I grieve only for the death of a child long ago.’

Mylai Tui was puzzled. ‘My lord, first there was the death of a great bird, and now there is the death of a child. Surely there is too much of dying in your heart?’

Poul Mer Lo smiled. ‘You are right. There is too much dying. It seems that I must learn to live again.’