Hammond listened politely, amused by the young man's enthusiasm, but for Kim it was different: he shared that sense of excitement. For him the young man's words were alive, vivid with burgeoning life. Listening, Kim found he wanted to know much more than he already did. Wanted to grasp it whole.
Finally, their guide took them into one of the hemispherical viewing rooms, settled them into chairs, and demonstrated how they could use the inquiry facility.
His explanation over, he bowed, leaving them to it.
Kim looked to Hammond.
"No, Kim. You're the one Prince Yuan arranged this for."
Kim smiled and leaned forward, drawing the control panel into his lap, then dimmed the lights.
It was like being out in the open, floating high above the world, the night sky all about them. But that was only the beginning. Computer graphics transformed the viewing room into an armchair spaceship. From where they sat they could travel anywhere they liked among the stars: to distant galaxies far across the universe, or to nearer, better-charted stars, circling them, moving among their planetary systems. Here distance was of little consequence and the relativistic laws of physics held no sway. In an instant you had crossed the heavens. It was exhilarating to see the stars rush by at such incredible speeds, flickering in the corners of the eyes like agitated dust particles. For a while they rushed here and there, laughing, enjoying the giddy vistas of the room. Then they came back to earth, to a night sky that ought to have been familiar to them, but wasn't.
"There are losses, living as we do," Kim said wistfully.
Hammond grunted his assent. "You know, it makes me feel, well— insignificant. I mean, just look at it." He raised his hand. "It's so big. There's so much power there. So many worlds. And all so old. So unimaginably old." He laughed awkwardly, his hand falling back to the arm of the chair. "It makes me feel so small."
"Why? They're only stars."
"Only stars!" Hammond laughed, amused by the understatement. "How can you say that?"
Kim turned in his chair, his face, his tiny figure indistinct in the darkness, only the curved, wet surfaces of his eyes lit by reflected starlight. "It's only matter, reacting in predictable ways. Physical things, bound on all sides by things physical. But look at you, Joel Hammond. You're a man. Homo sapiens. A beast that thinks, that has feelings."
"Four pails of water and a bag of salts, that's all we are."
Kim shook his head. "No. We're more than mere chemicals. Even the meanest of us."
Hammond looked down. "I don't know, Kim. I don't really see it like that. I've never been able to see myself that way."
"But we have to. We're more than earth, Joel. More than mere clay to be molded."
There was a hint of bitterness in the last that made the man look up and meet the boy's eyes.
"What is it?" he asked softly.
"Nothing. Just the memory of something."
It was strange. They had not really spoken before now. Oh, there had been the poems—the transfer of matters scientific—but nothing personal. They were like two machines passing information one to the other. But nothing real. As people they had yet to meet.
Hammond hesitated, sensing the boy's reluctance, then spoke, watching to see how his words were taken. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Kim looked back at him. "This feels like home."
"Home?"
"Down deep. Under the earth."
"Ah ... the Clay."
Kim smiled sadly. "You should have seen me, Joel. Eight years ago. Such a tiny, skulking thing, I was. And thin. So thin. Like something dead." He sighed, tilting his head back, remembering. "A bony little thing with wide, staring eyes. That's how T'ai Cho first saw me."
He laughed, a tighter, smaller sound than before. More like surprise than laughter. "I wonder what it was he saw in me. Why he didn't just gas me and dispose of me. I was just"—he shrugged, and his eyes came up to meet the older man's, dark eyes, filled with sudden, half-remembered pain—"just a growth. A clod of earth. A scrap of the darkness from beneath."
Hammond was breathing shallowly, intent on every word.
"Twice I was lucky. If it weren't for T'ai Cho I'd be dead. He saved me. When I reverted he made a bargain for me. Because of what he saw in me. Five years I spent in Socialization. Doing penance. Being retrained, restructured, tamed."
Hammond looked up, suddenly understanding. So that was why Kim's life was forfeit. "What did you do?"
Kim looked away. The question went unanswered. After a while, he began to speak again. Slower this time. Hammond's question had been too close, perhaps; for what Kim said next seemed less personal, as if he were talking about a stranger, describing the days in Socialization, the humiliations and degradations, the death of friends who hadn't made it. And other, darker things. How had he survived all that? How emerged as he was?
Kim turned away, leaning across to activate the viewer. Slowly the hemisphere of stars revolved about them.
"We were talking about stars, Joel. About vastness and significance." He stood and walked to the edge, placing his hand against the upward curving wall. "They seem so isolated—tiny islands in the great ocean of space, separated by billions of li of nothingness. Bright points of heat in all that endless cold. But look at them again." He drew a line between two stars, and then another two. "See how they're all connected. Each one linked to a billion-billion others. A vast web of light, weaving the galaxy together."
He came across, standing close to Hammond, looking down at him. "That's what's significant, Joel. Not the vastness or the power of it all, but how it's connected." He smiled and reached down to take Hammond's hand, clasping it firmly. "Apart or a part. There are always two ways of seeing it."
"A web," said Hammond, frowning; he shook his head and laughed, squeezing the hand that held his own. "A bloody web. You're mad, you know that, Kim Ward? Mad!"
"Not mad, Joel. Touched, perhaps, but not mad."
IT WAS HER last day on the island. She had slept late and had woken hungry. Now she walked the wooded slopes beside the house, Erkki shadowing her. It was a cool, fresh day. The storm had washed the air clean, and the sky, glimpsed through the tall, black bars of pine, was a perfect, unblemished blue.
At the edge of the clearing she turned and looked back at the young guard. He was walking along distractedly, looking down at the ground, his gun hung loosely about his left shoulder.
"Did you hear it?"
He looked up, smiling "Hear what?"
"The storm."
He shrugged. "I must have slept through it."
She studied him a moment, then turned back. In front of her the fire had burned a great circle in the stand of trees. Charred branches lay all about her. No more than a pace from where she stood, the ground was black. She looked up. The trees on all sides of the blackened circle had been seared by the heat of the blaze, their branches withered. She looked down, then stepped forward into the circle.
The dark layer of incinerated wood cracked and powdered beneath her tread. She took a second step, feeling the darkness give slightly beneath her weight, then stopped, looking about her. If she closed her eyes she could still see it, the flames leaping up into the darkness, their brightness searing the night sky, steaming, hissing where they met the violent downpour.
Now there was only ash. Ash and the fire-blackened stumps of seven trees, forming a staggered H in the center of the circle. She went across to the nearest and touched it with the toe of her boot. It crumbled and fell away, leaving nothing.
She turned full circle, looking about her, then shivered, awed by the stillness, the desolation of the place. She had seen the violent flash and roar of the gods' touch; now she stood in its imprint, reminded of her smallness by the destructive power of the storm. And yet for a moment she had seemed part of it, her thinking self lost, consumed by the elemental anger raging all about her.