CHAPTER 16
Amid's office - the Guildmaster's office, as Artur somewhat apologetically explained it should be referred to, when they spoke about it to anyone but Amid - was large enough for two work positions, and that was about all. It did, however, have enough floor space to allow the folding down of an oldfashioned mattress, which during work hours folded up against one of the walls. It was a generously sized double mattress, for which both Hal and Amanda were thankful, having had to do with a few ordinary-sized beds in their time. "Well," said Amanda, sometime later and just before they fell asleep. "Do you want to tell me why that recording of Jathed made you feel so good? I could feel you radiating cheerfulness right across the dining table. I probably could have felt it clear outside that room." "It was what I told Amid, what had struck me in what Jathed had said," Hal answered, "about there being a universe for every individual person. I haven't lacked for evidence. I was on the right track in my search for the Creative Universe. But I haven't had any new evidence for several years now, and, suddenly, along comes a man who agrees with me." "How agrees with you?" said Amanda. They were lying on their backs in the darkness, side by side, with all of the cloth covers with which the bed was furnished laid aside, since they were both rather sweaty. They were also holding hands. "He talked about a lot of universes. You've always talked about just one." "It doesn't matter," said Hal. "One big universe with room in it for everybody to create what he or she wants, or one universe each in which to create what each one wants. It amounts to the same thing-"
He broke off suddenly. "What is it?" asked Amanda. "Just hearing myself say that both conceptions amounted to the same thing. The transient and the eternal are the same. The likeness reminded me of Jathed's Law, that's all. Anyway, Jathed evidently had hold of a corner of the same blanket I've got a corner of. It does cheer you up to have your findings corroborated." "I'm happy for you then." Amanda gave his hand a squeeze "But to be truthful, I still don't follow that business of the broken light. Would it be 'not-broken' to someone who hadn't been there, who just walked into the room, afterward... or what?" "I don't know," said Hal. "Maybe that's why I'm right about it being one large universe with room for unlimited creations to be built in it, rather than an unlimited number of private universes, like Jathed said, and that's what's wrong with his theory, the fact that the question you just asked can't be answered. Or it may be that he was right in that some things done in the Creative Universe acquire existence in this one - for example, a painting's made in the mind of the artist, but it appears in what people will probably always call the real universe." "But you know why it appears in the real universe. You can watch it being painted," "No," said Hal, "what you watch are materials of various colors being applied to an even, vertical surface. When do you see the painter put into the painting whatever it is that makes those colors have a profound emotional effect on you? Or take music for example-" "Never mind," said Amanda, "I see what you're driving at. I'm still glad you find him corroborating you, but the fact is I wasn't too impressed with him. He seemed more interested in showing off than anything else." "Still," said Hal, "he was using the Creative Universe consciously and deliberately, which is something I can't do. He was entering it. All down the centuries, these artistic examples I'm always giving have been cases of creativity being used on the unconscious level. It's as if the artist can reach through into the Creative Universe with his arms and hands only in it, and has to work there by touch alone. I want to go into it completely - step into it as if it were another place to be stepped into. I have to do that, to make a battleground where the Enemy and I can finally have it out, and to make an opening so that other people can enter after me, wholly and consciously, to work with it in the future. But you're right about miracles being a bad way to teach anything, let alone this. I rejected that method of teaching its existence the first time I discovered the Creative Universe - but I've told you about that." "I wish," said Amanda, "you'd stop telling me you've told me things that you haven't told me. You've never said anything to me about when you discovered the Creative Universe." "I'm sorry," said Hal. "I do a certain amount of going over things in my mind, with you there in imagination - effectively bouncing problems off you, and unless I deliberately stop to remember when I did that on a specific topic, I get the imaginary talks with you mixed up with the real ones."
Amanda turned her head on the pillow and kissed his cheek. "What was that for?" he asked. "Nothing. Go on," she said. "You're going to tell me, actually this time, when you first discovered the Creative Universe." "It was back when I was Donal," said Hal. "You remember I showed you Sayona the Bond back at the Encyclopedia? It was some time before then. I'd just quit being War Chief for the two Friendly worlds after a rather unfriendly scene with Eldest Bright, who was head of the United Council of Churches for the Friendlies - in fact, he threatened me with summary trial and execution. I had to shoot three of his guards he ordered to arrest me, and remind him that his capitol city was full of enough of my mercenaries, who could appreciate the bloodless victory I'd just given them, to make it unwise for him to try doing such a thing. He'd accused me of being bought by the Exotics, over whose forces I'd just given him the victory, and it turned out he hadn't wanted it bloodless. He'd wanted blood and lots of it, specifically Exotic blood.
So he had to let me go, but his last words were that I should go and look for work with the Exotics. I'd already decided to do just that, anyway, and so I contacted them. That led to an interview with Sayona, who hired me, but also made the suggestion I become an Exotic. One of the things he said was that he, at least, believed I was the kind of person who could walk on air if I really wanted to. I turned him down on being an Exotic, but... "
In the quiet office-turned-bedroom Hal could hear his voice echoing differently from the walls, now, as he remembered how it had been, being Donal. It was Donal's voice in his present ears, and it brought a strangeness over him. Telling Amanda about it, he found himself reliving that time, now more than eighty years in the past...
...deep in thought, he had returned to his own quarters in the city of Portsmouth, on Mara, which then held the Military Command Base for the two Exotic worlds. Portsmouth was in what on Old Earth would have been the temperate latitudes, but the nature of Procyon, the same sun that shone on Kultis, was such that the night which had just entered that city as he came back was tropical.
The soli illumination of his room had come on automatically as he entered, but it was so adjusted that it failed to white out the overhead view of the stars. These shone down through the open wall of the loggia that was his bedroom.
Standing in the center of this loggia, his mind still full of the conversation with Sayona, Donal frowned. He gazed up at the gently domed roof of the loggia, which reached its highest point at two meters above his head. He frowned again and turned to search through the writing desk in the room until he found a self-sealing signal-tape capsule. Then, with this in one hand, he turned to look toward the ceiling again, and took one rather awkward step up off the floor.
His foot found purchase in the air. He stepped upward, putting his weight on it. Slowly, step by step he walked up through nothingness to the high point of the ceiling. Opening the capsule, he pressed its self-sealing edges against the white surface of the ceiling, where they hung. He stood there a second in the air, staring at them. "Ridiculous!'' he said suddenly - and just as suddenly, he was falling. He gathered himself with the instinct of long training in the second of drop and, landing on hands and feet, rolled over and came erect like a gymnast against a far wall. He got up, brushing himself off, unhurt - and turned to look up at the ceiling. The capsule still clung there.