She picked up the stylus.
"No. Never mind. I'm going there anyway," said Hal. "I'll you both later." He was getting up as he spoke and was already turned toward door. "Call on me if you need me," said Amanda. "On all of us, for anything," said Rukh. "I will," said Hal, already at the door. He went out. Jeamus Walters was in his office, as Rukh had guessed. It was typical of the man that his work place sported no illusions whatsoever. Its bare metal walls were completely covered with shelves holding hard copies of designs and schematic drawings.
His desk threatened to outdo Ajela's at its worst with an overload of hard copies. Jeamus lived for work and work was all, he lived for. He had been that way, as far as Hal knew, from long before he had become Research Director of the Encyclopedia, and apparently that was the way he always would be.
Now, Hal, who had hardly seen the man in the preceding three years, during which he had been caught up entirely in his own search and work, looked at him clearly for the first time in a long while, and saw changes in him, small but unmistakable.
There was a little less hair with more gray in it, in the circlet that surrounded all but the front part of his skull like an uncompleted wreath. His square mechanic's body and blunt mechanic's hands were the same as ever, his face showed no real signs of aging, but there was a faintly dusty air about him, as if he was a mechanism that had been left unused for some time. He, got to his feet with a sudden start as Hal entered after giving his name to the door annunciator. "Hal!" he said. His hard, square palm and fingers enclosed Hal's. They made up a smaller hand than the one Hal enclosed them with, but they were hardly less strong. "How are you? Is there something we can do for you?" "Yes," said Hal, "there is. I'm up against a time limit, Jeamus - you can guess why. I need something you can build without too much trouble - I think. But I don't want you to boggle at my plans for using it, so I won't tell you those, if you don't mind."
CHAPTER 35
Jeamus frowned at him and hesitated for just a moment. "If you say so," he said, then, his frown clearing, "everyone knows Tam expected you to take over as Director whenever you felt you were ready. It's just that I've gotten used to taking orders from Ajela-" "And Rukh." Jeamus glanced at the door, which was slightly open. It was close enough in the little office, so that he could reach out without getting up. He pushed it closed, and it swung back against the jamb but did not latch. "And Rukh, of course," he said, lowering his voice, "though most, even here, don't know that. What I was going to say was that I've gotten used to taking orders from both of them, and if you say you think I might boggle at your plans, it makes me think that it's very likely either one of them would boggle, too." "They would," said Hal. "That's why you have to do this for me without telling them anything about it."
Mentally, he added Amanda to the list of those who might not like what he wanted to do, then backed off a bit from that thought. Amanda's perception was remarkable enough that she would be the most likely of the three women to take him on faith.
Jeamus was distractedly ruffling what hair remained of him.
"This is a little uncomfortable for me," he said. "Technically you're in control here and should be able to order anything, but Ajela has been in charge so long, and in control - it's to think of not telling her - particularly about something might not think was a good idea. At the same time I hate to bother her right now..."
He sat for a moment, frowning and ruffling his hair. Hal sat in silence, patiently waiting. "All right," Jeamus said at last. "You've got my word. Now, what is it?"
To begin with," said Hal, "is there a blind corridor available in the Encyclopedia? I mean a short corridor with an entrance at one end but no doors at all leading off of it?" "Yes. There're several," said Jeamus. "They were set up originally to allow for overflow or changes in the personnel aboard. Right now they're all being used as storage areas, but we could clear one out and store whatever's in it, in some other area - we've got the available space." "Good," said Hal. "I'll want this corridor to come to my call, no one else's - even by mistake. Can we be certain of that?"
Jeamus smiled. "All right," said Hal, "I hadn't any real doubt, but I wanted to make sure. Would you have such a corridor cleared and call me when it's ready? Then I'll tell you what I want done." "Why not tell me now?" "You'll understand that, when I tell you what I want," said Hal. "All right? I'll be in my quarters. Call me when it's ready, as soon as possible, for other people's sakes beside my own." "Tam?" asked Jeamus, a little grimly. "Other people besides me," said Hal. "All right," said Jeamus. "It'll be a matter of a few hours, no more." "Good. As fast as you can. As I say, I'll be in my quarters. You can call me there."
When Hal let himself back into his own apartments, Amanda had not yet returned. This was as Hal had hoped. He seated himself on the carpeting of the carrel that was the workspace of his quarters, and summoned up with his imaging link to the Encyclopedia an image of the range of glowing red lines that was the internal map of the knowledge in that mighty body.
As he had known there would be, changes showed themselves in the lines - small changes, but undeniable ones that were the result of information constantly added, from the state of affairs on Earth, news brought by couriers from outside, and the readings of the many instruments that scanned and kept track of the wings of enemy space vessels prowling the outside of the phase-shield.
His eyes were drawn immediately to each small change, as any change is noticed in a known landscape, or the face of a loved one, and he took a few moments to incorporate all of these in his earlier mental picture of the Encyclopedia's core memory. Then he dismissed the mechanical image, and replaced it with one evolved from his own memory and imagination, comparable now with the latest and most up-to-date image the Encyclopedia itself had formed for him.
Sitting, holding it in the field of his mental vision, he could feel the complete knowledge of the Encyclopedia open to his mind, like some vast storehouse of priceless art objects, too multitudinous in number to be seen in one moment from any one single viewpoint. Then he let the rest of his mind go back, back to the chanting circle, to the first edge of the morning sun at was Procyon's bright pinpoint orb beginning to show above the far-off mountain peaks, and the single ray lancing into the dewdrop to make the explosion of light that signaled his sudden understanding of the full truth in what he and the rest had chanted... the transient and the eternal are the same.
That great and ringing verity echoed in and through him as if he was a tuned piece of metal struck by an invisible padded hammer - and it was not just as if comprehension of all the individual bits of knowledge stored in the memory of the Encyclopedia shrank until they could be contained by his one human mind, but as if the back of his thoughts, his own unlimited unconscious understanding, widened and spread to take in and possess, all at once, all that that warehouse contained.
He was not suddenly filled, as a vessel is brought to the brim with liquid - but it was as if there was nothing known here that he had not known and handled, understood and loved, in its own body and measure.
He sat as if bound, as if part of the workings of the Encyclopedia itself, possessed of all it contained and caught up in the fact like someone mesmerized. For there had been more there than any person could hope to learn in many lifetimes, but - the transient and the eternal were the same. He had one lifetime only, but less than a moment of that could contain eternity, and in that eternity he had had time to possess himself of all that the Final Encyclopedia contained.