At last, the Encyclopedia was ready to be put to its proper purpose, the one Mark Torre had envisioned for it, without even being able to see or name that vision. He could go to Tam now, and tell him that the search was over.
But, there was still the problem of using what he had touched and come to own. All that the Encyclopedia held was no more use locked in his mind than it had been in the technological container that was the Encyclopedia itself. He would use it - then go to Tam. Surely, there was time for that....
He woke to the surroundings of his carrel to find Amanda standing and watching him. Plainly, she had caused the Encyclopedia to make fresh clothing for her. She was no longer in the bush clothes in which they had left Kultis together, but wearing a plain, fitted, knee-length dress of blue - reminiscent of the color of the wintry seas around the northern islands of the Dorsai that he remembered from his childhood as Donal. There was no way for him to tell, after that timelessness from which he had just returned, how long she had been there, waiting for him to respond to her presence.
He got swiftly to his feet, and she looked up into his eyes with a steady, almost demanding, gaze. "Whatever it was you were doing," she said, "it worries me. Do you want to tell me?" "To tell you it all would take - I don't know how long. " Hal smiled at her to reassure her. "But I've won through - I've found what Mark Torre and Tam - and I too - have been after all these years. But there's not enough time to tell you now. I have to put it to use, before I go to Tam with the news. Will you trust me and wait a little while longer? It's your doing, you know. The key was that the transient and the eternal are the same. " "And with this," she said, "you're going to do something to make Tam happy before he dies?" "I think so," said Hal. "Though it's only the beginnings of the full answer. But it means the rest of what we need is only waiting to be found. Let's say it'll set him free to let go, content that the end is in sight."
His voice softened, unthinkingly. "Ajela's torn apart, isn't she?" he asked. "She can't bear to lose him, but she can't bear to let him go, either." "Yes," said Amanda, "and she can't help that. She'll be better off once he's gone, but even if she could face that now, it wouldn't make anything easier for her. I wish you'd give me more of an answer." "I've got to keep it a secret for myself, awhile longer," Hal said. He put his hands on her shoulders. "Can't you trust me for a little while? You and Rukh can come and see what I'm going to do as soon as anyone can. But if, with all this, it shouldn't work after ail... I've felt so close to the full answer so many times before, I want to make sure this time. I'd rather you didn't say anything, even to Rukh, let alone Ajela, before I'm ready to have you tell them."
She stood still, under the grasp of his hands, her eyes now thoughtful. "You're going to try something that means gambling your own life, aren't you?" "Yes," he said. "It's not for me to stop you..." She moved away from him, and his hands loosened to let her go. They fell to his sides. She turned back and put her arms around him. "Hold me," she said.
He enclosed her strongly in his own arms, and she held him tightly. He felt the living warmth of her body against him, and for a moment an unbearable poignancy swept through him. "You realize," she said as they pressed together, "you can never leave me behind." "I know that," he said. He rested his cheek against the top of her bright head, "but I can't take you with me now."
"Yes," she said, "but I'll always follow. You should know that I too. Wherever you go."
It was true. Of course, he knew. There was nothing to be said in answer. He simply held her.
A little over two hours later, when Amanda had finally left to see if she could be of any use to Rukh in Ajela's office, there was the soft chime on the air of Hal's quarters that announced someone wanted to speak to him.
"Yes?" he said, back to the surrounding atmosphere- "The corridor's clear." it was Jeamus's voice. "The door at the far left end of the present corridor outside your rooms will let you into it." "I'll be right there," said Hal.
He followed the directions and a moment later stepped into a short corridor with green metal walls, rather like Jeamus's own office without the shelves but stretched out in one dimension. It also smelled faintly of an odor something like mildewed paper, which Jeamus's office did not. "We haven't done areal cleaning job on it yet," Jeamus said. "I guessed you'd be more interested in getting on with whatever you had in mind." "You're right," said Hal, "and now I'll tell you why I wanted this space to come and open only to me, and of course, you and whoever needs to be with you to help while you're building it. What I want you to build me is something that I think might be dangerous to someone who could just stumble across it." "Dangerous?" "Yes. I want you to build me a doorway - a phase-shift doorway - that's the best I can do by way of describing it. Essentially, it's to be just a single phase-wall, not the complex affair you made for the phase-shield around Earth. I just want it to disperse whatever touches it, spread it out to universal position, and it should fill the corridor from ceiling to floor, wall to wall, about a third of its length from its blind end." "Just an out-shift wall?" said Jeamus. "Where's what you're sending through going to be reconstituted?" "It isn't, until it chooses to come back through the same wall." "Chooses?" echoed Jeamus. "There's no choice about that. Once dispersed, unless there's a destination at which it can be reconstituted, anything you send simply stays spread out until time ends." "That's not the point", said Hal. "Can you build it?" "Oh, it can be built, yes," said Jeamus. "Though I think what you're talking about actually would require a double screen, one to disperse, the other to reintegrate. That means the reintegrating screen would have to be in front of the dispersing one, so that you'd need a space here around one side of it, say, to get at the outgoing screen. But what you're describing doesn't make any sense. You mean it's departure point would be effectively just a meter or so from the arrival point?" "if there have to be two screens, yes. The closer the better," said Hal, "and, I'm sorry, but don't ask me to try to explain, it can't be any other way." "All right. Can you build it?" "Of course we can build it. " Jeamus stared up at Hal. "But I can't imagine what sort of idea you've got in mind, and the more I hear of it, the less I like doing it blind. Let me see if I've got it straight. You want to be able to put something through the screen, reducing it to universal position. Then, somehow, it's going to come back by itself, and it has to come through the screen just a step away from it - I suppose you're thinking of what you send as somehow entering the return screen from the other side - and translating back into its original form. Actually, there is no 'other side' in the ordinary sense. What makes you think something like this could happen?" "I'm going to find out," said Hal. "The only question I have for you is, whether you'll make it for me." "As I say, we can build what you're asking for," Jeamus said. "But there's no way that'll guarantee you'll be able to reconstitute something already spread out through the total universe. That is, it can be built so that if whatever it is gathers itself for re-entry - and how that's going to happen baffles me - then if it does the return screen will bring it back to its original location, which is here. The same way a spacecraft, shifting, returns to its original form at the point where it wants to be. But the ship has been pre-programmed to come out at that specific spot, and the action is essentially timeless - it happens in no-time. So, in effect, if I set up a device to do what you say, the going and returning is going to be instantaneous. The second screen'll simply cancel out the action of the first, so that in effect whatever you send will only have moved a meter or so, immediately - that is, if it ever comes out at all, which it won't. The point is, what you're planning to have happen is impossible. " "Not if I'm right," said Hal. "What I put through is going to stay awhile and come back when it's ready."