The apex of that misty triangle must be racing towards him at enormous speed, as the sun rose vertically behind the mountain, yet Morgan was conscious of no movement. Time seemed to have been suspended; this was one of the rare moments of his life when he gave no thought to the passing minutes. The shadow of eternity lay upon his soul, as did that of the mountain upon the clouds.
Now it was fading swiftly, the darkness draining from the sky like a stain dispersing in water. The ghostly, glimmering landscape below was hardening into reality; halfway to the horizon there was an explosion of light as the sun's rays struck upon some building's eastern windows. And even beyond that – unless his eyes had tricked him – Morgan could make out the faint, dark band of the encircling sea.
Another day had come to Taprobane.
Slowty, the visitors dispersed. Some returned to the cable-car terminus, while others, more energetic, headed for the stairway, in the mistaken belief that the descent was easier than the climb. Most of them would be thankful enough to catch the car again at the lower station; few indeed would make it all the way down.
Only Morgan continued upwards, followed by many curious glances, along the short flight of steps that led to the monastery and to the very summit of the mountain. By the time he had reached the smoothly-plastered outer wall – now beginning to glow softly in the first direct rays of the sun – he was very short of breath, and was glad to lean for a moment against the massive wooden door.
Someone must have been watching; before he could find a bell-push, or signal his presence in any way, the door swung silently open, and he was welcomed by a yellow-robed monk, who saluted him with clasped hands.
“Ayu bowan, Dr. Morgan. The Mahanayake Thero will be glad to see you.”
14. The Education of Starglider
(Extract from Starglider Concordance, First Edition, 2071)
We now know that the interstellar spaceprobe generally referred to as Starglider is completely autonomous, operating according to general instructions programmed into it sixty thousand years ago. While it is cruising between suns, it uses its five-hundred-kilometre antenna to send back information to its base at a relatively slow rate, and to receive occasional up-dates from “Starholme”, to adopt the lovely name coined by the poet Liwellyn ap Cymru.
While it is passing through a solar system, however, it is able to tap the energy of a sun, and so its rate of information transfer increases enormously. It also “recharges its batteries”, to use a doubtless crude analogy. And since – like our own early Pioneers and Voyagers – it employs the gravitational fields of the heavenly bodies to deflect it from star to star, it will operate indefinitely, unless mechanical failure or cosmic accident terminates its career. Centaurus was its eleventh port of call; after it had rounded our sun like a comet, its new course was aimed precisely at Tau Ceti, twelve light years away. If there is anyone there, it will be ready to start its next conversation soon after AD 8100.
For Starglider combines the functions both of ambassador and explorer. When, at the end of one of its millennial journeys, it discovers a technological culture, it makes friends with the natives and starts to trade information, in the only form of interstellar commerce that may ever be possible. And before it departs again on its endless voyage, after its brief transit of their solar system, Starglider gives the location of its home world – already awaiting a direct call from the newest member of the galactic telephone exchange.
In our case, we can take some pride in the fact that, even before it had transmitted any star charts, we had identified its parent sun and even beamed our first transmissions to it. Now we have only to wait 104 years for an answer. How incredibly lucky we are, to have neighbours so close at hand.
It was obvious from its very first messages that Starglider understood the meaning of several thousand basic English and Chinese words, which it had deduced from an analysis of television, radio and – especially – broadcast video-text services. But what it had picked up during its approach was a very unrepresentative sample from the whole spectrum of human culture; it contained little advanced science, still less advanced mathematics – and only a random selection of literature, music and the visual arts.
Like any self-taught genius, therefore, Starglider had huge gaps in its education. On the principle that it was better to give too much than too little, as soon as contact was established Starglider was presented with the Oxford English Dictionary, the Great Chinese Dictionary (Romandarin edition), and the Encyclopaedia Terrae. Their digital transmission required little more than fifty minutes, and it was notable that, immediately thereafter, Starglider was silent for almost four hours – its longest period off the air. When it resumed contact, its vocabulary was immensely enlarged, and for over 99 percent of the time it could pass the Turing test with ease – i.e., there was no way of telling from the messages received that Starglider was a machine, and not a highly intelligent human.
There were occasional giveaways – for example, incorrect use of ambiguous words, and the absence of emotional content in the dialogue. This was only to be expected; unlike advanced terrestrial computers – which could replicate the emotions of their builders, when necessary – Starglider's feelings and desires were presumably those of a totally alien species, and therefore largely incomprehensible to man.
And, of course, vice versa. Starglider could understand precisely and completely what was meant by “the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides”. But it could scarcely have the faintest glimmer of what lay in Keats' mind when he wrote:
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn…
Still less – Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Nevertheless, in the hope of correcting this deficiency, Starglider was also presented with thousands of hours of music, drama, and scenes from terrestrial life, both human and otherwise. By general agreement, a certain amount of censorship was enforced here. Although mankind's propensity for violence and warfare could hardly be denied (it was too late to recall the Encyclopaedia) only a few carefully selected examples were broadcast. And, until Starglider was safely out of range, the normal fare of the video networks was uncharacteristically bland.
For centuries – perhaps, indeed, until it had reached its next target – philosophers would be debating Starglider's real understanding of human affairs and problems. But on one point there was no serious disagreement. The hundred days of its passage through the solar system altered irrevocably men's views of the universe, its origin, and their place in it.
Human civilisation could never be the same, after Starglider had gone.
15. Bodhidharma
As the massive door, carved with intricate lotus patterns, clicked softly shut behind him, Morgan felt that he had entered another world. This was by no means the first time he had been on ground once sacred to some great religion; he had seen Notre Dame, Saint Sophia, Stonehenge, the Parthenon, Karnak, Saint Paul's, and at least a dozen other major temples and mosques. But he had viewed them all as frozen relics of the past – splendid examples of art or engineering, but with no relevance to the modern mind. The faiths that had created and sustained them had all passed into oblivion, though some had survived until well into the twenty-second century.