He said once your mind was grown you could do what you wanted. You'd grown your life, your ego; you'd finally found out who you were. He said people above didn't know who they were, any more than ants did. Their minds were so small they had very little life, and even the bit they had they wasted. They mainly spent it swapping things with each other and trying to get the best of a bargain, and then fighting if they got the worst of it. They never understood the point of their life.
I asked him what the point was, and he said I probably wouldn't get it but he'd explain a bit.
He said living creatures had minds, but all things had brains. A piece of wood had one. Wood was just millions of atoms all racing round in a certain pattern, and what kept the atoms in the pattern was what kept the wood being a piece of wood; otherwise it would turn into something else or fly apart. Things had to have brains; in fact, the world was one. The world was a single huge brain that kept all its separate brains in order.
He said though the world was a complete brain, it was still only a cell in another brain. The galaxy was a brain, too. It was one enormous whole brain, and worked like one, controlling all the millions of worlds that made it up, but it was still only part of another brain. The universe was a brain. And it even went further than that. Though the universe was a brain so gigantic that they hadn't even found a billionth of it yet, it was still only a bit of something else. It had to be. Brains were controlled by minds. There was a mind beyond the universe.
He was looking at me in a funny way as if he couldn't figure out if I'd got it yet.
I couldn't figure it out, either.
I said was this other mind God?
He said he hadn't done God yet so he didn't know, but the universe was all controlled. All the million million galaxies were; all the billions of worlds were; every grain of sand was; and I was. That was the point of it, and it was why life was fun.
I couldn't see where the fun came in, but he felt around in my mind and said he'd try a bit harder. He said it was hard to explain fun. He said an ant couldn't understand it so it didn't have any. A rat understood a bit, and it had a bit. People understood more so they had more, and that's how it went. The bigger your mind, the bigger your life, and the more fun you saw in it. But whether you saw it or not, the fun was there. Life was fun. The idea of it was. The universe was, and you only had to look up to see it. It was an enormous game that kept going on, and you were playing in it; only people above hadn't glimpsed it yet.
Just then I knew I had glimpsed it. I remembered the feeling in the lake, that my life was somehow magic and part of a game I'd been playing without knowing. But I had no time to think of it. (I forgot to put we'd left the caverns by then. We'd checked out below, and checked out above, and he'd picked up the car.) And he was still telling me things.
He said people above would get the idea one day, but they had to get their minds bigger first; they had to live longer. They had to learn the medical science that would let them live first to 200 and then 300, and everything would follow from that. He said their history had barely begun yet. And he started answering questions I didn't even know were in my mind.
He said no trace remained of their own history above because they'd gone below before the planet looked as it did now. The mountains had worn down and built up half a dozen times since they'd gone below. He said the people had changed colour from brown to white because the sun's rays were filtered out by the receivers, and it had also turned their eyes green and their hair white. He said their space flights hadn't been detected because they used anti-matter shields; which you needed anyway at high speed to beat friction.
He told me so many things. And I wish he hadn't now.
Right then, all I wished was that I wasn't going.
He stopped the car at the point he'd stopped it when we came in, and I looked down the two miles and saw the sun was setting and everything had begun to glow.
The ragusas glowed, and the lake glowed, and the kites wheeled in the sky above.
I could hardly bear to leave it. I thought the fantastic things had all finished for me now; which shows how wrong you can be, for the most fantastic were just coming.
25. Stretch Stretch
Silently we drove through the mountains. He drove fast, though it was dark now. The moon wasn't up. I looked through the open roof and saw stars in the sky, and looked at him, but he still didn't speak. I couldn't think of too much to say myself, because my heart was full, so it went on like that. Then I couldn't bear it any more.
“What is it?” I said.
“I don't want you to go.”
“I don't want to go.”
“But I'll never forget you!” He blurted it out suddenly. “I want you to know that. You won't know it — after they've properly erased you. But you can know it now.”
“How will I be erased?” I said.
“Specialists will do it. It's a big operation, after all you've seen. They'll take out all you know of Egon. They'll take it out from the beginning, from when we met, and put something else in its place. They'll put planted memories in, to account for the missing time.”
“What kind of memories?” I said.
“They invent them. They often bring people down, to see what they know. Mainly they do it overnight and have them back in their beds again by morning. Or they get people wrecked at sea. They even let some of them stay a short time, to get their reactions. But no one's seen as much as you.”
“Can't any of them remember, when they get back?”
“None of them.”
“Can't they even dream it?”
“You can't dream something that isn't in your mind. Nothing of Egon is in their minds. It won't be in yours, either.”
He was silent a long time.
“Will you be taking me back?” I said.
“They're letting me. Though I wasn't supposed to go before.”
Just then I remembered something I'd meant to ask before. “What happened to the submarine?” I said.
“What submarine?”
“The one you brought me in.”
The road suddenly lit up ahead. It lit up for miles like a long yellow snake. It did it automatically on dangerous roads when another car was coming. We'd left the pass between mountains now. We were on a track over a precipice, and he'd slowed. The other car appeared presently and passed, and the road faded into darkness again. I saw him peering over the side. Something was glimmering below.
“What is it?” I said.
“Lake Umbra. The deepest in Egon.”
“What's in it?”
“Nothing. That's the point of it. It gives an idea of the abyss. I'll show you.”
He stopped the car and fiddled with the dashboard, and we took off. We took off over the path and went down a few thousand feet to the lake.
It was a black lake, very still, between mountain walls. He pressed a switch and the car roof closed. Then we dropped in the water.
We dropped and dropped, in blackness.
“Can you feel it?” he said. I felt something. Something was changing around me.
“I can't see,” I said.
He switched the light on.
The dashboard had moved. It had moved several feet ahead. It was still moving. It was twenty feet ahead, thirty, and still going. The whole front of the car was stretching. The sides were stretching, too. Ahead, a filmy substance appeared between us and the dashboard. It turned solid. Just while I was looking, it turned into a wall. The car doors were turning into walls.
I looked behind me and saw the back of the car had become a wall. And right the same moment, I realized the seat I was in wasn't a car seat any more. It was an easy chair. He was in one, too. We were at a low table. There was a carpet on the floor, and a sofa all along one wall. The room was about thirty feet long, and music began softly playing in it.
“Recognize it?” he said.
I was staring about, speechless.
“You asked about it,” he said.
&nb
sp; “Is this — the submarine?”
“It's a submarine, a car, a plane. It's my vehicle. It's programmed to do these things. It's just stretch mechanics.”
We were still dropping. We were dropping fast. We must have dropped thousands of feet before he stopped the boat. He slid a panel from beneath the table, and pressed it, and the boat darkened and the wall lit up. Except, again, I saw it wasn't the wall but what was outside that had lit up. It hadn't lit up much. He pressed some more but it didn't light up any more. It stayed a mud colour, like fog.
“That's all the light in it,” he said. “It never took in any more. It's heavy water. They bring kids here to give them an idea of the abyss. They can't show them the abyss itself.”
“Why not?”
“They can't,” he said abruptly. But all of a sudden he said a lot more. It seemed to shoot out of him as if he'd bottled it up and couldn't hold it any longer. He said he'd never get over how he'd killed me, or the pain I'd suffered. I started telling him I'd already forgotten it, but he wouldn't let me speak.
He said he wouldn't forget me: he kept saying it. He said he knew everything about me, and he liked me better than anyone in the world, and he couldn't bear to lose me, though he knew I had to go.
We just floated, a few thousand feet under water, and he kept talking. He said he wouldn't let a day pass without thinking of me. He said if he got through his exam the way he wanted, he wouldn't just think of me: he'd be with me. He started telling me about the exam and what he wanted to do.
He said it was mind communications. His grandfather was a director of the Thought Institute and had one of the minds they used for distant thought. He had fifty thousand lines in his mind and they used them continuously, like a telephone exchange, even when he was asleep. The minds weren't only used for transmitting messages. They ran factories in space; they ran power lines for space energy; they navigated ships in space.
He said if he passed his exam, he'd do a year's preliminary and then another test to see if he was ready for the standard course. The course ran eighty years, then he'd go to university for another thirty before starting mind communications.
I was slowly working it out. I worked out that if he did his preliminary, and then the standard course, and after it the university one, he'd be 210 before he started mind communications. I'd be 123 by then! I'd be long dead by then! I asked how he thought he'd be able to “be” with me just after passing the first test.
He said the test wasn't anything. All you had to do was get on a thought wave with an examiner the other side of Egon. You got a flash in your mind when it happened. The examiner knew you'd be doing it, so you only had to get the time right. He said he could almost do it now, and my mind was so familiar he knew he could do it with me.
I asked if I'd know he'd be doing it, and he said I wouldn't. He said I wouldn't remember anything of him, not the slightest trace. And that made him so moody, he said he wanted to do something for me, something special, just to prove he'd never forget me. And suddenly he thought of it.
We were going up then. We left the lake and he turned the boat back into a car, and we hit the road and started off again.
But he was so excited he couldn't speak for a few minutes. Then he began nodding, and said he'd do it. He said it was an unbelievable thing but he'd do it.
I said, “Do what?”
He said, “Show you the abyss.”
I asked what was so special about the abyss.
He said it was holy. He said there was no way I could imagine it. It was made of nothing. There was no air or gas or water in it, no energy, no time. But all life came from it so it was holy.
I asked how I'd know it was holy if I'd been erased. He said he'd bring my memory back. He'd bring back the part I needed to know him. Then he'd show me the abyss, and it would prove he'd kept his promise, and he'd erase me again. He was sure he could do that, though he couldn't erase all I knew now. No single person could, and only specialists could do the operation, anyway.
I asked what kind of operation it was, and he shook his head. He said the problem was the knowledge was all over my mind now. The doctor at the lake had told him. A mind was so active that even if you took out ninety-nine per cent of it, the one per cent left could start remembering everything all over again. The specialists took everything out, and put back what they had to. And several of them did it together so they could check everything went back in the right order and that the mind wasn't left mad.
He saw I was scared but he told me not to worry. He said he wouldn't leave me. He'd be with me all the time. And he wouldn't say goodbye before the operation just to prove we'd say goodbye after. We'd see each other after, and know each other after, and he promised it. It didn't stop me being scared. And it didn't help to look at him.
I saw he was scared, too.
Even now I can't remember it properly. I've been trying, and I can't. I know it happened in the palace. I know I was on a couch, and that his father was there, and that five of them did it. But I'm not sure it's my own memory. I might have got it from his memory.
He was there: I know that. The five of them and his father had moved away. But he was still standing beside me, and he said, “They're discussing the easiest way to do it.”
I said, “Will I feel it?”
“I'm sure you won't. I'm pretty sure,” he said. But his lips were dry, and he was licking them. “Anyway, I'll be with you. And I'll do what I promised. I'll keep nodding at you, so you'll know I'll keep the promise.”
Then the specialists were back, and I was looking up at them, my heart thumping.
“Just relax,” one of them said, and that's all I remember any of them saying. They'd bent over me and stared right in my eyes. And I was blinking up at them. I could see Dido behind, still nodding and licking his lips, and I licked my own, and waited for it to happen.
I just kept blinking.
I didn't stop blinking.
What happened must have happened in a blink.
26. Into Nothing
Dido was saying, “Barry?” And I said, “Yes,” and blinked round to see where the others were. They weren't there any more. I wasn't in the palace any more. I was in the submarine. I was in the main room of it, lying on the sofa and blinking up at him. I couldn't think how I'd got here. I couldn't think when I'd got here.
He said, “Do you remember me, Barry?”
I said, “Of course I remember you.”
“Do you remember the palace?”
“Of course I remember it.”
“Do you remember Plum Lake?”
“What lake?” I said.
“Plum Lake. Have you heard of it?”
I hadn't. I'd never heard of anywhere like that. I felt confused. I kept remembering things and forgetting them again as if I was going off to sleep or trying to wake up. “Are we going there?” I said. I had an idea we were going somewhere.
“Not now,” he said, and looked relieved. He felt my head. “I think I've done it right. . .” He was looking at me closely. “Do you remember if I made you a promise of any kind?”
He had made me a promise. He'd been nodding to let me know he'd keep it. “Yes,” I said, and hung on to it before it went. He'd promised to show me a place with nothing in it. There was something dreadful about it, and its name suddenly swam into my mind. “Abyss,” I said.
“Okay.” He licked his lips. “I'll do it, then. Barry — a lot has happened to you lately. You won't remember it. I've brought back just a bit. I hope it's the right bit. I mustn't interfere with the rest. They've put things in your mind that you'll need when you get back.”
“Are we going back?” I said.
“We're going up. That's why —”
He stopped. A shuddering had started in the boat. He cocked his head as if listening. In the same moment I remembered having seen him do it before. And when he spoke I had a weird feeling he'd said the same thing before. He said, “Now. We're at it.”
“At what?”
“The abyss.”
He slid a panel from beneath the table and pressed it. There was a stronger tremor, like a high-speed lift slowing, and he looked at me for a few moments uncertainly. Then he touched a control, and the boat darkened and the sea lit up. It lit up for miles. He touched another control, and everything lit up. It lit up above, below, on all sides. I knew I'd seen this before, too, but with a difference. There was little to see now. All around was pale honey light, and ahead of us a white mist. The mist seemed to be in motion, swirling.
I saw the boat had stopped, but it hadn't stopped shuddering. It shuddered like a jet before take-off.
“We have to go to the control room,” he said.
I could see the control room: its panels and dials were glimmering ahead, as if in space. I seemed to be in space as we walked there; all the structure of the boat transparent now. I couldn't see the floor. I couldn't see the roof or walls. I just walked in space. The furniture hung in it. He turned left, then right, and the bathroom passed, and beds suspended in nowhere, and we were in the control room.
I could see the nose of the boat, nudging this way and that as if sniffing ahead. The wall of mist was ahead. It swirled for miles on either side, like a mountain range.
“Our own power's no use here,” he said. “We go on thought to star power.”
He pressed a button and a screen above the cockpit lit up. It lit up with thousands of points of light. A circle appeared from the corner of the screen and began moving. It moved about the screen for a few seconds before stopping. It pulsed brightly for a moment or two and turned purple. Then the pinpoints of light that it ringed slowly faded, leaving just one which turned purple and began to pulse with it. The pulsations fixed and beat together as the pinpoint began to expand. It expanded till it filled the circle exactly.
Under Plum Lake Page 9
