by E. C. Tubb
I was young then, and romantic, and still had to learn of the hard cynicism that the city instils into all who seek fame and fortune within the confines of its narrow streets. My work was hard, the hours long and I had little time and less money for pleasure. And so I, as many others have done, found what pleasure I could as cheaply as I could. And there is no entrance fee to the market places.
I became known after a while, and tolerated with that innate good humour which is a Londoner’s birthright. I was chaffed a little and it would have been beyond the forbearance of flesh and blood to refrain from trying to sell, but my refusals were taken in good part and my presence at the stalls did no harm, did some good in a way for customers will always gather where there is apparently another of their own kind.
Loneliness was my companion then as it has been all my life and, inevitably, I sought escape from monotony and dull routine in the realm of books. I was catholic in my taste, reading avidly any and all tales of adventure, romance and fables of foreign lands. My reading did not detract from the pleasure I found in the market places, rather it added to it, so that I would stand, with, perhaps, an old, battered telescope in my hand, a half of a spectacle frame or a carved oaken toilet box, my thoughts winging wild flights of imagination.
Was this telescope used at Trafalgar? Did some sea-dog lift it to his eye to stare at some scudding sail? Were those dents the result of war, the thunder of the guns and the crash of round-shot splintering the masts and scuppers of some long-vanished ship of the line? Did that spectacle frame once rest on the ears of some noted wit of an age when wit was the essence of social conversation? Had some perfumed dandy kept his pearl studs in that box and, if so, why had it passed from hand to hand to reach this, its final resting place? Had there been a duel, pistols for two and coffee for one or, perhaps, the flash of small swords in a dew-wet park?
Wild speculations and yet they amused me and lifted my thoughts from the common round. And, in all my searching, admit it or not, there was the hint of even wilder adventure. I had been reading the Arabian Nights and kindred stories and my head was filled with tales of magic Djinn, strange lamps, Seals of Solomon and all the myth and fable of an unreal world. Other stories, too, had fired my imagination, tales of strange things being found in strange shops, articles which all unknown to the vendor, held unusual powers.
It would be nice, I thought, to stumble across such a treasure in my wanderings around the stalls of the market places. Impossible, of course, but, hope being what it is and youthful imagination as strong as it was, desire led my common sense into a winding, mist-filled path. So it was that I took to rubbing every foreign-seeming object and muttering some half-shamed command as I rubbed. Brasses from India, probably manufactured in Sheffield, were my prime subjects. Then oddly shaped fragments whose purpose had become lost in time. I was self-conscious about it and yet, so strong was my conviction that such things had once happened and could well happen again, that I could not resist my search for an object that would contain more than it seemed.
And, incredibly, I found it.
* * *
I did not know then and I do not know now exactly what it was that I found. I can guess of course, and speculate and toy with fantastic imageries but I do not know. And I shall never know, not for certain and never without a shred of sneaking doubt. But I believe now, as I did not suspect then, that I had found Paradise…
In shape it was a flattened ovoid roughly three inches in diameter and about half as thick in the centre, tapering to a rounded edge. It looked like a sea-washed stone and yet, despite that initial appearance, it held within itself, either because of shape or substance, something that attracted both hand and eye. There was a feel about it, a sensation impossible to describe but oddly alien to the touch. It was a long time before I decided that the sensation was partly due to it not appearing to have any temperature but that was only a part if the reason; the true reason I never did discover.
I studied it, turning it over and over in my hands, searching for some flaw in the smooth surface and it was with a mounting excitement that I discovered that the surface at which I gazed was not its true surface at all. Somehow, either because of heat or pressure or, perhaps, by the design of some previous owner, the object had been coated with a rock-hard sediment of unglazed clay. Time and stress had flawed the covering so that it presented a false impression. It was smooth, yes, but that smoothness was superficial. As I stared I could discover a multitude of tiny lines, a microscopic network as if minute spiders had covered it with the delicate tracery of their webs. .
It was not easy to disguise my excitement, harder still to put down the object, to lift other fragments of the displayed rubbish and to casually, seemingly as if by afterthought, to return to the rounded stone. It was a normal practice, the usual sparring of those who wished to buy from those who had to sell, but I was an amateur at the game and I deluded no one but myself.
Even so the thing was cheap. To the vendor it was a stone, nothing more, a scrap of rubbish he had collected together with other litter, but he lauded it before asking his price and shrugged when I demurred and offered a little less. So I paid his price and he must have thought me a fool to squander coppers on such a useless thing. Coppers, when, as I know now, the thing was of a value beyond price.
But that was forty years ago and wisdom, for me, still waited in the future.
My first task was to attempt to clean my new possession. I examined it carefully with a borrowed glass and, with the point of a needle, prised and dug at one of the minute lines. I acted with exaggerated care, I did not want to damage it in any way through my ignorance but, as I probed, a tiny fragment of heat-dried clay came free revealing something beneath. Then I rested while I considered what to do next.
The thing had a coating, of that I was sure, but how to remove it without doing harm was not so clear. In the end I compromised and, filling a saucepan with water, set it to boil and immersed within the bubbling liquid the stone I had purchased. It was, I realize now, a forlorn thing to do. Water will not soften heat-dried clay; I might as well have tried to boil a brick into its virgin materials, but I was ignorant and impatient and used what materials I had to hand. Even so I finally began to despair. For hours I boiled the object, replenishing the water when it was necessary and squandering more coppers on further supplies of gas and, when my patience was exhausted, I lifted the stone from the saucepan and rested it on my tiny table. With glass and needle I sat ready to attack the coating once more and it was then that I discovered one of the peculiarities of the stone. It had no temperature.
I had thought that it would be too hot to touch and logic was with me on that assumption. It had been immersed for hours in boiling water and should, by now, be as hot as boiling water. It wasn’t—it was as when I had first touched it, strangely cool to the hand. It was while I sat considering this strangeness that I noticed that the clay-like coating was crumbling from the surface beneath.
Crumbling, not flowing or falling, but crumbling as if it yielded to pressure from beneath. Excitedly I picked up the ovoid and wiped it free of the last traces of the stuff that had covered it and then, entranced, sat and stared at what I held in my hand.
It was a jewel; somehow I never doubted that. It was smaller now the substance covering it had been a quarter of an inch in thickness, and it rested on my palm, cool and with very little weight. It was smooth and with the slickness of glass or of ice, of a peculiar granulated consistency, translucent and yet fogged so that the eye seemed to stare into limpid depths only to be baffled by inner walls of opacity. It was like staring into impact-shattered ice or layers of frosted glass but it was more than that for the eye was not repelled but attracted and it seemed to me, staring into the ovoid, that if I could but concentrate a little more, stare a little harder, then I would be able to peer into the heart of the misty dimness.
And, somehow, I wanted to do that, wanted to do it with every fibre of my being. To me, at that moment, nothing w
as so important than that I should stare into the heart of the stone. And so it was that I discovered the light within.
The stone was hollow, subconsciously I must have realized that all along, nothing of its size and composition could have been so light had it been solid. But even so it came as a shock to discover that, buried within the depth of the ovoid, a tiny suggestion of light floated and drifted like a thistledown on a gentle breeze. It was small, so small and so dim that I would never have seen it had not darkness fallen while I had sat wrapped in contemplation and had my eyes not been strained to focus on so small an area.
Rising, I lit the gas and by its flaring light examined the stone again. Because of the brightness or because of my breaking of concentration, I could no longer see the tiny speck of dim radiance within the ovoid and, indeed, I no longer cared to look. Tiredness had come upon me with an unusual swiftness and sleep beckoned like an entrancing woman. I yawned, and yawned again and, after what seemed like a long time, managed to summon strength to undress and turn down my bed. Two things yet remained to be done, one obvious and the other illogical but, nonetheless, I did them both. I turned out the gas and, picking up the stone, slipped it beneath my pillow. Why I should have done that I did not know. Perhaps it was the age-old instinct to guard a treasure or perhaps it was because of some deeper compulsion but, at the time, it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do.
And then I went to bed and fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow and, as soon as I closed my eyes, I dreamed.
I cannot describe that dream and, if I could, I would not. Some things are too personal for discussion, too intimate for anything but memory. I was young and poor and had few acquaintances and no friends. I lived in a cheap lodging and, as yet, I was a stranger to women. My days were a dull humdrum of monotonous routine with the prospect of promotion a tantalising wisp of promise and success to come. This was my life, my real life, but in my dream! Oh, God, in my dream!
I woke with memory surging in my head and felt almost a physical pain as I stared at the tiny square of un-curtained window and the rooftops outside. It took a little time for me to realize that was reality and that other, that glorious life, had been but a dream and, when realization came, the sting of tears dulled my eyes and I wished that I could turn and sleep again and lose myself forever in that wonderful world.
I did not. Habit is a stern taskmaster and my fear of unemployment was a very real one. And, I consoled myself, there would be other nights and, perhaps, I could dream the same dream again and again. It cheered me, that thought, so that the world seemed to be not so grim after all. Breakfast, poor and hurried though it was, cheered me even more for I was young and the young find it hard to be sad when well fed. It was only as I was opening the door that I remembered the stone.
Last night, without thought or logic, I had placed it beneath my pillow. Now, driven by the same impulse, I took it out and placed it on the window ledge so that the diffused rays of the sun would, shine directly on it during the day. And then, suddenly conscious of the need for haste, I ran from my room and down the stairs and only just managed to reach my office in time.
It was the beginning of what was to become routine.
* * *
I had heard men talk of the power of dreams and had never fully grasped what they meant. I now know that they were talking of a different form of dream; that they were really talking of ambition, but the words they used and the claims they made found an echo in my heart. Dreams, to me, began to replace reality so that each day when my work was done I would hurry home, snatch a hurried meal and then, almost with reverence, would lift the stone down from its ledge, place it beneath my pillow and retire at once to bed.
It was a bad habit and it began to have its effect. Without any form of exercise I grew thin and weedy, my natural paleness turning into a sickly pallor. My concentration suffered, how could rows of figures interest me when, each night, I was wafted to a world of my own? And it became more and more difficult to reach work on time. Fortunately my pallor was misconstrued; my superiors thought that it was due to too much studying at night, and I gained a false reputation, which enhanced me in their eyes. My lateness, however, was more serious. Twice I arrived behind time and twice I was warned and, when about a month after I had first acquired the stone, I woke to hear the church bells tolling the hour and knew that I was already late, I felt despair.
Employers then were not as lenient as they are now and to be late again was to invite the threatened discharge. My only hope was to feign illness and this I did, sending a message by my landlady’s son and then, sick with worry, settled down to spend the day as well as I might. Inevitably I examined the stone.
It fascinated me as it always had and now I had more cause for that fascination. The thing was alive, somehow I could sense that and, too, I sensed that it was the fount and cause of my dreams. Sitting with the ovoid poised in my hand, I stared at it as another man in a different time might have stared at a holy relic. But, unlike such a man, my mind teemed with questions.
How had it come here? Who had made it? What was its purpose and why had it been so thickly covered with a substance foreign to its nature? If it was alive, then who or what had given it birth? I sat with my back to the window, the ovoid in my hand, and I pondered with what wisdom I possessed on something, which, I now know, I had no hope of understanding.
Holding it in shadow, as I was, the tiny light within the stone shone with an unaccustomed brightness. It moved with a strange, restless urgency, totally unlike the first drifting motion I had discovered. My dreams, too, had of late, taken on a new, disturbing quality. There was a poignant quality about them, a soul-wrenching impression of utter despair so that I woke with a dreadful unease and spent the day in a moody depression. There was something I felt that needed to be done, something that I had to do and, coupled with this, there was an overwhelming impression of nostalgia and a hopeless yearning for something I could not quite understand.
So must a prisoner feel, I thought, cooped and hampered in his cell, tormented by bright memories of what he had missed and was missing and, too, the fearful urgency of the sense of the passage of time, the terrible knowledge that, even were he to escape, it would be too late. I could not analyze these impressions, they were not clear enough for that and, too, I lacked the experience to recognize them for what they were. All I knew was that, more and more of late, I had woken from my dreams conscious of a thing which had to be done and which I should do. But what that thing was I did not know.
Now, staring at the ovoid, I began to guess. It was alive, the thing within, and, somehow, it had been imprisoned within the stone in my hand. I had fed it, all unknowingly perhaps and without that intention, but I had given it the strength it lacked. Heat, perhaps, the heat from the boiling water, which had easily penetrated these minute cracks on the outer covering, had, at first, awakened it. And I had rested it in the sunshine and so given it the radiant energy on which it survived.
Insane speculation? Perhaps, and yet a sick mind in a sick body drifts easily into fantasy. To me, sitting with my back to the window, the ovoid pulsed in shadow in my hand, staring at the tiny mote of darting light and with my being tormented with strange, unaccustomed, dream-induced emotions, it all seemed logical enough. It answered too, the reason for the outer coating. Some previous owner, a man of scientific bent, perhaps, had reasoned as I did now and, to safeguard himself from dreams, had insulated the thing from outside sources of radiant energy. And, thinking so, it seemed to me a cruel and monstrous thing to have done. It was like penning a singing bird in a too-small cage and there leaving it for the gross pleasure of those who found enjoyment in the pleading trills of a broken-hearted creature.
Yet a cage may easily be opened and I could see no way to free the thing within the ovoid in my hand.
It was a new train of thought and it came to me without conscious volition. Never before had I thought of the possibility that the stone could be opened and yet, now tha
t I thought about it, it seemed obvious enough. It had been made and sealed after making; therefore it should be possible to reverse the procedure. The possibility excited me so that I ignored the thin, warning voice deep in my heart. Did I really want to open the ovoid? Did I really want to let loose what darted within? I had stumbled on a treasure equal to the Lamp of Aladdin for, though it could not give me material possessions, it could give me a world of my own beyond the wall of sleep. And a man can spend half his life, more if he tries, lost in sleep. It would be more than a fair exchange, this world of dreams for the world of reality. And what did the real world have to offer me in comparison with what I had tasted?
So evil must have whispered to Judas and, fool that I was, I prided myself on being stronger than he.
I opened the ovoid.
How even to this day I do not know. One moment I was turning it in my hands, my thoughts on freeing what lay imprisoned within, the next it lay in two hollow halves within my palms and, like a burning spark from some ancient fire, a mote of radiance darted past my head and out of the window and up and up into the infinite vastness of the sky. And I was left holding the broken ruin of what had been the most precious thing I was ever to know.
I was holding the broken shards of my life for, that night, I did not dream nor have I ever dreamed again.
Markets are wonderful places and part of their wonder is the people you meet. They walk slowly up and down, pausing at stalls heaped high with apparent rubbish and their hands pick and their eyes shadow as they stare at what they hold. Maybe they rub what is in their hand and mutter a little and that can be put down to the senility of age or the rash hope of youth. But the young do not deserve pity while the old deserve little else. So if you see an old man, bent now and with weak eyes peering through thick lenses, bearing the stamp of forty years of monotony and with a face almost devoid of hope, do not laugh at him as he picks and stares, examines and sighs, and turns away to try at some other stall.
