"He was completely unconscious at first. I had left him alone for awhile. I was in another part of the building. When I came back I found him lying on the floor. He had been reading. The spools were scattered all around him. His face was blue. His breathing was irregular. There were repeated muscular spasms, as before."
"What did you do?"
"I entered the room and carried him to the bed. He was rigid at first, but after a few minutes he began to relax. His body became limp. I tested his pulse. It was very slow. Breathing was coming more easily. And then it began."
"It?"
"The talk."
"Oh." Ryan nodded.
"I wish you could have been here. He talked more than ever before. On and on. Streams of it. Without pause. As if he couldn't stop."
"Was -- was it the same talk as before?"
"Exactly the same as it's always been. And his face was lit up. Glowing. As before."
Ryan considered. "Is it all right for me to go into the room?"
"Yes. It's almost over."
Ryan moved to the door. His fingers pressed against the code lock and the door slid back into the wall.
Jon did not notice him as he came quietly into the room. He paced back and forth, eyes shut, his arms wrapped around his body. He swayed a little, rocking from side to side. Ryan came to the center of the room and stopped.
"Jon!"
The boy blinked. His eyes opened. He shook his head rapidly. "Ryan? What -- what did you want?"
"Better sit down."
Jon nodded. "Yes. Thank you." He sat down on the bed uncertainly. His eyes were wide and blue. He pushed his hair back out of his face, smiling a little at Ryan.
"How do you feel?"
"I feel all right."
Ryan sat down across from him, drawing a chair over. He crossed his legs, leaning back. For a long time he studied the boy. Neither of them spoke. "Grant says you had a little attack," Ryan said finally.
Jon nodded.
"You're over it now?"
"Oh, yes. How is the time ship coming?"
"Fine."
"You promised I could see it, when it's ready."
"You can. When it's completely done."
"When will that be?"
"Soon. A few more days."
"I want to see it very much. I've been thinking about it. Imagine going into time. You could go back to Greece. You could go back and see Pericles and Xenophon and -- and Epictetus. You could go back to Egypt and talk to Ikhnaton." He grinned. "I can't wait to see it."
Ryan shifted. "Jon, do you really think you're well enough to go outside? Maybe --"
Ryan shifted. "Jon, do you really think you're well enough to go outside? Maybe --"
"Your attacks. You really think you should go out? Are you strong enough?"
Jon's face clouded. "They're not attacks. Not really. I wish you wouldn't call them attacks."
"Not attacks? What are they?"
Jon hesitated. "I -- I shouldn't tell you, Ryan. You wouldn't understand."
Ryan stood up. "All right, Jon. If you feel you can't talk to me I'll go back to the lab." He crossed the room to the door. "It's a shame you can't see the ship. I think you'd like it."
Jon followed him plaintively. "Can't I see it?"
"Maybe if I knew more about your -- your attacks I'd know whether you're well enough to go out."
Jon's face flickered. Ryan watched him intently. He could see thoughts crossing Jon's mind, written on his features. He struggled inwardly.
"Don't you want to tell me?"
Jon took a deep breath. "They're visions."
"What?"
"They're visions." Jon's face was alive with radiance. "I've known it a long time. Grant says they're not, but they are. If you could see them you'd know, too. They're not like anything else. More real than, well, than this." He thumped the wall. "More real than that."
Ryan lit a cigarette slowly. "Go on."
It all came with a rush. "More real than anything else! Like looking through a window. A window into another world. A real world. Much more real than this. It makes all this just a shadow world. Only dim shadows. Shapes. Images."
"Shadows of an ultimate reality?"
"Yes! Exactly. The world behind all this." Jon paced back and forth, animated by excitement. "This, all these things. What we see here. Buildings. The sky. The cities. The endless ash. None is quite real. It's so dim and vague! I don't really feel it, not like the other. And it's becoming less real, all the time. The other is growing, Ryan. Growing more and more vivid! Grant told me it's only my imagination. But it's not. It's real. More real than any of these things here, these things in this room."
"Then why can't we all see it?"
"I don't know. I wish you could. You ought to see it, Ryan. It's beautiful. You'd like it, after you got used to it. It takes time to adjust."
Ryan considered. "Tell me," he said at last. "I want to know exactly what you see. Do you always see the same thing?"
"Yes. Always the same. But more intensely."
"What is it? What do you see that's so real?"
Jon did not answer for awhile. He seemed to have withdrawn. Ryan waited, watching his son. What was going on in his mind? What was he thinking? The boy's eyes were shut again. His hands were pressed together, the fingers white. He was off again, off in his private world.
"Go on," Ryan said aloud.
So it was visions the boy saw. Visions of ultimate reality. Like the Middle Ages. His own son. There was a grim irony in it. Just when it seemed they had finally licked that proclivity in man, his eternal inability to face reality. His eternal dreaming. Would science never be able to realize its ideal? Would man always go on preferring illusion to reality?
His own son. Retrogression. A thousand years lost. Ghosts and gods and devils and the secret inner world. The world of ultimate reality. All the fables and fictions and metaphysics that man had used for centuries to compensate for his fear, his terror of the world. All the dreams he had made up to hide the truth, the harsh world of reality. Myths, religions, fairy tales. A better land, beyond and above. Paradise. All coming back, reappearing again, and in his own son.
"Go on," Ryan said impatiently. "What do you see?"
"I see fields," Jon said. "Yellow fields as bright as the sun. Fields and parks. Endless parks.
Green, mixed in with the yellow. Paths, for people to walk."
Green, mixed in with the yellow. Paths, for people to walk."
"Men and women. In robes. Walking along the paths, among the trees. The air fresh and sweet. The sky bright blue. Birds. Animals. Animals moving through the parks. Butterflies. Oceans. Lapping oceans of clear water."
"No cities?"
"Not like our cities. Not the same. People living in the parks. Little wood houses here and there. Among the trees."
"Roads?"
"Only paths. No ships or anything. Only walking."
"What else do you see?"
"That's all." Jon opened his eyes. His cheeks were flushed. His eyes sparkled and danced. "That's all, Ryan. Parks and yellow fields. Men and women in robes. And so many animals. The wonderful animals."
"How do they live?"
"What?"
"How do the people live? What keeps them alive?"
"They grow things. In the fields."
"Is that all? Don't they build? Don't they have factories?"
"I don't think so."
"An agrarian society. Primitive." Ryan frowned. "No business or commerce."
"They work in the fields. And discuss things."
"Can you hear them?"
"Very faintly. Sometimes I can hear them a little, if I listen very hard. I can't make out any words, though."
"What are they discussing?"
"Things."
"What kind of things?"