An act of recreation.
And now there were two identical aircraft locked in great green bubbles. And now the spider robots, with the exhausts from jet attachments on their pseudo-limbs writing brief vapour messages in the sky, drifted lazily down and into the top bubble, coming to rest upon the skin of the duplicate aircraft. And after them, like surrealist sausages, drifted a string of sixteen green plastic containers. Man sized.
The spider robots opened the door into the plane. Two of them entered it. Presently they began to hand out life-size dolls, stiff, immobile. The dolls were laid carefully into the containers. The lids were closed. The containers, each nursed by a spider robot, were lifted out of the green bubble and brought up to the great discus that hung over the world.
Presently, sixteen containers and sixteen spider robots had entered the discus. Presently the top bubble popped, exploded, imploded, disappeared. And there was no duplicate aircraft. Nothing.
Presently the lower bubble popped silently.
And the jet from Stockholm to London continued unconcernedly on its way.
The opening in the great space vehicle closed, and it rose towards the stars.
Then the stars dissolved, and Russell was lost once more in the green void of the Sphere of Creation. He was neither living nor dead… He was no more than a green thought in a green shade—a thread of consciousness in the profound, impossible silence of unbeing.
The thread shivered, and the movement became clothed in whispers…
“Thus do ghosts create ghosts. Thus were the facsimiles obtained. As it was with the aircraft travelling from Stockholm to London, so also was it with the red spice caravan journeying from the Kingdom of Ullos to the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Gren Li. So, too, with the settlement of those you call the People of the River. They, like you and your companions, were englobed by projected Spheres of Creation. The replicas were made, though the originals were unaware of their manufacture. The replicas were made— molecule for molecule, heartbeat for heartbeat, thought for thought… Thus, Russell Grahame, Member of Parliament for Middleport North, has returned to London and has resigned from the Parliamentary Labour Party. Thus Anna Markova, privileged now and then to journey from Moscow to Western Europe, continues to write her features for the Russian Press. Thus Farn zem Marur serves Absu mes Marur, gonfalonier of the western keeps, in a far country and in the name of the white queen and the black…
“The burden of knowledge is heavy, is it not?” went on the whispering voice. “Little one, how will you face the realization that you and your companions are no more than replicas of those who knew not that the very pattern of their bodies and minds would be infused into an alien world? Russell Grahame is elsewhere. Anna Markova is elsewhere. Farn zem Marur is elsewhere. All who live behind the barrier of mist are duplicates of those who exist elsewhere. Duplicates with slight modification of the language areas.
Duplicates supplied with duplicate foods, duplicate animals, duplicate habitations. Have the Vruvyir then abducted you from your own world? Demonstrably, they have not. They created you. Surely, you are their property?”
There was silence. A green silence. Time was demolished. Minutes, hours, days, years, centuries drowned in the opaque green ocean that existed in the Sphere of Creation. The being who had thought of himself as Russell Grahame almost drowned with them.
But somewhere… Somewhere there was a cry of defiance, a courageous rearguard action of sanity, a surge of affirmation.
“I am!” shouted a disembodied voice. “I am myself! I exist! I think! I sorrow! I hope! I am no one’s property! I am a man!”
Came the whisper once more. “Little one, is it greatness or is it madness? You have seen what you have seen.”
“I am myself!” shouted the voice. “Let who can destroy me! None shall possess me!”
“Child,” said the whisper, “truly you are alive. That much you may know. You are alive and with the ability to create new life. And in this, you are greater than those who crossed the light-years to fashion you in the image of a man. The Vruvyir are dead. They have played their part since the dawn of creation. But now they are dead. You are the living, creative image of a man. They are no more than ghosts of ghosts, duplicated as you were—but not from the image itself, only from the image of an image of an image through unimaginable epochs. They reach to you from the past. Their greatness and their skills are almost spent. You and your kind—their children indeed—are an act of faith, an offering to the future… Child, tomorrow, or the day after, or the year after, or the century or the millennium after, the mnemonic will fail, the kinetic will fail, and the last Sphere of Creation will be no more than a legend in the minds of children.
Let the children of your children’s children live to demonstrate that the Vruvyir, leaping from their parent star, did not leap in vain… Rest now, for the burden is heavy. Rest now, and prepare to pay the price for reaching out into the deeps.”
The greenness rippled, became deeper. There was nothing in all eternity but the drunkenness of an absolute fatigue. There was nothing in all eternity but the blackness of oblivion.
CHAPTER THIRTY
DAYLIGHT CREPT UP over the edge of the great green savannah to reveal two plastic coffins/boxes lying in the middle of the road between the hotel and the supermarket. A Stone Age warrior, incongruously wearing a jacket of animal skins, tattered woven trousers and plaited sandals, with a steel axe in his hand and half a dozen plucked chickens held by their extended necks and slung loosely over his shoulder, walked purposefully out of the green wilderness and along the strip of road towards the Erewhon Hilton.
He saw the coffins and stopped.
He saw the coffins just as their occupants pushed the lids off.
Russell was the first to climb out. He gazed around him, blinked, staggered a little, then held his head. Then he heard Anna groan, lying by his feet. He stooped and helped her up. They held each other tightly for a moment, saying nothing— because there was too much to say.
They gazed wonderingly at the silent hotel. Then they, noticed the Stone Age warrior.
With a great shout, he dropped axe and chickens and ran towards them. Even as he moved, there was an answering shout from the Erewhon Hilton.
“Russell, my friend!” said Ireg. “Anna! It has been a long time. You live. That is enough. My heart is very full.” He hugged them both.
Russell and Anna stared at him, stupefied. When they had last talked with him, Ireg’s vocabulary had been limited to that of a very primitive savage.
“How long?” demanded Russell intently.
Ireg grinned broadly. “Long enough for me to learn much. My head hurts with all that learning.”
Before Russell could get him to amplify the statement, people began to pour out of the Erewhon Hilton. Familiar faces. Familiar voices. And yet…
And yet there was the difference.
They were leaner and tougher. Their skins were crinkled and cracked with sunlight and wind. Their bodies were hard with exertion, and straight with confidence.
But the big difference was age.
John Howard’s hair was a silvered grey. Marion Redmar was heavily pregnant. Robert Hyman had lost an arm, and the stump was healed. Selene Bergere carried a baby at her breast. Mohan das Gupta was blind. And there were changes, subtle changes, in the others.
Russell licked his lips. He looked at Anna. She was swaying. He put out his arm to steady her.
People were talking, laughing, crying, asking questions. He heard nothing but the thought that rolled like thunder in his head: “Surely it was only the day before yesterday… Only the day before yesterday.”