Mark Torre's theory had postulated a dark area always existing in Man's knowledge of himself, an area where self-perception had to fail, as the perception of any viewing mechanism fails in the blind area where it, itself, exists. In that area, ran Torre's theory, the human race would at last find something which had been lost in the people of the Splinter Cultures on the younger worlds; and this, once found, would be the key to the race's last and greatest growth.
There was a largeness of dream and purpose about that theory, and the Encyclopedia itself, that had always resonated powerfully within Hal. That resonance touched him now as the jitney reached the point where the corners of four of the huge, insubstantial force-panels came together, and the jointure where their forces met dilated to reveal an aperture into the docking area that awaited them.
The jitney drifted in, very slowly it seemed, and settled into the cradle that waited for it. Abruptly, they were enclosed by a blaze of light. The aperture that had seemed so tiny as they had approached, now revealed itself to have the diameter of a chamber that dwarfed the jitney and was aswarm with human workers and machines.
Hal got to his feet and joined the procession of passengers moving to the exit port of the jitney. He stepped through the port, onto a sloping ramp and into a roar and clangor of sound, as the busy machines moved about the jitney on the metal floor and walls. Metal and magic… he went down the slope of the ramp and through a faintly hazy circle that was an entrance to the interior parts of the Encyclopedia. As he stepped through that circle, all the noise behind him was cut off. He found himself being carried forward by a movable floor, down a corridor walled in soft light, in a muted hush that welcomed him after the noise he had just left, and seemed to soften even the low-voiced conversations of his fellow passengers.
The line slowed, stopped, moved forward a couple of paces, stopped again, moved, stopped. The passengers ahead were displaying their clearance papers to a wall screen from which a thin-faced, black-haired young man looked out at them.
"Fine. Thank you." The young man nodded at the passenger ahead of Hal, and the passenger moved on. As Hal stepped level with the screen, the man moved aside out of camera range and a lively female face under a cloud of bright blonde hair, young enough to be that of a girl rather than of a woman, took the vacated space. Under the bright gold hair, she had a round, laughing expression and brown eyes with flecks of green swimming in their irises.
"I see…" She looked at Hal's papers as he held them up to the screen, then back to him. "You're Hal Mayne? Fine."
It seemed to Hal that her eyes met his with a particular friendliness; and a comfort came to him from seeing her that for a second dangerously weakened the wall that hid things in the back of his mind. Then he moved on.
The corridor continued. The people in front of him were moving more quickly now, single file down it. Ahead, a voice was speaking to them out of nowhere in particular.
"… If you'll please pause at the point where the corridor widens, and listen. Tell us if you hear anything. This is the Transit Point, at the center of the Index Room. You are now at the exact center of the communication system of the Encyclopedia. We do not expect you to hear anything; but if any of you do, will you speak up…"
More magic… they had moved what seemed like only a hundred meters; but now they were at the very center of the sphere that was the Encyclopedia. But neither Walter the InTeacher nor anyone else had ever mentioned to him anything about a Transit Point. He was not yet at the wide stationary spot that had been spoken of, but he found himself listening, as if there might be something he could hear even before he reached it. Vaguely, he felt the request to listen as if it had been a challenge. If there was something to hear there, he should be able to pick it up. He found himself straining to hear.
Almost - he could see the wide, unmoving spot now and he was only two people back from it - he could imagine that he was hearing something. But it was probably only the people who had already passed the Transit Point, discussing it among themselves. There was something familiar about their voices. He could not identify them but there was still a feeling of familiarity, although they seemed to be speaking a language he did not know. He had been trained to break down unfamiliar languages into familiar forms. If it was Indo-European… yes, it seemed to be a Romance tongue of some sort, one of the modern derivatives of Latin.
But their conversations were very loud now, and there seemed to be a number of them all talking at once. There was a single person left in front of him before he would reach the Transit Point. How could they expect anyone to hear anything at the Point if they were talking like this ahead of it - and behind, too, for that matter? The voices were all around him. Everybody in the line must be talking. The man just ahead of him stepped on, clearing the Transit Point. Hal stepped into it, stopped there, and the voices exploded.
Not tens of them, not hundreds or thousands, or even millions - but billions and trillions of voices in countless languages, arguing, shouting, calling to him. Only, they did not merge into one great, voiceless roar, like the radio roar of a universe. They each remained distinct and separate - unbelievably, he heard each one; and among them there were three he knew, calling out to him, warning him. The voice of Walter the InTeacher, of Malachi Nasuno, of Obadiah Testator - and with his identification of those three voices, the mental wall that had been protecting him finally crumbled and went down.
The Transit Point whirled around him. He was conscious, as of something heard from a little distance, of a sound coming from his own throat. He spun, staggered, and would have fallen - but he was caught and held upright. It was the young woman from the screen, the one with the green flecks in her eyes, who was holding him. Somehow she was here, physically, beside him; and she was not as small as he had thought her to be when he had seen her face on the screen. Still, his awkward, long-boned length was not easy to support; and, almost immediately, there were two men with her.
"Easy…hold him…" said one man; and something touched deep inside him, triggering a darkness like the spreading stain of biologic ink pushed out by a fleeing octopus. It flooded all through him, hiding all things in utter darkness, even his memory of what had happened on the terrace.
Gradually he roused once more, to silence and to peace. He was alone, naked, in a bed in a room walled by slowly changing, pastel colors. Besides the bed, and the table-surface beside it, there were a couple of chair floats hanging in the air, a desk, and a small pool with blue sides and floor that made the water in it seem much deeper than he guessed it actually to be. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked about him. The room had a disconcerting property of seeming to expand in the direction in which he was looking, although he was not conscious of any actual movement of its walls or floor. He looked around and then back at the bed in which he lay.
It had never really occurred to him as an important fact - although he had always been aware of it - that he had been raised under conditions that were deliberately spartan and archaic. It had always seemed only natural to him that the books he read should be heavy things of actual paper, that there should be no moving walkways in his home, or that the furniture there should be uniformly of solid, material construction, with physical legs that supported it upon the floor, rather than devices that appeared to float in midair, and to appear out of that same air or dissolve back into it at the touch of a control.