“That’s impossible. The galaxy evolved from a condensation of hydrogen gas.”
“So we believe.”
“Then what part could the lens play in it?”
“If a saturated solution is seeded with a small crystal, crystals will grow throughout the solution. A tiny seed can gather material and make a huge plant out of it. The lens is a resonant device linking macrocosm and microcosm. By means of very subtle radiations it is in contact with all parts of the galaxy and controls what takes place there.”
“But that’s fantastic! That’s impossible!” The Streall’s claims were so fantastic, so total, that Rodrone was becoming angry through his own inability to grasp it. “And what about all the other galaxies? Do they also owe their existence to these ‘cosmic gods’?”
“Some, perhaps. The special function of the lens is the formation of life. Nature makes dead galaxies. The makers of the lens make galaxies with life. And indeed, we know there is a difference between galaxies where life is present and where it is not.
“But that is not all. The lens is a four-dimensional plan, but a plan with an element of uncertainty in it. That is inevitable due to the quantum mechanical nature of the subatomic world.” As he said this, Rodrone realized that the Streall world-outlook had been misinterpreted by Mard Sinnt. “Hence, it constitutes a control of events, but a control that has to be exercised if the development is to go according to plan. This constitutes a feedback safety mechanism between the lens and Thiswhirl itself, ensuring that the system does not collapse. Certain races, at certain times, are entrusted with the task of exercising this control.”
The philosopher’s voice rose in volume. “At the present period of galactic history, the Streall are the chosen race, the only people given the freedom of the galaxy. But, just as the lens must exist to counteract the uncertainty of nature, and just as a guardian race must exist to counteract the subatomic indeterminacy of the lens, what is there that can safeguard against the incompetence of that chosen race? It was at this point, the weak link in the chain, that disaster struck. One and a half thousand years ago the lens was in transit from one place of safekeeping to another, under the supervision of the despised Seffatt.”
“Seffatt?” Rodrone echoed. “He had something to do with it?”
“You know the name? Perhaps you have heard legends. The ship in which the lens traveled was struck by an unpredicted and unusually powerful charge of radiation from a supernova. The crew lost consciousness and the ship, out of control, wandered into an asteroid belt. Automatically it separated into sections, as our ships are designed to do. The section carrying the lens was never recovered despite all efforts. Yet, centuries later, it must have been found by someone, for only recently the lens became an item of merchandise in man-carried interstellar traffic. Thus you see the burden that has lain on the Streall race all these years.”
“It hardly seems to be Seffatt’s fault,” Rodrone muttered.
“There remains the possibility that, by choosing an alternative route, he could have avoided the catastrophe. Therefore the blame is his.”
Silence descended for nearly half a minute before the Streall spoke again. “The loss of the lens meant that the destiny of the galaxy was at the mercy of random happenings, of chance biological mutations. Our worst fears were realized with the emergence of man and his intrusion into the Hub. There should never have been men in the Hub. You should not have become space creatures. You were only an atom in the galactic drama, to be played on the stage of a single planet and vanish in a little time. Instead, men have become a horror of multiplication, like electrons streaming away from a heavy atom which is constantly replenished, creating new electrons where none should be.
“Men are a cancer, a dangerous virus spreading endlessly!”
“That may be bad fortune for some, but it is good fortune for us,” Rodrone retorted.
“It is bad fortune for everybody. There is in your lives none of the orderliness which the proper function of the lens brings to planetary creatures. You are a horror of chaos and disorder. With you, anything can happen. How perfectly you demonstrate the wisdom of the lens, which ordains that there should at any time be only one star-traveling species in the galaxy! But now, we shall be able to rectify the error. The lens is not limited in its action to the present, it can also range through the future and the past. By amending the fault at the right point, we shall wipe out your past. Humanity will have thrived hardily and fallen into decay, without ever reaching beyond the atmosphere of the home planet.”
“Is that so?” said Rodrone savagely. “Well I like things as they are.”
“Can it really be that your mind does not submit to necessity, now that you have learned the truth?” the philosopher asked in amazement.
“You are truly naive if you think I will submit to being cast into a planetary prison! I think the galaxy is doing all right as it is.”
“It will end in dissolution and disaster!”
Rodrone laughed.
Tentatively, the Streall shuffled towards the lens. “I have often dreamed of such a thing…” he murmured, and bent, staring intently.
Something made Rodrone follow his gaze. As he did so, a strange sense of distance came over him. Following it, he experienced the same speeded-up consciousness that came from the use of the drug DPKL-59.
Perhaps it was his long-standing connection with the drug that caused to happen what happened. It took him some moments to realize exactly what was taking place. The Streall philosopher, impatient to taste the lens’s secrets, was using his knowledge of special mental techniques to enter it. Here at last was the key to controlling it that Rodrone had sought. And as the philosopher created an opening, Rodrone was sucked in alongside him…
Rodrone was hanging in space, yet it was not space as he knew it. It was atomic space, where energies hum and flash with an urgency not known in the slow-moving macrocosm. Although there was no sound, he heard things with his mind—in fact he had no body. He heard a huge grinding noise, which his instinct told him was the change in quantic states of subatomic particles. Then he penetrated further into the great swirl of the atomic galaxy, extending his mind into the very atoms themselves.
Worlds existed within those atoms. They were not the same as planets, there was nothing corresponding to that spatial phenomenon, but they were analogous. And in these worlds, analogy creatures lived.
He recognized that these creatures were identical to the creatures of the macrogalaxy, in that there was a one-to-one relationship. He could not understand how the relationship was maintained, or how the one remained always identical to the other—but what, after all, was cause and effect? Physics had already proved that they didn’t exist.
With a thrill, he realized that this was the world of possible change. This was the meaning of indeterminacy. There was a hint of split paths, as a result of which mutually contradictory events existed simultaneously.
This was the point of contention. In the macrocosm only one out of all the possibilities could become actual. The makers of the lens had carefully prepared their drama and written the script of galactic history, but they had been unable to eradicate indeterminacy from the atomic world. Thus they were faulted by the nature of things. Thiswhirl, Rodrone saw, was becoming the rogue galaxy, splitting up into its own fragmentary playlets as the cancerous energies of man radiated through the Hub. And this was what he wanted! In that disorganized Hub, nearly everything that could happen did happen somewhere. So what if some of it was bizarre? He thought of the deadliners, of Mard Sinnt and his son… but even so, it pleased him more than the vast, orderly system that the Streall wished to institute at the behest of the makers of the lens. The indeterminacy of the atomic world was what made the lens—and through it the real world, the macrocosm—subject to alteration by the action of purely mental forces. All that was needed, in fact, was to cross the protective force-field surrounding it. This the Streall had done—unwittingly, for the both of them! Rodrone felt the presence of the Streall philosopher now, like a powerful, adult system of mental vectors arrowing through the abstract, evanescent realm, bent on change. He intended to enter the past and form a mirror-barrier around an electron that somehow had become too energetic. In this way he could prevent the spread of man.