But even the saying of goodbyes had to run down finally.
“We’re all set,” I told Obsidian.
“All right,” he said. “Then, if you’ll just stand close to me, here.”
Porniarsk and I moved in until we were almost nose to nose with him, leaving a ring of unoccupied ground about ten feet wide around us. All at once, we were standing elsewhere, in a little open space between the trunks of massive elms spaced about thirty feet apart. We stood on something that looked like a linoleum rug, but felt underfoot like deep carpeting, a solid dark green in color. About us were some walls at odd angles, several large puff-type cushions ranging up to a size that would have made a comfortable queen-sized bed, and several of what looked like control panels on stands apparently connected to nothing.
I looked around.
“This is your living area and working quarters?” I asked Obsidian.
“Yes,” he said. “I think you’ll find it comfortable for the three of us. I can arrange the walls so that you can have separate rooms for privacy, if you like.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I assume we won’t be here long in any case, will we?”
“About the equivalent of five days of local time.”
“Five days?” I said. “I thought we’d be leaving for wherever it is in a matter of hours, if not minutes?”
“Oh, we’ve already left,” he said. He waved his hand and something like a picture window appeared between us and the trees to our left. The view in the picture window, however, was a view of black space, bright pinprick stars as thick as pebbles on a beach, and a blue and white earth-globe nearly filling the lower right-hand corner of the view.
I stared at the earth-globe and confirmed my first impression that it was visibly shrinking in size as I watched.
“I thought you said this was your working and living area?”
“It is.”
“It’s a spaceship, too?”
Obsidian waved a hand.
“I suppose you could call it that,” he said. “Actually, it’s more accurate to say it’s simply living quarters. The process of travelling between the stars isn’t much more cumbersome if we bring it along, however; and it’s a lot more comfortable if we do so.”
I turned about in a circle, on my heel.
“The trees and all,” I said. “That’s just an illusion?”
“Out here, yes,” Obsidian said. “Back when we first arrived, of course, you were looking at the actual surrounding forest.”
“When did we take off?”
“As soon as we arrived. But to call it a takeoff—”
“I know,” I said, “—doesn’t exactly describe what happened. Never mind. I’m not really interested in the mechanics of it, right now. All right then, if we really are going to be here for five days, I believe I’d appreciate a room of my own, after all; and I’d imagine Porniarsk would too.”
“It makes no difference to me,” said Porniarsk. “But I am interested in the mechanics of your space flight. Can I examine those control panels?”
“By all means,” said Obsidian. “If you like, I’ll explain them to you. They’re for work back on the planet we just left, actually. Our trip will be handled automatically.”
“I’m interested in all things,” said Porniarsk. “This is the effective result of being the avatar of an individual, Porniarsk, who has always been interested in all things—”
He checked himself.
“—I should probably say, was interested in all things.”
“Do you miss him?” Obsidian asked. “This individual of whom you were an avatar?”
“Yes,” said Porniarsk, “in a sense I do. It’s a little like realizing that part of myself is gone, or that I had a twin I now know I’ll never see again.”
The tone of his voice was perfectly calm and ordinary; but suddenly I found myself looking at him closely. I had never stopped to think of Porniarsk as having emotions, or stopped to consider what he might have lost in a personal sense by going forward in time with us.
“I should have asked you if you wanted to come with us,” I said.
“If you had, I’d have answered yes,” said Porniarsk. “The process of discovery and learning is what I was constructed for.”
“Yes,” I said.
I was suddenly very tired, with an almost stupefying feeling of fatigue. Part of it, undoubtedly, was the work schedule we had been keeping in the community these last few weeks. But the greater part was something more psychological and psychic than physical. In spite of Obsidian’s insistence that the testing I was about to take was that and no more, I was at last certain that I had reached the last arena, the moment of final confrontation.
I was like someone who had trained physically for months and years for one battle. I felt loose, light and ready, but drained and empty inside, hollow of all but the inevitability of the conflict toward which I was now marching inexorably. Not even enthusiasm was left—only a massive and silent acceptance of what would be.
“I think,” I said to Obsidian, “I’d like that private room now, if you don’t mind. I think I’d like to get some sleep.”
“To be sure,” he said.
Suddenly, the white walls were around me. I had not moved, but now I was enclosed, alone with the picture window, or screen, showing the innumerable stars and the shrinking Earth. I turned to the largest of the cushions and fell on it. For a second the lighting was still daylight strong, but just before I closed my eyes, it dimmed to nonexistence; and the space in which I now rested was lit only by the star-glow from the window.
I slept.
When I woke, the stars in the picture window were different. Not merely a little different; they bore no relationship to anything I had ever seen in the skies of Earth. Puzzled, I lay there looking at them while gradually I came to full alertness; and either automatically, or in response to some way of sensing my urge for better visibility, the lighting in the room slowly increased, back to the level of sunlight. I got up, explored, and found a doorway that let me into a bathroom, which was too good a replica of what I was familiar with to be anything but a construct created expressly for me by Obsidian.
Still, I was grateful for the fact that it looked so familiar. Part of my waking up had always been a morning routine involving a sharp razor blade, soap and a good deal of hot water. This out of the way, I left my private quarters and found Obsidian sleeping quietly on one of the larger cushions of the main area, Porniarsk busy doing incomprehensible things with one of the control consoles.
“Good morning, Marc,” he said, turning to look at me as I came up.
“Morning, if that’s what it is—” I lowered my voice, glancing at Obsidian. “Sorry, I forgot about him sleeping there.”
“I don’t think you need worry,” said Porniarsk at ordinary conversational volume. “I don’t believe he hears any noise he doesn’t want to hear until he wakes at the time he wants to wake.”
I looked at Obsidian curiously.
“Good trick,” I said. “What’s the breakfast situation?”
“There’s food of various kinds in a room there,” said Porniarsk, pointing a tentacle at a doorway in one of the walls that had been there when we arrived.
I went to look and found he was right. It was a pleasant, small room, apparently surrounded completely by the illusion of the forest in forenoon sunlight. There were chairs, my style, and a table, my style; and a piece of furniture that looked like a heavy, old fashioned wooden wardrobe.