Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke [97]
Jan paused, feeling slightly foolish. There was something incongruous, even faintly absurd, about what he was doing.
Here was the climax of all history, yet he might have been a radio-commentator at a race-track or a boxing-ring. Then he shrugged his shoulders and put the thought aside. At all moments of greatness, he suspected, bathos had never been very far away-and certain he alone could sense its presence here.
"There have been three slight quakes in the last hour," he continued. "Their control of Earth's spin must be marvellous, but not quite perfect… You know, Karellen, I'm going to find it very hard to say anything your instruments haven't already told you. It might have helped if you'd given me some idea of what to expect, and warned me how long I may have to wait. If nothing happens, I'll report again in six hours, as we arranged…
"Hello! They must have been waiting for you to leave.
Something's starting to happen. The stars are becoming dimmer. It's as if a great doud is coming up, very swiftly, over all the sky. But it isn't really a doud. It seems to have some sort of structure-I can glimpse a hazy network of lines and bands that keep changing their positions. It's almost as if the stars are tangled in a ghostly spider's web.
"The whole network is beginning to glow-to pulse with light, exactly as if it were alive. And I suppose it is; or is it something as much beyond life as that is above the inorganic world?
"The glow seems to be shifting to one part of the sky-wait a minute while I move round to the other window.
"Yes-I might have guessed. There's a great burning column, like a tree of fire, reaching above the western horizon. It's a long way off, right round the world. I know where it springs from; they're on their way at last, to become part of the Overmind. Their probation is ended; they're leaving the last remnants of matter behind.
"As that fire spreads upwards from the Earth, I can see the network becoming firmer and less misty. In places, it seems almost solid-yet the stars are still shining faintly through it.
"I've just realized. It's not exactly the same, but the thing I saw shooting up above your world, Karellen, was very much like this. Was that part of the Overmind? I suppose you hid the truth from me so that I would have no preconceived ideas-so that I'd be an unbiased observer. I wish I knew what your cameras were showing you now, to compare it with what my mind imagines I'm seeing!
"Is this how it talks to you, Karellen, in colours and shapes like these? I've remembered the control screens on your ship and the patterns that went across them, speaking to you in some visual language which your eyes could read.
"Now it looks exactly like the curtains of the aurora, dancing and flickering across the stars. Why, that's what it really is, I'm sure-a great auroral storm. The whole landscape is lit up-it's brighter than day-reds and golds and greens are chasing each other across the sky-oh, it's beyond words, it doesn't seem fair that I'm the only one to see it-I never thought such colours- "The storm's dying down, but the great misty network is still there. I think that aurora was only a by-product of whatever energies are being released up there on the frontier of space.
"Just a minute; I've noticed something else. My weight's decreasing. What does that mean? I've dropped a pencil-it's falling slowly. Something's happened to gravity-there's a great wind coming up-I can see the trees tossing their branches down there in the valley.
"Of course-the atmosphere's escaping. Sticks and stones are rising into the sky, almost as if the Earth itself is trying to follow them out into space. There's a great cloud of dust, whipped up by the gale. It's becoming hard to see… perhaps It will dear in a moment.
"Yes-that's better. Everything movable has been stripped away-the dust clouds have vanished. I wonder how long this building will stand? And it's getting hard to breathe-I must try and talk more slowly.
"I can see clearly again.