Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov [63]
She wondered if Ebling Mis were seeing the same thing, and if not, what he did see. The wonder passed, and then—
She was watching again. The little figures—were they little figures?—little tiny women with burning hair that turned and bent too quickly for the mind to focus?—seized one another in star-shaped groups that turned—and the music was faint laughter—girls’ laughter that began inside the ear.
The stars drew together, sparked toward one another, grew slowly into structure—and from below, a palace shot upward in rapid evolution. Each brick a tiny color, each color a tiny spark, each spark a stabbing light that shifted patterns and led the eye skyward to twenty jeweled minarets.
A glittering carpet shot out and about, whirling, spinning an insubstantial web that engulfed all space, and from it luminous shoots stabbed upward and branched into trees that sang with a music all their own.
Bayta sat enclosed in it. The music welled about her in rapid, lyrical flights. She reached out to touch a fragile tree and blossoming spicules floated downwards and faded, each with its clear, tiny tinkle.
The music crashed in twenty cymbals, and before her an area flamed up in a spout and cascaded down invisible steps into Bayta’s lap, where it spilled over and flowed in rapid current, raising the fiery sparkle to her waist, while across her lap was a rainbow bridge and upon it the little figures—
A palace, and a garden, and tiny men and women on a bridge, stretching out as far as she could see, swimming through the stately swells of stringed music converging in upon her—
And then—there seemed a frightened pause, a hesitant, indrawn motion, a swift collapse. The colors fled, spun into a globe that shrank, and rose, and disappeared.
And it was merely dark again.
A heavy foot scratched for the pedal, reached it, and the light flooded in; the flat light of a prosy sun. Bayta blinked until the tears came, as though for the longing of what was gone. Ebling Mis was a podgy inertness with his eyes still round and his mouth still open.
Only Magnifico himself was alive, and he fondled his Visi-Sonor in a crooning ecstasy.
“My lady,” he gasped, “it is indeed of an effect the most magical. It is of balance and response almost beyond hope in its delicacy and stability. On this, it would seem I could work wonders. How liked you my composition, my lady?”
“Was it yours?” breathed Bayta. “Your own?”
At her awe, his thin face turned a glowing red to the tip of his mighty nose. “My very own, my lady. The Mule liked it not, but often and often I have played it for my own amusement. It was once, in my youth, that I saw the palace—a gigantic place of jeweled riches that I saw from a distance at a time of high carnival. There were people of a splendor undreamed of—and magnificence more than ever I saw afterwards, even in the Mule’s service. It is but a poor makeshift I have created, but my mind’s poverty precludes more. I call it ‘The Memory of Heaven.’ ”
Now through the midst of the chatter, Mis shook himself to active life. “Here,” he said, “here, Magnifico, would you like to do that same thing for others?”
For a moment, the clown drew back. “For others?” he quavered.
“For thousands,” cried Mis, “in the great Halls of the Foundation. Would you like to be your own master, and honored by all, wealthy, and . . . and—” his imagination failed him. “And all that? Eh? What do you say?”
“But how may I be all that, mighty sir, for indeed I am but a poor clown ungiven to the great things of the world?”
The psychologist puffed out his lips, and passed the back of his hand across his brow. He said, “But your playing, man. The world is yours if you would play so for the mayor