The City And The Stars - Arthur C. Clarke [115]
The long line of fire smashed through the heart of the Universe, leaping from star to star. In a moment of time a thousand suns had died, feeding their energies to the monstrous shape that had torn along the axis of the Galaxy, and was now receding into the abyss.…
‘So the Empire left our Universe, to meet its destiny elsewhere. When its heirs, the pure mentalities, have reached their full stature, it may return again. But that day must still lie far ahead.
‘This, in its briefest and most superficial outlines, is the story of Galactic civilisation. Our own history, which to us seems so important, is no more than a belated and trivial epilogue, though one so complex that we have not been able to unravel its details. It seems that many of the older, less adventurous races refused to leave their homes; our direct ancestors were among them. Most of these races fell into decadence and are now extinct, though some may still survive. Our own world barely escaped the same fate. During the Transition Centuries—which actually lasted for millions of years—the knowledge of the past was lost or else deliberately destroyed. The latter, hard though it is to believe, seems more probable. For ages, Man sank into a superstitious yet still scientific barbarism during which he distorted history to remove his sense of impotence and failure. The legends of the Invader are completely false, although the desperate struggle against the Mad Mind undoubtedly contributed something to them. Nothing drove our ancestors back to Earth except the sickness in their souls.
“When we made this discovery, one problem in particular puzzled us in Lys. The Battle of Shalmirane never occurred—yet Shalmirane existed, and exists to this day. What is more, it was one of the greatest weapons of destruction ever built.
‘It took us some time to resolve this puzzle, but the answer, once it was found, was very simple. Long ago our Earth had a single giant satellite, the Moon. When, in the tug of war between the tides and gravity, the Moon at last began to fall, it became necessary to destroy it. Shalmirane was built for that purpose, and round its use were woven the legends you all know.’
Callitrax smiled a little ruefully at his immense audience.
‘There are many such legends, partly true and partly false, and other paradoxes in our past which have not yet been resolved. That problem, though, is one for the psychologist rather than the historian. Even the records of the Central Computer cannot be wholly trusted, and bear clear evidence of tampering in the very remote past.
‘On Earth, only Diaspar and Lys survived the period of decadence—Diaspar thanks to the perfection of its machines, Lys owing to its partial isolation and the unusual intellectual powers of its people. But both cultures, even when they had struggled back to their former level, were distorted by the fears and myths they had inherited.
‘These fears need haunt us no longer. It is not my duty as an historian to predict the future, only to observe and interpret the past. But its lesson is clear enough; we have lived too long out of contact with reality, and now the time has come to rebuild our lives.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
JESERAC WALKED IN silent wonder through the streets of a Diaspar he had never seen. So different was it, indeed, from the city in which he had passed all his lives that he would never have recognised it. Yet he knew that it was Diaspar, though how he knew, he did not pause to ask.
The streets were narrow, the buildings lower—and the Park was gone. Or rather, it did not yet exist. This was the Diaspar before the change, the Diaspar that had been open to the world and to the universe. The sky above the city was pale blue and flecked with ravelled wisps of clouds, slowly twisting and turning in the winds that blew across the face of this younger Earth.
Passing through and beyond the clouds were more substantial voyagers of the sky. Miles above the city, lacing the heavens