The City And The Stars - Arthur C. Clarke [118]
‘You gave us some anxious moments,’ he admitted. ‘Once or twice you started to ask questions that couldn’t be answered logically, and I was afraid I would have to break the sequence.’
‘Suppose Yarlan Zey had not convinced me—what would you have done then?’
‘We would have kept you unconscious, and taken you back to Diaspar where you could have woken up naturally, without ever knowing that you’d been to Lys.’
‘And that image of Yarlan Zey you fed into my mind—how much of what he said was the truth?’
‘Most of it, I believe. I was much more anxious that my little Saga should be convincing rather than historically accurate, but Callitrax has examined it and can find no errors. It is certainly consistent with all that we know about Yarlan Zey and the origins of Diaspar.’
‘So now we can really open the city,’ said Alvin. ‘It may take a long time, but eventually we’ll be able to neutralise this fear so that everyone who wishes can leave Diaspar.’
‘It will take a long time,’ replied Gerane drily. ‘And don’t forget that Lys is hardly large enough to hold several hundred million extra people, if all your people decide to come here. I don’t think that’s likely, but it’s possible.’
‘That problem will solve itself,’ answered Alvin. ‘Lys may be tiny, but the world is wide. Why should we let the desert keep it all?’
‘So you are still dreaming, Alvin,’ said Jeserac with a smile. ‘I was wondering what there was left for you to do.’
Alvin did not answer; that was a question which had become more and more insistent in his own mind during the past few weeks. He remained lost in thought, falling behind the others, as they walked down the hill towards Airlee. Would the centuries that lay ahead of him be one long anticlimax?
The answer lay in his own hands. He had discharged his destiny; now, perhaps, he could begin to live.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THERE IS A special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped towards new ends. Alvin knew that sadness as he wandered alone through the forests and fields of Lys. Not even Hilvar accompanied him, for there are times when a man must be apart even from his closest friends.
He did not wander aimlessly, though he never knew which village would be his next port of call. He was seeking no particular place, but a mood, an influence—indeed, a way of life. Diaspar had no need of him now; the ferments he had introduced into the city were working swiftly, and nothing he could do would accelerate or retard the changes that were happening there.
This peaceful land would also change. Often he wondered if he had done wrong, in the ruthless drive to satisfy his own curiosity, by opening up the ancient way between the two cultures. Yet surely it was better that Lys should know the truth—that it also, like Diaspar, had been partly founded upon fears and falsehoods.
Sometimes he wondered what shape the new society would take. He believed that Diaspar must escape from the prison of the memory banks, and restore again the cycle of life and death. Hilvar, he knew, was sure that this could be done, though his proposals were too technical for Alvin to follow. Perhaps the time would come again when love in Diaspar was no longer completely barren.
Was this, Alvin wondered, what he had always lacked in Diaspar—what he had really been seeking? He knew now that when power and ambition and curiosity were satisfied, there still were left the longings of the heart. No one had really lived until they had achieved that synthesis of love and desire which he had never dreamed existed until he came to Lys.
He had walked upon the planets of the Seven Suns—the first man to do so in a billion years. Yet that meant little to him now; sometimes he thought he would give all his achievements if he could hear the cry of a new-born child, and know that it was his own.
In Lys, he might one day find what he wanted; there was a warmth and understanding about its people, which, he now realised, was lacking