The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [109]
And up there beside Ring City was the starship that had carried the envoy and all the other Companions of the Hive across the interstellar gulfs. Even now it was being readied for departure—not with any sense of urgency, but several years ahead of schedule, in preparation for the next six-hundred-year lap of its journey.
That would represent no time at all to the Starholmer, of course, for It would not reconjugate until the end of the voyage. But then It might well face the greatest challenge of Its long career. For the first time, a Starprobe had been destroyed—or at least silenced—soon after it had entered a solar system. Perhaps it had at last made contact with the mysterious Hunters of the Dawn, who had left their marks upon so many worlds, so inexplicably close to the Beginning itself. If the Starholmer had been capable of awe, or of fear, It would have known both, as It contemplated Its future, six hundred years hence.
But now It was on the snow-dusted summit of Yakkagala, facing mankind’s pathway to the stars. It summoned the children to Its side (they always understood when It really wished to be obeyed) and pointed to the mountain in the south.
“You know perfectly well,” It said, with exasperation that was only partly feigned, “that Earthport One was built two thousand years later than this ruined palace.”
The children all nodded in solemn agreement.
“Then why,” asked the Starholmer, tracing the line from the zenith down to the summit of the mountain, “why do you call that column the Tower of Kalidasa?”
Sources and Acknowledgments
The writer of historical fiction has a peculiar responsibility to his readers, especially when he is dealing with unfamiliar times and places. He should not distort facts or events when they are known; and when he invents them, as he is often compelled to do, it is his duty to indicate the dividing line between imagination and reality.
The writer of science fiction has the same responsibility, squared. I hope that these notes will not only discharge that obligation well but also add to the reader’s enjoyment.
Taprobane and Ceylon
For dramatic reasons, I have made three trifling changes in the geography of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. I have moved the island eight hundred kilometers south, so that it straddles the equator—as indeed it did twenty million years ago, and may someday do again. At the moment, it lies between six and ten degrees north.
In addition, I have doubled the height of the Sacred Mountain, and moved it closer to “Yakkagala.” For both places exist, very much as I have described them.
Sri Pada, or Adam’s Peak, is a striking cone-shaped mountain sacred to the Buddhists, the Muslims, the Hindus, and the Christians, and bears a small temple on its summit. Inside the temple is a stone slab with a depression which, though two meters long, is reputed to be the footprint of the Buddha.
Every year, for many centuries, thousands of pilgrims have made the long climb to the 2,240-meter-high summit. The ascent is no longer dangerous, for there are two stairways (which must surely be the longest in the world) to the very top. I have climbed once, at the instigation of the New Yorker’s Jeremy Bernstein (see his Experiencing Science), and my legs were paralyzed for several days afterward. But it was worth the effort, because we were lucky enough to see the beautiful and awe-inspiring spectacle of the peak’s shadow at dawn—a perfectly symmetrical cone visible only for the few minutes after sunrise, and stretching almost to the horizon on the clouds far below.
I have since explored the mountain with much less effort in a Sri Lanka Air Force helicopter, getting close enough to the temple to observe the resigned expressions on the faces of the monks, now accustomed to such noisy intrusions.
The rock fortress of Yakkagala is actually Sigiriya (or Sigiri, “Lion Rock”), the reality of which is so astonishing that I have had no need to change it in any way. The only liberties I have taken are chronological. The palace on the summit