The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [8]
“The workmen have done well,” said Kalidasa. “Give them their freedom.”
How well, of course, they would never understand, for none could share the lonely visions of an artist-king. As Kalidasa surveyed the exquisitely tended gardens that surrounded Yakkagala, he felt as much contentment as he would ever know.
Here, at the foot of Demon Rock, he had conceived and created Paradise. There only remained, upon its summit, to build Heaven.
4
Demon Rock
The cunningly contrived pageant of light and sound still had power to move Rajasinghe, though he had seen it a dozen times and knew every trick of the programing. To see it was, of course, obligatory for every visitor to the Rock, though critics like Paul Sarath complained that it was merely instant history for tourists. Yet instant history was better than no history at all, and it would have to serve while Sarath and his colleagues continued vociferously to disagree about the precise sequence of events here two thousand years ago.
The little amphitheater faced the western wall of Yakkagala, its two hundred seats all carefully orientated so that each spectator looked up into the laser projectors at the correct angle. The performance always began at exactly the same time throughout the year—1900 hours—as the last glow of the invariant equatorial sunset faded from the sky.
Already, it was so dark that the Rock was invisible, revealing its presence only as a huge black shadow eclipsing the early stars. Out of that darkness, there came the slow beating of a muffled drum, and presently a calm, dispassionate voice:
“This is the story of a king who murdered his father and was killed by his brother. In the bloodstained history of mankind, that is nothing new. But this king left an abiding monument; and a legend that has endured for centuries.”
Rajasinghe stole a glance at Vannevar Morgan, sitting there in the darkness on his right. Though he could see the engineer’s features only in silhouette, he could tell that his visitor was already caught in the spell of the narration. On his left, his other two guests, old friends from his diplomatic days, were equally entranced. As he had assured Morgan, they had not recognized Dr. Smith; or, if they had, they had politely accepted the fiction.
“His name was Kalidasa, and he was born a hundred years after Christ, in Ranapura, City of Gold—for centuries the capital of the Taprobanean kings. But there was a shadow across his birth. . . .”
The music became louder as flutes and strings joined the throbbing drum to trace a haunting, regal melody in the night air. A point of light began to burn on the face of the Rock; abruptly, it expanded, and suddenly it seemed that a magic window had opened into the past, to reveal a world more vivid and colorful than life itself.
The dramatization, thought Morgan, was excellent. He was glad that, for once, he had let courtesy override his impulse to work. He saw the joy of King Paravana when his favorite concubine presented him with his first-born son—and understood how that joy was both augmented and diminished when, only twenty-four hours later, the Queen herself produced a better claimant to the throne. Though first in time, Kalidasa would not be first in precedence; and so the stage was set for tragedy.
“Yet in the early years of their boyhood, Kalidasa and his half-brother, Malgara, were the closest of friends. They grew up together quite unconscious of their rival destinies, and the intrigues that festered around them. The first cause of trouble had nothing to do with the accident of birth; it was only a well-intentioned, innocent gift. . . .
“To the court of King Paravana came envoys bearing tribute from many lands—silk from Cathay, gold from Hindustan, burnished armor from Imperial Rome. And one day a simple hunter from the jungle ventured into the great city bearing a gift that he hoped would please the royal family. . . .”
Morgan heard, all around him, a chorus of involuntary “oooh”s and “aah”s from