"Chapter 26" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Dickson - Forever Man)

C H A P T E R
26




. . .BUT IT'S LIKE SKATING!'. SAID MARY, "LIKE SKATING AT A
billion miles a second!"
"Like riding a bobsled down a bobsled run!" shouted Jim. He had no need to shout. It was the excitement in him making him do it.
"Like skating down a bobsled run, then," Mary shouted back, "without having to worry about hurting yourself!"
A yellow point of light in the far distance grew almost instantly into a huge golden sun as they dived toward it, then swept past, with the galaxy full of stars pinwheeling around them, toward a white giant of a sun past which they curved in turn. It was indeed like traveling at unimaginable speeds, for they were literally in motion. It was not like phase-shifting where you ceased to be at one point, were spread out throughout the universe and reassembled at a different place, all in literally no time at all . . . but it was fast, faster than imagination could believe.
And it was in fact a dance, all graceful swirls and turns across enormous spaces, as if they actually danced in a mighty ballroom where the stars were lamps. But it was more than just a dance. The creativity of it reached into Jim and woke all sorts of emotions and yearnings in him, building him inwardly

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toward an understanding of he knew not what. Also, he was actually beginning to feel the skeins of gravitic forces reaching out through space, the natural forces about which the dance was woven; like a piece of silk with threads so fine as to be invisible, woven on a magical loom that could be known, but neither viewed nor touched.


I'm skating out here with the stars,
In space with the stars, with the stars . . .


. . . sang Mary.
"Jim!" she cried. "I'm making my own music to go with it. Are you doing that, too?"
"I'm doing something-or it's doing something to me!" Jim shouted back.
The dance built to a climax; and in Jim's mind a realization broke like a shower of colored lights from a skyrocket bursting far overhead. It came to him suddenly that he had found his blue mountain. For a long time now the Forever Road had been inclining upward; its steepness had increased without his noticing that he was going uphill. But now he understood that he had, and understood why. Because the road had brought him not only to his mountain but to the very top of it.
For the blue mountain was the universe. Not just this one galaxy, but the whole universe; and he stood at the highest point of it. From where he was he looked out and down in all directions to the universe's end. He was at the point he had searched and traveled to come to-and, then, just as he was beginning to believe that he could see the shape of the dance and the forces it was woven about, it crescendoed. It completed its statement. It ended.
And they were back at the point where they had first started to dance.
"There you are," said ?1.
"?1, that was truly lovely," said Mary softly. "Thank you."
"It was indeed," said Jim. "Thanks."
"It was nothing. Or, actually, it was a dance so simple and small that if I had not known how limited you were, I'd have been ashamed to show it to you. But you did respond to it, didn't you?"

310 / Gordon R. Dickson

"Oh, yes," said Mary.
"Now you can understand, perhaps," said ?1, "why one of us would spend all his available existence dreaming and working to create one really great dance, if what you saw was only a small one; and why this space we need in which to create is so precious to us and has to be protected at all costs."
"Yes," said Jim. "I understand that a lot better, now."
"Meanwhile," said ?1, "we've thought it all over. We will help you if you and your people will help us. We will both have to trust each other a little, since we can never really know holes and you can never really know us. But after thinking it over, we believe if we both try hard we can work together. So we will let you bring your people in to live on the planets of our stars, and we will also let the Laagi in, once you can find some means to show us clearly that they understand enough about us that they won't destroy this precious place or the labor we live to do. Is this agreeable to both of you?"
"To me," said Jim.
"And to me," said Mary.
"Then we are agreed," said ?1.
"And in that case," said Jim, "we ought to be getting back into our hole that we brought with us-the one we call our ship. If you'll show us where that is."
"You are there," said ?1. And, instantaneously, they were. At it, but just outside its hull.
"I-Imm," said Jim, disgusted. "I could have found it, come to think of it. All you had to do was think of it, to find it. Isn't that right?"
"Quite right," said ?l. "But, since you asked, it was no trouble to do it for you."
"We're obliged," said Mary.
"I don't quite understand that concept, but I suppose you're expressing some sort of appreciation for being brought back here. As Jim has pointed out, you could have done it for yourselves, so appreciation is hardly necessary. Farewell=
"Wait a minute!" said Jim.
"Yes?" answered ?1.