The Book Of Ian Watson, page 15
“You may leave your wrist computer here. No-one will touch it.”
The burly man shed his bracelet, and Istinbat placed it on a shelf. The shelf was otherwise empty; there were no other visitors yet. Perhaps there would be no others.
Istinbat looked out from the doorway briefly, imagining the splendid view of the Dome, golden in the morning sun, that this stranger must have enjoyed as he approached up the road from Wakil City. The Dome rose three hundred metres at its zenith, and was a full kilometre around its base. The area immediately surrounding it was paved in turquoise marble, well worn by the scuff of countless feet down the millennia—though this was one of those centuries when the number of feet was more easily countable. Just off the marble stood a line of hutches, where vendors—poor brown folk with flashing teeth—were only just now putting up their shutters, to hawk their holopictures, spiced buns, wine flasks, fresh fruit, bowls of goat’s meat stew. Mainly they supplied the guardians of the Dome with food and drink; tourists were only a sideline. A stall concession at the Dome was a rare prize for a poor man; and only to a poor man would it go by tradition. The stall holders would bring the food and drink over when a bell tolled. Istinbat himself had not stepped outside of the doorway for perhaps a year.
The burly man fidgeted.
With a shrug, Istinbat turned from the doorway to the outside world. He pulled a cord which would summon another guardian from the catacomb quarters underneath the Dome. Twitching a taper alight, he preceded the visitor down the flight of steps into the long downward tunnel leading to below the mid-point of the Dome.
Istinbat was a tall thin man, with a long nose, thin pursed lips and eyes of a startling violet hue: the face of a sucking insect. His head was shorn, and he had a creamy skin, much lighter than the norm on this world, blanched by long attendance in the Dome. He held the taper high, and thus they proceeded down the tunnel in a cocoon of light.
“Will you be staying in the Dome with me?” asked the visitor idly enough, though the answer obviously mattered to him intensely.
“A guardian has to stay—though not intrude. I shall station myself a fair way off. You may take as long as you like. All day, till dusk. I shall not get bored, with all the voices speaking to me. I have hardly heard the same one twice, in all my years since I was a boy.”
“Hmm,” said the visitor. Obviously the answer pleased him. What private message was he hoping to hear—or to leave—in the Dome? Yet this was no concern of Istinbat’s, except in so far as it had been a very long time since anyone had come to the Dome from another world with a specific purpose beyond simple curiosity.
As they walked, a second cocoon of light approached them. A similar tall robed figure—the woman Tasamma—glided past, with a nod to Istinbat, as routinely as an ascending funicular railway cab passes a descending one midway.
The tunnel opened into a large circular chamber, with several brass-bound doors beyond which were the labyrinths of living quarters, and burial places. Once, there had been a hundred guardians. Now there were scarcely twenty.
A well-worn spiral stone stairway led up into the Dome itself. Istinbat held the taper well clear of his body to illuminate the steps; there were a hundred of these.
He noticed that the visitor did not puff or wheeze as he climbed.
As the man stepped up into the centre of the great bare floor of the Dome, Istinbat twitched out the taper. It was luminous enough inside. Light diffused from the translucent eye of the Dome, and from similarly translucent blocks inset at regular intervals high around the walls—or rather, the one wall. Faintly, from that all-encompassing wall, the massed echo of the whispers came to their ears like the distant sussurus of the sea. Istinbat wondered what the wall would say to him today. …
In the southern hemisphere of the planet Suf stood this famous Dome of Whispers: famous in the sense that it was the only thing by which most star people remembered the planet Suf these days. Much turbulent history had flowed through Suf down the millennia—and ebbed away again, leaving Suf to its own private weave of events, of which nowadays only a few threads remained mained. Yet Suf still ticked on, even though the clock (as they said locally) had no hands; and the old Dome endured, though comparatively little visited except by those native to Suf.
While it still stood, the Dome remained one of the most remarkable buildings in all the star worlds; for it had the most peculiar acoustics of any building ever raised.
Whispering galleries existed elsewhere: places where you spoke softly and your companion heard you clearly hundreds of metres away around the building. But in the Dome of Whispers, alone, no utterance was ever lost. Whatever was spoken there continued on around the Dome forever, quietly, undiminished.
This building of perfect proportions acted as a superconductor—not of electrical current, but of sound waves. Perhaps there really was something superconductive about the unique quartz-veined marble of which it was built—and something piezoelectric too; perhaps the slight compression caused by the impact of sound waves set up a current which stored and reproduced the spoken word again and again around the Dome. Perhaps. The guardians of the Dome had never permitted anyone to take the smallest flake of a sample away nor bring any kind of mechanical or electronic instrument into the Dome. It was all that the Sufish had, this Dome. Better that it should remain a prodigy, a marvel, than be explained away.
For millennia past the people of Suf, both common and uncommon, and intermittently the people of other star worlds (generally uncommon) had come here to whisper the secret of their lives or a confession or a prophecy. They had come to swear a binding oath or a love pledge or a vow of revenge. They had come to immortalise—for as long as the Dome endured—their own insight into the meaning of life.
During periods of Sufish decadence, the Dome had been used as an oracle. …
Around the perimeter of the floor stood various mobile ladders resembling pieces of ancient siege-gear. Their wheels rested on a track running right around the circuit of the wall. These ladder-towers leaned backwards precariously, balanced on a support leg which wheeled along an inner track.
“I expected it would be noisier,” said the visitor. “Uh … should I speak?”
“It’s all right to speak here. Beyond the black marble line, three metres from the wall, is where the effect occurs. You can speak anywhere within those three metres, and be recorded at that very point in the air. We don’t really know how large the capacity is—certainly not infinite—therefore each visitor may make only one statement, and then he must withdraw.”
“But you said that I could …”
“You may listen for as long as you like. With sealed lips. When you remove the seal, you may speak just once. Most people only have one real thing that they need to say.” Istinbat plunged a hand into his robes and produced a strip of adhesive bandage. “I am accustomed to silence, but I must ask all visitors to seal their lips during the Listening, till they wish to speak.”
The visitor nodded. “Only one real thing to say … or to hear—it’s quite true.”
And what is your real thing? wondered Istinbat.
The visitor stared around the Dome. Twelve metres above the floor was a continuous inscription cut in an angular script; it ran around the whole circuit of the wall. The inscription was repeated exactly in the black marble of the boundary line. The visitor pointed at it, sweeping his finger along.
“It is the whole of the ancient poem known as the Ruby Yat,” said Istinbat, “in the old script of Suf. A poem on the theme of mutability and eternity. Very few people can read the old Sufish script these days. Lovers sometimes match up the angles of the letters, above and below on the floor, as a way of marking where they pledged their love. They copy down the piece of text, without understanding it. Even so, it might take them quite some time to find the exact point where they spoke, and the exact angle of their lips.”
“But can you read it?”
“Oh, yes, that is something else that we guard: a knowledge of the sounds of those letters.”
“Will you read some of it for me? Please. I will pay you generously.”
“Why should I need money? But I will read it, if you wish. Come, we will walk to the beginning.”
“No, I already know the Ruby Yat by heart. I am looking for one particular passage.”
“So, a friend has been here, perhaps? It’s unusual, to know the Ruby Yat by heart.”
“It’s handed down … in my family. But this is the only example of the old script left.”
What family would that be? wondered Istinbat. Was this man a scholar?
Historians from off-planet had, from time to time, eavesdropped on one voice, then another, then the one after … sifting the equivalent of a ton of ordinary potsherds to find, by chance, one golden brooch or King’s insignia, one historic confession or vow. They soon gave up, their heads full of peasant love-words, verbal graffiti, portentous statements by the totally forgotten.
“What passage?” he asked.
And the visitor recited:
“Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key
That shall unlock the Door to Paradise”
“But that’s wrong,” said Istinbat. “It should be:
“Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key
That shall unlock the Door he howls without”’
The man’s face darkened. “Yes, yes, of course it is. How stupid of me.”
“But if you memorise the whole poem, in your family …? I suppose changes creep in. Corruptions of the text.”
“Yes, yes, they creep in.”
“But you knew you had made a mistake.” Istinbat thought briefly. “Where the text diverges, is that where you expect to find the message waiting for you?”
“Just show me where those words are, will you?”
“I am doing you a favor, star-stranger …”
“And you don’t want money. What do you want?”
“Why, I am curious. Events do not happen on Suf these days. I have a feeling that this is an event.” Istinbat felt a curious sensation, of power. It was an unusual sensation, and not one that he particularly cared for. This burly visitor was, perhaps, accustomed to power … or else he remembered power. Here, however, amidst the tide of voices he was powerless.
“But aren’t you vowed to silence … Istinbat?” The visitor had named him, to forge a relationship.
“Yes. But at the same time a guardian feels curiosity about the myriads of voices he hears.”
“If only he could identify one of them, is that it?”
Istinbat chuckled dryly. “Most people identify themselves. Right here is their immortality. I will show you. Seal your lips. You may reflect upon the phenomenon of the Needle and the Haystack.”
“But you said you would stand a fair way off.”
“And now you have involved me.”
Once across the black marble strip, it was like dialling through the air-bands of an enormous radio; catching a word here, a phrase there, half a sentence—switched away by the least movement on their part. Here was the archeological deep litter of thousands of years, compressed into three metres of whispering air, every millimetre of which clamoured for attention, begging to be heard.
Yet unlike an archeological site, here there was no depth yardstick of time. So here was a plea out of the deeps of time … perhaps. Here, next to it, was a promise from last year … perhaps again. There was no discernible difference in the signal strength. It did not matter whether the original speakers had cried out loudly or murmured most quietly. Each whisper had the same strength as the next. Nor did they overlap, however crowded together they were. No-one talked anyone else down. Each whisper was equal.
The visitor moved as if he was moving through treacle, though actually there was no resistance except for the drag of fascination.
He moved his head in tiny quantum jumps from one whisper to the next. Ah yes, one heard with the left ear or the right ear … but never with both at once. One heard inside the ear.
“Orelda, thee I love forever …” Dust.
“… yaum el-nnushur …” Unknowable.
“… anda klath impto hoptu vendi saa …” what language?
An alien hissing and croaking, never from a human throat …
“I swear my vengeance upon Satpat and all his heirs, by all of mine, for as long as our revenge is renewed in this iota of ever-air …” How long did that blood feud last for? Or had it merely just begun?
A nervous giggle: “Well, what do I say?”
A crisp voice: “This is Sully Hoberman from Alpha C in the Suf year 5079. The proof of Galois’ last theorem, which I have now found, is as follows …” Was Sully Hoberman right or wrong? Who knew? Who remembered?
A primping voice: “I, Marquis Enderby, will now recite my prizewinning ode which placed first in the Concourse of Poetry at Middle star …”
“I’ll marry Lala whatever her Dad says …”
And on. And on. An infinity of voices.
Well, not an infinity; but very many.
Istinbat let the stranger listen for ten or fifteen minutes, then laid a hand on his arm and nodded him back across the black marble strip. Gently, he detached the adhesive strip from the man’s lips.
“Now will you satisfy my curiosity, star-stranger?”
The visitor glanced around the Dome again, confirming that it was still empty but for the two of them. He flexed his hands. Strong hands they were.
“I suppose I shall have to!”
And this the stranger proceeded to do; and it began to dawn on Istinbat that he had put himself in danger of his life. Surely no-one would attempt to murder a guardian in the very Dome itself? Still, as the man spoke, Istinbat measured himself against him … unable, even so, to bring himself to call a halt to the stranger’s words. For this was the Event, and it seemed as though Istinbat had been waiting out his whole life to connect with this moment … of History.
The Empire of Tajalam, at its height a thousand years earlier, spanned seven worlds in the Praesepe Cluster, that mass of stars five hundred light years from old Earth for which the fanciful old Earth-Chinese name was ‘the exhalation of piled-up corpses’. Regarded with an unromantic eye, Tajalem’s Empire seemed amply to merit the Chinese description. Yet, despite his barbarities, Tajalam had been a remarkable character who persisted in sending out expedition after expedition into deepest space long after all other exploration and pioneering had slowed to a snail’s pace.
He was searching for no less than Paradise. A Paradise planet, which he believed must exist somewhere among the millions of suns.
Perhaps it had to exist, simply to counterbalance the hell of Praesepe.
And Paradise had been found … somewhere … by the last and smallest expedition. No doubt it spoke volumes for the loyalty that Tajalam inspired, or the terror he induced, that the expedition came back at all to tell him. Probably the former, since by then his Empire was crashing about his head, and he was on the run. Apparently he ran by way of Suf, before eventually committing suicide with his ritual ruler’s sword in the city of Qalb on Usul. From some personal quirk—which those of his descendants who survived the pursuing wolves had enshrined as a tradition—Tajalam had adopted the Ruby Yat as the basis of his private battle-code and cipher system.
It was a strict part of Praesepe culture that a dead ruler’s sword should be preserved in public for ever more. In Tajalam’s case, his enemies might have felt like melting it down—but not when it was stained with his own blood. That final act of his had sealed the sword into the stone of history forever. Thus his victorious enemies took the sword back with them to Praesepe Prime, where it lay in their central museum these days.
That sword had an inscription on it: the words which had pierced his heart. …
“We didn’t find that out, Istinbat … not for nine hundred years. We were scattered to the stars, as far from Praesepe as possible, living under new names, often living in poverty.”
“We?”
“The direct line of Tajalam. It’s unusual for a ritual ruler’s sword to have an inscription on it, you see. We believe the words were inscribed shortly before he killed himself, and some time after he passed through Suf. They were a message to his heirs, which his immediate heirs never received.”
“They were the key to the paradise planet?”
“Exactly. And it’s here. The celestial coordinates to Paradise are here. Now I’ve slaked your thirsty curiosity, perhaps you would tell me,” the visitor gestured impatiently, “approximately where?”
“I will have to remain alive afterwards,” said Istinbat, hoping that he did not sound as though he was begging for his life. Though how could he ensure that he remained alive?
No doubt, in the last thousand years, Tajalam’s line had become more settled in their ways, less inclined to produce exhalations of piled-up corpses. In some not-unpleasant respects, the human galaxy had run out of energy.
The visitor laughed.
“We shall see, Istinbat. We shall see.”
“You will swear it, by … yes, by the blood of your ancestors. Or I will not tell you where to listen.”
“Oh, very well. I so swear that you shall live … if you can call this living.”
“Do not despise the Dome, star-stranger. Has it not kept Tajalam’s secret for you for a thousand years?”
“Yes, actually that’s the only good reason for its existence! Plus, I suppose, the luring of a few scraps of trade to this backwater.”
Istinbat shook his head.
“There’s more than that. Much more. Here is the essence of hundreds of millions of people. Here is the last surviving breath of their souls, now that they are dead. True, some are vain and some are fatuous, but it is what they were. And that’s enough.”
“The door, man! Unlock the door. Now!”
Istinbat considered the inscription, then led the visitor half way around the Dome. With his foot he tapped the end of one word in the black marble. With his finger he pointed to the corresponding word above. With a mocking grin, the visitor retrieved the bandage from Istinbat’s hand and stuck it back over his lips. Slowly, very slowly, he moved forward.
