From the Ocean from teh Stars (43 page)

He shook his head in an angry gesture of defiance. These things were
fancies; he was imagining them. Indeed, they were so contrary to all
experience that somehow he no longer felt frightened but strode resolutely
forward with only a glance at the sun behind.

When Trilorne had dwindled to a point, and the darkness was all
around him, it was time to abandon pretense. A wiser man would have
turned back there and then, and Shervane had a sudden nightmare vi
sion of himself lost in this eternal twilight between earth and sky, unable
to retrace the path that led to safety. Then he remembered that as long
as he could see Trilorne at all he could be in no real danger.

A little uncertainly now, he continued his way with many backward
glances at the faint guiding light behind him. Trilorne itself had vanished,
but there was still a dim glow in the sky to mark its place and presently
he needed its aid no longer, for far ahead a second light was appearing
in the heavens.

At first it seemed only the faintest of glimmers, and when he was
sure of its existence he noticed that Trilorne had already disappeared.
But he felt more confidence now, and as he moved onward, the returning
light did something to subdue his fears.

When he saw that he was indeed approaching another sun, when he
could tell beyond any doubt that it was expanding as a moment ago he
had seen Trilorne contract, he forced all amazement down into the depths
of his mind. He would only observe and record: later there would be
time to understand these things. That his world might possess two suns,
one shining upon it from either side, was not, after all, beyond imagina
tion.

Now at last he could see, faintly through the darkness, the ebon line
that marked the Wall's other rim. Soon he would be the first man in
thousands of years, perhaps in eternity, to look upon the lands that it had sundered from his world. Would they be as fair as his own, and
would there be people there whom he would be glad to greet?

But that they would be waiting, and in such a way, was more than he
had dreamed.

Grayle stretched his hand out toward the cabinet beside him and
fumbled for a large sheet of paper that was lying upon it. Brayldon
watched him in silence, and the old man continued.

"How often we have all heard arguments about the size of the uni
verse, and whether it has any boundaries! We can imagine no ending to
space, yet our minds rebel at the idea of infinity. Some philosophers
have imagined that space is limited by curvature in a higher dimension—

I suppose you know the theory. It may be true of other universes, if they
exist, but for ours the answer is more subtle.

"Along the line of the Wall, Brayldon, our universe comes to an end
—
and yet does not.
There was no boundary, nothing to stop one going
onward before the Wall was built. The Wall itself is merely a man-made
barrier, sharing the properties of the space in which it lies. Those prop
erties were always there, and the Wall added nothing to them."

He held the sheet of paper toward Brayldon and slowly rotated it.

"Here," he said, "is a plain sheet. It has, of course, two sides.
Can
you imagine one that has not?"

Brayldon stared at him in amazement.

"That's impossible—ridiculous!"

"But is it?" said Grayle softly. He reached toward the cabinet again
and his fingers groped in its recesses. Then he drew out a long, flexible
strip of paper and turned vacant eyes to the silently waiting Brayldon.

"We cannot match the intellects of the First Dynasty, but what their
minds could grasp directly we can approach by analogy. This simple trick, which seems so trivial, may help you to glimpse the truth."

He ran his fingers along the paper strip, then joined the two ends
together to make a circular loop.

"Here I have a shape which is perfectly familiar to you—the section
of a cylinder. I run my finger around the inside, so—and now along the
outside. The two surfaces are quite distinct: you can go from one to the
other only by moving through the thickness of the strip. Do you agree?"

"Of course," said Brayldon, still puzzled. "But what does it prove?"

"Nothing," said Grayle. "But now watch—"

This sun, Shervane thought, was Trilorne's identical twin. The darkness had now lifted completely, and there was no longer the sensation,
which he would not try to understand, of walking across an infinite plain.

He was moving slowly now, for he had no desire to come too sud
denly upon that vertiginous precipice. In a little while he could see a
distant horizon of low hills, as bare and lifeless as those he had left
behind him. This did not disappoint him unduly, for the first glimpse of
his own land would be no more attractive than this.

So he walked on: and when presently an icy hand fastened itself
upon his heart, he did not pause as a man of lesser courage would have done. Without flinching, he watched that shockingly familiar landscape rise around him, until he could see the plain from which his journey had
started, and the great stairway itself, and at last Brayldon's anxious, wait
ing face.

Again Grayle brought the two ends of the strip together, but now he
had given it a half-twist so that the band was kinked. He held it out to
Brayldon.

"Run your finger around it now," he said quietly.

Brayldon did not do so: he could see the old man's meaning.

"I understand," he said. "You no longer have two separate surfaces.
It now forms a single continuous sheet—
a one-sided surface
—something
that at first sight seems utterly impossible."

"Yes," replied Grayle very softly. "I thought you would understand.
A one-sided surface.
Perhaps you realize now why this symbol of the
twisted loop is so common in the ancient religions, though its meaning
has been completely lost. Of course, it is no more than a crude and simple
analogy—an example in two dimensions of what must really occur in
three. But it is as near as our minds can ever get to the truth."

There was a long, brooding silence. Then Grayle sighed deeply and
turned to Brayldon as if he could still see his face.

"Why did you come back before Shervane?" he asked, though he
knew the answer well enough.

"We had to do it," said Brayldon sadly, "but I did not wish to see my work destroyed."

Grayle nodded in sympathy.

"I understand," he said.

Shervane ran his eye up the long flight of steps on which no feet
would ever tread again. He felt few regrets: he had striven, and no one
could have done more. Such victory as was possible had been his.

Slowly he raised his hand and gave the signal. The Wall swallowed
the explosion as it had absorbed all other sounds, but the unhurried grace with which the long tiers of masonry curtsied and fell was something he
would remember all his life. For a moment he had a sudden, inexpress
ibly poignant vision of another stairway, watched by another Shervane,
failing in identical ruins on the far side of the Wall.

But that, he realized, was a foolish thought: for none knew better
than he that the Wall possessed no other side.

☆
SECURITY CHECK

It is often said that in our age of assembly lines and
mass production there's no room for the individual craftsman, the artist
in wood or metal who made so many of the treasures of the past. Like
most generalizations, this simply isn't true. He's rarer now, of course, but
he's certainly not extinct. He has often had to change his vocation, but
in his modest way he still flourishes. Even on the island of Manhattan he
may be found, if you know where to look for him. Where rents are low and fire regulations unheard of, his minute, cluttered workshops may be
discovered in the basements of apartment houses or in the upper stories of derelict shops. He may no longer make violins or cuckoo clocks or
music boxes, but the skills he uses are the same as they always were,
and no two objects he creates are ever identical. He is not contemptuous
of mechanization: you will find several electric hand tools under the
debris on his bench. He has moved with the times: he will always be
around, the universal odd-job man who is never aware of it when he
makes an immortal work of art.

Hans Muller's workshop consisted of a large room at the back of a
deserted warehouse, no more than a vigorous stone's throw from the
Queensborough Bridge. Most of the building had been boarded up await
ing demolition, and sooner or later Hans would have to move. The only
entrance was across a weed-covered yard used as a parking place during
the day, and much frequented by the local juvenile delinquents at night. They had never given Hans any trouble, for he knew better than to co
operate with the police when they made their periodic inquiries. The police fully appreciated his delicate position and did not press matters,
so Hans was on good terms with everybody. Being a peaceable citizen,
that suited him very well.

The work on which Hans was now engaged would have deeply puz
zled his Bavarian ancestors. Indeed, ten years ago it would have puzzled

Hans himself. And it had all started because a bankrupt client had given
him a TV set in payment for services rendered. . . .

Hans had accepted the offer reluctantly, not because he was old-
fashioned and disapproved of TV, but simply because he couldn't imag
ine where he would find time to look at the darned thing. Still, he
thought, at least I can always sell it for fifty dollars. But before I do that,
let's see what the programs are like. . . .

His hand had gone out to the switch: the screen had filled with mov
ing shapes—and, like millions of men before him, Hans was lost. He entered a world he had not known existed—a world of battling space
ships, of exotic planets and strange races—the world, in fact, of Captain
Zipp, Commander of the Space Legion.

Only when the tedious recital of the virtues of Crunche, the Wonder
Cereal, had given way to an almost equally tedious boxing match be
tween two muscle-bound characters who seemed to have signed a non-aggression pact, did the magic fade. Hans was a simple man. He had always been fond of fairy tales—and
this
was the modern fairy tale, with
trimmings of which the Grimm Brothers had never dreamed. So Hans did
not sell his TV set.

It was some weeks before the initial naive, uncritical enjoyment wore off. The first thing that began to annoy Hans was the furniture and general decor in the world of the future. He was, as has been indicated, an artist—
and he refused to believe that in a hundred years taste would have
deteriorated as badly as the Crunche sponsors seemed to imagine.

He also thought very little of the weapons that Captain Zipp and his
opponents used. It was true that Hans did not pretend to understand the
principles upon which the portable proton disintegrator was based, but
however it worked, there was certainly no reason why it should be
that
clumsy. The clothes, the spaceship interiors—they just weren't convinc
ing. How did he know? He had always possessed a highly developed
sense of the fitness of things, and it could still operate even in this novel
field.

We have said that Hans was a simple man. He was also a shrewd
one, and he had heard that there was money in TV. So he sat down and
began to draw.

Even if the producer of Captain Zipp had not lost patience with his
set designer, Hans Muller's ideas would certainly have made him sit up and take notice. There was an authenticity and realism about them that made them quite outstanding. They were completely free from the element of phonyness that had begun to upset even Captain Zipp's most
juvenile followers. Hans was hired on the spot.