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sobs and catches and quavers. "Open and let forth the youthful creatures to
Blikdak. He finds boredom and lassitude in his vigil; so let the two come
forth to negate his unease."
Kerlin laboriously rose to his feet. "It is done."
From behind the door came a sad voice, "I am pent, I am snared in
scorching brilliance!"
"Now we discover," said Guyal. "What dissolves the ghost dissolves
Blikdak."
"True indeed," assented Kerlin.
"Why not light?" inquired Shierl. "Light parts the fabric of the ghosts like a
gust of wind tatters the fog."
"But merely for their fragility; Blikdak is harsh and solid, and can withstand
the fiercest radiance safe in his demon-land alcove." And Kerlin mused. After
a moment he gestured to the door. "We go to the image-expander;
there we will explode the ghost to macroid dimension; so shall we find his
basis. Guyal of Sfere, you must support my frailness; in truth my limbs are
weak as wax."
On Guyal's arm he tottered forward, and with Shierl close at their heels they
gained the gallery. Here the ghost wept in its cage of light, and searched
constantly for a dark aperture to seep his essence through.
Paying him no heed Kerlin hobbled and limped across the gallery. In their wake
followed the box of light and perforce the ghost.
"Open the great door," cried Kerlin in a voice beset with cracking and
hoarseness. "The great door into the Cognative Repository!"
Shierl ran ahead and thrust her force against the door; it slid aside, and
they looked into the great dark hall, and the golden light from the gallery
dwindled into the shadows and was lost.
"Call for Lumen," Kerlin said.
"Lumen!" cried Guyal. "Lumen, attend!"
Light came to the great hall, and it proved so tall that the pilasters along
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the wall dwindled to threads, and so long and wide that a man might be winded
to fatigue in running a dimension. Spaced in equal rows were the black cases
with the copper bosses that Guyal and Shierl had noted on their entry.
And above each hung five similar cases, precisely fixed, floating without
support.
"What are these?" asked Guyal in wonder.
"Would my poor brain encompassed a hundredth part of what these banks know,"
panted Kerlin. "They are great brains crammed with all that known,
experienced, achieved, or recorded by man. Here is all the lost lore, early
and late, the fabulous imaginings, the history of ten million cities, the
beginnings of time and the presumed finalities; the reason for human existence
and the reason for the reason. Daily I have labored and toiled in these banks;
my achievement has been a synopsis of the most superficial sort: a panorama
across a wide and multifarious country."
Said Shierl, "Would not the craft to destroy Blikdak be contained here?"
"Indeed, indeed; our task would be merely to find the information. Under which
casing would we search? Consider these categories: Demonlands; Killings and
Mortefactions; Expositions and Dissolutions of Evil; History of
Granvilunde (where such an entity was repelled) ; Attractive and Detractive
Hyperordnets; Therapy for Hallucinants and Ghost-takers; Constructive Journal,
item for regeneration of burst walls, sub-division for invasion by demons;
Procedural Suggestions in Time of Risk . . . Aye, these and a thousand more.
Somewhere is knowledge of how to smite Blikdak's abhorred face back into his
quasiplace. But where to look? There is no Index Major; none except the poor
synopsis of my compilation. He who seeks specific knowledge must often go on
an extended search . . ." His voice trailed off. Then: "Forward! Forward
through the banks to the Mechanismus."
So through the banks they went, like roaches in a maze, and behind drifted the
cage of light with the wailing ghost At last they entered a chamber smelling
of metal; again Kerlin instructed Guyal and Guyal called, "Attend us, Lumen,
attend!"
Through intricate devices walked the three, Guyal lost and rapt beyond
inquiry, even though his brain ached with the want of knowing.
At a tall booth Kerlin halted the cage of light. A pane of vitrean dropped
before the ghost. "Observe now," Kerlin said, and manipulated the activants.
They saw the ghost, depicted and projected: the flowing robe, the haggard
visage. The face grew large, flattened; a segment under the vacant eye became
a scabrous white place. It separated into pustules, and a single pustule
swelled to fill the pane. The crater of the pustule was an intricate stippled
surface, a mesh as of fabric, knit in a lacy pattern.
"Behold!" said Shierl. "He is a thing woven as if by thread."
Guyal turned eagerly to Kerlin; Kerlin raised a finger for silence.
"Indeed, indeed, a goodly thought, especially since here beside us is a rotor
of extreme swiftness, used in reeling the cognitive filaments of the cases . .
. Now then observe: I reach to this panel, I select a mesh, I withdraw a
thread, and note! The meshes ravel and loosen and part. And now to the bobbin
on the rotor, and I wrap the thread, and now with a twist we have the cincture
made ..."
Shierl said dubiously, "Does not the ghost observe and note your doing?"
"By no means," asserted Kerlin. "The pane of vitrean shields our actions;
he is too exercised to attend. And now I dissolve the cage and he is free."
The ghost wandered forth, cringing from the light.
"Go!" cried Kerlin. "Back to your genetrix; back, return and go!"
The ghost departed. Kerlin said to Guyal, "Follow; find when Blikdak snuffs
him up."
Guyal at a cautious distance watched the ghost seep up into the black nostril, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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