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My feelings were an uncomfortable mixture, and I had not quite decided
what to do with what was left.
It was awkward. I could make things neat and tidy again by deciding to
forget the small inexplicables. I had accomplished what I had set out to do.
I needed but stamp CLOSED on my mental file, go away, collect my fee and
live happily, relatively speaking, ever after.
No one would ever know or, for that matter, care about the little things
that still bothered me. I was under no obligation to pursue matters beyond
this point.
Except ...
Maybe it is an obligation. At least, at times it became a compulsion, and
one might as well salve one's notions of duty and free will by using the
pleasanter term.
It? The possession of a primate forebrain, I mean, with a deep curiosity
wrinkle furrowing it for better or worse.
I had to remain about the station a while longer anyway, for appearances'
sake. I took another sip of beer.
Yes, I wanted more answers. To dump into the bottomless wrinkle up front
there.
I might as well look around a bit more. Yes, I decided, I would.
I withdrew a cigarette and moved to light it. Then the flame caught my
attention.
I stared at the flowing tongue of light, illuminating my palm and curved
fingers of my left hand, raised to shield it from the night breeze. It seemed
as pure as the starfires themselves, a molten, buttery thing, touched with
orange, haloed blue, the intermittently exposed cherry-colored wick
glowing, half-hidden, like a soul. And then the music began ...
Music was the best term I had for it, because of some similarity of essence,
although it was actually like nothing I had ever experienced before. For one
thing, it was not truly sonic. It came into me as a memory comes, without
benefit of external stimulus, but lacking the Lucite layer of
self-consciousness that turns thought to recollection by touching it with
time, as in a dream. Then, something suspended, something released, my
feelings began to move to the effect. Not emotions, nothing that specific,
but rather a growing sense of euphoria, delight, wonder, all poured together
into a common body with the tide rising. What the progressions, what the
combinations., what the thing was, truly, I did not know. It was an intense
beauty, a beautiful intensity, however, and I was part of it. It was as if I
were experiencing something no man had ever known before, something
cosmic, magnificent, ubiquitous yet commonly ignored.
And it was with a peculiarly ambiguous effort, following a barely perceptible
decision, that I twitched the fingers of my left hand sufficiently to bring
them into the flame itself.
The pain broke the dream momentarily, and I snapped the lighter closed as
I sprang to my feet, a gaggle of guesses passing through my head. I turned
and ran across that humming artificial islet, heading for the small, dark
cluster of buildings that held the museum, library, offices.
But even as I moved, something came to me again. Only this time it was
not the glorious, musiclike sensation that had touched me moments earlier.
Now it was sinister, bringing a fear that was none the less real for my
knowing it to be irrational, to the accompaniment of sensory distortions
that must have caused me to reel as I ran. The surface on which I moved
buckled and swayed; the stars, the buildings, the ocean, everything,
advanced and retreated in random, nauseating patterns of attack. I fell
several times, recovered, rushed onward. Some of the distance I know that
I crawled. Closing my eyes did no good, for everything was warped,
throbbing, shifting, and awful inside as well as out.
It was only a few hundred yards, though, no matter what the signs and
portents might say, and finally I rested my hands against the wall, worked
my way to the door, opened it, and passed within.
Another door and I was into the library. For years, it seemed, I fumbled to
switch on the light.
I staggered to the desk, fought with a drawer, wrestled a screwdriver out of
it.
Then on my hands and knees, gritting my teeth, I crossed to the
remote-access terminal of the Information Network. Slapping at the
console's control board, I succeeded in tripping the switches that brought it
to life.
Then, still on my knees, holding the screwdriver with both hands, I got the
left side panel off the thing. It fell to the floor with a sound that drove
spikes into my head. But the components were exposed. Three little
changes and I could transmit, something that would eventually wind up in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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