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twelve-brights. Now can you visualize that?"
It took Morayak a few seconds to grasp, but in the end he nodded, at the same
time frowning intently. "That is vastness indeed, but it is not completely
unimaginable now you have described it thus. My mind is stretched, but I think
it can conceive of such a distance."
"And what of twelve times that, yet again?"
Morayak stared at Thirg with a strained look on his face, then grinned
hopelessly and shook his head. "Impossible!"
Thirg paced across the room, swung around, and threw his hands wide. "Then
what of twelve times even that, and twelve times that yet again still, and
then even twelve times "
"Stop, Thirg!" Morayak protested. "What purpose is served by uttering
repetitions of words that have ceased to carry any meaning?"
"But they do carry meaning," Thirg said. He moved forward and raised his arm
to point. Morayak turned in his seat to look at the large chart on the wall
above the table, which Lofbayel had drawn from Thirg's records of
conversations with the Skybeings. In the center it showed the huge furnace in
the sky large enough to consume the whole world in an instant, the
Skybeings said and around it the paths of the nine worlds that circled it
endlessly, some of them accompanied by their own attendant worlds, which in
turn circled them. It had come as something of a shock to learn that Robia, as
Kleippur had named the robeing world, was not even a member of the nine, but
just one although, true, the largest of a retinue of seventeen servants
following at the heels of a giant. Dornvald had remarked that the giant was
surely the king of worlds, because of his ringlike crown. But
Thirg was pointing not at the giant, but at the third world out from the
furnace a humble little world, seemingly, with just a single page in
attendance which Lofbayel had labeled Lumia, since its sky shone with the
heat light that accompanied the Skybeings, or Lumians, as they were now more
properly called, wherever they went. Thirg swept a finger slowly across the
chart. "That is the distance which separates our world from the world of
Lumians, Morayak the distance they have traveled to come to
Robia."
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Morayak stared at him incredulously. "It cannot be!" Thirg nodded. Morayak
looked at the chart again, then back at Thirg. "But such a journey would
surely require many twelves of twelves of lifetimes."
"One twelve-bright was sufficient, we are assured. The large dragon that
circles beyond the sky is swifter, seemingly, than even the smaller ones which
cross above the city in moments." Thirg studied Morayak's face for a few
seconds and gave a satisfied nod. "Now, methinks, you understand better the
wondrousness of the beings you are soon to meet," he said.
Morayak stared back at Thirg for a moment longer as if unsure of whether or
not to take his words seriously, and then looked slowly back at the chart,
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this time with a new respect. Thirg and Lofbayel were due to leave shortly for
Kleippur's residence to join the Carthogian leaders in more discussions with
the Lumians, and Morayak had eventually succeeded in pestering his father into
allowing him to go along too. He had been to see the strange growths that the
Lumians lived in just outside the city, of course his father said that the
Lumians had created them and he had caught glimpses from a distance of the
cumbersome, domeheaded figures, which apparently weren't the Lumians at all
but an outer casing that they had to wear on
Robia because they needed to be bathed in hot, highly corrosive gas all the
time; but that wasn't the same he wouldn't be able to boast to his friends
about that. "I wonder what kind of a world it is," he murmured distantly,
still staring at the chart.
"Amazing beyond your wildest dreams," Thirg replied. "Its sky is filled with
worlds too numerous to count, extending away as far as it is possible to see,
for there is no permanent cover of cloud above Lumia to limit vision. It is so
hot that the surface is covered by oceans of liquid ice.
Methane can exist only as a vapor. Your body would be much heavier than it is
on Robia."
"What of the countryside?" Morayak asked. "Does it have mountains and forests?
Do the Lumians keep herds of bearing-bush formers, and hunt platemelters out
on the flatlands? Do they have children who go gasket-collecting among the
head-assembly transfer lines, or baiting traps with copper wire to catch
coil-winders?"
Thirg frowned, not knowing quite how to explain the differences. "The children
there are assembled in miniature form," he said. "They grow larger by taking
in substances which are distributed internally as liquid solutions."
Morayak stared at him in astonishment. "But how could the substances know
where to be deposited?" he objected. "All form would surely be lost."
"The process is beyond my understanding," Thirg admitted. "Perhaps that is why
the Lumians exist as jelly and must remain inside outer casings to preserve
their shape. But natural assembly is impossible on Lumia because there aren't
any machines . . . save for a few which aren't alive, but were created by the
Lumians."
"It's true then the Lumians really can make artificial machines?"
"Oh yes those are the only machines they know. They do have animals and
forests, but they're not machines. They're made of, well . . . the best way
I can find to describe it is 'naturally occurring organics' very like the
Lumians themselves."
Morayak looked perplexed. "But artisans must exist to create organics. How can
there be 'natural organics'?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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