purposely simple, though. Even a cultural xenologist can figure it out. . . . All you do is hold your thumb over the right half of the tab at the bottom of the cassette. Then the fireworks begin.
\A pleased laugh, and its subsequent echo.] Ah, yes. Right now the eye in the center of the wafer is flashing through an indecipherable program of colors. Reds, violets, greens. Sapphires, yellows, pinks. All premeditatedly interlaced with pauses. Pregnant pauses, no doubt. ... In this dimness my hands are alternately lit and shadowed by the changing colors. Beautiful, beautiful. That's just it, in fact. The entire system probably sacrifices a degree of practicality on the altar of beauty.
There. I've shut it off. All you do is cover the left half of the control rectangle with your thumb. ... It may be possible to reverse the program—rewind it to a desired point, so to speak— but I haven't stumbled on the method yet. At least I don't think I have. It's impossible for me to remember the sequences of colors—though it probably wasn't a bit difficult for the Asadi, or Ur'sadi, who composed, manufactured, and used these things, however long ago that may have been.
They're books, or the Ur'sadi equivalent, as I'm sure you've already guessed. [A thumping noise.] I'm pocketing six of them, putting them in my backpack. For the greater glory of Science. To set the shirttails of ole Oliver Oliphant aflame with envy, may his ghost go angrily blazing across the heavens. Not to mention the fact that they'll be just one more thing for Morrell to put his screwdriver to.
[Musingly]: Look at that wall. Can you imagine the information on hand here? Or the level of technology necessary to devise a storage-and-retrieval system for a "language" that consists of complicated spectral patterns? One fifteen-minute program in one of these cassettes probably represents the equivalent of a three hundred-page book. ... By the way, what do you suppose I was "reading"? I'd guess that the band of colored dots above the eye is the description of the contents. The title, so to speak. Maybe I was scanning a sex-and-sadism tract by the late Marquis de Asadi— my hands had begun to sweat while the program was running.
[Sober again]: No, no, the eyebook—let's call 'em eyebooks— was the first one on that particular rod. Maybe it's their Iliad, their Divine Comedy, their Origin of the Species, their Brothers Kar-amazov. And what the hell have they done with it? Stuck it in a forgotten, godforsaken temple in the middle of the Synesthesia Wild and left it to commemorate their fall! What colossal waste! What colossal arrogance!
[Shouting]: Where the hell do you creatures get off neglecting the accumulated knowledge of millennia? You're animals! ANIMALS!
[A cacophony of echoes. A prolonged, painful ringing]
Forgive me, Eisen, Benedict, all of you. Forgive me. [Chaney's voice drops to a whisper, scarcely audible.] And you, you Asadi aerialists, that's right, pretend I don't exist, pretend you can't hear me, ignore the voices of your ancestors whispering to you from their deaths. [Venomously]: And may God damn you both to hell!
III. CHANEY[in a lifeless monotone]: I think I slept for a while. Under the rows upon rows of eyebooks. Maybe an hour. Then a noise woke me, a ringing of iron.
Now I'm on the helical stairway high above the museum floor. I'm in a curve of the stairway a little below and opposite the glass platform where The Bachelor was standing. He's no longer there. A moment ago he chinned himself up to the cold ring of the chandelier, gained his feet, and balanced on the ring, quite
precariously. Then he reached out and grabbed the plumb line that drops down from the dome.
The huri, meanwhile, squats on the foremost globe in the triangle of globes set in the great iron ring. He's been there awhile.
The Bachelor, after grabbing the gold braid, fashioned a noose and slipped his neck into it. Then he swung himself out over the floor so that his
\A pleased laugh, and its subsequent echo.] Ah, yes. Right now the eye in the center of the wafer is flashing through an indecipherable program of colors. Reds, violets, greens. Sapphires, yellows, pinks. All premeditatedly interlaced with pauses. Pregnant pauses, no doubt. ... In this dimness my hands are alternately lit and shadowed by the changing colors. Beautiful, beautiful. That's just it, in fact. The entire system probably sacrifices a degree of practicality on the altar of beauty.
There. I've shut it off. All you do is cover the left half of the control rectangle with your thumb. ... It may be possible to reverse the program—rewind it to a desired point, so to speak— but I haven't stumbled on the method yet. At least I don't think I have. It's impossible for me to remember the sequences of colors—though it probably wasn't a bit difficult for the Asadi, or Ur'sadi, who composed, manufactured, and used these things, however long ago that may have been.
They're books, or the Ur'sadi equivalent, as I'm sure you've already guessed. [A thumping noise.] I'm pocketing six of them, putting them in my backpack. For the greater glory of Science. To set the shirttails of ole Oliver Oliphant aflame with envy, may his ghost go angrily blazing across the heavens. Not to mention the fact that they'll be just one more thing for Morrell to put his screwdriver to.
[Musingly]: Look at that wall. Can you imagine the information on hand here? Or the level of technology necessary to devise a storage-and-retrieval system for a "language" that consists of complicated spectral patterns? One fifteen-minute program in one of these cassettes probably represents the equivalent of a three hundred-page book. ... By the way, what do you suppose I was "reading"? I'd guess that the band of colored dots above the eye is the description of the contents. The title, so to speak. Maybe I was scanning a sex-and-sadism tract by the late Marquis de Asadi— my hands had begun to sweat while the program was running.
[Sober again]: No, no, the eyebook—let's call 'em eyebooks— was the first one on that particular rod. Maybe it's their Iliad, their Divine Comedy, their Origin of the Species, their Brothers Kar-amazov. And what the hell have they done with it? Stuck it in a forgotten, godforsaken temple in the middle of the Synesthesia Wild and left it to commemorate their fall! What colossal waste! What colossal arrogance!
[Shouting]: Where the hell do you creatures get off neglecting the accumulated knowledge of millennia? You're animals! ANIMALS!
[A cacophony of echoes. A prolonged, painful ringing]
Forgive me, Eisen, Benedict, all of you. Forgive me. [Chaney's voice drops to a whisper, scarcely audible.] And you, you Asadi aerialists, that's right, pretend I don't exist, pretend you can't hear me, ignore the voices of your ancestors whispering to you from their deaths. [Venomously]: And may God damn you both to hell!
III. CHANEY[in a lifeless monotone]: I think I slept for a while. Under the rows upon rows of eyebooks. Maybe an hour. Then a noise woke me, a ringing of iron.
Now I'm on the helical stairway high above the museum floor. I'm in a curve of the stairway a little below and opposite the glass platform where The Bachelor was standing. He's no longer there. A moment ago he chinned himself up to the cold ring of the chandelier, gained his feet, and balanced on the ring, quite
precariously. Then he reached out and grabbed the plumb line that drops down from the dome.
The huri, meanwhile, squats on the foremost globe in the triangle of globes set in the great iron ring. He's been there awhile.
The Bachelor, after grabbing the gold braid, fashioned a noose and slipped his neck into it. Then he swung himself out over the floor so that his
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