The Canopy Of Time Part 4

Falling away to his left lay the Vale of Apple Trees. Chun Hwa saw the stream at the bottom of it, pushing brooks like snail trails up the slope; a village grew and twittered and slumbered beside the stream. This, Chun Hwa liked to think of as the present.

Falling away to his right were the burnt lands, and these he thought of as the past The naturally fertile landscape had had the fertility burnt irreparably out of it, as the bottom is burnt out of a pot. The weapons of man had become as fearsome as the Hand of G.o.d. Nothing lived, except two giant machines which had met in the black valley; they lay now, locked together, sides streaked in rust, each slowly and hatelessly demolishing the other.

This was the good thing for which Chun Hwa rode to sit on the very nose of Blighted Profile: he could see from here both past and present. It was like looking at the two sides of the nature of man, the black and the green.

"Existence has become too terrible," he thought. "The bad side must never emerge again. Never."

But he had no means of knowing how long "never" might be. That was why he wanted to go into the future.

So he sat there for a long time, wondering about life and death. The little boy watched him like a bird look-ing at a stone, wondering why it is a stone.

There is no solution to the bird's problem.

Chun Hwa eventually ate a small meal from porcelain bowls packed in a china box.

"Hup, now, Leg of Leather!" he called, when he had packed the bowls away, and the stallion began at once to carry him back home. The Vale sank below the high ridge. They jogged down the black side of Blighted Profile, jogged among the hard-boiled boulders, through the little landslides of dust and crystals, down, down, on to the arid plain.

The ground was like a scab. Occasionally Leg of Leather's hooves went through the crust. Skirting the machines locked in frigid battle, the stallion crossed the width of desolation, climbed a low slope and came among trees. Far behind-cautiously and involuntarily -Yalleranda followed. This was the first time he had ever left the Vale of the Apple Trees so far behind.

"Nearly home now, Leg of Leather," Chun Hwa said, as they emerged from the wood.

Ahead, the country grew green: parkland as trim and bright as a sunshade. When Chun Hwa approached, a section of it about an acre in extent appeared to change. Curious illusions grew in the air, shapes formed, mists moved. Curtains of molecules lifted higher and higher into the air, like fountains newly switched on; the molecules twisted, misted, glittered, frosted-and formed mirrors, one behind another, interpenetrating, weaving, defining the rooms of Chun Hwa's summer home.

He could see himself on fifty planes, approaching him-self on his own white horse.

By the time he came up to the house, all of its walls were entirely opaque, as they would appear to any visitor. Coaxing the stallion, Chun Hwa rode in. Without pausing at his own quarters, he rode slowly through the house to see his wife, w.a.n.gust Ilsont.

She was busily integrating with two servants when he appeared. Dismissing them, she came towards him as they clicked off. Her leopard, Coily, was beside her; she rested a hand on it for support. Age had her in its web. Only her eyes were not grey.

"I have not seen you for a week, husband," she said gently, taking the bridle in her hand as Coily and Leg of Leather touched muzzles. "At our time of life, that is too long. What have you been doing?"

"Thinking, my love; only thinking and regretting. In this weather, it's an agreeable enough pastime."

"Please dismount, Hwa," w.a.n.gust said anxiously.

When he had climbed down beside her, she said, "You are unsettled in yourself. This should never be, now. We have no reason or time to be anything but at peace with ourselves. For a decade, we have enjoyed only tran-quillity; you must allow me to do what I can to remedy the change in you."

Chun Hwa led her to a bank which shaped itself com-fortably about them as they sat down.

"There has never been a woman like you in any age, w.a.n.gust," he said, gently taking her frail hand.

"What we have been to each other can never be told. I speak out to you now as freely as ever, because we shall not allow ourselves to drift away from each other just because we sense the approaching hounds of death."

He had no way of guessing how these words played on a hidden listener, the child who had felt compelled to follow him across the plain.

"My dear, I feel we have been too absorbed in each other," Chun Hwa said gravely. "It is a fault too much like selfishness. I reproach myself for it now."

"We live in a difficult time; no longer is the world as simple and joyous as when we were young," his wife re-plied. "Our love has always been our strength, as it is now."

"Yes; the blind man sees no danger. I have spent the last few mornings up on Blighted Profile, overlooking my own life. I discover that I have been a refugee from reality, hiding my eyes. Your life has been an inspiration, an adventure: mine has been a walk in your shadow. In your portmatters, you went back to the dark period when I was born, rescuing animals and plants-and me. You almost certainly saved my life by transporting me from my own terrible age, eternally cursed for starting the colour war.

You worked heroically, while I ... hid . . . hid from the first obligation of man, which is to face the evil of his own time-in which evil, he must always be to some extent involved."

"This has become your time, Hwa," w.a.n.gust said. "Besides, a man has no obligations, except to fulfil the best side of his nature. Who would have instructed our ten children if you had not done so? Where would I have drawn the strength to do what I have done, if not from you? We have worked together, my husband, accomplishing much."

"If I have been of use, it has been accidentally," Chun Hwa said, a note of querulousness in his voice.

"You cannot deceive me, w.a.n.gust, however lovingly you try. While I still have breath, I must justify myself. Though I am old, there must still be something I can grasp. I am a poor thing in my own eyes, and that is no way to finish."

He stood before her, his feet apart, hands clasped behind his back. w.a.n.gust recalled his standing like that when his hair was black, long ago. The att.i.tude, she thought, expressed something steadfast in him; she wanted to tell him, "You are Chun Hwa: you do not have to do, only be," but she knew that in his present mood he would dismiss this with scorn. Men could be harder than leopards to handle.

She stood up.

"Come with me," she said simply, laying a hand on his arm.

Bidding Coily stay where he was, she led Chun Hwa through the house to their flying machine. She coaxed him in.

"We are going to fly," she said, smiling. "Is it not a day for flying?"

He shook his head impatiently, still rather petulant.

"You know I wish to talk, my dear. I have not even told you what I am intending to do. I intend to try and travel into the future."

She sighed. "One can only travel into the past, and only come back to the present. There is no future; it is unmade, a bridge unbuilt. Tomorrow does not exist until tomorrow. This has been proven."

He set his lips. The Solites, the tribe into which he had married, could be a stubborn people. But he could be stubborn too; it was, he found, one of the few abilities which did not fade with age.

"I shall visit the future," he repeated.

w.a.n.gust laughed. "Let us fly a little before you go."

On Yalleranda, listening, Chun Hwa's statement had a different effect. He slid discreetly but excitedly away. Now he knew how to catch his marvellous old man when next he rode over to Blighted Profile. As he hurried off, the flying machine rose silently into the air.

It climbed vertically, like a lift.

As w.a.n.gust and Chun Hwa watched, the great house faded beneath them, ebbing into invisibility. More and more landscape came to view, flattening out as it un-rolled beneath them. In a moment they were stationary five miles up. To one side, the square of green below was chopped by the black tract of the burnt lands, but to the other a stretch of fertile land extended into the distance.

w.a.n.gust pointed down at the fertile landscape.

"That is our work," she said quietly. "When we came here, that land was virtually dead. Do you remember it, as black as desert, supporting only cacti? In the midst of it, we established seeds, insects, birds, animals. Slowly they have carried that green wave further and further out. Death has been turned into life. We turned it, Hwa, One day soon, that green fringe will join with the green fringe from the coast, where the new city confronts the sea at Union Bay. Looking at it, can you still say we have accomplished nothing? Gould we have accom-plished anything better?"

He said nothing. Suddenly he felt tired and peevish.

Knowing him well enough not to press him, w.a.n.gust moved away, sighing. At once, as she had antic.i.p.ated, he turned to her and apologized for his rudeness. , "Let there be no breath between us," w.a.n.gust said. "Look, a ship is coming up from the coast!"

They watched through unkeen eyes the oblate spheroid which grew in the sky. It flashed a recognition signal at them, flicked into a change of course, dived, and unrolled behind it one long white vapour breaker down the clean air. Then it touched the machine and was motionless.

Next second, Cobalt Ilia projected herself before her grandparents. They were merely irritated by her exhibition of airmanship.

"I was on my way to visit you," Cobalt declared, kiss-ing the topmost wrinkle of Chun Hwa's forehead.

"Then why not come decently by portmatter instead of indulging in aerobatics?" Chun Hwa asked.

"Now don't be crochety! Flying's all the rage in Union, granf," Cobalt said airily. She was thirty. She was beautiful, but with the unforgiving look of an actress who has played Cleopatra too often.

"How's the city getting along?" w.a.n.gust asked duti-fully.

"You should come and see for yourself," replied Cobalt sternly, relenting at once to add, "because it is going to be so fine; it will be the greatest city in the world. It has been planned and planned, so that it will last for ever! The bad days are gone. The Solites can cease to think of themselves as savages: by the end of this season, the first reading schools will be in operation."

Chun Hwa turned sadly away. It seemed he had spent his life turning sadly away, but now all the confidence and drive manifest in, his granddaughter daunted him.

"Reading is a two-edged weapon," he muttered.

"Our people must read," Cobalt said. "Less than point one per cent of the population is literate."

"A semi-literate population falls prey to any petty dictator who arises," Chun Hwa said.

"An illiterate population falls prey to itself," Cobalt said.

She stood confronting him, feet slightly apart, hands clasped behind her back, in an unconscious imitation of one of his own att.i.tudes. "She might look impressive to anyone who did not know her," the old man thought. Of all his granddaughters, this was the one he found most trying: for this was the one who had most of himself in her.

"You are mouthing parroted phrases," he said. "The Solites are a happy people, Cobalt They do not need information when they have wisdom. Their skill with animals and machines is better than all book-learning. You delude yourself if you think cities create happiness."

"Union will be a happy city-creatively happy. We are barbarians with inherited machines; should we try to be nothing more?" She turned to her grandmother for agreement. "What do you say? Haven't we all vege-tated long enough? Someone must rebuild the world."

"Don't bring me into it, dear," w.a.n.gust said. "The future is with your generation. You must decide."

"We have decided. Power has been with the indolent for too long. In Union, everyone will live, and learn- and dance! I must tell you about our marvellous planned courses of historical dancing; they're quite revolu-tionary."

"Let us go home and not argue," w.a.n.gust said, "but spare me the historical dancing."

They went home, but they argued. It was a time of transition. Between the generations lay gulfs of age and outlook. The old thought that the young were reckless, the young that the old were hidebound. The same pat-tern had appeared down the ages. No agreement was possible, only truce; change was in the air, manifesting itself as discomfort.

"But I understand, and young Cobalt doesn't!" Chun Hwa cried out to himself that evening; "w.a.n.gust brought me from the time before the catastrophe, so that I have standards of comparison. I know how wrong these children are! I know there is nothing so precious as peace, in which a man may tend his own affairs...."

He slept little that night, waking discomforted. With dawn, he took a hurried and lonely meal, afterwards going to find Leg of Leather, saddling him with the pulpit saddle. Like a phantom, he rode off into the misty groves, unwilling to barter words any more; he suspected that Cobalt's ideas were second-hand, and newly acquired at that. It made her impervious to reasoning. He was too ancient for anything but the heady lullaby of riding.

Unthinkingly turning in the old direction, he made across the burnt lands. One ruined machine still picked with stiff daintiness at the carca.s.s of another. In a few minutes, the white stallion was climbing the slopes of Blighted Profile. As they neared the top, the first green leaves of the apple trees waved above the ridge.

Then they gained the highest point, midway between green and black worlds.

Yalleranda saw him perched in his usual position from his mother's cottage. Thin and sweet as celery, his legs carried him twinkling up the slope, dodging, ducking, climbing round the apple trees. Yalleranda was the snake sliding towards its victim, the seducer coming, the blade falling, as he whipped through the knee-high gra.s.ses.

A few yards from the old man, concealed, he halted. He was magnificent. He saw him as n.o.body else would have seen him: something like a snowman ready to melt back to the water from which it was formed. For Yal-leranda, an emanation blew from him like a breeze: and it carried the desire for death.

Yalleranda savoured it. It intoxicated. It was as real as treacle, Chun Hwa sat nodding in the saddle, nodding in con-cord with the cropping of the stallion, seeing neither the bad land on his left nor the good land on his right.

He was thinking that if he could go into the future, he could find there proof that Cobalt's policies, and the policies of her generation, would bring forth evil fruit. But of course he would never get there; it was a silly old man's silly dream. Although he could not see why visit-ing the future should be impossible, mathematicians and scientists had long ago proved it impossible. About that, he could do nothing. He was fit for nothing but reveries -the skin-thin reveries that dotage stretches over its bare bones. He was ripe for dying.

Fearfully, Chun Hwa shook his head, sitting up straight, hurt by his own thoughts.

A small, dark-eyed boy with hair wild and tawny as a lion's mane stood with his hand on the horse's bridle.

"You were nearly asleep," the boy said.

"I was dreaming," he said, thinking how savage, how beautiful he was in his wiry way. This was a generation even beyond Cobalt "You were dreaming of visiting the future," the boy said.

Chun Hwa was hardly surprised. He recalled local talk about wild people with wild talents, people with contaminated blood, strange abilities and unnatural desires, sports of the after-effects of high-radiation war. w.a.n.gust had warned him of them, and he had laughed. Now he laughed again, wheezily, without knowing why.

"A man dreams many things," he said. "What do you dream about, young man?"

"My name is Yalleranda, and I dream about. . . oh, sunshine all muddy on my body while I eat the little worms in apples, or about the hard stones in the middle of clouds."

"Where do you live?" he asked sharply, disliking the boy's answer.

Instead of replying, he twirled savagely round Leg of Leather, coming to the opposite stirrup and grasping Chun Hwa's shoe. Yalleranda's mustard hair touched his white smock.

"I know where there is a machine that will send you into the future," he said, darkling his eyes up at the old man.

As Chun Hwa followed the little figure down the high ridge, down Blighted Profile, he felt no wonderment. He was an old hand at accepting the world's oddities. All he did was cling on to the saddle pommels, letting the boy lead the stallion. In a shower of loose cobbles underfoot, they came to a cave set high on the savage slope, looking across the desolation below.

"It's in here," Yalleranda said, ducking into the gloom.

"Well, and why not?" Chun Hwa asked himself sleepily, not moving, not dismounting. "During the ter-rible war, technology reached its climax. Many weapons were secret. ... It could have been left here, forgotten . . . found by this child. Why not?"

While he waited outside on the horse, Yalleranda flicked round in the twilight of the cave, busy about his machine. He had found it abandoned; n.o.body else knew of it-except the other people who had entered its powerful beam, and they were in no position to say anything.

Darting to one side, nimble as ponies' tails, he pressed down one little red switch. A murmur grew, then dwindled. Out through the mouth of the cave went a beam like a grey mist, like the tongue of a searchlight licking through thin cloud. This was the disintegrator beam which had formed the burnt valley below.

Yalleranda slid round its edges, slipped out of the cave. Leg of Leather pawed .the ground, eyeing the fog uneasily.

"There you are!" Yalleranda cried, throwing up his arms. "Ride into that beam, old man, and you'll be carried into the future. Go on, spur your horse!"

Chun Hwa was puzzled. But the child's eyes were oddly commanding. He spoke to the stallion. Leg of Leather bridled, tossed up his head, then went forward smartly.

His face wizened as if yearning were as sharp as sloe juice, Yalleranda watched his old prize ride into the dis-integrator beam. Its surface was smooth, calm as an inland sea. It lapped up greedily round horse and rider, that cruel sea took them atom by atom, annihilating them absolutely. Like a man riding under a stretch of water, Chun Hwa rode without crying out or looking back-into the infinite future.

Inevitably times changed. Under a new regime, with harsh laws of personal responsibility, the ability to travel in time atrophied; soon the machines had to go alone. Their range of survey was decreasing. Only for a few more centuries would they dredge up this ancient material for beauty and for nightmare.

Judas Danced.

IT WAS NOT A FAIR TRIAL.