The Ships of Aleph (5 page)

‘Out where?’

‘Follow it and see.’

***

I managed to sleep, but I awoke early, as the illusory dawn was burning off the chill dew of the artificial night.

I wondered whether I should take provisions on my expedition before dismissing the notion as absurd. But I did take one of my books: a new, blank one, ready for my notes and observations.

The path disappeared into the mist, the same as it always had, but when I followed it I found the mist no longer thickened, but remained constant. The sense of foreboding that had driven me back before was also absent. I forced myself not to count my steps. After a while I made out a wall ahead. It was as featureless and grey as the mist itself, save for a rectangle drawn on its surface.

And then, between one step and the next, the shape changed – no, opened! It was a
door
. I went up to the doorway and peered through. It gave onto a passage, plain-walled and constructed of a smooth off-white material. Light came from the glowing ceiling. The passage curved away gently in both directions. It appeared I was entering some sort of structure, a building far larger than any I had ever been in.

I stepped into the passage – no,
corridor
was a better description – and started to walk. My eye caught movement behind me. I whirled around to find the door back in place. Heart hammering, I ran back. The door opened; tendrils of mist curled out into the corridor, disturbed by the abrupt motions of this strange device. I resisted the temptation to retrace my steps and check if the village was still there. Instead I turned away from the door – trying not to flinch when I heard it swish shut – and carried on down the passage.

Now I did count my steps, and I found, some fifty-three steps further on, another door, this one on the opposite wall. It did not open as I passed it. Seventy-eight steps in I found a further door on the same side. This one did open, and led into a cavernous hall, unlit and filled with structures whose function I could not begin to guess. The air was dry, and filled with a faint hum. I decided to carry on along the corridor.

I had gone just over a hundred steps when the revelation hit me: I was not in a building. Instead, the structure, with its strange gleaming surfaces
enclosed the entire reconstructed village
. Whatever this place was, it was huge!

I will not detail here all the wonders I found on that day, nor on the many days since that I have spent exploring my unimaginably vast home. I have mapped and recorded and postulated about my findings in other books, which can be found in my library back at the ersatz village.

I agree with the angel’s assertion that my mind as it was when I arrived would have been unable to encompass the true scale and complexity of this place. Consider the door that opens into a space whose walls are almost invisible, due both to their great distance and to the clouds that form and dissipate within the chamber. Or the long door-less section of corridor where I hear a faint but thunderous rush of waters behind the walls. Then there is the huge cylindrical room I have glimpsed through a window, actually a contained hurricane whose true nature is only revealed when some unidentified scrap of matter flies past.

I can move freely about and not come to harm here; in places where I have inadvertently walked into danger, such as the cloud chamber, I was held back from the lethal drop by an invisible force. More than once I have chosen a direction and walked for days, carefully mapping my route. Even so, I can only have explored a fraction of this place.

It has occurred to me that if a complete re-creation of my village is enclosed by this endless expanse of corridors and rooms, then perhaps the entire world I once knew also exists within the same, vast space. Could the roaring waters I heard at a distance be the sound of the very sea I once sailed, cascading over what I once thought of as the edge of the world? When I asked the angel this question it said, in its unhelpful way, that such a possibility was ‘quite feasible’.

Though I continue to explore, there is one place I keep returning to: the starry window.

I found the window two years and sixteen days after my first foray from the village. I call it a window, but that is merely a theory, formulated after much observation. It is located in a stretch of straight corridor located approximately ten thousand paces from my home. The corridor has a patch of wall forty-five paces long which is not like any other wall I have seen: it shows darkness relieved by scattered lights. This view bears a passing resemblance to the night sky I remember from my old life, but it is a night never relieved by dawn and many of the ‘stars’ do not rotate around the zenith but wander in a random fashion. Or not entirely random: many leave and return periodically, and some of these have a most unusual motion, and a hint of colour. Other stars come and go quickly enough that a patient observer can map, if not understand, their chaotic path.

I return to the village to rest, as it is still my home and the changes it undergoes, whilst illusory, are a comfort to me. I still study too; these days, I spend more time with my books than I do exploring. I have seen enough to know that this place is too big for me to chart, and too incomprehensible for me to understand. The only location beyond the bounds of my home that I return to regularly is the starry window. I confess I have become a little obsessed with it.

Every ten days the angel – an angel – still comes to me, and we talk. Sometimes in my wanderings I encounter other angels; they ignore me unless I question them, in which case they usually provide an explanation full of words I have never encountered, despite my wide reading.

If I ask about the starry window they give the usual frustrating response: ‘That is not a question I can answer’.

***

I have now lived here for almost seventeen years – as long as I lived in the real village before I sailed with the Duke. It has been a good life in many ways, but the approaching anniversary of my arrival has made me restless. I keep coming back to that foolish question I can never know the answer to: whether I would have been more content had I chosen to remain in ignorance in my village.

So, when the angel last visited nine days ago, I asked it two difficult questions, both of which I had given up enquiring about some years ago. The first was about my obsession: ‘What is the starry window?’

To my surprise it replied with a question of its own: ‘What do you think it is?’

That threw me for a moment. Then I said, ‘I believe it may show the truth of the world, though I cannot prove it. Am I right in this?’

The angel said nothing. I remembered the only other time it had refused to answer, when I had voiced my suspicions about ‘Merel’. The memory made me uneasy.

Finally I could bear the silence no longer. ‘I will take that as assent, then,’ I snapped. Then, propelled by my frustration I voiced my second, more dangerous question. ‘In my years here I have seen many angels, but not felt any closer to God than I did in my life before. Does God actually exist?’

‘That would depend,’ said the angel, ‘on your definition of God.’

The strange response sounded almost frivolous. I thought of the arguments for and against the existence of a truly divine power. I had certainly experienced miracles: that I lived after falling off the world was one, my healed leg another, this whole place arguably a third. Yet the re-creation of my village was not perfect, and more than once I had acted in ways that – as far as I could tell – surprised the angel.

I chose my next words with care. ‘I sometimes wonder if everything I have seen and experienced in my life is some great machine, running faultlessly, but mindlessly.’

Though I had not asked a question, the angel responded as though I had. ‘Be assured that there is a mind at work here.’

‘But not an omnipotent being?’

Once more, silence.

Which I broke, again. ‘I’m not the first, am I? There have been others who have been plucked from the world to live in this place.’ I did not say like some
pet
– if God truly knew my mind He would know what I was thinking. And if He chose to punish such blasphemy I would at least have my answer.

‘You are correct,’ said the angel. ‘There have been other rare enquiring souls who have lived for a while beyond the world of men.’

‘And they have not satisfied this mind you speak of either, have they?’

‘All have come upon insights of interest.’

‘Have any returned to the world with these insights?’

‘Some, though they had little success in passing on their wisdom. Others have lived out their lives here.’

I had no taste for further discussion, and told the angel so. It left without a word.

I considered for a full day before reaching my decision. In my musings I concluded that God – or rather, the mind behind the world – might know more answers than I, but he – or it – had far more questions too. It also occurred to me that this mind might be lonely, with only the cold, logical angels for company, and that this, as much as anything, could be why frail, transitory beings such as I were sometimes brought here.

In the end it comes down to a simple choice: to live alone in a machine I can never understand or with others of my kind who will never understand me.

When the angel returns tomorrow I will ask to be put back in the world, though not in the village. I would like to see Omphalos, the city I have read so much about. I do not know how I will fare there: all I can do is try.

Before that I will leave this account at the starry window. Call it an odd indulgence, of significance only to myself.

Perhaps the angels will find this book, and I will not have to state my decision boldly. Or perhaps they, or God, really do see my every act, and know already that I have failed to find whatever answers they brought me here to provide.

***

When I went to the starry window, clutching the book containing my story to my chest, I found the window had disappeared. The wall was blank.

My first reaction was fear; I have tested God more than once these last seventeen years, but he has never punished me. (Merel was not a punishment but an experiment.) Now I have made an irrevocable decision: have I finally damned myself in the process?

Yet no angel came to me, no clarion sounded, no force struck me down. I felt, if anything, rather foolish. I left the book anyway, and headed back to my cottage to sleep.

As I made my way through the mist I thought there was something odd about the village square. I hurried forward, straining to see. A figure stood by the well, a woman dressed in peculiar clothes that managed to be both tight and modest. Her skin was unusually dark, almost reddish in hue. She stood casually, arms crossed, a friendly smile on her face.

I was in no mood for games. I strode past her, waving a hand. ‘I see you did work out my intent after all,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry?’ Her accent was odd, though her voice was perfectly understandable. I wondered where ‘she’ would claim to be from – the Sunrise Veldt perhaps, or the Parsan Traps? Some writers had recorded strange skin tones in those high places.

I stopped. ‘I’m not sure what you think to achieve by adopting this form; we may as well just get on with it. Yes, I wish to go home – to Omphalos actually. Tonight would be fine, thank-you.’ A sudden, awful realisation began to grow. What if I had missed my chance to return to the world? Perhaps the option had been revoked. Perhaps instead I was being given a real person from the world to keep me company. I looked at her more closely. She was a little younger than me, not physically attractive but with the look of intellect about her. This was no construct.

Her smile changed, becoming something more complex. ‘Ah, I see. The avatars didn’t tell you, then?’

Now it was my turn to be confused. ‘The avatars?’

‘You call them angels.’

‘You know of the angels?’

‘Yes.’ She sounded uncertain. ‘I assumed they’d discussed this with you. Obviously not.’ Then, almost to herself, she added, ‘Well, your patron is a little eccentric.’

‘Madam, I have no idea what you are talking about.’ I found it hard to maintain my tone of hurt pride given how fascinating this all was.

‘Of course not, there’s no reason you should. Let me start by introducing myself: I’m Captain Estrides.’

Interest gave way to confusion. Some of the corsair schooners in the Blood Sea had female captains, but somehow I didn’t think my visitor was a corsair. ‘My name is Lachin,’ I murmured.

From her expression, this was not news to her. ‘I’m here with a proposition, Lachin. Before I put it to you I need to ask you something.’

‘Please do.’ What else was there to say? I had no idea what was going on.

‘Do you know where you are? By that I mean not just the reconstruction of your village, but what this place you live in actually is?’

‘I am aware that this village, and quite probably the entire world I knew in my youth, are contained in a machine too great for me – perhaps for any mortal mind –  to fully comprehend, though I am told that there is a mind at the heart of it.’

‘That’s correct, as far as it goes.’