Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (39 page)

BOOK: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

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Jhutti fixed his eyes on the slowly turning gem. The words were waiting to be spoken. But would he get them out in time? It would be, Jhutti thought, like an old Wild West movie, like a gunfight on the dusty main street. He would attempt to pull out his six-shooter – two words – and his adversary would attempt to pull out his weapon, and pin a crystal needle through Jhutti’s windpipe.

His heart was pounding. He shut his eyes. He heard the Jewel say, ‘What is your answer, Amanpreet Jhutti?’

He spoke.

EPILOGUE

That the mind is in the world and at the same time the world is inside the mind. This is in the nature of infinite geometries, and these are the geometries with which we must deal. Take the example of a particular writer – say he lives in France. Say he carries the idea of France inside him. Each insulates each; and France exists within the world and is itself a world. And this world is subordinate to its more massive sun, which has captured it; and yet the world moves on its frictionless ellipses around and around, containing its sun in an invisible net of silk. The sun is part of a galaxy that surrounds a central black hole; and that black hole has broke the hymen of space-time itself and folded out, a point that is an infinite space in which the galaxy itself is nested. Thought and matter are each inside each other, and each flows without and within, and the principle of flow is the ocean.

You are dipped in this water, and it is with this water that you are baptised. Streaming, your head surfaces, like the head of somebody breaking the surface of an ocean of words. This ocean is glassy, and greeny, and we move towards it.

Jhutti opened his eyes. He felt as if he had been turned inside-out, or the reverse of that. ‘Where am I?’ he asked.

Also by Adam Roberts from Gollancz:

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A Gollancz eBook

The right of Adam Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company

This eBook first published in 2014 by Gollancz.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 13444 7

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.adamroberts.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk