2

I was given a key to the cr`eche, told that I might continue to use my cabin until accommodation could be found in guild quarters, and reminded once more of my oath. I went straight to sleep.

I was awakened early by one of the guildsmen I had met the previous day. His name was Future Denton. He waited while I dressed myself in my new apprentice’s uniform, and then led me out of the cr`eche. We did not take the same route as that along which Bruch had led me the day before, but climbed a series of stairs. The city was quiet. Passing a clock I saw that the time was still very early indeed, just after three-thirty in the morning. The corridors were empty of people, and most of the ceiling lights were dimmed.

We came eventually to a spiral staircase, at the top of which was a heavy steel door. Future Denton took a flashlight from his pocket, and switched it on. There were two locks to the door, and as he opened it he indicated that I should step through before him.

I emerged into coldness and darkness, such extremes of both that they came as a physical shock. Denton closed the door behind him, and locked it again. As he shone his flashlight around I saw that we were standing on a small platform, enclosed by a handrail about three feet high. We walked over and stood at the rail. Denton switched off his light, and the darkness was complete.

“Where are we?” I said.

“Don’t talk. Wait… and keep watching.”

I could see absolutely nothing. My eyes, still adjusted to the comparative brightness of the corridors, tricked my senses into detecting coloured shapes moving about me, but in a moment these stilled. The darkness was not the major preoccupation; already the movement of the cold air across my body had chilled me and I was trembling. I could feel the steel of the rail in my hands like a spear of ice, and I moved my hands trying to minimize the discomfort. It was not possible to let go though. In that absolute dark the rail was my only hold on the familiar. I had never before been so isolated from what I knew, never before been confronted with such an impact of things unknown. My whole body was tense, as if bracing itself against some sudden detonation or physical shock, but none came. All about me was cold and dark and overwhelmingly silent bar the sound of the wind in my ears.

As the minutes passed, and my eyes became better able to adjust, I discovered I could make out vague shapes about me. I could see Future Denton beside me, a tall black figure in his cloak, outlined against the lesser darkness of what was above him. Beneath the platform on which we stood I could detect a huge, irregularly shaped structure, black and black on black.

Around all this was impenetrable darkness. I had no point of reference, nothing against which I could make distinctions of form or outline. It was frightening, but in a way which struck emotionally, not in such a way that I felt at all threatened physically. Sometimes I had dreamed of such a place, and then I had awakened still experiencing the after-images of an impression such as this. This was no dream; the bitter cold could not be imagined, nor could the startling clarity of the new sensations of space and dimension. I knew only that this was my first venture outside the city — for this was all it could be — and that it was nothing like I had ever anticipated.

Fully appreciating this, the effect of the cold and dark on my orientation became of subsidiary importance. I was outside… this was what I had been waiting for!

There was no further need for Denton’s admonition to silence; I could say nothing, and had I tried the words would have died in my throat or been lost on the wind. It was all I could do to look, and in looking I saw nothing but the deep, mysterious cape of a land under the clouded night.

A new sensation affected me: I could smell the soil! It was unlike anything I had ever smelled in the city, and my mind conjured a spurious image of many square miles of rich brown soil, moist in the night. I had no way of telling what it was I could actually smell — it was probably not soil at all — but this image of rich, fertile ground had been one that endured for me from one of the books I had read in the cr`eche. It was enough to imagine it and once more my excitement lifted, sensing the cleansing effect of the wild, unexplored land beyond the city. There was so much to see and do… and even yet, standing on the platform, it was still for those few precious moments the exclusive domain of the imagination. I needed to see nothing; the simple impact of this fundamental step beyond the city’s confines was enough to spark my underdeveloped imagination into realms which until that moment had been fed only by the writings of the authors I had read.

Slowly, the blackness became less dense, until the sky above me was a dark gray. In the far distance I could see where the clouds met the horizon, and even as I watched I saw a line of the faintest red begin to etch the shape of one small cloud. As if the impact of the light was propelling it, this cloud and all the others were moving slowly above us, borne on the wind away from the direction of the glow. The redness spread, touching the clouds for a few moments as they moved away, leaving behind a large area of clear sky which was itself coloured a deep orange. My whole attention was rivetted on this sight, for it was quite simply the most beautiful thing I had experienced in my whole life. Almost imperceptibly, the orange colour was spreading and lightening; still the clouds which moved away were singed with red, but at the very point at which the horizon met the sky there was an intensity of light which grew brighter by the minute.

The orange was dying. Far more quickly than I would ever have guessed, it thinned away as the source of light brightened. The sky now was a blue so pale and brilliant that it was almost white. In the centre of it, as if growing up from the horizon, was a spear of white light, leaning slightly to one side like a toppling church steeple. As it grew it thickened and brightened, becoming as the seconds passed so brilliant and incandescent that it was not possible to stare directly at it.

Future Denton suddenly gripped my arm.

“Look!” he said, pointing to the left of the centre of brilliance. A formation of birds, spread out in a delicate V, was flapping slowly from left to right across our vision. After a few moments, the birds crossed directly in front of the growing column of light, and for a few seconds they could not be seen.

“What are they?” I said, my voice sounding coarse and harsh.

“Just geese.”

They were visible again now, flying slowly on with the blue sky behind them. After a minute or so they became lost to sight beyond high ground some distance away.

I looked again at the rising sun. In the short time I had been looking at the birds it had been transformed. Now the bulk of its body had appeared above the horizon, and it hung in sight, a long, saucer-shape of light, spiked above and below with two perpendicular spires of incandescence. I could feel the touch of its warmth on my face. The wind was dropping.

I stood with Denton on that small platform, looking out across the land. I saw the city, or what part of it was visible from the platform, and I saw the last of the clouds disappearing across the horizon furthest from the sun. It shone down on us from a cloudless sky, and Denton removed his cloak.

He nodded to me, and showed me how we could climb down from the platform, by way of a series of metal ladders, to the land below. He went first. As I stepped down, and stood for the first time on natural ground, I heard the birds which had nested in the upper crannies of the city begin their morning song.