The hole in the zero, p.20
The Hole in the Zero, page 20
A third gust blew through the flaring nostrils of the mask, and it was the voice of Blake saying: Eternity is in love with the productions of time. Then the mask crumbled and was assimilated, and it was all within him. He focused down onto one particular galaxy, a misty wheel of light which he
allowed to swing slowly past in the majestic round of the Great Year. He must find a star within the right range, G-type for preference, and catch it at the precise moment of galactic time when it was beginning to throw off its broad roiling ring of gases and heavy elements, and take hold of one of the more moderate planets inside the zone of the gas-giants, and see what he could do with it. Since this needed fine workmanship, he was prepared to be patient and have many failures.
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The first one he tried turned out to be a water-world, and he abandoned it to an eternity of empty seas.
In the second he over-compensated and found himself with nothing but dry wind and rock. So he went on, balancing, adjusting, refining, until he knew that he had the right basic formula.
He braced himself for the next step, the making of life. At his first attempt, he worked without difficulty up to protein-chains before he became tired and abandoned it, a pleasant little tropical planet with an ocean of warm soup. Then he rested for a time and a space, sorting out possibilities. There were many attempts after that, all of them somehow wrong, a world of slow, mindless photosynthesisers, a world of sightless burrowers, a tree world full of birds, and so on.
Immense weariness grew on him and he longed at last to be home. He could feel his energy bleeding away into the stream of time. There could not be many more tries, perhaps only one, as the starry wheel spun before him. Throwing all his knowledge and all his longing into this last effort, he improvised like a master, adjusting, elaborating, here drawing in broad strong lines, there extemporising an airy fantasy, working with excruciating love and care over some cherished detail, until at last, on the edge of exhaustion, utterly drained of power, he knew that what he had made was, more or less, satisfactory.
It was escaping from him now, no longer under his control. He let it go gladly, thus becoming himself a part of it. He was drifting down out of the stark immensities into zones of golden and blue air, down through winds and clouds towards the green planet.
Below there, he knew, were such things as giraffes and honeybees, and troutstreams flowing clear below snowy mountains, and breadfruit sweetpotatoes and strawberries, peacocks and rhododendrons and merino sheep and a watermill.
He was walking along a narrow path beside a lake. A cloud of waterbirds flew up crying around him, and he saw Helena standing there, a blue-eyed sunburnt woman with her skirts kilted up above her knees and her strong legs planted in the shallow water, as she cut basket-rushes with a small sickle. She smiled and waved when he came towards her. Together they bundled up the rushes; he swung the
bundle lightly onto his shoulder, and they walked off arm in arm along the path beside the lake.
Behind them, in the blue sky, the thunder rumbled to itself: "Increase and multiply, my children, and replenish the earth."
The End
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Document Outline
Cover Title/Copyright
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
M.K. Joseph, The Hole in the Zero
