ask what made the Lifemaker and the Maker of Lifemakers. It seems to me that you
have merely moved your barrier to another place. It stands as high as ever, but
now you must travel farther to cross it. The gain would appear poor compensation
for the exertion, for what does it amount to but tired feet?”
“If the barrier has been moved back, then the world of knowledge that it
encompasses is so much the greater,” Thirg replied. “And if that world does not
close back upon itself but extends indefinitely, then the gain can be without
limit even though the barrier is never crossed. Therefore does this barrier in
the mind have any more effective substance to it than the Barrier which is
supposed to enclose the physical world?”
Dornvald considered the proposition for a while. “But what is there in the
knowable universe, apart from machines, that could assemble machines?” he asked
at last.
“Nothing of which I am aware … in this world,” Thirg replied. “But if there
should indeed exist other worlds beyond the sky, and if they are knowable, then
are we not obliged to include them in the total knowable universe of which you
speak? And does not the removal of a barrier to distances so vast leave room
enough within to harbor an unknown but knowable Life which, though not machine,
might create machine?”
“Now your words become the riddle,” Dornvald said. “How could Life exist without
machine when both are one?”
“Is Life constrained to take no other form than that familiar to us?” Thirg
asked. “If so, by what law? Certainly none that presents itself to me with
credentials sufficient to place its authority above all question.”
“Well, now you must answer your own riddle,” Dornvald said. “For truly we have
arrived at my barrier now, and its faces are unscalable. What form is both Life
and not Life, for it is not machine, yet machine is Life?”
“I can conceive of none such, Retumer-of-Riddles,” Thirg answered. “But then I
have never claimed that the borders which bound the tiny country of my
comprehension, and the barrier which confines the universe of the knowable must
coincide. The greater territory contains vast regions outside the smaller, with
room enough to accommodate whole nations of answers both to this riddle and
others that I know not even how to ask.”
They fell silent, and thoughtful patterns came and went slowly across Dornvald’s
face for a while. At last he looked sideways at Thirg and said, “Perhaps your
thoughts are not so strange after all, Wonderer-about-Lifemakers. There have
been tales of flying beasts that descended from the sky.”
“I have heard them,” Thirg replied. Allegedly a mysterious creature had come
down from the sky in a remote area of northern Kroaxia about twelve
twelve-brights previously and been devoured by swamp-dwelling saber cutters.
Rumors told of similar events in more distant places at about the same time too,
but always it was a case of somebody who knew somebody who had actually seen
them. “But all through the ages there have been myths of wondrous things. One
myth among many will not be made any the less a myth by mere conjecturings of
mine that would have it be otherwise.”
“If it is a myth,” Dornvald said.
“I cannot show that it is,” Thirg replied. “And neither can I show conclusively
that the fairy beings with which children would inhabit the forests are a myth,
for both propositions rest equally on negatives. But the impossibility of
proving falsity is no more grounds for asserting the truth of one than of the
other. Just as no Lifemaker speaks to you, so no flying beast has made itself
visible to me. And neither do I know of witnesses whose testimony forces me to
discount all possibility of other explanations for their claims.”
Another silence ensued. Then Dornvald said, “I have seen one.”
Thirg forced a tone that was neither too credulous nor openly disbelieving. “You
saw a creature flying? It actually descended from the sky?”
“So I was assured by one who was there before me,” Dornvald replied. “But I did
see its remains, and it was the likes of no beast that I have ever seen before