Far below, on the northern side, he could see the confluence of the two rivers. This side of the hill — which looked in profile like a face — was far steeper than the slope he had ascended, so that the water was almost directly below him. He could see the course of the river as it flowed through the marshes towards the sea, often invisible among high reeds. To the south, rising steadily to the gap in the hills, lay the jungle, looking very peaceful in the moonlight. But even as he watched, some batlike creature, many times larger than a bird, winged up into the moonlight, then dived into the trees with a strange, harsh cry. There was a frantic scream of some creature in pain.
Through the gap in the hills beyond he could catch a glimpse of the silvery grey desert — the desert that he had crossed on his way back from Kazak’s city. For a moment he experienced an overwhelming pang of nostalgia, and had the curious illusion that his father was standing beside him. It vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving a feeling of emptiness.
Now that he had arrived at his objective, he felt a sense of anticlimax. During the past hour, he had allowed himself to be carried along passively by the impulse that had moved his feet, his own will in abeyance, like a leaf drifting in a current. That impulse had now vanished. He still remained passive and receptive, waiting for further orders, but none came. Since there seemed to be nothing else to do, he walked round the foot of the stump, examining it carefully. The base curved down smoothly to the ground, like the foot of a large tree, but there was no obvious point at which it disappeared into the ground; in fact, the ground under his feet was hard and grey, like the material of the stump. All this only verified what he already knew: that he was not standing on a hill, but on top of some giant plant. On the stump itself there were rough protrusions, suggesting that leaves had once grown there; if so, they had long ago withered away.
He sat down at the base of the stump, and stared out towards the sea. Half an hour later, when the moon was in the mid-heaven, he was yawning. The sense of urgency had evaporated, and he was beginning to wonder if he was mistaken to believe he had been brought there for some purpose. Perhaps the climbing of the hill was a purely ritual act; perhaps he had been made to repeat the ritual as a sign of trust and acceptance. In that case, his task was completed, and there was nothing to do but return. But when he went to the edge and looked down, he decided that it would be safer to wait until daylight.
His position at the foot of the stump was not particularly comfortable; since the base curved downwards, he was forced to sit with his back at an angle. But when he allowed himself to slip downward into a less awkward position, he found that the curved portion made an excellent pillow; there was even a slight depression for the back of his head. He sighed with fatigue and closed his eyes. As soon as he did this, he experienced a wave of peace that ran down from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. His hands and bare feet, which had been cold, now began to glow with warmth. Once again he experienced a sense of being controlled; but this time the unknown force was urging him to relax.
The first thing he observed when he reached the level of inner silence was that he was no longer aware of the rippling, wave-like motion of the force. For a moment he was puzzled; then he understood; he was at the centre from which the waves emanated, and the centre was motionless.
Now, strangely enough, he was no longer tired. He was aware of the quiescence of his resting body as a glow of self-enjoyment, but the desire to sleep had vanished. Instead, he was possessed by an alert but muted excitement. For the first time, he understood clearly how the heaviness of the body limits the freedom of the mind. Now his mind felt bright and clear, like a still summer morning, and it seemed that he was contemplating his own life, and the lives of all human beings, from a great height. Yet the relaxation of his body continued, and had soon reached the point at which his consciousness normally melted into images and dreams. It was as if he stood on the threshold of some antechamber of the unconscious; voices and images over which he had no control began to invade his personal identity. But while he refused to be drawn over this threshold, he could still return to full awareness.
He was surprised by this ability to prevent himself from drifting into sleep, aware that his normal self-control was not equal to the task. The inner force that had brought him here was now providing the guidance and discipline that his own mind had not yet achieved. What astonished him was that this force was not manipulating or controlling him, but was treating him as an equal, respecting his individuality.
Then he was drawn into the world of living images that he had encountered so often on the borderland between sleep and waking. This was the dream world he had entered every night since he was born, and it was as familiar as the landscape around the burrow. Yet this was the first time he had seen it with his waking consciousness. The normal curtain of amnesia that separates sleeping and waking had been drawn aside, and he became aware of inner landscapes which, under their shifting dream imagery, were as real and permanent as the world of external reality.
As his own dream images faded, he understood why he was being allowed to linger at this gateway between waking and sleeping. This was the level of the consciousness that was trying to communicate with his own. The being whom the spiders worshipped as the goddess of the Delta lived permanently on a level that in human beings would have been called the subconscious. That was why she had been unable to communicate while Niall remained awake; to his conscious mind, the speech of the goddess would have been as meaningless as the sound of waves breaking on a beach.
Now, in the half-dream state, it was as clear as if it had been in spoken language. But it was a language without words. It reminded him of what had happened the first time the Master had addressed him directly; there had been no sense of a “voice” inside his chest; only a sense of direct communication. Now again the meaning was perfectly clear. The goddess was offering to answer any question he cared to ask.
Niall’s first reaction was a kind of inner paralysis; it seemed almost blasphemous to question a deity. But even this nervous reaction drew an immediate response. In images that spoke as clearly as words, he was informed that she was no more a goddess than he was a god. In fact, she had no gender. On her planet of origin, there were no sexes. This planet — known to astronomers of the late twentieth century as AL (Alpha-Lyrae) 3 — was the third in the solar system of the blue star called Vega, in the constellation Lyra. Being slightly larger than our own sun, AL3 exerts a gravitational pull about a hundred times greater than earth, so a man on its surface would weigh ten tons and would be unable to lift his eyelids. Sexual reproduction is therefore impossible, and life on the planet proceeds by a kind of self-generation.
Because of its immense gravitational pressure, life on AL3 has proceeded at a far slower pace than on earth. Life first appeared on the planet about five thousand million years ago, as compared to a mere three thousand million on earth. Three and a half billion years later, AL3 produced its first intelligent life form. On earth, they would not have been regarded as living creatures, since they resembled terrestrial mountains; but on AL3, the evolution of a thought takes as long as a human lifetime.
Half a billion years later, evolution had produced its highest form so far, the species to which the “goddess” belonged. On earth, these giant globular creatures would have been called vegetables. Unlike the “mountain” life form, they had achieved a certain individuality (although to Niall’s bewildered senses, the goddess seemed as impersonal as the sea). Moreover, each member of the species was in mental contact with every other member, and had access to the memories of all its ancestors.
In answer to Niall’s unspoken question, he was shown a picture of conditions on the surface of AL3. The first impression was of brilliance; with its great blue star blazing in the heavens — fifty times as bright as our own sun — it looked as if everything was illuminated by a continuous lightning flash. In this blinding light, the great flat plane seemed to stretch to infinity in every direction — for, since AL3 is so much bigger than earth, its horizon appeared to be almost infinitely distant. Our own planet seemed absurdly tiny by comparison. Halfway across this plane, mountains a thousand times greater than those on earth — the dead remains of earlier life forms — looked like symmetrical cones. And in the foreground, the monotony of this blinding plane was broken only by the presence of a few dozen hemispherical planets, each one surmounted by a stalk — far taller than the stump against which Niall was now reclining — through which it communicated with others of its kind.