I’m going across the chamber, past an open corridor leading off down the pagoda’s western wing and into darkness. [Footfalls. Echoes.] I’m going toward the one wall in here without any of these spindly cabinets against it . . . The Flying Asadi Brothers are still up there, more rigid than the statue I just picked up. I’m passing directly beneath them now, beneath the iron ring and its energy globes. There’s a huge circular pattern on the polished flagstones I’m walking upon. Inside this circle I feel I’m trespassing on sacred territory . . . Ah, I’m out of the circle and heading toward the horn-colored wall beyond the helical stairway. There are no cabinets on the wall. Instead . . .
Damn this light! this hollowness! Let me get closer . . . On the wall are what appear to be rows upon rows of tiny plastic wafers. Rows of wafers hung from a couple thousand silver rods protruding for several centimeters at right angles to the wall . . . The wall’s just one big, elegant pegboard glowing like a monstrous fingernail with a bonfire behind it. The rows of these wafers – cassettes, cigarette cases, matchboxes – whatever you want to call ’em – begin at about waist level and go up two or three hands higher than I can reach. Asadi height, I suppose.
[For three or four minutes only Chaney’s breathing can be heard. Then, slowly]: Interesting. I think I’ve figured this out, Eisen. I want you to pay attention . . . I’ve just unfastened this intricate, ah, wingnut, say, from the end of one of these protruding rods and removed the first of several tiny cassettes hanging from it . . . Wafer was a serendipitous word choice, because these little boxes are as thin as two or three transistor templates welded together. The faces of the things are about seven centimeters square . . . I’ve counted fifty of them hanging from this one rod, and, as I said, they’re probably three thousand rods on this wall. That’s about 150,000 cassettes altogether, and this section of the pagoda, more than likely, is just a display area.
But I want to describe the one I’ve got in my hand, tell you how it works. Maybe, if I can restrain myself, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Okay, then. In the center of this wafer – which, by the way, does seem to be made of plastic – there’s an inset circle of glass with a diameter of about a centimeter, maybe a little more. A bulb or an eye, call it. Beneath this eye there’s a rectangular tab that’s flush with the surface of the cassette. Above the bulb, directly under the hole through which the wall rod passes, there’s a band containing a series of different-colored dots. Some of the dots touch each other, some don’t. The spacing or lack of it between dots probably has signficance.
And here’s how this little crackerbox works. [Chaney chuckles.] Oh, Eisen, don’t you wish Morrell were here instead of me? I do, too – I really do . . . It’s purposely simple, though. Even a cultural xenologist can figure it out . . . All you do is hold your thumb over the right half of the tab at the bottom of the cassette. Then the fireworks begin.
[A pleased laugh, and its subsequent echo.] Ah, yes. Right now the eye in the center of the wafer is flashing through an indecipherable program of colors. Reds, violets, greens. Sapphires, yellows, pinks. All premeditatedly interlaced with pauses. Pregnant pauses, no doubt . . . In this dimness my hands are alternately lit and shadowed by the changing colors. Beautiful, beautiful. That’s just it, in fact. The entire system probably sacrifices a degree of practicality on the altar of beauty.
There. I’ve shut it off. All you do is cover the left half of the control rectangle with your thumb . . . It may be possible to reverse the program – rewind it to a desired point, so to speak – but I haven’t stumbled on the method yet. At least I don’t think I have. It’s impossible for me to remember the sequences of colors – though it probably wasn’t a bit difficult for the Asadi, or Ur’sadi, who composed, manufactured, and used these things, however long ago that may have been.
They’re books, or the Ur’sadi equivalent, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed. [A thumping noise.] I’m pocketing six of them, putting them in my backpack. For the greater glory of Science. To set the shirttails of ole Oliver Oliphant aflame with envy, may his ghost go angrily blazing across the heavens. Not to mention the fact that they’ll be just one more thing for Morrell to put his screwdriver to.
[Musingly]: Look at that wall. Can you imagine the information on hand here? Or the level of technology necessary to devise a storage-and-retrieval system for a ‘language’ that consists of complicated spectral patterns? One fifteen-minute program in one of these cassettes probably represents the equivalent of a three hundred-page book . . . By the way, what do you suppose I was ‘reading’? I’d guess that the band of colored dots above the eye is the description of the contents. The title, so to speak. Maybe I was scanning a sex-and-sadism tract by the late Marquis de Asadi – my hands had begun to sweat while the program was running.
[Sober again]: No, no, the eyebook – let’s call ’em eyebooks – was the first one on that particular rod. Maybe it’s their Iliad, their Divine Comedy, their Origin of the Species, their Brothers Karamazov. And what the hell have they done with it? Stuck it in a forgotten, godforsaken temple in the middle of the Synesthesia Wild and left it to commemorate their fall! What
