Compleat Traveller in Black Read Online Free Page B

said that I oppose you now you have informed me of the purpose of your task.”
    “A third component, not of your nature alone, but that of all humanity, is this: that you shall not understand what you are doing. I wish you good day – though whether it will be so is rather up to you than up to me.”
     
    Leaving his host rapt in thought, with one elbow on a book in front of him, his chin cupped in his hand, his eyes staring vacantly at his pet owl, the traveller set forward, and among the gold and silver towers of Ryovora the populace confirmed what Manuus had said.
    That same argument the enchanter had put bluntly, he heard indirectly phrased before the houses of the great merchant-enchanters who conjured this city’s goods from the far corners of the world; so too in market squares and private homes; so too in theaters and taverns, shops and laboratories and even brothels. When at last he came to stand upon the summit of a high shining tower and overlook the sleeping city in the small dead hours, he was convinced.
    Yes, truly the folk of Ryovora were dissatisfied, and it was as Manuus had claimed. They had struggled through centuries inquiring of the mute cosmos what its purpose and the purpose of humanity might be, and they were left still hungering, to the point of growing disillusioned.
    This hunger – so they declared – would be assuaged if only they had a god to turn to, as did their neighbors at Acromel. News had been brought, of course, that the god of Acromel had caused uncounted deaths and widespread misery, but they ascribed all that to the notorious stupidity of Duke Vaul. “We are sensible people!” they insisted. “We would know how to treat a god!”
    The traveller stood gazing out over the placid scene. The beams of a waxing moon glinted on the roofs of splendid buildings, on ornamental trees and lakes, mansions and fine wide roads among whose dust were scattered gems to make the way more pleasant.
    To think that folk who revelled in such luxury could hanker for an arbitrary god …!
    He had asked everywhere, “What is the nature of a god?” And they had answered confidently, “We have none! How, then, can we tell? But if we did have one – ah, then we’d know!”
    The traveller remained immobile until pink dawn-flush tinged the east, absorbing and reviewing the desire that inchoately washed against his mind. At last, a breath or two before full sunrise, a smile quirked his mouth and he raised his staff above the city and said, “As you wish, so be it.”
    Then, his task for the moment being accomplished, he departed.
     
    IV
     
    To park a car while one goes for a walk in the woods is not uncommon. To return and find that the car is no longer there is not unprecedented. But to return and find that the road itself, on which the car was parked, has likewise vanished, is a different matter entirely.
    Yet for a man who rules himself by the straightforward logic of common sense, such as a materials scientist turned civil engineer, there is no need instantly to assume that a problem of this magnitude is insoluble. Bernard Brown was precisely such a person, and it was to him that this improbable event had just occurred.
    “Well!” he said, staring at the indisputably grassy surface of the narrow ride between high hedges where to the best of his recollection – and his memory was normally good – there had shortly before been a tarmac road, sound enough in general albeit a far cry from the concrete superhighways he was used to helping build. “Well!” he said again, and since there was no obvious alternative sat down on a mossy rock and smoked a cigarette in a philosophical manner.
    However, no one came by who might enlighten him as to the fate either of his car or of the road it had been on, so when the cigarette had reduced to a stub he dropped it on the grass, ground it out underfoot, and began to walk along the lane between the hedges.
    By the straightforward logic of common sense, a road