Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 Read Online Free

the world who could
tell you that. All I know is that this machine is an Associator. If you give it
a set of facts, it will hunt through the sum total of human knowledge until it
correlates them."
                   "Doesn't that take a lot of time?"
                   "Very often. I
have sometimes had to wait twenty years for an answer. So won't you sit
down?" he added, the crinkles round his eyes belying his solemn voice.
                   Alvin had never met anyone quite like the Keeper
of the Records, and he decided that he liked him. He was tired of being
reminded that he was a boy, and it was pleasant to be treated as a real person.
                   Once again the synthesizer field flickered,
and Rorden bent down to read the slip. The message must have been a long one,
for it took him several minutes to finish it. Finally he sat down on one of the
room's couches, looking at his visitor with eyes which, as Alvin noticed for the first time, were of a most
disconcerting shrewdness.
                   "What does it say?" he burst out at
last, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.
                   Rorden did not reply. Instead, he was the one
to ask for information.
                   "Why do you want to leave Diaspar?"
he said quietly.
                   If Jeserac or his father had asked him that
question, Alvin would have found himself floundering in a
morass of half-truths or downright lies. But with this man, whom he had met for
only a few minutes, there seemed none of the barriers that had cut him off from
those he had known all his life.
                   "I'm not sure," he said, speaking
slowly but readily. "I've always felt like this. There's nothing outside
Diaspar, I know—but I want to go there all the same."
                   He looked shyly at Rorden, as if expecting
encouragement, but the Keeper's eyes were far away. When at last he again
turned to Alvin , there was an expression on his face that
the boy could not fully understand, but it held a tinge of sadness that was
somewhat disturbing.
                   No one could have told that Rorden had come to
the greatest crisis in his life. For thousands of years he had carried out his
duties as the interpreter of the machines, duties requiring little initiative
or enterprise. Somewhat apart from the tumult of the city, rather aloof from
his fellows, Rorden had lived a happy and contented life. And now this boy had
come, disturbing the ghosts of an age that had been dead for millions of
centuries, and threatening to shatter his cherished peace of mind.
                   A few words of discouragement would be enough
to destroy the threat, but looking into the anxious, unhappy eyes, Rorden knew
that he could never take the easy way. Even without the message from Alaine,
his conscience would have forbidden it.
                   " Alvin ," he began, "I know there are
many things that have been puzzling you. Most of all, I expect, you have
wondered why we now live here in Diaspar when once the whole world was not
enough for us."
                   Alvin nodded, wondering how the other could have
read his mind so accurately.
                   "Well, I'm afraid I cannot answer that
question completely. Don't look so disappointed: I haven't finished yet. It all
started when Man was fighting the Invaders—whoever or whatever they were.
Before that, he had been expanding through the stars, but he was driven back to
Earth in wars of which we have no conception.
                   Perhaps that defeat changed his character, and
made him content to pass the rest of his existence on Earth. Or perhaps the
Invaders promised to leave him in peace if he would remain on his own planet:
we don't know. All that is certain is that he started to develop an intensely
centralized culture, of which Diaspar was the final