Dark Is the Sun by Farmer Philip José

Author:Farmer, Philip José [Farmer, Philip José]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, Fiction, Science, Science Fiction, General, Fantasy, Astronomy
ISBN: 9780345296801
Amazon: 034529680X
Goodreads: 2911526
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1979-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

26

THE Archkerri trotted elephantinely up to them.

"He was trying to tell me that the gateway was moving," he said. "It apparently has been moving very slowly all along. That would, I think, be because the aggregation of matter in space, which makes the gateway, is also changing in density and location. The end of the log was about to slip off when I started over it!"

He buzzed the equivalent of "Whew!"

"I don't know if that hairy-faced man intended to come back over the log or if he just wanted to take one last look at this universe. Whatever the reason, it is indeed fortunate that he emerged. Otherwise, I would have dropped quite a distance. I am tough but not tough enough to survive a fall from that altitude."

"I wonder where that water came from," Deyv said.

"I've a theory about that, which I'll tell you about later. It involves a satellite of Earth and its effect upon the ocean. I'm more interested in that man. He was wearing garments which I've seen depicted in my prism, but men wore them only during a brief period early in their history. That was an unimaginable number of sleep-times ago, unimaginable to you, I mean.

"Why was he wearing them? And the hair on his face? Men haven't had facial hair for a thousand times a thousand times four hundred sleep-times. Obviously, then, the man is by no means our contemporary. If not, then what is he? It is most puzzling, very engaging."

"I think he was a demon who assumed the form of an ancient," Deyv said.

Sloosh buzzed scornful contempt.

"That's more believable than that he could be an ancient who'd lived since man's early days," Deyv said.

For five sleep-times, the shimmering continued to spill water at regular intervals. Then it ceased. Sloosh made a rope to which he tied a heavy rock. He heaved it through the shimmering, where it remained. Then he tied the other end of the rope to a tree trunk. Two more sleep-times passed, the rope tightened, and the rock fell out of the shimmering.

"It's moving," the plant-man said. "Upward at an angle."

In the meantime, he had gone down to the base of the cliff above which the shimmering hovered. He tasted the water that had fallen from it.

"Salty. The ocean there, if it is an ocean and not a lake, contains salt. So did Earth's at one time and several times after that. Perhaps that other planet in that other universe is a young one. That doesn't mean that if we should get through another gateway, we'll find ourselves in the world to which this gateway is the entrance. There must be many universes, and so there can be different gateways to these."

Sloosh finally decided that the hairy-faced stranger had not originated in Earth's universe. It seemed to him highly unlikely that he had come on purpose to this island to enter the gateway. How could he know there was one here? Not only that, but a thorough search of the shore had failed to yield any craft which he might have used to get to the island.

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