登陆注册
15325600000032

第32章

"At first I think it made him uncomfortable.He was restless because he knew too much and too little.The unknown pressed in on his mind as bad air weighs on the lungs.Then it lightened and he accepted the new world in the same sober practical way that he took other things.I think that the free exercise of his mind in a pure medium gave him a feeling of extraordinary power and ease.His eyes used to sparkle when he talked.And another odd thing he told me.He was a keen rockclimber, but, curiously enough, he had never a very good head.Dizzy heights always worried him, though he managed to keep hold on himself.But now all that had gone.The sense of the fulness of Space made him as happy--happier I believe--with his legs dangling into eternity, as sitting before his own study fire.

"I remember saying that it was all rather like the mediaeval wizards who made their spells by means of numbers and figures.

"He caught me up at once.'Not numbers,' he said."Number has no place in Nature.It is an invention of the human mind to atone for a bad memory.But figures are a different matter.All the mysteries of the world are in them, and the old magicians knew that at least, if they knew no more.'

"He had only one grievance.He complained that it was terribly lonely.'It is the Desolation,' he would quote, 'spoken of by Daniel the prophet.' He would spend hours travelling those eerie shifting corridors of Space with no hint of another human soul.

How could there be? It was a world of pure reason, where human personality had no place.What puzzled me was why he should feel the absence of this.One wouldn't you know, in an intricate problem of geometry or a game of chess.I asked him, but he didn't understand the question.I puzzled over it a good deal, for it seemed to me that if Hollond felt lonely, there must be more in this world of his than we imagined.I began to wonder if there was any truth in fads like psychical research.Also, I was not so sure that he was as normal as I had thought: it looked as if his nerves might be going bad.

"Oddly enough, Hollond was getting on the same track himself.

He had discovered, so he said, that in sleep everybody now and then lived in this new world of his.You know how one dreams of triangular railway platforms with trains running simultaneously down all three sides and not colliding.Well, this sort of cantrip was 'common form,' as we say at the Bar, in Hollond's Space, and he was very curious about the why and wherefore of Sleep.He began to haunt psychological laboratories, where they experiment with the charwoman and the odd man, and he used to go up to Cambridge for seances.It was a foreign atmosphere to him, and I don't think he was very happy in it.He found so many charlatans that he used to get angry, and declare he would be better employed at Mother's Meetings!"From far up the Glen came the sound of the pony's hoofs.The stag had been loaded up and the gillies were returning.Leithen looked at his watch."We'd better wait and see the beast," he said.

"...Well, nothing happened for more than a year.Then one evening in May he burst into my rooms in high excitement.You understand quite clearly that there was no suspicion of horror or fright or anything unpleasant about this world he had discovered.

It was simply a series of interesting and difficult problems.

All this time Hollond had been rather extra well and cheery.But when he came in I thought I noticed a different look in his eyes, something puzzled and diffident and apprehensive.

"'There's a queer performance going on in the other world,' he said.'It's unbelievable.I never dreamed of such a thing.I--I don't quite know how to put it, and I don't know how to explain it, but--but I am becoming aware that there are other beings--other minds--moving in Space besides mine.'

"I suppose I ought to have realised then that things were beginning to go wrong.But it was very difficult, he was so rational and anxious to make it all clear.I asked him how he knew.'There could, of course, on his own showing be no CHANGEin that world, for the forms of Space moved and existed under inexorable laws.He said he found his own mind failing him at points.There would come over him a sense of fear--intellectual fear--and weakness, a sense of something else, quite alien to Space, thwarting him.Of course he could only describe his impressions very lamely, for they were purely of the mind, and he had no material peg to hang them on, so that I could realise them.But the gist of it was that he had been gradually becoming conscious of what he called 'Presences' in his world.They had no effect on Space--did not leave footprints in its corridors, for instance--but they affected his mind.There was some mysterious contact established between him and them.I asked him if the affection was unpleasant and he said 'No, not exactly.'

But I could see a hint of fear in his eyes.

"Think of it.Try to realise what intellectual fear is.Ican't, but it is conceivable.To you and me fear implies pain to ourselves or some other, and such pain is always in the last resort pain of the flesh.Consider it carefully and you will see that it is so.But imagine fear so sublimated and transmuted as to be the tension of pure spirit.I can't realise it, but Ithink it possible.I don't pretend to understand how Hollond got to know about these Presences.But there was no doubt about the fact.He was positive, and he wasn't in the least mad--not in our sense.In that very month he published his book on Number, and gave a German professor who attacked it a most tremendous public trouncing.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 道德经的智慧

    道德经的智慧

    本书运用古代案例及故事,分析解读道德经。用通俗的语言对老子的《道德经》进行了解析。全书共81章,每章都分为原文、注释、意译和智慧解析四部分。
  • 亚西纪元没有你的永生

    亚西纪元没有你的永生

    在没有你的世界里…………
  • 时间至尊

    时间至尊

    穿越少年走修行之路,应祸而福得灵珠,从而踏上巅峰。
  • 离火大陆

    离火大陆

    这是一个火的世界,没有斗气,没有魔法,一切能力都来源于火。
  • 相思谋:妃常难娶

    相思谋:妃常难娶

    某日某王府张灯结彩,婚礼进行时,突然不知从哪冒出来一个小孩,对着新郎道:“爹爹,今天您的大婚之喜,娘亲让我来还一样东西。”说完提着手中的玉佩在新郎面前晃悠。此话一出,一府宾客哗然,然当大家看清这小孩与新郎如一个模子刻出来的面容时,顿时石化。此时某屋顶,一个绝色女子不耐烦的声音响起:“儿子,事情办完了我们走,别在那磨矶,耽误时间。”新郎一看屋顶上的女子,当下怒火攻心,扔下新娘就往女子所在的方向扑去,吼道:“女人,你给本王站住。”一场爱与被爱的追逐正式开始、、、、、、、
  • tfboys之王源的初恋

    tfboys之王源的初恋

    故事纯属虚假,不必当真。欢迎大家来收看。
  • 穿越现代来降夫

    穿越现代来降夫

    本是万人之上的武林盟主,身怀绝技,荣华富贵一生享不尽,谁料,暗算,嫁祸,离奇穿越……她忍了,谁知跑到现代还好死不死的遇上了他,是真心?还是假意?就这样沦陷在他的“真情”中了?小三来敲门,姑娘可不是好惹的!
  • 异界大灵术师

    异界大灵术师

    穿越异界,却没料到灵元世界已经走到了尽头。苟延残喘十年,萧何最终与灵元世界共同灭亡。睁开双眸后,萧何意外的发现,自己居然回到了灵元世界破灭时的百万年之前!这个时候灵术还在探索的路上,大部分药物还无法深知其的用途……
  • EXO之请别离开我

    EXO之请别离开我

    【时间真快啊,快得一眨眼刚见面就要离开了呢...】檬冉。。。【错在我,你怎么惩罚我都行,除了不要离开我...】边伯贤。。。【别人的看法,我统统都不在乎,我只在乎你】朴灿烈。。。【都让你不要踏这趟浑水,你怎么就不听呢?】吴世勋。。。【我永远在你身边陪着你】张艺兴。。。【想做什么你尽管去做,我护着你】吴亦凡。。。一滩浑水,本应与她毫无半点关系,可是,却因一条情线被卷了进来,越陷越深,直至深底......
  • 福妻驾到

    福妻驾到

    现代饭店彪悍老板娘魂穿古代。不分是非的极品婆婆?三年未归生死不明的丈夫?心狠手辣的阴毒亲戚?贪婪而好色的地主老财?吃上顿没下顿的贫困宭境?不怕不怕,神仙相助,一技在手,天下我有!且看现代张悦娘,如何身带福气玩转古代,开面馆、收小弟、左纳财富,右傍美男,共绘幸福生活大好蓝图!!!!快本新书《天媒地聘》已经上架开始销售,只要3.99元即可将整本书抱回家,你还等什么哪,赶紧点击下面的直通车,享受乐乐精心为您准备的美食盛宴吧!)