But the statues that rose in uncountable numbers on both sides of them were not only those of sapphire-eyes. There was a whole world here — a cosmos, even — dense, congested, statue upon statue in crazy profusion, all manner of beings packed tightly together in crowded groups.

Here and there Hresh saw the carved figures of hjjk-men interspersed with the sapphire-eyes, and some dome-headed mechanicals not very different from the ones the tribe had found rusting in the lowlands just beyond the mountains of scarlet rock, and other creatures that looked like walking shrubs, with petals for faces and leafy branches for arms and legs.

“What are those?” Haniman asked.

“Vegetals, I think. A tribe of the Great World that perished in the Long Winter.”

“And those?” said Haniman. He pointed to a group of pale elongated beings that reminded Hresh very much of Ryyig Dream-Dreamer, that strange hairless creature who had dwelled in slumber in the cocoon for, so it was said, hundreds of thousands of years. These walked upright on two long thin legs and looked something like the people of the tribe, but they had no fur and no sensing-organs, and their attenuated bodies, even in stone, seemed flimsy and soft.

Hresh stared a long while at them.

“I don’t know what they’re supposed to be,” he said finally.

“They’re like the Dream-Dreamer, aren’t they?”

“I thought so too.”

“A whole race of Dream-Dreamers.”

Hresh pondered that. “Why not? Before the Long Winter, all sorts of beings may have lived on Earth.”

“So Dream-Dreamers were one of the Six Peoples of the Great World that the chronicles talk about?” Haniman began to count on his fingers. “Sapphire-eyes, sea-lords, hjjks, vegetals, humans — that’s five—”

“You left out mechanicals,” said Hresh.

“Right. That’s all six, then. So who were the Dream-Dreamers?”

“From some other star, maybe. There were all sorts of people here from other stars in those days.”

“What was somebody from another star doing living in our cocoon?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“There’s a lot you seem not to know, isn’t there?”

“You ask too many questions,” said Hresh irritably.

“Ah, but you are Hresh-of-the-answers.”

“Ask me this one another time, will you?” Hresh said.

He turned away, stepping down cautiously from the slab of stone that had borne them to this place and tentatively advancing a few paces up the floor of the cavern. As he moved forward the amber glow preceded him, illuminating his path. It seemed to radiate from invisible outlets that might have been set fifteen or twenty paces apart, activated by his proximity.

Though overwhelmingly intricate masses of statuary rose along the walls on both sides far into the distance, the cavern floor itself seemed bare. But as Hresh continued he began to make out a blocklike object, high and broad, sitting in his path far up in the dimness. When he was closer he saw it to be a complex and significant structure, perhaps a machine, set all about with knobs and levers fashioned from a shining tawny substance that looked almost like bone.

“What do you think?” Haniman asked.

Hresh chuckled. “Haniman-full-of-questions, they’ll call you!”

“Is it dangerous?”

“It could be. I don’t know. There’s nothing about any of this in anything I’ve read.” He raised his hands and let them hover above the nearest row of knobs, not daring to touch anything. He had a sudden clear sense of this thing as a master control unit to which all the metal webwork of the three dozen towers of the plaza was connected. Those spirals of struts and braces might serve to collect and funnel energy to it.

And if I touch the knobs? he wondered. Will all that energy go roaring through my body and destroy me?

To Haniman he said, “Stand back.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Conduct a test. It could be dangerous.”

“Shouldn’t you wait, and study it a little first?”

“This is how I will study it.”

“Hresh—”

“Stand back. Farther. Farther still.”

“This is craziness, Hresh. You’re talking nonsense and your eyes look wild. Get away from that thing!”

“I have to try it,” Hresh said.

He put his hands to the nearest knobs and squeezed them as tightly as he could.

He expected anything: lightning cutting through the cavern like a bright sword, the crash of terrible thunder, the roar of the winds, the screaming of dead souls. Himself burned to a cinder in an instant. But all he felt was a faint warmth and a vague tingle. For an instant a startling, dizzying image flashed through his mind. It seemed to him that all the myriad statues on the walls had come to life, moving about, gesturing, talking, laughing. It was like being plunged into a turbulent stream, being swept down a wild whirlpool of life.

The sensation lasted only for a moment. But in that moment it seemed to Hresh that he himself was a citizen of the Great World. He was in the midst of all its wondrous surge and vigor. He saw himself striding down the throbbing streets of Vengiboneeza, moving through the turmoil and frenzy of a marketplace where members of the Six Peoples jostled one another by the thousands, sea-lords, vegetals, hjjks, sapphire-eyes, shoulder to shoulder. There was the sultry feel of warm moist air against his cheeks. Slender trees bent low under the weight of their thick, heavy, glossy blue-green leaves. Strange music tingled in his ears. The scent of a hundred unfamiliar spices astonished his nostrils. The sky was a tapestry of brilliant colors, azure, turquoise, ebony, crimson. It was all there. It was all real.

He was stunned by it, and humbled, and shamed.

All at once he understood what a true civilization was like: the immense bustling complexity of it, the myriad interactions, the exchange of ideas, the haggling in the marketplace, the schemes and plans, the conflicts, the ambitions, the sense of a great many people simultaneously moving in a host of individual directions. It was so very different from the only life he had known, the life of the cocoon, the life of the People, that he was stricken with profound awe.

We are really nothing, he thought. We are mere simple creatures who lived in hiding for century upon century, going through endless repetitious rounds of trivial activity, building nothing, changing nothing, creating nothing.

His eyes grew hot with tears. He felt small and lowly, a cipher from a tribe of ciphers deluded by their own pretentions. But then his chagrin gave way suddenly to defiance and pride and he thought: We were very few. We lived as we had to live. Our cocoon thrived and we kept our traditions alive. We did our best. We did our best. And when it was the Time of Coming Forth we emerged to take possession of the world that had been left to us; and when we have had a little time we will make it great again.

Then the vision slipped away and the astounding moment was over, and Hresh stood trembling, blinking, bewildered, still alive.

“What happened?” Haniman asked. “What did it do?”

Hresh made an angry gesture. “Let me be!”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes. Let me be.”

He felt dazed. The world of this dark musty cavern seemed only a hateful phantom, and that other world, so bright, so vivid, was the true world of his life. Or so it had seemed, until the cavern had sprung up about him once more and that other world had been swept away beyond his grasp. Just then he would have given everything to have it back.

He suspected that he had tasted only the merest slice of what this machine could give him. The Great World lived anew within it! Some ancient magic was kindled here, some force drawn downward through the three dozen towers and the enormous jumble of statuary, a force that had roared through his mind and carried him back across the bygone centuries to a lost world of miracles and marvels. And he could make that leap through the eons again. All it took was a touch.