The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,91
believe in God any longer, and so I have had to formulate my own understanding of the matter. Does that shock you?’
‘It baffles me, rather. The proofs of God’s existence are all around us; it seems to me that one would have to be blind not to see them.’
‘Perhaps I am blind. But I hope you will grant that a man may learn to navigate his way through the world without sight. Why, I have known blind men – and women, too – whose other senses have, as it were, become all the sharper in compensation for the lack of it. One of the keenest horologists I ever met was a blind man able to repair timepieces by touch and hearing alone. So it may be with a man like myself, blind to what others take for granted. Certainly I do not mean to disparage the genius of your late master. His insights into time and horology were profound, and I never met a quicker, more fertile mind, one better able, moreover, to turn its fancies into facts. And what wondrous facts! Nor did our differences of opinion on this and other matters prevent our long partnership from being, on the whole, a happy and successful one. I mourn his passing, sir, and honour his memory: truly, I do. And I will have more to say about that in due course. But I have pursued my own researches into the nature of time, and I think it fair to say that I have come to an understanding no less profound than your late master’s.’
‘I should like to hear it,’ Quare said.
‘I believe that time is another dimension. A fourth dimension, if you will. It is like a river in which we find ourselves, a great river stretching into the unknowable distance of the future and the irretrievable distance of the past. Yet we know only an infinitesimal portion of this river. Of its depths we can say nothing. Nor do I believe that we are afloat upon its surface; that is an illusion of perspective. Rather, it surrounds us on all sides, and the heights to which it extends above us are as infinite as the depths below. What we perceive as the passing of time, the steady beat of seconds and minutes that we measure out with our clever clocks, the signs of aging that we recognize with dismay upon our faces and the faces of our loved ones, which testify to the briefness of our earthly lives, the progression of the seasons, which, like a rolling wheel, both repeats its revolution and moves forward towards some culmination we cannot know, are but visible indications of an invisible force, just as the rustling of leaves in a tree signifies the passing of a breeze we cannot otherwise perceive. In this great river – or ocean, if you prefer – of time, we are but bits of debris carried along by the current. We mistake, in our ignorance and arrogance, the flow of that current for our own movement, and flatter ourselves that we give shape and direction to our lives by our actions and beliefs. But in fact, the vast majority of us are quite helpless, and all our vaunted intelligence is lost on inconsequential ephemera, bubbles and rainbows, rather than on the mysteries of this wondrous medium that surrounds us.’
‘An interesting theory,’ said Quare.
At which, as if acknowledging the scepticism behind Quare’s politeness, Longinus gave a bark of laughter. ‘It gets better, sir. Imagine, then, a great sea, in which we humans are carried along on a particular current, just as, in our own seas, ships may travel from one place to another simply by catching a certain stream. But would it not be strange if, in this sea of time, there were not other currents? And would it not be stranger still if there were not other creatures also living in this sea – just as, in our own watery seas, there is an abundance of life – life, moreover, that is not captive to one current or to any of them, but may move with freedom and purpose throughout the entire medium?’
‘What sort of creatures do you mean?’
‘Call them what you like: gods or angels, demons or dragons. Fairies, even. Creatures of myth and legend, though quite otherwise than those myths and legends paint them. Names are unimportant; what matters is that they exist. Some are mindless, some harmless, but others are as intelligent as we,