The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,1

not quite exist, but is about ninety percent congruent with the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Though the Sources and Acknowledgments will make clear what locations, events, and personalities are based on fact, the reader will not go far wrong in assuming that the more unlikely the story, the closer it is to reality.

The name “Taprobane” is now usually spoken to rhyme with “plain,” but the correct classical pronunciation is “Tap-ROB-a-nee”—as Milton, of course, in “Paradise Regained,” Book IV, well knew:

From India and the golden Chersoness

And utmost Indian Isle Taprobane…

I. The Palace

1. Kalidasa

The crown grew heavier with each passing year. When the Venerable Bodhidharma Mahanayake Thero had—so reluctantly—first placed it upon his head, Prince Kalidasa was surprised by its lightness. Now, twenty years later, King Kalidasa gladly relinquished the jewel-encrusted band of gold whenever court etiquette allowed.

There was little of that here, upon the wind-swept summit of the rock fortress; few envoys or petitioners sought audience on its forbidding heights. Many of those who made the journey to Yakkagala turned back at the final ascent, through the very jaws of the crouching lion that seemed always about to spring from the face of the rock.

An old king could never sit upon this heaven-aspiring throne. One day, Kalidasa would be too feeble to reach his own palace. But he doubted if that day would ever come; his many enemies would spare him the humiliations of age.

Those enemies were gathering now. He glanced toward the north, as if he could already see the armies of his half-brother, returning to claim the bloodstained throne of Taprobane. But that threat was still far off, across monsoon-riven seas. Although Kalidasa put more trust in his spies than in his astrologers, it was comforting to know that they agreed on this.

Malgara, making plans and gathering the support of foreign kings, had waited almost twenty years. A yet more patient and subtle enemy lay much nearer at hand, forever watching from the southern sky.

The perfect cone of Sri Kanda, the Sacred Mountain, looked very close today as it towered above the central plain. Since the beginning of history, it had struck awe into the heart of every man who saw it. Always, Kalidasa was aware of its brooding presence, and of the power that it symbolized.

And yet the Mahanayake Thero had no armies, no screaming war elephants tossing brazen tusks as they charged into battle. The High Priest was only an old man in an orange robe, whose sole material possessions were a begging bowl and a palm leaf to shield him from the sun. While the lesser monks and acolytes chanted the scriptures around him, he merely sat in cross-legged silence—and somehow tampered with the destinies of kings. It was very strange….

The air was so clear today that Kalidasa could see the temple, dwarfed by distance to a tiny white arrowhead on the very summit of Sri Kanda. It did not look like any work of man, and it reminded the King of the still-greater mountains he had glimpsed in his youth, when he had been half guest, half hostage at the court of Mahinda the Great. All the giants that guarded Mahinda’s empire bore such crowns, formed of a dazzling, crystalline substance for which there was no word in the language of Taprobane. The Hindus believed that it was a kind of water, magically transformed, but Kalidasa laughed at such superstitions.

That ivory gleam was only three days’ march away—one along the royal road, through forests and paddy fields, two more up the winding stairway that he could never climb again, because at its end was the only enemy he feared, and could not conquer. Sometimes he envied the pilgrims, when he saw their torches marking a thin line of fire up the face of the mountain. The humblest beggar could greet that holy dawn and receive the blessings of the gods; the ruler of all this land could not.

But he had his consolations, if only for a little while. Guarded by moat and rampart lay the pools and fountains and pleasure gardens on which he had lavished the wealth of his kingdom. And when he was tired of these, there were the ladies of the rock—the ones of flesh and blood, whom he summoned less and less frequently, and the two hundred changeless immortals, with whom he often shared his thoughts, because there were no others he could trust.

Thunder boomed along the western sky. Kalidasa turned away from the brooding menace of the mountain,