Forbidden Planets Read Free Page A

being?”
    “I hope not,” said Imbry. “I prefer to be touched only at my own instigation. Now tell me what it is.”
    Warrigrove sighed. “It has had many names: the Grail Ultima, the Egg of First Innocence, the Eighth Path, the Supernal Radiance. Which do you prefer?”
    Imbry found none of them satisfying. All had the ring of empty syllables swirled about by vague associations, nebulous connotations. He didn’t mind batting about such inflated insubstantiata when he had been the one to blow air into them, but to be on the receiving end of the “perfumed cloud” was irritating. He again studied Warrigrove closely, but detected no intent to deceive.
    “Ambiguity will not serve,” he said. “If you can’t give me more than a misty whiff of its nature, then tell me if it has a function: What does it do ?”
    Warrigrove’s brows rose and his lips pursed, and Imbry could tell that his latest question was no more likely to receive a hard-edged answer than had its predecessors. “Anything and nothing,” the aficionado said. “Fulfill dreams, but only for those who take care not to awaken. Reveal mysteries, though the revelations are no less mysterious than what was hidden. Transform base dross into rare earth, at least in the eye of the beholder. This is something from beyond our mundane existence. It is like one of the wonders of our species’ dawn time, when who could say what might lie beyond the familiar hills, and the mind spun tales of eldritch kingdoms and far off lands upon which any fancy might be imposed.”
    Imbry put one plump palm against his forehead, then drew it down his face, as if the action could wipe away a film that obscured his perceptions. “I will summarize,” he said. “We have an object whose existence to date has been mainly rumor; which comes from no one knows exactly where; whose nature and functions are, at best, untested; about which vague yet fabulous and mystical claims may be made. And, on top of all that, it may be merely a cunning forgery.”
    “You have it,” said Warrigrove. “Though I doubt it is a fake. It generates in me too profound a passion. Though I am puzzled by your ability to withstand its glamor.”
    “We are fashioned from different stuffs. It is why you collect and I deal.”
    “That may well be so. We come from different sides of a metaphysical divide. And each must pity the other.”
    “Let us leave our estimations of each other’s character for another day,” said Imbry, “and concentrate on resolving this mystery.”
    “Very well. I will advance a theory: Perhaps the myriad grails and will o’ the wisps that speckle the history of humanity have always been the same object. Say it is a fragment from a higher realm that somehow found its way into our base continuum—an eternal, unchangeable shred of absolute beauty that moves in mysterious ways from place to place and from time to time. Some of those who encounter it are transported by the revelation of a sphere of existence so much greater, so much finer, than the dull swamp in which we grind out our little lives. Others receive the same knowledge but are merely annoyed.”
    Imbry made a tactless noise. “Have you spent much time on that theory?”
    “In truth,” said Warrigrove, “it came to me as I beheld the object.”
    “Indeed? So it is a touchstone for separating humanity into the high-minded and the prosaic?”
    “I would not put it that way, but it is not an inaccurate reflection of my idea.”
    “And you would include Chiz Ramoulian among the elevated?”
    “The Red Abandon addict?” Warrigrove tried to disguise his anxiety, but Imbry was a practiced listener. “Is he connected to this?”
    “He appears to have been as taken with it as you are.”
    Warrigrove attempted to affect nonchalance. “You would feel no need to mention my connection to this matter in Ramoulian’s hearing?”
    “At present, he is dining with the Archon,” Imbry said, employing the common euphemism