01 Taxilas Children

TAXILA'S CHILDREN
"Do the Adepts control the city?"
"The Adepts are provided from the city."
"Who controls the city?"
"The builders."
"The city was built ten thousand years ago - the builders must be dead."
"Insufficient data to determine an answer."
"Are there life forms controlling the city?"
"The nearest life forms are seven point four three kilometres into the city centre, they do
not control the city."
"So - I may assume that the city is automated and responds to the requirements of those
who use it?"
"Correct."
"What sort of technology could possibly manage that?"
"An advanced technology."
Steve glared at the Bole suspiciously. The bastard was laughing at him.
"What is the stimulus for providing specific requirements?"
"Thought!"
Steve leaned back in the chair. As usual, after a game of question and answer with the
Bole, he felt exhausted. Thought! He didn't dare to contemplate the possibilities! It started to
make sense, on a planet where speech had almost become redundant and thought transfer was
a way of life, it stood to reason that the technology which they had abandoned centuries
earlier, would have been based on the harnessing of Thought. No wonder they had got into
strife! The indiscriminate satisfaction of every whim by wishing it to occur, would have
caused chaos. One man would have desired one thing, whilst his neighbour might have
insisted on the opposite - the inevitable result was conflict. They had abandoned the city for
this reason! There had been no alternative, other than eventual self destruction!
There was no point staring at the table at the remains of his meal. He was curious enough
to want to see how it was removed. On cue, there was a slight hazing of the light around the
platter and the wine cup. When the shimmering had ceased, nothing remained. He grinned
and was almost tempted to play with the capabilities - and then he remembered what had
happened to the original inhabitants. He went to bed in a much easier frame of mind. Some of
the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together - but not all, the major ones
remained an enigma.
Why was he there? How was it possible for him to be pictured in the floor of a room in an
abandoned city? What came next? He drifted on the borders of sleep without having the
answers. He felt quite secure, the ever faithful Bole had taken up a defensive stance in the
door of the room. Rho Arpor could have been a million kilometres distant and offered no
threat. The Adepts skulked in their retreat seven point four three kilometres distant and
wondered how they could control the aberrant stranger who had invaded their city. As he
drifted further into sleep, the thought came strongly, it wasn't their city - it was the city of
Taxila - and he had come home!
At some point during the night, he rose from his couch and walked past the Bole into the
main chamber. The Bole offered no resistance to his passing, nor did it offer any advice. It did
not follow, although it could still observe its master through the opening into the Chamber of
the Image. Steve walked slowly to the centre of the Pentagram and lay on his back under the
open lantern. He aligned himself to correspond with the image beneath him. He was not
dreaming and he was totally calm, unlike those times when he had struggled within a
nightmare, to resist the forces which were seeking to draw him through an archway on an
alien shore. On this occasion, he did not visit that planet.
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