The White City

Lamla took out his little bell and rang it. When the shaven youth came, he ordered him to bring a flask of the reddish-brown liquid. He drank from the silver cup and immediately felt its effect. His head lightened and seemed to expand in concentric circles of increasing vagueness. He filled the cup again and drained it. He expanded without limit and grew aware of a silence about him. Fear gripped him for a moment, then it passed away and was replaced by indifference. He told himself that, logically, nothing of the past had been changed, that he was still High Priest of the Ka, with the duties and responsibilities of that charge. Tomorrow he would attend to the affairs of the city as though nothing had happened.

  He drank again. Something had changed, however. Korkungal, the simple-minded warrior, realised it too, though how he had come to know it Lamla was not sure. Not to fear death was in itself a source of great fear. He began to feel restless. The Ka remains real, he told himself, no matter what happens. And then the terrible thought struck him, coming as though from outside: It is real only because you want it to be real.

  At the End, he realised, the fact that the past was unchanged was a fact of absolutely no importance.

  He drank again, draining the last of the liquor from the flask. He did not feel frightened, and he was too old, too wise for terror. Instead he saw the comedy of it. The limitless universe moved in laughter.

  Lamla was grateful for his wisdom.