ain a closer view of that other world than I have done?"

"I am an ignorant man, stranger, so I can't say. Perhaps there are many
others like you who would gladly know."

"Where? I should like to meet them."

"Do you think you were made of one stuff, and the rest of mankind of
another stuff?"

"I can't be so presumptuous. Possibly all men are reaching out toward
Muspel, in most cases without being aware of it."

"In the wrong direction," said Polecrab.

Maskull gave him a strange look. "How so?"

"I don't speak from my own wisdom," said Polecrab, "for I have none; but
I have just now recalled what Broodviol once told me, when I was a young
man, and he was an old one. He said that Crystalman tries to turn all
things into one, and that whichever way his shapes march, in order
to escape from him, they find themselves again face to face with
Crystalman, and are changed into new crystals. But that this marching of
shapes (which we call 'forking') springs from the unconscious desire
to find Surtur, but is in the opposite direction to the right one.
For Surtur's world does not lie on this side of the one, which was
the beginning of life, but on the other side; and to get to it we
must repass through the one. But this can only be by renouncing our
self-life, and reuniting ourselves to the whole of Crystalman's world.
And when this has been done, it is only the first stage of the journey;
though many good men imagine it to be the whole journey.... As far as I
can remember, that is what Broodviol said, but perhaps, as I was then
a young and ignorant man, I may have left out words which would explain
his meaning better."

Maskull, who had listened attentively to all this, remained thoughtful
at the end.

"It's plain enough," he said. "But what did he mean by our reuniting
ourselves to Crystalman's world? If it is false, are we to make
ourselves false as well?"

"I didn't ask him that question, and you are as well qualified to answer
it as I am."

"He must have meant that, as it is, we are each of us living in a false,
private world of our own, a world of dreams and appetites and distorted
perceptions. By embracing the great world we certainly lose nothing in
truth and reality."

Polecrab withdrew his feet from the water, stood up, yawned, and
stretched his limbs.

"I have told you all I know," he said in a surly voice. "Now let me go
to sleep."

Maskull kept his eyes fixed on him, but made no reply. The old man