Still, they were somehow different, and they certainly came from Surtur. If I didn't hear them correctly, that was my fault and not his."Polecrab growled a little. "If Surtur chooses to speak to you in that fashion, it appears he's trying to say something.""What else can I think? But, Polecrab, what's your opinion - is he calling me to the life after death?"The old man stirred uneasily. "I'm a fisherman," he said, after a minute or two. "I live by killing, and so does everybody. This life seems to me all wrong. So maybe life of any kind is wrong, and Surtur's world is not life at all, but something else.""Yes, but will death lead me to it, whatever it is?""Ask the dead," said Polecrab, "and not a living man."Maskull continued. "In the forest I heard music and saw a light, which could not have belonged to this world. They were too strong for my senses, and I must have fainted for a long time. There was a vision as well, in which I saw myself killed, while Nightspore walked on toward the light, alone."Polecrab uttered his grunt. "You have enough to think over."A short silence ensued, which was broken by Maskull.
"So strong is my sense of the untruth of this present life, that it may come to my putting an end to myself." The fisherman remained quiet and immobile.
Maskull lay on his stomach, propped his face on his hands, and stared at him. "What do you think, Polecrab? Is it possible for any man, while in the body, to gain a closer view of that other world than Ihave 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.
