"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling
beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to
the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual
in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass.
We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew
drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and
greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong
is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own
evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the
beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even
know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us,
the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the
machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we
build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient
Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be
destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that
our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power.
The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze.
It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man
would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a
space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to
protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield
of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come
is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric
was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their
thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far
flung kind to return."