Warlock

they safe, or does our fate soon become the equal of the tiger's fate -or of yours?”
        
         The transformation of this part of the forest was completed long ago. Now, all remains in stasis and no further changes can be made, you are safe; the jewels are worth taking with you.
        
        A collective sigh of relief passed through the men, and they seemed to stand easier. One or two of them bent and picked up the stones they had been examining while waiting for the specter's judgment of their safety.
        
        But most of them still watched the face which shimmered overhead, fascinated by the alienness of such a vision.
        
        “What manner of thing caused this change in the jungle?” Shaker Sandow asked he face. “Was it some disease or other?”
        
         First, the specter said, you must understand the nature of this jungle in which you find yourself.
        
        “It is round,” the Shaker said. “And there is some artificial heat source beneath the surface of the ground.”
        
         Perceptive. What more do you know?
        
        “Nothing, really. There has been no time for examination of these interesting facts.”
        
        The face watched them, expressionless, nothing more than a construct for them to direct their attention to. Around them, inside their heads, the voice came again: At one time, this was a great amusement park. It was surrounded by a force shield which kept its animals within it, and visitors rode through encapsulated in smaller shields, getting first-hand looks at the jungle animals of earth and several other worlds from which animals had been brought back. Do you understand force shields?
        
        “No,” the Shaker said, rather sadly. “The world of such marvels died some centuries ago.”
        
         The refugees came through, for a while. That was some eight or nine hundred years ago. Telling strange tales of war in space, of traitors in high councils, of the earth shifting and dancing beneath the feet. They said mountains grew where no mountains had been and seas opened beneath cities once built upon rocks. We few who lived here, within the crystals, knew nothing of that. Our jungle was stable and no changes came to us - and we were incapable of going elsewhere to look. The refugees ceased to pass through, and only every few hundred years do we find one such as yourself.
        
        “And you?” Sandow asked. “How came you to be as you are, not flesh but jewel?”
        
         Those who owned the amusement park were always anxious to find new and unique jungle creatures to place here. Within traveling distance of but a day, there were three cities with many people - many prospective patrons. On some distant world, circling an alien sun, they found a small furred creature, much like a mongoose, which lived in a crystal maze which it structured for itself, a sphere of crystal as hard and enduring as any metal. One was anesthetized and returned here at great expense, turned loose to establish itself in its new home. They imagined a new tourist attraction would be added when its crystal home was finished, but they misunderstood the creature (a common thing, this ignorance, as we fled to the stars with more business acumen than scientific knowledge). The mongoose somehow was able to tamper with the very nature of Time itself as concerns living matter. In its panic and confusion, it began to spin this colorful landscape that you see. Before it had been killed, all this large sector of the forest had succumbed to it and has remained this way since.
        
        “But you live, despite what was done to you.”
        
         I was a caretaker here. Four other human beings fell before the crystal change, and all of us live yet, though in a strange way. Our bodies still live, just as the plants live, just as the tiger and the snake live, though that life is invisible to human eyes. It is a life stretched across eternity. We live now. We live at the origin of the universe. We live, too, at the end of the universe a hundred billion years from now. Our life energies have been captured and spread across the map of eternity like butter over bread. We inhabit the crystal, but we inhabit the very ether of every era in history, recorded and unrecorded.
        
        “Space, you said,” the Shaker reminded the specter. “You spoke of space. The stars?”
        
         Does