chapter 60 Midnight in the Plaza
IX - 3001
Chapter 60 Midnight in the Plaza
The famous building, towering in solitary splendour above the woods of central Manhattan, had changed little in a thousand years. It was part of history, and had been reverently preserved. Like all historic monuments, it had long ago been coated with a microthin layer of diamond, and was now virtually impervious to the ravages of time.
Anyone who had attended early meetings of the General Assembly could never have guessed that more than a thousand years had passed. They might, however, have been intrigued by the featureless black slab standing in the Plaza, almost mimicking the shape of the UN building itself. If - like everyone else - they had reached out to touch it - they would have been puzzled by the strange way in which their fingers skittered over its ebon surface.
But they would have been far more puzzled - indeed, completely overawed - by the transformation of the heavens.
The last tourists had left an hour ago, and the Plaza was utterly deserted. The sky was cloudless, and a few of the brighter stars were just visible; all the fainter ones had been routed by the tiny sun that could shine at midnight.
The light of Lucifer gleamed not only on the black glass of the ancient building, but also upon the narrow, silvery rainbow spanning the southern sky. Other lights moved along and around it, very slowly, as the commerce of the Solar System came and went between all the worlds of both its suns.
And if one looked very carefully, it was just possible to make out the thin thread of the Panama Tower, one of the six umbilical cords of diamond linking Earth and its scattered children, soaring twenty-six thousand kilometres up from the equator to meet the Ring around the World.
Suddenly, almost as swiftly as if it had been born, Lucifer began to fade. The night that men had not known for thirty generations flooded back into the sky. The banished stars returned.
And for the second time in four million years, the Monolith awoke.
2061 Odyssey Three
Arthur C. Clarke's books
- Autumn
- Trust
- Autumn The Human Condition
- Autumn The City
- Straight to You
- Hater
- Dog Blood
- 3001 The Final Odyssey
- 2001 A Space Odyssey
- 2010 Odyssey Two
- The Garden of Rama(Rama III)
- Rama Revealed(Rama IV)
- Rendezvous With Rama
- The Lost Worlds of 2001
- The Light of Other Days
- Foundation and Earth
- Foundation's Edge
- Second Foundation
- Foundation and Empire
- Forward the Foundation
- Prelude to Foundation
- Foundation
- The Currents Of Space
- The Stars Like Dust
- Pebble In The Sky
- A Girl Called Badger
- Alexandria
- Alien in the House
- All Men of Genius
- An Eighty Percent Solution
- And What of Earth
- Apollo's Outcasts
- Beginnings
- Blackjack Wayward
- Blood of Asaheim
- Cloner A Sci-Fi Novel About Human Clonin
- Close Liaisons
- Consolidati
- Credence Foundation
- Crysis Escalation
- Daring
- Dark Nebula (The Chronicles of Kerrigan)
- Darth Plagueis
- Deceived
- Desolate The Complete Trilogy
- Earthfall
- Eden's Hammer
- Edge of Infinity
- Extensis Vitae
- Farside
- Flight
- Grail
- Heart of Iron
- House of Steel The Honorverse Companion
- Humanity Gone After the Plague
- I Am Automaton
- Icons
- Impostor
- Invasion California
- Isle of Man
- Issue In Doubt
- John Gone (The Diaspora Trilogy)
- Know Thine Enemy
- Land and Overland Omnibus
- Lightspeed Year One
- Maniacs The Krittika Conflict
- My Soul to Keep
- Portal (Boundary) (ARC)
- Possession
- Quicksilver (Carolrhoda Ya)
- Ruin
- Seven Point Eight The First Chronicle
- Shift (Omnibus)
- Snodgrass and Other Illusions
- Solaris
- Son of Sedonia
- Stalin's Hammer Rome
- Star Trek Into Darkness
- Star Wars Dawn of the Jedi, Into the Voi
- Star Wars Riptide
- Star Wars The Old Republic Fatal Allianc
- Sunset of the Gods
- Swimming Upstream
- Take the All-Mart!
- The Affinity Bridge
- The Age of Scorpio
- The Assault
- The Best of Kage Baker
- The Complete Atopia Chronicles
- The Curve of the Earth
- The Darwin Elevator
- The Eleventh Plague
- The Games
- The Great Betrayal
- The Greater Good
- The Grim Company
- The Heretic (General)
- The Last Horizon
- The Last Jedi
- The Legend of Earth