Part 15 (1/2)

”We and the Firvulag have a similar symbolic constellation that we call the Trumpet. See there? Just above your Pleiades.

Our galaxy is so remote that it is invisible, even in the telescopes brought by time travellers to this Many-Coloured Land. But we know that Duat lies out beyond the mouthpiece star of the Trumpet, uncounted light-years from Earth.”

His arm was around her shoulder. He drew her toward the alcove opposite the fireplace where the force-field projector called the room without doors had formerly been installed. Now the little niche was empty except for another pair of gifts from the s.h.i.+pspouse: a picture of a barred-spiral galaxy trailing two great arms, and hovering in front of it, an abstract sculpture of a female figure.

He said, ”We trust-Minanonn and I and the rest of the Peace Faction-that Tana is truly caring. That there is a greater evolution than that of the physical universe, of body, of mind.

That there is an All toward which creation yearns, which each generation perceives ever more clearly, and in doing so, approaches. Those following the old battle-religion see the all in All as achievable only in death and annihilation. Hence their myth of the Nightfall War, which we thought would first engulf our tiny breakaway group of Tanu and Firvulag, and later destroy all the rest of the Duat worlds as well.”

She said, ”Brede spoke of it, and its being rooted in the torcs. She told me how the ancestral Tanu introduced the torc technology to the other Duat races, and how this was eventually seen by her as a metapsychic catastrophe, dooming the Mind of your galaxy to a dead end. And her intuitive insight was correct, Creyn. The torcany artificial mind enhancement that becomes a permanent crutch-is an intrinsic bar to Unity. Marc Remillard and his people proved that in the Milieu.”

He said, ”Those of us who trust believe that even this terrible paradox, the dead end of the Duat Mind, fits somehow in the greater pattern-and will be resolved.”

Elizabeth turned her back on the statue and the star-whirl and moved to the fire. She took up a bronze poker and jabbed half-heartedly at the embers. A few sparks flew.

”I don't think Brede took that view. In the end, she came to believe that the evolution of the Duat Mind could continue only in your merging with the human race. I think she may have envisioned some relict Pliocene population eventually mating with primitive h.o.m.o sapiens-planting metapsychic seeds in the huge, marvellous, empty Neanderthaler brains. Voila! Instant Cro-Magnon. The really funny thing is, the modern type of human did appear with suspicious suddenness, and leaped to metapsychic operancy in a paltry fifty thousand years or so.”

She thrust emphatically at the dying fire. The logs, reduced almost entirely to charcoal, crumbled to bits. Her voice was flat and her mind tightly sealed. ”If this is what you'd call the masterplan of a compa.s.sionate G.o.d, then your faith is more cold-blooded than mine, Creyn. We humans will have climbed to Unity using the doomed Mind of Duat as a stepping-stone.

Have you seen the army ants bridge a stream in the jungle?

Thousands of them link together and willingly drown so their luckier fellows cross over without getting wet feet.”

”Elizabeth, the people in Duat don't know.”

”But I do.” She carefully replaced the poker. ”And I don't think I can bear it. Not that, not any of it.”

”You only toy with despair,” he insisted.

”I know. Sister Amerie used to say that one twits the Holy Spirit only at one's peril-but she couldn't quite break me of the habit.” Elizabeth smiled brightly. ”Shall we go downstairs and take care of our intelligence briefing?”

When the big door to the lodge's grand salon banged open, there was instant uproar. Elizabeth and the Peace Faction conferees, deeply engrossed in their mind-meld, were so taken aback that they did nothing. That left the friar free to elude Mary-Dedra and G.o.dal the Steward and the other two Tanu retainers, who had chased him up from the kitchen and who lacked the PK or coercive ability that would have restrained the old man in the first place. He barged right into the salon with the pursuers shouting and clutching at him and uttering telepathic apologies and belated pleas for help.

”Hold!” bellowed Minanonn, rising from the depths of the sofa like fulminating Jupiter.

The entire quintet of intruders froze in mid cry.

”Who in the world-” Elizabeth began.

Minanonn released his coercive grip on the Black Crag people, who pulled themselves together. The elderly human male in the tattered Franciscan habit remained completely paralysed, balanced on one foot and with hands raised and clenched.

His eyes were alive and glittering.

”We'd welcomed him,” said Mary-Dedra indignantly.

”Helped him to find the place, then dried him and gave him a nice supper!”

”He seemed harmless enough,” said G.o.dal the Steward, ”until Dedra let slip that Elizabeth had come down at last to meet with you Exalted Ones-”