Part 38 (1/2)
”There, your ambition didn't fit. But this Many-Coloured Land is a simpler world. You were even able to love here. And you dared to do it unselfishly, twice. You reached a species of mental integration. But that wasn't enough. Not for you! You were drawn toward Mercy, and driven to challenge Nodonn.
You wanted to be more than a powerful, successful person: You wanted to be King. And so, instinctively, you were drawn to two extraordinary minds-and you subsumed their attributes in an attempt to fulfil your ambition. Before the subsumption, you knew you were inadequate.”
”But I tricked them into believing that I wasn't!'
”Yes. But you couldn't fool yourself. Look at the illusory bodies you wore: b.u.t.terfly, dragonfly, nighthawk, golden falcon.
Each one more potent than the last but still winged, elusive, flyaway. You were a counterfeit King, royal without being n.o.ble.”
”c.o.c.k of the rock.”
”With the ambition to rule a world ... This is why you committed the act of surpa.s.sing chutzpah: in spite of the mortal danger, subsuming those very metafaculties that might support true kings.h.i.+p. You were like a man living in a fine large home who nevertheless craves a palace. So one day your dream is accomplished and all the necessary building materials are delivered-”
”Burying and d.a.m.n near destroying the original house! I see.”
”Most of this redaction you've done yourself. Dionket and Creyn and I helped you-I guided and they sustained-but the psychic insights that now provide a solid foundation are your own. Your palace is by no means complete, but now you have the blueprints for construction and the means to a.s.semble the parts into a harmonious whole.”
”How long is it going to take to finish?”
”It may take years, or happen in an instant.”
”You better pray for the latter, babe, for all our sakes! ...
One last thing, though, that I still don't understand. Why a lion?”
”You'll have to discover for yourself what it signifies in your own psyche, Aiken. It's obviously a kingly animal-but it has no wings. Sometimes it destroys its own young-and sometimes it defends the pride to the death.”
”You mean, I can still blow it.”
”You're a human being, dear, and you still have to face up to many choices. You can undoubtedly fail. The Trickster archetype is a strange one, not commonly personified. Perhaps it's just as well! You see, the Trickster is a person we simultaneously admire and fear. We know that he can hit and run-victimize us. But he also has the saving gift of laughter that enables us to abide in the midst of life's pain. He takes our pain onto himself, as a great psychologist once said. And that may help you to understand where the lion image fits. If you accept it as an integral part of your self, you can no longer be fugitive Mercurius, das.h.i.+ng about as the spirit wills. You'll have to relinquish some of the laughter and take pain in defending the pride; perhaps even lay down your life.”
”Ha! It's the hyenas that better look out!”
Elizabeth had to laugh. ”Oh, my dear. Go get 'em, Hermes Trismegistos-thrice-mighty leader.”
”You can count on it,” said the King.
II.
The Convergence
CHAPTER ONE.
During the first four years of the Rebel's exile, when resolution was still strong and optimism ran so high that some of the Ocala settlers dared to have children, appropriate technology was all the rage. There was really no necessity for roughing it, since the former scientists, military specialists, and planetary administrators had brought a vast collection of Milieu equipment with them. Nevertheless, low-tech achievement flourished as the exiles worked to turn their island into a home. Once they had recovered from their mental and physical wounds, most of the Rebels set about to develop one or more frontier skills.
For Walter Saastamoinen, who had been Deputy Chief Starfleet Operations (Strategy) under Ragnar Gathen, the vocational choice was a foregone conclusion. He took up the trade of his ancestors-s.h.i.+pbuilding. With the help of his former aide, Roy Marchand, and a dozen others (plus the elegantly complete data supplied by the computer library), Walter built a seventymetre four-masted sailing vessel that would become the princ.i.p.al freighter for the colony, transporting everything from minerals to Megahippus horses from the Antilles and the North and South American mainland to Ocala's first settlement at the head of Manchineel Bay.
She was named Kyllikki, after an enchantress in a Finnish epic, and her lines followed those of the old Pacific timber haulers, capacious but trim. She had a clipper bow figureheaded with a blonde witch, a long platformed bowsprit, a sweeping sheer, and a neatly tucked up counter stern. Her masts, the trunks of great longleaf pines from the virgin forests of Georgia, rose thirty-five metres above the black-mahogany deck and had a sportive rake.