The face was a turmoil of emotion. I could feel Adam December’s resentment of me and the role I was to play. He felt—perhaps not unjustly—that a creator should have the right of choice. He no longer hated me, but he wanted nothing to do with me. His distrust of me went far deeper than . Planet Despair’s distrust of him.
Poor Dawnstar was only a frightened child. She was trying desperately to close off her mind from these new sensations, just as she had tried to shut herself away from her dreams. She could have understood if only she had accepted, but she would not. She cowered in the comers of the composite mind.
Moonglow of Amia understood more than all the rest of us. He, far more than I and perhaps far more than the alien, had a mind that was capable of extension to meet the new perceptions and make full use of the new ways of communication. He knew that the alien was just one part of five, that it had as much difficulty adapting to our minds as we had to its own. He knew that the alien might be wrong, that we might all be wrong. But he knew that it was the one chance, that it had to be tried.
Because of his soothing and his urging, we calmed the rush of emotion, and tried to understand what it was that we had to do. The composite mind had to protect all its elements. It was not a matter of my saving the Beasts, Adam December the Humans and the alien itself. We were all of us responsible for the whole structure. We were all one. We shared a mind, and we shared the necessity of restructuring the Time Wave to the benefit of all of that mind.
The face was shaded with doubt: doubt that Planet Despair had the power necessary to guide the hand of the galaxy; doubt that Dawnstar could unite the mind with the Time Wave; doubt that Moonglow could link Adam December’s creative genius with Dawnstar’s visions; doubt that Adam December could create the elements of a universe; and doubt that I would even be able to choose, let alone make the right choice.
“Do you understand what we have to do?” asked the face, with a multiple voice.
We signaled our agreement. We understood what was needed. But we were uncomfortably aware of our weaknesses. Each one of us knew full well where our own faults, and those of the others, lay. If we could synthesize an identity out of our constructive facets, then we could compensate for our own handicaps. But if all that was added up was our weaknesses, then we were bound to fail.
I remembered some words of Darkscar’s from that final, long speech before I had killed him. “We are all together…We must live together…We are all one kind of being. We share the identity of being men…We must all add to each other, instead of taking from each other…
There had to be more than a symbiotic bond between the elements of the composite mind—there had to be a unity. There had to be a shared identity, not only between man and man, Human and Beast, but between man and alien, intelligence and intelligence.
Darkscar, I knew, had been wrong in most of his ideas. But I hoped now that the truth had lain behind him all along.
DAWNSTAR
Dawnstar suffered dreams, nightmares of a terror-filled future, fleeting glimpses of horrifying events. The dreams did more than frighten her; they consumed her. She was only a child, the youngest of six. There was love available in plenty but no help. Only her brother, Christopher Rainstar, could see what was happening to her, and even he could not understand. His dreams were optimistic ones. They flowed over him like the euphoric effects of a pleasant drug, bringing contentment and ease. He could never appreciate what it was to be attacked by dreams, haunted by them. He gave what sympathy he could, and he believed in her when no one else would. That was the least he could do.
But it still left Dawnstar alone, with a terrible species of loneliness; the loneliness from which there could be no escape. To be surrounded by people who loved her, but who could neither understand nor protect her was the worst sort of loneliness that could be felt. The loneliness of solitude can bring pain and anguish, but the loneliness of being different can bring despair and madness. And the first is curable, while the second is not. That she did not go mad was attributable in part to her youngest brother, and in part to the fact that she died so young.
What Dawnstar was is difficult to understand. Why is even harder.
Her mind was tuned to the rhythm of the Time Wave. Perhaps the natural rhythms of her own mind simply happened to be in harmony with it. Perhaps it was nothing at all to do with the pulse beat of the brain, but only a function of perception and emotion. The association cannot even be categorized.
Whatever the reason, the empathy was there with a mind-breaking intensity. So intense was the communication and so sensitive the link that she felt the distortion in the Time Wave even before Heljanita came back in time. She reached ten thousand years along the Time Wave, and felt the tension building in the far future. Her perception genuinely spanned time. She actually saw the future, although often she could not fit what she saw into her limited field of view. A wiser person—perhaps merely an older person—might have used the knowledge in some way. But Dawnstar could not and never did.
To Dawnstar herself, her empathy was not a miracle but a curse. It was not a talent but a sickness. As a Human being it destroyed her, and she was always powerless to use what it gave her.
Cou’d she now, seven years after her death, learn to use her empathy? Could she come to terms with it, control it and manipulate it. Alone, she could never have even tried.
But she is no longer alone.
ADAM DECEMBER
The creator of the Beasts was not like the men he made. Just as Heljanita did with the toys, and Darkscar with the frog people, Adam December made the Beasts reflect only selected aspects of himself. But he was not like Heljanita and Darkscar. He was older than either and cleverer than both. While they, in their arrogance, created lesser beings, Adam December, in his bitterness, only created simpler beings.
Adam December was a strange man, even by Human standards. He was faintly reminiscent of Cain Rayshade, but while Rayshade was an ordinary man whose character had been modified by external pressure, Adam December had never been ordinary, and the pressures on him were internal in origin. There were boundaries within his character which nobody dared attempt to cross. He was a respected man, and in many quarters a feared man. Yet he was frail and often petty. He was always unpredictable, always dangerous to be near—although words were his only weapons, and ideas his only ammunition. He was not a likable man. He was impossible to be close to, in an emotional sense. And yet he had a weird fascination, a compelling quality which made people listen and believe.
He was not a likely man to become a new saint. No one who knew him saw him as the man who could give mankind the stars. But there were depths they had never seen in Adam December, and for some reason, when he told them what to do they listened and they obeyed.
He was no great hero until he died. His memory attained dimensions which his identity never could have. He was elevated posthumously to heights which his living person never could have gained. The Humans were all too ready to adopt a dead man for a saint. Dead men inspire no fear. And once dead, he was judged far more by what he had done than by what he was seen to be.
His frail body and callous, sullen mind harbored a brain of great genius. He was a creator of ideas of a magnitude that Home had not seen in hundreds of years. The strait jacket which their planetary cage have placed upon the Humans had suppressed originality and creativity. They were lucky to find Adam December when they needed him. No other man ever made such an impact on history. No other man had ever contributed so much to his race.
But Adam December died without friends, with precious little honor and scant praise. That he lived on afterward for ten thousand years made no difference at all to the man himself.
And so Adam December is still unpredictable. All the boundaries in his mind are still there. It is still impossible to get close to him, or so it seems. But there is nothing he can do alone. He must fit into the composite mind, share its communal identity, and link his talent to the talent of others.
&nbs
p; MOONGLOW OF AMIA
Moonglow of Amia was the founder of civilization. Where Adam December was dynamic and brilliant, Moonglow was placid and patient. It is a matter of pure academic interest to guess how much either could have achieved without the other. The argument is usually said to hinge upon the fact that Adam December created the Beasts, and with them Moonglow of Amia. That is why civilization carries the name of Adam December first and foremost, and even the Beasts revere Moonglow of Amia only in a secondary role.
Moonglow would have been happy with the secondary role, whereas Adam December would not. Moonglow was a peaceful, thoughtful man who worked ceaselessly but boasted not at all. Like Adam December, he was little celebrated while he was alive. Unlike Adam December, he did not draw attention to himself or to his works.
But as the galaxy came to understand the debt which it owed to Moonglow of Amia, he was honored as any great man might expect to be. Typically, though, he was more the hero of the Humans than of the Beasts. His memory carried relatively few of the qualities most admired by the
Beasts, although the days of his youth are not remembered, and he might have been as strong and as fast as any of them. He was the father of the Beast civilization, and it treated him like a father- one to be respected and remembered, but one to be denied as irrelevant to the problems of the infant generation.
It has often been said that Moonglow was not only the first of the great Beasts but also the last. But that, too, is a Human point of view, and it speaks a little of lingering prejudice and a continued lack of understanding. The Humans could never quite accept Beast values. They could never see a man like Richard Stormwind as the idol of the galaxy. But Moonglow could have understood Storm-wind and his appeal to his people. Moonglow valued men like Stormwind as much as the peace which he treasured so greatly. He wanted balance and happiness like Darkscar of Despair, but he would not tolerate the idea of stagnation and lifelessness. He loved the enthusiasm and the pride of the Beasts as much as he loved the stability of society.
Ten thousand years have testified to the fact that Moonglow was right, and that Darkscar’s dream might exist without Heljanita’s nightmare. But twenty thousand years led to Darkscar and to Heljanita. It is a matter of conjecture as to whether Moonglow was wrong, or if other factors were to blame.
Moonglow is more to the composite mind than the synthesist of the new universe. He is the one who can hold the mind itself together. He can offer Dawnstar the help she needs. He can win Adam December and break down the barriers in his mind. He can support Mark Chaos and persuade him to make a decision.
CHAOS’S STORY CONCLUDED
“Now,” said the face. “Let the stars go.”
I took away my broken hand and the stars began to fall again. The crooked wheel was suddenly no longer in my hand but only in our mind. We enfolded it, the five of us. We took it into our being and saw the whole of it at once.
We accepted our new depths of perception, and we saw it as none of us had ever been able to see before. We entered into each and every one of the sparkling stars, felt their warmth and let their light shine inside our eyes. We took the planets, like beads on ethereal strings, and ran them through the channels of our minds.
But we could see so much more detail than that. A million images swept past me, flashing and pulsing. They were images of places and people—all places and all people. I could see the face and the three others standing beside me, and at first that image was superimposed on all the others. It was the vital one—the truth. But my eyes could see, if they only wanted to, and into the galaxy they went, searching and finding.
The images blurred and overlapped, flowed into one another, blending and eclipsing, And always there were more and more. But the more there were, the more I saw. The whole series was gradually coalescing to become a small part of something whole and very complex. The images were not shrinking, but so vast was my perception growing that they seemed so. Everything was there, within my eyes. I was everywhere. All I had to do was see.
And gradually, I saw. I saw every world in the galaxy, every continent on every world, every desert and plain, every mountain and river, every ocean and island, every rain cloud and road, every house and tree, every man and every woman. There was no confusion. My attention was never focused on any small part of it. I could see it all at once, and I could understand all of it, as a single, working entity.
With the aid of the alien’s perception, we could absorb it all. With the aid of our perceptions, Planet Despair could see it all. There was not a single thing which happened without our knowing and observing. We were there while it happened, anywhere in the entire galaxy.
It is impossible for the mind of a man to have assimilated all that, but we were not limited to our own minds. We shared something far greater—a whole which was more than the sum of its parts.
I felt Dawnstar slowly coming to share in the new perception. I could feel her loneliness faced for the first time with the identity which she needed. She was no longer totally different. There was something that she was a part of.
I felt Adam December sharing for the first time the intimacy which he had always needed so desperately. His loneliness was fading, too.
And I could feel Moonglow building, building us into the new entity which Planet Despair had envisaged. We were his elements, his raw material. He was building the being who could recreate the universe. I could feel him reaching for me, too, but I felt nothing. But I was already there, already committed. When the time came…
The Time Wave threw our world into madness, and the galaxy reacted. Without warning, our work had begun. All the worlds of all the stars changed, and time leapt madly from one path to another.
I saw a thousand different times, a million different worlds.
I watched the last ten years and tire next ten years a hundred times over, with occasional fragments of times far beyond that range. I saw things which happened and things which never could have happened.
I watched the battle of the Kamak system again and again, saw Saul Slavesdream save the Beasts, saw Richard Stormwind save the Beasts, and saw the Beasts all but annihilated in half a hundred futile struggles against the massive odds. I died myself, in many of those alternative versions, my ship blown apart either during the battle or before Eagleheart rushed into Starbird’s trap trying to save us.
In those battles where the Beasts lost, it was almost always Judson Deathdancer or Daniel Skywolf, or both who survived to make what peace they could with the Humans. But in every case, there was war again, even without Eagleheart’s influence. The Empire of the House of Stars was doomed to fall, it seemed, and the half-hearted Kingdom of the Beasts was bound to have its turn.
I watched Stormwind’s duel with Alexander Blackstar in the desert of Home, near the House of Stars, and there were times when Blackstar won, times when both men died of their wounds, and times when it was Stormwind’s ship which crashed and not Blackstar’s—in every instance killing the lord of Sabella.
In those instances where Stormwind did not survive the duel, the House of Stars often staggered on for two more years before finally falling, and it was Heljanita’s crooked wheel which played the major part in its fall, not the dissonance in the Human ranks and the furious determination of the Beasts. In those times, the galaxy was tired when the war finally ended, and Heljanita’s toys took over virtually unchallenged.
I watched Robert Hornwing commit suicide before the fall of the House of Stars. But where he did not, the massacre was different and incomplete. But still the Kingdom of the Beasts emerged eventually.
I watched Martin Hawkangel take his followers and their ships away from Home on the eve of the battle for the House of Stars, and I watched their journey out toward the rim stars. I saw him return, at different times, with very different results. In some versions, he came back to fight the Beasts, in other times to fight at Saraca, and in other times he came too late. Except in those versions where he arrived at exactly the right time to h
old the toys until Darkscar ended the battle, Heljanita’s toys achieved a shortlived victory before the eruption of time.
I watched Eagleheart die in his moment of glory, as he returned to his capital on Chrysocyon. I watched Gloriana plunge a dagger into his back and then murder Dawnstar with its twin. In other times, Eagleheart lived to rule the Kingdom of the Beasts, continuing his crusade against the Humans, and in some versions even defeating both Heljanita and Darkscar to carry the galaxy forward as he had dreamed.
I watched myself die a thousand times: killed in the battle of the Kamak system, cut down in the battle for the palace of the House of Stars, sharing the extinction of the black star, broken by the giant in the Devil’s Tresses, beaten to death by the Aeternan tunnel dwellers, shot by the toys on Hyla or in space, killed in the crash on Calypso’s world, drowned in Ciona’s sea. None of these deaths caused any change in any of their futures that I could see. Even the part I played in Heljanita’s fortress was irrelevant to the eventual explosion of time.
The futures I saw were less coherent than the pasts, more difficult to compare and tie in with what I knew. I saw fragments of the chaos Heljanita had sought to create, in a hundred thousand futures. I could see little of the substance of his dreams but much of the consequences of his philosophies.
I saw his worlds, based on isolation and competition, where every man lived alone, for himself and for no other. I watched men killing for fear instead of hate, buying other men, blackmailing them and ingratiating themselves with others. There was not so much violence as control, each man seeking dominance over his fellows rather than trying to eliminate them. The most successful men were the intelligent, the logical men who could analyze and plan, the computerlike men who kept their feelings under lock and key and played with the emotions of others as though they were pieces in a game of anarchic chess.
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