What that was like, I am unable to think, let alone tell. The age I was born into has bequeathed me the ideas I will use in trying, and failing, to speak of that which I have kept in me out of that which I learned. I know not whether they are more fit for this or less than the ideas of someone thirty thousand years past who was the first avatar of my race, or the instincts of an animal or the burgeoning of a plant.
The earliest Others arose on a world that took form before the coalescence of the galaxy. Perhaps a dearth of heavy metals caused them to develop technics and a high science very slowly, so that they evolved into harmony with every stage thereof before they went onward. Or perhaps they adapted themselves, psyche and soma both, to a swifter pace. Whichever, at last they were faring to stars which had by then also come to birth, in ships that went close to the speed of light. Meeting foreign sentiences and exchanging with these gave such a mighty impetus that they gained the power to build the great transport engines. At that time they were no longer a single race; and as their explorers ranged outward through space-time, they found more beings who could be aided to join them, if those wanted that.
Most species were not ready. Few would ever be. The Others do not urge or try secretly to guide. Only in rare cases do they reveal that they exist. They do not believe anyone's proper destiny is to become like them; they do not believe in destiny. Every kind of life is equally precious, with an equal right to go its unique way. Moreover, in such diversity is the nourishment whereby their own spirit may grow.
This is not to call them indifferent. No, with knowledge, intelligence, and sensitivity such as are theirs, sharing distinct lives on many planets through the entire history of the universe, from its fiery birth to its ashen death, the Others know tragedy to depths and heights that it is well I cannot remember; this mind, alone, would not survive. Where they are able, deeming the action harmless to the integrity of a people, they help. But oftenest they must watch and mourn.
Yet they are not overly solemn. Their merriment, humor, playfulness, enjoyment, exultation go beyond my comprehending. Likewise does their creativity. They think of their very lives as ongoing works of art, to be shaped for the delight of artist and audience.
This attitude may have come about because in them the mind, the consciousness, is protean. The merging, partial or total, of personalities at will, I might call telepathy, except that that is a meager word for it. What happens is not magic. It requires a carrier wave, which obeys the laws of physics. A rudiment may sometimes occur among us. The Others have brought it to completion.
This includes the ability to map a pattern corresponding to a personality onto a different body, be that body natural or artificial, organic or mechanical or- well, there was the Oracle, for example. The map is incomplete and distorted, of course. A mind is not an isolable object. Whatever generates and maintains it must govern it as well as being governed by it.
Still, an Other can lead separate existences, eventually to bring them together in the original being. An Other can in a sense be immortal, passing an entire past from a dying body to a new one which may have been grown for the purpose, or to more than one body. Mind-merging will already have made part of this personality integral with many different entities. Recordings, too, played back into a later awareness as needed, give a kind of resurrection.
Thus the Others are not monads in any degree. Neither are they fused in an enormous overmind; that would be stultifying, if it were possible. Individuality, fluid in form, is by that same receptivity more real than it can be among us. From this root may spring their passionate devotion to freedom.
They are not gods. In our single galaxy, at any single instant, is more than they can know or foresee. However widely they range and hugely they build, they discern far better than we can how grander than themselves is the whole reality, how eternally mysterious. Though the symbols be not things like the waxing and waning of a moon, but the birth and death of stars, they too must needs create myths, they too must dwell in awe.
Indeed, to them their technology, cyclopean or subatomic, has become incidental, a set of means to a set of ends. Much they have abandoned as no longer necessary. The achievements they seek are more subtle - too subtle for our perceiving. (If you chisel out a statue, your dog sees that a lump of stone is changed a bit in shape.) But I have to try to convey a hint, a shard.
Let me therefore say that the Others are concerned with exploring, understanding, and celebrating existence.
A way for them, among many, is through their avatars.
While they are careful and sparing about it, they do not regard as a violation the bringing forth of an avatar. Such an organism is in no way abnormal. At most, it has come into being instead of a similar bion that would else have done so. It does contain certain structures deep inside, incredibly fine, on the border between molecular and atomic. These do not affect its functioning and are not heritable. All that they do is make Oneness possible.
Slightly more may be involved. For instance, in the case of most Terrestrial vertebrates, it is simplest to fertilize an ovum parthenogenetically, while adding that micro-organ for the cell to replicate.
If a male is wanted, a few minor changes in the chromosomes are required as well. Whatever the treatment for whatever kind of organism, it is very mild, it conserves rather than destroys.
An avatar, then, lives out its time as a perfectly ordinary member of its species. It may well never be Summoned. The Others do not hover constantly over any planet; the cosmos is too big. When one of its kind is brought into communion, that is an act of love. No damage occurs, no disruption; save for those that are dying, for which oblivion may be mercy, it is returned to the place whence it came, to go on as it was. There has simply been the sharing. In this wise do the Others seek to partake in all life everywhere.
True, if the avatar is sentient, shades of memory may afterward flit about in its being. -Can I not stay? I pleaded.
-No, darling, sang that part of me which was at the heart of Brigit. -It would be a doom upon you.
From elsewhere in me spoke Aengus: -Nor would you wish to be passive, a parasite. Thankful are we for what you gave-
-But now when you have lived my life, I have no more to offer.
-If only you did! ... No, that is wrong. What's right is that you be what you are. We Summon no avatar twice.
-Because you have awareness and thus free will, we can make you the gift of Lethe. If you accept, you will forget everything that was Here. It will be to you like a dreamless night.
-Think well, dearest. You know that if you remember, you will always be haunted.
-But by how wonderful a ghost! I answered.
-It will have many faces, and some of them terrible.
Long I mused in Oneness. Call to mind your highest moments, of love, insight, creation, beauty, victory, when for a short while you went beyond yourself. It is more than that, being an Other; and still this is the lowland beneath their peaks.
-No, I decided. -What I may keep of you, I would not give up for any reward. Aye, hard will be to know that once my soul did span so much of reality that I could even sense a little of how immensely much more remains to search for and grow by and rejoice in. But I will not altogether lose the knowledge of what your love is.
We drew closer in our farewell. For this they bore again the appearances they had first shown me, because I liked those. Not that there was anything very strange about their true aspect, or anything strange at all about what passed between Aengus mac and myself. The time is not many centuries distant from my own when humans will begin one by one to become Others. They will not cease thereby to be human.
XLVI
Less than an hour had gone when the voice of Brigit wakened Chinook's intercom. "Caitlin is returning to you. She will enter by the same lock."
Alone in his office, Brodersen bit across the stem of the pipe he had had clamped between his jaws. The bowl bobbed off through harsh blue clouds it had made. Unaided by his breath
, the fire died down in free fall. He fumbled at his seat belt, got the damned thing unsnapped, surged from his chair. Behind him, a squeezer of whisky drifted forgotten.
"The word that she bears will cheer you," the voice followed him. "Through her we have found that yours is a rightful purpose. It is not absolutely right; never believe that of any purpose which may be yours; but your success would be better than your defeat. Though we do not aid you in your striving, we will send you on your way. Though we do not say that you will prevail, we wish you most sincerely well.
"But prepare to leave soon. The forces that made this place and keep it, here at the end and the beginning of a universe, are balanced as on a whirling spearhead. However tiny, the mass of your ship draws hard enough on them that while you stay, the work is at a halt. Nor have you anything left to do among us. You won this far, and thereby won your homecoming - or the right to go back and do battle for your homecoming. More we cannot bid you. At the start of your next watch, we will call upon you to depart.
"In the meantime, make Caitlin welcome. Be good to her."
"Christ," Brodersen shouted as he flew, "how could I try to be anything else?"
A few crewmen had gotten to the airlock before him. He elbowed them aside and himself admitted her. An argence entered, flicked off, and there she was. He caught her in his arms and they floated, ridiculously a-spin. The scent and warmth and lithe feel of her overwhelmed him. God damn, he thought, I'm actually crying.
"Are you okay? Pegeen, sweetheart, macushla, what happened? So soon-"
"It was long, I think," she said as if talking in her sleep. Her smile was from Nirvana. "They sent me back through time. Look." Out of a coverall pocket she pulled the notebook that spacefolk usually carried. "Written down, the patterns we'll follow, retracing the whole way we came till we get to Danu, where we jump to Beta's system. We'll arrive within a month of when Emissary left."
"But you, Pegeen, you!"
"Och, I'm fine. You must give me a while to... climb down-" Abruptly she clawed herself to him. He felt her shudder. "Dan, hold me, please. I should not be weeping after what I've had, I should not!"
Out of the pit where her being lay, Joelle radiated: Won't you at least say goodbye?
-Yes, and more, was the response. -We have learned from the avatar how stark is your need.
Then take me to you!
-It cannot be. O Joelle, can a tree fly or a bird catch sunlight? You are what you are, and you are what you may become if you will. Be glad in that.
In a few miserable years left me, knowing I will never know what you do, knowing my Noumenon is a shadow?
-If you wish, we can make you forget.
No!
-What else?
If I am not worthy of your company [-There is no special worthiness in this.] then open Reality for me. Whether it will kill me or drive me mad, show me the Ultimate.
-We have no Ultimate.
But what do you have-
-What fragments we possess will not harm you in themselves. The avatar could tell you... But you do have more gift and background than she does. Therefore hearken, if you will.
-Mathematics and snatches of what might be direct perception or might not be,
and:] Our space-time continuum is not the total Creation. It is a bubble in a hyperdimensional ocean which brings forth more of its kind endlessly, almost as the ancient oceans on Earth and Demeter and Beta begot life over and over, because that was in their nature. Universes die, like stars and flowers; but their stuff goes on too, worked into something that never was before.
-Here and now, our burnt-out cosmos, expanding, fleeing from itself, has intersected another. From this union, when it is complete, will arise an entire new world of worlds. (Praised be the chance that the other plenum is old itself, that no life - we pray - will perish in the genesis!) What the next cycle will be like, we cannot foretell.
-Already the very laws and constants of physics are changing. Not you nor we could exist for an instant outside this fortress of forces. What is to come will be wholly strange. Yet we will seek to become a part of it, to understand and cherish it. We are building a machine-
-which is only a means to an end, Joelle, the end which has no ending.
After a silence: -Do you still desire a glimpse?
Yes!
-Perceive-
She screamed. That was not from hurt or fear, it was from hopelessness.
-Farewell. Fare ever well.
Caitlin stirred. "I should go to her," she said.
"Huh? What d'you mean?" Brodersen asked.
"This was laid on me, to help Joelle," she told him. "They knew what she'd suffer. They can't heal her. Maybe there is no remedy. But I must try, Dan."
"What about me?... Oh, I don't want to pester you, I don't have to have consolation right this minute, but... you've changed, Pegeen."
"Yes." She gripped him hard. "Away from you. I'll be fighting my way back, I will. Now, though - you are more strong than she is."
"The hour has come for you to leave," said the voices of the Others. "Bear with you our blessing."
XLVII
Huge and red-golden in purple-blue heaven, the sun Beta stood at late morning. One of the rainstorms which ruled over that part of the long day had just ended. Scattered clouds lingered, softly aglow, and a rainbow bridged the western horizon. The land gleamed wet, as if the deep hues of turf, shrubs, fronds on trees had been bestrewn with diamonds. A breeze blew cool, bearing odors as of spices. Eastward shone an estuary and rose the silhouettes of buildings, but closer at hand there was little to show that here was a chief seat of starfaring civilization. An ancient tower did rear its bulk of gray, vine-wrapped stone aboveground.
It was the time of growth, between icy night and parched afternoon. Everywhere fresh plant life was springing up and swelling, almost visibly fast. The sky was full of wings, and song resounded from shaw and meadow.
Joelle and Caitlin approached the tower on foot. A gravity less than Earth's put spring in their stride. Yet they walked through the season unsmiling, the younger woman sober, the older woman somber.
"And why can you not be laying down your woe?" Caitlin demanded. "Aye, a shock did you have, to find what you know is but a drop of spindrift that in a moment will fall back into the sea and be lost. Yet is that any real surprise? Will it be less thrill tomorrow when you make a discovery?"
Joelle shook her head. "Worse," she said in her bleakness. "I found I am not only ignorant, I'm stupid. No, not even that. It would imply something in common with the Others. In spite of our holothetic tricks, we remain lower animals. We're like monkeys trying to write Shakespeare by random hits on a scriber console and unable to keep at it five minutes in a stretch. Or we're like blindworms trying to see."
For a second Caitlin doubled her fists and stared into the wind. When she had her face under control, she replied, "They don't look down on us. How often must I tell you? To them, every kind of life is noble. It's our business to be what we are, proudly."
"Easy enough for you to say."
Caitlin held back an answer.
"You're outgoing, physical, sanguine, everything I'm not," Joelle went on. "And what I believed I was turns out to be an illusion. So what I am is nothing."
Caitlin flushed, scowled, and snapped, "Are you not overdue for climbing out of that wallow of self-pity?"
"Oh, I'll perform my duties competently, never fear."
Softened, Caitlin touched Joelle's cheek. "Learn to be human again. Brain's a single facet of existence, neither the largest nor the brightest. I'll help where I can. All your shipmates will."
Scorn lifted, an acid taste. "Yes, beginning with plenty of sex. Your pet panacea, isn't it? Doubtless you can persuade your studs to do the old lady the favor of screwing her on a regular basis. No, thanks."
"Did I make that suggestion?" Caitlin said quietly. "I'd not be doing so. It's as ugly to me as to you. Or uglier, maybe. I don't suppose you will be wanting a man as a
man any more, ever. The which is no shame on you, is only your taste and choice. But dreadful it is to see you frozen in that aloneness. Let us warm you free. We can, if you will be warm toward us: if you will care."
"I'm still a holothete. The rest of you are still animals to me. Well-meaning, but animals; and I never did care much for pets. As for my colleagues on Earth, how can I like them when I no longer respect them? Or respect myself? Sticky sentimentalism isn't going to change any of this. -Here we are."
A flyer was parked outside the building, whose door had been drawn back. The women entered chill, echoey dimness and took a spiral ramp to the second story. There were those linkage units the Betans and the Emissary scientists had devised for their joint use. Memories of Fidelio rushed over Joelle. We would have shared the same loss, aided each other in our pain. But he is dead.
Three natives waited, a female looming between the lesser forms of two males. Sunbeams struck through a window to sheen off their mahogany fur. The iodine tang of them filled nostrils like the air on a beach. With upper paws and lower hands, they made gestures of greeting. The humans returned the courtesy as best they were able.
Joelle took her place. Caitlin helped connect her, then stood by. Holothesis awoke. Joelle dismissed any idea of examining the Noumenon, that shabby fiction. She simply wanted full command of the local language. Nonetheless she found the state possessing her, felt its power throughout her being, yes, this was where she belonged.
Through the vocalizing attachment she produced the full-toned, overtoned, sometimes fluting land speech. "Fair weather be yours, matriarch and her steadfast males."
"May the tide upbear you, female of intellect," the Betans responded as ritually.
"We regret we are late," Joelle explained. "The rain delayed us in camp. Our flockmates were using the vehicles lent us, on various errands connected with getting us established, and I wondered about the possibility of a dangerously strong storm."
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