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“You make a good point,” Park
agreed. “We don’t actually need to go to any particular Mer city, but I thought
Porgantis was also a trade-town.”

“There are two trade towns near
Porgantis,” Taodore replied, “but we need not stop in Porgantis before going to
either of them.”

“Sounds like a plan then,” Park
nodded.

“Parker Holman!” Okactack the
mystic greeted him a week later in a small trade-town on the northeast frontier
of Bidachik territory. Park was walking from one of the Bidachik trade
delegations back to one of the Mer buildings. “It is good to see you once
more.”

“It’s nice to see an old friend
in such a remote outpost for me as well,” Park told him formally. Inwardly, he
squelched the impulse to ask whether Tack’s prophecy had also predicted they
would meet there. The question would have both been rude and unnecessary. It
was Tack’s belief that everything that happened was a part of his prophetic
vision. The mystic was as devout in his beliefs as the Premm were in theirs
even if Tack was flexible enough to allow others to hold beliefs of their own
without being branded as heretics or infidels.

Park looked around and saw there
was a pool in the center of the open area he had been crossing. It was a water
garden, filled with plants and a few aquatic creatures that, by experience, he
knew only approximately resembled the goldfish he had known in the past. There
were also several benches surrounding the pool. “Care to sit while we talk?” he
invited the Atackack mystic.

“Thank you,” Tack replied and
made a gesture that, in the Atackack body language, expressed delight and
gratification. “Marisea told me where to find you this morning,” he commented.
“She has grown to become a fine woman, has she not?”

“She has,” Park nodded. “I wish I
could take credit for that, but I am sure she has done most of her growing up
without my help.”

“I would not be so certain of
that, Parker Holman,” Tack replied with the chitter Park had come to recognize
as an Atackack chuckle. “You are her
tamovir,
a second father to her and a role model. I dare say she holds you in the
highest esteem.”

“I think much of her too,” Park
replied uncomfortably at the praise. He was uncertain what to say next, but
Tack filled the silence.

“It is time for me to warn you of
what is to come,” Tack told him. “Two is a significant number. There are two
crisis points ahead of you. The first crisis involves both you and Iris Fain.
It is both near and close.”

“I could use a clue here,” Park
told him. “Any idea of what sort of crisis we are talking about?” Tack gave him
a four-armed shrug. “Yeah, okay. It would be nice to know if the proper
response is to wear armor or just walk on the other side of the street and jump
backwards on every forty-ninth step.”

“If my vision were that accurate,”
Tack pointed out, “I would have said. I cannot say what the crisis point will
be or when it will occur, but it will happen soon.”

“And nearby?” Park asked.

“And nearby,” Tack echoed. “I
recommend caution, however. Remember that ‘soon’ and ‘nearby’ are relative
terms and you have been known to travel among the stars.”

“So nearby could be anywhere in
the stellar neighborhood,” Park shook his head, “but it could be around the
next corner. Okay, I’ll step carefully until this first crisis has passed.”

“Do not let down your guard even
then, Parker Holman,” Tack advised. “Not only is there a second crisis, one
that is two-fold in nature, but it is possible to mistake mere danger for a
crisis point.”

“All right,” Park nodded, “so I
don’t let down my guard until you give me the all-clear sign.”

“The all-clear sign?” Tack asked.

“I imagine that at some time in
the foreseeable future,” Park replied, smiling at his own words, “that you will
see that the prophecy has come to pass. You will be so kind as to confirm it
when it happens?”

“What if it turns out there is a
new path I must follow then?” Tack countered.

“Then I suppose you will follow
it,” Park surrendered. “So what about two-fold crisis number two?”

“You will find you must resolve
that crisis twice,” Tack predicted, “at two different times and places. Failure
to react correctly at any of these crisis points will result in the death of Pangaea.
Success will mean Earth’s salvation.”

“You say the Death of Pangaea,
but the salvation of Earth,” Park noted. “Is there a significant difference?”

Tack shrugged. “Words are always
significant, Parker Holman, even when they mean the same thing. It may not
answer your question, but the words I use are dictated by the prophecy. I
believe we shall live to learn whether there is a difference that matters to
us.”

“I hope we shall learn that to
our benefit, then,” Park told him. “I have another question about your vision.”

Tack chittered a chuckle, “You
always do. Ask, then.”

“The Premm, have a prophecy too,
you know,” Park replied.

“Do they?” Tack asked. “I suppose
that should be natural.”

“According to them,” Park went
on, “The Earth shall be destroyed.”

“That seems very unlike any
prophecy with which I am acquainted,” Tack considered. “Are you sure that is
all there is to it?”

“Your prophecy says Iris and I
will save the world,” Park pointed out, “Theirs says they will destroy it.
Other than outcome, how is their prophecy any different?”

“My vision is not a prophecy. It
does not actually predict you will save the Earth, Parker Holman,” Tack
replied.

“No? Then what was all that about
savior strangers?”

“The future is not immutable,”
Tack explained. “There are many possible futures, in fact, and any of them
could come to pass.”

“So it’s a matter of
probability?” Park asked. “Some futures are more likely to happen than others?”

“An interesting idea,” Tack allowed.
“Perhaps that is the case as well. In any case there are many possible futures,
but my vision is focused on two of them.”

“So maybe neither of them will
come to pass,” Park suggested.

“No true prophecy can fail to
come to pass,” Tack maintained, “but perhaps you do not completely understand
the nature of a true prophecy. My vision concerns only one matter; the Earth
and her peoples. On one side we have those who would preserve this world and on
the other side we have those who would destroy it. There are many variants, but
in the end, either Earth lives or it does not.

“When you and I first met, the
Earth had many enemies as well as those who did not care whether we lived or
died,” Tack went on. “On the other side there were only those of us on Earth.
My vision showed me that there was a way to increase the number of those who
would want us to live. That is the use to which I have put my vision, but I see
that we shall die unless we follow my vision. My vision, therefore is a path to
the outcome we find preferable.

“Others would find the outcome in
which Earth is destroyed more to their liking,” Tack continued. “Both are still
possible although the possibility that Earth will be saved seems stronger in my
vision at this time.”

“Are you saying that a prophecy
is just a choice between two possible outcomes?” Park asked.

“Again, I am not a prophet. I do
not predict the future, but as I understand it, the event of a prophecy in
question must be significant,” Tack replied. “That is how it has ever been among
the Atackack. A Prophecy demarks a significant event. The vision of a mystic
shows us the path to the best possible outcome.”

Park considered that. His
translator had always seemed to use the words “Vision” and “Prophecy”
interchangeably, but now it seemed that even Mer translators had trouble with
the Atackack languages.“I’m afraid that has not always been the case with human
prophecies,” he told the mystic. “Our prophets have visions too, but they
predict what is to come, not the possibility of what is to come.”

“That does not sound reasonable
to me,” Tack responded. “It implies that there is no free will and I know there
is.”

“That may be why we talk of false
prophecies,” Park replied “They are predictions that do not come true.”

“That is just it,” Tack
disagreed. “As I said, I do not predict the future. My vision shows me the
possibilities and the path that must be followed if what I want to happen is to
happen at all. The path changes over time, but I can always see the way we must
go. Perhaps the visions of your human prophets can only see one path or perhaps
they can only see one outcome. Obviously, I cannot know this.”

“I don’t know either,” Park
admitted, “but then I cannot see the future at all.”

“That is not so, I am sure,” Tack
told him. “We all see the future; that is where hope comes from.”

“Most of us do not see a path to
the future,” Park pointed out.

“Of course not,” Tack chittered
another laugh. “Can you imagine a world filled with mystics? We would all end
up bumping into each other and never get anything accomplished.”

“How many mystics are there among
the Atackack?” Park asked.

“Never more than one per tribe,”
Tack replied. “There are never many mystics on Pangaea. There was one of us
among the Pakati who died of old age just a few years ago. I did hear of one
among the Kogack bands, but we do not have a lot of contact with them and
Kogack territory is large and their population is low. I certainly did not meet
a fellow mystic on my one journey among the Kogacks.”

“It occurs to me that there is an
important dichotomy of differences between your vision and the Premm prophecy,”
Park commented. “The most obvious is that yours involves salvation and theirs
is of destruction.” Tack nodded silently and Park continued. “Yours is flexible
and theirs is rigid. You see many possibilities, but they only see one. Yours
is inclusive, but theirs is exclusive.”

“I do not think they have my
vision,” Tack decided. “They may have a vision, but it is clouded or else they
choose not to recognize there is more than one possibility.”

“I do believe you have said your
vision was hardly perfect for that matter,” Park pointed out.

“It is not,” Tack admitted
easily. “No one person can see all there is to see and even among mystics we
can only see that which it is granted. Do the Premm have mystics?”

“I don’t know,” Park admitted.
“Probably not the way you mean it. There have been humans who claimed to be
mystics, but I’ve always been skeptical of such claims. Prophecies are usually
a collection of vague ramblings that can have many interpretations.”

“Their visions are imperfect and
did not provide a path, then,” Tack concluded. “Just a goal.”

“Maybe,” Park allowed, “but it’s
a goal that cannot come true if we stay on your path, right?”

“I do not know,” Tack admitted.
“Just what is this prophecy of theirs?”

“I have not heard the exact words
from the Premm themselves,” Park replied, “but as I understand it, they predict
that the humans they call the Originals will return and that Earth shall be
cleansed.”

“It can be argued that you are
the Originals,” Tack pointed out. “Were you not the first human species?”

“Not the very first,” Park told
him, “but we were the first to grow our own food and build towns and cities.”

“That may be good enough,” Tack
allowed. “You were the first to be people then?”

“Maybe,” Park shrugged. “There is
some debate about that. The ability to make tools goes back to the earliest
known human species
Homo habilis
although at the time we went to sleep there was some debate over a recently
discovered species that
 
seemed to have
features of both
habilis
 
and an earlier family of ancestors the
Australopithecines. The debate was over whether the remains truly represented a
distinct species and if so, whether they were of
Homo
or
Australopithecus
.
As I recall, the anthropologists were starting to come to a compromise and were
referring to the new species as a distinct genus,
Prohomo
, that sat between the other two in evolutionary terms. Of
course even that was controversial. First of all there was no real agreement as
to the name – some wanted to call the
 
genus
Eoanthropo
, or Dawn man,
but that, it was argued, was too close to
Eoanthropus
,
which
 
was the proposed scientific name
for Piltdown man, which it turned out was a forged fossil, so
Prohomo
was more popular. Then, no one
was really happy about making the single species a new genus. Nearly all really
wanted it in either…” he broke off suddenly. “None of that means much to you,
does it?”

“Not as much as it does to you,
Parker Holman,” Tack admitted. “But I take your meaning that there were other,
perhaps primitive, humans in the world before your people came to be.”

Something about that response
bothered Park. “You accept the theory of evolution?” he asked. “Most people who
live as Atackack do, believe all the world and its people were created by one
or more gods.”

“As do we,” Tack bobbed an
affirmative nod, “but I have heard of evolution from my friend Taodore Waisau
and other Mer. It seems to me that it is not incompatible with what I learned
as a youth. Who am I to say how the gods created us? Perhaps they used this
evolution you and the Mer believe in. But the real point I am interested in is
the term, ‘cleansed.’

“I believe that the actual
context in which it is used in the Premm prophecy could be key,” Tack went on.
“In my own religious obligations I must frequently cleanse myself.”

“To make certain you are ritually
clean, I assume,” Park replied.

“You understand the difference
between common dirt and being ritually unclean then,” Tack observed. “Would it
be fair to say that the Premm prophecy is a part of their religion.”