Orion Shall Rise (29 page)

‘No, but – his younger son, Olgh, you know – oh, reverend lady –’

The story stumbled out piece by piece. That Olgh had seduced her was nothing unusual. That he talked of making her his acknowledged concubine, respected in his household, after he got married, was not too surprising either; he was the same impulsive age. The problem was that Jiyan was desperately in love with him. She didn’t think she could bear the thought of going away for years. But – but – the gift was in her; already, under Vanna’s tutelage, she was coming to see what full Oneness could mean.

‘Oh, my poor darling.’ Vanna stopped. ‘Here’s a log, let’s sit down, let me hold you while you cry. Weeping is natural, you know.’
I know.

Afterward she led the girl through exercises and mantras, until calm returned like an incoming tide. She made no attempt to force a decision. That must come of itself. Vanna hoped it would be for departure. Here, Jiyan would never have the freedom to pursue truth undisturbed. Not only would that be her loss, mankind as a whole would have lost a potentially inspiring ucheny.

The morning was well along when they continued on their way and reached the shrine. It was an arbor in a small meadow, edged by flowerbeds. In winter Vanna sought it on snowshoes, warmly clad, and her perceptions and meditations grew frosty, turning out toward the universe through which Gaea danced. Summer was the season for contemplating life, and yourself as an organelle
amidst the energy and wonder of it.

Vanna lifted her arms. The birds came to her, robin, goldfinch, bluebird, flew around her head as a halo of wings and song, settled on wrists and fingers; she thrilled to the gentle clench of their feet. A doe and fawn trotted past, but were shy of Jiyan and did not come to be scratched behind the ears. It had taken Vanna a decade to win such friendship – as valuable, as Insight-giving a time as she had never spent. Nowadays a bear who denned in this vicinity would gladly share with her the blueberries in a nearby slough.

Oneness, Oneness, love, peace.… It made hard the task of explaining to disciples that pain and death were aspects of the same ever-evolving unity, that even as she stood amidst her animals the white cells in her bloodstream waged war against predatory bacteria, and that this too they must understand and wholly accept before they could hope to know Gaea.

The birds fluttered off. They had their own living to do. Vanna and Jiyan went into the arbor. It contained no more than a dais of swirl-grained oak and a glacier-scarred boulder on which was chiseled a mandala. The humans took lotus position before the stone.

‘I suggest you choose a leaf today,’ said Vanna, nodding toward the wild grapevines that twined over the lattice and passed the light through in golden flecks. ‘A single, particular leaf. Make it central in the cosmos, as everything is.’ Her voice fell into a hypnotic softness. ‘Observe its stem, veins, infinite shadings of color, the stirring at each least breeze. Think of its life cycle, ancestry, cellular architecture down to the quantum, its identity with you.…’

For her part, Vanna closed her eyes and sought to sense, to be, every odor of the thousandfold subtleties pervading the air.

Clouds piled up, moved forward on a loud wind, covered heaven. Rain came. It did not interrupt meditation but enhanced it. The humans removed their clothes and went out to be laved by the sky. Jiyan had learned how not to feel cool in this weather.

When the storm had passed and they were dry, they dressed again. Now speech was appropriate. Vanna found objects, twigs and stones and the like, wherewith to illustrate elementary principles of physics. That was a subject which gave her pupil difficulty. ‘You shall have to learn the basics of it, if you wish to approach true Oneness,’ the Librarian said, as she had done before. ‘Gaeanity is not mindless mysticism, whatever the majority of those who call themselves Gaeans may think. Or perhaps I should put it this way,
that its mysticism springs from the mystery at the heart of reality. We
do not ever
observe the world in detachment. That
is
not possible. The wave functions not only set a limit to the accuracy, the certainty of our knowledge; they make us a part of what we are studying, and of all else. Probability cannot become equal to unity before an experiment is performed. We create reality as much as it creates us.’ She saw a glow of eagerness on the girl’s face, smiled, and cautioned: ‘Yes, it sounds wonderful, and it is. It’s boundlessly wonderful. The universe is a miracle. But I’ve been giving you words of grand sound and scant meaning. The right language for the Ultimate
is
mathematics.’

She could almost hear the mind before her:
Might that kind of understanding not be worth more than
…
than Him?
To head off an anguished
No!
she took Jiyan’s hand. ‘I talk too much,’ she said. The afternoon’s gotten old, you’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast, and you’re healthily growing. Come, we’ll go home.’

An old scar twinged. Vanna too had surrendered a love, once and forever. Marriage ought not to be incompatible with enlightenment, but it often was. The wholly enlightened future would be different, but so would marriage itself be. Not that she’d live to see that. She would long since have returned her being to the Life Force.

They walked back at a brisk pace, in silence except for breath and footfalls.

Cleared land opened and Dulua lay red-roofed before them, along the huge argency of the lake. Vanna hugged her disciple goodbye and made her way alone to the Library. Various prosaic duties remained before she could seek her cottage, cook a simple meal, and settle down with a book – nothing weighty this evening, just a light historical romance, unless Chen Yao’s latest novel had arrived from the publisher. He was fantastically funny.

When she entered the building, an acolyte met her in its foyer. ‘Reverend lady,’ he said, after he had bowed and received her gesture of blessing, ‘a message has come for you, a coded radiogram from the High Sanctuary in Chai Ka-Go. I put the transciption on your desk and have stood guard outside.’

What?
Vanna willed her pulse back to normal. Thank you, Raiho.’ She could not make herself proceed in philosophical slowness. Adepts did not communicate thus unless something portentous was afoot, and this communication originated in the
nearest thing to a central headquarters that Gaeandom possessed. Having closed the office door behind her, she sought her stool and hunched anxiously over the papers.

A number at the top indicated the cipher matrix used. She could decode in her head as fast as she could from a book. Dipping brush in ink, she began to write. After a minute she was amused to notice that she was doing calligraphy.

Humor froze and fell out of her as the burden of the message began to appear. At the end she sat motionless, while the sun set and night flowed upward in the room.

‘– to those of principal grade throughout the Five Nations, enjoining them to absolute secrecy. Until permitted, you should give to no one the least sign that you possess the following information. Within the hour, you should perform the Exercise of Discretion.…

‘– you know about a mad quest by an unknown faction, seeking fissionables.…

‘– authorities ordered monitoring, seismological and radiological, terrestrial and atmosphere.… No public mention of this effort has been made, but of course the Minister of War in Yuan stands in a confidential relationship to Prorók Chepa and habitually seeks his counsel.…

‘– above Chukri. A slight but measurable increase in the background radiation count was observed and aircraft were dispatched to collect samples. … Unequivocally products of uranium fission –

‘– source unidentified. There were no unambiguous ground tremors on which to triangulate. Either it was an air burst or it took place very far west of us. Both could be true, of course.…

‘– Northwest Union is not the sole possible culprit. It was never made public, but Yuanese military intelligence has ascertained that a Beneghali attempt to construct a fusion generator was approaching success when the Maurai learned of it and mounted a commando operation which destroyed the plant. Elements within the Federation itself may conceivably be planning revolt. The Domain of Skyholm seems implausible, but certainly the potential capability exists, as it does in Espayn, Free Merica, Meyco, and perhaps some of the marginally technological societies. The explosion or explosions did occur in a high latitude, but there are plenty of uninhabited lands and untrafficked waters to which anybody
could send a testing expedition. An accusation like this is much too grave, too apt to bring a violent reaction, for us to make blindly.…

–– Soldati governments are keeping the knowledge to themselves for the nonce, informing no foreign powers.…

‘– you have been told because you are among the Custodians of Humanity. Yours
is
the task of guidance away from a new Death Time and, very likely, Gaea’s casting off of our whole species. On the practical side, you are in a network that covers much of the globe. Keep alert. If you believe you have any smallest clue, report it in cipher.…

‘– whoever is responsible for this must be found out and annihilated. You are the defensive cells of Gaea. Through you, now, acts the Life Force.’

– Vanna sat long in the dusk, alone with this newest truth. Finally she folded the papers and tucked them into her bosom, to carry home and burn. They felt harsh against her skin. Abruptly she put elbows on desk, buried face in hands, and wept.

The door at the top of the front stairs opened and afternoon sunlight struck dazzlingly downward into the Pey-d’Or. A dozen drinkers looked up from their tables, as did Sesi from her stance, and saw a pair of bulky shadows athwart that brilliance. The door closed again behind them and boots thumped. Wariness fell on the men together with the returned gloom, for these newcomers were strangers, and armed.

They stopped at the bottom of the stairs and peered around. At this hour, nearly all patrons were sailors from ships in port. Among their burly, shabby-brightly-clad forms, four were conspicuous as outlanders. One was Plik, who sprawled against the board, legs across the floor. Opposite him, in conversation until now, sat a short, sallow man with short, grizzled hair and beard, long nose, ready smile but wintry eyes, dressed in a high-collared tunic and buckskin trousers. Two benches away, a Maurai had been plying the barmaid with jokes and propositions; she giggled and encouraged him when she wasn’t taking orders. Off by himself in a corner was another Maurai, to judge by his blouse, sarong, and sandals; but he was a bizarre sort, short-bodied, long-legged, hair in black and brown stripes, features disharmonic, skin covered by dark splotches of which one made a domino mask. He alone did not stare at the arrivals.

Dressed alike in green, they had insignia of military rank on their sleeves and the emblem of a globe on their shoulders. Their heads bore sklerite helmets, and at their belts were not just combat knives and truncheons, but a pistol apiece.

Sesi moved toward them through an uneasy silence, smiling and swinging her hips a little more than usual. ‘Greeting, sirs,’ she said in her accented Francey. ‘What
is
your pleasure?’

When the sergeant replied, his own intonation was Eskuara: ‘We
are here on business of the Domain. Attention, everybody!’

A half-drunken deckhand bristled and jeered, ‘The Domain? Hai, what the devil’s going on? I never saw uniforms like yours before, and I’ve been around, I have.’

The corporal took the word, sounding as if his home state was Marnaube: ‘We belong to a new force, the Terran Guard. The Captain has ordered it.’

‘A couple of weeks after taking office?’ muttered Plik. ‘Oh, no, hardly. This must be the preorganized outfit that occupied those key points on the ground – and Skyholm – during the glorious revolution. Eh, my friend?’ he asked his tablemate.

Mikli Karst leaned close and answered low, ‘Yes, obviously, but don’t say it aloud.’ He grinned. ‘You perceive and understand a great deal for a souse, but you’re not used to government from the center and I’d hate to see you get in trouble.’

Plik scowled and swigged.

‘At ease,’ the sergeant called. ‘We’re going around town making an announcement. Too important for the radio or newspapers alone. Pay heed.’

He took a document from a pocket, unfolded it, cleared his throat, and read aloud:

‘Talence Jovain Aurillac, Captain of Ileduciel, to the people of the Domain, for its welfare and safety.

‘You are aware that an imminent danger has lately compelled the posting of troops aboard the aerostat. This danger still exists. While it does,
visits
on other than essential business must be suspended. Normal functions and services will be maintained, and the authorities and inhabitants of every state shall continue their normal routines unless otherwise directed.

‘Perils and uncertainties confront us on every side – conflicting ambitions and mutinous discontent at home, hostile nations growing in strength abroad, the entire configuration of the world changing at storm speed, politically, socially, economically, technologically, even religiously. Although I am vowed to preserve the integrity of the Domain, that
is
not possible by freezing ourselves into a new Isolation Era. We must be ready to institute whatever changes are healthful. Some will be radical. Most obviously and immediately, the Domain cannot continue as loosely organized as it has hitherto been. We must have a stronger central authority, prepared to act as swiftly and decisively as needful. To this end, I have
established the Terran Guard, a security corps taking precedence over any state militia or police, coequal with the regular armed services but with distinct responsibilities and under the direct command of the Captain.

‘People of the Domain, you too can help your country in its hour of peril. Investigation of enemy plans and actions against us
is
proceeding apace, and you shall have a full account immediately after your government does. Meanwhile, at present certain crucial individuals are missing.