The Book of Fire (71 page)

. . . a system, a fail-safe, maintained by myth and mysticism, nurtured by kinship, functioning on automatic. But . . .

. . . what is it for?

. . . The danger is in the revelation. The chasm is not emptiness, but infinite possibility. She reels under the
weight of it. Layer after layer of her ignorance peeling back like drying bark, sloughed like an obsolete snakeskin, until she knows the truth of how much she didn’t know, how much he kept from her, all that her father preserved in his precious library, all that the House Computer tried (too late!) to prepare her for. Not one dragon, omniscient and omnipotent, but four who are neither, and a great and sacred Duty for which she is sadly ill-equipped. As a dragon guide, she is, so far, a failure. None of this, once learned, amazes her. It all seems . . . right.

. . . and yet, the awful choice that lies before her! The God is her . . . god. How can she betray him? She struggles to explain it. He appeared at a time of confusion and loss! His promises of security, his opulent visions lent vital strength, got things going again! She believed him for so long. What makes her believe three strangers now?

. . . but they are not strangers, not anymore. She’s learned their lives. She’s lived them in an instant. She’s walked with their dragons and cannot imagine them the enemy. She’s grown up with N’Doch as bush child (ah, lost Africa!), as street urchin, as master sneak thief, dodging smooth and cynical through the disease and drought and corruption of a century that knew no better than to gun down its best and its brightest, his brother among them.

. . . and she’s come of age with Erde, in terror and bloodshed, hounded by another dragon-inspired golem. She tells them that the God, too, time travels. The pieces fall together. The mad priest in white is Lord Fire’s creation, no doubt of it. But why, they ask? For what purpose? She does not know. If she did, they would know it, too.

. . . and then the Librarian, the one who frightened her, so halting in his human speech, so eloquent in this . . . joining. Both source and resource, a vibrant stream of sensual data—image, scent, sound—rich with drama and knowledge and portent. His console links the world’s surviving com-nets, the sensors, the archives, even her own House Computer, yet he has kept himself invisible to them.

. . . she has longed desperately for both comprehension and friends. These three are not what she would have chosen for herself, yet they bring a sort of comprehension, and the joining of minds is a wonder. There’s so much they
understand that no one ever has, about living with the God . . .

. . . the past and her clinging to it have been a restraint, she sees that now, a burden she can willingly set down, so that others more pressing may take its place.

. . . ah, the relief! A joyful release into the now! Past, present, future are one continuum. Didn’t the dragon try to tell her this, long ago? There’s no sense of
then
in the new now, no pain at having left her past so far behind. Only a clarification of purpose, brought on by this union of minds. Four far-flung dragon guides at last united by the fourth’s miraculous gift, that Paia and N’Doch have words for—“virtual reality,” “synergetic,” “psi”—but which the Librarian tries to explain as something, well . . . electrical. The machines are his eyes and ears on the world, but he doesn’t run them. They run themselves. He only “feels” them, as she feels the surge of collective power his psi gift brings to the circle. All they lack now are their dragons, and a reason why . . .

. . . Wait. So long. Despair.

SEE: a gray curl of woodsmoke coiling up through firelight. Beady eyes in the darkness.

SMELL: burning pitch, damp earth, the pungency of drying herbs.

HEAR: the quiet lap of water against the reeds.

FEEL: a chill of waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting.

. . . visions stir up the darkness. Dreams. Inarticulate. Speak it without words. Oracle. Wait . . .

. . . and waiting is learning.

SEE: a snow-scattered farmstead, steep dark hills with a
bristle of trees. A large man with a rough black beard and an armload of books.

SMELL: damp cattle, rooting pigs, hay, and manure.

HEAR: the rhythm of the ax, the shuffing of the oxen steaming in the paddock.

FEEL: ice in the wind. Waiting. Still waiting.

. . . the visions brand him as a madman, yet he will not deny them. Loneliness. Confusion. But instinct becomes knowledge, and the library grows.

SEE: fluorescent light, a nest of cables, shelves stuffed with equipment. A wild-haired man at a keyboard, before a constellation of screens.

SMELL: the tang of hot metal, the cold coffee on the console.

HEAR: the whine of accessing memory, faint rock n’ roll.

FEEL: disbelief, outrage, despair.

. . . one after the other, the screens show disaster: war, famine, plague, death. He taps a key. Overlay of horsemen, red, black, white, and pale. He slaps at the power switch. The screens darken. He buries his face in his hands.

. . . a time passes. Then . . . he sits up, alert. He has heard something at last. Still, none of it makes sense. He can feel her, not see her. Guess at her, not know her. He interprets as best he can.

. . . Four and three. Missing the One. Visions. She speaks. Work. Work. The time nears. Quickly . . .

In the circle of hands, consciousness melds but the self is not lost. There is no confrontation, no accusation, no recrimination. Perhaps those will come in time, that a Duty has been neglected, that a man loves and is loved by another . . .

But not now. For now, only acceptance of what is, a vast and spontaneous learning across cultures and centuries, and the planning of what is to be done, as much as can be without a full understanding of the task at hand.

And still Paia asks, how can I betray him?

The Librarian breaks the circuit. A gentle parting of hands, the trailing of now familiar fingers across all-known palms. The four stand with their heads bowed, eager to reclaim autonomy, reluctant to give up the bond.

Erde shows them the next step, entirely by accident.

N’Doch!

She calls. And all of them answer. The connection holds.

It is not the total intimacy of the meld, but that is . . . just as well. The melding is turned inward, toward the mirror of self. There is no outer awareness. The connection is . . . more like never having to raise your voice.