Then Paul felt himself fading. Again came the stretching of identity, and the surroundings changed. Abruptly, he was sitting on a hard stone pedestal with Sabastian beside him.
"Are you all right?" Sabastian asked. His face was strangely pale. "You've been mumbling and muttering the whole time, jerking around like you were having a bad dream."
Paul's eyes focused with some effort on the old man. "I was with Dorland."
Sabastian didn't question the statement. "Where is he?"
"Coming back, I think."
Chapter Twenty
"SOMETHING'S HAPPENING!" SELMER EXCLAIMED. Paul stepped across to the archway. The crowd had moved closer during the past hour, and now he could hear a low murmur. He couldn't see what was happening through the trees, but it was clear that a commotion had broken out.
Jacque yelled down the stairs behind them:
"Someone's coming through."
Then Paul saw the ripple of motion. A moment later several uniformed boys appeared on the pathway. He stiffened, then saw Dorland among them. The crowd made way, and a moment later Dorland stepped through the archway. His wrists were bloody, his hair tangled in a wild mop. With him came the boy Paul recognized as Jonny.
"Jonny's friends are speaking to the people outside," Dorland said. "They're asking them to return to Fairhope. They are letting the people know that the Holy Order doesn't exist anymore." Paul took Dorland's arm and pulled him farther into the corridor. Except for his wrists, Dorland 205
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seemed to be unhurt. "What happened back there?"
"Elder Jacowicz returned to the temple after Jonny freed me," Dorland said. "He and High Elder Brill are there now, along with the rest of the elders and deacons. I think they're seeking advice from Lord Tern."
"Let's go after 'em!" Jacque exclaimed. "We've got the Sons on our side now—"
"That would only result in violence," Dorland said. "The deacons and elders are well armed." He turned to look back through the archway. "After the people have returned to Fairhope with their sons, I'll go to the temple and talk to High Elder Brill."
Selmer laughed without humor. "What makes you think he'll listen? You're the one that caused all this. He'll have your head for a temple decoration."
"I think he'll listen to me," Dorland said. Dusk was falling over the city by the time the last of the people from Fairhope had started the trek back to the village. Sabastian and Selmer Ogram had gone with them. Jacque was stationed on the roof of the building, where he could watch the temple with Karyn's binoculars.
Dorland had gone alone to the temple two hours ago. Through the binoculars Paul had watched him go inside, and as far as Paul could tell, he had been in there with the elders and deacons ever since. Paul stood outside the building in the falling light, listening to the rushing river and the sounds of countless insects in the woods all around.
"He must be making progress," Erich Frakes said. "They haven't dumped his body out the door yet."
"I think he knows what he's doing," Paul said. Strangely, he felt confident that he was right.
"I hope so," Karyn said. She turned to look
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through the archway at the chauka. It was dark now; Elli had vanished shortly after Dorland returned, and nobody had reactivated the chauka to bring her back. The silver disk lay on the pedestal in front of the chauka. "I wonder if we'll ever see Elli—I mean, really her, not just an image."
"I don't think so," Paul said.
Something in his voice made her turn back.
"Why not?"
"We've assumed that the chauka was a longrange communicator," Paul said. "Maybe even a transportation device. I don't think it's either of those."
"Then what is it?" Frakes asked.
Paul looked out toward the temple. Had Dorland guessed the truth?
"Has it occurred to you that the main room in this building and the sacred chamber in the temple are set up like an auditorium?"
"An auditorium?"
"Elli can be heard only as far as the outer ring of pedestals. The pedestals were obviously meant to be the Tal Tahir equivalent of chairs. With those long arms and legs of his, I'd guess Lord Tern would find one of them to be a comfortable place to sit for a while. I think those pedestals were seats for the males."
"You're saying the Tal Tahir males came to this place to watch a show?" Frakes sounded skeptical.
"I think they came here for all kinds of reasons. They called on Elli when they needed a counseling session."
"A what?" Karyn exclaimed.
"I kept wondering what Lord Tern and Elli were getting out of this exchange with humans," Paul went on. "Then Elli said that helping us was the reason for her existence. That made me wonder about how the disks work. You touch the rod with the disk and Elli appears."
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"If you use the disk with her picture on it," Karyn added.
"Exactly. You mentioned that earlier, but I didn't see the significance. You said the personal Tal Tahir god changes each time a new High Elder is elected. You told me the new High Elder selects his own personal god."
"That's the way it's always been," Karyn said.
"Right. Which means Captain Anson from the starship Vanguard was probably the man who
discovered the disks and the chauka. That's probably what made him go off the deep end in the first place. But I wondered how the High Elder could simply select a Tal Tahir god. Now I think it was simple—he merely chose a new disk. That means the elders had a supply of the disks."
Karyn nodded. "That makes sense. But I don't see—"
"If you use the disk with Elli's picture, you get Elli. If you use the one with Lord Tern's picture, you get him instead. There are dozens of disks, each with a different picture." He paused to let them absorb that. "Doesn't that remind you of something?"
"Sure," Frakes said. "It's like a tridee cube. You pop it in your player and sit back in your favorite easy chair and watch the show."
"Right. The show is recorded in the cube. You can get any kind of show you want, from a murder mystery to a horror film to a nature documentary."
"Are you saying . . ." Karyn let the words trail off.
Paul nodded. "I think the Tal Tahir disks are the human equivalent of tridee cubes."
Silence descended over them while they absorbed what Paul had told them. Karyn broke it:
"Lord Tern was an actor?"
"Not an actor as such," Paul corrected. "I don't think the Tal Tahir disks were recorded with the same kind of shows we're accustomed to. I've learned a lot from Elli. The social orientation of the Tal Tahir—you can see it in everything they had, even the way their city was designed. They felt each other's emotions—and it would only be natural that their entertainment would be angled toward emotional experiences. If I'm right, some of those disks depict humor, and some depict the Tal Tahir equivalent of love stories, and some are Tal Tahir horror stories."
"Stories don't talk back to you," Frakes pointed out.
"These do," Paul said. "The technology of the Tal Tahir was also oriented toward emotional fulfillment. The disks were all designed to interact with the viewer."
Karyn looked at him sharply. "The disk of Lord Tern . . ."
"The disk Brill selected happened to be a horror story. Lord Tern portrayed a Tal Tahir with something inherently wrong. He hated youth rather than worshipping them. The role he played was that of a kra'ith leader who turned against his members."
"But Lord Tern wasn't dealing with a kra'ith," Karyn pointed out.