"And that is what, exactly?"
"Transcendence of life, death… time itself," said Vogel without irony. "Truth."
Rue smiled, a little sadly. Her mother had warned her about movements like this. Transcendence, mother had said, is another word for escape. But escape to where? This life is all we have. To desire escape from life is to desire death.
"It sounds wonderful," she said wistfully. "I wish I could believe in it."
Vogel laughed. "Belief is entirely unnecessary," he said. "None of us believe anything. NeoShinto is a method, not an ideology."
"Huh?"
"NeoShinto is part of the philosophy of Permanence," said Vogel. "Permanence is the attempt to create a human culture that can survive indefinitely here in deep interstellar colonies. NeoShinto is a Permanence program that explores the limits of human neurological programming.
"Humans think metaphorically. Most of our thoughts are built up of more primitive metaphors. Our most atomic metaphors are hard-wired in as a result of where we evolved. One of those hardwired metaphors is something we commonly call 'I. It's the metaphor of self-as-object.
"Religions throughout history have tried to replace this primary metaphor with self-as-world, but it's very difficult unaided. Takes years of effort by specialists, because you're operating on basic neurological programming. By the twentieth century they had drugs that could explode the 'I' metaphor, but they didn't have the conceptual framework to understand what they were doing. We have it.
"NeoShinto is just a technology for replacing your 'I' with a perceived Other— what we call the kami. We attach no mythology or dogma to the experience. You're free to interpret it however you'd like." There was irony in his smile now.
"I don't understand," she confessed.
"Of course not," said Vogel. "You can't until you've met the kami. Would you like to try?" He gestured to the armchairs.
She didn't like the idea of undergoing some procedure here, under this man's power. But… "Can I take one of these headsets with me? And… a kami to try?"
"Of course. You can take a headset now. I'll have some kami copied for you— including the best of Brother Bequith's. That will take some hours; I'll have them delivered to your suite."
"Thank you."
"But tell me," said Vogel. "Why has Brother Bequith not come to visit us yet? We've received no communication from him since he arrived."
"I… I don't know," she said sincerely. "But I will ask him."
Vogel's question stayed with her as she rejoined Rebecca in the street and it distracted her from the rest of day's shopping.
"RUE, WHERE ARE you?" asked Michael.
She smiled to hear his voice. Through inscape, it seemed to thrum inside her head, nice and intimate. "I'm in the city," she said, looking around for a landmark. There were too many of them— minarets, domes, faery bridges between glittering towers. "How did your meeting go?"
"That's what I'd like to talk about. Listen, we're still in the ice caves, we should be back in the city in half an hour. Can you meet us at Pier 47?"
"Well, if it's urgent…"
"It's very urgent. I think we've found evidence of what Crisler is up to. We translated the Chicxulub message and, well— I'll tell you when we meet."
"Um, all right."
Michael disconnected. Well, that was odd, she thought. Rue was suddenly aware of her guard, who scanned the crowd unceasingly. The bustling streets didn't look so peaceful as they had moments ago.
"Rebecca, could you head back to the keep? Max and I are going to meet the boys at the docks."
The doctor was visibly tired from hiking around all day. "Sure," she said. "Want me to take this stuff?"
"If you could."
They went their separate ways, Rebecca toward the distant monastery and Rue and Max through narrow streets in the direction of the docks.
At the center of Lux, roads and maglev tracks entered into a whirlpool-like spiral that led down. They walked through underpasses and over bridges as traffic zipped by and finally reached the edge of an immense, round shaft that punctured the ice. The roads spiraled down its outer walls, then disappeared as the shaft opened out into a gigantic domelike cavern half a kilometer below. As their elevator fell past the roof of this dome, the roads reappeared, hugging the curve of the roof as they continued their way down to the dark ocean water below.
Dozens of warehouses and docks clung to the base of the cavern walls. Trucks and maglev cars were loading and unloading cargo within clusters of freighters at the docks. Dark cave entrances opened off the cavern at intervals and ships came and went through these.
It was a long walk from the elevators to Pier 47. Rue was tired and the crowds and growling machinery that raced back and forth here began to give her a headache. She sat down gratefully on a bench and rummaged through the one bag she hadn't given to Rebecca. This held some jewelry and the NeoShinto headset Vogel had given her. She toyed with this as she waited.
"Think that's them?" asked Max. He had become positively jovial in the past few minutes. As if new possibilities had opened for him, she thought. Where he pointed, a rust-streaked freighter was edging its way toward their pier. The only other vessel here was a battered looking lozenge-shaped thing that she thought might be a submarine.
Rue was not so happy. She found herself dwelling on the idea that the man Mallory could himself be responsible for the abuses of her past. And the idea that this place might become her home was equally disquieting, though she couldn't have said why. She didn't snap back to attention until she heard a gangplank thump down, and Mike ran up to her. Herat was sauntering down the gangplank behind him.
"Oh!" She leaped to her feet and hugged Mike. "How did it go?" she asked.
The freighter pulled away from the docks. Professor Waldt was still aboard; he waved from the deck, then turned to go inside.
Michael waved back and laughed. "We had as much fun as alien-hunters are likely to have. But listen, we know what the message on the Lasa habitat says. We've got to inform the abbot as soon as possible; can you get us in to see him as soon as we get back?"
"Sure, but what—?"
Rue stumbled over the words and stopped. Something weird had just happened; she shook her head, thinking for a second that her ears had popped.
The sounds of the crowds and machinery had stopped, as though cut off by a switch.
She started to say something about it to Mike, but he was staring past her open-mouthed. Rue turned.
The docks were empty. Not just their pier, but all the other piers as well. And the freighters, roadways, the maglev tracks, and the distant elevators. In a split-second and with no warning, the thousand or more people sharing the docks with them had vanished.
So had their bodyguard. The only people in this gigantic cavern, it seemed, were Rue, Mike, Max, and Herat.
"Oh shit," said Mike, "they've messed with the ins—"
"Get down!"
The figure appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the pier: a running man, his arms cradling a large laser gun. "Get down!" he shouted again. "Ambush!"
Now Rue heard the vicious hissing that accompanied laser fire. She threw herself to the ground and Mike landed on top of her.
"It figures." It was Max's voice. Rue looked up.