Staffa straightened, drawing a deep breath. "Don't do what?"
"Try and run away." She stepped easily to the dune crest and settled herself, legs dangling down the slip face. "I don't know what the range of the collars is, but—"
"Twelve kilometers," Staffa told her blankly. "I could be well past that by morning."
She looked up at him, soft starlight caressing her features. "Sit down." She patted the sand next to her.
Staffa hesitated a moment, then dropped. "I could make it."
Kaylla shook her head violently. "Fool, you'd be dead by noon tomorrow. Think about it. This air has no humidity. None. Sure, you're tough. You're strong as an Ashtan bull and you've got a hell of a lot of animal tenacity. You'd still
be dead by noon tomorrow. sucked dry, leached of all the water in your body."
"You know a lot about my abilities, woman."
"Are all men so sensitive? Yeah, Tuff, I know what you can do. I've watched you haul pipe." Her cool hand came to rest on his shoulder. "But listen. I know what this desert can do. While Anglo's been pumping me, I've been pumping him back. Assuming you could find water — which you can't — you'd be walking for three weeks to make Etarus. Between here and there, you won't find a mouse's mouthful of water. They've looked with the finest sensors Rega can buy. Nothing's out there but sand. Not even siff jackals, for all Anglo's warnings."
Staffa stared out over the endless white, so peaceful now in the starlight. I should go. Take off now, run and run until I fall headfirst into the sand. It won't take long. Only the thirst will be unbearable. I won't die in pain or terror like so many I've killed. Would the ghosts rest with my death?
"The collar would be easier." She said it so simply. "Or, if you'd like, Brak or one of the others could take a fitting wrench to your skull; you'd never feel it." She paused. "Why do you want to die?"
He chuckled hollowly. "You wear the collar and you can ask that? Why do you want to live? Seriously, Kaylla, you can't believe that self-delusive nonsense about God."
She leaned back, taking a deep breath. "Oh, but I do. Not only that, but I believe in responsibility and morality. Concepts alien to this horror-drenched age of darkness we've cloaked ourselves with."
"Don't tell me you—"
"Don't you think life has a purpose?" she asked levelly. "Why are you alive? Why do you experience the universe around you? What is the purpose of all this?" She picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers.
"You tell me."
"Knowledge," Kaylla whispered, looking up at the myriads of stars that wove a gray belt through the night sky. "The Seddi believe God became aware. That awareness started the universe in a brilliant instant eighteen billion years ago."
"God? Aware? If I could believe in God, what would awareness mean?"
"Observation." She rolled on her side, propping her head on one hand, fingers
tracing through the white grains of sand. "What if the creation of the universe was God's realiation that it was aware? Its first observation, if you will."
"Then God is aware. Why does it need us? It could float around and. and…"
"That's right. You begin to see the problem. Any inquiry into the true nature of God always leads into circles of logic and assumption. How could God see itself if it were the only observer?"
"Then the Seddi think that men are the mirrors of God?"
"No, not exactly." Her fingers raked the sand into geometric designs. "Seddi accept that the mind of God is One, and, at the same time, it is infinitely divisible. The third law the Seddi accept is that mind — yours, mine, or God's, it doesn't matter — creates. We do that by observation. Everything comes from the Now moment of observation."
"Then according to your logic God Mind creates its own future." Staff a settled into the sand. "Which means the universe is directed by the will of God Mind. Then all of existence becomes predetermined. What point is there in that? How do you know if your decision counts, or if it was someone else's decision all along?"
"You're astute, Tuff. Not many people would recognize that problem immediately." She lifted a tanned shoulder. "I'm not sure I know the answer. I think it hinges on awareness. You'd have to go to Targa to learn that."
Targa! My son.
"And there are women there like you who would know the answer?" He steepled his fingers, shirting, feeling the sand grate under his buttocks.
"The man you seek is called Magister Bruen. He is perhaps the greatest living Seddi. He, or his associate, Magister Hyde." She filled her lungs. "I have always wondered if I should have stayed. I would never have loved my husband. I never would have had my children. My life would have been poorer — and at the same time, richer."
He laughed bitterly. "And you think we'll ever get out of this Etarian desert hell alive? No, there is too much trouble with your Seddi magic. I cannot believe God made the universe by observing it. If I believe you, I fall into a
trap that I am nothing more than a bit of God which is seeing its own future."
"Not so," she countered, pointing a sandy finger at him. "The quanta are the failsafe against predetermination."
"The quanta?" He studied her skeptically. "What does quanta mean?"
"The uncertainty inherent in the universe. You can predict the location of a given electron or particle, but you cannot predict its direction. One or the other. Think in terms of subatomic particle motion, energy, and position. All are mutually exclusive depending on the observation you, the observer, make, correct? The future is perceived by quantum wave functions of probability which you in turn effect by making a choice in the now. Each of those decisions in turn is based on how the synapses in your brain fire, and those are determined by the energy level in the particles in your nerve cells, and whether or not a neural receptor happens to be blocked by a molecule. You can't know the energy or charge of those particles, or the location of any given molecule before you make the decision."
Staffa agreed warily, "Any student of null singularity drive and N-dimensional microcircuitry knows that principle. We call it the law of uncertainty."
"A name even older and unknown today is 'quantum function,' which describes just that. The reason the phrase isn't used anymore is because of the Seddi heresy. You know the Regans outlawed the order six hundred years ago. Why? Because the Seddi taught that we all share the Mind of God, that knowledge is our purpose in being. How well do you think such a concept sat with political authority?"
She snorted in derision. "Question because it is your purpose in life? Surely not! People might learn too much. Cultivated ignorance is the political chain that binds people to tyranny."
"Blessed Gods and Sassan Emperors are more handy for maintaining social control," Staffa agreed dryly, remembering the Etarian Priest who'd groveled at his feet — and later decreed that the Blessed Gods had revealed themselves in a vision, proclaiming Tybalt the Imperial Seventh as their anointed leader of the worlds of men. The faithful had swallowed it all, smiling, unaware of the power politics behind the scenes. Tybalt himsef had written the speech.
"And your Seddi don't agitate for political control?" Memories of the last Targan revolt filled his mind with images of smoke and death. Did I kill my son in that bloodbath?
"Oh, they do more than agitate. If Sassa or Rega knew the extent of their spy networks, both empires would rock."
"So?" Staffa made careful note of that piece of news. "Where is the difference?"
"The difference is in the goals we've set for ourselves." She cleared her throat. "You see, the Seddi think humanity is destined to be destroyed — or to destroy itself. The Star Butcher is part of that species death drive."