“If he, unmistakably of his own free will, should announce he’s changed his mind—not toadying to the Imperium, no, merely admitting that through most of its history Aeneas didn’t fare badly under it and this could be made true again—why, I think he could not only be pardoned, along with his associates, but the occupation government could yield on a number of points.”
Wariness brought Tatiana upright. “If you intend this offer to lure him out of hidin’—”
“No!” Desai said, a touch impatiently. “It’s not the kind of message that can be broadcast. Arrangements would have to be made beforehand in secret, or it would indeed look like a sellout. Anyhow, I repeat that I don’t think you know how to find him, or that he’ll try contacting you in the near future.”
He sighed. “But perhaps—Well, as I told you, what I mainly want to learn, in my clumsy and tentative fashion, is what drives him. What drives all of you? What are the possibilities for compromise? How can Aeneas and the Imperium best struggle out of this mess they have created for each other?”
She regarded him for a second period of quiet, until she asked, “Would you care to have lunch?”
The sandwiches and coffee had been good; and seated in her kitchenette bay, which was vitryl supported on the backs of stone dragons, one had an unparalleled view across quads, halls, towers, battlements, down and on to Nova Roma, the River Flone and its belt of green, the ocherous wilderness beyond.
Desai inhaled fragrance from his cup, in lieu of the cigarette he had not yet ventured to mention. “Then Ivar is paradoxical,” he remarked. “By your account, he is a skeptic on his way to becoming the charismatic lord of a deeply religious people.”
“What?” He’d lost count of how often today he had taken the girl aback. “Oh, no. We’ve never been such. We began as scientific base, remember, and in no age of piety.” She ran fingers through her hair and said after a moment, “Well, true, there always were some believers, especially among Landfolk … m-m, I suppose tendency does go back beyond Snelund administration, maybe several lifetimes … reaction to general decadence of Empire?—but our woes in last several years have certainly accelerated it—more and more, people are turnin’ to churches.” She frowned. “They’re not findin’ what they seek, though. That’s Ivar’s problem. He underwent conversion in early adolescence, he tells me, then later found creed unbelievable in light of science—unless, he says, they dilute it to cluck of soothin’ noises, which is not what he wants.”
“Since I came here for information, I have no business telling you what you are,” Desai said. “Nevertheless, I do have a rather varied background and—Well, how would this interpretation strike you? Aenean society has always had a strong faith. A faith in the value of knowledge, to plant this colony in the first place; a faith in, oh, in the sheer right and duty of survival, to carry it through the particularly severe impact of the Troubles which it suffered; a faith in service, honor, tradition, demonstrated by the fact that what is essentially paternalism continued to be viable in easier times. Now hard times have come back. Some Aeneans, like Ivar, react by making a still greater emotional commitment to the social system. Others look to the supernatural. But however he does it, the average Aenean must serve something which is greater than himself.” Tatiana frowned in thought. “That may be. That maybe. Still, I don’t think ‘supernatural’ is right word, except in highly special sense. ‘Transcendental’ might be better. For instance, I’d call Cosmenosis philosophy rather than religion.” She smiled a trifle. “I ought to know, bein’ Cosmenosist myself.”
“I seem to recall—Isn’t that an increasingly popular movement in the University community?”
“Which is large and ramified, don’t forget. Yes, Commissioner, you’re right. And I don’t believe it’s mere fad.”
“What are the tenets?”
“Nothing exact, really. It doesn’t claim to be revealed truth, simply way of gropin’ toward … insight, oneness. Work with Didonians inspired it, originally. You can guess why, can’t you?”
Desai nodded. Through his mind passed the picture he had seen, and many more: in a red-brown rain forest, beneath an eternally clouded sky, stood a being which was triune. Upon the platformlike shoulders of a large monoceroid quadruped rested a feathered flyer and a furry brachiator with well-developed hands. Their faces ran out in tubes, which connected to the big animal to tap its bloodstream. It ate for all of them.
Yet they were not permanently linked. They belonged to their distinct genera, reproduced their separate kinds and carried out many functions independently.
That included a measure of thinking. But the Didonian was not truly intelligent until its—no, heesh’s—three members were joined. Then not only did veins link; nervous systems did. The three brains together became more than the sum of the three apart.
How much more was not known, perhaps not definable in any language comprehensible to man. The next world sunward from Aeneas remained as wrapped in mystery as in mist. That Didonian societies were technologically primitive proved nothing; human ones were, until a geologically infinitesimal moment ago, and Terra was an easier globe on which to find lawfulness in nature. That communication with Didonians was extraordinarily difficult, limited after seven hundred years to a set of pidgin dialects, proved nothing either, beyond the truism that their minds were alien beyond ready imagining.
What is a mind, when it is the temporary creation of three beings, each with its own individuality and memories, each able to have any number of different partners? What is personality—the soul, even—when these shifting linkages perpetuate those recollections, in a ghostly diminuendo that lasts for generations after the experiencing bodies have died? How many varieties of race and culture and self are possible, throughout the ages of an entire infinite-faceted world? What may we learn from them, or they from us?
Without Dido for lure, probably men would never have possessed Aeneas. It was so far from Terra, so poor and harsh—more habitable for them than its sister, but by no great margin. By the time that humans who lacked such incentive had filled more promising planets, no doubt the Ythrians would have occupied this one. It would have suited them far better than it did Homo sapiens.
How well had it suited the Builders, uncertain megayears in the past, when there were no Didonians and Aeneas had oceans—?
“Excuse me.” Desai realized he had gone off into a reverie. “My mind wandered. Yes, I’ve meditated on the—the Neighbors, don’t you call them?—quite a bit, in what odd moments fall to my lot. They must have influenced your society enormously, not just as an inexhaustible research objective, but by their, well, example.”
“Especially of late, when we think we may be reachin’ true communication in some few cases,” Tatiana replied. Ardor touched her tone. “Think: such way of existence, on hand for us to witness and … and meditate on, you said. Maybe you’re right, we do need trans-humanness in our lives, here on this planet. But maybe, Commissioner, we’re right in feelin’ that need.” She swept her hand in an arc at the sky. “What are we? Sparks, cast up from a burnin’ universe whose creation was meanin’less accident? Or children of God? Or parts, masks of God? Or seed from which God will at last grow?” Quieter: “Most of us Cosmenosists think—yes, Didonians have inspired it, their strange unity, such little as we’ve learned of their beliefs, dedications, poetry, dreams—we think reality is always growin’ toward what is greater than itself, and first duty of those that stand highest is to help raise those lower—”
Her gaze went out the window, to the fragment of what had been … something, ages ago … and, in these latter centuries, had never really been lost in the wall which used it. “Like Builders,” she finished. “Or Elders, as Landfolk call them, or—oh, they’ve many names. Those who came before us.”