Kit looked at Quelt in astonishment.
“And you just walked away from that little conversation without having any further trouble?” Kit said.
“Well, yes,” Quelt said. “Why not?”
Kit was utterly dumbfounded. He looked at Ponch, who was eyeing him with some moderate confusion himself.
“Come on!” Kit said, and headed off. Ponch ran after him, leaving Quelt gazing after them.
“Well,” she said to no one in particular, “no help with the laundry this morning, I see…”
Kit made his way straight back to the great Display, via his “beam-me-up-Scotty” spell, into which he had laid the Display’s coordinates. “There’s something I’m looking for,” he said to Ponch as they popped out in the early morning over the crystalline “pool.”
Tell me about it.
“What we’re seeing here, down below…”
Ponch’s answer was a few minutes in coming. They decided, here, what the rest of this world’s life would look like, Ponch said. Is that right?
“That’s part of it,” Kit said.
Ponch looked up at him with an expression that was both quizzical and somehow sad. But not all.
“No,” Kit said. Standing there on the brink of the interface, he hesitated, and then sat down in the grass and flowers.
Ponch sat down beside him, his tongue hanging out, still giving Kit that uncertain look. You understand it, Ponch said. Make me understand it, too. I think it’s important.
Kit pulled his knees up, wrapped his arms around them. “The universe is running down,” he said. “It’s the Lone Power’s doing. It invented entropy, the Great Death that’s the shadow over all the smaller ones. Whether the results of that invention are all bad—” Kit shrugged. “It gets too complicated to just say yes or no. But wizards do what they can to slow down the speed of energy running out of the world, that’s all.”
Ponch had looked away and was gazing down into the Display. I think I understand that.
“Okay. When enough members of a species get to the point where they know they’re alive, and they know they can think—when they start to understand the world around them, and they realize they can do something about it one way or another—then they’re offered the Choice. As a species, they can elect to slow down the Great Death, or at least try to slow it down. Or else they can just give in and decide to do nothing about it. They can even go over to Its side, the Lone Power’s side, and help make the worlds die faster…”
Ponch shuddered. How can they do that?!
“I’ve never been real clear about that myself,” Kit said. How can they do it? How can someone be angry enough, or crazy enough, to say, “Sure, if things are going to hell anyway, let’s have them go there faster’? “Sometimes it looks like a
species can get tricked into it,” Kit said. “When a Choice happens, there are always representatives from Life’s side and Death’s side to argue the case. And there are always wizards there: sometimes a lot, sometimes just a few, or even just one. But finally it comes down to what the species itself decides, through its representatives at the Choice. If the Lone One offers them something they like the sound of—better than they like the sound of what Life’s offering—and they go for it, then…” Kit shook his head.
Then bad things happen to that species, Ponch said.
He was still looking down into the Display. Kit glanced over at him, wondering what was going on. Ponch was usually more voluble than this, even when he was upset.
“That’s right,” Kit said. “And usually bad stuff happens to the other species around them, too, if the one making the Choice has the biggest population of sentient beings on that planet. If they already had death to begin with, then it tends to get a lot worse than just their bodies stopping, or whatever. If they didn’t have death…they get it.”
It was some seconds before Ponch said anything else. Finally, he lifted his head and looked Kit in the eyes again. That’s awful.
Kit nodded. “So all the people in that world have to deal with the results of that Choice until their species ends,” he said. “And wizards get born to try to make it better, if it went badly. You could say that a wizard’s Ordeal is his own version of that Choice.” Kit smiled, a small smile and not a happy one. “Whether we like it or not, it looks like it’s Choices all the way down…”
Ponch flicked an ear at the Display. Including down there.
“Definitely down there,” Kit said. “Most species only have old stories about their Choices, and it’s hard to tell whether everything in the stories is true. These guys—” He shook his head. “It’s pretty unusual to have such a clear telling. It’s nice for the Alaalids. But I can’t get over the idea that there’s something missing.”
Something they’ve left out?
“Maybe. Yeah. Or else something they didn’t think was important. What I wish I could see…is that left-out part.”
Ponch looked stumped. Let me think about that for a moment, he said.
That, Kit thought. The part with the Lone One. In all other Choices that I’ve seen, It’s been the major player. In world after world, It haunts even the species that came close to winning their Choices. But this one…He sat down. This species has death. They accepted that part of the Lone Power’s “gift” even before the Choice process began. So the heart of their own Choice, and something they accepted—or threw out—has to be even more important than death.
Kit stood there in the bright day, turning that over and over in his mind. Something more important for this species than life and death. More important than what comes after it.
What could that be?
Ponch looked up at him. The thing you want to see, he said, I can take you there.
“Do it!”
Together they walked down into the crystal. Once again they found the eight
characters of the Choice waiting for them. But this time the air of the past, or the past-made-present, wasn’t quite so pellucid. There was uncertainty in it, a kind of haze.
“Where is that haze coming from?” Kit said.
Me, possibly, Ponch said. But pay attention. I don’t know if I can do this more than once.
The Lone Power and Druvah had stepped aside, and Kit and Ponch stood nearby, watching, listening. “You are the wise one,” the Lone Power was saying. “You know what day your people are coming to, in the far future. You know to what place they will come: the place from which they will not be able to move without help. My help.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Druvah said. “I think our Choice will still remain our own. Now tell me what you want.”
“The destruction of hopes,” It said. “The devaluation of life. The end of things, early or late. The dissolution of the created. What else?”
“No,” Druvah said. “I mean, what do you want of me? You wouldn’t have called me aside unless I had the ability to do something you want.”
“I want you to let me into the heart of things,” It said.
“You want me to betray my people,” Druvah said.
“Nothing of the kind! But I can give you the power to make sure they won’t destroy themselves. They will, eventually. You know it. They’re very happy with the way they are. But to every species comes a time when the way they are is not enough…when if they’re going to go on living, they have to become something more, something different from what they’ve always been. If your fellow wizards enact the wizardry they’re building at the moment, they’ll also find that they’ve built themselves a trap from which there’s no escape. And you know that’s what they’re doing, too. You’re trying to save them. But they’re not listening to you.”
“They’re likely to listen to me even less,” Druvah said, “if I talk to you much longer.”