“And your focus changes to the physical.”
“Of course.”
Vol slightly tightened his grip on Pao’s arms. “I cannot blame her, or you,” he continued sadly. “It tortures me not to have a physical connection with my lovers. A complete connection, to accompany the spiritual.”
“Then make that connection with whomever you wish,” Pao said, urging him. “But give this up, at least for now.”
Vol deflated. He released his friend and turned away. Then he stopped and looked back.
“Pao,” the librarian said, pressing him, “you once had more faith than any of us. Yet now you want to put your trust there?” He pointed toward the door.
“Not trust,” Pao said. “Hope? Optimism? The point is, we don’t have to decide that now, which is why I ask you to wait.”
Vol eyed his friend carefully. “Tell me. Do you truly believe in what the Technologists are attempting to do? Or is it that you lack faith in the alternative, in us?”
“Both,” Pao admitted. “More study is required on both sides.”
Vol regarded his friend silently. The door was shut and the remaining dozen people had now gathered loosely around the two men. Vol turned from Pao and began to walk around the basalt arm of the spiral.
“Pao,” a woman called and took several steps toward him. “Do not let Technologist propaganda cloud your eyes.”
Pao regarded her with fondness. “You have no fear about what we do?”
The woman’s eyes grew stern. “I am afraid, yes. To die, to ascend, but not to transcend—eternity on earth, immaterial and alone? That frightens me more. But there are other views, even among the Technologists. The earth is restless, the ice moves, the animals are fearful. We may not have time to explore alternative rituals as much as we would like.”
“Certainly not if we continue to debate the topic,” Vol pointed out, turning to Pao.
Everyone was silent.
Vol walked back toward the woman and took her arms as he had taken Pao’s. “I will be honored to go forth with you, Rensat, but I do not want to take you from him whom you love.”
“I love you both,” Rensat told him. “Ultimately, however, I love the Candescents above all. If I cannot have that, no life, no love, is worth possessing.”
Her words had an impact on Pao. He moved closer to the other two, and Mikel could feel their energy shift. “I have spent my adult life looking at existence from many viewpoints,” Pao told her. “That is why I have written—not just to share ideas but to see them as if they belong to someone else, to consider them impartially. And I have come to believe some of what we believe but also aspects of what the Technologists believe.” He faced the other members of the Priesthood. “There are basic questions that remain to be answered. I say wait.”
“What questions?” Rensat asked.
“The question of infusing ourselves into the cosmic plane.”
Vol released Rensat and waved with disgust. “The Technologists are not planning an ‘infusion,’” he said. “They are planning to break into the highest plane, like thieves. Never mind the animal violence inherent in that—by what logic can anyone think of overpowering limitless power? No.” He shook his head. “Our souls must bond. Together we must present ourselves to the infinite. We must merge with the cosmos. That is how the Candescents survived their obliteration.”
“You think that is what they did,” Pao said. “You believe that based on stories passed down since the world was young.”
Vol stood strong, wordlessly defending his faith.
“And you are wrong about the Technologists,” Pao said, correcting him. “They look to target a point in the cosmos, not to crack it or assault it.” Pao looked out at the others. “My friends, think about your approach. Even bonded souls may bounce from the cosmic plane like light from polished metal. One soul, a dozen, a thousand—it may not matter.”
“The Candescents proved it does,” Rensat retorted.
“And you suggest that rising like a geyser-powered stone on molten rock will achieve that goal?” Vol asked.
“I don’t know!” Pao confessed. “I don’t. That is why I say we must wait. The Technologists have built a device that may give us the opportunity to ascend. Even the legends tell us the Candescents rode into the cosmic plane on an inferno.”
“The word is haydonai and no one is sure what it meant,” Vol reminded him. “The ancient Galderkhaani may have meant ‘great glow,’ not ‘fire.’ The great glow may have come from luminous souls working together, not a column of fire. It may be figurative, not literal.”
Pao smiled thinly. “All I am asking is that we save, for later, the one option that might kill everyone here—and then prove too weak to allow us to reach any of the planes beyond death.”
“And I say again, there are risks inherent in all things,” Vol said. “Your thoughts and words and poetry were instrumental in creating the cazh. Do not abandon us now.”
Vol studied Pao’s reluctant face. Then he made a little open-handed gesture, as if to say, Join us.
“I do not wish to,” Pao said at last. But then he looked long and openly at his two former lovers. Their faces were so familiar, so dear, that the thought of living without them was unthinkable. “And yet I cannot abandon you,” he said.
With an encouraging look from Rensat, Pao finally nodded. Vol clapped the man’s shoulders joyously, then turned and pulled a parchment from its display on a wall and followed Pao as he strode without another word around the spiral toward its center. The other dozen arranged themselves along the basalt path so that they were evenly spaced, close to the fires floating on the water. Pao sat cross-legged in the center. Vol placed the parchment in Pao’s lap, then stood behind him.
The bearded man looked around. He still seemed uncertain.
“These are your words,” Rensat reminded him.
Pao looked at the parchment. It was a gesture, no more, but he placed his name on the document. Then he took a dramatic breath and bowed over his knees, exposing the nape of his neck.
Vol stood before him with his feet shoulder-width apart and closed his eyes. His breath became tremulous. The others held a respectful silence. Vol opened his eyes and extended the first two fingers of his right hand to point exactly at Pao’s neck. He raised his left hand above him and pointed those first two fingers at the lattice dome. Then he looked directly into Mikel’s eyes and smiled.
“Welcome, all,” he said. “In the name of the Candescents, we commit our spirits to wherever the ritual takes us!”
Almost at once, an invisible surge began to manifest itself, a shock wave that grew in power until it was no longer rippling but forcefully expanding—
Mikel jerked back in terror. His hands recoiled from the mosaic and the vision ripped away from his mind. Almost simultaneously, a massive fireball exploded nearby.
Three hours by plane, northeast of Halley VI, on the north coast of Antarctica, the commander of the Norwegian Troll base pushed his way through a huddle of scientists to get a full view of the jagged lines on the computer screen they were all staring at. He had NORSAR, a geoscience research foundation, on the phone and the phone to his ear.
“We’ve never seen seismic activity like this,” he said in awe.
“And no aftershocks?” asked the seismologist on the phone.
“Just that brief burst,” the commander said. An inveterate fidgeter, he began to drum with his fingers on the desk. As if he were reading music, he tapped the long and short lines from the Antarctic bedrock’s seismometer, but the resulting beat was far too arrhythmic to be music.