"At which point," Festina said, "every treasure hunter in the universe rushes here to grab Fuentes tech. Then they all turn into pissed-off ghosts."
"What else can we do?" I asked.
"Simple," Festina answered. "Figure out a way to kick-start Stage Two."
Tut turned to Ohpa. "Is that possible?"
"I don’t know," the alien replied. "I don’t know why Stage Two failed." His mandibles worked briefly — maybe a mannerism to show he was thinking. "It might be something simple, like a burned-out fuse. Perhaps Stage Two is ready to go, and you just need to fix some tiny thing. But the malfunction could be more serious. Perhaps it can only be repaired by persons with special expertise. And that assumes it can be repaired at all. I’ve been in stasis a long, long time. By now, the Stage Two equipment may have degraded too much to salvage."
"Those are all possibilities," Festina admitted, "but unless someone has a better idea, I don’t see we have much choice. We can’t leave Muta by Sperm-tail for fear the EMP clouds will attack Pistachio. But if we activate Stage Two, the clouds will go transcendental, after which they’ll likely leave us alone. Then we can go back to the ship and get decontaminated before we turn smoky." She looked at Tut and me. "Is that a plan?"
"I’m all for starting Stage Two," Tut said, "but why leave afterward? If Stage Two works, we can stay on Muta and turn into demigods, right?"
"Not quite," Festina told him. "If you stay on Muta, eventually you’ll undergo a process created by alien scientists with a proven record of fuck-ups: a process that might work on Fuentes but was never intended for Homo sapiens. Sounds more like a recipe for disaster than a golden invitation to climb Mount Olympus."
"Auntie, you’re such a spoilsport. Isn’t becoming godlike worth a little risk?"
"I’ve met godlike beings. As far as I can tell, they do nothing with their lives… except occasionally manipulate mine."
"That doesn’t mean you’d have to act that way. You could do good things for people who need it."
"I can do that now," Festina said. "Aren’t I a fabulous hero of the Technocracy?"
"Seriously," Tut said. "Seriously, Auntie. What’s wrong with being a god?"
"Seriously?" Festina sighed. "Deep in my bones, something cries out that gods are something you defy, not something you become. Humans should be standing on mountaintops, screaming challenges at the divine rather than coveting divinity ourselves. We should admire Prometheus, not Zeus… Job, not Jehovah. Becoming a god, or a godlike being, is selling out to the enemy. From the Greeks to the Norse to the Garden of Eden, gods are capricious assholes with impulse control problems. Joining their ranks would be a step down."
"Jeez, Auntie!" Tut made a disgusted sound, then turned to me. "What about you, Mom? You believe in gods and stuff. Wouldn’t you like to be one?"
"I’m with Festina on this. Godhood is a phase of existence for those who aren’t mature enough to be born human. Buddhists would never hurl defiance at the gods — that’s just rude — but we don’t envy the divine condition. The gods are stuck in celestial kindergarten: flashy powers, fancy toys, people prostrating themselves before your altar… it’s just childish wish fulfillment. Hardly a situation that encourages enlightenment. If your karma condemns you to birth as a god, the best you can do is resist the urge to throw thunderbolts and hope that in the next life you’ll get to be human."
"Oh come on!" He turned to Ohpa. "What about you? You’re enlightened. Don’t you want to be elevated beyond what you are now?"
Ohpa gave a small bow. "I yearn to be Tathagata… but will the process developed on this planet truly achieve that goal? My meager wisdom makes me mistrust easy solutions. Can genuine enlightenment be imposed by external forces? Can a normal being, full of conflicts and confusion, suddenly have every mental twist made straight? If so, is the resulting entity really the original person? Or is it some alien thing constructed from the original’s raw components, like a worm fed on a corpse’s flesh?"
Tut threw up his hands. "You’re all hopeless! You’ve got a chance to go cosmic, but all you do is nitpick. Can’t you think big?"
"Tut," I said, "suppose this process made you wise: honest-to-goodness wise. And suddenly, you weren’t interested in shining your face, or wearing masks, or pulling down Captain Cohen’s pants. All you wanted to do was help people transcend frivolous impulses, and recognize the emptiness of their fixations. Suppose that happened to you all at once, not gradually learning from experience, but flash, boom, like lightning. Doesn’t that sound like brainwashing? Or even getting lobotomized? Not deliberately refining yourself step by step, but having a new personality ruthlessly imposed on you."
"I see what you’re getting at, Mom… but suppose honest-to-goodness wisdom turns out to be shining your face, wearing masks, and pulling down Captain Cohen’s pants. How do you know it isn’t? Wisdom could be dancing and humping, not sitting in stodgy old lotus position."
Festina chuckled. "The Taoist rebuttal to Buddhism. But we don’t have time for religious debate. We’ve got to start Stage Two." She turned to Ohpa. "Any ideas how we do that?"
Ohpa thought for a moment. "Stage Two involved a network of projection stations all around the planet — to bathe Stage One clouds with energy to complete the transformation. The closest such station is on this river, some distance downstream: a day’s journey by foot, if your species’ walking pace is close to ours. It’s a large building beside a dam."
"A hydroelectric dam?" Festina asked. "I hope not. If the station depends on the dam for power, we’re screwed. After sixty-five hundred years with no one looking after the place, the generators will be rusted solid and clogged with silt."
Ohpa gave his tail a noncommittal flick. "I don’t know how the station obtains its power. I know almost nothing about it — as I said, the Stage Two workers kept aloof from those working on Stage One."
"Then come with us to the station. However little you know, it’s more than we do."
Ohpa shook his head. "I’ve told you what I can; have faith it’s what you need. If you yourselves don’t lay my people’s ghosts to rest, at least you’ll pass on my words, and the news will spread. Eventually, someone will bring this to an end. But I won’t live to see it — my part is over."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He turned my way. His faceted eyes showed no emotion a human could recognize, yet I felt compassion flood from him — deep pity for my ignorance. "I told you, my body needs special food. I will die without it: very soon. I avoided putting myself into stasis as long as I could, in hopes that a landing party from my own people would find me. I only entered the stasis sphere when I was on the verge of collapse."
"We have rations," Festina said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a standard protein bar. "Maybe this can tide you over until…"
"No. My body needs more than nutrition; it needs stabilization."
Ohpa held out his hand. The tips of his claws were smoking. Evaporating, like dry ice steaming into the air. His hand didn’t shake as the claws slowly vanished, and his fingers began to disintegrate.
"Stop," said Festina. "Don’t you dare do this. There are still things we need to know."
"You’ve heard everything necessary," Ohpa told her. "And I couldn’t stop this, even if I wished to. I stayed out of stasis as long as I could — until the time remaining to this body was just sufficient to do what was needed. To speak with you."