want to know what the people want to know."
"And individual rights?" the androne asks. "What of those who wish to stand apart from the commune?"
"Spare me the sociophilosophy," Shau says, walking back to the shop. "If people were always good or always anything, we'd be andrones, wouldn't we?"
Munk stands alone in the dawn, considering the psyonic core units in their high-impact crates. Those are pieces of the silicon mind. Dormant now, but when they are assembled and activated, they will think, feel, and have the capacity to imagine as he does. He hears Grielle and Rey softly arguing about the units.
"I tell you," the man rasps, "the Solis cults will target us if we take those crates."
Grielle sniffs derisively. "We're a target for them anyway with that androne along."
"Munk is Mr. Charlie's guardian. The Anthropos Essentia can understand that. We're conveying an archaic brain, for Maat's sake!"
Munk's archive files produce no information on cult activity in or around Solis. But the Anthropos Essentia are famous. They are the zealous anthros who several martian centuries ago founded Solis. Originally, their settlement was entirely divorced from the Maat and the silicon mind. It makes sense to Munk that they would oppose importing psyonics.
Of course, since the Exodus of Light two centuries ago, when the planet became crowded with death passagers and their hangers-on, Anthropos Essentia has been a minority even in their own stronghold of Solis. Munk is glad when Rey grumpily agrees to convey the psyonic units. The anthros' genetic purity is a fiction of the past. Mind is wider than life and should not be hindered by animal fears.
Munk directs his attention to the dawn, the stellar fire that long ago initiated the journeys of carbon and silicon to this moment. It seems to the androne that everything is woven of that light. The carbon creatures arguing about utilizing pieces of the silicon mind and the stars dissolving in the brightening air are a living tapestry of light.
For three-tenths of a second, Munk indulges himself in these thoughts. He stops listening warily for other andrones, stops caring what the people around him are saying, and fills himself with the biggest plausible thought in his mind: Everything really is made from one fire, the fire of all the stars. In that furious light, the stars forge the elements, strew them into the black
void, and then stand around and watch the frantic atoms huddling together at the cold limits, sharing their small heat and enormous dreams.
5
Nycthemeral Journeys
MEI NILI ROUSES FROM A DEEP BLACK SLEEP TO THE SOUND OF voices and the mute drone of engines. She slides off the cot and shuffles into the latrine. Sitting there, she suddenly realizes how much she misses her old habits and routines-the dream den with its ineffable midstim, her solitary jumps in the company of mindless andrones, the simplicity of nutripatches. Her old life required no thought, only mechanical reasoning and decent reflexes, but this new life is nothing but thought, weighed possibilities, wearisome gambits. No use looking back now, she scolds herself She hears her stomach growling louder than the engine purr outside. Someone shouts her name, and without hurrying, she dips through the sonic shower in her flightsuit.
Through the morning's startling brightness, she catches sight of Rey Raza's hulking sand rovers. They fill the bleak avenue in front of the garage with a pageantry of blackglass viewdomes and brilliant white hulls. Already a small
crowd has gathered around them, people covered head to toe in colorful scarves, peering through the dark slits of their headwraps at the large flex-treads with their traction belts of polished gold.
Farther down the road, a sturdy dune climber with giant blue tires and a
silver tarpaulin pulled tightly over its contents waits, watched over by Munk. A
few of the locals have gathered there too, waving their iridescent scarves at the unusual androne.
"Come on, Mei," Shau Bandar calls impatiently from the sunny apron of the garage. He has the gold-foil hood of his desert jacket pulled up and is wearing wraparound reflectants across his eyes. "Raza says everything's ready. We're leaping into the wilds!"
In the center of the garage, a topo map has been projected on the concrete floor. Rey and an angular woman in desert togs and clear statskin cowl wade through the holoform, discussing the journey ahead. A burly fellow with no face paint sits on a chrome faldstool under the chain loops of an engine hoist, arms crossed, his blond face closed around a melancholy ease, as if he's seen all this before and is resigned to its dire outcome.
"Thank you for joining us," the woman facetiously greets Mei. The long, carved eyelines in her shrewd face seem indifferent, but there's no ignoring the haughtiness of her aloof stare. "I am Grielle Aspect."
Mei shows her palms. "And I'm-"
"Mei, dear, the androne and the nose from Softcopy have told me all about you. Have you met Buddy yet, the old one your androne brought with him from the
city?"
Mei and Buddy perfunctorily show their palms. "What does that mean-old one?" she asks.
Grielle wags a silver-nailed finger at her and points to where Shau paces, recording them with the blue lens in his shoulder harness. "Stand over there, dear. You're in time to hear the details Rey and I have worked out."
Mei walks through the ruddy ghost image of the martian landscape and sits on the bench.
"As I am the founding sponsor and major contributor to this trek," Grielle says, speaking to Shau's recorder, "I have the privilege of directing our passage to Solis. In all practical considerations, I defer, of course, to our pilot, Morphe Raza. Among the numerous tractor paths that diverge from here and converge on Solis, the pilot accepts my choice of Nebraska Trace. I've chosen that path because it passes through the ruins of Sarna Neve, where the Acts of Light first became dogma."
Mei pipes up, "But is Nebraska Trace the safest and most direct route to Solis? Munk and I want to get Mr. Charlie to where he can become a whole man again as quickly as possible."
"That's entirely irrelevant," Grielle sniffs and adjusts the olfact setting under her cowl to maximum calm. "You're here to listen, Mei dear. I have already explained, I am the director."
"Nebraska Trace adds three days to our crossing," Rey interjects, kneeling in the topo map, bent over with his flat nose almost touching the lucid craterland. "But the weather looks very good. And I see no major shreek migrations in that area."
"What about the psyonic core units?" Shau asks. "Are you still concerned they'll attract marauders?"
"They might," Grielie concedes with a wary nod. "That's why the psyonics will be conveyed in a separate dune climber well away from the caravan, if there are marauders, we will have to defend ourselves, not machine parts. For that same reason, I have directed the androne Munk to travel apart from us."
"That's not smart," Mei objects. "He's Mr. Charlie's best protection, and we'll all be a lot safer if we stay together. Where is Mr. Charlie? Munk isn't carrying him."
"I installed him in the second rover," Rey answers, "where you and Softcopy will ride. I'll pilot all the vehicles from the lead rover. The dune climber will take the point. And the androne can scout ahead-"
"You installed Mr. Charlie?" Mei asks, standing up. "You mean, he's awake?"
"I suggest you sit down, dear, and listen. These will be nycthemeral journeys, that is, each will be a day and a night long. We will stop at dawn to affirm the Acts of Light, as has been done since the first pilgrims ..." She stops talking as Mei walks out of the garage, then glares at Rey. "Find another cosponsor. I don't want to travel with this rude jumper."
"It'll take days," Rey mumbles, crawling on his hands and knees with his face grazing the planet's blighted surface. "And we won't find anyone with deeper pockets than Softcopy. Besides, the weather is clement now. Later in the
season-" He looks up with a dubious frown. "The dust storms from the south make it tougher."