Amanda
He reached.
Amanda… ?
It was as if one wave spoke to another, a call from the one washing the eastern shore of one continent reaching the one washing the western shore of another, half a world apart, but joined by the ocean to which both waves belonged.
Hal…
Her response returned to him, and they touched across the vast space between them, touched and held. It was not in words that they spoke, but in surges of feeling and knowing.
After a time, they parted; and he felt her withdraw. But the warmth of her, like the fireside warmth she had spoken of early in her letter, stayed with him, strengthening him.
He looked at the stars and down at the control panel under his hands. His fingertips began to move and words lighted themselves into existence against the dark and stars' points before him.
In morning's ruined chapel, the full knight
Woke from the coffin of his last night's bed …
The poem drew him into the work, and the work enlarged in him, taking him over at last completely. He grew to be part of it as it grew in him; and gradually, alone with the stars, he left behind all else except the warmth of the link to Amanda, and became fully occupied with what at last held and engrossed him, beyond all other things.
Afterword
The Door into Darkness
by Sandra Miesel
"Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
- John 3:3
All creation is in flux. Every particle of matter, every living person is a pilgrim in a fluid universe. Each child's growth in body, mind, and spirit retraces that immeasurably ancient racial archetype, the Way. However many seasons wheel onward to mark the years, our progress from birth to death still shapes the myths we live by. All of us are destined to make the night-journey, endure the difficult passage, and seek entry through the narrow gate.
The first clear footprints on this path appear during the Ice Age, 25,000 years ago. In those days, Paleolithic cave-dwellers would crawl for hours through labyrinthine corridors to reach ceremonial chambers deep in the stony womb of Mother Earth. The life-defining rituals they celebrated there have left us trail markers in the form of splendid art at Lascaux, Altamira, and hundreds of other sites.
As millennia passed, initiation became the universal story, the tale of the hero of a thousand faces. The initiate's path rose in stages: to the plateau of tribal membership, up the heights of some specialized skill, ending on a lone peak of spiritual perfection. The higher one climbed, the farther one could see - and be seen as a scout by those below.
This age-old symbolism survives in the teachings of historic religions. The West speaks of passing over from bondage into freedom, the East of escaping the sorrowful wheel of existence. But whether the road be described as linear, cyclic, or spiral, salvation remains fundamentally a transit. Our quest for transcendence began as soon as human consciousness emerged. Pursuing it has made us what we are and suggests what we may become.
This is the message of Gordon R. Dickson's Childe Cycle. An evolutionary epic planned in twelve volumes, the Cycle treats the entire human species as one multi-celled organism undergoing initiation. This communal experience culminates in one man's pilgrimage across the centuries and among the stars. Like the race for which he stands, the hero is a squire - a childe - seeking knighthood. Through the victory of a single member, the whole body triumphs.
The man who came into existence as Donal Graeme is a worthy model for others to follow, because his three lives have been successive courses of initiation. Even heraldry proclaims his destiny. The three scallop shells adorning the arms of Graeme, as well as those of Sir John Hawkwood, Donal's historical forerunner, signify pilgrimage, rebirth, and the waters of limitless possibility.
First as Donal Graeme the Dorsai Warrior (Dorsai!, 1959), then as Paul Formain, the proto-Exotic Thinker (Necromancer, 1962 and for the forthcoming Chantry Guild), and finally here as Hal Mayne, the adopted Friendly Faith-holder, he explores three fundamental roles. These are the three points that determine the circle of his being. When he has finally integrated the separate lessons of each life - intuition, empathy, and creativity - his initiation as an evolved, ethically responsible person will be complete. Remembering what he learned as Donal and as Paul enables Hal to begin mastering the cosmic wheel. No longer a victim bound to it, he will eventually turn it himself, becoming the axis about which it willingly revolves.
But no hero's path to glory is smooth. Like Christ before His public ministry and the Buddha prior to his Enlightenment, Hal must withstand the blandishments of a tempter. Hal's satanic opponent, Bleys Ahrens, is a princely, titanic fiend out of Paradise Lost, an archangel noble even in his ruin. (The Miltonic inspiration is obvious and acknowledged, since Milton is to be the subject of a Childe Cycle historical novel.)
Biblical overtones resonate in Bleys. He is the corrupting serpent of Genesis and the whole hellish trinity of Revelation. Like Satan in the Book of Job, Bleys is the adversary who tests the just man nearly to destruction. But the trials thus inflicted inspire virtue that would not have emerged otherwise, even as Bleys' challenge triggers Hal's self-discovery. Satan's overtures to Christ in the desert are probes to discern His mission as well as lures to mislead Him, for Satan expects a Messiah in his own image. Likewise, Bleys attempts to examine as well as enlist Hal. He cannot imagine Hal being anything except an Other - darkness cannot grasp light. The captor remains imprisoned within walls of his own making while his captive breaks free.
Bleys' guileful tactics also parallel those of Mara, the Buddhist Lord of Death who lures men into fatal snares. When the treacherous god's threats and blandishments fail to dissuade the Buddha from seeking Enlightenment, the tempter disputes his very right to search for a new direction. But Mother Earth herself bears witness for the Buddha. He perseveres in his crucial meditation and, in the course of a single night, finds his Way to Liberation. In the same fashion Bleys ridicules Hal's agonizing pursuit of a path different from the Others'. But fundamental reality confirms the quest and thus Hal crosses nightfall into dawn.
The supernatural being Bleys most resembles in personality is Iblis, the melancholy Islamic Satan. They share the same fondness for sad songs and somber dress, the same grave manner that cloaks self-pity. Each strikes the pose of a scapegoat blamed for the failings of jealous inferiors. Each justifies himself as acting according to his inborn nature. Both beings suffer the predestined, but no less tragic, fault of single-eyed vision: they recognize power, not love. Bleys' fascination with Hal is like Iblis' longing to be overcome by the Perfect Man. Each instinctively seeks the defeat that will make him whole. Meanwhile, both Bleys and Iblis serve a greater purpose. As a Persian poem says, "Shadow makes clear the brilliance of light."
Thus Bleys Ahrens is an ancient Enemy poets knew of old. His very name marks him as a "wrongful blaze" that sheds "no light, but rather darkness visible." Preferring to "reign in hell than serve in heaven," he is the lord of endless twilight, the woeful "son of morn in weary night's decline." The infernal constancy of "a mind not to be chang'd in place or time" traps him in a dismal maze of his own design: "for within him hell he brings, and round about him, nor from hell one step no more than from himself can fly." Though "graceful and humane;… he seem'd for dignity composed and high exploit," his venomously sweet tongue can lick truth itself into deceitful shapes. Much as he professes to deplore bloodshed, "the dragons of the prime… were mellow music matched with him" for nothing in his arid heart "shares the eternal reciprocity of tears." He is the everlasting negation whose stubborn choice of stasis over growth makes potential heaven accomplished hell.