“Good that you came by, young Tivonel.” Sastro’s mind-touch cuts short her reverie. “Tell the Eldest that this alien has decided to go to the new world with our people. Tynad and Orcavel here brought word that it is accepted. It seems that it has skills which may be useful to them. For example, it knows how to handle much hard matter. And how to generate heat should that be needed. I confess I understand little of this, but your friend Valeree assures me it could be needed on such a world.”
“We call it ‘fire’,” Valeree puts in. “Yes, it could be very useful. That’s what got it out here, things made of hard stuffs and fire.”
“Is it a male or a female?” Tivonel asks, studying the curiously pulsing glow of the alien’s life.
“It’s both. They mate together and both bear eggs, like those animals down there. So that’s another reason it would fit in. It had eight limbs, like some creatures on my world, and it used to fly on a bag or thread. It showed me mind-pictures, that’s how I learned its words. Their sky was full of flyers. But you have no idea how strange. It says it was sent out of its world as a punishment.”
“But our people don’t want to take a criminal with them!”
“I don’t think you’d call it a crime. It seems to have questioned some command about not flying too high.”
“Great winds, that’s not a crime!”
“It was there. So they built a, a pod, and sent it out of the sky. They’ve done it before, this being expected it. It hoped to reach another world. It had no idea how far they were.”
Tivonel digests this extraordinary oddity. “It sounds like a crazy female to me. Wanting to explore right through the High.”
Valeree laughs. “More like you, Tivonel. We have a word for what it’s really like. Tell Tanel, he’ll explain. It feels like a jock, a typical jock. It’ll do much better in a real place than this mind-world. Like our Kirk and his pet animal, they’re going down too.”
“A jock? I will, Valeree-friend.” Tivonel makes her farewells, remembering she will never meet the other two Tyrenni again. “Fair winds on your new world.”
“Fair winds to you who stay, Tivonel.”
She glides off, reflecting. It’s going to be a lonesome moment when all the other Tyrenni leave. Giadoc has explained how it will be: a sort of wall or shield will form around the nucleus, separating those who stay from the pull of the outgoing Beam. She’ll be inside with Giadoc and the others. But it’ll be lonesome—think of feeling all the lives of her people, the life of Tyree itself, sliding out forever to the dark, down to that strange world, never to be known again. Brr. It’ll be sad for us all.
But we’ll see them lodge in the bodies of those flying things, come to themselves and take up real life again. They say it will be gentle; people will have time to choose the ones they want. It won’t be like the time she had voyaged to the yuman world and just fallen into the nearest mind. Tanel says that the Destroyer—the Saver—knows how to do this. It was the thing it was supposed to do, if it hadn’t been asleep or crazy or whatever it was before Tanel’s friend came.
Yes, it’ll be a lonely feeling, she thinks again, counting over those who will remain. Giadoc and Heagran, of course. And Ustan has decided to. And the two elders Sastro and Panad, who won’t part from Heagran. And the young, bitter Father Hiner, whose child was so tragically lost at the last minute on Tyree. We could have Orva the Hearer’s Memory-Keeper too, but Heagran says he must go with the others to carry Tyree’s history to the new world, since Kinto was lost. Hiner is studying with him to be Memory-Keeper here.
Well, six Fathers counting Hiner, that’ll be a lot of strength if and when new crazy aliens come along. Maybe she’ll have to try a little Fathering herself, as she had with Tanel. Heagran says we’ll get more like each other with all this mind-touching. But she wishes she had more female company. Only Issalin the Paradomin is staying, and her friend Jalifee. And Marockee— maybe. The other Tyrenni females are so short-sighted, they just see the adventure of that real new world down there. They can’t grasp the long mysterious Giadoc-type adventures we’ll have here. Maybe I wouldn’t either, she thinks, shivering half-pleasurably again, if it weren’t for Giadoc.
But I’ll have Valeree, Tivonel comforts herself. She’s almost like a Tyrenni, she loves to explore. And so does the old female-Father Winona, and maybe that sad Frodo will cheer up. And the funny human male Kris. Thinking of him, she notices the soft signal that means a quarter-Kris has passed. She better hurry. The signal must be coming from the node near the nucleus. She changes course slightly, and an idea comes to her. Why not ask Tanel to have his mysterious friend put markers on the different nodes, so we could really tell where we are? That way we could build up a real mental map of this enormous dark world, and explore out to the very end without danger of being lost. I wonder what we’ll find when we get to the edge, she muses. Will the Saver have a thick wall, or will it just thin out to nothing so we can begin to sense the lives of the sky through it?
Ahead of her the dim form of the nucleus and the mind-sparks near it are now faintly perceptible. Another life-group is converging on them—Ustan and the others. Good, she’s come just in time. There’s no real need for her presence, it’ll be all a solemn conference of Heagran telling the Fathers how to conduct themselves out there on New Tyree or whatever they’re going to call it. Responsibility, life-reverence, ahura, etcetera and so on. And Orva saying goodbye. But she loves to listen in to Heagran. So old, so wise; he was a child when New Deep was founded. His mind isn’t bounded by Fathering anymore. He’s been mind-caught by the wonders of the sky, like Giadoc. We’re so lucky to have him.
As she damps herself for a courteous arrival, she thinks ahead to the next, the really exciting conference there is to be. After the main group of Tyrenni go out to their new world and take up their lives, those who are staying here will gather around Tanel. Heagran has explained it. “The Saver wishes us to help it think upon a new Life-Task, since its race has left this part of the universe, and it is here alone.”
A great new task, here in limitless space among all these stars and worlds? Whew!
Tivonel has picked up many thought-fragments about this, enough to know that everyone has a different dream. Only the two old Fathers Sastro and Panad are united; typically, they want to find a young race and Father it to wise maturity. But the others! Averting cosmic cataclysms, reviving dead races—and Giadoc of course always wanting to learn more, to find ways of actually visiting other worlds… A vagrant notion of what it would be like to have real sex again in an alien body rises in her mind; she relegates it to storage.
She knows that old Heagran and that double yuman Waxman both dream of finding strange new kinds of minds among the worlds, but their visions aren’t alike. And Father Ustan wants to go on saving endangered races. Issalin and Jalifee will probably want to find some way of helping females, while the yuman Winona wants to rescue any person who is in terrible pain on whatever world. Valeree wants to invent a way of making strange races able to know and feel each other’s minds, like the Tyrenni. When Waxman heard her telling that he said, “Not too much empathy. I know.” The two yumans Tivonel knows least, Frodo and the dreamer Ted Yost, probably have still more wild notions of their own. And Giadoc’s friend Kris has the wildest one of all—he thinks they should search for whatever made or hatched the Saver!