Again, Habiba did not respond.
Habiba’s Cone of Control sat on precision rollers, turning in an equal but opposite direction to the whirlpool. This kept the cone stationary in relation to the volcano’s outer rim. There was no sensation of movement within the cupola.
Coming out of her Thoughtcon trance, Habiba saw the lights on the volcano rim that locked the cone in its single directional orientation. Six hundred lights on tall towers ringed the Sea of All Things. They flashed alternately red and blue. Whenever the cupola’s visuplex was open, she could hear the faint synchronized “pips” as the cone’s receivers acknowledged each light’s signal.
But the cupola was sealed now for Thoughtcon.
Habiba listened and heard only the deep, soft breathing of entranced subordinates.
“The Sea of All Things,” she said, forcing the magnificent words to tumble through the minds of those below her.
All turned to look down on the sea: perfectly clear water to tune them in to perfectly clear thoughts.
Despite its clarity, the sea gave the illusion of not being deep. But Habiba knew it extended into unfathomable depths, conforming to the “ampleness” of Dreenor itself. As with all of Dreenor’s water, the sea surface held no impurities, no algae, no suspended particles. Creatures were known to live far down in its darkness where even Habiba’s uniquely amplified vision could not penetrate. Creatures conceived by Dreen idmagination lived there and young Storytellers competed to idmage the most outlandish life forms for the Sea of All Things.
Even Habiba, who had heard more stories than any other Dreen, did not know all that lay beyond the reaches of her secret powers. There were stories about stories and some of them had the ring of truth. It was a fact that she could not possibly share every story. Thus, she could not know everything that existed. In this aspect, the sea stood as a symbol of the idmage mystery. No one could know all things and the sea could not contain all things except in potential. Therefore, the sea, as a symbol, represented only the ideal of perfect and complete knowledge.
Some of these reflections filtered down the Thoughtcon spiral, accepted at lower levels according to the abilities of each Dreen.
Only Habiba and Jongleur were expected to go in and out of Thoughtcon trance during the Sharing. Jongleur occasionally added refinements or suggestions. He did this mostly in private sessions afterward. Today, however, Mugly intruded with constant harping worries about Earth. There was no doubt that his argument gained force from the theft of the special Excursion Ship.
Habiba was forced to consider the threat.
Ryll is only a child and he may make very serious errors.
Who could deny it? The child already had shown a tendency toward mistaken judgments.
Perhaps we should have treated him with a Soother. It had been so difficult, though, to say her firstborn’s firstborn might be . . .well, aberrant.
But what to do about Earth?
Their warlike people now possessed spacecraft capable of attacking other planets. She saw their present ships as no immediate threat, but if Earthers achieved the Dreen drive, they could come through the Spirals to threaten Dreenor itself.
What if, through some quirky accident, they captured this child and his ship?
It was a horrible thought and her own past words came back to haunt her. She had said a thing to Jongleur and others on many occasions.
“We have no weapons for defense or offense. This is as it should be. History has proven that the entry of even the tiniest weapon into any society always leads to violence and the ultimate destruction of the entire social organism that has allowed this mistake.”
Dreen idmaging had experimented with countless forms of Free Will, every time with the same dismal result. But the most recent reports brought from Earth complicated her considerations.
Mugly intruded with one of his warnings: “The danger increases. Experiments in travel through the Spirals are being conducted on Earth at this very moment.”
That was the substance of a recent report. No doubt of it. An Earther named Lutt Hanson, Jr., was reported to have relayed radio messages in Spiral form, transmitting from spaceships in the Earth solar system.
How could the Earther fail to suspect that Spiral travel also was possible? This human might be close to a solution.
The warriors of Earth could be at our doorstep with their terrible weapons,
The Elite Storytellers below her had brought even more ominous news today, a report from the latest Earth excursion.
Earth nations have concluded a mutually verifiable treaty freezing and bridling their most awesome weapons.
So they were not as likely to exterminate themselves. It meant they were not in imminent danger of meeting the fate that had destroyed other people reaching a similar stage of war technology.
“Our problem is the universe’s problem,” Habiba said. She gazed across the Sea of All Things while this thought swirled down into the ranks. “All things are idmages held in our memories. When the last Dreen dies, the universe dies.”
A statement requiring no response.
Jongleur ruminated on the Supreme Tax Collector’s words.
Why did it have to be my son who precipitated this crisis?
Habiba reached down and patted his head.
Jongleur looked up at her lovingly. Habiba in full sunlight was a green goddess, her hair a salad of delights.
He took a deep breath, restored by her touch, and glanced around the cupola. Once more, sadness engulfed him. The window frames were shedding black flakes and the greenish-brown hardened vegetation at the base of the cupola needed polishing. Habiba must approve each maintenance detail and, in the normal course, these matters were cared for efficiently by useful manual labor and idmaging. She had had other problems to occupy her attention of late, though, and the cupola reflected neglect.
“Perhaps we are too curious about the unlimited possibilities in an unlimited universe,” Jongleur said.
“Who says it’s unlimited?” Mugly demanded.
“It is ample,” Habiba said.
Jongleur considered this and thought then about the touristlike curiosity of Dreens. Overdeveloped curiosity! Dreens always wanted to go in person and see the places, the creatures and marvels they had heard about in story form. Many stories touched on Earth because Dreen visitors had intervened with idmage changes over the millennia.
Variations on a theme.
It was an extremely popular place to visit but always presented that problem of Free Will no Dreen seemed capable of changing.
Such a pretty planet, though, when you got away from the places the occupants had contaminated and defaced with their constant disregard for consequences.
Why didn’t the original idmage contain an injunction against fouling their own nest? Mugly wanted to know.
Because that goes against Free Will, Jongleur explained.
None of this helped Habiba with a solution to the Earth problem. She had tried sending representatives to approach the planet openly, using many different shapes of ships and forms of life. But Earthers always shot first with no apparent interest in the identity or purpose of visitors.
“Shoot first and ask questions afterward,” was an Earther cliché.
We must believe it then, Habiba thought.
They would approach Dreenor that way, too. Guns blazing and bombs flying. Our advanced technology would make them suspect we possess commensurate war technology. They would fear us and try to exterminate us. How can we possibly teach them that the absence of monstrous weaponry represents a more advanced civilization?
“They already hold some of our people captive,” Mugly reminded her.
“But they have none of our ships and do not know our location,” Jongleur said.
“Ahhh, the Dreen pacifist tries to lull us,” Mugly sneered.
“Ah, Dreens are naturally pacifist,” Habiba reminded him.
“Am I not a Dreen?” Mugly demanded.
“And yo
u are more peaceful than you care to admit,” Habiba said. “You merely have a capacity for anger that does not appear very often in our people.”
“Are you saying I am the product of a bad seed?”
“Mugly!”
“Sorry, Habiba. I do love you dearly.”
“Sweet Mugly, try to smooth over your anger.”
“But the Earther Zone Patrol holds ninety-one of our people and every time we try to free them we lose more.”
“The Zone Patrol is crafty because they were idmaged that way,” Jongleur said.
“But they hold the prisoners separated, move them often and apparently keep them under almost constant interrogation.”
“They may not yet have seen the original Dreen form nor witnessed our full idmaging capabilities,” Jongleur said.
“Will your son change that?” Mugly asked.
“Whatever happens he does not have the secrets of our technology nor do any of the prisoners. Only you and Habiba and I share that precious knowledge.”
“Why do you think I didn’t go racing off after my ship?”
“Your people took much on themselves to idmage such a ship,” Habiba said.
“I have censured them severely and, as punishment, have ruled that none of them may ever share your precious presence in a Thoughtcon!”
Because he had disconnected his most secret thoughts, Mugly believed this untruth sincerely and, for a moment, was awed by the cruel severity of his own anger.
For once, though, Jongleur agreed with him. “You were wise, Mugly. Your action sends a salutary signal throughout Dreenor,”
“But it teaches very little other than the severity of those who rule,” Habiba said. “And I doubt it will stop others from trying similar tricks.”
Jongleur looked upward and, seeing the intense downward stare of Habiba’s round brown eyes, realized he was distracting her from developing a solution to their crisis. The Supreme Tax Collector’s sensitive microneurons required serenity to perform at their best. Jongleur swiveled his eyes inward and concentrated on transmitting serene story thoughts. The others in the Thoughtcon took their cue from him and reinforced the sense of serenity. Only Mugly the Elder maintained a tiny jangling interference but it was so small that Habiba alone could sense it.
Habiba now engaged in a performance available only to herself. One eye turned outward and the other inward. This act separated consciousness from unconsciousness even while she sank into Thoughtcon trance. The trance itself permitted her to mediate between her separated selves. Below her, thirty-six other minds added their efforts to Habiba’s. The intense energy generated by this concentration lifted the cupola from the roof of the cone and allowed it to turn with the swirling of the whirlpool in the sea below them.
Higher and higher the cupola flew, piercing clouds and rising into the stratosphere until the winds there buffeted it. Still it climbed, always keeping its alignment with the cone far below. Habiba knew she had never flown this high before but Dreens had never before encountered a problem of this magnitude.
Earth must be a faulty idmage, she told herself.
At last, the cupola ceased rising but it was far out of the atmosphere. The occupants survived now on air their combined energy idmaged and were warmed by the heat of their own efforts, protected by this concentration from intrusions of other thoughts and objects.
Habiba’s released awareness flowed through all the stories of Earth she had Shared, shutting out distractions. Every known facet of Earther existence that Dreens had witnessed and told in their tax tales or other Sharings—a comprehensive picture within which she searched for Earther motivations—absorbed her entire attention.
The cupola, without her to hold it, sped off laterally far beyond the Sea of All Things. After a time no one could count, a solution occurred to her. Habiba withdrew from the trance and found her cupola sitting in a meadow of bright yellow flowers almost the same color as her icy-yellow Thoughtcon aura.
Like the first childseed that I made fertile, she thought.
But these were not childseed flowers. All such plants were gone, picked by her hands and never again to grow on Dreenor unless eternity demanded she plant them.
With a pang, Habiba recalled the ancient odors of the childseed flowers. Nevermore to enjoy such beauty? Something about nevermore things troubled and frightened her. She wanted permanent creations or, at the very least, renewable cycles. Would she ever again know childseed flowers? Habiba longed either to learn the answer or to forget the question.
The Thoughtcon Elite remained entranced below her, breathing deeply, their energies decreasing. Presently, they could be awakened.
And I will be here—Habiba the Eternal.
That was how her people saw her: Supreme Tax Collector, Mother of All, the First Dreen. No family Elders lived below her home. She alone among Dreens needed no mate. Dreens could not conceive of anyone or anything predating Habiba. She had always ruled Dreenor and, therefore, commanded the universe. She would always occupy that pinnacle.
Such reflections disturbed Habiba. She felt the discord worry its way down the entranced hierarchy of the Thoughtcon.
There was a first memory in her awareness and she tried to avoid it but now felt unable to escape.
I awakened. I remembered a void—nothing in it. And I was a naked girl in a great meadow of yellow flowers. How did I know to pick and store their seeds?
She recalled the pleasant warmth of that long-ago meadow where she had idmaged her first mudbrick shelter as a center for neat rows of stone containers holding the childseeds.
Countless containers.
Jars as large as her youthful body. They stretched farther than even her eyes could see—and her eyes saw farther than those of any other Dreen.
Nothing ever again grew where childseed plants flowered.
I filled all the jars: a sacred task. How did I know it was sacred?
The years of the harvest did not seem long to her immortal timesense. Any measured time appeared minuscule when seen against eternity, Habiba thought. And she called the harvest time “First Day.”
At dawn of “Second Day,” another period of uncounted sunrises and sunsets, Habiba spoke her first words:
“These are the childseeds of my people.”
From seventy brown seeds, she brought forth the first children—thirty-five females and thirty-five males. When they were born, that was the dawn of “Third Day,” an evermore period extending through this time of the Earth period.
Earth!
The shock-snap of this reality awakened the Elite.
“I have considered the erasure of Earth,” she said.
“Mass capital punishment is unthinkable,” Jongleur objected.
Habiba did not need to look down at Jongleur to know he stared at her in fearful amazement. The familiarity of aeons told her every physical reaction of her Chief Storyteller—
My firstborn.
“I reject erasure,” Habiba said, “but not because capital punishment is objectionable. Earth’s death would precipitate a storytelling sickness. I fear that our sensitive, creative minds might experience idmage withdrawal. Would that not mean the death of all Dreens?”
Jongleur nodded. Habiba was so wise!
She shifted slightly on her perch. A thin vertical shadow cast by a visuplex frame crossed to the right side of her face.
To Jongleur, the shadow was like the deep creases that etched her dear features. He noted her Thoughtcon aura subsiding—the icy yellow visible to all of her people, brighter and more constant than the aura of any other Dreen.
Mugly could hold his silence no longer.
“But erasure would solve the problem permanently! Dear Habiba, even though my people acted on their own, perhaps they were not misguided.”
“Erasure, dear Mugly, would bring other problems, some quite possibly beyond our powers to correct.”
Mugly sat in stunned immobility. Problems beyond Dreen idmaging powers?
“Wh
at. . . what problems?” he stammered.
“I really don’t know, Mugly. But they could well be devastating.”
“If Earthers capture one of our ships intact, that could be the end of us,” Jongleur said. “I suggest we put Earth off limits to Dreens. That would . . .”
“That would tantalize our Storytellers,” Habiba said.
“And we’d have no advance knowledge of their actions,” Mugly said. “Besides, they already know about the Spirals.”
“Then let’s idmage a barricade shutting off the Spirals,” Jongleur insisted.
“I’m surprised and dismayed at you, Jongleur,” Habiba said. “Have you heard nothing I said? Confine us to Dreenor, our creativity with no outlet? Dreens would go mad.”
Jongleur pulled a puff of his beret forward and hid his eyes under it, not daring to look at Habiba. He searched his mind for something intelligent to say.
“The idmage of Earth was a rotten job!” Habiba said.
Jongleur bobbed his body in agreement but dared not mention the name of the Dreen who had idmaged Earth at the risk of disturbing her.
Wemply the Voyager, an unfortunate Dreen, really. Killed by Earther soldiers after he assumed Earther form.
The death of Wemply saddened Jongleur.
“How any idiot could idmage bacterial creatures possessed of Free Will and a definite tendency to violence is beyond me!” Habiba said. “He must have known he would populate the planet with all forms of predators.”
“Some Dreens will never heed your warnings,” Jongleur said, looking pointedly at Mugly. “The great power of idmaging requires great caution and never indiscriminate creation.”
Jongleur ventured to look up at Habiba then. Her great body trembled with emotion.
“Then what do we do about Earth?” Jongleur asked.
“We must create an idmage shield around Dreenor that camouflages the planet to look hostile and uninhabitable.”
Mugly was confused. “But didn’t you say we must not prevent Dreen travel to—”
“No barrier! This idea occurred to me because of a thing Earthers do. They make swimsuits that appear opaque but allow the tanning rays of the sun to penetrate.”
“Brilliant!” Jongleur said.
Man of Two Worlds Page 8
