The Avatar

by Poul Anderson

  The man shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “The one thing which they are not whom you call the Others, is gods. For you, though, for your solace and in homage, we have striven to be a shadow of these.”

  The woman moved toward Caitlín. The two men beside the girl let her go, that she might unhindered receive that touch. “Dear you are,” she who was Brigit murmured, “and much do we long to know you in fullness, and give you our thanks for what you will have given us.”

  “What? I,” Caitlín stammered, “tramp, she-fool, doggerel maker, what could I ever in the world be offering you?”

  “The living you have done.” Brigit set the harp adrift and took her to her bosom.

  With a handhold for pivot, Brodersen twisted about to glare at Aengus. From among his songbirds, the son of the Dagda said: “Fear not for her. Never willingly will we cause her sorrow, nor wittingly more than we must. All life is for cherishing. Oh, we too kill, we too let die, for we are not gods and most absolutely not God; we too are often bound to a fate. Yet as far as we may, we foster life; and we guard and revere freedom as far as we may, for that is the highest epiphany of life which we know. Should we not then honor the rights of our avatars?”

  “Avatar—incarnation—” Suddenly Weisenberg looked old. “Do you mean she’s a thing you made—”

  “No,” Aengus told them, while Brigit held Caitlín close and murmured to her. “How could a work of our own live in wholeness a life that is not our own? She is as human as you are. The differences in her are less than the differences—in the build of the cells, in the burden of the blood—between any twain of you. Had she never been Summoned., she would have ended her days unknowing what power slept in her.”

  “What power is that?” Leino croaked.

  Brigit lifted her countenance from Caitlín. “To become one with us,” she said.

  Aengus: “Were we in truth gods, we could look straight into your souls. But we are only the Others, who by ourselves can only touch the thinnest uppermost part of a mind, and cannot feel at all the inwardness of an entity that has none.”

  Brodersen, violently: “Well, what the hell are you? Pure intellects, loose in space and time, or what?”

  Brigit, smiling a little, speaking more to Caitlín than to him: “Indeed no. What but a body can bring forth and carry a mind? And were it possible, would not a spirit alone, bereft of senses and sinews and every joy that is in the cosmos, be a pitiful thing? We, your Others, are corporeal as you, the matter in us born from the stars like yours, old animal needs in us also. We are your kindred.”

  Brodersen: “Huh? What are you really like under those masks?”

  Aengus: “Are they masks?”

  Brigit: “Och, a few small, easily made changes, just for the sake of our avatar. Were she a different kind of human, as most have been, we might have thought best to appear black-skinned or slant-eyed or crag-browed or whatever seemed right. But underneath—We did not come the whole way from Earth in answer to a call, Daniel, merely because we chanced to be there.”

  Aengus: “We should not carry this on farther. Not until we know from Caitlín your whole story, beyond any telling that mere words or mere thoughts can give.” He had become entirely grave. His regard crucified Brodersen. “You must understand, Captain, that we do not yet understand you. We believe you are folk of good will. Nonetheless, returning, you might bring ruin, maybe in part from knowledge of what should not be uncaged among your people in a day of peril. If we cannot give you the way back, you will have your full spans in a pleasant place we shall prepare. But I think you would rather go home.”

  Brodersen and the most of his crew: “Yes, oh, yes.”

  Aengus: “Let us defer saying more until we feel certain of what we may say. Caitlín is for us the chalice of that discovery.”

  Brigit: “If she wishes.” To the girl she still embraced: “Darling, you will endure no harm, no pain, except what you yourself may choose afterward. Remembering has its price; but if you want, you shall be freed of every memory.” She kissed her on the brow. “I do warn you, I believe you will not so desire.

  “Think well, child. Take time. Never would we force you or hasten you. We cannot be wholly sure what oneness with us will do to you. Think; ask of us; ask among your comrades; be as long about this as you like, and not afraid to say no.”

  Caitlín raised her face to that which was a goddess’ and answered through tears: “Unless I go, we won’t come home, is that not right?” She laughed; the mirth sounded real. “Besides, here is the very lord of love.”

  The Other changed his look of concern to a smile and replied low, “We all of us love you.”

  “There has been enough talk,” Brigit said. “Let there be song.” She took her harp from the air beside her.

  Afterward nobody could ever quite tell what had happened, save that in the end they followed Aengus, Brigit, and Caitlín to the airlock, and amidst music bade farewell. By then the girl was wholly enraptured. She kissed her men goodbye as she might have kissed in a dream.

  Both shining ships withdrew from Chinook.

  XLV

  I WAS AN AVATAR whose lot was more strange than even they had foreseen who brought me into being. Had I remained home, likely at some time during my life those of them whose care was for man would have Summoned me. They would then have shared much joy, a measure of sorrow, many longings and wonderings, angers, calls, doings, triumphs, disasters, fears, marvels, wishes, bindings, loosings, maybe a slow slight growth of wisdom: the years of an ordinary human. But chance and desire brought me to them, at the uttermost ends of this our universe.

  What happened thereafter, I cannot now know. My body recalls too little of it, and that little a phantom of the truth, though nonetheless nothing for which I can make words. The beauties and glories—can you sing a painting or sculpture a melody? And they were the least of the reality.

  You see, the Others and I were not merely united, we were a whole. Their awareness, intellect, senses, recollections, outlook, feelings, souls were mine, as my soul was theirs. They were me, I was them, I was an Other.

  What that was like, I am unable to think, let alone tell. The age I was born into has bequeathed to me the ideas I will use in trying, and failing, to speak of that which I have kept in me out of that which I learned. I know not whether they are more fit for this or less than the ideas of someone thirty thousand years past who was the first avatar of my race, or the instincts of an animal or the burgeoning of a plant.

  The earliest Others arose on a world that took form before the coalescence of the galaxy. Perhaps a dearth of heavy metals caused them to develop technics and a high science very slowly, so that they evolved into harmony with every stage thereof before they went onward. Or perhaps they adapted themselves, psyche and soma both, to a swifter pace. Whichever, at last they were faring to stars which had by then also come to birth, in ships that went close to the speed of light. Meeting foreign sentiences and exchanging with these gave such a mighty impetus that they gained the power to build the great transport engines. At that time they were no longer a single race; and as their explorers ranged outward through spacetime, they found more beings who could be aided to join them, if those wanted that.

  Most species were not ready. Few would ever be. The Others do not urge or try secretly to guide. Only in rare cases do they reveal that they exist. They do not believe anyone’s proper destiny is to become like them; they do not believe in destiny. Every kind of life is equally precious, with an equal right to go its unique way. Moreover, in such diversity is the nourishment whereby their own spirit may grow.

  This is not to call them indifferent. No, with knowledge, intelligence, and sensitivity such as are theirs, sharing distinct lives on many planets through the entire history of the universe, from its fiery birth to its ashen death, the Others know tragedy to depths and heights that it is well I cannot remember; this mind, alone, would not survive. Where they are able, deeming the action harmless to the integrity
of a people, they help. But oftenest they must watch and mourn.

  Yet they are not overly solemn. Their merriment, humor, playfulness, enjoyment, exultation go beyond my comprehending. Likewise does their creativity. They think of their very lives as ongoing works of art, to be shaped for the delight of artist and audience.

  This attitude may have come about because in them the mind, the consciousness, is protean. The merging, partial or total, of personalities at will, I might call telepathy, except that that is a meager word for it. What happens is not magic. It requires a carrier wave, which obeys the laws of physics. A rudiment may sometimes occur among us. The Others have brought it to completion.

  This includes the ability to map a pattern corresponding to a personality onto a different body, be that body natural or artificial, organic or mechanical or—well, there was the Oracle, for example. The map is incomplete and distorted, of course. A mind is not an isolable object. Whatever generates and maintains it must govern it as well as being governed by it.

  Still, an Other can lead separate existences, eventually to bring them together in the original being. An Other can in a sense be immortal, passing an entire past from a dying body to a new one which may have been grown for the purpose, or to more than one body. Mind-merging will already have made part of this personality integral with many different entities. Recordings, too, played back into a later awareness as needed, give a kind of resurrection.

  Thus the Others are not monads in any degree. Neither are they fused in an enormous overmind; that would be stultifying, if it were possible. Individuality, fluid in form, is by that same receptivity more real than it can be among us. From this root may spring their passionate devotion to freedom.

  They are not gods. In our single galaxy, at any single instant, is more than they can know or foresee. However widely they range and hugely they build, they discern far better than we can how grander than themselves is the whole of reality, how eternally mysterious. Though the symbols be not things like the waxing and waning of a moon, but the birth and death of stars, they too must needs create myths, they too must dwell in awe.

  Indeed, to them their technology, cyclopean or subatomic, has become incidental, a set of means to a set of ends. Much they have abandoned as no longer necessary. The achievements they seek are more subtle—too subtle for our perceiving. (If you chisel out a statue, your dog sees that a lump of stone is changed a bit in shape.) But I have to try to convey a hint, a shard.

  Let me therefore say that the Others are concerned with exploring, understanding, and celebrating existence.

  A way for them, among many, is through their avatars.

  While they are careful and sparing about it, they do not regard as a violation the bringing forth of an avatar. Such an organism is in no way abnormal. At most, it has come into being instead of a similar bion that would else have done so. It does contain certain structures deep inside, incredibly fine, on the border between molecular and atomic. These do not affect its functioning and are not heritable. All that they do is make Oneness possible.

  Slightly more may be involved. For instance, in the case of most Terrestrial vertebrates, it is simplest to fertilize an ovum parthenogenetically, while adding that micro-organ for the cell to replicate. If a male is wanted, a few minor changes in the chromosomes are required as well. Whatever the treatment or whatever kind of organism, it is very mild, it conserves rather than destroys.

  An avatar, then, lives out its time as a perfectly ordinary member of its species. It may well never be Summoned. The Others do not hover constantly over any planet; the cosmos is too big. When one of its kind is brought into communion, that is an act of love. No damage occurs, no disruption; save for those that are dying, fonwhich oblivion may be mercy, it is returned to the place whence it came, to go on as it was. There has simply been the sharing. In this wise do the Others seek to partake in all life everywhere.

  True, if the avatar is sentient, shades of memory may afterward flit about in its being….

  —Can I not stay? I pleaded.

  —No, darling, sang that part of me which was at the heart of Brigit.—It would be a doom upon you.

  From elsewhere in me spoke Aengus:—Nor would you wish to be passive, a parasite. Thankful are we for what you gave—

  —But now when you have lived my life, I have no more to offer.

  —If only you did!… No, that is wrong. What’s right is that you be what you are. We Summon no avatar twice.

  —Because you have awareness and thus free will, we can make you the gift of Lethe. If you accept, you will forget everything that was Here. It will be to you like a dreamless night.

  —Think well, dearest. You know that if you remember, you will always be haunted.

  —But by how wonderful a ghost! I answered.

  —It will have many faces, and some of them terrible.

  Long I mused in Oneness. Call to mind your highest moments, of love, insight, creation, beauty, victory, when for a short while you went beyond yourself. It is more than that, being an Other; and still this is the lowland beneath their peaks.

  —No, I decided.—What I may keep of you, I would not give up for any reward. Aye, hard will be to know that once my soul did span so much of reality that I could even sense a little of how immensely much more remains to search for and grow by and rejoice in. But I will not altogether lose the knowledge of what your love is.

  We drew closer in our farewell. For this they bore again the appearances they had first shown me, because I liked those. Not that there was anything very strange about their true aspect, or anything strange at all about what passed between Aengus mac Óg and myself. The time is not many centuries distant from my own when humans will begin one by one to become Others. They will not cease thereby to be human.

  XLVI

  LESS THAN AN HOUR had gone when the voice of Brigit wakened Chinook’s intercom. “Caitlín is returning to you. She will enter by the same lock.”

  Alone in his office, Brodersen bit across the stem of the pipe he had had clamped between his jaws. The bowl bobbed off through harsh blue clouds it had made. Unaided by his breath, the fire died down in free fall. He fumbled at his seat belt, got the damned thing unsnapped, surged from his chair. Behind him, a squeezer of whisky drifted forgotten.

  “The word that she bears will cheer you,” the voice followed him. “Through her we have found that yours is a rightful purpose. It is not absolutely right; never believe that of any purpose which may be yours; but your success would be better than your defeat. Though we do not aid you in your striving, we will send you on your way. Though we do not say that you will prevail, we wish you most sincerely well.

  “But prepare to leave soon. The forces that made this place and keep it, here at the end and the beginning of a universe, are balanced as on a whirling spearhead. However tiny, the mass of your ship draws hard enough on them that while you stay, the work is at a halt. Nor have you anything left to do among us. You won this far, and thereby won your homecoming—or the right to go back and do battle for your homecoming. More we cannot bid you. At the start of your next watch, we will call upon you to depart.

  “In the meantime, make Caitlín welcome. Be good to her.”

  “Christ,” Brodersen shouted as he flew, “how could I try to be anything else?”

  A few crewmen had gotten to the airlock before him. He elbowed them aside and himself admitted her. An argence entered, flicked off, and there she was. He caught her in his arms and they floated, ridiculously a-spin. The scent and warmth and lithe feel of her overwhelmed him. God damn, he thought, I’m actually crying.

  “Are you okay? Pegeen, sweetheart, macushla, what happened? So soon—”

  “It was long, I think,” she said as if talking in her sleep. Her smile was from Nirvana. “They sent me back through time. Look.” Out of a coverall pocket she pulled the notebook that spacefolk usually carried. “Written down, the patterns we’ll follow, retracing the whole way we came till we get t
o Danu, where we jump to Beta’s system. We’ll arrive within a month of when Emissary left.”

  “But you, Pegeen, you!”

  “Och, I’m fine. You must give me a while to… climb down—” Abruptly she clawed herself to him. He felt her shudder. “Dan, hold me, please. I should not be weeping after what I’ve had, I should not!”

  Out of the pit where her being lay, Joelle radiated: Won’t you at least say goodbye?

  —Yes, and more, was the response.—We have learned from the avatar how stark is your need.

  Then take me to you!

  —It cannot be. O Joelle, can a tree fly or a bird catch sunlight? You are what you are, and you are what you may become if you will. Be glad in that.

  In a few miserable years left me, knowing I will never know what you do, knowing my Noumenon is a shadow?

  —If you wish, we can make you forget.

  No!

  —What else?

  If I am not worthy of your company [There is no special worthiness in this.] then open Reality for me. Whether it will kill me or drive me mad, show me the Ultimate.

  —We have no Ultimate.

  But what do you have—

  —What fragments we possess will not harm you in themselves. [Would a lecture on relativity harm an ape?] The avatar could tell you…. But you do have more gift and background than she does. Therefore hearken, if you will.

  —[Mathematics and snatches of what might be direct perception or might not be, and:] Our space-time continuum is not the total Creation. It is a bubble in a hyperdimensional ocean which brings forth more of its kind endlessly, almost as the ancient oceans on Earth and Demeter and Beta begot life over and over, because that was in their nature. Universes die, like stars and flowers; but their stuff goes on too, worked Into something that never was before.

  —Here and now, our burnt-out cosmos, expanding, fleeing from itself, has intersected another. From this union, when it is complete, will arise an entire new world of worlds. (Praised be the chance that the other plenum is old itself, that no life—we pray—will perish in the genesis!) What the next cycle will be like, we cannot foretell.