—You want to destroy me—Daiya thought.—You want to tear out what I know, what I've gone through, you know I may not survive that—
—That is unimportant. If you remain separate, you condemn yourself anyway. You will be apart from us and apart from God. Your only hope lies in sharing yourself with us—
—I shall not let down my wall—
Jowē glared at her balefully.—Then we shall tear it down—
Harel gasped. His eyes widened as he looked at Daiya. His love had, at least temporarily, pushed above the surface of his fear. Daiya steadied herself. She felt the assault of the Merging Ones; they battered against her barrier. She held her shield. Claws scraped and dug at her mind. She fought them off, resisting. She drew on the machines under the mountains, fortifying her defenses with their power. She thought: I could strike out, push them away. But she did not dare, knowing she might lose control. She could only resist.
A whirlwind rose from the field. Jowē stepped back, standing with the others. The whirlwind shrieked, whipping the woman's hair; then it swooped toward Daiya. It swirled around her, ripping at her wall. She held her ground. The earth shook; she stood on waves of dirt and grass. Her legs gave way and she toppled forward, still holding her wall.
The wind beat at her, stinging her face, thundering against her shield. A crack appeared in the earth, becoming a ravine, threatening to swallow her. She clung to the ground, her hands in the dirt, keeping up her wall. The ravine became a chasm, a black pit, impossibly deep.
Jowē stood across the chasm, on the other side, her eyes burning. The wind tore at Daiya, pushing her toward the black crevice. She held on, almost hearing the machines hum as they poured their power into her. The wall shook, cracking under the strain. Fire poured into her, searing her. She sealed the breach. The whirlwind became a tornado, trying to tear her from the ground. She held on, waiting. Every Merging Self in the village was assaulting her, screaming at her through the howling wind. She heard their voices, though not their words, and felt their anger.
The storm subsided. The crack in the earth disappeared. The field was as it had been. She lifted her head and climbed to her feet, trembling.
Harel was staring at her, partly relieved that she had survived, partly terrified of what it might mean. Jowē clutched her white tunic, wrapping her arms about herself.—I do not understand—she thought.—You should not have been able to resist—
Daiya glared angrily at her, careful to keep up her wall.—You can gain nothing from me that way—she responded.—I came here prepared to try to share my experience with you, but afraid of what you might do to me. You have proven that I was right to be afraid. Do you think I don't want to be part of the village again? You could have come to me and asked me to share things willingly with you, but instead you try to tear them from me—
—You are not fooling me—Jowē thought.—You show a part of the truth and keep the rest to yourself. You ask us to accept something without revealing what it is. You would not be so afraid if what you held was not evil. One with nothing to fear does not have to endure such an onslaught. That is the truth, isn't it? You carry something terrible inside you which you are afraid to release—
Daiya was silent, not knowing how to answer. What Jowē said was true, though she would not have put it in those terms. If she conveyed her knowledge to them, she did not see how the village could remain as it was. Rather than accept it, they would cast her out, if they could not destroy her. She would be an exile, unable to keep up her guard constantly. Eventually, someone would crush her when she was unable to defend herself, and destroy her in an unguarded moment. Jowē and the other Merging Ones could join together and, with the strength of the old woman's mind, touch another village, and another, summoning everyone on Earth to destroy her. She could not withstand them all.
Jowē turned and began to walk back to the village, the others following her. Only Cerwen and Harel remained. Her grandfather reached out an arm to her. She stared suspiciously at him.
—I will not force you to speak—Cerwen thought.—You claim you are willing to share what has happened with us. Here we are, your grandfather and the boy who wanted to be your partner. Will you speak now—
She sat down at the edge of a ditch.—You know that if I speak to you, I speak to everyone here—she answered.—You cannot join me in separation from the others—She looked at Harel—Why are you here? Did you want to see me die?—She knew it was not true, but she wanted to punish him for his failing love.
—The Merging Ones didn't want me here—he replied.—But I had to come, I thought you might be as you were, I thought—His thoughts failed. She saw his dream: their hut, their partnership, their children, their life. The Daiya in his dream smiled, merged with him, accepted the world, was calm, had no questions. She could not recognize herself. Even her face was different; pretty, placid, serene. She had never seen that face when she stood near still water on sunny days.
—You don't love me as I am—she thought.—If the Merging Ones had torn half my mind from me and left me peaceful and unable to question, a living shell of what I was, you would be happy, and accept me, and feel no loss. I can tell that is true—
Harel looked away from her. She realized that the ordeal had changed him too. He had learned the wisdom of restraint and acceptance; the black thing he had resisted had robbed him of any faint stirrings of rebelliousness, which was, of course, the purpose of the rite. The village held him, it would hold him forever. He could not love an outsider.
—Let me ask you something—she thought, turning toward Cerwen.—What would you think if you discovered that there were other people, like us and yet unlike us, who we had known nothing about?—
Cerwen frowned.—There are other villages—
—I don't mean that. I mean people who are more like solitaries, yet able to think and feel, people without our mental powers—
—I do not know what you mean, Daiya. Solitaries must die when they are born—
—Forget that—she thought impatiently.—I mean people who live in another place, who are grown, who are solitaries, but like us also. We believe it is not right to be apart from other minds, so wouldn't it be our duty to communicate with them, try to understand them? Wouldn't we be committing a great sin by cutting ourselves off from them if we knew they existed—
Cerwen fidgeted and she felt his irritation.—What is this outrageous idea? You must be mad to imagine such a thing, this question is more foolish than the ones you asked as a child—
—I am asking what you think you should do in such a case—
Her grandfather's wall came down, pushing against hers.—It is useless to ask such things—he thought faintly. He turned and stalked off toward the village.
Harel was alone with her. She stared across the ditch at the boy. She could no longer tell if she loved him or simply wanted him to love her. She had no right to blame him, knowing what he would see if she allowed him to look at her wishes, her imaginary picture of a Harel who would be curious and inquisitive, willing to join her even if it meant separation from the life of the village. There were four people sitting here in the fields, not two. She wondered how she and Harel had been able to look into each other's minds for so long without seeing what was there.
She reached out carefully with a mental tendril, trying to touch him, not the image she held. He blinked and began to withdraw.—There are other people, like us and yet alien, who do not live on our world. It's true. One of them came to me during the ordeal, that's why I saw that the blackness wasn't really there. I saw that it couldn't touch this boy, that he could not see it—
Harel shook his head.
—It's true—
—How do you know this other wasn't an illusion?—
Her mind seemed suddenly clear.—I know—she thought, almost dropping her wall in her surprise at the answer.—I know, because through this other person, I saw and learned about things and ideas which did not exist in my mind before. An illusion must
come from something, a thought, an idea, an experience you've had, a legend you've been told. You may combine them in many different ways, but each piece will be something you know. But I saw new things, things that could not have come from my mind or the mind of anyone I know, the ideas were too elaborate for that—
—It must be an evil thing, sent to delude you—
—By what? What would seek to do that? I have my evidence, give me yours—
He began to walk away. She got up, scurrying quickly along her side of the ditch.—Harel! Answer me, don't just walk away—
He turned and faced her for a moment and she saw such pain in his face that she gasped. She drew back, pulling every bit of her mind behind her wall. She could have him, could reach inside and pull at his love, force him to her side, show him what she had seen over and over again until he could no longer doubt it, but at the cost of qualities she had loved in him; his calm acceptance of how things were, his clear, uncomplicated mind, his sturdy loyalty to his family and the village. He would be only her puppet.
She looked down at the ground, and let him go.
Daiya sat at the top of a hill, her back against a tree. The watchfires were lit; the village slept. The distant mountains slumbered under the comet's light while the machines beneath them, like the minds of the villagers, hummed and dreamed.
She should not have returned. It had been a mistake. She knew what the village was thinking about her now, when they thought of her at all; she had caught a glimpse of it in her grandfather's mind, and in Harel's. If they could not drive her away, or tear down her mind, they would exile her, perhaps remove the Net again. She could walk down this hill, and into the village, walk through its streets and stop at the hut of her parents, go inside and unroll her mat, and she would still be outside the village, cut off from the minds there. She would have no place—no longer a child, unable to live in a hut with young people past their ordeal, without a partner—there was nothing for her. It would be worse than if she never went back at all.
She thought of Etey, feeling resentful of the woman, with her queer notions of communication between the village and the comet. They had trouble enough communicating with others of their own kind who lived on other comet worlds. What had made her think Daiya's people would be different? Daiya could touch their minds, and still not reach them. Etey did not really care about her at all; she was only someone to be used for another purpose.
Reiho, at least, had cared about her welfare. He was as foolish as she had been, thinking she could go back and have everything as it was. She suddenly found herself hating him because he could go back to his home and rejoin his friends and in time resume his normal life, or what passed for one there. She hated him because she knew she could go with him, but she would only be going to a place where there was no position for her, no way she would ever fit in. She would have her calming implant, but none of her powers; it would be like passing through life blind and deaf.
She could, she supposed, have her body changed as theirs were; then her life on Earth would in time seem far away. She might even look back on it in the way she thought of her own infancy, just beyond the reach of her memory, a distant stage of her existence. But she could never submit to the alteration of her body, its mutilation, and without such alterations her life would be to theirs as a butterfly's was to those here. She had learned enough to know that. She would flutter through their collective consciousness and be gone, her life only a stored pattern in Homesmind. The alienness of that idea made her shiver, as she wondered if she herself would be trapped there for all eternity. If the vast cybernetic organism could hold her memory, it could hold her soul. Was that what those people did instead of joining the Merged One?
There was no purpose left in her life. She had nowhere to go. She would die and it would be as if she had never lived, unless she survived in the memory of future villagers as a dim legend, a warning to children of the dangers of separateness. She was not that unique; perhaps there had been others like her, though most of them must have died during ordeals. Her grandmother Rilla had been one, no doubt, with her moodiness and her inability to join the Merging Ones. Her parents had lost Rin, and now, for all practical purposes, her as well. Maybe it was for the better. Daiya would have no children; maybe the bit of Rilla in her family would die out and would not be a part of their descendants.
She stretched out under the tree, wanting to rest but sure she would not be able to sleep. She would only have to wait four more days and then Etey and Reiho would be gone. That would be much better for her; she would be free from playing with the absurd notion of joining them. She would be free to prepare herself for death, the only thing left. She could stop clinging to life.
Her muscles became tight. Why should the thought of death disturb her? She had faced it often enough, had sought it. But she did not want to die now; she couldn't die. There was too much left to discover and sort out. She had once known almost all there was a person could know, and then the world had changed, and now she knew she could live a hundred cycles and not know more than a tiny portion of it all. She had to come to some understanding of this knowledge, however small and tentative, some way of reconciling herself to it. Perhaps it could console her for what she had lost.
She recalled her friends: frail Mausi and clever Oren, fearful Sude, stolid Tasso and angry Peloren, all of them dead in the desert. Their deaths seemed so pointless now, their lives cut off just as they had been starting. The village had been very devious; better to have taken them all to the public space and doused the sparks of consciousness. They could have lived, but the village had killed them, the weight of legend and custom had struck them down. It could have been otherwise. That was the thought that had destroyed her world for her; it could have been otherwise. God had not given them their destiny. They had made it for themselves, then protected themselves from anything that would have changed it. Her friends had died, not to preserve the Merged One's plan, but only to keep things as they were, unchanged and permanent as rocks and stones.
How could people live as hers had lived, with such abilities, to come to this? They denied the power available to them and had forgotten it; they tried to break down the walls around people, yet set a barrier around all humankind on Earth. It made no sense, it was a monstrous joke, a fraud. She buried her head in the grass. She choked; her body shook as tears rolled down her face. A cry escaped her and vibrated in the night air.
She cried at last for her dead friends.
Daiya, standing at the edge of the fields, saw the craft before the villagers did.
She clenched her fists. The morning air was cold on her face. Rage filled her as she thought of seizing the shuttle, hurling it back to the desert. The air around her grew warm. Then she felt the terrified feelings of those working in the fields. They threw down their tools and raced toward one another, huddling together among the wheat while others hurried out from the village.
Daiya had come to the edge of the fields at dawn, determined to take one last look at the village before leaving it. She knew that would be better than lingering near it, tormenting herself with the sight of the home she no longer had.
Now Etey had come to disturb the village with her ridiculous hopes. Daiya thought: I shouldn't do a thing to help her. But there was Reiho to consider. She was sure he had tried to talk Etey out of coming here.
Long lines of villagers were winding through the fields. She sensed the turmoil of their thoughts at the sight of this strange illusion. She caught their fears; first Daiya, with her twisted soul, had returned to disturb them, her mindpowers strengthened by some evil force. Now an alien machine had come to the village. They were blaming her for it. They were not entirely mistaken.
The shuttle set down just beyond the edge of the fields. Daiya ran toward it, almost stumbling; she lifted herself from the ground and floated the rest of the way. Several Merging Ones were moving toward the craft. They halted several paces from it, studying the illusion. The doors slid open. Dai
ya caught a glimpse of Etey's red hair. The woman emerged from the shuttle, followed by Reiho. Etey stepped forward and faced the Merging Ones. Reiho hung back, leaning against the vehicle.
Daiya alighted, casting an angry look in Etey's direction. The minds of the Merging Selves murmured, still stunned by the apparition. Daiya saw Fayl NuraBaan release the arm of the woman guiding him. She felt the fear in him; the blind man, unable to comprehend the sight his companions had conveyed to him, was blocking the vision. Cerwen was with the group; his dark eyes gazed at her sadly.—What have you brought to us, Daiya?—Anger slapped her. Jowē was hobbling toward them. Daiya felt a tug on the Net. The old woman was trying to draw the villagers together, controlling their fears with her strength.
Etey held out her hands. Her lips moved. “Do not be afraid,” she said. “I mean no harm.”
The Merging Ones tensed, sure that she did. Daiya stood between the villagers and Etey, surprised at how cold and empty she felt. She was certain that she could not defend Etey and Reiho against the entire village; she was not that strong. Neither could she stand by and watch them destroyed. Etey had finally set her against her own people.
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Jowē faced Etey. She surveyed the woman with her small fierce eyes, then gazed at Reiho. Her mouth twisted, as if she had tasted a strange and bitter food and then spat it out. Her gaze fell on Daiya.
—What have you brought to us, girl?—
—They are people from another world—
—The smaller one is like a solitary, yet it lives. The larger one has a mind weak as a baby's. Such things cannot exist—
—But they do—Daiya replied.
—They cannot. There is nothing like them in our world. It is an illusion. You have brought it. Tell the evil which holds you in its grip to disperse it—
—They are not from here. They live in the sky, far away. They have their own world. But Earth was once their home, too. They were like us, long ago. Their ancestors and ours are the same. You must believe me—Daiya gripped her tunic at the throat with one hand, twisting the fabric. She was afraid now. Her fear was becoming a cold solid mass inside her. She imagined it forming, like the black thing in the desert, swallowing everyone.—They too have minds—She went on.—They think and feel. Touch them and see for yourself—
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