Meanwhile Wairoa sat quietly observing, with his special senses and his special mind. He did the same when wandering about in the apparent aimlessness of any curious newcomer to town. His physique made some persons shun talk, some eager for it, but always it put them off balance, vulnerable to his talents. He was a copious reader of newspapers and magazines, a listener to radio broadcasts, who paid special attention to such matters as markets and shipping.
Pieces of the puzzle fell together. Mikli Karst had ranged extensively about, mostly contacting aristocrats, but the focus for him and his associates was in the Prynys, and perhaps beyond. They’re too few to be engineering trouble by themselves,’ Terai said. ‘Or are they?’
‘It doesn’t take much catalyst to make a reaction go,’ answered Wairoa. There is a magnate in the South by the name of Talence Jovain Aurillac. We should investigate him.’
‘Eh? Why?’
‘You may recall that mention of him has occurred occasionally. Body language at those times suggested he might be more important than he seems to be. Why has he kept himself in virtual exile these past two years? What did happen between him and that Iern Ferlay we hear of as a good prospect for the next Captain? I have nothing but hints, and an intuition that we need more than this.’
Intuition, Terai thought. Subconscious logic? I don’t know; but Wairoa’s hunches are worth more than most fellows’ demonstrations. ‘All right. We’ll drift in that direction.’
To travel straight and fast could raise too many questions. Terai zigzagged at a leisurely pace, by air, rail, and the generally execrable roads of a country where mechanized ground vehicles were rare. He sought men prominent in commerce. He was affable and gossipy as he inquired about possible demand for copra, coral, maricultural products, synthetic fibers, bacterial fuel cells, and the like. Their friends, including Clansfolk, heard about it and often wanted to meet him too. He was invited to homes, shown the local sights, sometimes given a romp in bed. He did not consider that an infidelity when Elena was half a world away, nor would she. His ‘assistant’ Wairoa stayed in the background, observing and thinking.
The news of Jovain’s takeover reached them in Toulou. ‘Oh-oh,’ Terai muttered; and as soon as he and Wairoa were alone: ‘We’d better get back to the ship. Every one of us. Nan the Destroyer knows what’s about to happen – I don’t.’
‘Won’t that look suspicious, when we have just arrived?’ Now and then Wairoa showed a curious ignorance about standard-issue human beings.
‘Not if we don’t mind looking rather timid. Strangers in a strange land and so forth; it’s natural for us to feel nervous. I’ll bluster out a feeble excuse. That should be in character for me. You contact the rest.’
Wairoa nodded and slipped off. A suitcase in their baggage contained a radio set capable of activating a sensitive recorder anywhere within five hundred kilometers. The signal was scrambled; outsiders who chanced to tune in would suppose they heard a burst of static. Agents who got the message also got instructions to relay. Back to Kemper, as fast as compatible with not blowing your cover!
Next morning the two Maurai boarded a dirigible for Renn, capital of Ar-Goat. There they would change for their destination in Ar-Mor. Passengers sat in tense quietness, waiting for newscasts. The music that a cabin loudspeaker brought them in between times did not ease them, nor did food and wine.
Renn felt close to explosion, during a night’s layover there. Wairoa went prowling through the dark, overhearing or eavesdropping. He sought Terai again at dawn. ‘The place reeks of fear and anger,’ he reported.
‘Well, nothing like this has ever happened before,’ Terai said. ‘It’s a terrible shock.’
‘Many people believe Jovain did frustrate a conspiracy. At any rate, they want to believe it. But then who are those shadowy figures behind the conspiracy, and what further evil have they in train? Many others think it’s a hoax, and are afraid Jovain means to stuff Gaeanity down their throats. And many others – The Domain is not the tranquilly unified realm that it has seemed for so long to be, from the outside. It’s shot through with rivalries and antagonisms, ethnic, religious, social, economic. When nobody knows what to expect, everybody dreads that somebody else will become able to take a sudden advantage.’
Terai scowled. ‘A civil war here is bloody near the last thing the Federation wants. The Domain’s our natural partner, or should be, as interested as us in keeping the world stable. … Well, let’s hope this doesn’t come to blows. And let’s go get us some breakfast. If a miserable Francey roll and cup of herb tea count as breakfast.’
They heard on their flight to Kemper: the Council of Seniors had chosen Talence Jovain Aurillac the new Captain. ‘I can imagine the scene,’ Terai grunted to Wairoa in their language. ‘His supporters will have been ready to argue and put on pressure in organized style, though I don’t suppose many of them knew in advance what he planned to do. Those who like part of what he stands for – Gaeanity, for instance, or opposition to foreign influences – they were easy to persuade. The cautious and the cowardly would mostly fall in line. I daresay an armed hillman looks persuasive, no matter what assurances his boss has given, and in any event, it’d appear safest to vote yes and scuttle home.’
‘At that,’ Wairoa pointed out, ‘he received a bare plurality. He probably could not have won if the opposition weren’t split among several candidates.’
‘And surely not if Iern Ferlay had been there. I gather that that’s one popular lad. What the Nan’s become of him, anyway?’
Presently the radio carried a speech by Jovain. It was short and conciliatory, urging people to go unafraid about their daily business, promising a detailed program later that would serve the needs and aspirations of the entire Domain. The bedbug letter,’ Terai muttered.
‘What?’ asked Wairoa.
‘Never mind. An archeologically ancient joke. We’re descending.’
At the airport the two got a carriage to the riverside dock where Hivao lay and went aboard. There Terai stopped to gaze around him.
The scene was a colorful and peaceful skin stretched across events. Shore leaves had been canceled and every crewman was back. However, they had made the most of their stay, not only in excursions but in cultivating friendships. Being exotic helped vastly. The skipper saw no immediate reason why they should not have visitors. Flutes and drums resounded, feet danced, girls laughed and chattered and embraced and sometimes slipped below with a nautical companion. Men were guests too, mostly sailors and navvies, come to drink and talk and gamble. Terai noticed one, afar at the taffrail, who did not resemble a Breizhad – tall, gaunt, sandy-haired, horse-faced; he played a stringed instrument and sang for a group of listeners, when he wasn’t upending a jug.
Several meters beyond lay the ship from the Northwest Union, a catamaran that bore an aircraft pod similar to Hivao’s. Her crew had avoided the Maurai, not even being sociable when in the same taverns, doubtless under orders. To Terai, that meant they weren’t civilians as alleged, but Navy. Those on watch today stared forward at the festivites here, surely more than a little envious.
The afternoon was warm and bright. Water clucked against hulls. A steam dredge chuffed and dumped a load into its barge, maintaining basin and channel. Tarry odors lifted from the wharf. Above the warehouses, Terai saw the twin towers on the cathedral, remembered their antiquity, and for a moment felt dwindled to a dayfly.
He kicked the notion from him. ‘We’ve got work to do,’ he said.
‘What?’ inquired Wairoa.
‘M-m-m … for the time being, I suppose, we wait to sec how things go. I daresay Mikli and company will soon get here. Whether or not they had anything to do with what’s happened, they can’t be certain either what’ll come of it. Better stay close to base, eh?’
‘He should not find out you are in the Domain.’
‘Oh, no. Agreed. Until he arrives, though, I suppose I can move about pretty freely, if I don’t give my right name.’
‘
What have you in mind?’
‘We’ve already seen the local higher-ups. I don’t think they’re involved in any plots, do you? But yon ship’s been seven months in this port. Ordinary people are bound to have had plenty of contact with the Norrmen, and scraps of information are bound to have slipped out. Not that townsfolk would recognize it for what it signifies. But we –’ Terai chuckled. ‘Yes, we have a great excuse for pub-crawling.’
5
A few kilometers north of Dulua, for it took no more to be deep in the forest, Vanna Uangovna had her communion shrine. Individual seers and seeresses differed in the settings where they could most readily and fully know Gaea: a hilltop, a cave, a riverbank, a grove. … Vanna wanted more than untouched nature, she wanted a place to which humanity was integral, on which she herself could work as air and sunlight and unseen tiny life did. So had she commanded years before, and so had it been done for the proróchina.
One dawn she went there, neither alone nor leading a class as often aforetime, but with a single attendant. The air was still cold and damp, tendrils of mist a smoke over the ground, but already full of pine and earth fragrances. Radiance from the right: stole among surrounding evergreens, lost itself in their needles and shadows, then suddenly glowed on a high branch or gleamed off a dew-wet spider-web. Birdcalls had begun trilling and pealing, mosquitoes whined as they sheered off from repellent, a squirrel halted its comet-pace up a bole and clittered, otherwise the woods were hushed. Nearly hidden by duff, the trail was soft and whispery underfoot.
Having left cultivation behind, the two walked in fitting silence among the trees for a while before Vanna said low: ‘You are troubled, child.’
Jiyan Robbs swallowed hard. She was of pure Merican blood, or a throwback to it, her blond head looming above her ucheny’s, her fullness straining a linsey-woolsey frock; but she was not quite sixteen, and a sluga. Her hands, coarsened and reddened by the house-cleaning tasks to which her steward had most recently assigned her, writhed together.
Vanna dropped back a pace, to walk alongside and lay a hand of her own, feather-light, on the girl’s arm. Tell me, dear,’ she murmured. ‘Let me do whatever I can toward easing your mind. Afterward let Gaea give you peace.’
‘I – I am afraid –’ Jiyan could not go on.
‘Fear must be a servant, never a master, not to be overworked, ultimately to be retired from service as no longer needed.’ Yet you must not ignore the fact that reality can be brutal.‘What are you afraid of? Mistreatment? A word from me should put a quick stop to that.’
‘Oh, no, reverend lady. But I – I’m afraid I can’t leave home after all.’ Jiyan knuckled her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘What?’ Vanna kept her tone serene. The major hasn’t said anything against it, has he?’ The Robbs family were slugai of the Kharsovs, born to serve that house. They were not bound to a patch of soil, though, but had been towndwellers for generations, many of them in skilled jobs or positions of trust, modestly well-to-do.
Admittedly Bors Kharsov, major in the Blue Star Polk that owned half the property hereabouts, was not happy about letting Jiyan go. He had complained that it was fine for her to be a disciple in her free time – yes, yes, we are One in Gaea, sluga and Soldat alike –– but sending her off for advanced study was something else again. Whether or not she showed promise, the example would make others of her class restive. … When Vanna insisted, he had not ventured to oppose the Librarian on a matter of that kind.
‘No, but – his younger son, Olgh, you know – oh, reverend lady –’
The story stumbled out piece by piece. That Olgh had seduced her was nothing unusual. That he talked of making her his acknowledged concubine, respected in his household, after he got married, was not too surprising either; he was the same impulsive age. The problem was that Jiyan was desperately in love with him. She didn’t think she could bear the thought of going away for years. But – but – the gift was in her; already, under Vanna’s tutelage, she was coming to see what full Oneness could mean.
‘Oh, my poor darling.’ Vanna stopped. ‘Here’s a log, let’s sit down, let me hold you while you cry. Weeping is natural, you know.’ I know.
Afterward she led the girl through exercises and mantras, until calm returned like an incoming tide. She made no attempt to force a decision. That must come of itself. Vanna hoped it would be for departure. Here, Jiyan would never have the freedom to pursue truth undisturbed. Not only would that be her loss, mankind as a whole would have lost a potentially inspiring ucheny.
The morning was well along when they continued on their way and reached the shrine. It was an arbor in a small meadow, edged by flowerbeds. In winter Vanna sought it on snowshoes, warmly clad, and her perceptions and meditations grew frosty, turning out toward the universe through which Gaea danced. Summer was the season for contemplating life, and yourself as an organelle amidst the energy and wonder of it.
Vanna lifted her arms. The birds came to her, robin, goldfinch, bluebird, flew around her head as a halo of wings and song, settled on wrists and fingers; she thrilled to the gentle clench of their feet. A doe and fawn trotted past, but were shy of Jiyan and did not come to be scratched behind the ears. It had taken Vanna a decade to win such friendship – as valuable, as Insight-giving a time as she had never spent. Nowadays a bear who denned in this vicinity would gladly share with her the blueberries in a nearby slough.
Oneness, Oneness, love, peace.… It made hard the task of explaining to disciples that pain and death were aspects of the same ever-evolving unity, that even as she stood amidst her animals the white cells in her bloodstream waged war against predatory bacteria, and that this too they must understand and wholly accept before they could hope to know Gaea.
The birds fluttered off. They had their own living to do. Vanna and Jiyan went into the arbor. It contained no more than a dais of swirl-grained oak and a glacier-scarred boulder on which was chiseled a mandala. The humans took lotus position before the stone.
‘I suggest you choose a leaf today,’ said Vanna, nodding toward the wild grapevines that twined over the lattice and passed the light through in golden flecks. ‘A single, particular leaf. Make it central in the cosmos, as everything is.’ Her voice fell into a hypnotic softness. ‘Observe its stem, veins, infinite shadings of color, the stirring at each least breeze. Think of its life cycle, ancestry, cellular architecture down to the quantum, its identity with you.…’
For her part, Vanna closed her eyes and sought to sense, to be, every odor of the thousandfold subtleties pervading the air.
Clouds piled up, moved forward on a loud wind, covered heaven. Rain came. It did not interrupt meditation but enhanced it. The humans removed their clothes and went out to be laved by the sky. Jiyan had learned how not to feel cool in this weather.
When the storm had passed and they were dry, they dressed again. Now speech was appropriate. Vanna found objects, twigs and stones and the like, wherewith to illustrate elementary principles of physics. That was a subject which gave her pupil difficulty. ‘You shall have to learn the basics of it, if you wish to approach true Oneness,’ the Librarian said, as she had done before. ‘Gaeanity is not mindless mysticism, whatever the majority of those who call themselves Gaeans may think. Or perhaps I should put it this way, that its mysticism springs from the mystery at the heart of reality. We do not ever observe the world in detachment. That is not possible. The wave functions not only set a limit to the accuracy, the certainty of our knowledge; they make us a part of what we are studying, and of all else. Probability cannot become equal to unity before an experiment is performed. We create reality as much as it creates us.’ She saw a glow of eagerness on the girl’s face, smiled, and cautioned: ‘Yes, it sounds wonderful, and it is. It’s boundlessly wonderful. The universe is a miracle. But I’ve been giving you words of grand sound and scant meaning. The right language for the Ultimate is mathematics.’
She could almost hear the mind before her: Might that kind of understanding
not be worth more than… than Him? To head off an anguished No! she took Jiyan’s hand. ‘I talk too much,’ she said. The afternoon’s gotten old, you’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast, and you’re healthily growing. Come, we’ll go home.’
An old scar twinged. Vanna too had surrendered a love, once and forever. Marriage ought not to be incompatible with enlightenment, but it often was. The wholly enlightened future would be different, but so would marriage itself be. Not that she’d live to see that. She would long since have returned her being to the Life Force.
They walked back at a brisk pace, in silence except for breath and footfalls.
Cleared land opened and Dulua lay red-roofed before them, along the huge argency of the lake. Vanna hugged her disciple goodbye and made her way alone to the Library. Various prosaic duties remained before she could seek her cottage, cook a simple meal, and settle down with a book – nothing weighty this evening, just a light historical romance, unless Chen Yao’s latest novel had arrived from the publisher. He was fantastically funny.
When she entered the building, an acolyte met her in its foyer. ‘Reverend lady,’ he said, after he had bowed and received her gesture of blessing, ‘a message has come for you, a coded radiogram from the High Sanctuary in Chai Ka-Go. I put the transciption on your desk and have stood guard outside.’
What? Vanna willed her pulse back to normal. Thank you, Raiho.’ She could not make herself proceed in philosophical slowness. Adepts did not communicate thus unless something portentous was afoot, and this communication originated in the nearest thing to a central headquarters that Gaeandom possessed. Having closed the office door behind her, she sought her stool and hunched anxiously over the papers.
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