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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:
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"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 Caitlin 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 Caitlin. "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 Caitlin than 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 call, Daniel, merely because we chanced to be there."
Aengus: "We should not carry this on farther. Not until we know from Caitlin 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. Caitlin is for us the
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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."
Caitlin 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 Caitlin 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 me
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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 space-time, 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]