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  The Vishnu was home for several hundred thousand Thuriens for periods that varied from short-term to permanent. They lived in baffling urban complexes that resembled their labyrinthine cities back home, amid simulations of external vistas beneath artificial skies, and in isolated spots enjoying the peculiarities of various landscapes, copied and contrived. Life aboard the ship combined all the functions of a complete social and professional infrastructure. The whole thing, Hunt began to realize, was more an elaborate, mobile space colony than anything conventionally thought of on Earth as a means of transportation.

  “This is the kind of vessel typically sent out to explore local regions of the Galaxy,” VISAR confirmed. “It might spend several years at a newly discovered planetary system.”

  Evidently the Thuriens liked to take their comforts with them.

  Hunt and Gina sat on a boulder on a grassy slope overlooking a lake with a distinctly curved surface. There were boats on it, scattered among several islands, and on the opposite shore an intricate composition of terraced architecture that went up to the “sky.” The sky was pale blue-like that of Thurien. The bushes around where they were sitting had broad, wedge-shaped, purple leaves that opened and folded like fans. According to VISAR, they could shed their roots and migrate downhill on bulbous pseudopods if the soil became too dry.

  “How would you classify them?” Gina mused. “If animals move and plants don’t, what are they?”

  “Why does it matter what you call them?” Hunt said. “When people have problems with questions like that, it’s usually because they’re trying to make reality fit something from their kit of standard labels. They’d be better off thinking about rewriting the labels.”

  They contemplated the scenery in silence for a while.

  “It’s funny how evolution works,” Gina said. “Purely random factors can send it all off in a completely new direction-ones that operate at high level, I mean, not just genetic mutation. About ninety-five percent of all species were supposed to have been wiped out in a mass extinction that happened around two hundred million years ago. It didn’t favor any particular kind of animal: large or small, marine or land-dwelling, complex or simple, or anything like that. Nothing can adapt for catastrophes on that kind of scale. So the survivors were simply the lucky five percent. Whole families vanished for no particular reason at all, and the few that were left determined the entire pattern of life subsequently.” She looked at Hunt, as if asking him to confirm it.

  “I don’t know too much about that side of things,” he said. “Chris Danchekker’s the one you ought to be talking to.” He stood up and offered her a hand. “Speaking of which, we ought to be getting back. It’s about time you met the rest of the crew.”

  They walked down to the lakeside, where a path brought them to a transit conveyor. Soon they were being whisked back through the Escherian maze, and arrived shortly afterward at the Terran section. As they crossed the mess area, Hunt noticed that the wallscreen that had previously showed the view outside was blank. He knew that the stress wave surrounding a Ganymean vessel cut it off from electromagnetic signals, including light, when it was under full gravity drive.

  “VISAR,” he said aloud so that Gina could hear. “Is the ship under way already?”

  “Since a little under fifteen minutes ago,” the machine confirmed. Which would have been typical of the Ganymean way of doing things: no fuss or ceremony; no formal announcements.

  “So where are we now?” Hunt asked.

  “Just about crossing the orbit of Mars.”

  So UNSA might as well scrap all of its designs for the next fifty years, Hunt decided.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  At a lonely place high among the peaks of the Wilderness of Rinjussin, Thrax came to a large, flat rock where the path divided. A monk was floating in midair above the rock, absorbed in his meditations. His sash bore the purple-spiral emblem representing the cloak of the night god, Nieru. Thrax had heard that as an exercise in learning to attract and ride the currents, adepts would support themselves on currents that they generated themselves by prayer. He waited several hours until the monk descended back onto the rock and looked at him.

  “What do you stare at?” Thrax asked him.

  “I contemplate the world,” the monk answered.

  Thrax turned and looked back at the valley he had climbed, with its scene of barren slopes, shattered rock, and desolation. “Not much of a world to contemplate from here,” he commented. “Do I take it, then, that your world is within?”

  “Within, and without. For the currents that bring visions of Hyperia speak within the mind; yet they flow from beyond Waroth. Thus, Hyperia is at the same time both within and without.”

  “I, too, am in search of Hyperia,” Thrax said.

  “Why would you seek it?” the monk asked.

  “It is taught that the mission of the adepts who rise on the currents and depart from Waroth is to serve the gods in Hyperia. Such is my calling.”

  “And what made you think that you would find it here, in Rinjussin?”

  “I seek a Master known as Shingen-Hu, who, it is said, teaches in these parts.”

  “This is the last place that you should come looking for Shingen-Hu,” the monk said.

  Thrax reflected upon the statement. “Then my search has ended,” he replied finally. “That means he must be here. For obviously he is to be found in the last place I would look, since why would I continue looking after I found him?”

  “Many come seeking Shingen-Hu. Most are fools. But I see that you are not foolish,” the monk said.

  “So, can you tell me which path I must take?” Thrax asked.

  “I can.”

  “Then, speak.”

  “One path leads to certain death. To know more, you must first ask the right question.”

  Thrax had expected having to give answers. But to be required to come up with the question itself put a different complexion on things. He looked perplexed from one to the other of the two trails winding away on either side of the rock.

  Then he said, “But death is certain eventually, whichever path one takes. Which path must I take, therefore, to achieve the most that is meaningful along the way?”

  “How do you judge what is meaningful?” the monk challenged.

  “Let Shingen-Hu be the judge,” Thrax answered.

  “We are in troubled times. The currents that once shimmered and glinted across the night skies have become few and weak. Many come to learn, but few shall ride. Why, stranger, should Shingen-Hu choose you?”

  “Again, let Shingen-Hu be the judge. I cannot give his reasons. Only mine.”

  The monk nodded and seemed satisfied. “You come to serve, and not to demand,” he pronounced, climbing down from the rock. “Follow me. I will take you to Shingen-Hu.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The others had gone to take care of various chores, leaving Hunt and Gina together at the dinner table. They had all agreed to meet later in the mess area for a nightcap-or two, or maybe several.

  Gina stared down at her coffee cup and unconsciously traced a question mark lightly on the tabletop with her finger. “Is it true that some of the animals on Jevlen have an uncanny resemblance to ones found in Earth’s mythology?” she asked after a long silence.

  Hunt had been watching her, thinking to himself that she was the most refreshing personality he had encountered in a long time. It wasn’t just that she was curious about everything, which was an attraction in itself, and that she took the trouble to find out something about the things that intrigued her; she did it without making an attention-getting display of it, or taking it to the point of where it started to get tedious. Her judgment in knowing how far to go was just right, which was one of the first things in making people attractive to be around. In the course of the meal she had won the company’s acceptance by refraining from thrusting herself on them, listening to Danchekker’s expositions without pandering like a student, putting Duncan at ease by n
ot flaunting her femininity, and avoiding triggering rivalry vibes from Sandy. In fact, she and Sandy had gotten along instantly, like sisters.

  “Do you know, you’ve never come back with a line that I expected, yet,” Hunt replied.

  “Seriously, I read about it somewhere. There’s a kind of horned wolf with talons that’s exactly like the Slavonic ‘kikimora.’ Another has parts of what look like a lion, a peacock, and a dog, just like the ‘simurgh’ of Iran. And would you believe a plumed, goggle-eyed reptile, practically identical to all those Mexican carvings?”

  “Roman Catholicism became a symbol of Irish nationalism. What Saint Patrick brought was Christianity.”

  “You mean the original?”

  “Something a lot closer to it, anyhow. And it flourished because it fitted with the ways of the native culture. It spread from there through Scotland and England into northern Europe. But then it collided with the institutionalized Jevlenese counterfeit being pushed northward, and it was destroyed. The first papal mission didn’t reach England until a hundred sixty-five years after Patrick died.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “My mother’s side of the family comes from Wexford. I go there for vacations and lived there for a while once.”

  “When did Patrick die?” Hunt asked, realizing that he really, had no idea.

  “In the fifth century. He was probably born in Wales and carried across by pirates.”

  “So we’re talking about a long time before that, then.”

  “Oh yes. In terms of literature and learning, they were unsurpassed anywhere in Western Europe long before Caesar crossed the Channel.”

  “Let me see, every English schoolboy knows that. Fifty-five B.C., yes?”

  “Right. Their race was unique, descended from a mixture of Celts and a pre-Celtic stock from the eastern Mediterranean.” Gina stared across the room and smiled to herself. “It wasn’t at all the kind of repressive thing that people were conditioned to think of later, you know. It was a very earthy, zestful, life-loving culture.”

  “In what kind of way?” Hunt asked.

  “The way women were treated, for a start. They were completely equal, with full rights of property-unusual in itself, for the times. Sex was considered a healthy and enjoyable part of life, the way it ought to be. Nobody connected it with sinning.”

  “The real life of Riley, eh?” Hunt commented.

  “They had an easygoing attitude to all personal relations. Polygamy was fairly normal. And then, so was polyandry. So you could have a string of wives, but each of them might have several husbands. But if a particular match didn’t work out, it was easy to dissolve. You just went to a holy place, stood back-to-back, said the right words, and walked ten paces. So children weren’t emotionally crippled by having to grow up with two people hating each other in a self-imposed prison; but if the marriage didn’t work out, they weren’t traumatized, either, because they had so many other anchor points among this network of people who liked each other.”

  “It all sounds very civilized to me,” Hunt said.

  “And that was where early Christianity hung on,” Gina said again. “So maybe it gives us an idea of what it really had to say.”

  Hunt watched the faraway expression on Gina’s face for a few seconds, then grinned impudently. “Oh, I can see where you’re coming from,” he teased. “It’s nothing to do with humanist philosophies at all. You just like the thought of having a string of men to pick from.”

  “Well, why should men have all the fun?” she retorted, refusing to be put on the defensive.

  “Ahah! The real Gina emerges.”

  “I’m merely stating a principle.”

  “What’s wrong with it? Don’t women fantasize?”

  “Of course they do.” She caught the look in his eye and smiled impishly. “And yes, who knows? Maybe one day if you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”

  Hunt laughed and picked up his coffee cup. He finished the contents and allowed the silence to draw a curtain across the subject. “How are we doing for time?” he asked, setting the cup down. “Will any of the others be in the bar yet?”

  Gina glanced at her watch. “It’s a bit early. What else is there to see of the ship?”

  “Oh, I think I’ve had it with being dragged around for one day. You know, I really do make a lousy tourist.”

  “That’s too bad. I can’t wait to see Jevlen. Just imagine, a real, actual, alien planet. And we’ll be there tomorrow. I still haven’t really gotten over all this.”

  Hunt looked at her thoughtfully. “Maybe we don’t have to keep you waiting that long,” he said.

  Gina looked puzzled. “Why? What are you talking about?”

  “What you just said has given me an idea… VISAR, are there any couplers nearby?”

  “A bank of them, to the right outside the door you came in through,” VISAR replied.

  “Are there two free right now?”

  “What are you doing?” Gina murmured.

  “Wait, and you’ll see.”

  “Plenty,” VISAR replied.

  Hunt stood up. “Come on,” he said to Gina. “You haven’t seen half of Ganymean communications yet. This’ll be the fastest interstellar trip you ever dreamed of. I guarantee it.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The room was just a cubicle, its main furnishing being a kind of recliner, padded in red, with several panels of what looked like a multicolored crystalline material above and on either side of a concave support where the occupant’s head would be. The wall behind carried equipment and fittings of unfamiliar construction.

  Gina ran her eye over the interior. “I take it this is how you connect into the Thurien virtual-travel net,” she guessed.

  “That’s right,” Hunt said. He tapped the communicator disk attached behind his ear. “This gadget that they gave you when you came aboard is just a two-way audiovisual link to VISAR-a viphone that goes straight into your head instead of through screens and senses. But this is the full works.”

  “What they call total neural stimulation?”

  “Instead of you having to go take your sense to wherever the information is, this brings the information to your senses-provided that the place you want to ‘go’ is wired with sensors for the system. It wouldn’t work too well for Times Square or the middle of the Gobi. Also, it intercepts the motor and speech outputs from your brain, and generates the feedback that you’d experience from moving around and interacting there.”

  Gina nodded but still looked unsure. After a few seconds, she said, “And all of that two-way information transfer takes place instantly through the same-what do you call it, ‘dimension’?”

  “I-space.”

  “That’s it… that this ship goes through to get to Jevlen, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay… But the ship has to spend a whole day getting out past Pluto before it can use i-space. How come this coupler can do it from right here? Or how come you can do it from Goddard, for that matter?”

  Hunt was already nodding. “A port big enough to take a ship would mess up everybody’s astronomical tables if you projected it into a planetary system. So instant planet-to-planet hopping is out. But for communications it’s a different matter. You can send information on a gamma-frequency laser into a microtoroid that can be generated on planetary surfaces-or in ships like this one-without undesirable side effects. The Thuriens use it for most of their routine business and social calling-and you don’t have to worry about drinking the water or catching any foreign bugs. It’s got a lot of advantages.”

  Gina moved forward and touched the material of the recliner curiously. It was soft and yielding. Hunt watched from inside the doorway. “So what do I do?” she asked.

  “Just take a seat. VISAR will handle the rest.”

  Gina hesitated for a moment, feeling just a trifle self-conscious. The she lowered herself into the recliner, settled her feet on the rest, and let herself sink back. A warm, drowsy
feeling swept over her, causing her head to drop back automatically onto the concave support, which was also padded. She felt more relaxed than she could ever remember. The interior of the cubicle seemed to be floating distantly in a detached kind of way. A part of her mind was aware that she had been thinking coherently only moments before, and that someone else had been there for some reason, but she was unable to recall who or why, or really to care. Nothing really mattered.

  “Like it?” She recognized the voice as VISAR’s.

  “It’s great. What do I do-just lie back and enjoy it?”

  “First, we’ll need to register some more of your personal cerebral patterns,” VISAR said. “It only takes a few seconds.” When Gina had first tried the communicator disk, she had experienced a strange series of sensations and illusions in her hearing and vision. VISAR had explained that the range and activity levels in the sensory parts of the brain varied from individual to individual, and it was necessary to tune the system to give the right responses. Once established, the parameters were stored away for future reference, making the process a onetime thing, analogous to fingerprinting. Presumably VISAR now needed to extend its records to accommodate the other sensory centers, too.

  Gina found herself becoming acutely conscious of the pressure of the recliner against her body, the touch of her clothes, and even the feeling of air flowing through her nostrils as she breathed. She could feel her own pulses all over, and then a weird tingling unrolling down her spine. VISAR was experimenting with her sense of touch, exercising her nervous system through its range of responses and reading the neural activity.

  She felt herself convulsing in spasms-and then realized that she wasn’t moving at all; the sensation was due to rapid variations of sensitivity occurring all over her skin. She felt hot, then cold, then itchy, then prickly, and finally numb. Sweet, sour, bitter, then again sweet tastes came and went in her mouth; her nose experienced a succession of odors… And all of a sudden, she was wide awake and alert again, and everything was normal.