Our Charter...

[Xanupox]

CHARTER



History of Celestial Tomb:

It is said that outside of space and time an entity known only as the Nameless exists, and that this being created all that there is and was and will be. It is also written in ancient texts that from His mind sprang not only the universe and its countless suns and worlds, but also a myriad of sentient, powerful, yet finite creatures whom one such as a man, or elf, or dwarf, would call a god.


In aeons past came one of these gods upon the world Norrath. Veeshan, Crystalline Dragon and ruler of the Plane of Sky, found this world pleasing and deposited her brood onto the frozen continent of Velious. With one swipe of her mighty claws, Veeshan opened several great wounds upon the surface of Norrath, staking her claim to this promising new world. Dragons then walked the land and flew the skies, powerful beings of great intellect, wisdom, and strength. Thus began the Age of Scale.


Other Gods became jealous, and each formed their own creations to balance the power of the Wurmqueen in their desire to gain strength in the new world. Each God and Goddess attracted followers who became Hero’s through the Elder age and up until our current age of turmoil. The Gods did not recognize what they were unleashing for the Heroes would learn the Gods true intentions! As each of the most reknowned in the lands were finally struck down, Veeshan laid them to rest in the Celestial Plane.


Veeshan, ruling the skies themselves revealed to the Hero’s souls what the true intentions of the gods were, and this caused a cataclysm to strike the Celestial Plane, Veeshan cunningly fled the rebellion and left open a portal back to Norrath knowing that her minor setback would become a major victory. ‘How fun’ the Great Dragon thought, "it will be to watch the mighty of ages past strike down the other gods and ensure my continual power.


Saddened and ashamed over the ages of torture and abuse the Heroes reborn awakened with mystical powers from all different backgrounds and races united against the Gods and all their foul spawn at a last chance to reclaim their world and bring true peace. These warriors returned to Norrath from their Celestial Tomb.


Gathering together a pact was made between them all, and seeing this great force the god’s retreated to there planes for strength as Veeshan Predicted. But she made a vital mistake, for the group she had forced into creation, were no longer mortals true, but had gained insight into the ways and power of immortality. They pursued many gods to thier homes and struck them down, too late Veeshan foresaw that she had sowed the seeds of her own destruction. She immediately began sending her dragon armies into action in preparing for the fierce fight, knowing that only by slowing the Tomb, could she search for a way to survive.







Hierarchy:

The Officers and Guild Leader shall decide upon matters pertaining to the guild. Consider your respective Officers as your representatives in all matters discussed within the guild. Decisions affecting the guild are made by a two-thirds majority vote of the active Officers and Guild Leader.


Primary contact or leader is Xanupox. All queries regarding the guild as a whole are to be referred to one of the officers listed in the Members Section. (For instance, in a guild conflict with another guild refer any comments or grievances to any one of the officers who may be present or online at the time.)


In guild events/hunts officers are to act as War Masters if they choose or to select a War Master. These events will then have a pre-selected war master who will lead the event. It is imperative that all members present listen closely to the war master for the duration of the hunt. Paying attention to what the war master says is vital to the success of any objective.


War masters are pre-selected by either a consensus among the officers or by the Guild Leader.








Order of Hierarchy:

Guild Leader: Xanupox El'Ninjapox


Council of Officers


War Master


Senior/Veteran Members


Newer Members


Trial Members







Membership Guidelines:

Celestial Tomb has no guild dues, fees, events, or required meetings unless called by the Guild Leader. It is expected that if a member is online and able that they do attend a raid if they are needed by the guild. The primary focus of this guild is to have Fun and attain significant respect while achieving mutual goals. Those goals currently include slaying Gods, Dragons, Planes Beasts, and all manner of high level creatures. While we desire loot to strengthen ourselves, it is not the main driving force, which motivates us. We wish to experience a higher level of gaming/adventuring. Satisfaction of success as a group is our true Reward.








Guild Code of Conduct:

Members need to be mindful of requests for twinking, and special favors such as resurrections, spirit of the wolf, teleportation, etc.


Harassment is an intolerable offense. Harassment of this guild or any other guild by its membership is forbidden and in extreme cases may be punishable by expulsion from the guild. This rule will be strictly enforced.


Kill stealing, Ninja looting, Purposeful training and gross abuse of the PnP is unacceptable behavior and guilty parties may be subject to expulsion.


Please exercise common courtesy as a rule at all times.


Keep guild chat to a minimum especially during raids.


All raids are the primary responsibility of the team that undertakes the risk involved. While the guild may help if things go wrong, and members are requested to offer assistance whenever possible, it is not required if they were not directly participating.


Racial slurs and excessive use of obscenity is an unacceptable practice. This rule will be strictly enforced.


Any member who has a problem that needs to be addressed by the guild should bring it to the attention of an Officer and then to the Guild Leader if no satisfactory action has been taken.






New membership:

Potential new recruits should be referred to any available officer for initial processing. This primarily will consist of an informal assessment of the adventurer’s vital statistics, which includes class, level, and ability.





Primary requirements for entry into Celestial Tomb are as follows:

Note: These requirements will change from time to time depending on what the officers and Guild Leader feels necessary to continue the success of the guild.


The minimum level for consideration will be 50 for any class. Higher level in some classes depending on the guilds needs at the time. Membership varies from active recruiting to a freeze on various classes.


Attendance to many Celestial Tomb raids for Officer and Guild leader inspection, along with familiarization with current guild members.


A new member must be voted in by a two-thirds majority of the officers and the Guild Master.






New member admission standards:

Note: Changes to the admission standards will be determined and approved by a two-thirds vote of the Guild Leader and Officers.


There will be a mandatory one-month trial member period for all new members.


New members will not be allowed to have a secondary in the guild until they reach full member status.


No additional vote is necessary for a trial member to reach full member status. If a trial member is not removed before the end of the one-month trial period they will be considered to have full membership status. All new members should understand that they would be considered at the bottom tier in all loot issues for an indefinite period of time primarily based on guild participation.


Trial members will have access to the guilds website.


Real life family and friends will not be given special treatment when considered for guild membership. They will have to join just as anyone else.






Loot Issues:

The Guild Leader will decide loot issues or by a consensus of Officers or the War Master if no officers are present. Non Officer War Masters should seek the advice and input of any Officer online or the Guild Master whenever possible before distributing loot items.






The Basic outline includes:

Officers only will check loot. Gems, crowns, etc will be looted by the group leader whose group gets the kill and liquidated or converted for future use by the guild.


On any special loot at guild specific events loot will NOT be rolled on. The presiding senior Officers or Guild Leader will decide loot in all situations. They may consult with others in the group and give the loot to the member who can make the most valuable use of said item.






Senior officers are ranked in this order in calling loot:

Guild Leader


Warmaster Officer


Class Leaders(Officers)


Officers


Class Leaders(Non-Officers)


Any of the aforementioned may defer to the next in rank. The officers themselves will decide upon rank among officers.


In the case that there is more than one item per event that is useful to the same class it will go to the next available member at the senior officer/leaders discretion. This method of even distribution will continue with every new item for said class until all have been given a loot turn. When all within that class have looted the order will start again at the officer/leaders discretion.






Specific notes on God or Dragon loot:

As in the case of guild only events loot will not be rolled upon. Once the loot order is decided (after the God or Dragon is slain typically) by the senior officer/leader those members will be resurrected immediately to loot the mob before the items decay. No one is to check the dead mob for loot except the group leader whose group gets the kill and the senior officer/leader. Obviously not everyone can loot when a guild is able to kill a God or Dragon. The idea is to make it as fair and as beneficial to the guild as possible. If you manage to be one of the lucky few who loots a God or Dragon you may be left out of the loot order on Gods and Dragons for a period of time on subsequent runs so that others may have an opportunity at improving their equipment. This will be at the senior officer/leaders discretion.


Outside of guild specific events or where you find yourself in a one-group camp with fellow members these loot rules will not apply to you. However, it is strongly encouraged that you take it upon yourself to be responsible and think of the guild first when and if an item comes up that you cannot directly use.


Too often in everyday situations people lose out on valuable and useful items due to bad luck. In a guild such as ours we have the ability to monitor such situations and not allow uneven distribution of loot as a result of chance. Using this power will enable us as a guild to grow stronger together. Instead of favoring the individual we can give items to those who can use them best. Having a more capable guild will allow us to do and succeed at more things. This gives us more loot/equipment, which in turn gives us more ability to achieve our goals, etc.


If we all help each other and are successful we should all eventually be able to get something. Loot will only become a serious problem if we let it so lets all try to hold ourselves as accountable as possible in dealing with this sensitive issue.






These policies are not permanent and are subject to change based on discussions from members and officers with final officer approval.

[Zamtuk]

Gorilla
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Gorilla (disambiguation).
This article is semi-protected indefinitely in response to an ongoing high risk of vandalism.
Gorillas[1]
Western Gorilla
(Gorilla gorilla)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Gorillini
Genus: Gorilla
I. Geoffroy, 1852
Type species
Troglodytes gorilla
Savage, 1847
Species

Gorilla gorilla
Gorilla beringei
distribution of Gorilla

Gorillas are the largest of the living primates. They are ground-dwelling and predominantly herbivorous. They inhabit the forests of central Africa. Gorillas are divided into two species and (still under debate as of 2008) either four or five subspecies. The DNA of gorillas is 98%–99% identical to that of a human,[2] and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after the two chimpanzee species.

Gorillas live in tropical or subtropical forests. Although their range covers a small percentage of Africa, gorillas cover a wide range of elevations. The Mountain Gorilla inhabits the Albertine Rift montane cloud forests of the Virunga Volcanoes, ranging in altitude from 2,200–4,300 metres (7,200–14,000 ft). Lowland Gorillas live in dense forests and lowland swamps and marshes as low as sea level.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Etymology
* 2 Evolution and classification
* 3 Physical characteristics
* 4 Behavior
o 4.1 Group life
o 4.2 Food and foraging
o 4.3 Reproduction and lifespan
* 5 Intelligence
o 5.1 Tool use
* 6 Interactions with humans
o 6.1 Studies
o 6.2 Endangerment
o 6.3 Cultural references
* 7 See also
* 8 References
* 9 External links

Etymology

The American physician and missionary Thomas Staughton Savage and naturalist Jeffries Wyman first described the Western Gorilla (they called it Troglodytes gorilla) in 1847 from specimens obtained in Liberia.[3] The name was derived from the Greek word Gorillai (a "tribe of hairy women") described by Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian navigator and possible visitor (circa 480 BC) to the area that later became Sierra Leone.[4]
Evolution and classification
Female gorilla.

The closest relatives of gorillas are chimpanzees and humans, from which gorillas diverged about 7 million years ago.[5] Human genes differ only 1.6% on average from their corresponding gorilla genes in their sequence, but there is further difference in how many copies each gene has.[6]

Until recently there was considered to be a single gorilla species, with three subspecies: the Western Lowland Gorilla, the Eastern Lowland Gorilla and the Mountain Gorilla.[7][8] There is now agreement that there are two species with two subspecies each. More recently it has been claimed that a third subspecies exists in one of the species.

Primatologists continue to explore the relationships between various gorilla populations.[7] The species and subspecies listed here are the ones upon which most scientists agree.[citation needed]

* Genus Gorilla [1]
o Western Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla)
+ Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla)
+ Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli)
o Eastern Gorilla (Gorilla beringei)
+ Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei)
+ Eastern Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri)

The proposed third subspecies of Gorilla beringei, which has not yet received a trinomen, is the Bwindi population of the Mountain Gorilla, sometimes called the Bwindi Gorilla.
Physical characteristics
Video showing a Western Lowland Gorilla walking on all four limbs towards a second gorilla which is sitting around on a rock. The second gorilla turns towards the camera inquisitively.
Play video
Two Western Lowland Gorillas move around at Ueno Zoo.

Gorillas move around by knuckle-walking. Adult males range in height from 1.65–1.75 metres (5 ft 5 in–5 ft 9 in), and in weight from 140–200 kg (310–440 lb). Adult females are often half the size of a silverback, averaging about 1.4 metres (4 ft 7 in) tall and 100 kg (220 lb). Occasionally, a silverback of over 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in) and 230 kg (510 lb) has been recorded in the wild. However, obese gorillas in captivity have reached a weight of 270 kg (600 lb).[9] Gorillas have a facial structure which is described as mandibular prognathism, that is, their mandible protrudes farther out than the maxilla.

The Eastern Gorilla is more darkly colored than the Western Gorilla, with the Mountain Gorilla being the darkest of all. The Mountain Gorilla also has the thickest hair. The Western Lowland Gorilla can be brown or grayish with a reddish forehead. In addition, gorillas that live in lowland forests are more slender and agile than the more bulky Mountain Gorilla.[10]

Almost all gorillas share the same blood type (B)[11] and, like humans, have individual finger prints.[12]
Behavior
Group life
"Blackback" redirects here. For other uses, see Blackback (disambiguation).
"Silverback" redirects here. For other uses, see Silverback (disambiguation).

A silverback is an adult male gorilla, typically more than 12 years of age and named for the distinctive patch of silver hair on his back. A silverback gorilla has large canine teeth that come with maturity. Blackbacks are sexually mature males of up to 11 years of age.
A silverback gorilla portrait.

Silverbacks are the strong, dominant troop leaders. Each typically leads a troop (group size ranges from 5 to 30) and is in the center of the troop's attention, making all the decisions, mediating conflicts, determining the movements of the group, leading the others to feeding sites and taking responsibility for the safety and well-being of the troop. Blackbacks may serve as backup protection.

Males will slowly begin to leave their original troop when they are about 11 years old, traveling alone or with a group of other males for 2–5 years before being able to attract females to form a new group and start breeding. While infant gorillas normally stay with their mother for 3–4 years, silverbacks will care for weaned young orphans, though never to the extent of carrying the little gorillas. If challenged by a younger or even by an outsider male, a silverback will scream, beat his chest, break branches, bare his teeth, then charge forward. Sometimes a younger male in the group can take over leadership from an old male. If the leader is killed by disease, accident, fighting or poachers, the group will split up, as the animals disperse to look for a new protective male. Occasionally, a group may be taken over in its entirety by another male. There is a strong risk that the new male will kill the infants of the dead silverback.
Food and foraging
Female and baby gorillas.

Gorillas are herbivores,[13] eating fruits, leaves, and shoots. Further they are classified as foliovores. Much like other animals that feed on plants and shoots, they sometimes ingest small insects as well (however there has been video proof that gorillas do eat ants and termites much in the same way as chimpanzees.)[14] Gorillas spend most of the day eating. Their large sagittal crest and long canines allow them to crush hard plants like bamboo. Lowland gorillas feed mainly on fruit while Mountain gorillas feed mostly on herbs, stems and roots.[10]
Reproduction and lifespan

Gestation is 8½ months. There are typically 3 to 4 years between births. Infants stay with their mothers for 3–4 years. Females mature at 10–12 years (earlier in captivity); males at 11–13 years. Lifespan is between 30–50 years, although there have been exceptions. For example the Dallas Zoo's Jenny lived to the age of 55.[15][16][17] Recently, gorillas have been observed engaging in face-to-face sex, a trait that was once considered unique to humans and the Bonobo.[18]
Intelligence

Gorillas are closely related to humans and are considered highly intelligent. A few individuals in captivity, such as Koko, have been taught a subset of sign language (see animal language for a discussion).
Tool use
A female gorilla exhibiting tool use by using a tree trunk as a support whilst fishing.

The following observations were made by a team led by Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society in September 2005. Gorillas are now known to use tools in the wild. A female gorilla in the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo was recorded using a stick as if to gauge the depth of water whilst crossing a swamp. A second female was seen using a tree stump as a bridge and also as a support whilst fishing in the swamp. This means that all of the great apes are now known to use tools.[19]

In September 2005, a two and a half year old gorilla in the Republic of Congo was discovered using rocks to smash open palm nuts inside a game sanctuary.[20] While this was the first such observation for a gorilla, over 40 years previously chimpanzees had been seen using tools in the wild, famously 'fishing' for termites. Great apes are endowed with a semi-precision grip, and certainly have been able to use both simple tools and even weapons, by improvising a club from a convenient fallen branch.
Interactions with humans
Studies

The word "gorilla" comes from the history of Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian explorer on an expedition on the west African coast. They encountered "a savage people, the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and who our interpreters called Gorillae".[21] The word was then later used as the species name, though it is unknown whether what these ancient Carthaginians encountered were truly gorillas, another species of ape or monkeys, or humans.[7]

American physician and missionary Thomas Staughton Savage obtained the first specimens (the skull and other bones) during his time in Liberia in Africa.[3] The first scientific description of gorillas dates back to an article by Savage and the naturalist Jeffries Wyman in 1847 in Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History,[22][23] where Troglodytes gorilla is described, now known as the Western Gorilla. Other species of gorilla are described in the next couple of years.[7]

Explorer Paul du Chaillu was the first westerner to see a live gorilla during his travel through western equatorial Africa from 1856 to 1859. He brought dead specimens to the UK in 1861.[24][25]

The first systematic study was not conducted until the 1920s, when Carl Akeley of the American Museum of Natural History traveled to Africa to hunt for an animal to be shot and stuffed. On his first trip he was accompanied by his friends Mary Bradley, a famous mystery writer, and her husband. After their trip, Mary Bradley wrote On the Gorilla Trail. She later became an advocate for the conservation of gorillas and wrote several more books (mainly for children). In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Robert Yerkes and his wife Ava helped further the study of gorillas when they sent Harold Bigham to Africa. Yerkes also wrote a book in 1929 about the great apes.

After World War II, George Schaller was one of the first researchers to go into the field and study primates. In 1959, he conducted a systematic study of the mountain gorilla in the wild and published his work. Years later, at the behest of Louis Leakey and the National Geographic, Dian Fossey conducted a much longer and more comprehensive study of the Mountain Gorilla. It was not until she published her work that many misconceptions and myths about gorillas were finally disproved, including the myth that gorillas are violent.
Endangerment

Both species of gorilla are endangered, and have been subject to intense poaching for a long time. Threats to gorilla survival include habitat destruction and the bushmeat trade. In 2004 a population of several hundred gorillas in the Odzala National Park, Republic of Congo was essentially wiped out by the Ebola virus.[26] A 2006 study published in Science concluded that more than 5,000 gorillas may have died in recent outbreaks of the Ebola virus in central Africa. The researchers indicated that in conjunction with commercial hunting of these apes, the virus creates "a recipe for rapid ecological extinction."[27] Conservation efforts include the Great Ape Survival Project, a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and also an international treaty, the Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and Their Habitats, concluded under UNEP-administered Convention on Migratory Species. The Gorilla Agreement is the first legally binding instrument exclusively targeting Gorilla conservation and came into effect on 1 June 2008.
Cultural references
Main article: Gorillas in popular culture

Since they came to the attention of western society in the 1860s, gorillas have been a recurring element of many aspects of popular culture and media. For example, gorillas have featured prominently in monstrous fantasy films such as King Kong, and pulp fiction such as the stories of Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian have featured gorillas as physical opponents to the titular protagonists.
See also

* List of apes – notable individual apes
* List of fictional apes

References

1. ^ a b Groves, C. (2005). Wilson, D. E., & Reeder, D. M. ed. Mammal Species of the World (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 181-182. ISBN 0-801-88221-4. http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/browse.asp?id=12100787.
2. ^ In a talk presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association on November 20, 1999, Jonathan Marks stated: "Humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas are within two percentage points of one another genetically." Jonathan Marks. "What It Really Means To Be 99% Chimpanzee". http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/interes ... saaa99.htm. Retrieved 2006-10-10.
3. ^ a b Conniff R. Discovering gorilla. Evolutionary Anthropology, 18: 55-61. doi:10.1002/evan.20203
4. ^ Müller, C. (1855-61). Geographici Graeci Minores. pp. 1.1–14: text and trans. Ed, J. Blomqvist (1979).
5. ^ Glazko GV, Nei M (March 2003). "Estimation of divergence times for major lineages of primate species". Mol. Biol. Evol. 20 (3): 424–34. doi:10.1093/molbev/msg050. PMID 12644563. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/20/3/424.
6. ^ Goidts V, Armengol L, Schempp W, et al. (March 2006). "Identification of large-scale human-specific copy number differences by inter-species array comparative genomic hybridization". Hum. Genet. 119 (1-2): 185–98. doi:10.1007/s00439-005-0130-9. PMID 16395594.
7. ^ a b c d Groves, Colin (2002). "A history of gorilla taxonomy". Gorilla Biology: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Andrea B. Taylor & Michele L. Goldsmith (editors) (Cambridge University Press): 15–34. doi:10.2277/0521792819. http://arts.anu.edu.au/grovco/Gorilla%20Biology.pdf.
8. ^ Stewart, Kelly J.; Pascale Sicotte, Martha M. Robbins (2001). "Mountain Gorillas of the Virungas". Fathom / Cambridge University Press. http://www.fathom.com/course/21701783/. Retrieved 2008-09-11.
9. ^ "Gorilla - The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition". bartleby.com. Archived from the original on 2008-02-12. http://web.archive.org/web/200802120059 ... rilla.html. Retrieved 2006-10-10.
10. ^ a b "Gorilla Information: A gorilla's habitat and diet". http://www.volcanoessafaris.com/great-apes.htm.
11. ^ Glass, Bonnie B. (2001). "Evolution of the Human". http://facstaff.uwa.edu/jmccall/evoluti ... _human.htm. Retrieved 2007-10-22.
12. ^ "Santa Barbara Zoo - Western Lowland Gorilla". santabarbarazoo.org. http://www.santabarbarazoo.org/showAnimals.asp?id=149. Retrieved 2006-10-10.
13. ^ "Gorilla gorilla: Information". animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu. http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/s ... rilla.html. Retrieved 2008-03-26.
14. ^ "Looking at Ape Diets: Myths, Realities, and Rationalizations". beyondveg.com. http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/com ... t-2a.shtml. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
15. ^ .tv3.co.nz, World's oldest gorilla celebrates 55th birthday[dead link]
16. ^ gmanews.tv/story, Gorilla celebrates 55th birthday with frozen cake
17. ^ Associated Press, Oldest living gorilla dies at 55[dead link], Houston Chronicle, 2008-08-05. Retrieved 2008-09-05.
18. ^ Caught in the act! Gorillas mate face to face
19. ^ Breuer, T; Ndoundou-Hockemba M, Fishlock V (2005). "First Observation of Tool Use in Wild Gorillas". PLoS Biol 3 (11): e380. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030380. PMID doi:[http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0030380 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030380 16187795 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030380].
20. ^ "A Tough Nut To Crack For Evolution". CBS News. 2005-10-18. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/ ... 1800.shtml. Retrieved 2006-10-18.
21. ^ Periplus of Hanno, final paragraph
22. ^ Savage TS. (1847). Communication describing the external character and habits of a new species of Troglodytes (T. gorilla). Boston Soc Nat Hist: 245–247.
23. ^ Savage TS, Wyman J. (1847). Notice of the external characters and habits of Troglodytes gorilla, a new species of orang from the Gaboon River, osteology of the same. Boston J Nat Hist 5:417–443.
24. ^ McCook, S. (1996). ""It May Be Truth, but It Is Not Evidence": Paul du Chaillu and the Legitimation of Evidence in the Field Sciences". Osiris 11: 177–197. doi:10.1086/368759.
25. ^ A History of Museum Victoria: Melbourne 1865: Gorillas at the Museum
26. ^ "Gorillas infecting each other with Ebola". NewScientist.com. 2006-07-10. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9 ... ebola.html. Retrieved 2006-07-10.
27. ^ "Ebola 'kills over 5,000 gorillas'". News.bbc.co.uk. 2006-12-08. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6220122.stm. Retrieved 2006-12-09.

External links
Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gorilla
Search Wikispecies Wikispecies has information related to: Gorilla
Search Wikinews Wikinews has related news: Researchers: Wild gorillas seen using tools

* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting International Gorilla Conservation Programme (Video)
* Primate Info Net Gorilla Factsheet - taxonomy, ecology, behavior and conservation
* San Diego Zoo Gorilla Factsheet - features a video and photos
* World Wildlife Fund: Gorillas - conservation, facts and photos
* Gorilla protection - Gorilla conservation
* Welcome to the Year of the Gorilla 2009
* Virunga National Park - The Official Website for Virunga National Park, the Last Refuge for Congo's Mountain Gorillas.

[show]
v • d • e
Extant species of family Hominidae (Great apes)
Kingdom: Animalia · Phylum: Chordata · Class: Mammalia · Order: Primates · Suborder: Haplorrhini
Ponginae
Pongo
(Orangutans)

Bornean Orangutan (P. pygmaeus) · Sumatran Orangutan (P. abelii)
Hominidae
Gorilla

Western Gorilla (G. gorilla) · Eastern Gorilla (G. beringei)
Pan
(Chimpanzees)

Common Chimpanzee (P. troglodytes) · Bonobo (P. paniscus)
Homo

Human (H. s. sapiens)
Category
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Ape-related articles

[Canelek]

Mud wrestling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007)
This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (September 2007)

Mud wrestling is classically defined as physical confrontation (fighting, wrestling, etc.) that occurs in mud or a mud pit. The popular modern interpretation specifies that participants wrestle while wearing minimal clothing and usually going barefoot, with the emphasis on presenting an entertaining spectacle as opposed to physically injuring or debilitating the opponent to the point where they are unable to continue the match. Venues for competition are usually social in nature with equal numbers of male and female spectators. Mud wrestling is typically performed in a semi-competitive fashion — though presented as a competition between participants, winning and losing is not considered as important as having fun. Variations to mud are sometimes used; such as jelly or oil.


A man and a woman mud wrestling at "Mud Fest 2008".Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Organization
3 Variations
4 Pop culture
5 See also

[edit] History
The place and time of origin of mud wrestling is unknown. An early instance can be seen in the 1966 "shockumentary" film Mondo Freudo, though no doubt its origins may be much earlier.

Houston wrestling promoter Paul Boesch is credited with the invention of mud wrestling, as he came up with the concept for the match when booking a feud between Gus Sonnenberg and Harnam Singh in Seattle, Washington. The idea was to do an "Indian Dirt Match", but he accidentally used too much water, and the sand pit became mud. It first became popular in the United States in the 80s, and later spread worldwide. Although originally performed in bars and nightclubs, mud wrestling is now mainstream to the point where organizations have staged mud wrestling events for fun and charity.

[edit] Organization

Basic materials for mud wrestling match. Sodium bentonite clay and straw bales to form a pit or ring.Countless public and private mud wrestling matches have been organized over the years. Most all have resulted in the contestants having only 'good clean fun'. However a few events have resulted in contestants presenting rash-like symptoms in the hours or days following the event.1 2 These unfortunate consequences have often been traced to the use of tainted dirt or unclean water in the preparation of the mud. Thus, even though the contestants are prepared to get dirty, it is important to ensure that the mud is as clean as possible and fresh, potable water is used for all mixing and clean-up.

For small events, a good analog for typical garden variety 'mud' is the use of sodium bentonite clay. Sodium bentonite - aka "Bentonite" is a well known additive in the food and cosmetic industries and is also used in the spa industry as the base for various mud masks, mud wraps and mud baths. Sodium bentonite (as opposed to potassium or calcium bentonite) has the unique property of expanding 15 to 18 times its original volume when hydrated with water. Thus a considerable amount of 'mud' can be synthesized from a relatively small amount of dry bentonite clay.

Bentonite is often available at well stocked clay and pottery dealers and can sometimes be found at various "farm and home centers" where it is used primarily to seal ponds. Clay and pottery stores often stock bentonite in 50 pound bags of very fine powder (i.e. 300 mesh or finer). Farm and home centers may carry bentonite as a fine powder, but a coarse 'chipped' variety is more common. Fine mesh bentonite is much more preferable as it produces a slippery 'mud' which is free from insoluble material and small rocks which may accompany the coarser 'chipped' bentonite.

It is also important to note that complete hydration of bentonite clay may take up to 24 hours once water is added to the dry clay. Thus, some amount of pre-planning may be needed when organizing an event. Additionally, use of bentonite alone, can result in a relatively translucent mixture. Other clays, such as kaolin or Old Mill #4 ball clay can be added to enhance the consistency and opacity of the mud if desired.

Approximately 100 pounds of sodium bentonite combined with 100 pounds of kaolin clay can cover the bottom of a 8' x 8' wrestling ring with several inches of extremely slippery, creamy-smooth mud. Proportions can always be adjusted larger or smaller depending on the amount of mud required and the consistency desired.

[edit] Variations
One common variation involves wrestling in gelatin rather than mud. This practice is known as Jell-O wrestling in the United States and as jelly wrestling in the United Kingdom. Other foods, such as pudding, creamed corn and mashed potatoes, have also been used for similar events.

Another variation of mud wrestling is Oil Wrestling, which is a very popular and traditional sport in Turkey.

Another variation is Mashed Potato Wrestling, which is popular in Barnesville, Minnesota and Clark, South Dakota in the U.S.A.

Another variation involves having the participants in formal dress, the entertainment value supposedly heightened by the ruining of expensive clothing.

[edit] Pop culture
In the movie Old School, an old man named Blue, who was part of a fraternity in the college in the film, died in a KY jelly wrestling competition before it had even started. He probably suffered from a heart attack when the two women he was supposed to wrestle took their tops off.

Mud Wrestling was popularized in France by the TV game show Fort Boyard. In the 90s the Spanish TV game show El gran juego de la oca became highly popular in most Spanish speaking countries. In El Gran Juego de la Oca the participants played as pieces in a giant board game where they had to pass the test of the space where they landed. Next to space number 8 was a mud pit where participants had to complete a test while being disturbed by Romy, a model / female mud wrestler. The tests were different but with the main idea of the mud wrestling, they could go from taking gloves from a wall with hands, to completing a word by finding all the letters painted on the body of the mud wrestler.

The American movie ...All the Marbles deals with the subject of women in professional wrestling. One sequence features a mud wrestling match.

In the PlayStation 2 video game Rumble Roses, a fighting game with an all-female cast, there is a stage where the characters can have a mud wrestling match.

The "sport" came in to mainstream popularity thanks to the Bill Murray movie Stripes (1981), which featured John Candy facing off against six kickboxing wrestlers in a boxing ring filled with mud.

A 2003 Miller Lite commercial ended with two beautiful women (Tanya Ballinger and Kitana Baker) wrestling in a mud pit. An uncensored version had the two women kissing.

Mud wrestling was one of the contests in the second series of Last Man Standing.

[edit] See also
Intergender wrestling
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_wrestling"
Categories: Sports entertainment
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[miir]

Anal fissure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An anal fissure is a natural crack or tear in the skin of the anal canal. Anal fissures may be noticed by bright red anal bleeding on the toilet paper, sometimes in the toilet. If acute they may cause severe periodic pain after defecation [1] but with chronic fissures pain intensity is often less. Anal fissures usually extend from the anal opening and are usually located posteriorly in the midline, probably because of the relatively unsupported nature of the anal wall in that location. Fissure depth may be superficial or sometimes down to the underlying sphincter muscle.


Causes
Most anal fissures are caused by stretching of the anal mucosa beyond its capability. For example, anal fissures are common in women after childbirth[2], after difficult bowel movements, and in infants following constipation.[3]

Superficial or shallow anal fissures look much like a paper cut, and may be hard to detect upon visual inspection, they will generally self-heal within a couple of weeks. However, some anal fissures become chronic and deep and will not heal. The most common cause of non-healing is spasming of the internal anal sphincter muscle which results in impaired blood supply to the anal mucosa. The result is a non-healing ulcer, which may become infected by fecal bacteria.[4]


Prevention
For adults, the following may help prevent anal fissure:

Avoiding straining when defecating. This includes treating and preventing constipation by eating food rich in dietary fiber, drinking enough water, occasional use of a stool softener, and avoiding constipating agents such as caffeine.[5] Similarly, prompt treatment of diarrhea may reduce anal strain.
Careful anal hygiene after defecation, including using soft toilet paper and/or cleaning with water.
In cases of pre-existing or suspected fissure, use of a lubricating ointment (e.g. hemorrhoid ointments) can be helpful.
In infants, frequent nappy/diaper change can prevent anal fissure. As constipation can be a cause, making sure the infant is drinking enough fluids (i.e. breastmilk, proper ratios when mixing formulas. NOTE: See physician before giving infants any fluids outside breastmilk and/or formula) may thus help avoid fissures. In infants, once an anal fissure has occurred, addressing underlying causes is usually enough to ensure healing occurs.

Treatment
Non-surgical treatment is recommended as first-line treatment of acute and chronic anal fissures.[6][7] Customary treatments include warm sitz baths, topical anesthetics, high-fiber diet and stool softeners.

Surgical treatment, under general anaesthesia, was either anal stretch (Lord's operation) or lateral sphincterotomy where the internal anal sphincter muscle is incised. Both operations aim to decrease sphincter spasming and thereby restore normal blood supply to the anal mucosa. Surgical operations involve a general anaesthetic and can be painful postoperatively. Anal stretch is also associated with anal incontinence in a small proportion of cases and thus sphincterotomy is the operation of choice.

A new medical/surgical development came in 1993 when researchers reported injecting botulinum toxin into the anal sphincter to relax the sphincter and promote fissure healing.[1]


Chemical sphincterotomy
Local application of medications to relax the sphincter muscle, thus allowing the healing to proceed, was first proposed in 1994 with nitroglycerine ointment,[8][9][10][11] and then calcium channel blockers with in 1999 nifedipine ointment,[12][13] and the following year with topical diltiazem.[14] Branded preparations are now available of topical nitroglycerine ointment (Rectogesic as 0.2% in Australia and 0.4% in UK), topical nifedipine 0.3% with lidocaine 1.5% ointment (Antrolin in Italy since April 2004) and diltiazem 2% (Anoheal in UK, although still in Phase III development). A common side effect drawback of nitroglycerine ointment is headache, caused by systemic absorption of the drug, which limits patient acceptability.

A combined surgical and pharmacological treatment, administered by colorectal surgeons, is direct injection of Botulinum toxin (Botox) into the anal sphincter to relax it. This treatment was first investigated in 1993.[15] Combination of medical therapies may offer up to 98% cure rates.[16]


Surgical Procedures
Surgical intervention may be required for persisting deep anal fissures unresponsive to the above conservative measures. Despite their high success rate (~95%), they are used only after medical treatment has failed due to their potential complications. These include general risks from anesthesia, infection and anal leakage (fecal incontinence). Surgical procedures include:


Lateral Internal Sphincterotomy
Lateral Internal Sphincterotomy (LIS) is the surgical procedure of choice for anal fissures due to its simplicity and its high success rate (~95%). In this procedure the Internal Anal Sphincter is partially divided in order to reduce spasming and thus improve the blood supply to the perianal area. This improvement in the blood supply helps to heal the fissure, and the weakening of the sphincter is also believed to reduce the potential for recurrence.

LIS does, however, have a number of potential side effects including problems with incision site healing and incontinence to flatus and faeces (some surveys of surgical results suggest incontinence rates of up to 36%[17]).


Anal Dilation (or Dilatation)
Anal dilation, or stretching of the anal canal, (Lord's operation) has fallen out of favour in recent years, primarily due to the perceived unacceptably high incidence of fecal incontinence.[18] In addition, anal stretching can increase the rate of flatus incontinence.[19]

In the early 1990s however Norman Sohn and Michael A. Weinstein of Somerset Surgical Associates pioneered a repeatable method of anal dilation which proved to be very effective and showed a very low incidence of side effects[20]. Since then at least one other controlled, randomized study has shown there to be little difference in healing rates and complications between controlled anal dilation and LIS[21], whilst another has again shown high success rates with anal dilation coupled with low incidence of side effects[22].


See also
Hemorrhoid
Pruritus ani
[edit] References
1.^ a b Gott M.D., Peter H. (March 5, 1998) The Fresno Bee New therapy coming for anal fissures. Section:Life; Page E2
2.^ Abramowitz L, Sobhani I, Benifla JL, et al. (2002). "Anal fissure and thrombosed external hemorrhoids before and after delivery,". Dis. Colon Rectum 45 (5): 650–5. doi:10.1007/s10350-004-6262-5. PMID 12004215.
3.^ Martínez-Costa C, Palao Ortuño MJ, Alfaro Ponce B, et al. (2005). "[Functional constipation: prospective study and treatment response]" (in Spanish; Castilian). Anales de pediatría (Barcelona, Spain) 63 (5): 418–25. PMID 16266617.
4.^ Collins EE, Lund JN.A review of chronic anal fissure management.Tech Coloproctol. 2007 Sep;11(3):209-23.
5.^ Basson, Marc D., "Constipation" @ emedicine
6.^ Nelson R.Non surgical therapy for anal fissure.Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006 Oct 18;(4):CD003431
7.^ Haq Z, Rahman M, Chowdhury R, Baten M, Khatun M (2005). "Chemical sphincterotomy--first line of treatment for chronic anal fissure". Mymensingh Med J 14 (1): 88–90. PMID 15695964.
8.^ Loder P, Kamm M, Nicholls R, Phillips R (1994). "'Reversible chemical sphincterotomy' by local application of glyceryl trinitrate". Br J Surg 81 (9): 1386–9. doi:10.1002/bjs.1800810949. PMID 7953427.
9.^ Watson S, Kamm M, Nicholls R, Phillips R (1996). "Topical glyceryl trinitrate in the treatment of chronic anal fissure". Br J Surg 83 (6): 771–5. doi:10.1002/bjs.1800830614. PMID 8696736.
10.^ Simpson J, Lund J, Thompson R, Kapila L, Scholefield J (2003). "The use of glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) in the treatment of chronic anal fissure in children". Med Sci Monit 9 (10): PI123–6. PMID 14523338.
11.^ Lund JN, Scholefield JH.A randomised, prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of glyceryl trinitrate ointment in treatment of anal fissure.Lancet. 1997 Jan 4;349(9044):11-4.
12.^ Antropoli C, Perrotti P, Rubino M, Martino A, De Stefano G, Migliore G, Antropoli M, Piazza P (1999). "Nifedipine for local use in conservative treatment of anal fissures: preliminary results of a multicenter study". Dis Colon Rectum 42 (8): 1011–5. doi:10.1007/BF02236693. PMID 10458123.
13.^ Katsinelos P, Kountouras J, Paroutoglou G, Beltsis A, Chatzimavroudis G, Zavos C, Katsinelos T, Papaziogas B (2006). "Aggressive treatment of acute anal fissure with 0.5% nifedipine ointment prevents its evolution to chronicity". World J Gastroenterol 12 (38): 6203–6. PMID 17036396. http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/12/6203.asp. Retrieved 2009-05-12.
14.^ Carapeti E, Kamm M, Phillips R (2000). "Topical diltiazem and bethanechol decrease anal sphincter pressure and heal anal fissures without side effects". Dis. Colon Rectum 43 (10): 1359–62. doi:10.1007/BF02236630. PMID 11052511.
15.^ Jost W, Schimrigk K (1993). "Use of botulinum toxin in anal fissure". Dis Colon Rectum 36 (10): 974. doi:10.1007/BF02050639. PMID 8404394.
16.^ Tranqui P, Trottier D, Victor C, Freeman J (2006). "Nonsurgical treatment of chronic anal fissure: nitroglycerin and dilatation versus nifedipine and botulinum toxin" (PDF). Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie 49 (1): 41–5. PMID 16524142. http://www.cma.ca/multimedia/staticCont ... f/pg41.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-12.
17.^ Wolff BG, Fleshman JW, ASCRS, Beck DE, Church JM. The ASCRS Textbook of Colon and Rectal Surgery. p. 180. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3dDY ... continence. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
18.^ Kotlarewsky M, Freeman JB, Cameron W, Grimard LJ (2001). "Anal intraepithelial dysplasia and squamous carcinoma in immunosuppressed patients" (PDF). Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie 44 (6): 450–4. PMID 11764880. http://www.cma.ca/multimedia/staticCont ... /pg450.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-12.
19.^ Sadovsky R (1 April 2003). "Diagnosis and management of patients with anal fissures - Tips from Other Journals" (Reprint). American Family Physician 67 (7): 1608. http://web.archive.org/web/200802091806 ... i_99410474. Retrieved 2009-05-12.
20.^ Sohn M, Weinstein MA (PDF). Anal Dilatation for Anal Fissures. http://ssamed.com/pdf/presentation_adaf.pdf. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
21.^ Yucel T, Gonullu D, Oncu M, Koksoy FN, Ozkan SG, Aycan O (June 2009). "Comparison of controlled-intermittent anal dilatation and lateral internal sphincterotomy in the treatment of chronic anal fissures: a prospective, randomized study". Int J Surg 7(3) (3): 228–31. doi:10.1016/j.ijsu.2009.03.006. PMID 19361582.
22.^ Renzi A, Brusciano L, Pescatori M, Izzo D, Napolitano V, Rossetti G, del Genio G, del Genio A (January 2005). "Pneumatic balloon dilatation for chronic anal fissure: a prospective, clinical, endosonographic, and manometric study". Diseases of the Colon and Rectum 48(1) (1): 121–6. PMID 15690668

[Canelek]

Most people do not realize that anal health is absolutely paramount to intraguild relations.

[Soreali]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Anal leakage)
Steatorrhea
Classification and external resources
ICD-10 K90.
ICD-9 579.8
MeSH D045602
Steatorrhea is the presence of excess fat in feces. Stools may also float due to excess lipid, have an oily appearance and be especially foul smelling. An oily anal leakage or some level of fecal incontinence may occur. There is increased fat excretion, which can be measured by determining the fecal fat level. While definitions have not been standardised, fat excretion in feces in excess of 0.3 (g/kg)/day[citation needed] is considered indicative of steatorrhea.
Contents [hide]
1 Possible biological causes
1.1 Seen in
2 As a side effect of weight-loss drugs or 'functional foods'
2.1 Artificial fats
2.2 Medications
2.3 Natural fats
3 Treatment
4 References
[edit]Possible biological causes

Possible biological causes can be lack of bile acids (due to liver damage, hypolipidemic drugs, or having had the gallbladder removed in a cholecystectomy), defects in pancreatic juices (enzymes), and defective mucosal cells. The absence of bile acids will cause the feces to turn gray or pale. Another cause of steatorrhea is due to the adverse effect of octreotide or lanreotide which are analogs of somatostatin, used clinically to treat acromegaly.
[edit]Seen in
malabsorption, e.g. in inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, and abetalipoproteinaemia
exocrine pancreatic insufficiency
pancreatitis
choledocholithiasis - (obstruction of the bile duct by a gallstone)
pancreatic cancer - (if it obstructs biliary outflow)
primary sclerosing cholangitis
bacterial overgrowth
short bowel syndrome
cystic fibrosis
Zollinger-Ellison syndrome
Giardiasis - a protozoan parasite infection
Abuse or misuse of certain prescribed slimming pills, such as Orlistat (Alli)
[edit]As a side effect of weight-loss drugs or 'functional foods'

Steatorrhea can also be due to eating non-digestible oils or fats such as Olestra, and a side-effect of medicines that prevent the absorption of dietary fats such as Orlistat.[1][2][3][4]
[edit]Artificial fats
The fat substitute Olestra, used in some reduced-fat foods, was reported to cause leakage in some consumers during the test-marketing phase. As a result, the product was reformulated before general release to a hydrogenated form that is not liquid at physiologic temperature. The United States Food and Drug Administration warning indicated that excessive consumption of Olestra could result in "loose stools"; this warning has not been required since 2003.[2][4]
[edit]Medications
Orlistat (Xenical) is a diet pill that works by blocking the enzymes that digest fat. As a result fat cannot be absorbed from the gut and some fat is excreted in the feces instead of being metabolically digested, sometimes causing oily anal leakage.[1][3]
[edit]Natural fats
Consuming jojoba oil has been documented to cause steatorrhea and anal leakage because it is indigestible.[5]
Consuming escolar and oilfish (sometimes called butterfish) will often cause steatorrhea. The fish is commonly used in party catering due to its delicate flavor and the fact that it is cheap and readily available.
[edit]Treatment

Treatments are mainly correction of the underlying cause, as well as digestive enzyme supplements.[6]
[edit]References

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

asshat

a person suffering from acute cranial-rectal inversion.

A person, of either gender, whose behavior displays such ignorance/obnoxiousness that you would like to make them wear their own ass as a hat.
Usage: "Can you believe that my boss is making me stay until 9 pm on a Friday!?" "What an asshat."

a unit vector in the ass direction
(similar to i hat, a unit vector in the i (or x) direction, j hat, k hat, etc.)
"Andrew is such an asshat."
"Totally. His unit vector is definitely pointed in the ass direction."

describing when one's head is so far up one's ass that one is wearing the ass as a hat. in other words, extreme stupidity.
A: Look at all those hurricane victims on their roofs, waving at the helicopters, begging for emergency food to be dropped down! Why don't they just leave?
B: You asshat.

A close cousin of the Ass-clown, typically identified by a jovial expression and an outward misunderstanding of how he/she is perceived, combined with a generally misguided conception of what is sociably acceptable amongst his/her fellow peers.

Said persons' frequent attempts at humor usually lead to he/she making an ass out of his/herself. Not to be confused with ass-hole.
"Quit throwing pennies at that homeless man, you asshat."
"Hey asshat, thanks for double parking."

One who has their head up their ass, thus wearing their ass as a hat. Someone who is very ignorant, stubborn or dull.
"Gah! Dan won't pay me back my cash! Freakin' asshat!"

one who is oblivious to the world around them,lacking common sense,their head might as well be up their ass.

[Dregor Thule]

Zerg
A Zerg hydralisk, as seen in StarCraft.

The Zerg Swarm is a race of fictional insectoids and the overriding antagonists of the StarCraft series. Operating as a hive mind, the Zerg strive for genetic perfection by assimilating "worthy" races into their own, creating numerous different strains of Zerg. Unlike the Protoss and the Terrans, the Zerg do not use technology, instead using assimilation of other species and directed mutation to develop traits to match such technology. As with the other two primary races, the Zerg are the subject of a full campaign in each of the series' real-time strategy video games. Zerg units are designed to be cheap and fast to produce, encouraging players to overwhelm their opponents with sheer numbers. Since the release of StarCraft the Zerg have become a video gaming icon, described by PC Gamer UK as "the best race in strategy history".[35] The phrase "zerging" has entered video gaming jargon to describe using many low-cost and weak units to rush and overwhelm an enemy.(see: Celestial Tomb)[36]
[edit] Attributes
[edit] Society

The Zerg are a collective consciousness of a variety of different races assimilated into the Zerg genome. The Zerg are originally commanded by the Zerg Overmind, a manifestation of this hive mind, and under the Overmind's control the Zerg strived for genetic perfection by assimilating the favourable traits of other species.[37] After a species has been assimilated into the Swarm, it is mutated towards a different function within its hierarchy, from being a hive worker to a warrior strain. StarCraft's manual notes that some species bear little resemblance to their original forms after just a short time into assimilation.[38] The Overmind controls the Swarm through secondary agents called cerebrates. Cerebrates command an individual brood of Zerg, each with a distinct tactical role within the hierarchy. Cerebrates further delegate power through the use of overlords for battlefield direction and queens for hive overwatch.[37]

The vast majority of the Zerg do not have any free will as they are genetically forced to obey the commands of those further up the Zerg hierarchy, although they are sufficiently intelligent to form strategies and work as a team on the battlefield. Despite this, the average Zerg has no sense of self preservation.[39] Along with the Overmind, the cerebrates are the only Zerg with full sapience, each with its own personality and methods, although they too are genetically incapable of disobeying the Overmind.[37] The Overmind also possesses the ability to reincarnate its cerebrates should their bodies be killed, although Protoss dark templar energies are capable of disrupting this process. If a cerebrate is completely dead and cannot be reincarnated, the Overmind loses control of the cerebrate's brood, causing it to mindlessly rampage and attack anything. As a result of the Overmind's death in StarCraft and the subsequent destruction of a new Overmind in Brood War, Blizzard Entertainment's Chris Metzen revealed that the surviving cerebrates perish as they are genetically incapable of surviving without their master, leaving the infested Terran and prize of the Overmind, Sarah Kerrigan, in complete control over the Swarm.[40]
[edit] Depiction

The backstory for the series describes the original Zerg as small larvae, the "most insignificant lifeform" on their homeworld Zerus.[41] The Xel'Naga are responsible for manipulating the evolution of the Zerg, allowing the larval Zerg to parasitically merge with other creatures, taking control of their host's nervous systems. From here, the Zerg can mutate the host and add its DNA to the Zerg gene pool for other Zerg larvae to mutate into.[41] This method of assimilation means that there is no distinctly typical Zerg; rather, many different strains and breeds of Zerg, each based on the original core genus. However, the style of the Zerg is consistent, with breeds using a carapace for armor, and using spines, claws and acids for attacking enemies.[42] Each strain serves a distinct role and possesses the traits necessary to fulfill its function. Zerg colonies also exhibit similar roles, with each structure built within a colony essentially making up an organ in a larger lifeform. Zerg colonies produce a carpet of bio-matter referred to as the "creep", which essentially provides nourishment for Zerg structures and creatures.[42] The Zerg are also shown to be highly dependent on their command structure: if a Zerg should lose its connection to the hive mind, it may turn passive and incapable of action, or become completely uncontrollable and attack allies and enemies alike.

Zerg buildings and units are entirely organic in-game, allowing every Zerg to slowly regenerate if they are damaged. Zerg production is far more centralized than with the Terrans and Protoss; a central hatchery must be utilized to create new Zerg, with other structures providing the necessary technology tree assets, whereas the other two races can produce units from several structures. Zerg units tend to be weaker than those of the other two races, but are also cheaper, allowing for rush tactics to be used. Some Zerg units are capable of infesting enemies with various parasites that range from being able to see what an enemy unit sees to spawning Zerg inside an enemy unit. In addition, Zerg can infest some Terran buildings, allowing for the production of special infested Terran units.[43]
[edit] Appearances

In StarCraft, the Zerg are obsessed with the pursuit of genetic purity, and are the focus of the game's second episode. With the Xel'Naga–empowered Protoss targeted as the ultimate lifeform, the Zerg invade the Terran colonies in the Koprulu Sector to assimilate the Terrans' psionic potential and give the Zerg an edge over the Protoss. Through the actions of the Sons of Korhal, the Zerg are lured to the Confederate capital Tarsonis, where they capture the psionic ghost agent Sarah Kerrigan and infest her. Returning to the Zerg base of operations on Char, the Zerg are attacked by the dark templar Zeratul, who accidentally gives the location of the Protoss homeworld Aiur over to the Zerg Overmind. With victory in sight, the Overmind launches an invasion of Aiur and manifests itself on the planet. However, at the end of the game, the Protoss high templar Tassadar sacrifices himself to destroy the Overmind, leaving the Zerg to run rampant and leaderless across the planet.[22]

The Zerg return in Brood War initially as uncontrolled indiscriminate killers. Through the early portions of Brood War, Sarah Kerrigan is at odds with the surviving cerebrates, who have formed a new Overmind to restore control of the Swarm. Through allying herself with the Protoss, Kerrigan strikes at the cerebrates, causing disruption of their plans. Eventually, the UED fleet takes control of Char and pacifies the new Overmind with drugs, putting the cerebrates and most of the Zerg under their control. Kerrigan retaliates by allying with the Dominion and the forces of Jim Raynor and Fenix, regaining the ground lost to the UED. However, she later betrays this alliance, dealing long-term damage to her allies' infrastructures. Proceeding to blackmail Zeratul into killing the new Overmind, Kerrigan's forces destroy the remnants of the UED fleet, giving her full control of the Zerg and establishing the Swarm as the most powerful faction in the sector.[23]

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

Douche
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is semi-protected due to vandalism.
A vaginal bulb syringe. Note the lateral holes near the tip of the nozzle (about 1cm, or 1/2 inch thick).
This "fountain syringe" should only be used for douching, by replacing the attached enema nozzle with the vaginal nozzle (shown bottom left). The vaginal nozzle is longer, thicker, and has lateral holes.

A douche is a device used to introduce a stream of water into the body for medical or hygienic reasons, or the stream of water itself.

Douche usually refers to vaginal irrigation, the rinsing of the vagina, but it can also refer to the rinsing of any body cavity. A douche bag is a piece of equipment for douching—a bag for holding the fluid used in douching. To avoid transferring intestinal bacteria into the vagina, the same bag must not be used for a vaginal douche and an enema.[citation needed]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Etymology
* 2 Overview
* 3 Slang uses
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

Etymology

The word "douche" comes from the French language, in which its principal meaning is a shower (it is thus a notorious false friend encountered by non-native speakers of English; the French phrase for vaginal douching is douche vaginale, meaning vaginal shower). The word "douche" is also used in English as a derogatory slang term (see slang uses below).
Overview

Vaginal douches may consist of water, water mixed with vinegar, or even antiseptic chemicals. Douching has been touted as having a number of supposed but unproven benefits. In addition to promising to clean the vagina of unwanted odors, it can also be used by women who wish to avoid smearing a sexual partner's penis with menstrual blood while having intercourse during menstruation. In the past, douching was also used after intercourse as a method of birth control, though it is not effective (see below).

Many health care professionals state that douching is dangerous, as it interferes with both the vagina's normal self-cleaning and with the natural bacterial culture of the vagina, and it might spread or introduce infections. For example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services strongly discourages douching, warning that it can lead to irritation, bacterial vaginosis, and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). Frequent douching with water may result in an imbalance of the pH of the vagina, and thus may put women at risk for possible vaginal infections, especially yeast infections.[1]

In May 2003, a randomized, controlled, multi-center study was conducted with 1827 women ages 18–44 who were regular users of a douche product and who had been treated recently for a sexually transmitted bacterial infection or bacterial vaginosis. Women were randomly assigned to use either a newly designed and marketed douche product or a soft cloth towelette. There was little or no indication of a greater risk of PID among women assigned to use the douche product (versus soft cloth towelette). Douching may be related to a lower probability that a woman becomes pregnant.[2]

Antiseptics may also result in an imbalance of the natural bacteria in the vagina, also resulting in an increased likelihood of infection.[3] Furthermore, unclean douching equipment may also introduce undesirable foreign bodies into the vagina. For these reasons, the practice of douching is now strongly discouraged except when ordered by a physician for specific medical reasons.[3] Douching may also wash bacteria into the uterus and Fallopian tubes, causing fertility problems.[4]

In May 2007, 40 women were enrolled in an open-label trial. The women all had bacterial vaginosis as defined by Amsel's criteria and were treated for 6 days with a douche containing Lactobacillus acidophilus. Vaginal smears were collected from the patients and analyzed according to Nugent's criteria at the time of diagnosis, after 6 days of treatment, and again at 20 days after the last treatment. At the same times, determination of vaginal pH and a Whiff test were performed. RESULTS: The Nugent score decreased significantly from bacterial vaginosis or an intermediate flora toward a normal flora during treatment, and remained low during the follow-up period for almost all of the patients, indicating bacterial vaginosis in 52.5% and in 7.5% of the patients before treatment and at follow-up, respectively. After treatment, significant decreases in vaginal pH were observed, to less than pH 4.5 in 34/40 women, and the odor test became negative in all of the patients. CONCLUSIONS: In this preliminary study, treatment of bacterial vaginosis with a vaginal douche containing a strain of L. acidophilus contributed to the restoration of a normal vaginal environment.[5]

Douching after intercourse is estimated to reduce the chances of conception by only 15-25%. In comparison, proper condom use reduces the chance of conception by as much as 97%. In some cases douching may force the ejaculate further into the vagina, increasing the chance of pregnancy. A review of studies by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center (N.Y.) showed that women who douched regularly and later became pregnant had higher rates of ectopic pregnancy, infections, and low birth weight infants than women who only douched occasionally or who never douched.[3]

The practice of douching is now largely restricted to the United States, where douching equipment is often available in pharmacies. A 1995 survey quoted in the University of Rochester study found that 27 percent of U.S. women age 15 to 44 douched regularly, but that douching was more common among African-American women (over 50%) than among white women (21%).[3]
Slang uses

Douchebag, or simply douche, is considered to be a pejorative term. The slang usage of the term dates back to the 1960s.[6] The term refers to a person with a variety of negative qualities, specifically arrogance and engaging in obnoxious and/or irritating actions without malicious intent.
See also

* Bidet
* Enema
* Massengill
* Sexual slang

References

[Stonie]

Doku TT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon#Asian_style

Emoticon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

An emoticon is a textual expression representing the face of a writer's mood or facial expression. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau of the English words emotion (or emote) and icon. In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well.

The use of emoticons can be traced back to the nineteenth century and were commonly used in casual and/or humorous writing.[citation needed] Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were included in a proposal by Scott Fahlman in a message on 19 September 1982.[1]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
o 1.1 Antecedents
o 1.2 Pre-1980 emoticons
o 1.3 Creation of and
o 1.4 Graphical replacement
* 2 Western style
o 2.1 Common western examples
o 2.2 Variation
* 3 Asian style
o 3.1 Common eastern examples
o 3.2 Korean Style
o 3.3 Western use of East Asian style
o 3.4 Mixture of western and East Asian style
o 3.5 Ideographic style
* 4 2channel style
* 5 Posture emoticons
o 5.1 Orz
* 6 Multimedia variations
* 7 Emoticons and intellectual property rights
* 8 See also
* 9 References
o 9.1 Notes
o 9.2 Further reading
* 10 External links
o 10.1 Examples
o 10.2 Japanese emoticons

[edit] History
[edit] Antecedents
Emoticons published in the March 30, 1881 issue of Puck.

The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in Morse code to express "love and kisses" (later reduced to the more formal "best regards"). Dodge's Manual in 1908 documented the reintroduction of "love and kisses" as the number 88. Gajadhar and Green comment that both Morse code abbreviations are more succinct than modern abbreviations such as LOL.[2][3]

A New York Times transcript from Abraham Lincoln's speech written in 1862 discovered by Bryan Benilous appears to contain a "winking" emoticon, but it is unclear whether it is an actual use, a typo or a legitimate punctuation construct.[4]

Typographical emoticons were published in 1881 by the U.S. satirical magazine Puck. In 1912 Ambrose Bierce proposed "an improvement in punctuation — the snigger point, or note of cachinnation: it is written thus \___/! and presents a smiling mouth. It is to be appended, with the full stop [or exclamation mark as Bierce's later example used], to every jocular or ironical sentence".[5]

Emoticons had already come into use in sci-fi fandom in the 1940s,[6] although there seems to have been a lapse in cultural continuity between the communities. In 1963 the "smiley face", a yellow button with two black dots representing eyes and an upturned thick curve representing a mouth, was created by freelance artist Harvey Ball. It was realized on order of a large insurance company as part of a campaign to bolster the morale of its employees and soon became a big hit. This smiley presumably inspired many later emoticons; the most basic graphic emoticon that depicts this is in fact a small yellow smiley face.

In a New York Times interview in April 1969, Alden Whitman asked writer Vladimir Nabokov: "How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?" Nabokov answered: "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question." [7]
[edit] Pre-1980 emoticons

Teletype machine operators, as early as 1973[citation needed], and probably long before that date, used "emoticons" to express themselves. Teletypes were limited to the keys of a standard typewriter keyboard plus a few special characters. Teletype operators developed a sort of shorthand to communicate among themselves. These shorthand notations became the foundation of "emoticons" as computers began to replace teletypes on university campuses.
A common Plato emoticon created by typing O←*←$

By the early 1970s, people on the PLATO System were using emoticons.[8] They had many of the advantages of later character-based emoticons because they could be used anywhere that you could type text. They also had many of the advantages of later graphical emoticons because they used character overstriking which created graphical images.

Several Internet websites —such as BT's Connected Earth[9]— assert that Kevin Mackenzie proposed -) as a joke-marker in April 1979, on the MsgGroup ARPANET mailing list. The idea was to indicate tongue-in-cheek — the hyphen represented a tongue, not a nose:

15-Apr-79 12:05:26-PST,1142;000000000000
Mail-from: MIT-MC rcvd at 12-Apr-79 1740-PST
Date: 12 APR 1979 1736-PST
From: MACKENZIE at USC-ECL
Subject: MSGGROUP#1015 METHICS and the Fast Draw(cont'd)
To: ~drxal-had at OFFICE-1
cc: msggroup at MIT-MC, malasky at PARC-MAXC

In regard to your message a few days ago concerning the loss
of meaning in this medium:

I am new here, and thus hesitate to comment, but I too have
suffered from the lack of tone, gestures, facial expressions
etc. May I suggest the beginning of a solution? Perhaps we could
extend the set of punctuation we use, i.e:

If I wish to indicate that a particular sentence is meant
with tongue-in-cheek, I would write it so:

"Of course you know I agree with all the current
administration's policies -)."

The "-)" indicates tongue-in-cheek.

This idea is not mine, but stolen from a Reader's Digest article
I read long ago on a completely different subject. I'm sure there
are many other, better ways to improve our punctuation.

Any comments?

Kevin

Others used for tongue-in-cheek, with the colon representing teeth. Also used was -:) to indicate sticking out your tongue, in derision or anger. Although similar to a sideways smiling face, the intended interpretation was different and this does not appear to have inspired the later smileys.

In the late sixties the APL programming language and timesharing environment, with its rich character set with backspace and overstrike capability provided a fruitful arena for interactive and creative symbol invention. Union-backspace-dieresis (∪̈) was a recognised and upright smiley in the early seventies.[citation needed]
[edit] Creation of and

The first person documented to have used the emoticons and , with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman;[10] the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 19 September 1982 (11:44), was thought to have been lost, but was recovered twenty years later by Jeff Baird from old backup tapes.[1]

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:



Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use



Within a few months, it had spread to the ARPANET[11] (the early Internet) and Usenet.[12] Many variations on the theme were immediately suggested by Scott and others.
[edit] Graphical replacement

In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called "Emoticons." Similarly, in some versions of Microsoft Word, the Auto Correct feature replaces basic smileys such as and with a single smiley-like character. Originally, these image emoticons were fairly simple and replaced only the most straightforward and common character sequences, but over time they became so complex that the more specialized emoticons are often input using a menu or popup windows, sometimes listing hundreds of items. Emoticons have also expanded beyond simple cartoon facial expressions to a variety of still or moving images. Some of these graphical emoticons do not actually represent faces or emotions; for example, an "emoticon" showing a guitar might be used to represent music. Further, some instant messaging software is designed to play a sound upon receiving certain emoticons.

Many applications use text codes, which become replaced with a graphical emoticon. For example, :dance: or (dance) could be replaced with a graphical dancing emoticon. The first web forum software package to perform this transformation was Proxicom Forum, developed in 1996.[citation needed]

An August 2004 issue of the Risks Digest (comp.risks on USENET) pointed out a problem with such features which are not under the sender's control:

It's hard to know in advance what character-strings will be parsed into what kind of unintended image. A colleague was discussing his 401(k) plan with his boss, who happens to be female, via instant messaging. He discovered, to his horror, that the boss's instant-messaging client was rendering the "(k)" as a big pair of red smoochy lips.[13]

Many sites use GIF or PNG graphic files, because of their transparency and small file size capabilities. Files can be created using a raster graphics editor. Many emoticon artists design their emoticons pixel by pixel. Some emoticons are made in vector format, such as SVG, and automatically processed using a graphics library. This allows SVG files to be automatically rendered as a GIF or PNG file, which is compatible with most browsers, which SVG is not.
[edit] Western style

Traditionally, the emoticon in Western style is written from left to right, the way one reads and writes in most Western cultures. Thus, most commonly, emoticons have the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and mouth. To more easily recognize them, tilt your head toward your left shoulder (or occasionally toward your right shoulder if the "top" of the emoticon is toward the right).
[edit] Common western examples
Main article: List of emoticons

The most basic emoticons are relatively consistent in form, but each of them can also be transformed by being rotated (making them tiny ambigrams), with or without hyphen (nose), and so on:.
Icon Meaning Icon Meaning Icon Meaning
:)
:] =]
=) :>
=> :D
^_^ ^-^
^3^ ^w^
^o^ ^x^
^u^ ouo
:3 =D
Smiling, happy
>:[ =( :[
:< =[ :( D:
T-T T^T T3T
TwT TnT .\_/.
ToT Dx DX
Frowning, sad, mad
;)
;] ;>
;o ;D
;3 ^_~
Wink

=D
XD
8D
)
Large grin
:-P
=P xP
:9 8P
:L ;P
Tongue out, or after a joke.
>X3 X3 >:3
o3o O3O
owo OwO *3*
*w* *-* *_*
*.* :3 =3
Love, cat-face (indicates playful, possibly naughty, mischievous, or sexy tone)
:O =O :(] :o
o-o o.o O.o o.O
O.O o_o O_o o_O
O_O Oo oO D:
Shocked or surprised
L" =I :I :/
:-\ -_- -3- -w-
-o- "/ :T :|
T_T
Bored, awkward or annoyed; concerned; 'hmph' or 'what?' face.
:S =S
@3@
@w@ @-@
@_@ @.@
o.O? ._.

][_, {[]} ][_,
Confused, embarrassed, unsure, uneasy or lol
[edit] Variation
Main article: ASCII art

An equal sign is often used for the eyes in place of the colon, without changing the meaning of the emoticon. In these instances, the hyphen is almost always either omitted or, occasionally, replaced with an 'o' as in =O) . In most circles it has become acceptable to omit the hyphen, whether a colon or an equal sign is used for the eyes, e.g. .[14] In some areas of usage, people prefer the larger, more traditional emoticon . In general, similar-looking characters are commonly substituted for one another: for instance, o , O , and 0 can all be used interchangeably, sometimes for subtly different effect. In some cases, one type of character may look better in a certain font and therefore be preferred over another.

Some variants are also more common in certain countries because of reasons like keyboard layouts, for example the smiley =) is common in Scandinavia where the keys for = and ) are placed right beside each other. Also, sometimes, the user can replace the brackets used for the mouth with other, similar shapes, such as ] and [ instead of ) and ( .

Diacritical marks are sometimes used. An O or U with an umlaut, Ö , Ü can be seen as an emoticon, as the upright version of :O (meaning that one is surprised) and (meaning that one is very happy).
[edit] Asian style

Users from East Asia popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without tilting one's head to the left. This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986.[15][16] Similar looking emoticons were used by Byte Information Exchange (BIX) around the same time.[17]

These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*). The asterisks indicate the eyes; the central character, commonly an underscore, the mouth; and the parentheses, the outline of the face. Two separate studies, in 2007 at Hokkaido University and in 2009 at Glasgow University, showed that Japanese and other East Asians read facial expressions by looking mainly at the eyes, and the researchers noted that this is reflected in East Asian emoticons which put emphasis on the eyes, compared to Western emoticons which emote mainly with the mouth.[18][19]

Different emotions are expressed by changing the character representing the eyes, for example ' T ' can be used to express crying or sadness (T_T). The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e.g. ^^. Looks of stress are represented by the likes of (x_x) while (-_-;) is a generic emote for nervousness, the semicolon indicating sweat that occurs during anxiety. Repeating the /// mark (///) can indicate embarrassment by symbolizing blushing. Characters like hyphens or periods can replace the underscore; the period is often used for a smaller, "cuter" mouth or to represent a nose, e.g. (^.^). Alternatively, the mouth/nose can be left out entirely, e.g. (^^). The parentheses also can often be replaced with braces, e.g. {^_^}. Many times, the parentheses are left out completely, e.g. ^^, >.<, o_O, O.O, <.<;, though this is more likely in Western culture. A quotation mark ", apostrophe ', or semicolon ; can be added to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, in the same way that a sweat drop is used in anime.

Microsoft IME 2002 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language Dictionary. In IME 2007, it was moved to Emoticons dictionary.

Further variations of emoticons may be produced by using Combining characters, e.g. ̼⌂̺͛ᴖ̲̿ᴥ̲̿ᴖ̺͛⌂̼ and ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ .
[edit] Common eastern examples
Main article: List of emoticons
Icon Meaning Icon Meaning Icon Meaning
(^_^)
smile
(^o^)
laughing out loud
d(^_^)b
headphones or listening to music; also seen as thumbs up
(;_;), (T_T) or (TT_TT)
sad (crying face)
(-.-)Zzz
sleeping
(Z.Z)
sleepy person
\(^_^)/
cheers, "Hurrah!"
(*^.^*)
shyness
(-_-;),

(-_-') or (-_-*)
sweating (as in ashamed), or exasperated.
(*_*)
"Surprise !."
(?_?)
Nonsense, I don't know
(^_~) or (^_-)
wink
(o.O)
shocked/disturbed/raised eyebrow
(<.<)
shifty, suspicious: could also be sarcasm
(>'_')>O or (>'_')>#
"Have a cookie/waffle"

all of these can be used also with [ ] instead of ( )
[edit] Korean Style

In South Korea, emoticons using Korean Hangul letters have been getting popular lately as well. Korean styles of face emoticons are similar to those of Japan's, but they contain Korean jamos (letters) instead of other characters. There are countless number of emoticons that can be formed with such combinations of Korean jamos, but popular choices include letter ㅅ or ㅂ as the mouth/nose component and ㅇ,ㅎ,ㅍ for the eyes. For example: ㅇㅅㅇ, ㅇㅂㅇ, -ㅅ-. Faces such as 'ㅅ', "ㅅ", 'ㅂ' using quotation marks " and apostrophes ' are also commonly used combinations. Vowel jamos such as ㅜ,ㅠ can be used in substitute to T, when depicting a crying face. Example: ㅜ_ㅜ, ㅠ_ㅠ. Sometimes the underscore is omitted, and the two letters can be mixed together, as in ㅜㅠ.

Single or multiple ; (Semicolons) are often used together with faces depicting embarrassment, for an added effect. Also, other characters may be added to indicate hands, similar to the Japanese emoticons; but usually they are only attached on the right. Example: -ㅅ-a (scratching one's head), 'ㅅ'b (Thumbs up), 'ㅅ'ㅗ (The finger)

In some cases, like ㅎ_ㅎ, the emoticon can mean an emotion even when it is not depicting a face of any specific emotion. Letters ㅎ and ㅋ are widely used in Korean internet as a sign of laughter (similar to the usage of "w" in Japanese Web); and so the emoticons using those letters as the eye component can be interpreted as a laughing face.

Also, ㅇㅈㄴ is a Korean version of Orz, depicting a man kneeling down.
[edit] Western use of East Asian style

English-language anime forums adopted those emoticons that could be used with the standard ASCII characters available on western keyboards. Because of this, they are often called "anime style" emoticons in the English-speaking Internet. They have since seen use in more mainstream venues, including online gaming, instant-messaging, and other non-anime related forums. Emoticons such as <(^.^)>,<(^_^<),<(o_o<),<( -'.'- )>,<('.'-^),(.ㅅ.), which include the parentheses, mouth or nose, and arms (especially those represented by the inequality signs < or >) also are often referred to as "Kirbies" in reference to their likeness to Nintendo's video game character, Kirby. The parentheses are usually dropped when used in the English language context, and the underscore of the mouth may be extended as an intensifier, e.g. ^__________^ for very happy.
[edit] Mixture of western and East Asian style

Exposure to both western and East Asian style emoticons or emoji through web blogs, instant messaging, and forums featuring a blend of Western and Asian pop culture, has given rise to emoticons that have an upright viewing format. The parentheses are similarly dropped in the English language context and the emoticons only use alphanumeric characters and the most commonly used English punctuation marks. Emoticons such as -O-, -3-, -w-, '_', ;_;, T_T, :>, and .V., are used to convey mixed emotions that are more difficult to convey with traditional emoticons. Characters are sometimes added to emoticons to convey a anime or manga-styled sweat drop, for example: ^_^' or !>_<! or ^3^' or v3v; as well as: <@>_________<@>;; ;O;. The equal sign can also be used for closed, anime looking eyes, for example: =0=, =3=, =w=, =A=

There are also more faces along those lines like >o<; using the ; as a sweat mark, and the "o" as a mouth, and the inequality signs as the eyes, it shows stress, or slight confusion. The amount of emoticons that can be made are limitless, and all have their own meaning.

In Brazil, sometimes combining character (accent) are added to emoticons to represent eyebrows, like: ò_ó or ó_ò or õ_o or ù_u or o_Ô. They can also replace (or add) "=" or ":" by ">", example: >D or >=D or >P or >:P or >3 or >:3.
[edit] Ideographic style
See also: Jiong and zh:失意體前屈

The letter 囧 (U+56E7), which means 'bright'[20], is also used in Chinese and Taiwanese community for frowning face.[21] It is also combined with posture emoticon Orz, such as 囧rz. The letter existed in Oracle bone script, but its use as emoticon was documented as early as 2005-01-20.[22]

Other ideographic variant for 囧 include 崮 (king 囧), 莔 (queen 囧), 商 (囧 with hat), 囧興 (turtle), 卣 (Bomberman).

The letter 槑 (U+69D1), which means 'plum', is used to represent double of '呆' (dull), or further magnitude of dullness.[23] In Chinese, normally full characters (as opposed to the stylistic use of 槑) may be duplicated to express emphasis.
[edit] 2channel style

The Japanese language is usually encoded using double-byte character codes. As a result there is a bigger variety of characters that can be used in emoticons, many of which cannot be reproduced in ASCII. Most kaomoji contain Cyrillic and other foreign letters to create even more complicated expressions analogous to ASCII art's level of complexity. To type such emoticons, the input editor that is used to type Japanese on a user's system is equipped with a dictionary of emoticons, after which the user simply types the Japanese word (or something close to it) that represents the desired emoticon to convert the input into such complicated emoticons. Such expressions are known as Shift JIS art.[citation needed]

Users of 2channel in particular have developed a wide variety of unique emoticons using obscure characters. Some have taken on a life of their own and become characters in their own right, like Mona.
[edit] Posture emoticons
[edit] Orz

Orz (also seen as Or2, on_, OTZ, STO, JTO,[24] _no, ＿冂○, OTL,[25] 囧rz,[22] O7Z, _|7O, Sto, and Jto[original research?]) is a Japanese emoticon representing a kneeling or bowing person, with the "o" being the head, the "r" being the arms and part of the body, and the "z" being part of the body and the legs. This stick figure represents failure and despair.[24] It is also commonly used for representing a great admiration (sometimes with an overtone of sarcasm) for someone else's view or action.[citation needed]

It was first used in late 2002 at the forum on Techside, Japanese personal website. At the "Techside FAQ Forum" (TECHSIDE教えて君BBS(教えてBBS) ), a poster asked about a cable cover, typing "＿|￣|○" to show a cable and its cover. Others commented that it looked like a kneeling person, and the symbol became popular. These comments were soon deleted as they were considered off-topic. However, one of the first corresponding reactions can be found on the thread on "Techside Chitchat Forum" (Techside一言板。) at the Internet Archive, on December 23, 2002.[original research?] By 2005, Orz spawned a subculture: blogs have been devoted to the emoticon, and URL shortening services have been named after it. In Taiwan, Orz is associated with the phrase "nice guy"—that is, the concept of males being rejected for a date by girls they are pursuing with a phrase like "You are a nice guy."[24]

Orz should not be confused with m(_ _)m, which means an apology.[citation needed]

The same applies to OK looking like a man, and OGC looking like a masturbating man when looked upon horizontally.
[edit] Multimedia variations

A portmanteau of emotion and sound, an emotisound is a brief sound transmitted and played back during the viewing of a message, typically an IM message or e-mail message. The sound is intended to communicate an emotional subtext.[citation needed] Many instant messaging clients automatically trigger sound effects in response to specific emoticons.

Some services, such as MuzIcons, combine emoticons and Adobe Flash music player in a widget.[26]

In 2004, The Trillian chat application introduced an feature called "emotiblips", which allows Trillian users to stream files to their instant message recipients "as the voice and video equivalent of an emoticon".[27]

In 2007, MTV and Paramount Home Entertainment promoted the "emoticlip" as a form of viral marketing for the second season of the show The Hills. The emoticlips were twelve short snippets of dialogue from the show, uploaded to YouTube, which the advertisers hoped would be distributed between web users as a way of expressing feelings in a similar manner to emoticons. The emoticlip concept is credited to the Bradley & Montgomery advertising firm, which hopes they would be widely adopted as "greeting cards that just happen to be selling something".[28]

In 2008 an emotion-sequence animation tool, called FunIcons was created. The Adobe Flash and Java-based application allows users to create a short animation. Users can then email or save their own animations to use them on similar social utility applications.[29]
[edit] Emoticons and intellectual property rights
Patented drop down menu for composing phone mail text message with emoticons. US patent 6987991

In 2000 Despair, Inc. obtained a U.S. trademark registration for the "frowny" emoticon when used on "greeting cards, posters and art prints." In 2001, they issued a satirical press release, announcing that they would sue Internet users who typed the frowny; the joke backfired and the company received a storm of protest when its mock release was posted at technology news website Slashdot.[30] They subsequently issued another press release a month later in response to the reaction their claim had generated.[31]

A number of patent applications have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with emoticons. A few of these have issued as US patents. US patent 6987991, for example, discloses a method developed in 2001 to send emoticons over a cell phone using a drop down menu. The stated advantage over the prior art was that the user saved on the number of keystrokes though this may not address the obviousness criteria.

In Finland, the emoticons , =), =(, and were trademarked in 2006 for use with various products and services.[32]

In 2008, Russian entrepreneur Oleg Teterin claimed to have been granted the trademark on the emoticon. A license would not "cost that much - tens of thousands of dollars" for companies, but would be free of charge for individuals.[33]
[edit] See also

* ASCII art
* Emoji
* Emotion Markup Language (EML)
* Hieroglyph
* Henohenomoheji
* Internet slang
* Kaoani
* List of emoticons
* Pixel art
* Smiley
* Tête à Toto
* Text

[edit] References
[edit] Notes

1. ^ a b See Fahlman's website for a reconstruction of the entire thread
2. ^ Joan Gajadhar and John Green (17 July 2003) (PDF). An Analysis of Nonverbal Communication in an Online Chat Group. The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. http://www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz/static ... dharj1.pdf.
3. ^ Joan Gajadhar and John Green (2005). "The Importance of Nonverbal Elements in Online Chat". EDUCAUSE Quarterly 24 (4). http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm05/e ... asp?bhcp=1.
4. ^ Is That an Emoticon in 1862? - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com
5. ^ Ambrose Bierce (1909–1912). ""For Brevity and Clarity"". Collected Works (N.Y. and Washington).
6. ^ Gregory Benford, A Scientist's Notebook: net@fandom.com, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 90, No. 6 (June 1996), p. 90
7. ^ Nabokov (March 1990). Strong Opinions. Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72609-8. http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter11.txt. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
8. ^ Dear, Brian L.. "Emoticons and smileys emerged on the PLATO system in the 1970s in a unique and different way.". http://www.platopeople.com/emoticons.html. Retrieved 2008-12-17.
9. ^ Connected Earth: The growth of e-mail
10. ^ ":) turns 25". Associated Press. 2007-09-20. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/09/18/emot ... index.html. Retrieved 2007-09-20.
11. ^ James.Morris at CMU-10A (1982-10-10). "Notes - Communications Breakthrough,". net.works. (Web link). Retrieved on 2008-12-18.
12. ^ Curtis Jackson (1982-12-03). "How to keep from being misunderstood on the net". net.news. (Web link). Retrieved on 2008-12-17.
13. ^ Hawkins Dale (2004-07-30). "Emoticon-interpreters create risks in instant messaging services". comp.risks. (Web link). Retrieved on 2009-03-24.
14. ^ Denoser strips noses from text
15. ^ The History of Smiley Marks
16. ^ The History of Smiley Marks (English)
17. ^ Jargon file, version 2.6.1, February 12, 1991
18. ^ "Americans and Japanese Read Faces Differently". LiveScience. 10 May 2007. http://www.livescience.com/health/07051 ... lture.html. Retrieved August 16, 2009.
19. ^ "Facial expressions 'not global'". BBC. 14 August 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8199951.stm. Retrieved August 16, 2009.
20. ^ Baidu: 囧
21. ^ 生僻字大行其道 "囧"衍生出各種表情
22. ^ a b 心情很orz嗎？ 網路象形文字幽默一下
23. ^ Baidu: 槑
24. ^ a b c Boing Boing. "All about Orz". http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/07/all-about-orz.html. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
25. ^ "みんなの作った ＿|￣|○クラフト "paper craft of orz"". http://www.dfnt.net/t/photo/your/craft_06suman.shtml. Retrieved 2009-08-18.
26. ^ "Muzicons.com - music sharing widget". http://www.muzicons.com. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
27. ^ Cerulean Studios: The Creators of Trillian and Trillian Pro IM Clients
28. ^ AdWeek Article about Emoticlip[dead link]
29. ^ Animated Faces and Emoticons / Digital Elite Inc.
30. ^ Schwartz, John. "Compressed Data: Don't Mind That Lawsuit, It's Just a Joke," New York Times, January 29, 2001
31. ^ Despair, Inc. "Facing International Outrage, Despair, Inc. Founder Offers Apology, Compromise on Emoticon Ban". http://www.despair.com/demotivators/acompromise.html. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
32. ^ "Tavaramerkkilehti" (PDF). Tavaramerkkilehti (National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland) (10): 27–28. 2006-05-31. http://tavaramerkki.prh.fi/lehti/tm/Tav ... S_2006.pdf. Retrieved 2007-06-16.
33. ^ BBC News: Russian hopes to cash in on

[edit] Further reading

* Walther, J. B., & D'Addario, K. P. (2001). "The impacts of emoticons on message interpretation in computer-mediated communication". Social Science Computer Review 19: 323–345. doi:10.1177/089443930101900307.
* Wolf, Alecia. 2000. "Emotional Expression Online: Gender Differences in Emoticon Use." CyberPsychology & Behavior 3: 827-833.

[edit] External links
Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Smiley
Search Wiktionary Look up common emoticons in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
[edit] Examples

* List of AOL messenger emoticons
* List of Gmail chat emoticons
* List of MSN messenger emoticons
* List of Yahoo messenger emoticons
* List of deviantART community emoticons
* A community effort to categorize and distribute emoticons
* How to insert few emoticons in Microsoft Office

[edit] Japanese emoticons

* 2-byte Japanese emoticons
* Anikaos Japanese Anime emoticons list
* Article - A Guide to Anime Emoticons Western usage of kaomoji
* Koto Phone in Japan Flickr set - Example of default kaomoji on Japanese cell phone
* List of Microsoft Office Input Method Editor emoticons (Japanese)

[masteen]

Steamroller
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This article is about the construction vehicle. For the smoking pipe, see Smoking pipe (non-tobacco). For the G.I. Joe character, see Steam-Roller (G.I. Joe).
A steam powered road roller

A steamroller (or steam roller) is a form of road roller – a type of heavy construction machinery used for levelling surfaces, such as roads or airfields – that is powered by a steam engine. The levelling/flattening action is achieved through a combination of the size and weight of the vehicle and the rolls: the smooth wheels and the large cylinder or drum fitted in place of treaded road wheels.

The majority of steam rollers are outwardly similar to traction engines as many traction engine manufacturers later produced rollers based on their existing designs, and the patents owned by certain roller manufacturers tended to influence the general arrangements used by others. The key difference between the two vehicles is that on a roller the main roll replaces the front wheels and axle that would be fitted to a traction engine.

In many parts of the world, the term steam roller is still used regardless of the method of propulsion. This typically only applies to the largest examples (used for road-making).
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Configurations
* 2 Design features
o 2.1 Wheels
o 2.2 Smokebox
o 2.3 Special equipment
* 3 Manufacturers
* 4 Usage
o 4.1 Preservation
* 5 Popular culture
o 5.1 Television
o 5.2 Film
o 5.3 Fiction
o 5.4 Music
o 5.5 Video games
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 External links

[edit] Configurations

The majority of rollers were of the same basic configuration, with two large smooth wheels at the back and a single wide roll at the front. However, there was also a distinctive variant, the "tandem", which had two wide rolls, one front, one rear. A further steam-powered variant was the tri-tandem, made by Robey, which was a like a tandem but with two large rear rolls, one mounted immediately in front of the other.

A variation of the basic configuration was the "convertible": an engine which could be either a steam roller or a traction engine and could be changed from one form to the other in a relatively short time – i.e., less than half a day. Convertible engines were liked by local authorities, since the same machine could be used for haulage in the winter and road-mending in the summer.
[edit] Design features

Although most steam roller designs are derived from traction engines, and were manufactured by the same companies, there are a number of features that set them apart.
[edit] Wheels

The most obvious difference is in the wheels. All traction engines were built with large fabricated spoked steel wheels with wide rims. Those intended for road use would have continuous solid rubber tyres bolted around the rims, to improve traction on tarmac. Engines intended for agricultural use would have a series of strakes bolted diagonally across the rims, like the tread on a modern pneumatic tractor tyre, and the wheels were typically wider to spread the load more evenly.

Steam rollers, on the other hand, had smooth rear wheels and a roller at the front. The roller was a single wide cylinder supported at either end. This replaced the separate wheels and axle of a traction engine.
[edit] Smokebox

In the conventional arrangement, the front roller is mounted centrally, forward of the chimney. In order to allow enough clearance from the boiler (and hence a larger front roll), the smokebox is extended forward substantially at the top to incorporate a support plate on which to mount the bearing for the roller assembly. This gives the distinctive, hooded look to the front of a steam roller. It also necessitates a different design of smokebox door – it has to drop down, rather than opening sideways, due to the limited access available.
[edit] Special equipment

The rear rollers were fitted with scraper bars. As the vehicle moved along, these removed any surface material that had become stuck to the roll, to prevent a build-up of material and ensure a flat finish was maintained.

Some steam rollers were fitted with a scarifier mounted on the tender box at the rear. They could be swung down to road level and used to rip up the old surface before a road was remade.

Another accessory was a tar sprayer – a bar mounted on the back of the roller. This was not a common fixture.
[edit] Manufacturers

Britain was a large exporter of steam rollers to the world over the years, with the firm of Aveling and Porter probably being the most famous and the most prolific.

Many other traction engine manufacturers built steam rollers, but after Aveling and Porter, the most popular were Marshall, Sons & Co., John Fowler & Co., and Wallis & Steevens.

In America, the Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company was a large builder. J. I. Case made a roller variant of their famed farm engines, but had a small market share. Other nations had makers including the Czechs, Swiss, Swedes, Germans and Dutch which produced steam rollers.

United States -built 1924 Buffalo Springfield steam roller: a vertical boiler design with tandem rolls. Note position of firebox door, facing out of frames.


Other side of same roller showing offset driving position: driver faces boiler controls (ie 'backwards') and steers with right hand
[edit] Usage
A former Bedfordshire County Council Aveling & Porter roller in 2004

In the UK, a number of companies owned fleets of steam rollers and contracted them out to local authorities.

Many were still in use into the 1960s, and part of the M1 motorway was made with the help of steam rollers.[1]

A few steam rollers were still being used for road maintenance in the early 1970s, and this may go some way to explaining why diesel-powered rollers are still colloquially known as steam rollers to this day.
[edit] Preservation

Many steam rollers are preserved in working order, and can be seen in operation during special live steam festivals, where operating scale models may also be displayed. At some of the UK steam fairs and rallies, demonstrations of road building using the old techniques, tools and machines are re-enacted by 'Road Gangs' in authentic dress; steam rollers feature prominently in these demonstrations. The annual Great Dorset Steam Fair has a section dedicated to road-making machinery, including a line-up of working steam rollers.
[edit] Popular culture
[edit] Television

* UK steeplejack and engineering enthusiast Fred Dibnah was known as a National Institution in Great Britain for the conservation of steam rollers and traction engines. The first engine he restored to working order was an Aveling & Porter steam roller, registration no. DM3079. Built in 1912, it was a 10 ton slide-valve, single-cylinder, 4-shaft, road roller.[2]

Originally named "Allison", after his first wife, Fred renamed the engine "Betsy" (his mother's name) following his divorce – Fred's view being "wives may change but your mother remains your mother!"

This roller was featured in many of Fred's early television programmes. It may still be seen at steam rallies in Britain and was in steam at the Great Dorset Steam Fair in 2006, working in the road-mending demonstration.

* Both Dad's Army and 'Allo 'Allo have used an out-of-control steamroller for comedy.

[edit] Film
For more details on appearances of diesel-powered rollers on film, see Road roller#Road rollers in popular culture.

Unlike the often-lethal movie roles by their diesel-powered equivalents, the film appearances by steam rollers are relatively benign:

* A steam roller was part of the supporting cast in the 1953 British film, The Titfield Thunderbolt which encountered a GWR tank loco in the film.
* In the 1971 film Dad's Army, the Walmington-on-Sea platoon are sent on an exercise for Home Guard training. On the way, an incident that disables Jones's van results in Capt. Mainwaring commandeering a passing steam roller to tow the van to the exercise. Unfortunately, on arrival at the training camp, Mainwaring and Jones discover that neither knows how to stop the roller, and they end up flattening their tents and equipment.

[edit] Fiction

* George the Steamroller is a fictional steamroller from the Rev W. Awdry's Railway Series books and also in the derived television series, Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. Buster the Steamroller, a member of "The Pack", has also appeared in the TV series.
* Roley is one of the main vehicle characters in the children's books and television series, Bob the Builder. He is a green roller with a cab, enclosed power unit and no chimney, and so is obviously diesel-powered – nevertheless, his official title is Roley the Steamroller. This is another example of how the use of "steam roller", to describe a modern road roller, still persists in the English language.

[edit] Music

* The group Buffalo Springfield named themselves after a steam roller parked outside the house.
* The song Steamroller Blues was written and performed by James Taylor in 1970 and subsequently became a favourite of live concerts by Elvis Presley.
* In Marianne Moore's To A Steam Roller, she portrays the democratizing ability of the steamroller: "You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down / into close conformity, and then walk back and forth / on them" (3-5).[citation needed]

[edit] Video games

The term "steamroller" has been adopted within video game circles, specifically real-time strategy games, where a "steamroller" is a player who favours powerful units to eliminate enemies with minimal casualties.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Steam rollers

* History of steam road vehicles
* Traction engine
* Roller (agricultural tool) – for farm rollers
* Roller (disambiguation) – for other types of roller
* List of steam energy topics
* Paddys motorbike – nickname for another type of compaction vehicle.
* Thomas Green & Son builders of steam rollers, but better known for motor rollers.

[edit] References

1. ^ "Steam Road Rollers (Gallery)". Bedfordshire Steam & Country Fair 2005. Bedford Steam Engine Preservation Society. http://www.bseps.org.uk/scf2k5/scf2k5__rollers.htm. Retrieved 2007-02-08.
2. ^ Fred Dibnahs roller 'Betsy'

[edit] External links

* Road Roller Association – UK-based society dedicated to the preservation of steam (and motor) rollers and ancillary road-making equipment.
* "Steam Dinosaur" – world's oldest surviving traction engine: immediate ancestor of Aveling's earliest rollers.
* Fred Dibnah's roller 'Betsy' – The story of Betsy's restoration

[Xouqoa]

List of Touched by an Angel episodes
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This article has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.

* It does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve it by citing reliable sources. Tagged since March 2010.
* It contains a plot summary that may be too long or overly detailed. Tagged since March 2010.
* Its lead section requires expansion. Tagged since March 2010.

This is a list of Touched by an Angel episodes. Touched by an Angel aired from 1994 to 2003.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Season 1
* 2 Season 2
* 3 Season 3
* 4 Season 4
* 5 Season 5
* 6 Season 6
* 7 Season 7
* 8 Season 8
* 9 Season 9

[edit] Season 1

The first season aired September 21, 1994 through March 4, 1995.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "The Southbound Bus" Jerry J. Jameson Martha Williamson September 21, 1994 (1994-09-21) (CBS)
Tess (Della Reese) guides Monica (Roma Downey) on her first assignment as a caseworker after being promoted from search-and-rescue. On the southbound bus, she befriends David Morrow (T. J. Lowther), a young boy who tells her that his mother and sister died in a car accident. After helping David fend off some bullies, Monica escorts him home. There she meets his father, Nick, a police detective who is looking for a live-in nanny. Monica is hired for the position, but soon she has a chance encounter with Adam (Charles Rocket), the Angel of Death. He informs her that although David's sister Katie died of crib death, his mother is still alive. Confronting David with his lie, Monica learns that his guilt-wracked mother left home, so she promises to bring his mother back home. Monica sets out to find the woman in Hewitt, leaving David in Tess' care. In a seedy café, Monica befriends two waitresses and mistakes one of them for David's mother. She arranges a meeting between Ruth Ann and Nick, which backfires when the police officer recognizes the waitress as a wanted fugitive. The angel appeals for Ruth Ann to stop running, but she refuses to turn herself in. Returning to the café, Monica discovers that the other waitress, Christine (Linda Hart), is actually David's mother and reveals herself in an effort to persuade Christine to return to her family. But Christine refuses; she blames herself for Katie's death. Anguished, Monica prays for guidance and returns to David and Nick to deliver the bad news. David is crushed and Tess admonishes Monica for her mishandling of the assignment. While Nick is outside comforting his son, Christine drives up in her red Cadillac. Monica's revelation convinced her to return home, thus reuniting the family. In gratitude, Christine gives the angels her Cadillac, which Tess gladly accepts.
2 "Show Me The Way to Go Home" Tim Bond Chris Ruppenthal September 28, 1994 (1994-09-28) (CBS)
Monica is assigned to Earl Rowley (Kevin Dobson), a crusty baseball coach. Bitter because his Vietnam War injury prevented him from pursuing a major league career, he pushes his high school players hard, especially Peter Enloe (Ivan Sergei), the star player, whose own father is dead. Earl isn't thrilled to have a female assistant coach but is told that Monica was the only substitute teacher who had strong credentials in both history and baseball. Meanwhile, Tess accepts a position working in a sports bar run by Peter's mother, Laura. A few days before a crucial game, Earl appoints Peter team captain and tells him a college scout will be watching the game to see if Peter's worthy of a baseball scholarship. However, the coach expects Peter to lead the team with his authoritarian leadership style. Prompted by Monica's history lesson that sometimes a person must stand up to a bully, Peter takes a stance against Earl which results in a fistfight and Peter's suspension from the team. While walking away, the coach collapses on the field and is rushed to the hospital, where Monica learns from Adam (Charles Rocket), the Angel of Death, that Earl is dying from pancreatic cancer. As he confides in Monica that the one time he let his guard down, a Vietnamese soldier shot him, he remembers that she was the one who had saved him during the heat of battle. He laments being spared since his life didn't turn out the way he had planned; she chides him for failing to take advantage of the numerous opportunities he had to positively influence the lives of his students. Monica, angry that Earl wasn't happy with his second chance, storms off. When she tells Tess what happened, Tess sings to her "The Lord Moves in Mysterious Ways," meaning God has a plan and knows what he's doing. Laura realizes that what her son really needs is Earl's approval. She visits the coach in the hospital, followed by Monica. But while the angel states her case, Earl's life signs diminish and Adam appears to escort him to the hereafter. Monica prays for him to have a second chance--a request that is granted. During the big game, the team is three runs down with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Peter is on the verge of striking out when Earl appears and loans him the wooden bat his own father gave him. The teen hits a home run, winning the game and the scholarship. Afterwards, Adam arrives to take Earl, who requests that Monica hold his hand as they walk into the light.
3 "Tough Love" Tim Van Patten Del Shores October 12, 1994 (1994-10-12) (CBS)
Monica serves as the personal assistant to Elizabeth Jessup (Phylicia Rashad), a prominent journalist, and the angel soon learns that her new assignment has a serious drinking problem. At a birthday dinner for her granddaughter Beth, Liz has too much to drink, which prompts her own daughter Sydney (Erica Gimpel) to take the child home. Soon afterwards, the newswoman makes a spectacle of herself while giving a speech at the Mayor's Centennial kick-off. This incident causes Sydney to stage an intervention for her mother with the help of Anita (Donna Bullock), a counselor at the New Hope Center. But this action backfires and an enraged Liz orders her guests to leave. The next day, Monica returns to work and learns that the journalist started drinking to fit in with her male counterparts. The angel convinces her employer to visit the New Hope Center. However, upon seeing Anita, Liz loses her temper and storms out of the building. Although Sydney refuses to let Beth have contact with her grandmother, the child sneaks out to see Liz anyway. While Beth is playing, Liz accidentally sets the house on fire with a cigarette. Monica rescues the little girl, whose grandmother was too drunk to comprehend what happened. At the hospital, an irate Sydney confronts her mother for leaving Beth inside the house to die. Returning to the wreckage to find a music box her granddaughter cherishes, Liz encounters Monica, realizing the angel was the one who saved Beth. Encouraged by Monica's revelation, Liz returns to the New Hope Center and attends a counseling session where she learns that Sydney herself is a recovering alcoholic.
4 "Fallen Angela" Bruce Kessler Martha Williamson & Marilyn Osborn October 19, 1994 (1994-10-19) (CBS)
Monica learns to overcome her fear of water when she moves next door to Angela Evans (Nia Peeples), an avid boater with a secretive past. Years ago during college, she supported herself as a call girl. Now that her husband Carter (Obba Babatunde) is running for the U.S. Senate, she is being blackmailed by Marshall (Rick Rossovich), her former pimp. Monica convinces Angela to stand up to him, but learns that the ruthless man had taken photographs of her in compromising positions. Rather than tell Carter the truth, she attempts suicide by intentionally sinking her boat in the middle of the lake. Adam (Charles Rocket), the Angel of Death, cautions Monica not to violate Angela's free will by rescuing her. The resourceful angel shows the woman how her suicide would affect her loved ones, and she chooses to live. Revealing herself after the rescue, Monica admits overcoming her own fear of water when she saw Angela about to drown and encourages her to return home and confide in Carter. Together, the Evans decide to hold a press conference regarding Angela's past, freeing them from the threat of further blackmail.
5 "Cassie's Choice" Burt Brinkerhoff Dawn Prestwich & Nicole Yorkin October 26, 1994 (1994-10-26) (CBS)
Cassie Peters (Alyson Hannigan) is pregnant and plans to give her baby up for adoption. Although neither Craig (the baby's father) (Rodney Eastman) nor Joanne (Cassie's mother) (Susan Ruttan) is present for the delivery, Monica is, posing as a nurse. After holding her daughter, Cassie changes her mind and runs away, much to the chagrin of the Feldmans, the adoptive parents. Monica and Tess are keeping watch over mother and child when they learn from Adam (Charles Rocket), the Angel of Death, that the child is seriously ill. Monica gently prods Cassie to take the child to the hospital, where the teenager begins to realize she is not ready for the rigors of motherhood. Monica's revelation reinforces this fact, and Cassie returns home and returns the baby to the Feldmans. At the infant dedication, Mrs. Feldman announces that she and Ben have named their baby Faith. Cassie asks for a moment with her daughter and plays the flute for her--a legacy of music that runs in the family.
6 "The Heart of the Matter" Max Tash Chris Ruppenthal November 2, 1994 (1994-11-02) (CBS)
Monica serves as a legal assistant to a young lawyer, Charles Hibbard (Peter Scolari). Charles mistakenly gives an inheritance to an eccentric young woman, Robin Dunwoody (Wendy Makkena) and must convince her to give it back. Charles is a hypochondriac with an imagined heart condition. Monica helps him to open his heart and he falls in love with Robin.
7 "An Unexpected Snow" Timothy Bond Martha Williamson December 7, 1994 (1994-12-07) (CBS)
Monica and Tess arrange an accident on a deserted road for Megan (Nancy Allen) and Susana (Brooke Adams), two women involved with same man. The angels create an estate where the women and eventually Susana's husband, Jack (Ed Marinaro) spend Thanksgiving together. The angels are assisted by Adam (Charles Rocket), the Angel-of-Death, who doesn't have the heart to kill the turkey for dinner. Monica convinces Megan that she must find someone else and Tess convinces Jack to return to his marriage.
8 "Manny" Tim Van Patten Dawn Prestwich & Nicole Yorkin December 14, 1994 (1994-12-14) (CBS)
Monica and Tess are party coordinators for Harrison Trowbridge Archibald IV (Robin Thomas), a stuffy doctor whose wife, Barbara (Gail Edwards), and mother, Amelia (Rue McClanahan), are planning a prestigious social event to commemorate a new hospital expansion named after their family. They are in the midst of preparation when Manny (Jonathan Hernandez) arrives at their doorstep, claiming to be a child the Archibalds sponsor through Child Watch, a charitable organization. Unable to have children of her own, Barbara welcomes him with open arms although her husband remains suspicious. Just as Harrison starts to bond with "Manny," Monica learns the boy is not from Child Watch but is really Luis, a homeless child who lives under the hospital. The angel reveals herself and urges him to tell the Archibalds the truth. When he does, Harrison becomes irate and wants to throw Luis out of the house, but Barbara and Amelia convince the doctor to wait until after the party. Tess, in turn, prods Amelia to tell her son the truth about his heritage: not only are the Bowthorpes of Charleston really the Klumps of Bowthorpe, but Harrison's real father was an Argentinean gardener who was kind to Amelia when she and her husband were experiencing marital difficulties. After the doctor announces that the hospital expansion will be simply called The Children's Pavilion, he encounters Monica who delivers the message that God loves him for who he is, not for his name. She then takes the doctor to Luis' hiding place in the hospital basement. Taking the child back home, Harrison and his wife decide to adopt him and become a family.
9 "Fear Not!" Tim Van Patten Ken LaZebnik December 25, 1994 (1994-12-25) (CBS)
A small-town church is putting on its Christmas pageant, and little Serena (Ra'ven Kelly) desperately wants to be the angel. Her slightly retarded friend Joey (Paul Wittenberg) must come to terms with the fact that Serena is dying of a heart condition. Joey is pathologically afraid of the dark--his parents went out into the night and never came back. Since then, his older brother Wayne (Randy Travis) has been his caregiver. One day, Serena starts choking and Joey carries her to see Wayne, who lets her rest on his bed until her mother comes. Devastated, Joey destroys the Christmas pageant set. When Wayne finds out, he lectures Joey about how there won't be a pageant now. Wayne tells Monica that he has resented looking after Joey and holds God responsible for his lousy life, but Monica tells him that Joey really needs him now. Serena dies on the night of the pageant while a bright star leads Joey to the church. Wayne is there, too. Monica takes Serena's place as the angel in the pageant. When the rope supporting her breaks, Monica rises with glory and power and the entire congregation is awed by her angelic revelation and message: "Fear Not."
10 "There, But For the Grace of God" Bruce Bilson Martha Williamson & R.J. Colleary February 25, 1995 (1995-02-25) (CBS)
Monica is stripped of her angel powers to help a proud, homeless man Pete (Gregory Harrison). She also befriends Sophie (Marion Ross) and Zack (Malcolm Jamal Warner) a Desert Storm vet. Monica realizes that she has stood in judgment on homeless people and after a prayer she washes Pete's feet. Sophie is reunited with her family. Zack trades his Marine corp ring for Pete's wife's ashes and the money for a phone call home. With God's help Pete is able to go to Colorado to spread his wife's ashes.
11 "The Hero" Max Tash Marilyn Osborn March 4, 1995 (1995-03-04)
Three years ago, James Mackey (John Amos) defused a tense hostage situation by shooting the gunman who had fatally wounded James' partner. Now Monica is a journalist writing a story about the small-town sheriff and local hero. Although a loving father, Mackey places intense pressure on his son, Matthew (Bumper Robinson) so he can gain admission to the U.S. Naval Academy. Rather than risk not doing well, the boy cheats on a college entrance exam but gets caught. Afraid of how his father will react, Matt attempts suicide. While he is in a coma, Monica uses her angelic powers to talk to him and convince him to live. She later helps Sheriff Mackey resolve his own inner torment: his late partner, Nick Hanson, was the true hero in that hostage situation. Mackey had frozen when they confronted the criminals, and Nick saved his life. Monica convinces Mackey that God loves him regardless and is able to reunite father and son.
[edit] Season 2

The second season aired September 23, 1995 through May 18, 1996. This season introduces John Dye as Andrew, the Angel of Death.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "Interview with an Angel" Helaine Heed Marilyn Osborn & Martha Williamson September 23, 1995 (1995-09-23) (CBS)
Tess is in an uncharacteristically grumpy mood as she gives Monica her new assignment: to be interviewed by Callie Martin (Dinah Manoff), a cynical reporter writing an expose' on angelic encounters. Explaining that she is an angelic experience, Monica recounts the story of a recent case. Heart transplant surgeon Dr. Joe Patcherik (Gerald McRaney) is assigned to operate on Ethan Parker (Douglas Roberts), the drunk driver who killed Joe's five children. Since that incident, Joe and his artist wife, Lisa (Marcia Strassman) have drifted apart. She has immersed herself in a sculpture that will stand in the children's wing of the hospital as a dedication to her kids. During a heated, emotional conversation, Lisa urges her husband to forgive her, Ethan, and God for their children's deaths. Later, in the middle of the surgery, Monica, the transplant coordinator, stops time and reveals herself to Joe. She tells him that he is holding his own life in his hands and that no one except God has the right to determine whether another human should live or die. After successfully completing the surgery, Joe is shown the sculpture Lisa has been crafting: it is a statue of their children sledding--the activity they were en route to when the accident occurred. Outraged that the killer lived, Callie tosses the interview tape away and walks out on to the street. She is nearly hit by a bus but is rescued by none other than Ethan Parker. Scrambling to recover the tape, Callie sees Monica, Tess, and Henry (an Angel of Death) (Bruce Altman) wave to her as they ride on the back of the garbage truck containing the tape.
2 "Trust" Victor Lobl Julie Sebo September 30, 1995 (1995-09-30) (CBS)
Monica “O’Dooley” is a rookie cop assigned to Zack Bennett (Joe Penny), who returns to the force following rehabilitation from a gunshot wound. Zack’s request for a new partner upsets his former one, Ben Rivera (Paul Rodriguez). Monica soon learns why Zack has been avoiding Ben: he’s become addicted to pain killers. This condition becomes overt when he steals a stash from Mason (John Hawkes), a drug dealer that he and Monica apprehend. His erratic behavior causes him to miss Mason’s hearing, allowing the thug to assault a teenage girl. Realizing that Zack has lived in fear with recurring memories of being shot, Monica reveals herself. Informing him that faith is the only armor that bullets can never pierce, she helps him capture Mason. Armed with renewed faith, the policeman faces his addiction head-on and grows closer to his wife.
3 "Sympathy for the Devil" Tim Van Patten R.J. Colleary October 7, 1995 (1995-10-07) (CBS)
Matt Duncan (Robert Kelker-Kelly) books a rodeo into an arena he manages not realizing that his estranged father is one of the feature attractions. Ty Duncan (Stacy Keach) is a grizzled veteran of the rodeo circuit and wants to reconcile with his son before he dies. Monica, who's acting as Matt's bookkeeper, is horrified to learn that the midway's fortune teller is Kathleen (Jasmine Guy)--a former friend and fallen angel--who is determined to keep father and son apart. She decides to focus on little Daniel Duncan (Miko Hughes), who had previously been told his grandfather was dead. Kathleen makes sure that Ty meets Danny, which infuriates Matt who is led to believe Monica is at fault. The "dark angel" also makes a pass at him, since his wife is out of town. After the youngster slips into the corral of a dangerous bull, Monica rescues him and then intercedes in the resulting fight between Matt and Ty. She reveals she was sent to end the cycle of hatred between father and son and to uncover Kathleen as a force of evil. Ty makes a memorable final bull ride, which his son and grandson watch, and then dies.
4 "The Driver" Tim Van Patten Glenn Berenbeim October 14, 1995 (1995-10-14) (CBS)
Monica is the new producer for high-powered television reporter Debra Willis (Vanessa Bell Calloway). Although her signature tag line is "As my mother always said..." in reality Grace Willis (Diahann Carroll) is an icy perfectionist whom Debra could never please while growing up. After hitting a teenager in her car, Debra flees the scene of the accident. Her old buddy, Leo (John Spencer) is the detective assigned to investigate the hit-and-run case. When the victim is identified as high school baseball star Bobby Garcia, Debra ends up reporting on her own crime because Mrs. Garcia admires the reporter's respect for her mother. While donating blood for Bobby, Debra's arms reveal the scars from a teenage suicide attempt. As evidence starts to point in her direction, Debra turns to her mother for help but is instead criticized. Feeling she has no other choice, she again considers suicide until Monica reveals herself. Learning that she has the right to be less than perfect, Debra turns herself in to the police and will survive the ordeal with the love and support of her boyfriend, George (James Pickens, Jr.).
5 "Angels on the Air" Bruce Bilson R.J. Colleary October 21, 1995 (1995-10-21) (CBS)
Monica works as a personal assistant to radio personality Sandy Latham (Elizabeth Ashley), who is renowned for her caustic rapport with listeners and her biting wit. In that capacity, the angel hopes to repair Sandy's relationship with Claire (Melissa Joan Hart), who is continually mortified that her mother uses her as a pawn in the ratings battle. Meanwhile, Tess joins Sandy as an on-air sidekick, encouraging her to be more supportive of her listeners and her daughter. After Claire is humiliated by one of her mother's stunts, the girl gets involved with a black-market CD scam to get money to run away from home. Monica uses her angelic powers to protect Claire and reveals that she is never alone with her pain because God is there also. Tess, likewise, reveals a similar message to Sandy, who is still recovering from her ex-husband's infidelity. The angels encourage mother and daughter to work through their pain.
6 "In the Name of God" Tim Van Patten Martha Williamson October 28, 1995 (1995-10-28) (CBS)
Tess returns to the town of a previous assignment and she and Monica help Dr. Joanne Glassberg (Talia Balsam) open an AIDS hospice. Joanne is injured in a bomb blast and Tess is brought face to face with a white supremacy group headed by her previous assignment Tim Porter (Craig Wasson). Tess' anger causes her to be replaced by another angel, Sam (Paul Winfield). Monica is able to enlist the help of a nosey neighbor Jerry (Dick Van Patten) and the angels do battle with Satan (John Schneider), who's posing as a politician. Tess and Monica reveal themselves to Tim and show him that he was motivated by fears stretching back to childhood. Together they drive Satan out of the community.
This particular episode of Touched by an Angel was filmed in Oklahoma City just 6 months before the devastating tragedy of the Oklahoma City bombing, which occurred April 19, 1995. It was originally marked as the first-season finale on the DVD, but was aired as a second-season episode. The original production code was 112, but on the fourth disc of the first-season DVD set, it's marked as the season finale.
7 "Reunion" Victor Lobl Valerie Woods November 4, 1995 (1995-11-04) (CBS)
Returning home for her mother's funeral, Megan Brooks (Natalie Cole) arrives with a Dixieland band playing "When the Saints Go Marching in." This incident raises the ire of her godmother, Clarice Mitchell (Maya Angelou), a renowned poet. Clarice's son, Sam (Michael Beach) and Megan had been high school sweethearts, but their lives drifted apart. Now that she is recently widowed, Sam is interested in rekindling a relationship and spontaneously proposes to Megan. Clarice, however, is horrified to discover that Megan is HIV positive. The mother urges her son to retract his proposal, and at first Sam literally drives away. But realizing his selfishness, he returns and pledges to stand by Megan through their coming years together. Now Megan has reservations about the marriage leaving Sam completely confused. Revealing that she has been the conduit through which Clarice received divine inspiration, Tess urges the poet to give her blessing to the nuptials because this is Sam and Megan's time to live and love. The wedding proceeds apace after the bride and groom also receive separate revelations, and Clarice composes a new poem for the ceremony.
8 "Operation Smile" Nancy Malone Glen Berenbeim, R.J. Colleary & Martha Williamson November 11, 1995 (1995-11-11) (CBS)
Ginger (Terumi Matthews) works as an exotic dancer, in which unlikely venue she meets Monica. Ginger hires Monica to babysit her little daughter Emily (Kelsi Copier), who was born with a disfiguring cleft palate. Ginger fears other kids in her trailer park will taunt Emily, but Monica invites Jeremy (Miles Feulner), who befriends the little girl. When Jeremy learns about Operation Smile, an organization of doctors who perform pro bono plastic surgery, he suggests Emily as a candidate. Ginger has taken Emily's affliction as a punishment from God for past transgressions, and refuses to accept the charity offer. Jeremy leads Emily off to Nashville (and Operation Smile) anyway by stowing away on Albert's (Tone Loc) pick-up. Albert is actually transporting stolen goods elsewhere, when Tess intercepts the entire crew. She confronts Albert and redirects their journey across state via a hot air balloon. When Monica reveals herself to Ginger, she is angry that Ginger assumes her daughter is a punishment from God; she should know that Emily is a great gift. In the end, Ginger gratefully allows Emily to receive treatment.
9 "The Big Bang" Chuck Bowman Ken LaZebnik November 25, 1995 (1995-11-25) (CBS)
Monica and Tess find themselves caught in the middle of a bank holdup. Jackson Spears (Jeffrey R. Nordling), the arrogant and brilliant stick-up man, holds Monica and a very pregnant Alison Craig (Lisa Jane Persky) hostage, as he forces the president of the bank, Max Chamberlain, III (Jack Scalia) into the vault. But when an earthquake shakes the building, Monica, Max and Alison are locked into the vault. Jackson insists on freeing them--Alison is his wife. Max was closing the bank; they were about to lose their insurance and a desperate Jackson was targeting Max in revenge. Inside the vault, Monica reveals herself to the unborn child in Alison's womb, reassuring him that the world is not to be feared; that God will watch over him. The metaphor stands for the bank as well, when the vault door swings open, Jackson cannot shoot Max as planned, for Max is carrying out Alison, and Monica is carrying out Jackson's son. Rescue workers open the bank entrance and the little group trapped within, like the infant, emerge into the world.
10 "Unidentified Female" Michael Schultz Martha Williamson December 2, 1995 (1995-12-02) (CBS)
Jennifer (Allison Smith) has a burn on her finger and a hole in her memory. Two detectives are rigorously interrogating her about a shooting death she witnessed. As she is cross-examined, her jumbled memories eventually coalesce into a narrative. A reporter for the trendy magazine Curb, Jennifer met Clay Martin (Brian Bloom), a real-estate developer, in an elevator at her office building. He invited her to a party where she met his best friend, Alex (Brandon Douglas), as well as Monica. Against his mother's wishes, Alex had been traveling in search of his real father. Despite the former roommates' cross words--not the least of which regarded the fact that Alex' ex-girlfriend was now dating Clay--they soon reconciled. Jennifer subsequently had a heart-to-heart talk with Alex where the prodigal confided he was on his way home to deliver yellow roses and an apology to his mother. Afterwards she just happened to be in the room when Clay shows Alex an antique gun. Although apparently unloaded, the gun contained a chambered round that killed Alex when the weapon fell off a desk. Since Jennifer's story corroborates Clay's, the police release her. Two weeks after the incident, she is still in shock and denial. Revealing herself, Monica informs the distraught woman that God had a purpose for her witnessing the incident, and that she has a task to complete. Understanding this, Jennifer comforts Alex's mother and gives her the roses he never got the chance to deliver.
11 "The Feather" Gene Reynolds Valerie Woods, Ken LaZebnik, and Robin Sheets December 16, 1995 (1995-12-16) (CBS)
The sequel to the first season's Christmas episode "Fear Not", "The Feather" continues the story of a little church's congregation now that they've seen Monica reveal herself in all her glory. Awed, trying to figure out what it all means, the congregation is susceptible to Charles (William R. Moses), a con artist posing as a preacher. He seizes a feather which fell from Monica's dove and holds it up to the congregation as physical proof of the miracle. He's diverting piles of donation offerings into his own pockets when he's confronted by Wayne (Randy Travis)--who turns out to be his brother. Years ago, Charles and Wayne ran the preacher scam together; Wayne is now a reformed man and he's determined to stop Charles. The issue is brought to a head when Joey (Paul Wittenburg), who's been ministering to a crack baby that was left in the church, brings the infant to Charles for a healing. Charles can't do it, of course, but Monica reveals herself again and reminds the congregation that they worshipped a feather instead of a King and their need for fame deafened them to the cries of a little baby. Charles is humbled and the congregation is once again put on the right track.
12 "The One That Got Away" Victoria Hockberg Debbie Smith and Danna Doyle January 6, 1996 (1996-01-06) (CBS)
En route to a wedding in a picturesque mountain meadow, Monica meets an uninvited guest--Andrew (John Dye), an Angel of Death whom Tess is well acquainted with. The angels' new assignment focuses on former law school classmates traveling via train to the nuptials. Mark Monfort (David Newsome) and Susan Duplain (Susan Diol) rekindle their passion, having ended their relationship just before graduation. However, their friend, Lisa Magdaleno (Tracy Nelson) is still reeling from the suicide of her fiancé, Doug who was expelled from law school for cheating on an exam. Mark had been unaware of his best friend's death and more importantly of his own involvement. Jealous that Doug received a clerkship she wanted, Susan tricked Mark into helping her change Doug's exam to make it look like he plagiarized. With Andrew's assistance, Monica shows Mark that Susan's quest for power and prestige is out of control. After an intense confrontation with her, he turns to Lisa for comfort and support.
13 "'Til We Meet Again" Tim Van Patten Martha Williamson January 13, 1996 (1996-01-13) (CBS)
The Carpenter family gathers as their father, Joe (Harvey Vernon) prepares to die at home. Although grown, the siblings demonstrate the roles they have become accustomed to. Kate (Concetta Tomei), the eldest, takes charge like their mother, Elizabeth (Priscilla Pointer) but is not quite as overbearing. Chris (Ed Begley, Jr.), the middle child, stuns his sisters with the news that he is estranged from his wife. And Kim (Joan Van Ark), the youngest, is the creative one who never seemed to fit in with the rest of the family. Monica and Tess, as the home-care nurse and interior decorator (respectively), get caught in the crossfire as Chris and Kim resist Kate's domineering behavior. The angels' mission is to help expose a family secret before Joe dies. Andrew (John Dye), the Angel of Death, informs his comrades that that time is rapidly approaching. Amidst a heated argument, Kate exposes the secret--Kim is not Joe's biological daughter. Upon returning from a brief trip, Elizabeth convenes a family meeting to discuss the matter. Years ago, she had a torrid affair with her husband's business partner. Joe forgave his wife and raised Kim as his own daughter. Though this disclosure threatens to tear the family apart, Andrew arranges for Joe to receive a special dispensation: the bed-ridden father is able to walk downstairs, play the hymn, "'Til We Meet Again," on the piano and converse lucidly with his family. Monica and Tess urge them to follow his attitude of love and forgiveness. Joe dies with his family gathered around him, singing "'Til We Meet Again" in four-part harmony.
14 "Rock n' Roll Dad" Tim Van Patten Andrew Smith January 20, 1996 (1996-01-20) (CBS)
Rock 'n' Roll star Jon Mateos (A Martinez) has it all: a loving wife, Evie (Rosalind Allen), a devoted teenage daughter Samantha (Ivey Lloyd), and a wiseass son, Dylan (Spencer Klein). He relies on Evie for support and she responds by trying to be everywhere and do everything for him. Mateos' comfortable world is turned upside down when Evie, rushing from her daughter's concert to a TV appearance by Jon, is killed in a car accident. Faced with actually having to raise his children, and deal with their emotional trauma, Mateos retreats into work and then rapidly descends into drink and drug use. Monica, who is Jon's driver, watches as his attempts to record a new song, "Nowhere", disappear down the bottle and up his nose. Tess is the kids' nanny; Samantha slips around her to go out with friends to a concert. But en route they stop at a motel to party. Samantha didn't plan on this and runs out. She pages her Dad, but he's too stoned to pick up her page. Eventually Sam hitches a ride with a trucker. When the driver points out they're right at the spot where Evie died, Sam insists on getting out and staying there alone. she looks down the ravine where her mother died--then slips and falls into it herself. At the bottom, Sam finds her mother's purse, with a notation of a song Evie was writing for Jon. Andrew (John Dye), the Angel of Death, sppears, but then Tess appears also to comfort Samantha. Back in the recording studio, Monica reveals herself to Jon, pointing out to him that the word NOWHERE may also be read as NOW HERE. She leads him to his daughter, and the show ends with Jon and Samantha on TV, singing the song that Evie wrote.
15 "Indigo Angel" Jon Andersen Glenn Berenbeim & R.J. Colleary February 3, 1996 (1996-02-03) (CBS)
Club Indigo, once St. Louis' premier blues and jazz club, has fallen hard times. Its owner, Sam Brown (Hal Linden), is getting on and his grandson Zach (Geoffrey Nauffts) arrives to convince his grandfather to sell the club and move into a nursing home. Sam resists. He's always told Zach that "The Countess" told him "do nothing, 'til you hear from me" and he's sticking to those words. Zach assumes that Sam has embroidered the past greatness of the club, and that he's made up stories of all the jazz greats who played there and were friends. Especially that story about "The Countess"--the mysterious singer who arrived in the sixties and put the club back on the map. Whether these stories are true or not, it's apparent that Sam should really be in a nursing home--he's losing his memory as well as his physical well-being. But Sam has always had an open-mic night on Mondays, and despite his grandson's protests, proceeds to hire Monica to M.C. Monday's open-mic performance. When we see that Andrew (John Dye), the Angel-of-Death, is a border in Sam's basement, we sense that Monday's open-mic night might be his last. Zach tricks Sam into signing a power of attorney agreement so that he can do what he thinks is best for his grandfather. But then, to Zach's astonishment, the singer Al Jarreau shows up--Sam's stories were all true, including the one about "The Countess". We see in a flashback that "The Countess" was actually Tess. The final open-mic night is a triumph: a packed house gets to hear music and tributes to Sam from B.B. King, Dr. John, and Al Hirt. And then "The Countess" makes a return appearance. She brings down the house, as Sam dies. Zach reconsiders selling Club Indigo; instead he'll transform it to The Sam Brown Blues Museum.
16 "Jacob's Ladder" Michael Schultz Martha Williamson February 10, 1996 (1996-02-10) (CBS)
As Monica studies a sleeping man in a run-down apartment, Tess appears and informs her she's in the wrong place 801 Cedar in Jacksonville, Florida rather than Jacksonville, Illinois. After using her angelic powers to tidy the apartment, Monica stoops to pick up a bag under the bed when the police burst in. The bag she's holding is full of cocaine, and the police arrest her. During interrogation, her claim that she's an angel makes her a candidate for a mental hospital. At her arraignment, Monica alone can see Sam (Paul Winfield), the angel from special services. He tells her the simple mistake of going to the wrong address has set events in motion that have to play out, but no matter what happens God will never leave nor forsake her. Monica is assigned a court-appointed attorney, Jake Stone (Joe Morton), a Vietnam veteran and hardened cynic. He tries to convince her to plead guilty but mentally ill. She refuses, however, and insists on a competency hearing. In the meantime, Monica is remanded to a psychiatric hospital where she shares a room with Claire (Cindy Williams), who also claims to be an angel but keeps repeating the phrase, "May Day." At the hearing, Jake produces Terry Hayman (Barbara Mandrell), the woman from Jacksonville, Illinois that Monica was supposed to help. Terry describes her encounter with Tess, which corroborates Monica's story. The judge declares her competent to stand trial, but anxious to avoid placing angels on trial is ready to dismiss charges based on a legal technicality. A skeptical Jake tells her a real angel would resemble Claire, whom he met in Vietnam. During the fall of Saigon, Jake attempted to rescue a little girl, May Ling, nicknamed "May Day." As he helicoptered away, the girl fell from his grasp but was rescued by Claire. Realizing that Claire is indeed an angel, Monica asks to return to the mental hospital. There, Monica helps Claire remember who she is. In turn, the newly restored angel helps Jake resolve his anger toward God. Returning to 801 Cedar Street, Monica and Tess learn that the building is going to become a home for orphans and child survivors of trauma and run by Executive Director May Ling Gustafson.
17 "Out of the Darkness" Victoria Hochberg R.J. Colleary February 17, 1996 (1996-02-17) (CBS)
What happens if you go into a coma, wake up five years later and discover you've lost everything that mattered to you? When we open Steve Bell (Brad Whitford) is celebrating the opening of he and his partner Matthew Tracy's (David Morin) architectural firm. Then his son falls off the roof, but is miraculously unhurt. Monica caught him, and unseen to the family, she also examines an angel key chain. This causes Steve to take his second car, a dumpy little model, and he's thrown out in an accident. When Steve wakes up, five years have passed, and we learn that his wife Bonnie (Jane Kaczmarek) has fallen in love with Matthew. Thinking he was a permanent vegetable, she's divorced Steve. Steve's house looks completely different, even his dog doesn't remember him. Steve reacts in rage, he breaks up Bonnie and Matthew's impending nuptials. Monica meanwhile feels so badly about causing all this trouble that she steps away from her assignment. Al (Brenda Vaccaro) is dispatched to talk sense into her. What is revealed is that Steve had carried on a legacy of abuse: there was a wooden spoon that he had been beaten with and he had been beating his son with. When he finally confronts this secret, he's able to forgive himself, let go of his rage and let Bonnie get on with her life.
18 "Lost and Found" Bethany Rooney Debbie Smith & Danna Doyle February 24, 1996 (1996-02-24) (CBS)
Monica and Tess are assigned to Detective Frank Champness (Bill Nunn) at the Center for Missing Children. Champness is very good at this job, but is haunted by his failures: the children who have died or have simply never been found. Andrew (John Dye), the Angel-of-Death, is also taking his shift at the center. Andrew is intrigued by computers, and shows Monica how computer simulated age progression works. Monica discovers that Kathleen (Jasmine Guy), a Dark Angel, is Bob's new girl friend, and is pushing Bob to the breaking point. She distracts him from his cases and undermines all the good he has done for missing children, pushing him close to quitting his job. In a dueling revelation scene, Monica defeats Kathleen and brings Bob back from the influence of evil. Then, with the help of Andrew's age progression expertise, Monica helps Bob solve a 15 year old missing child case.
19 "Dear God" Tim Van Patten Glenn Berenbeim March 9, 1996 (1996-03-09) (CBS)
While working at the post office, Monica meets Max (Elliott Gould), who is responsible for handling "dead" letters addressed to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and God. A Holocaust survivor, Max answers children's letters to God by telling them there is no God and not to place their faith in a fantasy. One little girl, Tanya Brenner (Kelsey Mulrooney), continues sending God letters, even though Max only answered the first one and ignored the rest. Andrew, who has met the child, and Monica entice Tess to ask God if they can read the letters. After receiving permission, they learn that Tanya's father (Willie Garson) is very ill and that his girlfriend, Sandy has been abusing the girl. Monica is outraged and wants to help, but Tess reminds her that Max, not Tanya is her assignment. Taking matters into her own hands, Monica arranges for Max to see a drunken Sandy hit the girl. Following this encounter, Max follows her home, where her dying father beseeches the postal worker to find Tanya a new home. Shaken, Max runs away. When he doesn't show up for work the next day, Monica goes to visit him. Tanya has disappeared and Max is wracked with guilt. The angel reveals herself and gently persuades him to do something. He decides to look for the girl, finding her at her late father's apartment. While treating Tanya to a meal at the diner, Max is spotted by policemen and arrested for suspicion of kidnapping. Monica visits a despondent Max in jail, informing him that men, not God were responsible for the Holocaust. When Andrew emerges on the scene, Max remembers seeing him at the Auschwitz barracks in 1944. The Angel of Death reminds Max of his father's faith, revealing that he died on his feet praising God and asking Him to walk with his son. Overcome by memories, the postal worker weeps. Meanwhile, Tess persuades the diner owner to tell the police Max did not abduct Tanya but was trying to help her. Once that matter is cleared up, Max applies to be her foster father, so the two of them can become a family. As Monica, Tess, and Andrew watch unseen, Max opens a mysterious package that contains a pair of children's shoes--his own--with the carved inscription "Lieber Gott," German for "Dear God."
20 "Portrait of Mrs. Campbell" Victor Lobl Susan Cridland Wick March 23, 1996 (1996-03-23) (CBS)
The women in Naval officer, Neil Campbell (Vince Grant)'s life do not get along. His mother Marian (Linda Gray) and his pregnant wife April (Gabrielle Carteris) seem to be competing for his love. After he goes out to sea, Monica enters their life as an artist commissioned to paint a "portrait of Mrs. Campbell". We soon learn that Marian is desperately in need of a bone marrow transplant and Neil cannot return home from sea. As the situation worsens, April volunteers to donate marrow despite her pregnancy. At this point we come to know the secret that Marian has been hiding for her entire life, that she has a mentally challenged son, Tommy, who has been raised in facilities all of his life. Although Marian has always loved and cared for her son, she was encouraged by her parents to give him up as punishment for the sinful behavior that conceived him. As Marian's health worsens, Tommy emerges as the only viable bone marrow donor and, with the help of Andrew, the Angel of Death, the operation is arranged and is successful. April gives birth to a healthy baby girl and the entire family is united with the return of Neil. Monica's painting is then revealed to be a portrait of the whole family
21 "The Quality of Mercy" Chuck Bowman Andrew Smith April 27, 1996 (1996-04-27) (CBS)
Joel Redding (Ted Shackleford) is a former soap-opera star who is coming to terms with middle age and life after television. He, his wife, Sally (Stephanie Faracy) and son, Marshall (Harley Cross) have moved to a small town trying to regain a semblance of normal family life. While helping with a college theatre's fund raiser, Monica, Tess, and Andrew witness tension between Joel, the play's director and Marshall, the play's star. Matters are further complicated when the aging actor initiates an affair with one of his teenage ingenues. During one of Joel's extracurricular trysts, Sally slips while hanging a picture and seriously injures herself. Marshall finds his mother, calls for help, and gets her to the hospital. After authorizing the doctor to perform a risky surgical procedure, the teen rails at Joel when he finally returns from his rendezvous. Tess reveals herself to the guilt-ridden husband, admonishing him to be faithful to his wife and son. Back at the theatre, Joel tries to apologize to his son and admits he didn't quit the soap opera but was fired because of his age. Marshall is still reluctant to forgive until Monica's revelation that he must see his father as a man, rather than as a hero to be worshipped. Sally's surgery is successful, the production is a triumph, and the family is reunited.
22 "Flesh and Blood" Jon Andersen R.J. Colleary May 4, 1996 (1996-05-04) (CBS)
Monica befriends Kate Prescott (Valerie Harper), whose son has been accused of a brutal murder. Angered by Thomas' (Anthony Michael Hall) acquittal, Leonard Page (Norman Parker) the victim's father tries to force the Prescotts to leave town. Tess advises the man to let God avenge his daughter's death, but he refuses to listen, even when Kate herself begs him to stop the vendetta. When she discovers some of the victim's belongings in Thomas's room, however, she doubts his innocence and issues a statement to the press. He responds by leaving town. But once the police apprehend the real murderer, Kate despairs because of her betrayal. Revealing herself, Monica tells the distraught mother her mistake was trusting evidence rather than faith. Tess meanwhile returns to Page's house, urging him to let the healing process begin. Afterwards, Monica wonders what will become of Kate's son. Tess reveals that Mrs. Angeli (Sally Jesse Raphael), the kindly bus driver who gave Kate moral support during the trial is herself an "advance angel" who will watch over Thomas as he starts his new life in Los Angeles.
23 "Birthmarks" Peter Hunt Ken LaZebnik May 11, 1996 (1996-05-11) (CBS)
Michael Russell (David Naughton) is dying of cancer, a fact his father finds hard to accept. A potter by trade, Whit (William Daniels) is skeptical of technology and persuaded his son to leave city life for the family farm once his illness was diagnosed. Unbeknownst to Whit, Michael and Penny (Barbara Alyn Woods) have undergone gamete fertilization, a process enabling Jolene (Kathie Lee Gifford) to be the surrogate mother for their baby. Believing the pregnancy to be unnatural, Whit vows to have no part in raising his grandchild. Subsequent to one of his tirades, Jolene disappears. As Michael's health deteriorates, the situation looks increasingly grim, especially when Andrew, the Angel of Death, arrives. Using a clever metaphor, Monica gently convinces Whit to accept the non-traditional pregnancy. Michael dies just as his son is born, and as his bereaved family visits the grave, Tess arrives in the Cadillac with Jolene and the baby in tow. The surrogate gives the infant to his mother, who laments that Michael never got a chance to hold his son. Tess comforts Penny by pointing out that he has a birthmark a kiss from his father.
24 "Statute of Limitations" Victor Lobl Danna Doyle & Debbie Smith May 18, 1996 (1996-05-18) (CBS)
The angels are assigned to The Morgan Bell Show, a tabloid talk show, with Monica having the plum job of assisting Claudia Bell (Darlene Cates), the program's embittered producer and Morgan's sister. A dark secret from the Bells' past forged their unhealthy symbiotic relationship; the glamorous Morgan (Shanna Reed) is the on-air talent while the obese Claudia calls the shots from seclusion. Morgan's attempt to focus on uplifting topics backfires when an "all-American" mother is confronted by an illegitimate daughter raised in foster homes. The woman has a heart attack, and Morgan is irate that Claudia engineered the situation. Working together, the angels uncover the mystery of the Bells' own past, but inform the sisters God can forgive any sin, no matter how long ago it was committed. Morgan and Claudia publicly confess their misdeeds, asking their victims and the television audience for forgiveness.
[edit] Season 3

The third season aired September 15, 1996 through May 18, 1997. This season also aired the pilot of the Touched by an Angel spin off, Promised Land.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "Promised Land" Michael Schultz Martha Williamson September 15, 1996 (1996-09-15) (CBS)
Monica is downcast because she has failed on one of her assignments, but Tess tells her to buck up because the cavalry's on the way. The two angels watch as Russell Greene (Gerald McRaney) and his family pass by in a Suburban truck towing an Airstream trailer. After being laid off from his factory job in North Carolina, Russell packed up his wife, two children and mother to head to her home town, Chicory Creek, Kentucky where an old friend, Doc Rogers has promised to give Russell a job. They arrive, however, just in time for the doctor's funeral. Erasmus Jones (Ossie Davis), another family friend, allows the Greenes to pull the trailer in his yard while Russell determines his next move. Complicating matters further is the fact that his brother, Joe skipped town, leaving Nathaniel (Eddie Karr), a nine-year old son, with Erasmus. Disappointed that the American dream has gone sour for him, Russell takes his wife, Claire' (Wendy Phillips)s advice and prays for guidance. Unseen, Tess and Monica watch and realize that Russell is their man. The next day, Dinah (Sara Schaub) prompts Erasmus to tell her father about Doc Rogers' "unfinished business"--the late doctor was visited by two angels who had come to help him save Chicory Creek. She thinks that since Russell doesn't have a job, he can travel to New York and try to persuade a big-city doctor to return to her home town and open up a clinic. Although he is skeptical, Claire talks her husband into making the trip, and Erasmus asks him to tell Dr. Rebecca Cousins (Suzette Douglas) that "her Daddy loves her." On the bus, Russell sits next to Monica, unaware of her true identity. In New York, he meets Dr. Cousins and chides her for abandoning the community that scraped together and helped put her through medical school. On the return trip to Chicory Creek, Russell discovers he has lost his bus ticket and only has enough money to get to Hensen. Disgusted with the "United States of Greedy People," Russell meets Tess, who spearheads a collection from the passengers to get him all the way back home. Once they get off the bus, she reveals herself, telling him that God wants his family to discover America and help others along the way.
2 "A Joyful Noise" Peter H. Hunt Katherine Ann Jones September 21, 1996 (1996-09-21) (CBS)
Monica begins working with Dr. Adam Litowski (Dwight Schultz), a child psychiatrist haunted by an event from his past that is influencing his treatment of Melissa Houghton (Mika Boorem), a young girl who claims to hear the voices of angels. While exploring a nearby church's bell tower late on a rainy night, Melissa encounters Clara (Olympia Dukakis), a mysterious stranger who escorts her home. Convinced that the girl is possibly schizophrenic, Adam prescribes medication. Monica, however, knows Melissa is telling the truth and becomes more concerned when Andrew shows her that the doctor's daughter, Katie--whose birthday he plans to celebrate--is deceased. Adam denies that her death has affected his diagnosis of Melissa's "illness." Her mother, Emily (Jane Sibbett) is distressed by her reaction to the medication and is incensed when the doctor mistakenly calls Melissa, "Katie." Shaken by the turn of events and by Andrew's realistic mural of the rustic cabin where Katie died, Adam heads there intending to commit suicide. Monica intercedes by revealing herself and showing the doctor how his daughter died--she fell off the cabin's roof while trying to rescue a bird's nest from the chimney. The angel tells him Katie is safe and happy because God sent an archangel named Clara to handle her transition. Days later, Melissa escorts Adam to the bell tower where she had previously met Clara, who reappears to the trio. The archangel assures the doctor his daughter felt no pain and saw only beauty at the time of her death. Clara also advises Melissa that though she is off medication it will be harder for her to hear the angels, but she should never stop listening for them.
3 "Random Acts" Tim Van Patten R.J. Colleary & Martha Williamson September 22, 1996 (1996-09-22) (CBS)
A solemn Monica stands in the woods, reflecting on the events that transpired there earlier. Tess appears, reminding Monica that some "days humans behave so badly to one another that it's all an angel can do to keep loving them." The caseworker recalls how this assignment began. Fed up with the "Yeah, whatever" generation, Mike O'Connor (John Ritter) questioned the significance of his career on the eve of his 20th anniversary as a teacher. Into his life walked Monica, his new student teacher. Unfortunately, so did Lucas Tremaine (Channon Roe) and Danielle Dawson (Aimee Graham), two petty criminals who randomly targeted Mike for kidnapping. Monica tacitly revealed herself to Mike, giving him counsel during his ordeal. The situation began to look less grim when the teacher recognized Danielle as a former pupil. But the volatile Lucas forced Mike to get into the car's trunk while en route to steal the teacher's boat at Lake Washington. Unable to free Mike from the trunk, Monica encouraged him by playing the videotape his class made to commemorate his anniversary. Afterwards he prayed, thanking God for his life and for his students. Irritated that he couldn't find the boat, Lucas hauled the teacher out of the trunk and shot him despite Danielle's protests. Monica, however, managed to record the event with Mike's video camera. Frustrated with Lucas after the shooting, Danielle punched him, causing the car to swerve. A state patrolman pulled them over and inspected the trunk. Seeing that the camera's record light was still on, the strung-out woman confessed to the patrolman, who apprehended the pair. Discouraged by her inability to help Mike, Monica received a revelation from Tess to use her gift "words" to help him. She confronted Robbie Hawkins (Danté Basco), one of Mike's problem students who had withheld information about his possible whereabouts. A search party eventually found the unconscious teacher. The reminiscence complete, Tess affirms that Monica was the right angel for the job. Mike recovers from his injuries and is visited by his students, including Robbie, who sympathizes with his teacher's ordeal.
4 "Sins of the Father" Tim Van Patten Debbie Smith & Danna Doyle September 29, 1996 (1996-09-29) (CBS)
Monica poses as a journalist to interview Luther Dixon (De'Aundre Bonds), a teenager on death row. During their conversations, Willis (Carl Lumbly), the prisoner in the adjacent cell often eavesdrops, interjecting his unwanted opinions on Luther's situation. Meanwhile, Tess and Andrew try to help Valerie Dixon (Debbie Allen) prevent her younger son, Samuel (Robert Ri'chard) from "gang banging." Despite Luther's incarceration, Sam looks up to him as a role model. Monica correctly surmises that the boys' father--despite abandoning the family during Valerie's second pregnancy--has negatively influenced both of their lives. The angel is astonished to learn that Willis, who is sentenced to die shortly for a murder he committed, is Luther and Samuel's father. Tess informs Monica that years earlier she had tried to dissuade Willis from running with a gang but had been ignored. Monica then reveals herself to Willis and convinces him to tell Luther that he is his father. Luther initially rejects Willis and rails at him for leaving his mom to fend for herself. The condemned prisoner, however, apologizes and admonishes his son to listen to Monica because his failure to heed another angel's earlier warnings landed him on death row. The caseworker subsequently reveals herself to the teen, urging him to tell Samuel he regrets the murder he committed and is not a worthy role model. Monica uses her angelic powers to temporarily free Luther from jail to stop his brother from murdering Pastor George, who has incurred the wrath of a gang by preaching against violence. After Willis' execution, Tess comforts a bereaved Valerie who fears both of her sons will follow in their father's footsteps. The angel advises her to cling to God and let Him help her guide Samuel's life. Andrew escorts the boy into the church where he embraces Valerie--the cycle of violence finally broken.
5 "Written in Dust" Peter Hunt Ken LaZebnik October 6, 1996 (1996-10-06) (CBS)
Henry Moskowitz (Corey Parker), a proud archaeologist on a dig at a Navajo excavation site, receives a surprise visit from his zayda (grandfather). Sam (Harold Gould) hopes to reconcile his grandson to himself and his Jewish faith by asking him to say kaddish--the Hebrew prayer for the dead--for him. Henry resists the reconciliation effort, still angry that his late parents disapproved of his marriage to a Catholic woman. Refusing to get in the middle of the strife, his wife leaves the dig site. Monica and Tess, posing as a research assistant and as a photographer, soon find themselves embroiled in a greater conflict. A group of Navajo elders led by Edison (Russell Means) disrupt the dig, stating the site is on sacred ground. Although Henry quickly dismisses their claim, Sam and Edison discover common ground in the similarities of their respective cultures. Even Henry's student intern, Dillon New Eagle (Adam Beach), begins to doubt the appropriateness of the excavation. After a dream about his own grandfather--in which Andrew enigmatically appears--Dillon joins Sam, Monica, and the others in a boycott of the dig. Furious, Henry stalks off. Later that night while exploring the excavation site by himself, he falls into a hidden cave. Gathered around a campfire with the others, Dillon recalls the story his grandfather told him years before: the excavation site was the location of a massacre against the Navajo by Kit Carson. Simultaneously, Henry finds archaeological evidence of that atrocity. While looking for him Sam encounters Tess, who reveals herself and tells him only Henry can reconcile himself to God. Sam finds his grandson and attempts a rescue, but the elderly man falls into the cave and succumbs to a heart attack. Henry rails at God for his zayda's death. Monica then appears and tells the archaeologist the peace Sam wanted for Henry was with God, not with him. Tess subsequently leads the others to his location, and he is rescued. Buoyed by Monica's revelation, Henry apologizes to Edison and destroys the dig permit. Monica then explains the kaddish is not just a prayer for the dead but is a prayer praising God by saying God is above all praise--a gift of peace to help the living carry on.
6 "Secret Service" Bethany Rooney Kathleen McGhee-Anderson October 13, 1996 (1996-10-13) (CBS)
Marty Dillard (Heidi Swedberg), an overachieving Secret Service agent, is at odds with Monica, assigned as an agent to protect a Presidential candidate. While off duty, Marty enjoys fishing and befriends Ulysses Dodd (Ben Vereen), an older gentleman who teaches her to enjoy the sport for its own sake rather than for sheer competitiveness. Baffled by a series of death threats to Senator Hammond (Roy Thinnes), Marty begrudgingly accepts help from Monica and Andrew, who's posing as a forensics specialist. Working together, they manage to apprehend the would-be assassin and save the senator's life. However, the assailant's wayward bullet strikes Ulysses, whom Marty had invited to the campaign rally. She visits him in the hospital and begins to suspect his diabetes may be more serious than he let on. Hammond, impressed with Marty's savvy, asks her to head up his presidential detail. Yet she doesn't feel like celebrating when she returns to the riverbank and finds that Ulysses is still in the hospital. There Tess, the attending nurse, tells Marty the trauma of the bullet wound has caused one of Ulysses' kidneys to shut down. If he doesn't have a transplant soon, he will die. Commenting on the situation, Tess tells Monica it's ironic that so many people are willing to sacrifice their lives for Senator Hammond but only one can save Ulysses. The next day Marty learns she is a viable donor to save her friend but would no longer qualify to be a field agent. Torn, she asks his advice. Ulysses encourages her to accept the position and be thankful for the time together God gave them. Later that night, despite another campaign victory for Hammond, Marty is still preoccupied with her ailing friend. Revealing herself to the secret service agent, Monica tells her all humans are created in God's image, and they are all the same in His eyes. Furthermore, His love is given freely and need not be earned. Realizing she has spent her life always trying to prove herself, Marty anonymously donates her kidney to Ulysses. She rejects Hammond's offer to find another position for her on his detail, telling him she's not sure what's next for her--except that she plans to go fishing.
7 "Groundrush" Peter Hunt Burt Pearl October 27, 1996 (1996-10-27) (CBS)
To Monica, Scott Walden (Robert Hays) seems like a perfect assignment. The charming owner of a small aviation company, he performs numerous charitable deeds and has been a wonderful surrogate father to his fiancee's pre-teen son. What Monica doesn't know is "Mr. Wonderful" has a secretive past, which comes to light after an employee borrows a plane to make a humanitarian, albeit illegal smuggling mission. FBI agents arrive and apprehend Scott, charging him with an eighteen-year-old murder committed by one William Grunwald. Insisting the man is innocent, Monica defends him to his fiancee, Jocelyn (Ashley Crow) and his lawyer, Andrew. Unsure what to make of these events, Scott's future stepson, Jeremy (Justin Garms) is comforted by Tess. Monica decides, though, to take matters into her own hands and uses her angelic powers to help Scott escape. Andrew is confounded by her actions, especially since he has discovered Scott Walden is William Grunwald. Despite this knowledge, Monica continues to insist the man is innocent. Tess, however, is irate and directly orders Monica not to help Scott escape justice in any way, shape, or form. The willful angel disobeys that order by concealing his whereabouts from Agent Bradford (Jeff Olson), then is taken aback when Scott admits he did commit murder. Sam (the special agent angel) (Paul Winfield) arrives and tells Monica her lie of omission has threatened her very existence as an angel. He sends her to "God's Country" to reflect upon her mistake--not as a punishment but as a lesson. In the meantime, Andrew starts a revelation to Scott, who bails out of the airplane after an engine fire. Surprised to be alive despite his parachute's apparent failure, he finds himself in the same nether-region as Monica. She helps him understand that although he killed the man who raped his sister, he should have faced the consequences rather than losing himself in lies. Both angel and human pray for forgiveness, which they receive. Scott's parachute opens and when he lands, the FBI agents take him into custody. Prior to his extradition, Scott and Jocelyn marry, and he is reunited with his sister, who has since come forward with the truth.
8 "The Sky is Falling" Victor Lobl Glenn Berenbeim November 3, 1996 (1996-11-03) (CBS)
On Halloween, renowned author Leonard Pound (Brian Keith) is grief stricken regarding his wife, Grace's recent death. His son, Allan (Ray Buktenica) has hired Monica to attend to the widower, who has lost the will to live. To help him, the angel prompts Leonard to revisit a pivotal event in his life, October 30, 1938--the night of Orson Welles' radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds... and the night Monica and Tess met. Dressed in his Buck Rogers costume, young Leonard (Sam Gifaldi) gathered with his family around the radio. His father, Tom (Gary Hudson), a state trooper, left the house to investigate the flaming object that reportedly fell in nearby Grovers Mill. As the broadcast continued, listeners began to fret, thinking it was the end of the world. Panic spread into the streets and the Pound family, along with others, sought shelter in a church. There Leonard literally bumped into Penny (Scarlett Pomers), a girl in an angel costume. Concerned about his father, he snuck outside and started searching. Back inside the church, Tess tried to calm the people, but a glowing Monica appeared, announcing "Fear not!" and panic ensued. Tess read Monica the "riot act" and told her to find some animals she could help. As the people scattered in the moonlight, Leonard again encountered Penny, who had a flashlight. The two of them set off to explore. Tess then received a visit from Dottie (Estelle Getty), the angel of etiquette, and learned God had big plans for Monica and herself. Meanwhile, after getting lost, Leonard and Penny spotted a police car. Unfortunately, the state trooper inside, Andrew, had bad news for the boy: his father had died in a car accident. Distraught, Leonard ran off into the night. Tess encouraged Monica to reveal herself to the lad, but he rejected her message. Penny, however, found and comforted her friend. Back in the present, Monica realizes Grace was actually Penny grown up. The angel tells Leonard her inability to help him grieve back then prompted his relationship with his future wife. Now Monica can help console him after Grace's death because "sometimes, all an angel can do is cry with you."
9 "Something Blue" Terrence O'Hara Susan Cridland Wick & Jennifer Wharton November 10, 1996 (1996-11-10) (CBS)
Tess, Monica, and Andrew observe unseen as Kevin Abernathy (Ed Kerr) proposes to Alison Miller (Brigid Brannagh) in a forest glade. Six months later, the angels are wedding coordinators for the couple. Although preparations have proceeded apace, Monica feels she has forgotten something, and Tess admonishes her to remember because Kevin and Alison's future depends on it. Wedding day jitters are compounded by Kevin's eccentric Aunt Augusta (Sally Kellerman) and his klutzy sister, Peggy (Holly Fields). But the arrival of Alison's estranged father, Stan (Richard Gilliland) causes her to have second doubts about the nuptials. Kevin is especially taken aback because his bride-to-be had told him her father was dead. To prove his love, he reads the wedding vows he wrote but is dismayed to learn that Alison hasn't written her own vows yet. While Tess tries to keep the wedding guests entertained, it becomes evident the wedding may not occur. Amidst the chaos, a mysterious blue envelope goes unnoticed in the bridal prep room. Monica wonders why Stan showed up until Tess reveals she invited him. Kevin's parents comfort him, while Tess urges Alison's mother, Harriet (Linda Kelsey) to tell the truth--Stan wrote to Alison all these years like he promised. Harriet withheld the letters, initially out of spite for her ex-husband, then to cover her own deception. Confused, but knowing the truth, the bride and groom decide to proceed with the wedding. Monica then realizes she has forgotten to ask God's blessing on the event. After praying, she discovers the blue envelope and halts the ceremony. A distraught Alison runs off, but Kevin chases after her. Returning to the glade where they got engaged, the couple receives a revelation from Monica, Tess, and Andrew. Informed that marriage is a sacred institution, of which God should be made a part, the couple also learn the envelope contains the results of their blood tests. One of them has leukemia. Realizing true love can endure a life-threatening illness, Kevin and Alison are married by the three angels in the sight of God.
10 "Into the Light" Victor Lobl R.J. Colleary November 17, 1996 (1996-11-17) (CBS)
James Block (David Marciano), a man with a heart condition--and a criminal past--gets a second chance after a near-death experience. He suffers a heart attack after marrying his girlfriend, Rachel (Lori Alan) to prevent her from testifying against him. While "dead," James sees Andrew walking toward the "light," though he himself moves in the opposite direction. Realizing he must change his ways, James initiates a campaign of good works. Tess and Monica are assigned as nurses at the hospital where he is fulfilling community-service he received for a crime. Neither angel is impressed, however, with his apparent change of heart--especially when they realize he records his good deeds in a notebook. James finds a kindred spirit in Amy Ann McCoy (Kirsten Dunst), a teenage Elvis Presley fan with cystic fibrosis. A bit of a con artist herself, the girl is unaware how serious her illness is. Meanwhile, James is haunted by a recurring nightmare of his near-death experience, finally realizing he was headed toward a roiling chasm of unending darkness. He again encounters Andrew, who admonishes, "Even if every one of your good deeds was a step to heaven, it would never reach high enough." Unnerved, James destroys his notebook and plans to skip Amy Ann's birthday party. Tess confronts him, telling him the teenager will soon die, and only her faith has sustained her all these years. James rails at God, but Tess tells him not to blame God for the mess he has made of his life. As Rachel starts to apologize to Amy Ann for James' absence, he arrives. But he puts a damper on the proceedings by telling the birthday girl how serious her illness is and that God doesn't care. A furious Tess orders him to leave the room, and Rachel tells her husband she hopes never to see him again. Seeing Andrew in the corridor, James realizes he is the Angel of Death and attacks him. But Andrew avoids the human's assaults, until Monica appears holding the notebook he had earlier destroyed. She tells him that hell is separation from God, and if he was on his way there, he was sending himself. Andrew then clarifies his earlier statement to James: no one can earn their way to heaven because only God's mercy can lift a soul up and take him there. Repenting of his misdeeds, James prays and turns his life over to God. Overhearing her husband, Rachel realizes her own prayers have been answered. James returns to a dying Amy Ann, reassuring her that God exists and to take His hand and walk toward the light. The teenager dies as Elvis' song, "Precious Lord" plays on a turntable.
11 "Homecoming (1)" Peter Hunt Martha Williamson and William Schwartz November 24, 1996 (1996-11-24) (CBS)
Working from different vantage points, the angels help rehabilitate Julia Fitzgerald (Delta Burke), a drug addict who is down and out. Monica, posing as a street walker, persuades the police to round up the disheveled Julia with the other ladies. In jail, she is encouraged by the angel to enter the New Spring Halfway House administered by Tess. Though Julia wants to leave the program, her parole officer, Andrew advises her doing so will land her back behind bars since her arrest was a parole violation. Plagued by a past action she committed, the woman deserts the halfway house to rejoin her friend, Fran (Katherine LaNasa) on the streets. But when she misses the rendezvous, Monica persuades Julia to return to New Spring. As she makes steady progress in rehab, the woman decides to make amends with people she has offended. First on the list is Chuck (Taylor Negron), the bartender and former employer she stole from. He wants to have Julia arrested, but Andrew convinces the man to let her pay him back. She returns to the alley where she has jewelry hidden in a secret place. But after pawning it, Julia encounters Fran, who is being confronted by her pimp, Jimmy (Roy Fegan). Returning to the halfway house, she admits giving Jimmy most of the money to help Fran but saving enough for herself to get high. Tess leaves to confront the unscrupulous man. Afterwards, Julia panics because she has lost a necklace with great sentimental value--a memento of the son she gave up to his father for fifty dollars. A fatigued Tess returns after recovering the money, teaching Jimmy a lesson, paying back Chuck, and finding Julia's locket. Revealing that she and Tess are angels, Monica encourages Julia to press on despite setbacks because God will always be there to pick her up. Days later, after Fran has entered rehabilitation herself, the angels send Julia to Chicory Creek, Kentucky where she is to find a man with a 1949 burgundy Cadillac. That man turns out to be Erasmus Jones (Ossie Davis), and Julia is astonished to learn his extended family is Promised Land's Greene family. When they return to town for Thanksgiving, the prodigal mother will be reunited with her son... Nathaniel Greene.
12 "The Journalist" Tim Van Patten Ken LaZebnik December 1, 1996 (1996-12-01) (CBS)
At a television news station, Monica is the new weather girl and Andrew, a cameraman. Sam (Paul Winfield) explains their assignment is Rocky McCann (Kay Lenz), a hard-edged investigative reporter. Evasive regarding Tess' whereabouts, the special agent angel tells the duo he is supervising them because of the universal ramifications of broadcasting. Monica, attempting to befriend the reporter, agrees to help her with research. Andrew's first assignment with Rocky is a story about Horace and Zelda Wittenberg (John Randolph & Peg Phillips), an elderly couple with four foster children. Impressed during the visit, the Angel of Death is mortified when Rocky's story airs: it is an exposé alleging child abuse. Monica, whose biggest story is an upcoming lunar eclipse, sides with the reporter, while Andrew is frustrated by her rush to judgment. He confronts her, but Rocky tells him overlooking details on an earlier story led to a tragedy. After she reports Zelda had been arrested decades earlier for kidnapping her own son, the Social Services Department removes the foster children from the household. Chagrined that Monica uncovered that research, Andrew reminds her Rocky needs an angel, not a research assistant. Sam then advises Monica to concentrate on the weather, hinting the eclipse may be more important than she thinks. Andrew revisits the Wittenbergs to apologize for Rocky's actions and learns Zelda's kidnapping charge had been dismissed because she rescued her child from an abusive first husband. The angel's visit ends abruptly when the police raid the house searching for evidence. Rocky soon learns her anonymous tip about the elderly couple came from a dubious source. Heartbroken, Horace and Zelda intend to commit suicide until Andrew appears, revealing God still has work for them. Monica discovers the reporter's zealousness resulted from an accident on a Ferris wheel, the Eclipse, that disabled her husband (Harley Venton). The angel informs Rocky God wants her to be His child, not His avenger. Once exonerated, the Wittenbergs agree to help the newswoman take care of her husband, William. At the conclusion of the case, Sam reveals Tess has been on loan to another department--Natural Phenomena and Acts of God--responsible for the lunar eclipse.
13 "The Violin Lesson" Peter Hunt Glenn Berenbeim December 22, 1996 (1996-12-22) (CBS)
Apprenticed to Jordan Du Bois (Peter Michael Goetz), a violin maker, Monica must ensure he finishes a violin he started 30 years earlier on the Christmas Day his son was born. The unsuspecting father doesn't realize Tony (Lawrence Monoson) has come home for the holidays with a devastating secret, which the angel soon learns: Tony has AIDS and has returned home to die. The truth comes out while father and son indulge in a late night snack. Disappointed, Jordan distances himself from Tony. Discovering the unfinished violin he had started those years ago, Monica learns that Tess had revealed herself to the violin maker back then. She announced his son's impending birth and also gave him a piece of wood. But Jordan never completed the instrument because a flaw in the grain had appeared when he started planing the wood. Showing Monica the scrap heap where imperfect wood is discarded, Tony confronts his father, who disowns him. After his health takes a turn for the worse, Tony enters an AIDS hospice on Christmas Eve. His mother, Willa (Millie Perkins) and sister, Nora (Lisa Waltz) attempt to persuade Jordan to visit with them but are unsuccessful. Later that evening, the dying attorney hears carols down the hall and tells his hospice worker, Tess he would like to see an angel. She reveals herself, saying he has not disappointed God, but he panics, thinking the revelation is a morphine-induced hallucination. Back at the workshop, Monica appeals to the violin maker to reconcile with Tony and is joined by a passionate Andrew. Jordan's response is to smash the violin. Tess then admonishes the Angel of Death not to judge the violin maker, just as he should not judge Tony. Monica reveals herself to Jordan, telling him God accepts Tony for who he is and urging him to do likewise. Miraculously, the ruined violin is restored, and the violin maker takes it with him to the hospice. After reconciling with his estranged son, Jordan picks up the instrument, and the blemish in the wood transforms into the shape of a Christmas tree. He plays a lullaby as Tony succumbs to his illness and is greeted by Andrew
14 "Forget me Not" Michael Schultz Burt Pearl January 12, 1997 (1997-01-12) (CBS)
Sara Perkins (Isabella Hofmann) rebels against her overprotective mother by hiring Monica as her new photography assistant. Though the angel understands why the woman has covertly taken a freelance assignment to Bosnia, Tess--a volunteer helping Charlotte (Carol Lawrence) at the public library thinks Sara's actions are inconsiderate. Noting the mother and daughter act differently when the other is not present, Monica wonders what Tess does in her free time, but the supervisor is tight lipped. Sara returns from the trip and describes it to her mother, who becomes enraged and attacks her. While she receives treatment at the hospital, the angels comfort a confused Charlotte. Regaining consciousness, Sara identifies her mother as the assailant. A police detective attempts to arrest Charlotte, but she resists violently and must be subdued. Jeff (Mark Derwin), the journalist who sponsored the Bosnia trip, and Monica visit Sara, who is shocked by her mother's attack. Over the years the pair's relationship has been troubled, but she never thought it would result in violence. A doctor soon sheds light on the problem: Charlotte has a massive, life-threatening brain tumor. Even if she survives the risky operation, she may have significant memory loss. Devastated by the diagnosis, Sara tries to understand why Charlotte smothered her. Working with mother and daughter, respectively, Tess and Monica piece together the past. Sara needed an eye operation when she was seven. Since her father had abandoned the family, Charlotte took a job as a "photographer's assistant", which entailed posing nude. Understanding her mother sacrificed self-esteem to ensure she had that operation, Sara is crushed when Charlotte has a seizure and lapses into a coma. Monica and Tess, having revealed themselves as angels, encourage the woman to talk to her comatose mother. Special Dispensation is granted, and the two women are able to openly express the love they never admitted before. Charlotte promises to try to hold on to one memory--the day she gave Sara her first camera. Though mother doesn't recognize daughter after the successful operation, she has managed to hold on to their special memory. The women pledge to rebuild their friendship. Monica, meanwhile, persuades Andrew to show her how Tess spends her free time--training a cute, but incorrigible dog.
15 "Smokescreen" Victor Lobl Christine Pettit & Rosanne Welch January 19, 1997 (1997-01-19) (CBS)
Tess represents a group of former employees in a class-action suit against family-owned Fairchild Tobacco. Her opposing counsel is Marc Hamilton (Kadeem Hardison), who has accepted this assignment to the dismay of his mother, Esther (Ja'Net DuBois). When he was growing up, both she and his late father worked for Fairchild as a maid and a chauffeur. Young Marc vowed to one day sit in the back of a limousine rather than drive it. Now that he has arrived professionally, he is determined to live the luxurious life his parents couldn't afford. J. D. Sinclair (Tim Dekay), Fairchild's vice president and heir apparent, becomes impressed with Marc's legal prowess and doubles his hourly fee. He decides to buy the old Sinclair mansion. As they settle in, his wife, Vanessa (Holly Robinson Peete) delivers the news that she's pregnant. She is concerned by Marc's newfound materialism, especially his hiring of Andrew and Monica as a butler and maid. In court, Sinclair is taken aback when he recognizes Esther as his family's former maid. Tess, however, is delighted to meet her and finagles an invitation to Marc's lavish housewarming party. The attorney is chagrined when his mother helps play hostess at the affair. During the resulting discussion, Esther reveals she has lung cancer from exposure to second-hand smoke during her tenure at Fairchild. Marc is stunned by this turn of events and Vanessa's increasingly vocal opposition to their new lifestyle. He tries to resign as Fairchild's counsel but is persuaded to stay by a smooth-talking Sinclair, who later visits the Hamilton mansion and tacitly threatens Esther. Troubled, she returns home and retrieves a mysterious envelope. During a subsequent court session, Marc and J. D. are stunned when Tess calls Esther as a material witness. The judge grants Marc a recess, but he returns home to discover Vanessa has moved in with his mother. In court the next day, Esther reveals the contents of her envelope--letters proving Fairchild tried to bribe the government not to release its 1964 report linking cigarette smoking with cancer. The company also bribed Marc's father to be silent by buying the family a house. Unsure of what to do, Marc is given a revelation by Tess. She tells him to focus on the real prize, God's love, "the only thing worth winning." Upon return to the courtroom, he urges Esther to tell the truth, which prompts Sinclair to call for a settlement in the case.
16 "Crisis of Faith" Peter Hunt William Schwartz February 2, 1997 (1997-02-02) (CBS)
In a hospital emergency room, a team of medics labors furiously to resuscitate an accident victim. Monica and Tess observe unseen and are eventually joined by Andrew when it becomes apparent the patient cannot be revived. The angels reflect on the events that led to this tragedy. Their assignment had been to help Reverend Daniel Brewer (Chad Everett) open the Mount Calvary Teen Center. Posing as a building inspector, Monica could see that Tess and Andrew had performed admirably as the center's fund raiser and as counselor for the crisis hot line, respectively. But as the angels prepared to leave, they received word from God that the assignment was not over. Despite a basketball injury, Daniel gave an uplifting speech at the center's dedication. But a cynical reporter barraged him with negative questions. Karen Gregg (Kimberlee Peterson), the daughter of the church's accountant, approached the pastor to discuss a problem but was interrupted by the pushy journalist. Though Daniel made an appointment to counsel Karen the next day, she required immediate attention. His son, Luke (Christopher Pettiet) spied her stealing money, while Tess tallied church funds. The minister's son walked the troubled girl home, where he stopped her from swallowing a handful of pills. Realizing that Karen's situation was beyond his realm of expertise, Luke decided to drive her to his father. Irritated that his son was absent from the newspaper interview, Daniel drove to pick him up. On a dark, winding road, the cars collided. Back in the ER, Daniel awakens, confused by the chaos. He is stunned when his wife, Gloria (Ilene Graff) informs him Luke died in the accident. Overwhelmed by guilt, Daniel shuts himself off from her. Though Tess is able to comfort the grieving mother, the pastor vents his frustrations at God. When Daniel absents himself from the funeral, Andrew delivers the eulogy while Monica reveals herself to the distraught minister. She convinces him to forgive himself and carry on the work God has for him. In so doing, he is able to counsel Karen, thereby finishing the task his son had started.
17 "Angel of Death" Tim Van Patten Glenn Berenbeim February 9, 1997 (1997-02-09) (CBS)
Tess instructs Celeste (Hudson Leick), an angel new to human form, and takes her to a Las Vegas showroom to see their assignment--Eric Weiss (Corbin Bernsen), an illusionist who calls himself the "angel of death." The supervisor angel volunteers her jittery charge to participate in his act, but Tess is dismayed when Celeste... and her dog vanish. On a rampage, Eric fires his assistant and yells at his agent, Andrew, who is hard pressed to find another magician's assistant. Tess cuts Monica's vacation short to fill that position. As the case progresses, the angels realize that Eric's death wish is not merely an extension of his stage routine. The pieces start to come together after he reluctantly agrees to perform in Appleton, Wisconsin, his hometown and also the hometown of Harry Houdini. There he visits his mother, an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital. She asks Danny--Eric's real name--if he has seen his brother, Peter. He recalls a tragic game of hide-and-seek before abruptly ending his visit. Meanwhile, Monica unwittingly discovers Celeste but fails to convince the wayward angel to turn herself in. During a performance, Eric becomes paralyzed with fear upon seeing his doppelganger in the audience. Her voice returns him to reality, but the illusionist is shaken, convinced that he saw the ghost of his dead, twin brother. Despite Andrew's and Monica's concern, Eric decides to attempt the most dangerous escape of his career, which involves being locked in a refrigerator and lowered to the bottom of a pool. Several minutes elapse until Eric's brother, Pete steps forward, and Tess orders the crane operator to raise the refrigerator out of the pool. Upon seeing his twin, Eric bolts through the crowd and eventually returns to the junkyard where his brother "died." Celeste appears and reveals herself to the distraught entertainer. Monica joins the apprentice angel, and the pair urge him to stop playing hide-and-seek with his life. Confronting the painful memory of his brother being trapped in a refrigerator, Eric learns that Pete did not die but was kidnapped by their scornful father. The brothers share an emotional reunion, and Celeste has successfully participated in her first case.
18 "Clipped Wings" Robert J. Visciglia Jr. R.J. Colleary February 16, 1997 (1997-02-16) (CBS)
On the way to a performance evaluation, Monica encounters her rival, Kathleen (Jasmine Guy). The dark angel tricks her former friend into entering the wrong office suite. There Monica encounters Jodi (Maureen McCormick), a troubled woman comforted by the angel's accounts of past assignments. Meanwhile, Tess and Andrew fret while waiting for their colleague. The High Court judge, Ruth (Cloris Leachman), is a distinguished but no-nonsense angel who was once Tess' supervisor. Troubled by Monica's tardiness and "irregularities" in her work, Ruth suspends the caseworker and revokes her angel privileges. While the judge reviews Monica's mistakes, Andrew recalls an assignment when she mistakenly went to Jacksonville, Florida, rather than Jacksonville, Illinois. Tess dispatches him to search the building. The Angel of Death finds her, but she wants to give Jodi a revelation before starting her evaluation. Mid-revelation, the caseworker is shocked to learn Jodi is actually Kathleen, whose evaluation was based on ruining Monica's. Tess and Andrew comfort their friend, who arrives in the correct office too late. The supervisor decides to appeal to the Angel of Angels on the grounds of Kathleen's treachery. Ruth is stunned by the dark angel's involvement, and Tess forces the judge to confront her own perceived failure: she was Kathleen's supervisor when she defected to the Other Side. That pivotal event spurred Ruth to replace her heart with rules and regulations. Seeing Tess' logic, she sanctions the appeal. Monica meanwhile prays, while a spiteful Kathleen observes. But the dark angel is mortified when the prayer is for God to forgive her misdeeds. The Angel of Angels (James Earl Jones) summons Monica, initially advising her on posture and the benefits of decaffeinated coffee. He then praises her kind heart but cautions her to never let it obstruct the truth. Because of the evidence of her heart, she passes the evaluation, and the Angel of Angels deems her worthy of expanded duties. Reconciled, Tess prompts Ruth to consider returning to casework. And Monica, learning that Kathleen's superiors have rejected her, suggests that the dark angel appeal to God's mercy. Touched, she follows that recommendation and repents.
19 "Amazing Grace (1)" Victor Lobl Martha Williamson February 23, 1997 (1997-02-23) (CBS)
Tess visits Russell Greene (Gerald McRaney), announcing that God has a special purpose for Josh (Austin O'Brien). Despite his fathers misgivings, the teenager departs with her and meets Monica, who has temporarily lost her sight. After the Cadillac breaks down, Michael Burns (George Newbern) stops and gives Josh and Monica a ride to Denver. His grandfather owns an inner-city mini-mall there and has tasked Michael to fix it up so it can be sold. The inhabitants are abuzz about the new landlord, who has arrived with "a kid and a blind lady." Uncomfortable in the urban setting, Josh learns from Monica to look with his heart rather than his eyes. The trio befriend Mary Harding (Esther Rolle), a luncheonette owner; her grandchildren, Calvin (Sean Nelson) and Chanice Cantrell (Myriah Darden); Queenie (Jenifer Lewis), who runs a beauty salon; her vivacious best friend. Tonya Hawkins (Loretta Devine); Nicky Pacheco (John Ortiz), a lawyer on a quixotic quest; Dr. Serena Hall (Lynn Whitfield), who persuades Michael to donate a space for her Uncle Gentry's church; and Anderson Walker (Lou Gossett, Jr.), a former activist weary of fighting the system. With racial tensions already high, Mary urges Michael to take action against the grocer, Kim Chyung Kyung (Soon-Tek Oh), whom she suspects has a gun. The young landlord also discovers he and Anderson share a love for music and the desire to fix up the mini-mall so Michael can leave. But while he and Josh paint over graffiti, Andrew appears on the scene. Anderson rushes outside and tries to save Michael and Josh from a drive-by shooting...
20 "Amazing Grace (2)" Victor Lobl Martha Williamson, E.F. Wallengren & William Schwartz February 25, 1997 (1997-02-25) (CBS)
After the shooting, Mary (Esther Rolle) and Dr. Hall (Lynn Whitfield) scramble to help their friends and loved ones. The luncheonette owner learns the .45 Mr. Kim (Soon-Tek Oh) possessed was a record, not a weapon, but both are aghast to notice her own wound from a stray bullet. Meanwhile, Tess returns to Russell (Gerald McRaney) and tells him Josh (Austin O'Brien) needs his family. The Greenes arrive and are horrified to discover he had been shot. When the surgery is over, the doctor reports the teenager will recover, though he has been blinded. Calvin (Sean Nelson) and Chanice (Myriah Darden), however, receive devastating news: their grandmother has died. Russell is astounded to learn that Anderson (Lou Gossett, Jr.), a former adversary from this time in the Navy, is the one who saved Josh. Serena rails at Michael (George Newbern), blaming for the tragic events. But buoyed by Queenie's (Jenifer Lewis) encouragement and Monica's revelation, Michael decides to stay with his new "family," feeling like he belongs for the first time in his life. Anderson, likewise inspired by Russell to regain his passion, gives a rousing eulogy at Mary's funeral, urging the community to take a stand against gang violence. Her sight restored, Monica, along with Tess and Andrew observe as the humans work together to paint the graffiti-covered wall.
21 "Labor of Love" Jim Johnston Susan Cridland Wick March 9, 1997 (1997-03-09) (CBS)
At a New York City hospital, Monica and Tess are assigned to Dr. Meg Salter (Priscilla Presley), a pediatrician. But when she decides to surprise her husband by boarding his flight to Paris, the angels have to call for back-up. Rookie caseworker, Celeste (Hudson Leick) and special agent angel, Sam (Paul Winfield) are put on the case, and so is Meg's fellow passenger Andrew, who had intended to take his first vacation in a century. The doctor gets a surprise of her own when she discovers her college professor husband, Brian (Ben Masters) is accompanied by his mistress, Olivia (A.J. Langer). As the plane heads into a storm, an already tense situation gets worse when the angels and his wife learn that the "other woman" is eight months pregnant. A consummate professional, Meg delivers a healthy, albeit premature baby girl, and the plane returns to JFK Airport because of the medical emergency. By the time they get back, Olivia has had two seizures. Monica tends to the infant, while Dr. Parham and his trauma team work on the mother. Brian, overwhelmed by joy and sadness, receives a revelation from Andrew. The angel urges him to reconcile with his wife and depend on God for strength. Meg, however, rebuffs his initial attempt but is interrupted when Olivia's condition deteriorates. The dying mistress is comforted by Monica and expresses the desire for Brian to take care of their baby. Lamenting that she never got her life in order, Olivia accepts Andrew's offer to let God change her heart. Then she dies. Monica reveals herself to a conflicted Meg and encourages her to salvage the marriage. With a newfound appreciation of the mistakes each has made, the Salters reconcile and agree to raise the baby together.
22 "Have You Seen Me?" Stuart Margolin Pamela Redford Russell March 16, 1997 (1997-03-16) (CBS)
After observing with Monica and Andrew, respectively, the Monroe family at breakfast and two businessmen who work in the same office building, Tess tells her charges their assignment will be difficult because it involves six intertwined human lives. The case kicks into gear when Hank Monroe (Bradley Pierce) sees a picture resembling his younger brother, Noah (Nathanael Meyst) on the back of a milk carton. Perplexed, he looks through family albums but can't find any baby pictures of his brother. Andrew, meanwhile, fails to engage Grant Abbott (Paul McCrane) in conversation but does befriend the talkative Ray (Stuart Margolin). The angel starts to reveal himself, but Ray flees after Andrew's admonition that "the truth will set you free." Tess warns the Angel of Death that time is running out. Visiting Grant at home, he sees that the man is contemplating suicide. Monica, posing as a waitress at a 50's diner, counsels a confused Hank to ask his parents, Jake (Sean O'Bryan) and Amy (Michelle Joyner) about the missing baby photos. But when their stories contradict, the youth realizes something is amiss. Investigating further, he finds a $25,000 check written to a law firm and shows it to Monica. She tells Hank the check is a clue and takes him to visit the law office... which is run by Ray. Repeating Andrew's line, "the truth will set you free," the angel prompts the lawyer to confess he performed a questionable adoption for the Monroes. When he gets home, Hank asks his mom and dad why they never told him his brother was adopted. They respond that Noah's parents were criminals, which would have upset him. Hank then gives them the milk carton with Noah's picture. In a drunken rage, Grant continues to play with a revolver until Andrew appears. The distraught father recounts how the boy was kidnapped during a trip to the mall and that his late wife blamed him for the tragedy. The angel introduces him to Ray, who admits his complicity in the crime and tells Grant where to find his son. Afraid of losing Noah, Jake and Amy prepare to skip town until Tess reveals herself. She tells them their zeal to adopt blinded them to suspicious circumstances. With the angels' support, Grant meets the Monroes and is introduced to "Noah." The three parents agree to slowly integrate Grant into his son's life and eventually tell the boy the truth.
23 "Last Call" Gene Reynolds Ken LaZebnik March 30, 1997 (1997-03-30) (CBS)
Monica, disappointed in the human race, watches as Tess performs in a small Chicago bar. She finishes and announces God has given the caseworker a miracle to give someone in this bar. Initially hesitant to decide, Monica observes the inhabitants: the owner, Noah (Eddie Jones), who is upbeat despite needing to use a wheelchair; Claude Bell (Clive Revill), a craggy Irishman obsessed with beating a mysterious stranger in a game of pool; Ernie and Marie Wachinski (Fred Sanders & Terri Hanauer), a hotel employee with wasted ambition and his co-dependent wife; Loafer (Edie McClurg), an eccentric crossword puzzle aficionado; Buddy Baker, (Tim Reid) a charming salesman who drinks to drown inner pain; and Amethyst (Tracy Middendorf), a young woman with a dubious plan for her future. After observing awhile, Monica announces she is an angel with a miracle to give away. They respond with raucous laughter. Humiliated, she hides underneath a pool table. As the laughter continues, Andrew enters. He is the stranger whom Claude is obsessed with beating. Having been the advance angel for the assignment, the Angel of Death takes a cue from Tess to find out what miracles these people need. Someone else soon enters the tavern, Mr. Burns (Clifton Powell) fresh out of prison. Following a pep talk from Tess, Monica again reveals herself, this time in glowing splendor. Though the people now take her seriously, she is frustrated when none of them want the miracle. When Ernie's lottery numbers appear on television, he and Marie mistake that for the miracle. But when he can't find his wallet, he accuses Mr. Burns of stealing it. The ex-convict's response prompts Noah to recognize Burns as the gunman who crippled him. Noah orders him to leave, but Tess' dog soon appears with the missing wallet. Marie is shocked to learn that Ernie played the wrong numbers while drunk. Mr. Burns rebukes the others for squandering their lives, yet saves his harshest criticism for himself. Wracked with guilt, he asks for God to heal Noah. But Monica tells Burns the real miracle is for Noah to forgive him, which will heal them both. The men reconcile, and the others seize the opportunity to reevaluate their own lives.
24 "Missing in Action" Tim Van Patten Rosanne Welch & Christine Pettit April 13, 1997 (1997-04-13) (CBS)
George Zarko (Darren McGavin), a.k.a. the "Colonel," sits on a park bench watching kids play war. Monica thinks her assignment is to help the elderly Army veteran find the joy of living. But Tess responds that what he really needs is to be understood. She gives Monica's swing a push... and the caseworker's human form transforms into that of an 80-year-old woman. Entering the retirement home where George lives, Monica meets him and Stephanie Hancock (Christina Pickles), the officious Nurse Director. Tess, the volunteer Activities Coordinator, persuades Stephanie to use pet therapy to alleviate the patients' loneliness, while George grouses to Andrew, the facility's cook, that a resident has recently died and no one seems to care. Monica inadvertently inspires the veteran to rebel by lowering the flag to half mast. Irate, Stephanie plans to kick him out of the retirement home. But the caseworker intercedes on George's behalf, vowing to be responsible for him. This selfless act endears Monica to him, and Tess warns her to be wary of how close she gets to the man. The supervisor's suspicions are validated when he makes a pass at the angel. Matters worsen when Lorraine McCully (Gwen Verdon), Monica's new roommate, attempts to play matchmaker for the would-be couple. Despite Stephanie's orders, Tess unlocks the piano in the social hall so Lorraine can entertain the residents. Wary of George's affection for her, the caseworker agrees to dance with him but gets winded. Stephanie is furious that Tess disobeyed her and demands the piano key back. Meanwhile, Andrew tends to Monica, who now understands the frailty of the human heart. Lorraine also frets over her friend and recalls the heartbreak when her husband was declared "Missing in Action." Monica has a talk with George during which she reverts to her younger form. He hastily exits, but she finds him the next day back in the park. Though discouraged that the angel cannot return his affection, George is convinced to share the truth about his past. He publicly confesses that he was not an Army colonel but a cook. Lorraine, realizing that he served with her late husband, Jimmy produces a letter in which he praises George's cooking. The veteran, in turn, is able to tell Lorraine how her husband died--sacrificing his life to save others, including George. As a content Lorraine plays the piano, Tess prompts Stephanie to admit she locked it up because it reminded her of a father who stopped letting her take music lessons.
25 "At Risk" Victor Lobl Kathleen McGhee-Anderson April 27, 1997 (1997-04-27) (CBS)
Jason DeLee (Vicellous Reon Shannon), a troubled teen, steals a car but is promptly caught by the police. His mother, Lena (Rhonda Stubbins White) can no longer deal with her son and releases her parental authority. Jason is placed in the custody of Denver Juvenile Services. Waters (J.A. Preston), the camp director, runs a tight ship and is taken aback when Tess arrives, announcing she is a new facility director and will be overseeing a new experimental work program. After the boys complete a survey, Monica, the coordinator for the work program arrives. A handful of the teens volunteer for the program; Jason is not one of them. Later that day, Lena visits Jason in Tess' office. He is discouraged when his mother says she just came to bring him some underwear and car magazines. The angel informs them that Monica has selected him for the work program, and Lena urges her son to take whatever chance they give him. He just glares at them and exits. When he finds out that Rey Estes (Michael Pena), his rival, has volunteered for the program, Jason decides to participate in it, too. Andrew, a Juvenile Services volunteer, drives the boys to their destination--the Linwood Children's Academy, a school for disabled children. Inside, Jason is paired with Kelly (Marisa Velez), a girl with cerebral palsy. Her mother, Anita (Camryn Manheim) has reservations about a "gang banger" working with her daughter. Jason is reluctant to bond with Kelly until Monica shows him that the girl shares his love of cars. Despite a few false starts, the two are able to forge a relationship. But Jason eventually panics and runs away. Waters wants to send the police after the boy, but Tess convinces him to wait. Monica, prompted by a Ferrari photo on Kelly's gait walker, finds him at an import car dealership. She reveals herself, urging him to stop trying to outrun God. Jason returns to the school, where Anita, Lena, and the angels revel in his progress with Kelly.
26 "Full Moon" Tim Van Patten Glenn Berenbeim May 4, 1997 (1997-05-04) (CBS)
As Ed Bingham (Alex McArthur) prepares for a ceremony to honor his heroic efforts as a fireman, his wife, Sarah (Jessica Steen) receives a terrifying letter. Carl Atwater (Chris Noth), the man who raped her six years ago is eligible for parole. Frightened of Ed's reaction if he found out, Sarah conceals the letter from him. Instead she visits a Crisis Center and meets Tess, the receptionist, and Monica, a counselor. Although the caseworker angel fails to draw Sarah out, the distraught mother invites her to attend the parole hearing. There Sarah is crushed when Carl, who apparently found God in prison, is released. Despite a briefing by Andrew, his parole officer, Carl violates the most important condition of his parole by making contact with Sarah. Although he merely seeks her forgiveness, she panics, threatening him with garden clippers. Monica urges her to report Carl, but Sarah refuses. The angel does, however, convince her to confide in her husband. Meanwhile, Andrew witnesses Carl's simmering anger that his ex-wife, Emily (Kim Gillingham) will not let him see their son. Sarah reluctantly shows Ed the letter regarding Carl's release, and his annoyance is interrupted when their daughter, Lorrin (Cara Rose) has a nightmare. The next morning, the couple encounters Carl, who is working as a bagger in a supermarket. Ed loses his temper and attacks the ex-con. Later, the Binghams visit Monica where years of unspoken recrimination and blame for the rape come to the forefront. Unbeknownst to his wife, Ed goes to a gun store and starts the process to purchase a pistol. After a sleepless night, he is unable to respond to a fire. Carl, in the meantime, grouses to Andrew that reforming his life is not so easy. The angel responds that quoting the Bible isn't enough; Carl has to start living it. Afterwards, he doesn't realize that Ed is stalking him while he himself is stalking Emily, and Andrew is observing the both of them. Upon returning home, Ed and Sarah argue when he won't divulge his whereabouts. The next day--six days after he started the paperwork--the fireman picks up his gun. He catches Carl breaking into Emily's house and plans to shoot him. Andrew reveals himself to both men, while Monica appears to Sarah. When asked where God was during the rape, the angel responds, "in the voice of a child." Then baby Lorrin's tears stopped Carl from killing Sarah, which was his original plan. The police arrest him, and Tess informs him that God can still help him find his way.
27 "An Angel by Any Other Name" Gabrielle Beaumont Burt Pearl May 10, 1997 (1997-05-10) (CBS)
Tess works for a local nursery, and Monica is a postal carrier in the middle-class neighborhood where IRS auditor Carolyn Sellers (Diane Ladd) lives. An avid gardener, she is eager to have her rose hybrid officially recognized but becomes dismayed when three people with Down syndrome move into a group home next door to her. Tess tries to convince the hardened woman to calm down and accept Taylor (Chris Burke), Jeannie (Andrea Friedman), and David (Jason Kingsley) for the loving, sensitive people they are, but she refuses. Andrew, the group home supervisor, is nonplused when his first encounter with Carolyn is a tacit threat to "keep those people in line." After Taylor stops Stevie Sanders (Trevor Morgan), a neighborhood boy, from playing in her vintage '57 Chevy, the car rolls down the driveway, crushes Stevie's bike, and just misses a young girl due to Tess' sudden intervention. Furious, Carolyn blames Taylor and calls the police. She also works her neighbors into a frenzy to take action against the group home. The next day Taylor confides in Monica, who says God has a purpose for his predicament. Taylor responds he knows that because he's an angel; she agrees he's "the kindest, sweetest angel" she's ever met. He goes to talk to Carolyn, who in the midst of berating him suffers a stroke. Thanks to Taylor's quick response, paramedics arrive in time to help her. But upon learning his part in her rescue, Carolyn continues to hold a grudge. Taylor continues to aid with her rehabilitation despite her constant rejection. Tess, Jeannie, and David have also tended her garden to prepare for the Rose Association's visit. Realizing that Carolyn had started a petition to shut down the group home, Andrew asks Taylor to tell the truth about the car incident. He responds, "Everything in its time." The night before the rose committee's visit, a severe thunderstorm devastates the garden. The next day, Andrew and Taylor take Stevie a new bike to replace the one that got crushed. Monica and Tess reveal themselves to Carolyn and joined by Taylor, who is indeed an angel, encourage the woman to get out of bed. As Stevie's mom announces the city has agreed to close the group home, the boy confesses his role in the accident. The rose committee arrives, and Taylor produces a beautiful, but lone rose blossom. Although the flower by itself does not qualify for the registry, Carolyn realizes it's good enough for her.
28 "Inherit the Wind" Michael Schultz R.J. Colleary May 11, 1997 (1997-05-11) (CBS)
An orphanage burns on a dusty street as the Angel of Music (Keb' Mo') observes, singing. The song continues although he has relocated to a rowdy party at a mansion. Tess and Monica, unseen, are chagrined by the excess as the host, Kevin Greeley (Charlie Schlatter), carouses with friends. His father, Edward (John McMartin), confronts him but angrily exits. Kevin glimpses Monica in a mirror, but she is gone when he turns around. As Edward ponders how to handle his spoiled son, Andrew appears, announcing God has granted the human one hour to set his affairs in order before his death. During that time, Edward gives his valet, George (Ian Abercrombie) papers to sign and mail, says good-bye to his drowsy son, opens his Bible, and dies while reading it. Days later, George is stunned that Edward left him one million dollars and a Bentley. Kevin, however, is furious to receive only his possessions until attorney Tess informs him he must locate Joseph Wells to claim the rest of his inheritance. He again sees Monica's reflection in a mirror, but this time, she is there. She knew Edward and will help Kevin find Joseph Wells, but he must take the trip without his father's help or influence. Carrying only his prized guitar, Kevin hitchhikes and is eventually picked up by the angel, Ruth (Cloris Leachman). She, too, knew his father and eventually drops Kevin off at a diner. There he meets the angel, Sam (Paul Winfield), after he is forced to wash dishes because he has no money. Sam also knew Edward and teaches the younger Greeley to take pride in work. Ruth again appears and gives Kevin a ride to Joseph Wells, Texas. They encounter the Angel of Music, and Kevin donates the dollar he mysteriously found in his pocket. Kevin also meets Andrew in a nearby blues club but refuses to sell his guitar. At the bank, he is livid when Monica and Tess give him his inheritance... Edward's Bible. After Kevin storms out mid-revelation, the angels summon a specialist--Phil (Bill Cosby), the Angel of Restoration. Phil tells Kevin to thank God for what he has rather than blame Him for what he doesn't have. Finding an abandoned baby, Kevin learns Edward grew up in the town orphanage, which is why most of his estate was left to the "children of Joseph Wells." Kevin sells his guitar and decides to stay in town and take care of the baby by working at the orphanage and the blues club.
29 "A Delicate Balance" Tim Van Patten Jennifer Wharton May 18, 1997 (1997-05-18) (CBS)
In an empty gym, Tess "coaches" Monica on their next assignment. They are interrupted by the arrival of Nadia Comaneci and Bart Conner, who will cover the gymnastics competition for a TV station. Andrew appears after they leave, and the angels then observe the Browner family. Rebecca Browner (Anndi McAfee) is a gifted gymnast, whose mother, Sandra (Dee Wallace Stone) pushes her to excel. Unfortunately, her younger brother, T. J. (Vincent Berry) feels neglected. He and another gymnast's brother dub themselves the "Nobodies" and visit a skate park. Andrew, the park's supervisor, is concerned by T. J.'s disregard for safety equipment. Meanwhile, Monica, Rebecca's new assistant coach, learns she is highly driven and has never fallen during a competition. Displeased that the television crew has ignored her daughter, Sandra complains to Tess, the segment producer. T. J. steals money from Andrew's cash register to visit the house where his family lived before his father died. He later confesses to Andrew, who makes him work off his debt. Sandra is unhappy to find him doing chores at the skate park. Back at the hotel, he tells his mother he "borrowed" the money to see a movie, but his sister sees through his lie. T. J. angrily exits, and Rebecca also leaves. Sandra later yells at her daughter for missing a meeting with a potential sponsor. Rebecca confides in Monica that she visited the family's former home. The angel urges the girl to recapture the joy of gymnastics. Returning to the skate park, T. J. ignores Andrew's warning to wear a helmet and has an accident. At the hospital, Tess reveals herself to Sandra, advising her to grieve her late husband rather than immersing herself in her daughter's career. Sandra then urges Rebecca to do her best for herself--no one else. While competing, Rebecca falls. Monica reveals herself and tells the gymnast she is never alone and that her father is with God and proud of her. She finishes the routine with grace, T. J. regains consciousness, and Sandra decides to move her family back into their old house.
[edit] Season 4

The fourth season aired September 21, 1997 through May 17, 1998. This season marks the first appearance of Alexis Cruz as Rafael.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "Joe's Return (1)" Tim Van Patten E.F. Wallengren & Mimi Schmir September 21, 1997 (1997-09-21) (CBS)
In the first half of a two-part crossover episode of "Touched By an Angel" and "Promised Land," Joe Greene (Richard Thomas), the long-lost brother of Russell (Gerald McRaney) returns, speeding wrecklessly down the highway as Tess, Monica and Andrew follow. When another car pulls out in front of Joe, he runs the car off the road and kills a father and son, while saving the youngest son. Lying about the accident to the police, he is then thought to be a "good samaritan" and quickly leaves. When he runs out of gas, Andrew arrives as a hitchhiker and offers to give him gas in exchange for a ride to Chicory Creek. Once in Chicory Creek, Andrew leaves and the car breaks down. Joe then breaks into the home of his family's old friend, Erasmus Jones (Ossie Davis), not knowing that his family is currently visiting. Russell catches him in the kitchen, quickly saying hello by punching him and the whole family is soon awake, marvelling at his return. At the hospital, the young boy injured in the wreck clings to life while Monica acts as a hospital caseworker, comforting the mother, Mrs. Mills (Connie Ray). Mrs. Mills wants to meet the good samaritan and Monica supplies the address to Erasmus' house. While meeeting Mrs. Mills, Joe lies to her while Russell listensskeptically as Joe refuses to visit the surviving child at the hospital. With the sudden return of his father, Nathaniel (Eddie Karr) is very angry but convinces his father to visit the child when his hopelessly inoperative car suddenly starts. While at the hospital, Monica reveals herself as an angel and Joe flees, taking stolen pharmaceuticals with him. Coming perilously close to another auto accident, he is stopped by Tess who takes Nathaniel and demands that Joe return to Monica at the hospital. Upon his return, Monica convinces him to "face the truth and seek forgiveness," and that God wants to save his life. Joe returns to Erasmus' house and tells Russell the truth about the car accident. Russell becomes enraged and tells him to leave. Joe gathers his things and leaves without telling his mother goodbye. Hattie (Celeste Holm) then blames herself, asking Russell "What could I have done differently?" Claire (Wendy Phillips) then enters with a note from Nathaniel explaining that Nathaniel has left to help his father who "needs him more now." As the episode ends, Nathaniel is stowed away in the backseat of Joe's car as Joe pops pills and swerves into the night.
2 "Great Expectations" Tim Van Patten Christine Pettit, Rosanne Welch, Mary Siversten & Lynn Wing September 28, 1997 (1997-09-28) (CBS)
Bill McNabb (Bill Smitrovitch), a cappuccino machine salesman, arrives with his pregnant wife, Joann (Betsy Brantley) at Juliano's Coffee Shop where Andrew is acting as temporary manager. While Bill tries to sell the "newest and best" machine to Andrew, Joann comfirms their plans to give a baby shower for friends at the coffee shop later that evening. Having overheard the discussion of babies, Monica introduces herself as a Lamaze teacher and invites Joann to attend a class. Bill and Joann then go to a Doctor's appointment and learn that their baby is going to be born with Down Syndrome. Bill immediately mentions "alternatives" to having the baby and tells Joann not to tell anyone about the diagnosis until they decide what to do. At the baby shower, a busboy with Down Syndrome, Taylor (Chris Burke), breaks dishes while avoiding a small child and this prompts Bill to tell Joann that their baby "is not a miracle" but rather "a mistake." Joann temporarily gives in, going to a community clinic but is unable to go through with an abortion, saying "I'm pro-choice and I've made my choice. I'm going to have this baby." She then continues her pregnancy alone while the angels try to convince Bill to come to reason. At Andrews urging, Bill begins to reconcile with Joann but is unable to accept the child. Tess tells him that perfect souls do not come in perfect bodies and that "it's not the packaging but the parenting" that will make the difference in a child's life. As Bill is servicing a cappuccino machine, Andrew continues to try to reason with him. Bill says he wants a "normal" kid, tall and healthy, perhaps one who could be captain of the football team. An all American kid then walks in, pulls a gun and begins robbing the store. As he is exiting, Joann enters and Bill tries to take the gun from the all-star thief. The gun explodes and Joann is hit. At the hospital, the doctor tells Bill that Joann may not make it and asks him to give consent to operate to save the baby. Bill is torn when Taylor reveals himself as an angel. He tells Bill that fear is worse than Down Syndrome and that he should not be afraid of ruining his life by having the child or of not having enough love to give. "The child was born of love" and "what we do in love is never lost." Bill signs the consent form and prays for his wife and son. Tess soon brings his healthy son into his arms. Joann continues to fight, eventually stabilizing and the family are united in love.
3 "Nothing But Net" Victor Lobl Daniel H. Forer & R.J. Colleary October 5, 1997 (1997-10-05) (CBS)
Tess, Monica, Andrew and Ruth arrive in the announcer's box of a professional basketball game overlooking their next assignment, Eric (E.Z.) Mony (Charles Malik Whitfield), the star point guard for the Salt Lake Saints. Tess tells the others that Eric is angry and rebellious, with a complete disregard for rules. As the angels look on, Eric shoves a referee (Bill Spooner). Although Ruth (Cloris Leachman) is told that her assignment is only to observe the situation, she is soon moving down in the stands in order to speak to the referee. Due to her interference, a jersey thrown into the crowd by Mony goes to a very impressionable 14 year-old named Darnell (Jamil Walker Smith). Sam (Paul Winfield), the special affairs angel arrives to explain that the case has just taken a turn for the worse because a bond was formed between E.Z. and Darnell. Later at the Boys Club, Sam coaches Darnell and his friends and introduces Monica as the new tutor. Meanwhile, as E.Z. is disavowing his status as a role model, we learn of the disappearance of a hockey player by the name of Winston El Camio. As E.Z. prepares to leave the stadium, Andrew introduces himself as the ghost writer who will be writing his E.Z.'s tell-all book. Ruth, having recovered from her blunder at the stadium, approaches Darnell. She tells him that E.Z. is not someone to look up to, that he cannot read. Darnell then goes to E.Z. and blackmails him with the information, demanding "a night in the life of E.Z. Mony" in return for his silence. While on the town, E.Z. takes Darnell to a casino and quickly loses $100,000. Two henchmen of the casino then threaten E.Z. with his life if he doesn't shave points, invoking the name of Winston El Camio as evidence of their seriousness. The next day, E.Z. learns of the death of El Camio and has no choice but to try to throw the game. Convinced that E.Z. will pull off the scam, Darnell takes bets from his friends. When the game begins, E.Z. is miraculously unable to miss and the Saints win. Darnell confronts E.Z. after the game and E.Z. rebukes him, "You're livin' poor and you're gonna die poor." Darnell slinks out and the two henchmen enter to kill E.Z. As E.Z. prays to God, Andrew reveals himself and demands, in the name of God, that the men leave. As the men exit, Andrew tells E.Z. God wants him to learn to read. In the pressbox, Monica consoles Ruth, showing her the marquee which is now flashing "God Loves You." As E.Z. and Darnell meet on the court, both look up at the flashing marquee. E.Z. vows to learn to read and Darnell cries as he realizes that he is truly loved by God.
4 "Children of the Night" Victor Lobl Suzonne Stirling October 12, 1997 (1997-10-12) (CBS)
While Tess and Monica work at an inner-city coffee shop, they see their next assignment, a group of homeless teenagers who have given up their real names to avoid being returned to the families that they no longer trust. "Doc," (Chris Masterson) "Lightning," (Rashaan Nall) "China," (Azura Skye) and the missing "Fish" have formed a family and soon take in a young girl who is new to the street, changing her real name from Alexandra (Madeline Zima) to "Ally." Losing their current shelter and trusting no one, the kids go to a junkyard where the angel, Rafael (Alexis Cruz), offers to let them build a shelter in exchange for watching over the place. When all the collective money of the group is gone, China takes to the streets to earn money as a prostitute. As she gets into a car, the missing "Fish" is dying in the care of Andrew. Afterward, Monica and Andrew begin to lose heart while Tess and Rafael urge them to be patient and "not push so hard." China continues to dream of being a poet, writing in her treasured journal while Doc's cough worsens. Ally burns her remaining pictures from home and begins to panhandle as Lightning begins to develop a drug problem. After China loses her journal, Monica finds it and returns it to her on the street, convincing her to meet her at the coffee shop. Monica waits for China but she never arrives. The following day, Doc collapses in Tess' coffee shop. China is then found by Andrew, dying from a beating by one of her customers. Monica blames herself for not being a better angel, holding China's journal. Rafael reveals himself to Doc, asking him to trust in God. No longer succeeding with her panhandling, Ally puts on makeup and attempts to follow in China's footsteps. Monica tells her that China is dead and shows her the first entry of China's journal in which she said she could never prostitute herself and explains to her that "it's never too late to apologize," but rather "just in time." As Ally prepares to leave on her bus ride home, Doc stops by for a brief "goodbye" as he and Rafael leave for the hospital. Lightning is dumbfounded that Ally is leaving but she prepares him for the revelation he is about to have in the presence of the Tess, Monica, and Andrew. "Do you believe in God, Lightning? You will."
5 "Jones vs. God" Sandor Stern Ken LaZebnik October 19, 1997 (1997-10-19) (CBS)
The town of Clarion, South Dakota is in the midst of a farm killing drought when Tess and Monica arrive to help them with their growing crisis of faith. Justinian Jones (John De Lance), a struggling farmer, enters Cotton's barber shop where a heated debate quickly develops between he, Cotton (J. Kenneth Campbell), Judge Dawes (Robert Guillaume) and Risa (Debra Jo Rupp), the town mayor, as to whether the town should sell out to a huge agricultural company. Having arrived to serve as auctioneer of the towns assets, Andrew sits quietly in the barber chair as Risa advocates selling to the conglomerate before the drought kills the town. Opposed to her is Justinian who is determined to stay on his farm even if he has to sell his horse and "pull the darned plow" himself. Continuing his tirade, Justinian decides to sue God. The Judge outlines how he should serve notice to God through the newspaper and a hearing is set. Outside, Justinian's daughter, Leela (Jennifer Lambert) tells her boyfriend Gordon (Don Jeffcoat) of her plans to leave town in search of more opportunity while he tries to convince her of the virtues of the small town they have grown up in. Later, all the townspeople gather in the court room, fully expecting a rapid dismissal of the case. Tess arrives to act as council for God and a jury trial is granted. As the trial begins, Jones begins by saying that droughts are considered "acts of God" and as such, He should be held responsible for the "intentional infliction of emotional stress" upon the people of Clarion. One by one, Tess calls the townspeople as witnesses in an attempt to show them how God has blessed them. When Tess calls Monica, the angel as an expert witness, Justinian corners her on the stand and temporarily stuns God's defense team by asking for an end to the drought. After a short recess and a prayer from Monica. She then returns to God with his answer to Justinian's request. The answer is "no." Justinian then realizes how blessed he is and Risa and the others rally together at a town picnic. As Justinian leads all in a prayer of thanks, their faith is rewarded as rain begins to pour out of the clear blue sky.
6 "The Pact" Bethany Rooney Jennifer Wharton & Melissa Milne October 26, 1997 (1997-10-26) (CBS)
The angels arrive at a camp for HIV positive teenage girls to find two veterans, Nikki (Meagon Good) and Erin (Thora Birch) picking on the "newbies" Melanie (Jade Villalon), Kim (Olivia Hack) and Abby (Ashleigh Aston Moore). Acting as counselors, the angels get to know the girls and try to help them deal with their fears. Rafael (Alexis Cruz) speaks to Melanie, learning her mother died of AIDS when she was a child. Melanie tells him of the song, "Duermete Nino Lindo," which her mother used to sing. Meanwhile, Erin develops a crush on Andrew and is heartbroken when he seemingly rejects her. Tired of painting the names of past participants who are no longer alive on a rock known as "the face," Erin talks the other girls into a suicide pact as some way of ending life their own way, without pain or pity. The girls then steal drugs from the infirmary where Rafael is working and prepare a suicide cocktail. As the girls all meet at "the face" to go through with the suicide, the angels arrive. Rafael begins playing "Duermete Nino Lindo" and Melanie loses her resolve to kill herself. As the other girls follow suit, only Nikki remains intent on suicide. The angels then appeal to Erin to take the lead and she convinces Erin to give up the suicide plan. As all the girls now realize that their best times may lie ahead, the angels lead them in singing "Duermete Nino Lindo" (Hush My Pretty Baby).
7 "Sandcastles" Victor Lobl Burt Pearl November 2, 1997 (1997-11-02) (CBS)
While Tess, Monica, Andrew and Rafael (Alexis Cruz) vacation at the beach, Rafael and Monica find a message in a bottle from a boy named Scooter Fisher. Tess gives them the option of helping the boy and both Monica and Rafael set out to find Scooter in the neighboring town, Pacific Falls. While Andrew stays with Tess to help repair her ailing Cadillac, Rafael and Monica begin their search at a local diner. As they meet and question Teresa (Pamala Tyson), Larry (Larry Gelman) and Leo (Jack Riley), no one seems to have heard of Scooter Fisher. Dennis (Sal Viscuso), a desperate man, pulls a gun when they approach him and Rafael catches the bullet when the gun fires. Benjamin Parker (William Devane), a local news anchor gains an interview with Rafael and suddenly Pacific Falls is being "invaded" by angels. Parker, skeptical, then sets out to uncover the scam. Monica then rescues a man at a muffler shop as his hydraulic lift fails and Rafael pulls a man out of a tool and die shop after an explosion. When Parker questions Leo, the owner of the muffler shop, about his angel encounter, we see his watch inscribed with the name Scooter. Leo tells him the angels are looking for Scooter Fisher and Parker goes on the air to let the angels know his identity. The two young angels then return to Tess who tells them the truth behind Scooter's note 40 years earlier; Scooters mother had accidentally killed his father in an attempt to stop his abuse. Monica and Rafael then try to convince the skeptical Benjamin to see his mother in prison. Benjamin overcomes his anger and learns the truth when he visits his dying mother in prison. He forgives his mother and agrees to revisit their "place" at the ocean where both cast their bottles upon the water. Benjamin writes "Thank You, God" and throws the bottle out to sea as the angels exit in their repaired Cadillac.
8 "My Dinner with Andrew" Gabrielle Beaumont Martha Williamson November 9, 1997 (1997-11-09) (CBS)
When the angels find themselves at a posh "Books and Bachelors" luncheon to benefit medical research, Andrew is quickly chosen to be auctioned as an eligible bachelor. When the prominent research scientist, Beth Popik (Lisa Eichhorn), begins to bid on Andrew, her chief rival, Kate Calder (Stephanie Zimbalist), outbids her and then refuses the date with Andrew, explaining that she wasn't bidding for Andrew, she was bidding against Beth. Adam (Charles Rocket), another "angel of death" arrives, thanks Andrew for covering for him, and asks about the date with "the doctor." When Andrew tells him that she refused to go to dinner, Adam explains that he MUST go on the date. Andrew then convinces Kate to have dinner with him, while Monica and Tess begin preparing an elegant restaurant for the meeting. Andrew and Kate then meet for dinner in the "controlled environment" of "Chez Tess." Monica plays waiter while Tess cooks and although this is supposed to be a private engagement, another patron, Norman (Keene Curtis), enters and insists of being served. During dinner, Kate tells Andrew that she is going to die of Leukemia within several years and that she believes in science, not in God. She continues, stating that her research is all that matters to her and that her goal is to find a "gene sequence" before she dies and in that way gain immortality. Adam then interrupts the dinner and privately tells Andrew that "the doctor" is going to die "tonight." Andrew then reveals himself to Kate while Norman begins to choke on his food. Kate rescues Norman but not before he recognizes Andrew as the Angel of Death. Kate follows Norman out of the restaurant and questions him about Andrew. Now a believer, she returns to find that Andrew and the restaurant have disappeared. She then runs to the safe where her research is being held and finds Andrew waiting for her. He tells her to share her research so that others may live. They then go to Beth's house to find her on the verge of death due to carbon monoxide poisoning. After saving Beth's life, Kate visits her at the hospital, tells her about her recent discovery and suggests that they work together to find a cure. "You can do wonderful things if you don't care who gets the credit." Andrew then leaves Kate's life telling her he doesn't know when she will die, but that when it's time, he'll see her for dinner.
9 "Charades" Victor Lobl Glenn Berenbeim November 16, 1997 (1997-11-16) (CBS)
With the approach of a special tribute to the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist to be given by the Hollywood Screen Guild, Tess and Monica arrive to help Libby Glaser (Swoosie Kurtz), a powerful Hollywood agent, learn the truth about her Blacklisted father's last days. Monica arrives as Libby's new assistant and quickly impresses Libby with her "connections" by managing to connect her with the head of the Hollywood Screen Guild. Libby learns that the Guild has chosen to restore her father's name to a film he made during the Blacklist Era when he was forced to write under a pseudonym, and that they want Libby's mother, Vera King (Janet Leigh), to present the award with her co-star in the show, Clive Hathaway (Joseph Campanella). Vera flatly refuses to present the award with Clive which surprises Libby as he was her father's best friend. Simultaneously, home movies from Libby's childhood mysteriously appear from an unknown source and Libby's memory is jarred as she views them. When Libby confronts her mother, Vera tells her Clive is the one who ruined her father's career by naming him as a communist and that he didn't die in an accident, he killed himself. Libby then sends Monica on a search for her father's FBI file and it is soon delivered by Tess. Tess then explains to Monica that she was Budd (Michael Goorjian)'s angel and that she was unable to convince him not to kill himself, suffering under the burden ever since. She continues to say that Budd wrote a note to Libby just before driving his car over the cliff but that the note was lost during the fire. Libby, now armed with her father's FBI file, plans to ruin Clive Hathaway as he ruined her father. As the Blacklist ceremony is in progress, Vera begs Libby not to expose Clive, finally telling her the complete truth, that she had "one sad weekend" with Clive and that he was her real father. Now wrecked, Libby enters the stage intent on ruining Clive. Monica then freezes time and asks Libby to forgive. As time resumes, Libby then realizes that she is no longer holding the FBI file but the note from her father asking her to forgive those involved and telling her that she will always be his little girl. Libby then gives an emotional speech, denouncing the tactics of the Blacklist.
10 "The Comeback" Sandor Stern Kenny Solms November 23, 1997 (1997-11-23) (CBS)
Thirty years after suffering stage fright during her Broadway opening, Lillian Bennett (Carol Burnett) returns to Broadway to discourage her daughter from following in her footsteps. Arriving just in time to attend her daughter's audition, Lillian sees her old understudy, Amanda Revere (Rita Moreno), who has now become the famed diva she once dreamed of becoming herself. Monica arrives to audition for a supporting role and miraculously wins the role while Allison (Carrie Hamilton) becomes her understudy. After Monica falls ill with a cold, Allison takes her place and Amanda takes an interest in her. When Lillian and Amanda finally meet in the presence of Allison, she demands an explanation. Lillian explains how she received yellow roses every night after rehearsal until the opening night when her "lucky" roses didn't come. Convinced she was doomed to fail, she stared into the prompter's box and froze, as Amanda had told her she would. Allison thinks her mother is jealous and doesn't realize why she can't just be happy for her. With the orchestra warming up, Lillian carries a "lucky" yellow rose as she meets Freddy (Tim Conway), the stage manager who knew both she and Amanda from years before. Freddy tells Lillian Amanda was the one who sent her flowers after every rehearsal. Realizing that her superstition was used against her by Amanda, Lillian confronts her and warns her against hurting Allison. As Amanda screams at her to get out, she loses her voice. Monica then reveals herself to Amanda, telling her that God wants her to help Lillian to finally shine. Meanwhile, Tess finds Lillian at the train station and tells her to stop believing in luck and help her daughter. Returning to the theatre, Lillian is met by an apologetic Amanda. Amanda then pushes Lillian onto the stage to face the fears that defeated her years before. Initially stumbling, Lillian finds her courage and belts a rousing rendition of "I'm still here." As Allison looks on with a newfound appreciation of her mother, the angels smile at another job well done.
11 "Venice" Gabrielle Beaumont R.J. Colleary December 7, 1997 (1997-12-07) (CBS)
Tess and Monica arrive in Montana to help the elderly Annie Doyle (Piper Laurie) reconcile her life before she loses her failing eyesight. Offering to help Annie with her daily errands, Monica escorts her to the weekly bingo game at church where Annie admits that the only reason she plays bingo is to “tick off” her nosy neighbors, Emily (Bonnie Bartlett), Russell (Sterling Brimley) and Markus (Matt Clark). After winning at bingo, Annie and Monica return to the house where Emily explains that she has always wanted to see Venice. Monica thinks this is her mission and offers to take Annie to Venice but not before Annie realizes that her sight is finally gone. Dr. Waldron arrives to say that Annie has been losing her sight for a long time but, like the other townspeople, he seems unsympathetic. Crushed by the loss of her eyesight, Annie tells Monica to get out of her house. Tess encourages Monica, explaining that God wants Annie to see the truth about her life. Monica returns to Annie and asks to be her friend. Annie then explains that her husband, Tommy (Michael Trucco), died the day after they were married thirty-five years earlier and the town has blamed her for his death ever since. Annie met Tommy while the town was financing his medical schooling. Tommy promised to return to the town and practice medicine, but he was bitter and did not want to live in such a backward area. On the day of the wedding, Annie and Tommy wrecked the car into the local river and Tommy saw the chance to escape his duty by faking his death. He vowed to keep contact with Annie, leaving her in town to verify the story. After a few correspondences, Tommy stopped writing and Annie was left to deal with the town. Annie knew how much the town had favored Tommy and did not want to reveal him for the scoundrel he was. As a result, the town had blamed her for his death and even questioned whether or not she had orchestrated the accident. The truth finally known, the angels then confront the townspeople, enlisting them to help ensure that Annie's dream of seeing Venice would become a reality. With the angels help, the townspeople recreate the sounds and smells of Venice in the local YMCA pool and Monica shows Annie to her gondola where she is transported, if only in her mind, to the Venice of her dreams.
12 "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" Michael Schultz Ken LaZebnik December 21, 1997 (1997-12-21) (CBS)
When Joey (Paul Wittenburg) breaks the Christmas angel while he and Wayne decorate the Christmas tree, Wayne (Randy Travis) leaves him alone to monitor the turkey while he goes out into the snow to buy a new angel. As the storm causes the lights to go out, Monica arrives to console Joey by telling him the story of the Christmas she spent with Mark Twain in 1909. Monica begins, explaining how Twain (John Cullum) had returned home on Christmas eve after a long absence to find his beloved daughter Jean (Kate Fuglei), his housekeeper Katy Leary (Helena Carroll), a townswoman, Mrs. Allen with her daughter Helen. Immediately prior to Twain's arrival, Jean shows the others her Christmas gift to her father, a copy of a lost verse from Twain's favorite Longfellow poem. When Twain arrives, Jean hurriedly hides the scroll on the tree. Twain then arrives and, as Mrs. Allen and Helen leave, Twain comments that such sweetness is the stuff of Heaven. Twain reflects on the deaths of his wife, daughter and infant son and says he is too old to be cheered up. Back in the present, Edna (Monique Ridge), the church organist, arrives to use Joey's phone but the lines are dead. As Wayne's truck swerves off the road, Monica resumes the story with the death of Jean on Christmas morning. While attempting to console Mr. Twain, Monica is lambasted and told to leave. In the present, Tess arrives with the sheriff who tells Joey that he found Wayne's truck but not Wayne and Joey's becomes more worried. Shortly thereafter, Andrew, the Angel of Death, enters and Monica continues the story. Monica is sent back to Twain by God and prays for help. At that very moment, Sam (Paul Winfield), the internal affairs angel, arrives and approaches Twain but is soon thrown out as Twain topples the Christmas tree. As Joey sits listening to the story, he is now convinced that Wayne is dead and topples his own Christmas tree. Monica then manages to calm Joey down for long enough to hear the end of Twain's story. She continues with the young girl, Helen returning to present the scroll that was to be Jean's surprise gift. As Helen finishes reading the known verses, Twain reads the lost verse. "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail. With peace on Earth, goodwill to men." This restores Twain's faith and, in the present, Joey echoes his sentiment singing "Peace on Earth." As Joey sings, Wayne arrives and all join in and sing around the restored Christmas tree.
13 "Deconstructing Harry" Burt Brinckerhoff Burt Pearl January 4, 1998 (1998-01-04) (CBS)
Monica and Tess arrive at the DMV where Tess has been instructed to obtain a driver's license. Now ready to take the driving portion, Tess meets her instructor and assignment, Doris (Lainie Kazan). Midway through the driving test, Doris tells Tess to follow a hearse which leads them both to the funeral of Harry Applegate. Doris enters the funeral and steals the ashes of her former lover as Andrew arrives outside as a state policeman. With Harry's ashes in her arms, Doris commands Tess to flee while Harry’s widow, Stella (Polly Bergen) convinces Andrew to pursue in his patrol car. Monica prays at the DMV where she is still waiting for Tess to return and soon is guided to her next stop in the journey that both Doris and Stella are now taking. Doris tells Tess they are going to Pizmo Beach where she is going to spread Harry’s ashes. Instructed by Doris to find food, Tess stops at the “Heaven on a Bun” where Monica is now working and quickly exit. Andrew then arrives with Stella and Monica tells him they are going to Pizmo Beach. Tess and Doris then stop at a gas station to use the restroom and exit quickly. Andrew and Stella arrive soon thereafter as Doris realizes she left her wallet and picture of Harry in the gas station bathroom. When she and Tess return to the station, Stella is in the restroom and gives out a cry as she learns that her husband’s mistress is outside the door. Doris wastes no time fleeing the scene. Monica tells Andrew that the two women must not meet yet and he stalls Stella’s pursuit, citing engine failure. Tess and Doris then stop at Del Ray’s Honkytonk where Tess tries to convince Doris that there is a better life for her than the lie she lived with Harry. Harkening back to a happier time, Doris sings “We live on Borrowed Time” and the two have dinner on the house. No longer wanting to hear what Tess says’, Doris attempts to leave as Tess’ car is being stolen. Andrew and Stella then arrive and the confrontation begins. Stella pulls a gun on Doris and the both Andrew and Tess try to appeal to reason. Doris gives Harry’s ashes to Stella as Andrew takes the gun. Stella then begins to insult Doris and they are soon wrestling on the ground. As both women rail on each other, the waitress from the Honky Tonk explains that Harry spent every Saturday night at the Honky Tonk, talking to her about the dilemma of his situation with both women. The waitress then explains that Harry was constantly in turmoil over the life he was living. Andrew then reveals himself and explains that Harry's dying wish was to reconcile his life with his loved ones. Andrew tells Stella that while it is too late to repair her marriage, God can repair her heart if she will let him. Doris apologizes to Stella for the pain she has caused and Stella accepts. With Harry’s life now reconciled with his loved ones, his ashes are swept into the air as all wish him a fond farewell.
14 "The Trigger" Peter Hunt Rosanne Welch & Christine Pettit January 11, 1998 (1998-01-11) (CBS)
As Monica gives Tess an ice skating lesson we meet the seemingly happy Craig family at the rink where the son, Alex (Joe Pichler), is finishing hockey practice. This family is Monica’s next assignment as she gets a lesson that things aren’t always what they seem. Linda (Gabrielle Carteris) and Ray Craig (J.C. Mackenzie) bring their children home to welcome Linda’s sister Holly (Elizabeth Berridge), who is in town for Linda’s graduation from law school. Holly is overwhelmed to be back in the house of her childhood, a house that the Craig’s recently bought back. Andrew, Alex's hockey coach, arrives at the house to return Alex's hockey gloves, which he left at the rink. This upsets Ray, abnormally so, and it becomes clear that there is a tension in this family when Ray grounds Alex for the whole weekend. Holly questions this, but Linda covers for Ray, explaining that he's had a bad day. Holly also finds a gun in the hall closet, and questions the safety of having a loaded weapon in the home. Later that night Holly wakes up to hear Linda and Ray having a heated argument. She goes downstairs to find Linda on the floor bleeding from the head. Monica arrives as a policeman to investigate an anonymous domestic disturbance call, but Linda and Ray both agree that Linda fell down the stairs and bumped her head. Later at the hospital Linda explains that Ray has been upset recently, after losing his position as head of the emergency room, a consequence of endangering a patient’s life. Tess arrives as a family counselor and encourages Linda and Ray to seek counseling, but Linda will not admit that Ray has been violent with her. The situation seems to improve when Ray is really sweet to the kids, but when Alex gets into a fight during the hockey game, it is clear that he is taking after his father. When Holly suggests that the family needs counseling, Ray becomes furious and starts beating Linda and Holly with a hockey stick. Believing that Ray will kill her sister, Holly gets the gun and shoots Ray, ultimately killing him. Because Linda won’t admit the abuse, Holly is arrested for murder. Linda is also angry at Holly for killing her husband, who she claims was just trying to “scare” her. Back at the house Monica offers to pray with Linda, and they do, in hopes that this will clear Linda’s mind about the events. Monica reveals herself to be an angel, and this triggers Linda’s memory about her childhood, when her father beat her in the same house, and about how Holly saved her by hitting him with a stone. Linda digs the stone out from under the closet floorboards and brings it to her sister, thanking her for her protection. The murder charges having been dropped, the two sisters are reunited and resolve to ask God to help them pick up the pieces of their lives.
15 "Doodlebugs" Terrance O'Hara Ken LaZebnik January 18, 1998 (1998-01-18) (CBS)
After the death of his wife, small town minister Erskine (Chris Mulkey) gave up his ministry and his lack of faith has spread to the rest of the townspeople. Erskine's son, Andy (Adam Wylie) now fears he will die of cancer like his mother while his daughter, Bits (Renee Olstead), spends her time trying to draw the elusive doodlebugs out of their holes. As Bits tries without success to draw a doodlebug out of its nest, a young man by the name of Pearhead (Morgan Rusler) answers a payphone. When he is told by a mysterious voice where to find a winning twenty-dollar lottery ticket, it appears God is finally on his side. After Pearhead enters Sis and Vinegar's Café and announces his "miracle," Sis (Tina Lifford), her brother Vinegar (K. Todd Freeman), and Ada (Barbara Mandrel), an aspiring singer all begin to sit vigil by the phone, waiting for heavenly advice. The voice first tells Sis to apologize to Vinegar for some hurtful things she has said and when she does, their relationship instantly improves. Ada then answers the phone and is told to forego her plans to sing in Atlanta because there is someone in town she loves and she should tell him. Erskine then answers the phone and the voice knows the pain he has felt after losing his wife and tells him to find love where he can because his son needs a mother. Erskine is now convinced and when Sis answers the phone and is told to convert an old building into a bar and grill, the entire town pitches in to help; Sis and Vinegar mortgage the café, Pearhead sells his ice cream truck and Ada donates her savings. When the Gem Bar and Grill burns to the ground on opening night, it appears that all is lost. Tess, meanwhile has traced the voice on the other end of the phone back to Andy. She tries to convince him to own his lie but he is unable to muster the courage and runs away, opting to send an apology note to Ada instead. Tess then reveals to the townspeople, asking them why they had lost their faith. She tells Erskine to begin the search where all successful searches begin, with God. As Erskine prays, the townspeople begin to regain their faith and they begin the search for Andy. Tess then finds Andy in his fathers abandoned church and tells him how much God loves him. As Sis, Vinegar and Pearhead arrive, Tess tells them they have hidden from God when they should have reached for him. She convinces Andy that he is not going to die like his mother. Erskine and Andy then go to Ada and Erskine asks her to stay. At just that moment, the phone rings and Bits answers it. Apparently, this time the caller is God and He tells bits how to catch a doodlebug. As she cradles the entire nest in her palm, a dove flies away.
16 "Redeeming Love" Burt Brinckerhoff Marilyn Osborn & Kathleen McGhee-Anderson February 1, 1998 (1998-02-01) (CBS)
As Monica and Tess take a walk through the city streets, they stumble across Monica's next assignment, a young woman sleeping under a pile of garbage. The woman's name is Lydia (Alanna Ubach) and she is a crack addict. As Monica follows Lydia into her apartment building, her beautiful clothes become like Lydia's, ragged and dirty. Lydia's landlord, who hasn't received the rent, resolves to evict her, but Monica pays the rent and becomes Lydia's new roommate. Meanwhile Lydia grabs Monica's coat and tries to sell it on the street. Monica tails Lydia to her parents' home, where Lydia breaks in to steal money. But Lydia's parents show up, as do the police, and Lydia flees to a crack house. Monica finds Lydia smoking crack and causing a disturbance among the other addicts. Lydia runs into the street and gets hit by a car. When Lydia's parents arrive at the emergency room the doctor informs them that Lydia is not only an addict, but she’s also pregnant. Their disbelief is short-lived when Lydia delivers a crack-addicted baby girl. Tess, acting as a drug counselor, talks to Lydia's parents about Lydia's upbringing, reminding them that they are partially to blame for Lydia's condition. Lydia sneaks out of the hospital and tries to get an old job back; instead she steals some money from her boss and returns to her parents' home. She asks her parents for money and they refuse, choosing to take Tess' advice and allow Lydia to become so desperate that she must help herself. Lydia returns to the hospital, steals the baby, and takes her to the crack house. Andrew tells Monica that if they don't find the baby it will die. Monica and Tess search for the child. Monica finds Lydia, who is too high to realize that she has lost the baby. Monica reveals herself to Lydia, and tells Lydia that God has a better plan for her life, but she must choose His help. Lydia does. Monica and a choir of angels gather around Lydia to sing and comfort her as she goes through withdrawal. Meanwhile Tess finds and rescues the baby. Emerging triumphant but shaken from a seven-day struggle, Lydia, accompanied by Monica, checks into a drug rehab program.
17 "Flights of Angels" Peter Hunt Sally Storch Bunkall & Sally Howell March 1, 1998 (1998-03-01) (CBS)
Richard (Gregory Harrison) is an artist diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, a terminal sickness that has a debilitating effect on one's motor functions. Richard is in denial about the prognosis but his wife Sally (Linda Purl) is not, and she prays for guidance for her family. Monica arrives to help her take care of their 3 boys; John Henry (Haley Joel Osment), George (Ian Meltzer) and Ray, while Andrew will assist Richard with his paintings. Sally explains that Richard is working against a deadline: he must finish more paintings if he wishes to showcase them at a gallery. John Henry, the oldest son, is aware that there is something wrong with his father, but attempts to get him to play games with him. Richard is too weak for this, and also preoccupied with finishing his work so that he can leave his family with the revenue from his paintings. At the same time Richard is working on "dream books" for his sons, scrapbooks that contain sketches and mementos of all the things their father holds dear. When Richard's legs give out, he and Sally break down and cry as the despair of the disease overtakes them. The next day Sally, the boys, Monica and Andrew surprise Richard with an electric cart. He explains to the boys that he has a disease, but when John Henry asks if he's going to die, Richard tells them "not for a very long time." This upsets Sally since he wasn't "truthful" with the boys. Tess, posing as an artist's manager, agrees to represent Richard even though he only has two paintings finished. With Andrew at his side, and using a respirator to help him breathe, Richard begins work in earnest, but his goal of twelve paintings is cut short when a fire breaks out in the studio. Andrew is able to save Richard from the fire, but all but one of the paintings is destroyed. Richard, feeling that his life is now worth nothing, gives up hope. But Andrew sets up a studio in the living room for Richard to finish his last painting. Richard gets to work right away, realizing that this one painting is going to have to go a long way. Over the next few days Richard is hard at work with the painting. Sally explains to the boys what's happening to their father. As much as they don't want their father to die, they're happy he won't be in pain anymore. That night Andrew reveals himself to Richard and tells him that he only has a few hours left and asks him to make a choice: finish his last painting, or finish the scrapbooks for his sons. Richard decides to leave his sons with a piece of their father by finishing the books. Richard works all night and finishes each book and Andrew helps him say goodbye to the boys and Sally before he dies. The next day Monica and Tess reveal themselves to Sally and assure her that if she puts her trust in God, He will provide. This is evident when Sally finds Richard's lone painting to have been miraculously completed. And it is clear that this won't be the last painting, as John Henry takes up a brush and begins to paint on one of his father's blank canvases.
18 "Breaking Bread" Peter Hunt Burt Pearl March 8, 1998 (1998-03-08) (CBS)
A timid baker named Matt Coletti (Michael Chiklis) is closing up his bakery one evening when two white men attack his black assistant (Willard E. Pugh) in the street. Matt witnesses the crime but is too frightened to come forward. Tess tells Monica that it is their job to help him make a stand against the criminals, members of a white supremacist group. Andrew poses as a representative of the state attorney's office, asking questions about the incident, trying to determine if it was a simple robbery attempt or a hate crime. Monica is hired as Matt's new assistant and dons an apron. Matt goes to the local church where Tess, the visiting preacher, unveils a beautiful new stained glass window which Matt has financed. The next day the two criminals show up at the bakery to ensure that Matt remains quiet about the incident, but a young mechanic named Derek (Todd Rulapaugh) threatens them and they leave the store without a fight. When a swastika-covered rock is thrown through the stained glass church window, it is a sign that the community must take action. A town meeting is held and the people decide to form a community group to respond to the crimes, but Derek, reminding the group of the risks this could entail, convinces them to give up the idea. Matt, under pressure from Tess to finally admit his role as a witness to the crime, tells the people his story. Matt, in fact, had seen three people the night of the beating, the two white men and another figure riding in the backseat of the mens' car, a figure Matt realizes was the devil himself. Of course no one believes Matt, not even his wife (Mary Donnelly-Haskell) and the two separate. To make matters worse a bomb explodes in the bakery, and Matt, though not hurt, laments the loss of his reputation, family, and business. Monica, Tess, and Andrew reveal themselves to Matt, and explain that God wants to use him as a prophet who will lead the townspeople against the satanic forces in the town. Matt rises to the challenge and rallies the people to confront the physical manifestation of the devil, Derek, and the two criminals. Matthew breaks a loaf of bread and passes it among the group, and vows never to be frightened by the devil again nor to give in to his own prejudices. The two men are arrested and the devil, defeated by Matt's moral stand, disappears.
19 "God and Country" Bethany Rooney R.J. Colleary and Glenn Berenbeim March 15, 1998 (1998-03-15) (CBS)
Rafael (Alexis Cruz) enters the army in an attempt to befriend a bitter soldier named Tomas (Vincent Laresca). Tomas hates the army, in particular his commanding officer Colonel Victor Walls (Edward James Olmos). Both men are Hispanic but Tomas feels that Col. Walls has rejected his heritage by failing to use his original surname, Paredes. Tomas requests a transfer from this base, but Col. Walls denies the request. Rafael meets with Col. Walls, who suggests he change his name to Ralph as a means to get along better in the army. When Tomas hears of this, a fight breaks out in the barracks between Rafael, Tomas, and another soldier. Rafael gets a scolding from Tess for being the first angel to hit an assignment and all three soldiers end up in the military jail. It is in jail that Rafael learns that Col. Walls is actually Tomas' father and he has another son, Paul, who is missing in action in Bosnia. This is a further source of frustration for Tomas because the army cannot give the family any straight answers regarding Paul's situation. Monica arrives at the jail as the army lawyer who will represent Tomas, and she reprimands him for his attitude towards his father. Later, when Tomas is out of jail, he brings Rafael with him to a family dinner at the Walls (Paredes) home. A fight between father and son is stifled when Andrew appears at the door as a casualty officer, bearing the news that Paul was killed in battle. Col. Walls guards his emotions, and this further drives a wedge between Col. Walls and Tomas, who doesn't believe his father loves him. Col. Walls brightens at the news that Paul was killed saving other soldiers' lives, making him a hero. When an ambiguous postcard arrives posthumously from Paul to Tomas, a confused and despairing Tomas confronts his father with a gun, hoping to learn the truth about his brother's death. But when he sees that his father is unafraid, Tomas turns the gun on himself, pleading for his father to tell him the truth. When Col. Walls doesn't, Tomas leaves. Monica reveals herself to Col. Walls explaining that although he has served his country, he needs to serve God and tell his family the truth. Col. Walls returns home to tell his family the truth, that he pulled some strings to get Paul a dangerous assignment. Tomas is upset by the news and leaves. Rafael appears and reveals himself to Tomas, urging him to forgive his father for his wrongdoing. The next day at the memorial service for Paul, his parents and the angels are unsure if Tomas will attend. As Col. Walls begins the eulogy Tomas, enters the service. Col. Walls speaks of the mistakes he has made both as an officer and as a father and professes his love for Tomas. The father and son salute each other respectfully, then break down into a tearful embrace. Tess, Monica, Andrew, and Rafael smile, realizing their assignment is complete.
20 "How Do You Spell Faith?" Bethany Rooney Michael Glassberg March 29, 1998 (1998-03-29) (CBS)
Monica and Tess arrive in the life of a single mother, Mary (Bess Armstrong), to help her reconcile her relationship with her son, Aaron (Noah Fleiss). Herself a former athlete, Mary relates to her eldest son, Michael (Jesse Raynes), who is the star wrestler of Olympus High School. Aaron, on the contrary, is more cerebral and spends the majority of his time spelling out words to hide the pain he feels for not having a father and not being closer to his mother. While the entire school supports Michael's wresting efforts, Aaron is ignored by virtually everyone except his brother, who has become something of a father to him. When Tess encourages Aaron to take the test to qualify for the Midwest Regional Spelling Bee, Aaron reluctantly agrees and Michael is quick to support him. When Michael is killed on route to a wrestling competition, Mary is less able to relate to Aaron and her distance causes him to leave home in search of his father. Following the address on letters from his father that were given to him by Michael, Aaron goes to Minnesota. Once there, Aaron meets Andrew who is acting as a cab driver. When Andrew and Aaron arrive at his father's address, they find only an empty parking lot. Looking closely at the postmarks on the letters Michael had given him, Aaron realizes that his brother had been sending him the letters and that his father doesn't really care about him. Andrew convinces Aaron to return to his mother but they are still separated by their different personalities. Tess tells Mary that although she and Aaron have differing abilities, what he needs is her love. Mary tries to tell Aaron how proud she is of him but Aaron is still unwilling to open up to his mother. Andrew reveals himself to Aaron and tries to make him understand how much his mother loves him. Andrew encourages Aaron to turn to God who will never desert him like his father did. Finally understanding how much he is loved, Aaron reconciles with his mother and showcases his spelling talent by winning the Midwest Regional Spelling Bee.
21 "Seek and Ye Shall Find" Victor Lobl Glenn Berenbeim April 5, 1998 (1998-04-05) (CBS)
Monica and Tess discuss the next mission in the one-stop town of Savage, Mississippi. Monica slips on the icy pavement outside of a bus station, hits her head, and suffers from amnesia. Inside the station Dr. Chester Crayton (Michael Moriarty) somewhat impatiently examines a frightened Monica. The Doctor is on the way to a prison to watch the execution of a man who murdered his wife. The station is filled with other colorful characters including a bible salesman (Gary Grubbs), the crusty station-keeper named the Colonel (Dakin Matthews), a sweet old black lady named Effie (Irma P. Hall), and a young pregnant Elvis fan, Sueellen (Devon Odessa). As Monica struggles to regain her memory, the doctor reveals the hatred and bitterness he feels over the murder of his wife. Andrew, on his way to "work" the execution, stops by the station and encourages Monica, who doesn't recognize him, to first seek out who God is, and then she will know herself. The bible salesman steals Effie's money, but Monica is accused of the crime and the Colonel calls the cops. Monica, thoroughly lost, begins to cry, but Sueellen's boyfriend, Skeeter, teaches her to pray. Monica prays that God would restore her memory, but instead the police arrive and handcuff her. Effie, however, decides to forgive Monica and give her the money. This extreme act of forgiveness reminds Monica of who God is and who she is. She reveals herself to Effie, who is delighted to finally see an angel. Later at the prison, the murderer (Connor Trinneer) asks the doctor to forgive him for killing his wife. The doctor scoffs at this request and the execution commences. Monica appears to the doctor and begs him to forgive the murderer as a means of achieving peace in his own life. The doctor suspends the execution so he can tell the murderer that he has, indeed, forgiven him.
22 "Cry, and You Cry Alone" R.J. Colleary Gene Reynolds April 12, 1998 (1998-04-12) (CBS)
Four aging comics (Johnny Brown, Tom Dreesen, Jack Carter, Johnny Dark) sit around a diner table reminiscing about their careers and celebrating the fact that one of them is soon to leave on a cruise ship gig. One of the men offers to tell the story of Salt and Pepper, a famous comic team who suddenly broke up before they hit it really big. The story begins many years after the breakup, when Maury Salt (Jerry Stiller) arrives at the diner for his daily breakfast. Monica, a waitress at the diner, is the object of Salt's disdain when she doesn't know his usual order. During breakfast Salt reads the trade magazines and discovers that he and Pepper (Tom Poston) are going to be inducted into the Comedy Hall of Fame. When Monica inquires it becomes apparent that Salt and his former partner dislike each other, mostly because Pepper walked out on the act. The two men reunite and continue their feud at a press conference in spite of the fact that they've agreed to put on a show for the Hall of Fame induction. At the rehearsal Salt and Pepper return to their old routines but cannot agree on who will play which part, so they break up. Salt recruits Monica to be his new partner, but tries her out at an open-mike contest, and she bombs horribly, refusing to insult anyone for a laugh. Meanwhile, Pepper recruits Andrew as his partner, a sign that the old comic hasn't long to live. When they realize their new partners are terrible, Salt and Pepper reunite. But it’s not long before Pepper collapses with a weak heart. The men see the error of their ways on the ride to the hospital, and Tess, who is driving the ambulance, honors their request to go to the diner in the old neighborhood where they met. The men perform one more comedy routine for Monica. Pepper then dies, but not before the old friends express their love and gratitude to each other.
23 "Perfect Little Angel" Terrence O’Hara Susan Cridland Wick, Ann Elder & Jeannine Tree April 26, 1998 (1998-04-26) (CBS)
Monica and Tess meet their next assignment, Tracy Beringer (Ele Keats), as she receives some very bad news via a letter in her mailbox. The nature of the news is unclear, however Tracy needs money very badly, telling her boss at the auto repair shop where she works that she needs the money for college tuition. When she sees an ad in the paper for the Miss Colorado pageant, she tries to sign up, but one of the many stipulations is that the young ladies must have a sponsor. Tracy, who desperately needs the pageant prize money, is upset until Monica, Tess, Rafael (Alexis Cruz), and Andrew agree to be her sponsors, crowning her Miss Unincorporated Area #579. As they begin to prep Tracy for the pageant the angels discover a few strange things about her: she never lets anyone inside of her apartment, she tells people that her parents died in a boating accident (then later says it was a train accident), and she plays the piano very well, but lacks the passion required of a truly great pianist. On the night of the pageant all is going well for Tracy, until her landlord shows up and takes Monica to Tracy's apartment revealing a little boy named Nick (Seth Adkins) babysitting himself. Monica takes Nick to the pageant and, Tracy, upset that the angels know she's a single mom, tells them that she wants to win the pageant so that she'll have the money to put Nick through a surgery to repair a hole in his heart. It's also revealed that Tracy's parents are not dead, she actually ran away from home when she found out she was pregnant. Realizing that Tracy doesn't think God loves her, Monica and Tess reveal themselves, reminding her of God's love and encouraging her to trust God with her son's life. When it comes time to be interviewed for the pageant Tracy, realizing that nothing good can come from a lie, tells the audience that she is a single mom and embraces Nick on the stage, thereby solidifying her journey into truth. The audience, including Andrew and Rafael, applauds. Later Tracy receives a load of mail from people who have heard her story offering help with Nick's surgery. One of the letters is from Tracy's parents who want her to come home. Tracy calls her parents and the angels, their task complete, depart.
24 "Elijah" Peter H. Hunt Glenn Berenbeim May 3, 1998 (1998-05-03) (CBS)
Jacob Weiss (Bruce Davison), a bitter slum lord, is sentenced to spend two weeks in one of his own tenements and the angels arrive to help him understand the error of his ways. As the code enforcement officer, Monica quickly educates Jake on the changes that will need to be made but he is intent on trying to go around the law, offering her a bribe. He then continues to try any legal means of avoiding his punishment until his mother (Doris Belack) and son (Jeremy Foley) urge him to come to Passover dinner which coincidentally falls on the eve when his incarceration is to begin. He then approaches the judge and makes a religious plea. Unfortunately for Jake, the judge attends the very synagogue where he claims to be devout and, having never seen Jake there, firmly refuses. Jacob then attempts to hide from the police at his mother's apartment but is picked up in the midst of the Passover meal. Tess meets Jake as he arrives for his internment and places an ankle monitor on his leg to ensure that he does not leave. Jake then settles in to the abysmal conditions of his own tenement and meets a savvy neighborhood kid, Tyler (George Gore, II), who arranges to bring him the things he needs in exchange for money. Jake then begins to hear a haunting song and starts to remember where all his troubles began... with the death of his father. In a rare moment of sentiment, Jake then calls his son Michael but is quickly interrupted by a fire in his apartment. With Monica's help, Jake extinguishes the fire but is forced to move to the only other vacant apartment, that which he lived in when his father was alive. Once there, Andrew appears, telling Jake he is there to help him remember. Jake then dreams back to the day his father died and to his explanation of the Passover and its message of freedom for all people. When Jake is awakened by Tyler, he is even more desperate to escape the pain of his own memories and offers Tyler more money to find someone who can remove his ankle monitor. Jake calls his wife (Jeannie Elias) from whom he is separated to ask for the money, but she steadfastly refuses. His son, Michael, overhears his mother and brings Jake his Bar Mitzvah money. While Jake is being robbed of the money by the supposed monitor remover, Michael is shot. Unable to get help from the neighbors he has abused, Jake listens to Monica and follows his pious father's example. He smears the blood of his son on his door and sings the song of "Elijah" while Tess sings "Go Down Moses" as Andrew, the Angel of Death, passes over the house.
25 "Last Dance" Terrence O’Hara Jennifer Wharton & R.J. Colleary May 10, 1998 (1998-05-10) (CBS)
The pressure to abstain from sex before marriage is almost as great for teenagers Greg (Corbin Allred) and Jill (Mercedes McNab), as the pressure from their mothers to be perfect students. Greg’s mother, Liz (Alley Mills), owns a flower shop, and doesn’t like Greg seeing Jill, claiming it affects his grades and will jeopardize his ability to get into college. Jill’s mother, Candace (Karen Austin), still dealing with issues from her own past, demands complete chastity from her daughter. It is Monica and Tess’ assignment to make sure these relationships don’t self-destruct. Meanwhile Andrew, as a DJ, encourages the high schoolers to respect themselves and their bodies. Rafael (Alexis Cruz), as a student teacher, fends off infatuated girls. Monica, as a substitute teacher, holds a meeting to plan the upcoming prom and chaperones Liz and Candace meet. Although they deny knowing each other, it is clear they have a history together. The truth is Liz and Candace were friends in high school, until Candace, who slept around quite a bit, stole Liz’s boyfriend. The enmity over this event hasn’t yet subsided, and Candace asks Liz not to tell Jill about her past. Liz agrees but only if she will forbid Jill from dating Greg. Tess, as an assistant at the flower shop, obviously disapproves of this idea. Greg and Jill, though very upset and confused, respect their mothers’ wishes, until Jill learns her mother’s secret—that while preaching chastity she lived an unchaste lifestyle as a teenager. Jill determines to do all the things her mother has told her not to do and she sneaks out to meet Greg at the prom. Greg and Jill plan to go to a hotel and have sex after the prom, but Monica tries to stop them. However, they don’t listen to Monica and go to the hotel. The next morning, Greg drops Jill off at her house and leaves. As Jill climbs to her bedroom window, she falls and is unconscious. Later in the hospital, a distraught Greg tells the mothers that he and Jill spent the night together and Liz becomes upset. Greg can’t believe that his mother is more concerned about his sex life than about his girlfriend whose life hangs in the balance. Tess and Monica appear at the hospital, reveal themselves as angels and ask the mothers, for the sake of their children, to resolve their differences and make peace. The mothers decide to give one another a second chance and give their blessing to Greg and Jill’s relationship. Andrew reveals that Jill will recover and the families rejoice in the news.
26 "The Spirit of Liberty Moon" Tim Van Patten Martha Williamson May 17, 1998 (1998-05-17) (CBS)
While testing a kite, Tess briefs Monica and Andrew on their next assignment: it can change many lives because the "courage of one single person" can change history. That chance may come for Edward Tanner (Adrian Pasdar), CEO of Tanner Toys, and he may not recognize it. It will come for one of Edward's employees, Jean Chang (Bai Ling), a second time -- she will recognize it and "that's why she may say 'no.'" Tess demonstrates her new "portable kite" that can fly without wind to Alex Stella (Ben Bode), Edward's longtime friend and legal counsel for Tanner Toys. He is intrigued by the technology, but quickly brushes her off as Edward enters to discuss moving their manufacturing to China. Alex introduces Monica as a consultant who will acquaint them with the import-export business. Monica explains the new opportunities that China's open-door policy has given to Western businesses and recommends that Edward hire a translator from within the company. When the job is offered to Jean, she is offended, claiming she is Korean and they just assumed she was Chinese because she looked "oriental." Her cover is quickly blown, however, when she arrives at a Chinese restaurant where Edward, Alex and Monica are eating lunch and proceeds to order in Chinese. When she comes to their table to apologize, Alex is unexpectedly pulled away from the conversation by an exuberant Tess, the "kite inventor." With Alex distracted, Jean explains to Monica and Edward why she lied. Admitting to be Chinese, Jean tells them of how she was orphaned during the Cultural Revolution and how she fell in love with a picture of the Statue of Liberty in a banned book. Edward finds himself becoming genuinely interested in her -- an interest that will eventually turn to love -- as she explains how she and many like her were affected by Western culture. While an idealistic student in China, her husband adopted the nickname "Gus" after Auguste Rodin's "Thinker" and their best friend adopted his name, "George," after Washington. Jean explains how she and her husband took part in the Tiananmen Square protests while George stayed home with her daughter, Piao Yue (Liberty Moon). When the crack-down came, she was separated from her husband and although she heard that he was killed, she was unable to verify his death and was forced to flee to America before she could find George and her daughter. As Monica and Edward investigate China further, they are shocked to find one of the companies courting a joint venture with Tanner Toys is none other than Liberty Moon International Management. Edward shows Jean the letter and agrees to take her with them to Beijing. In China, Monica distracts the customs agents, allowing Jean to sneak safely back into the country. They soon meet George (Russell Wong), who is frightened to see Jean. George tells them he will no longer guarantee that his company, Liberty Moon, can do business with them. However, after Tess plants some seeds of courage in George, he helps Alex, Edward and Jean to infiltrate a "re-education through labor" camp under the guise that they will use the factory being constructed to manufacture Tanner Toys. Jean recognizes a sickly worker at the labor camp as her husband, Gus (Ping Wu). After a bittersweet reunion, Jean and the others quickly leave the camp when a guard becomes suspicious of their presence. Alex is angered to learn of the risks Edward has taken with the business and attempts to fire Monica -- but is overruled by Edward. They later read in a newspaper of Gus' death in prison and his "renouncement" of his actions in Tiananmen Square. As Jean resolves to speak out against the lies, soldiers move into their hotel, spot Jean and give chase. Later, Edward and Monica meet Jean in a busy street and offer to help her. As they walk away together, a soldier hands them a leaflet depicting a wanted criminal -- it's a photo of Jean from her Tiananmen Square days. They go to meet George and ask about Jean's daughter, Piao Yue. Ashamed, he tells them that he took Piao Yue to a family in the south who would look after her until his return. He further explains that there was a terrible flood and that he no longer knows what happened to Piao Yue. He explains that he named his company "Liberty Moon" with the hope that they would one day be united. Believing she has nothing left to lose, Jean goes back to Tiananmen Square to openly tell the people who she is and the truth about what happened to her husband. As the police arrest her, she looks up at the sky and notices a kite with the Liberty Moon symbol on it. She follows the string down to a group of young girls, but cannot make contact with her daughter before she is taken away. Edward, desperate to help Jean, goes to George who explains the judicial process to him: Jean will be convicted and sentenced quickly, and some "accidental" death in prison will soon follow. Seeing that there is nothing left for them in China, Alex leaves for home and apologizes to Edward for his behavior. Monica reveals herself as an angel to Jean and physically shields Jean when she is attacked by fellow prisoners -- taking the painful blows herself. The prisoners are frightened by the miracle, Jean is unharmed after the beating; but the guards are furious and they take Jean to the top of a staircase and throw her down where she dies in Monica's arms. Monica promises Jean that she will tell Piao Yue the truth about her mother. Monica reveals herself to Edward and tells him of Jean's death. He goes to George and together they use Tess's "portable kite" with a Liberty Moon symbol painted on it to find Piao Yue. George then uses his influence to adopt Piao Yue and Edward promises that she can live with him in Maine every summer. As Edward's plane flies over New York, he looks out the window to see the Statue of Liberty. He breaks down and cries.
[edit] Season 5

The fifth season aired September 20, 1998 through May 23, 1999.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "Miles to Go Before I Sleep" Peter Hunt Peter Hunt September 20, 1998 (1998-09-20) (CBS)
When Andrew arrives at a hospital to escort an elderly Mr. Richards to Heaven, Mr. Richards makes Andrew promise to help someone else in the hospital, someone whose soul is dying. Mr. Richards directs Andrew to the bible he is leaving behind which, he insists, will answer Andrew’s questions. Andrew meets up with Monica and Tess who are at the hospital to minister to the patients, but no one knows the whereabouts of Mr. Richards’ Bible. Complicating matters, Rita Lasky (Margot Kidder), a terminally ill woman with no will to live, claims to have seen the Angel of Death and that it told her to "hurry up and die." Monica tells Rita God would never ask someone to give up, and that if an angel says something that is not from God, then it’s not an angel. Meanwhile, Andrew is caring for John Minore (Johnny Green), a young man with brain cancer, who has faith that he will be miraculously healed. Arthur Bowers (Chad Lowe), a kind-hearted orderly, tells John about Rita's angel-sighting and insists that there is an angel in the hospital. When Rita wakes up from her medicated sleep, she rebuffs Monica's attempt to convince her that the angel is a fraud. Before the rumor can settle, John Minore claims to have been visited by the Angel of Death, who told him not to be afraid of his imminent death. Andrew pleads with John not to give up on life but John is convinced that he will die in surgery. As the patients’ will to live dwindles, Tess continues to search for Mr. Richards’ missing bible, hoping for some clue as to the identity of the pseudo-angel. Monica questions the skeptical head nurse, Jo (Elaine Kagan), who denies having anything to do with the angel. Monica goes to Rita and reveals herself as a real angel as Rita professes her need to speak to her estranged sister. Tess finds the shredded Bible in a trash dumpster, and as the angels sift through the pages, the “Angel of Death” visits John again. The angels chase down the false angel, revealing that it is really Arthur Bowers in a costume. Arthur tries to escape, but Andrew is everywhere he turns, finally revealing his identity. Andrew gives him the verse from Mr. Richards’ Bible. "I will seek that which was lost and return that which was driven away." Andrew questions Arthur about his troubled past, and takes Arthur home to make amends with his estranged mother. Arthur explains to his mother that, years ago, he left Toby, his late brother, alone on the day he died and has since been suffering from guilt, trying to fix everyone but himself. Arthur’s mother forgives him but tells him he must forgive himself. Arthur admits his false identity to John Minore and introduces Andrew as the real Angel of Death. Andrew asks John to cling to life and John enters surgery with a hopeful attitude. Monica helps Rita make peace with her sister before Andrew delivers her to Heaven
2 "Vengeance is Mine (1)" Victor Lobl Steven Phillip Smith September 27, 1998 (1998-09-27) (CBS)
In a previous episode of "Promised Land," Joe Greene (Richard Thomas) caused the death of a father and son in an automobile accident. In this two-part crossover episode with the cast of Promised Land, the angels arrive to help the surviving wife and son. As the one year anniversary of Joe's tragic car accident approaches, the Greene family is in Springville. After seeing Joe depart for Turkey where he is intent on working, Russell (Gerald McRaney) is eager to get back on the road while Claire (Wendy Phillips) has a sense that she has work still to do in Springville. As strange letters begin to arrive for Joe, Claire volunteers to teach reading on death row at the local prison and meets Darlene (Tracey Gold), a young woman convicted of killing a man while on a drug-crazed binge. As Claire and Dinah (Sarah Schaub) try to help Darlene come to terms with her daughter and mother before she is executed, the angels learn that the letters to Joe have been sent by Sandra Mills (Karen Sillas), who is abusing alcohol and neglecting her son, Matthew, (Courtland Mead) in the aftermath of her husbands death at Joe's hand. Tess works as an efficiency consultant at Sandra's office and tries to convince her to stop drinking and face her grief but Sandra is soon fired for drinking on the job. Meanwhile, Monica is Matthew's teacher and tries to help Matthew as his mother's drinking problem worsens. As the date of Darlene's execution approaches, Claire and Dinah convince her of the need to reconcile with her daughter and mother. Much less able to deal with her own grief, Sandra ignores the pleas of Monica and continues to drink and Matthew is near fatally wounded in a gas explosion. Sandra then writes another threatening letter to Joe Greene. Part one concludes as Sandra kidnaps Nathaniel (Eddie Karr) at gunpoint, threatening to kill him if her own son does not survive the explosion.
3 "What are Friends For?" Peter H. Hunt Martha Williamson October 4, 1998 (1998-10-04) (CBS)
The angels arrive in the life of mayoral candidate Carrie Carver (Sheila Kelley) to help her learn a valuable lesson about friendship. Monica arrives as Carrie's speechwriter when Carrie is called away by a message from an old college friend. Monica tells her "truth is the best spin." Carrie arrives at Frodo's, her old college hangout to find Tom (Wren T. Brown), who is waiting to hear the news of his most recent cancer test. Andrew is acting as a bartender, not knowing whether or not he will be escorting Tom. Carrie then resumes her campaign, formally announcing her candidacy for the office of mayor. Carrie then goes to her college reunion with Sam (John James) and Monica. Carrie then sees her old friend Billy (Erich Anderson). Sam looks on with controlled concern as Carrie and Billy dance to their old college song. As Carrie, Billy, and Tom, "The Terrible Threesome" give an reunion performance, Tess tells Andrew and Monica "Sometimes memories keep people harmonizing long after the music is over." Carrie tells Billy she'll pull some strings at the Board of Education to get him a job and also tells Sam she let him know he can stay in the basement until he gets on his feet. Carrie tells Sam she was never in love with Billy. The campaign rolls on and Billy begins a job as a high school teacher. While Carrie uses the restroom at a local high school, she overhears two students talking about Billy and one threatens to make him "pay" for giving her a "C." When Sam and Carrie arrive at home that night, Billy has prepared a candlelight dinner for them. The police then arrive with a warrant for Billy's arrest on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor. As Sam advises Carrie to distance herself in the aftermath of the arrest, Monica again advocates the truth. Carrie stands by Billy. Tom is his lawyer and explains the severity of his situation: a 17 year old student claims he tried to seduce her but refuses to say anything more due to client privelege. Carrie cashes in her bonds to make bail for Billy, explaining how Billy came to her fathers funeral when she needed him. She makes a statement of support of Billy and learns that the incident allegedly happened in her own home. Sam questions Billy's intentions. Carrie then speaks to Tom, asking why he didn't tell her about Billy's case. Tom refuses to say any more but informs Monica that anyone can read the police report. Monica and Carrie read the police report and Carrie comes to know that Billy actually did have relations with the girl in question. Carrie then confronts Billy and he confirms, claiming she said she was 18. Billy asks Carrie to help him, to tell that she heard the girl threaten him. She says she'll have to think about it. She then realizes that perhaps Billy wasn't such a good friend. Not wanting to betray her friend, Carrie has a dilemma of conscience and Monica reveals herself to be an angel, telling Carrie to not lie for Billy and let him fall so that God can eventually help him.
4 "Only Connect" Tim Van Patten Ken LaZebnik October 11, 1998 (1998-10-11) (CBS)
When a widower named Donnie Mancuso (Joe Regalbuto) is having problems communicating with his son, Cameron (Brendon Ryan Barrett), the angels arrive to help them learn from the least likely of souls, an autistic man by the name of Ferdie (Tait Smith). Misunderstood all of his life, Ferdie lives in a shack on the edge of a baseball field in Cicero, Illinois. Although harmless, the townspeople are unaware of his autism and think of Ferdie merely as “weird.” Cameron befriends Ferdie, who shares his love of trains. Donnie, a former professional ball player, pushes Cameron to work harder at baseball as a way of making friends. Cameron falls prey to peer pressure and participates in a prank that inadvertently results in the burning of Ferdie’s shack. Monica appeals to Cameron’s conscience, and he convinces his father to let Ferdie live with them until his shack can be rebuilt. While living with Donnie and Cameron, Ferdie behaves strangely but Donnie pays little attention because he seems harmless. Donnie finds Ferdie in the basement using his deceased wife’s train set and forbids him to do so again. The meaning of this is lost on Ferdie, who cannot recognize Donnie when he’s not wearing glasses, nor Cameron when he’s not wearing his ball cap. Ferdie, being Autistic, latches on to certain aspects of people’s appearance in order to recognize them. The day of the championship game Ferdie gets upset when Cameron takes his cap off, and tries to forcibly replace it, unintentionally hurting another player. The confused and angry townspeople drive Ferdie off the field, but Cameron finally realizes Ferdie’s unique method of viewing the world. The championship game continues until Cameron, who is preoccupied with Ferdie, strikes out, losing the game. Donnie blames Cameron for letting the team down and Cameron leaves to find Ferdie, the only friend he connects with. When Donnie and the other townspeople catch up to Cameron at a train yard, he tries to explain, with Andrew’s help, how Ferdie views the world but Donnie refuses to listen. Cameron says he would rather live in a train car with Ferdie than with his father. Monica consoles Ferdie in the train car while Tess reveals herself to Donnie who, ashamed of his behavior, is sitting alone in the dugout. Tess reminds him of how his wife loved trains and how she saw the good in him when no one else would, just as Cameron sees the good in Ferdie. Donnie understands he needs to view the world through Cameron and Ferdie’s eyes, and the three return home to play with the train set and make plans for a train trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
5 "The Lady of the Lake" Michael Scott Burt Pearl October 18, 1998 (1998-10-18) (CBS)
Andrew and Tess show Monica how to skip stones on Lake Paradise, and notice that this lake is "dead" in that it has no birds, no fish, no people. It is Monica's assignment to help revitalize this lake, and at the same time, revitalize the life of Blake Chapman (Lee Tergesen), who has returned to Lake Paradise after twelve years, as a representative of the Mayforth Corporation, the company that wants to purchase the property around Lake Paradise. Blake is stunned when "Monica's Bait and Tackle Shop" springs up on the lakeshore, especially when he realizes that Mayforth doesn't own the small patch of land the shop rests on. Monica, enjoying her new job as storekeeper and friend of the worms, refuses to sell the shop, thereby impeding the company's progress and infuriating Blake and the townspeople, including, Earl Gray (John McMartin), an old-timer, his hearing-impaired daughter Laurel (Kathy Buckley), her son, Jeremy (Nathan Lawrence), and Eb (Dick Van Patten) and Flo (Marian Mercer), one-time Vegas performers. They all stand to profit in different ways if the property is sold to Mayforth, which the townspeople presume will turn the lake into a resort. Laurel is somewhat shocked to see Blake again, who suddenly left town after an accident on the lake (the night he was to propose to her) ruined his chances of becoming a professional hockey player. Monica realizes that twelve-year-old Jeremy is Blake's son, and encourages Laurel to tell him. But when bulldozers come to the lake to begin destruction, Monica chains herself to a tree to make them halt. She asks Blake to reveal the true reason Mayforth wants the property, to build an outlet mall. The townspeople feel Blake has lied to them, and Laurel tells Blake to "go to hell." Blake has Monica arrested. In jail, Tess reprimands Monica for her methods, but when Blake arrives Monica makes some progress. She tells Blake that he lost his soul the night of the accident, and he came back to Lake Paradise to get it back. Blake goes to the lake to think, and he is visited by Monica, the Lady of the Lake. She reveals herself as the angel who saved Blake and Laurel the night of the accident, and tells him that God spared Blake's life so that he would realize life to its full potential. After some time in deep reflection, God reveals to Blake that Jeremy is his son. Blake reunites with Laurel, and the next day they go to the lake, where, in front of the townspeople, Blake tears up the Mayforth contracts, proposes to Laurel, and makes peace with himself. At the same time fish and birds return to the miraculously revitalized lake.
6 "Beautiful Dreamer" Peter H. Hunt Martha Williamson & Glenn Berenbeim October 25, 1998 (1998-10-25) (CBS)
Tess substitutes at a school in Washington D.C. and asks the students what they want to be when they grow up. One of the children, Calvin (Mitchah Williams), tells the class he wants to be an assassin. Tess tells Calvin that being an assassin is nothing to be proud of and to prove it Tess tells the class the story of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. On April 14, 1865 Sam (Paul Winfield) and Andrew arrive in post-Civil War Washington. Sam tells Andrew, then a caseworker, of his next assignment, Mr. Booth (Reg Rogers). Andrew meets Booth backstage at Ford's Theater, where stagehands are busily preparing for the evening's play. At the White House, Abraham Lincoln (David Selby) and his wife Mary (Christine Healy) make plans to attend the play. Monica, currently working in Annunciations, arrives as Mrs. Lincoln's seamstress. While Monica fits her dress, Mrs. Lincoln confides in Monica her worry for her husband's health, especially in light of a recent dream the President has had. That afternoon Andrew approaches Booth in a saloon outside the theater, and after a political discussion, comes to realize the depth of Booth's hatred for Lincoln. Andrew realizes Booth plans to kill the President. Meanwhile, Monica speaks to the President about his dream. Lincoln realizes that Monica is an angel and he tells her of the dream, in which he sees his corpse laying in the White House. Monica comforts Lincoln, and assures him that, whatever lies ahead, his work will be continued. The Lincoln's go to the theater. Booth, having a few drinks before the show, is delighted to learn that Lincoln's bodyguard is also in the saloon. Andrew struggles over stopping Booth from killing Lincoln, but Sam tells him they cannot interfere with a human's free will. Booth shoots Lincoln and flees the theater. Later Andrew appears to Booth in the barn he is using as a hideout, revealing himself to be an angel, and tells Booth that he did not act according to God's will, but that God offers Booth forgiveness. Booth is shot by a soldier and dies, unable to ask God for forgiveness. Andrew reports back to Sam, who informs him that God has a new job for him. God wants Andrew to be An Angel of Death, and his first assignment is to escort Lincoln home. Back in present-day, Tess takes young Calvin to the Lincoln Memorial, where he admits what he really wants to be when he grows up - the President of the United States.
7 "I Do" Victor Lobl R.J. Colleary November 1, 1998 (1998-11-01) (CBS)
Monica tries to determine God's greatest gift to humans and hypothesizes that it might be marriage - the wedding of two people. Tess reminds her that a marriage is much more than a wedding ceremony. Stephanie (Hillary Danner) and Michael (Mark Kiely) are planning to elope with Michael's younger brother, Eddie (Maury Sterling), in tow, when Nancy (Patty Duke), Michael's mother, finds out and demands that they have a traditional wedding. Stephanie and Michael relent and Monica and Tess note that this family runs like a dictatorship. While Stephanie is trying on dresses at Tess' dress shop, Eddie gives Michael a special gift, their deceased father's favorite tie, reworked as a bowtie so Michael can wear it at the wedding. At the bachelor party, Monica pops out of the cake, and befriends Eddie, who asks her to be his date for the wedding. On the day of the wedding, Stephanie and Nancy receive news that Michael and Eddie have been in a car accident. They rush to the hospital, Stephanie still in her wedding dress, to find Eddie fine, but Michael in a coma. Nancy scolds Eddie because he was driving the car and Monica suggests he work through his guilt and sorrow through prayer. Nancy makes Michael's medical decisions on her own, angering Stephanie and Michael. As surgery begins Andrew takes Michael's soul out of the operating room and into a forest where they discuss his future. Andrew tells Michael that if he lives, he will be handicapped. Not wanting to burden his family, Michael asks God to let him die. In the chapel, Monica helps Eddie to pray, putting his brother's fate in the hands of God. Stephanie sits with Michael after surgery, speaking her marriage vows to him. Andrew allows Michael to see this and he decides he wants to live, and gives Stephanie a sign. But at Nancy's request the doctors disconnect the life support system. Nancy tells Stephanie that she is doing what is best, that she kept her own husband on life support for three months, and she has always regretted prolonging his pain. Tess helps Stephanie to forgive Nancy for always keeping her at arms' length, a defense she created when her husband shot himself. Stephanie goes to the chapel to pray for Michael. Nancy goes to Michael to say goodbye. Andrew appears to her in the hospital room, and Nancy breaks down, proclaiming that she hates God, and asking what he wants from her. Andrew tells her that God wants her to give up control of her and everyone else's lives. Nancy joins Stephanie and Eddie in prayer for Michael. Others from the hospital join them in the chapel to pray. A doctor reports that Michael is going to live. Stephanie and Michael, in a wheelchair, finally marry.
8 "The Wind Beneath Our Wings" Stuart Margolin Rosanne Welch November 8, 1998 (1998-11-08) (CBS)
When Andrew arrives in the court of Judge Dorrie Chapin (Veronica Hamel) to notify her that she is the governor's first choice to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, Dorrie and her ever-dependable mother, Emma (Marion Ross), are overjoyed. Having met Tess while sitting in the gallery of her daughter's courtroom, Emma invites Tess and Dorrie's new assistant, Monica over for dinner to celebrate. Later that afternoon, Emma is the subject of show and tell in the classroom of Dorrie's daughter, Jenny, and tells of her days as one of the only female pilots, the Lady Tigerettes, during World War II. When Emma and Jenny get lost on the way home after leaving Jenny's school, it is apparent that Emma is beginning to show the first signs of aging. The angels attempt to tell Dorrie that her mother is simply getting older but Dorrie is unwilling to accept that her steadfast mother is faltering. Dorrie tries to rationalize the situation, suggesting that her mother will be fine with lifestyle changes and vitamins until Emma falls asleep in the courtroom, waking to not recognize her own daughter. Tess again appeals to Dorrie, telling her that her mother still has important work to do. Dorrie then goes to her mother's house to find her affairs in shambles; bills are unpaid, important prescriptions are unfilled and the insurance has lapsed. When Emma catches Dorrie snooping through her things, the issue comes out into the open and Emma reiterates what the angels had said earlier, she is getting older and simply can't keep up anymore. Still confused as to how she will cope without the support of her mother, Dorrie hears a custody case involving the welfare of an elderly man, Mr. Miller (Oscar Rowland). After hearing his children argue over whether or not to put him in a nursing home, Mr. Miller appeals to them both to live their own lives and to visit him often. Dorrie then breaks down in her chambers as Andrew arrives to tell her that the governor needs to know if she will accept her appointment to the supreme court. Dorrie initially refuses the appointment, fearing that she simply cannot go on without her mother's support. Emma is also resigned to give up all of her duties rather than just limiting her schedule. The angels then reveal to both Emma and Dorrie, telling them to give up their fears of being alone, of growing old, of losing each other, because God will never leave either of them. Monica tells Emma that God has another task for her; together with the other surviving Flying Tigerettes, she is commissioned to share her wartime experiences so as to ensure against future wars. As Emma departs on her nationwide Tigerettes bus tour, Dorrie enters the Supreme Court where she will now serve proudly as a State Supreme Court Justice.
9 "Psalm 151" Sandor Stern Martha Williamson November 15, 1998 (1998-11-15) (CBS)
Monica, Tess, and Andrew celebrate Monica’s one-hundredth assignment with a cake in a park. In the same park Audrey (Wynonna Judd), a single mother who writes commercial jingles, celebrates her son Petey’s birthday. Petey (Joseph Cross) tries to blow out his candles but is racked with coughing, an effect of his disease, Cystic Fibrosis. Monica arrives at Petey and Audrey’s home as a prospective border and she meets Celine (Mika Boorem), Petey’s best friend who is Celine Dion’s number one fan. Celine introduces Monica to Audrey and Monica moves into their home. Petey plays a song for Monica on tape that Audrey began to write when Petey was born but has since been unable to finish. When he collapses on his way home from school, Petey is rushed to the hospital where, upon his release, he and Celine overhear some nurses saying he doesn’t have much time left to live. Petey tells Audrey, who is having trouble accepting the fate of her little boy, that when he dies, he wants to die at home. Petey, with Monica’s help, begins to compile a list of the things he wants to do before he dies. His items include: Learn to play the piano, find a home for Fluffy (his pet iguana), find someone to sing with Mom, find someone to shovel the snow. With Tess and Andrew’s help these things come to pass (Tess agrees to take care of the iguana). Petey and the angels move on to the more tricky items on the list, including introducing Celine to the real Celine Dion. Celine is blindfolded and taken to a concert hall to meet Celine Dion in her dressing room before the show. Celine Dion tells Petey and Celine, who is in shock, that she will sing a special song for them. Later during the concert she sings “Love Can Move Mountains” to the children. At the end of the concert Petey becomes very sick and, at the hospital, Audrey comes to the realization that Petey will soon die. Celine, with Tess’ help, resolves to help make it possible for Petey to die at home, another item on his list, and they visit the HMO in hopes of getting a medical waiver allowing this. When they are denied Tess demands to see the manager, who happens to be Celine’s father. When he says he cannot make an exception to a rule, even for Petey, Celine returns to his office in a gown and pearls, and sings “Love Can Move Mountains.” She pleads with her father to prove he loves Petey and he pulls some strings. Petey is brought home and, while he sleeps, Audrey discovers his list, including the wish that Audrey would finish her song. Audrey tries to finish the song, but breaks down in tears when she can’t get past the first verse. Monica reveals herself to Audrey, comforts her, and asks her to tell the whole world about Petey’s love with her song. Audrey works all night to finish the song, and in the morning wakes Petey, telling him to cross that item off his list. Petey is taken outside to find many neighbors gathered to perform Audrey’s finished song, “The 151st Psalm,” the main chorus of which proclaims, “For as long as I shall live I will testify to love!” Petey tells Andrew, “It is finished,” and the young boy dies as the crowd continues to sing his song. Monica crosses the final item off of Petey’s list: “Go to Heaven.”
10 "The Peacemaker" Peter H. Hunt Christine Pettit November 22, 1998 (1998-11-22) (CBS)
As part of his application to New York University, seventeen year-old Mark Tanner (Zack Graham) videotapes the morning coffee ritual that his parents, Scott (Bruce Boxleitner) and Michelle (Melissa Gilbert), began during his recovery from a recent drug addiction. Although all appears well, Andrew warns Tess and Monica not to waste any time with this case. Scott arrives at the police precinct where he is a hostage negotiator to meet his new partner, Monica and invites her to dinner. When Scott is paged by the precinct during dinner, Michelle lashes out, blaming Scott for always choosing his work over his family. Later, as Michelle rifles through her "Memory Box," Mark enters. She shows him the wrist watch Scott gave her for their first anniversary but adds that he meant to have it engraved. When Mark asks if they are going to be okay after he goes off to college, she reassures him but her face registers doubt. As she exits, Mark finds divorce papers in the memory box and becomes angry with his mother. Later, while painting a portrait of her most recent client, Tess, Michelle confides that she had considered divorce earlier in their marriage and had not gotten rid of the divorce papers. Tess urges her to do so and she returns to the memory box to find that the watch she had shown Mark is now gone. Beginning to suspect that Mark may have stolen the watch to pay for drugs, her suspicions are further compounded when she interrupts him while he has a secretive phone conversation. Michelle then calls Scott to discuss her fears but he is interrupted by a hostage situation at a bank robbery. When the robbery is over, it is learned that Mark was killed by the robbery while trying to withdraw money from his college fund. Desolate after losing their son, Scott and Michelle blame each other. When a message from a man named Ivan is found on Mark's answering machine, both Scott and Michelle are convinced this person was Mark's drug dealer and both become obsessed with finding the man while deciding to get a divorce. Tess and Monica then intervene by showing Scott and Michelle the videotape Mark had made and it turns out to be a plea for them to work out their problems. Andrew then arrives with Ivan who is not a drug dealer but rather a video editor. Mark had taken his parents' home videos to Ivan to have them edited together to show them how much love they truly have for one another. Now understanding the error of their ways, Scott and Michelle vow to stay together.
11 "An Angel on the Roof" Stuart Margolin Ken LaZebnik December 13, 1998 (1998-12-13) (CBS)
Charley (George Grizzard), an aging south Texas motel owner, gets a Christmas Eve visit from Monica, who tells him not to fear, because she brings him tidings of great joy. Charley in a drunken daze, thinks the beautiful glowing angel before him is merely a hallucination, and begins a dialogue with this “vision” as he decorates his Desert Star Inn for the holiday. Monica tells Charley that he will receive a miracle this Christmas Eve, and he, somewhat skeptical, hypothesizes about what this will be. He hopes it will be a new star, something he has been waiting quite a long time to see through his high-powered telescope from the roof of the inn. Meanwhile, Tess serves coffee to three lonely truckers (Jerome Butler, Tom Hodges, Adrian Sparks) who celebrate the holiday at a truck stop. As they leave, Tess points them to the inn, but the truckers muse at the thought of spending an evening at the dilapidated motel. Elsewhere, Jorge (Greg Serano) and Marisol (Justina Machado), a young Mexican couple, illegally across the border, panic when pregnant Marisol begins to show signs of an early labor. Rafael (Alexis Cruz) arrives telling them that they are needed to help someone this evening. When he says he is from their village in Mexico, they go with him. In another part of the state Andrew sits on border patrol with Carl (Michael Harney), a cynical deputy, who is anxious to catch some “illegals.” Monica, still glowing atop the motel roof, stirs up a dust storm, which makes driving difficult for the truckers. At Tess’ instruction via CB, they head towards a light in the desert, the light Monica exudes, and the only thing visible on the stormy landscape. Rafael, Jorge, and Marisol, driving through the storm, run out of gas. They, too, see the light and begin to follow it. When the three arrive at the inn, Charley, obviously prejudiced against Mexicans, at first refuses to give them a room, and rather than call a doctor, he calls the border patrol. Carl and Andrew head for the motel. Charley reveals to Monica the reason why he is so bitter: as a young man he traveled in Mexico and fell in love with a young woman named Estrella, whose parents wouldn’t allow them to marry. Later Estrella’s father told Charley that the heartbroken Estrella killed herself. Charley tells Monica that he intends to do the same as soon as he sees a new star, something no one else has ever seen. Monica pleads with Charley to do something that will “make the angels sing,” and become a man with faith in the God who loves him. Marisol gives birth to the child as the truckers draw near, and Monica and Rafael proclaim this child to be the miracle, something which no man has ever seen. The baby girl is named Estrella, after Marisol’s grandmother, the same woman Charley loved, who is alive and well in Mexico. When Charley hears this news he has a change of heart and when Carl and Andrew arrive to arrest any illegal aliens, Charley hides everyone by working them into his nativity scene, including Tess as a shepherd and the truckers as the three wise men. As Charley makes plans to visit his old love in Mexico, Monica and Tess bid everyone “Peace On Earth and Goodwill to Men.
12 "Fool for Love" Peter Hunt Susan Cridland Wick & Burt Pearl January 3, 1999 (1999-01-03) (CBS)
Sara Parker (Paige Moss), a successful big city district attorney, is forced to come to terms with her past when an ex-boyfriend, Jesse (Joey Lawrence), is arrested and she must interrogate him. Rather than face Jesse, who still has some strange kind of hold over her, Sara retreats to a pub for some sanctuary. Monica, who is waiting tables at the bar while Tess serves drinks, offers to listen to Sara’s story. Sara is reluctant at first, but then proceeds to tell Monica her story of ten years ago: As a 17 year-old high schooler, Sara meets Jesse, a handsome troublemaker. Much to her mother’s disdain, Sara and Jesse fall in love and, when he suggests they move to California to start a new life, Sara agrees. Sara is worried when she finds a gun in Jesse’s glove compartment, but when Jesse says it’s for protection she’s too blinded by love to disagree. Soon, however, their money runs out, their relationship sours, and to make matters worse Sara learns she is four months pregnant. In order to get some money Jesse robs a liquor store. Sara meets Andrew who, posing as a hitchhiker, tries to convince her to return home. Sara, unwilling to admit she has made a mistake, stays with Jesse. The baby is born at a motel and Sara names her Abby. Sara and Jesse meet Sam (Paul Winfield), posing as a motel owner, who lets them stay at his motel and offers to let Sara phone home. A furious Jesse refuses and storms out of the room. When he returns, Jesse is in a much better mood and explains to Sara that he met a man who sells babies on the black market, and who will give them $10,000 for Abby. Sara is horrified and rather than let this happen, she takes Abby while Jesse is asleep, and leaves her in a church sanctuary with a note. Sara has a change of heart and realizes she can’t leave her baby, but when she returns to the church Abby has already been taken. When Sara goes back to Jesse he hits her and leaves. Sam takes care of Sara, helping her to get back on her feet, and ultimately through law school. Back in present-day, Sara admits to Monica that Sam was the closest thing to an angel she has ever known. Monica tells her that she’s right, that Sam is an angel, and that her, Tess, and Andrew are angels as well. Sara can’t believe that God can love her after all that she has done, but Monica reminds her of the story of the prodigal son and how God waits for his children to return. Sara admits that she wants to return both to God and to her home, and with this choice Jesse’s spell over her is broken. When she returns home, Sara’s mother is overjoyed, but tells her of a little girl named Abby, whom Andrew had brought to her ten years ago, after she was abandoned in a church. Having reunited Sara with both her mother and daughter, the angels drive off, their mission complete.
13 "The Medium and the Message" Noel Nosseck R.J. Colleary January 10, 1999 (1999-01-10) (CBS)
Tess and Monica arrive at the offices of NNT Television to pay a visit to T.K. McKenna (Alan Rosenberg), a network executive who once dreamed of "being the best" and now only wants "to be first." As T.K. is bragging about the ratings on a show featuring a hijacked bus which explodes, Monica arrives in T.K.'s office. But T.K. is not surprised, telling Monica that people drop in to tell him things all the time and that he has no idea who they are. Monica then tries to sell him on the idea of a show about angels in which the angels are sent by God who loves us all. McKenna wants to know more and Monica tells him that like some of his visitors, angels are often undercover. We then see a series of clips from previous episodes where the angels play a variety of roles. T.K. then dismisses Monica and the idea. As Monica leaves, T.K. is told by another executive that 76% of people believe in angels. Outside, Tess tells Monica to change the heart of the man in order to change the network. T.K. finds Monica outside of the building and convinces her to "pitch" her idea to another group of executives who immediately start to tear apart her angel premise. When they say they need a more "edgy" show, we see clips of previous episodes where Monica experiences shootings, bombings, car crashes and assassination attempts. Monica then tells them about how the angel of death, Andrew, takes people home to Heaven rather than killing them. The executives don't seem to understand and Monica leaves the room in disgust. Monica runs into Irene (Conchata Ferrell), T.K. 's secretary as she is leaving to catch a bus. Irene tells her that T.K. once dreamed of being a writer and wrote a very good script. Later, as Monica ruminates on how to approach T.K., Tess tells her to comfort him, that a bus was hijacked and blown up. T.K. responds to the tragedy by trying to cover his responsibility to the Board of Directors. Hoping to change the image of the network, he asks Monica to pitch him the angel show again. When he says the angels don't have enough attitude, we see clips of Tess in action. When T.K. begins to complain about the whereabouts of Irene, Monica informs him that she was on the bus that was blown up. Crushed, T.K. throws everyone out of his office. Andrew hands Monica T.K.'s original script and tells her that Irene wanted T.K. to have it. When T.K. asks where the angels were for Irene, Monica tells him there are angels for everyone. We then see a series of guest angels. Monica tells T.K. that God exists, hands him his script and asks him to take a leap of faith and follow his dream of writing. T.K. then pitches his simple show about a family trying to live well to his fellow executives, refusing to take no for an answer.
14 "My Brother's Keeper" Peter H. Hunt Hoot Maynard & Jennifer Wharton February 7, 1999 (1999-02-07) (CBS)
Tess and Monica arrive in Park City, Utah as the World Cup Qualifier Ski race is about to begin. As Tess and Monica watch over two of the contestants, Jett Rudin (David Lascher) and Will Heller (Sean Murray), Tess explains that the two boys have been friends for their entire life but that their friendship is about to change. Although both boys are competitive, Will has never beaten Jett. Jett is the center of attention, even to Will's father who taught both of them to ski. Monica approaches Jett for an interview, the angle of which would be the friendship of Jett and Will. Meanwhile, Will's father, Howard (Jack Blessing) is more interested in securing an endorsement deal for Jett than in his own son. When Monica interviews Will, his jealousy rises and he tells her there will be a new "top dog" on the mountain the following day. At the qualifying round the next day, Jett sets a new record and warns Will about a dangerous curve on the course. Fueled by his desire to finally beat Jett, Will ignores Jett's advice, skids around the curve and loses his place on the World Cup first team. At the lodge later that night, Monica questions Will off the record. Will then tells her the story of how Jett's parents were killed in a fire when they were ten years old. The two had been having a cigarette smoking competition in the basement of Jett's house before they fled when his parents arrived home. When Jett woke up the next morning after spending the night with Will, his parents were dead. Will then gave Jett a red bandana he had wanted for winning the smoking competition and resigned himself to never beat Jett at anything again. Jett enters, having overheard the story, and denies that Will ever let him win anything. The two argue and decide to settle the issue by racing down the mountain as the sun comes up. As the boys race, Jett loses control and tumbles down the mountain. When Jett regains consciousness, it is apparent that his spinal cord has been damaged and that he may never walk again. Howard scolds Will when he learns they were racing. "You have never beaten Jett at anything... Why would you start now?" Will then goes back to the mountain, finds the red bandana that Jett lost during his accident and returns it to Jett. Jett now remembers the argument and asks Will to help kill himself. Will says he'll have to think about it, but as he exits, he takes pills off of an unguarded tray and ducks into another hospital room where Monica is waiting for him. Monica reveals herself to be an angel, and asks Will to pray... and to not hold back any longer, not from his gift of skiing nor from his friendship with Jett. Will then goes to his father and tells him how he had let Jett win until he thought he was losing his father. Howard tells him he's proud of him and that he could never lose him. Will then returns to Jett, refuses to help him die and tells him about Monica being an angel. When Jett rebukes him, Will tells him he loves him and leaves the room. Andrew then reveals to Jett, telling him that he has a death wish because he feels responsible for his parents' death. When Andrew tells him he should protect his friendship with Will, Jett gives him the red bandana and asks him to give it to Will. Will puts on his friend's bandana and wins the World Cup Giant Slalom as Jett watches proudly from his hospital bed.
15 "On Edge" Tim Van Patten R.J. Colleary February 14, 1999 (1999-02-14) (CBS)
Tess and Monica are introduced to their next assignment when the Cadillac by Bart (Jack Wagner) and Hayley Ewing (Anastasia Emmons), a father and daughter con team. The angels follow Bart and Hayley to Salt Lake City where Bart has promised Hayley she will be able to indulge her favorite hobby, ice skating. Monica works as an employee of the skating rink and is short-changed by Bart as he pays for Hayley's entry. When Hayley falls down, Andrew, the acting D.J., introduces her to an Olympic hopeful skater, Alex Thorpe (Tara Lipinski) and she agrees to help Hayley learn to skate. Meanwhile, Bart pretends to find some lost money in order to win the trust of Alex's father, Carl (Ron Orbach), who is the owner of the rink. Carl tells Bart of an upcoming fundraiser to benefit the Silver Blades Skate Team. Bart notices the cash drop bag that Carl is carrying and begins to hatch an idea for a scam. Later that night, Hayley tells her father she wants to do something other than con people--something she can be recognized for. At the rink the next day, Hayley tells Andrew that she is torn because she wants to skate but doesn’t want to hurt her father. Andrew tells her to follow her conscience. Hayley works with Alex, improves dramatically and begins to demand a more normal life from her father. Bart promises to stay in town long enough for Hayley to try out for the Silver Blades and she is temporarily appeased. Bart then begins the con of Carl by asking if Hayley might be able to practice at the rink after it closes. When Carl agrees, Bart pretends to drop Hayley off, packs up their belongings from the hotel, then returns to the rink and turns off the lights. While Carl searches for the fuse box, Bart then takes the bank drop. When the lights have been restored, Bart arrives at the rink to retrieve Hayley. As Bart and Hayley make their getaway, Hayley realizes that her father has left the snow globe which belonged to her mother at the hotel room and refuses to leave town without it. Bart and Hayley return to the hotel room to find the globe. As they leave the cops arrive and Bart is arrested. Knowing that it will be easier for him to get her out of jail then vice versa, Hayley confesses to the crime. Bart tries to convince Carl to drop the charges but he refuses, forcing a court case. Monica reveals herself to Bart, convincing him to trust God and listen to his conscience. Bart interrupts Hayley's trial, confesses to the crime and asks his daughter to forgive him for not teaching her right from wrong. The judge recommends that Hayley be remanded to a foster home. Instead Carl decides to be her foster parent enabling her to live and train with Alex.
16 "The Man Upstairs" Peter H. Hunt Glenn Berenbeim February 21, 1999 (1999-02-21) (CBS)
Gus Zimmerman (Michael Jeter), an insurance salesman, arrives in Las Vegas to call on his largest account, the Paradise Grand Casino. Tess tells Monica that behind Gus' smile is a desperate man. Monica meets Gus at the bar where he explains that he is there to call on the casino manager, Mac (Frank Ashmore), and earn the commission that will pay for his wife, Esther's care in a nursing home. As he guzzles ginger ale, Gus explains that neither he nor Esther drink or gamble. When Gus learns that Mac is no longer the general manager and the new management is not willing to see him, he orders another drink, this time with vodka. Gus goes to the cashier, withdraws a five-thousand dollar credit limit and loses it all on one roll of roulette. When Gus pleads with the croupier, "I'll sign anything," the phone mysteriously rings and the new manager is ready to see him. Gus enters the office to find the new manager's name is Monique and she looks exactly like Monica. It becomes apparent that Monique is evil as she toys with Gus, reminding him of Esther's problems and letting him win a game of poker for the entire five-thousand dollars which he just lost. Confident after his rigged victory, Gus agrees to gamble again: a signed insurance policy for his soul, something he doesn’t believe in, anyway. He loses. Dejected, Gus finds Monica at the bar and explains the situation. Monica, concerned about Gus’ huge loss, plots to beat Monique at a game of poker. Tess scolds her for entertaining the thought. Gus goes to Monique who suggests that he "have an accident," thereby helping his wife who is the beneficiary of his insurance policy. Gus continues to drink more and rejects Monica when she tries to convince him not to listen to Monique. Monica takes Gus back to the chapel where he and Esther were married. Gus remembers how Tess was the witness of their vows and Monica reveals that they are both angels, sent by God, to help him fight for his soul. Gus, however, only becomes more depressed, feeling that his soul is gone forever, and he climbs to the top of the casino intending to kill himself. Monique encourages him, showing him a copy of the same "soul contract" signed by Esther. Monica pleads with Gus to ask God for His help. Gus then begins to shine a flashlight, singing "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine," and begs God to help him. Powerless against Gus’ reliance on God, Monique disappears. Gus returns to find that Mac had only been late for their meeting. Mac signs the insurance contract, Esther's care is guaranteed and Gus breathes a sigh of relief as he realizes how close he came to losing his soul.
17 "Family Business" Tim Van Patten Martha Williamson & R.J. Colleary February 28, 1999 (1999-02-28) (CBS)
On their 35th wedding anniversary, Ben (Pat Hingle) and Sylvia Mangione (Joyce Van Patten), owners of a car dealership, host a huge sale. Monica and Tess are on hand to help the Mangione family, and Phil (Bill Cosby), the angel of reconciliation, will assist them, if the perennially late angel ever arrives. Mangione Auto World is a family business, with daughters Ellen (Sydney Walsh) and Dee Dee (Romy Rosemont) and Ellen's husband Frankie (Michael Rispoli) all working there. But one of the children, Buddy (Josh Carmichael), moved to California several years ago, refusing to take over the family business, much to Ben's chagrin. During the sale, Buddy calls to say he is returning for the anniversary with a big announcement to make. Frank is upset that Buddy is returning because he thinks it may spoil his chances for taking over the dealership. Indeed, Ben hopes Buddy is returning to take over the dealership. At the anniversary party Tess plays with the band, filling in for the still tardy Phil, while Monica caters the event. Soon, however, the police show up to let the family know that Buddy has been killed in a car crash. Ben and Frank are called to identify Buddy's remains but, since the corpse has been badly burned, they identify his personal effects. Rather than grieve, the family argues over Buddy's funeral arrangements. Ben insists on returning to work, where he meets Sharon (Stacey Travis), a young woman claiming to be Buddy's wife. The family thinks this must be Buddy's big surprise, but is upset when Sharon wants to have the body cremated. Monica helps them strike a bargain -- Buddy will be buried if Sharon performs the eulogy at the service. Meanwhile, Andrew finds Phil and offers to give him a lift into town. They are further detained when the car overheats, but are offered help by a hitchhiker who is eagerly trying to get to town. They offer him a lift. At the funeral, Sharon delivers the eulogy, recalling a touching memory about how Buddy saved the life of a beached whale. Before she can finish, though, the hitchhiker arrives. It's Buddy! The family is shocked to see him alive and he explains how his car was stolen and he had to hitchhike into town. Rather than rejoice that his son is alive, Ben wants to know if Buddy is ready to take over the business. Buddy says 'no,' and a furious Ben returns to the dealership where Monica is waiting for him. Monica reveals that she is an angel and takes him back to the funeral parlor where she finishes the eulogy. The eulogy reveals the big surprise, that Buddy has cancer and will soon die. Phil finally arrives to tell a shocked Ben that God wants him to stop keeping such a tight hold on his family. Phil points out that many fathers wish they could have the gift that Ben has: the chance to spend one more hour with his son, to tell him all of the things he wished he had said when he was alive. Buddy arrives at the funeral parlor, and Ben embraces his son, asking for forgiveness and expressing his love.
18 "Anatomy Lesson" Sandor Stern Ken LaZebnik March 7, 1999 (1999-03-07) (CBS)
When Dewey Burton (David Graf) dies of a heart attack while running for help after finding a young girl trapped in a deep drain pipe, Tess tells Monica that his body is the key to saving the young girl and she only has four hours to do so. When Dewey's body arrives at the coroner's office, Monica arrives as the assistant to the skeptical pathologist, Ivar (Dan Butler). Ivar believes that everything about a man's life can be determined from an autopsy. While Tess remains with the little girl, Jamie (Kaleigh Krish), Monica begins trying to change the heart of Ivar by telling the story of Dewey's life from the details of his body. Monica begins by looking at the man's hands, deducing that he worked in construction, building homes which he could never afford himself. Tess continues to comfort Jamie as Dewey's wife, Faye (Mariangela Pino), begins to search for her missing husband. As the autopsy continues, Monica learns more about Ivar, that he believes, "In the end, we are helpless and what we do doesn't change anything," and that he used to practice medicine but changed to pathology. Jamie's mother alerts the authorities as to her missing daughter and a search begins, but Ivar turns off the radio as news of Jamie's disappearance is broadcast. Ivar's young daughter calls, telling her father that she wants to have a funeral for her goldfish, which has just died, but Ivar is unsympathetic. Meanwhile, Jamie is unconscious but Tess refuses to pull her out due to instructions from God. Monica continues recounting John Doe's life by telling how he fell in love, was married and lost a child. Ivar is no longer tolerant of Monica's story telling. He breaks down, telling her how he had a son die of leukemia and that there was nothing he could do to save his son. Monica then reveals herself to be an angel, telling Ivar how she also was there to comfort Dewey when he lost his child. She tells Ivar that his child is happy in heaven and that he still has work to do. Ivar then looks closely at Dewey's body and begins to piece together where he might have been when he died. As the radio announces that the missing Jamie was wearing red gloves, Ivar realizes Dewey's connection to Jamie, and where to find her. Rushing to the drain pipe, Dewey rescues and resuscitates Jamie. When Faye arrives at the scene, Ivar must tell her about the death of her Dewey. He tells her of his daring attempt to rescue Jamie. His faith now fully restored, he comforts her. "He was a good man… I could see it in his face."
19 "Jagged Edges" Gregory Harrison Jennifer Wharton & Burt Pearl March 28, 1999 (1999-03-28) (CBS)
Andrew helps an older man, Doug (Drew Snyder), clean out his garage, searching for a box he wants to give to his daughter, Natalie (Arabella Field). Doug has a heart attack, and as he is dying, Andrew assures him that God's angels will be on hand to deliver the box to Natalie. When Natalie, a stand-up comic, hears of Doug's death, she returns home with her infant daughter Lily to organize her father's things. Natalie begins to have flashbacks about her deceased mother, and how when Natalie was young, she would play the piano incessantly. Andrew tries to persuade Natalie to help him clean the garage and find the box, but she is unwilling to go into the garage. To get a break from her intense memories, Natalie goes to a comedy club to perform. Meanwhile, at a local hospital, Monica and Tess talk about how Natalie will react to learning her father's secret that Amanda (Linda Lavin), her mother, is not dead, but has been institutionalized for many years. Natalie, indeed, is shocked to learn this and that Amanda, after a slow recovery from mental illness, is almost ready to return home. Natalie goes to the hospital to meet Amanda, who convinced herself Natalie was dead, and, though she doesn't realize Natalie is her daughter, the visit makes her very nervous and she begins to play the piano feverishly. This frightens Natalie and she quickly leaves the hospital. Back at the garage, Natalie discovers the box, which contains a metronome. As the metronome begins to tick, Natalie accidentally closes the garage door, triggering a horrifying memory about how, when she was seven, Amanda locked Natalie and herself in the garage with the motor running. By the time Andrew arrives Natalie fully recollects that her mother tried to kill her. Monica explains Amanda's illness how after she lost a baby Amanda blamed herself to the point of illness, and how she wanted to die, but didn't want to leave Natalie behind. Natalie returns to the hospital and with the angels' help, convinces Amanda that she is still alive. Overjoyed, Amanda moves to hug Natalie, but Natalie, unable to handle the emotion, flees to the comedy club. While onstage, though, Natalie has a nervous breakdown. Monica reveals herself to be an angel, and comforts Natalie, telling her that God loves her, and that she must break down the fake life she has created to protect herself, before God can help her build a new life. Natalie admits her fear that she inherited her mother's illness. She was scared to love her own baby now she knows why. Later, Natalie, recuperating at the hospital from the breakdown, performs her stand-up routine for the other patients while Amanda watches proudly. Natalie introduces Amanda to her granddaughter and tells her mother that she inherited something very important from her -- her sense of humor.
20 "Into the Fire" Tim Van Patten Brian Bird April 4, 1999 (1999-04-04) (CBS)
Monica meets her next assignment, Melina Richardson (Cynthia Nixon) at her latest temp job, a telemarketing agency. When the usually meek Melina is fired for yelling at a potential customer, she decides to attend a seminar of the Golden Path Institute hoping to find meaning in her life. After an impassioned speech by the Golden Path's Jacob (Spencer Garrett), Melina shares her life's story with the crowd, describing how her parents deserted her, and her fiance left her at the altar. The culmination of the seminar is the introduction of the Golden Path's leader, the charismatic Brother David (Montel Williams), who persuades the attendees who "feel called" to board a bus bound for the institute. Melina, captivated by Brother David, gets on the bus. Tess tells Monica to stay close to her assignment. At the institute, Monica and Melina are stripped of their possessions because Brother David feels it is important to leave the past behind. Melina, however, secretly keeps a picture of her ex-fiance under her bed. When David finds the picture, he summons a meeting of the whole group and exposes Melina's transgression forcing her to destroy the picture. Meanwhile, a mail truck arrives at the institute with letters for everyone, but Brother David collects them before they can be distributed. Later he asks Melina to destroy a package for him. Melina, unaware that it contains the mail, begins to burn the package. At the same time, Andrew, acting as a Child Services officer, asks to inspect the camp. David angrily refuses. Andrew warns David that he will have to return with the authorities. In private, Monica shows Melina and Rebecca (Cynthia Ettinger) the letters she rescued from the fire, and Rebecca explains Brother David's plan: On September 9, 1999 all of the world's computers will crash causing an extinction-level event. Brother David will save his faithful followers before this happens by taking them to heaven in a suicide pact. In an effort to prove to the group that Brother David has been lying to them, Monica gives the people their letters. When David finds out, he is furious but persuades the people that this is the outside world's attempt to divide them. Softening, he asks Melina to be his bride and, spellbound, she agrees. David insists that the plan go into action right away because the police are already approaching the camp. Trained for this moment, the people spring into action, barricade the doors, and prepare the poisoned juice. But as they are about to drink, Monica proclaims herself to be an angel, and tells the people that God doesn't want them to die. David tells the people that she is the devil trying to mislead them, but the people believe Monica and led by Melina, they try to escape. David sets fire to the building. Monica breaks the doors open and the people pour out of the smoke-filled room. Monica tries to persuade Brother David to leave the burning building, but still believing his own claims of divinity, he will not. He perishes in the fire. Later the angels help the shaken cult members reacquaint themselves using their real names and identities.
21 "Made in the USA" Bethany Rooney Christine Pettit & Rosanne Welch April 11, 1999 (1999-04-11) (CBS)
Nick Stratton (Eric Roberts), owner of Stratton Apparel, hires Vietnamese women to work in his sweatshop because they are willing to work for little pay. Monica's assignment is to help Nick, a "good man with a bad attitude." Nick hires Monica as his accountant the same day that Am-Nhac Nguyen (Jennifer Paz) starts at the factory, pressing pants on a faulty steam press. Am-Nhac and the other women are willing to work for Nick because he will pay for citizenship classes if they meet their rigorous daily quotas. Tess, who teaches the class, tells Am-Nhac that her father, Cadao (Toshi Toda), can attend as well. The next day Nick, under pressure from his clients, raises the quotas, and Am-Nhac, in a hurry to meet hers, severely burns her arm. Nick fires Am-Nhac because her injury will slow her down. Monica asks Nick why he is so hard on his workers, and Nick tells her his story. As a soldier, Nick helped a captured Vietnamese boy escape. Nick knew the boy was not Viet Cong because he had a peace symbol, an American fad, tattooed on his shoulder. Nick was court-martialed for aiding the enemy and returned to the U.S. a war criminal. His uncle left the factory to him when he died. Monica convinces Nick to let Am-Nhac keep her job. Am-Nhac, with Tess' help, works through the night to meet her quota. When Cadao picks her up, Nick sees the tattoo on his shoulder, a peace symbol. Nick realizes that Cadao is the boy he helped escape, and the person, Nick believes, who is responsible for ruining his life. Meanwhile, Tess teaches her students about how the early Americans protested against British rule, and Am-Nhac decides to protest the dangerous working conditions at the factory. The plan backfires, however, when Nick fires everyone. When Andrew, posing as an I.R.S. agent, explains that Nick owes the government several thousand dollars in back taxes, Nick plants a time bomb in the factory. Before he can leave, however, one of the rickety shelves collapses, trapping Nick. Seconds before the bomb is to detonate, the timer stops ticking and Monica appears to Nick. She tells him that God loves him and is proud of him for saving the young man's life. Nick asks God to forgive him for the hatred he has lived with for so long. The clock begins ticking again and when Nick screams for help, Am-Nhac arrives with Cadao, who diffuses the bomb. Nick asks Am-Nhac for forgiveness and reveals that he is the soldier who helped Cadao in Vietnam. Am-Nhac and Cadao are happy to finally be able to thank him for his act of kindness. Later, Nick attends the swearing-in ceremony for Am-Nhac and her Cadao, finally United States citizens.
23 "Full Circle" Victor Lobl Daniel H. Forer April 25, 1999 (1999-04-25) (CBS)
Monica re-enters the life of a former assignment, Kate Prescott (Valerie Harper), who has spent the last few years of her life waiting for her son, Thomas (Anthony Michael Hall), to return home. When Monica was last with the Prescotts, Thomas had been falsely accused of murdering a young woman, and Kate doubted her son's innocence. Later, Thomas was cleared, and Kate has since felt guilty for not trusting her son. Now, Kate's neighborhood is being leveled to make way for a highway, but she won't sell her house to the government, wanting to remain there in case Thomas should return. Monica appears to Kate to tell her that her prayers have been answered, that Thomas is returning home. Thomas arrives at the house with a surprise, his seven-year old son Dylan (Justin Cooper). At first Thomas seems to have changed his shady ways and accepted responsibility as a father, but Monica learns he is doing drugs and tries to warn Kate. Kate is unwilling to believe the truth about her son, and she finally agrees to sell the house. While taking a walk in the park, Kate tries to encourage Thomas to buy a coffee cart from Tess, as a means to start making some money. Thomas, however, is more interested in working a deal with an old drug buddy. Thomas tells Kate that he needs the government money to buy a coffee cart, and Kate, seeing this as a second chance to trust her son, gives it to him. Instead he arranges to use the money to conduct the drug deal. Kate spends more time with Dylan, learns that his mother was abusive, and appeals to Thomas to spend a little more time with his son. Thomas reads Dylan the story of David and Goliath, a story they both enjoy because it involves a little guy who stands up to a big problem. The next day Thomas goes to the park to meet his contact, and Dylan goes him as well. Tess arrives at the Prescott house and tells Kate that Thomas said he wasn't interested in the coffee carts. Kate feels stupid for having trusted him again, and she and Monica rush to the park to find him in the middle of the deal. They arrive to find Thomas being arrested by undercover cops. Dylan throws a stone at one of the cops, giving Thomas a chance to flee. While trying to stop Thomas, Kate is accidentally shot by a cop, yet Thomas continues to run. At the hospital Kate is rushed into surgery, and Andrew pleads with her to cling to life. Monica finds Thomas walking on the railroad tracks, despairing over his actions, and contemplating suicide. As a train draws near, Monica reveals herself to be an angel and tells him that God is willing to give him another chance, that by taking his life he will be taking part of his mother's and his son's lives with him. Thomas, asking God for another chance, steps off the tracks. At the hospital, Kate's surgery is successful. Thomas asks Kate for a second chance and, knowing that he has had an authentic encounter with God, she is willing to give him one. Before the police arrest Thomas, he hugs Dylan, telling him that he must go and "fight Goliath."
24 "Black Like Monica" Tim Van Patten Martha Williamson May 2, 1999 (1999-05-02) (CBS)
Monica encounters Tess on the side of a dirt road on the outskirts of Aynesville, a small Southern Illinois town. Tess, holding a bloodied noose and crying, directs Monica to the body of a dead black man. Tess, in anguish, tells Monica that she has given up on earth, and is returning to heaven. In downtown Aynesville, preparations are being made for the upcoming Civil Rights Day and a visit from Rosa Parks. Lavonda (Davenia McFadden), the director of the celebration, wonders why Mooney (James Jamison), the set builder, is no where to be found. Monica arrives and informs Tom (John Ritter), the sheriff, about the murder. Monica takes Tom, Lavonda, Deputy James (Rick Worthy), the Mayor and a few others to the murder site, and they identify the body as Mooney's. The group suspects that the murder was committed to ruin the celebration, and, with the exception of Tom and James, decides to keep the murder quiet. To ensure the cover up, Tom reluctantly locks Monica in a jail cell. As a black man, James protests the cover up and the abuse of Monica's civil rights. That night Monica prays for a way to help this town, despite being locked up. Though angels don't need to sleep, Monica does, and has a violent dream about Mooney's death. Monica wakes to find the cell door unlocked, and her skin black. She leaves her cell, and walks down the street, but no one seems to notice that the color of her skin has changed. At the same time, Tom and James discover that Monica is missing. The crowd gathers in the townsquare to meet the bus carrying Rosa Parks, and Monica, still unrecognized, begins to ask the members of the committee if they know where she can find Mooney, which, of course, makes them nervous. Monica returns to the dirt road, hoping to find Tess and some direction, but instead she encounters the Foleys, the men suspected of killing Mooney. Upset that Mooney's murder isn't causing a stir, they plan to kill Monica and leave the body in a more prominent location. Monica flees and, when she stumbles and starts to bleed, she realizes that she is human and becomes very afraid. With the Foleys drawing near, Monica prays that God will make her white again. When the Foleys find Monica, her skin has become white, and they leave confused. Monica weeps, beginning to comprehend her failure. Monica insists on speaking with Rosa Parks, who invites Monica to sit on the bus with her. Monica tearfully recounts her situation to an understanding Ms. Parks, and Tess appears, telling Monica that she too made a mistake by giving up on God, and that He has forgiven both of them. Tess tells Monica that she first had to confront the racism in herself before she can help this town. With newfound confidence, Monica reveals herself to Tom and James, encouraging them to be honest with each other about their own prejudices. After a heartfelt talk, the men announce the death of Mooney to the town, and Monica lays flowers on Mooney's grave resolving to thank him when she sees him for helping to open her eyes.
25 "Fighting the Good Fight" Tim Van Patten Michael Glassberg May 9, 1999 (1999-05-09) (CBS)
In a run-down apartment complex, eleven-year-old Tim (Christopher Marquette) endures being teased by his older brother Steven (J. Evan Bonifant) as they try to sleep on a fold-out couch. Uncle Frank (Richard Burgi), the boys' reluctant guardian, threatens to beat them if they leave the house while he is gone for the night. As he does every night, Frank takes the vicious pit-bull he keeps chained outside the door with him and leaves. Monica, Tess, Andrew, and Rafael (Alexis Cruz) are on hand for this assignment, but Rafael notes they may need someone else's help, someone who, unlike themselves, actually knows what it is like to be a child and have to fight to survive. The next morning, Frank returns with the dog and prepares to sleep on the same couch as the boys go to school, demanding them to come home late so he can sleep longer. After school, Steven taunts and punches Tim and won't let him hang out with his gang of friends. Instead, Tim wanders into Tess' gym, where Rafael and Tess train boxers. Tim, wanting to be able to beat up Steven, begins to train. Later, Tim makes friends with Andrew, the new handyman at the complex. That night Steven complains of a headache and then collapses while trying to get out of bed. Tim panics. At the hospital, Tim learns from Monica that Steven has meningitis, a disease affecting his brain, and that he will be in the hospital for quite some time. Tim, tired of being pushed around, is glad to get a vacation from his brother. Tim gets a hooded sweatshirt from Goodwill, but a bully named Jimmy (Sam Saletta) recognizes the sweatshirt as his own and forcefully removes it from Tim. This only gives Tim more incentive to train with Rafael, and he does, becoming stronger everyday. At the gym, he sees a poster of Muhammad Ali, who Tim really admires because he always won his fights. Andrew tells Tim the story of Muhammad Ali's greatest fight: how Ali refused to fight in a war because he believed God didn't want him to kill another man, and how, because of this, he was made to give up his boxing title. Later, Tim sees Jimmy and, using his new skills, forces him to return the shirt. Tim learns that his brother is returning from the hospital and plans to bully Steven the way he used to bully Tim, but is surprised to find Steven in a wheelchair with constant need of Tim's assistance. Later, Jimmy's brother challenges Tim to a fight, and they agree to meet at Tess' gym. Tim fights the older, bigger boy and wins, collapsing into Andrew's arms, sobbing. Andrew tells him that God loves him, and reveals Muhammad Ali standing in the ring. Tess speaks for Ali, telling Tim that he must fight for his family. Steven and Frank love him, but they are unable to show it and don't know how to care for each other. Tess reads Tim a poem about fighting for love, and Ali hugs Tim, telling him not to forget this. Tim returns home and confronts Frank, telling him that he loves him, but that Frank must take better care of them. Touched and wanting to change, Frank begins to cook breakfast for his family. Andrew assures Frank that guardian angels will be watching over them.
26 "Hearts" Victor Lobl Susan Cridland Wick & R.J. Colleary May 16, 1999 (1999-05-16) (CBS)
Monica is an aid to Dr. Sandra Pena (Maria Conchita Alonso), a Portland heart surgeon. Sandra's favorite patient, Ilena (Christina Vidal), is in need of a heart transplant and time is running out to find a compatible donor. Meanwhile, at a hospital in Boise, Angela, the victim of a horse riding accident, lays dying. Sandra is excited to learn that Angela may be the compatible donor Ilena desperately needs. Tess, an organ donor specialist, tries to convince Angela's husband Dan (Travis Tritt) to donate Angela's heart. Unwilling to believe that his wife is dying, he refuses to agree to the transplant. In an attempt to lift Ilena's spirits, Monica introduces her to Sandra's daughter, Casey (Jena Malone). The two teenagers quickly become attached. When Sandra learns that the heart is unavailable, she warns Casey of Ilena's fate, and insists she not see Ilena anymore. Rather than give up hope, Casey takes a bus to Boise, without Sandra's permission, in hopes of convincing Dan to donate Angela's heart. In Boise Casey meets Andrew, who has been sitting with Angela and comforting Dan. Tess introduces Casey to Dan. She tells Dan of Ilena, and how there is a real person in need of Angela's heart. This only angers Dan and, in denial about Angela's condition, he refuses to discuss the matter any further. Defeated, Casey returns to Portland, where an angry Sandra awaits her. While driving home, Sandra and Casey argue, causing an accident. Casey suffers severe head trauma. Monica speaks with a distraught Sandra about Casey's condition and the possibility that Casey's heart may be a good match for Ilena. Sandra refuses to consider the possibility. At the same time Ilena is unwillingly to take her good friend's heart. Monica reveals herself to Sandra, telling her that though she and Casey may not always see eye-to-eye it's okay to have differences, and that the bond between a mother and daughter is one of God's greatest gifts. Meanwhile, Andrew reveals himself to Dan telling him that Angela wishes to donate her heart. As Sandra waits with Casey, she tells her how much she loves their differences and that's what makes their relationship special. Casey recovers and Dan agrees to the donation, but it's too late, Ilena has died. Weeks later, Dan receives a letter from Casey, who informs him that Angela's heart did not go unused, it was donated to another needy individual. Casey acknowledges Dan's difficult decision and thanks him for his generous gift of life.
27 "Godspeed" Tim Van Patten Glenn Berenbeim May 23, 1999 (1999-05-23) (CBS)
Major Josie Saunders (Sherry Stringfield) grew up reading all about Charles Lindbergh. It was Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic, along with Josie's own desire to make her mother proud, that fueled her drive to join the Air Force and later NASA. When, just a few days before her first mission into space, Josie learns from a NASA P.R. man, Andrew, that her mother has died, the frightening reality of what she's about to do hits home. When she returns from the funeral and joins her fellowastronauts, we learn that one of the mission's Capcoms, Greg (Brian McNamara), is Josie's husband. In a private moment, he expresses some concern about her emotional readiness for the mission. He rightly assesses that she might be angry and a little scared, but she denies it. Then she meets Diana (Hayden Panettiere), a brave little girl with brain cancer, who asks her to deliver a letter to God while she is in space. Josie becomes suddenly awkward and ends her time with Diana, throwing the letter away. Later, she tells Greg the truth: "I don't know where my courage comes from. I don't even know if I ever had it." She is afraid. One night, Diana's words echo in her dreams: "What if something goes wrong?" When she wakes up screaming, Tess, a NASA nurse, comforts her and we learn that while Josie loved her mother deeply, they did not really see eye to eye. Her mother had had a strong faith, but since the death of her father, Josie had given up on God. She had always just wanted to show her mother what she could do by herself without God, without prayer like Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Tess assures her that Lindbergh was never alone and begins to tell the story of Lucky Lindy as Josie has never heard it before. But she only gets so far before Josie falls asleep. On the day of the mission, Josie meets Sally Ride, who does much to comfort her, and Tess does her part too. She tells Josie that Lindbergh was visited by an angel during his historic flight, and that it was God who got him through, not just his own ability. Josie reminds Tess that she does not believe in God and goes to the shuttle angry, if not quite so scared. The mission goes smoothly until the spacewalk for which Josie had trained so hard. Her tether breaks and then communication is lost; and as she floats off into the dark, soundless solitude of space, the real fear sets in. But she is visited by Monica--Lindbergh's angel--who tells her to tether herself to God, and to trust Him as her mother had always entrusted her to Him in prayer. She gives her Diana's letter, which Josie finally "delivers" to God. Communication is restored and as the shuttle comes to get her she asks Greg, back at mission control, if Diana is there. She is, he assures her; Andrew has made sure of that. Josie tells Diana, "I can't be with you during the surgery. but I'll be praying for you. Every day. Just like my mother prayed for me..."
[edit] Season 6

The sixth season aired September 26, 1999 through May 21, 2000. This is the first season to enter the new millennium.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "Such a Time as This" Martha Mitchell Martha Williamson September 26, 1999 (1999-09-26) (CBS)
In the middle of the African desert, Andrew snaps photographs of Sudanese slaves toiling in the hot sun. Back in the United States, young Thomas Cooper (Jake Thomas) is upset that his mother, Senator Katherine Cooper (Lindsay Crouse), has to return to work in Washington D.C. Monica is horrified to see the pictures that Andrew took, and wonders why the angels aren't in the Sudan. Tess indicates that Thomas is the little child that will lead them there. In Washington, Dr. Jospeh Akot (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), working with Andrew and Monica, approach Kate about the problem of slavery in the Sudan, but Kate, espousing the Sudanese government's position, denies its existence. They persuade her, however, to keep the pictures, and she relents, stuffing them into her briefcase. Back home Thomas discovers the disturbing pictures and reads Dr. Joe's letter, which says that slaves can be bought and sold for fifty American dollars. Thomas is moved by one of the pictures in particular, of a small Sudanese boy, who Thomas names Sam after his older brother who died before Thomas was born. Thomas pleads with Kate to rescue Sam, but she tells him that the issue is too complicated. Thomas sneaks the picture of Sam and takes it to school, where Tess, his substitute teacher, encourages him to talk about it during "show and tell." Led by Thomas, and with the help of Dr. Joe and the angels, the class begins to raise funds to buy the freedom of Sudanese slaves. Meanwhile, Kate, facing a tough re-election campaign, is given the financial support of a large candy company, on the condition that she remain uninvolved in Sudan, a country that, if undisturbed, will continue to manufacture candy ingredients at a low cost. This makes the situation particularly tough for Kate when Thomas and the childrens' efforts receive media interest. She argues with her husband James (Joe Spano), who supports Thomas, thereby embarrassing Kate. Their fight comes to a head when James accuses Kate of never forgiving him for the death of their son, Sam, who died because they never had health insurance. Indeed, Kate wears a locket with a picture of Sam in it around, tormenting James everyday. Kate argues that if she supports Thomas, she may not be re-elected, and then she cannot help anyone. She returns to Washington and receives criticism for her son's actions from her campaign contributors. Monica arrives with James and Thomas, who gives his mother the several thousand dollars he raised to travel to the Sudan and purchase slaves. Still Kate refuses to go, crushing Thomas' hopes of rescuing Sam, and inciting her politically uninvolved husband to vote against her. Kate angrily confronts Monica for helping with this effort. Monica reveals herself to be an angel and tells Kate that she is the one God is calling to go to the Sudan to witness the abuses. Convinced, Kate travels with the angels and Dr. Joe to the Sudan, and buys the freedom of many slaves. When all of the money is spent, Kate sees one captive person left -- Sam, the little boy from Thomas' picture -- and tearfully exchanges her precious locket for the boy's freedom. Back in the U.S., James and Thomas are proud to hear that Kate has publicly testified to the existence of slavery in the Sudan.
2 "The Compass" Peter H. Hunt Glenn Berenbeim & Martha Williamson October 3, 1999 (1999-10-03) (CBS)
In July of 1944, a month after D-Day, a small squad of American soldiers make their way through the deadly battlefields of Normandy, part of the attempt by the Allied forces to re-claim France. Led by Sergeant Walker (Matthew Glave), the men are weary, and anything but unified. Cynical Private Joe Faraday (Christian Leffler) takes bets on how many casualties there will be at the end of each day. Private Eddie Rourke (Andrew Kavovit), full of optimism, is constantly at odds with Joe. Privates Nick Dante (Steven Martini) and Homer Stucky (Esteban Powell) comprise the rest of the squad. Monica, on a Search and Rescue mission, watches over the men unseen. Through a flashback, we learn that the feud between Eddie and Joe began several months earlier, in an Allied canteen. Joe is upset to find Eddie dancing with Stella (Amy Locane), a USO hostess whom Joe considers his girl. Stella isn't interested in Joe and tries to let him down easy. Tess, a USO singer, tells Monica that she is assigned to Joe, that she must help him decide to become a hero. Back on the battlefield as the combat quiets down, the squad discovers Monica comforting a dying German soldier and they take her prisoner. Just then, Sergeant Walker is shot and dies. The squad holds Monica partially responsible, and Joe wants to execute her, but cooler heads prevail. Homer, in a panic, tries to radio HQ, but accidentally uses a German radio revealing their position. Knowing that they are now sitting ducks, Monica encourages the men to write letters to their loved ones, and to make a pact that whoever survives will deliver them. All agree except for Joe, who recalls the night in the canteen when, rejected by Stella, he tries to hit Eddie, but Eddie knocks him down first. At this moment the air raid sirens sound, signaling for everyone to take cover. As the crowds gather in the London underground, Joe meets a small boy named Rupert (Scotty Cox), with a birdcage, who is lost. Joe is shaken out of this memory by the news that a German tank is approaching. Monica prays, but Homer and Nick fall, and Eddie is wounded. Monica and Joe help Eddie to a farmhouse where he realizes that they left the letters behind. He pleads with Joe to find them, but Joe refuses. Eddie tells Joe that he and Stella were married the night before they shipped out, but Joe tells Eddie that Stella married him too, so that she could cash his paycheck. Monica slaps Joe for the lie and reveals herself to Eddie, telling him the truth before he dies. Later, Monica reveals herself to Joe, telling him that God loves him, but that his moral compass is broken. She tells him about the greatest love -- laying down your life for your friends. Joe goes to find the letters and, instead, finds Andrew digging graves for the dead soldiers, and Andrew gives him the letters. When he brings them back to Monica, she promises to deliver them. Joe admits that he feels like he's finally done something important. As he rejoices, he is shot by a German soldier. As he dies, Monica helps him compose a letter to Rupert. Joe writes that he fought this war for him, and for the generations to follow. Fifty years later, Monica enters a small London pet shop and comments on its beautiful birdcage. The old proprietor, Rupert (Jack Sydow), tells her the story of the birdcage, and shows her a framed letter from a soldier, the letter from Joe.
3 "The Last Day of the Rest of Your Life" R.J. Visciglia, Jr. Burt Pearl October 10, 1999 (1999-10-10) (CBS)
Corey (David Kaufman), Stasi (Lisa Jane Persky), Dolores (Eileen Brennan) and Larry (Lenny Clarke) meet at a support group meeting, all of them answering to the same ad: "Are you ready for the last day of the rest of your life?" They are all dying. Rachel (Nancy McKeon) shows up, too, but something deep and personal keeps her from going inside. As facilitator of the group, Monica explains that their purpose will be "to give meaning to the life you're leaving behind and explore what it means to face death." Dolores is 67-year-old wiseacre who is dying of emphysema. Stasi, who owns a hair salon, is a divorcee and mother of two; she has hepatitis. Larry, an avid bowler and construction worker, is dying of asbestos poisoning. Corey won't say what he's dying of, which annoys Larry. Finally, Rachel gets up the courage to join the others and reveals that she has an inoperable brain tumor. Monica encourages them to make a list of things they want to accomplish before they die. At the next meeting, Dolores admits that she would like to learn how to dance. Stasi says that she regrets missing her prom, so the group plans one. Corey is cynical about these "goals" and admits to having a blood disease that could kill him at any time. He says he'd like to do something really important before he dies. He alludes to a girl he likes, who works at the coffee shop. He'd like to date her, but given his illness he thinks that would be unfair. Larry says that he'd like to reconnect with his teenage daughter, Amy (Kimberly J. Brown). The prom is set for two weeks, enough time for everyone to accomplish their goals and the group asks Rachel what she would like to do. She reluctantly tells them that she had a daughter twelve years ago that she gave up for adoption. She would like to meet her before she dies. They begin to work at their goals: Andrew teaches Dolores how to dance; Larry and Rachel plan for the prom; Stasi encourages Larry to keep trying with his daughter; Corey and Monica search the web for information on Rachel's daughter. By the next meeting Larry has talked with his daughter. Corey has a date with Karla (Kathy Ireland) (from the coffee shop). And he has other news too: he's done something important. Corey gives Rachel an envelope with all the information she needs to find her daughter. At first she is thrilled, but Rachel soon realizes with horror that she can't leave her daughter behind a second time. Monica finds Rachel at home and reveals herself as an angel. Monica tells Rachel that her daughter is safe, happy and loved. Monica encourages Rachel to tell her husband Seth about the adoption (which happened before they met). At the prom, Rachel arrives with Seth (Mark Moses), in whom she has finally confided. Stasi is crowned queen. Corey arrives with Karla and Karla's daughter Bridget (Marissa Leigh). Dolores tangos with Andrew. Larry dances, and reconnects, with his daughter. And when little Bridget mentions that she's adopted, and was born on October 22, 1987, in Bullhead City, the last accomplishment is made, for Rachel has met her daughter! Dolores dies, and Andrew escorts her home. As they take one last spin on the dance floor, she looks back and smiles at the sight of the friends she was blessed to have.
4 "The Letter" Peter H. Hunt Danna Doyle October 17, 1999 (1999-10-17) (CBS)
As Tess and Monica drive through the crop fields of central California, Monica comments on their beauty. But when Tess asks her to take a closer look, Monica sees the hardworking families, including many young children, toiling over the crops in the hot sun. One such family is the Morante clan. Patriarch Roberto (Efrain Figueroa) works tirelessly alongside his wife Elisa (Julie Carmen), his teenage son Tino (Carlo Alban), and younger children Claudia (Sandra Toriz) and Miguel (Romeo Rene Fabian). They migrate with the season, always traveling to the part of the country that is being harvested. One of their few joys is the letter they receive each week from their grandmother. Roberto is illiterate so he has Tino read the letter, though Tino would rather be listening to classical music on the car radio. As the Morantes settle in at the latest migrant camp, they meet Monica, the church volunteer, Andrew, the camp supervisor, and Rafael (Alexis Cruz), a fellow migrant worker. At church on Sunday, Tino discovers the piano and beings to play. Tess offers to be his music teacher. She teaches Tino Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and he plays the song feverishly all night long, attracting a crowd. Roberto is furious to find that his son is late for work and, despite Tess telling him that Tino is a musical genius, he insists Tino quit thinking about playing music. Instead, with Monica's help Tino completes an application to a local music academy and waits patiently for a mailed reply. Roberto injures his back while working in the field which forces him to visit the town doctor. He is told to stay off his back, lest he do serious damage. Roberto knows, however, that he must be able to work to support the family, and Tino's contribution becomes all the more vital. Roberto is upset to receive a letter of Tino's acceptance to the music academy, and tears it up in haste. Later Tino finds out about the undelivered letter, and, after he and his father fight, he decides to go to the audition. At the same time Roberto's back finally gives out, so Tino agrees to work twice as hard to pick up his father's slack. Because of this he misses the audition and begins to accept his future as a migrant worker. Tess reveals herself to Roberto as an angel and asks him to put his trust in God and stop trying to control his son. Roberto asks Tess to help him help Tino. Together they go to the music academy, and persuade the professor in charge to give Tino another chance to audition. Meanwhile in the fields Monica reveals herself to Tino and tells him that God wouldn't gift him musically and then not give him the opportunity to praise Him with that gift. Since they are working on a Sunday, Rafael arranges for a priest to give the workers communion. They encourage Tino to play for them but his hands are blistered and he cannot. Roberto arrives to support Tino, telling him that God will give him the strength. Tino begins to play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and as the song reverberates through the fields, the professor offers Tino a music scholarship. At the same time, Andrew offers Roberto his job as supervisor, a job that will be less physically demanding and allow the family to stay in one location, near Tino's school.
5 "Til Death Do Us Part" Tim Van Patten Rosanne Welch & Christine Pettit October 24, 1999 (1999-10-24) (CBS)
Molly Avery (Julie White)'s preparations for her husband Jordan (Kevin Kilner)'s 40th birthday surprise party are interrupted by a phone call from her doctor's office, they suspect she may have cancer, the disease that killed her mother and grandmother at the same young age. Andrew, working as the Avery's farmhand, believes that Molly is his assignment, but Tess cautions him that there may be some other surprises. Despite Andrew's pleas, Molly refuses to tell Jordan about the phone call and spoil the party. Instead of being happy at the surprise, Jordan seems depressed to find everyone gathered in celebration. He finds some joy in talking with his good friend Donna (Jordan Baker), and they reminisce about their high school romance. Molly and Jordan's young son Jimmy (Bobby Edner) interrupts the party with the news that one of the cows has gone into labor. Jordan, Andrew, and Jimmy struggle to deliver the calf, and it is born premature. Jimmy plans to raise the calf and names it Hannibal, but Jordan tells him that some things are meant to live and some things are meant to die. Molly takes these words personally. After the party, Jordan goes to the barn to check on Hannibal and soon there is a gunshot. Andrew immediately runs to the barn and stops Molly from entering. Jordan has killed himself. Andrew is as devastated as Molly. He feels he has failed his assignment, but Tess tells him he did the best he could. Monica arrives as the vet for Hannibal, and starts to talk with Jimmy about his sorrow. Molly desperately searches for an answer and, after tearing the house apart, finds a single earring in the bedroom which she recognizes as Donna's. Despite Andrew's cautions, Molly is convinced that Jordan was having an affair with Donna, and that he killed himself when he found out she was returning to her husband. Monica tells Andrew that he must tell Molly the truth soon, he knows more about Jordan's final moments than he has revealed. Andrew refuses, not wanting to confess his failure. Molly confronts Donna about the affair, but Donna insists it isn't true, reminding Molly that she has been in their bedroom hundreds of times ith her. Jimmy continues to care for Hannibal and becomes upset when his mother refuses to go into the barn to see the animal. Monica warns Andrew that he is running out of time to help this family. Molly enters the barn for the first time since the suicide to be with her son. This triggers a memory and Molly recalls that Andrew was the last person to see Jordan. Monica reveals herself to Andrew, reminding him of his duties as an angel, and as a servant of God. Andrew goes to Molly and reveals to her that he is an angel and that he did spend time with Jordan that night. Andrew found Jordan with the gun and reminded him of how much he had to live for and how much God loved him. He told Jordan about the phone call and how much Molly would need his help. Believing he had gotten through to Jordan, Andrew left him in the barn, only to return after hearing the gunshot. Molly is furious at this revelation and slaps Andrew. Andrew tells her that even though Jordan lost hope as others do, it amazes him that most people actually remain hopeful despite terrible circumstances nd this is her task right now. Comforted, Molly reconnects with Jimmy, telling him that despite what lies ahead, they will not let each other lose hope.
6 "The Occupant" Larry Peerce Jon Andersen October 31, 1999 (1999-10-31) (CBS)
On Halloween night all angels have their hands full, and this night is no different for Monica, Tess, and Andrew, who attend to a spiritual battle at Salt Lake City's Mercy Hospital. The ambulance brings in Lonnie (Titus Welliver), a deranged and suicidal homeless man. Lonnie frequently visits the ER and Duncan (Casey Biggs), the head of the ER and Lonnie's best friend from childhood, has diagnosed him with Multiple Personality Disorder. Andrew arrives to comfort Lonnie, but suddenly lucid, Lonnie claims to be "Gregory" and recognizes Andrew as an angel! Andrew looks to Tess for some insight and she relates Lonnie's history: Many years ago, when Tess was Lonnie and Duncan's Sunday School Teacher, she taught them that faith in God is like a mustard seed -- though little, it can grow to be very large. Despite an abusive home life, Lonnie struggled to have faith, and cherished the mustard seed that Tess gave him. One Halloween though, a prank gone awry resulted in Lonnie burning a house down. Monica then continues the history: Lonnie's guilt and shame over this event initiated a downward spiral that ultimately resulted in Lonnie becoming involved in drugs and, then, the occult. When "Gregory" claims to have power over Lonnie's soul, Andrew finally understands -- Lonnie is possessed by a demon! "Gregory" claims that Lonnie's soul is fading and that he will soon be completely possessed. In a moment of clarity Lonnie calls out to Duncan for help, and clutches something in his fist. It is the mustard seed he has kept since childhood. But when an orderly accidentally crushes the seed, Lonnie gives a final cry and "Gregory" says he has full possession. Tess appeals to Duncan to help his old friend, telling him about Lonnie's spiritual condition. They corner "Gregory" in the boiler room where he is waiting for Lonnie's body to die. Rather than give up hope for Lonnie, Monica pleads with him to ask God for help. "Gregory" howls in pain. Duncan, frightened, runs from the room. Tess follows him and reveals herself to be an angel, and tells him that Lonnie needs his help now; he needs someone to stand beside him who has a strong faith. In his office, Duncan finds his old mustard seed and returns to the boiler room, telling Lonnie that the seed is only a symbol of faith, real faith comes from the heart. Duncan's presence gives Lonnie the strength to cry out to God, asking for forgiveness and help. "Gregory" screams in pain, finally defeated. Redeemed, Lonnie wonders at the realization that, through it all, God never gave up on him.
7 "Voice of an Angel" Peter H. Hunt Glenn Berenbeim November 14, 1999 (1999-11-14) (CBS)
In New York City, Tess and Monica enjoy the vocal talents of some street performers ('N SYNC), but when Monica tries to join in Tess points out that, clearly, singing is not one of her gifts. Monica reminds Tess that she has always prayed for a beautiful singing voice, and when she hears one echoing down the halls of Carnegie Hall, she believes God is finally answering her prayer. Much to her disappointment, Monica finds the voice really belongs to a rude English orphan girl named Alice (Charlotte Church). Alice is in New York to perform in a vocal contest with her choir, and is Monica's assignment. Tess tells Monica that she is to give Alice a "singing lesson." Monica reluctantly agrees to be Alice's chaperone for the day, and they start to explore the city. Alice, who remembers a song her father taught her, wants to see Herald Square, and Monica, trying to be friendly, takes her there. At Herald Square, Monica meets Andrew posing as a mime and relates a story: Centuries ago, in heaven, Monica was kicked out of the angelic choir for her horrible voice. Since then all she wants is to be able to give glory to God through song pecifically by singing the song, "Panis Angelicus" with a voice befitting an angel. Monica finishes her story to find that Alice has ditched her, returning to Carnegie Hall to enter the solo competition singing "Panis Angelicus." When Monica hears the sweet notes coming from this sour child, she becomes jealous and walks off the assignment. Monica ends up at a karaoke bar where, when she asks for coffee, she is served Irish coffee. As she further explores her affection for the drink, Monica's inhibitions decrease and, despite Andrew's protests, she performs a truly painful rendition of "Danny Boy." When she taunts a policeman, Monica is arrested and put in jail where she sobers up and meets a young girl named Ivy (Erika Christensen). Ivy, abused by her father, is being held for stealing a CD. Through Ivy, Monica learns what God has been trying to teach her, that you shouldn't take what doesn't belong to you. Monica prays for forgiveness. After she receives a scolding from Tess, Monica returns to the assignment, but Alice doesn't arrive on time for the choir competition. As Monica begins her search, Andrew tells her that Alice is not really an orphan and that her father is still alive. Meanwhile, at Herald Square, Alice meets a bum (Wade Andrew Williams) who says he is her father. Monica then arrives to reveal the truth, that the bum is not really her father. Monica tells Alice that she is an angel, and that she has been sent to give Alice a singing lesson. Alice wonders how an angel with a sub-par voice could teach her anything about singing. Monica tells Alice that she has been singing to the wrong father, her earthly father who abandoned her and doesn't deserve her. Instead, she should sing to her Heavenly Father who loves her and will never leave her. Alice begins to sing "Panis Angelicus" as Monica speaks the words in English. Later, at Carnegie Hall, Alice continues the song giving an emotional performance, finally using her talents to glorify her Creator.
8 "The Whole Truth and Nothing But..." Sandor Stern Kenny Solms & Brian Bird November 21, 1999 (1999-11-21) (CBS)
Monica, Tess and Andrew sit on a Chicago park bench reading the Chicago Daily Guardian, a tabloidesque newspaper with the motto: "If It's The Truth, It's News." The angels cringe at the sensational headlines and Tess notes that there is more to the truth than just the "facts" these articles portray. According to Tess, Liz Bradley (Ann Jillian), the editor of the Guardian, is suffering from a contagious disease, cynicism. She is Monica's assignment. When Monica arrives at the Guardian to interview for a reporter job, she meets eager young Ray (John Patrick White), who works as a gofer while awaiting his big break as a reporter. Liz is impressed with Monica and hires her, assigning her a story about possible shady dealings between Mayor Hunley and some Taiwanese officials. Liz teams Monica with the Guardian's star reporter Lauren (Marcia Cross), who is also Liz's younger sister whom Liz raised. Lauren feels that Liz is too obsessed with her work, and as a result, the sisters fight frequently. Soon after Lauren and Monica begin the assignment, they split up, because Lauren thinks they will be able to cover more ground that way. When Monica returns to Liz with a soft story about a Taiwanese dance troupe, Liz is furious. Ray, wanting to help Monica, tails the mayor and sees him discreetly entering a hotel room. He gives Monica the tip, and when she arrives at the hotel, she meets Andrew who informs her that the mayor has died of a heart attack. When Liz finds out about the mayor's death, she encourages Monica to stall the police and look for the story. Monica finds a glass with some lipstick on it, along with a strange manuscript, leading her to believe that a woman was with the mayor when he died. Lauren arrives on the scene soon after the police to "help" Monica with the story, instead she "accidentally" breaks a glass. Back at the Guardian, Liz hopes to headline the morning paper with a story about the "mystery lover." Monica and Lauren object. Ray, following up on the story, learns that Lauren's fingerprints are on the manuscript. Monica remembers that Lauren never touched the manuscript, and realizes that Lauren is the mystery woman. Monica confronts Lauren about the affair, and insists that Lauren come forward with the truth. Lauren refuses, not wanting to hurt the mayor's family or endure the scorn of Liz. Meanwhile, Liz insists that Monica reveal the mystery woman's identity and Monica is forced to tell the truth. At first, Liz thinks Monica is lying, but Lauren finally confesses. Liz, angry at her sister's transgression and reckless in her pursuit of truth, publishes the story humiliating Lauren. Ray investigates further and writes a story about some suggestive phone calls on tape between Lauren and the mayor. Liz reads the story, is furious, and fires Ray. Monica reveals to Liz that she is an angel, that God loves her, and reminds her to speak the truth in love. Liz realizes that she has been using the "truth" for harm rather than for good. Liz finds Ray and apologizes, rehiring him to be a reporter in training. Liz tearfully admits to Lauren that in her desire to protect and prepare her little sister, she failed to be the one thing Lauren really needed -- a friend. Lauren forgives Liz and the sisters make amends.
9 "Then Sings My Soul" Peter H. Hunt Burt Pearl & Glenn Berenbeim November 28, 1999 (1999-11-28) (CBS)
Andrew gives a tour of Taffy Town to a group of young schoolchildren. Taffy Town seems like a wonderful place, as evidenced in the warm video that plays for visitors hosted by the founder, Uncle Dudley (Louie Anderson). Uncle Dudley is known to children as the man who makes all the taffy in the world. Tess reveals that when Uncle Dudley died five years ago, the spirit behind Taffy Town died with him. Monica meets Bo (Greg Evigan), son of Uncle Dudley and the current owner of Taffy Town. Bo has never been able to live up to his father's genial image, and has come to hate being saddled with the responsibility of Taffy Town. To make matters worse, Taffy Town is losing money, and Bo hires Monica as an efficiency expert to figure out why. Monica starts to interview the employees of Taffy Town, and finds the veteran staff to be hard working, yet a little lacking in spirit. Clarence (Tom Sullivan), a blind man, works as the taste tester. Susie (Jo Dee Messina), following in her family's footsteps, works the big taffy machine while nursing a quiet love for Bo. Norma (Jennifer Holliday), a particularly outspoken employee, works hard in order to support her husband and handicapped son. Isaac (Keb' Mo') keeps to himself dealing with the grief over having lost his wife and daughter in a car accident. Monica learns from Clarence that Dudley bequeathed the factory to Bo, with the stipulation that he could sell it in five year's time if he so desires. Dudley hoped that Bo would come to love Taffy Town as much as he did. Monica reports to Bo that the problem with the factory is not a lack of efficiency, but a lack of heart. Bo uses this as justification to sell the factory and announces this to his stunned employees. Monica convinces Bo to give her until the end of the day to change his mind. Bo agrees. Monica prays for guidance. Clarence remembers that Uncle Dudley used to pray all the time and wonders if that is what has been missing. Monica enlists the help of Tess who brings in a band to help lift the spirits of the workers. Tess and Clarence sing a duet of "Surely the Presenc]" reminding everyone that God is in their midst. Norma steps forward to sing "My Tribute," marveling at all of the things the Lord has done for her. Susie sings "I Have Decided," a commitment to live as a child of God. Isaac sings "Hand It Over," reminding the workers to take their troubles to God through prayer. Monica appeals to Bo to come out of his office and join in the praising, but he refuses, pointing out that her time is almost up. Just then, an explosion rocks the factory. Unharmed, Bo wonders how God could let an accident happen at the very time He was being praised. Monica then reveals she is an angel and tells Bo that God loves him. Tess appears and makes Bo watch the remainder of Uncle Dudley's video. Dudley reminds Bo of all the wonderful gifts God gives, and to never stop thanking Him. Tess sings "Doubly Good to You" echoing Dudley's words. Bo admits that God has been good to him, and sings "How Great Thou Art." As rescuers clear the wreckage, Bo continues to sing and finds that the workers are dazed but unharmed. Later, Tess finishes the song at the opening ceremony for the newly rebuilt Taffy Town.
10 "The Christmas Gift" Stuart Margolin Ken LaZebnik & Patrice Chanel December 12, 1999 (1999-12-12) (CBS)
Robert (Cleavant Derricks) and Brianna (Suzanne Douglas) return to their impoverished hometown of East St. Louis for the Thanksgiving holiday. This tradition annoys Brianna, who worked hard to leave this city behind, and wishes that Robert's widowed mother LaBelle (Ruby Dee) would come to their safe and wealthy neighborhood instead. Monica and Tess watch unseen as Robert welcomes in the season with a beautiful carol played on his treasured trumpet. When a local homeless man named Gabe (Ossie Davis) is drawn to the music, LaBelle welcomes him in for dinner, much to Brianna's chagrin. LaBelle tells Brianna that she is happy in East St. Louis, where she knows her neighbors and volunteers at the soup kitchen. After the holiday, Robert and Brianna work hard to afford their home by selling water filters. Though money is very tight, Roberts buys LaBelle a cell phone for safety reasons. She calls him late one night to tell him that a vandal has broken a window in her home, so Robert promptly leaves for East St. Louis. Hours later, Andrew, a policeman, arrives at Brianna's door to inform her that Robert was killed while being carjacked, just a mile down the road. After Robert's funeral, a few people come by to pay their respects, including Tess, Monica and Andrew. The angels offer to help LaBelle and Brianna any way they can, and encourage them to stay close through this hard time. Though finances are dwindling, Brianna is too proud to ask LaBelle for help and instead sells most of her possessions at a yard sale. The sale does not yield enough money to keep the house, however, so Brianna moves into a motel. Monica finally convinces Brianna to go to LaBelle for help; Brianna agrees to temporarily move back to East St. Louis. The new living situation grates on both women who blame each other for Robert's death. In her anger, Brianna smashes LaBelle's cell phone, the last gift that Robert gave her. Trying to make amends, Brianna pawns Robert's trumpet for a new cell phone. This makes LaBelle furious, as she treasures Robert's trumpet more than any of his other possessions. Brianna vows to get the trumpet back and leave LaBelle forever, but finds that the trumpet has already been sold. Tess calms LaBelle, reminding her that a large part of Robert lives on in Brianna. Monica reveals herself as an angel, and tells a desperate Brianna that God loves her. As the women reconcile on Christmas Eve, homeless Gabe is revealed as none other that the angel Gabriel. Gabriel has an annunciation, Brianna is pregnant! Both women weep with joy as Gabriel plays "Away In A Manger" on Robert's rescued trumpet.
11 "Millennium" Robert J. Visciglia, Jr. Martha Williamson January 2, 2000 (2000-01-02) (CBS)
At a New Year's Eve party in the final minutes of 1999, the angels meet Angela (Ann-Margret), their new assignment. Tess tells Monica that Angela is reluctant to enter the new millennium because she does not want to give up the past. Tess also informs her that Angela has forgotten about an important appointment that she made many years ago. In the crowded chaos of the party, Andrew, working as a waiter, accidentally spills some champagne on Angela's dress. Angela graciously retreats to the ladies' room where she meets Monica, the attendant, who is able to clean her dress. Monica recites a poem to Angela, "Oh! To be alive in such an age!" and this triggers a childhood memory about Angela's father. When she leaves the ladies' room, the commitment-weary Angela becomes nervous when she oversees her escort, Nick (James Read), showing Andrew an engagement ring. Later, on the terrace, Angela tells Andrew about her father, Carl, whom she idolized. He was full of spirit and had a love of great poetry. Angela remembers that she and her father buried a time capsule in 1955 and made a pact to return on January 1, 2000 to dig it up. Andrew encourages her to keep the appointment. Somewhat reluctant at first to unearth old memories, Angela agrees to make the overnight trip to her childhood home with Monica and Andrew. The next morning they arrive at the house which is now a bed and breakfast run by Tess. They check in and Angela explores her memories, but is reluctant to dig up the time capsule. Instead, she wants to wait for her father. Angela tells the angels more about Carl -- how he abandoned her without explanation when she was a child. She presumes he is dead by now. Angela is angry when she realizes that this traumatic event is the source of her own inability to make a marriage commitment. Finally, Angela digs up the time capsule. She is surprised to find the capsule filled with twenty years' worth of letters from her father. Angela and the angels begin to read the emotional letters, the final letter accompanied with a note from a doctor diagnosing Carl as a manic-depressive. This enables Angela to remember an incident in which Carl brought her to the roof of the house to recite some poetry. In his elation, Carl accidentally let go of Angela who fell from the roof. Angela realizes that, though she was unharmed, this is the reason why Carl left, to protect her. Angela weeps when she grasps that her father never stopped loving her. Monica then reveals to Angela that she is an angel. Monica tells her that God does not want her to be afraid of love and commitment any longer. Angela believes she has ruined her chances of a life with Nick. Monica tells her that God will decide that, and, in that moment, Angela returns to the terrace of the New Year's Eve party of the previous night. As the countdown to the New Year begins, Nick proposes to Angela and she joyfully accepts. The next morning, Angela and Nick drive to her childhood home, but are shocked to find an office building in its place. In a glass exhibit, they see the time capsule. Angela notices an old man waiting nearby, recognizes it to be Carl (Rayford Barnes), and has a tearful reunion with her father as the angels watch happily.
12 "With God as my Witness" Stuart Margolin R.J. Colleary January 9, 2000 (2000-01-09) (CBS)
In Tess and Monica are on hand to witness their next assignment, Jim Sullivan (David Andrews), get fired from his job as a construction foreman. Trying to warn the project managers of potential safety hazards, Jim instead incurs their wrath. Tess reminds Monica that humans value themselves for what they do, rather than for who they are. In light of this, the angels must keep Jim from making any desperate decisions. Unable to find more construction work, Jim takes a low-paying job as a limousine driver and worries that he will be unable to financially support his wife and two daughters. As the bills pile up, Jim does make a desperate decision. Taking his co-worker's advice, Jim decides to drive a questionable but generously-tipping client around for the evening. Monica, the limo dispatcher, warns against it, but the promise of quick cash is too tempting to refuse. Stuart Deane (Stuart Margolin), Jim's passenger, is secretive about his business and appointments. Jim learns too much when Deane leaves their last stop firing a gun. Deane tips Jim handsomely, threatens his family if he goes to the police, and leaves. Jim remains silent about the incident until Monica arrives with another undercover federal officer and questions him about Deane's involvement in the previous night's murder. Jim refuses to talk to the agents, but when two of Deane's men threaten his family, he agrees to testify against Deane and enter the Witness Protection Program. Jim's wife, Shawn (Kim Greist), is upset, but believing Jim to be without fault, is supportive of his decision. Tess, another federal agent, outlines their new living adjustments -- they will be moved to another state, be given new names and records, and will never return to their former lives. Most painfully, they will have to say a final goodbye to Shawn's father, Charles, who lives in the local nursing home. Andrew, an orderly there, agrees to take good care of Charles. At the Sullivan's temporary home at a hotel, Monica and the other agents remain on a 24 hour protective watch. Shawn is upset when Jim admits that he previously knew of Deane's reputation and thus destroyed the family's identity and safety for some extra cash. Later, Tess reminds a much calmer Shawn about her marriage vows and the importance of forgiveness. Despondent, Jim believes he has lost his family. Monica then reveals herself as an angel and tells Jim that God will be a good shepherd as promised, faithfully leading Jim and his family through the valleys ahead. Monica shows Jim two newspaper stories: the first about Stuart Deane, the second, about the lives saved at the construction site as a result of Jim's safety recommendations. Now inspired, Jim visits Stuart Deane in prison who again threatens him if he testifies. Jim tells Deane that even though his family will go into hiding, they will always have their identities as God's children. Jim gives Deane a bible and suggests he read it, beginning with Psalm 23. As the reconciled family prepares for their new life, they are ecstatic to learn that Tess has arranged a new identity for Carl (William Ostrander), who will enter the program to be with them as well.
13 "A House Divided" Bethany Rooney Rosanne Welch January 23, 2000 (2000-01-23) (CBS)
Andrew, on assignment as a sixth-grade teacher, resides over a parent-teacher night at the school. A simple game the parents play turns into a scene when a divorced couple, Martin (Peter Onorati) and Janet (Judith Hoag), argue over who better knows their son, John (Eli Marienthal). Eleven-year-old John is humiliated in front of his classmates, but quietly hides his grief as Tess and Monica watch, unseen. As Andrew builds a relationship with John, he begins to understand the tug-of-war that is John's life. John lives with his mother and her new husband Phil (Stephen Caffery), and spends the weekends with his father. When Martin and Janet do have to deal with each other, their communication is riddled with subversion and insults. One weekend while John and Martin eat pizza at a local restaurant, they run into Andrew and Monica, who describes herself as an "advocate"-- someone who helps people. When Janet arrives at the restaurant to deliver John's homework another fight erupts, and John decides that he would like to enlist Monica's services--to help him divorce his parents. Shocked, Andrew insists that what John really needs is a break from his parents so they spend the day at a museum exploring John's love of dinosaurs. At first, John begins to feel better, but when he returns home to find his parents in the midst of another fight, his desire for a divorce becomes stronger. The next day, a process server delivers a subpoena to Janet and Martin. At the family court, Tess presides as the court judge. After it becomes clear that Janet and Martin cannot control their outbursts, she orders a time-out. Andrew agrees to let John stay with him for a few days, but first has to overcome one problem -- he must find an apartment! At the next court date, Monica takes the parent's depositions. Janet decries Martin's lack of responsibility, while Martin argues that he tries his best with the limited visitation he has. Finally, Tess wants to hear from John himself but he refuses to testify, afraid that Tess will require him to choose one parent over the other. Tess calls a recess and takes the parents to her chambers where she relates to them the story of King Solomon and the two mothers. Two women claim to be the mother of one child and insist that Solomon pick the real mother. Unable to decide, Solomon suggests they cut the child in two, giving equal parts to both women. One woman thinks this is a fine idea, but the other, the real parent, insists that the child be given to the other woman rather than be harmed. Tess tells Martin and Janet that real parents don't make their children suffer. Meanwhile, Monica and Andrew talk to an upset John, telling him that God has answered his prayers by sending him three angels. After a pep talk, John is ready to take the stand. He tells his parents that he is afraid that they will stop loving him, the way they stopped loving each other. Finally, understanding the pain they have caused, Janet and Martin commit to working on their relationship. Judge Tess gratefully dismisses the case.
14 "Buy Me a Rose" Peter H. Hunt R.J. Colleary February 6, 2000 (2000-02-06) (CBS)
Greg (Michael Nouri) and Ellen Sawyer (Kathy Baker) have been married for nineteen years. Tess and Monica's assignment is to make sure they stay married well past twenty. Greg, a successful Portland developer, is often too preoccupied with his work to notice Ellen. But when securing a business deal takes precedence over their twentieth anniversary celebration, Ellen begins to question her marriage. When Monica, working as Ellen's assistant, helps her go through some old boxes, Ellen discovers love letters from an old boyfriend, a musician named Denny. The passionate letters reawaken Ellen's sense of romance and she begins to wonder if she made a mistake in marrying Greg instead of Denny. Meanwhile, Andrew refuses to sell Greg a lucrative piece of property that would cement Greg's plans for a waterfront condo. In the ensuing negotiations, Greg barely notices when Ellen leaves to celebrate their anniversary alone at their cabin in the woods. Instead of going to the cabin, Ellen detours to Oregon City, in hopes of reuniting with Denny. She stops off at a hotel and meets Tess, the bartender, who lovingly counsels her to return to her husband. But as Ellen is leaving, she hears Denny's voice -- he is performing in the hotel lounge. Listening to Denny (Kenny Rogers) sing his old love songs brings back memories for Ellen and after the show the two catch up enthusiastically. The next morning, Greg realizes that Ellen never made it to the cabin, and learns that she spent the night at the hotel. Meanwhile, Ellen and Denny walk through the park discussing Ellen's failing marriage. Though he still loves her, Denny tells her to return to Greg and work things out. Ellen agrees. Greg arrives to find Denny and Ellen kissing goodbye. Greg is furious and punches Denny. Later, Greg and Ellen have it out, and she explains her feelings of abandonment. Greg argues that he works hard to provide and make a leisurely future possible. In a conversation with Ellen, Monica reveals herself to be an angel, and reminds Ellen that love is not a feeling, but a choice and a commitment that God is calling her to make. At the same time, Greg goes to find Denny intending to assault him again. Instead, he finds Andrew and once again tries to secure the property. Andrew points out the absurdity of working a business deal while his marriage is crumbling. Andrew tells Greg that he is angel with a gift from God. God has given Greg the property, but with this gift comes the responsibility to love and take care of it, much like the gift of marriage. When Greg finds Denny, he asks him the secret to keeping Ellen happy. Denny tells him that Ellen likes roses and love letters. Greg returns home with a bouquet of roses and tries to open the channels of communication with Ellen. As Ellen and Greg recommit to their marriage, they remember to make each other their first priority.
15 "Life Before Death" Martha Mitchell Glenn Berenbeim February 6, 2000 (2000-02-06) (CBS)
Monica is ecstatic to be assigned to help her beloved Ireland, where she first set foot on earth. Her assignment is a group of teens from Northern Ireland, whom she hopes to persuade to come to the United States through a program called Project Children. However, the group of teens is made up of both Catholics and Protestants, religious groups that have been fighting a bloody religious war for centuries. Recently, a peace treaty was signed, but peace is dependent on the youth of Ireland. Monica interviews teenagers for the program, and finds bitterness and prejudices on both sides. She hopes that two particular teenagers, Tommy (Keith McErlean), a Catholic, and Rose (Lesley-Ann Shaw), a Protestant, will be able to lead the others into peace. Tommy's brother Gavin, whom Tommy greatly admires, also encourages Tommy to work towards peace by accepting the trip to America. In America, the teens find that their prejudices are strong, and they are reluctant to overcome them. The first night, Tommy and Rose both wake from bad dreams of their violent childhood and meet in the kitchen. They share a cup of tea and begin to fall in love. Under the guidance of Andrew, Monica and Tess, the teens slowly begin to cooperate on renovating a house. Late one night, Tommy and Rose meet in secret to share a loving moment, but it turns sour when they discover that Tommy's father was in the IRA and Rose's father was in the British Police. The damages done to both parents during a riot are still scars for the young lovers, and the prejudice that set their fathers against each other is suddenly rekindled in these two young leaders. Monica is extremely discouraged, but Tess reassures her that peace can be reached. The next day a fight almost erupts between the two groups. The battle is averted by the arrival of an Irish band, and the teens dance, their common culture uniting them. It seems as if peace has been achieved until Tess arrives with some bad news: Gavin is dead. Although his death was declared an accident, the explosion that caused it makes all the teens suspicious of each other again and widens the gap between Tommy and Rose. As Tommy prepares to go home for the funeral, he and Rose reluctantly approach each other. As they start to fight again, Monica reveals herself as an angel and tells them that the Father wants them to help lead their generation into peace. Tommy and Rose accept the words of wisdom and finally accept each others love. All the children return to Ireland for Gavin's funeral, and Tommy delivers a message of peace and a promise of goodwill in his eulogy. Led by Tess, the teens unite at the altar and sing "Let There Be Peace on Earth," a symbol of the lesson of peace they learned in America.
16 "The Perfect Game" Martha Mitchell Burt Pearl February 20, 2000 (2000-02-20) (CBS)
The angels arrive at the Cherry Lanes Bowl-A-Rama where they meet Ziggy (Sharon Gless), the unhappy owner of the alley. Despite the fact that it is technically the angels "night off," Monica takes an immediate interest in helping the cantankerous woman. Ziggy, who is too proud to ask for help from anyone, refuses Monica's offers to watch the counter. At the same time, Darrell (Denis Arndt), a security guard, is led into the bowling alley blindfolded. Darrell's friends have brought him to Cherry Lanes to celebrate his birthday, unaware that Darrell and Ziggy, though once best friends, haven't spoken in years. Ziggy's resentment of Darrell is immediately apparent. As Andrew and Tess teach Monica to bowl, she's ecstatic when she knocks down one pin, but even more excited to learn she gets a second chance at the remaining pins. On another lane, Tess counsels Renee (Samantha Becker) and Warren (Jon Huertas), a newly engaged couple, who argue about whom to invite to their wedding. Monica questions Ziggy about her anger toward Darrell and suggests that forgiveness would be a nice birthday gift. Contemplating this, Ziggy agrees that Darrell does have something coming and decides to make adjustments to Darrell's lane. Meanwhile, Warren suggests eloping as the solution to their planning problems and Renee is clearly hurt. Tess explains to Warren that you get married because you're in love, but you stay married because you do love. The key is to keep talking to each other. Darrell begins to bowl strike after strike. He believes this is his lucky day, but the angels are skeptical about his sudden streak. Sweeney (Arnetia Walker), the snack bar waitress, tells Tess about the history of Ziggy and Darrell's relationship. One night five years ago, Ziggy expected Darrell to propose. Instead, Darrell gave Ziggy the keys to his truck. Humiliated and rejected, Ziggy told Darrell to get out and never come back. They hadn't spoken again until tonight. As the media gets wind of Darrell's ongoing perfect game, people arrive at the bowling alley to spectate. Darrell, becoming more and more arrogant, believes his fifteen minutes of fame have arrived. When Renee complains about Warren, Ziggy warns her to get out of the relationship. As Darrell attempts his final strike and perfect game, Ziggy yells, distracting him. The ball rolls into the gutter, but to the crowd's amazement, all ten pins fall! Darrell is crestfallen, as it becomes clear that Ziggy rigged the lanes. As the crowd disperses, Monica is finally able to tell Ziggy what she'd been trying to all along -- Darrell has lung cancer. While trying to maintain her callous demeanor, Ziggy is clearly affected by the news. She tries to apologize to Darrell, but he walks out. Monica then finds Ziggy weeping and reveals that she's an angel from God, and that Ziggy can learn a lesson from bowling, you always get a second chance to make it right. People who love each other, like Ziggy and Darrell, hurt each other. What matters is the choice you make after the hurt happens. God will always give you a second chance to love. Inspired, Ziggy convinces Warren and Renee to reunite. Darrell returns and Ziggy apologizes and pledges to stick by him; Darrell insists they be more than buddies this time. Darrell and Ziggy walk out together as the Angels continue their "night off."
17 "Here I Am" Joel J. Feigenbaum Ken LaZebnik February 27, 2000 (2000-02-27) (CBS)
Monica, Tess and Andrew find themselves in a New York art museum, each assigned to a different individual. The museum is full of visitors of all ages, including a class of young children on a field trip. Keeping a wary eye on these youngsters is Bud (Edward Asner), an older security guard whose retirement begins at the end of the day. Bud has emotional walls between himself and the rest of the world, and it is Tess's assignment to help knock them down. Monica is talking to Antonio (Giancarlo Esposito), an artist who despises his displayed painting, a modern art piece comprising of yellow above black whose dividing line is flawed by a solitary bump. In another wing, Andrew has revealed himself as the angel of death to Constance (April Grace), a woman who has just discovered that she has cancer and is trying to determine what she has contributed to the world. Tess discovers that Bud is obsessed with a painting of a little girl holding flowers. Bud protects this painting more than any other in the museum, and even makes the children move to another section when they almost damage it. As the field trip relocates to the modern art wing one little boy, Morgan (Robert Bailey, Jr.), pauses to look at Antonio's painting and then catches up with the class. Antonio complains that a quick glance like that is all his painting ever gets. When Monica picks up his sketch book, she finds that he has hidden a knife within it. Antonio tells her he wants to use it to destroy his painting because it doesn't seem to create any emotional response from people, and the failure of this work seems to be a continuation of neglect he has felt. Monica makes Antonio know that God has a message for him, and he agrees to wait for fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, Tess finally persuades Bud to open up and talk about why the painting of the girl is so important to him. The girl in the picture seems to be asking him if the world is as beautiful as the flowers in her hand, and Bud tells Tess of a harrowing experience in Vietnam that has kept him from seeing the world as a beautiful place for the last thirty years. He further reveals that this painted child has been his only friend for those years, to which Tess responds that God loves him and has living friends for him. Fifteen minutes have passed, and Antonio is about to destroy the painting when Monica reveals herself as an angel to him. She tells Antonio that God inspired him to paint what he did, though His purpose may not always seem clear. At that moment, Morgan approaches and shows Antonio a picture he has drawn. It is Antonio's painting reproduced except now the black bump has a plant growing out of it. Morgan tells him that the painting reminds him of how he has grown from his mothers seed into a plant, and Antonio realizes that his painting does have the ability to stir emotion in others. Watching this are Andrew and Constance, Morgan's mother. Constance realizes that her son is the gift she has given to the world. Their assignments finished, Andrew and Monica rejoin Tess, who is still trying to get Bud to open up to other people. As they all approach the painting of the young girl, they see an older woman with a young girl who strongly resembles the one in the picture. It turns out that the older woman posed for the painting when she was young, and Bud's friend on canvas has suddenly become the living friend Tess spoke of. A now happy Bud does his last closing of the museum, and the angels disappear.
18 "Bar Mitzvah" Jeff Kanew Allen Estrin & Joseph Telushkin March 12, 2000 (2000-03-12) (CBS)
Ross Berger (Kirk Douglas), an 83-year old owner of a successful chain of exercise gyms, credits his recovery from a stroke to his own physical strength and will. He considers himself a self-made man and believes religion is for the weak. Ross' son Alan (Dennis Boutsikaris), on the other hand, is a man of faith in God and a well-respected college professor who deeply values his Jewish heritage. Alan's son Aaron (Shawn Pyfrom), who is preparing for his bar mitzvah, admires his grandfather's physical strength more than his father's spiritual faith. Monica and Tess agree to help Ross produce an exercise video for stroke victims, while Andrew tutors Aaron in Hebrew, teaching him the true meaning of the bar mitzvah, the acceptance of his new responsibilities as a man of God. Alan's wife Connie (Melanie Chartoff) is worried about Ross' influence on Aaron, but is even more concerned about Alan's frequent dizzy spells, one of which results in a serious car accident. When Alan receives the news that he is dying from a rapidly growing brain tumor, he confides in Ross. Despite Alan's pleas to spend his final days with his family, Ross pledges to find better doctors and newer treatments, promising to fix the situation with his own resources. Soon after, Alan collapses and is taken to the hospital. Even while ill, Alan is concerned with Aaron's bar mitzvah, asking Ross to participate in the ceremony if he is unable. Ross agrees and also prays with Alan, but when Aaron oversees this, he believes his grandfather has weakened and has given up trying to save Alan. When Andrew arrives as the Angel of Death, Alan realizes that his faith has been justified, and he dies in peace. Aaron is devastated and angry, both at God and at Ross for not saving Alan. Aaron refuses to proceed with the ceremony, citing his grandfather's belief that religion is for the weak as a reason. Meanwhile, Monica reveals to Ross that she is an angel, and encourages him to humble himself before God and accept His love. The next day at the ceremony, the rabbi announces that there will be no bar mitzvah. Ross then steps forward to state his desire to be bar mitzvah'd. Ross tells Aaron that he was wrong to believe religion was for the weak and admits that Alan was right all along. Grandfather and grandson join each other in reading the Torah, embracing their Jewish faith and heritage.
19 "True Confessions" Larry Peerce Brian Bird March 19, 2000 (2000-03-19) (CBS)
As Monica and Tess discuss the end of winter, Tess reminds Monica that in some places winter lasts all year round. One such place is the Kewanee Women's Correctional Facility where Monica's assignment, Carla Robinson (Viveka Davis), is doing 25 years to life for murder. Monica joins the prison staff as a social worker and begins to implement a prison theater program. With Tess' help as a prison guard, Monica is able to get a small group of the prisoners to open up about themselves and their crimes. Carla though claims to be innocent and spends her time trying to get a pardon. Meanwhile, Andrew is a hospice nurse to Santos Gonzales (Castulo Guerra), the father of Orbie, the man Carla was convicted of murdering. Even after several years, Santos is still bitter about Orbie's death. At the prison, Monica chooses the play "Agnes of God" for the women to perform for the rest of the inmates. "Agnes of God" tells the story of a young nun who becomes pregnant as a result of being raped. Agnes is accused of murdering the baby, though she has blocked out any memories of the incident. Monica casts Carla as Agnes. As rehearsals commence, Monica begins to believe that Carla may be innocent of her crime, but Andrew arrives to say that Carla is guilty -- he was there. Tess tells Monica that Carla isn't simply lying – she actually believes that she is innocent, and, like Agnes, has blocked her memory of the tragic event. As Santos gets closer to death, Andrew pleads with him to pray for peace rather than for vengeance against Carla. Monica begins to make progress with Carla, learning of her suicide attempts and the daughter she hasn't seen in years. When Monica asks Carla about Orbie, she gives her version of the events, that her boyfriend, conducting a drug deal, shot Orbie, an innocent bystander. Before Monica can challenge this version of events, Carla receives news that her conviction has been overturned. Despite her imminent release, Carla agrees to still participate in the first performance of "Agnes of God." During the climax of the play when Agnes regains the memories of her own tragedy, Carla begins to have flashbacks about Orbie's death and about her involvement. Though upset, Carla finishes the show and is soon released from prison. When Santos hears of Carla's pardon, he insists on asking her forgiveness for all the years he'd cursed her. Carla meets her daughter Meredith (Devyn LaBella) for a tearful reunion at a local diner where Tess "moonlights" as the waitress. Andrew arrives with Santos but Carla is too overwhelmed to speak with him. In the storeroom, Monica reveals to Carla that she is an angel and helps Carla pray for the ability to remember the truth. Carla finally recalls that she accidentally pulled the trigger in a drug-induced haze. She begs for God's, and then Santos', forgiveness and then tells Meredith that their life together will be postponed, she must first go to the court and tell the truth.
20 "Quality Time" Rosanne Welch Peter H. Hunt April 2, 2000 (2000-04-02) (CBS)
Toni Cozzi (Robin Bartlett) organizes her life the same way she runs her family, in adherence to a rigid schedule. Monica and Tess watch unseen as Toni prepares for her day, completing even the simplest of tasks with perfect timing, Toni's way of keeping her family safe. That family includes: patriarch Paul (Ray Abruzzo), an idea man who is always preoccupied, Amy (Amanda Barfield), a high school volleyball player, and Angelo (Sean Marquette), the youngest, whose specialty is playing the tuba and getting into mischief. The family is just days away from the grand opening of their newpizza parlor "Paul and Toni's Perfect Pizza." Monica is hired as a chef and Andrew as a handyman. As Monica begins making the pizza, it becomes apparent that Toni won't reveal the secret of her family sauce, not even to her own family! At the same time, Toni worries about Amy's increasing appetite and water intake, and about her general moodiness, scared that Amy is getting into drugs. When Amy collapses on the volleyball court, the doctors diagnose her with juvenile diabetes. Tess, the nurse, teaches the family about the condition. Since the body has stopped making insulin, Amy will have to test her blood and give herself insulin shots. Toni immediately takes charge, planning to beat the disease with perfect scheduling. Tess reminds them that, as of yet, there is no cure for diabetes. Amy insists that none of her friends know about this, especially not her boyfriend Matt (Nate Richert). While Amy recuperates at the hospital, everyone at the restaurant pitches in to do her duties. Monica is reassigned to be the waitress and Andrew becomes the chef. When Amy comes home, Toni wakes up in the middle of every night to make sure that Amy has taken her shot. Paul, on the other hand, is squeamish around needles and can't help. At the next game, Angelo tells a shocked Matt about the diabetes. The coach tells Amy that, in light of her condition, he wants her mom to travel with the team. Amy is horrified and decides to quit. The day before the grand opening, everyone rushes to prepare. When Toni learns that Paul has picked up the wrong uniforms and that Amy hasn't taken her latest shot, she breaks down. Frustrated, Amy leaves to find Matt. When Matt tells Amy that he knows about her diabetes, Amy gives herself a shot to show him how easy it is, but she isn't careful with the levels. Upset that Amy hid this from him, Matt breaks up with her. As Matt leaves, Amy becomes very sick. Monica finds her and takes her to the hospital. When Paul and Toni hear the news they leave the restaurant for the hospital, accidentally leaving an apron on the lit stove. Soon a fire starts, and Andrew arrives to rescue Angelo and to douse the flames. When Paul and Toni return with a recovered Amy, they find a charred kitchen. First Paul and Toni begin to fight, then Amy and Angelo join in, each blaming the other for this setback. In the midst of the chaos, Monica reveals to the family that she is an angel, and reminds them that they need to make God a family member, and the first guest in the new restaurant. The family prays, committing themselves to God. Everyone pitches in to clean up the restaurant for the opening. Just before they open the doors to a huge crowd, Toni reveals the secret ingredient in the pizza sauce -- nutmeg. Now it's a family secret!
21 "Living the Rest of My Life" Tim Van Patten Della Reese April 9, 2000 (2000-04-09) (CBS)
Abby (Cicely Tyson) is a 71-year-old widow who spends her days watching soap operas and her nights doting on her overly-attached son Phillip (Sherman Augustus) and his wife Judith (Jonell Kennedy). Monica and Tess's assignment is to help cut the apron strings between mother and son. When Monica arrives at Abby's door to collect clothes for the "Living the Rest of My Life" Retirement Community fundraiser, Abby is skeptical. Later, when Tess tells her about the activities that take place at "Living the Rest of My Life," Abby agrees to a visit to see for herself. Abby is excited to find many other seniors who keep busy with all sorts of activities, though she tries to mask her enthusiasm. She meets Ramone (Rick Gonzales), a young graffiti artist who serves mandatory community service hours by helping Andrew, the Community's handyman, paint the hallways. Abby also meets Lois (Tonea Stewart), a retired artist and widow, who hides in her apartment angrily refusing to socialize with the other community members. Abby uses Lois and Ramone as reasons why she wouldn't want to move here, but her real feelings are apparent when she returns a few days later with her treasured pecan pie. When Phillip realizes where his mother has been spending her time, he insists she put any thoughts of moving out of her head, reminding her of how much he needs her. But when Phillip forgets Abby's birthday, she decides it is time to begin her new life and moves into "Living the Rest of My Life." Phillip and Judith arrive for a visit, and Phillip desperately attempts to sweet talk his mother into returning home. Abby is settling in, however, and is unwilling to return, paying for her first month's rent with some cash she'd saved away. Phillip is angry and storms out, while Judith, unbeknownst to Phillip, gives Abby her checkbook which Phillip had been holding for her. Meanwhile, Lois and Ramone argue about art and insult each other's work in the process. Abby comforts Lois by writing a check for one of her paintings, a favorite of Abby's since she and her husband's honeymoon. In turn, Lois apologizes to Ramone and revalidates his work. At the fundraiser, Abby sells some of her vintage hats, and is delighted to have Phillip and Judith visit. She shows them her new painting until Lois reclaims it, announcing that Abby's check bounced. Phillip then admits that he depleted Abby's life savings by making bad investments. Abby is shocked but forgives Phillip and plans to move back home, no longer able to afford her new life. But when Abby oversees Phillip stealing cash from her personal belongings, she can no longer make any excuses for him. Tess reveals herself to be an angel, and tells Abby that God understands her situation. He lets His children face the consequences of their actions, and she must do the same for Phillip. Abby insists that Phillip pay back all the money he lost, and tells him that he cannot be in her life until he pulls his together. Abby prepares to move out of the retirement community, until Ramone announces that he's learned that Lois' artwork is worth a fortune. Lois then offers to pay Abby's rent so she can remain a part of the family at "Living the Rest of My Life."
22 "Stealing Hope" Peter H. Hunt Jason Jersey April 23, 2000 (2000-04-23) (CBS)
Ricky Hauk (Pedro Balmaceda) has just received the news that he's being laid off from his dead-end job as a mechanic at Al's Gas Station. Ricky vents his frustration by writing poetry on the bathroom wall, quickly erasing it before it can be preserved for posterity. Monica is hired to take inventory at the station, and she encourages Ricky to pursue his writing. When Shelley (Taylor Stanley), a local college student, arrives with her snobby boyfriend Marshall (Nathan Anderson), Ricky is immediately smitten. When Marshall notices Ricky's college hat, he accuses him of being a poseur, and the boys exchange words. As Marshall and Shelley leave, Ricky discovers Shelley dropped her school I.D. Later, Ricky agrees to help his little brother Joey (Alex D. Linz) win the Invention Convention at the College. When Shelley returns to the station in search of her I.D., Ricky claims to be a student at the college. Shelley suggests he enroll in her writing class. Ricky agrees to check it out. Ricky's mother Ellen (Deborah Strang) is frustrated to find out about Ricky's plans to take the class, they need his income to make ends meet. The next day, Ricky is resigned to apply for work at Taco Town. Instead he goes to Shelley's class, taught by Andrew, where he sees Tess, another student. Andrew's teaching is inspiring, but Ricky is scared off by Marshall. Back at the station, Ricky again writes a poem on the wall. Monica offers him a blank notebook to write in, but when Ricky tries it, he has a flashback to his childhood: his father abuses him for writing on his racing form. The next time Ricky tries to attend class, Andrew catches him. Andrew agrees to let him sit in for one week, but then he must officially enroll. During class, Andrew invites Marshall to read a poem. Ricky is shocked to hear Marshall read his poem, copied from the bathroom wall. Defeated, Ricky swipes the rearview mirror from Marshall's car. Meanwhile, Monica helps Joey finish his invention, a forgetting machine. Ricky complains to Monica about Marshall's plagiarism. Monica tells Ricky to use it as an encouraging sign that his writing is good. Still frustrated, Ricky throws the rearview mirror in the garbage. That night, Pearson and Smitty, friends of Ricky's, drive up in Marshall's stolen car. Ricky sends them away. The next day, Joey finds the last part for his invention, Marshall's discarded rearview mirror. Ricky tells Ellen that he has been hired at Taco Town. At the convention, Joey unveils his invention. Marshall, one of the judges, recognizes the mirror and accuses Ricky of stealing his car. The men fight and when Andrew breaks it up, Ricky admits to stealing the mirror, but not his car. He also accuses Marshall of stealing his poem. Tess comes to Ricky's defense, saying she knows who really stole the car. In an empty classroom, Monica reveals to Ricky that she is an angel, telling him he's put up a wall to block out the past, but this wall has also blocked out his dreams. God wants him to tear down this wall and write his words down so he can be free. Later, Andrew asks Marshall to recite the poem. Marshall can't. Ricky, however, recites it on the spot. Ellen is moved by the poem about Ricky's father and asks Ricky for forgiveness for remaining in an abusive situation. Ellen asks Ricky to write the poem down for her. He says he will. The angels watch as the newly restored family leaves arm in arm.
23 "Monica's Bad Day" Tim Van Patten R.J. Colleary April 30, 2000 (2000-04-30) (CBS)
Late one night in New York City, a desperate Monica hails a cab and demands that Merl (John Ratzenberger), the driver, take her to the Queensborough Bridge, she says if she doesn't reach the bridge by 10 pm, someone will die. Flynn Hodge (Howard Hesseman), the proprietor of Flynn's Bar and Grill also hops in the cab, claiming Monica hasn't paid her dinner bill. Tess and Andrew watch from the curb, noting that Monica is having a really bad day. In the cab, Monica tells the men that she is an angel and they think she is crazy. Monica reminds Flynn that it was something he did earlier in the day that led to this desperate situation. Flashback to that morning, Flynn rushes to the bank to appeal a foreclosure on his restaurant. Due to Monica's poor parallel parking job, Flynn misses his meeting and, despite Monica's apologies, he yells at her. Tess counsels Monica to forgive Flynn right then rather than harbor her own anger and take it out on someone else. Meanwhile, Andrew counsels Simon (Steven Gilborn) to meet his estranged son Russell (Jay Patterson) at Flynn's restaurant. Later, while Tess and Monica eat lunch at Flynn's, Monica, still in a foul mood, drops Flynn's cell phone in the fish tank to cease its annoying beeping. As a result, Flynn misses an important call from the bank. Flynn then yells at Ronnie (Doug E. Doug), the dishwasher, who spends his spare time searching for his missing brother. The cycle continues as Ronnie yells at the waitress, who yells at the bartender, who yells at the customers, including Simon and Russell, who refuse to reconcile. Flynn is also rude to Wendy (Kathie Lee Gifford), a lone customer who leaves the restaurant shortly after she arrives. Ultimately, the bank loan officer visits the restaurant and finds the customers and staff to be so unfriendly he refuses to reverse the foreclosure. Believing that all is lost, Flynn rants at Monica who is so overwhelmed that she faints. While she recovers, Tess allows Monica to see what would have happened to all these people had she not given in to her anger. In this fantasy, Flynn receives the call from the bank and arranges for an extension on the foreclosure. He is so happy he decides to promote Ronnie. The good mood infects the restaurant and Simon and Russell begin to reconcile. Flynn chats with Wendy, and, as they share their stories, Wendy reveals her depression over the death of her husband. Her grief is so intense that she had planned to jump off the Queensborough Bridge at 10 pm. After seeing what could have been, Monica understands that Wendy has gone to the bridge because Flynn was not able to comfort her. As it nears 10 pm, the cab arrives at the bridge and Monica and Flynn find Wendy about to jump. Monica reveals to Wendy that she is an angel and apologizes to her for her role in the chain of events, reminding her of God's love. Flynn also apologizes for being rude to Wendy, offering to be a much-needed friend. On the way back to the restaurant, Flynn recognizes Ronnie's missing brother and reunites the two. Andrew persuades Simon to reconcile with Russell. When Flynn announces a celebration to close the restaurant, Wendy offers to help financially. Finally, the angels rejoice at God's ability to put right what went wrong.
24 "A Clown's Prayer" Larry Peerce Glenn Berenbeim May 7, 2000 (2000-05-07) (CBS)
Monica and Tess laugh as they look at themselves in the mirrors of the fun house at the Grazeldi circus. Tess reminds Monica that, like their distorted mirror images, the circus is all about illusion. Davey Tucker (Jeremy James Kissner) seems like the luckiest boy in the world because he lives at the circus, yet Davey dreams about being a regular boy. Davey's father Leroy (Phil Fondacaro), an achondroplasic dwarf, works as a circus clown. Since Wally Grazeldi (John Mahon) is unable to pay the performers, many are quitting the show. But Leroy steadfastly remains, and Tess, a "talent scout" offers the talents of Monica as a clown and Andrew as a ringmaster. What Wally really needs is a human cannonball. He asks Leroy, but Leroy refuses, he has a phobia of small spaces. As Monica is coached in clowning by Leroy, she begins to learn more about the Tuckers, how close the father and son have been since Davey's mother, also a little person, died when he was a baby. Davey befriends Mary Jane (Rachel Snow), a local schoolgirl who is teased by her classmates for being overweight. Mary Jane tells Davey to keep his father's size a secret, unless he wants to be ridiculed like her. Davey begins to attend the local school quickly winning over the other kids, even Eddie the bully (Anthony DeFilippo, Jr.). When Andrew comes by the school to drop off Davey's lunch, Davey tells the kids that Andrew is his father. Later, Andrew talks with Davey about his lie. Davey says that he just wants to fit in. The next day after school, Davey goes to the house of his teacher, Mrs. Donovan (Susan Ruttan), to bake cookies and returns to the circus very late. Leroy, being overly-protective, is furious and punishes Davey. Late that night, Davey sneaks out of the circus and goes to Mrs. Donovan's, leaving a note for Leroy. The next day, Leroy has a meeting with Mrs. Donovan who tells him she believed Andrew was Davey's father. Leroy is heartbroken. Mrs. Donovan, a frequent foster mom, tells him that all children are embarrassed about their parents at some time. As Leroy leaves the school, the children, led by Eddie, point and laugh at him as Davey watches sadly. Later, Leroy tells Monica that he has arranged for Davey to stay with Mrs. Donovan, who can give him the "normal life" he desires. When Monica protests, Leroy reveals that Davey's mother died while trying to provide him with a normal life of complications from a dangerous limb-lengthening procedure. At school, Tess offers free circus passes to the children. All are excited except for Davey, who, a spited Mary Jane reveals, doesn't want to see his "midget" father. The children laugh and tease Davey. On the night of the circus, Wally is still looking for a human cannonball, so Leroy volunteers. Andrew reveals to Monica that Leroy won't live through the stunt. Tess tells Davey what Leroy's about to do and Davey rushes to the circus to stop him. But when Leroy approaches the cannon, he becomes afraid and backs out. Monica reveals to Leroy that she is an angel, reminding him that he was made in the image of the God who loves him. Monica tells him that God seeks out His wayward children and Leroy needs to do the same for Davey. Leroy and Davey are reconciled, but the circus still awaits a human cannonball. As the cannon blasts, Monica and Andrew are proud to see that Tess has performed the stunt as the crowd roars in pleasure.
25 "Mother's Day" Victor Lobl Martha Williamson May 14, 2000 (2000-05-14) (CBS)
Celine (Mika Boorem) sits at the grave of her friend Petey Carmichael giving him an update of the things that have happened since his death. She tells Petey that his mother, Audrey (Wynonna Judd), hasn't been doing too well since he left. She refuses to compose music and she drinks frequently. Celine asks Petey if he can send some angels to help her. Tess and Monica reminisce about Audrey. Tess tells Monica that Audrey hasn't forgiven them for helping her say goodbye to Petey. Since Audrey refuses to see Tess, Monica and Andrew, another angel, Emma (Jean Stapleton) is assigned to Audrey. Emma, a very fastidious angel, rents a room from Audrey and immediately begins spring cleaning the cluttered house. Meanwhile, Andrew is assigned to Liz (Naomi Judd), a tough and demanding radio talk show host who has also lost a child, though many years ago. Andrew proposes a series of radio shows on addiction. At the same time, Monica begins to appear in Audrey's dreams, repeating the phrase, "That's what makes you strong." The next morning, Audrey begins to sing a song called, "That's What Makes You Strong" but cannot remember how she knows the tune. As she sings, Emma quietly turns on the tape recorder. Later, Celine tells Tess that her family is moving and she won't be able to take care of Audrey anymore. Tess reveals to Celine that she and Emma are angels, and tells her that they'll all have to work together to help Audrey. That night, Celine hears the recording and calls in to Liz's talk show about alcoholism in hopes of finding help for Audrey. Celine plays some of Audrey's song over the radio, but quickly hangs up when Audrey enters. Liz is shocked to hear the song, she wrote it years ago, singing it only to the child that she lost. Meanwhile, Audrey chastises Celine for playing the song, sending her home in tears. Liz begins to ask her listeners for more information on Celine. Celine's father calls in to the program and speaks with Liz. The next morning, Liz and Andrew arrive at Audrey's house, and Liz tells Audrey she is her mother. Audrey wants nothing to do with her, believing that Liz abandoned her years ago. Liz explains that her father kidnapped Audrey soon after they divorced and Liz has been searching for her ever since. Nonetheless, Audrey is unable to forgive Liz for not being around to help her through Petey's death. Monica reveals to Audrey that she is an angel, assuring her that Petey is with God. Monica tells Audrey that she has to give Him the pieces of her broken heart and He will restore her. Monica reminds her that sometimes God sends an angel, and sometimes He sends a mother. Liz tells Audrey that she is also an alcoholic and that she knows what it is like to lose a child, she will help her on the difficult road ahead. As the angels watch, Liz and Audrey celebrate Mother's Day at Petey's grave by singing a duet of "That's What Makes You Strong."
26 "Pandora's Box" Tim Van Patten Donna Rice Hughes & Daniel H. Forer May 21, 2000 (2000-05-21) (CBS)
The Radcliff family is a paradox of centuries. Mother, Kate (Christine Estabrook), lives in the 19th Century, running an antique shop and avoiding technology as much as possible. Father, Charlie (Gary Cole), lives in the 20th Century with his wide-screen TV and microwave. But Sarah (Evan Rachel Wood), their 13 year-old daughter, and Millie (Abigail Mavity), their kindergartner, live in the 21st Century, relying on the Internet to help them with their school projects. One night while researching Hawaii, Sarah stumbles onto a pornographic website. Charlie and Kate insist she turn it off immediately, upset that this sort of material is so easily accessible. At the antique store, Kate meets Monica and they become fast friends. Meanwhile Tess, Millie's teacher, avoids Millie's questions about reproduction (her pet rabbit is pregnant) suggesting that her mom and dad will want to give her those answers. Kiki (Mimi Paley), Sarah's world-wise pal, takes her to the cyber café run by Andrew. At work, Charlie's co-worker shows him some porn sites on the web. Charlie is intrigued and, before he knows it, has spent an hour surfing these sites. When his boss catches him, he is fired. Charlie tells Kate about the firing, but he lies, saying he was only on the sites for a minute. Despite this, Kate insists on getting rid of the computer. Charlie offers it to Andrew who agrees to rent it for the café. Charlie begins spending time there, preparing his resume. Sarah, furious that the computer is gone, spends time at Kiki's house surfing the web. They begin a webchat with "Dean16," who sends them his picture, he looks like a handsome teenaged boy. But as Sarah sends Dean her picture we learn that Dean (Joey Spillers) is much, much older than he's portraying. Tess brings Millie home from school and talks to Kate and Charlie about Millie's questions. They agree to have a speak with her soon. When Kate talks to Monica about protecting her children from the Internet, Monica reminds her that it is more important to equip children with the tools they need to protect themselves. Meanwhile, Sarah arranges to meet Dean face to face. Charlie admits his lie to Kate, telling her he cannot get the images he's seen out of his head. This further affects Kate's hatred of technology. Later, Sarah meets Dean at a local park. At first she is nervous that he seems so much older, but he sweet-talks her into believing he is only 19. She agrees to go back to his apartment. Monica and Andrew find Charlie and Kate, and they reveal to them that they are angels. They tell them of the danger that Sarah is in. At Dean's apartment he quietly slips some drugs into Sarah's drink, and becomes upset when she claims she's not thirsty. As Dean moves to attack Sarah, Charlie and Andrew arrive. Dean attacks Andrew with a bat, but Andrew is able to stop him. In anger, Andrew smashes Dean's computer. Monica then delivers a message to the Radcliff family, that they have been the victims of an evil force. She also tells them that the Internet is an exciting gift from God but, like many of His gifts, it can be abused. That is why is it important to take precautions with the Internet. A few days later, Sarah unveils a new web page for Kate's antique store! Charlie decides to start his own business too, managing the cyber café.
[edit] Season 7

The seventh season aired October 15, 2000 through May 20, 2001. This season marks the first appearance of Valerie Bertinelli as Gloria, the new angel.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "The Face on the Barroom Floor" Peter H. Hunt Daniel H. Forer October 15, 2000 (2000-10-15) (CBS)
High atop a New York penthouse, Tess is entertaining at a society party hosted by bon vivant Everett Clay (Richard Chamberlain) when his octogenarian father Benjamin (Ray Walston), who still runs the family business, makes a surprise appearance to chastise his son and grandson about their wasteful ways. The following morning, Benjamin tells Everett the Bible story of the prodigal son who squanders his fortune. Benjamin reminds Everett that his great grandfather started this company carving handmade buttons and that he's being disinherited to learn the importance of self-reliance and hard work, handing him a framed deerskin jacket, with buttons carved by his great grandfather. Angry and penniless, Jake busts the frame, when Tess appears in her Cadillac, offering Everett a ride to Colorado, where some friends of his had invited him to stay. Before long, they arrive in Central City, Colorado the mining town that was in its heyday at the turn of the century. They stop at the historic Teller House saloon where Everett notices a portrait of a woman's face painted on the barroom floor. Tess tells Everett some of the folklore surrounding the fabled portrait, then goes on to tell him its connection to his great grandfather, Jack Clay. It turns out that the woman whose likeness appeared on the barroom floor worked at the saloon and was friends with Jack Clay. Tess recounts the story of how Jack had come to Central City to hawk his miracle elixir, preaching its curative powers with the conviction of an evangelist. Jack loses a game of poker to a known con man named Barkley Stubbs (Keith Szarabajka), who not only left town with Everett's horse and gun, but a bag full of handcrafted buttons he made for his wife. With Monica and Andrew as his guides, Jack tracks Barkley to a remote mountaintop and finds him unearthing a treasure. Jack holds Barkley at gunpoint to hand over the treasure. Monica tries to talk Jack out of it when Barkley makes a move for the gun. A struggle ensues and the gun goes off, wounding Barkley. Physically unable to reach the nearest hospital, Barkley prepares to meet his Maker. But before he does, he advises Jack to put his button-making skills to use, and gives Jack the map to find his way back to Central City. Tess explains that Jack left the treasure intact, taking only his due. Realizing what this means, Everett searches the deerskin jacket, finds the treasure map and returns to the spot to unearth the treasure his great grandfather buried over a hundred years ago. But when he opens it, he is flabbergasted to find a lone button -- the button that came off during the struggle between his great grandfather and Barkley Stubbs. When Jack realizes he'd come all this way for naught, Jack goes into cardiac arrest. He's rushed to the hospital and while the doctors work on reviving his body, Monica goes to work on his soul. With Monica's help, Everett finally comes to understand the lesson his father had been trying to impart. When Everett regains consciousness, he calls his father to apologize and to assure him that he's coming home a changed man.
2 "Legacy" Bethany Rooney Jennifer Wharton October 22, 2000 (2000-10-22) (CBS)
Max Rigney (Jacob Tierney) shows up for his first day of college with his father, Sam (Jere Burns), who is proud to show him the frat house of which he was once president, the PIG House. Rafael (Alexis Cruz) meets them and introduces himself as a student. Tess and Andrew join Rafael, noting that Sam is paying for Max's education but only if he goes to this school, pledges this fraternity, and takes all the right courses. Walking around campus, Sam is greeted by Monica; he recognizes her voice and has a troubling flashback. He later discovers that Monica is a visiting philosophy professor, and secretly determines that Max will have to stay away from her, which shouldn't be a problem since he, Sam, has chosen Max's coursework. But that night, Rafael helps Max make a decision of his own and take one class his father hasn't chosen for him, Monica's philosophy class. He tells his mother about it on the phone, and mentions that he might not pledge PIG. He likes being his own man, but that night, his father drives two hours back to campus to demand Max drop the philosophy class and join the fraternity. So Max pledges PIG and goes through all of the hazing rituals, but Monica is able to convince him to stay in her class. That night, Max and Jamie (Eric Jungmann) and Greg (Chris McKenna) are locked in the clock tower by two frat brothers. Security guard Andrew shows up and spends some time talking to Max. After Greg and Max help Jamie through an asthma attack, the boys become fast friends. Their last hazing ritual demands that if a pledge fails any of the other challenges, he must drink 21 shots of tequila. When Jamie fails the PIG history quiz, he decides to take the drinking challenge. When he can't finish it, Greg finishes for him, drinks the rest of the shots and immediately passes out. The PIG brothers convince Jamie to take the rap for the frat by saying he bought the tequila. Jamie does so, knowing that if he doesn't he won't get in. Greg is raced off to the hospital, and the next night, just after Jamie and Max have been accepted into the fraternity, Jamie is arrested. Max discovers that Greg is in a coma and that when his father was president of the fraternity, there was another controversy, which Sam won't say much about (it is the troubling night he remembered in his earlier flashback). Max visits Greg in the hospital and receives a revelation from Rafael, who explains that just like in the popular movie "The Matrix," there is more to this world than what we can see. The other three angels appear, too, and encourage Max to make his own decisions, right decisions, based on truth, not on going along with his dad. They explain that the controversy Sam lied about involved attempted rape and that his father has been lying ever since. Max decides to confront his father, speak the truth to get Jamie out of jail, and live in the truth even if that means paying for college himself.
3 "The Invitation" Michael Schultz Jon Andersen October 29, 2000 (2000-10-29) (CBS)
Rick (Guillermo Diaz) and Annie Higuerra (Karina Arroyave) are expecting their first child and struggle to keep up with their debts. Annie, seven months pregnant, is undeterred by her husband’s suggestion to cancel their Halloween party in a few days. The angels make their own preparations as Tess alerts Monica to Satan’s presence in town. Monica, unseen, keeps vigil outside the Higuerra’s apartment. Monica confronts Satan, in the form of a lion, but is resolved to protect Rick and Annie, causing the lion to retreat. Rick and Annie are awakened the next day by their new neighbor, Tess, singing the hymn “When You Can’t Move The Mountain.” Monica, working as a manicurist at Annie’s salon, meets two of Annie’s clients Millie (Marla Gibbs) and Clara (Alex Elias), and a wayward 13 year-old boy, Dennis (Thomas Dekker), who finds a set of tarot cards in an old box of decorations. Monica fears that Annie’s interest in the cards is part of Satan’s plans. Meanwhile, Rick tends bar in a scarcely populated lounge, his only regular is Cal (Jeremy Roberts), a bookie. Andrew, working as a plumber, is suspicious of Cal’s presence. Later that night, Rick is unwilling to entertain Annie’s prediction that “Three” is his lucky number. Annie’s next prediction apparently comes true when they receive an unexpected check in the mail for $4500. Annie reports her success to the delight of Clara, who requests a reading. Despite Monica’s admonitions, Annie obliges Clara. Distressed over her foreboding reading, Clara rushes outside, too preoccupied to notice an oncoming truck. She is nearly run over, but is pushed aside at the last moment by Monica. The truck’s logo, as envisioned in Annie’s reading, seems to validate the tarot cards. Cal hears of Rick’s newfound fortune and tries to convince him to gamble it. Encouraged by Dennis’ account of how Annie’s cards can foretell the future, Rick wagers the $4500 on a horse named “Three by Three”, believing it to be the one foretold the night before. Rick is wreaked with guilt for risking their savings and concealing it from his wife. Rick blames his restlessness on Tess’ singing and rudely confronts her, leading to Tess’ departure. It is Halloween and Monica is disheartened by the power the tarot cards hold over these people’s lives. Millie is despondent, finding out “an old enemy returns with death” and Rick has lost their entire future savings. Rick entertains Cal’s offer to use a loan shark as a way out, but is reminded by Andrew that Cal’s suggestions and the belief in the cards have led to his problems. Clara and Millie enter the bar. Millie later excuses herself to the restroom, intending to commit suicide. Andrew interrupts Millie, who confides her fear that the “old enemy” is her cancer returning. Andrew reveals himself as an angel and reassures Millie that her cancer has not returned. Tess appears and explains to Rick, Millie and Clara that there is a God, but Satan also exists. And their faith in the tarot cards has allowed Satan to disrupt their lives and mislead them away from Annie. Annie, ready to deliver her baby, calls out for help after accidentally falling down the stairs in her apartment building. Dennis arrives and reveals his true identity -- morphing into a lion. Monica rushes to Annie’s side and urges her to involve God against the power of darkness -- “the enemy cannot stand in the presence of God.” Annie becomes empowered as she recalls the hymn sung by Tess. Annie is joined in her singing by a united Rick, Millie, Clara, Tess and Andrew. Satan retreats into the night -- the beautiful cries of Rick and Annie’s baby boy are heard.
4 "Restoration" R.J. Visciglia, Jr. R.J. Colleary November 5, 2000 (2000-11-05) (CBS)
Cantankerous 102-year-old film director Chandler Crowne (Robert Loggia) wants to die, but Andrew tells him he's got unfinished business. Enter Stevie Noonan (Noëlle Parker), twenty-something student filmmaker who's making a documentary about the famous director who built his reputation on dark, depressing subject matter. Stevie's task is to persuade the reclusive genius to share why he abandoned his early comedies for the dark films which became his trademark. In flashback, we find a young Chandler (Steven Petrarca) directing his leading lady, Ruby (Adria Tennor), in an ambitious and inspirational film called "Redemption." Besides dealing with a temperamental leading lady, Chandler had to contend with Sid Lumsky (Ken Lerner), the head of the studio, who fires one of his actresses for having an affair with a member of the crew. Forced to choose from a bevy of young unknowns, Chandler chooses Monica. Chandler then breaks off prematurely, leaving Stevie with unanswered questions. On her way out, Stevie lifts Chandler's pocket watch, only to return later with the pawn ticket as a bargaining tool to get him to give her the exclusive she needs. Chandler resumes his story as we flash back in time to the day Chandler filmed the fateful scene which changed his career...and his life. With Lumsky breathing down his neck to finish shooting, Chandler films a stunt involving Ruby crashing into a tree. The stunt goes awry and Ruby is killed. But Stevie, aware deaths during the making of movies were not uncommon in those days, doesn't understand how that changed his whole cinematic vision. With her deadline approaching, Stevie returns the next day with Chandler's watch, hoping to get the missing piece of the puzzle. Chandler explains how he argued with Lumsky over the ending of the movie and how he snuck into the projection booth the night of the premiere and cut the happy ending. Lumsky was furious until he heard the enthusiastic audience reaction. Chandler explains he cut the ending because he was mad at Lumsky. But Stevie is still unsatisfied, having expected some sort of epiphany. Stevie lashes out at Chandler for belittling her search for answers, hoping to find answers for her own personal pain. Monica then reveals herself as an angel to Chandler. She explains how God gave him a gift, which he could have used to encourage and uplift millions. But instead, he only used it to perpetuate his private pain. Monica tells him it's not too late to encourage one person -- Stevie. Chandler finally confides in Stevie that he changed the ending to his movie, not because he was mad at Lumsky, but because he was mad at God. Not only were Ruby and Chandler married, but she had just told him that she was carrying his child. Chandler then screens the original unedited version of the film for Stevie, with the restored happy ending. Stevie is moved, but remains dubious about the real world, which doesn't always deliver happy endings. Chandler encourages her to look again, that life is what you make it, and gives her the original restored version of the film, before Andrew escorts him to the hereafter.
5 "Finger of God" Robert J. Visciglia, Jr. Burt Pearl & Susan Cridland Wick November 12, 2000 (2000-11-12) (CBS)
Calvin Chillcut (Randall Batinkoff) is a storm-chaser who tracks tornadoes for the National Severe Storms Lab. But due to the death of storm activity, the NSSL has just informed him to cease and desist. Distraught over the news, Calvin ties one on and sleeps through the first twister in 2 years. The next day, Calvin shows up at the local watering hole (the Die Hard Diner) with a hangover, and by this point, it's clear that a major storm is headed their way. Tess points out that Calvin doesn't have to turn in his equipment until tomorrow and urges him to stop feeling sorry for himself and get busy. Calvin takes her advice and starts tracking the storm and along the way stops to pick up a hitchhiker -- Monica. Calvin explains it's his last day barring a miracle. And before long, that's just what he gets, in the form of a twister. As the Civil Defense Tornado Warning sirens sound, the Sheriff (Glynn Turman) advises everyone in the diner to take cover. Some take his advice, but most feel perfectly safe in the diner, which they believe to be storm-proof, having weathered many a storm, unharmed. Joe (Joe Chrest), a construction foreman from Atlanta, is concerned for his wife, Laura (Tina Alexis Allen), who's heading to the diner with their infant daughter. While Calvin tracks the storm and gives Monica a dose of his cynical world outlook, Tess chides the locals at the diner for blaming God for natural disasters and placing their emphasis on "luck" and superstition. Only Joe seems to have any appreciation for Tess' point of view. Calvin warns Sheriff Guthrie the twister is headed toward the diner when there's a sudden crash -- Joe's wife's car has landed outside the diner inches from the Sheriff's squad car -- its grille impaled into the street. With nobody in the car, Joe holds onto his faith that his wife and child are safe. Joe heads out in search of his wife and child along with two others Langford T (Troy Winbush) and Willard (William Marquez) from the diner. Meanwhile, Monica suggests looking for Joe's family, but Calvin is only thinking of himself, intent on saving his job. It's here that we get a glimpse of the source of Calvin's pain and how a tornado struck without warning, killing both his parents, when he was a teenager. JJ (Kathy Mattea) suddenly remembers something about Joe's wife from a previous visit -- that she loved antiques and that she would've gotten off the main highway. Tess convinces JJ to put aside her fear and join her in the search. Meanwhile, Monica tries to get Calvin to join in the search for the child, but he's only thinking of himself. Monica reveals herself as an Angel of God and explains why Calvin has failed as a storm-chaser. That he's allowed his rage to control his life and instead of following his heart's desire, he turned his vocation into something it was not intended to be. Once he's ready to listen, he hears the cry of a child and looks up to see Joe's baby girl (still in the car seat) wedged between the branches of a tree. He radios in the good news, but static obscures the message. Langford T, Willard, Joe and Laura return to find the diner decimated by the tornado, its "luck" having finally run out. Calvin pulls up in his truck and returns Joe and Laura's child to two very grateful parents.
6 "The Empty Chair" Jeff Kanew Martha Williamson November 19, 2000 (2000-11-19) (CBS)
Bud (George Dzundza) and Betsy Baxter (Tess Harper) are in their fifteenth year hosting the popular local TV program "Breakfast with the Baxters" when they learn their show is being cancelled. Still reeling from the loss, Bud and Betsy are grateful when two unexpected visitors (Monica and Andrew) show up on their doorstep, feigning car trouble. Monica and Andrew become a welcome distraction for the Baxters, who have devoted their lives to their show and in doing so, have avoided dealing honestly with each other. With a captive audience, Bud and Betsy take a certain glee in telling their guests the whole ugly story of how they were unceremoniously canned after 15 years. Monica and Andrew try to convince the Baxters of the importance of grieving. But Bud pours himself another Scotch while espousing the importance of carrying on. Meanwhile, Betsy busies herself looking through some storage boxes for her mother's meatloaf recipe when she comes across a baby's jumper outfit, a painful remind of the child they "lost." But it's not long before the truth comes out that they didn't actually "lose" the baby, so much as they "cancelled" it, just like their show has been cancelled. Rather than talk about it, Bud retreats to his rose garden to cover the roses from an expected frost. Andrew joins Bud, who explains that the news of Betsy's pregnancy came just as they got their big break to host their own TV program. They ended up getting into an argument and rather than deal with it, he took off for a wedding they were supposed to attend together. When he returned, the pregnancy had been terminated and neither of them brought up the subject again. The argument comes to a head and in his usual flight response, Bud heads off in search of a suitcase. Meanwhile, Monica helps Betsy sort through her feelings. Betsy admits that she didn't feel she had the right to grieve. She thought they'd get their careers going and that the babies would come later. Their inability to discuss their loss only fostered resentment which built up over the years. Bud is getting ready to leave when Monica asks why they have no chairs around the dining room table. Betsy explains how their first dinner together in their new home became so awkward because of the topic they were both avoiding. Bud made up the excuse that the chairs weren't comfortable in order to escape into the kitchen to eat alone, and dining room chairs are something they've done without ever since. Bud is about to walk out on his marriage when Betsy urges him to fight to save their marriage. Betsy then asks Monica to read a poem she wrote and had saved all these years. In the poem, Betsy expresses her need to share her grief with Bud. Bud apologizes and begins to break down the wall that had come between them. Monica and Andrew reveal themselves as angels to deliver a message of forgiveness and the importance of including God in their decisions, in their lives and at their dinner table. Dining room chairs appear at the table where they were not before, as Monica and Andrew leave Bud and Betsy to begin anew.
7 "God Bless the Child" Victor Lobl Glenn Berenbeim November 26, 2000 (2000-11-26) (CBS)
14-year-old Charnelle Bishop (Kenya Williams) tells her grandmother (Mary Alice) that she's going to the museum for an essay she has to write about "finding a piece of yourself in history." But she's really going there to buy drugs from her dealer, Lamont (Antwon Tanner). Monica tries to forge a bond with Charnelle through her love of music, but Charnelle is wary of Monica. Monica catches Charnelle in the bathroom lighting up a joint and refuses to give it back until she begins her homework assignment. Monica tells Charnelle the story of how Billie Holiday fought her own battle against drugs. In flashback, we return to a Greenwich Village speakeasy in 1939 where Billie Holiday (Paula Jai Parker) is performing, with Andrew auditioning to be her pianist. But Charnelle isn't interested in hearing about love songs, she likes music that tells the truth. Monica resumes the story of how Billie Holiday reacted when she first read the lyrics to the song "Strange Fruit" -- the first song to tell the truth about lynching of African Americans. Monica persuades Charnelle to enter the exhibit of lynching photographs on display at the museum, but after viewing them, Charnelle is surprisingly unmoved. Charnelle meets with Lamont in the lobby, asking him for something stronger. Aware that Charnelle's brother died of a drug overdose, Monica asks why she hasn't learned from his death. As Monica resumes Billie's story, Andrew is eventually able to persuade Billie to sing the song, but she pleads with Andrew to get her the drugs to give her the strength. But Charnelle is impatient with Monica's story and grabs the joint out of her hands. She turns a corner and runs into a security guard (David Jean Thomas), who discovers the joint and calls her grandmother to pick her up. As she waits, Monica resumes her story, with Billie in worse shape, craving drugs, when Andrew's "connection" arrives and it's Tess. But Tess isn't there to push drugs, she's there to push God. Georgia arrives at the museum security office, demanding an explanation from her granddaughter. On hearing of the lynching photographs, Georgia forces Charnelle to view them with her. Georgia asks Charnelle to describe what she sees, when to Charnelle's surprise, her grandma starts describing the scene from memory because the man in the photograph was her brother, Earl. Georgia explains how Earl was not only her brother, but her teacher and her best friend. He taught her to read, and when her birthday came around, he worked extra hard to buy her a gift, which his employer falsely accused him of stealing. The gift was her Bible which she is never without and became the source of her strength. Monica resumes Billie Holiday's story as she summons the courage to sing "Strange Fruit" before a live audience. After the song, there is complete silence until finally, the sound of one person applauding, followed by the thunderous applause of the entire audience. Monica reveals herself as an angel and urges her to learn from her brother's mistake and choose life and turn her back on drugs. Monica encourages Charnelle to hold onto her dream, and to write her essay, and tell the truth for her generation as Billie did for hers. When Lamont returns with the drugs, Charnelle takes the first step, telling him she's changed her mind.
8 "Reasonable Doubt" Peter H. Hunt Burt Pearl December 3, 2000 (2000-12-03) (CBS)
Monica is summoned to be a juror on a murder case in which the defendant could get the death penalty. The defendant, Brendan Falstaff, is on trial for the murder of his former girlfriend, Elizabeth Bennet. The prosecution maintains that Brendan Falstaff set fire to Elizabeth's house while she was asleep. The defense, however, maintains that their case is built merely on hearsay and circumstantial evidence. After hearing both sides present their case, the jury is ushered into the deliberation room to reach a verdict. Carol Anne (Bonnie Franklin) is selected as the foreperson and tallies the votes, but Monica holds up the process by requesting the others to discuss the decision. Most of the jurors are in agreement that the evidence supports finding Brendan Falstaff guilty based on investigators' findings that the fire was the result of arson, that a gas can was found in Brendan Falstaff's trunk and that Mr. Gunderson, the neighbor across the street, identified Brendan's car leaving the scene of the crime. Monica raises some doubt regarding Mr. Gunderson's ability to identify the license plate when he couldn't identify the make of the car. One of the jurors is able to explain this to the other jurors' satisfaction, but Monica remains unconvinced of Brendan's guilt. Outside the courtroom, Tess overhears two officers discussing the case. The one man who could corroborate Falstaff's alibi was a homeless wino whose testimony was inadmissible. Tess is frustrated that an innocent man could be convicted, but Andrew reminds her they're here on assignment and refuses to let her interfere with the wheels of justice. Meanwhile, back inside the deliberation room, Monica asks God for help, and her prayer is answered when she notices that one of the jurors is dyslexic. Monica asks the jurors to consider the possibility that Gunderson was dyslexic, and that he merely repeated Falstaff's license plate by memory, having towed his car from in front of his house on numerous occasions. Monica's insight turns the tide as the other jurors start to change their minds. Undone by the prospect of an acquittal, Carol Anne reaches her breaking point and rushes into the restroom. Monica talks with Carol Anne privately and discovers her zeal to convict Brendan Falstaff has more to do with her husband's unsolved murder in an unrelated case. Over the years, Carol Anne has turned her anger inward, blaming herself albeit without cause. Monica assures Carol Anne that she is not to blame and that she needs to find forgiveness, starting with herself. Carol Anne emerges from the restroom and admits to her fellow jurors how her state of mind clouded her ability to see the truth. She calls for another vote. Back in the courtroom, the verdict is announced and Bredan Falstaff is acquitted. Recognizing the victim's parents' sense of grief, Carol Anne approaches them in an effort to help them find the closure she so desperately needed.
9 "The Grudge" Peter H. Hunt Arnold Margolin December 10, 2000 (2000-12-10) (CBS)
Monica and Tess are driving through North Carolina in search of their next assignment when they get pulled over by a traffic cop and hauled into court. The presiding Judge turns out to be Andrew, who shows no special treatment and sentences them to "community service." He assigns them to assist two members of the community whose feud (dating back forty years) has become a nuisance to the court, in the hopes that the extra assistance will enable them to work out their differences out of court. Tess assists Pastor Robert Harrigan (Robert Prosky) who is preparing for the arrival of his twelve-year-old grand-nephew, Brian (Martin Spanjers). Meanwhile, Monica assists Harrigan's neighbor and chief nemesis, Dr. Lucy Scribner (Bonnie Bartlett), who submits a written critique of his weekly sermon. Monica and Tess ultimately realize the purpose of their assignment has more to do with Brian than the two feuding adults. Lucy strikes a rapport with Brian and explains the reason she became a doctor had to do with her having polio as a child. She was told by doctors that she would never walk again. Tess proceeds to tell Monica the story behind Robert and Lucy's feud which began as a tale of teen romance. But when Robert told his parents of his plans to marry Lucy, they objected, fearful that polio was somehow contagious. Robert's parents saw to it that their marriage plans were thwarted and sent him away to live with relatives, leaving Lucy with a broken heart. In time, a vaccine was developed and Lucy went on to medical school. Meanwhile, back in the present, Lucy and Robert square off on opposite sides of a local issue over the placement of a stop sign at a busy intersection. Lucy is vehemently opposed to the stop sign which she feels would open the floodgates to developers and would encroach on their city's small town charm. Lucy and Robert go at it, using the public forum as a means to vent their personal agenda until Brian finally cries out against these two adults behaving like children. He then runs off and is struck by a car at the very intersection they've been debating. At the hospital, Robert and Lucy learn that Brian suffered damage to his spinal cord and will be paralyzed from the waist down. Lucy starts to feel hopeless, but Monica reminds Lucy how she proved the doctors wrong when they told her she would never walk again. Lucy goes on the internet and locates a new drug that could reverse the effects of paralysis with the caveat that it be administered within 72 hours of the injury. Unable to convince Robert and the attending physician that this is Brian's best option, Lucy goes to Judge Andrew to obtain a court order granting her permission to go over Robert's head to administer the drug, but Andrew denies the request. With time running out, Tess finds a way to get through to Robert by showing him how his feud with Lucy lies in the face of the very gospel he preaches, reminding him of the Biblical passage of coming to the altar having been reconciled to those you have wronged. With moments to spare, Monica and Tess act as referees, showing them how their feud is holding a little boy hostage and how this grudge grew out of silence and lack of communication. With the key to the past finally unlocked, Robert and Lucy make their peace in time to administer the drug and begin to heal the wounds of the past.
10 "An Angel on My Tree" Larry Peerce Brian Bird December 17, 2000 (2000-12-17) (CBS)
Tess hires Kathy Benson (Kathleen Wilhoite), a mother of three whose husband is in prison, to wrap gifts for the Christmas rush. Meanwhile, Andrew is conducting an anger management course at the prison where Kathy's husband is serving a five year sentence for manslaughter. Andrew asks the prisoners to submit their applications for Project Angel Tree, a nationwide program which enables them to submit their children's names to receive Christmas gifts from good Samaritans. While Kathy's at work, Monica baby-sits the Benson children Travis (Jonathan Osser), Cassie (Jessica Sara) and Cody (Christopher Marquette) and discovers that Cody has Tourette's Syndrome, a chemical brain disorder which causes him to involuntarily twitch, emitting hiccup like sounds. In a newscast, we see footage of the attack on the 17-year-old boy (Matt McHale) one year ago which landed Joe in prison for manslaughter. When Kathy gets home, Monica discusses the effect of the attack on Cody's relationship with his father, who have not spoken since last Christmas. Kathy brings Travis and Cassie to visit their father while Cody remains home with Monica. Joe decides to participate in Project Angel Tree, but fails to submit a gift request for Cody. Two weeks later, Kathy is at work when Sally McHale shows up and lashes out at her for her son's death. Cody witnesses the interchange, triggering an episode, and comes to his mother's defense, saying he's to blame. Tess pulls Mrs. McHale aside and gets her to see how her anger isn't helping matters and that forgiveness could go a long way toward beginning the healing process for both families. Meanwhile, Monica talks with Cody about why he feels responsible for Matt's death. In flashback, we return to the night when Joe took his son to the drug store to replace a broken Christmas ornament. A fairly innocent exchange between Matt and Cody turns ugly as Cody's Tourette's flares up and Matt calls him a retard, shoving him to the ground. Joe snaps and punches Matt, whose head cracks against the counter, killing him. Joe lashes out at Cody, etching the blame in his memory. At the prison, Andrew gets Joe to take a hard look at how his relationship with his father affected his relationship with Cody and to take responsibility for his actions. Joe eventually realizes the harm of his actions, as well as his words, and wonders if it's too late to salvage his relationship with Cody. Back at the Benson's house, Sally McHale makes a surprise visit with Angel Tree gifts, having chosen Travis and Cassie's names from the tree, and takes that first step toward healing. Cody is about to leave the room when Tess stops him to show him that his father didn't forget him. Cody reads a letter in which his father apologizes for what he said to him the night of the attack. Joe accepts full responsibility and tells his son how he's learning how to control his anger and asks for his forgiveness. Monica and Kathy escort Cody to the prison to be reunited with his father.
11 "Mi Familia" Victor Lobl Rosanne Welch January 7, 2001 (2001-01-07) (CBS)
Miguel (Renoly Santiago) and Anna (Crystle Lightning)’s marriage is interrupted by Anna’s father, Tommy (Jesse Borrego), who rejects his daughter’s decision to marry Miguel, the father of their 6-month old child. Unmoved by Anna’s protests of love, Tommy dismisses Miguel because of his gang affiliation. Tommy insists the two teenagers stay away from each other. Andrew and Rafael (Alexis Cruz), working with the church, try to get Miguel to participate in a community outreach program for teenage fathers, but his participation is only to appease the suspicions of the local police. Miguel is determined to gain his respect the only way he knows how, through the gang. Gonzo (Abel Soto), the hot-tempered leader, informs Miguel of his plans to kill a rival gang member. Miguel returns home to discover his mother, Lorena (Laura Ceron), has given away his room to Monica, who works as a church volunteer. This furthers Miguel’s withdrawal from the people who truly care about him. Lorena confides to Monica her disappointment in her son’s lifestyle and longing for the son he once was. Miguel and Anna meet the next day at the family run restaurant owned by Tommy. Tommy voices his displeasure with Miguel and his friends to an attentive new customer, Tess. Tess recognizes that Tommy’s intolerance is closely linked with his own questionable past that he is trying to escape. Gonzo pressures Miguel to kill one of their rivals after a failed earlier attempt. Miguel struggles with his decision and privately turns to God for guidance. Monica tries to convince Miguel that his family is in need of him, not the gang. Misguided by his father’s legacy, Miguel is undeterred in carrying out his orders. Miguel’s hesitation at the critical moment infuriates Gonzo, who fears their rival will retaliate. Miguel rushes home to gather his few belongings and asks Anna to leave town with him. Anna’s devotion to Miguel leads her to reluctantly follow him with their son. As they get into the car to leave, there is a drive-by shooting by the rival gang, which injures Anna and the baby. They are rushed to the hospital where Miguel is relieved to discover that the injuries are not critical. The doctor explains that his baby was fortunate to have the car seat buckle interfere with the path of the bullet. Miguel realizes what he learned in his parenting class, the proper way to buckle a baby in a car, saved his son’s life. Tommy arrives at the hospital incensed at Miguel. At Tess’ urging, Tommy dispels Miguel’s glorified memory of his father and explains to Miguel that his father killed himself playing Russian Roulette. The shocking news drives Miguel away. Miguel concludes that his entire life has been a failure. Monica tells Miguel that there are many people who love and need him, but he must take responsibility for his actions. Monica takes Miguel to church where Rafael reveals that he is an angel sent by God, just like Monica, Tess and Andrew. Rafael urges Miguel to open his heart to God because through His grace, he can live in the truth and start over again. Miguel returns to the hospital to apologize to Tommy. Miguel promises that he will be a good father and offers his cooperation with the police.
12 "The Lord Moves in Mysterious Ways" Joel Fiegenbaum R. J. Colleary January 21, 2001 (2001-01-21) (CBS)
Monica and Andrew are planning a surprise party for Tess to show their appreciation. A new angel, Ronald (Joel Grey), from Records and Permanent Files, shows up at the party hoping to meet Tess. The only problem is that Tess is running late and the hotel's banquet manager, Mr. Nalls (Brad Slocum), is pressuring them to move things along for the Chamber of Commerce banquet at five. Meanwhile, Tess, who is under the impression that Monica's in trouble, is having car problems, pulls into a diner/car repair station where a none-too-helpful cashier, Kelly (Mel Harris), tells her she'll have to wait until Penny returns from a tow call. Meanwhile, back at the banquet room, Ronald tells Monica and Andrew about how he daydreams about helping people face to face. But he doesn't feel he has what it takes to be a caseworker. Tess, meanwhile, tries to get Kelly to help her, but Kelly insists she doesn't do favors, that anytime you do things for other people, you just get in trouble. As the five o'clock hour arrives with no sign of Tess, the Chamber of Commerce banquet starts moving in. While Ronald has a pretty good idea of who Tess is, Monica and Andrew try to fill in the blanks, such as Tess's gift for music. We then see that Tess is using that very gift to get through to Kelly. Kelly finally explains how her father ran into a burning house to save a man's life and they both died. Once Tess realizes that Kelly refuses to be swayed, she offers to give Kelly her beloved Cadillac if she'll just drive her where she needs to be. Tess finally arrives. Monica and Andrew explain how they've spent the entire afternoon talking about her and how they've come to realize even more how much she means to them. They then present her with their gift, a beautiful hood ornament for her car. Tess introduces Kelly when Ronald suddenly recognizes her last name. Ronald pulls Monica aside so that she can deliver God's message to Kelly. But Monica tells Ronald that this time, God is calling him to deliver the message. With a little push from Monica, Ronald reveals himself as an angel (along with Monica, Andrew and Tess). He tells Kelly that her father was a brave man and that while two people died that day, one little boy's life was saved, the man who is being honored this evening as Man of the Year, Brandon White. Brandon White (Ben Siegler) then steps up to the podium to deliver his acceptance speech. He speaks of the perfect stranger (Kelly's father) who gave his life for his and explains how he dedicated himself to be deserving of the second chance he received.
13 "A Death in the Family" Stuart Margolin E.F. Wallengren February 4, 2001 (2001-02-04) (CBS)
Detective Frank McCovey (Scott Baio) and his narcotics team obtain a warrant to raid the house of an elusive drug dealer based on a tip from his informant. The targeted address is an African-American neighborhood known for its criminal element. McCovey leads the raid, ignoring the signs that indicate they may be at the wrong house. McCovey charges through the apparent empty residence and mistakenly shoots an innocent eleven-year-old boy, Jamal Griffin, who is hospitalized in critical condition. Reverend Davis (Isaiah Washington), hardened by the social injustices perpetrated on his community, proclaims that this one will not be ignored. Andrew, an Internal Affairs agent, suggests the truth behind the tragic event lies with the accidental death of McCovey’s ten-year-old daughter’s by a black man. McCovey refuses to discuss the matter, insisting that he followed proper procedure. Meanwhile, Jamal’s mother begins her vigil beside her unconscious son and is joined by the police department’s community relations officer, Monica. McCovey’s suspension does not appease Rev. Davis, who skillfully uses the media to further his own agenda of social unrest, under the guise of protecting the Griffins’ wishes. McCovey wrestles with his own conscience as he reflects on the circumstances of the shooting. News of the drug dealer’s apprehension at a different address only pushes McCovey to blame his informant. McCovey insists he correctly wrote down the relayed information, but is unable to recover the piece of paper to aid his case. His wife (Mary Ward) and his partners try to help him realize that he may be pushing himself too hard and making mistakes, but McCovey refuses to listen or apologize. Tess, a new parishioner to Rev. Davis’ church, warns the reverend that his call to arms may incite violence against the police department. Rev. Davis refutes Tess’ claim until proven wrong when a brick, bearing the words on Rev. Davis’ flyer, is thrown through the McCovey’s window, injuring McCovey’s son. The next day, Jan confronts her husband with the piece of paper indicating he communicated the wrong information on the arrest warrant. Overwrought with the guilt of shooting an innocent child, McCovey goes to his daughter’s grave prepared to end his life where Andrew reveals that he is an angel and was with his daughter when she died. Andrew helps McCovey face his racial prejudice stemming from the accidental death of his daughter by a black man. This subconscious racism is what made McCovey less careful in an African-American neighborhood. Andrew tells him that God loves him and forgives him, but now that he is aware of his prejudice, he must conquer it. Rev. Davis’ parish disapprovingly receives the contrite McCovey and Rev. Davis refuses to listen to his apologies. Monica, Tess and Andrew reveal themselves to convince Rev. Davis that he must forgive McCovey. McCovey remorsefully apologizes to the congregation and Rev. Davis offers his hand in peace. Jamal’s mother praises God as her son regains consciousness.
14 "Bringer of Light" Robert J. Visciglia, Jr. Luke Schelhaas February 11, 2001 (2001-02-11) (CBS)
Monica and Tess are captivated by the thousands of stars that decorate the beautiful night sky. Monica elaborates on the majesty of God’s heavens as it is revealed that the angels are actually sitting in a planetarium hosted by Andrew. Across the city, fifteen year-old Lucy Baker (Amanda Fuller) sits in her room looking at the sky, where only the moon can be seen above the city lights. Erica Baker (Eve Gordon) joins her daughter and the two share a moment pondering what or who created the universe. “It’s just luck,” responds Lucy’s father and science teacher, John (Arye Gross). Lucy is not convinced that her atheist father is right. At school, tension runs high between John and Lucy, who is barely maintaining a C average. John reminds Lucy that her grade hinges on her next research paper and she needs to come up with a topic. Despite her struggles in science, Lucy excels in Monica’s English class. Monica encourages Lucy’s growing curiosity of how the universe was created by allowing Lucy to combine her research for her English essay and her science project. Lucy is pleased that her science paper to prove the existence of God will antagonize her father. John dismisses Lucy’s idea as mindless speculation and demands she pick another topic or fail the assignment. Their differences are momentarily set aside when Erica informs them that her ovarian cancer, which was in remission, has returned. John is confident that medical science will successfully get them through it again. As Erica’s health gradually declines, she begins to question her own beliefs. Lucy goes to the planetarium to continue her research despite her father’s objections. There Andrew suggests that she look into Intelligent Design Theory, which claims that the universe is too complex and precise to be a random coincidence. Andrew asks Lucy, “if you discover a watch…sitting on a tree stump. Would you assume that all these little springs and wheels and gears fell out of the sky and landed together just right to make this watch?” The next day, Lucy’s discovers from a classmate that the survival rate for a second bout with ovarian cancer is practically zero. Overwhelmed at the prospect of losing her mother, Lucy confides to Monica her feelings of helplessness. Monica consoles Lucy, explaining that her name means “bringer of light,” and that her mother is still alive and needs her now more than ever. Lucy is determined to prove the existence of God to comfort her ailing mother. Lucy turns in her two papers, but is distraught that her mother doesn’t find the inspiration she is looking for in Lucy’s science paper. Monica suggests that Lucy has given her mother the wrong paper to read. Lucy, with Nurse Tess’ help, takes her mother outside the city limits to see the stars. Erica reads Lucy’s English essay, which states how grateful Lucy is for the beauty of the universe…grateful to God. John arrives at the hospital to find his wife missing and his frantic search leads him to the planetarium where Monica encourages him to take the first step and invite God into his heart. John does so, and is answered by Monica who reveals herself as an angel. Monica tells John that God loves him, and he is miraculously transported to the clearing, where the family is reunited in God’s love.
15 "Thief of Hearts" Stuart Margolin Jason Jersey February 18, 2001 (2001-02-18) (CBS)
11-year-old Corey Taylor (Paul Robert Santiago) is hanging out at the local newsstand when he spies a locket dangling near the cash register. He steals the locket in plain view and runs off before anyone can catch him. Alice Dupree (Patti LuPone), the newsstand attendant, contacts the police regarding the theft. Monica arrives on the scene as the officer on duty to get all the information. Alice gives Monica a photo of the culprit who was caught on her security camera as well as a sketch of the heart-shaped locket, which Alice describes as a priceless family heirloom given to her by her mother. Monica pays a visit to Corey's school and discovers that he's an orphan with a heart condition. But Alice remains unsympathetic, anxious to get her locket back. Monica tracks Corey down at the local arcade and gives him the opportunity to return the locket on his own. When he doesn't show up, Alice is irritated with Monica's trusting attitude. It just confirms what she's believed all along, that trust leads to disappointment. Monica catches up with Corey at the arcade and spends some time getting to know him. He explains what it's like to live at the boys home, waiting for someone to adopt him. He's come close a couple times, but when they find out he's got a heart defect, they change their minds. Monica gives Corey a second chance to return the locket, but on his way there, some bullies rough him up and steal the locket. Corey tries to explain this to Alice, but she doesn't believe him. Corey explains that he's prayed for God to send him a mother and that he stole the locket so he would have a gift when the time comes. Alice is unmoved until he collapses before her eyes. Corey is rushed to the hospital. Alice feels bad for him, but still considers herself the victim in all this. Tess tells Alice to stop thinking of herself and go to the hospital and forgive Corey. Monica notices that Alice is softening toward Corey and suggests that maybe God has already found a mother for Corey -- Alice. Alice doesn't appreciate Monica's meddling, but as she spends more time with Corey, Alice starts to consider the possibility of adopting. But she's still unsure that she has what it takes, feeling that she could never live up to being the kind of mom her own mother was to her. But Tess encourages Alice to make the change. Alice tells Corey the good news and he is elated. Alice braces herself for all the legal red tape, but is amazed when things fall into place quickly. Alice heads to the hospital with the final papers, but when she arrives, she finds that Corey has taken a turn for the worse. Alice goes into a tailspin, unprepared to make the emotional commitment only to lose him. Monica reveals herself to Alice as an angel, exposing the fact that Alice's locket was not the cherished reminder of her mother she claimed it to be. In fact, her mother was an abusive alcoholic who beat her. Monica points out that Alice is a survivor, but that she hasn't healed. God wants her to learn what it's like to love without fear. With a renewed sense of purpose, Alice works up the courage to be the mother that Corey needs her to be. Corey returns the locket to Alice, which now contains his own picture, and with his last breath, he is able to say the words he's been waiting to say: "I love you, mom."
16 "Winners, Losers, and Leftovers" Peter H. Hunt Rosanne Welch February 25, 2001 (2001-02-25) (CBS)
Liam Cadegan (Harry Hamlin) works for ApexOne Technologies, a high-tech company which has just been bought as part of a merger. While Liam is generally secure in his job and is clearly devoted to his family, he starts to become affected by the paranoia of those around him in the wake of the company president's termination. Tess points out that in a tense climate, even the least competitive person can switch gears and become a predator. Harlow (Grant Albrecht) meets with the employees by video conference and introduces Monica as the new vice president of community relations. Monica suggests aligning themselves with the Special Olympics and offers to arrange a meeting this weekend with her contact (Andrew). Liam, whose son will be participating in the Special Olympics, supports the idea, acknowledging the fact that his son is disabled. But Harlow preempts Monica's suggestion in favor of a corporate retreat he's scheduled this weekend. Josh Whitman (Jon Pennell) (one of Liam's colleagues) reads between the lines and advises Liam to prepare for a gladiator-style competition which will likely determine the company's next president. Liam breaks the news to his son, Matt (Robert Jackson), that he won't be able to be there for the preliminaries, but he will definitely be there for the finals. Tess guides the VP's through the retreat, which is designed to get them to know each other personally so they can work together better professionally. The first game is musical chairs, in which a meek Liam is promptly eliminated. When Josh wins the contest by pulling the last chair away from Monica, Liam realizes that he will have to be ruthless if he wants to win. When Tess announces this evening's outdoor challenge, Liam realizes he must decide between attending his son's race or competing for a chance at promotion. Monica is the first to notice the change in Liam and tries to get him to see what he's sacrificing. But when she suggests he isn't actually interested in becoming the company president, he thinks she's just trying to psych him out. The final phase of the competition involves a search for clues to locate a flag to be planted at the top of a mountain. As Josh predicted, the president will be selected from the winning team. Liam's team manages to work together and capture the flag until Neil (Vince Melocchi) trips and breaks his ankle. Unwilling to let anything (or anyone) stand in his way, Liam proceeds to the top of the mountain alone. But when he reaches the summit, Tess reminds Liam that, in order to win, his whole team had to make it to the top. Liam rushes back to get his teammates, but finds only Monica. She tells him that Josh’s team stopped to help Neil and have taken him back to the retreat center. Liam refuses to concede, convinced that he needs this promotion in order to provide for his "special needs" son. Monica reveals herself as an angel and tells him that Matt's deepest need is his family and that Liam's most important job is being a father. Liam arrives in time to see Matt and cheer him on. Matt appears to be winning the race, but stops to aid a fellow athlete who falls down. Liam beams with pride as he watches his son cross the finish line while supporting the injured competitor. Harlow arrives and offers Liam the promotion, saying he's got the qualities he wants in a leader, someone who's willing to do what it takes to get to the top. But Liam turns down the promotion, having learned a powerful lesson not only from Monica, but from his son.
17 "I Am an Angel" Larry Peerce R. J. Colleary March 11, 2001 (2001-03-11) (CBS)
Seven-year-old Mickey (Matt Weinberg) has been despondent since his mother's recent death. He lives with his Aunt Val (Shannon Cochran) and his older brother Ryan (Tony Denman). When Ryan learns that Guy Garfield (Lee Horsley), the star of Mickey's favorite television show "The Avenging Angel," will be appearing at an Angel Convention in Portland, he goes there in the hopes of persuading Guy to help his brother. Guy makes a grand entrance by way of his "golden ladder" (which takes him back and forth to Heaven on his weekly series) to cheering fans. But Monica and Tess have observed the real Guy, a boozing womanizer who is anything but angelic. Ryan stretches the truth and asks for help for his "dying" brother. Guy graciously agrees, milking the moment for all its worth. But once he's offstage, he makes it clear to Monica (who's filling in as his assistant) that he has no intention of keeping his promise. Monica decides to keep it for him by driving an unsuspecting Guy to the rural town where Mickey lives. Once Guy realizes he's been "kidnapped," he bolts and flags down the sheriff, only to discover that she is Aunt Val. While trying to sort things out, Aunt Val vents her frustration about losing her sister and how her life has suddenly changed. Ryan takes this the wrong way, assuming she resents being stuck with two kids. Ryan explains to Monica how his mom made them lunch every day and tucked them in at night and told them she loved them, whereas Aunt Val just does the minimum. Out of the spotlight, Guy gets a chance to appreciate the simple pleasures of small town life and strikes a rapport with Val. Meanwhile, Mickey talks to Andrew (his bus driver) about praying for an angel. When Mickey comes home to find “Gabriel” in his living room, he thinks God has answered his prayer. Despite Monica's pleas, Guy assumes his angel persona and assures Mickey that his mother is in Heaven conjuring a make-believe image. Mickey packs his overnight bag so that "Gabriel" can take him to Heaven. When Guy tries to explain his way out of this, Mickey runs off and climbs to the top of an old grain silo to wait for the "golden ladder" himself. While Val and Ryan go for help, Monica reveals herself as an angel to Guy. She tells Guy that God wants him to be the man he was before the fame, who served God rather than serving himself. Guy climbs the silo to rescue Mickey and explains that he's not an angel, but that real angels do exist. Mickey reaches out to Guy and accidentally falls, but Andrew is there to catch him. Andrew reveals to Mickey that he took his mother to Heaven and helps him understand the difference between Guy's make-believe version of Heaven versus the awesome reality of being in God's presence. Comforted by Andrew’s words, Mickey is finally able to say goodbye to his mother and move forward. Aunt Val embraces her nephews, telling them how much she loves them, and a spiritually renewed Guy joins the restored family as they return home.
18 "Visions of thy Father" Peter H. Hunt Mark Goffman March 18, 2001 (2001-03-18) (CBS)
Seventeen-year-old Jason Harris (Ryan Merriman) seems to have it all: a loving family, a beautiful girlfriend and aspirations of being a photojournalist. Jason’s father Will Harris (Tom Irwin) a prominent ophthalmologist, has been urging Jason to monitor an old eye injury which resulted in detached retinas. Monica is assigned to help this family deal with a secret, and she winds up working alongside Jason in a local photo store. When Monica learns of Jason's talent for photography, she offers to introduce him to a photographer friend of hers (Andrew) at the Denver Daily Herald. Jason meets with Andrew and suggests his father for one of their "day in the life" photo spreads. Andrew takes Jason up on his suggestion and invites Jason to shoot it himself. Jason spends the next day shadowing his father, but when he returns for one last photo he walks in on his father kissing his receptionist Sherri (Angela Lambert) and captures the moment on film. Jason returns home, now sharing the burden of this secret. Will talks to Jason privately, blaming his lapse on a midlife crisis, a cancer scare a year ago. Will assures Jason that it's over between him and Sherri and that telling his mother would only hurt her. When Jason refuses to hand over the film, Will grabs the camera from him and rips out the film, unaware that Jason already saved the roll with the incriminating photo. His faith in his father shattered, Jason's sense of betrayal ripples into other aspects of his life as he starts skipping school and distancing himself from his girlfriend. Jason shows the incriminating photo to Monica, who tries to convince him that this is not his secret to keep. True to his word, Will has terminated his affair and replaced Sherri with a new receptionist, Tess. But Jason becomes overwhelmed by the burden of his father's secret and tries to numb the pain in a bottle of Scotch. Intoxicated, he crashes his father's car, rendering himself temporarily blind. As Jason is rushed to the hospital, Renee (Christine Healy) returns inside the house and discovers the incriminating photo. With time of the essence, the attending physician informs the family that a corneal transplant will be necessary to restore Jason's eyesight and that his father is the most qualified man for the job. But Jason refuses to let his father perform the surgery. Will is prepared to step out of the way without a fight, but Renee calls him on the carpet. She tells Will she found the incriminating photo and knows all about his affair. Renee tells Will to stop acting like a child and make peace with his son. She then tries to convince Jason to let her deal with their marital issues in her own way, and to let Will perform the surgery. Will returns to his office where Tess reveals herself as an angel and tells Will that God wants him to fight for his family and that he needs to apologize to Jason without making any excuses. Monica then reveals herself as an angel to Jason, and miraculously, Jason (though still blind) is able to see Monica glowing. She tells him it's up to God (not Jason) to judge his father. Will comes to see his son and apologize and Jason forgives him. As father and son embrace, Renee enters with family photos of happier times, a reminder of all that's worth fighting for in this family.
19 "The Penalty Box" Bethany Rooney Brian Bird April 8, 2001 (2001-04-08) (CBS)
Star hockey player, Jeff McHenry (Zachery Ty Bryan), a senior at the exclusive St. Crispin’s prep school enjoys the privileged lifestyle afforded to him by his father’s wealth. With his team on the heels of the playoffs and his father’s financial support to attend Harvard, Jeff’s future seems secure. Jeff’s arrogance fuels a rivalry with teammate, Chase Jennings (Brian Gross), and draws alliances from both on and off the ice rink. When Jeff’s substitute History teacher, Andrew, tries to teach his class about the St. Crispian’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, it is clear that Jeff has never understood or practiced the humility that made Henry V a great leader. Jeff’s mettle is tested when a bad investment bankrupts his father. Jeff painfully accepts his transfer to a public school, but is allayed by his father’s assurance that his college tuition is safe. Jeff’s adjustment to the socially and economically diverse Eastside High proves to be a difficult one. He refuses Monica’s invitation, as the interim hockey coach, to join the team. His disparaging remarks about the last placed team, alienates the players. That night, Jeff attends a St. Crispin’s house party and discovers that he is no longer part of that social circle. Even more distressing, is the circulating news that his father’s financial troubles have forced him to tap into his college fund. Realizing his need for an athletic scholarship, Jeff joins the Eastside team in the hopes of impressing a Harvard scout. Jeff’s rigorous and punishing practices are in opposition with Monica’s good-natured coaching. Monica questions Jeff’s incessant determination to go to Harvard and learns that it is part of his fulfillment of his deceased mother’s dream. Jeff dismisses Monica’s advice that his character determines who he is, not the name of his school. At the last game of the year, Eastside vs. St. Crispin, Jeff faces off with his school rival, Chase. Jeff tells his teammates that their only chance of winning is for him to shoulder the offense. Jeff’s talents and selfish play are unable to overcome the dominating St. Crispin’s team. With only few minutes left and Eastside is being shut out 3-0, Jeff’s frustration mounts. When Chase insults Jeff, a fight erupts and the two players receive penalties. A defeated Jeff buries his face in his hands only to look up to discover the entire arena has come to a standstill. Monica reveals herself as an angel and tells Jeff that although investments go bad and plans change, God’s love for him is constant. Monica tells Jeff that even though he made a promise to his dying mother, his mother is at a peace in God’s presence. But this game is Jeff’s chance to prove that he is a true leader. The arena becomes active and Jeff is released from the penalty box. He apologizes to his teammates and inspires them with a version of the St. Crispian’s day speech. Tess and Andrew, spectators at the game, direct the Harvard scout’s attention to Jeff. Working as a team, Eastide is able to score two quick goals. Their efforts fall short as time expires before the tying goal reaches past the goal line. Despite the loss, Jeff’s leadership skills impress the scout, who suggests that there might be an available scholarship for him next semester.
20 "Band of Angels" Stuart Margolin Jennifer Wharton April 15, 2001 (2001-04-15) (CBS)
17-year-old Alex Wilson (Robert Ri'chard) breaks into the music store where he works to steal a guitar, not counting on the fact that his boss and mentor, famed Blues musician Henry Baldwin (Bill Cobbs), would be working late that night. Armed with a gun, Henry goes out into the darkened store to confront the intruder. Henry is shocked to find Alex there and goes to call the police when Alex tries to stop him. There's a struggle for the gun and Henry is fatally wounded. Alex is arrested, found guilty and remanded to the local juvenile detention center until sentencing. Monica works at the detention center supervising a group of six boys, including Alex. In a show of false bravado, Alex makes it known that he's serving time for murder. Ronald (Joel Grey) (the angel from records and permanent files) suggests to Monica that perhaps the boys need to find some common ground. The next day, Tess surprises Alex with some strawberry pancakes for his birthday and when everyone joins in to sing "Happy Birthday," they stumble onto some untapped potential. Andrew accompanies Alex to his sentencing hearing where he calls Alex's high school counselor, who testifies to the important role Henry played in Alex's life. But Alex's fate takes a turn for the worse when Henry's daughter Olivia (Tamu Smith) takes the stand. She tearfully recounts how her father had a lot more love and music to share and that Alex is a murderer who should be made to pay. The judge sentences Alex to twenty-five years without the possibility of parole. Alex returns to the detention center feeling hopeless, and Monica asks if there's something he'd like to do in the remaining time before he's transferred to the penitentiary. Alex admits he'd like to hear his music performed before an audience. Alex asks the guys if they'd be willing to sing his song. They're reluctant, but eventually agree to give it a try. While Alex works with the guys on their harmony, Ronald locates a venue for them to perform. Tess smoothes things over with the juvenile center administrator, who grudgingly allows them to attend the "open mike" night under their supervision. The boys perform Alex's song to an enthusiastic response, but Alex escapes before the song is over. When Alex is discovered missing, the performance is interrupted and the boys are sent back to the detention center, where Ronald reveals himself as an angel and tells them that God loves them and forgives them. Monica finds Alex hiding out in the now abandoned music store where it all began. Monica shows Alex that Henry had intended to give him the guitar as a birthday present. Monica reveals herself as an angel, and that she was sent in answer to Henry's prayer. She reminds Alex that God loves him and that he still has a future, even if it's behind bars and that it's time to turn his future over to God. Alex returns to the juvenile center and apologizes to the guys. He asks them for one last favor, to honor Henry's memory. As Alex is transferred to prison, the guys restore Henry's music store with the angels' help, to be reopened as a youth center.
21 "The Sign of the Dove" Jeff Kanew Martha Williamson & Burt Pearl April 22, 2001 (2001-04-22) (CBS)
Andrew runs into a colleague, fellow Angel of Death, Adam (Charles Rocket), while spending his "day off" in Richmond, Virginia visiting the Mason family, a family he's had the privilege of following over many generations. Andrew occupies a special place in the Mason family, so much so that they've dedicated a special chair in his honor. Adam and Andrew stop in for a non-alcoholic beverage at the Mason family tavern, The Sign of the Dove, which is managed by Ben Mason (Thomas Calabro), an affable young man who is to be married that evening. While Andrew and Adam talk shop, one angel of death to another, Monica tries to get through to her assignment, Nicholas Freeman (Richard Lawson), a hard-working man who owns the print shop next door, which is being edged out by the competition. Driven to drastic measures to provide for his family, Nicholas is planning to blow up his print shop so his family can collect the insurance. While recounting his experiences with the Mason family, Andrew sees a dove on the window sill, a sign that Ben is going to die today, bringing an end to the Mason family lineage. Andrew tells Adam how The Sign of the Dove served as an underground railroad back in the 1850s. He relates the story of how Ben's ancestors staged a fake funeral to help a runaway slave escape to freedom. That night, the newly freed man changed his name to Mason Freeman, accidentally leaving behind a fifty-cent piece which is now displayed in a frame behind the bar. Tess then shows up and explains that Andrew has been reassigned to assist Monica and that Adam will be following Ben. Monica tries to persuade Nicholas to think about what he's doing, but he is resolved, convinced that he's worth more to his family dead than alive. He assures Monica that the explosion will happen while everyone's at the church, so that nobody will get hurt but himself. Andrew takes some solace in the fact that Ben has left the tavern in time to avoid getting hurt. But Monica and Adam remind Andrew that Ben left behind the Mason family Bible, a register of births, deaths and marriages over generations, something he will be sure to return for. Monica finally relinquishes her assignment to Andrew, but when she introduces Nicholas by his full name, Andrew realizes the reason they were brought together. Andrew takes Nicholas back to the tavern and explains his place in history as Mason Freeman's descendant, showing him the coin his ancestor left behind. Monica explains the coin was a symbol of hope that God would always provide a way and that the Mason family has saved this coin all these years, waiting to return it to its rightful heir. His faith restored, Nicholas rushes to disarm the explosives with moments to spare. At the wedding reception, Andrew takes Ben aside and explains the history that links his past with Nicholas Freeman.
22 "The Face of God" Victor Lobl Glenn Berenbeim April 29, 2001 (2001-04-29) (CBS)
Dr. Sarah Conover (Annabella Sciorra) is at the forefront of human genetics and on the verge of a historic breakthrough by being the first to clone a human being. Her headstrong pursuit is met with strong opposition from her supervisor, Brad Renslow (James Eckhouse), who questions the social ramifications of human cloning. Under the microscopic scrutiny of a government review team, Sarah anxiously awaits final approval to proceed from the company board. Sarah acknowledges to the throng of media that she is not playing the role of God, but improving upon Him. For Sarah, the advancement of genetic technology ultimately leads to healthier and better lives and will allow infertile parents to have children. Fearing the possibility that Sarah will proceed without authorization, Brad assigns a bio-ethicist, Monica, to weigh the moral and ethical implications. The ease and eagerness with which Sarah demonstrates the initial steps of the cloning process causes Monica to question Sarah’s motives and intentions. Sarah argues that Albert Einstein, her idol whom she did her PhD thesis on, would have championed her scientific endeavors. Monica offers a different picture of the pioneering scientist with an account of his final moments with Andrew and Tess. Faced with his own impending death, Einstein (Harold Gould) was more eager to appreciate the beauty that God created than artificially prolong his own life. Monica’s story is interrupted by the arrival of the candidates for Sarah’s project. After hearing the tragic tale of an infertile couple seeking to clone their daughter who passed away, Monica questions her ability to discover the truth of the matter. Monica tries to emphasize to Sarah the tremendous responsibility she will take on if she clones a child. Sarah misinterprets Monica’s advice and decides that she is the perfect choice and will use her frozen sample of EinstEin’s DNA to give birth to her son. Sarah is elated with the decision, convinced that her son will have the best of everything, a loving mother and the genius of Einstein. The news that other scientists will start the cloning process in a week pressures Sarah to proceed without authorization. After evading security, Sarah locks herself in her laboratory, ready to begin. Monica warns Sarah that she has not considered the long-term consequences, just like Einstein, and will suffer just as he did. Monica describes how Einstein met a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, Mr. Aramaki (Soon-Tek Oh). The gardener’s account of the infamous day painfully reminded Einstein how his discovery of relativity regretfully became the blueprint for the atomic bomb. Monica reveals herself as an angel to Sarah and allows her to witness the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The frightful experience causes Sarah to reconsider what she is doing. Monica tells Sarah that only God creates life and that He is in a constant state of creation. Suddenly, the cherry blossoms from a tree outside whirl inside the laboratory and transform into a beautiful new angel (Valerie Bertinelli). As Monica and the new angel depart, Monica reminds Sarah that she is a child of God and will always be loved by Him and she will be a wonderful mother one day. With a renewed hope for the future, Sarah tearfully removes the genetic material and disposes it.
23 "Netherlands" Kevin Dowling Martha Williamson & Luke Schelhaas May 6, 2001 (2001-05-06) (CBS)
Monica works with the newly created Angel (Valerie Bertinelli), who has yet to be named, trying to explain what it means to work with human beings and the rewards of helping them connect with God. The Angel is apprehensive, wondering why Monica chooses to stay on Earth after experiencing the wonder of being in God's presence. Monica explains that she stays because God asks her to, and because He loves them. But the Angel doesn't know what love is. Monica's first priority is finding the Angel a pair of eyeglasses to correct her blurred vision and trade in her angel garb for human clothes. After doing so, Monica shares her appreciation of different coffees with the Angel when a young girl named Madeline (Madison McReynolds) approaches. Madeline explains that she comes to this business complex with her mother who's looking for work. The Angel befriends Madeline and offers to fix her mechanical toy dog. Before long, Madeline is braiding her hair and discerning the angel's name to be "Gloria" from the hymn "Angels We Have Heard On High." Tess explains that Gloria has a very quick mind, but Monica will have to show her how to use her heart. But all that changes when a building explodes in front of their very eyes, as they watch not just one, but many angels of death, arrive on the scene. Monica is suddenly struck by the large scale tragedy before her, and feels unprepared to show Gloria how to use her heart only to be broken. Andrew arrives on the scene and explains that he just took Madeline's mother to Heaven. Gloria helps emergency crews pinpoint Madeline's location based upon the trajectory of her mechanical dog. While Monica leaves her post, Tess assigns Gloria to sit with Madeline who now lies unconscious in the hospital. Gloria is at a loss as to what to do, so Tess suggests she sing to her. Nearby, an older man waits beside his wife of forty years who is also seriously injured, offering her a glimpse of what love is. When Madeline regains consciousness, he suggests Gloria tell her a story to keep her awake. But Gloria is at a loss, unfamiliar with how to use her imagination. As Monica walks along the highway, a charismatic man in a black Mercedes offers to give her a lift. But Monica recognizes this is no ordinary mortal, but Satan (Mandy Patinkin), who has taken on human form to tempt Monica. He preys on Monica at her most vulnerable moment, whose faith in human love has been shattered by the bombing, a reminder of all that's wrong with humankind. The driver taps into Monica's belief that perhaps she could succeed where they have failed. He shows her what life would be like if she were human, with a husband and two beautiful children and another on the way. The moment is intoxicating, even for an angel. The driver makes an eloquent appeal, promising to be there for Monica when she falls, leading her to the precipice. But at the last moment, Monica asks God to forgive her. Her prayer is answered and she is transformed, her faith renewed. Monica resumes her post as Gloria's mentor. Gloria is concerned that she lacks imagination, but Monica assures her that among angels, truth is better. Monica explains to Madeline that her mother is in Heaven with God, and that soon, she will be reunited with her. Gloria sits with Madeline until Andrew comes for her, and sheds her very first tear, a sign that Monica has done her job and that Gloria has learned how to use her heart.
24 "Shallow Water (1)" Peter H. Hunt Burt Pearl May 13, 2001 (2001-05-13) (CBS)
Perched on a rocky peak above a vast canyon, Monica reflects on her previous temptation by Satan and her triumphant return to God’s grace. Monica is at a loss for words trying to describe the new gift God has given her. Tess explains that God has blessed her with the ability to see humans “from the inside out,” to see the past and how it has changed the present. Monica begins sensing the joyful sounds and images of the Winslow family as they were three years ago. Tess reminds Monica to patiently allow the events connected with the wreckage to unfold. Monica gradually retraces the history of the Winslow’s to the present day. Meanwhile, Diana Winslow (Delta Burke) continues her therapy under the counsel of psychiatrist Rebecca Markham (Faye Dunaway), to uncover the painful memory she has suppressed. Diana says she has prayed for an angel to help her reunite her family and reconnect her son Danny (Cameron Bowen) with the other relatives. Believing that Diana’s faith in God has hampered her progress, Rebecca tries to refocus Diana on the events leading to her memory lapse. Diana fondly recalls the last time the family toured and how they worked on the song “Shallow Water,” composed by her talented brother-in-law Jed (Randy Travis). Diana confesses that the beginning of the family breakup was caused by her headstrong father-in-law’s Carter (David Canary) refusal to allow Jed to sing his song, preferring his more charismatic son, Joshua (John Schneider). When Monica shockingly discovers the truth of the tragic accident, she goes to see Diana. Diana introduces Monica as the angel she has been praying for. Rebecca is indifferent to Monica’s presence, believing that she is just a concerned friend. Diana continues her recollection of the past, describing how she conspired for Jed to sing “Shallow Water” without Carter’s permission. Despite the audience’s praise, Carter was unable to forgive the deception and directed his anger at Jed. Jed’s refusal to board the bus to the next city on tour is the last thing Diana can remember and it is the impasse that Rebecca has not been able to help Diana cross. Rebecca privately suggests to Monica that a reunion with Jedidiah will help Diana overcome her denial of the traumatic experience. Monica agrees with Rebecca and follows her investigation to Jed’s whereabouts in Georgia. Tess and Monica are surprised to find out that the man they have tracked down is not Diana’s brother-in-law, but an African-American preacher with the same name. Believing that the journey has not been an accident, Monica convinces the preacher and his sister, Cynthia (Nell Carter), to return with her to see Diana. Cynthia is shocked to discover that Diana, a patient at a mental health facility, believes her son is still alive and continues to be at her side.
25 "Shallow Water (2)" Peter H. Hunt Martha Williamson & Burt Pearl May 20, 2001 (2001-05-20) (CBS)
Cynthia (Nell Carter) and J.D. (Keb' Mo') meet with Diana Winslow, who is still in denial that her son, Danny (Cameron Bowen), is dead. Monica goes to the long-term acute care center where Carter (David Canary) and Lila (Rue McClanahan) wait with their son, Joshua (John Schneider), who lies unconscious on life support. Monica hopes that they might be able to help her locate their other son, Jed (Randy Travis), in order to help Diana remember what happened the night of the accident. Carter doesn't know where Jed is and wants nothing to do with him. But Lila feels differently and admits that perhaps Diana is right that this family needs a reunion. Acting on a tip from Lila, Monica drives J.D. and Cynthia to Memphis in search of Jed. They follow the sound of a man singing until they finally find Jed on a street corner, dirty and disheveled, some spare change in his guitar case from passersby. Monica asks J.D. to convince Jed to return home to Nashville and begin the healing process. J.D. tells Monica he's no good at preaching, but Monica tells him to reach out to Jed through music. As Dr. Markham (Faye Dunaway) predicated, when Diana sees Jed for the first time since the accident, the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place. Dr. Markham facilitates as Diana remembers the accident. In flashback, we see Diana awaken to find the bus has crossed the yellow center line into oncoming traffic. She shouts to awaken the driver who has fallen asleep at the wheel, but he doesn't respond. The others awaken, horrified, as the bus plunges over the embankment and sinks into the lake. Dr. Markham helps Diana stay with the moment as she cradles her son Danny's lifeless body in her arms. Diana returns to her son's gravesite with her family where she is finally able to acknowledge his death and say goodbye. Jed speaks with his mother and admits that while he never stopped believing in God, he feels further away than ever. Privately, Dr. Markham tells Monica that she feels that Diana needs to overcome her "God obsession" in order to fully recover. Dr. Markham helps Diana begin dealing with her grief, but warns her against trying to do too much too soon. But Diana is determined to bring her family together and assures Dr. Markham that she may have lost her mind, but she never lost her faith. Diana tries to get Carter to agree to a family reunion, but he refuses to leave Joshua's bedside. But Diana won't give up, urging him to forgive Jed and to let go of Joshua. Monica reveals herself as an angel and explains that while Josh is brain-dead, his spirit is alive. One by one, Josh (in spirit) tells his family what they need to know to let go and move on with their lives. Monica tells Carter that after singing about revival for the past thirty-five years, the time has come to live it. The Winslow's return to the lake where it all began and Jed and Carter make their peace. Carter admits that deep down, he blames himself for the accident, because he lost his temper and made them drive all night. J.D. then takes his cue from Jed to re-baptize the family in the lake. The family then gathers to take Joshua off life support as Andrew escorts him to Heaven. As Monica and Dr. Markham part ways, Dr. Markham acknowledges the possibility that she, too, has grown from this experience.
[edit] Season 8

The eighth season aired September 29, 2001 through May 11, 2002. This season is also Valerie Bertinelli's first full season as Gloria, the new angel.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "Holy of Holies" Bethany Rooney Martha Williamson, Burt Pearl & Luke Schelhaas September 29, 2001 (2001-09-29) (CBS)
Andrew pays a visit to Catherine (Julianna McCarthy), an 88-year-old woman who lost her husband in WWII. She has since lost her youth as well as her faith in her children and grandchildren. All except for one that is: her grandson, Paul (R.D. Robb). She shows Andrew a copy of the Memoirs of Nehemiah, an ancient document pointing out the hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant. After this revelation, she secures his promise to take it to the post office and ship it to Paul, who is away at school. Meanwhile, Tess, Monica, and Gloria are floating around Paul’s campus eager to get started on their next assignment. Andrew arrives and tells them what he saw. Gloria masquerades as a student to infiltrate Paul’s history class. Here, she meets Thomas (William Russ), a history professor with a zeal for Ark-lore. Later on Paul stops by Thomas’ office with the Memoirs of Nehemiah. He thinks it might “be something important”, because his grandfather traveled extensively in the Middle East during the war. Thomas assures him that it’s nothing, but becomes a bundle of excitement the moment Paul leaves. At a faculty party that evening, Monica poses as one of the people who gave Thomas his book grant. Thomas is furious. He can’t show her anything of his book, because he spent all of the money and time devoted to it, on yet another trip to find the Ark. Gloria crashes the party, and eagerly gives Thomas a hint about the Ark that she found in the Bible. Now Thomas has all of the pieces. He immediately plans another trip to the Temple Mount, which Monica talks her way into being a part of. Gloria and Andrew will tag along. Later, at the base of Mount Nebo, Thomas uses all of his clues to pinpoint the location the correct cave. Andrew remains at base camp while the others continue on. At the entrance to the cave, they encounter Micah (Roy Dotrice), who bids them “Stop in the name of Almighty God!” Thomas draws a concealed pistol, and threatens to shoot Micah. Micah backs off. They continue on, but Gloria breaks her glasses and is forced to stay behind with Micah. Monica and Thomas continue on, leaping obstacles and squeezing through cracks, until they are forced into some running water deep underground. Thomas loses his compass, but insists that they go on. Meanwhile, Gloria tells Micah of what is going on in the world, and he teaches her to sing. Back in the caves, Thomas reveals the real reason for his obsession. He was looking for the Ark years before, his wife came to visit, and she died in a cab crash on the way to the airport. He must find the Ark so that her death will have meant something. They come to what appears to be a dead end, but Thomas finds an inscription, which Monica translates as “You are standing on Holy Ground”. Thomas gets very excited, throws down his equipment, and begins to hack away at the wall with his pickaxe. Thomas breaks through to discover a veil obscuring an altar on which the Ark sits. Micah is there with a sword, he reveals himself as an Angel set to guard the Ark. He turns to Monica, who is gone. When he turns back to Micah; Gloria, Monica, Tess, and Andrew are at his side. They all glow, and begin a revelation. They tell him what the Ark means, and why it is hidden, and that the time isn’t right for it to be taken from this place. If he wants the vessel of the Lord, he already has it, because He travels in our hearts. Thomas rails against them. The Ark begins to glow, and the Light is the love of God. Thomas is a changed man. He returns home, content, and tells Paul that his Grandmother sent him a treasure.
2 "The Perfect Game" Frank E. Johnson Glenn Berenbeim October 6, 2001 (2001-10-06) (CBS)
Ben McCloud (Omar Gooding), ace pitcher for the AAA Richmond Braves, is on his way to the Major Leagues. His biggest obstacle is his father, Norm (Ernie Hudson). Norm is constantly critical of Ben’s performance, including a two-hit shut-out. He wants so much for his son to make it to the Majors that he will except nothing short of perfection. He wants Ben to succeed where he failed though he is, in effect, pushing his son down the same path that ended his career. He is constantly embarrassing his son in front of the other players, and Ben is approaching a breaking point. Monica comes on board as the team’s new trainer, allowing Ben to vent some of his frustrations, something he desperately needs. His father will not listen to him, and if he knew, would prevent him from visiting his grandfather, Candy (Lee Weaver), a great ballplayer in his own time. Norm’s drive is all encompassing, he treats his son as little more than an avenue to success, and his own father as a pathetic liar. He is unable to accept his father’s old story of pitching a perfect game and the even more legendary feat of striking out Babe Ruth. Now he doesn’t even see his father, having abandoned him years before to a life of loneliness and an eventual stroke. Later on, while Ben is pitching a perfect game of his own, Monica and the Angels take Ben and Norm into Candy’s memory to reconcile the debate surrounding “the perfect game.” Tess shows them all how the game began, how Candy pitched, how the Babe was defeated, and how anger and pride led a promising pitcher to a life as a baseball clown. With the memory played out, sons forgive fathers, fathers embrace sons, and Ben’s perfect game resumes as though he never left it. He finishes the game allowing no hits, walks or errors, and with his family finally together, he embarks on what will be a promising career in the majors.
3 "The Birthday Present" Peter H. Hunt R.J. Colleary October 13, 2001 (2001-10-13) (CBS)
When a cancer patient is taken by Andrew, Gloria’s curiosity about death is piqued. Monica suggests she take a “ride-along” with Andrew. Meanwhile, Robby McGregor (Michael Welch) locks his sister Sarah (Skye McCole Bartusiak) in a bomb shelter to protect her from their abusive father. He then returns the key to his father’s key-chain. Later on, mailman Chuck Parker (Kirk Cameron) comes upon the McGregor house. Robby answers Chuck’s “easy” baseball trivia question, then asks about a special package he is expecting. Chuck hasn’t seen it, but assures Robby that he’ll keep an eye out. Robby’s father, Gary (James MacDonald), hollers for him to “Get in here!”. Robby does, and Chuck gets back into his truck, only to discover the package. Chuck hurries up to the door, but before he can knock , he hears an argument. At the sound of a slap, and Robby’s “Ow!”, Chuck rings the doorbell. When Gary answers, Chuck presents the package and insists that Robby sign for it himself. Gary refuses, so Chuck leaves. Gary demands to know what’s in the package, Robby says “I can’t…it’s your birthday present.” This changes Gary’s attitude, and he goes to buy Chinese food for dinner, but not before Robby can once again steal the key to the bomb shelter. With Gary gone, Robby frees Sarah from her hiding place. Chuck meets Grams’ new nurse, Monica. Monica leads Grams (Gloria Stuart) to her room, and is surprised to find Gloria and Andrew waiting. This is part of the “ride-along”. Andrew takes Grams Home. Across town, Gary is drunk again, so Robby hurries Sarah back into the bomb shelter where she meets an angel, Tess. Chuck, overcome with grief, delivers Robby’s package: it’s a gun. He loads it and tells Sarah that everything will be okay. Robby puts the gun back in the box and hides it under his bed. But, before he can return the key, Gary wakes up and demands to know where he’s hiding Sarah. Robby refuses and hides in his room. Robby aims the gun at the door, while Andrew and Gloria watch unseen. Robby decides he can’t do it, and returns the gun to its box. When Gary gets into the room, Robby runs. He hides the box in a bush and takes off. Robby rushes into the street in front of Chuck’s car. Chuck accidentally hits and kills Robby. The next day he shows up with a casserole that Gary chucks into the yard. While retrieving it, Chuck finds the gun. He takes it home and contemplates suicide in the garage. The angels have a revelation and Chuck recants, God gave him the gun to save Robby’s sister. Meanwhile, Gary has found the key amongst Robby’s personal effects. He opens the bomb shelter and yells for Sarah to come out. Tess confronts him, and Chuck arrives with the box. He shows the gun to Gary so he knows how bad it had gotten. Sarah confirms their fears and Gary crumbles. Officer Dave (Benito Martinez) arrests him. Chuck agrees to stay with Sarah until she finds a new home.
4 "Manhunt" Victor Lobl Danna Doyle October 20, 2001 (2001-10-20) (CBS)
The Angels go to Happy Hour at The Monte Carlo, a bar run by one of Tess’s former assignments. It is here that Monica learns that Zoe (Sarah Paulson), a girl she saw earlier in the park, is her assignment. Zoe is lonely, heartbroken, and trying to come to terms with the end of a relationship with a great guy, Jeff (Chrisopher Jacobs). Her friends, Patty, Penny (Connie Young), and Maggie (Jennifer Leigh Warren), try to cheer her up and help her “Get over him.” The next day at work, Monica is hired to take over for Patty, who quit her job to get married. As the day progresses, Gloria arrives to fix all of the office computers, and Billy (Christopher Wiehl), an RDS delivery guy shows up with some packages. During his time in the office, his attention is solely focused on Zoe. Monica immediately notices the attraction, though Zoe is oblivious. Billy leaves and the girls go about their day eagerly awaiting Happy Hour. The clock strikes six, and they all hurry off to the Ladies room to get dolled up. Billy arrives with some apple strudel for Zoe. When he is unable to find her, Monica tells him that she will be at The Monte Carlo later on, if he wanted to show up. Billy’s not sure, but he says he’ll think about it. Monica joins the girls in the ladies room, and both she and Gloria are forcibly made-over with make-up, and high heels. At the Monte Carlo, Tess and Andrew, hang out at the bar with Betty (Debbie Reynolds), the owner. The girls arrive and take a seat at their usual table. Penny waits nervously for her blind date while Zoe continues to pine over Jeff. Surprisingly Jeff shows up with a rose, but the rose is yellow, and he’s only trying to make a gesture toward their lasting friendship. He leaves, and Zoe struggles to regain control over her emotions. Penny’s date arrives, and she heads off to another table with him. Billy arrives, looking completely different out of uniform, and hangs out at the bar afraid to approach Zoe. Andrew moves over to him, and with the help of Betty, convinces him to take a chance. The girls spot him talking to Andrew, and are surprised when Monica speculates on the object of Billy’s affection. Billy approaches the table and asks Zoe to dance. She accepts and they get to know each other better on the dance floor. It is soon obvious that Billy is a wonderful guy, and that he’s crazy about Zoe. After a while, he has to leave. He gives her a parting kiss and heads for the door, Andrew offers to walk out with him. Zoe is very happy. The next day at work, Zoe goes about her day trying to stay focused on the job and not her memories of the previous night. After a while she begins to doubt Billy’s feelings because he hasn’t shown up with his deliveries yet. Finally an RDS delivery guy shows up but it’s not Billy. Zoe demands to know where he is. The delivery guy, Dave, tells her that on his way into work, Billy was killed by a drunk driver. Zoe is devastated. She heads to The Monte Carlo to drink away her sorrows. While she’s at the bar, a sleazy guy, Peter (Scott Reeves), continues to hit on her until she agrees to go home with him. Monica and Andrew arrive and stop her. Monica reveals that she is an angel, and that God loves her and loves Billy, and it broke His heart just like it broke hers. Monica assures her that love doesn’t need to be saved for just one person, that you can love someone while they are there and that’s enough. She tells Zoe that Billy died with no regrets because he told her how he felt. All that Zoe has to do is look to God, and listen for His answers, because He created love, and He is love.
5 "Chutzpah" Frank E. Johnson Allen Estrin & Joseph Telushkin October 27, 2001 (2001-10-27) (CBS)

After Monica leaves Gloria alone at a Portland bus stop, Gloria learns about Jewish people from three white power skinheads. A short time after that, Gloria meets Sam Silverstein (David Margulies). Sam is a sofer, a Jewish man who hand-makes the Torah, the holy scripture. Sam is amazed that Gloria does not know the truth about the holocaust and encourages her to learn about it. Monica gets a job at the Portland Daily News as an editorial writer, where she works with Sam’s daughter, Rachel “Silver.” Rachel (Meredith Scott Lynn) is the paper’s editorial cartoonist but her job is in jeopardy because it isn’t edgy enough. Monica also notices Rachel’s extensive collection of cartoons depicting her father and the Jewish faith in unflattering light. When Rachel invites Monica over to the family dinner to be her “human shield” Monica quickly learns how deep the wounds are between Sam and Rachel. The next day, Rachel puts one of the “personal jabs” in the paper and immediately her panel, “Chutzpah!” is the hit of Portland. She is thrilled that now she even receives fan mail. However, as her popularity grows, so do the number of Jewish people she offends. Monica writes an editorial criticizing her cartoon and the local rabbi asks Sam to stop Rachel.

God reveals to Monica the key turning point in Sam and Rachel’s relationship: when Rachel was 9 years old, she wrote and colored a Torah on construction paper and presented it to her father. Sam, being determined to follow the letter of the law, chastised Rachel by saying “There are no pictures in the Torah, and besides, girls are not allowed make them.” Now, the rift has gotten so deep between them that Sam leads a protest of “Chutzpah!” in front of The Portland Daily News and disowns his daughter on the evening news.

The next day, Gloria goes to the Holocaust museum and discovers the truth of the atrocity. She is humbled that Sam did not get angry at her ignorance, but encouraged her to seek the truth. She goes to Sam to make a personal apology to him for the offensive things she said to him at the bus stop. At the same time, Rachel receives a call from a reader who tells her that she “won’t have to worry about that protester” after tonight. When Sam and Gloria arrive at the synagogue, they discover the three skinheads vandalizing the place. Then the vandals turn their bats and knives on Sam and Gloria, however, Gloria reveals herself as an angel, “God made me, He made you, He made Sam. He made us all, He’s the Father of us all…that makes this man your brother, not your enemy!” The skinheads are incredulous and then threaten Gloria, but at that moment Andrew appears among them and addresses the neo-Nazi skinheads. He tells them to turn from their anger before it’s too late. He also tells them that they will get caught and pay the price for their crimes. As they try and escape, the police arrive and arrest them, but the damage has been done; they destroyed the synagogue’s Torah and have beaten Sam, breaking both of his hands.
Monica and Rachel arrive and find Sam crumpled on the floor. Rachel realizes that her personal attacks on him and the Jewish people was the catalyst for these attacks. She and Sam reconcile and ask forgiveness for the years of hostile pride. Sam, with his hands still bandaged, happily lets Rachel help him complete the family Torah in the front of everyone in the synagogue on the Sabbath.
6 "Famous Last Words" Peter H. Hunt Brian Bird November 3, 2001 (2001-11-03) (CBS)
Monica and Gloria breeze into Carlisle, Arizona in search of a cup of coffee, and the Famous Last Words of a death row inmate. Posing as an author, Monica steps into the Oasis diner, where she meets Shirlee (Veronica Cartwright), a waitress with a nice smile and a strange fascination with the families that come to see their relatives die by lethal injection. Meanwhile, across the street, convicted killer Daniel Lee Corbitt (Sean Patrick Flanery) is trying to stay tough on the eve of his own execution. He brags about the fame that will come with his death, and about the “book writer” who’s coming to see him. What Daniel didn’t count on was the arrival of Andrew, his own personal angel of Death, who has come to see him through the final thirty-six hours of his life. When Monica arrives in the prison with her assistant, Gloria, Daniel is only too eager to ignore Andrew and continue upon his quest for immortality through a tell-all biography. He happily relates his history and the events that led up to him returning home, after years on the street, to shoot his Mother’s third husband seven times in the chest. Monica watches the memory as Daniel shoots him dead, and calls out “That cost you seven old man!” Gloria asks about Daniel’s mother, but he admits that he hasn’t seen in her in years. Monica offers to search for her, and Daniel gives her what information he can. He tells Monica that his mother went by her middle name “Shirlee with two e’s,” and that she may also be using her married name “Gibbons.” Monica and Gloria realize that Shirlee, the waitress from the Oasis is indeed Daniel’s mother. After a confrontation with Shirlee, Monica is finally able to convince her to go and see Daniel. When she does, Daniel surprises them all by his treatment of Shirlee. He rails and screams at her and says that the only love and comfort he ever received was from Alonzo his childhood Teddy bear. He says that it is Alonzo and not Shirlee that he wants in the witness chair to his execution. Shirlee is shattered by Daniel’s words, and runs from the confrontation. Daniel tells Monica how when he finally did run away, it was because he realized that Shirlee had been planning his beatings with her husband, Delroy (Mark Rolston). Monica goes to comfort Shirlee while Andrew tries to dissuade Daniel from meeting his death with harsh thoughts and harsh words. Andrew tells him that he need only ask forgiveness of God, and he will be accepted into heaven. Back at the diner, Monica discovers that Shirlee didn’t plan Daniel’s beatings, instead she pleaded with Delroy to let her take some of the whacks in his place. Daniel received seven lashes, but Shirlee took thirteen. Monica reveals herself as an angel and tells Shirlee that God does not hold her responsible for the sins of her son, and that she may have made mistakes but she tried and that is what matters. When Monica brings Shirlee to the execution, the finality of the moment and the intervention of angels, allow mother and son to forgive and love each other.
7 "Most Likely to Succeed" Stuart Margolin Burt Pearl November 10, 2001 (2001-11-10) (CBS)
Dennis Loggins (Christopher Daniel Barnes) is a young multi-billionaire. He’s become a success, he’s gotten in shape, he’s spent years improving himself, and he’s done it all for the love of a good woman. Or so he tells himself. The fact is that Dennis has engineered this façade of confidence and importance solely as a means for revenge. In high school Dennis was a nerd with a crush on the head cheerleader, Melissa (Jennifer Morrison). Due to her kindness and attention, Dennis’s crush transformed into unrequited love. To make matters worse, he was constantly tormented and humiliated by Ricky (Dylan Bruno), Melissa’s boyfriend. On one memorable occasion, Ricky tricked Dennis into admitting his love for Melissa over a live microphone at the football game. Dennis never got over the humiliation, despite Melissa’s assurance that he needn’t worry. Now years later, Dennis is a success, and is eager to return Ricky’s slights ten-fold. He hires Gloria on as an assistant specifically to find out what football team Ricky is playing for, and to help Dennis re-plan the ten-year high school reunion. Moving the gathering to a much more glamorous location, and bringing Gloria as his “date”, Dennis waits eagerly for the payoff of his plans. He has bought the football team that Ricky plays for, and has arranged for a phone call to be made a minute before the crowning of the King and Queen of the reunion, to tell Ricky that he’s fired. When Ricky arrives, it’s obvious that he’s changed. He apologizes to Dennis for the grief he gave him in high school, and congratulates him on his success. Ricky is nonplussed, but is so wrapped up in the pending arrival of Melissa, that he all but ignores the change. When Melissa shows up it’s more than obvious that she too is different. She’s dying of cancer. Dennis is blown away, he stands with his jaw hanging open as Ricky hurries to Melissa’s side and lovingly leads her through the gathering. Dennis goes over to her and they talk for a while, she tells him how her illness has changed Ricky into a warm, caring, compassionate man. Dennis instantly regrets his plotting and scheming, and hurries inside to swipe Ricky’s cell phone, before the call arrives. He makes it just in time, and Melissa and Ricky take the stage as King and Queen of the reunion. Toby Keith hired by Dennis as part of the night’s festivities takes the stage to perform “My List”.
8 "Heaven's Portal" Bethany Rooney Glenn Berenbeim November 24, 2001 (2001-11-24) (CBS)
Nick Albright (Ross Malinger) is having a difficult time adjusting to the changes in his family. His dad’s business is going under, his parents are splitting up, and on top of that it looks like there may not even be a Thanksgiving. It is all of this and Nick’s curiosity that lead him to make a terrible decision. After an attempt at family counseling with Monica, a failed reunion between his parents, and the constant babysitting of Gloria, Nick plans to sneak out. He wants to find the peace, love, unity, and respect that is missing from his home life, at a Thanksgiving Rave called Heaven’s Portal. Gloria is not about to let him go, but as she can’t seem to stop him, she decides to come along instead. At the rave, they meet Celestine (Ange Billman) and Grover, a couple of ravers who tell them about how “we’re all family”. Inside, they dance to the techno beat and are offered ecstasy, a drug that will bring them closer to God. Nick is eager to try it, and Gloria is intrigued with the idea of “prayer in pill form”. Having both taken the pills, their high starts out well, but soon they are freaking out. When Monica and Jessica (Stephanie Zimbalist) arrive looking for them, the juvenile and angel delinquents run. They get into Nick’s car and speed away. Eventually they’re cornered at a cliff overlooking the sunrise. Nick decides that he wants to drive off the edge, but Gloria pushes him out of the car at the last minute. As Gloria plummets to what Nick believes to be her death, Monica reveals herself to Nick and his parents. She says that Gloria is fine. She also tells them that the secret of a strong family is the simple act of loving and believing in each other.
9 "When Sunny Gets Blue" Frank E. Johnson Jason Jersey December 1, 2001 (2001-12-01) (CBS)
Mike (Zachary Quinto) is a young man trying to discover the truth about his father. All that his mother, Allison (Annie Corley), ever told him was that he was a lawyer and that he left. She refuses to tell him anything more, and gets upset when Mike announces his transfer to a building site near her parking enforcement patrol. She encourages him to quit the job and go to college and to stop listening to all that jazz. Mike just smiles and shakes his head. Later on at the construction site, Monica shows up as a building inspector and asks Andrew, the foreman, for some building permits. He doesn’t have them, but assures her that they have been pulled. Monica suggests that they use the internet coffee house to check online. Andrew sends Mike to help her. On their way into the coffee shop they pass by Gloria who is selling record albums from a sidewalk booth. Inside, Monica shows him how to find things on the net. He asks can she find people? Monica doesn’t see why not, so she begins a search for a lawyer named Simon K. Miller, Mike’s father. Mike goes outside to look at Gloria’s records, then Monica comes out with bad news, she can’t find Simon K. Miller. Tess, also looking at the records, asks Gloria where she saw that name. Then she remembers and produces an old jazz album featuring Simon K. and the Chattanooga Express. Simon is amazed and goes inside to play the record on the Juke Box. Once the record gets going, a local homeless man comes in and grabs it, saying it’s his record. It’s him (John Savage). Mike has found his father, but Simon gets scared and runs. When confronted, Allison admits that Simon was a musician, but she says that that is why he left them. Mike tries to track him down, but soon discovers that not only is Simon homeless, but he’s also suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He finds Simon and takes him home, much to Allison’s agitation. Simon refuses to take his medicine, and in the midst of one of his hallucinations, sets fire to Mike’s room. He runs. When they finally find him again, it takes the angels to bring him out of his delusion state and into the arms of his family, who will see that he gets the help he needs.
10 "Angels Anonymous" Larry Peerce R.J. Colleary December 15, 2001 (2001-12-15) (CBS)
The angels lure a group of former classmates and their significant others to a run down bar and restaurant called “Bubba’s Polynesian Paradise”. Andrew, acting as a marriage counselor, sends Yvette (A.J. Johnson) and Peter (Erik King) there when they have trouble talking about anything but work. Monica catches the eye of Michael (Chris Potter), a lonely paramedic, and leads him on a wild goose chase ending at Bubba’s. Tess sends Leigh (Leila Kenzle) and her “I’m the boss” husband Jimmy (Geoffrey Blake) to the dive in order to squeeze lunch into their thoroughly planned outing. And Karen (Molly Hagan), a lawyer who has lost her sense of purpose, is stranded in the Polynesian nightmare when a bad client, a flat tire, and returning angel Rafael (Alexis Cruz) combine to alter her day. As they become aware of each other and gravitate toward a single table, they catch up on the years gone by, and make the startling discovery that their former teacher Dave Price (Hal Linden) is bussing their table. Dave denies his identity at first, hating what he’s become, and despising what he is about to do. He has agreed to help Bubba (Jack McGee), the owner, burn the place down in exchange for a chunk of the insurance money. He figures if he can dodge his students and forget the good man he used to be, he’ll be able to go through with the arson. But after some prodding by Gloria, Dave admits who he is and how he got there. Soon the former students teach the teacher about life, and tell him of the differences he made in theirs. Dave tells Bubba he won’t do it, and reconciles with himself and his past. The meeting puts balance back into Leigh’s marriage, gives Yvette and Peter something to talk about, and reconciles lost lovers Michael and Karen. Everyone is better off from their visit to Bubba’s and none of them knew the part the angels played in their lives.
11 "A Winter Carol" Victor Lobl Martha Williamson & Burt Pearl December 16, 2001 (2001-12-16) (CBS)
In a small New York town, just a short commute from NYC, a lone Volkswagen Beetle sits abandoned in the train station parking lot. It hasn’t moved in months, not since its owner, Bill Harper, took the 6:15 train into the city on the morning of September 11th. No one knows why he went to New York that day, and no one knows what became of him. It just makes it that much more difficult for his friends and neighbors to accept that Bill Harper will not be home for Christmas. This year Mr. Harper will not be around to plan the Christmas Pageant, or to give drum lessons to Benny Lewis (JB Gaynor). Benny however, refuses to give up hope, everyday checking to see if Mr. Harper’s car has moved, or if anyone has gotten word from him. But Benny’s fear for Mr. Harper is nothing compared to the fear that has consumed his mother, Victoria (Blair Brown), since that awful day. She, as mayor, refuses to have the Volkswagen towed despite the persistence of Charlie (Brian Howe), the town sheriff. She is reluctant to let someone else work on the pageant, and she refuses to go into the city to have her chronic sore throat looked at. Her older son, Patrick (Gregory Smith) urges her to abandon her fear, but she dismisses his concern. Her only desire is to move on with the Holidays and pretend that nothing is wrong. In an effort to keep things moving along, she grudgingly let’s Monica, who has opened a Christmas store on Main St., begin planning a pageant. She hires Andrew to continue Benny’s drum lessons, and she is overjoyed when Patrick begins working at Monica’s store in place of the restaurant job he was laid off of. When they receive word that Mr. Harper’s wallet had been found among the wreckage of the World Trade Center, everything falls apart: Benny takes the news hard, Victoria refuses to let grief overtake her, and Patrick decides that something must be done to make his family feel safe again. In an act of selflessness, Patrick goes into the city, and enlists in the army. He is set to leave for boot camp the day after Christmas. Victoria has difficulty accepting this decision, and accuses her son of abandoning her and his brother. The next day, she accompanies Charlie to Mr. Harper’s house, where she discovers that Benny has been leaving hopeful messages on his teacher’s answering machine, ever since 9/11. She also uncovers some clues as to what Mr. Harper was doing at the World Trade Center, and what he was planning for the pageant. After a revelation from Monica, and allowing herself to finally mourn, Victoria takes the train into New York City, and solves the mystery surrounding Mr. Harper’s last day. Picking up where he left off, she arranges for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to sing at the pageant, where she wishes her son good luck, and God Speed.
12 "The Last Chapter" Ricardo Mendez Matta Martha Williamson January 12, 2002 (2002-01-12) (CBS)
Monica revisits the home of Elizabeth Jessup (Phylicia Rashad), a retired reporter who she once helped cope with alcoholism. Tess insists that Monica is there as the answer to someone’s prayer. Monica hurries up the steps to offer Elizabeth whatever help she may need, only to discover that her help is not only unwanted, but resented. Elizabeth wants nothing to do with the angel that once helped her out. Monica shows up at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where Elizabeth is celebrating seven years of sobriety. In the midst of her speech, she begins to slur her words, insisting that she hasn’t been drinking, it’s just a headache. After the meeting, Monica meets up with her and her daughter, Sydney (Erica Gimpel) and granddaughter, Beth (Lauren Robinson). Monica expresses her concern and Elizabeth says that she’s developed a tendency for transient cognitive episodes of undetermined origin. Sydney explains that the doctors suspect a brain tumor. Later on, Monica reads Elizabeth’s memoirs, and asks why there is no mention of the fire Elizabeth started at the peak of her problem, or why she doesn’t say anything about angels. Elizabeth tells Monica she’d be laughed out of the news business if she wrote about meeting an angel. That evening, Elizabeth passes out and is taken to the hospital. Once she comes to, she is eager to get out, but Sydney won’t let her, and neither will Monica, nor Tess who is working as a nurse. As the night goes by and Elizabeth waits for the results of her test, Monica tells her of some of her favorite and most challenging assignments. Finally, Andrew enters with the news, it’s a brain tumor. She schedules the surgery and sits down with Gloria to finish her memoirs, “before it’s too late.” The next day, while Elizabeth is in surgery, Monica reads the last chapter to Sydney and Beth. This time Elizabeth tells the truth about the fire, and of how she beat alcoholism. When the story ends, so does the surgery, and Elizabeth is going to be all right.
13 "Ship-in-a-Bottle" Armand Mastroianni Rita Russell January 26, 2002 (2002-01-26) (CBS)
Tevis Lockwood (Mikelti Williamson) is starting a new life with his daughters, Ashley (Arreale Davis) and Jasmine (Aysia Polk). Leaving behind the sun and heat of Los Angeles, they move to the cold and rainy Seattle suburbs so Tevis can take control of a large shipping company. His daughters are not overly enthused about the move, particularly Jasmine who fears that the cold and rain will bring illness with it. As they set about unpacking and arranging the new house, Jasmine is increasingly worried about the weather and the effects it might have on she and Ashley. Monica arrives as part of the transition team for the shipping company and with Gloria’s help, looks after the girls while Tevis gets situated at work. Tevis arrives at the office pleased with his new station in life and eager to make an impression on the world. When he finds the reception desk empty, Tess shows up with a resume and answers the phone for him. Impressed by her initiative, Tevis hires her on the spot, not a moment before Joaquin (Rene Moreno), the real receptionist arrives. Joaquin explains that his doctor’s appointment ran late and that it won’t happen again. Tevis agrees and fires him. Later on, at home, Ashley begins coughing. Tevis, panicked, and fearful for her health rushes her to the emergency room, where she is diagnosed with the same stomach flu as all of the other patients. She is released despite Tevis’s protestations that her sickle cell anemia makes this particular flu a more serious illness. Once home though, her flu goes from bad to worse, and she is in the midst of a sickle-cell crisis. Tevis, no longer trusting the local doctors, insists on taking her all the way into Seattle to the Sickle Cell Clinic. He refuses to wait for an ambulance. Halfway to the clinic, Ashley dies. After the funeral, Jasmine is still having a hard time accepting her loss. Tevis on the other hand doesn’t have time to feel the pain, he’s too busy trying to inflict it on others. He hires Andrew to sue the hospital and the doctor who treated Ashley for malpractice and wrongful death. As a result of his drive to go on, Tevis pushes his other daughter away when she needs comfort the most. Finally Jasmine runs away, without a coat unmindful of the weather and her own sickle-cell. Monica and Gloria are pretty sure they know where she’s gone. Jasmine sits on her sister’s grave trying to make sense of the changes in her life, when Andrew appears and assures her that both her sister and her late mother are in a place of peace and happiness. He tells her that she needs to live without fear, to be more than just Tevis’s daughter or Ashley’s sister. She needs to live as Jasmine. When Tevis arrives, it’s his turn for a revelation, and Monica offers one. He needs to stop trying to control every aspect of his life, because its just not possible, he needs to trust in others to do their part, and mostly he needs to trust in God to look after everyone. Tevis’s drive to succeed is a virtue, but not at the cost of his faith, and not at the cost of his family. If he doesn’t take the time to live, he’s not really accomplishing anything.
14 "The Blue Angel" Larry Peerce Glenn Berenbeim February 2, 2002 (2002-02-02) (CBS)
From being televised at the 1939 World’s Fair, to finishing out his days as the director of a community access station in South Bend, Indiana; Max Blandish (Ernest Borgnine) has run the spectrum of television’s growth. Once he had ideals and dreams, now all he has is a lump of bitterness and emphysema. His failure to make the right choices has brought him to the bottom of the entertainment barrel, and his cigarettes have brought him to the end of his days. Now, he tries to hide his ailment, while filling the airwaves with: singing cowboys, Elvis impersonators, chicken farmers, and the pinnacle of bad taste “the Blue Angel”. Gloria arrives with a respirator, as a representative of “Life Support”. Max has a fit and insists that he ordered no such thing, his longtime friend and cameraman, Elmer (Tom Bosley), admits that he did. Max storms off, and Monica appears to tell Gloria all about him. When she first met Max, he made the right choice to put a young Japanese girl on the air, and was fired for it. That was the last time he took a stand. When Monica finishes the story, Elmer calls for Gloria to get the respirator, Max can’t breathe. They attend to him, and Max comes back to himself. Shortly thereafter, Tiffany “The Blue Angel” arrives. She has the flu and won’t be able to go on at midnight. When Max takes her out of the room to get some tea, Tess appears and tells Gloria of her experience with Max. It was 1954 and Max (Matthew Glave) was back at the top of his game, directing a variety show for the 4th of July. Everything was perfect, great television waiting to happen, except for one thing. The blonde singer the sponsor hired is terrible, despite Tess’s attempts to instruct her. Max is so impressed with Tess’s voice, and so eager for the show to go well, that he replaces the singer with Tess. When the sponsor finds out, he insists that his singer goes on as planned. According to him, the American people don’t want to see a black woman sing “God Bless America”. Max reluctantly agrees. Because of this, he keeps his job, but loses his dream. As Tess finishes her story, Max enters and baits Gloria into taking over for the Blue Angel. When Max leaves, Tess tells her what the blue angel does. She’s a stripper. Gloria doesn’t think she can do that, but Monica tells her not to worry, to let God do the directing. When the time comes, and she’s on the air, Gloria drops her trenchcoat to reveal her angel garb and glow. She gives Max an entirely different kind of revelation than the one he was expecting. She tells him that it’s never too late to do the right thing, and that he doesn’t have to let his dreams die just because they didn’t turn out how he thought they would. On the air, Max accepts this truth, and God, and admits that “TV didn’t ruin me, I ruined TV.” With that said, he vows that from now on, he’ll put out the best programming that he can. He throws away his cigarettes and begins his new life.
15 "Secrets and Lies" Armand Mastroianni Brian Bird March 2, 2002 (2002-03-02) (CBS)
Allen Lowry (John Heard) is having a great day at the gym with his wife, Suzanne (Patricia Kalember) and their 17-year-old daughter, Erica (Jeanette Brox). Things couldn’t be better. Unfortunately they could get a lot worse, and they do. In the middle of a one-on-one basketball game, Erica collapses. When Allen and Suzanne rush to her side, they discover a series of dark bruises across her back. The next day, at the hospital, the family waits for Erica’s test results. When Dr. Nathans (Bernard White) arrives he is accompanied by, Monica, a counselor from the organ donor department. The news is grim. Erica has leukemia and if she doesn’t get a bone marrow transplant she is going to die. Allen heads downstairs to get tested for bone marrow compatibility while Suzanne comforts Erica. While Gloria draws blood for the test, she explains to Allen the odds of finding a match. Since Erica is a mix of the genetic material of both Allen and Suzanne, chances are that neither of them will be acceptable donors. She says that a brother or sister would stand a much better chance. Allen thanks her and heads home. Once there, he rummages through a box hidden in the attic and pulls out a mysterious address. The next day, Allen arrives at the address and knocks on the door. Robby (Trever O’Brien), a boy of about sixteen answers. Allen asks if his mother is home, Robby says that she’s out and offers to take a message. Allen tells him his name. Robby recognizes it as the name of his father. He lets Allen in and they start to talk, but Robby’s mother, Debbie (Sherry Hursey), arrives and tosses him out. Before Allen goes he tells her about Erica and pleads with her to let Robbie be tested. She refuses. Robby skips school to go to the hospital. He meets with Allen and agrees to the test. Monica reluctantly allows it when Allen signs the release form as Robby’s father. Later on, the news comes in: Robbie is a match. Allen and his family are relieved, but Robby wants to meet his sister. Allen eventually lets him when Robby promises not to tell Erica the truth about who he is. Soon Debbie arrives to drag Robby away. The confrontation forces Allen to tell his wife about his infidelity. Suzanne is crushed by the news, and shattered by Debbie’s refusal to allow the transplant. Everything looks hopeless, but soon the angels are there to talk to Debbie about understanding, and to Suzanne about forgiveness, and to Allen about truth. The transplant goes through, the truth is uncovered, and a life is saved.
16 "The Princeless Bride" Kevin Dowling Luke Schelhaas March 9, 2002 (2002-03-09) (CBS)
Liz (Kim Rhodes) and Jonas (Neil Patrick Harris) are in love, it’s the day before their wedding and everything is perfect. The only thing that could go wrong is an act of nature. And the only thing that can make it right will be an act of God. The wedding is to be held at the Peery Hotel in Washington D.C., the very spot that Jonas and Liz met. Liz arrives in a great mood only to be met with a new staff, a loitering homeless man, and an unwanted wedding guest, Aunt Meg (Lainie Kazan). All of this she can handle, just as long as Jonas makes his flight into town. Unfortunately Jonas decides to squeeze in one last meeting, and must take a later flight. Even more unfortunately, all later flights are canceled as a monster blizzard sweeps across the eastern seaboard. Forced to seek alternate transportation, Jonas catches a ride from a helpful cabbie, Andrew. Back at the Hotel, Liz is shattered as she receives phone call after phone call from guests unable to make it to town. Her wedding is ruined, her parents won’t be there, the groom may not be there, and Aunt Meg is. She is so upset, that she gets into a fight with Jonas on the phone, causing him to call off the wedding, and ask Andrew to take him back to New York. Liz breaks down at Jonas’s decision not to show and tells Monica, Gloria, and Tess about the wedding she always wanted, and how she’ll never get it. Later that evening, the angels show up at Liz’s door to throw the pre-wedding slumber party she wanted to have. Around the same time, Jonas wakes up in the cab to find that Andrew drove him to the hotel despite his request to the contrary. Angry at the interference, he storms out of the cab and into the blizzard. He quickly gets lost, and is forced to call another cab. As soon as he’s made the call, his cell phone rings, it’s Liz. She tries to apologize but Jonas is forced to cut the call short when he is held up at gun-point. Andrew and a homeless man (sent by Tess) help Jonas to his feet, replace his stolen clothes and help him back to the hotel. Tess has spent most of the day and the evening bringing the homeless off of the street and into the boiler room of the hotel. The next day, the wedding banquet is prepared yet none of the guests have arrived. Monica tells Liz that just because things aren’t turning out the way she expected, doesn’t mean they won’t turn out well. At Monica’s prompting, she invites all of the homeless people to attend the wedding banquet. Making the most of the disastrous wedding, she sees that all of her new guests are well fed and entertained. Jonas watches from the hallway, dressed as a vagrant. He falls in love with her all over again, but can’t bring himself to go inside. Liz comes out of the banquet while his back is turned, she mistakes him for another homeless person, and invites him to have the last plate of food, the one she was saving for Jonas. He turns around, revealing his identity, and they reunite.
17 "Hello, I Love You" Frank E. Johnson R.J. Colleary April 6, 2002 (2002-04-06) (CBS)
In the small town of Wells, Nevada, good news travels fast, almost as fast as gossip. Danni Blake (Holliston Coleman) has been plagued by the latter for all of her short life. The shame of not having a father has kept her down. What’s worse, is that her school is planning a father-daughter dance. After a few scornful comments from her classmates, Danni storms home, upset. Her mother, Nicole (Laurel Holloman), tries to comfort her, but in the end, the only comfort that Danni will accept is in the form of information about her father. Nicole relents and gives Danni a card that he sent her on her first birthday. Danni cheers up considerably. Nicole goes to work, leaving her in the capable hands of Monica. That night, Danni wakes up to a roomful of people. There was an accident at the factory and her mother was hurt. The next day, after visiting her still unconscious mother in the hospital, Danni uses the address from the birthday card. She hops on a bus and heads to Silver Springs in search of her father. With only the last name ‘Jackson’ to go on, Danni begins flipping through the phone book. Monica arrives and makes her call her aunt to tell her where she is. The two of them then go off to check the addresses. After several dead ends, they come upon the house of Walter Jackson (David Kriegel), a young man with a pregnant wife. Monica thinks that he must be the father, because Andrew is in the driveway working on Walter’s car. When Danni introduces herself and asks if he is her father, Walter’s wife, Kim (Leah Lail), has a fit. They had had trouble in the past with his infidelities, and despite their reconciliation, Kim has been bottling it up inside. Monica and Danni leave them to argue, and come upon a handyman named Dan Jackson (David Barry Gray), who Gloria is working with. Now Danni thinks that he is the father, and Gloria does too. Monica is unsure, but after a bit of questioning, they discover that Dan is unable to have children, though if he could, he’d want one like Danni. Returning to Walter’s house, Danni asks him about Nicole, and mentions her birthday. Walter realizes then, that he and Kim weren’t even in the country when Danni was conceived. Dejected, Danni and Monica return home. During all of this, Tess has been driving, and she’s been driving fast. Soon she is pulled over by a motorcycle cop whose name happens to be J.T. Jackson (Kieran Mulroney). He is Danni’s father, but Nicole pushed him away, not wanting to get in the way of his life. After she was gone, he gave up on his other dreams to focus on finding her and Danni. Now he has a chance. Tess takes him to them. When Nicole wakes up in the hospital, it’s to the possibility of family.
18 "Minute by Minute" Robert J. Visciglia, Jr. Rosanne Welch April 13, 2002 (2002-04-13) (CBS)
The angels stand outside of Our Lady of Hope Senior High, watching as Sister Theodore (Mary McDonnell) enters the school. It’s early, 6:00am, and all is not well. Punk Rock music blares from an old car as it pulls into the parking lot. John (Jonah Rooney) and Cory (Lukas Behnken) sit inside, both are seventeen and they’re about to do something terrible. In the backseat of the car sits a box, and in the box are ten homemade bombs. They plan to blow up the school at seven o’clock, while everyone is next door at mass. Bobby (Dwight Armstrong) is also seventeen, and he’s the one responsible for building the bombs. When he arrives at the school to meet John and Cory, he realizes that he can’t go through with it. Instead he heads down the street to Millie’s, the greasy spoon diner where he works. He apologizes to Tess, the new manager, for being late, and starts his shift teaching Gloria how to work the register. They get along well. Inside the school, Monica appears to Sister Theodore, telling her about the boys’ plan. She tells her that God will help her find the words to get through to the boys. Sister Theodore heads out into the hall with an invisible angel at her side, to confront her students. In a move shocking even to Cory, John pulls a gun from his pocket and shoots Sister Theodore in the shoulder. He then changes their plan. He tells Cory that they will now set the bombs to go off at eight when everyone is in the building. Cory doesn’t want to do it, but neither does he fight when John tells him he has no choice. They set about placing the bombs. At the restaurant, Bobby grows increasingly nervous as seven o’clock draws near. Finally the time comes, but there is no explosion to be heard. He breathes a sigh of relief, figuring that his friends came to their senses. Andrew stalks the halls of the high school with John, trying to talk him out of his misguided attempt at easing the pain in his life. When the bombs are set, Cory joins John. He is surprised by the presence of Andrew, who tells him that it was always John’s plan to set off the bombs when the school was full. Monica helps the wounded Sister Theodore through the halls to the boys. She finally finds the words she needs to get through to them, and tells them of her past. She tells them that before she was a nun, her name was Mary Renaldi, and she once thought that destruction was the answer too. After the death of her brother in Vietnam, she helped blow up a college chemistry lab that was developing weapons. It was supposed to be empty, but turned out to have someone in it. She ran away and has lived with that regret every day. Cory runs, crying from the building to warn the incoming students, but John will not relent. Meanwhile Bobby has entered the school, and uses a fire extinguisher to knock John out and drag him to safety. None of the entering students believe Cory, who they think of as a dork, and continue toward the school. Sister Theodore sees this, and turns back to sound the fire alarm, even as the clock strikes eight. The students are saved and she is redeemed.
19 "The Bells of St. Peters" Robert J. Visciglia, Jr. Glenn Berenbeim May 4, 2002 (2002-05-04) (CBS)
Rose (Doris Roberts) is the loving mother of Maggie (Mare Winningham), an oncologist. She is also her office manager, a meddler in her personal affairs, and a collector of various superstitions and faiths. In an attempt to ease tension in Maggie and her husband Brian (Tom Vereca)’s marriage, Rose has planned a trip to Rome. She is counting on her son-in-law and daughter to insist on accompanying her. She thinks that if they make the trip to Vatican Square on Easter Sunday to hear the bells of St. Peter’s Cathedral, the miracle they need will happen. She has even gone so far as to hire Monica to temp in the office while they are away. Unfortunately things don’t go according to plan. When a patient named Annie dies, Maggie is devastated, closing herself off to Brian, and canceling their plans for Rome. Rose tries to persuade her, but Maggie erupts in anger at her mother’s meddling. She even takes Rose’s fatigue to be nothing more than a sympathy ploy, her blood-work however tells another story. Rose has leukemia. Maggie becomes utterly focused on saving her mother, but continues to keep Brian at a distance. She tries to get her mother to agree to a cranial shunt, a bubble-like apparatus that will administer her doses of chemotherapy, but must be installed in the top of her head. Rose refuses, saying that she bought a new hat for Easter in Rome, and it won’t do to have something sticking out of her head. Several weeks pass as Rose takes the more painful form of chemo, and Maggie becomes more isolated and obsessive in her attempt to save her mother without actually connecting with her. Just before Easter, Rose, at her weakest, attempts to leave the hospital and catch her flight. She collapses just outside. When they get her back inside, the diagnosis is poor, Rose isn’t expected to live through the night. As Maggie stands in the room with her dying mother, Tess, who has been posing as a hospital administrator, gives her a revelation. Despite the sense of Tess’s words, Maggie is still reluctant to believe. Meanwhile Rose wakes up, stepping clear of the bed and out of her body. Andrew is there, ready to take her to heaven, but Monica intercedes, telling him that she has a message for Rose. Andrew nods and exits, leaving Monica to talk to Rose. She tells her to trust in God, not to immerse herself in the various superstitions and sayings that she is so fond of. She tells her that she can’t go out in search of miracle, true miracles come to you with the love of God. Rose nods and listens, weeping with joy as the peal of the bells of St. Peter’s echo throughout the hospital room. The next morning, brings with it a miracle that even Maggie cannot refute, Rose is alive, and her cancer is gone. Maggie is overjoyed, and finally breaks free of her emotional shields. She has no choice but to believe the truth of Tess’s words and to work at being the best in all aspects of her life, not only professional but personal as well.
20 "The Impossible Dream" Peter H. Hunt Brian Bird May 4, 2002 (2002-05-04) (CBS)
Reggie Hunter (Luther Vandross) has the voice of an angel and the love of his family. Unfortunately, he hasn’t had the courage to sing in over twenty-five years. Instead he works as a janitor at his former high school, even though he was once good enough to audition for Berry Gordy of Motown Records. Every Sunday, he, his Aunt Charlotte (Lee Chamberlin), his brother Martin (Joe Morton), and his sister Eleanor (Penny Johnson Jerald) sit down to supper with the rest of their family. It is a family tradition that they have kept throughout their lives, missing only once for their parents’ funeral. On this particular Sunday, news of Aunt Charlotte’s impending retirement makes its way around the table, distressing Reggie. The only reason he can even tolerate his job is because Aunt Charlotte teaches choir at the school. The thought of her leaving upsets him so much, that he leaves the table. On Monday, Reggie goes unhappily back to work at the school, breaking in a new janitor, Andrew. Meanwhile at Detroit Metro Bank, Martin hires Monica as a new loan officer, counting on her to take his place when he is promoted to Vice-President. He brings her along with him when he speaks at the high school's career day. During the course of his speech, he sticks up for Reggie, who is seen as a failure by the kids. When Martin returns to the bank, he is confronted by Mr. Stoecker, an investigator from the Michigan Bank Examiner’s Office. A man that Martin approved a loan for is being charged with investment fraud. Tess, who has been working as the new interim choir director, puts together a meeting to plan Charlotte’s retirement party. Eleanor suggests a barbecue, but Charlotte isn’t interested. Finally, Reggie suggests a concert, performed by some of her former students. Eleanor thinks it’s a good idea, and that Reggie should sing. Charlotte promises to give it some thought. The following Sunday she has decided, she wants to have the concert and she wants Reggie to sing. Before he can object, lunch is interrupted by Mr. Stoecker and a federal marshall. Martin is under arrest. In an attempt to raise bail money Reggie attempts to sell the 1914 Steinway piano that his mother left him. Charlotte stops him, caving in and finally telling him the truth about his audition with Berry Gordy. He had wanted to sign him, but Martin said he wasn’t interested because he wanted him to go to college. Reggie goes to the jail and fumes at Martin, accusing him of ruining his life. When next he tries to sell the piano, to get the money to move out, Andrew and Tess appear and speak to him of lost dreams and the importance of family. Reggie forgives Martin and new evidence clears him of all charges. When the family is reunited, the concert is on, and Reggie sings once again with the voice of an angel.
21 "For All The Tea in China" Stuart Margolin Martha Williamson & Luke Schelhaas May 5, 2002 (2002-05-05) (CBS)
Sarah (Kate McNeil) and James Berrington (Brian McNamara) are unable to conceive a child. They have tried everything, including in-vitro fertilization. Nothing works. When their final pregnancy test comes out negative, Sarah weeps, devastated. On the other side of the world, a Chinese woman staggers down a dark road with a small bundle in her arms. Finally she comes to the gate of a building and lays her bundled baby against it. As snow starts to fall, and the woman walks away from her child, she cries out in anguish. Back at the gate, Gloria cuddles the baby in her arms, waiting for morning. In New York, at the home they share with his grandmother, Lady Penelope Berrington (Angela Lansbury), James and his wife consider adoption. Though they know that Penelope will react poorly to decision, they decide to visit an adoption counselor. Everything seems to be in order, but they will need to be evaluated in home by a case worker. They take a series of pamphlets about adopting from various corners of the globe and return home to look them over. Penelope is not thrilled about ending her noble bloodline with an adoption, but she realizes that this may be the only way for Sarah and James to have a child. She gives her consent, and after they are gone she looks at the pamphlets. She freezes on the pamphlet about adopting from China, and tosses it into the fire. When Tess, the adoption case worker, arrives, Penelope gets stand-offish and makes a scene which may hamper their chances of being approved. James confronts her about it, but she holds her ground. Back in China, Gloria watches over the baby, Rose, as she is admitted into the orphanage by a kind Matron. Gloria tells Rose of the parents that are waiting for her in America. But the adoption may never happen. Tess returns to tell Penelope that the adoption was not approves, and that she is to blame. She gives Penelope the opportunity to tell James and Sarah. She admits to them that she has been lying about her identity all these years, that she is not a noblewoman, that she started her tea company with a stolen identity, and when it became a success, she used it. She tells them about her upbringing in China, where she lived with her missionary parents. She tells how she and a friend, Li Na, were separated from her parents during an evacuation, and how she never saw them again, returning to England on her own. When the truth is out and accepted, Tess clears the adoption and they head to China to meet Rose, and to allow Penelope to come to terms with her past. At the orphanage, the family is finally formed, and another miracle takes place. Though Penelope will never be reunited with her parents, she discovers that the Matron that runs the orphanage is actually her childhood friend Li Na (June Kyoko Lu).
22 "Forever Young" Victor Lobl R.J. Colleary May 11, 2002 (2002-05-11) (CBS)
One year ago the Costellos were a happy family. Now, Don (Gregory Harrison) is losing his touch at work, his wife Stacey (Donna Bullock) is wandering the park at all hours of the day, and their son Justin (Myles Jeffrey) has been suspended from school pending therapy. The root of the problem is the murder of Kimmie (Bethany Richards), their daughter and Justin’s sister. Stacey shows up at one of Don’s motivational speeches so they can drop Justin off at the office of his new therapist, Gloria. Don agrees and apologizes to Monica, the company evaluator, saying that he will meet with her later at his home office. At the therapy session, Gloria tries to discover the reason for Justin’s fights at school, but he refuses to answer her questions. Later on, Monica tells Don of the negative feedback that he’s been getting from his audiences. It seems that no one appreciates the mention of his dead daughter, it makes them feel manipulated. Before he can respond, Justin enters, telling him that Stacey never came to get him at the therapist’s. Monica offers to continue the next day, and sees herself out. In the park, Stacey sits on the swings, reliving memories of times spent there with Kimmie. She is so engrossed, that hours slip by without her noticing. While the Monica and Gloria ponder their assignments, Tess begins tracking down a number of people to help the Costellos come to grips with Kimmie’s death. The following day, Monica returns to apologize to Don about her previous comments. She tells him that she only wants to help and that she thinks he’s letting Kimmie’s death overrun his life. During a second therapy session Gloria finally gets Justin to talk. He admits that Kimmie is dead because of him. She takes him home to talk to his parents, and Justin tearfully admits that he told Kimmie’s ex-boyfriend where she was the day that he killed her. Don assures him that it’s not his fault, that Blake (Mike Erwin) was sick and that he would have found her anyway. Stacey loses touch with reality, says that Kimmie is fine, and leaves to go find her. At the park, Andrew confronts her with the truth. He then brings her to Robintino’s, the Italian restaurant the family went to regularly when Kimmie was alive. Inside they are having a private party, which she is told is for her. Justin and Don are already there with their angels. And so are a number of other people that none of them recognize. These are the people that Tess found, the people who’s lives Kimmie touched. They stand up one by one and tell how their lives, or the lives of someone they love where saved by Kimmie. Kimmie was an organ donor, and her memory lives on in the hearts of everyone present.
[edit] Season 9

The ninth season was the last season of the show, and aired September 28, 2002 through April 27, 2003.
# Title Director Writer Original air date
1 "A Rock and a Hard Place" Kevin Dowling Martha Williamson & Burt Pearl September 28, 2002 (2002-09-28) (CBS)
In the middle of the wilderness, at the base of a mountain, a ways from the road, Monica and Tess discuss the perfect décor for a remote hotel. Meanwhile, in Glendale, Joe Collette (Robert Pastorelli) arrives at his former home to pick up his 16 year old son, Ricky (Taylor Handley), for a weekend camping trip. Joe’s separation from his wife, Sandra (Mary-Margaret Humes), has had a negative effect on the whole family, but mostly on Ricky, who acquired a drug problem and then spent sixteen weeks in rehab. The two of them hit the road despite Ricky’s lack of enthusiasm. Several hours into the trip, Joe stops the car to stretch his legs and check his map. As he and his son stand outside of their vehicle, a tiny asteroid, smashes through the windshield of their SUV cutting a hole straight through the seat and the floor. Andrew shows up, with a tow truck, but even he is surprised by the reason for the breakdown. He offers to take their car to the nearest town, and drop them off at a little hotel that he knows. Tess and Monica check them in and settle them in their room, but they aren’t the only guest this weekend. Just before dinner, a motorcycle roars up to the door, and a little old lady named Mildred (Lois Smith) hops off. She’s ridden through this area for years with her late husband, and she’s never seen this place. She wants to know where it came from, who’s running it, and how she can go about getting a room. Later that evening, Joe tries to connect with his son, inviting him to take a walk with him, but Ricky refuses. He blames his father for all of his troubles. Joe walks off by himself, eventually coming upon Gloria, who has set up a telescope outside. She has no trouble engaging the astronomy-loving Joe in an in depth conversation about the cosmos, and asteroids. After Joe leaves, Gloria maintains her watch on the stars, and sees something that shouldn’t be there, an asteroid. This one is huge, and it’s hurtling right toward earth, looking to do to the planet what its little brother did to Joe’s car. Gloria runs into the lodge to tell the other angels what she has found. They are shocked, but Tess says that they still have a job to do, and it won’t help to tell their assignments what she saw. Of course, the secret refuses to be kept. Ricky “borrows” a portable television from Mildred’s sidecar and catches a report of the asteroid on the news. He hurries inside to tell his father, and soon everyone knows. While the reports go on, and experts speculate on the fate of the planet, Joe and Ricky realize that they are stranded in the middle of nowhere without a car, and no way to reach the rest of their family. In the midst of this worry, Mildred surprises them all by saying that she wishes for the asteroid to hit, and quickly, too. As the day wears on, and Mildred explains that all she wants is to die so that she can be with her husband again, in heaven, Ricky grows more frantic. All he wants to do is get home to his mother and sister while he still can. Joe feels the same way, but admits that he’s powerless to change it. Ricky decides that if Joe won’t do anything, he will. He punches his father and runs off, stealing Andrew’s tow truck, and taking to the road, despite a stern warning from Tess. Away from the lodge, Ricky runs over a rusty muffler, and tears the fuel line. With the truck out of commission, he is more alone than ever. But he’s not alone, there are angels around him, and one pulls up beside him on Mildred’s motorcycle. It’s Andrew. He takes Ricky back to the lodge, where Mildred insists they all climb the mountain to watch the asteroid approach. Once they reach the top, Joe’s cell phone miraculously comes to life, and he and Ricky are able to talk to Sandra and Erica. Over the phone Joe reconciles with them, and in person he does so with Ricky. As the asteroid fills the sky, all is well with the Collette family. When it skips off the atmosphere, sparing the world a catastrophic impact, Mildred has a heart attack at Andrew’s side. She has seen a miracle, and now she is going home to the Father and to her husband.
2 "The Sixteenth Minute" Jim Charleston John Wierick October 5, 2002 (2002-10-05) (CBS)
Ed Gold (Grant Shaud) is an underappreciated underwriter for Brewster Financial Services, and he’s in a rut. His bills are behind, his paperboy keeps throwing the morning edition into the sprinklers, and he feels like a nobody. To top it all off, his wife, Gwen (Romy Rosemont) wants him to ask for a raise. He knows he won’t get it, but he’s resolved himself to asking. His boss, Mr. Norris (Sam McMurray), is even less eager to help, than he is to remember Ed’s name. But with a little angelic intervention, in the form of Monica as the new PR person, Norris is only too eager to show his willingness to invest in his employees. And as his boss goes off to put in a request with payroll, Ed feels like a new man. To celebrate, he heads home to spend his lunch hour with Gwen. Near the side of the road, amongst the hills, and deep in the earth, a silver mine is set to collapse. As its supports buckle, a dog breaks away from his owner, chasing the sound of the stressed supports. Once he’s in the mine, his owner, Marla (Rachel Luttrell) has no choice but to go in after him, cutting short her afternoon run. But now that she’s inside, the mine grows even more unsettled and Marla makes a mistake. She leans against one of the beams to steady herself, causing a cave-in. When the dust settles, she’s trapped under the debris with no help in sight. Unseen, however, Andrew waits with her. On his way home, Ed sees a dog, barking madly, outside of an abandoned mine. He eventually grasps the situation and calls 911. As he waits for help to arrive, he becomes more frantic about the person trapped inside, and with only a moment’s hesitation, he hurries inside to lend a hand. Once he finds Marla, though, another cave-in begins and Ed must throw his shoulder into a beam to keep it from falling. He feels that he has to stay that way until help arrives, despite Marla’s assurances that there’s an angel with them. He doesn’t believe her, and maintains his Herculean feat for five and a half hours. By the time the rescue is complete, Ed is a bona-fide hero, and Marla is forgotten. As the days pass and Ed’s fame grows, Marla loses her leg and begins physical therapy. The man that Ed was, the kind who would risk himself for others, changes into a glory hound, too concerned with his image to actually do things to help others, and too self involved to notice anyone else. He spends his days on the phone, trying to keep on top of his celebrity status or convincing Monica to set up appearances for him. He neglects his marriage, and ignores his job. And as his fame begins to fade, he becomes even more frantic to resurrect it, so much so that he tries to use Marla’s misfortune to his advantage, and fails to keep Gwen from walking out on him. When he hits the bottom of the barrel, he heads back to the mine to challenge the Angel that Marla insisted was there. Andrew appears with Monica and help Ed to realize that he was a good man before, and his desire to help a stranger was more valuable than fame ever could be. Sobered, Ed heads back to the hospital, where he apologizes to Marla, and reconciles with his wife.
3 "Two Sides to Every Angel" Larry Peerce Brian Bird & R.J. Colleary October 12, 2002 (2002-10-12) (CBS)
On their day off, Monica and Gloria hit the road in Tess’s Cadillac, looking to “bond”. Gloria realizes that while she is a unique and distinctive angel, so is Monica, and as a result they don’t always see eye to eye. So the two of them go off together to try to find some common ground. They eventually come upon a rustic café, where they meet Doug (Ryan Hurst) and Kristie (Sarah Thompson), a young married couple who are about to celebrate their six month anniversary. As they sit and enjoy their coffee, they are interrupted by Sally (Nancy Linehan Charles), the café’s owner, who says that there is a phone call for Monica. Puzzled, Monica walks down the hall to the phone. But she reappears almost immediately, handing Gloria Tess’s car keys, and getting into the car. Gloria is so overjoyed to be given the responsibility, that she doesn’t notice that something isn’t quite right, that Monica is a little too eager to hand the car over, that maybe this isn’t Monica, it’s Monique, a demon disguised as an angel. ut Gloria doesn’t know about her, and so she drives off with the demon. By the time Monica realizes what has happened, they’re already gone, and Tess tells her that Gloria must face this demon on her own. Later that evening at the Black Boot, a local cowboy bar, Monique still pretending to be Monica, leads Gloria to believe that they are on assignment. She uses a demonic trick to take over as waitress, and cause some trouble. Doug and Kristie are there, finally celebrating, but their joyous occasion is cut short by the arrival of Doug’s ex, Ashlee (Christine Lakin), who sends a couple of drinks over. Monique is only too eager to bring them over, and when Doug tries to send them back, she makes him deal with it himself. Upset, Kristie heads to the ladies room. While she’s gone, Monique gets Doug and Ashlee talking, and when Kristie returns, makes it seem as though Doug is more interested in his ex. Monique tells Kristie to fight fire with fire, and gets her to dance with a red-booted cowboy. Then, using Gloria as a distraction, she makes both couples think that the other one has left. When Doug and Ashlee actually leave, and the cowboy is trying to get Kristie to leave with him, Gloria attempts a revelation. But without having spent time with Kristie, without Monica and Tess to support her, and with Monique’s interference, Gloria can’t even manage a faint glow. She fails, and Monique tells her that this means God doesn’t love her anymore. Kristie leaves with the cowboy, and Gloria is devastated. Monique, in the guise of Monica, offers comfort, but in doing so tips her hand. She says things that Monica would never say, and Gloria realizes what she really is. When she does this, the real Monica arrives, and together they banish Monique. They embrace and finally bond, but Gloria still needs to help Kristie, who is in great danger. A ways down the road, the cowboy pulls his truck over and tries to attack Kristie. She manages to get out of the truck and run, but he’s hot on her tail, and the only thing keeping her safe is the trees and brush that she hides behind. But soon he catches up with her, and just as she screams for help, Gloria is there. And she does help, this time glowing brightly with God’s love, and striking fear into the heart of the wicked cowboy. He runs, but it’s too late, Andrew is there, and takes him in hand. The cowboy will be going to jail. At last, with revelations to both Doug and Kristie, the marriage is reconciled, and the angels are closer than ever.
4 "The Word" Stuart Margolin Ken LaZebnik October 19, 2002 (2002-10-19) (CBS)
Monica becomes a substitute teacher for a class of “resource students”. Their learning disabilities and health problems have aggravated a number of subs and none of the temporary teachers have stuck around. One student especially needs her help. Her name is Charlee (America Ferrera), and she has obsessive compulsive disorder. As a result of her disorder, she is constantly plagued with worry. Before class she checks her locker numerous times to make sure it is locked. Later on, she thinks the air is dirty and after a few minutes, she gets so worked up that she has trouble breathing and is sent to the nurse’s office. The nurse, Tess, tries to comfort her, but Charlee insists on going home, and her father, Rolando (Nicholas Turturro), agrees to come get her. However, in order to do that, he must sign a release form though he has trouble locating the signature line. Rolando can’t read. With this realization, the angels decide that Charlee is not the only assignment here. They go to visit Rolando that evening, in part to talk about Charlee and how she can keep up in school, and in part to confront him about his illiteracy. As soon as the subject arises, Rolando is on the defensive. e denies having a problem and asks Monica and Andrew to leave, which they do. Charlee meanwhile is still panicked from her OCD episode earlier that day, so Rolando goes to the pharmacist to pick up her new medicine. When he gets home and Charlee once again gets too worked up to breath, he gives her the pills. The problem is, he can’t read the instructions, only the number “4”, so instead of giving her a pill every four hours, he gives her four at once, causing an overdose. At the hospital, Gloria, who is working as a social worker, reports the incident to social services, and Rolando finally realizes the harm his illiteracy can cause. When a letter from Social Services is hand delivered to Rolando, he rushes to the hospital to have Charlee read it. She does and discovers that she is going to be taken into foster care. Rolando takes her out of the hospital and tries to run. He has no intention of giving up his daughter, but no plans of where to go. On a deserted road outside of town he is stopped by the angels, who give him a glimpse of the miracle of reading as well as a revelation. He agrees to learn and Charlee agrees to teach him. When he is granted a hearing with social services, he will be able to prove to them that he’ll do whatever is required to keep his daughter.
5 "A Feather on the Breath of God" Victor Lobl Glenn Berenbeim October 26, 2002 (2002-10-26) (CBS)
Lorena Watkins (Stacy Edwards) is dying. She has an inoperable brain tumor, and only a matter of days left to live. As though this weren’t troubling enough, she also has a twelve year old daughter, Grace (Sarah Hyland), and no family left to take her in. But what she does have, is a strong faith, and a sense of hope. She walks the labyrinth of a local church every day, taking that spiritual journey that will bring her and her prayers closer to God. And it has worked, because the angels are there and watching her unseen. They are going to help her find a place for Grace, just as her faith has found her a place in heaven. Lorena doesn’t know that help is on the way though, she plans to contact social services and put Grace up for adoption, something that she expects will turn out okay. Lorena herself was adopted and loved her new parents dearly. But she has one card she’d like to play first, and it’s a grim one. Sidney Alcott (Bob Gunton) works with the dead. He runs a funeral parlor, and though he excels in his job, he has no real sympathy and his condolences are made up almost entirely of play-acting. Whenever the customers are gone the act drops and a very cynical man emerges. It is this man that Monica comes to in search of a job as a pre-needs counselor. When Lorena comes in to plan her own funeral, and mentions her lack of money, Sidney refers her to Monica, hoping that his new employee will get rid of her. Monica, however, has other plans. She talks with Lorena, learns about her tumor and her daughter, and comes to discover that she has a beautiful singing voice. Later when Sidney is need of someone to sing hymns, Monica brings her up. She suggests that Sidney cuts Lorena a deal if she sings for some of the funerals and cleans up around the parlor. Sidney grudgingly agrees. With that, he closes the door on them, sits back, has a drink, and wistfully fingers a sealed letter. The nest day Sidney indulges in more alcohol to calm his nerves while preparing the remains of a child. When Lorena’s daughter enters the room, she sees the body, and it is only when Andrew insists on covering it, that Grace finally overcomes her shock and flees the room. Andrew is furious. He goes to Tess and tells him that he can’t finish the assignment. He can’t handle Sidney. Tess tells him to pull himself together and stop being selfish. She has him walk the labyrinth and trust in God to put him where he needs to be. As he walks the labyrinth, he is given insight, he knows why Sidney is so cynical and why Lorena needs to be where she is now. Sidney is Lorena’s natural father. Lorena knows this, she has in fact tracked Sidney down, and has entered his life in the hopes that he would be a good man and would be willing to take Grace when the time comes. But the incident with the dead boy, and Sidney’s lack of concern over what it might do to Grace, Lorena is certain that she made a mistake. She intends to keep her appointment with social services. She finishes her chores around the funeral parlor, and gets ready to go to Grace’s ballet recital, but first she gives Sidney a ticket to the event. Grace wants him to be there, because despite his surly behavior, she still likes him. Lorena delivers the ticket, and leaves. Sidney meanwhile pulls out the unopened letter and begins drinking, it is the letter that he never sent his daughter. He wanted to tell her that he loved her and that he shouldn’t have given her up, but after the death of his wife, he just couldn’t handle the responsibility. And he’s never worked up the courage to find her. While he drowns his sorrow in booze, Grace dances on a stage, and Lorena dies watching her daughter. When Monica finally confronts Sidney about his daughter, and reveals her identity, it is too late. Lorena is dead and Sidney is shattered. This new blow, has reinforced his cynicism, and he has concern for no one but himself, but with a little help from a few angels, he realizes that while he never got a chance to know Lorena, he still has an opportunity to know her daughter. He goes to Grace and asks if she’d like to stay with him.
6 "Jump!" John Dye Brian Bird November 2, 2002 (2002-11-02) (CBS)
Buzz Wescott (Daniel Baldwin) dominates the drive-time airwaves throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. His radio show is number one and about to go national. All he needs to get where he wants to be is that little something extra. Of course, that little something is going to push him in a direction he never anticipated. With the ratings high, and the usual amount of idiot callers, Buzz is just settling into his routine of pre-made insults and mock outrage, when something happens. He is informed by his producer, Su Kim (Angela Oh), and his call screener, Monica, that his guests for the hour have cancelled. It seems that the Siamese twins he had booked are stuck in traffic due to the ill-timed suicidal impulse of a depressed teen. Scott Hardwick (Dan Byrd), is fifteen, and reeling after the suicide death of his best friend. Having just arrived home from the funeral, while his parents are away on a cruise, he has stepped out onto the ledge of his apartment building to contemplate jumping. This decision has led to a gigantic traffic jam, as people stop their cars to look up at him. Buzz is inspired. After talking with a classmate of Scott’s he plans to take his show to the next level. He decides to call Scott and put him on the air. By this time, Sgt. Richardson (Holmes Osborne) and his partner, Gloria, have already arrived on the scene. They answer the phone and pass it out to Scott. It is only after Scott picks up, do they realize that the man on the phone who claimed to be his father, is actually Buzz Wescott. Amazingly though, Buzzactually begins to get through to him. Scott is a fan of Buzz’s and once they begin to speak, a connection develops. It seems that Buzz has a real chance to help the boy. But first he has to cut to commercial. During the commercial break, Buzz takes a call from his lawyer, who tells him that his request for joint custody of his children has been denied. Buzz is shattered, he had his hopes up and now he has nothing. He goes back on the air and tells Scott to get on with, that he’s holding up traffic. Soon the people listening in the traffic jam begin to take up the cry. As Scott reels from Buzz’s parting words, the chant of “Jump!” filters up to him from the street. Now he is shattered. After Buzz storms out of the studio, Monica confronts him with the truth of what he has become. A man who alienated himself from his family for success, and now for just a little more, he’s willing to alienate a boy in need. Buzz has lost his compassion and now, thousands of people are screaming for that boy to kill himself. Buzz breaks up. He had no idea it would go so far, he had no idea how bad he’d become. He rushes back to the studio and tries to call Scott back, but can’t get through. So instead he goes back on the air, and unburdens his soul, to Scott and to everyone listening. He begs Scott to take another look at things, to not be dissuaded by idiots like him. He can only hope that Scott is listening. And he is. With the help of Gloria and Sgt. Richardson, he comes in off of the ledge.
7 "Bring on the Rain!" Armand Mastroianni R.J. Colleary & Burt Pearl November 9, 2002 (2002-11-09) (CBS)
Natalie Tate (Ashley Johnson) is trying to keep her life in very neat categories. She wants to go to Yale, she wants to be like her friends, and she doesn’t want anyone to know that she lives in a trailer with her mother, Annie. Annie (Jo Dee Messina), on the other hand, thinks her daughter is perfect; smart, studious, polite, and completely honest. And what Annie doesn’t know will hurt her. Ever since they moved to town, Natalie has been passing herself off as wealthy. She tells her friends and pretty much anyone who asks, that her mother is in Paris on business. But apart from these deceptions, she is trying hard to make something of her life. She is building a relationship with her boyfriend, Ben (Billy Aaron Brown), and she is taking the SATs as often as she can in an effort to earn a scholarship. Annie, meanwhile, is trying her hardest just to keep the two of them afloat. She works as a cocktail waitress at a trashy bar. She also plans to start selling cosmetics door-to-door in an effort to help her daughter along to a brighter future. She is so set on focusing her energies on Natalie, that when her daughter asks for a cell phone, Annie allows herself to be convinced. Despite their serious lack of financial security, she buys one. It is through this generous act, that Annie finally learns some of the truth. When her daughter forgets her cell phone, Annie answers it and discovers that instead of going to an honor society meeting, Natalie had planned a date with Ben. Rather than admit lying, Natalie rages at her mother for invading her privacy. Things are not going well between the two of them, and it is obvious to Monica, who has just moved in to the trailer next door. The next day, while selling her cosmetics, Annie comes a cross a snobby woman named Rebecca (Nancy Everhard). Rebecca is Ben’s mother, and Annie is still at the house when Natalie arrives with her boyfriend. She’s shocked to see her mother there, and tries to ignore her. To her relief, Rebecca whisks her off to get her hair done for a college recruitment party. Later on, back at the trailer, Monica urges them to talk to each other. Natalie admits her lies, and the reasons for them. She is embarrassed. All she wants to do is fit in. Annie is still hurt, but she understands some of Natalie’s feelings. She tries to get Monica to help her become the woman that Natalie says is her mother. Monica refuses. She thinks that one deception can not be fixed by another. Annie decides to do it anyway. She shows up to the party in second-hand designer clothes, and talks on and on about Paris. Natalie is mortified, even more so when Annie blows it. The only way to salvage the situation, is for the angels to convince both mother, and daughter, to be true to themselves and to each other. They go back inside, without pretense, and talk to the college representatives.
8 "Remembering Me (1)" Bethany Rooney Burt Pearl November 16, 2002 (2002-11-16) (CBS)
While Monica observes her new assignment, David (Charles Shaughnessy), at a zoo with his family, Tess talks with the angel, Sam (Paul Winfield). He tells her that she must be strong for what is coming, and not fear because God is with her. Tess says she isn’t afraid for herself, she is afraid for Monica. Sam nods and leaves. David Satterfield is a husband and a father, and while he loves his family, he doesn’t have much time for them. Even now, at the zoo, he spends his time talking on his cell phone, when he should be watching the bird show with his daughter. He is unwilling to let the day go by with out getting a little business in. His company is going through a major transition, and he feels the need to involve himself in every aspect. Tess joins Monica in her observation, and gets David’s name wrong. Monica corrects her, thinking nothing of it. Later on, Tess is watching some zebras, but forgets what they are called. She refers to them as “stripey-horse-things.” These slip-ups come to a head, when driving back from the zoo, Tess freezes up at a green light. She can’t figure out how to make the car go. Monica is very worried. When they manage to get the car to the side of the road, another motorist, Dr. Coburn (Kenneth Tigar), pulls over to assist them. He asks that Tess come to his office the following afternoon for an examination. The next day, Dr. Coburn, checks on Tess’s condition. After asking her a series of questions, he is certain of the diagnosis, but Monica has trouble believing that Tess has Alzheimer’s disease. While trying to come to terms with this, the two of them must also work on David’s transition team. Tess is of little help in her present condition, and Monica isn’t much more useful because of her concern. Still, she tries to help David along, and also to urge him to cut back on work, and become more involved in his daughter’s life. David shrugs off such suggestions, and becomes irritated with the lack of work getting done. When Tess finally wanders off and Monica is forced to admit the problem, David is outraged. He hires a new transition team, and gives Monica the name of an assisted living center that takes care of Alzheimer’s patients. Monica is at first flustered, but regains some composure when she discovers the Rafael (Alexis Cruz) and Sam are the new transition team. She checks Tess into the center and watches as she slips further from the angel she used to be. Monica is surprised to discover that David’s mother is one of the other Alzheimer’s patients. She begins to see that Tess’s illness and her assignment are somehow related. If only she weren’t so worried about Tess, she might be able to figure it out. After a particularly frustrating day trying to communicate with Tess, and after speaking with Sam, Monica is resolved to finish what she started. She goes to David, and talks to him about his mother. She reveals to him, that while his mother is unable to speak with him, his love is still able to reach her. If he goes on treating her as though she is lost, she truly will be. In the midst of her revelation, she realizes that the same is true of Tess, and resolves to stick with her.
9 "Remembering Me (2)" Armand Mastroianni Luke Schelhaas November 23, 2002 (2002-11-23) (CBS)
In the town of Joseph Wells, Kevin Greeley (Charlie Schlatter) plays catch with his foster son, Nathan (Nathan Norton). He has been Nathan’s guardian for seven years, and is in high spirits, because today, the adoption will be finalized. A couple towns away, Tess sits, unresponsive in her room at the assisted living center. Her Alzheimer’s has progressed, and now she won’t even sing. But when Monica, Gloria and Andrew begin discussing Joseph Wells, Tess perks up a little. Still in her dazed state, she mouths the words “Joseph Wells” over and over again. Later on, when Monica’s frustration has risen, and her fear of never having Tess back the way she was has grown, Gabriel (Ossie Davis) arrives and tells her to go to Joseph Wells to see Kevin Greeley. Monica does as she is told and meets Kevin outside the courthouse where the adoption will be made official. Kevin greets her warmly, but insists he doesn’t need her help. Everything is great. Nathan is going to be his son. Monica is confused, but happy for him, and accompanies him into court. It is there, when the adoption is all but complete, that a woman enters with her lawyer. They are there to contest the adoption. The woman is Hannah (Jenica Bergere), one of the volunteers at Tess’s nursing home, and she is claiming to be Nathan’s mother. The judge, having little choice, postpones the adoption until paternity can be established. Kevin is outraged. Nathan’s natural mother left him in box on the street next to a burning orphanage. As far as Kevin is concerned, Hannah has no parental rights. He is even more upset when he realizes that Monica knows Hannah, and is unwilling to speak poorly of her. Monica asks Kevin to come to visit Tess. She thinks that he can help Tess, and that she perhaps, can help him. Kevin agrees, and he and Nathan go to see Tess at the home. There, the Angel of Music (Keb’ Mo') waits with his guitar. He and Kevin play a duet and sing “Hand it Over” to Tess. She doesn’t respond, but Monica comes to a realization. “Handing it over” is exactly what she and Kevin need to do. He needs to place Nathan’s fate in God’s hands, and she needs to do the same with Tess. After much deliberation and prayer, Kevin asks God to decide what will become of Nathan. After he does so, he introduces his son to Hannah, and allows them to get to know each other. Later on, as Kevin and Hannah sit over coffee, he asks her to come back to Joseph Wells, so that he can gain a mother without losing a father. As things resolve themselves on that end, Monica hands Tess into God’s hands, and is surprised by her recovery. In no time, Tess is back to her old self. The angels reunite with joy and tears, their love for each other, stronger than ever.
10 "The Christmas Watch" Peter Hunt Ken LaZebnik December 21, 2002 (2002-12-21) (CBS)
It’s Christmas Eve and all through the shop, a party is waiting for the workday to stop. The angels have come to lend joy and aid, to the little old watch shop that’s starting to fade. Piltdown & Sons is the name of the store, but after this Christmas they’ll do business no more. Across from ground zero the watchmakers sit, though their store was spared, their business was hit. Gloria finds troubles in Mr. Piltdown (Austin Pendleton)’s finance, but she hates to disrupt the song and the dance. But still he must listen, still he must know, he must have the time to let it all go. When Gloria tells him he takes the news bad, this is one more loss on top of all that he’s had. Oscar (Jose Zuniga), Chris (Matt Malloy) and Agnes (Jodi Thelen), his workers, his friends, will they still be so close when their legacy ends? And so Piltdown tells them, and know they all see that this is the last Piltdown Christmas to be. Sadness and anger and confusion all reign, to lose it all now causes such pain. But in Andrew comes with one final chore, a Piltdown watch has been found in the rubble next door. Do they know where it’s from, do they know whose it is? They hope and they pray that perhaps he still lives. They look through the books and check the old sales, but it’s their memory of Joshua (Eddie Mills), in the end, that prevails. Dialing the number with a big bated breath, they hope for a life, but fear for a death. A woman’s voice answers, sad for the season, this time of year there can be just one reason. Her husband is gone, her son has no father, could they please fix the watch, would it be such a bother? Piltdown, he thinks, as do Agnes and Chris, should their last work together be for something like this? The answer is yes, what else could they do, what are their troubles compared to those two? A mother and child of a father bereft, this little old watch is all they have left. And all through the night, the watchmakers toil, tightening and tweaking and winding the coil. The angels lend spirit, and purpose and joy, to grant a holiday wish to a poor little boy. And when the day rises and Christmas is here, they’ve done their best work in many a year. Mother and child arrive and thank them sincere, for a little old watch that they’ll always hold dear.
11 "Private Eyes" Julia Rask R.J. Colleary & Ken LaZebnik January 11, 2003 (2003-01-11) (CBS)
The sun rises over the grittier end of Chicago, and the light of dawn cuts right through Maury Hoover (Stacy Keach)’s eyelids and into his hangover. He grumbles his annoyance and embarks on another day of deceit, never knowing that there are angels in his future. Scooping coffee grounds from his potted plants and wondering that they’re still alive, he readies himself for the rigors of the day. But first… a client. The door swings open and in steps a classic Femme Fatale, only this is Monica, so she’s a Femme Angele. She plays the part perfectly, intriguing and mystifying Maury, until he agrees to take on her missing person case. And if he can wrap it up in two days, she’ll double his pay. All he has to do is find Jim Grant (Kelly Connell). It shouldn’t be hard, after all Monica has supplied him with a description, a last known address and a fingerprint. Before Maury can ask her how she got the print, or what this guy is to her, she has vanished. Dames. Maury hits the local diner for some breakfast and to beg a favor from a cop friend, then meets up with the runaway street-walker he’s sort of adopted, Delphina (Amanda MacDonald). She’s led a troubled life; left without a mother, beaten by her father, muscled by a pimp, and dreaming of the good life as a fashion model. But with Maury’s help, that dream may become a reality. He takes her with him to a local bar, where the two of them hustle rich men who are naïve enough to fall into their trap. Sure it’s dishonest, but it brings the money in. Only it doesn’t always go as planned. This evening, Delphina is taken outside. Maury hurries out after him, but is blind sided by Lennie (Scott Anderson), the aforementioned pimp. He’s angry that Delphina has left him for Maury, and even more so that she’s kicked her drug habit. He beats Maury up in retaliation. He might even have done worse if Andrew hadn’t stepped in. He and Delphina get Maury home, where they convince him to hire Andrew onto the case. After all, he needs someone to watch his back. Maury gives Delphina a couple of bucks to get something to eat, while he and Andrew check out a lead on the missing Jim Grant. They stake out his place, and at last the very man they want comes home. Posing as Gas Company workers, they gain admittance to the residence and look for evidence they can show Monica. What Maury does find does not please him. According to the pictures on the mantle, Jim Grant is Delphina’s father, and her name ain’t Delphina, it’s Violet. Maury questions him carefully, and without giving anything away, discovers that Delphina’s dad never beat her like she said. The next day Monica appears, and pays Maury for his work. It’s a fat wad of cash and it doesn’t cheer him up. He struggles with what to tell Delphina, but he’s come to like being needed by her. He hands her the cash, telling her it will put her through modeling school. She’s overjoyed, saying that now she can go back home to her dad with her head held high. Maury fumbles, and tells her that he’s found her father, and he’s dead. Delphina is shattered. When Maury is gone, she falls off of the wagon and back on the vein train, taking up her old drug habit. It is only luck and a little angelic help that keeps her from overdosing. After a couple revelations, Maury sets things right, telling Delpina the truth, reuniting her with her father, and making a deal to get Lennie locked up as well. Days may start bad, and they may get worse, but as long as the angels are on the case, they can get better.
12 "The Root of All Evil" Michael Schultz R.J. Colleary January 25, 2003 (2003-01-25) (CBS)
There are only a few hours left for the angels to infiltrate two sides of a heist that will go horribly wrong. Monica is not on the case, and so the angels must enlist the help of Adam (Charles Rocket), one of the angels of death. He and Andrew must insinuate themselves into the plans of two brothers on opposite sides of the law. Adam must partner himself with Mike (Kirk Baltz), the edgier of the two. Filling in for one of Mike’s associates, Adam must accompany him on what is essentially an arms deal in order to gain his trust. Meanwhile, Andrew is beginning his first day as an armored car guard. He set to be riding with the other brother, Pete (Matt Ross), much to his surprise. On the other end of town, Gloria is assigned to help someone desperately in need of God’s guidance, Father Madden (Charles Durning), a priest. Gloria doesn’t know what it is that he needs, or how to convince her that she’s not a raving lunatic with a delusions of angelic grandeur. What she does know, is that Father Madden needs to be where he is, in the lobby of this building, near the ATM when the heist goes down in a few hours. Adam is very reluctant to get involved with Mike. He doesn’t like his assignment, but sticks with it and accompanies Mike as he scopes out the very lobby in which Gloria is working the priest. Pretty soon it is apparent that Mike knows Father Madden, and is eager to avoid his attention. Andrew makes the regular ATM pickup run with Pete. They’ve got an almost full load and Andrew has gotten to know Pete a little better. He knows that Pete made a great sacrifice in regards to his life plan, by sticking by his ailing father until his subsequent death. He also knows that Pete harbors some bitterness toward his rebellious brother, who was seeing the world while his father lay dying. Pete thinks it’s unfair that Mike was also bequeathed the house in their father’s will. Soon Andrew and Pete arrive at the last stop of the night, an ATM pick up that will complete their heavy cash load. It is not surprisingly, the very ATM that Mike and Andrew are watching, and the one near which Gloria is waiting with Father Madden. This is the moment they’re all there for. The ATM heist, brother against brother, one to steal, the other to stop. But it’s not quite how it seemed. It is Pete, the guard, who is in fact pulling the job. His elaborate plans of riding off into the sunset with the full armored car load have already been dashed by Andrew’s placement on the car, and now his brother is there too. Mike steps forward with his gun and his badge, a cop as it turns out, and he’s acting on a tip to stop the heist. Soon guns are pointed, voices raised, and angels anxious. Father Madden tries to intercede, to bridge the gulf between the two brothers that he has known for so long, but in the heat of the moment, Pete shoots him. If they are to try and save him, and themselves, the brothers must set aside their anger and their guns and focus on the problem. In the end, there’s nothing they can do. Andrew and Adam take him home to heaven, but his death brings the brothers back together, and Pete puts himself into Mike’s custody.
13 "A Time for Every Purpose" John Behring John Wierick February 1, 2003 (2003-02-01) (CBS)
The Kellermans are the perfect American family: they’re business owners, proud parents, and they have a strong marriage. But life is about to turn less than ideal for Rob (Timothy Carhart) and Courtney (Dierdre Lovejoy) and their son, Sam (Seth Adkins). While working on pieces of their custom furniture and skipping stones with his son, Rob begins to notice a loss of strength in his hand. He can’t get a solid grip without his hand quivering. At first he thinks it’s nothing, but when the symptoms persist, he and Courtney decide to consult a specialist. It seems that their fears are not unfounded; Rob has ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. As Rob and Courtney struggle to adjust to the changes in their life, Monica, who was hired to set up their computers, takes a more active role in their life. She helps out where she can, and tries to get them used to the fact that Rob won’t be around forever. She encourages him to cherish the time he has left and to involve himself in his son’s life while he still can. Rob though not thrilled, tries his best to carry on, but there is yet more tragedy to come for the Kellerman family. Later on, with Rob’s conditioning deteriorating, the couple talk to their doctor, Andrew, about ways for Rob to communicate when he can no longer speak. This really hits home for Rob, and on the car ride back to the house, he and Courtney despair for the future. It is during this drive, that another car runs a red light and plows into them. Rob wakes up in the hospital, but Courtney died on the operating table. Now Rob is given the responsibility of a single parent, when he is unable to take care of himself. During the funeral, Rob plans to kill himself. He intends to overdose on his medication. He thinks he’s no good to anyone, especially Sam, and no one will stop him from lightening the burden of the only family he has left. Except that Sam isn’t his only family. Rob has a brother, Pepper (William Moses), a trucker, who was also in love with Courtney and left when she got married. They haven’t spoken since that day, and Rob has written him off, all but disowning him. But he is on his way now. Gloria told him what has happened, and what Rob intends to do, and Pepper is going to do his best to save his brother. When he does arrive, Rob locks himself into his room, and tries to carry out his plans, but Pepper is persistent, and with the help of Monica, he gets through to his brother. They make Rob realize that with Pepper’s help, there is still time for Rob to see his son grow, that he isn’t a burden, but a valued member of the family: a father, a brother, and a child of God.
14 "And a Nightingale Sang" Peter H. Hunt Burt Pearl & Ken LaZebnik February 8, 2003 (2003-02-08) (CBS)
Snow falls, blanketing the streets and alleyways with a thick layer of impassible white. The throughways clog up and the hills ice over, and on what’s supposed to be one of the busy nights in the restaurant business, the Ritz Restaurante is virtually empty. With an overstocked kitchen of swordfish fillets and prime rib, Marty (Louis Mandylor) and Tricia (Wendie Jo Sperber), co-owners of the charming bistro, are having a less than stellar Valentine’s Day. They’ve been married for ten years, and have put off starting a family until they were financially secure. At least they’ve never had to worry about filling the tables on February 14th, not until this year anyway. The place is not completely empty though, Andrew is here, as are Monica and Gloria. Andrew sits at a table by himself, enjoying the atmosphere, while his angelic cohorts have been hired on to help with the “busiest” night of the year. In truth, there is little for them to do. But the angels aren’t the only souls to brave the weather. Riley (Cress Williams) is here with his girlfriend, Amanda (Tembi Locke). They’ve been together for two years and this evening will represent a big change for their relationship. Riley wants to propose, and she wants to break up with him, and neither one has the least idea about the other’s plans. Charlotte (Kate Fuglei) is here too. She is waiting to meet a blind date, a man she met on the internet. She embarrasses herself by mistaking Andrew for him, but resolves herself to sit and wait for her tardy date. Eventually he shows up with Tess, who’s car he towed. When they finally sit down together, he and Charlotte are very awkward, unable to be free with themselves in person as they were online. Tess joins the angels at Andrew’s table and tells them that they are here to watch one of these couples fall in love. But which one? The final couple of the evening arrives in the forms of George (William Daniels) and Loretta (Bonnie Bartlett) a smarmy couple celebrating their 49th wedding anniversary. They are planning on a cruise for their 50th. Unfortunately, according to Andrew, they won’t both be there for the happy occasion. This is just one troubling aspect of the evening. Marty and Tricia are fighting about money and their chance to have children. Amanda refuses to stop using her cell phone, and when Riley proposes, she flees to the restroom. Ben (Lennie Lofton) is unsure of himself, and finds his attempt at charm brushed aside when he suggests that Charlotte brush her hair back from her face. She has been using it to hide a ragged scar that runs along the side of her visage. But things turn around, George and Loretta, informed by Andrew of their fate, privately plead with him to take them rather than their spouse. Ben surprises Charlotte by revealing that it was he who pulled her car from the ravine after the accident that gave her her scar. Monica convinces Amanda to talk to Riley, and when he saves a choking Marty’s life, she is once again smitten with him. And Marty’s brush with death, makes he and Tricia forget their petty squabbles and finally fall in love after ten years.
15 "As It is in Heaven" Victor Lobl Martha Williamson & Luke Schelhaas February 15, 2003 (2003-02-15) (CBS)
Monica and Tess begin their 200th assignment together, on a sour note. While attempting to give Tess a gift, in celebration of their partnership, she accidentally takes her foot off the brake and nearly runs down her assignment. This does not go over well. Not only has she already alienated herself from the person that she is there to help, but she gets a ticket and must now attend traffic school. As a result, Gloria must fill in for her as the new volunteer at the community center. It is Gloria who must now assist Jessie (Edwin Hodge), a smart urban youth who tutors underprivileged children. He is also the adoptive son of, Kelly (Lesley Ann Warren), the woman who Monica almost hit. When Monica arrives in traffic school, she is surprised to find that Kelly is in fact her driving instructor, and she’s not thrilled to see the new addition to her class. It is a grueling four hours of stop-sign quizzes and drunk driving videos. At the end, Monica tries to make peace with the woman she has come to help, but all she discovers is that Kelly is selling completion certificates to traffic offenders. At the community center, Gloria learns that Jessie is a shining light in a gritty, harsh neighborhood. His student, Guillermo (Gilbert Leal, Jr.), strives to better himself, but he is one of several siblings, and his father is in jail. Jessie tells Gloria that prison is the only good thing that can be said about Guillermo’s dad. Unfortunately, the parole board does not agree, and they allow Lionel (Robert LaSardo)’s slick lies to convince them that he is rehabilitated. Soon he is back on the street, trying to re-enter his son’s life, and retake the streets he once roamed as a drug dealer. Jessie tries to get him to leave, but Lionel only laughs at him. Meanwhile, at the second section of traffic school, Monica completes her lessons, and confronts Kelly about her discrepancies. She tells her that God sees what she has been doing. Kelly flinches, and stares Monica down. “You’re an angel aren’t you?” she asks. Monica is shocked, even more so when she discovers that Kelly is also an angel. She was on assignment when Jessie’s mother died, and she adopted him. She has been AWOL this whole time. Monica tries several times to reach her, but Kelly won’t listen. She does listen however, when Andrew shows up with the news that Jessie is going to die. Kelly hurries out the door and drives as fast as she can to the community center. She is not quick enough. Jessie has gone outside to run Lionel off, when a drive-by shooting, aimed at the former drug dealer hits Jessie instead. Kelly is only in time to watch her son die. Giving up hope for the world and herself, she gives the money she had been saving to move Jessie to a safer town, to Guillermo’s mother. And finally she accepts the fact that Monica has come to take her home. She even smiles when she realizes that Jessie will be there.
16 "Song for my Father" Ricardo Mendez Matta Brian Bird February 22, 2003 (2003-02-22) (CBS)
Sarah Dardenne (Krystal Harris) is front-woman of an up and coming band called “The Jane Factor.” She is also a seventeen year-old who is at odds with her father about her music, her cigarette smoking, and the prospect of college. It’s bad enough that he calls her music “trash”, but he also is the music teacher at school. Either at home or in class, she must endure his lectures and his disapproval. The final straw comes when Richard (Geoff Pierson) forbids Sarah and her friends from practicing their songs in his garage. Luckily, the new neighbor across the street, Tess, is a music lover and her house comes complete with a sound proofed garage. This is a small miracle, considering that the house was only on the market for an hour. But with Andrew as her real estate agent, and the fact that he works with her mother, Paula (Ann Dowd), at Wonderland Realty, all the pieces are in place for a garage band on the rise. Especially since Sarah’s boyfriend, Ty (Tyler Andrews), has set up a gig for them at the Retro Club, where local DJ legend, Bumper Doorman, will be at hand. Sarah and her band-mates are thrilled, if only her throat didn’t hurt so much. In music class, Sarah has a coughing fit during a solo, and Richard sends her to the school nurse while admonishing her about cigarette smoking. The school nurse takes a look, and sends a note to Richard, telling him that he is concerned. The next day, Paula takes her to the clinic, where Dr. Gloria takes a culture of the inflamed area. When she has the test results, she brings them immediately to the Dardenne household. Sarah has throat cancer. She will not be able to sing that night, and maybe never again. As Richard and Paula discuss their fears with Gloria, Sarah sneaks out to the Retro Club. By the time her parents notice and get to the club, she is already on stage, singing beautifully. But before she can finish, she blows her vocal chords, collapses in pain, and is rushed to the hospital. While Sarah is prepped for surgery, Richard alternately blames her, Paula, the cigarettes, and God. When he is at his most vulnerable and scared, Monica reveals herself to him. He finally understands. He walks along with Sarah’s gurney, singing to her, and assuring her that they all love her: he, Paula and God.
17 "The Good Earth" Ben Lewin Luke Schelhaas March 1, 2003 (2003-03-01) (CBS)
Stan (Jonathan Lipnicki) and his friends are fascinated by the crazy old man who lives on their street. He’s an inventor, a mad scientist, and he’s building cars that run on chicken droppings… or so they say. There is also speculation that he is experimenting on dead bodies in his basement, but the truth is that Emmett Rivers (Dennis Weaver) is working hard to free the world from its dependence on oil. He is fashioning a device which, when it is finished, will convert hydrogen into energy. It will run on water. Of course, there are a few hitches. Emmett, so far, is unable to get the machine just right. Everything is theoretically working, but it’s just a little off. It’s nothing a few months of fine tuning won’t fix. Unfortunately he might not get that chance. Monica has arrived, as an IRS agent, to look into Emmett’s tax deductions. While she is there, Stan finally gets up the courage to sneak into the house and see just what the crazy old man is working on. But elsewhere, Carl Northram (Michael Nouri), an oil magnate, has been informed of Emmett’s work via his new research assistant, Gloria. On this assignment, it is her job to bring the genius to the man who can put his ideas to work. But when Gloria arrives to express interest in the invention, and negotiate with Emmett regarding its sale, she is rebuffed. Emmett is angry that they weren’t interested until he’d spent twenty years of his life working on it. Now, when it is so near to completion he is afraid that they will swoop in and steal the credit. Gloria assures him that no one is swooping, but Emmett is unwilling to budge. He sees this accomplishment as a way of living on, something he won’t do himself; he’s dying of stomach cancer. When Gloria is gone, Monica and Stan, who Emmett has taken a liking to, try to convince him that it is time to share his genius with the rest of the world. So when Gloria returns with Carl Northram, Emmett accepts their offer and sells the nearly finished machine for one million dollars. Now he can finally relax and seek treatment for his ailment. But all is not as it seems, Carl Northram has no interest in helping the world, he has bought Emmett’s invention solely for the purpose of destroying it. Gloria is devastated by her part in this and returns to bear the tidings to Emmett, Monica and Stan. They are equally disheartened, especially Emmett, who realizes that his work will not be rebuilt in his lifetime. “But it will be rebuilt.” Monica assures him. He just needs to teach someone to carry on his work. He needs to teach Stan, and his work will live on. Emmett does as requested, and realizes that sharing his ideas with even one more person, is better than keeping it locked in a basement, hoping for immortality.
18 "Virtual Reality" Larry Peerce Burt Pearl & Daniel H. Forer March 15, 2003 (2003-03-15) (CBS)
Marissa Atkins lies in a coma in her hospital room. She’s been asleep for nearly six months, and shows no signs of recovery. Her future is locked away in a dormant mind, just like the future of the boys who did this to her are locked in the wheels of justice. Victor Jackson (Billy Kay) is on trial, for what is essentially attempted vehicular manslaughter. The prosecution is trying to demonstrate that Victor intentionally ran Marissa over with his mother’s car. The defense claims that Victor tried to stop, and that it was the fear of an inexperienced driver that led him to flee the scene of the accident. The truth is somewhere in between, and must be discovered by the angels; Rafael (Alexis Cruz) for the prosecution and Andrew for the defense. With Tess acting as Judge, the trial begins. And while various experts take the stand, Monica tries to make some headway with the only witness to the alleged crime, Victor’s cousin, Josh (Kyle Gallner). Rafael brings to the jury’s attention, the fact that Victor and his cousin had been playing a video game called "Carjack 2000: Millennium Mayhem." In this violent game, players get points for: stealing cars, killing drivers, breaking roadblocks and running over prostitutes. Andrew argues that the game bears no relevance to the case and that violent crimes are not spawned from representations of violence in entertainment. Meanwhile, Monica is learning more about Josh. She finds out that he’s been living with his aunt and uncle, Victor’s parents, while his own mother and father are in the midst of a divorce. She learns of his victimization by tougher kids at school, and about his academic decline after he started playing Carjack 2000 with Victor. She also, using her God-given gift of seeing into the hearts of others, discovers that what happened to Marissa was no accident. She sees the boys driving through the rain-soaked streets, jamming angry rap music and getting into the Carjack 2000 mindset. She watches as Victor spots Marissa, scantily clad under a raincoat. He sees her as a prostitute, as "street-scum" from his video game, and he does what is needed to garner the 20,000 points, he runs her down. Now that she knows this, she works with Josh to humanize the victim, to put a person’s face on the unreal figure that his cousin tried to kill. In the end, she is successful. With Marissa awake and in the courtroom, Josh breaks down and confesses. He says that Victor was trying to kill her, he was sick of playing the game on a computer screen and wanted to do it for real. Of course when you do something for real, you must face real consequences, especially when the angels are on the case.
19 "The Show Must Not Go On" Frank E. Johnson Brian Bird & Ken LaZebnik April 12, 2003 (2003-04-12) (CBS)
There’s a lot to be said for a theater founded solely to celebrate children, but there is more to be said about a theater that, after 50 years, ceases to do so. This is the case for the Egyptian Theater, a little community playhouse, that has aged with its owner, Ben Horner (Alex Rocco). As the neighborhood grew dirtier and more dangerous, Ben grew more jaded. He began to view the children of the community as the enemy, and now his little theatre is in shambles; frequently tagged by graffiti and filled with self-important, part-time thespians. This is how things stand when the angels arrive with a camera to document the 50th anniversary of the Egyptian. Never one to mince words, Tess almost immediately confronts Ben, revealing herself as an angel and pointing him back in the direction of his roots. She wants him to write a new song for the 50th anniversary show, something to set the tone for the next 50 years. Ben is inspired. He can already hear the song, and excitedly tells Wally (Ethan Phillips), his all purpose technician all about it. Just as he begins to write though, he suffers a fatal heart attack. Now the documentarian style interviews take on a somber tone, or they would if the regular cast members weren’t so full of themselves. But even they must put aside their egos and elect a new artistic director for the theater. At first they all vote for themselves, but unable to trust each other, they finally opt for the lesser of four evils, Wally. Who, as it happens, is the ideal choice. He takes charge right away, surprising even himself. His first order of business is to tell off the juvenile delinquents who continue to vandalize the theater with their cans of spray paint. This of course, backfires. The morning after Wally’s warning, the cast and crew find the inside of the theater trashed, with tags like “punks rule” sprayed on the walls. All seems lost. But soon, with the help of a few angels, they begin to see that the only way to truly save the theater, is to bring the children back in. And the way to do that, is with a truly memorable anniversary show, dedicated to the memory of Ben Horner. With Tess and Wally shaping the show together, the show is a fantastic success and it seems that the Egyptian will live on with another generation of theatre lovers.
20 "At The End of the Aisle" Jim Charleston Burt Pearl & Luke Schelhaas April 19, 2003 (2003-04-19) (CBS)
Monica, Andrew and Tess are cordially invited to witness the joining of Audrey Carmichael (Wynonna Judd) and Scott Morgan (Gregory Jbara) in holy matrimony… or not so holy matrimony. While Audrey has been blessed with angelic visitations and knows for a fact that God exists and loves her dearly, she has no qualms about marrying a man who does not share her faith. In fact, Scott not only doubts the existence of God and angels, but he scorns the beliefs of those who do. Still, Audrey loves him and his son, and wants to be a part of their family. Scott is, after all, a good man and a good father. The difference between their beliefs would be a minor problem, if not for Audrey’s promise to preach the word and testify to God’s love. It is that promise, which has allowed her to pull herself together and get on with her life after her son Petey died. But now, she is so eager to get on with her life, that she is ignoring who she is, and what she knows is true. When Monica discovers this, she begins to have doubts about Audrey’s impending nuptials, especially after learning that the word “God” has been replaced by “Universe” in the wedding vows. At the rehearsal dinner, Monica broaches the subject briefly, but is rebuffed by Audrey who tells her that “it’s no big deal.” Monica looks to Tess for reassurance, but all she receives is more doubt. Tess points out how much Scott’s son, Kyle (Brandon Mauro), looks like Petey, and how much Audrey dotes on him. Is she marrying the man, or is she marrying back into motherhood? Monica corners Audrey on the issue that night. She expected a bit of anger, but was not prepared to be un-invited to the wedding. Still, she respects Audrey’s wishes, and leaves. But the next night, before the wedding, while practicing the lighting of the candles, Kyle accidentally sets the Wedding Room on fire. He tries to put it out, but the smoke overwhelms him and he passes out. Outside, Scott is frantic, and is about to rush in to look for his son, when Andrew emerges from the building with Kyle in his arms. He is rushed to the hospital. Waiting anxiously for word of Kyle’s condition, Audrey realizes how much she has invested in Kyle, and how little she has in Scott. When they find out that Kyle is alright, Audrey thanks God, and Scott belittles her for it. She asks straight out whether, after all that has happened, he can honestly say that he has no belief in God or in angels. When he says no, Audrey knows that they are not fit to be together. Though she does love them, she loves God more, and cannot deny her faith in Him, or in the angels who have so touched her life.
21 "I Will Walk With You (1)" Larry Peerce Martha Williamson & Burt Pearl & Luke Schelhaas April 26, 2003 (2003-04-26) (CBS)
Monica meets Tess in the dessert, at the same bus stop where she began her job as a caseworker. It is from this, the place where her first assignment began, where she will take on her final one. If all goes well, Monica will advance from caseworker to supervisor. She can’t wait to get started, so that she can start work as a supervisor at Tess’s side. But Tess tells her that it won’t be that way. She’s put in for a new position as well, back in heaven sitting at God’s feet and singing His praises. She hasn’t been training Monica to be her partner, she’s been training her to be her replacement. Monica is upset to hear the news, but her goodbye is cut short by the arrival of the bus. She climbs aboard, wondering where she is going, and what her assignment will bring. On board she meets Zack (Scott Bairstow), a traveling handyman, seemingly without a care in the world. She asks where he’s going and he tells her he’s going where she is, Ascension, Colorado, the bus’s final stop. When they finally arrive in Ascension, they are greeted by a feeling that something is missing. It doesn’t take them long to discover that thing that is absent, is the children. There are no kids here, but there is plenty of evidence that they once were. Bikes lay discarded beside the diner, toy trucks lie in the grass by the school, and joyless adults wander through their days pondering the emptiness in their lives. Two years prior, all of the children were killed when the school’s boiler exploded. Now, the only thing the adults want more than to forget, is justice for the person responsible. It turns out there was a witness to the whole thing, Joey Machulis (Paul Wittenburg), one of Monica’s former assignments. And he’s not the only familiar face in town. His brother, Wayne (Randy Travis), is the sheriff, and Sophie (Marion Ross), a formerly homeless acquaintance of Monica’s is here too. Also, Mike (Patrick Duffy), a big time lawyer who Monica saved during her search and rescue days, is the Mayor. Knowing that there is no such thing as coincidence, Monica tries to figure out what she is doing here and how she can help. The answer soon becomes clear, as Carver (Bob Bancroft), an out of town developer, claims to have seen Zack somewhere before. In fact, it was by the school the day of the explosion. Such a small claim, from an unreliable source, is all the grieving townspeople need to become incensed. While there is little justification, their small world turns on its end, and suddenly everyone is looking at Zack as a killer of children. Monica is astounded.
22 "I Will Walk With You (2)" Larry Peerce Martha Williamson & Burt Pearl & Luke Schelhaas April 27, 2003 (2003-04-27) (CBS)
As the uproar increases, Wayne (Randy Travis) whisks Zack (Scott Bairstow) off to the jail to protect him from the frenzied crowd and to ask him some questions. Unfortunately Zack’s answers are less than satisfactory and not entirely forthcoming. He is, quite simply, a drifter, and as such he has no way of backing up who he is or where he comes from. He does admit to being at the school on the day of the explosion, but he won’t say why he was there. There is already talk of putting him on trial. Monica is dismayed, and sets to work getting Zack the best representation she can, i.e. Mike (Patrick Duffy) and Gloria. They are both certain that there is no case against Zack, and that even if it goes to trial, they should have no trouble getting a change of venue. They are both, however, wrong. The prosecuting attorney, Jones (David Ogden Stiers), is tough as nails and as twisted as a screw. He is also, according to Monica, the devil. Not only does he succeed in bringing the case to trial, but he also eloquently rebuffs all of the defense team’s motions for dismissal. He then proceeds to bring a barrage of witnesses to bear against Zack. The townspeople testify that when Zack arrived in town, little things belonging to the children began to go missing. Soon after that, Jones calls an expert witness to testify that serial killers habitually collect tokens from the scenes of their crimes. When he gets Zack on the stand, he gets him to admit taking the items and to being in any number of towns when accidents claimed the lives of children. Gloria and Mike try their hardest to win over the court-members, but in the end, Zack is found guilty and given the maximum sentence for his crimes. It is after the trial though that Monica makes the most progress. She helps the townsfolk to remember who they were and what they lost. She reminds them that it wasn’t until Zack arrived that they began to fall back into the rhythms of their old lives. When she guides them back to the church and back to the pastor who had let them all slip away, they realize the terrible mistake that they have made. Back in the jail, Monica apologizes to Zack for not helping him in time. But she lets him know that she’s an angel and that she will forgo any future assignments and promotions in order to stay by his side and protect him. She will have to start almost immediately, as Zack is scheduled for transfer the next day. But when she arrives the next morning, Zack’s cell is empty. Everyone is surprised, though the townspeople make it clear that they will not be pursuing him. Especially after they learn from Joey (Paul Wittenburg), that it was he who set the boiler on its deadly course, tricked by the devil into turning the heat up to warm some orphaned kittens. Monica, perplexed, moves on to meet Tess back in the desert, but it is there that she finds Zack once again. He thanks her for her service and devotion, and allows her to recognize him for who he truly is, her Lord, God. She will be promoted. Monica bids farewell to Gloria, Andrew, and Tess and drives off in the Cadillac, a goodbye present from Tess.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_To ... l_episodes"

[miir]

whatafuckingwalloftext!

[Xouqoa]

whatafuckingwalloftext!

AND you get to learn all about "Touched by an Angel" if you read it!

[Canelek]

Winnow has possessed Xouqoa!

[miir]

I think the board crashed for a few minutes when you posted that.

[miir]

96225 words
455376 characters
551771 characters with spaces

I'm a little bit shocked that PHPBB actually supports posts of that size.

[Xouqoa]

96225 words
455376 characters
551771 characters with spaces

I'm a little bit shocked that PHPBB actually supports posts of that size.

Yeah, I was impressed that we were still standing after I submitted it.

[Aslanna]

wtf.. Gilmore Girls > Touched By An Angel (which actually sounds like some sort of Christian sex crime)


[close]
List of Gilmore Girls episodes
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The following is a list of episodes of the television show Gilmore Girls, an American comedy drama series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, starring Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel. The series made its debut on The WB on October 5, 2000, and ended on May 15, 2007, in its seventh season, which aired on The CW. The show placed #32 on Entertainment Weekly's "New TV Classics" list,[1] and in 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME."[2] The show is known for its fast dialogue with endless run-on sentences. The show follows single mother Lorelai Victoria Gilmore (Graham) and her daughter Lorelai "Rory" Leigh Gilmore (Bledel) in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, a close-knit small town with many quirky characters, located roughly thirty minutes from Hartford, Connecticut.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Series overview
* 2 Season 1: 2000-2001
* 3 Season 2: 2001-2002
* 4 Season 3: 2002-2003
* 5 Season 4: 2003-2004
* 6 Season 5: 2004-2005
* 7 Season 6: 2005-2006
* 8 Season 7: 2006-2007
* 9 References

[edit] Series overview
Season Episodes Season premiere Season finale DVD Release
Region 1 Region 2 Region 4
1 21 October 5, 2000 May 10, 2001 May 4, 2004 (2004-05-04) November 16, 2005 (2005-11-16) April 5, 2006 (2006-04-05)
2 22 October 9, 2001 May 21, 2002 December 7, 2004 (2004-12-07) March 15, 2006 (2006-03-15) April 5, 2006 (2006-04-05)
3 22 September 24, 2002 May 20, 2003 May 3, 2005 (2005-05-03) April 12, 2006 (2006-04-12) July 5, 2006 (2006-07-05)
4 22 September 23, 2003 May 18, 2004 September 27, 2005 (2005-09-27) June 14, 2006 (2006-06-14) July 5, 2006 (2006-07-05)
5 22 September 21, 2004 May 17, 2005 December 13, 2005 (2005-12-13) August 16, 2006 (2006-08-16) September 6, 2006 (2006-09-06)
6 22 September 13, 2005 May 9, 2006 September 19, 2006 (2006-09-19) January 10, 2007 (2007-01-10) February 6, 2007 (2007-02-06)
7 22 September 26, 2006 May 15, 2007 November 13, 2007 (2007-11-13) November 14, 2007 (2007-11-14) April 9, 2008 (2008-04-09)
[edit] Season 1: 2000-2001
# Title Original airdate Code
1 "Pilot [3]" October 5, 2000 (2000-10-05) 226730
Rory (Alexis Bledel) is accepted into an elite prep school, which leaves her mother to deal with the large fee associated with her attendance. Lorelai (Lauren Graham) is forced to ask her wealthy parents for the money, who accept on one condition: every Friday night, they come over for dinner.
2 "The Lorelais' First Day at Chilton" October 12, 2000 (2000-10-12) 226701
Rory's first day at Chilton is stressful, as she finds a new rival, Paris (Liza Weil). Lorelai does not wake up in time to get the things done that she needs to, so she ends up looking funny and totally not professional when she drops Rory off at her first day of Chilton.
3 "Kill Me Now" October 19, 2000 (2000-10-19) 226702
Rory, under obligation to Chilton, must take up a sport. Emily wrangles Richard to take Rory to the club, and to Lorelai's dismay, she enjoys it.
4 "The Deer Hunters" October 26, 2000 (2000-10-26) 226703
Upon Rory receiving a "D" in English, she crams for an upcoming Shakespeare test. After a late night of studying, however, Rory misses her test and is outraged.
5 "Cinnamon's Wake" November 2, 2000 (2000-11-02) 226704
Rory discovers Lorelai and Max's budding relationship. Rory and Dean begin dating, which Lorelai observes, no thanks to Rory. Cinnamon, the cat of the Gilmores' next door neighbour Babette, passes away.
6 "Rory's Birthday Parties" November 9, 2000 (2000-11-09) 226705
Emily throws Rory a Chilton party for her birthday on Friday, which ends in a blow up between Emily and Lorelai. On Saturday, Lorelai hosts a birthday party for her which her grandparents reluctantly attend leading Emily to a shocking realization; she missed out on Lorelai's life.
7 "Kiss and Tell" November 16, 2000 (2000-11-16) 226706
Doose's Market plays host to Rory's first kiss; with Dean. The whole town is buzzing about it, yet Rory has not told Lorelai who hears it from an ashen Mrs. Kim.
8 "Love and War and Snow" December 14, 2000 (2000-12-14) 226707
The first snowfall prompts Lorelai and Max's first date. Lane is upset with Rory for being distracted with Chilton, and Dean.
9 "Rory's Dance" December 20, 2000 (2000-12-20) 226708
Chilton hosts a dance which Rory and Dean attend, confirming that they are "boyfriend-girlfriend." Emily sleeps over at Lorelai's the night of the dance to take care of Lorelai's injured back and to see Rory off. Rory and Dean fall asleep accidentally causing Rory to arrive home at 5 a.m., which pushes Emily to think they had sex. Thus, erupts another blow up between Lorelai and her mother.
10 "Forgiveness and Stuff" December 21, 2000 (2000-12-21) 226709
Richard has a heart attack during a Christmas party that Lorelai wasn't invited to, yet Rory was. The medical emergency brings Emily and Lorelai to forgive each other and it even brings Luke and Lorelai closer, too.
11 "Paris Is Burning" January 11, 2001 (2001-01-11) 226710
Lorelai, with intentions to break things off with Max, attends Chilton's parents day, but ends up kissing him which Paris witnesses. Paris spreads the rumors, and when Rory explodes on her; she accepts an offer of friendship (a truce) with Paris. Sookie, on whim from a sharp quip from Lorelai, begins dating Jackson.
12 "Double Date[3]" January 18, 2001 (2001-01-18) 226712
Lane, convinced that Dean's best friend is the boy for her, convinces Rory to double date with her. Lorelai reluctantly accepts a double and blind date with Jackson and Sookie, and Jackson's cousin, Roon.
13 "Concert Interruptus[3]" February 15, 2001 (2001-02-15) 226711
Lorelai, Sookie, Rory, and Lane plan to attend the The Bangles concert, but when Lane's mother finds the truth, she bans her from going. Lorelai and Sookie offer up the three tickets so Rory can take Madeline, Louise, and Paris which backfires when Madeline and Louise take off with two mysterious boys (including Brandon Routh) for a party.
14 "That Damn Donna Reed[3]" February 22, 2001 (2001-02-22) 226715
Dean and Rory fight about his approval of the 1950s, pearls-and-meatloaf domestic antics of Donna Reed, which prompts her to set up a meal in this light. Lorelai admits to Emily she might have feelings for Luke when Emily pesters her about her and Luke's relationship...again.
15 "Christopher Returns[3]" March 1, 2001 (2001-03-01) 226713
Christopher Hayden, Rory's father and Lorelai's old flame, makes a short visit in Stars Hollow. After a dramatic dinner between Richard, Emily and Strobe, and Francine (Christopher's parents), Lorelai and Christopher make love on the balcony. Christopher proposes spontaneously to Lorelai, who rejects him.
16 "Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers" March 8, 2001 (2001-03-08) 226714
Rory and Dean celebrate their three-month anniversary which ends abruptly when Rory is unable to say those three words. Lorelai realizes her feelings for Max are still there. Luke's old flame, Rachel, comes to stay. Later on at a festival going on in Stars Hollow Lorelai, who still has feeling for Max seems very anxious to know if Rachel is staying and if Luke wants her to.when the only answer given by Luke is "I don't know."
17 "The Breakup, Part 2" March 15, 2001 (2001-03-15) 226716
Rory attempts to overcome her sorrow of losing Dean by not wallowing. Instead of not wallowing Rory tries not to deal with it by keeping her brain busy. She buys things and she goes to a party and takes Lane with her. At the party she kisses Tristan and then comes home and starts to wallow. Lorelai and Max share a one-night relapse, and decide to start "talking."
18 "The Third Lorelai" March 22, 2001 (2001-03-22) 226717
Richard's mother, the original Lorelai, with much-too-much attitude visits, sending Emily into peril due to her disapproval of Emily. To make matters worse, she makes Lorelai an offer that may free her of her parents forever.
19 "Emily in Wonderland" April 26, 2001 (2001-04-26) 226718
Rory gives Emily a tour of Stars Hollow, accidentally frightening Emily with the garden shed at the Inn, where Rory and Lorelai first lived.
20 "P.S. I Lo..." May 3, 2001 (2001-05-03) 226719
Rory and Lorelai fight, sending Rory on a cab to Emily and Richard's. Lorelai confronts Dean, and she learns the cause of their break-up which prompts her to confront Rory about her inability to say I love you.
21 "Love, Daisies and Troubadours" May 10, 2001 (2001-05-10) 226720
Love goes: Rachel leaves yet again, but this time because of suspicions of Luke ... and Lorelai, which Luke does not deny having feelings for her but he does tell her they are just friends , which they are but he can barely get it out. Rachel, just before walking out the door tells Luke " Don't wait too long" to tell her his feelings. Rory finally says the three words Dean needed to hear. Max has 1,000 daisies and a question for Lorelai.
[edit] Season 2: 2001-2002
# Title Original airdate Code
22 "Sadie, Sadie" October 9, 2001 (2001-10-09) 227451
Lorelai accepts Max's proposal. Lane is being sent to Korea, with no return in sight. Dean joins Rory and Lorelai at Friday Night dinners, in which Dean is interrogated about his education and his intentions by an angry Richard.
23 "Hammers and Veils" October 9, 2001 (2001-10-09) 227452
Rory volunteers to build a house, hosting panic due to her lack of extracurricular activities. Lorelai tells Emily about her engagement yet Emily responds coldly. Sookie throws Lorelai and Max an engagement party.
24 "Red Light on the Wedding Night" October 16, 2001 (2001-10-16) 227453
Lorelai and Max continue planning their wedding, until at the last moment Lorelai realizes she does not love him. Luke builds Lorelai a chuppah.
25 "The Road Trip to Harvard" October 23, 2001 (2001-10-23) 227454
After canceling the engagement, Rory and Lorelai take a road trip to Harvard. After hearing the news about Lorelai and Max, Luke gives everybody in the diner free coffee. Lane returns from Korea.
26 "Nick & Nora/Sid & Nancy" October 30, 2001 (2001-10-30) 227455
Paris uses her fury about the supposed date Rory and Tristan had to make Rory miserable on the school paper. Luke's troubled nephew, Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) comes to stay.
27 "Presenting Lorelai Gilmore" November 6, 2001 (2001-11-06) 227456
Rory, under obligation to her Grandmother, formally comes out to society. Richard, growing increasingly hostile, vents his frustrations about being "phased out" of his job.
28 "Like Mother, Like Daughter" November 13, 2001 (2001-11-13) 227457
Rory is told that her antisocial tendencies at Chilton are frowned upon and she must better socialize herself. She does so, accidentally tangling herself up in a secret sorority known as The Puffs, and however unwanted the connection is; it reconciles Paris and Rory's damaged relationship. Sookie and Lorelai decide to move forward in opening their own inn.
29 "The Ins and Outs of Inns" November 20, 2001 (2001-11-20) 227458
Mia, the owner of the Independence Inn, visits Stars Hollow. Lorelai and Sookie look into buying the Dragonfly Inn, a disheveled property inside Stars Hollow. Mia's intentions to sell the Independence Inn blow Lorelai off-balance.
30 "Run Away, Little Boy" November 27, 2001 (2001-11-27) 227459
Rory and Tristan must play Romeo and Juliet in a school project; yet the night of the performance Tristan is sent to military school. Lorelai dates a younger man from business school, which upsets and amuses Luke.
31 "The Bracebridge Dinner" December 11, 2001 (2001-12-11) 227460
The Independence Inn throws a dinner party for Stars Hollow friends. Emily and Richard attend, the evening goes awry when Richard reveals he quit his job a few days ago.
32 "Secrets and Loans" January 22, 2002 (2002-01-22) 227461
Lorelai's house has termites, and despite Lorelai's protests, Rory spills the financial aspects of the situation to Emily. Lane has become a cheerleader, which shocks Rory.
33 "Richard in Stars Hollow" January 29, 2002 (2002-01-29) 227462
Richard's newfound free time drives Emily crazy, so she sends him to Stars Hollow for a day where he finds and points out Lorelai's faults.
34 "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" February 5, 2002 (2002-02-05) 227463
A yearly festival (Bid-A-Basket) in which the women make picnic lunches and men bid on them and enjoy the lunch and the basket-makers presence. All couples go awry; Kirk bids on Sookie's, Jess bids on Rory's, and Luke buys Lorelai's. Jackson gets down on one knee to Sookie.
35 "It Should Have Been Lorelai" February 12, 2002 (2002-02-12) 227464
Christopher visits, bringing his girlfriend Sherry to Stars Hollow. Sherry is desperate to spend time with Rory, and Emily is upset by the fact that "it should have been Lorelai."
36 "Lost and Found" February 26, 2002 (2002-02-26) 227465
Rory, who lost her bracelet in episode "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" and was found by Jess, gets panicked when Dean notices its absence on her wrist. Lorelai knows Jess had stolen it. Luke looks for a larger apartment for him and Jess.
37 "There's the Rub" April 9, 2002 (2002-04-09) 227466
Lorelai and Emily spend a weekend at a luxurious spa which goes awry. Rory has the night to herself which also takes a turn for the worse when Dean discovers Jess at Lorelai's house.
38 "Dead Uncles and Vegetables" April 16, 2002 (2002-04-16) 227467
Luke's uncle dies, but the funeral is poorly attended, as nearly everyone has a grudge against the antisocial old man; Luke worries he has followed his uncle's example. Emily helps Sookie plan her wedding, and it becomes too much for Jackson.
39 "Back in the Saddle Again" April 23, 2002 (2002-04-23) 227468
Richard helps Rory with a project for her business class, and it confirms how much he misses the business world.
40 "Teach Me Tonight" April 30, 2002 (2002-04-30) 227469
Rory, attempting to tutor Jess, ends up with a fractured wrist when Jess crashes her car. Lorelai and Luke get into a fight while she looks for Jess. Luke sends Jess home to New York.
41 "Help Wanted" May 7, 2002 (2002-05-07) 227470
Richard starts a consulting business, and Lorelai helps him find a new secretary. Lane decides that drums are her destiny. Carole King guests.
42 "Lorelai's Graduation Day" May 14, 2002 (2002-05-14) 227471
Lorelai graduates from business school, but Rory misses the ceremony because she skipped school to visit Jess in New York and find out why he never said goodbye.
43 "I Can't Get Started" May 21, 2002 (2002-05-21) 227472
Sookie's and Jackson's wedding. Christopher breaks up with Sherry, and spends a romantic night with Lorelai at the Inn, after which they make plans to reunite. When Chris discovers the next day that Sherry is pregnant with his child, he tells Lorelai he cannot fail the new baby the way he did Rory. Rory is surprised to see Jess at the wedding; she kisses him and runs off, telling him to keep it all a secret, ending the season.
[edit] Season 3: 2002-2003
# Title Original airdate Code
44 "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days" September 24, 2002 (2002-09-24) 175001
Lorelai has a strange dream in which she is pregnant with Luke's twins, which Rory interprets as either: Lorelai subconsciously wants to marry Luke and have his twins or that she is jealous that Sherry's pregnancy has doomed Lorelai's hopes with Christopher. Rory comes back from her internship in Washington, where Paris met and dated a Princeton student. Rory is surprised to see Jess making out with another girl and is instantly jealous, but resolves to appreciate her relationship with Dean. The town hosts a summer festival, including a barbershop quartet who only sings "Those Crazy Hazy Lazy Days of Summer" over and over, much to Lorelai's irritation.
45 "Haunted Leg" October 1, 2002 (2002-10-01) 175002
Lorelai turns down a date with Kirk. Rory and Jess quarrel in Doose's market when he points out that she has no right to be jealous, having not contacted him while she was away. Christopher shows up unannounced at Friday-night dinner, having talked with Emily, but is sent away by all three Gilmore women.
46 "Application Anxiety" October 8, 2002 (2002-10-08) 175003
Rory is scared that she may not get in to Harvard after a panel of admissions consultants visits Chilton and emphasizes the competitive process. Rory and Dean start talking about what would happen when Rory leaves for college. Lane joins a rock band, and Taylor wins the town's backing of his plans to open an old-fashioned soda shop.
47 "One's Got Class and the Other One Dyes" October 15, 2002 (2002-10-15) 175004
Lorelai and Luke are invited to speak about success at Stars Hollow High, but the kids just want to hear about Lorelai's teenage pregnancy – and their mothers blame Lorelai. Lane, driven to rebellion, dyes her hair purple but loses her nerve and immediately dyes it back. Rory confronts Jess' new girlfriend, Shane.
48 "Eight O'Clock at the Oasis" October 22, 2002 (2002-10-22) 175005
An irritatingly cheerful new neighbor, partial to board games and kitsch, gives Lorelai detailed instructions for watering his lawn and violets during his business trip; when Rory takes over the watering, however, disaster strikes. Lorelai meets a guy at an auction Emily organized, but their subsequent date does not go well.
49 "Take the Deviled Eggs..." November 5, 2002 (2002-11-05) 175006
Rory and Lorelai attend Sherry's baby shower. Lorelai is jealous because Sherry seems to be living the life she was unable to have with Christopher. Sherry gives Lorelai and Rory left-over deviled eggs from the party, which they proceed to throw at Jess's new car.
50 "They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?" November 12, 2002 (2002-11-12) 175007
Lorelai Lorelai is desperate to win the annual Stars Hollows Dance Marathon in which Kirk has won four times previously. Lorelai convinced Rory to be her partner after she fails to find anyone else suitable. Dean comes to watch. Jackson and Sookie fight over his hopes for four children in four years which Sookie, Lorelai and Luke find ridiculous. Jamie visits Paris at school during his break and convinces her to go out for coffee with him. Jess comes to watch the Dance Marathon with his new girlfriend, Shane. Rory will not stop talking about Jess and how much he annoys her and so Dean snaps. He announces to the entire dance hall that Rory and Jess like each other and everyone knows it and that he is done with Rory. Dean breaks up with Rory for good – causing Lorelai to once again lose to Kirk.
51 "Let the Games Begin" November 19, 2002 (2002-11-19) 175008
Richard guilts Rory into coming with him to Yale. When Rory tells Lorelai, she is angry at her father for tricking Rory into it when he knows Rory only wants to go to Harvard. But Rory convinces her that she does not mind looking around and asks Lorelai to join them and Lorelai grudgingly accepts. Rory and Jess awkwardly begin dating, which Luke is very happy about but Lorelai is wary about Jess. Kirk parades around town, bragging about his Dance Marathon trophy but like every year, someone steals it. Rory, Lorelai, Emily and Richard head to Yale where they look around and Richard then tricks Rory into doing an interview with the Dean of Admissions, whom Richard knows well. Lorelai is extremely mad at Richard for tricking her daughter once again. She goes to get a cab, which Emily tries to talk her out of. When Rory comes out, she is mad at Richard for not preparing her and springing the interview on her. Lorelai and Rory leave, angry. Emily is also mad at Richard, although she tried to defend him. Rory and Jess have their first real kiss and Rory goes to Dean's house to tell him she is sorry about the way she treated him and that she hopes he will not hate her one day. At bedtime, the Gilmore girls each secretly read promotional material from Yale.
52 "A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving" November 26, 2002 (2002-11-26) 175009
Rory and Lorelai are expected to be at four different Thanksgiving meals. First the Kim's, then Sookie's, followed by Luke's and finally Richard and Emily's. They decide that Luke won't mind if they miss his, but when they tell him they won't be able to come, he seems very disappointed, and so they pretend to change their plans so they can go. On Thanksgiving, Lorelai and Rory are at Doose's getting flowers for everyone when Jess surprises Rory with a kiss. Rory relocates them to the side of the building so Dean won't see them. She tells Jess she doesn't want to flaunt their new relationship. Kirk gets a cat, named Kirk who eventually drives Human Kirk from his home. The Gilmores attend each Thanksgivings meal and when they make it to Richard and Emily's, Rory lets it slip that she had applied to Yale, which Lorelai seems angry about and blames on Richard and Emily. Lane gets a kiss.
53 "That'll Do, Pig" January 14, 2003 (2003-01-14) 175010
Paris has a boyfriend, and is not herself. Lorelai gives Emily tips on coping with Richard's mother, Trix. Rory begins to ease up around Dean; she and Jess begin to make out publicly. Jess refuses to attend the Winter Carnival, but when Dean asks Rory to join him and his little sister Clara, Jess becomes jealous and decides to escort Rory after all.
54 "I Solemnly Swear" January 21, 2003 (2003-01-21) 175011
Francie tricks Paris into believing that Rory is plotting against her in the Student Council. Lorelai and Sookie attend a lecture on running an inn; it is a total waste, but Sookie meets an old friend Joe, and sparks fly between Lorelai and Joe's business partner Alex. Emily, sued by a fired servant, presses Lorelai to give a deposition, and is outraged at the result.
55 "Lorelai Out of Water" January 28, 2003 (2003-01-28) 175012
Alex invites Lorelai on a fishing trip, so Luke teaches her how to fish without embarrassing herself. Luke also meets Taylor's attractive lawyer, Nicole. Paris escalates her one-sided feud with Rory, and both are reprimanded by the headmaster. Lane is thrilled that her mother said maybe to her request of going to the Prom — that is, until her mother picks out her date.
56 "Dear Emily and Richard" February 4, 2003 (2003-02-04) 175013
Rory receives an invitation to Sherry's C-section. Sherry goes into labor early, and Rory is the only one present. Lorelai reminisces about her own pregnancy and, realizing anew what her mother suffered, makes a reconciliatory gesture toward Emily.
57 "Swan Song" February 11, 2003 (2003-02-11) 175014
Jess comes to Friday night dinner with a black eye, and Rory accuses him of having a fight with Dean, which he denies. Later, Jess admits to Luke that he was attacked by a swan. Rory stays the night at her grandparents' house. Emily yells at Lorelai for letting Rory go out with Jess. Rory later tells Lorelai that she might have sex with Jess soon. Zack and Brian guess that Lane and Dave are hiding a secret, but think that the secret is their religious faith.
58 "Face-Off" February 18, 2003 (2003-02-18) 175015
When Jess does not call, Rory goes to a hockey game and sees Dean with his new girlfriend, Lindsay. Emily gets revenge for Trix's slights when she finds her making out with a man in a jogging suit. Lane and Dave convince her male friend Young Chui to become Lane's fake boyfriend. Rory leaves an angry message for Jess, but after discovering that he was out preparing a surprise for her, she asks him to delete it without listening.
59 "The Big One" February 25, 2003 (2003-02-25) 175016
On the eve of presenting joint speeches over C-SPAN for the school's bicentennial, Paris has a heart-to-heart with Rory, confiding that she finally had sex with her boyfriend and getting Rory to admit she is still a virgin (to an eavesdropping Lorelai's relief). The next day, Paris has a meltdown on live TV, announcing her rejection by Harvard as judgment upon her premarital sex and predicting the virginal Rory will be accepted. Lorelai runs into Max and sparks fly. Sookie discovers she is pregnant. Rory arrives home to find she has been accepted to every school.
60 "A Tale of Poes and Fire" April 15, 2003 (2003-04-15) 175017
The Independence Inn catches fire during a meeting of the Poe Society, so guests move into Lorelai's house, and she spends the night with Luke and Jess, where she tells Luke about her strange dream of months before. Lane discovers Young Chui may never initiate the break up that would free her to date Dave. Rory must choose among Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, but is torn when her pro-con lists point away from the school whose banners cover her wall and toward the school to which Lorelai had opposed her applying.
61 "Happy Birthday, Baby" April 22, 2003 (2003-04-22) 175018
Rory plans Lorelai's big birthday blowout, including a town-sized pizza. Richard gives Lorelai the $75,000 payout from an investment he had made at her birth. Lorelai, in turn, writes a check to her mother to repay the loan for Chilton and end the Friday dinner agreement, then is shocked when her mother is angry at being repaid. Luke's adventures in parenting also go badly when he cannot convince Jess to prioritize school, then scares off Nicole's parents by raving about the situation.
62 "Keg! Max!" April 29, 2003 (2003-04-29) 175019
Jess learns he does not get to graduate. Rory, Jess, Dean and Lindsay attend a party where Lane's band is playing. A drunken Lane calls her mother and admits all her deceptions as she despairs of ever having the relationship she wants. Jess makes a pass at Rory after she seeks him out to find why he is acting strangely, then pushes her away when she does not respond as he hoped. She leaves the room crying, which Dean sees, leading him to start a fight with Jess and destroy their host's home. Lorelai, meanwhile, invites Luke and Nicole to stay at the inn, then is distressed by a close look at their coziness.
63 "Say Goodnight, Gracie" May 6, 2003 (2003-05-06) 175020
Jess's father appears, meets Jess, then vanishes after Luke warns him off. Dean and Lindsay get engaged. Fran dies, meaning Lorelai and Sookie may have a chance to buy the Dragonfly. Mrs. Kim agrees to let Dave take Lane to the prom, but only after a mysterious quote that he cannot find anywhere in the Bible. After days of mutual avoidance with Jess, Rory finally tells Lorelai what happened at the party. Jess fights with Luke over how they will handle his failure to graduate, then leaves for California in search of his father. Jess does not tell Rory that he is going to visit his father.
64 "Here Comes the Son" May 13, 2003 (2003-05-13) 175021
Jess goes to live with his dad in Venice Beach (in a backdoor pilot for a show that was to star the Jess character). Rory stresses over graduation, while Lorelai ponders how to break the news that Jess has left for good.
65 "Those Are Strings, Pinocchio" May 20, 2003 (2003-05-20) 175022
Rory graduates from Chilton. With the Independence Inn set to close, a newly unemployed Lorelai plans to use her inn-buying funds to pay for Yale, until Rory goes behind her back to make a new deal with her grandparents. Lorelai and Sookie buy the Dragonfly. The Gilmore Girls get ready for their European adventure, and Luke — prompted by a conversation with Lorelai — decides to commit to a cruise with Nicole. Rory breaks up with Jess.
[edit] Season 4: 2003-2004
# Title Original airdate Code
66 "Ballrooms and Biscotti" September 23, 2003 (2003-09-23) 176151
Warp speed. The Gilmore girls return from their summer holiday and find out they have to cram one-and-a-half weeks of activities into three days before Rory's Yale orientation. Meanwhile, Luke and Nicole have surprising news from their vacation, and Sookie has found out the gender of her baby. Emily takes advantage of Lorelai's skipping of the Friday night dinner, and monopolizes Rory's last night before Yale.
67 "The Lorelais' First Day at Yale" September 30, 2003 (2003-09-30) 176152
Rory and Lorelai prepare to leave for Yale, packing and with Lorelai taking photos of Rory heading off. Lorelai borrows Luke's truck to take Rory's things to Yale but doesn't mention to Luke that she can't drive a stick.. Luke tries to teach her but his efforts are wasted and she leaves. Rory arrives at Yale and begins her Orientation. She meets one of her new roommates who is only sixteen and quite strange. Rory soon finds that someone she knows is her other roommate. It's Paris, with her new lifecoach, Terrance. Rory finds that Paris requested a room with her as they have a history together. Rory is shocked. After seeing what other students have got in their dorms, Lorelai leaves to find better things for Rory's dorm. She brings Rory the things and then leaves again. Just as Lorelai gets back to Stars Hollow, she gets a page from Rory saying to come back and go she heads for Yale again. When she gets there, Rory gives Lorelai a hug and tells her how she missed her after only being away for five minutes. She goes on about how she is pathetic being a mummy's girl and asks Lorelai why she doesn't hate her and want to be away from her like most kids do when they go off to college. Lorelai calms her down and suggests staying the night. Rory accepts and Lorelai begins to order every kind of food for them and Rory's roommates. When the pizza arrives, there is far too much and so Lorelai calls other girls in for a party. They all have a good time and remember Rory for having a really cool mum. Lorelai leaves and Rory feels better, knowing more people at Yale.
68 "The Hobbit, the Sofa and Digger Stiles" October 7, 2003 (2003-10-07) 176153
Lorelai and Sookie begin a catering company, starting with a Lord of the Rings-themed children's party that leads Sookie to doubt her abilities as a mother. Richard goes into business with his former associate's son, while Emily surprises Rory with unrequested furniture. Rory has her first college party.
69 "Chicken or Beef?" October 14, 2003 (2003-10-14) 176154
Lorelai begins renovations on the Dragonfly Inn. Dean invites Rory to his wedding, but Luke later tells Rory not to go after Dean makes a drunken and shocking confession to Luke on the night of his bachelor party that he still loves Rory.
70 "The Fundamental Things Apply" October 21, 2003 (2003-10-21) 176155
Rory tries to start dating again, and is disappointed. Lorelai invites Luke, the "uber monk," over for movie night.
71 "An Affair to Remember" October 28, 2003 (2003-10-28) 176156
Emily plans a launch party for Richard's new business and hires Lorelai and Sookie to cater it. And Kirk prepares – extensively – for a date. But neither affair goes quite as expected.
72 "The Festival of Living Art" November 4, 2003 (2003-11-04) 176157
The whole town gets involved posing as famous artwork for a festival. Lorelai is nervous about a possible repeat performance of her flinch several years ago in the same role, and Kirk as Jesus in The Last Supper is warring with the guy playing Judas. While the show goes on, Luke's about-to-be ex shows up, and Sookie's baby is a no-show, days after the due date. (This episode won the show's only Emmy, for Outstanding Makeup for a Series (non-prosthetic).[4])
73 "Die, Jerk" November 11, 2003 (2003-11-11) 176158
En pointe and in print. To get a story published in the school newspaper, Rory blasts the Yale ballet...and earns the lead ballerina's wrath, who leaves a note on Rory's door saying "DIE JERK". Jason finagles an invitation to the Gilmores' Friday dinner.
74 "Ted Koppel's Big Night Out" November 18, 2003 (2003-11-18) 176159
When the four Gilmores run into an old acquaintance at the Harvard-Yale game, Emily fights with both Richard and Lorelai, prompting Lorelai to accept a dinner date with Jason. Meanwhile, Lane begs Luke to let her replace his new employee.
75 "The Nanny and the Professor" January 20, 2004 (2004-01-20) 176160
Sookie's new nanny turns out to be Michel's old rival, who has child-phobic Michel so paranoid he offers to play Mary Poppins to Sookie's new baby, Davey. Meanwhile, one of Rory's professors shows a penchant for women 40 years his junior...Paris Gellar.
76 "In the Clamor and the Clangor" January 27, 2004 (2004-01-27) 176161
Hear the tintinnabulation. Restored church bells set everyone on edge, prompting Lorelai and Luke to a late-night escapade. When Lorelai discovers Luke has "moved" to another town with Nicole, she freaks. Rory has an embarrassing run-in with a fellow student who turned her down for a date. When Mrs. Kim discovers Lane's secret rock-'n'-roll life — after a failed gig at the famous CBGB club in New York — she and Lane discuss Lane's secret life.
77 "A Family Matter" February 3, 2004 (2004-02-03) 176162
Luke is wary when his flaky sister Liz unexpectedly visits. Then the other shoe drops: Jess is back in Stars Hollow. Paris dumps Jamie for her new flame.
78 "Nag Hammadi Is Where They Found the Gnostic Gospels" February 10, 2004 (2004-02-10) 176163
When Luke wants to do something about Liz's latest boyfriend, who seems to be yet another loser, Jess accuses him of being a know-it-all buttinski ... and Luke takes the criticism to heart. Also, Jess runs away from Rory every time he sees her, but later has a surprising proclamation to make.
79 "The Incredible Sinking Lorelais" February 17, 2004 (2004-02-17) 176164
Things fall apart. Humiliated when she has trouble keeping up with her course load, Rory turns to Dean for support. Running out of time and money to renovate the Dragonfly, and reeling from being labeled as a failure by her grandmother, Lorelai turns to Luke for a loan.
80 "Scene in a Mall" February 24, 2004 (2004-02-24) 176165
Conspicuous consumption. Hurt that Richard spends so much time on business and so little time with her, Emily hits the mall, dragging Lorelai and Rory with her when she runs into them on their mother-daughter day. Lane moves into an apartment with her band mates.
81 "The Reigning Lorelai" March 2, 2004 (2004-03-02) 176166
Trix, Richard's mother, dies, and in the process of attending to every little detail of the plans Trix left for the funeral, Emily finds an upsetting letter that Trix wrote to Richard the night before his and Emily's wedding. Emily abruptly halts planning the funeral, leaving the task to Lorelai.
82 "Girls in Bikinis, Boys Doin' The Twist" April 13, 2004 (2004-04-13) 176167
Rory and Paris go south for a rite of passage: spring break! Jason awkwardly performs the rite of giving Lorelai his house key. Luke is read his rights after attacking a suspicious car outside the house that belongs to him and Nicole.
83 "Tick, Tick, Tick, Boom!" April 20, 2004 (2004-04-20) 176168
Taylor returns to Stars Hollow looking a little different, and Kirk panics about a mistake he made during the Easter egg hunt he planned in Taylor's absence. Former business associate Floyd, Jason's father, slaps a lawsuit on Richard and Jason's partnership, simultaneously revealing Lorelai's secret to her astonished parents.
84 "Afterboom" April 27, 2004 (2004-04-27) 176169
What happens after an explosion? Everything is in pieces. The crisis in Richard and Jason's business dramatically affects Richard and Emily's marriage as well as Lorelai and Jason's relationship.
85 "Luke Can See Her Face" May 4, 2004 (2004-05-04) 176170
The least-likely person to buy self-help tapes buys self-help tapes. And what do you know? They help. Thanks to the voice from the boom box, Luke finally realizes who will make him happy. Feeling better, Luke completes his journey by handing over the tapes to a flummoxed Jess.
86 "Last Week Fights, This Week Tights" May 11, 2004 (2004-05-11) 176171
Wedding day at Stars Hollow-and Liz and T.J.'s Renaissance-themed ceremony seems to have an effect on Luke and Jess. Mrs. Kim and Lane begin a tentative reconciliation. Meanwhile, Rory and Dean share another secret conversation.
87 "Raincoats and Recipes" May 18, 2004 (2004-05-18) 176172
The Dragonfly hosts a test-run weekend, and it seems everyone Lorelai knows is there (including someone she does not invite), oohing, aahing, laughing, loving, clashing, crying, fuming, leaving. Richard and Emily continue to fight, Kirk suffers from night terrors, Taylor offers up his commentary in classic Taylor style, Michel proposes some changes to the inn, and Luke and Lorelai have a serious discussion ending with a kiss to start their relationship. Rory and Dean's relationship moves to the next level, and Lorelai's disapproval sparks a fight between her and Rory.
[edit] Season 5: 2004-2005
# Title Original airdate Code
88 "Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller" September 21, 2004 (2004-09-21) 2T5301
Rory and Lorelai quarrel about Rory's affair with Dean, and an angry Rory leaves for a summer in Europe with Emily to get some space from Lorelai.
89 "A Messenger, Nothing More" September 28, 2004 (2004-09-28) 2T5302
While touring Europe with Emily, Rory writes a letter to Dean, hoping to fix the mess she made, but only makes it worse when Lindsay finds the letter and kicks Dean out of the house.
90 "Written in the Stars" October 5, 2004 (2004-10-05) 2T5303
Luke and Lorelai finally go on their first date, where Luke shows Lorelai a horoscope she gave to him when they first met 8 years ago. After sleeping with Luke, Lorelai goes downstairs in Luke's plaid shirt to look for coffee, and finds the diner full of towns people.
91 "Tippecanoe and Taylor, Too" October 12, 2004 (2004-10-12) 2T5304
Frustrated with Taylor's obstructionism, Jackson runs for town selectman.
92 "We Got Us a Pippi Virgin" October 19, 2004 (2004-10-19) 2T5305
A double date between Lorelai and Luke, and Rory and Dean, does not go well.
93 "Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant!" October 26, 2004 (2004-10-26) 2T5306
Norman Mailer visits the Inn. Sookie becomes aware that she is pregnant again. Rory does research on the "Life and Death Brigade" for the Yale Daily News, which leads her right back to Logan Huntzberger.
94 "You Jump, I Jump, Jack" November 2, 2004 (2004-11-02) 2T5307
Rory gets an overnight inside scoop on the "Life and Death Brigade". Emily insists on meeting Luke, and finds him unsuitable. Luke plays golf with Richard, who proposes franchising Luke's Diner – explaining to Emily that Luke would only be a figurehead.
95 "The Party's Over" November 9, 2004 (2004-11-09) 2T5308
Emily and Richard host a party for Yale alumni (and their sons) but Rory is the unknowing guest-of-honor and it ends her relationship with Dean. Luke, Lorelai, and T.J. have a complicated dinner.
96 "Emily Says Hello" November 16, 2004 (2004-11-16) 2T5309
Emily goes on a date. Christopher visits Stars Hollow with baby Gigi and has lunch with Lorelai.
97 "But Not as Cute as Pushkin" November 30, 2004 (2004-11-30) 2T5310
Rory shows a student from Chilton around Yale. Lorelai learns of Luke's "dark day". Rory is embarrassed by Logan and his friends during a class.
98 "Women of Questionable Morals" January 25, 2005 (2005-01-25) 2T5311
A dog temporarily brings Emily and Richard back together; Stars Hollow holds its annual Revolutionary War reenactment with some strange changes; Chris attempts to make amends with Rory.
99 "Come Home" February 1, 2005 (2005-02-01) 2T5312
A fender bender reunites Emily and Richard. Emily tries to replace Luke with Christopher.
100 "Wedding Bell Blues" February 8, 2005 (2005-02-08) 2T5313
In the 100th episode, Richard and Emily renew their vows with an elaborate ceremony. Christopher tries to get together with Lorelai, even though she has brought Luke to the reception. Rory is caught by her parents and Luke in the midst of an intimate encounter with Logan.
101 "Say Something" February 15, 2005 (2005-02-15) 2T5314
Lorelai deals with her break-up with Luke.
102 "Jews and Chinese Food" February 22, 2005 (2005-02-22) 2T5315
Lorelai helps with costumes for the elementary school's production of "Fiddler on the Roof" while Luke helps with props. Rory finally reveals her feelings for Logan, as Marty reveals his feelings for her.
103 "So...Good Talk" March 1, 2005 (2005-03-01) 2T5316
Lorelai shuts out Emily for driving Luke away. Rory faithfully keeps her Friday dinner date with her grandparents, but is cold to Emily, making her furious.
104 "Pulp Friction" March 8, 2005 (2005-03-08) 2T5317
A Quentin Tarantino-themed party marks a new phase in Logan and Rory's relationship. Lorelai celebrates her reunion with Luke, but continues to freeze out Emily. Michel wins a motor home on "The Price Is Right."
105 "To Live and Let Diorama" April 19, 2005 (2005-04-19) 2T5318
Luke helps Taylor Doose renovate an old house into a museum. Rory, Paris, and Lane become intoxicated at the opening of the house and speak their minds on their love lives.
106 "But I'm a Gilmore!" April 26, 2005 (2005-04-26) 2T5319
Rory lets Logan know that she is a "girlfriend-girl," and Logan takes it as an ultimatum. He is scared at the thought of leaving her, and he decides to commit. He takes her to his parents' house where his family does not exactly accept her.
107 "How Many Kropogs to Cape Cod?" May 3, 2005 (2005-05-03) 2T5320
Rory begins work as Mitchum Huntzberger's intern. Emily and Richard host a dinner for Logan.
108 "Blame Booze and Mellville" May 10, 2005 (2005-05-10) 2T5321
Sookie's baby arrives early. Lorelai insults Emily with her insensitive remarks in an article about the Dragonfly. Kirk outbids Luke for the Twickham house. Rory is upset when Mitchum Huntzberger tells her she wouldn't cut it as a professional journalist.
109 "A House Is Not a Home" May 17, 2005 (2005-05-17) 2T5322
After stealing a yacht to make herself feel better following Mitchum Huntzberger's poor evaluation of her, Rory decides to take some time off from Yale. Lorelai is upset by this, and becomes even more upset when Rory chooses to move in with her grandparents. A very distraught Lorelai asks Luke to marry her.
[edit] Season 6: 2005-2006
# Title Original airdate Code
110 "New and Improved Lorelai" September 13, 2005 (2005-09-13) 2T6301
Rory goes to court for stealing a yacht and gets 300 hours of community service. Luke says yes to Lorelai and they go to the gazebo and celebrate. Luke buys Lorelai an engagement ring.
111 "Fight Face" September 20, 2005 (2005-09-20) 2T6302
Rory gets into a fight while doing community service, which has an ugly turn. Luke and Lorelai decide they are not going to buy a new house, but expand Lorelai's house instead. Rory finds out about Lorelai and Luke's engagement. Lorelai buys a dog and names him Paul Anka.
112 "The UnGraduate" September 27, 2005 (2005-09-27) 2T6303
Rory completes her 125th hour of community service, while Paris terrorizes everyone at The Dragonfly. Lorelai's house is under construction, and Lorelai entertains the workers. Paul Anka eats baking chocolate and Luke takes him to a vet.
113 "Always a Godmother, Never a God" October 4, 2005 (2005-10-04) 2T6304
Sookie and Jackson's children are getting baptized, and Jackson's family is coming to The Dragonfly. Lorelai and Rory are made the children's godmothers, forcing them to meet again.
114 "We've Got Magic to Do" October 11, 2005 (2005-10-11) 2T6305
Rory hosts a WWII-themed DAR function, Paris goes broke, and Richard and Emily learn the truth about the Huntzbergers.
115 "Welcome to the Doll House" October 18, 2005 (2005-10-18) 2T6306
Taylor changes Stars Hollow's street names to their historical predecessors, much to the displeasure of the staff of the Dragonfly Inn. Logan gives Rory an extremely expensive gift. Rory tells Logan she loves him.
116 "Twenty-One is the Loneliest Number" October 25, 2005 (2005-10-25) 2T6307
Rory and Lorelai are unhappy because, due to their estrangement, they cannot carry out their plans for Rory's 21st birthday. Emily and Richard become wary about Rory and Logan becoming serious. Emily throws Rory a party.
117 "Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out" November 8, 2005 (2005-11-08) 2T6308
A visit from Jess makes Rory think about her relationship with Logan and her life. Lorelai deals with her and Rory's estrangement by taking care of her dog.
118 "The Prodigal Daughter Returns" November 15, 2005 (2005-11-15) 2T6309
Rory decides to go back to Yale, and she gets a job. Then Rory and Lorelai reunite. Luke finds out that he has a daughter. After Luke finds out he does not tell Lorelai.
119 "He's Slippin' 'Em Bread...Dig?" November 22, 2005 (2005-11-22) 2T6310
Christopher offers to share a recent inheritance with Lorelai and Rory, so Rory asks him to pay for Yale. Zach throws a tantrum during an important concert for the band after Brian writes a song called "Lane".
120 "The Perfect Dress" January 10, 2006 (2006-01-10) 2T6311
Lorelai and Sookie manage to plan Luke and Lorelai's wedding in just one day.
121 "Just Like Gwen and Gavin" January 17, 2006 (2006-01-17) 2T6312
Lorelai finds out about Luke's daughter, but not from Luke himself.
122 "Friday Night's Alright for Fighting" January 31, 2006 (2006-01-31) 2T6313
Logan helps Rory with a paper crisis that saves their relationship. During Friday night dinner, all four Gilmores vent their frustrations with each other.
123 "You've Been Gilmored" February 7, 2006 (2006-02-07) 2T6314
Luke attends Friday night dinner with Lorelai. Rory becomes the Yale Daily News' editor and moves in with Logan.
124 "A Vineyard Valentine" February 14, 2006 (2006-02-14) 2T6315
Lorelai and Luke spend some time in Martha's Vineyard with Logan and Rory during Valentine's Day weekend.
125 "Bridesmaids Revisited" February 28, 2006 (2006-02-28) 2T6316
Rory attends the wedding of Logan's sister and finds out some upsetting things about how Logan spent his time during their separation. Zach seeks to reunite the band and spontaneously proposes to Lane.
126 "I'm OK, You're OK" April 4, 2006 (2006-04-04) 2T6317
Logan comes to explain himself to Rory, where they sort of make-up. Zach and Mrs. Kim team up to write a hit song for Hep Alien. The Gilmore Girls face romance problems.
127 "The Real Paul Anka" April 11, 2006 (2006-04-11) 2T6318
Rory becomes worried about Logan's constant drinking and partying. Luke chaperones April's field trip to Philadelphia and visits Jess at his publishing house. Rory sees (and kisses) Jess.
128 "I Get A Sidekick Out of You" April 18, 2006 (2006-04-18) 2T6319
Lane and Zach get married and Lorelai realizes that at this rate, she may never be in Lane's shoes.
129 "Super Cool Party People" April 25, 2006 (2006-04-25) 2T6320
Logan is hospitalized and Rory rushes to be by his side. Lorelai helps throw a birthday party for April.
130 "Driving Miss Gilmore" May 2, 2006 (2006-05-02) 2T6321
Logan comes home from the hospital and Paris & Doyle take care of him. Emily has laser eye surgery and asked Lorelai to drive her around while her eyes heal. Lorelai learns Emily and Richard were planning to buy her and Luke a new house.
131 "Partings" May 9, 2006 (2006-05-09) 2T6322
After seeing a psychologist (in the back of her car), Lorelai decides to face Luke with an ultimatum regarding their relationship, which backfires; She ends up going to see Christopher. Rory throws Logan a big good-bye party, then sees him off to London.
[edit] Season 7: 2006-2007
# Title Original airdate Code
132 "The Long Morrow" September 26, 2006 (2006-09-26) 2T7751
Lorelai wakes up next to Christopher after her fight with Luke. Rory receives a model rocket as a going-away present from Logan and struggles to decode its significance. Before Lorelai goes to sleep, Christopher calls her and says " That other night was incredible and I hope it can happen again." But she replies" That night was a mistake and it can not happen again."
133 "That's What You Get, Folks, For Makin' Whoopee" October 3, 2006 (2006-10-03) 2T7752
Lane and Zach return from their less-than-perfect honeymoon in Mexico. Lane reports to Rory that sex is overrated; learning that she is pregnant does not help her opinion. Luke and Lorelai begin to deal with their break-up.
134 "Lorelai's First Cotillion" October 10, 2006 (2006-10-10) 2T7753
Lorelai begins to wonder if all the choices she has made have been due to her trying to rebel against her mother. Christopher tells Lorelai that he loves her.
135 "'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous" October 17, 2006 (2006-10-17) 2T7754
Lorelai and Chris have begun to date. Rory returns to Yale for the fall semester. April is staying with Luke temporarily while her mom, Anna, is out of town. Richard starts at Yale as a guest lecturer.
136 "The Great Stink" October 24, 2006 (2006-10-24) 2T7755
Logan returns to town on business to acquire an internet company and pays Rory a surprise visit. Rory is thrilled but, during a dinner with Logan's colleagues, she realizes that she has no connection to his new business world.
137 "Go, Bulldogs!" November 7, 2006 (2006-11-07) 2T7756
Lorelai and Chris attend Yale Parents' Night. Chris takes out Rory and all her friends for dinner. At the end, she shows her commitment to her duties as editor of the newspaper by gathering the troops to report on a story.
138 "French Twist" November 14, 2006 (2006-11-14) 2T7757
Lorelai and Chris fly to France to take Gigi to see her mother. Once there, Chris proposes to Lorelai.
139 "Introducing Lorelai Planetarium" November 21, 2006 (2006-11-21) 2T7758
Rory is angry that she could not attend Lorelai and Chris's wedding. Logan is moving from London to New York City. He and Rory fight about an article she wrote. April develops appendicitis and Luke takes her to the hospital.
140 "Knit, People, Knit!" November 28, 2006 (2006-11-28) 2T7759
Lorelai becomes determined to make Christopher liked by the people in Stars Hollow. Rory moves in with Paris, after moving out of Logan's apartment and attends a party at Lucy's apartment. Marty reveals to Rory that he still has feelings for her. Luke's evident feelings for Lorelai are still apparent in his behavior.
141 "Merry Fisticuffs" December 5, 2006 (2006-12-05) 2T7760
Luke and Lorelai share a sweet moment when Luke introduces her to Liz's new baby, and Christopher witnesses the scene. Lorelai and Christopher get into a fight over what Lorelai wants vs. what Christopher wants. Luke contacts a lawyer over his custody troubles with Anna. Christopher and Luke fight in the town square. Logan discovers that Rory and Marty have been pretending that they just met, and he reveals the truth to Lucy. Emily gives Lorelai a warning about her marriage.
142 "Santa's Secret Stuff" January 23, 2007 (2007-01-23) 2T7761
Luke asks Lorelai to be a character reference in his custody case. Rory comes back from London, where she and Logan have made amends. The Gilmore girls celebrate Christmas a month late. Also, April sneaks out to see Luke.
143 "To Whom It May Concern" January 30, 2007 (2007-01-30) 2T7762
Rory makes amends with Lucy while Christopher finds the letter Lorelai wrote for Luke's character reference. Rory witnesses a frightening sight while at Richard's Economics class. Sookie is acting weirdly so Lorelai makes Jackson confess: Sookie is pregnant again, even though Sookie told Jackson to get a vasectomy.
144 "I'd Rather Be In Philadelphia" February 6, 2007 (2007-02-06) 2T7763
Richard is in the hospital, with Emily, Lorelai and Rory in the waiting room. Hearing of this, Logan comes to be by Rory's side. Lorelai calls Christopher to let him know ("since that is what a married couple should do"), but cannot reach him. Luke, however, hears about Richard and comes running.
145 "Farewell, My Pet" February 13, 2007 (2007-02-13) 2T7764
Richard is feeling better and preparing to leave the hospital. Michel's dog, Chin Chin, dies and he guilts Lorelai into holding his memorial at The Dragonfly. Rory has a crush on the teacher's assistant that is filling in for Richard and confesses her "self-destructing" feelings to Logan. Lorelai and Christopher end their marriage.
146 "I am Kayak, Hear Me Roar" February 20, 2007 (2007-02-20) 2T7765
Lorelai is having a hard time confessing her breakup to Emily but to her surprise encounters Emily's sympathy when she finally does. Rory prepares a "Gilmorish-birthday" for Logan to show him that a birthday can be fun as opposed to the way they get celebrated in the Huntzburger family. Logan learns that his company's patents aren't valid due to prior art.
147 "Will you be my Lorelai Gilmore?" February 27, 2007 (2007-02-27) 2T7766
Lorelai and Rory throw Lane's baby shower, but Lorelai has to settle a fight between Lane and her mother first. Rory has an interview with the New York Times. Luke sells his father's boat to Kirk and buys a new and bigger one. Logan finally tells Rory about his business situation, and she tries to help out even though there's nothing she can do. She offers to come home from Lane's baby shower early to be with him, but Logan decides to go to Las Vegas with Colin and Finn to blow off some steam.
148 "Gilmore Girls Only" March 6, 2007 (2007-03-06) 2T7767
Lorelai plans a road trip to North Carolina to attend the wedding of Mia, the woman who took in Lorelai and Rory and served as a surrogate mother/grandmother for many years. Rory has a fight with Logan over his immature reaction to his business disaster, and agrees to go on the trip with Lorelai. Emily invites herself along in an effort to get away from Richard, who is driving her crazy while he recuperates at home. At the wedding, Emily is upset by the close relationship Mia shares with Lorelai and Rory. Lorelai learns that Emily came to see Mia five years earlier to ask for pictures of Lorelai and Rory during the years they were estranged. Logan makes a surprise appearance and asks Rory to forgive him. Meanwhile, Lane and Zack ask Luke to be the godfather to their twins Steve and Kwan. Finally, Lane goes into labor and Luke helps get everyone to the hospital.
149 "Hay Bale Maze" April 17, 2007 (2007-04-17) 2T7768
When Taylor spends all of the Spring budget on a hay bale maze, it forces Lorelai and Luke to reunite while in the hay bale maze. Rory and Logan come to Stars Hollow for the Spring fair and Rory learns that she was given a job offer for a newspaper, when she evaluates what she truly wants she decides to reject the job offer and wait on an internship at the New York Times.
150 "It's Just Like Riding A Bike" April 24, 2007 (2007-04-24) 2T7769
Lorelai tries to reacquaint herself and Luke again by visiting the diner but the reunion results in an awkward silence. Shortly after this incident another chance presents itself when Lorelai's car breaks down and she asks Luke to pick up a new one at the dealership. Paris freaks out over too many opportunities when she gets accepted to lots of colleges. On the other hand Rory's hopes get squashed when she gets rejected for the internship at the New York Times. While staying with Lorelai, Jackson accidentally destroys her dollhouse. Sookie says that's the only thing from Lorelai's childhood that she likes.
151 "Lorelai? Lorelai?" May 1, 2007 (2007-05-01) 2T7770
After getting into a science camp, April tells Luke that she cannot go on the boating trip with him over the summer. Zach is asked to go on tour with another band. Logan comes to Lorelai's home to ask permission to propose to Rory and take her to San Francisco.
152 "Unto the Breach" May 8, 2007 (2007-05-08) 2T7771
At Rory's graduation party, Logan proposes to her. Rory is caught off-guard and says she needs time to think about it. Rory heads to Lorelai for advice and her answer on this matter but Lorelai insists on telling nothing saying "It's your choice, hun." During the next half of the episode, Rory thinks over Logan's proposal and decides to give him an answer on graduation day. After Rory graduates from Yale, Logan tells her its all or nothing and Rory decides to turn down his marriage proposal. She says that life has too much to offer her, and by marrying Logan, she might lose out on those opportunities.
153 "Bon Voyage" May 15, 2007 (2007-05-15) 2T7772
Just as Rory lands her dream job as a political reporter, Luke enlists the help of everyone in Stars Hollow to throw her a graduation party. When the town finds out it is going to rain, Luke stays up all night to prepare for the party by making a huge tarp to cover the party area. Emily and Richard attend the huge party, where Rory makes a speech thanking Lorelai and the whole town for giving her such a great start in life. Luke's thoughtfulness brings out a long-awaited reaction from Lorelai and she kisses him. Finally, on the morning that Rory leaves Stars Hollow to start her career, Luke opens the diner before dawn to share a celebratory breakfast with the Gilmore Girls.
[edit] References

1. ^ The New Classics: TV. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on 2009-08-20
2. ^ Poniewozik, James (2007). "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME". Time. Time.com. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/ ... 29,00.html. Retrieved March 4, 2010.
3. ^ a b c d e "Gilmore Girls Season 1 Recaps". gilmoregirlsnews.com. http://www.gilmoregirlsnews.com/gilmore-girls-season-1/. Retrieved 2007-11-23. [dead link]
4. ^ IMDb: Awards and nominations for Gilmore Girls. Retrieved 2008-06-10.

[hide]
v • d • e
Gilmore Girls
Creators
Amy Sherman-Palladino • Daniel Palladino
See also
Lorelai Gilmore • Characters • Stars Hollow • List of episodes
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gi ... s_episodes"
Categories: Lists of comedy-drama television series episodes
Hidden categories: All articles with dead external links | Articles with dead external links from March 2010
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* Disclaimers

[Sylvus]

How can a show run for 150+ episodes without me ever having seen one? Was it on the Oxygen network or something? I can't recall ever even seeing it on and changing the channel.

[Canelek]

More impressively, Xanopox contributed something entertaining to VV. Go go good guy!

[Aslanna]

How can a show run for 150+ episodes without me ever having seen one? Was it on the Oxygen network or something? I can't recall ever even seeing it on and changing the channel.

Seriously? You've never heard of Gilmore Girls? You living in a cave or what? It's only like the best show ever.

[Winnow]

I've never seen Gilmore Girls either and I watched two seasons of Gossip Girl!

[Noysyrump]

It's quite obviose Xoquoa won this thread, as everyone who posted afterwards failed misserably.

Way to ruin the best thread ever MIIR!

[miir]

you kidding me?
Anal fissures > all

[Canelek]

WTF is Gilmore Girls? Yall mafahs be watchin too much TVees.

[pyrella]

Anathem


Neal Stephenson
















TO MY PARENTS











Contents




Note to the Reader





[ Part 1 ] Provener




[ Part 2 ] Apert




[ Part 3 ] Eliger




[ Part 4 ] Anathem




[ Part 5 ] Voco




[ Part 6 ] Peregrin




[ Part 7 ] Feral




[ Part 8 ] Orithena




[ Part 9 ] Inbrase




[ Part 10 ] Messal




[ Part 11 ] Advent




[ Part 12 ] Requiem




[ Part 13] Reconstitution





Glossary




Calca 1: Cutting the Cake




Calca 2: Hemn (Configuration) Space




Calca 3: Complex Versus Simple Protism




Acknowledgments




About the Author




Other Books by Neal Stephenson




Credits






Copyright






About the Publisher


















Anathem:

(1) In Proto-Orth, a poetic or musical invocation of Our Mother Hylaea,

which since the time of Adrakhones has been the climax of the daily

liturgy (hence the Fluccish word Anthem meaning a song of great emotional resonance, esp. one that inspires listeners to sing along). Note:

this sense is archaic, and used only in a ritual context where it is

unlikely to be confused with the much more commonly used sense 2. (2)

In New Orth, an aut by which an incorrigible fraa or suur is ejected

from the math and his or her work sequestered (hence the Fluccish word Anathema meaning intolerable statements or ideas). See Throwback.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000












NOTE TO THE READER




IF YOU ARE ACCUSTOMED

to reading works of speculative fiction and enjoy puzzling things out

on your own, skip this Note. Otherwise, know that the scene in which

this book is set is not Earth, but a planet called Arbre that is

similar to Earth in many ways.


Pronunciation hints: Arbre

is pronounced like “Arb” with a little something on the end. Consult a

French person for advice. In a pinch, “Arb” will do. Two dots above a

vowel are a dieresis, meaning that the vowel in question gets a

syllable all its own. So, for example, Deät is pronounced “day ott” rather than “deet.”


Arbran measurement units have been

translated into ones used on Earth. This story takes place almost four

thousand years after the people of Arbre settled on their common system

of units, which now seem ancient and time-worn to them. Accordingly,

old Earth units (feet, miles, etc.) are used here instead of the newer

ones from the metric system.


Where the Orth-speaking culture of this

book has developed vocabulary based on the ancient precedents of Arbre,

I have coined words based on the old languages of Earth. Anathem is the first and most conspicuous example. It is a play on the words anthem and anathema,

which derive from Latin and Greek words. Orth, the classical language

of Arbre, has a completely different vocabulary, and so the words for anthem, anathema, and anathem are altogether different,

and yet linked by a similar pattern of associations. Rather than use

the Orth word, which would be devoid of meaning and connotations to

Earth readers, I have tried to devise an Earth word that serves as its

rough equivalent while preserving some flavor of the Orth term. The

same thing, mutatis mutandis, has been done in many other places in the book.


Names of some Arbran plant and animal

species have been translated into rough Earth equivalents. So these

characters may speak of carrots, potatoes, dogs, cats, etc. This

doesn’t mean that Arbre has exactly the same species. Naturally, Arbre

has its own plants and animals. The names of those species’ rough Earth

equivalents have been swapped in here to obviate digressions in which,

e.g., the phenotype of the Arbre-equivalent-of-a-carrot must be

explained in detail.


A very sparse chronology of Arbre’s history

follows. None of this will make very much sense until one has read some

pages into the book, but after that it may be useful for reference.





-3400 TO-3300:




Approximate era of Cnoüs and his daughters Deät and Hylaea.


-2850:




Temple of Orithena founded by Adrakhones, the father of geometry.


-2700:




Diax drives out the Enthusiasts, founds theorics on axiomatic principles and gives it its name.


-2621:




Orithena destroyed by volcanic eruption.

Beginning of Peregrin period. Many surviving theors gravitate toward

city-state of Ethras.


-2600 TO-2300:




Golden Age of Ethras.


-2396:




Execution of Thelenes


-2415 TO-2335:




Life span of Protas


-2272:




Ethras forcibly absorbed into Bazian Empire


-2204:




Foundation of the Ark of Baz


-2037:




Ark of Baz becomes state religion of the Empire


-1800:




Bazian Empire reaches its peak


-1500S:




Various military setbacks lead to dramatic shrinkage of the Bazian Empire. Theors retreat from public life. Saunt Cartas writes Sæculum thereby inaugurating the Old Mathic Age.


-1472:




Fall of Baz, burning of its Library. Surviving literate people flock to Bazian monasteries or Cartasian maths.


-1150:




Rise of the Mystagogues


-600:




The Rebirth. Purging of the Mystagogues, Opening of the Books.


-500:




Dispersal of the mathic system, Age of

Exploration, discovery of laws of dynamics, creation of modern applied

theorics. Beginning of the Praxic Age.


-74:




The First Harbinger


-52:




The Second Harbinger


-43:




Proc founds The Circle


-38:




Proc’s work repudiated by Halikaarn


-12:




The Third Harbinger


-5:




The Terrible Events


0:




The Reconstitution. The First Convox.

Foundation of the new mathic system. Promulgation of the Book of

Discipline and the first edition of the Dictionary.


+ 121:




Avout of the Concent of Saunt Muncoster

split into two groups, the Syntactics and the Semantics, founding the

Procian and Halikaarnian Orders respectively. Thereafter, orders

proliferate.


+ 190 TO + 210:




Avout of Saunt Baritoe make advances in manipulation of nucleosynthesis using syntactic techniques. Creation of New Matter.


+ 211 TO + 213:




The First Sack


+ 214:




Post-Sack Convox abolishes most forms of

New Matter. Promulgation of the Revised Book of Discipline. Faanian

order splits away from Procian. Evenedrician order splits away from

Halikaarnian.


+ 297:




Saunt Edhar establishes his own order out of the Evenedricians.


+ 300:




At the Centennial Apert, it is found that several Centenarian maths have gone off the rails (“gone Hundred”) since 200.


+ 308:




Saunt Edhar founds the Concent of the same name.


+ 320 TO + 360:




Advances in praxis of genetic sequences

made at various concents, frequently arising from collaboration between

Faanians and Halikaarnians.


+ 360 TO + 366:




Second Sack.


+ 367:




Post-Sack Convox. Manipulation of genetic

sequences abolished. Sharper lines drawn between syntactic and semantic

orders. Faanians disbanded. New Revised Book of Discipline promulgated.

Syntactic devices removed from the mathic world. The Ita are created;

many ex-Faanians join them. The Inquisition is created as a means of

enforcing the new rules. Wardens Regulant installed in all concents;

modern system of hierarchs instituted in the form that will endure for

at least the next three millennia.


+ 1000:




First Millennial Convox


+ 1107 TO




Detection of a dangerous asteroid (the “Big


+ 1115:




Nugget”) prompts the Sæcular Power to summon an extraordinary Convox.


+ 2000:




Second Millennial Convox


+ 2700:




Growing rivalry between Procian and Halikaarnian Orders gives rise to Sæcular legends of the Rhetors and the Incanters.


+ 2780:




During a Decennial Apert, the Sæcular Power

becomes aware of extraordinary kinds of praxis being developed by

Rhetors and Incanters.


+ 2787 TO




Third Sack depopulates all concents except for


+ 2856:




the Three Inviolates.


+ 2857:




Post-Sack Convox reorganizes the concents. Dowments

outlawed. Various measures taken to reduce perceived luxury of mathic

life. Number of Orders reduced. Remaining Orders redistributed to bring

about greater “balance” between Procian and Halikaarnian tendencies.

Promulgation of the Second New Revised Book of Discipline.


+ 3000:




Third Millennial Convox


+ 3689:




Our story opens.


















Part 1


PROVENER







Extramuros:

(1) In Old Orth, literally “outside the walls.” Often used in reference

to the walled city-states of that age. (2) In Middle Orth, the

non-mathic world; the turbulent and violent state of affairs that

prevailed after the Fall of Baz. (3) In Praxic Orth, geographical

regions or social classes not yet enlightened by the resurgent wisdom

of the mathic world. (4) In New Orth, similar to sense 2 above, but

often used to denote those settlements immediately surrounding the

walls of a math, implying comparative prosperity, stability, etc.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















Do your neighbors burn one another alive?” was how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with Artisan Flec.


Embarrassment befell me. Embarrassment is something I can feel in my flesh, like a handful of sun-warmed mud clapped on my head.


“Do your shamans walk around on stilts?”

Fraa Orolo asked, reading from a leaf that, judging by its brownness,

was at least five centuries old. Then he looked up and added helpfully,

“You might call them pastors or witch doctors.”


The embarrassment had turned runny. It was horrifying my scalp along a spreading frontier.


“When a child gets sick, do you pray? Sacrifice to a painted stick? Or blame it on an old lady?”


Now it was sheeting warm down my face,

clogging my ears and sanding my eyes. I could barely hear Fraa Orolo’s

questions: “Do you fancy you will see your dead dogs and cats in some

sort of afterlife?”


Orolo had asked me along to serve as amanuensis. It was an impressive word, so I’d said yes.


He had heard that an artisan from

extramuros had been allowed into the New Library to fix a rotted rafter

that we could not reach with our ladders; it had only just been

noticed, and we didn’t have time to erect proper scaffolding before

Apert. Orolo meant to interview that artisan, and he wanted me to write

down what happened.


Through drizzly eyes, I looked at the leaf in front of me. It was as blank as my brain. I was failing.




But it was more important to take notes of

what the artisan said. So far, nothing. When the interview had begun,

he had been dragging an insufficiently sharp thing over a flat rock.

Now he was just staring at Orolo.


“Has anyone you know ever been ritually mutilated because they were seen reading a book?”


Artisan Flec closed his mouth for the first

time in quite a while. I could tell that the next time he opened it,

he’d have something to say. I scratched at the edge of the leaf just to

prove that my quill had not dried up. Fraa Orolo had gone quiet, and

was looking at the artisan as if he were a new-found nebula in the

eyepiece of a telescope.


Artisan Flec asked, “Why don’t you just speel in?”


“Speel in,” Fraa Orolo repeated to me, a few times, as I was writing it down.


I spoke in bursts because I was trying to

write and talk at the same time: “When I came—that is, before I was

Collected—we—I mean, they—had a thing called a speely…We didn’t say

‘speel in’—we said ‘cruise the speely.’” Out of consideration for the

artisan, I chose to speak in Fluccish, and so this staggering drunk of

a sentence only sounded half as bad as if I’d said it in Orth. “It was

a sort of—”


“Moving picture,” Orolo guessed. He looked

to the artisan, and switched to Fluccish. “We have guessed that ‘to

speel in’ means to partake of some moving picture praxis—what you would

call technology—that prevails out there.”


“Moving picture, that’s a funny way to say

it,” said the artisan. He stared out a window, as if it were a speely

showing a historical documentary. He quivered with a silent laugh.


“It is Praxic Orth and so it sounds quaint to your ears,” Fraa Orolo admitted.


“Why don’t you just call it by its real name?”


“Speeling in?”


“Yeah.”


“Because when Fraa Erasmas, here, came into

the math ten years ago, it was called ‘cruising the speely’ and when I

came in almost thirty years ago we called it ‘Farspark.’ The avout who

live on the other side of yonder wall, who celebrate Apert only once

every hundred years, would know it by some other name. I would not be able to talk to them.”


Artisan Flec had not taken in a word after

Farspark. “Farspark is completely different!” he said. “You can’t watch

Farspark content on a speely, you have to up-convert it and re-parse

the format….”


Fraa Orolo was as bored by that as the

artisan was by talk of the Hundreders, and so conversation thudded to a

stop long enough for me to scratch it down. My embarrassment had gone

away without my noticing it, as with hiccups. Artisan Flec, believing

that the conversation was finally over, turned to look at the

scaffolding that his men had erected beneath the bad rafter.


“To answer your question,” Fraa Orolo began.


“What question?”


“The one you posed just a minute ago—if I want to know what things are like extramuros, why don’t I just speel in?”


“Oh,” said the artisan, a little confounded by the length of Fra Orolo’s attention span. I suffer from attention surplus disorder, Fraa Orolo liked to say, as if it were funny.


“First of all,” Fraa Orolo said, “we don’t have a speely-device.”


“Speely-device?”


Waving his hand as if this would dispel clouds of linguistic confusion, Orolo said, “Whatever artifact you use to speel in.”


“If you have an old Farspark resonator, I could bring you a down-converter that’s been sitting in my junk pile—”


“We don’t have a Farspark resonator either,” said Fraa Orolo.


“Why don’t you just buy one?”


This gave Orolo pause. I could sense a new set of embarrassing questions stacking up in his mind: “do

you believe that we have money? That the reason we are protected by the

Sæcular Power is because we are sitting on a treasure hoard? That our

Millenarians know how to convert base metals to gold?” But

Fraa Orolo mastered the urge. “Living as we do under the Cartasian

Discipline, our only media are chalk, ink, and stone,” he said. “But

there is another reason too.”


“Yeah, what is it?” demanded Artisan Flec,

very provoked by Fraa Orolo’s freakish habit of announcing what he was

about to say instead of just coming out and saying it.




“It’s hard to explain, but, for me, just aiming a speely input device, or a Farspark chambre, or whatever you call it…”


“A speelycaptor.”


“…at something doesn’t collect what is

meaningful to me. I need someone to gather it in with all their senses,

mix it round in their head, and make it over into words.”


“Words,” the artisan echoed, and then aimed

sharp looks all round the library. “Tomorrow, Quin’s coming instead of

me,” he announced, then added, a little bit defensively, “I have to

counter-strafe the new clanex recompensators—the fan-out tree’s

starting to look a bit clumpy, if you ask me.”


“I have no idea what that means,” Orolo marveled.


“Never mind. You ask him all your

questions. He’s got the gift of gab.” And for the third time in as many

minutes, the artisan looked at the screen of his jeejah. We’d insisted

he shut down all of its communications functions, but it still served

as a pocket-watch. He didn’t seem to realize that in plain sight out

the window was a clock five hundred feet high.


I put a full stop at the end of the

sentence and aimed my face at a bookshelf, because I was afraid that I

might look amused. There was something in the way he’d said Quin’s coming instead of me

that made it seem he’d just decided it on the spot. Fraa Orolo had

probably caught it too. If I made the mistake of looking at him, I

would laugh, and he wouldn’t.


The clock began chiming Provener. “That’s

me,” I said. Then I added, for the benefit of the artisan: “Apologies,

I must go wind the clock.”


“I was wondering—” he said. He reached into

his toolbox and took out a poly bag, blew off sawdust, undid its seal

(which was of a type I had never seen before), and withdrew a silver

tube the size of his finger. Then he looked at Fraa Orolo hopefully.


“I don’t know what that is and I don’t understand what you want,” said Fraa Orolo.


“A speelycaptor!”


“Ah. You have heard about Provener, and as long as you are here, you’d like to view it and make a moving picture?”




The artisan nodded.


“That will be acceptable, provided you

stand where you are told. Don’t turn it on!” Fraa Orolo raised his

hands, and got ready to avert his gaze. “The Warden Regulant will hear

of it—she’ll make me do penance! I’ll send you to the Ita. They’ll show

you where to go.”


And more in this vein, for the Discipline

was made up of many rules, and we had already made a muddle of them, in

Artisan Flec’s mind, by allowing him to venture into the Decenarian

math.


Cloister: (1) In Old

Orth, any closed, locked-up space (Thelenes was confined in one prior

to his execution, but, confusingly to younger fids, it did not then

have the mathic connotations of senses 2, etc., below). (2) In Early

Middle Orth, the math as a whole. (3) In Late Middle Orth, a garden or

court surrounded by buildings, thought of as the heart or center of the

math. (4) In New Orth, any quiet, contemplative space insulated from

distractions and disturbances.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





I’d been using my sphere as a stool. I

traced counterclockwise circles on it with my fingertips and it shrank

until I could palm it. My bolt had shifted while I’d been sitting. I

pulled it up and yanked the pleats straight as I careered around

tables, chairs, globes, and slow-moving fraas. I passed under a stone

arch into the Scriptorium. The place smelled richly of ink. Maybe it

was because an ancient fraa and his two fids were copying out books

there. But I wondered how long it would take to stop smelling that way

if no one ever used it at all; a lot of ink had been spent there, and

the wet smell of it must be deep into everything.


At the other end, a smaller doorway led to

the Old Library, which was one of the original buildings that stood

right on the Cloister. Its stone floor, 2300 years older than that of

the New Library, was so smooth under the soles of my feet that I could

scarcely feel it. I could have found my way with my eyes closed by letting my feet read the memory worn into it by those gone before.


The Cloister was a roofed gallery around

the perimeter of a rectangular garden. On the inner side, nothing

separated it from the weather except the row of columns that held up

its roof. On the outer side it was bounded by a wall, openings in which

gave way to buildings such as the Old Library, the Refectory, and

various chalk halls.


Every object I passed—the carven

bookcase-ends, the stones locked together to make the floor, the frames

of the windows, the forged hinges of the doors and the hand-made nails

that fastened them to the wood, the capitals of the columns that

surrounded the Cloister, the paths and beds of the garden itself—every

one had been made in a particular form by a clever person a long time

ago. Some of them, such as the doors of the Old Library, had consumed

the whole lifetimes of those who had wrought them. Others looked as

though they’d been tossed off in an idle afternoon, but with such

upsight that they had been cherished for hundreds or thousands of

years. Some were founded on pure simple geometry. Others reveled in

complication and it was a sort of riddle whether there was any rule

governing their forms. Still others were depictions of actual people

who had lived and thought interesting things at one time or another—or,

barring that, of general types: the Deolater, the Physiologer, the

Burger and the Sline. If someone had asked, I might have been able to

explain a quarter of them. One day I’d be able to explain them all.


Sunlight crashed into the Cloister garden,

where grass and gravel paths were interwoven among stands of herbs,

shrubs, and the occasional tree. I reached back over my shoulder,

caught the selvage end of my bolt, and drew it up over my head. I

tugged down on the half of the bolt that hung below my chord, so that

its fraying edge swept the ground and covered my feet. I thrust my

hands together in the folds at my waist, just above the chord, and

stepped out onto the grass. This was pale green and prickly, as the

weather had been hot. As I came out into the open, I looked to the

south dial of the clock. Ten minutes to go.


“Fraa Lio,” I said, “I do not think that slashberry is among the One

Hundred and Sixty-four.” Meaning the list of plants that were allowed

to be cultivated under the Second New Revised Book of Discipline.


Lio was stockier than I. When younger he

had been chubby, but now he was just solid. On a patch of disturbed

earth in the shade of an apple tree, he was squatting, hypnotized by

the dirt. He had wrapped the selvage end of his bolt around his waist

and between his thighs in the basic modesty knot. The remainder he had

rolled up into a tight cylinder which he had tied at each end with his

chord and then slung diagonally on his back, like a bedroll. He had

invented this wrap. No one else had followed his lead. I had to admit

that it looked comfortable, if stupid, on a warm day. His bottom was

ten inches off the ground: he had made his sphere about the size of his

head, and was balancing on it.


“Fraa Lio!” I said again. But Lio had a

funny mind that sometimes did not respond to words. A slashberry cane

arched across my path. I found a few thornless inches, closed my hand

around it, jerked it up by its roots, and swung it round until the tiny

flowers at its tip grazed Fraa Lio’s stubbly scalp. “Thistlehead!” I

said, at the same moment.


Lio tumbled backward as if I’d smacked him

with a quarter-staff. His feet flew up and spun back to find purchase

on the roots of the apple tree. He stood, knees bent, chin tucked,

spine straight, pieces of dirt trickling down from his sweaty back. His

sphere rolled away and lodged in a pile of uprooted weeds.


“Did you hear me?”


“Slashberry is not one of the Hundred and

Sixty-four, true. But neither is it one of the Eleven. So it’s not like

I have to burn it on sight and put it down in the Chronicle. It can

wait.”


“Wait for what? What are you doing?”


He pointed at the dirt.


I stooped and looked. Many would not have

taken such a risk. Hooded, I could not see Fraa Lio in my peripheral

vision. It was believed you should always keep Lio in the corner of

your eye because you never knew when he might commence wrestling. I had

endured more than my share of headlocks, chokeholds, takedowns, and pins

at Lio’s hands, as well as large abrasions from brushes with his scalp.

But I knew that he would not attack me now because I was showing

respect for something that he thought was fascinating.


Lio and I had been Collected ten years ago,

at the age of eight, as part of a crop of boys and girls numbering

thirty-two. For our first couple of years we had watched a team of four

bigger fraas wind the clock each day. A team of eight suurs rang the

bells. Later he and I had been chosen, along with two other relatively

large boys, to form the next clock-winding team. Likewise, eight girls

had been chosen from our crop to learn the art of ringing the bells,

which required less strength but was more arduous in some ways, because

some of the changes went on for hours and required unbroken

concentration. For more than seven years now, my team had wound the

clock each day, except when Fraa Lio forgot, and three of us had to do

it. He’d forgotten two weeks ago, and Suur Trestanas, the Warden

Regulant, had sentenced him to do penance, in the form of weeding the

herb beds during the hottest time of the year.


Eight minutes to go. But nagging Lio about

the time wouldn’t get me anywhere; I had to go through, and out the

other side of, whatever it was that he wanted to talk about.


“Ants,” I said. Then, knowing Lio, I corrected myself: “Ant vlor?”


I could hear him smiling. “Two colors of

ants, Fraa Raz. They’re having a war. I regret to say I caused it.” He

nudged a pile of uprooted slashberry canes.


“Would you call it a war, or just mad scrambling around?”


“That’s what I was trying to figure out,” he said. “In a war, you have strategy and tactics. Like flanking. Can ants flank?”


I barely knew what that meant: attacking

from the side. Lio worried such terms loose from old books of

vlor—Vale-lore—as if pulling dragon’s teeth from a fossil jaw.


“I suppose ants can flank,” I said, though

I sensed that it was a trick question and that Lio was flanking me with

words at this very moment. “Why not?”




“By accident, of course they can! You look

down on it from above and say, ‘Oh, that looked like flanking.’ But if

there’s no commander to see the field and direct their movements, can

they really perform coordinated maneuvers?”


“That’s a little like Saunt Taunga’s Question,” I pointed out (“Can a sufficiently large field of cellular automata think?”).


“Well, can they?”


“I’ve seen ants work together to carry off part of my lunch, so I know they can coordinate their actions.”


“But if I’m one of a hundred ants all

pushing on the same raisin, I can feel the raisin moving, can’t I—so

the raisin itself is a way that they communicate with one another. But,

if I’m a lone ant on a battlefield—”


“Thistlehead, it’s Provener.”


“Okay,” he said, and turned his back on me

and started walking. It was this penchant for dropping conversations in

the middle, among other odd traits, that had earned him a reputation as

being less than intact. He’d forgotten his sphere again. I picked it up

and threw it at him. It bounced off the back of his head and flew

straight up in the air; he held out a hand, barely looking, and caught

it on the drop. I edged around the battlefield, not wanting to get

combatants, living or dead, on my feet, then hustled after him.


Lio reached the corner of the Cloister well

ahead of me and ducked in front of a mass of slow-moving suurs in a way

that was quite rude and yet so silly that the suurs all had a chuckle

and thought no more of it. Then they clogged the archway, trapping me

behind them. I had alerted Fraa Lio so he wouldn’t be late; now I was

going to arrive last and be frowned at.


Aut: (1) In Proto-and

Old Orth, an act; an action deliberately taken by some entity, usually

an individual. (2) In Middle and later Orth, a formal rite, usually

conducted by an assembly of avout, by which the math or concent as a

whole carries out some collective act, typically solemnized by singing of chants, performance of coded gestures, or other ritual behavior.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





In a sense the clock was the entire

Mynster, and its basement. When most people spoke of “the clock,”

though, they meant its four dials, which were mounted high on the walls

of the Præsidium—the Mynster’s central tower. The dials had been

crafted in different ages, and each showed the time in a different way.

But all four were connected to the same internal works. Each proclaimed

the time; the day of the week; the month; the phase of the moon; the

year; and (for those who knew how to read them) a lot of other

cosmographical arcana.


The Præsidium stood on four pillars and for

most of its height was square in cross-section. Not far above the

dials, however, the corners of the square floor-plan were cleaved off,

making it into an octagon, and not far above that, the octagon became a

sixteen-sided polygon, and above that it became round. The roof of the

Præsidium was a disk, or rather a lens, as it bulged up slightly in the

middle to shed rainwater. It supported the megaliths, domes,

penthouses, and turrets of the starhenge, which drove, and was driven

by, the same clock-works that ran the dials.


Below each dial was a belfry, screened

behind tracery. Below the belfries, the tower flung out plunging arcs

of stone called buttresses to steady itself. Those found footing amid

the topmost spires of four outlying towers, shorter and squatter than

the Præsidium, but built to the same general plan. The towers were

webbed to one another by systems of arches and spans of tracery that

swallowed the lower half of the Præsidium and formed the broad plan of

the Mynster.


The Mynster had a ceiling of stone, steeply

vaulted. Above the vaults, a flat roof had been framed. Built upon that

roof was the aerie of the Warden Fendant. Its inner court, squared

around the Præsidium, was roofed and walled and diced up into

store-rooms and headquarters, but its periphery was an open walkway on

which the Fendant’s sentinels could pace a full circuit of the Mynster

in a few minutes’ time, seeing to the

horizon in all directions (except where blocked by a buttress, pier,

spire, or pinnacle). This ledge was supported by dozens of close-spaced

braces that curved up and out from the walls below. The end of each

brace served as a perch for a gargoyle keeping eternal vigil. Half of

them (the Fendant gargoyles) gazed outward, the other half (the

Regulant gargoyles) bent their scaly necks and aimed their pointy ears

and slitted eyes into the concent spread below. Tucked between the

braces, and shaded below the sentinels’ walkway, were the squat Mathic

arches of the Warden Regulant’s windows. Few places in the concent

could not be spied on from at least one of these—and, of course, we

knew them all by heart.


Saunt: (1) In New Orth, a term of veneration applied to great thinkers, almost always posthumously. Note: this word was accepted only in the Millennial Orth Convox of A.R. 3000. Prior to then it was considered a misspelling of Savant.

In stone, where only upper-case letters are used, this is rendered

SAVANT (or ST. if the stonecarver is running out of space). During the

decline of standards in the decades that followed the Third Sack, a

confusion between the letters U and V grew commonplace (the “lazy stonecarver problem”), and many began to mistake the word for SAUANT. This soon degenerated to saunt (now accepted) and even sant (still deprecated). In written form, St.

may be used as an abbreviation for any of these. Within some

traditional orders it is still pronounced “Savant” and obviously the

same is probably true among Millenarians.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





The Mynster erupted from the planed-off

stump of what had once been the end of a mountain range. The crag of

the Millenarian math loomed above it on the east. The other maths and

compounds were spread below it on the south and west. The one where I

lived with the other Tenners was a

quarter of a mile away. A roofed gallery, consisting of seven

staircases strung together by landings, connected our math to a stone

patio spread before the portal that we used to get into the Mynster.

This was the route being taken by most of my fellow Tenners.


Rather than wait for that clot of old suurs

to clear the bottleneck, though, I doubled back into the Chapterhouse,

which was really just a wide spot in the gallery that surrounded the

Cloister. This had a back exit that got me into a covered alley between

chalk halls and workshops. Its walls were lined with niches where we

stuffed work in progress. Ends and corners of half-written manuscripts

projected, slowly yellowing and curling, making the passage seem even

narrower than it was.


Jogging to its end and ducking through a

keyhole arch, I came out into a meadow that spread below the elevated

plinth on which the Mynster was built, and that served as a buffer

separating us from the math of the Centenarians. A stone wall sixteen

feet high sliced it in half. The Hundreders used their side for raising

livestock.


When I had been Collected, we had used our

side as a haymow. A few years ago, in late summer, Fraa Lio and Fraa

Jesry had been sent out with hoes to walk it looking for plants of the

Eleven. And indeed they had happened upon a patch of something that

looked like blithe. So they had chopped it out, piled it in the middle

of the meadow, and set fire to it.


By day’s end, the entire meadow on our side

of the wall had become an expanse of smoking carbonized stubble, and

noises coming over the top of the wall suggested that sparks had blown

onto the Hundreders’ side. On our side, along the border between the

meadow and the tangles where we grew most of our food, the fraas and

suurs had formed a battle line that ran all the way down to the river.

We passed full buckets up the line and empty ones down it and threw the

water onto those tangles that seemed most likely to burst into flames.

If you’ve ever seen a well-tended tangle in the late summer, you’ll

know why; the amount of biomass is huge, and by that time of the year

it’s dry enough to burn.




At the inquisition, the deputy Warden

Regulant who had been on duty at the time had testified that the

initial fire had produced so much smoke that he’d been unable to get a

clear picture of what Lio and Jesry had done. So the whole thing had

been Chronicled as an accident, and the boys had got off with penance.

But I know, because Jesry told me later, that when the fire in the

blithe had first spread to the surrounding grass, Lio, instead of

stamping it out, had proposed that they fight fire with fire, and

control it using fire vlor. Their attempt to set counterfires had only

made matters worse. Jesry had dragged Lio to safety as he was

attempting to set a counter-counterfire to contain a system of

counterfires that was supposed to be containing the original fire but

that had gotten out of hand. Having his hands full with Lio, he’d had

to abandon his sphere, which to this day was stiff in one place and

could never quite become transparent. Anyway, the fire had provided an

excuse for us finally to do something we’d been talking about forever,

namely to plant it in clover and other flowering plants, and keep bees.

When there was an economy extramuros, we could sell the honey to

burgers in the market stall before the Day Gate, and use the money to

buy things that were difficult to make inside the concent. When

conditions outside were post-apocalyptic, we could eat it.


As I jogged toward the Mynster, the stone

wall was to my right. The tangles—now just as full and ripe as they’d

been before the fire—were mostly behind me and to my left. In front of

me and somewhat uphill were the Seven Stairs, crowded with avout.

Compared to the other fraas all swathed in their bolts, half-naked Lio,

moving twice as fast, was like an ant of the wrong color.


The chancel, the heart of the Mynster, had

an octagonal floor-plan (as theors were more apt to put it, it had the

symmetry group of the eighth roots of unity). Its eight walls were

dense traceries, some of stone, others of carved wood. We called them

screens, a word confusing to extramuros people for whom a screen was

something on which you’d watch a speely or play a game. For us, a

screen was a wall with lots of holes in it, a barrier through which you

could see, hear, and smell.




Four great naves were flung out,

north-east-south-west, from the base of the Mynster. If you have ever

attended a wedding or a funeral in one of the Deolaters’ arks, a nave

would remind you of the big part where the guests sit, stand, kneel,

flog themselves, roll on the floor, or whatever it is that they do. The

chancel, then, would correspond to the place where the priest stands at

the altar. When you see the Mynster from a distance, it’s the four

naves that make it so broad at its base.


Guests from extramuros, like Artisan Flec,

were allowed to come in the Day Gate and view auts from the north nave

when they were not especially contagious and, by and large, behaving

themselves. This had been more or less the case for the last century

and a half. If you visited our concent by coming in through the Day

Gate, you’d be channeled into the portal in the north façade and walk

up the center aisle of the north nave toward the screen at the end. You

might be forgiven for thinking that the whole Mynster consisted of only

that nave, and the octagonal space on the other side of the screen. But

someone in the east, west, or south nave would make the same mistake.

The screens were made dark on the nave side and light on the chancel

side, so that it was easy to see into the chancel but impossible to see

beyond it, creating the illusion that each nave stood alone, and owned

the chancel.


The east nave was empty and little used.

We’d ask the older fraas and suurs why; they’d give a wave of the hand

and “explain” that it was the Mynster’s formal entrance. If so, it was

so formal that no one knew what to do with it. At one time a pipe-organ

had stood there, but this had been ripped out in the Second Sack, and

later improvements of the Discipline had banned all other musical

instruments. When my crop had been younger, Orolo had strung us along

for several years telling us that there was talk of making it a

sanctuary for ten-thousand-year fraas if the Concent of Saunt Edhar

ever got round to building a math for such. “A proposal was submitted

to the Millenarians 689 years ago,” he’d say, “and their response is

expected in another 311.”


The south nave was reserved for the Centenarians, who could reach it by strolling across their half of the meadow. It was much too

big for them. We Tenners, who had to cram ourselves into a much smaller

space just next to it, had been annoyed by this fact for more than

three thousand years.


The west nave had the best stained-glass

windows and the finest stone-carving because it was used by the

Unarians, who were by far the best-endowed of all the maths. But there

were easily enough of them to fill the place up and so we didn’t resent

their having so much space.


There remained four screen-walls of the

chancel—northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest—that were the

same size and shape as the four that lay in the cardinal directions but

that were not connected to proper naves. On the dark sides of these

screens lay the four corners of the Mynster, cluttered by structural

works that were inconvenient for humans but necessary for the whole

thing to remain standing. Our corner, on the southwest, was by far the

most crowded of these, since there were about three hundred Tenners.

Our space had therefore been expanded by a couple of side-towers that

bulged out from the walls of the Mynster and accounted for its obvious

asymmetry in that corner.


The northwest corner connected to the

Primate’s compound, and was used only by him, his guests, the wardens,

and other hierarchs, so there was no crowding there. The southeast

corner was for the Thousanders; it connected directly to their

fantastical hand-carved stone staircase, which zoomed, veered and

rambled down the face of their crag.


The northeastern corner, directly across

from us, was reserved for the Ita. Their portal communicated directly

with their covered slum, which filled the area between that side of the

Mynster and the natural stone cliff that, in that zone, formed the

concent’s outer wall. A tunnel supposedly gave them access to the

subterranean workings of the clock, which it was their duty to tend.

But this, like most of our information concerning the Ita, was little

better than folklore.


So there were eight ways into the Mynster

if one only counted the formal portals. But Mathic architecture was

nothing if not complicated and so there were also any number of smaller

doors, rarely used and barely known about, except by inquisitive fids.




I shuffled through the clover as quickly as

I could without stepping on any bees. Even so I made better time than

those on the Seven Stairs, and soon reached the Meadow door, which was

set into a masonry arch that had been grafted onto the native rock. A

flight of stone steps took me up to the level of the Mynster’s main

floor. I dodged through a series of odd, mean little store-rooms where

vestments and ceremonial objects were kept when out of season. Then I

came out into that architectural hodgepodge in the southwest corner

that we Tenners used in place of a nave. Incoming fraas and suurs

obstructed me. But there were lanes of open space wherever the view was

obstructed by a pillar. Planted in one of those lanes, right up against

the base of a pillar, was our wardrobe. Most of its contents had been

dumped out onto the floor. Fraa Jesry and Fraa Arsibalt were standing

nearby, already swathed in scarlet and looking irritated. Fraa Lio was

swimming through silk trying to find his favorite robe. I dropped to

one knee and found something in my size among the ones he had

discarded. I threw it on, tied it, and made sure it wouldn’t get in the

way of my feet, then fell in behind Jesry and Arsibalt. A moment later

Lio came up and stood too close behind me. We came out from the shadow

of that pillar and threaded our way through the crowd toward the

screen, following Jesry, who wasn’t afraid to use his elbows. But it

wasn’t that crowded. Only about half of the Tenners had shown up today;

the rest were busy getting ready for Apert. Our fraas and suurs were

seated before the southwest screen in tiered rows. Those in the front

sat on the floor. The next row sat on their spheres, head-sized. Those

behind them had made their spheres larger. In the back row, the spheres

were taller than those who sat on them, stretched out like huge filmy

balloons, and the only thing that kept them from rolling about and

spilling people onto the stone was that they were all packed in

together between the walls, like eggs in a box.


Grandfraa Mentaxenes pulled open the little

door that penetrated our screen. He was very old, and we were pretty

sure that doing this every day was the only thing that kept him alive.

Each of us stepped into a tray of powdered rosin so that his feet could

better grip the floor.




Then we filed out and, like grains of sugar

dropped in a mug of tea, dissolved in a vast space. Something about the

way the chancel was built made it seem a cistern storing all of the

light that had ever fallen upon the concent.


Looking up from a standpoint just inside

the screen, one saw the vaulted Mynster ceiling almost two hundred feet

above, illuminated by light pouring in through stained-glass windows in

the clerestory all around. So much light, shining down onto the bright

inner surfaces of the eight screens, rendered them all opaque and made

it seem as though the four of us had the whole Mynster to ourselves.

The Thousanders who had clambered down their walled and covered stair

to attend Provener were now seeing us through their screen, but they

could not see Artisan Flec, with his yellow T-shirt and his

speelycaptor, in the north nave. Likewise Flec could not see them. But

both could view the aut of Provener, which would take place entirely

within the chancel, and which would be indistinguishable from the same

rite performed one, two, or three thousand years ago.


The Præsidium was supported by four fluted

legs of stone that rammed down through the middle of the chancel and, I

imagined, through the underlying vault where the Ita looked after the

movements of their bits. Moving inward we passed by one of those

pillars. These were not round in cross-section but stretched out

diagonally, almost as if they were fins on an old-fashioned

rocket-ship, though not nearly as slender as that implies. We thus came

into the central well of the Mynster. Looking up from here, we could

see twice as far up, all the way to the top of the Præsidium where the

starhenge was. We took up our positions, marked by rosin-stained

dimples.


A door opened in the Primate’s screen, and

out came a man in robes more complicated than ours, and purple to

indicate he was a hierarch. Apparently the Primate was busy today—also

probably getting ready for Apert—and so he had sent one of his aides in

his place. Other hierarchs filed out behind. Fraa Delrakhones, the

Warden Fendant, sat in his chair to the left of the Primate’s, and Suur

Trestanas, the Warden Regulant, sat to the right.




Fifteen green-robed fraas and suurs—three

each of soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass—trooped out from

behind the screen of the Unarians. It was their turn to lead the

singing and chanting, which probably meant we were in for a weak

performance, even though they’d had almost a year to learn it.


The hierarch spoke the opening words of the aut and then threw the lever that engaged the Provener movement.


As the clock would tell you, if you knew

how to read it, we were still in Ordinal time for another two days.

That is, there was no particular festival or holiday going on, and so

the liturgy did not follow any special theme. Instead it defaulted to a

slow, spotty recapitulation of our history, reminding us how we’d come

to know all that we knew. During the first half of the year we would

cover all that had gone before the Reconstitution. From there we would

work our way forward. Today’s liturgy was something to do with

developments in finite group theorics that had taken place about

thirteen hundred years ago and that had caused their originator, Saunt

Bly, to be Thrown Back by his Warden Regulant and to live out the

remainder of his days on top of a butte surrounded by slines who

worshipped him as a god. He even inspired them to stop consuming

blithe, whereupon they became surly, killed him, and ate his liver out

of a misconception that this was where he did his thinking. If you live

in a concent, consult the Chronicles for more concerning Saunt Bly. If

you don’t, know that we have so many stories in this vein that one can

attend Provener every day for one’s whole life and never hear one

repeated.


The four pillars of the Præsidium I have

mentioned. Right in the middle, on the central axis of the whole

Mynster, hung a chain with a weight at its end. It reached so high in

the column of space above us that its upper reaches dissolved into dust

and dimness.


The weight was a blob of grey metal shot

through with voids, as if it had been half eaten by worms: a

nickel-iron meteorite four billion years old, made of the same stuff as

the heart of Arbre. During the almost twenty-four hours since the last

celebration of Provener, it had descended most of the way to the floor;

we could almost reach up and touch it. It descended steadily most of

the time, as it was responsible for driving the clock. At sunrise and sunset

though, when it had to supply the power for opening and closing the Day

Gate, it dropped rapidly enough to make casual spectators scurry out of

its way.


There were four other weights on four

other, independently moving chains. They were less conspicuous because

they did not hang down in the middle, and they didn’t move much. They

rode on metal rails fixed to the four Præsidium pillars. Each of these

had a regular geometric shape: a cube, an octahedron, a dodecahedron,

and an icosahedron, all wrought from black volcanic stone quarried from

the Cliffs of Ecba and dragged on sledge trains over the North Pole.

Each rose a little bit every time the clock was wound. The cube

descended once a year to open the Year Gate and the octahedron every

ten years to open the Decade Gate, so both of these were now quite

close to the tops of their respective tracks. The dodecahedron and the

icosahedron did the same for the century and millenium gates

respectively. The former was about nine-tenths of the way to the top,

the latter about seven-tenths. So just from looking, you could guess it

was about 3689.


Much higher in the Præsidium, in the upper

reaches of the chronochasm—the vast airy space behind the dials, where

all of the clock-work came together—was a hermetically sealed stone

chamber that contained a sixth weight: a sphere of grey metal that rode

up and down on a jack screw. This kept the clock ticking while we were

winding it. Other than that, it would only move if the meteorite was on

the floor—that is, if we failed to celebrate the daily aut of Provener.

When this happened, the clock would disengage most of its machinery to

conserve energy and would go into hibernation, driven by the slow

descent of the sphere, until such time as it was wound again. This had

only ever occurred during the three Sacks and on a few other occasions

when everyone in the concent had been so sick that they’d not been able

to wind the clock. No one knew how long the clock could run in that

mode, but it was thought to be on the order of a hundred years. We knew

it had continued to run all through the time following the Third Sack

when the Thousanders had holed up on their crag and the rest of the

concent had been uninhabited for seven decades.




All of the chains ran up into the

chronochasm where they hung from sprockets that turned on shafts,

connected by gear-trains and escapements that it was the Ita’s business

to clean and inspect. The main drive chain—the one that ran up the

middle, and supported the meteorite—was connected to a long system of

gear-trains and linkages that was artfully concealed in the pillars of

the Præsidium as it made its way down into the vaulted cellar below our

feet. The only part of this visible to non-Ita was a squat hub that

rose up out of the center of the chancel floor, looking like a round

altar. Four horizontal poles projected like spokes from this hub at

about the height of a person’s shoulder. Each pole was about eight feet

long. At the proper moment in the service, Jesry, Arsibalt, Lio, and I

each went to the end of a pole and put his hands on it. At a certain

beat in the Anathem, each of us threw himself behind his pole, like a

sailor trying to weigh anchor by turning a capstan. But nothing moved

except for my right foot, which broke loose from the floor and skidded

back for a few inches before finding purchase. Our combined strength

could not overcome the static friction of all the bearings and gears

between us and the sprocket hundreds of feet above from which the chain

and the weight depended. Once it became unstuck we would be strong

enough to keep it going, but getting it unstuck required a mighty

thrust (supposing we wanted to use brute force) or, if we chose to be

clever, a tiny shake: a subtle vibration. Different praxics might solve

this problem in different ways. At Saunt Edhar, we did it with our

voices.


Back in very ancient times, when the marble

columns of the Halls of Orithena still rose from the black rock of

Ecba, all the world’s theors would gather beneath the great dome just

before noon. Their leader (at first, Adrakhones himself; later, Diax or

one of his other fids) would stand on the analemma, waiting for the

shaft of light from the oculus to pass over him at midday: a climax

celebrated by the singing of the Anathem to our mother Hylaea who had

brought us the light of her father Cnoüs. The aut had fallen into

disuse when Orithena had been destroyed and the surviving theors had

embarked on the Peregrination. But much later, when the theors retreated

to the maths, Saunt Cartas drew on it to anchor the liturgy that was

then practiced all through the Old Mathic Age. Again it fell into

disuse during the Dispersal to the New Periklynes and the Praxic Age

that followed, but then, after the Terrible Events and the

Reconstitution, it was revived again, in a new form, centered on the

winding of a clock.


The Hylaean Anathem now existed in

thousands of different versions, since every composer among the avout

was likely to take at least one crack at it during his or her lifetime.

All versions used the same words and structure, but they were as

various as clouds. The most ancient were monophonic, meaning each voice

sang the same note. The one used at Saunt Edhar was polyphonic:

different voices singing different melodies that were woven together in

a harmonious fashion. Those One-offs in their green robes sang only

some of the parts. The rest of the voices came out through the screens.

Traditionally the Thousanders sang the deepest notes. Rumor had it

they’d developed special techniques to loosen their vocal chords, and I

believed it, since no one in our math could sing tones as deep as the

ones that rumbled out from their nave.


The Anathem started simple, then got almost

too complicated for the ear to follow. When we’d had an organ, it had

required four organists, each using both hands and both feet. In the

ancient aut, this part of the Anathem represented the Kaos of

non-systematic thought that had preceded Cnoüs. The composer had

realized it almost too well, since during this part of the music the

ear could scarcely make sense of all the different voices. But then,

sort of as when you are looking at some geometric shape that looks like

a tangle having no order at all, and you rotate it just a tiny bit, and

suddenly all its planes and vertices come into alignment and you see

what it is, all of those voices fell in together over the course of a

few measures and collapsed into one pure tone that resonated in the

light-well of our clock and made everything vibrate in sympathy with

it. Whether by a lucky accident, or by a feat of the praxics, the

vibration was just enough to break the seal of static friction on the

winding-shaft. Lio, Arsibalt, Jesry and I, even though we knew it was

coming, practically fell forward as the hub went into motion. Moments

later, after the backlash in the gear train had been taken up, the

meteorite above our heads began to creep upwards. And we knew that

twenty beats later we could expect to feel the day’s accumulation of

dust and bat droppings raining down on our heads from hundreds of feet

above.


In the ancient liturgy, this moment had

represented the Light dawning in the mind of Cnoüs. The singing now

split apart into two competing strains, one representing Deät and the

other Hylaea, the two daughters of Cnoüs. Trudging counterclockwise

around the shaft, we worked up to a steady pace that fell into

synchrony with the rhythm of the Anathem. The meteorite began to rise

at about two inches every second, and would continue to do so until it

reached its upper stop, which would take about twenty minutes. At the

same time, the four sprocket-wheels from which the four other chains

were suspended were also turning, though much more slowly. The cube

would rise by about a foot during this aut. The octahedron would rise

by about an inch, and so on. And up above the ceiling, the sphere was

slowly descending to keep the clock going during the time it took us to

wind it.


I should stipulate that it does not really

take so much energy to run a clock—even a huge one—for twenty-four

hours! Almost all of the energy that we were putting into the system

went to run the add-ons, like bells, gates, the Great Orrery just

inside the Day Gate, various lesser orreries, and the polar axes of the

telescopes on the starhenge.


None of this was in the front of my mind

while I was pushing my pole around and around the hub. True, I did look

at these things afresh during the first few minutes, simply because I

knew that Artisan Flec was watching, and I was trying to imagine how I

might explain these things to him, supposing he asked. But by the time

we had found our rhythm, and my heart had begun to thump along at a

steady pace, and the sweat had begun to drip from my nose, I had

forgotten about Artisan Flec. The chanting of the One-offs was better

than I’d expected—not so bad as to call attention to itself. For a

minute or two I thought about the story of Saunt Bly. After that, I

thought mostly of myself and my situation in the world. I know that

this was selfish of me, and not what

I should have been doing during the aut. But unbidden and unwanted

thoughts are the hardest to expel from one’s mind. You might find it in

poor taste that I tell you of what I was thinking. You might find it

unnecessarily personal, perhaps even immoral—a bad example for other

fids who might one day find this account sticking out of a niche. But

it is part of this story.


As I wound the clock on that day I was wondering what it would be like to climb up to the Warden Fendant’s ledge and jump off.


If you find such a thing impossible to

comprehend, you probably are not avout. The food that you eat is grown

from crops whose genes partake of the Allswell sequence, or even

stronger stuff. Melancholy thoughts may never come into your mind at

all. When they do, you have the power to dismiss them. I did not have

that power, and was becoming weary of keeping company with those

thoughts. One way to silence them forever would have been to walk out

of the Decenarian Gate in a week’s time, go to live with my birth

family (supposing they would have me back), and eat what they ate.

Another would have involved climbing the stair that spiraled up our

corner of the Mynster.


Mystagogue: (1) In

Early Middle Orth, a theorician specializing in unsolved problems, esp.

one who introduced fids to the study of same. (2) In Late Middle Orth,

a member of a suvin that dominated the maths from the middle of the

Negative Twelfth Century until the Rebirth, which held that no further

theoric problems could be solved; discouraged theoric research; locked

libraries; and made a fetish of mysteries and conundrums. (3) In Praxic

and later Orth, a pejorative term for any person who is thought to

resemble those of sense 2.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“Are people starving to death? Or are they sick because they are too fat?”




Artisan Quin scratched his beard and thought about that one. “You’re talking of slines, I assume?”


Fraa Orolo shrugged.


Quin thought that was funny. Unlike Artisan

Flec, he was not afraid to laugh out loud. “Sort of both at the same

time,” he finally admitted.


“Very good,” said Fraa Orolo, in a now we’re getting somewhere tone, and glanced at me to make sure I was getting it down.





After the Flec interview, I had had words

with Fraa Orolo. “Pa, what are you doing with that

five-hundred-year-old questionnaire? It’s crazy.”


“It is an eight-hundred-year-old copy of an eleven-hundred-year-old questionnaire,” he had corrected me.


“It would be one thing if you were a Hundreder. But how could things have changed that much in only ten years?”


Fraa Orolo had told me that since the

Reconstitution there had been forty-eight instances in which radical

change had occurred in a decade, and that two of these had culminated

in Sacks—so perhaps the sudden ones were the most important. And yet

ten years was a long enough span of time that people who lived

extramuros, immersed in day-to-day goings-on, might be oblivious to

change. So a Tenner reading an eleven-hundred-year-old questionnaire to

an artisan could perform a service to the society extramuros (assuming

anyone out there was paying attention). Which might help to explain why

we were not only tolerated but protected (except when we weren’t) by

the Sæcular Power. “The man who looks at a mole on his brow every day

when he shaves may not see that it is changing; the physician who sees

it once a year may easily recognize it as cancer.”


“Beautiful,” I’d said. “But you’ve never cared about the Sæcular Power before, so what’s your real reason?”


He had pretended to be bewildered by the

question. But, seeing I wasn’t going to back off, he had shrugged and

said “Just a routine check for CDS.”




“CDS?”


“Causal Domain Shear.”


This had as much as proved that Orolo was only having me on. But sometimes he had a point when he was doing that.


Correction: he always had a point. Sometimes I was able to see it. So I had rested my face on my hands and muttered, “Okay. Open the floodgates.”


“Well. A causal domain is just a collection of things linked by mutual cause-and-effect relationships.”


“But isn’t everything in the universe so linked?”


“Depends on how their light cones are

arranged. We can’t affect things in our past. Some things are too far

away to affect us in any way that matters.”


“But still, you can’t really draw hard and fast boundaries between causal domains.”


“In general, no. But you are much more strongly webbed together with me

by cause and effect than you are with an alien in a faraway galaxy. So,

depending on what level of approximation you’re willing to put up with,

you could say that you and I belong together in one causal domain, and

the alien belongs in another.”


“Okay,” I had said, “what level of approximation are you willing to put up with, Pa Orolo?”


“Well, the whole point of living in a

cloistered math is to reduce our causal linkages with the extramuros

world to the minimum, isn’t it?”


“Socially, yes. Culturally, yes.

Ecologically, even. But we use the same atmosphere, we hear their mobes

driving by—on a pure theoric level, there is no causal separation at

all!”


He hadn’t seemed to have heard me. “If

there were another universe, altogether separate from ours—no causal

linkages whatsoever between Universes A and B—would time flow at the

same rate between them?”


“It’s a meaningless question,” I’d said, after having thought about it for a moment.


“That’s funny, it seemed meaningful to me,” he’d retorted, a little cross.




“Well, it depends on how you measure time.”


He’d waited.


“It depends on what time is!” I’d said. I had spent a few minutes going up various avenues of explanation, only to find each of them a dead end.


“Well,” I’d said finally, “I guess I have

to invoke the Steelyard. In the absence of a good argument to the

contrary, I have to choose the simplest answer. And the simplest answer

is that time runs independently in Universe A and Universe B.”


“Because they are separate causal domains.”


“Yes.”


Orolo said, “What if these two

universes—each as big and as old and as complicated as ours—were

entirely separate, except for a single photon that managed to travel

somehow between them. Would that be enough to wrench A’s time and B’s

time into perfect lockstep for all eternity?”


I had sighed, as I always did when one of Orolo’s traps closed over me.


“Or,” he’d said, “is it possible to have a

little bit of time slippage—shear—between causal domains that are

connected only loosely?”


“So—back to your interview with Artisan

Flec—you want me to believe that you were just checking to see whether

a thousand years might have gone by on the other side of that wall

while only ten have gone by on this side!?”


“I saw no harm in making inquiries,” he’d

said. Then he’d gotten a look as if something else were on the tip of

his tongue. Something mischievous. I had headed him off before he could

say it:


“Oh. Is this anything to do with your crazy stories about the wandering ten-thousand-year math?”


When we’d been new fids, Orolo had once

claimed that he had found an instance in the Chronicles where a gate

somewhere had ground open and some avout had walked out of it claiming

to be Ten-thousanders celebrating Apert. Which was ridiculous because

avout in their current form had only existed for (at that time) 3682

years. So we’d reckoned that the whole purpose of the story had been to

see if we had been paying any attention whatsoever to our history lessons. But perhaps the story had been meant to convey a deeper point.


“You can get a lot done in ten millennia if

you put your mind to it,” Orolo had said. “What if you found a way to

sever all causal links to the world extramuros?”


“That is utterly ridiculous. You are giving Incanter-like powers to these people.”


“But if one could do it, then one’s math

would become a separate universe and its time would no longer be

synchronized with the rest of the world’s. Causal Domain Shear would

become possible—”


“Nice thought experiment,” I’d said. “Point taken. Thank you for the calca. But please tell me you don’t really expect to see evidence of CDS when the gates open!”


“It is what you don’t expect,” he’d said, “that most needs looking for.”





“Do you have, in your wigwams or tents or skyscrapers or wherever you live—”


“Trailers without wheels mostly,” said Artisan Quin.


“Very well. In those, is it common to have things that can think, but that are not human?”


“We did for a while, but they all stopped working and we threw them away.”


“Can you read? And by that I don’t just mean interpreting Logotype…”


“No one uses that any more,” said Quin.

“You’re talking about the symbols on your underwear that tell you not

to use bleach. That sort of thing.”


“We don’t have underwear, or bleach—just

the bolt, the chord, and the sphere,” said Fraa Orolo, patting the

length of cloth thrown over his head, the rope knotted around his

waist, and the sphere under his bottom. This was a weak joke at our

expense to set Quin at ease.


Quin stood up and tossed his long body in a

way that made his jacket fly off. He was not a thick-built man but he

had muscles from working. He whirled the jacket round to his front and

used his thumbs to thrust out a sheaf

of tags sewn into the back of the collar. I could see the logo of a

company, which I recognized from ten years ago, though they had made it

simpler. Below it was a grid of tiny pictures that moved. “Kinagrams.

They obsoleted Logotype.”


I felt old: a new feeling for me.


Orolo had been curious until he’d seen the

Kinagrams; now he looked disappointed. “Oh,” he said, in a mild and

polite tone of voice, “you are talking bulshytt.”


I got embarrassed. Quin was amazed. Then his face turned red. It looked as if he were talking himself into being angry.


“Fraa Orolo didn’t say what you think!” I

told Quin, and tried to punctuate it with a chuckle, which came out as

a gasp. “It is an ancient Orth word.”


“It sounded a lot like—”


“I know! But Fraa Orolo has forgotten all about the word you are thinking of. It’s not what he meant.”


“What did he mean, then?”


Fraa Orolo was fascinated that Quin and I were talking about him as if he weren’t there.


“He means that there’s no real distinction between Kinagrams and Logotype.”


“But there is,” Quin

said, “they are incompatible.” His face wasn’t red any more; he drew

breath and thought about it for a minute. Finally he shrugged. “But I

see what you mean. We could have gone on using Logotype.”


“Why do you suppose it became obsolete, then?” asked Orolo.


“So that the people who brought us Kinagrams could gain market share.”


Orolo frowned and considered this phrase. “That sounds like bulshytt too.”


“So that they could make money.”


“Very well. And how did those people achieve that goal?”


“By making it harder and harder to use Logotype and easier and easier to use Kinagrams.”


“How annoying. Why did the people not rise up in rebellion?”


“Over time we were led to believe that Kinagrams really were better. So, I guess you’re right. It really is bul—” But he stopped in mid-word.


“You can say it. It’s not a bad word.”


“Well, I won’t say it, because it feels wrong to say it here, in this place.”


“As you wish, Artisan Quin.”


“Where were we?” Quin asked, then answered

his own question: “You were asking me if I could read, not these, but

the frozen letters used to write Orth.” He nodded at my leaf, which was

growing dark with just that sort of script.


“Yes.”


“I could if I had to, because my parents

made me learn. But I don’t, because I never have to,” said Quin. “My

son, now, he’s a different story.”


“His father made him learn?” Fraa Orolo put in.


Quin smiled. “Yes.”


“He reads books?”


“All the time.”


“His age?” Obviously this was not on the questionnaire.


“Eleven. And he hasn’t been burned at the

stake yet.” Quin said that in a very serious way. I wondered if Fraa

Orolo understood that Quin was making a joke—taking a dig at him. Orolo

made no sign.


“You have criminals?”


“Of course.” But the mere fact that Quin responded in this way caused Orolo to jump to a new leaf of the questionnaire.


“How do you know?”


“What?!”


“You say of course

there are criminals, but if you look at a particular person, how do you

know whether or not he is a criminal? Are criminals branded? Tattooed?

Locked up? Who decides who is and isn’t a criminal? Does a woman with

shaved eyebrows say ‘you are a criminal’ and ring a silver bell? Or is

it rather a man in a wig who strikes a block of wood with a hammer? Do

you thrust the accused through a doughnut-shaped magnet? Or use a

forked stick that twitches when it is brought near evil? Does an

Emperor hand down the decision from his throne written in vermilion ink

and sealed with black wax, or is it

rather that the accused must walk barefoot across a griddle? Perhaps

there is ubiquitous moving picture praxis—what you’d call

speelycaptors—that know all, but their secrets may only be unlocked by

a court of eunuchs each of whom has memorized part of a long number. Or

perhaps a mob shows up and throws rocks at the suspect until he’s dead.”


“I can’t take you seriously,” Quin said. “You’ve only been in the concent, what, thirty years?”


Fraa Orolo sighed and looked at me. “Twenty-nine years, eleven months, three weeks, six days.”


“And it’s plain to see you are boning up for Apert—but you can’t really think that things have changed so much!”


Another look in my direction. “Artisan

Quin,” said Fraa Orolo, after a pause to make his words hit harder,

“this is anno three thousand, six hundred, and eighty-nine of the

Reconstitution.”


“That’s what my calendar says too,” Quin affirmed.


“3690 is tomorrow. Not only the Unarian

math, but we Decenarians as well, will celebrate Apert. According to

the ancient rules, our gates will open. For ten days, we shall be free

to go out, and visitors such as you shall be welcome to come in. Now,

ten years hence, the Centenarian Gate will open for the first, and probably the last, time in my life.”


“When it closes, which side of that gate will you be on?” Quin asked.


I got embarrassed again, because I’d never dare ask such a question. But I was secretly delighted that Quin had asked it for me.


“If I am found worthy, I should very much

like to be on the inside of it,” said Fraa Orolo, and then glanced at

me with an amused look, as if he’d guessed my thoughts. “The point is

that in nine or so years, I can expect to be summoned to the upper

labyrinth, which separates my math from that of the Centenarians. There

I shall find my way to a grate in a dark room, and on the other side of

that grate shall be one of those Hundreders (unless they have all died,

vanished, or turned into something else) who shall ask me questions

that shall seem just as queer to me as mine do to you. For they must

make preparations for their Apert just as we do for ours. In their

books they have records of every judicial practice that they, and

others in other concents, have heard of in the last

thirty-seven-hundred-odd years. The list that I rattled off to you, a

minute ago, is but a single paragraph from a book as thick as my arm.

So even if you find it to be a ridiculous exercise, I should be most

grateful if you’d simply describe to me how you choose your criminals.”


“Will my answer be entered in that book?”


“If it is a new answer, yes.”


“Well, we still have Magistrate Doctors who roam about at the new moon in sealed purple boxes…”


“Yes, those I remember.”


“But they weren’t coming round as often as

we needed them—the Powers That Be weren’t doing a good job of

protecting them and some got rolled down hills. Then the Powers That Be

put up more speelycaptors.”


Fraa Orolo jumped to a new leaf. “Who has access to those?”


“We don’t know.”


Orolo began moving to yet another new leaf.

But before he found it, Quin continued: “But if someone commits a bad

enough crime, the Powers That Be clamp a thing on their spine that

makes them sort of crippled, for a while. Later it falls off and then

they are normal again.”


“Does it hurt?”


“No.”


A new page. “When you see someone wearing one of those devices, can you tell what crime they committed?”


“Yes, it says right on it, in Kinagrams.”


“Theft, assault, extortion?”


“Sure.”


“Sedition?”


Quin waited a long time before saying, “I’ve never seen that.”


“Heresy?”


“That would probably be handled by the Warden of Heaven.”


Fraa Orolo threw his hands up so high that

his bolt fell away from his head and even bared one of his armpits.

Then he brought them down again, the better to clamp them over his

face. It was a sarcastic gesture that he liked to make in a chalk hall

when a fid was being impossibly

block-headed. Quin clearly took its meaning, and became embarrassed. He

shifted back in his chair and pointed his chin at the ceiling, then

lowered it again and looked at the window he was supposed to be

mending. But there was something in Fraa Orolo’s huge gesture that was

funny, and gave Quin the feeling that it was okay.


“All right,” Quin finally said, “I never thought of it like this, but now that you mention it, we have three systems…”


“The chaps in the purple boxes, the spine

clamps, and this new thing that neither I nor Fraa Erasmas has ever

heard of called the Warden of Heaven,” said Fraa Orolo, and began

pushing through many leaves of his questionnaire—digging deep.


Something had occurred to Artisan Quin. “I never mentioned them because I thought you’d know all about them!”


“Because,” Fraa Orolo said, finding the

page he’d been looking for, and scanning it, “they claimed that they

came from the concent…bringing the enlightenment of the mathic world to

a worthy few.”


“Yeah. Didn’t they?”


“No. They didn’t.” Seeing just how taken

aback Quin was, Orolo continued: “This sort of thing happens every few

hundred years. Some charlatan will appear and make a claim on Sæcular

Power based on an association with the mathic world—which happens to be

fraudulent.”


I knew the answer to the following question

before I blurted it out: “Does Artisan Flec—is he a follower, a

disciple, of the Warden of Heaven?”


Quin and Orolo both looked at me, agog for different reasons. “Yes,” Quin said. “He listens to their casts while he works.”


“That’s why he made a speely of Provener,”

I said. “Because this Warden of Heaven claims to be part of us. If

there’s anything mysterious or…well, magnificent about this place, why,

that just makes the Warden of Heaven seem that much bigger and more

powerful. And to the extent that Artisan Flec is a disciple of the

Warden of Heaven, he feels some of that belongs to him.”


Orolo said nothing, which made me embarrassed at the time. When I thought about it later, though, I understood that he didn’t need to say anything because what I’d said was obviously true.


Quin was looking a little confused. “Flec didn’t make a speely.”


“I beg your pardon?” I said.


Fraa Orolo was still distracted, thinking about the Warden of Heaven.


“They wouldn’t allow it. His speelycaptor was too good,” Quin explained.


Being old and wise, Fraa Orolo went rigid,

pursed his lips, and looked uneasy. Being neither, I said: “What on

earth does that mean?”


Fraa Orolo’s hand came down on my wrist and

prevented me from writing any more. And I suspect that his other hand

wanted to clamp down on Quin’s mouth. Quin went on, “The Eagle-Rez, the

SteadiHand, the DynaZoom—put those all together, and it could have seen

straight across into the other parts of your Mynster, even through the

screens. Or at least that’s what he was told by the—”


“Artisan Quin!” Fraa Orolo trumpeted, loud

enough to draw looks from everyone else in the library. Then he made

his voice quite low: “I am afraid you are about to tell us something

that your friend Flec learned from talking to the Ita. And I must

remind you that such a thing is not allowed under our Discipline.”


“Sorry,” Quin said. “It’s confusing.”


“I know it is.”


“All right. Forget about the speelycaptor. I’m sorry. Where were we?”


“We were talking about the Warden of

Heaven,” Fraa Orolo said, relaxing a little, and finally letting go my

wrist. “And as far as I’m concerned, the only thing we need to

establish is whether he is a Throwback-turned-Mystagogue, or a Bottle

Shaker, as the former can be quite dangerous.”


Kefedokhles: (1) A fid from the Halls of Orithena who survived the eruption of Ecba to become one of the Forty Lesser

Peregrins. In his old age, he appears to have turned up on the

Periklyne, though some scholars believe that this must have been a son

or namesake of the Orithenan. He appears as a minor character in

several of the great dialogs, most notably Uraloabus,

where his timely and long-winded interruption enables Thelenes—who has

been thrown back on his heels by the heavy sarcasm of his adversary—to

recover his equilibrium, change the subject, and embark upon the

systematic annihilation of Sphenic thought that accounts for the last

third of the dialog and culminates in the title character’s public

suicide. From the Peregrin phase of Kefedokhles’s career, three dialogs

survive, and from his years on the Periklyne, eight. Though talented,

he gives the impression of being insufferably smug and pedantic, whence

sense 2. (2) An insufferably smug or pedantic interlocutor.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“I can puzzle out

‘Throwback-turned-Mystagogue,’” I told Fraa Orolo later. I was chopping

carrots in the Refectory kitchen, and he was eating them. “And I can

even guess why they are dangerous: because they’re angry, they want to

come back to the place that Anathematized them, and even the score.”


“Yes, and that’s why Quin and I spent the whole afternoon with the Warden Fendant.”


“But what’s a Bottle Shaker?”


“Imagine a witch doctor in a society that

doesn’t know how to make glass. A bottle washes up on the shore. It has

amazing properties. He puts it on a stick and waves it around and

convinces his fellows that he has got some of those amazing properties

himself.”


“So Bottle Shakers aren’t dangerous?”


“No. Too easily impressed.”


“What of the slines who ate Saunt Bly’s liver? Apparently they weren’t so impressed.”


To hide a smile, Fraa Orolo pretended to

inspect a potato. “The point is well taken, but remember that Saunt Bly

was living alone on a butte. The very

fact of his having been Thrown Back separated him from the artifacts

and auts that are most impressive to Bottle Shaker–producing societies.”


“So what did you and the Warden Fendant decide?”


Fraa Orolo glanced around in a way that made it obvious I should have been more discreet.


“Expect more precautions at Apert.”


I lowered my voice. “So, the Sæcular Power will send…I don’t know…?”


“Robots with stun guns? Echelons of horse archers? Cylinders of sleeping gas?”


“I guess so.”


“That depends on to what extent the Warden

of Heaven has become the same as the Panjandrums,” Fraa Orolo said. He

liked to call the Sæcular Power the Panjandrums. “And that is very

difficult for us to make out. Obviously, I can’t make heads or tails of

it. It is just the kind of thing for which the office of Warden Fendant

was created, and I’m certain that Fraa Delrakhones is working the

problem as we speak.”


“Could it lead to…you know…”


“A Sack? Local or general? I certainly

don’t think that this is going to culminate in Number Four. Fraa

Delrakhones would have heard rumblings from other Wardens Fendant. Even

a local sack is most improbable. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a bit

of roughhousing on Tenth Night; but that’s why we prepare for Apert by

moving all of the stuff we really care about to the labyrinths.”


“You said to Quin that radical changes extramuros had twice culminated in Sacks,” I reminded him.


Fraa Orolo let a moment go by and said,

“Yes?” Then, before I could go on, he put on the merry-fraa face that

he used when he was trying to humor a chalk hall full of bored fids.

“You’re not actually worrying about Number Four, are you?”


I murdered a carrot and said Diax’s Rake three times under my breath.


“Three Sacks-General in 3700 years is not bad,” he pointed out. “The statistics for the Sæcular world are far more alarming.”




“I was worrying about it a little bit,” I said. “But that is not what I was going to ask before you went Kefedokhles on me.”


Orolo said nothing, perhaps because I was

gripping a large knife. I was tired and testy. Earlier, I had punched

in my sphere to make it a bushel basket and ventured into the tangles

nearest the Cloister, only to find they’d already been stripped of

produce. To find all the stuff we needed to make the stew, I’d had to

cross the river and ransack some of the tangles between it and the wall.


I snatched a hard-earned carrot and aimed

it at the sky. “You have only taught me of the stars,” I said. “History

I have learned from others—mostly from Fraa Corlandin.”


“He probably told you that the Sacks were our fault,” said Orolo—using our, I noted, in a very elastic way, to mean every avout all the way back to Ma Cartas.


Sometimes, when I was chatting with

Thistlehead, he would reach out and give me a little push on the

collarbone, and just like that I’d be flailing my arms, aware that one

more push would topple me. It was Lio’s charming way of letting me know

that he had noticed I was standing in the wrong way, according to his

books of Vale-lore. I thought it nonsense. But my body always seemed to

agree with Fraa Lio, because it would over-react. Once, in trying to

recover my balance, I had pulled a muscle deep in my back that had hurt

for three weeks.


Fraa Orolo’s last sentence touched my mind

in a similar way. And in a similar way, I over-reacted. My face flushed

and my heart beat faster. It was just like the moment in a dialog when

Thelenes has tricked his interlocutor into saying something stupid and

is about to begin slicing him up like a carrot on a plank.


“Each Sack was followed by a reform, was it not?” I said.


“Let us Rake your sentence, and say that each Sack led to changes in the maths that are still observed to this day.”


That Fraa Orolo was now talking in this

style confirmed that we were in dialog. The other fraas stopped peeling

potatoes and chopping herbs, and gathered around to watch me get planed.


“All right, call them whatever you wish,” I

said, and then snorted, because I knew I had left myself open; this was

the equivalent of me falling on my

arse after one little nudge from Fraa Lio. I should never have brought

up Kefedokhles. I was going to pay for that.


I couldn’t stop myself from shooting a

glance out the window. The kitchen faced south into an herb garden that

filled most of the space between it and the closest of the tangles—the

ones cultivated by the very oldest fraas and suurs, so that they

wouldn’t have to walk very far to get their chores done. The roof on

that side had a deep overhanging eave to prevent sun from shining in

and making the kitchen even hotter than it already was. Suur Tulia and

Suur Ala were sitting together in the shade of that eave, directly

beneath the window, cutting up tires to make sandals. I didn’t want

Tulia to hear me get planed because I had a crush on her, and I didn’t

want Ala to hear it because she would enjoy it so much. Fortunately,

they were explaining something to each other as usual, and had no idea

what was happening in here.


“Call them whatever you wish? What a

curious thing to say, Fid Erasmas,” Orolo said. “Let me see…may I call

them carrots or floor-tiles?” Titters flew out from all around, like

sparrows flushed from a belfry.


“No, Pa Orolo, it would not make sense to say that each Sack was followed by a carrot.”


“Why not, Fid Erasmas?”


“Because the word carrot has a meaning different from reform or change in the maths.”


“So because words have this remarkable

property of possessing specific meanings, we must take care to use the

correct ones? Is that a just statement of what you have said, or am I

in error?”


“It is correct, Pa Orolo.”


“Perhaps some of the others, who have

learned so much from the New Circle and the Reformed Old Faanians, have

noted some error in this, and would like to correct us.” And, with the

placid eye of a viper tasting the air, Fraa Orolo looked about at the

half-dozen fids who had encircled us.


No one moved.


“Very well, no one here wishes to support the novel hypothesis of Saunt Proc. We may continue under the assumption that words mean

things. What is the difference between saying that the Sacks were

followed by reforms, and saying that they were followed by changes in

the maths?”


“I suppose it has to do with the connotations of the word reform,”

I said. For I had given up and was willing to let myself be planed, not

because I liked it but because it was so unusual for Fraa Orolo to

expose his views about anything other than stars and planets.


“Ah, perhaps you could elaborate on that,

for I am not gifted with your faculty for words, Fid Erasmas, and would

be chagrined if I failed to follow your argument.”


“Very well, Pa Orolo. To say that there were changes seems like a more Diaxan phrasing—raked clean of subjective emotional judgments—whereas, when we say reforms, it gives the feeling that something was wrong with how the maths were run before, and that—”


“We deserved to be sacked? The Panjandrums needed to come in and mend us?”


“When you put it that way, Pa Orolo, and in

that tone of voice, you seem to suggest that the changes that were

made, need not have been—that they were forced on us wrongly by the

Sæcular Power.” I stumbled over a few words, because I was excited. I

had glimpsed a way to corner Orolo. For those reforms—those

changes—were as fundamental to the maths as going to Provener every

day, and he could hardly take a stand against them.


But Fraa Orolo only shook his head sadly,

as if he could scarcely believe what thin gruel was being spooned out

to us in the chalk halls. “You need to review the Sæculum of Saunt Cartas.”


Avout who spent a lot of time peering

through telescopes were known for taking an eccentric approach to the

study of history, and so I did not laugh at this. A few of the others

exchanged smirks.


“Pa Orolo, I read it last year.”


“What you read was probably selections from

a translation into Middle Orth. Many of those translations were

influenced by a sort of ur-Procian mentality that took hold during the

Old Mathic Age, not long before the rise of the Mystagogues. You

giggle, but it is obvious once you begin to notice it. Certain bits of

it they translate poorly, because they are skittish about what it

means; then, when they get around to

choosing selections, they leave those bits out because they’re ashamed

of them. Instead you should go to the effort of reading Cartas in the

original. It is not as difficult to follow Old Orth as some would have

you believe.”


“And when I do this, what shall I learn?”


“That in the very founding document of the

mathic world, Saunt Cartas herself emphasizes that it is not an

accommodation to the Sæculum but a kind of opposition to it. A

counterbalance.”


“The Concent-as-fortress mentality?” suggested one of the listeners—trying to bait Orolo.


“That is not a designation I love,” said

Orolo, “but if I hold forth on that, the stew will never get made, and

we’ll soon have two hundred and ninety-five hungry avout calling for

our heads. Suffice it to say, Fid Erasmas, that Saunt Cartas would

never have accepted the notion that the Sæcular Power can or should

‘reform’ the maths. But she would have admitted that it does have the

power to wreak changes on us.”


Proc: A late Praxic Age

metatheorician who is assumed to have been liquidated in the Terrible

Events. During the brief window of stability between the Second and

Third Harbingers, Proc was the leading figure in a like-minded group

called the Circle, which claimed that symbols have no meaning at all,

and that all discourse that pretends to mean anything is nothing more

than a game played with syntax, or the rules for putting symbols

together. Following the Reconstitution, he was made patron Saunt of the

Syntactic Faculty of the Concent of Saunt Muncoster. As such, he is

viewed as the progenitor of all orders that trace their descent to that

Faculty, as opposed to those originating from the Semantic Faculty,

whose patron was Saunt Halikaarn.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“I understand that some planning took place in the kitchen?”


“Believe me, it was not one for ink or even chalk.”




Fraa Corlandin, the FAE—First Among Equals—of the Order of the New Circle, had sat down across the table from me.


For the first nine and three-quarters years

of my time at the Concent, he had ignored me, except in chalk hall

where he was obliged to pay attention; lately he was acting as if we

were friends. This was to be expected. With luck, thirty or forty new

avout would be joining us at Apert. Even though they were not here yet,

they seemed to surround us like ghosts, which made me seem older by

contrast.


Not long after, if things went according to

the usual pattern, the bells would signal the aut of Eliger, and all

the Tenners would come together to watch me take a vow that would bind

me to one order or another.


Eleven of my crop had been

Collected—brought straight into the math from extramuros. The other

twenty-one had joined the Unarian math first and spent at least a year

under their Discipline before graduating to the Tenners; they tended to

be a little bit older than us Collects. All Collection, and most

graduation, happened during Apert. Though if a One-off showed

exceptional promise, he or she could graduate early by passing through

the labyrinth that connected the Unarian to the Decenarian math. But

this had only happened three times while I’d been here. The full wiring

diagram of how avout came here from extramuros and from small feeder

maths in the region, and how they moved from one math to another, was

complicated, and not really worth explaining. The upshot was that in

order to maintain our nominal strength of three hundred, we Tenners

would need to take in about forty new people at Apert. Some—we couldn’t

know how many—would be graduating from the Unarian math. The balance

would be made up by Collection, and by trolling through hospitals and

shelters for abandoned newborns.


Once that was all done, I’d be facing a

choice. Fraa Corlandin was sounding me out, perhaps even recruiting me,

for the New Circle.


I had always been seen as a fid of Orolo

and a few other Edharians who assisted him in his theorics. They spent

whole days together in tiny chalk halls, and when they came out, I

would go in and see their handwriting

all tangled together on the slates—snarled skeins of equations and

diagrams of which I understood perhaps one symbol in twenty. At this

very moment, I was supposed to be working on a problem that Orolo had

set for me: a photomnemonic tablet bearing an image of Saunt Tancred’s

Nebula, from which I was supposed to answer certain questions about the

formation of heavy nuclei in the cores of stars. Definitely not a New

Circle kind of exercise. So why would the New Circle take it into their

heads, now, that I might choose them at Eliger?


“Orolo is an impressive theorician,” Fraa Corlandin said. “I regret that I haven’t been suvined by him more.”


The flaw in this was obvious: odds were

that Corlandin was going to spend sixty or seventy more years in the

same math with Orolo. If he really meant what he said, why didn’t he

simply pick up his stew-bowl and walk across the Refectory to Orolo’s

table?


Fortunately my mouth was full of bread, and

so I did not subject Fraa Corlandin to a withering blast of Thelenean

analysis. Chewing my food gave me time to realize that he was just

speaking polite nothings. Edharians never talked this way. Spending all

my time around Edharians, I’d forgotten how to do it.


I tried to unlimber those parts of my mind

that were used for polite conversation: probably a good thing to do

anyway, on Apert eve. “I’m sure you could arrange to be suvined by

Orolo, if you sat down near him and said something wrong.”


Fraa Corlandin chuckled at my joke. “I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the stars even to say something wrong.”


“Well, today for once he said something that wasn’t about stars.”


“That’s what I heard. Who could have guessed that our cosmographer was an enthusiast for dead languages?”


This entire sentence went by me—a little

like when you are eating a slice of canned fruit and suddenly it slides

down your throat before you’ve had a chance to chew it. Having finally

got the hang of polite chitchat, I returned the favor of chuckling at

his remark. But before I could really think about what he was saying, I

noticed Lio and Jesry carrying their bowls to the kitchen. Two other fids stood, as though caught up in their wake, and followed them.


Following their glances, I noticed Grandsuur Tamura standing by the exit with her arms folded.


She reacted as if I had hit her with a

spitball from across a crowded chalk hall, swiveling her head to strafe

me with her eyes. I still had no idea what was going on, but I excused

myself from Fraa Corlandin and carried my bowl into the kitchen. Seven

of the other fids were there, hurriedly cleaning their bowls, but none

of them knew any more than I did.


Incanter: A legendary

figure, associated in the Sæcular mind with the mathic world, said to

be able to alter physical reality by the incantation of certain coded

words or phrases. The idea is traceable to work conducted in the mathic

world prior to the Third Sack. It was wildly inflated in popular

culture, where fictionalized Incanters (supposedly linked to

Halikaarnian traditions) dueled their mortal foes, the Rhetors

(supposedly linked to Procians), in more or less spectacular style. An

influential suvin among historical scholars holds that the inability of

many Sæculars to distinguish between such entertainments and reality

was largely responsible for the Third Sack.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





A few minutes later, all thirty-two fids

and Grandsuur Tamura were together in Saunt Grod’s chalk hall, which

was normally considered to hold eighteen. “Shall we move over to Saunt

Venster where there’s more room?” suggested Suur Ala. She was the

self-appointed boss of the bell-ringing team—and of everyone else in

range of her searchlight eyes. Behind Ala’s back, people liked to say

that, of all the current crop of fids, she was the most likely to end

up being Warden Regulant.


Grandsuur Tamura pretended not to hear. She had lived here seventy-five

years and well knew the sizes of the available halls. She must have

chosen this one for a reason—probably, I realized, because no one could

hide ignorance, or boredom, when we were packed in so tightly. There

wasn’t room to make our spheres into stools, and so we kept them pilled

up and tucked inside our bolts.


I noticed that some of the suurs were

standing even closer together than was strictly necessary, and

sniffling into one another’s shoulders. One of them was Tulia, whom I

liked quite a bit. I was eighteen. Tulia was a bit younger. Lately I

had dreamed of having a liaison with her once she had come of age. In

general I looked at her more often than was strictly necessary.

Sometimes she looked back. But when I tried to meet her eye now, she

pointedly looked away, and fixed her red and swollen eyes on the big

stained-glass window above the slate. Since (a) it was dark outside and

(b) the window depicted Saunt Grod and his research assistants being

beaten with rubber hoses in the dungeons of some Praxic Age spy bureau

and (c) Tulia had already spent something like a quarter of her life in

this room, I reckoned that inspecting the window wasn’t really the

point.


Dense though I am, I finally put it

together that this was the last time that our crop of thirty-two fids

would be gathered together, as such, in our lives. The girls with their

preternatural ability for noticing such things were responding, the

boys with our equally uncanny obtuseness were only affected inasmuch as

the girls we fancied were crying.


Grandsuur Tamura was not doing this to be

sentimental, though. “Our topic is the Iconographies and their

origins,” she announced. “If I am satisfied that you know enough and

that you understand the importance of what you know, then you shall be

free to roam about extramuros during the ten days of Apert. Otherwise,

you shall remain in the Cloister for your own safety. Fid Erasmas, what

are the Iconographies and why do we concern ourselves with them?”


Why had Grandsuur Tamura directed the first

question at me? Probably because I’d been transcribing those interviews

with Fraa Orolo, and had an advantage over the others. I decided to

frame my answer accordingly. “Well, the extras—”




“The Sæculars,” Tamura corrected me.


“The Sæculars know that we exist. They

don’t know quite what to make of us. The truth is too complicated for

them to keep in their heads. Instead of the truth, they have simplified

representations—caricatures—of us. Those come and go, and have done

since the days of Thelenes. But if you stand back and look at them, you

see certain patterns that recur again and again, like, like—attractors

in a chaotic system.”


“Spare me the poetry,” said Grandsuur

Tamura with a roll of the eyes. There was a lot of tittering, and I had

to force myself not to glance in Tulia’s direction.


I went on, “Well, long ago those patterns

were identified and written down in a systematic way by avout who make

a study of extramuros. They are called Iconographies. They are

important because if we know which iconography a given extra—pardon me,

a given Sæcular—is carrying around in his head, we’ll have a good idea

what they think of us and how they might react to us.”


Grandsuur Tamura gave no sign of whether

she liked my answer or not. But she turned her eyes away from me, which

was the most I could hope for. “Fid Ostabon,” she said, staring now at

a twenty-one-year-old fraa with a ragged beard. “What is the

Temnestrian Iconography?”


“It is the oldest,” he began.


“I didn’t ask how old it was.”


“It’s from an ancient comedy,” he tried.


“I didn’t ask where it was from.”


“The Temnestrian Iconography…” he rebegan.


“I know what it’s called. What is it?”


“It depicts us as clowns,” Fraa Ostabon

said, a little brusquely. “But…clowns with a sinister aspect. It is a

two-phase iconography: at the beginning, we are shown, say, prancing

around with butterfly nets or looking at shapes in the clouds…”


“Talking to spiders,” someone put in. Then,

when no reprimand came from Grandsuur Tamura, someone else said:

“Reading books upside-down.” Another: “Putting our urine up in test

tubes.”


“So at first it seems only comical,” said Fraa Ostabon, regaining the

floor. “But then in the second phase, a dark side is shown—an

impressionable youngster is seduced, a responsible mother lured into

insanity, a political leader led into decisions that are pure folly.”


“It’s a way of blaming the degeneracy of

society on us—making us the original degenerates,” said Grandsuur

Tamura. “Its origins? Fid Dulien?”


“The Cloud-weaver, a satirical play by the Ethran playwright Temnestra that mocks Thelenes by name and that was used as evidence in his trial.”


“How to know if someone you meet is a subscriber to this iconography? Fid Olph?”


“Probably they will be civil as long as the

conversation is limited to what they understand, but they’ll become

strangely hostile if we begin speaking of abstractions…?”


“Abstractions?”


“Well…let’s say anything that comes to us from our mother Hylaea.”


“Level of dangerousness, on a scale of 1 to 10?”


“Given what happened to Thelenes, I’d say 10.”


Grandsuur Tamura didn’t favor the answer. “I can’t be too hard on you for over-estimating the risk, but—”


“Thelenes was executed in an orderly

judicial proceeding by the Sæcular Power—not a mob action,” volunteered

Lio, “and mob actions are less predictable, thus, more difficult to

defend against.”


“Very good,” said Grandsuur Tamura,

obviously surprised to hear such a cogent answer coming from Lio. “So

let us rate its level of danger as 8. Fid Halak, what is the origin of

the Doxan Iconography?”


“A Praxic Age moving picture serial. An

adventure drama about a military spaceship sent to a remote part of the

galaxy to prevent hostile aliens from establishing hegemony, and

marooned when their hyperdrive is damaged in an ambush. The captain of

the ship was passionate, a hothead. His second-in-command was Dox, a

theorician, brilliant, but unemotional and cold.”


“Fid Jesry, what does the Doxan Iconography say of us?”


“That we are useful to the Sæcular Power. Our gifts are to be celebrated. But we are blinded, or crippled—take your pick—by, er…”


“By the very same qualities that make us

useful,” said Fid Tulia. Which was why I couldn’t get her out of my

mind: in a heartbeat, she could go from blubbering to being the

cleverest person in the room.


“How to identify one who is under the influence of the Doxan Iconography? Fid Tulia, again?”


“They’ll be curious about our knowledge,

impressed by us, but patronizing—certain that we must be subordinated

to intuitive, common-sense leaders.”


“Danger level? Fid Branch?”


“I would put it very low. It is basically the situation we are living in anyway.”


This got a laugh, which Grandsuur Tamura

didn’t like very much. “Fid Ala. What does the Yorran Iconography have

in common with the Doxan?”


Suur Ala had to think for a minute before

trying: “Also from a Praxic Age entertainment serial? But it was an

illustrated book, wasn’t it?”


“Later they made moving pictures of it,” put in Fraa Lio.


Someone muttered a hint into Ala’s ear, and

then she remembered everything. “Yes. Yorr is identified as a

theorician, but if you see how he actually spends his time, he’s really

more of a praxic. He has turned green from working with chemicals, and

he has a tentacle sprouting from the back of his skull. Always wears a

white laboratory smock. Criminally insane. Always has a scheme to take

over the world.”


“Fraa Arsibalt, what iconography surrounds the Rhetors?”


He was so ready.

“Fiendishly gifted at twisting words and confusing Sæculars—or, what is

worse, influencing them in ways so subtle they don’t even know it’s

happening. They use Unarian maths to recruit and groom minions, whom

they send out into the Sæcular world to get influential positions as

Burgers—but in truth they are all puppets of a Rhetor conspiracy.”


“Well, that one makes sense, anyway!” said Fid Olph.




Everyone looked at him to make out whether he was joking. He looked taken aback.


“Guess we know which order you’ll be signing up for!” said one irritated suur, who everyone knew was headed for the New Circle.


“Because he’s a Procian-hater? Or just

because he’s socially inept?” said one of her companions in a low voice

that was, however, clearly audible.


“That’s enough!” said Grandsuur Tamura.

“The Sæculars don’t know about the differences between our Orders and

so all of us—not just the Procians—are equally vulnerable to the

iconography that Fraa Arsibalt has just explained. Let’s move on.”


And so it went. The Muncostran Iconography:

eccentric, lovable, disheveled theorician, absent-minded, means well.

The Pendarthan: fraas as high-strung, nervous, meddling know-it-alls

who simply don’t understand the realities; lacking physical courage,

they always lose out to more masculine Sæculars. The Klevan

Iconography: theor as an awesomely wise elder statesman who can solve

all the problems of the Sæcular world. The Baudan Iconography: we are

grossly cynical frauds living in luxury at the expense of the common

man. The Penthabrian: we are guardians of ancient mystical secrets of

the universe handed down to us by Cnoüs himself, and all of our talk

about theorics is just a smoke-screen to hide our true power from the

unwashed multitude.


In all, there were a round dozen

iconographies that Grandsuur Tamura wanted to talk about. I’d heard of

all of them, but I hadn’t realized that there were so many until she

made us sort through them one by one. Particularly interesting was the

rating of their relative dangers. After much back-and-forth we

concluded that the most dangerous of the lot was not the Yorran, as one

might have expected, but rather the Moshianic, which was a hybrid of

the Klevan and the Penthabrian: it held that we were going to emerge

from the gates and bring enlightenment to the world and usher in a new

age. It tended to peak every hundred or thousand years, as people got

ready for the Centenarian or Millenarian gates to open. It was

dangerous because it raised people’s expectations to the point of

delirium, and drew many pilgrims and much attention.




Because of my work with Fraa Orolo, I knew

that the Moshianic Iconography was ascendant, in the guise of the

so-called Warden of Heaven. Our hierarchs had become aware of this, and

the Warden Fendant had asked Grandsuur Tamura to lead us in this

discussion.


In the end, she gave the whole crop

permission to go extramuros during Apert, which surprised no one: the

threat of locking us up had only been to make us pay heed.


The discussion had actually become quite

interesting, and the only thing that ended it was the ringing of the

curfew bell. It was part of our Discipline never to sleep two nights in

a row in the same cell. Assignments were posted each evening on a slate

in the refectory. We had to go back there to find out where we’d be

sleeping and whom we’d be chumming with. So the entire group made its

way out of the chalk hall and around the Cloister, chattering and

laughing about Dox and Yorr and the other funny characters that the

extras had dreamed up in an effort to make sense of us. Older fraas and

suurs sat on the benches that faced into the Cloister, assembling

sandals—normally our sort of job—and giving us dirty looks.


It was important that I not let any one of

the sandal-makers catch my eye, so I looked elsewhere. I noticed Fraa

Orolo emerging from one of the other chalk halls with a sheaf of

leaves, cluttered with calculations, tucked under his arm. He started

one way, then, seeing our crowd, turned into the garden instead, and

headed off in the direction of the Mynster. This gave me a little

twinge, for a certain tablet of Saunt Tancred’s Nebula was gathering

dust on a table in a workroom up in the starhenge, holding down a

couple of leaves stained with inconclusive notes and scratch-outs in my

handwriting. Orolo would notice, and know I hadn’t worked on it in days.


A few minutes later I was in the cell that

I was to share that night with two other fraas, wrapping myself up in

my bolt and making my sphere a pillow. You might expect that, as I lay

there trying to get to sleep, I’d be thinking about Apert or about the

iconographies. But spying Fraa Orolo in the Cloister had put me in mind

of the slippery sentence that Fraa Corlandin had spoken at dinner, and

that I’d swallowed without tasting. Now it had become one of those unwelcome thoughts I didn’t know how to get rid of.


That’s what I heard,

Fraa Corlandin had said. But my dialog with Orolo had taken place only

an hour before dinner. Who among the spectators had run off to spread

the story in the New Circle chapterhouse? Why did anyone care?


Until last year, Corlandin had been in a

liaison with Suur Trestanas, also of the New Circle. Then one day the

bells had rung to signal the aut of Regred, meaning that someone had

made the decision to go into retirement. We had convened in the Mynster

and the Primate had called out a name: that of our Warden Regulant.

Despite all of the penance that this man had meted out to us over the

years, we all felt sorrow as we sang the chants of the aut, for he’d

been reasonable and wise.


Statho—the Primate—had then named Suur

Trestanas the new Warden Regulant. It was a little bit of a surprise

because she was young, but not controversial since everyone knew she

was bright. She’d moved to the Primate’s Compound where she now had a

cell to herself, and took her meals with the other hierarchs. But rumor

had it that her liaison with Fraa Corlandin continued. Some avout, of a

suspicious mindset, believed that the hierarchs had devices salted

around the concent that enabled them to know what we were saying.

Believing so was a fad that came and went depending on what people

thought of the hierarchs at a given time. It had been on the rise since

Suur Trestanas had been appointed Warden Regulant. It was impossible

for me not to think of it now. Perhaps she had listened to my dialog

with Orolo and then passed it on to Corlandin.


On the other hand (said the part of my mind

that pleaded with such thoughts to go away), I had to admit that I

myself had thought it strange that Orolo would suddenly take an

interest in Old Orth translation errors.


Who could have guessed that our cosmographer was an enthusiast for dead languages? Well, enthusiast

was one of those unkillable words that had passed almost unchanged from

Proto-Orth all the way up into Fluccish. In Fluccish—which was how I

assumed, at first, Corlandin had used it—it simply meant one who liked

something. The Proto-Orth meaning, however, was not a very complimentary one to hang on a fraa, especially a theorician like Orolo. And dead languages

too was an interesting choice of words. Was it really dead if Orolo was

reading it? And if Orolo was right about the translations, then by

calling the original “dead,” wasn’t Corlandin sort of making a

point—and doing it in a sneaky way, without going to the effort of

proving it?


After what seemed like hours of lying awake

and worrying about this, I had the upsight that the things Fraa Orolo

said—even when they caused me embarrassment or outright pain—never made

me wrestle with my bolt in the night-time in the way that these words

from Fraa Corlandin had. This made me think I’d rather join the

Edharians.


If, that is, the Edharians would have me. I

was not so confident that they would. I’d never been as quick to grasp

pure theorics as some of the other fids. This must have been noticed. I

wondered: why had Grandsuur Tamura asked me the first, and easiest,

question? Was it because she didn’t think I could handle anything more

difficult? Why did Orolo have me working as an amanuensis instead of

doing theorics? Why was Corlandin now trying to recruit me? Putting it

all together, I came to the conclusion that everyone knew I just wasn’t

fit to join the Edharian order, and some were trying to prepare a soft

landing for me.













Part 2


APERT







Ita:

(1) In late Praxic Orth, an acronym (therefore, in ancient texts

sometimes written ITA) whose precise etymology is a casualty of the

loss of shoddily preserved information that will forever enshroud the

time of the Harbingers and the Terrible Events. Almost all scholars

agree that the first two letters come from the words Information

Technology, which is late Praxic Age commercial bulshytt for syntactic

devices. The third letter is disputed; hypotheses include Authority,

Associate, Arm, Archive, Aggregator, Amalgamated, Analyst, Agency, and

Assistant. Each of these, of course, suggests a different picture of

what role the Ita might have performed in the years before the

Reconstitution, and so each tends to be advocated by a different suvin.

(2) In early New Orth (up to the Second Sack), a faculty of a concent

devoted to the praxis of syntactic devices. (3) In later New Orth, a

proscribed artisanal caste tolerated in the thirty-seven concents that

were built around the Great Clocks, all of which are in technical

violation of the Second Sack reforms in that their clocks were built

with subsystems that employ syntactic devices; the task of the Ita is

to operate and maintain those subsystems while observing strict

segregation from the avout.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















The

last night of 3689 I dreamed that something was troubling Fraa Orolo,

and that everyone had noticed, but on no account would he or anyone

else speak of it openly. So it was a mystery. And yet everyone knew

what it was: the planets were deviating from their courses, and the

clock was wrong. For part of the clock was an orrery: a mechanical

model of the solar system that displayed the current positions of the

planets and many of their moons. It was in the narthex or lobby between

the Day Gate and the north nave. It had been exactly correct for

thirty-four centuries, but now it had gone out of whack. The marble,

crystal, steel, and lapis spheres that represented the planets had

moved to positions that were at odds with what Fraa Orolo could plainly

see even in the smallest of telescopes. Never mentioned in the dream,

but understood by me, was that the problem must have something to do

with the Ita, because the orrery was one of the systems driven by the

devices that they tended in the vaulted cavern beneath the floor of the

Mynster.


The same system, it was rumored, effected

subtle corrections to the rate of the main clock. If the error down in

the cellar were not fixed, it would lead to greater errors that would

be obvious to all, such as the bells chiming midday when the sun was

not at its zenith, or the Day Gate opening before or after sunrise.


In a universe governed by the usual logic,

those errors would have cropped up later than the tiny discrepancies

between the orrery and the planets. But in dream-logic, it all happened

at the same time, so that I was wondering what was troubling Fraa Orolo

even as I saw the orrery show the phase of the moon wrong, which

happened at the same time as burgers were wandering in through the Day

Gate at midnight. But for some reason, none of those errors troubled me

as much as the sounds emanating from the belfry: the bells ringing the wrong changes….


I opened my eyes to hear Apert ringing. Or

so the other fraas in my cell speculated. There was no way of telling

unless you listened carefully for a few minutes. The belfry movement

could play fixed tunes, for example to chime the hours. But to announce

auts and other events, our team of ringers would disengage that

mechanism and ring changes, or permutations of tones. There was a

pattern or code in them that we were taught to understand. This was

supposedly so that messages could be cast to a sprawling concent

without the people extramuros knowing what was being said.


Not that there was anything secret about

Apert. This was the first day of 3690; therefore, not only the Day Gate

but the Unarian and Decenarian Gates would open at sunrise. Any extra

who glanced at a calendar knew this perfectly well, and so did we. But

for some reason none of us would get out of bed and act upon it until

we heard the right sequence of tones ring out from the belfry: a melody

reversed, flipped upside-down, and turned back on itself in a

particular way.


We sat up, three naked fraas in a cold cell

with our bolts and chords and spheres all disheveled on the pallets.

Such a day called for a formal wrap, which was difficult to manage

alone. Fraa Holbane’s feet had touched the floor first, so I leaned

over and rummaged through his warm, stirred-up bolt until my fingers

felt the fraying end, which I drew toward me. Fraa Arsibalt, the third

one in the cell, was the last to wake up; after some strong language

from me and Holbane, he finally took up the selvage end. We went out

into the corridor and stretched it between us. Fraa Holbane had made it

short, thick, and fuzzy for warmth.


Arsibalt and I pleated Holbane’s bolt and

then backed away from each other as Holbane made it three times as long

and much thinner. Chord wadded in his hand, he crawled under it and

then stood so that it was tented over his left shoulder. Then all he

had to do was swivel this way and that, and raise and lower his arms at

the right times, while Arsibalt and I moved about him, like planets in

an orrery, winding the bolt, spreading or bunching pleats as necessary.

The finished wrap was notoriously unstable, so we held it in place for

a minute while Holbane passed his chord over it in several places and

tied a few important knots. Then he was free to partner with Arsibalt

in getting my bolt around me. Finally, Holbane and I did it for

Arsibalt. Arsibalt always liked to go last, so that he would get the

best results. Not that he was vain. On the contrary, of all of our

crop, he seemed best suited to live in a math. He was big and portly,

and kept trying to grow a beard so that he could look more like the old

fraa that he was destined to be. But unlike, say, Fraa Lio, who

invented new wraps all the time, Arsibalt insisted on having it done

right.


When we were all clothed, we spent a few

more minutes making extra passes with our chords and shaping the pleats

that hooded our heads: just about the only part of this wrap where it

was possible to show any individual style.


Completed sandals were heaped on the ground

next to the exit of the cell-house. I kicked through them looking for a

pair big enough for my feet. The Discipline had been created by people

who lived in warm places. It allowed each of the avout to own a bolt, a

chord, and a sphere, but it said nothing about footwear. That didn’t

trouble us much during the summer. But the weather was getting ready to

turn cold. And during Apert we might go extramuros and walk on city

streets with broken glass and other hazards. We stretched the

Discipline a little bit, wearing tire sandals during Apert and

soft-soled mukluks during the winter months. The avout of Saunt Edhar

had been doing this for a long time now and the Inquisition hadn’t come

down on us yet, so it seemed that we were safe. I made a pair of

sandals mine, and tied them onto my feet.


Finally, each of us took his sphere and

made it fist-sized. As we strolled in the direction of the Mynster, we

passed the knotted ends of our chords around these, weaving simple nets

to entrap them, then made the spheres inhale and swell to draw the

chords taut. Each of us then made his sphere glow with a soft scarlet

light. The light was so that we could see where we were going and the

color was to mark ourselves as Tenners, which was necessary since

before long we’d be mixed up with One-offs.




When all of these preparations were

finished, the sphere dangled from the right hip and swung against the

thigh, which looked fascinating when a couple of hundred of us were

converging on the Mynster in the dark. If you wanted to look like a

real Saunt in a statue, you could cup the glowing sphere in one hand

and stroke it with the other while staring off into the distance as

though mesmerized by the Light of Cnoüs.


Forty avout had risen earlier and gathered

in the chancel. They were singing the processional of Decennial Apert

as we came in. Woven into this chant was a melody I had not heard in

ten years, or since I had stood inside the Decade Gate at sunrise and

watched its stone-and-steel doors grind shut on everything I had ever

known. To hear that melody now penetrated so deep into my brain that it

literally threw me off balance, and I leaned into another fraa: Lio,

who for once did not use it as an excuse to flip me over his hipbone

and slam me to the ground, but rather pushed me back up straight, as if

I were a crooked ikon, and turned his attention back to the aut.


All of the music was synchronized to the

clock, which served as metronome and conductor. It went on for another

quarter of an hour: no reading, no homily, just music.


The sky was clear, and so at the moment of

sunrise, light washed down the well from the quartz prism at the top of

the starhenge. The music stopped. We extinguished our spheres. I had an

impression that the light from above was emerald-colored at first, or

perhaps that was a trick of my eyes; by the time I’d blinked once, it

had gone the color of the back of your hand when you shine a light

through it in a dark cell. There was an unbearable moment of stillness

when we all feared that (as in my dream) the clock was wrong and

nothing would happen.


Then the central weight began to drop. This

happened every day at sunrise to open the Day Gate. But today it was

the signal for everyone to crane their necks and look up to where the

Præsidium’s pillars pierced the Mynster’s vault. We heard, then saw

movement. It was happening! Two of the weights were descending, riding

down their rails to open the Year Gate and the Decade Gate.


We all gasped and exclaimed and cheered and many of us had to

wipe our eyes. I could even hear the Thousanders reacting to it behind

their screen. The cube and the octahedron descended into plain view and

everyone roared. We applauded them as if they were celebrities at an

awards ceremony. As they neared the chancel floor we hushed, as if

fearing that they might smash into the ground. But as they got closer

they slowed, and finally crept to a halt only a hand’s-breadth above

the floor. Then we all laughed.


In some ways this was ridiculous. The clock

was but a mechanism. It had no choice at this moment but to let those

weights drop. Yet to see it happen created a feeling that can’t be

conveyed to one who was not there. The choir were supposed to break

into polyphonic singing now, and they almost couldn’t. But the

raggedness of their voices was a music of its own.


Outside, beneath the singing, I could hear the sound of running waters.


Avout: (1) A person who

has sworn a vow to submit himself or herself to the Cartasian

Discipline for one or more years; a fraa or suur. (2) A plurality of

such persons. (3) A formally constituted community of such persons,

e.g., a chapter or a math.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“There’s no right way to build a clock,”

Fraa Corlandin used to say when he was teaching us modern

(post-Reconstitution) history. This was his euphemistic way of saying

that Saunt Edhar’s praxics had been a little bit crazy.


Our concent was nestled in the crook of a

river where it dodged around one end of a range of rocky bluffs—the

terminus of a mountain range that stretched for hundreds of miles to

the northeast and whose glaciers and snowpacks formed the river’s

headwaters. Just upstream was a series of cataracts. We could hear them

at night if the slines weren’t making too much noise. Below them, the

river, as though resting from all of the excitement, ran still and

gentle for some distance, curving

across a well-drained prairie. Part of that prairie, and a mile and a

half of the river, were encompassed by our walls.


Up at the cataract, the river was easily

bridged, and so a settlement tended to be there. During some eras it

would grow and engulf our walls, and office workers in skyscrapers

would gaze down on the tops of our bastions. At other times it would

ebb and recede to a tiny fueling-station or gun emplacement at the

river crossing. Our stretch of the river was hazardous with rust-eaten

girders and lumps of moss-covered synthetic stone, the remains of

bridges that had been raised at that crossing and, in later ages,

collapsed and washed downstream.


Most of our land and almost all of our

buildings were on the inside of the riverbend, but we had claimed a

strip on the far bank and built our fortifications there: walls

parallel to the river where it ran straight, bastions where it bent.

Three of those bastions housed gates, one each for the Unarian,

Decenarian, and Centenarian maths (the Millenarian Gate was up on the

mountain and worked differently). Each gate was a pair of doors,

supposed to swing open and closed at certain times. This had posed a

problem for the praxics, in that the gates were situated far away, and

on the opposite side of a river, from the clock that was supposed to

command the opening.


The praxics had done it with water power.

Far outside of our walls, upstream of the cataract—therefore, at an

altitude well above our heads—they had carved a pool, like an open

cistern, out of the river’s stony course, and made it feed an aqueduct

that cut due south toward the Mynster, bypassing the cataract, the

bridge, and the bend. After rushing through a short tunnel and loping

on stone stilts across half a mile of broken terrain, this dove into

the ground and became a buried pipe that passed beneath what was now a

settled neighborhood of burgers. The water in that pipe, pressurized by

gravity, erupted in a pair of fountains from the pond that lay just

outside of the Day Gate. A causeway ran across the middle of that pond,

connecting the central square of the burgers’ town, at its northern

end, to our Day Gate at its southern, and passing right between those

two fountains.


The elevation of the pond was still above that of the river and plain.

Drains were plumbed into its bottom and throttled by monumental

ball-valves of polished granite. One of them fed a series of ponds,

canals, and fountains that beautified the Primate’s compound and,

farther downstream, formed part of the barrier between the Unarian and

the Decenarian maths. Three other drains were connected to systems of

pipes, siphons, and aqueducts that ran out toward the Year, Decade, and

Century Gates. Those systems were dry except at Apert. Now the clock’s

descending weights had opened two valves and allowed water to rush from

the pond to flood the Year and Decade systems.


In some ways maybe this was

a crazy and ramshackle way to do it, but there was one advantage that

wasn’t obvious to me until that day. The waterworks had been designed

to fill up slowly. So after the rite concluded, we were able to spill

out of the Mynster and follow the water at a brisk walking pace as it

charged an aqueduct that ran along beside the Seven Stairs, skirted the

Cloister, and reached across the Back toward the river.


A stone bridge crossed the river there,

anchored on the near bank by a round tower and on the far by a bastion

in the concent’s outer wall. Within the round tower was a cistern, now

being filled by water from the aqueduct, with a pitcher-lip poised

above the petals of a water-wheel. Most of us reached it in time to see

the cistern overflow and the wheel begin to turn, accepting energy from

the water before exhausting it into the river. By stainless steel gears

the wheel rotated a shaft, as thick as my thigh, that ran across the

bridge (you might mistake it for a very stout railing if you didn’t

know what it was for). Across the river, inside of the bastion, the

shaft drove another set of gears that was connected directly to the

hinge-pins around which the gates swung.


Hearing them move, we ran toward them, but slowed as we got closer, not knowing what was about to happen.


Well…actually, we had a pretty good idea.

But I was still young enough that I could let myself forget about

Diax’s Rake when I was in love with some idea. Orolo’s yarn about a

math that floated freely in time, surfing on crosscurrents of Causal

Domain Shear, had really stirred my emotions, and so for a few moments

I let my imagination run away, and

pretended that I lived in such a math and that I really had no idea

what might be found outside its gates when they opened: Mobs of

jumped-up slines rushing in with pitchforks or molotovs. Starving ones

crawling in to worry potatoes out of the ground. Moshianic pilgrims

expecting to see the face of some god or other. Corpses strewn to the

horizon. Virgin wilderness. The most interesting moment was when the

gap between the gates grew just wide enough to admit a single person.

Who would it be? Male or female, old or young, carrying an assault

rifle, a baby, a chest of gold, or a backpack bomb?





As the doors continued to open, we were

able to make out perhaps thirty Sæculars who had gathered to watch.

Several were planted facing the gate, all sharing the same awkward

stance; after a while I figured out that these were aiming

speelycaptors at us, or holding up jeejahs to send feeds to people far

away. A small child sat on her father’s shoulders, eating something;

she was already bored, and wriggling to be let down; he bent and

twisted at the hips and insisted through clenched teeth that she watch,

just for another minute. Eight children in identical clothes stood in a

row, watched over by a lady. These must have come from one of the

Burgers’ suvins. A desolate woman, looking as though she’d survived a

natural disaster that hadn’t touched anyone else, walked slowly toward

the gate carrying a bundle that I suspected was a newborn infant. Half

a dozen men and women were gathered around something that smoked. This

artifact was surrounded by a loose revetment of large brightly colored

boxes, on which some of them sat, the better to eat their enormous

drooling sandwiches. Half-forgotten Fluccish words came to me: barbecue, cooler, cheesburg.


One man had planted himself in a disk of

open space—or perhaps the others were just avoiding him—and was waving

a banner on the end of a pole: the flag of the Sæcular Power. His

posture was defiant, triumphant. Another man shouted into a device that

made his voice louder: some sort of a Deolater, I guessed, who wanted

us to join his ark.




The first to enter were a man and woman

dressed in the kinds of clothes that people wore extramuros to attend a

wedding or make an important commercial transaction, and three children

in miniature renditions of those clothes. The man was towing behind him

a red wagon carrying a pot with a sapling growing out of it. Each of

the children had a hand on the rim of the pot so that it wouldn’t

topple as the wagon’s wheels felt their way over the cobbles. The

woman, unencumbered, moved faster, but in a gait that looked all wrong

until I recollected that women extramuros wore shoes that made them

walk so. She was smiling but also wiping tears from her eyes. She

headed straight for Grandsuur Ylma, whom she seemed to recognize, and

began explaining that her father, who had died three years ago, had

been a great supporter of the concent and liked to go in the Day Gate

to attend lectures and read books. When he had died, his grandchildren

had planted this tree, and now they hoped to see it transplanted to a

suitable location on our grounds. Grandsuur Ylma said that that would

be fine provided it was of the One Hundred Sixty-four. The Burger lady

assured Ylma that, knowing our rules, they had gone to all sorts of

trouble to make sure that this was so. Meanwhile, her husband was

prowling around taking pictures of this conversation with a jeejah.


Seeing that we had not massacred the Burger

family or inserted probes into their orifices, a young assistant to the

man with the sound amplification device came in and began to approach

us one by one, handing us leaves with writing on them. Unfortunately

they were in Kinagrams and so we could not read them. We had been

warned that it was best to accept such things politely and claim we

would read them later—not engage such persons in Thelenean dialog.


This man noticed the desolate woman.

Guessing that she meant to leave her baby with us, he began trying to

talk her out of it in slangy Fluccish. She recoiled; then,

understanding that she was probably safe, began cursing at him. Half a

dozen suurs moved forward to surround her. The Deolater became furious

and looked as if he might strike someone. I noticed Fraa Delrakhones

for the first time, watching this fellow closely and making eye contact

with several burly fraas who were

moving closer to him. But then the man with the sound device chirped

out a word that must have been the younger fellow’s name. Having got

his attention, he looked up at the sky for a moment (“The Powers that

Be are watching, idiot!”) then glared at him (“Simmer down and keep

handing out the all-important literature!”).


A tall man was walking toward me: Artisan

Quin. Next to him was a shorter copy of Quin, without the beard. “Bon

Apert, Fraa Erasmas,” Quin said.


“Bon Apert, Artisan Quin,” I returned, and

then looked at his son. His son was looking at my left foot. His gaze

traveled quickly up to the top of my hood but did not catch or linger

on my face, as if this were of no more note than a wrinkle in my bolt.

“Bon—” I began, but he interrupted: “That bridge is built on the arch

principle.”


“Barb, the fraa is wishing you Bon Apert,”

said Quin, and held out his hand in my direction. But Barb actually

reached out and pulled his father’s arm down—it was blocking his view

of the bridge.


“The bridge has a catenary curve because of the vectors,” Barb went on.


“Catenary. That’s from the Orth word for—” I began.


“It’s from the Orth word for chain,” Barb

announced. “It is the same curve that a hanging chain makes, flipped

upside-down. But the driveshaft that opens the gates has to be

straight. Unless it was made with newmatter.” His eyes found my sphere

and studied it for a few moments. “But that can’t be, because the

Concent of Saunt Edhar was built after the First Sack. So it must have

been made with old matter.” His eyes went back to the driveshaft, which

seemed to follow the arch of the bridge, passing through blocks of

carved stone at regular intervals. “Those stone things must contain

universal joints,” he concluded.


“That is correct,” I said. “The shaft—”


“The shaft is put together from eight

straight pieces connected by universal joints hidden inside the bases

of those statues. The base of a statue is called a plinth.” And Barb

began to walk very fast; he was the first extra to cross over the

bridge into our math. Quin gave me a look that was difficult to

interpret, and hustled after him.




An altercation had flared up between the

desolate woman and the suurs. Apparently, this woman had been told by

some ignorant person that we’d give her money for the baby. The suurs

had set her straight as gently as they knew how.


Several more extras had come in. A group of

half a dozen, mostly men, all wearing clothes that were respectful, but

not expensive. They had engaged a small group of mostly older avout.

The foremost of the visitors was draped in a thick, gaudy-colored rope

with a globe at the end. I reckoned he was the priest of some

newfangled counter-Bazian ark. He was talking to Fraa Haligastreme:

big, bald, burly, and bearded, looking as if he’d just stepped off the

Periklyne after a brisk discussion of ontology with Thelenes. He was a

theorical geologist, and the FAE of the Edharian chapter. He was

listening politely, but kept throwing significant glances at a pair of

purple-bolted hierarchs standing off to the side: Delrakhones, the

Warden Fendant, and Statho, the Primate.


Circumventing this group, I passed in

earshot of a side conversation. One of the women visitors had engaged

Fraa Jesry. I put her age at about thirty, though the way that

extramuros women did their hair and faces made it difficult to guess

such things; on second thought, she was a dressed-up twenty-five. She

was paying close attention to Jesry, asking him questions about life in

the math.


After what seemed like a long time, I got

Jesry’s attention. He politely told the woman that he had made

arrangements to go extramuros with me. She looked at me, which I

enjoyed. Then her jeejah spat out a burst of notes and she excused

herself to take a call.


Sline: (1) In Fluccish of the late Praxic Age and early Reconstitution, a slang word formed by truncation of baseline,

which is a Praxic commercial bulshytt term. It appears to be a noun

that turned into an adjective meaning “common” or “widely shared.” (2)

A noun denoting an extramuros person with no special education, skills,

aspirations, or hope of acquiring same. (3) Derogatory term for a

stupid or uncouth person, esp. one

who takes pride in those very qualities. Note: this sense is deprecated

because it implies that a sline is a sline because of inherent personal

shortcomings or perverse choices; sense (2) is preferred because it

does not convey any such implication.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Jesry and I walked out for the first time in ten years.


The first thing I noticed was that people

had leaned a lot of junk against the outside of our walls. Apparently

some of it had even been leaned against the gates, but someone had

cleared it off to the sides in preparation for Apert.


During this era, the neighborhood outside

the Decade Gate was where artisans kept their shops, and so the stuff

leaned against the walls tended to be lumber, pipes, reels of cable or

tubing, and long-handled tools. We walked silently for a while, just

looking. But sooner than you might think, we got used to it and forgot

we were fraas.


“Do you think that woman wanted to have a liaison with you?” I asked.


“A—what do you call it—”


“An Atlanian Liaison.” Named after a

Decenarian fraa of the Seventeenth Century A.R. who saw his true love

for ten days every ten years and spent the rest of the time writing

poems to her and sneaking them out of the math. They were really fine

poems, carved in stone some places.


“Why do you think a woman would want that?” he wondered.


“Well, no risk of getting pregnant, when your partner is a fraa,” I pointed out.


“That might be important sometimes, but I think it’s easy for them to obtain contraception in this epoch.”


“I was kind of joking.”


“Oh. Sorry. Well…maybe she wants me for my mind.”


“Or your spiritual qualities.”


“Huh? You think she’s some kind of Deolater?”


“Didn’t you see who she was with?”




“Some sort of—who knows—a contingent, I think is what they call that.”


“Those were Warden of Heaven people, I’ll bet. Their leader was got up in a kind of imitation of a chord.”


We had gone far enough that the Decade Gate

was lost to view around a curve. I glanced up at the Præsidium. The

megaliths rising up from the perimeter of the starhenge served as

compass points to help me establish my bearings. We had come to a

larger road now, running roughly parallel to the river. If we crossed

it and kept going, we’d climb into a neighborhood of big houses where

burgers lived. If we followed it to the right, it would take us to the

commerce district and we could eventually loop back in through the Day

Gate. To the left, it ran out into the fauxburbs where I had spent my

first eight years.


“Let’s get this over with,” I said, and turned left.


After we had gone a few paces, Jesry said

“Again?” which was his annoying way of requesting clarification. “The

Warden of Heaven?”


“Moshianics,” I said, and then spent a while telling him about Fraa Orolo’s interviews with Flec and Quin.


As we went along, the nature of the place

changed: fewer workshops, more warehouses. Barges could navigate this

stretch of the river and so it was where people tended to store things.

We saw more vehicles now: a lot of drummons, which had up to a dozen

wheels and were used for carrying large, heavy objects around districts

like this. These looked the same as I remembered. A few fetches

scurried around with smaller loads secured to their backs. These were

more colorful. The men who owned them tended to be artisans, and it was

clear that they spent a lot of time altering the vehicles’ shape and

color, apparently for no reason other than to amuse themselves. Or

maybe it was a kind of competition, like plumage on birds. Anyway, the

styles had changed quite a bit, and so Jesry and I would stop talking

and stare whenever a particularly strange or gaudy fetch went by. Their

drivers stared right back at us.


“Well, I was oblivious to all that Warden of Heaven stuff,” Jesry concluded. “I’ve been very busy computing for Orolo’s group.”




“Why did you think Tamura was drilling us last night?” I asked.


“I didn’t think about it,” Jesry said. “All I can say is, it’s good you are around to be aware of all this. Have you considered—”


“Joining the New Circle? Angling to become a hierarch?”


“Yeah.”


“No. I don’t have to, because everyone else seems to be considering it for me.”


“Sorry, Raz!” he said, not really sounding

sorry—more miffed that I had become miffed. He was hard to talk to, and

sometimes I’d go months avoiding him. But slowly I’d learned it could

be worth the aggravation.


“Forget it,” I said. “What have Orolo’s group been up to?”


“I’ve no idea, I just do the calculations. Orbital mechanics.”


“Theorical or—”


“Totally praxic.”


“You think they have found a planet around another star?”


“How could that be? For that, they have to

collate information from other telescopes. And we haven’t gotten

anything in ten years, obviously.”


“So it’s something nearer,” I said, “something that can be picked out with our telescopes.”


“It’s an asteroid,” Jesry said, fed up with my slow progress on the riddle.


“Is it the Big Nugget?”


“Orolo would be a lot more excited in that case.”


This was a very old joke. The Panjandrums

had almost no use for us, but one of the few things that might change

that would be the discovery of a large asteroid that was about to hit

Arbre. In 1107 it had almost happened. Thousands of avout had been

brought together in a convox that had built a spaceship to go nudge it

out of the way. But by the time the ship had been launched in 1115, the

cosmographers had calculated that the rock would just miss us, and so

it had turned into a study mission. The lab where they’d built the ship

was now the concent of Saunt Rab, after the cosmographer who had

discovered the rock.




To our right, the hill where the burgers

lived had petered out. A tributary of the river cut across our path

from that direction. The road crossed it on an ancient steel bridge,

built, rusted, decayed, condemned, and pasted back together with

newmatter. A dotted line, worn away to near invisibility, hinted to

motorists that they might consider showing a little civility to

pedestrians between the rightmost lane and the railing. It was a bit

late for us to double back now, and we could see another pedestrian

pushing a cart, piled high with polybags, so we hustled over as quickly

as we could manage, trusting the drummons, fetches, and mobes not to

strike us dead. To our left we could see the tributary winding through

its floodplain toward the join with the main river a mile away. When

I’d been younger, the angle between the two watercourses had been

mostly trees and marsh, but it looked as though they had put up a levee

to fend off high water and then shingled it with buildings: most

obviously, a large roofless arena with thousands of empty seats.


“Shall we go watch a game?” Fraa Jesry

asked. I couldn’t tell whether he was serious. Of all of us, he looked

the most like an athlete. He didn’t play sports often, but when he did,

he was determined and angry, and tended to do well even though he had

few skills.


“I think you need money to get in.”


“Maybe we could sell some honey.”


“We don’t have any of that either. Maybe later in the week.”


Jesry did not seem very satisfied with my answer.


“It’s too early in the morning for them to be having a game,” I added.


A minute later he had a new proposal: “Let’s pick a fight with some slines.”


We were almost to the end of the bridge. We

had just scurried out of the path of a fetch operated by a man about

our age who drove it as if he had been chewing jumpweed, with one hand

on the controls and the other pressing a jeejah to the side of his

face. So we were physically excited, breathing rapidly, and the idea of

getting into a fight seemed a tiny bit less stupid than it would have

otherwise. I smiled, and considered it. Jesry and I were strong from

winding the clock, and many of the

extras were in terrible condition—I understood now what Quin had meant

when he’d said that they were starving to death and dying from being

too fat at the same time.


When I looked back at Jesry he scowled and turned his face away. He didn’t really want to get into a fight with slines.


We had entered into the fauxburb where I

had come from. A whole block had been claimed by a building that looked

like a megastore but was apparently some new counter-Bazian ark. In the

lawn before it was a white statue, fifty feet high, of some bearded

prophet holding up a lantern and a shovel.


The roadside ditches were full of jumpweed

and slashberry poking up through sediments of discarded packaging.

Beneath a grey film of congealed exhaust, faded Kinagrams fidgeted like

maggots trapped in a garbage bag. The Kinagrams, the logos, the names

of the snacks were new to me, but in essence it was all the same.


I knew now why Jesry was being such a jerk. “It’s disappointing,” I said.


“Yeah,” Jesry said.


“All these years reading the Chronicles and hearing strange tales told every day at Provener…I guess it sort of…”


“Raised our expectations,” he said.


“Yeah.” Something occurred to me: “Did Orolo ever talk to you about the Ten-thousanders?”


“Causal Domain Shear and all that?” Jesry looked at me funny, surprised that Orolo had confided in me.


I nodded.


“That is a classic example of the crap they

feed us to make it seem more exciting than it really is.” But I sensed

Jesry had only just decided this; if Orolo was talking to all the fids about it, how special could it be?


“They’re not feeding us crap, Jesry. It’s just that we live in boring times.”


He tried a new tack: “It’s a recruiting strategy. Or, to be precise, a retention strategy.”


“What does that mean?”


“Our only entertainment is waiting for the next Apert—to see what’s

out there when the gates open. When the answer turns out to be the same

crap except dirtier and uglier, what can we do besides sign up for

another ten years and see if it’s any different next time?”


“Or go in deeper.”


“Become a Hundreder? Haven’t you realized that’s worthless for us?”


“Because their next Apert is our next Apert,” I said.


“And then we die before the next one after that.”


“It’s not that rare to live to 130,” I

demurred. Which only proved that I had done the same calculation in my

head and come to the same conclusion as Jesry. He snorted.


“You and I were born too early to be

Hundreders and too late to be Thousanders. A couple of years earlier

and we might have been foundlings and gone straight to the crag.”


“In which case we’d both die before seeing an Apert,” I said. “Besides, I might have been a foundling, but from what you’ve said of your birth family, I don’t think you’d have.”


“We’ll see soon enough,” he said.


We covered a mile in silence. Even though

we didn’t say anything, we were in dialog: a peregrin dialog, meaning

two equals wandering around trying to work something out, as opposed to

a suvinian dialog where a fid is being taught by a mentor, or a

Periklynian dialog, which is combat. The road dovetailed into a larger

one lined with the mass-produced businesses where slines obtained food

and stuff, enlivened by casinos: windowless industrial cubes wrapped in

colored light. Back in some day when there had been more vehicles, the

full width of the right-of-way had been claimed by striped lanes. Now

there were a lot of pedestrians and people getting around on scooters

and wheeled planks and pedal-powered contraptions. But instead of going

in straight lines they, and we, had to stitch together routes joining

the pavement slabs that surrounded the businesses as the sea surrounds

a chain of islands. The slabs were riven with meandering cracks marked

by knife-thin hedges of jumpweed that had been straining dirt and

wrappers out of the wind for a long time. The sun had gone behind

clouds shortly after dawn but now it came out again. We ducked into the

shade of a business that sold tires

of different colors to young men who wanted to prettify their fetches

and their souped-up mobes, and spent a minute rearranging our bolts to

protect our heads.


“You want something,” I said. “You’re

grumpy you don’t have it yet. I don’t think that what you want is

stuff, because you’ve paid no attention at all to any of this.” I

jerked my head at a display of iridescent newmatter tires. Moving

pictures of naked women with distended breasts came and went on the

sides of the wheels.


Jesry watched one of the moving pictures

for a while, then shrugged. “I suppose I could leave, and learn to like

such things. Frankly it seems pretty stupid. Maybe it helps if you eat

what they eat.”


We moved on across the pavement-slab.

“Look,” I said, “it’s been understood at least since the Praxic Age

that if you have enough allswell floating around in your bloodstream,

your brain will tell you in a hundred different ways that everything is

all right—”


“And if you don’t, you end up like you and me,” he said.


I tried to become angry, then surrendered

with a laugh. “All right,” I said, “let’s go with that. A minute ago,

we passed a stand of blithe in the median strip—”


“I saw it too, and the one by the pre-owned-pornography store.”


“That one looked fresher. We could go pick

it and eat it, and eventually the level of allswell in our blood would

go up and we could live out here, or anywhere, and feel happy. Or we could go back to the concent and try to come by our happiness honestly.”


“You are so gullible,” he said.


“You’re supposed to be the Edharians’ golden boy,” I said, “you’re supposed to be the one who swallows this stuff without question. I’m surprised, frankly.”


“And what are you now, Raz? The cynical Procian?”


“So people seem to think.”


“Look,” Jesry said, “I see the older avout

working hard. Those who have upsight—who are illuminated by the light

of Cnoüs”—he said this in a mocking tone; he was so frustrated that he

veered and lunged in random ways as

he moved from one thought to the next—“they do theorics. Those who

aren’t so gifted fall back, and cut stone or keep bees. The really

miserable ones leave, or throw themselves off the Mynster. Those who

remain seem happy, whatever that means.”


“Certainly happier than the people out here.”


“I disagree,” Jesry said. “These people are

as happy as, say, Fraa Orolo. They get what they want: naked ladies on

their wheels. He gets what he wants: upsight to the mysteries of the

universe.”


“Let’s get down to it then: what do you want?”


“Something to happen,” he said, “I almost don’t care what.”


“If you made a great advance in theorics, would that count?”


“Sure, but what are the odds I’ll do that?”


“It depends on the givens coming in from the observatories.”


“Right. So it’s out of my control. What do I do in the meantime?”


“Study theorics, which you’re so good at.

Drink beer. Have Tivian liaisons with as many suurs as you can talk

into it. Why is that so bad?”


He was devoting way too much attention to

kicking a stone ahead of him, watching it bound across the pavement. “I

keep looking at the shrimpy guys in the stained-glass windows,” he said.


“Huh?”


“You know. In the windows depicting the

Saunts. The Saunts themselves, they’re always shown big. They fill most

of the window. But if you look close, you can see tiny little figures

in bolts and chords—”


“Huddled around their knees,” I said.


“Yeah. Looking up at the Saunt adoringly.

The helpers. The fids. The second-raters who proved a lemma or read a

draft somewhere along the way. No one knows their names, except maybe

the cranky old fraa who takes care of that one window.”


“You don’t want to end up as a knee-hugger,” I said.


“That is correct. How does that work? Why some, but not others?”


“So, you want a window all to yourself?”




“It’d mean that something interesting happened to me,” he said, “something more interesting than this.”


“And if it came to a choice between that, and having enough allswell in your blood?”


He thought about that as we waited for a huge, articulated drummon to back out of our way.


“Finally you ask an interesting question,” he said.


And after that, he was quite a pleasant companion.





Half an hour later I pronounced us lost. Jesry accepted it with pleasure, as if this were more satisfactory than being found.


A boxy vehicle rolled past. “That is the

third coach full of children that has gone by us recently,” Jesry

pointed out. “Did you have a suvin in your neighborhood?”


“Places like this don’t have suvins,” I reminded him. “They have stabils.”


“Oh yes. That comes from—it’s an old Fluccish word—uh, cultural…”


“Stabilization Centers. But don’t say that because no one has called them that in something like three thousand years.”


“Right. Stabils it is.”


We turned where the coaches turned. For the

next minute or so, things were fragile between us. Inside the math, it

didn’t matter that he had come from burgers and I had come from slines.

But as soon as we had stepped out of the Decade Gate, this fact had

been released, like a bubble of swamp gas deep in dark water. Invisibly

it had been rising and expanding ever since, and had just now erupted

in a great, flaming, stinking belch.


My old stabil looked, in my eyes, like a

half-scale reproduction of itself thrown together by a sloppy

modelmaker. Some of the rooms had been boarded up. In my day they’d

been crowded. So that confirmed that the population was declining.

Perhaps by the time I was a grandfraa there would be a young forest

here.


An empty coach pulled out of the drive. Before the next drew up to take its place, I glimpsed a crowd of youngsters staggering under

huge backpacks into a canyon of raucously colored light: a breezeway

lined with machines dispensing snacks, drinks, and attention-getting

noises. From there they would carry their breakfasts into rooms, which

Jesry and I could see through windows: in some, the children all

watched the same program on a single large screen, in others each had

his or her own panel. To one end, the blank wall of the gymnasium was

booming with low-frequency rhythms of a sports program. I recognized

the beat. It was the same one they had used when I was there.


Jesry and I had not seen moving pictures in

ten years and so we stood there for a few minutes, hypnotized. But I

had got my bearings now, and once I had nudged Jesry back into motion,

I was able to lead us down the streets I had wandered as a boy. People

here were as keen to modify their houses as their vehicles, and so when

I did recognize a dwelling, it would have a new, freestanding roof

lofted above the old one, or new modules plugged and pasted onto the

ones I saw when I dreamed about the place. But I was helped by the fact

that the neighborhood was half the size of what I remembered.


We found where I’d lived before I was

Collected: two shelter modules joined into an L, another L of wire mesh

completing a weedy cloister that housed one dead mobe and two dead

fetches, the oldest of which I had personally helped set up on blocks.

The gate was decorated with four different signs of varying ages

promising to kill anyone who entered, which, to me, seemed much less

intimidating than a single sign would’ve. A baby tree, about as long as

my forearm, had sprouted from a clogged raingutter. Its seed must have

been carried there by wind or a bird. I wondered how long it would take

to grow to a size where it would tear the gutter clean off. Inside, a

loud moving picture was showing on a speely, so we had to do a lot of

hallooing and gate-rattling before someone emerged: a woman of about

twenty. She’d have been a Big Girl to me when I’d been eight. I tried

to remember the Big Girl’s names.


“Leeya?”


“She moved away when those

guys left,” the woman explained, as if hooded men came to her door

every day incanting the names of long-lost relations. She glanced back

over her shoulder to watch a fiery

explosion on the speely. As the sound of the explosion died away we

could hear a man’s voice demanding something. She explained to him what

she was doing. He didn’t quite follow her explanation, so she repeated

the same words more loudly.


“I infer that some kind of factional schism

has taken place within your family while you were gone,” Jesry said. I

wanted to slug him. But when I looked at his face I saw he wasn’t

trying to be clever.


The woman turned to look at us again. I was

peering at her through an aperture between two signs that were

threatening to kill me, and I wasn’t certain that she could see my face.


“I used to be named Vit,” I said.


“The boy who went to the clock. I remember you. How’s it going?”


“Fine. How are you?”


“Keeping it casual. Your mama isn’t here. She moved.”


“Far away?”


She rolled her eyes, vexed that I had

leaned on her to make such a judgment. “Farther than you can probably

walk.” The man inside yelled again. She was obliged to turn her back on

us again and summarize her activities.


“Apparently she does not subscribe to the Dravicular Iconography,” Jesry said.


“How do you figure?”


“She said you went to the clock. Voluntarily. Not that you were taken by or abducted by the avout.”


The woman turned to face us again.


“I had an older sib named Cord,” I said. I

nodded at the oldest of the broken fetches. “Former owner of that. I

helped put it there.”


The woman had complex opinions of Cord,

which she let us know by causing several emotions to ripple across her

face. She ended by exhaling sharply, dropping her shoulders, setting

her chin, and putting on a smile that I guessed was meant to be

obviously fake. “Cord works all the time on stuff.”


“What kind of stuff?”


This question was even more exasperating to her than my earlier “Far away?” She looked pointedly at the moving picture.




“Where should I look?” I tried.


She shrugged. “You passed it on the way

probably.” And she mentioned a place that we had in fact passed,

shortly after leaving the Decade Gate. Then she took a step back

inside, because the man in there was demanding an account of her recent

doings. “Keep it casual,” she said, and waved, and disappeared from our

view.


“Now I really want to meet Cord,” Jesry said.


“Me too. Let’s get out of here,” I said,

and turned my back on the place—probably for the last time, as I didn’t

imagine I’d come back at next Apert. Perhaps when I was seventy-eight

years old. Reforestation was a surprisingly quick process.


“What’s a sib? Why do you use that word?”


“In some families, it’s not entirely clear how people are related.”


We walked faster and talked less, and got

back across the bridge in very little time. Since the place where Cord

worked was so close to the concent, we first went up into the burger

neighborhood and found Jesry’s house.





When we’d gone out the Decade Gate, Jesry

had been quiet and distracted for a few minutes before he had gone on

his rant. Now I had an upsight, which was that he’d been expecting his

family to be standing in front of the gate to meet him. So as we

approached his old house I actually felt more anxious than I had when

approaching mine. A porter let us in at the front gate and we kicked

off our sandals so that the damp grass would clean and soothe our

blasted feet. As we passed into the deep shade of the forested belt

around the main residence, we threw back our hoods and slowed to enjoy

the cool air.


No one was home except for a female servant

whose Fluccish was difficult for us to make out. She seemed to expect

us; she handed us a leaf, not from a leaf-tree such as we grew in the

concent, but made by a machine. It seemed like an official document

that had been stamped out on a press or generated by a syntactic

device. At its head was yesterday’s date. But it was actually a

personal note written to Jesry by his mother, using a machine to

generate the neat rows of letters.

She had written it in Orth with only a few errors (she didn’t

understand how to use the subjunctive). It used terms with which we

were not familiar, but the gist seemed to be that Jesry’s father had

been doing a lot of work, far away, for some entity that was difficult

to explain. But from the part of the world it was in, we knew it had to

be some organ of the Sæcular Power. Yesterday, she had with great

reluctance and some tears gone to join him, because his career depended

on her attending some kind of social event that was also difficult to

explain. They had every intention of making it back for the banquet on

Tenth Night, and they were bending every effort to round up Jesry’s

three older brothers and two older sisters as well. In the meantime,

she had baked him some cookies (which we already knew since the female

servant had brought them out to us).


Jesry showed me around the house, which

felt like a math, but with fewer people. There was even a fancy clock,

which we spent a lot of time examining. We pulled down books from the

shelves and got somewhat involved in them. Then the bells began to ring

in the Bazian cathedral across the street, followed by the chimes in

the fancy clock, and we realized that we could read books any day and

sheepishly re-shelved them. After a while we ended up on the veranda

eating the rest of the cookies. We looked at the cathedral. Bazian

architecture was a cousin to Mathic, broad and rounded where ours was

narrow and pointy. But this town was not nearly as important to the

Sæcular world as the Concent of Saunt Edhar was to the mathic world, so

the cathedral looked puny compared to the Mynster.


“Do you feel happy yet?” Jesry joked, looking at the cookies.


“It takes two weeks,” I said, “that’s why Apert is only ten days long.”


We wandered out onto the lawn. Then we marched back out and headed down the hill.





Cord worked in a compound where everything

was made of metal, which marked it as an ancient place—not quite as

ancient as a place made of stone, but probably dating back to the

middle of the Praxic Age when steel had become cheap and heat engines

had begun to move about on rails. It

was situated a quarter of a mile from the Century Gate on the end of a

slip that had been dug from the river so that barges could penetrate

into this neighborhood and connect to roads and rails. The property was

a mess, but it drew a kind of majesty just from being huge and silent.

It had been outlined by a fence twice my height made from sheets of

corrugated steel anchored in earth or concrete, welded together, and

braced against wind by old worn-out railroad rails, which seemed like

overkill for a wind brace. In fact it was such conspicuous overkill

that Jesry and I interrupted each other trying to be the first to point

it out, and got into an argument about what it meant. Other parts of

the perimeter were made of the steel boxes used later in the Praxic Age

to enclose goods on ships and trains. Some of these were filled with

dirt, others stuffed with scraps of metal so tangled and irregular that

they looked organic. Some were organic because

they had been colonized by slashberry. There was a lot of green and

growing matter around the edges of the compound, but the center was a

corral of pounded earth.


The main building was little more than a

roof on stilts straddling the last two hundred feet of the canal. Its

trusses were oversized to support a traveling crane with a great hook

dangling from a rusty chain, each of whose links was as big as my head.

We had seen this structure from the Mynster but never given much

thought to it. Teed into its side was a high-roofed hall enclosed by

proper walls of brick (below) and corrugated steel (above). Grafted to

the side of that, down low, was a shelter module with all sorts of

homey touches, such as a fake wood door and a farm-style weathervane,

that looked crazy here. We knocked, waited, then pushed our way in. We

made lots of noise, just in case this was another one of those places

where visitors were put to death. But no one was there.


The module had been designed to serve as a

home, but everything in it had been bent to serve the purposes of an

office. So for example the shower stall was occupied by a tall cabinet

where records were filed. A hole had been sawed into a wall so that

little pipes could be routed to a hot-beverage machine. A freestanding

urinal had been planted in the

bedroom. The only decoration, other than those crazy-looking rustic

touches that had shipped with the module, was oddly shaped pieces of

metal—parts from machines, I reckoned—some of which had been bent or

snapped in traumatic events we could only imagine.


A trail of oily bootprints led us to the

back door. This opened straight into the cavernous hall. Both of us

hunched our shoulders as we stepped over the threshold. We hesitated

just inside. The place was too big to illuminate, so most of the light

was natural, shining through translucent panels high up in the walls,

each surrounded by a hazy nimbus. The walls and floors were dark with

age, congealed smoke, and oil. More hooks and chains dangled from

overhead beams. The light washing round these gave them a spindly,

eroded look. The floor sprawled away into haze and shadow. Widely

spaced around it were crouching masses, some no bigger than a man,

others the size of a library. Each was built around a hill of metal:

from a distance, smooth and rounded, from up close, rough, which led me

to guess that these had been made in the ancient process of excavating

molds from sand and pouring in a lake of molten iron. Where it

mattered, the rough iron had been cut away to leave planes, holes, and

right angles of bare grey metal: stubby feet by which the castings were

bolted to the floor, or long V-shaped ways on which other castings

could slide, driven by great screws. Huddled beside these things or

crouching under them were architectures of wound copper wire, rife with

symmetries, and, when they moved, brilliant with azure-tinged

lightning. Tendrils of wire and of artfully bent tubing had grown over

these machines like ivy exploring a boulder, and my eye followed them

to concentrations where I was sometimes surprised to see a human being

in a dark coverall. Sometimes these humans were doing something

identifiable as work, but more often they were just thinking. The

machines emitted noise from time to time, but for the most part it was

quiet, pervaded by a low hum that came from warm resonating boxes

strewn all round and fed by, or feeding, cables as thick as my ankle.


There were perhaps half a dozen humans in the entire place, but something in their posture made us not dare approach them. One came our way pushing a rusty cart exploding with wild helices of shaved metal.


“Excuse me,” I said, “is Cord here?”


The man turned and extended his hand toward

something big and complicated that stood in the middle of the hall.

Above it, the rational adrakhonic geometry of the roof-trusses and the

infinitely more complex manifolds of swirling mist were magnified and

made more than real by the sputtering blue light of electrical fire. If

I saw a star of that color through a telescope, I would know it as a

blue dwarf and I could guess its temperature: far hotter than our sun,

hot enough that much of its energy was radiated as ultraviolet light

and X-rays. But, paradoxically, the house-sized complex that was the

source of the energy looked orange-red, with only a fringe of the

killing radiance leaking out round edges or bouncing from slick places

on the floor. As Jesry and I drew closer, we perceived it as a giant

cube of red amber with two black forms trapped in it: not insects but

humans. The humans shifted position from time to time, their

silhouettes rippling and twisting.


We saw that this machine had been robed in

a curtain of some red jelly-like matter suspended from an overhead

track. The blue light could blast straight up and kill germs in the

rafters but it could not range across the floor and blind people.

Obviously to me and Jesry, the curtain was red because it had been

formulated to let only low-energy light—which our eyes saw as red—pass

through it. To high-energy light—which we saw as blue, if we could see

it at all—it was as opaque as a steel plate.


We walked around the perimeter, which was

about the size of two small shelter modules parked side by side.

Through the red jelly-wall it was difficult to resolve fine details of

the machine, but it seemed to have a slab-like table, big enough to

sleep ten, that eased to and fro like a block of ice on a griddle.

Planted in its center was a smaller, circular table that made quick but

measured spins and tilts. Suspended above all of this, from a cast-iron

bridge, was a mighty construct that moved up and down, and that carried

the spark-gap where the light was born.


An arm of tubular steel was thrust forth from the apex of the bridge

toward a platform where the two humans stood. Pendant from its end was

a box folded together from sheet metal, which looked out of place; it

was of a different order of things from the sand-cast iron. Glowing

numbers were all over it. It must be full of syntactic processors that

measured what the machine was doing, or controlled it. Or both; for a

true syntactic processor would have the power to make decisions based

on measurements. Of course my thought was to turn away and get out of

the room. But Jesry was rapt. “It’s okay, it’s Apert!” he said, and

grabbed my arm to turn me back around.


One of the two humans inside said something

about the x-axis. Jesry and I looked at each other in astonishment,

just to be sure we’d actually heard such a thing. It was like hearing a

fry cook speak Middle Orth.


Other fragments came through above the sputtering of the machine: “Cubic spline.” “Evolute.” “Pylanic interpolation.”


We could not keep our eyes off the banks of

red numbers on the front of the syntactic processor. They were always

changing. One was a clock counting down in hundredths of a second.

Others—as we gradually perceived—reflected the position of the table.

They were literal transcriptions of the great table’s x and y position,

the angles of rotation and tilt of the smaller table in the middle, and

the altitude of the sizzling blaster. Sometimes all would freeze except

for one—this signaled a simple linear move. Other times they would all

change at once, realizing a system of parametric equations.


Jesry and I watched it for half an hour

without speaking another word. Mostly I was trying to make sense of how

the numbers changed. But also I was thinking of how this place was

similar in many respects to the Mynster with its sacred clock in the

center, in its well of light.


Then the clock struck, as it were. The countdown stopped at zero and the light went out.


Cord reached up and threw back the curtain.

She peeled off a pair of black goggles, and raised one arm to wipe her

brow on her sleeve.


The man standing next to her—who I gathered was the customer—was

dressed in loose black trousers and a black long-sleeved pullover, with

a black skullcap on his head. Jesry and I realized at the same moment

what he was. We were dumbstruck.


Likewise, the Ita saw what we were, and

took half a step back. His long black beard avalanched down his chest

as his mouth fell open. But then he did something remarkable, which was

that he mastered the reflex to cringe and scuttle away from us, which

had been drilled into him since birth. He thought better of that

half-step back. He resumed his former stance, and—hard to believe, but

Jesry and I agreed on this later—glared at us.


Not knowing how to handle this, Jesry and I

backed away and stood out of earshot while Cord did one small quick

necessary chore after another, celebrating some aut of shutting down

the machine and making it ready for re-use.


The Ita peeled off his skullcap—which was

how they covered their heads when they were among their own kind—and

drew it out into the slightly mushroomed stovepipe that they wore when

they were out and about so that we could identify them from a distance.

He then set this back on his head while sending another defiant look

our way.


Just as we would never let the Ita come into the chancel, he saw it as sacrilege that we would come here. As if we were guilty of a profanation.


Perhaps obeying a similar impulse, Jesry and I hooded ourselves.


It was almost as if, far from chafing under

the stereotype of the sneaky, scheming, villainous Ita, this one was

embracing it—taking pride in it, and pushing it as far as he could

without actually talking to us.


As we waited for Cord and the Ita to

conclude their business, I kept thinking of all the ways that this

place was similar to the Mynster: for example, how I had been taken

aback when I’d stepped into the hall, so dark and so light at the same

time. A voice in my head—the voice of a Procian pedant—admonished me

that this was a Halikaarnian way of thinking. For in truth I was

looking at a collection of ancient machines that had no meaning: all

syntax, no semantics. I was claiming

I saw a meaning in it. But this meaning had no reality, outside of my

mind. I had brought it into the hall with me, carrying it in my head,

and now I was playing games with semantics by pasting it onto these

iron monuments.


But the longer I thought about it, the more certain I became that I was having a legitimate upsight.


Protas, the greatest fid of Thelenes, had

climbed to the top of a mountain near Ethras and looked down upon the

plain that nourished the city-state and observed the shadows of the

clouds, and compared their shapes. He had had his famous upsight that

while the shapes of the shadows undeniably answered to those of the

clouds, the latter were infinitely more complex and more perfectly

realized than the former, which were distorted not only by the loss of

a spatial dimension but also by being projected onto terrain that was

of irregular shape. Hiking back down, he had extended that upsight by

noting that the mountain seemed to have a different shape every time he

turned round to look back at it, even though he knew it had but one

absolute form and that these seeming changes were mere figments of his

shifting point of view. From there he had moved on to his greatest

upsight of all, which was that these two observations—the one

concerning the clouds, the other concerning the mountain—were

themselves both shadows cast into his mind by the same greater,

unifying idea. Returning to the Periklyne he had proclaimed his

doctrine that all the things we thought we knew were shadows of more

perfect things in a higher world. This had become the essential

doctrine of Protism. If Protas could be respected for saying so, then

what was wrong with me thinking that our Mynster, and this machine

hall, were both shadows of some higher thing that existed elsewhere—a

sacred place of which they were both shadows, and that cast other

shadows in such places as Bazian arks and groves of ancient trees?


Jesry meanwhile had been staring at Cord’s

machine. Cord had manipulated some controls that had caused the

lightning-head to retract as far up as it would go and the table to

thrust itself forward. She vaulted up onto that steel slab. In small

premeditated steps she came to the part of it that tilted and rotated

(which, by itself, was a machine of

impressive size). Before resting her weight on a foot she would wiggle

it to and fro, scattering shards and twists of silver metal to either

side. They made glinting music as they found their way to the floor,

and some left corkscrews of fine smoke along their paths. A helper

approached with an empty cart, a broom, and a shovel, and began pushing

the scraps into a pile.


“It carves the metal from a block,” Jesry said. “Not with a blade but with an electrical discharge that melts the stuff away—”


“More than melts. Remember the color of the light?” I said. “It turns the metal to—”


“Plasma,” we said in unison, and Jesry went on: “It just carves off all the bits that aren’t wanted.”


This raised the question of what was

wanted? The answer was clamped to the top of the rotating table: a

sculpture of silver metal, flowing and curved like an antler, swelling

in places to knobs pierced by perfect cylindrical holes. Cord drew a

wrench from the thing she was wearing, which seemed more harness than

garment, as its chief purpose was to secure tools to her body. She

released three vises, put the wrench back in its ordained pocket, threw

back her shoulders, bent her knees, made her spine long, raised her

hands, and clasped them around two prongs of this thing she had made.

It came up off the table. She carried it down off the machine as if it

were a cat rescued from a tree and set it upon a steel cart that looked

older than a mountain. The Ita ran his hands over it. His tall hat

turned this way and that as he bent to inspect certain details. Then he

nodded and exchanged a few words with Cord and pushed the cart off into

smoke and quiet.


“It’s a part for the clock!” Jesry said. “Something must have broken or worn out down in the cellar!”


I agreed that the style of the thing

reminded me of some parts of the clock, but I shushed him because I was

more interested in Cord just now. She was walking toward us, almost but

not quite stepping on strewn shards of metal, wiping her hands on a

rag. Her hair was cut short. I thought at first that she was tall,

perhaps because that was how I remembered her. In truth she was no

taller than I. She seemed stocky with all that hardware strapped to

her, but her neck and forearms were

firm. She drew to within a couple of paces and clanked to a stop and

planted herself. She had a quite solid and deliberate manner of

standing. She seemed as though she could sleep standing up, like a

horse.


“I guess I know who you are,” she said to me, “but what is your name?”


“Erasmas, now.”


“Is that the name of an old Saunt?”


“That’s right.”


“I never did get that old fetch to run.”


“I know. I just saw it.”


“Took part of it here, to be machined, and

never left.” She gazed at the palm of her right hand, then looked up at

me. I understood this to mean “my hand is dirty but I will shake it if

you please.”


I extended my hand and clasped hers.


The sound of bells drifted in.


“Thank you for letting us see your

machine,” I said. “Would you care to see ours? That’s Provener. Jesry

and I have to go wind the clock.”


“I went to Provener one time.”


“Today, you can see it from where we see it. Bon Apert.”


“Bon Apert,” she returned. “Okay, what the heck, I’ll come see it.”





We had to run across the meadow. Cord had

left her big tool-harness behind at the machine hall, only to reveal a

smaller, vestlike one that I guessed held the stuff she’d not be

without under any circumstances. When we broke into a run, she clanked

and jounced for a few paces until she cinched down some straps, and

then she was able to keep pace with us as we rushed through the clover.

Our meadow had been colonized by Sæculars who were having midday

picnics. Some were even grilling meat. They watched us run by as if our

being late were a performance for their amusement. Children were

chivvied forward for a better view. Adults trained speelycaptors on us

and laughed out loud to see us caring so much.




We came in the meadow door, ran up stairs

into a wardroom where stacks of dusty pews and altars were shoved

against the walls, and nearly tripped over Lio and Arsibalt. Lio was

sitting on the floor with his legs doubled under him. Arsibalt sat on a

short bench, knees far apart, leaning forward so that the blood

streaming from his nostrils would puddle neatly on the floor.


Lio’s lip was puffy and bleeding. The flesh

around his left eye was ochre, suggesting it would be black tomorrow.

He was staring into a dim corner of the room. Arsibalt let out a

shuddering moan, as if he’d been sobbing, and was just now managing it.


“Fight?” I asked.


Lio nodded.


“Between the two of you or—”


Lio shook his head.


“We were set upon!” Arsibalt proclaimed, shouting at his blood-puddle.


“Intra or extra?” Jesry demanded.


“Extramuros. We were en

route to my pater’s basilica. I wished only to learn whether he would

speak to me. A vehicle drove by once, twice, thrice. It circled us like

a lowering raptor. Four men emerged. One had his arm in a sling; he

looked on and cheered the other three.”


Jesry and I both looked at Lio, who took our meaning immediately.


“Useless. Useless,” he said.


“What was useless?” Cord asked. The sound of her voice caused Arsibalt to look up.


Lio was not the sort to care that we had a

visitor—but he did answer her question. “My vlor. All of the Vale-lore

I have ever studied.”


“It can’t have been that bad!” Jesry

exclaimed. Which was funny since, over the years, no one had been more

persistent than Jesry in telling Lio how useless his vlor was.


By way of an answer Lio rolled to his feet,

glided over, grasped the edge of Jesry’s hood, and yanked it down over

his face. Not only was Jesry now

blind, but because of how the bolt was wound around his body, it

interfered with his arms and made it surprisingly difficult for him to

expose his face again. Lio gave him the tiniest of nudges and he lost

his balance so badly that I had to hug him and force him upright.


“That’s what they did to you?” I asked. Lio nodded.


“Tilt your head back,

not forward,” Cord was saying to Arsibalt. “There’s a vein up here.”

She pointed to the bridge of her nose. “Pinch it. That’s right. My name

is Cord, I am a sib of…Erasmas.”


“Enchanted,” Arsibalt said, muffled by his

hand, as he had taken Cord’s advice. “I am Arsibalt, bastard of the

local Bazian arch-prelate, if you can believe such a thing.”


“The bleeding is slowing down, I think,”

Cord said. From one of her pockets she had drawn out a pair of purple

wads which unfolded to gloves of some stretchy membranous stuff. She

wiggled her hands into them. I was baffled for a few moments, then

realized that this was a precaution against infection: something I

never would have thought of.


“Fortunately, my blood supply is simply

enormous, because of my size,” Arsibalt pointed out, “otherwise, I fear

I should exsanguinate.”


Some of Cord’s pockets were narrow and tall

and ranked in neat rows. From two of these she drew out blunt plugs of

white fibrous stuff, about the size of her little finger, with strings

trailing from them. “What on earth are those?” Arsibalt wanted to know.


“Blood soaker-uppers,” Cord said, “one for

each nostril, if you would like.” She gave them over into Arsibalt’s

gory hands, and watched, a little bit nervous and a little bit

fascinated, as Arsibalt gingerly put them in. Lio, Jesry, and I looked

on speechless.


Suur Ala came in with an armload of rags,

most of which she threw on the floor to cover the blood-puddle. She and

Cord used the rest to wipe the blood off Arsibalt’s lips and chins. The

whole time, they were appraising each other, as if in a competition to

see which was the scientist and which was the specimen. By the time I

got my wits about me to make introductions, they knew so much about

each other that names hardly mattered.




From yet another pocket Cord produced a

complex metal thing all folded in on itself. She evoluted it into a

miniature scissors, which she used to snip off the strings dangling

from Arsibalt’s nostrils.


So bossy, so stern a person was Suur Ala

that, until this moment, I had feared that she and Cord were going to

fall upon each other like two cats in a pillowcase. But when she drew

focus on those blood soaker-uppers, she gave Cord a happy look which

Cord returned.


We frog-marched Arsibalt out of there, hid

his carnage under a huge scarlet robe, and came out for Provener only a

few minutes late. We were greeted by titters from some who assumed we’d

been extramuros getting drunk. Most of these wags were Apert visitors,

but I heard amusement even from the Thousanders. I was expecting that

Jesry and I would have to do most of the work, but, on the contrary,

Lio and Arsibalt pushed with far more than their usual strength.


After Provener, the Warden Fendant crossed

the chancel and came through our screen to interview Lio and Arsibalt.

Jesry and I stood off to one side. Cord stood close and listened. This

influenced Lio to use a lot of Fluccish, to the annoyance of Fraa

Delrakhones. Arsibalt, on the other hand, kept using words like rapscallions.


From his description of the vehicle the

thugs had driven and the clothes they had worn, Cord knew them. “They

are a local—” she said, and stopped.


“Gang?” Delrakhones offered.


She shrugged. “A gang that keeps pictures of fictional gangs from old speelys on their walls.”


“How fascinating!” Arsibalt proclaimed, while Fraa Delrakhones was absorbing this detail. “It is, then, a sort of meta-gang….”


“But they still do gangy stuff for real,” Cord said, “as I don’t have to tell you.”


It became clear from the nature of the

questions Delrakhones asked that he was trying to work out which

iconography the gang subscribed to. He did not seem to grasp something

that was clear enough to me and Cord: namely, that there were extras

who would beat up avout simply because it was more entertaining than not

beating them up—not because they

subscribed to some ridiculous theory of what we were. He was assuming

that rapscallions bothered to have theories.





Cord and I therefore became frustrated,

then bored (and as Orolo liked to say, boredom is a mask that

frustration wears). I caught her eye. We drifted to one side. When no

one objected, we fled.


As mentioned, we Tenners had a bundle of

turrets instead of a proper nave. The skinniest turret was a spiral

stair that led up to the triforium, which was a sort of raised gallery

that ran all the way around the inside of the chancel above the screens

and below the soaring clerestory windows. At one end of our triforium

was another little stair that led up to the bell-ringers’ place. Cord

was interested in that. I watched her gaze traveling up the bell-ropes

to where they vanished into the heights of the Præsidium. I could tell

she wouldn’t rest until she had seen what was at the other ends of

those ropes. So we went to the other end of the triforium and began to

climb another stair. This one zigzagged up the tower that anchored the

southwestern corner of the Mynster.


Mathic architects were helpless when it

came to walls. Pillars they could do. Arches they were fine with.

Vaults, which were just three-dimensional arches, they knew everything

about. But ask them to construct a simple wall and they would go to

pieces. Where anyone else in the world would construct a wall, they’d

fill in the space with a system of arches and tracery. When people

complained about wind, vermin, and other things that would be kept out

of a normal building by walls, they might be troubled to fill up a

vacancy with a stained-glass window. But we hadn’t got round to putting

all of those in yet. On a windy and rainy day it made buildings like

this hellish. But on a day like this one it was fine because you could

always see. As we scaled the flights of the southwestern tower we had

views down into the Mynster, and out over the concent.


The upper reaches of this tower—the place

where it devolved into piers and pinnacles, the highest part, in other

words, that you could get to without

ladders and mountaineering equipment—was at about the same altitude as

the Warden Regulant’s headquarters. It sported one of the most

elaborate works of stone-carving in the whole concent, a sort of

cupola/tower/walk-through statue depicting planets and moons and some

of the early cosmographers who had studied them. Built into the middle

of this was a portcullis: a grid of bars that could be cranked up and

down. At the moment, it had been drawn up out of the way, giving us the

freedom to attack yet another stair. This one was cut right into the

top of a flying buttress. It would take us up and inwards to the

Præsidium. If the portcullis had been closed, we’d have had nowhere

else to go, unless we wanted to cross over a sort of bridge into the

Warden Regulant’s quarters.


Cord and I passed through the cupola,

moving slowly so that she could take in the carvings and the mechanism.

Then we were on our way up. I let her go ahead of me so that she could

get an unobstructed view, and so that I could steady her if she got

dizzy. For we were high above the ground here, climbing over the curve

of a stone buttress that seemed about as thick as a bird’s bone when

you looked at it from the ground. She gripped the iron banisters with

both hands and took it slowly and seemed to enjoy it. Then we passed

through an embrasure (sort of a deep complicated Mathic archway), built

into the corner of the Praesidium at about the level of the belfries.


From here there was only one way up: a

series of stairs that spiraled up the inside of the Præsidium just

within its tracery walls. Few tourists were game for that much

climbing, and many of the avout were extramuros, so we had the whole

Præsidium to ourselves. I let her enjoy the view down to the chancel

floor. The courts of the Wardens, immediately below us, were

cloister-shaped, which is to say that each had a big square hole in the

middle where the Præsidium shot through it, lined with a walkway with

sight-lines down to the chancel and up to the starhenge.


Cord traced the bell-ropes up from the

balcony and satisfied herself that they were in fact connected to a

carillon. But from here it was obvious that other things too were

connected to the bells: shafts and chains leading down from the

chronochasm, where automatic

mechanisms chimed the hours. It was inevitable that she’d want to see

this. Up we went, trudging around like a couple of ants spiraling up a

well shaft, pausing now and then to catch our breaths and to give Cord

leisure to inspect the clock-work, and to figure out how the stones had

been fitted together. This part of the building was much simpler

because there was no need to contend with vaults and buttresses, so the

architects had really gotten out of hand with the tracery. The walls

were a fractal foam of hand-carved, interlocking stone. She was

fascinated. I couldn’t stand to look at it. The amount of time I had

spent, as a fid, cleaning bird droppings off this stone, and the

clock-works inside…


“So, you can’t come up here except during Apert,” she asserted at one point.


“What makes you think that?”


“Well, you’re not allowed to have contact

with people outside your math, right? But if you and the One-offs and

the Hundreders and Thousanders could all use this stairway any time you

wanted, you’d be bumping into each other.”


“Look at how the stairway is designed,” I

said. “There’s almost no part of it that we can’t see. So, we just keep

our distance from each other.”


“What if it’s dark? Or what if you go to the top and bump into someone at the starhenge?”


“Remember that portcullis we went through?”


“On top of the tower?”


“Yeah. Well, remember there’s three more towers. Each one has a similar portcullis.”


“One for each of the maths?”


“Exactly. During the hours of darkness, all

but one of them is closed by the Master of the Keys. That’s a

hierarch—a deputy of the Warden Regulant. So on one night, the Tenners

might have sole access to the stair and the starhenge. Next night it

might be the Hundreders. And so on.”


When we reached the altitude where the

Century weight was poised on its rail, we paused for a minute so that

Cord could look at it. We also looked out through the tracery of the

south wall to the machine hall where she worked. I retraced my morning’s walk, and picked out the house of Jesry’s family on the hill.


Cord was still looking for flaws in our Discipline. “These wardens and so on—”


“Hierarchs,” I said.


“They communicate with all of the maths, I guess?”


“And also with the Ita, and the Sæcular world, and other concents.”


“So, when you talk to one of them—”


“Well, look,” I said, “one of the

misconceptions people have is that the maths are supposed to be

hermetically sealed. But that was never the idea. The kinds of cases

you are asking about are handled by disciplined conduct. We keep our

distance from those not of our math. We are silent and hooded when

necessary to avoid leakage of information. If we absolutely must

communicate with someone in another math, we do it through the

hierarchs. And they have all sorts of special training so that they can

talk to, say, a Thousander in a way that won’t allow any Sæcular

information to pass into his mind. That’s why hierarchs have those

outfits, those hairstyles—those literally have not changed in 3700

years. They speak only in a very conservative ancient version of Orth.

And we also have ways to communicate without speech. So, for example,

if Fraa Orolo wishes to observe a particular star five nights in a row,

he’ll explain his plan to the Primate, and if it seems reasonable, the

Primate will direct the Master of the Keys to keep our portcullis open

those nights but leave all the others closed. All of them are visible

from the maths, so the Millenarian cosmographers can look down and see

how it is and know that they won’t be using the starhenge tonight. And

we can also use the labyrinths between the maths for certain kinds of

communication, such as passing objects or people back and forth. But

there’s nothing we can do to prevent aerocraft from flying over, or

loud music from being heard over the walls. In an earlier age,

skyscrapers looked down on us for two centuries!”


That last detail was of interest to Cord. “Did you see those old I-beams stacked in the machine hall?”


“Ah—were those the frames of the skyscrapers?”




“It’s hard to imagine what else they’d be.

We have a box of old phototypes showing those things being dragged to

our place by teams of slaves.”


“Do the phototypes have date prints?”


“Yeah. They’re from about seven hundred years ago.”


“What does the landscape in the background look like? A ruined city, or—”


She shook her head. “Forest with big trees. In some of those pictures they are rolling the beams over logs.”


“Well, there was a collapse of civilization right around 2800, so it all fits together,” I said.


The chronochasm was laced through with

shafts and chains that in some places converged to clock-movements. The

chains that led up from the weights terminated up here in clusters of

bearings and gears.


Cord had been growingly exasperated by something, and now, finally, she let it out: “This just isn’t the way to do it!”


“Do what?”


“Build a clock that’s supposed to keep going for thousands of years!”


“Why not?”


“Well, just look at all those chains, for

one thing! All the pins, the bearing surfaces, the linkages—each one a

place where something can break, wear out, get dirty, corrode…what were

the designers thinking, anyway?”


“They were thinking that plenty of avout

would always be here to maintain it,” I answered. “But I take your

point. Some of the other Millennium Clocks are more like what you have

in mind: designed so that they can run for millennia with no

maintenance at all. It just depends on what sort of statement the

designer wanted to make.”


That gave her much food for thought, so we

climbed in silence for a while. I took the lead, since, above a certain

point, there was no direct route. We had to dodge and wind among

diverse catwalks and stairs, each of which had been put there to

provide access to a movement. Which was fine with Cord. In fact she

spent so much time working out how the clock functioned that I became

restless, and thought about the meal

being served at this moment in our refectory. Then I recollected that

it was Apert and I could go extramuros if I wanted, and beg for a

cheeseburg. Cord, accustomed to being able to eat whenever she pleased,

wasn’t concerned about this at all.


She watched a complex of bone-like levers

wrestling with one another. “Those remind me of the part I made for

Sammann this morning.”


I held up my hands. “Don’t tell me his name—or anything,” I pleaded.


“Why can’t you talk to the Ita?” she asked, suddenly irritated. “It’s stupid. Some of them are very intelligent.”


Yesterday I would have laughed at any

artisan who was so presumptuous as to pass judgment on the intelligence

of anyone who lived in a concent—even an Ita—but Cord was my sib. She

shared a lot of my sequences and had as much intrinsic intelligence as

I. Fraas were kept sterile by substances in our food so that we could

not impregnate suurs and breed a species of more intelligent humans

inside the concents. Genetically, we were all cut from the same cloth.


“It’s kind of like hygiene,” I said.


“You think the Ita are dirty?”


“Hygiene isn’t really about dirt. It’s

about germs. It’s to prevent the spread of sequences that are dangerous

if they are allowed to propagate. We don’t think the Ita are dirty in

the sense of not washing. But their whole purpose is to work with

information that spreads in a promiscuous way.”


“Why—what is the point? Who came up with all these stupid rules? What were they afraid of?”


She was quite loud. I’d have cringed if

she’d talked this way in the Refectory. But I was happy to hear her out

alone in this chasm of patient, deaf machines. As we resumed our

ascent, I searched for some explanation to which her mind might be

open. We had passed above most of the complicated stuff now—the

machines that moved the clock’s dials. All that remained were half a

dozen vertical shafts that ran up through holes in the roof to connect

with things on the starhenge: polar

drives for the telescopes, and the zenith synchronizer that adjusted

the clock’s time every day at noon—every clear day, anyway. Our final

approach to the starhenge was a spiral stair that coiled around the

largest of those shafts: the one that rotated the great Telescope of

Saunts Mithra and Mylax.


“That big machine you use to cut the metal—”


“It’s called a five-axis electrical discharge mill.”


“I noticed it had cranks, made for human

hands. After the job was finished, you turned them to move the table

this way and that. And I’ll bet you could also use those cranks to cut

a shape, couldn’t you?”


She shrugged. “Sure, a very simple shape.”


“But when you take your hands off the

cranks and turn control over to the syntactic device, it becomes a much

more capable tool, doesn’t it?”


“Infinitely more. There’s almost no shape

you couldn’t make with a syndev-controlled machine.” She slid her hand

down to her hip and drew out a pocket-watch, and let it dangle at the

end of a silver chain made of fluid, seamless links. “This chain is my

journeyman piece. I cut it from a solid bar of titanium.”


I took a moment to feel the chain. It was like a trickle of ice water over my fingers.


“Well, syndevs can have the same amplifying

effect on other kinds of tools. Tools for reading and writing genetic

sequences, for example. For adjusting proteins. For programmatic

nucleosynthesis.”


“I don’t know what those are.”


“Because no one does them any more.”


“Then how do you know about them?”


“We study them—in the abstract—when we are learning about the First and Second Sacks.”


“Well, I don’t know what those are either, so I wish you would just get to the point.”


We’d been standing at the top of the stair

that led up to the starhenge. I pushed the door open and we walked

outside, squinting in the light. Cord had gotten a little testy. From

watching Orolo talk to artisans like

Flec and Quin, I knew how impatient they could be with what they saw as

our winding and indirect way of talking. So I shut up for a minute, and

let her look around.


We were on the roof of the Præsidium, which

was a great disk of stone reinforced by vault-work. It was nearly flat,

but bulged up slightly in the middle to shed rainwater. Its stones were

graven and inlaid with curves and symbols of cosmography. Around its

perimeter, megaliths stood to mark where certain cosmic bodies rose and

set at different times of the year. Inside of that ring, several

freestanding structures had been erected. The tallest of these, right

in the center, was the Pinnacle, wrapped in a double helix of external

stairs. Its top was the highest part of the Mynster.


The most voluminous structures up here were

the twin domes of the big telescope. Dotted around from place to place

were a few much smaller telescope-domes, a windowless laboratory where

we worked with the photomnemonic tablets, and a heated chapel where

Orolo liked to work and to lecture his fids. I led Cord in that

direction. We passed through two consecutive doors of massive

iron-bound hardwood (the weather could get rough up here) and came into

a small quiet room that, with its arches and its stained-glass

rosettes, looked like something out of the Old Mathic Age. Resting on a

table, just where I’d left it, was the photomnemonic tablet that Orolo

had given me. It was a disk, about the size of my two hands held side

by side, and three fingers thick, made of dark glassy stuff. Buried in

it was the image of Saunt Tancred’s Nebula, dull and hard to make out

until I slid it away from the pool of sunlight coming in the window.


“That’s about the bulkiest phototype I’ve ever seen,” Cord said. “Is that like some ancient technology?”


“It’s more than that. A phototype captures

one moment—it doesn’t have a time dimension. You see how the image

seems close to the upper surface?”


“Yeah.”


I put a fingertip to the side of the tablet

and slid it downwards. The image receded into the glass, following my

finger. As it did, the nebula changed, contracting into itself. The

fixed stars around it did not change

their positions. When my fingertip reached the bottom of the tablet,

the nebula had focused itself into a single star of extraordinary

brilliance. “At the bottom layer of the tablet, we’re looking at

Tancred’s Star, on the very night it exploded, in 490. Practically at

the same moment that its light penetrated our atmosphere, Saunt Tancred

looked up and noticed it. He ran and put a photomnemonic tablet, just

like this one, into the great telescope of his concent, and aimed it at

that supernova. The tablet remained lodged there, taking pictures of

the explosion every single clear night, until 2999, when finally they

took it out and made a number of copies for distribution to the

Thousanders.”


“I see things like this all the time in the

background of spec-fiction speelys,” Cord said, “but I didn’t realize

that they were explosions.” She traced her finger up the side of the

tablet a few times, running it forward thousands of years in a second.

“But it couldn’t be more obvious.”


“The tablet has all kinds of other

functions,” I said, and showed her how to zoom in on one part of the

image, up to its resolution limit.


That’s when Cord saw the point I was

making. “This,” she said, pointing at the tablet, “this has got to have

some kind of syndev built into it.”


“Yes. Which makes it much more powerful

than a phototype—just as your five-axis mill is much more powerful

because of its brain.”


“But isn’t that a violation of your Discipline?”


“Certain praxes were grandfathered in. Like the newmatter in our spheres and our bolts, and like these tablets.”


“They were grandfathered in—when? When were all of these decisions made?”


“At the Convoxes following the First and

Second Sacks,” I said. “You see, even after the end of the Praxic Age,

the concents obtained a huge amount of power by coupling processors

that had been invented by their syntactic faculties to other kinds of

tools—in one case, for making newmatter, and in the other, for

manipulating sequences. This reminded people of the Terrible Events and

led to the First and Second Sacks. Our rules concerning the Ita, and which praxes we can and can’t use, date from those times.”


This was still too abstract for Cord’s

taste, but suddenly she got an idea, and her eyes sprang open. “Are you

talking about the Incanters?”


Out of some stupid, involuntary reflex, I

turned my head to look out the window in the direction of the

Millenarian math, a fortress on a crag, on a level with the top of this

tower, but shielded from view by its walls. Cord took this in. Worse,

she seemed to have expected it.


“The myth of the Incanters originated in the days leading up to the Third Sack,” I said.


“And their enemies—the what-do-you-call-’em…”


“Rhetors.”


“Yeah. What’s the difference exactly?” She

was giving me the most innocent, expectant look, twirling her watch

chain around her finger. I couldn’t bear to level with her—to let her

know what stupid questions she was asking. “Uh, if you’ve been watching

those kinds of speelies, you know more about it than I do,” I said.

“One sort of glib explanation I heard once was that Rhetors could

change the past, and were glad to do it, but Incanters could change the

future—and were reluctant.”


She nodded as if this weren’t a load of rubbish. “Forced to by what the Rhetors had done.”


I shrugged. “Again: it all depends on what work of fiction you happen to be enjoying—”


“But those guys would be Incanters,” she said, nodding at the crag.


I was getting a little restless, so I led

her back out onto the open roof, where she immediately turned her gaze

back to the Thousanders’ math. I finally worked it out that she was

merely trying to reassure herself that the strange people living up

there on the crag that loomed over her town were not dangerous. And I

was happy to help her, especially if she might go out and spread the

good news to others. That sort of fence-mending was the whole purpose

of Apert.




But I didn’t want to lie to her either.

“Our Thousanders are a little different,” I said. “Down in the other

maths, like the one where I live, different orders are mixed together.

But up on the crag, they all belong to one order: the Edharians. Who

trace their lineage back to Halikaarn. And to the extent there is any

truth whatsoever in the folk tales you’re talking about, that would put

them on the Incanter side of things.”


That seemed to satisfy her where

Rhetor/Incanter wars were concerned. We continued wandering around the

starhenge, though I had to give wide berth to an Ita who emerged from a

utility shack with a coil of red cable slung over his shoulder. Cord

noticed this. “What’s the point of having the Ita around if you have to

go to all of this trouble to avoid them? Wouldn’t it be simpler to send

them packing?”


“They keep certain parts of the clock running…”


“I could do that. It’s not that hard.”


“Well…to tell you the truth, we ask ourselves the same question.”


“And being who you are, you must have twelve different answers.”


“There is a sort of traditional belief that they spy on us for the Sæcular Power.”


“Ah. Which is why you despise them.”


“Yeah.”


“What makes you think they’re spying on you?”


“Voco. An aut where a fraa or suur is

called out from the math—Evoked—and goes to do something praxic for the

Panjandrums. We never see them again.”


“They just vanish?”


“We sing a certain anathem—a song of

mourning and farewell—as we watch them walk out of the Mynster and get

on a horse or climb into a helicopter or something, and, yes, ‘vanish’

is fair.”


“What do the Ita have to do with that?”


“Well, let’s say that the Sæcular Power

needs a disease cured. How can they possibly know which fraa or suur,

out of all the concents, happens to be an expert in that disease?”




She thought about this as we clambered up

the spiral stair that wrapped up and around the Pinnacle. Each tread

was a slab of rock cantilevered straight out from the side of the

building: a daring design, and one that required some daring from

anyone who would climb it, since there was no railing.


“This all sounds pretty convenient for the

Powers That Be,” Cord commented. “Has it ever occurred to you that all

this fear about the Terrible Events and the Incanters is just a stick

they keep handy to smack you with to make you do what they want?”


“That is Saunt Patagar’s Assertion and it dates from the Twenty-ninth Century,” I told her.


She snorted. “I’ll bite. What happened to Saunt Patagar?”


“Actually, she flourished for a while, and founded her own Order. There might still be chapters of it somewhere.”


“It’s frustrating, talking to you. Every

idea my little mind can come up with has already been come up with by

some Saunt two thousand years ago, and talked to death.”


“I really don’t mean to be a smarty pants,”

I said, “but that is Saunt Lora’s Proposition and it dates to the

Sixteenth Century.”


She laughed. “Really!”


“Really.”


“Literally two thousand years ago, a Saunt put forth the idea that—”


“That every idea the human mind could come up with, had already been come up with by that time. It is a very influential idea…”


“But wait a minute, wasn’t Saunt Lora’s idea a new idea?”


“According to orthodox paleo-Lorites, it was the Last Idea.”


“Ah. Well, then, I have to ask—”


“What have we all been doing in here for the 2100 years since the Last Idea was come up with?”


“Yeah. To be blunt about it.”


“Not everyone agrees with this proposition.

Everyone loves to hate the Lorites. Some call her a warmed-over

Mystagogue, and worse. But Lorites are good to have around.”


“How do you figure?”




“Whenever anyone comes up with an idea that

they think is new, the Lorites converge on it like jackals and try to

prove that it’s actually 5000 years old or something. And more often

than not, they’re right. It’s annoying and humiliating but at least it

prevents people from wasting time rehashing old stuff. And the Lorites

have to be excellent scholars in order to do what they do.”


“So I take it you’re not a Lorite.”


“No. If you like irony, you might enjoy

knowing that, after Lora’s death, her own fid determined that her ideas

had all been anticipated by a Peregrin philosopher 4000 years earlier.”


“That’s funny—but doesn’t it prove Lora’s point? I’m trying to figure out what’s in it for you. Why do you stay?”


“Ideas are good things to have even if they

are old. Even to understand the most advanced theorics requires a

lifetime of study. To keep the existing stock of ideas alive

requires…all of this.” And I waved my arm around at the concent spread

out below us.


“So you’re like, I don’t know, a gardener.

Tending a bunch of rare flowers. This is like your greenhouse. You have

to keep the greenhouse up and running forever or the flowers will go

extinct…but you never…”


“We rarely come up with

new flowers,” I admitted. “But sometimes one will get hit with a cosmic

ray. Which brings me to the subject of this stuff you see up here.”


“Yeah. What is it? I’ve been looking at

this poky thing my whole life and thinking it had a telescope on top,

with a crinkly old fraa peering through it.”


We’d reached the top of the “poky

thing”—the Pinnacle. Its roof was a slab of stone about twice as wide

as I was tall. There were a couple of odd-looking devices up here, but

no telescopes.


“The telescopes are down in those domes,” I

said, “but you might not even recognize them as such.” I got ready to

explain how the newmatter mirrors worked, using guidestar lasers to

probe the atmosphere for density fluctuations, then changing their

shape to cancel out the resulting distortions, gathering the light and

bouncing it into a photomnemnonic tablet. But she was more interested

in deciphering what was right in front of her. One was a quartz prism, bigger

than my head, held in the grip of a muscular Saunt carved out of

marble, and pointed south. Without any explanation from me, Cord saw

how sunlight entering into one face of the prism was bounced downwards

through a hole in the roof to shine on some metallic construct within.

“This I’ve heard of,” she said, “it synchronizes the clock every day at

noon, right?”


“Unless it’s cloudy,” I said. “But even

during a nuclear winter, when it can be cloudy for a hundred years, the

clock doesn’t get too far out of whack.”


“What’s this thing?” she asked, pointing to

a dome of glass about the size of my fist, aimed straight up. It was

mounted at the top of a pedestal of carven stone that rose to about the

same height as the prism-holding statue. “It’s got to be some kind of a

telescope, because I see the slot where you put in the photomnemonic

tablet,” she said, and poked at an opening in the pedestal, just

beneath the lens. “But this thing doesn’t look like it can move. How do

you aim it?”


“It can’t move, and we don’t have to aim

it, because it’s a fisheye lens. It can see the entire sky. We call it

Clesthyra’s Eye.”


“Clesthyra—that’s the monster from ancient mythology that could look in all directions at once.”


“Exactly.”


“What’s the use of it? I thought the point of a telescope was to focus in on one thing. Not to look at everything.”


“These things were installed in starhenges

all over the world around the time of the Big Nugget, when people were

very interested in asteroids. You’re right that they’re useless if you

want to focus in on something. But they’re great for recording the

track of a fast-moving object across the sky. Like the long streak of

light that a meteorite draws. By recording all of those and measuring

them, we can draw conclusions about what kinds of rocks are falling out

of the sky—where they come from, what they’re made of, how big they

are.”


But as Clesthyra’s Eye lacked moving parts,

it didn’t hold Cord’s attention. We’d gone as high as we could go, and

reached the limit of her cosmographical curiosity. She drew out her

pocket-watch on its rippling chain and checked the time, which I

pointed out was funny because she was standing on top of a clock. She

didn’t see the humor. I offered to

show her how to read the time by checking the sun’s position with

respect to the megaliths, but she said maybe some other time.


We descended. She was feeling late,

worrying about jobs to do and errands to run—the kinds of things that

people extramuros spent their whole lives fretting about. It wasn’t

until we reached the meadow, and the Decade Gate came in view, that she

relaxed a little, and began reviewing in her mind all that we’d

discussed.


“So—what do you think of Saunt What’s-her-name’s Assertion?”


“Patagar? That the legend of the Incanters is trumped up so that the Panjandrums can control us?”


“Yeah. Patagar.”


“Well, the problem with it is that the Sæcular Power changes from age to age.”


“Lately from year to year,” she said, but I couldn’t tell whether she was being serious.


“So it’s awfully hard to see how they could

maintain a consistent strategy over four millenia,” I pointed out.

“From our point of view, it changes so often we don’t even bother

keeping track, except around Apert. You could think of this place as a

zoo for people who just got sick of paying attention to it.”


I guess I sounded a little proud. A little

defensive. I said goodbye to her on the threshold of the Decade Gate.

We had agreed to meet again later in the week.


As I walked back over the bridge, I thought

that of all the people I’d talked to today, I was probably the least

content in my situation. And yet when I heard the system being

questioned by Jesry and by Cord, I lost no time defending it and

explaining why it was a good thing. This seemed crazy on the face of it.


Newmatter: A solid,

liquid, or gas having physical properties not found in naturally

occurring elements or their compounds. These properties are traceable

to the atomic nuclei. The process by

which nuclei are assembled from smaller particles is called

nucleosynthesis, and generally takes place inside of old stars. It is

subject to physical laws that, in a manner of speaking, congealed into

their current forms shortly after the inception of the cosmos. In the

two centuries following the Reconstitution, these laws became

sufficiently understood that it became possible for certain of the

avout to carry out nucleosynthesis in their laboratories, and to do it

according to sets of physical laws that differed slightly from those

that are natural in this cosmos. Most newmatter proved to be of little

practical value, but some variants were discovered and laboriously

improved to produce substances that were unusually strong or supple or

whose properties could be modulated under syntactical control. As part

of the First Sack reforms, the avout were forbidden to carry out any

further work on newmatter. Within the mathic world, it is still

produced in small quantities to make bolts, chords, and spheres.

Extramuros, it is used in a number of products.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Fraa Lio perfected a new wrap that made him

look like a parcel that had fallen from a mail train, but that could

not under any circumstances be pulled over the face by a foe. We proved

as much by trying to do it for a quarter of an hour, Lio getting more

and more pleased with himself until Jesry ruined the mood by asking

whether it could stop bullets.


Cord came back, accompanied by one Rosk, a

young man with whom she was having some sort of liaison. They had

supper with us in the Refectory. She wore fewer wrenches and more

jewelry, all of which she had made herself out of titanium.


Arsibalt managed to walk to the basilica

unmolested, but his father refused to talk to him, unless his purpose

in coming was to repent and be consecrated into the orthodox Bazian

faith.


Lio roamed the fauxburbs in the hopes that he would be set upon by a gang of thugs, but instead people kept offering him rides and buying him drinks.


Jesry’s family filtered back into town, and

he went to visit them from time to time. I accompanied him once and was

struck by their intelligence, their polish, and (as usual) how much

stuff they owned. But there was nothing underneath. They knew many

things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather

than less, certain that they were right.


Stung by Jesry’s earlier remarks, Lio

persuaded some of his new friends to take him out to an abandoned

quarry in the foothills where people amused themselves by discharging

projectile weapons at things that didn’t move. His bolt and sphere

became targets. Lio took up arms against two of his three possessions,

assaulting them with bullets and broad-headed arrows. Bullets

apparently passed through the weave of the bolt—the newmatter fibers

stretched to let them go through, leaving gaps that could later be

massaged away. But the razor-sharp arrows cut some of the fibers and

left irreparable holes in the garment. The sphere, however, distorted

and stretched without limit, like a sheet of caramel if you try to

shove your finger through it. The bullets poked it nearly inside-out

and knocked it back like a batted balloon. Lio’s verdict was that the

sphere could be used as a defense against gunfire: the bullet would

still penetrate your body, but it would pull a long stretchy finger of

sphere-stuff behind it, which would prevent fragmentation or tumbling,

and which could be used to pull the bullet out of the wound. We were

all much comforted by this.


Cord came back for yet another visit, this

time without Rosk. We had a nice stroll around the math and even went

into the upper labyrinth for a look round. The conversation was first

about where various members of our family had ended up, and later about

where she hoped she’d be at the next Apert.


Eight days into Apert, I was sick of it,

and thoroughly mixed up. I had a crush on my sib. This might mean all

kinds of bad things about me. As I thought about it more, though, I saw

it was not the kind of crush where I wanted to have a liaison with her.


I would think about her all day, care too much what she thought of

me, and wish she would come around more often and pay attention to me.

Then I’d remember that in a few days the gate would close and I

wouldn’t have any contact with her for ten years. She seemed never to

have lost sight of this, and had kept a certain distance. Anyway, I

reckoned, the parts of the concent that were most interesting to her

were those that concerned the Ita, and, in a sense, she had access to

that all the time because she made stuff for them.


On any given day of Apert I could have

written an entire book about what I was thinking and feeling, and it

would have been completely different from the previous day’s book. But

by the end of the eighth day, the thing had been settled in such a way

that I can sum it up much more briefly.


Liaison: (1) In Old and

later Orth, an intimate (typically sexual) relationship among some

number of fraas and suurs. The number is almost always two. The most

common arrangement is for one of these to be a fraa and the other a

suur of approximately the same age. Liaisons are of several types. Four

types were mentioned by Ma Cartas in the Discipline. She forbade all of

them. Later in the Old Mathic Age, a liaison between Saunt Per and

Saunt Elith became famous when their hoards of love-letters were

unearthed following their deaths. Shortly before the Rebirth, several

maths took the unusual step of altering the Discipline to sanction the

Perelithian liaison, meaning a permanent liaison between one fraa and

one suur. The Revised Book of Discipline, adopted at the time of the

Reconstitution, described eight types and sanctioned two. The Second

New Revised Book of Discipline describes seventeen, sanctions four, and

winks at two others. Each of the sanctioned liaisons is subject to

certain rules, and is solemnized by an aut in which the participants

agree, in the presence of at least three witnesses, to abide by those

rules. Orders or concents that deviate from the Discipline by

sanctioning other types of liaisons are subject to disciplinary action

by the Inquisition. It is permissible, however, for an order or concent

to sanction fewer types; those that sanction zero types are, of course,

nominally celibate. (2) A Late Praxic Age bulshytt term, as such,

impossible to define clearly, but apparently having something to do

with contacts or relations between entities.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Fraa Orolo had noticed how distracted I was

and summoned me to the starhenge shortly before sunset. He’d reserved

the Telescope of Saunts Mithra & Mylax for the night. The weather

was cloudy, but in the hope that it would clear up, he had gone there

late in the afternoon to aim the telescope and blank a photomnemonic

tablet. I found him at the controls of the M & M just as he was

finishing these preparations. We went out and strolled around the ring

of megaliths. My tongue was a long time in loosening, but after a while

I told Orolo of what I’d been feeling and thinking about Cord. He asked

all sorts of questions I’d never have thought of, and listened

carefully to my answers, all of which seemed to confirm in his mind

that I wasn’t feeling anything about her that was inappropriate for a

sib.


Orolo reminded me that Cord was all the

biological family I had left, not to mention the only person I really

knew from extramuros, and assured me that it was normal and healthy for

me to think about her a lot.


I told him about the conversations I’d been

having lately that called into question all kinds of things about the

Discipline and the Reconstitution. He assured me that this was an

unwritten tradition of Apert. This was a time for the avout to get all

of that out of their systems so that they did not have to spend the

next ten years worrying about it.


He slowed and stopped as we rounded the northeastern limb. “Did you know that we live in a beautiful place?” he asked.


“How could I not know it?” I demanded. “Every day, I go into the Mynster, I see the chancel, we sing the Anathem—”


“Your words say yes, your defensive tone says something else,” Orolo said. “You haven’t even seen this.” And he gestured to the northeast.


The range of mountains leading off in that

direction was obscured during winter by clouds and during summer by

haze and dust. But we were between summer and winter now. The previous

week had been hot, but temperatures had fallen suddenly on the second

day of Apert, and we had plumped our bolts up to winter thickness. When

I had entered the Præsidium a couple of hours earlier, it had been

storming, but as I’d ascended the stair, the roar of the rain and the

hail had gradually diminished. By the time I’d found Orolo up top,

nothing remained of the storm except for a few wild drops hurtling

around on the wind like rocks in space, and a foam of tiny hailstones

on the walkway. We were almost in the clouds. The sky had hurled itself

against the mountains like a sea attacking a stony headland, and spent

its cold energy in half an hour. The clouds were dissolving, yet the

sky did not get any brighter, because the sun was going down. But Orolo

with his cosmographer’s eye had noted on the flank of a mountain a

stretched patch that was brighter than the rest. When I first saw what

he was pointing at, I guessed that hail had silvered the boughs of

trees in some high vale. But as we watched, the color of it warmed. It

broadened, brightened, and crept up the mountainside, setting fire to

individual trees that had changed color early. It was a ray coming

through a gap in the weather far to the west, levering up as the sun

sank.


“That is the kind of beauty I was trying to

get you to see,” Orolo told me. “Nothing is more important than that

you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you

will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come

at you in so many ways.”


From Fraa Orolo, of all people, this was an

astonishingly poetic and sentimental remark. I was so startled that it

didn’t occur to me to wonder what Orolo was referring to when he spoke

of the ugliness.


At least my eyes were open, though, to what

he wanted me to see. The light on the mountain became rich in hues of

crimson, gold, peach, and salmon. Over the course of a few seconds it

washed the walls and towers of the

Millenarian math with a glow that if I were a Deolater I’d have called

holy and pointed to as proof that there must be a god.


“Beauty pierces through like that ray

through the clouds,” Orolo continued. “Your eye is drawn to where it

touches something that is capable of reflecting it. But your mind knows

that the light does not originate from the mountains and the towers.

Your mind knows that something is shining in from another world. Don’t

listen to those who say it’s in the eye of the beholder.” By this Orolo

meant the Fraas of the New Circle and the Old Reformed Faanites, but he

could just as well have been Thelenes warning a fid not to be seduced

by Sphenic demagogues.


The light lingered on the highest parapet

for a minute, then faded. Suddenly all before us was deep greens,

blues, and purples. “It’ll be good seeing tonight,” Orolo predicted.


“Will you stay?”


“No. We must go down. We’re already in

trouble with the Master of the Keys. I must go fetch some notes.” Orolo

hustled away and left me alone for a minute. I was surprised by a

little sunrise above the mountains: the ray, sweeping invisibly up

through empty sky, had found a couple of small wispy clouds and set

them alight, like balls of wool flung into a fire. I looked down into

the dark concent and felt no desire to jump. Seeing beauty was going to

keep me alive. I thought of Cord and the beauty that she had, in the

things she made, the way she carried herself, the emotions that played

on her face while she was thinking. In the concent, beauty more often

lay in some theoric proof—a kind of beauty that was actively sought and

developed. In our buildings and music, beauty was always present even

if I didn’t notice. Orolo was on to something; when I saw any of those

kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when

I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the

sense that I was partaking of something—something was passing through

me that it was in my nature to be a part of. This was both a good

reason not to die and a hint that death might not be everything. I knew

I was perilously close to Deolater territory now. But because people

could be so beautiful it was hard not to think that there was something of people that came from the other world that Cnoüs had seen through the clouds.


Orolo met me at the top of the stairs,

notes under his arm. Before we began our descent, he took one last look

at the stars and planets beginning to come out, like a butler counting

the spoons. We went down in silence, lighting our way with our spheres.


Fraa Gredick, the Master of the Keys, was

waiting by the portcullis just as Fraa Orolo had predicted. Another,

slighter person stood next to him. As we came down the buttress, we saw

that it was Gredick’s superior: Suur Trestanas. “Ugh, looks like we’re

going to get penance,” I muttered. “This just demonstrates your point.”


“Which point do you mean?”


“The ugliness coming in from all directions.”


“I don’t think this is that,” Fraa Orolo said. “This is something exceptional.”


We stepped down into the stone cupola and

crossed the threshold. Gredick slammed the grid down behind us with too

much force. I looked at his face, thinking he was angry we’d made him

wait. But that wasn’t it. He was unsettled. He only wanted to get out

of there. We all watched him fumble with his key ring. As he was

locking the portcullis down, I looked north to the Unarians’ cupola and

then east to the Centenarians’. Both of their gridirons were also

closed. The whole thing seemed to have been shut down. Perhaps a

security precaution for Apert?


I expected Gredick to leave so that Suur

Trestanas could give me and Orolo a scolding. But Gredick looked me in

the eye and said, “Come with me, Fid Erasmas.”


“Where to?” I asked. It was unusual for the Master of the Keys to make such a request; it wasn’t his job.


“Anywhere,” he said, and then nodded toward the head of the stairs that would lead us down.


I looked at Orolo, who shrugged and made

the same nod. Then I looked at Suur Trestanas, who only stared back at

me, putting on a show of patience. She was early in her fourth decade

of life, and not unattractive. She was brisk and organized and

confident—the kind of woman who in the Sæcular world might have gone

into commerce, and scampered up the

hierarchy of a firm. During her first months as Warden Regulant, she

had handed out a lot of penance for small infractions that her

predecessor would have ignored. Older avout had assured me that this

was typical behavior for a new Warden Regulant. I was so certain that

she was going to give me and Orolo penance for being late that I

hesitated to leave before she had done so. But it was clear that she

had come here for another purpose. So I took my leave of Trestanas and

Orolo, and began descending the stairs, followed by Fraa Gredick.


When Trestanas judged that Gredick and I

were far enough away, she began telling Orolo something in a low voice.

She talked for a minute or so, as if delivering a little speech that

she had prepared.


When Orolo answered—which he did only after

a long pause—it was in a voice that was wound up tight. He was making

some kind of argument. And it was not the cool voice that he used when

he was in dialog. Something had upset him. From this I knew that Suur

Trestanas had not given him penance, because that was something one had

to accept meekly, lest it be doubled and doubled again. They were

talking about something more important than that. And Suur Trestanas

had obviously told Gredick to get me out of that place so that she and

Orolo could have privacy.


This was not a very satisfying end to the

conversation that Orolo and I had shared on the starhenge! But it was

further proof of the point he had made, and a challenge for me to put

the idea into practice.





You must have this and hold to it or you’ll die.

By the time I awoke the next morning I could not recall whether this

was something Orolo had said in so many words, or a resolution that had

formed in my own mind. Anyway I woke up exhilarated and determined.


In the Refectory I saw Fraa Orolo, sitting

alone, several tables away. He gave me a tight smile and looked away in

the next instant. He did not wish to fill me in on his argument with

Suur Trestanas. He ate quickly, then got up and headed in the direction

of the Decade Gate for another day on the town.




More important than the argument with

Trestanas was my conversation with Orolo just before. I knew I could

not talk about this in the Refectory. It would not survive Diax’s Rake;

it would not be considered sound by the avout. Those of a more Procian

bent would say I’d become a kind of Deolater. I’d be unable to defend

myself without invoking all kinds of ideas that would sound

ridiculously fuzzy-minded to them. At the same time, though, I knew

that this was how the Saunts had done it. They judged theorical proofs

not logically but aesthetically.


I wasn’t the only one with a lot on his

mind. Arsibalt sat alone, ate practically nothing, and then skulked

out. Later Tulia picked up her bowl and came over and sat by me, which

made me happy until I understood that she only wanted to talk about

him. Arsibalt had been doing a lot of brooding, and he had been doing

it in conspicuous places, as much as demanding that we ask him what was

wrong. I’d refused to do so because I found it such an annoying tactic.

But Suur Tulia had been checking on him from time to time. She let me

know I ought to go and see him. I did so only because the request had

come from her.


After the Reconstitution, the first fraas

and suurs of the Order of Saunt Edhar had come to this place where the

river scoured around a ramp of stone and attacked it with explosives

and water-jet cutters, cleaning away the scree and rotten rock—which

they moved to the perimeter and piled up to fashion the concent’s

walls—until they hit the sound stone at the heart of the mountain. This

they cleaved off in slabs and prisms that tumbled to the valley floor,

sometimes rolling almost to the walls before they came to rest. The

ramp became a knob, the knob was sharpened to a crag. The first

Thousanders whittled a narrow meandering stair up its face and went up

there one day and never came back again, but pitched a camp on its top

and set to work building their own walls and towers. The valley below

remained a rubble-field for centuries. The avout swarmed over the

strewn stones wherever they had come to rest and carved out of them the

pieces of the Mynster. Almost all of them were now gone, and the land

was flat, fertile, and stoneless. But a few of the great boulders were

still dotted around the meadow, partly for decoration and partly as raw materials for our stonecutters, who were still fiddling with the Mynster’s gargoyles, finials, and such.


I found Arsibalt perched on the top of a

boulder, surrounded by empty beverage containers that had been strewn

around the place by slines. All around him, visitors were sleeping it

off in the tall grass. Across the meadow, Lio was cavorting around a

statue of Saunt Froga, flinging the end of his bolt out and letting it

waft over the statue’s head, then snapping it back like a whip. I

wouldn’t have looked twice if this hadn’t been Apert. But there were

visitors on the meadow, watching, pointing, laughing, and

speelycaptoring. Another useful function of Apert: to be reminded of

how weird we were, and how fortunate to live in a place where we could

get away with it.


Exhibit A: Fraa Arsibalt. Speaking whole

paragraphs, complete with topic sentences, in perfect Middle Orth, with

footnotes in Old and Proto-Orth, he explained that he felt aggrieved by

his father’s refusal to talk to him, because he was not so much

abjuring his father’s faith as trying to build a bridge between it and

the mathic world.


This struck me as an ambitious project for

a nineteen-year-old to undertake, seven thousand years after the two

daughters of Cnoüs had stopped speaking to each other. Still, I heard

him out. Partly so that I could later impress Tulia with what a good

guy I was. Partly because I didn’t want to be a Lorite. But also partly

because what Arsibalt was saying was nearly as crazy as my discussion

with Orolo the evening before. And so perhaps, after I had heard

Arsibalt out, he would let me confide some of my thoughts. But as the

conversation (if listening to Arsibalt talk could be called that) went

on, this hope curdled. It had not crossed his mind that I too might

have some things I wanted to discuss—perhaps not as clever or as

momentous as what was on his mind, but important to me. I bided my

time. And just when I saw an opening, he changed the subject altogether

and ambushed me with a rhapsody about “the exquisite Cord.” And so

instead of talking about what I wanted to talk about, I was forced to

come to grips with the idea of Cord as being exquisite. He wondered

whether she might be open to an Atlanian liaison. I thought not, but

who was I to judge? And a boyfriend who was (a) sterile and (b) only

allowed out once every ten years seemed like a safe boyfriend to have, so I shrugged and allowed that anything was possible.


Then, back to Suur Tulia to file a report.


Seventeen years ago, Tulia had been found

at the Day Gate, wrapped in newspapers and nestled in a beer cooler

with the lid ripped off. The stump of her umbilical cord had already

fallen off, which meant that she was too old and too touched by the

Sæcular world to be accepted by the Thousanders. Anyway she had been

sickly at first and so she had been kept in the Unarian math, which was

more convenient to Physicians’ Commons. There she had been raised (as I

pictured it) by the doting burgers’ wives and daughters who populated

that math until she’d graduated through the labyrinth at the age of

six. She had emerged, all alone, from our side of the maze and gravely

introduced herself to the first suur she saw. Anyway, she had no family

on the outside. Watching the rest of us cope with our families during

Apert had led her to understand how very fortunate she might be. She

was too deft to say anything, but it was clear she’d spent the whole

time being bemused at the rest of us. She had seen me strolling around

chatting with my sib and concluded that everything was fine and simple

for me. I sensed it would boot me nothing to try to explain to her what

I had discussed with Orolo.


So, instead, I talked to groups of total strangers from extramuros who showed up to take tours of the Unarian math.


My math was small, simple, and quiet. The

Unarian math, by contrast, had been built to overawe people who came in

from outside: ten days out of each year, groups of extramuros tourists,

and the rest of the time, those who’d made a vow to spend at least one

year in it. Few of these graduated to the Decenarian math. “Burgers’

wives trying to feel something,” was an especially cruel description I

had once heard from an old fraa. As often, they were younger,

unmarried, and looking for the final coat of polish and prestige needed

to go out into adult society and seek a mate. Some studied under

Halikaarnians and became praxics or artisans. Others studied under

Procians; these tended to go into law, communications, or politics.

Jesry’s mother had done two years here just after she’d turned twenty.

Not long after coming out, she’d married Jesry’s father, a somewhat

older man who had put in three years and used what he’d learned to

start a career doing whatever it was he did.


Plane: (1) In Diaxan

theorics, a two-dimensional manifold in three-dimensional space, having

a flat metric. (2) An analogous manifold in higher-dimensional space.

(3) A flat expanse of open ground in the Periklyne of ancient Ethras,

originally used by theoricians as a convenient place to scratch proofs

in the dirt, later as a place to conduct dialogs of all types. (4) Used

as a verb, utterly to destroy an opponent’s position in the course of a

dialog.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Around dawn of the tenth day of Apert, Suur

Randa, who was one of the beekeepers, discovered that during the night

some ruffians had found their way into the apiary shed, smashed some

crockery, and made off with a couple of cases of mead. Nothing so

exciting had happened in eons. When I came into the Refectory to break

my fast, everyone was talking about it. They were still talking about

it when I left, which was at about seven. I was due at the Year Gate at

nine. The easy way to get there would have been to go extramuros

through the Decade Gate, walk north through the burgers’ town, and

approach it from the outside. But thinking about Tulia yesterday had

given me the idea of getting there through our lower

labyrinth—retracing the steps she’d taken at the age of six. Supposedly

she had made it through in about half a day. I hoped that at my age I

could get through it in an hour, but I allowed two hours just to be on

the safe side. It ended up taking me an hour and a half.


As the clock struck nine, I stood, formally

wrapped and hooded, at the foot of the bridge that led to the Year

Gate, which rose up before me in its crenellated bastion. Bridge and

gate were of similar design to those in the Decenarian math, but twice

as big and much more richly decorated. On the first day of Apert, four

hundred had thronged the plaza that I

could now see through the Year Gate, and cheered as their friends and

family had poured out at sunrise to end their year of seclusion.


This morning’s tour group numbered about

two dozen. A third of them were uniformed ten-year-olds from a Bazian

Orthodox suvin, or so I guessed from the fact that their teacher was in

a nun’s habit. The others seemed a typical mix of burgers, artisans,

and slines. The latter were recognizable from a distance. They were

huge. Some artisans and burgers were huge too, but they wore clothes

intended to hide it. The current sline fashion was to wear a garment

evolved from an athletic jersey (bright, with numerals on the back) but

oversized, so that shoulder seams hung around the elbows, and extremely

long—descending all the way to the knee. The trousers were too long to

be shorts and too short to be pants—they hung a hand’s-breadth below

the jersey but still exposed a few inches of chunky calf, plunging into

enormous, thickly padded shoes. Headgear was a burnoose blazoned with

beverage logos whose loose ends trailed down the back, and dark goggles

strapped over that and never removed, even indoors.


But it was not only clothing that set the

slines apart. They had also adopted fashions in how they walked (a

rolling, sauntering gait) and how they stood (a pose of exaggerated

cool that somehow looked hostile to me). So I could see even from a

distance that I had four slines in my tour group this morning. This

troubled me not at all, because during the previous nine days there had

been no serious trouble on the tours. Fraa Delrakhones had concluded

that the slines of this era subscribed to a harmless iconography. They

were not half as menacing as their postures.


I backed up onto the crest of the bridge to

get a little altitude. Once the group had formed up below me I greeted

them and introduced myself. The suvin kids stood in a neat row in the

front. The slines stood together in the back, maintaining some distance

to emphasize their exceptional cool, and thumbed their jeejahs or

suckled from bucket-sized containers of sugar water. Two latecomers

were hustling across the plaza and so I went a little slowly at first

so as not to strand them.




I had learned not to expect much in the way

of attention span and so after pointing out the orchard of page trees

and the tangles on this side of the river, I led them over the bridge

into the heart of the Unarian math. We skirted a wedge-shaped slab of

red stone, carved all over with the names of the fraas and suurs whose

remains lay underneath it. It was our policy not to talk about this

unless someone asked. Today, no one did, and so a lot of awkwardness

was avoided.


The Third Sack had opened with a week-long

siege of the concent. The walls were far too long to be defended by so

few, and so on the third day the Tenners and Hundreders had broken the

Discipline and withdrawn to the Unarian math, which was somewhat easier

to defend because it had a smaller perimeter that included some water

barriers. The Thousanders of course were safe up on their crag.


By the time the siege was two weeks old, it

had become obvious that the Sæcular Power had no intention of coming to

their aid. Before dawn one day, most of the avout gathered behind the

Year Gate, threw it open, and stormed out across the plaza in a flying

wedge, driving through the surprised besiegers and into the town. For

one hour they sacked the town and the besiegers’ supply dumps,

gathering medicines, vitamins, ammunition, and all that they could find

of certain chemicals and minerals that could not be obtained within the

concent. Then they did something even more astonishing to the

attackers, which was that instead of running away they formed up into

another wedge—much smaller, by this point—and fought their way back

across the plaza and went back in the gate. They didn’t stop until

they’d crossed the bridge, which was immediately dropped by explosives.

There they threw down the stuff they had scavenged and collapsed. Five

hundred had stormed out. Three hundred had come back. Of those, two

hundred died on the spot from wounds suffered during the operation.

This wedge of granite was their tumulus. The stuff that they had

gathered was sent up to the Thousanders. The rest of the concent fell

the next day. The Thousanders lived alone and untouched on their crag

for the next seventy years. Besides ours, only two other Millenarian

maths in the world had made it through the Third Sack unviolated and

unsacked. Though in many cases there

had been enough warning that avout had been able to run away, carrying

what they could in the way of books, and live in remote places for the

next decades.


The wedge monument was aimed, not out

toward the city, but in toward the clock. This was to emphasize that

those buried under it had returned.


Fifty paces from its vertex lay the

entrance of the Hylaean Way. After the Mynster, this was the dominant

architectural feature of the concent. The style of these buildings was

more Bazian than Mathic—less vertical, more horizontal, reminding

people of arks, which traditionally spread wide to welcome all comers.


I held the door open long enough for the

two latecomers to scurry inside, then closed it, content—maybe even

smug—in the knowledge that Barb was not with us. During the first two

days of Apert, the son of Quin had attended almost every one of these

tours. After memorizing every word that the guides said, he had begun

to ask crippling numbers of questions. From there he’d moved on to

correcting the fraas and suurs whenever they’d said something wrong,

and amplifying their remarks when they were insufficiently long-winded.

A couple of wily suurs had found other ways to keep him busy, but it

was difficult to keep him focused for long and so he would still make

occasional strafing runs. Quin and his ex-wife seemed content to give

Barb the run of the concent at all hours, which was as good as telling

us that they wanted him Collected.


The architects of the Hylaean Way had

played a little trick by making its grand-looking entrance lead to a

space that was unexpectedly dark and close—suggestive of a labyrinth,

but not nearly that complicated. The walls and floors were made from

slabs of greenish-brown shale quarried from a deposit that fascinated

naturalists because of the profusion of early life-forms fossilized in

it. I explained as much to the group as we all waited for our eyes to

adjust to the dimness, then invited them to spend a few minutes looking

at the fossils. Those who’d had the foresight to bring a source of

light, such as the suvin kids and some of the retired burgers,

dispersed into the corners of the chamber. The nun had brought a map so

that she knew just where to look for the really weird fossils. I

circulated among the others with a

basket of hand-lights. Some accepted them. Some waved me off. Probably

these were counter-Bazian fundamentalists who believed that Arbre had

been created all at once in its present form shortly before the time of

Cnoüs. They ignored this phase of the tour as a silent protest. A few

more wore earbuds and listened to recorded tours on jeejahs. The slines

only stared at me and made no response. I noticed that one of them had

his arm in a sling. It took me a few moments to place this memory. Then

I drew the obvious conclusion that this was the very group that had

attacked Lio and Arsibalt. I felt helpless in my formal wrap—the one

that could easily be pulled down over the face—and wished I’d paid more

attention to how Lio had been wearing his bolt lately.


Backing away from them, I announced: “This

chamber is two things at once. On the one hand, it’s an exhibit of

ancient fossils—mostly weird and funny-looking ones that did not evolve

into any creatures known to us today. Evolutionary dead ends. At the

same time, this place is a symbol for the world of thought as it

existed before Cnoüs. In that age there was a zoo of different

thought-ways, most of which would seem crazy to us now. These too were

evolutionary dead ends. They are extinct except among primitive tribes

in remote places.” As I was saying this I was leading them around a

couple of turns toward a much bigger and brighter space. “They are

extinct,” I continued, “because of what happened to this man as he was

walking along a riverbank seven thousand years ago.” And I stepped

forth into the Rotunda, quickening my pace to draw the group along in

my wake.


A long pause now, so as not to ruin the

moment. The central sculpture was more than six thousand years old; it

had been a world-famous masterpiece for almost that long. How it had

found its way to this continent and this rotunda was a long and lively

story in itself. It was of white marble, double life size, though it

seemed even bigger because it was up on a huge stone pedestal. It was

Cnoüs, aged but muscular, with long wavy beard and hair, sprawled back

against the gnarled roots of a tree, staring up in awe and

astonishment. As if to shield himself from the vision, he had raised a

hand, but could not resist the temptation to peek over it. Gripped in his

other hand was a stylus. Tumbled at his feet were a ruler, a compass,

and a tablet graven with precisely constructed circles and polygons.


Barb hadn’t looked at the ceiling when he’d

come in here for the first time. This was because Barb’s brain was so

organized that he was blind to facial expressions. Everyone else—even

I, who’d seen it many times—looked up to see what was having such an

effect on poor old Cnoüs. The answer (at least, ever since the statue

had been installed here) was an oculus, or a hole at the apex of the

Rotunda dome, shaped like an isosceles triangle, and letting in a beam

of sunlight.


“Cnoüs was a master stonemason,” I began.

“On one ancient tablet, which was made before he had his vision, he is

described by an adjective that literally means one who is elevated.

This might mean either that he was especially good at being a

stonemason or that he was some kind of holy man in the religion of his

place and time. At the command of his king, he was building a temple to

a god. The stone was quarried from a place a couple of miles upriver

and floated down to the building site on rafts.”


Here one of the slines broke in with a

question, and I had to stop and explain that all of this had happened

far away, and that I was not speaking of our river or our quarries. A

jeejah began to crow a ridiculous tune; I waited for its owner to

stifle it before I continued.


“Cnoüs would draw up measurements on a wax

tablet and then walk up to the quarry to give instructions to the

stonecutters. One day he was trying to work out a particularly

difficult problem in the geometry of the piece he needed to have cut.

Under the shade of a tree that grew on the riverbank, he sat down to

work on this problem, and there he had a vision that changed his mind

and his life.


“Everyone agrees on that much. But his

description of that vision comes to us indirectly, through these

women.” I extended my arm toward a pair of slightly smaller sculptures,

which (inevitably) formed an isosceles triangle with that of Cnoüs.

“His daughters Hylaea and Deät, thought to be fraternal twins.”


The counter-Bazians were way ahead of me. They had already moved to the foot of Deät and knelt down to pray. Some were rummaging

in their bags for candles. Others, peering into their jeejahs as they

snapped phototypes, stumbled and collided. Deät was a cloaked figure

sunk to her knees, facing toward Cnoüs, her garment shielding her face

from the light of the oculus.


Our Mother Hylaea, by contrast, stood

erect, pulling her cloak back to bare her head, the better to gaze

straight up into the light. With her other hand she was pointing at it,

and her lips were parted as if she were just beginning to offer up some

observation.


I recited a legend concerning these two

statues. They had been commissioned in-2270 by Tantus, the Bazian

Emperor, specifically as companion-pieces to the older one of Cnoüs,

which he had just acquired by sacking what was left of Ethras. He had

also acquired the quarry whence the marble for the original statue had

come, and so he had caused two more great blocks to be extracted from

it and shipped to Baz in specially made barges. The finest sculptor of

the age had spent five years carving these.


At the formal unveiling, Tantus had been so

taken by the look on Hylaea’s face that he had ordered the sculptor to

be brought before him and had asked him what it was that Hylaea was

about to say. The sculptor had declined to answer the question. Tantus

had insisted. The sculptor had pointed out that all of the art, and all

of the virtue, in this statue lay in that very ambiguity. Tantus,

fascinated, had asked him a number of questions on that theme, then

drew the Imperial sword and plunged it into the sculptor’s heart so

that he would never be able to undermine his own work of art by

answering the question. Later scholarship had cast doubt on this story,

as it did on all good stories, but to tell it at this point in the tour

was obligatory, and the slines got a kick out of it.


In my opinion, these two sculptures were

such bald pro-Hylaea, anti-Deät propaganda that I was almost

embarrassed by them. The Deolaters, however, seemed to take precisely

the opposite view. Over the course of Apert, Deät’s pedestal had become

bedizened with so many candles and charms, flowers, stuffed animals,

fetishes, phototypes of dead people, and slips of paper that the

One-offs would be cleaning it up for weeks after the gates closed.


“Deät and Hylaea went out searching for their father and found him

lost in contemplation under the tree. Both saw the tablet on which he

had recorded his impressions, and both listened to his account. Not

long after, Cnoüs said something so offensive to the king that he was

sent into exile, where he soon died. His daughters began telling people

different stories. Deät said that Cnoüs had looked up into the sky and

seen the clouds part to give him a vision of a pyramid of light,

normally concealed from human eyes. He was seeing into another world: a

kingdom of heaven where all was bright and perfect. According to her,

Cnoüs drew the conclusion that it was a mistake to worship physical

idols such as the one he had been building, for those were only crude

effigies of actual gods that lived in another realm, and we ought to

worship those gods themselves, not artifacts we made with our own hands.


“Hylaea said that Cnoüs had actually been

having an upsight about geometry. What her sister Deät had

misinterpreted as a pyramid in heaven was actually a glimpse of an

isosceles triangle: not a crude and inaccurate representation of one,

such as Cnoüs drew on his tablet with ruler and compass, but a pure

theorical object of which one could make absolute statements. The

triangles that we drew and measured here in the physical world were all

merely more or less faithful representations of

perfect triangles that existed in this higher world. We must stop

confusing one with the other, and lend our minds to the study of pure

geometrical objects.


“You’ll notice that there are two exits

from this room,” I pointed out, “one on the left near the statue of

Deät, the other on the right near Hylaea. This symbolizes the great

forking that now took place between the followers of Deät, whom we call

Deolaters, and of Hylaea, who in the early centuries were called

Physiologers. If you pass through Deät’s door you’ll soon find yourself

outside where you can easily find your way back to the Unarian Gate. A

lot of our visitors do that because they don’t think that anything

beyond this point is relevant to them. But if you follow me through the

other door, it means you are continuing on the Hylaean Way.” And after

giving them a few minutes to roam around and take pictures, I went out,

leading all but the Deät-pilgrims into a gallery lined with pictures

and artifacts of the centuries following the death of Cnoüs.




This in turn gave on to the Diorama

Chamber, which was rectangular, with a vaulted ceiling, and clerestory

windows letting in plenty of light to illuminate the frescoes. The

centerpiece was a scale model of the Temple of Orithena. As I

explained, this had been founded by Adrakhones, the discoverer of the

Adrakhonic Theorem, which stated that the square of a right triangle’s

hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

To honor this, the floor of the chamber was adorned with numerous

visual proofs of the said theorem, any of which you could puzzle out if

you stood and stared at it for long enough.


“We’re now in the period from about 2900

years before the Reconstitution to about negative 2600,” I said.

“Adrakhones turned Orithena into a temple devoted to exploration of the

HTW, or the Hylaean Theoric World—the plane of existence that had been

glimpsed by Cnoüs. People came from all over. You’ll notice that this

chamber has a second entrance, leading in from the out of doors. This

commemorates the fact that many who had taken the other fork and

sojourned among the Deolaters came in from the cold, as it were, trying

to reconcile their ideas with those of the Orithenans. Some were more

successful than others.”


I looked over at the slines. Back in the

rotunda, they had spent some time speculating as to the size of certain

parts of the anatomy of Cnoüs (which were hidden under a fold of his

garment) and then gotten into a debate as to which they fancied more:

Deät, who was conveniently kneeling, or Hylaea, who was beginning to

take her clothes off. In this chamber, they had gathered beneath the

most prominent fresco, which depicted a furious dark-bearded man

charging down the steps of the temple swinging a rake, striking terror

in a group of deranged, eye-rolling dice-players. It was clear that the

slines loved this picture. So far, they’d seemed docile enough. So I

drew closer to them and explained it. “That’s Diax. He was famous for

his disciplined thought. He became more and more distressed by the way

Orithena was being infiltrated by Enthusiasts. Those were people who

misunderstood how the Orithenans used numbers. They dreamed up all

kinds of crazy number-worshipping stuff. One day Diax was coming out of

the temple after the singing of the

Anathem when he saw these guys casting fortunes using dice. He was so

furious that he grabbed a rake from a gardener and used it to drive the

Enthusiasts out of the temple. After that, he ran the place. He coined

the term theorics, and his followers called

themselves ‘theors’ to distinguish themselves from the Enthusiasts.

Diax said something that is still very important to us, which is that

you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We

call that ‘Diax’s Rake’ and sometimes we repeat it to ourselves as a

reminder not to let subjective emotions cloud our judgment.”


This explanation was too long for the four

slines, who turned their backs to me as soon as I got past the rake

fight. I noticed that one of them—the one with his arm in a sling—had a

curious, bony ridge running up his spine and protruding a few inches

above the collar of his jersey. Normally this was concealed by his

trailing burnoose, but when he turned away from me I saw it clearly. It

was like a second, exoskeletal spine attached to the natural one. At

its top was a rectangular tab, smaller than the palm of my hand,

bearing a Kinagram in which a large stick figure struck a smaller one

with his fist. It was one of the spine clamps Quin had described to me

and Orolo. I guessed it had disabled the man’s right arm.


A fresco on the ceiling at the far end

showed the eruption of Ecba and the destruction of the temple. The

following series of galleries contained pictures and artifacts from the

ensuing Peregrin period, with separate alcoves dedicated to the Forty

Lesser and the Seven Great Peregrins.


From there we came out into the great

elliptical chamber with its statues and frescoes of the theoric golden

age centered on the city-state of Ethras. Protas, gazing up at the

clouds painted on the ceiling, anchored one end. His teacher Thelenes

commanded the other, striding across the Plane with his

interlocutors—variously awed, charmed, chastened, or indignant. The two

bringing up the rear had their heads together, conspiring—a

foreshadowing of Thelenes’s trial and ritual execution. A large

painting of the city made it easy for me to point out the Deolaters’

temples atop its highest hill, where Thelenes had been put to death;

its market, the Periklyne, wrapped around the hill’s base; a flat open

area in the center of the Periklyne,

called ‘the Plane,’ where geometers would draw figures in the dust or

engage in public debate; and the vine-covered bowers around the edges,

in whose shade some theors would teach their fids, from which we got

the word suvin, meaning “under the vines.” As far as the nun was concerned, that one moment made the whole trip worth the trouble.


As we worked our way to the farther end, we

began seeing theors standing at the right hands of generals and

emperors, which led naturally enough to the last of the great chambers

in the Hylaean Way, which was all about the glory that was Baz, its

temples, its capitol, its walls, roads, and armies, its library, and

(increasingly, as we approached the end) its Ark. After a certain point

it was priests and prelates of the Ark of Baz, instead of theors,

advising those generals and emperors. Theors had to be sought out as

small figures in the deep background, reclining on the steps of the

Library or going into the Capitol to spill wise counsel into the dead

ears of the high and mighty.


Frescoes depicting the Sack of Baz and the

burning of the library flanked the exit: an incongruously narrow,

austere archway that you might miss if it weren’t for the statue of

Saunt Cartas cradling a few singed and tattered books in one arm,

looking back over her shoulder to beckon us toward the exit. This led

to a high stone-walled chamber, devoid of decoration and containing

nothing except air. It symbolized the retreat to the maths and the dawn

of the Old Mathic Age, generally pegged at Negative 1512.


From there the Hylaean Way took a lap

around the Unarian Cloister and petered out. There was room on the

other side where exhibits might one day be added about the rise of the

Mystagogues, the Rebirth, the Praxic Age, and possibly even the

Harbingers and the Terrible Events. But we had seen all the good stuff,

and this was customarily the end of the tour.


I thanked them all for coming, invited them

to backtrack if they wanted to spend more time with any of what they’d

seen, reminded them that all were welcome at the Tenth Night supper,

and told them I’d be happy to answer questions.


The slines seemed happy for now to savor the pictures of Imperial

Bazian galley combat and library-burning. A retired burger stepped up

to thank me for my time. The suvin kids asked me what sorts of things I

had been studying lately. The two visitors who had rushed in at the

last minute bided their time as I tried to explain to the kids certain

theorical topics that they’d never heard of. After a minute the nun

took pity on me (or possibly on the kids) and hustled them away.


The latecomers were a man and a woman, both

probably in their fifth decades of life. I did not get the sense that

they were having a liaison. Both were attired for commerce, so perhaps

they were colleagues in a business. Around each one’s neck was a

lanyard leading to a flasher of the type used extramuros to demonstrate

one’s identity and control access to places. Since such things weren’t

needed here, both of them had tucked their flashers into their breast

pockets. They had been appreciative tourists, trailing the group,

cocking their heads toward each other to discuss fine details that one

or the other had noticed.


“I was intrigued by your remarks about the

daughters of Cnoüs,” the man announced. His accent marked him as coming

from a part of this continent where cities were bigger and closer

together than around here, and where a concent might house a dozen or

more chapters in contrast to our three.


He went on, “It’s just that normally I

would expect an avout to emphasize what made them different. But I

almost got the idea you were hinting at a—” And here he stopped, as

though groping for a word that was not in the Fluccish lexicon.


“Common ground?” suggested the woman. “A

parallel between them?” Her accent—as well as the bone structure of her

face and the hue of her skin—marked her as coming from the continent

that, in this age, was the seat of the Sæcular Power. And so by this

point I had made up a reasonable story in my head about these two: they

lived in big cities far away, they worked for the same employer, a

business of global scope, they were visiting its local office for some

purpose, they’d heard it was the last day of Apert and had decided to

spend a couple of hours taking in the sights. Both, I guessed, had

spent at least a few years in a Unarian math when younger. Perhaps the man’s Orth had grown some rust and he was more comfortable confining the discussion to Fluccish.


“Well, I think many scholars would agree

that Deät and Hylaea both say that one should not confuse the symbol

with the thing symbolized,” I said.


He looked as if I’d poked him in the eye.

“What kind of way to begin a sentence is that? ‘I think many scholars

would agree…’ Why don’t you just say what you mean?”


“All right. Deät and Hylaea both say that one should not confuse the symbol with the thing symbolized.”


“That’s better.”


“For Deät the symbol is an idol. For Hylaea

it’s a triangular shape on a tablet. For Deät, the thing symbolized is

an actual god in heaven. For Hylaea, it’s a pure theorical triangle in

the HTW. So, do you agree that I can speak about that commonality in

itself?”


“Yes,” the man said, reluctantly, “but an

avout rarely takes an argument that far only to drop it. I keep waiting

for you to base some further argument on it, the way they do in the

dialogs.”


“I take your point clearly,” I said. “But I was not in dialog at the time.”


“But you are now!”


I took this as a joke and chuckled in a way

I hoped would seem polite. His face showed a trace of dry amusement but

on the whole he looked serious. The woman seemed a bit uneasy.


“But I wasn’t then,” I said, “and then

I had a story to tell, and it had to make sense. It makes sense if Deät

and Hylaea took the same idea and mapped it onto different domains. But

if I’d described them as saying totally contradictory things about

their father’s vision, it wouldn’t have made sense.”


“It would have made perfect sense if you had made Deät out to be a lunatic,” he demurred.


“Well, that’s true. Maybe because there were so many Deolaters in the group I avoided being so blunt.”


“So you said something you don’t actually believe, just to be polite?”


“It’s more a matter of emphasis. I do believe what I said before about the commonality—and so do you, because you agreed with me to that point.”


“How widespread do you suppose that mentality is within this concent?”


Hearing this, the woman looked as if she

had got a whiff of something foul. She turned sideways to me and spoke

in a subdued voice to the man. “Mentality is a pejorative term, isn’t

it?”


“All right,” the man said, never taking his eyes off me. “How many here see it your way?”


“It’s a typical Procian versus Halikaarnian

dispute,” I said. “Avout who follow in the way of Halikaarn, Evenedric,

and Edhar seek truth in pure theorics. On the Procian/Faanian side,

there is a suspicion of the whole idea of absolute truth and more of a

tendency to classify the story of Cnoüs as a fairy tale. They pay lip

service to Hylaea just because of what she symbolizes and because she

wasn’t as bad as her sister. But I don’t think that they believe that

the HTW is real any more than they believe that there is a Heaven.”


“Whereas Edharians do believe in it?”


The woman shot him a look, and he made the

following adjustment: “I specify Edharians only because this is the

Concent of Saunt Edhar, after all.”


If this man had been one of my fraas I

might have spoken more freely now. But he was a Sæcular, strangely

well-informed, and he behaved as though he were important. Even so, I

might have blurted something out if this had been the first day of

Apert. But our gates had been open for ten days: long enough for me to

grow some crude political reflexes. So I answered not for myself but

for my concent. More specifically for the Edharian order; for all of

the Edharian chapters in other concents around the world looked to us

as their mother, and had pictures of our Mynster up in their

chapterhouses.


“If you ask an Edharian flat out, he’ll be reluctant to admit to it,” I began.


“Why? Again, this is the Concent of Saunt Edhar.”


“It was broken up,” I told him. “After the

Third Sack, two-thirds of the Edharians were relocated to other

concents, to make room for a New Circle and a Reformed Old Faanite

chapter.”




“Ah, the Powers That Be put a bunch of

Procians in here to keep an eye on you, did they?” This actually caused

the woman to reach out and put her hand on his forearm.


“You seem to be assuming I’m an Edharian

myself,” I said, “but I have not yet made Eliger. I don’t even know if

the Order of Saunt Edhar would accept me.”


“I hope so for your sake,” he said.


The conversation had become steadily odder

from its very beginning and had reached a point where it was difficult

for me to see a way forward. Fortunately the woman got us out of the

jam: “It’s just that with all that’s been going on with the Warden of

Heaven, we were speculating, as we were on our way here, whether the

avout were feeling any pressure to change their views. And we wondered

if your take on Deät and Hylaea might have reflected some Sæcular

influence.”


“Ah. That’s an interesting point,” I said.

“As it happens, I’d never heard of the Warden of Heaven until a few

days ago. So if my take on Deät and Hylaea reflects anything at all,

it’s what I’ve been thinking about lately for my own reasons.”


“Very well,” the man said, and turned away.

The woman mouthed a “thank you” at me over her shoulder and together

they strolled off into the Cloister.


Not long after, the bells began to chime

Provener. I walked across the Unarian campus, which had been turned

inside-out. Many avout, as well as some extramuros contract labor, were

cleaning the dormitories to make them ready for the crop that would be

starting their year tomorrow.


For once, I reached the Mynster with plenty

of time to spare. I sought out Arsibalt and warned him to be on the

lookout for those four slines. Lio overheard the end of that

conversation and so I had to repeat it as we were getting our robes on.

Jesry showed up last, and drunk. His family had thrown a reception for

him at their house.


When the Primate entered the chancel, just

before the beginning of the service, he had two purple-robed visitors

in tow. It was not unusual for hierarchs from other concents to show up

in this way, so I didn’t think twice

about it. The shape of their hats was a little unusual. Arsibalt was

the first to recognize them. “It appears that we have two honored

guests from the Inquisition,” he said.


I looked across the chancel and recognized the faces of the man and woman I’d been talking to earlier.





I spent the afternoon striping the meadow

with rows of tables. Fortunately, Arsibalt was my partner. He might be

a little high-strung in some ways, but beneath the fat he had the frame

of an ox from winding the clock.


For three thousand years it had been the

concent’s policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible

tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only

one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial

Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to

enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs

made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites,

injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs,

advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and

plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle

board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or

substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their

lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that

of a dried flower to that of a buffalo.


“You’d think that after all this time someone might have invented…oh, say…the wheel,”

Arsibalt mentioned at one point, as we were wrestling with a

twelve-foot-long monster that looked like it might have stopped spears

during the Old Mathic Age.


Dragging these artifacts up from the

cellars and down from the rafters was an almost perfectly stupid task.

It was not much more difficult to get Arsibalt talking about

Inquisitors and the Inquisition.


The gist of it was that the arrival of two

Inquisitors wasn’t a big deal at all, unless it was a big deal, in

which case it was a really big deal. The Inquisition long ago had

become a “relatively non-psychotic, even

bureaucratized, process.” This was evidenced by the fact that we saw

the Warden Regulant and her officers all the time even when we weren’t

in trouble. Though they reported to the Primate, they were technically

a branch of the Inquisition. They even had the power to depose a

Primate in certain circumstances (Arsibalt, warming to the task, here

threw in some precedents of yore involving insane or criminal

Primates). Consistent standards had to be maintained across all the

world’s concents, or else the Reconstitution would be null and void.

And how could that be achieved unless there existed this elite class of

hierarchs—typically, Wardens Regulant who had doled out so much penance

to their long-suffering fraas and suurs that they’d been noticed, and

promoted—who traveled from concent to concent to poke around and keep

an eye on things? It happened all the time. I just hadn’t noticed it

until now.


“I’m a little rattled by something that happened just before Provener,” I told him.


We were out in the meadow, working on our

second acre of tables. Suurs and younger fraas were scurrying around in

our wake, lining the tables with chairs, covering them with paper.

Older and wiser fraas were hauling on lines, causing a framework of

almost weightless struts to rise up above our heads; later these would

support a canopy. In an open-air kitchen in the center of the meadow,

older suurs were trying to kill us with the fragrance of dishes that

were many hours away from being served. Arsibalt and I had been trying

for ten minutes to defeat the latching mechanism on the legs of an

especially over-designed table: military surplus from a Fifth Century

world war. Certain levers and buttons had to be depressed in the right

sequence or the legs would not deploy. A dark brown leaf, folded many

times, had been wedged into the undercarriage: helpful instructions

written in the year 940 by one Fraa Bolo, who had succeeded in getting

the table open and wanted to brag about it to generations of unborn

avout. But he used incredibly recondite terminology to denote the

different parts of the table, and the leaf had been attacked by mice.

At a moment when we were about to lose our tempers, throw the table off

the Præsidium, consign Fraa Bolo’s useless instructions to the fires of

Hell, and run out the Decade Gate in

search of strong drink, Fraa Arsibalt and I agreed to sit down for a

moment and take a break. That was when I told Arsibalt about my

conversation with Varax and Onali—as the male and female Inquisitors

were called, according to the grapevine.


“Inquisitors in disguise, hmm, I don’t

think I’ve heard of that,” Arsibalt said. Gazing worriedly at the look

on my face, he added: “Which means nothing. It is selection bias:

Inquisitors who can’t be distinguished from the general populace would

of course go unnoticed and unremarked on.”


Somehow I didn’t find that very comforting.


“They have to move about somehow,”

Arsibalt insisted. “It never occurred to me to wonder how exactly. They

can’t very well have their own special aerocraft and trains, can they?

Much more sensible for them to put on normal clothing and buy a ticket

just like anyone else. I would guess that they happened to come in from

the aerodrome just as your tour was beginning, and decided on the spur

of the moment to tag along so that they could view the statues in the

Rotunda, which anyone would want to see.”


“Your words make sense but I still feel…burned.”


“Burned?”


“Yeah. That Varax tricked me into saying things I’d never have said to an Inquisitor.”


“Then why on earth did you say them to a total stranger?”


This wasn’t helpful. I threw him a look.


“What did you say that was so bad?” he tried.


“Nothing,” I concluded, after I’d thought

about it for a while. “I mean, I probably sounded very HTW, very

Edharian. If Varax is a Procian, he hates me now.”


“But that is still within normal limits.

There are whole orders that have prospered for thousands of years,

saying much more ridiculous things, without running afoul of the

Inquisition.”


“I know that,” I said. Looking across the

meadow I happened to see Corlandin and several others of the New Circle

getting in position to rehearse a carol that they would sing tonight.

From a hundred feet away I could see them grinning and exchanging

handshakes. I could smell their

confidence as if I were a dog. I wanted to be like that. Not like the

crusty Edharian theoricians carrying on bitter debates about the vector

sums on the vertices of the canopy struts.


“When I say burned, maybe what I’m getting

at is that I burned my bridge. What I said to Varax is going to get

repeated to Suur Trestanas and then filter down to the rest of her lot.”


“You’re afraid the New Circle won’t want you for Eliger?”


“That is correct.”


“You can avoid the stink then. Better for you.”


“What stink, Arsibalt?”


“The stink that’s going to permeate this

place when most of our crop join the Edharians. The New Circle and the

Reformed Old Faanians are going to be left with floor-sweepings.”


Trying to seem casual, I looked around to

be sure that we were not in earshot of any of the fids Arsibalt

considered to be floor-sweepings. But the only person nearby was the

primeval Grandfraa Mentaxenes, shuffling around waiting for a purpose,

but too proud to ask for one. I approached him with the gnawed

table-opening codex of Fraa Bolo and asked him to translate it. He

couldn’t have been more ready. Arsibalt and I left him to it, and

trudged back toward the Mynster for the next table.


“What makes you think that’s going to happen?” I said.


“Orolo has been talking to many of us—not just you,” Arsibalt said.


“Recruiting us?”


“Corlandin recruits—which is why we don’t trust him. Orolo simply talks, and lets us draw our own conclusions.”


Bulshytt: (1) In

Fluccish of the late Praxic Age and early Reconstitution, a derogatory

term for false speech in general, esp. knowing and deliberate falsehood

or obfuscation. (2) In Orth, a more technical and clinical term

denoting speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or

political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing

repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the

impression that something has been said. (3) According to the Knights

of Saunt Halikaarn, a radical order of the 2nd Millennium A.R., all

speech and writings of the ancient Sphenics; the Mystagogues of the Old

Mathic Age; Praxic Age commercial and political institutions; and,

since the Reconstitution, anyone they deemed to have been infected by

Procian thinking. Their frequent and loud use of this word to interrupt

lectures, dialogs, private conversations, etc., exacerbated the divide

between Procian and Halikaarnian orders that characterized the mathic

world in the years leading up to the Third Sack. Shortly before the

Third Sack, all of the Knights of Saunt Halikaarn were Thrown Back, so

little more is known about them (their frequent appearance in Sæcular

entertainments results from confusion between them and the Incanters).


Usage note: In the

mathic world, if the word is suddenly shouted out in a chalk hall or

refectory it brings to mind the events associated with sense (3) and is

therefore to be avoided. Spoken in a moderate tone of voice, it takes

on sense (2), which long ago lost any vulgar connotations it may once

have had. In the Sæculum it is easily confused with sense (1) and

deemed a vulgarity or even an obscenity. It is inherent in the

mentality of extramuros bulshytt-talkers that they are more prone than

anyone else to taking offense (or pretending to) when their bulshytt is

pointed out to them. This places the mathic observer in a nearly

impossible position. One is forced either to use this “offensive” word

and be deemed a disagreeable person and as such excluded from polite

discourse, or to say the same thing in a different way, which means

becoming a purveyor of bulshytt oneself and thereby lending strength to

what one is trying to attack. The latter quality probably explains the

uncanny stability and resiliency of bulshytt. Resolving this dilemma is

beyond the scope of this Dictionary and is probably best left to

hierarchs who make it their business to interact with the Sæculum.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Somehow that canopy got raised. The struts

were newmatter dating back to the founding of the Concent; as dusk

fell, they began to emit a soft light that came from all directions and

made even Fraa Mentaxenes look healthy. Beneath it, twelve hundred

visitors, three hundred Decenarians, and five hundred Unarians

celebrated Tenth Night.


This had originated as a harvest festival,

coinciding with the end of the calendar year. Thanks to some adroit

sequence-writing that had been done before the Second Sack, we had a

few crops that could grow almost year-round. In our greenhouses we

could cultivate less hardy plants in midwinter. But that stuff wasn’t

glorious in the way that tangle food was at this time of the year.


The tangle had been invented way back

before Cnoüs, by people who lived on the opposite side of the world

from Ethras and Baz. Cob grew straight up out of the ground to the

height of a man’s head and bore rich heads of particolored kernels late

in the summer. In the meantime, it served as a trellis for climbing

vines of podbeans that gave us protein while fixing nitrogen in the

soil to nourish the cob. In the web that the podbean vines spun among

the cob stalks, three other kinds of vegetables grew: highest from the

ground, where bugs couldn’t get to them, red, yellow, and orange

tommets to give us vitamins and flavor our salads, stews, and sauces.

Snaking along the ground, gourds of many varieties. In the middle,

hollow pepperpods. Tubers of two kinds grew beneath the ground, and

leaf vegetables gathered whatever light remained. The original, ancient

tangle had comprised eight plants, and the people who cultivated them

had over thousands of years bred them to be as efficient as they could

be without actually reaching in and tinkering with their sequences.

Ours were more efficient yet, and we had added four more types of

plants, two of which had no purpose other than to replenish the soil.

At this time of year, the tangles

we’d been cultivating since thaw were in their glory and sported a

variety of color and flavor that couldn’t be had extramuros. That’s why

Apert took place now. It was a way for those inside the math to share

their good fortune with their neighbors extramuros, as well as to

relieve them of any babies not likely to survive the winter.


I saved seats for Cord and her boyfriend

Rosk. Cord also brought with her a cousin of ours: Dath, a boy of

fifteen. I remembered him vaguely. He’d been the kind of youngster who

was always being rushed to Physicians’ Commons for repair of

astonishing traumas. Somehow he’d survived and even put on passable

clothing for the event. His dents and scars were hidden beneath a mess

of curly brown hair.


Arsibalt made sure he was seated across

from “the exquisite” Cord; he didn’t appear to understand the

significance of Rosk. Jesry caused his entire family to sit at the next

table, which placed him back to back with me. Then Jesry flagged down

Orolo and persuaded him to sit in our cluster. Orolo attracted Lio and

several other lonely wanderers, who proceeded to fill out our table.


Dath was the kind of sweet untroubled soul

who could ask very basic questions with no trace of embarrassment. I

tried to answer them in the same spirit.


“You know I’m a sline, cousin,” I said. “So

the difference between slines and us is not that we’re smarter. That is

demonstrably not the case.”


This topic had come up after people had

been eating, drinking, talking, and singing old carols just long enough

to make it obvious that there really were no differences. Dath, who had

come through his early mishaps with his good sense intact, had been

looking about and taking note of this—I could read it on his face. And

so he had raised the question of why bother to put up walls—to have an

extramuros and an intramuros?


Orolo had caught wind of this and turned

around to get a look at Dath. “It would be easier for you to understand

if you could see one of the pinprick maths,” he said.


“Pinprick maths?”




“Some are no more than a one-room apartment

with an electrical clock hanging on the wall and a well-stocked

bookcase. One avout lives there alone, with no speely, no jeejah.

Perhaps every few years an Inquisitor comes round and pokes his head in

the door, just to see that all is well.”


“What’s the point of that?” Dath asked.


“That is precisely the question I am asking

you to think about,” Orolo said, and turned back round to resume a

conversation with Jesry’s father.


Dath threw up his hands. Arsibalt and I laughed, but not at his expense. “That’s how Pa Orolo does his dirty work,” I told him.


“Tonight, instead of sleeping, you’ll lie awake wondering what he meant,” Arsibalt said.


“Well, aren’t you guys going to help me? I’m not a fraa!” Dath pleaded.


“What would motivate someone to sit alone

in a one-room apartment reading and thinking?” Arsibalt asked. “What

would have to be true of a person for them to consider that a life well

spent?”


“I don’t know. Maybe they’re really shy? Scared of open spaces?”


“Agoraphobia is not the correct answer,” Arsibalt said, a little huffy.


“What if the places you went and the things

you encountered in your work were more interesting than what was

available in the physical world around you?” I tried.


“Okayyy…”


“You might say that the difference between

us and you is that we have been infected by a vision of…another world.”

I’d been about to say “a greater” or “a higher” but settled for

“another.”


“I don’t like the infection metaphor,” Arsibalt started to say in Orth. I kneed him under the table.


“You mean like a different planet?” Dath asked.


“That’s an interesting way of looking at

it,” I said. “Most of us don’t think it’s another planet in the sense

of a speculative fiction speely. Maybe it’s the future of this world. Maybe it’s an alternate universe

we can’t get to. Maybe it’s nothing but a fantasy. But at any rate it

lives in our souls and we can’t help striving toward it.”


“What’s that world like?” Dath asked.


Behind me, a jingle began to play from

someone’s jeejah. It wasn’t that loud, but something about it made my

brain lock up. “For one thing, it doesn’t have any of those,” I told Dath.


After the jeejah had been singing for a

little while, I turned around. Everyone in a twenty-foot radius was

staring at Jesry’s older brother, who was slapping himself all over

trying to determine which of the pockets in his suit contained the

jeejah. Finally he extracted it and silenced it. He stood up, as if he

had not drawn enough attention to himself, and bellowed his own name.

“Yes, Doctor Grane,” he went on, staring into the distance like a holy

man. “I see. I see. Can they infest humans as well? Really!? I was only joking. Well, how would we be able to tell if that had happened?”


People turned back to their meals, but conversations were slow to restart, because of sporadic incursions from Jesry’s brother.


Arsibalt cleared his throat as only Arsibalt could; it sounded like the end of the world. “The Primate’s about to speak.”


I turned around and looked at Jesry, who

had realized the same thing and was waving his arms at his brother, who

stared right through him. He was negotiating a bulk rate on biopsies.

He was a very tough negotiator. Women in the

party—sisters and sisters-in-law of Jesry—had begun to feel ashamed and

to tug at the man’s elbows. He spun around and stalked away from us:

“Excuse me, Doctor, I didn’t catch that last part? Something about the

larvae?” But in his defense, as I looked around I could see that he was

only one of many who were using jeejahs for one purpose or another.


Statho had already addressed us twice. The

first time had been ostensibly to greet everyone but really to nag us

into taking our seats. The second time had been to intone the

Invocation, which had been written by Diax himself while the rake

blisters were still fresh on his hands. If you could understand

Proto-Orth and if you happened to be a mushy-headed, number-worshipping

Enthusiast, the Invocation would make you feel distinctly unwelcome.

Everyone else just thought it added a touch of class to the proceedings.




Now he told us we were going to be

entertained by a contingent of Edharians. Statho’s grasp of Fluccish

was weak; the way he phrased it, he was commanding

us to be entertained. This made laughter run through the crowd, which

left him nonplussed and asking the Inquisitors (who were flanking him

at the high table) for explanations.


Three fraas and two suurs sang a five-part

motet while twelve others milled around in front of them. Actually they

weren’t milling; it just looked that way from where we sat. Each one of

them represented an upper or lower index in a theorical equation

involving certain tensors and a metric. As they moved to and fro,

crossing over one another’s paths and exchanging places while

traversing in front of the high table, they were acting out a

calculation on the curvature of a four-dimensional manifold, involving

various steps of symmetrization, antisymmetrization, and raising and

lowering of indices. Seen from above by someone who didn’t know any

theorics, it would have looked like a country dance. The music was

lovely even if it was interrupted every few seconds by the warbling of

jeejahs.


Then we ate and drank more. Then the New

Circle fraas sang their piece, which was much better received than the

tensor dance. Then we ate and drank more. Statho made it all tick

along, like Cord running her five-axis mill. We weren’t used to seeing

him do a lot of work, but he was earning his beer this evening. To the

visitors, this was just a free feed with weird entertainment, but in

truth it was a ritual as old and as important as Provener and so there

were certain boxes that had to be checked if we were to get out of it

without drawing a rebuke from the Inquisition. And Statho was the kind

who would have done it the right way even if Varax and Onali hadn’t

been sitting there asking him to pass the salt.


Fraa Haligastreme was introduced to say a

few words on behalf of the Edharian chapter. He tried to talk about

what I had mentioned to Dath earlier, and bungled it even worse. He was

the funniest man in the world if you just walked up to him and asked

him a question, but he was helpless when given the opportunity to

prepare, and the sporadic alarums of the jeejahs shattered his

concentration and reduced his talk to a heap of shards. The only shard

that lodged in my memory was his

concluding line: “If this all seems ambiguous, that’s because it is;

and if that troubles you, you’d hate it here; but if it gives you a

feeling of relief, then you are in the right place and might consider

staying.”


Next up was Corlandin for the New Circle chapter.


“I’ve been with my family the last ten

days,” he announced, and smiled over at a table of Burgers who smiled

back at him. “They were kind enough to organize a family reunion during

Apert. All of them have busy lives out there, just as I do in here, but

for these days we suspended our routines, our careers, and our other

commitments so that we could be together.”


“Myself, I’ve been out watching speelys,”

Orolo remarked. Only about five of us could hear him. “Ones with plenty

of explosions. Some are quite enjoyable.”


Corlandin continued, “Making

dinner—normally a routine chore we perform to avoid starvation—became

something altogether different. The pattern of cuts my Aunt Prin made

in the top crust of a pie was not just a system of vents to relieve

internal pressure, but a sort of ritual going back who knows how many

generations—an invocation, if you will, of her ancestors who did it the

same way. The conversations we had about, say, when Grandpa Myrt fell

off his porch roof while cleaning the gutters, were not just

debriefings about the hazards of home renovation but celebrations—full

of laughter, tears, and sometimes laughter and tears at the same

time—of how much we loved each other. So you could say that nothing was

about what it superficially seemed to be about.

Which in another context might make it sound all just a bit sinister.

But obviously it was nothing of the kind. We all got it. You’d have

gotten it too. And that’s a lot like what we fraas and suurs do in this

concent all the time. Thank you.” And Corlandin sat down.


Slightly indignant murmuring from avout—not

at all certain that they agreed with him—was drowned out by applause

from the majority of visitors. Poor Suur Frandling had to get up next

and say a few words for the Reformed Old Faanians, but she could have

been reading from an economic database for all anyone cared. Most of

the avout were peeved by Corlandin’s eloquence—or glibness—and Orolo

was among them. But to his credit he pointed out that Corlandin had

smoothed over an awkward moment and probably won us some sympathy

extramuros.


“How do you know when someone is really glib?” Jesry muttered to me.


“I’ll bite. How?”


“It doesn’t cross your mind that he’s glib

until someone older and wiser points it out. And then, your face turns

hot with shame.”


More music then, as most of us avout got up

to clear plates and fetch dessert. The entertainment, which earlier had

been so intimidating, had become a little easier to enjoy. Many of the

carols traditionally played over loudspeakers in stores and elevators

at this time of year were derived from liturgical music that had

originated in the maths and filtered out at Apert, and so many of the

visitors were pleasantly surprised to hear familiar melodies spilling

from the lips of these bolt-wrapped weirdos.


Dessert was sheet cakes baked and served in

broad trays. One of them ended up in front of Arsibalt—not a

coincidence. He picked up the spatula that had arrived with it: a flat

metal blade about the size of the palm of a child’s hand. Just before

he plunged it into the cake, I had an idea, and stopped him. “Let’s

have Dath do it,” I said.


“As hosts, it is our duty to serve,” Arsibalt demurred.


“Then you can serve, but I want Dath to do

the cutting,” I insisted. I wrenched the spatula from Arsibalt’s grip

and handed it across to Dath, who took it a little uncertainly.


I then talked him through cutting the cake;

but I had him go about it in a very specific way, working through the

steps of an old geometry proof*

that Orolo had taught me when I had been a brand-new fid, up all night

crying because I missed my old life. This took a little while, but when

all was said and done, it was clear from the look on Dath’s face that

he understood it, and I was able to tell him: “Congratulations. You

have just worked out a geometric proof that is thousands of years old.”




“They had sheet cakes back then?”


“No, but they had land and other things they needed to measure, and the same trick works for those things too.”


“Uh huh,” Dath said, gobbling a vertex from his serving.


“You say uh huh like it is not a big deal,

but it is a big deal to us,” I said. “Why should a proof that works for

sheet cake work as well for a plot of land? Cake and land are different

things.”


We had gone a little over the head of Dath,

who just wanted to eat his cake, but Cord saw it. “I guess I have an

unfair advantage here since I spend so much time thinking about

geometry in my work. But the answer is that geometry is…well…geometry.

It’s pure. It doesn’t matter what you’re applying it to.”


“And it turns out that the same is true for

other kinds of theorics besides geometry,” I said. “You can prove

something. Later the same thing might be proved in a totally different

way; but you always end up with the same answer. No matter who is

discussing these proofs, in what age, whether they are speaking of

sheet cake or pasture-land, they always arrive at the same answer.

These truths seem to come out of another world or plane of existence.

It’s hard not to believe that this other world really exists in some

sense—not just in our imaginations! And we would like to go there.”


“Preferably without having to die first,” Arsibalt put in.


“When I’m cutting a part, sometimes I get

obsessed with it,” Cord said. “I lie awake in my bed thinking about its

shape. Is that—perhaps—related to how you all feel about what you

study?”


“Why not? You’re carrying this geometry

around in your head that fascinates you. Some would say it’s only a

pattern of neurons firing in your brain. But it has an independent

reality. And for you, thinking about that reality is an interesting and

rewarding way to spend your life.”


Rosk was a manual therapist—he put his

hands on people to fix them. “I’ve been working on someone who has a

pinched nerve because he has lousy posture,” he said. “I was discussing

it with my teacher, over the jeejah—no pictures, just our voices. We

had this long talk about this nerve and the muscles and ligaments

around it and how I should manipulate them to help alleviate the

problem, and suddenly I just flashed

on how weird the whole thing was—two of us both relating to this

image—this model—of another person’s body that was in his mind and in my mind, but—”


“Also seemingly in a third place,” I suggested, “a shared place.”


“That’s what it felt like. It freaked me

out for a little while, but then I put it out of my mind because I

thought I was just being weird.”


“Well, it’s been freaking people out since

Cnoüs and this is like an asylum for people who can’t stop thinking

about it,” I said. “It’s not for everyone, but it’s harmless.”


“Since the Third Sack anyway,” Rosk said.


That he said it so innocently made it ten

times as rude as it was to begin with. I saw Cord’s face flush, and

guessed she’d probably have words with him after dinner. It was

anyone’s guess whether he’d ever really understand why it was such an

abhorrent thing to say.


People were shushing us because we had reached that part of the aut where the newcomers were presented at the high table.


Eight foundlings had been Collected. One

was sickly and would stay in the Unarian math where it would be easier

for the physicians to keep an eye on her. Two of them still had the

stumps of their umbilical cords attached, which meant that they were

destined for the Millenarian math, by way of a brief sojourn among the

Hundreders. We would pass them along via our upper labyrinth. The

remaining five were a little bit older, and so would be passed to the

Hundreders.


Thirty-six youngsters were to be Collected.

Seventeen of these, including Barb, would come directly to our math.

The others would stay with the One-offs, at least at first. With any

luck, some of them might graduate to our math later.


Twelve of the One-offs had decided to

graduate to our math. Nine more had arrived from another, smaller

concent in the mountains that acted as a feeder to ours.


All of these were brought up before the

high table, welcomed, and applauded. Tomorrow, after the gate closed,

we would celebrate their arrival in a much more tedious ceremony.

Tonight was the time for the

extramuros authorities to supply their own special brand of tedium. By

ancient tradition, the highest-ranking Panjandrum present at this

dinner was supposed to stand up and formally hand the newcomers over to

us. At that moment, they passed out of Sæcular, and into mathic

jurisdiction. We became responsible for housing them and feeding them,

caring for them when they ailed, burying them when they died, and

punishing them when they misbehaved. It was as if they ceased in this

moment to be citizens of one country and became citizens of another. It

was, in other words, a big deal from a legal standpoint, and it had to

be solemnized by the speaking of certain oaths and the ringing of a

bell. And there was an almost as ancient tradition that the official in

question would use it as an excuse to “deliver some remarks.”


This turned out to be the rope-draped

oddity who had appeared at the Decade Gate with his contingent on the

first morning of Apert. He was, as it turned out, the mayor.


After thanking everyone from God on down

and then back up to God again, and then, as a precaution, tacking on a

blanket thank-you for any persons or supernatural beings he had left

out, he began: “Even those of you who live at Saunt Edhar must be aware

by now that the extraordinary re-configuration of prefectural

boundaries mandated by the Eleventh Circle of Arch-Magistrates has

literally transformed the political landscape. The Plenary Council of

the Recovered Satrapies has passed through a tipping point of no

return, placing five of the eight Tetrarchies within the grasp of a new

generation of leaders who I can promise you will be far more sensitive

than their predecessors to the values and priorities of New

Counterbazian constituencies and our many friends who may belong to

other Arks, or even to no Ark at all, but who share our concerns…”


“If there are eight of them, why are they

called Tetrarchs?” Orolo demanded, drawing an exasperated look from

Jesry’s father, who had been listening intently—he was taking notes.


“There were four of them originally and the name stuck,” Arsibalt said.


Jesry’s father seemed to relax a bit, thinking that the interruption was over. But we were just beginning.




“What’s a New Counterbazian?” Lio wanted to

know. Jesry’s brother shushed him. To my surprise Jesry rose to Lio’s

defense. “We didn’t tell you to shut up when you were bellowing about

your infestation.”


“Yes you did.”


“I’ll bet it’s a euphemism for one of those

Warden of Heaven nut jobs,” I said to Lio. This brought a cataract of

shushing down on me. Jesry’s father sighed as if he could thereby rise

above all of this, and cupped a hand to his ear, but it was too late;

we’d planted a branching tree of arguments and recriminations. The

mayor was going on and on about the beauty of our clock, the majesty of

our Mynster, and the magnificent singing of the fraas and suurs. At no

point did he say anything that was not as sugary as words could be, and

yet the feeling I got was one of foreboding, as if he were urging all

of his constituents to mass before our gates with bottles of gasoline.

The argument between Jesry and his brother decayed into sporadic sniper

fire across the table, suppressed by glares and arm-squeezings from

exasperated females who had wordlessly squared up into a peacekeeping

force. Jesry’s brother had decided that with our hair-splitting debates

about how many Tetrarchs there were, we’d shown ourselves to be a lot

of insignificant pedants. Jesry informed him that this was an

iconography that dated back to before the founding of the city-state of

Ethras.


In some eerily quiet way that he must have

learned from a book of Vale-lore, Lio had vanished. Strangely for one

who studied fighting so much, he hated conflict.


I waited until the bell had rung to induct

the newcomers, then excused myself and walked out during the standing

ovation. I felt like getting some fresh air. By tradition, the revelry

would wind down and the cleanup gather momentum until the gates closed

at dawn, so it was unlikely I’d miss much.


The meadow was lit partly by the harvest

moon and partly by light diffusing through the skirts of the great

canopy, which, when I turned around to look back on it, looked like an

enormous straw-colored moon half sunk into a dark sea. Lio was

silhouetted against it. He was moving in an odd, dance-like fashion,

which for him was hardly unusual. One

end of his bolt was modesty-wrapped, but the other was all over the

place—flinging out like a bucket of suds, then wafting down for a few

moments only to be snapped back and regathered: the same thing he’d

been practicing on the statue of Saunt Froga. It was strangely

fascinating to watch. I was not his only spectator: a few visitors had

gathered around him. Bulky men. Four of them. All wearing the same

color. Numbers on their backs.


Lio’s bolt slapped down on top of Number 86

and draped him, making him look like a ghost. The lower part was all in

a thrash as he flailed his arms to throw it off. His head was a

stationary knob at the top—hence a fine target for the ball of Lio’s

foot, which was delivered in a perfectly executed flying kick.


I started running toward them.


86 went down backwards. Lio’s momentum

carried him to the same place. He used 86’s torso to cushion his

landing, and rolled off smartly, staying low like a spider and snapping

his bolt free. 79 was coming in high. Lio spun clear of the line of

attack and in so doing got his bolt around 79’s knees. Then he stood

up, bringing 79’s knees with him; 79’s face dove at the ground and he

didn’t get his arms up—excuse me, down—fast enough

to avoid getting a mouthful of turf. For just a moment after Lio

spiraled his bolt loose, 79 remained poised upside-down with his legs

splayed. Lio absent-mindedly rammed his elbow down into the vee as he

turned to see who was next.


Answer: Number 23, running right at him.

Lio turned and ran away. But not very fast. 23 gained on him. It was

his fate to step on Lio’s bolt, which was dragging behind Lio on the

grass. This demolished his gait, which had been clumsy to begin with.

Lio sensed it—as how could he not, since the other end of that bolt was

lashed around his crotch. He whirled and yanked. 23 somehow remained on

his feet, but the price he paid for doing so was that he ended up

staggering, bent forward at the waist, leading with his head. Lio

planted a foot in his path, got a hand on the back of 23’s head, and

used the other’s momentum to flip him over his knee. 23 didn’t know how

to fall. He came down hard on his shoulder and pivoted around

that to a hard landing on his back. I knew what was coming next: Lio

would follow with a “death blow” to the exposed throat. And that is

just what he did; but he pulled it, as he always had with me, and

refrained from staving in the man’s windpipe.


One remained. And I do mean one, for he had

a large numeral 1 on his back. This was the man with his arm in a

sling. With his good arm, he had been been rummaging through the

pockets of the fallen 86. He found what he had been looking for and

stood up, holding something that I was pretty sure was a gun.


His spine-clamp exploded in light, flashing

alternately red and blue. He uttered a common profanity. He dropped the

gun and collapsed. Every muscle in his body had lost tone in the same

instant, jammed by signals from the clamp. All four of the attackers

were down now, and the meadow was quiet except for the plaintive

warbling of their jeejahs.


A solitary person, somewhere nearby, began

clapping. I assumed it was a sline who’d had too much to drink. But

looking toward the sound, I was surprised to see a hooded figure in a

bolt. He kept shouting an ancient Orth word that meant “hail, huzzah,

well done.”


Stalking toward this fraa, I shouted, “I

hope you’re stinking drunk, because if not, you’re an idiot. He could

have gotten killed. And even if you really are that big of a jerk—don’t

you know there’s a couple of Inquisitors skulking around?”


“It’s okay, one of them skulked out to get away from that idiotic speech,” the fraa said.


He pulled back his hood to reveal that he was Varax of the Inquisition.


I can’t guess what my face looked like, but

I can tell you that the sight of it was the most entertaining thing

Varax had seen in a long time. He tried not to show it too much. “It

never ceases to amaze me, what people think of us and why we’re here,”

he said. “Will you please forget about this. It is nothing.” He looked

up at the top of the Præsidium. “Larger matters are at stake than

whether a young fraa at the remote hermitage of Saunt Edhar practices

his vlor on some local runagates. For God’s sake,” he continued (which

sounded funny to me since few of us

believed in God, and he didn’t seem like one of them; but maybe it was

just an oath used by cosmopolitan people in the sorts of places where

our concent was thought of as a “remote hermitage”). “For God’s sake,

raise your sights. Think bigger—the way you were doing this morning.

The way your friend, there, does when he decides to tackle four larger

men.” And with that Varax drew his hood back over his head and walked

back toward the canopy.


He passed the Warden Fendant and the Warden

Regulant hurrying the other way. The two of them parted and stood aside

to let him pass. Each nodded and uttered some term of respect that no

one had ever bothered to teach me.


Both of the Wardens were looking rather

tightly wound. In ordinal time, the boundary between their

jurisdictions was clear: it was the top of the wall. During Apert,

things became complicated as the wall ceased to exist for ten days.


Suur Trestanas was for throwing the Book at

Lio. Fraa Delrakhones was satisfied with how things had come out, with

a few quibbles: when Lio had noticed the four slines sneaking out the

back, he ought to have alerted someone instead of going out to confront

them himself.


“Well, is that an offense or isn’t it?” demanded Suur Trestanas.


“It is an overlookable offense, as far as I am concerned,” said Delrakhones, “but I’m not the Warden Regulant.”


“Well, I am,” said Suur Trestanas

unnecessarily, “and for one of our fraas to be brawling, during Apert,

when he’s supposed to be welcoming newcomers and busing tables, strikes

me as something that could even lead to being Thrown Back.”


This was such an outrageous thing to say

that I spoke immediately—as if Lio’s impulsiveness had jumped like a

spark into my head. “If I were you, I’d run that by Inquisitor Varax

before taking it any further,” I said.


Trestanas turned and looked at me, head to

toe, as if she’d never seen me before. And perhaps she hadn’t. “The

amount of private time you are spending with our honored guests is

remarkable. Extraordinary.”




“And accidental, I promise you.” But Suur Trestanas was—I realized too late—jealous

of me for this. Almost as if she pined to be in a liaison with Varax

and Onali, but they had a crush on me. And she’d never believe that my

encounters with them had been mere accidents. You didn’t get to be

Warden Regulant by believing such things.


“It is obvious that you have no conception of the power that the Inquisition may wield over us.”


“Uh, not true. They may put the concent on

probation for up to one hundred years, during which time our diet will

be restricted to the basics—nutritional but not so interesting. If we

haven’t mended our ways after a century they can come in and clean the

place out top to bottom. And they have the power to fire any hierarch

and replace him or…her…with…a new one of their choosing…” I was

faltering because my brain—too late—was working through the

implications. I had only been spewing back what Arsibalt had told me

earlier in the day. But to Trestanas it would, of course, sound like a

taunt.


“Maybe you think that Saunt Edhar’s current

hierarchs are not handling their responsibilities well,” Suur Trestanas

proposed, too calmly. “Perhaps Delrakhones—or Statho—or I—ought to be

replaced?”


“I have never thought anything of the sort!” I said, and bit my tongue before I could add until now.


“Then why all of these secret assignations with the Inquisitors? You are the only non-hierarch who has spoken to them at all—and now you have done so twice, both times under circumstances that were extraordinarily private.”


“This is crazy,” I said, “this is crazy.”


“More is at stake than a boy of your age

can comprehend. Your naïvete—combined with your refusal to admit just

how naïve you are—imposes risks on us all. I am throwing the Book at

you.”


“No!” I couldn’t believe it.


“Chapters One through…er…oh…Five.”


“You have got to be kidding!”


“I believe you know what to do,” she said, and looked across the meadow to the Mynster.




“Fine. Fine. Chapters One through Five,” I repeated, and turned toward the canopy.


“Halt,” Suur Trestanas said.


I halted.


“The Mynster is that way,” she said, sounding amused. “You seem to be going the wrong direction.”


“My sib and my cousin are in there. I just need to go and explain to them that I have to leave.”


“The Mynster,” she repeated, “is in that direction.”


“I can’t do five chapters before sunrise,”

I pointed out. “The gates are going to be closed when I come out of

that cell. I have to say goodbye to my family.”


“Have to? Curious

choice of words. Let me bring you up to date on semantics, since you

who worship at Hylaea’s feet are so keen on such things. You have to go to the Mynster. You want to say goodbye to your family. The whole point of being a fraa is to be free of those wants that enslave people who live extramuros. I am doing you the favor of forcing you to make a choice now, in this instant. If you want to

see your family so badly, go see them—and keep on walking, right out

the gate, and don’t ever come back. If you will remain here, you have to walk straight to the Mynster now.”


I looked for Lio, hoping he might convey a

message to Cord and Dath, but he was some distance away now, recounting

the fight to Delrakhones, and anyway I didn’t want to give Suur

Trestanas the additional pleasure of telling me I couldn’t.


So I turned my back on what remained of my family and started walking toward the Mynster.















Part 3


ELIGER



















Boredom is a mask that frustration wears.

What better place to savor the truth of Fraa Orolo’s saying than a

penance cell of the Warden Regulant? Some cunning architect had

designed these things to be to frustration what a lens was to light. My

cell did not have a door. All that stood between me and freedom was a

narrow arch, shaped in the pointed ogive of the Old Mathic Age, framed

in massive stones all scratched with graffiti by prisoners of yore. I

was forbidden to stray through it or to receive visitors until the

penance was complete. The arch opened onto the inner walkway that made

the circuit of the Warden Regulant’s court. It was trafficked at all

hours by lesser hierarchs wandering by on one errand or another. I

could look straight out across that walkway into the vault-work of the

upper chancel, but because of its parapet I could not see down to the

floor two hundred feet below where Provener was celebrated. I could

hear the music. I could gaze straight out and see the chain moving when

my team wound the clock and the bell-ropes dancing when Tulia’s team

rang changes. But I could not see the people.


On the opposite side of the cell, my view

was better. Framed in another Mathic arch was a window affording a fine

view of the meadow. This was just another device to magnify frustration

and hence boredom, since, if I wanted, I could spend all day looking

down on my brothers and sisters strolling at liberty around the concent

and (I supposed) discussing all sorts of interesting things, or at

least telling funny stories. Above, the Warden Fendant’s overhanging

ledge blocked most of the sky, but I could see to about twenty degrees

above the horizon. My window faced roughly toward the Century Gate,

with the Decade Gate visible off to the right if I put my

face close to the glass. So when the sun rose the morning after Tenth

Night, I was able to hear the close-of-Apert service. Looking out my

cell’s doorway, I could see the chains move as the water-valves were

actuated. Then by stepping across the cell and looking out my window I

was able to see a silver thread of water negotiate the aqueduct to the

Decade Gate, and to watch the gate grind closed. Only a few spectators

were strewn about extramuros. For a little while I tortured myself with

the idea that Cord was standing there forlornly expecting me to run out

at the last moment and give her a goodbye hug. But such ideas faded

quickly once the gates closed. I watched the avout take down the canopy

and fold up the tables. I ate the piece of bread and drank the bowl of

milk left at my door by one of Suur Trestanas’s minions.


Then I turned my attention to the Book.


Since the sole purpose of the Book was to

punish its readers, the less said of it the better. To study it, to

copy it out, and to memorize it was an extraordinary form of penance.


The concent, like any other human

settlement, abounded in nasty or tedious chores such as weeding

gardens, maintaining sewers, peeling potatoes, and slaughtering

animals. In a perfect society we’d have taken turns. As it was, there

were rules and codes of conduct that people broke from time to time,

and the Warden Regulant saw to it that those people performed the most

disagreeable jobs. It was not a bad system. When you were fixing a

clogged latrine because you’d had too much to drink in the Refectory,

you might not have such an enjoyable day, but the fact of the matter

was that latrines were necessary; sometimes they clogged up; and some

fraa or suur had to clean them out, as we couldn’t very well call in an

outside plumber. So there was at least some satisfaction in doing such

penance, because there was a point in the work.


There was no point at all to the Book,

which is what made it an especially dreaded form of penance. It

contained twelve chapters. Like the scale used to measure earthquakes,

these got exponentially worse as they went on, so Chapter Six was ten

times as bad as Chapter Five, and so on. Chapter One was just a taste,

meted out to delinquent children, and usually completed in an hour or

two. Two meant at least one overnight

stay, though any self-respecting troublemaker could bang it out in a

day. Five typically meant a stay of several weeks. Any sentence of

Chapter Six or higher could be appealed to the Primate and then to the

Inquisition. Chapter Twelve amounted to a sentence of life at hard

labor in solitary confinement; only three avout had finished it in 3690

years, and all of them were profoundly insane.


Beyond about Six, the punishment could span

years. Many chose to leave the concent rather than endure it. Those who

stuck it out were changed when they emerged: subdued, and notably

diminished. Which might sound crazy, because there was nothing to it

other than copying out the required chapters, memorizing them, and then

answering questions about them before a panel of hierarchs. But the

contents of the Book had been crafted and refined over many centuries

to be nonsensical, maddening, and pointless: flagrantly at first, more

subtly as the chapters progressed. It was a maze without an exit, an

equation that after weeks of toil reduced to 2 = 3. Chapter One was a

page of nursery-rhymes salted with nonsense-words that almost

rhymed—but not quite. Chapter Four was five pages of the digits of pi.

Beyond that, however, there was no further randomness in the Book,

since it was easy to memorize truly random things once you taught

yourself a few tricks—and everyone who’d made it through Chapter Four

knew the tricks. Much harder to memorize and to answer questions about

were writings that almost but did not quite make sense; that had

internal logic, but only to a point. Such things cropped up naturally

in the mathic world from time to time—after all, not everyone had what

it took to be a Saunt. After their authors had been humiliated and

Thrown Back, these writings would be gone over by the Inquisition, and,

if they were found to be the right kind of awful, made even more so,

and folded into later and more wicked editions of the Book. To complete

your sentence and be granted permission to walk out of your cell, you

had to master them just as thoroughly as, say, a student of quantum

mechanics must know group theory. The punishment lay in knowing that

you were putting all of that effort into letting a kind of intellectual

poison infiltrate your brain to its very

roots. It was more humiliating than you might imagine, and after I’d

been toiling on Chapter Five for a couple of weeks I had no difficulty

in seeing how one who completed a sentence of, say, Chapter Nine would

emerge permanently damaged.


Enough of the Book. A more interesting

question: why was I here? It seemed that Suur Trestanas wanted me

removed from the community for as long as the Inquisitors were among

us. Chapter Three wouldn’t have taken me long enough. Four might have

done it, but she’d given me Five just in case I happened to be one of

those persons who was good at memorizing numbers.


The dawn aut—which was attended only by a

smattering of avout who were especially fond of ceremonies—woke me

every morning. I snapped my bolt off the wooden pallet that was the

cell’s only furniture and wrapped it around myself. I pissed down a

hole in the floor and washed in a stone basin of cold water, ate my

bread and drank my milk, set the empty dishes by the door, sat on the

floor, and arranged the Book, a pen, a bottle of ink, and some leaves

on the surface of the pallet. My sphere served as a rest for my right

elbow. I worked for three hours, then did something else, just to clear

my head, until Provener. Then, during the whole time that Lio and Jesry

and Arsibalt were winding the clock, I was doing pushups, squats, and

lunges. My team were working harder and getting stronger because of my

absence, and I didn’t want to be weak when I emerged.


My teammates must have somehow figured out

which cell I was in, for after Provener they’d have a picnic lunch in

the meadow right beneath my window. They didn’t dare look up or wave to

me—Trestanas must be glaring down at them, just waiting for such a

mistake—but they’d begin each lunch by hoisting tankards of beer in

someone’s honor and quaffing deeply. I got the message.


Plenty of ink and leaves were available, so

I began to write down the account you have been reading. As I did so, I

became haunted by the idea that there was some pattern woven through

the last few weeks’ events that I had failed to notice. I put this down

to the altered state of mind that comes over a solitary prisoner with

nothing to keep him company save the Book.




One day about two weeks into my penance, my

morning work-shift was interrupted by strange bells. Through my door I

could see a stretch of the bell-ropes that ran from the ringers’

balcony up toward the carillon. I moved round to the other side of the

pallet, turning my back to the window, so that I could observe the

jerking and recoiling of those ropes. All avout were supposed to be

able to decode the changes. I had never been especially good at it. The

tones melted together in my ears and I could not shape them into

patterns. But watching the movements of the ropes somehow made it

easier; for such work my eyes were better suited than my ears. I could

see the way in which a given rope’s movement was conditioned by what

its neighbors had done on the previous beats. In a minute or two,

without having to ask anyone’s help, I was able to recognize this as

the call to Eliger. One of my crop was about to join an order.


After the changes were rung, half an hour

passed before the aut began, and it was another half an hour of singing

and chanting before I heard Statho intone the name of Jesry. This was

followed by the singing of the Canticle of Inbrase. The singing was

vigorous but rough around the edges—so I knew it was the Edharians who

were inducting him. During all of that time, it was difficult for me to

concentrate on the Book, and afterwards I could get very little done

until after Provener.


The next day those changes rang again. Two

more joined the Edharians and one—Ala—joined the New Circle. No

surprise there. We’d always expected her to end up as a hierarch. For

some reason, though, this one kept me awake late into the night. It was

as if Ala had flown off to some other concent where I’d never see her

again, never get into another argument with her, never compete with her

to see who could solve a theorics problem first. Which was absurd,

since she was staying right here at Edhar and I’d be dining with her in

the Refectory every day. But some part of my brain insisted on seeing

Ala’s decision as a personal loss for me, and punished me by keeping me

awake.


There was a little lesson hidden in the way

I had deciphered the Eliger changes by seeing them. For as I continued

to write out my account of the

preceding weeks—all the while nagged by the sense that I was missing

something—I eventually came to the part where I set down my

conversation with Fraa Orolo on the starhenge, and his muffled argument

with Trestanas immediately afterwards, down by the portcullis. As I

wrote this, I looked out my window to the place where it had happened,

and noted that the portcullis was closed—even though it was daytime. I

also had a view of the Centenarians’ portcullis. It too was closed.

Both of them had been closed the whole time I’d been here. With each

day that went by I became more and more certain that the starhenge had

been altogether sealed off, and had been from the very moment that the

Master of the Keys had slammed the grate down behind me and Orolo on

the eighth day of Apert. This closure of the starhenge—which I was

pretty sure was unprecedented in the entire history of the Concent of

Saunt Edhar—must have been the topic of the angry conversation between

Orolo and Trestanas.


Was it too much of a stretch to think that

the arrival of the Inquisitors, a couple of days later, had been no

coincidence? Ours looked at the same sky as every other starhenge in

the world. If ours had been closed—if there was something out there we

weren’t supposed to see—the others must have been closed too. The order

must have gone out over the Reticulum on the eighth day of Apert and

been conveyed by the Ita, to Suur Trestanas; at the same moment, I

reckoned, Varax and Onali had begun their journey to the “remote

hermitage” of Saunt Edhar.


All of which made a kind of sense but did

nothing at all to help me with the most perplexing and important

question: why would they want to close the starhenge? It was the last

part of the concent one would ever expect the hierarchs to concern

themselves with. Their duty was to preserve the Discipline by

preventing the flow of Sæcular information to the minds of the avout.

The information that came in through the starhenge was by nature

timeless. Much of it was billions of years old. What passed for current

events might be a dust storm on a rocky planet or a vortex fluctuation

on a gas giant. What could possibly be seen from the starhenge that

would be considered as Sæcular?




Like a fraa who wakes in his cell in the

hours before dawn smelling smoke, and who knows from this that a slow

fire must have been smoldering and gathering heat for many hours while

he slumbered in oblivion, I felt not only alarm but also shame at my

own slowness.


It didn’t help that Eliger was being

celebrated almost every day now. For the last year or so, I’d sensed

myself falling slowly behind some of the others in theorics and

cosmography. At times I’d resigned myself to joining a non-Edharian

order and becoming a hierarch. Then, immediately before Trestanas had

thrown the Book at me, I’d made up my mind to angle for a place among

the Edharians and devote myself to exploring the Hylaean Theoric World.

Instead of which, I was stuck in this room reading nonsense while the

others raced even further ahead of me—and filled up the available

spaces in the Edharian chapter. Technically there was no limit—no

quota. But if the Edharians got more than ten or a dozen new avout at

the expense of the others, there’d be trouble. Thirty years ago, when

Orolo had come in, they’d recruited fourteen, and people were still

talking about it.


One afternoon, just after Provener, the

bell team began to ring changes. I assumed at first that it was Eliger

again. For by that time, five had joined the Edharians, three the New

Circle, and one the Reformed Old Faanians. But some deep part of my

brain nagged me with the sense that these were changes I had not heard

before.


Once more I set down my pen—wishing I’d

been given this penance in less interesting times—and sat where I could

watch the ropes. Within a few minutes I knew for certain that this was

not Eliger. My chest clenched up for a few moments as I worried that it

was Anathem. It was over, though, before I could make sense of it. So I

sat motionless for half an hour listening to the naves fill up. It was

a big crowd—all of the avout in all of the maths had stopped whatever

they’d been doing and come here. They were all talking. They sounded

excited. I couldn’t make out a word. But I sensed from their tone that

something momentous was about to happen. In spite of my fears, I slowly

convinced myself it could not be Anathem. People would not be talking so much if they had gathered to watch one of their number be Thrown Back.


The service began. There was no music. I

could make out the Primate speaking familiar phrases in Old Orth: a

formal summoning of the concent. Then he switched to New Orth, and read

out some formula that by its nature had to have been written around the

time of the Reconstitution. At the end of it he called out distinctly:

“Voco Fraa Paphlagon of the Centenarian Chapter of the Order of Saunt

Edhar.”


So this was the aut of Voco. It was only

the third one I’d ever heard. The first two had occurred when I’d been

about ten years old.


As I absorbed that, a gasp and then a deep

moan welled up from the floor of the chancel: the gasp, I reckoned,

from most of the avout, and the moan from the Hundreders who were

losing their brother forever.


And now I did something crazy, but I knew I

could get away with it: I stepped over the threshold of my cell. I

crossed the walkway, and looked over the railing.


Only three people were in the chancel:

Statho in his purple robes and Varax and Onali, identifiable by their

hats. The rest of the place, hidden behind the screens, was in an

uproar that had stopped the aut.


I’d only meant to peek over the rail for an

instant so that I could see what was going on. But I had not been

struck by lightning. No alarm had sounded. No one was up here. They couldn’t possibly be here, I realized, because Voco had rung, and everyone had to gather in the Mynster for that—had to because there was no way of knowing in advance whose name would be called.


Come to think of it, I

was probably supposed to be down there! Voco must be one of the few

exceptions to the rule that someone like me must remain in his cell.


Then why hadn’t the Warden Regulant’s staff

come and rousted me? It had probably been an oversight, I reckoned.

They didn’t have procedures for this. If they were like me, they hadn’t

even recognized the changes. They hadn’t realized it was Voco until it

had started—and then it had been too late for them to come up and fetch me. They were stuck down there until it was over.


They were stuck down there until it was over.


I was free to move about, at least for a

little while, as long as I was back in my cell when the Warden Regulant

and her staff trudged back up here. Whereupon I’d be in trouble anyway

for having ignored Voco! So why not get in trouble for something that

people would be talking about in the Refectory fifty years from now?


All of those exercises I’d been doing were

going to pay off. I tore around the walkway, took the stairs up through

the Fendant court three at a time, and so came into the lower reaches

of the chronochasm. Here I had to move with greater care so as not to

clatter and bang on the metal stairs. But by the same token I had a

clear view down, so I could keep track of what was going on. Nothing

had changed that I could see, but a new sound was rising up the well:

the hymn of mourning and farewell, addressed by the Hundreders to their

departing brother. This had taken a little while to get underway. No

one had it memorized. They’d had to rummage for rarely-used hymnals and

page through them looking for the right bit. Then it took them a minute

to get the hang of it, for this was a five-part harmony. By the time

the hymn really fell together and began to work, I was halfway to the

starhenge—clambering up behind the dials of the clock, trying to stay

collected, trying to move as Lio would, and not let the end of my bolt

get caught between gears. The song of mourning and farewell was really

hair-raising—even more emotional, somehow, than what we sang at

funerals. Of course I had not the faintest idea who Fraa Paphlagon was,

what he was like, or what he studied. But those who were singing did,

and part of the power of this music was that it made me feel what they

felt.


And—given that Fraa Paphlagon and I were both striking out alone for unknown territory—perhaps I felt a little of what he felt.


The main floor of the starhenge was just

above my head now—I’d come up against the inward curve of the vault

that spanned the top of the Præsidium and supported all that rested on

its top. A few shafts penetrated the stonework, delivering power to the

polar drives. A stair spiraled around

the largest of these. I ran to the top of it and rested my hand on a

door latch. Before passing through, I looked down to check the progress

of the aut. The door through the Centenarians’ screen had been opened.

Fraa Paphlagon stepped out into the middle and stood there alone. The

door closed behind him.


At the same moment I opened the door to the

starhenge. Daylight flooded through. I cringed. How could this possibly

go unnoticed?


Calm down, I told myself, only four people are in the well where they can see this. And all eyes are on Fraa Paphlagon.


Looking down one more time, I discovered a flaw in that logic. All eyes were on Fraa Paphlagon—except for Fraa Paphlagon’s!

He had chosen this moment to tilt his head back and gaze straight up.

And why not? It was the last time he would ever look on this place. If

I’d been in his situation, I’d have done the same.


I could not read his facial expression at this distance. But he must have seen the light flooding through the open door.


He stood frozen for a moment, thinking,

then slowly lowered his gaze to face Statho. “I, Fraa Paphlagon, answer

your call,” he said—the first line in a litany that would go on for

another minute or two.


I passed onto the starhenge and closed the door softly behind me.


I had been expecting that everything would

be filmed with dust and speckled with bird droppings—Orolo’s fids spent

an inordinate amount of time up here keeping things clean. But it

wasn’t too bad. Someone must have been coming up here to look after it.


I came to the windowless blockhouse that

served as laboratory, passed through its light-blocking triple doors,

and fetched a photomnemonic tablet, blanked and wrapped in a dust

jacket.


What image should I record on it? I had no

clue what it was that the hierarchs didn’t want us to see, so I had no

way of knowing where I should aim a telescope.


Actually, I had a pretty good idea what it

must be: a large asteroid headed in our direction. That was the only

thing I could imagine that would

account for the closure of the starhenge. But this didn’t help me. I

couldn’t take a picture of such a rock unless I aimed Mithra and Mylax

directly at it, which was impossible unless I knew its orbital elements

to a high degree of precision. To say nothing of the fact that aiming

the big telescope in these circumstances would draw everyone’s

attention.


But there was another instrument that

didn’t need to be aimed, because it couldn’t move: Clesthyra’s Eye. I

started jogging toward the Pinnacle as soon as this idea entered my

head.


As I climbed the spiral stair, I had plenty

of time to review all of the reasons that this was unlikely to work.

Clesthyra’s Eye could see half of the universe, from horizon to

horizon, it was true. The fixed stars showed up as circular streaks,

owing to the rotation of Arbre on its axis. Fast-moving objects showed

up as straight paths of light. But the track made by even a large

asteroid would be vanishingly faint, and not very long.


By the time I’d reached the top of the

Pinnacle, I’d put these quibbles out of my mind. This was the only tool

I had. I had to give it a try. Later I’d sort through the results and

see what I could see.


Beneath the fisheye lens was a slot carved

to the exact dimensions of the tablet in my hand. I broke the seal on

the dust jacket, reached in, and got my palm under the opaque base of

the tablet. I drew off the dust jacket. The wind tore it out of my grip

and slapped it against the wall, just out of reach. The tablet was a

featureless disk, like the blank used for grinding a telescope mirror,

but darker—as if cast in obsidian. When I activated its remembrance

function, its bottom-most layer turned the same color as the sun, for

that was the origin of all the light now striking the tablet’s surface.

Because the tablet was out in the open with no lenses or mirrors to

organize the light coming into it, it could not form an image of

anything it saw—not of the bleak winter sun lobbing across the southern

sky, not of the icy clouds high in the north, and not of my face.


But that was about to change, and so before

doing anything else I drew my bolt over my head and shaped it into a

long dark tunnel. If this precaution actually turned out to be necessary—that is, if this tablet

ever found its way to the Warden Regulant—I’d probably be found out

anyway. But as long as I was up to something sneaky, I felt an

obligation to do a proper job of it.


I introduced the tablet into the slot below

the Eye and slid it home, then closed the dust cover behind it. It

would now record everything the Eye saw—beginning with a distorted

image of my bolt-covered backside scurrying out of view—until it filled

up, which at its current settings would take a couple of months.


Then I’d have to come back up here and retrieve it—a small problem I had not even begun to think about.


As I was descending the Pinnacle, thinking

about this, something big and loud and fast clattered across the empty

space between me and the Millenarians’ crag. It scared the life out of

me. It was a thousand feet away, but it felt as immediate as a slap in

the face. In tracking its progress, I sacrificed my balance and had to

collapse my legs to avoid toppling from the rail-less stair. It was a

type of aerocraft that could rotate its stubby wings and turn into a

two-bladed helicopter. It made a slicing downward arc, as if using the

Mynster as a pylon, and settled into a steep glide path aimed at the

plaza before the Day Gate. My view of this was blocked from here, so I

rose carefully to my feet, ran down to the base of the Pinnacle, then

sprinted across the lid of the starhenge. Realizing that I was about to

hurl myself from the Præsidium—something I no longer cared to do—I

aimed myself at one of the megaliths, put on the brakes, and stopped

myself by slamming into it with my hands. Then I peered around its

corner just in time to see the aerocraft—rotors now pointed up—settling

in for a landing on the plaza. The rotor wash made visible patterns in

the surface of the pond and splayed the twin fountains.


A few moments later, two purple-robed

figures came into view, having just emerged from the Day Gate. Varax

and Onali stripped off their hats so that the wind from the rotors

wouldn’t do it for them. Two paces behind was Fraa Paphlagon, leaning

forward into the hurricane and hugging himself, clawing up handfuls of

wayward bolt so that he wouldn’t be stripped nude. Varax and Onali

paused flanking the aerocraft’s door and turned back to look at him. Each

extended an arm and they helped Paphlagon clamber inside. Then they

piled in behind him. Some automatic mechanism pulled the hatch closed

even as the rotors were spinning up and the aerocraft beginning to lose

its grip on the plaza. Then the pilot rammed the throttles home and the

thing jumped fifty feet into the air in a few heartbeats. The wings

tilted. It took on some forward velocity and accelerated up and away

over the pond and the burgers’ town, then banked away to the west.


It was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen and I couldn’t wait to talk about it in the Refectory with my friends.


Then I remembered that I was an escaped prisoner.


By the time I got into the chronochasm,

Voco was long since over. The sound of voices still crowded the well,

but it was dwindling rapidly as the naves emptied. Most were leaving

the Mynster but some would ascend the stairs in the corner towers to

resume their work in the Wardens’ courts. I banged and clanged in my

haste. As I got lower, though, I had to be more judicious in my

movements in spite of the fear that the quickest of the climbers would

get there before I could.


The first ones up were two young hierarchs

on the Warden Fendant’s staff who were climbing as fast as they could

in the hope that they could get to their balcony and catch a glimpse of

the aerocraft before it flew out of sight. I reached the Fendant court

from above just before they reached it from below. Caught on the

walkway, I looked for a place to hide. This level of the Mynster was

cluttered with things that only a Warden Fendant could think of as

ornaments: mostly, busts and statues of dead heroes. The most awful of

these was a life-sized bronze of Amnectrus, who had been the Warden

Fendant at the moment of the Third Sack. He was depicted in the pose

where he’d spent the last twenty hours of his life, kneeling behind a

parapet peering through the optics of a rifle that was as long as he

was tall. Amnectrus was cast in bronze but the rifle and the lake of

spent shell-casings in which he was immersed were actual relics. The

pedestal was his sarcophagus. I dove behind it. The two fleet-footed

ones sprinted down the walkway, headed for the west side of the

balcony. They passed right by me. I got up, took the long way

round to avoid any more such, and plunged down the steps to the

Regulant court. I dove to the floor behind the half-wall that ran

around the walkway, then levered myself up to hands and knees. In that

attitude I scurried round until I found my cell. I’d never thought I’d

be happy to see the place.


Now there was only the small problem that I

was streaming with sweat, my chest was heaving, my heart was throbbing

like the rotors of that aerocraft, I had abrasions on my knees and

palms, and was trembling with exhaustion and nervousness. There was

only so much I could do. I used some blank leaves to wipe sweat from my

face, drew my bolt around me to cover as much as I could, and arranged

myself on my sphere before my window, back to the doorway, as if I’d

been gazing out at the scene below. Then it was just a matter of trying

to control my breathing as I waited for the moment when someone from

the Warden Regulant’s staff came to look in on me.


“Fraa Erasmas?”


I turned around. It was Suur Trestanas—looking a bit flushed herself from the climb.


She stepped into the cell. I had not spoken

to her since Tenth Night. She seemed oddly normal and human now—as if

we were just two cordial acquaintances having a chat.


“Mm-hmm?” I said, afraid to say more in case my voice would sound funny.


“Do you have any idea what just happened?”


“It’s difficult to make out from here. It sounded almost like Voco.”


“It was Voco,” she said, “and you should have been there.”


I attempted to look aghast. Maybe this was

easy given the state I was in. Or maybe she wanted me to be aghast so

badly that she was easily fooled. Anyway, she let a few moments go by

so that I could twist in the wind. Then she said: “I’m not going to

throw the Book at you, not this time, even though it is technically a

serious offense.”


Besides which, I thought, you’d have to give me Chapter Six—which I could appeal—and you don’t want to have to defend that.




“Thank you, Suur Trestanas,” I said. “In the unlikely event that we have another Voco while I’m here, should I go down for it?”


“That is correct,” she said, “and view it from behind the Primate’s screen. Return here immediately afterward.”


“Unless it’s I whose name gets called,” I said.


She wasn’t looking for humor in this

situation and so this only flustered her. Then she was annoyed at

having become flustered. “How are you progressing on Chapter Five?” she

asked.


“I hope I’ll be ready for examination in one or two weeks,” I said.


Then I wondered how I was going to retrieve that tablet from Clesthyra’s Eye and sneak it out of here in that amount of time.


Suur Trestanas actually showed me the

beginnings of a smile before she took her leave. Maybe it had something

to do with the fact that the two Inquisitors had just left, and

whatever strange motivation lay behind her throwing the Book at me had

departed along with them. Anyway, I got the idea that for all intents

and purposes my punishment was finished now, and the rest was just a

formality. This made me most impatient to get on with it. During the

rest of the day I made more progress on Chapter Five than I had in the

previous week.


The next day Eliger rang again. Two more

joined the Edharians, two the New Circle, and again the Reformed Old

Faanians came up with nothing.


One of the names called out for the New

Circle was Lio. I was astonished by this, and wondered for a time if

I’d heard it right. It’s difficult to say why, because it made perfect

sense. Lio was an obvious candidate for Warden Fendant. His fight with

the slines on Tenth Night must have impressed Fraa Delrakhones to no

end. Working for the Warden Fendant meant being a hierarch, and for

some reason that was associated with being in the New Circle. So why

did it surprise me? Because (as I figured out, lying awake on my pallet

that night) Lio and I had been on the same Provener team for so long

that I’d grown used to his being there, and had assumed that he and I

and Jesry and Arsibalt would always be together in the same group. And

I had believed that they shared these feelings and assumptions.

But feelings can change, and I was beginning to see that they had been

changing rapidly while I’d been up in this cell.


Two days later, Arsibalt joined the Reformed Old Faanians. It was just dumb luck that no one down below heard me yelling, “What!?”

I could lie awake all night long if I pleased and no upsight would be

forthcoming to explain this. The Reformed Old Faanians had been a dying

order for almost as long as they’d been in existence.


The only thing for it was to get out of

this cell. I gave up on daily exercise and stopped writing the journal

and did nothing but study Chapter Five after that. By the time I gave

word that I was ready to be examined, eleven had joined the Edharians,

nine the New Circle, and six the Reformed Old Faanians. My options,

assuming I still had any, were narrowing by the hour. In my gloomier

moments I wondered if throwing the Book at me had been a sort of

recruiting tactic on the part of Suur Trestanas—a way of forcing me to

join some non-Edharian order and thereby pushing me down the path that

would lead to my toiling in the Primate’s compound as a lesser

hierarch, always under someone’s thumb. Ordinary fraas and suurs

answered to no one except the Discipline. But hierarchs were in a chain

of command: it was the price they paid for the powers they wielded.


My examination took place the next day,

following an Eliger in which one more went to the New Circle and three

to the Reformed Old Faanians. Of those, two were what Arsibalt had had

in mind when he had spoken of floor-sweepings. One was unusually

bright. Of my crop, only I and one other now remained. Since I hadn’t

been writing names down, I probably would have lost track, by this

point, of who the other one was—if not for the fact that it was Tulia.


The examiners numbered three. Suur

Trestanas was not among them. At first I was relieved by this, then

irritated. I had just sacrificed a month of my life doing this penance,

and thrown away any chance I’d ever had of getting into the Order of

Saunt Edhar. The least she could have done was show up.


They began by asking me some trick

questions about Chapter Two in the hopes that I’d have rushed through

it on the first day and then forgotten it. But I had anticipated this,

and had spent a couple of hours reviewing the first three chapters the

day before.




When I recited the 127th through 283rd

digits of pi, the fight went out of them. We only spent two hours on

Chapter Five. This was exceptionally lenient. But Eliger had pushed

everything back to late in the day. We were nearing the solstice, so it

got dark early, which made it seem even later. I could actually hear

the examiners’ stomachs growling. The head of the panel was Fraa

Spelikon, a hierarch in his seventh decade who’d been passed over for

Warden Regulant in favor of Suur Trestanas. At the last minute he

seemed to decide I hadn’t been grilled hard enough, and began putting

up a fight. But I snapped out an answer to his first question, and the

other two examiners said with their postures and their tones of voice

that it was over. Spelikon snatched up his spectacles, held them in

front of his face, and read something from an old leaf that said my

penance was over and I was free to go.


Though it felt later, a whole hour remained

before dinner. I asked if I could go back to my cell to collect some

notes I had left there. Spelikon wrote out a pass giving me permission

to remain in the Regulant court until the dinner hour.


I thanked them, took my leave, and walked

around to my cell, waving my pass at any hierarchs who crossed my path.

By the time I had reached my cell and pulled my journal out from

beneath my pallet, an idea—which had not even existed thirty seconds

earlier as I had bid goodbye to the examiners—had flourished inside my

head and taken control of my brain. Why not sneak up to the starhenge

right now and collect that tablet?


Of course my better sense prevailed. I

wrapped my journal up in the free end of my bolt and walked out of that

cell—forever, I hoped. Fifty paces down the walkway took me to the

southwest corner, the head of the Tenners’ stair. A few fraas and suurs

were passing up and down, getting ready for a change of guard at the

Fendant court. I stood aside to make way for one who was on his way up.

He was hooded, and not looking where he was going. Then my feet came

into his view. He pulled his hood back to reveal a freshly shaved head.

It was Lio.


There was so much to say that neither of us knew where to begin, so we just stared at each other and made incoherent sounds for a few moments. Which was probably just as well since I didn’t want to say anything in the Regulant court. “I’ll walk with you,” I said, and turned to fall in step alongside him.


“You have to talk to Tulia,” he muttered,

as we were ascending to the Fendant court. “You have to talk to Orolo.

You have to talk to everyone.”


“Going to your new job?”


“Delrakhones has me doing an internship. Hey, Raz, where the heck are you going?”


“The starhenge.”


“But that’s—” He grabbed my arm. “Hey, idiot, you could be Thrown Back!”


“It’s more important that I do this than

that I not be Thrown Back,” I said. Which was pretty stupid, but I was

feeling rebellious and not thinking very hard. “I’ll explain it to you

later.”


I had led Lio off the inner walkway, which

was too crowded for comfort, and out toward the periphery of the

Fendant court as if we were going to stand on the ledge. Along the way

we had to pass through a narrow arch. He made an after-you gesture. I

stepped into the arch—and realized at the same instant that I’d just

turned my back on him. By the time that had penetrated my brain, he had

my arm wrapped up the wrong way. I had a choice: move, and spend the

next two months with my arm in a sling, or not move. I chose not to

move.


My tongue still worked. “Good to see you again, Thistlehead. First you get me in trouble—now this.”


“You got your own self in trouble. Now I’m going to make sure you don’t do it again.”


“Is this how they do things in the New Circle?”


“You shouldn’t even try to speak of how Eliger came out until you know what’s going on.”


“Well, if you’ll let go of me so I can get

up to the starhenge, my next step will be the Refectory where I’ll get

all the latest.”


“Look,” he said, and

levered me around so that I could see back the way we had come. A hush

had fallen over the stairs. I was half afraid we’d been seen. But then

I saw a procession of black-clad figures in tall hats on their way up. They passed into the chasm above and began to clang on the ironwork.


“Huh,” I said, “no wonder it’s so clean up there.”


“You’ve been up there!?” Lio was so startled that he tightened his grip on me in a way that hurt.


“Let go! I promise I won’t go any farther up,” I said.


Lio released my arm. I slowly and judiciously got it arranged in a more human position before standing up to face him.


“What did you see?” Lio wanted to know.


“Nothing yet, but there’s a tablet up there I have to retrieve that might—might—give us a hint.”


He considered it. “That will be a challenging operation.”


“Is that a promise, Lio?”


“Just an observation.”


“Do those Ita go up there on some kind of a predictable schedule?”


Lio parted his lips to answer, then got a

shrewd look on his face and said, “I’m not going to tell you that.”

Then something occurred to him. “Look, I’m late.”


“Since when do you care about that?”


“A lot has changed. I have to go. Now. Talk to you later, okay?”


“Lio!”


He turned to look back at me. “What!?”


“Who was Fraa Paphlagon?”


“He taught Fraa Orolo half of what he knew.”


“Who taught him the other half?” I asked,

but Lio was already gone. For a minute I stood there listening to the

upward progress of the Ita, wondering whether they checked the

equipment for tablets. Wondering where I could get myself an Ita

disguise.


Then my stomach growled. As if it were wired directly to my feet, I headed for the Refectory.





It had been ten years and a couple of

months since I had watched a moving picture, but I could still remember

a kind of scene where a spaceman walks into a starport bar, or a steppe

rider into a dusty saloon, and all goes silent for a few moments. That was how it was when I entered the Refectory.


I had arrived early—a mistake, since it

gave me no way of controlling who I would sit with. A few of the

Edharians had come early and staked out tables, but they glanced away

from me when I tried to catch their eye. I got in the queue behind a

couple of Edharian cosmographers, but they turned their backs on me and

put on a show of discussing, with great intensity, some new proof that

they had found in the ten years’ worth of books and journals that had

been dumped on the threshold of the library at Apert.


It was the Reformed Old Faanians’ night to

serve dinner. Arsibalt gave me an extra dollop of stew and shook my

hand—the first warm greeting I had received. We agreed to talk later.

He seemed happy.


I decided to sit down at an empty table and

see what happened. Within a few minutes, fraas and suurs of the New

Circle began to cluster around me, and each had some jovial remark to

throw my way about my time in the cell.


After a quarter of an hour, Fraa Corlandin

showed up cradling something old, dark, and crusty, like a mummified

infant. He set it down on the table and peeled off some wrappings. It

was an ancient firkin of wine. “From our chapterhouse to you, Fraa

Erasmas,” he announced, in lieu of a greeting. “One who has endured

extraordinary penance deserves an extraordinary libation. This won’t

give you those weeks back. But it will help you forget everything about

the Book!”


Corlandin was being a little bit clever. I

was glad of it. Given his liaison with Suur Trestanas—which I assumed

was still going on—this moment was bound to be awkward. The wine was

both a kind gesture and a way of sliding past that awkwardness. Though

as he fussed with the stopper I felt a little uneasy. Was this also

meant to be a celebration of my joining their order?


Fraa Corlandin seemed to be reading my mind. “This is strictly to celebrate your freedom—not to encroach on it!” he said.


Someone else had fetched a wooden case and opened it to reveal a matched set of silver thimbles, each engraved with the crest of

the New Circle. A fraa and a suur plucked these one by one from their

velvet-lined niches and polished them with their bolts. Corlandin

busied himself with the stopper, a brittle contraption of clay and

beeswax, difficult to remove without shattering it and contaminating

the wine. Just to watch Fraa Corlandin was to feel a link to a time

when concents had been richer, classier, more well-endowed, and—though

this made no sense at all—somehow older than they were now.


The cask was obviously made of Vrone oak,

which meant that the wine inside of it had been made, in some other

concent, from the juice of the library grape, and sent here to age.


The library grape had been sequenced by the

avout of the Concent of the Lower Vrone in the days before the Second

Sack. Every cell carried in its nucleus the genetic sequences, not just

of a single species, but of every naturally occurring species of grape

that the Vrone avout had ever heard of—and if those people hadn’t heard

of a grape, it wasn’t worth knowing about. In addition, it carried

excerpts from the genetic sequences of thousands of different berries,

fruits, flowers, and herbs: just those snatches of data that, when

invoked by the biochemical messaging system of the host cell, produced

flavorful molecules. Each nucleus was an archive, vaster than the Great

Library of Baz, storing codes for shaping almost every molecule nature

had ever produced that left an impression on the human olfactory system.


A given vine could not express all of those

genes at once—it could not be a hundred different species of grape at

the same time—so it “decided” which of those genes to express—what

grape to be, and what flavors to borrow—based on some impossibly murky

and ambiguous data-gathering and decision-making process that the Vrone

avout had hand-coded into its proteins. No nuance of sun, soil,

weather, or wind was too subtle for the library grape to take into

account. Nothing that the cultivator did, or failed to do, went

undetected or failed to have its consequences in the flavor of the

juice. The library grape was legendary for its skill in penetrating the

subterfuges of winemakers who were so arrogant as to believe they could

trick it into being the same grape two seasons in a row. The

only people who had ever really understood it had been lined up against

a wall and shot during the Second Sack. Many modern winemakers chose to

play it safe and use old-fashioned grapes. Developing a fruitful

relationship with the library grape was left to fanatics like Fraa

Orolo, who had made it his avocation. Of course, library grapes hated

the conditions at Saunt Edhar, and were still reacting to an incident

fifty years ago when Orolo’s predecessor had pruned the vines

incorrectly, poisoning the soil with bad memories encoded in

pheromones. The grapes chose to grow up small, pale, and bitter. The

resulting wine was an acquired taste, and we didn’t even try to sell it.


We had better luck with trees and casks.

For while the Vrone avout had been busy creating the library grape,

their fraas and suurs a few miles up the valley at the rustic math of

Upper Vrone Forest had been at similar pains with the trees that were

traditionally fashioned into casks. The cells of the Vrone oak’s

heart-wood—still half alive, even after the tree had been chopped down,

sliced into staves, and bound into a cask—sampled the molecules

drifting around in the wine, releasing some, making others percolate

outward until they precipitated on the outside of the cask as fragrant

sheens, rinds, and encrustations. This wood was as choosy about the

conditions under which it was stored as the library grape was about

weather and soil, so a winemaker who treated the casks poorly, and

didn’t provide them with the stimulation they liked, would be punished

by finding them crusted and oozing with all the most desirable resins,

sugars, and tannins, with nothing left on the inside of the cask but

cleaning solvent. The wood liked the same range of temperature and

humidity as humans, and its cellular structure was responsive to

vibrations. The casks, like musical instruments, resonated in sympathy

with the human voice, and so wine that had been stored in a vault used

for choir rehearsals would taste different from that stashed along the

walls of a dining room. The climate at Saunt Edhar’s was well suited to

growing Vrone oaks. Better yet, we were somewhat renowned for our

prowess with aging. Casks felt comfortable in our Refectory and our

Mynster, and responded warmly to all

the talking and singing. Less fortunate concents shipped their casks

here to age. We ended up with some pretty good stuff. We weren’t really

supposed to drink it, but every so often we would cheat a little.


Corlandin got the stopper out without

incident and decanted the wine into a blown-quartz laboratory flask,

and from there served it out into the thimbles. The first of these was

passed to me, but I knew better than to drink from it right away.

Everyone at the table had to get one—last of all Fraa Corlandin, who

raised his, looked me in the eye, and said, “To Fraa Erasmas, on the

occasion of his freedom—long may it last, richly may he enjoy it,

wisely may he use it.”


Then clinking all around. I was uneasy about the “wisely may he use it” part, but I drank anyway.


The stuff was tremendous, like drinking

your favorite book. The others had all stood for the toast. Now they

sat down, allowing me to see the rest of the Refectory. Some tables

were watching the toast and hoisting tankards of whatever they were

drinking. Others were involved in their own conversations. Standing

around the edges of the place, mostly alone, were the ones I most

wanted to talk to: Orolo, Jesry, Tulia, and Haligastreme.


Dinner became quite long, and not very ascetic. They kept refilling my glass. I felt very well taken care of.


“Someone get him to his pallet,” I heard a fraa saying, “he’s finished.”


Hands were under my arms, helping me to my feet. I let them escort me as far as the Cloister before I shook them off.


My time in the Mynster had made me well

aware of which parts of the concent could not be seen from the Warden

Regulant’s windows. I made several orbits around the Cloister, just to

clear my head, and then went into the garden and sat down on a bench

that was shielded from view.


“Are you even a sentient being at this

point or should I wait until the morning?” a voice asked. I looked over

to discover that Tulia had joined me. I was pretty sure she had woken

me up.


“Please,” I said, and patted the bench next to me. Tulia sat down but kept her distance, the better to get a thigh up on the bench and turn sideways to face me.


“I’m glad you’re out,” she said, “a lot has been going on.”


“So I gathered,” I said. “Is there any way to sum it up quickly?”


“Something’s…funny with Orolo. No one knows what.”


“Come on! The starhenge has been locked! What else is there to know?”


“That’s obvious,” she said, a little bit annoyed at my tone, “but no one knows why. We think Orolo knows, but he’s not telling.”


“Okay. Sorry.”


“It has been shaping Eliger. Some fids who were expected to join the Edharians have gone to other orders.”


“I noticed that. Why? What’s the logic?”


“I’m not so sure it is

logical. Until Apert, all the fids knew exactly what they wanted to do.

Then so many things happened at once: the Inquisitors. Your penance.

The closure of the starhenge. Fraa Paphlagon’s Evocation. It shook

people up—made them rethink it.”


“Rethink it how?”


“It got everyone thinking politically. They

made decisions they might not have done otherwise. For one thing, it

cast doubt on the wisdom of joining the Edharians.”


“You mean because they are on the outs politically?”


“They’re always on the

outs politically. But seeing what happened to you, people got to

thinking that it was unwise to turn one’s back on that side of the

concent.”


“I’m starting to get it,” I said. “So a guy like Arsibalt, by going to the Reformed Old Faanians, who want him desperately—”


“Can become important in the Reformed Old Faanians, right away.”


“I noticed he was serving the main course at supper.” That was an honor normally reserved for senior fraas.


“He could become the FAE. Or a hierarch.

Maybe even Primate. And he could fight some of the idiotic things that

have been going on lately.”


“So the ones who have been going to the Edharians—”




“Are the best of the best.”


“Like Jesry.”


“Exactly.”


“We’re going to screen you Edharians,

protect you on the political front, so that you can be free to do what

you do best,” I said.


“Uh, that’s the gist of it—but who’s this ‘you’ and ‘we’ you’re talking about?”


“Clearly where this is going is that tomorrow you join the Edharians and I join the New Circle.”


“That’s what everyone expects. It’s not what is going to happen, Raz.”


“You’ve been—holding a space for me in the Edharians?”


“That’s an awfully blunt way of putting it.”


“I can’t believe the Edharians want me that badly.”


“They don’t.”


“What!?”


“If they held a secret ballot, well, it’s

not clear that they would vote for you over me. I’m sorry, Raz, but I

have to be honest. A lot of the suurs in particular want me to join

them.”


“Why don’t we both join them?”


“It is considered impossible. I don’t know

the particulars—but some sort of deal has been made between Corlandin

and Haligastreme. It’s decided.”


“If the Edharians don’t want me, why are we

even discussing this?” I asked. “Did you see that keg the New Circle

tapped for me? They want me bad. So why don’t I join them and you go to

the loving embrace of the suurs of the Edharian chapter?”


“Because it’s not what Orolo wants. He says he needs you as part of his team.”


That affected me so much that between it and the wine I almost cried. I sat quietly for a while.


“Well,” I said, “Orolo doesn’t know everything about what is going on.”


“What are you talking about?”


I looked around. The Cloister was too small and quiet for my taste. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said.




I said no more until we were on the other

side of the river, strolling in the moon-shadow of the wall, and then I

told her about what I had done during Voco.


“Well!” she said, after a long silence. “That settles that, anyway.”


“What settles what?”


“You have to go to the Edharians.”


“Tulia, first of all, no one knows besides

you and Lio. Second, I’ll probably never come up with a way to retrieve

the tablet. Third, it’s probably not going to contain any useful

information!”


“Details,” she scoffed. “You’re missing my whole point. What you did shows that Orolo is correct. You do belong on his team.”


“What about you? Where do you belong, Tulia?”


She wasn’t comfortable with that. I had to ask her again.


“What happened, on Tenth Night, happened. All of us made decisions. Maybe later we’ll think better of them.”


“And to what extent is this seen as my fault?”


“Who cares?”


“I care. I wish I could have come down out of that cell to talk people out of it.”


“I don’t like the way you are thinking

about this at all,” she said. “It’s like the rest of us became adults

while you were up there—and you didn’t.”


That one made me stop in my tracks and blow

air for a while. Tulia kept going for a couple of paces, then rounded

on me. “To what extent is this seen as my fault?” she said, mimicking

me. “Who cares? It’s done. It’s over.”


“I care because it has a big effect on how I am seen by the rest of the Edharians—”


“Stop caring,” she said, “or at least stop talking about it.”


“Okay,” I said, “sorry, but I’ve always thought of you as a person others could talk to about those kinds of feelings—”


“You think I want to spend the rest of my life being that person? For everyone in the concent?”


“Apparently you don’t.”


“All right. We’re done. You go find Haligastreme. I’ll find Corlandin. We’ll tell them that we are joining their respective orders tomorrow.”


“Okay,” I said with a fake-nonchalant

shrug, and turned around to walk back toward the bridge. Tulia caught

up with me and fell in step alongside. I was silent for a while—a

little bit distracted by the prospect of joining a chapter that didn’t

want me, many of whose members might blame me for taking Tulia’s place.


Some part of me wanted to hate Tulia for

being so hard on me. But by the time we had crossed over the bridge,

that voice, I’m happy to say, had been silenced. I was to hear it again

from time to time in the future, but I would do my best to ignore it. I

was scared to death to be joining the Edharians under these

circumstances. But to forge ahead and just do it without leaning on

Tulia’s, or anyone else’s, shoulder felt better—felt right. As when you

just know you’re on the right track with a theorical proof, and all the

rest is details. A splinter of the beauty Orolo had spoken of was

reaching out toward me through the dark, and I would follow it like a

road.


“Do you want to talk to Orolo?” was Fraa

Haligastreme’s question, after I broke the news to him. He wasn’t

surprised. He wasn’t overjoyed. He wasn’t anything except tired. Just

looking at his face in the candlelight of the Old Chapterhouse told me

how exhausting the last few weeks had been for him.


I considered it. Talking to Orolo seemed

like such an obvious thing to do, and yet I’d made no move to do it.

Considering how the conversation had gone with Tulia, I was no longer

inclined to stay up half the night telling people about my feelings.


“Where is he?”


“I believe he is in the meadow with Jesry conducting naked-eye observations.”


“Then I don’t think I’ll disturb them,” I said.


Haligastreme seemed to draw energy from my words. The fid is beginning to act his age.

“Tulia seems to think that he wants me…here,” I said, and looked around

the Old Chapterhouse: just a wide spot in the Cloister gallery, rarely

used except for ceremonial purposes—but still the heart of the

worldwide Order, where Saunt Edhar himself had once paced to and fro

developing his theorics.




“Tulia is correct,” Haligastreme said.


“Then here is where I want to be, even if the welcome is lukewarm.”


“If it seems that way to you, it’s largely out of concern for your own well-being,” he said.


“I’m not sure I believe that.”


“All right,” he said, a bit irritated, “maybe some don’t want you for other reasons. You used the word lukewarm, not chilly or hostile. I refer now only to those who are lukewarm.”


“Are you one of those?”


“Yes. We, the lukewarm, are only concerned—”


“That I won’t be able to keep up.”


“Exactly.”


“Well, even if that’s how it works out, you can always come to me if you need to know some digits of pi.”


Haligastreme did me the courtesy of chuckling.


“Look,” I said, “I know you’re worried about this. I’ll make it work. I owe that much to Arsibalt and Lio and Tulia.”


“How so?”


“They’ve sacrificed something to make the

concent work better in the future. Maybe with the result that the next

generation of hierarchs will be better than what we have now—and will

leave the Edharians to work in peace.”


“Unless,” said Fraa Haligastreme, “being hierarchs changes them.”













Part 4


ANATHEM



















Six

weeks after I joined the Edharian order, I became hopelessly stuck on a

problem that one of Orolo’s knee-huggers had set for me as a way of

letting me know that I didn’t really understand what it meant for two

hypersurfaces to be tangent. I went out for a stroll. Without really

thinking about it I crossed the frozen river and wandered into the

stand of page trees that grew on the rise between the Decade Gate and

the Century Gate.


Despite the best efforts of the sequencers

who had brought these trees into being, only one leaf in ten was

high-grade page material, suitable for a typical quarto-sized book. The

most common flaw was smallness or irregularity, such that when placed

in the cutting-frame, it would not make a rectangle. That was the case

for about four out of ten leaves—more during cold or dry years, fewer

if the growing season had been favorable. Holes gnawed by insects, or

thick veins that made it difficult to write on the underside, might

render a leaf unusable save as compost. These flaws were especially

common in leaves that grew near the ground. The best yield was to be

found in the middle branches, not too far out from the trunk. The

arbortects had given them stout boughs in the midsection, easy for

young ones to clamber on. Every autumn when I’d been a fid, I’d spent a

week up on those branches, picking the best leaves and skimming them

down to older avout who stacked them in baskets. Later in the day we’d

tie them by their stems to lines stretched from tree to tree, and let

them dry as the weather turned colder. After the first killing frost we

would bring them indoors, stack them, and pile on tons of flat rocks.

It took about a century for them to age properly. So once we’d gotten

the current year’s crop under stone we’d go back and find similar piles

that had been made about a hundred

years earlier, and, if they seemed ready, take the rocks off and peel

the leaves apart. The good ones we stacked in the cutting-frames and

made into blank pages for distribution to the concent or for binding

into books.


I’d rarely gone into the coppice after

harvest time. To walk through it in this season was to be reminded that

we only collected a small fraction of its leaves. The rest curled up

and fell off. All those blank pages made an uproar as I sloshed through

them, searching for one especially grand tree I’d always loved to

climb. My memory played me false and I wandered lost for a few minutes.

When I finally found it, I couldn’t resist climbing up to its lower

boughs. When I’d done this as a boy I’d imagined myself deep in the

middle of a vast forest, which was much more romantic than being walled

up in a math surrounded by casinos and tire stores. But now, with the

branches bare, it was plain that I was close to the eastern limit of

the coppice. The ivy-snarled ruin of Shuf’s Dowment was in plain sight.

I felt foolish, thinking Arsibalt must have seen me from a window, so I

let myself to the ground and began walking that way. Arsibalt now spent

most of his days there. He had been pestering me to come out and visit

him, and I’d been making excuses. I couldn’t slink away now.


I had to get over a low hedge that bounded

the coppice. Shoving the snarled foliage out of my way I felt cold

stone against my hand, pain an instant later. This was actually a stone

wall that had become a trellis for whatever would grow on it. I vaulted

over it and spent some time yanking my bolt and chord free from

hedge-plants. I was standing on someone’s tangle, brown and shriveled

now. The black earth was gouged where people had been digging up the

last potatoes of the season. Going over the wall made me feel as though

I were trespassing. To elicit such feelings was probably why Shuf’s

Lineage had put it there in the first place. And that explained why

those who’d found themselves on the wrong side of that wall had

eventually become fed up with it and broken the lineage. Tearing the

wall down was too much trouble and so that work had been left to ants

and ivy. The Reformed Old Faanians had more recently got in the habit

of using this place as a retreat, and when no one had objected, they’d slowly begun to make themselves more comfortable there.


Gardan’s Steelyard:

A rule of thumb attributed to Fraa Gardan (-1110 to-1063), stating

that, when one is comparing two hypotheses, they should be placed on

the arms of a metaphorical steelyard (a kind of primitive scale,

consisting of an arm free to pivot around a central fulcrum) and

preference given to the one that “rises higher,” presumably because it

weighs less; the upshot being that simpler, more “lightweight”

hypotheses are preferable to those that are “heavier,” i.e., more

complex. Also referred to as Saunt Gardan’s Steelyard or simply the

Steelyard.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Very comfortable, as I

saw when I came up the steps and pushed the door open (again fighting

the sense that I was a trespasser). ROF carpenters had been at work

furnishing the stone shell with wooden floors and paneled walls.

Actually “cabinet-makers” was a fairer description than “carpenters”

for avout who chose woodworking as their avocation, and so the place

was all fitted and joined to tolerances that Cord might have envied. It

was mostly one great cubical room, ten paces square, and lined with

books. To my right a fire burned on a hearth, to my left, clear

northern sky-light rushed in through a bay window so large that it

formed a sort of alcove, as broad, round, and comfortable as Arsibalt,

who sat in the middle of it reading a book so ancient he had to handle

the pages with tongs. So he had not seen me tree-climbing after all. I

could have slunk away. But now I was glad I hadn’t. It was good to see

him here.


“You could be Shuf himself,” I said.


“Ssh,” he commanded, and looked about the

place. “People will be cross if you talk that way. Oh, all the orders

have their special hideaways. Islands of luxury that must make Saunt

Cartas roll over in her chalcedony sarcophagus.”




“Pretty luxurious, that, come to think of it—”


“Come off it, it’s cold as hell in the winter.”


“Hence the expression ‘cold as Cartas’s—’”


“Ssh,” he said again.


“You know, Arsibalt, if the Edharian chapter has a luxurious hideaway, they’ve yet to show it to me.”


“They are the odd ones out,” he said,

rolling his eyes. He looked me up and down. “Perhaps when you have

attained more seniority—”


“Well, what are you, at the age of nineteen? The FAE of the Reformed Old Faanians?”


“The chapter and I have become most comfortable with each other in, yes, a short time. They support my project.”


“What—reconciling us with the Deolaters?”


“Some of the Reformed Old Faanians even believe in God.”


“Do you, Arsibalt? All right, all right,” I

added, for he was getting ready to shush me for a third time. He

finally began to move. He took me on a little tour, showing me some of

the artifacts of the Dowment’s halcyon days: gold drinking-cups and

jeweled book-covers now preserved under glass. I accused his order of

having more of the same hidden away somewhere for drinking out of, and

he blushed.


Then, as all this discussion of utensils

had put him in mind of food, he shelved his book. We left Shuf’s

Dowment behind us and began walking back for the midday meal. We had

both skipped Provener, a luxury that was possible only because some

younger fraas had begun to spell us winding the clock a few days a week.


When we gave up altogether on

clock-winding, which would happen in two or three years, each of us

would have enough free time to settle on an avocation—something

practical that one could do to help improve life at the concent.

Between now and then, we had the luxury of trying different things just

to see how we liked them.


Fraa Orolo, for example, and his ongoing

conversation with the library grape. We were too far north. The grapes

were not happy. But we did have a south-facing slope, between the page

trees and the outer wall of the concent, where they deigned to grow.


“Beekeeping,” Arsibalt said when I asked him what he was interested in.




I laughed at the image of Arsibalt

enveloped in a cloud of bees. “I always thought you’d end up doing

indoor work,” I said, “on dead things. I thought you’d be a bookbinder.”


“At this time of year, beekeeping is

indoor work on dead things,” he pointed out. “Perhaps when the bees

come out of hibernation I won’t favor it so much. How about you, Fraa

Erasmas?”


Though Arsibalt didn’t know it, this was a

sensitive subject. There was another reason you needed an avocation: so

that if you turned out to be incapable of doing anything else, you

could give up on books and chalk halls and dialog and work as a sort of

laborer for the rest of your life. It was called “falling back.” There

were plenty of avout like that, making food, brewing beer, and carving

stone, and it was no secret who they were.


“You can pick some funny thing like

beekeeping,” I pointed out, “and it’ll never be anything more than an

eccentric hobby—because you’ll never need to fall back. Not unless the

ROF suddenly recruits a whole lot of geniuses. For me the odds of

falling back are a little greater and I need to pick something I could

actually do for eighty years without going crazy.”


Arsibalt now blew an opportunity to assure

me that I was really smart and that this would never happen. I didn’t

mind. After my rough conversation with Tulia six weeks ago I was

spending less time agonizing and more time trying to get things

accomplished. “There are some opportunities,” I told him, “making the

instruments on the starhenge work the way they’re supposed to.”


“Those opportunities would be much brighter

if you in fact had access to the starhenge,” he pointed out. It was

safe for him to talk this way since we were sloshing through leaves and

no one was near us, unless Suur Trestanas was hiding in a leaf pile

with a hand cupped to her ear.


I stopped and raised my chin.


“Are you expecting an Inquisitor to fall out of a tree?” Arsibalt asked me.


“No, just looking at it,” I said, referring

to the starhenge. From here, on this little rise, we had a good view of

it. But nestled as we were in the coppice, we’d be difficult to make

out from the Mynster and so I felt

comfortable taking a long look. The twin telescopes of Saunts Mithra

and Mylax were in the same position where they had rested during the

three months or so we’d been locked out: slewed around to aim at the

northern sky.


“I was thinking that if Orolo was using the

M & M to look at something they didn’t want him to see, then we

might get some clues from where he pointed it the last day he had

access to it. Maybe he even took some pictures that night, yet to be

seen.”


“Can you draw any conclusions from where the M & M is pointed now?” Arsibalt asked.


“Only that Orolo wanted to look at something above the pole.”


“And what is above the pole? Other than the pole star?”


“That’s just it,” I said. “Nothing.”


“What do you mean? There must be something.”


“But it messes up my hypothesis.”


“What, pray tell, is that? And can you explain it as we walk toward a place that is warm and has food?”


I started moving my feet again, and talked

to the back of Arsibalt’s head as I let him break trail through the

leaves. “I had been guessing it was a rock.”


“Meaning an asteroid,” he said.


“Yeah. But rocks don’t come over the pole.”


“How can you say such a thing? Don’t they come from all directions?”


“Yeah, but they mostly have low

inclinations—they are in the same plane as the planets. So you’d look

near the ecliptic, which is what we call that plane.”


“But that is a statistical argument,” he pointed out. “It could simply be an unusual rock.”


“It fails the Steelyard.”


“Saunt Gardan’s Steelyard is a useful

guideline. All sorts of real things fail it,” Arsibalt pointed out,

“including you and me.”





Orolo sat with us. It was the first time

I’d talked to him in ages. He sat where he could gaze out a window at

the mountains, in much the same mood

as I’d been looking at the starhenge a few minutes earlier. It was a

clear day, and the peaks were all standing out, seeming as if they were

close enough to throw stones at. “I wonder what the seeing will be like

tonight on top of Bly’s Butte,” he sighed. “Better than here, anyway!”


“Is that the one where the slines ate Saunt Bly’s liver?” I asked.


“The same.”


“Is that around here? I thought it was on another continent or something.”


“Oh no. Bly was a Saunt Edhar man! You can look it up in the Chronicle—we have all of his relics salted away somewhere.”


“Do you really mean to suggest that there’s an observatory there? Or are you just pulling my leg?”


Orolo shrugged. “I’ve no idea. Estemard built a telescope there, after he renounced his vow and stormed out the Day Gate.”


“And Estemard is—”


“One of my two teachers.”


“Paphlagon being the other?”


“Yes. They both got fed up with this place

at about the same time. Estemard left, Paphlagon went into the upper

labyrinth one night after supper and then I didn’t see him for a

quarter of a century, until—well—you know.” A thought occurred to him.

“What were you doing during Paphlagon’s Evocation? At the time, you were still a guest of Autipete.”


Autipete was a figure of ancient mythology

who had crept up on her father as he lay sleeping and put out his eyes.

I had never heard Suur Trestanas referred to this way. I bit my lip and

shook my head in dismay as Arsibalt blew soup out his nostrils. “That

is not fair,” I said, “she’s only following orders.”


Orolo squared off to plane me. “You know,

during the Third Harbinger it was quite common for those who had

committed terrible crimes to say—”


“That they were just following orders, we all know that.”


“Fraa Erasmas is suffering from Saunt Alvar’s Syndrome,” Arsibalt said.


“Those people during the Third Harbinger were shoving children into

furnaces with bulldozers,” I said. “And as far as Saunt Alvar

goes—well, he was the sole survivor of his concent in the Third Sack

and was held captive for three decades. Locking the door to the

telescopes for a few weeks doesn’t really measure up, does it?”


Orolo conceded the point with a wink. “My question stands. What did you do during Voco?”


Of course I’d have loved to tell him. So I

did—but I made it into a joke. “While no one was looking, I ran up to

the starhenge to make observations. Unfortunately, the sun was out.”


“That damned luminous orb!” Orolo spat.

Then something crossed his mind. “But you know that our equipment can

see some things during the daytime, if they are very bright.”


Since Orolo had decided to play along with

my joke, it would not have been sporting for me to drop it at this

point. “Unfortunately the M & M was pointed in the wrong

direction,” I said. “I didn’t have time to slew it around.”


“The wrong direction for what?” Orolo asked.


“For looking at anything bright—such as a planet or…” I faltered.


Jesry sat down at an empty table nearby,

facing me and Orolo, and remained still, ignoring his food. If he’d

been a wolf his ears would have been erect and swiveled toward us.


Orolo said, “Would it be too much trouble for you to bring your sentence to a decent conclusion?”


Arsibalt looked as rattled as I felt. This

had started as a joke. Now, Fraa Orolo was trying to get at something

serious—but we couldn’t make out what.


“Aside from supernovae, very bright objects

tend to be nearby—within the solar system—and things in the solar

system are, by and large, confined to the plane of the ecliptic. So,

Fraa Orolo, in this absurd fantasy of me running to the starhenge to

look at the sky in broad daylight, I’d have to slew the M & M from

its current polar orientation to the plane of the ecliptic in order to

have a chance of actually seeing anything.”


“I just want your absurd fantasy to be internally consistent,” Fraa Orolo explained.




“Well, are you happy with it now?”


He shrugged. “Your point is well reasoned. But don’t be too dismissive of the poles. Many things converge there.”


“Like what? Lines of longitude?” I scoffed.


Arsibalt, in similar spirit: “Migratory birds?”


Jesry: “Compass needles?”


Then a higher-pitched voice broke in. “Polar orbits.”


We turned and saw Barb coming toward us

with a tray of food. He must have been listening with one ear as he

stood in line. Now he was giving the answer to the riddle in a

pre-adolescent voice that could have been heard from Bly’s Butte. It

was such an odd thing to say that it had turned heads all over the

Refectory. “By definition,” he continued, in the singsong voice he used

when he was rattling off something he had memorized from a book, “a

satellite in a polar orbit must cross over each of the poles during

each revolution around Arbre.”


Orolo stuffed a piece of gravy-sopped bread

into his mouth to hide his amusement. Barb was now standing right next

to me with his tray a few inches from my ear, but he made no move to

sit down.


I had the feeling I was being watched. I

looked over at Fraa Corlandin a few tables distant, just in the act of

glancing away. But he could still hear Barb: “A telescope aimed north

would have a high probability of detecting—”


I yanked down on a loose fold of his bolt.

One arm dropped. All the food slid to that end of his tray and threw it

out of balance. He lost control and it all avalanched to the floor.


All heads turned our way. Barb stood amazed. “My arm was acted on by a force of unknown origin!” he stated.


“Terribly sorry, it was my fault,” I said.

Barb was fascinated by the mess on the floor. Knowing by now how his

mind worked, I rose, squared off in front of him, and put my hands on

his shoulders. “Barb, look at me,” I said.


He looked at me.


“This was my fault. I got tangled up with your bolt.”


“You should clean it up, if it was your fault,” he said matter-of-factly.




“I agree and that is what I shall do now,”

I said. I went off to fetch a bucket. Behind me I could hear Jesry

asking Barb a question about conic sections.


Calca: (1) In Proto-and

Old Orth, chalk or any other such substance used to make marks on hard

surfaces. (2) In Middle and later Orth, a calculation, esp. one that

consumes a large amount of chalk because of its tedious and detailed

nature. (3) In Praxic and later Orth, an explanation, definition, or

lesson that is instrumental in developing some larger theme, but that,

because of its overly technical, long-winded, or recondite nature, has

been moved aside from the main body of the dialog and encapsulated in a

footnote or appendix so as not to divert attention from the main line

of the argument.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





One form of drudgery led straight into

another as Suur Ala helpfully reminded me that it was my day to clean

up the kitchen following the midday meal. I hadn’t been at it for long

before I noticed that Barb was in there with me, just following me

around, making no move to help. Which irked me at first: yet another

case of his almost perfect social cluelessness. But once I got over

that, I decided it was better that way. Some things were easier to do

alone. Communicating and coordinating with others was often more

trouble than it was worth. Many tried to help anyway because they

thought it was the polite thing to do, or because it was an avenue for

social bonding. Barb’s thinking wasn’t muddled by any such

considerations. Instead, he talked to me, which in my view was

preferable to being “helped.”


“Orbits are about as much fun as what you

are doing,” he observed gravely, watching me get down on my knees and

reach elbow-deep into a grease-choked drain.


“I gather that Grandsuur Ylma has been teaching you about such

things,” I grunted. Drain-cleaning made it easy to hide my chagrin. I

hadn’t learned about orbits until my second year. This was Barb’s

second month.


“A lot of xs and ys and zs!” he exclaimed, which forced a laugh out of me.


“Yes,” I said, “quite a few.”


“You want to know what’s stupid?”


“Sure, Barb. Lay it on me,” I said, hauling

a fistful of vegetable trimmings up out of the drain against the

back-pressure of twenty gallons of dammed-up dishwater. The drain

gargled and began to empty.


“Any sline could stand out on the meadow at night and see some satellites in polar orbits, and other

satellites in orbits around the equator, and know that those were two

different kinds of orbits!” he exclaimed. “But if you work out the xs

and ys and zs of it, guess what?”


“What?”


“They just look like a lot of xs and ys and

zs, and it is not as obvious that some are polar and some are

equatorial as it would be to any old dumb sline looking up into the

sky!”


“Worse than that,” I pointed out, “staring at the xs and ys and zs doesn’t even tell you that they are orbits.”


“What do you mean?”


“An orbit is a stationary, stable thing,” I

said. “The satellite’s moving all the time, of course, but always in

the same way. But that kind of stability is in no way shown by the xs

and ys and zs.”


“Yeah! It’s like knowing all of the

theorics only makes us stupider!” he laughed excitedly, and cast a

theatrical glance over his shoulder, as if we were up to something

incredibly mischievous.


“Ylma is having you work it out in the most

gruesome way possible,” I said, “using Saunt Lesper’s Coordinates, so

that when she teaches you how it’s really done, it’ll seem that much easier.”


Barb was dumbfounded. I went on, “Like

hitting yourself in the head with a hammer—it feels so good when you

stop.” This was the oldest joke in the world, but Barb hadn’t heard it

before, and he became so amused that he got physically excited and had

to run back and forth across the

kitchen several times to flame off energy. A few weeks ago I would have

been alarmed by this and would have tried to calm him down, but now I

was used to it, and knew that if I approached him physically things

would get much worse.


“What’s the right way to do it?”


“Orbital elements,” I said. “Six numbers that tell you everything that can be known about how a satellite is moving.”


“But I already have those six numbers.”


“What are they?” I asked, testing him.


“The satellite’s position on Saunt Lesper’s

x, y, and z axes. That’s three numbers. And its velocity along each one

of those axes. That’s three more. Six numbers.”


“But as you pointed out you can look at those six numbers and still not be able to visualize the orbit, or even know that it is

an orbit. What I am telling you is that with some more theorics you can

turn them into a different list of six numbers, the orbital elements,

that are infinitely easier to work with, in that you can glance at them

and know right away whether the orbit goes over the poles or around the

equator.”


“Why didn’t Grandsuur Ylma tell me that to begin with?”


I couldn’t tell him, because you learn too damned fast. But if I tried to be overly diplomatic, Barb would see through it and plane me.


Then I had an upsight: it was my responsibility, just as much as it was Ylma’s, to teach fids the right stuff at the right time.


“You are now ready to stop working in Saunt

Lesper’s Coordinates,” I announced, “and begin working in other kinds

of spaces, the way real, grown-up theors do.”


“Is this like parallel dimensions?” said

Barb, who apparently had been watching the same kinds of speelies as I

had before coming here.


“No. These spaces I’m talking about aren’t

like physical spaces that you can measure with a ruler and move around

in. They are abstract theorical spaces that follow different rules,

called action principles. The space that cosmographers like to use has

six dimensions: one for each of the orbital elements. But that’s a

special-purpose tool, only used in that discipline. A more general one

was developed early in the Praxic Age by Saunt Hemn…” And I went on to give Barb a calca* about Hemn spaces, or configuration spaces, which Hemn had invented when he, like Barb, had become sick of xs and ys and zs.


to go Hundred:

(Derogatory slang) To lose one’s mind, to become mentally unsound, to

stray irredeemably from the path of theorics. The expression can be

traced to the Third Centennial Apert, when the gates of several

Hundreder maths opened to reveal startling outcomes, e.g.: at Saunt

Rambalf’s, a mass suicide that had taken place only moments earlier. At

Saunt Terramore’s, nothing at all—not even human remains. At Saunt

Byadin’s, a previously unheard-of religious sect calling themselves the

Matarrhites (still in existence). At Saunt Lesper’s, no humans, but a

previously undiscovered species of tree-dwelling higher primates. At

Saunt Phendra’s, a crude nuclear reactor in a system of subterranean

catacombs. These and other mishaps prompted the creation of the

Inquisition and the institution of hierarchs in their modern forms,

including Wardens Regulant with power to inspect and impose discipline

in all maths.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





I caught up with Fraa Orolo late in the

afternoon as he was coming out of a chalk hall, and we stood among

page-stuffed pigeonholes and chatted. I knew better than to ask him

what he had been getting at earlier with his weird discussion of

daytime cosmography. Once he had made up his mind to teach us in that

mode, there was no way to get him to say the answer straight out.

Anyway, I was more worried about the things he had been referring to

earlier. “Listen, you’re not thinking of leaving, are you?”




He got a slightly amused look but said nothing.


“I always worried you were going to go into

the labyrinth and become a Hundreder. That would be bad enough. But the

way you were talking I got the idea you were going to go become a Feral

like Estemard.”


This was Orolo’s idea of an answer: “What does it mean that you worry so much?”


I sighed.


“Describe worrying,” he went on.


“What!?”


“Pretend I’m someone who has never worried. I’m mystified. I don’t get it. Tell me how to worry.”


“Well…I guess the first step is to envision a sequence of events as they might play out in the future.”


“But I do that all the time. And yet I don’t worry.”


“It is a sequence of events with a bad end.”


“So, you’re worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?”


“No,” I said with a nervous chuckle.


“I don’t get it,” Orolo claimed, deadpan. “That is a sequence of events with a bad end.”


“But it’s nonsensical. There are no nerve-gas-farting pink dragons.”


“Fine,” he said, “a blue one, then.”


Jesry had wandered by and noticed that

Orolo and I were in dialog, so he approached, but not too close, and

took up a spectator’s position: hands folded in his bolt, chin down,

not making eye contact.


“It has nothing to do with the dragon’s color,” I protested. “Nerve-gas-farting dragons don’t exist.”


“How do you know?”


“One has never been seen.”


“But I have never been seen to leave the concent—yet you worry about that.”


“All right. Correction: the whole idea of

such a dragon is incoherent. There are no evolutionary precedents.

Probably no metabolic pathways

anywhere in nature that could generate nerve gas. Animals that large

can’t fly because of basic scaling laws. And so on.”


“Hmm, all sorts of reasons from biology,

chemistry, theorics…I suppose then that the slines, who know nothing of

such matters, must worry about pink nerve-gas-farting dragons all the

time?”


“You could probably talk them into worrying

about it. But no, there’s a…there’s some kind of filter that kicks in…”

I pondered it for a moment, and shot a glance at Jesry, inviting him to

join us. After a few moments he took his hands out of his cloak and

stepped forward. “If you worried about pink ones,” he pointed out,

“you’d have to worry about blue, green, black, spotted, and striped

ones. And not just nerve-gas farters but bomb droppers and fire

belchers.”


“Not just dragons but worms, giant turtles, lizards…” I added.


“And not just physical entities but gods,

spirits, and so on,” Jesry said. “As soon as you open the door wide

enough to admit pink nerve-gas-farting dragons, you have let in all of

those other possibilities as well.”


“Why not worry about all of them, then?” asked Fraa Orolo.


“I do!” claimed Arsibalt, who had seen us talking, and come over to find out what was going on.


“Fraa Erasmas,” said Orolo, “you said a

minute ago that it would be possible to talk slines into worrying about

a pink nerve-gas-farting dragon. How would you go about it?”


“Well, I’m not a Procian. But if I were, I

suppose I’d tell the slines some sort of convincing story that

explained where the dragons had come from. And at the end of it, they’d

be plenty worried. But if Jesry burst in warning them about a striped,

fire-belching turtle, why, they’d cart him off to the loony bin!”


Everyone laughed—even Jesry, who as a rule didn’t like jokes made at his expense.


“What would make your story convincing?” Orolo asked.


“Well, it’d have to be internally

consistent. And it would also have to be consistent with what every

sline already knew of the real world.”


“How so?”




Lio and Tulia were on their way to the

Refectory kitchen, where it was their turn to prepare dinner. Lio,

having heard the last few lines, chimed in: “You could claim that

shooting stars were dragon farts that had been lit on fire!”


“Very good,” said Orolo. “Then, whenever a

sline looked up and saw a shooting star, he’d think it was

corroboration for the pink dragon myth.”


“And he could refute Jesry,” Lio said, “by

saying ‘you idiot, what do striped fire-belching turtles have to do

with shooting stars?’” Everyone laughed again.


“This is straight from the later writings of Saunt Evenedric,” Arsibalt said.


Everyone got quiet. We’d thought we were

just being playful, until now. “Fraa Arsibalt is jumping ahead,” Orolo

said, in a tone of mild protest.


“Evenedric was a theor,” Jesry pointed out. “This isn’t the kind of stuff he would have written about.”


“On the contrary,” Arsibalt said, squaring off, “later in his life, after the Reconstitution, he—”


“If you don’t mind,” Orolo said.


“Of course not,” said Arsibalt.


“Restricting ourselves to nerve-gas-farting dragons, how many colors do you think we could distinguish?”


Opinions varied between eight and a hundred. Tulia thought she could distinguish more, Lio fewer.


“Say ten,” Orolo said. “Now, let us allow for striped dragons with alternating colors.”


“Then there would be a hundred combinations,” I said.


“Ninety,” Jesry corrected me. “You can’t count red/red and so on.”


“Allowing for different stripe widths,

could we get it up to a thousand distinguishable combinations?” Orolo

asked. There was general agreement that we could. “Now move on to

spots. Plaids. Combinations of spots, plaids, and stripes.”


“Hundreds of thousands! Millions!” different people were guessing.




“And we are only considering nerve-gas-farting dragons, so far!” Orolo reminded us. “What of lizards, turtles, gods—”


“Hey!” Jesry exclaimed, and shot a glance at Arsibalt. “This is becoming the kind of argument that a theor would make.”


“How so, Fraa Jesry? Where is the theorical content?”


“In the numbers,” Jesry said, “in the profusion of different scenarios.”


“Please explain.”


“Once you have opened the door to these

hypotheticals that don’t have to make internal sense, you quickly find

yourself looking at a range of possibilities that might as well be

infinitely numerous,” Jesry said. “So the mind rejects them as being

equally invalid, and doesn’t worry about them.”


“And this is true of slines as well as of Saunt Evenedric?” Arsibalt asked.


“It has to be,” Jesry said.


“So it is an intrinsic feature of human consciousness—this filtering ability.”


As Arsibalt grew more confident,

Jesry—sensing he was being drawn into a trap—became more cautious.

“Filtering ability?” he asked.


“Don’t play stupid, Jesry!” called Suur

Ala, who was also reporting for kitchen duty. “You just said yourself

that the mind rejects and doesn’t worry about the overwhelming majority

of hypothetical scenarios. If that’s not a ‘filtering ability’ I don’t

know what is!”


“Sorry!” Jesry snapped back, and looked around at me, Lio, and Arsibalt, as if he’d just been mugged, and needed witnesses.


“What then is the criterion that the mind

uses to select an infinitesimal minority of possible outcomes to worry

about?” Orolo asked.


“Plausibility.” “Possibility,” people were murmuring, but no one seemed to feel confident enough to stake a claim.


“Earlier, Fraa Erasmas mentioned that it had something to do with being able to tell a coherent story.”


“It is a Hemn space—a configuration space—argument,” I blurted, before I’d even thought about it. “That’s the connection to Evenedric the theor.”


“Can you please explain?” Orolo requested.


I wouldn’t have been able to if not for the

fact that I’d just been talking to Barb about it. “There’s no way to

get from the point in Hemn space where we are now, to one that includes

pink nerve-gas-farting dragons, following any plausible action

principle. Which is really just a technical term for there being a

coherent story joining one moment to the next. If you simply throw

action principles out the window, you’re granting the world the freedom

to wander anywhere in Hemn space, to any outcome, without constraint.

It becomes pretty meaningless. The mind—even the sline mind—knows that

there is an action principle that governs how the

world evolves from one moment to the next—that restricts our world’s

path to points that tell an internally consistent story. So it focuses

its worrying on outcomes that are more plausible, such as you leaving.”


“You’re leaving!?” Tulia exclaimed, utterly

horrified. Others who’d joined the dialog late reacted similarly. Orolo

laughed and I explained how the dialog had gotten started—and I did it

hastily, before anyone could run off and start rumors.


“I don’t think you’re wrong, Fraa Erasmas,”

said Jesry, when everyone had settled down, “but I think you have a

Steelyard problem. Bringing in Hemn space and action principles seems

like an unnecessarily heavyweight way of explaining the fact that the

mind has an instinctive nose for which outcomes are plausible enough to

worry about.”


“The point is conceded,” I said.


But Arsibalt was crestfallen—disappointed

in me for having backed down without a fight. “Remember that this came

up in connection with Saunt Evenedric,” Arsibalt said, “a theor who

spent the first half of his life working rigorous calculations having

to do with principles of action in various kinds of configuration

spaces. I don’t think he was merely speaking poetically when he

suggested that human consciousness is capable of—”


“Don’t go Hundred on us now!” Jesry snorted.


Arsibalt froze, mouth open, face turning red.




“It is sufficient for now to have broached

this topic,” Orolo decreed. “We’ll not settle it here—not on empty

stomachs, anyway!” Taking the hint, Lio, Tulia, and Ala took their

leave, headed for the kitchen. Ala shot a frosty look over her shoulder

at Jesry, then leaned in close to Tulia to make some remark. I knew

exactly what she was complaining about: Jesry had been the one who had

brought up the profusion-of-outcomes argument in the first place—but

when Arsibalt had tried to develop it, he had gotten cold feet and

backed out—even mocked Arsibalt. I tried to throw Ala a grin, but she

didn’t notice. There was too much else going on. I ended up standing

there grinning into empty space, like an idiot.


Arsibalt began to pursue Jesry across the cloister, disputing the point.


“Back to where we were,” Orolo continued.

“Why do you worry so much, Erasmas? Are you doing nothing more

productive than imagining pink nerve-gas-farting dragons? Or do you

have a particular gift for tracing possible futures through Hemn

space—tracing them, it seems, to disturbing conclusions?”


“You could help me answer that question,” I pointed out, “by telling me whether you are thinking of leaving.”


“I spent almost all of Apert extramuros,”

Orolo said with a sigh, as if he had finally been run to ground. “I was

expecting that it would be a wasteland. A cultural and intellectual

charnel house. But that’s not exactly what I found. I went to speelys.

I enjoyed them! I went to bars and got into some reasonably interesting

conversations with people. Slines. I liked them. Some were quite

interesting. And I don’t mean that in a bug-under-a-microscope way.

They have stuck in my mind—characters I’ll always remember. For a while

I was quite seduced by it. Then one evening I had an especially lively

discussion with a sline who was as bright as anyone within this

concent. And somehow, toward the end, it came out that he believed that

the sun revolved around Arbre. I was flabbergasted, you know. I tried

to disabuse him of this. He scoffed at my arguments. It made me

remember just how much careful observation and theorical work is

necessary to prove something as basic as that Arbre goes around the

sun. How indebted we are to those who went before us. And this got me to thinking that I’d been living on the right side of the gate after all.”


He paused for a moment, squinting off

toward the mountains, as if judging whether he should go on to tell me

the next part. Finally he caught me giving him an expectant look, and

made a little gesture of surrender. “When I got back, I found a packet

of old letters from Estemard,” he said.


“Really!”


“He’d been posting them from Bly’s Butte

once every year or so. Of course he knew that they’d be impounded until

the next Apert. He told me of some observations he’d made, using a

telescope he’d built up there, grinding the mirror by hand and so

forth. Good ideas. Interesting reading. Certainly not the quality of

work he’d produced here, though.”


“But he was allowed to go up there,” I said, gesturing toward the starhenge.


Orolo thought that was funny. “Of course. And I trust that we shall be re-admitted to it one day before too long.”


“Why? How? What basis do you have for that?” I had to ask, though I knew he wouldn’t answer.


“Let us say I too am gifted with the faculty that you have, for envisioning how things might play out.”


“Thanks a lot!”


“Oh, and I can also put that faculty to

work imagining what it would be like to be a Feral,” he said.

“Estemard’s letters make it plain that this is a hard way to live.”


“Do you think he made the right choice?”


“I don’t know,” Orolo said without

hesitation. “These are big questions. What does the human organism

seek? Beyond food, water, shelter, and reproduction, I mean.”


“Happiness, I guess.”


“Which is something you can get, in a

shallow way, simply by eating the food that they eat out there,” Orolo

pointed out. “And yet still the people extramuros yearn for things.

They join different kinds of arks all the time. What’s the point in

that?”


I thought about Jesry’s family and mine. “I guess people like to think that they are not only living but propagating their way of life.”


“That’s right. People have a need to feel

that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go

on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the

need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of

the other, more obvious needs. But there’s more than one way to get it.

We may not think much of the sline subculture, but you have to admit

it’s stable! Then the burgers have a completely different kind of

stability.”


“As do we.”


“As do we. And yet it didn’t work for Estemard. Perhaps he felt that living by himself on a butte would fill that need better.”


“Or maybe he just didn’t need it as much as some of us,” I suggested.


The clock chimed the hour. “You’re going to miss a fascinating talk by Suur Fretta,” Orolo said.


“That sounded kind of like changing the subject,” I pointed out.


Orolo shrugged. Subjects change. You’d best adapt.


“Well,” I said, “all right. I’ll go to her

talk. But if you’re going to leave, don’t just walk out of this place

without letting me know, please?”


“I promise to give you as much advance

knowledge as I can if such a thing is going to happen,” he said, in an

indulgent tone, as if talking to a mentally unhinged person.


“Thank you,” I said.


Then I went to Saunt Grod’s chalk hall and took a seat in the large empty space that, as usual, surrounded Barb.


Technically, we were supposed to call him

Fraa Tavener now, for that was the name he had adopted when he had

taken his vow. But some people took longer than others to grow into

their avout names. Arsibalt had been Arsibalt from day one; no one even

remembered his extramuros name any more. But people were going to be

addressing Barb as Barb for a long time.


Whatever his name, that boy was going to

save me. There was a lot he didn’t know, but nothing he was afraid to

ask about, and ask about, and ask about, until he understood it

perfectly. I decided to make him my

fid. People would think I was doing it to be charitable. Maybe some

would even think I was getting ready to fall back, and was making the

care of Barb my avocation. Let them think so! In truth it was mostly

self-interest. I had learned more theorics in six weeks, simply by

being willing to sit next to Barb, than I had in six months before

Apert. I saw now that in my desire to know theorics I had taken

shortcuts that, just like shortcuts on a map, turned out to be

longcuts. Whenever I’d seen Jesry get it quicker than me, I had misread

equations in a way that had seemed easier at the time but made things

harder—no, impossible—later. Barb didn’t have that fear that others

were getting it faster; because of how his brain was set up, he

couldn’t read that in their faces. And he did not have the same desire

to reach a distant goal. He was altogether self-centered and

short-sighted. He wanted only to understand this one problem or

equation chalked on the slate before him now, today,

whether or not it was convenient for the others around him. And he was

willing to stand there asking questions about it through supper and

past curfew.


Come to think of it, Ala and Tulia had come up with a similar way of learning a long time ago. The creature with two backs

was a term Jesry had coined for those two girls when they stood

together outside of a chalk hall discussing—endlessly—what they had

just heard. It wasn’t enough for one of them to understand something.

Nor for both of them to understand it in different ways. They both had

to understand it in the same way. The sound of them furiously

explaining things to each other gave the rest of us headaches.

Especially when we’d been younger, we’d always clap our hands over our

ears and run away when we spotted the creature with two backs. But it

worked for them.


Barb’s willingness to do things the hard

way in the near term was making his advancement toward the long

goal—even though he didn’t have one—swifter and surer than mine had ever been. And now I was advancing in step with him.





As a possible avocation, I had been teaching the new crop how to sing. Extramuros, everyone heard music but only a few actually knew how to make

it. These new fids had to be taught everything. It was excruciating. I

already knew this wasn’t going to be my avocation. We met three

afternoons a week in an alcove in what passed for our nave.


One day as I was leaving one of these

practices I happened to run into Fraa Lio, who was coming in to do

whatever he did at the Warden Fendant’s court. “Come up with me,” he

offered, “I want to show you something.”


“A new nerve pinch?”


“No, nothing like that.”


“You know I’m not supposed to look out from the high levels.”


“Well, I haven’t gone through hierarch training—yet—so neither am I,” he said. “That’s not what I want to show you.”


So I began to follow him up the stair. As

we climbed, I became nervous that he was going to carry out a plot to

raid the starhenge. Then I recalled what Orolo had said the other day

about worrying too much, and tried to put this out of my mind.


“You’re not supposed to look out beyond the

walls,” he reminded me, as we were getting closer to the top of the

southwest tower, “but you are allowed to remember what you saw there

during Apert, right?”


“I suppose so.”


“Well, did you notice anything?”


“Say again?”


“Extramuros, did you notice anything?”


“What kind of a question is that? I noticed

a ton of stuff,” I sputtered. Lio turned around and gave me a brilliant

smile, letting me know this was just his goofy sense of humor at work.

Humor vlor.


“All right,” I said, “what was I supposed to notice?”


“Do you think the city’s getting bigger or smaller?”


“Smaller. No question about it.”


“Why are you so sure? Did you look up the census data?” Another smile.


“Of course not. I don’t know. Just a feeling. Something about how the place looked.”




“How did it look?”


“Sort of…weedy. Overgrown.”


He turned around and held up his index

finger like a statue of Thelenes declaiming on the Periklyne. “Hold

that idea,” he said, “while we pass through enemy territory.”


We looked at the closed and locked

portcullis, but didn’t say anything. We crossed the bridge into the

Regulant court and followed its inner walkway round to the stair that

led up. When we had reached safe ground above—the statue of

Amnectrus—he said, “I was thinking of making gardening my avocation.”


“Well, considering all of the weeds you’ve

pulled over the years doing penance for beating me up, you are well

qualified,” I said. “But why on earth would you want to?”


“Let me show you what has been going on in

the meadow,” he said, and led me out to the Fendant’s ledge. A couple

of sentinels were making the rounds, swathed in bulky winter-bolts,

their feet swallowed up in furry mukluks. Lio and I were hot from

climbing the stairs and so the cold didn’t bother us much. We took a

moment to hood ourselves. This was a way of showing respect for the

Discipline. Our bolts, drawn far out in front of our faces, gave us

tunnel vision. When we walked to the parapet and leaned forward, we

could see down into the concent but not up and out to the world beyond.


Lio pointed down at the back fringe of the

meadow. Shuf’s Dowment rose up just on the other side of the river.

With the exception of a few evergreen shrubs, everything down there was

dead and brown. It was easy to see that, near the riverbank, the clover

that carpeted most of the meadow became thin and patchy, and blotched

with darker, coarser stuff: colonies of weeds that favored the sandy

soil near the bank. Nearer the river I could see a distinct front where

the clover gave way altogether to a snarl of woody trash: slashberry

and the like. Behind that front I could see splats and rambling trails

of green; some of the stuff back there was so tough that not even hard

frost could kill it.


“I guess your theme today is weeds. But I don’t see where you’re going with it,” I said.




“Down there, come spring, I am going to stage a re-enactment of the Battle of Trantae,” he announced.


“Negative 1472,” I answered in a robotic

voice, that being one of the dates drilled into the head of every fid.

“And I suppose you want me to play the role of a hoplite who gets a

Sarthian arrow in the ear? No, thanks!”


He shook his head patiently. “Not with people,” he said, “with plants.”


“Say again?”


“I got the idea during Apert from seeing

how weeds and even trees are invading the town. Taking it back from

humans so slowly that the humans don’t notice. The meadow is going to

represent the fertile Plains of Thrania, the breadbasket of the Bazian

Empire,” Lio said. “The river represents the river Chontus separating

it from the northern provinces. By Negative 1474 those have long since

been lost to the Horse Archers. Only a few fortified outposts hold out

against the barbarian tide.”


“Can we imagine that Shuf’s Dowment is one of those?”


“If you like. It doesn’t matter. Anyway,

during the cold winter of Negative 1473, the steppe hordes, led by the

Sarthian clan, cross the frozen river and establish bridgeheads on the

Thranian bank. By the time the campaigning season has opened, they’ve

got three whole armies ready to break out. General Oxas deposes the

Bazian Imperator in a military coup and marches forth promising to

drive the Sarthians into the river and drown them like rats. After

weeks of maneuver, the legions of Oxas finally meet the Sarthians in

the flat countryside near Trantae. The Sarthians stage a false retreat.

Oxas falls for it like a total dumbass and charges into a pincer. He’s

surrounded—”


“And three months later Baz is on fire. But how are you going to do all of that with weeds?”


“We’ll allow the invasive species from the

riverbank to make inroads into the clover. The starblossom vines run

along the ground like light cavalry—it’s incredible how fast they

advance. The slashberry is slower, but better at holding ground—like

infantry. Finally the trees come along and make it permanent. With a

little weeding and pruning, we can make it all work out just like Trantae, except it’ll take six months or so to play out.”


“That is the craziest idea I have ever heard,” I said. “You are some kind of a nut.”


“Would you rather help me, or go on trying to teach those brats down there how to carry a tune?”


“Is this a trick to get me to pull weeds?”


“No. We’re going to let the weeds grow—remember?”


“What’s going to happen after the weeds

win? We can’t set fire to the Cloister. Maybe we could sack the apiary

and drink all the mead?”


“Someone already did that, during Apert,”

he reminded me gravely. “No, we’ll probably have to clean it all up.

Though if people like it we could let nature take its course and let a

grove of trees grow on the conquered territory.”


“One of the things I like about this is

that, come summer, it will put me in a good position to watch Arsibalt

being chased around by angry swarms of bees,” I said.


Lio laughed. I thought to myself that his

plan had another advantage as well: it was flagrantly silly. Until now,

I had been dabbling in avocations, such as looking after Barb and

teaching fids how to sing, that were sensible and virtuous. Typical

behavior for someone who was getting ready to fall back. To spend the

summer doing something absolutely ridiculous would flaunt the fact that

I had no such intentions. Those members of the Edharian chapter who

hadn’t wanted me would be furious.


“I’ll do it,” I said. “But I guess we have to wait a few more weeks before anything starts to grow.”


“You’re pretty good at drawing, aren’t you?” Lio asked.


“Better than you—but that’s not saying much. I can make technical illustrations. Barb is freakishly good at it. Why?”


“I was thinking we should make a record of

it. Draw pictures of how it looks as the battle goes on. This would be

an excellent vantage point.”


“Should I ask Barb if he’s interested?”


Lio looked a little uneasy at that. Maybe because Barb could be so obnoxious; probably because Barb was a new fid and shouldn’t have an avocation yet. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself,” I said.


“Great,” Lio said, “when can you start?”





Lio and I read some histories of the Battle

of Trantae during the next week, and pounded stakes into the ground to

mark important sites, such as where General Oxas, pierced by eight

arrows, had fallen on his sword. I constructed a rectangular frame,

about the size of a dinner tray, with a grid of strings stretched

across it. The idea was that I’d set this up on the parapet and look

through it like a windowframe as I sketched; if I continued to use it

in the same way throughout the summer, then each illustration would

tally with the next. One day we’d be able to line them up in a row and

then people would walk down the line and see the weed-war unfold like a

speely.


Lio spent a lot of time thrashing around in

the brush along the riverbank looking for particularly aggressive

specimens of various kinds of weeds. Yellow starblossom was going to

represent the Sarthian cavalry, red and white their allies.


We were both waiting for the moment when we would get in trouble.


Sure enough, a couple of weeks into the

project, I looked up during supper to see Fraa Spelikon come into the

Refectory, accompanied by a younger hierarch of the Regulant staff.

Conversation dimmed for a moment—sort of like when the power threatens

to go out and the room becomes brown. Spelikon looked around the

Refectory until he found my face. Then, satisfied, he snatched up a

tray and demanded some food. Hierarchs were allowed to dine with us,

but they rarely did. They had to concentrate pretty fiercely not to let

Sæcular information slip out and so this was no way to have a relaxing

meal.


Everyone had noticed the way Spelikon had

looked at me and so, following the brownout, there was a brief jovial

uproar at my expense. For once in my life I wasn’t worried. What could

they accuse me of? Conspiring to let weeds grow? Probably they had

misinterpreted what Lio and I were up to. The only hard part was going to be explaining it to a man like Spelikon.


The younger hierarch—Rotha was her name—ate

quickly, then rose and walked out of the Refectory hugging a fat wallet

of papers that swiveled as her hips moved. Spelikon ate more heartily

but refused offers of beer and wine. After a few minutes he pushed

back, wiped his lips, stood up, and came over to me. “I wonder if I

might have a word with you in Saunt Zenla’s,” he said.


“Certainly,” I said, then glanced across

the room at Lio, who was dining at another table. “Would you like Fraa

Lio to join us or—”


“That will not be necessary,” Spelikon

said. Which struck me as odd, and left me with physical symptoms of

anxiety—pounding heart, moist palms—as I followed Spelikon around the

Cloister to Saunt Zenla’s.


This was one of the smallest and oldest

chalk halls, traditionally used by the most senior Edharian theoricians

to collaborate or to teach their senior students. I’d only been in the

room a couple of times my whole life, and would never have dared to

barge in there and claim it like this. It had one small table, large

enough for at most four people to sit around it on their spheres. Rotha

had already covered the table with stuff: a constellation of glow-buds

whose pools of soft light merged to illuminate a stack of blank leaves

and a few manuscripts, or excerpts of them. Several pens lay in a neat

row next to an uncapped ink-bottle.


“Interview with Fraa Erasmas of the

Edharian chapter of the Decenarian math of the Concent of Saunt Edhar,”

Spelikon said. Rotha scribbled out a row of marks on a blank leaf—not

the customary Bazian characters, but a kind of shorthand that hierarchs

were trained to use when taking down transcripts. Spelikon went on to

tell the date and the time. I was mesmerized by Rotha’s skill with the

pen—her hand swept across the whole width of the leaf in as little time

as it took to draw breath, leaving in its wake a row of simple

one-stroke glyphs that, it seemed to me, couldn’t possibly convey as

much meaning as the words we were speaking.


My eyes wandered to the other manuscripts that Rotha had set out on the table. Most of them were also written in that same shorthand. But at least one was in traditional script. My

script. Bending closer, I was able to make out several words. I

recognized it as the journal I had started keeping when I’d been in the

penance cell in the Mynster. I saw the names Flec and Quin, and Orolo.


My movements had gone all jerky. Some primitive threat-response mechanism had taken over. “Hey, that’s mine!”


Spelikon saw to it that this was written down. “The subject admits that Document Eleven is his.”


“Where did you get that?” I demanded, now sounding no older than Barb. Rotha’s hand flitted across the leaf and immortalized it.


“From where it was,” Spelikon answered, amused. “You do know the whereabouts of your own journal, don’t you?”


“I thought I did.” One

of the niches outside of Saunt Grod’s chalk hall, up high where only a

few people could reach it. But to take someone else’s leaves out of a

niche was just about the rudest thing an avout could do. It was only

acceptable when someone had died or been Thrown Back. “But,” I went on,

“but you’re not supposed to—”


“Why don’t you let me be the judge of what

we are and are not supposed to do,” Spelikon said. As he spoke these

words he made a gesture with his hand that stilled Rotha’s hand, so

none of it was written down. Then he made a different gesture that

undid the spell, and she began to write again. “This inquiry does not

concern you directly and, in fact, need not take up very much of your

time. You have already supplied most of what we wish to know in the

leaves of your journal. Clarification and confirmation are all that we

require. On the day before Apert, did you serve as amanuensis during an

interview conducted in the New Library between Fraa Orolo and an

artisan from extramuros named Quin?”


“Yes.”


“Document Three, please,” Spelikon said.

Rotha drew out another manuscript, also written in my hand: my

transcript of Orolo’s interview with Quin. I didn’t bother asking where

they’d gotten it. Obviously they’d been rooting around in Fraa Orolo’s

niches too. Outrageous! But for all that, I was beginning to relax.

There was nothing wrong with the

conversations Orolo had had with those artisans. Even if the Warden

Regulant wouldn’t take my word for it, well, others had been in the

library the whole time and could vouch that it had all been harmless.

This must be some petty and misguided harassment of Fraa Orolo that

would come to nothing, and—I hoped—make Fraa Spelikon look like an

idiot.


Spelikon had me confirm that Document Three

was mine before going on: “There are discrepancies between the account

of the Orolo-Quin conversation as you transcribed it at the time, and

the version you later set down in your journal.”


“Yes,” I said. “I’m not like her.” I nodded

at Rotha. “I can’t take shorthand. I only wrote down what was germane

to the research that Orolo was doing.”


“Which research do you mean?” Spelikon asked.


I’d thought that was obvious, but I

explained, “His study of the political climate extramuros—part of

normal preparations for Apert.”


“Thank you. There are several such

discrepancies, but I’d like to draw your attention to one, late in the

Quin interview, concerning the technical capabilities of speelycaptors.”


This was so unexpected it blanked my mind. “Uh, I vaguely remember that topic coming up.”


“Your memory was not vague at all when you

wrote this,” he said, and reached down over Rotha’s shoulder and picked

up the journal. “According to this, Artisan Quin said, at one point,

and I quote, ‘Flec didn’t make a speely.’ Does that make your memory

any less vague?”


“Yes. The day before, at Provener, we had

sent Artisan Flec to see the Ita so that they could show him to the

north nave. Flec wanted to make a speely. But later Quin told us that

it hadn’t gone as planned. The Ita didn’t allow Flec to operate his

speelycaptor in the Mynster.”


“Why not?”


“The image quality was too good.”


“Too good in what way?” Spelikon asked.


“Quin rattled off some commercial bulshytt that I tried to capture in the journal,” I said.


“When you say you tried to capture it, are you saying that what you

wrote in the journal is only a guess at what it said? Here it

reads—quoting again—‘the Eagle-Rez, the SteadiHand, the DynaZoom—put

those all together, and it could have seen straight across into the

other parts of your Mynster, even through the screens.’ Did Quin

actually use those words?”


“I don’t know. It’s partly my recollection and partly an educated guess.”


“Explain what you mean by an educated guess in this case.”


“Well, the point of the story—the basic

technical reason that the Ita wouldn’t allow Flec to use the

speelycaptor—was that from where he was going to be sitting, behind the

north screen, he would have been able to take pictures of the

Thousanders and Hundreders by pointing his speelycaptor across the

chancel. With our naked eyes, we can’t see through the screens into the

other naves because of the contrast between the screen, which is

light-colored—cosmographers would say it has high albedo—and the dark

space beyond. Also because of distance and other factors. The gist of

it was that the Ita had looked up the specifications on Flec’s

speelycaptor and figured out that it had some combination of features

that would make it possible to see things that the naked eye couldn’t.

Now, it’s a fool’s game trying to make sense of the commercial bulshytt

that the makers of speelycaptors use to describe those features. But

from my experience with cosmography, I have a pretty good idea what it

would entail: some kind of zoom or magnification feature, a way of

detecting faint images against a noisy background, and image

stabilization, to correct for shaking of the hands.”


“And that is what you mean by an educated

guess,” Spelikon said. “Educated, in the sense that anyone with a

knowledge of cosmographical instruments would be able to infer what you

inferred about the capabilities of Flec’s speelycaptor.”


“Yes.”


“It says in your journal,” Spelikon

continued, “that Fraa Orolo’s hand came down on your wrist just after

that, and stopped you from writing. Why?”


“Being older and wiser,” I said, “Orolo saw

where the conversation was headed. Quin was about to go off chattering

about Sæcular stuff, and about what had happened between Flec and the Ita, which obviously is not the kind of information we ought to be exposed to.”


“But if your ears were going to be exposed to it anyway, why did Orolo stop your hand? Why did he not plug your ears?”


“I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t the most logical thing for him to do. People don’t always think clearly at such moments.”


“Except when they do,”

Spelikon said. “Well, at any rate, that is all I have for you

concerning the Orolo-Quin interview. There is only one other question.”


“Yes?”


“Where were you on the ninth night of Apert?”


I thought for a minute, and frowned. “That’s one of those simple-sounding questions that is hard for a normal person to answer.”


Spelikon was almost too quick to agree with

me. “If by ‘normal person’ you mean ‘non-hierarch,’ then let me assure

you I have no specific memories of what I did that evening.”


“Well, I was scheduled to give a tour the

next morning, so I didn’t stay up late. I had supper. Then I’m pretty

sure I went to bed. I was doing a lot of thinking.”


“Really?” Spelikon asked. “About what?”


I must have gotten a very strange look on

my face. He chuckled and said, “I’m just curious. I don’t think it

matters.” He drew up another leaf. “According to the Chronicle, on that

night you were assigned to share a cell with Fraa Branch and Fraa

Ostabon. If I were to ask them, they’d both say you were in the cell

with them that night?”


“I can’t imagine why they’d say anything else.”


“Very well,” Spelikon said, “that will be all. Thank you for your time, Fraa Erasmas.”


Spelikon opened the door for me. I stepped through it to discover Fraa Branch and Fraa Ostabon waiting in the gallery.





My talent for envisioning things, and

spinning yarns in my head, failed me that evening, as if it had gone on

vacation. I could make no sense of my

interview with Spelikon. I put it down as further evidence that Suur

Trestanas was cracking, and would soon be sent to Physicians’ Commons

to get better—hopefully very slowly.


The next day I was up early to help serve

breakfast. I spent the morning in a chalk hall with Barb, working on

some fundamentals of exterior calculus that I should have understood

years earlier but was only now getting a real grip on. As I was

reaching the point where my brain couldn’t take any more, and noticed

myself making dumb mistakes, Provener rang.


This was one of the days that my old team

was supposed to wind the clock, so I went to the Mynster. It was

sparsely attended, with few hierarchs in evidence. I didn’t see Fraa

Orolo or any of his senior students, and Jesry didn’t show up, so Lio

and Arsibalt and I had to do it without his help.


Between that and the long morning in the

chalk hall, I was famished, and ate like a dog in the Refectory. When I

was almost finished, Orolo came in, fetched himself a light lunch, and

sat down alone in what had become his favorite spot: the table from

which he could look out the window and down the mountains when the

weather was clear. Today, it wasn’t; but it felt as though the clouds

might later be rinsed away by a cold clear river of wind. When I had

finished eating, I went over and sat with him. I guessed that Spelikon

must have been pestering him with questions too. But I didn’t want to

bring it up. He must be sick of it.


He gave me a little smile. “Thanks to the hierarchs,” he said, “I shall soon be making observations again.”


“They’re going to open the starhenge?

That’s great news!” I exclaimed. Orolo smiled again. Things were

beginning to make sense. Something had spooked the hierarchs. They had

misinterpreted Orolo’s pre-Apert activities in a way I still didn’t

understand. Now finally they were coming to see that they’d been

mistaken, and things were about to go back to normal.


“I must admit, I have a tablet up in the M & M that I’ve been dying to get my hands on,” he said.


“When are they going to open it?”


“I don’t know,” Orolo said.




“What are you going to look at first?”


“Oh, I’d rather not say just now. Nothing

that requires the power of the M & M. A smaller telescope would

suffice, or even a commercial speelycaptor.”


“Spelikon was asking me all kinds of questions about those—”


He put his finger to his lips. “I know,” he said, “and it is good that you answered his questions as you did.”


I was distracted for a few moments, working

through the implications. The news was good. But when people began

going up to the starhenge again, they might find the tablet I’d left in

Clesthyra’s Eye, which could get me in a lot of trouble. I felt stupid

now for having put it there. How was I going to fetch it back?


Orolo looked out a different window,

reading the time from the clock. “I saw Tulia a few minutes ago. She

and Ala were rounding up the team. She asked me to give you a message.”


“Yes?”


“She won’t be turning up for this meal. She’ll see you at supper.”


“That’s the message?”


“Yes. The team have got some unusual

changes to ring—it’s going to require their full attention. They’ll be

starting in half an hour or so. She seemed to think that you of all

people would find this especially important. I’ve no idea why.”


Voco.


It had to be another Voco. So I was going to get my chance to sneak up to the starhenge again—that was the real message that Tulia was trying to send me.


Did Orolo understand all of this? Did he know what was going on?


But once the changes began to ring, I

couldn’t very well go charging up the Mynster stairs against the

traffic of Regulant and Fendant staff coming down to attend the aut.

This was only going to work if I ascended first, before the bells sounded, and hid myself up there.


And I had a perfect excuse for doing so, thanks to Lio.


I stood up. “See you in the Mynster,” I said to Orolo.




“Yes,” he said, and then winked. “Or perhaps not.”


I was frozen for a moment, again wondering

how much he knew. This made him smile broadly. “All I meant,” Orolo

said, “was that one never knows who will remain in the Mynster after

one of these auts, and who will depart.”


“You think you might be called up at Voco?”


“It is most unlikely!” Orolo said. “But just in case you are called—”


I snorted. Now he was just having fun with me.


“Just in case you are

called,” he said, “know that I have seen the progress you have been

making in recent months. I am proud of you. Proud, but not surprised. Do keep at it.”


“All right,” I said. “I’ll keep at it. In fact, I have some questions for you later. But I have to run.”


“Run then,” he said. “Mind your step on those stairs.”


I turned around and forced myself to

saunter, not sprint, out of the Refectory. I fetched my drawing-frame

and sketches from the niche where I’d been stashing them, and walked as

quickly as I could, without looking like I was in a hurry, to the

Mynster. When I had ascended to the triforium, I looked over to the

bell-ringers’ balcony and saw Ala and Tulia and their team there, going

through the motions of the changes they were about to ring without

actually pulling on the ropes. Tulia saw me. I looked away, not wanting

to be obvious, then went the other way and climbed the southwest tower

stairs as briskly as I could.


The Regulant court was as crowded as I had

ever seen it, but quiet, as everyone seemed intent on something. Which

made sense, just before a Voco. I actually saw Suur Trestanas for a

moment as she was passing from one office to another. She looked a

little surprised, but then her gaze dropped to take in my drawing

equipment, and she saw me attacking the next flight of stairs.

Something clicked into place in her mind and she forgot about it.


Lio was waiting for me by the statue of

Amnectrus, looking a little flushed himself from climbing the stairs.

He fell in step beside me. “Don’t go to the ledge,” he said, “too

conspicuous. Come with me.”




I hooded myself as I followed him around

the inner walkway. Neither of us spoke, as we always seemed to be in

earshot of someone. Finally he dodged into a chamber that was lined

with heavy wooden doors all around—a muster room, they called it, where

a squad might gather to brief and equip before a mission.


“You planned this whole thing, didn’t you?” I whispered.


“I created opportunities, in case we might

need them.” Lio slid one of the doors open to reveal a storage chamber

lined with metal boxes, neatly stacked. Then he grabbed my bolt in

front of my chest, yanked me forward, and shoved me into the locker. By

the time I’d got my balance back, he’d slid the door shut behind me. It

was dark. I was hidden.


No more than a minute later, the bells began to ring strange changes.


My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I

took the minor risk of making my sphere give off a faint glow. The

boxes stacked around me were stenciled with incomprehensible words and

numbers, but I was growing certain that they contained ammunition. I

had heard stories. The lifetime of this stuff was a few decades. Then

it had to be flung off the Mynster and shoveled into wagons to be

carted off for disposal. The whole concent would then queue up on the

stairs and convey the fresh ammunition up to this level by passing the

boxes from hand to hand. This hadn’t been done in a while, but some of

the older avout remembered it clearly.


Anyway it gave me something to think of

while I waited through the ringing of the changes and the half-hour of

assembly time that followed. No one up here needed half an hour. They

could go on about their business for fifteen or twenty minutes and then

hustle down at the last minute. So it took a while for the place to

empty out. At some point Fraa Delrakhones himself made a sweep,

commanding everyone to leave now. He wanted to be the last one down, and he didn’t want to have to run.


After that, I felt it was safe to go out

into the muster room. I cracked the door of the locker and paused to

let my eyes adjust, then crept out and squatted behind the exit door

for a minute, just listening. But there was nothing to hear—not even

from the Chancel and the naves, which sounded as if they had been

abandoned.




I was afraid that Delrakhones might still

be hunting for stragglers, and there was no particular reason to hurry,

so I waited until the voice of Statho resonated up the well, intoning

the Convocation. Then I bolted from cover, charged around to the

stairs, and raced into the space above. Statho went on at some length,

pausing from time to time as though sifting through hastily assembled

notes, or gathering strength.


I was about halfway to the starhenge, high up behind the face of the clock, when I first heard the word Anathem.


My knees collapsed, like those of a beast

when something unexpectedly touches its back. I lost my stride and had

to stop myself and crouch down lest I bang into something.


It couldn’t be real. The aut of Anathem had not been celebrated in this place for two hundred years.


And yet I had to admit that the changes

Tulia had rung had sounded new to my ears—different from Voco. The

crowd in the Mynster had been dead quiet before the aut. Now they were

muttering, producing a gravelly sound the likes of which I’d never

heard.


Everything that had happened since Apert

now made sense in a new way, as if a pile of shattered fragments had

been thrown up in the air and reassembled itself into a mirror.


Some part of me said that I must keep

moving. That this was my only chance to fetch that tablet. Not that the

images stored on it mattered any more. But Orolo had gone out of his

way to tell me, a few minutes ago, that he wanted the tablet from the M

& M. I had to get both of them. If I blew it, I’d get in huge

trouble—perhaps be Thrown Back. Worse, I’d fail Orolo.


How long had I been crouched on this catwalk not moving? Wasted time! Wasted time! I made myself move.


Whose name would they call? Perhaps mine?

What would happen then if I failed to step out? There was some dark

humor in that. It got darker as I imagined one way to answer the call:

by jumping down the center of the well. With luck I’d land on Suur

Trestanas. Now that would be a story that would

live on forever in the lore of Saunt Edhar and the mathic world beyond.

Perhaps it would even make the local newspapers.


But it would not get that tablet from Clesthyra’s Eye, nor the one that Orolo wanted from the M & M. That was a prize worth taking risks for.


I climbed as Statho read some ancient

prattle about the Discipline and how it must be enforced. Maybe I

didn’t climb as quickly as I might have, for I could tell he was

leading up to the moment when he would call out the name of the one who

was to be Thrown Back, and I wanted to hear it. I reached the top, and

put my hand on the door that led to the starhenge, and actually killed

time for a minute.


Finally he said “Orolo.” Not “Fraa Orolo,” for in that instant he had ceased to be a fraa.


How could I be surprised? From the moment I

had heard “Anathem” I had known that it would be Orolo. Still I said

“No!” out loud. No one heard me, because everyone else was saying it in

the same moment; it came up the well like the beat of a drum. As it

died away, a very weird sound replaced it, something I’d never heard

the likes of before: people were screaming down there.


Why did I cry out “No!” when I’d known it all along? Not out of disbelief. It was an objection. A refusal. A declaration of war.


Orolo was ready. He emerged through the

door in our screen immediately, and closed it firmly behind him before

his former brothers and sisters could begin to say goodbye, for that

would have taken a year. Better to just be gone, like one who is killed

by a falling tree. He walked out into the chancel and tossed his sphere

to the floor, then began to untie his chord. This dropped around his

ankles. He stepped out of it and then reached down, grabbed the lower

fringes of his bolt, and shrugged it off over his shoulders. For a

moment, then, he was standing there naked, holding a wad of bolt in his

arms, and gazing straight up the well, just as Fraa Paphlagon had done

at Voco.


I opened the door to the starhenge and let

the light flood in. Orolo saw it and bowed his head like a Deolater

praying to his god. Then I passed through and closed the door behind

me. The entire, terrible scene in the Mynster was eclipsed, and

replaced by the lonely vista of the starhenge.


In the same moment I began sobbing out loud. My face drew back from my skull as if I were vomiting and tears ran from my eyes like

blood from gashes. I was sad—rather than surprised—because I had known

that this was coming from the moment Fraa Spelikon had begun asking

about speelycaptors. I hadn’t foreseen it only because it was too

dreadful to think about until I could not escape it any more—until it

had happened. Until now. So I didn’t have to waste any time being

astonished, like those fraas and suurs down below me; I went straight

to the most intense and saturating grief I had ever known.


I found my way to the Pinnacle more by

groping than by sight, as I could perceive little more than light and

dark. By the time I’d reached the top, I’d moved on to hysterical

blubbering, but I wiped my face a couple of times with my bolt, took

some deep breaths, and settled myself long enough to get the dust cover

open and withdraw the tablet from Clesthyra’s Eye. This I wrapped in my

bolt, which called to mind the memory of Orolo stripping his off.


He would stand there naked while the avout

sang a wrathful song to Anathematize him. They were probably singing it

now. You were supposed to sing it like you meant it. Maybe that would

be easy for the Thousanders and the Hundreders who had never known him.

But I suspected that little coherent sound was coming from behind the

Tenners’ screen.


I went into the control chamber of the M

& M and looked for the tablet that Orolo had placed in its

objective when he and I had been here just before the whole place had

been locked down. But it was empty. Someone had been here before me and

confiscated it. Just as they would now go through the niches that he

had used and take all of his writings.


Then I did something that might have been

foolish, but that was necessary: I went to the same place where I’d

watched Fraa Paphlagon and the Inquisitors take off in their aerocraft.

I crouched at the base of the same megalith, and waited until Orolo

walked out of the Day Gate. Once he had passed out of the chancel, and

out of sight of the avout, they had given him a sort of gunny sack to

cover his body, and an emergency blanket made of crinkly orange foil,

which he pulled around his shoulders as he got out into the plaza and

the wind hit him. His skinny white ankles were lost in a pair of old

black work boots and he had to shuffle lest they fall off. He moved

away from the concent without once gazing back over his shoulder. After

a few moments he disappeared behind the spray of one of the fountains.

I chose that time to turn my back on him and head back down.


As I passed back into the chronochasm and

heard the aut of Anathem concluding, I thought it was a small mercy for

me that I’d had this last sight of Orolo extramuros. Those in the

Mynster merely saw him be swallowed by the unknowable beyond, which was

(and was meant to be) terrifying. But I had at least seen him making

his way out there. Which didn’t make things any less horrible and sad.

But to glimpse him still alive and moving under his own power in the

Sæculum was to have hope that someone would help him out there—that

maybe, before dark, he’d be sitting in hand-me-down clothes in one of

those bars he had frequented during Apert, having a beer and looking

for a job.


The remainder of the service was a

reaffirmation of vows and a rededication to the Discipline. I was happy

to miss it. I wrapped up the tablet in a leaf of drawing paper and

stashed it behind a can of ammunition; Lio could always retrieve it

later.


The one question was: would my absence have

been marked by any of the Tenners? But in a group of three hundred, it

was easy for such a thing to go unnoticed.


In case anyone asked, I concocted a story

that Orolo had dropped a hint of what was going to happen (which—come

to think of it—he had, though I’d been too dense to get it) and that I

had skipped the aut because I was afraid I couldn’t bear it. This would

still get me in trouble. I didn’t much care. Let them Throw me Back;

I’d figure out where Orolo had gone—probably to Bly’s Butte—and join

him there.


But as it came out, I never had to tell anyone that lie. No one had noticed I was missing; or if they had, they didn’t care.





The story of how Orolo had come to be

Thrown Back had to be reconstructed over the next few weeks, like a

skull in an archaeological dig being

fitted together one shard at a time. We would get lost for days as

rumor or convincingly wrong data sent us up some promising path that

only later proved a logical cul-de-sac. It didn’t help that all of us

had suffered the psychic equivalent of third-degree burns.


He had somehow known, days before Apert,

that there would be trouble related to the starhenge. He’d put Jesry to

work doing some computations. He had not allowed Jesry to see the

photomnemonic tablets from which the givens had been extracted; indeed,

he’d gone to a lot of effort to obscure the nature of the work from

Jesry and his other students, perhaps to shield them from any

consequences.


When Artisan Quin had spoken of the

technical capabilities of Flec’s speelycaptor, the idea had come into

Orolo’s head that he might use such a device to make cosmographical

observations. On the ninth night of Apert, after the starhenge had been

locked, Orolo had gone to the apiary and stolen several crates of mead.

He put on clothes that made him look like a visitor from extramuros and

went out the Decade Gate with a large wheeled beer cooler in which he

hid the loot. He made a rendezvous with a shady character of some

description whom he had presumably met while hanging around in bars

extramuros. Indeed, his entire motive for having frequented such places

during Apert might have been to recruit such a person. In exchange for

the mead, Orolo had taken delivery of a speelycaptor.


The little vineyard where Orolo pursued his

avocation was difficult to see from the Mynster. During the winter, he

sometimes went there to mend trellises and prune vines. In the weeks

following Apert he devised a rudimentary observatory there, consisting

of a vertical pole somewhat taller than a man, free to rotate, with a

crosspiece lashed athwart it at eye level that could be swiveled up and

down. Into this crosspiece he’d whittled a niche to fit the

speelycaptor. The pole and crosspiece enabled him to hold the

speelycaptor steady for long periods as he tracked his target across

the sky. The device’s image-stabilization, zoom, and low-light

enhancement features enabled him to get a decent look at whatever he

was so curious about.




The idea of Orolo stealing from the

concent, conspiring with a criminal during Apert, and making forbidden

observations in the vineyard was shocking to everyone, but the story

did make sense, and it was just the kind of logical plan that Orolo

would have come up with. Sooner or later we all came to terms with it.


My role in the story led some Edharians to

view me as a traitor—as the guy who had sold Orolo out to the Warden

Regulant. This was the kind of thing that, before Anathem, would have

kept me up all night, every night, feeling bad. On even-numbered nights

I’d have felt guilty about what I had divulged to Spelikon and on

odd-numbered nights I’d have seethed with impotent rage at those in my

chapter who so misunderstood me. But against the backdrop of all that

had been going on, being worried about these things was a little bit

like attempting to see distant stars against the daytime sky. Even

though Orolo was not my father, and even though he was still alive, I

felt about Fraa Spelikon as I would have about a man who had murdered

my father before my eyes. And my feelings toward Suur Trestanas were

even darker since I suspected that, in some sneaky way, she was behind

it.


What had Orolo seen? We might have been

able to get some clues from the computations Jesry had been doing

before Apert. But the Warden Regulant had confiscated these from their

niche and so all we had to go on were Jesry’s recollections. He was

fairly certain that Orolo had been trying to calculate the orbital

parameters of an object or objects in the solar system. Normally this

would imply an asteroid moving in a heliocentric (sun-centered) orbit

that happened to be similar to the orbit of Arbre. A Big Nugget type of

scenario, in other words. But Jesry had a hunch, based on certain of

the numbers he remembered seeing, that the object in question was

orbiting, not the sun, but Arbre. This was extremely unusual. In all

the millenia that humans had been observing the heavens, only one

permanent moon of Arbre had been found. It was possible for an asteroid

in a sun-centered orbit to pass near a libration point and be captured

into an Arbre-centered orbit, but all such orbits were unstable, and

ended with the rock striking Arbre or the moon, or being ejected from

the Arbre-moon system.




It might have been that Orolo was looking

at the triangular libration points of the Arbre-moon system, which

harbored concentrations of rocks and dust that were visible as faint

clouds chasing or being chased by the moon in its orbit about Arbre.

But it was not clear why such a project would create so much hostility

in the Warden Regulant. And as Barb had pointed out, the orientation of

the M & M suggested that Orolo had been using it to take pictures

of an object in a polar orbit, which was unlikely in a natural object.





Of our group, it was Jesry who first had

the courage to give voice to what was implied by all of this: “It is

not a natural object. It was made and put there by humans.”


It was not exactly spring. Winter was over,

but frost still threatened; bulbs were thrusting green spears up

through crystalline mud-ice. Several of us had spent the afternoon

chopping down the dead stalks and vines of our tangles. We left these

up through most of the winter to prevent soil erosion and provide a

habitat for small animals, but the time of year had come when we had to

take it all down and burn it so that the ashes could fertilize the

soil. Now, following supper, we had gone out into the dark and set fire

to the slash we’d heaped up during the day, creating a huge gaseous

fire that would not last for very long. Jesry had found a bottle of the

peculiar wine that Orolo used to make and we were passing it around.


“It could also have been made by some other

praxic civilization,” said Barb. Technically, of course, he was right.

Socially, he was annoying us. By putting forth his suggestion, Jesry

had stuck his neck out—had exposed himself to the risk of ridicule. By

agreeing with him, silently or not, we were accepting the same risk.

The last thing we needed was Barb speculating about bug-eyed space

monsters.


Another thing about Barb: he was the son of

Quin, who in a sense had instigated all of this by making indiscreet

remarks about the excellence of modern speelycaptors. This was hardly

Barb’s fault but it did create a negative association in one’s mind

that bobbed to the surface at awkward moments—and Barb was a copious source of awkward moments.


“That would explain the closure of the

starhenge,” Arsibalt said. “Let us suppose, for the sake of argument,

that the Sæcular Power has divided into two or more factions—perhaps

arming for war. One may have launched a reconnaissance satellite into a

polar orbit.”


“Or several of them,” Jesry said, “since I got the impression I was making calculations for more than just one object.”


“Could it have been one object that changed its orbit from time to time?” Tulia asked.


“Unlikely. It takes a lot of energy to

change an orbit from one plane to another—almost as much energy as

launching the satellite in the first place,” Lio said.


Everyone looked at him.


“Spy satellite vlor,” he said sheepishly, “from a Praxic Age book on space warfare. Plane change maneuvers are expensive!”


“A satellite in a polar orbit doesn’t need

to change its plane!” Barb snorted. “It can see all parts of Arbre by

waiting long enough.”


“There’s one big reason why I like Jesry’s

hypothesis,” I said. Everyone turned and looked at me. I hadn’t been

talking much. But in the weeks since Anathem, I had come to be seen as

an authority on all things Orolo. “Orolo’s behavior in the days just

before Apert suggests that he knew there was going to be trouble.

Whatever it was that he had seen, he knew that it was a Sæcular event

and that the hierarchs would make him stop looking at it as soon as

they found out. That wouldn’t have been true if it was just a rock.”


I was only agreeing with the consensus.

Most of the others nodded. But Arsibalt of all people seemed to take

what I’d said as a challenge. He cleared his throat and came back at me

as if we were in dialog. “Fraa Erasmas, what you have said makes sense

as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go very far. Since Anathem was rung

down on Orolo, it’s easy for us to fall in the habit of thinking of him

as a malcontent. But would you have identified him as such before

Apert?”


“Your point is well taken, Fraa Arsibalt. Let’s not waste time taking

a poll of everyone standing around this fire. Orolo was as happy to

abide under the Discipline as any avout who ever lived.”


“But the launching of a new reconaissance satellite is clearly a Sæcular event, is it not?”


“Yes.”


“And, moreover, since that kind of praxis

has been around for millenia—long enough that Fraa Lio here can read of

it in ancient books—there is nothing new that Orolo could have learned

by making observations of such a satellite, is there?”


“Presumably not—unless it embodied some newly developed praxis.”


“But such a new praxis would also be a Sæcular event, would it not?” Tulia put in.


“Yes, Suur Tulia. And therefore no concern of the avout.”


“So,” said Arsibalt, “if we accept the

premise that Fraa Orolo was a true avout who respected the Discipline,

we cannot at the same time believe that the thing he saw in the sky was

a satellite recently launched from the surface of Arbre.”


“Because,” said Lio, completing the thought, “he’d have identified any such thing as being of no interest to us.”


All of which made sense; but it left us with nowhere to go. Or at least, nowhere we were willing to go.


Except for Barb. “Therefore it must be an alien ship.”


Jesry inhaled deeply and let out a big

sigh. “Fraa Tavener,” he said, using Barb’s avout name, “remind me to

show you some research, back in the Library, showing just how unlikely

that is.”


“Unlikely but not impossible?” Fraa Tavener shot back. Jesry sighed again.


“Fraa Jesry,” I said, and managed to catch

his eye and throw him a wry look—exactly the kind of signal to which

Barb was oblivious. “Fraa Tavener seems very keen on the topic. The

fire’s dying fast. We only have a few more minutes here. Why don’t you

go on ahead of us and show him that research. We’ll put out the fire

and tidy up.”


Everyone was quiet for a while, because every one of us—including I—was startled by what had just happened: I had bossed Jesry around. Unprecedented! But I didn’t care. I was too busy caring about other things.


“Right,” Jesry said, and stomped off into

the dark with Barb in tow. The rest of us stood there silently until

the sound of Barb’s questions had been drowned out by the seething of

the fire and the burble of the river over ice-shoals.


“You want to talk about the tablet,” Lio predicted.


“It’s time to bring that thing down and look at it,” I said.


“I’m surprised you haven’t been in more of a hurry,” Tulia said. “I’ve been dying to see that thing.”


“Remember what happened to Orolo,” I said. “He was incautious. Or maybe he just didn’t care whether he got caught.”


“Do you care?” Tulia

asked. It was a blunt question that made the others uneasy. But no one

edged away. They all looked at me, keen to hear my answer. The grief

that had hit me at the moment Statho had called Orolo’s name was still

with me all the time, but I had learned that it could transform in a

flash to anger. Not jumping-up-and-down anger but cold implacable fury

that settled in my viscera and made me think some most unpleasant

thoughts. It was distorting my face; I knew this because younger fids

who had used to give me a pleasant greeting when I encountered them in

a gallery or on the meadow now averted their eyes.


“Frankly no,” I said. This was a lie, but

it felt good. “I don’t care whether I get Thrown Back. But you guys are

all involved in it too, and so I’m going to be careful for your sakes.

Remember, this tablet might have no useful information whatsoever. Even

if it does, we might have to stare into the thing for months or even

years before we see anything. So we are talking about a lengthy and

secret campaign.”


“Well, it seems to me that we owe it to Orolo to try,” Tulia said.


“I can bring it down whenever you like,” Lio said.


“I know of a dark room beneath Shuf’s Dowment where we could view it,” Arsibalt said.


“Very well,” I said. “I only need a little

bit of help from you guys. I’ll do the rest myself. If I get caught,

I’ll say you knew nothing and I’ll

take responsibility for whatever happens. They’ll give me Chapter Six,

or worse. And then I’ll walk out of here and try to find Orolo.”


These words made Tulia and Lio quite

emotional in different ways. She looked ready to weep and he looked

ready to fight. But Arsibalt was merely impatient with me for being so

slow. “There is a larger matter at stake than getting in trouble,” he

said. “You are avout, Fraa Erasmas. You swore a vow to keep the

Discipline. It’s the most solemn and important thing in your life. That is what you are putting into play. Whether or not you get caught and punished is a detail.”


Arsibalt’s words had a strong effect on me

because they were true. I had an answer ready-made, but it wasn’t one

that I could speak aloud: I no longer respected that oath. Or at least,

I no longer trusted those who were charged with enforcing the

Discipline to which I had sworn. But I couldn’t very well say as much

to these friends of mine who did still respect it.

My mind worked for a while, looking for a way to answer Arsibalt’s

challenge, and the others were content to stand there and poke at the

dying fire and wait for me to speak.


“I trust Orolo,” I finally said. “I trust

that, in his mind, he was in no way violating the Discipline. That he

was punished by lesser minds who don’t understand what is really going

on. I think he is—that he will be—a—”


“Say it!” Tulia snapped.


“Saunt,” I said. “I will do this for Saunt Orolo.”















Part 5


VOCO







Lineage: (1) (Extramuros) A line of hereditary descent. (2) (Intramuros)

A chronological sequence of avout who acquired and held property

exceeding the bolt, chord, and sphere, each conferring the property

upon a chosen heir at the moment of death. The wealth (see Dowment)

accumulated by some Lineages (or at least, rumors of it) fostered the

Baud Iconography. Lineages were eliminated as part of the Third Sack

reforms.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















Whatever

you might say of his rich descendants, Fraa Shuf had had little wealth

and no plan. That became obvious as soon as you descended the flagstone

stairs into the cellar of the place that he had started and his heirs

had finished. I write cellar, but it is more true

to say that there was some number of cellars—I never made an exact

count—cemented to one another in some graph that no one fully

understood. It was a real accomplishment, in a way, to have left such a

mess under a building so small. Arsibalt, of course, had an

explanation: Shuf’s avocation was stone-mason. He had begun the

project, circa 1200, as a sort of eccentric pastime. He’d meant only to

build a narrow tower with a room at the top where one avout could sit

and meditate. That done, he’d passed it on to a fid who had noticed the

tower beginning to lean, and had spent much of his life replacing the

foundation—a tetchy sort of undertaking that involved digging out

cavities beneath what was already there and socking huge stone blocks

into the holes. He’d ended up with more foundation than was really

needed, and passed it on to another mason who had done more digging,

more foundation work, and more wall-building. And so it had gone for

some generations until the Lineage had begun to gather wealth beyond

the building itself and had needed a place to store it. The old

foundation-work had then been rediscovered, re-excavated, walled,

floored, vaulted, and extended. For one of the toxic things about

Lineages was that rich avout could get not-so-rich ones to do things

for them in exchange for better food, better drink, and better lodging.


Anyway, by the time that the Reformed Old Faanians had begun sneaking

back to the ruin of Shuf’s Dowment, hundreds of years after the Third

Sack, the earth had reclaimed much of the cellars. I wasn’t sure how

the dirt got into those places and covered the floor so deep. Some

process humans couldn’t fathom because it went on so gradually. The

ROF, who had been so diligent about fixing up the above-ground part,

had almost completely ignored the cellars. To your right as you reached

the bottom of the stairs there was one chamber where they stored wine

and some silver table-service that was hauled out for special

occasions. Beyond that, the cellars were a wilderness.


Arsibalt, contrary to his reputation, had

become its intrepid explorer. His maps were ancient floor-plans that he

found in the Library and his tools were a pickaxe and a shovel. The

mystical object of his quest was a vaulted sub-basement that according

to legend was where Shuf’s Lineage had stored its gold. If any such

place had ever existed, it had been found and cleaned out during the

Third Sack. But to rediscover it would be interesting. It would also be

a boon for the ROF since, in recent years, avout of other orders had

entertained themselves by circulating rumors to the effect that the ROF

had found or were accumulating treasure down there. Arsibalt could put

such rumors to rest by finding the sub-basement and then inviting

people to go and see it for themselves.


But there was no hurry—there never was,

with him—and no one was expecting results before Arsibalt’s hair had

turned white. From time to time he would come tromping back over the

bridge covered with dirt and fill our bath with silt, and we would know

he had gone on another expedition.


So I was surprised when he took me down

those stairs, turned left instead of right, led me through a few twists

and turns that looked too narrow for him, and showed me a rusty plate

in the floor of a dirty, wet-smelling room. He hauled it up to expose a

cavity below, and an aluminum step-ladder that he had pilfered from

somewhere else in the concent. “I was obliged to saw the legs off—a

little,” he confessed, “as the ceiling is quite low. After you.”


The legendary treasure-vault turned out to be approximately one arm-span wide and high. The floor was dirt. Arsibalt had spread out

a poly tarp so that perishable things—“such as your bony arse,

Raz”—could exist here without continually drawing up moisture from the

earth. Oh, and there wasn’t any treasure. Just a lot of graffiti carved

into the walls by disappointed slines.


It was just about the nastiest place

imaginable to work. But we had almost no choices. It wasn’t as if I

could sit up on my pallet at night and throw my bolt over my head like

a tent and stare at the forbidden tablet.


We employed the oldest trick in the

book—literally. In the Old Library, Tulia found a great big fat book

that no one had pulled down from the shelf in eleven hundred years: a

compendium of papers about a kind of elementary particle theorics that

had been all the rage from 2300 to 2600, when Saunt Fenabrast had

proved it was wrong. We cut a circle from each page until we had formed

a cavity in the heart of this tome that was large enough to swallow the

photomnemonic tablet. Lio carried it up to the Fendant court in a stack

of other books and brought it back down at suppertime, much heavier,

and handed it over to me. The next day I gave it to Arsibalt at

breakfast. When I saw him at supper he told me that the tablet was now

in place. “I looked at it, a little,” he said.


“What did you learn?” I asked him.


“That the Ita have been diligent about

keeping Clesthyra’s Eye spotless,” he said. “One of them comes every

day to dust it. Sometimes he eats his lunch up there.”


“Nice place for it,” I said. “But I was thinking of night-time observations.”


“I’ll leave those to you, Fraa Erasmas.”


Now I only wanted an excuse to go to Shuf’s

Dowment a lot. Here at last politics worked in my favor. Those who

looked askance at the ROF’s fixing up the Dowment did so because it

seemed like a sneaky way of getting something for nothing. If asked,

the ROF would always insist that anyone was welcome to go there and

work. But New Circles and especially Edharians rarely did so. Partly

this was the usual inter-Order rivalry. Partly it was current events.


“How have your brothers and sisters been

treating you lately?” Tulia asked me one day as we were walking back

from Provener. The shape of her voice

was not warm-fuzzy. More curious-analytical. I turned around to walk

backwards in front of her so that I could look at her face. She got

annoyed and raised her eyebrows. She was coming of age in a month.

After that, she could take part in liaisons without violating the

Discipline. Things between us had become awkward.


“Why do you ask? Just curious,” I said.


“Stop making a spectacle of yourself and I’ll tell you.”


I hadn’t realized I was making a spectacle of myself but I turned back around and fell in step beside her.


“There is a new strain of thought,” Tulia

said, “that Orolo was actually Thrown Back as retribution for the

politicking that took place during the Eliger season.”


“Whew!” was the most eloquent thing I could

say about that. I walked on in silence for a while. It was the most

ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. If you couldn’t be Thrown Back for

stealing mead and selling it on the black market to buy forbidden

consumer goods, then what wouldn’t bring down the Anathema? And yet—


“Ideas like that are evil,” I said,

“because some creepy-crawly part of your brain wants to believe in them

even while your logical mind is blasting them to pieces.”


“Well, some among the Edharians have been

letting their creepy-crawly brains get the better of them,” Tulia said.

“They don’t want to believe in the mead and the speelycaptor.

Apparently, Orolo brokered a three-way deal that sent Arsibalt to the

ROF in exchange for—”


“Stop,” I said, “I don’t want to hear it.”


“You know what Orolo did and so it’s easier

for you to accept,” she said. “Others are having trouble with it—they

want to make it into a political conspiracy and say that the thing with

the mead never happened.”


“Not even I am that cynical about Suur Trestanas,” I said. In the corner of my eye I saw Tulia turn her head to look at me.


“Okay,” I admitted, “Let me put it differently. I don’t think she’s a conspiracist. I think she’s just plain evil.”


That seemed to satisfy Tulia.


“Look,” I said, “Fraa Orolo used to say

that the concent was just like the outside world, except with fewer

shiny objects. I had no idea what he

was getting at. Now that he’s gone, I see it. Our knowledge doesn’t

make us better or wiser. We can be just as nasty as those slines that

beat up Lio and Arsibalt for the fun of it.”


“Did Orolo have an answer?”


“I think he did,” I said, “he was trying to

explain it to me during Apert. Look for things that have beauty—it

tells you that a ray is shining in from—well—”


“A true place? The Hylaean Theoric World?”

Again her face was hard to read. She wanted to know whether I believed

in all that stuff. And I wanted to know if she

did. I reckoned the stakes were higher for her. As an Edharian, I could

get away with it. “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know if he would have called

it by that name. But it’s what he was driving at.”


“Well,” she said, after giving it a few moments’ thought, “it’s better than spending your life swapping conspiracy theories.”


That’s not saying much,

I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud. The decision Tulia had made to

join the New Circle was a real decision with real consequences. One of

which was that she must be guarded when talking about ideas like the

HTW that they considered to be superstitions. She could believe in that

stuff if she wanted; but she had to keep it to herself, and it was bad

form for me to try to pry it out of her.


Anyway I now had an excuse to hang around

at Shuf’s Dowment: I was trying to act as a peacemaker among the orders

by accepting the ROF’s standing invitation.


After breakfast each morning I would attend

a lecture, typically with Barb, and work with him on proofs and

problems until Provener and the midday meal. After that I would go out

to the back part of the meadow where Lio and I were getting ready for

the weed war, and work, or pretend to, for a while. I kept an eye on

the bay window of Shuf’s Dowment, up on the hill on the other side of

the river. Arsibalt kept a stack of books on the windowsill next to his

big chair. If someone else was there, he would turn these so that their

spines were toward the window. I could see their dark brown bindings

from the meadow. But if he found himself alone, he would turn them so

that their white page-edges were visible. When I noticed this I would

stop work, go to a niche-gallery, fetch my theorics notes,

and carry them over the bridge and through the page-tree-coppice to

Shuf’s Dowment, as if I were going there to study. A few minutes later

I’d be down in the sub-cellar, sitting crosslegged on that tarp and

working with the tablet. When I was finished I would come back up

through the cellars. Before ascending the flagstone steps I would look

for another signal: if someone else was in the building, Arsibalt would

close the door at the top of the stairs, but if he were alone, he’d

leave it ajar.





One of the many advantages that

photomnemonic tablets held over ordinary phototypes was that they made

their own light, so you could work with them in the dark. This tablet

began and ended with daylight. If I ran it back to the very beginning,

it became a featureless pool of white light with a faint bluish tinge:

the unfocused light of sun and sky that had washed over the tablet

after I had activated it on top of the Pinnacle during Fraa Paphlagon’s

Voco. If I put the tablet into play mode I could then watch a brief

funny-looking transition as it had been slid into Clesthyra’s Eye, and

then, suddenly, an image, perfectly crisp and clear but geometrically

distorted.


Most of the disk was a picture of the sky.

The sun was a neat white circle, off-center. Around the tablet’s rim

was a dark, uneven fringe, like a moldy rind on a wheel of cheese: the

horizon, all of it, in every direction. In this fisheye geometry,

“down” for us humans—i.e., toward the ground—was always outward toward

the rim of the tablet. Up was always inward toward the center. If

several people had stood in a circle around Clesthyra’s eye, their

waists would have appeared around the circumference of the image and

their heads would have projected inward like spokes of a wheel.


So much information was crammed into the

tablet’s outer fringe that I had to use its pan and zoom functions to

make sense of it. The bright sky-disk seemed to have a deep dark notch

cut into it at one place. On closer examination, this was the pedestal

of the zenith mirror, which stood right next to Clesthyra’s Eye. Like

the north arrow on a map, this gave me a reference point that I could

use to get my bearings and find other things. About halfway around the

rim from it was a wider, shallower

notch in the sky-disk, difficult to make sense of. But if I turned it

about the right way and gave my eye a moment to get used to the

distortion, I could understand it as a human figure, wrapped in a bolt

that covered everything except one hand and forearm. These were

reaching radially outward (which meant down) and became grotesquely

oversized before being cropped by the edge of the tablet. This

monstrosity was me reaching toward the base of the Eye, having just

inserted the tablet and secured the dust cover. The first time I saw

this I laughed out loud because it made my elbow look as big as the

moon, and by zooming in on it I could see a mole and count the hairs

and freckles. My attempt to hide my identity by hooding myself had been

a joke! If Suur Trestanas had found this tablet she could have found

the culprit by going around and examining everyone’s right elbow.


When I let the tablet play forward, I could

see the notch-that-was-me melt into the dark horizon-rim as I departed.

A few moments later, a dark mote streaked around the tablet in a long

arc, close to the rim: the aerocraft that had taken Fraa Paphlagon away

to the Panjandrums. By freezing this and zooming in I could see the

aerocraft clearly, not quite so badly distorted because it was farther

away: the rotors and the streams of exhaust from its engines frozen,

the pilot’s face, mostly covered by a dark visor, caught in sunlight

shining through the windscreen, his lips parted as if he were speaking

into the microphone that curved alongside his cheek. When I ran the

time point forward a few minutes I was able to see the aerocraft flying

back in the other direction, this time with the face of Fraa Paphlagon

framed in a side-window, gazing back at the concent as if he’d never

seen it before.


Then, by sliding my finger up along the

side of the tablet for a short distance, I was able to make the sun

commit its arc across the sky-disk and sink into the horizon. The

tablet went dark. Stars must be recorded on it, but my eyes couldn’t

see them very well because they hadn’t adjusted to the dark yet. A few

red comets flashed across it—the lights of aerocraft. Then the disk

brightened again and the sun exploded from the edge and launched itself

across the sky the next morning.




If I ran my finger all the way up the side

of the tablet in one continuous motion, it flashed like a strobe light:

seventy-eight flashes in all, one for each day that the tablet had

lodged in Clesthyra’s Eye. Coming to the last few seconds and slowing

down the playback, I was able to watch myself emerging from the top of

the stairs and approaching the Eye to remove the tablet during Fraa

Orolo’s Anathem. But I hated to see this part of it because of the way

my face looked. I only checked it once, just to be sure that the tablet

had continued recording all the way until the moment I’d retrieved it.


I erased the first and last few seconds of

the recording, so that if the tablet were confiscated it would not

contain any images of me. Then I began reviewing it in greater detail.

Arsibalt had mentioned seeing the Ita in this thing. Sure enough, on

the second day, a little after noon, a dark bulge reached in from the

rim and blotted out most of the sky for a minute. I ran it back and

played it at normal speed. It was one of the Ita. He approached from

the top of the stairs carrying a squirt-bottle and a rag. He spent a

minute cleaning the zenith mirror, then approached Clesthyra’s

Eye—which was when his image really became huge—and sprayed cleaning

fluid on it. I flinched as if the stuff were being sprayed into my

face. He gave it a good polish. I could see all the way up into his

nostrils and count the hairs; I could see the tiny veins in his

eyeballs and the striations in his iris. So there was no doubt that

this was Sammann, the Ita whom Jesry and I had stumbled upon in Cord’s

machine-hall. In a moment he became much smaller as he backed away from

the Eye. But he did not depart from the top of the Pinnacle

immediately. He stood there for several moments, bobbed out of view,

re-appeared, approached and loomed in Clesthyra’s Eye for a little bit,

then finally went away.


I zoomed in and watched that last bit

again. After he polished the lens, he looked down, as if he had dropped

something. He stooped over, which made all but his backside disappear

beyond the rim of the tablet. When he stood up, bulging back into the

picture again, he had something new in his hand: a rectangular object

about the size of a book. I didn’t have to zoom in on this to know what

it was: the dust jacket that, a day previously, I had torn off this

very tablet. The wind had snatched it from my hand, and in my haste to leave, I had, like an idiot, left it lying where it had fallen.


Sammann examined it for a minute, turning

it this way and that. After a while he seemed to get an idea of what it

was. His head snapped around to look at me—at Clesthyra’s Eye, rather.

He approached and peered into the lens, then cocked his head, reached

down, and (I guessed, though I couldn’t see) prodded the little door

that covered the tablet-slot. His face registered something. If I’d

wanted, I could have zoomed in on his eyeballs and seen what was

reflected in them. But I didn’t need to because the look on his face

told all.


Less than twenty-four hours after I had

slipped that tablet into Clesthyra’s Eye, someone else in this concent

had known about it.


Sammann stood there for another minute,

pondering. Then he folded up the dust jacket, inserted it into a

breast-pocket of his cloak, turned his back on me, and walked away.





I moved the tablet forward to a cloudy

night, thereby plunging myself into almost total blackness, and I sat

there in that hole in the ground and tried to get over this.


I was remembering the other evening,

standing around the campfire, when I had criticized Orolo for being

incautious, and told my friends that I’d be much more careful. What an

idiot I was!


Watching Sammann pick up that dust jacket

and put two and two together, my face had flushed and my heart had

thumped as if I were actually there on top of the Pinnacle with him.

But this was just a recording of something that had happened months

ago. And nothing had come of it. Granted, Sammann could spill the beans

any time he chose.


That was unnerving. But I could do nothing

about it. Feeling embarrassed by a mistake I’d made months ago was a

waste of time. Better to think about what I was going to do now. Sit

here in the dark worrying? Or keep investigating the contents of this

tablet? Put that way, it wasn’t a very difficult question. The fury

that had taken up residence in my gut was a kind of anger that had to

be acted upon. The action didn’t need to be sudden or dramatic. If I’d joined

one of the other orders, I might have made acting upon it into a sort

of career. Using it as fuel, I could have spent the next ten or twenty

years working my way up the hierarch ranks, looking for ways to make

life nasty for those who had wronged Orolo. But the fact of the matter

was that I’d joined the Edharians and thereby made myself powerless as

far as the internal politics of the concent were concerned. So I tended

to think in terms of murdering Fraa Spelikon. Such was my anger that

for a little while this actually made sense, and from time to time I’d

find myself musing about how to carry it off. There were a lot of big

knives in the kitchen.


So how fortunate it was that I had this

tablet, and a place in which to view it. It gave me something to act

on—something, that is, besides Fraa Spelikon’s throat. If I worked on

it hard enough and were lucky, perhaps I could come up with some result

that I could announce one evening in the Refectory to the humiliation

of Spelikon, Trestanas, and Statho. Then I could storm out of the

concent in disgust before they had time to Throw me Back.


And in the meantime, studying this thing

answered that need in my gut to take some kind of action in response to

what had been inflicted on Orolo. And I’d found that taking such action

was the only way to transmute my anger back into grief. And when I was

grieving—instead of angry—young fids no longer shied away from me, and

my mind was no longer filled with images of blood pumping from Fraa

Spelikon’s severed arteries.


So I had no choice but to put Sammann and

the dust cover out of my mind, and concentrate instead on what

Clesthyra’s Eye had seen during the night-time. I had kept track of the

weather those seventy-seven nights. More than half had been cloudy.

There had only been seventeen nights of really clear seeing.


Once I allowed my eyes to adjust to the

darkness, it was easy to find north on this thing, because it was the

pole around which all the stars revolved. If the image was frozen, or

playing back at something like normal speed, the stars appeared as

stationary points of light. But if I sped up the playback, each star,

with the exception of the pole star, traced an arc centered on the pole

as Arbre rotated beneath it. Our fancier telescopes had polar axis

systems, driven by the clock, that eliminated

this problem. These telescopes rotated “backwards” at the same speed as

Arbre rotated “forwards” so that the stars remained stationary above

them. Clesthyra’s Eye was not so equipped.


The tablet could be commanded to tell what

it had seen in several different ways. To this point I’d been using it

like a speelycaptor with its play, pause, and fast-forward buttons. But

it could do things that speelycaptors couldn’t, such as integrate an

image over a span of time. This was an echo of the Praxic Age when,

instead of tablets like this one, cosmographers had used plates coated

with chemicals sensitive to light. Because many of the things they

looked at were so faint, they had often needed to expose those plates

for hours at a time. A photomnemonic tablet worked both ways. If you

were to “play back” such a record in speelycaptor mode, you might see

nothing more than a few stars and a bit of haze, but if you configured

the tablet to show the still image integrated over time, a spiral

galaxy or nebula might pop out.


So my first experiment was to select a

night that had been clear, and configure the tablet to integrate all

the light that Clesthyra’s Eye had taken in that night into a single

still image. The first results weren’t very good because I set the

start time too early and the stop time too late, so everything was

washed out by the brightness in the sky after dusk and before dawn. But

after making some adjustments I was able to get the image I wanted.


It was a black disk etched with thousands

of fine concentric arcs, each of which was the track made by a

particular star or planet as Arbre spun beneath it. This image was

crisscrossed by several red dotted lines and brilliant white streaks:

the traces made by the lights of aerocraft passing across our sky. The

ones in the center, made by high-flying craft, ran nearly straight.

Over toward one edge the star-field was all but obliterated by a sheaf

of fat white curves: craft coming in to land at the local aerodrome,

all following more or less the same glide path.


Only one thing in this whole firmament did

not move: the pole star. If our hypothesis was correct as to what Fraa

Orolo had been looking for—namely, something in a polar orbit—then,

assuming it was bright enough to be seen on this thing, it ought to

register as a streak passing near the

pole star. It would be straight or nearly so, and oriented at right

angles to the myriad arcs made by the stars—it would move north-south

as they moved east-west.


Not only that, but such a satellite should

make more than one such streak on a given night. Jesry and I had worked

it out. A satellite in a low orbit should make a complete pass around

Arbre in about an hour and a half. If it made a streak on the tablet as

it passed over the pole at, say, midnight, then at about one-thirty it

should make another streak, and another at three, and another at

four-thirty. It should always stay in the same plane with respect to

the fixed stars. But during each of those ninety-minute intervals Arbre

would rotate through twenty-two and a half degrees of longitude. And so

the successive streaks that a given satellite made should not be drawn

on top of each other. Instead they should be separated by angles of

about twenty-two and a half degrees (or pi/8 as theoricians measured

angles). They should look like cuts on a pie.


image


My work on that first day in the sub-cellar

consisted of making the tablet produce a time exposure for the first

clear night, then zooming in on the

vicinity of the pole star and looking for something that resembled a

pie-cutting diagram. I succeeded in this so easily that I was almost

disappointed. Because there was more than one such satellite, what it

looked like was more complex:


image


But if I looked at it long enough I could see it as several different pie-cut diagrams piled on top of each other.


“It’s an anticlimax,” I told Jesry at

supper. We had somehow managed to avoid Barb and sit together in a

corner of the Refectory.


“Again?”


“I’d sort of thought that if I could see

anything at all in a polar orbit, that’d be the end of it. Mystery

solved, case closed. But it is not so. There are several satellites in

polar orbits. Probably have been ever since the Praxic Age. Old ones

wear out and fall down. The Panjandrums launch new ones.”


“That is not a new result,” he pointed out.

“If you go out at night and stand facing north and wait long enough,

you can see those things hurtling over the pole with the naked eye.”


I chewed a bit of food as I struggled to master the urge to punch him in the nose. But this was how things were done in theorics. It wasn’t only the Lorites who said that is not a new result.

People reinvented the wheel all the time. There was nothing shameful in

it. If the rest of us oohed and aahed and said, “Gosh, a wheel, no

one’s ever thought of that before,” just to make that person feel good,

nothing would ever get done. But still it stung to risk so much and do

so much work to get a result, only to be told it was nothing new.


“I don’t claim it is a new result,” I told

him, with elaborate patience. “I’m only letting you know what happened

the first time I was able to spend a couple of hours with the tablet.

And I guess I am posing a question.”


“All right. What is the question?”


“Fraa Orolo must have known that there were

several satellites in polar orbits and that this wasn’t a big deal. To

a cosmographer, it’s no more remarkable than aerocraft flying overhead.”


“An annoyance. A distraction,” Jesry said, nodding.


“So what was it that he risked Anathem to see?”


“He didn’t just risk Anathem. He—”


I waved him off. “You know what I mean. This is no time to go Kefedokhles.”


Jesry gazed into space above my left

shoulder. Most others would have been embarrassed or irritated by my

remark. Not him! He couldn’t care less. How I envied him! “We know that

he needed a speelycaptor to see it,” Jesry said. “The naked eye wasn’t

good enough.”


“He had to see all of this in a different way. He couldn’t make time exposures on a tablet,” I put in.


“The best he could do, once the starhenge

had been locked, was to stand out in that vineyard, freezing his arse

off, looking at the pole star through the speelycaptor. Waiting for

something to streak across.”


“When it showed up, it would zoom across

the viewfinder in a few moments,” I said. We were completing each

other’s sentences now. “But then what? What would he have learned?”


“The time,” Jesry said. “He would know what time it was.” He shifted

his gaze to the tabletop, as if it were a speely of Orolo. “He makes a

note of it. Ninety minutes later he looks again. He sees the same bird

making its next pass over the pole.” Lio referred to satellites as

birds—this was military slang he’d picked up from books—and the rest of

us had adopted the term.


“That sounds about as interesting as watching the hour hand on a clock,” I said.


“Well, but remember, there’s more than one of these birds,” he said.


“I don’t have to remember it—I spent the whole afternoon looking at them!” I reminded him.


But Jesry was on the trail of an idea and

had no time for me and my petty annoyance. “They can’t all be orbiting

at the same altitude,” he said. “Some must be higher than others—those

would have longer periods. Instead of ninety minutes they might take

ninety-one or a hundred three minutes to go around. By timing their

orbits, Fraa Orolo could, by making enough observations, compile sort

of—”


“A census,” I said. “A list of all the birds that were up there.”


“Once he had that in hand, if there was any

change—any anomaly—he’d be able to detect it. But until such time as he

had completed that census, as you call it—”


“He’d be working in the dark, in more ways

than one, wouldn’t he?” I said. “He’d see a bird pass over the pole but

he wouldn’t know which bird it was, or if there was anything unusual

about it.”


“So if that’s true we have to follow in his footsteps,” Jesry said. “Your first objective should be to compile such a census.”


“That is much easier for me than it was for

Orolo,” I said. “Just looking at the tracks on the tablet you can see

that some are more widely spread—bigger slices of the pie—than others.

Those must be the high flyers.”


“Once you get used to looking at these

images, you might be able to notice anomalies just by their general

appearance,” Jesry speculated.


Which was easy for him to say, since he wasn’t the one doing it!




For the last little while he had seemed

restless and bored. Now he broke eye contact, gazed around the

Refectory as if seeking someone more interesting—but then turned his

attention back to me. “New topic,” he announced.


“Affirmative. State name of topic,” I answered, but if he knew I was making fun of him, he didn’t show it.


“Fraa Paphlagon.”


“The Hundreder who was Evoked.”


“Yes.”


“Orolo’s mentor.”


“Yes. The Steelyard says that his Evocation, and the trouble Orolo got into, must be connected.”


“Seems reasonable,” I said. “I guess I’ve sort of been assuming that.”


“Normally we’d have no way of knowing what

a Hundreder was working on—not until the next Centennial Apert, anyway.

But before Paphlagon went into the Upper Labyrinth, twenty-two years

ago, he wrote some treatises that got sent out into the world at the

Decennial Apert of 3670. Ten years later, and again just a few months

ago, our Library got its usual Decennial deliveries. So, I’ve been

going through all that stuff looking for anything that references

Paphlagon’s work.”


“Seems really indirect,” I pointed out. “We’ve got all of Paphlagon’s work right here, don’t we?”


“Yeah. But that’s not what I’m looking

for,” Jesry said. “I’m more interested in knowing who, out there, was

paying attention to Paphlagon. Who read his works of 3670, and thought

he had an interesting mind? Because—”


“Because someone,” I

said, getting it, “someone out there in the Sæcular world must have

said ‘Paphlagon’s our man—yank him, and bring him to us!’”


“Exactly.”


“So what have you found?”


“Well, that’s the thing,” Jesry said. “Turns out Paphlagon had two careers, in a way.”


“What do you mean—like an avocation?”




“You could say his avocation was

philosophy. Metatheorics. Procians might even call it a sort of

religion. On the one hand, he’s a proper cosmographer, doing the same

sort of stuff as Orolo. But in his spare time he’s thinking big ideas,

and writing it down—and people on the outside noticed.”


“What kind of ideas?”


“I don’t want to go there now,” Jesry said.


“Well, damn it—”


He held up a hand to settle me. “Read it

yourself! That’s not what I’m about. I’m about trying to reckon who

picked him and why. There’s lots of cosmographers, right?”


“Sure.”


“So if he was Evoked to answer cosmography questions, you have to ask—”


“Why him in particular?”


“Yeah. But it’s rare to work on the metatheorical stuff he was interested in.”


“I see where you’re going,” I said. “The Steelyard tells us he must have been Evoked for that—not the cosmography.”


“Yeah,” Jesry said. “Anyway, not that many

people paid attention to Paphlagon’s metatheorics, at least, judging

from the stuff we got in the deliveries of 3680 and 3690. But there’s

one suur at Baritoe, name of Aculoä, who really seems to admire him.

Has written two books about Paphlagon’s work.”


“Tenner or—”


“No, that’s just it. She’s a Unarian. Thirty-four years straight.”


So she was a teacher. There was no other reason to spend more than a few years in a Unarian math.


“Latter Evenedrician,” Jesry said, answering my next question before I’d asked it.


“I don’t know much about that order.”


“Well, remember when Orolo told us that Saunt Evenedric worked on different stuff during the second half of his career?”


“Actually, I think Arsibalt’s the one who told us that, but—”


Jesry shrugged off my correction. “The Latter Evenedricians are interested in exactly that stuff.”




“All right,” I said, “so you reckon Suur Aculoä fingered Paphlagon?”


“No way. She’s a philosophy teacher, a One-off…”


“Yeah, but at one of the Big Three!”


“That’s my point,” Jesry said, a little

testy, “a lot of important Sæculars did a few years at Big Three maths

when they were younger—before they went out and started their careers.”


“You think this suur had a fid, ten or

fifteen years ago maybe, who’s gone on to become a Panjandrum. Aculoä

taught the fid all about how great and wise Fraa Paphlagon was. And

now, something’s happened—”


“Something,” Jesry said, nodding confidently, “that made that ex-fid say, ‘that tears it, we need Paphlagon here yesterday!’”


“But what could that something be?”


Jesry shrugged. “That’s the whole question, isn’t it?”


“Maybe we could get a clue by investigating Paphlagon’s writings.”


“That is obvious,” Jesry said. “But it’s rather difficult when Arsibalt’s using them as a semaphore.”


It took me a moment to make sense of this. “That stack of books in the window—”


Jesry nodded. “Arsibalt took everything Paphlagon ever wrote to Shuf’s Dowment.”


I laughed. “Well then, what about Suur Aculoä?”


“Tulia’s going through her works now,” Jesry said, “trying to figure out if she had any fids who amounted to anything.”


Ringing Vale: (1) A

mountain valley renowned for the many small streams that spill down its

rocky walls from glaciers poised above, producing a musical sound

likened to the ringing of chimes. Also known as the Rill Vale, or

(poetically) Vale of a Thousand Rills. (2) A math founded there in

A.R.17, specializing in study and developments of martial arts and

related topics (see Vale-lore).




Vale-lore: In New Orth,

an omnibus term covering armed and unarmed martial arts, military

history, strategy, and tactics, all of which are strongly associated,

in the Mathic world, with the avout of the Ringing Vale, who have made

such topics their specialty since a math was founded there in A.R.17.

Note: in informal speech and in Fluccish, the word is sometimes

contracted to vlor. However, note that this

variant emphasizes the martial-arts side of Vale-lore at the expense of

its more academic and bureaucratic aspects. Extramuros, Vlor

is an entertainment genre, and (for those Sæculars who can be moved to

stand up and practice such things, as opposed to merely watching them)

a type of academy.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Working in a hole in the ground had made me

ignorant of all these goings-on. But now that Jesry had let me know

that my fraas and suurs were working so hard, I redoubled my efforts

with the tablet. Stored on that thing I had all of seventeen clear

nights. Once I got the knack, it took me about half an hour’s work to

configure the tablet to give me the time exposure for a given night.

Then, using a protractor, I would spend another half hour or so

measuring the angles between streaks. As Jesry had predicted, some

birds made slightly larger angles than others, reflecting their longer

periods, but the angle for a given bird was always the same, every

orbit, every night. So in a sense it only took a single night’s

observations to make a rough draft of the census. But I went ahead and

did it for all seventeen of the clear nights anyway, just to be

thorough, and because frankly I had no idea what to do next. I could

polish off one, sometimes two nights’ observations every time I got a

chance to go down into that sub-cellar, but I didn’t get that chance

every day.


By the time I finished, I had been at it

for about three weeks. Buds were out on the page trees. Birds were

flying north. Fraas and suurs were poking around in their tangles,

arguing about whether it was time to plant. The barbarian weed-horde

was marshaling on the riverbank and getting ready to invade the fertile

Plains of Thrania. Arsibalt was two-thirds of the way through his pile

of Paphlagon. The vernal equinox was

only a few days away. Apert had begun on the morning of the autumnal

equinox—half a year ago! I could not understand where the time had gone.


It had gone the same place as all the

thousands of years before it. I had spent it working. It didn’t matter

that my work was secret, illicit, and could have got me Thrown Back.

The concent didn’t care about that. Certain persons would have cared a

lot. But this was a place for the avout to spend their lives working on

such projects. And now that I had a project, I was a part of that concent in a way I’d never been before, and the place was the right place for me.


Since Arsibalt, Jesry, and Tulia had their

minds on other projects, I didn’t tell them about Sammann. That was a

topic reserved for Lio when we were out in the meadow coaxing the

starblossom to grow in the right direction. Or, since it was Lio, doing

whatever else had most recently jumped into his mind.


We had reacted in different ways to the

loss of Orolo. In my case, it was bloody revenge fantasies that I kept

to myself. Lio, on the other hand, had become entranced by ever weirder

varieties of vlor. Two weeks ago, he had tried to get me interested in

rake vlor, which I guessed was inspired by the story of Diax casting

out the Enthusiasts. I had declined on grounds of not wanting to get a

blood infection—a weaponized rake could give you mass-produced puncture

wounds. Last week he had developed a keen interest in shovel vlor, and

we had spent a lot of time squatting on the riverbank sharpening spades

with rocks.


When he led me down to the river again one

day, I assumed it was for more of the same. But he kept looking back

over his shoulder and leading me in deeper. I’d been on enough furtive

expeditions as a fid to know that he was checking the sight-lines to

the Warden Regulant’s windows. Old habits kicked in; I became silent,

and moved from one shady place to another until we had reached a place

where the bending river had cut away the bank to form an overhang,

sheltered from view. Fortunately no one was there having a liaison just

now. It would have been a bad place for it anyway: mucky ground, lots

of bugs, high probability of being interrupted by avout messing around

on the river in boats.




Lio turned to face me. I was almost worried that he was going to make a pass at me.


But no. This was Lio we were talking about.


“I’d like you to punch me in the face,” he said. As if he were asking me to scratch his back.


“Not that I haven’t always dreamed of it,” I said, “but why would you want it?”


“Hand-to-hand combat has been a common

element of military training down through the ages,” he proclaimed, as

if I were a fid. “Long ago it was learned that recruits—no matter how

much training they had received—tended to forget everything they knew

the first time they got punched in the face.”


“The first time in their lives, you mean?”


“Yeah. In peaceful, affluent societies where brawling is frowned on, this is a common problem.”


“Not being punched in the face a lot is a problem?”


“It is,” Lio said, “if you join the

military and find yourself in hand-to-hand combat with someone who is

actually trying to kill you.”


“But Lio,” I said, “you have been punched in the face. It happened at Apert. Remember?”


“Yes,” he said, “and I have been trying to learn from that experience.”


“So why do you want me to punch you in the face again?”


“As a way to find out whether I have learned.”


“Why me? Why not Jesry? He seems more the type.”


“That is the problem.”


“I see your point. Why not Arsibalt, then?”


“He wouldn’t do it for real—and then he’d complain that he’d hurt his hand.”


“What are you going to tell people if you show up for dinner with a busted face?”


“That I was battling evildoers.”


“Try again.”


“That I was practicing falls, and landed wrong.”


“What if I don’t want to mess up my hand?”




He smiled and produced a pair of heavy

leather work gloves. “Stuff some rags under the knuckles,” he

suggested, as I was pulling them on, “if you’re that worried about it.”


Grandsuurs Tamura and Ylma drifted by on a punt. We pretended to pull weeds until they were out of sight.


“Okay,” Lio said, “my objective is to perform a simple takedown on you—”


“Oh, now you tell me!”


“Nothing we haven’t done a hundred times,”

he said, as if I would find this reassuring. “That’s why we came here.”

He stomped the damp sand of the riverbank. “Soft ground.”


“Why—?”


“If I put up my hands to defend my face, I won’t be able to complete my objective.”


“I get it.”


Suddenly he came at me and took me down. “You lose,” he proclaimed, getting up.


“Okay.” I sighed, and clambered to my feet.

Immediately he wheeled around and took me down again. I threw a playful

blow at his head, way too late. This time he took me down a lot harder.

Every one of the small muscles in my head felt as if it had been

strained. He planted a dirty hand on top of my face and shoved off

while getting back to his feet. The message was clear.


The next time I tried for real, but I

didn’t have my feet planted and wasn’t able to hit very hard. And he

was coming in too low.


The time after that, I got my center of

gravity low, planted my feet in the mud, made a bone connection from

hip to fist, and drilled him right on the cheekbone. “Good!” he moaned,

as he was climbing off me. “See if you can actually slow me down

though—that’s the whole point, remember?”


I think we did it about ten more times.

Since I was suffering a lot more abuse than he was, I sort of lost

track. On my best go, I was able to throw him off stride for a

moment—but he still took me down.


“How much longer are we going to do this?”

I asked, lying in the mud, in the bottom of an Erasmas-shaped crater.

If I refused to get up, he couldn’t take me down.




He scooped up a double handful of river

water and splashed it on his face, rinsing away blood from nostrils and

eyebrows. “That should do,” he said. “I’ve learned what I wanted.”


“Which is?” I asked, daring to sit up.


“That I’ve adjusted, since what happened at Apert.”


“We did all that to obtain a negative result?” I exclaimed, getting to my knees.


“If you want to think of it that way,” he said, and scooped up more water.


I’d never get such a fine opportunity again, so I rolled up, put a foot in his backside, and sent him headlong into the river.


Later, as Lio was engrossed in the

comparatively normal and sane activity of shovel-sharpening, I got us

back on the topic of what I’d been seeing in the tablet: specifically,

Sammann’s behavior during his noon visits.


Once I’d gotten over that sick feeling of

having been found out, I’d begun to brood over some other questions.

Was it merely a coincidence that the Ita who had discovered the dust

jacket was the same one who had visited Cord in the machine hall? I

reckoned that either it was a simple coincidence,

or else that this Sammann was some kind of high-ranking Ita who was

responsible for important tasks having to do with the starhenge. In any

case, it booted me nothing to speculate about it.


“Has dis Ita tried to cobbudicade wid you?” Lio asked through puffy lips.


“You mean, like, sneaking into the math at night to slip me notes?”


Lio was baffled by my answer. He showed

this in his usual way: by correcting his posture. The scrape of the

rock on the shovel paused for a moment. Then he got it. “No, I don’t

mean in real time,” he said. “I mean, on the tablet does he—you know.”


“No, Thistlehead, I have to confess I haven’t the faintest idea—”


“If anyone understands surveillance, it’s those guys,” Lio pointed out. “If you buy into Saunt Patagar’s Assertion, sure.”




Lio seemed disappointed that I was so naïve

as not to believe this. He went back to work on that rock. The scraping

really set my teeth on edge but I reckoned it must be putting the hurt

on any spies who might be eavesdropping.


Apparently my new role at the Concent of

Saunt Edhar was to be the sheltered innocent. I said, “Well, answer me

this. If they have us under total surveillance, they must know

everything about me and the tablet, right?”


“Well, yeah, you’d think so.”


“So why hasn’t anything happened?” I asked him. “It’s not like Spelikon and Trestanas have soft spots for me.”


“That doesn’t surprise me,” he insisted. “I don’t think there’s anything strange about that.”


“How do you figure?”


He paused long enough to give me the idea

he was making up an answer on the spot. He dipped his sharpening-rock

into the river. “The Ita can’t be telling the Warden Regulant

everything they know. Trestanas would have to spend every minute of

every day with them, to take in so much intelligence. The Ita must make

decisions as to what they will pass on and what they will withhold.”


What Lio was saying opened up all sorts of

interesting scenarios that would take me some time to sort out. I

didn’t want to stand there with my mouth hanging open any longer than I

already had, so I bent down and grabbed the handle of the shovel. It

wasn’t going to get any sharper. I looked around for a stand of

slashberry that needed to be massacred. It didn’t take long to find

one. I made for it and Lio followed me.


“That’s giving the Ita a lot of

responsibility,” I said, raising the shovel, then driving it down and

forward into the roots of the slashberry canes. Several of them

toppled. Most satisfying.


“Assume that they are as intelligent as we

are,” Lio said. “Come on! They operate complicated syntactic devices

for a living. They created the Reticulum. No one knows better than they

do that knowledge is power. By employing strategy and tactics in what

they say and what they don’t, they must be able to get things they

want.”




I took down a square yard of slashberry while thinking about what he said.


“You’re saying there’s a whole world of Ita/hierarch politics going on over there that we know nothing about.”


“Has to be. Or else they wouldn’t be human,” Lio said.


Then he used Hypotrochian Transquaestiation

on me: he changed the subject in such a way as to imply that the

question had just been settled—that he had won the point and I had

lost. “So, back to my question: does Sammann do anything else on the

tablet that sends you a message—or at least indicates he knows that his

image is being recorded?” He chucked his sharpening-rock into the river.


The correct response to Hypotrochian Transquaestiation was Hey, not so fast!

but Lio’s question was so interesting that I didn’t make a fuss. “I

don’t know,” I had to admit, after I’d spent an enjoyable minute or so

taking down more slashberry. “But I’m getting bored measuring

pie-slices. And I honestly don’t know what else to look at next. So

I’ll have a look.”





After that I couldn’t get into the cellar

for almost a week. The concent was getting ready for some equinox

celebrations and so I had chant rehearsals. The weed war was entering a

stage that demanded I draw at least one sketch of it. I had to get my

tangle planted. When I was free, there always seemed to be other people

at Shuf’s Dowment. The place was becoming hip!


“Be careful what you wish for,” Arsibalt

moaned to me, one afternoon. I was helping him carry a stack of beehive

frames into a wood shop. “I invited one and all to use the Dowment—now

they are doing so—and I can’t work there!”


“Nor I,” I pointed out.


“And now this!” He picked up a putty knife,

which I was pretty sure was the wrong tool for the job, and began to

pick absent-mindedly at a patch of rotten wood on the corner of a

frame. “Disaster!”


“Do you know anything about woodworking?” I asked.


“No,” he admitted.




“How about the metatheorical works of Fraa Paphlagon?”


“That I know a few things about,” he said. “And what is more, I think Orolo wanted us to learn about them.”


“How so?”


“Remember our last dialog with him?”


“Pink nerve-gas-farting dragons. Of course.”


“We must come up with a more dignified name

for it before we commit it to ink,” Arsibalt said with a grimace.

“Anyway, I believe that Orolo was pushing us to think about some of the

ideas that were—are—important to his mentor.”


“Funny he didn’t mention Paphlagon, in that

case,” I pointed out. “I remember talking about the later works of

Saunt Evenedric, but—”


“One leads to the other. We would have found our way to Paphlagon in due course.”


“You would’ve, maybe,” I said. “What’s it all about?” This seemed a reasonable question. But Arsibalt flinched.


“The sort of stuff Procians hate us for.”


“Like, the Hylaean Theoric World?” I asked.


“That’s what they would call it, as a

backhanded way of suggesting we are naïve. But, starting at least as

early as Protas, the idea of the HTW was developed into a more

sophisticated metatheorics. So you could say that Paphlagon’s work is

to classical Protan thought what modern group theory is to counting on

one’s fingers.”


“But still related to it?”


“Certainly.”


“I’m just thinking back to my conversation with that Inquisitor.”


“Varax?”


“Yeah. I’m wondering whether his interest in the topic—”


“Correction: he was interested in whether we were interested in it,” Arsibalt pointed out.


“Yeah, exactly—whether that might be further evidence for the existence of the Hypothetical Important Fid of Suur Aculoä.”


“I think we should be careful speculating

about the HIFOSA until Suur Tulia has actually found evidence of his or

her existence,” Arsibalt said. “Otherwise we’ll be coming up with all manner of speculations that would never make it past the Rake.”


“Well, without telling me everything you

know about it,” I said, “can you give me a clue as to why anyone in the

Sæcular world would think Paphlagon’s work might be of practical

importance?”


“Yes,” he said, “if you fix this beehive for me.”





“You know about atom smashers? Particle accelerators?”


“Sure,” I said. “Praxic Age installations. Huge and expensive. Used to test theories about elementary particles and forces.”


“Yes,” Arsibalt said. “If you can’t test

it, it’s not theorics—it’s metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if

you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines

the boundary separating theorics from philosophy.”


“Wow,” I said, “I’ll bet a philosopher

would really jump down your throat for talking that way. It’s like

saying that philosophy is nothing more than bad theorics.”


“There are some theors who would say so,” Arsibalt admitted. “But those people aren’t really talking about philosophy as philosophers would define it.

Rather, they are talking about something that theors begin to do when

they get right up to the edge of what they can prove using the

equipment they’ve got. They drive philosophers crazy by calling it

philosophy or metatheorics.”


“What kind of stuff are you talking about?”


“Well, they speculate as to what the next

theory might look like. They develop the theory and try to use it to

make predictions that might be testable. In the late Praxic Age, that

usually meant constructing an even bigger and more expensive particle

accelerator.”


“And then came the Terrible Events,” I said.


“Yes, no more expensive toys for theors

after that,” Arsibalt said. “But it’s not clear that it actually made

that much of a difference. The biggest machines, in those days, were

already pushing the limits of what could be constructed on Arbre with

reasonable amounts of money.”




“I hadn’t known that,” I said. “I always tend to assume there’s an infinite amount of money out there.”


“There might as well be,” Arsibalt said,

“but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs.

There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle

accelerators.”


“So the Turn to Cosmography might have happened even without the Reconstitution.”


“It was already happening,” Arsibalt said,

“as the theors of the very late Praxic Age were coming to terms with

the fact that no machine would be constructed during their lifetimes

that would be capable of testing the theorics to which they were

devoting their careers.”


“So those theors had no alternative but to look to the cosmos for givens.”


“Yes,” Arsibalt said. “And in the meantime we have people like Fraa Paphlagon.”


“Meaning what? Both theors and philosophers?”


He thought about it. “I’m trying to respect

your earlier request that I not simply bury you in Paphlagon,” he

explained, when he caught me looking, “but this forces me to work

harder.”


“Fair is fair,” I pointed out, brandishing a crosscut saw that I had been putting to use.


“You could think of Paphlagon—and presumably Orolo—as descendants of people like Evenedric.”


“Theors,” I said, “who turned to philosophy when theorics stopped.”


“Slowed down,” Arsibalt corrected me, “waiting for results from places like Saunt Bunjo’s.”


Bunjo was a Millenarian math built around

an empty salt mine two miles underground. Its fraas and suurs worked in

shifts, sitting in total darkness waiting to see flashes of light from

a vast array of crystalline particle detectors. Every thousand years

they published their results. During the First Millennium they were

pretty sure they had seen flashes on three separate occasions, but

since then they had come up empty.


“So, in the meantime, they’ve been fooling around with ideas that people like Evenedric came up with when they reached the edge of theorics?”


“Yes,” Arsibalt said. “There was a

profusion of them, right around the time of the Reconstitution, all

variations on the theme of the polycosm.”


“The idea that our cosmos is not the only one.”


“Yes. And that’s what Paphlagon writes about when he isn’t studying this cosmos.”


“Now I’m a little confused,” I said, “because I thought you told me just a minute ago that he was working on the HTW.”


“Well, but you could think of Protism—the

belief that there is another realm of existence populated by pure

theorical forms—as the earliest and simplest polycosmic theory,” he

pointed out.


“Because it posits two cosmi,” I said, trying to keep up, “one for us, and one for isosceles triangles.”


“Yes.”


“But the polycosmic theories I’ve heard

about—the circa-Reconstitution ones—are a whole different kettle of

fish. In those theories, there are multiple cosmi separate from our

own—but similar. Full of matter and energy and fields. Always changing.

Not eternal triangles.”


“Not always as similar as you think,”

Arsibalt said. “Paphlagon is part of a tradition that believed that

classical Protism was just another polycosmic theory.”


“How could you possibly—”


“I can’t tell you without telling you

everything,” Arsibalt said, holding up his fleshy hands. “The point I’m

getting at is that he believes in some form of the Hylaean Theoric

World. And that there are other cosmi. Those are the topics Suur Aculoä is interested in.”


“So if the HIFOSA really exists—” I said.


“He or she summoned Paphlagon because the polycosm somehow became a hot topic.”


“And we are guessing that whatever made it hot, also triggered the closure of the starhenge.”


Arsibalt shrugged.


“Well, what could that possibly be?”




He shrugged again. “That’s one for you and Jesry. But don’t forget that the Panjandrums might simply be confused.”





Finally one day I made it down into the

sub-cellar of Shuf’s Dowment and spent three hours watching Sammann eat

lunches. He made the trip almost every day, but not always at the same

time. If the weather was fine and the time of day was right, he would

sit on the parapet, spread out some food on a little cloth, and enjoy

the view while he ate. Sometimes he read a book. I couldn’t identify

all of his little morsels and delicacies, but they looked better than

what we had for lunch. Sometimes, if the wind blew out of the

northeast, we could smell the Ita cooking. It always seemed as if they

were taunting us.


“Results!” I proclaimed to Lio the next time I was alone with him in the meadow. “Sort of.”


“Yeah?”


“You were right, I think.”


“Right about what?” For so much time had

passed that he had forgotten our earlier talk about Sammann. I had to

remind him. Then, he was taken aback. “Wow,” he said, “this is big.”


“Could be. I still don’t know what to make of it,” I said.


“What does he do? Hold up a sign in front of the Eye? Use sign language?”


“Sammann’s too clever for that,” I said.


“What? It sounds like you’re speaking of an old friend.”


“I almost feel that way about him by this point. He and I have had a lot of lunches together.”


“So, how does he—did he—talk to you?”


“For the first sixty-eight days, he’s a real bore,” I said. “Then on Day Sixty-nine, something happens.”


“Day Sixty-nine? What does that mean to the rest of us?”


“Well, it’s about two weeks after the solstice and nine days before Orolo got Thrown Back.”


“Okay. So what does Sammann do on Day Sixty-nine?”


“Well, normally, when he gets to the top of the stair, he unslings

a bag from his shoulder and hangs it around a stone knob that sticks up

from the parapet there. He cleans the optics. Then he goes over and

sits on the parapet—it has a flat top about a foot wide—and takes his

lunch out of that bag and spreads it out there and eats it.”


“Okay. What happens on Day Sixty-nine?”


“In addition to the shoulder bag, he is

carrying something cradled in one arm like a book. The first thing he

does is set this down on the parapet. Then he goes about his usual

routine.”


“So it’s sitting there in plain view of the Eye.”


“Exactly.”


“Can you zoom in on it?”


“Of course.”


“Can you read its title?”


“Turns out it’s not a book at all, Lio. It

is another dust jacket—just like the one Sammann found up there the

first day. Except this one is big and heavy because it contains—”


“Another tablet!” Lio exclaimed, then paused to consider it. “I wonder what that means.”


“Well, we have to assume he had just picked it up elsewhere in the starhenge.”


“He doesn’t leave it there, I assume.”


“No, when he’s finished eating he takes it with him.”


“I wonder why he’d choose that day of all days to snatch a tablet.”


“Well, I’m thinking it must have been

around Day Sixty-nine that Fraa Spelikon’s investigation of Orolo

really began to pick up steam. Now, you might remember that when I

sneaked up there during the Anathem, on Day Seventy-eight, I checked

the M & M—”


“And found it empty,” Lio said with a nod.

“So. On Day Sixty-nine, Spelikon probably ordered Sammann to fetch the

tablet that Orolo had left in the M & M. Which Sammann did. But

Spelikon didn’t know about the one you’d put in Clesthyra’s Eye, so he

didn’t ask for it.”


“But Sammann knew,” I reminded him. “He had noticed it on Day Two.”




“And had made up his mind not to tell

Spelikon. But on Day Sixty-nine he didn’t try to hide the fact that

he’d just grabbed Orolo’s tablet.” Lio shook his head. “I don’t get it.

Why would he risk letting you know that?”


I threw up my hands. “Maybe it’s not such a risk for him. He’s already Ita. What can they do to him?”


“Good point. They can’t be nearly as afraid of the Warden Regulant as we are.”


I was a little bit irritated to be reminded

that we were afraid, but, considering all of the skulking around I’d

been doing lately, I couldn’t argue.


I’d been getting better, I realized.

Recovering from the loss of Fraa Orolo. Forgetting how sad and angry I

was. And when Lio mentioned the Warden Regulant, it reminded me.


Anyway, there was a long silence now as Lio assimilated all of this. We actually got some work done. On the weeds I mean.


“Well,” he finally said, “what happens after that?”


“Day Seventy, cloudy. Day Seventy-one,

snowing. Day Seventy-two, snowing. Can’t see anything because the lens

is covered. Day Seventy-three, it’s brilliant weather. Most of the snow

has melted off by the time Sammann gets there. He cleans the place up

and has lunch. He’s wearing goggles.”


“Like sunglasses?”


“Bigger and thicker.”


“Like what mountain climbers wear?”


“That’s what I thought at first,” I said. “Actually, I had to watch Day Seventy-three several times before I got it.”


“Got what?” Lio asked. “It was bright, there was snow, he wore dark goggles.”


“Really dark,” I said. “I don’t think that these were ordinary goggles like an outdoorsman would wear. I’ve seen

these goggles before, Lio. When I saw Cord and Sammann in the machine

hall, during Apert, they were wearing these things to shield their eyes

from the arc. An arc that’s as bright as the sun.”


“But why would Sammann suddenly start wearing such a getup to clean the lenses?”




“He doesn’t actually have them on while

he’s cleaning. They’re dangling around his neck on a strap,” I said.

“Then he puts them on and eats his lunch as usual. But the entire time

that he’s eating, he’s staring directly into the sun. Sammann is watching the sun.”


“And he never did this before Day Sixty-nine?”


“Nope. Never.”


“So do you think that he learned something—?”


“Something from Fraa Orolo’s tablet,

maybe?” I said. “Or something Spelikon told him? Or perhaps scuttlebutt

from other Ita in other concents, talking, or whatever they do, over

the Reticulum?”


“Why watch the sun? That is completely off the track of what you have been doing, isn’t it?”


“Completely. But it’s something. It is a big fat hint. A gift from Sammann.”


“So, have you started looking at the sun too?”


“I don’t have goggles,” I reminded him,

“but I do have twenty-odd clear sunny days recorded on that tablet. So

starting tomorrow I can at least look at what the sun was doing three

and four months ago.”


Big Three: The Concents

of Saunt Muncoster, Saunt Tredegarh, and Saunt Baritoe, which are

geographically close to one another and which have numerous

characteristics in common, e.g., founded in 0 A.R., relatively

populous, richly endowed, and enjoying high status for past

achievements.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





The next morning, after a theorics lecture,

Jesry and Tulia and I went talking in the meadow. It was the first

really fine spring day and everyone was out walking around, so it felt

as though we could do this without being conspicuous.


“I think I found the IFOSA,” Tulia announced.


“You mean the HIFOSA,” Jesry corrected her.




“No,” I said, “if Tulia has found such a person, it is no longer Hypothetical.”


“I stand corrected,” Jesry said. “Who is the Important Fid?”


“Ignetha Foral,” Tulia said.


“The surname sounds vaguely familiar,” Jesry said.


“The family has been wealthy for a few

hundred years, which makes them old and well-established by Sæcular

standards. They have a lot of ties to the mathic world—especially

Baritoe.”


Saunt Baritoe was adjacent to landforms

that made a huge and excellent harbor when the sea level was behaving

itself, when it wasn’t buried in pack ice, and when the river that

emptied into it had not dried up or been diverted. For about a third of

the time since the Reconstitution, a large city had existed around

Baritoe’s walls—not always the same city, of course—and so it had the

reputation of being urban and worldly, with many ties to families such

as, apparently, the Forals. The Procians were powerful there, and in

their Unarian math they trained many young Sæculars who later went into

law, politics, and commerce.


“What are we allowed to know of her?” Jesry asked.


The question was aptly phrased. Once a

year, at Annual Apert, our Unarians reviewed summaries of the Sæcular

news of the year just ended. Then, once every ten years, just before

Decennial Apert, they reviewed the previous ten annual summaries and

compiled a decennial summary, which became part of our library

delivery. The only criterion for a news item to make it into a summary

was that it still had to seem interesting. This filtered out

essentially all of the news that made up the Sæcular world’s daily

papers and casts. Jesry was asking Tulia what Ignetha Foral had done

that was interesting enough to have made it into the most recent

Decennial summary.


“She had an important post in the

government—she was one of the dozen or so highest-ranking people—and

she took a stand against the Warden of Heaven, and he got rid of her.”


“Killed her?”


“No.”


“Threw her into a dungeon?”




“No, just fired her. I speculate that she

has some other job now where she still has enough pull to Evoke someone

like Paphlagon.”


“So, she was a fid of Suur Aculoä?”


“Ignetha Foral spent six years in the

Unarian math at Baritoe and wrote a treatise comparing Paphlagon’s work

to that of some other, er…”


“People like Paphlagon,” Jesry said impatiently.


“Yeah, of previous centuries.”


“Did you read it?”


“We didn’t get a copy. Maybe in another ten

years. I already went into the Lower Labyrinth and shoved a request

through the grille.”


Someone at Baritoe—presumably a Unarian

fid—would have to copy Foral’s treatise by hand and send it to us. If a

book were very popular, fids would do this without being asked, and

copies would circulate to other maths.


“You’d think a rich family would have had copies machine-printed,” Jesry said.


“Too vulgar,” Tulia said. “But I know the title: Plurality of Worlds: a Comparative Study of Polycosmic Ideation among the Halikaarnians.”


“Hmm. Makes me feel like a bug under the Procians’ magnifying glass,” I said.


“Baritoe is Procian-dominated,” Tulia reminded me. “She wasn’t going to get anywhere calling it Why the Halikaarnians Are So Much Smarter than Us.” Too late I remembered that Tulia belonged to a Procian order now.


“So, she was interested in the polycosm,”

Jesry said before this could flourish into a spat. “What could have

happened that would be observable from the starhenge and that would

make the polycosm relevant?” It was the sort of question Jesry would

never ask unless he already knew the answer, which he now supplied:

“Something’s gone wrong with the sun, I’ll bet.”


I was poised to scoff, but held back,

reflecting that Sammann had, after all, been looking at the sun.

“Something visible with the naked eye?”


“Sunspots. Solar flares. These can affect our weather and so on. And ever since the Praxic Age, the atmosphere doesn’t protect us from certain things.”


“Well, if that’s where the action is, why was Orolo looking at the North Pole?”


“The aurora,” Jesry said, as if he actually knew what he was talking about. “It responds to solar flares.”


“But we haven’t had a single decent aurora this whole time,” Tulia pointed out, with a catlike look of satisfaction on her face.


“That we could see with the naked eye,”

Jesry returned. “This tablet of ours could be the perfect instrument

for observing not only auroras but the disk of the sun itself.”


“I notice it’s ‘our’ tablet now that it’s got something good on it,” I pointed out.


“If Suur Trestanas finds it, it’ll go back

to being ‘your’ tablet,” Tulia said. She and I laughed but Jesry was

determined not to be amused.


“Seriously,” Tulia continued, “that

hypothesis doesn’t explain why they Evoked Paphlagon. Any cosmographer

can look at solar flares.”


“What’s the connection to the polycosm, you’re asking?” Jesry said.


“Exactly.”


“Maybe there is none,” I speculated, “maybe Ignetha Foral just wanted a cosmographer, and happened to remember Paphlagon’s name.”


“Maybe she’s being persecuted as a heretic,

and they yanked Paphlagon so that they could burn him too,” Jesry

suggested. And we chatted about such ideas for a few minutes before

discarding all of them in favor of the proposition that Paphlagon must

have been chosen for some good reason.


“Well,” Jesry said, “the way that the

theors of old found themselves talking about the polycosm in the first

place was by thinking about stars: how they formed, and what went on

inside them.”


“Formation of nuclei and so on,” Tulia said.


“And not only that but, when the stars die, how do those nuclei get blown out into space so that they can form planets and—”




“And us,” I said.


“Yeah,” Jesry said. “It leads to the

question, why are all of those processes so fine-tuned to produce life?

A sticky question. Deolaters would say, ‘Ah, see, God made the cosmos

just for us.’ But the polycosmic answer is, ‘No, there must be lots of

cosmi, some good for life, most not—we only see one cosmos in which we

are capable of existing.’ And that is where all of this philosophical stuff originated that Suur Aculoä likes to study.”


“I think I see where you’re going now when

you guess something’s gone wrong with the sun,” I said. “Maybe there

are some new solar observations that contradict what we thought we knew

about the theorics of what goes on in the cores of stars. And maybe

this has ramifications that extend all the way to those polycosmic

theories that Paphlagon’s interested in.”


“Or—more likely—Ignetha Foral mistakenly thinks so, so she’s yanked Paphlagon, and is now sending him on a wild goose chase,” Jesry said.


“I think she’s pretty smart,” Tulia

demurred, but Jesry didn’t hear her because a resolution was forming in

his head. He turned toward me. “I want to go down there and view this

with you,” he said. “Or without you, if you are busy.”


For about twelve different reasons I hated

this idea, but I couldn’t say so without making it look like I was

trying to be a pig and monopolize the tablet. “Fine,” I said.


“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Tulia

said—sounding as if she were pretty sure it wasn’t. But before this

could develop into a proper fight, we all took notice of the approach

of Suur Ala, who was heading straight for us across the meadow.

“Uh-oh,” Jesry said.


Suur Ala was unusual-looking in a way I’d

never been able to pin down; sometimes I found myself staring at her

during lectures or at Provener trying to make sense of her face. She

had a round head on a slender neck, lately accentuated by a short

haircut she had gotten during Apert; since then, one of the other suurs

had been maintaining this for her. She had huge eyes, a delicate sharp

nose, and a wide mouth. She was small and bony where Tulia was

generous. Anyway there was something about her physical form that

matched her soul.




She didn’t waste time greeting us. “For the

eight-hundredth time in the last three months, Fraa Erasmas is at the

center of a heated conversation. Carefully out of earshot of others.

Complete with significant glances at the sky and at Shuf’s Dowment,”

she began. “Don’t bother trying to explain it away, I know you guys are

up to something. Have been for weeks and weeks.”


We all stood there for a long moment. My

heart was pounding. Ala was squared off against the three of us,

scanning our faces with those searchlight eyes.


“All right,” Jesry said, “we won’t bother.”

But that was all he said. There followed another long silence. I was

expecting a look of fury to come over Ala’s face. For her to make a

threat to bring down the Inquisition on us. Instead of which her face

slowly collapsed. For a moment I thought she might show some other

emotion—I couldn’t guess what. But she passed from there to a blank

resolute look, turned her back on us, and began walking away. After

she’d gone a few paces, Tulia went after her, leaving Jesry and me

alone. “That was weird,” he observed.


I could hardly respond. The miserable

feeling that had kept me awake in my cell on the night that Ala had

joined the New Circle had come over me again.


“You think she’ll rat us out?” I asked him.


I tried to put it in an incredulous tone of voice, as in are you really stupid enough to think she’d rat us out? but Jesry took it at face value. “It would be a great way to score points with the Warden Regulant.”


“But she was careful to approach us when no one else was around,” I pointed out.


“Maybe in hopes of negotiating some kind of deal with us?”


“What do we have to offer in the way of a deal!?” I snorted.


Jesry thought about it and shrugged. “Our bodies?”


“Now you’re just being obnoxious. Why don’t you say ‘our affections’ if you’re going to make such jokes.”


“Because I don’t think I have any affection for Ala,” Jesry said, “and I don’t think she has any for me.”


“Come on, she’s not that bad.”




“How can you say that after the little performance she just put on?”


“Maybe she was trying to warn us that we’re being too obvious.”


“Well, she might have a point there,” Jesry

admitted. “We should stop talking out in the open where the whole math

can observe us.”


“You have a better idea?”


“Yeah. The sub-cellar of Shuf’s Dowment, next time Arsibalt sends us the signal.”





As it turned out, this was only about four

hours later. It all worked fine—superficially. Arsibalt sent the

signal. Jesry and I noticed it from different places and converged on

Shuf’s Dowment. No one was there except for Arsibalt. Jesry and I went

below and got to work.


But in every other way it was wrong from

the start. Whenever I went to Shuf’s Dowment, I took a circuitous route

through the back of the page-tree-coppice. I never went the same way

twice. Jesry, on the other hand, just crossed the bridge and made a

beeline for it. But I couldn’t say his way was any worse than mine,

because that day I encountered no fewer than four different people, or

groups of people, out strolling around to enjoy the weather. Within a

stone’s throw of the Dowment I almost tripped over Suur Tary and Fraa

Branch who were enjoying a private moment together, all wrapped up in

each other’s bolts.


When I finally reached the building, it was

with the intent of calling the thing off. But Jesry wasn’t about to

walk away. He talked me into going down there as Arsibalt looked on,

growingly horrified, eyes jumping from door to window to door. So down

we went, and crammed ourselves into that tiny place where I had spent

so many hours by myself. But it wasn’t the same with him there. I’d

grown used to the geometric distortion wreaked by the lens; he hadn’t,

and spent a lot of time zooming in on different things just to see what

they looked like. It was no different from what I had done on

my first few sessions with it, but it made me want to scream. He didn’t

seem to understand that we did not have time for this. When he got

really interested in something, he would talk much too loudly. Both of

us had to go out and urinate; I had to teach him about the “all clear”

signal involving the door.


It seemed like two or three hours went by

before we actually got around to observing the sun. The tablet worked

as well for this as it did for looking at distant stars. It could only

generate so much light, and so the sun appeared, not as a blinding

thermonuclear fireball, but as a crisp-edged disk—the brightest thing

on the tablet, certainly, but not so bright you couldn’t look at it. If

you zoomed in on it and turned down the brightness, you could observe

sunspots. I couldn’t really say whether there was an exceptional number

of these. Neither could Jesry. By blacking out the sun’s disk and

observing the space around it, we could look for solar flares, but

there was nothing unusual going on that we could see. Not that either

of us was an expert on such things. We’d never paid much attention to

the sun before, considering it an obnoxious, wayward star that

interfered with our observations of all the other stars.


After we became discouraged, and convinced

ourselves that the hypothesis about Sammann and the goggles was wrong,

and that we’d wasted the whole afternoon, we attempted to leave, and

found the door at the top of the stairs closed. Someone else was in the

building; it wasn’t safe to go out.


We waited for half an hour. Maybe Arsibalt

had closed the door in error. I crept up and put my ear to it. He was

carrying on a conversation with someone there, and the longer I

listened to their muffled voices the more certain I became that the

other person was Suur Ala. She had tracked us here!


Jesry had uncomplimentary things to say

about her when I came back down to report this news. Half an hour later

she was still there. Both of us were starving. Arsibalt must be in a

state of animalistic terror.


Clearly our secret was out, or soon to be

out, to at least one person. Squatting there in the darkness, trapped

like rats, we had more than enough

time to think through the implications. To go on as if this had not

happened would be senseless. So, having nothing else to do, we pulled

the poly tarp up off the floor and wrapped the tablet in it. Then we

maneuvered and squirmed into the remotest place we could find—the

utmost frontier of Arsibalt’s explorations—and used his shovel to bury

the tablet four feet deep. When we were finished with that project, and

nicely covered with dirt, I went up and put my ear to the door again.

This time I heard no conversation. But the door was still closed.


“I think Arsibalt has abandoned us in favor of supper,” I told Jesry. “But I’ll bet she’s still up there.”


“It’s not in her character to leave at this point,” Jesry said.


“Say, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about her.”


“What do you think we should do, Raz?”


It was strange to hear Jesry asking for my

views on any topic. I savored this novel experience for a few moments

before saying, “If she intends to rat us out, I’m dead no matter what.

But you have a chance. So, let’s go out together. You hood yourself and

go straight out the back door and make yourself scarce. I’ll approach

Ala and talk to her—she’ll be distracted long enough for you to melt

into the darkness.”


“It’s a deal,” Jesry said. “Thanks, Raz. And remember: if it’s your body that she wants—”


“Shut up.”


“Okay, let’s do it,” Jesry said, pulling

his bolt over his head. But I could see him shaking his head at the

same time. “Can you believe this is what passes for excitement around

this place?”


“Maybe someday your wish will be granted and something will happen in the world.”


“I thought this might be it,” he said, nodding toward the sub-cellar. “But, so far, there’s nothing but sunspots.”


The door opened and a light shone on us.


“Hello, boys,” said Suur Ala, “lose your way?”


Jesry was hooded; she couldn’t see his

face. He bounded up the stairs, pushed his way past Ala, and headed for

the back door. I was right behind him. I came face to face with Suur

Ala just in time to hear a terrible thud from down the hall. Jesry was sprawled over the threshold, covered by a mess of bolt—from the waist up.


“No point hiding, Jesry. I’d know your smile anywhere,” Ala called.


Jesry got his legs under him, let his bolt

drop back down over his arse, and ran off. Now that my eyes had

adjusted to the light I could see that Ala had stretched her chord

across the doorway at ankle level and tied it off between a couple of

chairs flanking the exit. Lacking any other way to keep her bolt on,

she had thrown it over herself loosely and was holding it up with one

arm. She turned her back on me and shuffled over to retrieve the chord.


“Arsibalt left an hour ago,” she said. “I think he lost half his weight in perspiration.”


I couldn’t muster a lot of amusement, since

I knew she was in a position to say equally funny things about me or

Jesry if she wanted.


“Cat got your tongue?” she asked, after a good long while.


“How many other people know?”


“You mean, how many have I told? Or how many have figured it out on their own?”


“I guess…both.”


“I’ve told no one. As to the other

question, I guess the answer would be, anyone who pays as much

attention to you as I do, which probably means…no one.”


“Why would you pay attention to me?”


She rolled her eyes. “Good question!”


“Look, what do you want, Ala? What are you after?”


“It’s part of the rules of the game that I mustn’t tell you.”


“If this is about you trying to be some

sort of junior Warden Regulant—her little protégée—then get it over

with! Go and tell her. I’ll march out of the Day Gate at sunrise and go

find Orolo.”


She was winding her chord about herself as

I said this. Suddenly the bolt seemed to grow twice as large as all of

the breath went out of her. Her chest collapsed and her head drooped.

The big eyes closed for a few moments. Here was where any other girl

would have gone to pieces.




It is hard to say just how monstrous I

felt. I leaned back against the wall and let my head thud back as if

attempting to escape from my own, hideously guilty skin. But there was

no way out of it.


She had opened her eyes. They were gleaming, but they saw everything. Anyone who pays as much attention to you as I do, which means no one.


In a voice almost too quiet to hear, she said, “You need to take a bath.”


For once in my life I actually managed to see the double meaning. But Ala was already gone.


Eleven: The list of

plants forbidden intramuros, typically because of their undesirable

pharmacological properties. The Discipline states that any specimen

noticed growing in a math is to be uprooted and burned without delay,

and that the event is to be noted in the Chronicle. The list originally

drawn up by Saunt Cartas included only three, but their number was

increased over the centuries as Arbre was explored and new species were

discovered.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





I’d have become a Deolater and gone on a

pilgrimage of any length to find a magic bath that would wash away the

mess I’d just made. The hardships of the journey would have been

pleasant compared to my next week or so in the math. Not that Ala told

anyone. She was too proud for that. But all the other suurs, beginning

with Tulia, could tell she was suffering. And by breakfast the next

morning, everyone had decided it must be my fault. I wondered how this

worked. My first hypothesis was wrong on the face of it: that Ala had

run home and narrated the story to a chalk hall full of appalled suurs.

My second hypothesis was that she had been seen coming home miserable

after having missed supper; I had been seen skulking home a little

while later; ergo, I had done a bad thing to her. It wasn’t until later

that I understood the much simpler truth: others had

noticed that Ala had her eye on me, and so if Ala were miserable, it

could only be because I had done something—it didn’t matter what—bad.


In a stroke I had been Thrown Back by every

young female in the math. All the girls seemed to be aghast, all the

time, because that was the look that would come over every girl’s face

when she saw me.


The thing grew over time. If Ala had simply

written up an account of what I’d done and stapled it to my chest, it

wouldn’t have been so bad; but because the amount of information about

what I had done was exactly zero, people’s imaginations went crazy.

Young suurs cringed away from me. Older ones glared at me through

supper. It doesn’t matter what you did, young man…we know you did something.


I did not see Ala again for four days,

which was statistically improbable. It suggested that other suurs were

acting as lookouts, tracking my movements so that they could tell Ala

where not to be.


Arsibalt was so rattled that he could

hardly speak until three days later, when he came to supper all dirty,

and told me in a whisper that he had dug up the tablet from where Jesry

and I had buried it (“ridiculously easy to find”) and hid it in a much

better place (“safe and sound”).


Jesry and I knew better than to try to find

any object that Arsibalt considered to be safe and sound. All we could

do was wait for him to calm down.


I figured out why I never saw Ala: she and

Tulia were spending an inordinate amount of time at the Mynster, doing

some maintenance on the bells, practicing weird changes, and passing

their knowledge down to the younger girls who would eventually replace

them.


Sunny days came more frequently. I could

look up to the top of the spire sometimes and see Sammann eating his

lunch and staring fixedly into the sun through his goggles. Jesry and I

discussed smoking a pane of glass and using it to do likewise, but we

knew that if we did it wrong we’d go blind. I even contemplated going

over the wall, running off to the

machine hall, and borrowing a welding mask from Cord. But all of these

were really nothing more than distractions to get my mind off the Ala

problem. Early on, I had thought of this as a matter of salvaging my

reputation. But as time went by, and I thought about it harder, the

real nature of the thing became clear: I had made a mess inside of

someone else’s soul at a moment when that soul had been open to me. Now

it was closed. I was the only one who could clean up the mess; but in

order to do this I first had to get in there. And I had no idea how,

especially in the case of someone as fierce as Ala.


But it occurred to me, one day, as I was

pursuing the weed project, that unilateral disarmament might work with

someone like her. The work Lio and I had been doing along the riverbank

was bringing me into contact with many spring wildflowers. The girls

were up in the Mynster doing maintenance on the belfry. Suddenly it all

seemed obvious. I put the plan into motion before I’d really thought it

through. Ten minutes later I was sleep-walking up the Mynster stairs

with a bunch of flowers on my arm, covered under a fold of my bolt

because one of them was of the Eleven and I was about to carry it

straight through the Warden Regulant’s court.


The portcullis was still locked down, the

stair up the buttress inaccessible, the upper Præsidium off limits. Our

carillon was in the lower reaches of the chronochasm, reachable by a

ladder that ran up from the Fendant court. This route dead-ended in a

sort of maintenance shack just below the carillon; you couldn’t go any

higher up the Præsidium that way, so I could go there without arousing

any concern that I might be attempting to look at the forbidden sky.


The bells themselves were open to the

weather. Below them was this shack that sheltered some of the machinery

that made the bells ring. I could hear Ala and Tulia up there talking.

The ladder led up to a trapdoor in its floor. My heart was bonging like

a bell as I climbed; I gripped the rungs hard so I wouldn’t fall off.

I’d stuffed the flowers into my bolt to leave both hands free, and now

I was sweating all over the blossoms. Disgusting. Ala laughed at some

witty remark of Tulia’s. I was happy to hear that she was capable of laughter, then chagrined, in a weird way, that she’d already gotten over me.


There was no way to make a smooth entrance.

I shoved the trapdoor up and out of my way. The girls became silent. I

heaved the bouquet through the aperture and dumped it on the floor to

one side, thinking that this would make a more favorable first

impression than my face, which of late had practically made young

females run screaming. But this was only delaying the inevitable. My

face was attached to the rest of me. It and I would have to arrive

together. I poked the sorry thing up through the door and looked

around, but couldn’t see a thing; the shack had windows, but they’d

been covered. The girls, however, recognized me with their

dark-adjusted eyes, and became even more silent, if such a thing is

possible. I hauled the rest of me up through the door.


Tulia made her sphere emit light. She and

Ala were sitting side by side on the floor, leaning back against the

wall. I wondered why. But I was leery of opening my mouth for any

purpose other than the one at hand. So I knelt to one side of the

trapdoor and regathered the bouquet. This gave me a few moments to

realize I had no plan and nothing to say. But having grown up with Suur

Ala and knowing how she reacted to things, I reckoned I couldn’t go

wrong asking permission. “Ala, I would like to give you these, if it

wouldn’t kill you.”


At least one of them inhaled. Neither

raised an objection. The place was larger than I imagined, but so

cluttered with beams and shafts I wasn’t certain I could stand up, so I

knee-walked over to where they were sitting. Something brushed past

me—a bat? But the next time I took a count of persons in the room—which

was much later—there were only two of us. So it must have been Tulia

teleporting herself out of the place like a space captain in a speely.


“Thank you,” Ala said—guardedly. “Did you carry these things up through the Regulant court? I guess you must have.”


“I did,” I said. “Why?” Though I already knew why.


“This one here is Saunt Chandera’s Bane, isn’t it?”


“Saunt Chandera’s Bane makes a

weird-looking blossom around this time of year, which I have decided is

beautiful.” I was getting ready to

make an analogy to Ala’s appearance but faltered, wondering how to

phrase the part about her being kind of weird-looking.


“But it’s one of the Eleven!”


“I’m aware of it,” I said, getting a little

tense, as she had broken into my analogy only to start a dispute.

“Look, I put it there because it’s forbidden. And this thing between

you and me—this mess that I made—is all about something else that’s

forbidden.”


“I can’t believe you carried this right up the stairs under the nose of the Inquisition.”


“Okay. Now that you mention it, it was pretty stupid.”


“That wasn’t the word I was going to use,” she said. “Thanks for bringing these.”


“You’re welcome.”


“If you sit next to me I’ll show you something I’ll bet you never expected,” she said. And here I was pretty sure there wasn’t a double meaning. By the time I’d gotten myself seated in Tulia’s former spot, Ala had already climbed to her feet—she

could stand up in here, at least—and padded over to the trapdoor, which

Tulia had left open. Ala closed it. She sat next to me and extinguished

her light. It was totally dark in here now. Totally dark, that is,

except for a single splotch of white light, about the size of the palm

of Ala’s hand, that seemed to hover in space just in front of us. I

didn’t imagine that this was a coincidence; the girls had been sitting

here because of the splotch of light. I reached

out and explored it with my right hand (the left, curiously, was beyond

use, as it had somehow ended up around Ala’s shoulders). There was a

plank leaning against the wall, with a blank leaf pinned to it, and the

light-splotch was being projected against that leaf. Now that my eyes

had adjusted, I could see that the splotch was round. Perfectly

circular, in fact.


“Do you remember the total eclipse of 3680 when we made a camera obscura so we could see it without burning our eyes?”


“A box,” I recalled, “with a pinhole at one end and a sheet of white paper at the other.”


“Tulia and I have been spring cleaning up

here,” she said. “We noticed these patches of sunlight moving around on

the floor and the walls. They were shining through from an old opening

up high in the wall, over thataway.”

She squirmed as she pointed invisibly in the dark, and somehow ended up

closer to me. “We think it was put there to ventilate the place, then

boarded up because bats were getting in. The light was leaking in

through chinks between the boards. We fixed it—almost.”


“That ‘almost’ being a nice neat little pinhole?”


“Exactly, and we set up the screen down here. We have to move it, obviously, as the sun moves across the sky.”


Ala could insert the word obviously

into an otherwise polite sentence like nobody’s business. I’d spent

more than half of my life being sporadically annoyed by it. Here,

finally, I let it go. I was too busy admiring the cleverness of Tulia

and Ala. I wished I’d thought of this. You didn’t need a lens or a

mirror of ground and polished glass to see things far away. A simple

pinhole could serve as well. The image that it cast was faint, though,

and so you had to view it in a dark room—a camera obscura.


Apparently Tulia had told Ala everything

about the tablet, about Sammann, and about my observations. But it

seemed like years since I had cared about that stuff as much as I cared

about fixing my mess. In fact, as we sat there in the dark together I

was finding it difficult to muster even the least bit of interest in

the sun. It was shining. Photosynthesis was safe. There were no major

flares, and only a few spots. Who cared?


It was even harder to care a few minutes

later. Kissing was not a subject taught in chalk halls. We had to learn

by trial and error. Even the errors were not too bad.


“A spark,” Ala said—muffled somewhat—a while later.


“I’ll say!”


“No, I thought I saw a spark.”


“I’m told it’s normal to see stars at times like this—”


“Don’t flatter yourself!” she said, and heaved me aside. “I just saw another one.”


“Where?”


“On the screen.”


Somewhat bleary-eyed, I turned my attention to it. Nothing was on that page except the same pale-white disk.




And…a spark. A pinprick of light, brighter than the sun, gone before I could be certain it was there.


“I think—”


“There it is again!” she exclaimed. “It moved a little though.”


We watched a few more. She was right. All

of the sparks were below and to the right of the sun’s disk. But each

one was slightly higher and farther to the left. If you plotted them on

the page, they’d form a line aimed right at the sun.


What would Orolo do? “We need a pen,” I said.


“Don’t have one,” she said. “They’re coming about once a second. Maybe faster.”


“Is there anything sharp?”


“The pins!” Ala and Tulia had used four

stick-pins to fix the page to the plank. I worried one loose and let it

tumble into her warm little hand.


“I’m going to hold the plank still. You poke a hole in the page wherever you see a spark,” I said.


We missed a few more while we were getting

ourselves arranged. I knelt to one side, bracing the plank against the

wall with my hand, holding its base steady with my knee. She threw

herself down on her belly and propped herself up on her elbows, her

face so close to the page that I could see her eyes and the curve of

her cheek in the faint illumination scattering from the page. She was

the most beautiful girl in the concent.


I saw the next spark reflected in her eye. Up came her hand as she poked it on the page.


“It would be really good if we knew the exact time,” I said.


Poke. “In a few minutes this is,” poke,

“going to migrate off the page, obviously.” Poke. “Then we can run out

and look at,” poke, “the clock.” Poke.


“Notice anything funny about these sparks?” Poke.


“They’re not instant on-off.” Poke. “They flare up quickly,” poke, “but fade slowly.” Poke.


“I was referring to the color.” Poke.


“Kind of blue-y?” Poke.




A sudden grinding noise nearly gave me a

heart attack. It was the belfry’s automatic mechanism going into

action. The clock was striking two. At this time it would have been

traditional to plug one’s ears. I didn’t dare; Ala would have assailed

me with that jabbing pin. Poke…poke…poke…


“So much for knowing the time,” I said, when I thought she might be able to hear again.


“I made a triple hole on the spark that came closest to the stroke of two,” she said.


“Perfect.”


“I think it’s been curving,” she said.


“Curving?”


“Like—whatever makes these sparks isn’t

moving in a straight line. It is changing its course,” she said. “It’s

obviously flying between us and the sun—it’s passing right across the

sun’s disk, at the moment. But the line of pinholes doesn’t look

straight to me.”


“Well, assuming it’s in orbit, that’s really weird,” I said. “It ought to go straight.”


“Unless it’s in the act of changing its

course,” she insisted. “Maybe these sparks are something to do with its

propulsion system.”


“I remember now where I’ve seen that shade of blue before,” I said.


“Where?”


“Cord’s shop. They have a machine that uses

plasma to cut metal. The light that comes from it is that shade of

blue. The same as a hot star.”


“It’s passing off the edge of the sun’s disk,” she said. Then: “Hey!”


“Hey what?”


“It stopped.”


“No more sparks?”


“No more sparks. I’m sure of it.”


“Well, before I move this thing, make some

pinpricks around the edge of the disk of the sun, so we know where it

stood in relation to all this. Between that and the time—we can find

this thing!”


“Find it how?”




“We can work out where in the sky the sun

stood at two p.m. on this day of the year. That is, which of the

so-called fixed stars it’s passing in front of. This plasma-spark thing

that we were tracking—it was in the same place. That means that unless

it changes its orbit again, it will pass over the same fixed stars on

each orbit. We can find it in the sky.”


“But it seems to have no difficulty

changing its orbit,” said Ala, meticulously outlining the sun’s disk

with a series of closely spaced pinpricks.


“But part of the puzzle we’ve failed to

understand until now—maybe—is that it only does so when it’s passing

near the sun. So as long as we have this camera obscura, we can be on

the lookout for that.”


“Why should the sun’s position make any difference?”


“I think it’s hiding,” I said. “If it did what it just did in the night sky, anyone could see it with the naked eye.”


“But we were able to detect it with a

pinhole and a sheet of paper!” Ala pointed out. “So it’s a pretty

ineffective way to hide.”


“And Sammann can apparently see it with

welding goggles,” I said. “But the difference is that people like you

and me and Sammann are…”


“Are what?” she said. “Knowledgeable?”


“Yeah. And whoever, or whatever this thing

is, it doesn’t or they don’t care if knowledgeable people know they are

up there. They are letting their existence be known to us—”


“Which the Sæcular Power doesn’t like—”


“Which is why Orolo got Thrown Back for looking at it.”


It took us a while to get out of there. Too

much was going on. I rolled up the page and stuck it inside my bolt.

Ala picked up the bunch of flowers. This reminded me of why I’d come up

here in the first place and of what we’d been doing before Ala had

noticed the sparks. I felt like a jerk for letting this slip my mind.

By that time, though, Ala had remembered about the Saunt Chandera’s

Bane and was wondering what to do with it. So we traded; I gave her the

chart and she gave me the flowers so that I could accept the risk of

sneaking them back down.




“What should we do next?” I wondered out loud.


“About…?”


We had opened the trapdoor. There was

plenty of light. I was about to blurt “what we just saw” when I noticed

a look on her face—steeling herself to get hurt again. I think I

stopped myself just in time.


“Do you want to—should we—” I began, then

closed my eyes and just said it. “I think we should be honest about

this in front of everyone.”


“I’m fine with that,” she said.


“I’ll set it up for tomorrow, I guess. After Provener.”


“I’ll tell Tulia,” she said, and something

about the way she pronounced that name informed me that she knew

everything; she knew I’d once had a crush on her best friend. “Who do

you want as your witness?”


I had been about to say Lio, but Jesry had

been such a jerk about this that I decided he had to be the one. “And

our free witness can just be Haligastreme or whoever is handy,” I said.


“What kind of liaison are we to publish?” she asked.


This was not a difficult question. Liaisons

were supposed to be announced when they were formed and when they were

dissolved. It was a way to curtail gossip and intrigue, which could so

easily run rampant in a math. The Concent of Saunt Edhar recognized

several types. The least serious was Tivian. The most

serious—Perelithian—was equivalent to marriage. That was out of the

question for two kids of our age who’d hated each other’s guts until

forty-five minutes ago. If I said Tivian, Ala would throw me out the trapdoor to my death, and I’d spend the last four seconds of my life wishing I’d said Etrevanean.


“Could you stand having people know that you were in an Etrevanean liaison with that big jerk Fraa Erasmas?”


She smiled. “Yes.”


“Okay.” Then awkwardness. It seemed appropriate to kiss her one more time. This went over well.


“Now, are we going to talk about the fact

that we have just discovered an alien spacecraft hiding in orbit around

Arbre?” she asked in a tiny, coy

voice—most unlike her. But she wasn’t as used to being in big trouble

as I was and so I think she felt as though, on such questions, she had

to defer to a hardened criminal.


“To a few people. I’m pretty sure Lio’s down in the Fendant court. I’ll stop there and tell him—”


“That works. We should go about separately, anyway, until our liaison is published.”


Her agility in jumping between the love

topic and the alien spacecraft was making me dizzy. Or perhaps giddy.

“So I’ll meet you below later. We’ll spread the news to the others as

we have opportunity.”


“Bye,” she said. “Don’t forget your forbidden flower.”


“I won’t,” I said.


Just like that she was gone down the ladder.


I followed a minute later and found Lio in

the reading room in the Fendant court. He was studying a book about a

Praxic Age battle that had been conducted in the abandoned subway

tunnels of a great city by two armies that had run out of ammunition

and so had to fight with sharpened shovels. He looked at me blankly for

a while. I must have looked even blanker. Then I realized that the

recent events weren’t written on my face. I would actually have to

communicate.


“Incredible things have happened in the last hour,” I announced.


“Such as?”


I didn’t know what to say first but

concluded that alien spaceships were a better topic for the Warden

Fendant’s reading room. So I gave him a full account of that. He looked

a little deranged until I got to the point about how the spark track

curved, and mentioned plasma. Then his face snapped like a shutter. “I

know what it is,” he said.


He was so certain that doubting him never crossed my mind. Instead, I just wondered how he knew. “How can you—”


“I know what it is.”


“Okay. What is it?”


For the first time he took his eyes off

mine, and let his gaze wander around the reading room. “It might be

here…or it might be in the Old Library. I’ll find it. I’ll show it to

you later.”




“Why don’t you simply tell me?”


“Because you won’t believe me until I show it to you in a book that was written by someone else. That’s how weird it is.”


“Okay,” I said. Then I added, “Congratulations!” since that seemed like the right thing to say.


Lio slammed his book shut, stood up, turned his back on me, and headed for the stacks.





Back at the Cloister I came to understand

that things were going to move much more slowly than I wanted them to.

I was on supper duty, so I spent the remainder of the afternoon in the

kitchen. Ala and Tulia didn’t have to cook, but they did have to serve.

While dumping a hot potato into my bowl Ala gave me a look that moved

me in a way I won’t describe here. While burying it with stew Tulia

gave me a look that proved Ala had told her everything. “The pinhole:

nice!” I told her. Fraa Mentaxenes, who’d been nudging me in the kidney

with his bowl, trying to get me to move faster, had no idea what I

meant and only became more irritated.


Lio didn’t show up for supper. Jesry was

there, but I couldn’t talk to him because we were at a crowded table

with Barb and several others. Arsibalt sat as far from us as he could,

as had been his habit of late. After supper he was on cleanup duty.

Jesry went off to a chalk hall to work with some of the other Edharians

on a proof. Those guys might work until dawn. But I couldn’t have

talked to him anyway because I had to corner Fraa Haligastreme and set

up the little aut tomorrow where Ala and I would declare our liaison

before witnesses and have it entered in the Chronicle.


I did have time to work out where in the

sky the sun had stood at two in the afternoon. After curfew, when the

fids had gone to bed, I went out into the meadow alone, sat on a bench,

and stared at that place in the sky for an hour, hoping I might get

lucky and see a satellite pass through. Which was irrational, because

if this spaceship could be seen with the naked eye, none of this

intrigue would have been necessary. It was some combination of too

small, too dark, and/or too high to bounce back enough light for our

eyes to see it. But I needed to sit

there alone for a while and stare into the black just to settle my

thoughts. My brain zinged back and forth between the Two Topics for an

hour. When I was totally exhausted I got up and crawled into a vacant

cell where I slept soundly.


Lio was in the Refectory at breakfast. When I caught his eye, he glanced significantly at a big old book he’d dug up: Praxic Age Exoatmospheric Weapons Systems.


Cheerful.


Jesry skipped breakfast. Afterward, Ala and

I squandered most of the morning getting things ready for this

afternoon. You could announce a Tivian liaison at the drop of a hat but

for the Etrevanean each participant was supposed to discuss it first

with an older fraa or suur. I was finishing that up when Provener rang.

This was one of those increasingly rare days when my old team was

supposed to wind the clock. I found the cell where Jesry was still

asleep, yanked him off his pallet, and got him moving. We ended up

sprinting to the Mynster, late as usual. But it felt good to have the

team back together, after all that had been happening lately, and I

enjoyed the simple physical work of winding the clock more than I’d

used to.


After, the four of us went to the Refectory

to take the midday meal. But there was no question of talking about the

spaceship there. Instead it was all about the aut that Ala and I were

to celebrate later. Of all the team, I was the first to go so far as to

join in such a liaison and so this was sort of like a rehearsal for a

bachelor party. We became so loud and so funny (at least, we believed

we were funny) that we were asked on two separate occasions to tone it

down, and threatened with severe penance—which only made us louder and

funnier.


At some point during all of this I mentally

stepped back from it all and took a moment to enjoy the looks on my

friends’ faces and to reflect on everything that had been going on

lately. And as part of that, I recollected that Orolo had been Thrown

Back and that he was out there, somewhere, extramuros, trying to find

his way. Which made me sad, and even brought back a spark of the old

anger. But none of it stopped me from being happy with my friends.

Part of this was the sheer thrill of what had happened with Ala. But

part of it too was the growing certainty that Ala and Tulia and I had

scored a victory over those like Spelikon and Trestanas who had locked

us out of the starhenge and tried to control what we knew and what we

thought about. We just needed to find a way to announce it that

wouldn’t lead to my getting Thrown Back. I didn’t want to leave the

concent any more. Not as long as Ala lived here.


She and Tulia were nowhere to be seen, and

before long we found out why: they had duties in the Mynster. Bells

began to ring not long after we had finished eating. We sat and

listened for a couple of minutes, trying to decipher the changes. But

Barb had been memorizing these things and figured it out first. “Voco,”

he announced, “the Sæcular Power will Evoke one of us.”


“Apparently Fraa Paphlagon couldn’t get the job done,” Jesry cracked, as we were draining our beers.


“Or he’s calling for reinforcements,” Lio suggested.


“Or he had a heart attack,” said Arsibalt.

Lately he had been full of gloomy ideas like this, and so the rest of

us gave him dirty looks until he held up his hands in submission.


We sauntered across the meadow to the

Mynster. Even so, we got there in plenty of time, and ended up in the

front row, closest to the screen. Voco continued ringing for some

minutes after we arrived. Then the eight ringers filed down from their

balcony and found places farther back. A choir of Hundreders came out

into the chancel and began a monophonic chant. I thought of going back

to be near Ala but it was part of the Discipline that you didn’t engage

in any of that clingy couple-like behavior before your liaison was

published, so it would have to wait for a few more hours.


This time Statho didn’t have any

Inquisitors with him, as he’d had during Fraa Paphlagon’s Voco. He went

through the opening rounds of the rite as before, and for the first

time since the bells had begun to ring, it sank in that this was for

real. I wondered which avout we would say goodbye to—whether it would

be one of us Tenners this time, or someone like Fraa Paphlagon whom

we’d never met because they were of a different math.




By the time Statho reached the place in the

aut where he was to call out the name of the Evoked, I had become quite

anxious. The Mynster was as silent as that sub-basement beneath Shuf’s

Dowment. So I almost wanted to scream when he chose that moment to

pause and fumble around in his vestment. He took out a page that had

been folded in on itself and sealed shut with a dollop of beeswax. It

took him forever to pick the thing open. He unfolded it, held it up in

front of his face, and looked astonished.


It was such an awkward moment that even he felt the need to explain. He announced, “There are six names!”


Pandemonium was the

wrong word to describe a few hundred avout standing still and muttering

to each other, but it conveys the right feeling. A single Voco was rare

enough. Six at a stroke had never happened—or had it? I looked at

Arsibalt. He read my mind. “No,” he whispered, “not even for the Big

Nugget.”


I looked at Jesry. “This is it!” he told me. Meaning the something different he’d been waiting for.


Statho cleared his throat and waited for the murmuring to subside.


“Six names,” he went on. The Mynster now

became silent again, except for the faint wail of police sirens outside

the Day Gate, and the rumble of engines. “One of them is no longer

among us.”


“Orolo,” I said. About a hundred others

said it at the same time. Statho’s face reddened. “Voco,” he called,

but his voice choked up and he had to swallow before trying it again.

“Voco Fraa Jesry of the Edharian chapter of the Decenarian math.”


Jesry turned and socked me on the shoulder,

hard enough to leave a charley horse that would still ache three days

later. Something to remember him by. Then he turned his back on us and

walked out of our lives.


“Suur Bethula of the Edharian chapter of

the Centenarian math…Fraa Athaphrax of the same…Fraa Goradon of the

Edharian chapter of the Decenarian math…and Suur Ala of the New Circle,

Decenarians.”


By the time I had regained consciousness she was already on the threshold of the door through the screen. She was as shocked as I was. Tears began to run out of her eyes as she hesitated, there, and looked my way.


When I’d watched Fraa Paphlagon step out,

all those months ago, I’d understood clearly that no one in this place

would ever see him again. The same thing was now happening to Ala. But

it didn’t sink in. The only thing that got through to me was the look

on her face.


They told me later I knocked two people down as I made my way over to her.


She hooked an elbow over my neck and kissed me on the lips, then pressed her wet cheek against mine for an instant.


When Fraa Mentaxenes closed the door

between us, I looked down to discover a rolled-up page stuck in my

bolt. It was perforated with tiny holes. By the time I’d finished

taking that in, and stepped forward to put my face to the screen,

Jesry, Bethula, Athaphrax, Goradon, and Ala had already walked out the

same way that Paphlagon and Orolo had gone before. Everyone was singing

except for me.


Terrible Events: A

worldwide catastrophe, poorly documented, but generally assumed to have

been the fault of humans, that terminated the Praxic Age and led

immediately to the Reconstitution.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“You see what I mean,” Lio said, “that it’s so crazy, you wouldn’t have believed me unless I showed it to you in a book.”


He and I, Arsibalt, Tulia, and Barb were all sitting around the big table at Shuf’s Dowment. Praxic Age Exoatmospheric Weapons Systems

was sprawled out like an autopsy. We were looking at a double-ended

foldout. It had taken us a quarter of an hour just to get the thing

unfurled without tearing the ancient leaves: real paper made in a

factory. We were looking at a huge, exquisitely detailed diagram of a

spaceship. At one end, it sported a proper

nose cone, as a rocket should. Everything else about it looked weird.

It did not have engines per se. At the aft end, where the nozzle bells

of a proper rocket ought to be, there was instead a broad flat disk,

looking like a pedestal on which the vessel might be stood upright.

Forward of that were several stout columns that ran up to what I

assumed was the spaceship proper: the family of rounded pressure

vessels sheltered beneath that nose cone.


“Shock absorbers,” Lio said, pointing to

the columns, “except bigger.” He drew our attention to a tiny hole in

the center of the big disk astern. “This is where it would spit out the

atomic bombs, one after another.”


“That’s the part I still can’t get my mind to accept.”


“Have you ever heard of those Deolaters who

walk barefoot over hot coals to show that they have supernatural

powers?” He looked over toward the hearth. We’d lit a fire there. Not

that we needed one. We had a couple of windows cracked open to admit a

fresh green-scented breeze that was blowing in over the young clover in

the meadow. Sad songs were carried on that air. Most of the avout were

so shocked by the six-fold Voco that to make music about it was all

that they could do. Those of us in this room had another way to come to

terms with our loss, but only because we knew things that the others

didn’t. We’d lit the fire as soon as we’d arrived, not to keep warm but

as a primitive way to get some comfort. It was what humans had done,

long before Cnoüs, long before even language, to claim a bit of space

in a dark universe that they did not understand and that was wont to

claim their family and friends suddenly and forever. Lio went over to

that fire and assaulted a glowing log with a poker until he had knocked

off several lumps of glowing charcoal. He raked one of these out onto

the stones. It was about the size of a nut, and red hot.


I was already getting nervous.


“Raz,” he said, “would you put this in your pocket and carry it around?”


“I don’t have pockets,” I joked.




No one laughed.


“Sorry,” I said. “No, if I had a pocket I would not put that into it.”


Lio spat into the palm of his left hand,

then put the fingertips of his right into the pool of saliva. He then

used them to pick up that coal. There were sizzling noises. We cringed.

He calmly tossed the coal back into the fire, then slapped his hot

fingertips against his thigh a few times. “Slight discomfort. No

damage,” he announced. “The noise was spit being vaporized by the heat

of the coal. Now imagine that the plate on the back of that ship was

coated with something that served the same purpose.”


“The same purpose as spit?” Barb asked.


“Yes. It was vaporized by the plasma from

the atomic bombs, and as it expanded into space, it would spank that

plate. The shock absorbers would even out the impact and turn it into

steady thrust so that the people up at the forward end would feel nice

smooth acceleration.”


“It’s just hard to imagine being that close

to an atomic bomb going off,” Tulia said. “And not just one, but a

whole series of them.”


Her voice sounded pretty raw. All of ours

did, except for Barb’s. He’d been perusing the book earlier. “They were

special bombs. Really tiny,” he said, making a circle of his arms to

show their size. “Designed not to blow out in all directions but to

spew a lot of plasma in one direction—toward that ship.”


“I too find it unfathomable,” Arsibalt

volunteered, “but I vote we suspend our disbelief and move forward. The

evidence is before us, in this”—he gestured toward the book—“and this.”

He rested his hand on the sheet that Ala had pinpricked the day before.

Then he looked stricken. I think he had seen something on my face, or

Tulia’s, or both. For us, this leaf was now like one of the mementoes

of bygone Saunts that the avout cherished in reliquaries.


“Perhaps,” Arsibalt said, “it is too early for us to have this discussion. Perhaps—”


“Perhaps it’s too late!” I said. Which earned me a grateful look from Tulia, and seemed to settle it for everyone.


“I’m surprised—pleasantly—you’re here at all, Arsibalt,” I said.




“You are referring to my, ah, apparent skittishness of recent weeks.”


“Your words, not mine,” I said, working to keep a straight face.


He raised his eyebrows. “I do not recall—do you?—any diktat

from the hierarchs to the effect that we must not make tiny holes in

pieces of foil and allow the light of the sun to fall on paper. Our

position is unassailable.”


“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said. “I almost feel a little let down that we are no longer breaking any rules.”


“I know it must be an odd sensation for you, Fraa Erasmas, but you may get used to it after a while.”


Barb didn’t get the joke. We had to explain it. He still didn’t get it.


“So I wonder if—perhaps—one of these ships went missing,” Tulia said.


“Went missing?” Lio repeated.


“Like—its crew mutinied and they headed out for parts unknown. Now, thousands of years later, their descendants have returned.”


“It might not even be their descendants,” Arsibalt pointed out.


“Because of Relativity!” Barb exclaimed.


“That’s right,” I said. “Come to think of

it, if the ship could travel at relativistic velocity, they might have

gone on a round-trip journey that lasted a few decades to them—but

thousands of years to us.”


Everyone loved this hypothesis. We had

already made up our minds it must be true. There was only one problem.

“None of these ships was ever built,” Lio said.


“What!?”


He looked as if we were about to blame him

for it. “It was just a proposal. These are nothing more than conceptual

drawings from very late in the Praxic Age.”


“Just before the Terrible Events!” Barb footnoted.


We were all silent for a while. It takes time and effort to tear down and stow away an idea you were that excited about.


“Besides,” Lio went on, “this ship was only

for military operations inside the solar system. They had ideas for

ones that could go to relativistic velocity, but they would have been much bigger and they’d have looked different.”


“You wouldn’t need a nose cone!” said Barb—which was his idea of hilarious.


“So if we buy the idea that what Ala and I

saw—the blue sparker—was a ship in orbit that was using this kind of

propulsion system—” I began, nodding at the diagram.


“—Then it must have come from an alien civilization,” Arsibalt said.


“Fraa Jesry believes that advanced life forms must be extremely rare in the universe,” Barb told us.


“He followed the Conjecture of Saunt

Mandarast,” Arsibalt said, nodding agreement. “Billions of planets

infested with unicellular glop. Almost none with multicellular

organisms—to say nothing of civilizations.”


“Let’s speak of him in the present tense—it’s not as though he’s dead!” Tulia pointed out.


“I stand corrected,” said Arsibalt, none too wholeheartedly.


“Barb, when you were talking to Jesry of this, did he have some alternate theory?” Tulia asked.


“Yes—an alternate theory about an alternate

universe!” Barb cracked. Tulia mussed his hair and gave him a shove,

which was a mistake because then he wanted to get rambunctious. We had

to threaten him with Anathem and make him go outside and run five laps

around Shuf’s Dowment before he would settle down.


“Talking about where this thing might have come from is a side track to the main discussion,” Lio pointed out.


“Agreed,” said Arsibalt, so authoritatively that we did agree.


“It came from somewhere. Who cares. It settled into a polar orbit around Arbre and stayed there for a while—doing what?” I said.


“Reconaissance,” said Lio. “That’s what polar orbits are for.”


“So they were learning about us. Mapping Arbre. Eavesdropping on our communications.”


“Learning our language,” Tulia said.


I went on, “Somehow Orolo became aware of it. Maybe he happened to see the deceleration burn that took it into polar orbit. Perhaps

others did too. The Panjandrums knew. They sent word to the hierarchs:

‘we are putting you on notice that we deem this to be a Sæcular matter,

it is none of your business, so butt out.’ And the hierarchs dutifully

sent out the order to close every starhenge.”


“Inquisitors were sent to make sure it was done,” Lio said.


“Fraa Paphlagon was Evoked to go somewhere and study this thing,” Tulia said.


“He,” said Arsibalt, “and perhaps others like him from other concents.”


“The ship stayed in orbit. Maybe sometimes

it would adjust its trajectory by firing those engines. But it would

only do so when it was passing between Arbre and the sun—to hide its

traces.”


“Like a fugitive who walks in a river not to leave footprints,” Barb put in.


“But yesterday something changed. Something big must have happened.”


“Gardan’s Steelyard says that the course

change you and Ala witnessed, and the unprecedented six-fold Voco less

than a day later, must be connected,” Arsibalt said.


I had been avoiding the sacred relic. That

had to end. Ala had given it to me for a reason. We unrolled it on the

table and weighed its corners down with books.


“We can’t figure out what it did unless we know the darn geometry!” Barb complained.


“You mean, of the pinhole, and where the

screen was situated up in the Præsidium. Which way was up. Which way

was north,” I said. “I agree that we have to take all of those

measurements.”


Barb started backing toward the exit—ready to take those measurements at once.


But I held back. I wanted to do those

things as badly as he did. But here was where Orolo would have proposed

something brilliantly simple. Something that would have made me feel

like an idiot for having made it too complicated. I could think of

nothing like that.


“Why don’t we at least measure the angle,” I said. “It comes in from

one direction. That’s its initial orbit. By firing those bombs, it

curves until it is going a different direction. That’s its final orbit.

We could at least measure that angle.”


So we did. The answer was something like a quarter of pi—forty-five degrees.


“So if we assume it started out in a polar

orbit, then by the time this maneuver was finished, it was in a new

orbit, roughly halfway between polar and equatorial,” Lio said.


“And what do you suppose would be the point

of that?” I asked, since Lio knew so much more of exoatmospheric

weapons systems than anyone else in the room.


“If you plot its ground track on a globe or

a map of the world, well, it’s never going to ascend higher than

forty-five degrees of latitude, in such an orbit. It’ll sine-wave back

and forth between forty-five degrees north and forty-five south.”


“Which is where ninety-nine percent of the people live,” Tulia pointed out.


“Which they would know by now, since they have had time to compile maps of every square inch of Arbre,” Arsibalt reminded us.


“They have finished Phase One: reconaissance,” Lio concluded, “and yesterday began Phase Two: which is—who knows?”


“Actually doing something,” Barb said.


“And the Panjandrums know it,” I said.

“Have been worrying about it. They’ve had a contingency plan ready for

months—we know this because Orolo’s name was on that list! So it must

have been written out and sealed before his Anathem.”


“I’ll bet Varax and Onali handed it to

Statho during Apert,” Tulia said. “Statho’s been carrying it around

ever since, awaiting the signal to break the seal and read out those

names.” She got a distracted look on her face. “It bothers me that they

chose Ala.”


“I never fully understood until last week how close the two of you were,” I said.


But Tulia wanted none of it. “It’s not just that,” she said. “I mean, it is. I love her. I can’t stand that she’s gone. But why her? Paphlagon—Orolo—Jesry—fine. I get it. But why would you choose Ala? What would you want someone like her for?”




“To organize a lot of other people,” Arsibalt said without hesitation.


“That,” said Tulia, “is what troubles me.”





For God’s sake, raise your sights.


Mention of the Inquisitors had put me in

mind of the conversation I’d had with Varax on Tenth Night. This had

slipped my mind because of what had happened a few moments afterward.

But I could remember him gazing up at the starhenge—or perhaps he’d

been raising his sights a little higher, looking off into space. Come

to think of it, he’d been facing north at the time. Larger

matters are at stake than whether a young fraa at the remote hermitage

of Saunt Edhar practices his vlor on some local runagates…think

bigger…the way your friend does when he decides to tackle four larger

men.


What on earth did that

mean? That the alien ship was a threat? That we would soon have to

tackle it against long odds? Or was I reading too much into it? And

why, during my earlier conversation with Varax, had he grilled me

concerning my opinions on the Hylaean Theoric World? It was an odd time

for someone like him to be so concerned with metatheorics.


Or maybe I was reading way too much into these conversations. Maybe Varax was just one of those guys who thought out loud.


The “raise your sights” part of it seemed pretty clear.


I didn’t need a lot of encouragement to get

to work. After Orolo’s Anathem, the only thing that had kept me from

going crazy had been working on the photomnemonic tablet. Ala’s loss

wasn’t quite as dreadful—at least she hadn’t been Thrown Back—but

unlike Orolo’s it had been entirely surprising to me. I was still

feeling bad that I’d just stood there like a stunned animal while she’d

walked out of my life. To have lost her, just after we’d begun

something—well, suffice it to say that I really needed a project to

work on.


Our group invaded the shack above the

belfry with every measuring device we could scare up. Arsibalt found

some architectural drawings of the Mynster dating back to the Fourth

Century. We calculated the geometry

of the camera obscura in three different ways, and compared the results

until we got them all to agree. We were able to refine the rough

measurement we had made at Shuf’s Dowment: the ship’s new orbit was

inclined at about fifty-one degrees to the equator, which meant that it

passed over essentially all populated areas. When the weather had

become hot and dry in the centuries after the Terrible Events, people

had tended to move poleward. More recently, reductions in the amount of

carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had begun to gentle the climate, and

people had migrated back towards the equator to get away from the solar

radiation near the poles. As a matter of fact, fifty-one degrees was a

higher orbit than the ship really needed, if all it wanted was to keep

an eye on most of the world’s population.


We thought this mysterious until Arsibalt

pointed out that if you looked at all the world’s major

concents—meaning ones that had Millennium Clocks and that housed

hundreds or thousands of avout—the one that was farthest from the

equator was at 51.3 degrees north latitude.


That one happened to be the “remote hermitage” of Saunt Edhar.





Word got around. Within a month of the big

Voco, everyone in the Decenarian math knew most of what we knew about

the ship. The hierarchs could do nothing to suppress it. But still they

didn’t open the starhenge. I found myself getting invited to a lot more

late-night chalk hall sessions. We studied the diagram Lio had found in

that book and worked out the theorics of how such a ship would

function, and how much bigger it would have to be to journey between

stars. Some of it was simple praxic calculations about the shock

absorbers. Some—such as predicting what the plasma would do when it hit

the plate—was extraordinarily challenging work. The theorics was too

advanced for me. It felt like we were proving the Lorites wrong,

because some of the other avout, just a little older than I, were

coming up with proofs that we were pretty sure had never been thought

of by anyone before—anyone on Arbre, that is.




“It makes you wonder about the Hylaean

Theoric World,” Arsibalt volunteered, one summer evening, about eight

weeks after the big Voco. He had been pretending to look after his bees

and I had been pretending to tend the weeds. By that time, the Sarthian

cavalry had penetrated deep into the Plains of Thrania and driven a

wedge between the Fourth and the Thirty-third Legions of General Oxas.

So it wasn’t surprising that Arsibalt and I bumped into each other. At

our latitude, days were very long at this time of year, and we still

had some light remaining even though supper had ended hours ago.


“What’s on your mind?” I asked him.


“You are toiling in chalk halls with the

other Edharians, trying to work out the theorics of this alien ship,”

he said, “theorics that the aliens must have mastered long ago, to

build such a thing and drive it among stars. My question is: are they

the same theorics?”


“You mean, ours and the aliens’?”


“Yes. I see the chalk-dust on your bolt,

Fraa Erasmas, from equations you were drawing after supper. Did some

two-headed, eight-limbed alien draw the same equations on the

equivalent of a slate on another planet a thousand years ago?”


“I’m pretty sure the aliens use different notation,” I began.


“Obviously!” he barked.


“You sound like Ala.”


“Maybe they use a little square to

represent multiplication and a circle for division, or something,” he

went on, rolling his eyes in annoyance, then whirling his hand to

indicate he wanted the conversation to go faster.


“Or maybe they don’t write out equations at

all,” I said. “Maybe they prove things with music, or something.” Which

wasn’t farfetched at all, since we did something like that in our

chants, and there had been whole orders of avout who had done all of

their theorics that way.


“Now we’re getting somewhere!” He was so

thrilled by this idea that I regretted having mentioned it. “Suppose

they have a system of doing theorics that uses music, as you said. And

perhaps if it leads to a harmonious chord, or a pleasing tune, it means

that they have proved that something is true.”




“You really are going off the deep end now, Arsibalt.”


“Tolerate your friend and fraa. Do you

think it’s the case that, for every proof you and the other Edharians

work out on a slate, the aliens have a proof in their own system that

corresponds to it? That says the same thing—expresses the same truth?”


“We couldn’t do theorics at all if we

didn’t think that was the case. But Arsibalt, this is old stuff we’re

talking about. Cnoüs saw it. Hylaea understood it. Protas formalized

it. Paphlagon thought about it—which is why he got Evoked. What’s the

point of going over it now? I’m tired. As soon as it gets a little

darker, I’m going to bed.”


“How are we to communicate with the aliens?”


“I don’t know. It’s been speculated that they have been learning our language,” I reminded him.


“What if they can’t talk?”


“A minute ago you had them singing!”


“Don’t be tedious, Fraa Erasmas. You know what I’m getting at.”


“Maybe I do. But it’s late. I was up until three talking about plasma. Hey, I think it is dark enough for me to go to bed now.”


“Hear me out. I’m saying that it is through

the Protan forms—the theoric truths—in the Hylaean Theoric World that

we might end up communicating with them.”


“It sounds like you’re just itching for an

excuse to barricade yourself in Shuf’s Dowment behind a stack of old

books and work on this. Are you asking me for—permission? Approval?”


He shrugged. “You are the resident expert on the alien ship.”


“Okay. Fine. Knock yourself out. I’ll back you up. I’ll tell everyone you’re not crazy—”


“Capital!”


“—if you help me with one thing that really has me scratching my head right now.”


“And what would that be, Fraa Erasmas?”


“Why does the Millenarian math appear to be glowing?”


“What?”


“Look at it,” I said.


He turned around and raised his chin to gaze up at the crag. It was glowing ruby red. This was not a normal thing for it to be doing.


Of course, we saw soft lights up there all

the time. And if the weather was right, the walls would sometimes catch

the light of the setting sun, as when Orolo and I had looked on it

during Apert. For the last few minutes, as the twilight had been

deepening, I’d noticed a red glow about the place, and reckoned it must

be that again. But the sun was absolutely down now. And this light was

a shade of red that was most un-sun-like. It had a grainy, sparkly

quality.


And it was coming from the wrong direction.

Sunlight would have lit up the west-facing surfaces of the math and the

crag. But this weird red light was striking the roofs, parapets, and

tower-tops. Everything below was in shade. It was almost as if some

aerocraft were hovering high above the crag shining a light straight

down. But if that were the case, it was so high we could neither see

nor hear it.


The meadow grew busy with fraas and suurs

who came out of the Cloister buildings to look at it. Most were

silent—like Deolaters gazing upon a heavenly omen. But among a group of

theoricians not far away an argument was gaining momentum, featuring

words such as laser, color, and wavelength. That jogged my memory: I knew where I’d seen that grainy sort of light before: the guidestar lasers on the M & M.


And that was the key to the riddle. A laser

beam could shine across a vast distance without spreading out very

much. The thing that was shining this light on the Millenarian math

didn’t have to be nearby. It could be thousands of miles away. It could

be—could only be—the alien spaceship.


Exclamations, and even a little bit of

applause, rose up from the meadow. Looking more closely at the

Millenarian math I saw that a column of smoke was rising from behind

its walls. I swallowed hard and got very upset for just a moment,

thinking that the laser was setting fire to the place! It was a death

ray! Then my better sense got the upper hand. To burn things down, one

would want an infrared laser, whose light would make things hot. By

definition, this laser wasn’t infrared, because we could see it. The

smoke wasn’t from burning buildings.

The Thousanders were creating it. They were throwing grass or something

onto fires, filling the space above their math with smoke and steam.


It was impossible to see a laser beam from

the side if it was traversing empty space or clean air, but if you put

smoke or dust in its way, the particles would scatter some of the light

in all directions and make the ray stand out as a glittering line in

space.


It worked. That ray might be thousands of

miles long. We’d never be able to see most of it—the part that

traversed the vacuum above the atmosphere. But the smoke made by the

Thousanders enabled us to see the last few hundred feet, and to get a

very good idea of which direction the light was coming from.


And of course I had an unfair advantage,

since I knew the plane of the alien ship’s orbit—which of the fixed

stars it would pass in front of. I held my bolt up with one hand,

making a screen to block out most of the light from the crag. My eyes

adjusted to the dark, to the point where I could see the stars again.


And then I saw it arcing across the sky,

just where I knew it’d be: a point of red light surrounded by a grainy

nimbus caused by its passage through the atmosphere. I pointed. Others

around me saw this and found it for themselves. The meadow became as

silent as the Mynster during an Anathem.


The shooting star winked out and vanished

into the black. The red glow was gone. A round of applause started up

in the meadow, but it was tentative. Nervous. It died away before it

really got going.


“I feel like a fool,” Arsibalt said. He

turned and looked at me. “When I think of all the things I’ve worried

about and been afraid of in my life—and now it’s plain that I’ve been

scared of the wrong things.”





They rang Voco at three o’clock in the morning.


No one minded the odd hour. No one was

sleeping anyway. People showed up slow and late because most of them

were carrying books and other things they thought they might need,

supposing their names were called.




Statho Evoked seventeen.


“Lio.”


“Tulia.”


“Erasmas.”


“Arsibalt.”


“Tavener.” And some other Tenners.


I stepped over the threshold into the

chancel—a step I’d taken thousands of times to wind the clock. But when

I wound the clock I always knew that a few minutes later Fraa

Mentaxenes would open the door again. This time, I turned my back on

three hundred faces I’d never see again—unless they got Evoked and sent to—well—wherever I was being sent.


I found myself with several I knew well, and some who were strangers to me: Hundreders.


The intonation of the names stopped. There

had been so many that I’d lost count, and supposed we were finished. I

looked at Statho, expecting him to move on to the next phase of the

aut. He was staring at the list in his hand. His expression was

difficult to read: his face and body had gone stiff. He blinked slowly

and shifted the list toward the nearest candle as if having trouble

reading it. He seemed to be scanning the same line over and over.

Finally he forced himself to raise his gaze, and looked directly across

the chancel at the Millenarians’ screen.


“Voco,” he said, but it came out husky and he had to clear his throat. “Voco Fraa Jad of the Millenarians.”


Everything got quiet; or maybe it was blood raging in my ears.


There was a long wait. Then the door in the

Thousanders’ screen creaked open to reveal the silhouette of an old

fraa. He stood there for a moment waiting for the dust to clear—that

door didn’t get opened very often. Then he stepped out into the

chancel. Someone closed the door behind him.


Statho said a few more words to formally

Evoke us. We said the words to answer the call. The avout behind the

screens took up their anathem of mourning and farewell. All of them

sang their hearts out. The Thousanders shook the Mynster with a mighty

croaking bass line, so deep you felt more than heard it. That, even more

than the singing of my Decenarian family, made the hairs prickle on my

scalp, made my nose run and my eyes sting. The Thousanders were going

to miss Fraa Jad and they were making sure he knew it in his bones.


I looked straight up, just as Paphlagon and

Orolo had. The light of the candles only penetrated a short distance up

the well. But I wasn’t really doing this in an attempt to see

something. I was doing it to prevent a deluge from running out of my

nostrils and my eyes.


The others were moving around me. I lowered my chin to see what was happening. A junior hierarch was leading us out.


“There’s a hypothesis, you know, that we just get taken to a gas chamber now,” Arsibalt muttered.


“Shut up,” I said. Not wanting to hear any

more in this vein from him, I lingered, and let him go well ahead of

me. Which took a while since he had made half of his bolt into a sack

and was lugging a small library.


The hierarchs, all formally robed in

purple, led us down the center aisle of the empty north nave and from

there to the narthex just inside the Day Gate. We congregated below the

Great Orrery. The Day Gate had been opened, but the plaza beyond was

empty. No aerocraft was waiting for us there. No buses. Not even a pair

of roller skates.


Junior hierarchs were circulating through

the group handing things out. I got a shopping bag from a local

department store. Inside were a pair of dungarees, a shirt, drawers,

socks, and, on the bottom, a pair of walking shoes. A minute later I

was handed a knapsack. Inside was a water bottle, a poly bag containing

toiletries, and a money card.


There was also a wristwatch. It took me a

while to understand why. Once we got more than a couple of miles from

Saunt Edhar, we’d have no way of knowing the time.


Suur Trestanas addressed us. “Your destination is the Concent of Saunt Tredegarh,” she announced.


“Is it a Convox?” someone asked.


“It is now,” she answered. This killed all discussion for a minute as everyone absorbed that news.




“How are we to get there?” Tulia asked.


“Any way you can,” said Trestanas.


“What!?” That or some

variation of it came from all of the Evoked at once. Part of the

romance of Voco—a small consolation for being ripped away from everyone

you knew—was that you got whisked away in some kind of vehicle, as Fraa

Paphlagon had been. Instead of which we’d been issued walking shoes.


“You are not to wear the bolt and the chord

under the open sky, night or day,” Trestanas went on. “Spheres are to

be kept fist-sized or smaller and not used to make light. You are not

to walk out of this gate all together—we’ll have you emerge in groups

of two or three. Later, if you want, you can meet up somewhere, away

from the Concent. Preferably underneath something.”


“What is the resolution of their surveillance?” Lio asked.


“We have no idea.”


“Saunt Tredegarh’s is two thousand miles away,” Barb mentioned. In case this was of interest. Which it was.


“There are local organizations, connected with arks, that are trying to round up vehicles and drivers to get you there.”


“Warden of Heaven people?” Arsibalt asked—he beat me to it.


“Some of them,” Trestanas said.


“No, thanks!” someone called out. “One of those people tried to convert me during Apert. Her arguments were pathetic.”


“Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!” went someone very close to me.


I turned and looked. It was Fraa Jad,

standing behind me with his shopping bag and his knapsack. He wasn’t

laughing that loudly, so no one else had noticed him. He smelled like

smoke. He had not bothered to look into the shopping bag yet. He saw my

head turn, and looked me in the eye—very amused. “The Powers That Be

must be pissing their pants,” he said, “or whatever they wear nowadays.”


Everyone else was too stunned by all that

had happened to say much. Here I had an advantage: I had gotten used to

being stunned. Like Lio was used to being punched in the head.


I climbed up onto a stone bench that had

been placed where visitors could sit on it and watch the orrery. “South

of the concent, not far from the Century Gate, west of the river,

there’s a great roof on stilts that

straddles a canal. Next to it is a machine-hall. You can’t miss it.

It’s the biggest structure in the neighborhood by far. We can meet

there under cover. Go there in small groups, like Suur Trestanas said.

We’ll convene there later and come up with a plan.”


“What time shall we meet?” asked one of the Hundreders.


I considered it.


“Let’s meet when we—I mean, when they—ring Provener.”













Part 6


PEREGRIN







Peregrin:

(1) In ancient usage, the epoch beginning with the destruction of the

Temple of Orithena in-2621 and ending several decades later with the

flourishing of the Golden Age of Ethras. (2) A theor who survived

Orithena and wandered about the ancient world, sometimes alone and

sometimes in the company of other such. (3) A Dialog supposedly dating

to this epoch. Many were later written down and incorporated into the

literature of the mathic world. (4) In modern usage, an avout who,

under certain exceptional circumstances, leaves the confines of the

math and travels through the Sæcular world while trying to observe the

spirit, if not the letter, of the Discipline.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















We

took turns going into the men’s and women’s toilet chambers to change.

The shoes immediately drove me crazy. I kicked them off and parked them

under a bench, then found a clear place on the narthex floor where I

could spread out my bolt and fold it up. That involved stooping and

squatting—tricky, in dungarees. I couldn’t believe people wore this

stuff their whole lives!


Once I had my bolt reduced to a book-sized

package, I wrapped my chord around it, put them into the

department-store bag along with my balled-up sphere, and stuffed that

into the bottom of the knapsack. Across the narthex, Lio was trying to

perform some of his Vale-lore moves in his new clothes. He moved as if

he’d just come down with a neurological disorder. Tulia’s clothes

didn’t fit at all and she was negotiating a swap with one of the

Centenarian suurs.


“Is this a Convox?”


“It is now.”


There had only been eight Convoxes. The

first had coincided with the Reconstitution. After that, one had been

held at each Millennium to compile the edition of the Dictionary that

would be used for the next thousand years, and to take care of other

business of concern to the Thousanders. There had been one for the Big

Nugget and one at the end of each Sack.


Barb became jumpy, then unruly, and then wild. None of the hierarchs knew what to make of him.


“He doesn’t like change,” Tulia reminded me. The unspoken message: he’s your friend—he’s your problem.




Barb didn’t like being crowded either, so

Lio and I crowded him. We crowded him into a corner where Arsibalt was

encamped with his stack of books.


“Voco breaks the Discipline because the one

Evoked goes forth alone, and from that point onward is immersed in the

Sæcular world,” Arsibalt intoned. “That’s why they can’t return. Convox

is different. So many of us are taken at once that we can travel

together and preserve the Discipline within our Peregrin group.”


“Peregrin begins and ends at a math,” Barb said, suddenly calm.


“Yes, Fraa Tavener.”


“When we get to Saunt Tredegarh’s—”


“We’ll celebrate the aut of Inbrase,” Arsibalt prompted him, “and—”


“And then we’ll be together with other avout in the Convox,” Barb guessed.


“And then—”


“And then when we’re done doing whatever it is they want us to do, we make Peregrin back to Saunt Edhar,” Barb went on.


“Yes, Fraa Tavener,” said Arsibalt. I could sense him fending off the temptation to add if we haven’t been incinerated by an alien death ray or gassed by the Warden of Heaven.


Barb calmed down. It wouldn’t last. Once we

left the Day Gate, we’d be contending with minor violations of the

Discipline all the time. Barb would be certain to notice these and

point them out. Why, oh why, had he been Evoked? He was just a

brand-new fid! I was going to be babysitting him through the entire

Convox.


As the small hours of the morning passed,

though, and the lapis sphere that represented Arbre in the orrery

ticked slowly around, I settled down a little bit and remembered that

half of what I now knew about theorics was thanks to Barb. What would

it say about me if I ditched him?


It was getting light outside. Half of the

Evoked had already departed. The hierarchs were pairing Tenners with

Hundreders because many of the latter would need help from the former

in speaking Fluccish and coping with the Sæculum in general. Lio was summoned and went out with a couple of Hundreders. Arsibalt and Tulia were told to get ready.


I couldn’t go out barefoot. My shoes were

under a bench by the orrery. Fraa Jad had parked himself on that bench.

Right above my shoes. His head was bent. His hands were folded in his

lap. He must be doing some kind of profound Thousander meditation. If I

disturbed him just so that I could fetch my shoes, he would turn me

into a newt or something.


No one else wanted to disturb him either.

Tulia, then Arsibalt, left with Hundreders in tow. There were only

three Evoked left: Barb, Jad, and I. Jad was still in his bolt and

chord.


Barb headed for Fraa Jad. I broke into a sprint, and caught up with him just as he arrived.


“Fraa Jad must change clothes,” Barb announced, stretching his first-year Orth until it cracked.


Fraa Jad looked up. Until now I had thought

that his hands were folded together in his lap. Now I saw that he was

holding a disposable razor, still encased in its colorful package. I

had one just like it in my bag. It was a common brand. Fraa Jad was

reading the label. The big characters were Kinagrams, which he would

never have seen before, but the fine print was in the same alphabet

that we used.


“What principle explains the powers imputed

by this document to the Dynaglide lubri-strip?” he asked. “Is it

permanent, or ablative?”


“Ablative,” I said.


“It is a violation of the Discipline for you to be reading that!” Barb complained.


“Shut up,” Fraa Jad said.


“I don’t mean in any way to be disrespectful,” I tried, after a somewhat awkward and lengthy pause, “but—”


“Is it time to leave?” Fraa Jad asked, and checked the orrery as if it were a wristwatch.


“Yes.”


Fraa Jad stood up and, in the same motion,

stripped his bolt off over his head. Some of the hierarchs gasped and

turned their backs. Nothing happened for a little while. I rummaged in his shopping bag and found a pair of drawers, which I handed to him.


“Do I need to explain this?” I asked, pointing out the fly.


Fraa Jad took the garment from me and

discovered how the fly worked. “Topology is destiny,” he said, and put

the drawers on. One leg at a time. It was hard to estimate his age. His

skin was loose and mottled, but he balanced perfectly on one leg, then

the other, as he put on the drawers.


The rest of getting Fraa Jad decent went by

without notable incidents. I retrieved my shoes and tried once more to

remember how to tie them. Barb seemed amazingly content to follow the

command to shut up. I wondered why I had never tried this simple tactic

with him before.





Stumbling and shuffling in our shoes,

hitching our trousers up from time to time, we walked out the Day Gate.

The plaza was empty. We crossed the causeway between the twin fountains

and entered into the burgers’ town. An old market had stood there until

I’d been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the

Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling

T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile,

the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had

gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now

called the New Market even though it was actually the old market. Some

casinos had gone up around the Olde Market, hoping to cater to people

who wanted to visit it or who had business of one kind or another

linked to the concent. But no one wanted to visit an Olde Market that

was surrounded by casinos, and frankly the concent wasn’t that much of

an attraction, so the casinos were looking dirty and forlorn. Sometimes

at night we could hear music playing from dance halls in their

basements but they were awfully quiet at the moment.


“We can obtain breakfast in there,” Barb said.


“Casino restaurants are expensive,” I demurred.




“They have a breakfast buffet that you can go to for free. My father and I would eat there sometimes.”


This made me sad but I could not dispute

the logic, so I followed Barb and Jad followed me. The casino was a

labyrinth of corridors that all looked the same. They saved money by

keeping the lights dim and not washing the carpets; the mildew made us

sneeze. We ended up in a windowless room below ground. Fleshy men,

smelling like soap, sat alone or in pairs at tables. There was nothing

to read. A speely display was mounted to the wall, showing feeds of

news, weather, and sports. It was the first moving picture praxis that

Fraa Jad had ever seen, and it took him some getting used to. Barb and

I let him stare at it while we got food from the buffet. We put our

trays down on a table and then I returned to Fraa Jad who was watching

highlights of a ball game. A man at a nearby table was trying to draw

him into conversation about one of the teams. Fraa Jad’s T-shirt

happened to be emblazoned with the logo of the same team and this had

caused the man to jump to a whole set of wrong conclusions. I got

between Fraa Jad’s face and the speely and managed to break his

concentration, then led him over to the buffet. Thousanders didn’t eat

much meat because there wasn’t room to raise livestock on their crag.

He seemed eager to make up for lost time. I tried to steer him toward

cereal products but he knew what he wanted.


While we were eating, a news feed came up

on the speely showing a Mathic stone tower, seen from a distance, at

night, lit from above by a grainy red glow. The scene was very much

like what the Thousanders’ math had looked like last night. But the

building on the feed was not one that I had ever seen.


“That is the Millenarians’ spire in the Concent of Saunt Rambalf,” Fraa Jad announced. “I have seen drawings of it.”


Saunt Rambalf’s was on another continent.

We knew little of it because it had no orders in common with ours. I’d

run across the name recently, but I could not remember exactly where—


“One of the three Inviolates,” Barb said.


“Is that what you call us?” Jad asked.


Barb was right. The Flying Wedge monument inside our Year Gate

bore a plaque telling the story of the Third Sack and mentioning the

three Thousander maths, in all the world, that had not been violated:

Saunt Edhar, Saunt Rambalf, and—


“Saunt Tredegarh is the third,” Barb continued.


As if the speely were responding to his

voice, we now saw an image of a math that seemed to have been carved

into the face of a stone bluff. It too was illuminated from above by

red light.


“That’s odd,” I said. “Why would the aliens shine the light on the Three Inviolates? That is ancient history.”


“They are telling us something,” said Fraa Jad.


“What are they telling us? That they’re really interested in the history of the Third Sack?”


“No,” said Fraa Jad, “they are probably

telling us that they have figured out that Edhar, Rambalf, and

Tredegarh are where the Sæcular Power stored all of the nuclear waste.”


I was glad we were speaking Orth.





We walked to a fueling station on the main

road out of town and I bought a cartabla. They had them in different

sizes and styles. The one I bought was about the size of a book. Its

corners and edges were decorated with thick knobby pads meant to look

like the tires of off-road vehicles. That’s because this cartabla was

meant for people who liked that kind of thing. It contained topographic

maps. Ordinary cartablas had different decorations and they only showed

roads and shopping centers.


When we got outside I turned it on. After a

few seconds it flashed up an error message and then defaulted to a map

of the whole continent. It didn’t indicate our position as it ought to

have done.


“Hey,” I said to the attendant, back inside, “this thing’s busted.”


“No it’s not.”


“Yes it is. It can’t fix our position.”


“Oh, none of them can today. Believe me. Your cartabla works fine. Hey, it’s showing you the map, isn’t it?”


“Yeah, but…”


“He’s right,” said another customer, a driver who had just pulled into

the station in a long-range drummon. “The satellites are on the blink.

Mine can’t get a fix. No one’s can.” He chuckled. “You just picked the

wrong morning to buy a new cartabla!”


“So, this started last night?”


“Yeah, ’bout three in the morning. Don’t

worry. The Powers That Be depend on those things! Military. Can’t get

by without ’em. They’ll get it all fixed in no time.”


“I wonder if it has anything to do with the

red lights shining on the—on the clocks last night,” I said, just to

see what they might say. “I saw it on the speely.”


“That’s one of their festivals—it’s a ritual or something they do,” said the attendant. “That’s what I heard.”


This was news to the other customer, and so

I asked the attendant where he had heard it. He tapped a jeejah hanging

on a lanyard around his neck. “Morning cast from my ark.”


The natural question would now have been: Warden of Heaven?

But showing more than the weakest curiosity might have pegged me as an

escapee from a concent. So I just nodded and walked out of the fueling

station. Then I started to lead Barb and Jad in the direction of the

machine hall.


“The aliens are jamming the nav satellites,” I announced.


“Or maybe they just shot them down!” said Barb.


“Let’s buy a sextant, then,” suggested Fraa Jad.


“Those have not been made in four thousand years,” I told him.


“Let’s build one then.”


“I have no idea of all the parts and whatnot that go into a sextant.”


He found this amusing. “Neither do I. I was assuming we would design it from first principles.”


“Yeah!” snorted Barb. “It’s just geometry, Raz!”


“In the present age, this continent is

covered by a dense network of hard-surfaced roads replete with signs

and other navigational aids,” I announced.


“Oh,” said Fraa Jad.


“Between that and this”—I waved the cartabla—“we can find our way to Saunt Tredegarh without having to design a sextant from first principles.”


Fraa Jad seemed a little put out by this. A

minute later, though, we happened to pass an office supply store. I ran

in and bought a protractor, then handed it to Fraa Jad to serve as the

first component in his homemade sextant. He was deeply impressed. I

realized that this was the first thing he’d seen extramuros that made

sense to him. “Is that a Temple of Adrakhones?” he asked, gazing at the

store.


“No,” I said, and turned my back on it and

walked away. “It is praxic. They need primitive trigonometry to build

things like wheelchair ramps and doorstops.”


“Nonetheless,” he said, falling behind me, and looking back longingly, “they must have some perception—”


“Fraa Jad,” I said, “they have no awareness of the Hylaean Theoric World.”


“Oh. Really?”


“Really. Anyone out here who begins to see

into the HTW suppresses it, goes crazy, or ends up at Saunt Edhar.” I

turned around and looked at him. “Where did you think Barb and I came

from?”


Once we had gotten clear as to that, Barb

and Jad were happy to follow me and discuss sextants as I led them on a

wide arc around the west side of Saunt Edhar to the machine hall.





“You come and go at interesting times; I’ll give you that,” was how Cord greeted me.


We had interrupted her and her co-workers

in the middle of some sort of convocation. Everyone was staring at us.

One older man in particular. “Who’s that guy and why does he hate me?”

I asked, staring back at him.


“That would be the boss,” Cord said. I noticed that her face was wet.


“Oh. Hmm. Sure. It didn’t occur to me that you’d have one of those.”




“Most people out here do, Raz,” she said.

“When a boss gives you that look, it’s considered bad form to stare

back the way you are doing.”


“Oh, is it some kind of social dominance gesture?”


“Yeah. Also, busting into a private meeting in someone’s place of employment is out of bounds.”


“Well, as long as I have your boss’s attention, maybe I should let him know that—”


“You called a big meeting here at midday?”


“Yeah.”


“Or, as he would think of it, you—a total

stranger—invited a whole lot of other total strangers to gather on his

property—an active industrial site with lots of dangerous

equipment—without asking him first.”


“Well, this is really important, Cord. And it won’t last long. Is that why you and your co-workers were having a meeting?”


“That was the first agenda item.”


“Do you think he is going to physically assault me? Because I know a little vlor. Not as much as Lio but—”


“That would be an unusual way to handle it.

Out here it would be a legal dispute. But you guys have your own

separate law, so he can’t touch you. And it sounds like the Powers That

Be are leaning on him to let this thing happen. He’ll negotiate with

them for compensation. He’s also negotiating with the insurance company

to make sure that none of this voids his policy.”


“Wow. Things are complicated out here.”


Cord looked in the direction of the Præsidium and sniffled. “And they’re not…in there?”


I thought about that for a while. “I guess

my disappearance on Tenth Night probably looks as weird to you as your

boss’s insurance policy looks to me.”


“Correct.”


“Well, it wasn’t personal. And it hurt me a lot. Maybe as much as this mess hurts you.”


“That is unlikely,” Cord said, “since ten seconds before you walked in here I got fired.”




“That is wildly irrational behavior!” I protested. “Even by extramuros standards.”


“Yes and no. Yes, it’s crazy for me to get

fired because of a decision you made without my knowledge. But no, in a

way it’s not, because I’m weird here. I’m a girl. I use the machines to

make jewelry. I make parts for the Ita and get paid in jars of honey.”


“Well, I’m really sorry—”


“Just stop,” she suggested.


“If there’s anything I can do—if you’d like to join the math—”


“The math you just got thrown out of?”


“I’m just saying, if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you—”


“Give me an adventure.”


In the moment that followed, Cord realized

that this sounded weird, and lost her nerve. She held up her hands.

“I’m not talking about some massive adventure. Just something that

would make getting fired seem small. Something that I might remember

when I’m old.”


Now for the first time I reviewed everything that had happened in the last twelve hours. It made me a little dizzy.


“Raz?” she said, after a while.


“I can’t predict the future,” I said, “but

based on what little I know so far, I’m afraid it has to be a massive

adventure or nothing.”


“Great!”


“Probably the kind of adventure that ends in a mass burial.”


That quieted her down a little bit. But after a while, she said: “Do you need transportation? Tools? Stuff?”


“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs,” I said. “We have a protractor.”


“Okay, I’ll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string.”


“That’d be great.”


“See you here at noon. If they’ll let me back in, that is.”


“I’ll see to it that they do. Hey, Cord—”


“Yeah?”




“This is probably the wrong time to ask…but could you do me one favor?”





I went into the shade of the great roof

over the canal and sat on a stack of wooden pallets, then took out the

cartabla and figured out how to use its interface. This took longer

than I’d expected because it wasn’t made for literate people. I

couldn’t make any headway at all with its search functions, because of

all its cack-handed efforts to assist me.


“Where the heck is Bly’s Butte?” I asked

Arsibalt when he showed up. It was half an hour before midday. About

half of the Evoked had arrived. A small fleet of fetches and mobes had

begun to form up: stolen, borrowed, or donated, I had no idea.


“I anticipated this,” Arsibalt said.


“Bly’s relics are all at Saunt Edhar,” I reminded him.


“Were,” he corrected me.


“Excellent! What did you steal?”


“A rendering of the butte as it appeared thirteen hundred years ago.”


“And some of his cosmographical notes?” I pleaded


No such luck: Arsibalt’s face was all curiosity. “Why would you want Saunt Bly’s cosmographical notes?”


“Because he ought to have noted the longitude and latitude of the place from which he was making the observations.”


Then I remembered we had no way to

determine our longitude and latitude anyway. But perhaps that

information was entombed in the cartabla’s user interface.


“Well, perhaps it’s all for the best,” Arsibalt sighed.


“What!?”


“We are supposed to go directly to Saunt Tredegarh’s. Bly’s Butte is not between here and there.”


“I don’t think it’s that far out of the way.”


“Didn’t you just tell me you don’t know where it is?”


“I have a rough idea.”


“You can’t even be certain that Orolo went to Bly’s Butte. How are you going to persuade seventeen avout to make an illicit detour to search for a man they Anathematized a few months ago?”


“Arsibalt, I don’t understand you. Why did you bother stealing Bly’s relics if you had no intention of going to find Orolo?”


“At the time I stole them,” he pointed out, “I didn’t know it was a Convox.”


It took me a moment to follow the logic. “You didn’t know we’d be coming back.”


“Correct.”


“You reckoned, after we got finished doing whatever it is they wanted us to do—”


“We could find Orolo, and live as Ferals.”


That was all interesting. Sort of poignant too. It did nothing, however, to solve the problem at hand.


“Arsibalt, have you noticed any pattern in the lives of the Saunts?”


“Quite a few. Which pattern would you like to draw to my attention?”


“A lot of them get Thrown Back before everyone figures out that they are Saunts.”


“Supposing you’re right,” Arsibalt said, “Orolo’s canonization is not going to happen for a long time; he’s not a Saunt yet.”


“Beg pardon,” said a man who had lately been hovering nearby with his hands in his pockets, “are you the leader?”


He was looking at me. I naturally glanced

around to see what fresh trouble Barb and Jad had gotten into. Barb was

standing not far away, watching some birds that had built their nests

up in the steel beams that supported the roof. He’d been doing this for

a solid hour. Jad was squatting in a dusty patch, drawing diagrams

using a broken tap as a stylus. Shortly after we’d arrived, Fraa Jad

had wandered into the machine hall and figured out how to turn on a

lathe. Cord’s ex-boss almost had attacked me.

Since then, both Jad and Barb had been reasonably well-behaved. So why

was this extra asking me if I was the leader? He didn’t seem angry or

scared. More…lost.


I guessed that by pretending to be the leader I could make a few things go my way, at least for a little while, until they figured out I was faking it.


“Yes,” I said, “I am called Fraa Erasmas.”


“Oh, good to meet you. Ferman Beller,” he

said, and extended his hand a little uncertainly—he wasn’t sure if we

used that greeting. I shook his hand firmly and he relaxed. He was a

stocky man in his fifth decade. “Nice cartabla you got there.”


This seemed like an incredibly strange

thing for him to say until I remembered that extras were allowed to

have more than three possessions and that these often served as

starting-points for small talk.


“Thanks,” I tried. “Too bad it doesn’t work.”


He chuckled. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you

there!” I guessed he was one of the locals who had volunteered to drive

us. “Say, look, there’s a guy over there wants to talk to you. Didn’t

know if we should, you know, let him approach.”


I looked over and saw a man with a black stovepipe on his head, standing in the sun, glaring at me.


“Please send Sammann over,” I said.


“You can’t be serious!” Arsibalt hissed when Ferman was out of range.


“I sent for him.”


“How would you go about sending for an Ita?”


“I asked Cord to do it for me.”


“Is she here?” he asked, in a new tone of voice.


“I’m expecting her and her boyfriend

to show up at any minute,” I said, and jumped down off the stack of

pallets. “Here, figure out where Bly’s Butte is.” I handed him the

cartabla.





The bells of Provener flipped switches in

my brain, as if I were one of those poor dogs that Saunts of old would

wire up for psychological experiments. First I felt guilty: late again!

Then my legs and arms ached for the labor of winding the clock. Next

would be hunger for the midday meal. Finally, I felt wounded that

they’d managed to wind the clock without us.


“We’re going to hold much of the discussion in Orth because many

of us don’t really speak Fluccish,” I announced, from my pallet-stack

podium, to the whole group: seventeen avout, one Ita, and a roster of

extramuros people that grew and shrank according to their attention

span and jeejah usage but averaged about a dozen. “Suur Tulia will

translate some of what we say, but a lot of our conversation is going

to be about stuff that is of interest only to avout. So you might want

to have your own conversation about logistics—such as lunch.” I saw

Arsibalt nodding.


Then I switched to Orth. I was a little

slow to get going because I was waiting for someone to point out that I

was not actually the leader. But I had called this meeting, and I was

standing on the stack of pallets.


And I was a Tenner. Our leader would have

to be a Tenner who would be able to speak Fluccish and deal with the

extramuros world. Not that I was an expert on that. But a Hundreder

would be even more inept. Fraa Jad and the Hundreders couldn’t very

well choose which Tenner was going to be the leader, because they’d

never met any of us until a few hours ago. For years, however, all of

them had watched me and my team wind the clock, which gave me, Lio, and

Arsibalt the advantage that our faces were familiar. Jesry, the natural

leader, was gone. I had won Arsibalt’s loyalty by speaking of lunch.

Lio was too goofy and weird. So through no rational process whatsoever

I was the leader. And I had no idea what I was going to say.


“We have to divide up among several

vehicles,” I said, stalling for time. “For now we’ll stick with the

same mixed groups of Tenners and Hundreders that were assigned in the

Narthex this morning. We’ll do that because it’s simple,” I added,

because I could see Fraa Wyburt—a Tenner, older than me—getting ready

to lodge an objection. “Swap things around later if you want. But each

Tenner is responsible for making sure his Hundreders don’t end up

stranded in a vehicle with non-Orth speakers. I think we can all

happily accept that responsibility,” I said, looking Fraa Wyburt in the

eye. He looked ready to plane me but decided to back down for reasons I

could only guess at. “How will those groups be distributed among

vehicles? My sib, Cord, the young woman in the vest with

the tools, has offered to take some of us in her fetch. That’s a

Fluccish word. It is that industrial-looking vehicle that seems like a

box on wheels. She wants me and her liaison-partner Rosk—the big man

with the long hair—in there with her. Fraa Jad and Fraa Barb are with

me. I have invited Sammann of the Ita to join us. I know some of you

will object”—they were already objecting—“but that’s why I’m putting

him in the fetch with me.”


“It’s disrespectful to put an Ita in with a Thousander!” said Suur Rethlett—another Tenner.


“Fraa Jad,” I said, “I apologize that we

are discussing you as if you were not present. It goes without saying

that you may choose whichever vehicle you want.”


“We are supposed to maintain the Discipline during Peregrin!” Barb helpfully reminded us.


“Hey, you guys are scaring the extras,” I

joked. Because looking over the heads of my fraas and suurs I could see

the extramuros people looking unnerved by our arguing. Tulia translated

my last remark. The extras laughed. None of the avout did. But they did

settle down a little.


“Fraa Erasmas, if I may?” said Arsibalt. I

nodded. Arsibalt faced Barb but spoke loudly enough for all to hear:

“We have been given two mutually contradictory instructions. One, the

ancient standing order to preserve the Discipline during Peregrin. Two,

a fresh order to get to Saunt Tredegarh by any means necessary. They

have not provided us with a sealed train-coach or any other such

vehicle that might serve as a mobile cloister. It is to be small

private vehicles or nothing. And we don’t know how to drive. I put it

to you that the new order takes precedence over the old and that we

must travel in the company of extras. And to travel with an Ita is

certainly no worse than that. I say it is better, in that the Ita

understand the Discipline as well as we do.”


“Sammann’s in Cord’s fetch with me,” I

concluded, before Barb could let fly any of the objections that had

been filling his quiver during Arsibalt’s statement. “Fraa Jad’s

wherever he wants to be.”


“I’ll travel in the way you have suggested,

and make a change if it is not satisfactory,” said Fraa Jad. This

silenced the remainder of the seventeen for a moment, simply because it was the first time most of them had heard his voice.


“That might happen immediately,” I told

him, “because the first destination of Cord’s fetch will be Bly’s Butte

where I will try to find Orolo.”


Now the extras really did have something to

worry about, for the avout became quite loud and angry and my short

tenure as self-appointed leader looked to be at an end. But before they

pulled me down and Anathematized me I nodded to Sammann, who strode

forward. I reached down and grabbed his hand and pulled him up to stand

alongside me. The novel sight of a fraa touching an Ita broke the

others’ concentration for a moment. Then Sammann began to speak, which

was so arresting that after the first few words he had a silent, almost

rapt audience. A couple of Centenarian suurs plugged their ears and

closed their eyes in silent protest; three others turned their backs on

him.


“Fraa Spelikon told me to go to the

Telescope of Saunts Mithra and Mylax and retrieve a photomnemonic

tablet that Fraa Orolo had placed there hours before the starhenge was

closed by the Warden Regulant,” Sammann announced in correct but

strangely accented Orth. “I obeyed. He did not issue any command as to

information security relating to this tablet. So, before I gave it to

him, I made a copy.” And with that Sammann withdrew a photomnemonic

tablet from a bag slung over his shoulder. “It contains a single image

that Fraa Orolo created, but never got to see. I summon the image now,”

he said, manipulating its controls. “Fraa Erasmas, here, saw it a few

minutes ago. The rest of you may view it if you wish.” He handed it

down to the nearest avout. Others clustered around, though some still

refused even to acknowledge that Sammann was present.


“We need to be discreet and not show this

to the extras,” I said, “because I don’t think they have any idea what

we are up against.” We meaning everyone on Arbre.


But no one heard me because by then they were all looking at the image on the tablet.


What the tablet showed did not force anyone to agree with me, but

it was a huge distraction from the argument we’d been having. Those who

were inclined to see things my way derived new confidence from it. The

rest of them lost their nerve.





It took an hour to figure out who was going

in which vehicle. I couldn’t believe it could be so complicated. People

kept changing their minds. Alliances formed, frayed, and dissolved.

Inter-alliance coalitions snapped in and out of existence like virtual

particles. Cord’s big boxy fetch, which had three rows of seats, was to

be occupied by her, Rosk, me, Barb, Jad, and Sammann. Ferman Beller had

a large mobe that was made to travel on uneven surfaces. He would take

Lio, Arsibalt, and three of the Hundreders who had decided to throw in

with us. We thought we had pretty efficiently filled the two largest

vehicles, but at the last minute another extra who had been making a

lot of calls on his jeejah announced that he and his fetch were joining

our caravan. The man’s name was Ganelial Crade and he was pretty

clearly some kind of Deolater from a counter-Bazian ark—whether Warden

of Heaven or not, we didn’t know yet. His vehicle was an open-back

fetch whose bed was almost completely occupied by a motorized tricycle

with fat, knobby tires. Only three people could fit into its cab. No

one wanted to ride with Ganelial Crade. I was embarrassed on his

behalf, though not so embarrassed that I was willing to climb into his

vehicle. At the last minute, some younger associate of his stepped up,

tossed a duffel bag into the back, and climbed into the cab with him.

So that completed the Bly’s Butte contingent.


The direct-to-Tredegarh contingent

comprised four mobes, each with one owner/driver and one Tenner: Tulia,

Wyburt, Rethlett, and Ostabon. Other seats in these vehicles were taken

up by Hundreders who wanted no part of an Orolo expedition or by other

extras who had volunteered to come on the journey.


With the exception of Cord and Rosk, all of

the extras appeared to be part of religious groups, which made all of

the avout more or less uncomfortable. I reckoned that if there had been

a military base in this area the Sæcular Power might have ordered some

soldiers to dress up as civilians and

drive us around, but since there wasn’t, they’d hit on the idea of

relying on organizations that people were willing to volunteer for on

short notice, which in this time and place meant arks. When I explained

it to people in those terms, it seemed to settle them down a little

bit. The Tenners sort of understood it. The Hundreders found it quite

difficult to fathom and kept wanting to know more about the deologies

espoused by their would-be drivers, which in no way shortened the

process of getting them into vehicles.


Ganelial Crade was probably in his fourth

decade, but you could mistake him for a younger man because he was

slender and whiskerless. He announced that he knew the location of

Bly’s Butte and that he would lead us there and we should follow him.

Then he got into his fetch and started the engine. Ferman Beller ambled

over and grinned at him until he opened his window, then started

talking to him. Pretty soon I could tell that they were disagreeing

about something—mostly by watching Crade’s passenger, who was glaring

at Beller.


I got that mud-on-the-head sense of

embarrassment again. Ganelial Crade had spoken with such confidence

that I’d assumed he’d already gone over this plan with Ferman Beller

and that the two of them had agreed on it. Now it was obvious that no

such thing had ever happened. I’d been prepared to follow Crade

wherever he led us.


I could now see that this business of being

the leader was going to be a pain in the neck because people would

always be trying to get me to do the wrong things or get rid of me

altogether.


“Some leader!” I said, referring to myself.


“Huh?” asked Lio.


“Don’t let me do stupid things any more,” I

ordered Lio, who looked baffled. I started walking towards Crade’s

fetch. Lio and Arsibalt followed at a distance. Crade and Beller were

openly arguing now. I really wanted no part of this but I had been

cornered into doing something.


The problem, I realized, was that Crade

claimed to have knowledge we didn’t have as to the location of Bly’s

Butte. That was my fault. I’d made the error of admitting that I didn’t

know exactly where it was. Inside the

concent it was fine to admit ignorance, because that was the first step

on the road to truth. Out here, it just gave people like Crade an

opening to seize power.


“Excuse me!” I called out. Beller and Crade

stopped arguing and looked at me. “One of my brothers has brought with

him ancient documents from the concent that tell us where to go. By

combining this knowledge with the skills of our Ita and the topographic

maps on the cartabla, we can find our own way to the place we are

going.”


“I know exactly where your friend went,” Crade began.


“We don’t,” I said, “but as I mentioned we can figure it out long before we get there.”


“Just follow me and—”


“That is a brittle plan. If we lose you in traffic we will be in a bad way.”


“If you lose me in traffic you can call me on my jeejah.”


This hurt because Crade was being more

rational than I was, but I couldn’t back down at this point. “Mr.

Crade, you may go on ahead if you like, and have the satisfaction of

beating us there, but if you look in your rearview and notice that we

are no longer visible, it is because we have decided to keep our own

counsel as to how we should get there.”


Crade and his passenger now hated me forever but at least this was over.


This plan, however, necessitated a shake-up

that put me and Sammann in Ferman Beller’s vehicle with Arsibalt. The

three of us would navigate. Lio and a Hundreder moved to Cord’s fetch

to balance the load; they would follow. Ganelial Crade sprayed us with

loose rocks as he gunned his fetch out into the open.


“That man behaves so much like the villain in a work of literature, it’s almost funny,” Arsibalt observed.


“Yes,” said one of the Hundreders, “it’s as if he’d never heard of foreshadowing.”


“He probably hasn’t,” I

said. “But please remember that our driver is the only extra in this

vehicle and so let’s show him the courtesy of speaking Fluccish at

least part of the time.”




“Go ahead,” said the Hundreder, “and I’ll see if I can parse it.”


Fraa Carmolathu, as this Hundreder was

called, was a little bit of a dork, but he had volunteered to go fetch

Orolo, so he couldn’t be all bad. He was five or ten years older than

Orolo, and I speculated that he was a friend of Paphlagon.


“How many roads lead northeast, parallel to the mountains?” I asked Beller. I was hoping he’d say only one.


“Several,” he said. “Which one do you want to take, boss?”


“By definition a butte is free-standing—not part of a range,” Arsibalt said in Orth, “so—”


“It rises from the plateau south of the mountains,” I announced in Fluccish. “We don’t need to take a mountain road.”


Beller put the vehicle into gear and pulled

out. I waved goodbye to Tulia. She was watching us go, looking a little

shocked. Our departure had been abrupt, but I was

afraid that if we waited one more minute there would be another crisis.

Tulia had elected to go directly to Tredegarh so that she could try to

find Ala. Perhaps I ought to have done the same. But this was not an

easy choice, and I thought I was choosing rightly. If all went well,

we’d get to Tredegarh only a couple of days later than Tulia’s

contingent. She’d do a fine job of leading them there.


Before leaving town we stopped, or rather

slowed down, at a place where we could get food without spending a lot

of time. I remembered this kind of restaurant from my childhood but it

was new to the Hundreders. I couldn’t help seeing it as they did: the

ambiguous conversation with the unseen serving-wench, the bags of

hot-grease-scented food hurtling in through the window, condiments in

packets, attempting to eat while lurching down a highway, volumes of

messy litter that seemed to fill all the empty space in the mobe, a

smell that outstayed its welcome.


Bazian Orthodox: The

state religion of the Bazian Empire, which survived the Fall of Baz,

erected, during the succeeding age, a mathic system parallel to and

independent of that inaugurated by Cartas, and endured as one of Arbre’s largest faiths.


Counter-Bazian:

Religion rooted in the same scriptures, and honoring the same prophets,

as Bazian Orthodoxy, but explicitly rejecting the authority, and

certain teachings, of the Bazian Orthodox faith.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





By the time we’d finished eating, we’d

passed out of view of the Præsidium. We had left most of the slines’

quarter behind us and were moving across a sort of tidal zone that was

part of the city when the city was big and part of the country when it

wasn’t. Where a tidal zone would have driftwood, dead fish, and

uprooted seaweed, this had stands of scrawny trees, animals killed by

vehicles, and tousled jumpweed. Where the tidal zone would be littered

with empty bottles and wrecked boats, this had empty bottles and

abandoned fetches. The only thing of consequence was a complex where

fuel trees that had been barged down from the mountains were chewed up

and processed. There we were caught for a few minutes in a traffic jam

of tanker-drummons. But few of these were going our way, and soon we

had got clear of them and passed into the district of vegetable gardens

and orchards that stretched beyond.


In my vehicle, besides me and Ferman

Beller, were Arsibalt, Sammann, and two Hundreder Fraas, Carmolathu and

Harbret. The other vehicle contained Cord, Rosk, Lio, Barb, Jad, and

another Edharian from the Hundreder math: Fraa Criscan. I noted a

statistical oddity, which was that there was only one female, and that

was my sib, who was pretty unconventional as females went. Intramuros,

we didn’t often see the numbers get so skewed. Extramuros, of course,

it depended on what religions and social mores prevailed at a given

time. Naturally, I wondered how this had come about, and spent a little

while reviewing my memories of the hour-long scramble to get people

into vehicles. Of course, the biggest factor in determining who’d go in

which group was how one thought about Orolo and the mission to go and

find him. Perhaps there was something about this foray that smelled

good to men and bad to women.




We numbered twelve, not counting Ganelial

Crade. This was a common size for an athletic team or a small military

unit. It had been speculated for a long time that this was a natural

size for a hunting party of the Stone Age, and that men were

predisposed to feel comfortable in a group of about that size. Anyway,

whether it was a statistical anomaly or primitive behavior programmed

into our sequences, this was what we’d ended up with. I spent a few

minutes wondering whether Tulia and some of the other suurs in the

straight-to-Tredegarh contingent hated me for letting it come out this

way, then forgot about it, since we needed to think about navigation.


From the drawing that Arsibalt had

supplied—which showed the profile of a range of mountains in the

distance—and from certain clues in the story of Saunt Bly as recorded

in the Chronicles, and from things that Sammann looked up on a kind of

super-jeejah, we were able to identify three different isolated

mountains on the cartabla, any one of which might have been Bly’s

Butte. They formed a triangle about twenty miles on a side, a couple of

hundred miles from where we were now. It didn’t seem that far away but

when we showed it to Ferman he told us we shouldn’t expect to reach it

until tomorrow; the roads in that area, he explained, were “new

gravel,” and it would be slow going. We could get there today, but it

would be dark and we wouldn’t be able to do anything. Better to find a

place to stay nearby and get an early start tomorrow.


I didn’t understand “new gravel” until

several hours later when we turned off the main highway and on to a

road that had once been paved. It almost would have been faster to

drive directly over the earth than to pick our way over this crazed

puzzle of jagged slabs.


Arsibalt was uncomfortable being around

Sammann, which I could tell because he was extremely polite when

addressing him. Complaining of motion sickness, he moved up to the seat

next to Ferman and talked to him in Fluccish. I sat behind him and

tried to catch up on sleep. From time to time my eyelids would part as

we caught air over a gap in the road and I’d get a dreamy glimpse of

some religious fetish swinging from the control panel. I was no expert

on arks, but I was pretty sure that Ferman was Bazian Orthodox. At some

level this was just as crazy as believing in whatever Ganelial Crade

believed, but it was a far more traditional and predictable form of

crazy.


Still, if a group of religious fanatics had

wanted to abduct a few carloads of avout, they couldn’t have done a

slicker job of it. That’s why I snapped awake when I heard Ferman

Beller mention God.


Until now he’d avoided it, which I could

not understand. If you sincerely believed in God, how could you form

one thought, speak one sentence, without mentioning Him? Instead of

which Deolaters like Beller would go on for hours without bringing God

into the conversation at all. Maybe his God was remote from our doings.

Or—more likely—maybe the presence of God was so obvious to him that he

felt no more need to speak of it than did I to point out, all the time,

that I was breathing air.


Frustration was in Beller’s voice. Not

angry or bitter. This was the gentle, genial frustration of an uncle

who can’t get something through a nephew’s head. We seemed so smart.

Why didn’t we believe in God?


“We’re observing the Sconic Discipline,”

Arsibalt told him—happy, and a bit relieved, to’ve been given an

opportunity to clear this up. He was too optimistic, I thought, too

confident he could get Beller to see it our way. “It’s not the same

thing as not believing in God. Though”—he hastily added—“I can see why

it looks that way to one who’s never been exposed to Sconic thought.”


“I thought your Discipline came from Saunt Cartas,” said Beller.


“Indeed. One can trace a direct line from

the Cartasian principles of the Old Mathic Age to many of our

practices. But much has been added, and a few things have been taken

away.”


“So, I guess Scone was another Saunt who added something?”


“No, a scone is a little cake.”


Beller chuckled in the forced, awkward way that extras did when someone told a joke that was not funny.


“I’m serious,” Arsibalt said. “Sconism is

named after the little tea-cakes. It is a system of thought that was

discovered about halfway between the

Rebirth and the Terrible Events. The high-water mark of Praxic Age

civilization, if you will. A couple of hundred years earlier, the gates

of the Old Maths had been flung open, the avout had gone forth and

mingled with the Sæculars—mostly Sæculars of wealth and status. Lords

and ladies. The globe, by this point, had been explored and charted.

The laws of dynamics had been worked out and were just beginning to

come into praxic use.”


“The Mechanic Age,” Beller tried, dredging up a word he’d been forced to memorize in some suvin a long time ago.


“Yes. Clever people could make a living, in

those days, just by hanging around in salons, discussing metatheorics,

writing books, tutoring the children of nobles and industrialists. It

was the most harmonious relationship between, er—”


“Us and you?” Beller suggested.


“Yes, that had existed since the Golden Age

of Ethras. Anyway, there was one great lady, named Baritoe, whose

husband was a philandering idiot, but never mind, she took advantage of

his absence to run a salon in her house. All the best metatheoricians

knew to gather there at a particular time of day, when the scones were

coming out of her ovens. People came and went over the years, so Lady

Baritoe was the only constant. She wrote books, but, as she herself is

careful to say, the ideas in them can’t be attributed to any one

person. Someone dubbed it Sconic thought and the name stuck.”


“And it all got incorporated into your Discipline, what, a couple of hundred years later?”


“Yes, not in a very formal way though. More

as a set of habits. Thinking-habits that many of the new avout already

shared when they came in the gates.”


“Such as not believing in God?” Beller asked.


And here—though we were driving on fair,

level ground—I felt as I would’ve if we’d been on a mountain track with

a thousand-foot cliff to one side, which Beller could have spilled us

into with a twitch of the controls. Arsibalt was relaxed, though, which

I marveled at, because he could be so high-strung about matters that

were so much less dangerous.


“Studying this is sort of a pie-eating contest,” Arsibalt began.




This was a Fluccish expression that Lio,

Jesry, Arsibalt, and I used to mean a long thankless trudge through a

pile of books. It completely wrong-footed Beller, who thought we were

talking of scones, and so here Arsibalt had to spend a minute or two

disentangling these two baked-goods references.


“I’ll try to sketch it out,” Arsibalt

continued, once they’d gotten back on track. “Sconic thought was a

third way between two unacceptable alternatives. By then it was well

understood that we do all of our thinking up here in our brains.” He

tapped his head. “And that the brain gets its inputs from eyes, ears,

and other sense organs. The naïve attitude is that your brain works

directly with the real world. I look at this button on your control

panel, I reach out and feel it with my hand—”


“Don’t touch that!” Beller warned.


“I see you seeing it

and having thoughts about it, and I conclude that it’s really there,

just as my eyes and fingers present it to me, and that when I think

about it I’m thinking about the real thing.”


“That all seems pretty obvious,” Beller said.


Then there was an awkward silence, which Beller finally broke by saying—in good humor—“I guess that’s why you called it naïve.”


“At the opposite extreme, there were those

who argued that everything we think we know about the world outside of

our skulls is an illusion.”


“Seems kind of smart-alecky more than anything else,” Beller said after considering it for a bit.


“The Sconics didn’t much care for it

either. As I said, they developed a third attitude. ‘When we think

about the world—or about almost anything—’ they

said, ‘what we are really thinking about is a bunch of data—givens—that

have reached our brains from our eyes and ears and so forth.’ To go

back to my example, I am given a visual image of that button and I am

given a memory of what it felt like when I touched it, but that’s all I have to work with, as far as that button is concerned—it is impossible, unthinkable,

for my brain to come to grips with the actual, physical button in and

of itself because my brain simply does not have access to it. All that

my brain can ever work with are the look and the feel—givens piped into our nerves.”


“Well, I guess I see the point. It doesn’t

have that smart-aleckiness of the other one you mentioned. But it seems

like a distinction without a difference,” Beller said.


“It’s not,” Arsibalt said. “And here is where the pie-eating contest would begin, if you wanted to understand why

it’s not. Because, starting from this idea, the Sconics went on to

develop a whole metatheorical system. It was so influential that no one

has been able to do metatheorics since then without coming to grips

with it. All subsequent metatheorics is a refutation, an amendment, or

an extension of Sconic thought. And one of the most important

conclusions you arrive at, if you make it to the end of the pie-eating

contest, is that—”


“There is no God?”


“No, something different, and harder to sum

up, which is that certain topics are simply out of bounds. The

existence of God is one of those.”


“What do you mean, out of bounds?”


“If you follow through the logical

arguments of the Sconic system, you are led to the conclusion that our

minds can’t think in a productive or useful way about God, if by God

you mean the Bazian Orthodox God which is clearly not

spatiotemporal—not existing in space and time, that is.”


“But God exists everywhere and in all times,” Beller said.


“But what does it really mean to say that?

Your God is more than this road, and that mountain, and all the other

physical objects in the universe put together, isn’t He?”


“Sure. Of course. Otherwise we’d just be nature-worshippers or something.”


“So it’s crucial to your definition of God that He is more than just a big pile of stuff.”


“Of course.”


“Well, that ‘more’ is by definition outside

of space of time. And the Sconics demonstrated that we simply cannot

think in a useful way about anything that, in principle, can’t be

experienced through our senses. And I can already see from the look on your face that you don’t agree.”


“I don’t!” Beller affirmed.


“But that’s beside the point. The point is

that, after the Sconics, the kinds of people who did theorics and

metatheorics stopped talking about God and certain other topics such as

free will and what existed before the universe. And that is what I mean

by the Sconic Discipline. By the time of the Reconstitution it had

become in-grained. It was incorporated into our Discipline without much

discussion, or even conscious awareness.”


“Well, but with all the free time you’ve got—sitting there in your concents—couldn’t someone be troubled in four thousand years to be aware of it? To discuss it?”


“We have less free time than you imagine,”

Arsibalt said gently, “but nevertheless, many people have devoted much

thought to the matter, and founded Orders devoted to denying God, or

believing in Him, and currents have surged back and forth in and among

the maths. But none of it seems to have moved us away from the basic

position of the Sconics.”


“Do you believe in God?” Beller asked flat-out.


I leaned forward, fascinated.


“I have been reading a

lot, lately, about things that are non-spatiotemporal—yet believed to

exist.” By this, I knew he meant mathematical objects in the Hylaean

Theoric World.


“Doesn’t that go against the Sconic Discipline?” Beller asked.


“Yes,” Arsibalt said, “but that is

perfectly all right, as long as one isn’t going about it in a naïve

way—as if Lady Baritoe had never written a word. A common complaint

made about the Sconics is that they didn’t know much about pure

theorics. Many theoricians, looking at Baritoe’s works, say ‘wait just

a minute, there’s something missing here—we can

relate directly to non-spatiotemporal objects when we prove theorems

and so on.’ The stuff I’ve been reading lately is all about that.”


“So you can see God by doing theorics?”


“Not God,” Arsibalt said, “not a God that any ark would recognize.”




After that he managed to change the

subject. He—like I—had wondered what the Powers That Be might have told

Ferman and the others when they had put out the call for volunteers.


The answer seemed to be: not much. The

Sæcular Power needed some sort of puzzle solved—the sort of thing that

avout were good at. Some fraas and suurs would have to be moved from

Point A to Point B so that they could work on this conundrum. People

like Ferman Beller were naturally curious about us. They had all

learned about the Reconstitution in their suvins, and they understood

that we had an assigned role to play, however sporadically, in making

their civilization work. They were fascinated to see the mechanism

being invoked, at least once in their lives, and were proud to be a

part of it even if they hadn’t a clue as to why it was being engaged.


In the hottest part of the afternoon we

pulled off into the shade of a line of trees that had once served as

wind-break for a farm compound, now collapsed. We hadn’t seen Crade in

hours, but Cord’s fetch was right behind us. Some of us walked around

and some dozed. The mountains darkened the northwestern sky, though if

you didn’t know what they were you might mistake them for a storm

front. On their opposite slope they caught most of the moisture blowing

in from the ocean and funneled it into the river that ran through our

concent. Consequently this side was arid. Only bunchgrass and low

fragrant shrubs would grow here of their own accord. From age to age

the Sæcular Power would irrigate it and people would live here growing

grain and legumes, but we were now on the wane of such a cycle, as was

obvious from the condition of the roads, the farmsteads, and what were

shown on the cartabla as towns. The old irrigation ditches were fouled

by whatever would grow in them, which was mostly things with thorns,

spines, and detachable burrs. Lio and I went for a brisk walk along one

of these, but we didn’t say much as we were keeping an eye out for

snakes.


Sammann kept looking as if he had something

to say. We decided on a shake-up that put me and him in Cord’s fetch,

while Lio and Barb went to Ferman’s mobe. Barb wanted to stay with Jad

but we all knew that Jad must be getting a little weary of his company

and so we insisted. Cord was tired of driving, so Rosk took the

controls.




“Ferman Beller is communicating with a Bazian installation on one of those mountains,” Sammann told me.


This was an odd phrasing, since Baz had been sacked fifty-two hundred years ago. “As in Bazian Orthodox?” I asked.


Sammann rolled his eyes. “Yes.”


“A religious institution?”


“Or something.”


“How do you know this?”


“Never mind. I just thought you might want to know that Ganelial Crade isn’t the only one with an agenda.”


I considered asking Sammann what his agenda was but decided to let it drop. He was probably wondering how a bunch of Bazian priests would treat an Ita.


My agenda was looking at the photomnenomic

tablet, which I knew that everyone in this vehicle—except for Cord,

who’d been driving—must have been studying. I’d only had a brief look

at it before. Cord and I sat together in the back. The sun was shining

in so we threw a blanket over our heads and huddled in the dark like a

couple of kids playing campout.


This thing that Orolo had wanted so badly

to take pictures of: would it be something that we would recognize as a

ship? Until Sammann had showed me this tablet a few hours ago, all I

had known was that it used bursts of plasma to change its velocity and

that it could shine red lasers on things. For all I’d known, it could

have been a hollowed-out asteroid. It could have been an alien life

form, adapted to live in the vacuum of space, that shot bombs out of a

sphincter. It could have been constructed out of things that we would

not even recognize as matter; it could have been only half in this

universe and half in some other. So I had made an effort to open my

mind. I had been prepared to be confronted by some sort of image that I

would not be able to understand at first. And it had, indeed, been a

riddle. But not the kind of riddle I’d been expecting. I hadn’t had

time to study it, to puzzle over it, at the time. Now I had a good long

look.


The image was streaked in the direction of

the ship’s motion. Fraa Orolo had probably set up the telescope to

track it across the sky, but he’d had

to make his best guess as to its direction and speed, and he hadn’t

gotten it exactly right, hence the motion blur. I guessed that this was

only the last in a series of such images that Orolo had been making

during the weeks leading up to Apert, each slightly better than the

last as he learned how to track the target and how to calibrate the

exposure. Sammann had already applied some kind of syntactic process to

the image to reduce the blur and bring out many details that would have

been lost otherwise.


It was an icosahedron. Twenty faces, each

of them an equilateral triangle. That much I’d seen when Sammann had

first shown it to me. And therein lay the puzzle, because such a shape

could be either natural or artificial. Geometers loved icosahedrons,

but so did nature; viruses, spores, and pollens had all been known to

take this shape. So perhaps it was a space-adapted life form, or a giant crystal that had grown in a gas cloud.


“This thing can’t be pressurized,” I pointed out.


“Because the surfaces are all flat?” Cord

said—more as statement than question. She dealt with compressed gases

in her work, and knew in her bones that any vessel containing pressure

must be rounded: a cylinder, a sphere, or a torus.


“Keep looking,” Sammann advised us.


“The corners,” Cord said, “the—what-do-you-call-’em—”


“Vertices,” I said. Those twenty triangular

facets came together at twelve vertices; each vertex joined five

triangles. These seemed to bulge outward a little. At first I’d

mistaken this for blur. But on a closer look I convinced myself that

each vertex was a little sphere. And this drew my eye to the edges. The

twelve vertices were joined by a network of thirty straight edges. And

those too had a rounded, bulging look to them—


“There they are!” said Cord.


I knew exactly what she meant. “The shock

absorbers,” I said. For it was obvious, now: each of the thirty edges

was a long slender shock absorber, just like the ones on the suspension

of Cord’s fetch, except bigger. The frame of this ship was just a

network of thirty shock absorbers that came together at a dozen

spherical vertices. The entire thing was one big distributed shock absorption system.


“There must be ball-and-socket joints in the corners, to make that work,” Cord said.


“Yeah—otherwise the frame couldn’t flex,” I said. “But there’s a big part of this I’m not getting.”


“What are the flats made of? The triangles?” Cord said.


“Yeah. No point making a triangle out of

things that can give, unless the stuff in the middle can give

too—change its shape a little, when the shocks flex.” So we spent a

while puzzling over the twenty flat, triangular surfaces that accounted

for the ship’s surface area. These, I thought, looked a little funny.

They looked rugged. Not smooth metal, but cobbled together.


“I could almost swear it’s stucco.”


“I was going to say concrete,” Cord said.


“Think gravel,” suggested Sammann.


“Okay,” Cord said, “gravel has some give to it where concrete doesn’t. But how’s it held together?”


“There are a lot of little rocks floating

around up there,” I said. “In a way, gravel’s the most plentiful solid

thing you can obtain in space.”


“Yeah, but—”


“But that doesn’t answer your question,” I admitted. “Who knows? Maybe they have woven some kind of mesh to hold them in place.”


“Erosion control,” Cord said, nodding.


“What?”


“You see it on the banks of rivers, where

they’re trying to stop erosion. They’ll throw a bunch of rocks into a

cube of wire mesh, then stack the cubes and wire ’em together.”


“It’s a good analogy,” I said. “You need erosion control in space too.”


“How do you figure?”


“Micrometeoroids and cosmic rays are always

coming in from all directions. If you can surround your ship with a

shell of cheap material—aka, gravel—you’ve cut down quite a bit on the

problem.”


“Hey, wait a sec,” she said, “this one looks different.” She was pointing

to one face that had a circle inscribed in it. We hadn’t noticed it at

first, because it was around to one side, foreshortened, harder to make

out. The circle was clearly made of different stuff: I had the feeling

it was hard, smooth, and stiff.


“Not only that,” I pointed out, “but—”


She’d caught it too: “No shocks around this one.” The three edges outlining this face were sharp and simple.


“I’ve got it!” I said. “That one is the pusher plate.”


“The what?”


I explained about the atomic bombs and the

pusher plate. She accepted this much more readily than any of us had.

The ship that Lio had shown us in the book had been a stack: pusher

plate, shocks, crew quarters. This one was an envelope: the outer shell

was one large distributed shock absorber, as well as a shield. And, I

was beginning to realize, a shroud. A veil to hide whatever was

suspended in the middle.


Once we’d identified the pusher plate—the

stern of the ship—our eyes were naturally drawn to the face on the

opposite, or forward end: its prow. This was hidden from view. But one

of the adjoining shock absorbers was visible. And something was written

on it. Printed there neatly was a line of glyphs that had to be an

inscription in some language. Some of the glyphs, like circles and

simple combinations of strokes, could easily be mistaken for characters

in our Bazian alphabet. But others belonged to no alphabet that I had

ever seen.


And yet they were so close to our letters

that this alphabet seemed almost like a sib of ours. Some of them were

Bazian letters turned upside-down or reflected in a mirror.


I flung the blanket off.


“Hey!” Cord complained, and closed her eyes.


Fraa Jad turned around and looked me in the face. He seemed ever so slightly amused.


“These people”—I did not call them aliens—“are related to us.”


“We have started referring to them as the Cousins,” announced Fraa Criscan, the Hundreder sitting next to Fraa Jad.


“What could possibly explain that!?” I demanded—as if they could possibly know such a thing.




“These others have been speculating about it,” Fraa Jad said. “Wasting their time—as it is just a hypothesis.”


“How big is this thing—has anyone tried to estimate its dimensions?” I asked.


“I know that from the settings of the telescope and the tablet,” Sammann said “It is about three miles in diameter.”


“Let me spare you having to work it out in

your head,” said Fraa Criscan, watching my face, mildly amused. “If you

want to generate pseudogravity by spinning part of the ship—”


“Like those old doughnut-shaped space stations in spec-fic speelies?” I asked.


Criscan looked blank. “I’ve never seen a speely, but yes, I think we are talking about the same thing.”


“Sorry.”


“It’s okay. If you are playing that game,

and you want to generate the same level of gravity we have here on

Arbre—and if there is such a thing hidden inside of this icosahedron—”


“Which is kind of what I was imagining,” I allowed.


“Say it’s two miles across. The radius is

one mile. It would have to spin about once every eighty seconds to

provide Arbre gravity.”


“Seems reasonable. Doable,” I said.


“What are you talking about?” Cord asked.


“Could you live on a merry-go-round that spun once every minute and a half?”


She shrugged. “Sure.”


“Are you talking about where the Cousins

came from?” shouted Rosk over his shoulder. He couldn’t understand Orth

but he could pick out some words and he could read our tones of voice.


“We’re debating whether it is productive to

have any such discussion at all,” I said, but that was a little too

complicated, shouted from the back of the fetch over road noise.


“In books and speelies, sometimes you see a

fictional universe where an ancient race seeded a bunch of different

star systems with colonies that lost touch with each other afterwards,”

Rosk volunteered.




The other avout in the vehicle looked as if they were biting their tongues.


“The problem is, Rosk, we have a fossil record—”


“That goes back billions of years, yeah,

that is a problem with that idea,” Rosk admitted. From which I guessed

that others had already torn this idea limb from limb before his eyes,

but that Rosk liked it too much to let go of it—he’d never been taught

Diax’s Rake.


Cord had put the blanket back over her head

but she said, “Another idea that we were talking about earlier was, you

know, the whole concept of parallel universes. Then Fraa Jad pointed

out that this ship is quite clearly in this universe.”


“What a killjoy,” I remarked—in Fluccish, obviously.


“Yeah,” she said. “It is a real drag

hanging around with you people. So logical. Speaking of which—did you

notice the geometry proof?”


“What?”


“They couldn’t stop talking about it, earlier.”


I ducked back under the blanket with her.

She knew how to pan and zoom the image. She magnified one of the faces,

then dragged it around until the screen was filled with something that

looked like this, though a lot streakier and blurrier:


image


“That’s certainly a weird thing to put on your ship,” I said. I zoomed back out for a moment because I wanted to get a sense of where

this diagram was located. It was centered on one of the icosahedron’s

faces, adjoining, and just aft of, the one that we had identified as

the bow. If the ship’s envelope was made of gravel, held in some kind

of matrix, then this diagram had been built into this face as a sort of

mosaic, by picking out darker pieces of gravel and setting them

carefully into place. They’d put a lot of work into it.


“It’s their emblem,” I said. Only

speculating. But no one spoke out against the idea. I zoomed back in

and spent a while examining the network of lines. It was obviously a

proof—almost certainly of the Adrakhonic Theorem. The sort of problem

that fids worked all the time as an exercise. Just as if I were sitting

in a chalk hall, trying to get the answer quicker than Jesry, I began

to break it down into triangles and to look for right angles and other

features that I could use to anchor a proof. Any fid from the Halls of

Orithena probably would have gotten it by now, but my plane geometry

was a little rusty—


Wait a minute! some part of my mind was saying.


I poked my head out from under the blanket, careful this time not to blind Cord.


“This is just plain creepy,” I said.


“That’s the same word Lio used!” Rosk shouted back.


“Why do you guys all think it’s creepy?” Cord wanted to know.


“Please supply a definition of the oft-used Fluccish word creepy,” said Fraa Jad.


I tried to explain it to the Thousander, but primitive emotional states were not what Orth was good at.


“An intuition of the numenous,” Fraa Jad hazarded, “combined with a sense of dread.”


“Dread is a strong word, but you are close.”


Now I had to answer Cord’s question. I made

a few false starts. Then I saw Sammann watching me and I got an idea.

“Sammann here is an expert on information. Communication, to him, means

transmitting a series of characters.”


“Like the letters on this shock absorber?” Cord asked.


“Exactly,” I said, “but since the Cousins

use different letters, and have a different language, a message from

them would look to us like something

written in a secret code. We’d have to decipher it and translate it

into our language. Instead of which the Cousins have decided here

to—to—”


“To bypass language,” Sammann said, impatient with my floundering.


“Exactly! And instead they have gone directly to this picture.”


“You think they put it there for us to see?” Cord asked.


“Why else would you go to the trouble to put something on the outside of your ship? They wanted to mark themselves with something they knew we’d understand. And that is what’s creepy—the fact that they just knew in advance that we’d understand this.”


“I don’t understand it,” Cord protested.


“Yet. But you know what

it is. And we could get you to understand it a lot faster than we could

decipher an alien language. It looks to me as though Fraa Jad has

already worked it out.” My eye had fallen on a leaf in his lap that

bore a copy of the diagram, with some marks and notations that he had

added as he had worked through the logic of the proof.


Logic. Proof. The Cousins had these—had them in common with us.


With us who lived in concents, that is.


Avout with nukes!


Roaming from star system to star system in a bomb-powered concent, making contact with their planet-bound brethren—


“Snap out of it, Raz!” I said to myself.


“Yes,” said Fraa Jad, who’d been watching my face, “please do.”


“They came,” I said, “the Cousins did, and

the Sæcular Power picked them up on radar. Tracked them. Worried about

them. Took pictures of them. Saw that.” I pointed to the proof on Fraa

Jad’s lap. “Recognized it as an avout thing. Got worried. Figured out

that the ship had been detected—somehow—by at least one fraa: Orolo.”


“I told him about it,” Sammann said.


“What?”


Sammann looked uncomfortable. But I had

gotten it all so badly wrong that he couldn’t contain himself—he had to

straighten me out. “A communication reached us from the Sæcular Power,”

he said.




“Us meaning the Ita?”


“A third-order reticule.”


“Huh?”


“Never mind. We were told to go in

secret—bypassing the hierarchs—to the concent’s foremost cosmographer,

and tell him of this thing.”


“And then what?”


“There were no further instructions,” Sammann said.


“So you chose Orolo.”


Sammann shrugged. “I went to his vineyard

one night while he was alone, cursing at his grapes, and told him

this—told him I had stumbled across it while reviewing logs of routine

mail-protocol traffic.”


I didn’t understand a word of his Ita

gibberish but I got the gist of it. “So, part of your orders from the

Sæcular Power were to make it seem that this was just you, acting on

your own—”


“So that they could later deny that they had anything to do with it,” Sammann said, “when it came time to crack down.”


“I doubt that they were so premeditated,”

Fraa Jad put in, using a mild tone of voice, as Sammann and I had

become heated—conspiratorial. “Let us get out the Rake,” Jad went on.

“The Sæcular Power had radar, but not pictures. To get pictures they

needed telescopes and people who knew how to use them. They did not

want to involve the hierarchs. So they devised the strategy that

Sammann has just explained to us. It was only a means of getting some

pictures of the thing as quickly and quietly as possible. But when they

did get the pictures, they saw this.” He rested the palm of his hand on the proof in his lap.


“And then they realized that they’d made a

big mistake,” I said, in a much calmer tone than before. “They had

divulged the existence and nature of the Cousins to the last people in

the world they’d want to know about them.”


“Hence the closure of the starhenge and

what happened to Orolo,” Sammann said, “and hence me in this fetch, as

I have no idea what they’ll want to do to me.”


I’d assumed until now that Sammann had obtained permission to

go on this journey. This was my first hint that it was more complicated

than that. I found it strange to hear an Ita voicing fear of getting in

trouble, since usually it was we who worried about their

sneaky tricks—such as the one that had ensnared Orolo. But then my

point of view snapped around and I saw it his way. Precisely because

people believed the things they did about the Ita, no one was likely to

believe Sammann’s story or stand up for him if all of these doings

broke out into the open.


“So you made this copy of the tablet and kept it so that you would have—”


“Something,” he said, “that I could leverage.”


“And you showed yourself in Clesthyra’s Eye. Announcing, in a deniable way, that you knew something—that you had information.”


“Advertising,” Sammann said, and the shape of his face changed, whiskers shifting on whiskers—his way of hinting at a smile.


“Well, it worked,” I said, “and here you are, on the road to nowhere, being driven around by a bunch of Deolaters.”


Cord got fed up with hearing Orth and moved

up to the front of the fetch to sit with Rosk. I felt sorry—but some

things were nearly impossible to talk about in Fluccish.


I was dying to ask Fraa Jad about the

nuclear waste, but was reluctant to broach this topic with Sammann

listening. So I drew my own copy of the proof on the Cousins’ ship and

began working it. Before long I got bogged down. Cord and Rosk started

playing some music on the fetch’s sound system, softly at first, more

loudly when no one objected. This had to be the first time Fraa Jad had

ever heard popular music. I cringed so hard I thought I’d get internal

injuries. But the Thousander accepted it as calmly as he had the

Dynaglide lubri-strip. I gave up trying to work the proof, and just

looked out the window and listened to the music. In spite of all of my

prejudices against extramuros culture, I kept being surprised by

moments of beauty in these songs. Most of them were forgettable but one

in ten sheltered some turn or inflection that proved that the person

who had made it had achieved some kind of upsight—had, for a moment,

got it. I wondered if this was a

representative sampling, or if Cord was just unusually good at finding

songs with beauty in them and loading only those onto her jeejah.


The music, the heat of the afternoon, the

jouncing of the fetch, my lack of sleep, and shock at leaving the

concent—with all of these affecting me at once, it was no wonder I

couldn’t work a proof. But as the day grew old and the sun came in more

and more horizontally, as the dying towns and ruined irrigation systems

came less and less frequently and the landscape was purified into high

desert, spattered with stony ruins, I started thinking that something

else was working on me.


I was used to Orolo being dead. Not

literally dead and buried, of course, but dead to me. That was what

Anathem did: killed an avout without damaging the body. Now, with only

a few hours to get used to the idea, I was about to see Orolo again. At

any moment, for all I knew, we might spy him hiking up one of these

lonely crags to get ready for a night’s observations. Or perhaps his

emaciated corpse was waiting for us under a cairn thrown up by slines

descended from those who’d eaten Saunt Bly’s liver. Either way, it was

impossible for me to think of anything else when I might be confronted

by such a thing at any moment.


Cord’s face was shining on me. She reached

for a control and turned down the music, then repeated something. I had

gone into a sort of trance, which I shattered by moving.


“Ferman’s on the jeejah,” she explained. “He wants to stop. Pee and parley.”


Both sounded good to me. We pulled off at a

wide place in the road along a curving grade, a third of the way into a

descent that would, over the next half-hour, take us into a

flat-bottomed valley that connected to the horizon. This was no valley

of the wet and verdant type, but a failure in the land where withered

creeks went to die and flash floods spent their rage on a supine waste.

Spires and palisades of brown basalt hurled shadows much longer than

they were tall. Two solitary mountains rose up perhaps twenty or thirty

miles away. We gathered around the cartabla and convinced ourselves

that those were two of the three candidates we’d chosen earlier. As for the third—well, it appeared that we had just driven around it and were now scouring its lower slopes.


Ferman wanted to talk to me in my capacity

as leader. I shook off the last wisps of the near-coma I had sunk into,

and drew myself up straight.


“I know you guys don’t believe in God,” he

began, “but considering the way you live, well, I thought you might

feel more at home staying with—”


“Bazian monks?” I hazarded.


“Yes, exactly.” He was a little taken aback

that I knew this. It was only a lucky guess. When Sammann had mentioned

earlier that Ferman was talking to a “Bazian installation,” I had

imagined a cathedral or at any rate something opulent. But that was

before I’d seen the landscape.


“A monastery,” I said, “is on one of those mountains?”


“The closer of the two. You can see it about halfway up, on the northern flank.”


With some hints from Ferman I was able to

see a break in the mountain’s slope, a sort of natural terrace

sheltered under a crescent of dark green: trees, I assumed.


“I’ve been there for retreats,” Ferman remarked. “Used to send my kids there every summer.”


The concept of a retreat didn’t make sense to me until I realized that it was how I lived my entire life.


Ferman misinterpreted my silence. He turned

to face me and held up his hands, palms out. “Now, if you’re not

comfortable, let me tell you we have enough water and food and bedrolls

and so on that we can camp anywhere we like. But I was thinking—”


“It’s reasonable,” I said, “if they’ll accept women.”


“The monks have their own cloister,

separate from the camp. But girls stay at the camp all the time—they

have women on the staff.”


It had been a long day. The sun was going

down. I was tired. I shrugged. “If nothing else,” I said, “it might

make for a good story or two, for us to tell when we get to Saunt

Tredegarh.”


Lio and Arsibalt had been hovering. They pounced on me as soon

as Ferman Beller started to walk away. They both had the somewhat tense

and frayed look of people who’d just spent several hours cooped up with

Barb. “Fraa Erasmas,” Arsibalt began, “let’s be realistic. Look at this

landscape! There’s no way anyone could live here on his own. How would

one obtain food, water, medical care?”


“Trees are growing on one place on that

mountain,” I said. “That probably means that there is fresh water.

People like Ferman send their kids here for summer camp—how bad can it

be?”


“It’s an oasis!” Lio said, having fun whipping out this exotic word.


“Yeah. And if the nearer butte has an oasis

large enough for a monastery and a summer camp, why couldn’t the

farther one have a place where Ferals like Bly, Estemard, and Orolo

could live in the shade and drink spring water?”


“That doesn’t solve the problem of getting food,” Arsibalt pointed out.


“Well, it’s an improvement on the picture

that I’ve been carrying around in my head,” I said. I didn’t have to

explain this to the others because they’d had it in their heads too:

desperate men living on the top of a mountain, eating lichens.


“There must be a way,” I continued, “the Bazian monks do it.”


“They are a larger community, and they are supported by alms,” Arsibalt said.


“Orolo told me that Estemard had been

sending him letters from Bly’s Butte for years. And Saunt Bly managed

to live there for a while—”


“Only because slines worshipped him.” Lio pointed out.


“Well, maybe we’ll find a bunch of slines

bowing down to Orolo then. I don’t know how it works. Maybe there’s a

tourist industry.”


“Are you joking?” Arsibalt asked.


“Look at this wide spot in the road where we are stopped,” I said.


“What of it?”


“Why do you suppose it’s here?”


“I haven’t the faintest idea, I’m not a praxic,” Arsibalt said.




“So that vehicles can pass each other more easily?” Lio guessed.


I held out my arm, drawing their attention to the view. “It’s here because of that.”


“What? Because it’s beautiful?”


“Yeah.” And then I turned away from

Arsibalt and looked at Lio, who started to walk away. I fell in

alongside him. Arsibalt stayed behind to examine the view, as if he

could discover some flaw in my logic by staring at it long enough.


“Did you get a chance to look at the icosahedron?” Lio asked me. “Yeah. And I saw the proof—the geometry.”


“You think these people are like us. That

they will be sympathetic to our point of view as followers of Our

Mother Hylaea,” he said, trying these phrases on me for size.


I was already defensive—sensing a flank maneuver. “Well, I think that they are clearly trying to get at something by making the Adrakhonic Theorem into their emblem…”


“The ship is heavily armed,” he said.


“Obviously!”


He was already shaking his head. “I’m not

talking about the propulsion charges. They’d be almost useless as

weapons. I’m talking about other things on that ship—things that become

obvious when you look for them.”


“I didn’t see anything that looked remotely like a weapon.”


“You can hide a lot of equipment on a

mile-long shock absorber,” he pointed out, “and who knows what’s

concealed under all that gravel.”


“Can you give me an example?”


“The faces have regularly spaced features on them. I think that they are antennas.”


“So? Obviously they’re going to have antennas.”


“They are phased arrays,” he said.

“Military stuff. Just what you’d want to aim an X-ray laser, or a

high-velocity impactor. I’ll need to consult books to know more. Also,

I don’t like the planets lined up on the nose.”


“What do you mean?”




“There’s a row of four disks painted on a

forward shock. I think that they are depictions of planets. Like on a

military aerocraft of the Praxic Age.”


It took me a few moments to sort out the reference. “Wait a minute, you think that they are kills?”


Lio shrugged.


“Well, now, hold on a second!” I said.

“Couldn’t it be that it’s something more benign? Maybe those are the

home planets of the Cousins.”


“I just think that everyone is too eager to look for happy, comforting interpretations—”


“And your role as a Warden Fendant-in-the-making is to be way more vigilant than that,” I said, “and you’re doing a great job.”


“Thanks.”


We walked along silently for a little

while, strolling up and down the length of this wide place,

occasionally passing others who were taking the opportunity to get a

little bit of exercise. We happened upon Fraa Jad, who was walking

alone. I decided that now was the moment.


“Fraa Lio,” I said, “Fraa Jad has informed

me that the Millenarian math at Saunt Edhar is one of three places

where the Sæcular Power put all of its nuclear waste around the time of

the Reconstitution. The other two are Rambalf and Tredegarh. Both of

them were illuminated last night by a laser from the Cousins’ ship.”


Lio wasn’t as surprised by this as I’d

hoped. “Among Fendant types there is a suspicion that the Three

Inviolates were allowed to remain unsacked for a reason. One hypothesis

is that they are dumps for Everything Killers and other dangerous

leftovers of the Praxic Age.”


“Please. You speak of my home. Don’t call

it a dump,” Fraa Jad said. But he was amused—not offended. He was

being—if I could say this of a Thousander—playful.


“Have you seen the stuff?” Lio asked.


“Oh yes. It is in cylinders, in a cavern in the rock. We see it every day.”


“Why?”




“Various reasons. For example, my avocation is thatcher.”


“I don’t recognize the word,” I said.


“It is an ancient profession: one who makes roofs out of grass.”


“What possible application could that have in a nuclear waste d—repository?”


“Condensation forms on the ceiling of the

cavern and drips onto the tops of the cylinders. Over thousands of

years it could corrode them—or, just as bad, form stalagmites whose

weight would crush and rupture the containers. We have always

maintained thatched roofs atop the cylinders to prevent this from

happening.”


This was all so weird that I couldn’t think

of anything to do other than to continue making polite chatter. “Oh, I

see. Where do you get the grass? You don’t have much room to grow grass

up there, do you?”


“We don’t need much. A properly made

thatching lasts for a long time. I have yet to replace all of those

that were put in place by my fid, Suur Avradale, a century ago.”


Lio and I both walked on for a few paces

before this hit us; then we exchanged a look, and wordlessly agreed not

to say anything.





“He was just having us on,” I said, the

next time Lio and I could speak privately, which was at the retreat

center, as we were dropping our bags in the cell we were to share. “He

was getting back at us for calling his math a dump.”


Lio said nothing.


“Lio! He’s not that old!”


Lio put his bag down, stood up straighter

than I could, and rotated his shoulders down and back, which was a way

of recovering his equilibrium. As if he could defeat opponents just

through superior posture. “Let’s not worry about how old he is.”


“You think he is that old.”


“I said, let’s not worry about it.”


“I don’t think we have to worry about it. But it would be interesting to know.”




“Interesting?” Lio did the shoulder thing again. “Look. We’re both talking bulshytt, would you agree?”


“Yeah, I agree,” I said immediately.


“Enough of this. We have to talk straight—and then we have to shut up, if we don’t want to get burned at the stake.”


“Okay. You see this from a Fendant point of view. I take your point.”


“Good. So we both know what we’re really talking about now.”


“That you can’t live that long without repairing the sequences in the nuclei of your cells,” I said.


“Especially if you work around radiation.”


“I hadn’t thought of that.” I pondered it

for a moment, replaying the earlier conversation with Jad. “How could

he have possibly made such a slip? He must know how dangerous it is

even to hint that he is—er—the sort of person who can do things like

repairing his own cells.”


“Are you kidding? It wasn’t a slip. It was deliberate, Raz.”


“He was letting us know—”


“He was entrusting us with his life,” Lio said. “Haven’t you noticed how he was sizing everyone up today? He chose us, my fraa.”


“Wow! If that’s really true, I’m honored.”


“Well, enjoy being honored while you can,” Lio said, “because that kind of honor doesn’t come without obligations.”


“What kind of obligations are you thinking of?”


“How should I know? I’m just saying that he was Evoked for a reason. He’s expected to do something. He’s starting to develop a strategy. And we’re part of that strategy now. Soldiers. Pawns.”


This shut me up for a little while; I could hardly think straight.


Then I remembered something that somehow made it easier.


“We were already pawns anyway,” I said.


“Yeah. And given the choice, I’d rather be

a pawn of someone I can see,” Lio said. And then he smiled the old Lio

smile for the first time since last night. He had been more serious

than I’d ever seen him. But the sight of those kills—if that was what

they were—lined up on that ship had given him a lot to be serious about.


We avout liked to tell ourselves that we lived in a humble and austere

manner, by contrast with Bazian prelates who strutted around in silk

robes, enveloped in clouds of incense. But at least our buildings were

made out of stone and didn’t need a lot of upkeep. This place was all

wooden: higher up the slope, a little ark and a ring of barracks that

formed a sort of cloister, centered on a spring. Down closer to the

road, two rows of cells with bunk beds and a large building with a

dining hall and a few meeting rooms. The buildings were well taken care

of, but it was obvious that they were in continual decay and that, if

the people were to leave, the place would be a pile of kindling in a

few decades.


We did not get to see how the monks lived.

The cells where we stayed were clean but covered with graffiti

scratched into the walls and bunks by the kids who came here by the

coach-load during the summer. It was just dumb luck that no kids were

there when we arrived; one group had departed a couple of days earlier,

and another was expected soon. Of the half-dozen young adults who

staffed the place, four had gone back to town during the break. The

remaining two, and the Bazian priest who was in charge of the retreat

center, had prepared a simple meal for us. After we’d deposited our

bags in our cells and spent a few minutes cleaning up in the communal

bathrooms, we convened in the dining hall and sat down at rows of

folding tables much like the ones we used at Apert. The place smelled

of art supplies.


The monks, we were told, numbered

forty-three, which seemed like a small figure to us avout for whom a

chapter was a hundred strong. Four of them came down to dine with us.

It wasn’t clear whether they had special status, like hierarchs, or

were simply the only ones of the forty-three who had any curiosity

about us. All of them were greybeards, and all wanted to meet Fraa Jad.

Bazian Orthodox clerical Orth was about seventy percent the same as

what we spoke.


After the exchange that Lio and I just had,

you might think we’d have wanted to sit next to Fraa Jad, but in fact

we had the opposite reaction and ended up sitting as far away from him

as we could—as if we were secret agents in a speely, making a big point

of preserving our cover, playing it cool. At the last minute, Arsibalt hustled

in with several of the Hundreders; they’d been running a calca in one

of the cabins. He had a wild look about him, desperate to talk. He had

not been able to examine the photomnenomic tablet until late in the

day. Now he’d seen the geometry proof blazoned on the Cousins’ ship,

and he was about to explode. I felt sorry for him when he came into the

dining hall and found himself forced to choose between sitting with me

and Lio, or with Fraa Jad and the Bazian monks. Ferman Beller, noting

his indecision, stood up and beckoned him over. Arsibalt couldn’t

decline the invitation without giving offense, so he went and sat with

Ferman.


We always opened our meals by invoking the

memory of Saunt Cartas. The gist of it was that our minds might be

nourished by all manner of ideas originating from thinkers dating all

the way back to Cnoüs, but for the physical nourishment of our bodies

we relied upon one another, joined in the Discipline that we owed to

Cartas. Deolaters, on the other hand, all had different pre-meal

rituals. Bazian Orthodoxy was a post-agrarian religion in which literal

sacrifice had been replaced by symbolic; they opened their meals with a

re-enactment in effigy of that, then praised their God for a while,

then asked Him for goods and services. The priest who ran the retreat

center launched into it out of habit, but got unnerved in the middle

when he noticed that none of the avout were bowing their heads, just

gazing at him curiously. I didn’t think he was all that troubled by our

not believing what he believed—he must have been used to that. He was

more embarrassed that he’d committed a faux pas. So, when he was

finished, he implored us to say whatever sort of blessing or invocation

might be traditional in the math. As mentioned we were strangely

lacking in sopranos and altos, but we were able to put together enough

tenors, baritones, and basses to sing a very ancient and simple

Invocation of Cartas. Fraa Jad handled the drone, and I could swear he

made the silverware buzz on the tables.


The four monks seemed to enjoy this very

much, and when we’d finished they stood up and did an equally

ancient-sounding prayer. It must have dated back to the early centuries

of their monastic age, just after the Fall of Baz, because their Old

Orth was indistinguishable from ours,

and it had obviously been composed in a time before the music of the

maths and of the monasteries had diverged. If you didn’t listen too

carefully to the words, you could easily mistake this piece for one of

ours.


The conversation during the meal had to be

superficial compared to the events of the last twenty-four hours, given

that we had to talk in Fluccish and couldn’t mention the ship in

earshot of our hosts. I became frustrated, then bored, then drowsy, and

ate mostly in silence. Cord and Rosk talked to each other. They weren’t

religious, and I could tell they felt awkward here. One of the young

women on the staff made lavish efforts to make them feel welcome, which

mostly backfired. Sammann was absorbed in his jeejah, which he had

somehow patched into the retreat center’s communications system. Barb

had found a list of the camp rules and was memorizing it. Our three

Hundreders sat in a cluster and talked amongst themselves; they could

not speak Fluccish and didn’t have the Thousander glamor that had made

Fraa Jad the center of attention with the Bazian monks. I noticed that

Arsibalt was deep in conversation with Ferman, and that Cord and Rosk

had shifted closer to them, so I wandered over to see what they were

talking about. It seemed that Ferman had been thinking about the

Sconics, and wanted to know more. Arsibalt, for lack of any other way

to pass the time, had launched into a calca called “The Fly, the Bat,

and the Worm,” which was a traditional way of explaining the Sconic

theory of time and space to fids. “Look at that fly crawling around on

the table,” Arsibalt said. “No, don’t shoo it away. Just look at it.

The size of its eyes.”


Ferman Beller gave it a quick glance and then returned his eyes to his dinner. “Yeah, half of its body seems to be eyes.”


“Thousands of separate eyes, actually. It

doesn’t seem as though it could possibly work.” Arsibalt reached back

behind himself and waved his hand around, nearly hitting me in the

face. “Yet if I wave my hand back here, far away, it doesn’t care—knows

there is no threat. But if I bring my hand closer…”


Arsibalt brought his hand forward. The fly took off.




“…somehow its microscopic brain takes

signals from thousands of separate, primitive eyes and integrates them

into a correct picture, not merely of space, but of spacetime. It knows

where my hand is. Knows that if my hand keeps moving thus, it’ll soon

squash it—so it had better change its position.”


“You think the Cousins have eyes like that?” Beller asked.


Arsibalt dodged sideways: “Maybe they’re like bats instead. A bat would have detected my hand by listening for echoes.”


Beller shrugged. “All right. Maybe the Cousins squeak like bats.”


“On the other hand, when I shift my body to

swat the fly, it creates a pattern of vibrations in the table that a

creature—even a deaf and blind one, such as a worm—might feel…”


“Where is this going?” Beller asked.


“Let’s do a thought experiment,” Arsibalt said. “Consider a Protan fly. By that, I mean the pure, ideal form of a fly.”


“Meaning what?”


“All eyes. No other sense organs.”


“All right, I’m considering it,” Beller said, trying to be good-humored.


“Now, a Protan bat.”


“All ears?”


“Yes. Now a Protan worm.”


“Meaning all touch?”


“Yes. No eyes, ears, or nose—just skin.”


“Are we going to do all five senses?”


“It would start to become boring, so let’s

stop with three,” Arsibalt said. “We place the fly, the bat, and the

worm in a room with some object—let’s say a candle. The fly sees its

light. The bat squeals at it, and hears its echoes. The worm feels its

warmth, and can crawl over it to feel its shape.”


“It sounds like the old parable of the six blind men and the—”


“No!” said Arsibalt. “This is completely different. Almost the opposite. The six blind men all have the same sensory equipment—”


Beller nodded, seeing his mistake. “Yeah, but the fly, the bat, and the worm have different ones.”




“And the six blind men disagree about what it is they are groping—”


“But the fly, the bat, and the worm agree?” Beller asked, raising an eyebrow.


“You sound skeptical. Rightly so. But they are all sensing the same object, are they not?”


“Sure,” Beller said, “but when you say that they agree with each other, I don’t know what that means.”


“It’s a fascinating question, so let’s

explore it. Let’s change the rules a little,” said Arsibalt, “just to

set the stakes a little higher, and make it so that they have to agree. The thing in the middle of the room isn’t a candle. Now, it’s a trap.”


“A trap!?” Beller laughed.


Arsibalt got a proud look.


“What’s the point of that?” Beller asked.


“Now there’s a threat, you see. They have to figure out what it is or they’ll be caught.”


“Why not a hand coming down to swat them?”


“I thought of that,” Arsibalt admitted,

“but we have to make allowances for the poor worm, who senses things

very slowly compared to the other two.”


“Well,” Beller said, “I expect they’re all going to be caught in the trap sooner or later.”


“They are very intelligent,” Arsibalt put in.


“Still—”


“All right then, it is a huge cavern

swarming with millions of flies, bats, and worms. Thousands of traps

are scattered about the place. When a trap catches or kills a victim,

the tragedy is witnessed by many others, who learn from it.”


Beller considered it for a while as he

served himself some more vegetables. After a while, he said, “Well, I

expect that where you’re going with it is that once enough time has

gone by, and enough of these critters have been caught, the flies will

learn what a trap looks like, the bats what it sounds like, the worms

what it feels like.”


“The traps are being planted by exterminators who are intent on killing everything. They keep disguising them, and coming up with new designs.”


“All right,” Beller said, “then the flies, bats, and worms have to get clever enough to detect traps that are disguised.”


“A trap could look like anything,” Arsibalt

said, “so they must learn to look at any object in their environment

and to puzzle out whether or not it could possibly function as a trap.”


“Okay.”


“Now, some of the traps are suspended from strings. The worms can’t reach them or feel their vibrations.”


“Too bad for the worms!” Beller said.


“The flies can’t see anything at night.”


“Poor flies.”


“Some parts of the cavern are so noisy that the bats can’t hear a thing.”


“Well, it sounds as though the flies, the bats, and the worms had better learn to cooperate with one another,” Beller said.


“How?” This was the sound of Arsibalt’s trap closing on his leg.


“Uh, by communicating, I guess.”


“Oh. And what exactly does the worm say to the bat?”


“What does all of this have to do with the Cousins?” Beller asked.


“It has everything to do with them!”


“You think that the Cousins are hybrid fly-bat-worm creatures?”


“No,” Arsibalt said, “I think that we are.”


“AAARGH!” Beller cried, to laughter from everyone.


Arsibalt threw up his hands as if to say how could I make this any clearer?


“Please explain!” Beller said. “I’m not used to this, my brain’s getting tired.”


“No, you explain. What does the worm say to the bat?”


“The worm can’t even talk!”


“This is a side issue. The worms learn over

time that they can squirm around into different shapes that the bats

and flies can recognize.”




“Fine. And—let me see—the flies could fly

down and crawl around on the worms’ backs and give them signals that

way. Et cetera. So, I guess that each type of critter could invent

signals that the other two could detect: worm-bat, bat-fly, and so on.”


“Agreed. Now. What do they say to each other?”


“Well, hold on now, Arsibalt. You’re

skipping over a bunch of stuff! It’s one thing to say a worm can squirm

into a shape like C or S that could be recognized by a fly looking

down. But that’s an alphabet. Not a language.”


Arsibalt shrugged. “But languages develop

over time. Monkeys hooting at each other developed into some primitive

speech: ‘there’s a snake under that rock’ and so forth.”


“Well, that’s fine, if snakes and rocks is all you have to talk about.”


“The world in this thought experiment,”

Arsibalt said, “is a vast, irregular cavern sprinkled with traps: some

freshly laid and still dangerous, others that have already been sprung

and may safely be ignored.”


“You went out of your way to say that they were mechanical contraptions. Are you saying they’re predictable?”


“You or I could inspect one and figure out how it worked.”


“Well, in that case it comes down to saying

‘this gear here engages with that gear, which rotates yonder shaft,

which is connected to a spring,’ and so on.”


Arsibalt nodded. “Yes. That’s the sort of

thing the flies, bats, and worms would have to communicate to one

another, in order to figure out what was a trap and what wasn’t.”


“All right. So, same way that monkeys in

trees settled on words for ‘rock’ and ‘snake,’ they’d develop

symbols—words—meaning ‘shaft,’ ‘gear,’ and so on.”


“Would that be enough?” Arsibalt asked.


“Not for a complicated piece of clockwork.

Let’s see, you could have two gears that were close to each other, but

they couldn’t engage each other unless they were close enough for their

teeth to mesh.”


“Proximity. Distance. Measurement. How would the worm measure the distance between two shafts?”




“By stretching from one to the other.”


“What if they were too far apart?”


“By crawling from one to the other, and keeping track of the distance it moved.”


“The bat?”


“Timing the difference in echoes between the two shafts.”


“The fly?”


“For the fly it’s easy: compare the images coming into its eyes.”


“Very well, let’s say that the worm, the

bat, and the fly have each observed the distance between the two

shafts, just as you said. How do they compare notes?”


“The worm for example would tell what it knew by translating it into the squirming-alphabet you mentioned.”


“And what does a fly say to another fly upon seeing all of this?”


“I don’t know.”


“It says ‘the worm seems to be relating

some kind of account of its wormy doings, but since I don’t squirm on

the ground and can’t imagine what it would be like to be blind, I

haven’t the faintest idea what it’s trying to tell me!’”


“Well, this is just what I was saying earlier,” Beller complained, “they have to have a language—not just an alphabet.”


Arsibalt asked, “What is the only sort of language that could possibly serve?”


Beller thought for a minute.


“What are they trying to convey to each other?” Arsibalt prompted him.


“Three-dimensional geometry,” Beller said. “And, since parts of the clock are moving, you’d also need time.”


“Everything that a worm could possibly say

to a fly, or a fly to a bat, or a bat to a worm, would be gibberish,”

Arsibalt said, leading Beller forward.


“Kind of like saying ‘blue’ to a blind man.”


“‘Blue’ to a blind man, except for descriptions of geometry and of time. That is the only language that these creatures could ever possibly share.”




“This makes me think of that geometry proof

on the Cousins’ ship,” Beller said. “Are you saying that we are like

the worms, and the Cousins are like the bats? That geometry is the only

way we can speak to each other?”


“Oh no,” Arsibalt said. “That’s not where I was going at all.”


“Where are you going then?” Beller asked.


“You know how multicellular life evolved?”


“Er, single-celled organisms clumping together for mutual advantage?”


“Yes. And, in some cases, encapsulating one another.”


“I’ve heard of the concept.”


“That is what our brains are.”


“What!?”


“Our brains are flies, bats, and worms that

clumped together for mutual advantage. These parts of our brains are

talking to each other all the time. Translating what they perceive,

moment to moment, into the shared language of geometry. That’s what a

brain is. That’s what it is to be conscious.”


Beller spent a few seconds mastering the

urge to run away screaming, then a few minutes pondering this. Arsibalt

watched him closely the whole time.


“You don’t mean literally that our brains evolved that way!” Beller protested


“Of course not.”


“Oh. That’s a relief.”


“But I put it to you, Ferman, that our brains are functionally indistinguishable from ones that evolved thus.”


“Because our brains have to be doing that kind of processing all the time, just—”


“Just in order for us to be conscious. To

integrate our sensory perceptions into a coherent model of ourselves

and our surroundings.”


“Is this that Sconic stuff you were talking about earlier?”


Arsibalt nodded. “To a first approximation,

yes. It is post-Sconic. Certain metatheoricians who had been strongly

influenced by the Sconics came up with arguments like this one later,

around the time of the First

Harbinger.” Which was a bit more detail than Ferman Beller really

wanted to hear. But Arsibalt’s eyes flicked in my direction, as if to

confirm what I’d been suspecting: he had been reading up on this kind

of thing as part of his research into the work that Evenedric had

pursued later in his life. I lingered on the edge of that dialog until

it started to wind down. Then I got up and headed straight for my bunk,

planning to sleep good and hard. But Arsibalt, moving

uncharacteristically fast, chased me out of the dining hall and ran me

down.


“What’s on your mind?” I asked him.


“Some of the Hundreders held a little calca just before dinner.”


“I noticed.”


“They couldn’t get the numbers to add up.”


“Which numbers?”


“That ship simply isn’t big enough to

travel between star systems in a reasonable amount of time. It can’t

possibly hold a sufficient number of atomic bombs to accelerate its own

mass to relativistic velocity.”


“Well,” I said, “maybe it split off from a mother ship that we haven’t seen yet, and that is that big.”


“It doesn’t look like it’s that kind of

vessel,” Arsibalt said. “It is huge, with space to support tens of

thousands of people indefinitely.”


“Too big to be a shuttle—too small for interstellar cruising,” I said.


“Precisely.”


“Seems like you are making a lot of assumptions though.”


“That is a fair criticism,” he said with a shrug. But I could tell he had some other hypothesis.


“Okay. What do you think?” I asked him.


“I think it is from another cosmos,” he said, “and that is why they Evoked Paphlagon.”


We were at the door of my cabin.


“This cosmos we’re living in has me

flummoxed,” I said. “I don’t know whether I can start thinking about

additional ones at this point in the day.”




“Good night then, Fraa Erasmas.”


“Good night, Fraa Arsibalt.”





I woke to the sound of bells. I couldn’t

make sense of them. Then I remembered where I was and understood that

they were not our bells, but those of the monks, rousing them for some

punishingly early ritual.


My mind was about half sorted out. Many of

the new ideas, events, people, and images that had come at me from

every direction the day before had been squared away, like so many

leaves rolled up and thrust into pigeonholes. Not that anything had

really been settled. All of the questions that had been open when my

head had hit the pillow were still pending. But in the intervening

hours, my brain had been changing to fit the new shape of my world. I

guess that’s why we can’t do anything else when we’re sleeping: it’s

when we work hardest.


The peals faded slowly, until I couldn’t

tell whether I was hearing the bells themselves, or ringing in my ears.

Enduring was a deep tone, solid, steady, but faint because distant. I

knew somehow that I’d been hearing it for hours—that in those moments

of semi-waking when I’d rolled over or pulled up the covers I’d marked

this sound and wondered what it was before falling back to sleep. An

obvious guess would be some nocturnal bird. But the tone was low, for

an avian throat: like someone playing a ten-foot-long flute half-choked

with rocks and water. And birds tended not to just sit in one place and

make noise for half the night. Some kind of big amphibian, then, crazy

for a mate, squatting on a rock by the spring and blowing wind through

a quivering air-sac. But the sound was regular. Patterned. Perhaps the

hum from a generator. An irrigation pump down in the valley. Trucks

descending a grade using air brakes.


Curiosity and a full bladder were keeping

me awake. Finally I got up, moving quietly so as not to disturb Lio,

and tugged at my blanket. Out of habit, I was going to wrap it around

myself. Then I hesitated, remembering that I was supposed to wear

extramuros clothes. In the predawn

gloom I couldn’t even see the pile of trousers and underwear and

whatnot I’d left on the floor last night. So I went back to plan A,

peeled the blanket off the bed, wrapped it around myself, and went out.


The sound seemed to come from everywhere at

once, but by the time I’d used the latrine and emerged into the cool

morning air, I’d started to get an idea of where it came from: a stone

retaining wall that the monks had built along a steep part of the

mountain to prevent their road from crumbling into the valley. As I

walked toward it my perceptions cleared suddenly and I shook my head in

amazement at my own silliness in having imagined it was an amphibian or

a truck. It was plainly a human voice. Singing. Or rather droning, for

he had been stuck on the same note the whole time I’d been awake.


The note changed slightly. Okay, so it wasn’t a drone. It was a chant. A very, very slow one.


Not wanting to stroll right up to Fraa Jad

and disturb him, I maneuvered around on the soft wet grass of the

retreat center’s archery range until I was able to bring him in view at

a distance of a couple of hundred feet. The retaining wall ran in

straight segments joined by round, flat-topped towers about four feet

in diameter. Fraa Jad had rescued his bolt from his luggage, plumped it

up to winter thickness, and put it on, then climbed to the top of a

pillar that had a fine view to the south across the desert. He was

sitting there with his legs tucked under him and his arms outstretched.

Off to the left, the sky was luminescent purplish, washed of stars. To

the right, a few bright stars and a planet still shone, striving

against the light of the coming day, succumbing one by one as the

minutes went by.


I could have stood there watching and

listening for hours. I got the idea—which might have been just my

imagination—that Fraa Jad was singing a cosmographical chant: a requiem

for the stars that were being swallowed up in the dawn. Certainly it

was music of cosmographical slowness. Some of the notes went on for

longer than I could hold my breath. He must have some trick of

breathing and singing at the same time.


A single bell rang behind and above me at the monastery. A priest’s

voice sang an invocation in Old Orth. A choir answered him. It was a

call to the dawn aut, or something. I was crestfallen that their

rituals were trampling on Fraa Jad’s chant. But I had to admit that if

Cord had been awake to see this, she’d have been hard put to see any

difference between the two. Whatever Fraa Jad was chanting was rooted,

I knew, in thousands of years’ theorical research wedded to a musical

tradition as old and as deep. But why put theorics into music at all?

And why stay up all night sitting in a beautiful place chanting that

music? There were easier ways to add two plus two.


I’d been singing bass since the eventful

season, six years ago, when I’d fallen down the stairs from soprano.

Where I lived, that meant lots of droning. When you spend three hours

singing the same note, something happens to your brain. And that goes

double when you have fallen into oscillatory lockstep with the others

around you, and when you collectively have gotten your vocal chords

tuned into the natural harmonics of the Mynster (to say nothing of the

thousands of casks stacked against its walls). In all seriousness I

believe that the physical vibration of your brain by sound waves

creates changes in how the brain works. And if I were a craggy old

Thousander—not a nineteen-year-old Tenner—I might just have the

confidence to assert that when your brain is in that state it can think

things it could never think otherwise. Which is a way of saying that I

didn’t think Fraa Jad had been up all night chanting just because he

was a music lover. He was doing something.


I left Fraa Jad alone and went for a stroll

while the sun came up. Clatters and hisses from the dining hall told me

that the retreat center staff were up making breakfast, so I went to

the cell and put on my extra costume, then went there to lend a hand.

In some respects I might be helpless extramuros, but I knew how to

cook. Fraa Jad and the rest of our group drifted in, one by one, and

tried to help until they were ejected and commanded to eat.


In addition to the four who’d dined with us

the night before, three more monks joined us for breakfast, including

one very old one who wanted to talk to Fraa Jad, though he was quite

hard of hearing. The rest of the

avout left them alone. These monks seemed to consider it a high honor

to talk to a Thousander and so why should we interfere? They weren’t

going to get another chance.


At the end of the meal they presented us

with some books. I let Arsibalt accept them and make a nice speech.

They liked what he said so much that it made me squirm a little,

because it seemed he was encouraging them to see all sorts of natural

connections between who we were and who they were. But no harm came of

it. These people had been good to us, and they’d done it with open

hearts, and no expectation of anything in return—I was pretty sure the

Sæcular Power wasn’t going to reimburse them! That’s why Arsibalt’s

talk made me uneasy—he seemed to hold out the possibility that they would

get something in return, namely, future contact between them and us. I

stepped on his toe. He seemed to take my meaning. A few minutes later,

we were on our way down the mountain, the monks’ books having been

added to Arsibalt’s portable library.


Erasmas: A fraa at

Saunt Baritoe’s in the Fourteenth Century A.R. who, along with Suur

Uthentine, founded the branch of metatheorics called Complex Protism.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Between the monastery and Bly’s Butte, a

very small river trickled through a very large canyon, spanned by only

one bridge that was fit for use. Until we had crossed this, and come to

a fork, we didn’t need to think very hard about which direction we

ought to go. The road to the left swung wide to avoid the mountain. The

one to the right headed up the bank of a tributary toward a settlement

marked on the cartabla as Samble. So we went that way, and, a little

more than an hour after leaving the monastery, found ourselves

approaching something that, from a distance, looked like a pot scourer

dropped on the smooth southern flank of Bly’s Butte. It was a carpet of

scrubby trees. As we got closer we saw it had been cleaved and sorted

by settlers’ walls, rooves, and fences. Taller trees, obviously fawned

over by generations who loved them for shade or beauty, stood in a

rectangle around a plot of grass, at one end of which rose the acute

wood-framed sky-altar of a counter-Bazian ark. Without any

communication between the two vehicles, we found our way to that

village green. When we climbed out, we heard singing from the ark. But

we saw no people. The entire town—including Ganelial Crade, whose fetch

was parked in a patch of dirt behind the ark—was inside that building.


This didn’t seem like a good place to look

for Orolo or (assuming he was still alive) Estemard. But it did give us

our first hint as to how a couple of Ferals might have been able to

survive out here: by coming down into Samble to get things like food

and medicine. How they might have paid for them was another question.

But Fraa Carmolathu pointed out that Samble didn’t make much economic

sense to begin with. There weren’t any other towns hereabouts, the land

didn’t support farming, there was little in the way of industry. He

developed a theory that it was every bit as much a religious community

as the monastery where we’d stayed last night. And if that were the

case, perhaps Estemard and Orolo didn’t have to pay for things with

money, if instead they could provide useful services to the townsfolk.


“Or perhaps they are simply beggars,” suggested Fraa Jad, “like certain Orders of old.”


Most of the avout seemed more comfortable

with the beggar hypothesis than with any suggestion that Estemard or

Orolo might have been making himself useful to these kinds of people.

It led to a lively discussion. All of our attempts to plane each other

would have disturbed the service in the ark if it had been a quiet and

contemplative kind of proceeding, but it was more raucous in that place

than we could ever hope to be, with a lot of singing that sounded like

shouting. A few of us separated ourselves from the discussion and spent

a minute looking back and forth between the cartabla and the butte.

Samble—which Fraa Carmolathu speculated might be an ancient weathered

contraction of “Savant Bly”—stood at the beginning of a dirt road that

spiraled around the butte to its top. After

a few minutes we identified the place where that road began: the dirt

lot behind the ark. And at the moment there was no way to drive through

it and get on that road. The lot was full of parked vehicles: a few

shiny mobes such as might belong to whoever passed for Burgers in

Samble, but mostly dust-covered fetches with big tires. There was an

open lane up the center. The head of the road, though, was squarely

blocked by Ganelial Crade’s fetch.


According to the cartabla, it was only four

miles to the top, and I was feeling restless, so I filled my water

bottle from a pump in the middle of the green and started to walk up

the road. Lio came with me. So did Fraa Criscan, who was the youngest

of the Hundreders. It felt a little strange walking among the parked

fetches of the faithful of Samble, but once we squeezed past Crade’s

and got onto the road, it curved around the flank of the butte, and the

little town disappeared from view. A minute after that, we were no

longer able to hear the shouting inside the ark, just the rush of a dry

crackling wind coming at us from across the desert, carrying the sharp

perfume of the tough resinous plants that grew down there. We gained

altitude briskly and the temperature of the air dropped even as we

warmed to the task. Once we had reached a point opposite to Samble, we

were able to see all the way up to the top and make out a few buildings

and the crippled skeletons of old aerial towers and polyhedral domes.

We guessed they were military relics, which wasn’t interesting, since,

after a few thousand years of habitation, all landscapes were strewn

with such things.


We spiraled up and around to a point where

we could look down into Samble and wave to our friends below. The

service in the ark showed no sign of winding down. We had assumed that

the vehicles would catch up with us soon into our hike. In other words,

we were only doing this to get some exercise—not as a way of getting to

the top. But now it seemed we might get there before our vehicles did.

For some reason this aroused our competitive instincts and made us hike

faster. We found a shortcut that had been used by other hikers, and cut

off one whole circuit of the mountain by scrambling straight up the

slope for a couple of hundred feet.


“Did you know Fraa Paphlagon?” I asked Criscan when we stopped at the top of the shortcut to drink water and marvel at our progress. The view was worth a few minutes.


“I was his fid,” Criscan said. “You were Orolo’s?”


I nodded. “Are you aware that Orolo was a fid of Paphlagon before Paphlagon came to you through the labyrinth?”


Fraa Criscan said nothing. For Paphlagon to

have mentioned Orolo—or anything about his former life among the

Tenners—to Criscan would have been a violation of the Discipline. But

it was the sort of thing that could easily leak out when talking about

one’s work. I went on, “Paphlagon and another Tenner named Estemard

worked together and raised Orolo. They left at the same time: Paphlagon

via the labyrinth and Estemard via the Day Gate. Estemard came here.”


Criscan asked, “What was Orolo’s reputation? Before his Anathem, I mean.”


“He was our best,” I said—surprised by the question. “Why? What was Paphlagon’s reputation?”


“Similar.”


“But—?” Because I could tell that there was a “but” coming.


“His avocation was a bit strange. Instead of doing something with his hands like most people, he made a hobby of studying—”


“We know,” I said. “The polycosm. And/or the Hylaean Theoric World.”


“You looked at his writings,” Criscan said.


“Twenty-year-old writings,” I reminded him. “We have no idea what he’s been up to recently.”


Criscan said nothing for a few moments,

then shrugged. “It seems highly relevant to the Convox, so I guess it’s

okay for me to talk to you about it.”


“We won’t tell on you,” Lio promised him.


Criscan didn’t catch the humor. “Have you

ever noticed that when people are talking about the idea of the Hylaean

Theoric World, they always end up drawing the same diagram?”


“Yeah—now that you mention it,” I said.


“Two circles or boxes,” Lio said. “An arrow from one to the other.”




“One circle or box represents the Hylaean

Theoric World,” I said. “The arrow starts there and points to the other

one, which represents this world.”


“This cosmos,” Criscan corrected me. “Or causal domain, if you will. And the arrow represents—?”


“A flow of information,” Lio said. “Knowledge of triangles pouring into our brains.”


“Cause-and-effect relationship,” was my guess. I was recalling Orolo’s talk of Causal Domain Shear.


“Those two amount to the same thing,”

Criscan reminded us. “That kind of diagram is an assertion that

information about theorical forms can get to our cosmos from the HTW,

and cause measurable effects here.”


“Hold on, measurable?

What kind of measurable are you talking about?” Lio asked. “You can’t

weigh a triangle. You can’t pound in a nail with the Adrakhonic

Theorem.”


“But you can think about those things,” Criscan said, “and thinking is a physical process that goes on in your nerve tissue.”


“You can stick probes into the brain and measure it,” I said.


“That’s right,” Criscan said, “and the

whole premise of Protism is that those brain probes would show

different results if there weren’t this flow of information coming in

from the Hylaean Theoric World.”


“I guess that’s so,” Lio admitted, “but it sounds pretty sketchy when you put it that way.”


“Never mind about that for now,” Criscan

said. We were on a steep part of the road, breathing hard and sweating

as the sun shone down on us, and he didn’t want to expend much energy

on it. “Let’s get back to that two-box diagram. Paphlagon was part of a

tradition, going back to one Suur Uthentine at Saunt Baritoe’s in the

fourteenth century A.R., that asks ‘why only two?’ Supposedly it all

started when Uthentine walked into a chalk hall and happened to see the

conventional two-box diagram where it had been drawn up on a slate by

one Fraa Erasmas.”


Lio turned and looked at me.


“Yes,” I said, “my namesake.”




Criscan went on, “Uthentine said to

Erasmas, ‘I see you are teaching your fids about Directed Acyclic

Graphs; when are you going to move on to ones that are a little more

interesting?’ To which Erasmas said, ‘I beg your pardon, but that’s no

DAG, it is something else entirely.’ This affronted Suur Uthentine, who

was a theor who had devoted her whole career to the study of such

things. ‘I know a DAG when I see one,’ she said. Erasmas was

exasperated, but on reflection, he decided it might be worth following

up on his suur’s upsight. So Uthentine and Erasmas developed Complex

Protism.”


“As opposed to Simple?” I asked.


“Yes,” Criscan said, “where Simple is the

two-box kind. Complex can have any number of boxes and arrows, as long

as the arrows never go round in a circle.”


We had spiraled around to the shady side of

the butte, and come to a stretch of road that had been covered with

silt during seasonal rains—perfect for drawing diagrams. While we

rested and sipped water, Criscan went on to give us a calca*

about Complex Protism. The gist of it was that our cosmos, far from

being the one and only causal domain reached by information from a

unique and solitary Hylaean Theoric World, might be only one node in a

web of cosmi through which information percolated, always moving in the

same direction, as lamp oil moves through a wick. Other cosmi—perhaps

not so different from ours—might reside up-Wick from ours, and feed

information to us. And yet others might be down-Wick from us, and we

might be supplying information to them. All of which was pretty far

out—but at least it helped me understand why Paphlagon had been Evoked.


“Now I have a question for you Tenners,” Criscan said, as we set out again. “What was Estemard like?”


“He walked out before we were Collected,” I said, “so we didn’t know him.”


“Oh, that’s all right,” Criscan said, “we’ll know soon enough.”


We walked on silently for a few steps before Lio—casting a wary

glance to the top of the butte, not so far away now—said, “I’ve been

looking into Estemard a little. Maybe I should tell you what I know

before we barge into his house.”


“Good for you. What did you learn?” I asked.


“This might be one of those cases where someone walked out before he could be Thrown Back,” Lio said.


“Really!? What was he doing?”


“His avocation was tiles,” Lio said. “The really ornate tile work in the New Laundry was done by him.”


“The geometric stuff,” I said.


“Yes. But it seems he was using that as a

sort of cover story to pursue an ancient geometry problem called the

Teglon. It’s a tiling problem, and it dates all the way back to the

Temple of Orithena.”


“Isn’t that the problem that made a bunch of people crazy?” I asked.


“Metekoranes was standing on the Decagon in

front of the Temple of Orithena, contemplating the Teglon, when the ash

rolled over him,” Criscan said.


I said, “It’s the problem that Rabemekes was thinking about on the beach when the Bazian soldier ran him through with a spear.”


Lio said, “Suur Charla of the Daughters of

Hylaea thought she had the answer, scratched out on the dust of the

road to Upper Colbon, when King Rooda’s army marched through on their

way to getting massacred. She never recovered her sanity. People’s

efforts to solve it have spun off entire sub-disciplines of theorics.

And there are—have always been—some who paid more attention to it than

was really good for them. The obsession gets passed down from one

generation to the next.”


“You’re talking of the Lineage,” Criscan said.


“Yes,” Lio answered, with another nervous look up.


“Which lineage do you mean?” I asked.


“The Lineage, people call it,” Criscan said, “or sometimes the Old Lineage.”


“Well…give me some help. What concents is it based at?”


Criscan shook his head. “You’re assuming it’s like an Order. But this

Lineage goes back farther than the Reconstitution—farther even than

Saunt Cartas. Supposedly it was founded during the Peregrin period, by

theors who had worked with Metekoranes.”


“But who unlike him didn’t end up under three hundred feet of pumice,” Lio added.


“That’s a whole different matter then,” I said. “If that’s really true, it’s not of the mathic world at all.”


“That’s the problem,” Lio said, “the

Lineage was around for centuries before the whole idea of maths, fraas,

and suurs. So you wouldn’t expect it to operate according to any of the

rules that we normally associate with our Orders.”


“You are speaking of it in the present tense,” I pointed out.


Criscan again looked uneasy, but he said nothing. Lio glanced up again, and slowed.


“Where is this going? Why are you guys so nervous?” I asked.


“Some came to suspect that Estemard was a member,” Lio said.


“But Estemard was an Edharian,” I said.


“That’s part of the problem,” Lio said.


“Problem?” I asked.


“Yes,” said Criscan, “for me and you, anyway.”


“Why—because you and I are Edharians?”


“Yes,” Criscan said, with a flick of the eyes toward Lio.


“Well, Lio I trust with my life,” I told

him. “So you can say anything in front of him that you might say to me

as a fellow Edharian.”


“All right,” Criscan said. “It doesn’t

surprise me that you’ve never heard about this, since you have only

been in the Order of Saunt Edhar for a few months, and you’re just

a—er—”


“Just a Tenner?” I said. “Go ahead, I’m not

offended.” But I was, a little. Behind Criscan, Lio made a funny face

that took the sting out of it.


“Otherwise you might have heard rumors about this kind of thing. Remarks.”


“To what effect?”


“First of all, that Edharians in general are a little nutty—a little mystical.”




“Of course I know some people like to say that,” I said.


“All right,” Criscan said. “Well, then you

know that one of the reasons people look askance at us Edharians is

that it seems as though our devotion to the Hylaean Theoric World might

take precedence over our loyalty to the Discipline and the principles

of the Reconstitution.”


“Okay,” I said, “I think that’s unfair but I can see how some people might harbor such notions.”


Lio added, “Or pretend to harbor them when it gave them a weapon to wave in Edharians’ faces.”


“Now,” Criscan said, “imagine that there was—or was thought to be—a Lineage of what amounted to ultra-Edharians.”


“Are you telling me that people think there’s a connection between our Order and the Lineage?”


Criscan nodded. “Some have gone so far as

to lodge the accusation that the Edharians are a sham—a false front

whose real purpose is to act as a host body for an infestation of

Teglon-worshippers.”


Given the number of contributions Edharians

had made to theorics over the millennia, I didn’t have any trouble

dismissing such a ludicrous claim, but one word caught my attention.

“Worshippers,” I repeated.


Criscan sighed. “The kinds of people who spread such rumors—” he began,


“Are the same ones who think that our

belief in the HTW is tantamount to religion,” I concluded. “And it

suits their purposes to spread the idea that there is a secret cult at

the heart of the Edharian order.”


Criscan nodded.


“Is there?” Lio asked.


I’d have slugged him if I could have gotten

away with it. Criscan didn’t know about Lio’s sense of humor and so he

took it pretty badly.


“What did Estemard actually do

when he was pursuing this avocation?” I asked Lio. “Was he reading

books? Trying to solve the Teglon? Lighting candles and reciting

spells?”


“Mostly reading books—very old ones,” Lio said. “Very old ones that had been left behind by others who in their day had likewise been under suspicion of belonging to the Lineage.”


“Seems interesting but harmless,” I said.


“Also, people noticed that he was unduly

interested in the Millenarians. During auts, he would take notes while

the Thousanders sang.”


“How can anyone really follow the meaning of those chants without taking notes?”


“And he went into the upper labyrinth a lot.”


“Well,” I admitted, “that’s a bit odd…is it

a part of the myth surrounding the Lineage that its members violate the

Discipline—communicate across the boundaries of their maths?”


“Yes,” Criscan said. “It fits in with the

whole conspiracy-theory aspect. The slur on the Edharians in general is

that they consider their work to be more profound, more important than

anyone else’s—that the pursuit of the truths in the Hylaean Theoric

World takes precedence over the Discipline. So, if their pursuit of the

truth requires that they communicate with avout in other maths—or with

extras—they have no compunctions about doing so.”


This was sounding more and more ridiculous

by the moment, and I was beginning to think it was one of those nutty

Hundreder fads. But I said nothing, because I was thinking about Orolo

talking to Sammann in the vineyard and making illicit observations.


Lio snorted. “Extras? What kind of extras would care about a mystical, six-thousand-year-old theorics problem?”


“The kind we’ve been hanging around with the last two days,” Criscan said.


We had come to a complete stop. I stepped

forward up the road. “Well, if everything you’re saying is true, we’re

not doing ourselves any favors by being out here.”


Criscan took my meaning right away but Lio

looked puzzled. I went on, “Saunt Tredegarh is filling up with avout

from all over the world. The hierarchs must be keeping track of who has

arrived, from which concent. And we—a group of mostly Edharians from,

of all things, the Concent of Saunt Edhar—are going to be late…”




“Because we’ve been bending the rules—wandering among the Deolaters,” Lio said, beginning to get it.


“…looking for a couple of wayward fraas who exactly fit the stereotype that Criscan’s been talking about.”


Lio and I were at the summit a few minutes

later. We had left Criscan huffing and puffing in our wake. All of the

weird talk had made us nervous and we had practically run the rest of

the way—not out of any practical need to hurry, simply to burn off

energy.


The top of Bly’s Butte looked as if it

might have been a lovely place back in the days of Saunt Bly. It

existed because there was a lens of hard rock that had resisted erosion

and protected the softer stuff beneath it while everything for miles

around had slowly washed down. There was enough room on top to

construct a large house, say, the size of the one where Jesry’s family

lived. A lot of different structures had been crammed onto it over the

millennia. The bottom strata were masonry: stones or bricks mortared

directly onto the butte’s hard summit. Later generations had poured

synthetic stone directly atop those foundations to make small

blockhouses, guard shacks, pillboxes, equipment enclosures, and

foundations for aerials, dishes, and towers. These then had been

modified: connections between them built, worn out, demolished or

rusted away, replaced or buried under new work. The stone—synthetic and

natural—was stained a deep ochre by the rust of all the metal

structures that had been here at one time or another. For such a small

area it was quite complicated—the sort of place children could have

explored for hours. Lio and I were not so far out from being children

that we couldn’t be tempted. But we had plenty else on our minds. So we

looked for signs of habitation. The most conspicuous of these was a

reflecting telescope that stood on a high plinth that had once

supported an aerial tower. We went there first. The telescope looked in

some ways like an art project that Cord or one of her friends might

have made in a welding shop from scraps of steel. But looking into it

we could see a hand-ground mirror, well over twelve inches in diameter,

that looked perfect, and it was easy to figure out that it had a polar

axis drive cobbled together from motors, gearboxes, and bearings

scavenged from who knows where. From

there it was easy to follow a trail of evidence across the platform and

down an external stairway to a lower platform on the southeast exposure

of the complex. This had been kitted out with a grill for cooking meat,

weatherproof poly chairs and table, and a big umbrella. Children’s toys

were stored with un-childlike neatness in a poly box, as if kids came

up here sometimes, but not every day. A door led off this patio into a

warren of small rooms—little more than equipment closets—that had been

turned into a home. Whoever was living in this place, it wasn’t Orolo.

Judging from phototypes on the walls, it was an older man with a

somewhat younger wife and at least two generations of offspring. Ikons

were almost as numerous as snapshots and so this was obviously a

Deolater family. We gathered these impressions over the course of a few

seconds before we realized we were trespassing on someone’s home. Then

we felt stupid because this was such a typical avout mistake. We backed

out so fast we almost knocked each other down.


The patio was a smooth slab of synthetic

stone. Given that Estemard was such a zealous tiler, it seemed odd that

he had not improved it. But now we noticed a stair that led up to a

ledge where he had fashioned a kiln out of burnt bricks. Around it was

strewn the detritus of many years’ work: clay, molds, pots of glaze,

and thousands of tiles and tile-shards in the same repertoire of simple

geometric shapes as those that decorated the New Laundry at Edhar.

Estemard hadn’t got round to tiling his patio yet because he hadn’t

found the perfect configuration of tiles. He hadn’t solved the Teglon.


“Clinically insane?” I asked Lio. “Or just well on his way?”


Criscan came up a different way. When he

found us, he mentioned that he’d seen another, smaller habitation. We

followed him as he backtracked around the southern limb of the complex.


We knew what it was instantly. All the

earmarks of a pinprick math were plain to see. It was set off in a

corner, reachable only by a long and somewhat challenging path, at the

end of which stood a barrier—mostly symbolic, as it had been improvised

recently from poly tarps and plywood—and a gate. Passing through the

gate we found ourselves in a setting where we felt perfectly at home.

It was another roofless slab. A

broker of real estate might have called it a patio. We saw it as a

miniature cloister. All vestiges of the Sæcular had been carefully

scrubbed away; all that remained was the ancient, stained stone, and a

few necessaries, all hand-made: a table and chair sheltered beneath a

canvas stretched over a frame of timbers lashed together with many

turns of string. A rusty paintbucket stood in the corner, lid held down

with a stone. Lio opened it, wrinkled his nose, and announced that he

had found Orolo’s chamber pot. It was empty and dry. The ashes in the

bottom of his brazier were cold. His water jug was empty and a wooden

locker, which had once been used to store food, had been emptied of

everything but seasonings, utensils, and matches.


A beat-up wooden door led to Orolo’s cell,

which for the most part was done up in similar style. The clock,

however, was distinctly modern, with glowing digital readouts to a

hundredth of a second. Bookshelves made of old stair treads and masonry

blocks supported a few machine-printed books and hand-written leaves.

One wall was covered by leaves: diagrams and notes Orolo had posted

there using little dabs of tack. Another wall was covered by phototypes

mostly showing various efforts that Orolo had made to capture images of

the Cousins’ ship using (we assumed) the homemade telescope above. The

typical image was little more than a fat white streak against a

background of smaller white streaks: the tracks of stars. In one corner

of this mosaic, though, Orolo had posted several unrelated phototypes

that he had torn from publications or printed using a syndev. At a

glance, these seemed to depict nothing more than a big hole in the

ground: an open-pit mine, perhaps.


The rest of the leaves formed an

overlapping mosaic, with lines drawn from one to the next, diagramming

a treelike system of connections. The uppermost leaf was labeled

orithena. Near its top was written the name of Adrakhones. From it, one

arrow descended vertically to the name of Diax. This was a dead end.

But a second arrow, angling down and off to the side, pointed to the

name of Metekoranes, and from it, the tree ramified downward to include

names from many places and centuries.




“Uh-oh,” Lio said.


“I hate the looks of that,” I admitted.


“It is Lineage stuff,” put in Criscan.


The door opened, and there was violence.

Not prolonged—it was finished in a second—and not severe. But it was

definitely violence and it wrenched our minds so far out of the track

we’d been following that there was no question of getting back to it

any time soon.


Simply, a man burst in through the cell’s

door and Lio took him down. When it was finished, Lio was sitting on

the man’s chest and examining, with utmost fascination, a projectile

weapon that he had just extracted from a holster on the man’s hip. “Do

you have any knives or anything like that?” Lio asked, and glanced at

the door. More people were approaching. The foremost of these was Barb.


“Get off me!” the man shouted. It took a

moment for it to sink in that he was speaking in Orth. “Give me that

back!” We noticed that he was pretty old, although when he’d come in

the door, he’d moved with the vigor of a younger man.


“Estemard carries a gun,” Barb announced. “It is a local tradition. They don’t consider it threatening.”


“Well, I’m sure Estemard won’t feel

threatened by my carrying this one, then,” Lio said. He rolled backward

off Estemard and came up on his feet, gun in hand, pointed at the

ceiling.


“You have no business in here.” Estemard said, “And as for my gun, you’d better shoot me with it or hand it over.”


Lio didn’t even consider handing it over.


Now, through most of this I’d been so

shocked, and then so confused, that I’d stood motionless. I had been

afraid of doing anything for fear of doing the wrong thing. But the

sight of my friends’ faces outside nudged me to act, since I didn’t

wish to look tongue-tied or indecisive. “Since you have just asserted

we have no business here,” I pointed out, “an assertion we disagree

with, by the way, it would not be in our interests to supply you with

weapons.”


By this time, other members of our Peregrin

group had crowded onto the patio. Fraa Jad came in, shouldered Estemard

out of his way, took in the cell at a glance, and began examining the

leaves and phototypes Orolo had put

on the wall. This, much more than being knocked down by Lio or planed

by me, made Estemard realize he was outmatched. He got smaller somehow,

and looked away. Unlike the rest of us, he’d only had a few minutes to

get used to being in the presence of a Thousander.


“Lio, a lot of people carry sidearms out

here.” It was Cord. “I can see why you got the wrong idea, but take my

word for it, he was not going to draw down on you.” No one responded.

“Come on, you bunch of sad sacks, it’s picnic time!”


“Picnic?” I said.


“After we are finished with our service,”

Estemard said, “we have a cookout on the green, if the weather is

good.” Cord’s intervention seemed to have cheered him up a little.


I glanced out the door and caught the eye of Arsibalt, out on the patio. He raised his eyebrows. Yes. Estemard has become a Deolater.


Back in the concent, we’d always pictured

Ferals as long-haired wild men, but Estemard looked like a retired

chemist out for a day hike.


Estemard held me in a careful gaze. “You

must be Erasmas,” he said. This seemed to settle something for him. He

breathed deeply, shaking off the last vestiges of the shock he’d gone

into when Lio had helped him to the floor. “Yes. All of you are invited

to the picnic, if you promise not to assault people.” Seeing the

objection percolating through my brain toward my face, he smiled and

added, “People who haven’t assaulted you first, that is. And I doubt

they will; they’re more tolerant of avout than you are of them.”


“Where’s Orolo?”


Fraa Jad, still planted with his back to

us, currently viewing the phototypes of the open-pit mine, startled us

all by unlimbering his subsonic voice: “Orolo has gone north.”


Estemard was astonished; then the smile

crept back onto his face as he figured out how the Thousander had

figured this out. “Fraa Jad has it right.”


“We shall attend the picnic,”

Fraa Jad announced, pronouncing the Fluccish word with tweezers. “Lio,

Erasmas, and I shall go down last, in the vehicle of Ganelial Crade.”




This directive filtered out to the patio.

People turned around and headed back toward the vehicles. Lio took the

ammunition magazine out of the gun and handed them back separately to

Estemard, who departed, reluctantly, with Criscan. As soon as they had

passed out through the makeshift gate, Fraa Jad reached out and began

plucking the leaves off the wall. Lio and I helped, and gave all that

we’d harvested to Fraa Jad. He left most of the phototypes alone, but

took the ones that depicted the big hole in the ground, and handed them

to me.


The Thousander went out to Orolo’s cloister

and stuffed all of the leaves into the brazier. Then he reached into

Orolo’s food-locker and took out the matches. “I infer from the label

that this is a fire-making praxis,” he said.


We showed him how to use matches. He set

fire to Orolo’s leaves. We all stood around until they had turned to

ash. Then Fraa Jad stirred the ashes with a stick.


“Time for picnic,” he said.


As we spiraled down the butte, jostling and

rocking in the open back of Ganelial Crade’s fetch like so many bottles

in a box, we were able to look down from time to time and see the

picnic taking shape down on the village green of Samble. It appeared

that these people took their picnics as seriously as they did their

religious services.


Fraa Jad seemed to have other things on his

mind, and said nothing until we were almost down to Samble. Then he

pounded on the roof of the fetch’s cab and, in Orth, asked Crade if he

wouldn’t mind waiting here for a few minutes. In really wild,

barbarous-sounding Orth, Crade said that this would be fine.


It had never crossed my mind that someone

like Crade would know our language. But it made sense. The

counter-Bazians distrusted priests and other middlemen. They believed

everyone should read the scriptures themselves. Almost all read

translations into Fluccish. But it wasn’t so farfetched to think that

an especially fervent and isolated sect, such as the people of Samble,

might learn Classical Orth so that they would no longer have to entrust

their immortal souls to translators.


Fraa Jad let me know I should get out. I vaulted from the back of the

fetch and then helped him down, more out of respect than anything,

since he didn’t seem to need much helping. We strolled about a hundred

paces to a bend in the road where there was an especially nice view

over the high desert to the mountains of the north, still patched with

snow in places, and dappled by cloud-shadows. “We are just like Protas

looking down over Ethras,” he remarked.


I smiled but didn’t laugh. The work of

Protas was viewed as embarrassingly naïve by many. It was rarely

mentioned except to be funny or ironic. But to deprecate it so was a

trend that had come and gone a hundred times, and there was no telling

what Fraa Jad, whose math had been sealed off for 690 years, might

think of it. The more I stood and looked at him and followed his gaze

northward to the clouds and the shadows that they cast on the flanks of

the mountains, the more glad I became that I hadn’t snickered.


“What do you think Orolo saw, when he looked out thus?” Fraa Jad asked.


“He was a great appreciator of beauty and loved to look at the mountains from the starhenge,” I said.


“You think he saw beauty? That is a safe

answer, since it is beautiful. But what was he thinking about? What

connections did the beauty enable him to perceive?”


“I couldn’t possibly answer that.”


“Don’t answer it. Ask it.”


“More concretely, what do you want me to do?”


“Go north,” he said. “Follow and find Orolo.”


“Tredegarh is south and east.”


“Tredegarh,” he repeated, as if waking from a dream of it. “That is where I and the others shall go after the picnic.”


“I have bent the rules quite a bit by coming here,” I said. “We’ve lost a day—”


“A day. A day!” Fraa Jad, the Thousander, thought it was pretty funny that I should care about a day.


“Chasing Orolo around could take months,” I said. “For being so late, I could be Thrown Back. Or at least given more chapters.”


“Which chapter are you up to now?”


“Five.”




“Nine” Fraa Jad said. For a moment I thought he was correcting me. Then I was afraid he was sentencing me. Finally I understood that he himself was all the way up to Chapter Nine.


He must have spent years on it.


Why? How had he gotten in that much trouble?


Had it made him crazy?


But if he was crazy or incorrigible, why

had he, of all the Thousanders, been Evoked? After his Voco, why had

his fraas and suurs sung the way they had—as though their hearts had

been ripped out?


“I have a lot of questions,” I said.


“The most efficient way for you to get answers is to go north.”


I opened my mouth to repeat my earlier

objection, but he held up a hand to stay me. “I shall make every effort

to see to it you are not punished.”


It was by no means clear to me that Fraa

Jad would have any such power in a giant Convox, but I didn’t have the

strength of will to tell him as much to his face. Lacking that

strength, I had but one way out of the conversation. “Fine. After the

picnic I’ll go north. Though I do not understand what that means.”


“Then keep going north until you understand it,” Fraa Jad said.













Part 7


FERAL







Reticule:

(1) In Proto-, Old, and Middle Orth, a small bag or basket, netlike in

its construction. (2) In early Praxic Orth, a gridlike network of lines

or fine wires on an optical device. (3) In later Praxic and New Orth,

two or more syntactic devices that are able to communicate with one

another.


Reticulum:

(1) When not capitalized, a reticule formed by the interconnection of

two or more smaller reticules. (2) When capitalized, the largest

reticulum, joining together the preponderance of all reticules in the

world. Sometimes abbreviated to Ret.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















There

was no point trying to talk Cord out of going with me. We just climbed

into her fetch and started as soon as the picnic was over. We had to

backtrack thirty miles to find a north-going road that would not peter

out before the mountains. At the first town on that road I used up my

money card buying fuel, food, and warm clothes. Then I used up Fraa

Jad’s.


While we were loading the stuff into the

fetch, Ganelial Crade pulled up. Sitting next to him was Sammann. Both

were grinning, which was a novelty. They didn’t have to announce that

they were coming with us and we didn’t have to discuss it. They got

busy buying the same sorts of things we’d just bought. Crade had an

ammunition can full of coins and Sammann had information in his jeejah

that worked in lieu of money; I got the sense that each of them had

obtained funds from his respective community. I wasn’t happy to see

Crade again. If it really was true that he was getting money for this

journey from the people of Samble, it raised all sorts of questions as

to what he was really up to.


Crade had reinstated the three-wheeler in

the back of his fetch, so he didn’t have much room left over; most of

the bulky stuff went into Cord’s fetch. We had no idea where we were

going or what to plan for, but we all seemed to be carrying roughly the

same picture in our heads, namely that Orolo had gone up into the

mountains for some reason. It would be cold up there and we might have

to camp, so we got things like winter bedrolls, tents, stoves, and

fuel. Sammann had an idea that he might be able to track Orolo, and

Crade was planning to make inquiries with some of his co-religionists

along the way.




We all climbed back into our vehicles and

headed north. It would be two hours’ drive to the foothills, where

Crade knew of places to camp. He led the way. This was a thing he felt

a compulsion to do, and I was tired of fighting it. Cord was content to

follow. Crade sitting upright at the controls, and Sammann hunched over

the glowing screen of his super-jeejah, gave us the feeling that the

two of them must be seeing to all of the details. I wouldn’t have been

comfortable following either of them alone, but together they’d never

agree on anything, so I judged it was prudent.


I regretted parting from people like

Arsibalt and Lio with whom I could talk about things. But once we

turned north and started forging toward the mountains, the regret

vanished and instead I felt relief. So much had been revealed to me

over the course of the last twenty-four hours—not only about the

Cousins’ ship but even more so about the world I had lived in for ten

and a half years—that it was too much for me to make sense of in one

go. Just to name one example, the thatched roofs on the nuclear waste

cylinders, alone, if I’d learned of it in the concent, would have taken

me a little getting used to. I was much more at ease sitting next to my

sib, staring out the windscreen, my sole responsibility being to chase

a wild fraa across the waste. The night before, at the Bazian

monastery, I had accommodated certain new, odd facts in my mind just by

sleeping. A similar trick might work for me now: by doing something

completely different for a few days, I might chance upon a better

understanding than I could get by kneeling in a cell and concentrating

on it, or having a wordy discussion in a chalk hall.


And even if all of that was completely wrong, I didn’t care. I simply needed a break.


Cord spent a lot of time talking on the

jeejah with Rosk. She’d kissed him goodbye on the Samble village green.

He had to go back home and work. Now there were issues of some kind to

be worked out. They didn’t have just one long conversation on the

jeejah. Instead they made and broke contact ten or so times. It got on

my nerves and I wished we’d get to some wild reach where her link

wouldn’t work. But after a while I got used to it and started to

wonder: if Rosk and Cord had to do so much communicating to rig for

a few days’ separation, what did that imply for me and Ala? I couldn’t

stop recalling the shocked look on Tulia’s face as we had pulled out

yesterday afternoon. Part of which, I was sure, came from her thinking

I was being beastly to Ala.


“Is there currently a mechanism in place

for sending letters?” I asked Cord during a breather between

micro-conversations with Rosk.


“From here it’ll take some doing, but the

answer is yes,” she said. Then she got a big smile. “You want to write

to a girl, Raz?”


Since I’d never mentioned Ala to her and

had asked my question in such a colorless way, I was shocked and then

quite irritated that she had figured this out with no effort. She was

still deriving joy from the look on my face when her jeejah twittered

and gave me a few minutes to get my composure back.


“Tell me about her,” Cord demanded, as soon as she disconnected.


“Ala. You met her. She’s the one—”


“I remember Ala. I liked her!”


“Really? That was not obvious to me.”


“That and so many other things,” Cord said,

in such an airy, innocent voice that it almost slipped by me. Then I

had to spend a minute being silent and dignified.


“She and I have hated each other pretty

much our whole lives,” I said. “Especially recently. Then we started

something. It was pretty sudden. Really wonderful though.”


Cord gave me a grateful smile and almost swerved off the road.


“The next day she was Evoked. This was

before we knew it was going to become a Convox, so in effect she was

dead to me after that. This was, I guess, pretty upsetting to me. I

sort of put it out of my mind by working. Then when I got Evoked

yesterday—which seems like ten years ago now—it opened up the

possibility that I might see her again. But then a few hours later I

decided to make this little detour—which just turned into a bigger

detour. As a matter of fact, I am technically a Feral now and so I

might never see her again because of the way I just let Fraa Jad push

me around. So you might say things are complicated. Hard to say just how long I’d have to spend on a jeejah with her, sorting this one out.”


Cord took another call from Rosk then, and

by the time she was finished, I was ready with more: “Mind you, I’m not

just whining about my own situation here. Everything’s confused. This

is the biggest upheaval since the Third Sack. So many weird things are

going on—it almost makes a mockery of the Discipline.”


“But your way isn’t just that set of

rules,” Cord said. “It’s who you are—you follow that way for bigger

reasons. And as long as you stay true to that, the confusion you’re

talking about will sort itself out eventually.”


I would have been fine with that except for

one problem: it sounded like the mentality that Edharians were accused

of having by people who believed in all of that Lineage stuff that

Criscan had been telling us about. So an instinct told me to say

nothing.


Then Cord sprang the trap on me: “And

likewise you could drive yourself crazy trying to sort through all of

these ins and outs in your relationship with Ala, but if you send her a

letter—which is a great idea—you shouldn’t get into all of that. Just

skip it.”


“Skip it?”


“Yeah. Just tell her how you feel.”


“I feel jerked around. That’s how I feel. You want me to say that?”


“No, no, no. Tell her how you feel about her.”


My gaze dropped to her jeejah, sitting on

the seat between us, silent for once. “Are you sure you haven’t been

taking calls from Tulia on that thing? Because I have the feeling you

guys have your own private reticule. Like—”


“Like the Ita?” This would have been

insulting if I’d said it, but she thought it was hilarious. We both

looked up the road at the back of Sammann’s head silhouetted against

his jeejah screen. “That’s right,” Cord said, “we’re the girl Ita and

if you don’t do what we say, we’re going to Throw the Book at you!”


Cord had a notebook that she used as a

maintenance log for her fetch, so I used a blank page to begin a letter

to Ala. This went about as badly as it was possible for a written

document to go. I tore it out and

started again. I couldn’t get used to the way the disposable poly pen

shat pasty ink onto the slick machine-made paper. I tore it out and

started yet again.


I had to suspend work on the fourth draft

because Ganelial Crade had led us off the paved road and onto a dirt

track better suited for his fetch than for Cord’s. The lower,

south-facing slopes of the mountains were covered with fuel tree

plantations and crisscrossed with dirt roads such as this one, alive

with rampaging log trucks, dusty and dangerous to us. We spent an

unpleasant half-hour getting through that zone. Then we climbed to

where the growing season was too short and the grades too steep for

that industry, or indeed for any kind of economic activity save

recreation.


He led us to a beautiful camping place at

the edge of a tarn in the hills. People came here to hunt in the

autumn, he said, but no one was here today. All of our equipment was

new and we had to take it out of boxes and dispose of the wrappers and

tags and instruction manuals before we could do anything with it. We

started a bonfire with these and sustained it with fallen dead timber.

As the sun went down, this settled to a bed of coals on which we cooked

cheeseburgs. Cord bedded down in her fetch and the three men got ready

to share a tent. I stayed up late and finished my letter to Ala by

firelight. Which was a good way to do it; the seventh draft was short

and simple. I just kept asking myself: if fate had it that we’d never

see each other again, what would I need to say to her?


The next day started out refreshingly

devoid of great events, new people, and astonishing revelations. We got

up slowly in the cold, lighted the stove, heated up some rations, and

got on the road. Crade was happy. It was not in his nature to be that

way but he was happy here and now, strutting all over the place telling

us the best way to pack our bedrolls and attending to every detail of

the camp stove as if it were a nuclear reactor. But he was much easier

to be around in such circumstances, where he actually had something to

do with all of his energies. I decided that he was too intelligent for

his circumstances and that he’d missed an opportunity to be an avout.

If he’d been born among the slines he’d have ended up on a concent.

Instead he’d landed among a sect that valued his brains

too much to let him go. But his brains had no purpose there. Anyway, he

was used to being the only smart person within a hundred miles and now

that he’d been thrown together with other smart people he didn’t know

how to behave.


Sammann was badly out of his element—he

could hardly pick up anything on his jeejah—but he managed well, as if

prolonged suffering were a standard part of the Ita tool kit. He had a

shoulder bag that was for him what Cord’s vest was for her, and he kept

pulling out useful tools and gadgets. Or so it seemed to me, as I was

not used to owning things.


Cord was quiet unless I looked at her,

whereupon she’d become grumpy. I was bored and impatient. When we

finally got going again, I guessed it must be about midday. But

according to the clock in Cord’s fetch, midday was not for another

three hours.


We went up into the mountains. This was new to me. Any

travel would have been new to me. When I’d been a kid, before I’d been

Collected, I’d left town a few times—tagging along on trips that my

elders made to visit friends or kin in the near country. After I’d

joined the Concent, of course, I hadn’t traveled at all. And I hadn’t

missed it. I hadn’t known what there was to miss. Up in those hills and

mountains, seeing natural leads of open space through the forest, pale

green meadows, old logging roads, abandoned fortresses, decrepit

cabins, and collapsed palaces, I began to think of these as places I

might go, if I had the time to stop and go for a walk. In that way the

landscape was altogether different from the concent, all of whose paths

had been trodden for thousands of years, and where going into the

cellar of Shuf’s Dowment seemed intrepid. It made me wonder where my

mind might ramble, and where events might take me, now that

circumstances had forced me to leave the concent and venture into such

places.


Cord changed the music. The popular songs

she’d been playing the previous days felt wrong here. Their beautiful

parts did not stand comparison with what we could see out the windows,

and their coarse parts jarred. She owned a recording of the music of

the concent, which we sold in the market outside the Day Gate alongside

our honey and our mead. She started playing random selections

from it, beginning with a lament for the Third Sack. To Cord, this was

just Selection Number 37. To me it was just about the most powerful

piece of music we had. We sang it only once a year, at the end of a

week spent fasting and reciting the names of the dead and the titles of

the books burned. Somehow, the feeling was right: if the Cousins turned

out to be hostile, they might Sack the world.


We came around a turn and were confronted

by a wall of purple stone that went up until it disappeared in a cloud

layer a mile above our heads. It must have stood there for a million

years. Seeing it while I heard the lament, I felt what I can only

describe as patriotism for my planet. Until this moment in history

there had never been any call for such feelings because there’d never

been anything beyond Arbre except for points of light in the sky. Now

that had changed, and instead of thinking of myself as a member of the

Provener team, or of the Decenarian math, or of the Edharian order, I

felt like a citizen of the world and I was proud to be doing my little

bit to protect it. I was comfortable being a Feral.


Casinos and speelies weren’t the only new

experiences you had when you went extramuros. Even if you traveled solo

and stuck to the wild places—even if you never saw a strip mall or

heard a word of Fluccish—you were getting information, not about the

Sæcular world but about the world that had been there before it, the

ground state that cultures and civilizations emerged from and collapsed

back into. The wellsprings of the Sæcular—but also of the mathic world.

The origin where, seven thousand years ago, those worlds had diverged.


Sea of Seas: A

relatively small but complex body of salt water, connected to Arbre’s

great oceans in three places by straits, and generally viewed as the

cradle of classical civilization.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





We crested the pass and descended into a

small city, Norslof. This took me by surprise. I’d seen the cartabla.

But in the fantasy map of the world that I carried in my head, the mountains went on much farther.


We had not found Orolo, but we had at least

made one pass over the landscape. Along the way we had taken note of a

few places where he might have gone. Most promising of these, to my

mind, had been a small, tatterdemalion math constructed on a lookout

tower originally put there to detect forest fires. It was a few miles

off the road and a few thousand feet above it. We’d noticed it shortly

after topping the pass. If it had been a full-sized concent they

wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with someone like Orolo, but such

an out-of-the-way math might have welcomed an Orth-speaking wanderer

who could bring them some new ideas.


We stopped to eat and use toilets at a big

drummon-refueling station several miles outside of Norslof’s commercial

center. Here it was possible to rent rooms and it was permissible to

sleep in one’s vehicle. I had an idea that we might use it as a base

from which to double back into the mountains and search for Orolo. I

changed my mind when we walked into the mess hall, steamy and redolent

of cured meats, and all of the long-range drummon operators turned to

stare at us. It was obvious that they didn’t get many customers such as

us and that they preferred it that way. Part of it must have been that

we were a group of four in a room full of singletons. But even if we’d

come in one by one, we would have drawn stares. Sammann was dressed in

normal-looking extramuros garb, but his long beard and hair were not

the norm, and the bone structure of his face marked him ethnically. The

men in this room would not be able to peg him as Ita—supposing they

even knew what the Ita were—but they could tell he was not one of them.

Cord did not dress or move like their women. Her repertoire of gestures

and facial expressions was altogether disjoint from theirs. Ganelial,

being an extra, ought to have blended—but somehow didn’t. He belonged

to a religious community that went to great lengths to preserve its

apartness from the cultural baseline and he proclaimed as much in the

way he carried himself and the looks he gave people. And I: I had no

idea how I looked. Since leaving the concent I’d spent most of my time

among extras who knew that I was an avout on Peregrin. Here I was trying to pass for something I wasn’t, and it seemed best to assume I was doing a terrible job of it.


We might have drawn even more attention had

it not been for the fact that there were speelies all over the place.

They were mounted to the ceiling, angled down toward the tables. All of

them ran the same feed in lockstep. At the moment we walked in the

door, this showed a house burning down at night. It was surrounded by

emergency workers. A close-up showed a woman leaning out of an

upper-story window that was vomiting black smoke. She had a towel

wrapped around her face. She dropped a baby. I kept watching to see

what happened next, but instead the speely cycled back and showed the

baby drop two more times in slow motion. Then that scene vanished and

was replaced by images of a ball player making a clever play. But then

it showed the same ball player breaking his leg later in the game. This

too was repeated several times in slow motion so that you could see the

leg bending at the site of the break. By the time we reached our table,

the speelies were showing an extraordinarily beautiful man in expensive

clothes being arrested by police. My companions glanced at the images

from time to time, then looked away. It seemed that they had built up

some kind of immunity. I couldn’t keep my eyes off them, so I tried to

sit in a position where there wasn’t a speely directly in front of me.

Still, every time the feed popped from one image to another, my eye

jumped to it. I was like an ape in a tree, looking at whatever moved

fastest in my environment.


We sat in the corner, ordered food, and

talked quietly. The room, which had gone silent when we’d entered,

slowly defrosted and was replenished by the normal low murmur of

conversation. It occurred to me that we should not have chosen a corner

table because this would make it impossible for us to get out quickly

if there was some kind of trouble.


I missed Lio badly. He would have assessed

the threats, if any, and thought about how to counter them. And he

might have gotten it completely wrong, as he had with Estemard and his

sidearm. But at least he would have taken care of these matters so that

I could worry about other things.




Take Sammann as an example. When he’d

joined us I’d been glad of his company, as he knew how to do so many

things that I didn’t. Which was all fine when it was just four of us

camped by a tarn. But now that we were deep in the Sæcular world I

recalled the ancient taboo against contact between avout and Ita, which

we could not have been breaking any more flagrantly. Did these people

know of that taboo? If so, did they understand why it had been

instated? Were we, in other words, stirring memories and awakening

fears of old? Would their police protect us from a mob—or join in with

them?


Ganelial Crade started canvassing his local

brethren on his jeejah. This grew obnoxious, and when he noticed that

we were all glaring at him, he got up and moved to an empty table. I

asked Sammann if he could pull up any information on the lookout-tower

math and he began to view maps and satellite photos on his jeejah that

were much better than the stored charts on the cartabla. I’d rarely

seen anything like these pictures, which must have been very like what

the Cousins could see of Arbre from their ship. This answered a

question that had been rattling around in my head since yesterday

morning. “Hey,” I said, “I think Orolo was looking at such pictures. He

put a few up on the wall of his cell.”


“It’s too bad you didn’t tell me that

before,” said Sammann curtly. Not for the first time I got the feeling

that we avout were children and the Ita, far from being a subservient

caste, were our minders. I was about to apologize. Then I got the

feeling that once I started apologizing I’d never be able to stop.

Somehow I managed to arrest my embarrassment before it reached the

mud-on-the-head stage.


(on the speely: an old building being blown up; people celebrating)


“Okay, well, now that you mention it, Fraa

Jad went out of his way to make sure I came away with them,” I said,

and pulled from my shirt pocket the folded-up phototypes of the big

hole in the ground. I spread them out on the table. Three heads

converged and bent over them. Even Ganelial Crade—who had taken to

pacing back and forth as he yammered on his jeejah—slowed down for a

look-see. But no light of recognition came into his face. “That looks

like a mine. Probably in the tundra,” he said, just to be saying

something.




“The sun is shining almost straight down into it,” I pointed out.


“So?”


“So it can’t be at a high latitude.”


Now it was Crade’s turn to be embarrassed. He turned away and pretended to be extremely involved in his jeejah conversation.


(on the speely: phototypes of a kidnapped child, blurry footage of the kid being led out of a casino by a man in a big hat)


“I was wondering,” I said to Sammann, “if

you could, I don’t know, use your jeejah to start scanning the globe

and look for such features. I know it would be like finding a needle in

a haystack. But if we were systematic about it, and if we worked in

shifts for long enough—”


Sammann responded to my idea in much the

same spirit as I had to Crade’s suggestion that this thing was in the

tundra. He held his jeejah up above the picture and took a phototype of

the phototype. Then he spent a few seconds interacting with the

machine. Then he showed me what had come up on its screen: a different

picture of the same hole in the ground. Except now it was a live feed

from the Reticulum.


“You found it,” I said, because I wanted to go slowly and make sure I understood what was going on.


“A syntactic program available on the

Reticulum found it,” he corrected me. “It turns out to be a long way

from here—on an island in the Sea of Seas.”


“Can you tell me the name of the island?”


“Ecba.”


“Ecba!?” I exclaimed.


“Is there a way to figure out what it is?” Cord asked.


Sammann zoomed in. But this was almost

unnecessary. Now that I knew it was on Ecba, I was no longer inclined

to see this hole as an open-pit mine. It was clearly an excavation—it

was completely encircled by mounded-up earth that had been taken out of

it. And a ramp spiraled around to its flat bottom. But it was too

orderly, too prim for a mine. Its flat bottom was neatly gridded.


“It is an archaeological dig,” I said. “A huge one.”


“What’s there on Ecba to dig up?” Cord asked.




“I can search for that,” Sammann said, and got ready to do so.


“Wait! Zoom out. Again…and again,” I asked him.


We could now see the dig as a pale scar

several miles south-southeast of a huge, solitary mountain that ramped

up out of a wrinkled sea. The upper slopes of the mountain were patched

with snow but its summit had a scoop taken out of it: a caldera.


“That is Orithena,” I said.


“The mountain?” Cord asked.


“No. The dig,” I said. “Someone has been digging up the Temple of Orithena! It was buried by an eruption in Negative 2621.”


“Who’d do that and why?” Cord asked.


Sammann zoomed back in. Now that I knew

what to look for, I could see that the whole dig was surrounded by a

wall. It was pierced in one place by a gate. Inside, several structures

had been erected around a rectangular courtyard—a cloister. A tower

sprouted from one of these.


“It’s a math,” I said. “Come to think of

it, I once heard a story—probably from Arsibalt—that some order had

gone to Ecba and started trying to dig their way down to the Temple of

Orithena. I thought it was just a few eccentric fraas with shovels and

wheelbarrows, though.”


“I don’t see any heavy equipment on the

site,” Crade pointed out. “A few people with shovels could dig a hole

that deep if they kept at it long enough.”


This left me a little irritated, since it

ought to have been obvious to me; after all, our Mynster had been

constructed in the same style. But Crade was right and there was

nothing I could do but agree as vigorously as I could so that he

wouldn’t explain this any further.


“This is all very interesting,” Sammann said, “but it’s probably a dead end for us.”


“I agree,” I said. Ecba was on another

continent; or, to be precise, it was in the Sea of Seas which lay among

four continents on the opposite side of the world.


“Orolo is not in the mountains,” Ganelial

Crade announced, pocketing his jeejah. “He passed through here and kept

right on going.”




(on the speely: two very beautiful people getting married)


“How do you know this?” Sammann asked. I

was glad of it. Crade was so sure of himself that I found it draining

to confront him with even simple questions. Sammann seemed to derive

wicked pleasure from doing so.


Crade rose to it. “He got a ride as far as

here from some Samble folk who were going this way, and stayed the

night before last in the back of my cousin’s fetch, just a couple of

miles from here.”


“The back of his fetch? Doesn’t your cousin have a spare bed?” Sammann asked.


“Yulassetar travels a lot,” Crade answered, “the back of his fetch is nicer than his house.”


“You say this happened the night before last?” I asked. “I had no idea we were so hot on his trail!”


“Getting colder every minute…Yulassetar

helped him get outfitted yesterday morning, and then Orolo hitched a

ride on a northbound drummon.”


“Outfitted how?” Cord asked.


“With warm clothes,” Crade said. “The warmest

clothes. This is something Yul knows a lot about. It’s what he does for

a living. I’m sure that’s why Orolo sought him out in Norslof.”


“Why would Orolo want to keep going north?” I asked. “There’s nothing there, am I right?”


Sammann pawed at my cartabla—which had a

larger display than his jeejah—zoomed way out, and slewed it north and

east. “Practically nothing but taiga, tundra, and ice between here and

the North Pole. As far as economic activity is concerned, there are

fuel tree plantations for the first couple of hundred miles. Beyond

that, nothing but a few resource extraction camps.”


The view on the cartabla seemed to

contradict him, as it was densely netted with roads that came together

at named places, many of which were ringed by concentric beltways. But

all of these were depicted in the faint brown color used to denote

ruins.


(on the speely: a fiery rocket launch from an equatorial swamp)


“Orolo’s going to Ecba!” Cord proclaimed.


“What are you talking about?” Crade demanded.


“Ecba is not on this continent, you have to fly!” I said.




“He’s going over the pole,” she explained. “He’s headed for the sledge port at Eighty-three North.”





We were in the habit of referring to the

Sæcular Power as if it were one thing down through the ages. This

seemed simple-minded or even insulting to some extras—though they did

essentially the same thing when they spoke of the Powers That Be. Of

course we knew it was an over-simplification. But for us it was a

useful convenience. Whatever empire, republic, despotate, papacy,

anarchy, or depopulated wasteland lay beyond our walls at a given

moment, we could slap this name on it and predicate certain things of

it.


What you are reading does not attempt to

set forth details as to how the Sæcular Power was constituted in my

day. Such information can be had anywhere. It might even be interesting

if you know nothing about the history of the world up to the Terrible

Events; but if you have studied that, everything since will seem like

repetition and all the particulars as to how the Sæcular Power of my

day was organized will remind you of more or less ancient forerunners,

but with less majesty and clarity since the ancients were all doing it

for the first time and believed they were on to something.


But at this point I had to attend to one of

those details. The Sæcular Power in my day was a federation. It broke

down into political units that more or less agreed with Arbre’s

continents. One could travel freely within most of those units, but to

cross from one to another one had to have documents. The documents were

not that difficult to obtain—unless one was avout.


Since the Reconstitution, we had existed

wholly apart from the legal system of the Sæcular Power. They had no

records of us, no jurisdiction over us, no responsibility for us; they

could not draft us into their armies, levy taxes on us, or even step

through our gates except at Apert. Likewise they would not offer us

assistance of any kind, except for protecting us from direct assault by

mobs or armies if they felt like it. We didn’t get pensions or medical

care from the Sæcular Power—and we certainly didn’t get identity

documents.




It has become obvious during the writing of

this that it might one day be read by people from other worlds. So I’ll

say that we considered ourselves to have ten continents but that the

Cousins, or anyone else who came to us from beyond and looked at Arbre

fresh, would have said we had only seven—and they would have been

right. We counted ours as ten because the original tally had been made

by explorers working outward from the Sea of Seas, who could only guess

at what might lie more than a few days’ march from its convoluted

shores. It happened more than once that they bestowed distinct names on

lands that were sundered by straits and gulfs, but that on further—and

much later—exploration proved to be lobes of the same great land mass

reaching toward the Sea of Seas from different quarters. But by that

time the places had made their way into the classical myths and

histories under the ancient names, which we could no more dislodge from

the culture than we could withdraw one of the colossal

foundation-stones that supported the Mynster.


Likewise, during the Rebirth, land had been

found on the other side of the world from the Sea of Seas and had been

proclaimed and mapped as a new continent. But centuries later it had

been determined that the far northern reaches of that continent wrapped

over the North Pole and thence extended south all the way to the Sea of

Seas. It was not a new continent at all but a limb of the oldest and

best-known continent, and no one had ever had a clue about it because

even the aboriginal peoples who knew how to live in ice houses could

not venture much above eighty degrees of latitude. To prove that the

“old” and “new” continents were one, it was necessary to go all the way

up to ninety degrees north latitude—the North Pole—and then descend to

eighty or less on the other side. This had not been accomplished until

the last century before the Terrible Events and it had not changed

people’s habit of referring to the place that Cord, Sammann, Ganelial

Crade, and I were on now, and the land mass forming the northern

boundary of the Sea of Seas, as two different continents. The ice cap

separated the two even more absolutely than an ocean would have, and no

normal person ever traveled between them that way. They flew in an

aerocraft or did it in a ship.




But to do it by aerocraft or ship you’d

have to pass through ports of entry and show documents. Orolo had none

and no hope of getting any. So he was doing what was logical, which was

to exploit the fact that the two continents were in fact one. Cord had

been the first to put this whole picture together in her mind.


No. She’d been the second. The first had been Fraa Jad.


“The sledge trains! That’s like something out of a children’s storybook to me,” Sammann said. “Do they still operate?”


“They were shut down for a while, but they

are running again now,” Crade confirmed. “The price of metals went up.

People went back to stripping the Deep Ruins.”


“We used to make parts for the sledge

locomotives in the machine hall where I worked,” Cord said. “We were

the largest machine hall that was so far north, so they’d send the jobs

to us. It’s been a source of business for that shop for over a thousand

years. We had to make them of special alloys that wouldn’t shatter in

the cold.” And she went on in this vein for a minute or two; she could

talk about alloys the way some girls talked about shoes. Crade and

Sammann, who’d been so fascinated to hear about the sledge train idea

at first, got less and less so the more Cord said of it.


In my mind I was replaying the memory of

Fraa Jad in Orolo’s cell yesterday. He couldn’t have spent more than

half a minute gazing at these phototypes before he’d figured it all

out. Even if you were the kind of person who attributed nearly

supernatural powers to the Thousanders, this seemed a little weird. He

must have had some prior knowledge about this.


“This excavation,” I said, tapping my finger on the phototype.


Everyone looked at me funny. I realized that I had just interrupted Cord’s disquisition about alloys.


(on the speely: victims of a roadside massacre; their hysterical wives rending their clothes and rolling on the ground)


I continued, “I’ll bet you my last energy bar that if you look it up, you’ll find that it is 690 years old.”


“You think they started digging this hole in 3000,” said Ganelial Crade. “Why? You like round numbers?”


This was an extremely rare attempt by Crade to make a joke, and so etiquette required me to smirk at it for a moment before I answered.

“I’m pretty sure Fraa Jad knew that this was going on. He recognized

this as soon as he saw it. So, I’m thinking that this dig must have

been launched during the most recent Millennial Convox. The Thousander

math at Saunt Edhar would have sent delegates to that Convox and so

they would have heard about it, and brought the knowledge back home

with them—which is how Fraa Jad knew.”


Sammann, as usual, was ready to play

devil’s advocate: “I’m not disagreeing, but even if you’re right, it

seems strange to me that Fraa Jad could take one look at this phototype

and know that it was the Orithena dig. It could be any hole in the

ground. There’s nothing to peg it to Ecba.”


Until now we had been attending mostly to

the phototype that showed the entire dig on one sheet. The others were

zoomed-in detail shots that hadn’t made much sense before. Scanning

them now, I was able to perceive the outlines of ancient building

foundations, the stubs of columns, and flat areas of tiled floor. One

of these was marked thus:


image




I pointed to it. “That’s the analemma,” I

said. “The Temple of Orithena was a big camera obscura. It had a small

hole in the roof that projected an image of the sun on the floor. As

the seasons changed, the sun-spot hit the floor in a different place

each day during their midday ritual—what we celebrate now as Provener.

Over the course of the year it would trace this pattern on the floor.”


“So, you think Fraa Jad noticed the

analemma on this phototype and said to himself ‘Aha, this must be the

Temple of Orithena?’ That seems like pretty quick thinking to me,” Cord

said.


“Well, he’s a pretty smart guy,” I

returned. This was not the most polite answer. Jesry would have planed

me at this point. Cord was right to be skeptical about it. I wasn’t

willing to dig any deeper on this point, though. The speed with which

Fraa Jad had recognized this hole in the ground suggested that he, and

presumably the other Millenarians, knew a lot about it. I was worried

that if we pulled any harder on this loose thread, it would lead us

back to crazy talk about the Lineage.


“Oh, how interesting,” Sammann said, gazing into his jeejah, “Erasmas wins his bet. This dig in the phototypes was started in A.R. 3000.” He read another tidbit off the screen, then looked up and grinned at me. “It was started by Edharians!”


“Great!” I muttered, wishing I could take Sammann’s jeejah and drop it down a toilet.


“It’s a spinoff of Saunt Edhar. But a lot

of other Edharian maths around the world contributed fraas and suurs to

get it started.”


“How many avout live there?” Cord asked. I could see her doing the calculation in her head: if each avout moves twenty wheelbarrow loads of dirt per day, for 690 years, how big does the hole get?


“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” Sammann said, grimacing. “Most of the information on this topic is crap.”


“What do you mean by that?” Crade demanded. We all looked at him, because in an instant he had become markedly defensive.


Sammann raised his eyes from the screen of

the jeejah and gazed interestedly at Crade. He let a few moments go by,

then responded in a calm and matter-of-fact tone: “Anyone can post information

on any topic. The vast majority of what’s on the Reticulum is,

therefore, crap. It has to be filtered. The filtering systems are

ancient. My people have been improving them, and their interfaces,

since the time of the Reconstitution. They are to us what the Mynster

is to Fraa Erasmas and his kind. When I look at a given topic I don’t

just see information about that topic. I see meta-information that

tells me what the filtering systems learned when they were conducting

the search. If I look up analemma, the filtering

system tells me that only a few sources have provided information about

this and that they are mostly of high repute—they are avout. If I look

up the name of a popular music star who just broke up with her

boyfriend,” Sammann continued, nodding at a tearful female on the

speely, “the filtering system tells me that a vast amount of data has

been posted on this topic quite recently, mostly of very low repute.

When I look up the excavation of the Temple of Orithena on the Island

of Ecba, the filtering system informs me that people of very high and

very low repute have been posting on this topic, slowly but steadily,

for seven centuries.”


Sammann’s explanation had failed if its

purpose had been to settle Crade down. “What’s an example of a person

of high repute? Some fraa sitting in a concent?”


“Yes,” Sammann said.


“And what would a low-repute source be?”


“A conspiracy theorist. Or anyone who makes a lot of long rambling posts that are only read by like-minded sorts.”


“A Deolater?”


“That depends,” Sammann said, “on what the Deolater is writing about.”


“What if he’s writing about Ecba? Orithena?

The Teglon?” Crade asked, whacking his index finger into a phototype

that depicted the ten-sided plaza in front of the ancient temple.


“The filters tell me that a lot has been

posted in that vein,” Sammann said, “as you appear to know very well.

Sorting it out is difficult. When I see such a pattern emerging in the

filter interface, my gut tells me that most of it is probably crap.

It’s a quick and superficial judgment. I could be wrong. I apologize if my choice of words offended you.”


“You’re forgiven,” Crade snapped.


“Well!” I exclaimed, after a few moments’

awkward silence had gone by. “This has been fascinating. It’s good that

we figured this out before we wasted a lot of time searching the

mountains! Obviously, the whole premise of my search for Orolo has

changed. None of you imagined he would be going to the other side of

the world. So you’ll all want to turn around and head back south at

this point.”


Everyone just looked at me. None of their faces was readable.


“Or so I imagine,” I added.


“This changes nothing,” Sammann said.


“I’m not about to ditch my sib in this dump,” Cord said.


“You have to have two vehicles in case one

breaks down in the cold,” said Ganelial Crade. I couldn’t argue with

his logic. But I didn’t for one moment think that this was his real

reason for wanting to tag along. Not after he had let the word Teglon slip out.


“From here to Eighty-three North is two

thousand miles on a great circle route,” said Sammann, working his

jeejah. “On the highway, it’s twenty-five hundred and some.”


“If you and Sammann learn to drive, Raz, so that we can switch off, we can make it in three or four days,” Crade said.


“The road’s bound to get worse as we go north,” Cord said. “I would plan on it taking a week.”


Crade was eager to dispute that with her but she added, “And we’ll have to modify the vehicles.”


So we encamped in the fueling station’s

back lot and set to work. Once the proprietors understood that we were

just passing through en route to the far north, they became more

comfortable with us and things got easier. They assumed we were just

another crew of vagabonds going up to mine the ruins, and better

equipped and financed than most.


The next day we used Cord’s fetch to go out

and buy new tires for Crade’s. Then we used his to get tires for hers.

The new tires were deeply grooved and had hobnails sticking out of

them. Cord and Gnel (as Ganelial

Crade now insisted we call him) worked together on some sort of

tool-intensive project to replace the vehicles’ coolants and lubricants

with ones that would not freeze. Neither Sammann nor I knew much about

working on vehicles, so we stood around and tried to be useful. Sammann

used his jeejah to study the route north, reading logs posted by

travelers who’d gone that way recently.


“Hey,” I said to him at one point, “my mind keeps going back to an image I saw on that speely feed yesterday.”


“The burning librarian?”


“No.”


“The mudslide hitting the school?”


“No.”


“The brain-damaged boy playing with the puppies?”


“No.”


“Okay, I give up.”


“A rocket taking off.”


He looked at me. “And—what? Blowing up? Crashing into an orphanage?”


“No. That’s the thing. It just took off.”


“Did it have celebrities on board or—”


“Not that they showed. They’d show that, wouldn’t they?”


“I wonder why they bothered to show it then. Rockets take off all the time.”


“Well, I’m no judge of these things, but it looked like an especially big one.”


For the first time Sammann seemed to take my meaning. “I’ll see what I can find,” he said.


An elderly but bustling lady—one of Gnel’s

co-religionists—came out with a cake that had been baked for us, then

snared Gnel in a conversation that never seemed to end. While they were

talking, a big, mud-splattered fetch with a wooden cabin on its back

thundered into the fueling station, circled around us a couple of

times, and claimed four parking spaces. The cake lady marched away, her

face all pinched up. A big man with a beard shambled out of the

cabin-fetch and came toward Gnel with his hands in his pockets, looking

about curiously. When he got closer to Gnel he suddenly flashed a grin

and extended his hand. Gnel extended his after a moment’s hesitation

and let the other heave it up and down for a while. They spoke for no

more than a few seconds, then the newcomer began to pace around our

little encampment taking a mental inventory of what we had and

reconstructing in his mind what we’d been doing there. After a few

minutes of that, he unfolded a sort of deployable counter from the side

of his cabin-on-wheels and fired up a stove and began to make hot

beverages for us.


“That’s Yulassetar Crade. My cousin,” Gnel

told me as we watched him erect a little kitchen, blowing dust out of

teacups and polishing pots with a rag from his pocket.


“What happened?” I asked.


“What are you talking about?” Gnel asked, nonplussed.


“It’s obvious from the way that you and that lady react to him that there is some history. Some kind of trouble between you.”


“Yul is a here—” Gnel began, and stopped himself before he had got to the end of the word. “An apostate.”


I wanted to ask, other than that, is he all right? but I let it drop.


Yul made no effort to introduce himself,

but when I approached him he turned to me with a smile and shook my

hand before turning back to his chores. “Hold your arms out,” he said,

and when I complied he put a tray on them and then placed cups of hot

stuff on the tray. “For your friends,” he said.


I insisted that he come with me, though. So

after giving Gnel a cup we went over to Sammann and I introduced the

two of them. Then I talked Cord into sliding out from under her fetch.

She stood up and dusted herself off and shook Yul’s hand. They gave

each other a funny look, which made me speculate that they might have

crossed paths before. But neither one of them said anything about it.

She accepted her cup and then they turned away from each other as if

something embarrassing had happened.


Yulassetar Crade gave me a lift into town

so that I could run a couple of errands. First, I mailed my letter to

Ala, care of the Concent of Saunt Tredegarh. The woman at the post

office gave me a lot of trouble because it wasn’t properly addressed.

Concents didn’t have addresses for

the same reason that I didn’t have a passport. I knew I’d made a

terrible mistake by not giving some sort of note to Arsibalt or Lio at

the picnic in Samble. They could have smuggled it directly to Ala.

Instead of which I had to mail this thing to the concent, where it

would be intercepted by the hierarchs and—if they were sticking to the

Discipline—kept out of Ala’s knowledge until her next Apert, more than

nine years from now. I could only imagine what she’d think of me at

that time, reading this yellowed document written by a boy not yet

twenty years of age.


The next stop on the itinerary was a place

where we could get suitsacks: huge orange coveralls whose legs could be

zipped together to make them into sleeping bags. These were made for

people who hunted or scavenged in the far north. Each had a catalytic

power unit built into it; as long as you kept some fuel in its bladder

it would supply a modest trickle of power that was routed down the

suits’ arms and legs to warming-pads placed in the soles of the boots

and the palms of the mittens. New ones could be pretty expensive, but

Yul had helped Orolo get a cheap one the other day. He knew of places

where you could get used ones that had been fixed up, and he knew

tricks for making them more comfortable.


Once we’d taken care of that we set out in

search of other gear and supplies we were going to need. Whenever I

suggested going to an outdoorsy type of store, Yul winced and groaned,

and then explained how better stuff could be had at one-tenth the price

by using things you could buy at stores that sold housewares and

groceries. He was always right, of course. He made his living as a

wilderness guide, taking vacationers on trips to the mountains.

Apparently he had no work at the moment, because he spent the whole day

driving me around Norslof helping me improvise what we needed. When we

were unable to get what we wanted at a store, he promised to supply us

out of his own personal stock.


The driving consumed an unbelievable amount

of time. The traffic was always bad, or so it seemed to me. But I

wasn’t used to the vehicular life of a city. When the traffic slowed to

a stop, people in the mobes around us would look out the windows at

Yul’s ramshackle fetch. If they were

grownups they would soon look the other way, but children loved to

point and stare and laugh. And they were right to do so. Yul and I were

an odd pair, compared to all of these people driving to school and to

work.


At first Yul seemed to feel an obligation

to be a good host—to provide entertainment during traffic jams.

“Music?” he said distantly, as if music were something he had heard of

once. Hearing no objection, he took to fiddling with the controls on

his sound system as if they had broken off in his hands and were no

longer attached to anything. Eventually he left it set on a random

feed. Later, once he got to talking, I reached over and turned it off

and he didn’t notice.


Part of his job, I guessed, was to make

people he’d just met (his clients) feel comfortable, which he did by

telling stories. He was good at it. I tried to get him to talk about

Orolo but he didn’t have much to say. Orolo might be a lot of things to

me but to Yul he was just another tenderfoot who needed advice on how

to travel in the rough. This did, however, lead to the topic of getting

around in the far north, which he knew a lot about.


Later I asked him if all of his travel had

been in that direction and he scoffed and said that no, he’d spent

years as a river guide in a region south of Samble that was gouged by

deep sandstone canyons filled with spectacular rock formations. He told

some good stories about such trips, but after a while became

uncomfortable and stopped talking. Telling tales, it seemed, was a good

way to loosen things up, a useful time-killer, but what he really

wanted was a project into which he could pour his energies and his

intelligence.


At some point during the day, he stopped

referring to “you” as in “You’re going to need extra fuel in case you

have to melt snow to make drinking water” and began speaking of “we” as

in “We should plan on at least four flat tires.”


Yul’s house was really just a dumping

ground for stuff he couldn’t fit into his fetch: camping equipment,

vehicle parts, empty bottles, weapons, and books. The books were

stacked in piles that came up to my hip. He didn’t seem to own any

shelves. A lot of them were fiction

but he also had several geology-piles. Nailed to the wall were big

blown-up phototypes of colorful sedimentary rock formations, sculpted

by water and wind. In his cellar, where we went to mine more equipment,

he had stacks of tabular rocks—slabs of sandstone—with fossils in them.


After we’d got everything he thought we’d

need, and begun driving through another traffic jam back to the fueling

station, I said to him, “You figured out that the world was old, didn’t

you?”


“Yeah,” he said immediately. “I spent years

on rafts going down those rivers. Years. The whole way, there’s rocks

strewn along the banks. Rocks the size of houses that fell off the

canyon walls, higher up. Just looking down one of those canyons, you

can see it happens all the time.”


“You mean, rocks falling down.”


“Yeah. It’s like, if you’re driving down

this highway and you see skid marks on the pavement, like those right

there, any idiot knows that skidding happens. If you see lots of skid marks, well, that means that skidding is common.

If you see lots of fallen rocks in a canyon, then rock falls are

common. So, I kept expecting to see one. Every day, I’d be drifting

down the river on that raft with the clients, you know, and they’d be

sleeping or talking about whatever they wanted to talk about, and I’d

keep an eye on the canyon walls, waiting to see a rock fall.”


“But you never did.”


“Never. Not once.”


“So you realized that the time scale had to be enormous.”


“Yeah. I tried to figure it out once. I

don’t have the theorics. But I kept an eye on that river for five years

and not a single rock fell down while I was running it. If Arbre is

only five thousand years old—if all the rocks in that canyon have

fallen down in that short a time—I should have seen some rocks fall.”


“The people in your ark didn’t like what you had to say about that,” I guessed.


“There’s a reason I got out of Samble.”


That was the end of that conversation. It

was the evening rush hour now and we drove in silence for a long time.

I was fascinated by the little

glimpses of other people’s lives that I got through the windows of

their mobes. Then I was struck by how different Yul’s life seemed to be

from theirs.


The way in which Yul had decided to join us

on our journey north was strange to me. There had been no rational

process: no marshaling of evidence, no weighing of options. But that

was how Yul lived his whole life. He had not—I realized—been invited by

Gnel to come out and pay us a visit at the fueling station. He had just

shown up. He did a new thing with a new set of people every day of his

life. And that made him just as different from the people in the

traffic jam as I was.


So I looked with fascination at those

people in their mobes, and tried to fathom what it would be like.

Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down

into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people

were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their

lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive

economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not

exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who’d made the

system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story.

If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to

tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a

spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in

stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made

up to motivate them. People who couldn’t live without story had been

driven into the concents or into jobs like Yul’s. All others had to

look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a

story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports,

and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an

adventure? Something with a beginning, middle, and end in which you

played a significant part? We avout had it ready-made because we were a

part of this project of learning new things. Even if it didn’t always

move fast enough for people like Jesry, it did move. You could tell

where you were and what you were doing in that story. Yul got all of

this for free by living his stories from day to day, and the only drawback

was that the world held his stories to be of small account. Perhaps

that was why he felt such a compulsion to tell them, not just about his

own exploits in the wilderness, but those of his mentors.


We at last reached the fueling station. Yul

deployed his traveling kitchen and began to make supper. He made no

formal announcement that he was coming with us, but this was obvious

from the way he talked, and so after a while Gnel went into the station

and struck a deal with the management for Cord to leave her fetch

parked there for a couple of weeks. Cord began to move things from her

fetch into Yul’s. As he cooked, Yul observed this procedure closely,

and soon began to complain, in a joking way, about the enormous volume

of unnecessary clutter that Cord was, according to him, stuffing into

his home-on-wheels. Cord soon began to volley the abuse back at him.

Within about sixty seconds they were saying amazingly rude things to

each other. I couldn’t take part in their banter any more than I could

get between two persons who were kissing or fighting, so I drifted over

to Sammann.


“I found that rocket speely,” he told me.

“You were right about its being big. That’s one of the largest rockets

going nowadays.”


“Anything else?”


“The payload,” he said. “Its shape and size match those of a vehicle that is generally used to carry humans into space.”


“How many humans?”


“Up to eight.”


“Well, is there any information about who is on board, or why they’re going up there?”


Sammann shook his head. “Not unless you count the absence of information as information.”


“What do you mean by that?”


“According to the Powers That Be, the vehicle is unmanned. It’s a test of a new system. Under syndev control.”


I gave him a look. He grinned and held up

his hands. “I know, I know! I’ve made inquiries on a few reticules

known to me. In a few days maybe we’ll have something.”




“In a few days we’ll be at the North Pole.”


“In a few days,” he said, “that might be a wise place to be.”





The next morning, after a large breakfast

prepared by Yul and Cord, we started the journey north. Cord’s fetch

stayed behind. Our caravan consisted of the Crade vehicles, that of

Yulassetar containing most of the gear, that of Ganelial carrying his

three-wheeler in the back.


The first leg was north and downhill to the

coastal plain, a turn to the right when we neared salt water, and then

a long sweeping leftward curve as we skirted a gulf of the northern

ocean. At the head of that gulf lay what had been the greatest port in

the world for a couple of centuries back in the First Millennium A.R.

when the water had stayed ice-free all year round. Because of its

location it had later become the “shallowest” of all ruins—the easiest

to mine. Most of its great works—its viaducts, seawalls, and

bridges—had been hammered apart by scavengers who had extracted the

reinforcing bars buried in the synthetic stone and shipped the metal to

places where it was needed. The rubble-mounds were forested with

immense trees. The only remaining structure from that age was a

suspension bridge over the great river that emptied into the head of

the gulf; it was high enough above sea level that the resurgent pack

ice had not crushed it. At this time of year there was no ice to be

seen, but it was easy to make out the scars it had left along the

rubble-banks. This port-ruin now functioned as a fishing village and

drummon stop. A few hundred people lived here, at least in the summer.

Once we left it behind and struck inland, heading almost due north, we

saw only scattered settlements, which thinned and failed as we climbed

into forested hills. We then descended into an unmistakably different

landscape: taiga, a country too dry and cold for trees to grow much

higher than a person’s head. Almost all traffic had vanished from the

highway. We drove for an hour without seeing any other vehicles.

Finally we stopped in a rocky place near a river, pulled our vehicles

round to where they couldn’t be seen from the road, and slept in our

suitsacks.




The next morning, the brand-new stove we

had bought after leaving Samble stopped working. If Yul hadn’t joined

us, we’d have spent the rest of the trip eating cold energy bars. Yul,

looking quietly triumphant, produced a thunderous breakfast on his

battery of roaring industrial burners. Watching his cousin work, Gnel

seemed proud, if exasperated. As if to say, look at what fine people we can produce when they stop believing in our religion.


Since there was almost no traffic on the

road, I took driving lessons from Yul while Cord dismantled the stove.

She diagnosed the problem as a clogged orifice, attributable to gunk

that had precipitated from the fuel during the cold night.


“You’re fuming,” she pointed out a while

later. I realized that I had withdrawn from the conversation. She and

Yul had been talking, but I hadn’t heard a word of their conversation.

“What is the problem?”


“I just can’t believe that in this day and age we are having a problem with chemical fuel,” I said.


“Sorry. We should have bought the premium brand.”


“No, it’s not that. Nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m just pointing out that this stove is four-thousand-year-old praxis.”


Cord was nonplussed. “Same goes for this fetch and everything in it,” she said.


“Hey!” Yul cried, mock-wounded.


Cord scoffed, rolled her eyes, and turned her attention back to me. “Everything except for your sphere, that is. So?”


“I guess because I live in a place with

almost zero praxis, it never occurs to me to think about such things,”

I said. “But at times like this, the absurdity hits me between the

eyes. There’s no reason to put up with junk like this. A stove with

dangerous, unreliable chemical fuel. With orifices that clog. In four

thousand years we could have made a better stove.”


“Would I be able to take that stove apart and fix it?”


“You wouldn’t have to, because it would never break.”


“But I want to know if I could understand such a stove.”


“You’re the kind of person who could probably understand just about anything if you set your mind to it.”




“Nice flattery, Raz, but you keep dodging the question.”


“All right, I take your point. You’re really asking if the average person could understand the workings of such a thing…”


“I don’t know what an average person is. But look at Yul here. He built his stove himself. Didn’t you, Yul?”


Yul was uneasy that Cord had suddenly made

this conversation about him. But he deferred to her. He glanced away

and nodded. “Yup. Got the burners from scavengers. Welded up the frame.”


“And it worked,” Cord said.


“I know,” I said, and patted my belly.


“No, I mean the system worked!” Cord insisted.


“What system?”


She was exasperated. “The…the…”


“The non-system,” Yul said. “The lack of a system.”


“Yul knew that stoves like this were unreliable!” Cord said, nodding at the broken one. “He’d learned that from experience.”


“Oh, bitter experience, my girl!” Yul proclaimed.


“He ran into some scavengers who’d found

better burner heads in a ruin up north. Haggled with them. Figured out

a way to hook them up. Probably has been tinkering with them ever

since.”


“Took me two years to make it run right,” Yul admitted.


“And none of that would have been possible with some kind of technology that only an avout can understand,” Cord concluded.


“Okay, okay,” I said, and let it drop

there. Letting the argument play out would have been a waste of breath.

We, the theors, who had retreated (or, depending on how you liked your

history, been herded) into the maths at the Reconstitution, had the

power to change the physical world through praxis. Up to a point,

ordinary people liked the changes we made. But the more clever the

praxis became, the less people understood it and the more dependent

they became on us—and they didn’t like that at all.





Cord spent a while telling Yul what she

knew about the Cousins, and about all that had happened during the

journey from Saunt Edhar to Samble to Norslof. Yul took it pretty

calmly, which irked me. I wanted to

grab him by the shoulders and shake him and make him see, somehow, that

this was an event of cosmic significance: the most important thing that

had ever happened. But he listened to Cord’s narration as if she were

relating a story of how she had fixed a flat tire on her way to work.

Perhaps it was a habit of wilderness guides to feign unnatural calm

when people ran up to them with upsetting news.


Anyway, it gave me an opening to carry

forward the stove argument in a way that wouldn’t make Cord so

irritated. When the conversation lapsed, I tried: “I see why you

guys—or anyone—would feel more comfortable with a stove you could take

apart and understand. And I’m fine with that—normally. But these are

not normal times. If the Cousins turn out to be hostile, how can we

oppose them? Because it looks like they came from a world that didn’t

have anything like the Reconstitution.”


“A dictatorship of the theors,” Yul said.


“It doesn’t have to be a dictatorship! If

you could see how theors behave in private, you’d know they could never

be that organized.”


But Cord was of one mind with Yul on this.

“Once they get to the point where they’re building ships like that

one,” she said, “it is a dictatorship in effect. You said yourself it

would take the resources of a whole planet. How do you think they got

their hands on those resources?”


In most cases Cord and I saw things the

same way and the extra/avout split simply was not important to us, so

when she talked this way it made me more upset than I cared to let on.

I let it drop for a while. On these endless drives, it was nothing to

let the conversation pause for an hour or two.


And there was something else going on,

which was that everything had changed about Cord when Yul had showed

up. These two simply knew what to do around each other. Whatever was

going on between them, I wasn’t part of it, and I felt jealous.


We passed through another ruin-city, almost as “shallow” as yesterday’s and almost as thoroughly erased.


“The Cousins’ praxis is nothing to jump up and down about,” I

said. “We haven’t seen anything on that ship that couldn’t have been

built in our own Praxic Age. That makes me think that we could build a

weapon that could disable their ship.”


Cord smiled and the tension was gone. “You sound like Fraa Jad the other day!” she exclaimed, with obvious affection—for me.


“Oh really? What did the old man say?” I could hear the hurt draining out of my own speech.


She adopted a pretty good imitation of his

grumbling voice. “‘Their electrical systems could be disabled by a

burst of whozamajigger fields.’ Then Lio said, ‘Begging your pardon,

Fraa Jad, but we don’t know how to make those.’ ‘Why, it’s simple, just

build a phrastic array of whatsit-field inducers.’ ‘Sorry, Fraa Jad,

but no one knows those theorics any more and it takes thirty years’

study to get up to speed!’ and so on.”


I laughed. But then—tallying the days in my

head—I realized something: “They’re probably reaching Tredegarh right

now. Probably starting to talk about how to make those whatsit field

inducers.”


“I would hope so!”


“The Sæcular Power probably has tons of

information about the Cousins that has been withheld from us until now.

Maybe they’ve even been going up there and talking

to the Cousins. I’ll bet they are giving all of that information to the

fraas and suurs at the Convox. I wish I was there. I’m tired of not

understanding! Instead I’m helping Fraa Jad understand why a Throwback

wants to visit a seven-century-old archaeological dig.” I slapped the

control panel helplessly.


“Hey!” Yul said in mock outrage and pretended to haul off and punch me in the shoulder.


“I guess that’s part of being a pawn,” I went on.


“Your vision of what the Convox is like

sounds pretty romantic to me,” Cord said. “Way too optimistic. Remember

the first day at the machine-hall when we were trying to get seventeen

people into six vehicles?”


“Vividly.”


“This Convox thing is probably like that except a thousand times worse.”




“Unless there’s someone like me there,” Yul said. “You should see the way I can get seventeen tourists into four rafts.”


“Well, Yul’s not at Tredegarh,” Cord pointed out, “so you’re not missing a thing. Just relax and enjoy the drive.”


“Okay,” I said, and laughed a little. “Your understanding of human nature is better than mine.”


“What’s her problem with me then?” Yul demanded.


As the drive went on, most of us bounced

back and forth between the two vehicles. The exception was Gnel who

always remained in his fetch, though sometimes he’d let Sammann drive

it.


The next day, when Cord and I were alone

together for a couple of hours, she told me that she and Yul had become

boyfriend and girlfriend.


“Huh,” I said, “I guess that explains why

you two spend so much time out ‘gathering firewood.’” I wasn’t trying

to be a smarty-pants, just trying to emulate the kind of banter that

Cord and Yul exchanged so freely. But Cord became quite embarrassed and

I realized that I had struck too close to home. I groped around for

something else to say. “Well, now that you’ve told me, it seems like it

was meant to be. I guess I just didn’t see it because I had this idea

that you were going out with Rosk.”


Cord thought that was pretty silly. “Remember all those conversations I was having with him on my jeejah the other day?”


“Yes.”


“Well, what we were really doing was breaking up.”


“Well, Cord, I hate to be a pedantic avout,

but I couldn’t help overhearing your half of those conversations, and I

don’t think I heard a single word that was even remotely about breaking

up.”


She looked at me as if I were insane.


“All I’m saying,” I said, holding up my hands, “is that I had no idea that that was what was going on.”


“Neither did I,” Cord said.


“Do you think…” I began, and stopped. I’d been about to say Do you think that Rosk knows?

but I realized in the nick of time that it would be suicide. It seemed

to me like a pretty irregular way to handle important relationships,

but then I remembered how things had gone with me and Ala and decided I was in no position to criticize my sib on that score.


Cord and I had talked surprisingly little

about our family—that is, the family I’d shared with her until I’d

“gone to the clock.” But what little I’d heard had left me amazed by

how clever people were at finding ways to make each other crazy and

miserable, whether it was those they were related to or a crowd of

strangers they’d been thrown together with in a concent. Cord sometimes

seemed eighty years old in her knowledge and experience and cynicism

about such things. I couldn’t help thinking she’d thrown up her hands

at some point and decided to devote the rest of her life to mastering

things, such as machines, that could be made sense of and fixed. No

wonder she hated the idea of machines she couldn’t understand. And no

wonder she didn’t waste a lot of time trying to understand things she

couldn’t—like why she was now Yul’s girlfriend.





When the climate had been warmer,

civilizations had sloshed back and forth across this glacier-planed

landscape for a couple of thousand years like silt in a miner’s pan,

forming drifts of built-up stuff that stayed long after the people had

departed. At any given moment during those millennia, a billion might

have lived on this territory that now supported a few tens of

thousands. How many bodies were buried up here, how many people’s ashes

scattered? Ten, twenty, fifty billion all told? Given that they all

used electricity, how many miles of copper wire had been sewn through

their buildings and under their pavements? How many man-years had been

devoted to the one activity of pulling and stapling those wires into

place? If one out of a thousand was an electrician, something like a

billion man-years had been devoted to running wire from one point to

another. After the weather had grown cold again and the civilizations

had, over the course of a few centuries, shifted south—moving like

glaciers—scavengers had begun coming up here to undo those billion

man-years one tedious hour at a time, and retrieve those countless

miles of wire yard by yard. Professional

scavengers working on an industrial scale had gotten ninety percent of

it quickly. I’d seen pictures of factories on tank treads that rolled

across the north and engulfed whole city blocks at a time, treating the

fabric of the ruins just as a mining robot would an ore-rich hill,

grinding the buildings to rubble and sorting the shards according to

density. The first ruins we had seen were the feces that those machines

left along their paths.


Stripping ruins by hand was more expensive.

When times were prosperous elsewhere, metals became precious enough

that miners could make a life out of venturing to the deep

ruins—far-flung cities of old, never reached by the

factories-on-tank-treads—and extracting whatever was most valuable:

copper wires, steel beams, plumbing, or what have you. The swag made

its way toward the road we were driving in fitful stages, from one

anarchic little tundra market-town to the next. Snowstorms and arctic

pirate-bands might impede its progress but eventually it found the road

and was piled on the backs of ramshackle drummons that seemed to

consist of seventy-five percent rust by weight, held together only by

rimes of ice and shaggy cloaks of dirty snow. These moved in caravans

for protection, so it was hopeless to try to pass them, but they moved

fast enough for our purposes and they afforded us the safety of the

herd once they’d figured out we were pilgrims, not pirates. We stayed

well back of them so that we’d have time to swerve whenever a rigid

glyph of plumbing or a hairball of wire fell off onto the road. Our

windscreen grew opaque with tire-flung mud-ice. We kept the side

windows open so that we could reach out and wipe it off with rags on

sticks. On the third day the rags froze; after that we kept the stove

running with a pot of warm water on top of it, to thaw them out.

Through our open windows we looked at ruins passing by. We learned to

tell what age a place had been built by the character of its

fortifications: missile silos, three-mile-long runways, curtain walls,

stone ramparts, acres of curled razor barbs, belts of

sequence-engineered thorn trees, all more or less torn down and

deranged by scavengers.


As the days went on, all of this stuff was dusted, then frosted, then

choked, flattened, crushed, drowned, obliterated by ice. After that,

the only things we saw that had been put there by humans were wrecks of

former sledge ports: fluctuations of climate or of markets had left

them defenseless long enough to die. The landscape a mile from the road

was clean and white, that along the road was the most disgusting thing

I’d seen the whole trip. The snow-piles along the sides of the road

grew higher and blacker until our way became a carbon-black slit trench

twenty feet deep, crammed with drummons moving about as fast as a

healthy person could walk. After that there was no escape. We could

have shut off our vehicles’ engines and the drummon behind us would

have shoved us all the way to the end of the road. They had snorkels to

draw fresh air down into their cabs. We hadn’t thought to so equip

ourselves, and spent the last day breathing oily blue exhaust. When

this became too sickening to endure we would swap drivers and climb up

out of the trench (there were occasional ramps in the snow-walls) and

simply walk alongside for a while (we had bought snowshoes, improvised

from scavenged building materials, in one of the tundra markets) or

ride on Gnel’s three-wheeler.


It was on one of those trudges—the very last leg—that Yul finally asked me about the parking ramp dinosaur.


Ever since our day together in Norslof, it

had been clear he’d wanted to get something off his chest. When he and

Cord had suddenly become an item, he’d avoided being alone with me for

a couple of days. But once it was clear that I was not going to go

nonlinear, he’d begun a gentle search for opportunities to talk to me

one-on-one. I’d assumed the topic was going to be him and Cord. But Yul

was full of surprises.


“Some say it was a dinosaur, some say

dragon,” I told him. “One of the first things we were taught about the

incident is that nothing can be known of it for certain—”


“Since all evidence was wiped out by the Incanters?”


“That’s one story. The second thing we were taught, by the way, was that we should never discuss the incident with Sæculars.”




He got a frustrated look.


“Sorry,” I said, “that’s just how it is.

Most accounts agree that one group, let’s call them Group A, started

it, and Group B finished it. In popular folkore, A equals the so-called

Rhetors and B equals the so-called Incanters. It happened three months

before the opening of the Third Sack.”


“But the dinosaur—or the dragon or whatever—really did appear in the parking ramp.”


Yul and I were walking side-by-side on

compacted snow, a stone’s throw off to the right side of the

drummon-jammed slit trench. Closer to it, conditions were dangerous

because men, many of them intoxicated, were zipping back and forth on

snow machines. The track that Yul and I were following appeared to have

been laid down by such a machine a day or two earlier. We could tell

where our fetches were in the trench because we’d learned to recognize

the jury-rigged snorkels of the adjoining drummons. The traffic seemed

to be accelerating slightly, so that we had to mush harder in order to

keep pace. This was probably because we were only a couple of miles

from the sledge port. We could see its antennas, its smoke, and its

lights a couple of miles ahead. Even if the fetches outdistanced us,

we’d be able to reach it on foot, so we weren’t overly concerned about

keeping up.


“It was only a couple of thousand feet away

from Muncoster,” I said. “There was a city there—as there is now.

Overall level of affluence and praxic development, let’s say nine on a

scale of ten.”


“Where are we today?” Yul asked.


“Let’s say eight. But the society around

Muncoster had peaked, though they didn’t know it yet. Deolaters were

gaining political influence.”


“Which Ark?”


“I don’t know. One of those that is aggressive about garnering power. They had an iconography—”


“A what?”


“Well,” I said, “let’s just say that they felt threatened by certain things that avout tend to believe.”


“Such as that the world is old,” Yul said.




“Yeah. There had been trouble at a couple

of Annual Aperts, and bigger trouble at the Decennial of 2780. The

Tenners’ math got sacked a little on Tenth Night. But then things

seemed to calm down. Apert was over. Things went back to normal. So,

now, a parking ramp was then under construction within sight of the

concent. It was part of a shopping center. The avout could see it going

up, just by looking out the windows of their towers—Muncoster has a lot

of towers. The ramp was finished a few months later. Sæculars went in

there every day and parked their cars. No problem. Six years passed.

The shopping center expanded. The workers had to make some structural

changes to the parking ramp so that they could attach a new wing. One

of them was up on the fourth level, using a pneumatic hammer to

demolish part of the floor, when he noticed something embedded in the

synthetic stone. It looked like a claw. Investigating, they removed

more and more stone. It was a major safety issue since the building

isn’t structurally sound if there are such things as claws and bones in

load-bearing members. They had to shore it up—the building was

weakening, sagging, before their eyes. The more they uncovered, the

worse it got. When all was said and done, they had uncovered a complete

skeleton of a hundred-foot-long reptile embedded in synthetic stone

that had only been poured four years earlier. The Deolaters didn’t know

what to make of it. There started to be serious unrest and violence

around the walls of the concent. Then one night, chanting was heard

from the Thousanders’ tower. It went on all night. The next day, the

parking ramp was back to normal. So the story goes.”


“Do you believe it?” Yul asked.


“Something happened. There were—are—records.”


“You mean, like, phototypes of the skeleton?”


“I’m referring more to things like the

memories in the witnesses’ minds. Piles of lumber used to shore up the

structure. The paperwork at the lumberyard. A little bit of additional

wear on the tires of the drummons that carried the lumber to the site.”


“Like ripples spreading out,” Yul said.


“Yeah. So if the skeleton suddenly vanishes, and there’s no physical evidence it was ever there, what do you have left?”




“Only the records,” Yul said, nodding vigorously, as if he understood it better than I. “The ripples, without the splash.”


“The tires of the lumber drummon didn’t

suddenly get un-worn. The paperwork at the lumberyard didn’t vanish

from the files. But now there is a conflict. The world isn’t coherent

any more—there are logical contradictions.”


“Big piles of shoring lumber in front of a parking ramp that never needed to be shored up,” Yul said.


“Yeah. And it’s not that this is physically impossible. Obviously it is possible

to have a pile of wood in front of a parking ramp, or some pieces of

paper in a filing cabinet. But the problem—the issue it raises—is that

the overall state of affairs just doesn’t add up any more.” I was

remembering the pink dragon dialog with Orolo—realizing, all these

months later, that his choice of a dragon to illustrate the point had

been no accident. He’d been trying to remind us of the very incident

Yul was talking about.


We heard a braying engine behind us and

turned around to see Ganelial Crade headed our way on the

three-wheeler. Yul and I exchanged a look that meant let’s not discuss this around him.

Yul bent down, scooped up a double handful of snow, and tried to pack

it into a ball to throw at his cousin. It was too cold to pack though.





We reached the sledge port at Eighty-three

North at two in the morning, which only meant that the sun was slightly

lower in the sky than usual. The slit-road debouched into a plateau of

pack ice a mile or two wide, and somewhat lower than the surrounding

ice, so that it felt like being on the floor of a large meteorite

crater. Here and there, housing modules rose on stilts that could be

moved and adjusted when the ice flowed under them. The drummons tended

to congregate around these. Each was the headquarters of a different

scrap dealer, and the drivers would hustle from one to the next trying

to get the best prices for their loads. Other structures served as

hostels, eateries, or bordellos.


The place was dominated by the sledge train itself. The first time I saw this, with the low sun behind it, I mistook it for a factory.

The locomotive looked like one of those city-eating scrap processors: a

power plant and a village of housing modules built on a bridge that

spanned the interval between two colossal tracks. In the train behind

it were half a dozen sledges, each built on parallel runners that rode

in the ruts of packed snow laid down by the locomotive’s treads. The

first of these was built to carry shipping containers. They were

stacked four high, and an ungainly crane on wheels was laboring to

begin a fifth layer. Behind it were a few sledges that simply consisted

of great open boxes. Another crane, equipped with pincers easily big

enough to snatch both of our vehicles at the same time, was clawing

tangles of scrap metal from a pile on the snow and dropping them into

these with heart-stopping crashes. The last sledge in the train was a

flatbed: a mobile parking lot about half full of loaded drummons.


We spent a while blundering around, but

from having talked to drummon operators at roadside stops we had a

general notion of how the place worked and some good suggestions on how

not to behave. From Sammann’s research we already

knew that another sledge train had departed two days earlier and that

the one we were looking at would continue loading for another few days.


Getting about was a hazard because there

were no established rights-of-way. Drummons and fetches just moved in

straight lines toward whatever their jumped-up drivers wanted to reach.

So we tended to use our vehicles even for short movements. We found the

office-on-stilts that booked places on the flatbed, and arranged to

have both of our vehicles loaded upon it. But we paid a little extra to

get Gnel’s fetch situated at the edge, rather than in the middle; that

way, by deploying planks as ramps, we were able to get the

three-wheeler on and off at will. It then became our means of moving

around the sledge port, though it could only take two at a time and so

at any given moment three of us would be marooned. So we rented one of

the housing modules on the locomotive and marooned ourselves there. It

was cheap. The toilet was a hole in the floor covered, when not used,

by a trapdoor weighed down with slugs of scrap iron so that arctic

gales wouldn’t blow it open. A few trips up and down the sledge train

in the three-wheeler sufficed to stock

our little house with the rations and other goods we’d packed into the

fetches, as well as a surprisingly comprehensive arsenal of projectile

and edged weapons. Yulassetar and Ganelial Crade might disagree about

religion, but in their relationship to arms they were the same mind in

two different bodies. They even used the same types of cases to store

their guns, and the same boxes for ammunition. Many at the sledge port

carried weapons openly, and there was a place at the edge of “town”

where people would go out and discharge weapons into the encircling

ice-wall just to pass the time. On the whole, though, the place was

more orderly and predictable than the territory we’d spent the last

week driving though. As I was coming to understand, it had to be thus

because it was a place of commerce.


Once we were settled in, Sammann and I took

the three-wheeler and made the rounds of bars and brothels just to

confirm that Orolo wasn’t in any of them. Cord clambered around on the

locomotive, admiring its workings, and Yul followed her. He claimed to

be as interested in such things as Cord, but to me it was obvious that

he expected she’d be raped if she went out alone.


We killed time for several days. I tried to

read some theorics books I’d brought, but couldn’t concentrate, and

ended up sleeping for unreasonable amounts of time. Sammann had found a

place near an office-module where he could get patchy connections to

the Reticulum. He went there once a day, then came back to scan through

the information he had acquired. Yul and Cord watched speelies on a

tiny jeejah screen when they weren’t “gathering firewood.” Ganelial

Crade read his scriptures in Old Bazian and began to signal interest in

something that he had been polite enough to avoid and that I had been

dreading: religion.


Sammann once saved me from a near brush

with that by looking up suddenly from his jeejah, finding my face at

the other end of the room, then dropping his gaze again to the screen.

He’d recently come back from one of his data-foraging expeditions;

there were still a few clots of ice dangling from his whiskers. I went

over and squatted next to his chair.


“After we left Samble I began trying to obtain access to certain reticules,”

Sammann explained. “Normally these would have been closed to me, but I

thought I might be able to get in if I explained what I was doing. It

took a little while for my request to be considered. The people who

control these were probably searching the Reticulum to obtain

corroboration for my story.”


“How would that work?” I asked.


Sammann was not happy that I’d inquired.

Maybe he was tired of explaining such things to me; or maybe he still

wished to preserve a little bit of respect for the Discipline that we

had so flagrantly been violating. “Let’s suppose there’s a speelycaptor

at the mess hall in that hellhole town where we bought snow tires.”


“Norslof,” I said.


“Whatever. This speelycaptor is there as a

security measure. It sees us walking to the till to pay for our

terrible food. That information goes on some reticule or other. Someone

who studies the images can see that I was there on such-and-such a date

with three other people. Then they can use other such techniques to

figure out who those people are. One turns out to be Fraa Erasmas from

Saunt Edhar. Thus the story I’m telling is corroborated.”


“Okay, but how—”


“Never mind.” Then, as if he’d grown weary

of using that phrase, he caught himself short, closed his eyes for a

moment, and tried again. “If you must know, they probably ran an

asamocra on me.”


“Asamocra?”


“Asynchronous, symmetrically anonymized,

moderated open-cry repute auction. Don’t even bother trying to parse

that. The acronym is pre-Reconstitution. There hasn’t been a true

asamocra for 3600 years. Instead we do other things that serve the same

purpose and we call them by the old name. In most cases, it takes a few

days for a provably irreversible phase transition to occur in the

reputon glass—never mind—and another day after that to make sure you

aren’t just being spoofed by ephemeral stochastic nucleation. The point

being, I was not granted the access I wanted until recently.” He smiled

and a hunk of ice fell off his whiskers and landed on the control panel

of his jeejah. “I was going to say ‘until today’ but this damned day

never ends.”




“Fine. I don’t really understand anything you said but maybe we can save that for later.”


“That would be good. The point is that I was trying to get information about that rocket launch you glimpsed on the speely.”


“Ah. And have you succeeded?”


“I’d say yes. You might say no because you

avout like your information tidily written down in a book and

cross-checked by other avout. The information we trade in is noisy and

ambiguous and suggestive. Often it’s images or acoustical signatures

instead of words.”


“I accept your rebuke. What have you got?”


“Eight went up on that rocket.”


“So the official statement was a lie as we suspected.”


“Yes.”


“Who were they?”


“I don’t know. That’s where things get

noisy and ambiguous. This thing was very hush-hush. Military secrets

and so forth. There is no passenger manifest that I can read to you. No

stack of dossiers. All I have is ten seconds of really bad images from

the collision-avoidance speelycaptor on the windscreen of some

janitor’s fetch, taken while he was parallel-parking in a tight spot a

quarter of a mile away. Motion artifacts have been removed, of course.”


Sammann caused the jeejah to begin playing

back a snippet of—as advertised—terrible speely data. It showed a

coach, with military markings, parked next to a large building. A door

in the side of the building opened. Eight people in white coveralls

came out and climbed into the coach. They were followed by others who

looked like doctors and technicians. The interval between the building

and the coach was about twenty feet, so we got to see them walk that

far. Sammann made the thing run on infinite loop. The first couple of

dozen times through, we focused all of our attention on the first four

people in the white suits. Faces were impossible to make out, but it

was surprising how much could be inferred from how people moved. Three

of the white-suited people moved in an ever-shifting triangle around a

fourth, who was bigger than all of

them, with prepossessing hair. He carried himself erect and moved in a

heedless line; the others scurried and weaved. His coverall was subtly

different from the others’: it had a pattern of stripes or markings

crisscrossed over it, almost as if he’d been draped in a few yards of—


“Rope,” I said, freezing the image and

pointing to it. “I’ve seen something like that before—at Apert. There

was an extra wearing something like that. He was a Warden of Heaven

priest. That is their ceremonial garb.”


By this point Cord had come over to watch

the speely with us. She was standing behind Sammann’s chair looking

over his shoulder. “Those four who are bringing up the rear,” she said,

“they are avout.”


Until now we’d only had eyes for the high

priest and his three acolytes. The other half of the crew didn’t do

much: just walked in single file from the building to the coach. “What

makes you say that?” I asked. “That is, other than the fact that they

show zero interest in the guy with the rope. There is nothing to mark

them as avout.”


“Yes there is,” Cord said. “The way they walk.”


“What are you talking about!? We’re all

bipeds! We all walk the same way!” I protested. But Sammann had twisted

around in his chair to grin up at Cord. He nodded enthusiastically.


“You two are nuts,” I said.


“Cord is right,” Sammann insisted.


“It couldn’t have been more obvious at

Apert,” Cord said. “Extras swagger and slouch. They walk like they own

the place.” She got out from behind the chair and strode down the

middle of the room in a rolling, easy gait. “Avout—and Ita—are more

self-contained.” She drew herself up and walked back to us with quick

steps, not moving any air.


As crazy as this sounded, I had to admit

that during Apert I’d been able to tell extras apart from fraas and

suurs at a distance, partly based on how they moved. I turned my

attention back to the screen. “Okay, I’ll give you that one,” I said.

“The more I look at them, the more familiar that gait seems to me.

Especially the tall one bringing up the rear. He is a dead ringer for—”




I couldn’t get a word out for a few

moments. Everyone looked at me to see if I was okay. I couldn’t take my

eyes off that speely. I watched it four more times, and each time I

grew more certain of what—of who—I was seeing.


“Jesry,” I said.


“Oh, my god!” Cord exclaimed.


“His blessings and mercy upon you,” hissed Ganelial Crade, as was his custom when anyone used that word in an oath.


“That is absolutely your friend,” Cord said.


“Fraa Jesry is in space with the Warden of Heaven!” I shouted, just to hear it.


“I’m sure they are having some fascinating discussions,” said Sammann.





A couple of hours later, after we’d covered

the windows and tried to sleep, the place began to hum and rumble, and

there came a jerk that made half of our stuff fall to the floor. Gnel

and I unzipped the legs of our suitsacks and ran out to the catwalk and

looked down to see rimes of ice exploding into sparkling clouds as they

were crushed by imperceptible shifting of the tread segments. We

scurried to the end of the catwalk where a stair led down to near snow

level, jumped off, got the three-wheeler started, and buzzed back to

the flatbed. Explosive bangs resonated up and down the train as the

locomotive budged forward and began to draw up slack. A couple of the

flatbed’s boarding-ramps were dragging on the ice so that last-minute

loading could proceed—it would be half an hour before the train was

really moving. We blasted up one of these, veered around a drummon that

was back-and-forthing into a tight slot, and found our way to Gnel’s

fetch. We ran the three-wheeler up the plank ramps and stowed the

planks under the fetch. Then we spent a while draining the coolants

from all three vehicles’ engines and storing it in poly jugs. By the

time we were finished, the train was moving faster than we could walk

in snowshoes, so we made our way forward along the system of catwalks

that skirted the sledges and linked them together. Cord and Yul had

pulled up the window-coverings to let the sun in, and

were cooking a big celebratory breakfast. We were on our way to the

North Pole. I was glad of that. But when I thought of Fraa Jesry in

orbit I couldn’t have felt more in the wrong place.





“Bastard!” I said. “That bastard!”


Everyone looked at me. We had pushed back from what, in these circumstances, counted as a huge breakfast.


Yulassetar Crade looked at Cord as if to say, Your sib…your problem.


“Who? What?” Cord asked.


“Jesry!”


“A few hours ago you were about to start weeping over Jesry. Now he’s a bastard?”


“This is so typical,” I said.


“He gets launched into space frequently?” Sammann asked.


“No. It’s hard to explain, but…of all of us, he is the one they would pick.”


“Who’s they?” Cord asked. “Obviously this was not a Convox operation.”


“True. But the Sæcular Power must have gone

to the hierarchs at Tredegarh and said ‘give us four of your best’ and

this is what they came up with.” I shook my head.


“You must be proud…a little bit,” Cord tried.


I put my hands over my face and sighed. “He

gets to go meet aliens. I get to ride on a junk train.” Then I

uncovered my face and looked at Gnel. “What do you know about the

Warden of Heaven?”


Gnel blinked. He froze for a moment. I had

been avoiding religion for so long, and now I’d asked him a direct

question about it! His cousin exhaled sharply and looked away, as if he

were about to witness a traffic accident.


“They are heretics,” he said mildly.


“Yes, but almost everyone is to you, aren’t they?” I said. “Can you be any more specific?”


“You don’t understand,” Gnel said. “They aren’t just any heretics. They are an offshoot of my faith.” He looked at Yul. “Of our faith.” Cord elbowed Yul just in case he’d missed this.


“Really?” I asked. “An offshoot of the Samblites?” This was news to the rest of us.


“Our faith was founded by Saunt Bly,” Gnel claimed.


“Before or after you ate his—”


“That,” said Gnel, “is an ancient lie invented to make us seem like a bunch of savages!”


“It’s almost impossible to sauté a human liver without bruising it,” Yul put in.


“Are you saying that Saunt Bly turned into a Deolater? Like Estemard?”


Gnel shook his head. “It’s a shame you

didn’t have an opportunity to talk more with Estemard. He isn’t a

Deolater as you would define it—or as I would. Neither was Saunt Bly.

And that’s where we differ from the Warden of Heaven people.”


“They think Bly was a Deolater?”


“Yes. Sort of a prophet, according to them, who found a proof of the existence of God and was Thrown Back because of it.”


“That’s funny because if anyone actually

did prove the existence of God we’d just tell him ‘nice proof, Fraa

Bly’ and start believing in God,” I said.


Gnel gave me a cool stare, letting me know

he didn’t believe a word of it. “Be that as it may,” he said levelly,

“it’s not the version put out by the Warden of Heaven.”


My mind went back to Apert Eve and the

discussion of iconographies with Grandsuur Tamura. “This is an instance

of the Brumasian Iconography,” I said.


“What?”


“The Warden of Heaven is putting out the story that there is a secret conspiracy in the mathic world.”


“Yes,” Gnel said.


“Something of great import—in this

instance, the existence of God—has been discovered. Most of the avout

are pure of heart and want to spread the news. But they are cruelly

oppressed by this conspiracy which will stop at nothing to preserve the

secret.”




Gnel was getting ready to say something cautious but Yul spoke first: “You nailed it.”


“That is disheartening,” I said, “because

of all the iconographies, the ones based on conspiracy theories are the

hardest to root out.”


“You don’t say,” Sammann said, looking me in the eye.


I got embarrassed and shut up for a bit.

Cord broke the ice: “The Cousins’ ship is still being kept secret. So

we don’t know what the Warden thinks about it. But we can guess.

They’ll see it as—”


“A miracle,” Yul said.


“A visitation from another world, purer and better than ours,” I guessed.


“Where the evil conspiracy doesn’t exist,” Cord said. “Come to reveal the truth.”


“What about the laser light shining down on the Three Inviolates?” Sammann asked. “How would they interpret that?”


“Depends on whether they know that the Three Inviolates are nuclear waste dumps,” I said.


“What!?” the Crades exclaimed.


“Even if they do know that,” Cord said, “they’d probably give it a more spiritual interpretation.”


Gnel was still a little off balance, but he put in, “The Warden of Heaven sees the Thousanders as the good guys.”


“Of course,” I said. “They know the truth

but they can’t get the word out because they’re bottled up by conniving

Tenners and Hundreders, is that it?”


“Yes,” Gnel said. “So he would interpret the laser light as—”


“A blessing,” Cord said.


“A benediction,” I said.


“An invitation,” Yul said.


“Boy, are they in for a surprise!” Sammann said delightedly.


“Probably. Maybe. We don’t know. I just hope it isn’t a nasty surprise for Jesry,” I said.


“Jesry the bastard?” Cord said.


“Yeah,” I said, and chuckled. “Jesry the bastard.”


I was feeling good because it felt like

we’d gotten through this without having to endure a sermon from

Ganelial Crade; but my heart fell into my gut as Cord turned to him and

asked, “Where did the Warden part

company from your faith, Gnel?” The last part of this sentence was a

little rushed and muffled because Yul had playfully reached around her

shoulder to clap his hand over her mouth, and she was twisting his

fingers backwards as she talked.


“We read the scriptures ourselves in the

original Bazian,” Gnel said, “so you might imagine that we are

primitive fundamentalists. Maybe we are in that sense. But we aren’t

blind to what has happened in the mathic world—Old and New—in the last

fifty centuries. The Word of God does not change. The Book does not

suffer editing or translation. But what men know and understand outside

of the Book changes all the time. That’s what you avout do: try to

understand God’s creation without using the direct revelations given to

us by God almost six thousand years ago. To us you’re like people

who’ve put out your own eyes and are now trying to explore a new

continent. You’re grievously handicapped—but for that reason you may

have developed senses and faculties we lack.”


After a few moments’ silence, I said, “I’m

just going to hold my tongue and not even get into all that is wrong in

what you’ve just said. The gist of it seems to be that we aren’t evil

or misguided. You think that in the end we’ll agree with the Book.”


“Of course,” said Gnel, “it has to be that way. But we don’t think there’s a secret conspiracy to hide the truth.”


“He believes your confusion is genuine!” Yul translated. Gnel nodded.


“That’s very considerate of you,” I said.


“We preserved the notebooks of Saunt Bly,” Gnel said. “I’ve read them myself. It’s obvious he was no Deolater.”


“Excuse me for saying so,” Sammann

said—this was always how he opened when he was going to insult

someone—“isn’t it a little nutty for a bunch of Deolaters to found a

religion based on the writings of someone they know to have been an

atheist?”


“We identify with his struggle,” Gnel said, not the least bit insulted. “His struggle to find the truth.”


“But don’t you already know the truth?”


“We know those truths that are in the Book. Truths not therein we feel but we don’t know.”


“That sounds like something—” I began, then bit my tongue.




“That an avout would say? Like Estemard? Or Orolo?”


“Let’s not bring him into this, please.”


“Fine.” Gnel shrugged. “Orolo kept to himself. Preserved the Discipline, as near as I could tell. I never talked to him.”


Here I had to draw back. Count to ten. Take

out the Rake. These people cared about eternal truths. Believed that

some—but not all—such truths were written down in a book. That their

book was right and the others wrong. This much they had in common with

most of the other people who had ever lived. Fine—as long as they left

me alone. Now they had this new wrinkle: they drew inspiration from a

Saunt of the avout. It was not important that I be able to make sense

of this.


“You feel the truth but you don’t know it,”

Cord repeated. “Your service the other day, in Samble—we could hear

your singing. It was very emotional.”


Gnel nodded. “That’s why Estemard attends—though he doesn’t believe.”


“He’s not intellectually convinced of your arguments,” Cord translated, “but he feels some of what you feel.”


“That’s exactly it!” Ganelial Crade was delighted. A strange thing to relate. But he was. As if he’d found a new convert.


“Well, even for one who doesn’t believe, I can sort of understand the attraction,” Cord said.


I gave her a look. Yul clapped his hands

over his face. Cord became defensive. “I’m not saying I’m likely to

join this ark. Just that it was remarkable, after driving through the

middle of nowhere for hours, to come upon this building where people

were gathered together and to feel the emotional bond that they shared.

To know that they’ve been doing it for centuries.”


“Our ark, our towns like Samble,” Gnel said, “they are all dying. That’s why those services are so emotionally intense.”


This was the first thing he’d ever said

that didn’t bristle with confidence, so we were taken aback by it. Yul

took his face out of his hands and blinked at his cousin.


“Dying because of the Warden of Heaven?” Sammann guessed.


“He preaches a simple, unsubtle creed. It spreads like a disease. Those

who adopt it turn around and spurn us as if we were the heretics. It is

wiping us out,” Gnel said, and aimed a none too friendly look at Yul.


This was all very interesting but I had other stuff to think about. So Estemard has gone off the deep end. Has Orolo?


I recalled the conversation I’d had with

Orolo just before the starhenge had been closed—the one about beauty.

The one that had saved my life. In retrospect it could be seen as the

moment when Orolo’s mind began to crack. As if he had started and I’d

stopped being crazy at the same moment.


I shook it off. Orolo had been Thrown Back.

He’d had only one place to seek refuge: Bly’s Butte. Once there, he’d

observed the Discipline. No singing in the ark for him. And he had

gotten out of the place as soon as he’d been able to.


Well—


Wait a minute. Not as

soon as he’d been able to. He had departed for the north only a couple

of days before we had—the morning after the lasers had shone down upon

the Three Inviolates. Why would that cause him to pack up his bolt,

chord, and sphere, and hurry to Ecba, of all places?


Maybe in a few days I could just ask him.


Allswell: A naturally

occurring chemical that, when present in sufficient concentrations in

the brain, engenders the feeling that everything is fine. Isolated by

theors in the First Century A.R. and made available as a

pharmaceutical, it became ubiquitous when a common weed, subsequently

known as blithe, was sequence-engineered to produce it as a byproduct

of its metabolism. Blithe was subsequently made one of the Eleven.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





The journey lasted about two days—or, up here, two waking-and-sleeping cycles. I was all of a sudden ready to get back to work.

The journey from Samble to the sledge port had been a welcome respite

from reading and thinking, but seeing Jesry had shocked me awake. I

might be sleeping twelve hours at a time and watching speelies, but my

friends were working as hard as ever and going off on dangerous

missions. It was difficult for me to act on this, though. The

continuous vibration and occasional jarring shifts of the sledge train

were about as far as you could get from the cloister. Reading and

writing were difficult; even watching speelies was hardly worth it.

Going outside was out of the question. I could understand why so many

people up here were substance abusers.


Before we’d departed, Sammann had done

research on how to sneak across the border without documents. Economic

migrants did this all the time and some of them had logged their

experiences, which gave me a rough idea of what and what not to do. The

most important thing not to do was to ride the

sledge train the whole way. Apparently the sledge port on the other

side was a much more fastidious operation than the one we’d passed

through. Officials would board the train at an outpost a couple of

degrees north of the port and make a sweep down the length of the train

during the last few hours of the journey. You could try to hide from

them but this was chancy. Instead, illegals tended to jump off the

train just short of the outpost and make deals with local sledge-men

who would spirit them past the border post.


These came in two categories. The older,

more established smugglers had bigger, long-haul sledge trains that

they would drive over the mountains to the icebound coast, a couple of

hundred miles away. There was also a newer breed using small, nimble,

short-range snow machines just to circumvent the sledge port itself. We

were hoping to get me on one of those. But the little ones couldn’t

operate in foul weather. Of course, all of this smuggling could have

been stopped if the Sæcular Power had been serious about doing so, but

it seemed they were willing to look the other way as long as illegals

showed them the courtesy of being a little bit sneaky.


Because of the Cousins’ jamming the nav satellites we could not

know our latitude, but we could guess how far we’d come by dead

reckoning. When we thought we were getting close, I put on all the warm

stuff I had and topped off the fuel bladder in my suitsack. The

backpack I’d been issued at Voco was too small, too new, and too

nice-looking, but Yul said he had an old one in his fetch that was

bigger, with a metal frame. So we bundled ourselves up and made our way

back over the catwalks to the flatbed in the rear. Our backs were to

the wind but we staggered and flailed as the sledges bucked over ridges

in the ice. We had to shovel three feet of snow off his vehicle. More

snow began to fall while we were doing this, and at times it seemed to

come down faster than we could get rid of it. But eventually we got

into the back of Yul’s fetch and found an old military backpack that

wouldn’t be too conspicuous in the company I’d soon be keeping. I

transferred the contents of my little rucksack into it. We filled the

remaining volume with energy bars, spare clothes, and other odds and

ends, and strapped a pair of snowshoes to the sides just in case.


Back at the head of the train, Gnel

supplied me with coins: enough to pay for passage if I haggled, not

enough to stain me as rich. Sammann printed out a map of the region

around the sledge port. Cord gave me a hug and a smack on the cheek. I

went out on the catwalk, pulled the fake-fur fringe of my hood out to

shield my face from wind blast, and looked out the left side of the

train. Like a litter of cubs following their mother, three much smaller

sledge trains were now shadowing us on that side. They’d materialized

out of the storm in the last quarter of an hour. Each consisted of a

tracked snow-crawler drawing a few sledges behind it. Some of those

sledges were open boxes or flatbeds. These were for smuggling goods,

and indeed one was now being laden; it had pulled alongside the third

sledge in our train, and men were throwing boxes and kicking gravid

bags down into it. Others, though, were covered—tents had been pitched

on their backs. I spied a couple of men in orange suitsacks vaulting

down into one of those.


Sammann had given me one guideline and two rules. The guideline: get on a sledge with lots of other passengers. There’s safety

in numbers. Rule 1: don’t let your feet touch the surface. You’ll be

abandoned and you’ll die. Rule 2 I’ll get to presently.


Gnel and I paced the catwalks for a quarter

of an hour, hoping to see something smaller than these three trains.

Tiny as they might have seemed next to the giant sledge train, they

were quite a bit bigger than most vehicles you’d see on a road down

south. They were probably bound west over the mountains. We did not see

any of the smaller, more agile vehicles that made short-range smuggling

runs in the vicinity of the sledge port. None of them was out

today—probably because of the foul weather.


One sharp-eyed sledgeman spied me. He

gunned his engine, coughing out a roil of black exhaust, and pulled

alongside. He had only one sledge behind his crawler. He slid his

window open and stuck his ruddy, hairy face out and quoted a price. I

walked back a few steps so that I could look into his sledge. Empty. He

quoted a lower price before I said a word.


It didn’t feel right to jump into the first

one that came along, so I shook my head, turned away, and headed back

toward where a larger train was taking on passengers. This operation

seemed more professional—if that word made any sense here—but I’d

arrived late. The sledges were already crowded with what looked like

organized bands of migrants whose stares suggested I wouldn’t be

welcome. And the price was high. A third, smaller train of mixed cargo

and passenger sledges looked more promising: there were enough

passengers aboard that I didn’t fear being abandoned.


Seeing me and a couple of other singletons

in negotiations with the driver of that train, the first sledgeman

swooped in again. He pulled ahead so that I could look in through the

flaps of the tent on his sledge and see that he’d taken on two

passengers. The door of his crawler was hanging open, so I could see

his control panel. A glowing screen was mounted above it, showing a

jagged trace that scrolled horizontally as we moved: a sonic. Rule 2

was that I should never entrust myself to a sledge that lacked one. It

used sound waves to probe the ice ahead for hidden crevasses. Most

crevasses could be bridged by the tractor’s long treads, but some might

swallow it and everything in train behind it.




I asked the driver where he was headed:

“Kolya,” he answered. The longer, mixed passenger-cargo train was bound

for another place called Imnash. The next icebreaker, we knew, was

scheduled to leave from Kolya in thirty-one hours. So, having agreed on

a price, I heaved my backpack down into the one-sledge train and became

its third passenger. According to custom, I paid the driver half of the

agreed-on fare up front and kept the other half in my pocket, payable

on arrival. For another quarter of an hour he jockeyed for position

along both flanks of the train, and managed to collect one more

passenger on the right side. By that point, no one remained on the

catwalks. All of the little sledge trains peeled away from the big one

as if they’d received a common signal. I reckoned we must be drawing

close to the outpost where the inspectors would board the train.


From fifty feet we could barely see the

giant train; from a hundred it was invisible. A minute after that even

the throbbing of its power plant had been muffled by the snow and

drowned out by the higher-pitched note of our little train’s motor.


This was hardly the sort of thing I’d had

in mind when I’d walked out of the chancel at the big Voco two weeks

earlier! Even when I’d made the decision to follow Orolo over the pole,

I hadn’t dreamed that the last leg of the journey was going to be like

this. If someone had told me back at Samble that I was going to have to

go on a ride like this one, I’d have come up with an excuse not to, and

gone straight to Tredegarh. What wouldn’t have been clear to me,

though, back in Samble, was just how routine this all was. People did

it all the time. All I needed to do was kill twenty-four hours, which

was how long it would take for this contraption to reach the sea.


We four passengers sat on a pair of

sideways-facing benches that could have accommodated eight. We all

looked about the same in our suitsacks. Mine was new compared to theirs

even though I’d been living in it for a week. Despite the trouble we’d

gone to to outfit me with desperate-looking baggage, mine still gleamed

in comparison with the first two passengers’: poly shopping bags bound

up with poly twine and reinforced with poly tape. The last passenger had an old suitcase bound up in a neat gridwork of yellow rope.


The first two called themselves Laro and

Dag, the last was Brajj, all of these being reasonably common

extramuros names. I said my name was Vit. Further conversation was

difficult over the engine noise and in any case these guys didn’t seem

very talkative. Laro and Dag huddled together under a blanket. I had

the idea that they were brothers. Brajj, having entered last, sat

closest to the flaps in the rear. Between his bulk (he was a little

bigger than I) and his clumsy suitcase he claimed a lot of space. But

it was space that we were glad to let him have because of the snow that

swirled in from the sledge’s coiling wake.


I’d left all my books with Cord. No one had

a speely. There was nothing to see outside but swirling snow. I set my

catalytic heater to the lowest power level that would keep my digits

alive, folded my arms, propped my legs up on my pack, slumped down on

the wooden bench, and tried not to think about how slowly time was

passing.





It seemed like years since I’d been in the

comfortable surroundings of the concent. But here on this sledge I’d

gone into a daydream where I could practically see my fraas and suurs

in front of me and hear their voices. From Arsibalt, Lio, and Jesry, I

moved on to the decidedly more enjoyable image of Ala. I was fancying

her at Tredegarh, a place of which I knew little except that it was

older and much bigger than Saunt Edhar, and that the climate was

better, the gardens and groves lusher and more fragrant. I had to

interpolate a fantasy wherein I survived this trip, found Orolo, got

back to Tredegarh, and was allowed in the gate as opposed to being

Thrown Back or spending the next five years with nothing except the

Book to keep me company. Having got those formalities out of the way, I

conjured up a half-waking dream of a fine supper in a rich old

Tredegarh refectory at which fraas and suurs from all over the world

raised glasses of really good-tasting stuff to me and Ala for having

made those pinhole camera observations. Then the daydream

took a more private turn involving a long walk in a secluded

garden…this made me drowsy. It was not turning out as I’d expected.

Whatever part of my mind was in charge of daydreams was shaping this

one to comfort me and lull me, not to arouse passions.


A shift in the sledge’s attitude brought me just awake enough to know I’d been sleeping.


In going over the pole, we’d followed a

stocky isthmus. Two tectonic plates had collided in the far north and

pushed up a range of mountains that would have been tricky to pass over

if they hadn’t been buried under two miles of ice. During the last day

or so the continent had broadened beneath us, but we had stayed to the

right or (now that we were southbound) western side of it. Not all the

way to the edge, for the western coast was a steep subduction-zone

mountain range. There was very little level ground between it and the

frozen sea, and most of that was covered in treacherous

crevasse-riddled glaciers flowing down from the mountains. So instead

the sledge train stayed some miles inland of the coastal range,

tracking across a plateau with stable ice. That’s where the sledge port

stood. Roads ran south from there across ice, tundra, and taiga to

connect up with the transportation network that ramified all the way to

the Sea of Seas. But the first outpost going that way was hundreds of

miles distant. Smugglers such as the man driving my sledge could not

prosper carrying their passengers such a long way. Instead they veered

to the right, or west, bypassing the sledge port and taking one of

three passes that slashed through the coastal range to connect with

ports on the shore of the ocean. These were reachable from the south

via icebreakers.


Cord, Sammann, and the Crades would simply

get into the fetches and drive south from the sledge port. If the

weather had been better and the short-range smugglers had been

operating today, I could have paid one of them to whisk me around the

sledge port and drop me off on the road a few miles south where I could

simply have climbed aboard Yul’s fetch. Instead, my four companions

would drive south without me for a couple of days into a more temperate

zone, then swing west and cross the mountains to a harbor

called Mahsht—the home port of the icebreaker fleet. In the meantime I

would buy passage on an icebreaker or one of the convoy ships that

followed in its wake. This would bring me down to Mahsht. Once we’d

rendezvoused there, it would be only a few days’ drive to the Sea of

Seas. So what I was doing now was Plan B—Plan A being the short-range

whisk-around—and frankly we hadn’t discussed it in very much detail

because we hadn’t expected it to come out this way. I had a nagging

feeling that I’d made the decision hastily and probably forgotten some

important details, but during the first couple of hours on this little

sledge train I’d had plenty of time to think it through and satisfy

myself that it would turn out fine.


Anyway, when I sensed the sledge changing

its attitude beneath me I took it as a sign that we were beginning the

ascent to one of the three passes that connected the inland plateau to

the coast. According to Sammann, one of these was considerably better

than the other two, but was closed by avalanches from time to time. The

sledge drivers never knew, from one day to the next, which one they

would end up taking. They made up their minds on the spur of the moment

based on what they heard from other smugglers on the wireless. Since

our driver was in a separate vehicle, sealed up in a heated cab, there

was no way for me to overhear his wireless traffic and get any sense of

what was going on.


A few hours later, however, the sledge’s

velocity dwindled and it shambled to a halt. We passengers spent a

minute or so learning how to move again. I checked my watch and was

astonished to learn that we had been underway for sixteen hours. I must

have slept eight or ten of them—no wonder I was stiff. Brajj hurled a

tent-flap aside to flood our sledge with grey light, bright but

directionless. The storm had broken, the air was free of snow, but

clouds still screened the sky. We had paused on the flank of a

mountain, but the surface beneath us was reasonably level—some sort of

sledge track, I guessed, that traversed the slope through whatever pass

our driver had decided to take.


Brajj showed no interest in getting out. I

got to my feet and made as if I were going to climb over his

outstretched legs, but he held up a

hand to stay me. A moment later we heard a series of thuds from the

sledge tractor followed by a peeling and cracking noise as its door was

pushed open through a coating of ice. Feet descended steel stairs and

crunched on snow. Brajj lowered his hand and drew in his legs: I was

free to go. Only then did I remember Sammann’s warning not to let my

feet touch the surface, lest I be abandoned. Brajj, who seemed to have

done this before, knew it wasn’t prudent to venture out until the

driver had exited the tractor.


We’d invested in snow goggles at

Eighty-three. I pulled them down over my eyes and climbed off the

sledge to find an unfamiliar man standing on the snow up next to the

tractor, urinating on the uphill slope. I reasoned that there must be a

bunk in the tractor and that two drivers must spell each other. Sure

enough, the first driver now stuck his sleepy-looking face out the

door, pulled on his goggles, and climbed out to join the other. They

kept the door open, apparently so that they could listen to wireless

traffic. This came through in rare bursts, weirdly modulated. I could

understand enough to gather that it was sledge operators exchanging

information about conditions in the passes, and who was where. But very

little seemed to be getting through. When a transmission did erupt from

the speaker, the two drivers stopped talking, turned toward the open

door, and strained to follow it.


Laro and Dag climbed out and went to the

other side—the downhill side—of the sledge. I heard exclamations from

both of them. They began talking excitedly. The drivers looked annoyed

since this made it difficult to follow the bursts of distorted speech

on the wireless.


I went around to the other side. From here

we had a fine view down a snow-covered slope, interrupted from place to

place by spires of black stone, to a U-shaped valley. We were on its

north side. To our right, it broadened and flattened as it debouched

into the coastal strip. To our left it grew steeper as it ascended into

white mountains. So we had made it over the summit of the coastal range

and were descending toward one of the icebound ports.


But that wasn’t what had drawn exclamations from Laro and Dag.

They were looking at a black snake, ten miles long, wreathed in steam,

slithering up the valley toward the mountains: a convoy of heavy

vehicles, jammed nose to tail. All the same color.


“Military,” announced Brajj, climbing out of the sledge. He shook his head in amazement. “You’d think a war was starting.”


“An exercise?” suggested Laro.


“Big one,” said Brajj in a skeptical tone.

“Wrong equipment.” He spoke with such a combination of authority and

derision that I guessed he must be retired military—or a deserter. He

shook his head. “There’s a mountain division on point,” he said, and

pointed to the head of the column, which, I now noticed, consisted of

several score white vehicles running on treads. “After that it’s all

flatlanders.” He chopped air, aiming for the first of the dark

drummons, then swept his hand down-valley, encompassing the remainder

of the column, trailing toward the frozen sea, which could be seen from

here as a white, jumbled plateau crazed with blue fractures. A smear of

yellow and brown marked the port we were trying to reach. A lane of

black water had been gouged by an icebreaker but was already fading as

the ice crowded in behind it.


I was not a praxic and not an Ita but I’d

seen enough speelies as a kid, and heard enough from Sammann, to have a

general idea of how the wireless worked. There was only so much

bandwidth to go around. In most circumstances it was plentiful. This

was true even in big cities. But military used lots of it, and

sometimes jammed what it didn’t use. The sledge operators up here in

these mountains were accustomed to having a nearly infinite amount of

bandwidth at their disposal, and had grown dependent on it—they were

always swapping reports on the weather and on trail conditions. But at

some point during today’s journey our drivers must have noticed

something new to them: transmissions got through rarely, and were of

poor quality. Perhaps they had thought their equipment was

malfunctioning until they had crested the pass and discovered this:

hundreds, maybe thousands of military vehicles, commandeering every

scrap of bandwidth.


Everything about this was so remarkable that we might have stood there for hours looking at it if Brajj hadn’t turned to pay attention

to our drivers. They were clambering over the tractor, knocking ice

from various pieces of equipment, inspecting the treads, rattling the

linkages between the tractor and our sledge, checking fluid levels in

the engine. Brajj was a dour and calm man but he was extremely

attentive, even skittish, to be standing on the snow at a time when

both of the drivers had mounted the tractor. After a minute he simply

became too uncomfortable and climbed back aboard. I was happy to follow

his example. Only a few moments after I’d settled back into my place,

we heard the door of the tractor thudding shut. We called out to Laro

and Dag who were several paces behind the sledge, frozen in amazement

at the sight of the convoy. We managed to get Dag’s attention. He

turned to look at us but still didn’t seem to grasp what was happening

until the engine of the tractor roared up, and a linkage clanked as it

was put into gear. He smacked Laro on the shoulder, then took a couple

of paces toward us, grabbing Laro by the collar as he went by and

jerking him along in his wake. Brajj shifted closer to the back and

thrust out an arm in case he had to pull them aboard. I got to my feet

and moved closer to help. The tractor’s engine roared louder and we

heard the distinctive clanking of its treads beginning to move. Laro

and Dag reached us at about the same time; Brajj and I each grabbed one

of their hands and hauled them aboard. Their momentum carried them

forward into the front of the sledge. The tread clanks had already

built to a steady rhythm.


We weren’t moving.


Brajj and I looked out at the snow. Then we looked at each other.


Both of us jumped out and ran around to the

sides. The tractor was fifty feet away from us and picking up speed.

The hitch that had linked it to our sledge was dragging on the snow

behind it.


Brajj and I started running after it. The

tracks supported our weight most of the time but every few steps we’d

break through and sink to mid-thigh. In any event, I ran faster. I

covered maybe a hundred feet before the side hatch swung open and the

second driver emerged. He clambered out on to a sort of running board above the right tread, and let me see a long projectile weapon slung on his back.


“What are you doing!?” I shouted.


He reached into the cab, hauled out

something bulky, and let it drop into the snow: a carton of energy

bars. “We’re going to have to take a different pass now,” he called

back. “It’s farther. Steeper. We don’t have enough fuel.”


“So you’re abandoning us!?”


He shook his head and dropped out another

object: a can of suitsack fuel. “Going to see if we can beg some fuel

from the military,” he shouted—getting farther away—“down there. Then

we’ll come back up here and fetch you.” Then he ducked back into the

cab and closed the door behind himself.


The logic was clear enough: they had been

surprised by the convoy. They couldn’t get to safety without more fuel.

If they took us with them on their begging expedition, it’d be obvious

that they were smugglers and they would get in trouble. So they had to

park us for a while. They knew we’d object. So they’d left us no choice.


Brajj had caught up with me. He had

produced, from somewhere, a small weapon. But as he and I both

understood, there was no point in taking potshots at the back side of

the tractor. Only it, and the two men in it, could get us out of here.





When Brajj and I got back to the sledge

dragging the fuel and the energy bars, we found Laro and Dag kneeling,

face to face, holding each other’s hands and mumbling so rapidly that I

couldn’t make out a single word. I had never seen any behavior quite

like it and had to watch them for a few moments before I collected that

they were praying. Then I felt embarrassed. I stepped back to get out

of Brajj’s way in case he wanted to join them, but the look on his face

as he regarded the Deolaters was contemptuous. He caught my eye and

jerked his head back toward the flaps. I joined him outside. Both of us

were hooded, goggled, and swathed against the cold. Frost grew with

visible speed on our face-masks as we talked.




Brajj had been checking his watch every few

minutes since we had been abandoned. “It’s been a quarter of an hour,”

he said. “If those guys haven’t come back for us in two hours, we have

to save ourselves.”


“You really think they’d leave us here to die?”


Brajj chose not to answer that question but

he did offer: “They might get into a situation where they have no

choice. Maybe they can’t get fuel. Maybe their tractor breaks down. Or

the military commandeers it. Point being, we have to have our own plan.”


“I have a pair of snowshoes—”


“I know. We have to make three more. Load up your water pouch.”


The suitsacks had pouches on the front that

could be stuffed with snow. Over time it would melt and become drinking

water. That consumed energy, but it was sustainable as long as the body

had food or the suitsack had fuel. We had both—for the time being. We

packed ours as full of snow as we could. We replenished our fuel

bladders from the cache that the drivers had left for us. Brajj

interrupted the others’ prayers and insisted they also take on water

and fuel. Then he had us each eat a couple of energy bars. Only then

did we get working.


The tent was held up by flexible metal

poles. We collapsed it and drew them out. This had the side effect of

getting Laro and Dag’s attention. Our shelter was gone; they had no

choice but to join in our plan. Brajj had a pocket tool with a little

saw blade; he went to work cutting the tent poles into shorter

segments. Once the others saw that there was work to be done, they

joined in cheerfully. Dag, who was the sturdier of the two, took over

the sawing of the tent poles. Brajj had Laro get to work scavenging

every inch of rope and twine at our disposal. Then—perhaps leading by

example—he undid the yellow rope that he had used to gird his suitcase.

This turned out to be some thirty feet long. He undid the latches and

dumped out the contents: hundreds of tiny vials, all packed in loose

nodules of foam. I hadn’t seen such things before but I guessed that

these were pharmaceuticals. “Child support,” Brajj explained, reading

the look on my face.




The panels of the suitcase were a tough

leathery material that we cut into slabs to make the platforms of the

snowshoes. We bent the tent poles to make crude quadrangular frames and

lashed the suitcase-panels to them using twine from Laro’s and Dag’s

improvised baggage. This took a while because we had to do it with bare

fingers, which went numb in a few seconds. The contents of Laro’s and

Dag’s baggage were mostly old clothes, which they were willing to

abandon, and keepsakes of their families, which they weren’t. I pulled

one of the benches off the sledge, flipped it upside down, and kicked

its flimsy legs off. It would serve as a toboggan. We loaded it with

the supplies and wrapped them up in what remained of the tent. My pack

had already been stripped of its metal frame and of anything that would

serve as rope. I added my energy bars and my stove to the supplies,

threw away my extra clothes, and put my bolt, my chord, and my sphere

(pilled down as small as it would go) into the cargo pockets on the

body of my suitsack. I considered adding my chord to our stock of rope,

but we seemed to have plenty—Laro had found a fifty-foot coil stored

under one of the sledge’s benches and we’d been able to make up another

fifty by splicing together odds and ends from the tent’s rigging and so

on. That plus Brajj’s thirty feet of yellow stuff gave us enough that

we were able to rope ourselves together at intervals of thirty or forty

feet, which Brajj explained would be useful if one of us lost his

footing on a steep slope or fell into a crevasse.


These preparations consumed almost four

hours, so we set out late according to Brajj’s timetable. The convoy

down below seemed as though it had not moved an inch. Brajj estimated

that it was two thousand feet below us. He said that if “everything

goes to hell” we should just “pull the ripcord” and let ourselves slide

down the ice to the valley floor where we could throw ourselves on the

mercy of the military. They might arrest us but they probably wouldn’t

let us die. It was a last resort, however, because if we tried it we

stood a good chance of falling into a crevasse before we reached the

bottom.


Brajj took the lead. He was armed with a length of tent-pole that

he would use to probe the snow ahead of him for crevasses. At his hip

he had his “sticker,” a long, heavy-bladed knife. He claimed that if

one of us fell into a crevasse he would throw himself down and jam this

into the ice, anchoring himself so as to arrest our fall. He had me go

last and saw to it that I was armed with an L-shaped piece of metal

scavenged from the frame of my pack, which I was to use in the same

manner. He even had me practice throwing myself down face-first and

jamming the short leg of the thing into the ice. Dag, then Laro, were

roped up between us. The toboggan trailed behind me.


The first part of the trek was balky and

frustrating as the snowshoes or the bindings that held them to the

others’ feet seemed to give out every few steps. The whole expedition

seemed to have failed before it had started. But then I noticed we’d

been going for a whole hour without pause. I sipped from the tube that

ran down to my water-pouch and munched slowly on an energy bar. I

looked around me and actually enjoyed the view.


Allswell! The thought

hit me like a snowball in the nose. I’d been out of the concent for a

little more than two weeks, eating extramuros food the whole time. Lio

and Arsibalt and the others had probably made it to Tredegarh in less

than a week—too brief a time for them to be affected. But I had been

out long enough that the ubiquitous chemical must have taken up

residence in my brain—subtly altering the way I thought about

everything.


What would my fraas and suurs have said

about the decisions I had been making recently? Nothing too polite.

Just look at where those decisions had gotten me! And yet, even in the

midst of this terrible situation, I’d been strolling around with

nothing on my mind except for how pretty the view was!


I tried to force myself into a sterner

frame of mind—tried to envision some bad outcomes so that I could lay

plans. Brajj’s “sticker” might serve as an anchor in a crisis—but he

might just as well use it to cut himself free if one of us fell in.

What should I do in that event?


But it was no use. Brajj had made himself

the leader, and had made reasonable decisions to this point. There was

no limit to the amount of time and energy I could put into spinning such alarming fantasies in my head. Better to attend to the here and now.


Or was that the Allswell talking?


For the first few hours we followed the

tamped-down tracks left by the tractor, but then they veered downhill,

following a cirque—a crescent-shaped vale cut by a tributary

glacier—down toward the valley floor. This would take us straight to

the military convoy, and so here we broke away from the trail and

ventured across trackless snow for the first time. The first bit was

slow going as we had to work our way up out of the cirque. By the time

the slope began to level, I was ready to “pull the ripcord” in Brajj’s

phrase. If I threw myself on the mercy of some military drummon

operator, what was the worst that could happen? I hadn’t broken any

laws. It was only my three companions who had to go to such ridiculous

lengths to avoid the authorities’ notice. But for better or worse I was

roped up to them and couldn’t cut myself free without endangering their

lives and mine; I had to wait for them to pull the ripcord.


Then we crested a subsidiary ridge and came

in view of the coastline. I was startled at how close it was. We had to

shed some altitude but the horizontal distance didn’t look that great.

We could easily pick out individual buildings in the port and count the

military transport ships moored at its piers. Military aerocraft were

lined up at the edge of a dirty landing-strip wedged in between the

coast and the foot of the mountains. We watched one take off and bank

to the south.


One or two civilian ships were also in the

harbor, and this gave us all the idea that if we could only get down

there in one piece—which looked like less than a day’s travel—we could

buy passage on one of them and get out of here behind the next

icebreaker. So we took a rest up there in preparation for what we all

knew would be a long and arduous final push. I forced myself to eat two

more energy bars. The things were starting to make me sick but perhaps

that was just me worrying about the Allswell. I washed them down with

water and refilled my snow pouches and my fuel bladder. Our supplies

were holding up well. The sledge drivers had given

us plenty—perhaps thinking that they might not be returning for a

while. I was glad we had taken action—moved out instead of huddling in

that tent not knowing if we’d live or die.


After an hour’s rest we repacked the

toboggan and got underway again. We descended into a round-bottomed

cleft: another cirque that cut across our path and seemed to curve

toward the port. Brajj decided to follow this one down. The risk was

that it would become too steep for us to negotiate and that we’d have

to backtrack. On a few occasions during the next couple of hours I

became very worried about this, but then we would come around a bend,

or crest a little rise, and get a view of the next mile or so and see

that there was nothing we couldn’t handle. On steeper bits the toboggan

would try to run ahead of me, and then I would have my hands full for a

while—the only remedy was to slew it round ahead of me and let it pull

me downhill as I leaned back against its weight. At such times the

others, who didn’t have to contend with such a burden, would

outdistance me. The rope joining me to Laro would draw taut and remind

me of his impatience. I felt like reeling him in and smacking him. But

Brajj kept our pace from running out of control. Even in stretches that

looked smooth and safe he plodded along at the same rate, pausing every

couple of steps to probe the snow ahead of him with his tent pole.


I had long since learned to distinguish

Brajj’s snowshoe prints from those of the others, and from time to time

I would notice, to my indescribable annoyance, that they had diverged:

Brajj had zigged for whatever reason, and Dag had zagged, and Laro

followed in his kinsman’s steps, obligating me to do the same, and

hence pass over ground that Brajj had not probed.


We had probably shed three-quarters of the

altitude needed to reach the port. It would be relatively easy going

from here. Laro and Dag were laborers—they had plenty of energy left

and yearned to push on past the plodding Brajj to a place where they

could get a hot meal and peel off the accursed suitsacks.


It was on one of those steep bits where the

toboggan had swung around in front of me and I was straining back

against two ropes at once that I noticed myself being pulled out of

balance. The tension on the rope that

connected me to Laro was rapidly increasing. I planted my left snowshoe

and pulled back, but the last hours’ descent had turned my leg muscles

into quivering flab. I collapsed to my knee, the rope at my waist

pulling me forward. Just before I planted my face in the snow I

collected a glimpse of Brajj standing up facing me, a hundred feet

away, sticker in hand. Laro was sliding and tumbling down the slope,

pulling me with him. Dag—who was roped between Brajj and Laro—was

nowhere to be seen.


That remembered image was all I had to go

on during the next little while, because I was face-down, being pulled

along by Laro and by the toboggan. And—I realized—by Dag. He must have

fallen into a crevasse! Why hadn’t Brajj stopped his fall? The rope—the

frayed yellow thirty-foot poly rope that had connected Brajj to

Dag—must have snapped. Either that or Brajj had cut it with a swipe of

his sticker. I was the only person who could stop this, and save Laro,

Dag, and myself: I had to plunge that L-shaped piece of metal into the

ice. I should have had it out and ready to use—should have been

watching ahead for signs of trouble. But in order to free both hands to

wrangle the toboggan I’d stuck it in one of the equipment loops on the

outside of my suitsack. Was it still there? I kicked wildly with one

leg and managed to roll over on my back. My head was plowing up a

bow-wave of snow that buried my face. I snorted it out of my nose and

stifled the urge to inhale. I groped around until I felt something

hard, and pulled it out—or so I guessed. Through those mittens it was

hard to tell what was going on. I got the pick pointed away from my

body, flailed the legs again, and managed to roll over on my stomach.

My head came up out of the snow and I heard Laro screaming something—he

must have gone over the brink of the crevasse. I put all of my weight

on top of that L-shaped hunk of metal and drove it down. It caught—sort

of—and became a pivot; my body spun around it as the rope at my waist,

now drawn by the combined weights of Laro and Dag, torqued me downhill.

The pick tugged at my hands, but not all that hard. It didn’t seem to

be holding.


Or rather it held, but it held in a raft of snow that had broken loose and was now sliding down the hill beneath me.




This was just plain bad luck; if we’d been

traversing packed snow, the pick would have had something firm in which

to get purchase, but yesterday’s storm had left the packed ice covered

with powdery stuff that slid freely on top of it.


Another vicious jerk at my waist told me

that the toboggan had just hurtled over the edge. I raised my face up

out of this mini-avalanche and got the weird idea that I wasn’t

actually moving—because, of course, the snow around me was moving at

the same speed as I. Then there was nothing under my toes. Nothing

under my ankles. Nothing under my knees. My hips. The rope jerked me

straight down with the weight of three men. I guess I did a sort of

back-flip into the crevasse. But I only got to experience the terror of

free fall for a fraction of a second before something terrible happened

to my back and I stopped. The rope’s force was pulling me down against

something immobile and hard. Loose snow continued to pummel me for a

while. I remembered a woolly story that Yul had told me about getting

caught in an avalanche, the importance of swimming, of preserving air

space in front of one’s face. I couldn’t swim, but I did get one arm up

and crooked an elbow over my mouth and nose. The weight of snow on my

body built steadily, the tension on the rope slackened. Most of the

avalanche seemed to be parting around me—falling away to either side—as

I remained stuck.


For some reason I heard Jesry’s voice in my head saying, “Oh, so you’re only being buried alive a little bit.” What a jerk!


Then it stopped. I could hear my own heart beating, and nothing else.


I pushed outwards with my elbow. The snow

moved a little and gave me a void in front of my face—air for a moment.

More importantly it kept me from panicking, and let me open my eyes.

There was dim blue-grey light. I could hear Arsibalt saying “Just

enough to read by!” and Lio answering “If only you’d thought to bring a

book.”


For whatever reason, I was not falling any

deeper into the crevasse. Yet. And I didn’t think I’d fallen too far

into it. Something had stopped my fall. I guessed that the toboggan had

gotten lodged sideways between the

crevasse walls and I’d fallen on it. Hard. I took a moment to wiggle my

toes and my ankles, just to verify that I hadn’t broken my spine. It

would have been nice to explore with my hands but one was pinned at my

side and the other—the one I’d crooked over my face—was hemmed in by

snow. I was, however, able to move that one downwards over my body. I

found the zipper pull for my front pocket and inched it open. Then I

moved that hand up to my face and pulled my mitten off with my teeth. I

reached my bare hand down into the open pocket and fished out my sphere.


Spheres don’t have controls as such. They

recognize gestures. You talk to them with your hands. My hand was a

little stiff but I was able to make the unscrewing gesture that caused

the sphere to get bigger. After a while this became a little scary

because the sphere was stealing my air supply, claiming the void in

front of my face and pressing on my chest. But I had the idea that the

snow over me wasn’t that deep. So I kept telling it to expand. And just

when I thought my own sphere was going to squeeze the life out of me, I

heard rushing noises—a small avalanche. I reversed the gesture. The

sphere got small, the weight came off, and I found myself gazing up

through clear air between walls of blue ice. The sky was visible. And

so was Brajj, standing at the edge of the crevasse looking down at me.

I’d fallen about twenty feet.


“You’re avout,” was the first thing he said to me.


“Yes.”


“Got anything else in your bag of tricks?

Because I have no rope. It all went down with those two Gheeths.” He

patted the length of yellow rope tied around his waist. Only a foot or

so dangled below the knot. It had been severed at exactly the point

where the blade of his sticker would have intercepted it in a moment of

panic—or of calculation.


“I thought maybe you cut it,” I said. I don’t know why. I guess it was that weird avout compulsion to state facts.


“Maybe I did.”


We looked at each other for a while. It occurred to me that Brajj was an exceptionally rational man—more so than some avout. He

was another like the Crades or Cord or Artisan Quin who was smart

enough to be an avout but who for whatever reason had ended up

extramuros. In his case it seemed that being alone out here with no

bond to anyone else like him had made him utterly calculating and

ruthless.


“Let’s say you don’t care whether I live or

die,” I said. “Let’s say that every decision you’ve made has been based

on self-interest. You kept us alive, brought us with you, and roped

yourself to us because you knew that if you fell in we’d try to help

you. But the minute one of us fell in you cut the rope to save

yourself. You looked down into this crack out of simple curiosity.

Nothing more. Then you saw my sphere. You know I’m avout. What’s your

decision?”


Brajj had found all of this faintly

amusing. He rarely heard intelligent people state things clearly and he

sort of enjoyed its novelty. He pondered my question for a minute or

so, turning away at one point to look down the slope. Then he turned

back to scrutinize me. “Move your legs,” he said.


I did. “Arms.” I did.


“Those Gheeths were more trouble than they were worth,” he said.


“Is that an ethnic slur for what Laro and Dag are?”


“Ethnic slur? Yeah, it’s an ethnic slur,” he said in a mocking tone. “Gheeths are great for digging ditches and pulling weeds. Worse than useless up here. But you might keep me alive. How are you going to get out of there?”


For 3700 years, we had lived under a ban

that prevented us from owning anything other than the bolt, the chord,

and the sphere. Shelves of books had been written about the ingenious

uses to which these objects had been put by avout who’d found

themselves in trying circumstances. Many of the tricks had names: Saunt

Ablavan’s Ratchet. Ramgad’s Contraption. The Lazy Fraa. I was no

expert, but when we’d been younger, Jesry and I had leafed through some

such books and practiced a few of those tricks, just for sport.


Chords and bolts were made of the same stuff: a fiber that could coil into a tight helix, becoming short and bulky and springy, or

relax into a straight filament, becoming long, lean, and inelastic. In

the winter we told the fibers in our bolts to coil up. They got much

shorter but the bolt became thick and warm because of the pockets of

air involved with those coils. In summer we straightened them and the

bolts became long and sheer. Likewise the chord could be fat and

yarn-like or long and thready.


I made my sphere about as big as my head,

wrapped my bolt around it, and tied it together with my chord. Then I

made the sphere get bigger and let the bolt expand with it. The sphere

wedged itself between the walls. It could go up but it wouldn’t go

down, because the crevasse was wider at the top and narrower below. I

pushed it up a short distance and it found a new equilibrium, a little

higher. Then I expanded and pushed, expanded and pushed, a few inches

at a time. The walls were surprisingly irregular, so all of this was

more complicated than I’m making it sound. But once I got the hang of

it, it went fast.


“Got it!” Brajj called. The sphere moved

away from me, scraping against the ice walls. A panic came over me

until I found my chord with a flailing arm. Then I let it slide through

my hand until Brajj had pulled the sphere all the way out of the

crevasse. Brajj and I were now linked by the chord. He jammed his

sticker into the ice up there and wrapped my chord around its handle—or

so he claimed.


I didn’t want to lose our connection to the

toboggan and to Laro and Dag, but I had to cut myself free of it to

have any hope of bettering things. The end of my chord I joined to the

loop of rope around my waist. Then I cut my way free from that loop. So

I was free of the hundreds of pounds of stuff anchoring me to the

bottom. The chord was now our only link to the toboggan and to Laro and

Dag. I gave instructions to Brajj on how to make the sphere smaller. He

threw it down to me. I wedged it between the crevasse walls again. This

time—now that I had freedom to move—I was able to get astride it. For

the first time since the accident I took my weight off whatever hard

thing had stopped my fall and saved my life. Looking down at it, I

verified that it was indeed the toboggan, wedged at an angle between

the crevasse walls like a stick

thrust between a monster’s jaws. When I took my weight off it, it

shifted, and a moment later it fell, tumbling another ten feet before

getting wedged again. Braj had anchored his loop of the chord to his

sticker, jammed in the ice, so we didn’t lose it. I was able to

extricate myself from the crevasse by expanding the sphere, which

pushed me up as it inflated, while keeping the chord looped around one

hand in case I fell off. Once I was out, we doubled the anchor by

driving in my makeshift ice-axe, and secured the chord to that as well.


For a little while we were able to haul the

rope up by causing the chord to get shorter (a simple implementation of

Saunt Ablavan’s Ratchet) but after a few minutes it ran out of stored

energy. If I left it out in the sun for a while it would recharge, but

we didn’t have time. And it wasn’t able to store a lot of energy

anyway. So, after that, Brajj and I hauled using muscle power. Once we

had gotten the toboggan up on the surface, this became markedly easier.

A few moments later, Laro’s corpse could be seen deep down in the

valley of blue light, emerging from the snow that had piled up in the

bottom. The rope that trailed below him was no more than ten feet long,

and ended in a botched knot. It had held well enough to drag down Laro,

me, and the toboggan, but must have given way under the jerk when the

toboggan and I came to rest. After that Dag must have free-fallen to

the very bottom of the crevasse and been buried under falling snow. I

hoped his death had been quicker than the long agonizing slide and

tumble that had preceded it.


Brajj kept throwing me dirty looks as if to say why are we doing this? but I ignored him and kept pulling on the rope until we had brought Laro’s body up to the brink of the crevasse.


As we were rolling him up onto the surface at last, he twitched, gasped, and called out the name of his deity.


Now I understood Brajj. He was smarter, more rational than I at the moment. He’d probably been wondering what’ll we do if he turns out to be alive?


I just lay there on the snow for a few

minutes, half dead. All the injuries I’d suffered in the fall were now

making themselves obvious.




There was nothing to do but go on. Brajj

was furious to have been burdened with an injured man, and kept

stamping around in circles and gazing hungrily down the slope,

wondering whether he should chance it alone. After a few minutes he

decided to stay with us—for now.


Laro had a broken thigh, and his skull had

taken a beating during the fall, creating some bloody lacerations.

Between that and being buried in snow for a while, he was groggy.


One of Laro’s snowshoes still dangled from

his foot. I took it apart and used its pieces to splint his leg. Then I

made my sphere big and flat on the snow.


The sphere is a porous membrane. Each pore

is a little pump that can move air in or out. Like a self-inflating

balloon. The spring constant—the stretchiness—of the membrane is

controllable. If you turn the stretchiness way down (that is, make it

stiff) and pump in lots of air, it becomes a hard little pill. What I

did now was the opposite. I made it very stretchy and removed most of

the air. I spread my bolt flat on the snow and dragged the flaccid

sphere onto it. Then I got Brajj to help me roll Laro into the middle.

He screamed and cried out to his mother and his deity as we were doing

this. I took that as a good sign because he was seeming more alert. I

rolled him in the sphere and then wrapped the bolt loosely around that,

leaving his head exposed. The whole bundle I tied with my chord.

Finally I inflated the sphere a little bit while telling the bolt not

to stretch. The sphere expanded to form an air bed that coccooned

Laro’s whole body. The bundle was between two and three feet in

diameter, and slid over the snow reasonably well, since I’d made the

bolt sheer and smooth. I could never have pulled it up a slope, but

going downhill ought to work.


I towed Laro and Brajj towed the toboggan.

We tied ourselves together with the length of good rope that had

formerly connected me to Laro, and set out in the same style as before,

with Brajj going first and using his tent pole to probe for crevasses.


I tried not to think about the possibility that Dag might still be alive in the bottom of the crevasse.


Then I tried not to wonder how many other migrants’ corpses would be found strewn all over this territory if all the ice and snow ever melted.


Then I tried not to wonder if Orolo’s might be among them.


For now I’d just have to settle for making sure I

wasn’t among them. I paid close attention to Brajj’s footprints. If

Brajj went into another crevasse, I might try to save him—which was why

he’d kept me alive. But if I went in, Laro and I were both dead. So I

stepped where he stepped.


After a few hours I lost track of what was

happening. Everything I had was channeled into keeping my feet moving.

There’s not much point in trying to offer a description of the

bleakness, the moral and physical misery. In those rare moments when I

was lucid enough to think, I reminded myself that avout had been

through far worse ordeals in the Third Sack and at other such times.


Since I was so groggy, I have no way of

guessing when Brajj parted company with us. Laro’s voice brought me to

awareness. He was screaming and fighting with the sphere, trying to get

out. I told Brajj we had to stop. Hearing no answer, I looked around

and discovered that he was gone. The rope that had connected us had

fallen victim to his sticker. And no wonder: we were on the floor of a

valley that led straight to the port, a couple of miles away, and the

ground was black and burnished smooth by all of the tires and treads

that had passed over it. We were on the path of the military convoy. No

worries about crevasses here. So Brajj had taken off. I never saw him

again.


Laro was frantic to get out. Perhaps he’d

been that way for a long time. I was worried he’d hurt himself flailing

around. I inflated the sphere until he couldn’t move at all, and then I

knelt beside him and looked into his eyes and tried to talk some sense

into him. This was monumentally difficult. I’d known some, such as

Tulia, who could do it effortlessly—or at least she made it look that

way. Yul simply would have bellowed into his face, used the force of

his personality. But it was not a thing that came easily to me.


He wanted to know where Dag was. I told him

Dag was dead, which did nothing to calm him down—but I couldn’t lie to

him and I was too exhausted to devise a better plan.




The sound of engines cut through the still,

frigid air. It came from up-valley. A small convoy of military fetches

was headed our way—detached from the huge procession to go back and run

some errand at the port.


By the time they approached within hailing

distance, Laro had got a grip on himself, if hopeless, uncontrollable

sobbing could be so described. I relaxed the sphere, undid the chord,

and dragged him free of the bundle, then got everything stowed back in

my pockets.


Those guys in the military trucks were real

pros. They came right over and picked us up. They took us into town.

They didn’t ask questions, at least none that I remember. Though I was

not exactly in a mirthful frame of mind, I marked this down as being

funny. With my simpleminded view of the Sæcular world, I’d assumed that

the soldiers, simply because they looked sort of like cops with their

uniforms and weapons, would act like cops, and arrest us. But it turned

out that they couldn’t have cared less about law enforcement, which

made perfect sense once I thought about it for ten seconds. They took

Laro to a charity clinic run by the local Kelx—a religion that was

strong in these parts. Then they dropped me off at the edge of the

water. I bought some decent food at a tavern and slept face-down on the

table until I was ejected. Standing out there on the street I felt

stretched thin, diluted, as if that pale arctic sunlight could shine

right through me and give my heart a sunburn. But I could still walk

and I had money—the sledge driver had never collected the second half

of his fare. I bought passage to Mahsht on the next outbound transport,

boarded it as soon as they’d let me, climbed into a bunk, and slept one

more time in that horrible suitsack.


Kelx: (1) A religious faith created during the Sixteenth or Seventeenth Century A.R. The name is a contraction of the Orth Ganakelux meaning “Triangle Place,” so called because of the symbolic importance of triangles in the faith’s iconography. (2) An ark of the Kelx faith. Kedev: A devotee of the Kelx or Triangle faith.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





About halfway into the four-day cruise I

had recovered to the point where I was capable of introspection. I

spent a lot of time sitting very still in the ship’s mess, eating. I

had to sit still because I’d messed up my ribs and back in the fall,

and it hurt to move—even to breathe. The food was good compared to

energy bars. Perhaps I ate so much of it in hopes that it would bring

up the level of Allswell in my blood and chase the dark thoughts from

my head.


Getting me killed couldn’t have been part

of Fraa Jad’s plan. Where then had it gone wrong? My foolish choices?

The migrant traffic over the pole had been going on at least long

enough for Jad to have heard about it—he’d known that a Feral like

Orolo would take that route to Ecba. So it was an ancient and settled

practice. We’d all underestimated its dangers precisely because it was

so ancient. We’d assumed that nothing could go on for so long unless it

was safe—the way avout would run things if we were in charge.


But we weren’t in charge and it wasn’t run that way.


Or maybe it was a safe and settled thing most of the time but the military convoy had thrown it into chaos.


Or maybe we’d just been unlucky.


“You look like you’ve been through a harrowing experience.”


I snapped out of it, and looked up by

rotating my eyeballs—not my head, as I had a terrible crick in the

neck. A man was standing there looking at me. Probably in his third

decade. I’d noticed him eyeing me the day before. Now he’d come over

and said this to me as a way of striking up a conversation.


I’m sorry to say I broke out laughing. It took me a minute to get it under control.


Harrowing was a thing that we

did—literally—to our tangles during the spring. We went through the

beds on hands and knees identifying the weeds and rooting them out with

hand-hoes, throwing the weeds on a pile to be burned, leaving nothing

except churned-up soil, pulverizing the clods in our hands to leave a

loose bed for expansion of the tangle

plants’ root systems. So when this stranger suggested I’d been through

a harrowing experience, my mind went straight to that and I thought he

was trying to say that I looked as if I’d been crawling through dirt.

Which I did. Or perhaps that I looked like a heap of dead weeds. Which

I also did. Finally I remembered that I was extramuros, where the old

literal meaning of harrowing had been forgotten thousands of years ago, and it had become a cliché, uprooted from any concrete meaning.


None of this could be explained to the

stranger, so all I could do was sit there and helplessly giggle—which

made my ribs hurt—and hope he wouldn’t take umbrage and slug me. But he

was patient. He even looked a little pained to behold someone in such a

pathetic state. Which was fortunate since he was a big man and could

have slugged me hard.


This gave me an idea that stopped the giggle. “Hey,” I said, “do you have any spare clothes? I’d buy them from you.”


“You do need clean clothes,” the stranger

said. This brought me back to giggling. From time to time I’d get a

whiff of myself. I knew it was bad. But I couldn’t very well don my

bolt.


“I have more clothes than I need and will gladly part with them,” he said.


He had an odd way of talking.

Quasi-literate Sæculars went to stores and bought prefabricated

letters, machine-printed on heavy stock with nice pictures, and sent

them to each other as emotional gestures. They were written in a

stilted language that no one ever spoke aloud—except for this guy who

was standing in front of me letting fly with words like harrowing.


He went on, “I don’t ask for anything in return. But I do hope you’ll join me for services—after you’ve changed.”


So that was it. This guy wanted to convert

me to his ark. He’d been watching me and had picked me out as a

wretch—a soul ripe for saving.


I had nothing better to do, and it had

become all too obvious that I needed to grow a little wiser in the ways

of the Sæcular world. So I threw away my stinking clothes and my

suitsack, bathed as best as I could while standing in front of a sink,

and put on this guy’s funny-smelling

clothes. Then I went to a hot crowded cabin where his ark was holding

its services. There were a dozen and a half devotees and one magister—a

leathery man named Sark who apparently spent his life banging around on

ships like this, ministering to sailors and fishermen.


This was a Kelx—a Triangle ark. Its

adherents were called Kedevs. It was a completely different faith from

that of Ganelial Crade. It had been invented about two thousand years

ago by some ingenious prophet who must have been unusually

self-effacing, since little was known about him and he wasn’t

worshipped as such. Like most faiths it was as fissured and fractured

as the glaciers I’d been walking over lately. But all of its sects and

schisms agreed that there was another world outside of and greater—in a

sense, more real—than the one we lived in. That in this world there was

a robber who had waylaid a family. He’d slain the father outright,

raped and killed the mother, and taken their daughter with him as a

hostage. Not long after, while trying to evade capture, he’d strangled

the innocent girl. But he’d been caught anyway and locked up in a

dungeon for a long time (“half of his life”) while waiting for his case

to come before a Magistrate. At the trial he had admitted his guilt.

The Magistrate had asked if there was any reason why he should not be

put to death. The Condemned Man had responded that there was such a

reason, one that had come to him during his years in the dungeon. As he

had meditated over his hideous crimes, the one thing he’d never been

able to chase from his mind was the murder of the girl—the

Innocent—because in her there had been the potential to do so many

things that could now never be realized. In any soul, the Condemned Man

argued, was the ability to create a whole world, as big and variegated

as the one that he and the Magistrate lived in. But if this was true of

the Innocent, it was true of the Condemned Man as well, and so he

should not—no one should ever—be put to death.


The Magistrate upon hearing this had voiced

skepticism that the Condemned Man really had it in him to generate a

whole world. Taking up the challenge, the Condemned Man had begun to

tell the tale of a world he had thought up in his mind and to relate

the stories of its gods, heroes, and kings. This had taken up the whole

day, so the Magistrate had adjourned the court. But he had warned the

Condemned Man that his fate was still in the balance because the world

he had invented seemed to be just as full of wars, crimes, and cruelty

as the one that they lived in. The Condemned Man’s stay of execution

was only as good as the world he had invented. If the various troubles

in that world could not be brought to a satisfactory conclusion in

tomorrow’s session, he would be executed at sundown.


The next day the Condemned Man had

attempted to satisfy the Magistrate, and made a little headway, but in

so doing introduced new troubles and gave birth to new characters no

less morally ambiguous than the first lot. The Magistrate could not

find sufficient grounds to execute him and so had continued the case to

the next day, and the next, and the next.


The world that I lived in with Jesry and

Lio and Arsibalt, Orolo and Jad, Ala and Tulia and Cord and all the

others, was the very world that was being created from day to day in

the mind of the Condemned Man in that courtroom. Sooner or later it

would all end in a final judgment by the Magistrate. If that—if

our—world seemed, on balance, like a decent place to him, he would let

the Condemned Man live and our world would go on existing in his mind.

If the world, as a whole, only reflected the Condemned Man’s depravity,

the Magistrate would have him executed and our world would cease to

exist. We could help keep the Condemned Man alive and thus preserve the

existence of ourselves and our world by striving at all times to make

it a better place.


That’s why Alwash—the big stranger—had given me his clothes. He was trying to prevent the end of the world.


Kelx was a contraction of the Orth words

meaning “Triangle Place.” Triangles figured in the faith’s iconography.

In the story just told there were three key characters: the Condemned

Man, the Magistrate, and the Innocent. The Condemned Man represented a

creative but flawed principle. The Magistrate represented judgment and

goodness. The Innocent was inspiration that had the power

to redeem the Condemned Man. Taken individually these each lacked

something but taken as a triad they had created us and our world.

Debates as to the nature of this triad had triggered a hundred wars,

but in any case they all believed in one interpretation or other of the

basic story. At this point in history the Kelx was very much under the

heel of other faiths and had become especially bitter and apocalyptic.

The premise of the whole faith was that sooner or later the Magistrate

would make up his mind, and so the magisters—as their clergy were

called—could get their flocks emotionally whipped up, as needed, by

claiming that the judgment was near at hand.


Today’s sermon was one of those. Kelxes

didn’t have long complicated services like the Bazians. The service

consisted of a harangue from Magister Sark, followed by interviews with

the Kedevs, concluded by another harangue. He wanted to know what each

man in the cabin (we were all men) had done lately to make the world a

better place. We might all be flawed—as how could we not since we

originated in the mind of a rapist and murderer—and yet because of the

pure inspiration that had impregnated the Condemned Man’s soul from the

Innocent at the moment of her death, we had the power to make the world

better in a way that would please the all-seeing and-knowing Magistrate.


Crazy as this all was I found it sort of

compelling in my weakened state, and tried the experiment of playing

along with it for a while. This might sound very unlike an avout, but

we were used to being presented with outlandish cosmographical

hypotheses, and in our theorics we did this sort of thing all the time:

that is, assume for the sake of argument that a hypothesis was true,

and see where it led.


I’d known the tale of the Condemned Man for

almost as long as I’d been alive, but sitting in this cabin I learned

two things about the faith—or at least this sect—that I hadn’t known

before. One, that the events of our world, which happened in parallel

(each person doing something different at the same time), were teased

apart and narrated serially by the Condemned Man to the Magistrate. There

was no way to tell the stories of billions concurrently, so he broke

them down into smaller, more manageable narratives and told them

consecutively. So, for example, my trip down the glacier with Brajj and

Laro and Dag had been related to the Magistrate as one self-contained

tale, after which the Condemned Man had doubled back in time to tell

the story of what, say, Ala had done that day. Or, if Ala hadn’t done

anything unusual—if she hadn’t been presented, say, with any great

choices—the Condemned Man might have said nothing of her and she might

thus have avoided the Magistrate’s scrutiny for the time being.


The full attention of the Magistrate was

focused on only one such story at a time. When your story was being

told, you were under the pitiless inspection of the Magistrate, who saw

everything you did and knew everything you thought—so at such times it

was important to make the correct choices! If you attended Kelx

services often enough, you’d develop a sixth sense for when your story

was being told to the Magistrate and you’d get better at making the

right choices.


Second, the Inspiration that had passed

from the Innocent to the Condemned Man at the moment of her death was

viral. It passed from him into each of us. Each of us had the same

power to create whole worlds. The hope was that one day there would be

a Chosen One who would create a world that was perfect. If that ever

happened, not only he and his world but all of the other worlds and

their creators, back to the Condemned Man, would be saved recursively.


When Sark turned his hot gaze upon me and

asked me what I had done of late to save the world, I, in a spirit of

trying to play along, began to tell an edited version of the story of

the descent of the glacier. I left out any mention of bolt, chord, and

sphere. And I intended to leave out the story of Dag’s death—or his

being left for dead. But as I went on I found myself unable to tell the

story without including that part of it. It just fell out of me, like

an intestine that keeps uncoiling from the belly of a wounded animal.

The whole thing had gone out of control. I’d intended to play along as

a sort of intellectual parlor game but my emotions had taken over and

dictated what I would say. Something about the whole setup of this ark,

I realized (too late) was designed to play on such emotions. I wasn’t

the first stranger to walk into one of these meetings and spill his

guts. They expected it. They counted on it. It was why the Kelx had

lasted two thousand years.


When I’d finished, I looked over at Alwash,

expecting to see a triumphant look on his face. Yeah, he’d gotten me

but good. But he didn’t look that way at all. Just serious, and a

little sad. Like he’d known what would happen. He’d done it before.

He’d had it done to him.


The silence that followed was long, but did

not feel awkward. Then Magister Sark told me that it wasn’t clear I had

done anything wrong at all given the circumstances. I understood this

to mean that when the Magistrate had heard the story of Brajj, “Vit,”

Laro, and Dag from the Condemned Man, he had not construed it to mean

that the latter should be executed. At worst it was neutral testimony.

I felt hugely relieved at this, and in the next moment hated myself for

being emotionally manipulated by a witch doctor.


If I were still feeling bad about it, Sark

concluded, I should try to put on a better showing the next time the

Condemned Man saw fit to relate some part of my affairs in that

celestial court.


Some of the others had even worse stories

to tell to the magister. I could not believe some of what I heard. I

wasn’t the only first-timer in this congregation; it had been clear

from the smirks on others’ faces that they too had been dragooned into

coming here. I suspected that some were embellishing their stories just

to see if they could freak out the magister.


Apparently the rule for these services was

that after all present had stated what they had to state, the magister

would wind things up with a rip-roarer.


“It has been our way since of old to say that the day of the Magistrate’s final judgment is coming. It is forever coming. But today I tell you that it is here. Signs and portents have made it plain! The Magistrate, or his bailiff, has been sighted in the heavens above! He has turned his red eye upon the avout in their concents and rendered

his judgment upon them. Now he turns his eye upon the rest of us! The

so-called Warden of Heaven has gone before him to make his entreaties,

and the Magistrate has seen him for what he is, and cast him out in

wrath! What shall he make of you who are gathered

together in this cabin? On his final day before that court, of whom

shall the Condemned Man speak? Shall he tell of you, Vit, and of your

doings? To prove that he, and all his creations, are worthy of life,

shall he tell of you, Traid, or you, Theras, or you, Ever-ell? Shall it

be your doings on the final day that tip the scales of judgment one way

or the other?”


It was a tough question—was meant to be.

Magister Sark had no intention of answering it. Instead he looked long

and deep into each man’s eyes.


Except for mine. I was staring at a

bulkhead. Trying to figure out what he’d meant. The Magistrate had been

seen in the heavens? The Warden of Heaven had been cast out in wrath?

Was I supposed to read those statements literally?


If something bad had happened to the Warden of Heaven, what did it mean for Jesry?


I was desperate to know. I didn’t dare ask.


When it was over, I was too drained to

move. As the cabin emptied out I sat slumped against a steel bulkhead,

letting the ship’s engines jiggle my brain around.


One of the other Kedevs had been talking to

Alwash. When the cabin was nearly empty they approached me. I sat up

and tried to muster strength to fight back another religious harangue.


This new guy’s name was Malter. “I was wondering,” Malter said, “are you one of the avout?”


I did not move or speak. I was trying to remember what the Kelx thought of us.


“The reason I ask,” Malter went on, “is

that there were rumors going around town, before we shipped out, that

an avout in disguise had come down the glacier in the last few days and

got into trouble just like what you described.”


I was startled. Not for long. It was easy to imagine Laro raving, to anyone who would listen, about his bizarre and tragic adventure with the avout who called himself Vit. Maybe I raised an eyebrow or something.


“I’ve always wanted to meet an avout,” Malter said. “I think it would be an honor.”


“Well,” I said, “you just met one.”


Vout: An avout.

Derogatory term used extramuros. Associated with Sæculars who subscribe

to iconographies that paint the avout in an extremely negative way.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Mahsht was four times the size of the city

around Saunt Edhar, and as such was the biggest city I’d yet been to in

my peregrination—or my life, for that matter. To the great

consternation of the regulars on this ship—the men who journeyed in

transports like this one to and from the Arctic all the time—we were

not given leave to enter the harbor and tie up at a pier as usual.

Instead we had to stand off and keep station in the outer harbor. Word

filtered down from the bridge that Mahsht had been thrown into disarray

by the military convoys and that novel arrangements were being worked

out from hour to hour.


I spent much of that day abovedecks, just

looking at the place, and enjoying being in a part of the world where

the weather wasn’t trying to kill me. Even though Mahsht was farther

north than Edhar, at fifty-seven degrees of latitude, its climate was

moderate because of a river of warm water in the ocean. Having said

that, it wasn’t warm, just dependably chilly. You could be comfortable

if you wore a jacket and stayed dry. Staying dry could be a bit of a

project.


Mahsht was built around a fjord that forked

into three arms. Each arm supported different kinds of facilities. One

was military, and quite busy. One was commercial. It had been built

around the end of the Praxic Age to handle cargo in steel boxes and

hadn’t changed much since then. Normally our ship would have put in at a

passenger terminal in that district. The third was the oldest. It had

been built up out of stone and brick a thousand years before the

Reconstitution, during the age when ships moved under power of wind and

were unloaded by hand. Apparently there was still a demand for such

facilities because smaller vessels went in and out of its stone docks

all the time.


The old town and the port facilities were

built on filled tide flats, incised with networks of canals, narrow and

irregular in Old Mahsht, gridded lanes in the commercial and military

sectors. Much of the land that separated the arms of the fjord was too

steep to build on. The spires and ridges of stone supported ancient

castles, luxury casinos, and radar stations. The territory outside of

town was steeper yet: a misty green-black wall with unrecognizable

constructs scraped out of it, hanging at crazy angles a mile in the

sky. Alwash explained to me that these were places where people paid to

slide downhill on packed snow. It didn’t appeal to me at the moment.


After a day, a tug came out and brought us

to a wharf in Old Mahsht. According to the regulars, this had never

happened before—they always went to the “new” commercial district. So,

as much as I was absorbed in the workings of the tug and the shifting

views of Old Mahsht’s warehouses, arks, cathedrals, and town center, I

had now to give some thought to how I was going to find Cord, Sammann,

Gnel, and Yul—or how I could help them find me. Should I walk to the

commercial port on the assumption they’d be waiting for me there? Or

would they have already heard about the disruptions in traffic and be

looking for me in Old Mahsht?


As soon as I came down the gangplank it was

clear that Old Mahsht was the right place. Since the military part of

town could not tolerate disarray and the commercial part found it

unprofitable, all of the chaos had been pushed into the old town, which

had become the kingdom of broken plans and improvisations. All of the

city’s proper lodgings had been claimed by contractors from the south

who were involved in this project of moving the military north, so

people were sleeping in mobes and fetches, or on the streets.

Against them, all doors were locked and many were guarded, so they were

channeled into such open places as could be found, such as the tops of

the wharves, unbuilt stretches of tide flat, and lots where ancient

warehouses had been demolished to make room for new projects that had

never been realized. This is what the gangplank spewed me into. I

shuffled down the ramp scanning the crowd for my friends. The longer I

sought their faces, the lower I was pushed on the ramp and the less I

could see. Then I was down in it and could see nothing. Having no plan,

I let the currents of the multitude stir me around. When I sensed still

pockets or eddies in the flow I sidled into them and stood and looked

about. From what I’ve described so far you might think it was a scene

of terrible poverty, but the more I observed the more it was plain to

me that there was work to be had here, that people had come to find it,

and that what I was seeing—what I had become part of—was

a kind of prosperity. Young men queued to talk to important fellows who

I assumed were buyers of labor. Many others had come to sell goods or

services to those who’d found work, so people were cooking food in

carts or on open fires, hawking mysterious effects from the pockets of

their coats, or behaving in very strange ways that, as I slowly

realized, meant that they were willing to sell their bodies. Old

road-worn passenger coaches nudged through the crowds at slower than

walking pace to discharge or take on passengers. The only wheeled

transport that seemed to be of any practical use were pedal-powered

cycles and motor scooters. Preachers of diverse arks commandeered

pinch-points in the flow and shouted gospels and prophecies into

crackling amps. There was a lot of uncollected garbage and open-air

defecation, which made me glad it wasn’t warmer.


The generous climate had long attracted

immigrants, who came from all over the world, singly or in waves, and

climbed up into fjords or mountain valleys to live as they pleased.

Over time they developed their own modes of dress and even distinct

racial characteristics. I bought food from a cart—it was easily the

best food I’d had since my last supper at Saunt Edhar—and stood there

eating it and watching the pageant. Long-haired mountain men, always

alone. A huge family, moving in a tight formation, males in

broad-brimmed hats, females in face-veils. A multi-racial group, all

wearing red T-shirts, every head—men’s and women’s alike—shaved clean.

A race, if that was the right word, of tall people with bony noses and

prematurely white hair, hawking fresh shellfish packed in poly crates

full of seaweed.


After I’d been off the ship for an hour, it

had become evident that meeting up with Cord, Sammann, and the Crades

could easily take more than one day. I started considering where I

might sleep that night—for I had at last reached a latitude where the

sun went down for a few hours at this time of year. I knew that there

were no great concents this far north. But in a city as old as this one

there had to be at least one small math—perhaps even one dating to the

Old Mathic Age. Wondering if I should try to seek one out and talk my

way in, I walked up a broad street that ran from the waterfront up to

the Bazian cathedral, scanning the fronts of old buildings for Mathic

architecture or anything that looked like a cloister.


Clamped to a black iron lamp post I noticed

a speelycaptor, and this put me in mind of Sammann and his ability to

obtain data from such devices. Perhaps I’d been going about this in the

wrong way. It could be that Sammann was tracking me on speelycaptors

but that my friends hadn’t been able to catch up with me because I kept

moving around. So I decided to remain still for a while in a

conspicuous place and see if that helped. I had just bumped into Malter

and Alwash, who had given me the address of a Kelx mission hostel where

I might be able to sleep in a pinch, and as long as I had such a backup

plan I thought it might be worth the gamble to sit and wait somewhere.

I chose a spot in the open plaza before the cathedral, in direct view

of a speelycaptor bracketed to the front of Old Mahsht’s town hall.


That’s where I got mugged.


Or at least I thought it was a mugging at

first. My attention had been drawn to a street performer doing

gymnastics about fifty feet away. “Hey, Vit!” someone said, behind me

on the right. I turned my face straight into an onrushing fist.




While I was down, someone jerked my sweater

up out of my trousers to bare my midsection. For some reason I thought

of Lio, who’d been defeated at Apert when the slines had pulled his

bolt over his head. So instead of protecting my face as I ought to have

done I made a clumsy effort to push my sweater back down where it

belonged. Someone’s hands were busy down there, jerking something out

of the waistband of my trousers.


It was my bolt, chord, and sphere. I’d made

them up into a neat package and stuffed them into my trousers for

safekeeping and covered them with the sweater.


Ground level makes for a lousy vantage

point. Especially when you’re on one side in a fetal position looking

up out of the corner of one eye. But it seemed as though two men were

playing tug-of-war with the package they’d stolen from me, trying to

get it apart. The chord spiraled off and the bolt, which I’d pleated

into a configuration called the Eight-fold Envelope, fell open. Out

tumbled my pilled-up sphere. I caught it on the second bounce. A foot

smashed down on my hand. “He’s trying to use it!” someone cried. A man

dropped on me, one knee to either side. At this point a reflex took

over. Lio had taught me that once I’d been mounted I’d never get up

again, and so when I sensed what was happening I twisted sideways,

getting my back up and my belly down, and drew my knees up under me, so

that by the time this guy’s weight landed on me I was presenting my

butt to him rather than my belly, and I had my legs under me where I

could use them. My hand was still pinned to the ground by someone’s

foot, but my sphere was trapped between my hand and the pavement. I

made it bigger. The expanding sphere forced the man’s foot up, and when

it became head-sized his foot rolled right off and my hand came free. I

planted that hand under me and pushed as hard as I could with both arms

and legs. The guy on top of me wrapped his arms around my trunk as I

came up but I grabbed one of his pinkies in my fist and jerked it back.

He screamed and let go. I surged forward without looking back. “He used

a spell on me!” someone screamed. “The vout cast a spell on me!”


Part of me—not the wiser part—wanted to explain to that guy what

an idiot he was being, but most of me just wanted to put distance

between myself and these mysterious attackers. How had they known I had

been using the name Vit? I turned back to look at them. My passage

through the crowd had left an open space in my wake. Several men were

charging into it, coming for me. I’d never seen them before. There was

something familiar in their faces, though: they belonged to the same

ethnic group as Laro and Dag. Gheeths, as Brajj had called them.


They were having trouble keeping up with me

but I could not outrun their voices: “Stop him! Stop the vout!” This

didn’t seem to have much effect. But then they got cleverer. “Murderer!

Murderer! Stop him!” It turned out that this only made things easier

for me since no one wanted to get in the way of a large, sprinting

murderer. So then it became: “Thief! Thief! He stole an old lady’s

money!” That was when the crowd closed in and people started sticking

legs out to trip me.


I jumped over a few of those, but it was

obvious I had to get out of this crowded square, so I dodged into the

first street I could reach that led away from it, then into an alley

off that street. This was so narrow I could touch both sides, but at

least I didn’t have the feeling any more of being engulfed in a huge

and hostile mob.


I heard the buzz of scooter engines. They

were tracking me. Local scooter boys who knew the alley network were

maneuvering to cut me off at the next intersection.


I tried a few doors but they were locked.

Then I made the mistake of doing so in view of an armed guard who was

standing in front of a money-changing house a few doors up. He unslung

a weapon and muttered something into his collar. I backtracked, took

the next side-alley that I could find, and ran down it for a hundred

yards to a place where it bridged a narrow canal. A couple of scooter

boys pulled up to block the bridge just as I reached it. Glancing down

I saw some mucky canal-bottom exposed. The tide must be out. I jumped

down without thinking, landed and rolled in the soft mud, felt pain but

didn’t break anything as far as I could tell. To one direction the

canal curved back toward the town square. The other direction led to

open sky: the waterfront. I began

running that way, thinking that if I could get to the beach I might

steal or beg a ride on a small boat. Even swimming would be safer than

being in the middle of that crowd.


But I couldn’t run very fast in the muck.

And I was exhausted anyway. I’d forgotten to breathe. Bridges spanned

the canal every couple of hundred feet, and I began to see people

gathering on the bridges ahead of me, pointing at me excitedly.


I turned around to see a bigger crowd on

the bridge behind. They had bottles and stones ready. Trying to run

under those bridges would be suicide. The canal wall was vertical but

the stonework was ancient and rough-cut; I tried to scale it. Scooter

noise zeroed in on me and something hit me on the top of the head.


I woke up some time after landing in

knee-deep water in the middle of the canal, and came up howling for air

only to get hit by a dozen stones and bottles in as many seconds.


“Stop! Stop! The vout isn’t going anywhere!

Keep him penned in,” said some kind of self-appointed leader: a stout

Gheeth with shaggy hair. “Our witness is almost here!” he proclaimed.


So we all waited for the “witness.” The

crowd sorted itself. Most of them had been random people who had been

drawn to the bridges or the canal-brink by simple curiosity or out of

the belief that they were helping to collar a purse-snatcher. But those

sorts drifted away or were pushed aside by new arrivals: Gheeths with

jeejahs. So by the time that the witness arrived on the back of a

pedal-powered cab, a minute or so later, a hundred percent of those

staring down at me were Gheeths. And none of them believed that I was a

purse-snatcher. What did they believe? I doubted most of them even cared.


The witness was Laro. His leg was in a

military-issue cast. “That is him! I’ll never forget his face. He used

vout sorcery to save himself—but left our kinsman Dag for dead.”


I looked at him like you have got to be kidding but the look on his face was so sincere it made me doubt my own version of the story.


“The cops are coming!” someone warned.

Actually, we’d been hearing such warnings the whole time I’d been at

bay here. I wished those cops would hurry. But I wasn’t sure they’d

treat me any better.




“Let’s get this done!” someone shouted, and

looked to the leader, who stepped to the brink. Sidling along next to

him was a big guy holding a huge chunk of pavement above his head in

both hands and staring at me intently.


The leader pointed down at me. “He’s a vout. Laro testifies to it. These two found the evidence hidden under his clothes!”


Two young Gheeths—the pair who’d mugged

me—were pushed to the front of the crowd so vigorously they almost fell

in. They had my bolt, chord, and sphere. At the leader’s prompting they

raised these up for all to see. The crowd oohed and aahed at the

exhibits as if they were nuclear bomb cores.


“The vout has broken the ancient law that

keeps his kind apart. He has come among us as a spy. We all know what

he did to poor Dag. We can only imagine what fate he had in store for

Laro—had Laro not bravely fought his way free of the vout’s snare. Are

we going to stand for it?”


“No!” the crowd shouted.


“Are we going to get any justice from the cops?”


“No!”


“But are we going to see justice done?”


“Yes!”


The leader nodded at the big guy with the

rock. He flung it down at me so ponderously that I was able to step out

of its path with ease. But a score of smaller, faster projectiles came

in its wake. Running back and forth just to make myself a moving

target, I caught sight of a stone stairway in the canal about a hundred

feet distant. If I could get to its top I’d at least be at street level

again—not in this hopeless situation, down below the mob. I ran for it

and took several more bottles and rocks in my back, but I had my arms

folded behind my head to shield it.


I got to the top of those stairs all right,

but they were waiting for me there. I’d scarcely ascended to street

level before they’d tripped and shoved me down onto the street. One of

them fell on me, or maybe it was a clumsy attempt to tackle me. I

grabbed the lapel of his jacket and held him there, keeping him on top

of me as a shield. People elbowed each other aside to get in and aim

kicks at me, but most of them drew up

short when they saw one of their own people in the way. Hands reached

in to grab him and haul him to his feet. I ended up with his empty

jacket clutched in my hand. I tried to get up but was pushed down. I

went to a fetal position and clamped my arms over my head.


It was a few seconds later that I heard The Scream.


The Scream was definitely a human voice but

it was unlike anything I’d ever heard. The only way I can convey just

how disturbing it was, is to say that it fully expressed the way I was

feeling. I even wondered, in my panicked and addled state, whether it

might have escaped from my own throat. The Scream had the effect of

making everyone stand still. They were no longer attacking me, no

longer fighting to get within kicking distance. Instead, all stood

around trying to figure out where The Scream had come from and what it

portended.


I rolled over on my back. A space had opened up around me. Around me, that is, and a shaven-headed man in a red T-shirt.


He stepped toward me and drew something

from his pocket that rapidly became large: a sphere. In a second he had

expanded it to about five feet in diameter, leaving it somewhat

flaccid. He doubled it over me. My head and feet stuck out to either

end but the rest of me was shielded against further blows—at least as

long as this man stood there holding the sphere in place. A gust of

wind could dislodge it. But he took care of that by vaulting to its top

and perching on it: a precarious pose even when you attempted it with

both feet. He, however, was placing all of his weight on one foot,

leaving the other drawn up beneath him. Sometimes, when we’d been

younger, we’d tried to stand on our spheres as a kind of childish game.

Some adults did it as an exercise to improve their balance and

reflexes. This seemed an odd time and place for calisthenics, though.


It did have the useful side-effect of

leaving the people around me even more nonplussed than they had been by

The Scream. But after a few moments one young man spied my head—a

tempting and obvious target—and stepped toward me, drawing back one leg

to deliver a kick. I closed my eyes and braced myself. Above me I heard

a sharp, percussive sound. I opened my eyes to see my attacker falling

backwards. A second later, moisture sprayed into my face: a shower of

blood. A few small pebbles or something rattled to the pavement nearby.

Blinking the blood out of my eyes, I perceived that they weren’t

pebbles but teeth.


Another scream emanated from the edge of

the crowd. This one was altogether different. It came from a person who

was experiencing an amount of pain that was incredible, in the literal

sense; his scream sounded surprised, as in I had no idea anything could be as painful as whatever is happening to me now!

This got the attention of everyone except for one Gheeth who was coming

toward me and my protector with an odd, fixed grin on his face, drawing

a knife from his pocket and flicking it open. This time I got a better

view of what happened. The man perched on the sphere above me faked a

snap-kick with his free leg and the other waved his knife at where he

supposed the kick was going; but before he even knew how badly he’d

missed, my protector had grabbed the hand holding the knife and twisted

it the wrong way—not simply by flicking his wrist but by jumping off

the sphere and doing a midair somersault over the attacker’s arm, whose

joints and bones came undone in a series of thuds and pops. The sphere

rolled off me. The knife fell to the ground and I tried to clap my hand

down on top of it, but too late—my protector kicked it away and it flew

over the brink of the canal and disappeared.


I was unshielded. But it hardly mattered

because the crowd had all moved in the direction of that horrible,

astonished screaming. I pushed myself up on hands and knees and got to

a kneeling position.


The source of the screaming was an adult

male Gheeth who was being held in some sort of complicated wrestling

grip by a shaven-headed woman in a red T-shirt. A similar-looking man

of about eighteen was standing at her back, efficiently knocking down

anyone who approached. By the time I came in view of all this, the mob

had begun to hurl stones at these two. My protector abandoned me and

slipped through the crowd to join the other two redshirts and help bat

away projectiles. They began to retreat. Most

of the mob went after them but some began to edge away; throwing stones

at a lone avout might have been good sport for them but they wanted no

part of whatever was going on now.


I turned, thinking I might just get out of

here now, and found myself staring into the eyes of the Gheeth leader.

He had a gun. It was aimed at me. “No,” he said, “we haven’t forgotten

about you. Move!” He gestured with the gun in the direction that the

crowd seemed to be moving. They were slowly pursuing the retreating

redshirts down the edge of the canal toward a more open place a hundred

feet away: a square where two streets met at canal’s edge. “Turn around

and march,” he commanded.


I turned around and walked toward the

square. Most of the mob had gone past us, so I was now in the outer

fringes, the back lines, of a crowd of perhaps a hundred, all moving at

a trot, then a run, after the three retreating redshirts, who by this

point had dragged their hostage all the way into the square as they

tried to get away from that overwhelmingly superior force of

rock-throwing, knife-waving attackers.


My captor and I entered the square. The

canal’s edge was to my left, the square spread away from it to my

right. War-cries now sounded from that direction. I’m using the term

war-cry here to mean the unearthly scream that the first redshirt had

uttered when he’d come out of nowhere to protect me. Now we heard ten

of them at once. The first one, as I described, had simply paralyzed

everyone. But in a short time we had learned to associate the sound

with face-smashing, limb-twisting Vale-lore experts. A battle-line of

redshirts had materialized on our right flank; they’d been poised in

the square, waiting for the first three to draw us into position. All

heads turned toward, all bodies swerved away from them. Each of the

redshirts had sent one or two members of the mob down to the pavement

with bloody lacerations before we could even take in the image. The

line of redshirts pivoted to link up with the first three, who now

released the man they’d been torturing. Beginning to understand that

they were outflanked on the right and that the square in general was

enemy territory, unable to move left because of the canal-edge, the mob

turned back, hoping to withdraw the way

they’d come. But another salvo of war-cries came from the rear as

several redshirts vaulted up out of the canal. They’d been hiding down

there, clinging to the rugged canal wall like rock-climbers, and we had

unwittingly gone right past them. They sealed off the retreat. The only

way out now for the mob was to squirt forward between the canal-edge

and the redshirts into the square, or jump down into the canal. As soon

as a few had escaped via these routes, everyone wanted to do it, and it

flashed into a panic. The redshirts let them go. In a few moments

almost all of my attackers had simply disappeared. The two lines of

redshirts joined up and contracted to form a sparse ring about twenty

feet in diameter. They faced outwards. Their heads never stopped

moving. In the middle of the ring were three people: the gun-toting

Gheeth leader, I, and a single redshirt who always moved so that he was

between me and the muzzle of the gun.


A redshirted woman on the perimeter called

out “Fusil” which was a ridiculously archaic Orth word meaning a

long-barreled firearm. The redshirts to either side instantly turned

their backs on her to look in other directions. Everyone else, though,

did what came naturally: followed the woman’s gaze to the top of a

parked drummon on the edge of the square. A Gheeth had climbed up there

with a long weapon and was training it in our direction. The woman who

had called out “Fusil” skipped forward, raising her hands, and did a

cartwheel that took her to the lid of a trash container. From there she

sprang sideways, rolled, and came up near a drinking fountain on which

she planted a foot to shove off and make a violent reversal of

direction that took her toward a scraggly tree. She got a hand on that

and swung round it, scampered to the top of a bench, disappeared into a

little clot of pedestrians, reappeared a moment later sprinting

directly toward the man with the gun but in a moment had changed course

again to duck behind a kiosk. In this manner she made rapid progress

toward the gunman atop the drummon. He was hard-pressed to aim his

weapon at her with all these sudden changes in course. If I’d been in

his shoes, I couldn’t have fired, even to save my own life, because her

gymnastics were so fascinating to watch.


A shot sounded. Not from the man on the drummon and not from

the leader in the ring behind me. It came from somewhere else: hard to

pin down because it echoed from the fronts of buildings all around the

square. My knees buckled.


Five feet away from me, something

unpleasant happened to the Gheeth leader; a redshirt had used this

distraction as an opportunity to take him down and disarm him.


The woman doing the gymnastics kept moving

toward the gunman atop the drummon, who had frozen up and was looking

all around trying to identify the source of the shot.


A second shot sounded. The gun spun loose

from the would-be sniper’s hands and clattered to the pavement. He

grabbed his hand and howled. The redshirt woman stopped with the

gymnastics, dropped into a normal sprinting gait, and went straight to

the fallen weapon.


“Fusil!” called one of the other redshirts.

He pointed across the canal. Again the two flanking him spun about to

look in other directions. It took the rest of us a moment to see what

he’d seen.


Across the canal was a food cart, prudently

abandoned by its owner. A three-wheeler had drawn up behind it, using

it and its array of signs and fluttering banners to provide visual

cover. One man was operating the three-wheeler’s controls: Ganelial

Crade. Another was standing on its passenger platform: Yulassetar

Crade. He was carrying a long weapon. He addressed himself to the

sniper atop the drummon, bellowing across the canal. “The first shot

was to make you freeze,” he explained. “The second was to make you

helpless. The third you’re never going to know about. Show me your

hands. Show me your hands!”


The Gheeth held up his hands—one of them bloody and misshapen.


“Run away!” Yul howled, and shouldered his rifle.


The Gheeth avalanched down over the front

of the drummon, rolled around on the pavement for a few moments, then

came up at a run.


“Raz, we gotta go!” Yul called. “The rest

of you in the red shirts—whoever or whatever you are—you’re welcome to

come with. Maybe you want to be getting out of town as bad as we do.”




There was a bridge over the canal at the

square. Gnel zipped over it and came towards me. The circle of

redshirts parted to let him in. He passed through the gap, eyeing them

a little nervously, and pulled up alongside me. I wasn’t moving too

well. Yul bent down over me, grabbed my belt in his fist, just behind

the small of my back, and heaved me aboard the three-wheeler like an

unconscious rafter being pulled out of a river. It was extremely

crowded now on this tiny vehicle. Gnel made a careful, sweeping turn

into the square and headed up a street. He was wearing earphones

plugged into a jeejah. Sammann must be feeding him instructions.


The redshirts followed us, jogging beside

and behind the three-wheeler. Apparently they saw good sense in Yul’s

point that it was time to get out of town. Once it became clear which

way we were going, they picked up the pace and threatened to outrun the

three-wheeler, prompting Gnel to give it a little more throttle. Before

long they were sprinting. We covered a mile in a few minutes, and came

into a district of railway lines and warehouses that wasn’t as crowded

as the center of Old Mahsht. It was possible for full-sized vehicles to

move about normally on the streets here. A pair of them came out of

nowhere and nearly ran us down: Yul’s and Gnel’s fetches, driven by

Cord and by Sammann respectively.


As we later established, the redshirts

numbered twenty-five. We somehow got all of them onto the two fetches

and the three-wheeler. I’d never seen people packed so tight. We had

redshirts on the roof of Yul’s fetch, elbows linked together to keep

them from falling off.





Cord took all of this pretty calmly,

considering that she couldn’t have known, until just before they piled

into the fetch, that she was going to be transporting a dozen and a

half vlor experts in red T-shirts. As she drove us out of there, she

kept looking over at me aghast. “It’s okay,” I told her. “They are

avout—they must have been Evoked. I don’t know what math they are

from—obviously one that specializes in vlor—maybe an offshoot of

Ringing Vale or some such—”




Behind me, an amused redshirt translated all of that into Orth and got a round of chuckles.


I got embarrassed. Horribly, mud-on-the-head embarrassed.


These people were from the Ringing Vale.


I tried to turn back to look at them but

something impeded movement. Groping to explore, I discovered three

hands, belonging to Valers behind or beside me, pressing wads of

blood-soaked fabric against my face and scalp. Lacerations. I hadn’t

been aware of them. It wasn’t the strangers crammed into her fetch that

so disturbed Cord; it was my face.


During most of this I’d been having the

wrong emotions. At the very beginning when the two Gheeths had mugged

me, I’d been scared. Appropriately. That’s why I’d run away. Then I had

convinced myself that I could handle this somehow. I could evade the

mob in streets or canals. I could talk some sense into Laro, plead my

case. They didn’t really mean to kill me; this couldn’t be happening.

The cops would get here any minute. Next had come a sort of dazed

acceptance of my fate. Then the fraas and suurs of the Ringing Vale had

arrived. Everything after that had been fascinating and sort of

exhilarating, and I had surfed through it on some sort of chemical

high: my body’s reaction to injury and stress. A minute ago I’d greeted

Cord with a big bloody hug as though nothing had happened.


A few minutes into the drive, though, I

fell apart. All of my injuries began sending pain to my brain, like

soldiers sounding off at roll call. Whatever convenient substances my

glands had been squirting into my bloodstream were withdrawn, cold

turkey. It was as if a trapdoor had opened beneath me. Just like that I

became a shivering, weeping tangle of nerves, squirming and grunting in

pain.


Twenty minutes’ drive, under Sammann’s

direction, took us to a site on the left bank of a big river that

flowed from the mountains down into the Old Mahsht fjord branch. It

looked as though it might have been a broad sandbar in some earlier

age, but had long ago been paved over and played host to a succession

of industrial complexes, now in ruins. At one end of it was a

recreational boat ramp and picnic

ground with a couple of smelly latrines. We pulled in there and scared

off some holiday-makers. I was carried out of Yul’s fetch and laid out

flat on a picnic table that they’d covered with camping pads to make it

soft, and tarps to protect the camping pads from whatever was leaking

out of me. Yul opened his medical kit, which like all of his other gear

was not store-bought but improvised from found objects. Into a big,

heavy-gauge poly bag he dumped white powder from a poly tube: salt and

germicide. Then he filled it up with a couple of gallons of tap water

and shook it for a minute, producing a sterilized normal saline

solution. He tucked the bag under his arm and squeezed it hard against

his ribs, shooting out a jet of fluid that he aimed into my wounds to

flush them out. Picking a wound, he would yank off the gauze and sluice

it until I screamed, then give it another thirty seconds. Gnel followed

in his wake, working with something smelly. As he was using it on my

split eyebrow I realized it was a tube of glue—the same stuff you’d use

to stick the handle back onto a broken teacup. Wounds too big to glue

were bridged with glass-fiber packing tape. At one point a Ringing Vale

suur dug into me with a sewing needle and a length of fishing line from

Gnel’s tackle box. Once a wound had been hit with glue, tape, or

fishing line, someone in a red T-shirt would slap petroleum jelly on it

and cover it with something white. A Ringing Vale fraa, obviously a

masseur, went over my whole body without so much as a by-your-leave,

looking for broken bones and hemorrhages. If my spleen wasn’t ruptured

when he got to it, it was by the time he moved on to my liver. His

verdict: mild concussion, three cracked ribs, spiral fracture of one

arm bone, two small broken bones in one hand, and I could expect to pee

blood for a while.


Enough time had gone by for me to be

ashamed of how I’d fallen apart during the drive, so I put a lot of

effort into not screaming any more than was strictly necessary. For

some reason I was thinking of Lio. He’d worshipped all things Vale

since before he’d even been Collected. He’d tracked down every book at

Saunt Edhar that came from there, or that had been written by people

who claimed to have visited the Vale or been beaten up by Valers. He’d have died of shame to know that I’d been less than totally immune to pain in the presence of these people.


Conversations I was dying to be a part of

were taking place just out of earshot. Once they finished gluing my

head together, I could look about and see Sammann talking to a senior

fraa from the Vale, and a suur consoling Cord, who broke out crying

whenever she turned her face in my direction. After a while, when it

was decided I was going to live and so might be worth talking to, Fraa

Osa—the First Among Equals of the Valers—came over to talk to me. With

the exception of the seamstress, who was making long tedious work of a

rambling slash on my calf, the wound-fixers raked up all their litter

and drifted away. Yul went over and bear-hugged Cord and practically

carried her over to the edge of the river where she had a good long

soaking cry.


“Yesterday we were Evoked,” said Fraa Osa.

He was the first redshirt I had seen during the melee: the one who had

covered me with his sphere and perched on it one-legged. He was

probably in his fifth decade. “They said we should go to Tredegarh. We

consulted a globe and determined that the most efficient route was via

Mahsht.”


The Ringing Vale was a hundred or so miles

outside of Mahsht. From there a great circle route across the ocean

would take one almost to Tredegarh, so this made sense as far as it

went.


“Local people gave us transportation to

Mahsht. We found it as you found it. Those of us who speak Fluccish

sought transport on a ship. We were approached by your magister.”


“My magister!?” I shouted. Then I saw the faintest trace of irony on Osa’s face. He was half joking.


But only half. “Sark,” he said. “He is well

known to us. He comes to our Aperts, and speaks to us of his ideas.”

Osa shrugged and made a gentle bobbling motion with his hands, which I

thought was his way of telling me that they tried to weigh Sark’s

preaching fairly. “In any case, he recognized us in the street. He told

us that a lone avout was being pursued by a mob. We saw it as an

emergence.”


For a moment I thought he was slipping into broken Fluccish, trying to pronounce emergency. Then I remembered some of the Vale-lore that Lio had drummed into me over the years.


During the time of the Reconstitution,

literally in the Year 0, when the sites of the first new maths were

being surveyed so that the cornerstones of their Clocks and Mynsters

could be laid down, a team of freshly sworn-in avout had journeyed to a

remote place in the desert to begin such a project, only to find

themselves under siege by mistrustful locals. For the place they’d been

sent was covered with jumpweed plantations and they had stumbled upon a

shack where the weed was being boiled down to make a concentrated,

illegal drug. The avout were unarmed. They had been pulled together

from all over the world and so had little in common with one another;

most of them didn’t even speak Orth. But it so happened that several of

them were students of an ancient school of martial arts, which back in

those days had no connection with the mathic world, even if it had been

developed in monastic settings. Anyway, they had never used their

skills outside of a gym, but they now found themselves thrust into a

position where they had to take action. Some of their number were

killed. Some of the martial artists performed well, others froze up and

did no better than those who’d had no training at all. That sort of

situation became known as an emergence. A few of the survivors went on

to found the Ringing Vale math. According to Lio, they spent almost as

much time thinking about the concept of emergence as they did in

physical training—the idea being that all the training in the world was

of no use, maybe even worse than useless, if you did not know when to

use it, and knowing when to use it was a lot harder than it sounded,

because sometimes, if you waited too long to go into action, it was too

late, and other times, if you did it too early, you only made matters

worse.


“The most salient feature of the enemy was

its thoughtless aggression,” Fraa Osa said. He reached into air and

closed his hand as though grasping the wrist of an attacker who’d tried

to punch him. It was an eloquent gesture, which was convenient for me,

since Fraa Osa did not seem inclined to say more than that about the

strategy they had used.




“You reckoned, as long as they are in such

a mood, let’s really give them something to be aggressive about,” I

said, trying to draw him out a little more. Fraa Osa smiled and nodded.

“So you grabbed that one person and started, uh…”


Here for once I broke off instead of

telling the truth, which was that they had been torturing that Gheeth.

I didn’t want to seem critical towards these people who had just risked

their lives saving mine. Fraa Osa just kept smiling and nodding. “It is

a nerve pressure technique,” he said. “It seems to hurt a lot, but does

no damage.”


This raised all sorts of interesting questions: was there really a difference between hurting, and seeming

to hurt? Was it permissible to torture someone if it didn’t cause

clinical injuries? But again there were all sorts of reasons not to

pursue such questions now. “Well, anyway, it worked,” I said. “The mob

turned against you—you staged a false retreat and drew them into a

trap—then you made them panic.” More smiling and nodding. Fraa Osa

simply was in no mood to wax eloquent about any of this. “And how long

did you have in which to devise this plan?” I asked him.


“Not long enough.”


“I beg your pardon?”


“There is no time in an emergence to think

up plans. Much less to communicate them. Instead I told the others that

we would emulate Lord Frode’s cavalry at Second Rushy Flats, when they

drew out Prince Terazyn’s squadron. Except that the canal edge would

substitute for the Tall Canes and that little square would take the

place of Bloody Breaks. As you can see it does not take very much time

to say these words.”


I nodded as if I had some idea what he was

talking about—which I didn’t. I couldn’t even guess which war he was

alluding to, in what millennium.


“What’s with the red T-shirts?” I asked,

though I already had my suspicions. Fraa Osa grinned ruefully. “They

were issued to us at Voco,” he said. “Donated by a local ark. I look

forward to reaching Tredegarh so that I can go back to the bolt and

chord.”


“Speaking of which—”




He shook his head. “Your bolt, chord, and

sphere are lost. Perhaps we could have gotten them back—but we departed

in some haste.”


“Of course!” I said. “Not a big deal.” And

it wasn’t, in one sense. Fraas and suurs lost theirs from time to time.

New ones were issued. But losing mine in this way made me feel pretty

bad. They’d been with me for more than ten years and they had a lot of

memories associated with them. They’d been my last physical link to the

Mathic world. Now that they were gone, I could be any old Sæcular.

Which might be safer—no one could yank them out from concealment and

wave them around and try to lynch me. But it made me feel lonely.


Sammann went over and had a few words with

Yul who jumped up, fetched the rifle, grabbed it by the barrel, and

after a few running steps gave it a mighty heave. Spinning end-over-end

it flew about halfway across the river, then stabbed into the current

and disappeared. About a minute later, two mobes full of Mahsht

constables showed up and piled out of their wailing and flashing

vehicles. Except for Fraa Osa and the suur who was sewing me together,

all of the Ringing Vale avout sat on the ground, feet tucked under

them, and looked serene. The constables mostly gaped at them. How many

thousands of speelies had been produced about the fictional exploits of

the Valers? The cops couldn’t begin to think of them as suspects. They

saw them more as tourist attractions. Zoo animals. Movie stars. What’s

more, the Valers knew as much, and knew how to exploit it. They showed

us the meaning of posture, and pretended to meditate. The cops ate it

up. The boss cop had a long and (at first) tense conversation with Yul

and Fraa Osa. The suur with the needle kept running that string through

my flesh and I gritted my teeth so hard I could hear them creaking.

Finally she tied it off and walked away without a word—without even a

look. I had an upsight: I might have warm feelings for these people

because they had helped me and because I had seen way too many speelies

about them before I’d been Collected. The Valers, however, had not been

Evoked because they were nice guys.




Cord came over and stood with her hands in her pockets taking inventory of my bandages.


“See what a small percentage of my body they actually cover,” I pointed out.


She was having none of it.


“Our plan didn’t work out so well,” I offered.


She looked off to the side and sniffled—the last emotional aftershock of a long day. “Not your fault. How could we have known?”


“I’m sorry to have put you through this. I don’t understand how things could have gone so wrong.”


She looked at me acutely and saw nothing, I

guess, except for a stupid look on my face. “You don’t have any idea

what’s going on, do you?”


“I guess not. Just that the military has

been moving toward the pole.” A memory popped into my head. “And a

magister on the ship made some weird comment about the Warden of Heaven

being cast out in wrath.”


Even as I was saying this, an old

rattletrap coach was pulling in off the road. At its controls was

Magister Sark. It was one of those freakish coincidences that made some

people believe in spirits and psychic phenomena. I explained it away by

supposing that my unconscious mind had seen the coach out of the corner

of my eye a few moments before I’d consciously recognized him.


“You still with me?” Cord asked.


“Yeah. Hey—what about Jesry? Is he okay?”


“We think so. We’ll get you caught up.”


We looked over at Yul, who had somehow

managed to get the police captain laughing. Something had been decided

between them. The official part of the conversation was over.


The captain came over and made a few

appreciative remarks about how banged up I was and what a tough guy I

must be, then asked if I wanted to pursue it—to press charges.

Absolutely lying through my teeth, I said no. By doing so, I apparently

closed a deal. The particulars were never explained to me, but the gist

of it was that all of us were free to go. The leaders of that mob would

get off free except for injuries and insults already suffered. And

these constables would dodge a

mountain of paperwork: paperwork that would have been ten times as bad

as what they were used to simply because many of those concerned were

avout and hence of tricky legal status.


Magister Sark had not been idle during all

of these other goings-on. The coach belonged to his Kelx in Mahsht; it

was painted all over with Triangle iconography. It was large enough to

transport all of the Valers. Some other member of his Kelx had

volunteered to drive them south to a bigger city, less chaotic than

Mahsht at the moment, whence they could arrange transport to Tredegarh.

This driver, he explained, was on his way, but because of the difficult

conditions in town, we might have to wait for a little while.


The magister glanced at me as he was

explaining these things, and for some reason I felt a thrill of

resentment. I did not like being indebted to him, and did not relish

the prospect of having to sit gratefully through another sales pitch

for his faith while we waited for the driver to show up. But it seemed

he was more interested in checking my status than starting a

conversation, and as soon as he stopped looking my way I felt ashamed

of the way I’d reacted. Was there really that much of a difference

between the Kelx notion of having one’s story related to the

Magistrate, and the Valers’ concept of emergence? They seemed to

produce very similar behavior; I owed my life to the fact that Sark and

Osa had been of one mind, earlier today in Mahsht.


I was on my feet by now; I limped over to him, held out my hand, and thanked him. He shook my hand firmly and said nothing.


“The Condemned Man had a good yarn to spin for the Magistrate today,” I said. I guess I was trying to humor him.


His face darkened. “But he could not tell

it without speaking too of the ones who behaved evilly. Yes, it is the

case that—thanks to the spirit of the Innocent—some good was achieved.

But I can scarcely believe that the Magistrate’s ultimate judgment of

this world was much shifted, either way, by what he heard from the

Condemned Man today.”


Not for the first time I was astonished by Magister Sark’s ability

to be intelligent and wise while spouting prehistoric nonsense. “For

your own part, anyway,” I pointed out, “it seems you chose in a way

that reflects well on you and your world.”


“The Innocent moved me,” he insisted. “Give all credit to her.”


“I give you my personal thanks,” I said, “and ask you to relay it to the Innocent the next time you hear from her.”


He shook his head in exasperation, then

finally chuckled; though such a grim fellow was he that his chuckle was

something between a gag and a cough. “You don’t understand at all.”


“Fair enough,” I said. “I am in no shape

for Dialog right now, but perhaps some other time I can try to explain

to you how I see all of these matters.”


His reaction was noncommittal, but he

understood that the conversation was over. He wandered away. I

collected some blank paper from Yul’s fetch and began to scribble out

notes to my friends at the Convox. Magister Sark got into a long

conversation with Yul and Cord, interrupted from time to time by

Ganelial Crade, who of course belonged to a completely different faith,

and who paced back and forth at a distance, fuming, then darted in from

time to time to dispute some fine point of deology.


A mobe swung through, dropped off the

driver who would take the Valers south, and picked up Magister Sark.

The Valers began to find seats aboard the coach. Fraa Osa was the last

to board. I handed him a stack of notes. “For my friends at Tredegarh,”

I explained, “if you would not mind bearing them.”


He bowed.


“You’ve already done me plenty of favors, so it is okay to say no,” I went on.


“You did us a favor,” he countered, “by

creating an emergence nested within the larger emergence, and giving us

an opportunity to train.”


I said nothing. I was wondering what he

meant by “the larger emergence,” and reckoned he must be talking about

the Cousins. He was sifting through the letters I’d given him. “You

have many friends at the Convox!” he remarked, and looked up at me quizzically. This was probably an indirect way of asking what the heck are you doing!? but I ignored it. “The long one, there, is for a girl named Ala. The others are for some other fraas and suurs of mine—”


“Aah!” exclaimed Fraa Osa, holding one up. “You know the famous Jesry!”


I didn’t even want to think about what was

implied by Jesry’s being famous, so I glided past it and directed his

attention to the last letter in the stack. “Lio,” I said, “Fraa Lio is

a student of Vale-lore.”


“Ah!” he exclaimed. As if Lio were unique;

as if the world, for thousands of years, at any given moment, had not

contained millions of vlor students.


“Mostly self-taught. But it is important to

him. If this letter were handed to him by even the most junior member

of the Ringing Vale math, it would be the greatest honor of his life.

Uh, don’t tell him I said that.”


Fraa Osa bowed again. “I shall comply with

all of your instructions.” He put his foot on the coach’s running

board. “Here I say farewell—unless—?” And he looked between me and the

coach.


I fell for it hard. I imagined the long

ride on the coach full of authentic Ringing Vale avout, maybe a night

or two in a room at a casino down south, a journey—safe and

well-organized—to Tredegarh, reunion with my friends there. If these

people could somehow get their hands on a plane, it could even happen

in a day. I imagined all of that long and hard enough to savor it, to

look forward to it.


But I knew it was all a daydream. That I had to pull back. That the longer I kept on this way the harder it was going to be.


“I want to climb on board that thing and go

to Tredegarh with you like that water wants to find the ocean,” I said,

gesturing to the river. “But to quit in the middle”—just because I’m beat up and homesick and scared—“seems wrong. Fraa Jad—he’s the Millenarian who sent me—would never understand.”


This was the first thing that had happened all day that startled Fraa Osa. “A Thousander,” he repeated.




“Yes.”


“Then you had best finish the task.”


“That’s kind of what I’m thinking.”


He bowed one more time—more deeply than

before. Then he turned his back on me and climbed into the coach. I

went to the latrine and peed blood and boarded Yul’s fetch. Sammann was

in there too. We pulled on to the main road and turned south. I slept.





They said I only slept for half an hour but

it felt much longer. When I woke up I crawled into the back of the

fetch, where it was darker, and Sammann showed me a speely on his

jeejah.


Sammann was the only member of the crew who

didn’t make remarks or ask questions about my injuries and emotional

state. This might make it sound like he was insensitive. Frankly,

though, I could have done with a lot less sensitivity by that point in

the day.


“There is not a lot of explanatory content

connected to this data because of the way in which it was obtained,” he

warned as he was queueing it up.


The image quality was, as usual, terrible.

It took me a minute even to be sure that it had been shot in color.

Everything was either solid black (space, and shadows) or blinding

white (anything with sun shining on it). As I slowly came to realize,

it had been made by aiming a hand-held speelycaptor out a dirty window.

“Outgassing,” Sammann said, which meant little to me. He went on to

explain that the materials used to build the space capsule had, in the

vacuum of space, let go of vaporous byproducts that had congealed on

the spacecraft windows. “You’d think they would have solved that

problem,” I said. “They built it in a rush,” he answered.


A perfect circle, centered in a perfect

equilateral triangle, dominated the view. “It’s the back end of the

alien ship,” Sammann explained. “The pusher plate on the rear. They

always kept it oriented toward the capsule—think about it.”


After a few moments I tried: “They—the Cousins—couldn’t be sure that our space capsule wasn’t carrying a nuclear warhead. So they kept the nuke-proof part of their ship aimed towards it.”


“That’s part of it,” Sammann said, and gave me a wicked grin—egging me on.


“They could spit one of their own nukes out the back of that thing and blow up the space capsule any time they felt like it.”


“You got it. Also: we can’t get a good look at their ship from this angle. No way to gather military intelligence.”


“Where’s the hole that the nukes come out of?” I asked.


“Don’t bother looking. You can’t see it.

It’s tiny compared to the scale of the plate. It’s closed by a shutter

when it’s not in use. You won’t be able to see it until it opens.”


“It’s going to open!?”


“Maybe it’s better if we just watch the

speely.” Sammann reached in and turned up the volume a bit. The sound

track was a roar of ambient noise: whooshes, hums, buzzes, and drones

at many different pitches. There was the occasional human word or

phrase, shouted over the roar, but people spoke rarely, and when they

did it tended to be in terse military jargon.


“Bogey,” someone said, “two o’clock.”


The image veered and zoomed, the big

triangle expanding until its edge had become a straight division

separating white from black. In the black part a grey blob was

discernible: just a mess of pixels a few shades brighter than black.

But it got brighter and bigger. “Incoming,” someone confirmed.


The murk of noise took on new overtones. People were conversing. I thought I heard the cadences of an Orth sentence.


“Prepare for egress!” someone commanded, in

a voice that meant business. For the first time, the speelycaptor

turned away from the window and refocused to show the interior of the

space capsule. This view was shockingly crisp, clear, and colorful

after the endless dreary shot of the pusher plate. Several people were

floating around in a confined space. Some were strapped into chairs

before consoles. Some were gripping handles, the better to keep their

faces pressed against windows. One of these was definitely Jesry. In

the middle of the capsule was the big man with the hairdo. He

didn’t look good. Weightlessness had made his hair go funny. His face

was swollen and greenish; I could tell he was nauseated. He looked

tired and uncaring—maybe from anti-nausea drugs? His impressive clothes

were gone, revealing all sorts of things about his physique that no one

except for his doctor really needed to know. A couple of people were

striving to fit him into an outlandish garment consisting of a network

of tubes in a matrix of stretchy fabric. It seemed that this project

had been going on for a while, but just now they threw it into high

gear and one of the others pushed himself away from a window and flew

over to help jerk the thing on. The Warden of Heaven (I didn’t know for

a fact that this was he, but it seemed unmistakable) woke up enough to

become indignant. He glared at the camera and lifted a finger. One of

his aides drifted into position to block the view, and said, “Please

give His Serenity some—”


“Some serenity?” cracked Jesry, off-camera.


Testy words were exchanged. The

authoritative voice commanded them to shut up. The argument was

replaced by technical conversation pertaining to the suit that they

were building around the Warden of Heaven’s body. One of the

console-watchers called out updates on the approach of the bogey.


Jesry said, “You’re about to become the first person ever to converse with aliens. What is your plan?”


The Warden of Heaven made some brief and

indistinct response. He was farther from the microphone, he wasn’t

feeling well, and he’d seen enough of Jesry by this point to know that

the conversation wasn’t going to end well.


The speelycaptor swung round to point at

the Warden again. They’d finished putting the tube-garment around his

body and were building a space suit over that, one limb at a time.


Off-camera, Jesry answered: “How do you know that the Geometers are even going to recognize that concept?”


Another muffled, noncommittal response from

the Warden (who, to be fair, couldn’t talk well because they were

mounting a headset on him).


“Geometers?” I asked.




“That’s what people at the Convox have been calling the aliens, apparently,” Sammann said.


“I would try to go in there with a mental

checklist of basic observations I wanted to achieve,” Jesry went on.

“For example, do they take any precautions against infection? It would

be quite significant if they were afraid of our germs—or if they

weren’t.”


The Warden of Heaven deflected Jesry’s suggestion with a humorous remark that his aides thought was funny.


“You ever look at bugs under a lens?” Jesry

tried. “That’d be good preparation for this. They look so different

from anything we normally experience that it’s easy to be kind of

stunned and bewildered by their appearance at first. But if you can get

past that emotional reaction, you can see how they work. How do they

transmit their weight to the ground? Count the orifices. Look for

symmetries. Observe periodicities. By which I mean, how often do they

breathe? From that, we can make inferences about their metabolism.”


One of the aides cut Jesry short by telling

him it was time to pray. The suit was all on now except for the helmet.

The Warden’s head—unrecognizable under the earphones, the mike, the

heads-up goggles—poked up out of a huge, rigid carapace. He held hands

with his aides as best he could through the bulky gloves. They closed

their eyes and said something in unison. A loud metallic pop/crunch

interrupted them. “Contact,” someone called, “we have been grappled by

a remote manipulator.”


The speelycaptor swung past a crew member

checking his watch and aimed back out the dirty window to focus on the

bogey. This was a skeletal craft, altogether mechanical, no pressurized

compartments where a Cousin might ride along: just a frame with half a

dozen robot arms of various sizes, and thruster nozzles, spotlights,

and dish antennas pointed every which way. One of its arms had reached

out and grabbed an antenna bracket on the outside of the capsule.


Things happened fast now. The helmet had

already been clamped down over the Warden of Heaven’s head, and crew

members had shooed away the aides and were manipulating the suit’s controls.

Through the bubble the Warden’s eyes could be seen moving back and

forth uncertainly, responding to inscrutable hisses and creaks from the

suit as its systems came alive. His lips moved and he nodded and gave

thumbs-up signs as communications were tested.


They pushed him through a pressure hatch at

one end of the capsule, closed it behind him, and turned a wheel to dog

it shut. He was in the airlock.


“Why’s he going alone?” I asked.


“Supposedly that’s how the Cousins—excuse me, the Geometers—wanted it,” Sammann said. “Send one, they said.”


“So we sent him?” I asked incredulously.


Sammann shrugged. “But that’s part of the

Geometers’ strategy, isn’t it? If we were allowed to send a whole

delegation, we could hedge our bets. But if the whole planet is allowed

to send only one representative, whom do we pick? That tells them a

lot.”


“Yeah, but why—?”


Sammann cut me off with an even more

exaggerated shrug. “You seriously expect me to be able to explain why

the Sæcular Power makes the decisions it makes?”


“Okay. Sorry. Never mind.”


Hisses and clanks and terse utterances from

the crew signaled the opening of the airlock’s outer door. A small arm

unfolded itself from the Geometers’ robot probe and reached toward the

ship, out of view of this window. When it drew back, a few moments

later, it brought the Warden of Heaven with it. The arm’s steely hand

had gripped a metal bracket that projected from the suit’s round

shoulder—a lifting point. The Geometers understood our engineering, and

knew a bracket for a bracket.


The bogey disengaged from the capsule and

fired a puff of gas to get itself drifting away, then, after a few

seconds, ignited larger thrusters that accelerated it toward the

icosahedron. The Warden of Heaven waved back to us. “Everything is

okay,” he announced over the wireless. Then his voice was replaced by a

harsh buzzing tone. A crew member turned it down. “They’re jamming us,”

he announced. “His Serenity is on his own.”




“No,” said an aide, “God is with him.”


The speelycaptor zoomed in on the Warden,

being drawn backwards toward the icosahedron. He was getting harder to

see, even at maximum zoom, but it looked like he was gesticulating,

tapping his helmet and throwing up his hands in confusion. “Okay, we

get it!” Jesry said. “You can’t hear.”


“I’m worried about his pulse. Way too high for a man his age,” said a crew member.


“You’ve still got telemetry?” Jesry asked.


“Just barely. They jammed vox first. Now they are attacking the other channels…nope. Lost it. Bye-bye.”


“The Geometers are some kind of military hardasses,” Sammann said, perhaps unnecessarily.


The video went on with little further

commentary until the robot probe and the Warden had shrunk to a tiny

cluster of grey pixels. Then it cut out and went to black. Sammann

paused it. “In the original, what follows is four hours of basically

nothing,” he said. “They just sit there and wait. Your friend Jesry

baits the Warden’s toadies into a philosophical debate and crushes

them. After that, no one wants to talk. There is only one event of

note, which is that after about one hour the jamming stops.”


“Really? So they can talk to the Warden again?”


“I didn’t say that. The jamming signals are

turned off, but they can’t get any data from the Warden’s spacesuit.

Most likely what it means is that the suit had been shut down.”


“Because something happened to the Warden of Heaven or…”


“Most people think he got out of the suit. Since it was no longer necessary, it was turned off to conserve power.”


“That implies…”


“That the Hedron—as people are calling

it—has an atmosphere we can breathe, yes,” Sammann said. “Or that the

Warden was dead on arrival.”


“The Warden of Heaven’s dead?”


Sammann started the speely playing again. The time code in the corner had jumped forward a few hours.


“New signal from the Hedron,” announced a tired crew member. “Repetitive pulses. Microwaves. High power. I’d say they are illuminating us with radar.”


“Like they don’t already know where we are!” someone scoffed.


“Cut the chatter!” ordered the voice I’d come to think of as the captain’s. “Do you think they are acquiring us?”


“As in acquiring a target for a weapons launch,” Sammann translated.


“It’s definitely that kind of a narrow-beam signal,” said the other, “but steady—not homing in.”


“Activity on the base plate!” Jesry called. “Dead center.”


The image once again wheeled to the huge

circle-in-triangle. Then it zoomed. A dark mote was visible in the

center. As the zoom went on, this grew and resolved itself as a

circular pore.


“Give us some distance!” the captain ordered.


“Brace for emergency acceleration…three,

two, one, now,” said another voice, and then everything went out of

whack for a minute. People and stuff flew around. Loud clunks and

hisses sounded. Everything that was loose ended up plastered against

the bulkhead closest to the icosahedron as the capsule accelerated away

from it. The woman holding the speelycaptor did her share of gasping

and cursing. But soon enough she got it pointed back out the window.

“Something is coming out of that port!” Jesry announced, and once again

we were treated to a long, veering zoom-in. But this time the hole

wasn’t crisp-edged and black. It was pinkish, its boundaries

ill-defined. The pink part was moving; it separated itself from the

base of the icosahedron. It had been cast off. It was adrift in space.

The hole irised shut behind it.


“That doesn’t look like a nuke,” someone said.


“Understatement of the year,” Sammann muttered.


“Move in on it.”


“Brace for acceleration…three two, one,

now.” There was another messy scene as the capsule reversed its

direction and began heading back toward the icosahedron. Yet again we

had to wait as the indefatigable woman with the speelycaptor made her

way back to that tiny, filthy window and re-acquired the shot.




She gasped.


So did I.


“What is it?” asked one of the voices. They

couldn’t see what she—what I—could see because they weren’t peering at

it through magnifying optics.


“It’s him,” said the woman holding the

speelycaptor. “It’s the Warden of Heaven!” She refrained from

mentioning one important detail, which was that he was stark naked.

“They threw the Warden of Heaven out the airlock!”


Sammann stopped it. “That has become the

hip catch phrase of the moment,” he told me. “Technically, though, it’s

not an airlock. It’s the port where they spit out the little nukes.”


The Warden at this point was still small

and poorly resolved, but he had been getting bigger, and I had been

steeling myself for what he would look like close-up. “I can keep

playing it if you want,” Sammann offered, none too enthusiastically,

“or—”


“I’ve seen enough gore for one day, thanks,” I said. “Don’t you explode or something?”


“There was a little bit of that. By the time they got him back into the capsule—well, it was a mess.”


“So the Geometers just—executed him?”


“This is not known. He might have died of natural causes. They found a burst aneurysm on autopsy.”


“I imagine they found a lot of burst stuff!”


“Eew!” Cord said from up front.


“Exactly—so it’s hard to say whether it blew before or after he was thrown out.”


“Have the Geometers sent out any communications since this happened?”


“We’d have no way of knowing that. This

speely was leaked. Other than that, the Powers That Be have managed to

control information pretty effectively.”


“Is everyone looking at this speely? Does the whole world know about it?”


“The Powers That Be have shut down most of the Reticulum in order to control propagation of this speely,” Sammann said. “So only a few people have seen it. Most people, if they’ve heard anything, have only heard rumors.”


“That’s almost worse than facts,” I said, and told him about Magister Sark. “When did this happen?” I asked.


“While we were going over the pole,” he

said. “The capsule landed a day later. Everyone except the Warden was

safe and sound. Meanwhile the military had begun moving toward the

poles, as you found out.”


“Which makes no sense to me,” I mentioned.


“I’m told that the Hedron is in an orbit that confines its ground track to a belt around the Equator…”


“Yes, and so if you go to the far north or south you can get out from under it—”


“And maybe out of reach of its weapons?”


“Depends on what kind of weapons they are.

But the part that doesn’t make sense to me is that the Geometers could

change their orbit any time they wanted to. The first few months they

were here, they were in a polar orbit, remember?”


“Yes, of course I remember,” Sammann said.


“Then they changed and…”


“And what?” Sammann asked after a while, since I’d gone silent.


“…and I saw—Ala and I saw—light from the

nukes that they fired to make that change in their orbit. ‘Plane change

maneuvers are expensive.’ For them to change back to a polar orbit now—where

they could shoot down on our military forces at the poles—they’d have

to fire that many nukes again.” I looked at Sammann. “They’re out of

fuel.”


“You mean…out of nukes?”


“Yeah. Nuclear bombs are the fuel that makes the ship go. They can only store so many of them. When they run low, they have to…”


“To go get more,” Sammann said.


“Which means zeroing in on a technically

advanced civilization and raiding them. Pillaging their stockpile of

nuclear material. Which, in our case, means—”




“Edhar, Rambalf, and Tredegarh,” Sammann said.


“That was the message they were sending on the night that the lasers shone down,” I said, “the night I was Evoked.”


“The night Fraa Orolo walked down off Bly’s Butte,” Cord put in, “and headed for Ecba.”













Part 8


ORITHENA



















The

drive south went fast. We did it in four days and three nights. We were

almost out of money, so we camped. Yul cooked our breakfasts and

suppers. We saved our money for fuel and for lunch, passing through the

mass-produced restaurants and fueling stations like ghosts.


During the first day or so, the landscape

was dominated by endless tracts of fuel trees, relieved by small cities

surrounding the plants where they were shredded and cooked to produce

liquid fuel. Then we had two days of the most densely populated

territory I had ever seen. The landscape was indistinguishable from

that of the continent where we had started: the same signs and stores

everywhere. The cities were so close that their fauxburbs touched one

another and we never saw any open countryside, just pulsed along the

highway-network from one traffic jam to the next. I saw several

concents. They were always in the distance, for they tended to be built

on hilltops or in ancient city centers that great highways swerved to

avoid. One of these, by coincidence, happened to be Saunt Rambalf. It

was built on an elevated mass of igneous rock several miles wide.


I thought about harrowing. When Alwash had

used that word on me back on the ship, I’d thought it was funny. But

after what had happened in Mahsht, I really did feel harrowed. Not in

the sense of a weed that had been pulled out and burned, but in the

sense of what was left after the harrowing had been finished: a plant,

young, weak, survival still uncertain. But standing alone and alive,

with nothing around it that might interfere with its growth or that

could protect it from whatever blasts came its way tomorrow.


Late on the third day the landscape began

to open up and to smell of something other, more ancient, than tires

and fuel. We camped under trees and

packed away our warm clothes. Breakfast the fourth day was made from

things Cord and Yul had purchased from farmers. We drove into a

landscape that had been settled and cultivated since the days of the

Bazian Empire. Its population had, of course, waxed and waned countless

times since then. Lately it had waned. The fauxburbs and then the

cities had withered, leaving what I thought of as the intransigent

strongholds of civilization: wealthy people’s villas, maths,

monasteries, arks, expensive restaurants, suvins, resorts, retreat

centers, hospitals, governmental installations. Little stood between

these save open country and surprisingly primitive agriculture. Tufts

of scrawny, garishly colored businesses sprouted at road-junctions,

just to keep the riffraff like us moving, but most of the buildings

were stone or mud with slate or tile roofs. The landscape became more

sere and open as we moved along. The roads shed lanes, then insensibly

narrowed, grew rougher and more tortuous, until without having noticed

any sudden transitions we found ourselves driving on endless one-lane

tracks and stopping to avoid flocks of livestock so tough and emaciated

they looked like jerky on the hoof.


Late on the fourth day we came over a

little rise and beheld in the distance a naked mountain. Mountains for

me had always borne dark green pelts, shaggy with mist. But this one

looked as though acid had been poured on it and burned off everything

alive. It had the same structure of ridges and cols as the mountains I

was used to but it was as bald as the head of a Ringing Vale avout. The

pink-orange light of the setting sun made it glow like flesh in

candlelight. I was so taken by its appearance that I stared at it for

quite a while before I realized that there was nothing behind it. A few

more such mountains rose beyond it in the distance, but they rose from

a flat and featureless geometric plane, dark grey: an ocean.


That night we camped on a beach beside the

Sea of Seas. The next morning we drove the vehicles down a ramp onto

the ferry that took us to the Island of Ecba.


Semantic Faculties: Factions within the mathic world, in the years following the Reconstitution, generally claiming descent

from Halikaarn. So named because they believed that symbols could bear

actual semantic content. The idea is traceable to Protas and to Hylaea

before him. Compare Syntactic Faculties.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





The light through the tent-cloth roused,

the surf on the beach lulled, and like a log rolling up and down in the

breakers I’d rocked any number of times between sleeping and waking as

I nursed a vague and uneventful dream about the Geometers. Some part of

my mind had become obsessed with the remote manipulator arms on the

probe that they had sent out to fetch the Warden of Heaven, and had

been consuming vast dark energies dwelling on them, sharpening and

embellishing my memories, building them up into a hybrid of seen and

imagined, theorics and art, that encoded all sorts of weird ideas and

fears and hopes. I fended off wakefulness as long as I could, since

that would lose me the dream, and I lay there half-conscious, waiting

for something to happen, willing the dream to move ahead, to reveal

something; but I only grew more restless, for nothing occurred but what

sprang from my own thinking: endlessly deeper study of the joints,

bones, bearings, and actuators of those arms, which in my imagination

had become as complex as my own arms and hands, and styled with the

same organic curves as the parts of our clock that Cord used to make

for Sammann. The only new thing that developed in that dreaming was

that, at the very end, I turned my attention from the arms to the

imaging devices that I guessed must be present on the bodies of those

probes. But those lenses—supposing they were there—were guarded by

clusters of spotlights, and when I tried to stare into them and meet

the Geometers’ gaze, all I could see was explosions of glare held apart

by utter blackness.


Frustration succeeded in waking me up where

daylight, the smell of cooking food, and the others’ conversation had

failed. I could not move matters forward save by waking up and doing

something.


Ecba was beautiful, in a hot and harsh way. It had taken us a day simply

to erect defenses against sun and heat. We’d found an east-facing cove

north of a precipitous rocky headland that afforded us shade for much

of the day, and Yul had showed us ways to anchor stakes deep in the

sand, which enabled us to put up tarps that blocked the late afternoon

sun. The only time we really got blasted with it was first thing in the

morning, before the heat got too bad. A smaller island half a mile

offshore broke and diffracted incoming surf, so waves here were small

but unpredictable. The cove was too shallow and rock-bound to be of use

to any but the smallest boats, so it had never, as far as we could

tell, been settled or used for anything. We kept expecting someone to

rush up, gaudy with insignias, and eject us, but it didn’t happen. The

place did not seem to be private property. It was not a park. It was

simply there. Ecba’s only real settlement (other than the math at

Orithena) enveloped the ferry terminal, five miles away in a straight

line, fifteen by the road that traversed the island’s shore. A

desalination plant, powered by the sun, made and sold water there. Yul

had filled a couple of musty-smelling military surplus water bladders

when we had arrived. Between that and the food we’d bought from farmers

on the mainland, we wouldn’t really have to make another supply run for

a week.


The day after we’d made the camp and

pitched the tarps had been, by unspoken, unanimous agreement, a time to

rest. Beat-up books had appeared from bottoms of bags. Someone was

always snoring, someone always swimming. I borrowed a pair of

long-nosed pliers from Cord and yanked my stitches out, then sat in the

surf up to my neck until the wounds went numb. There is more I could,

but won’t, say about healing. Watching my body marshal its forces of

regeneration was fascinating at the time, and probably accounted for

the weird dreams I had been having about the metallic limbs and crystal

organs of the alien probe. There was the temptation to ponder and

philosophize about the relationship between mind and body. But the

Lorite in me said it would be a waste of time. More efficient to find a

library and read what better thinkers had written on it.


Late yesterday, Yul had shattered the calm of the place by starting

the engine of Cord’s fetch, and some of us had gone for a dawdling,

two-hour circumnavigation of the island. The location of the volcano

was, of course, no secret; there was hardly a place from which it

couldn’t be seen. It was steep, which, as Fraa Haligastreme had taught

me, meant that it was dangerous. Some volcanoes produced runny lava

that spread out quickly; these were lens-shaped and safe, provided you

could walk faster than the lava. Others made thick lava that moved

slowly and built steep slopes; these were dangerous because pent-up

pressure had no outlet except for explosions.


This island was the last stop on a ferry

route that ran generally south-southeast from the mainland, so we’d

steamed into it from the north. The terminal and town were built around

the island’s only surviving harbor, a bite chomped out of the northwest

limb of the approximately round island. Our camp was in the northeast,

in one of a series of closely spaced coves separated by fingers of

hardened magma that had reached down from the caldera many centuries

before Ecba had been settled. So all of our views, during those first

few days, had been of the north face of the volcano, which looked

regular and graceful—even if Haligastreme’s voice was in my ear telling

me it was dangerously steep. Yesterday’s drive had taken us clockwise

around the island, passing down its eastern shore, and after a few

miles we had suddenly come in view of its south slope, which had

exploded and collapsed in-2621, burying the Temple of Orithena, and

filling in and obliterating a harbor on the island’s southeastern coast

into which the early physiologers—followers of Cnoüs from all round the

Sea of Seas—had once voyaged in their galleys and sailing-ships. Anyone

could see at a glance that it was the result of an explosion. The ash

and rubble sloped straight from summit to sea. So slow had Ecba been to

recover that the road, even now, faltered as it came up on to the

rubble-fan, and became an informal dirt track for several miles. There

were no signs, no buildings or improvements. At one point, though, as

we had slowly rounded the island’s southeastern curve, and had come to

a place where we could look straight up into the yawning rupture in the

volcano’s cone, we had seen a separate track, teed into the coastal

road, that ran straight uphill for

some distance, then veered off into the first of a series of

switchbacks. These ascended a bare slope whose skyline was reinforced

by a dark wall. We hadn’t needed Sammann’s satellite imagery to know

that this was the math that had been a-building there since 3000.


Halfway between us and it, at the beginning

of the switchbacks, a few low buildings struggled to keep their roofs

above the drifting ash. We had gone up there and found several avout

running a sort of checkpoint and souvenir stand. They had all worn

bolts and chords openly. We had told them no lies, but behaved as if we

were tourists. They had been pleased to sell us things (soap made with

volcanic ash) but had let us know we could not drive any farther up the

road.


Later, as we had paused in town to pick up

supplies, I had again seen bolted and chorded avout walking around

openly. They had not seemed like hierarchs. This had been, then, a

violation of the Discipline—as was letting avout run a souvenir stand.

But too it let us know that relations between avout and extras were

much friendlier here than, say, in Mahsht. I had badly wanted to

approach those avout and ask them if they knew of Orolo, but had

checked myself, reasoning that they would still be here tomorrow, and

it was better to sleep on it. And sleep on it I had, but this had

booted me nothing but that endless, frustrating dream about remote

manipulator arms.


Having slept so poorly, I didn’t say much at breakfast until I came out with: “Suppose there are

no biological Geometers—creatures with bodies like ours, sitting at the

controls of those machines. What if they died long ago and left behind

ships and probes that run an automated program?”


This turned out to be an absolute

conversation-killer except in the case of Sammann, who seemed delighted

by the idea. “So much the better for us,” he said, which puzzled me for

a moment until I perceived that by us he meant the Ita.


I considered it. “Makes you more useful to the Sæcular Power, you mean.”


His face froze for a while and I knew I’d offended him. “Perhaps being useful to them isn’t the only thing we care about,” he suggested. “Perhaps the Ita can have other aspirations.”


“Sorry.”


“Think what a fascinating problem it would

be, to interact with such a system!” he exclaimed. I had gotten off

easy. He was so thrilled by this idea that he wasn’t going to dwell on

my slur. “At its lowest level, it would be a fully deterministic

syndev. But it would express itself only in certain actions: movements

of the ship, transmissions of data, and so on. Observables.”


“We’d use givens, but go on.”


“To grasp the workings of the syntactic

program by analyzing those givens would be a sort of code-breaking

effort. We Ita would have to have our own Convox.”


“You could solve the Aboutness Problem once and for all,” I suggested, half serious.


He lowered his gaze from enraptured study of the sky and stared at me. “You’ve studied the AP?”


I shrugged. “Probably not as much as you have. We learn about it when we study the early history of the Split.”


“Between the followers of Saunt Proc and the disciples of Saunt Halikaarn.”


“Yeah. Though it’s a little unfair to call

one group followers and the other disciples, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, that’s what we call the Split.”


“Procians were more friendly to the syntactic point of view…or maybe I should have said Faanians…”


Sammann seemed a little shaky here, so I reminded him: “We’re speaking, remember, of Aboutness. You and I can think about

things. Symbols in our brains have meanings. The question is, can a

syntactic device think about things, or merely process digits that have

no Aboutness—no meaning—”


“No semantic content,” Sammann said.


“Yes. Now, at the Concent of Saunt

Muncoster, just after the Reconstitution, Faan was the FAE of the

Syntactic Faculty—followers of Proc. She took the view that Aboutness

didn’t exist—was an illusion that any sufficiently advanced syndev

creates for itself. By this time

Evenedric was already dead but he like Halikaarn before him had taken

the view that our minds could do things that syndevs couldn’t—that

Aboutness was real—”


“That our thoughts really did have semantic content over and above the ones and zeroes.”


“Yes. It’s related to the notion that our minds are capable of perceiving ideal forms in the Hylaean Theoric World.”


“Would you people mind!?” Yul bellowed. “We’re trying to have a campout here!”


“This is what we do to relax,” Sammann shot back.


“Yeah,” I said, “if we were working, we’d talk about things that were tedious and complicated.”


“It’s worse than listening to preachers!” Yul complained, but Gnel refused to rise to the bait.


“Let me explain it in words you can

understand, cousin,” Gnel said. “If the aliens are just a big computer

program, Sammann here can shut them down just by flipping one bit. The

program won’t even know it’s being sabotaged.”


“Only if it does not have Aboutness,” I cautioned him. “If it’s capable of understanding that its symbols are about something, then it’ll know that Sammann is up to no good.”


“It would have to have crazy security measures built in,” Yul said, “what with all those nukes and so on.”


“If it lacks Aboutness, it is incredibly

vulnerable, so yes,” Sammann said. “But systems with true Aboutness, or

so the myth goes, should be much more difficult to deceive.”


“Nah,” Yul said, and looked at his cousin again. “You just have to deceive ’em in a different way.”


“Apparently the Warden of Heaven was not very convincing,” Gnel pointed out, “so maybe preaching isn’t as easy as you think.”


Cord cleared her throat and frowned at her bowl. “Uh, not that this isn’t fascinating, but what is the plan for today?”


This produced a long silence. Cord followed

up with, “I like it here, but it’s beginning to feel creepy. Does

anyone else think it’s creepy?”




“You’re talking to a bunch of guys,” Yul said. “No one here is going to validate your feelings.” She tossed sand at him.


“I’ve been doing some research,” Sammann

said, “which was creepy in itself, because I didn’t understand why I

should have such good Reticulum access in such a godforsaken place…”


“But you understand it now?” Gnel asked.


“Yes, I think so.”


“What did you learn?”


“The whole island is a single parcel, owned

by a single entity. Has been since the Old Mathic Age. Back in those

days it was a petty principality. Got kicked back and forth between

different empires from age to age. When kings and princes went out of

style it would pass into the hands of a private owner or a trust. When

they came back into fashion, it’d get a prince or a baron or something

again. But nine hundred years ago it was purchased by a private

foundation—that’s a thing like a Dowment. And they must have had ties

to the mathic world—”


“Because the Orithena dig—the new concent we saw yesterday—was sponsored by them?”


“Sponsored, or something,” Sammann said.


“A single Apert—ten days—isn’t long enough

to organize such a big project,” I pointed out. “This Dowment must have

been a long time making its plans.”


“It’s not so hard,” Cord said. “The

Unarians have Apert once a year. It’s easy to talk to them. Some

graduate and become Tenners. Some of those become Hundreders, and so

on. If these guys started working on it in 2800, by the time of the

Millennial Convox of 3000 they could have had supporters everywhere

except in Thousander maths.”


I was uneasy with Cord’s scenario because

it sounded sneaky, but I couldn’t dispute the facts she’d stated. I

guess what troubled me about it was that we, the avout, liked to

believe that we were the only long-term thinkers, the only ones capable

of hatching plans over centuries, and her scenario envisioned a Dowment

in the Sæcular world turning the tables on us.


Perhaps Sammann was harboring similar feelings. “It could just as well have worked the other direction,” he said.




“What—” I exclaimed, “are you saying that a

bunch of avout created a Dowment in the Sæcular world to buy them an

island? That’s outrageous.”


But we all knew Sammann had won that

exchange, because he was relaxed, satisfied. I was angry and off

balance. Largely because this all fit so neatly into what I had been

told, in recent weeks, about the Lineage.


Still, everyone seemed to be looking at me for a response. “If it’s like you say, Sammann, then they—whoever they

are—know we’re here anyway. I think we should take the direct approach.

Drive down there. I’ll just walk up to the gate, knock, and state my

business.”


That got all of us on our feet, getting

ready for the day, except for Gnel who just followed Sammann around.

“There must be more information about what sort of entity bought the

island. I mean, come on! How many things last nine hundred years in

this world?”


“Lots of things,” Sammann said. “As an

example, that ark you belong to has lasted quite a bit longer…” He

turned and searched Gnel’s face. “That’s your point, isn’t it? You

think this is some kind of religious institution?”


Gnel was a little taken aback, and seemed to back down. “I’m just saying, businesses don’t last that long.”


“But it’s quite a stretch to go from that to saying that Ecba is run by a secret ark.”


“When I see avout walking openly in the

streets of the town,” Gnel said, “it tells me we need to ‘stretch’

beyond normal explanations.”


“We saw avout in the streets of Mahsht. Maybe the ones here just got Evoked or something,” said Yul, getting into the act.


I don’t think that this seemed plausible to

any of us—Yul included—but it brought us to an impasse. “Many avout,” I

said, “especially Procian/Faanian ones, think that belief in the

Hylaean Theoric World is basically a religion anyway. And I have reason

to believe that the avout down there at Orithena are the ultimate

fringe of HTW believers. So whether it’s a religious community

or not sort of depends on how you define your terms.” I faltered as I

said that last bit, just imagining how Orolo would plane me if he heard

me talking Sphenic gibberish. Even Sammann turned to fix me with an

incredulous look. But he didn’t say anything, because I think he

understood that I was just trying to get us moving. “Look,” I said to

Gnel, “Sammann’s investigation just got started, and we’ve seen before

that it can sometimes take a few days for him to get access to certain

things. Whether or not they open the gates for me at Orithena, you’ll

have plenty of time to ask around and learn more in days to come.”


“Yes,” Gnel said, “but whether they open

those gates for you depends on what you say. And that depends on what

you know. So maybe it’s better to wait for a couple of days.”


“I know more than I’m saying,” I said, “and I want to go there today.”


Metekoranes: A theor of

ancient times, exceptionally gifted at plane geometry but usually

silent in Dialogs, who was buried under volcanic ash in the eruption

that destroyed Orithena. According to those traditions that believe in

the existence of the Old Lineage, the founder (though probably

unwittingly) of same.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Two hours later I was standing alone at the gates of Orithena.


The wall was twenty feet high, made of

blocks of fine-grained, grey-brown stone that were all the same size

and shape. As I stood there, sweating in the sun, waiting for an answer

to my knock, I had more than enough time to examine these and to

conclude that they had been cast in molds, using some process that

fused loose volcanic ash into a sort of concrete. Each was about the

size of a small wheelbarrow, say the largest that a couple of avout

could move around using simple tools. Anyway the courses were extremely

regular, since all of the blocks were clones. Some were slightly

browner, some slightly greyer, but on the whole the wall looked as if

it had been snapped together out of a child’s building toy kit. The

gates themselves were steel plates, which would last a good long while

in this climate. After knocking, I stepped well back to get clear of

the stored heat radiating from those panels, which were large enough to

admit two of the largest drummons abreast. I turned and looked back at

the souvenir stand, a few hundred feet down the hill. Cord, leaning

back against the shady side of Yul’s fetch, waved at me. Sammann took a

picture on his jeejah.


The gate was framed between a pair of

cylindrical bastions perforated with small gridded windows. The one on

the left sported a tiny door, also of steel. After some time had

passed, I ambled over and knocked on it. Framed in its upper half was a

hatch, just about the size of my hand. Ten minutes or so later, I heard

movement on the other side. A door opened, then slammed shut within the

bastion. A latch scrabbled. The little hatch creaked open. The room on

the other side of it was dark and, I guessed, delightfully cool. But my

eyes were adjusted to the blasting sun of an Ecba noon, and I could see

nothing.


“Know that you address a world that is not

your own and into which you may not pass save that you make a solemn

vow not to leave it again,” said a woman’s voice, speaking in locally

accented Fluccish. This was what she was supposed to do. Gatekeepers in

places like this had been saying this, or some variant of it, since

Cartas.


“Greetings, my suur,” I said, “let us speak

in Orth if you please. I am Fraa Erasmas of the Edharian chapter of the

Decenarian math of the Concent of Saunt Edhar.”


A pause, then the hatch closed and was

latched. I waited for a while. Then the hatch opened again and I heard

a deeper, older woman’s voice.


“I am Dymma,” she said.


“Greetings, Suur Dymma. Fraa Erasmas at your service.”


“That I am your suur, or you my fraa, is very much undecided in my mind, as you come so attired.”




“I have traveled far,” I returned. “My bolt, chord, and sphere were stolen from me as I made peregrin across the Sæculum.”


“No Convox is summoned hither. We do not look for peregrins.”


“It seems inhospitable,” I said, “that

Orithena, whence the first Peregrins departed, should not open her

gates for one who has returned.”


“Our duty is to the Discipline, not to any

custom of hospitality. There are hotels in town; hospitality is their

business.” The little hatch made a noise as if she were getting ready

to close it.


“What part of the Discipline permits avout

to sell soap extramuros?” I asked. “Where does the Discipline state

that bolted fraas may stroll about yonder town?”


“Your discourse belies your claim to be

avout,” said Dymma, “as a fraa would know that there are variations in

the Discipline from one math to the next.”


“Many avout would not know it since they never leave their own maths,” I demurred.


“Precisely,” Dymma said, and I could

imagine her smirking in the dark at how deftly she had turned the point

to her advantage—for I was on the outside, where no avout should be.


“I grant that your customs may differ from those of the rest of the mathic world,” I began.


She interrupted me. “Not so much so that we would admit one who had not sworn the Vow.”


“Did Orolo swear the Vow, then?”


A few seconds of silence. Then she closed the hatch.


I waited. After a while I turned back,

waved to my friends, and pantomimed a big shrug. It was strangely

difficult to reconnect with them, even in such a simple gesture, after

having stared over the threshold of the math. I’d bid goodbye to them a

few minutes ago as if I’d be back in time for lunch. But for all I knew

I might end up spending the rest of my life there.


The hatch again. “State your business, you who style yourself Fraa Erasmas,” said a man in Orth.


“Fraa Jad, Millenarian, would know Orolo’s mind on certain matters, and sends me in quest of him.”




“Orolo who was Thrown Back?”


“The same.”


“One on whom the Anathem has been rung down

may never more go into a math,” the man pointed out. “And for that

matter, one who has been Evoked, and despatched to Convox at Tredegarh,

may not suddenly present himself at a different math on the other side

of the world.”


I had already suspected the answer before

we reached Ecba. Certain clues had bolstered my hypothesis. But,

strangely, what clinched it for me was the architecture of the place.

No concessions to the Mathic style here. “The riddle that you pose is a

trying one,” I admitted, “however, on reflection, its answer is clear.”


“Oh? What is its answer then?”


“This is not a math,” I said.


“What is it if not a math?”


“The cloister of a lineage that was born a thousand years before Cartas and her Discipline.”


“You are well come to Orithena, Fraa Erasmas.”


Heavy bolts moved and the door swung open.


I stepped forward into Orithena, and into the Lineage.





At Saunt Edhar, Orolo had grown a little

doughy, though he kept in decent shape by working in his vineyard and

climbing the steps to the starhenge. At Bly’s Butte, according to

Estemard’s phototypes, he had lost some of that weight and gone

shaggy-headed and grown the obligatory Feral beard. But when I picked

him up at the gates of Orithena and spun him around five times, his

body felt solid, neither fat nor emaciated, and when I finally let him

go, tears were making wet tracks down his tanned and clean-shaven

cheeks. That was all I saw before my vision was blurred with tears, and

then I had to break away and walk to and fro in the shade of the great

wall to get my composure back. The Discipline had taught me nothing of

how to cope with such an event: throwing my arms around a dead man.

Perhaps it meant that I too was now dead to the mathic world, and had

moved on to a sort of afterlife. Cord, Yul, Gnel and Sammann had served as my pallbearers.


It took a powerful effort of will to remember that they were still out there, wondering what was going on.


There was a little fountain in the

cloister. Orolo fetched me a ladle of water. We sat together in the

shade of the clock-tower as I drank. It tasted of sulfur.


Where to begin? “There’s so much I would

have said to you, Pa, if I could have, when you were Thrown Back. So

much I wanted to say to you in the weeks following. But…”


“It all flows back.”


“Beg pardon?”


“Those things flow back in time and as they

do they change—your mind changes them—so that they no longer need

talking about quite so much. Fine. Let’s talk of what is fresh and

interesting.”


“All right. You’re looking well.”


“You aren’t. Scars honorably earned, I hope?”


“Not really. Learned a lot though.” But I

did not really feel like telling him the story. We made idle chitchat

for a few minutes until we both realized how ridiculous it was, then

got up and began to prowl around. A younger fraa—if that was the

correct term for one who lived in a math-that-was-not-a-math—brought me

a bolt and chord, which I traded for my Sæcular clothes. Then Orolo led

me away from the cloister along a broad path, beaten down by countless

sandaled feet and barrow-wheels, to the edge of a pit big enough to

swallow the Mynster of Saunt Edhar several times over. If we had built

our monument by piling stone on stone, building up from the ground,

they had built theirs by digging down, a shovel-load at a time. The

walls of the hole were too steep, the soil too loose to be stable; they

had shored it up using slabs of fused ash. A ramp spiraled down to the

bottom. I started down it, but Orolo held me back. “You’ll notice there

are no people down there. It gets hotter as you descend. We dig at

night. If you insist on going for a hike, we’ll ascend.” And he

gestured up the mountainside.


I already knew from Sammann’s pictures and from yesterday’s scouting

trip that Orithena had two wall-systems, an inner and an outer. They

coincided along the road, where the main gate stood. The huge

twenty-foot wall enclosed the cloister where the avout lived, and the

hole in the ground where they delved. The outer wall was much

lower—perhaps six feet high—so, more symbolic than anything else. It

reached thousands of feet up the mountainside, embracing a strip of

ground that ran all the way to the volcano’s caldera. It was clear from

the pictures that mine-works had been created up at the top, possibly

to extract energy from the volcano’s heat. So there I reckoned it would

be hot, foul-smelling, and dangerous. But the territory in between—what

Orolo and I walked through—had been transformed into an oasis by the

labor of the Lineage. Somehow they had found water and used it to raise

vines, grain, and all manner of trees that yielded fruits and oils

while casting dappled shade on the path up the mountain. The

temperature dropped a little, the breeze freshened, with every step.

The effort of climbing kept me warm, but when we reached a suitable

altitude to stop, enjoy the view, and nibble at the fruits we’d

pilfered along the way, my sweat dried instantly in the cool dry wind

off the sea and I had to wrap myself up.


We passed beyond the upper limit of

Orithena’s orchards and wandered through a belt of twisted, gnarled

trees to a sloping meadow dusted with what had looked, from a distance,

like frost. But it was actually a carpet of tiny white wildflowers that

somehow found a way to grow here. Colorful insects flew around but

there weren’t enough of them to be obnoxious. They were kept in check,

I guessed, by the birds, who sang from perches in scrub-trees and

bursts of spiky vegetation. We sat on the exposed root of a tree that

must have been planted the spring after the volcano had gone off. Orolo

explained that these trees, which were no taller than I, were in fact

the oldest living things on Arbre.


Most of our conversation that afternoon

consisted of such tour-guide stuff. In a way it was a great relief to

chatter about birds and trees, and how many cubic feet of earth had

been removed from the dig and how many of the Temple buildings had been

excavated, rather than talking of such weighty affairs as the

Geometers, the Convox, and the

Lineage. Later we hiked down and supped at the Refectory with the

hundred or so fraas and suurs who lived here. Their FAE, Fraa

Landasher, the third of the three who’d interrogated me at the gate,

formally bade me welcome and made a toast in my name. I drank more than

my share of their wine, which was infinitely better than what Orolo

made in his frostbitten vineyard at Saunt Edhar, and slept it off in a

private cell.


I awoke sour, hung over, out of sorts,

thinking it was late and that I’d overslept—but no, it was early, and

the night shift of diggers were coming up out of the pit with their

picks, trowels, brushes, and notebooks, singing hilarious

marching-songs. They’d constructed a bathhouse where hot water was

sluiced down from volcanic springs and routed through vertical shafts

where you could get blasted clean in about ten seconds. I stood in one

of those until I could no longer breathe, then stepped out and let my

newmatter bolt pull the water off my skin. This helped a little. But

what was really throwing me for a loop was the re-entry shock of being

back in the mathic world, with its view of time so different from what

I’d grown used to extramuros. Making it worse was that no one had

explained the place’s rules to me yet. In most ways it was like a

Cartasian math. But they’d not made me swear a vow, and I got the sense

that I could walk out the door whenever I chose. They just pretended

it was a math when they were dealing with anyone who might not

understand. Being avout was their cover story. And yet it was no lie,

for they were as dedicated to their work as any who lived in Saunt

Edhar. Perhaps more so, in that they wouldn’t suffer that work to be

impeded by rules, would not submit to the dictates of any Inquisition.


Fraa Landasher intercepted me coming out of

the sluice-bath and introduced me to Suur Spry, a girl of about my age.

Or rather reintroduced me, since she was the first person I’d spoken

with yesterday at the gate. She reminded me disconcertingly of Ala. It

was now or never, explained Landasher, for me to descend and see the

ruins, for if we waited any longer it would be too hot. Suur Spry was

to be my guide; she’d packed a basket of food that we could nibble on

as we went. It was clear from the looks on their faces that they

expected I’d be thrilled. And what would be more reasonable? Yet I had

to feign gratitude because what I really wanted was to awaken Orolo and

talk to him of pressing Sæcular matters.


Not having known what might happen at the

gate, I’d made the plan yesterday with Cord, Yul, Gnel, and Sammann

that if I was allowed to go inside, they should wait for an hour and

then, if nothing happened, come back three days later, at which time

I’d try to get word out to them as to what ought to be done next. I

felt that my three days were flying by, and so in truth I did not want

to go on a long tourist hike with some girl I’d only just met. It was

in a peevish mood that I began to descend the ramp, carrying Suur

Spry’s picnic-basket on one arm.


It was in an altogether different mood,

though, that I reached the bottom, kicked off my sandals, and felt

under my bare feet the paving-stones on which Adrakhones had walked.

The Temple steps where Diax had brandished his Rake. The Analemma where

generations of physiologer-priests had celebrated Provener. And the

tile-strewn Decagon where Metekoranes had stood, lost in thought, as

the whole place was buried under ash.


“Did you find him?” I asked Spry, a few minutes later, as we were munching on some fruit and drinking water from the basket.


“Who—Metekoranes?”


“Yes.”


“Yes. He was the first one we—I mean they,

my forerunners—looked for. They found, standing upright, a—” She

balked, looking awed and disgusted.


“Skeleton?”


“A cast,” she said, “a cast of his whole

body. You can look at it if you want. Of course it’s just speculation

that it is the actual Metekoranes. But it fits perfectly with the

legend. He even had his head bowed, you know, as if he were looking at

the tiles.”


The plaza where we were enjoying our little

picnic—the one where Metekoranes had been buried and cast in stone—was

the Teglon made real. It was flat, decagonal, maybe two hundred feet

across, paved in smooth slabs of marble. In ancient times the plaza had

been plentifully supplied with tiles made of clay baked in molds. There

were seven molds, hence seven different shapes of tile. Their shapes

were such that it was possible to fit them together in an infinite

number of patterns. That’s not possible with squares, or equilateral

triangles; those fit together in repeating patterns, so there are no

choices to make. But as long as you had more copies of the Teglon

tiles, you could go on making choices forever. Hundreds of tiles were

scattered around the place even now, and from place to place the

modern-day Orithenans had been putting them together in little

arrangements. I squatted down and looked at one, then looked

questioningly at Spry. “Go ahead,” she said, “it’s a modern

reproduction. We found the original molds!”


I picked up a tile for a closer look. This

one happened to be four-sided: a rhombus. A groove was molded into its

surface, curving from one of its sides to another. I carried it over to

the nearest vertex of the Decagon and set it down; its obtuse angle fit

perfectly into the corner.


“Ah,” Suur Spry teased me, “going straight to the most difficult problem of all, huh?”


She was talking, of course, of the Teglon.

She turned away and walked to the opposite vertex and set a tile down

there. Meanwhile I scavenged a few other tiles, getting samples of all

seven shapes. I chose one at random and set it next to the first. This

one also had a groove curving from one side to another—all of the tiles

were so made—and I rotated it until its groove mated with, and became a

continuation of, the one on the first tile. Into the angle between them

I was able to place a third. That created opportunities to slide in a

fourth, a fifth, and so on. I was playing the Teglon. The objective of

the game was to build the pattern outward from one vertex and pave the

entire Decagon in such a way that the groove formed a continuous,

unbroken curve from the first vertex to the last—the one directly

opposite, where Suur Spry had put down a tile. Along the way, the curve

had to pass across every tile in the entire Decagon. For the first

little while, it was easy—it came naturally. But beyond a certain

point, the two objectives—that of tiling the whole surface, and that of

keeping the curve going—began to conflict. I had to leave a stretch of

groove hanging unconnected for a while, then work my way back to it,

steering the groove around to make the connection. That was satisfying.

But a few minutes later I found myself with three such segments of

marooned groove in different parts of the pattern, and despaired of

ever finding an arrangement that would connect them all. On one level,

this was all about the shape of the outer boundary, and how it

developed. Tiles trapped in the middle were of no further interest to

the game—or so you might think. But on the other hand, the way in which

an interior tile had been laid down ended up determining the location

of every other tile in the whole Decagon.


The ancient Orithenans suspected, but

didn’t know how to prove, that the tiles of the Teglon were aperiodic:

that no pattern would ever repeat. Again, solving the Teglon would have

been easy—it would have been automatic—with square or triangular tiles,

or any tile system that was periodic. With aperiodic tiles, it was

impossible, or at least very unlikely, unless you had some Godlike

ability to see the whole pattern in your head at once. Metekoranes had

believed that the final pattern existed in the Hylaean Theoric World,

and that the Teglon could only be solved by one who had developed the

power of seeing into it.


Suur Spry was clearing her throat. I looked

up. I was squatting at the edge of a system of tiles fifty feet wide.

It was getting hot.


“Sorry,” I said.


“Some people use sticks to push them around. Saves wear and tear on the back.”


“We should probably get out of here, huh?”


“Soon,” she allowed.


First, though, I followed her about as she

showed me the remnants of the ancient buildings. All the roofs were

gone, of course. Some pillars still stood, and a few courses of stone

that had once been walls, now half-buried in blocks that had tumbled

down from above. But mostly we were looking at foundations, floors,

stairs, and plazas. Active parts of the dig were gridded with string, a

geometric touch Adrakhones would have appreciated. The rocks were

annotated with neatly brushed letters and numbers put down by diggers

of centuries past. Up above, I knew, was a sort of museum where they’d

placed many of the artifacts they had found, including

presumably the cast of Metekoranes. I imagined that museum should be

dark. Nicely ventilated. And cool. “Okay, let’s get out of this

barbecue pit,” I proposed, and heard no argument from Suur Spry.


We had stayed later than expected. Partly

because it had been fascinating. But—and this probably didn’t say much

for my character—mainly because this was the one thing I could do on

this journey that would seem almost as cool as Jesry’s space adventure.


My body had healed to the point where it

was willing to cut me a little bit of slack, and so during the early

part of the climb I was babbling about the Teglon just like all of

those geometers of yore who’d gone crazy over it. Soon enough, though,

my injuries began talking to me, and excitement was snuffed out by

pain. The remainder of the hike was a long silent trudge. Another

sluice-bath was called for. I fell asleep. When I woke up it was late

afternoon. Orolo was on kitchen duty. I helped him. But we didn’t

really get to talk about anything. So more than one of my three days

had been gobbled up just like that. Before we retired that evening I

warned Orolo we must speak of important things the next day. So after

breakfast the next morning we hiked back up to the meadow.


Sconic: One of a group

of Praxic Age theors who gathered at the house of Lady Baritoe. They

addressed the ramifications of the apparent fact that we do not

perceive the physical universe directly, but only through the

intermediation of our sensory organs.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“After I landed at Bly’s Butte,” Orolo

said, “I was like one of those poor cosmographers, just after the

Reconstitution, who couldn’t use his atom smasher any more.”


“Yes, I saw that telescope,” I told him, “the pictures you tried to take of the icosahedron…”


He was shaking his head. “I could not see a thing with that. So, my work concerning the aliens had to be based on what I could observe.”


This didn’t make sense to me. “All right,” I said, “what was that?”


He looked at me, mildly startled, as if it ought to have been obvious. “Myself.”


I was nonplussed. Which only showed that I

was dealing with the same old Orolo. “How would self-observation help

you understand the Geometers?” I asked. For I had already mentioned to

him that this was the term people were now using to denote the aliens.


“Well…the Sconics are not a bad place to start. Remember fly-bat-worm?”


I laughed. “Just got a refresher on that a

couple of weeks ago. Arsibalt was explaining it to an extra who wanted

to know why we didn’t believe in God.”


“Ah, but that’s not what fly-bat-worm

says,” said Orolo. “It says only that pure thought alone doesn’t enable

us to draw any conclusions one way or another about things that are

non-spatiotemporal—such as God.”


“True.”


“The same observations that the Sconics

made about themselves must also be true of aliens’ brains. No matter

how different they might be from us in other respects, they must

integrate sensory givens into a coherent model of what is around them—a

model that must be hung on a spatiotemporal frame. And that, in a

nutshell, is how they come to share our ideas about geometry.”


“But they share more than that,” I pointed out, “they appear to share the idea of Truth and of Proof.”


“It is a reasonable enough supposition,” Orolo said with a cautious shrug.


“More than that!” I protested. “They emblazoned the Adrakhonic Theorem on their ship!”


This was news to him. “Oh, really? How cheeky!”


“Didn’t you see it?”


“I remind you that I was Thrown Back before I saw the last picture that I took of the alien ship.”




“Of course. But I assumed you had taken other pictures before then—had been taking them for a long time.”


“Streaks and blobs!” Orolo scoffed. “I was only learning how to capture a decent image of the thing.”


“So you never saw the geometric proof—or the letters—or the four planets.”


“That’s correct,” Orolo said.


“Well, there’s much more that you have to know, if you want to think about the Geometers! All kinds of new givens!”


“I can see how excited you are about those

new givens, Erasmas, and I wish you all the best in your study of them,

but I’m afraid that for me it would all prove a distraction from the

main line of the inquiry.”


“The main line—I don’t know what you mean.”


“Evenedrician datonomy,” Orolo said, as if this ought to have been quite obvious.


“Datonomy,” I translated, “that would be study, or identification, of what is given?”


“Yes—givens in the sense of the basic

thoughts and impressions that our minds have to work with. Saunt

Evenedric pursued it late in his life, after he got locked out of his

atom smasher. His immediate forerunner, of course, was Saunt Halikaarn.

Halikaarn thought that Sconic thought was badly in need of an overhaul

to bring it in line with all that had been discovered, since the time

of Baritoe, about theorics and its marvelous applicability to the

physical world.”


“Well—how’d he make out?”


Orolo grimaced. “Many of the records were

vaporized, but we think he was too busy demolishing Proc and kicking

away all the ankle-biters Proc sent after him. The work fell to

Evenedric.”


“Has it been an important thing to the Lineage?”


Orolo gave me a queer look. “Not really.

Oh, it’s important in principle. But notoriously unsatisfying to work

on. Except when great alien ships appear in orbit around one’s planet.”


“So, then…are you finding it satisfying now?”


“Let’s be quite direct and say what we mean,” Orolo said. “You fear

that I’m navel-gazing. That on Bly’s Butte I pursued this line of

inquiry, not because it was really worthwhile, but simply because I

didn’t have hard givens about the Geometers. And that now that we have

evidence that they are, or were, physically and mentally similar to us,

this line of inquiry should be dropped.”


“Yes,” I said, “that’s what I think.”


“I happen to disagree,” Orolo said. “But

things have changed between us. We are no longer Pa and Fid but Fraa

and Fraa, and fraas disagree, cordially, all the time.”


“Thank you but it has certainly felt like a Pa/Fid conversation to this point.”


“Largely because I have a bit of a head start on you.”


I let this polite nothing pass without

comment. “Listen, if I can tear you away from Evenedrician datonomy, we

have to talk about Sæcular stuff for a minute.”


“By all means,” Orolo said.


“Several of us were Evoked to a Convox at Tredegarh,” I said, for, unbelievably, Orolo had not yet expressed any

curiosity as to why or how I’d turned up at Orithena. “One of the

others was Fraa Jad, a Thousander. He accompanied me and Arsibalt and

Lio to Bly’s Butte—”


“And saw the leaves on the wall of my cell there.”


“He—Jad—figured out quickly—weirdly quickly—that you had gone to Ecba and, I guess, that you had ideas about the Geometers that he wanted to know more of.”


“It was neither quick nor weird,” Orolo

said. “All of these matters are connected. It would have been obvious

to Fraa Jad as soon as he walked in.”


“How? Do you guys communicate? Violate the Discipline?”


“What do you mean, ‘you guys’? You are carrying around some melodramatic idea of the Lineage, aren’t you?” Orolo said.


“Well, just look at this place!” I protested. “What is going on?”


“If I got interested in meteorology,” Orolo

said, “I’d spend a lot of time observing the weather. I would come to

have much in common with other weather-watchers whom I’d never met. We

would think similar thoughts as a natural result of observing the same phenomena. Nine-tenths of what you think of as mysterious Lineage machinations is explained by this.”


“Except that instead of watching the weather you’re thinking about Evendrician datonomy?”


“Close enough.”


“But there was nothing about Evenedric or

datonomy on the wall of your cell for Fraa Jad to see. Just material

pertaining to Orithena, and a chart of the Lineage.”


“What you identified as a chart of the

Lineage was really a sort of family tree of those who have tried to

make sense of the Hylaean Theoric World. And it turns out that if you

trace the branches of that tree and, so to speak, prune off all the

branches populated by fanatics, Enthusiasts, Deolaters, and

dead-enders, you end up with something that doesn’t look so much like a

tree any more. It looks like a dowel. It starts with Cnoüs and runs

through Metekoranes and Protas and some others, and about halfway along

you encounter Evenedric.”


“So Fraa Jad, looking at your

tree-pruned-down-to-a-dowel, would guess immediately that you must be

working on Evenedrician datonomy.”


“And would assume I was doing so in hopes of gaining upsight as to how the Geometers’ minds must be organized.”


“What about Ecba? How’d he guess you went to Ecba?”


“This math was founded by people who lived

in the same cells where Fraa Jad has spent his whole life. He would

know or surmise that if I could get to this place they would let me in

the gates and provide me with food and shelter—quite obviously a better

existence than what I could manage at Bly’s Butte.”


“Okay.” I was feeling relieved of a burden

I’d been carrying since that day above Samble. “So there’s not a

conspiracy. The Lineage doesn’t communicate through coded messages.”


“We communicate all the time,” Orolo said, “in the way I mentioned.”


“Meteorologists watching the same cloud.”


“That’s good enough for this stage of our

conversation,” Orolo said. “But you haven’t yet unburdened yourself of

whatever terribly important-seeming message or mission you brought in the gates with you. What errand has Fraa Jad sent you on?”


“He said ‘go north until you understand.’ And I guess that part of the mission is accomplished now.”


“Oh really? I’m pleased that you understand. I’m afraid I am still full of questions about these matters.”


“You know what I mean!” I snapped. “He also

implied I was to come back to Tredegarh later. That he’d see to it I

didn’t get in trouble. I guess he wanted me to fetch you. To bring you

back to the Convox.”


“In case I’d developed any ideas, concerning the Geometers, that might be useful,” Orolo hazarded.


“Well, that’s the point of a Convox,” I reminded him, “to be useful.”


Orolo shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t have enough givens to work with, concerning the Geometers.”


“I’m sure that all the givens that there are to be had, are available at Tredegarh.”


“They are probably collecting exactly the wrong sort of information,” he said.


“So go there and tell them what to collect! Fraa Jad could use your help.”


“For me and Fraa Jad and some others of

like mind to try to change the behavior of this Sæcular/Mathic

monstrosity called a Convox sounds like politics, which I am infamously

bad at.”


“Then let me try to help!” I said. “Tell me what you’ve been doing. I’ll go back to the Convox and look for ways to use it.”


The most charitable way to interpret the

look Orolo now gave me was affectionate but concerned. He waited for my

brain to catch up with my mouth.


“Okay,” I said, “with a little help from

some of the others, maybe.” I was thinking of the conversation I’d had

with Tulia before Eliger.


“I can’t advise you on what to do at the Convox,” he finally said, “however, I am happy to explain what I’ve been up to.”


“Okay—I’ll settle for that.”




“It won’t help you—in fact, it’ll probably hurt you—at the Convox. Because it will sound crazy.”


“Fine. I’m used to people thinking that we are crazy because of the whole HTW thing!”


Orolo raised an eyebrow. “You know, on balance I think that what I’m about to discuss with you is less

crazy than that. But the HTW”—he nodded in the direction of the

Orithena dig—“is a cozy and familiar form of craziness.” He paused for

a few moments, returning his gaze to me.


“Who are you talking to?” Orolo asked.


I was wrong-footed by this bizarre

question, and took a moment to be certain I’d heard the question right.

“I’m talking to Orolo,” I said.


“What is this Orolo? If a Geometer landed here and engaged you in conversation, how would you characterize Orolo to it?”


“As the man—the very complicated, bipedal, slightly hot, animated entity—standing right over there.”


“But depending on how a Geometer sees

things, it might respond, ‘I see nothing there but vacuum with a sparse

dusting of probability waves.’”


“Well, ‘vacuum with a sparse dusting of

probability waves’ is an accurate description of just about everything

in the universe,” I pointed out, “so if the Geometer was not able to

recognize objects any more effectively than that, it could scarcely be

considered a conscious being. After all, if it’s having a conversation

with me, it must recognize me as—”


“Not so fast,” Orolo said, “let’s say you

are talking to the Geometer by typing into a jeejah, or something. It

knows you only as a stream of digits. Now you have to use those digits

to supply a description of Orolo—or of yourself—that it would

recognize.”


“Okay, I’d agree with the Geometer on some

way to describe space. Then I’d say, ‘Consider the volume of space five

feet in front of my position, about six feet high, two wide, and two

deep. The probability waves that we call matter are somewhat denser

inside of that box than they are outside of it.’ And so on.”




“Denser, because there’s a lot of meat in that box,” Orolo said, slapping his abdomen, “but outside of it, only air.”


“Yes. I should think any conscious entity

should be able to recognize the meat/air boundary. What’s on the inside

of the boundary is Orolo.”


“Funny that you have such firm opinions on

what conscious beings ought to be able to do,” Orolo warned me. “Let me

see…what about this?” He held up a fold of his bolt.


“Just as I can describe the meat/air

boundary, I can describe how bolt-stuff differs from both meat and air,

and explain that Orolo is wrapped in bolt-stuff.”


“There you go making assumptions!” Orolo chided me.


“Such as?”


“Let’s say that the Geometer you’re talking

to has been inculcated in his civilization’s equivalent of the Sconics.

He’ll say, ‘Wait a minute, you can’t really know, you’re not allowed to

make statements about, things in themselves—only about your perceptions.’”


“True.”


“So you need to rephrase your statement in terms of the givens that are actually available to you.”


“All right,” I said, “instead of saying,

‘Orolo is wrapped in bolt-stuff,’ I’ll say, ‘When I gaze at Orolo from

where I’m standing, I see mostly bolt, with bits of Orolo—his head and

his hands—peeking out.’ But I don’t see why it matters.”


“It matters because the Geometer can’t

stand where you are standing. It has to stand somewhere else, and see

me from a different angle.”


“Yes, but the bolt wraps all the way around your body!”


“How do you know I’m not naked in back?”


“Because I’ve seen a lot of bolts and I know how they work.”


“But if you were a Geometer, seeing one for the first time—”


“I’d still be able to surmise that you were not naked in back, because if you were, the bolt would hang differently.”


“What if I got rid of the bolt and stood here naked?”


“What if you did?”


“How would you describe me to the Geometer, then? What would meet your eye, and the Geometer’s?”




“I would say to the Geometer ‘From where I

stand, all I see is Orolo-skin. From where you stand, O Geometer, the

same is likely true.’”


“And why is it likely?”


“Because without skin your blood and guts

would fall out. Since I can’t see a puddle of blood and guts behind

you, I can infer that your skin must be in place.”


“Just as you infer that my bolt must continue all the way round me in back, from the way in which its visible part hangs.”


“Yes, I guess it’s the same general principle.”


“Well, it seems that this process you call

consciousness is somewhat more complex than you perhaps gave it credit

for at first,” Orolo said. “One must be able to take in givens from

sparse dustings of probability waves in a vacuum—”


“I.e., see stuff.”


“Yes, and perform the trick of integrating

those givens into seemingly persistent objects that can be held in

consciousness. But that’s not all. You perceive only one side of me,

but you are all the time drawing inferences about my other side—that my

bolt continues round in back, that I have skin—inferences that reflect

an innate understanding of theorical laws. You can’t seem to make these

inferences without performing little thought experiments in your head:

‘if the bolt didn’t continue round in back it would hang differently,’

‘if Orolo had no skin his guts would fall out.’ In each of those cases

you are using your understanding of the laws of dynamics to explore a

little counterfactual universe inside of your head, a universe where

the bolt or the skin isn’t there, and you are then running that

universe in fast-forward, like a speely, to see what would happen.


“And that is not the only such activity

that is going on in your mind when you describe me to the Geometers,”

Orolo went on, after a pause to swallow some water, “because you are

forever making allowances for the fact that you and the Geometer are in

different places, seeing me from different points of view, taking in

different givens. From where you’re standing you might be able to see

the freckle on the left side of my nose, but you have the wit to

understand that the Geometer can’t see that freckle because of where it

is standing. This is another way in

which your consciousness is forever building counterfactual universes:

‘if I were standing where the Geometer is, my view of the freckle would

be blocked.’ Your ability to have empathy with the Geometer—to imagine

what it would be like to be someone else—isn’t a mere courtesy. It is

an innate process of consciousness.”


“Wait a second,” I said, “you’re saying I

can’t predict the Geometers’ inability to see the freckle without

erecting a replica of the whole universe in my imagination?”


“Not exactly a replica,” Orolo said. “Almost a replica, in which everything is the same, except for where you are standing.”


“It seems to me that there are much simpler

ways of getting that result. Perhaps I have a memory of what you look

like when viewed from that side. I call up that image in my memory and

say to myself, ‘Hmm, no freckle.’”


“It is a perfectly reasonable thought,”

Orolo said, “but I must warn you that it does not really buy you much,

if what you seek is a simple and easy-to-understand model of how the

mind works.”


“Why not? I’m only talking about memory.”


Orolo chortled, then composed himself, and

made an effort to be tactful. “Thus far we have spoken only of the

present. We’ve talked only of space—not of time. Now you would like to

bring memories into the discussion. You are proposing to pull up

memories of how you perceived Orolo’s nose from a different angle at a

different time: ‘I sat on his right last night at supper and couldn’t

see the freckle.’”


“It seems simple enough,” I said.


“You might ask yourself what in your brain enables you to do such things.”


“What things?”


“Take in some givens one evening at supper.

Take in another set of givens now—or one second ago—two seconds ago—but

always now! And say that all of them were—are—the same chap, Orolo.”


“I don’t see what the big deal is,” I said. “It’s just pattern recognition. Syntactic devices can do it.”




“Can they? Give me an example.”


“Well…I guess a simple example would be…” I

looked around, and happened to notice the contrail of an aerocraft high

overhead. “Radar tracking aerocraft in a crowded sky.”


“Tell me how it works.”


“The antenna spins around. It sends out

pulses. Echoes come back to it. From the time lag of the echo, it can

calculate the bogey’s distance. And it knows in what direction the

bogey lies—that’s dead easy, it’s just the same direction as the

antenna is pointing when the echo hits it.”


“It can only look in one direction at a time,” Orolo said.


“Yeah, it’s got extreme tunnel vision, and compensates for that by spinning around.”


“A little bit like us,” Orolo said.


We had begun descending the mountain, and

were walking side by side. Orolo went on, “I can’t see in all

directions at once, but I glance to the side every so often to make

sure you’re still there.”


“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “You have in

your head a model of your surroundings that includes me off to your

right side. You can maintain it for a while by holding down the

fast-forward button. But every so often you have to update it with new

givens, or it’ll get out of whack with what is really going on.”


“How does the radar system manage it?”


“Well, the antenna rotates once and takes

in echoes from everything that’s in the sky. It plots their positions.

Then it rotates again and collects a new set of echoes. The new set is

similar to the first one. But all of the bogeys are now in slightly

different positions, because all of the aerocraft are moving, each at

its own speed, each in its own direction.”


“And I can see how a human observer,

watching the bogeys plotted on a screen, would be able to assemble a

mental model of where the aerocraft were and how they were moving,”

Orolo said, “in the same way as we stitch together frames of a speely

to form a continuous story in our minds. But how does the syntactic

device inside the radar system do it? It has nothing more than a list

of numbers, updated from time to time.”




“If there were only one bogey, it would be easy,” I said.


“Agreed.”


“Or just a few, widely separated, moving slowly, so that their paths didn’t cross.”


“Also agreed. But what of the hard case of many fast bogeys, close together, paths crossing?”


“A human observer could manage it

easily—just like watching a speely,” I said. “A syndev would have to do

some of what a human brain does.”


“And what is that, exactly?”


“We have a sense for what is plausible.

Let’s say there are two aerocraft, full of passengers, going just under

the speed of sound, and that during the interval between two radar

sweeps, their paths cross at right angles. The machine can’t tell the

bogeys apart. So there are a few possible interpretations of the

givens. One is that both planes executed sharp right-angle turns at the

same moment and veered off in new directions. Another is that they

bounced off each other like rubber balls. The third interpretation is

that the planes are at different altitudes, so they didn’t collide, and

both simply kept flying in a straight line. That

interpretation is the simplest, and the only one consistent with the

laws of dynamics. So the syndev must be programmed to evaluate the

different interpretations of the givens and choose the one that is most

plausible.”


“So we have taught this device a little of

what we know of the action principles that govern the movement of our

cosmos through Hemn space, and commanded it to filter out possibilities

that diverge from a plausible world-track,” Orolo said.


“In a very crude way, I suppose. It doesn’t really know how to apply action principles in Hemn space and all that.”


“Do we?”


“Some of us do.”


“Theors, yes. But a sline playing catch knows what the ball will do—more importantly, what it can’t do—without knowing the first thing about theorics.”


“Of course. Even animals can do that. Orolo, where is Evenedrician datonomy getting us? I see some connection to our pink dragon dialog back home, a few months ago, but—”


Orolo got a funny look on his face. He’d forgotten. “Oh yes. About you and your worrying.”


“Yes.”


“That’s something animals can’t do,” he

pointed out. “They react to immediate, concrete threats, but they don’t

worry about abstract threats years in the future. It takes the mind of

an Erasmas to do that.”


I laughed. “I haven’t been doing it so much lately.”


“Good!” He reached out and gave me an affectionate thud on the shoulder.


“Maybe it’s the Allswell.”


“No, it’s that you have real things to worry about now. But please remind me how it went—the dialog about the pink nerve-gas-farting dragon?”


“We developed a theory that our minds were

capable of envisioning possible futures as tracks through configuration

space, and then rejecting ones that didn’t follow a realistic action

principle. Jesry complained it was a heavyweight solution to a

lightweight problem. I agreed. Arsibalt objected.”


“This was after Fraa Paphlagon had been Evoked, wasn’t it?”


“Yes.”


“Arsibalt had been reading Paphlagon.”


“Yes.”


“So tell me, Fraa Erasmas, are you still with Jesry, or with Arsibalt?”


“I still think it seems fanciful to think we are all the time erecting and tearing down counterfactual universes in our minds.”


“I’ve become so used to it that it seems fanciful to think otherwise,”

Orolo said. “But perhaps we can go on another hike tomorrow and discuss

it further.” We were reaching the outskirts of the math.


“I’d like that,” I said.


As we drew near enough to smell supper

cooking, I recollected that I needed to get a message out to my friends

the next day. But it was not the right moment to bring this up and so I resolved to mention it the next morning.





I had it in my mind that this would force

Orolo to make a decision, but as soon as I explained it to him, he made

a point that was embarrassingly obvious, once he’d made it: the

three-day deadline was perfectly arbitrary, and hence the only sound

approach was to brush it aside without any further mention. He called

in Fraa Landasher, who proposed that my friends be invited into the

math and allowed to lodge here for as long as it might take to sort

things out. This was shocking until I reminded myself that things were

done differently here and that Landasher was beholden to no one except,

possibly, the dowment that owned Ecba. Then I felt sure that my four

friends would have no interest in biding in such a place as this. But a

couple of hours later, when I walked out of the gate and down to the

souvenir shop to explain matters to them, they accepted unanimously and

without discussion. That in itself made me a little nervous, so I

accompanied them back to the cove and helped them strike camp, using

the afternoon to provide them with a running lecture on mathic

etiquette. I was especially worred that Ganelial Crade would preach to

them. But soon, beginning with Yul and spreading quickly to the others,

they began to make fun of me for being so worried about this, and I

realized that I had offended them. So I said nothing more until we got

back to Orithena. Cord, Yul, Gnel, and Sammann were let in through the

gate and given rooms in a sort of guest lodge, set apart from the

cloister, where they were allowed to keep jeejahs and other Sæcular

goods. Dressed in their extramuros garb—but without the jeejahs—they

joined us at dinner and were formally toasted and welcomed by Fraa

Landasher.


The next morning I rousted them early and

led them down to the dig for a tour. Gnel looked as if he were having

some sort of Deolatrous epiphany, though in all fairness I’d probably

had a similar look on my face when Suur Spry had taken me down there.


I asked Sammann if he’d learned anything more about who was running Ecba and he said “yes” and “it’s boring.” Some burger, just after

the Third Sack, had become an Enthusiast for all things Orithenan. He

was very rich and so he’d bought the island and, to run it, set up the

foundation, complete with tedious bylaws that ran to a thousand

pages—it was meant to last forever and so the bylaws had to cover every

eventuality they could think of. Executive power lay in the hands of a

mixed Sæcular/Mathic board of governors, Sammann explained, warming to

the task even as my attention was beginning to wander…


So getting my friends squared away at

Orithena distracted me for a couple of days. After that I resumed my

walks up the mountain with Orolo.


Dialog: A discourse,

usually in formal style, between Theors. “To be in Dialog” is to

participate in such a discussion extemporaneously. The term may also

apply to a written record of a historical Dialog; such documents are

the cornerstone of the mathic literary tradition and are studied,

re-enacted, and memorized by fids. In the classic format, a Dialog

involves two principals and some number of onlookers who participate

sporadically. Another common format is the Triangular, featuring a

savant, an ordinary person who seeks knowledge, and an imbecile. There

are countless other classifications, including the suvinian, the

Periklynian, and the peregrin.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“I know that our last conversation was not

completely satisfactory to you, Erasmas. I apologize for that. These

ideas are unfinished. I am tormented, or tantalized, by the sense that

I’m almost in view of something that is at the limit of my

comprehension. I dream of being in the sea, treading water, trying to

see a beacon on shore. But the view is blocked by the crests of the

waves. Sometimes, when conditions are perfect, I can pop up high enough

to glimpse it. But then, before I can form any firm impression of what

it is I’m seeing, I sink back down of my own weight, and get slapped in the face by another wave.”


“I feel that way all the time, when I am trying to understand something new,” I said. “Then, one day, all of a sudden—”


“You just get it,” Orolo said.


“Yeah. The idea is just there, fully formed.”


“Many have noted this, of course. I believe

it is related, in a deep way, to the sort of mental process I was

speaking of the other day. The brain takes advantage of quantum

effects; I’m sure of it.”


“I know just enough about it to know that what you just said has been controversial for a long, long time.”


This affected him not at all; but after I looked in his eye long enough, he finally gave a shrug. So be it. “Did Sammann ever talk to you of Saunt Grod’s Machines?”


“No. What is it?”


“A syntactic device that made use of

quantum theorics. Before the Second Sack, his forerunners and ours

worked together on such things. Saunt Grod’s Machines were extremely

good at solving problems that involved sifting through many possible

solutions at the same time. For example, the Lazy Peregrin.”


“That’s the one where a wandering fraa needs to visit several maths, scattered randomly around a map?”


“Yes, and the problem is to find the shortest route that will take him to all of the destinations.”


“I kind of see what you mean,” I said. “One could draw up an exhaustive list of every possible route—”


“But it takes forever to do it that way,”

Orolo said. “In a Saunt Grod’s Machine, you could erect a sort of

generalized model of the scenario, and configure the machine so that it

would, in effect, examine all possible routes at the same time.”


“So, this kind of machine, instead of

existing in one fixed, knowable state at any given time, would be in a

superposition of many quantum states.”


“Yes, it’s just like an elementary particle that might have spin up or spin down. It is in both states at the same time—”


“Until someone observes it,” I said, “and the wavefunction collapses to one state or the other. So, I guess with a Saunt Grod’s Machine, one eventually makes some observation—”


“And the machine’s wavefunction collapses

to one particular state—which is the answer. The ‘output,’ I believe

the Ita call it,” Orolo said, smiling a little as he pronounced the

unfamiliar bit of jargon.


“I agree that thinking often feels that

way,” I said. “You have a jumble of vague notions in your mind.

Suddenly, bang! It all collapses into one clear answer that you know is

right. But every time something happens suddenly, you can’t simply

chalk it up to quantum effects.”


“I know,” Orolo said. “Do you see where I’m going, though, when I speak of counterfactual cosmi?”


“I didn’t really get it until you brought

quantum theorics into the picture,” I said. “But it’s been obvious for

a while that you have been developing a theory about how consciousness

works. You have mentioned some different phenomena that any

introspective person would recognize—I won’t bother to go back and list

them all—and you have tried to unify them…”


“My grand unification theory of consciousness,” Orolo joked.


“Yes, you are saying that they are all

rooted in a special ability that the brain has to erect models of

counterfactual cosmi in the brain, and to play them forward in time,

evaluate their plausibility, and so on. Which is utterly insane if you

take the brain to be a normal syndev.”


“Agreed,” Orolo said. “It would require an

immense amount of processing power just to erect the models—to say

nothing of running them forward. Nature would have found some more

efficient way to get the job done.”


“But when you play the quantum card,” I

said, “it changes the game entirely. Now, all you need is to have one

generalized model of the cosmos—like the generalized map that a Saunt

Grod’s Machine uses to solve the Lazy Peregrin problem—permanently

loaded up in your brain. That model can then exist in a vast number of

possible states, and you can ask all sorts of questions of it.”


“I’m glad that you now understand this in the same way that I do,” Orolo said. “I do have one quibble, however.”




“Oh boy,” I said, “here goes.”


“Traditions die hard, among the avout,”

Orolo said. “And for a very long time, it has been traditional to teach

quantum theorics to fids in a particular way that is based on how it

was construed by the theors who discovered it, way back in the time of

the Harbingers. And that, Erasmas, is how you were taught as well. Even

if I had never met you before today, I would know this from the

language that you use to talk about these things: ‘it exists in a

superposition of states—observing it collapses the wavefunction’ and so

on.”


“Yes. I know where you are going with

this,” I said. “There are whole orders of theors—have been for

thousands of years—that use completely different models and

terminology.”


“Yes,” Orolo said, “and can you guess which model, which terminology, I am partial to?”


“The more polycosmic the better, I assume.”


“Of course! So, whenever I hear you talking of quantum phenomena using the old terminology—”


“The fid version?”


“Yes, I must mentally translate what you’re

saying into polycosmic terms. For example, the simple case of a

particle that is either spin up or spin down—”


“You would say that, at the moment when the

spin is observed—the moment when its spin has an effect on the rest of

the cosmos—the cosmos bifurcates into two complete, separate, causally

independent cosmi that then go their separate ways.”


“You’ve almost got it. But it’s better to say that those two cosmi exist before

the measurement is made, and that they interfere with each other—there

is a little bit of crosstalk between them—until the observation is

made. And then they go their separate ways.”


“And here,” I said, “we could talk about how crazy this sounds to many people—”


Orolo shrugged. “Yet it is a model that a

great many theors come to believe in sooner or later, because the

alternatives turn out to be even crazier in the end.”


“All right. So, I think I know what comes next. You want me to restate your theory of what the brain does in terms of the polycosmic interpretation of quantum theorics.”


“If you would so indulge me,” Orolo said, with a suggestion of a bow.


“Okay. Here goes,” I said. “The premise,

here, is that the brain is loaded up with a pretty accurate model of

the cosmos that it lives in.”


“At least, the local part of it,” Orolo said. “It needn’t have a good model of other galaxies, for example.”


“Right. And to state it in the terminology

of the old interpretation that fids are taught, the state of that model

is a superposition of many possible present and future states of the

cosmos—or at least of the model.”


He held up a finger. “Not of the cosmos, but—?”


“But of hypothetical alternate cosmi differing slightly from the cosmos.”


“Very good. Now, this generalized

cosmos-model that each person carries around in his or her brain—do you

have any idea how it would work? What it would look like?”


“Not in the slightest!” I said. “I don’t

know the first thing about the nerve cells and so on. How they could be

rigged together to create such a model. How the model could be

reconfigured, from moment to moment, to represent hypothetical

scenarios.”


“Fair enough,” Orolo said, holding up his

hands to placate me. “Let’s leave nerve cells out of the discussion,

then. The important thing about the model, though, is what?”


“That it can exist in many states at once, and that its wavefunction collapses from time to time to give a useful result.”


“Yes. Now, in the polycosmic interpretation of how quantum theorics works, what does all of this look like?”


“There is no longer superposition. No

wavefunction collapse. Just a lot of different copies of me—of my

brain—each really existing in a different parallel cosmos. The cosmos

model residing in each of those parallel brains is really, definitely

in one state or another. And they interfere with one another.”


He let me stew on that for a few moments. And then it came to me. Just like those ideas we had spoken of earlier—suddenly there in my head. “You don’t even need the model any more, do you?”


Orolo just nodded, smiled, egged me on with little beckoning gestures.


I went on—seeing it as I was saying it. “It

is so much simpler this way! My brain doesn’t have to support this

hugely detailed, accurate, configurable,

quantum-superposition-supporting model of the cosmos any more! All it

needs to do is to perceive—to reflect—the cosmos that it’s really in, as it really is.”


“The variations—the myriad possible

alternative scenarios—have been moved out of your brain,” Orolo said,

rapping on his skull with his knuckles, “and out into the polycosm,

which is where they all exist anyway!” He opened his hand and extended

it to the sky, as if releasing a bird. “All you have to do is perceive

them.”


“But each variant of me doesn’t exist in perfect isolation from the others,” I said, “or else it wouldn’t work.”


Orolo nodded. “Quantum interference—the

crosstalk among similar quantum states—knits the different versions of

your brain together.”


“You’re saying that my consciousness extends across multiple cosmi,” I said. “That’s a pretty wild statement.”


“I’m saying all things

do,” Orolo said. “That comes with the polycosmic interpretation. The

only thing exceptional about the brain is that it has found a way to use this.”


Neither of us said a word as we picked our

way down the path for the next quarter of an hour, and the sky receded

to a deep violet. I had the illusion that, as it got darker, it moved

away from us, expanding like a bubble, rushing away from Arbre at a

million light-years an hour, and as it whooshed past stars, we began to

see them.





One of the stars was moving. So discreetly,

at first, that I had to stop, find my balance, and observe it closely

to be sure. It was no illusion. The ancient animal part of my brain, so

attuned to subtle, suspicious movement, had picked out this one star

among the millions. It was in the

western sky, not far above the horizon, hence diluted, at first, in

twilight. But it rose slowly and steadily into the black. As it did, it

changed its color and its size. Early on, it was a pinprick of white

light, just like any other star, but as it rose toward the zenith it

reddened. Then it broadened to a dot of orange, then flared yellow and

threw out a comet-tail. Until that point my eyes had been playing any

number of tricks on me and I’d misconceived its distance, its altitude,

and its velocity. But the comet-tail shocked me into the right view:

the thing was not high above us in space but descending into the

atmosphere, dumping its energy into shredded, glowing air. Its rise had

slowed as it neared the zenith, and it was clear it would lose all

forward speed before it passed over our heads. The meteor’s bearing had

never changed: it was headed right at us, and the brighter and fatter

it grew, the more it seemed to hang motionless in the sky, like a

thrown ball that is coming straight at your head. For a minute it was a

little sun, fixed in the sky and stabbing rays of incandescent air in

all directions. Then it shrank and faded back through orange to a dull

red, and became difficult to make out.


I realized I had tilted my head as far back as it would go, and was gazing vertically upwards.


At the risk of losing my fix on it, I dropped my chin and had a look around.


Orolo was a hundred feet downhill of me and running as fast as he could.


I gave up trying to track the thing in the

sky and took off after him. By the time I caught up, we were almost at

the edge of the pit.


“They deciphered my analemma!” he exclaimed between gasps.


We stopped at a rope that had been

stretched at waist level from stake to stake around the edge of the

pit, to prevent sleepy or drunk avout from falling into it. I looked up

and cried out in shock as I saw something absolutely enormous, just

above us, like a low cloud. But it was perfectly circular. I understood

that it was a gigantic parachute. Its shroud lines converged on a

glowing red load that hung far below it.




The lines went all quavery and the chute

blurred, then began to drift sideways on a barely perceptible breeze.

It had been cut loose. The hot red thing fell like a stone but then

thrust out legs of blue fire and, a few seconds later, began to hiss,

shockingly loud. It was aiming for the floor of the pit. Orolo and I

followed the rope around to the top of the ramp. A crowd of fraas and

suurs was building there, more fascinated than afraid. Orolo began

pushing through them, headed for the ramp, shouting above the hiss of

the rocket: “Fraa Landasher, open the gate! Yul, go out with your

cousin and get your vehicles. Find the parachute and bring it back!

Sammann, do you have your jeejah? Cord! Get all of your things and meet

me at the bottom!” And he launched himself down the ramp, rushing alone

into the dark to meet the Geometers.


I ran after him. My usual role in life. I’d

lost sight of the probe—the ship—whatever it was—during all of this,

but now it was suddenly there, dead level with me and only a few

hundred feet away, dropping at a measured pace toward the Temple of

Orithena. I was so stunned by its immediacy, its heat and noise, that I

recoiled, lost my balance, and stumbled to my knees. In that posture I

watched it descend the last hundred feet or so. Its attitude, its

velocity were perfectly steady, but only by dint of a thousand minute

twitches and wiggles of its rocket nozzles: something very

sophisticated was controlling the thing, making a myriad decisions

every second. It was headed for the Decagon. In the final half-second,

a hell-storm of shattering tiles was kicked up by the plumes of

hypersonic gas shooting from those engines. Crouching, insect-like legs

took up the last of its velocity and the engines went dark. But they

continued to hiss for a couple of seconds as some kind of gas was run

through the engines, purging the lines, shrouding the probe in a cool

bluish cloud.


Then Orithena was silent.


I picked myself up and began hurrying down

the ramp as best I could while keeping my head turned sideways, the

better to stare at the Geometers’ probe. Its bottom was broad and

saucer-shaped and still glowing a dull red-brown from the heat of

re-entry. Above that it had a simple shape, like an inverted bucket,

with a slightly domed top. Five tall

narrow hatches had opened in its sides, revealing slots from which the

bug-legs had unfolded. Atop its dome was some clutter I could not quite

make out: presumably the mechanism for deploying and cutting free the

parachute, maybe some antennas and sensors. I saw all sides of it as I

chased Orolo down the spiral ramp, and never saw anything that looked

like a window.


I caught up with him at the edge of the

Decagon. He was sniffing the air. “Doesn’t seem to be venting anything

noxious,” he said. “From the color of the exhaust, I’m guessing

hydrogen/oxygen. Clean as a whistle.”


Landasher came down alone. It seemed he had

ordered the others to remain above. He had his mouth open to say

something. He looked half-deranged, a man in over his head. Orolo cut

him off: “Is the gate open?” Landasher didn’t know. But above, we could

now hear vehicles roaring around. I recognized them by their sounds:

they were the ones we had brought over the pole. A light appeared at

the top of the ramp.


“Someone opened them,”

Orolo said. “But they must be closed and bolted again, as soon as the

vehicles and parachute are inside. You should prepare for an invasion.”


“You think the Geometers are launching an—”


“No. I mean an invasion of the Panjandrums.

This event will have been picked up on sensors. There is no telling how

quickly the Sæcular Power may respond. Possibly within an hour.”


“We cannot possibly keep the Sæcular Power out, if they wish to come in,” Landasher said.


“As much time as possible. That is all I ask for,” Orolo said.


The three-wheeler was coming down the ramp.

As it drew closer I saw Cord at the controls, Sammann standing on the

back, gripping Cord’s shoulders to maintain his balance.


“What do you propose to do with that time?”

Landasher demanded. Until now, he had always struck me as a wise and

reasonable leader, but this evening he was under a lot of stress.


“Learn,” Orolo said. “Learn of the Geometers, before the Sæcular Power takes this moment away from us.”




The three-wheeler reached the bottom.

Sammann hopped off, unslinging his jeejah from his shoulder. He aimed

its sensors at the probe. Cord gunned the engine briefly and swung the

machine around so that its headlight, too, was aimed at the probe. Then

she hopped off and began to pull gear from the cargo shelf on the rear

axle.


“What of—how do you know it is safe? What about infection!? Orolo? Orolo!”

Landasher cried, for Cord’s headlight gambit had offered a much better

look at the thing, and Orolo was drifting toward it, fascinated.


“If they were afraid of being infected by us, they would not have come here,” Orolo said. “If we are at risk of being infected by them, then we are at their mercy.”


“Do you really fancy that bolting the gate is going to stop people who have helicopters?” Landasher asked.


“I have an idea about that,” Orolo said. “Fraa Erasmas will see to it.”


By the time I had got back up to the top of

the ramp, Yul and Gnel had retrieved the parachute. They and a small

crew of adventurous avout had wadded and stuffed much of it into the

open back of Gnel’s fetch, restraining it with a haphazard web of cargo

straps and shroud lines. Still, an acre of parachute and a mile of

shroud lines trailed in the dust behind the fetch as they drew up to

the edge of the pit.


Now at this point we ought to have put on

white body suits, gloves, respirators, and sealed the alien chute in

sterile poly and sent it to a lab to be examined and analyzed down to

the molecular level. But I had other orders. So I grabbed the edge of

the chute—my first physical contact with an artifact from another star

system—and felt it. To me, no expert on textiles, it felt like the same

stuff we used to make parachutes on Arbre. Same story with the shroud

lines. I did not think that they were what we called newmatter.


Quite a crowd had gathered around the

fetch. They were respecting Landasher’s order not to go into the pit.

But he hadn’t said anything about the parachute. I climbed up onto the

top of the fetch and announced: “Each of you is responsible for one

shroud line. We’ll pull the chute out

and spread it on the ground. Form a ring around its edge. Choose your

line. Then radiate. Spread the lines outwards, untangling them as you

go. In ten minutes I would like to see the whole population of Orithena

standing in a huge circle around this parachute, each holding the end

of a line.”


A pretty simple plan. It got quite a bit

messier as they put it into practice. But they were smart people, and

the less fussing and meddling I did, the better they showed themselves

at dreaming up solutions to problems. Meanwhile I had Yul estimate the

length of a single shroud line by counting fathoms with his arms.


Gnel drove his fetch out from under the

spreading chute and down the ramp to the bottom of the pit. He had

equipped it with a battery of high-powered lights that I had always

found ridiculous. Tonight, he had finally found something to aim them

at. I took a moment to glance down, and saw that Orolo and Cord had

approached to within twenty feet of the probe.


Getting the Orithenans spread out around the chute took a little while. A supersonic jet screamed overhead and startled us.


Yul’s measurement confirmed my general

impression, which was that the shroud lines were something like half as

long as the pit was wide. Once I explained the general plan to the

Orithenans, they began to move toward the edge of the pit, parting to

either side and circumventing the rim while keeping the shroud lines

taut. The chute glided across the ground in fits and starts. We had to

get a few people underneath it to coax and waft it over snags. But

presently the leading edge of the fabric curled over the rim of the

pit, and then the movement took on a life of its own as gravity helped

it forward. I hoped the Orithenans on the ends of the lines would have

the good sense to let go the ropes if they felt themselves being pulled

toward the edge. But the chute wasn’t nearly heavy enough to cause any

such problems. Once all of the fabric had gone over the edge, and the

Orithenans had spaced themselves evenly around it, the thing became

quite manageable. The chute seemed to cover about half of the pit’s

area. The Orithenans by now had figured out the general idea, which was

that we wanted to suspend the parachute above the Teglon plaza as a

canopy. They began to move about en masse,

adjusting its position and its altitude with no further direction from

me. When it seemed right, I jogged around the perimeter urging them to

move away from the hole and trace their shroud lines out as far as they

could go, and to lash the ends around any solid anchors they could

find. For about a third of them, this ended up being the top of the

concent’s outer wall. Other lines ended up finding purchase on trees,

Cloister pillars, trestles, rocks, or sticks hammered into the ground.


Hearing an engine, I looked over to the top

of the ramp and saw that Yul was gingerly driving his house-on-wheels

down into the pit—the better, I guessed, to cook breakfast for the

Geometers. I sprinted over and dived into the cabin with him. This

sparked a general rebellion among the Orithenans who, ignoring

Landasher’s earlier order, followed us down on foot.


Yul and I drove down the ramp in silence.

The look on his face was as if he were just on the verge of hysterical

laughter. When we reached the bottom, he parked amid the ruins of the

Temple, just near the Analemma. He shut off the engine. He turned to

look at me and finally broke the silence. “I don’t know how this is

going to come out,” he said, “but I sure am glad I came with you.” And,

before I could tell him how glad I was of his company, he was out the

door, striding over to join Cord.


Radiant heat from the underside of the

vehicle was making it difficult to approach. Yul went back to his fetch

and got some reflective emergency blankets. Cord, Orolo, and I used

these as bolts. Most of the vehicle was above us, so we put out a call

for ladders.


It had been difficult to guess the thing’s

size before, but now I was able to borrow a measuring rod from the

archaeological dig and measure it at about twenty feet in diameter. I

hadn’t brought anything to write with, but Sammann was using his jeejah

in speelycaptor mode, taking everything down, so I called out the

numbers.


A helicopter approached. We could hear it

through the canopy. It circled the compound a few times, its downwash

creating huge, eye-catching disturbances in the canopy. Then it

withdrew to a higher altitude and hovered. It could not land here

because of the parachute. All the

land within the walls was built on or cultivated with trees and

trellises. They’d have to land outside and knock on the door, or scale

the wall.


So we had stalled them for a few minutes.

But everyone felt desperately short of time now. Suddenly a dozen

ladders were available—all different sizes, all hand-crafted of wood.

The Orithenans began lashing them together to make a scaffold right

next to the probe, on the side that seemed to have a sort of hatch.

Cord clambered up and found a place to stand on a ladder that had been

placed horizontally. I felt proud watching her. So much about this

might have been overwhelming. At some level perhaps she was

overwhelmed. But this probe was, after all, a machine. She could tell

how it worked. And as long as she held her focus on that, none of the

other stuff mattered.


“Talk to us!” Sammann called to her, staring at the screen of his jeejah as he lined up his shot.


“There is clearly a removable hatch,” she

said. “It is trapezoidal with rounded corners. Two feet wide at the

base. One and a half at the top. Four high. Curved like the fuselage.”

She was doing a funny kind of dance, because the scaffold was still

being improvised beneath her—she was poised between two ladder-rungs

and the ladder kept shifting. She was casting an array of lapping

shadows on what she wanted to see, so she fished a headlamp out of her

vest, turned it on, and played its beam over the streaked and burned

surface of the probe.


“Can we just go ahead and call it a door?” Sammann asked.


“Okay. There is Geometer-writing stenciled around the door. Letters about an inch high.”


“Stenciled?” Sammann asked.


“Yeah.” Cord stretched the band of the lamp over her head and adjusted its angle, freeing her hands.


“Literally stenciled?”


“Yeah. In the sense that they took a piece

of paper with letter-shaped cutouts and held it up to the metal and

slapped paint on it.” I heard a series of metallic raps. Cord was

touching a magnet to various places around the door. “None of this is

ferrous.” Then a screeching noise. “I can’t scratch it with my steel knife blade. Maybe a high-temp stainless alloy.”


“Fascinating,” Orolo called. “Can you get it open?”


“I think that the stenciled messages are

opening instructions,” she said. “It is the same message—the same

stencil—repeated in four places around the door. In each case, there is

a line painted from it—”


“An arrow?” someone called. Others, who were standing where they could see it better, were more certain. “Those are arrows!”


“They don’t look like our arrows,” Cord

said, “but maybe the Geometers do them differently. Each of them is

aimed at a panel about the size of my hand. These panels appear to be

held in place with fasteners—flush-head machine bolts—four per panel—I

don’t have the right tool to put into them but I can fake it with a

daisy-head driver.” She frisked herself.


“How do we know they are fasteners at all?” someone called. “We know nothing of these aliens and their praxis!”


“It’s just obvious!” Cord called back. “I

can see little burrs where some alien mechanic over-torqued them. The

heads are knurled so aliens can turn ’em with their alien fingers when

they are loose. The only question is: clockwise, or counterclockwise?”


She jammed a driver into place, whacked it

once with the heel of her hand to seat it, and grunted as she applied

torque. “Counterclockwise,” she announced. For some reason this caused

a cheer to run through the crowd of avout. “The Geometers are

right-handed!” someone called, and everyone laughed.


Cord pocketed the bolts as she got them

out. The little panel fell off and clattered through the scaffolding to

the stone plaza, where someone snatched it up and peered at it like a

page from a holy book. “Behind the panel is a cavity containing a

T-handle,” she announced. “But I’m going to remove the other three

panels before I mess with it.”


“Why?” someone asked—typical argumentative avout, I thought.


Going to work on another panel, Cord

answered patiently: “It’s like when you bolt the wheel onto your mobe,

you take turns tightening the nuts to equalize the stress.”




“What if there is a pressure differential?” Orolo asked.


“Another good reason to take it slow,” Cord

muttered. “We don’t want anyone to get smashed by a flying door. As a

matter of fact—” She looked out at the crowd of avout below.


Yul took her meaning. He cupped his hands

around his mouth and bellowed: “MOVE BACK! Everyone get clear of the

hatch. A hundred feet away. MOVE!” The voice was shockingly loud and

authoritative. People moved, and opened up a corridor all the way to

Gnel’s fetch.


More aerocraft, of two or three different

types, approached while Cord was undoing the panels. We could hear them

landing on the other side of the wall. Someone called down news that

soldiers were getting out, down on the road by the souvenir shop.


A thought occurred to me. “Sammann,” I asked, “are you sending this out over the Reticulum?”


“Smile,” Sammann answered, “right now a billion people are laughing at you.”


I tried not to think about the soldiers and the billion people.


A hiss came from the probe. Cord jumped

back and almost toppled from the scaffold. The hiss died away

asymptotically over a few seconds. Cord laughed nervously. “One of the

things that happens when you operate a T-handle,” she said, “is that a

pressure-equalizing valve opens up.”


“Did air go in, or out?” Orolo asked.


“In.” Cord operated the other three

T-handles. “Uh-oh,” she said, “here it comes!” And the door simply fell

out and hit the ladder she was standing on. Yul got his arms up in time

to steer it down to the ground. We all watched that. Then all looked to

Cord, who was standing there, hands on hips, pelvis cocked to one side,

aiming the beam of her headlamp into the probe.


“What’s in there?” someone finally asked.


“A dead girl,” she said, “with a box on her lap.”


“Human or—”


“Close,” Cord said, “but not from Arbre.”


Cord crouched as if to enter the capsule,

but then started as the scaffolding torqued, rocked, and rebounded. It

was Yul. He had vaulted up to join

her. He wasn’t about to let his girl climb into an alien spaceship

until he’d checked it for monsters. The scaffold had been about right

for one, and had now reached maximum capacity; no one else was going up

there as long as most of the space was claimed by an agitated

Yulassetar Crade. Cord was mildly offended; she refused to move, so Yul

had to drop to his knees and stick his head into the doorway down

around the level of her thighs. It felt haphazard, hasty, and

absolutely the wrong way to treat such priceless theorical evidence. If

circumstances had been different, avout would have swarmed the ladders

and restrained Yul, nothing would have been touched until all had been

measured, phototyped, examined, analyzed. But the hovering and circling

aerocraft, as well as other sound effects from above, had put everyone

in a different frame of mind. “Yul!” Sammann shouted, and as soon as

Yul turned around the Ita lobbed his jeejah up to the scaffold. Yul

reached instinctively, snatched it out of the air, and thrust it into

the capsule. It could see in the dark better than a human and so he

ended up using its screen as a night vision device. That’s how he

noticed the dark stains in the clothing of the dead Geometer.


“She’s wounded,” he announced, “she’s

bleeding!” There were cries of alarm from some of the avout who assumed

Yul must be talking of Cord, but soon it was clear that he was speaking

of the Geometer in the capsule.


“Are you claiming he, she, is alive!?” Sammann asked.


“I don’t know!” Yul said, turning his head to look down at us.


As long as he was out of the way, Cord

thrust a leg into the doorway and leaned her head and upper body

through. We heard a muffled exclamation. Yul relayed it: “Cord says

she’s still warm!”


All kinds of theorical questions were

coming up in my mind—and probably the minds of all the others: how can

you tell it’s female? How do you know they even have sexes? What makes

you think they have blood like we do, and that that’s what is coming

out of her? But, again, the stress and chaos relegated all such

questions to a kind of intellectual quarantine.


Orolo pointed out, “If there is any possibility that she might be alive, we must do whatever we can to help her!”




That was all Yul needed to hear. He tossed

the jeejah back to Sammann with one hand while giving Cord a knife with

the other. “She’s strapped in pretty good,” he warned us. All we could

see of Cord now was one leg, which twisted and pawed as she braced it

against the scaffold. A minute passed. We stood, waiting, unable to

help Cord, helpless to do anything about the banging, booming, and

metallic screeching noises resounding from the gates and walls of the

concent high above. Finally Cord gave a great heave and tumbled half

out of the door. Yul reached in for the second heave. Like a rafting

guide hauling a drowned customer from a river, he brought the Geometer

out with the full power of both arms and legs, and ended up lying on

his back with the alien sprawled full-length on top of him. Red liquid

spilled down around his ribs and dripped through the rungs onto the

ground. Twenty hands reached up to accept the weight of the Geometer as

Yul rolled her sideways off his body. Three hands, one of them Orolo’s,

converged on her head, cradling it, taking great care it did not loll.

I glimpsed the face. From fifty feet, anyone would have taken her for a

native of this planet. Close up, there was no doubt that she was, as

Cord had put it, “not from Arbre.” There was no one thing about her

face that would prove this. But the color and texture of her skin and

hair, the bone structure, the sculpture of the outer ear, the shape of

the teeth, were all just different enough.


It was out of the question to lay her down

on the rocket-blasted ground, still hot and strewn with jagged

tile-shards, so we looked around for the nearest flat surface that

might serve. This turned out to be the empty bed of Gnel’s fetch, about

a hundred feet away. We carried the Geometer on our shoulders,

quick-stepping as fast as we could without dropping her. Suur Maltha,

the concent’s physician, met us halfway and was probing the patient’s

neck with her fingertips before we had even set her down. Gnel,

thinking fast, got a camp pad rolled out just in time. We laid the

Geometer down on it, head on the tailgate. She was in a loose, pale

blue coverall, the back sodden with what was obviously blood. Suur

Maltha ripped the garment open and explored the body with a

stethoscope. “Even allowing for the fact that I can’t be sure where the

heart is, I hear no pulse. Just some very faint noises that I would identify as bowel sounds. Roll her over.”


We got the Geometer on her stomach. Suur

Maltha cut the fabric away. It was not just soaked with blood but

perforated with many holes. Maltha used a cloth to swipe a mess of gore

away from the back, revealing a constellation of large round puncture

wounds, extending from the buttocks up halfway to the shoulder, mostly

on the left side. Everyone inhaled and became silent. Suur Maltha

regarded it for a few moments, mastering her own sense of shock, and

then looked as if she might be about to deliver some clinical

observation.


But Gnel beat her to it. “Shotgun blast,”

he diagnosed. “Heavy gauge—antipersonnel. Medium range.” And then,

though it wasn’t really necessary, he delivered the verdict: “Some SOB

shot this poor lady in the back. May God have mercy on her soul.”


One of Maltha’s assistants had had the

presence of mind to shove a thermometer into an orifice that she had

noticed down where the legs joined. “Body temp similar to ours,” she

announced. “She has been dead for maybe minutes.”


The sky fell on us. Or so it seemed, for a

few moments. Someone above had cut the shroud lines of the parachute

and it had collapsed on our heads. Startling as all hell, but harmless.

Everyone spread out and got busy pawing, dragging, stuffing, and

wadding. There was no coherent plan. But eventually a lot of avout came

together in the middle of the plaza, corralling a huge wad of

chute-stuff which they pushed and rolled up the steps of the Temple to

get it out of the way. When it was obvious that there was an oversupply

of these chute-wranglers, I turned back towards the probe, meaning to

go and give the people there an update. My inclination was to run. But

soldiers in head-to-toe suits were coming down the ramp in force and I

thought that running might only excite someone’s chase instinct.


Orolo and Sammann were examining an

artifact that had been in the capsule—the box that Cord had seen on the

occupant’s lap. It was made of some fibrous stuff, and it contained

four transparent tubes filled with red liquid. Blood samples, we

figured. Each was labeled with a

different, single word in Geometer-writing, and a different circular

ikon: a picture of a planet—not Arbre—as seen from space.


Soldiers yanked it out of our hands. They

were all around us now. Each sported a bandolier loaded with what

looked like oversized bracelets. Whenever they encountered an avout

they’d yank one off and ratchet it around the avout’s throat, whereupon

it would come alive and flash a few times a second. Each collar had a

different string of digits printed on its front, so once they’d

captured a picture of you, they would know your face and your number.

It didn’t require a whole lot of imagination to guess that the collars

had tracking and surveillance capabilities. But as sinister and

dehumanizing as all of this was, nothing came of it, at least for

now—it seemed that they only wanted to know who was where.


Fraa Landasher acquitted himself well,

demanding—firmly but calmly—to know who was in charge, by what

authority this was being done (“What law covers alien probes, by the

way?”) and so on. But the soldiers were all dressed in suits made for

chemical and biological warfare, which didn’t make engaging them in

dialog any easier, and Landasher didn’t know enough about the legal

procedures of this time and place. He could have mounted a fine legal

defense 6400 years ago but not today.


A contingent of four soldiers,

distinguished by special insignias that had been hastily poly-taped

onto their suits, approached the probe and started to unpack equipment.

Two of them climbed up on the scaffold, shooed away the fraa who was

inside of it, and began collecting samples and making phototypes of

their own.


The soldiers had naturally come to the

probe first. They communicated well with one another because their

suits had wireless intercoms, but they couldn’t hear or talk to us very

fluently. When they did talk to us, it was to boss us around, and when

they listened, it was with something worse than skepticism—as if their

officers had issued a warning that the avout would try to cast spells

on them. The ones who entered the probe might have noted some red

fluid, but it wasn’t as obvious as you might think—the capsule had very

little uncluttered floor space, the lighting was poor, and the acceleration

couches were upholstered in dark material that didn’t show the stain.

The face shields on the soldiers’ helmets kept fogging up. Their gloved

hands could not feel the sticky wetness, their air-filtration devices

removed all odors. Standing near the probe, getting used to the collar

snugged around my neck, I realized that a long time might actually go

by before any of the soldiers became aware of the fact that a Geometer

had come down in this capsule and was lying dead in the back of a fetch

a hundred feet away. The billion people watching Sammann’s feed over

the Reticulum all knew this. The soldiers, isolated in their own

secure, private reticule, had no idea. Sammann, Orolo, Cord, and I kept

exchanging amazed and amused looks as we collectively realized this.


Yul distracted everyone for a while. He

shoved away the soldiers who came to collar him, then, when they aimed

weapons at him, negotiated a deal that he would collar himself. But

once he’d put it on and the soldiers had walked away, he pulled the

collar right off over his head. He had a thick neck and a small skull.

The collar scraped his scalp and lacerated his ears, but he got it off.

Then, having satisfied himself that he could do it, he pulled it back

on again.


An officer finally noticed the small crowd

of uncollared avout gathered around Gnel’s fetch, and sent a squad over

to take care of them. It seemed that we were free to move about as long

as we didn’t try to run away or interfere with the soldiers, so I

followed them at a distance that I hoped they would consider polite.


Collared avout were being herded toward the

Temple steps. Nearby, a line of soldiers was moving across the Teglon

plaza, bent forward at the waist, picking up stray tiles and other

debris that might go ballistic when they began landing things there.

Big vertical-landing aerocraft were keeping station in the sky above,

waiting for the landing zone to be prepared. I reckoned that the

general plan was to load us on aerocraft and take us away to some kind

of detention facility. The longer I could delay being on one of those

flights, the better.


The squad leader did not show the least bit of curiosity as to what

these half-dozen avout were doing in the back of the fetch, but only

ordered them to move away from the vehicle and line up for collaring.

The avout complied, looking nonplussed. A soldier circled around behind

the fetch to check for stragglers. He saw the dead body, started,

unslung his weapon—which drew the attention of his squad-mates—then

relaxed and put the weapon back over his shoulder. He approached the

fetch slowly. Something in his posture told me he was communicating

with his mates on the wireless. I got in close enough to hear the squad

leader saying to Suur Maltha—obviously the physician, since she was all

stained with blood—“You have one casualty?”


“Yes.”


“Do you require—”


“She’s dead,” Suur Maltha said, “we don’t

need a medic.” She was speaking bluntly, a little sarcastically,

astounded as I had been to realize that the soldiers didn’t know.

If they had only asked us, we would have told them; we wouldn’t have

been able to shut up. But they hadn’t asked. They didn’t care for our

knowledge, our opinions. And so all of us—all the avout—were reacting

in the same way to that: to hell with them!


The soldiers began to pop collars off their

bandoliers and fit them around the necks of Maltha and her assistants.

But halfway through they all stopped. Several of them raised gloves to

helmets. I turned around and saw that all of the soldiers on the plaza

and around the probe were behaving the same way. I reckoned the jig was

up now. Some general, sitting in an office a thousand miles away where

he had access to the civilian feeds, was screaming into a microphone

that there was a dead alien in the back of the fetch. I supposed that

in a moment all heads would turn in our direction, all soldiers would

converge here.


But that was not what they did. Instead they all looked up into the sky.


Something was coming.


The hovering aerocraft had received the

message too: the pitch of their engines changed, their lights shifted

as they spun to new headings, banked, and sidled away, gaining altitude.




The soldiers by the fetch had turned inward on one another, though they kept glancing skywards.


“Hey!” I said. “Hey! Look at me!”

I finally got the leader to swing his face shield in my direction.

“Talk to us!” I shouted. “We can’t hear! We don’t know what’s going on!”


“…mumble mumble mumble EVACUATE!” he said.


Ganelial Crade didn’t need to hear that

twice. He swung himself up into the cab of the fetch and started the

engine. Suur Maltha and one of her assistants climbed into the back

with the “casualty.” I decided to circle back to the probe first, just

to make sure my friends there had gotten the same message—and to chivvy

Orolo along if he decided to be difficult. All around the plaza,

soldiers were waving their arms, herding avout toward the base of the

ramp. Gnel’s fetch was headed that way at slower than walking pace,

pausing here and there to pick up slower-moving avout. Yul’s vehicle

had begun to do likewise, and I was comforted to see Cord in the front

seat. But the ramp was already jammed with pedestrians, so the vehicles

would not be able to go any faster than the slowest could walk.


Or run, as the case might be. “MOVE! MOVE!”

someone was shouting. An officer had ripped his helmet off—alien

infections be damned—and begun shouting into a loud-hailer. “If you can

run, do so! If you can’t, get on the truck!”


I ended up a straggler along with Sammann

and Orolo. We jogged toward the ramp. I threw Sammann a questioning

look. He shrugged. “They jammed the Ret as soon as they got here,” he

said, “and I can’t penetrate their transmissions.”


So I looked at Orolo, who was keeping an

eye on the western sky as he jogged along. “You think something else is

coming?” I asked.


“Since the probe was launched, about one

orbital period has expired,” he pointed out. “So, if the Geometers

wanted to drop something on us at the next opportunity, then now would

be the time to expect it.”


“Drop something,” I repeated.


“You saw what was done to that poor woman!” Orolo exclaimed. “There is insurrection—perhaps civil war—in the icosahedron. A faction that wishes to share information with us, and another that will kill to prevent it.”


“Kill us, even?”


Orolo shrugged. We had reached the base of

the ramp and got stuck in a traffic jam. Scanning the ramp circling

round above us, I could see avout and soldiers, all mixed together,

running. But some inscrutable law of traffic-jam dynamics dictated that

those of us at the bottom were at a perfect standstill. All we could do

was wait for it to clear. We were the last avout in the queue; behind

us were two squads of soldiers bent under heavy packs, waiting

stolidly, as was the timeless lot of soldiers. Behind them, Orithena

was depopulated, empty except for the alien probe.


Orolo squared off in front of me and

favored me with a bright grin. “Regarding our earlier conversation,” he

began, as if inviting me to dialog in the Refectory kitchen.


“Yes? You have something to add?”


“As to the actual substance, no,” he

confessed. “But things are about to become quite chaotic indeed, and

it’s possible we may get separated.”


“I intend to stay by your side—”


“They may not give us a choice,” he pointed

out, running his finger around his collar. “My number is odd, yours is

even—perhaps they’ll sort us into different tents, or something.”


The people in front of us finally began to

move. Sammann, sensing we were trying to have some kind of private

conversation, went ahead. We shouldered and jostled our way onto the

lower stretches of the ramp. In a few moments we were walking, then

jogging.


Orolo, still casting frequent glances at

the western sky, went on: “If you find yourself at Tredegarh, let us

say, talking to people of your experiences here, and you tell them

about what we spoke of this afternoon, the kind of reaction you will

get will depend quite strongly on who they are, what math they came

from—”


“As in, Procian versus Halikaarnian?” I asked. “I’m used to that, Orolo.”


“This is a little different,” Orolo said. “Most people, Procians and

Halikaarnians alike, will deem it nothing more than idle, metatheorical

speculation. Harmless, except insofar as it is a waste of time. On the

other hand, if you talk to someone like Fraa Jad…”


He paused. I thought it was only to catch

his breath, for we really were running now. Above us, aerocraft were

settling in for landings outside the front gates, and the noise of

their engines forced Orolo to raise his voice. But when I glanced

sideways at him, I thought I saw uncertainty on his face. Not something

I’d learned to associate with Pa Orolo. “I think,” he finally said, “I

think that they all know this.”


“Know what?”


“That what I told you earlier is true.”


“Oh.”


“That they’ve known it for at least a thousand years.”


“Ah.”


“And that…that they do experiments.”


“What!?”


Orolo shrugged, and got a wry smile. “An

analogy: when the theors lost their atom smashers, they turned to the

sky and made cosmography their laboratory, the only place remaining to

test their theories—to turn their philosophy into theorics. Likewise,

when a lot of these people were put together on a crag with nothing to

do except ponder the kinds of things you and I were talking of earlier,

well…some of them, I believe, devised experiments to prove whether they

were speaking truth or nonsense. And out of that arose, over time,

through trial and error, a form of praxis.” I looked at him and he

winked at me.


“So, you think Fraa Jad sent me here to find out whether you knew?”


“I suspect so, yes,” Orolo said. “Under

normal circumstances they might simply have reached down and hauled me

up into the Centenarian or Millenarian math, but…” He was scanning the

western sky again. “Ah, here it comes now!” he exclaimed, delightedly,

as if we had been waiting for a train, and he’d just spied it coming

into the station.




A white streak sliced heaven in half,

moving west to east, and ending, with no loss of speed, in the caldera

of the volcano a few thousand feet above us.


In the moment before the sound reached us,

Orolo remarked, “Clever. They don’t trust their aim enough to score a

perfect hit on the probe. But they know enough geology to—”


After that I could not hear anything for half an hour. Hearing was worse than useless; I was sorry I’d been born with ears.


Fraa Haligastreme had taught me some

geological terms which I will use here. I can imagine Cord shaking her

head in dismay, giving me a hard time for using dry technical language

instead of writing about the emotional truth. But the emotional truth

was a black chaos of shock and fear, and the only way to recount what

happened in a sensible way is to give technical details that we only

pieced together later.


So, the Geometers had thrown a rock at us.

Actually, a long rod of some dense metal, but in principle nothing

fancier than a rock. It penetrated a quarter of a mile into the solid

cap of hardened lava on top of the volcano before it vaporized of its

own kinetic energy, creating a huge burst of pressure that we knew as

an earthquake. The pressure vented up along the wound that the rod had

left through the rock, widening the hole as it roared out, founding

systems of cracks that were immediately blown open by the underlying

lava. This lava was wet, saturated with steam; the steam exploded into

gas as the overburden was relieved, just as bubbles appear in a bottle

of soda when the lid is removed. The lava, inflated by the steam, blew

itself up into ash, most of which went straight up, which is why

everything for a thousand miles downwind ended up buried in grey dust.

But some of it came down the side of the mountain in the form of a

cloud, rolling down the slope like an avalanche, and easy for us to

see, since it was glowing orange. And once we had gotten over the shock

of what we had seen and staggered back up to our feet after the

leg-breaking jolt of the explosion and sprinted to the top of the ramp

in a desperate mob, what we clearly saw was that this thing, this

glowing cloud, was coming for us, and that it would simultaneously

crush us like a sledgehammer and roast us like a flamethrower if

we didn’t get out of its path. The only way of doing that was to get on

the aerocraft, which had landed on the open slope between the walls of

the concent and the souvenir shop. There were exactly enough of these

to carry the soldiers who had arrived in them, plus their gear. So they

had chivalrously dropped their gear on the ground. They were abandoning

everything they had brought with them, the better to carry

passengers—avout—away from danger. They were even flinging armloads of

gear—fire extinguishers, medical kits—out onto the ground to make room

for more humans.


What it came down to then was a simple

calculation of the type any theor could appreciate. The pilots of the

craft knew how much weight they could lift off the ground and they knew

how much a person weighed, on average. Dividing the latter into the

former told them how many people might be allowed on each craft. To

enforce that limit, the pilots had their sidearms out, and armed

soldiers posted to either side of the doors. The soldiers, by and

large, knew where to go: they simply returned to the same craft they’d

arrived in. The Orithenans swarmed, streamed, surged in the open spaces

among the aerocraft, tripping on or vaulting over abandoned gear.

Pilots pointed at them one by one, hustled them aboard, and kept count.

From time to time they figured out a way to throw out more equipment

and accept another passenger. This had already been going on for some

time before Orolo, Sammann, and I came running out the gates. Most of

the places were already taken. Full craft were lifting off, some with

desperate people hanging from their landing gear. The few who hadn’t

yet been chosen were running from one aerocraft to another, and I was

heartened to see that many were finding spaces. I saw Gnel’s and Yul’s

vehicles parked with lights on and engines running, but didn’t see

them—they must have made it! I’d lost track of Orolo, though. A running

soldier grabbed my arm and hurled me toward an aerocraft that was

revving up its engines. I staggered toward the door through a cloud of

flying dirt. Hands grabbed me and hauled me inside as the craft’s skids

were leaving the ground. The soldier climbed on to the skid behind me.

I spun around in the doorway to take in the scene below. I could not

see Sammann and I could not see Orolo—good! Had they found places? Only

two craft remained on the ground. One of them lifted off, shedding two

Orithenans who pawed desperately at the frame of its door but couldn’t

get a grip. At least ten other people had been left behind. Some sat

despondently or lay crumpled on the ground where they had fallen. Some

ran for the sea. One took off running toward the one remaining

aerocraft, but he was too far away. Some part of me was thinking why couldn’t they only have taken a few more?

but the answer was obvious in the way my aerocraft was performing:

engines screaming full tilt, yet gaining altitude no faster than a man

could climb a ladder, and shedding a hail of small objects as people

found odds and ends that could be hurled out the open door. A

flashlight bounced off the back of my head and tumbled to the floor; I

clawed it up and tossed it out.


It almost struck a bolted figure hurrying

over the ground, harshly lit from behind by the lights of Gnel’s fetch,

bent under a heavy burden—light blue. The dead body of the Geometer,

forgotten and abandoned in the back of Gnel’s fetch. The man bent under

it was headed straight for the only aerocraft still on the ground. Arms

were reaching out from the door. The runner put on a last, mighty

effort, planted both feet in the dust below the aerocraft, and gave a

mighty leg-thrust to hurl the Geometer’s body upward. Hands grasped it

and hauled it aboard. The soldier in the doorway showed his teeth as he

screamed something into his microphone. The aerocraft rose, leaving

behind the man who had delivered the dead Geometer. I forced myself to

look at him, and saw what I had expected and dreaded: it was Orolo,

alone before the gates of Orithena.


We had enough altitude now that I could

look over the walls and buildings of the concent and up the slope to

see what was coming. It looked very much as Fraa Haligastreme had

described it to us from ancient texts: heavy as stone, fluid as water,

hot as a forge, and—now that it had fallen several thousand feet down a

mountain—fast as a bullet train.


“No!” I screamed. “We have to go back!” Not

that anyone could hear me. But a soldier behind me read my face, saw my

eyes swing toward the cockpit. He calmly raised his sidearm and planted

its muzzle in the center of my forehead.




My next thought was do I have the guts to jump out so that Orolo could have my place? but I knew that they would not set down again to pick him up. There was no time.


Orolo was looking about curiously. He

seemed almost bored. He sidestepped to a position where he could get a

clear view uphill through the open gates and see what was headed for

him. That, I think, gave him a sense of how many more seconds he had.

He picked up a trenching tool that had been discarded, and used its

handle to slash an arc into the loose soil. He turned, again and again,

joining one arc to another, until he had completed the graceful,

neverending curve of the analemma. Then he tossed the tool aside and

stood on the center, facing his fate.


The buildings of the concent imploded

before the glowing cloud even reached them, for the avalanche was

pushing an invisible pressure wave before it. Destruction washed across

the full width of the concent in a few seconds, and slammed into the

walls from the back side. The walls bulged, cracked, shed a few blocks,

but held, until the glowing cloud hit them with its full force. Then

they went down like a sand castle struck by a wave.


“No!” I screamed one more time, as Orolo

withered under the pressure wave. He flopped to the ground like a hank

of rope. For a moment, smoke shrouded him: radiant heat shining out as

a harbinger of the glowing cloud. Our aerocraft rocked and skidded

sideways on hard air. The cloud erupted from the gates, vaulted over

the rubble of the wall, and fell on Orolo. For a fraction of a second

he was a blossom of yellow flame in the stream of light, and then he

was one with it. All that remained of what he’d been was a wisp of

steam coiling above the torrent of fire.













Part 9


INBRASE







Convox:

A large convocation of avout from maths and concents all over the

world. Normally celebrated only at Millennial Apert or following a

sack, but also convened in highly exceptional circumstances at the

request of the Sæcular Power.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















A

tide of milky light spilled in over the forests and the greens and

congealed into sticky haze. It was a day without a dawn. The

aerocraft’s window had grown a million-edged network of tiny fractures

that pulverized the light into a dust of rare colors. I was seeing it

through the visor of a balloon suit. On the seat next to me was an

orange suitcase that breathed and burbled like a torso, killing what

ever came out of me. The avout and the Panjandrums who’d been summoned

to Convox from all over Arbre were too important to risk infecting them

with alien germs, and so I was living in a bubble until further notice.


This did not make sense. Why bring me to

Tredegarh if there was any risk whatsoever? No dialog between rational

people could have ended in the conclusion that I should be brought

here—but only in a balloon suit. But as Orolo had said, the Convox was

political, and made decisions by compromise. And it happened all the

time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives

was something that made no sense at all.


So my first glimpse of the Precipice was

through several layers of fogged, scratched, and cracked poly, and

miles of haze: smoke, steam, or dust, I couldn’t tell. The poets who

wrote of it always seemed to behold the Precipice at dawn or sunset of

a glorious day, and liked to wonder what the Thousanders were doing up

in their turrets. They must not have known, or perhaps were too

discreet to mention, that the lobe of granite beneath was riddled with

tunnels for storage of nuclear waste, and that its Inviolateness was

due not to the strength of its walls or the bravery of its defenders

but to a deal between the mathic world and the Sæcular Power. I

wondered what a poem would read like,

written by one who saw the Precipice as I did now, knowing what I knew.

A snort of laughter fogged my visor. But when it melted away, and gave

me back again that stark, hazy, color-sapped prospect, I decided it

could actually be a cool poem. The Precipice looked a thousand years

older than anything on Ecba, and all of the stuff that so obscured my

view gave me the same emotional distance as a cosmographer looking at a

dust cloud through a telescope.


Tredegarh had been built somewhat farther

away from the great cities of the late Praxic Age than Muncoster and

Baritoe. That and the rugged look of the Precipice had given it the

reputation of being isolated. The cities that surrounded Muncoster and

Baritoe had, of course, fallen and been remade a dozen times since

then, while similar ebbs and flows had lapped around Tredegarh; still,

people in the mathic world insisted on thinking of it as a woodsy

retreat. But we landed at a busy aerodrome no more than half an hour’s

walk from its Day Gate, and as we drove there I could see that what I’d

identified as forests were really arboretums, and the pastures were

really lawns for the pleasure of Sæculars who lived in great old houses

tucked in at the verge of the woods.


The Day Gate was so lofty I didn’t notice

we’d passed through it. An inlaid road of red stone, wide enough to

drive two mobes abreast, veered to the right and plunged under a huge

Mathic pile that I mistook for the Mynster. But this was merely their

Physicians’ Commons, and the red road was a sign for illiterate

patients and their visitors. I was being squired around on a motorized

cart, since the suitcase grafted onto me was awkward to carry. My

driver veered onto the red road and swung wide to dodge an old patient

who was being aired out in a wheeled chair festooned with drip bags and

readouts. We plunged through a portal arch, then turned off the red

road into a service corridor. We hummed down long rows of chilly rooms

with metal counters and sinister plumbing fixtures, then up a ramp and

into a courtyard. This was about the size of the Cloister back home,

but it felt smaller because the buildings around it were higher.

Planted in the corner of this space was a housing module, brand-new,

with pipes and ducts snaking out of its windows

and leading away to whirring machines, or through windows to a lab. I

was directed to go inside and take off my suit. When the door closed

behind me I heard it being locked from the outside, then the farting of

a poly tape dispenser sealing the cracks all around. I kicked my way

free of the suit and powered down the suitcase, then stuffed them under

the bed. The module had a bedroom, a bath, and a kitchen/dining nook.

The windows had been reinforced on the outside with metal mesh—so that

if I turned out to be claustrophobic and prone to panic attacks I

couldn’t claw my way out—and sealed with thick, translucent poly

sheeting.


Pretty bleak. Yet this was the first time

I’d been alone for several weeks, and in that sense it could not have

been more luxurious. I almost didn’t know what to do with myself. I

felt dizzy, and knew that I was about to fall apart. Then I didn’t feel

quite so private after all, since I guessed that I must be under

surveillance. I couldn’t stop thinking about the image of my sobbing

face that I had inadvertently captured in Clesthyra’s Eye after Orolo’s

Anathem—the first time he had died. Some instinct

told me to burrow. I went into the bathroom, turned off the light,

turned on the shower, and ducked under the water. Once the temperature

had stabilized I collapsed back against the wall, sank down until I was

all folded up over the drain, and utterly lost control of myself. A lot

went down that drain.


I had been through adventures that might

have made for good stories if Orolo hadn’t been vaporized before my

eyes. Our aerocraft, along with several others, had flown to the next

island up-wind and landed on a beach, scattering a crowd of locals

who’d gathered there to drink wine and watch the eruption of Ecba.

Other aerocraft had run out of fuel and ditched in the sea. Since they

had jettisoned their life rafts to make room for passengers, many of

these would have drowned had it not been for the avout, who could

easily make their spheres into life buoys. A second wave of airborne

commandoes had plucked them out of the water and brought them to the

same beach where the rest of us had set down. This had been

commandeered by the Sæcular Power and cordoned off. Tents had been

dropped on us and we had erected our own camp: “New Orithena,”

complete with a canvas cloister in the middle and a digital alarm clock

on a stick, where Provener was celebrated. We had said the aut of

requiem for Orolo and the others who had not survived. Meanwhile the

military had pitched larger tents around us, marched us through naked,

hosed us down with unspecified chemical solutions, given us plastic

bags in which to void urine and excrement. We had spent a few days

living off military rations, wearing paper coveralls that we were

supposed to burn when they got dirty, being called in at random times

to be interviewed, phototyped, and biometrically scanned.


Around noon on the second day, a big

fixed-wing aerocraft had landed on a nearby road that had been made

into a temporary aerodrome. A little while later, a caravan of vehicles

had come up the beach, carrying civilians, some of whom had been

dressed in bolts and chords. My name had been called. I’d walked to the

camp gate, where I had encountered—across a safe, non-infectious

expanse of empty sand—a contingent from Tredegarh. There had been a

couple of dozen, all told. Until they had begun speaking to me in

perfect Orth, I had not even recognized some of them as avout, because

the style of their bolts and chords was so different from what we wore

at Edhar. They originated from many different concents. I’d recognized

only one of them: a Valer who’d helped save me in Mahsht. I’d caught

her eye and made a hint of a bow, and she’d responded in kind.


The FAE of this group had said something

about Orolo that was actually quite respectful and well put. He had

then informed me that I would help them prepare the “givens” for

shipment to the Convox, and return to Tredegarh with them the next day.

By “givens,” of course, he’d meant the box of vials and the body of the

dead Geometer, both of which had been confiscated by the military and

kept on ice in a special tent.


Meanwhile, Sammann had been having a

similar conversation with one of his brethren; a small detachment of

Ita, segregated in their own vehicle.


Thereafter it had mostly been work, which

had probably been a good thing, since it had meant less brooding time

for me. Since Orolo had traded the rest of his life for the theorical

knowledge contained in the body of the

Geometer, preparing it for shipment to Tredegarh had given me an

opportunity to show it the same respect as I would have shown the body

of Orolo, had we been able to give him a normal burial. Two lives had

been sacrificed—one of Arbre, one of some other world—to bring us this

knowledge.


In what free time I did have, I talked to

Cord. At first, I only spoke of my feelings. Later, Cord began to share

her views about what had happened, and it became obvious that she was

interpreting the whole thing from a Kelx point of view. It seemed that

Magister Sark had got himself a convert. His words, back in Mahsht,

might have made only a faint impression on her, but something about

what we had lived through at Orithena had made it all seem true in her

mind. And this didn’t seem like the right time for me to try to

convince her otherwise. It was, I realized, like the broken stove all

over again. What was the point of my having a truer explanation of

these things if it could only be understood by avout who devoted their

whole lives to theorics? Cord, independent soul that she was, wouldn’t

want to live her life under the sway of such ideas any more than she’d

want to cook breakfast with a machine that she couldn’t understand and

fix.





Wrung out, purified, shaky but stronger, I wandered around my new home.


Half the kitchen was occupied by bottled

water, palletized and stacked. The cupboards had been stocked with an

odd mixture of extramuros groceries and fresh produce from the tangles

and arboretums of Tredegarh. Some books had been left on the table: a

few very ancient spec-fic novels (the originals, machine-stamped on

cheap paper, were all dust; these had been copied out by hand on proper

leaves) and a dog’s breakfast of philosophy, metatheorics, quantum

mechanics, and neurology. Some was famous stuff written by people like

Protas, some had been produced by avout toiling in maths I’d never

heard of. I concluded that some fid had been deputized to provide me

with reading material and had run through a library blindfolded, pawing

books off shelves at random.




On my bed lay a new bolt, chord, and

sphere, wrapped and knotted into the traditional package. As I undid

the knots and folds, kicked off the last of my Ecba garb, and got

dressed, everything that had happened since I’d been walked out the Day

Gate of Edhar began to seem dreamlike—as far back in the past as the

time before I was Collected.


In the kitchen I culled all of the food

from the Sæcular world, hiding it in the cupboards, and left the

produce out where I could see and smell it. They’d provided me with

everything I needed to make bread, so I set about it without thinking.

The smell of it permeated the module and drove back the scents of fresh

poly, carpet adhesive, and glueboard.


I tried to read one of the metatheorics

books while the dough was rising. Just as I was beginning to doze off

(the book was impenetrable and my body’s clock was out of synch with

the sun) someone tried to scare me to death by pounding on the walls of

my trailer. I knew it was Arsibalt by the weight of the impacts. By his

footfalls as he prowled around. By the methodical way he pounded on

every bit of wall that presented itself—as if I could have missed it

the first time.


I opened a window and shouted through steel

mesh and cloudy poly-sheet. “It is not made of stone, like the

buildings you are accustomed to, and so a little pounding goes a long

way.”


A vaguely Arsibalt-shaped ghost centered

itself in the aperture. “Fraa Erasmas! How good it is to hear your

voice, and squint at your indistinct form!”


“Likewise. Am I still even considered a fraa then?”


“They are far too busy to fit your Anathem into their schedules—don’t flatter yourself.”


A long silence.


“I am so terribly sorry,” he said.


“Me too.” Arsibalt seemed upset, so I

nattered on for a while. “You should have seen me an hour ago! I was a

mess,” I said. “Am still.”


“You were…there?”


“A couple of hundred feet away, I’d estimate.”


Then he began weeping in earnest. I couldn’t very well go and put

my arms around him. I tried to think of something to say. It was

harder, I saw, for him. Not that watching Orolo die had been easy

for me. But if it had to happen, it was better to have been there and

watched it. And better, as well, to have spent a couple of days

afterwards with my friends on the beach.





After the contingent from Tredegarh had

showed up and told me how it was going to be, I’d sat around a campfire

with Cord, Yul, Gnel, and Sammann. It had not been necessary to point

out that we five might never be together again.


“They wouldn’t bring me back to Tredegarh

just to Anathematize me,” I speculated, “so I guess I’ll go back to

being what I was.” I looked around at all of their faces, warm in

firelight. “But I’ll never be the same.”


“No kidding,” Yul said, “all those head injuries.”


Ganelial Crade said, “I’m staying with these people.”


This was so unexpected that we’d all been

slow to work out what he meant: he was joining the Orithenans. “I’ve

talked to Landasher about it,” he went on, amused by how we were

reacting. “He says they’ll try me out for a while, and if I’m not too

obnoxious, maybe I can stay.”


Yul got up and went around the circle to

hug his cousin from behind and pound him on the back. We all toasted

him with our poly cups of dyed sugar water.


Heads turned next to Sammann, who threw up

his hands and admitted, “All of this has been very good for my

reputation and access.” We all hurled mock abuse at him for a while. He

soaked it up with a satisfied smile. “I’ll be flying back to the Convox

with Fraa Erasmas—probably in a different section of the plane,

though.” This moved me, and so I got up, walked over, and embraced him

while I was still allowed to.


Finally attention turned to Cord and Yul,

who were sitting on a cooler and leaning against each other. “Now that

we are Arbre-leading experts on Geometer technology,” Yul began, “we

might go out and seek employment as such.”




“Seriously,” Cord said, “there are a lot of

people here who want to ask us questions. Since the probe got

destroyed, our memories of what we saw are important. We might even end

up at Tredegarh.”


“Yul’s rig too,” I remarked. I had a dim

memory of its wreckage hurtling past Fraa Orolo. For once, Yul had

nothing to say. He just gazed out over the sea and shook his head.


Cord reminded us, “My fetch should be safe

at Norslof. Once things have settled down a little, we’ll go back and

collect it. Then we were thinking of going up into the mountains for a

while—a delayed honeymoon.”


A silence ensued. She let it stretch out just long enough before saying, “Oh, did I mention we’re engaged?”


The previous evening, Yul had approached me

with a conspiratorial look and drawn a shiny thing from his pocket: a

metal ring that he had cut free from the rigging of the Geometers’

parachute. He’d heated it in a campfire blown white-hot with an

improvised bellows, and hammered it into a size that he hoped would fit

Cord’s finger.


“I was going to ask Cord to—well—you know. Not right away! But later, you know, when things are settled.”


I’d realized that Yul was, in a way, asking

my permission, so I’d moved to embrace him and said, “I know you’ll

take care of her.” His hug had nearly broken my spine and I’d thought

for a moment I’d have to summon one of the Valers to come and pry him

off me.


After he’d calmed down a little, he’d let

me look at the ring. “Not your normal jewel,” he admitted, “but—being

that it’s from another world and all—it’s the rarest, isn’t it?”


“Yes,” I assured him, “it’s the rarest.” Then both of us had involuntarily looked over at my sib.


He must have asked her earlier in the day,

and she must have said yes. For a while, there was wild hugging,

hollering, and running around. A mob of Orithenans gathered around us,

drawn by a rumor that the wedding was going to happen now.

They were followed by curious soldiers, followed in turn by Convox

people who wanted to know what all the fuss was about. There was a kind

of crazy momentum pushing us toward holding the ceremony that day,

on the beach. But after a few minutes, everyone settled down, and it

turned into a party. Orithenan suurs uprooted armloads of weedy flowers

from the ditch along the road and braided them into garlands. The

soldiers got into the spirit of things, producing booze from nowhere,

and cheering Cord and Yul with gutsy noises. A helicopter mechanic gave

Cord his favorite daisy-head screwdriver.


An hour later I was on the plane to Tredegarh.





Arsibalt was settling down a little. He drew a deep, shaky breath. “He accepted his fate quite calmly, it seemed.”


“Yes.”


“Do you know the meaning of the symbol he drew on the ground? The analemma?”


Something occurred to me. “Hey!” I said. “How do you know all of this stuff? Have they been letting you watch speelies?”


He was glad to have an excuse to declaim

about something. It settled him right down. “I forget you know nothing

of the Convox. Whenever they wish to say something to everyone—for

example, when Jesry came back from space—they summon us to a so-called

Plenary in the nave of the Unarians, the only place big enough to hold

the entire Convox. Rules are relaxed; they show us speelies. Anyway,

there was an all-day Plenary—most enervating—after the Visitation of

Orithena.”


“Is that what they’re calling it?”


I could see him nodding. It was hard to

make out details through the poly, but I feared he might be trying to

grow a beard again.


“Well,” I said, “I spent a few days with

him before…before the events you saw on the speely. Of course, I saw

the original Analemma, the ancient one on the Temple floor.”


“Now that must have been something!” Arsibalt gushed.


“It was. Especially now that we can never

go back,” I said. “But as for the analemma that Orolo drew on the

beach, I’m afraid I didn’t get any special insight to decode the

meaning of…”


“Is something the matter?” Arsibalt asked, a few seconds later. For I had trailed off.




“I just remembered something,” I said. “A

remark Orolo made. The last thing he said to me, before the probe fired

its thrusters. ‘They must have deciphered my analemma!’”


“‘They’ meaning the Geometers, presumably.”


“Yeah. Too much was happening for me to ask him what it meant…”


“And then it was too late,” Arsibalt said.


Orolo’s death was still new enough that we

had to stop talking for a few moments whenever it came up in

conversation. But both of us were thinking. “A phototype on the wall of

his cell, at Bly’s Butte,” I said, “showed the Analemma. The ancient

one.”


“Yes,” Arsibalt said. “I remember seeing it.”


“Almost as if it were the equivalent of a religious symbol to him,” I said, “like the Triangle is to certain Arks.”


“But that doesn’t explain his remark about the Geometers ‘deciphering’ it,” Arsibalt pointed out.


We sat there puzzling over it for a few more moments, but could make no headway.


“So,” I said, “at the Plenary after Jesry came back from space…did you see what happened to the Warden of Heaven?”


“Did you?” he asked. Then both of us were

silent for a minute, daring each other to say something funny and

inappropriate. But somehow it didn’t seem like the right time, yet.


“How are the others?”


He sighed. “I don’t see much of them. We

have all been assigned to different Laboratoria. Periklyne is absolute

bedlam, of course. And we have chosen different Lucubs.”


I could only guess at the meanings of those words. “But maybe you can at least tell me how they are doing?”


“You need to know it is different for Jesry and Ala,” he began.


“Why?”


“Because they were summoned in Voco. They

died, as do all whose names are called out thus, and they had to begin

new lives. Some of them quite liked it. All of them got used to it.

Then, suddenly, weeks later, the thing changed into a Convox.”


“They had to undie.”




“Yes. You should expect some awkwardness.”


“Awkwardness! Well, at least something about this place will be familiar then.”


Arsibalt cleared his throat instead of laughing.





“They are going to let you out of this

contraption in no time,” Jesry told me. Somewhat confounding Arsibalt’s

prediction, he came to visit me before my bread was even finished

cooling.


He had spoken with such absolute confidence

that I knew he had to be blowing this out of his rectal orifice. “What

is the basis of your prediction?” I asked.


“The lasers were the wrong color,” he said.


I repeated this sentence out loud, but could make nothing of it.


“The laser that shone down onto the Inviolates,” he explained, “on the night that this turned into a Convox.”


“It was red,” I said—pretty stupid, but I

was trying to dislodge loose bits of information from Jesry’s brain by

throwing rocks at it.


“Some here at Tredegarh are knowledgable

about lasers,” Jesry said. “They knew right away that something was

funny. There are only so many gases, or combinations of gases, that can

be used to make a red laser. Each generates a different wavelength. A

laser expert can look at a spot of light and know right away what gas

mixture was used as the lasing medium. They didn’t recognize the color

of the Geometers’ laser.”


“I don’t see what—”


“Fortunately a cosmographer at Rambalf had

the presence of mind to expose a photomnemonic tablet to that light,”

Jesry went on. “So we know its exact wavelength. And it has been

confirmed that it doesn’t match up with any naturally occurring

spectral lines.”


“That makes no sense! Those wavelengths fall out of quantum-mechanical calculations that are basic to everything!”


“But think of newmatter,” Jesry said.


“Okay,” I said, and considered it. If you messed around with how the nucleus was put together, it changed the way electrons orbited

around it. Laser light was the result of an electron jumping from an

orbit with a higher, to another with lower, energy. The energy

difference determined the wavelength—the color—of the light. “Lasers

made with newmatter have colors not found in nature,” I allowed.


Jesry was silent, waiting for me to go the next step.


“So,” I continued, “the Geometers have newmatter—they used it to make a laser.”


He shifted posture. Through the plastic I could see nothing but posture. Yet I knew he was disagreeing with me. And for once, I knew why.


“But they don’t,” I

continued. “At least, not in any meaningful way. I’ve handled their

parachute. The shroud lines. The hatch. It was just regular stuff—too

heavy, too weak.”


He nodded. “What you couldn’t know—what none of us knew, until a few hours ago—is that it is all

newmatter. Everything that came down in that probe—all the hardware,

all the flesh—is what we would call newmatter, in the sense that the

nuclei are put together in a way that is not natural—not in this

cosmos, anyway.”


“But most of it was destroyed!” I protested. “Or at least buried in hundreds of feet of ash.”


“The Orithenans, and your friends, came

away with some fragments. We have a T-handle panel. Some bolts that

Cord put in her pocket. Scraps of chute and shroud lines. The box of

blood samples. And we have the entire body of the woman who was shot in

the back, thanks to Saunt Orolo.”


This almost slipped by me. Jesry hadn’t

mentioned Orolo until now. Certain nuances in his posture and voice

told me he was grieving—but only because I’d known him my whole life.

He was going to grieve in a funny, hidden way, over a long period of

time.


I cleared my throat. “Are a lot of people referring to him that way, now?”


“Actually, fewer as time goes by. Right

after they showed us the speely, it just flew out of people’s mouths.

His actions were so obviously those of a saunt that no one even had to

think about it. In the last day or so, some are pulling

back—reconsidering it.”




“What’s to reconsider!?”


He shrugged and threw up his hands. “Don’t

worry about it. You know how it is. No one wants to be hasty—to be

called an Enthusiast. The Procians are probably cooking up radical new

interpretations of what Orolo did in their Lucubs. Forget it. He made

the sacrifice. We honor that by getting as much knowledge as we can out

of the dead chick. And I’m trying to tell you that every nucleus of

every atom in her, the shotgun balls in her guts, the clothing she

wore, is newmatter—so the same is probably true of everything in the

isocahedron.”


“So the electrons around those nuclei behave correspondingly unnaturally,” I said, “such as lasing at the wrong color.”


“Electron behavior is basically synonymous

with chemistry,” Jesry put in. “That’s why newmatter was invented:

because monkeying around with nucleosynthesis gave us new elements and

new chemistry to play around with.”


“And the functioning of living organisms is founded on chemistry,” I said.


Jesry was smarter than I. He must have

known it. But he didn’t let it show very often. No matter how many

times I failed to get what he was talking about, he had this steady

faith in my ability to understand what he understood. It was an

endearing quality—his only one. Now, he shifted posture again, leaning

in as if he were actually interested in what I had to say—letting me

know I was on the right track.


“We can’t interact chemically with the Geometers—or with any of their viruses or bacteria—because the laser was the wrong color!”


“Some simple interactions are doubtless

possible,” Jesry said. “An electron is an electron. So our atoms can

form simple chemical bonds with theirs. But there’s not the

sophisticated biochemistry that germs use to go about their business.”


“So, they could make noises that we could hear. See light reflecting from our bodies. Punch us in the nose, even…”


“Or rod us.” This was the first time I’d heard rod employed as a verb, but I collected that he was talking of the projectile that had blasted Ecba.




“But not infect us,” I said.


“Nor vice versa. Oh, over time, germs will

evolve that can interact with both types of matter—knit the ecosystems

together. But that’ll take a long time, and we can stay ahead of it.

So. You’ll be out of that box soon.”


“Do they have water? Oxygen?”


“Their hydrogen is identical to ours. Their

oxygen is similar enough to give them water. We don’t know whether we

could breathe it. Carbon seems to be a little different. The metals and

so on show greater divergence.”


“How much more do you know about the Geometers?”


“Less than you. What was Orolo doing at Orithena?”


“Pursuing a line of inquiry that I don’t fully understand.”


“Consistent with a polycosmic interpretation of what’s going on?”


“Totally.”


“Tell me about it.”


“I’m afraid to talk about it.”


“Why?”


“Because I’m afraid I’ll make a bloody hash of it.”


Jesry did not respond, and I fancied he was eyeing me suspiciously through the plastic.


The real reason I didn’t want to talk about

it, of course, was because I was afraid it would lead straight to the

Incanters. And I guessed that we were under surveillance.


“Some other time,” I said, “when I’m

fresher. We can go for a walk. Like when we used to hold theorical

dialogs in Orolo’s vineyard.”


Orolo’s vineyard, because of its

south-facing slope, was one of those parts of Edhar that wasn’t visible

from any of the Warden Regulant’s windows, and as such, was where we

used to go when we were up to some kind of mayhem. Jesry got the

message, and nodded.


“How’s Ala?” I asked.


“Fine. I don’t know when you’ll see her, because after our Voco, she and I started having a liaison.”


My ears caught fire and serrated bristles popped out of my spine. Or

at least it felt that way. But later when I checked out a mirror, I

didn’t seem any different, just a little more stupid-looking. Some

higher, more modern part of my brain—that is, some part of it that had

evolved more recently than five million years ago—thought it might be

good to keep the conversation going. “Well. Thanks for letting me know.

What’s going to happen now, then?”


“Well, knowing her, she’s going to make a

decision. And until she’s made it, neither one of us is probably going

to hear from her.”


I didn’t say anything.


“She’s busy, anyway,” Jesry went on. I had

the feeling that he was finished with me, bored, and really wanted to

leave. But even he knew he couldn’t just drop this bomb and walk away.

So he filled a little time talking about the structure of the Convox

and how it was organized. I heard little.


That’s why he had paid me a visit so

promptly. So that he could break this news to me while we were

separated by steel mesh. Clever boy!


Because (as I reflected, after he had taken his leave) he knew me, and knew I’d brood on it, and be reasonable. Why shouldn’t they have started a liaison? After Ala had been Evoked, I had thought of myself as available.


Not that it had gotten me anywhere!


I ate a piece of bread. Three avout in

bubble suits came into the trailer. Two of them stole even more of my

blood. The other stayed behind after the blood-stealers had made their

getaway. She wrenched the head from her bubble suit and tossed it on

the floor. Stuffed the gloves into that. Stuck her fingers through her

hair, and felt her own scalp. “Stuffy in there,” she explained, when

she caught me looking. “Suur Maroa. Centenarian. Fifth Sconic. I’m from

a little math you’ve never heard of. Can I have some of that bread?”


“Aren’t you afraid you’ll be contaminated?”


She glanced at her helmet, then back to me.


I thought Suur Maroa was pretty attractive,

but she was fifteen years older than I, and I didn’t trust myself at

the moment; maybe I’d have been

attracted to any female who didn’t treat me as an alien plague vector.

So I got her a piece of bread. “What a godawful place!” she remarked,

looking around. “Is this how extras live?”


“Most of them.”


“You should be out of it soon, though.” She

inhaled deeply through her nose, and I could tell by the look on her

face that she was thinking about what she smelled. Then she got an

annoyed look, and shook her head. “Too many industrial byproducts in

here,” she muttered.


“What are you about?” I asked. “What do Fifth Sconics do? I’m sorry, I ought to know.”


“Thank you,” she said, accepting a piece of

bread from my hand, touching me incidentally. She took a bite and

stared off into space as she chewed it.


Avout who followed the Sconic Discipline

had begun to splinter and fight immediately after the Reconstitution

and to squabble over which sect had dibs on the names Sconics, Reformed

Sconics, New Sconics, and so on. Eventually they had gone over to a

numbering system. They were up into the low twenties now, so Fives were

pretty well-established.


“I don’t think that the differences between

the Fives, the Fours, and the Sixes are germane here,” she finally

decided. She turned to look at me. “I just want to know how they

smelled.”


“Really?”


“Yeah. For example, you handled the parachute, right?”


“Yes.”


“If you handled a big old parachute from a

military depot on Arbre, you’d be able to smell it. Maybe it would

smell musty from being wadded up in a sack for a long time.”


“If only I’d had the presence of mind to pay more attention to that!” I said.


“It’s all right,” Suur Maroa said. She was a theor, used to setbacks. “You were kind of busy. Nice job, by the way.”


“Oh thanks.”


“When the cool girl—”




“Cord.”


“Yeah, activated the pressure equalization valves on the hatch, air moved—?”


“In to the capsule,” I said.


“So you didn’t get to smell their atmosphere until after it had been mixed with ours.”


“Correct.”


“Damn.”


“Maybe we should have waited,” I said.


She aimed a sharp look at me. “I don’t recommend you go around saying things like that!”


I was taken aback. She checked herself and

went on in a lower voice: “This place is the world capital of

know-it-alls. Everyone is jealous. Wishes they’d been there instead of

you and a bunch of Lineage weirdos. Thinks they could have done better.”


“Okay, never mind,” I said. “We had to do what we did because we knew the military was coming to screw it up even worse.”


“That’s more like it,” she said. “Back to the olfactory now: do you remember smelling anything, at any time?”


“Yes! We talked about it!”


“Not when that Ita had his speelycaptor on you, you didn’t.”


“Before Sammann arrived. The probe had just

landed. Orolo smelled the plume from the engines. He wanted to know if

they were using toxic propellants—”


“Wise of him. Some of them are frightening,” Maroa put in.


“But we couldn’t smell anything. Decided it was all steam. Hydrogen/oxygen.”


“That is still a negative result.”


“But later, there was a definite odor

inside the probe,” I said. “I remember it now. Associated with the

body. I assumed it was some kind of bodily fluid.”


“Assumed, because you didn’t recognize the

odor?” Suur Maroa asked, after she had thought about this for as long

as she wanted to.


“It was totally new to me.”


“So the Geometers’ organic molecules are capable of interacting chemically with our olfactory systems,” she concluded. “It’s an interesting

result. Theors have been breathing down my neck wanting me to answer

it—because some of those reactions are quantum-mechanical in nature.”


“Our noses are quantum devices?”


“Yes!” Maroa said, with a bright look that

was close to a smile. “Little-known fact.” She stood up and fetched her

helmet. “It’s a useful result. We should be able to get a sample from

the body and expose it to olfactory tissue in a lab.” She gave me the

bright look again. “Thank you!” And, in a completely absurd departure

ritual, she pulled her gloves on, and lowered her helmet over her head,

which I was sorry to see the last of.


“Wait!” I said. “How could any of this be? How could the Geometers be so like us, and yet made of different matter?”


“You’ll have to ask a cosmographer,” she said. “My specialty is cornering vermin and taking them apart.”


“What does that make me?” I asked, but she

was too preoccupied getting her helmet on to catch the joke. She passed

out into a kind of airlock that they’d erected outside my front door.

The door closed and locked, and the tape dispenser started making rude

noises again.


It got dark. I fretted over the

contradiction. The Geometers looked like us, but were made of matter so

fundamentally different that Maroa had entertained the possibility that

we wouldn’t even be able to smell it. Some at the Convox were afraid of

space germs; Maroa sure wasn’t.


My being stuck in this box was a byproduct

of arguments that people were having in chalk halls a few hundred yards

away. I should have paid better attention to Jesry’s chitchat about

what a Convox was.


Lio showed up late and made a hooting noise

at the window. It was a fake bird call that we had used, back at Edhar,

when we were out after curfew.


“I can’t see you at all,” I said.


“Just as well. Bumps and bruises mostly.”


“Been working out with the Valers?”


“That would be much safer. No, I’ve been working out with people who are as clumsy as I am. The Ringing Vale avout watch and laugh.”


“Well, I hope you’re giving as good as you’re getting.”


“That would be satisfying on one level,” he allowed, “but no way to shine in the eyes of my instructors.”


I felt funny talking to a blank square of

plastic, so I turned off the lights and sat in the dark with him. For a

long time. Thinking, not talking, about Orolo.


“Why are they teaching you how to fight?” I asked. “I thought they had that market cornered.”


“You jumped straight to a pretty

interesting question, Raz,” he croaked. His voice had gotten all husky.

“I don’t know the answer yet. Just starting to get some ideas.”


“Well, my body clock is screwed up, I’m

going to be awake all night, and the books they left me are unreadable.

My girlfriend ran off with Jesry. So, I’m happy to sit here and listen

to your ideas.”


“What books did they leave you?”


“A hodgepodge.”


“Unlikely. There must be a common thread. You need to get on top of it before your first messal.”


“Jesry used that word. I was trying to parse it.”


“Comes from the diminutive of a Proto-Orth word meaning a flat surface on which food was served.”


“So, ‘small table’—”


“Think ‘small dinner.’ Turns out to be an

important tradition here. It’s really different from Edhar, Raz. The

way we used to eat—everyone together in the Refectory, carrying their

own food around, sitting wherever they felt like it—they have a word

for that too, not so complimentary. It is seen as backward, chaotic.

Only fids and a few weird, ascetic orders do it. Here it’s all about

messals. The maximum head count is seven. That’s considered to be the

largest number you can fit around a table such that everyone can hear,

and people aren’t always splitting off into side conversations.”


“So, there’s a dining hall somewhere with a lot of seven-person tables in it?”




“No, that’d be too noisy. Each messal is held in a small private room—called a messallan.”


“So, there’s a ring of these messallans, or something, around the Refectory kitchen?”


Lio was chuckling at my naïveté. Not in a

mean way. He’d been in the same state of ignorance a few weeks ago.

“Raz, you don’t get how rich this place is. There is no Refectory—no

one central kitchen. It’s all dowments and chapterhouses.”


“They have active dowments? I thought those were abolished—”


“In the Third Sack reforms,” he said. “They

were. But you know how Shuf’s Dowment has been fixed up by the ROF?

Well, imagine a concent with a hundred places like that—each of them

bigger and nicer than Shuf’s ever was. And don’t get me started on the

chapterhouses.”


“I feel like a hick already.”


“Just you wait.”


“So there is a separate kitchen—” I stopped, unable to handle such a wild thought.


“A separate kitchen for each messallan—cooking just fourteen servings at a time!”


“I thought you said seven.”


“The servitors have to eat too.”


“What’s a servitor?”


“We are!” Lio laughed.

“When they let you out, you’ll be paired with a senior fraa or

suur—your doyn. A couple of hours ahead of time, you go to the dowment

or chapterhouse where your doyn is assigned for messal, and you and the

other servitors prepare the dinner. When the bells ring eventide, the

doyns show up and sit down around the table and the servitors bring out

the food. When you’re not moving plates around, you stand behind your

doyn with your back to the wall.”


“That is shocking,” I said. “I’m half convinced you’re pulling my leg.”


“I couldn’t believe it myself, at first,”

Lio said, laughing. “Made me feel like such a hayseed. But the system

works. You get to listen in on

conversations you’d never get to be a part of otherwise. As years go by

you move up and become a doyn and get a servitor of your own.”


“What if your doyn is an idiot? What if

it’s a bad messal with the same boring conversation every evening? You

can’t get up and move to another table like we do at Edhar!”


“I wouldn’t trade it for our system,” Lio

said. “It’s not such an issue now, because the people who get invited

to a Convox tend to be pretty interesting.”


“So, who is your doyn?”


“She’s the Warden Fendant of a small math

on the top of a skyscraper in a big city that is in the middle of a

sectarian holy war.”


“Interesting. And where is your messallan?”


Lio said, “My doyn and I rotate to a different one every evening. This is unusual.”


“Hmm. I wonder where they’ll put me.”


“That’s why you need to get on top of those books,” Lio said. “You might get in trouble with your doyn if you’re not prepared.”


“Not prepared to do what—fold their napkin?”


“You’re expected to understand what’s going on. Sometimes, servitors even get to take part in the conversation.”


“Oh. What an honor!”


“It might be a great honor, depending on who your doyn is. Imagine if Orolo were your doyn.”


“I take your point. But that’s out of the question.”


Lio brooded for a while before answering.

“That’s another thing,” he said, in a quiet voice. “The aut of Anathem

has not been celebrated at Tredegarh for close to a thousand years.”


“How can that be? This place must have twenty times the population of Edhar!”


“All the different chapters and dowments

make it possible for weirdos and misfits to find homes,” Lio said. “You

and I grew up in a tough town, brother.”


“Well, don’t go soft on me now.”


“That is unlikely,” Lio said, “when I spend every day sparring with Valers.”




This reminded me that he was exhausted. “Hey! Before you go—one question,” I said.


“Yeah?”


“Why are we here? Isn’t this Convox a sitting duck?”


“Yes.”


“You’d think they’d have dispersed it.”


“Ala’s been busy,” he said, “drawing up

contingency plans for just that. But the order hasn’t been given yet.

Maybe they’re worried it would look like a provocation.”


“So—we are…”


“Hostages!” Lio said cheerfully. “Good night, Raz.”


“’Night, Lio.”


In spite of Lio’s advice, I couldn’t get a

grip on the books that had been left for me. My brain was too jangled.

I tried to skim the novels. These were easier to follow, but I couldn’t

fathom why I had been assigned to read such

things. I got about twenty leaves into the third one, and the hero

jumped through a portal to a parallel universe. The other two novels

had also revolved around parallel-universe scenarios, so I reasoned

that I was supposed to be thinking about that topic, and that the other

books must relate to that theme. But all of a sudden my body decided it

was time to sleep, and I was barely able to stagger over to bed before

I lost consciousness.





I woke to bells ringing strange changes,

and Tulia calling my name. Not in a happy way. For a moment I fancied I

was back at Edhar. But when I opened one eye—just a slit—all I saw was

trailer.


“My god!” Tulia exclaimed, from

terrifyingly close range. I came awake to find her standing at the foot

of my bed. No bubble suit. The look on her face was as if she’d found

me sprawled in a gutter outside a bordello. I did some groping, and

satisfied myself that most of me was covered by my bolt.


“What is your problem?” I muttered.


“You have to move now! Instantly! They are holding up Inbrase for you!”


That sounded serious, so I rolled out of bed and chased her out of the

trailer. The airlock had been torn down; we trampled the plastic. She

led me across the courtyard, under an arch, and down some ancient

Mathic catacomb whose far end was sealed off by an iron grille—the sort

of barrier used to separate one math from another. It sported a gate,

which was being held open by a nervous-seeming fid who clanged it shut

behind us as we burst through into a long straight lane guarded by twin

rows of enormous page trees. This lane cut through the middle of a

forest of them.


My feet had grown soft from wearing shoes

and I kept mincing over stones and root-knuckles, so Tulia outran me.

On its far side, the page-tree wood was bordered by a stone wall,

thirty-odd feet high, pierced by a massive arch, where she paused to

catch her breath and wait for me.


As I drew near, she turned to face me and

raised her arms. I gave her a big hug, lifting her off the ground, and

for some reason both of us broke out laughing. I loved her for that.

She was the only one I’d met who was responding to Orolo’s death with

something other than sadness. Not that she wasn’t sad. But she was

proud of him, I thought, thrilled by what he had done, glad that I had

survived and come back to be with my friends once more.


Then we were running again: through the

arch and into a rolling green, splashed with coppices of great old

trees, that seemed to extend for miles. Stone buildings rose up every

few hundred feet, and a network of footpaths joined them. These must be

the dowments and chapterhouses Lio had spoken of. I was more impressed

by the lawns than anything else; at Edhar, we couldn’t afford to waste

ground this way.


The bells were getting marginally closer.

As we came around the corner of an especially huge building—some sort

of cloister/ library complex—the Precipice finally came in view. Tulia

led me to a broad tree-lined lane that would take us straight to it.

Then I was able to see the Mynster complex massed at the base of the

cliff.


The Precipice had been formed when a dome

of granite, three thousand feet high, had shed its western face. Avout

had cleaned up the mess below and used the crumbly bits to make

buildings and walls. Since no

artificial clock-tower could compete with the Precipice, they had built

their Mynster at the base of the cliff and then cut tunnels and

galleries and ledges into the granite above, sculpting the Precipice

into their Clock, or vice versa. A succession of dials had been built

over the millennia, each higher and larger than the last, and all of

them still told time: all of them told me I was late.


“Inbrase,” I gasped, “that’s—”


“Your official induction to the Convox,”

Tulia said. “Everyone has to go through it—the formal end of your

Peregrination—we did it weeks ago.”


“A lot of trouble for one straggler.”


She laughed once, sharply, but couldn’t

maintain it owing to air debt. “Don’t flatter yourself, Raz! We’ve been

doing these once a week. There’s a hundred other peregrins from eight

different maths—all waiting on you!”


The bells stopped ringing—a bad sign! We picked up our pace and ran silently for a few hundred yards.


“I thought everyone got here a long time ago!” I said.


“Only from big concents. You would not believe how isolated some are. There’s even a contingent of Matarrhites!”


“So I’m with the Deolaters, eh?”


I was getting the picture that the

chapterhouses closest to the Mynster were the oldest: ring around ring

of cloister, gallery, walk, and yard. Glimpses, through Mathic gates

and shouting arches, of chapterhouses so tiny, mean, and time-pitted

that they must date back to the Reconstitution. New towers striving to

make up in loftiness and brilliance what their ancient neighbors owned

by dint of age, fame, and dignity.


“Another thing,” Tulia said, “I almost forgot. Right after Inbrase there is going to be a Plenary.”


“Arsibalt mentioned those—Jesry did one?”


“Yes. I wish I had more time, but…just remember it’s all theater.”


“Sounds like a warning!”


“Any time you get that many in a room, there’s no dialog worthy of the name—it’s all stilted. Filtered.”




“Political?”


“Of course. Just—just don’t try to out-politic these guys.”


“Because I’m a complete idiot when it comes to—”


“Exactly.”


We ran on silently for a few more strides, and she thought better of it. “Remember our conversation, Raz? Before Eliger?”


“You were going to nail down the political end of things,” I recalled, “so that I could memorize more digits of pi.”


“Something like that,” she said, tossing off a chuckle just to be a good sport.


“And how’s that plan working out?”


“Just tell the truth. Don’t try to be tricky. It’s not in you.”


Half of the visible universe was now grey

granite. We ran up steps whose only purpose was to support steps that

held up other tiers and hierarchies and systems of steps. But at some

point things flattened out. An entrance was dead ahead of us, but the

wrong one. Peregrins were supposed to enter from the direction of the

Day Gate, so we had to run a quarter of the way around the Mynster and

go in the grandest of all the entrances, which I’d have stared at for

half an hour if Tulia hadn’t grabbed my chord like a leash and hauled

me through. We ran through a lobby sort of thing and into a nave that

was so large I thought we’d gone outdoors again. An aisle ran up the

center. Three-quarters of the way along, I could see the tail end of a

procession of avout, shuffling toward the chancel. Tulia dropped back,

gave me a slap on the bottom that could have been heard from the top of

the Precipice, and hissed: “Follow the guys in the loincloths! Do what

they do!” At least thirty heads turned to stare; the pews were sparsely

occupied with Sæculars.


I dropped to a brisk walk—needed to get my

breathing under control—and timed it so that I caught up with half a

dozen “guys in loincloths” just as they got to the screen at the head

of the aisle. Following them through, I found myself sharing a big

semicircular chamber—the chancel—with an assortment of hierarchs, a

choir, the guys in the loincloths, and several other contingents of

avout.


Inbrase was another one of our mathic auts. A formal program, hinged at several instants when coded movements were performed, ancient

phrases called out, or symbolic objects manipulated in certain ways,

and ventilated by musical entertainments and speeches from purpled

hierarchs. A Sæcular would have seen it as ludicrous foppery if not

outright witchcraft. I tried to get back into the spirit of things and

see it as an avout was supposed to. That, after all, was the point of

Inbrase: to get peregrins back into the mathic frame of mind. To that

end, it was more fabulous and impressive than daily auts such as

Provener. Or perhaps that was just how they did everything at

Tredegarh. Their hierarchs really knew how to put on a show—to grab the

audience in the way that great actors did in a theater. Their raiments

were really something, and their numbers were intimidating; the Primate

was flanked not just by his two Wardens but by echelons of other

hierarchs, and not junior ones either, but people who had

sub-entourages of their own, and looked as if they might have been

Primates themselves. I was looking, I realized, at some sort of high

council of Primates who had all been Evoked from their concents,

presumably so that they could run the Convox. Or the mathic side of it,

at least. Somewhere on the other side of a screen there must be a

cabinet of Panjandrums who were as important in the Sæcular world as

these hierarchs were in the mathic.


I felt like a scabby mendicant, and

considered it a brilliant stroke of good fortune that I was standing

next to an order of avout who wore only handkerchiefs. As I looked at

those, however, I began to see that these were actually bolts that had

frayed away to almost nothing. The loose fibers that dangled from their

fraying ends had clumped together into ropy dreadlocks that these men

(they were all men) used to tie the remaining snatches of fabric around

their midsections. It was our tradition at Edhar to allow one end of

the bolt to fray. The most ancient members of our order, however, when

they succumbed to old age, might be buried in bolts with fringes a few

inches long. In this order, it seemed, bolts were passed down from

older to younger avout. Some of them must be thousands of years old.

One of these strange half-naked fraas had a pot belly, and the rest

were gaunt. They belonged to a race that tended to live near the

Equator. Their hair was wild, but not so wild as their

eyes, which stared into the space above the chancel floor without

seeming to register anything. I got the feeling they weren’t used to

being indoors.


The other six contingents wore full-sized

bolts in complicated wraps. That was all they had in common with one

another. Each of the groups was accessorized with a completely

different system of turbans, hats, hoods, footgear, under-bolts,

over-bolts, and even jewelry. Plainly, we at Edhar were at the austere

end of the spectrum. Perhaps only the Valers and the guys in the

loincloths were more ascetic than we.


After we’d worked through the opening

rounds of pomp, the Primate stepped up to say a few words. It was

possible to hear people sighing and settling in the dark naves behind

the screens. I risked looking down at myself and saw dirty bare feet, a

rough, dull-colored bolt in the crudest possible wrap (the Just Got Up

Special), scars that were still red, and bruises faded yellow-green. I

was the token Feral.


One of the other Inbrase groups—the most

numerous and dressed-up—stepped forward and sang a number. They had

enough strong voices to pull off six-part polyphony without showing the

strain. What a fine gesture, I thought. Then the group next to them

rattled off a monophonic chant, using modes and tonalities I’d never

heard before. I saw the next group worrying cheat sheets out of their

bolts. Finally then, understanding came over me, and I got the feeling

one gets only in an especially sadistic nightmare: I was perfectly

trapped. Each group had to sing something! I was a group—of one! And it

wasn’t going to work for me to sheepishly wave my hands and beg off. No

one at the Convox would think that was cute; no one would think it was

funny.


It wouldn’t be that

bad, I told myself. Expectations would be low. I was a reasonably

competent singer. If someone had stuck a piece of music in front of me

and said “go!” I could have winged it—sight-read the thing. The hard

part was deciding what to sing. Obviously these

other groups had sorted it out weeks ago—chosen pieces that said

something about who they were, what they thought about at their

concents, what musical traditions they had developed to

glorify the ideas most precious to them. The musical heritage of the

Concent of Saunt Edhar could stand in the same ranks as those of much

larger concents. I felt no insecurity there. A sizable contingent from

Edhar had already arrived, though, and celebrated Inbrase. Arsibalt and

Tulia had no doubt taken the matter in hand and organized a

performance, anchored by Fraa Jad’s world-shaking drone, that the rest

of the Convox was still talking about at their messals. What, then, was

left for me? Harmony and polyphony were out of the question. I wasn’t

good enough to blow everyone away with sheer skill. Best to be

simple—not to overreach, not to make a fool of myself. Very few

soloists were good enough that people would actually want to listen to

them for more than a minute or two. I just had to do my bit, to show

respect for the occasion, then step back and shut up.


But I didn’t want to just rattle off some

random scrap of lesson, which would have been easy, and would have

sufficed, because—and I well know how insane this is going to sound—I

wanted to touch Ala. Jesry was right about one thing: I was not going

to see her until she had made up her mind. But she had to be somewhere

in this Mynster, and she had no choice but to listen to what would come

out of my mouth. Singing an old lesson we’d learned at Edhar might have

evoked nostalgic feelings in her breast but it would be safe and dull.

Jesry had been to space. But I was capable of having adventures of my

own, learning new things, taking on qualities that Ala knew nothing

of—yet. Was there a way of expressing that in music?


There might be. The Orithenans had used a

system of computational chanting that, it was plain to see, was rooted

in traditions that their founders had brought over from Edhar. To that

point, it was clearly recognizable to any Edharian. It was a way of

carrying out computations on patterns of information by permuting a

given string of notes into new melodies. The permutation was done on

the fly by following certain rules, defined using the formalism of

cellular automata. After the Second Sack reforms, newly computerless

avout had invented this kind of music. In some concents it had withered

away, in others mutated into something else, but at Edhar it had always

been practiced seriously. We’d all learned it as a sort of children’s musical game. But at Orithena they had been doing new things with it, using it to solve problems. Or rather to solve a problem, the nature of which I didn’t understand yet. Anyway, it sounded

good—the results, for some reason, just tended to be more musical than

the Edharian version, which was serviceable for computing things, but,

as music, could be hard to take. I’d spent enough time among the

Orithenans to hear some of it and to gain some familiarity with the

system. I’d had one tune in particular stuck in my head during the

flight to Tredegarh and my time in quarantine. Maybe if I sang it

aloud, it would go away.


Once I’d thought of this, it was the

obvious and easy choice. And so, when my turn came, I stepped forward

and sang that piece. I sang it freely and easily, because I was not

troubled by any second thoughts as to whether it was the right thing to

do.


At least, not until it was too late.

Because, when I had gotten a few phrases into it, a rumble of

astonishment passed like a wave through one wedge of the audience. It

wasn’t loud, but it was unmistakable. I couldn’t help glancing toward

it, and then I faltered, and almost lost the melody, when I saw that it

had come from behind the screen of the Thousanders.


Sensing I might have blundered into some

kind of trouble, I did what any guilty fid would do: shot a furtive

glance at the hierarchs. They were looking back at me. Most were

glassy-eyed, but some were putting their heads together, starting a

discussion. One of these, I noticed, was my old friend Varax the

Inquisitor.


I actually derived a kind of relief then,

from knowing that I was helpless—whatever basket of bugs I had

overturned, I couldn’t change the result now. Most of the audience

heard nothing remarkable in this piece, and listened politely, so I

concentrated on bringing it to a clean finish. But seeing movement in

the corner of my eye, I glanced over to see that the guys in the

loincloths—who’d appeared to’ve been ignoring the aut so far—had broken

ranks, and shifted position so that all of them could get a clear view

of me.


When I finished, there ought to have been

silence—the polite response to a well-sung number. But some of the

Thousanders were still muttering to one another. I even fancied I heard

a snatch of music being sung back to

me. In the vast swathes of pews behind the other screens, small knots

of fraas and suurs were still talking about it, and being shushed by

their neighbors.


The men in the loincloths stepped up and

did a computational chant of their own. It was weird-sounding in the

extreme, being built on modes completely different from ours. It was

hard to believe that vocal cords could be trained to make such sounds.

But I had the feeling that as a computation it was

quite similar to what I’d done. When they got to the end of the

sequence, the potbellied one sang a sort of coda that, if I understood

it correctly, stated that this was only the latest phrase of a

computation that his order had been carrying out continuously for

thirty-six hundred years.


The last group were the Matarrhites: one of

the very few Mathic orders that believed in God. They were the residuum

of a Centenarian order that had gone hundred in the centuries just

after the Reconstitution. They wore their bolts over their heads,

completely covering their faces, except for a screen across the eyes.

They sang a kind of dirge—a lament, I realized, for having been torn

from the bosom of their concent, and a warning, as if we needed any,

that they weren’t going to hang out with us any more than they

absolutely had to. It was well carried off, but struck me as whiny and

a bit rude.


These performances were the next-to-last

part of the aut of Inbrase. Though I hadn’t fully understood it at the

time, we had already, earlier in the aut, been struck off the register

of peregrins and formally enrolled in the Convox. We had renewed our

vows, and funny-looking documents, hand-written on animal skin, had

been despatched to our home concents letting them know we’d arrived.

The songs we’d just sung represented our first, albeit symbolic,

contributions to whatever it was the Convox was supposed to be doing.

All that remained was to stand there while everyone else—the thousands

behind the screens—stood up to sing a canticle stating that our

contributions were duly accepted and that they were glad to have us.

During the final verse, the hierarchs began parading out through the

screen into the Unarians’ nave. We, the Inbrase groups, followed them

in the same order as before. I brought up the rear. We had (at least

symbolically) entered through the Day Gate and the visitors’ nave, as

Sæculars, and now, having become avout once more, we exited into a

math. The canticle began to lose cohesion as the last of the hierarchs

filed out, and by the time I stepped over the threshold, leaving the

chancel empty behind me, the melody had been devoured by the shufflings

and mutterings of the Convox taking their leave.


Tredegarh: One of the

Big Three concents, named after Lord Tredegarh, a mid-to-late Praxic

Age theor responsible for fundamental advances in thermodynamics.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





I was on my own, back in the mathic world,

officially decontaminated, free to pursue my own interests—for two

seconds. Then: “Fraa Erasmas!” someone called out, as if I were being

placed under arrest.


I stopped. I was at the head of the Unarian

nave, which was huge and insanely magnificent. A couple of hundred

avout were already in here. Hundreds more, as well as a few Sæculars,

were pouring in through the entrance at the back, quick-walking toward

the front to stake out the best pews.


The space between the front row and the

screen, which ought to have been left open to provide a clear view of

goings-on in the chancel, was cruddy with all sorts of Sæcular

equipment. A scaffolding of newmatter tubes had been erected, framing

but not blocking the screen, and burly fids were already at work

carrying platform-slabs into it and slamming them into place, clamping

them together to create a stage, raised above the level of the floor so

that people in back could see it. Riggers payed out ropes, allowing a

speely projection screen to unfurl until it filled most of the space

above the stage. A test pattern flashed across this and was replaced by

a live feed from a speelycaptor out in the nave, providing a magnified

picture of the stage. Harsh lights began to come on, as if to say

“under no circumstances look in this direction!” These were mounted

high on scaffold-towers positioned

here and there around the space. A bolted and chorded suur walked past

me talking into a wireless headset.


The man who’d called out my name was a

young hierarch whose sole charge was to channel me to one Fraa

Lodoghir: a man in his sixth or seventh decade, dressed in something

that was as far evolved from my bolt as a domestic fowl was from a

prehistoric reptile. “Fraa Raz, my good young man!” he exclaimed,

before the hierarch could trouble with a formal introduction. “Can’t

say how much I enjoyed your singing. Where did you pick up that ditty?

Somewhere on your world travels?”


“Thank you,” I said. “I heard it at Orithena and couldn’t get it out of my head.”


“Fascinating! Tell me, what are the people like there?”


“Like us, for the most part. At first they

struck me as quite different. But the more I see of the different kinds

of avout here—”


“Yes, I take your meaning!” Lodoghir said. “Those savages in the breechclouts—what tree did they fall out of?”


I didn’t think it would be very productive

for me to say that Fraa Lodoghir seemed more foreign to me than the

“savages in the breechclouts,” so I nodded.


“Has anyone explained to you that you’re about to be the guest of honor at a Plenary?” Fraa Lodoghir asked me.


“It was mentioned but not explained.”


Fraa Lodoghir seemed a little nonplussed by

my way of talking, but after a moment’s pause he went on, “Well,

briefly then, I’m to be your loctor—”


“Loctor?”


“InterLOCuTOR,” Fraa Lodoghir said, showing

impatience, which he tried to mask with a chuckle. “You are much more

formal in your pronunciation at Edhar! Good for you, sticking to your

guns like that! Tell me, do you still say savant, or have you adopted saunt like the rest of us?”


“Saunt,” I said. Fraa Lodoghir was doing so much talking that I didn’t feel the need to say much.


“Splendid, well then, the idea is that the Convox have been crunching the numbers, analyzing the samples, perusing the speelies

of the Visitation of Orithena, but there is some interest, naturally,

in hearing from an eyewitness—which is why you’re here. Rather than

putting you to the trouble of preparing a lecture, we shall use the

format of an extemporaneous dialog. I have some questions”—he rattled a

sheaf of leaves—“handed to me by various interested parties, as well as

some topics of my own that I’d like to pursue, should time permit.”


As this dialog, or rather monolog, went on,

the Plenary took shape. The suur with the headset shooed us up a

stairway that had been rolled into place, and Fraa Lodoghir followed me

up onto the stage-platform. Microphones were clipped to our bolts. Two

mugs and a pitcher of water were placed on a little stand at the back

of the stage. Other than that, there was no furniture. For some reason

I did not feel the slightest bit nervous, and I did not think about

what I was going to say. Instead I was musing about this funny

structure that my loctor and I were standing on: a snatch of geometric

plane held in a three-dimensional space grid. Like a geometer’s

fantasy, a modernized rendition of the Plane where the theors of Ethras

used to have their dialogs.


“Do you have any questions, Fraa Erasmas?” my loctor asked me.


“Yes,” I said, “who are you?”


He looked a bit regretful that I’d asked,

but then his face hardened into a visage that—as I could see from a

glance at the huge moving picture above us—was going to look much more

impressive on a speely feed. More impressive than mine, anyway. “The First Among Equals of the Centenarian Chapter of the Order of Saunt Proc at Muncoster.”


“Your microphone is live—now,”

said a fraa, flicking a switch on the apparatus clipped to my bolt, and

then he performed the same service for Fraa Lodoghir. Lodoghir poured

himself a mug of water, then took a draught, gazing at me over the rim

of the mug, coolly curious to see what I was making of the news that my

loctor was probably the most eminent Procian in the whole world. I have

no idea what he saw.


“The Plenary begins,” he said, in a voice that had somehow gone an octave deeper, and that was amplified all over the nave. The

crowd began to quiet down, and he gave them a few more moments to

suspend conversations and take seats. I could see nothing, because of

the lights; Fraa Lodoghir might have been the only other person on

Arbre.


“My loctor,” Fraa Lodoghir said, and then

paused a moment for silence. “My loctor is Erasmas, formerly of the

Decenarian chapter of something called the ‘Edharian Order’ in a place

that, unless I’ve been misinformed, styles itself as the Concent of Savant Edhar.”


A titter ran through the nave at this ridiculously old-fashioned pronunciation.


“Er, I think you have been misinformed—” I began, but my microphone wasn’t in the right position or something, so my voice did not get amplified.


Meanwhile, Lodoghir was talking right over

me. “They say it’s up in the mountains. Tell me, don’t you get cold,

with nothing but that simple bolt between you and the elements?”


“No, we have shoes and—”


“Ah, for those of you who can’t hear my loctor, he is very proud to announce that the Edharians do have shoes.”


Finally I got the microphone aimed at my

mouth. “Yes,” I said. “Shoes—and manners.” This got an appreciative

rumble out of the crowd. “I’m still a member of the chapter and order

you mentioned, and I may be addressed as Fraa.”


“Oh, I beg your pardon! I’ve been looking

into it, and have uncovered a different story: that you went Feral a

day after the start of your peregrination, and rattled around the world

for a bit until you fetched up in this place called Orithena, where I

gather they welcome just about anyone.”


“They were more hospitable than some places

I could mention,” I said. I thought about what Fraa Lodoghir had just

said, looking for some way to break it down and plane him, but every

word of it was factually correct—as he knew perfectly well.


He was trying to bait me into quibbling

over how he’d phrased it. Then he’d crush me by quoting chapter and

verse. He probably had the supporting documents right there in his hand.




That day on Bly’s Butte, Fraa Jad had told

me that when he got to Tredegarh, he’d make it all okay—prevent me from

getting in trouble.


Had he failed? No. If he’d failed, they would not have permitted me to celebrate Inbrase. So Jad must have succeeded at some level. Along the way, maybe he’d made enemies.


Who were now my enemies.


“That is all correct,” I said. “Yet here I am.”


Fraa Lodoghir was off balance for a moment

when he saw that his first gambit had failed, but like a fencer, he had

a riposte. “That is extraordinary, for one who claims to know so much

of manners. Thousands of avout are in this magnificent nave. Every one

of them came straight to Tredegarh when he or she was summoned. Only

one person in this room chose to go Feral, and to switch his allegiance

to a society, an organization, that is not a part of the mathic world:

the cult of Orithena. What in the world—or should I say, who in the world—induced you to make such a self-destructive choice?”


Now something funny happened inside of my

head. Fraa Lodoghir had hit me with a sneak attack. He was good at this

kind of thing and he had counters prepared for anything I might do to

defend myself. My first reaction, naturally, had been to get flustered.

But without knowing it, he’d just committed a tactical mistake: by

making so much of my unauthorized and “self-destructive” peregrination,

he had flooded my mind with memories of Mahsht and the sneak attack I

had endured there: something so terrible that nothing Fraa Lodoghir

could say to me could possibly be worse. His best efforts seemed kind

of funny by comparison. Thinking of this made me calm, and in that

calmness I noticed that Fraa Lodoghir had, with his last question,

tipped his hand. He wanted me to blame it all on Fraa Jad. Give up the

Thousander, he was saying, and all will be forgiven.


Only an hour ago, Tulia had warned me not

to attempt to play politics—just to tell the truth. But some

combination of stubbornness and calculation told me not to give

Lodoghir what he wanted.


I thought of how the scene in Mahsht had ended, with the onslaught

of the Valers. How they had observed what was going on, and construed

it as an emergence. I didn’t have their training, but I knew an

emergence when I saw one.


“I did it on my own,” I said. “I accept the

consequences of my decision. I knew that one such consequence might be

Anathem. In that expectation I found my way to Orithena. There, I

thought I might live in a Mathic style, even though Thrown Back. That I

was returned to Tredegarh and allowed to celebrate Inbrase is a

surprise and is an honor.”


The Convox was as silent as it was invisible. It was just me and Lodoghir, floating in space on our scrap of plane.


Fraa Lodoghir had given up on getting Jad,

and moved on to secondary targets. “I really don’t understand how you

think! You say that your objective was to live in the Mathic style? You

were doing that already, weren’t you?” He turned to face the crowd in

the nave. “Perhaps he just wanted to do it someplace a bit warmer!”


The jest earned laughter from some but I

could also hear an indignant strain out there beyond the lights. “Fraa

Lodoghir wastes the time of the Convox!” a man called out. “The topic

of this Plenary is the Visitation!”


“My loctor has asked me to address him by

what he claims is the correct title of Fraa,” Lodoghir said in return,

“and as he seems to take such matters so seriously, I am merely

attempting to get the facts straight.”


“Well, I’m glad I was able to assist you,” I said. “What would you like to know about the Visitation?”


“Since we’ve all watched the speely that

was recorded by your Ita collaborator, I should think that what would

be most productive would be for you to relate those parts of your

experience that did not make it into the speely. What went on during those rare moments when you were able to tear yourself away from your Ita friend?”


He was giving me so much to object to, that

I was forced to make a choice: I had to let the Ita-baiting go for now.

The best I could do was give the Ita a name. “Sammann arrived and began

to record images a few minutes after the probe landed,” I began. “For

several minutes, I saw what he saw.”




“Not so fast, you’re starting in the middle of the story!” Fraa Lodoghir complained, in an indulgent, fatherly style.


“Very well,” I said, “how far back do you think it would be useful for me to go?”


“As much as I’m fascinated by the auts and

folkways of the Cult of Orithena,” Fraa Lodoghir said, “we ought to

confine ourselves to the Visitation proper. Pray begin at the first

moment when it penetrated your awareness that something extraordinary

was happening.”


“It looked like a meteorite—which is

unusual, but not extraordinary,” I said. “It didn’t burn out instantly,

so I thought it must be a big one. At first it was difficult to make

sense of its trajectory—until I figured out that it was headed toward

us. I can’t tell you at what point I drew the conclusion that it was

not a naturally occurring object. We began to run down the mountain.

While we were en route, the probe’s parachute deployed.”


“Now, when you say ‘we,’ what size of group are you speaking of?”


Rather than wait for Fraa Lodoghir to drag this out of me, I volunteered: “Two. Orolo and I.”


“Saunt Orolo! Yes, we know about him,”

Fraa Lodoghir said. “He’s all over the speely, but we haven’t known

until now how he arrived at the scene. He was the first to reach the

bottom of the hole, was he not?”


“If by ‘hole’ you mean the excavated Temple of Orithena, yes,” I said.


“But that’s at the foot

of the volcano!” he exclaimed, in a tone of voice that somehow managed

to accuse me of being such a simpleton that I did not know this.


“I’m aware of it,” I said.


“But now we learn that you and Orolo were running down from the top of the volcano while the probe was parachuting into the hole.”


“Yes.”


“What of the others? Were they so entranced by contemplation of the Hylaean Theoric World that they were unaware that an alien space probe was dropping into the middle of their camp?”




“They stayed up at the rim of the excavation while Orolo ran down to the bottom alone.”


“Alone?”


“Well, I followed him.”


“What on earth were you and Orolo doing on

the top of the volcano after dark?” Fraa Lodoghir managed, somehow, to

ask this in a tone that elicited some titters from the audience.


“We weren’t on the top—as ought to be obvious, if you think for a moment about what a volcano is.”


This got a whole different kind of laugh. Even Fraa Lodoghir looked faintly amused. “But you were quite high up on its slopes.”


“A couple of thousand feet.”


“Above the cloud layer?” he asked, as if this were extremely significant.


“There were no clouds!”


“I ask you again: why? What were you doing?”


Here I hesitated. I’d have liked nothing

better than to help propagate Orolo’s ideas, and I’d never have a

better opportunity, what with the whole Convox listening to me. But I’d

only gotten to see a fragment of his argument. I didn’t fully get what

I’d heard. I knew enough, though, to know that it might lead to talk of

Incanters.


“Orolo and I went up the mountain to talk,”

I said. “We became quite involved in our dialog, and didn’t notice it

was getting dark.”


“When you choose to employ the word dialog

it causes me to think that the topic was something more weighty than

the charms of your new Orithenan girlfriend,” Fraa Lodoghir said dryly.


Damn, he was good! How could he know so precisely what it would take to fluster me?


Bells began ringing, high up on the Precipice. It sounded like the call to Provener. How did they wind their clock here?


A memory came to me of Lio, a few months

ago, winding the clock with two black eyes after he had asked me to

punch him in the face. I tried to summon whatever Lio had learned to

summon that day. I forced myself to go on as if the blows had never

landed.


“This much of your statement is correct, that it was a serious theorical discussion.”




“And what was so much on Orolo’s mind that he had to drag you up a volcano to get it off his chest?”


I was rolling my eyes and shaking my head in amazement.


“Did it have anything to do with the Geometers?” he tried.


“Yes.”


“Then I don’t understand your reticence on

this topic. If it relates to the Geometers, it is of interest to the

Convox, is it not?”


“I’m reluctant because I only got to hear a small part of his thoughts and I fear I won’t do them justice.”


“Stipulated! Everyone has heard and understood your disclaimer now, so you have no reason to go on hoarding information.”


“Because he was Anathematized, Orolo lost

the ability to gather data about the Geometers. He never even saw the

only good picture of their ship that he managed to take. So his

thinking about them, from that point onward, had to be based on the

only givens he still had access to—”


“I thought you just said he had access to no givens.”


“None emanating from the icosahedron.”


“So just what other kind of givens are there?”


“The givens that you and I are taking in

all the time, simply by virtue of being conscious, and that we can

observe and think about on our own, without any need for scientific

instruments.”


Fraa Lodoghir blinked in fake amazement. “Do you mean to claim that the subject of your dialog was consciousness?”


“Yes.”


“Specifically, Orolo’s consciousness? Since that, presumably, is the only one he has access to.”


“His, and mine,” I corrected him, “since I was part of the dialog too, and it was clear that Orolo’s observations of his consciousness tallied with my observations of mine.”


“But I thought you told me, only a minute ago, that this very same dialog was about the Geometers!”


“Yes.”


“But you now contradict yourself by admitting it was about the features shared between your consciousness, and that of Orolo!”


“And that of the Geometers,” I said, “because they clearly possess consciousness.”




“Ohh,” Fraa Lodoghir exclaimed, and got a

faraway look in his eyes, as if trying to wrap his mind around

something impossibly absurd. “Are you trying to say that just because

you and Orolo are conscious, and the Geometers are too (which I’ll give

you for the sake of argument), that you can learn something about how

the Geometers’ minds work, simply by gazing at your own navel long

enough?”


“Something like that.”


“Well, I’m certain that the Lorites are

going to have a field day with this. But to me it seems you are saying

too little and too much at the same time!” Fraa Lodoghir complained.

“Too little, because we here on Arbre have been gazing at our navels

for six thousand years and still don’t understand ourselves.

So what does it boot us to be as in the dark about the Geometers as we

are about our own minds? And too much, because you really are going too

far in assuming that the Geometers would think like us at all.”


“As to that last point, one can make strong arguments that all conscious beings must have certain mental processes in common.”


“Strong arguments that no disciple of

Halikaarn will examine too closely, I’m sure,” Fraa Lodoghir said

dryly, earning a chortle from every Procian at the Convox.


“As to your first point,” I continued, “namely, that we still don’t understand ourselves

after six thousand years of introspection, I believe that Orolo was of

the view that we might be able to settle some of those ancient

questions now that we have access to conscious beings from other star

systems.”


This settled the crowd down, and they

became so markedly quiet that I knew they must all be concentrating

intensely. We had got to the heart of the matter. The Sphenic and

Protan systems had been dueling for millennia, and continued the

struggle here in this nave under the names of Procians and

Halikaarnians, Lodoghir and Erasmas. The only thing they agreed on was

the words I’d just put in Orolo’s mouth: that the Geometers might tip

the scales to one side or the other. Not necessarily because they would

know the answers themselves—they might be just as confused as we

were—but because of the new givens we could now obtain. And that was the true goal of many at this Convox. Never mind whatever mission statement the Sæcular Power had handed us.


Even Fraa Lodoghir knew to observe a few

moments’ silence, to give this the respect it deserved. Then he said:

“If they were smart swarms of simple-minded bugs, or systems of

pulsating energy fields, or plants speaking a chemical language to one

another—something enormously different from us—then perhaps Orolo’s

lucubrations in the extinct pseudo-philosophy of Evenedric might

provide us with a few moments’ diversion. But the Geometers look like

us. Orolo couldn’t have known that this was the case, so we may forgive

him for his temporary delusion.”


“But why do they look

like us?” I asked. Realizing, as I said it, that I was making a

tactical error by asking a question—even a rhetorical one.


“Let me help you,” Fraa Lodoghir said,

magnanimously offering the hopelessly confused fid a helping hand, his

giant face, on the screen above, a picture of amused beneficence. “We

know that for months and months, before anyone else knew that the

Geometers were up there, Orolo was up to something. Using the

cosmographical devices at your concent to track the icosahedron.”


“We know exactly what he was up to,” I began.


Fraa Lodoghir cut me off: “We know what you were told:

a story that many of your own fraas and suurs refuse to believe! And we

know that Orolo was Thrown Back. That his fellow-cultists in the

shadowy group known as the Lineage spirited him halfway around the

world to Ecba: by an amazing coincidence, the place where the Geometers just happened to make their first landfall—and to do it on the very evening when this Orolo happened to mount a long and exhausting nocturnal expedition to the rarefied heights of an active volcano!”


“It’s not long, it’s not exhausting, and we

didn’t go up at night—” I tried to say. But he had reduced me once

again to quibbling, and all I’d done was let him draw breath and get a

sip of water.


“Help us now, Fraa Erasmas,” Fraa Lodoghir

said, in a perfectly reasonable tone. “Help us solve the riddle that

has so bedeviled us.”


“Who is ‘us’ in this case?” I demanded.




“Those, here at the Convox, who sense that there is something more to Orolo than what we’ve been allowed to see on the speely.”


I couldn’t keep the tiredness out of my voice as I answered. “What riddle are you speaking of?”


“How did Orolo signal the Geometers? What trick was he using to send them his secret messages?”


Here, if I’d been having a drink, I’d have

spat it out. Fraa Lodoghir’s statement raised a commotion: waves of

murmuring, shock, anger, and derisive laughter clashed, lapped, and

rolled from one end of the nave to the other. I was too dumbfounded to

speak, but merely stood there looking at him for a long while, waiting

for him to show signs of embarrassment and withdraw the accusation. But

the look on his face was as pleasant, as unself-conscious as it could

be. And as his calm, his confidence waxed, mine waned. I wanted so

desperately to plane him!


But Orolo’s words came back to me: they deciphered my analemma! As if he had somehow sent them a signal.


Why else would they

have chosen to land at Orithena—the very place, in the whole world,

where Orolo had sought sanctuary? Why else would Orolo have made the

long and hazardous journey to Orithena?


Back to the matter at hand: I dared not

enter a serious Dialog with Lodoghir, here, before this audience, on

this topic. He’d plane me so badly they’d have to scrub my remains off

the floor with a sandblaster. And he’d take Orolo down with me.


My dialog with Fraa Lodoghir was being

witnessed by Sæculars. Important Sæculars. Panjandrums, as Orolo would

call them. Maybe his sleazy tricks were actually working on them.


What was it people used to say of the

Rhetors? That they had the power to alter the past, and that they did

so every chance they got.


I had no power to duel a Rhetor. All I could do was speak the truth and hope it might be heard by friends who could wield such power.


“That’s a novel suggestion,” I said. “I

don’t know how you do things in the Order of Saunt Proc, but as an

Edharian, I would look for evidence.”




“What of the famous Steelyard?” Lodoghir asked.


“The Steelyard favors the simpler hypothesis. Orolo not sending secret messages to an alien starship is simpler than what you are proposing.”


“Oh no, Fraa Erasmas,” said Lodoghir with

an indulgent chuckle, “I’ll not let you slip that one past me. Try to

remember that intelligent people are listening to us! If Orolo sending

messages explains what is otherwise mysterious, then it is the simpler hypothesis!”


“What mysteries do you think it explains?”


“Three, to be exact. Mystery the First:

that the probe landed on the ruins of Orithena, an otherwise desolate

and uninteresting site whose most conspicuous feature is an analemma,

clearly visible from space.”


“Anything is clearly

visible from space if you have good enough optics,” I pointed out.

“Remember that the Geometers decorated their ship with a proof of the

Adrakhonic Theorem. What is more reasonable than for them to land on

the Temple of Adrakhones?”


“They must know we’re here,” Lodoghir pointed out. “If they wanted to talk to theors, why not simply land at Tredegarh?”


“Why blast each other with shotguns? You

can’t burden me with responsibility for explaining everything that the

Geometers do,” I said.


“Mystery the Second: Orolo’s suicide.”


“No mystery there. He made a choice to preserve a priceless specimen.”


“He weighed his own life against that

specimen,” Lodoghir said, making a scale-balancing gesture with his two

hands. “Mystery the Third: he drew an analemma on the ground in the

final instants of his life, and stood on it to meet the fate he had

chosen.”


I had nothing to say. It was a mystery to me as well.


“Orolo accepted his responsibility,” Lodoghir said.


“You have completely lost me.”


“Somehow, Orolo sent a message to the

Geometers during those months when he was one of the only persons on

Arbre who knew they were up there. I speculate that the message took

the form of an analemma. A sign,

telling the Geometers to make their landfall on the analemma that is—or

used to be—so clearly visible at Orithena. Once Thrown Back, he went

there, and waited. And lo, the Geometers did make

landfall there. But not in the manner that Orolo had, perhaps naïvely,

anticipated. A faction among the Geometers sent down an illicit probe.

The alien woman sacrificed her life. The dominant faction retaliated by

rodding Ecba, with deadly results at Orithena. Orolo understood that he

bore responsibility for what had happened. Throwing the dead woman into

the aerocraft was his self-imposed penance, and drawing the analemma on

the ground was his way of admitting responsibility for what he had

done.”


As Lodoghir had proceeded through this

indictment, his tone had changed: like an Inquisitor at first, but

softening as he went on, so that by the time he reached the last part,

he seemed regretful. Moved. I was spellbound. Perhaps this Rhetor did

have magical powers to reach in and meddle with my brain—to change the

past. But much more so, I was almost certain that he was right.


“You still have no evidence—only a good

story,” I finally said. “Even if you do find evidence, and prove you’re

right, what does it really say about Orolo? How could he have

anticipated a civil war among the Geometers? The Geometer who gave the

order to drop a rod on Ecba—doesn’t he, or she, and not Orolo, deserve

responsibility for the deaths below? So even if some elements of your

hypothesis are proved, there is still room for dialog as to Orolo’s

state of mind when the glowing cloud struck him down. I think he was

accepting a kind of responsibility, yes. But by planting himself on

that analemma and waiting to die, I think he was saying something other

than what you’re trying to put in his mouth. I think he was saying ‘I

stand by what I did in spite of all this.’”


“A bit cheeky, wouldn’t you say? Don’t you

think he ought to have deferred to the Sæcular Power? Let them weigh

the evidence—make a considered judgment as to how best we ought to

treat with the Geometers?” Lodoghir’s eyes glanced to the side, as if

to remind me that the Panjandrums were out there in the dark, listening

for my answer.




And now I made the only move, out of this whole Dialog, that I was later proud of: I did not say what I was thinking: the Warden of Heaven already tried that, remember?

But I didn’t have to. A low murmur had begun to run through the

audience, building toward mirth. All I had to do was sit silently and

wait for the whole Convox to perceive just how ludicrous my loctor’s

statement really was. And—I sensed—this had been a considered move on

his part.


“That depends,” I said, “on how it all comes out in the end.”


Lodoghir raised his eyebrows and turned

away from me to face the speelycaptor. “And that,” he said, “is the

whole point of this Convox. I suppose we ought to get to work.” He made

a gesture. The microphones died and the speely screen went dark.

Everyone in the nave began talking at once.


I was alone on the platform, and it was

dark; Fraa Lodoghir had scurried down the steps, probably so that I

could not tear his tongue out with my bare hands. The crew were already

dismantling the stage. I took off my microphone, had a good long drink

of water, and trudged down the steps, feeling as if I’d just spent an

hour as a punching bag for Lio.


A few people seemed to be waiting for me.

One in particular caught my eye, because he was a Sæcular, dressed in

important-person clothes. He had made up his mind that he was going to

be the first person to talk to me, so rather than wait for me to reach

the bottom of the steps he bounded up and met me halfway. “Emman

Beldo,” he said, and then rattled off the name of some government

ministry or other. “Would you mind telling me what the hell that was all about?”


He was younger than he looked in those clothes, I realized: only a few years older than I.


“Why don’t you ask Fraa Lodoghir?” I suggested.


Emman Beldo chose to interpret that as dry humor. “I came here expecting to hear about the Geometers—” he began.


“And instead we talked about consciousness and analemmas.”


“Yeah. Look. Don’t get me wrong. I put in five years as a Unarian…”


“You’re a literate, smart Burger, you read

stuff and use your brain for a living, but still you can’t fathom what

just happened—”




“When we need to be talking about the threat! And how to address it!”


I lost focus for a moment, gazing down to

the base of the stairs where a cluster of fraas and suurs all wanted to

talk to me. I was trying to size them up without making eye contact.

Some, I feared, styled themselves members of the Lineage and wanted to

exchange secret handshakes with me. Others probably wanted to spend the

whole afternoon telling me why Evenedric was wrong. There would be

hard-core Halikaarnians furious because I had not managed to plane Fraa

Lodoghir, and people like Suur Maroa who had specific questions about

what I’d seen at Orithena. I was thinking it might be easier to have a

regular job like Emman Beldo…


Fraa Lodoghir saved me—sort of. He pushed

forward to the base of the steps. He had just finished a heated

discussion with a senior hierarch. “Well, now you’ve gone and done it,

Fraa Erasmas!” he said.


“Gone and done what, Fraa Lodoghir?”


“Gotten us relegated to the outer darkness—the arse-end of the mathic world, as far as I’m concerned.”


“Wouldn’t that be the Concent of Savant Edhar?”


“No, there’s one place left that’s even

worse,” he proclaimed. “The Plurality of Worlds Messal at Avrachon’s

Dowment. That is where we will be taking our sustenance until I can get

the hierarchs to see reason.”


“Who’s this ‘we’ you’re talking about?”


“You need to pay attention, Fraa Erasmas!”


“Attention to what?”


“Your place in the Convox!”


“And what is my place?”


“Standing behind me while I eat. Folding my napkin when I get up to use the toilet.”


“What!?”


“You are my servitor, Fraa Erasmas, and I

am your doyn. I like a damp face-cloth before dinner, warm but not too

warm. See to it—if you don’t want to spend the rest of the Convox

studying the Book.” He turned and strode out.




Emman Beldo was looking at me interestedly.


I should have been crushed by this terrible

news, but I was a little punch-drunk, and it tickled me to see Fraa

Lodoghir so irritated.


“Well,” I said to Emman Beldo, “now you

have a choice. If you want to learn about the threat posed by the

Geometers, you can go anywhere except where I’m going. If you want an

answer to why we spoke of such out-of-the-way topics during this

Plenary, you can join me and Fraa Lodoghir at the arse-end of the

mathic world.”


“Oh, I’ll be there!” he said. “My doyn wouldn’t miss it.”


“And who is your doyn?”


“You and I will address her as ‘Madame Secretary,’” he cautioned me, “but her name is Ignetha Foral.”















Part 10


MESSAL







Lorite:

A member of an Order founded by Saunt Lora, who believed that all of

the ideas that the human mind was capable of coming up with, had

already been come up with. Lorites are, therefore, historians of

thought who assist other avout in their work by making them aware of

others who have thought similar things in the past, and thereby

preventing them from reinventing the wheel.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















The

Geometers have us pinned down like a biological sample on a table,”

said Ignetha Foral, after we had served the soup. “They can poke and

prod us at their leisure, and observe our reactions. When we first

became aware that they were in orbit around Arbre, we assumed that

something was going to happen soon. But it has been maddeningly slow.

The Geometers can get all the water they need from comets, all the

stuff they need from asteroids. The only thing they can’t do—we

suspect—is go on interstellar voyages. But it could be that they aren’t

in that much of a hurry.” She paused to whet her whistle. A bracelet

gleamed on her wrist. It looked valuable but not gaudy. Everything

about her confirmed what Tulia had told us, months ago, at Edhar: that

she came from a moneyed Burger clan with old ties to the mathic world.

It wasn’t clear, yet, why she was here, and carrying the

impressive-sounding title of “Madame Secretary.” According to the

information Tulia had dug up, she had been deposed from her Sæcular job

by the Warden of Heaven. But that was old news. The Warden of Heaven

had been thrown out of the airlock a few weeks ago. Perhaps, while I’d

been distracted on Ecba, the Sæcular Power had reorganized itself, and

she’d been dusted off and given a new job.


Having taken a bit of refreshment, Madame

Secretary made eye contact with the other six at the table. “Or at

least that’s what I say to my colleagues who want to know why I’m wasting my time

at this messal.” She said this in a good-humored way. Fraa Lodoghir

laughed richly. Everyone else was able to manage at least a chuckle

except for Fraa Jad, who was staring at Ignetha Foral as if she were

the aforementioned biological specimen. Ignetha Foral was sharp enough

to notice this. “Fraa Jad,” she said, inclining her head slightly in

his direction, in a suggestion of a bow, “naturally takes the long view

of things, and is probably thinking to himself that my colleagues must

have dangerously short attention spans. But my métier,

for better or worse, is the political workings of what you call the

Sæcular Power. And to many in that world, this messal looks like a

waste of some very good minds. The kindest thing some will say of it,

is that it is a convenient place to which difficult, irrelevant, or

incomprehensible persons may be exiled, so that they don’t get in the

way of the important business of the Convox. How would you at this

table recommend that I counter the arguments of those who say it ought

to be done away with? Suur Asquin?”


Suur Asquin was our host: the current

Heritor of Avrachon’s Dowment, hence its owner in all but name. Ignetha

Foral had called on her first because she looked as though she had

something to say, but also, I suspected, because it was the correct

etiquette. For now, I was giving Suur Asquin the benefit of the doubt,

because she had helped us make dinner, working side by side with her

servitor, Tris. This was the very first Plurality of Worlds Messal, and

so it had taken us a while to find our way around the kitchen, get the

oven hot, and so forth.


“I believe I’d have an unfair advantage,

Madame Secretary, since I live here. I’d answer the question by showing

your colleagues around Avrachon’s Dowment, which as you’ve all seen is

a kind of museum…”


I was standing behind Fraa Lodoghir with my

hands behind my back holding the knotted end of a rope that disappeared

into a hole in the wall and ran thirty feet to the kitchen. Someone

tugged on the other end of it, silently calling for me. I leaned

forward to make sure that my doyn didn’t need his chin wiped, then

walked around the table, sidestepping in front of other servitors.

Meanwhile Suur Asquin was trying to develop an argument that merely

looking at the old scientific instruments scattered around the Dowment

would convince the most skeptical extra that pure metatheorics was

worthy of Sæcular support. Seemed obvious to me that she was using

Hypotrochian Transquaestiation to assert that pure metatheorics would

be the sole occupation of this messal, which I didn’t agree with at

all—but I mustn’t speak unless spoken to, and I reckoned that the

others here could take care of themselves. Fraa Tavener—aka Barb—was

standing behind Fraa Jad, looking at Suur Asquin as a bird looks at a

bug, just itching to jump in and plane her. I gave him a wink as I went

by, but he was oblivious. I passed through a door, padded for silence,

and entered a stretch of corridor that served as an airlock, or rather

sound-lock. At its end was another padded door. I pushed through—it was

hinged to swing both ways—and entered the kitchen, a sudden and

shocking plunge into heat, noise, and light.


And smoke, since Arsibalt had set fire to

something. I edged toward the sand bucket, but, not seeing any open

flames, thought better of it. Suur Asquin could be heard over a

speaker; the Sæcular Power had sent in Ita to rig up a one-way sound

system so that we in the kitchen—and others far away, I had to

assume—could hear every word spoken in the messallan.


“What’s the problem?” I asked.


“No problem. Oh, this? I incinerated a cutlet. It’s all right. We have more.”


“Then why’d you yank me?”


He made a guilty glance at a plank on the

wall with seven rope-ends dangling from it, all but one chalked with a

servitor’s name. “Because I’m desperately bored!” he said. “This conversation is stupid!”


“It’s just getting started,” I pointed out. “These are just the opening formalities.”


“It’s no wonder people want to abolish this messal, if this is a fair sample of—”


“How is yanking my rope going to help?”


“Oh, it’s an old tradition here,” Arsibalt

said, “I’ve been reading up on it. If the dialog gets boring, the

servitors show their disdain by voting with their feet—withdrawing to

the kitchen. The doyns are supposed to notice this.”


“The odds of that actually working with this group are about as high as that this dinner won’t make them sick.”




“Well, we must begin somewhere.”


I went over to the ropes, picked up a lump of chalk, and wrote “Emman Beldo” under the one that was still unlabeled.


“Is that his name?”


“Yeah. He talked to me after Plenary.”


“Why didn’t he help cook?”


“One of his jobs is driving Madame Secretary around. He only got here five minutes ago. Anyway, extras can’t cook.”


“Raz speaks the truth!” said Suur Tris,

coming in from the garden with a bolt-load of firewood. “Even you guys

seem a little challenged.” She hauled open the hatch of the oven’s

firebox and gazed on the coal-bed with a critical eye.


“We shall prove our worth anon,” said

Arsibalt, picking up a huge knife, like a barbarian warlord called to

single combat. “This stove, your produce, your cuts of meat—all strange

to us.” And then, as if to say speaking of strange…Arsibalt

and I both glanced over at a heavy stew-pot, which had been pushed to

the back of the stove in hopes that the vapors belching out of it would

stink less if they came from farther away.


Suur Tris was nudging coals around and

darting bits of wood into the firebox as if it were brain surgery. We’d

made fun of her for this until our efforts to manage it ourselves had

produced the kinds of outcomes normally associated with strategic

nuclear warfare. Now, we watched contritely.


“Kind of weird for Madame Secretary to open by saying the messal’s a drain trap for losers,” I said.


“Oh, I disagree. She’s good!” Tris

exclaimed. “She’s trying to motivate them.” Tris was podgy and not

especially good-looking, but she had the personality of a beautiful

girl because she’d been raised in a math.


“I wonder how that’s going to work on my

doyn,” I said, “he’d like nothing more than to see this canceled, so he

can go dine with cool people.”


A bell jingled. We turned to look. Seven

bells were mounted to the wall above the seven rope-ends; each was

connected, by a long ribbon routed through the wall and under the

floor, to the underside of the table

in the messallan, where it terminated in a velvet pull. A doyn could

summon his servitor, silently and invisibly, by yanking on the pull.


The bell rang once, paused, then began to

jangle nonstop, more and more violently, until it looked like it was

about to jump off the wall. It was labeled “Fraa Lodoghir.”


I returned to the messallan, walked around

behind him, and bent forward. “Get rid of this Edharian gruel,” he

breathed. “It is perfectly unpalatable.”


“You should see what the Matarrhites are

cooking up!” I muttered. Fraa Lodoghir glanced across the table at an

avout—one of those who’d celebrated Inbrase with me, earlier in the

day—whose face was covered by his or her bolt. The fabric had been

drawn sideways over his or her head, as if to form a hood, but the hood

had then been pulled down to cover the face, with an opening below

through which food—if that was the correct word for what the

Matarrhites put into their mouths during meals—could be introduced.

“I’ll have what it’s having,” Lodoghir hissed. “But not this!”


I glanced significantly at Fraa Jad who was

shoveling the stuff into his mouth, then confiscated Lodoghir’s serving

and whisked it out of there, happy to have an excuse to go back to the

kitchen. “Perfectly unpalatable,” I repeated, heaving it into the

compost.


“Perhaps we should slip him some Allswell,” Arsibalt suggested.


“Or something stronger,” I returned. But

before we could develop this promising theme, the back door swung open

and in walked a girl swathed in a hectare of heavy, scratchy-looking

black bolt, lashed to her body with ten miles of chord. Her punched-in

sphere was overflowing with mixed greens. Out of doors, she kept her

head covered, but once she had set the greens down she swept her bolt

back to reveal her perfectly smooth dome, all dotted with perspiration,

since it was a warm day and she was overdressed. Arsibalt and I did not

feel as easy around Suur Karvall as we did around Tris, so all banter

stopped. “That’s a lovely selection of greens,” Tris began, but Karvall

flinched and held up a bony, translucent hand, gesturing for silence.




Fraa Lodoghir had begun speaking. I reckoned that was why he’d wanted his “gruel” cleared away.


“Plurality of Worlds,” he began, and let it

resonate for a long moment. “Sounds impressive. I haven’t the faintest

idea what it means to some here. The mere fact of the Geometers’

existence proves that there is at least one other world, and so on one

level it is quite trivial. But since it appears that I am the token

Procian at this messal, I shall play my role, and say this: we have

nothing in common with the Geometers. No shared experiences, no common

culture. Until that changes, we can’t communicate with them. Why not?

Because language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that are

perfectly meaningless until we associate them, in our minds, with

meaning: a process of acculturation. Until we share experiences with

the Geometers, and thereby begin to develop a shared culture—in effect,

to merge our culture with theirs—we cannot communicate with them, and

their efforts to communicate with us will continue to be just as

incomprehensible as the gestures they’ve made so far: throwing the

Warden of Heaven out the airlock, dropping a fresh murder victim into a

cult site, and rodding a volcano.”


As soon as he paused, reactions came through on the speakers, several people talking over each other:


“I don’t agree that those are incomprehensible.”


“But they must have been watching our speelies!”


“You’re missing the point of the Plurality of Worlds.”


But Suur Asquin spoke last, and most

distinctly. “Many other messals are addressing the topics you

mentioned, Fraa Lodoghir. In the spirit of Madame Secretary’s opening

question: why should we have a separate Plurality of Worlds Messal?”


“Well, you might simply ask the hierarchs

who brought it into existence!” Fraa Lodoghir answered a little

disdainfully. “But if you want my answer as a Procian, why, it is quite

straightforward: the arrival of the Geometers is a perfect laboratory

experiment, as it were, to demonstrate and to explore the philosophy of

Saunt Proc: put simply, that language, communication, indeed thought

itself, are the manipulation of symbols to which meanings are assigned

by culture—and only by culture. I only hope that they haven’t watched so many of our speelies that their minds have been contaminated, and the experiment ruined.”


“And this relates to our theme how?” Suur Asquin prodded him.


“She knows perfectly well,” Suur Tris assured us, “she’s just making sure it all gets spelled out for Ignetha Foral.”


“Plurality of Worlds means a plurality of

world cultures—cultures hermetically sealed off from one another until

now—hence, for the time being, unable to communicate.”


“According to Procians!” someone put in. I didn’t recognize the oddly accented voice, so I thought it might be the Matarrhite.


“The purpose of this messal, accordingly,

is to develop and, I would hope, implement a strategy for the Sæcular

Power, assisted by the avout, to break down the plurality—which is the

same thing as developing a shared language. We shall put ourselves out

of business by making the Plurality of Worlds into One World.”


“He hates this messal,” I translated, “so

he’s trying to talk Ignetha Foral into turning it into something else:

which would just happen to be a power base for the Procians.”


Suur Karvall really hated it when we talked

over the doyns, but she was going to have to get used to it. We were

all standing around distributing the greens among half a dozen salad

plates. Only six, because Matarrhites, apparently, didn’t eat salad.


While making dinner, some of us servitors

had had a good argument as to why a Matarrhite had been invited. One

theory was simply that, because the Sæcular Power was religious, they

wanted some Deolaters in on the discussion. The Matarrhites were going

to have Convox clout way out of proportion to their significance in the

mathic world, or so this argument went, because the Panjandrums felt

more comfortable with them. The other theory was more in line with the

notion, just voiced by Ignetha Foral, that this messal was a dumping

ground.


Clanking sounds over the speaker told us

that those servitors who were still in the messallan were collecting

the soup bowls. This led to a break in the dialog; but we could hear an

elderly woman’s voice, speaking up, in a more informal mood, as the servitors worked: “I believe I can put your fears to rest, Fraa Lodoghir.”


“Why, that’s good of you, Grandsuur Moyra,

but I don’t remember voicing any fears!” said Fraa Lodoghir, trying and

failing to sound jovial.


Moyra was Karvall’s doyn, so, out of respect for Karvall, we actually did shut up for a moment.


Moyra returned, “I believe you did express

concern that the Geometers had contaminated their own culture by

watching too many of our speelies.”


“Of course you are right! That’s what I get for contradicting a Lorite!” Fraa Lodoghir said.


The door opened and in came Barb with seven bowls stacked on his arms.


“I think you ought to change my

designation,” said Moyra delicately, after considering this for a

moment, “and now call me a meta-Lorite, or, in honor of this occasion,

a Plurality of Worlds Lorite.”


This got a murmur out of everyone—in the

messallan and in the kitchen. Suur Karvall had drifted over to the

speaker and was standing there rapt. Arsibalt had been chopping

something; he stopped and poised his knife above the block.


“We Lorites are always making nuisances of

ourselves,” Moyra said, “by pointing out that this or that idea was

already come up with by someone else, long ago. But now I do believe we

shall have to broaden our sphere to include the Plurality of Worlds,

and say ‘I’m terribly sorry, Fraa Lodoghir, but your idea was actually

dreamed up by a bug-eyed monster on Planet Zarzax ten million years

ago!’”


Laughter around the table.


“Splendid!” Arsibalt said. He turned and looked at me.


“She’s a closet Halikaarnian,” I said.


“Exactly!”


Fraa Lodoghir had seen the same thing and

was trying to lodge an objection: “I’d say you can’t know such a thing

until you communicate with that bug-eyed monster or his descendants…”

And then he went on to reiterate what

he’d said before. I rushed the salad out in the hopes that it would

shut him up. Suur Moyra didn’t seem quite taken with his arguments, and

Ignetha Foral was beginning to look a little frosted.


Meanwhile, Arsibalt’s doyn, who happened to

be seated next to Fraa Jad, was leaning to exchange whispers with the

Thousander. When first I’d seen this man, he’d struck me as oddly

familiar. Only when Arsibalt told me his name had I realized where I’d

seen him before: standing alone in the chancel of Saunt Edhar, looking

straight up at me. This was Fraa Paphlagon.


Fraa Jad nodded. Paphlagon cleared his

throat as Lodoghir began to wind down, and finally barged in: “Perhaps

while we’re proving that everything Saunt Proc ever wrote was just

perfect, we can get some theorics done too!”


This shut even Lodoghir up, so there was a

short pause. Paphlagon continued, “There’s another reason for having a

messal about the Plurality of Worlds: a reason that some would say is

almost as fascinating as Fraa Lodoghir’s remarks about syntax. It is a

pure theorical reason. It is that the Geometers are made of different

matter from us. Matter that is not native to this cosmos. And what is

more, we have results just in from Laboratorium, concerning the tests

that were performed on the four vials of fluid—assumed to be blood—on

the Ecba probe. These four samples are made of different matter from each other, which is to say that each of them is as different from the other three, as it is from the matter we are made of.”


“Fraa Paphlagon, I was only made aware of

this as I was en route. I’m still absorbing it,” said Ignetha Foral.

“Say more, please, of what you mean when you speak of the matter being

different?”


“The nuclei of the atoms are incompatible,”

he said. Then, surveying the faces at the table, he shifted back in his

chair, grinned, and held up his hands like parallel blades, as if to

say “imagine a nucleus.” “Nuclei are forged in the hearts of stars.

When the stars die, they explode, and the nuclei are thrown out as ash

from a dead fire. These nuclei are positively charged. So, when things

get cool enough, they attract electrons, and become atoms. Further

cooling enables the atoms’ electrons

to interact with one another to form complexes called molecules, which

are what everything is made of. But, again, the making of the world begins

in the hearts of stars, where those nuclei are forged according to

certain rules that only apply in very hot crowded places. The chemistry

of the stuff we are made of reflects, in a roundabout way, those rules.

Until we learned to make newmatter, every nucleus in our cosmos was

made according to the set of rules that naturally obtains. But the

Geometers are aware of—they are made of—four other slightly different, but totally incompatible, sets of rules for making nuclei.”


“So,” said Suur Asquin, “they too learned to make newmatter or—”


“Or they came from different cosmi,” Fraa

Paphlagon said. “Which makes a Plurality of Worlds Messal seem awfully

relevant to me.”


“This is bizarre—fantastical!” said a reedy

voice with a heavy and strange accent. No one’s lips were moving that

we could see, so, by process of elimination, we turned to the

Matarrhite, who was chalked up on the bell-board as one Zh’vaern, with

no “Fraa” or “Suur” to give a clue as to sex. Zh’vaern turned slightly

in his seat—I was guessing male, from the voice—and made a gesture. His

servitor, a column of black fabric, loomed forward, grew a pseudopod,

and took his plate—to the visible relief of those seated to either

side. “I can hardly believe we are talking about a possibility so

inconceivable as that other universes exist—and that the Geometers

originate there!”


In this, Zh’vaern seemed to speak for the entire table.


Except for Jad. “The words fail. There is one universe, by the definition of universe. It is not the cosmos we see through our eyes and our telescopes—that

is but a single Narrative, a thread winding through a Hemn space shared

by many other Narratives besides ours. Each Narrative looks like a

cosmos alone, to any consciousness that partakes of it. The Geometers

came from other Narratives—until they came here, and joined ours.”


Having dropped this bomb, Fraa Jad excused himself, and went to the toilet.




“What on earth is he

going on about?” Fraa Lodoghir demanded. “It sounded like literary

criticism!” But he did not speak scornfully; he was fascinated.


“So perhaps this messal has already

turned into what its detractors claim of it,” said Ignetha Foral. And

having issued that challenge, she turned toward the topic of the

research she had performed, years ago, as a Unarian.


Paphlagon was in his seventh decade,

impressive-looking rather than handsome, no doubt accustomed to being

the most senior, the most eminent person in any given room. He was

sitting there with a trim, wry smile, staring at the center of the

table—resigning himself, with all good humor, to being Fraa Jad’s

interpreter. “Fraa Jad,” he said, “speaks of Hemn space. It’s probably

just as well he broached the subject early. Hemn space, or

configuration space, is how almost all theors think about the world.

During the Praxic Age, it became obvious that it was a better place for

us to go about our work, so we decamped, left three-dimensional

Adrakhonic space behind, and moved there. When you talk of parallel

universes, you make as little sense to Fraa Jad as he does to you.”


“Perhaps you can say a few words, then, about Hemn space, if it is so important,” suggested Ignetha Foral.


Paphlagon got that wry look again, and

sighed. “Madame Secretary, I am trying to think of a way to sum it up

that will not turn this messal into a year-long theorics suvin.”


And he gamely launched into a primer on

Hemn space. He learned to look to Suur Moyra whenever he got stuck for

a way of explaining some abstruse concept. More often than not, she was

able to drag him out of trouble. She’d already shown herself to be good

company. And the vast stock of knowledge that she, as a Lorite, carried

around in her head made her good at explaining things; she could always

reach back to a useful analogy or clear line of argument that some fraa

or suur had written down in the more or less distant past.


I got yanked in the middle of it and, going

back to the kitchen, found Emman Beldo on the other end of the rope.

Zh’vaern’s servitor was standing at the stove, stirring the mystery

pot, and so Emman and I wordlessly

agreed to retreat to the other end of the kitchen, near the open door

to the garden. “What the hell are we talking about here?” Emman wanted

to know. “Is this some kind of ‘travel through the fourth dimension’

scenario?”


“Oh, it’s good that you asked,” I said, “because it is precisely not that—Hemn space is anything but.

You’re talking about the old thing where a bunch of separate

three-dimensional universes are stacked on top of each other, like

leaves in a book, and you can move between them—”


Emman was nodding. “By figuring out some

way to move through the fourth spatial dimension. But this Hemn space

thing is something else?”


“In Hemn space, any point—which means any string of N numbers, where N is how many dimensions the Hemn space has—contains all the information needed to specify everything that can possibly be known about the system at a given moment.”


“What system?”


“Whatever system the Hemn space describes,” I said.


“Oh, I see,” he said, “you’re allowed to set up a Hemn space—”


“Any time you feel like it,” I said, “to

describe the states of any system you are interested in studying. When

you are a fid, and your teacher sets a problem for you, your first step

is always to set up the Hemn space appropriate to that problem.”


“So what is the Hemn space that Jad’s

referring to, then?” Emman asked. “What is the system that his Hemn

space gives all of the possible states of?”


“The cosmos,” I said.


“Oh!”


“Which, to him, is one possible track

through an absurdly gigantic Hemn space. But that very same Hemn space

can have points in it that do not lie on the track that is the history

of our cosmos.”


“But they’re perfectly legitimate points?”


“A few of them are—a tiny few, actually—but in a space so huge, ‘a few’ can be enough to make many whole universes.”


“What about the other points? I mean the ones that aren’t legitimate?”




“They describe situations that are incoherent somehow.”


“A block of ice in the middle of a star,” Arsibalt suggested.


“Yes,” I said, “there is a point somewhere

in Hemn space that describes a whole cosmos similar to ours, except

that, somewhere in that cosmos, there’s a block of ice in the middle of

a star. But that situation is impossible.”


Arsibalt translated, “There’s no past history that could make it happen, so it can’t be accessed by a plausible worldtrack.”


“But if you can suppress your curiosity

about those for a moment,” I said to Emman, “the point I was getting at

was that you can string the legitimate points—ones not visited by our

worldtrack, but that make sense—into other worldtracks that make as

much sense as ours.”


“But they’re not real,” Emman said, “or are they?”


I balked.


Arsibalt said, “That is a rather profound

question of metatheorics. All of the points in Hemn space are equally

real—just as all possible (x, y, z) values are equally real—since they

are nothing more than lists of numbers. So what is it that imbues one

set of those points—one worldtrack—with what we call realness?”


Suur Tris had been clearing her throat,

more and more loudly, the last few minutes, and now graduated to

throwing things at us. To this was added the jingling of several bells.

It was time to bring out the main course; other servitors had been

picking up the slack for me and Emman. So we got very busy for a while.

Several minutes later, the fourteen were all back in their formal

positions, doyns at the table waiting for Suur Asquin to pick up her

fork, servitors standing behind them.


Suur Asquin said, “I believe we have all

decided—albeit with some reservations—to move over into Hemn space with

Fraa Jad. And according to what we hear of it from Fraa Paphlagon and

Suur Moyra, there should be no lack of room for us there!” All the

doyns laughed dutifully. Barb snorted. Arsibalt and I rolled our eyes.

Barb was clearly dying to plane Suur Asquin by explaining, in

excruciating, dinner-wrecking detail, just how colossal the

configuration space of the universe really was, complete with estimates

of how many zeroes it would take to

write down the number of states it could describe, how far said string

of digits would extend, et cetera, but Arsibalt raised a hand,

threatening to rest it on his shoulder: steady, now.

Suur Asquin began to eat, and the others followed her lead. There was a

little interlude during which some of the doyns (not Lodoghir) made the

requisite comments on how tasty the food was. Then Suur Asquin

continued, “But looking back on our discussion, I find myself puzzled

by a remark that Fraa Paphlagon made before the topic of Hemn space was

mentioned, concerning the different kinds of matter. Fraa Paphlagon, I

believe you were citing this as evidence that the Geometers all came

from different cosmi—or, to use Fraa Jad’s term, different Narratives.”


“A somewhat more conventional term would be worldtracks,” Suur Moyra put in. “Use of Narrative is somewhat—well—loaded.”


“You’re speaking my language now!” said Lodoghir, clearly delighted. “Who besides Fraa Jad uses Narrative, and what do they really mean by it?”


“It is rare,” Moyra said, “and it is associated, in some people’s minds, with the Lineage.”


Fraa Jad appeared to be ignoring all of this.


“Terminology aside,” Suur Asquin went on—a

little brusquely—“what I don’t quite understand is how it all fits

together—what is the link that you see between the fact of the

different kinds of matter, and the worldtracks?”


Paphlagon said, “The cosmogonic processes

that lead to the creation of the stuff we are made of—the creation of

protons and other matter, their clumping together to make stars, and

the resulting nucleosynthesis—all seem to depend on the values of

certain physical constants. The most familiar example is the speed of

light, but there are several others—about twenty in all. Theors used to

spend a lot of time measuring their precise values, back when we were

allowed to have the necessary equipment. If these numbers had different

values, the cosmos as we know it would not have come into being; it

would just be an infinite cloud of cold dark gas or one big black hole

or something else quite simple and dull. If you think of these

constants of nature as knobs on the control panel of a machine, well, the knobs all have to be set in just the right positions or—”


Again Paphlagon looked to Moyra, who seemed

ready: “Suur Demula likened it to a safe with a combination lock, the

combination being about twenty numbers long.”


“If I follow Demula’s analogy,” said

Zh’vaern, “each of those twenty numbers is the value of one of those

constants of nature, such as the speed of light.”


“That is right. If you dial twenty numbers

at random you never get the safe open; it is nothing more to you than

an inert cube of iron. Even if you dial nineteen numbers correctly and

get the other one wrong—nothing. You must get all of them correct. Then

the door opens and out spills all of the complexity and beauty of the

cosmos.”


“Another analogy,” Moyra continued, after a

sip of water, “was developed by Saunt Conderline, who likened all of

the sets of values of those twenty constants that don’t produce complexity to an ocean a thousand miles wide and deep. The sets that do,

are like an oil sheen, no wider than a leaf, floating on the top of

that ocean: an exquisitely thin layer of possibilities that yield

solid, stable matter suitable for making universes with living things

in them.”


“I favor Conderline’s analogy,” said

Paphlagon. “The various life-supporting cosmi are different places on

that oil-sheen. What the inventors of newmatter did was to devise ways

to move around, just a little, to neighboring points on that oil-sheen,

where matter had slightly different properties. Most of the newmatter

they created was different from, but not really better than, naturally

occurring matter. After a lot of patient toil, they were able to slide

around to nearby regions of the oil-sheen where matter was better, more

useful, than what nature has provided us. And I believe that Fraa

Erasmas, here, already has an opinion on what the Geometers are made

of.”


So unready was I to hear my name called

that I didn’t even move for several seconds. Fraa Paphlagon was looking

at me. In an effort to jog me out of my stupor, he added: “Your friend

Fraa Jesry was kind enough to share your observations concerning the

parachute.”




“Yes,” I said, and discovered that my throat needed clearing. “It was nothing special. Not as good as newmatter.”


“If the Geometers had learned the art of making newmatter,” Paphlagon translated, “they’d have made a better parachute.”


“Or come up with a way to land the probe

that was not so ridiculously primitive!” Barb sang out, drawing glares

from the doyns. His name hadn’t been called.


“Fraa Tavener makes an excellent point,”

said Fraa Jad, defusing the situation. “Perhaps he shall have more of

interest to say later—when called upon.”


“The point being, I take it,” said Ignetha

Foral, “that the Geometers—the four groups of them, I should say—each

use whatever kind of matter is natural in the cosmos where they

originated.”


“The four have been given provisional names,” announced Zh’vaern. “Antarcts, Pangees, Diasps, and Quators.”


This was the first and probably the last time Zh’vaern was going to get a laugh out of the table.


“They all sound vaguely geographical,” said Suur Asquin, “but—?”


“Four planets are depicted on their ship,”

Zh’vaern continued. “This is clearly visible on Saunt Orolo’s

Phototype. A planet is depicted on each of the four vials of blood that

came in the probe. People have given them informal names inspired by

their geographical peculiarities.”


“So—let me guess—Pangee has one large continent?” asked Suur Asquin.


“Diasp a lot of islands, obviously,” put in Lodoghir.


“On Quator, most of the landmasses are at

low latitude,” Zh’vaern said, “and Antarct’s most unusual feature is a

big ice continent at the South Pole.” Then, perhaps anticipating

another correction from Barb, he added: “Or whichever pole is situated

at the bottom of the picture.”


Barb snorted.


If Fraa Zh’vaern seemed strangely

well-informed for a member of a fanatically reclusive sect of Deolaters

who’d only arrived at the Convox a

few hours ago, it was because he had attended the same briefing as I

had: a meeting in a chalk hall where a succession of fraas and suurs

had gotten the Inbrase groups up to speed on diverse topics. Or (taking

the more cynical view) fed us what some hierarchs wanted us to know. I

was only beginning to get a feel for how real information diffused through the Convox.


This touched off a few minutes of banter,

which made me impatient until I saw that Moyra and Paphlagon were using

it as an opportunity to catch up with the others in cleaning their

plates. Some of the servitors went back to the kitchen to look after

dessert. It wasn’t until we began to clear away the dinner plates that

the conversation paused, and Suur Asquin, after an exchange of glances

with Ignetha Foral, hemmed into her napkin and said: “Well. What I have

collected, from what we heard a few minutes ago, is that none of the

four Geometer races has invented newmatter—”


“Or wishes us to know that they have,” Lodoghir put in.


“Yes, quite…but in any case, each of the

four has originated from a cosmos, or a Narrative, or a worldtrack

where the constants of nature are ever so slightly different from what

they are here.”


No one objected.


Ignetha Foral said, “That to me seems like

an almost incredibly strange and remarkable finding, and I don’t

understand why we haven’t heard more of it!”


“The results of the tests were not definitive until today’s Laboratorium,” Zh’vaern said.


“This messal seems to have been thrown together immediately afterwards—actually during Inbrase, as a matter of fact,” said Lodoghir.


“There were some who had inklings of these results a day or two ago, in Lucub,” said Paphlagon.


“Then we ought to have been made aware of it a day or two ago,” said Ignetha Foral.


“It is in the nature of Lucub work that it

does not get talked about as readily as what is done in Laboratorium,”

Suur Asquin pointed out, deftly playing her role as social facilitator,

smoother-out of awkward bits. Jad looked at her as if she were a speed bump stretching across the road in front of his mobe.


“But there is another reason, which Madame

Secretary might look on a little more benignly,” said Suur Moyra. “The

predominant hypothesis, until this morning, was that the propulsion

system used by the Geometers to travel between star systems had changed

their matter somehow.”


“Changed their matter?”


“Yes. Locally altered the laws and constants of nature.”


“Is that plausible?”


“Such a propulsion device was envisioned

two thousand years ago, right here at Tredegarh,” Moyra said. “I

brought it up last week. The idea gained currency for a few days. So,

you see, it is all my fault.”


“The idea would not have gained currency,”

Fraa Jad announced, “but for that many were unsettled, disturbed by

talk of other Narratives. They longed for an explanation that would not

force them to learn a new way of thinking, and forgot the Rake.”


“Most eloquent, Fraa Jad,” said my doyn. “A

fine example of the hidden currents that so often drive what pretends

to be rational theoric discourse.”


Fraa Jad fixed Lodoghir with a look that was hard to read—but not what you’d call warm.


I got yanked. I’d learned to recognize

Emman’s touch on the rope. Sure enough, he was waiting for me when I

entered the kitchen. “The first thing Madame Secretary will say to me

in the mobe on her way home is that I have to find my way into the

right Lucub.”


“You yanked the wrong guy then,” I said, “I just got out of quarantine this morning.”


“That’s why you’re perfect: you’re going to be in the market.”


The picture, as I’d pieced it together, was

that mornings (ante Provener) were spent in Laboratorium. I would go to

a specific place and work on a given job with others who’d been

similarly assigned. Post Provener, but before Messal, was a part of the

day called Periklyne, when people mixed and mingled and exchanged information

(such as Laboratorium results) that could be further sorted and

propagated in the messals. After Messal was Lucub—burning the midnight

oil. Everyone was saying there was going to be a lot of Lucub activity

tonight because so much of the workday had been wiped out by the

Inbrase and the Plenary. Lucub tended to be where the action was

anyway. Everyone here wanted to get things done, but many felt that the

structure of Laboratorium, Messal, and so on was only getting in their

way. Lucub was a way for them to exercise a little initiative. You

might be working with a bunch of lunkheads all morning, the hierarchs

might have assigned you to a real snoozer of a messal, but during Lucub

you could do what you wanted.


“I’d be happy if you wanted to accompany me

to Lucub,” I told Emman—and I meant it. “But you have to understand

that I can’t guarantee—”


I was drowned out by indignant shushing from Arsibalt and Karvall.


Barb turned to me and announced: “They want you to be quiet, because they want to hear what is being said in the—”


I shushed Barb. Arsibalt shushed me. Karvall shushed him.


The topic seemed to have turned to the crux

of the whole evening’s discussion: how the idea of worldtracks and

configuration space were related to the existence of different kinds of

matter on “Pangee,” “Diasp,” “Antarct,” “Quator,” and Arbre.


“It was a strong meme, around the time of the Reconstitution,” Moyra was saying, “that the constants of nature are contingent—not necessary.

That is, they could have been otherwise, had the early history of the

universe been somehow different. As a matter of fact, research into

such ideas is how we got newmatter in the first place.”


“So, if I’m following you,” Ignetha Foral

said, “the correctness of that idea—that those numbers are

contingent—was proved. Proved by our ability to make newmatter.”


“That is the usual interpretation,” said Moyra.


“When you speak of ‘early history of the universe,’” put in Lodoghir, “how early—”




“We are speaking of an infinitesimal snatch

of time just after the Big Bang,” Moyra said, “when the first

elementary particles congealed out of a sea of energy.”


“And the claim is, it happened to congeal in a particular way,”

Lodoghir said, “but it could have congealed a little

differently—leading to a cosmos with different constants and different

matter.”


“Exactly,” said Moyra.


“How can we translate what’s just been said

into the language that Fraa Jad prefers, of Narratives in configuration

space?” asked Ignetha Foral.


“I’ll take a crack at it,” said Paphlagon. “If we traced our worldtrack—the series of points through configuration space that is the past, present, and future of our cosmos—backwards

in time, we would observe configurations that were hotter and brighter,

more closely packed—like running a photomnemonic tablet of an explosion

in reverse. It would lead us into regions of Hemn space scarcely

recognizable as a cosmos at all: the moments just after the Big Bang.

At some point, proceeding backwards, we’d get to a configuration in

which the physical constants we’ve been speaking of—”


“Those twenty numbers,” said Suur Asquin.


“Yes, were not even defined.

A place so different that those constants would be meaningless—they

would have no value, because they still had the freedom to take on any

value. Now, up until this point in the story I’m telling you, there

really is no difference between the old one-universe picture, and the

worldtrack-through-Hemn space picture.”


“Not even when newmatter is taken into account?” asked Lodoghir.


“Not even then, because all the newmatter

makers did was to build a machine that could create energies that high,

and then make their own little Big Bangs in the lab. But what is

new to us now, as of this morning’s Laboratorium findings, is that if

you, in the same manner, traced the worldtracks of Antarct, of Pangee,

Diasp, and Quator backwards, you would find yourself in a very similar

part of Hemn space.”


“The Narratives converge,” said Fraa Jad.




“As you go backwards, you mean,” Zh’vaern said.


“There is no backwards,” said Fraa Jad.


This occasioned a few moments of silence.


“Fraa Jad doesn’t believe in the existence

of time,” Moyra said; but she sounded as if she were realizing it and

saying it at the same moment.


“Ah, well! Important detail, that,” said

Suur Tris, in the kitchen, and for once no one shushed her. For some

minutes, we’d all been standing around a set of dessert plates, ready

to serve, waiting for the right moment.


“I don’t recommend we get sidetracked on

the question of whether time exists,” said Paphlagon, to the almost

audible relief of everyone else. “The point is that in that model that

views the five cosmi—Arbre, and those of the four Geometer races—as

trajectories in Hemn space, those trajectories are extremely close

together in the vicinity of the Big Bang. And we might even ask whether

they were the same up to a certain point, when

something happened that made them split off from one another. Perhaps

that is a question for another messal. Perhaps only Deolaters would

dare to attempt it.” In the kitchen, we risked glancing at Zh’vaern’s

servitor. “In any case, the different worldtracks ended up with

slightly different physical constants. And so you could say that even

if we were to sit in a room with a Geometer who seemed similar to us,

the fact is that they would carry in the very nuclei of their atoms a

sort of fingerprint that proved they came from a different Narrative.”


“As our genetic sequences carry a record of

every mutation, every adaptation, every ancestor to the first thing

that ever lived,” said Suur Moyra, “so the stuff of which they were

made would encode what Fraa Jad calls the Narrative of their cosmos,

back to the point in Hemn space when we all diverged.”


“Farther,” Fraa Jad said. Which was

followed by the customary silence that followed most Jad-statements;

but it was shattered, this time, by a laugh from Lodoghir.


“Ah, I see it! Finally! Oh, what a fool

I’ve been, Fraa Jad, not to notice the game you’ve been playing. But

now at last I see where you have been leading us, ever so subtly: to the Hylaean Theoric World!”


“Hmm, I don’t know which is more annoying,” I said, “Lodoghir’s tone, or the fact that he figured this out before I did.”


I’d been shocked, a few hours ago, when

Lodoghir had wandered up to me during Periklyne and begun chit-chatting

about our encounter on the Plenary stage. How could he come anywhere

near me without body armor and a team of stun-gun-brandishing

Inquisitors? How could he not have foreseen that I’d devote the rest of

my life to plotting violent revenge? Which had forced me to understand

that it really wasn’t personal, for him: all the rhetorical tricks, the

distortions, salted with outright lies, the appeals to emotion, were

every bit as much parts of his tool kit as equations and syllogisms

were of mine, and he didn’t imagine I’d really object, any more than

Jesry would if I pointed out an error in his theorics.


I had stared dumbly at Lodoghir throughout,

judging the distance separating my knuckles and his teeth. I had had

the vague idea that he was bossing me around a little, concerning this

evening’s messal, but I hadn’t heard any of it. After a while he had

lost interest, since I hadn’t said a word, and had wandered off.


“I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this, between him, and the Inquisition!” I said.


“You’re already in trouble with the Inquisition?” Arsibalt asked, sounding amazed and appreciative at the same time.


“No—but Varax let me know he’s watching me,” I said.


“How in the world did he do that?”


“Earlier, I had a really annoying encounter with Lodoghir.”


“Yes. I saw it.”


“No, I mean I had a second one. And a few seconds later, guess who walked up to me?”


“Well, given the context in which you are telling the story,” Arsibalt said, “I would have to guess it was Varax.”


“Yeah.”


“What did Varax say?”


“He said, ‘I understand you’re up to Chapter Five! Hope it didn’t ruin your whole autumn.’ And I told him that it had taken me a few weeks but I didn’t blame him for what had happened.”


“That was all?”


“Yeah. Maybe some chitchat afterwards.”


“And how do you interpret these words of Varax?”


“He was saying ‘don’t pop your doyn in the nose, young man—I’m watching you.’”


“You’re an idiot.”


“What!?”


“You got it all wrong! This was a gift!”


“A gift!?”


Arsibalt explained: “A doyn has the power

to discipline his servitor by assigning chapters in the Book. But you,

Raz, hardened criminal that you are, are already up to Five. Lodoghir

would have to give you Six: a very heavy punishment—”


“Which I could appeal,” I said, getting it, “appeal to the Inquisition.”


“Arsibalt’s right,” said Tris, who’d been

listening (and who seemed to be looking at me in a whole new way, now

that she knew I was up to Five). “It sounds to me like this Varax was

giving you a big fat hint that the Inquisition would throw out any

sentence from Lodoghir.”


“They would almost have to,” said Arsibalt.


I picked up Lodoghir’s dessert and headed

for the messallan in a whole new mood. The others followed me. We came

into a room of flushed faces and bitten lips: a tableau of strained and

awkward body language. Lodoghir had been having his usual effect on

people.


“Just when I’d thought we were getting

somewhere,” Ignetha Foral was saying, “I see that once again the messal

has been sidetracked into some old and tedious dispute between Procians

and Halikaarnians. Metatheorics! Sometimes I wonder whether you in the mathic world really understand the stakes that are now in play.”


Clearly I had come in at the wrong moment. But it was too late now, and others were piling up behind me, so I barged on in and gave my doyn his dessert just as he was saying, “I accept your rebuke, Madame Secretary, and I assure you that—”


“I don’t accept it,” said Fraa Jad.


“Nor should you!” put in Zh’vaern.


“These matters are important whether or not you take the trouble to understand them,” Fraa Jad went on.


“How am I to distinguish this from the

partisan bickering that goes on in the capital?” Ignetha Foral asked.

Others at the table had been horrified by Fraa Jad’s tone, but she

seemed to find it bracing.


Fraa Jad ignored the question—it was none

of his concern—and turned his energies to his dessert. Fraa

Zh’vaern—who was surprising us all with his interest in the topic—took

it up. “By examining the quality of the arguments.”


“When the arguments come out of pure theorics, I am unable to make such judgments!” she pointed out.


“I would not assume that the existence of

the Hylaean Theoric World comes out of what is called pure theorics,”

Lodoghir said. “It is as much a leap of faith as believing in God.”


“As much as I admire the ingenuity with

which you find a way to skewer Fraa Jad and Fraa Zh’vaern with the same

sentence,” said Ignetha Foral, “I must remind you that most of the

people I work with believe in God, and so, among them, your gambit is

likely to backfire.”


“The hour is late,” Suur Asquin pointed

out—though no one seemed tired. “I propose that we take up the topic of

the Hylaean Theoric World in tomorrow evening’s messal.”


Fraa Jad nodded, but it was hard to tell whether he was accepting the challenge, or really enjoying the cake.


Everything Killer: a

weapons system of unusual praxic sophistication, thought to have been

used to devastating effect in the Terrible Events. The belief is widely

held, but unproved, that the complicity of theors in the development of

this praxis led to universal agreement that they should henceforth be segregated from non-theorical society, a policy that when effected became synonymous with the Reconstitution.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“Have you all been enjoying your books?”

Suur Moyra inquired, then seized a pan and began scraping dead

vegetables into the compost. Karvall gasped—Moyra had sneaked in and

ambushed us. She dropped the pot she’d been scrubbing, spun away from

the sink, and ran over to take the pan out of her old doyn’s frail

hands. Arsibalt and I turned almost as adroitly to watch. Karvall might

be swathed in a ton of black bolt, but, as we’d been noticing, the

lashings that held it in place around her body were most intricate, and

rewarded close examination. Even Barb looked. Emman Beldo was driving

Ignetha Foral back to her lodgings. Zh’vaern’s servitor, Orhan, was a

hard man or woman to read with his or her head totally covered, but the

wrinkles in his or her bolt told me his or her head was tracking

Karvall. Tris took advantage of this to steal the best scrub-brush.


“Were you responsible for the books?” I asked.


“I had Karvall place them in your trailer,” Moyra said, and gave me a smile.


“So that’s where those

came from,” Tris said, then explained, “I found a stack of books in my

cell this morning.” From the way other servitors were now looking at

Moyra, I guessed they’d had similar experiences.


“Wait a minute, that is chronologically

impossible!” Barb pointed out, and then, showing a flash of the old

Barb wit, added, “Unless you violated the rules of causality!”


“Oh, I’ve been trying to get this messal

started for a few days,” Moyra said. “Just ask Suur Asquin, she’ll tell

you what a pest I’ve made of myself. You don’t really think something

like this could be thrown together by a bunch of hierarchs passing

notes around during Inbrase, do you?”


“Grandsuur Moyra,” Arsibalt began, “if it

wasn’t this morning’s Laboratorium results that brought this messal

into being, what was it?”




“Well, if you weren’t too busy flirting

with these lovely suurs and horsing around in the kitchen, you might

have heard me earlier, speaking of being a meta-Lorite.”


“Or a Plurality of Worlds Lorite,” I said.


“Ah, so you were paying attention!”


“I thought it was just an icebreaker.”


“Who was their Evenedric, Fraa Arsibalt?”


“I beg your pardon?” Arsibalt was

fascinated by the question, but soon had his hands full as Suur Tris

dumped a huge greasy platter into his arms.


“Fraa Tavener, who was the Saunt Hemn on

the planet of Quator? Tris, who was the Lady Baritoe of Antarct? Fraa

Orhan, do they worship a God on Pangee, and is it the same as the God

of the Matarrhites?”


“It must be, Grandsuur

Moyra!” Orhan exclaimed, and made a gesture with his hand (I had

decided he had to be male) that I’d seen before. Some kind of Deolater

superstition.


“Fraa Erasmas, who discovered Halikaarn’s Diagonal on the world of Diasp?”


“Because obviously they did think such thoughts, you’re saying…” Arsibalt said.


“They must have done, to build that ship!” said Barb.


“Your minds are so much fresher, more agile

than some of those who sit in that messallan,” Moyra said. “I thought

you might have ideas.”


Suur Tris turned around and asked, “Are you

saying that there would be one-to-one-correspondences between our

Saunts and theirs? Like the same mind shared across multiple worlds?”


“I’m asking you,” Moyra said.


I had nothing to say, being stricken with

the all-too-familiar feeling of unease that came over me, lately, when

conversations began to wander down this path. The last words Orolo had

spoken to me, a few minutes before he’d died, had been a warning that

the Thousanders knew about this stuff, and had been developing a praxis

around it: in effect, that the legends of the Incanters were based in

fact. And perhaps I’d fallen back into my old habit of worrying too much; but it seemed to me, now, that every conversation I was part of came dangerously close to this topic.


Arsibalt, unburdened by such cares, felt

ready to have a go. He heaved the washed platter into a drying rack,

wiped his hands on his bolt, and squared off. “Well. Any such

hypothesis would have to be grounded in some account of why

different minds in different worldtracks would think similar things.

One could always look to a religious explanation,” he went on, with a

glance at Orhan, “but other than that…well…”


“You needn’t be reticent about your belief in the HTW—remember who you’re talking to! I’ve seen it all!”


“Yes, Grandsuur Moyra,” Arsibalt said, with a dip of the head.


“How might the knowledge propagate from a

common Theoric World—I won’t call it Hylaean, since presumably there

was no person named Hylaea on Quator—to the minds of different Saunts

in different worlds? And is it still going on at this moment—between

us, and them?” Moyra had been edging toward the back door as she tossed

these mind bombs into the kitchen, and now almost collided with Emman

Beldo, fresh in from escorting his doyn home.


“Well, it sounds as though the messal will discuss that tomorrow,” I pointed out.


“Why wait? Don’t be complacent!” Moyra shot

back as she was storming out into the night. Karvall threw down a towel

and scurried after her, drawing her bolt up over her head. Emman

politely got out of her way, then swiveled to watch Karvall until there

was nothing left to see. When he turned back around, he got a sponge in

the face from Suur Tris.





“You can’t just have these tracks wandering around in Hemn space—” said Emman.


“The way we’re wandering around in the dark,” I proposed. For we were attempting to find a suitable Lucub.


“With no rhyme or reason. Can you?”


“You mean the worldtracks? The Narratives?”


“I guess so—what is up with that, by the way?”




It was a vague question but I could tell what was on his mind.


“You mean, Fraa Jad’s use of the word Narrative?”


“Yeah. That’s going to be a hard one to sell to—”


“The Panjandrums?”


“Is that what you call people like my doyn?”


“Some of us.”


“Well, they’re pretty hardheaded. Don’t go in for anything highfalutin.”


“Well, let me see if I can come up with an example,” I said. “Remember what Arsibalt said? The block of ice buried in the star?”


“Yeah, sure,” he said. “There is a point in Hemn space that represents a cosmos that includes even that.”


“The configuration of the cosmos encoded in

that point,” I said, “includes—along with all the stars and planets,

the birds and the bees, the books and the speelies and everything

else—one star that happens to have a big chunk of ice in the middle of

it. That point, remember, is just a long string of numbers—coordinates

in the space. No more or less real than any other possible string of

numbers.”


“Its realness—or unrealness in this case—has to grow out of some other consideration,” Emman tried.


“You got it. And in this case, it is that the situation being described is so damned ridiculous.”


“How could it ever happen, to begin with?” Emman demanded, getting into the spirit.


“Happen. That’s the key

word,” I said, wishing I could explain this as confidently as Orolo.

“What does it mean for something to happen?” That sounded pretty lame.

“It’s not just this situation—this isolated point in configuration

space—that springs into being for a moment and then vanishes. It’s not

like you have a normal star, and then suddenly for one tick of the

cosmic clock a block of ice materializes in the middle of it, and then,

next tick, poof! It’s gone without a trace.”


“But it could happen, couldn’t it, if you had a Hemn Space teleporter?”


“Mm, that’s a useful thought experiment,” I said. “You’re thinking

of a gadget from one of Moyra’s novels. A magic booth where you could

dial in any point in Hemn space, realize it, and then jump to another.”


“Yeah. Regardless of the laws of theorics or whatever. Then you could make the ice block materialize. But then it would melt.”


“It would melt,” I corrected him, “if you

let natural law take over from that point. But you could preserve it by

making your Hemn Space teleporter jump to another point encoding the

same cosmos, an instant later, but with the block of ice still

included.”


“Okay, I get it—but normally it would melt.”


“So, Emman, the question is: what means

‘normally’? Another way of putting it: if you look at the series of

points you’d have to string together with your Hemn Space teleporter in

order to see, outside the windows of the booth, a cosmos with a block

of ice persisting in the middle of a star, how different would that

series of points have to be from one that was a proper worldtrack?”


“Meaning, a worldtrack where natural laws were respected?”


“Yeah.”


“I don’t know.”


We laughed. “Well,” I said, “I’m now

starting to understand some of what Orolo was saying to me about Saunt

Evenedric. Evenedric studied datonomy—an outgrowth of Sconic

philosophy—which means, what is given to us, what we observe. In the

end, that’s all we have to work with.”


“I’ll bite,” Emman said, “what do we observe?”


“Not just world points that are coherent,” I said, “so, no ice blocks in stars—but coherent series of such points: a worldtrack that could have happened.”


“What’s the difference?”


“It’s not just that you can’t have a block of ice in a star, but that you can’t get it there, you can’t keep it there—there is no coherent history that can include it. See, it’s not just about what is possible—since anything is possible in Hemn space—but what is compossible, meaning all the other things that would have to be true in that universe, to have a block of ice in a star.”


“Well, I actually think you could do it,” Emman said. The praxic gears

were turning in his head. This was what he did for a living; he’d been

pulled out of his job at a rocket agency to serve as technical advisor

to Ignetha Foral. “You could design a rocket—a missile with a warhead

made of thick heat-resistant material with a block of ice embedded in

it. Make this thing plunge into the star at high velocity. The

heat-resistant material would burn away. But just after it did, for a

moment, you’d have a block of ice embedded in a star.”


“Okay, that’s all possible,” I said, “but

it’s a way of answering the question ‘what other things would have to

be true about a cosmos that included a block of ice in a star?’ If you

were to go to that cosmos and freeze it in that moment of time—”


“Okay,” he said, “let’s say the teleporter

has a user interface feature that makes it easy to freeze time by

looping back to the same point over and over.”


“Fine. And if you did that and looked at

the region around the ice, you’d see the heavy nuclei of the melted

heat shield swirling around in the star-stuff. You’d see the trail of

rocket exhaust in space, leading all the way back to the scorch marks

on the launch pad. That launch pad has to be on a planet capable of

supporting life smart enough to build rockets. Around that launch pad

you’d see people who had spent years of their lives designing and

building that rocket. Memories of that work, and of the launch, would

be encoded in their neurons. Speelies of the launch would be stored in

their reticules. And all of those memories and recordings would mostly

agree with one another. All of those memories and recordings boil down

to positions of atoms in space—so—”


“So those memories and recordings, you’re saying, are themselves

parts of the configuration encoded by that point in Hemn space,” Emman

said, loudly and firmly, as he knew he was getting it. “And that is

what you mean about compossibility.”


“Yes.”


“Ice in a star could be encoded by many Hemn space points,” he said, “but only a few of them—”


“A vanishingly tiny few,” I said.


“Include all the records—coherent, mutually consistent records—of how it got to be there.”




“Yes. When you go all praxic on me and

dream up the ice missile delivery system, what you’re really doing is

figuring out what Narrative would create the set of conditions—the

traces left behind in the cosmos by the execution of that project—that

is compossible with ice in a star.”


We walked on for a bit and he said, “Or to give a less dignified example, you can’t look at Suur Karvall’s outfit—”


“Without having to reconstruct in your mind the sequence of operations needed to tie all those knots.”


“Or to untie them—”


“She’s a Hundreder,” I warned him, “and the Convox won’t last forever.”


“Don’t get too attached. Yeah, I know. But I could still get a date with her in 3700—”


“Or become a fraa,” I suggested.


“I might have to, after this. Hey, do you know where you’re going?”


“Yeah. I’m following you.”


“Well, I’ve been following you.”


“Okay, that would mean that we’re lost.”

And we stumbled about until we encountered a pair of grandsuurs out for

a stroll, and asked them for directions to the Edharian chapterhouse.


“So,” Emman said, after we’d set out on the

right track, “the bottom line is that in any one particular

cosmos—excuse me, on any one particular worldtrack—things make sense.

The laws of nature are followed.”


“Yes,” I said. “That’s what a worldtrack is—a sequence of Hemn space points strung together just so, to make it look like the laws of nature are preserved.”


“I’m going to put that in teleporter terms,

since that’s how I’ll be explaining it to people,” he said. “The whole

point of the teleporter is that it could take you to any other point at any moment. You could jump randomly from one cosmos to another. But only one point in Hemn space encodes the state that the cosmos you’re in now will have at the next tick of the clock, if the laws of nature are followed—right?”




“You’re on the right track,” I said, “but—”


“Where I’m going with this,” he said, “is

as follows: the people to whom I have to explain this have heard of the

laws of nature. Maybe even studied them a bit. They’re comfortable with

that. Now suddenly I come in and start talking about Hemn space. A new

concept to them. I give them a big explanation—I talk about the

teleporter, the ice in the star, and the scorch marks on the launch

pad. Finally one of these people raises his hand and says, ‘Mr. Beldo,

you have squandered hours of our valuable time giving us a calca on

Hemn space—what, pray tell, is the bottom line?’ And my answer is, ‘If

you please, sir, the bottom line is that the laws of nature are

followed in our cosmos.’ And he’s going to say—”


“He’s going to say, ‘We already knew that, you idiot, you’re fired!’”


“Exactly! Which is when I have to run off and become a fraa, preferably in Karvall’s math.”


“So you are asking me—”


“What do we gain that is consequential by adopting the Hemn space model? You already mentioned it makes it easier to do theorics—but Panjandrums don’t do theorics.”


“Well, for one thing, it is actually not the case that, at any given point, there is only one next point that is consistent with the laws of nature.”


“Oh, are you going to talk about quantum mechanics?”


“Yeah. An elementary particle can decay—which is compatible with the laws of nature—or it can not decay—which is also compatible with the laws of nature. But decaying and not decaying take us to two different points in Hemn space—”


“The worldtrack forks.”


“Yeah. Worldtracks fork all the time, whenever quantum state reduction seems to occur—which is a lot.”


“But still, whatever worldtrack we happen to be on still always obeys the laws of nature,” he said.


“I’m afraid so.”


“So, back to my original problem—”




“What does Hemn space get us? Well, for one thing, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to think about quantum mechanics.”


“But Panjandrums don’t think about quantum mechanics!”


I had nothing to say; I just felt like a clueless avout.


“So, do you think I should mention the Hemn space thing at all?”


“Let’s ask Jesry,” I proposed. “He’s

cool-looking.” For we had reached the Edharian cloister, and I spied

him on a path, drawing diagrams in the gravel with a stick while a fraa

and a suur stood by watching and laughing delightedly. In the moonlight

these people looked as though they’d been sketched in ash on a

fireplace floor. Still, they cut altogether different figures. Jesry

looked like a young prophet from some ancient scripture next to the

fraa and the suur, who came from more cosmopolitan orders that went in

for fancy wraps. This morning at Inbrase I’d felt like a real hick when

I’d looked at how the other avout dressed. But that was just me. Put

the same outfit on Jesry and he became awe-inspiringly rugged, simple,

austere, and, well, manly. I understood, as I looked at him, why Fraa

Lodoghir had been so keen to plane me. There was something about the

Edharian contingent that impressed people. Orolo had made us into

stars. Lodoghir had seen the Plenary as an opportunity to take one of

us down a peg.


“Jesry,” I called.


“Hi, Raz. I am not one of those people who think you sucked at the Plenary.”


“Thanks. Name one thing we get by working in configuration space that we don’t get any other way.”


“Time,” he said.


“Oh yeah,” I said. “Time.”


“I thought time didn’t exist!” Emman said sarcastically.


Jesry looked at Emman for a few moments, then looked at me. “What, has your friend been talking to Fraa Jad?”


“It is nice that Hemn space gives us an

account of time,” I said, “but Emman will say that the Panjandrums he

has to talk to already believe in the existence of time—”


“Poor, benighted fools!” Jesry exclaimed, getting a low, painful laugh out of Emman, and quizzical looks from his avout companions.


“So of what relevance to them is the Hemn space picture?” I continued.


“None whatsoever,” Jesry said, “until

strangers come to town from four different cosmi at once. Hey, can I

get you guys something to drink?”


It was yet another of Jesry’s annoying

qualities that he did some of his finest work while drunk. We servitors

had sampled our share of wine and beer in the kitchen, and I was just

beginning to get my head clear, so I decided to drink water. Presently

we found ourselves in the largest chalk hall of the local Edharian

chapter—or at least I assumed it had to be the

largest. The slate walls were covered with calculations I recognized.

“They’ve got you doing cosmography?” I asked.


Jesry followed my gaze and focused on a

table of figures chalked up on a slate. One column was longitude,

another latitude—and seeing fifty-one degrees and change chalked up in

the latter, I realized I was looking at the coordinates of Saunt Edhar.


“This morning’s Laboratorium,” he

explained. “We had to check a bunch of calculations that the Ita did

last night. All of the world’s telescopes—including the M & M, as

you can see—are to be pointed at the Geometers’ ship tonight.”


“All night long or—”


“No. In about half an hour. Something is

going to happen,” Jesry proclaimed in his usual confident baritone. I

noticed Emman cringing. “Something that will give us a different view,”

Jesry went on, “more interesting than the pusher plate on its arse

which I spent so many hours staring at.”


“How do we know this?” I asked, though I was a little distracted by Emman’s conspicuous nervousness.


“I don’t,” Jesry said, “I’m just inferring it.”


Emman jerked his head toward the exit and we followed him out into the cloister.


“I’ll tell you guys,” he said, once we’d

gotten out of earshot of the rest of the Lucub, “since the secret is

going to be out in half an hour anyway. This is an idea that was cooked

up at a very influential messal after the Visitation of Orithena.”




“Were you in on it?” I asked.


“No—but it’s why I was brought here,” Emman

said. “We have an old reconaissance bird up there in synchronous orbit.

It’s got loads of fuel on board, so that it can move around when we

tell it to. We don’t think the Geometers know about it. We’ve kept the

bird silent, so it hasn’t occurred to them to jam its frequencies.

Well, earlier today we narrow-beamed a burst of commands to the thing

and it fired up its thrusters and placed itself into a new orbit that

will intercept that of the Hedron in half an hour.” He used his toe to

render the Geometers’ ship in the gravel path: a crude polygon for the

envelope of the icosahedron, a heel-stomp on one edge for the pusher

plate. “This thing is always pointed at Arbre,” he complained, tapping

his toe on the pusher plate, “so we can’t see the rest of the ship”—he

swept his foot in an arc around the forward half—“which is where they

keep all of the cool stuff. Obviously a deliberate move—this half has

been like the dark side of the moon to us, so we’ve had to rely

entirely on Saunt Orolo’s Phototype.” He stepped around to the flank of

the diagram and swept out a long arc aimed at the bow. “Our bird,” he

said, “is approaching from this direction. It is radioactive as hell.”


“The bird is?”


“Yeah, it draws power from radiothermal

devices. The Geometers are going to notice this thing headed their way

and they’ll have no choice but to execute a maneuver—”


“To get the pusher plate—which is their shield—between themselves and the bogey,” Jesry said.


“They’ll have to spin the whole ship around,” I translated, “exposing the ‘cool stuff’ to view from ground-based telescopes.”


“And those telescopes are going to be ready.”


“Is it even possible to

spin something that big around in any reasonable amount of time?” I

asked. “I’m trying to imagine how big the thrusters would have to be—”


Emman shrugged. “You ask a good question.

We’ll learn a lot just from observing its maneuver. Tomorrow we’ll have

lots of pictures to look at.”


“Unless they get angry and nuke us,” Jesry put in, while I was trying to think of a more delicate way of saying it.


“There’s been some discussion of that,” Emman admitted.




“Well, I should hope so!” I said.


“The Panjandrums are all sleeping in caves and bunkers.”


“That’s comforting,” Jesry said.


Emman missed the sarcasm. “And the mathic world has experience in coping with nuclear aftermaths.”


Jesry and I both turned to look in the direction of the Precipice, wondering how deep we could get in those tunnels, how fast.


“But this is all considered

low-probability,” Emman said. “What happened on Ecba was a serious

provocation, if not an outright act of war. We have to make a serious

response—show the Geometers we won’t just sit passively while they drop

rods on us.”


“Will this bird actually hit the icosahedron?” I asked.


“Not unless they’re stupid enough to get in its way. But it’ll come close enough that they’ll have to respond, as a precaution.”


“Well!” Jesry said, after we had spent a minute absorbing all of this. “So much for getting anything done during Lucub.”


“Yeah,” I said, “I guess I will have that wine after all.”


We took a bottle out onto the lawn between

the Edharian and Eleventh Sconic cloisters. We knew where to look in

the sky, so we arranged ourselves and lay in the grass waiting for the

End of the World.


I really missed Ala. For a while I hadn’t

been thinking about her much. But she was the one I wanted to be next

to when the nukes rained down.


At the appointed moment there was a tiny,

momentary flash of light in the middle of the constellation where we

knew the Hedron was. As though a spark had jumped between their ship

and our “bird.”


“They nailed it with something,” Emman said.


“Directed energy weapon,” Jesry intoned, as if he actually knew what he was talking about.


“X-ray laser, to be specific,” said a nearby voice.


We sat up to see a stocky figure in an antique bolt-and-chord getup, shambling toward us on weary legs.


“Hello, Thistlehead!” I called out.


“Feel like a stroll while we await massive retaliation?”




“Sure,” I said.


“I’m going to bed,” Jesry said. I guessed he was lying. “No Lucub tonight.” Definitely lying.


“Then I’m doing the same,” said Emman Beldo, who knew when he was being gotten rid of. “Lots of work tomorrow.”


“If we still exist,” Jesry said.





“I really have to get in touch with Ala,” I

told Lio, after we had wandered for half an hour without saying a word.

“I looked for her at Periklyne this afternoon but—”


“She wasn’t there,” Lio said, “she was getting ready for this.”


“You mean aiming the telescopes or—”


“More the military side of it.”


“How’d she get mixed up in that?”


“She’s good. Someone noticed. The military gets what it asks for.”


“How would you know? Are you mixed up in the military side too?”


Lio was silent. We walked for a few minutes

more. “A few days ago they put me in a new Laboratorium,” he said. I

could tell that he’d been laboring to get it off his chest for a while.


“Oh really? What have they got you doing?”


“They dug up some old documents. Really old. We’ve been scraping them off. Getting familiar with them. Looking up old words, fallen from use.”


“What kinds of documents?”


“Technical drawings. Specs. Manuals. Back-of-envelope sketches, even.”


“For what?”


“They won’t just come out and say, and no

one is allowed to see the whole picture,” Lio said, “but talking to

some of the others, comparing notes in Lucub, taking into account the

dates on the documents—just before the Terrible Events—we’re all pretty

sure that what we are looking at are the original plans for the

Everything Killers.”




I gave a little snort of laughter, simply

out of habit. The Everything Killers were only ever mentioned in the

same way as we might talk of God or Hell. But everything about Lio’s

tone and manner told me that he was being altogether literal. There was

a long silence while I tried to absorb this news.


In an attempt to prove that he must be mistaken, I pointed out, “But that goes against everything—everything—that the world is based on!” Meaning the post-Reconstitution world. “If they’re willing to do that, then nothing is real anymore.”


“There are many who agree with you, of

course,” Lio said, “and that’s why—” He exhaled, the breath coming out

raggedly. “That’s why I wanted to invite you to be part of my Lucub.”


“What’s the purpose of this Lucub?”


“Some people are thinking of going over to the Antarcts.”


“Going over—as in joining forces with? With the Geometers!?”


“The Antarcts,” he insisted. “It’s been established, now, that the dead woman in the probe was from Antarct.”


“Based on the blood samples in the tubes?”


He nodded. “But the projectiles in her body are from the Pangee cosmos.”


“So people are guessing that the Antarcts are on our side—”


He nodded again. “And having some sort of conflict, up there, with the Pangees.”


“So the idea is to forge an alliance between the avout, and the Antarcts?”


“You got it,” Lio said.


“Wow! How exactly would you go about that?

How would you even communicate with them? I mean, so that the Sæcular

Power wouldn’t know of it.”


“Easy. Already been worked out.” Then,

knowing I’d never be satisfied with that, he added, “It’s the guidestar

lasers on the big telescopes. We can aim them at the icosahedron.

They’ll see the light but it can’t be intercepted by anyone who’s not

right on the beam line.”


I thought of the conversation I’d had with Lio months ago, when we had wondered whether it was really true, or just an old folk

tale, that the Ita had us under continual surveillance. Idiotically, I

looked around just in case any hidden microphones might somehow have

popped into view. “Do the Ita—”


“Some of them are in on it,” Lio said.


“What kind of relationship exactly do these people want to forge with the Antarcts?”


“We spend most of our time arguing about

that. Too much time. There are some nut jobs, of course, who think we

can go up there and live on their ship and it’ll be like ascending to

Heaven. Most are more reasonable. We’ll set up our own communications

to the Geometers and…conduct our own negotiations.”


“But that is totally at odds with the Reconstitution!”


“Does the Reconstitution say anything about aliens? About multiple cosmi?”


I shut up, knowing when I was planed.


“Anyway,” he went on.


I completed his sentence. “The Reconstitution is a dead letter anyway if they are dusting off the Everything Killers.”


“The term post-mathic is being thrown around,” Lio said. “People are talking about the Second Rebirth.”


“Who’s in on it?”


“Quite a few servitors. Not so many doyns, if you follow me.”


“What orders? What maths?”


“Well…the Ringing Vale avout consider the Everything Killers to be dishonorable, if that helps you.”


“Where does this Lucub meet? It sounds huge.”


“It’s a bunch of Lucubs. A network of cells. We talk to one another.”


“What do you do, Lio?”


“Stand in the back of the room and look tough. Listen.”


“What are you listening for?”


“There are some crazies,” he said. “Well, not crazy, but too rational, if you know what I mean. No awareness of tactics. Of discretion.”


“And what are those people saying?”


“That it’s time for the smart people to be in charge. Time to take the power back from people like the Warden of Heaven.”




“That kind of talk could lead to a Fourth Sack!” I said.


“Some people are way ahead of you,” Lio said. “They are saying, ‘Fine. Bring it on. The Geometers will intervene on our side.’”


“That is just shockingly reckless,” I said.


“That’s why I’m listening to those people,”

Lio said, “and reporting back to my Lucub group, which seems reasonable

by comparison.”


“Why would the Geometers reach down to stop a Sack?”


“People who believe this tend to be

hard-core HTW types, I’m sorry to say. They’ve seen the Adrakhonic

proof on Orolo’s phototype. They assume that the Geometers are our

brothers. The fact that the Geometers made their first landfall at

Orithena just confirms this.”


“Lio, I have a question.”


“Okay.”


“I’ve had zero contact with Ala. Jesry

thinks it’s because she’s trying to get her liaisons sorted. But that

doesn’t seem like her. Does she know anything about this group?”


“She started it,” Lio said.


Sphenics: A school of

theors well represented in ancient Ethras, where they were hired by

well-to-do families as tutors for their children. In many classic

Dialogs, seen in opposition to Thelenes, Protas, or others of their

school. Their most prominent champion was Uraloabus, who in the Dialog

of the same name was planed so badly by Thelenes that he committed

suicide on the spot. They disputed the views of Protas and, broadly

speaking, preferred to believe that theorics took place entirely

between the ears, with no recourse to external realities such as the

Protan forms. The forerunners of Saunt Proc, the Syntactic Faculties,

and the Procians.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Paphlagon’s plate was clean; Lodoghir

hadn’t even picked up his fork. Hunger at last succeeded where

throat-clearing, glares, exasperated sighs, and the en masse departure of the servitors had failed: Lodoghir fell silent, picked up his glass, and doused his flaming vocal chords.


Paphlagon was eerily calm—almost jolly. “If

one were to examine a transcript of that, one would see an

extraordinary, and quite lengthy, catalog of every rhetorical trick in

the Sphenic book. We’ve seen appeals to mob sentiment: ‘no one believes

in the HTW any more,’ ‘everyone thinks Protism is crazy.’ We’ve seen

appeals to authority: ‘refuted in the Twenty-ninth Century by no less

than Saunt So-and-so.’ Efforts to play on our personal insecurity: ‘how

can any person of sound mind take this seriously?’ And many other

techniques that I have forgotten the names of, as it has been so long

since I studied the Sphenics. So. I must begin by applauding the

rhetorical mastery that has given the rest of us an opportunity to

enjoy this excellent meal and rest our voices. But I would be remiss if

I did not point out that Fraa Lodoghir has yet to offer up a single

argument, worthy of the name, against the proposition that there is a

Hylaean Theoric World, that it is populated by mathematical

entities—cnoöns, as we call them—that are non-spatial and non-temporal

in nature, and that our minds have some capability of accessing them.”


“Nor could I—ever!” exclaimed Fraa

Lodoghir, whose jaw had been working at an astounding pace during the

last few moments to get a bite of food squared away. “You Protists are

ever so careful to frame the discussion so that it can’t be touched by

rational debate. I can’t prove you’re wrong any more than I can prove

the non-existence of God!”


Paphlagon had some infighting skills of his

own; he simply ignored what Lodoghir had just said. “A couple of weeks

ago, at a Plenary, you and some of the other Procians floated the

suggestion that the diagram of the Adrakhonic Theorem on the Geometers’

ship was a forgery, inserted into Saunt Orolo’s Phototype by Orolo

himself, or someone else at Edhar. Do you now retract that allegation?”

And Paphlagon glanced over his shoulder at an astoundingly

high-resolution phototype of the Geometers’ ship, taken last night by

the largest optical telescope on Arbre, on which the diagram was clearly visible. The walls of the messallan were papered with such. The table was scattered with more.


“There is nothing wrong with mentioning

hypotheses in the course of a discussion,” Lodoghir said. “Clearly that

particular one happened to be incorrect.”


“I think he just said ‘yes, I withdraw the

allegation,’ said Tris, in the kitchen. I had gone back there

ostensibly to fulfill my duties, but really to plow through heaps of

more phototypes. Everyone in the Convox had been looking at them all

day, but we weren’t even close to being tired of it.


“It is such good fortune that this gambit worked,” Emman reflected, gazing fixedly at a grainy close-up of a strut.


“You mean, that we did not get rodded?” Barb asked—sincerely.


“No, that we got pictures,” Emman said. “Got them by doing something clever, here.”


“Oh—you mean it is good fortune politically?” Karvall asked, a little uncertain.


“Yes! Yes!” Emman exclaimed. “The Convox is expensive! It makes the Powers That Be happy when it yields discernible results.”


“Why is it expensive?” Tris asked. “We grow our own food.”


Emman finally looked up from his pictures. He was checking Tris’s face, in order to see whether she could possibly be serious.


Over the speaker, Paphlagon was saying: “the Adrakhonic Theorem is true here.

It’s apparently true in the four cosmi the Geometers came from. If

their ship had turned up in some other cosmos, the same as ours, but

devoid of sentient beings, would it be true there?”


“Not until the Geometers arrived to say it was true,” said Lodoghir.


Back in the kitchen, I intervened before

Emman could blurt out anything he might have to apologize for. “It must

be expensive for people like Emman and Ignetha Foral to keep tabs on

it,” I pointed out.


“Of course,” Emman said, “but even if you ignore that: there is a huge amount of mathic effort going into it. Thousands of avout working

night and day. Sæculars don’t like wasted effort. That goes double for

Sæculars who know a thing or two about management.”


Management was a

Fluccish word. Faces went blank around the kitchen. I stepped in to

translate: “Just because the Panjandrums know how to run cheeseburg

stands, they think they know how to run a Convox. Lots of people

putting in time with no results makes them nervous.”


“Oh, I see,” Tris said, uncertainly.


“How funny!” Karvall said, and went back to work.


Emman rolled his eyes.


“I admit I am no theor,” Ignetha Foral was

saying on the speaker, “but the more I hear of this, the less I

understand your position, Fraa Lodoghir. Three is a prime number. It is

prime today, was prime yesterday. A billion years ago, before there

were brains to think about it, it was prime. And if all the brains were

destroyed tomorrow, it would still be prime. Clearly its primeness has

nothing to do with our brains.”


“It has everything to do with our brains,”

Lodoghir insisted, “because we supply the definition of what it is to

be a prime number!”


“No theor who attends to these matters can

long escape the conclusion that the cnoöns exist independently of what

may or may not be going on in peoples’ brains at any given moment,”

Paphlagon said. “It is a simple application of the Steelyard. What is

the simplest way of explaining the fact that theors working

independently in different eras, different sub-disciplines, different

cosmi even, time and time again prove the same results—results that do

not contradict each other, even though reached by different

proof-chains—results, some of which can be turned into theories that

perfectly describe the behavior of the physical universe? The simplest

answer is that the cnoöns really exist, and are not of this causal

domain.”


Arsibalt’s bell jingled. I decided to go in

with him. We took down a huge rendering of the icosahedron that had

been pinned to a tapestry behind Paphlagon. Karvall and Tris came out

and helped take the tapestry down, exposing a wall of dark grey slate,

and a basket of chalk. The dialog had

turned to an exposition of Complex versus Simple Protism, and so

Arsibalt was called upon to draw on that slate the same sorts of

diagrams that Fraa Criscan had drawn in the dust of the road up Bly’s

Butte when he had explained this topic to me and Lio some weeks

earlier: the Freight Train, the Firing Squad, the Wick, and so on. I

drifted back and forth between there and the kitchen as the exposition

went on. Ignetha Foral had long been familiar with this material, but

it was new to several of the others. Zh’vaern, in particular, asked

several questions. Emman, for once, understood less of what was going

on than his doyn, and so as he and I worked on garnishes for the

desserts, I watched his face, and jumped in with little explanations

when his eyes went out of focus.


I returned to the messallan to clear plates

just as Paphlagon was explaining the Wick: “A fully generalized

Directed Acyclic Graph, with no distinction made any more between, on

the one hand, so-called theoric worlds, and, on the other, inhabited

ones such as Arbre, Quator, and the rest. For the first time, we have

arrows leading away from the Arbran Causal Domain towards other inhabited worlds.”


“Do you mean to suggest,” Lodoghir asked,

as though not quite believing his ears, “that Arbre might be the

Hylaean Theoric World of some other world that has people living on it?”


“Of any number of such worlds,” Paphlagon said, “which might themselves be the HTWs of still other worlds.”


“But how could we possibly verify such a hypothesis?” Lodoghir demanded.


“We could not,” Jad admitted, in his first utterance of the whole evening, “unless those worlds came to us.”


Lodoghir broke into rich laughter. “Fraa

Jad! I commend you! What would this messal be without your punch lines?

I don’t agree with a word of what you’re saying, but it does make for

an entertaining—because completely unpredictable—mealtime!”


I heard the first part of this in person,

the back half over the speaker in the kitchen, to which I had repaired

with an armload of plates. Emman was standing over the counter where we

had spread out the phototypes,

thumbing something into his jeejah. He ignored me, but he did glance up

and fix his gaze on nothing in particular as Ignetha Foral began to

speak: “The material is interesting, the explanation well carried off,

but I am at a loss, now. Yesterday evening we were told one story about

how Plurality of Worlds might be understood, and it had to do with Hemn

space and worldtracks.”


“Which I spent all day explaining to rooms full of bureaucrats,” Emman complained, with a theatrical yawn. “And now this!”


“Now,” Ignetha Foral was saying, “we are

hearing an altogether different account of it, which seems to have

nothing to do with the first. I cannot help but wonder whether

tomorrow’s Messal will bring another story, and the day after that, yet

another.”


This touched off a round of not very

interesting conversation in the messallan. The servitors pounced and

cleared. Arsibalt trudged to the kitchen and busied himself at the keg.

“I’d best fortify myself,” he explained, to no one in particular, “as I

am condemned to spend the remainder of the evening drawing light

bubbles.”


“What’s a light bubble?” Emman asked me quietly.


“A diagram that shows how information—cause-and-effect—moves across space and time.”


“Time, which doesn’t exist?” Emman said, repeating what had become a stock joke.


“Yeah. But it’s okay. Space doesn’t exist either,” I said. Emman threw me a sharp look, and decided I must be pulling his leg.


“So how’s your friend Lio doing?” Emman

asked, apropos of yesterday evening. It was noteworthy that he

remembered Lio’s name, since there had been no formal introduction, and

little conversation. In the Convox, people met one another in myriad

ways, though, so they might have crossed paths anywhere. I would not

have given this a second thought if not for the substance of what Lio

and I had talked about. Yesterday I’d felt easy around Emman. Today it

was different. People I cared about were being drawn into—in Ala’s

case, perhaps leading—a subversive movement. Lio

was trying to draw me into it even as Emman wanted to follow me to

Lucub. Could it be that the Sæcular Power had got wind of it, and that Emman’s

real mission was to ferret it out, using me as a way in? Not a very

nice way to think—but that was the way I was going to have to think

from now on.


I’d lain awake in my cell all night from a

combination of jet lag and fear of a Fourth Sack. Good thing that most

of the day had been a huge Plenary at which the story of last night’s

satellite gambit had been told, and phototypes and speelies exhibited.

The back pews of the Unarian nave were dark, and roomy enough that I

and scores of Lucub-weary avout had been able to stretch out

full-length and catch up on sleep. When it was over, someone had shaken

me awake. I had stood up, rubbed my eyes, looked across the Nave, and

caught sight of Ala—the first time I’d seen her since she had stepped

through the screen at Voco. She had been a hundred feet away, standing

in a circle of taller avout, mostly men, all older, but seemingly

holding her own in some kind of serious conversation. Some of the men

had been Sæculars in military uniforms. I had decided that now was not

the best time for me to bounce up to her and say hello.


“Hey! Raz! Raz! How

many fingers am I holding up?” Emman was demanding. Tris and Karvall

thought that was funny. “How’s Lio doing?” he repeated.


“Busy,” I said, “busy like all of us. He’s been working out quite a bit with the Ringing Vale avout.”


Emman shook his head. “Nice that they’re

getting exercise,” he said. “Love to know what joint locks and nerve

pinches are going to do against the World Burner.”


My gaze went to the stack of phototypes.

Emman slid a few out of the way and came up with a detail shot of a

detachable pod bracketed to one of the shock absorbers. It was a squat

grey metal egg, unmarked and undecorated. A structural lattice had been

built around it to provide mountings for antennae, thrusters, and

spherical tanks. Clearly the thing was meant to detach and move around

under its own power. Holding it to the shock absorber was a system of

brackets that reached through the lattice to engage the grey egg

directly. This detail had drawn notice from the Convox. Calculations

had been done on the size of those brackets. They were strangely

oversized. They only needed to be so large if the thing they were

holding—the grey egg—were massive. Unbelievably massive. This was no

ordinary pressure vessel. Perhaps it had extremely thick walls? But the

calculations made no sense if you assumed any sort of ordinary metal.

The only way to sort it—to account for the sheer number of protons and

neutrons in that thing—was to assume it was made from a metal so far

out at the end of the table of elements that its nuclei—in any

cosmos—were unstable. Fissionable.


This object was not just a tank. It was a

thermonuclear device several orders of magnitude larger than the

largest ever made on Arbre. The propellant tanks carried enough

reaction mass to move it to an orbit antipodal to that of the mother

ship. If it were detonated, it would shine enough radiant energy onto

Arbre to set fire to whatever half of the planet could see it.


“I don’t think that the Valers are really

expecting to swarm over the World Burner in space suits and subdue it

with fisticuffs,” I said. “Actually, what impressed me most about them

was their knowledge of military history and tactics.”


Emman held up his hands in surrender. “Don’t get me wrong. I would like to have them on my side.”


Again, I couldn’t help but see a hidden

meaning. But then a bell rang. Like animals in a lab, we had learned to

tell the bells apart, so we didn’t have to look to know who it was for.

Arsibalt took a final gulp from his flagon and hustled out.


Moyra’s voice was coming through on the

speaker: “Uthentine and Erasmas were Thousanders, so their treatise was

not copied out into the mathic world until the Second Millennial

Convox.” She was speaking of the two avout who had developed the notion

of Complex Protism. “Even then, it received scant notice until the

Twenty-seventh Century, when Fraa Clathrand, a Centenarian—later in his

life, a Millenarian—at Saunt Edhar, casting an eye over these diagrams,

remarked on the isomorphism between the causality-arrows in these

networks, and the flow of time.”


“Isomorphism meaning—?” asked Zh’vaern.


“Sameness of form. Time flows, or seems to flow, in one direction,” Paphlagon

said. “Events in the past can cause events in the present, but not vice

versa, and time never loops round in a circle. Fraa Clathrand pointed

out something noteworthy, which is that information about the

cnoöns—the givens that flow along all of these arrows—behaves as if the cnoöns were in the past.”


Again, Emman was staring off into space, drawing connections in his head. “Paphlagon is also a Hundreder from Edhar, right?”


“Yeah,” I said. “That’s probably how he got

interested in this topic—probably found Clathrand’s manuscripts lying

around somewhere.”


“Twenty-seventh Century,” Emman repeated.

“So, Clathrand’s works would’ve been distributed to the mathic world at

large at the Apert of 2700?”


I nodded.


“Just eight decades before the rise of…” But he cut himself short and flicked his eyes nervously in my direction.


“Before the Third Sack,” I corrected him.


In the messallan, Lodoghir had been

demanding an explanation. Moyra finally settled him down: “The entire

premise of Protism is that the cnoöns can change us, in the quite

literal and physical sense that they make our nerve tissue behave

differently. But the reverse is not true. Nothing that goes on in our

nerve tissue can make four into a prime number. All Clathrand was

saying was that things in our past can likewise affect us in the

present, but nothing we do in the present can affect the events of the

past. And so here it seems we might have a perfectly commonplace

explanation of something in these diagrams that might otherwise seem a

bit mystical—namely, the purity and changelessness of cnoöns.”


And here, just as Arsibalt had predicted,

the conversation turned into a tutorial about light bubbles, which was

an old scheme used by theors to keep track of how knowledge, and

cause-and-effect relationships, propagated from place to place over

time.


“Very well,” said Zh’vaern eventually,

“I’ll give you Clathrand’s Contention that any one of these DAGs—the

Strider, the Wick, and so on—can be isomorphic to some arrangement of

things in spacetime, influencing one another through propagation of

information at the speed of light. But what does Clathrand’s Contention get us? Is he really asserting that the cnoöns are in the past? That we are just, somehow, remembering them?”


“Perceiving—not

remembering,” Paphlagon corrected him. “A cosmographer who sees a star

blow up perceives everything about it in his present—though

intellectually he knows it happened thousands of years ago and the

givens are only now reaching the objective of his telescope.”


“Fine—but my question stands.”


It was unusual for Zh’vaern to become so

involved in the dialog. Emman and I confirmed as much by giving each

other quizzical looks. Perhaps the Matarrhite was actually getting

ready to say something?


“After the Apert of 2700, various theors

tried to do various things with Clathrand’s Contention,” Moyra said,

“each pursuing a different approach, depending on their understanding

of time and their general approach to metatheorics. For example—”


“It is too late in the evening for a recitation of examples,” said Ignetha Foral.


Which chilled the whole room, and seemed to

end the discussion, until Zh’vaern, in the ensuing silence, blurted

out: “Does this have anything to do with the Third Sack?”


A much longer silence followed.


It was one thing for me and Emman, standing

back in the kitchen, to mention this under our breath. Even then, I’d

felt excruciatingly awkward. But for Zh’vaern to raise the topic in a messal

attended (and under surveillance) by Sæculars, went far, far beyond

disastrously rude. To imply that the avout were in any way to blame for

the Third Sack—that was mere dinner-party-wrecking

rudeness. But to plant such notions in the minds of extremely powerful

Sæculars was a kind of recklessness verging on treason.


Fraa Jad finally broke the silence with a

chortling noise, so deep that it hardly came through on the sound

system. “Zh’vaern violates a taboo!” he observed.


“I see no reason why the topic should be off limits,” Zh’vaern said, not in the least embarrassed.




“How fared the Matarrhites in the Third Sack?” Jad asked.


“According to the iconography of the time,

we, as Deolaters, had nothing to do with Rhetors or Incanters and so

were considered—”


“Innocent of what we were guilty of?” said Asquin, who seemed to have chosen this moment to stop being nice.


“Anyway,” Zh’vaern said, “we evacuated to

an island, deep in the southern polar regions, and lived off the

available plants, birds, and insects. That is where we developed our

cuisine, which I know many of you find distasteful. We remember the

Third Sack with every bite of food we take.”


On the speaker I heard shifting,

throat-clearing, and the clink of utensils for the first time since

Zh’vaern had rolled his big stink-bomb into the middle of the table.

But then he ruined it all by the way he volleyed the question back at

Jad: “And your people? Edhar was one of the Inviolates, was it not?”

Everyone tensed up again. Clathrand had come from Edhar; Zh’vaern

seemed to have been developing a theory that Clathrand’s work had been

the basis for the exploits of the Incanters; now he was drawing

attention to the fact that Jad’s math had somehow managed to fend off the Sack for seven decades.


“Fascinating!” Emman exclaimed. “How could this get any worse?”


“I’m glad I’m not in there,” Tris said.


“Arsibalt must be dying,” I said. A small

noise in the back of the kitchen drew our notice: Orhan, Zh’vaern’s

servitor, had been standing there silently the whole time. It was easy

to forget he was there when you couldn’t see his face.


“You just got to the Convox, Fraa

Zh’vaern,” said Suur Asquin, “and so we’ll forgive you for not having

heard, yet, what has become an open secret in the last few weeks: that

the Three Inviolates are nuclear waste repositories, and as such were

probably protected by the Sæcular Power.”


If this was news to Zh’vaern, he didn’t seem to find it very remarkable.


“This is going nowhere,” announced Ignetha Foral. “Time to move

on. The purpose of the Convox—and of this messal—is to get things done.

Not to make friends or have polite conversations. The policy of what

you call the Sæcular Power toward the mathic world is what it is, and

shall not be altered by a faux pas over dessert. The World Burner, you must know, has quite focused people’s minds—at least where I work.”


“Where would you like the conversation to

go tomorrow, Madame Secretary?” asked Suur Asquin. I didn’t have to see

her face to know that the rebuke had really burned her.


“I want to know who—what—the

Geometers are, and where they came from,” said Ignetha Foral. “How they

got here. If we have to discuss polycosmic metatheorics all evening

long in order to answer those questions, so be it! But let us not speak

of anything more that is not relevant to the matter at hand.”


Rebirth: The historical

event dividing the Old Mathic Age from the Praxic Age, usually dated at

around-500, during which the gates of the maths were thrown open and

the avout dispersed into the Sæcular world. Characterized by a sudden

flowering of culture, theorical advancement, and exploration.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





I’d been flattering myself that Fraa Jad

might want to talk to me; he had, after all, sent me off on a mission

that had almost killed me three times. But unlike Moyra he was not the

type to hang around in the kitchen post-messal, rapping with the

servitors and washing dishes. By the time we were done cleaning up, he

was gone to wherever it was that the Convox stowed Thousanders when not

in use.


It was just another reason I wanted to

track down Lio. On the drive from Edhar to Bly’s Butte, Fraa Jad had

confided in both of us—or so we believed—by dropping the hint that he

was unnaturally old. If I were going to seek out Jad and take the

dialog to the next stage—whatever that might be—Lio should be there

with me.




The only problem was that I seemed to have

sprouted an entourage: Emman, Arsibalt, and Barb. If I led those three

into a meeting of the seditious conspiracy of which Lio was now part,

Arsibalt would black out and have to be dragged back to his cell, Barb

would blab it to the whole Convox, and Emman would report us to the

Panjandrums.


While mopping the kitchen floor, I hit on

the idea of leading them to Jesry’s Lucub instead. With luck, I could

shed some or all of them there.


As we were informed while trying to find

Jesry—in Emman’s case, by a jeejah message, and for the rest of us, by

coded bell-ringing from a carillon in the Precipice—Lucub had been

canceled. Everything, in fact, except Laboratorium and Messal had been

suspended until further notice, and the only reason we still had Messal

was that we had to eat in order to work. The rest of the time, we were

supposed to analyze the Geometers’ ship. The Sæculars had syntactic

systems for building and displaying three-dimensional models of

complicated objects, and so the goal, now, was to create such a model,

correct down to the last strut, hatch, and weld, of the starship

orbiting our planet—or at least of its outer shell, which was all of it

we could see. Emman was proficient in the use of this modeling system,

and so he was called away to toil in a Laboratorium with a lot of Ita.

As I understood it, he wasn’t actually doing any modeling work—just

getting the system to run. Those of us with theorical training had been

assigned to new Laboratoria whose purpose was to pore over the

phototypes from last night and integrate them into the model.


Some such tasks were more demanding than

others. The propulsion system, with jets of plasma interacting with the

pusher plate, was difficult even for a Jesry to understand. He’d been

assigned to penetrate the mysteries of the X-ray laser batteries. I was

on a team analyzing the large-scale dynamics of the entire ship. We

assumed that, inside of the icosahedron, some part of it rotated to

create pseudo-gravity. So it was a huge gyroscope. When it

maneuvered—as it had been forced to, last night—gyroscopic forces must

be induced between the spun and despun sections, and those must be managed by bearings of some description. How great were those forces? And how did

the thing maneuver, anyway? No jets—no rocket thrusters—had fired. No

propulsion charges had detonated. And yet the Hedron had spun around

with remarkable adroitness. The only reasonable explanation was that it

contained a set of momentum wheels—rapidly spinning gyroscopes—that

could be used to store and release angular momentum. Imagine a circular

railway built around the inner surface of the icosahedron, making a

complete circuit, and a freight train running around it in an eternal

loop. If the train applied its brakes, it would dump some of its

angular momentum into the icosahedron and force it to spin. By

releasing the brakes and hitting the throttle, it could reverse the

effect. As of last night, it was obvious that the Hedron contained half

a dozen such systems—two, running opposite directions, on each of three

axes. How big might they be, how much power could they exchange with

the ship? What might that imply about what they were made of? More

generally, by making precise measurements of how the Hedron had

maneuvered, what could we infer about the size, mass, and spin rate of

the inhabited section that was hidden inside?


Arsibalt was put on a team using

spectroscopy and other givens to figure out which parts of the ship had

been forged in which cosmi; or had it all been made in one cosmos? Barb

was assigned to make sense of a triangulated network of struts that had

been observed projecting from the despun part of the ship. And so on.

So six hours now went by during which I was completely absorbed in the

problem to which I, and a team of five other theors, had been assigned.

I didn’t have a moment to think about anything else until someone

pointed out that the sun was rising, and we received a message that

food was to be had on the great plaza that spread before the Mynster,

at the foot of the Precipice.


Walking there, I tried to force gyroscope

problems out of my head for a few minutes and consider the larger

picture. Ignetha Foral had made no secret of her impatience yesterday

evening. We’d emerged from the messal to find ourselves in a Convox

that had abruptly been reorganized—along Sæcular lines. All of us were

like praxics now, working on small bits of a problem whose entirety we

might never get to see. Was this a

permanent change? How would it affect the movement Lio had spoken of?

Was it a deliberate strategy by which the Panjandrums intended to snuff

that movement out? What Lio had told me had made me anxious, and I’d

been afraid of what I might learn if I ever found my way to Ala’s

Lucub. So I was relieved that it had been put into suspended animation.

The conspiracy could have made no progress last night. But another part

of me was concerned about how it might respond to being driven further

underground.


Breakfast was being served out of doors, at

long tables that the military had set up on the plaza. Convenient for

us—but weirdly and intrusively Sæcular in style, and another hint that

the Mathic hierarchs had lost or ceded power to the Panjandrums.


Emerging from the line with a hunk of

bread, butter, and honey, I saw a small woman just in the act of taking

a seat at an otherwise vacant table. I walked over quickly and took the

seat across from her. The table was between us, so there was no

awkwardness as to whether we should hug, kiss, or shake hands. She knew

I was there, but remained huddled over her plate for a long moment,

staring at her food, and, I thought, gathering her strength, before she

raised her eyes and gazed into mine.


“Is this seat taken?” asked an approaching

fraa in a complicated bolt, giving me the sort of ingratiating look I’d

learned to associate with those who wanted to suck up to Edharians.


“Bugger off!” I said. He did.


“I sent you a couple of letters,” I said. “Don’t know if you got them.”


“Osa handed one to me,” she said. “I didn’t open it until after what happened with Orolo.”


“Why not?” I asked, trying to make my voice gentle. “I know about Jesry—”


The big eyes closed in pain—no—in

exasperation, and she shook her head. “Forget about that. It’s just

that too much else has been going on. I’ve not wanted to get

distracted.” She leaned back against her folding chair, heaved a sigh.

“After the Visitation of Orithena, I thought maybe I had better open

up. Zoom out, as the extras say. I read your letter. I think—” Her brow

folded. “I don’t know what I think.

It’s like I’ve had three different lifetimes. Before Voco. Between Voco

and Orolo’s death. And since then. And your letter—which was a

respectable piece of work, don’t get me wrong—was written to an Ala two

lifetimes gone.”


“I think that we could all tell similar stories,” I pointed out.


She shrugged, nodded, started to eat.


“Well,” I tried, “tell me about your current life, then.”


She looked at me, a little too long for comfort. “Lio told me that you spoke.”


“Yes.”


She finally broke eye contact, let her gaze

wander over the breakfast tables, slowly filling up with weary fraas

and suurs, and out over the lawns and towers of Tredegarh. “They

brought me here to organize people. So that’s what I’ve been doing.”


“But not in the way they wanted?”


She shook her head quickly. “It’s more

complicated than that, Erasmas.” It killed me to hear her speak my

name. “Turns out that once you get an organization started, it takes on

a life—lives by a logic—of its own. I suppose if I’d ever done this before, I’d have known it would be that way—would have planned for it.”


“Well—don’t beat yourself up.”


“I’m not beating myself up. That’s you putting emotions on me. Like clothes on a doll.”


The old feeling—a curious mix of irritation, love, and desire to feel more of it—came over me.


“See, they knew from the start that the Convox was vulnerable. An obvious target, if the pact opened hostilities.”


“The pact?”


“We call it PAQD now for Pangee-Antarct-Quator-Diasp. Less anthropomorphic than Geometers.”


But they are anthropomorphic, I was tempted to say. But I stifled it.


“I know,” she said, eyeing me, “they are anthropomorphic. Never mind. We call them the PAQD.”


“Well, I had been wondering,” I said. “Seems risky to put all the smart people in one square mile.”


“Yeah, but what they have drilled into me, over and over, is that it’s all about risk. The question is, what are the benefits that might be had in exchange for a given risk?”


To me this sounded like the kind of

organizational bulshytt that was always being spouted by pompous extras

who hadn’t bothered to define their terms. But it seemed weirdly

important to Ala that I listen, understand, and agree. She even reached

out and put her hand on mine for a few moments, which focused my

attention. So I went through a little pantomime of processing what

she’d said and agreeing to it. “The benefit, here, being that maybe the

Convox could do something halfway useful before it got blown up?” I

asked.


That seemed to pass muster, so she plowed

ahead. “I was assigned to risk mitigation, which is bulshytt meaning

that if the PAQD does anything scary, this Convox is going to scatter

like a bunch of flies when they see the flyswatter. And instead of

scattering randomly, we are going to do it in a systematic, planned

way—the Antiswarm, the Ita have been calling it—and we are going to

stay on the Reticulum so that we can continue the essential functions

of the Convox even as we are scurrying all over the place.”


“Did you start on this right away? Just after you got Evoked?”


“Yes.”


“So you knew from the outset that there was going to be a Convox.”


She shook her head. “I knew they—we—were

laying plans for one. I didn’t know for sure it would actually

happen—or who would be called. When it started to materialize, these

plans that I’d been making came into sharper focus, took on depth. And

then it became obvious to me—was unavoidable.”


“What became obvious?”


“What did Fraa Corlandin teach us of the Rebirth?”


I shrugged. “You studied harder than I. The

end of the Old Mathic Age. The gates of the old maths flung open—torn

off their hinges, in some cases. The avout dispersed into the

Sæculum—okay, I think I see where this is going now…”


“What the Sæcular Power had asked me to lay plans for—without understanding—was

in many ways indistinguishable from a second Rebirth,” Ala said.

“Because, Raz, not only Tredegarh would open its gates. If it comes to

war with the PAQD, all of the concents will have to disperse. The avout

will move among—mingle with—blend into the general population. Yet

we’ll still be talking to one another over the Reticulum. Which means—”


“Ita,” I said.


She nodded, and smiled, warming to the

task, to the picture she was building. “Each cell of wandering avout

has to include some Ita. And it won’t be possible to maintain avout/Ita

segregation any more. The Antiswarm will have tasks to carry out—not

the kinds of things avout have traditionally done. Work of immediate

Sæcular relevance.”


“A second Praxic Age,” I said.


“Exactly!” She’d become enthusiastic. I

felt the excitement too. But I drew back from it, recollecting that it

could only come to pass if we got into out-and-out war. She sensed this

too, and clamped her face down into the kind of expression I imagined

she wore when sitting in council with high military leaders. “It

started,” she said, in a much lower voice—and by it

I knew she meant the thing Lio had told me of—“it started in meetings

with cell leaders. See, the cells—the groups we’re going to break into,

if we trigger the Antiswarm—each has a leader. I’ve been meeting with

those leaders, giving them their evacuation plans, familiarizing them

with who’s in their cells.”


“So that’s—”


“Preordained. Yes. Everyone in the Convox has already been assigned to a cell.”


“But I haven’t—”


“You haven’t been informed,” Ala said. “No one has—except for the cell leaders.”


“You didn’t want to upset people—distract them—there was no point in letting them know,” I guessed.


“Which is about to change,” she said, and looked around as if expecting it to change now. And indeed I noticed that several more military drummons had pulled onto the grounds and parked at one end

of this open-air Refectory. Soldiers were setting up a sound system.

“That’s why we’re all eating together.” She snorted. “That’s why I’m

eating at all. First meal worthy of the name I’ve had in three days. Now I get to relax for a little—let things play out.”


“What’s going to happen?”


“Everyone’s going to receive a pack, and instructions.”


“It can’t be random that we’re doing this out of doors under a clear sky,” I observed.


“Now you’re thinking like Lio,” she said

approvingly, through a bite of bread. She swallowed and went on, “This

is a deterrence strategy. The PAQD will see what we’re up to and, it is

hoped, guess that we’re making preparations to disperse. And if they

know that we are ready to disperse at a moment’s notice, they’ll have

less incentive to attack Tredegarh.”


“Makes sense,” I said. “I guess I’ll have

many more questions about that in a minute. But you were saying

something about the meetings with the cell leaders—?”


“Yes. You know how it is with avout.

Nothing gets taken at face value. Everything is peeled back. Dialoged.

I was meeting with these people in small groups—half a dozen cell

leaders at a time. Explaining their powers and responsibilities,

role-playing different scenarios. And it seemed as though every group

had one or two who wanted to take it further than the others. To put it

in bigger historical perspective, draw comparisons to the Rebirth, and

so on. The thing that Lio told you about was an outgrowth of that. Some

of these people—I simply couldn’t answer all of their questions in the

time allotted. So I put their names on a list and told them, ‘Later

we’ll have a follow-up meeting to discuss your concerns, but it’ll have

to be a Lucub because I have no time otherwise.’ And the timing just

happened—and you can consider this lucky or unlucky, as you like—to

coincide with the Visitation of Orithena.”


We were distracted now, as the sound system

came alive. A hierarch asked for “the following persons” to come to the

front—to approach the trucks, where soldiers were breaking open

pallet-loads of military rucksacks, prepacked and bulging. The hierarch

had obviously never spoken into a sound amplification device before,

but soon enough she got the hang of

it and began to call out the names of fraas and suurs. Slowly,

uncertainly at first, those who’d been called began to get up from

their seats and move up the lanes between tables. Conversation paused

for a little while, then resumed in an altogether different tone, as

people began to exclaim about it, and to speculate.


“Okay,” I said, “so here you are in a

Lucub, in a chalk hall somewhere with all of the pickiest, most

obstreperous cell leaders—”


“Who are wonderful, by the way!” Ala put in.


“I can imagine,” I said. “But they are all

wanting to go deep on these topics—at the same moment you are getting

news of that poor woman from Antarct who sacrificed her life—”


“And of what Orolo did for her,” she

reminded me. And here she had to stop talking for a few moments,

because grief had overtaken her in an unwary moment. We watched, or

pretended to watch, avout coming back to their seats, each with a

rucksack slung over one shoulder and a sort of badge or flasher hanging

around the neck.


“Anyway,” she said, and paused to clear her

throat, which had gone husky. “It was the strangest thing I’d ever

seen. I’d expected we’d talk until dawn, and never arrive at a

consensus. But it was the opposite of that. We walked in with a consensus. Everyone just knew

that we had to make contact with whatever faction had sent that woman

down. And that even if the Sæculars wouldn’t allow such a thing, well,

once we had turned into the Antiswarm—”


“What could they do to stop us?”


“Exactly.”


“Lio said something about using the guidestar lasers on the big telescopes to send signals?”


“Yes. It’s being talked about. Some might even be doing it for all I know.”


“Whose idea was that?”


She balked.


“Don’t get me wrong!” I assured her. “It’s a brilliant idea.”


“It was Orolo’s idea.”


“But you couldn’t have talked to him—!”


“Orolo actually did it,” Ala said, reluctantly, watching me closely to see how I’d react. “From Edhar. Last year. One of Sammann’s colleagues went up to the M & M and found the evidence.”


“Evidence?”


“Orolo had programmed the guidestar laser on the M & M to sweep out an analemma in the sky.”


A week or a month ago, I’d have denied it

could possibly be true. But not now. “So Lodoghir was right,” I sighed.

“What he accused Orolo of, at the Plenary, was dead on.”


“Either that,” Ala said, “or he changed the past.”


I didn’t laugh.


She continued, “You should know, too, that Lodoghir is one of this group I’ve been telling you about.”


“Fraa Erasmas of Edhar,” called the voice on the speaker.


“Well,” I said, “I guess I’d better go find out which cell you put me in.”


She shook her head. “It’s not like that. You won’t know that until it’s time.”


“How can we meet up with our cell if we don’t know who to look for?”


“If it happens—if the order goes out—your

badge will come alive, and tell you where to go. When you get there,”

Ala said, “the other people you will see, are the rest of your cell.”


I shrugged. “Seems sensible enough.”

Because she had suddenly become somber, and I couldn’t guess why. She

lunged across the table and grabbed my hand. “Look at me,” she said.

“Look at me.”


When I looked at her I saw tears in her

eyes, and a look on her face unlike any I’d ever seen before. Perhaps

it was the same way my face had looked when I had gazed down out of the

open door of the aerocraft and recognized Orolo. She was telling me

something with that face that she did not have power to put in words.

“When you come back to this table, I’ll be gone,” she said. “If I don’t

see you again before it happens”—and I sensed this was a certainty in

her mind—“you have to know I made a terrible decision.”


“Well, we all do, Ala! I should tell you about some of my recent terrible decisions!”




But she was already shaking me off, willing me to understand her words.


“Isn’t there any way to change your mind? Fix it? Make amends?” I asked.


“No! I mean, I made a terrible decision in the way that Orolo made a terrible decision before the gates of Orithena.”


It took me a few moments to see it. “Terrible,” I said at last, “but right.”


Then the tears came so hard she had to

close her eyes and turn her back on me. She let go my hand and began to

totter away, shoulders hunched as if she’d just been stabbed in the

back. She seemed the smallest person in the Convox. Every instinct told

me to run after her, put an arm around her bony shoulders. But I knew

she’d break a chair over my head.


I walked up to the truck and got my

rucksack and my badge: a rectangular slab, like a small photomnemonic

tablet that had been blanked.


Then I went back to work estimating the inertia tensor of the Geometers’ ship.





I slept most of the afternoon and woke up

feeling terrible. Just when my body had adjusted to local time, I had

messed it up by keeping odd hours.


I went early to Avrachon’s Dowment. This

evening’s recipe called for a lot of peeling and chopping, so I brought

a knife and cutting board around to the front veranda and worked there,

partly to enjoy the last of the sunlight, but also partly in hopes I

might intercept Fraa Jad on his way to messal. Avrachon’s Dowment was a

big stone house, not quite so fortress-like as some Mathic structures I

could name, with balconies, cupolas and bow windows that made me wish I

could be a member of it, just so that I could do my daily work in such

charming and picturesque surrounds. As if the architect’s sole

objective had been to ignite envy in the hearts of avout, so that

they’d scheme and maneuver to get into the place. I was fortunate that

such an exceptional chain of events had made it possible for

me even to sit on its veranda for an hour peeling vegetables. My

conversation with Ala had reminded me that I had better take advantage

of the opportunity while I could. The Dowment was situated on a knoll,

so I had a good view over open lawns that rambled among other dowments

and chapterhouses. Groups of avout came and went, some talking

excitedly, some silent, hunched over, exhausted. Fraas and suurs were

strewn at random over the grounds, wrapped in their bolts, pillowed on

their spheres, sleeping. To see so many, clothed in such varied styles,

reminded me again of the diversity of the mathic world—a thing I’d

never been aware of, until I’d come here—and cast Ala’s talk of a

Second Rebirth in a different light. The idea of tearing the gates off

the hinges was thrilling in a way, simply because it represented such a

big change. But would it mean the end of all that the avout had built,

in 3700 years? Would people in the future look with awe at empty

Mynsters and think that we must have been crazy to walk away from such

places?


I wondered who else might be assigned to my

cell, and what tasks we might be assigned by those in charge of the

Antiswarm. A reasonable guess was that I’d simply be with my new

Laboratorium group, and that we’d go on doing the same sorts of things.

Living in rooms in a casino in some random city, toiling over diagrams

of the ship, eating Sæcular food brought up by illiterate servants in

uniforms. The group included two impressive theors, one from Baritoe

and one from a concent on the Sea of Seas. The others were tedious

company and I didn’t especially relish the idea of being sent on the

road with them.


Occasionally I would glimpse one of the

Ringing Vale contingent and my heart would beat a little faster as I

imagined what it would be like to be in a cell with them! Rank fantasy,

of course—I would be worse than useless in such company—but fun to

daydream about. No telling what such a cell would be ordered to do. But

it would certainly be more interesting than guessing inertia tensors.

Probably something incredibly dangerous. So perhaps it was for the best

that they were out of my league.


Or—in a similar yet very different

vein—what would Fraa Jad’s cell look like, and what sorts of tasks

would they be assigned? How privileged

I’d been, in retrospect, to have traveled in a Thousander’s company for

a couple of days! As far as I’d been able to make out, he was the only

Millenarian in the Convox.


I’d settle for being in a cell with at

least one of the old clock-winding team from Edhar. Yet I doubted that

this would be the case. Ala was quite obviously troubled by some aspect

of the decisions she had made regarding cell assignments, and though I

could not know just what was eating at her so, it did serve as a

warning that I should not lull myself into imagining a happy time on

the road with old friends. The respect—I was tempted to call it

awe—with which we Edharians were viewed by many at the Convox made it

unlikely that several of us would be concentrated in one cell. They

would spread us out among as many cells as possible. We would be

leaders, and lonely in the same way Ala was.


Fraa Jad approached from the direction of

the Precipice. I wondered if they had given him a billet up on top, in

the Thousanders’ math. If so, he must be spending a lot of time

negotiating stairs. He recognized me from a distance and strolled right

up.


“I found Orolo,” I said, though of course Jad already knew this. He nodded.


“It is unfortunate—what happened,” he said.

“Orolo would have passed through the Labyrinths in due time, and become

my fraa on the Crag, and it would have been good to work by his side,

drink his wine, share his thoughts.”


“His wine was terrible,” I said.


“Share his thoughts, then.”


“He seemed to understand quite a lot,” I said. And I wanted to ask how—had

he deciphered coded messages in the Thousanders’ chants? But I didn’t

want to make a fool of myself. “He thinks—he thought—that you have

developed a praxis. I can’t help but imagine that this accounts for

your great age.”


“The destructive effects of radiation on

living systems are traceable to interactions between individual

particles—photons, neutrons—and molecules in the affected organism,” he

pointed out.


“Quantum events,” I said.


“Yes, and so a cell that has just undergone a mutation, and one that has not, lie on Narratives that are separated by only a single forking in Hemn space.”


“Aging,” I said, “is due to transcription errors in the sequences of dividing cells—which are also quantum-level events—”


“Yes. It is not difficult to see how a

plausible and internally consistent mythology could arise, according to

which nuclear waste handlers invented a praxis to mend radiation

damage, and later extended it to mitigate the effects of aging and so

on.”


And so on seemed to

cover an awful lot of possibilities, but I thought better of pursuing

this. “You’re aware,” I said, “of how explosive that mythology is, if

it gains currency in the Sæculum?”


He shrugged. The Sæculum was none of his

concern. But the Convox was a different matter. “Some here want badly

to see that mythology promoted to fact. It would give them comfort.”


“Zh’vaern was asking some weird questions

about it,” I said, and nodded at a procession of Matarrhites wafting

across the lawn some distance away.


It was a gambit. I hoped to bond with Fraa

Jad by giving him an opening to agree with me that those people were

weird and obnoxious. But he slid around it. “There is more to be

learned from them than from any others at the Convox.”


“Really?”


“It would be impossible to pay too much attention to the cloaked ones.”


Two Matarrhites detached themselves from

the procession and set a course for Avrachon’s Dowment. I watched

Zh’vaern and Orhan come towards us for a few moments, wondering what

Jad saw in them, then turned back to the Thousander. But he had slipped

inside.


Zh’vaern and Orhan approached silently and entered the Dowment after greeting me, rather stiffly, on the veranda.


Arsibalt and Barb were a hundred feet behind them.


“Results?” I demanded.


“A piece of the PAQD ship is missing!” Barb announced.


“That structure you’ve been studying—”


“It’s where the missing piece used to be attached!”




“What do you think it was?”


“The inter-cosmic transport drive,

obviously!” Barb scoffed. “They didn’t want us to see it, because it’s

top secret! So they parked it farther out in the solar system.”


“How about your group, Arsibalt?”


“That ship is patched together from

subassemblies built in all four of the PAQD cosmi,” Arsibalt announced.

“It is like an archaeological dig. The oldest part is from Pangee. Very

little of it remains. There are only a very few odds and ends from

Diasp. Most of the ship is made of material from the Antarct and Quator

cosmi—of the two, we are fairly certain that Quator was visited more

recently.”


“Good stuff!” I said.


“How about you—what results have been produced by your group, Raz?” Barb asked.


I was collecting my things, getting ready to go inside. Arsibalt shuffled over to help me. “It sloshed,” I said.


“Sloshed?”


“When the Hedron made its spin move the

other evening, the rotation wasn’t steady. It jiggled a little. We

conclude that the spun part contains a large mass of standing water,

and when you hit it with a sudden rotation, the water sloshes.” And I

went off into a long riff about the higher harmonics of the sloshing,

and what it all meant. Barb lost interest and went inside.


“What were you discussing with Fraa Jad?” Arsibalt asked.


I didn’t feel comfortable divulging the

part of the talk that had been about praxis, so I

answered—truthfully—“The Matarrhites. We’re supposed to keep an eye on

them—learn from them.”


“Do you suppose he wants us to spy on them?” Arsibalt asked, fascinated. This gave me the idea that Arsibalt wanted, for some reason, to spy on them, and was looking for Jad’s blessing.


“He said it would be impossible to pay too much attention to the cloaked ones.”


“Is that how he phrased it!?”


“Pretty near.”


“He said ‘cloaked ones,’ rather than ‘Matarrhites’?”


“Yes.”




“They’re not Matarrhites at all!” Arsibalt

said in an excited whisper. “I’ll take that if you don’t mind,” I said.

For in his eagerness to help, he had reached for my cutting board. I

confiscated the knife.


“You think I’m so profoundly insane that I can’t be trusted with sharp objects!” Arsibalt said, crestfallen.


“Arsibalt! If they aren’t Matarrhites, what are they? Panjandrums in disguise?”


He looked as if he were about to spill a great secret, but then Suur Tris came around, and he clammed up.


“I’ll take your hypothesis under

advisement,” I said, “and weigh it on the Steelyard against the

alternative—which is that the Matarrhites are Matarrhites.”


Syntactic Faculties:

Factions within the mathic world, in the years following the

Reconstitution, generally claiming descent from Proc. So named because

they believed that language, theorics, etc., were essentially games

played with symbols devoid of semantic content. The idea is traceable

to the ancient Sphenics, who were frequent opponents of Thelenes and

Protas on the Periklyne.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Fraa Lodoghir said, “We are on the third

messal already. The first seemed to be about worldtracks in Hemn space

as a way of understanding the physical universe. Which was

unobjectionable to me, until it turned out to be a stalking horse for

the Hylaean Theoric World. The second was a trip to the circus—except

that instead of gawking at contortionists, jugglers, and

prestidigitators, we marveled at the intellectual backflips,

sword-swallowing, and misdirection in which devotees of the HTW must

engage if they are not to be Thrown Back as a religious cult. That’s

quite all right, it was good to get it out of our systems, and I

commend the Edharian plurality here for having, as it were, laid their

cards on the messal. Ha. But what may

we now say about the matter at hand—which is, in case anyone has

forgotten, the PAQD, their capabilities and intentions?”


“Why do they look like us, for one thing?”

asked Suur Asquin. “That is the question that my mind returns to over

and over again.”


“Thank you, Suur Asquin!” I exclaimed back

in the kitchen. I was scattering bread crumbs over the top of a

casserole. “I can’t believe how little attention has been paid to that

minor detail.”


“People simply don’t know what to make of

it—have no idea where to begin,” said Suur Tris. And as if to confirm

this, a welter of voices was coming through on the speaker. I hauled

the oven door open and thrust the casserole in, arranging it on the

center of a hand-forged iron rack. Fraa Lodoghir was going on about

parallel evolution: how, on Arbre, physically similar but totally

unrelated species had evolved to fill similar niches on different

continents.


“Your point is well taken, Fraa Lodoghir,” said Zh’vaern, “but I believe that the similarities are too

close to be explained by parallel evolution. Why do the Geometers have

five fingers, one of which is an opposable thumb? Why not seven fingers

and two thumbs?”


“Do you have some knowledge of the PAQD

that has been withheld from the rest of us?” demanded Lodoghir. “What

you say is true of the one specimen we have seen—the Antarct woman. The other three Geometer species might have seven fingers, for all we know.”


“Of course, you are correct,” Zh’vaern

said. “But the Antarct-Arbre correspondence, taken alone, seems too

great to be accounted for by parallel evolution.”


The point was argued all the way through

the soup course. We servitors made our rounds, staggering and sidling

through a messallan congested with rucksacks. For we had all been told

that one should never let one’s rucksack out of sight—so that, even if

the dispersal order were accompanied by a power blackout, or some sort

of disaster that filled the air with dust and smoke, one would be able

to find it by touch. Since we servitors couldn’t very well carry them

up and down the serving corridor, we’d bent the rules by leaving ours

lined up along the corridor wall. The doyns kept theirs behind the

chairs in the messallan, and flipped their badges back over their

shoulders to eat.


Ignetha Foral put a stop to the

thumb-and-finger discourse with a glance at Suur Asquin, who silenced

the room with another of her magisterial throat-clearings. “In the

absence of further givens, the parallel-evolution hypothesis cannot be

rationally evaluated.”


“I agree,” said Lodoghir in a wistful tone.


“The alternative hypothesis seems to be

some sort of leakage of information through the Wick, if I have been

taking up Fraa Paphlagon’s argument?”


Fraa Paphlagon looked a bit uneasy. “The word leakage

makes it sound like a malfunction. It is nothing of the kind—just

normal flow or, if you will, percolation along the world-DAG.”


“This percolation you speak of: until now,

I fancied it was all theors seeing timeless truths about isosceles

triangles,” Lodoghir said. “I oughtn’t to be surprised by the

ever-escalating grandiosity of these claims, but aren’t you now asking

us to believe something even more colossal? Correct me if I’m wrong:

but did you just try to link percolation of information through the

Wick to biological evolution?”


An awkard pause.


“You do believe in evolution, don’t you?” Lodoghir continued.


“Yes, though it might have sounded strange

to someone like Protas, who had frankly mystical pagan views about the

HTW and so on,” said Paphlagon, “but any modern version of Protism must

be reconcilable with long-established theories, not only of

cosmography, but of evolution. However, I disagree with the polemical part of your statement, Fraa Lodoghir. It is not a larger claim, but a smaller, more reasonable one.”


“Oh, I’m sorry! I thought that when you claimed more, it was a larger claim?”


“I am only claiming what is reasonable. That—as you yourself pointed out during your Plenary with Fraa Erasmas—tends to be the smallest, in the sense of least complicated, claim. What I claim is that information moves through the Wick in a manner that is somehow analogous to how it moves from past to present. As it moves, one of the things that it does is to excite physically measurable changes in nerve tissue…”


“That,” Suur Asquin said, just to clarify, “being the part where we see truths about cnoöns.”


“Yes,” said Paphlagon, “whence we get the HTW and the theorical Protism that Fraa Lodoghir loves so well. But nerve tissue is just tissue, it is just matter obeying natural law. It is not magical or spiritual, no matter what you might think of my opinions on this.”


“I am so relieved to hear you say so!” said Lodoghir. “I’ll have you in the Procian camp by the time Fraa Erasmas brings me my dessert!”


Paphlagon held his tongue for a moment,

dodging laughter, then went on. “I can’t believe all of what I just

said without positing some non-mystical, theorically understandable

mechanism by which the ‘more Hylaean’ worlds can cause physical changes

in the ‘less Hylaean’ worlds that lie ‘downstream’ of them in the Wick.

And I see no prima facie reason to assume that all

those interactions have to do with isosceles triangles and that the

only matter in the whole cosmos that is ever affected just happens to

be nerve tissue in the brains of theors! Now that would be an ambitious claim, and a rather strange one!”


“We agree on something!” said Lodoghir.


“A much more economical claim, in the Gardan’s Steelyard sense, is that the mechanism—whatever it is—acts on any

matter whether or not that matter is part of a living organism—or a

theor! It’s just that there is an observational bias at work.”


A couple of heads nodded.


“Observational bias?” Zh’vaern asked.


Suur Asquin turned to him and said,

“Starlight falls on Arbre all the time—even at high noon—but we would

never know of the stars’ existence if we slept all night.”


“Yes,” Paphlagon said, “and just as the

cosmographer can only see stars in a dark sky, we can only observe the

Hylaean Flow when it manifests itself as perceptions of cnoöns in our

conscious minds. Like starlight at noon, it is always present, always working, but only

noticed and identified as something remarkable in the context of pure theorics.”


“Er, since you Edharians are so adept at

burying assertions in your speeches, let me clarify something,”

Lodoghir said. “Did you just stake a claim that the Hylaean Flow is

responsible for parallel evolution of Arbrans and Geometers?”


“Yes,” said Paphlagon. “How’s that for a speech?”


“Much more concise, thank you,” Lodoghir said. “But you still believe in evolution!”


“Yes.”


“Well, in that case, you must be saying

that the Hylaean Flow has an effect on survival—or at least on the

ability of specific organisms to propagate their sequences,” Lodoghir

said. “Because that’s how we, and the Antarctans, ended up with five

fingers, two nostrils, and all the rest.”


“Fraa Lodoghir, you are doing my work for me!”


“Someone has to do it. Fraa Paphlagon, what possible scenario could justify all of that?”


“I don’t know.”


“You don’t know?”


“The Visitation of Orithena was only ten

days ago. Givens are still pouring in. You, Fraa Lodoghir, are now on

the forefront of research into the next generation of Protism.”


“I can’t tell you how uneasy that makes me feel—really, I’d rather eat what Fraa Zh’vaern is eating. What is that?”


“At last Fraa Lodoghir asks a good

question,” said Arsibalt. Emman had yanked us; a boilover demanded our

attention. We both knew exactly what Lodoghir was talking about. It was

sitting on the stove, and we had been nervously edging around it all

evening long. Stewed hair with cubes of packing material and shards of exoskeleton,

or something. The hair seemed to be a vegetable. But what was really

troubling Lodoghir and the others at the messal was the explosive

crunching of the exoskeletons, or whatever they might be, between

Zh’vaern’s molars. We could actually hear these noises over the speaker.


Arsibalt looked around, verifying that Emman and I were the only

ones in the kitchen. “As a member of an ascetic, cloistered,

contemplative order myself,” he said, “I probably ought not level such

criticisms against the poor Matarrhites—”


“Oh, go ahead!” Emman said. He was gamely trying to repair the ruptured casserole.


“All right, since you insist!” said

Arsibalt. Protecting his hand with a fold of his bolt, he lifted the

lid from the stewpot to divulge a bubbling morass of expired weeds,

laced with dangerous-looking carapaces. “I think it’s taking things

just a little too far to selectively breed, over a period of millennia,

foodstuffs that are offensive to all non-Matarrhites.”


“I’ll bet it’s one of those

not-as-bad-as-it-looks,-sounds,-feels, and-smells type of things,” I

said, holding my breath and approaching the pot.


“How much?”


“I beg your pardon?”


“How much do you bet?”


“Are you suggesting we try it?”


“I’m suggesting you try it.”


“Why only me?”


“Because you proposed the wager, and you are the theor.”


“What does that make you?”


“A scholar.”


“So you’ll take notes of my symptoms? Design my stained glass window, after I’m dead?”


“Yes, we’ll place it right there,” Arsibalt said, pointing to a smoke-hole in the wall, about the size of my hand.


Emman had drifted closer. Karvall and Tris had come in from the messallan and were standing very close to each other, watching.


Being watched by females changed

everything. “What is the wager?” I said. “I am back down to three

possessions.” And it was one of the oldest rules in the mathic world

that we weren’t allowed to wager the bolt, chord, and sphere.


“Winner doesn’t have to clean up tonight,” Arsibalt proposed.


“Done,” I said. This was easy; all I had to

do, to win the bet, was to claim it wasn’t that bad, and not throw

up—at least, not in front of Arsibalt.

And even if I lost, I got all kinds of childish satisfaction out of

Tris’s and Karvall’s exquisitely horrified reactions as I fished

something out of the pulp and put it in my mouth. It was a cube of (I

guessed) some curd-like, fermented substance, tangled up in wilted

fronds, flecked with a few crunchy shards. While I was pursuing the

latter with my tongue, the fronds slipped halfway down my gullet and

made me swallow convulsively. They dragged the cube down with them,

like seaweed killing a swimmer. I had to do a bit of coughing and

gagging to get the vegetable matter back up into my mouth where I could

chew it decently. This added some drama to the proceedings and made it

that much more entertaining to the others. I held up a hand, signaling

that all was well, and took my time chewing what was left—didn’t want

my innards slashed up by the sharp bits. Finally it all went down in a

greasy, fibrous, thorny tangle. I put the odds at 60–40 that it

wouldn’t be coming back up. “You know,” I claimed, “it’s not that much

worse than just standing over the pot and wondering.”


“What’s it taste like?” Tris asked.


“Ever put your tongue across battery terminals?”


“No, I’ve never even seen a battery.”


“Mmm.”


“Now, as to the wager—” Arsibalt said uncertainly.


“Yes,” I said, “good luck with cleanup. Put your back into it when you are taking care of those casseroles, will you?”


Before Arsibalt could argue the point, his

bell rang. Tris and Karvall were laughing at the look on his face as he

slunk out of the kitchen.


In the messallan, the doyns had been asking

Zh’vaern—much more circumspectly—about his food, but now Fraa Paphlagon

took the bit in his teeth again: “Like cosmographers who sleep at day

and work at night because that is when the stars can be seen, we are

going to have to toil in the laboratory of consciousness, which is the

only setting we know of where the effects of the Hylaean Flow are

observable.” And then he muttered something to Arsibalt. Then he added:

“Though instead of one single HTW we should now speak of the Wick

instead; the Flow percolates through a complex network of cosmi ‘more

theoric than’ or ‘prior to’ ours.”




Arsibalt returned to the kitchen. “Paphlagon doesn’t want me. He wants you.”


“Why would he want me?” I asked.


“I can’t be sure,” Arsibalt said, “but I

was chatting with him yesterday and mentioned some of the conversations

you had with Orolo.”


“Oh. Thanks a lot!”


“So pick the shrapnel out of your teeth and get in there!”


And that was how I came to spend the entire

main course recounting my two Ecba dialogs with Orolo: the first about

how, according to him, consciousness was all about the the rapid and

fluent creation of counterfactual worlds inside the brain, and the

second in which he argued that this was not merely possible, not merely

plausible, but in fact easy, if one thought of

consciousness as spanning an ensemble of slightly different versions of

the brain, each keeping track of a slightly different cosmos. Paphlagon

ended up saying it better: “If Hemn space is the landscape, and one

cosmos is a single geometric point in it, then a given consciousness is

a spot of light moving, like a searchlight beam, over that

landscape—brightly illuminating a set of points—of cosmi—that are close

together, with a penumbra that rapidly feathers away to darkness at the

edges. In the bright center of the beam, crosstalk occurs among many

variants of the brain. Fewer contributions come in from the half-lit

periphery, and none from the shadows beyond.”


I gratefully stepped back against the wall, trying to fade into some shadows myself.


“I am indebted to Fraa Erasmas for allowing

us to sit and eat, when so often we must interrupt our comestion with

actual talk,” Lodoghir finally said. “Perhaps we ought to trade places

and allow the servitors to sit and eat in silence while they are

lectured by doyns!”


Barb cackled. He had lately been showing

more and more relish for Lodoghir’s wit, furnishing me with the

disturbing insight that perhaps Lodoghir was just a Barb who had become

old. But after a moment’s reflection I rejected such a miserable idea.


Lodoghir continued, “I’d like you to know that I fully took up Paphlagon’s

earlier point about using consciousness as the laboratory for observing

the so-called Hylaean Flow. But is this the best we can do? It is

nothing more than a regurgitation of Evenedrician datonomy in its most

primitive form!”


“I spent two years at Baritoe writing a

treatise on Evenedrician datonomy,” mentioned Ignetha Foral, sounding

more amused than angry.


I got out of the room, which seemed more

politic than laughing out loud. Back in the kitchen, I poured myself a

drink and braced my arms on a counter, taking a load off my feet.


“Are you all right?” Karvall asked. She and I were the only servitors in the room.


“Just tired—that took a lot out of me.”


“Well, I thought you spoke really well—for what that’s worth.”


“Thanks,” I said, “it’s worth a lot, actually.”


“Grandsuur Moyra says we are doing something now.”


“I beg your pardon?”


“She believes that the messal is on the verge of coming up with new ideas instead of just talking about old ones.”


“Well, that’s really something, from such a distinguished Lorite!”


“It’s all because of the PAQD, she says. If they hadn’t come and brought new givens, it might never have happened.”


“Well, my friend Jesry will be pleased to hear it,” I said. “He’s wanted it all his life.”


“What have you wanted all your life?” Karvall asked.


“Me? I don’t know. To be as smart as Jesry, I guess.”


“Tonight, you were as smart as anyone,” she said.


“Thanks!” I said. “If that’s true, it’s all because of Orolo.”


“And because you were brave.”


“Some would call it stupid.”


If I hadn’t had that conversation with Ala

at breakfast, I’d probably be falling in love with Karvall about now.

But I was pretty sure Karvall wasn’t in love with

me—just stating facts as she saw them. To stand here and receive

compliments from an attractive young woman was quite pleasant, but it

was of a whole lesser order of experience from the continuous finger-in-an-electrical-socket buzz that I experienced during even brief interactions with Ala.


I ought to have volleyed some compliments back, but I was not

brave in that moment. The Lorites had a kind of grandeur that

intimidated. Their elaborate style—shaving the head, performing hours

of knotwork just to get dressed—was, I knew, a way of showing respect

for those who had gone before, of reminding themselves, every day, just

how much work one had to do to get up to speed and be competent to sift

new ideas from old. But my knowing that symbolism didn’t make Karvall

any more approachable.


We were distracted by Zh’vaern’s strangely

inflected voice on the speaker: “Because of the way we Matarrhites keep

to ourselves, not even Suur Moyra might have heard of him we honor as

Saunt Atamant.”


“I don’t recognize the name,” Moyra said.


“He was, to us, the most gifted and meticulous introspectionist who ever lived.”


“Introspectionist? Is that some sort of a job title within your Order?” Lodoghir asked, not unkindly.


“It might as well be,” Zh’vaern returned. “He devoted the last thirty years of his life to looking at a copper bowl.”


“What was so special about this bowl?” asked Ignetha Foral.


“Nothing. But he wrote, or rather dictated,

ten treatises explaining all that went on in his mind as he gazed on

it. Much of it has the same flavor as Orolo’s meditations on

counterfactuals: how Atamant’s mind filled in the unseen back surface

of the bowl with suppositions as to what it must look like. From such

thoughts he developed a metatheorics of counterfactuals and

compossibility that, to make a long story short, is perfectly

compatible with all that was said during our first messal about Hemn

space and worldtracks. He made the assertion that all possible worlds really existed and were every bit as real as our own. This caused many to dismiss him as a lunatic.”


“But that is precisely what the polycosmic interpretation is positing,” said Suur Asquin.


“Indeed.”




“What of our second evening’s discussion? Has Saunt Atamant anything to say about that?”


“I have been thinking about that very hard.

You see, nine of his treatises are mostly about space. Only one is

about time, but it is considered harder to read than the other nine put

together! But if there is applicability of his

work to the Hylaean Flow, it is hidden somewhere in the Tenth Treatise.

I re-read it last night; this was my Lucub.”


“And what did Atamant’s copper bowl tell him of time?” Lodoghir asked.


“I should tell you first that he was

knowledgeable about theorics. He knew that the laws of theorics were

time-reversible, and that the only way to determine the direction of

time’s arrow was to measure the amount of disorder in a system. The

cosmos seems oblivious to time. It only matters to us. Consciousness is

time-constituting. We build time up out of instantaneous impressions

that flow in through our sensory organs at each moment. Then they

recede into the past. What is this thing we call the past? It is a

system of records encoded in our nerve tissue—records that tell a

consistent story.”


“We have heard of these records before,” Ignetha Foral pointed out. “They are essential to the Hemn space picture.”


“Yes, Madame Secretary, but now let me add

something new. It is rather well encapsulated by the thought experiment

of the flies, bats, and worms. We don’t give our consciousness

sufficient credit for its ability to take in noisy, ambiguous,

contradictory givens from the senses, and sort it out: to say ‘this

pattern of givens equals the copper bowl that is in front of me now and

that was in front of me a moment ago,’ to confer thisness

on what we perceive. I know you may feel uncomfortable with religious

language, but it seems miraculous that our consciousness can do this.”


“But absolutely necessary from an evolutionary standpoint,” Lodoghir pointed out.


“To be sure! But none the less remarkable for that. The ability of our consciousness to see—not just as a speelycaptor sees (by taking in and recording givens) but identifying things—copper bowls, melodies,

faces, beauty, ideas—and making these things available to

cognition—that ability, Atamant said, is the ultimate basis of all

rational thought. And if consciousness can identify copper-bowlness,

why can’t it identify isosceles-triangleness, or

Adrakhonic-theoremness?”


“What you are describing is nothing more than pattern recognition, and then assigning names to patterns,” Lodoghir said.


“So the Syntactics would say,” replied

Zh’vaern. “But I would say that you have it backwards. You Procians

have a theory—a model—of what consciousness is, and you make all else

subordinate to it. Your theory becomes the ground of all possible

assertions, and the processes of consciousness are seen as mere

phenomena to be explained in the terms of that theory. Atamant says

that you have fallen into the error of circular reasoning. You cannot

develop your grounding theory of consciousness without making use of

the power consciousness has of seizing on and conferring thisness on

givens, and so it is incoherent and circular for you to then employ

that theory to explain the fundamental workings of consciousness.”


“I understand Atamant’s point,” Lodoghir

said, “but by making such a move, does he not exile himself from

rational theoric discourse? This power of consciousness takes on a sort

of mystical status—it can’t be challenged or examined, it just is.”


“On the contrary, nothing could be more

rational than to begin with what is given, with what we observe, and

ask ourselves how we come to observe it, and investigate it in a

thorough and meticulous style.”


“Let me ask it this way, then: what results was Atamant able to deliver by following this program?”


“Once he made the decision to proceed in

this way, he made a few false starts, went up some blind alleys. But

the nub of it is this: consciousness is enacted in the physical world,

on physical equipment—”


“Equipment?” Ignetha Foral asked sharply.


“Nerve tissue, or perhaps some artificial

device of similar powers. The point being that it has what the Ita

would call hardware. Yet Atamant’s premise is that consciousness

itself, not the equipment, is the primary reality. The full cosmos consists of the physical stuff and

consciousness. Take away consciousness and it’s only dust; add

consciousness and you get things, ideas, and time. The story is long

and winding, but eventually he found a fruitful line of inquiry rooted

in the polycosmic interpretation of quantum mechanics. He quite

reasonably applied this premise to his favorite topic—”


“The copper bowl?” Lodoghir asked.


“The complex of consciousness-phenomena

that amounted to his perception of a copper bowl,” Zh’vaern corrected

him, “and proceeded to explain it within that framework.” And

Zh’vaern—uncharacteristically talkative this evening—proceeded to give

us a calca summarizing Atamant’s findings on the copper bowl. As he’d

warned us, this had much in common with the dialogs I’d been reporting

on a few minutes earlier, and led to the same basic conclusion. As a

matter of fact, it was so repetitive that I

wondered, at first, why he bothered with it, unless it was just to show

off what a smart fellow Atamant was, and score one for the Matarrhite

team. As a servitor, I was free to come and go. Zh’vaern eventually

worked his way around to the assertion, which we’d heard before, that

crosstalk among different cosmi around the time that their worldtracks

diverged was routinely exploited by consciousness-bearing systems.


Lodoghir said, “Please explain something to

me. I was under the impression that the kind of crosstalk you are

speaking of could only occur between two cosmi that were exactly the same except for a difference in the quantum state of one particle.”


“We can testify to that much,” said Moyra,

“because the situation you’ve just described is just the sort of thing

that is studied in laboratory experiments. It is relatively easy to

build an apparatus that embodies that kind of scenario—‘does the

particle have spin up or spin down,’ ‘does the photon pass through the

left slit or the right slit,’ and so on.”


“Well, that’s a relief!” Lodoghir said. “I

was afraid you were about to claim that this crosstalk was the same

thing as the Hylaean Flow.”


“I believe that it is,” Zh’vaern said. “It has to be.”


Lodoghir looked affronted. “But Suur Moyra has just finished explaining

that the only form of inter-cosmic crosstalk for which we have

experimental evidence is that in which the two cosmi are the same

except for the state of one particle. The Hylaean Flow, according to its devotees, joins cosmi that are altogether different!”


“If you look at the world through a straw,

you will only see a tiny bit of it,” Paphlagon said. “The kinds of

experiments that Moyra spoke of are all perfectly sound—better than

that, they are magnificent, in their way—but they only tell us of

single-particle systems. If we could devise better experiments, we

could presumably observe new phenomena.”


Fraa Jad threw his napkin on the table and

said: “Consciousness amplifies the weak signals that, like cobwebs spun

between trees, web Narratives together. Moreover, it amplifies them selectively and in that way creates feedback loops that steer the Narratives.”


Silence except for the sound of Arsibalt chalking that one down on the wall. I slipped into the messallan.


“Would you be so kind as to unpack that

statement?” Suur Asquin finally said. Glancing at Arsibalt’s handiwork,

she said, “To begin with, what do you mean by amplifying weak signals?”


Fraa Jad looked as if he hardly knew where

to begin, and couldn’t be bothered, but Moyra was game: “The ‘signals’

are the interactions between cosmi that account for quantum effects. If

you don’t agree with the polycosmic interpretation, you must find some

other explanation for those effects. But if you do

agree with it, then, to make it compatible with what we have long known

about quantum mechanics, you must buy into the premise that cosmi

interfere with each other when their worldtracks are close together. If

you restrict yourself to one particular cosmos, this crosstalk may be

interpreted as a signal—a rather weak one, since it only concerns a few

particles. If those particles are in an asteroid out in the middle of

nowhere, it hardly matters. But when those particles happen to be at

certain critical locations in the brain, why, then, the ‘signals’ can

end up altering the behavior of the organism that is animated by that

brain. That organism, all by itself, is vastly larger than anything

that could normally be influenced by quantum interference. When one

considers societies of such organisms that

endure across long spans of time and in some cases develop

world-altering technologies, one sees the meaning of Fraa Jad’s

assertion that consciousness amplifies the weak signals that web cosmi

together.”


Zh’vaern had been nodding vigorously: “This

tallies with some Atamant that I was reading yesterday evening.

Consciousness, he wrote, is non-spatiotemporal in nature. But it

becomes involved with the spatiotemporal world when conscious beings

react to their own cognitions and make efforts to communicate with other

conscious beings—something that they can only do by involving their

spatiotemporal bodies. This is how we get from a solipsistic world—one

that is perceived by, and real to, only one subject—to the intersubjective world—the one where I can be certain that you see the copper bowl and that the thisness you attach to it harmonizes with mine.”


“Thank you, Suur Moyra and Fraa Zh’vaern,”

said Ignetha Foral. “Assuming that Fraa Jad will maintain his gnomic

ways, would you or anyone else care to take a crack at the second part

of what he said?”


“I should be delighted to,” said Fraa

Lodoghir, “since Fraa Jad is sounding more and more Procian every time

he opens his mouth!” This earned Lodoghir a lot of attention, which he

reveled in for a few moments before going on: “By selective amplification, I believe Fraa Jad is saying that not all inter-cosmic crosstalk gets amplified—only some of it. To cite Suur Moyra’s example, crosstalk affecting elementary particles in a rock in deep space has no effect.”


“No extraordinary effect,” Paphlagon corrected him, “no unpredictable effect. But, mind you, it accounts for everything about that rock: how it absorbs and re-radiates light, how its nuclei decay, and so on.”


“But it all sort of averages out statistically, and you can’t really tell one rock from another,” Lodoghir said.


“Yes.”


“The point being that the only crosstalk capable of being amplified by consciousness is that affecting nerve tissue.”




“Or any other consciousness-bearing system,” Paphlagon said.


“So there is a highly exclusive selection process at work to begin with

in that, of all the crosstalk going on in a given instant between our

cosmos and all the other cosmi that are sufficiently close to it to

render such crosstalk possible, the stupefyingly enormous preponderance

of it is only affecting rocks and other stuff that is not complex

enough to respond to that crosstalk in a way we’d consider interesting.”


“Yes,” Paphlagon said.


“Let us then confine our discussion to the

infinitesimally small fraction of the crosstalk that happens to impinge

on nerve tissue. As I’ve just finished saying, this already

gives us selectivity.” Lodoghir nodded at the slate. “But, whether or

not Fraa Jad intended to, he has opened the door to another kind of

selection procedure that may be at work here. Our brains receive these

‘signals,’ yes. But they are more than passive receivers. They are not

merely crystal radios! They compute. They cogitate. The outcomes

of those cogitations can by no means be easily predicted from their

inputs. And those outcomes are the conscious thoughts that we have, the

decisions we put into effect, our social interactions with other

conscious beings, and the behavior of societies down through the ages.”


“Thank you, Fraa Lodoghir,” said Ignetha

Foral, and turned to scan the slate again. “And would anyone care to

tackle ‘feedback loops’?”


“We get those for free,” Paphlagon said.


“What do you mean?”


“It’s already there in the model we’ve been

talking about, we don’t have to add anything more. We’ve already seen

how small signals, amplified by the special structures of nerve tissue

and societies of conscious beings, can lead to changes in a

Narrative—in the configuration of a cosmos—that are much larger than

the original signals in question. The worldtracks veer, change their

courses in response to those faint signals, and you could distinguish a

cosmos that was populated by conscious organisms from one that wasn’t

by observing the way their worldtracks behaved. But recall that the signals

in question only pass between cosmi whose worldtracks are close

together. There is your feedback! Crosstalk steers the worldtracks of

consciousness-bearing cosmi; worldtracks that steer close together

exchange more crosstalk.”


“So the feedback pulls worldtracks close to

one another as time goes on?” Ignetha Foral asked. “Is this the

explanation we’ve been looking for of why the Geometers look like us?”


“Not only that,” put in Suur Asquin, “but of cnoöns and the HTW and all the rest, if I’m not mistaken.”


“I am going to be a typical Lorite,” Moyra said, “and caution you that feedback

is a layman’s term that covers a wide range of phenomena. Entire

branches of theorics have been, and are still being, developed to study

the behavior of systems that exhibit what laymen know as feedback. The

most common behaviors in feedback systems are degenerate. Such as the

howl from a public address system, or total chaos. Very few such

systems yield stable behavior—or any sort of behavior that you or I

could look at and say, ‘see, it is doing this now.’”


“Thisness!” Zh’vaern exclaimed.


“But conversely,” Moyra went on, “systems that are stable, in a tumultuous universe, generally must have some kind of feedback in order to exist.”


Ignetha Foral nodded. “So if the feedback

posited by Fraa Jad really is steering our worldtrack and those of the

PAQD races together, it’s not just any feedback but some very special, highly tuned species of it.”


“We call something an attractor,” Paphlagon said, “when it persists or recurs in a complex system.”


“So if it is true that the PAQD share the

Adrakhonic Theorem and other such theorical concepts with us,” said

Fraa Lodoghir, “those might be nothing more than attractors in the

feedback system we have been describing.”


“Or nothing less,” said Fraa Jad.


We all let that one resonate for a minute.

Lodoghir and Jad were staring at each other across the table; we all

thought something was about to happen.




A Procian and a Halikaarnian were about to agree with each other.


Then Zh’vaern wrecked it. As if he didn’t

get what was going on at all; or perhaps the HTW simply was not that

interesting to him. He couldn’t get off the topic of Atamant’s bowl.


“Atamant,” he announced, “changed his bowl.”


“I beg your pardon?” demanded Ignetha Foral.


“Yes. For thirty years, it had a scratch on

the bottom. This is attested by phototypes. Then, during the final year

of his meditation—shortly before his death—he made the scratch

disappear.”


Everyone had become very quiet.


“Translate that into polycosmic language, please?” asked Suur Asquin.


“He found his way to a cosmos the same as the one he’d been living in—except that in this cosmos the bowl wasn’t scratched.”


“But there were records—phototypes—of its having been scratched.”


“Yes,” said Zh’vaern. “so he had gone to a cosmos that included some inconsistent records. And that is the cosmos that we are in now.”


“And how did he achieve this feat?” asked Moyra, as if she already guessed the answer.


“Either by changing the records, or else by shifting to a cosmos with a different future.”


“Either he was a Rhetor, or an Incanter!”

blurted a young voice. Barb. Performing his role as sayer of things no

one else would say.


“That’s not what I meant,” said Moyra. “How did he achieve it?”


“He declined to share his secret,” said

Zh’vaern. “I thought that some here might have something to say of it.”

And he looked all around the table—but mostly at Jad and Lodoghir.


“If they do, they’ll say it tomorrow,”

announced Ignetha Foral. “Tonight’s messal has ended.” And she pushed

her chair back, casting a baleful glare at Zh’vaern. Emman burst

through the door and snatched up her rucksack. Madame Secretary

adjusted the badge around her neck as

if it were just another item of jewelry, and stalked out, pursued by

her servitor, who was grunting under the weight of two rucksacks.





I had grand plans for how I would spend the

free time I’d won in my wager with Arsibalt. There were so many ways I

wanted to use that gift that I could not decide where to start. I went

back to my cell to fetch some notes and sat down on my pallet. Then I

opened my eyes to find it was morning.


The hours of night had not gone to waste,

though, for I awoke with ideas and intentions that had not been in my

head when I’d closed my eyes. Given the sorts of things we’d been

talking about lately at messal, it was hard not to think that while I’d

lain unconscious, my mind had been busy rambling all over the local

parts of Hemn space, exploring alternate versions of the world.


I went and found Arsibalt, who had slept

less than I. He was inclined to surliness until I shared with him some

of what I had been thinking about—if thinking was the right word for processes that had taken place without my volition while I had been unconscious.


For breakfast I had some dense, grainy buns

and dried fruit. Afterwards, I went to a little stand of trees out

behind the First Sconic chapterhouse. Arsibalt was waiting for me

there, brandishing a shovel he’d borrowed from a garden shack. He

scooped out a shallow depression in the earth, no larger than a

serving-bowl. I lined it with a scrap of poly sheeting that I had

scavenged from one of the middens that Sæcular people left everywhere

they went—and that had lately begun to pock the grounds of this concent.


“Here goes nothing,” I said, hitching up my bolt.


“The best experiments,” he said, “are the simplest.”





Analyzing the givens only took a few

minutes. The rest of the day was spent making various preparations. How

Arsibalt and I got others involved in that work, and the minor

adventures each of us had during the day, would make for an amusing

collection of anecdotes, but I have

made the decision not to spell them out here because they are so

trivial compared to what happened that evening. Before it was over,

though, we had enlisted Emman, Tris, Barb, Karvall, Lio, and Sammann,

and had talked Suur Asquin into looking the other way while we made

some temporary alterations to her Dowment.


The fourth Plurality of Worlds Messal began

normally: after a libation, soup was served. Barb and Emman went back

to the kitchen. Not long after, Orhan was yanked. Tris followed him

out. About a minute later I felt a coded sequence of tugs on my rope,

which informed me that things had gone according to plan in the

kitchen: the stew that Orhan had been cooking had “inadvertently” been

knocked over by clumsy Barb. Between that distraction, and the racket

that Tris and Emman had begun making with some pots and pans, Orhan

would be unlikely to notice that sound was no longer coming out of the

speaker.


I nodded across the table to Arsibalt.


“Excuse me, Fraa Zh’vaern, but you forgot to bless your food,” Arsibalt announced, in a clear voice.


Conversation stopped. The messal had been

unusually subdued to this point, as though all the doyns were trying to

devise some way of restarting the dialog while avoiding the awkward

territory that Zh’vaern had attempted to drag us into last night. Even

in the rowdiest messal, though, any unasked-for statement from a

servitor would have been shocking; Arsibalt’s was doubly so because of

what he’d said. As long as everyone was speechless, he went on: “I have

been studying the beliefs and practices of the Matarrhites. They never

take food without saying a prayer, which ends with a gesture. You have

neither spoken the prayer nor made the gesture.”


“What of it? I forgot,” Zh’vaern said.


“You always forget,” Arsibalt returned.


Ignetha Foral was giving Paphlagon a look that meant when are you going to throw the Book at your servitor?

and indeed Paphlagon now threw down his napkin and made as if to push

his chair back. But Fraa Jad reached out and clamped a hand on

Paphlagon’s arm.


“You always forget,” Arsibalt repeated, “and, if you like, I can list

any number of other ways in which you and Orhan have imperfectly

simulated the behavior of Matarrhites. Is it because you’re not

actually Matarrhites?”


Beneath the hood, Zh’vaern’s head moved. He was casting a glance at the door. Not the one through which he and the other doyns had entered, but the one through which Orhan had left.


“Your minder can’t hear us,” I told him,

“the microphone wire has been cut by an Ita friend of mine. The feed no

longer goes out.”


Still Zh’vaern remained frozen and silent.

I nodded at Suur Karvall, who pulled aside a tapestry to reveal a shiny

mesh, woven of metal wires, with which we’d covered the wall. I stepped

around toward Zh’vaern, stuck a toe under the edge of the carpet, and

flipped it up to reveal more of the same on the floor. Zh’vaern took it

all in. “It is a fencing material used in animal husbandry,” I

explained, “obtainable in bulk extramuros. It is conductive—and it is

connected to ground.”


“What is the meaning of all this?” demanded Ignetha Foral.


“We’re in a Saunt Bucker’s Basket!”

exclaimed Moyra. Her life, as an extremely senior, semi-retired Lorite,

probably didn’t include many unexpected events, and so even something

as mundane as discovering that she was surrounded by chicken wire

seemed like quite an adventure. More than that, though, I believe she

was pleased that the servitors had taken her exhortations to heart, and

gone out and done something that the doyns never

would have dreamed of. “It’s a grounded mesh that prevents wireless

signals from passing into or out of the room. It means we’re

informationally shielded from the rest of Arbre.”


“In my world,” said Zh’vaern, “we call it a

Faraday cage.” He stood up and shrugged his bolt off over his head,

then tossed it to the floor. I was behind him and so could not see his

face—only the looks of awe and astonishment on the faces of the others:

the first Arbrans, with the possible exception of the Warden of Heaven,

to gaze upon the face of a living alien. Judging from the back of his

head and torso, I guessed he was of the same race as the dead woman

who’d come down in the probe. Beneath a sort of under-shirt, a small

device was attached to his skin with poly tape. He reached under the garment, peeled it off, and threw it on the table along with a snarl of wires.


“I am Jules Verne Durand of Laterre—the

world you know as Antarct. Orhan is from the world of Urnud, which you

have designated Pangee. You had best get him inside the Faraday cage

before—”


“Done,” said a voice from the door: Lio,

who had just come in, cheerfully flushed. “We have him in a separate

Bucker’s Basket in the pantry. Sammann found this on him.” And he held

up another wireless body transmitter.


“Well-wrought,” said Jules Verne Durand,

“but it has purchased you a few minutes only; those who listen will

grow suspicious at the loss of contact.”


“We have alerted Suur Ala that it might become necessary to evacuate the concent,” Lio said.


“Good,” said Jules Verne Durand, “for I am sorry to say that the ones of Urnud are a danger to you.”


“And to you of Laterre as well, it would

seem!” said Arsibalt. Since the doyns were all too speechless to rejoin

the conversation, Arsibalt—who’d had time to prepare—was doing his bit

to keep things going.


“It is true,” said the Laterran. “I will

tell you quickly that those of Urnud and of Tro—which you call

Diasp—are of similar mind, and hostile to those of Fthos—which you

call—”


“Quator, by process of elimination,” said Lodoghir.


I’d worked my way round to a place where I

could see Jules Verne Durand, and so was feeling some of the

astonishment that the others had experienced a few moments earlier.

First at the differences—then similarities, then differences

again—between Laterran and Arbran faces. The closest comparison I can

make is to how one reacts when conversing with one who has a birth

defect that has subtly altered the geometry of the face—but without the

deformity or loss of function that this would imply. And of course no

comparison can be drawn to the way we felt knowing that we were looking

on one who had traveled from another cosmos.




“What of you and your fellow Laterrans?” Lodoghir asked.


“Split between the Fthosians and the others.”


“You, I take it, are loyal to the Urnud/Tro axis?” Lodoghir asked. “Otherwise, you would not have been sent here.”


“I was sent here because I speak better

Orth than anyone else—I am a linguist. A junior one, actually. And so

they put me to work on Orth in the early days, when Orth was believed

to be a minor language. They are suspicious of my loyalty—with good

reason! Orhan, as you divined, is my watcher—my minder.” He looked at

Arsibalt. “You penetrated my disguise. Not surprising, really. But I

should like to know how?”


Arsibalt looked to me. I said, “I ate some of your food yesterday. It passed through my digestive system unchanged.”


“Of course, for your enzymes could not react with it,” said Jules Verne Durand. “I commend you.”


Ignetha Foral had finally recovered enough

to join the conversation. “On behalf of the Supreme Council I welcome

you and apologize for any mistreatment you have undergone at the hands

of these young—”


“Stop. This is what you call bulshytt. No

time,” said the Laterran. “My mission—assigned to me by the military

intelligence command of the Urnud/Tro axis—is to find out whether the

legends of the Incanters are grounded in fact. The Urnud/Tro axis—which

they call, in their languages, the Pedestal—is extremely fearful of

this prospect; they contemplate a pre-emptive strike. Hence my

questions of previous evenings, which I am aware were quite rude.”


“How did you get here?” asked Paphlagon.


“A commando raid on the concent of the

Matarrhites. We have ways of dropping small capsules onto your planet

that cannot be noticed by your sensors. A team of soldiers, as well as

a few civilian experts such as myself, were sent down, and seized that

concent. The true Matarrhites are held there, unharmed, but

incommunicado.”


“That is an extraordinarily aggressive measure!” said Ignetha Foral.




“So it rightly seems to you who are not

accustomed to encounters between different versions of the world, in

different cosmi. But the Pedestal have been doing it for hundreds of

years, and have become bold. When our scholars became aware of the

Matarrhites, someone pointed out that their style of dress would make

it easy for us to disguise ourselves and infiltrate the Convox. The

order to proceed was given quickly.”


“How do you travel between cosmi?” Paphlagon asked.


“There is little time,” said Jules Verne

Durand, “and I am no theor.” He turned to Suur Moyra. “You will know of

a certain way of thinking about gravity, likely dating to the time of

the Harbingers, called by us General Relativity. Its premise is that

mass-energy bends spacetime…”


“Geometrodynamics!” said Suur Moyra.


“If the equations of geometrodynamics are

solved in the special case of a universe that happens to be rotating,

it can be shown that a spaceship, if it travels far and fast enough—”


“Will travel backwards in time,” said

Paphlagon. “Yes. The result is known to us. We always considered it

little more than a curiosity, though.”


“On Laterre, the result was discovered by a

kind of Saunt named Gödel: a friend of the Saunt who had earlier

discovered geometrodynamics. The two of them were, you might say, fraas

in the same math. For us, too, it was little more than a curiosity. For

one thing, it was not clear at first that our cosmos rotated—”


“And if it doesn’t rotate, the result is useless,” said Paphlagon.


“Working in the same institute were others

who invented a ship propelled by atomic bombs—sufficiently energetic to

put this theory to the test.”


“I see,” said Paphlagon, “so Laterre constructed such a ship and—”


“No! We never did!”


“Just as Arbre never did—even though we had the same ideas!” Lio put in.


“But on Urnud it was different,” said Jules Verne Durand. “They had geometrodynamics. They had the rotating-universe solution. They had cosmographic evidence that their cosmos did in fact rotate. And they had the idea for the atomic ship. But they actually built

several of them. They were driven to such measures because of a

terrible war between two blocs of nations. The combat infected space;

the whole solar system became a theatre of war. The last and largest of

these ships was called Daban Urnud, which means

‘Second Urnud.’ It was designed to send a colony to a neighboring star

system, only a quarter of a light-year away. But there was a mutiny and

a change of command. It fell under the control of ones who understood

the theorics that I spoke of. They chose to steer a different course:

one that was intended to take them into the past of Urnud, where they

hoped that they could undo the decisions that had led to the outbreak

of the war. But when they reached the end of that journey, they found

themselves, not in the past of Urnud, but in an altogether different

cosmos, orbiting an Urnud-like planet—”


“Tro,” said Arsibalt.


“Yes. This is how the universe protects

herself—prevents violations of causality. If you attempt to do anything

that would give you the power of violating the laws of

cause-and-effect—to go back in time and kill your grandfather—”


“You simply find yourself in a different and separate causal domain? How extraordinary!” said Lodoghir.


The Laterran nodded. “One is shunted into

an altogether different Narrative,” he said, with a glance at Fraa Jad,

“and thus causality is preserved.”


“And now it seems they’ve made a habit of it!” said Lodoghir.


Jules Verne Durand considered it. “You say

‘now’ as if it came about quickly and easily, but there is much history

between the First Advent—the Urnudan discovery of Tro—and the

Fourth—which is what we are all living through now. The First Advent

alone spanned a century and a half, and left Tro in ruins.”


“Heavens!” exclaimed Lodoghir. “Are the Urnudans really that nasty?”


“Not quite. But it was the first time. Neither the Urnudans nor the Troäns had the sophisticated understanding of the polycosm that

you seem to have developed here on Arbre. Everything was surprising,

and therefore a source of terror. The Urnudans became involved in Troän

politics too hastily. Disastrous events—almost all of them the Troäns’

own fault—played out. They eventually rebuilt the Daban Urnud

so that both races could live on it, and embarked on a second

inter-cosmic voyage. They came to Laterre fifty years after the death

of Gödel.”


“Excuse me,” said Ignetha Foral, “but why did the ship have to be changed so much?”


“Partly because it was worn out—used up,”

said Jules Verne Durand. “But it is mostly a question of food. Each

race must maintain its own food supply—for reasons made obvious by Fraa

Erasmas’s experiment.” He paused and looked around the messal. “It is

my destiny, now, to starve to death in the midst of plenty, unless by

diplomacy you can persuade those on the Daban Urnud to send down some food that I can digest.”


Tris—who had returned to the messal early

in the conversation—said, “We’ll do all we can to preserve the Laterran

victuals that are still in the kitchen!” and hustled out of the room.


Ignetha Foral added, “We shall make this a priority in any future communications with the Pedestal.”


“Thank you,” said the Laterran, “for one of my ancestry, death by starvation would be the most ignominious possible fate.”


“What happened in the Second Advent—on Laterre?” asked Suur Moyra.


“I will skip the details. It was not as bad

as Tro. But in every cosmos they visit, there is upheaval. The Advent

lasts anywhere from twenty to a couple of hundred years. With or

without your cooperation, the Daban Urnud will be

rebuilt completely. None of your political institutions, none of your

religions, will survive in their current form. Wars will be fought.

Some of your people will be aboard the new version of the ship when it

finally moves on to some other Narrative.”


“As you were, I take it, when it left Laterre?” asked Lodoghir.


“Oh, no. That was my great-grandfather,” said the visitor. “My ancestors lived through the voyage to Fthos and the Third Advent. I was born on Fthos. Similar things will probably happen here.”


“Assuming,” said Ignetha Foral, “that they don’t use the World Burner on us.”


I was just learning to read Laterran facial

expressions, but I was certain that what I saw on Jules Verne Durand’s

face was horror at the very mention. “This hideous thing was invented

on Urnud, in their great war—though I must confess we had similar plans

on Laterre.”


“As did we,” said Moyra.


“There is a suspicion, you see, planted

deep in the minds of the Urnudans, that with each Advent they are

finding themselves in a world that is more ideal—closer to what you

would call the Hylaean Theoric World—than the last. I don’t have time

to recite all the particulars, but I myself have often thought that

Urnud and Tro seemed like less perfect versions of Laterre, and that

Fthos seemed to us what we were to Tro. Now we are come to yet a new

world, and there is terrible apprehension among the Pedestal that those

of Arbre will possess powers and qualities beyond their grasp—even

their comprehension. They have exaggerated sensitivity to anything that

has this seeming—”


“Hence the elaborate commando raid, this ambitious ruse to learn about the Incanters,” said Lodoghir.


“And Rhetors,” Paphlagon reminded him.


Moyra laughed. “It is Third Sack politics all over again! Except infinitely more dangerous.”


“And the problem you—we—face is that there is nothing you can do to convince them that such things as Rhetors and Incanters don’t exist,” said Jules Verne Durand.


“Quickly—Atamant and the copper bowl?” asked Lodoghir.


“Loosely based on a philosopher of Laterre,

named Edmund Husserl, and the copper ashtray he kept on his desk,” said

the Laterran. If I was reading his face right, he was feeling a bit

sheepish. “I fictionalized his story quite heavily. The part about

making the scratch disappear was, of course, a ruse to draw you out—to

get you to state plainly whether anyone on Arbre possessed the power to

do such things.”




“Do you think that the ruse worked?” asked Ignetha Foral.


“The way you reacted made those who control me even more suspicious. I was directed to bear down harder on it this evening.”


“So they are still undecided.”


“Oh, I am quite certain they are decided now.”


The floor jumped under our feet, and the

air was suddenly dusty. The silence that followed was ended by a

succession of concussive thuds. These rolled in over a span of perhaps

a quarter of a minute—twenty of them in all. Lio announced, “No cause

for alarm. This is according to plan. What you’re hearing are

controlled demolition charges, taking down sections of the outer

wall—creating enough apertures for us to get out of the concent

quickly, so we don’t bunch up at the Day Gate. The evacuation is under

way. Look at your badges.”


I pulled mine out from under a fold of my

bolt. It had come alive with a color map of my vicinity, just like the

nav screen on a cartabla. My evacuation route was highlighted in

purple. Superimposed over that was a cartoon rendering of a rucksack

with a red flashing question mark.


The doyns took the momentous step of

pushing their chairs back. They were looking at their badges, making

remarks. Lio vaulted up onto the table and stamped his foot, very loud.

They all looked up at him. “Stop talking,” he said.


“But—” said Lodoghir.


“Not a word. Act!” And Lio gave that

command in a voice I’d never heard from him before—though I had once

heard something like it in the streets of Mahsht. He’d been training

his voice, as well as his body—learning Vale-lore tricks of how to use

it as a weapon. I sidestepped past a stream of doyns who were headed

the other way, shouldering their rucksacks. I entered the corridor,

where mine was waiting. I hoisted it to one shoulder and looked at my

badge again. The rucksack cartoon had disappeared. I strode out to the

kitchen. Tris and Lio were helping Jules Verne Durand package what was

left of his food into bags and baskets.


I walked out the back of Avrachon’s Dowment and into the midst of a total evacuation of the ancient concent of Tredegarh.




Thousands of feet above, aerocraft were landing on the tops of the Thousanders’ towers.





All of this business with the badges and

the rucksacks had seemed insultingly simpleminded to me and many others

I’d talked to—as if the Convox were a summer camp for five-year-olds.

In the course of a fifteen-minute jog across Tredegarh, I came to

appreciate it. There was no plan, no procedure, so simple that it could

not get massively screwed up when thousands of persons tried to carry

it out at the same time. Doing it in the dark squared the amount of

chaos, doing it in a hurry cubed it. People who had mislaid their

badges and their rucksacks were wandering around in more or less

panic—but they gravitated to sound trucks announcing “Come to me if you

have lost your badge or your rucksack!” Others twisted ankles,

hyperventilated, even suffered from heart trouble—military medics

pounced on these. Grandfraas and grandsuurs who failed to keep up found

themselves being carried on fids’ backs. Running through the dark,

mesmerized by their badges, people banged into one another in grand

slapstick style, fell down, got bloody noses, argued as to whose fault

it had been. I slowed to help a few victims, but the aid teams were

astoundingly efficient—and quite rude about letting me know I should

head for an exit rather than getting in their way. Ala had really put

her stamp on this thing. As I gained confidence that the evacuation was

basically working, I moved faster, and struck out across the giant page

tree plantation, heavy with leaves that would never be harvested,

toward a rugged gap that had been blasted through the ancient wall. The

opening was choked with rubble. Lights shone through from extramuros,

making the dusty air above the aperture glow blue-white, and casting

long, flailing silhouettes behind the avout who were streaming through

it, clambering over the rubble-pile, helped over tricky parts by

soldiers who played flashlights over patches of rough footing and

barked suggestions at any avout who stumbled or looked tentative. My

badge told me to go through it, so I did, trying not to think about how

many centuries the stones I trod had stood until tonight, the avout who’d cut them to shape and laid them in place.


Beyond the wall was a glacis, a belt of

open territory that locals used as a park. This evening it had become a

depot for military drummons: simple flatbeds whose backs had been

covered by canvas awnings. At first I saw only the few that stood

closest to the base of the rubble-pile, since these lay in the halo of

light. But my badge was insisting that I penetrate the darkness beyond.

When I did, I became aware that these drummons were scattered across

what seemed like square miles of darkness. I heard their engines idling

all around, and I saw cold light thrown off by glow buds, by the

spheres of wandering avout, and by control panels reflecting in

drivers’ eyes. The vehicles themselves were running dark.


Something overtook me, parted around me,

and moved on. I felt rather than heard it. It was a squad of Valers,

swathed in black bolts, running silently through the night.


I jogged on for some minutes, taking a

winding route, since my badge kept trying to get me to walk through

parked drummons. Another blown wall section, with its mountain of

light, passed by on my right, and I saw yet another swinging into view

around the curve of the wall. All of these gaps continued to spew

avout, so I didn’t get the sense that I was late. Here and there I’d

spy a lone fraa or suur, face illuminated by badge-light, approaching

the open back of a drummon, eyes jumping between badge and vehicle, the

face registering growing certainty: yes, this is the one.

Hands reaching out of the dark to help them aboard, voices calling out

to them in greeting. Everyone was strangely cheerful—not knowing what I

and a few others now knew about what we were getting into.


Finally the purple line took me out beyond

the last of the parked drummons. Only one vehicle remained that was

large enough to carry a cell of any appreciable size: a coach, gaudy

with phototypes of ecstatic gamblers. It must have been commandeered

from a casino. I could not believe that this was my destination, but

every time I tried to dodge around it, the purple line irritably

re-vectored itself and told me to turn back around. So I approached the

side door and gazed up the entry stair. A military driver was sitting there, lit by his jeejah. “Erasmas of Edhar?” he called out—apparently reading signals from my badge.


“Yes.”


“Welcome to Cell 317,” he said, and with a

jerk of the head told me to come aboard. “Six down, five to go,” he

muttered, as I lurched past him. “Put your pack on the seat next to

you—quick on, quick off.”


The aisle of the coach and the

undersurfaces of the luggage shelves were lined with strips that cast

dim illumination on the seats and the people in them. It was sparsely

occupied. Soldiers, talking on or busy with jeejahs, had claimed the

first couple of rows. Officers, I thought. Then, after a few empty

rows, I saw a face I recognized: Sammann, lit by his super-jeejah as

usual. He glanced up and recognized me, but I didn’t see the old

familiar grin on his face. Instead his eyes darted back for a moment.


Gazing into the gloom that stretched behind

him, I saw several rows of seats occupied by rucksacks. Next to each

was a shaven head, bowed in concentration.


I stopped so hard that my pack’s momentum nearly knocked me over. My mind said, boy, did you ever get on the wrong coach, idiot! and my legs tried to get me out of there before the driver could close the door and pull out.


Then I recalled that the driver had greeted me by name and told me to come aboard.


I glanced at Sammann, who adopted a sort of long-suffering expression that only an Ita could really pull off, and shrugged.


So I swung my pack down into an empty row

and took a seat. Just before I sat down, I scanned the faces of the

Valers. They were Fraa Osa, the FAE; Suur Vay, the one who’d sewn me

back together with fishing line; Suur Esma, the one who had danced

across the plaza in Mahsht, charging the sniper; and Fraa Gratho, the

one who had placed his body between me and the Gheeth leader’s gun and

later disarmed him.


I sat motionless for a while, wondering how to get ready for whatever was to come, wishing it would just start.


Next on the coach was Jesry. He saw what I

had seen. In his face I thought I read some of the same emotions, but

less so; he’d already been picked to

go to space, he was probably expecting something like this. As he

walked past me, he socked me on the shoulder. “Good to be with you,” he

said, “there is no one I would rather be vaporized with, my fraa.”


“You’re getting your wish,” I said, recalling the talk we’d had at Apert.


“More of it than I wished for,” he returned, and banged down into the seat across the aisle from me.


A few minutes later we were joined by Fraa

Jad, who sat alone behind the officers. He nodded to me, and I nodded

back; but once he had made himself comfortable, the Valers came up the

aisle one by one to introduce themselves to him and to pay their

respects.


A young female Ita came in, followed by a

very old male one. They stood around Sammann for a few minutes,

reciting numbers to one another. I fancied that we were going to have

three Ita in our cell, but then the two visitors walked off the coach

and we did not see them again.


When Fraa Arsibalt arrived, he stood at the

head of the aisle, next to the driver, and considered fleeing for a

good half-minute. Finally he drew an enormous breath, as if trying to

suck every last bit of air out of the coach, and marched stolidly up

the aisle, taking a seat behind Jesry. “I had damned well better get my

own stained-glass window for this.”


“Maybe you’ll get an Order—or a concent,” I proposed.


“Yes, maybe—if such things continue to exist by the time the Advent is finished.”


“Come off it, we are the Hylaean Theoric World of these people!” I said. “How can they possibly destroy us?”


“By getting us to destroy ourselves.”


“That’s it,” said Jesry. “You, Arsibalt, just appointed yourself the morale officer for Cell 317.”


Jesry didn’t understand some of the remarks

that Arsibalt and I had exchanged, and so we set about explaining what

had happened at messal. In the middle of this, Jules Verne Durand came

aboard, hung all about with a motley kit of bags, bottles, and baskets.

His presence in the cell must have been a last-minute improvisation;

Ala couldn’t have planned on him.

He looked slightly aghast for a minute, then—if I read his face

right—cheered up. “My namesake would be unspeakably proud!” he

announced, and walked the full length of the aisle, introducing himself

as Jules to each member of Cell 317 in turn. “I shall be pleased to

starve to death in such company!”


“That alien must have some namesake!” Jesry muttered after Jules had passed us.


“My friend, I’ll tell you all about him

during the adventures that are to come!” said Jules, who had overheard;

Laterran ears were pretty sharp, apparently.


“Ten down, one to go,” called the driver to someone who was evidently standing at the base of the steps.


“All right,” said a familiar voice, “let’s

go!” Lio bounded up onto the coach. The door hissed shut behind him and

we began to move. Lio, like Jules before him, worked his way down the

aisle, somehow maintaining his balance even as the coach banked and

jounced over rough ground. Those unknown to him got handshakes.

Edharian clock-winders got spine-cracking hugs. Valers got bows—though

I noticed that even Fraa Osa bowed more formally, more deeply, to Lio

than Lio to him. This was my first clue that Lio was our cell leader.


We were at the aerodrome in twenty minutes.

The escort of military police vehicles really helped speed up the trip.

No hassles about tickets or security; we drove through a guarded gate

right onto the taxiway and pulled up next to a fixed-wing military

aerocraft, capable of carrying just about anything, but rigged for

passengers tonight. The officers at the head of the coach were its

flight crew. We filed out, crossed ten paces of open pavement, and

clambered up a rolling stair onto the craft. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t

sad. Most of all, I wasn’t surprised. I saw Ala’s logic perfectly: once

she had accepted that she was making the “terrible decision,” the only

way forward was really to make it—to take it all the way. To put all of

her favorite people together. The risk was greater for her—the risk,

that is, that we’d all be lost, and she’d spend the rest of her life

knowing she’d been responsible for it. But the risk, for each of us

individually, was less, because we could help one another through it.

And if we died, we’d die in good company.




“Is there a way to send a message to Suur

Ala?” I asked Sammann, after we’d all claimed seats, and the engines

had revved up enough to mask my voice. “I want to tell her that she was

right.”


“Consider it done,” said Sammann. “Is there anything else—as long as I have a channel open?”


I considered it. There was much I could—should—have said. “Is it a private channel?” I asked.


“Don’t be ridiculous,” he pointed out.


“No,” I said, “nothing further.”


Sammann shrugged and turned to his jeejah.

The craft lunged forward. I fell into a seat, groped in the dark for

the cold buckles, and strapped myself in.















Part 11


ADVENT







Teglon:

An extremely challenging geometry problem worked on at Orithena and,

later, all over Arbre, by subsequent generations of theors. The

objective is to tile a regular decagon with a set of seven different

shapes of tiles, while observing certain rules.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















Red

light woke me, or kept me from sleeping in the first place. It was not

the clear, cold blood-red of warnings and emergencies, but pink/orange,

warm, diffuse. It was coming in through the windows of the aerocraft,

which were few and tiny. I unbuckled myself, staggered over to one—for

I’d lain wrong, and my limbs were tingling and floppy—and squinted out

at a spectacular dawn above the same ice-scape I’d recently traversed

on a sledge.


For a confused minute I fancied we might,

for some reason, be headed back to Ecba. But I had no success matching

the mountain ranges and glaciers below against those I recollected. Out

of habit I looked for Sammann, hoping he could conjure up a map. But he

was huddled with Jules Verne Durand. Both were wearing headsets.

Sammann just listened. Jules alternated between listening and speaking,

but he did a lot more of the latter. Sometimes he’d sketch on Sammann’s

jeejah, and Sammann would transmit the image.


I found myself irked. The Laterran’s

presence in Cell 317 had seemed like a medal pinned on our chests.

Through him we would know things, be capable of deeds, beyond all other

cells. But I hadn’t bargained on the wireless link to the Reticulum

that would make him fair game for any Panjandrum who was feeling

curious about something. They were pumping him dry before he was

rendered useless by inanition. I couldn’t hear a word because of the

noise of the plane, but I could tell he’d been at it for a while, and

that he was tired, groping for words, doubling back midsentence to

repair conjugations. Orth was a murderously difficult language and I

thought it a kind of miracle that Jules spoke it as well as he did,

having practiced it for only a couple of years (which, we’d calculated,

was about how long the Geometers had

been in a position to receive signals from Arbre). Either Laterrans

were smarter than we, or he was prodigiously gifted.


Arsibalt was up, pacing the aisles. He

joined me at the window and we began shouting at each other. From our

recollected geography we convinced ourselves that we were descending

from the pole along a more easterly meridian than the one that passed

through Ecba. This was confirmed as we left the ice and the tundra

behind and entered into more temperate places: there was a lot of

forest down there, but few cities.


No wonder people were slow to get up; we’d

jumped forward through more than half a dozen time zones. I’d fooled

myself into thinking I’d had a full night’s sleep. In fact, I might not

have slept at all.


Lio had been sitting alone in the front

row, trying to make friends with a military-style jeejah. I noticed he

had set it aside, so I went up and sat next to him. “Jammed,” he

announced.


I turned and looked back at Sammann and

Jules. They were peeling the phones off their heads. Sammann caught my

eye and threw up his hands disgustedly. Jules, on the other hand,

seemed relieved to have been cut free of the Ret; he sank back heavily

in his seat, closed his eyes, and began to rub his face, then to

massage his scalp.


I turned back to Lio. “Such a move must

have been anticipated,” I said. But he had got into one of those

Lio-trances where he did not respond to words. I grabbed the jeejah,

whacked him on the shoulder with it, threw up my hands, tossed it

aside. He watched me curiously, then grinned. “The Ita can still make

the Reticulum run on land lines and other things,” he said. “When we

stop moving, we can get patched in once more.”


“What are your orders?” I asked.


“Go to ground—which we’re doing now. All the other cells are doing it too.”


“Then what?”


“At the place where we’re going, there’ll be equipment prepositioned. We’re supposed to train on it.”




“What kind of equipment?”


“Don’t know, but here’s a hint: Jesry is in charge of training.”


I looked over at Jesry, who had

commandeered a row of seats and constructed a sort of amphitheatre of

documents all around himself. He was scanning these with an intensity

that I had learned, long ago, never to interrupt.


“We’re going into space,” I concluded.


“Well,” Lio said, “that is where the problem is.”


I decided to take advantage of the noise,

and of the fact that our wireless link was down. “What news of the

Everything Killers?” I asked.


He looked as though in the earliest stages of airsickness. “I think I can tell you how they worked.”


“Okay.”


He pantomimed a punch to my face, pulled it

so his knuckles met my cheek and nudged my head. “Violence is mostly

about energy delivery. Fists, clubs, swords, bullets, death rays—their

purpose is to dump energy into a person’s body.”


“What about poison?”


“I said mostly. Don’t

go Kefedokhles. Anyway, what’s the most concentrated source of energy

they knew about around the time of the Terrible Events?”


“Nuclear fission.”


He nodded. “And the stupidest way of using

it was to split a whole lot of nuclei in the air above a city, just

burn everything. It works, but it’s dirty and it destroys a lot of

stuff that doesn’t need destroying. Better to nuke the people only.”


“How do you manage that?”


“The amount of fissile material you need to

kill a person is microscopic. That’s the easy part. The problem is

delivering it to the right people.”


“So, is this a dirty bomb type of scenario?”


“Much more elegant. They designed a reactor

the size of a pinhead. It’s a little mechanism, with moving parts, and

a few different kinds of nuclear material in it. When it’s turned off,

it’s almost totally inert. You could eat these reactors by the spoonful

and it would be no worse than eating

one of Suur Efemula’s bran muffins. When the reactor goes to the ‘on’

configuration it sprays neutrons in every direction and kills—well—everything that is alive within a radius of—depending on exposure time—up to half a mile.”


“Hence the name,” I said. “What’s the delivery mechanism?”


“Whatever you can dream up,” he said.


“What causes them to turn on?”


He shrugged. “Body heat. Respiration. The sound of human voices. A timer. Certain genetic sequences. A radio transmission. The absence of a radio transmission. Shall I go on?”


“No. But what kinds of delivery mechanisms and triggers is the Sæcular Power looking at now?”


He got a distant look. “Remember, launching

mass into space is expensive. With the amount of energy it takes to

launch a single human, you could get thousands of Everything Killers

into orbit. They’d be too small to show up on most radar. If you could

get even a few of them into the vicinity of the Daban Urnud…”


“Yeah, I can see the strategy clearly. Which leads to the profoundly sickening thought—”


“Are we going to be asked to deliver these things?” Lio said. “I think the answer is no. If anything, we are going to be a diversion.”


“We’ll distract them,” I translated, “while some other technique is used to deliver the Everything Killers.”


Lio nodded.


“That’s inspiring,” I said.


He shrugged. “I could be wrong,” he pointed out.


I felt like going outside and getting some

fresh air. In lieu of which I walked up and down the aisles for a bit.

Jules Verne Durand was asleep. Next to him, Sammann was bent over his

jeejah. But I thought it was jammed? Looking over his shoulder, I saw

he was making some sort of calculation.


Looking over Jesry’s, I saw that he was,

indeed, reading the manual for a space suit. This demanded a

double-take. But it was as simple as that. Suur Vay was in an adjoining

row, poring over many of the same documents, swapping them with Jesry

from time to time. The other Valers

were asleep. Fraa Jad was awake and chanting, though my ears were hard

put to disentangle his drone from that of the engines. I went back to

staring out the window.


We angled across a range of old, worn-down

mountains and struck out over an expanse of brown that ran to the

eastern horizon: the grass of the steppe, browned by the summer sun.

The craft was descending. A river flashed beneath us. Then the

industrial skirt of a modestly sized city. We landed at a military

airbase that seemed to stretch on forever, since land here was as

plentiful as it was flat, and there was no incentive to make things

compact.


A canvas-backed military drummon came out

to collect us. We had no windows, and could not see out the front, but

through the aperture in the back we watched the streets of an ancient,

none too prosperous city ramifying in our dust. There were more animals

on highways than we were used to, more people carrying things that in

other places might have been entrusted to wheels. Of a sudden, things

got dense and old, all yellow brick adorned with polychrome tiles. A

heavy shadow passed over our heads, as if we were being strafed. But

no, we had only passed through an arch in a thick wall. Three

successive gates were closed and bolted behind us. The vehicle stopped

on a tiled plaza. We clambered out to find ourselves in a courtyard,

embraced by an ancient building four stories high: stone, brick, and

wrought iron, softened by cascades of flowering vines on trunks as

thick as my waist. A fountain in the center supplied water for these

and for gnarled fruit trees growing in pots and casting pools of shade

on what would otherwise have been an unpleasant place to stand.


“Welcome to the Caravansery of Elkhazg,”

said a voice in cultured Orth. We turned to see an old man in the shade

of a tree: a man who did not seem to belong here, in the sense that he

was of an ethnic group one would expect to find in another part of

Arbre. “I am the Heritor. My name is Magnath Foral, and I shall be

pleased to serve as your host.”


After introductions, Magnath Foral gave us

a quick explanation of the history of Elkhazg. I made no effort to

follow most of this, since I only needed a few cues and hints to

reconstruct what I had been taught of

the place as a fid. It was one of the oldest Cartasian maths, founded

by fraas and suurs who had personally witnessed the Fall of Baz, and

known Ma Cartas. They had trekked across forests and mountains to build

this thing more or less out in the middle of nowhere, on an oxbow lake

a few miles from the main course of a river. A trade route from the

east crossed the river not far away—close enough to give them access to

commerce when they needed it, not so close as to be a distraction or a

menace. Centuries later, a rough winter followed by a stormy spring

caused some trouble involving ice dams that altered the course of the

river and turned the oxbow lake back into an active channel. The trade

route adapted, choosing Elkhazg as the best place to make a

crossing—since one of the side-effects of the math had been the

development of a relatively stable and prosperous Sæcular community

around its walls.


A certain kind of mathic personality would

then have abandoned the place for something more remote, perhaps up in

the mountains. The wardens of Elkhazg, though, weren’t that way, and

had come to notice that the goods being carried on the backs of the

beasts passing over the river included not just fabrics, furs, and

spices but books and scrolls. In a compromise that would have made Ma

Cartas kick her way out of her chalcedony sarcophagus and come after

them with a broken bottle, they had spun off a thriving side business

in the form of a caravansery adjacent to the math, and a ferry across

the river. The one tariff that they charged was that the fraas and

suurs of Elkhazg be allowed to make a copy of every book and scroll

that passed through. Books were copied whose meanings they did not even

know. But they interpreted their mandate somewhat broadly and began, as

well, to make copies of the geometrical designs that they saw on

fabrics, pottery, and other goods. For these fraas and suurs had a

particular interest in plane geometry and in tiling problems. So, to

make a long story somewhat shorter, Elkhazg had become synonymous in

the minds of theors all over the world with tiling problems. Important

tile shapes and theorems about their properties were named after fraas

and suurs who had lived here, or specific walls and floors in this

complex.




It was no longer a math. At the time of the

Rebirth its library had been dispersed and copied all over the world,

and the building had fallen into private hands. It had not been made

over into a new math at the time of the Reconstitution. Instead—as

Magnath Foral did not come out and say, but as was easy enough to

figure out—it had been taken over by a long-lived complex of financial

interests similar to—quite likely the same as—the one that ran Ecba.


Fraa Jad skipped the intro and wandered off

into some other courtyard. Elkhazg had been big and rich and its

courtyards went on and on. Now it must appear as a large, rambling

black hole in the population density map of the city, since the only

people who dwelled here were Magnath Foral and another man who was his

liaison-partner; some visiting avout (though these had all been sent

packing yesterday); and a staff of janitors-cum-curators who looked

after the place. For one of the problems with this kind of art—i.e.,

tiles cemented to stone walls—was that you couldn’t cart it off to a

museum.


My brain ought to have been shutting down,

since I’d had essentially no rest since the shovel experiment at

Tredegarh the day before, and the time since then had been freakishly

eventful. But the visual environment of Elkhazg was overwhelmingly

rich—would have been so even had I not known that every pattern of

tiles was not merely a mesmerizing, intricate work of art, but a

profound theorical statement as well, shouting at me in a language I

was too tired or stupid to understand. This acted like a shot of

jumpweed extract, or something, that kept me awake for another hour at

the cost of some sanity. When I closed my eyes to get some respite from

the relentless grandeur, questions crept out of the darkness. That our

host had the same family name as Madame Secretary was, of course,

interesting. Was it a coincidence that Cell 317 had ended up here? Of

course not. What did it mean? Impossible to say. Should I even be

trying to puzzle it out now? No—no more than I should be trying to

grasp the significance of the tiling patterns that spread over every

surface around me, and seemed to be trying to crawl beneath my closed

eyelids and invade my brain.


One of the courtyards was a Decagon—of course. Fraa Jad found

it. The Teglon had already been solved on it, perhaps by some master

geometer of yore, perhaps by a syndev. None of us had ever seen a full

solution in person before, so we spent a while gawking. Stationed

around the edges were baskets of extra Teglon tiles in a different

color, which Fraa Jad was nudging around with his toe. It occurred to

me I’d never seen him sleep. Maybe Thousanders did something else. We

left him to the Teglon. Magnath Foral took the rest of us to the Old

Cloister, which had not been remodeled in five thousand years. That is

to say it lacked electricity or even plumbing. Each of us got a cell.

Mine had a bed, and a lot of tiles. I closed some preposterously

ancient and rickety shutters so that I’d not have to see, and

consequently think about, the tiles, then sank to my knees and located

the bed by groping.





“It occurred to me,” said Arsibalt, the next time both of us were awake, “I don’t think we have anything like this.”


“We meaning—?”


“The modern, post-Reconstitution mathic world.”


“And this meaning—?”


He held up his hands and gazed about in an are you blind? sort of gesture.


We were standing next to a table in an

alcove on the ground floor, open to the cloister on one side. The floor

of the cloister itself was covered with thousands of identical,

horn-shaped, nine-sided tiles that had been joined together with

machine-tool precision into a nonrepeating double-spiral pattern that

was giving me motion sickness just looking at it. I turned my back on

this and looked at a loaf of bread that was resting on the table. This

was so fresh that steam was gushing out of the end—Arsibalt, an

infamous heel-filcher, had already got to it. The loaf had been made by

braiding several ropes of dough together in a non-trivial pattern that,

I feared, had deep knot-theoretical significance and was named after

some Elkhazgian Saunt. “I just don’t think we have anything this

ancient, this—well, fantastic,” Arsibalt continued through a crunchy mouthful of bread-heel.




“There’s more than one way to be Inviolate,

I guess,” I said, tearing off a hunk of bread, and sitting down at the

table—which, inevitably, was ancient and covered with precision-cut

tiles of diverse exotic woods. “You can simply stop being a math.”


“And thereby become exempt from Sacks.”


“Exactly.”


“But what kind of entity owns something for four thousand years?”


“That’s what I kept asking myself on Ecba.”


“Ah, so you have a head start on me, Fraa Erasmas.”


“I guess you could think of it that way.”


“What conclusion have you reached?”


I stalled for a while by chewing the

bread—which was possibly the best I’d ever had. “That I don’t care,” I

finally said. “I don’t need to know the bylaws, the org chart, the

financial statements, the tedious history of the Lineage.”


Arsibalt was horrified. “But how can you not be fascinated by—”


“I am fascinated,” I

insisted. “That’s the problem. I am suffering from fascination burnout.

Of all the things that are fascinating, I have to choose just one or

two.”


“Here’s a candidate,” announced Sammann,

who had crossed into the cloister from an adjoining court where, I

inferred, Reticulum access was to be had. He sat down next to me and

laid his jeejah on the table. The screen was covered with the

calculations I’d noticed him doing on the plane. “Chronology,” he said.

“According to Jules, the amount of time that has passed since the Daban Urnud embarked on its first inter-cosmic journey is 885 and a half years.”


“Whose years?” Jesry asked, skittering down

the stairs from his cell, homing in on the smell of the bread. He

closed with it like a wrestler and ripped off a hunk.


“That, of course, is the whole question,” Sammann said with a grin.


Arsibalt noticed a pitcher of water on a

sideboard and began pouring it out into earthenware tumblers incised

with geometric patterns.




“If Urnud years are anything like ours, that is a long time,” I said. “Thank you, Fraa Arsibalt.”


“The Urnudans, and later the Troäns, wandered for a long time between Advents. Jules thinks it explains why they are a little tetchy.”


“Can we get a conversion factor—” Jesry said, in a tone that said I’ll be damned if I let this conversation wander.


“That’s what I’ve been working on,” said

Sammann, nodding thanks to Arsibalt. He took a draught of water.

Elkhazg was in a climate that sucked the moisture out of you. “Problem

is, Jules is a linguist. Hasn’t paid a lot of attention to this. Knows

the timeline in Urnud years—which is their standard unit up there—but

not the conversion factor to Arbre years. Anyway, I was able to back it

out from some clues—”


“What clues?” Jesry demanded.


“While the rest of us were evacuating

Tredegarh, a unit of Valers assaulted the quarters of the so-called

Matarrhites, and captured a lot of documents and syndevs before the

Urnud/Tro guys could destroy them. My brethren are still virtualizing

the syndevs—never mind—but some of the documents have timestamps in

Urnud units, which can be matched against recent events on our

calendar.”


“Wait a moment, please, how can we even

read a document in Urnudan?” Arsibalt asked, sitting down and helping

himself to the other heel.


“We can’t. But a cryptanalyst can easily

see that many of the documents have the same format, which includes a

string of characters readily decipherable as a timestamp. And they have

a special, phonetic alphabet for transliterating proper names; they

haul it out and dust it off whenever they encounter a new planet. This

too is elementary to decipher. So if we see a document that has the

phonetic transcription of Jesry and of his loctor at the Plenary—”


“We can infer it must be a report of the

Plenary I participated in after I came back from space,” Jesry said,

“and we know the Arbre date of that event. Very well. I agree that such

givens would enable you to begin estimating a conversion factor

relating Arbran to Urnudan years.”




“Yes,” said Sammann. “And there is still

some error margin, but I believe that, in Arbran years, the Urnudans

began their inter-cosmic journey 910 years ago, plus or minus 20.”


“Somewhere between 890 and 930 years ago,”

I translated, but that was the limit of my arithmetical powers so early

in the morning. Sammann was glaring fiercely into my eyes, willing me

to wake up a little faster, to go the next step, but mere calculation

was not my strong suit, especially when I had an audience.


“Between 2760 and 2800 A.R.?” said a new

voice: Lio, coming across the cloister with Jules Verne Durand. These

two did not look as if they’d only just gotten up; I guessed Lio had

been pumping the Laterran for information.


“Yes!” Sammann said. “The time of the Third Sack.”


One of Magnath Foral’s staff came out with

a huge bowl of peeled and cut-up fruit and began ladling it into bowls,

which we passed around.


Jules tore off a piece of bread and began

to eat it. This surprised me at first, since he could not derive any

nutritional value from it; but I reasoned it would fill his stomach and

make him feel less hungry.


“Wait a second,” Jesry said, “are you

trying to develop a theory that there’s a cause-and-effect relationship

at work? That the Urnudans began their journey because of events that took place here on Arbre?”


“I’m just saying it is a coincidence that needs looking at,” Sammann said.


We ate and thought. I had a head start on

the eating, so I briefed Jesry and Lio—as well as others who drifted

in, such as three of the Valers—on the conversations we’d had in the

Plurality of Worlds Messal about the Wick and the idea that Arbre might

be the HTW of other worlds, such as Urnud. The newcomers then had to be

brought up to speed on the first part of this morning’s conversation,

so the conversation forked and devolved into a general hubbub for a

couple of minutes.


“So information could flow from Arbre to Urnud, in that scenario,” Jesry concluded, loudly enough to shut everyone up and retake the floor. “But why would the Third Sack trigger such behavior on the part of an Urnudan star captain?”


“Fraa Jesry, remember the margin of error

that Sammann was careful to specify,” Arsibalt said. “The trigger could

have been anything that happened in this cosmos in the four decades

beginning around 2760. And I’ll remind you that this would include—”


“Events leading up to the Third Sack,” I blurted.


Silence. Discomfort. Averted gazes. Except

for Jules Verne Durand, who was staring right at me and nodding. I

recalled his willingness to broach excruciating topics at Messal, and

decided to draw strength from that. “I’m done tiptoeing around this

topic,” I said. “It all fits together. Fraa Clathrand of Edhar was the

tip of an iceberg. Others back then—who knows how many

thousands?—worked on a praxis of some kind. Procians and Halikaarnians

alike. It’s hard to know the truth of what this praxis was capable of.

The parking ramp dinosaur hints at what it could do when they made mistakes.

We know what the Sæculars thought of it, how they reacted. The records

were destroyed, the practitioners massacred—except in the Three

Inviolates. There’s no telling what people like Fraa Jad have been up

to since then. I’ll bet they’ve just been nursing it along—”


“Keeping the pilot light burning,” Lio called.


“Yeah,” I said. “But something about what

they did, circa 2760, when the praxis reached its zenith, sent out a

signal that propagated down the Wick, and was noticed, somehow, by the

theors of Urnud.”


“It drew them here, you’re saying,” said Lio, “like a dinner bell.”


“Like the fragrance of this bread,” I said.


“Perhaps it’s not just the smell of the

bread that has drawn others to this room, Fraa Erasmas,” Arsibalt

suggested. “Perhaps it is the sound of the conversation. Half-overheard

words, not understandable at a distance, but enough to pique the

interest of any sentient person in range of the voices.”


“You’re saying that’s what it might have been like to the Urnudan theors on that ship,” I said, “when they received—I don’t know—emanations, hints, signals, percolating down the Wick from Arbre.”


“Precisely,” said Arsibalt.


We all turned to Jules. He had removed some

Laterran food from a bag and—having sated his appetite with stuff he

could not digest—was now eating a few bites of what his body could use.

He noticed the attention, shrugged, and swallowed. “Do not hold your

breath waiting for an explanation from the Pedestal. Those of 900 years

ago were rational theors, to be sure. But during the long, dark years

of their wandering, it became something better recognizable as a

priesthood. And the closer these priests get to their god, the more

they fear it.”


“I wonder if we might calm them down just a little by getting them to see they’re not actually that close,” Jesry said.


“What do you mean?” Yul asked.


“Fraa Jad’s an interesting guy and all,”

Jesry said, “but he doesn’t seem like a god, or even a prophet, to me.

Whatever it is that he’s doing when he chants, or plays Teglon all

night, I don’t think it is godlike. I think he’s just picking up

signals coming to Arbre from farther up the Wick.”


By now everyone had showed up and eaten

except for Fraa Jad. We found him sitting in the middle of the Decagon,

eating some food that had been brought out to him by the staff. The

Decagon looked altogether different. When we had passed across it

yesterday, it had been paved in hand-sized clay tiles, dark brown, and

grooved: just like the ones I’d played with at Orithena, except

proportionally smaller. The groove seemed to run unbroken from one

vertex to the opposite—I had not taken the time to verify this, but I

assumed it was a correct solution. For those who wanted to try their

hands at it, baskets of white porcelain tiles, marked with black glazed

lines instead of grooves, had been stacked all around the edges. This

morning, though, the baskets were empty, and Fraa Jad was enjoying his

breakfast on a seamless white courtyard decorated with a wandering

black line. During the night he had tiled the whole thing. When we

understood this, we burst into applause. Arsibalt and Jesry were

shouting as if at a ball game. The Valers approached Fraa Jad and bowed

very low.




Out of curiosity, I backtracked to the

outskirts of the Decagon and stepped off its edge—for the surface was

several inches higher than the adjoining pavement. I squatted down and

lifted up one of Jad’s white tiles to expose a small patch of brown

tiling underneath. Jad’s was, as I’d expected, a wholly different

solution of the Teglon—the positions of the older brown tiles didn’t

match up with those of the new ones, proving that Fraa Jad had not

merely copied the older solution.


“It is the fourth,” said a gentle voice. I

looked up to find Magnath Foral watching me. He nodded at the tile in

my hand. Looking more closely at the edge of the Decagon, I perceived,

now, that underneath the brown tiles was a layer of green ones, and

below that, one of terra-cotta.


“Well,” I said, “I guess you need to bake up a new set of tiles.”


Foral nodded, and said, deadpan: “I don’t think there is any great hurry.”


I set the white tile back into its place,

stood up, and took a step up to the Decagon. It was open to the sky. I

craned my neck and looked straight up. “Think they noticed?” I asked.

Magnath Foral got a bemused look and said nothing.


Cell 317 moved on to convene in a courtyard

we’d not visited yesterday. This one was circular, and roofed by a

living bower. They had somehow trained half a dozen enormous flowering

vines to arch across the top of the space and grapple with one another

to form a stable dome of interlocked branches, fifty feet above the

ground. Dappled light shone through it to illuminate the cool space

below, but seen from above it would look like a hemisphere of solid

green, freckled with color. Pallets of mysterious but expensive-looking

stuff had been stationed around the edge of the yard. We devoted the

remainder of the morning to breaking these open, getting rid of

packaging materials, and drawing up an inventory: mindless labor that

everyone badly needed.


That we’d be going into space was obvious

from the nature of this stuff. By weight, it was ninety-nine percent

containers. We were opening beautiful twenty-pound lockers to find

pieces of equipment that weighed as much as dried flowers. We shed our bolts

and chords in favor of nearly weightless charcoal-grey coveralls. “It’s

all for the best,” Jesry said, eyeing me. “In zero gravity, the bolt

doesn’t hang, if you get my meaning. Things would get ugly fast.”


“Speak for yourself,” I said. “Anything else I need to know?”


“If you get sick—which you will—it’ll last

for three days. After that, you get better or you get used to it. I’m

not sure which.”


“Do you think we’ll even have three days?”


“If they were only sending us up as a diversion—”


“Just to get killed, you mean?”


“Yeah—then they could just send Procians.”


Our conversation had begun to draw in

others, such as the Valers, who did not understand Jesry’s sense of

humor. He cleared his throat and called out, “What is happening, my

fraa?” to Lio.


Lio sprang to the top of a tarp-covered pallet, and everyone went silent.


“We’re not allowed to know yet what the mission is,” he began, “or why we’re doing it. We just have to get there.”


“Get where?” Yul demanded.


“That Daban Urnud,” Lio said.


Not that we hadn’t been paying attention, but: we were really paying attention now. Everyone seemed brighter. Especially Jules. “Food, here I come.”


“How are we going to get aboard a heavily armed—” Arsibalt began to ask.


“We haven’t been told that yet,” Lio said.

“Which is just fine, because simply getting off the ground is difficult

enough. We can’t use the normal launch sites. I would presume that the

Pedestal have threatened to rod them if they notice launch

preparations. That means we can’t use the usual rockets, because those

are tailor-made to be launched only from those sites. And that, in

turn, means we can’t use the usual space vehicles—such as the one you

rode on, Jesry—because those can only be launched by said rockets. But

there is an alternative. During the last big war, a family of ballistic

missiles was developed. They use storable propellants and they launch

from the backs of vehicles that ramble around the countryside on

treads.”




“That can’t work,” Jesry protested. “A

ballistic missile doesn’t get its payload to orbit. It merely throws a

warhead at the other side of the world.”


“But suppose you take off that warhead and

replace it with something like this,” Lio said. He jumped down, got a

grip on the tarp, collected himself, and snapped it away with a

forceful movement of the hips and the arms. Revealed was a piece of

equipment not a great deal larger than a major household appliance. “A

gazebo on top of a welding rig” was how Yul might have described it, if

only he had been here. The “gazebo” was a very small one—though, as Lio

demonstrated, it was large enough to house one person in a fetal

position. Its roof was a lens of pressed sheet metal with some sort of

hard coating. It was supported by four legs: spindly-looking,

triangulated struts, like miniature radio towers.


So the gazebo had a roof and pillars, but

it lacked a floor. In lieu of that were only three lugs projecting

inward from a structural ring. At the moment, these were spanned by a

sheet of plywood, which supported Lio’s back as he curled up on top of

it. Once he rolled out, though, he took the plywood away to reveal

nothing below except for structural members and plumbing. There were

two big tanks—a torus encircling a sphere—and several smaller ones, all

spherical, and none larger than what you’d see on the shelves of a

sporting goods store. These were profoundly ensnared in plumbing and

cable-harnesses. Sticking out the bottom, like an insect’s stinger, was

a rocket nozzle, dismayingly small. “The real one will have a nozzle

skirt bolted onto it,” Lio informed us, “as big again as this whole

stage.”


“Stage!?” Sammann exclaimed. “You mean, as in—”


“Yes!” said Lio. “That’s what I’m trying to

tell you. I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer. This is the upper stage of a

rocket. There’s one for each of us.” Then, so that we could get a

better view of the nozzle, he grabbed a strut with one hand and hauled

up. The entire stage rocked back, exposing the underside.


“You’ve got to be kidding!” I exclaimed, and put my hand next to his and shouldered him out of the way. He let it drop into my hand. The entire stage weighed considerably less than I did. Then everyone else had to try it.


“Where’s the rest of it?” Jesry asked.


There was an awkward silence.


“This is the whole thing,” proclaimed Jules

Verne Durand, understanding it perfectly, even though he was seeing it

for the first time. “The conception is monyafeek!”


“Well, since you appear to be an expert on

monyafeeks,” Jesry said, “maybe you could tell us how four legs and a

roof are going to contain a pressurized atmosphere!”


“It’s not called a monyafeek,” Lio protested mildly. “It’s a—oh, never mind.”


“We will have only space suits, am I right?” Jules asked, looking to Lio.


Lio nodded. “Jules gets it. Since we need space suits anyway,

complete with life support and sanitation and all the rest, it’d be

redundant to send up a pressurized capsule comprising extra copies of

the same systems.”


I was expecting Jesry to lodge further

protests but he underwent a sudden conversion, and held up both hands

to silence murmurs. “I have been there,” he reminded us, “and I can

tell you there is no part of the shared space capsule experience I’m

eager to relive. You don’t know the meaning of nasty until you’ve been

blindsided by a drifting blob of someone else’s vomit. Don’t even get

me started on what passes for toilets. How hard it is to see out those

tiny windows. I think this is a great idea: each of us sealed up in our

own personal spaceship, keeping our farts to ourselves, enjoying the

panoramic view out the facemask.”


“How long is it possible to live in a space suit?” I asked.


“You’re going to love this,” Jesry

proclaimed, taking the floor with a nod from Lio. Jesry strode over to

where he, with help from Fraa Gratho, had, for the last hour or so,

been assembling space suits. He approached one that seemed to be

complete, and slapped a green metal canister socketed into the suit’s

backpack. “Liquid oxygen! A whole four hours’ supply, right here.”


“Provided you show discipline in its use,” put in Suur Vay.




“Liquid!? As in cryogenic?” Sammann asked.


“Of course.”


“How long will it stay cold?”


“In space? It’s not such an issue. It’ll

stay cold as long as the fuel cell has fuel to run the chiller.”

Slapping a red canister, he went on, “Liquid hydrogen. Easy on, easy

off.” He twisted it off, showed us some kind of complicated

latching/gasket hardware, then twisted it back on.


“So we’re competing against a fuel cell for the available oxygen?” Arsibalt asked.


“Think of it as coöperation.”


“What about waste products?” someone asked,

but Jesry was ready. “Carbon dioxide is scrubbed here.” He twisted off

a white can and waved it around. “When it’s used up, slap on a new one.

Then—you’ll like this—take the old one over to the tender.” He paced

over to a separate piece of equipment that looked as if it belonged to

the same genus, but a different species, from the space suits. It had

color-coded sockets all over it for tanks and canisters. He jacked the

scrubber onto one of these. “It bakes the CO2 out of the

scrubber. When this bar has changed color”—he pointed to an indicator

on the side of the can—“it’s ready to use again.”


“This device is also a reservoir of air and fuel?” asked Suur Vay, eyeing the sockets for oxygen and hydrogen canisters.


“If it’s available, this is where you’ll

get it,” Jesry said. “It’s meant to be connected to a water bladder and

an energy supply—usually solar panels, but in our case, a little nuke.

It breaks the water down into hydrogen and oxygen, liquefies them, and

fills any tank you slap onto it. And it uses heat to recycle the

scrubbers, as I was saying. Likewise, when your waste bags fill

up—we’ll discuss those later—you attach them here—” pointing

fastidiously to an array of yellow fittings.


“Do you mean to say we’ll be defecating inside the suits?” Arsibalt asked.


“Thank you for volunteering to demonstrate

this amazing feature of the praxis!” Jesry proclaimed. “Lio and Raz,

would you be so kind as to give your fraa some privacy?”




Lio and I collected Arsibalt’s bolt from

where he had left it, and held it up, stretched between us, to make a

screen as Arsibalt shed his coverall. Meanwhile, Jesry fetched a double

extra large space suit and trundled it over. It was suspended from a

rolling contraption that he called the Donning Rig. The suit consisted

of a big rigid construct, the Head and Torso Unit or, inevitably, HTU,

whose upper back hinged open like a refrigerator door. Each arm and

each leg was built up out of several short, stiff, bulbous pods,

stacked like beads on a string. This gave it a different appearance

from the space suits I remembered seeing in speelies, and on the Warden

of Heaven: this one was bigger, more rounded, reassuringly solid.

Another big difference, at least cosmetically, was that this suit—like

all of the others that Jesry had been working on—was matte black.


Arsibalt stepped toward the Donning Rig,

raising his hands to grasp a strategically located chin-up bar, and

pulling/climbing to a step poised at the threshold of the suit’s back

door. He was surprisingly game. Perhaps he was remembering spec-fic

speelies he used to watch before he was Collected, or perhaps he just

didn’t like being naked. With some help from Jesry he introduced one

pointed toe, then the other, into the leg-holes at the base of the HTU,

and lowered himself into them. As his feet descended, the hard segments

rotated in different ways. Each bulb, it seemed, was joined to its

neighbors by an airtight bearing. All of them could rotate

independently, so that elbows and knees could bend normally without the

need for a complex joint mechanism. Arsibalt looked even more roly-poly

than usual now. He flexed one leg, than the other, giving us a look at

how the segments allowed movement by rotating against each other.


“I want to you take notice of the bags

ringing your thighs and waist,” Jesry said, indicating some

rubberish-looking stuff hanging limp from the inner walls of the HTU.

“In a few minutes, those are going to rock your world.”


“It is so noted,” Arsibalt said, thrusting

one hand, then the other, into the arm-constructs, which seemed to end

in blunt hemispherical domes—handless stumps. All we could see now was

his back and his arse. Jesry did us all the favor of slamming the door

on that.




Now that our fraa was decent, Lio and I let

the bolt drop, then migrated round to Arsibalt’s front side. We could

barely hear his muffled voice. Jesry jacked a wire into a socket on the

chest and turned on an amplifier. We heard Arsibalt on a speaker:

“There’s much for my hands to learn about down here—I wish I could see

what I was doing.”


“We’ll go over it,” Jesry promised. He

spoke distractedly, since he was busy examining an array of readouts on

the front of the suit—making sure his fraa wasn’t going to asphyxiate

in there. I noticed others staring at Arsibalt’s front and looking

amused, so I came around to that side of him and discovered that a

small flat-panel speely screen was planted in the middle of his chest.

It was showing a live feed of Arsibalt’s face, taken by a speelycaptor

inside the helmet. It was quite distorted because shot through a

fisheye lens at close range, but gave us something to look at other

than the opaque smoked-glass face mask. “Pray tell, what are all these

nozzles in front of my mouth?” Arsibalt asked, eyes downcast and

scanning.


“Left, water. Right, food and, as warranted, pharmaceuticals. The big one in the middle is the scupper.”


“The what?”


“You throw up into it. Don’t miss.”


“Ah.” Arsibalt’s eyes rose to look out the

face-mask at where his hands ought to have been. He raised one arm

until its stump was up where he could see it. A hatch popped open. We

all jumped back as something like a giant metal spider sprang out of

it, flailing its limbs. On a second look, this proved to be a skeletal

hand: bones, joints, and tendons mimicking those of a natural hand, but

all made of machined, black-anodized metal, and skinless, unless you

counted the black rubber pads on the tips of the fingers. It all grew

out of a wrist joint that was fixed to the end of the stump. At first,

it twitched and flopped spasmodically. One by one, the joints seemed to

come under Arsibalt’s control, and it began to move like a real hand.

His other arm came up, the hatch popped open, and another hand emerged

from it. This one, though, was less human-looking; it was studded with

small tools.


“Explain what you are doing with your hands,” I requested.




“The ends of the arms are roomy,” Arsibalt

said. “There is a sort of glove, into which I can insert my hand. It is

mechanically connected to the skeletal hand that you can all see.”


“Pure mechanism?” Sammann asked. “No servos?”


“Strictly mechanical,” said Jesry. “See for

yourself.” And we gathered round for a closer look. The skelehand was

animated by a number of metallic ribbons and pushrods that all

disappeared into the arm-stump where, we gathered, they were connected

directly to the internal glove that Arsibalt was wearing.


“Simple, in a way,” was Fraa Osa’s verdict, “yet very complex.”


“Yes. Except for the airtight seals, the

whole thing could have been made by a medieval artisan with a lot of

time on his hands,” Jesry said. “Fortunately, the mathic world has a

large number of medieval artisans. And, believe it or not, it’s easier

to build something like this than it is to make a pressurized space

suit glove that’s actually good for anything.”


“There are other controls as well, in the

end of the stump,” Arsibalt volunteered. “If I withdraw my hand from

the glove—” The skelehand wiggled, then went limp. It snapped back into

its storage compartment in the end of the stump, and the hatch closed

over it. “Now,” Arsibalt said, “I’m groping around on the inner surface

of the stump, which is replete with all manner of buttons and switches.”


“Be careful with those,” Jesry suggested.

“Most of the suit’s functions are controlled by voice commands, but

there are manual overrides that you don’t want to mess with.”


“How are we to tell all of these buttons

and whatnot apart, since we can’t see them?” Arsibalt asked, and on the

speely screen we could see his eyes wandering around uselessly as he

felt his way around the inside of the stump.


“Most of them are a keyboard for entering

alphanumeric data with the fingertips. Sammann will be able to use it

immediately. The rest of us will have to hunt and peck.”


“So,” I asked, “overall, what do you think? How does it feel?”


“Surprisingly comfortable.”


“As you’ve noticed, the suit touches you in

relatively few places,” Jesry said. “That is for comfort, and so that

your core temp can be regulated by a

simple air-conditioning system—obviates the tube garment that the

Warden of Heaven had to wear. But where it touches you, it really grabs

you—say the words sanitary elimination cycle commence.”


“Sanitary elimination cycle commence,”

Arsibalt repeated, with trepidation rising as he climbed to the end of

this ungainly phrase. The words sanitary elimination cycle appeared on

a status panel below the speely of his face. His eyes got wide. “Oh, my

god!” he exclaimed.


Everyone laughed. “Care to explain what’s going on?” Jesry said.


“Those air bags you pointed out to me earlier—they inflated. Around my waist and upper thighs.”


“Your pelvic region is now completely isolated from the rest of the suit,” Jesry said.


“I’ll say!”


“You can do whatever needs doing.”


“I believe we can skip that part of the demonstration, Fraa Jesry.”


“Have it your way. Say ‘sanitary elimination cycle conclude.’”


Arsibalt said it, and we got to have

another laugh as we saw and heard his reaction. “I’m being sprayed with

warm water. Fore and aft.”


“Yes. Boys and girls get the same

treatment, like it or not,” Jesry said. Jesry now hauled down a thick

hose that was part of the donning rig, and jacked it into a not very

dignified part of the suit’s anatomy. “We don’t have the infinite

vacuum of space to draw on, so we fake it.” He hit a switch and a

vacuum cleaner howled for several seconds. More comedy on the speely

screen. Arsibalt informed us that he was now being vigorously

air-dried. Then: “It’s over. The bags deflated.”


“We know,” Sammann said, reading the status panel.


“You spend some air every time you do this—so use it sparingly,” Jesry cautioned us. “But the point is—”


“As long as the tender is up and running we can live in these things for a long time,” I said.




“Yeah.”


“This suit is altogether different from that worn by the Warden of Heaven,” Fraa Osa pointed out. “More sophisticated.”


“Beautifully machined,” I said, wishing

Cord could be here to admire the huge ring bearing that encircled

Arsibalt’s waist, just below the threshold of the back door, making it

possible for him to swivel his hips and shoulders independently.


“It is literally unbelievable,” was

Arsibalt’s verdict. “As highly as I rate our fraas and suurs of the

Convox, I can’t believe they could have designed something of such

complexity on such short notice.”


“They didn’t,” Jesry said, “this suit was designed, down to the last detail, twenty-six centuries ago.”


“For the Big Nugget?” Sammann asked.


“Exactly. And that

Convox had several years to devote to it. The plans were archived at

Saunt Rab’s, and preserved during the Third Sack by fraas and suurs who

carried the books around on their backs their whole lives. Last year,

when the Geometers dropped into orbit around Arbre, there was a whole

round of Vocos that we at Edhar never heard about, just to dump talent

into restarting the program. Money was spent on an inconceivable scale

to build these”—he slapped Arsibalt’s shoulder—“and those.” He waved at

the monyafeek. “Note the attachment points.” He swiveled Arsibalt

around so that the rest of us could see his back, and pointed out a

triangular array of sockets, in the same configuration as the

structural lugs on the monyafeek. “One plugs into the other—they become

an integrated unit. So we don’t need furniture—no acceleration couches.

Air bags in the suit will inflate to cushion our bodies during launch.”


“Impressive,” Sammann said. “The only thing we won’t be able to do in these things is sneak around.”


Everyone looked at him blankly. He grinned,

and waved at Arsibalt’s chest, all lit up with speely feeds,

alphanumeric displays, and status lights. “Pretty much rules out a

covert operation.”


Gratho stepped forward, grabbed a barely

noticeable ridge projecting from the HTU at collarbone level, and

pulled down. A retractable black screen deployed, slid down, and

latched in place just above the waist

bearing. All of the lights and displays were now concealed. Arsibalt

was matte black from head to toe, as if he’d been sculpted out of damp

carbon.


“It is remarkable,” Osa pointed out, “when

one considers that these were not even available when you, Fraa Jesry,

went up with the Warden of Heaven.”


Jesry nodded. “There are now sixteen of them.”


“But there are eleven of us!” Arsibalt

exclaimed, over his speaker. We’d forgotten he was there. His skelehand

groped at his waist, found the latch for the screen, and yanked it back

up to expose the speely. His familiar look of bulging-eyed surprise was

comically magnified.


“That’s right,” said Jesry.


“The significance of that should be

obvious,” Lio said, “but I will spell it out: we can’t screw this up.

It is a similar story with the missile launchers. These were a military

secret. There’s no reason why the Pedestal—who have obtained almost all

of their knowledge of Arbre from the leakage of popular culture into

space—would know of their existence. They were specifically made to be

hard to see from above. But as soon as one of them is launched, its

thermal signature will be picked up on the Geometers’ surveillance, and

they’ll know all about them. So they must be launched all at once, or

not at all. There are a couple of hundred. They are all going to be

sent up within the same ten-minute launch window, which happens to be

three days from now. Eleven of them will be tipped with ‘monyafeeks’

carrying the members of this cell. Quite a few others will carry the

equipment and consumables we’ll be needing.”


“And the remainder?” Sammann asked.


Lio said nothing, though he did throw a

glance at me. Both of us were thinking of the Everything Killers.

“Decoys and chaff,” he said finally.


“What is it we’re expected to do once we get up there?” Arsibalt asked.


“Consolidate a number of other payloads into a thrust platform—I won’t dignify it as a ‘vehicle’—that will inject us into a new orbit,” Lio said, “an orbit that will bring us to a rendezvous with the Daban Urnud.”


“We could have guessed that much,” Jesry said. “What Fraa Arsibalt is really asking, is—”


Fraa Osa stepped forward, giving Lio an if I may?

look. We hadn’t heard much out of the Vale leader, so everyone got

where they could see him. “The greatest difficulty for ones such as you

shall be, not completion of the given tasks, but instead the

humiliation and uncertainty that arise from not being able to know the

entire plan. These emotions can hamper you. You must simply decide,

now, either to proceed with the awareness that the entire plan might

never be revealed to you—and, were it revealed, might have obvious

defects—or to turn away and allow some other person to occupy the space

suit that has been allotted to you.” And then he stepped back. There

was a minute of silence as all of us made our decisions. If that was

the right word for what was going on in our heads. I didn’t feel any of

the emotions connected with real decision-making. To step away from

this group at the moment was simply unthinkable. There was no decision

to be made. Fraa Osa, who had devoted his entire life to preparing for

such situations, no doubt knew this perfectly well. He wasn’t really

asking us to make a decision. He was telling us, in a reasonably

diplomatic way, to shut up and concentrate on the matter at hand.


And so that is what we did eighteen hours a

day until the truck came to pick us up and take us to the airfield.

Though a casual observer might have thought we were working only half

the time, and playing video games otherwise. Three of the cells that

adjoined the courtyard had been equipped with syndevs hooked to big

wraparound speely screens. In the center of each was a chair with

disembodied spacesuit arms rigged to it. We’d take turns sitting in

that chair with our hands stuck into the arms, groping at the controls.

Projected on the screens around us was a simulation of what we might

see out of our face-masks when we were floating around in low orbit,

complete with all manner of readouts and indicators that, we were

promised, would be superimposed on the view by the suit’s built-in

syndevs. The controls beneath our fingertips could be patched through

to the thrusters on the monyafeeks so that, once we reached orbit, we’d

be able to scoot around and accomplish certain tasks. Beneath the left

hand was a little sphere that spun freely in a cradle; beneath the

right, a mushroom-shaped stick that could be moved in four directions

as well as pushed down or pulled up. The former controlled the suit’s

rotation, which was pretty easy to manage. The latter controlled

translation—moving across space, as opposed to spinning in place. That

would be tricky. Things in orbit didn’t behave like what we were used

to. Just to name one example: if I were pursuing another object in the

same orbit, my natural instinct would be to fire a thruster that would

kick me forward. But that would move me into a higher orbit, so the thing I was chasing would soon drop below

me. Everything we knew down here was going to be wrong up there. Even

for those of us who’d learned orbital mechanics at Orolo’s feet, the

only way for us to really grasp it was by playing this game.


“It is deceptive,” was Jules’s observation.

He and I were in one of those cells together. I’d become good, early,

at playing the game, since I knew the underlying theorics, so helping

others learn it had become my role. “The left hand seems

to make a great effect.” He spun the little sphere. I closed my eyes

and swallowed as the image on the screens—consisting of Arbre, and some

other stuff in “orbit” around us—snapped around wildly. “However, in

truth the six elements have not been changed in the slightest.” He was

referring to the row of six numbers lined up across the bottom of the

simulated display: the same six numbers I’d once taught Barb about in

the Refectory kitchen.


“That’s right,” I said, “you can spin around all you want and it won’t change your orbital elements—which is all that really

matters.” A six-way indicator in the lower right began to flicker,

which told me that Jules was using his other hand—the dexter, as he

called it—to play with the mushroom, which he called a joycetick. The

six orbital elements began to fluctuate. One of them changed from green

to yellow. “Aha,” I said, “you just screwed up your inclination. You’re

out of plane now.”


“Very significant in the long run,” he said, “and yet deceptively I observe no great difference now.”


“Exactly. Let me run it forward, though, to show you what happens.”

I had an instructor’s control panel, which I used to fast-forward the

simulation, compressing the next half hour into about ten seconds. The

other satellites drifted so far away from us that they were lost to

sight. “Once you get so far away that you can’t see your friends—or

can’t tell them apart from all of the decoys—”


“I am pairdoo,” he said flatly. “Can you make it run backward?”


“Of course.” I ran the simulation back to just after he had messed up his inclination.


“How can I fix it—like so, perhaps?” he

muttered, and tried something with the joycetick. The inclination got a

little worse, and the eccentricity jumped through yellow to red.

“Maird,” he said, “I am fouled up now on two of the six.”


“Try the reverse of what you just did,” I

suggested. He fired the opposite thruster, and the eccentricity

improved, but semimajor axis got worse. “Quite a fine puzzle,” he said.

“Why did I study linguistics instead of celestial mechanics?

Linguistics got me into this excellent mess—only physics can get me

out.”


“What’s it like up there?” I asked him. He was getting frustrated and I thought he might benefit from a break.


“Oh, you have seen the model, I am sure. It

is quite accurate, in the externals which can be viewed by your

telescopes. Of course, most of the Forty Thousand never see any of

that. Only the internals of the Orbstack where they live their whole

lives.” He was speaking of the living heart of the Daban Urnud:

sixteen hollow spheres, each a bit less than a mile in diameter,

clustered about a central axis that rotated to produce pseudogravity.


“That’s what I’m asking about,” I said. “What’s that community of ten thousand Laterrans like?”


“Split, now, between the Fulcrum and the Pedestal.” The Fulcrum was the opposition movement, led by Fthosians.


“But in normal times—”


“Until we came here, and the positions of

Pedestal and Fulcrum became so hard, it was like a nice provincial town

with perhaps a university or research lab. Each orb is half full of

water. The water is covered with houseboats. On the roofs of them, we

grow our own food—ah, I remember food!”




“Each race has four of the orbs, I assume?”


“Officially, yes, but there is of course

some mixing of the communities. When the ship is not under

acceleration, we can open certain doors to join neighboring orbs, and

one moves freely between them. In one of the orbs of Laterre, we have a

school.”


“So there are children?”


“Of course we have children and raise them very, very well—education is everything to us.”


“I wish we did a better job of that on Arbre,” I said. “Extramuros, that is.”


Jules thought about it, and shrugged.

“Understand, I do not describe a utopia! We do not educate the young

ones purely out of respect for noble ideals. We need them to stay

alive, and to allow the voyaging of the Daban Urnud

to continue. And there is competition between the children of Urnud,

Tro, Laterre, and Fthos for the positions of power within the Command.”


“Does that even extend to fields such as linguistics?” I asked.


“Yes, of course. I am a strategic asset! To

make its way to new cosmi and to carry out new Advents is the Rayzon

Det of the Command. And almost nothing is more useful to them, in an

Advent, than a linguist.”


“Of course,” I said. “So, your nice town of ten thousand is big enough for people to marry, or whatever you do—”


“We marry,” he confirmed. “Or at least, sufficient of us do, and have children, to maintain ten thousand.”


“How about you?” I asked. “Are you married?”


“I was,” he said.


So they had divorces too. “Any kids?”


“No. Not yet. Never, now.”


“We’ll get you back home,” I told him. “Maybe you’ll meet someone new up there.”


“Not like her,” he said. Then he got a wry

look and shrugged. “When Lise and I were together, I always would have

said such things. Sweet nothings. ‘Oh, there is no one like you, my

love.’” He sniffled, and looked away. “Not insincerely, of course.”


“Of course not.”




“But the manner of her passing made so

clear, so bright, the truth of it—that there truly was no one like her.

And in a community of only ten thousand, cut off forever from its roots

in the home cosmos—well—I know them all, Raz. All the women of my age.

And I can tell you as a matter of fact that in the cosmos where you and

I are standing, there is no one like my Lise.” Tears were running

freely down his face now.


“I am terribly sorry,” I said. “I feel such a fool. I didn’t understand your wife was dead.”


“She is dead,” he confirmed. “I have, you know, seen the pictures of her body—her face—all over the Convox.”


“My god,” I exclaimed. I wasn’t in the

habit of using religious oaths, but could think of nothing else strong

enough. “The woman in the probe at Orithena—”


“She was my Lise,” said Jules Verne Durand. “My wife. I have already told Sammann.” And then he broke down altogether.


Jules and I were sitting together in the

darkened cell, nothing to see by except simulated sunlight, reflecting

from a simulated Arbre and a simulated moon. Simulated persons in

spacesuits drifted silently around us. He was hunched over sobbing.


I remembered our Messal conversations about

how we could interact in simple physical ways with the Geometers even

if biological interaction was not possible. I went over and wrapped my

arms around the Laterran until he stopped crying.





“He told me,” I said to Sammann later.


He knew immediately who and what I was speaking of. He broke eye contact and shook his head. “How’s he doing?”


“Better…he said something good.”


“What’s that?”


“I touched Orolo. Orolo touched Lise—gave himself up for her. When I touched Jules, it was like—”


“Closing a cycle.”


“Yeah. I told him how we had prepared her body. The respect we showed it. He seemed to like hearing that.”




“He told me on the plane,” Sammann said. “Asked me not to tell the others.”


“You have anyone like that, Sammann?” For in all the time we’d spent together, we’d never broached such topics.


He chuckled and shook his head. “Like that? No. Not like that.

A few girlfriends sometimes. Otherwise, just family. Ita are—well—more

family oriented.” He stopped awkwardly. The contrast with avout was too

obvious.


“Well, in that vein,” I finally said, “could you help me close another cycle?”


He shrugged. “Be happy to try. What do you need?”


“You got a message off to Ala the other day. Just before the plane took off. I was sort of—shy.”


“Because of the lack of privacy,” he said. “Yeah, I could see that.”


“Can you send her another?”


“Sure. But it won’t be any more private than the last.”


I sort of chuckled. “Yeah. Well, considering everything, that’ll be acceptable.”


“Okay. What do you want me to tell Ala?”


“That if I get to have a fourth life, I want to spend it with her.”


“Whew!” he exclaimed, and his eyes glistened as if I’d slapped him. “Let me type that in before you change your mind.”


“All we do now is go forward,” I said, “there’ll be no changing of minds.”


Rod: Military slang. To

bombard a target, typically on the surface of a planet, by dropping a

rod of some dense material on it from orbit. The rod has no moving

parts or explosives; its destructiveness is a consequence of its

extremely high velocity.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





I spent the entire journey to orbit

convinced that the rocket had failed and that this was what dying was.

The designers hadn’t had time or

budget to put in fripperies like windows, or even speely feeds: just a

fairing, a thin outer shell whose functions were to shield the

monyafeek from wind-blast; to block out all light, ensuring we’d make

the trip in absolute darkness and ignorance; and to vibrate. The latter

two functions combined to maximize the terror. Think of what you’d feel

going down white water in a barrel. Keeping that in mind, think of

being nailed into a rickety crate and then thrown from an overpass onto

an eight-lane freeway at peak traffic. Now think of putting on a padded

suit and being used for stick-fighting practice in the Ringing Vale.

Finally, imagine having giant speakers glued to your skull and pure

noise pumped into them at double the threshold for permanent hearing

loss. Now pile all of those sensations on top of each other and imagine

them going on for ten minutes.


The only favorable thing I could say about

it was that it was much better than how I’d spent the preceding hour:

lying on my back in the dark, wedged and strapped in a fetal position,

and expecting to die. Compared to that, actually dying

was turning out to be a piece of cake. Most unpleasant—and, in

retrospect, most embarrassing—had been the philosophical musings with

which I’d whiled away the time: that Orolo’s death, and Lise’s, had

prepared me to accept my own. That it was good I’d sent that message to

Ala. That even if I died in this cosmos I might go on living in another.


A stowaway hit me in the spine with a pipe.

No, wait a second, that was the engine exploding. No, actually it had

been the explosive charges blowing off the fairing. A system of cracks

split the darkness into quadrants, then expanded to crowd it out. The

four petals of the fairing fell aft and I found myself looking down at

Arbre. Some of the buffeting’s overtones (aero turbulence) lessened,

others (combustion chamber instability) got worse. The acceleration, so

far, had not been a big deal compared to the buffeting, but about then

it became quite intense for half a minute or so as the missile’s engine

concluded its burn. Made it hard to appreciate the view. Another

spine-crack told me that the booster had fallen off. Good riddance. It

was just me and the monyafeek now. A few moments’ drift and

weightlessness came to a decisive end as the steering thrusters got a

grip and snapped the stage into the

correct orientation with a crispness that was reassuring even if it did

make some of my internal organs swap places. Then a sense of steadily

building weight as the monyafeek’s engine came on for its long burn. To

all appearances—the sky was black—I was out of the atmosphere, and the

roof of the gazebo was doing nothing more than blocking my view ahead.

But as the monyafeek’s engine pushed me ahead toward orbital velocity,

blades of plasma grew out from the roof’s edges and twitched around my

shoulders and feet, just close enough to make it interesting. This was

the upper atmosphere being smashed out of the way with such violence

that electrons were being torn loose from atoms.


At the launch site, just after I’d

swallowed the Big Pill (an internal temperature transponder) and donned

the suit, the avout who’d been pressed into service as launch crew had

mummified me in kitchen wrap, stuffed me into the gazebo, bracing their

shoulders against the soles of my feet, and strapped me together with

packing tape. They had taken measurements with yardsticks: freebies

from the local megastore. More tape work had ensued, until they’d

compressed me into an envelope that matched the diagrams on their

hastily printed, extensively hand-annotated documents. Then they had

converged on me with cans of expanding foam insulation and foamed me

into position, being sure to get the stuff between my knees and my

chest, my heels and my butt, my wrists and my face. Once the foam had

become rigid, someone had reached in and peeled the plastic back from

my face shield so that I could see, patted me on the helmet, and stuck

a box cutter into my skelehand. The importance of the measurements

became obvious during the early minutes of the second stage burn, as I

saw those jets of white-hot atmosphere playing within inches of my

feet. But they faded as we climbed out of the atmosphere altogether.

The entire gazebo sprang off (literally—it was spring-loaded) and

drifted away, leaving me as hood ornament. Then I was powerfully

tempted to get free of the packing material. But I knew the

velocity-versus-time curve of this trajectory by heart, and knew I was

still far from reaching orbital velocity. Most of the velocity gain was

going to happen in the final part of the burn, when the monyafeek had

left in its wake three-quarters or

more of its mass in the form of expended propellants. The same thrust,

pushing against a greatly reduced burden, would then yield acceleration

that Lio had cheerfully described as “near-fatal.” “But it’s okay,”

he’d said, “you’ll black out before anything really bad happens to you.”


I tried to look around. During the last

three days, I’d fantasized that the view would be fantastic. Inspiring.

I’d be able to see the other rockets going up: two hundred of them, all

arcing up and east on roughly parallel courses. But the suit had more

air bags inside of it than Jesry had let on, and all of them had been

pumped up to maximal inflation (meaning: I was lying on a bed of

rocks), locking my head and torso into the attitude deemed least likely

to end in death, paralysis, or organ failure. My spleen could rest

easy; my eyes could see nothing but a starfield, and a bit of Arbre’s

glowing blue atmosphere down in the lower right. Those grew blurry as

my eyes began to water, and the eyeballs themselves were mashed out of

shape by their own weight, like Arsibalt sitting on a water balloon…





I was falling. I was hung over. I was not

dead. My suit was talking to me. Had been for a bit. “Issue the

‘Restraint Depressurize’ command to deflate the restraint system and to

commence the next stage of the operation,” suggested a voice in Orth,

over and over: some suur with good enunciation who’d been drafted to

read canned messages into a recording device. I wanted to meet her.


“Ruzzin duzzle,” I said, thinking that this would impress her.


The suit drew breath, then said, “Issue the ‘Restraint Depressurize’ command to—”


“Rustin Deplo!” I insisted. She was beginning to get on my nerves. Maybe I didn’t want to meet her after all.


“Issue the ‘Restraint—’”


“Restirraynt. Dee. Press. Your. Eyes.”


The bags deflated. “Welcome to Low Arbre Orbit!” said the voice, in an altogether different tone.


My head and torso were now free to move about the HTU, but my

arms and legs were still taped and foamed. I got busy with that box

cutter. It was slow going at first, but soon hunks of foam and snarls

of tape were flying out of the monyafeek, drifting away, keeping

station in my general vicinity. Eventually, because of their low mass

and high drag, they’d re-enter and burn up. Until then, they’d make a

lot of visual clutter to confuse the Geometers.


Speaking of clutter, I was beginning to see

brilliant specks of light around me. There were two kinds: millions of

tiny sparkles (strips of chaff sent up on other missiles) and dozens of

large, steady beacons. Some of the latter were near enough that my

eyeballs—gradually resuming their former shape—could resolve them as

disks, or moons. Depending on where they, I, and the sun were situated,

some looked like full moons, some like new ones, others somewhere in

between.


There was a half moon off to my right,

steadily getting larger as my orbit and it converged. It was a

metallized poly balloon five hundred feet across, sent up in the same

missile-barrage as I. By measuring its apparent size against the

reticle on my face mask, I was able to estimate its distance: about two

miles. This must be the one I was supposed to make for.


Feeling around inside the arm-stumps, I got

my left hand on the trackball and my right on the stick. They were dead

until I uttered another voice command, and confirmed it by flicking a

switch. This brought the monyafeek’s thrusters under my control. Up to

now, the built-in guidance system had been managing them. And, assuming

that the nearby balloon was the one that I was supposed to be aiming

for, it seemed to have done a respectable job. But it had no eyes, no

brain by which it could home in on the balloon. And as long as the

Geometers kept jamming our nav satellites, it could only get me so

close. From here on, my eyes would have to be the sensors and my brain

the guidance system. I gave the trackball the tiniest rotation, just to

verify that the system was working, and the thrusters spat blue light

and spun me around to a new attitude. I got my bearings, squared

Arbre’s horizon below me, figured out which way was southeast (the

direction of my orbital travel), made a mental calculation, thought

about it one more time for good measure, and

gave the joycetick a shot in two directions. The monyafeek hit me with

a one-two punch. Other than that, nothing terrible happened, and I

liked what the balloon was now doing in my visual field, so I was

tempted to repeat. But I thought better of it. That was how we’d

frequently got into trouble in the video game: by doing too much of the

right thing.


I had a long-distance wireless transceiver,

for use only in emergencies. I left it switched off. When the balloon

was close enough for the short-range system to work, I said “Reticule

scan,” and a few moments later the suit came back with “Network

joined,” drowned out by Sammann’s voice: “How was that for a ride?”


“I want my money back,” I said, and suppressed a feeling of wild joy that came over me on hearing his—anyone’s—voice. Glancing down at a display below my face mask (actually, projected into my eyeballs so that it looked

that way), I saw ikons for myself, Sammann, and Fraa Gratho. But as I

was looking, Esma’s face and then Jules’s were tacked on. I looked

around to see two other monyafeeks converging on us. They were flying

in improbably close formation. Actually, one of them—Esma—was towing

the other. “I grappled Jules. He was drifting,” Esma said. Fortunately,

I had grown accustomed to the Valers’ habit of modest understatement.

I’d only just managed to get here alone. In the same time, Esma had tracked someone else, maneuvered to snag him, and brought him home.


“Jules? What’s up? You okay? Is this what passes for a joke on Laterre?” Sammann asked.


“I locked him out of the reticule,” Esma said. “He was speaking incoherently of cheese.”


“Twenty minutes to line of sight,” said an automated voice—referring to the time when the Daban Urnud

would be able to see us. The balloon now was huge in my vision, and I

could see Sammann hovering to one side of it in his monyafeek, Gratho

in his about fifty feet away. Both looked strangely colorful and fuzzy,

like toddlers’ toys. The monyafeeks, and the other, non-human payloads

that had been sent up at the same time, were surrounded by unruly

clouds of fibrous netting that had been crammed into sealed capsules

for the ride up, but that had popped open once we’d hit orbit, and

expanded to ten times their former volume. We looked like drifting red

pompoms.


“You guys performed the star check?” I asked.


“Yes,” said Gratho, “but I invite you to verify our results.”


I used the trackball to nudge myself around

until I could see the vaguely circular constellation that outlined the

Hoplite’s shield, and compared its position to those of Arbre and of

the balloon. This was a simple way of assuring that when our orbit took

us around to where telescopes on the Daban Urnud might be able to see us, the balloon would be between us and them.


By now, the Geometers must know that

something big was afoot. We had timed it, though, in such a way that

Arbre had blocked their view of the two-hundred-missile launch. That

was soon to change. Our orbit was almost perfectly circular—its

eccentricity, a measure of how unround it was, was only 0.001—and it

skimmed just above the atmosphere, at an altitude of a hundred miles.

It took us around Arbre once every hour and a half. The Daban Urnud’s orbit was more elliptical, and its altitude ranged between fourteen and twenty-five thousand

miles. It took ten times as long—about fifteen hours—to make one

revolution. Imagine two runners circling a pond, one staying so close

to the shore that his feet got wet, the other maintaining a distance of

half a mile. The one on the inside would lap the one on the outside ten

times for every circuit made by the other. Whenever we were lapping the

Daban Urnud, they could look down and see us

against the backdrop of Arbre. Soon, though, we would scoot around

behind the planet and be lost to their view for anywhere from

forty-five minutes to an hour. We had launched during one of those

intervals of privacy; now it was halfway over.


Why hadn’t we simply launched to a higher

orbit? Because our patched-together launch system wasn’t capable of

dumping that much energy into a payload.


In a few minutes, when the Daban Urnud

got line of sight to the cloud of stuff that had just been flung into

orbit by those two hundred missiles, they’d see a few dozen balloons

salted through a nebula of

radar-jamming chaff—strips of metallized poly—hundreds of miles across,

and rapidly getting bigger as orbits diverged. The chaff would make

long-wavelength surveillance (radar) useless. They’d have to look at us

in shorter wavelengths (light) which would necessarily mean sorting

through a very large number of phototypes, looking for anything that

wasn’t a balloon or a strip of chaff. If we did this right, then even

if they did manage to collect all of those

pictures and inspect them in a reasonable span of time, they’d still

see nothing—because we and all of our stuff would be hiding behind one

of the balloons.


But this implied that a lot would have to

happen in the next twenty minutes. I became so preoccupied that I

almost forgot Jesry’s first piece of advice: don’t miss the scupper.

The first spasms in my throat seized my attention, though, and I was

able to lunge forward and bite down on the rubber orifice just in time.

My breakfast was vacuumed away and freeze-dried into a waste bag

somewhere. I returned to the task at hand. Fortunately—and a bit

surprisingly—the Big Pill didn’t come up. It must still be down in my

gut somewhere, sending temperature and other biomedical data to the

suit’s processors.


After that, anyway, I felt better, and didn’t throw up again for almost ten seconds.


By getting there first, Sammann had

appointed himself Glommer, which meant that his job was to keep station

under the balloon and secure the incoming payloads into a single,

haphazardly connected mass. Payload number one was Jules Verne Durand.

Esma towed him in and hit the brakes. Her monyafeek stopped, but Jules

kept going, like a trailer jackknifing on an icy road. She had to

back-thrust once more as the Laterran’s rig tried to jerk her forward.

As Gratho hovered watchfully, wondering whether this was an emergence,

Sammann maneuvered closer, then spun in place. A long slender probe

snapped out from his monyafeek, stretched across twenty feet of space

in an eye-blink, and buried itself in the mass of red fuzz surrounding

Jules’s rig. “Nailed it!” Jules was now stretched between him and Esma.

“Feel free to detach.”




“De-grappling,” Esma reported. “I’ll try to

find additional payloads.” Her jets flared and the probe connecting her

to Jules’s fuzz-ball slid free.


Thus did Sammann begin his work as Glommer.

The rest of us were Getters, meaning we’d move around using the

maneuvering thrusters, latch on to payloads that drifted near, and

bring them to the Glommer. I spun my rig around to look for any

incoming payloads. Humans—of whom there ought to have been eleven—were

color-coded red. The tender and its little nuke plant were also red,

since we’d soon die without them. In addition, there were fifty

monyafeeks carrying cargo. Their fuzzballs were blue. Their contents

were interchangeable—each contained some water, some food, some fuel,

and some other stuff we’d need. That’s because we didn’t expect to

recover all of them. When I looked around, I saw what seemed like an

impossibly huge number of red and blue fuzzballs, all drifting in the

general vicinity. My brain told me, flat-out, that rounding them all up

was impossible. It was a disaster. But the very least I could do was

head for the nearest red one and make sure that whoever it was had

survived the launch and was conscious. I began to line up for a

rendezvous, but I’d barely begun to move before I saw maneuvering jets

flash. Jesry’s ikon came up on my display. “I’m good,” he announced

impatiently, “go look for something that can’t take care of itself.”


Beyond him, a blue payload was coming in.

It was in the correct plane but its orbit was a little too eccentric,

so it was losing altitude—probably doomed to re-enter and burn up in a

few minutes. I got myself spun around facing “forward,” i.e., in the

direction that I, and all of this other stuff, were moving in our

orbits around Arbre, and then made myself “vertical,” so that the soles

of my feet were pointed at Arbre and its horizon was parallel to a

certain line projected across my face mask. The payload was slowly

“falling” through my visual field. I used the stick to thrust

backwards, slowing myself down. The payload stopped “falling,” which

meant I was now in the same doomed orbit that it was. A little more

maneuvering took me to within twenty feet of the thing.


I was distracted for a moment by more visual clutter: a red payload,

tumbling across my visual field from left to right, sideswiped a blue

one. My eye was drawn to it. The red and the blue had stuck together. I

reckoned it was one of the other cell members doing what I was doing.

But if so, they weren’t using a grapnel—just holding on to the net with

a skelehand, or something. The red and the blue payload had merged into

a slowly rotating binary star. I saw no sign of thrusters being

fired—no evidence that the person was even conscious. “I think we might

have someone in trouble here—an inadvertent collision,” I reported.


“I see what you see and am coming to investigate,” said Arsibalt.


“I’m a little closer,” I offered, turning my head around and seeing Arsibalt on his way in. “I could—”


“No,” he said, “go ahead and take the payload you’ve got.”


So, to grips. But before I went to the next

step, I couldn’t help looking over toward the balloon. My pursuit of

this payload had taken me well away from it, but I was heartened to see

a number of blues and reds converging there. Suur Vay and Fraa Osa had

linked half a dozen payloads into a big lazily spinning molecule of

fuzz-balls and were hauling it in, getting ready to link it to a

growing complex in the shelter of the balloon.


Arsibalt reported: “I’m closing on Fraa Jad. He has become entangled with a blue payload and he seems to be unconscious.”


“What kind of orbital elements are you seeing?” Lio asked.


“His e is dangerously high,” Arsibalt said,

referring to the eccentricity of Jad’s orbit. “He’ll be in the soup in

a few minutes.”


“Be careful you don’t get entangled, then!” Lio warned him.


“Rear grapnel camera on,” I said, and the

view out my face-mask was obscured by a virtual display in jewel-like

laser colors: a green grid with red crosshairs in the middle. This was

a feed from a speelycaptor aimed out the back of my monyafeek. I

checked my pitch angle and then rotated the trackball until it had

incremented by a hundred and eighty degrees. The payload swung into

view. It was now directly behind me. “Grapnel One fire,” I said, and

felt a little kick in the tail as a small cylinder of compressed gas

ruptured. The grapnel system was a long skinny tube of fabric, all

telescoped in on itself like a stocking. When the gas exploded into it,

the tube shot out straight and became

a long rigid balloon. At its end was a warhead, rounded smooth on its

tip so that it would plunge through the cloud of netting surrounding a

payload, but spring-loaded with spines that sprang out when the tube

reached the end of its travel, or when it smacked into something.


Based on my imperfect view through the rear

camera, I was pretty certain it had all worked. But there was only one

way to be sure. “Rear grapnel camera off,” I said, and thrust forward.

For a couple of seconds I don’t think my heart beat at all. Then a jerk

backwards told me my grapnel had engaged the netting. I allowed myself

a shout of joy, then checked the balloon again.


Arsibalt reported, “Jad is welded to the payload. I’ll never get them apart.”


Lio: “What do you mean, welded?”


Arsibalt: “When he drifted into it, the

blue plastic netting contacted the hot nozzle skirt on his monyafeek

and melted—stuck fast. I’m attempting to grapple the two payloads as a

unit.”


Lio: “Do you have sufficient propellant to make the necessary burn?”


Arsibalt: “I’ll tell you in a minute.”


Lio: “I’m on my way. Don’t expend all your propellant. We don’t even know if Jad is still alive.”


“Seventeen minutes to line of sight.”


Plenty of time. I got myself oriented as

before, with the payload trailing behind me, and thrust forward,

undoing the damage I’d inflicted on my orbit a few moments earlier. It

took more fuel—a longer burn—because I was moving double the mass now.

Some nervousness here, because a long burn meant a large mistake, if I

was doing it wrong. I kept an eye on the eccentricity readout at the

bottom of my display. This was already about .005, but I had to make it

less than .001 to stay in any kind of reasonable synch with everyone

else.


In my earphones I could hear others making

a similar calculation. Arsibalt, I gathered, had succeeded in grappling

Jad and the payload Jad was stuck to, and was trying to do what I was

doing, calling out numbers to Lio, who was maneuvering into position to

rescue Arsibalt if that became

necessary. Meanwhile Jesry was monitoring the traffic, calculating how

much propellant was going to be needed, calling out suggestions that,

as the adventure went on, hardened into commands. The distraction was

severe, so I reluctantly shut off my wireless link and focused on my

own situation.


Only once I’d burned my e down under .001

did I lift my hands from the controls and look around for the balloon.

After a few moments’ wild anxiety when I didn’t think it was anywhere

near me, I found it “above” and to my right, a thousand feet away, and

slowly getting closer. A cluster of blue netting was forming up “below”

it as other Cell 317ers brought in payloads. As long as I was so close,

I took a look around to see if there were any others handy.


“Fifteen minutes to line of sight.”


I’d lost contact with Arsibalt and Lio, but

several other ikons came up on my display as I drifted in range of the

reticule. I turned the sound back on, not without intense trepidation,

since I did not know what news I was about to hear.


Screaming filled my ears—overloaded the

electronics. I tried to remember how to turn down the volume. The tone

was not that of a horror show; more like a sporting event where someone

wins a close game with an improbable score just as time expires. Lio’s

ikon popped up. “Calm down! Calm down!” he insisted, appalled by the

lapse of discipline. Arsibalt’s ikon came up. “Sammann, prepare to grab

Fraa Jad, please. He’s unresponsive.” His voice was weighed down with a

kind of unnatural calm, but I sensed that if I checked his bio readouts

they would reflect near-fatal excitement.


The balloon was rapidly getting bigger. I

was too high, though—too far from Arbre—so I juked northwest, killing a

bit of my orbital velocity, dropping to a lower altitude. I say “juked

northwest” as if it were that simple, but now that I was towing a

payload on the end of a twenty-foot grapnel, such moves were much more

complicated; first I had to swing around to get on the payload’s other

side, then apply thrust. This slowed my convergence on the balloon.


Sammann said, “Got him. He’s alive. Bio readouts are screwy though.”




Everyone had been paying attention to Fraa

Jad being towed in by Arsibalt. But suddenly all I heard was shouting.

“Look out look out!” “Damn it!” “That was close!” and “Bad news—it’s a red!”


Twisting my head around, I saw what they

had been reacting to: a red payload had passed within a few yards of

the balloon, moving at a high relative speed—fast enough to have done

damage if it had been just a little bit “higher.” It had come upon them

so rapidly that no one had reacted in time to head it off, grapple it,

and rein it in. It passed between me and the balloon, and I got a good

look at it. “It’s the nuke,” I announced. Then I said to my suit,

“Grapnel disengage.”


“Disengaged,” it returned.


I fired a little burst to pull myself free

of the blue payload. “I’m on it,” I announced, “someone grab this

payload.” The nuke was moving so fast that I reverted to instincts

cultivated playing the video game in Elkhazg. I fired a lateral burst

that—while it didn’t solve the problem—slowed the rate at which the gap

between me and the nuke was widening. Ikons were falling off my display

as I shot out of range, and the sound was coming through as sporadic,

disjointed packets. I was pretty sure I heard Arsibalt saying “wrong

plane,” which tallied with what I was thinking: this nuke’s orbit was

in a plane that differed from ours by a small angle, just because of

some small error that had crept in during the chaos of launch.


One voice, anyway, came through clearly: “Thirteen minutes to line of sight.”


I tried another maneuver, screwed it up

desperately, and, with feelings that were close to panic, watched the

nuke zoom across my field of vision. A moment later, Arbre whipped

beneath me, and I realized I was spinning around. My hand must have

brushed the trackball and set it spinning. I devoted a few moments to

getting my attitude stabilized, then spun about carefully so that I

wouldn’t lose my fix on the nuke. Once I had that in hand, I glanced

back toward the balloon. It was shockingly distant.


When I looked back toward the nuke, I

couldn’t see it. I’d lost it in sun-glare off the Equatorial Sea.

Back-thrusting to lose altitude, I was able to find the red fuzzball again as it rose above the horizon.


No one else was anywhere near. They’d heard me saying I had the nuke, and assumed I could handle it.


“Calm down,” I said to myself. Doing this

slowly and getting it right on the next try would get me back to my

friends quicker than making three hasty, failed attempts. I got myself

stabilized so that the nuke was low in my field of vision and dead

ahead, and forced myself to spend thirty seconds doing nothing except tracking it, observing how its motion differed from mine.


Definitely an error in

the slant of its orbital plane. I had to fire the thrusters to match

that error. Which I did—but in the process I messed up my semimajor

axis and a couple of other elements in a way that would have killed me

ten minutes later. Another sixty seconds’ fussing got those squared

away.


Plane change maneuvers are expensive.


I’d been forcing myself not to look for the

balloon any more. Partly because I was afraid of what I’d see—my

shelter, my friends, impossibly far away. But also because it simply

didn’t matter. Without the nuke, whose power would split water into

hydrogen and oxygen, we would all asphyxiate within a couple of hours.

If I lost my nerve and retreated to the balloon without it, my

empty-handed arrival would be a death sentence for the whole cell.


I came near, but got slewed sideways at the

last minute. Did a little spin move. Stopped myself, where “stopped”

meant that the nuke and I were stationary with respect to each other.

“Three minutes to line of sight,” said the voice. I gave the controls

the tiniest nudge, saw to my satisfaction that the nuke and I were

converging. Just let it happen. Tried not to breathe so fast.


Rather than grappling the nuke, I spent a

few moments maneuvering close enough that I could simply reach out with

my skelehand and grab the netting. Then I turned, making my best guess

as to where the balloon might be, and saw—nothing. Or rather, too much.

Our decoy strategy had backfired. At this distance, I had no way to

distinguish true from false. There were three balloons about the same

distance from me—none closer than ten miles. Even if I were

to guess right, I wouldn’t be able to reach it in three minutes. And if

I guessed wrong, I’d use up so much thruster propellant in getting to

it that I’d be marooned there.


On the other hand. The orbit that I, and

the nuke, were in was a stable one. I double-checked the numbers, since

all our lives depended on my judgment of this. The orbit’s shape and

size were such that it would not enter the atmosphere and burn up, at

least not for a day or two.


What if I simply stayed with it? My oxygen

supply was down to about two hours, but I could stretch it by calming

down a little. I knew for a fact that the problem, here, was in the

inclination of the orbit—the angle that the nuke and I were now making

with respect to the equator. Ours was a little steeper than my

comrades’. Consequently, my trajectory would only coincide with Cell

317’s in two places—two points of intersection, occurring once every

forty-five minutes, on opposite sides of the planet. Sort of like the

proverbial stopped clock that’s right twice daily. The last time it had

been right had been about fifteen minutes ago, when the nuke had almost

hit my friends, and I had gone after it. Since then, we’d been getting

farther apart. But starting in another few minutes, we’d begin getting

closer together again. And in half an hour, we should enjoy another

near collision.


“One minute to line of sight.”


The key to it all: what were my friends

thinking? What were they saying right now over that wireless ret? I’d

heard Arsibalt’s voice saying that the nuke was in the wrong plane.

They’d probably watched me drifting away, with mounting anxiety, and

debated whether to send out a rescue team.


But they hadn’t. Lio had given no such order. Not only that, they had fought off the temptation to switch on the long-range wireless.


If it had been anyone else, I wouldn’t have

been able to read their minds, nor they mine. But my fraas had been

raised, trained, by Orolo. They had figured out—probably sooner than I

had—that in forty-five minutes the nuke would reappear on the other

side of Arbre. Just as important, they were relying on me—entrusting me

with their lives—to figure out the same thing and to act accordingly.




And what did “act accordingly” mean? It

meant stay calm and don’t mess with the orbit that I was in. If I took

no action, they’d be able to anticipate my position. If I did something, though, they’d have no way of predicting my whereabouts.


I didn’t have much in the way of emergency

supplies: just a blanket of metallized poly—like the emergency blanket

they’d issued to Orolo after his Anathem—taped to the chest of my suit.

It was to be used to block the light of the sun, where necessary, from

striking our matte black suits with full force and overheating them,

which would force the chiller to work harder and use more oxygen. I

peeled mine loose and unfolded it—not easy with skelehands—and used it

to cover as much of the nuke as I could, then snuggled beneath it.


“Line of sight established.”


Supposing they were looking, the telescopes on the Daban Urnud could now see me, albeit as just another hunk of crud thrown up in the two-hundred-missile launch. Chaff.


Let’s put this in perspective: the Daban Urnud

was something like fourteen thousand miles away. At their closest

approach to Arbre, the whole planet looked as big to them as a pie held

at arm’s length. At their farthest, the size of a saucer. For them to

see my spread-out blanket, at this distance, was like trying to spot a

gum wrapper from a hundred miles away. Worse—or, for me, better—it was

like looking at a whole field covered with litter, trying to pick out a

single gum wrapper from all the rest.


On the other hand, Lio—who had brought Praxic Age Exoatmospheric Weapons Systems

with him to the Convox—had cautioned us not to get cocky, and Jules had

added weight to this by telling us how the Urnudans, past masters of

space warfare, had coupled syndevs to excellent telescopes, enabling

them to sift through vast numbers of images to find things that didn’t

look right. Decoys, for example, were easy to detect because they were

usually nothing more than balloons, whose huge size and light weight

made them feel the drag of the evanescent atmosphere much more than

real payloads.


So decoy orbits behaved a little differently from non-decoy ones. Moreover,

once the Urnudans had created a census of all the stuff that the

two-hundred-missile-launch had flung into orbit, they would be in a

position to notice if anything went missing, or changed to a new orbit.

This could only happen if it had thrusters and guidance on board.


So in that sense we had already screwed up

the mission. We had to fall back on safety in numbers: the hope that my

blanket’s sudden disappearance from the junk-cloud would not be noticed

soon enough for the Pedestal to do anything about it.


But I was getting ahead of myself. In order

for this blanket to suddenly disappear, I was going to have to

rendezvous with the others.


That would be easier with oxygen. I closed

my eyes, tried to relax, tried to stop thinking about the Pedestal and

their admirable telescopes and their syndevs. Here was that rare

circumstance where worrying too much actually could kill me.


Once my pulse had dropped to a more

reasonable range, I found the keyboards in my arm-stumps and typed

messages to Cord and to Ala, in case I died and the suit was recovered

later with its memory intact.


The suit’s syndev included an orbital

theorics calculator, which one almost never had time to use in the heat

of the moment, but I fired it up and used it to verify some of my

hunches as to what I’d need to do when I drew within range of the

others. It was infuriatingly difficult to concentrate, though. My brain

had become like an old sponge that has sopped up more water than it can

hold.


In zero gravity, there was almost no

contact between the suit and the person wearing it. Air, at just the

right temperature, circulated all around my naked body—it was like

taking a bath in air. Behind my back was a small chemical plant going

full tilt, but I was only aware of it as a source of gentle white

noise. Other than that, I heard nothing except the beating of my own

heart. Normally, I could get a jolt of excitement simply by opening my

eyes and looking out the face-mask: I’m in space!

But now all I could see was the back side of a crinkly blanket, as if I

were poultry in a roasting pan. So it was not difficult to feel drowsy.

My body and my mind had never had so

many reasons to want rest; between jet lag and training, we’d slept

very little at Elkhazg, and not at all in the last twenty-four hours.

The last half hour had been absurdly stressful—just the kind of

experience after which any sane person would want to crawl under the

covers of a warm bed and cry himself to sleep.


The only thing that kept me from passing

out instantly was fear of my own sleepiness. After the training we’d

been through, I now knew the symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning

better than the alphabet. Nausea, check. Dizziness, check. Vomiting,

check. Headache, check. But who wouldn’t have all

of those symptoms after being kicked up a hundred-mile-high staircase

by a monyafeek? What came next? Oh, yeah—almost forgot—drowsiness and

confusion.


I checked the readouts in my screen.

Checked them again. Closed my eyes, waited for my vision to clear,

checked them a third time. They were fine. Oxygen tank level was

yellow—which was to be expected, after all the heavy breathing—but the

oxygen content of the air I was breathing was fine and the CO2 level was zero—the scrubber was taking all of it out.


But if I were drowsy and confused, might I be reading the numbers wrong?


I drifted off, but started awake every few

minutes. Enough time had passed that I’d begun to second-guess what had

happened just after the launch. I’d been so focused on what I’d been

doing that when I’d noticed Jad bumping into the blue payload and

getting stuck to it, I’d decided not to go check it out. That had been

a mistake. I should have gone for it. Instead, Arsibalt had gone after

Jad—and to judge from the way Jesry had been screaming when Arsibalt

had made it back, he had just barely escaped with his life, and Jad’s.


This was a bad plan. Who had come up with the idea of doing it this way?


I understood the logic. Arbre had two

hundred missiles. No more. Each just barely capable of getting a tiny

payload to a dangerously low and short-lived orbit. There was only so

much we could do, working from that. We’d all studied the plan at

Elkhazg, come to grips with it, nodded our heads, accepted it.


But that was one thing. To be up here with payloads zooming around

chaotically, bumping into each other, getting melted together—hiding

under space blankets—there were so many ways this could have gone wrong.


Could still go wrong. Could be going wrong now.


What if I’d been a little hastier when I had reached the nuke, and made a bid to drag it back? We’d all have died.


I was worrying again. Actually, it was worse than that—even more

pointless. Rather than worrying about the future—which could be

changed—I was worrying about things that might have gone wrong in the

past, and couldn’t be changed in any case.


Leave that to the Incanters and the Rhetors, respectively.


Where were all of the Thousanders now? Gathered in a stadium, chanting?


“Raz!”


I opened my eyes. Had one of those moments

when I simply couldn’t figure out where I was—could not convince myself

that the launch hadn’t been a dream.


“Raz!”


One ikon was visible on the display: Fraa Jesry.


“Here,” I said.


“It’s great to hear your voice!” he exclaimed, sounding enormously relieved.


“Well, I’m touched to hear you say so, Jesry—”


“Shut up. I’m incoming. Get the blanket out of the way so you can get a clue what’s going on.”


“Are you sure? Aren’t we in line of sight?”


“No.”


“I think that we are in line of sight, Jesry.”


“We were, last time. Now we’re not.”


“Last time?”


“We missed you the first time around.

Crossed your path, but the altitude difference was too great. Couldn’t

raise you on the wireless.”


“This is our second

try?” I checked the time. He was right. Ninety minutes—not

forty-five—had passed. My oxygen indicator had gone red. I’d slept

through the first rendezvous!




I swiped the blanket out of the way. Saw a

balloon, a mile away and rapidly getting closer. Tucked up under it was

an ungainly structure of inflated grapnel-tubes with dozens of red and

blue fuzzballs caught up in it. A few space-suited figures on

monyafeeks kept station nearby, all turned to look my direction. The

row of ikons flashed up as I rejoined the reticule. But no one spoke

except Jesry. He had come out alone.


“If I fail, remain calm and wait,” he said. “There are two layers of backup plans.”


“But they sent the best first, eh?” I kicked away from the nuke, very gently, and fired a grapnel into its net-cloud.


“Thanks, but for doing what you did, you

get bragging rights, Raz.” Jesry had floated in range. He spun about,

collected himself, and fired a grapnel of his own.


“Maybe we can brag when we’re old,” I said. “What should I do?”


“Orient positive radial,” he said. This

meant that instead of facing in the direction of our orbital movement

as before, we had to swing around ninety degrees so that our backs were

to Arbre. I did it, and bumped lightly against Jesry as we came around

side by side.


“Rotate down forty-five degrees and fire a fifteen-second burst,” Jesry said.


Fifteen seconds was huge, and, if the

calculations had been wrong, would send us far off course with no

propellant to get back. But I did it. Didn’t even think

of not taking the suggestion. This was Jesry. He’d been watching me,

coolly, as I’d gone out to fetch the nuke. Had done the theorics in his

head, and triple-checked it with the syndev. I swiveled and fired. Lost

my visual in so doing.


“You are headed for us as if we were

reeling you in on a line,” Sammann proclaimed. But his tone of voice

was all I really needed to hear.


“Take no action,” Lio warned us. “You’re

passing under us—we are coming to grapple you—” And a moment later, two

sudden yanks, and a cheer from the others, told me we’d been captured.

I took my fingers off the thruster controls just to prevent my trembling hands’ inadvertently firing the thrusters, and let Lio and Osa tow us in.


“Raz, you’re secure,” Lio said. “Sammann, final star check please?”


“We are still shielded by the balloon,” Sammann said.


“Good,” Lio said. “I’m sure everyone wishes

to congratulate Fraa Erasmas, but don’t. Save oxygen. Do it later.

Arsibalt, you know what’s next—let us know if you need to borrow oxygen

from someone else.”


The others had pulled on white overgarments

of tough fabric to stop micrometeoroids and to reflect the heat of the

sun. These made them look more like proper spacemen. One was given to

me, and I put it on. Then, like the others, I snap-linked myself to

this huge tangle of nets and payloads and grapnels and tried to sleep

while Arsibalt and Lio got the tender online. This meant maneuvering it

and the nuke close together and then connecting them. Already connected

to the tender was a flexible water bladder. Other cell members had been

busy during my absence scavenging water from the reservoirs on the blue

payloads and transferring it into this bag, which had plumped out until

it was bathtub-sized.


Arsibalt snap-linked himself to the control

panel of the nuke and spent a lot of time motionless, which probably

meant he was reading the instructions on the virtual screen inside his

face-mask and going through checklists. After a while he got to work

deploying some long poles that ended up sticking out from one side of

the nuke like spines. Petals blossomed from near their ends, blocking

our view of whatever was on the tips of those poles. Arsibalt returned

to the control panel and worked for a few moments, then informed us, “I

have powered up the reactor. Avoid the ends of the poles. They are hot.”


“Hot, as in radioactive?” Jesry asked.


“No. Hot as in ouch. They are where the

system radiates its waste heat into space.” Then, after a pause: “But

they’re also radioactive.”


No one said anything, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who checked his oxygen supply. The water was now being split into hydrogen

and oxygen. In a few hours we’d be able to replace our depleted air and

fuel supplies, and swap used for fresh scrubbers, at the tender. Until

then, we had to take it easy, and share what we had with others who

needed it more. Esma, for example, had been responsible for scavenging

water from payloads, and had used up a lot of her oxygen.


Lio said, “Everyone except Sammann and

Gratho drink, eat, and sleep. If you absolutely can’t sleep, review

coming tasks. Sammann and Gratho, connect us.”


Sammann and Gratho clambered free of their

monyafeeks and took to shinnying around the payload-tangle. They found

some kind of magic box, broke it free from the mess, and got it lashed

into a position where it enjoyed a clear line of sight down to Arbre. A

few minutes later Sammann announced that we were on the Reticulum. But

I already suspected that based on new lights and jeejah-displays that

had begun to flourish in my peripheral vision.


“Hello, Fraa Erasmas, this is Cell 87,” said a voice in my ears. “Can you hear me?”


“Yes, Tulia, I can hear you fine. Good morning, or whatever it is where you are.”


“Evening,” she said. “We’re in the

equipment shed of a farm about a thousand miles southwest of Tredegarh.

What took you guys so long?”


“We were enjoying the view and having a

party,” I said. “How have you been spending the time? What is it that

Cell 87 does in that equipment shed?”


“Whatever makes things easier for you.”


“Tulia, I’ve hardly ever known you to be so helpful, so compliant…”


“Looks like you need to urinate. What’s the holdup?”


“I’ll get right on it.”


“Any particular reason your pulse is so rapid?”


“Gosh, I don’t know, let me think…”


“Spare me,” she said. “Here’s a picture of

the mess you’re in—check it out while you’re peeing.” And just like

that, my screen was filled with a three-dimensional rendering of a big

silver sphere with a mess of struts,

fuzzballs, and color-coded payloads tucked up against one side of it.

“Here’s where you are.” My name flashed in yellow. “Here’s where you

need to be.” A payload began flashing on the other side of the mess.

“We worked out the most efficient route.” A line snaked through,

linking my name to the destination.


“That doesn’t look so efficient,” I began.


She cut me off. “There’s stuff you don’t

know. Each of the others in your cell has to follow a different route

to a different payload. This one is optimized to minimize interference.”


“I stand corrected.”


A flashing red box appeared about halfway along my route. “What’s the red thing?” I asked.


She conferred with someone in the equipment

shed, then answered, “One of the payloads has a sharp corner you’ll

want to avoid. No worries, we’ll talk you through it.”


“Gosh, thanks.”


Rustling papers, she announced, “I’m going to talk you through the process of unstrapping yourself from the S2-35B.”


“Up here, we call it a monyafeek.”


“Whatever. Move your right hand up to the buckle above your left collarbone…”





I’ll describe what we did next as if we’d

just done it. In the act, though, it was—as the old joke goes—a whole

hour’s work packed into just one twenty-four-hour day.


It would have been twenty-four days,

though, if not for our support cells on the ground, keeping track of

what we were doing and coming up with ways to make it easier. During

rest breaks—ruthlessly enforced by our private physicians—I learned

that Arsibalt’s support cell was in a drained swimming pool in a Kelx

parochial suvin, and Lio’s was on an unmarked drummon parked at a

maintenance depot. And as slowly became plain, each of these cells was

in turn being supported by networks of other cells out there in the

Antiswarm.


Work began with disentangling and sorting the goods we’d hauled in during that first, feverish twenty minutes. Suur Vay tended

to Jules Verne Durand and to Fraa Jad. Both ended up being fine. The

Laterran was weak from lack of nutrition, and had suffered more from

the ride up to orbit. It simply took him longer to become himself

again. It wasn’t really clear what had happened to Fraa Jad. He was

unresponsive for a while, though his vital signs were in acceptable

ranges and his eyes were open. Eventually, he requested that Suur Vay

leave off pestering him. Then he dropped off the reticule and did

nothing for an hour. Finally he began to move, and to take part in the

unpacking. I wondered who was in his support cell.


The fuzz-balls we stripped off, wadded up,

and got out of the way. The payloads we strapped together with poly

ties, just so they wouldn’t drift out from the shelter of the balloon

and give away our position. We rigged the payload-cluster to a

monyafeek, and used its thrusters for station-keeping. The balloon’s

low mass and high drag made it inevitable that we’d drift out from

under its shelter unless we tapped the thrusters every so often to slow

ourselves down. If we did this for more than a couple of days, we’d

re-enter the atmosphere along with the balloon, and there would be a

sort of race to see whether incineration or crushing deceleration would

kill us first. But we had no intention of hanging around that long.


Arsibalt, Osa, and I assembled the decoy while the rest of Cell 317 assembled the Cold Black Mirror.


The decoy was erected on a base consisting

of seven monyafeeks lashed together in a hexagonal array. We scavenged

propellants from the blue payloads just as Suur Esma had earlier done

with water, and loaded it into the decoy’s tanks.


That took care of propulsion. On top of

this platform we attached what looked like a big unruly wad of

fabric—it was an inflatable structure—that had come up as a separate

payload. There was a zipper in its side. We opened it, and stuffed in

everything we didn’t need: nets, leftover packing material, parts of

other monyafeeks. Also there were four manikins dressed in coveralls.

We closed the zipper to prevent all of that junk from drifting out, and

opened it from time to time as members of the other team came to us

with stuff they wanted to get rid of. But we didn’t inflate it yet,

because space on this side of the balloon was tight, and getting tighter as the Cold Black Mirror took shape.


My description of the Cold Black Mirror

might make it sound heavy, but like everything else up here, it weighed

practically nothing because it was slapped together of inflatable

struts, memory wire, membranes, and aerogels. It was square, fifty feet

on a side. Its upper surface was perfectly flat (it was a membrane

stretched like a drumhead between knife edges) and perfectly

reflective. It was made of stuff that would reflect not only visible

light, but microwaves—the frequencies that the Geometers used for

radar. When we ventured out from behind the balloon, we would keep it

between us and the Daban Urnud, but angled, like a

shed roof, so that their radar beams, as they swept across our

vicinity, would be bounced off in some other direction. We’d still make

a big echo, but it would never come anywhere near the Daban Urnud, and never show up on their screens.


As long as we were careful about which way

the mirror was pointing, we would not be visible against the backdrop

of space, because the mirror would be reflecting some other part of

space, and all space looked more or less the same: black. If they just

happened to zoom in on us with a really good telescope they might

happen to notice a star or two in the wrong place, but this was

unlikely.


When we passed between the Daban Urnud

and the luminous surface of Arbre it would be a different matter, but

we were hoping that a fifty-by-fifty-foot snatch of absolute blackness

might go unnoticed on a backdrop eight thousand miles across. It would

be like a single bacterium on a dinner plate.


If the mirror were permitted to get warm,

it would emit infrared light that the Geometers might notice, and so

most of the ingenuity that had been spent on its design had been

devoted to keeping it cold. It was laced with solid-state chillers that

were powered by the nuke. The nuke, as Jesry had mentioned, produced a

lot of waste heat. This would show up like a casino on infrared, if we

were dumb enough to shine it at the Daban Urnud,

but as long as we kept the radiators hidden beneath the Cold Black

Mirror and pointed in the direction of Arbre, the Geometers would not

have a line of sight that would make it possible for them to see it.




Propulsion was, to get us started, three

scavenged monyafeeks, and (for later) a reel of string. Our spacesuits

would serve as living quarters, beds, toilets, Refectories, drugstores,

and entertainment centers.


But not as cloisters. Space travel had any

number of interesting features, but quiet contemplation was not among

them. During Apert, and later when we had been Evoked, the worst part

of the culture shock had been the jeejahs. There was no estimating how

many times I’d said to myself Thank Cartas I’m not chained to one of those awful things!

But this was like living inside of a jeejah: a super-ultra-mega jeejah

whose screen wrapped all the way around my field of vision, whose

speakers were jacked into my ears, whose microphone transmitted every

word, breath, and sigh to attentive listeners on the other end of the

line. Part of it was even inside of me: that huge temperature transponder.


We were only allowed to work for two hours

before a mandatory rest break kicked in. And, as I began to suspect,

round about the second or third such break, it wasn’t so much to give

our bodies a rest as it was to rest our souls from the bewildering,

overwhelming, irritating barrage of information being pumped into our

ears and eyes.


Strangely, when I got a moment’s peace, I only wanted to talk to someone. In a normal way. “Tulia? You there?”


“I am shocked you haven’t fallen asleep!” she joked. “You’re behind schedule—get cracking and relax!”


I laughed not.


“Sorry,” she said, “what’s up?”


“Nothing. Just thinking, is all.”


“Uh-oh.”


“Are we the right people, out of all Arbre, to be up here doing this?”


“Uh, that decision has been made, and the answer is yes.”


“But how did it get made? Wait a minute, I know: Ala rammed it through some committee.”


“Maybe it wasn’t so much a ramming kind of

thing,” Tulia said, and I had to smile at the distaste in her voice.

“But you’re right that Ala had a lot to do with it.”




“Fine. No ramming. But I’ll bet it wasn’t all sweet persuasion either. Not all rational Dialog. Not with those people.”


“You’d be surprised how far rational Dialog goes with wartime military.”


“But the military must have been saying

‘look, this is obviously a job for our guys. Commandos. Not a bunch of

avout, a renegade Ita, and a starving alien.’”


“There was—is—a backup team,” Tulia allowed. “I think it’s all military. Same training as you guys.”


“Then how did the decision get made to give us the suits, the monyafeeks—”


“Partly a language issue. Jules Verne

Durand is a priceless asset. He speaks Orth. Not Fluccish. So the team

would have to be at least part Orth-speaking. To make it bilingual

would pose all sorts of problems.”


“Hmm, so we were probably the backup option until Jules fell into our laps.”


“He didn’t fall into your lap,” Tulia reminded me. “You went out and—”


“Be that as it may, I still find it amazing that the Panjandrums would even entertain the idea, given that they have commandos and astronauts who know this kind of thing cold.”


“But Raz, you are educable,

you can learn ‘this kind of thing,’ if by that you mean how to maneuver

an S2-35B and how to assemble a Cold Black Mirror. You’ve spent your

whole life, ever since you were Collected, becoming educable.”


“Well, maybe you have a point there,” I

said, remembering the hitherto inconceivable sight of Fraa Arsibalt

powering up a nuclear reactor.


“But the clincher—and here I’m just

imagining how Ala would have framed the argument—is that the whole

mission, the journey you and the others are going on, isn’t going to be

just this. When you get where you’re going, who knows what you’ll be

called upon to do? And then you’ll have to draw on everything you

know—every aptitude you’ve ever acquired since you became a fid.”


“Since I became a fid…now that seems like a long time ago!”


“Yeah,” she said, “I was thinking about it the other day. Finding my

way through that labyrinth. Coming out into the sun. Grandsuur Tamura

taking me by the hand, making me a bowl of soup. And I remember when

you were Collected.”


“You showed me around the place,” I recalled, “as if you’d lived there for a hundred years. I thought you were a Thousander.”


I heard a sniffle on the other end of the

link, and closed my eyes for a minute. The suit was built to handle

just about every excretory function except for crying.


How could I ever have been so stupid as to think I could be in a liaison with Tulia? Now, that would have been a mess.


“You ever talk to Ala? Are you in touch with her?” I asked.


“I probably could if I had to,” she said, “but I haven’t tried.”


“You’ve been busy,” I said.


“Yeah. When your cell got shot into space, it made her really important. Really busy.”


“Well…I hope she’s busy figuring out what we’re going to do when we get there.”


“I’m sure she is,” Tulia said. “You can’t imagine how seriously Ala takes her responsibility for what she’s—for what happened.”


“In fact, I have a reasonably good idea,” I

said, “and I know she’s worried we’re all going to get killed. But if

she could see how well the cell is working together, she’d take heart.”





We dropped behind Arbre yet again. I’d lost track of how many times we had swung in and out of the Daban Urnud’s

line of sight. The others were strapping themselves down to the thrust

structures under the Cold Black Mirror. I was up underneath the decoy,

running through the final seventeen items on a checklist that was two

hundred lines long.


“Pulling the inflation lanyard,” I

proclaimed, and did. “It’s done.” I couldn’t hear the hiss of escaping

gas in space, but I could feel it in the hand that was gripping the

frame of the decoy.


“Check,” Lio said.


“Monitoring inflation process,” I said,

numbly reading the next line of technobulshytt. The listless wad of

painted fabric, which we’d been using as a garbage receptacle for the

last day, stirred, and began to show

some backbone as internal struts filled with gas and began to stiffen.

For a while I was afraid it was failing—not enough gas, or

something—but finally, over the course of a few seconds, it snapped

open.


“Status?” Lio demanded. Down under the mirror, he could see nothing.


“The status is, it’s so beautiful I wish I could climb into it and go for a ride.”


“Check.”


“Commencing visual inspection,” I said. I

spent a minute clambering over the thing, admiring its origami

“attitude thrusters,” its paper-light, memory-wire-and-polyfilm

“antennas,” its hand-painted “scorch marks,” and other marvels of

stagecraft that Laboratoria at the Convox must have toiled over for

weeks. I found a “thruster” that had failed to unfold, and popped it

loose with my skele-fingers. Whacked on a creased strut until it

inflated itself properly. Flicked off a clinging stripe of kitchen

wrap. “It’s good,” I announced.


“Check.”


The remaining items on the list were mostly

valve openings and pressure checks down among the engines. I was

conscious that a plumbing failure here would kill me, but had to get on

with it.


“Ten minutes to line of sight.”


The final step was to set a timer for five

minutes, and to start the countdown. Lio’s final “Check” was still in

my ears when I felt a mighty yank on my safety line: Osa hauling me in.

A few seconds later I was down beneath the Mirror and the others were

strapping me down as if I were a homicidal maniac at the end of a

day-long chase. All communications had devolved to a series of

checklist items and clipped announcements.


“Eight minutes to line of sight.” My suit’s

airbags inflated. Light flared as the Mirror’s engines came on, and I

felt the thrust against my back. As usual our faces were aimed in the

wrong direction, so we could not see that anything was happening. But

this time around, we had a speely feed to watch, so we were able to see

the balloon and the decoy dwindling into the distance. By the time that

the five-minute timer expired, the decoy was so far away that we could see nothing of it except for a single blue-white pixel as its engines fired.


A few minutes into its burn, the Geometers could see it too. Because by then the Daban Urnud’s orbit had taken it back into line of sight.


Our engines had performed their mission of

kicking us into a new trajectory that would get us up to the same

altitude as the Geometers. We’d never use them again. So we were back

in free fall. The in-suit airbags deflated.


I loosened a couple of straps and twisted

around so that I could see the decoy. Its engines continued to burn for

another minute or so, as if it were making a spirited attempt to climb

up out of low orbit and get on an intercept course with the Daban Urnud.


Then it blew up.


It was supposed to.

Rather than wait for the Pedestal to do something about it—something we

couldn’t predict, something that might have unwanted side-effects on

us—the designers of the mission had deliberately programmed the engines

to open the wrong valve at the wrong moment. So it flew apart. There

wasn’t much in the way of fire, and obviously we couldn’t hear the

boom. The thing just turned into a rapidly expanding mess of

smithereens, and ceased to exist. Only a few minutes later, we began to

see streaks of fire drawn across the atmosphere below us as chunks of

it began to re-enter. The Pedestal, we hoped, would think that our

pathetic gambit had failed because of a malfunctioning rocket

engine—which was all too plausible—and would put all of their sensors

to work snapping pictures of the debris, greedily vacuuming up all the

intelligence they could get before it was engulfed and burned by the

atmosphere. The Cold Black Mirror they would not see.





The next phase of the journey lasted for

several days. It couldn’t have been more different from those first

twenty-four hours. We no longer had that high-bandwidth link to the

ground. Between that, and the fact that we didn’t have much to do,

things got quiet.


The burn that had taken us out from the shelter of the balloon had put us in a predicament, vis-à-vis the Daban Urnud, a little like that of a bird that is on a collision course with an aerocraft. We would definitely reach the Daban Urnud

now, but if we didn’t want to end up as a spray of freeze-dried flesh

on its rubbly surface, we would need to slow down before we smacked

into it.


Any other space mission would have done it

with a brief rocket engine burn at the last minute, followed by some

nice work with maneuvering thrusters. But since we were trying to sneak

up, that wouldn’t work. We needed a way of generating thrust that

didn’t involve a sudden brilliant ejaculation of white-hot gases.


The Convox had found the answer in the form

of an electrodynamic tether, which was nothing more than a string with

a weight on the end, with electricity running through it in one

direction. The string was about five miles long. It was slender, but

strong—similar to our chords. In order to keep it taut, we had to

dangle a weight from the end. The weight turned out to be our spent and

now useless monyafeeks, concealed under a smaller and simpler version

of the Cold Black Mirror. So our first task, once we’d broken out from

the shelter of the balloon, was to lash the monyafeeks together into a

compact mass, to deploy another mirror above them, and to attach them

to the end of the tether. We waited until Arbre was between us and the Daban Urnud

before commencing the most ticklish—verging on insane—part of the

operation, which was to throw ourselves into a spin and then use the

resulting centrifugal force to pay out the five miles of line. This was

sickening and terrifying for a few minutes, until we and the

counterweight got a little farther apart. This slowed the rate at which

we and the counterweight spun around our common center of gravity, so

that Arbre was no longer whipping past us quite so frequently. By the

time the counterweight was at the end of the string, the rotation had

slowed to the point where we barely noticed it. From now on, we would

spin exactly once during each orbit, which simply meant that the

counterweight was always five miles “below” us, the string was oriented

vertically, and the Cold Black Mirror was always “above” us—where we

wanted it. This slow rotation yielded pseudogravity at a level of about

a hundredth of what we felt on the surface

of Arbre, so we and all of our stuff slowly “fell” upward—away from the

planet—unless something stopped us. The something was the frame of

inflated tube-struts that helped keep the Cold Black Mirror stretched

out flat. We drifted up against it and remained caught there like

litter pressed against a fence by an imperceptible breeze.


Shortly after completing this maneuver, we

passed onto the night side of Arbre. This afforded us an excellent view

when the Pedestal rodded all of the big orbital launch facilities

around Arbre’s equator. The planet was mostly black, with skeins and

clots of light sprawling across the temperate parts of the landmasses

where people tended to live. The incoming rods drew brilliant streaks

across this backdrop, as if chthonic gods, trapped beneath Arbre’s

crust, were slicing their way to freedom with cutting torches. When a

rod hit the ground its light was snuffed out for a moment, then reborn

as a hemispherical bloom of warmer, redder light: comparable to a

nuclear explosion, but without the radioactivity. We orbited over the

very launch pad from which Jesry had begun his first journey into

space, and got a perfect view of an orange fist reaching up toward us.

Jesry was fussing over the tender at the time, but he paused in his

labors for a few minutes to watch as we flew over.


I heard a little mechanical pop, and looked

over to see that Arsibalt had just jacked a hard wire into the front of

my suit. This was how we’d be talking to each other from now on. Even

the short-range wireless was considered too much of a risk. Instead we

physically connected ourselves, suit to suit, with wires. Likewise, we

no longer had the 24/7 high-bandwidth link to the ground. Instead,

Sammann was bringing up some kind of link that squirted

information—slowly and sporadically—along a narrow line-of-sight beam

that the Geometers would not be able to detect. So if Cell 87 had

anything to say to me after this, they’d say it in the form of text

messages that would flash up on the virtual screen inside my

face-mask—but not immediately. We’d been told to expect delays on the

order of two hours. And if we didn’t hard-wire ourselves into the

reticule, we’d not be able to send or receive anything.


“It is a high wire act,” Arsibalt remarked. Out of habit I looked at

his face-mask, but saw nothing except for the distorted reflection of a

mushroom cloud. So I looked down at the screen mounted to his chest and

saw his face, staring down at Arbre, then glancing up to make eye

contact of a sort.


I collected myself for a moment. This was

the first real—that is, private—conversation I’d had in days. Since I’d

choked down the Big Pill and climbed into the suit, every sound I’d

made, every beat of my heart, every swallow of water I’d taken had been

recorded and transmitted somewhere in real time. I’d gotten into the

habit of assuming that every word I spoke was being monitored by

Panjandrums, discussed in committees, and archived for eternity. Hardly

a way to have an honest or an interesting conversation. But I’d very

quickly adjusted to not having Cell 87’s voice in my ears. And now

Arsibalt and I had the opportunity to talk. No one else was hard-wired

to us. We were alone together, as if strolling through the page trees

at Edhar.


High wire was a play on

words: a literal description of the tether that we had just unreeled.

But of course Arsibalt meant something else too. “Yes,” I said, “as we

have torn open one payload after another I have been keeping an eye out

for anything that would serve as a—” And I checked myself on the verge

of lapsing into astro-jargon. I’d been about to say “atmospheric

re-entry and deceleration system” but it sounded as wrong here as it

would have back among the page trees.


Arsibalt finished the sentence for me: “A way down.”


“Yeah. And now that we’ve unpacked

everything, and thrown away most of it—stripped down to the absolute

basics—it’s clear that there is nothing here that can get us back to

Arbre. Never was.” I thought about it as I watched another mushroom

cloud skidding along below us, rapidly diluting itself and paling like

dawn in the cold upper atmosphere.


Arsibalt picked up the thread I’d dropped:

“So you told yourself that they would send up a re-entry vehicle for us

later—launching it from, say, there, or there.” He pointed at the

mushroom cloud we’d just passed over, then at another, new one,

burgeoning a few thousand miles to the east of it. “Or wherever that’s

going.” He was obviously referring to another rod that was just now

streaking across the atmosphere below us. I don’t know what it hit.

Maybe a rocket factory.




Of course, Arsibalt was making the point that we were all dead now—beyond rescue, unless we could make it to the Daban Urnud. I was irked, just a little, that he’d put this picture together a bit quicker than I had. And I was also thinking, Here we go again,

bracing myself to spend the next ten hours hard-linked to Arsibalt,

trying to talk him down from a condition of near-hysteria, persuading

him to gulp sedatives from the supply that, I presumed, was stored

somewhere in the suit.


But he wasn’t being that way at all. He was

grasping the truth of our situation as clearly as anyone could—more so

than I’d done. But he wasn’t upset. More bemused.


“When we were Evoked,” I reminded him, “you said there was a rumor we’d just get taken off to a gas chamber.”


“Indeed,” he said, “but I was envisioning something much simpler—quicker—less expensive.”


It was the kind of joke that would only be

ruined by my laughing out loud. I somewhat wished that Jesry and Lio

could be in on it. But indeed, before too much longer, our conversation

flagged. Arsibalt disconnected from me and began making the rounds, as

if table-hopping in the Refectory.


He was connected to Jesry when Jesry

applied power to the tether. This was a simple matter of pumping

electrical current down the wire to its far end. Of course, in order to

make an electrical circuit, there had to be some way for those

electrons to get back up to the nuke. Normally that would have been

provided by a second wire, parallel to the first—as in a lamp cord.

Here, though, that would have defeated our purposes. Fortunately we

were in the ionosphere—the extreme upper atmosphere, permanently

ionized by the radiation of the sun, so that it conducted electricity.

We got the return path for free. Current only flowed in one direction

along that wire. Consequently, it interacted with Arbre’s magnetic

field in such a way as to generate thrust. Not a lot of it—not like a

rocket engine—but, unlike a rocket engine, we could run it continuously

for days, and gradually spiral in to the desired orbit: still, all this

time later, the orbit that Ala and I had watched the Daban Urnud settle into by following a trail of sparks across a page in the Præsidium.




As long as Arsibalt was hard-wired to

Jesry, he acted as communicator to the rest of us, getting our

attention with sweeping arms and pantomiming a suggestion that we all

grab on to something. Then he counted down with his finger. At “five,”

one of his skelehands became redundant and he used it to grasp a

bracket on the control panel of the nuke. At “one” he grabbed the

bracket with his other hand as Jesry flipped a switch. The result was

not dramatic, but it was perfectly obvious: we saw the tether adopt a

slight bow, just like a taut string being acted on by wind. As it did,

the Cold Black Mirror yawed around slightly and settled into a new

angle, no longer looking straight down at the surface of Arbre but now

canted almost imperceptibly sideways. And that was the whole event. We

were under thrust now, as surely as if Jesry had fired a rocket engine.

It was, though, a thrust too subtle for our bodies to feel it, and it

would have to act on us for days to have any effect.


Once that had been done, I had a few

moments to think about what Arsibalt had been saying. Even taking into

account Jules’s and Jad’s medical troubles and my nuke escapade, it had

to be said that the launch and the assembly of the Cold Black Mirror,

the firing of the decoy and the deployment of the tether had all gone

better than we’d had any right to expect. No one had turned up dead, or

mysteriously failed to turn up at all. There’d been no accidents—no one

drifting helplessly away—we’d recovered as many of the payloads as we

needed. Since that had seemed like the most obviously fatal part of the

journey, it had put me in too sunny a mood. But ten seconds’ reflection

sufficed to make it obvious that this was a suicide mission.


Causal Domain: A collection of things mutually linked in a web of cause-and-effect relationships.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





Social conventions evolved. I’d thought

some might take it the wrong way if two or three of us jacked together

for a private conversation. But I didn’t feel thus when I noticed Lio

talking to Osa or Sammann to Jules

Verne Durand, and soon it became clear that everyone in the cell was

happy to afford others privacy. Sammann strung a network of wires

through the frame that everyone could connect to when it was necessary

to have an all-hands meeting, and we agreed that we’d do so every eight

hours. The intervals between those meetings were free time. Each of us

tried to devote one out of three to sleeping, but this wasn’t going so

well. I thought I was the only one having trouble with it until

Arsibalt drifted over during a rest period and connected himself to me.


“You sleeping, Raz?”


“Not any more.”


“Were you sleeping?”


“No. Not really. How about you?”


Up to this point it had been the same, word

for word, as the conversations we used to have in the middle of the

night back when we had been newly Collected fids, lying in unfamiliar

cells, trying to sleep. Now, though, it took a new turn. “Hard to say,”

Arsibalt said. “I don’t feel as if I am going through normal sleeping

and waking cycles up here. Frankly, I can’t tell the difference between

dreaming and waking any more.”


“Well, what are you dreaming about?”


“About all that could have gone wrong—”


“But didn’t?”


“Exactly, Raz.”


“I haven’t heard the whole story yet of how you rescued Jad.”


“I’m not even certain that I could relate

it coherently,” he sighed. “It exists in my mind as a jumble of moments

when I thought or did things—and every one of those moments, Raz, could

have gone another way. And all of the other

outcomes would have been bad ones. I’m certain of that. I replay it in

my head over and over. And in every case, I happened to do the right

thing.”


“Well, it’s kind of like the anthropic

principle at work, isn’t it?” I pointed out. “If anything had been a

little different, you’d be dead—and so you wouldn’t have a brain to

remember it with.”


Arsibalt said nothing for a while, then sighed. “That is as unsatisfactory as anthropic arguments usually are. I’d prefer the alternate explanation.”


“Which is?”


“That I’m not only brilliant, but cool under pressure.”


I decided to let this go. “I’ve had

dreams,” I admitted, “dreams in which everything is the same, except

that you and Jad aren’t here because you croaked.”


“Yes, and I have had dreams in which I let

Jad go because I couldn’t drag him back, and watched him burn up in the

atmosphere below me. And other dreams in which you didn’t make it, Raz.

We recovered the nuke, but you had simply vanished.”


“But then you wake up—” I began.


“I wake up and see you and Jad. But the

boundary between waking and dreaming is so indistinct here that

sometimes I can’t make out whether I’ve gone from dreaming to waking,

or the other way round.”


“I think I see where this is going,” I said. “I might be dead. You might be dead. Jad might be dead—”


“We’ve become like Fraa Orolo’s wandering

10,000-year math,” Arsibalt proclaimed. “A causal domain cut off from

the rest of the cosmos.”


“Whew!”


“But there is a side effect that Orolo

never warned us of,” he continued, “which is that we’ve gone adrift. We

don’t exist in one state or another. Anything’s possible, any history

might have happened, until the gates swing open and we go into Apert.”


“Either that,” I said, “or we’re just sleepy and worried.”


“That is just another possibility that might be real,” Arsibalt said.





When we weren’t (according to most of us)

dozing or (according to Arsibalt) drifting between distinct, but

equally real, worldtracks, we were studying the Daban Urnud.

A few paragraphs’ worth of description from Jules Verne Durand,

disseminated over the Reticulum, had given the Antiswarm enough

information to build a three-dimensional model of the alien ship that, according to the Laterran, was eerily faithful.


Blow a balloon out of steel, almost a mile

wide, and fill it half full of water. Repeat three more times. Place

these four orbs at the corners of a square, close to one another, but

not quite touching.


Repeat with four more orbs. Stack the new

set atop the old. But give it a forty-five-degree twist, so that the

upper orbs nestle into the clefts between the ones below, like fruits

stacked at a green-grocer’s.


Pile on two more such orb-squares,

repeating the twist each time. Now you have sixteen orbs in a stack a

little more than two miles high and a little less than two miles

across. Running up the center of the stack is an empty space, a chimney

about half a mile in diameter. Pack that chimney with all of the good

stuff: all of the complicated, expensive, exquisitely designed praxis

that we have long associated with space travel. Much of it is nothing

but structure: steel trusswork to grip those orbs and hold them

securely in their places while the entire thing is spinning around at

one revolution per minute to create pseudogravity, maneuvering to dodge

incoming bogeys, managing the resultant slosh, accelerating under

atomic power, or all of the above.


Once you’re satisfied it’s never going to

fall apart structurally, weave in all of the other stuff: a storage

magazine capable of holding tens of thousands of nuclear propulsion

charges. Reactors to supply power when the ship is far from any sun.

Inconceivably complex plumbing and wiring. Pressurized corridors along

which Urnudans, Troäns, Laterrans, and Fthosians can move from one orb

to another. Trunk lines of optical fibers to pipe captured sunlight

from the exterior of the icosahedron to the orbs, to shine on their

rooftop farms.


The orbs themselves are comparatively

simple. Inside of them, the water’s free to find its own level. When

the whole construct is spinning, the water flees to the outside and

settles into a curve on which “gravity” is always equal to what it was

on the home planet. When the ship is under power, the water settles

into the aft part of the sphere and levels out. People live on the

surface of the water in houseboats

linked by a web of stretchy lines and held apart by tough air-bladders;

when the shape of the water changes, there’s always a bit of jostling.

Like any proper boat, though, these are rigged for that; the cabinets

have latches so that they don’t fly open, the furniture is attached to

the floor so it doesn’t slide around. People live as their ancestors

did on the home planet, and may go for days, weeks, without thinking

very much about the fact that they’re sealed in a metal balloon being

spanked through space by A-bombs—as their families back on Urnud, Tro,

Laterre, or Fthos might never think about the fact that they live on

wet balls of rock hurtling through a vacuum.


This construct—the Orbstack—is a nice piece

of work, but vulnerable to cosmic rays, wandering rocks, sunlight, and

alien weaponry. So, frame walls of gravel around it, and while you’re

at it, hang the walls on a network of giant shock pistons. The Orbstack

is suspended in its middle, webbed to it. Anything that relates to the

rest of the universe—radar, telescopes, weapons systems, scout

vehicles—lives on the outside, attached to the thirty shock pistons, or

the twelve vertices where the shocks join together. Three of the

vertices—the ones down around the pusher plate—are naked mechanisms,

but the other nine are all complex space vehicles in themselves. Some

are pressurized spheres where members of the Command float around

weightless. Others have wide tunnels bored through them so that small

vehicles, and space-suited persons, can pass between the interior of

the icosahedron and the remainder of whatever cosmos the ship happens

to be in. And one is an optical observatory, better than any on Arbre

because it enjoys the vacuum of space.


All of this had been modeled, in more or

less detail, by the minds of the Antiswarm during the days that my

cell-mates and I had been assembling space suits and playing video

games in Elkhazg. The model lived in our suits now. We could fly

through it using the same controls—the trackball and the stick—that we

had earlier used to steer the monyafeeks. From a distance it seemed

impressively complete, with a kind of organic complexity about it; as I

flew in closer, though, to explore the core of the Orbstack, I found

hovering, semitransparent notes that had been posted by diffident avout, writing in perfect Orth, informing me, with regret, that everything beyond this point was pure conjecture.


Fraa Jad finally got his wish: a sextant.

We had been supplied with a device consisting of a wide-angle lens,

like Clesthyra’s Eye, that was smart enough to recognize certain

constellations. So it could know our attitude with respect to the

so-called fixed stars. That in combination with the positions of the

sun, the moon, and Arbre, and an accurate internal clock and ephemeris,

gave this thing enough information to calculate our orbital elements.

Fraa Jad seized this tool as soon as its presence was made known, and

devoted hours to mastering its functions.


Now that our adventure had turned into an

obvious do-or-die proposition, Jules had given up on trying to conserve

what remained of his food, and was eating freely. So his energy level

sprang back and his mood improved. Whenever he was awake, several

others were jacked into his suit, asking him questions about internal

details of the ship that had not made it into the model: for example,

what the doors looked like, how to operate the latching mechanisms, how

to tell a Fthosian from a Troän. I learned that the Geometers had a

particular dread of fire in the zero-gravity parts of the ship, and

that one could not go more than a hundred feet without encountering a

locker stocked with respirators, fireproof suits, and extinguishers.


That still left a lot of free time. Two

days in, I made a private connection with Jesry and told him what I

knew of the Everything Killers. Jesry listened attentively, as in a

chalk hall, and didn’t say much. By watching his face on the speely

screen I could tell that he was thinking about it hard—talking himself

into why it made sense. It had been obvious to him that there was

something we weren’t being told. Otherwise, the mission made no sense

on the face of it. I had given him something to think about. Until he’d

thought about it—until he’d had a thought that wasn’t obvious—he’d have

nothing to say.


Text messages trickled in from Cell 87 and appeared on my screen. The first few were routine. Then they started getting weird.




Tulia: Settle an argument down here…what is your head count up there?


I pecked a message back: Pardon me, but are you asking me how many of us are alive?

Then I fired the message off. Only after brooding over the exchange for

a few minutes did I realize that I hadn’t answered her question. By

that time, though, we’d lost contact with the ground.


I called a meeting. We all jacked in.


“My support cell doesn’t know how many of us are alive,” I announced.


“Nor does mine,” Jesry said immediately. “They claim I sent them a message a few hours ago implying that two of us were dead.”


“Did you?”


“No.”


“My support cell sent me no messages at all

for quite a long time,” said Suur Esma, “because they were convinced I

had perished in the launch.”


“It makes me wonder if something has gone

wrong with the Antiswarm,” I said. “All of these cells should be

talking to each other on the Reticulum, right? Comparing notes?”


We looked at Sammann. New body language was

required. Since faces could not be seen directly, we had gotten in the

habit of shifting our bodies toward the interlocutor to let them know

we were paying attention. So, nine space suits aimed themselves at

Sammann. Fraa Jad, though, didn’t seem interested. He had already

jacked out of the meeting and was clambering to a different part of the

space frame. But he had scarcely uttered a word since we had reached

space, and so we paid him no mind. I was even starting to wonder if he

had suffered brain damage.


“Something has gone wrong,” Sammann affirmed.


“Did the Geometers find a way to jam the Reticulum?” Osa asked.


“No, the Ret—its physical layer, anyway—is working fine. But there’s a low-level bug in the dynamics of the reputon space.”


“In Ita talk,” I said, “when you call something ‘low-level,’ you mean it’s really important, right?”




“Yes.”


“Can you say any more about what this means for us?” Lio requested.


“Early in the Reticulum—thousands of years

ago—it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty,

obsolete, or downright misleading information,” Sammann said.


“Crap, you once called it,” I reminded him.


“Yes—a technical term. So crap filtering

became important. Businesses were built around it. Some of those

businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned

the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing

people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created

syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the Reticulum. But it

had to be good crap.”


“What is good crap?” Arsibalt asked in a politely incredulous tone.


“Well, bad crap would be an unformatted document consisting of random letters. Good

crap would be a beautifully typeset, well-written document that

contained a hundred correct, verifiable sentences and one that was

subtly false. It’s a lot harder to generate good crap. At first they

had to hire humans to churn it out. They mostly did it by taking

legitimate documents and inserting errors—swapping one name for

another, say. But it didn’t really take off until the military got

interested.”


“As a tactic for planting misinformation in

the enemy’s reticules, you mean,” Osa said. “This I know about. You are

referring to the Artificial Inanity programs of the mid–First

Millennium A.R.”


“Exactly!” Sammann said. “Artificial

Inanity systems of enormous sophistication and power were built for

exactly the purpose Fraa Osa has mentioned. In no time at all, the

praxis leaked to the commercial sector and spread to the Rampant Orphan

Botnet Ecologies. Never mind. The point is that there was a sort of

Dark Age on the Reticulum that lasted until my Ita forerunners were

able to bring matters in hand.”


“So, are Artificial Inanity systems still active in the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies?” asked Arsibalt, utterly fascinated.




“The ROBE evolved into something totally different early in the Second Millennium,” Sammann said dismissively.


“What did it evolve into?” Jesry asked.


“No one is sure,” Sammann said. “We only

get hints when it finds ways to physically instantiate itself, which,

fortunately, does not happen that often. But we digress. The

functionality of Artificial Inanity still exists. You might say that

those Ita who brought the Ret out of the Dark Age could only defeat it

by co-opting it. So, to make a long story short, for every legitimate

document floating around on the Reticulum, there are hundreds or

thousands of bogus versions—bogons, as we call them.”


“The only way to preserve the integrity of

the defenses is to subject them to unceasing assault,” Osa said, and

any idiot could guess he was quoting some old Vale aphorism.


“Yes,” Sammann said, “and it works so well

that, most of the time, the users of the Reticulum don’t know it’s

there. Just as you are not aware of the millions of germs trying and

failing to attack your body every moment of every day. However, the

recent events, and the stresses posed by the Antiswarm, appear to have

introduced the low-level bug that I spoke of.”


“So the practical consequence for us,” Lio said, “is that—?”


“Our cells on the ground may be having

difficulty distinguishing between legitimate messages and bogons. And

some of the messages that flash up on our screens may be bogons as

well.”


“And this is all because a few bits got flipped in a syndev somewhere,” Jesry said.


“It’s slightly more complicated than you make it sound,” Sammann retorted.


“But what Jesry’s driving at,” I said, “is

that this ambiguity is ultimately caused by some number of logic gates

or memory cells, somewhere, being in a state that is wrong, or at least

ambiguous.”


“I guess you could put it that way,”

Sammann said, and I could tell he was shrugging even if I couldn’t see

it. “But it’ll all get sorted soon, and then we’ll stop receiving goofy

messages.”


“No we won’t,” said Fraa Gratho.


“Why do you say that?” asked Lio.




“Behold,” said Fraa Gratho, and extended

his arm. Following the gesture, we found Fraa Jad at work on the

wireless box that was our only link to the ground. He was stabbing it

with a screwdriver again and again. From time to time a piece of

shrapnel would float away from it, and he would fastidiously pluck it

out of space with a skelehand so that it would not wander out from

beneath the Cold Dark Mirror and return a radar echo.


When he was good and finished, he drifted

back to the meeting and jacked himself in. Lio remained calm, and

waited for him to speak.


Jad said, “The leakage was forcing choices, the making of which in no way improved matters.”


Okay. So we were, in effect, locked in a

room with a madman sorceror. That clarified things a little. We were

silent for a while. We knew there was no point in requesting

clarification. Fraa Jad had put it as clearly as he knew how. I saw

Jesry looking my way in his speely display. This is how the Incanters do it; he’s doing it now.


Sammann finally broke the silence. “It is

most odd,” he said, sounding strangely moved, “but I have been working

up my nerve to do the same thing.”


“What? Destroy the transmitter?” Lio asked.


“Yes. As a matter of fact, I dreamed a few hours ago I had done it. I felt good about it. When I woke up, I was surprised to find it intact.”


“Why would you wish to destroy it?” Arsibalt asked.


“I’ve been observing its habits. Once every

orbit, it comes into line of sight with a facility on the ground and

establishes a link. Then it empties its buffer—clears its queue.” He

went on to translate these Ita terms into Orth. The queue was like a

stack of leaves with messages written on them, which were transmitted

down to Arbre whenever possible. They were sent down in the same order

as they stood in the queue, like customers waiting in line at a store.


“So these things in the queue are, for

example, the text messages I’ve been writing back to my support cell on

the ground?” I asked.




“How many have you written?” he asked me.


“Maybe five.”


“Lio?”


“More like ten.”


“Osa?” Sammann polled everyone. None had

written more than a few messages. “The number of items in the queue at

this time,” he announced, “is over fourteen hundred.”


“What are they?” Arsibalt asked. “Can you read them?”


“No. They are all encrypted, and no one saw

fit to give me the key. Most are quite small. Probably text messages,

biomedical data, and associated bogons. But some of them are thousands

of times larger. Since I am the only one here with knowledge of such

things, I’ll tell you what would be obvious to an Ita, which is that

the large items are most likely recorded sound and video files.”


I could think of any number of explanations

for this but Arsibalt jumped directly to the most dramatic and, I had

to admit, probably correct one: “Surveillance!”


Sammann made no objection. “I have been

watching the behavior of the queue during my idle moments, of which I

have many. The big files behave in certain remarkable ways. For one

thing, they get priority over the little ones. The system advances them

to the foremost position in the queue as soon as they are created. For

another, the creation of these files seems to coincide with beginnings

and ends of conversations. As an example, I saw Erasmas having a

private conversation with Jesry a while ago, between about 1015 and

1030 hours. The next time Jesry connected himself to the reticule,

which was only about fifteen minutes ago, a large file sprang into

existence in the queue, and was promptly moved to the top. Time of

creation, 1017. Last modified, 1030.”


“Is this occurring with all

of our conversations?” Lio asked. And the tone of his voice told me—as

if I ever could have doubted it—that all of this was as new to him as

it was to me.


“No. Only some.”


“I propose an experiment,” Jesry said. “Sammann, does it still work?”




“Oh yes. Fraa Jad destroyed only the transmitter. The syndev still functions as if nothing had changed.”


“Are you monitoring the queue now?”


“Of course.”


Jesry disconnected, and motioned for me to

do the same. We formed a private connection. Jesry launched into a very

old, well-worn dialog that we’d had to memorize as fids: a verbal proof

that the square root of two was an irrational number. I did my best to

hold up my end of it. When we were finished, we reconnected to the

reticule and waited a few seconds. “Nothing,” Sammann said.


Again we disconnected and formed a two-person link.


“Do you remember back at Edhar,” I began,

“when we and the other Incanters would sit around after dinner making

Everything Killers out of cornstalks and shoelaces?”


“Of course,” Jesry said, “those were really

good Everything Killers because they could assassinate filthy

Panjandrums like no one’s business.”


“That’ll come in handy when we betray Arbre to the Pedestal,” I pointed out.


And so on in that vein for a couple of

minutes. Then we reconnected to the reticule. “There’s a new file,”

Sammann announced, “at the head of the queue.”


“Okay,” I announced, “so the Panjandrums

seem to be really keen on knowing if we talk about certain things like

the Everything Killers.”


“Ha!” Sammann exclaimed. “A new file has just been opened, and it is growing larger the longer…I…keep…talking.”


The topic of the Everything Killers had not

yet been broached to the group at large, and so some people had a lot

of questions, which Lio fielded. Meanwhile, Jesry and I continued the

experiment we had begun, breaking and re-establishing contact with the

reticule a couple of dozen times over the course of the following

half-hour. Every time we broke away, we’d try a few more words, just to

see which topics triggered the automatic recording system. This was a

haphazard business, but we were able to discover several more trigger words, including attack, neutron, mass murder, insane, dishonor, unconscionable, refuse, and mutiny.


Every time we reconnected, we heard more

ideas for possible trigger words, since the conversation was quite

naturally evolving in such a way that all the words listed above, and

many more, were frequently put to use. Things were becoming extremely

emotional, and it was good in a way that Jesry and I were able to jack

in and out of it and treat its contents as an object of theorical

study. But after a while it reached a point where we reckoned we had

better join and stay joined.


Arsibalt had just asked a rather probing question of the Valers: where did their ultimate allegiance lie?


Fraa Osa was answering: “To my fraas and

suurs of the Ringing Vale I have a loyalty that can never be dissolved

precisely because it is no rational thing but a bond like that of

family. And I will not waste oxygen by discussing all of the nesting

and overlapping loyalty groups to which I belong: this cell, the Mathic

world, the Convox, the people of Arbre, and the community, extending

even beyond the limits of this cosmos, that unites us with the likes of

Jules Verne Durand.”


“Say zhoost,” answered the Laterran, which we’d figured out was his way of expressing approval.


“To untangle all acting loyalties and

obligations is not possible in the thick of an Emergence, and so one

falls back on simple responses that arise from one’s training.”


Jules had not yet been exposed to this

concept and so Osa gave him a brief tutorial on Emergence-ology, using

as an example the decision tree that a swordfighter must traverse in

order to make the correct move during a duel. It was obvious that such

a thing was far too complex to be evaluated in a rational way during a

rapid exchange of cuts and thrusts, and so it must be the case that

sword-fighters who survived more than one or two such encounters must

be doing Something Different. The avout of the Ringing Vale had made

the study and cultivation of that Something Different their sole

occupation. Jules Verne Durand took the point readily. “The analogy

works as well with complex board games. We have some on

Laterre, similar to yours here in that the tree of possible moves and

counter-moves rapidly becomes far too vast for the brain to sort

through all possibilities. Ordinators—what you’d call syntactic

devices—can play the game in this style, but successful human players

appear to use some fundamentally different approach that relies on

seeing the whole board and detecting certain patterns and applying

certain rules of thumb.”


“The Teglon,” put in Fraa Jad. And he did

not need to elaborate on this. We’d all seen the feat he had

accomplished at Elkhazg, and it was obvious to all of us that it could

not have been done by trial and error. Nor by building outwards from a

single starting place. He’d had to grasp the whole pattern at once.


“This is dangerous,” Jesry said flatly. “It

leads to saying that we may abandon the Rake and behave like a bunch of

Enthusiasts, and everything will work out just fine because we have

achieved holistic oneness with the polycosm.”


“What you say is indeed a problem,” said

Jules, “but no one here would dare argue that it is possible to win a

swordfight or solve the Teglon by behaving so self-indulgently.”


“Jesry is making a straw man argument,”

Arsibalt said. “He’s raising a possible future issue. If we agree to

proceed along these lines, and reach a point, somewhere down the line,

where a difficult decision needs to be made, what grounds will we have

for evaluating possible decisions, if we’ve already thrown rational

analysis to the wind?”


“The ability to decide correctly at such

moments must be cultivated over many years of disciplined practice and

contemplation,” said Fraa Osa. “No one would argue that a novice could

solve the Teglon simply by trusting his feelings. Fraa Jad developed

the ability to do it over many decades.”


“Centuries,” I corrected him, since I saw

no benefit, now, in being coy about this. I heard a couple of surprised

exclamations over the reticule, but no one said anything for or against

the proposition.


Not even Fraa Jad. He did say this: “Those who think through possible outcomes with discipline, forge connections, in so doing, to

other cosmi in which those outcomes are more than mere possibilities.

Such a consciousness is measurably, quantitatively different from one

that has not undertaken the same work and so, yes, is able to make

correct decisions in an Emergence where an untrained mind would be of

little use.”


“Fine,” Jesry said, “but where does it get us? What are we going to do?”


“I think it has already gotten us

somewhere,” I said. “When you and I re-joined this dialog a few minutes

ago, passions were inflamed and people were still trying to frame the

decision in terms of allegiances and loyalties. Fraa Osa has shown that

any such approach will fail because we all belong to multiple groups

with conflicting loyalties. This made the conversation less emotional.

We’ve also developed an argument that it’s not possible to work out all

the moves in advance. But as you yourself pointed out, going on naïve

emotion is bound to fail.”


“So we must develop the same kind of

decision-making ability that Fraa Jad employs when he solves the

Teglon,” said Jesry, “but that requires time and knowledge. We don’t

have time and we don’t have much knowledge.”


“We have two more days,” said Lio.


“And there is much knowledge that we can infer,” said Arsibalt.


“Such as?” Jesry asked in a skeptical tone.


“That Everything Killers might be planted in this equipment. That our purpose might be to deliver them to the Daban Urnud,” Arsibalt said.


“Most of this equipment isn’t going to make it to the Daban Urnud,”

Lio pointed out. He added, perfectly deadpan, “Those of you who’ve

reviewed the Terminal Rendezvous Maneuver Plan will know as much.”


“Just us, and our suits,” Jesry said.

“That’s all that will make it to the ship—if we’re lucky. And they—the

ones who planned this—can’t predict the fate of our suits. What if we

get captured by the Pedestal? They might ditch our suits in space, or

dismantle them.”


“Your point is becoming clear,” said Fraa Osa, “but it is important that you make it.”




“Fine. We are the weapons. The Everything Killers have been planted inside our bodies. We all know how it was done.”


“The giant pills,” said Jules.


“Exactly: the core temperature transponders that we swallowed before takeoff,” Jesry said. “Anyone pass theirs yet?”


“Come to think of it, no,” said Arsibalt. “It seems to have taken up residence in my gut.”


“There you have it,” said Jesry. “Until those things are surgically removed, we are all living, breathing nuclear weapons.”


“All,” said Suur Vay, “except for Fraa Jad, and Jules Verne Durand.”


This left all of us nonplussed, so she

explained, “I believe you will find their core temperature transponders

rattling around loose, somewhere inside their space suits.”


“I threw mine up,” explained Jules.


“I declined to swallow mine,” said Jad.


“And as the cell physician, you knew this, Suur Vay, because their core temp readings have been obviously wrong?” asked Lio.


“Yes. And the incorrect readings caused

their suits to respond in inappropriate ways, which is why both of them

required medical attention following the launch.”


“Why didn’t you swallow your pill, Fraa Jad?” asked Arsibalt. “Did you know what it was?”


“I judged it wiser not to,” was all that Fraa Jad was willing to supply in the way of an answer.


“This idea—that we’ve all been turned into

nuclear weapons—is an amazing theory,” I said, “but I simply don’t

believe that Ala would ever do such a thing.”


“I’m guessing she didn’t know,” Lio said. “This must have been added onto the plan without her knowledge.”


Fraa Osa said, “If I were the strategist in

charge, I would go to Ala and say ‘please assemble the team you deem

most capable of getting aboard the Daban Urnud.’

And her answer would come back: ‘I will do it by making friends with

those among the Geometers who are opposed to the Pedestal; they’ll take

our people in and offer them assistance.’”




“That is monstrous,” I said.


“Monstrous: probably another trigger word,” Jesry mused. I wanted to slug him. But he was making an excellent point.





Two days later we stripped off our white

coveralls, then drew down the retractable shields to conceal the lights

and displays on our suit-fronts. We were all matte black now. Like

mountaineers, we roped ourselves together with a braided line that

doubled as safety rope and communications wire. Jad, Jesry, and I had

spent much of the last shift working with the sextant and making

calculations. These culminated with Fraa Jad hanging off the underside

of the nuke with a knife in one hand, sighting down the length of the

tether as if it were a gun barrel, watching the constellations wheel

behind it. At the instant when a particular star came into alignment

with the tether, he slashed through it with a knife. The tether and the

counterweight at its end flew off into space—and so did we, picking up

a final momentum adjustment that would, we hoped, synch our orbit with

that of the Daban Urnud.


Half an hour later, we all braced our feet

against the underside of the Mirror and, at a signal from Lio, pushed

it away—or jumped off, depending on your frame of reference. The Mirror

glided out of the way to give us our first direct look at the Daban Urnud.

It was so close to us, now, that we could hardly see anything: just a

single triangular facet of the icosahedron, filling most of our visual

field.


Essentially all of the Geometers’

surveillance and remote sensing systems had been designed to look at

things that were thousands of miles away. As Jesry and the others had

learned when they had brought the Warden of Heaven here, the Daban Urnud

did have short-range radars for illuminating things that were nearby,

but there was no reason to keep them switched on unless visitors were

expected. And we had not emerged from behind the Cold Black Mirror

until we had approached too close even for those radars to work very

well. This was partly luck. If our trajectory had been a little less

precise, we’d have been forced to ditch the Mirror farther out, and

thereby exposed ourselves to the scrutiny of those systems. But

Fraa Jad had wielded his knife at just the right instant. If he did

nothing else for the rest of the mission he would still have earned his

place.


In order to see us, they’d have to

literally see us. Someone would have to look out a window, or (more

likely) at a speelycaptor feed, and just happen to notice eleven

matte-black humanoids gliding in against the background of space.


Its surface was like a shingle beach: flat,

assembled from countless pieces of asteroids that had been scavenged

from four different cosmi. Light glinted among the stones: the wire

mesh that held them together. It seemed as though we were going to

collide with a shock piston, which cut straight across our path like a

horizon. But we cleared it by a few yards and found ourselves gliding

along “above” a new face of the icosahedron, currently in shadow. Each

of us was armed with a spring-loaded gun, and so at a signal from Lio,

eleven grappling hooks shot out toward the rubble shield, trailing

lines behind them. I’d estimate that half of them snagged in the mesh

holding the rocks together. One by one the grapnel-lines went taut and

began to pull back on those who’d fired them. This caused the ropes

that joined us to go tight in a complex and unpredictable train of

events, and so there were a few moments of bashing into one another and

gratuitous entanglement as the whole cell came to the end of this

improvised web of tethers. Our momentum caused us to swing forward and

down toward the rubble, a scary development that was somewhat mitigated

by the four Valers, who’d been issued cold gas thrusters that they held

out before them like pistols and fired in the direction we didn’t want

to go. This led to further collisions and entanglements that bordered

on the ridiculous, but did have the net effect of slowing us down some.

As we got closer, we tried to get legs and/or arms out in front of

ourselves to serve as shock absorbers. I was able to plant my right

foot on a boulder. The impact torqued me around. I spun and punched

another 4.5-billion-year-old rock with the stumpy end of my suit-arm

just in time to avoid planting my face on it. Then various ropes jerked

on me from multiple vectors and dragged me along for a short ways. But

soon everyone stopped bouncing and dragging and managed to grip the wire mesh with their fingers, giving Cell 317 a secure purchase on the Daban Urnud.


Requiem: The aut celebrated to mark the death of an avout.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





The darkness was nearly perfect. Arbre was

on the other side of the ship, and shed no light here. A new moon,

though, was swinging up through the cluttered horizon of the nearest

shock piston, strewing faint light by which we cut ourselves apart and

sorted ourselves out. Our magnetic boot-soles stuck faintly to the

icosahedron, a rubble of nickel and iron. Moving like a man with gum on

the soles of his shoes, Sammann made the rounds and checked our

connections to the rope/wire.


“This facet will remain in darkness for

another twenty minutes,” Jesry informed us, “after which we have to

move to that one.” I supposed he was pointing at one of the three shock

pistons that made up our local horizon, but I couldn’t see him. As the Daban Urnud

revolved around Arbre, the terminator—the dividing line between the

sunlit and shaded halves of the icosahedron—crept around it. On any

given facet, sunrise or sunset would be explosively sudden. We’d better

not get caught in the open when it happened, because the citadel-like

complexes that loomed over the twelve vertices had clear views over the

surrounding facets.


“According to my equipment,” announced Fraa Gratho, “we did not get illuminated by any short-range radar.”


“They simply don’t have it turned on,” said

Lio. “But sooner or later, they’ll probably notice the monyafeeks that

Fraa Jad cut loose, or the Cold Black Mirror, and then they’ll go to a

higher state of alert. So, which way to the World Burner?”


“Follow me,” said Fraa Osa, and started

walking. If walking was the right word for such a clumsy style of

locomotion. I’d like to say we moved as drunks, but it would be an

insult to every sloshed fraa who had

staggered back to his cell in the dark. Much of our twenty minutes of

darkness was burned moving the first couple of hundred feet. After

that, though, we learned, if not what to do, then at least what not to do, and reached the nearest horizon with a few minutes’ darkness to spare.


The shock piston was like a pipeline

half-buried in the rubble, but reinforced with fin-like trusses to

prevent it from buckling like a straw when it was under load. At its

ends, about a mile away in either direction, it swelled like the end of

a bone and developed into a heavy steel knuckle. Five such knuckles,

coming together from different directions, formed the base of each

vertex. Each vertex was different, but in general they had been cobbled

together from a mess of domes, cylinders, gridwork, and antennae.

Extravagant bouquets of silver parabolic horns flourished from their

“tops,” waiting for their turn to gaze into our sun and steal some of

our light.


The triangular rubble-field across which

we’d been walking didn’t butt up hard against the shock piston, because

there had to be some give in the system; a shock absorber that had been

in effect welded to a stiff triangular plate all along its length would

not be able to function. Instead the facet stopped ten feet short of

the truss-work that enshrouded the shock, and was sewn to it by a

system of cables that zigzagged over pulleys. At a glance, it looked

awfully complicated, and made me think of sailboats, not starships. But

since the Urnudans had been building such things for a thousand years I

guessed they had come up with a way to make it work.


Light shone up from the chasm below. As we

neared it we slowed, bent forward, and gazed into the interior of the

icosahedron, a volume of some twenty-three cubic miles, softly

illuminated by sunlight slitting in through other such gaps and

scattering from the icosahedron’s inner walls and the sixteen orbs. It

was all as we’d seen it rendered on the model, but of course to see it

in person was altogether different. The view was dominated by the

nearest of the orbs, swinging by as fast as the second hand on a clock,

helpfully painted with a huge numeral in the Urnudan writing system.

I’d learned enough of this to translate it as number 5. Orb 5 housed high-ranking Troäns.


All of my instincts told me to fear the

jump across the gap, because if I “fell in” I would drop for some vast

distance before getting splattered on a rotating orb. But of course

there was no gravity here, no down, nothing to fall into.


Osa went first, launching himself across

the gap and getting himself established on the struts that lent

strength to the shock piston. Vay was last on the line. Once we’d all

made it over, we hand-over-handed our way across the shock out of

concern that the snapping of our magnetic boots against its steel would

create an obvious acoustical signature. There was a dizzy moment when

our settled conception of up and down was challenged by the next facet

swinging into view, defining a new level and a new horizon. Then we got

used to it and floated across another gap using the same procedure as

before. This was perhaps an overly cautious way to travel ten feet

through space. But if we all did it at once, and jumped too hard, we

might drift away.


Sun was striking the struts we had just

passed over as we planted our feet on the next facet of the

icosahedron, where we could be assured of a few hours’ darkness. This

was more time than we needed. Or, to speak truthfully, it was more than

we had, since we only had an hour’s oxygen remaining, and the tender

was gone.


Two miles away—directly across the

facet—was a hydrogen bomb the size of a six-story office building. It

was essentially egg-shaped. But like a beetle caught in spider’s

webbing, its form was blurred by a fantastic tangle of strut-work and

plumbing connecting it to the vertex-citadel. Indeed, that whole vertex

appeared to have no practical use other than to serve as a support base

for the World Burner. Even if it hadn’t been so enormous, it would have

been a difficult thing to miss, because it was all lit up.


Lit up for the benefit of a hundred people in space suits clambering around on it.


“Do you think they’re getting ready to launch it?” Arsibalt asked.


“I don’t think they’re giving it a new paint job,” Jesry said.




“Very well,” Lio said. I didn’t know who he

was speaking to, or what he was giving his assent to. A click on the

line suggested that someone had just jacked out.


Our view of the World Burner complex was

interrupted, now, by four black-space-suited figures who had broken

away from the rest of us. In the dark, with the suits in stealth mode,

we could not tell one another apart, but something in the way that

these four moved convinced me that they were the Ringing Vale

contingent. They walked abreast, with one—presumably Fraa Osa—slightly

ahead of the others. They were spreading a little farther apart with

each step.


“Lio? What is happening?” I asked.


“An Emergence,” he reasoned.


When the four Valers were spaced about

twenty feet apart, Fraa Osa deployed his skelehands and, like a steppe

rider in a shootout, drew a pair of pistol-like objects—the cold gas

thrusters—from holsters bracketed to the hips of his suit. The other

three did likewise. Then, to all appearances, Fraa Osa fell on his

face. He planted his feet next to each other and let his momentum carry

his body forward, peeling his magnetic soles loose from the rubble. As

soon as he lost that connection to the icosahedron, his feet swung up

and his whole body pivoted in space until he was prone. And in the same

moment he began to glide headfirst toward the World Burner. He was

holding both arms down to his sides, pointing the cold gas guns toward

his feet, using them to thrust himself across the rubble plane, like a

low-flying superhero. Vay, Esma, and Gratho were all doing likewise. In

their wake we could see a roiling in the light, like heat waves, as the

plumes of clear gas dissolved into space. At first their movement was

achingly gradual, but they rapidly picked up speed, sometimes

porpoising up, then correcting it with a calm inflection of the wrist,

spreading out as they vectored themselves toward different parts of the

World Burner complex, sliding with a kind of wicked, silent beauty over

the glossy purple-blue rubble plane. We were able to see them only in

silhouette against the lights of the sprawling complex—and that only

for the first few moments of their flight. Then they were as invisible

to us as they were to the space-suited Geometers swarming over the bomb.




Lio announced, “We have perhaps only a few minutes to get inside and find something to breathe before every door in the Daban Urnud is locked against us.”


“What about the Valers?” Arsibalt said.


“I think it would be wisest to assume that

they and everyone working on the World Burner are as good as dead,” Lio

said, after a moment’s thought.


“They are attacking now?” I asked.


“They are boarding it now,” Lio said.


Or—technically speaking—reminded me. For we had discussed this eventuality. “What if, when we come in sight of the World Burner, we see evidence that the Geometers are just about to launch it?”


“Ah, well, of course that would

change everything, we’d have to fork to a completely different branch

of the plan, not a moment to spare!” I knew we’d gone over

it. But I had filed it, in my head, under the category of “things very

unlikely to happen, hence safely forgotten.” Lio, however, had not

forgotten. “If the Valers can manage to get aboard the World Burner

covertly, they’ll hide, and take no further action until just before

their air supply runs out. That’s to give the rest of us time to find a

way in. But if the World Burner launches—or if someone sees them, and

raises the alarm—well—”


“Bad things will happen,” Jesry snapped.


“So we might or might not have a little time,” I said.


“Which means, we should act as if we have

none at all,” Lio returned. “Jules?” For the Laterran had been silent

for a long time. “You still with us?”


“Pardon me,” Jules returned. “I am amazed,

thinking of the havoc that our friends of the Ringing Vale are about to

unleash. It is an inconceivable nightmare for the Pedestal, the worst

embarrassment they will have suffered in one thousand years. My

loyalties are torn several ways, you know.”


“No matter how much conflict is in your

soul,” I said, “you can’t possibly object to the destruction of the

World Burner, can you?”


“No,” said Jules softly, but distinctly.

“In that my feelings are unalloyed. What a shame, if some of those

working on it are slain! But to work

on such a horrible device—” He did not finish the sentence, but I knew

that, inside his space suit, he was shrugging.


“So mainly you just don’t want to introduce Everything Killers to the Daban Urnud,” I said.


“That is certainly correct.”


Lio broke in: “I never thought I’d hear myself saying this, but: take us to your leader,”


“I beg your pardon?”


“Point us to the Urnudans. Then your work is done. You can go home and get a decent meal.”


“Which is more than we can say for ourselves,” Arsibalt pointed out. “Yes,” Jules said, “the irony. No food for you. Not here!”


“So then,” Lio said, “what is your

decision?” All of us shared his impatience, if for no other reason than

that we were running out of air. I’d like to report that I was still

thinking coolly, applying the Rake to everything that was clattering

through my mind. But in truth I was stunned and bewildered and—if this

made sense—hurt by the sudden departure of Osa, Vay, Esma, and Gratho.

I’d known, of course, that there were various contingency plans. Had

never fooled myself that I could know all of them. But I’d been telling

myself all along that the Valers would always be with us. When I’d

first seen them on the coach at Tredegarh I’d been horrified by the

idea that I was about to be sent off on the kind of mission where such

persons might be needed. But over the days since, I had grown used

to—and proud of—being on just such a mission. Now, here we were, at its

most critical moment, and the Valers were suddenly gone, without

explanation, without even a “goodbye and good luck!” The logic of the

decision they’d made was unassailable—what could be more important than

disabling the World Burner? But where did it leave the rest of us?


“Is it possible,” I heard myself saying,

“that we are a spent delivery mechanism? Like those boosters that threw

us into space—to be dumped into the sea?”


“That’s totally plausible,” Jesry said

without hesitation. “We did our lessons well and played some clever

tricks to get the four Valers here. That job is done. Now, here we are. No food, no oxygen, no communications, and no way home.”


“You overestimate the importance of the

World Burner,” Jad announced. “It is a bluff. Its existence forces our

military to act in ways it would not otherwise. Its destruction would

give Arbre back a measure of freedom. But what use the Sæcular Power

would make of that freedom is yet to be known, and our actions may yet

be of some importance. We go on.”


“Jules?” Lio said. “How about it?”


“It is tempting to drop through this

opening before us, no?” Jules said. For we had instinctively turned our

backs on the World Burner, as if this would protect us from whatever

was about to erupt there. Once more we were gazing down into the gap,

watching Orbs 6 and 7 rotate past, glimpsing the Core in the cleft

between them. “But then we are in the light, where we may be seen. And

the Orbstack rotates with too much velocity for us ever to catch it.

No. We must go in via the Core. But to enter the Core, we must first go

in at a vertex.” He toddled around until he was gazing at the vertex

that, as we faced the shock piston, was to our left. “That is the

observatory. You’ve studied the pictures.” He toddled right. “That one is a military command post.”


“Does the observatory have airlocks?”

Arsibalt asked. For all of us were now looking leftward—no one felt up

to invading a military command post, not after we’d lost our Valers.


“Oh yes, you are looking at one,” said Jules, and began walking toward it. We fell in step.


“Er—I am?”


“The dome that houses the telescope is, itself, a great airlock,” Jules explained.


“Makes sense,” Jesry said. “To work on the

telescope, they’d want to flood the dome with air. Then, when they were

ready to make observations, they’d evacuate it and expose it to space.”

Which is where I normally would have become irritated with Jesry for

lecturing the rest of us. But it went by me. I was fascinated,

dumbfounded, by an idea I had not dared to think of for a week: taking

my suit off. Being able to touch my face.




Arsibalt was on the same track: “The way I smell will probably seem funny when I reminisce about it years hence.”


“Yes,” Lio said, “if odors can travel between cosmi, everything down-Wick of us is about to die.”


“Thanks for the preview,” Jesry said.


“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I suggested.


Sammann asked, “Is anyone going to be on duty in this observatory?”


“Perhaps not physically there,” Jules said.

“The telescopes are controlled remotely on our version of the

Reticulum. But the big one will be in use, certainly—making a survey of

your lovely cosmos, which is all new to us.”


The vertex was looming mountainously as we

carried on this conversation. Old instincts warned me that we had an

exhausting climb ahead of us. But, of course, it was no climb at all,

because we were weightless. Without having to discuss it we made for

the “highest” and largest of the domes, which, as Jules had promised,

was open. It was a spherical shell, split into two hemispheres, which

had spread apart on tracks to expose a multi-segmented mirror with a

diameter of some thirty feet. We all clambered through the gap between

the hemispheres, which was wide enough to throw a three-bedroom house

through, and hand-over-handed ourselves “down” to the level of the

trusses and gimbals that supported the mirror—all following, I think, a

sort of instinct to get indoors, under cover, away from the terrible

exposure we had been living with for so long. Jules pointed out a hatch

by which we could gain entry to the pressurized regions of the vertex

once the dome had been closed and filled with air. There was even a

nice big red panic button that we could slam to emergency-pressurize

the dome. But he advised us not to use it, because this would trigger

alarms all over the Daban Urnud. Instead he pulled

himself up on the struts that held the telescope’s objective suspended

at the mirror’s focal point. He peeled the reflective blanket off his

chest and stuffed it in there, then clambered “down” to rejoin us.

Meanwhile, the rest of us tried to stay calm and control our breathing.

Arsibalt, who used more oxygen than anyone

else, was down to ten minutes. Sammann had twenty-five; the two of them

swapped oxygen tanks. I had eighteen. Lio suggested we all try to eat

as much as possible; if we were separated from our suits, we’d have no

food left except for a few energy bars that we could carry with us. So

I sucked more gruel from the nozzle and made a prolonged and labored

effort not to throw it right back up into the scupper.


“Hello!” called Jules, more as an

exclamation than a greeting. It took us a moment to understand that he

was responding to a face that had appeared in the porthole of the

hatch: some cosmographer come to see why the big scope had gone dark.

Based on Jules’s lessons, I guessed, from the hue of her eyes and the

shape of her nostrils, that she was Fthosian. And, though it would take

some time to learn Fthosian facial expressions, I reckoned I had now

seen two of them: befuddlement followed by shock as a matte black space

suit of unfamiliar design loomed in her window. Jules grabbed handles

flanking the hatch and pressed his face plate against the glass. Then

we all had to turn down the volume in our phones as he began to holler

in what I assumed was Fthosian. The woman inside got the idea and

pressed her ear against the window. Sound would not travel through the

vacuum of space, but, by shouting loud enough, Jules could excite

vibrations in his face-mask that would be transmitted by direct contact

into the glass of the porthole and thence into the cosmographer’s ear.


He repeated himself. He somehow managed to

sound more cheerful than desperate. His tone seemed to say it was all

in good sport. The woman’s lips moved as she shouted back.


The dome illuminated. I reckoned she’d hit

the light switch, to get a better look at what was going on. But on

second thought this light was pouring in through the gap between the

hemispheres. The sun must have risen? We’d been warned of explosive

sunrises. But this seemed explosive in more ways than one; the light

flared, faded, and flared brighter. It burbled and boiled. A silent

concussion passed through the frame of the icosahedron. Lio sprang up

so smartly that he almost committed the fatal mistake of flying

straight up out of the dome and off into space. But he caught himself

short by gripping the comm wire that linked him to the rest of us, and

swung around above the telescope mirror until he finally contrived to

stop himself short on the edge of a dome-half. The light, which was

slowly dying, reflected in his face mask. “The World Burner,” he said,

“I think they must have blown the propellant tanks.” Then, with a

sudden exclamation, he pushed off and glided back “down” to what I was

thinking of as the floor of the dome. For the giant hemispheres had

gone into movement, and the slit between them was narrowing decisively.

The lights really did come on now.


The slit disappeared with a clunk, felt not

heard. For better or worse, we were trapped here now. I kept eyeing the

big red emergency button. I had eight minutes.


A readout on my display began to change:

outside air pressure, which had been a red zero ever since I’d been

launched into the vacuum of space, was climbing up toward the yellow

zone. Jules had noticed the same thing; he went over to a grated vent

near the hatch and reached for it. His arm was batted aside by

inrushing air.


“Thank Cartas,” Arsibalt said, “I don’t care what cosmos this air came from. I just want to breathe it.”


“While we are waiting, re-acquaint

yourselves with the doffing procedure,” Lio told us. “And show

yourselves.” He pulled up the screen that had been hiding his readouts.

The rest of us did likewise. For the first time in a couple of hours we

were able to see one another’s faces on the speely screens and to check

one another’s readouts. I could not see everyone in the group, because

we were distributed around a cluttered and complex space “beneath” the

mirror supports. But I could see Jesry, who had two minutes. I had

five. I swapped canisters with him; it was taking a long time to

pressurize the dome.


A few minutes later the external pressure

readout finally changed from yellow to green: good enough to breathe.

Just as my oxygen supply indicator was going from red (extreme danger)

to black (you are dead). With my last lungful of Arbre air I spoke the

command that opened my suit to the surrounding atmosphere. My ears popped. My nose stung, and registered a funny smell: that of something, anything,

other than my own body. Lio, who’d been keeping a sharp eye on my

readouts (I had less oxygen than anyone else that I could see), stepped

behind me and hauled the back of my suit open. I withdrew my arms, got

a grip on the rim of the HTU, and pulled myself, stark naked, out of

the accursed thing. I breathed alien air. My comrades watched me with

no small interest. The only other Arbran to have breathed this stuff

had been the Warden of Heaven, who apparently hadn’t lasted more than a

few minutes. My hands flew to my face. I kneaded it, scratched my nose,

rubbed a week’s sleep from my eyes, ran my fingers up into my hair.

Could have thought of more edifying things to do, but it was a

biological imperative.


Lio groped on his front, found a switch, flicked it. “Can you hear me?”


“Yeah, I can hear you.” The others took to groping for their switches.


“Not that it makes a difference—since we all have to get out—but what is it like, my fraa?”


“My heart is pounding like crazy,” I said,

and paused, since to say that much had worn me out. “I thought I was

just excited, but—maybe this air doesn’t work for us.” I was speaking

in bursts between gasps for air; my body was telling me to breathe

faster. “I can see why the Warden of Heaven blew an aneurysm.”


“Raz?”


Breathe, breathe. “Yeah?” Breathe breathe breathe…


“Get me out of this thing!” Lio insisted.


Jesry grabbed Lio, spun him around, yanked

his door open. Lio got out of his suit as if it were on fire. He

floated over with a mad look on his face. All my habits from home told

me to get out of Lio’s way when he approached in that mood, but I

simply didn’t have the strength. His arms, which had subjected me to so

much rough treatment over the years, came around me in a bear hug. He

pressed his ear against my chest. His scalp was like thistles. I felt

his rib cage begin heaving. Jesry and Arsibalt and Jules were swimming

free of their suits. Jules went straight to the hatch, threw a lever,

and shoved it open. Everything faded—not to darkness but to a washed-out yellow-gray, as if too much light were shining through it.





Fraa Jad and I were floating in a white

corridor. I was naked. He was dressed in one of the grey coveralls we’d

brought up in our kit. Evidence suggested he had been rummaging in a

steel locker set into the wall. Two clumps of silvery fabric were

floating near him. He teased one open. It turned out to have arms and

legs. From time to time he glanced my way. When he noticed me looking

at him, he tossed me a grey packet in a poly bag: another folded-up

coverall. “Put this on,” he said. “Then, over it, the silver garment.”


“Are we going to put out a fire?”


“In a manner of speaking.”


The effort of tearing open the poly wrapper

set my heart pounding. Pulling on the coverall plunged me deep into

oxygen debt. Once I had recovered enough to get a few words out, I

asked, “Where are the others?”


“There is a Narrative, not terribly

dissimilar to the one you and I are perceiving, in which they went to

explore the ship. Their plan is to surrender peacefully whenever

someone notices them.”


“Is there any particular reason they left us behind?”


“Emergence from the suit after so long.

Finding oneself in a confined space after having grown accustomed to

the unobstructed vastness. Breathing an atmosphere from a different

cosmos. Effects of long-term weightlessness. General stress and

excitement. All of these induce a syndrome that lasts for a few

minutes, a kind of going into shock, that can produce confusion or even

loss of consciousness. Soon it passes, if one is healthy. I infer that

it was too much for the Warden of Heaven.”


“So,” I tried, “after we doffed the suits,

we were all confused or unconscious for a few minutes. Meaning—in your

system of thought—we lost our grip on the Narrative. Stopped tracking

it. Whatever faculty of consciousness enables it continuously to do the

fly-bat-worm trick—it shut down for a while, there.”




“Yes. And the others regained consciousness in a worldtrack in which you and I are dead.”


“Dead.”


“That is what I told you.”


“So that’s why they left us behind,” I said. “They didn’t leave us behind, because, in their worldtrack, we never even made it here.”


“Yes. Put this on.” He handed me a full-face respirator.


“What of the Fthosian astronomer? Won’t she summon the authorities, or something?”


“She went with Jules. He is talking to her. He has a gift for that kind of thing.”


“So Lio, Arsibalt, Jesry, and Sammann are just wandering around the ship openly, looking for someone to surrender to?”


“Such a worldtrack exists.”


“It’s pretty bizarre.”


“Not at all. Such occurrences are common in the confusion of war.”


“How about this worldtrack? What are the four of them doing in the Narrative that you and I are in?”


“I’m in several,” Fraa

Jad said, “a state of affairs that is not easy to sustain. Your

questions hardly make it easier. So here is a simple answer. The others

are all dead.”


“I don’t wish to abide in a worldtrack where my friends are all dead,” I said. “Take me back to the other one.”


“There is no taking, and there is no back,” Jad said. “Only going, and forward.”


“I don’t want to be in a Narrative where my friends are dead,” I insisted.


“Then you have two choices: put yourself

out the airlock, or follow me.” And Fraa Jad pulled the respirator over

his face, terminating our conversation. He handed me a fire

extinguisher, and took one for himself. Then he shoved off down the

corridor.





Now my mind did something absurd, namely,

attended to the nuts and bolts of the ship instead of things that were

truly important. It was as though

some Barb-like part of me had stepped to the fore, elbowed my soul out

of the way, and directed all of my energies and faculties toward those

things that Barb would find interesting, such as door-latching

mechanisms. Subsystems responsible for irrelevancies such as grieving

for my friends, fearing death, being confused about the worldtracks,

and wanting to strangle Fraa Jad, were starved of resources.


There were many doors, all closed but not

locked. This was, according to Jules, the usual state of affairs here.

These outer reaches of the ship were divided into separate,

independently pressurized compartments so that a meteor strike in one

wouldn’t beggar its neighbors. Consequently, one spent an inordinate

amount of time opening and closing doors. These were domed round

hatches about three feet in diameter, with heavy bank-vault-like

latching mechanisms. One opened them by grabbing two symmetrical

handles and pulling them opposite ways, which was handy in zero gravity

where planting one’s feet and using one’s body weight were not

supported by theorical law. The effort always left me panting for

breath in Fraa Jad’s wake. One of the questions I had meant to annoy

him with had been, Why me? Can’t you do whatever it is you are doing alone, so that I can be in a Narrative where my friends are alive?

And maybe this was the answer. I’d been picked out for the same reason

that the hierarchs at Edhar had made me part of the bell-ringing team:

I was a lummox. I could open heavy doors. It seemed preferable to doing

nothing, so I floated ahead of Fraa Jad and applied myself to it. Every

time I hauled one open I expected to find myself staring down the

muzzle of an Urnudan space marine’s weapon, but there simply weren’t

that many people here in the observatory, and when we did finally

encounter someone in a corridor, she gasped and got out of our way. The

firefighter disguise was so simple, so obvious, I’d assumed it could

never work. But it had worked perfectly on the first person we’d met,

which probably meant it would work as well on the next hundred.


That corridor led to a spherical chamber

that apparently served as the foyer for the whole vertex. We had to

pass through it, anyway, to get out of this vertex and reach other

parts of the Daban Urnud.

As we discovered by trial and error, one of its exits communicated with

a very long tubular shaft. “The Tendon,” I announced, when I discovered

it. Fraa Jad nodded and launched himself down it.


The stupendous icosahedron and its imposing

vertex-citadels had accounted for almost all of my impressions of the

ship until now. Their size and their strangeness made it easy to forget

that essentially all of the Daban Urnud’s

complexity and population lay elsewhere: in the spinning Orbstack.

Until now, Fraa Jad and I had been like a couple of barbarians kicking

down doors in an abandoned guardhouse on the frontier of an empire.

Here, though, we had set out on the road that would take us to the

capital. There were a dozen Tendons. Six radiated from each of the

mighty bearings at the ends of the Orbstack. The Orbstack was like a

monkey using its arms and legs to brace itself in the middle of a

packing crate. Sometimes an arm had to push, sometimes it had to pull.

It flexed to absorb shocks. It was alive: a bundle of bones that gave

strength, muscles that reacted, vessels that transported materials,

nerves that communicated, and skin that protected all of the rest. The

Tendons had to perform all of the same functions, and so shared much of

that complexity. All that Fraa Jad and I could see of this Tendon was

the inner surface of a ten-foot-diameter shaft, but we knew from

talking to Jules that the Tendon as a whole was more than a hundred

feet wide, and crammed with structure and detail hidden from our

view—but richly hinted at by a bewilderingly various series of hatches,

valve-wheels, wiring panels, display screens, control panels, and signs

that shimmered by us as we flew along. Since it was impossible for

novices such as we to get aimed perfectly down the center, we strayed

from side to side as we went along. Whenever we came in slapping range

of a likely-looking handhold we’d give it a bit of abuse and earn some

speed, then take a lot of deep breaths while coasting to the next.

About halfway along, we encountered a group of four Geometers who, when

they saw us coming, grabbed handholds and crouched against the wall to

make way. As we flew by, they shouted what I assumed were questions,

which we had little choice but to ignore.




The hatch at the end opened onto a domed

chamber about a hundred feet across: by far the largest open volume we

had yet seen. I knew it had to be the forward bearing chamber. This was

confirmed by the fact that it had a navel in its floor, perhaps twenty

feet across, and everything that we could see on the other side of it

was rotating. We had reached the forward end of the Core. Surrounding

but invisible to us was the immense bearing that connected the spinning

Orbstack to the non-spinning complex of icosahedron and Tendons that

guarded it.


It was a mess. Half a dozen Tendon-shafts

were plumbed into this thing via huge portals shot into its domed

“ceiling.” Fraa Jad and I had just emerged from one of them. The

adjacent one was the focus of a huge amount of activity and

attention—it looked like one of those pits in great cities where stocks

are traded. This, of course, was the Tendon that led to the World

Burner complex, or what was left of it now that the Valers had got to

it. People were flying in to, or issuing from, it at a rate of about

two per second—it was like watching the entrance of a hornet’s nest in

high summer. Most of those going into it were carrying weapons or

tools. Some of those coming out were injured. The ingoing and outcoming

streams collided in the bearing chamber, and others tried to sort

things out, to tell people where to go, what to do, without much result

that I could discern, save that they ended up arguing with each other.

I was just as happy I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The

chaos made it almost too easy for me and Fraa Jad to move around

without attracting notice. In fact, my only problem was distinguishing

the Thousander from other men in firefighting

gear. But after a brief moment of anxiety when I feared I’d lost him, I

spied a likely-looking firefighter gazing in my direction and pointing

toward what I had begun to think of as the floor of the chamber: the

flat surface with the big hole in the middle of it.


The hole was getting smaller.


As Jules had explained, wherever the Daban Urnud’s

architects had needed to forge a connection between major parts of the

Core, they had used a ball valve, which was just a sphere with a fat

hole drilled through the middle, held captive in a spherical cavity bridging

the two spaces in question. The sphere couldn’t go anywhere, but it was

free to rotate. Depending on how the hole in its middle was aligned, it

could allow free passage or form an impregnable barrier. Such a valve

was set into the “floor” of this chamber. It was so huge that, at

first, I hadn’t seen it for what it was. But now that it had gone into

motion, its nature and its function were perfectly obvious. It moved

ponderously, but by the time Fraa Jad managed to draw my attention to

it, the thing was already about half closed, like an eyeball slowly

drifting into sleep.


Fraa Jad planted his feet against a

soldier’s backside and shoved off, driving the soldier toward the

ceiling and Jad down toward the ball valve. I was already near a sort

of ladder or catwalk, which I pushed off against to propel myself after

him. When we got to the ball valve, the aperture had narrowed to

perhaps three feet at its widest—plenty of room to squeeze through. But

we had used up all of our momentum just getting there, and our aim had

been miserable. After some feverish banging around we drifted through

the aperture and found ourselves hovering in the bore of the sphere,

watching the eye at its other end get smaller. There were no handholds

that we could use to move ourselves along. If we didn’t reach the other

end by the time it closed, we’d be imprisoned until the next time they

opened the valve.


I was too out of breath to do much anyway.

I aimed my fire extinguisher back the way we’d come and pulled the

trigger. The recoil forced it back against me; I took the force with my

arms and felt myself tumbling backwards. But I was moving. I slammed

into the socket-wall at the end, scrabbled for a handhold on the rim of

the hole, and pulled myself through. A second later Fraa Jad squirted

through on a snowy plume of fire retardant. I grabbed his ankle, which

slowed him down quite a bit. We found ourselves adrift and slowly

tumbling at the forward extremity of the two-mile-long,

hundred-foot-diameter shaft that ran the length of the Orbstack. We had

made it to the Core. And if any of those we’d left behind in the

bearing chamber had found our behavior suspicious, they had not been

adroit enough to follow us through the ball valve. Smaller

hatches—airlocks, made for one person at a time—were planted around

it so that people could pass between Core and bearing chamber even when

the ball valve was closed. I kept a nervous eye on those, half

expecting a space cop to fly out and accost us, but then reasoned that

it simply wasn’t going to happen. Jules’s words of a few minutes ago

came back to me. What the Valers had done—what we

had done—had been the worst military embarrassment these people had

suffered in a thousand years. The bomb was still on fire, the disaster

only getting started. The Valers might still be alive and fighting. So

they weren’t going to make a big deal about a couple of firefighters

acting weird.


Our panicky flight through the valve had

imbued us with momentum that carried us outward toward the wall of the

Core, which was rotating about as fast as the second hand on a clock.

This meant that when we drifted into the wall, it was moving past us at

a brisk walking pace. This part of the Core wall was covered with a

grid with convenient hand-sized holes between the bars, so we did what

came naturally and grabbed it. The effect was gentle but inexorable

acceleration that made our feet spin out to find purchase on the grid.

We were now rotating along with everything else. Here our body weight

was less than that of a newborn infant. But it was the most “gravity”

we had known for a long time, and took a little getting used to.


We clung to it for a couple of minutes,

gasping for air, trying not to black out. Then Fraa Jad, never one to

discuss his plans and intentions with his traveling companions, pushed

off and glided along the Core wall, headed for the first of the four

great Nexi that were spaced evenly along its length. Travel was easier

in micro-than in zero gravity, because we slowly “fell” to the Core

wall where we could always push off and get another dose of momentum.

Available was a sort of rapid transit system, consisting of a moving

conveyor-belt-cum-ladder that glided up one side of the Core and down

the other. Most of the people we could see—perhaps a hundred, heavily

skewed toward soldiers and firefighters—were using it. The rungs were

elastic, so that when you grabbed one it didn’t simply jerk your arm

from its socket. Tired as I was, I was tempted to have a go, but didn’t

want to make a spectacle of myself. Fraa

Jad showed no interest. We moved more slowly than those who were using

it, which worked to our advantage: some of them shouted questions at us

as they glided by, but none was inquisitive enough to jump off and

pursue the conversation.


In a few minutes we came to the station in

the Core where the forward-most Orbs—One, Five, Nine, and Thirteen—were

connected. Each of these stood at the head of a stack of four. So, Orbs

One through Four were for the Urnudans. Five through Eight were Troän,

Nine through Twelve were Laterran, and the rest Fthosian. By

convention, the lowest-number Orb in each stack—the ones that connected

here, at the heads of the stacks—were for the highest-ranking members

of their respective races. So this Nexus was the most convenient place

for the Geometers’ VIPs to meet. From where we were, it didn’t look

like much: just four cavernous holes in the wall, the termini of

perpendicular shafts leading out to the Orbs. According to Jules,

though, if we were to look at it from the outside, we would see that

this part of the Core was wrapped in a doughnut of offices,

meeting-chambers, and ring-corridors where the Command had its offices.

Several hatches in the Core wall hinted at this. But conflict between

Pedestal and Fulcrum had led to a division of the Command torus into

parts of unequal size. Hatches had been locked, partitions welded into

place, guards posted, cables severed.


None of which concerned us very much, since

the space we were in served only as a service corridor or elevator

shaft, rarely visited or thought about by the Command. Of much greater

interest to us were the four huge orifices in the Core wall. As we

drifted into the Nexus we were able to gaze into these and see tubular

shafts, each about twenty feet in diameter, each leading “down” about a

quarter of a mile. At the “bottom” of each was another huge ball valve,

currently closed. Beyond each such valve was an inhabited Orb a mile

wide.


It wasn’t difficult to identify the shaft

leading to Orb One. A large numeral was painted on the Core wall next

to it. The numeral was Urnudan, but any sentient being from any cosmos

could recognize it as the glyph that represented unity, 1, a single

copy of something. I, however, did not

have time to linger and contemplate its profound meaning, as Fraa Jad

had already located a ladder bracketed to the wall of the shaft, and

begun to descend it.


I followed him. Gravity slowly came on as

we went. It’s hard to describe how terrible this made me feel. The only

thing that kept me from passing out was fear I’d let go of the rungs

and fall down on top of Fraa Jad. During the worst spell, a voice

drilled into my awareness and made my skull buzz. Fraa Jad had begun to

sing some Thousander chant like the one that had kept me awake at the

Bazian monastery on the night we had been Evoked. It gave my

consciousness something to hold on to, like the steel ladder-rung that

I was gripping with my hand: my only hard tangible link to the giant

complex spinning around me. And in the same way that the rung kept me

from falling, the sound of Jad’s voice in my skull kept my mind from

floating away to wherever it had gone when I’d passed out in the

observatory and awoken on the wrong worldtrack.


I kept descending.


I was crouching atop a giant steel navel with my head between my knees, trying not to pass out.


Fraa Jad was punching numbers into a keypad mounted to the wall.


The sphere began to rotate beneath me.


“How did you know the code?” I asked.


“I selected a number at random,” he said.


I’d heard only four beeps from the keypad.

Only a four-digit number. Only ten thousand possible combinations. So

if there were ten thousand Jads in ten thousand branches of the

worldtrack…and if I were lucky enough to be with the right one…


Sunlight was shining through the bore of

the valve. I flattened myself on it and gazed down on open water,

vegetation, and buildings from an altitude of half a mile.


This time, the bore of the valve had

ladder-rungs on it. We climbed down them even as the valve was snapping

to its final position, and exited onto a ring-shaped catwalk hung from

the ceiling of the orb, surrounding the aperture—the oculus at the top

of a vast spherical dome, a little

sky above a little world. A stairway led up to it. Men with weapons

were running up the stairway, intent on saying hello to us. Fraa Jad,

seeing this, pulled off his respirator. No point in maintaining the

disguise now. I did likewise.


Two soldiers, peering down shotgun barrels,

reached the catwalk. One of them moved aggressively toward Fraa Jad. I

stepped forward, instinctively, holding up my hands. My attention was

drawn to a small silver object in Fraa Jad’s hand—like a jeejah, of all

things! The other soldier pivoted toward me and swung the butt of his

weapon around, catching me in the jaw. I toppled backward over the rail

and felt my old friend, zero gravity, taking me back into its embrace

as I went into free fall down the middle of the orb. Something went

extremely wrong in my guts. A moment later I heard the boom of a

shotgun. Had I been shot? Not likely, given my situation. My vision

whited out again, and my viscera caught on fire and melted.


They had shot Fraa Jad. The Everything

Killers had been turned on. I had become a nuclear weapon, a dark sun

spraying fatal radiance onto the dwellings and cultivated terraces of

the Urnudan community below.


We had accomplished our mission.


Harbinger: One of a

series of three calamities that engulfed most of Arbre during the last

decades of the Praxic Age and later came to be seen as precursors or

warnings of the Terrible Events. The precise nature of the Harbingers

is difficult to sort out because of destruction of records (many of

which were stored on syntactic devices that later ceased functioning)

but it is generally agreed that the First Harbinger was a worldwide

outbreak of violent revolutions, the Second was a world war, and the

Third was a genocide.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





“We have come,” said the man in the robes. “We have answered your call.” He was speaking Orth. Not as well as Jules Verne Durand,

but well enough to make me think he had been studying it for almost as

long. As long as we didn’t snow him with arcane tenses and intricate

sentence structures, he would be able to keep up.


I say “we,” but I didn’t expect to do much

talking. “Why am I here?” I’d asked Fraa Jad, as we had approached the

gate of the building that floated in the center of Orb One.


“To serve as amanuensis,” he had replied.


“These people can build self-sufficient intercosmic starships, but they don’t have recording devices?”


“An amanuensis is more than a recording

device. An amanuensis is a consciousness-bearing system, and so what it

observes in its cosmos has effects in others, in the manner we spoke of

at Avrachon’s Dowment.”


“You’re a

consciousness-bearing system. And you seem to be much better at playing

this polycosmic chess game than I am. So doesn’t that make me exiguous?”


“Much pruning has taken place in recent weeks. I am now absent in many versions of the cosmos where you are present.”


“You mean, you’re dead and I’m alive.”


“Absent and present express it better, but if you insist on using those terms, I won’t quibble.”


“Fraa Jad?”


“Yes, Fraa Erasmas?”


“What happens to us after we die?”


“You already know as much of it as I do.”


About then the conversation had been

interrupted as we had been ushered into the room featuring the man in

the robes. Knowing nothing of Urnudan culture put me at a disadvantage

in trying to puzzle out who this man was. The room offered no clues. It

was a sphere with a flat floor, like a smallish planetarium. I guessed

that it was situated near the geometric center of the Orb. The inner

surface was matte, and glowed softly with piped-in sunlight. The

circular floor had a chair in the middle, surrounded by a ring-shaped

bench. A few receptacles, charged with steaming fluids, were arranged

on the bench. Otherwise the room was featureless and undecorated. I

felt at home here.




“We have answered your call.”


What was Fraa Jad going to say to that? A few possible responses strayed into my head: Well, what took you so long? or What the hell are you talking about? But Fraa Jad answered in a shrewdly noncommittal way by saying, “Then I have come to bid you welcome.”


The man turned sideways and extended an arm

toward the circular bench. The robes unfurled and hung from his arm

like a banner. They were mostly white, but elaborately decorated. I

wanted to say that they were brocade or embroidery, but life among

bolt-wearing ascetics had left me with a deeply impoverished vocabulary

where the decorative arts were concerned, so I’ll just say that they

were fancy. “Please,” the man said, “we have tea. A purely symbolic

offering, since your bodies can do nothing with it, but…”


“We shall be pleased to drink your tea,” Fraa Jad said.


So we repaired to the circular bench and

took seats. I let Fraa Jad and our host sit relatively close, facing

each other, and arranged myself somewhat farther away. Our host picked

up his teacup and made what I guessed was some kind of polite

ceremonial gesture with it, which Fraa Jad and I tried to copy. Then we

all sipped. It was no worse and no better than what “Zh’vaern” used to

eat at Messal. I didn’t think I’d be taking any home with me.


The man drew some notes from a pocket in

his robe and consulted them from time to time as he delivered the

following. “I am called Gan Odru. In the history of the Daban Urnud, I am the forty-third person to bear the title of Gan; Odru is my given name. The closest translation of Gan

into Orth is ‘Admiral.’ This only approximates its meaning. In our

military system, one class of officers were responsible for the trees,

another for the forest.”


“Tactics and strategy respectively,” Fraa Jad said.


“Exactly. ‘Gan’ was the highest-ranking

strategic officer, responsible for direction of a whole fleet, and

reporting to civilian authorities, when there were any. Command of

specific vessels was delegated by the Gan to tactical officers with the

rank of Prag, or what you would call a captain. I apologize for perhaps

boring you with this, but it is a way to explain the manner in which

the Daban Urnud has behaved toward Arbre.”




“It is in no way boring,” said Fraa Jad,

and glanced over my way to verify that I was doing my job: which as far

as I could tell was merely to remain conscious.


“The first Gan of the Daban Urnud

was entrusted with the responsibility to establish a colony on another

star system,” Gan Odru continued. “As links to Urnud became more

tenuous with distance, his responsibilities grew, and he became the

supreme authority, answerable to no one. But he was a strange kind of

Gan in that his fleet consisted of but one ship and so his staff

consisted of but one Prag, and inasmuch as the Prag had no real

tactical decisions to make—as the war had been left far behind—the

relationship between Gan and Prag became unstable, and evolved. A

simple way to express it is that the Gan became somewhat like your

avout, and the Prag like your Sæcular Power. This state of affairs came

about over the course of but a single generation, but proved

extraordinarily stable, and has not changed since. The clothing that I

wear is but little changed from the formal dress uniforms worn by the

Gans of Urnud’s ocean-going fleets thousands of years ago. Though, of

course, they did not wear them aboard ship, since it is difficult to

swim in robes.”


Humor was the last thing I was looking for

here and so astonishment got the better of mirth and I chuckled too

little and too late.


“The second Gan was weakened by illness and

served for only six years. The third was a young protégé of the first;

he had a long career, and through the force of his personality and his

uncommon intelligence, gained back some of the power that his office

had ceded to that of the Prags. Late in his career, he became aware of

your summons, and made the decision to alter the trajectory of the Daban Urnud

so that it would—as he conceived it—fly into the past. For the signals

that he and the others heard, they conceived as ancestral voices

calling them home to make the Urnud that should have been but that,

through its leaders’ follies, it had failed to become.


“I suppose you have already some notion of the wanderings that followed, the Advents at Tro, Earth, and Fthos and their consequences. My purpose is not to rehearse all of that history but to give an account of our actions here.”


“It will be useful,” Fraa Jad said, “to know what occurred with the Warden of Heaven.”


“For a long time,” said Gan Odru, shifting

into a lower gear, as he was now making it up as he went along instead

of reading from notes, “the relationship between the Gans and the Prags

has been poisoned. The Prags have said that the third Gan was simply

wrong. That all the wanderings of the Daban Urnud

have been without meaning—simply the endless consequence of an ancient

mistake. Believing that, they saw their only purpose as

self-preservation. Those who think this way want only to settle down

somewhere and go on living. And, with each Advent, some do. We have

left Urnudans behind on Tro, Troäns behind on Earth, and so on. They

find ways to live even though those cosmi are not their own. So, of the

cynical ones, the ones who believe it is all a meaningless error, a

large fraction are bled off at each Advent. At the same time we are

joined by ones from the new cosmos who believe in the quest. So the

ship is rebuilt and departs for the next cosmos. At first the Gans have

power and the Prags do their bidding. But the journey is long, the

quest is forgotten as generations go by, the Prags gain, the Gans lose,

power. The Pedestal and the Fulcrum have long been our names for these

two tendencies. And so here you see me, virtually alone in this place

of ceremony, doing what my predecessors did, but with little respect

and no power.


“Thus came we to Arbre. Prag Eshwar, my

counterpart, and her followers saw your planet as just another

civilization to be raided for its resources, so that the ship could be

rebuilt and the journey extended. Yet Eshwar is an intelligent woman

who has read our histories and well knows that, in an Advent, the

Pedestal and the Prag tend to lose power to the Fulcrum and the Gan.

Already she was choosing tactics to forestall this.


“When the Warden of Heaven came to us, it

was obvious that he was a fool, a charlatan. We already knew as much,

of course, from our surveillance of Arbre’s popular culture. And the

Prag had already devised a plan, to draw comparisons between me and

this Warden of Heaven. To make his foolishness, his falseness, rub off on me.


“So the Warden of Heaven was brought here

in his spacesuit. He kept wanting to take it off. We advised against

it. When he came in to this room, he saw it as a kind of holy place,

and insisted that the risk of removing his suit was acceptable. That

his god would watch over him and keep him safe. So, off came the suit.

He became short of breath. Our physicians tried to reassemble the suit

around him but this did not help matters, for he had already suffered

the bursting of a major blood vessel. The physicians next tried to put

him in a cold hyperbaric chamber, a therapy in which they are well

practiced. He was stripped naked and readied for the procedure, but it

was too late—he died. A debate followed as to what should be done with

the body. While some of us debated, overzealous researchers took

samples of his blood and tissues, and commenced an autopsy. So the body

had already been desecrated, if you will. Prag Eshwar made the decision

that any effort to apologize would be taken as a sign of weakness and

that any sharing of information would only benefit Arbre. And too, for

internal political reasons, she was inclined to show contempt, or at

least disregard, for the body—because she had made it into a symbol for

me. Hence the style in which the Warden of Heaven was returned.”


“But it backfired,” I said, “didn’t it?”


“Yes. Those of the Fulcrum were embarrassed

and ashamed, and conceived a plan to make an exchange of blood for

blood. As we had taken samples of blood from the Warden of Heaven’s

body, they would convey samples of our blood to the surface of Arbre.

We had detected signals from the planet, which, as we later learned,

had been sent by Fraa Orolo. These took the form of an analemma. Jules

Verne Durand had become the foremost authority on Orth and on the

avout. He was covertly sympathetic to the Fulcrum. He interpreted

Orolo’s signal as pointing to Ecba, and suggested that it would have

profound symbolic value to deliver the samples there. He even

volunteered to go down on the probe. But at about the same time he was

ordered to go on the raid to the concent of the Matarrhites, and so was

no longer available. Lise went in his stead—without

his knowledge, of course. For she had learned much of the avout, and

even a few words of Orth, from Jules. It went wrong and she was shot

while boarding the probe, as you know.”


We let a few moments pass untroubled by words.


“Since then things have moved fast. I would say that Prag Eshwar has done what Prags do, which is—”


“React tactically, with no thought of strategy,” Jad said.


“Yes. It led us to this pass. Thirty-one have been slain by your fraas and suurs—from the Ringing Vale, I presume?”


Fraa Jad made no response, but Gan Odru

looked my way, and I nodded. He continued, “Eighty-seven more are held

hostage—your colleagues herded them into a chamber and welded the doors

shut.”


“A misinterpretation,” Fraa Jad said. “Such

people do not take hostages, so the eighty-seven were put in that room

to keep them safely out of the way.”


“Prag Eshwar interprets it, rightly or

wrongly, as hostage-taking, and prepares a response with one hand. With

her other hand she has reached out to me and asked me to discuss

matters with you. She is shaken. I don’t really know why. The large

bomb that was destroyed has always been a weapon of last resort; no one

would seriously consider using it.”


“Pardon me, Gan Odru, but the Pedestal was getting ready to launch it,” I blurted.


“As a threat, yes—to

hang above your planet and exert pressure. But that is its only real

use. I don’t understand why its loss has shaken Prag Eshwar so deeply.”


“It didn’t,” Fraa Jad said. “Prag Eshwar sensed terrible danger.”


“How would you know this?” Gan Odru asked politely.


Fraa Jad ignored the question. “She might

explain it by claiming that she had a nightmare, or that sudden

inspiration struck her in the bath, or that she has a gut feeling that

tells her she ought to steer a safer course.”


“And is this something that you brought

about!?” Gan Odru said, more as exclamation than as question. He was

getting very little satisfaction from Fraa Jad, and so turned to look

at me. I can’t guess what he saw on

my face. Some mix of bemusement and shock. For I had just seen a

glimpse of an alternate Narrative in which we had visited appalling

destruction upon one of the Orbs.


“That we might send a signal to Prag

Eshwar—is that such a difficult thing to believe for you, Gan Odru, the

Heritor of a tradition, a thousand years old, founded on the belief

that my predecessors summoned you hither?”


“I suppose not. But it is so easy, after all this time, to harbor doubts. To think of it as a religion whose god has died.”


“It is good to doubt it,” Fraa Jad said.

“After all, the Warden of Heaven’s mistake was failure to doubt. But

one must choose the target of one’s doubt with care. Your third Gan

detected a flow of information from another cosmos, and saw it as

cryptic messages from his ancestors. Your Prags, ever since, have

doubted both halves of the story. You disbelieve only one half: that

the signal came from your ancestors. But you may still believe that the signal exists

while discarding the third Gan’s incorrect notions as to its source.

Believe, then, that information—the Hylaean Flow—passes between cosmi.”


“But if I may ask—have you learned the power to modulate that signal, to send messages thus?”


I was all ears. But Fraa Jad said nothing.

Gan Odru waited for a few moments, then said, “I suppose we’ve already

established that, haven’t we? You apparently got inside Prag Eshwar’s

head somehow.”


“What signal did the third Gan receive nine centuries ago?” I asked.


“A prophecy of terrible devastation. Robed priests massacred, churches torn down, books burning.”


“What gave him the idea it was from the past?”


“The churches were enormous. The books,

written in unfamiliar script. On some of their burning leaves were

geometrical proofs unknown to us—but later verified by our theors. On

Urnud we had legends of a lost, mythic Golden Age. He assumed that he

was being given a window into it.”


“But what he was really seeing was the Third Sack,” I said.




“Yes, so it seems,” said Gan Odru. “And my question is: did you send us the visions, or did it just happen?”


We have come…we have answered your call. Was he the last priest of a false religion? Was he no different from the Warden of Heaven?


“The answer is not known to me,” said Fraa Jad. He turned to look at me. “You shall have to search for it yourself.”


“What about you?” I asked him.


“I am finished here,” Fraa Jad said.













Part 12


REQUIEM



















Something was pressing hard against my back—accelerating me forward. That couldn’t be good.


No, it was just gravity, or some reasonable

facsimile, pulling me down against some flat firm thing. I was

monstrously cold. I started to shiver.


“Pulse and respiration are looking more

normal,” said a voice in Orth. “Blood oxygenation coming up.” Jules was

translating this into some other language. “Core temp is getting into a

range compatible with consciousness.”


That would, perhaps, be my

consciousness they were talking about. I opened my eyes. The glare

faded. I was in a small but nice enough room. Jules Verne Durand was

seated on the edge of my bed, looking clean and sleek. This more than

anything else confirmed the vague impression that a lot of time had

passed. I was hooked up to a bunch of stuff. A tube was cinched under

my nose, blowing something cold, dry, and sweet into my nostrils. A

physician—from Arbre!—was glancing back and forth between me and a

jeejah. A woman in a white coat—a Laterran—was looking on, running a

big piece of equipment that was circulating warm water to—well—you

wouldn’t believe me if I told you, and then you’d wish I’d kept such

details to myself.


“You have questions, my friend,” Jules said, “but perhaps you should wait until—”


“He’s fine,” said the Arbran. He was

dressed in a bolt and chord. He had a tube strapped across his upper

lip. He shifted his attention to me. “You’re fine—as far as I can tell.

How do you feel?”


“Unbelievably cold.”


“That’ll change. Do you know your name?”




“Fraa Erasmas of Edhar.”


“Do you know where you are?”


“I would guess on one of the orbs on the Daban Urnud. But there are some things I don’t understand.”


“I am Fraa Sildanic of Rambalf,” said the

physician, “and I need to tend to your comrades. I need Jules to come

with me as interpreter, and Dr. Guo here to supervise the core warming

procedure. Speaking of which, we’ll be needing that.”


Dr. Guo now punctuated this statement in

the most dramatic way you can possibly imagine by reaching up under my

blankets from the foot of the bed and disconnecting me from the core

warmer. For the first time in a long time, I uttered a religious oath.


“Sorry,” said Fraa Sildanic.


“I’ll live. So—”


“So we are going to have to leave your

questions unanswered,” Fraa Sildanic continued, “but one is waiting

outside who will, I think, be happy to lay it all out for you.”


They left. Through the opening door I

glimpsed a pleasant view over open water, with green growing things all

over the place, soon blocked by a small figure coming in at speed. A

moment later, Ala was lying full-length on top of me, sobbing.


She sobbed and I shivered. The opening

half-hour was all about raising my core temp and getting her calmed

down. We made a great team that way; Ala was just what the doctor

ordered as a way to raise my temperature, and using me as a mattress

seemed to be good for what ailed her. During the bone-breaking

shivering that hit its peak about fifteen minutes in, she clung to me

as if I were an amusement park ride, and kept me from vibrating right

off the bed. This kind of thing gave way, in due course, to other

fascinating biological phenomena, which I can’t set down here without

turning this into a different kind of document.


“Okay,” she finally said, “I’ll report to

Fraa Sildanic that you have excellent blood flow to all of your

extremities.” It was the first complete sentence that had come out of

her mouth. We’d been together for an hour and a half.


I laughed. “I was thinking Heaven? But Heaven wouldn’t have these.” I tugged gently at the hissing tube under her nose. She snorted, and batted my hand away. “Oxygen from Arbre?” I asked.


“Obviously.”


“How did it—and you—get here?”


She sighed, seeing that I was determined to

ask tedious questions. She pushed herself up, straddled me. I raised my

knees and she leaned back against them. Snatched a pillow, propped

herself up, got comfortable, fiddled with her oxygen tube. She looked

at me, and once again the I’m in Heaven hypothesis floated to the top. But it couldn’t be. You had to deserve Heaven.


“After you went up,” she said, “the Pedestal rodded all of our space launch infrastructure.”


“I’m aware of it.”


“Oh yes. I forgot. You had a vantage point.

So, we got the message that they were extremely cross with us over the

two-hundred-missile launch. But they had fallen for the decoy—the

inflatable thing you launched. They sent us detailed phototypes of the

wreckage. Were they ever triumphant!”


“Maybe they were only pretending to fall for it.”


“We considered that. But, remember—a few days later, you guys were able to just walk right in.”


“Well, it was a little more difficult than you make it sound!” I was trying to laugh, but it was hard, with her weight on my tummy.


“I get that,” she said immediately, “but what I’m trying to say is—”


“The Pedestal hadn’t taken any extraordinary precautions,” I agreed, “they were totally surprised.”


“Yes. So, one moment, they are feeling

triumphant. The next, out of nowhere, all of a sudden, their World

Burner has been wrecked. A bunch of their people are dead. One of the

twelve Vertices has been seized by Arbran commandos.”


“Wow! The Valers did all that?”


“They sneaked onto the World Burner and

planted three of the four shaped charges they had with them. Then they

headed for a certain window—”




“Pardon me, a window?”


“That vertex is a sort of command post and

maintenance depot for all things World Burner. There is a conference

room with windows that look out over the bomb. Osa and company had a

plan, apparently, to rendezvous there. Along the way, they were

noticed, and came under assault by the maintenance workers who were out

there in space suits. But the workers didn’t have weapons per se.”


“Neither did the Valers,” I said.


She gave me a sort of pitying look. Maybe with a trace of affection. “Okay,” I said, “Valers don’t need weapons.”


“The Geometers’ space suits are soft. Ours are hard. Just imagine.”


“Okay,” I said, “I’d almost rather not. But I can see how it would come out.”


“Suur Vay died. She took on five guys, one

of whom happened to be carrying a plasma cutter. Uh, it’s a very

unpleasant story. She and the five all ended up dead. But, largely

because of her intervention, the other three Valers made it to that

window.”


She paused for a moment, letting me absorb

that. I had really hated Suur Vay when she had sewn me up after Mahsht,

but when I remembered that picnic-table surgery now, it made me want to

cry.


Once we’d given Suur Vay a decent moment of

silence, Ala went on: “So, imagine this from the point of view of the

big bosses inside the conference room. They see a large number of their

people converted to floating corpses before their eyes. There’s nothing

they can do about it. Fraa Osa trudges right up to the window and slaps

on a shaped charge, right up against the glass. They’re not certain

what it is. He makes a gesture. The World Burner explodes in three

places: the primary detonator, the inertial guidance system, and the

propellant tanks. There is a huge secondary detonation as the tanks

rupture.”


“That we noticed.”


“Fraa Gratho is killed by a piece of flying debris.”


“Damn it!” My eyes were stinging. “He stood between me and a bullet…”




“I know,” she said softly.


After another silence, she went on, “So,

the bosses now understand the nature of the object that’s been slapped

on their window. They get the message and open an airlock. Esma comes

inside. Osa stays where he is—he’s the gun to their heads. Esma stays

in her suit. She herds all the Geometers she can find into the

conference room, locks the door, welds it shut with Saunt Loy’s Powder.

Now, Osa joins her, bringing the shaped charge with him. They lock the

doors into the vertex, sealing it off from the rest of the Daban Urnud,

and weld those too. They detonate the fourth charge in such a way that

most of the vertex vents its atmosphere to space. Now it can’t be

approached except by people in space suits. They hole up in one of the

few rooms that still has an atmosphere. Their suits are out of air now,

so they climb out of them, and suffer the usual symptoms.”


“What is up with that, by the way?”


She shrugged. “Hemoglobin is a classy

molecule. Finely tuned to do what it does—take oxygen from the lungs

and get it to every cell in the body. If you give it oxygen that is

only a little bit different from what it’s used to, well, it still

works—just not as well. It’s like being at high altitude. You get short

of breath, woozy, can’t think straight.”


“Hallucinations?”


“Maybe. Why? Did you hallucinate?”


“Never mind…but wait a second, Jules can get along just fine on Arbre air.”


“You acclimatize. Your body responds by

generating more red blood cells. After a week or two, you can handle

it. So, as an example, some of the people who live on the Daban Urnud

rarely leave their home orb. They have trouble going into common areas

of the ship, where the air is a mixture. Others are used to it.”


“Like the Fthosian cosmographer who let us in the airlock at the observatory.”


“Exactly. When she saw you guys gasping for

breath and starting to lose consciousness, she recognized what was

going on. Sounded an alarm.”




“She did?” I said.


She gave me that pitying-but-affectionate look again. “What, you were hoping you’d managed to sneak aboard?”


“I, er, thought we had done exactly that!”


She grabbed my hand and kissed it. “I think your ego can be satisfied by what you did accomplish, which people are going to be celebrating for a long time.”


“Okay,” I said, feeling it was time to change the subject away from my ego. “She sounded an alarm.”


“Yes. Of course, there were lots of other

alarms going off at the same time because of the Valers’ mayhem,” Ala

said, “but some medics came to the observatory and found you

unconscious, but alive. Fortunately for you, the physicians around here

are used to dealing with such problems. They put you on oxygen, which

seemed to help. But they had no way to be sure; they’d never treated

Arbrans, they were worried you were going to suffer brain damage.

Better safe than sorry. So they put you on ice in a hyperbaric chamber.”


“On ice?”


“Yeah. Literally. Dropped your body

temperature to limit brain damage while oxygenating your blood as best

they could with Laterran air. You’ve been unconscious for a week.”


“What about Osa and Esma, holed up in that vertex?”


She let a long moment pass before saying,

“Well, Raz, they died. The Urnudans figured out where they were. Blew a

hole in the wall. All the air escaped into space.”


I lay there for a minute.


“Well,” I finally said, “I guess they went out like real Valers.”


“Yes.”


I laughed in a not-funny way. “And—like a true non-Valer—I lived.”


“And I’m glad you did.” And here she

started crying again. It wasn’t sadness over the dead Valers. Nor joy

that the rest of us had lived. It was shame and hurt that she had sent

us into a situation where we easily could have died; that the responsibilities placed on her shoulders, and the logic of the situation, had left her no alternative to the Terrible Decision. For the rest of her life—of our

life, I hoped—she’d be waking up sweaty in the middle of the night over

this. But it was a hurt she’d have to keep to herself, since most

people she might share it with would not extend her much sympathy. “You sent your friends to do what!? While you sat on the ground, safe!?” So it was going to be a private thing between us, I knew, forever. I squirmed free and held her for a bit.


Once it felt right to go back to the story,

I said, “How long did Osa and Esma remain locked up in that room

before—before it happened?”


“Two days.”


“Two days!?”


“The Pedestal assumed that the place was

booby-trapped, and/ or that there might be other Valers lurking in it.

But they had to do something, since the hostages were running out of

air. It was either that, or watch their people die on the speely.”


“So they were scared to death.”


“Yes,” Ala said, “I think so. Maybe shocked

is a better word. Because they had thought for a while that they had us

locked down in Tredegarh, which they had infiltrated. Then you and your

friends unmasked Jules Verne Durand, so they lost their eyes and ears

on the ground. At the same moment, the Convox—and all of the other big

concents—dispersed into the Antiswarm.”


“That was a great idea! Who dreamed that up?”


She blushed, and fought back a smile, but

wasn’t happy with my turning the attention to her, so went on: “They

are really afraid of the Thousanders—the Incanters—and must have

noticed that all of the Millenarian maths had been emptied out. Where

did all of those Thousanders go? What are they cooking up? Then, the

two-hundred-missile launch. Very upsetting. A lot of data to process.

Zillions of bogeys to track. They think they see a ship—it blows

up—they think they’ve dodged a bullet. But a few days after that, out

of nowhere, comes this horrifying and devastating attack on their

biggest strategic asset. For two days afterwards, it is all that they

can think of—they are worried sick about the hostages trapped in that

vertex. Not only that, but some other dudes in black suits manage to gain entry to the ship, and are only foiled because they can’t breathe the air—”


“They mistook us for another squad of Valers?”


“What would you think, in their place? And

the biggest concern of all in their minds, I believe, was that they

couldn’t know how many others were out there. For all they knew, there

were a hundred more of you on the way, with more weapons. So, the

result of it all was that—”


“They decided to negotiate.”


“Yes. To initiate four-way talks among the Pedestal, the Fulcrum, and the Magisteria.”


“Pardon me, what was that last one?”


“The Magisteria.”


“Meaning—?”


“This happened after you left Arbre. One

magisterium is the Sæcular Power. The other is the Mathic world—now the

Antiswarm. The two of them together are—well—”


“Running the world?”


“You could say that.” She shrugged. “Until we come up with a better system, anyway.”


“And would you, Ala, be one of those people who is currently running the world?”


“I’m here, aren’t I?” She didn’t appreciate my humor.


“As part of the delegation?”


“A wall-crawler. An aide. And the only reason I made the cut was that the military likes me, they think I’m cool.”


I was about to point out a much better

explanation, which was that she had been responsible for sending Cell

317 on a successful mission, but she read it on my face and glanced

away. She didn’t want to hear it mentioned. “There are four dozen of

us,” she said hurriedly. “We brought doctors. Oxygen.”


“Food?”


“Of course.”


“How did you get here?”


“Geometers came down and picked us up. Once we reached the Daban Urnud, we came straight here, of course.”




“Hmm,” I reflected, “shouldn’t have brought up the subject of food.”


“Are you hungry?” she asked, as if it were astonishing that I would be.


“Obviously.”


“Why didn’t you say so—we brought five hampers of absolutely the best food for you guys!”


“Why five?”


“One for each of you. Not counting Jules, of course—he’s been stuffing his face since he got here.”


“Um. Just to prove I don’t have brain damage, would you name the five, please?”


“You, Lio, Jesry, Arsibalt, and Sammann.”


“And—what of Jad?”


She was so aghast that my social instincts

got the better of my brain, and I backed down. “Sorry, Ala, I’ve been

through a lot of weird stuff, my memory is a little blurry.”


“No, I’m sorry,” she said, “maybe it is a result of the trauma.” She looked a little quivery, scrunched her face, mastered it.


“Why? What trauma?”


“Of seeing him float away. Knowing what happened to him.”


“When did I see him float away?”


“Well, he never regained consciousness

after the two-hundred-missile launch,” Ala said softly. “You saw him

collide with a payload. He got stuck to it. You made the decision to go

after him—to try to help. But it was tricky. The grapnel missed. You

were running out of time. Arsibalt was coming to help. But then you

nearly got sideswiped by the nuke. Jad drifted away. Re-entered the

atmosphere. And burned up over Arbre.”


“Oh yeah,” I said, “how could I have

forgotten?” I said it sarcastically, of course. But I was carefully

watching Ala’s face as I did. The circumstances of my recent life were

such that I was more exquisitely attuned to Ala’s facial expressions

than to anything else in the Five Known Cosmi. She believed—better, she

knew—that what she’d just reminded me of was true.


There were, I was sure, records down on Arbre to prove it.




Rhetor: A legendary

figure, associated in folklore with Procian orders, said to have the

power of altering the past by manipulating memories and other physical

records.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000





All I could think of was getting to the

food. First, though, I had to stop being naked. Ala slipped out, as

though it were perfectly all right to see me nude, but watching me

dress would be indecent. The Arbran delegation had brought us bolts and

chords and spheres. The four Geometer races were more or less

fascinated by the avout, and might take it the wrong way if we

attempted to hide what we were.


Once I got properly wrapped, the hospital

staff helped me don a backpack carrying a tank of Arbre oxygen that was

connected to the tube beneath my nose. Then I followed a series of

pictographic signs to a terrace on the roof of the hospital, where I

found Lio and Jesry elbow-deep in their hampers. Fraa Sildanic was

there. With a resigned and hopeless air, he cautioned me not to eat too

fast lest I get sick. I ignored him as heartily as my fraas were doing.

After a few minutes, I actually managed to lift my gaze from my bowl,

and look out at the artificial world around me.


The four orbs of a given stack were so

close that they almost kissed, and were linked by portals, a little bit

like cars on a passenger train. When the Daban Urnud was maneuvering or accelerating, the portals had to be closed and dogged shut, but they were open today.


Laterrans lived in Orbs Nine through

Twelve. The hospital was in Ten, not far from the portal that joined it

to Eleven. This rooftop terrace, like all other outdoor surfaces, was

intensively cultivated. A bit of space had been cleared for tables and

benches. The tops of these, though, were slabs of glass, and vegetables

grew in trays underneath. Bowers arched over our heads, supporting

vines laden with clusters of green fruit. As long as one maintained

focus on what was near to hand, it

looked like a garden on Arbre. But the long view was different. The

hospital consisted of half a dozen houseboats lashed together. Each had

three stories below the water-line and three above. Flexible gangways

linked them to one another and to neighboring houseboats, which spread

across the water to form a circular mat that seemed to cover every

square foot of the water’s surface. But because “gravity” here was a

fiction created by spin, the surface—what our inner ears, or a plumb

bob, would identify as level—was curved. So the circular mat of boats

was dished into a trough. Our inner ears told us that we were at its

lowest point. If we gazed across it to the other side, rather less than

a mile away, our eyes gave us the alarming news that the water was

above us. But if we were to make the journey blindfolded, it would feel

like walking over level ground—we’d have no sense of climbing uphill.


Of the orb’s inner surface, about half was

under water. The remainder constituted the “sky.” This was blue, and

had a sun in it. The blue was painted on, but it was possible to forget

this unless you looked at the portals to Orbs Eleven and Nine. These

hung in the firmament like very strange astronomical bodies, and were

linked by cable-chair systems to houseboats below. The sun was a bundle

of optical fibers bringing processed and filtered light that had been

harvested by parabolic horns on the exterior of the icosahedron. The

fibers were fixed in place on the ceiling of the orb, but by routing

the light to different fibers at different times of day, they created

the illusion that the sun was moving across the sky. At night it got

dark, but, as Jules had explained, fiber-pipes were hard-routed to

indoor growing facilities in the cellars of many houseboats so that

plants could grow around the clock. The system was so productive that

these Geometers were capable of sustaining a population density like

that of a moderately crowded city solely on what was produced in the

city itself.


It was good, in a way, that the view from

the hospital roof afforded so many remarkable things to look at and

talk about, because otherwise the conversation would have been

paralyzingly awkward. Lio’s and Jesry’s faces were stiff. Oh, they had

cracked huge smiles when they’d seen

me. And I could not have been happier to see them. We’d shared those

feelings immediately and without words. But then their faces had closed

up like fists, as much as forbidding me to say anything out loud.


We were eating too hard to talk much

anyway. Fraa Sildanic and another Arbran medic kept coming and going.

And, though I didn’t wish to think ill of our Laterran hosts, I had no

way of knowing whether this terrace might be wired with listening

devices. Half of the Laterrans were pro-Pedestal. Even the pro-Fulcrum

ones, though, might not take kindly to the role we had played in

assaulting the Daban Urnud. Some might have had

friends or relatives who had been slain by the Valers. To divulge in

casual conversation that a Thousander had breached the hull and then

vanished would be the worst thing that could happen right now. Once I

had sated my hunger a little bit, I began to get physically anxious

about it.


When Arsibalt showed up, and made for his

hamper like a piece of earth-moving equipment, I waited until his mouth

was crammed before raising my glass and saying, “To Fraa Jad. Even as

we think of the four Valers who died, let’s not forget the one who

sacrificed his life in the first ten minutes of the mission, before he

even made it out of Arbre’s atmosphere.”


“To the late Fraa Jad,” Jesry echoed, so quickly and forcefully that I knew he must be thinking along similar lines.


“I’ll never be able to erase the memory of

his fiery plunge into the atmosphere,” Lio added with a patently fake

sincerity that almost made me blow the libation out of my nose. I was

keeping an eye on Arsibalt, who had stopped chewing, and was staring at

us, eyes a-bulge, trying to make out if this was some kind of extremely

dark and elaborate humor. I caught his eye and glanced up: an old

signal from Edhar, where we would, by a flick of the eyes at the Warden

Regulant’s windows, say shut up and play along. He

nodded, letting me know he had taken my meaning, but the look on his

face made his shock and confusion plain. I shrugged as a way of letting

him know he was in good company.


Sammann showed up, dressed in the traditional Ita costume, and,

showing remarkable self-control, went around and shook our hands and

gave each of us a squeeze or pat on the shoulder before tearing open

his hamper, full of infinitely better-and spicier-smelling foods than

anything we had. We let him eat. He went about this in the same quiet,

contemplative style I had once grown used to, watching him take his

lunches on the top of the Pinnacle at Edhar. His face showed no

curiosity as to why there were five people and five hampers, instead of

some other number. In fact, he was altogether reserved and impassive,

which, combined with his formal Ita garb, stirred up all sorts of old

habits and social conventions that had long since settled to the bottom

of my consciousness.


“Earlier we were raising a toast to the

memory of the late Fraa Jad and the others who died,” I told him, when

he paused in his eating and reached for his glass. He gave a curt nod,

raised the glass, and said, “Very well. To our departed comrades.” Yes, I know too.


“Am I the only one who suffers from funny neurological sequelae?” Arsibalt asked, still a bit rattled.


“You mean, brain damage?” Jesry asked in a helpful tone.


“That would depend on whether it is as permanent as what ails you,” Arsibalt fired back.


“Some of my memories are a little sketchy,” Lio offered.


Sammann cleared his throat and glared at him.


“But the longer I’m awake, the more coherent I seem to get,” Lio added. Sammann returned his focus to the food.


Jules Verne Durand stopped by, took in the

scene, and beamed. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “When I saw the five of you, out

of your spacesuits, gasping for air, like beached fish, in the

observatory, I feared I would never be able to look on a scene such as

this one.”


We all raised glasses his way, and beckoned for him to join us.


“What of the others—I mean, what was done

with the four corpses?” Jesry asked. Five sets of Arbran eyes went to

the Laterran’s face. But if Jules noted any discrepancy in the figures,

he didn’t show it. “This became a topic of negotiation,” Jules said.

“The bodies of the four Valers have been frozen. As you can guess,

there are those of the Pedestal who wish to dissect them as biological

specimens.” A cloud passed over his face, and he paused for a few moments.

We all knew he was remembering his wife Lise, whose body had been

subjected to the biological-specimen treatment at the Convox. After

getting his poise back, he went on: “The diplomats of Arbre have said

in the strongest terms that this would be unacceptable—that the remains

are to be treated as sacred and handed over, undisturbed, to this

delegation of which you are now a part. This will occur at the opening

ceremonies, which are to take place in Orb Four in about two hours.” The

Pedestal doesn’t know yet about the Everything Killers lodged in your

bodies, and I haven’t spilled the beans—but it’s really making me

nervous.


Had even more Everything Killers been brought up by the delegation? Were hundreds, thousands of them now salted around the Daban Urnud?

Were there some in the delegation who had the power to trigger them? I

“remembered”—if that was the right word for something that had not

happened in this cosmos—the silver box in Fraa Jad’s hand. The

detonator. Who of the four dozen were carrying them? More to the point,

who would press the trigger? To a certain kind of mind, this would make

for an acceptable trade. At the cost of four dozen Arbran lives, the Daban Urnud

would be sterilized, or at least crippled to the point where its

survivors would have no choice but to surrender unconditionally. Much

cheaper than fighting a war with them.


For more than one reason, I was no longer hungry.


Everyone else was thinking similar

thoughts, and so conversation was not exactly sparkling. In fact, it

was nonexistent. The silence became conspicuous. I wondered what a

blind visitor would think of the place, for the sonic environment was

distinctly odd. The air didn’t move much in these orbs. Each was warmed

and cooled on a different diurnal schedule so that the expanding and

contracting air would slosh back and forth through the portals and stir

faint breezes down below. But it never blew hard enough to raise waves,

or even to blow a leaf from a table. Sound carried in that still air,

and it ricocheted strangely from the ceiling of the orb. We heard

someone rehearsing a tricky passage on a bowed instrument, children

arguing, a group of women laughing, an air-powered tool cycling. The

air felt dense, the place closed-in, deadening, stifling. Or perhaps that was just the food catching up with me.


“Orb Four is Urnudan,” Lio finally said, waking us all up.


“Yes,” Jules said heavily, “and all of you will be there.” Nothing personal, but I want you walking bombs out of my orb as soon as possible.


“It is the highest-numbered of the Urnudan

orbs,” Arsibalt observed, “meaning—if I understand the convention—the

farthest aft, the most residential, the, er…”


“Lowest in the hierarchy, yes,” said Jules. “The oldest, the most important stuff, the highest in the Command, are in Orb One.” That’s the one you’d want to nuke.


“Will we be visiting Orb One?” Lio asked. Are we going to have an opportunity to nuke it?


“I would be astonished,” said Jules, “the people there are very strange and hardly ever come out.”


We all looked at each other.


“Yes,” said Jules, “they are a little like your Thousanders.”


“Fitting,” said Arsibalt, “since their journey has lasted for a thousand years.”


“It is doubly unfortunate that Fraa Jad

perished during the launch, then,” I said, “since Orb One sounds like a

place he would make a beeline for—that is, in a Narrative where he had

made it here with someone like me to open doors for him.”


“What do you imagine he’d do once he reached it?” asked Jesry, keenly interested.


“Depends on what kind of reception we got

when we came in the door,” I pointed out. “If things went badly wrong,

we would not survive, and our consciousnesses would no longer track

that Narrative.”


Sammann chopped this off by clearing his throat again.


“How long will it take for us to get from

here to Orb Four?” Jesry asked. I think he was the only one capable of

speech; Lio and Arsibalt were gobsmacked.


“We should leave as soon as convenient,” Jules replied. “An advance party is already there.” Everything Killers are already in Orb Four, nothing can be done about it.




We began wrapping up our food, repacking our hampers. “How many Orth interpreters are there?” Arsibalt asked. Do we get to hang out with you?


“With my level of skill, there is only I.” I’m about to become extremely busy, I won’t be able to talk to you after this.


“What kind of people make up the Arbran delegation?” Lio asked. Who’s got his finger on the Everything Killers’ trigger?


“Quite a funny mix, if you ask me. Leaders

of Arks. Entertainers. Captains of commerce. Philanthropists such as

Magnath Foral. Avout. Ita. Citizens—including a couple well known to

you.” This was directed at me.


“You’re kidding,” I said, momentarily forgetting about all of the grim subtext. “Cord and Yul?”


He nodded. “Because of their role during

the Visitation of Orithena—watched by so many on the speely that you,

Sammann, put on the Reticulum—it was seen as fitting that they come

here, as representatives of the people.” The politicians are pimping them to the mass media.


“Understood,” said Lio. “But among all of those pop singers and witch doctors, there must be at least some actual representatives of the Sæcular Power?”


“Four of the military, who strike me as honorable.” Not the ones who will trigger the EKs “Ten of the government—including our old friend Madame Secretary.”


“Those Forals really get around,” I

couldn’t help saying. Sammann raised an eyebrow at me. Jules went on to

rattle off a list of the names and titles of the Sæcular Power

contingent, going out of his way to identify some of them as mere

aides. “…and finally our old friend Emman Beldo, to whom, I sense,

there is more than meets the eye.” He’s the one.


Whatever praxis would be used to trigger

the EKs, it would be advanced, possibly nothing more than a prototype.

It would have to be disguised as something innocuous. They would need

someone like Emman to operate it. And he would take his orders from,

presumably, the highest-ranking Panjandrum in the delegation. Not

Ignetha Foral. She was here on Lineage business, of that I had no doubt.

Whatever her nominal title and brief might be in the Sæcular Power, she

and her cousin—or whatever he was—Magnath had not come all this way to

follow the whims of whatever Panjandrum happened to have most lately

gained the upper hand in the infinite clown-fight that was Sæcular

politics.


Did the Forals know about Fraa Jad? Were they working with him? Had they framed a plan together during our stay at Elkhazg?


There was so much to think about that my

mind shut off, and all I did for the better part of the next half-hour

was take in new sensations. I had turned into Artisan Flec’s

speelycaptor: all eyes, no brain. With my Eagle-Rez, my SteadiHand, and

my DynaZoom, I dumbly watched and recorded our discharge from the

hospital. Paperwork, it seemed, was one of those Protic attractors that

remained common and unchanged across all cosmi. We were given over into

the care of a squad of five nose-tube-wearing Troäns in the same getups

as the goons who had assaulted me and Jad in my dream, hallucination,

or alternate polycosmic incarnation. Lio ogled their weapons, which

tended toward sticks, aerosol cans, and electrical devices—apparently,

high-energy projectiles were frowned on in a pressurized environment.

They gave us a good looking-over in return, paying special attention to

Lio—they’d been doing research on who was who, and some of the Valer

mystique had rubbed off on him.


Two of the soldiers and Jules went ahead of

us, three followed. We crossed a gangplank into someone’s garden and I

looked through an open window, from arm’s length away, at a Laterran

man washing dishes. He ignored me. From there we crossed into a school

playground. The kids stopped playing for a few moments and watched us

go by. Some said hello; we smiled, bowed, and returned the greeting.

This went over well. From there we crossed to a houseboat where a

couple of women were transplanting vegetables. And so it went. The

community did not waste space on streets. Their transportation system

was a network of rights-of-way thrown over the roofs and terraces of

the houseboats. Anyone could walk anywhere, and a social convention

dictated that people simply ignore each other. Heavy goods were moved

around on skinny, deep-draught

gondolas maneuvering through narrow leads of open water—whose existence

came as a surprise, because they tunneled under flexible bowers, and

so, from the hospital terrace, had looked only like dark green veins

and arteries ramifying through the town.


In a few minutes we came to a boat that

served as the terminal of the cable-chair system. We rode up to the

hole in the sky two by two, each Arbran accompanied by a Troän soldier,

until all had collected in the portal that joined Ten to Eleven. The

wind was blowing in our faces strongly enough to sting our eyes and

whip our bolts around.


While waiting for the others to catch up, I

stood in the portal and looked at the theatrical machinery behind the

blue scrim of the fake sky, the bundles of glass fibers that piped in

the light. The sun was bright, but cold; all the infrared had been

filtered out of it. Warmth came instead from the sky itself, which

radiated gentle heat like an extremely low-temperature broiler. We felt

it strongly here, and were glad of the wind.


Then another chair ride down to Orb

Eleven’s houseboat-mat, a walk across, and a similar ride up to the

next portal and into Orb Twelve: the highest-numbered, farthest-aft of

the four Laterran orbs. Hence, there was no next portal; we had reached

the caboose. But the sky supported a tubular catwalk-cum-ladder that

took us “up” and around to a portal in the “highest” part of the

sky—the zenith. Gravity here was noticeably weaker because we were

closer to the Core. We tarried on the ring-shaped catwalk below the

portal, which, down to the last rivet, was just like the one in Orb One

where Fraa Jad had taken a shotgun blast. I looked around and saw

details I clearly “remembered,” and I perched my butt on the railing to

check it against my “memory” of being knocked over it.


Jules had to identify himself at a speely

terminal and state his business to someone in a language that I assumed

was Urnudan. The leader of the soldiers chimed in with bursts of gruff

talk. We five had to take turns standing in front of the machine and

have our faces scanned. While we waited, we examined the ball valve,

which felt, and therefore looked, as if it were in the ceiling,

straight above our heads. It was old

hat to me. In its design I recognized the massive, thunderous praxic

style—call it Heavy Intercosmic Urnudan Space Bunker—that dominated the

look of the ship as seen from the outside and the Core, but was

mercifully absent from the orbs.


That great steel eye would not open for us

today. Instead we would use a round hatch just wide enough to admit

Arsibalt, or a Troän grunt in his cumbrous gear-web. This eventually

swung open by remote command, and we queued up to climb through it.


“A threat,” Jesry snorted, and nodded at

the colossal ball valve. I knew his tone: disgusted that he’d been so

long figuring it out. I must have looked baffled. “Come on,” he said,

“why would a praxic design it that way? Why use a ball valve instead of

some other kind?”


“A ball valve works even when there is a

large pressure difference between its two sides,” I said, “so the

Command could evacuate the Core—open it to space—and then open this

valve and kill the whole orb. Is that what you’re thinking?”


Jesry nodded.


“Fraa Jesry, your explanation is unreasonably cynical,” said Arsibalt, who’d been listening.


“Oh, I’m sure there are other reasons for it,” Jesry said, “but it is a threat all the same.”


One by one we ascended a ladder through the

small side hatch, up a short vertical tube, and through a second

hatch—an airlock—and collected on another ring-catwalk on the bore of

the vertical shaft that rose twelve hundred feet “above” us to the

Core. I checked out the keypad: just where I remembered it.


Lio had passed through first, and was

donning a sort of padded blindfold. Jules handed them to the rest of us

as we emerged from the airlock. “Why?” I asked sharply.


“So you don’t get sick from the effects of

Coriolis,” he said. “But, in case you do—” And he handed me a bag.

“Come to think of it, take two—the way you were eating.”


I took a last look up before putting on the

blindfold. We were getting ready to ascend a dauntingly tall ladder.

But I knew that “gravity” would get weaker the higher we went, so it

wouldn’t be that arduous. We would,

however, be experiencing powerful, disorienting inertial effects as we

moved closer to the axis. Hence the concern about motion sickness.


I groped for the lowest rung. “Slow,” Jules

said, “settle on each step and wait for it to feel correct before

moving to the next.”


Since the whole ladder was enclosed in a

tubular cage, there was scant danger of falling. I took the rungs

slowly as recommended, listening for movement from Lio, who was above

me, before going to the next. But above a certain point the rungs

became mostly symbolic. A flick of the wrist or finger floated us to

the next one up. Still the Troän soldier at the top maintained the same

steady pace—he’d learned the hard way that those who climbed too fast

would soon be reaching for their bags.


I was thinking about that keypad. What if Fraa Jad had punched in one of the 9,999 wrong

numbers? What if he had attempted it several times? Eventually a red

light would have gone on in some security bunker. They’d have turned on

a speelycaptor and seen a live feed of two firefighters screwing around

with the keypad. They’d have sent someone to shoo them off. That person

probably would not have been issued a shotgun—just the nonlethal

weapons that our escorts were toting.


Jesry’s words came back to me: A threat.

He was right. Opening that ball valve had been a way of putting a gun

to the head of the whole Orb. No wonder those soldiers had simply

rushed up and blown us away! In a cosmos where Fraa Jad knew—or

guessed—the number on the keypad, we were sure to get killed. Freeing

me, apparently, to end up somewhere else.


But what would have happened in all of the vastly more numerous cosmi where he’d punched in the wrong random number? We would have been taken alive.


What would have happened next in those cosmi?


We’d have been detained for a while—then taken to parley with Gan Odru.


My ears told me I had emerged from the top

of the shaft, my hand pawed in the air but didn’t find a next rung.

Instead the Troän intercepted it, hauled me out, hauled back the other

way to kill the momentum he’d

conferred on me, and guided me to something I could grab. I peeled up

my blindfold and saw that I had emerged into the Core. The ball valve

leading to the aft bearing chamber was just a stone’s throw behind us.

Its length in the other direction was inestimable, but I knew it to be

two and a quarter miles. It was as I “remembered” it: glowing tubes

strung down its inner surface emitted filtered sunlight, and the

conveyor belt ran endlessly with well-lubed clicking and humming noises.


Three other well-shafts were plumbed into

the Core at this nexus. The one directly “above” or opposite us led

into Orb Four; it looked like a direct, straight-line continuation of

the shaft we had just finished climbing. A ring-ladder ran around the

Core wall, providing access to all of them. Those who were practiced at

this kind of thing could simply jump across.


There was a wait. To begin with, those

below me on the ladder had to catch up. Moreover, a traffic jam had

already developed in the shaft to Orb Four. There were safety rules

governing how many were allowed to use the ladder at once, being

enforced by a soldier stationed at the top rung. Some other delegation

was going down ahead of us—though from our point of view they appeared

to be ascending the ladder feet-first—and we would have to wait until

they had reached the bottom.


So, Lio and I began screwing around. We

decided to see if we could make ourselves motionless in the center of

the Core. The goal was to place oneself near the middle of the big

tunnel while killing one’s spin so that the whole ship would rotate

around one’s body. This had to be done through some combination of

jumping off from the wall just so, and then swimming in the air to make

adjustments. Desperately clumsy would be a fair description of our

first five minutes’ efforts. From there we moved on to dangerously

incompetent, as, while flailing around, I kicked Lio in the face and

gave him a bloody nose. The Troän soldiers watched with mounting

amusement. They couldn’t understand a word we were saying, but they

knew exactly what we were trying to do. After I kicked Lio, they took

pity on us—or perhaps they were just scared that we’d get seriously

hurt and they’d be blamed. One of them beckoned

me over. He grabbed my chord in one hand and my bolt, at the scruff of

my neck, at the other, and gave me a gentle push combined with a little

torque. When I swam to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, I saw I was

closer than I had ever been to achieving the goal.


Hearing voices in Fluccish, I looked up the

Core to see a contingent of perhaps two dozen coming to join us. Most

were floating down the middle of the Core instead of using the

conveyors, so even if they hadn’t been speaking Fluccish I’d have known

them for tourists. One of these suddenly bounded ahead of the group,

drawing a rebuke from a soldier.


Cord hand-over-handed her way along the

tunnel wall and launched herself at me from a hundred feet away. I

feared the impending collision, but fortunately air resistance slowed

her flight, so that when we banged bodies it was no more violent than

walking into someone. We had a long zero-gravity hug. Another Arbran

was not far behind her: a young Sæcular man. I didn’t recognize him,

but I had the oddest feeling that I was expected

to. He was slowly tumbling on all three axes as he drifted toward me

and my sib, flailing his arms and legs as if that would help. For that,

he was very impressively dressed and coiffed. One of our soldier

escorts reached out and gave him a push on the knee that stopped his

tumbling and slowed his trajectory to something not quite so meteoric.

He came to a near-stop with respect to me and Cord. Gazing at him past

Cord’s right ear, which was pressed so hard against my cheek that I was

pretty sure her earrings were drawing blood, I saw him raise a

speelycaptor and draw a bead on us. “In the chilly heart of the alien

starship,” he intoned, in a beautifully modulated baritone, “a

heartwarming reunion between brother and sister. Cord, the Sæcular half

of the heroic pair, shows profound relief as she—”


I was just beginning to have some

profound—but not quite so heartwarming—emotions of my own when the man

with the speelycaptor was somehow, almost magically, replaced by

Yulassetar Crade. Associated with the miracle were a few sound effects:

a meaty thwomp, and a sharp exhalation—a sort of

bark—from the man with the speelycaptor. Yul had simply launched

himself at the guy from some distance away, and body-checked him at

full speed, stopping on a dime in midair as he transferred all of his energy into the target.


“Conservation of momentum,” he announced,

“it’s not just a good idea—it’s the law!” Far away, I heard a thud and

a squawk as the man with the hairdo impacted on the end-cap. This was

almost drowned out, though, by chuckling and what I took to be

appreciative commentary from our soldier-escorts. If I’d been startled,

at first, to learn that Yulassetar Crade had been made part of—of all

things—a diplomatic legation, I saw the genius of it now.


Once Cord had settled down enough to

release me, I drifted over and bumped bodies (more gently) and shared a

hug with Yul too. Sammann had emerged from the Orb Twelve shaft by now,

and greeted them both in high spirits. Of course, there was much more

that I wanted to say to Cord and Yul, but the man with the speelycaptor

had crawled back close enough to get us in his sights—though from a

more respectful distance—and this made me clam up. “We’ll talk,” I

said, and Yul nodded. Cord, for now, seemed content merely to look at

me, her face a maze of questions. I couldn’t help wondering what she

saw. I was probably drawn and pasty. She, by contrast, had gone to some

effort to dress up for the occasion: all the milled titanium jewelry

was on display, she had gotten a new haircut and raided a women’s

clothing store. But she’d had the good sense not to get too girly, and

she still seemed like Cord: barefoot, with a pair of fancy shoes

buckled together in the belt of her frock.


Others filtered in: a couple of

ridiculously beautiful persons I didn’t recognize. Some old men. The

Forals, drifting along arm in arm as if members of their family had

been going on zero-gravity perambulations for centuries. Three avout,

one of whom I recognized: Fraa Lodoghir.


I flew right at him. Spying me inbound, he

excused himself from his two companions and waited for me at a handhold

on the tunnel wall. We wasted no time on pleasantries. “You know what

became of Fraa Jad?” I asked him.


His face spoke even more eloquently than his voice knew how to do—which was saying a lot. He knew. He knew. Not the false cover story. He knew what I knew—which probably meant he knew a lot more

than I knew—and he was apprehensive that I was getting ready to blurt

something out. But I shut my mouth at that point, and with a flick of

the eyes let him know I meant to be discreet.


“Yes,” said Lodoghir. “What can avout of

lesser powers make of it? What does Fraa Jad’s fate mean, what does it

entail, for us? What lessons may we derive from it, what changes ought

we to make in our own conduct?”


“Yes, Pa Lodoghir,” I said dutifully, “it

is for such answers that I have come to you.” I could only pray he

would catch the sarcasm, but he made no sign.


“In a way, a man such as Fraa Jad lives his

whole life in preparation for such a moment, does he not? All the

profound thoughts that pass through his consciousness, all the skills

and powers that he develops, are shaped toward a culmination. We only

see that culmination, though, in retrospect.”


“Beautiful—but let’s talk of the prospect. What lies ahead—and how does Fraa Jad’s fate reshape it for us? Or do we go on as if it had never occurred?”


“The practical consequence for me is

continuing and ever more effective coöperation between the tendencies

known to the vulgar as Rhetors and Incanters,” Lodoghir said. “Procians

and Halikaarnians have worked together in the recent past, as you know,

with results that have been profoundly startling to those few who are

aware of them.” He was staring directly into my eyes as he said this. I

knew he was talking about the rerouting of worldtracks that, among

other things, had placed Fraa Jad at the Daban Urnud at the same time as his death was recorded above Arbre.


“Such as our unveiling of the spy Zh’vaern,” I said, just to throw any surveillors off the scent.


“Yes,” he said, with a tiny, negative shake

of the head. “And this serves as a sign that such coöperation must and

should continue.”


“What is the object of that coöperation, pray tell?”


“Inter-cosmic peace and unity,” he returned, so piously that I wanted to laugh—but I’d never give him that satisfaction.




“On what terms?”


“Funny you should ask,” he said. “While you

were in suspended animation, some of us have been discussing that very

topic.” And he nodded a bit impatiently, toward the muzzle of the Orb

Four shaft, where everyone else was gathering.


“Do you think that Fraa Jad’s fate affected the outcome of those negotiations?”


“Oh yes,” said Fraa Lodoghir, “it was more influential than I can say.”


I was beginning to feel a little

conspicuous and I could see I’d get nothing more out of Lodoghir, so I

turned and accompanied him to the head of the Orb Four shaft.


“I see we have some big-time Procians,” Jesry said, nodding at Lodoghir and his two companions.


“Yeah,” I said, and did a double-take. I had just realized that Lodoghir’s companions were both Thousanders.


“They should be in their element,” Jesry continued.


“Politics and diplomacy? No doubt,” I said.


“And they’ll come in handy if we need to change the past.”


“More than they’ve already changed it, you

mean?” I returned—which I figured we could get away with, since it

would sound like routine Procian-bashing. “But seriously, Fraa Lodoghir

has paid close attention to the story of Fraa Jad and has all sorts of

profound thoughts about what it means.”


“I will so look forward to hearing them,” Jesry deadpanned. “Does he have any practical suggestions as well?”


“Somehow we didn’t get around to that,” I said.


“Hmm. So does that mean it’s our department?”


“That’s what I’m afraid of.”


The trip down to Orb Four took a while because of the safety regulations.


“I wouldn’t have thought it possible,” said

Arsibalt’s voice, somewhere on the other side of my blindfold, as we

descended. “But this is already banal!”


“What? Your feet in my face?” For he kept wanting to descend too fast, and was always threatening to step on my hands.




“No. Our interactions with the Geometers.”


I descended a few more rungs in silence,

thinking about it. I knew better than to argue. Instead I compiled a

mental list of all that I’d seen on the Daban Urnud

that had struck me as, to use Arsibalt’s word, banal: the red emergency

button on the observatory hatch. The bowel-warming machine. Paperwork

at the hospital. The Laterran man washing his dishes. Smudgy handprints

on ladder-rungs. “Yeah,” I said, “if it weren’t for the fact that we

can’t eat the food, it would be no more exotic than visiting a foreign

country on Arbre.”


“Less so!” Arsibalt said. “A foreign country on Arbre might be pre-Praxic in some way, with a strange religion or ethnic customs, but—”


“But this place has been sterilized of all that, it’s a technocracy.”


“Exactly. And the more technocratic it becomes, the more closely it converges on what we are.”


“It’s true,” I said.


“When do we get to the good part?” he demanded.


“What do you have in mind, Arsibalt? Like in a spec-fic speely, where something amazingly cool-to-look-at happens?”


“That would help,” he allowed. We descended

a few more rungs in silence. Then he added, in a more moderate tone:

“It’s just that—I want to say, ‘All right, already! I get it! The

Hylaean Flow brings about convergent development of

consciousness-bearing systems across worldtracks!’ But where is the

payoff? There’s got to be more to it than this big ship roaming from

cosmos to cosmos collecting sample populations and embalming them in

steel spheres.”


“Maybe they share some of your feelings,” I suggested. “They have been doing it for a thousand years—a lot more time to get sick of it than you’ve had. You only woke up a couple of hours ago!”


“Well, that is a good point,” Arsibalt said, “but Raz, I am apprehensive that they’re not sick of it. They’ve turned it into a sort of religious quest. They come here with unrealistic expectations.”


“Ssh!” Jesry exclaimed. He was just below

me. He continued, in a voice that could have been heard in all twelve

Orbs, “Arsibalt, if you keep running your mouth this way, Fraa Lodoghir will have to erase everyone’s memory!”


“Memory of what?” Lio said. “I don’t remember anything.”


“Then it is not because of any Rhetor

sorcery,” called out Fraa Lodoghir, “but because failed attempts at wit

fade so quickly from the memory.”


“What are you people talking about!?” demanded Yul, in Fluccish. “You’re spooking the superstars.”


“We’re talking about what it all means,” I said. “Why we’re the same as them.”


“Maybe they are weirder than you think,” Yul suggested.


“Until they let us visit Orb One, we’ll never know.”


“So go to Orb One,” Yul said.


“He’s already been there,” Jesry cracked.


We reached the bottom and climbed down an

airlock-shaft just like the others and found ourselves looking straight

down on the houseboat-mat of Orb Four. This had an elliptical pool of

open water in the middle: a touch of luxury we hadn’t seen in any of

the Laterran orbs. Perhaps the Urnudans had agriculture even more

productive than the others, and could afford to waste a bit of space on

decoration. The pool was surrounded by a plaza, much of which was now

covered with tables.


“It is a center for the holding of meetings,” Jules explained.


My mind went straight back to Arsibalt’s complaints about the banality. The aliens have conference centers!


They had welded stairs to their sky, and

painted them blue. We clanked down them, getting heavier as we went.

The architecture of the houseboats below was not markedly different

from what we’d seen in the Laterran orbs. There were only so many ways

to build a flat-roofed structure that could float. Many of the

decorative flourishes that might distinguish one style of architecture

from another were buried under cataracts of fruit-bearing vines and

layered canopies of orchard-trees. Our path across the houseboat

complex was a narrow, but straight and unmistakable, boulevard to the

elliptical pool; here, we did not ramble from one terrace to the next.

Still, we did encounter the occasional Urnudan pedestrian, and as I looked

at their faces I tried to resist the temptation to perceive them as

mere rough drafts of superior beings from higher up the Wick. As we

drew near and passed them by, they averted their gaze, got out of our

way, and stood patiently in what looked to me like submissive postures.


“How much of what we’re seeing is native

Urnudan culture,” I wondered out loud to Lio, who had fallen in step

next to me, “and how much is a consequence of living on a military

spaceship for a thousand years?”


“Same difference, maybe,” Lio pointed out, “since only the Urnudans built ships like this in the first place.”


The boulevard debouched into the plaza

surrounding the meeting pool. This—as we had clearly seen from

above—was partitioned into four quadrants of equal size. In turn, it

was enclosed by four glass-walled pavilions that curved around it like

eyebrows.


“Check out the weatherstripping on the

doors!” Yul remarked, nodding at a pavilion entrance. “Those things are

aquariums.” And indeed, through the glass walls we could see Fthosians,

who were not equipped with nose tubes, speed-walking with documents or

talking into their versions of jeejahs. “They check their breathing

gear at the door,” Cord observed, and pointed to a rack just inside

that heavily weatherstripped door where dozens of tank-packs had been

hung up.


Jesry nudged me. “Translators!” he said,

and pointed to a windowed mezzanine above the main deck of the

“aquarium.” A few Fthosian men and women, fiddling with headsets, sat

at consoles that overlooked the pool. And as if to confirm this,

Urnudan stewards began to circulate through our delegation carrying

trays of earbuds: red for Orth, blue for Fluccish. I stuffed a red one

into my ear and heard in it the familiar tones of Jules Verne Durand.

With a quick look around, I picked him out in the translators’ booth

atop the Laterran pavilion. “The Command welcomes the Arbran delegation

and requests that you gather at the water’s edge for opening

ceremonies,” he was saying. I got the impression, from his tone of

voice, that he’d already said it a hundred times.


We had joined up with a part of the Arbran contingent that had arrived earlier to get things sorted before the stars, journalists,

and space commandos showed up to make it complicated. Ala was one of

those. The Panjandrums and their aides had also preceded us, and were

waiting near the water’s edge in an inflated poly bubble the size of a

housing module, just off to our left as we emerged from the boulevard.

Behind it was a clutter of equipment including compressed air tanks

that must have been brought up on the ship from Arbre. So this was

meant to be a makeshift pavilion, symbolically placing our Panjandrums

on the same footing as the Geometer dignitaries. It was made of the

same kind of milky poly sheeting that had covered the windows of my

quarantine trailer at Tredegarh. I could make out vague shapes of

dark-suited figures around a table—I thought of them as doyns—and

others, servitors, hovering round the edges or darting in to handle

documents.


I spent a while watching Ala run in and out

of that tent, sometimes gazing off at the fake sky as she talked on a

headset, other times peeling it off her head and holding her hand over

the microphone as she talked to someone face to face. I was overcome by

recollection of the time she and I had spent together that morning, and

could not think of much else. I thought that I was like a man lame in

one leg, who had learned to move about well enough that all awareness

of his disability had passed out of his mind. And yet, when he tried to

go on a journey, he kept finding himself back where he had started,

since his weak leg made him go in circles. But if he found a partner

who was weak in the other leg, and the two of them set out as

companions…


Cord goosed me. I nearly toppled into the water and she had to pull me back by my bolt.


“She’s beautiful,” she said before I could get huffy.


“Yeah. Thanks. She most definitely is,” I said. “She’s the one for me.”


“Have you told her?”


“Yeah. Actually telling her isn’t the problem. You can ease up on me as far as telling her is concerned.”


“Oh. Good.”


“The problem is all of these other circumstances.”




“They are some pretty interesting circumstances!”


“I’m sorry you got swept up in it like this. It’s not what I wanted.”


“But it was never about what you wanted,” she said. “Look, cuz, even if I croak, it was a good trade.”


“How can you say that, Cord, what about—”


She shook her head, reached out, and put her fingertips to my lips. “No. Stop. We are not discussing it.”


I took her hand between mine and held it for a moment. “Okay,” I said, “it’s your life. I’ll shut up.”


“Don’t just shut up. Believe it, cuz.”


“HEY!” called a gruff voice. “What do you think you’re doing, holding hands with my girl?”


“Hey Yul, what have you been up to since Ecba?”


“Time went by fast,” he said, ambling

closer and standing behind Cord, who leaned comfortably against him.

“We got a lot of free aerocraft rides. Saw the world. Spent a lot of

time answering questions. After three days, I laid down the law. Said I

wouldn’t answer any question I had answered already. They took it hard,

at first. Forced them to get organized. But after that, it was better

for everyone. They put us up in a hotel in the capital.”


“An actual hotel,” Cord wanted me to understand, “not a casino.”


“Days would go by with nothing—we’d go see

museums,” Yul said. “Then all of a sudden they’d get excited and call

us back in, and we’d spend a few hours trying to remember whether the

buttons on the control panel were round or square.”


“They even hypnotized us,” Cord said.


“Then someone ratted us out to the media,”

Yul said bleakly, and cast a wary look round for the man with the

speelycaptor. “Less said about that, the better.”


“They moved us to a place just outside Tredegarh, then, for a couple of days,” Cord said.


“Right before they blew the walls,” Yul

added. “Then we Anti-swarmed to an old missile base in the desert. I

liked that. No media. Lots of hiking.” He sighed helplessly. “But now

we’re here. No hiking in this place.”




“Did they give you anything before you boarded the ship?”


“Like a big pill?” Yul said. “Like this?”

He held out his hand, the Everything Killer resting in the middle of

his palm. I jerked my hand out and clasped his and shook it. He looked

surprised. When we let go, I made sure that pill was in my hand.


“You want mine?” Cord said. “They said it was a tracking device—for our safety. But I didn’t want to be tracked, and, well—”


“If you wanted safety you wouldn’t have come,” I said.


“Exactly.” She handed me her pill, a little more discreetly than Yul had done.


“What are they really?” Yul asked. I was

drawing up a lie when I happened to glance up, and saw him looking at

me in a way that said he would brook no deception.


“Weapons,” I mouthed. Yul nodded and looked

away. Cord looked nauseated. I took my leave, tucking the pills into a

fold of my bolt, for I had just noticed Emman Beldo emerging from the

inflatable with an aide of, to judge from body language, lesser

stature. I yanked out my earbud and tossed it aside. Emman saw me

headed his way and told the other to get lost. I met him at the edge of

the pool.


“Just a second,” were his first words.

Around his neck he had a little electronic device on a lanyard. He

turned it on and it began to talk, emitting random syllables and

word-fragments in Orth. It sounded like Emman and a couple of other

people, recorded and run through a blender. “What is it?” I asked, and

before I had reached the end of this short utterance my own voice had

been thrown into the blender too. I answered my own question: “A means

of defeating surveillance,” I said, “so we can talk freely.”


He made no sign that I was right or wrong, but only looked at me interestedly. “You’ve

been through some changes,” he pointed out, making an effort to speak

distinctly above the murmur of Emman-and Erasmas-gibberish.


I peeled back my bolt fold and let him see

what I’d collected from Yul and Cord. “Under what circumstances,” I

said, “are you planning to turn these on?”


“Under the circumstance that I am given the order to do so,” he answered, with a glance back toward the tent.




“You know what I mean.”


“It is clearly a measure of last resort,”

Emman said, “when diplomacy fails and it looks like we are about to be

killed or taken hostage.”


“I just wonder whether the Panjandrums are even competent to render such judgments,” I said.


“I know paying attention to Sæcular

politics isn’t your game,” he said, “but it has gotten a little better

since our gracious hosts threw the Warden of Heaven out the airlock.

And even more so since the Antiswarm started throwing its weight

around.”


“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, would I?” I pointed out. “Since I’ve been otherwise engaged the last two weeks.”


Emman snorted. “No kidding! Nice job, by the way.”


“Thanks. Some day I’ll tell you stories. But for now—just how, exactly, did the Antiswarm throw its weight around?”


“They didn’t have to say much,” Emman told me. “It was obvious.”


“What was?”


He took a deep breath, sighed it out.

“Look. Thirty-seven hundred years ago, the avout were herded into maths

because of fear of their ability to change the world through praxis.”

He nodded helpfully at where I had tucked the Everything Killers.

“Because of clever stunts like that, I guess. So praxis stopped, or at

least slowed down to a rate of change that could be understood,

managed, controlled. Fine—until these guys showed up.” He raised his

head and gazed around. “Turned out that all we’d been doing was losing

the arms race to cosmi that hadn’t imposed any such limits on their

avout. And guess what? When Arbre decided to fight back a little, who

delivered the counterpunch? Our military? The Sæcular Power? Nope. You

guys in the bolts and chords. So the Antiswarm has garnered a lot of

clout just by doing a lot and saying very little. Hence the concept of

the two Magisteria, which is—”


“I’ve heard of it,” I said.


He and I stood there for a few moments,

gazing across the elliptical pond at the opposite shore, where

processions of Urnudan and Troän dignitaries were emerging from their

pavilions, making their way toward the water. The garble-box around Emman’s neck, however, did not know how to shut up.


“So that is the Narrative everyone is working with now?” I asked him.


He looked at me alertly. “I guess you could think of it that way.”


“Well,” I said, “if this thing goes all

pear-shaped and some Panjandrum gives you the order to activate the

EKs, it’d be a shame if that Panjandrum and you turned out to have the

Narrative all wrong, wouldn’t it?”


“What do you mean?” he asked sharply.


“Thirty-seven hundred years ago they

rounded us up, yeah. But they didn’t take away our ability to mess with

newmatter. In consequence of which, we had the First Sack. Fine. No

more newmatter, except for a few exemptions that got grandfathered in:

factories where the stuff still gets made, staffed by ex-avout who get

Evoked when they are needed. Time passes. We’re still allowed to do

sequence manipulation. Things get a little spooky. There’s a Second

Sack. No more sequence work, no more syndevs in the concents, except

for a few exemptions that get grandfathered in: the Ita, the clocks,

the page trees, and the library grapes, and maybe some labs on the

outside, staffed by skeleton crews of Evoked and concent-trained

praxics like you. Fine. Things are under control now, right? Not much the avout can do if they have nothing, no syndevs, no tools at all except for rakes and shovels, and are being watched over by an Inquisition. Now we’re really

under the Sæcular Power’s thumb—until two and half millennia later,

when it turns out that sufficiently smart people locked up on crags

with nothing to do but think can actually come up with forms of praxis that require no

tools and are all the more terrifying for that. So we have a Third

Sack—the worst of all, much more savage than the others. Seventy years

later the mathic world gets reëstablished. But, you have to ask

yourself the obvious question…”


“What got grandfathered in?” Emman said,

completing the sentence for me. “What were the special exemptions?” And

then there was silence except for the babble coming out of his jammer. Each

of us was waiting for the other to finish the sentence—to answer the

question. I hoped he might know—and that he might be so forthcoming as

to share the answer with me. But from the look on his face it was plain

that this was not the case.


So I had to follow the logic myself.

Fortunately, Magnath and Ignetha Foral chose this moment to come down

to the water’s edge—as it had become obvious that something was about

to happen. I looked at them, and Emman Beldo looked with me.


“Those guys,” he said.


“Those guys,” I affirmed.


“The Lineage?”


“Not exactly the

Lineage—since that goes all the way back to the time of Metekoranes—but

a kind of Sæcular incarnation of it, a dowment that was established and

funded around the time of the Third Sack. Tied into the mathic world in

all sorts of ways. Owns Ecba and Elkhazg and probably other places

besides.”


“Maybe it looks that way to you,” Emman

said, “but I can promise you that most of what you call the Panjandrums

have never heard of this dowment. It is nothing to them—exerts no

influence. Magnath Foral—if they’ve heard his name at all—is just a

dried-up, blue-blooded art collector.”


“But that’s how it would

happen,” I said. “They would set this thing up after the Third Sack. It

would be famous and influential for about ten minutes. But after a few

wars, revolutions, and Dark Ages, it would be forgotten. It would

become what it is.”


“And what is it?” Emman asked me.


“I’m still trying to figure that out,” I said. “But I think that what I’m saying is that—”


“We Sæculars are in over our heads here?” Emman suggested. “I’m comfortable with you saying that.”


“But are you comfortable with the practical consequence,” I asked him, “which is—”


“That if I get the order,” he said, with a

flick of the eyes at the place where I’d secreted the Everything

Killers, “maybe I should ignore it, because it was issued by a clueless

Sæcular who has been working from the wrong Narrative?”




“Exactly,” I said. And I noticed him

rubbing his jeejah with his thumb. He had gotten a new jeejah since

Tredegarh. Most unusual. From hanging around with Cord, I knew some of

the terminology: Emman’s jeejah had been milled from a solid billet of

alloy, not molded in poly or stamped out of sheet material. Very

expensive. Not mass-produced.


“Nice, huh?” He’d caught me looking.


“I’ve seen one before,” I said.


“Where?” he asked sharply.


“Jad had one.”


“How could you know that? It was issued to him immediately before the launch. He burned up before you could talk to him.”


I just stared at him, hardly knowing where to begin.


“Is this one of those in-over-my-head things?” he asked.


“More or less. Tell me, how many more of those things?”


“Up here? At least one.” And he turned his

head toward the inflatable. The outer door of its airlock had been

unzipped, and a series of men and women in impressive clothes were

emerging, patting their heads self-consciously as they got used to the

feel of their nose-tubes. “The third one—the bald man—has one just like

it.”


My right arm departed the conversation. Ala

had made off with it. The rest of me caught up just in time to avoid

dislocation of the shoulder joint. “You should wear your earbud,” she

told me, “then you’d know we’re in the middle of an aut!” She slapped a

bud into my hand and I wormed it into my ear. Music had begun to play

from a band on the other side of the ellipse. I looked across and saw

four long boxes—coffins—being borne down to the water’s edge by a mixed

contingent of Urnudan, Troän, Laterran, and Fthosian soldiers.


Ala led me round behind the inflatable,

where Arsibalt, Jesry, and Lio were standing at three corners of

another coffin. “For once, I’m not the latest!” Lio said wonderingly.


“Leadership has changed you,” I said, and

reported to my corner. We picked up the coffin, which I knew must

contain the remains of Lise.




All of these coffins smacked me into a

whole different frame of mind. We carried Lise out from behind the

inflatable, centered her in the road that led to the water’s edge, and

set her down as we waited for the procession on the opposite side to

finish. The music, of course, sounded strange to our ears, but no

stranger than a lot of stuff you might hear on Arbre. Music, it seemed,

was one of those places where the Hylaean Flow was especially

strong—com-posers in different cosmi were hearing the same things in

their heads. It was a funeral march. Very slow and grim. Hard to say

whether this was a reflection of Urnudan culture, or a sort of reminder

that the four in those coffins had slain a lot of Geometers and that

we’d best keep that in mind before we got to celebrating them.


It almost worked. I actually started to feel guilty for having delivered the Valers to the Daban Urnud.

Then I happened to glance down at the coffin beside my knee, and

wondered who up here had shot Jules’s wife in the back. Who had given

the order to rod Ecba? Who was responsible for killing Orolo? Was he or

she standing around this pool? Not the sorts of things I should have

been thinking at a peace conference. But there wouldn’t have been a

need for one if we hadn’t been killing each other.


The soldiers carried the coffins of Osa,

Esma, Vay, and Gratho quite slowly, stopping for a few beats after each

pace. My mind wandered, as it always did during long auts, and I found

myself thinking about those four Valers, recalling my first impressions

of them in Mahsht, when I’d been cornered, and hadn’t understood, yet,

what they were. The scenes played in my head like speelies: Osa,

perched one-legged atop the sphere that sheltered me, fending off

attackers with snap-kicks. Esma dancing across the plaza toward the

sniper while Gratho made his body into a bullet-shield for me. Vay

fixing me up afterwards—so efficiently, so ruthlessly that snot had run

out of my nose and tears from my eyes.


Were doing so, for I

was weeping now. Trying to imagine their last moments. Especially Suur

Vay, out on the icosahedron, in single combat against several terrified

men with cutting tools. Alone, in the dark, the blue face of Arbre

thousands of miles away, knowing in the last moments she’d never breathe its air again, never hear the thousand brooks of the Ringing Vale.


“Raz?” It was Ala’s voice. She had her

hand—more gently, this time—on my elbow. I wiped my face dry with my

bolt, got a moment’s clear view before things got all misty again. The

honor guard across the pool had set the Valers’ coffins down and were

standing there expectantly. “Time to go,” Ala said. Lio, Jesry, and

Arsibalt were all looking at me, all crying too. We all bent our knees,

got a grip on the coffin, raised it off the deck.


“Sing something,” Ala suggested. We looked

at her helplessly until she said the name of a chant that we used for

the aut of Requiem at Edhar. Arsibalt started it, giving us the pitch

in his clear tenor, and we all joined in with our parts. We all had to

do some improvising, but few noticed and none cared. As we came out in

view of the Laterran pavilion, Jules Verne Durand went off the air. I

glanced up through the windows of the translators’ booth and saw other

Laterrans rushing to his side to lay hands on him. We all sang louder.


“So much for the Orth translation,” Jesry

said, once we had reached the water and set Lise down. But he said it

in a simple and plaintive way that did not make me want to hurt him.


“It’s okay,” Lio said, “that’s the good

thing about an aut. The words don’t matter.” And he rested his hand

absent-mindedly on the lid of the coffin.


The soldiers on the opposite bank

transferred the coffins of the Valers onto a sort of flatboat. They

could simply have marched them around to us, but there seemed to be

something in the act of crossing the water that was of ceremonial

meaning here. “I get it,” Arsibalt said, “it represents the cosmos. The

gulf between us.” There was more music. The raft was staffed by four

women in robes, who began rowing it across. The music was much easier

on the ears than the funeral march: different instruments with softer

tones, and a solo by a Laterran woman who stood at the edge of the

water and seemed to make the whole orb resonate with the power of her

voice. It was a good going-home piece, I reckoned.


When the ladies were halfway finished rowing across, Jesry spoke up: “Not setting any speed records, are they?”




“Yeah,” Lio said, “I was just thinking the same thing. Give us a boat! We could take ’em!”


It wasn’t that funny,

but our bodies thought it was, and we had to do a lot of work in the

next couple of minutes trying to avoid laughing so obviously as to

create a diplomatic incident. When the boat finally arrived, we took

the coffins off, then loaded Lise’s on board. To the accompaniment of

more music, those slow-rowing ladies took her in a long arc to the

Laterran shore, where she was brought off by half a dozen civilian

pallbearers—friends of Jules and of Lise, I guessed—while Jules,

supported by a couple of friends, looked on. Then in four separate

trips we carried the Valers’ coffins back to the staging area behind

the inflatable. Meanwhile Lise was conveyed into the Laterran pavilion

so that Jules could have a private moment with her. The oar-ladies

rowed back to the Urnudan shore. Fraa Lodoghir and Gan Odru, from

opposite sides of the pond, each said a few words reminding us about

the others who had died in the little war that we had come here to

conclude: on Arbre, the ones who had been killed in the rod attacks,

and up here, the ones who had fallen to the Valers.


After a moment of silence, we broke for an

intermission, and food and drinks were brought out on trays by

stewards. Apparently, the need to eat after a funeral was as universal

as the Adrakhonic Theorem. The boat ladies went to work refitting their

barge with a table, draped with blue cloth, and arrayed with piles of

documents.


“Raz.”


I had been waiting for my crack at a food

tray, but turned around to discover Emman a few paces away, just in the

act of underhanding something to me. Reflexes took over and I pawed it

out of the air. It was another one of those conversation-jamming

machines.


“I stole it from a Procian,” he explained.


“Won’t the Procian be needing it?” I asked, my face—I hoped—the picture of mock concern.


“Nah. Redundant.”


The conversation jammer turned into a conversation piece, as my friends gathered round to play with it and chuckle at the funny sounds

it made. Yul got it to generate random, profane sentences by cursing

into it. But after a few minutes, the voice of Jules Verne

Durand—hoarse, but composed—was in our ears telling us that the next

phase of the aut was about to begin. Once again we convened at the

water’s edge and heard speeches from the four leaders who would be

putting pens to paper in a few minutes: first Gan Odru. Then Prag

Eshwar: a stocky woman, more grand-auntish than I had envisioned, in a

military uniform. Then the Arbran foreign minister, and finally one of

the Thousanders who had been hanging around with Fraa Lodoghir. As each

of the speakers finished, they stepped aboard the barge. When our

Thousander had joined the first three, the oar-ladies rowed them out

into the middle. They all took up pens and began to sign. All watched

in silence for a few moments. But the signing was lengthy, and so, soon

enough, people began muttering to one another. Conversations flourished

all over, and people began to mill around.


It might sound like an odd thing to do, but

I strayed around behind the inflatable and counted the coffins. One,

two, three, four.


“Taking inventory?”


I turned around to find that Fraa Lodoghir had followed me.


I flicked on the conversation jammer, which

emitted a stream of profanity in Yul’s voice as I said, “It’s the only

way for me to be sure who is still dead.”


“You can be sure now,” he said. “It’s over. The tally will not change.”


“Can you bring people back as well as make them disappear?”


“Not without undoing that.” He nodded at the barge where they were signing the peace.


“I see,” I said.


“You were hoping to get Saunt Orolo back?” he asked gently.


“Yes.”


Lodoghir said nothing. But I was able to

work it out for myself. “But if Orolo’s alive, it means Lise is buried

at Ecba. We don’t get the intelligence gleaned from her remains—none of

this happens. Peace is only compatible with Lise and Orolo being

dead—and staying that way.”




“I’m sorry,” Lodoghir said. “There are

certain worldtracks—certain states of affairs—that are only compatible

with certain persons’ being…absent.”


“That’s the word Fraa Jad used,” I said, “before he turned up absent.”


Fraa Lodoghir looked as if steeling himself to hear some sophomoric outburst from me. I continued, “How about Fraa Jad? Any chance he’ll be present again?”


“His tragic demise is extensively

recorded,” said Fraa Lodoghir, “but I’d not presume to say what an

Incanter is and is not capable of.” And his gaze fell away from my face

and traveled across the milling crowd until it had come to rest, or so

I thought, on Magnath Foral. For once, the Heritor of Elkhazg did not

have Madame Secretary at his side—she was tending to official

duties—and so I walked directly over to him.


“Did you—did we—summon

them here?” I asked him. “Did we call the Urnudans forth? Or is it the

case that some Urnudan, a thousand years ago, saw a geometric proof in

a dream, and turned that into a religion—decided that he had been

called to a higher world?”


Magnath Foral heard me out, then turned his

face toward the water, drawing my attention to the peace that was being

signed there. “Behold,” he said. “There are two Arbrans on that vessel,

of coequal dignity. Such a state of affairs has not existed since the

golden age of Ethras. The walls of Tredegarh have been brought down.

The avout have escaped from their prisons. Ita mingle and work by their

sides. If all of these things had occurred as the result of a summoning

such as you suppose, would it not be a great thing for the Lineage to

have brought about? Oh, I should very much like to claim such credit.

Long have my predecessors and I waited for such a culmination. What

honors would decorate the Lineage were it all true! But it did not come

to pass in any such clean and straightforward manner. I do not know the

answer, Fraa Erasmas. Nor will any born of this cosmos until we have

taken ship on a vessel such as this, and journeyed on to the next.”













Part 13


RECONSTITUTION







Upsight: A sudden, usually unlooked-for moment of clear understanding.


—THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000


















The

need for stakes was insatiable. Our volunteers were fashioning them

from anything they could find: reinforcing bar cut from buildings that

had been splashed across the landscape, twisted angle irons sawed from

toppled gantries, splinters of blown-apart trees. Lashed into bundles,

they piled up before the flaps of my tent and threatened to block me in.


“I need to deliver those to the survey team on the rim,” I said, “would you like to walk with me?”


Artisan Quin had been sitting in a fetch

for six days with Barb. My proposal sounded good to him. We pushed

through mildewy canvas and came out into the white light of an overcast

morning. Each of us shouldered as many stake-bundles as he thought he

could carry, and we began to trudge uphill. Our early trails down from

the rim had already been turned into gullies by erosion, so new

arrivals were cutting terraces and properly switchbacked paths into the

dirt. Hard work, and a good way to sort mere vacationers from those who

would stick it out and make their livings at Orolo.


“The first draft of everything is going to

be wood and earth,” I told him, as we passed by a mixed team of avout

and Sæculars pounding sharpened logs into the ground. “By the time I

die, we should have a rough idea of how the place works. Later

generations can begin planning how to do it all over again in stone.”


Quin looked dismayed for a moment. Then his

face relaxed as he understood that I was talking about dying of old

age. “Where are you going to get the stone from?” he asked. “All I see

is mud.”


I stopped and turned back to face the crater. It had filled with water

as soon as it had cooled down, and so, with the altitude we’d already

gained, we could easily see its general shape: an ellipse, oriented

northwest to southeast—the direction in which the rod had been

traveling. We were above its southeastern end. Its most obvious feature

was an island of rubble that rose from the brown water a few hundred

yards offshore. But I directed his attention to a barely visible notch

in the coastline, miles away. “The river that filled it spills in over

yonder, near the other end,” I said. “It’s not easy to make out from

here. But if you go up that river a couple of miles, you come to a

place where the impact touched off a landslide that exposed a face of

limestone. Enough for our descendants to build whatever they want.”


Quin nodded, and we resumed climbing. He was silent for a while. Finally he asked, “Are you going to have descendants?”


I laughed. “It’s already happening! People

started getting pregnant during the Antiswarm. We started eating normal

food and the men stopped being sterile. The first avout baby was born

last week. I heard about it on the Reticulum. Oh, you’ll find our

access is a little spotty. For a while Sammann—he’s our ex-Ita—was

keeping it running all by himself. But more ex-Ita show up here every

day. We have a couple of dozen now.”


Quin wasn’t interested in that part of it. He interrupted me: “So, Barb could one day be a father.”


“Yes. He could.” Then—better late than never—I worked out the implication: “You could be a grandfather.”


Quin picked up the pace—suddenly eager to get Saunt Orolo’s constructed now.

Huffing along in his wake, I added: “Of course, that raises the ancient

breeding issue. But we know enough now that we can prevent a forking of

the race into two species. It puts some responsibility on us to make

places like this welcoming for what we used to call extras.”


“What are you going to call them—us—now?” Quin asked.


“I have no idea. What matters is that,

under the Second Reconstitution, there are two coequal Magisteria.

People can come up with words for them later.”


We had reached a place where the crater’s formerly knifelike edge

had already softened to a round shoulder under the action of rain and

wind. It was dotted with a few opportunistic weeds and etched with

colored lines strung between stakes. “The boundaries will run wherever

we put them. Here’s one.” I plucked at a red string.


Quin was aghast. “How can you just do that? Go out and stake a claim? The lawyers must be going crazy.”


“We have a small army of Procians running their mouths for us. The lawyers don’t stand a chance.”


“So everything on this side of the string is your property?”


“Yes. The walls will run parallel to it, just inside.”


“So you’ll still have walls?”


“Yes. With gateways—but no gates,” I said.


“Then why bother building the walls?”


“They have symbolic content,” I said. “They

say, ‘you’re passing into a different Magisterium now, and there are

certain things you must leave behind.’” But I knew I was not being

altogether forthright. Half a mile away I could make out half a dozen

people in bolts, peering through instruments and pounding in stakes:

Lio and the crowd of ex-Ringing Vale avout he ran with now. I knew

exactly what they were discussing: when war breaks out between the

Magisteria and we plug the holes in the wall with gates, we’ll want

interlocking fields of fire between this bastion and the next to repel

any assault on the intervening stretch of wall…


I whistled between my fingers. They looked

over at us. I pointed to the bundles of stakes that Quin and I had just

dropped. A couple of the Valers began sprinting to fetch them. Quin and

I turned to descend the way we’d come. But we were pulled up short by

an answering whistle, which I recognized as Lio’s. I looked his way. He

gestured down the outer slope of the crater wall, trying to get me to

see something. There wasn’t much to reward looking: just a long slope

of boiled earth, burned wood, shredded insulation, and pulverized

stone. Farther away, a flat place where pilgrims like Quin had parked

their vehicles. Finally, though, I saw what Lio wanted me to see: a

vein of yellow starblossom rushing up the slope.


“What is it?” Quin asked.




“Barbarian invasion,” I said. “Long story.” I waved to Lio.


Quin and I turned around and began the

descent into the crater. We had enough time to go on a detour to a

certain terrace that my Edharian fraas and suurs and I had built soon

after we had come to this place. Unlike most of the terraces, which

were beginning to sprout plants that would eventually grow up into

tangles, this one was covered with scrap-metal trellises that would one

day support library vines. Some months ago, Fraa Haligastreme had paid

us a visit from Edhar, and he’d brought with him root stock from

Orolo’s old vineyard. We’d planted it in the ground beneath these

trellises, and since then visited it frequently to see whether the

vines, in a fit of pique, were committing suicide. But they were

sending out new growth all over the place. We were near the equator,

but almost two miles high, so the sun was intense but the weather was

cool. Who would’ve thought that rockets and grapevines liked the same

sorts of places?


As we were walking back down to the lake’s

edge, Quin—who had been silent for a while—cleared his throat. “You

mentioned that there were certain things you have to leave behind when

you enter this new Magisterium,” he reminded me. “Does that include

religion?”


One measure of how much things had changed

was that this didn’t make me the least bit nervous. “I’m glad you

brought that up,” I said. “I noticed that Artisan Flec came with you.”


“Flec’s been going through rough times,”

Quin wanted me to know. “His wife divorced him. Business hasn’t been so

good. The whole Warden of Heaven thing sent him into a tailspin. He

just needed to get out of town. Then, Barb spent the whole drive, er…”


“Planing him?”


“Yeah. Anyway, I just want to say, if his presence here is not appropriate…”


“The rule of thumb we’ve been using is that

Deolaters are welcome as long as they’re not certain they’re right,” I

said. “As soon as you’re sure you’re right, there’s no point in your

being here.”


“Flec’s not sure of anything now,” Quin assured me. Then, after a minute: “Can you even have an Ark, if you’re not sure you’re right? Isn’t it just a social club, in that case?”


I slowed, and pointed to an outcropping of

bedrock that protruded from the curving wall of the crater. Smoke was

braiding up from a fire that had been kindled on its top, before the

entrance of a tent. My fraa was up there burning his breakfast. “Flec

should hike up to Arsibalt’s Dowment,” I suggested. “It is going to be

a center for working on that sort of thing.”


Quin made a wry grin. “I’m not sure if Flec wants to work on it.”


“He just wants to be told?”


“Yes. Or at least, that’s what he’s used to—what he’s comfortable with.”


“I have a few Laterran friends now,” I

said, “and one of them, the other day, was telling me about a

philosopher named Emerson who had some useful upsights about the

difference between poets and mystics. I’m thinking that it’s just as

applicable in our cosmos as it is in his.”


“I’ll bite. What’s the difference?”


“The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning

that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the

other hand, sees that truth while it’s true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.”


“Someone here must have said something like that once,” Quin said.


“Oh, yes. It’s a great time to be a Lorite.

We have a whole contingent of them here, gearing up for the great

project of absorbing the knowledge from the four new cosmi.” I looked

toward the tent-cloister where Karvall and Moyra and their fraas and

suurs had encamped, but they’d not emerged from under canvas yet.

Probably still tying their outfits on. “Anyway, my point is that guys

like Flec have a weakness, almost a kind of addiction, for the

mystical, as opposed to poetic, way of using their minds. And there’s

an optimistic side of me that says such a person could break that

addiction, be retrained to think like a poet, and accept the fluxional

nature of symbols and meaning.”




“Okay, but what’s the pessimistic side telling you?”


“That the poet’s way is a feature of the

brain, a specific organ or faculty, that you either have or you don’t.

And that those who have it are doomed to be at war forever with those

who don’t.”


“Well,” Quin said, “it sounds like you’re going to be spending a lot of time up on that rock with Arsibalt.”


“Well, someone has to keep the poor guy company.”


“For guys like me and Flec, do you have anything? Besides hammering stakes into mud?”


“We are actually

building some permanent structures,” I said, “mostly on the island. The

new Magisterium needs a headquarters. A capitol. You came just in time

to watch the cornerstone being laid.”


“When will that happen?”


I slowed again and checked the position of the bright place in the sky. The sun was almost ready to burn through. “Noon sharp.”


“You have a clock?”


“Working on it.”


“Why today? Is this a special day in your calendar?”


“It will be after today,” I said. “Day Zero, Year Zero.”





Chance or luck had endowed us with half of

a causeway to the island: a launch gantry that had gone down like a

tall tree in a gust of wind. It was twisted, fractured, and half

melted, but still more than able to bear the weight of humans and

wheelbarrows. Halfway from shore to island, it ramped beneath the

surface. Beyond there we had extended it with pontoons of closed-cell

foam, anchored by scavenged cables to the submerged part of the gantry.

The last few hundred yards still had to be managed on small boats. Yul

liked to swim it. “We would like to build a simple cable-car system,” I

told Quin, as we rowed across the gap, “but it is a serious praxic

challenge to anchor a tower in the soil of the island, which is still

loose. That might be something where father and son could work

together.” For Quin, Barb, and I were all crossing together. I don’t

think Barb had come along for the companionship so much as because

the breeze had shifted and carried the scent of cooking food from

island to shore. From his perch in the bow, Barb had already identified

the barbecue pits and other such attractions he would be visiting

first. “You have an oven!” he exclaimed, pointing to a smoking masonry

dome that had just interrupted the skyline.


“That was the first permanent thing we

built. Arsibalt started it and Tris finished it. Later we’ll build a

kitchen, then a Refectory around it.”


“How about messallans?” Barb asked.


“Maybe a couple of those too,” I allowed, “for those who just can’t get along without servitors.”


“So, this will become the Concent of Saunt Orolo?” Quin asked me.


I hesitated, and shipped the oars, not wanting to clobber Yul, who was wading out to come and tow us in. “It’ll be the something of Saunt Orolo,” I assured Quin. “But we are a little uneasy with the word Concent.

We need a new word. Hey, Barb!” For Barb was about to jump off and wade

to shore in quest of food. He didn’t hear me, but Yul—who had his big

wet hand clamped on our gunwale now—touched Barb’s arm, and pointed to

me. Barb turned around. “I will not drown,” he assured me, as if

calming a fretful child, “my clothes are made from non-absorbent

fibers.”


“You won’t eat, either. That food is for later.”


“How much later?”


“You’re going to have to sit through two

auts,” I said. “One at noon. The second immediately after. Then, for

the rest of the day, we eat.”


“What time is it?”


“Let’s go ask Jesry.”


Jesry’s clock was taking shape on the

summit of the island. It was another of those projects that would not

be finished in our natural lifetimes—but at least it was ticking!

Jesry’s ideas on how to build “the real one” were so advanced that I

could not understand half of them. But we had insisted he have

something working for today. He and Cord had been toiling for a couple

of months, building and breaking prototypes. The pace of the work had

quickened as Cord had gathered in

more tools. When Barb, Quin, and I hiked to the top, Cord was absent,

having been called away to other preparations. Jesry was up there alone

with his machines, like a half-mad holy hermit, watching through

goggles as a spot of blinding light crept across a slab of synthetic

stone. It was cast by a parabolic mirror that we had all taken a hand

in grinding. “Lucky the sun came out,” he said, by way of greeting.


“It often does, this time of day,” I said.


“You ready?”


“Yeah, Arsibalt is a few minutes behind us, and I saw Tulia and Karvall putting their heads together, so…”


“Not for that,” he said. “I mean, are you ready for the other thing?”


“Oh, that?”


“Yeah, that.”


“Sure,” I said, “never been readier.”


“You, my fraa, are a liar.”


“How much time?” I asked, feeling a change of subject was in order.


He pulled his goggles back down over his

eyes, judged the distance between the spot of light and a length of

wire that lay helpless in its path. “A quarter of an hour,” he decreed.

“See you there.”


“Okay, Jesry.”


“Raz? Any Deolaters down there?”


“Probably. Why?”


“Then ask them to pray that this contraption doesn’t fall apart in the next fifteen minutes.”


“Will do.”


We got to the site of the aut by following

the trigger line down from the clock. The island had very little flat

space, but we had created one just big enough for the cornerstone by

scraping it out with hand tools and pounding it flat. Above it Yul had

welded together a tripod from scrap steel. The stone—a fragment of the

actual rod that the Geometers had thrown from space—was suspended from

the tripod’s apex. It had been shaped to a cube by avout stonemasons,

of whom we already had several. of savant orolo was carved into

one face—we’d fill in the blank later, when we’d found a suitable

word—and year 0 of the second reconstitution was on another. On a third

face—which would be hidden when the structure was built—we’d all been

scratching our names. I invited Barb and Quin to add theirs.


Barb got so involved in it that I don’t

think he heard a word or a note of the aut and the music that Arsibalt,

Tulia, and Karvall had put together for us. But neither did I. I had

other matters on my mind, and was too busy, anyway, marveling at all

who’d showed up for the event: Ganelial Crade. Ferman Beller, with a

couple of Bazian monks in tow. Three of Jesry’s siblings. Estemard and

his wife. A contingent of Orithenans. Fraa Paphlagon and Emman Beldo.

Geometers of all four races, equipped with nose tubes.


As noon drew near, we launched into a

version of the Hylaean Anathem that Arsibalt had chosen for what he

called its “temporal elasticity,” meaning that if the clock

malfunctioned we’d be able to cover it up. But at some point—I have no

idea whether it was even close to true solar noon—I saw Jesry spring up

out of his clock-hovel, fling his goggles aside, and take off toward us

at a run. I could tell by his gait that the news was good. The trigger

line was getting noticeably tighter. I looked over at Yul, who was

under the tripod, and drew my thumb across my throat. He grabbed Barb

in a bear hug and jerked him back to safety. A moment later, a

mechanism snapped and the stone dropped into its place with a thud that

we all felt in our ankles. There was applause and cheering, which I

didn’t really get to take part in since Arsibalt—presiding at a

lectern, and leading the Anathem—was staring into my eyes and jerking

his head in the direction of a tent a short ways up the hill. “Okay,” I

mouthed, and obeyed.


Yul reached the tent a few moments after I

did. He helped me change into a fancy Tredegarh-style bolt while I

helped him put on a formal going-to-Ark suit. And both of us proved so

incompetent at our respective tasks that these preparations outlasted

the aut, and led to audible restlessness and rude comments from the

crowd milling around just on the other side of the canvas. Emman Beldo

had to tear himself away from bothering Suur Karvall, come into the tent,

and intervene on Yul’s behalf. Meanwhile my overwraps were pleated and

fixed into place by, of all people, Fraa Lodoghir, who had showed up

probably to make sure that Saunt Orolo’s would include an influential

Procian faculty.


Yul and I dithered and swapped after-yous

at the threshold—which was obviated when the threshold ceased to exist.

Lio and some of the Valers had lost patience, cut the tent’s guy ropes,

and swept it off over our heads, like unveiling a couple of statues.


And, as a matter of fact, statues is

probably what we acted like when we caught sight of Ala and Cord, who

had done a much better job of getting dressed. I’d expected that my

bride would be garlanded with starblossom and other invasive species.

But I understood, now, that Quin’s fetch had been loaded with proper

flowers, raised in faraway fields and hothouses.


The aut was a little complicated, since I

had to give away Yul’s bride, but it had all been worked out by better

minds. Cord and Yul were joined in matrimony by Magister Sark, who

pulled it off pretty well, considering he’d been up until three A.M.

in Dialog with Arsibalt over bottles of wine. He used the occasion to

uncork one of his amazing, exasperating sermons, filled with wisdom and

upsight and human truths, fettered to a cosmographical scheme that had

been blown out of the water four thousand years ago.


When Sark’s part of the ceremony was

complete, I, seconded by Jesry, and Ala, backed up by Tulia, came

together in the presence of Fraa Paphlagon, and, to the accompaniment

of a joyous song, and the distant rumble of Ma Cartas rolling over in

her chalcedony sarcophagus, joined ourselves together in a Perelithian

liaison.


It was traditional for the presiding fraa

or suur to deliver some remarks, so we came to a place in the aut when

all of the avout fell silent and turned their eyes to Fraa Paphlagon.

This could have been awkward, since there was no avoiding the fact that

the listeners would view his words, not entirely in their own light,

but as a counterbalance to what Magister Sark had said. I thought it

good that Paphlagon did not try to sneak around this.


“Since we pride ourselves on our Dialogs,

let me welcome Magister Sark as a respected interlocutor. In his words

I clearly see the traces left,

thousands of years ago, when one of his forebears hit on an upsight and

a way of expressing it that, for that moment, were true. As when the

parts of a clock tick into alignment, and a pin falls into a slot, and

something happens: a gate swings open, there’s a little Apert, and

through it, a glimpse into the next cosmos. Or—in light of recent

developments—perhaps I should say a next cosmos.”

As he was saying this, Paphlagon looked around and made eye contact

with Urnudans, Troäns, Laterrans, and Fthosians. “Those who were there

when that gate opened, knew it for a real upsight, wrote it down, made

it part of their religion—which is a way of saying that they did all

that was in their power to pass it on to the ones they loved. We can,

on some other occasion, have a lively debate as to whether they

succeeded; I regret to say that in my case they did not.”


I couldn’t help looking over at Ganelial

Crade to see how he was reacting. I saw no trace of the old fuming

resentment that had used to come over him when he felt that we were

disrespecting his beliefs. Something had changed for him at Orithena.


“We are gathered at a place named after

Fraa Orolo, who was a fid of mine for a little while,” Paphlagon

continued. “When he was only a little older than some of you,” and here

he looked at me and Ala, then Jesry, Tulia, and the others who had come

from Edhar or from the Convox, “he spoke to me once of why he had made

Eliger with my Order. For he could have left the mathic world at Apert

and found a life in the Sæculum, or, having decided to remain a fraa,

he might just as well have joined the New Circle. Orolo said that the

more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos with which

it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was

to see it as a kind of miracle—not in quite the same sense that our

Deolaters use the term, for he considered it altogether natural. He

meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate

matter was more beautiful and more extraordinary than any of the

miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world.

And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought,

religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and

in so doing sought to draw limits

around it. That’s why he’d chosen the path that he had. Now the coming

of our friends from Urnud, Tro, Earth, and Fthos has demonstrated

certain things about how the polycosm works that we had only speculated

about before. We must all of us re-examine everything we know and

believe in the light of these revelations. That is the work that begins

here now. It is a great and gradual beginning that encompasses many

smaller but no less beautiful beginnings—such as the union of Ala and

Erasmas.”


I almost missed my cue. But I felt Ala

swinging around toward me. We came together, there on the rubble, and

found each other. You might find it odd that a story like this one ends

with a kiss, as if it were a popular speely, or a comedy acted out on a

stage. But in that we started so many things in that moment, we brought

to their ends many others that have been the subject matter of this

account, and so here is where I draw a line across the leaf and call it

the end.






















GLOSSARY




A.R.: Year of the

Reconstitution. Arbre’s dating system defines Year 0 as the year in

which the Reconstitution took place; any year prior to that is assigned

a negative number, any year that is expressed as a positive number or,

equivalently, followed by A.R., happened afterwards.


Adrakhonic Theorem: An

ancient theorem from plane geometry, attributed to Adrakhones, the

founder of the Temple of Orithena, stating that, in a right triangle,

the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the

other two sides. Equivalent to the Pythagorean Theorem on Earth.


Allswell: A naturally

occurring chemical that, when present in sufficient concentrations in

the brain, engenders the feeling that everything is basically fine. Its

level may be artificially adjusted by, e.g., consuming blithe.


Analemma: A shape like

a slender, elongated figure eight, observed by astronomers who track

the way the sun’s apparent movement across the sky varies from day to

day over the course of a year.


Anathem: (1) In

Proto-Orth, a poetic or musical invocation of Our Mother Hylaea, used

in the aut of Provener, or (2) an aut by which an incorrigible fraa or

suur is ejected from the mathic world.


Apert: The aut in which a math opens its gates for a period of ten days, during which time the avout are free to come and go extramuros,

and Sæculars are free to come in, sightsee, and talk to the avout.

Depending on the math, Apert is celebrated every one, ten, hundred, or

thousand years.


Arbortect: One who genetically engineers new species of trees.


Arbre: The name of the planet on which Anathem is set.


Ark: Equivalent to a church, temple, synaogue, etc., on Earth.


Atlanian: See Liaison, Atlanian.


Aut: A rite observed in

the mathic world. Some of the more important and commonly celebrated

auts are Provener, Eliger, Regred, and Requiem. Rarely celebrated rites

include Anathem, Voco, and Inbrase.


Avout: A person sworn to the Cartasian Discipline and therefore dwelling in the mathic, as opposed to Sæcular, world.


Baritoe, Saunt: (1) A

noblewoman of the mid-Praxic Age, the hostess and the leader of the

Sconics. (2) A concent of the same name, one of the Big Three.


Baz: Ancient city-state that later created an empire encompassing the known world.


Bazian Orthodox: The

state religion of the Bazian Empire, which survived the Fall of Baz,

erected, during the succeeding age, a mathic system parallel to and

independent of that inaugurated by Cartas, and endured as one of

Arbre’s largest faiths.


Big Three: The Concents

of Saunt Muncoster, Saunt Tredegarh, and Saunt Baritoe, all relatively

old, wealthy, distinguished, and close together.


Blithe: A weed that was genetically altered to produce the brain chemical known as Allswell. Forbidden to the avout.


Bly, Saunt: A theor of

the Concent of Saunt Edhar who was Thrown Back and lived out the

remainder of his days as a Feral on a butte, later known as Bly’s

Butte. According to legend, he was worshipped as a god by the local

slines, who eventually killed him and ate his liver.


Book, The: A tome

filled with subtly incoherent material, which misbehaving avout are

forced to study as a form of penance. Divided into chapters, the

difficulty of which grows exponentially.




Bulshytt: Speech

(typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs

euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such

rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been

said.


Calca: An explanation,

definition, or lesson that is instrumental in developing some larger

theme, but that has been moved aside from the main body of the dialog

and encapsulated in a footnote or appendix.


Cartabla: A portable location-finding and map-display gadget, like a GPS unit on Earth.


Cartas, Saunt: An

educated Bazian noblewoman who, after the Fall of Baz, founded the

first math and created the Discipline that was followed all throughout

the Old Mathic Age and, with certain renovations, in the mathic world

following the Reconstitution.


Cartasian Discipline:

The set of rules prescribed by Saunt Cartas, who is credited with

having brought the mathic world into being following the Fall of Baz.

An avout is a person who has taken an oath to observe the Discipline.


Causal Domain: A collection of things mutually linked in a web of cause-and-effect relationships.


Centenarian: An avout

sworn not to emerge from the math or to have contact with the outside

world until the next Centennial Apert. Informally, “Hundreder.”


Chapter: Local

organizational unit of an Order of avout. Orders generally span the

entire mathic world, and may have local Chapters in any number of

different maths and concents. Commonly, as for example at Edhar, a math

will comprise two or more distinct Chapters, belonging to different

Orders.


Chronicle: Log of all events, great and small, taking place within a math or concent. Assiduously maintained and archived by hierarchs.


Chronochasm: In Mathic

architecture, the space in the interior of a clock tower housing the

workings of the clock and related equipment such as dials, bells, etc.


Cnoön: According to Protan metatheorics, the pure, eternal, changeless entities, such as geometric shapes, theorems, numbers, etc.,

that belong to another plane of existence (the Hylaean Theoric World)

and that are somehow perceived or discovered (as opposed to fabricated)

by working theors.


Cnoüs: Ancient

historical figure famous for having a vision in which he claimed to see

into another, higher world. The vision was interpreted in two different

and incompatible ways by his daughters Hylaea and Deät.


Collect: Used as a

verb, to accept a newcomer into a math from extramuros during Apert.

Typically the newcomer is within a few years of his or her tenth

birthday. Used as a noun to denote such a newcomer.


Concent: A relatively

large community of avout in which two or more maths exist side by side.

In general, Centenarian and Millenarian orders are only to be found in

concents, as practical considerations make it difficult for them to

exist as freestanding maths.


Convox: A large

convocation of avout from maths and concents all over the world.

Normally celebrated only at Millennial Apert or following a sack, but

also convened in highly exceptional circumstances at the request of the

Sæcular Power.


Cosmi: Plural of cosmos. A coinage necessary for discoursing of polycosmic theorics.


Cosmographer: In Earth terms, an astronomer/astrophysicist/ cosmologist.


Counter-Bazian:

Religion rooted in the same scriptures, and honoring the same prophets,

as Bazian Orthodoxy, but explicitly rejecting the authority, and

certain teachings, of the Bazian Orthodox faith.


DAG: See Directed Acyclic Graph.


Datonomy: An approach

to philosophy rooted in the work of the Sconics and based on rigorous

study of data, or, literally, givens, meaning what is given to our

minds by our sensory apparatus.


Deät: One of the two

daughers of Cnoüs, the other being Hylaea. She interpreted her father’s

vision as meaning that he had glimpsed a heavenly spiritual kingdom

populated by angelic beings and ruled by a supreme creator.


Decenarian: An avout sworn not to emerge from the math or to have contact with the outside world until the next Decennial Apert. Informally, “Tenner.”


Deolater: One who favors Deät’s interpretation of her father Cnoüs’s vision and therefore believes in a Heaven with a God in it. Compare Physiologer.


Dialog, Peregrin: A

Dialog in which two participants of roughly equal knowledge and

intelligence develop an idea by talking to each other, typically while

out walking around.


Dialog, Periklynian: A competitive Dialog in which each participant seeks to destroy the other’s position (see Plane).


Dialog, Suvinian: A Dialog in which a mentor instructs a fid, usually by asking the fid questions, as opposed to speaking discursively.


Dialog: A discourse,

usually in formal style, between theors. “To be in Dialog” is to

participate in such a discussion extemporaneously. The term may also

apply to a written record of a historical Dialog; such documents are

the cornerstone of the mathic literary tradition and are studied,

re-enacted, and memorized by fids. In the classic format, a Dialog

involves two principals and some number of onlookers who participate

sporadically. Another common format is the Triangular, featuring a

savant, an ordinary person who seeks knowledge, and an imbecile. There

are countless other classifications, including the suvinian, the

Periklynian, and the peregrin.


Diax’s Rake: A pithy

phrase, uttered by Diax on the steps of the Temple of Orithena when he

was driving out the fortune-tellers with a gardener’s rake. Its general

import is that one should never believe a thing only because one wishes

that it were true. After this event, most Physiologers accepted the

Rake and, in Diax’s terminology, thus became Theors. The remainder

became known as Enthusiasts.


Diax: An early

physiologer at the Temple of Orithena, credited with driving out the

Enthusiasts, founding theorics, and placing it on a solid, rigorous

intellectual footing.


Directed Acyclic Graph:

An arrangement of nodes connected by one-way links (think boxes

connected by arrows) so arranged that it is not possible to follow the

links around in a circle.




Discipline: See Cartasian Discipline.


Dowment: In its most

general usage, any wealth accumulated and held by a Lineage in the

mathic world. Almost always used to refer to a building and its

contents.


Doyn: At Concents that

observe the mealtime tradition of the Messal, a senior avout who has

the privilege of sitting at the table and being waited on by a servitor.


Drummon: A large wheeled vehicle used extramuros to transport heavy freight on roads.


Ecba: A volcanic island in the Sea of Seas, home of the Temple of Orithena until the catastrophic eruption of-2621.


Edhar: A Saunt

belonging to the Evenedrician order who in 297 established a new order

and later founded a concent, where he lived until he died; both the

order and the concent ended up being named after him. The full name of

the latter is “The Concent of Saunt Edhar” but in common usage this is

often shortened to “Saunt Edhar” or simply “Edhar.”


Eleven: The list of

plants forbidden intramuros, typically because of their undesirable

pharmacological properties. The Discipline states that any specimen

noticed growing in the math is to be uprooted and burned without delay,

and that the event is to be noted in the Chronicle.


Eliger: The aut by

which a fid chooses, and is chosen by, a specific chapter in his or her

math, and thereby ceases to be a fid. Typically celebrated within a few

years of the age of twenty.


Enthusiast: Disparaging

term for those early Physiologers at Orithena who were driven out by

Diax because of their unwillingness or inability to think rigorously.


Erasmas: A fraa at

Saunt Baritoe’s in the Fourteenth Century A.R. who, along with

Uthentine, founded the branch of metatheorics called Complex Protism.

Also, his namesake, a fraa at Saunt Edhar’s in the Thirty-seventh

Century who narrates Anathem.


Ethras: A relatively

prosperous and powerful city-state in the ancient world that, during

its Golden Age (circa-2600 to-2300) was home to many theors, including

Thelenes and Protas. The site of many important Dialogs studied,

re-enacted, and memorized by fids.


Etrevanean: See Liaison, Etrevanean.




Evenedric: A protégé of

Halikaarn, credited with carrying Halikaarn’s work forward into the

time of the Reconstitution and helping to found the Semantic Faculties.


Evenedricians: An early offshoot of the Halikaarnians.


Everything Killer: A

weapons system of unusual praxic sophistication, thought to have been

used to devastating effect in the Terrible Events. The belief is widely

held, but unproved, that the complicity of theors in the development of

this praxis led to universal agreement that they should henceforth be

segregated from non-theorical society, a policy that when effected

became synonymous with the Reconstitution.


Evoke: To call out an avout in the aut of Voco.


Extra: Slightly disparaging term used by avout to refer to Sæcular people.


Extramuros: The world outside the walls of the math; the Sæcular world.


Faanians: An early offshoot of the Procians.


Fendant: See Warden Fendant.


Feral: A literate and

theorically minded person who dwells in the Sæculum, cut off from

contact with the mathic world. Typically an ex-avout who has renounced

his or her vows or been Thrown Back, though the term is also

technically applicable to autodidacts who have never been avout.


Fetch: A wheeled

vehicle used extramuros, typically by artisans, to transport small

amounts of freight, tools, etc. Typically larger and less comfortable

than a mobe.


Fid: A young avout; an avout who has not yet joined an Order. See Eliger.


Fluccish: The dominant

global language of the Sæcular world. Derived from an ancient

“barbarian” (i.e., non-Orth) language, its vocabulary overlaps with

that of Orth when dealing with abstractions, technical, medical, or

legal terms. When extramuros culture is largely illiterate or aliterate

(which is most of the time), it is written in short-lived, ad hoc

writing systems such as Kinagrams or Logotype, but it can also be

transcribed using the same alphabet as is employed for Orth.


Fraa: A male avout.




Gardan’s Steelyard: (1)

A rule of thumb stating that when one is comparing two hypotheses,

preference should be given to the one that is simpler. Also referred to

as Saunt Gardan’s Steelyard or simply the Steelyard.


Gheeth: An informal term, verging on an ethnic slur, for a particular ethnic group in the Sæcular world.


Graduation: A procedure

by which an avout belonging to a Unarian, Decenarian, or Centenarian

math may move up to (respectively) the adjoining Decenarian,

Centenarian, or Millenarian math, traditionally by passing through a

labyrinth that bridges the two maths in question.


Grandfraa: An informal

term of respect by which an avout might address a very senior fraa,

especially, but not necessarily, one who has celebrated the aut of

Regred.


Grandsuur: An informal

term of respect by which an avout might address a very senior suur,

especially, but not necessarily, one who has celebrated the aut of

Regred.


HTW: See Hylaean Theoric World.


Halikaarn: A Saunt from

the last decades of the Praxic Age who clashed with his contemporary,

Proc. Sometimes called Saunt Halikaarn the Great. Broadly speaking,

Halikaarn is seen as the standard-bearer of the school of theorics

promulgated thousands of years earlier by Protas and Thelenes and

carried forward after his death by his disciple Evenedric and the

Semantic Faculties.


Halikaarnian: Of, or

relating to, Saunt Halikaarn or any of the Orders that claim descent

from the Semantic Faculties. Frequently seen as natural opponents of

Procians and Faanians.


Harbinger: One of a

series of three calamities that engulfed most of Arbre during the last

decades of the Praxic Age and later came to be seen as precursors or

warnings of the Terrible Events. The precise nature of the Harbingers

is difficult to sort out because of destruction of records (many of

which were stored on syntactic devices that later ceased functioning)

but it is generally agreed that the First Harbinger was a worldwide

outbreak of violent revolutions, the Second was a world war, and the

Third was a genocide.




Hemn space: What is called configuration, state, or phase space on Earth.


Hierarch: One of a

specialized caste of avout whose responsibilities include the

administration of maths and concents, interaction with the Sæcular

world and with hierarchs in other maths, defense of the math from

Sæcular molestation, policing, and maintenance of the Discipline.


Hundred, to go: To lose one’s mind, to become mentally unsound, to stray iredeemably from the path of theorics.


Hundreder: Informal term for a Centenarian (see).


Hylaea: One of the two

daughters of Cnoüs, the other being Deät. She interpreted her father’s

vision as meaning that he had glimpsed a higher and more perfect world

(the Hylaean Theoric World or HTW) populated by pure geometric forms,

crudely copied by geometers in this world.


Hylaean Theoric World:

The name used by most adherents of Protism to denote the higher plane

of existence populated by perfect geometric forms, theorems, and other

pure ideas (cnoöns)


Hypotrochian Transquaestiation:

Only one of a very large number of rhetorical tactics drilled into

fids, particularly those under the tutelage of Procians. It means to

change the subject in such a way as to assert, implicitly, that a

controversial point has already been settled one way or the other.


Iconography: An

oversimplified and, in most cases, wildly inaccurate schema used by

Sæculars to make sense of what little they know of the mathic world,

often taking the form of a conspiracy theory or an allusion to

characters and situations from popular entertainments.


Icosahedron: A roughly spherical geometric figure with twenty faces, each of which is an equilateral triangle.


Inbrase: A rarely celebrated aut in which Peregrins are welcomed back into the mathic world following a journey through the Sæculum.


Incanter: A legendary

figure, associated in folklore with Halikaarnian orders, said to be

able to alter physical reality by the incantation of certain coded

words or phrases.




Inquisition: Global

body charged with maintaining uniform standards of the Discipline

across all maths and concents, typically acting through the Wardens

Regulant.


Inviolate: One of the

three Millenarian maths that was never breached during the seven

decades of the Third Sack. The Three Inviolates were at the Concents of

Saunt Edhar, Saunt Rambalf, and Saunt Tredegarh.


Ita: A caste dwelling

in the mathic world but segregated from the avout, responsible for all

functions having to do with syntactic devices and the Reticulum.


Jeejah: Ubiquitous

handheld electronic device used by Sæculars, combining functions of

mobile telephone, camera, network browser, etc. Forbidden in the mathic

world.


Jumpweed: A ubiquitous weed that when chewed acts as a stimulant. Psychoactive in larger doses. One of the Eleven.


Kedev: A devotee of the Kelx or Triangle faith.


Kefedokhles: A smug, pedantic interlocutor.


Kelx: (1) A religious faith created during the Sixteenth or Seventeenth Century A.R. The name is a contraction of the Orth Ganakelux

meaning “Triangle place,” so called because of the symbolic importance

of triangles in the faith’s iconography. (2) An ark of the Kelx faith.


Kinagrams: A simple set of ideograms used by Sæculars in place of a written language per se.


Laboratorium: At a

Convox, a daily work session, typically in the morning, in which the

attendees gather in groups to which they have been assigned by the

hierarchs and pursue specific projects.


Lesper’s Coordinates: Also called Saunt Lesper’s Coordinates. Equivalent to Cartesian coordinates on Earth.


Liaison, Atlanian: An

unusual type of liaison between a Tenner and a partner who dwells

extramuros, therefore only capable of being consummated every ten years.


Liaison, Etrevanean: A liaison roughly equivalent to going steady in the Sæcular world.


Liaison, Perelithian: A liaison equivalent to marriage in the Sæcular world.


Liaison, Tivian: The most casual and ephemeral type of liaison.




Liaison: A relationship, typically sexual or at least romantic, in the mathic world.


Lineage, Old: According

to some traditions, an unbroken chain of mentors and fids beginning

with Metekoranes and extending all the way to the era in which Anathem

is set, and as such, constituting a community of theors more ancient

than, and separate from, the mathic tradition founded by Saunt Cartas.


Lineage: In general, a

chronological sequence of avout who, prior to the Third Sack reforms,

acquired and held property exceeding the bolt, chord, and sphere, each

conferring the property upon a chosen heir at the moment of death. In

this sense, frequently connected with Dowments. Also, sometimes used as

a shorthand term for the Old Lineage; see Lineage, Old.


Loctor: Informal contraction of Interlocutor, meaning one’s partner in a Dialog.


Logotype: A simple writing system used by Sæculars but, during the time in which Anathem is set, being rendered obsolete by Kinagrams.


Lorite: A member of an

Order founded by Saunt Lora, who believed that all of the ideas that

the human mind was capable of coming up with had already been come up

with. Lorites are, therefore, historians of thought who assist other

avout in their work by making them aware of others who have thought

similar things in the past, and thereby preventing them from

re-inventing the wheel.


Lucub: At a Convox, an

informal work group that, on the members’ own initiative, meets in the

evening to “burn the midnight oil” on some topic of shared interest.


Ma: An informal term of respect by which a fid might address a more senior suur.


Magister: Title bestowed on the clergy of the Kelx faith.


Matarrhite: One of an

Order founded at the Centenarian math of the Concent of Saunt Beedle’s

between the Second and Third Centennial Aperts. One of the few

explicitly religious Orders of avout. Reclusive even by the standards

of the mathic world. During the Third Sack they fled to an island in

the southern polar regions, where they developed various distinctive

cultural traits, including bolts that covered their entire bodies and an austere cuisine based on the limited range of edible things in their environment.


Math: A relatively

small community of avout (typically fewer than a hundred, sometimes as

small as one). In general, all members of a given math celebrate Apert

on the same schedule, i.e., all of them are either Unarians,

Decenarians, Centenarians, or Millenarians. Compare Concent.


Messal: At certain

(typically larger and older) concents, the traditional way of taking

the evening meal, in which no more than seven senior avout (doyns) are

waited on by an equal number of junior avout (servitors).


Metatheorics:

Equivalent to metaphysics on Earth. The part of human thought that

addresses questions so fundamental that they must be settled before one

can even begin to do productive work in theorics.


Metekoranes: A theor of

ancient times who was buried under volcanic ash in the eruption that

destroyed Orithena. According to some traditions, the founder (probably

unwittingly) of the Old Lineage. See Lineage, Old.


Millenarian: An avout

sworn not to emerge from the math or to have contact with the outside

world until the next Millennial Apert. Informally, “Thousander.”


Mobe: A wheeled passenger vehicle used extramuros.


Muncoster, Saunt: (1) A

theor of the late Praxic Age, responsible for crucial advances in what

is called, on Earth, general relativity. (2) One of the Big Three

concents.


Mynster: At many

concents, the large centrally located building that houses the clock

and that serves as the venue for auts and other gatherings of the

entire population.


Mystagogue: One who is

fond of mysterious thinking and obfuscatory cant. In the Old Mathic

Age, an all too powerful faction during the centuries leading to the

Rebirth. Since then, a pejorative term.


Newmatter: A form of

matter whose atomic nuclei were artificially synthesized and which

therefore has physical properties not found in naturally occurring

elements or their compounds.




One Hundred and Sixty-four: A list of plants allowed to be cultivated within maths by the version of the Discipline current at the time in which Anathem

is set. Expanded from shorter lists found in earlier versions of the

Discipline dating all the way back to Saunt Cartas. The plants on the

list are deemed adequate to supply all nutritional requirements of the

avout as well as filling other needs including medicinal, shade,

erosion control, etc. Compare Eleven.


One-off: Informal term for a Unarian (see).


Orithena: A temple

founded in ancient times by Adrakhones on the Isle of Ecba, later

populated by physiologers who migrated there from all over the ancient

world. Destroyed by a volcanic eruption in-2621, excavated, beginning

in 3000, by avout who founded a new math around the perimeter of the

dig.


Orth: The classical

language used by all classes of people in the Bazian Empire and, during

the Old Mathic Age, used intramuros in both Cartasian maths and Bazian

Orthodox monasteries. The language of science and learned discourse in

the Praxic Age. In a revived and modernized form, the language used at

almost all times by the avout. May also denote the alphabet used to

write it.


Pa: An informal term of respect by which a fid might address a more senior fraa.


Panjandrum: Fraa Orolo’s pejorative term for a high-ranking official of the Sæcular Power.


Penance: Tedious or unpleasant chore assigned as punishment by the Warden Regulant to avout who have violated the Discipline.


Peregrin: (1) In

ancient usage, the epoch beginning with the destruction of the Temple

of Orithena in-2621 and ending several decades later with the

flourishing of the Golden Age of Ethras. (2) A theor who survived

Orithena and wandered about the ancient world, sometimes alone and

sometimes in the company of other such. (3) A Dialog supposedly dating

to this epoch. Many were later written down and incorporated into the

literature of the mathic world. (4) In modern usage, an avout who,

under certain exceptional circumstances, leaves the confines of the

math and travels through the Sæcular world while trying to observe the

spirit, if not the letter, of the Discipline.




Perelithian Liaison: See Liaison, Perelithian.


Periklyne: An open area

in the ancient city-state of Ethras, home to the market, where Golden

Age theors were wont to congregate and engage one another in Dialog.


Physiologer: In the

span of time between Cnoüs and Diax, a thinker who followed the Hylaean

Way, i.e., who favored Hylaea’s interpretation of her father’s vision.

The forerunners of theors and the founders of the Temple of Orithena.

Compare Deolater.


Plane: Used as a verb, utterly to destroy an opponent’s position in the course of a Dialog.


Plenary: In a Convox, an event in which all attendees come together in the same room at the same time for some purpose.


Polycosm: Two or more

universes (cosmi), especially when considered as a system that includes

the possibility of interactions between cosmi.


Præsidium: In Mathic architecture, the tallest structure in a concent, typically the clock tower.


Praxic Age: Period of

Arbre’s history beginning in the century after the Rebirth (therefore,

approximately-500) and ending with the Terrible Events and the

Reconstitution (the year 0). So called because the inhabitants of the

old mathic system, who had dispersed into the Sæcular world after the

Rebirth, put their theorics to work exploring the globe and creating

technology.


Praxic: An applied scientist, an engineer.


Praxis: Technology.


Primate: The highest-ranking hierarch in a math or concent.


Proc: A late Praxic Age

metatheorician, the standard-bearer in his age of the theorical lineage

traceable to the Sphenics, and the progenitor of all orders that trace

their descent to the Syntactic (as opposed to Semantic) Faculties of

the early post-Reconstitution maths. Contrast with Halikaarn.


Procian: Of, or

relating to, Saunt Proc or any of the Orders that claim descent from

the Syntactic Faculties. Frequently seen as natural opponents of

Halikaarnians.


Protan: Of or relating to the ancient Ethran philosopher Protas.


Protas: A student of Thelenes during the Golden Age of Ethras, later

the most important theor in Arbran history. Building on the foundation

laid by Hylaea and later strengthened by the Orithenans, developed the

notion that the objects and ideas that humans perceive and think about

are imperfect manifestations of pure, ideal forms that exist in another

plane of existence.


Protism, Complex: A

relatively recent (Fourteenth Century A.R.) interpretation of

traditional (“Simple”) Protism, positing more than two (possibly

infinitely many) causal domains linked in a Directed Acyclic Graph or

DAG, known, in the most general case, as the Wick. Information about

cnoöns is assumed to flow through the DAG from “more Hylaean” to “less

Hylaean” cosmi.


Protism, Simple: A

retroactive coinage used by Uthentine and Erasmas to contrast the

traditional conception of Protism, which consisted of one Hylaean

Theoric World having a causal relationship to the cosmos in which Arbre

is embedded, to their new scheme, which they dubbed Complex Protism.

See Protism, Complex.


Protism: The philosophy

of Protas. More specifically, the notion that theors perceive pure

ideas from another realm of existence known as the Hylaean Theoric

World.


Provener: The most

commonly observed aut of the mathic world, typically celebrated every

day at noon, and linked to the winding of a clock.


Rake: See Diax’s Rake.


Rambalf: A concent. One of the Three Inviolates.


Rebirth: The historical

event dividing the Old Mathic Age from the Praxic Age, usually dated at

around-500, during which the gates of the maths were thrown open and

the avout dispersed into the Sæcular world. Characterized by a sudden

flowering of culture, theorical advancement, and exploration.


Reconstitution: The

state of affairs that came into being following the Terrible Events,

whereby almost all learned and literate persons were concentrated

together in maths and concents.


Regred: The aut by which a senior avout withdraws from active service and goes into retirement.


Regulant: See Warden Regulant.




Requiem: The aut celebrated to mark the death of an avout.


Ret: See Reticulum.


Reticule: A network; two or more syntactic devices that are able to communicate with one another.


Reticulum: The largest reticulum, joining together the preponderance of all reticules in the world.


Rhetor: A legendary

figure, associated in folklore with Procian orders, said to have the

power of altering the past by manipulating memories and other physical

records.


Ringing Vale: A

mountain valley that gave its name to a math founded there in 17 A.R.,

specializing in study and developments of martial arts and related

topics. See Vale-Lore.


Rod: Military slang. To

bombard a target, typically on the surface of a planet, by dropping a

rod of some dense material on it from orbit. The rod has no moving

parts or explosives; its destructiveness is a consequence of its

extremely high velocity.


Sæcular: Of or pertaining to the non-mathic world.


Sæcular Power: Whatever entity currently wields power in the non-mathic world.


Sæculum: The Sæcular world.


Sack: A breach of the

terms of the Reconstitution in which maths or concents are forcibly

violated and despoiled by Sæcular interlopers. Normally used only to

refer to Sacks-General, in which most or all of the maths and concents

are sacked at the same time.


Samblites: A religious sect tracing its origin back to Saunt Bly, and centered on Bly’s Butte, not far from the Concent of Saunt Edhar.


Sarthian:

Steppe-dwelling horse archers of ancient times, held responsible for

the Fall and Sack of Baz, which ended the Bazian Empire and inaugurated

the Old Mathic Age.


Saunt: A title bestowed on great thinkers.


Sconic: One of a group

of Praxic Age theors who gathered at the house of Lady Baritoe. They

addressed the ramifications of the apparent fact that we do not

perceive the physical universe directly, but only through the

intermediation of our sensory organs.


Sea of Seas: A relatively small but complex body of salt water, connected to Arbre’s great oceans in three places by straits, generally viewed as the cradle of classical civilization.


Semantic Faculties:

Factions within the mathic world, in the years following the

Reconstitution, generally claiming descent from Halikaarn. So named

because they believed that symbols could bear actual semantic content.

The idea is traceable to Protas and to Hylaea before him. Compare Syntactic Faculties.


Sequence: The genetic code of a living organism. In various usages, equivalent to gene, genetic, or DNA on Earth.


Servitor: At Concents that observe the mealtime tradition of the Messal, a junior avout who is assigned to wait on a doyn.


Sline: An extramuros

person with no special education, skills, aspirations, or hope of

acquiring same, generally construed as belonging to the lowest social

class.


Sphenics: A school of

theors well represented in ancient Ethras, where they were hired by

well-to-do families as tutors for their children. In many classic

Dialogs, seen in opposition to Thelenes, Protas, or others of their

school. Their most prominent champion was Uraloabus, who in the Dialog

of the same name was planed so badly by Thelenes that he committed

suicide on the spot. They disputed the views of Protas and, broadly

speaking, preferred to believe that theorics took place entirely

between the ears, with no recourse to external realities such as the

Protan forms. The forerunners of Saunt Proc, the Syntactic Faculties,

and the Procians.


Starhenge: In Earth terms, an observatory, esp. one with multiple telescopes.


Steelyard: See Gardan’s Steelyard.


Suur: A female avout.


Suvin: A school.


Syndev: Contraction of Syntactic Device. A computer.


Syntactic Device: In Earth terms, a computer.


Syntactic Faculties:

Factions within the mathic world, in the years following the

Reconstitution, generally claiming descent from Proc. So named because

they believed that language, theorics, etc., were essentially games

played with symbols devoid of semantic content. The idea is traceable

to the ancient Sphenics, who were frequent opponents of Thelenes and Protas on the Periklyne.


Tangle: A cultivated

plot, roughly hexagonal in plan, supporting a particular set of more or

less genetically engineered food-bearing plant species that, taken

together, supply all of the nutritional requirements for a single

avout. A web of symbiotic relationships among the species bolsters the

health and productivity of the plants while preventing exhaustion of

the soil. In concents that employ the tangle system, each avout is

responsible for maintenance of one tangle; the produce of all of the

tangles is pooled to supply food for the concent. Since a math cannot

observe the Discipline when it is dependent on Sæcular trade for

foodstuffs, the tangle is a fundamental enabling technology for the

Reconstitution.


Teglon: An extremely

challenging geometry problem worked on at Orithena and later, all over

Arbre, by subsequent generations of theors. The objective is to tile a

regular decagon with a set of seven different shapes of tiles, while

observing certain rules.


Tenner: Informal term for Decenarian (see).


Tenth Night: The

traditional conclusion of an Apert, held on its tenth and final night.

A feast served by the math to any and all extramuros visitors who wish

to attend. Also used to transact certain necessary items of business

with the Sæcular Power, such as formal transfer of new Collects from

Sæcular to mathic jurisdiction.


Terrible Events: A

poorly documented worldwide catastrophe thought to have begun in the

year-5. Whatever it was, it terminated the Praxic Age and led

immediately to the Reconstitution.


Thelenes: A great theor

of the Golden Age of Ethras, protagonist of many Dialogs, mentor to

Protas. Executed by the Ethran authorities for irreligious, or at least

disrespectful, teachings.


Theor: Any practitioner of theorics, which see.


Theorician: Nearly

equivalent to theor, but with slightly different connotations.

“theorician” tends to be used of one who is devoted to highly specific,

detailed, technical work, e.g., carrying out elaborate computations.


Theorics: Roughly equivalent to mathematics, logic, science, and philosophy on Earth. The term can fairly be applied to any intellectual

work that is pursued in a rigorous and disciplined manner; it was

coined by Diax to distinguish those who observed the Rake from those

who engaged in wishful or magical thinking.


Thousander: Informal term for a Millenarian (see).


Throw Back: An informal term meaning to subject an avout to the aut of Anathem.


Throwback: An ex-avout who was Anathematized.


Tredegarh: One of the

Big Three concents, named after Lord Tredegarh, a mid-to-late Praxic

Age theor responsible for fundamental advances in thermodynamics.


Triangle Ark: Alternate term for the Kelx faith or one of its arks.


Unarian: An avout sworn

not to emerge from the math or to have contact with the outside world

until the next Annual Apert. Informally, “One-off.”


Upsight: A sudden, usually unlooked-for moment of clear understanding.


Uraloabus: Prominent

Sphenic theor of the Golden Age of Ethras who, if the account of Protas

is to be credited, committed suicide after being planed by Thelenes.


Uthentine: A suur at

Saunt Baritoe’s in the Fourteenth Century A.R. who, along with Erasmas,

founded the branch of metatheorics called Complex Protism.


Vale-lore: Martial arts. Associated with the Ringing Vale (see).


Valer: An avout of the Ringing Vale; one who has, therefore, devoted his or her entire life to the martial arts.


Vlor: An informal contraction of Vale-lore (see).


Voco: A rarely

celebrated aut by which the Sæcular Power Evokes (calls forth from the

math) an avout whose talents are needed in the Sæcular world. Except in

very unusual cases, the one Evoked never returns to the mathic world.


Vout: An avout.

Derogatory term used extramuros. Associated with Sæculars who subscribe

to iconographies that paint the avout in an extremely negative way.


Warden Fendant: A hierarch charged with defending the math or concent from Sæcular interlopers, by all means up to and including physical violence, and typically overseeing a staff of more junior hierarchs trained to carry out such functions.


Warden of Heaven: During the years leading up to the time in which Anathem is set, a popular religious leader who obtained Sæcular power by claiming to embody the wisdom of the mathic world.


Warden Regulant: A

hierarch charged with maintaining the Discipline intramuros, empowered

to conduct investigations and to mete out penance. Technically

subordinate to the Primate but ultimately answerable to the

Inquisition, and empowered to depose the Primate in certain exceptional

circumstances.


Wick: In Complex

Protism, a fully generalized Directed Acyclic Graph in which a large

(possibly infinite) number of cosmi are linked by a more or less

complicated web of cause-and-effect relationships. Information flows

from cosmi that are more “up-Wick” to those that are more “down-Wick”

but not vice versa.














CALCA 1:

Cutting the Cake


A supplement to Anathem by Neal Stephenson






“LET’S SAY THAT EACH serving will be a square, the same width as the spatula. Go ahead and cut in one corner of the pan.”


Dath cut the cake thus:


image


and then made more cuts thus, to produce the four servings I’d asked for:


image




“I can’t believe you’re doing this!” Arsibalt muttered.


“If it worked for Thelenes…” I muttered

back. “Now shut up,” and I turned my attention back to Dath who was

awaiting further instructions. “How many servings do we have there?” I

asked him.


“Four,” he said, slightly unnerved by my ridiculously easy question.


“Now, what if you cut a similar figure but

with sides twice as long? So instead of each side being two units—two

spatula-widths—it would be—?”


“Four units?”


“Yes. We have four servings here already—if you doubled the size of the figure, how many people could we serve then?”


“Well, two times four would be eight.”


“I agree that two times four is eight. Go ahead and try it,” I said. Dath made more cuts thus:


image


Halfway through, he saw his error and made

a wry face, but I encouraged him to keep going until he was finished.

“Sixteen,” he said. “We actually have sixteen servings. Not eight.”


“So, just to review: when we cut a square grid that is two units on a side, we get how many servings?”


“Four.”


“And you just told me that a four-unit grid gives us sixteen. But what if we only wanted eight servings? How many units would our grid have to be?”


“Three?” Dath said, cautiously. Then his eyes dropped to the cake and he counted it out. “No, that gives nine servings.”


“But we’re getting warmer. And now an important thing has changed, which is that you know you don’t know.”




Dath’s eyebrows went up. “That’s important?”


“It’s important to us in here,” I said.


I couldn’t remember what Thelenes had done

next when he had done this with a slave-boy on the Plane six millennia

ago, and had to ask Orolo.


I spun the cake around, presenting Dath

with an unmarked corner. “Go ahead and cut one square big enough for

four servings. You don’t have to cut the individual servings out of it.”


“Can I make lines on the frosting?” he asked.


“If it helps.”


With some hints and nudges from Cord, Dath produced a square like this:


image


“Good,” I said, “now add three more squares just like it.”


Extending lines he’d already made and adding some new ones, Dath enlarged it to this:


image


“Now, remind me, how many servings can we get out of that whole area?”


“Sixteen.”


“All right. Now look only at the square in the lower right-hand corner.”




image


“Is there a way you can divide it exactly in half with only one cut?”


He got ready to slice along one of the

dotted lines, but I shook my head. “Arsibalt here is very particular

about his cake and he wants to be sure no one gets a larger slice than

him.”


“Thank you very much, wise Thelenes,” Arsibalt put in.


I ignored him. “Can you make one cut that’s

guaranteed to satisfy him? The pieces don’t have to be square. Other

shapes are okay—like triangles.”


With that hint, Dath made a cut like this:


image


“Now, do the others the same,” I said. He made it like this:


image


“When you made the first diagonal cut, you cut a square exactly in half, right?”




“Right.”


“And is the same true of the other three diagonal cuts and the other three squares?”


“Of course.”


“So, let’s say I rotate the pan and you look at it this way”:


image


“What shape do you see in the middle there?”


“A square.”


“And how many servings worth of cake are contained in that square?”


“I don’t know.”


“Well, it’s made up of four triangles, right?”


“Yeah.”


“Each of those triangles is half of a small square, right?”


“Right.”


“And how many servings in a small square?”


“Four.”


“So each triangle has enough cake for how many servings?”


“Two.”


“And the square that’s made up from four such triangles has enough cake for—”


“Eight servings,” he said, and then realized: “which is the problem we were trying to solve before!”


“We’ve been trying to solve it the whole time,” I corrected him, “it just takes a minute or two. So, can you cut us eight servings then, please?”


image


“That’s it,” I said.


“We can eat now?”


“Yes. Do you see what just happened?”


“Uh…I cut eight equal servings of cake?”


“You make it sound easy…but it was hard, in

a way,” I said. “Remember, a few minutes ago, you knew how to cut four

servings. That was easy. You knew how to cut sixteen. That was easy

too. Nine, no problem. But you didn’t know how to cut eight.

It seemed impossible. But by thinking it through, we were able to come

up with an answer. And not just an approximate answer, but one that is

perfectly correct.”














CALCA 2:

Hemn (Configuration) Space


A supplement to Anathem by Neal Stephenson




IT JUST SO HAPPENED that in our comings and goings we had kicked over an empty wine bottle, which was resting on the kitchen’s floor like this:


image


The floor had been built up out of strips

of wood, set on edge in a gridlike pattern, which put me in mind of a

coordinate plane.


“Get a slate and a piece of chalk,” I said to Barb.


I felt a little guilty bossing him around

like this, but I was cross at him for not helping me with the drain. He

didn’t seem to mind, and it didn’t take him long to fulfill the

request, since slates and chalks were all over the kitchen. We used

them to write out recipes and lists of ingredients.




“Now indulge me for a second and write down the coordinates of that bottle on the floor.”


“Coordinates?”


“Yes. Think of this pattern as a Lesper’s

coordinate grid. Let’s say each square in the floor pattern is one

unit. I’ll put a potato down here, to mark out the origin.”


image


“Well, in that case the bottle is at about

(2, 3),” Barb said, and worked with the chalk for a moment. Then he

tipped the slate my way:



x






y


2






3



“Now, this is already a configuration

space—just about the simplest one you could possibly imagine,” I told

him. “And the bottle’s location, (2, 3), is a point in that space.”


“It’s the same as regular two-dimensional space then,” he complained. “Why didn’t you say so?”


“Can you add another column?”


“Sure.”


“Notice that the bottle isn’t straight.

It’s rotated by something like a tenth of p—or in the units you used to

use extramuros, about twenty degrees. That rotation is going to become

a third coordinate in the configuration space—a third column on your

slate.”


Barb went to work with the chalk and produced this:


image


“Okay, now it’s starting to look like

something different from plain old two-dimensional space,” he said.

“Now it’s got three dimensions, and the third one isn’t normal. It’s

like something I had to learn once in my suvin—”


“Polar coordinates?” I asked, impressed that he knew this. Quin must have spent a lot of money to send him to a good suvin.


“Yeah! An angle, instead of a distance.”


“Okay, let’s learn something about how this

space behaves,” I proposed. “I’ll move the bottle, and whenever I say

‘mark,’ you punch in its current coordinates.”


I dragged the bottle a short distance while giving it a bit of a twist. “Mark.”


image



x






y






iamge


2






3






20



“Mark. Mark. Mark…”




image



x






y






iamge


2






3






20


3






3.5






70



I said, “So, this set of points in

configuration space is like what we’d get if I accidentally kicked the

bottle and sent it skidding and spinning across the floor. Would you

agree?”



x






y






iamge


2






3.






20


3






3.5






70


4






4.






120


5






4.5






170


6






5






220


7






5.5






270


8






6.






320



“Sure. That’s kind of what I was thinking!”


“But I moved it in slow motion to make it easier for you to take down the data.”


Barb didn’t know what to make of this very

weak attempt at humor. After an awkward pause, I plowed ahead: “Can you

make a plot now? A three-dimensional plot of those numbers?”


“Sure,” Barb said uncertainly, “but it’s going to be weird.”


image




“The dotted line track on the bottom shows just the x and the y,” Barb explained. “The track that it made across the floor.”


“That’s okay—it’d be confusing otherwise,

if you’re not used to configuration space,” I said. “Because part of

it—the xy track that you plotted with a dotted line—looks just like

something that we all recognize from Adrakhonic space; it just shows

where the bottle went on the floor. But the third dimension, showing

the angle, is a completely different story. It doesn’t show a literal

distance in space. It shows an angular displacement—a rotation—of the

bottle. Once you understand that, you can read it directly off the

graph and say ‘yeah, I see, it started out at twenty degrees and spun

around to three hundred and some degrees while it was skidding across

the floor.’ But if you don’t know the secret code, it doesn’t make any

sense.”


“So what’s it good for?”


“Well, imagine you had a more complicated

state of affairs than one bottle on the floor. Suppose you had a

bottle, and a potato. Then you’d need a ten-dimensional configuration

space to represent the state of the bottle-potato system.”


“Ten!?”


“Five for the bottle and five for the potato.”


“How do you get five!? We’re only using three dimensions for the bottle!”


“Yeah, but we are cheating by leaving out two of its rotational degrees of freedom,” I said.


“Meaning—?”


I squatted down and put my hand on the

bottle. The label happened to be pointed toward the floor. I rolled it

over. “See, I’m rotating it around its long axis so that I can read the

label,” I pointed out. “That rotation is a completely separate,

independent number from the kick-spinning rotation that you plotted on

your slate. So we need an extra dimension for it.” Grabbing the bottle,

and keeping its heel pressed against the floor, I now tilted it up so

that its neck was pointed up from the floor at an angle, like an

artillery piece. “And what I’m doing here is yet another completely

independent rotation.”


“So we’re up to five,” Barb said, “for the bottle alone.”


“Yeah. To be fully general, we’d want to add a sixth dimension, to

keep track of vertical movement,” I said, and raised the bottle up off

the floor. “So that would make six dimensions in our configuration

space just to represent the position and orientation of the bottle.” I

set the bottle down again. “But as long as we keep it on the floor we

can get along with five.”


“Okay,” Barb said. He only said this when he totally got something.


“I’m glad you think so. Thinking in six dimensions is difficult.”


“I just think of it as six columns on my

slate, instead of three,” he said. “But I don’t understand why we need

six completely new dimensions for the potato. Why don’t we just re-use

the six that we’ve already got for the bottle?”


“We sort of do,” I said, “but we keep the

numbers in separate columns. That way, each row of the chart specifies

everything there is to know about the bottle/potato system at a given

moment. Each row—that series of twelve numbers giving the x, the y, and

the z position of the bottle, its kick-spin angle, its label-reading

angle, and its tilt-up angle, and the same six numbers for the

potato—is a point in the twelve-dimensional configuration space. And

one of the ways it starts to get convenient for theors is when we link

points together to make trajectories in configuration space.”


“When you say ‘trajectory’ I think of

something flying through the air,” Barb said, “but I don’t follow what

you mean when you use that word in this twelve-dimensional space that

isn’t like a space at all.”


“Well, let’s make it ultrasimple and

restrict the bottle and the potato to the x-axis,” I said, “and ignore

their rotations.” I moved them around thus:


image




“Can you use your slate to record their x positions?” I asked.


“Sure,” he said, and after a few moments, showed me this:



Bottle’s x






Potato’s x


7






1



“I’m going to smash them into each other,”

I said, “in slow motion, of course. Try to make a record of their

positions, if you would.” And, much as before, I began to move the

potato and the bottle in small increments, calling out “Mark” when I

wanted him to add a new line to his chart.


image


“The bottle’s moving faster,” he observed, as we worked.


“Yeah. Twice as fast.” I ended up holding the potato on top of the bottle at 3.



Bottle’s x






Potato’s x


7






1


6






1.5


5






2.


4






2.5


3






3.



“They just hit each other,” I said, “and so

now they are going to bounce apart. But they are going to move slower,

because the potato got mashed in the collision and some energy was

lost.” With a little over-the-shoulder coaching from me, Barb added

several postsmashup points to the table:





Bottle’s x




Potato’s x


7






1


6






1.5


5






2.


4






2.5


3






3.


3.2






2.5


3.4






2.


3.6






1.5


3.8






1.



“There,” I said, letting go of the

projectiles, and clambering back up to my feet. “Now, all of this

action happened along a straight line. So, this is a one-dimensional

situation, if you keep thinking in Saunt Lesper’s coordinates. Saunt

Hemn, though, would do something here that might strike you as strange.

Hemn would think of each row of the table as specifying a point in a two-dimensional configuration space.”


“Treat each pair as a point,” Barb translated, “so, the beginning point is (7, 1) and so on.”


“That’s right. Can you make a plot of that for me?”


“Sure. It’s trivial.”


image


“That’s weird!” Barb exclaimed. “It’s like Saunt Hemn has turned the whole situation inside out.”


“Well, give me the chalk for a minute and

I’ll annotate it in ways that will help you make sense of it,” I said.

A few minutes later, we had something that looked like this:




image


“The collision line,” I said, “is nothing

other than the set of all points where the bottle and the potato happen

to be at the same place—where their coordinates are equal to each

other. And any theor, looking at this plot, even without knowledge of

the physical situation—the bottle, the potato, the floor—can see right

away that there is something special about that line. The state of the

system progresses in an orderly and predictable fashion until it

touches that line. Then something exceptional happens. The trajectory

makes a hairpin turn. The points become more closely spaced—this means

that the objects are moving more slowly, which means that the system

has lost energy somehow. I don’t expect you to be bowled over by this,

but maybe this can give you an inkling of why theors like to use

configuration space as a way to think about physical systems.”


“There’s got to be more to it than that,” Barb said. “We could have just plotted this in a simpler way.”


“This is simpler,” I insisted. “It is closer to the truth.”


“Are you talking about the Hylaean Theoric

World now?” Barb asked, half whispering and half gloating, as if this

were just about the naughtiest thing that a fraa could do.


“I’m an Edharian,” I answered. “No matter

what some people around here might think…that’s what I am. And

naturally we seek to express what we are thinking in the simplest, most

elegant way possible. In many—no,

most—cases that are interesting to theors, Saunt Hemn’s configuration

space does that better than Saunt Lesper’s space of x, y, and z

coordinates, which you’ve been forced to work in until now.”


Something occurred to Barb: “The bottle and the potato each had six numbers—six coordinates in Hemn space.”


“Yes, in general it takes six numbers to represent the position of something.”


“A satellite in orbit needs six numbers too!”


“Yes—the orbital elements. A satellite in orbit always

needs a six-dimensional Hemn space, no matter which coordinate system

you use. If you’re using Saunt Lesper’s Coordinates, it leads to the

problem you were complaining of earlier—”


“The xs and ys and zs don’t really tell you anything!”


“Yes. But if you transform it into a different

six-dimensional space, using six different numbers, it becomes very

clear, the same way that the bottle-potato scenario became clear when

we chose an appropriate space in which to plot it. For a satellite,

those six numbers are the eccentricity, the inclination, the argument

of perihelion, and three others with complicated names that I’m not

going to rattle off now. But just to name a couple of them: the

eccentricity tells you, at a glance, whether or not the orbit is

stable. The inclination tells you whether it’s polar or equatorial. And

so on.”














CALCA 3:

Complex Versus Simple Protism


A supplement to Anathem by Neal Stephenson




“HERE’S THAT TWO-BOX DIAGRAM we’ve all seen,” Criscan began, and drew something like this in the dust:


image


“The arrow says that entities in the

Hylaean Theoric World are capable of causing effects within the Arbran

Causal Domain but not vice versa. And if you take the trouble to unpack

what it is that people are asserting when they chalk one of these up on

a slate, it boils down to a small set of premises that define what we

call Protism. And I know that you two are well aware of these, but with

your indulgence I’m going to run through them briefly just so that we

can be sure we are starting from the same place.”


“Please do,” I said.


“Be my guest,” Lio said.


“All right. The first assertion is:

entities that are the subject matter of theorics exist independently of

human perceptions, definitions, and constructions. Theors don’t create

them; theors merely discover them. And the second premise is that the

human mind is capable of perceiving such entities; which is exactly what theors are doing, when they discover them.”


“We’re with you so far,” I said.


“Very well,” Criscan said, “now, if you

want to proceed beyond merely rattling off those two premises, you need

to supply an account of how it is that the human mind is capable of

obtaining knowledge about theorical entities, which, according to the

first premise, are non-spatiotemporal and do not stand in a normal

causal relationship to the entities that make up the cosmos as we know

it. And various arguments have been put forward over the millennia as

metatheoricians have tried to supply that account. For example,

Halikaarn took a lot of heat from the Procians because he thought that

our brains contained an organ that was responsible for this.”


“An organ? Like a gland, or something?” Lio asked.


“Some interpreted it that way, which helps

explain why he took so much heat for it. But this was probably a

translation error. Halikaarn was pre-Reconstitution, of course, so he

was not writing in Orth but in one of the minor languages of his day.

The person who translated his works into Fluccish did him a disservice

by choosing the wrong word. Halikaarn wasn’t thinking of something like

a gland. He was thinking of a faculty, an inherent ability of the

brain, not localized in any one specific lump of tissue.”


“That’s a little easier to take seriously,”

I said. “Fine.” Because I had the sense that Criscan was getting ready

to veer off into a long tedious defense of Halikaarn. “So how does this

faculty figure into his account of what’s happening in this diagram?”


“There is some other type of given, other

than what we can detect with our eyes, ears, and so on, that somehow

reaches the Arbran Causal Domain and that is perceived by Halikaarn’s

Organ,” Criscan said.


“That almost raises more questions than it answers,” Lio pointed out.


“It doesn’t answer any questions at all,”

Criscan returned, “this is not really an attempt to answer questions

but a way of setting one’s pieces out

on the board, agreeing on terminology, and so on. So. The theorical

entities in the HTW—triangles, theorems, and other pure concepts—are

called cnoöns.”


“Cnoöns, check!” Lio said.


“Between us and the HTW is a relationship,

the details of which are subject to further debate, which Halikaarn

didn’t name, but it’s symbolized by this arrow, and so people have

ended up calling it Halikaarn’s Arrow.”


“Halikaarn’s Arrow, check!”


“A Halikaarn’s Arrow is a one-way conduit

for givens about the cnoöns. These givens enter the Arbran Causal

Domain through a poorly understood process called the Hylaean Flow and

there impinge on Halikaarn’s Organ, which is how we become aware of

them.”


“Hylaean Flow, check!”


Criscan had decided that he didn’t like Lio

very much, but was making a visible effort to tolerate him. I stepped

into the position of interlocutor, shouldering Lio aside. Lio reacted

melodramatically, sprawling off to the shoulder of the road as if he

had been struck by a speeding fetch. I ignored him. “So,” I said to

Criscan, “now that we have the terminology bolted down, where are we

going with it?”


“Now we’re going to skip ahead a millennium

and a half,” Criscan said, “and talk about the move that Erasmas and

Uthentine made, when they decided to see what happened if they

construed this diagram as just one, particularly simple example of a

Directed Acyclic Graph or DAG. Here ‘directed’ just means ‘arrows are

unidirectional.’ The modifier ‘acyclic’ means that the arrows can’t go

around in a circle, i.e., if we have an arrow from A to B, we can’t

also have an arrow from B to A.”


“Why bother stipulating that, I wonder?”


“The property of being acyclic is required

in order to preserve the fundamental doctrine of Protism: that the

cnoöns are changeless. If it were possible for the arrows to go around

in a circle, it would mean that events in our universe could alter

things in the Hylaean Theoric World.”




“Of course,” I said, “pardon me, that’s obvious now that you mention it.”


“This diagram,” said Criscan, drawing my attention back to his two-box sketch, “just seems wrong, to a metatheorician.”


“What do you mean, just seems wrong? How can you get away with statements like that?”


“It is a legitimate move in metatheorics.

You have to be continually asking yourself, ‘why are things thus, and

not some other way?’ And if you apply that test to this diagram, you

immediately run into a problem: there are exactly two worlds. Not one,

not many, but two. One might draw such a diagram having only one

world—the Arbran Causal Domain—and zero arrows. That would draw very

few objections from metatheoricians (at least, those who are not

Protists). One might, on the other hand, assert ‘there are lots of

worlds’ and then set out to make a case for why that is plausible. But

to say ‘there are two worlds—and only two!’ seems no more supportable

than to say ‘there are exactly 173 worlds, and all those people who

claim that there are only 172 of them are lunatics.’”


“Okay, if you put it that way, I agree that

there is a certain odor of crankiness about it. Like when Deolaters

claim that there are thirty-seven books making up their scripture but

that anyone who proposes a different number must die.”


“Yes, and this accounts, at least in part,

for the way Protism raises hackles in some quarters. So the

Erasmas/Uthentine move is simply to say ‘what’s true of one DAG ought

to be true of another’ and to consider other DAGs having other numbers

of worlds.”


Criscan took up his stick again, and scratched out a diagram like this one:


image


“They called this one the Freight Train,”

Criscan announced. “In the Freight Train topology, there is a (possibly

infinite) plurality of Hylaean

Theoric Worlds that stand in a hierarchical relationship, each ‘more

Protan’ than the last and ‘less Protan’ than the next. This introduces

the notion of Analog Protism. In Simple Protism, being Protan is a

binary, digital property.”


“A world is either Protan, or it isn’t,” I translated.


“Yes. Here, on the other hand, gradations of Protanness are possible.”


“Not just possible,” I pointed out, “they are required.”


“Yes,” Criscan said, a little distractedly, for he was already at work making another diagram.


image


“This is the Firing Squad,” he said. “In

the Firing Squad topology, some number of Hylaean Theoric Worlds are

connected by direct linkages to the Arbran Causal Domain. This

introduces the notion of separate Protan domains that have nothing to

do with one another. In Simple Protism, all possible theoric entities

are lumped together in one box labeled ‘Hylaean Theoric World,’ which

seems to imply that, within that box, they can stand in

cause-and-effect relationships to one another. But perhaps this is not

the case, and each mathematical entity should be isolated in a separate

World as above.”


He now spent a while drawing a much more complex diagram:




image


“The Reverse Delta,” Criscan said. “It has

the topology of a river delta, but the arrows run backwards, hence the

name. The Reverse Delta is most easily summed up by saying that it

combines the properties of the Freight Train and Firing Squad

topologies.”


“Got it,” I said, after a moment’s

thought—for Criscan, I sensed, was testing me. “It’s got Analog

Protism—many gradations of Protanness—and it’s got the idea, from the

Firing Squad, that different cnoöns might have nothing to do with one

another—might come from altogether different Theoric Worlds.”


Criscan did not respond one way or the other, since he was busy with his stick again. “The Strider,” he proclaimed.




image


“Strider? In what way does it stride?” I asked.


“It’s named after a kind of tree—a tropical

species that connects to the ground through multiple root systems. As

you can see, it is similar to a Reverse Delta topology. The only

difference is that the Strider contains more than one inhabited cosmos.

You’ll note I changed the name.”


“Yes. Up until now, it’s always ended with

arrows going to the Arbran Causal Domain. But here you are assuming a

polycosmic scheme—multiple inhabited cosmi, causally disconnected from

one another.”


“That’s right. Causally disconnected, but—and this is important—non-causally correlated

in that they share knowledge of the same cnoöns. The inhabitants of

these other cosmi receive the Hylaean Flow from the same sources as

ours. As a result they could, for example, have the Adrakhonic Theorem

for the same reason we do.


“And this finally leads us to the Wick.”


image


“The Wick is a fully generalized DAG,”

Criscan said. “The Hylaean Flow moves through it from left to

right—from more Protan to less Protan worlds—but here we are taking

Analog Protism to its logical extreme in that no distinction is drawn

between types of worlds.”


“I see ours there,” I said, pointing to the one labeled “Arbran Causal Domain.”


“Yes,” Criscan said, “I did that just to

distinguish it from the others. But it’s no different in principle or

in kind from any of the other cosmi in this diagram; here, all worlds

are potentially habitable cosmi that would look similar to the one that

we live in.”




“Okay, so you have completely dispensed with the idea that there might be a special HTW full of pure ideas,” I said.


Criscan shrugged. “Perhaps there’s something like that somewhere,

way off to the left, but you’re basically right. This is a network of

cosmi like ours. And there is one thing about it that is not shown on

any of the other topologies I’ve drawn, which is—”


“I think I see it,” I said, and tapped my

toe on the “Arbran Causal Domain” box. “In the Wick, we are shown as a

source of the Hylaean Flow for other worlds.”


“Exactly,” Criscan said. “The Wick introduces the notion that our world might, in effect, be the HTW of some other world.”


“Or might be seen that way,” Lio corrected him, “if there was no one in that world, yet, who had thought up the idea of Complex Protism.”


“Yes,” said Criscan, a little surprised to hear such a good point from someone he had written off as a tiresome clown.


“It makes you wonder about the Cousins,” I

said, thinking back to a wild notion that Arsibalt had raised last

night: that the Cousins might have come, not just from another solar

system, but from another cosmos.


“Yes,” Criscan said, “it makes you wonder about the Cousins.”
















ACKNOWLEDGMENTS




ANATHEM COULD NOT HAVE been written had the following not come first:




* the Millennium Clock project being carried out by

Danny Hillis and his collaborators at the Long Now Foundation,

including Stewart Brand and Alexander Rose.


* a philosophical lineage that can be traced from Thales through Plato, Leibniz, Kant, Gödel, and Husserl.


* the Orion project of the late 1950s and early 1960s.




The author is, therefore, indebted to many

more people than can comfortably be listed on a traditional

acknowledgments page. The premise of the story, as well as the simple

fact that it is a work of fiction, rule out the use of footnotes. This

is unfortunate in a way, since many readers will presumably wish to

know where the ideas being discussed by the characters actually

originated, and how to learn more about them. Accordingly, detailed

acknowledgments, complete with links to other resources, may be found

at http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathemacknowledgments.









About the Author


NEAL STEPHENSON is the author of seven previous novels. He lives in Seattle, Washington.



http://www.nealstephenson.com



Visit http://www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.











ALSO BY NEAL STEPHENSON


The System of the World


The Confusion


Quicksilver


Cryptonomicon


The Diamond Age


Snow Crash


Zodiac










Credits




Jacket design by Ervin Serrano


Jacket photographs by Yolande De Korte/Dave Wall @ Arcangel Images












Copyright


This book is

a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn

from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any

resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely

coincidental.


ANATHEM.

Copyright © 2008 by Neal Stephenson. All rights reserved under

International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the

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on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,

down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced

into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by

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invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

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* See Calca 1.





* See Calca 2.





* See Calca 3.

[Winnow]

Prehistory
[edit] The Paleo-Indians and Archaic peoples

According to the best archaeological and geological evidence available, Paleolithic, mammoth-hunting families moved into northwestern North America sometime between 16,000 BCE and 10,000 BCE. In central Alaska, they found their passage blocked by a huge sheet of ice until a temporary recession in the last ice age that opened up an ice-free corridor through northwestern Canada, allowing bands to fan out throughout the rest of the continent. The earliest undisputed evidence of humans in the southwestern United States is a set of fluted spear points from the Paleolithic.[1] Some scientists have proposed that small bands of women, men and children wandered across the deserts of southwestern Arizona en refuge in present-day Mexico.

Temperatures rose, and the seasonal distribution of precipitation began to change, causing major changes in the vegetation as well. The Clovis people were stalking mammoths and other ice-age species in southeastern Arizona at a time when many streams were drying up, forcing animals to concentrate around streams and seeps. The growing aridity of the region therefore coincided with the arrival of hunters who specialized in the pursuit of large mammals. It is possible that climate and humans acted together to bring an end to these species.

Arizona grew even more arid after the last ice age came to an end. Summers grew wetter, but warmer, so rainfall evaporated quicker. Winters became considerably drier, making less moisture available to plants. In southern Arizona, woodlands gave way to desert grasslands, and desert grasslands gave way to desert scrub. Important Sonoran Desert species like saguaro and brittlebush began to recolonize the region from the south, while ponderosa forests and piñon-juniper-oak woodlands climbed back onto the Colorado Plateau. By 2000 BC, the modern plant communities of Arizona had been established and a modern climate prevailed.

The early Archaic peoples of Arizona survived these changes by adapting to the cycles of plants rather than trying to change them. In the woodlands, they gathered acorns in July and August, and piñon nuts and juniper berries in November. In the desert, they picked the leaves of annual plants like chenopodium (goosefoot) and amaranth (pigweed). They also roasted agave in rock-lined pits each spring, and collected cactus fruit and harvested mesquite pods in the summer. Because of their dependence on scattered and seasonal resources, Archaic groups did not occupy permanent settlements. Instead, they wandered from camp to camp in search of water and wild foods.

Their tools reflected their economy: ground stones (manos and metates) were used for grinding seeds into flour, scrapers for working hide and wood, and projectile points, smaller and cruder than the earlier Clovis and Folsom points, for hunting large and small game. The varying proportions of such tools at different sites suggest that people moved back and forth between different environmental zones to exploit their particular resources. Archaic peoples fashioned artifacts that demonstrated their capacity for wonder and their quest for supernatural power. Intaglios (sand drawings) 10 to 100 feet (30 m) in length appeared on both sides of the Colorado River in southeastern California and southwestern Arizona. Many of them were of stylized rattlesnakes, thunderbirds, phalli, and human forms.
[edit] The introduction of agriculture

For most of the Archaic period, people were not able to transform their natural environment in any fundamental way. Many archaeologists assumed that the Archaic cultures of Arizona were dead ends. They believed groups outside the region, particularly Mesoamerica, introduced major innovations like agriculture into the Southwest. According to this model, maize first put down Southwestern roots in the highlands of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, the pre-Hispanic cultural area known as the Mogollon. Archaic populations there began growing a small and primitive variety of maize at places like Bat Cave as early as 3500 BCE. From there, maize spread slowly to more arid and lowland areas, such as the Sonoran Desert.

During the 1980s, these early maize dates were challenged by a refinement in radiocarbon dating using the accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) technique. Accelerator dates reveal that the first corn from Bat Cave and other highland sites appeared around 1000 BCE, 2,500 years later than previously thought. A number of sites excavated in southern Arizona demonstrate that Archaic farmers were cultivating maize in the Tucson Basin at around the same time as well. At the Milagro site along Tanque Verde Creek, for example, a Late Archaic population built pit houses, dug bell-shaped storage pits, and planted maize around 850 BCE. Archaic groups, then, were already beginning to make the transition from food gatherers to food producers around 3,000 years ago. They also possessed many of the cultural features that accompany semisedentary agricultural life: storage facilities, more permanent dwellings, larger settlements, and even cemeteries.

Despite the early advent of farming, late Archaic groups still exercised little control over their natural environment. Furthermore, wild food resources remained important components of their diet even after the invention of pottery and the development of irrigation. The introduction of agriculture never resulted in the complete abandonment of hunting and foraging, even in the largest of Archaic societies. During the 1st millennium CE, at least three major cultures flourished in the Southwest: the Anasazi, the Hohokam, and the Mogollon. These three cultures are well known for their architecture and pottery.
[edit] European/North American colonization
Main article: European colonization of Arizona
The Coronado Expedition, 1540–1542.

Although the first European visitors to Arizona may have come in 1528, the most influential expeditions in early Spanish Arizona were those of Marcos de Niza and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado.[2] The accounts of the early Spanish explorers of large mythical cities like Cíbola and large mineral deposits of copper and silver would attract settlers and miners to the region in later years. These explorations led to the Columbian Exchange in Arizona, and widespread epidemics of smallpox among the Native Americans. Native-American history of early European Arizonan exploration is hard to find, but the O'odham calendar stick is a traditional way of recording notable events, including droughts, invasions, floods that could be used as a source.

Early Franciscans and Jesuits in Arizona also set up numerous missions around the area to convert the Native Americans, such as San Xavier del Bac. The missionary Eusebio Kino developed a chain of missions around the Pimería Alta, exchanging gifts and catechizing the natives, who were then used as scouts for keeping track of events on the frontier. In 1680, the Pueblo Revolt drove Spaniards temporarily from northern New Mexico, but the area was reconquered in 1694.
[edit] Spanish Arizona
Main article: Spanish Arizona
Mission San José de Tumacácori

Although the Spanish did not yet have towns for themselves, in the late 17th century, colonists began steadily entering the region, attracted by the recent discovery of deposits of silver (see Silver mining in Arizona) around the Arizonac mining camp. Most of the colonists left after Juan Bautista de Anza announced it had merely been buried treasure; however, several stayed and became subsistence farmers. During the mid-18th century, the pioneers of Arizona tried to expand their territory northward, but were prevented from doing so by the Tohono O'odham and Apache Native Americans, who had begun raiding their villages for livestock.

In 1765, the Bourbon Reforms began, with Charles III of Spain doing a major rearranging of the presidios (military fortresses) on the northern frontier. The Jesuits were expelled from the area, and the Franciscans took their place at their missions. In the 1780s and 1790s, the Spanish began a plan of setting up Apache peace camps and providing the Apache with rations so that they would not attack, allowing the Spanish to expand northward.

For the most part, Spanish Arizona had a subsistence economy, with occasional small gold and silver mining operations.
[edit] Mexican Arizona
Main article: Mexican Arizona
The Gadsden Purchase (shown with present-day state boundaries and cities).

In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain after a decade of war. The revolution had destroyed the colonial silver mining industry and had bankrupted the national treasury.[3] Along the northern frontier, funds that had supported missions, presidios and Apache peace camps nearly disappeared. As a result, Apaches once again began raiding, running off horse herds, and killing anyone caught outside presidial walls. As missions began to wither, Mexico began auctioning off more land, causing the Pimería Alta and the Apachería to shrink as territory expanded. In the meantime, American mountain men began to enter the region, looking to trap beavers for their pelts.

In 1836, Texas declared independence from Mexico and claimed much of the territory in the northern lands of Mexico. When the United States annexed Texas in 1846 over the strong objections of the Mexican government, U.S. troops moved into disputed territory. Despite offers to buy the disputed lands from Mexico, hostilities erupted in what is known as the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). The U.S. occupied Mexico City and forced the newly founded Mexican Republic to give up its northern half, including the later Arizona.

In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexico ceded to the U.S., together with many more territories, approximately the northern 70% of what is today Arizona, while this treaty also specified that the U.S. pay Mexico the sum of US$15 million in compensation.[citation needed] In 1849, the California Gold Rush led as many as 50,000 miners through the region, leading to major booms in Arizona's population. In 1850, the aforementioned 70% of Arizona, together with most of present day New Mexico, was organized as the New Mexico Territory. In 1853, President Franklin Pierce sent James Gadsden to Mexico City to negotiate with Santa Anna, and the United States bought the remaining area of Arizona and New Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase.
[edit] American Arizona
Main articles: Arizona Territory and Arizona Territory (Confederate States of America)
See also: New Mexico Territory in the American Civil War
Arizona Territory in 1866

Starting in 1853, the entirety of present-day Arizona was part of the New Mexico Territory. During the Civil War, on March 16, 1861, southern New Mexico Territory around Mesilla (now in New Mexico) and Tucson declared itself independent from the United States to join the Confederacy. Confederate Territory of Arizona (CSA) was regarded as a valuable route for possible access to the Pacific Ocean, with the specific intention of joining southern California to the Confederacy (In 1860, Southern California had cleared all legal hurdles for secession from the rest of California and was waiting reorganization as a new U.S. territory, which never materialized. At that time, sparsely populated Southern California was a hotbed of Southern-sympathizers.)

In March 1862, Union troops re-captured the Confederate Territory of Arizona and returned it to the New Mexico Territory.

The Battle of Picacho Pass, April 15, 1862, was a battle of the Civil War fought in the CSA and one of many battles to occur in Arizona during the war. Between three sides, Apaches, Confederates and Union forces. In 1863, the U.S. split up their New Mexico Territory along a north-south border to create the U.S. Arizona Territory, which was later to become the state of Arizona.

During the war, U.S. presidios were moved to New Mexico, leaving Arizona vulnerable to Native American attack. Hostilities between the Native Americans and American settlers began in 1861, lasted until 1886, and led to most Indian tribes' being moved to reservations.
1895 map (Rand McNally)

Steamboats, mining, cattle and trains became vital parts of the Arizona economy, leading to boomtowns being formed as prospectors found gold, and the boomtowns' becoming ghost towns as the miners left. Mexicans, who still were the majority in Arizona during the time shortly following the Mexican-American War, constituted most of the mining labor force.

The Desert Land Act of 1877, which gave settlers 640 acres (1 sq. mi., 2.6 km²) of land, caused people to flood into the region.
[edit] Statehood

In the 1900s, Arizona almost entered the Union as part of New Mexico in a Republican plan to keep control of the U.S. Senate. The plan, while accepted by most in New Mexico, was rejected by the vast majority of those living in Arizona. Progressives in Arizona favored inclusion in the state constitution of initiative, referendum, recall, direct election of senators, woman suffrage, and other reforms. Most of these proposals were included in the constitution that was submitted to Congress in 1912. President William Howard Taft insisted on removing the recall provision (because it would allow recall of judges) before he would approve it. It was removed, Taft signed the statehood bill on February 14, 1912, and state residents promptly put the provision back in.[4]

In 1912 women gained suffrage in the state.
[edit] The Great Depression and the World Wars
Main article: The Great Depression and the World Wars in Arizona

In 1917, the United States entered into World War I, thus beginning a boom in the economy of Arizona. After suffering through the Great Depression, the implementation of the New Deal and another economic boom after World War II brought Arizona back into a state of stability.

During this timeframe, industries such as cotton, copper, farming, and mining began to flourish in the state. The military began using Phoenix and Tucson for military bases and academies, with the army becoming the community's largest source of revenue. For a time, the Charter Government Committee swept the elections. Barry Goldwater and Sandra Day O'Connor would later have successful judicial and political careers.

During the war, people also began to move to Arizona from other regions of the country because of its inland position and protection from aerial attacks. In 1946, Arizona began to enforce right-to-work laws, which allowed workers to decide whether or not to join or financially support a union. The dual-wage system, in which Mexicans made $1.15 less per shift, was abandoned. In 1948, the high tech industry began in Arizona, with Motorola building one of the first plants in Phoenix. 1948 also saw American Indians gaining the right to vote, after having been disqualified for twenty years for being "wards of the state".
[edit] Recent events
Aerial photo by the Central Arizona Project.

In recent times, Arizona has become a major warm-weather tourist and retirement destination, much like Florida. A major part of the tourism industry is based on the presence of the Grand Canyon.

In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Arizona over California in a dispute over Arizona's share of the Colorado River. Five years after the decision, authorization was given for the construction of the Central Arizona Project, which was not completed until 1991.[5]

Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, a native of Arizona, ran for the presidency in 1964, with William Edward Miller as his running mate. Due to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Goldwater found himself in the difficult position of running against the successor to a slain president, and was soundly defeated by Lyndon B. Johnson. Goldwater received only 38.4% of the popular vote and the electoral votes of just five states, including five from Arizona.

In 1988, Evan Mecham, the Governor of Arizona, was impeached. Mecham faced allegations of money laundering, including trying to conceal a $350,000 campaign loan, borrowing $60,000 of state money to prop up his struggling auto dealership, as well as allegations of attempting to block the investigation of a death threat made by a state official. Rose Mofford succeeded him as the Governor of Arizona, becoming the first woman ever to hold the office.

Mecham had already been unpopular for his cancellation of a paid Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday for state employees. The holiday had been first proposed in 1972 by former state senators Cloves Campbell. For the first of several times, the legislation had failed to pass the legislature, causing Arizona to lose its chance to host the Super Bowl,[6] as well as costing the state tourism and other benefits that naturally come from these events. Governor Bruce Babbitt gave state employees the day off by executive order, but Mecham later voided the order just a week before the holiday was to be celebrated, based on a legal opinion by the state's Attorney General that the holiday had been created illegally.[7]

When the legislation passed in 1989, Rose Mofford signed into law a paid state holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.,[8] making it possible for the state to host a Super Bowl. The chair of the Americans for Traditional American Values filed a petition against it, accusing Dr. King of being a socialist and philanderer. The two 1990 ballot initiatives were, respectively, for celebrating both Martin Luther King Day and Columbus Day holidays, and for swapping the Columbus holiday for the King one. Both failed. In 1992, in the face of a tourist boycott and losing the chance to host Super Bowl XXVII, 61% of Arizonan voters publicly approved the payment of state workers on a Martin Luther King Day/Civil Rights Day holiday. It was the 49th state in the United States to approve the holiday, and the first state to have voter approval of allowing state workers to have paid absence on Martin Luther King Day. Super Bowl XXX was later played in Tempe in 1996 and Super Bowl XLII was held in Glendale in 2008.

Mofford's successor as governor, Fife Symington, resigned in 1997 after conviction of bank fraud. His conviction was later overturned, and he was subsequently pardoned by President Clinton. On August 17, 2005,[9] the governors of both Arizona and New Mexico declared an emergency in the Mexico-bordering counties of their states. Both governors cited violence, illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and the inaction of both the U.S. and Mexican governments as reasons for the state of emergency. Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona freed $1.5 million in disaster funds to help the border counties, and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico freed $1.75 million.

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