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An Oblique Approach
by David Drake and Eric Flint


This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 1998 by David Drake and Eric Flint

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-87865-4

Cover art by Keith Parkinson

First printing, March 1998

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America

To Lucille
PROLOGUE
The first facet was purpose.

It was the only facet. And because it was the only facet, purpose had neither meaning nor content. It simply was. Was. Nothing more.

purpose. Alone, and unknowing.

Yet, that thing which purpose would become had not come to be haphazardly. purpose, that first and isolated facet, had been drawn into existence by the nature of the man who squatted in the cave, staring at it.
Another man-almost any other man-would have gasped, or drawn back, or fled, or seized a futile weapon. Some men-some few rare men-would have tried to comprehend what they were seeing. But the man in the cave simply stared.

He did not try to comprehend purpose, for he despised comprehension. But it can be said that he considered what he was seeing; and considered it, moreover, with a focused concentration that was quite beyond the capacity of almost any other man in the world.

purpose had come to be, in that cave, at that time, because the man who sat there, considering purpose, had stripped himself, over long years, of everything except his own overriding, urgent, all-consuming sense of purpose.
* * *
His name was Michael of Macedonia. He was a Stylite monk, one of those holy men who pursued their faith through isolation and contemplation, perched atop pillars or nestled within caves.

Michael of Macedonia, fearless in the certainty of his faith, stretched forth a withered arm and laid a bony finger on purpose.

For purpose, the touch of the monk's finger opened facet after facet after facet, in an explosive growth of crystalline knowledge which, had purpose truly been a self-illuminated jewel, would have blinded the man who touched it.