"Radiant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

CHAPTER 17

Satori [Japanese]: A sudden flash of enlightenment; a spiritual breakthrough. Strictly speaking, satori refers to a life-changing experience of seeing the world as it truly is. However, many people also use satori for smaller "Aha!" moments and for any burst of insight.

When Prince Gotama left the pleasure palace, he wandered through cities and countryside, seeking truth. He listened to many teachers; he practiced spiritual disciplines; he fasted in the wilderness before deciding that ravenous hunger was not conducive to inner calm. At last, he seated himself beneath a great tree and vowed he wouldn’t budge until he achieved enlightenment.

The good gods rejoiced that this time had come. For all their power, they were no more free than any other living creature. They longed for Gotama to awaken — to become Tathagata — so he could teach them the path to liberation.

But one god feared what Gotama might achieve. Mara, god of passion and delusion, knew his power would be shattered if the prince won through to ultimate truth. Therefore, Mara summoned his sons (the Fears) and his daughters (the Desires), and together they tried to break Prince Gotama’s resolve by using threats and temptations. Some say Gotama was so focused, he didn’t even notice this assault; but others say Gotama had to summon all his mental strength to fight back and would never have Awakened if he hadn’t been forced to make a supreme spiritual effort. Perhaps an all-out confrontation with the sources of turmoil is the only way to become a Buddha.

Whatever the case, Mara failed — Prince Gotama couldn’t be intimidated or lured from his goal. The god and his children slunk away in defeat. Throughout the hours of darkness, Gotama passed through the four stages of Awakening: remembering his past lives, seeing the world without delusion, understanding the causes of suffering, and finally (at dawn) achieving nirvana… which is not some spacey state of bliss, but a simple unwavering clarity so perfect one can never fall into error again. Gotama, Tathagata Buddha, hadn’t become some miracle-working superman; he’d just purged himself of all his own bullshit.

What transcendence could be higher?

I thought about Gotama as I floated through the darkness — about the night he faced Mara. Maybe I should try the same thing myself. Not that I was anywhere close to enlightenment; my earlier "So what?" moment was only a small upward step, not a leap straight into the heavens. But maybe I should confront my own version of Mara. As the Grindstone propelled me southward, I finally had the time and space to think. Slowly the depth of my situation sank in: the hollowness that would dog me down the years if I couldn’t reach out and communicate.

"Balrog," I said. "Can we talk?"

Water rushed around me. Darkness filled my eyes.

"Balrog. We’re joined, you and I. Merged. Closer than husband and wife. Can we talk?"

Only the river and the night.

"I’ve given up a lot," I said. "You’ve got the better of me over and over. The things you’ve offered in return… you’ve helped when I asked, and even saved my life, but… do you understand loneliness, Balrog? You’re a hive creature. Maybe loneliness is beyond your comprehension. But if you and I are going to be together — for the rest of my life, till death us do part — I’ll shrivel inside if we don’t connect. If I’m just the lowly human and you never ever share… please, Balrog, don’t make me live like that. It’s too cold."

Blackness. Silence.

"When Kaisho Namida talks about you," I said, "she makes you sound like a lover. She makes it sound like she loves you, and you love her back. I don’t ask you to love me…" (Oh, would no one ever love me? I yearned so deeply to writhe with passion, and would even open myself to the spores if it would ease my longing.) "I don’t ask you to love me, but please… please. Meet me halfway so I’m not alone."

Nothing. And yet…

Floating gently, my eyes slipped shut. I dreamed.

Once again I was at the pagoda: the gravesite of Fuentes civilization, with its fountain and orchard of minichili trees. Once again I saw statues of heroes in the arboretum — one coated with purple jelly, another surrounded by sandy black grains, a third turned to glass and lava — but in my dream, the statues had changed.

Now the marble figure enclosed in jelly looked like Tut… the one with black sand had become an Arabic man carrying a huge four-barreled gun… the one in glass and lava was no longer Hui-Neng the Patriarch, but a beautiful naked woman… and all the rest within sight were similarly changed, some to people I recognized (students and professors from the Explorer Academy), others to people I couldn’t name but who seemed familiar, as if I’d met them in other dreams. Or other lives.

I turned toward the fountain in the middle of the pagoda. False memory said the fountain had contained a golden Buddha overlaid with Balrog moss. My mother said she had seen Kaisho Namida in a wheelchair. Now… now I saw both Kaisho and myself, the two of us sitting in lotus position, facing each other, knees touching. Our eyes were open, gazing on each other as we floated in midair two meters above the fountain. We both were moss from the waist down: glowing a warm-hearth red that filled the space around us with light. Kaisho’s hands made the mudra gesture for Birth, while mine made the gesture for Enlightenment. The pair of us smiled with sisterly gentleness.

Comfortable with each other. Not alone. Reassurance.

I dreamed this as if I were a third person standing in the temple’s doorway: with a view of the arboretum outside as well as Kaisho and me inside. No one else was part of this. Just the statues of heroes, plus a levitating Kaisho and Youn Suu. Did it mean something that I saw the scene from the threshold between the temple and the outer world beyond? The boundary between the sacred and mundane?

"It means whatever fits," said Kaisho. She and the duplicate Youn Suu turned, rotating in air until both could look at me. "None of it’s really predetermined. At least we hope not. We throw a lot of things your way, but only you decide what to use."

I asked, "Who’s ‘we’?"

The Youn Suu in front of me smiled. "You want to know who’s pulling the strings? Irrelevant. The important thing is what you do once your strings are cut loose. I’ll have to remember to teach you that."

"You’re going to teach me?" I said. "You are me."

"No. Look at yourself."

I did. My hands weren’t my familiar dark brown, but a much lighter shade that showed multiple scrapes and scratches. My clothes were Unity nanomesh, but not colored in motley Mutan camouflage; just a solid sheen of black stretching down to the white boots of a Technocracy tightsuit.

Festina had taken the black nanomesh. Her tightsuit was white and her hands, gouged and nicked in her trip through the bush, were exactly like the ones on the end of my arms.

"You’re having her dream," the other Youn Suu said. "She can’t have it herself — she’s awake."

"Besides" — Kaisho chuckled-"Festina would hate receiving messages in dreams. Such a rationalist! If she dreamed two plus two equaled four, she’d automatically mistrust it. You, on the other hand, will pay attention. Oneiromantic prophecies are in your blood. Literally."

"You mean my veins are full of Balrog spores?"

"Shush," Kaisho told me. "There’s one universal rule of prophecy, recognized by every thread of human culture: you don’t get to ask clarifying questions. You just listen and suck it up."

"Then," Youn Suu added, "if you’ve got a milligram of sense, you interpret the message like an intelligent mensch, rather than some self-centered oaf who’s never learned the concept of ‘double meaning.’ "

"I know how prophecies work," I said. "The wise benefit, while fools work their own destruction."

The second Youn Suu turned to Kaisho. "Pompous little bint, aren’t I?"

"She’s quoting," Kaisho replied.

"I knew that." The other Youn Suu turned back to me. "Are you ready to hear the message?"

I nodded.

"Okay," the Youn Suu said. "Give her the message, Kaisho."

Kaisho frowned. "I thought you had the message."

"How can I have the message?" my double said. "I’m just Youn Suu. I have no words of wisdom, and I certainly don’t know anything about the future."

"Well, I don’t have a message either," Kaisho said. "I’ve been the Balrog’s meat pasty for decades, but do the blasted spores tell me anything? Not bloody likely. I get sent on errands all over the galaxy, and most of the time I don’t have the slightest hint what I’m supposed to do." She glanced at me. "Get used to faking it, sister. Our mossy master loves us dearly, but he never spells things out."

"So we go to all this trouble," the other Youn Suu muttered, "for an honest-to-goodness dream visitation, and we don’t have anything to say?" She looked down on me from her place above the fountain. "This is a great steaming mound of embarrassment, isn’t it?"

"I get the message," I said.

"You do?"

"I do. But did you have to lay it on so thickly? I’m just Youn Suu. I have no words of wisdom, and I certainly don’t know anything about the future. Spare me the gushing humility."

Youn Suu gave me a dubious look. "That’s the message you think we’re sending? Some crap about having faith in yourself? Sweetheart, if tripe like that was all we had to offer, we’d send you a goddamned greeting card."

"You’ve stopped talking like me," I said. "I don’t swear, and I don’t use words like ‘sweetheart.’ "

"How about words like ‘fucking smart-ass’?" My own face glowered at me, then turned to Kaisho. "Come on, moss-breath, we’re done here."

Kaisho gave me a piercing stare. "Are we done? Do you know what you have to teach Festina?"

"How would I know that?" I said. "I’m just Youn Suu. I have no words of wisdom. I certainly don’t know anything about the future."

The thing that looked like me made a growling sound in its throat. "Buddhists! You can have them, spore-head. They’re all yours. Give me a hot-looking glass chick with legs and an attitude, and I’ll make the galaxy my bitch!"

The Youn Suu look-alike winked out of existence. Kaisho looked apologetic. "Sorry. He can never resist putting on a show."

"Who was he?" I asked.

"A friend of the Balrog’s."

"Some great and powerful alien?"

"Of course," Kaisho said. "He and the Balrog are working together on a project. Along with a good many others in the League."

"What are they all up to?"

Kaisho smiled. "You’ll figure it out. When you do, tell Festina. It’s time she knew."

"No hints?"

"Sure, here’s a hint. Become enlightened. Then you’ll know everything."

"How do I become enlightened?"

Kaisho shrugged. "It’s easy. Just wake up."

I woke up. Dream over. And despite the lack of direct information, I felt I’d learned a lot.

I’d learned that when I reached out to the Balrog — when I needed the solace of contact — the Balrog was ready to answer.

Oblique, frustrating answers… but enough to assure me I wouldn’t live my life in numb solitary confinement.

I rode peacefully on the flooded Grindstone. The rain had stopped. Above me, the sky was full of stars.

An hour before dawn, I reached the lake created by the Stage Two station’s dam. The current was slower but still perceptible; muddy water poured thick as cream over the dam, taking with it leaves and other debris floating on the lake’s surface. I could easily swim against the pull. Taking my time, conserving my strength, I stroked toward the station.

My skin had not turned to moss; that hadn’t been necessary. When the nanomesh uniform sensed my body temperature dropping to unacceptable levels, it had puffed itself up: from a skintight sheath to a thick layer of fabric filled with air bubbles. It held my body heat like foam insulation, even stretching itself to cover my hands and most of my head — just the face left bare so I could see and breathe. I offered my thanks to the Unity’s foresight, giving their survey teams all-weather clothes.

The outfit reminded me of a cold-water diving suit I’d worn during scuba training at the Academy… except that the Unity uniform was still colored in multihued camouflage patterns matching the local foliage. I attracted much interest from plant-eating fish who thought I might be a tasty mat of ferns floating on the surface. My slow swimming kept them from coming too close (even mid-Triassic fish were smart enough to know that plants didn’t do the breaststroke) but I accumulated a crowd of followers who wistfully hoped I might prove to be food.

Onshore, Festina and the diplomats continued toward the station. Their journey wasn’t as easy as mine; walking through semi-jungle gets tiring. At least they had adequate light for traveling — Festina carried a number of spare glow-tubes. The Bumbler also helped. It could scan ahead for trouble, letting them pick better routes and reducing the need for backtracking. Still, they hadn’t had a pleasant time. Ubatu was injured and weakened from blood loss. Li was in decent physical shape for a civilian, but came nowhere near matching Festina’s level of endurance. He whined… demanded frequent rest breaks… didn’t push himself to keep up.

Once Li stopped and refused to go any farther. By sixth sense I heard him say, "This is absurd! We’re stumbling around in the dark. I’m not budging another millimeter till morning." Festina took her time responding: probably deciding what tack to take with a stubborn diplomat. Ubatu, however, just grabbed Li by his pricey silk shirt and shook him, making incomprehensible sounds of rage through her ruined mouth. It worked far better than rational argument — a few hard cuffs, and Li started moving again.

Deeper out in the bush, Tut was also on the move. He had to be: if he slowed down, he’d die. A beanpole like him, with little insulating fat and no clothes but masks, could only survive the cold damp by staying active. By dawn Tut was racked with shivers, despite his constant capering. The foliage through which he moved was soaking wet, drenching him whenever he bumped against a rain-laden frond. Once the sun arrived it might warm him a bit, but the season was still late autumn. The day would remain cool for hours… and if Tut collapsed in exhaustion, even the heat of noon might not restore his body to a life-sustaining temperature.

For the time being, though, he was still on his feet. Pretas surrounded him, urging him on. They’d helped him through the night, jolting him awake whenever he came close to dropping from fatigue. I was sure they’d keep him on the move until… until he did whatever a planetful of frustrated ghosts wanted him to do.

We were all alive and moving — Tut, Festina, Li, Ubatu, the pretas, and I. All of us converged on the station, like actors approaching the climax of a VR melodrama. I wondered whether events had been planned this way from the beginning… by the League, the Balrog, the purple-jelly Fuentes, or any other godlike aliens who liked playing puppet-master. But as the Youn Suu in my dream had said, it really didn’t matter who was pulling the strings. The important thing was what we did with whatever small freedoms we had.

The first gray light of the coming dawn glistened on the water — a perfect time for a swim.

At the far end of the lake, the station rose above the beach. It was built in the shape of a Fuentes head — black marble skin, bright glass eyes with hundreds of facets, huge chrome mandibles framing the mouthlike entrance — but the forehead was circled with a crown of golden spikes: not pure gold but some gleaming alloy, each spike ten meters long, square at the base and tapering out to a point as sharp as a lightning rod.

The lightning rod resemblance wasn’t accidental. If the station had done its job sixty-five hundred years ago, bolts of power should have shot from that golden crown, uplifting every EMP cloud in the neighborhood. But I perceived no energy being emitted. In fact, I perceived little from the station at all. My sixth sense encompassed the building’s exterior, but stopped blind at the doorway… as if the world ended there, and the station’s interior was part of some other reality. A pocket universe like the research center in Drill-Press.

I wondered if even the Balrog knew what lay inside the building. It might be as blind as I was. Or perhaps the moss knew exactly what the station held and wanted to keep it secret; the spores never missed a chance to spring a surprise on lesser beings. The Balrog had a childish fondness for catching people unawares… unless there was some deeper motivation for the moss’s actions. Zen masters also loved springing surprises, in an effort to shock students out of conventional patterns of thinking. As one sensei famously said, "Sometimes a slap is needed for a newborn child to breathe."

Kaisho Namida had been a student of Zen. The Balrog had certainly jolted her out of conventional ways. Were the spores trying to do the same with me — not startling me for the fun of it, but doling out disorienting shocks in the hope of Waking me up?

"Just for the record," I told the Balrog, "my form of Buddhism isn’t like Zen. We prefer the slow but steady approach… without undue surprises. Trying to achieve enlightenment in a single lifetime is considered needy."

For a moment — just a moment — I imagined the Balrog laughing.

I reached the station before the others: swam ashore, pulled myself above the waterline, and lay on the beach letting my clothes dry as I waited for Festina and the diplomats. Drying didn’t take long — the nanomesh channeled excess H2O molecules to the surface of the fabric, then formed a seal to prevent drops from seeping back in. I sloshed most of the moisture off with my hands. Muta’s predawn air did the rest.

The station’s front doors were only a stone’s throw away, but I made no effort to enter. Better to wait for Festina — I couldn’t help notice that pretas clustered thickly on the beach, but not a single cloudy particle ventured nearer than ten meters to the building. Those that got close moved on quickly, as if the proximity made them nervous. In fact, every cloud within range seemed anxious or outright afraid; their auras fluttered with agitation. Were they worried our group would cause trouble inside the Stage Two installation? Or did they fear that something in the building might be disturbed by our arrival and cause trouble for everyone?

Such questions would be answered in time. Meanwhile, I experimented with ways to get around in my low-mobility condition: crawling stomach down, sitting up and going backward (bouncing along on my rump), trying to walk upside down on my hands (impossible because my limp legs flopped around too much to keep my balance), rolling lengthwise, various ungainly sideways maneuvers…

At last, I paused for breath. Lying on the sand, breathing deeply, I considered other means of locomotion… like asking the Balrog for help. My alien parasite had spectacular powers. On Cashleen, the spores had formed that mossy carriage to whoosh me through the streets of Zoonau… and the navy’s files were full of similar incidents, including a time on the planet Troyen when the Balrog picked up the entire royal palace and used it as a battering ram against a mass of soldiers. If the Balrog could telekinetically move a building, why couldn’t it move me?

But I knew that wouldn’t happen — not on Muta, where the Balrog had gone to great lengths to hide its presence. Yes, the spores could construct glowing red carriages… and perhaps they could lift me into the air, or teleport me instantly to another continent. But they wouldn’t; not here. They’d do nothing out of the ordinary unless their actions could be concealed from the outside world. The Balrog might amuse itself under my skin, romping through my tissues and reshaping my brain; but it wouldn’t miraculously restore my half-amputated leg. That would give away the game to…

To whom? The pretas?

Or to whatever waited inside the station? Was that the threat the Balrog hid from?

Pity I couldn’t see into the building. In the meantime, I watched the horizon brighten and let myself fall asleep.

I woke as Festina and the diplomats became visible to the naked eye. They walked along the beach, all three glum and apprehensive — right up to the point where the Bumbler chirped to indicate it had sensed something interesting.

Me.

I lay on the outermost edge of its scan. Festina soon realized the little machine was reporting a human body sprawled in front of the station. She set off at a run, leaving the others behind… but she slowed to a casual jog when I waved to show I was alive.

The fear that had blazed through her aura shifted to beaming relief… then, because she was Festina Ramos, the relief darkened to suspicion. When she got within earshot, she yelled, "How the hell did you end up here?"

"I swam. Saved you the effort of carrying me."

"We thought you’d been attacked by Rexies."

"I was." I reached down and raised my left leg with my hands — showing her the stump. "One Rexy wouldn’t leave without having a bite."

Festina swallowed hard. "Do you want me to look at your wounds?"

"Better not. The nanomesh closed up around the damage. You wouldn’t want to open things and start new bleeding."

Festina’s eyes met mine. I’d spoken the literal truth — the uniform had closed up around the damage, and she wouldn’t want to start new bleeding — but Festina was smart enough to grasp what I’d left unsaid.

The nanomesh couldn’t have plugged the spurt of a major arterial rupture; that had to be the work of the Balrog. Festina realized there must be some reason I didn’t want to talk about the spores now that we were close to the station. She knew how circumspect the Balrog had been since we’d landed on Muta. Besides, she may have thought I was equivocating to hide my condition from Li and Ubatu… who’d hurried to join us and were now close enough to hear.

"You look pretty damned comfortable," Li grumbled at me. "Must be nice, not having to walk all night."

I said, "Must be nice, being able to walk at all."

Li glared at me, but held his tongue. Ubatu, unable to speak, also remained silent beneath the bandages swathing her face… but her eyes, peering out between strips of gauze, glinted like black diamonds. I was still alive, and therefore still a prize to be seized for Ifa-Vodun. Perhaps even now she was praying to the Balrog — trying to project her thoughts to say, "Great mossy loa, come ride me, come heal me." I couldn’t be sure that was what she had in mind; but her aura showed ferocious hunger, fierce to the point of obsession, as she gazed fixedly at me.

Meanwhile, Li had turned to contemplate the gold spikes protruding from the station’s crown. Wan predawn light reflected from the polished gilt surface. "So this is the place that’ll save us from turning into smoke?"

"No," Festina said. "This is the place that’ll turn the EMP clouds into gods… at which point, we get the hell back to Pistachio and save ourselves."

"What if we can’t do anything? What if some machine is broken beyond repair?"

"Then we become smoke ourselves," Festina told him. "The Unity and Technocracy will research their asses off till they find some way to protect landing parties from Stage One microbes and EMP-shooting clouds. Once they’ve figured that out, you can be damned sure they’ll come back. They won’t pass up the chance to get their hands on Fuentes technology… especially the process for becoming transcendent. Sooner or later, they’ll bring in teams to get this station up and running, even if it takes a complete rebuild. We might spend a decade or two as smoke, but eventually someone will activate Stage Two. Then up we all go to heaven." She made a face. "Godhood, here we come. Yippee."

"You still don’t like the idea?" I asked.

"I’ve been thinking about it all night," Festina answered. "Why am I so against it? What’s so great about my current condition that makes godhood feel like diminishment? It must be… you know…" Embarrassed, she gestured toward the birthmark on her cheek. "I’m comfortable with feeling beleaguered. Always forced to struggle. Even when I succeed, I mistrust the success, so I run off to find another fight. I don’t know who I am unless I’m up to my eyeballs in shit."

"I’m the same way," Li said. "Sitting around is exasperating. I need to be on the attack, to charge into the slavering horde-"

"No," Festina interrupted, "that’s not what I mean. I’m no adrenaline junkie. I’m an Explorer, for God’s sake. We don’t seek out trouble; that’s unprofessional. But I just feel I have to… like I’m being called to exercise my humanity…"

She blushed — her good cheek turning red. "I told you, I’ve been brooding all night. Never a good thing. I start composing soliloquies. Trying to rationalize my contradictions. Why can’t I believe that advancement might work? Why does something in my head keep saying, Human, human, human, I must remain human… as if being human is the most sacred state in the universe and anything else is sacrilege. That’s bullshit. Homo sapiens are barely beyond monkeys. There must be something better… whether it’s achieved by microbes and dark energy, or by meditating over a thousand lifetimes until you find enlightenment. Run-of-the-mill humanity cannot be the peak of creation. No. No. A thousand times no." She shook her head fiercely… then let it sag. "But I bristle with mistrust at anything else. Becoming more than human seems either a false promise or a genuine evil. Human, human, I must remain human. That voice in my head won’t stop."

"That voice in your head is Mara," I told her. "The god of delusion and ignorance. Or if you regard gods as metaphors, it’s the voice of ego."

"If gods were metaphors," she said, "we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It’s the imminent chance of becoming a god that makes me feel this bleak." Abruptly, she broke into a laugh. "Hell, Youn Suu, maybe some people deserve to be gods… but me? On a heavenly throne? I wouldn’t know what to do with myself."

"If you became a god," Li said, "you’d know then. There’s no such thing as a god with self-doubt."

"Another reason I don’t trust gods." Festina turned her gaze toward the station — the giant alien head with its insect eyes and mandibles. "I look at that, and I ask how a whole world could choose to abandon their very flesh. Everyone on Muta planned to ascend… and if the experiment had worked, other Fuentes planets would have repeated the trick as soon as possible. In fact, the other Fuentes did ascend eventually; they found a different way to elevate themselves, and damned near the entire race chose to take the big leap. They were so eager to run from everything…" Her voice faded. "I don’t understand it."

"Maybe they were bored," Li said. "Like the Cashlings. So jaded with existence, they’d do anything to liven it up."

"Are you bored, Ambassador?" I asked.

"I’m cold and tired and hungry," he replied… as if that answered my question.

"In any civilization, some people are bound to be bored," Festina said. "But the whole species? Bored to the point where they’d rip their bodies into smoke in the hope of becoming something better?"

"The Unity does much the same," I pointed out. "They’re ready to engineer their bodies, their DNA, their language, their religion, all in the name of becoming more than human. The Technocracy is heading that way too. We haven’t gone as far as the Unity, but that’s because we’re in denial — publicly pretending we don’t believe in gene-splicing babies, while privately spending billions on the black market. I was engineered. Ubatu was too, right?"

She nodded… and looked grateful I’d involved her in the conversation rather than treating her like some speechless wad of flotsam heaped on the sand. I turned to Li. "Did your parents build you inside a test tube?"

"Of course," he said. "Otherwise, I couldn’t compete with engineered children. Everyone who rises to the top has boosted DNA."

He glanced at Festina as if he expected confirmation. "I have no idea whether I was engineered," Festina muttered. "I was adopted."

"So?" Li asked. "The adoption agency must have supplied your genetic history when you came of age."

"There was no adoption agency." Festina had dropped her gaze to the sand under our feet.

"You mean you were found on a doorstep?" Li asked.

"Yes. Literally." She lifted her head, and defiance burned in her eyes. "I was left on the steps of a church, all right? Presumably because my real parents didn’t want a blemished child." Festina jutted out her chin, raising her birthmarked cheek higher. "My adoptive parents weren’t so picky."

Suddenly, she whirled on me. "Why the hell are you smiling?"

"You were adopted," I said. I was more than just smiling — I was trying not to laugh. "You were adopted."

The exhilaration of comprehension. In the blink of an eye, I’d seen the truth. Why the Balrog kept filling my head with the Ghost Fountain Pagoda and the Arboretum of Heroes. Why the statues had become Tut and other Explorers, each one marked by an alien presence. Why the Balrog only infected Buddhist women, and even why that voice in Festina’s head kept repeating, Human, human, I must remain human.

I knew. I understood. Gods and Buddhas, demigods and myths. The Balrog and other powerful aliens working together on a project.

"Festina," I said, "you came out of nowhere, real parents unknown. You can jog half an hour with me on your shoulder and have enough strength left to fight two Rexies. You’re devoted to struggle, and refuse to rest on any sort of victory. Wherever there’s trouble in the galaxy, you happen to be in the neighborhood. Really, Festina, don’t you see?"

"See what?" she asked, her eyes fierce as lightning.

"That I’m not the only ringer in this fight." I gave her a rueful look. "We really are reverse mirror images."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"No. You don’t. That’s your nature. Facing down the universe, not sitting back to understand it. Prometheus, not Buddha. You mentioned Prometheus yourself while we were talking to Ohpa. You’re the classic Western hero who defies the gods for the sake of humanity."

She rolled her eyes. "I’m scarcely a hero, Youn Suu. Explorers who try to be heroes end up dead."

"You don’t have to try," I told her. "You just are. So am I. I’m an Eastern-style hero; you’re the Western version. Eastern heroes know; Western heroes do. Eastern heroes learn to accept; Western heroes fight to their dying breath. Eastern heroes are born with great fanfare in royal pleasure palaces; Western heroes are found floating in baskets and brought up by shepherds. Grotesque cliches, but that’s the point of the game."

"Game? What game?" Li grumbled.

I ignored him. "The players choose their pieces from threads of human culture." Threads of human culture: Kaisho had used that phrase in my dream. "The Balrog, for instance, picks Buddhist women. It seizes us, reshapes us, transforms us into our own cultural ideal. Bit by bit, we approach Tathagata. As for you, Festina… you’ve been chosen too. By some other powerful alien who’s working with the Balrog. Except that your patron picked the ideal embodied by Prometheus… and Hercules, Ulysses, all the god-defying monster-killers. You get the sword; I get the lotus. Meanwhile, someone else gets the plow, someone gets the scepter, someone gets the divine madness…"

"She’s babbling," Li said in disgust. "None of this makes-"

"Shut up!" Festina snapped. "I think this is important." She leaned close to me. "Who’s saying this? Youn Suu? Or the Balrog?"

"I don’t know," I answered. "Maybe the Balrog planted this in my mind; maybe I figured it out myself. But everything’s clicked into place: everything I’ve ever seen, every class at the Academy, all the files I’ve read about what’s happening in the universe…"

I lowered my voice. "Listen. We’re chosen. You, me, a lot of others." I remembered all the statues I’d seen in the arboretum. "We’ve been selected by high-ranking aliens in the League of Peoples; they’re grooming us to be champions. There’s something in Homo sapiens… or maybe in human culture… something the superior races care about. Maybe something they lost on the way to becoming powerful: we have some potential the League no longer possesses. So they have this project — this game — to push humans beyond normal. Not beyond the limits of humanity; it’s our humanness that’s valuable. But if a set of us are pushed to become embodiments of time-honored human ideals…"

"Like the Balrog pushing you to become a living Buddha?"

"Yes. The Balrog picked that particular aspect of humanity, and it’s taking me down that path. Now I’ve reached the point where I’ve finally gleaned a few insights." I gave a rueful chuckle. "Good thing I’m becoming the sort of ideal who understands the universe. If I got chosen to be, oh, the Ultimate Thief or the Ultimate Drunkard, we wouldn’t have a clue what was happening."

"What about me?" Festina asked. "I’m no goddamned ultimate."

"Not yet. But you’re being put through your paces by whatever alien is molding you into its champion. You’re the heroic archetype, right down the line: beginning with a mysterious birth that hides your real identity and going on from there. The alien left you on a doorstep where some family would give you precisely the right upbringing. Probably watched over you as you were growing up and secretly nudged you in the right direction if ever you slipped off course. You aren’t more than human, but you’re… exactly what you need to be, mentally and physically."

"In order to be a champion."

"Yes."

"So I’m engineered?"

I shrugged. "Your genes could be all-natural if your alien patron wanted it that way — choosing two exemplary parents and trusting to chance. Some patrons might avoid direct genetic intervention, for fear of splicing out whatever crucial element we humans have. But one way or another, you were created to express an aspect of humanity your patron thinks is important."

"A goddamned hero."

"A European-style hero. Knight, monster-slayer, rescuer of innocents."

"Fuck that," Festina said. "And fuck this whole business of competing with you or anyone else."

"We aren’t competing," I told her. "The game isn’t about who’s stronger than who, it’s who achieves the final goal. Which type of champion will realize humanity’s potential. The puppet-masters behind the experiment will keep bringing champions like you and me together until we crack whatever secret we’re supposed to reveal."

Festina stared at me a long time. Her aura said she was thinking it over: hoping it wasn’t true, fearing it was. Finally, she whispered, "Is there some way to recognize these champions?"

I touched the birthmark on her cheek. Then I touched the ooze on my own. "We’re marked for easy recognition. The whole damned Explorer Corps. We’re the champions — every last member."

Festina gaped in horror. "You mean we were all… tampered with… by aliens… from birth? Before birth? Everybody in the corps?"

I wanted to answer, Look at me. Look at you. Could it possibly be an accident we were born reverse images of each other? But the words that came out of my mouth were, "Sorry. Can’t say more. The Mother of Time will pull out my tongue."

"Bloody hell!" Festina roared. She grabbed me by the arms and jerked me off the ground. "You are not going to leave things there. You’re going to tell me everything I need-"

"No," my mouth said without my volition.

"Don’t give me that shit. How do the aliens influence the corps? How do they control who does and doesn’t become an Explorer? Good God, were they even responsible for creating the corps in the first place? And maintaining it all these years? I need answers, Youn Suu."

"No," I said again. "You don’t. Too much information would jeopardize the final outcome. It’s all about what’s inherent in Homo sapiens; champions have certain traits emphasized, but nothing human has been excised. What you and I are has always been possible in the human species, even if it’s seldom attained. But learning the whole truth now would ruin our naivete. It would make us more than human. Prejudice the experiment."

"Forcing you to become Buddha doesn’t prejudice the experiment?"

"The Buddha was entirely human. Anyway, the Balrog isn’t forcing me to become anything. It’s accelerating certain parts of the process, but I’ve taken every crucial step on my own. That’s the way it had to be, or the effort would have been wasted." I put my hand on hers. "You’ll have the same opportunity, Festina. I can see you think your whole life has been a lie — that you’re a rat running through someone else’s maze. But you’ve always had choices. Real choices with real consequences. They have to let you choose, or the rest is pointless."

"I thought you said they nudged me to become what I am. They bred me, they birthed me, they controlled me…"

"They didn’t control you," I said. "They influenced you. They arranged for you to be raised in a certain culture. But look at it this way, Festina: ultimately, you have the League of Peoples, the most powerful beings in the universe, ensuring you have free will and a free choice. They can’t let anyone mess with you. They can guide you to the entrance of one rat maze after another, but once you’re inside, they can’t interfere. They can’t. Past a point, they have to keep their hands off." I brushed her cheek, pretending not to see a tear in the corner of her eye. "We hold the missing pieces, Festina — you, me, and the other Explorers. The League of Peoples needs us; they can’t fulfill themselves without us."

"Just what I want," Festina said, easing me away and lowering me to the sand. "To fluff the League of Peoples because they can’t get it up themselves. Damn!"

She turned, took a few steps, and kicked at a loose stone lying on the beach. Kicked it hard. The stone was lifted off the ground and sent flying to the edge of the lake, plopping loudly into the shallows. Small fish fled from the noise; larger fish swam closer to see if it might be food. "You realize what you’ve done?" Festina asked. "I didn’t want to be a god, but you’ve made me one anyway. Prometheus, for Christ’s sake! You think I’m predestined to live out a legend… so even if I dodge ascension here on Muta, it doesn’t matter because I’m already halfway up Olympus."

Her voice was so bitter, I wanted to touch her, comfort her… but she was too far away, and if I dragged myself toward her, she’d just pull away. "If it helps," I said, "there’s always a chance I’m wrong. This could be disinformation planted by the Balrog to hide something else."

"Do you think that’s likely?"

I shrugged. Some time in the preceding moments, I’d gone back to speaking for myself rather than having words thrust into my mouth. Hard to tell when it had happened; the line between me and the Balrog was no longer easy to identify.

Odd that I didn’t feel dismayed — merging with a creature who was slowly devouring me and who’d darkened my life long before Zoonau. The oozing mess on my cheek… had it really been an accident by careless gene engineers, or had spores sneaked into the lab where I was created and subtly altered the embryo? I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected the Balrog was responsible for making me an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl.

Yet I didn’t feel anger or outrage. After a lifetime of smarting at injustice, I was relieved to think my disfigurement wasn’t random mischance or bad karma. My cheek looked that way for a reason.

I found that comforting.

"Enough," said Festina. "Enough of this shit. We’ve got work to do."

"Whatever you’ve got in mind," Li grumbled, "I hope to God there’s no more walking."

"You can rest where you are if you like," Festina answered. "But time’s getting short. According to the Bumbler, we’re damned near full of Stage One microbes. We have to get the station working fast."

"What does the Bumbler see inside the station?" I asked.

Festina played with the little machine for a few seconds, then shook her head. "Nothing. The place is shielded against scans, just like buildings in Drill-Press. I’ll have to go in blind."

She started toward the entrance. I called after her, "You aren’t going alone, are you?"

"Just thought I’d take a peek while you people caught your breath."

"I’m not out of breath," I told her. I began to crawl toward her, sand rasping beneath my body. Suddenly, arms wrapped around me, picking me up. Ubatu. She gave me a quick little hug before carrying me easily across the beach. "See?" I told Festina. "I can get around just fine."

"Youn Suu," Festina said, "this isn’t going to work. No matter how strong Ubatu may be, she can’t move quickly with you weighing her down. Besides, she’s injured. And you’re injured. You’re both liabilities I can’t afford. I have to go in alone."

"Not a chance," I said. "You’ll need me inside. I’m sure."

"Why? What’s inside?"

"I don’t know. That’s why you’ll need me. I have to see what’s in there before I can help you."

"If you get in my way, we all might die."

"If you go in without me, you’ll be out of your depth."

She glared at me. "Why? Because you’re an enlightened Buddhist know-it-all, and I’m not?"

"Because every mythic hero needs some brainy beauty to explain how to kill the hydra or escape the labyrinth."

Festina made a face. "I’ve always considered myself the brainy beauty."

"No, you haven’t. Neither have I. We grew up thinking we were Ugly Screaming Stink-Girls… which is ridiculous, because we are brainy beauties. But now I’m wise as well as brainy, so you need me. Western heroes never wise up till it’s too late, and everyone else is dead. Just ask Oedipus. Or Hamlet."

"Just you wait," Festina said. "When this mission is over, I’m going to study Eastern mythology so I can make cheap-ass put-downs about your metaphysical shortcomings."

"Ooooomph!" Ubatu yelled. Or some similar sound of loud urgency.

Festina looked around as if there might be some looming danger, but Li (who’d followed on our heels and eavesdropped) said, "She’s trying to tell you, for God’s sake, shut up! Eastern, Western, this, that, as if those are the only two options!"

"Mph!" Ubatu said, nodding.

"And as if," Li went on, "Eastern and Western haven’t interbred to the point where the two can’t be separated. Look at me — my father came from a colony that was mostly Chinese, my mother from one that was mostly Belgian, but both planets were so thoroughly mainstream Technocracy, the only difference was the street names. I suppose you people were raised on Fringe Worlds that still cling to vestiges of your original ethnicities; but let me tell you, the Technocracy Core is the proverbial melting pot. Everyone is a mongrel, and the lifestyles mongrelized too. East and West have blended with African, Polynesian, Aboriginal, and Inuit… not to mention Divian, Cashling, Fasskister, and all the other alien cultures in our neighborhood. So don’t give me East and West. The terms are meaningless. At least they are now. Maybe back in Confucius’s day…"

"Ooooomph!" Ubatu yelled again. Her arms clenched around me. For a moment, I thought she’d use me as weapon to smack Li across the face. But the impulse passed; her grip relaxed back to normal.

"Behave, you two," Festina snapped. "Behave, or I really will make you wait outside."

She turned and walked toward the station. When the rest of us followed, she said nothing.