repossessed something before, we've never had any trouble selling it off…not when it was something, uhh, big.
No, ma'am. We didn't think ahead. We're sorry.
VARIATION M: TOTEM
(TRANQUILLO CON SPIRITO)
(SERENELY, WITH SPIRIT)
CONTACT: JANUARY 2079
Come here, Celeste.
You're wondering what your animal will be, right?
When I was a boy your age, I wanted the shaman to tell me I'd been chosen by the eagles. I dreamt of flying with them…or a bear, that seemed like a good animal too. I'd seen a bear once in a zoo—it seemed wise and kindly. Now that I know more about bears, I realize I overlooked important aspects of the bear personality. Its claws, for example.
But no, your animal will not be the bear. Or the eagle. Or the wolf or the whale or any of those totems young people usually hope for.
I know. You're disappointed. I was disappointed when the shaman told me my bed would lie in the rabbit lodge. I wanted to be…oh, something more heroic. I thought rabbits were timid and foolish. But really, when a rabbit runs from a fox, it isn't being foolish, is it? It's just being sensible. And a rabbit has the heart of a wolverine at times—when being brave is the least foolish alternative. A rabbit is always watching, always listening, always sniffing the air. That's a good way for a shaman to live.
But no, you won't be a rabbit either.
The spirits have built a new lodge. They've sensed a new creature. Not human, not an animal they've known in the past. It comes from far away. This animal is your totem.
I don't know its name. You're the first of its clan. It has no name in any human tongue. You can ask for its secret name when you meet it.
To meet it, you'll have to journey off-planet. At present, the creature is several million kilometers inside the orbit of Mercury, and—
No, I'm not crazy. Or lying. The animals spoke. I dreamed a true dream.
Are you saying the truth is only true when you can understand it?
You're wrong.
When I went to university many decades ago, I enrolled in mathematics because I wanted to tell truth from falsehood. I believed mathematics was the one pure source of truth because it was the only discipline entirely divorced from subjectivity. But that was before I began studying. At school, I learned all mathematics starts with 'Let's pretend this is true and see where it leads.' That is mathematics' great joy and strength: it dares to stand on nothingness. It dares to
You want to argue with me, I see that. Don't you want to be a shaman, Celeste? Don't you want to have magic in your heart? Well, I'll tell you a secret about magic: it refuses to be what you want it to be. Demand something of magic and it will choose to be something else.
One quiet wintry Sunday while I was at the university, I woke at dawn and went for a walk. I suppose you'd like me to give some mystic explanation for walking at that hour, but the truth is, my roommate was snoring so loudly I couldn't sleep, so I got angry and left. I walked nowhere in particular, and because I was angry, I paid little attention to the world around me: the cardinals whistling in the trees, the squirrels running across the snow. I was in no magical mood, I assure you.
But. As I passed one of the university parking lots, I saw a spirit.
It was the Thunderbird, I think: a man's body with the head of a bird of prey. It was at the far end of the lot, walking away from me toward the science complex; I could only see its back, a long distance off.
I stood frozen for two full minutes until the spirit disappeared behind the Chemistry building.
Now, girl, was that magic?
The spirit was a long way off and in the shadow of some buildings. It could have been nothing more than someone wearing an odd hat. I tried to convince myself I was imagining things, because the incident didn't fit with how I thought the world should work. Why would a great spirit be walking across a parking lot? A parking lot! Not a field, not a forest, a parking lot. And if a spirit chose to show itself to me, why didn't it talk or do something miraculous? Why would it just walk away and disappear?
Was that magic? Or was it only my imagination?
Since then I've met the Thunderbird several times in my dreams of the Other World, but it's always refused to say whether it really showed itself to me that day.
That's the way of true magic, Celeste. It's slippery. It's always open to question. My dreams of the Other World, well, maybe they're just dreams, right? There's always a logical explanation somewhere if you want it.
And there's always magic if you want it. Everywhere. In the forest, in the city, in a lodge, in a factory.
In space, several million kilometers inside the orbit of Mercury.
That's the magic you've been offered, Celeste. You don't get a choice what your magic will be; your choice is whether you will let it
Will you?
Yes, we can get you there. A woman named Verhooven is bringing people to see the new creature. She's become curious about it; she's gathering those with knowledge of its travels. It won't be hard for you to join this group. You belong to the creature's clan—you have to speak for it. The spirits will make sure you get where you belong.
Are you willing to accept this magic, young shaman? Are you willing to say, 'Let's pretend this is true and see where it leads'?
Then let the drums sound.
The music of the drums rises to Heaven.
FUGUE: ORGANISM
(ALLEGRO CON TUTTI)
(AT GOOD SPEED, WITH THE ENTIRE ORCHESTRA)
CONTACT: MARCH
According to the laws of the League of Peoples, the boundary of a single-sun solar system is that set of points where the gravitational attraction of the primary exactly equals the gravitational attraction of the rest of the universe. Humans might claim determining this line is impossible, maybe even in violation of quantum physics; but the laws of the League have taken precedence over the laws of physics so long, physics no longer contests the issue.
A few meters outside the boundary of Sol's system, the Outpost prepared for action. Sensors had recorded a steady increase in the Organism's mass over the past months as it drank in Sol's energy; within minutes, the Organism would have enough energy to open a wormhole out of the system. Wormholes were a haphazard way to travel—the hole's outlet might open as much as a light- year off target—but species without true FTL flight found wormholes a convenient shortcut whenever they wanted to leapfrog a parsec or two.
Of course, wormholes had an unfortunate tendency to suck in every particle of matter for kilometers around….
The Outpost of the League of Peoples watched and waited. The odds were good that humans would become an interstellar race much sooner than they expected.
She hated the sight of her grandfather's magnificent Leviathan reduced to this decrepit clown. But at the farthest ranges of vision, she could see the creature's wings spread wide to the sun: a clear, clean black, darker than the night sky behind them. Valhalla and Nirvana and the Sunboat Fun ride were just barnacles on Leviathan's hide; they'd be scraped off soon enough.
The woman must have heard him come in, for she turned and nodded without smiling. 'Hello.'
'H'lo,' he answered carefully. 'Anything doing out?'
'Heaven is warring with itself,' she said. 'The idols are crashing down.'
'Oh.' He looked at the wreckage shuddering across the surface. A concrete tower toppled soundlessly across a cluster of roller-coaster tracks. The windows in the distant tower's observation deck shattered; the air inside burst outward, its humidity turning to a spray of white. Stitch couldn't remember if the white was steam because of the low pressure or frost because of the cold. 'Wild, isn't it?' he said.
'Yes,' said the woman, sounding very satisfied.
'I was thinking of driving down,' Stitch said suddenly, surprising himself he'd revealed this to a stranger. 'I'm licensed for minishuttles, and there are dozens in the docking bay. I'd like to see…' But there was something too intense in the woman's expression to let him tell the truth: that he was hoping to find some huge chalk letters his grandfather had scribbled decades earlier. 'I'd like to see it close up,' he said.
The woman looked down at the surface again. She seemed to be smiling at the continuing destruction. 'I'd like to see it close up too.'
Esteban had repeated that axiom to himself so often it was like a mantra. Jogging around the track at the gym, he sometimes caught himself muttering, 'Treat the person, not the label,' over and over and over and over.
'We're going for a closer look at the surface,' the she-bear said. 'Interested?'
'Certainly,' Esteban said, smiling his professional smile. In fact, he'd heard that vicious quakes rocked the surface from time to time, scattering rubble into the air. Getting too close was dangerous…but his first patient Rachel had hesitated to approach her angel, and for that cowardice, she'd gone mad.
No, he corrected himself, she'd succumbed to delusional paranoia brought about by unresolved guilt.
No, he corrected himself again. She'd gone mad.
