Patron of the Arts

But I lay there in that darkness with images and thoughts coming and going.

Nova.

Madelon.

Cilento and Sunstrum and the great sphere of stars.

My mother, my father, and falling broken into the crystals. Was my death to be so plebeian, I thought, with my life flashing past like some newsstat bio?

The images blurred and ran, and through my closed lids I saw the mural over my head, glowing in the dark, pulsating, throbbing, the long arms moving. The perspective shifted and stretched, then condensed and ran like melted wax. Madelon was in one of the arms, glisteningly naked, turning, swimming through stars, laughing, her long hair like a net. Nova was in the next arm as the great spiral wheel turned, her hair spreading out like black night, blocking out the galaxies whirling in the distance. Crystal jewels coated her body like light, shifting and running like water as she turned in space. Something else came up on the next spiral arm, a formless form, a rainbow in the shape of a shape, a turning, shimmering dance.

The pain was distant and then gone and I was there in the galaxy dance, part of the farflung arms, part of the stars and atoms and utter void. The arms curved through time and space, becoming one, becoming many, blending, regenerating, purifying, a cascade of color sound, a river of light, a comet of time . . .

My body and mind parted, breaking, disintegrating, each with a reflection of the whole, each with the whole of perfection. I was Nova, I was a star, I was void, I was crystal, I was energy . . . I was . . . always had been . . .

I linked . . . went back, far back, linking, linking. linking. I was part of everything . . .

I was Feather of Flame and Lastwarrior.

I was Flowerbringer and Nightwind and Gilgamesh.

I was earth and fire and Xenophon, Demonkiller, and Rainbowsound.

I was Stormsweep and Firestar.

I was Brian Thorne.

I was reflected in man, but I was one—unique—a fragment of all. I was IOK and IOR and Cre-vlar-mora-ma. I was merah and damu

and smoke.

I linked.

I was.

I knew.

The atoms drew together. They formed into the old pattern. Returned, they moved and meshed and I was whole again. But not the same.

I realized I was staring up at the ancient mural. It was dark, yet I could see it plainly, more clearly than I had with the light. The galactic spiral still spun in a frozen moment of time, a millisecond frame from eternity.

The pain was gone.

Startled, I felt in the dark for my thigh.

It was whole.

Complete, uncut, unsevered.

My hands were smooth, my exhaustion gone. I could feel the thin cold Martian air in my lungs. I could sense the pulsebeat of blood and the busy, busy body at work.

I looked up at the mural, but now it seemed too dark to see clearly.

I got to my feet, shaky in mind, but whole in body. I moved my leg and it moved without pain, without