church gain converts?”
“By making more sense, to many people, than paganism does. At that, it isn’t easy to get into. There’s a lot of hard study required first, and examinations, and finally an expensive sacrifice. But you know, if I had a religious inclination, I’d think wistfully about joining.”
“What? You can’t be serious. Personifying the three suns—”
“A symbol. You can suppose they are literal gods, but you don’t have to; you can take the personalities as allegorical if you prefer, tokens of the reality.” Sparling looked thoughtfully at the smoke drifting from his pipe, “And the mythology does contain a great deal of truth about life, with poetry and ritual to help you feel it more directly. Bel, the Sun, the life-giver, who can also be terrible; Ea, the Ember Star, a diadem on the Dark which is winter and death—but the world needs them; Anu, the Rover, bringing both chaos and a chance for renewal. Yes, it strikes me as quite a bit more reasonable than a Christian God who’s simultaneously one person and three, who’s called merciful but left us to handle creations of his like cancer and stroke.”
Dejerine, who considered himself a Christian, refrained from saying more than: “Have there been conversions among humans?”
“No,” Sparling said. “Nor will there be, I’m sure. If nothing else, since we can’t dream right, we’d miss half the significance. We’d be like a Catholic forever unable to attend Mass or take communion. No, worse off; he could read his missal.”
“Dreams?” Dejerine frowned. “Like the medicine dreams of primitive humans?”
“Not at all. You don’t know? Well, it’s so subtle and difficult an idea—for us—that I suppose it’s not gotten into the average popular account of this planet. Ishtarians sleep like us, and apparently for the same basic reason: the brain needs time off the line, to assimilate data. But the Ishtarian’s forebrain doesn’t shut down as thoroughly as ours. He keeps more consciousness than we do. To a certain extent, he can direct his dreaming.”
“I’ve had that experience myself, when barely asleep.”
“Most humans have. With us, though, it’s rudimentary and unusual. It’s normal for the Ishtarian. He can choose what he’ll dream about. It becomes a major part of his emotional life—maybe one reason why, in spite of using a few drugs, Ishtarians never become addicted. Of course, some have more talent for it than others. There are actually professional dreamers. They use that blend of consciousness and randomness to experience marvelous visions, and an entire art of communicating the effect afterward to an audience. Words, tone, gesture, expression, music, dance, an enormous body of ancient conventions, all go into it.” Sparling sighed. “We’ll never be able to share that, you and I. So, since I can’t dream the Triad, it can’t be anything more to me ever than a philosophical concept.”
Dejerine drank smoke. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I see how the Ishtarians could have a… a rather overwhelming impact. But I don’t feel they are necessarily inherently superior, except in a few departments.”
“Nor do I, nor any sensible person,” Sparling answered. “For instance, insofar as we can separate culture and heredity—which isn’t very bloody damn far—they seem to have less sense for three-dimensional geometry than we do. Maybe because of having no arboreal ancestors? A lot of them are terrified of flying, though they know our vehicles are safe. Et cetera. No, you’re wrong about an inferiority complex. We simply consider them our friends, from whom we can learn a huge amount if Earth’s politicos will get off our backs.”
“Will you believe that I, too, have been close to nonhumans?” Dejerine asked softly.
Sparling nodded.
It flashed in Dejerine: He is becoming better disposed to me. Perhaps he will carry an olive branch to Jill?
Am I in love with her? Or is it merely charm that met a longstanding celibacy, like steel meeting flint? I don’t know. I never will know unless I can see her again. Often.
He said with care, “Would you mind mentioning that to Miss Conway, if opportunity should arise? I’m afraid she is angry at me because I couldn’t help her native official. She gave me no chance to explain how sorry I was.”
Abruptly Sparling froze over. “How can I do that?”
A hand took hold of Dejerine’s heart and squeezed. “Is something wrong with her?”
“No way to tell,” Sparling clipped. “She’s gone north with Larreka. They’ve been on the trail for days.”
“What? Why, that is crazy!”
“How’d you stop her? If she chooses to do research in Valennen before it’s closed to us, who has the right to forbid her? At that, she sent notes to her parents and me by a messenger who was not to deliver them till she was welt on her way. I flitted over the route but saw nothing. Didn’t really expect to, that small a party in that big and rugged a landscape. I called, but naturally they’d switched off their transceivers when they passed beyond ordinary relay range.”
“Why in cosmos would she do so mad a thing?”
“Because she’s Jill, and wants to help. Yeah, ‘intervention.’ But she calls it research, and you’d have a sweet time proving different, Dejerine. She’ll phone when she reaches Port Rua, and quite likely I’ll find a research project for myself in those parts at that time. Now dog your hatch! Haven’t you done enough harm?”
THIRTEEN
Jill finished the ancient words which she had put into the tongue of Sehala—for Ishtarians who didn’t know English were often eager to hear the music of Earth—and kept her guitar ringing on while she whistled in the way of a wind over cold seas. It flitted through her awareness that she had always taken such performances for granted; but what would the unknown maker of the ballad think, could he be called from the dust and across a thousand light-years to this night?
In it, Larreka’s party were camped on the northern slope of the Red Hills. Ahead of them reached the Badlands, the Dalag. and at last the’ coast where they would take a legionary ship. In that open tropical country, under two suns most of the day, they would travel after dark as much as might be. But here they had forest to shade them, and to make them half blind, thus slow, when stars and moons alone gave light. Therefore, they rested.
A low fire tinged faces, manes, forequarters of her companions, where they reposed in a circle and every eye gleamed toward her. Further off among shadows glinted the spearheads of the watch; if nothing else, tree lions might be made sufficiently desperate by dwindling game to attack sophonts. Closer hunched the bales of supplies and a tent raised for her protection against any sudden, flayingly violent storm. She didn’t expect one. The forest wailed this glade in unstirring murk, stars smoldered above, the air hung warm and tull of heavy pungencies. She planned to shed her few garments and sleep outside on top of her bag. Still, nobody could tell for sure what weather Anu might bring.
Her tones died away. For a time, legionaries and porters lay thoughtful, only switching their tails in the male sign for “Thank you.”
Finally a young trooper asked, “What did the females do?”
“Eh?” Jill was brought from a reverie. Ah, well, just speculating about what it all means, life and death, suns and worlds, the kind of question which has to get asked over and over but I don’t suppose can ever be answered.
