“And?”
“And they hated one another. The one for what the other had; the other for what his brother had not. And in the hate, the one lost what he had had while the other gained nothing. At the end was only emptiness.”
“And so?”
“And so, Ganver, I will think on it. Perhaps the lesson will mean something to me as I consider it.” Privately, I thought I might never perceive it. So far, it was only a tangle of Sanctuary, Dragons, Prophets.
“Perhaps.” Ganver mused in the gray place where we were. “Come, we will go elsewhere.”
We came out of the grayness this time on a shore where a silver river ran laughing into the sea, Ganver in his own shape and I in mine. My shape, my own Jinian shape, was ravenously hungry and thirsty, as though it had not eaten for many days—and indeed, perhaps that was true. Who knew what time was like in the gray spaces between memories, or whether meals eaten there were real or only remembered? Ganver, perhaps, but it did not tell me. I ran across the sands to drape myself across a stone and suck water into me like a great empty jug. After a time I was sloshingly restored but as hungry as ever. There were silver fishes playing in the pool beneath me, delicious-looking fishes, and I knew I could catch them with my hands if I drove a few of them into one of the shallow pools along the stream.
“Look, Ganver,” I called. “Fish. I’ll catch a few for my supper!” The Eesty strolled over to me, stood peering down into the water. “Jewel fish,” it said at last. “The only breeding population of jewel fish on Lom. Rare and few.”
I was hardly listening, full of plans for filling my belly. Still, there was something in the tone in which Ganver had said, “Rare and few. . . .” I tried speaking to the fishes. Nothing. Their language was a flip of the tail, the feel of a splash of water on the skin, four or five words, no more. Food. Fight. Flee. Breed. Chemical words, running quick hormonal fingers along their spines and fins.
“Ganver,” I said, “the fish have no souls.”
“Ah,” said Ganver. I knew that “ah” and disliked it. “Is that so?” the Eesty asked.
“They have no awareness even.”
“True.”
I sat there watching those damn fish, mouth watering until I thought I would die. There were some table roots near the stream. A sharp stick dug them out, and I sat looking at the fish while washing them clean and peeling them one by one before crunching their unsatisfying bland sweetness. They were not bad baked or boiled as an accompaniment to other things: roasts, stews, broiled fish. . . .
A flower clump moved in the wind, and I thought of Chimmerdong. The Forest of Chimmerdong, where every flower seemed aware of itself. No. No, where the forest seemed aware of every flower.
“What place is this?” I asked.
“Boughbound Forest,” said Ganver. “Long ago.”
“Tricky, Ganver,” I remarked in a conversational tone. “Very tricky. And undoubtedly the being which was Boughbound knew of these fish, as I know of my toenail or little finger or hair?”
“Possibly.”
“If I catch a few of them to eat, there won’t be enough of them to guarantee reproduction, is that it?”
“Likely.”
“They are—ah, how would we say this. They are part of the soul of something greater?”
“Possibly.”
“And while it wouldn’t be wrong for me to take nuts from a tree or roast a bunwit for my lunch—there are plenty of nuts and plenty of bunwits . . .”
“True.”
“It would be wrong to take these.”
The implications of this were so provoking that I forgot to be hungry. “There are plenty of men,” I said at last. “If a man had a soul, it would be wrong to kill him. If he had awareness but no soul, it would be less wrong. If he had neither, it would not be wrong at all?”
“What did you do at the Sanctuary?”
“I let those pitiful creatures go to sleep forever.”
“Why?”
“Out of mercy, Ganver.”
“But you did not do the same for the Fathers of the place.”
I thought on this. “But they had awareness, Ganver. I did not want them to get off so easily. I wanted . . .”
“You wanted to punish them.”
It was true. I had wanted to punish them.
“Why did you not let them go mercifully as well?”
Why? Why, indeed. Why had I sought to punish, to hurt, rather than merely let them go? Did the Fathers of the Sanctuary have bao? I thought not. They had had no sense of fitness. They had shown no mercy. They had prolonged pain and caused it, to no purpose. Out of seed ego. Out of worship for St. Phallus.
But I had been no more merciful than they! Out of shape ego. I had told myself the Fathers were aware, therefore—therefore they should have known better. They were aware, therefore they should have understood. They were aware. Shape ego. My own kind, therefore . . . therefore nothing.
It slipped away from me. “Ganver, I’m too tired and too hungry to concentrate on this lesson. Are you finished with your teaching?”
“There are five points on the star,” it said. “Five lessons to learn, five parts to understanding. I have given you what I can.”
“Then feed me, Eesty, or take me somewhere there is something I can feed myself. And when I have eaten, perhaps it will all make sense. Are you sure you can’t explain it to me in simple language?”
“There are certain lessons which are not difficult to explain but which are very difficult to live by,” said Ganver, moving away once more into the gray, the roiling, the smoke place between time. “And one who has not tried to live by the lesson of the
