“Who, who does?” Laurinda stammered.
“It appears to me that your race is mad—not you, dear, nor most people by themselves, but your race—torn between instinct and intellect, the animal and something beyond the animal. Is this a misinterpretation? If not, then most likely, without guidance, humankind will put an end to itself long before the cosmos would. I cannot as I am understanding it well enough to know, or to provide that guidance.
“Help me, Laurinda.”
“How?” she asked, atremble, wondering what further she could do in what years were left to her.
“Do not die. When your body is worn out, let me upload your mind and memories.”
Cold struck through. “No! No. I’ve … thought about it, of course, but everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve heard—I don’t want to be a robot.”
“I know. But would you become one with me?
“A kind of Nirvana, yes, you no longer a uniqueness but an enrichment of the whole. Yet, you’ll be there for millions of years or more, and, as need may be, I can resurrect you in emulation as you were.
“It’s an offer I can only make to a few. This is a newly created capability, and my capacity for it is limited thus far. Later—But I would like to take you, Laurinda, before you are gone forever.
“Think about it. Remember, though, your last hour for choosing is not so very far away.”
VI
Seventeen hundred years later, a thing occurred that lived in people’s memories for generations, until life-ways changed too much for them to make sense of it.
In those days communities, fellowships, nations, and ethnoi all had their own ways of observing New Century’s Eve. In Tahalla it climaxed a month of ceremonies and celebrations. Some of these equalled Creation Day or Remembrance in solemnity, others rivaled Fire Night or the Festival for Children in joyousness. The quinquennial Darvic Games now took on an even greater importance; the glory that winning players brought to their clans would heighten the standing of every member and the influence of every captain for the next decade or more.
The opening procession moved grandiosely down Covenant Boulevard. Sunlight out of a hard blue sky flared off metal and seemed to set banners afire. Folk stood ten deep on either side. One did not sit at home and merely watch an occasion like this. One came, partook, joined in the hymns and the cheers, saw high-born and heroes pass by in the living flesh, felt the surge and throb of exultation, and needed no psychotrope for the spirit to soar. Most had arrived in groups, wearing the special garb of guild or society, but the groups had mingled randomly. The white gowns and red sashes of educators might be wedged between the purple-and-gold tunics of Magnificos and the scarlet cloaks and plumed headdresses of Torchmen, or some Falcons in close-fitting blue and gray cluster by some green-clad physicians. Only the philosophers kept individually apart, a scattering of hooded gray robes trimmed with iridescent flickercloth. As was their traditional right, the Terpsichoreans cavorted in front of everybody, on the street itself, limbs, long hair, and filmy garments flying. The morning was already hot, but nobody heeded. It baked fragrances from the pavement.
Behind reared the many-hued walls, shimmering colonnades, and jewel-faceted cupolas of central Roumek. Everything was cleaned and polished; often intricate patterns of mosaic or sculpture had been added; but no façde changed appearance except as shadows shifted with the sun. Owners vied to produce astonishing effects only at the Festival of Illusions. The Games were different, an occasion religious as well as secular.
Trumpets rang, sonors pealed and thundered, tuned fountains and the Singing Tower blent their own music in. Helmets and cuirasses agleam, lances and lasers held high, a squad of Honorables went in advance, riding white elks whose antlers had been gilded. Hierophants, one from every hinterland in Tahalla, followed on foot, wearing their canonicals and bearing their symbols according to their orders: of God the Dreamer of the Universe, God the Mother, God the Summoner (black cassock, impaled skull), God the Lover (rainbow hues and wreathed staff). After them glided the car of the Holy Interpreter. Robotic agents attended his sumptuously canopied throne and comforted him in his opalescent vestments with fans from which streamed cool breezes. Another detachment of Honorables rode behind.
Then came the Regnant and First Consort. Their thrones were on a dais at the center of a great moving stage, from whose corners undulated the shapes of a golden dragon, a scarlet flame, a blue whirlwind, and a flowering vine. On the Regnant’s left sat the heir apparent, on the Consort’s right the Chief Enactor. Benched below were the Council. Senior guardsmen stood along the sides, tossing tokens of diamond and ruby into the crowd. The garb and accoutrements of all these dazzled every beholder.
A dozen men who stood at the front wore simply the insignia of the clans of which they were captains, together with emblems of whatever societies they might belong to—except for the one at the center, from whose shoulders hung the Cloak of Darva and in whose hand rested the Staff of Supremacy. Yet, gazes followed them more than any others: for these were the appointed stewards of the Games.
Magnates of the city, commanders of lesser communities, and rural landkeepers rode after, most in open cars, some on horses of fanciful genetics, each attired in his or her finest. Behind them marched the players, in bands under the standards of whatever contest they were to enter but every individual proudly dressed in a tunic of the color pattern marking his or her clan. And the shouts burst over them like surf.
Mikel headed the auvade contingent, for his father Wei, captain of Clan Belov, was among the stewards. Of course, kinship disqualified Wei from judging that competition.
