taking the offering on trust. They didn’t reply, but she sensed that they were no longer potential adversaries. It was a start.
It seemed the natives had a rapid method of communication, nontech or not, since she had only to land in what she thought of as a “village” and someone would come with water and cake. She hoped, though, that she’d be able to speak to their holy ones at Quislon Center.
It wasn’t difficult to spot, once you got near it. The enormous volcano was smoking and churning, and there, embedded in the side of the great mountain, was the bizarre hexagonal shaped nothingness of a Zone Gate.
The region was also so dense with settlements that she wondered how they all fit down there. This was no collection of villages, but a great underground city. She couldn’t help but wonder what happened when the volcano erupted, as it most surely did—they had volcanoes in Ambora, and she could see the evidence of fresh flows.
If there were preparations for the great event to come, they were not evident, nor was any area obviously reserved as the holy place for a priesthood. Maybe they had group minds and no need of priesthoods, she thought, but she didn’t get that impression from the sensations emanating beneath her. No, these were individuals who could also become a single group entity. Not the same thing, and probably not that simple, either.
She decided to set down amidst a large complex and call out for aid. This time, though, it wasn’t food and water that she needed, but authority.
These were such different creatures than any others she’d dealt with that she was unsure how to proceed. She assumed from the way she’d been treated that they had some sort of empathic ability to read truth, sincerity, and perhaps threat as well, and that was why they had fed her, but their society was a closed book, buried deep underground in a self-illuminated complex. The translator always made every creature sound quite normal, but in this case she understood that it was being a deceiver. She didn’t know how these people thought, or whether she ever could know. She was beginning to wonder why Core and the others thought she could speak to them on more than a basic level, and of course, anybody could do that.
And so she stood before the largest of the pyramid entry-ways and said, loudly, “Hello? I am sure you have some way of already knowing who I am. I am here to witness your great festival, but I wish more than just to witness, for to witness without understanding is to see nothing. As different as we are, we have in common certain religious truths at the very center of our beings. I need to speak with, to learn from, anyone within your society who can communicate this understanding to one such as me, or at least as much as one not of Quislon could understand. I do not wish to see merely what you do, but why you do it.”
She waited, feeling that she’d been heard. The door opened then, and one of the creatures with a different striped coloration about its head looked out at her and said, “Northwest past two principalities, then east directly toward the Holy Mountain to the next one you see. They might be able to help you.”
She thanked the Quislonian, noting the term “principality,” or at least that was the word as the translator caught it. It implied some kind of royalty. That was interesting. She would never have thought of these people as having a monarchial structure. Perhaps it was like the insects of Ambora, a physical thing. But in that case there would be one queen and no others. Well, it was one of those things that might be learned, or might even be a translator error due to the impossibility of precisely mating the ideas in her mind with those of theirs.
By “principalities” she was sure it meant what she’d interpreted as towns or villages or, in this area, maybe neighborhoods. At least it was to find, considering the short distance, the precise direction, and the relation to the volcano. She found, however, that she was amidst a cluster that did not feel as densely populated but did in fact emit a very different sort of empathic energy. She looked around and realized that this might not be the most popular place for a very dense population; there were recent flows very near, and this “principality” was almost at the base of the mountain. Beyond it they did not live, but just beyond, and a bit higher, on the side of the mountain itself, she could feel as much as see the proximity of the Gate. If anybody was going to rule this place, then they would be here, danger or not. You passed here to climb the sacred mountain, or to go to or from Quislon to Zone.
“You are quite perceptive,” a voice said, and she almost jumped, not having sensed anyone nearby. She turned and saw an exceptionally large Quislonian uncharacteristically fully outside the enclosure. She turned, then self-consciously knelt down, as uncomfortable as that was for her, to be more on a face-to-face plane with this newcomer.
“I-—I apologize sincerely,” she told it. “I had thought that I could not be surprised, but here there are so many sensations that I did not see you there.” In spite of her stops and the charity of the others, this was as close as she’d ever been to one of the creatures, and her first chance to study one.
It stood about a meter high on all six legs. Its base color was pinkish-gray, its skin or possibly soft exoskeleton had a smooth and slightly wet look to it, but it had a unique design over its back on both right and left sides near the top. The design, in scarlet and gold, seemed woven, yet also appeared natural.
Its head was adorned with the same scarlet and gold trim, and was on a retractable neck that appeared to be able to turn most of the way around and rise from a notch in the body, elevating the head another thirty or so centimeters or leaving it facing forward as an extension of the body. It was no beauty; there were four horns, two long, two short, atop an oval mouth that seemed to have wriggling worms where teeth might be, constantly dripping some kind of wet ooze and also constantly in motion.
“You did not see because I did not wish you to. Just as you just did with me, I wanted to get a good look at you as well, you see. We are so very alien to one another, physically, perhaps otherwise, you and I, yet within you runs complexities I have never encountered before.”
She felt confused. “I am perhaps the simplest of creatures on this world who thinks and breathes. This— metamorphosis, or whatever it is, which changed me into a grander looking Amboran and restored my flight, and which also gave me some powers I do not yet understand, well, this was all laid upon me without explanation.”
The Quislonian said nothing for a moment, then commented, almost as if to itself, “So this is one who listens to the God of the Well.” Its voice became bolder, more direct. “You
“I—suppose—well, yes, I hear it, but I do not understand it.”
“How can one of us understand something that is running the whole universe? That at one and the same time keeps track of we two, individually, here, and worlds upon worlds out to infinity?”
“You believe, then, in a single godhead?”
“Hardly that! We know that God was made by the Ancients. That does not make it any less God, for its power is absolute and cannot be challenged nor superseded, which is the essence of being a god. Your own beliefs have many gods?”
“Yes. We see the one who is Creator, and then the Agents, the lesser gods, who maintain the stability and utility of the universe and, as it were, take care of the small details such as you and me.”
“We think the opposite, proceeding from the same Creator. Not lesser gods, for we’ve seen nor sensed nothing of them, but greater ones. The Ancients, who built this place and the Creator and then left for a divine plane that we cannot comprehend. Are they not in your cosmology?”
She thought a moment. “There is some sense of the Ancients, who have a particular name and vision, yes, but they are considered outside the universe, First Causes now removed from power. If they could create a god to control the universe, then they have to be outside it, and beyond anything we can comprehend. If we proceed in our own universe as properly as we can, then when death comes, God may send us to them. Until then, we do not believe that they are the ones with whom we are to deal.”
“Interesting concept. You worship agents of the Creator, who then, I suppose, worship the Creator, who in turn… Makes an odd sort of sense. No! Please! I am not intending to offend, but it is a strange cosmology to us, and a concept that is a bit, well,
It took her aback for a moment, and she realized now how provincial had been her thinking. Not only here and now, but ever since she’d left Ambora, it had been
“I have communed with the god of my people, whom we call the Grand Falcon, although, of course, he is no bird, but spirit. We have spoken to one another, and he is never that far from me and inhabits a tiny part of me. I cannot deny his existence, yet I will not deny the truth of yours as well, just its emphasis and interpretation. We may never totally agree, but we are, I believe, far closer, particularly for two such different species, than either of
