Gravity Dreams

1

To that which is born, death is certain; to that which is dead, birth is certain.

My eyes flashed to the rain-swollen stream, and then to the swirl of water that geysered out of the gray rocks of the defile. Heavy clouds melded with the granite to the north. Mist droplets clung to my hair, and water seeped down my neck and back. Sweat and fear enveloped me, a combined odor that the rain could not wash away, that would guide my pursuers through the ancient trees to me.

'The Demons' Caldron.' The words mumbled from my chilled and chapped lips, and I looked eastward, seeing again the cart road.

A thousand meters or so to the right was the cart path that headed northward toward Rykasha and the Demons' Niche - one thousand, seven hundred and ten point four meters jumped into my thoughts, reminding me again of the demon I had become or was fast becoming. The paved path followed the once-larger road of the ancients, or so the maps showed, although it supposedly ended short of the boundary markers, and only a trail continued north into Rykasha.

I shook my head. Too close by far. I had thought I had been jogging farther westward, moving away from that serviceway, but my feet had betrayed me and carried me gradually downhill and back toward the gliders that tracked me. Back toward Foerga?

My eyes burned, and I shook my head. Poor Foerga, linked to a man who had become a demon, yet still loving him to the end, against the tenets of Dorcha, against the Townkeeper and the Shraddans. Against the Shraddans I had trusted and upheld in all my teachings of Dzin.

Underfoot the ground grew hard, with the ancient pavement that still endured around the Caldron. My stomach growled, a reminder that I had gone through all the food in the rucksack I had discarded kilos behind me, enough food for a normal man for weeks. It had scarcely lasted days for me.

An image of a vast glowing ball of light - an intense, yet peaceful, spinning pinwheel - rose before my eyes, and the grayness and the rain vanished for a moment. Just as suddenly, the image vanished, and I shook my head as I beheld the darkness of firs and rain-damped oak and maple trunks, and rain.

Rain ... the mist was turning into rain, and I had no time to think about mysterious balls of light appearing. I forced my eyes back to the wet and gray granite and the twisted trees before me. From the Caldron, the green-and-white stream water swirled up in a foaming cascade, then subsided. I paused and took a deep breath.

Whrrrrr ...

A glow of silver flashed through the trees to my right, the silver teardrop shape of a rough terrain glider - one with self-induction risers. I turned away from the stream and the Caldron and sprinted uphill.

The rain burst down in gusted waves interspersed with the near-continual rumbling of thunder, as I ran westward and then neared the crest of the first low rise, northward, trying to keep an even pace ahead of the gliders and the grim-faced Shraddans they contained.

So long as they could not get in front of me before I reached the border ... I had to reach the border, if only for Foerga's sake.

The ground rose and smote me, doubtless because I had been thinking more of geography than where my feet should go.

I staggered up, ignoring the line of fire across my forearm, the blood that mixed with rain, and dull aches too numerous to count. Then I had to bend and untangle the boot laces from the root that had tripped me, retying them before straightening. The mustiness of damp leaves and mud filled my nostrils.

Two more gliders whirred out of the mist and over the stream south of the Caldron and began to climb the low hill.

I began to run once more, tired as I was, running like a hare compared to how I had once run, even in my younger years.

Benefits of becoming a demon ...

The hill and granite outcroppings seemed to slow the Shraddans and their gliders, and the whining and whirring faded. Faded but did not disappear, lingering in my hearing, lingering in too many perceptions that had become too acute.

I slowed to a jog, insisting that one foot follow the other, then lead the other - any sort of mental imagery to keep moving, keep ahead of the Shraddans and what they wanted to do to me.

Lines of golden red fire filled the skies like arches holding back the depth of the void beyond the planet. That sky was not purple, nor blue, but nielle, blackness beyond black, with stars that jabbed like knives of light. I shook my head, concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and the vision vanished.

Some time later, when my legs ached into cramping, my lungs heaved, burning so that I could barely breathe, I lurched to a halt beside the dark-trunked fir. For a moment, all I could do was pant, although I tried to force deeper breathing.

Before I had taken much more than a dozen breaths, the silver teardrop shape of the first rough terrain glider loomed out of the rain to the east, whining and groaning as it forced its way through the undergrowth, not dodging bushes as I had done, but still weaving to avoid the man-thick pine and hardwood trunks.

With a gasp that was half sob, I dodged uphill around an outcrop of rain-stained rocks and back into the darkwood forest, forcing my legs, gasping for air, ignoring the agony that stabbed through my lungs with each breath.

Anything was better than starving in a stone cage. Than dying quickly by slow grams entombed in immovable stone. But I wasn't supposed to die. I couldn't let them kill me ... not after everything that had occurred.

I pushed my body, using every Dzin technique I had ever learned. Once more, the whining and whirring faded to the edge of consciousness as I plunged northward, knowing another set of gliders followed the road to the east, ready to slide in front of me should I falter.

Did they wish to capture me? Or just drive me out of Dorcha?

Containment pattern, ninety-nine percent probability ... Was that the demon, or was the demon liberating my own demons?

Having no answers, no time for answers, I avoided the berry patches, but even the other bushes ripped at my already-rent gown, and my boots skidded across clay and damp leaves and slick needles.

How had it all happened?

Less than a month earlier, I'd been a respected master of Dzin in Hybra. A low-level master tasked to educate the children of the town, but a master. Not quite a decade earlier, I'd been a candidate scholar in Henvor, learning the way of Dzin, learning the very skills that had stabilized the world and reclaimed it from the unbridled selfishness and chaos of the demons.

Now I was being hunted ... as a demon ... as an outcast and hated remnant of a despicable past forced on today's world by the unspeakable depravity of the ancients.

I slowed somewhat on a level stretch, a trail carpeted in rain-slicked needles, trying to catch my breath, to let jarred shins and fatigued muscles recuperate ever so slightly.

Me? A demon? Because I suddenly could think more clearly, run more quickly?

The long baying of a hound to the right spurred my flagging steps. Hounds were not used for herding and containment. Hounds were for the kill.

The blood on scratched arms forgotten, the cramps in over-strained legs ignored, I stepped up my pace, continuing to run up a gradual incline through the hills that never seemed to end.

Again, the sense and sounds of the gliders retreated. More important, that awful baying diminished. The mist cooled, became thin pellets of ice that bounced off my shoulders, off my soaked hair. In the stillness came the odor of sweat and fear, of panic.

The trees thinned, fir and spruce replacing the leafless oaks and maples. Fine snow sifted through the woods, settling on the needles and undergrowth not covered with the coniferous canopy.

In spite of my efforts, my pace slowed, and the whirring neared. Another pair of hounds bayed, their howling lower, more mournful.

The forest ended, and I stopped, caught by the openness running from left to right, an openness covered with snow. Flat, as though the snow covered pavement or grass, with no sign of undergrowth.

Fifty meters - forty-eight point three meters - to my left a tall silver pillar rose out of the ankle-deep snow, shimmering in the dim light.

A cleared swathe that cut off the tree growth as sharply as a knife or a laser ran east and west - marking the boundary between Rykasha and Dorcha, between civilization and chaos, and, incidentally, added that newly autonomous part of my thoughts, the forty-fourth parallel.

I shivered.

Behind me rose the whining of the pursuit gliders, a sound so faint I could not have heard it a month earlier, a sound so fearsome I would have pushed the idea out of my thoughts a decade earlier. The hounds bayed again.

I glanced back, sensing the approach of three, perhaps more, of the gliders, then looked at the pillar, then downhill to where I knew there was another, and another beyond that - a silver line marking the north boundary of Dorcha and the south boundary of Rykasha, the land of the demons.

Finally, as the whining rose, I shivered once more, then bolted past the boundary and into the land of my damnation.

The snow got deeper as I continued northward, seemingly centimeters higher with each few hundred steps, until I was plodding through knee-deep and clinging heavy white powder that soaked through the thin undertrousers and chilled my legs.

The trees grew farther apart, yet larger, and the mist became a white powder that filtered down from the darkness overhead.

I kept putting one foot in front of the other, glad at least that the whining and whirring of the gliders had been left behind at last. Bitter-glad, doing what duty - and love - required.

As I stepped out into a long empty space, with granite cliffs rising to the left and the right, another sound, more like a whooshing hum, intruded, grew louder by the moment, seemingly coming from no direction and all at once.

I stood still, calf-deep in snow that chilled even my heated body, turning in every direction before looking up ...

Light transfixed me - then darkness.

2

Dzin must be seized with bare hands and open eyes.

Outside the school, the late fall winds carried the fallen leaves past the half-open windows, creating a pleasant rustling. For a moment, rather than concentrate on the sixteen students sitting on their mats before me, I just listened, was just aware, holding to that single Dzin instant, accepting the moment.

Melenda held up her hand.

I nodded. There would be other moments.

'How did Dzin come into the world?' asked the long-haired young woman. 'You tell us about it and teach us how to apply it, but...' Her words trailed off uncertainly.

'Dzin has always been in the world; we just need to discover it.' I smiled. 'That's both true and incomplete. Knowledge of Dzin extends farther than the great collapse. It could have existed long before that. We don't know.' I paused, wondering how to connect what I had said to what we had been discussing. 'What we do know is that Dzin is not like a mountain or a glider repair manual. It is neither an immovable object nor a step-by-step guide to life. It is the way to become aware of reality, not to explain reality or to describe it. That's why we don't spend much time on telling what it is or how it came to be. It is. We try to teach you to become aware of everything, not to explain everything.'

'Is it like the clouds?' Wryan smiled broadly. 'There, but you really can't touch it or feel it?'

'Like the clouds?' I chuckled. 'Not exactly ... although there is an old Dzin saying, "The clouds are in the sky; the water is in the well." But that's another reminder that Dzin teaches us to understand reality directly, without becoming lost in descriptions of descriptions.'

There were several frowns at that, including one from Sergol, the blond fisherman's son in the middle of the second row.

'What's wrong with descriptions?' asked the thin-faced Sirena, squirming slightly on her mat.

We need descriptions to deal with some aspects of our life. Yet we must recognke that while descriptions are necessary, they are only approximations of the world. That was one of the reasons for the downfall of the ancients. The ancients could describe anything. They had descriptions of subatomic particles so small that their most powerful instruments could not detect them, yet they described them. They described how the world was built from the smallest forces, forces so infinitesimal that they could be detected only by interactions created by machines that were as big as the entire city of Henvor.'

The blank looks from the younger children in the second row told me I was well over their heads. I fingered my beard. How could I make what I'd said simpler, yet accurate? 'Dimmel? Do you like chocolate?'

'Yes, Master Tyndel, yes, ser.'

'Tell me about chocolate. What makes it good?'

'It's brown, and it's sweet, and it tastes soooo good.'

I nodded, looking from student face to student face. 'Lycya? Can you taste chocolate from Dimmel's description?'

'No, Master Tyndel.'

I looked at an older face. 'Can you, Erka?'

'No, ser.'

'Can anyone tell me more about chocolate?'

'It has milk and sugars in it,' added Wryan, 'and it melts in your hand on a hot day.'

'How does it taste? How do you feel when you eat it and after you eat it?' I pressed.

'Good ... really good!' exclaimed young Dimmel.

'I'm sure you do.' I paused, letting my eyes sweep over the group. 'Do all these descriptions really tell you how chocolate tastes?'

A few heads shook, then a few more.

'You see how hard it is? And you know about chocolate. The ancients tried to explain things far bigger, far more complicated than chocolate ... Yet for all their explanations, for all their search for more explanations that they could use, they failed, and they perished. As the Abbo Sanhedran said, "Explanation is not awareness."' I paused. 'What does that mean?' I looked toward the end of the first row at Dynae.

Ah, ser ... I am not sure. It wasn't in the lesson,' replied the brunette, the Townkeeper's daughter.

I concealed the wry amusement I felt and looked back at the thin-faced older girl beside her. 'What do you think, Sirena?'

'An explanation ... it doesn't... it's not the same ... as feeling something.'

I nodded. 'That's right. There's more. When you describe something you feel or see, immediately the truth of what you've seen becomes false.'

'Oh ... like the tale of the elephant and the blind men ... except we can't possibly explain everything we see,' interjected the redheaded Wryan. 'So when we talk about it, we leave things out'

'That's part of it,' I agreed.

'And there are things we feel but can't describe, and those get left out, too?' asked Wryan.

'You're right.' I smiled and nodded. 'That's enough for now. I want you all to think about it. We'll take a break before we start physical science.'

I smiled. Not always did the Dzin sessions go so well, but I was pleased, though I took care to remind myself that all too much of what I imparted I had gained from others. Still, most of them seemed to understand, and some, like Wryan, had a feel for Dzin.

3

Truth is not somewhere else.

In the shadow of the cataclypt of Dyanar, two children kissed, and I let them, although in my new and deep aquacyan gown, I should have stepped forward, frowned, let the silence of my disapproval separate them, for such familiarity so young leads to the arrogance of unbridled knowledge.

Rather than act, I studied the carvings on the cataclypt, the images of the winged figures who represented the ancients and the tailed figures in the background, the representation of the demons who had been created by the technology of those ancient angels. Dzin had saved us, those of Dorcha, from degenerating into the soullessness of the north, just as, I supposed, Toze had saved those of West Amnord.

From the carvings, my eyes went back to the two children, kissing. That was the beginning, though I did not see it. Instead, I forbore intervening and smiled, for I well remembered a day years before when I had kissed Esolde behind the grape trellis in her parents' garden.

On this later day of my posting, in my aquacyan gown, with the slow swirl of the river below and the dampness of the morning mist in my nostrils, I let the two kiss unmolested and turned to walk along the foot-polished stones of the River Walk, the sun not quite warm on my right cheek as it struggled over the eastern hills and through the late-morning mist of spring.

Henvor is an old city, its origins on the banks of the Greening River lost in myths of time before the Great Hunger and Devastation. The weather-auspexes claim that it was colder then, much colder, but now the winter rains were soft, and the morning mists and clouds of summer kept the sun's heat from drying the marshes that bordered the watercourse south of Henvor, the marshes and their grasses that purified the waters once again before they flowed between the Whitened Hills, winding ponderously toward the merchant cities on the Summer Sea, past Leboath and Wyns, and eventually to Mettersfel, where the sunships brought in the ocean nodules and carried the wines and cheeses of Dorcha eastward, eastward across the Rehavic Ocean south of the Pillars of Fire and around the Barren Isles to Thule ... and occasionally to Dhura.

I hurried north toward the Hall, repressing a head shake. First my mother, then my father, then Umbard and finally Manwarr had cautioned me against the insidious and evil habit of open disapproval, even open disapproval of self, but still I had to fight that urge, calling on the precepts of Dzin, so much that I wondered what ancestor had gene-coded the trait.

Across the river was the equally old city of Teford, though it is closer to a large town than a city proper. There are the stone carvers, more properly called lithoidolators in their love of their craft, for it has been stone and Dzin that have held back the demons of the north.

The two river cities are the crown jewels of Dorcha, small but precious - unlike Halz and Mettersfel, which are large and filled with credits of all origins and denominations. Teford and Henvor are also far enough from the Sea of Summer to be comfortable, even if the merchants of Mettersfel call them provincial. Yet, how can a city such as Henvor, blessed with the hagiaphants of Dzin, ever be provincial, even to the merchant city-state of Mettersfel?

Behind me, there was the slap of softboots, and the children vanished into the Street of Iconraisers. I did frown at that. The iconraisers were tolerated throughout Dorcha, and indeed all of Amnord, but even I had to agree with Manwarr's view of them: 'The universe we see is unreal; how then would one describe an image of unreality displayed upon a bed of light?'

The Street of Iconraisers contrasted thin and mean dwellings, scarcely more than caserns, with the gold and viridium shimmering pillars of wealth. How else could it be, when the electric current to power an iconscreen was dearer than pure bloodessence itself? Some claimed that the iconraisers were little more than coprophrologers who enslaved and transferred the souls of children to power their lightbed screens, but always are there superstitions among the less enlightened, even within Henvor. There are even those -Dzinarchists - who see Dzin not as a way but as a goal.

As the softboot steps died in sound and memory, I looked northward, toward the unseen granite ramparts that marked the south border of demon-ruled Rykasha, land of mystery and darkness, before hastening my steps toward the Hall of Unremitting Alertness.

At the old river gate to the city, now well within Henvor itself, I stepped through the narrow way of the Demons' Passage. After a decade under the hagiaphants, I no longer looked up at the twenty-meter-high-glass smooth walls, nor at the blocking stones designed to glide inexorably into place should a demon need to be destroyed.

At the yearly ceremony of the old equinox, at each of the ancient gates, the blocks were tested. The first time, I remember, I stood behind Umbard, my head barely to his chest, my mouth open, as the niellen stones slid silently shut, creating a stone chamber that not even the strongest demon could escape. Then, my heart pounding, I had followed Umbard, as each new student had followed his or her first proctor, standing briefly alone in the square of judgment before being motioned to pass.

For all that two centuries had passed since the last demon had been caught and imprisoned in Henvor, my heart still beat a little faster each year, at least until the yin in the silver passlet on my wrist was renewed.

On the old city side of the demon gate, a constable in the dun red of the Shraddans smiled. 'Happy awakening to you, candidate scholar.'

'May the mists always be soft at dawn.'

She nodded, and I passed, and before long, with the other twenty senior candidate scholars, I stood in the Hall of Unremitting Alertness.

Nearly so old as Henvor itself, the stone arches that bore the ancient oak cross beams and the niellen darkslates soared into the dimness nearly thirty meters overhead, their size diminished only by their height. Aquacyan softboots remained motionless on the green ceramic floor tiles that showed no wear after nearly a millennium - yet another relic of the Days of Wonder and the time of demons.

Along the eastern wall stood the eight Masters of Dzin. Manwarr stood third from the left. Idly, I supposed that, had I been born in Klama, I might have been instructed by a Master of Toze. But speculating on the face I might have had if my parents had possessed others was futile ... and meaningless.

'There is no ceremony to wisdom, and wisdom requires none,' said Abbo Sanhedran. 'The individual reveres wisdom because it increases self; the merchant because it increases coins; and the scholar because wisdom is the first step to ignorance. May the wisdom you possess truly be but a first step on that journey.'

The words flowed over and around me, perhaps because I had heard them so many times before, just as the younger candidate scholars standing in the back of the Hall were hearing them.

I looked at the cream-colored sash worn by the Abbo, but once a year, wondering if someday I also might wear the cream.

After the ceremony, I walked to Manwarr's hypostyle, wanting to scurry, but, no longer a scholar candidate but a junior master of Dzin, I forced deliberation, even slowing to savor the delicate perfume of the golden springpoppies in the garden without.

As I entered through the plain stone columns and bowed, Manwarr returned the gesture, his faded blue gown sweeping the polished stones of the columned west meditation room, the one where he taught those of us who had been senior scholar candidates. 'You have been called.'

I waited.

'Townkeeper Trefor of Hybra has requested a junior master now that Ainged has remanded his post and seeks the Way of Ignorance.'

My entire abdomen twisted in upon itself.

You are fortunate indeed,' Manwarr said, 'for Hybra looks upon Deep Lake. Years ago, in the time of the Fifth Colloquium, the Master Vollod brought us, all the junior scholars, to the precipice to behold the eels.'

My stomach sank further. Eels were the last thing I wanted to hear about. Hybra, where I would be schoolmaster to the offspring of foresters and trufflers. Hybra, a town so small it barely needed a gliderway.

'I remember now what he said when the sun split the crevasse and the light spilled like an arrow onto the waters.'

I forced myself to nod.

'A true Dzin image renders insights beyond speech.' Manwarr was always like that, spouting forth platitudes that were so obvious that they'd have been as threadbare as the Abbo's ceremonial sash.

I reminded myself to consider that the obvious could yet bear truth, even though I could not always see such.

'In Hybra, you will have the time to consider the life you have not led. I would suggest, Tyndel, that you devote yourself both to your duties and to your garden.'

'I shall endeavor to follow your advice.'

'Through disappointment, through the eye of the needle, lies shradda.' Manwarr paused, and, in a way, his words were fresh, recalling the definition of shradda - 'faith,' perfect faith in the triumph of true ignorance. 'Did you know that Abbo Sanhedran was once schoolmaster in Danber? It has not even a gliderway, not even to this day.' A brief smile followed.

'I did not know that.' I didn't, but perhaps times thad not changed that much since Abbo Sanhedran had been young. I felt Manwarr was letting me know that a schoolmaster in Hybra could become one of the eight masters, perhaps even Abbo.

'I expect you'll be wishing to share your good fortune with your family. Come see me after you're settled in Hybra. It's not that long by glider - less than an hour.'

With his dismissal, I walked slowly, reflectively, back to my room, back to the narrow pallet bed and the desk and scriber that I would leave to another.

There, Hywk came upon me as I packed the two black duffels that contained all I had, all I needed. He had another year, or more, at the Hall.

'The aquacyan wears well upon you, Tyndel.'

'An aquacyan robe is an aquacyan robe.' A safe enough platitude, and true.

'I wish you well on your posting. When you get where you're going, let me know.'

'I know where I'm going, but not where I'm destined.' I offered a laugh.

'The road not taken can be walked another day.'

Hywk's words told me he had an idea that I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or not. But I didn't want to tell him that I'd been sent to Hybra, not after suggesting almost arrogantly earlier that I might have been considered for the undermaster opening at the Lyceum at Leboath.

'Perhaps even in the soft mists of morning.' At least I had not been tasked to one of the floating cities.

'Or the fullness of evening, when the heat has fled.' Hywk always grinned when he talked about evening, and most of Henvor knew why. That may have been one reason he had lingered so long under the tutelage of Master Juab, the inscrutable. 'I'll be late for my session. Do let me know.'

A warm and crooked grin, and he was gone, and I needed but to add the last items to my bags. Then there wasn't much else to do but carry the duffels down to the gliderway above the river. I had up to three weeks before going to Hybra. That was the custom, and I hadn't been informed otherwise.

The orange ball of the morning sun was golden and near noon-high by the time I stood and waited for the next glider south. The glider was empty, and, after easing the duffels into a locker, I sat on the polished and curved wood of the first seat under the reflective overcanopy and watched the river as the glider carried me south toward Leboath, Wyns, and eventually Mettersfel. The faintest odor of ozone permeated the glider, a sign of impending maintenance.

The narrow grassy lawns that flanked the river near the center of Henvor, and Teford, since Teford was on the west side of the Greening and Henvor the east, quickly gave way to the marshes, the tall grasses, and the lilies. A huge blue heron stalked, darted his beak, and came up with a silver fish before the taller rushes to the south blocked my view.

A single-sailed tillerboard slid northward in the light breeze, a blond and white-skinned figure guiding the fragile craft more toward the pleasure docks at Teford and away from the eastern shore.

The late spring air flowed around the windscreen and caressed my face, and I watched the Greening, the occasional boaters, and the scattered dwellings between Henvor and Leboath. Older and smaller than Henvor, Leboath sits on a low plateau overlooking the river, and the glider slipped uphill toward the first boarding point on the north side.

As it slowed, I glanced at the smooth-faced green bricks that walled the antique waiting platform, bricks still unmarked, unvanquished by rain and weather, yet exuding age, and at the hard-finished and polished oak timbers that comprised each corner post and supported the roof. The design proclaimed the age of the timbers, as did their mellow aenous shade, but like most structures in Dorcha, the platform and its roof had been well built and better maintained.

A woman in a green tunic and trousers boarded at the north stop in Leboath, as did two couples, younger than I. The couples sat in the rear, but the woman sat across the aisle from me.

'On holiday, young master?' The white-haired woman's eyes sparkled as she settled herself and the glider eased at half speed toward the midtown stop. 'You must be a teacher.'

'Not yet. I'll be going to my first position after I see my family.'

'Teaching is important, especially for the young.' She snorted slightly. 'Too many worry about being great masters in the Halls. You do, too. You've got the look. You'll be great someday, but not in the way you expect, I'd bet. In the interim, teach the young the best you can. That's anyone's true legacy.'

'The dye is scarcely dry on my gown,' I protested, half smiling.

She smiled. You've the marks of greatness, but what kind is too early to say.'

Marks of greatness? For a junior scholar master headed for a small Dorchan town?

You smile, but I've seen my share of greatness over the years, and it's not a blessing. The only difficulty is that escaping greatness brings an even greater curse.'

Was she one of the superstitious single-god believers? I nodded. Your words are stamped with the imprint of truth.' Safe enough to say.

'All words bear some truth.'

The glider stopped once more, in mid-Leboath, and two men and three women boarded silently. All five, plus one of the couples in the rear, got off at the next stop - the south platform of Leboath, a roofless stand set in an extensive Barren Isles garden with maze hedges and topiary shaped like fantastic birds with fanned tails. Outside of that one garden, I'd never seen such an image.

I did not speak as the glider accelerated southward, but watched the river once more.

'Good day and bright skies.' The white-haired woman in green nodded as she rose to debark at Wyns. 'And to you.'

'Thank you, young master, but at my age we take any day and whatever may be in the skies.' The warm smile and soft tone further disarmed her words.

Two more stops in Wyns added more passengers, and the glider was nearly full as it whispered away from the south boarding point in Wyns. I withdrew more into my own thoughts. A teacher's post was certainly honorable, but what would I say to my father?

Yet even before the glider was close to Mettersfel, I was worrying about his disappointment. For the son of a merchant, the only mastership was one in a prestigious location. Dzin for the sake of Dzin was not enough.

Then, had it been so for me in the beginning? I forced a deep and contemplative breath.

4

Explanation is not an escape from suffering.

Some nightmares don't end. I woke on a pallet not of snow, nor stone nor dirt nor leaves, but of some unyielding substance harder than steel or stone, and every muscle twitched. Yet I could control none of them.

Days earlier I had outrun gliders, and even heaved massive stones, but I could not move as I lay under a curtain of light that pulsed into my eyes, right through the lids even when I shut them. An odor of machines and power burned through my nostrils.

'Our boy here - he's got one of the really bad old versions - probably from the old Eibran massacre. We get one from there every few years, some form of ethical punishment or something.' The man's voice, if demons were men, if demons had captured me, was deep, almost bass.

'Careful... he can still hear,' cautioned a higher voice - a woman?

'It won't register. Never does. See ... there's no violent feedback, and he's wearing aquacyan.'

'A real hardcase for Jost or Cerrelle, if he makes it.'

I understood the meaning of every word that penetrated the light curtain, and yet the sentences made no sense at all, except for the words about what I was wearing and about ethical punishment, which seemed like a redundant phrase to me.

How could any punishment in Dorcha not be ethical? How could those who truly followed Dzin not be ethical? How could following Dzin have led me to this? I would have cried out if I could.

My eyes blinked, and again I could see the arcs of golden red fire that seemed to web a black star-pointed sky. The curtain of light vanished, as did the words of the unseen speakers, and for a time I beheld bright stars in a sky blacker than any I had ever seen.

That image faded, and I was back under the light curtain.

Another pulse from the En-field. Really dragged him down. There has to be an affinity there. He doesn't have that high a nanite concentration yet.' The woman's voice was dispassionate, like that of a Dzin master, except that Harleya had been the only woman among the eight Dzin masters in recent generations.

'Old Engee must be having difficulties getting recruits these days. Or worshippers.'

'We don't know that. It's a misnomer to call something like that a deity, anyway. You should know better.'

'Whatever, Seana, whatever. If our boy makes it, he'll give Engee fits.'

'If ... if ... if ... Stop talking and help me with the reformulation insertion. He'll need the heavy-duty series ... and that's more than iffy.'

The light curtain flared, and I saw darkness... and nothing - again.

5

Better to see the face than hear the name.

Lessons had gone well. Even young Sergol had nodded his understanding of the parables of San-Merto, and I almost skipped, undignified as that would have been for a young Dzin master, as I headed home from the school. In the lane, well before the boxwood, the deep blue lilacs were about to bud. My nose twitched, anticipating their fragrance, a fragrance that I linked to Foerga, though her eyes were deeper than the lilacs.

'Strive not for beauty of raiment, nor for stately dwellings ... behold the lilac' I laughed gently at my own attempts at a Dzin saying. The feeling was there, just not the conciseness and depth. With time, and more study, perhaps both would come. Manwarr had been right; Hybra had been good for me ... good for both of us.

'... the sun is in the sky; the water in the river ...' And Foerga is here, creating beauty. What more could any Dzin master ask?

When I opened the door to the house, I could tell Foerga was not there, but I could smell hot glass. Rather than call to her and possibly disturb whatever crystal she might be working, I slipped out toward her workshop, the small high-roofed and rectangular outbuilding we had added when Foerga had first joined me in Hybra. In the sunlit coolness of early spring, the door was open, and I stepped inside as noiselessly as I could.

Her back to me, Foerga drew the glass-bearing blowpipe out of the furnace.

Holding my own breath, I watched as she blew, as the blue-tinged glass expanded evenly, and then as she deftly took the rod and twirled and shaped, in ways I could but watch and understand but not duplicate, until suddenly there was a long-stemmed, delicately fluted goblet, shimmering, standing where none had stood before. Truly, Foerga exemplified the Dzin ideal of perfection of the art, yet as an artist and a person, she also neared perfection.

When she eased back from the goblet, I did step forward. 'It's beautiful. So are you, and I'm always amazed.'

My words brought a shy smile, as though, even after seven years, acknowledgment of her beauty of soul and body yet astounded her. 'They're for Elyancar. He has a customer in Leboath.' She smiled more broadly. 'He won't say who it is. So I told him he'd have to pay what she would, and he agreed.'

'Who would not agree for your work?' And about that, I was right. Her crystal would be prized generations after my strivings with Dzin had vanished or, if I were fortunate, merged into the words taught to another generation.

'You praise me too much.' She checked the furnace, then looked back at me. 'I'd best do the last one.'

'I don't praise you enough.' For a moment, I saw the depth and the blue fire behind her eyes, those warm blue depths wherein I often looked and marveled. 'After that, are you finished for this afternoon? Would you like some tea, then?'

She nodded, holding the glass pipe in one hand. 'I very-much would, especially the way you fix the Arleen.'

'Good.' I eased toward her, avoiding the pipe. She smelled of glass, and warmth, and fire, and I held her tightly. She returned the embrace, one-armed, and for precious long moments we remained an isle in a river. The sun is in the sky, the water in the river...

We kissed, then released each other slowly ... eyes meeting for another timeless moment. After another brief kiss, I stepped back and went to prepare the Arleen.

6

Where are you between two thoughts?

When I finally woke up, I lay on what seemed a normal bed with polished spindle posts on each corner. A wooden rocking chair sat in one corner with a table beside it, and a small glow lamp rested on the golden oak of the table. There were two other tables, one on each side of the bed, each also with a glow lamp, and a window that looked out over a rain-dampened and browning lawn and up at a slope thickly forested in evergreens.

I sat up slowly, swinging my feet to the side of the high bed and letting them dangle. I discovered I wore a green sleeping gown or the equivalent, silken against my skin. My face felt bare. As my eyes went to the mirror on the white wall, my fingers went to my chin - smooth as it had been back when

I had been a scholar candidate. The brown hair on my head was also short.

A humming overhead, being paralyzed, lying under a canopy of light, and hearing voices ... and now I was in a luxurious bedroom, with sheets and clothes as tightly woven as the finest silk.

The door opened, and a redheaded woman, as tall as I was, if not taller, stepped inside, closing it behind her. She wore a pale green shirt and trousers and brown boots. Her hair was short, for a woman, and her features sharp.

'I'm Cerrelle, and I'll be your guide.' Her voice was girlish, but the piercing green eyes and the thin face were not, despite the welcoming smile.

I just looked at her. Guide? To what?

'To Lyncol, for one thing.' She sat in the rocking chair and leaned back.

Lyncol?

'Lyncol - that's where we are. It's the coordinating center of Rykasha. Here.' She took a deep breath. 'I'm not likely to be as good as I probably should be. We don't get many converts anymore. That's if you can call unwilling nanite possession conversion.'

Once again, I had the feeling of knowing most of the words and understanding little. All I really understood was loss. In the last few days, I'd lost everything - Foerga, my life in Dzin, my teaching, and nearly my life itself. Why? Because I'd changed a little?

'You really don't understand a word, do you?' She paused. 'Some of this is going to be hard, especially for you.'

For me? What did they know about me? 'I would appreciate it... if you could tell me exactly what happened.'

You do speak. Good.' A smile - sardonic, warm, wistful, all in one - crossed her thin lips.

I waited.

'You were infected with self-replicating nanites, and you happened to be one of the lucky ones with compatible genes. Relatively compatible. If we hadn't reengineered your system, you'd have burned out in another year or so. Painfully. About half who are infected die before they reach us - or get caught and killed by mites.'

I just looked at her.

'Let me try again. In simple terms, nanites are subcellular organic machines that can undertake a wide array of tasks. Nanites immobilized you when they brought you in. They can block virtually any weapon short of high-powered lasers, particle beams, or nucleonic weapons. They come in various sizes, all of them submicroscopic. Let's see. How do I put this? A human cell averages twenty microns. Most nanites are one micron, although some of the specialized varieties are less than a tenth of a micron.'

I struggled with the idea - something that capable that was a ten-thousand of a millimeter in size or smaller? My thoughts skittered away from the whole idea.

The woman frowned, not angrily, then smiled gently, almost as if I were a child. 'I was afraid this was going to be hard for you. It will be harder than you think because, in a way, you've been subtly conditioned against higher technology.'

Higher technology? What did technology have to do with where I was?

Cerrelle moistened her lips. 'Somehow, one of those nanites infected you. They're old high technology. They changed you from being an unmodified human into a nanite-enhanced human. Weren't you able to run faster and farther and to lift heavier objects?'

'Yes.' I nodded.

'That was because of the nanites,' Cerrelle said.

My stomach tightened and sank. If what she said were correct ... I was a demon, and so was she. Me - a Dzin master - a demon?

'We call ourselves Rykasha.' She smiled again, an expression warm and helpful, and just a hint patronizing. After a moment, she added, 'People who aren't nanite-enhanced call us demons.'

'But...' Aren't those just words? Aren't you demons, the ones who brought down the ancients? I didn't want to say anything out loud, but I might as well have done so.

Cerrelle shrugged apologetically. 'Your legends are partly correct. The inability of the average mite ... Dorchan ... to cope with the advantages of nanotech was what destroyed the ancients.'

My stomach growled.

You need to eat. Your blood sugar's low, and you'll have enough trouble dealing with the changes in your life even when it's normal. Are you going to behave?' The green eyes glinted, humorously, directly, and that honest directness told me, again, how much I missed Foerga. I had the feeling I was going to miss her for a long time.

'It appears my choices are limited.'

'For the moment. That will change once you get more settled.' Cerrelle's lips quirked momentarily. 'It might also be nice to know what to call you.'

'I'm sorry. I'm Tyndel. All this seems like a nightmare. So much has happened.' Hadn't I told her my name?

'It seems that way, I'm sure, but it's just the beginning. I'm sorry for being so direct in asking your name, but I had to ask because self-identification isn't the same as appellation. Early guides learned that.' She stood and pointed to a sliding door in the wall. 'That's a closet. There's a set of trousers and other clothes inside - and your boots. While you get dressed, I'll be waiting outside.' She slipped out the door as silently as she had entered.

For a moment, I just sat on the high bed. Then I rose. The cool floor tile somehow reassured me as I walked to the closet. The pale green shirt and trousers felt almost silk-smooth, but I had the sense that they were close to indestructible. My own boots seemed crude in comparison, but I was glad something of my past remained.

I tried the other door - a shower chamber and toilet of odd design. I washed my face and hands before I stepped out of the room into a wood-paneled hallway where Cerrelle waited.

'You seem to be adjusting. It's hard, but try to take it moment by moment. Your Dzin might help with that.'

I almost nodded to myself. Concentrate on being aware of what is; seek no explanations; seek but awareness. The mantra helped, and I squared my shoulders.

'If you're ready ... ?'

I did nod then, and she turned and walked quickly down the white-tiled corridor, her boots padding on the hard surface. I had to stretch my legs to catch her, and by the time I did, she'd pushed through another door.

The low murmur of conversation caught me. Some of it died away as I stood in what seemed to be a dining common, then resumed.

'... new convert ... Cerrelle's charge ...'

'... keep her busy.'

The redhead ignored the comments and walked along the end of the room to the far side. Cerrelle paused before a low console with several doors less than a half meter square and something like a miniature iconraiser's screen and keyboard. 'There's a menu here, and it does have some Dorchan dishes.'

I glanced around. There was no kitchen, yet the small dining area had a dozen diners, all with hot food. 'Another demon miracle machine?'

'I guess it looks that way, but it's just a different way of processing molecules into food. Try to think of it like that.' She lifted a card, one that was coated with a shimmering surface through which the printing appeared, and extended it to me. 'There's the menu. If you see something you like, press the numbers on the board there. I'll show you.'

Her own fingers tapped out the numbers, and a hum came from behind the far left door. Then a green light flashed over the door, and Cerrelle opened it, withdrawing a large slab of meat with an unfamiliar odor. Beside it was some form of steaming potato and what looked to be beans covered with buttered almonds.

'Steak. Beef protein. Rare. Quite good.' She nodded toward the tables. 'Join me when you decide. Drinks are there.' She pointed to a small table with several pitchers.

I read the list on the stiff and shining card. The printing was strange, angular, but recognizable, and that startled me momentarily. Somewhere half down the list was an entry I recognized - Orange Chicken Dorcha. I pressed the numbers, and the hum indicated the machine was at work.

I took the steaming dish to the table where Cerrelle sat, cutting her steak. She looked up and said gently, 'Don't forget a drink. You'll need plenty of liquid.'

So I got a large glass of water and seated myself, beginning to eat as my involuntary salivation told me just how hungry I was.

'How is it?' asked Cerrelle.

'It's good. Not the best, but very good.'

'Another example of nanotech. The nanites rearrange the raw materials in the right order, and there you have anything you can program in.'

'Is there anything they can't do?'

They handle molecular rearrangement, not atomic patterns.' She smiled. 'They're like many machines, except smaller.

They're like all technology. They don't do much for improving human intelligence or teaching people to think. And like a lot of technology, nanite systems can really create havoc when combined with human stupidity.'

'Stupidity?' I wished the word hadn't escaped my lips, especially with the look Cerrelle offered.

'I wish I could explain everything, Tyndel, but I can't, not immediately. I can promise you that you'll get a history course, and a lot more, through nanopills and sprays. I know it would be easier if they could just stick all that in you right now, but body and mind, especially former mite minds, need periods of conscious and unconscious adjustment. Right now, I'll give you a few ideas to keep in mind. Ever heard of the free-birthers? The ancients had a lot of them - Saints, Roms, Buchs, Fals ... so many ethnic and cultural groups I can't keep track of the names. There were close to eight billion people on the earth when nanotech became a functional reality, when the ability arrived to have every living human being a fully functional and reproducing organism for a thousand years. The free-birthers were producing five to ten offspring in a forty-year span and violently opposed any restrictions on reproduction. Now ... anyone with any common sense could figure out the mathematics if even ten percent of the population practiced free-birth, and it was more like twenty percent.'

'There wouldn't be enough food.' I paused. 'Except ... what about machines like those?' I pointed to the console.

'That just made things worse. Every group wanted the health benefits, and self-reproducing nanites for an individual's system were relatively easy. Machinery, like those molecular food creators, takes capital, money, tools - and some power, and there wasn't enough. So ... the ancients had lots of very physically healthy and strong people with even healthier appetites —those who had heavy weapons and food survived - about one hundred million, and the technology base was pretty much lost, except here and in Thule and one or two smaller enclaves.'

'We have a decent technology base—'

'I should have said nanotech. Old-style technology is pretty limiting. It takes too much resource investment to maintain. That's even with a small population. It can't be done with a large population, and the ancients never did figure that out. That is one thing you ... Dorchans figured out. You were successful in finding a self-reinforcing way to ration out goods and services that doesn't exceed the carrying capacity of the environment.'

'So how do you do it?' I mumbled, angry with her veiled condescension and superiority.

'Some of the ancients had the right idea, and then they gave it up.' Her words ignored my anger. 'Each individual has a worth to society. All people are not equal, not in those terms. We reward people for their service to society and charge them for the resources that they consume, in general terms, just as the ancients did, and you mites do, with credits. We figure the basis for the credits differently. Those people who consume more than they earn have to repay the balance within a year or undertake compensatory service, like you will.'

'Me?'

'Once you get medically stabilized and on your feet, you'll become a part of Rykashan society. Just like the rest of us, you'll need to make your way and pay for the goods and services you need. I'm here to get you started on making that adjustment.'

That made a sort of sense, I had to admit. I looked at my plate. It was empty.

'You're still hungry, aren't you?'

Yes.'

'Go order another helping. You'll need it all. The nanites take extra energy. That's something you'll need to remember. As soon as you finish, Tyndel, we've got to get back to work. You've got a lifetime of knowledge and skills to catch up on. The sooner you understand where you are and how Rykasha works, the better off you'll be.'

I didn't like the sound of that, or the idea of compensatory service, whatever that was, but the demons were treating me better than my own people had, except for Foerga.

I swallowed at that, and my eyes burned. I rose quickly and went back to the food console and studied the list, choosing something called Lemon Beef. Maybe the different taste would help, but I doubted it.

7

Wretched are all who work for results.

Mettersfel was large enough that it had smaller gliders that webbed the city, and large enough that private gliders or carts paid exorbitant passage-rights. Even so, at times one had to pause before crossing the wide and grass-centered boulevards.

After leaving the intercity glider, I took the harbor bluff glider. Because an older man already sat in the rear seat, I sat in front. When the glider reached the throughway at the top of the bluff and whispered across the polished stones, the Summer Sound spread out below the eastern bluffs.

The sun danced on the gray-blue waters, and the foam of the small whitecaps glistened and subsided, glistened and subsided.

The stone piers shone almost white in the late-afternoon sun, although clouds were building offshore. Beyond the piers lay the low commercial buildings, most of gray or white stone framing the amber powerglass that supplemented the other solar and tidal power systems that supplied the city-state that was Mettersfel.

The older man watched, without speaking, as I left the glider at the Rim Park stop. The gold polished spruce of the exercise bars rose out of the lawn to my left. I'd never been that good at pure gymnastics, but I'd always liked the park, particularly the gardens on the downslope to the lower bluffs with their stone-walled terraces and the colors and scents of all the flowers.

The thought prompted me to pause and inhale, and to enjoy the faint smell of roses mixed with sunbursts. What is ... is. I had to smile, recalling what I'd been taught in the middle of the park.

Beyond the park began the houses, all of one or two stories and situated to catch the sweep of the sound and the lower city. I was perspiring heavily by the time I had walked the half kilo from the park to the house and carried both duffels up to the low front steps of the two-story scaled-down replica of a Breaker house.

A low growl from the walled front side garden indicated that my parents, my mother, doubtless, had gotten another dog to replace Gershon.

My cousin Rhada opened the door. 'They said you'd be here.'

'I'm here. Where are they?' The duffels went on the spotless green marble, and I wiped my forehead with the back of my forearm. 'It's hotter than I remember.'

'Your mother's coming down from her studio, I imagine. Uncle Tynd - he's where he always is, trading and watching the markets.' Rhada offered a crooked smile that bared perfect white teeth. 'It has been hot this spring.'

'Dear ...' My mother was already halfway down the polished marble of the curving hall steps, steps that curved around the crystal chandelier that had been blown and cut nearly two centuries earlier by her grandmother. Artistic talent seemed to run in the women of the family.

'Mother.' I bowed, then stepped forward and hugged her.

'You look wonderful in the blue.'

'Aquacyan,' I mumbled.

'Much better than in that brown.'

Colors weren't everything, but mother was an artist. So perhaps they were.

'You must be famished. We should have tea. Up on the higher balcony.' Mother turned to Rhada. 'If you would give me a hand ... I was having difficulty with the alcade's hair.'

'You're doing the chief magistrate's portrait?'

'He finally conceded that only I was worthy to do it.' She laughed. 'Why don't you put your bags away and then go up to the balcony terrace?' Her words were really a question, but a great deal of Mother's questions weren't.

My room was nearly exactly as I'd left it, except that the bed frame had been refmished, as had the writing table. I set the duffels before the closet, then washed up, enjoying the cool water on a flushed face. After that, I went across the hall and out onto the balcony, where I pulled up a chair. For some reason, I was tired.

From under the arches of the roofed second-level balcony I could see the sound, and the harbor, and the long and white-walled building that held Tynd Trading. My father had purchased the older home that had once stood on the site and totally rebuilt it - all so he could watch the harbor when he wasn't down there.

I'd barely gotten settled when Rhada and my mother arrived with two trays. Mother began to pour the tea, offered the tall and fluted cups to each of us, and eased into the high-backed trader's chair beside me.

Rhada set down the smaller tray - nuts, sliced apples, white cheese, and cakes and biscuits. 'He looks older, Aunt Kerisma.'

I should have; it had been nearly six years since I'd seen Rhada.

My mother's hand strayed to her thick and short silver-gray hair. 'Over six years, we've all aged, Rhada, Tyndel the least of all, I imagine.'

I didn't answer, but waited for my mother to touch her cup, which she did, before taking a long and welcome sip of the Arleen tea.

'I miss good tea.'

'So why don't you come back to Mettersfel?' asked Rhada. 'It doesn't work that way. The Dzin masters decide where I teach.'

'You don't have to do as they say.'

'Of course not. I can leave at any time. But I can't come back.' I smiled. 'I've learned a lot through Dzin.'

You'd be better off here. As a trader, or even as a private master in the trading school or in the Changers tutorial system. They pay Dzin-trained teachers well.' Rhada smiled and took a swallow of the Arleen, so big a swallow that I wondered whether she'd even tasted it.

'Where will you be going, dear?' asked Mother quietly.

'Hybra. It's a small town on Deep Lake, northwest of Henvor.'

'That's not far from the border with Rykasha.' Rhada shivered.

'Rhada, don't exaggerate.' My mother's tone was patiently exasperated. 'The border's been stable for nearly a millennium, and no one's even seen a demon in Mettersfel for over twenty-five years. Or most places in Dorcha.' She lifted her cup, sipped, and continued. 'Besides, if Tyndel wants to teach there, it will be good experience. If he likes it, then that's good. If he doesn't, then the experience will be good for him and make him more desirable to the others here or elsewhere.' She smiled, closing that subject.

Mother was nothing if not practical. I refilled my cup and had one of the butter biscuits.

'Have you heard about the Dhurs?' Rhada finally asked. The Dhurs were always a favorite topic of conversation. Everything they did was outrageous, impossible, and a form of insanity.

'What now?' I couldn't even guess.

'The Genchief of the Dhurs traveled to Mettersfel on a restored Second Confed warboat. He aimed the lase-cannon at the Mer-Change and demanded that the Changers advance the credits for a Dhur floating city.'

'And?'

'There's a new Dhur Genchief, and an interestingly shaped chunk of steel and composite that the Metalworkers are reclaiming. You can see the wreckage beyond the last pier. The salvage fees might pay off the damage claims against the Dhurs, including the power surcharges, but the Dhurs are claiming that it was all a misunderstanding.'

'With the Dhurs, a great deal is.' I took a surreptitious look toward the harbor. There was something that looked like a melted ship.

Rhada laughed.

Mother frowned.

'Have you run across anyone lately?' Rhada meant anyone she and Mother were likely to know.

'Outside of Khandet? He's still studying under Master Celvan. Not anyone else. Mettersfel doesn't generate a lot of interest in Dzin. I've lost touch with almost everyone.' A thought struck me. 'I should inquire after Esolde.'

'Esolde? Is she the blonde you longed after before you marched off to the masters at Henvor? She is a scholar doctor with the healing masters in Halz, well above you now, Tyndel.' Rhada was matter-of-fact, as she always had been, regardless of the impact.

So Esolde had gone to Halz? The great delta city of the River Dor? The only city to which the mighty merchants of Mettersfel paid heed, where healing raised more credits than trade?

'She was a lovely girl,' Mother offered. 'From a good family, too, and that always helps. Blood will tell.' She smiled wryly. 'In time, at least.'

'I remember you spent a great deal of time around a certain grape trellis,' suggested Rhada.

I couldn't help blushing.

'See! He's still mooning over her.'

'Mooning over a memory, I suspect,' said Mother. 'But I do know another lovely young lady you should meet.'

'Oh?'

'Her name is Foerga. She's a crystal worker - fine hand, very artistic, and really too sweet for most of the merchant types.'

In spite of the suggested arrangement, I was intrigued. And Mother had always had good taste. She had liked Esolde.

Aunt Kerisma ...' Rhada rose from the table. 'I need to be going home, but it was good to get away from the twins for a little while.'

I rose as well. 'It was good to see you.'

After escorting Rhada to the front door, I rejoined my mother on the balcony.

'I did mean it about Foerga.'

'I know,' I told her. 'I've always respected your taste. I'd be happy to meet her.'

'Good. She's coming for dinner tomorrow.'

'Ah ... all right' One thing about Mother - when she decided, she acted. Then, around my father, I supposed that was a necessity.

'I think I heard the glider enter the hangloft.'

She could also hear the sound of butterfly wings, or delphinium stalks brushing against each other, from a kilo away, one reason why there had seldom been any secrets in the house.

With the steps echoing out to the balcony I stood, barely before my father burst onto the balcony.

'Son ... it's good to see you.' My father stepped forward and hugged me, moving as he always did, in quick bursts, with an energy that declared there was never enough time for anything. Then he released his bear hug and dropped into the chair where Rhada had been sitting. 'So ... you're a master of Dzin now. What does that mean?'

'Not a great deal,' I had to admit. 'I get to teach in out-of-the-way places or as a junior master under an experienced master.'

'Someone has to, but you could do a lot more as a trader.'

'No,' I answered with a laugh. 'If you were in my position, you could do a great deal more as a trader.'

He laughed in return. 'I suppose you're right, but I hate to see all that intelligence wasted in a schoolroom.' He lifted the cup my mother had silently filled. 'I know. I know. It's not a waste. Someone has to prepare children, and if the teacher isn't the best, we all suffer in the future.' He shook his head briskly, as briskly as he did everything. 'I still think you're cut out for something different. But I've tried, and you've tried, and we are where we are.' He took a quick sip of tea. 'How long will you be here?'

'Three weeks.'

'Good. I understand your mother has some special treats planned for you. Besides your favorite meals, I meant.' He grinned.

'She's alluded to one already.' I grinned and leaned back in the chair, pleased that my father had decided to leave the past behind, and pleased with myself that I'd been able to rely on Dzin not to worry overly.

'There could be more,' he said dryly.

We both laughed.

8

All societies are evil, sorrowful, and inequitable, and always will be. Therefore, if you wish to help the world, you must first learn to live in it and then teach others the same.

The fields and gardens outside the school were sodden with the late fall rain, and all the students' boots rested on the spooled rack under the convective heater. The smooth, dark paving stones of Hybra, beyond the waist-high stone walls that surrounded the gardens and lawns and playing fields, shimmered with a reflective coat of rain. I looked down from the dais at the fifteen students - nine girls and six boys - seated on their pillows on the polished gold of the wooden floor, their lap desk stands set aside after their concrete mathematics lessons. The hint of dried apples and lavender perfumed the heavy air.

With a slow, deep breath, I looked at the book, although I knew the phrases by heart after eight years.

'Knowledge begets power.

'Power begets force.

'Force is applied from ignorance.'

With a smile of habit, I looked at the blond youth on the end. 'Sergol? Would you finish it?'

'Knowledge leads to ignorance.' He frowned, and his thin lips turned down.

'You wonder how knowledge begets ignorance?' I nodded at the redhead beside him. 'Wryan?'

'The twofold path,' Wryan said confidently. 'The total of knowledge is greater than the ability of any individual to assimilate. Because an individual does not comprehend what he or she does not know, the selection of knowledge by an individual is based on the knowledge possessed. The greater the knowledge possessed, the less likely the individual to discover ignorance. The less the knowledge possessed by the individual, the more likely ignorance is to be revealed. Thus, greater knowledge leads to greater influence by ignorance, and greater ignorance to greater influence by knowledge.' Wryan bestowed a smile on Sergol.

Sirena - the girl to the left of Wryan - concealed a wince.

Sergol fidgeted on his pillow as the wind splashed fat raindrops on the clear permaglass of the high windows, and as the indirect breeze wafted through the room, bringing the faint scent of winter fern and pushing out the lavender.

'You doubt that all knowledge conceals greater ignorance?' I asked. Questions would not have been appropriate for older students, at the collegium in Mettersfel or in the Hall of Dzin in Henvor, but by questions must masters draw out the misconceptions of the young before they blossom into the knowledge-based power that is in truth ignorance.

'Enlighten my ignorance, Master Tyndel.' Sergol bowed his head, keeping his eyes properly downcast.

'You do not believe that knowledge conceals ignorance,' I said mildly. There was no use in anger; it would only have bewildered him and weakened me. To those who seek knowledge, one piece of knowledge by itself is not enough, Sergol. As the Abbo Sanhedran said, "Of making great knowledge there is no end, and much study, and the knowledge therefrom is a weariness of the flesh and a deadening of the spirit." And we know what happened to the ancients, do we not?'

From the end of the second row, Fyonia bobbed her head vigorously.

Keeping my distaste for such unseemly enthusiasm from my lips, I inclined my head to the stocky daughter of Hybra's most senior truffler, refraining from touching my beard, finally beginning to show some gray, some visible indication of age and wisdom.

'The ancients wrested the secrets from the depths of the earth and from the hearts of the stars, and with those secrets they banished sickness, death, and all forms of discomfort. And sickness, death, and discomfort gathered together and created the demons, and the demons destroyed the ancients.' Fyonia paused, then added conversationally, 'Most of them, but not all, or we wouldn't be here.'

The three bright faces in the back row were blank, as those new to the school always were when the subject first arose.

'The dangers of knowledge are threefold.' I nodded to Katya.

'There is the danger of not learning; the danger of learning too much; and the danger of not understanding,' she answered.

'But it is not like that, Master Tyndel.' Sergol's words tumbled out. 'The big trout like the black worms. I put a black worm on the hook. I catch a trout. One piece of knowledge ... one trout. I know that there is much I do not understand, but how can that one bit of knowledge lead to ignorance and evil?'

It was a fair question. That I had to admit to myself because I had asked it, years back. Yet I had been older than Sergol, years older, though my words had doubtless been more polished.

'Now, Sergol, you seek one trout. What happens when you are older? When you must provide your share of food for the town?' I shrugged. 'You understand, but not all people do. And the ancients did not. So, they found ways to put many hooks on their lines, and ways to make their lines strong enough to hold many fish. In time, there were not enough fish. Then they grew the fish in ponds, but the ponds changed the land, and soon there were not enough birds to kill the insects, and many people sickened. Then the ancients killed the insects, and more of the birds died, and many small animals. To feed the people, and there were many people in the ancient times, their knowledge-seekers planted corn and maize and rice everywhere, and in many places the ground was too dry and blew away, and in others it was too wet, and the crops rotted. And people died. So many people died that there were not the numbers to count them.' I paused.

Sergol was trying hard not to shake his head.

'That was when the ancients harnessed the powers of the demons, and the demons turned wastes and chaff and bark from fallen trees into food, good food, and for a time, all was well. For a time.' I smiled and waited.

'But... that was better than people starving, was it not? People were not meant to starve, were they, Master Tyndel?' asked Sergol.

'Nor were fishes or birds. Too much of any good ceases to be good. All of you in the front row. Write me an essay for tomorrow on the excess of good.' I offered a frown, not entirely for theatrical effect. 'Now ... out with your physical science assignments.'

I wheeled the projection screen into place and waited, ignoring the slumped shoulders and the not-quite-hidden glares at Sergol, who still smiled brightly.

Physical science was straightforward enough, since we were dealing with the basics of material structure and chemistry, and not questions of Dzin. After science came language and rhetoric.

At the end of the day, after sweeping the floor, mopping it, polishing it with the cloth buffer, and setting up for the morning, I adjusted my hat and stepped out of the school into the rain that was more than a drizzle but less than the downpour that had pelted the roof tiles earlier in the afternoon.

The faint whine of a cart rose over the whisper of the rain and the light breeze. I watched as it lurched slightly - usually the sign of a fuel cell close to the end of its life - and several of the large pumpkins and squash in the carry bin rolled, but the driver did not turn, and I could not make out who it might have been through the rain.

I walked on, my waterproof and hat more than enough protection against the fast-falling drops, still wondering about the questions Sergol had asked. Scarcely questions from a truffler's and fisherman's family, and certainly the first so well posed in years. Yet Sergol had been blissfully unaware of the impact of his questions, even as the others in the first row had not. Fyonia and Wryan - they had understood, as had even some of those in the back, who had not heard my words before. So why had Sergol not understood?

'The unexpected only means that which you have not expected.' That was what my old tutor Manwarr would have said, and he would have been right.

From the corner of my eye, the motion of the glider caught me, and I turned. Three people sat under the clear bubble canopy as the five-meter-long craft slid toward the kiosk that marked town center, apparently suspended in midair over the black, rain-polished stones of the gliderway.

I thought the figures might have been Eel-master Parsfal and Quella and their daughter, probably returning from shopping in Leboath, but a line of rain splashed over me, and I blinked, and the glider was out of sight.

Just before I reached our gate, so did the Townkeeper, and he waited for me.

'Master Tyndel.' Trefor bowed the bow of the perfect third.

'Townkeeper Trefor.' I responded, as necessary to the headman of the town, with one of a perfect fourth. 'You look well.'

'As do you, Master Tyndel'

'And of those you wish to speak?'

Trefor bowed again, then offered a smile. 'Dynae has become a candidate scholar in the Hall of Dzin, under the Overmaster Juab. Much credit falls upon you.'

'I can only take refuge in ignorance, Townkeeper. May she find it as much of a blessing as I have.'

'I am most certain she will, Master Tyndel.' He inclined his head, smiled, and continued toward the brown-walled house on the hill to the east of the square.

The drier and covered front portico of our home beckoned, and I sloshed the last few meters up the walk, turning and looking back once I was under the overhang. Was the yew hedge too large, its edge too close to the green ceramic border of the walk? The edges were clean, straight, as they should have been, but the hedge did appear oversized, slightly at least?

An ill-proportioned hedge would not be appropriate for Hybra's Dzin master, small as the school was, especially not after the Townkeeper's visit.

I repressed a shrug and opened the door. The scent of lemon-grass chicken filled the foyer, and my mouth watered as I took off my boots and donned the green house slippers.

I bowed to Foerga as I entered the kitchen. Foerga was tall, half a head taller than I, and her eyes were the piercing blue of the west, for all that her parents and ancestors had lived in Dorcha all the days of their existences.

She nodded in return, and her eyes met mine, and we both smiled.

'My dear.' I kept smiling.

'You looked troubled when you came in, Tyndel. Is it the rain?' She offered another of the warm smiles I treasured. 'The tea is ready.'

'I can't say it is the rain, but I am indeed ready for tea.' We didn't go in for the long ceremony, just the short one, and I marveled, as always, at the precision and grace with which Foerga served and presented the tea. My own efforts fell far short of hers.

I sat at the burnished oak table set in the bay that overlooked the rear garden and the raven fountain that had been Foerga's first gift to me after she had joined me in Hybra. The warm scent of the Arleen wreathed my face, offering comfort.

And your day?' I asked after the first sip, letting the warmth diffuse through me.

'Quiet. I finished the last of the goblets for Annynca. The turned ones, you recall?' She lifted her cup as gracefully as she had poured the tea.

I recalled. The area prefect's spouse had wanted unique goblets and hadn't even balked at the price - more than thirty credits each. 'They're a bargain at thirty.'

'Perhaps in Metterfels, but not in Hybra. Annynca and the Townkeeper's family are the only ones here who can afford my better work.'

That was why Foerga often took the glider to Henvor or Teford, or down the Greening River to Leboath or even the Metterfels of her youth. There the great art dealers or even the household planners employed by the families of the wealthy clamored for her work.

'It's a pity, in some ways.'

'In some,' she conceded. 'But it is far more peaceful here, and I'm happier and do better work where it's peaceful.' She offered that open smile, so much more warming than even the Arleen tea.

'I'm glad of that'

'So am I.' She refilled her cup, and then mine.

'I noticed the hedge. Does it seem slightly overlarge? Perhaps overpowering the balance between the garden rows and the walk?'

Foerga laughed gently, kindly. 'You have always seen those balances more readily than I.'

'You're too kind. I see your glasswork, and the balance and artistry.'

'Glass and crystal are not living plants. There's a difference.'

I let it go. She believed what she said, my all-too-modest Foerga. 'Townkeeper Trefor was waiting by the gate for me,' I mused. 'It wasn't an accident.'

'I would think not. There are not many accidents in any townkeeper's life.' She slid the plate of wafer biscuits before me.

'Thank you.' The butter-based wafer melted in my mouth, and I took another sip of tea, glancing out the window at the blue-feathered jay that alighted on the smooth brown bricks of the garden wall before shaking awkwardly, spreading wing, and vanishing into the mist and twilight. 'Young Dynae had been accepted as a candidate scholar by Overmaster Juab.'

'Overmaster Juab was at Henvor when you studied with Master Manwarr. You spoke of him.'

'He always had insights, but seldom spoke.' I sipped the last of the tea in the cup. 'I did not recommend Dynae. Not even to Manwarr.'

'His selection of Dynae troubles you.'

'I cannot believe I was that mistaken. Yet...' I shook my head slowly. 'To believe in one's own infallibility proves the opposite.'

You think that other considerations were involved?'

'I cannot believe that, either, although my mind says such is certainly possible.' I laughed. 'I don't wish to believe that Juab might be either fallible or venal, nor that my judgment was so erroneous.'

'Sometimes, as someone I respect and love has said, all choices are unpleasant.'

You keep me more honest than I would otherwise be.'

'More humble, I suspect. Not more honest. You're too honest as it is, Tyndel, my dear.'

My dear ... How I loved those words and the lady who uttered them. With a smile, I lifted the teacup. I could do nothing about Dynae, nor Juab, nor the Townkeeper. I could hold to the warmth of the past that we had built over the years in Hybra.

Had it been eight years? Closer to nine, actually. Nine years since I'd walked the River Greening and watched two children kiss by a cataclypt? Nine years since I'd found a blue-eyed artist who warmed my soul? Nine years bringing Dzin to the children of tnifflers, fishers, eel-masters, and geoponickers.

Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow, I would prune the hedge, before anyone else noticed the imbalance. I smiled to myself at the thought. Who else would even notice? But once a Dzin master, however humble, always one, even unto pruning hedges.

9

Openness to the world, to what is, can never be aquired.

I paced back and forth across the foyer floor. Had allowing Mother to invite her young artisan friend been a mistake?

'Don't be so nervous,' my mother called from the lower balcony.

That was easy enough for her to say.

'Your father won't be home for a while,' she added, as if that were supposed to be a consolation.

I paced some more. At least I'd grown up with Esolde. What if I didn't like this woman? Mother would be telling me how good and how talented she was for the entire length of my stay.

'Stop pacing. You sound like a demon in heat. It doesn't become the aquacyan.'

I stopped and shook my head. How could a demon be in heat? And what did that have to do with the color of my robes?

Then the bells chimed, and I took a deep breath before stepping forward and opening the door.

The woman who stood under the front portico was tall, at least half a head taller than I. The black hair framed a thin face, one dominated by deep blue eyes. The green-tinged blue tunic and trousers she wore neither added to nor subtracted from the clean lines of her face.

'Greetings,' I offered.

'I'm Foerga. You must be Tyndel' Her lips curled into a warm smile, and her eyes sparkled.

I had to smile in return. 'I'm Tyndel. Please come in.'

When I closed the door, my mother's voice carried from the balcony. 'Do bring Foerga out, Tyndel.'

What else was I going to do? I wanted to roll my eyes.

Foerga's smile turned into a grin, and she murmured in a low and husky voice, 'All mothers are the same.'

I couldn't help grinning back at her, and I almost forgot how much taller she was as we walked out to the balcony.

'I'm so glad you could come.' Mother was standing by the table. Steam curled from the spout of the teapot.

After seating the black-haired woman in the chair beside my mother, I poured three cups. 'Would you like honey?'

'No, thank you.' Her voice remained husky without being rough.

'Mother?'

You know my habits well enough, Tyndel. One dollop.'

I gave her one and took two myself before sitting down and glancing toward the harbor. It was still early enough that the overhang protected us from the descending sun, and early enough that my father was doubtless still wrestling with some aspect of exchanges or futures or shipping schedules.

You have a lovely view from here,' Foerga said.

'It is lovely, but Tyndel's father set it up more to view the harbor for commercial purposes. Not aesthetic ones.' Mother laughed. 'Tynd's never been one for aesthetics.'

'Then everyone must be pleased.' Foerga's summary was both matter-of-fact and delivered warmly.

I laughed. 'You have a way with words that I envy.'

'Foerga is one of the most talented artisans with crystal,' Mother said. 'Elexton told me that last week.' If Mother said so, Foerga was talented, but I was more taken with the smile and the warmth in those blue eyes.

'I need to see to the dinner.' With a knowing smile, Mother rose.

'As if she didn't have it planned to the last instant,' I said with a laugh after my mother vanished from the balcony.

The dark-haired artisan laughed gently. 'What else would you have her say? "I'm going to leave you two alone in order to see if you can discover each other"?'

Her words were true enough, but there was no edge to them, no brittleness, no sense of revealed truth or self-importance. At that moment, I could sense that Foerga possessed an absolute understanding and acceptance of what was and would be. She understood Dzin better than I.

'Have you studied Dzin?' I asked.

'No. I read a little from my father's library, but' - a faint smile crossed her lips - 'it seemed ...' She shook her head.

'Obvious?' I suggested.

A slight frown greeted my question. 'Not obvious. Anything that is obvious has more behind it.' For the first time, she looked a little flustered, a little less composed.

I waited.

'The simplest crystal design is often the most difficult,' she finally said. 'You can feel how good it is, but executing it or explaining it sometimes feels impossible.' She paused, those deep and piercing eyes fixed on me. 'I think Dzin is like that.'

I realized for the first time, but not for the last, that Foerga was like that - a simple goodness so direct that it was art and not artifice, a truth so obvious it could not be described.

For the longest time, I just looked into her eyes, far more blue than the Summer Sea, far deeper than any blue presented by a Dzin master.

10

You may know your thoughts, but you are not your thoughts.

The morning brume was thick, silver-white, and my breath added to it as the shears snick-snicked their way along the hedge in the postdawn glow. Each pruned piece went into the cart, none over a few centimeters, to be carried to the composter when I was done.

The scent of damp grass surrounded me, pervaded even the cold silver brume as my hands and fingers wielded the oiled shears. Ensuring the proper proportions of the hedge, that was easy, and rewarding, to apply myself to the task and become one with it. But why had I not seen how the boxwood had grown overlarge? Yes, the lines had been precise, but too near the green edges of the walk. Why had I not seen the changes? Had I grown too complacent in Hybra? Too tolerant of the small deviations from the ideals of Dzin?

I walked back to the front gate and studied the walk-side edge of the hedge. Another centimeter or two would be better. I lifted the polished wood and steel of the shears, shears older than I but still keen and functional. When I finished, I did smile.

Then, after emptying the cart into the hopper and racking it on the garden shed wall, I turned the crank, regularly, slowly, and the finely meshed gears drove the grinder. A thin stream of shredded leaves and wood poured into the compost bin, from which I took the material that I used to build up the garden and mulch the trees, except that it came from the bottom, slanted so that it fed into the chute with a lifting door on the outside of the shed.

Dynae's selection by Overmaster Juab - that nagged at me, although I knew I was certainly not one who should question it. How could a lowly schoolmaster in Hybra question an Overmaster of Dzin? Yet the thought that criteria other than intelligence and receptiveness to Dzin troubled me, and I could not deny that unease.

Then, Sergol, a truffler's son, had questioned me, and not in the proper manner.

How had I failed? Had I not kept to the true ideals of Dzin in some subtle fashion?

I kept cranking the composter until the hopper was empty. Then I swung the grinder back into its rack and replaced the bin cover.

I would have to talk to Wolyd about his son, if only to discover who was planting such questions. Questioning to seek the truth was one matter. Questioning merely to cause unrest was another, and I had the feeling that Sergol's questions were not raised to seek the truth or the way of Dzin. I doubted Sergol himself had even raised them. But Dzin masters, even in small towns, were not supposed to let such questions and doubts arise.

I wiped down and oiled the shears, then racked them, closed the garden shed, and walked back through the fog and mist to the rear door of the house.

Foerga was up, heating the water and fixing breakfast. Her low song as she moved around the kitchen brought a smile to my lips, and I paused for several moments in the rear hall, silently listening, drawing in the warmth of song and of the artisan who was my soul mate.

After laying out the exercise mat on the enclosed rear deck, I stripped to my shorts, then sat on the mat and tried to compose my thoughts. The key was to let the trivia of the world pass me by, concentrating on the now, on the sense of body and self and selflessness. The world did indeed recede, and physically I was refreshed, especially after my shower.

The questions pushed their way back into my thoughts by the time I sat at the table.

'You did not sleep well. I had hoped you would.' Foerga smiled softly as she poured the tea.

'One cannot always sleep the sleep of the untroubled.' I offered her a smile.

'You are worried.'

'I am, but your words warm me.' I took a slow sip of tea, then a bite of the apple biscuit, savoring the taste of each crumb. 'They are but small matters - Dynae, Sergol and his questions.' And we have each other. I smiled as I looked into her deep blue eyes.

'The tongue of the adder, visible only briefly, is a small matter.' Foerga offered the slightest frown, and that expression worried me, for my artist soul mate saw more without words than I did with them.

Her expression told me more than her words that I was right to worry. Those small matters would have to be addressed... after I had considered the options through the perceptions of Dzin.

11

If the body is unmastered, the mind will remain unmastered.

I'd taken only one set of nanosprays and pills, but already my mind was filled with information and terms I'd never learned.... adjudication may only be used after demonstrated irresponsibility and must be imposed by a class one adjudicator ... Rykasha is comprised of eight geographic districts ... Amnord logistics for stellar transport is based in Runswi... facilities include ... maintenance suits will be purple ... the Authority will consist of no less than five, and no more than seven members ...

The seemingly unrelated facts tumbled and turned through my skull as if trying to find places, referents, someplace to which they could attach themselves, and all too often failing to find places of adhesion.

Then, too, somewhere deep within me was a coldness, a chill that would not lift, a chill tied to knowing I would not see Foerga again, or my parents, or even my cousin Rhada... but mostly I missed Foerga. She would have handled what I felt far better than I was.

I almost didn't hear the knock on the door to my quarters. Overwhelmed by the continuing flood of information, I tried not to stagger as I stood and made my way to greet the caller who had to be Cerrelle.

'You're having a hard time,' she observed as I opened the door. 'It will get better. I know.'

I nodded, letting her close the door. Even after I sank back into the chair, my head continued to feel as though it were being split apart.

You need to think through the information you're getting, try to talk about it. Talk to me, if it helps,' she suggested.

I shook my head. 'I wouldn't know where to start. There's so much.'

'That's one problem,' Cerrelle replied quietly. 'Human beings are programmed genetically to be hunter-gatherers. We need to tie abstract information to real-world perceptions. That's why it helps to talk, even just to repeat what surfaces in your mind. Then, after you get a grasp on that, try to think where what you're sensing might be helpful in the future.'

'In the future?' I laughed hoarsely. 'I'm having trouble with right now.' My eyes skittered away from her and toward the snowflakes slipping past the window.

'I understand.'

I wondered how she could. She wasn't the one trying to assimilate the flood of random information.

'You're having trouble. That's natural. It's because you're still in the habit of experiencing and reacting. That's necessary for a mite - and deadly for a demon.'

Mites, demons ... what did it matter? So much of what she said, so much of what rattled through my mind, didn't seem to matter much.

You have two problems right now,' she said. 'One is personal shock. You've been torn from everything you know and everyone you love. The second is cultural shock. You're in the middle of a culture you've been conditioned against from birth. You have to accept that those shocks are real, but you also have to go on.'

'Why should I even care?' I asked.

'I could offer you warm words, but that wouldn't help you. You want someone to tell you how bad things are and how much you've been hurt. Well, you have been. We acknowledge that, but sitting and feeling bad won't help you get on with life. That's assuming you want to. And if you do ...'

I couldn't just give up. I owed Foerga that much ... and more. 'You really don't care how I feel, do you?'

'I care because you are an intelligent being, and right now you're confused, and you're upset, and your whole world has been turned inside out.' Cerrelle stood and walked toward the window and the snowflakes that drifted by outside. 'But there's a difference between caring between individuals and caring by society. That was one of the problems the ancients had. They always wanted everyone to feel good. They worried too much about how people felt and not enough about what needed to be done. How you feel and how I feel about you doesn't matter when it comes to society's basic principles. First, a society has to figure out what works. Then it must educate and condition people to accept it.' She laughed softly. 'I shouldn't be preaching, but it's hard to offer sympathy without being misleading. Adjusting to Rykasha is difficult, and dishonesty on my part will only make it harder.'

'... hard enough as it is ...' I said, making an effort not to mumble. 'Hard on anyone not born here.'

Cerrelle turned her green eyes on me, eyes warm but honest, like a green version of Foerga's. I wished Cerrelle were somewhere else and anyone else. 'Tyndel ... every workable society conditions its members. Dorcha conditions its people. You should know that; you were one of the ones doing the conditioning. It's only hard when you have to learn someone else's conditioning.' A tinge of bleakness colored her words, then vanished.

'Making it so cold ... so impersonal ... that's wrong. People aren't just numbers.' I didn't know why I felt so strongly. Was it because I was an outsider, because I hadn't chosen voluntarily to become a demon?

'On the contrary ... people have always been digits in any society. There have been numerous societies - and belief systems - that fostered an illusion of caring, but it was always an illusion, and we're not fond of illusions. We care about whether society works, but on the societal level, no one really cares about how you feel so long as you do what's necessary. We each have to find the individuals who care for us. That's always been true. Do you think that's changed in history? We deal with it more directly than most societies. We try to make honesty something more than lip service, and it isn't easy for us ... for me. It won't be easy for you.'

I just stared at her, not sure I'd heard the words she'd spoken.

'Tyndel ...' For the first time, Cerrelle sighed, actually sighed, as she turned from the glass to face me once more. 'You've spent your whole life learning and believing in Dzin. I don't fault you for that. Now that you have a chance to see more and learn more, you're fighting it. And you're reluctant to use what you learned from Dzin because it would prove that Rykasha is an improvement over mite society, and you can't face that. You want all your comfortable old illusions back.' She shrugged. You can have them back, or not, as you wish. But you're still responsible for yourself and, when you're able, for repaying us for saving you.'

'I didn't ask to be saved.'

'Then why did you flee Dorcha and come to Rykasha? Are you sure that you're not saying that you wanted to be saved on your terms and not ours?'

She was probably right, but I wasn't sure I really wanted to admit anything. Why couldn't things have stayed the way they had been?

'Because they haven't,' she answered gently, 'and nothing will change that.'

I almost wished she hadn't been so gentle with her words. Then I could have lashed out. Instead, I swallowed. By Dzin ... I missed Foerga ... the certainty of the Dzin I had known ... and even crusty old Manwarr.

12

All is equally fair and good and foul and evil; only the individual will claim something is but one.

I went to talk to Sergol's father on sevenday afternoon. Unlike many in Dorcha, fishermen do not rest, or Wolyd did not, and I had to wait in the brisk chill wind until he beached the dingy.

The fisherman and truffler was small and wiry, his head barely above my shoulder. His black beard was trimmed short and square, like my own blond-brown beard, and he paid me no attention until he had turned the boat on its rack to dram and dry, and replaced all his gear in the small barn above the rocky beach.

'What do you want with me, Dzin master?' In his weathered gray clothes and grayed face, except for the black beard and hair, he could almost have been a statue or a full-sized carving. 'To talk to you about Sergol.'

'Walk with me to the caves, then.' He grunted and turned, heading for an opening in the bushes. Not the one that led to the cart road around the lake but one leading toward the rocky slope to the south of the high cliffs that seemed to plunge straight into the deep azure of the lake.

'Caves?' Even I knew truffles grew under oaks, not in caves.

'Do mushrooms, too,' Wolyd said over his shoulder. 'Where you think they come from? Come on. Don't have time to waste.'

I followed the wiry man down a well-trod path toward another cliff, a mere fifteen meters high, unlike the hundred meter drop-off of the high cliffs.

'Sergol's a good boy.' Wolyd eased back a sliding door that covered a long tunnel, reaching inside and touching a plate. A line of glow lamps illuminated the low-ceilinged and ancient tunnel, a tunnel long enough that I could not see the far end.

'He's a very good boy. He's also been asking some strange questions. Using fish as examples,' I added blandly, then scrambled after the truffler as he walked toward the mushroom beds. My nose wrinkled at the dampness and acrid odor of manure.

'He should. Learn a lot from fish.'

'Every creature has lessons to teach.'

'What's the problem?' The truffler looked up from the long tray bed of mushrooms - portobello, I thought, but they were still small.

'I worry that he seeks knowledge for the sake of knowledge.'

'You Dzin-folk do enough of that.' A smirk crossed the man's face.

'If he wishes to follow the way of Dzin, then he will learn how to deal with knowledge.' I studied Wolyd's blank gray eyes, eyes that said nothing and revealed nothing. The man bothered me, but I couldn't say why, even as I attempted to hold on to a state of unremitting alertness.

'He's a boy. Why worry about his questions?'

How could I phrase the answer? I wondered. 'Sometimes ... sometimes, children need to ask questions, and that is right, especially if the questions come from their hearts.'

Wolyd cocked his head and studied me, a faint smile crossing his lips. 'And you're worried that a poor truffler's putting ideas in his head?'

'I didn't say that you were,' I pointed out reasonably.

'Who else would? His mother went back to Wyns years ago. Just Sergol and me.' He paused. 'You say you worry. Who worried about us when she left? Who worried when I had to pay a nurse? Now, boy asks a question or two, and you worry.'

'I didn't know.'

'Lots you Dzin masters don't know.' He moved down the bed, studying the small fungi.

'I'm sure of that,' I agreed, following.

'Anyone asks questions you don't like, and you start worrying about forbidden knowledge and demons ... and the like.'

Demons? I hadn't even thought about demons. What had brought that up? Was Wolyd a secret demon-worshipper? I tried not to swallow. 'I wasn't talking about demons.'

'What do you think about demons, Dzin master?' Wolyd's tone was too casual, and I wanted to step back.

'I don't know much about the demons. No one today does, except that anyone who crosses the border never comes back. Nor do any gliders. Sometimes, arrows of fire, or lasers, streak into the heavens.' I shrugged. 'They seem to want to be left alone, and so do we.'

'Do not mock the demons. Those in Rykasha are but pale remnants of the ancient demons.'

I stepped back, but the truffler narrowed the distance between us. What would a fisherman and truffler know about demons? And why was he angry at me?

'You do not believe me. Ah, well, I will tell you. In that, then, you will have the opportunity to brighten the mirror with cleansed perceptions.'

I had to frown at the misapplication of the Dzin saying.

'In the time of the demons, each and every demon wore a magnificent suit of clothes. If folded, it was no larger than a man's fist, yet when worn the demon could lift weights of more than five hetstones and dash as fast as the glideways for nearly an hour.' Wolyd bent down under one of the trays, as if he had dropped something.

A suit of clothes that would allow a man to lift the weight of, what, three glider cars? I smiled politely.

'So blind are you who do not see.' With a laugh he stood and turned, and he held a polished gun, the kind designed to hold and stop even demons.

'I am no demon,' I protested.

Whrrr...

My body convulsed, and I was held rigid by the current that froze my muscles, flowing through every dartlet that had pierced my flesh.

'Not yet.'

What did he mean, this fisherman and truffler? I tried to speak, but I could sense nothing.

When I woke, I was bound to a wooden frame, and the loose sleeves of my gown and undershirt had been rolled back. Both arms ached, and I could see and feel that they had been slashed, or cut, and then dressed rudely.

Where was I? My eyes blurred as I turned my head, discovering I was in another ancient tunnel, a damp one, and one without glow lamps. The only illumination came from the portalight held by Wolyd.

'The rope will keep you bound. That's until you can get free. Then you won't do nothing.' He laughed, nearly maniacally. 'You Dzin types, you think you're so smart. You know phrases that others have repeated from the old days, and the sayings never change, and you never learn. The demons learned, and you drove them out because you were afraid of what they had discovered. Now you ignore them and drive out anyone who questions.' Another laugh followed. 'You Dzin masters, you are so high and mighty. And you, you, Master Tyndel, you are among the worst, for you believe what you say and would have my boy believe you. Well, Wolyd the truffler would have you see how you fare in a world where none think you are high or mighty.'

Laughing again, he rolled a barrel next to me, lifted it onto the rock ledge by my head, and maneuvered a spigot covered with what seemed to be a rubber nipple close enough that it almost touched my mouth. An odor of rancid fish flowed over me, and I nearly gagged. 'Not much better than pig slop.' He nodded at the huge barrel. 'You think you will not eat it, but you will. The little demons in your blood will see to that. You will need it all before you are strong enough to break free.' A crooked smile crossed his face, revealing equally crooked and yellow teeth. 'Then you will be a demon. And you will leave Dorcha or die.'

'Demon?' I choked out stupidly.

'I know the secret of making demons. A demon died in these caves, long time ago, and in his dust... but you don't need to know that.' He held up the demon gun. 'If I must use this on you again, you will be carried to the demon cage in Hybra ... and you will die.'

A door clunked shut.

I was alone in the ancient tunnel, alone in the darkness, bound with ropes twice as thick as a truffler's thumbs. I, a master of Dzin, schoolmaster of Hybra, tied up like a pig for slaughter, tied up by a mad truffler in a place that no one would find. Tied up by a truffler convinced he had a mystical secret that would turn me into a demon.

I tried to wiggle free, but the ropes and the knots were firm, and all I got was rope burns and aching muscles. My stomach turned at the odor of rancid fish and at the fear of what Wolyd might have done. What poison had he introduced? Or had it all been a delusion, and had I been left to slowly starve in the darkness?

Was he angry at me? Or did he dislike all Dzin teachers?

I strained against the ropes, then tried to move my fingers, but my wrists were bound too tightly. Everything was bound too tightly, and the odor of fish too strong, far too strong.

I struggled until I was exhausted, with little result, and another darkness passed over me.

13

The objective universe is absolutely unreal.

For a moment, when I looked outside in the early afternoon, I thought fog had come to Lyncol, with the whiteness that obscured my view of the hillside trees. Then a figure appeared passing the window, red hair blotched with white, and before I could reach the door, Cerrelle appeared. 'Greetings—'

She thrust a jacket at me, one I hadn't seen before. Tut that on.'

'Why?'

'I thought it might be a good idea to take a walk. You're feeling sorry for yourself, and sometimes a walk helps.'

'What if I don't feel like a walk?'

'Well... I'm supposed to help you adjust, and you aren't going to adjust sitting and looking at the wall. Life goes on.'

'For some people.'

'You think you're the first and only one who's ever lost everything he loved?'

Again, there was a hint of bleakness behind the overly cheerful facade, a hint of something I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

'Besides,' Cerrelle continued, 'it's snowing, and Lyncol is beautiful in the snow.' Snow? I shivered.

'You probably wouldn't notice it, even without the jacket, but it will be more than enough with your nanite balance. Put it on.'

Her tone didn't brook arguing. I didn't. She'd just keep being annoyingly cheerful. Instead I pulled on the jacket and followed her into the corridor and then out the side door and off the small stone porch.

The ground was white, and only one set of tracks marred the snow, the ones that led to the structure where I lodged and was fed nanopills and pestered and questioned.

I looked back. The roof was tiled. That I could see from the pattern, but not the color because the snow had already provided a white blanket. The windows were dark. I frowned.

They didn't look dark from inside. Some form of one-way glass? Each wall stone shimmered a translucent green that almost seemed to glow. 'The stone shimmers—'

'Don't talk. Not now. You'll spoil it. Keep your questions for later. Just follow me.'

I shut my mouth, wanting to protest her high-handedness, but what good would it have done? Accept what is until you may understand it. I held to that thought. You couldn't change anything until you accepted and understood it.

The snow squeaked, ever so faintly, under Cerrelle's boots, but I moved without a sound along the path that led into the trees to the north of the lodge. I knew it was north, but how?

Under the canopy of firs on either side of the path the snow cover was intermittent, and brown needles protruded. With no real wind to disturb, swirl, or blow it, the powdery white drifted down through and around the branches like a mist sifting groundward. The faint odor of pines or resin mixed with the not-quite-dampness of the snow.

We passed through a stretch of evergreens perhaps a hundred meters long. Ninety-seven point three meters, insisted the internal observer that had come with my transition to demonhood. Another expanse of meadow appeared, also snow covered, and a silver spire rose out of the snow-dusted evergreens to my right, rising perhaps thirty meters, although the silver seemed to meld with the snow and at times vanish.

In the open, the chill dampness of snow melting on my forehead and bare cheeks was strangely welcome, like cold tears. Foerga's tears? My mother's? I swallowed, paused, and then kept walking. The silver spire vanished behind us, just as the certainty I had placed in Dzin had vanished.

Out of the snow ahead rose an oblong black-pillared building, like one of the temples of the ancients, except those had been white. It stood on a small hill, around which ran water over a perfectly smooth bed, so smooth that the water looked like shining silk that caressed the gentle slope before collecting in a long pool lined with the same seamless black stone. Steam rose where the snow touched the water, and the scent of lavender puffed away from the pool as we walked past.

The snow kept drifting down, cool and welcome on my face.

The next structure was harder to describe - either built into a granite cliff or the facsimile of a cliff built around it -with balconies overlooking heated pools from which steam rose - or I thought it did. A diaphanous veil cloaked the entire dwelling, revealing only general shapes. A couple might have been bathing in one of the pools - or it might have been two statues given the illusion of movement by the shifting of the veil.

Then the woods got deeper and darker.

Cerrelle held up a hand for me to stop, and I did.

A dark, looming, four-footed creature, silent as the snow itself, slipped across the path in front of us. Dark and wide antlers, a good two meters across, topped a long fur-bearded face.

Never had I thought anything that large could have moved so silently, but it had, vanishing into the darkness of the evergreens.

'What...' I whispered.

'Giant moose. Quiet.' Cerrelle resumed walking, the only sound that of the squeaking of her boots in the dry snow.

A chittering sound echoed through the woods, twice, and not again.

For a time, we passed no other obvious structures, just walked through meadows and woods, and over a thin brook where the clear water splashed amid rocks that were half covered with snow. An unrailed bridge crossed the stream, a single seamless construction of reddish stone that leapt out of the ground at each side and arched over the water, stones, and snow-covered grasses - part of nature, and yet not at all a part.

Beyond the bridge and uphill was a small lake, and granite ramparts, natural cliffs, reared into the clouds at the north end of the lake, less than a kilo away across dark gray-blue water. Fist-sized stones, predominantly white, comprised the shoreline.

On the exposed shore, the wind gusted and small white-caps crested intermittently. A birdlike elongated shape, a black-and-white shadow on the water, glided away from us, then vanished beneath the chop, only to reappear a good hundred meters to the east.

Cerrelle stood and watched the lake and the diving bird. I watched the lake, the bird, the snow, the mountains, and Cerrelle.

Abruptly, she walked westward along the shore, then took another path downhill and back southward.

Beyond the first patch of evergreens was another dwelling, but no dwelling I had ever seen. The entire dome was comprised of hexagons, and each hexagon glittered a silver sheen, but each sheen was fractionally different from those that bordered it. The light snow slid away from the dome and piled around it. No walk, no steps, no footprints led to or away from the dome.

Cerrelle didn't even slow her even steps as we passed, and I had to hurry to catch up. A ghost of a past image - the lines of crimson fire across a nielle sky - flitted across my eyes and vanished, except I hadn't seen images like that before being entombed by Wolyd.

Cerrelle turned and frowned but said nothing, instead headed into the next patch of woods and the more gentle filtering of snow through the overhanging evergreen branches.

Once more, I had the feeling of cold tears on my cheeks, and I thought of Foerga, kind and loving Foerga, and my tears mixed with the snow, and I walked blindly for a time.

We passed more dwellings or structures, each different from the others, each standing separate, inviolate, and each, in a strange way, like the bridge we had crossed, springing out of the ground and forest or snow-covered meadows as though it belonged there.

The light was dimming, and our first footprints had been covered by the fine but continuous snow by the time we reached the lodge - or research or rehabilitation center. I wasn't really sure what anything really happened to be, and the dreamlike quality of that afternoon-long walk reinforced that feeling.

Cerrelle did not speak until we were in the corridor outside my door. 'You walk through the snow like a ghost, as if you weren't here.' A crooked smile crossed her lips. 'But you are. Tomorrow, you start on the heavy-duty background education. I hope you can get some sleep, Tyndel.'

She nodded and was gone, back into the twilight snow.

I went into my room and hung the jacket - already dry -in the closet.

Why the walk, except to show me ... what? I shook my head and looked out at the falling snow for a long time, until it was too dark to see. Then I went and ate.

Dwellings, forests, lakes, images of fire in nielle ... what did they mean? Did they mean anything? And Cerrelle ... patient on the surface but with a hint of something less patient, wilder, beneath.

I took a deep breath.

14

He who would not be hammer will be anvil

Wolyd the truffler had been right. In the end, I gulped and swallowed the rancid fish slop almost with an insane hunger. What had he done to me? And why? Why did he dislike Dzin masters so much - so much he raved about turning them into demons?

Eventually - was it days later? - I wrestled free of the ropes with a strength I did not know I had. The ropes did not give way. The wooden beam to which one of them was attached snapped with one of my desperate lurches. Then I squirmed and wiggled in the darkness ... and worried myself free of the rest of my bonds.

Somehow, the tunnel had gotten lighter - or could I see better? Or was I seeing at all?

Once free of the rope, I pushed on the door, and with a creak and a shredding sound it opened. I looked down. The lock had ripped out of the wood, but the wood hadn't been rotten. It looked like good strong oak. The metal hinges were bent as well, and I couldn't close the door.

Rain and wind beat down on my face, but neither seemed that cold, though the season was early winter. In the gray light I studied myself. My gown was ripped and torn, my midsection thinner, far thinner. Scabs covered my upper arms, but scabs that looked mostly healed. Surely, I hadn't been in the cave that long?

Through the bushes, I could see the gray, white-capped waters of Deep Lake, choppy in the late afternoon. The light wind brought the mist raised by the waves lapping on the stones and the scent of decaying rushes and grasses from the marsh to the north.

Cold as it was, I washed my soiled gown and garments in the lake water, looking around every few moments. But it was winter, and no one came. And I marveled that I was not too cold as I stood on the rocky shore in the light wind.

Was I really a demon? Or was I hallucinating? How could I tell?

I hung the damp clothes on the bare branches of a blueberry bush for a moment, except for my damp drawers, which I slipped back on, hoping that my body heat would dry them sooner.

A good-sized boulder rested a meter beyond the bush. I laughed and bent to pick it up, knowing I could never budge it. It came out of the ground easily, and I almost dropped it on my foot. I staggered for a moment, then half threw, half pushed it toward the lake. A splash like the impact of ancient bombard rose from the gray chop.

I looked down at my hands and arms. They were no different, except thinner. My stomach growled with an emptiness that was almost like a hungry bear or mother cayute on the prowl.

My eyes burned, helplessly, as I pulled the damp gown and undershirt from the bush and pulled them on, ignoring their dampness. Whatever had happened, whatever I had become, I had to get home. I had to see Foerga.

Caution prompted me to take the path beside the cart road, but I only had to duck off the path twice as I hurried homeward, trying to avoid thinking too much about my ability to keep jogging longer and faster than ever before.

Instead, I just kept repeating one of Manwarr's mantras: 'Explanation is not awareness.'

As my feet and legs covered meter after meter, I forced the words through my mind and mouth. 'Explanation is not awareness ... Explanation is not awareness ... Explanation is not awareness ...'

When I neared the house - the house of the master of Dzin in Hybra - not my house or our house, events reminded me, I left the path and entered the rear garden by the gate beside the shed. The boxwoods in back needed pruning, and I could smell the healthy mustiness of the compost pile.

The back door was not latched, and I stepped inside, calling, 'Foerga?'

She stepped from the kitchen and stared at me, blue eyes deep. Then tears streamed down her cheeks.

'I'm here. What is the matter?'

'The Townkeeper ... he said you had been carried off by a demon. He warned me.'

'The only demon was Wolyd. He stunned me with a demon gun and tied me up in a cave. He doesn't like Dzin masters... or at least this one. It took me a long time to get free. I don't know how long.'

'Ten days ... eleven ... oh ... Tyndel...'

Without speaking we moved closer, then embraced, and I held on to her gently, trembling, afraid to squeeze, afraid of the strange strength that had burst ropes and a door and lifted a boulder I once could not have budged.

'You ... are hot ... so warm ...' Her lips brushed my cheek, and she stepped back, eyes downcast for a moment.

'I... just... wanted to come home.'

More tears streamed down her face - and mine.

In the silence, I was conscious of the smallness of the house, of the walls pressing in on me, each wall spotless and perfect, but close. And the scent of fresh-brewed Arleen tea drifted from the pot on the table.

Foerga hugged me again, shivering slightly as she did.

The ticking of the clock in the wall alcove echoed through the silence, loud as a drum.

My blue-eyed crystal artist stepped back once more. 'You are so thin, yet your arms feel like iron.' Her eyes went to my wrist and filled with tears again.

My eyes followed hers, and she nodded slowly. The yin in the passlet had nearly died. Only the palest flicker of silver remained.

'You are of the demons now. Look at your passlet.' The tears kept streaming down her pale, thin face. 'You must go. You must go. Trefor will gather his demon patrol, and they will stun you and cage you, and you will die.'

I was already stunned. Me? How could this be happening to me?

'He or one of the others keeps checking to see if you have returned.'

I lifted my head at the whispering whine of approaching gliders, the kind that didn't need glideways. 'There's a glider coming.'

Foerga tilted her head. 'Your hearing is better.'

Another small touch that clutched at my stomach - she had always been the one with the ears like a hare, able to sense the faintest of sounds.

'Demon or not, I love you.' Foerga's arms went around me again, and they felt so comforting, so warm.

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore, just momentarily, the whining in the distance.

Foerga stepped back. 'You have to go.' She grabbed my old rucksack out of the pantry closet. 'Put food in this. You look starved. I'll go out and delay them. Go out through the back.'

'But...'

'Do it... please, Tyndel. For me. It's all I can offer now.' She tried to blot her face even as more tears streamed from the corners of her eyes.

I took the rucksack, looking at it blankly as she wiped her face dry and scurried toward the front door, leaving me alone in the small kitchen holding a canvas rucksack. For another moment, I looked at the rucksack, until the front door shut with a dull clunk.

Then I began stuffing the sack - a loaf of bread, sunflower seeds, three apples, a wedge of hard cheese, a roll of crackers. What went in didn't matter ... Foerga had told me to fill it, and I did.

I eased toward the back door and stepped into the rear garden. 'No! You will not!'

At Foerga's yell I ran along the side of the house, slipping up to the edge of the front hedge.

Only a single free-run glider rested by the gate, and Wolyd and Trefor, along with a single Shraddan, stood beside it. Another glider was at the end of the lane, but even with my sharpened vision, I could not discern who rode within, although I did see one dun-red uniform.

Foerga blocked the gate. You just want an excuse to kill him.' She held a staff, an exercise wand, and the Shraddan held his right wrist.

'He's a demon and she is, too!' Wolyd lifted his shimmering gun, turning it toward her.

Foerga flipped the staff into a thrust toward him.

Sssssss ...

With the power of the guns, Foerga convulsed, the staff falling, clattering on the hard green ceramic tiles of the walk outside the gate. They kept pulsing the guns, and I realized they wouldn't stop, not until she died.

I dropped the rucksack and moved faster than I had thought possible, past the hedge and up behind the mad truffler, arms and legs striking, misusing the art of defense.

I felt Wolyd's neck crack. At least he would not poison any more Dzin masters.

Trefor seemed to move in slow motion, too slow, and I crushed his neck with my elbow.

The broken-wristed Shraddan ran back toward the other gliders, yelling, 'The demon is loose! ... demon loose!'

I bent down and cradled Foerga, black hair spreading across my arms, but it was too late. Her eyes were blank, and her body limp.

Behind me, the whistling whirr of the gliders rose.

I wanted to stay, but then Foerga's last effort would have been worth nothing. The rucksack -1 had to have food, any food. I groped for the canvas and came up with it.

The whining slowed, then grew louder.

Eyes nearly blind, rucksack dangling from one hand, I began to run. Away from the house of a master of Dzin and toward the uncertain future of a demon, death at my back.

15

One can never conclusively prove an idea, only disprove it.

For days, interrupted periodically by gently frustrating conversations with Cerrelle, sleep, and dreams of Foerga and pursuing gliders and dun-red-coated Shraddans, my head swam or spun with the so-called background knowledge imparted through nanopills and sprays. Even when I lay down upon the silklike sheets of the bed, I felt as if my head and my entire body were bursting, like my very soul had been crammed with years of instructions by masters. But there wasn't any insight, no interpretation, just fact upon fact, image upon image, until my very self seemed ready to drown in information.

Some of the images were vivid - like self-assembling nucleonic weapons that destroyed much of the original coastline of ancient Dorcha. Others were prosaic - the basic idea of the food replicator. Others were mathematical - why would I ever need to calculate relative orbital mechanics? I thought that was what that series was about, but wasn't sure, because it had other math that applied to something called overspace, and how could there be something above real space? I thought there might be, but it wouldn't be practical if one couldn't get there, and the math didn't make sense. It seemed logical, but so had ancient speculations that the world was flat or that all other worlds held life.

Yet Cerrelle insisted everything was just background.

You know all of this?' I asked her at another lunch in the same small dining area.

The green eyes glinted again in the expression I had come to see as a combination of warmth, wistfulness, frustration, and, I suspected, anger. 'Much more.'

'How can there be overspace?' I asked. 'And if there is, how can one get to it? And of what use is it?'

'Overspace exists, and we use it for interstellar transport. There are special ships ... you have that background. Why do you ask me what you know?'

'Because it doesn't make sense.'

'It doesn't make sense to you because it's outside of your

Dzin background.' She set down her glass of lemon drink and looked at me. 'Now that you know the basics, and when I talk to you and you don't answer, it's because of stubbornness, willful ignorance, or something other than lack of knowledge.' She paused. Tou're bright. The tests show that. Why are you so uncooperative? Was there a big wall you had to climb, Tyndel? Did anyone say you couldn't seek refuge here?'

'A barrier in the mind is as real as one in stone.'

'I'll accept that' She nodded. 'If you can tell me what barrier so that you can work on it.'

I shook my head. How could I say I was angry she was alive and Foerga was dead? Or that I resented her probing and pushing and pressing? Or that I hated the arrogant superiority that seemed to infuse all of Rykasha?

A momentary expression of sadness crossed her face, and it was replaced with an equally vanishing look of anger before she sighed. 'I'm sorry. It is hard for you. Sometimes, I forget. Let's try it another way. How did you end up getting infected?'

'Some daft truffler caught me off-guard, stunned me with a demon gun, and somehow infected me with something that multiplied my strength and endurance and sharpened my vision - your original nanites, I gather. That qualified me as a demon.' I glanced at my bare wrist. 'At least it extinguished the yin in my passlet.'

'The passlets measure certain body fields in reverse - fairly ingenious for mite technology. We can duplicate them and manipulate them, of course.'

'Mite technology ... mite stupidity ... why do you call non-demons mites?'

The green-eyed redhead actually looked down at the table ... with an expression somewhere between guilt and embarrassment.

I waited.

'It's a derogatory term. Short for termites.'

'You think of us as low-level social insects?' My voice rose.

You aren't one of them anymore, and you never will be. The tests would indicate you probably never were, not in mental outlook. And yes, old-style human beings aren't much more than technologically gifted social insects. As a group, they aren't any more able than termites to surmount their inability to overcome instinctual hardwiring. How many mite geniuses have been killed or stifled or exiled because they didn't fit the social norm?'

My mouth opened and closed.

'How many unwanted and unneeded children have been born and killed over the millennia? How many prophets have claimed to represent one deity or another with no proof, no evidence, except demonstration of powers available to every human being? And how many mites have swallowed the words of those prophets? Is that rationality or free intelligence?'

'Dzin holds society together.' I forced myself to speak slowly.

'I didn't say it didn't.' She took a swallow of her drink. 'Instinct holds a termite colony together, instinct and accepted social practices. Dzin is a way of limiting human social practices and abilities to ensure that human beings don't destroy society and themselves. It's a declaration of failure. It says that humans cannot reach their full intellectual and physical potential without becoming a danger to themselves and to their society. So Dzin preaches and enforces restraint.'

'Of course it does. If someone eats too much, and there isn't enough food, others will starve. If someone wants to build weapons and use them on others, others suffer. Restraint is necessary in any human society.' Was Cerrelle blind? Were the demons that different?

'I'm sorry. I'm coming across as being angry at you, and I'm not. I am angry at a society that turns people, people like you, into fugitives and throws them out as worthless or demons.' She took a slow breath. 'I am not making myself as clear as I should. The nanites gave you better vision, greater strength and greater endurance, and over time, clearer thought processes. Yet Dzin resists these changes. Why? Why does it limit you to less than you could be?'

'Because those changes destroyed the ancients,' I pointed out as dryly as I could.

'That's my point. Human society is based on the lowest common denominator. Or a fairly low denominator, anyway. Dzin, or Toze, or Dhur customs all limit the fullest expression of human capabilities. Those capabilities are not always or usually evil or antisocial.'

I shook my head. 'From what I've already learned, people infected with nanites require increased nutrition. There wasn't enough energy or technology to feed those who already existed, let alone meet the increased requirements.'

'Exactly,' answered Cerrelle. 'And every intelligent being who existed at that time, and for centuries before, knew that. So did most political leaders. Yet few serious efforts were made to curb population growth, and some belief systems actually encouraged unlimited reproduction. Does that sound like an intelligent species?'

'When you put it that way ...' I conceded, pulling at my chin. Humans didn't sound all that intelligent. But there was something about the redhead's argument that bothered me -the assumption of automatic superiority. 'Where's your sense of responsibility?' I asked. 'You can blame and denigrate the poor mites, but what have you done to improve the situation? You say all you demons know better, but what have you done?'

Cerrelle smiled - almost sadly. 'Our borders are open.

No one stopped you. No one tried to kill you. Your former colleagues have all the freedom they desire to do as they wish.'

'What if they tried to take over the Rykasha lands?'

'They would be stopped. It has happened several times, but years pass, and people forget' You're so superior ...'

'So are you, Tyndel. That's why they tried to kill you. And your beloved Foerga.'

'Leave her out of this.'

'Why? You believe she was a more perceptive and decent being than you are, and they killed her. Do you really think she was sacrificing herself to follow you to Hybra? Wasn't she also keeping herself away from jealous and scared mites? What better protection than to marry a Dzin master?'

Foerga? Worried about what others thought? 'She wasn't a demon.'

'I never said she was. I said she was a better being and that all mites turn against their betters when they can.'

'Are you any better?' I snapped.

'We walked in the snow last week. What did you see?'

'Dwellings.' I shrugged.

'Were they alike? Did they disrupt nature?'

'No.' I paused. 'They didn't seem to disrupt nature.'

Yet your masters of Dzin claim that demons are disruptive. Why? History shows that the greatest murders and disruptions were by so-called ordinary people, not by demons.' Cerrelle snorted. 'There are thousands of years of history, filled with villains, and everyone blames those villains, but most of the evil deeds attributed to them were actually carried out by ordinary people. Were those people weak - or did they secretly enjoy their work? I don't know that it matters. Either way, it's not a flattering image.'

'And you're better?' I pressed.

'At heart? Probably not. Part of what we do is to force honesty. That and what else we do, both to those who grow up in Rykasha and those like you, isn't exactly ideal... but we don't have any real choice.'

'Explanation is not awareness,' I quoted absently.

'You've said that before. It's true, and it's also meaningless.' She took another deep breath. 'You should know this already, but you're fighting knowing what you know. Human beings are programmed badly for going beyond the hunter-gatherer stage.' Cerrelle gave a wry smile. 'We have to struggle with rationality because ... rationality isn't necessarily good for survival on the species level.'

I had to frown at that.

'Look ... there are enough human beings out there so that your actions can't possibly destroy the species. That means all those altruistic responses that are gene-coded can be and are overridden by rational decisions for your own survival. Multiply that by billions, and that was the problem that the ancients faced. The other problem that humans face is lack of time. Our biological clocks are set by light and nutrition. The more exposure to light and the better the nutrition, the sooner the biological maturity. At the same time, with the civilization that creates artificial light and adequate food for most comes the need for greater knowledge, greater forbearance, and greater understanding, all of which require a greater social investment in the young over time.

'The ancients never did solve that problem. A burgeoning birth rate made the necessary investment in the young impossible for many societies - and there were many societies then, hundreds, if not thousands, from what we can tell from the records and traces, not the half dozen cultures that now exist. Add to that the biological urges to reproduce, which conflicted with the rational urge not to have so many children ... Anyway ... a lot of things were tried, from abortion to war to contraception to infanticide - none of them worked very well.'

'Dzin works,' I pointed out.

'It does, and so does Toze, and even the Dhur customs work,' Cerrelle agreed. 'And they're all dead ends. They work because they've managed to create a consensual, custom-based restriction on the amount of knowledge and change allowed into their societies. That is, none to speak of. That was the appeal of ancient religions. A code was supposedly imposed by a god, something greater than the society and its people - a code that was usually an attempt at what was conceived as greater rationality. Usually, it wasn't. At least Dzin has a semirational basis.'

Semirational? Even as I opened my mouth to protest, I wondered about the other phrase she'd said - the need for people to believe in something bigger than they were. Had that changed for the Rykasha? In what great dream did they believe? Did they even know what that dream was?

She held up a hand. 'Look ... I'm not saying that on the basic level we're much better. We use nanites and technology to force knowledge and self-responsibility into people, almost from the day they can comprehend. Do you know what our suicide rate is?'

Suicide?

'We force true rationality on people. You'll see. Some people can't take it.'

Not take rationality? A cold shiver settled in my spine, as though I already did know and feared accepting.

Add to that the problem that our biological clocks know on the genetic level that we're time-limited,' Cerrelle plowed on. 'We can use nanites to extend our productive life enormously, to ten times that of the ancients, but those gene-coded responses still say that you have to reproduce in three decades or the species will perish. And we have to keep our numbers low because the earth's resource base is limited, especially after the Devastation.

'What we need, what all humans need, is a longer life span, call it the inverse of neoteny, where sexual maturation lags, rather than leads, cultural or societal maturity, something that's embedded on the cellular level. It might have been possible for the ancients, but we've lost a lot, and we have to be careful with tinkering on cell-gene level.' She looked at the empty dishes and glasses. 'We're wasting time.'

'You never finish answering anything,' I protested.

'I'm trying, Tyndel. I really am. But one person can't tell you everything. That's why you got all that nanite-implanted knowledge and why it's necessary for you to use it and sort through it.'

'But you said it helps to talk,' I pointed out.

Her lips twisted wryly. 'I did, but talking doesn't help that much when most of your questions turn out to be variants on how far north is north.' She stood.

North? What was to the north of Rykasha? Even before I finished formulating the question, I had the answer. There really wasn't anything north of Rykasha, because the demons had basically taken over the colder regions of Amnord.

There was no doubt that the demons were physically and technically superior to the older and numerically larger earth cultures ... yet they had let Dorcha, the Dhur gens, the Toze peoples, even the floating cities - they had let them be. Why?

Cerrelle had been clear enough that the nanites that made demons out of humans did not change basic genetics or cellular-level programming. So the Rykasha weren't somehow more moral, and I wondered if even the masters of Dzin would have been as forbearing if they wielded the power of the demons.

Yet Cerrelle had denied the dream of Dzin, of faith. Was that why their suicide rate was high? Because even nanite-modified humans needed dreams, and forced rationality created too great an internal conflict? Or was there a hidden dream behind Rykasha?

For all the knowledge that filled me, I still knew so little - or had had so little time to sort it out.

'We can talk more later, if you'd like. Right now, you have another appointment.' Cerrelle was always bringing me up short. Cerrelle - my keeper.

I held in a sigh as I stood, but not the bitterness in my eyes as I thought of another, gentler, keeper, and of a time I had not held dearly enough.

Was that to be the story of my life?