from time to time and individual to individual, ever made its existence
doubtful. Today we can identify it when it occurs.
“Whatever happened in these last experiments of ours, you are not
becoming a telepathic receiver. An influence of that general nature was
present, true. The meters registered it, barely over threshold level.
But analysis shows you were not calling the signs I dealt with
above-random accuracy. Instead, I was not dealing them completely at
random.
“Somehow, slightly, unconsciously, you were influencing me toward
turning up the signs you guessed I would be turning up.”
“I wanted to reach you,” Djana mumbled.
Ydwyr said sternly: “I repeat, we have entered realms where I am not fit
to conduct you. The dangers are too great–principally to you, possibly
to me. At a later date, maybe, Aycharaych–for the present, we stop. You
shall return to the flesh world, Djana. No more magic. Tomorrow we set
you to gymnastics and flogging, exhausting, uninspiring work with Eriau.
That should bring you back.”
He on the throne: “For that they have sinned beyond redemption, the sin
that may not be forgiven, which is to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit,
no more are they My people.
“Behold, I cast them from Me; and I will raise against them a new people
under a new sun; and their name shall be Strength.
“Open now the book of the seven thunders.”
Talwin’s short autumn was closing when the ship came from headquarters.
That was not Merseia. No domain like the Roidhunate could be governed
from a single planet, even had the Race been interested in trying.
However, she did bear a direct word from the Protector.
She stood on the field, slim, sleek, a destroyer with guns
whippet-wicked against the sky, making a pair of counterparts from
Morioch’s command that were likewise in port look outmoded and a little
foolish. The captured Terran scoutboat hunched in a corner, pathetic.
Few trees showed above the stockade. Early frosts had split their flimsy
trunks and brought them down, already to crumble back into the soil. The
air was cool and moist. Mists coiled about Merseians working outdoors;
but overhead heaven reached clear, deep blue, and what clouds there were
shone dazzling white beneath Siekh.
Djana was not invited to the welcoming ceremonies, nor had she
anticipated it. Ydwyr gave her a quick intercom call–“Have no fears, I
am authorized to handle your case, as I requested in my dispatch”–and
wasn’t that wonderful of him? She went for a walk, a real tramp,
kilometers along the bluffs above the Golden River and back through what
had been enclosing jungle and was becoming open tundra, space, freedom,
full lungs and taut muscles, for hour after hour until she turned home
of her own desire.
I’ve changed, she thought. I still don’t know how much.
The weeks under Ydwyr’s–tutelage?–were vague in her recollection,
often difficult or impossible to separate from the dreams of that time.
Later she had gradually regained herself. But it was no longer the same
self. Old Djana was scarred, frightened, greedy with the greed that
tries to fill inner emptiness, lonely with the loneliness that dares not
love. New Djana was … well, she was trying to find out. She was
someone who would go for a hike and stop to savor the scarlet of a
late-blooming flower. She was someone who, in honest animal wise, hoped
Nicky would soon finish with his expedition, and daydreamed about
something between him and her that would last, but did not feel she
needed him or anybody to guard her from monsters.
Maybe none existed. Dangers, of course, but dangers can’t do worse than
kill you, and they said in the Vachs, “He cannot respect life who does
not respect death.” No, wait, she had met monsters, back in the Empire.
Though she no longer quailed at the remembrance of them, she could see
they must be crushed underfoot before they poisoned the good beings like
Ydwyr and Nicky and Ulfangryf and Avalrik and, well, yes, all right, in
his fashion, Morioch …
Wind lulled, tossing her hair, caressing her skin, which wore less
clothes than she would formerly have required on this kind of day.