“Do you fear damage?” the other woman asked, unruffled.
“Aye. Induced schizophrenia, maybe, or a condition that mocks it, or-Who can say? I’m hardly more than a nurse who’s had some extra training. The medical references aboard swamp me in technicalities on this subject, then give no diagnostic symptoms nor prognoses, for the situation is unprecedented.
Nevertheless, you are behaving more and more… autistic.” Caitlin leaned forward. “Be honest. Are we, the rest of us, anything else to you than part of the machinery?”
“Of course,” Joelle responded, still placid. The smile crossed her like a moonbeam briefly through clouds. “I like all of you, wish you well, aim to do everything in my power to get you safely home. To that end, I had better develop the power. I assure you, far from going crazy, each day I become more sane than any of our species has been before in its whole existence.”
“Och, a whale of a claim to be making.”
“Yes, it does sound grandiose when put in that ape-chatter man calls language. I wish you could have the experience. You’re a poetess, who might be able to convey a hint of the feeling, if not of the reality. I have no eloquence, and have had less practice than average throughout my life at expressing myself to ordinary people. Furthermore, unlinked, I am, well, less than half alive.” Joelle paused to search for phrases. “I suppose Susanne Granville has tried to explain how linkage is for her. That’s the palest shadow of what it is for me. You don’t think she’s mentally ill, do you? Or- when you’re composing- when you’re making love, you surely more fully than most –
those are transcendental experiences, aren’t they? You seek them over and over, every chance you get. They don’t unhinge your reason, do they? On the contrary, aren’t you the stronger and stabler for them?”
“They’re natural,” Caitlin argued. “They evolved in us from the earliest life ever to stir on Earth. And you’ve renounced them altogether. That can’t be wholesome. Oh, yes, priests and nuns and saintly mystics, utterly dedicated scientists and artists, they’ve sometimes kept a balance. Maybe asceticism suited their temperaments better than common pleasures. Yet they did keep within the human world, seeking human goals, surrounded by things human senses can respond to – not wired in a machine. I’d never be forbidding you your holothesis, Joelle. I’m but thinking you should use the rest of yourself, too.”
For the first time, pain touched the countenance before her and the voice that answered, though barely. “I tried. Harder than you know. Year by year, the rewards of that shriveled and the hurts grew, till I was a silly, scrabbling crone when I was out of my linkage.” Calm returned. “Meanwhile, on this flight, I began really using, really mastering what I’d learned on Beta.
And Fidelio taught me more. And the incredible inputs, the whole cosmos opening to me, facets of the Noumenon that neither Betan nor human had dreamed of.
Trying for insight, I’ve been discovering new techniques – ways to discern, think, understand – philosophies – and they give me deeper insights, which lead me onward-”
The peace in Joelle rose to a quiet ardor. “Caitlin, believe me, I’ve never been so happy, and the farther beyond what you call humanness, the happier and saner I become. No, I’m not better than you, but I am different, and how would you feel if a command robbed you of your gift for making songs and making love? I… I will soon be able to overcome a thing in me that I know is wrong: Side 166
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The that I pity you. Poor sweet beautiful animal, I pity you. But I don’t think the Others would, so I should not either.
“The Others- We may not find them. We may die in space, or on the world of some species that merely has superior technology to us. I can endure those things if either happens. But I’m convinced that every race, when it becomes able to, goes in search of the Others, as we’ve blundered into doing. What higher purpose can it have?