Hunt spread his hands helplessly and shook his head.
Danchekker turned his gaze back to Nixie, who was lounging at ease, chin resting on her hand and one finger stretched along the side of her face, following the conversation with interest. “Do you have any picture in your mind of what goes on inside VISAR?” he asked her. “Can you describe it in any terms at all?”
“Not really,” Nixie replied, speaking via ZORAC. “I just know what to do. I can’t explain how.”
“No more than a child could explain the physics of swimming or riding a bicycle,” Hunt said. “She just feels it instinctively.”
“How long have you had this ability?” Danchekker asked.
“I’ve always had it,” Nixie answered.
Danchekker looked askance. “But that’s wrong, surely. Isn’t it something that a person of your kind acquires suddenly, after the abrupt transformation of personality that we’ve heard about?”
“You still don’t understand,” Nixie said. “Everyone where I come from has it. They’re born that way. It’s people like you who don’t have it.”
“And me?” Hunt put in.
“Yes. And Shilohin. All of you.”
“Could people like us acquire it?” Shiohin asked.
“Yes—by becoming transformed in the same way. By being taken Over.”
“Taken over by what?”
“Ayatollahs—ones like me. The ones we call awakeners. We bring the ability with us.”
Danchekker drew a long breath and threw Hunt a wary look. “You’re saying that you actually take over the personality of somebody else? Is that what you’ve done?”
Nixie nodded. “Yes, exactly. We are not, as you say, ‘possessed.’ We are really the possessors.”
“What was the original Nixie like, then?” Hunt asked.
“I don’t know. I was never her. From what people say, she sounded excitable and not very smart.”
The three scientists exchanged glances that all seemed to say the same thing. A general trait of the ayatollahs was supposed to be their confusion and insecurity; but Nixie came across as collected, coherent, and in full command of herself. Either Hunt had truly found an exception to the trend, with powers of resilience and fortitude greater than most, or she was too far gone to have doubts. The problem was going to be telling which.
“Let’s get back to what you mean when you say people like us,” Danchekker suggested. “What, exactly, are people like ‘us’?”
“People who are from here,” Nixie replied.
“You mean Jevien? But I’m not from Jevlen. Vie and I are from Earth. Shiohin is from—God, I don’t know, Minerva, I suppose.”
“No, that doesn’t matter. I meant from this . . . world, universe, whatever you want to call it.”
Danchekker’s expression became strained. “Are you saying that you came from some other world, and took over the personality of somebody in this one?”
Nixie nodded vigorously. “Yes. Yes, that’s it, exactly.”
“Let’s be realistic,” Danchekker said~ “These different worlds don’t actually exist as physical entities. Isn’t your way of talking really a symbolic way of referring to the attainment of what some people believe to be a higher state of consciousness? You were always the same self. But the personality which that self once possessed underwent a deep change, and you feel as if you’ve been reborn into a new person. Similar terms and ways of describing one’s spiritual awakening are common among many of the religions and systems of mental training that we’re familiar with on Earth.”
But Nixie was adamant. “No, it’s another place.”
“Where?” Shilohin asked her.
“I don’t know.”
There was the short, cautious silence of three people wondering how to phrase a delicate point. “So, how did you get here?” Hunt inquired finally.
“You must know how to ride the currents of life.”
Danchekker looked away with a sigh, and Hunt could almost hear
him groaning to himself inwardly. Here we go, Hunt thought to himself. But there was no choice but to press on. “What are the currents of life?” he asked.
“The undercurrents of existence, which flow from the higher plane through the material world. They come from the stars and are drawn by the celestial spirals, bringing voices and visions from the world beyond.”
“You mean you reach it through the power of mind, is that what you’re saying?” Shilohin offered, taking over Danchekker’s previous tack. “It exists inside you?”