Melanie’s mouth twisted. “You’re baiting me. You know Earthmen had no regard for other species. Even though it was the only soul they had, Earthmen evicted the soul of the Earth and moved out into space from a dead planet.”
“So what are they now?”
Melanie sighed. “A friend of ours calls them irrelevant intellects.”
“And all this time that I’ve worried over the state of my soul, I shouldn’t have bothered,” Genevieve said angrily.
Melanie sighed, moving restlessly in the chair. She said soothingly, “There’s a little story my mother used to tell me about Haven. A scrutator was sailing on Merdune Lagoon, and caught by a great fish who threatened to eat him, and the scrutator said it didn’t matter, for his soul would go to heaven. And the fish asked him, ‘When your soul gets to heaven, what will it say to enlighten the universe?’ The scrutator said he wasn’t that wise, and the fish said, ‘You’d better learn wisdom while you’re on the way down my gullet, because wisdom is the only thing that unlocks the gates of heaven.’“
“What else did your mother tell you?” Genevieve asked, suddenly intrigued.
“She told me that among the billions and billions of human beings, perhaps a few know some little thing of interest to the universe, and those few men are the leavening of mankind. Most men don’t know anything except myths and manners. She told me only the wholeness of a world that has lived for billions of years can speak to the universe about anything meaningful. Men’s lives are part of that, of course, and the wiser men become, the more they learn about the universe, the greater part they are, which is an incentive to study, so far as I’m concerned. If my life is a part of the world-soul, it is truly immortal.”
“And what have harbingers to do with it?”
“They’re just indicators. Like warning lights. Or alarm bells. They’re born naturally, and they die naturally. They don’t seek long life. Sometimes they’re killed, but they don’t look for unnatural ways to protect themselves. If a harbinger hunts, it hunts with what nature gave it. Sometimes it eats the prey. Sometimes the prey eats it. Harbingers don’t play it safe, they adhere to the chain of life, and if the chain is healthy, so are they.”
Genevieve closed her eyes, going inside herself to another place. Melanie’s words resonated. Someone had said something like this to her before. Mother? Who else could it have been? “But if each living world has a spirit, didn’t you simply invade another spirit’s territory when you came here?”
“Spirits aren’t territorial, they’re inclusive. One joining another is like immigrants coming to a new land. They change the society, yes, but they broaden it and add to its wisdom. The spirit of Haven, the world, was not identical to the spirit of Earth that arrived with the creatures in the ark ship, but when the two united, the resultant spirit was not dichotomous.
Genevieve rubbed her forehead wearily. “Melanie, I know you want me to believe all this, but it seems little different from the religious stories we learned in school, esoteric and relatively pointless. I can believe your people came here to preserve Earthian species that were in danger of extinction. I believe that’s why people on Old Earth built the ark fleet. I believe you are sincerely religious, and I concede that your religious interpretation of what happened might be true, but I haven’t even sorted out the beliefs I was brought up to! I’ve no inclination toward adopting a new credo just now unless I have to.”
Melanie sighed. “Of course you don’t have to believe anything. Mankind lived for a long time on Earth without believing in the spirit of the world. Right up to the end people thought the Earth was the center of the universe and the god of all creation was fixated on humans as a race. Nonetheless, once the ark ships were gone, the world died.”
Genevieve asked, “What does your world-spirit look like?”
Her jaw dropped. “I have no idea. None of us has ever seen it. I’m not sure it’s seeable.”