The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

The music was unrecognizable, at least for Jill. But she thought that it was derived from a Central or South American Indian piece.

“If this were tete-a-tete, instead of a large party, I would be able to give you tea, my dear,” Piscator said. “But it is not possible. My grail does not provide me with tea daily, but only one small bagful once a week.”

He had not changed so much that he did not miss the ceremony of tea, so beloved by all Japanese. Jill regretted the scarcity of the herb, too. Like most of her nation, she felt that something vital was missing if she didn’t get, her tea at the proper time.

Piscator dipped a glass in a huge glass bowl full of skull-bloom and handed it to her. She sipped on it while he told her how happy he was to see her here. He sounded as if he really meant it. She found herself warming to him, though she did remind herself that he came from a culture which conditioned males to regard females as plea­sure and work objects. Then she warned herself-for the ten thousandth time?-that she must not be as guilty of prejudice as others. Find the facts first and study them before judgment.

Her host led her around, introducing her briefly. Firebrass waved at her from a corner. Cyrano smiled thinly and bowed. They had encountered each other a number of times since that morning, but each had been aloof though polite. She did not want it that way. After all, he had apologized, and she was very curious about this flamboyant seventeenth-centurian.

She said hello to Ezekiel Hardy and David Schwartz, whom she saw every day in the office inside the hangar and in the factories nearby. Hardy and Schwartz were friendly enough; they had learned by now that she was thoroughly knowledgeable in her field. In many, in fact. She had bridled her impatience and anger at their ignorance and their assumed superiority. It had paid off, though she did not know how long she could repress herself.

“Don’t bottle up,” she told herself. “Empty yourself.”

How many times had she done that, or tried to do that? And it had seemed to work so many times, though not always by any means. Yet, here was this Japanese, Ohara, calling himself by the goofy name of Piscator-how weird-telling her than Zen was nonsense. Well, not exactly nonsense. But he had certainly indicated that it was overrated. She had not liked to hear that. It struck her below the belt of her self-image; it injured her. Which it should not have done. She should have laughed at him, even if only inwardly. But he had seemed so sure.

14

One of the women she was introduced to was Jeanne Jugan.

Piscator mentioned that she had once been a servant in her native France but then had become one of the founders of the Roman Catholic religious order of the Little Sisters of the Poor, established in 1839 in Brittany.

“I am his disciple,” Jugan said, nodding at Piscator.

Jill’s eyebrows rose. “Oh!” She had no chance to continue the conversation. Piscator steered her away with a light touch on the elbow.

“You may talk to her later.”

Jill wondered what particular religion, sect, or mental discipline Piscator belonged to. He wasn’t a member of the Church of the Second Chance. A Chancer always wore a hornfish spiral vertebra or its wooden facsimile on a string from his neck.

However, the next person she met did wear that emblem, three, in fact, indicating that he was a bishop. Samuelo, short, very dark, and hawk faced, had been born sometime around the middle of the second century A.D. He had been a rabbi of the Jewish community at Nehardea in Babylonia. According to Piscator, he was somewhat famous in his time for his knowledge of traditional law and for some attainments in science. One of his feats was the compilation of a calendar of the Hebrew year. His chief claim to fame, however, lay in his efforts to adjust the Jewish law to the law of the land in which the Jews of the Diaspora lived.