“He says, after finding this Elder artifact I mentioned, he put ‘crown’ on his head. I suppose that would be natural thing to do. It’s adjustable, and ornamental, and maybe he’s right, maybe command was being broadcast. Anyhow, something indescribable happened, heaven and hell together, at first mostly hell because of fear and strangeness and uprooting of his whole mind, later mostly heaven— and now, Jaan says, neither word is any good, there are no words for what he experiences, what he is.
“In scientific terms, if they aren’t pseudoscientific (where do you draw line, when dealing with unknown?), what he says happened is this. Long ago, Elders, or Ancients as they call them here, had base on Aeneas, same as on many similar planets. It was no mere research base. They were serving huge purpose I’ll come to later. Suggestion is right that they actually caused Didonians to evolve, as one experiment among many, all aimed at creating more intelligence, more consciousness, throughout cosmos.
“At last they withdrew, but left one behind whom Jean gives name of Caruith, though he says spoken name is purely for benefit of our limited selves. It wasn’t original Caruith who stayed; and original wasn’t individual like you or me anyway, but part—aspects?—attribute?—of glorious totality which Didonians only hint at. What Caruith did was let heeshself be scanned, neurone by neurone, so entire personality pattern could be recorded in some incredible fashion.
“Sorry, darling, I just decided pronoun like ‘heesh’ is okay for Neighbors but too undignified for Ancients. I’ll say ‘he’ because I’m more used to that; could just as well, or just as badly, be ‘she,’ of course.
“When Jaan put on circlet, apparatus was activated, and stored pattern was imposed on his nervous system.
“You can guess difficulties. What shabby little word, ‘difficulties’! Jaan has human brain, human body; and in fact, Elders thought mainly in terms of Didonian finding their treasure. Jaan can’t do anything his own organism hasn’t got potential for. Original Caruith could maybe solve a thousand simultaneous differential equations in his ‘head,’ in split second, if he wanted to; but Caruith using Jaan’s primitive brain can’t. You get idea?
“Nonetheless, Elders had realized Didonians might not be first in that room. They’d built flexibility into system. Furthermore, all organisms have potentials that aren’t ordinarily used. Let me give you clumsy example. You play chess, paint pictures, hand-pilot aircraft, and analyze languages. I know. But suppose you’d been born into world where nobody had invented chess, paint, aircraft, or semantic analysis. You see? Or think how sheer physical and mental training can bring out capabilities in almost anybody.
“So after three days of simply getting adjusted, to point where he could think and act at all, Jaan came back topside. Since then, he’s been integrating more and more with this great mind that shares his brain. He says at last they’ll become one, more Caruith than Jaan, and he rejoices at prospect.
“Well, what does he preach? What do Elders want? Why did they do what they have done?
“Again, it’s impossible to put in few words. I’m going to try but I know I will fail. Maybe your imagination can fill in gaps. You’ve certainly got good mind, sweetheart.
“Ancients, Elders, Builders, High Ones, Old Shen, whatever we call them—and Jaan won’t give them separate name, he says that would be worse misleading than ‘Caruith’ already is—evolved billions of years ago, near galactic center where stars are older and closer together. We’re way out on thin fringe of spiral arm, you remember. At that time, there had not been many generations of stars, elements heavier than helium were rare, planets with possibility of life were few. Elders went into space and found it lonelier than we can dream, we who have more inhabited worlds around than anybody has counted. They turned inward, they deliberately forced themselves to keep on evolving mind, lifetime after lifetime, because they had no one else to talk to— How I wish I could send you record of Jaan explaining!
“Something happened. He says he isn’t yet quite able to understand what. Split in race, in course of millions of years; not ideological difference as we think of ideology, but two different ways of perceiving, of evaluating reality, two different purposes to impose on universe. We dare not say one branch is good, one evil; we can only say they are irreconcilable. Call them Yang and Yin, but don’t try to say which is which.