“In crudest possible language, our Elders see goal of life as consciousness, transcendence of everything material, unification of mind not only in this galaxy but throughout cosmos, so its final collapse won’t be end but will be beginning. While Others seek—mystic oneness with energy— supreme experience of Acceptance— No, I don’t suppose you can fairly call them death-oriented.
“Jaan likes old Terran quotation I know, as describing Elders: To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ (Do you know it?) And for Others, what? Not ‘Kismet,’ really; that at least implies doing God’s will, and Others deny God altogether. Nor ‘nihilism,’ which I reckon implies de-
sire for chaos, maybe as necessary for rebirth. What Others stand for is so alien that— Oh, I’ll write, knowing I’m wrong, that they believe rise, fall, and infinite extinction are our sole realities, and sole fulfillment that life can ultimately have is harmony with this curve.
“In contrast, Jaan says life, if it follows Elder star, will at last create God, become God.
“To that end, Elders have been watching new races arise on new planets, and helping them, guiding them, sometimes even bringing them into being like Didonians. They can’t watch always over everything; they haven’t over us. For Others have been at work too, and must be opposed.
“It’s not war as we understand war; not on that level. On our level, it is.
“Analogy again. You may be trying to arrive at some vital decision that will determine your entire future. You may be reasoning, you may be wrestling with your emotions, but it’s all in your mind; nobody else need see a thing.
“Only it’s not all in your mind. Unhealthy body means unhealthy thinking. Therefore, down on cellular level, your white blood corpuscles and antigens are waging relentless, violent war on invaders. And its outcome will have much to do with what happens in your head—maybe everything. Do you see?
“It’s like that. What intelligent life (I mean sophonts as we know them; Elders and Others are trans-intelligent) does is crucial. And one tiny bit of one galaxy, like ours, can be turning point. Effects multiply, you see. Just as it took few starfaring races to start many more on same course, irreversible change, so it could take few new races who go over to wholly new way of evolution for rest to do likewise eventually.
“Will that level be of Elders or of Others? Will we break old walls and reach, however painfully, for what is infinite, or will we find most harmonious, beautiful, noble way to move toward experience of oblivion?
“You see what I was getting at, that words like ‘positive’ and ‘negative,’ ‘active’ and ‘passive,’ ‘evolutionism’ and ‘nihilism,’ ‘good’ and ‘evil’ don’t mean anything in this context? Beings unimaginably far beyond us have two opposing ways of comprehending reality. Which are we to choose?
“We have no escape from choosing. We can accept authority, limitations, instructions; we can compromise; we can live out our personal lives safely; and it’s victory for Others throughout space we know, because right now Homo sapiens does happen to be leading species in these parts. Or we can take our risks, strike for our freedom, and if we win it, look for Elders to return and raise us, like children of theirs, toward being more than what we have ever been before.
“That’s what Jaan says. Tanya, darling, I just don’t know—”
She lifted eyes from the page. It flamed in her: I do. Already.
Nomi dwelt with her children in a two-room adobe at the bottom end of Grizzle Alley. Poverty flapped and racketed everywhere around them. It did not stink, for even the poorest Orcans were of cleanly habits and, while there was scant water to spare for washing, the air quickly parched out any malodors. Nor were there beggars; the Companions took in the desperately needy, and assigned them what work they were capable of doing. But ragged shapes crowded this quarter with turmoil: milling and yelling children, women overburdened with jugs and baskets, men plying their trades, day laborer, muledriver, carter, scavenger, artisan, butcher, tanner, priest, minstrel, vendor chanting or chaffering about his pitiful wares. Among battered brown walls, on tangled lanes of rutted iron-hard earth, Ivar felt more isolated than if he had been alone in the Dreary.