He’d explored the inner garden then, looking for a
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place to hide through the day, and had found nothing suitable. The portal to the inner garden proved unguarded, however, and from outside it he saw a grove of shaggy evergreens that looked like a possibility. He’d planned to use his radio there, and see if he could call in a rescue. As he’d approached the grove, he’d seen the building behind it. From close up he’d heard a sort of roar or howl, and froze where he was. Then he’d seen someone on the porch, and in the dawnlight thought he recognized Hans.
According to Matthew, his worst moment—worse than Kazi’s dungeon—was when the ogres came boiling out of the Sanctuary to attack Baver and Hans. He’d had to spray slugs around freely, with a fair chance of hitting the people he was trying to protect.
The sun was high—the local time was 0847 by the computer—when they finished. Hans had fallen asleep in his seat. Nikko took the controls again and started up the fertile valley toward the army post. Slowly, with Matthew operating the viewer on high mag, Nils watching for some sign of Chen. Close outside of town they saw three horses, two of them Mongol ponies, grazing in a ditch by the road. Nearby, Chen slept in the shade of a mulberry tree. Nils had Nikko land him in a forest glade on a bordering ridge, from where he trotted down to tell Chen that Hans was all right. And that all three horses were his to take home with him.
When Nils got back to the glade, the pinnace landed again, picked him up, and took off for Jampa’s House of Enlightenment. The Kumalos offered to wait till nightfall to land there, if landing by daylight would cause a disturbance. Through Nils, Jampa said it undoubtedly would, among the novices, but that would be good for them. And in fact, several of those working in the field fled headlong to the forest when they saw the Alpha settling toward the Songhouse. Matthew and Nils got out with Jampa and shook his hand where the monks could see.
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Then the old master sauntered to the longhouse, and the Alpha lifted again.
“Well, Nils,’ said Matthew, “it’s back to the Balkans now, I hope.”
The Northman shook his head. “Not at once,” he said. I want to see Achikh, at Urga. He is my anda, my soul brother. I should see him again before I go so far away.”
Nikko called up a map on the computer screen, found Urga and its coordinates, and they lifted.
APPENDIX
THE PSYCHOME AND THE PSYCHE
In telling a story, some concepts may be unfamiliar to readers, while an in-story explanation may be inappropriate. And invariably some readers will be troubled because of its absence. Here, story considerations dictated that I avoid discussing the psychome or even mentioning it, though it helps greatly in understanding Yunnan ogres. This short section clarifies psychome.
In writing it, I have drawn heavily on the discussion by Alexei Park in his “Psyche and Humanity.” (In Toward a Science of Humanity, edited by Mei-Ti Lomasetewa. Star Press, Deep Harbor, New Home. A.C. 906).
The ogre “psyche” is not a true psyche. It is a pseudo-psyche. On many planets there is what might be called a common psychome,* or mind/spirit pool, for all of that planet’s life. This is the equivalent, in the Sigma Field,
*Instead of psychome, I could have used the more descriptive term “spirit pool,” specifying that the animal mind is a function of it. I’ve coined and use the term psychome (psyche = spirit or mind; ome = mass, body or group), analogous to biome, because the term spirit carries too much semantic luggage for many people.
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of the sum of planetary genomes in the field of physical-biological phenomena. A useful but very limited analogy for the psychome and the planetary genetic sum is the head and tail of a coin. A somewhat closer analogy is the individual psyche of a person, and the person’s physical body.
For most purposes, the planetary psychome is subdivided into lesser psychomes that are more or less separate and distinct. These are the Sigma Field analogs of those gene pools which are capable of mixing. There is a gene pool for all the species and breeds of cattle that are able to hybridize with each other to produce viable offspring; also there is a gene pool for Yunnan ogres. Each has its corresponding psychome.