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felt it myself." He tapped his chest.
"I'm completely lost now," Harpal said. "I don't deserve to be second. I'm out
of touch."
"Things are going to get a lot more complicated very soon," Martin said.
"Let's see how he handles the situation."
Ariel surprised him by agreeing completely. "He's made mistakes& But he's
still in charge, and we're still ready to do the Job."
Harpal stood in the door. "If he accepts my resignation, that's fine by me,"
he said. "But why did he pick Rex? Rex is not the smartest person on the ship.
He knows nothing about leadership."
Martin held back the most obvious and the darkest answer he could think of:
Rex won't say no
.
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Hans kept to the back of the cafeteria, smiling benignly. Rosa stood on a
table; sixty-three of the crew listened intently.
"In two days," she said, "we'll meet our new colleagues& What will they be
like? What will they think and believe? How can we accommodate them? Interact
with them? What are we
, to them
!"
The crew did not answer. Martin sat a few meters from Hans, beside Harpal and
Ariel. Hans winked at Martin.
Rosa looked radiant; the beauty of intense compassion, of selflessness.
Awkward Rosa had melted finally, giving way to a new woman; had the defining
moment occurred in Hans' arms?
Hans revealed nothing.
"In the scale of things, we are the very smallest of intelligences, the very
dimmest of lights.
Yet like plankton in Earth's seas, we lay the foundations for all the complex
glory above us. We are the food and eggs and seed of all intelligence, up to
and including that radiant center beyond all understanding. A disturbance in
the sea of little thinking creatures can move up the spiritual food column
with disastrous consequences, though it may take an age; and so the highest
regards the lowest with more than just disinterested love, for we are
ultimately them
, part of their flesh, if they have flesh, part of their histories, and their
futures&
"The colleagues joining us have undoubtedly suffered as we have. They have
lost their home world, have wandered for centuries in foreign shells, and have
fought and lost loved ones, all to vanquish the poison, the death of the
planet killers. We join with them now, and the little intelligences merge& And
it is noticed by those high above us, those in attendance on the Most
High, the galaxies of bright spirituality that rotate around the unimaginably
vast center& And that notice is not just a kind of love, it love, compared
to which the love we feel for the parts of is our own body, for our own flesh,
is a cheap imitation.
"Our success or failure has a larger meaning. When we die, we are not just
lost; I have felt the cradle of the Most High coming for our dead, to embrace
their memories, their essence, and draw them to the center, where there is
eternal motion and eternal rest, peace and the center of all action."
"She hasn't read her Aquinas," Ariel whispered to Martin.
But what Rosa said sounded good to him. Martin needed to know that Theresa and
William were happy, that they had found rest; that sardonic and razor-sharp
Theodore and all the others were appreciated somewhere, that perhaps they
floated in a sea of painless interaction, showing their highest qualities to
something that might finally appreciate them&
"When our ships join, we join purposes as well. All our goals must mesh. We
are here not to satisfy the moms, but to clean the seas of a poison that could
reach to the center itself. Call it evil, call it senseless greed, call it
maladaptation& It is separate from the Most High, and the Most
High does not cherish it.
"The cup-bearers of planetary death are not among the lights in attendance to
the Most High;
they are caught in a vicious cycle of pain and fear. We have felt their fear.
It killed our home planet and it has killed our friends; the time has come for
us to apply the burning iron to that fear, and to send the Killers back to
where they can again become part of the column, rise in usefulness again to
the Most High.
"But we will not receive divine aid. Though there are things repugnant to the
highest intelligences, the greatest spirits, they do not give us their powers
and insights when we fight the repugnant things. That would be a kind of
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interference even more evil than senseless murder; a confusion of scales, the
Most High stifling the potential of the low, where all creativity, all
creation begins. We are on our own, but our struggle is not senseless."
"What do the moms think of this?" Harpal asked Martin in a low voice.
Martin shook his head.
"The story I tell this evening is of war. Nothing gentle, nothing soothing, it
reminds us of what we face still, and may face for centuries more, before we
can lay down our weapons and take up the duties of living for ourselves."
"Why can't I feel the touch and see what you've seen?" Nguyen Mountain Lily
asked.
Rosa looked puzzled for an instant, then smiled again and raised her hands,
sweeping all around. "The Most High is never not touching us. But it does not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]