A time of changes, p.13
A Time of Changes, page 13
“Your proposal, Schweiz,” I said.
“One first must tell you that he has used these drugs himself, and found them not entirely satisfactory. True, they open the infinite. True, they let one merge with the Godhead. But only for moments: a few hours at best. And at the end of it, one is as alone as before. It is the illusion of the soul’s opening, not the opening itself. Whereas this planet produces a drug that can provide the real thing.”
“What?”
“In Sumara Borthan,” said Schweiz, “dwell those who fled the rule of the Covenant. One is told that they are savages, going naked and living on roots and seeds and fish; the cloak of civilization has dropped away from them and they have slipped back into barbarism. So one learned from a traveler who had visited that continent not long ago. One also learned that in Sumara Borthan they use a drug made from a certain powdered root, which has the capacity of opening mind to mind, so that each can read the inmost thoughts of the other. It is the very opposite of your Covenant, do you see? They know one another from the soul out, by way of this drug they eat.”
“One has heard stories of the savagery of those folk,” I said.
Schweiz put his face close to mine. “One confesses himself tempted by the Sumaran drug. One hopes that if he could ever get inside another mind, he could find that community of soul for which he has searched so long. It might be the bridge to the infinite that he seeks, the spiritual transformation. Eh? In quest of revelations he has tried many substances. Why not this?”
“If it exists.”
“It exists, your grace. This traveler who came from Sumara Borthan brought some of it with him to Manneran, and sold some of it to the curious Earthman.” Schweiz drew forth from a pocket a small glossy envelope, and held it toward me. It contained a small quantity of some white powder; it could have been sugar. “Here it is,” he said.
I stared at it as if he had pulled out a flask of poison.
“Your proposal?” I demanded. “Your experiment, Schweiz?”
“Let us share the Sumaran drug,” he said.
THIRTY-ONE
I MIGHT HAVE SLAPPED the powder from his hand and ordered his arrest. I might have commanded him to get away from me and never come near again. I might at the very least have cried out that it was impossible I would ever touch any such substance. But I did none of those things. I chose instead to be coolly intellectual, to show casual curiosity, to remain calm and play conversational games with him. Thus I encouraged him to lead me a little deeper into the quicksand.
I said, “Do you think that one is so eager to contravene the Covenant?”
“One thinks that you are a man of strong will and inquiring mind, who would not miss an opportunity for enlightenment.”
“Illegal enlightenment?”
“All true enlightenment is illegal at first, within its context. Even the religion of the Covenant: were your forefathers not driven out of other worlds for practicing it?”
“One mistrusts such analogy-making. We are not talking of religions now. We talk of a dangerous drug. You ask one to surrender all the training of his lifetime, and open himself to you as he has never done even to bond-kin, even to a drainer.”
“Yes.”
“And you imagine that one might be willing to do such a thing?”
“One imagines that you might well emerge transformed and cleansed, if you could bring yourself to try,” Schweiz said.
“One might also emerge scarred and twisted.”
“Doubtful. Knowledge never injures the soul. It only purges that which encrusts and saps the soul.”
“How glib you are, Schweiz! Look, though: can you believe it would be possible to give one’s inner secrets to a stranger, to a foreigner, to an otherworlder?”
“Why not? Better to a stranger than to a friend. Better to an Earthman than a fellow citizen. You’d have nothing to fear: the Earthman would never try to judge you by the standards of Borthan. There’d be no criticisms, no disapprovals of what’s under your skull. And the Earthman will leave this planet in a year or two, on a journey of hundreds of light-years, and what then will it matter that your mind once merged with his?”
“Why are you so eager to have this merger happen?”
“For eight moontimes,” he said, “this drug has been in one’s pocket, while one hunts for someone to share it with. It looked as though the search would be in vain. Then one met you, and saw your potential, your strength, your hidden rebelliousness—”
“One is aware of no rebelliousness, Schweiz. One accepts his world completely.”
“May one bring up the delicate matter of your attitude toward your bondsister? That seems a symptom of a fundamental discontent with the restrictions of your society.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
“You would know yourself better after sampling the Sumaran drug. You would have fewer perhapses and more certainties.”
“How can you say this, if you haven’t had the drug yourself?”
“So it seems to one.”
“It is impossible,” I said.
“An experiment. A secret pact. No one would ever know.”
“Impossible.”
“Is it that you fear to share your soul?”
“One is taught that such sharing is unholy.”
“The teachings can be wrong,” he said. “Have you never felt the temptation? Have you never tasted such ecstasy in a draining that you wished you might undergo the same experience with someone you loved, your grace?”
Again he caught me in a vulnerable place. “One has had such feelings occasionally,” I admitted. “Sitting before some ugly drainer, and imagining it was Noim instead, or Halum, and that the draining was a two-way flow—”
“Then you already long for this drug, and don’t realize it!”
“No. No.”
“Perhaps,” Schweiz suggested, “it is the idea of opening to a stranger that dismays you, and not the concept of opening itself. Perhaps you would take this drug with someone other than the Earthman, eh? With your bondbrother? With your bondsister?”
I considered that. Sitting down with Noim, who was to me like a second self, and reaching his mind on levels that had never been available to me before, and he reaching mine. Or with Halum—or with Halum—
Schweiz, you tempter!
He said, after letting me think a while, “Does the idea please you? Here, then. One will surrender his chance with the drug. Take it, use it, share it with one whom you love.” He pressed the envelope into my hand. It frightened me; I let it fall to the table as if it were aflame.
I said, “But that would deprive you of your hoped-for fulfillment.”
“No matter. One can get more of the drug. One may perhaps find another partner for the experiment. Meanwhile you would have known the ecstasy, your grace. Even an Earthman can be unselfish. Take it, your grace. Take it.”
I gave him a dark look. “Would it be, Schweiz, that this talk of taking the drug yourself was only pretense? That what you really look for is someone to offer himself as an experimental subject, so you can be sure the drug is safe before you risk it?”
“You misunderstand, your grace.”
“Maybe not. Maybe this is what you’ve been driving toward.” I saw myself administering the drug to Noim, saw him falling into convulsions before my eyes as I made ready to bring my own dose to my lips. I pushed the envelope back toward Schweiz. “No. The offer is refused. One appreciates the generosity, but one will not experiment on his loved ones, Schweiz.”
His face was very red. “This implication is unwarranted, your grace. The offer to relinquish one’s own share of the drug was made in good faith, and at no little cost to one’s own plans. But since you reject it, let us return to the original proposition. The two of us will sample the drug, in secrecy, as an experiment in possibilities. Let us find out together what its powers may be and what doors it can open for us. We would have much to gain from this adventure, one is sure.”
“One sees what you would have to gain,” I said. “But what purpose is there in it for—”
“Yourself?” Schweiz chuckled. Then he rammed me with the barbed hook. “Your grace, by making the experiment you would learn that the drug is safe, you would discover the proper dosage, you would lose your fear of the mind-opening itself. And then, after obtaining a further supply of the drug, you would be properly prepared to use it for a purpose from which your fears now hold you back. You could take the drug together with the only person whom you truly love. You could use it to open your mind to your bondsister Halum, and to open hers to you.”
THIRTY-TWO
THERE IS A STORY they tell to children who are still learning the Covenant, about the days when the gods had not yet ceased to walk the world in human form, and the first men had not yet arrived on Borthan. The gods at that time did not know they were divine, for they had no mortals about them for comparison, and so they were innocent beings, unaware of their powers, who lived in a simple way. They dwelled in Manneran (this is the source of Manneran’s claim to superior holiness, the legend that it was once the home of the gods) and ate berries and leaves, and went without clothing except in the mild Mannerangi winter, when they threw shawls of animal hide loosely over their shoulders. And there was nothing godlike about them.
One day two of these ungodlike gods decided they would go off to see something of the world. The idea for making such a journey came first to the god whose secret name is Kinnall, now the god who looks after wayfarers. (Yes, he for whom I was named.) This Kinnall invited the goddess Thirga to join him, she whose responsibility now is the protection of those who are in love. Thirga shared Kinnall’s restlessness and off they went.
From Manneran they walked west along the southern coast until they came to the shores of the Gulf of Sumar. Then they turned north, and passed through Stroin Gap just by the place where the Huishtor Mountains come to an end. They entered the Wet Lowlands, which they found less to their liking, and finally they ventured into the Frozen Lowlands, where they thought they would perish of the cold. So they turned south again, and this time they found themselves staring at the inland slopes of the Threishtor Mountains. There seemed no way for them to cross over this mighty range. They followed its eastern foothills south, but could not get out of the Burnt Lowlands, and they suffered great hardships, until at last they stumbled upon Threish Gate, and made their way through that difficult pass into the cool and foggy province of Threish.
On their first day in Threish the two gods discovered a place where a spring flowed out of a hillside. The opening in the hillside was nine-sided, and the rock surrounding the opening was so bright that it dazzled the eye, for it rippled and iridesced, and glowed with many colors constantly pulsing and changing, red and green and violet and ivory and turquoise and many more. And the water that came forth was of the same shimmering quality, having in it every color anyone ever had seen. The stream flowed only a short distance this way, and then was lost in the waters of a much larger brook, in which all the wondrous colors vanished.
Kinnall said, “We have wandered a long while in the Burnt Lowlands, and our throats are dry from thirst. Shall we drink?” And Thirga said, “Yes, let us drink,” and knelt by the opening in the hillside. She cupped her hands and filled them with the glittering water, and poured it into her mouth, and Kinnall drank also, and the taste of the water was so sweet that they thrust their faces right against the flow of the spring, gulping down all they could.
As they did this they experienced strange sensations of their bodies and minds. Kinnall looked toward Thirga and realized that he could see the thoughts within her soul, and they were thoughts of love for him. And she looked toward him, and saw his thoughts as well. “We are different now,” Kinnall said, and he did not even need words to convey his meaning, for Thirga understood him as soon as his thought formed. And she replied, “No, we are not different, but are merely able to understand the use of the gifts we have always had.”
And it was true. For they had many gifts, and they had never used them before. They could rise in the air and travel like birds; they could change the shape of their bodies; they could walk through the Burnt Lowlands or the Frozen Lowlands and feel no discomfort; they could live without taking in food; they could halt the aging of their flesh and become as young as they pleased; they could speak without saying words. All these things they might have done before coming to the spring, except that they had not known how, and now they were capable of using the skills with which they had been born. They had learned, by drinking the water of the bright spring, how to go about being gods.
Even so, they did not yet know that they were gods.
After some time they remembered the others who lived in Manneran, and flew back to tell them about the spring. The journey took only an instant. All their friends crowded round as Kinnall and Thirga spoke of the miracle of the spring, and demonstrated the powers they had mastered. When they were done, everyone in Manneran resolved to go to the spring, and set out in a long procession, through Stroin Gap and the Wet Lowlands and up the eastern slopes of the Threishtors to Threish Gate. Kinnall and Thirga flew above them, guiding them from day to day. Eventually they reached the place of the spring, and one by one they drank of it and became as gods. Then they scattered, some returning to Manneran, some going to Salla, some going even to Sumara Borthan or the far continents of Umbis, Dabis, and Tibis, since, now that they were as gods, there were no limits on the speed of their travel, and they wished to see those strange places. But Kinnall and Thirga settled down beside the spring in eastern Threish and were content to explore one another’s soul.
Many years passed, and then the starship of our forefathers came down in Threish, near the western shore. Men had at last reached Borthan. They built a small town and went about the task of collecting food for themselves. A certain man named Digant, who was among these settlers, ventured deep into the forest in search of meat-animals, and became lost, and roamed and roamed until finally he came to the place where Kinnall and Thirga lived. He had never seen any such as they before, nor they anyone such as he.
“What sort of creatures are you?” he asked.
Kinnall replied, “Once we were quite ordinary, but now we do quite well, for we never grow old, and we can fly faster than any bird, and our souls are open to each other, and we can take on any shape we please.
“Why, then, you are gods!” Digant cried.
“Gods? What are gods?”
And Digant explained that he was a man, and had no such powers as theirs, for men must use words to talk, and can neither fly nor change their shape, and grow older with each journey of the world around the sun, until the time of dying comes. Kinnall and Thirga listened with care, comparing themselves to Digant, and when he was done speaking they knew it was true, that he was a man and they were gods.
“Once we were almost like men ourselves,” Thirga admitted. “We felt hunger and grew old and spoke only by means of words and had to put one foot in front of the other to get from place to place. We lived like men out of ignorance, for we did not know our powers. But then things changed.”
“And what changed them?” Digant asked.
“Why,” said Kinnall in his innocence, “we drank from that glistening spring, and the water of it opened our eyes to our powers and allowed us to become as gods. That was all.”
Then Digant’s soul surged with excitement, for he told himself that he too could drink from the spring, and then he would join this pair in godhood. He would keep the spring a secret afterward, when he returned to the settlers on the coast, and they would worship him as their living god, and treat him with reverence, or he would destroy them. But Digant did not dare ask Kinnall and Thirga to let him drink from the spring, for he feared that they would refuse him, being jealous of their divinity. So he hatched a scheme to get them away from that place.
“Is it true,” he asked them, “that you can travel so fast that you are able to visit every part of this world in a single day?”
Kinnall assured him that this was true.
“It seems difficult to believe,” said Digant.
“We will give you proof,” Thirga said, and she touched her hand to Kinnall’s, and the two gods went aloft. They soared to the highest peak of the Threishtors and gathered snowflowers there; they descended into the Burnt Lowlands and scooped up a handful of the red soil; in the Wet Lowlands they collected herbs; by the Gulf of Sumar they took some liquor from a flesh-tree; on the shores of the Polar Gulf they pried out a sample of the eternal ice; then they leaped over the top of the world to frosty Tibis, and began their journey through the far continents, so that they might bring back to the doubting Digant something from every part of the world.
The moment Kinnall and Thirga had departed on this enterprise, Digant rushed to the spring of miracles. There he hesitated briefly, afraid that the gods might return suddenly and strike him down for his boldness; but they did not appear, and Digant thrust his face into the flow and drank deeply, thinking, Now I too shall be as a god. He filled his gut with the glowing water and swayed and grew dizzy, and fell to the ground. Is this godhood, he wondered? He tried to fly and could not. He tried to change his shape and could not. He failed in all these things because he had been a man to begin with, and not a god, and the spring could not change a man into a god, but could only help a god to realize his full powers.
But the spring gave Digant one gift. It enabled him to reach into the minds of the other men who had settled in Threish. As he lay on the ground, numb with disappointment, he heard a tiny tickling sound in the middle of his mind, and paid close heed to it and realized he was hearing the minds of his friends. And he found a way of amplifying the sound so that he could hear everything clearly: yes, and this was the mind of his wife, and this was the mind of his sister, and this was the mind of his sister’s husband, and Digant could look into any of them and any other mind, reading the innermost thoughts. This is godhood, he told himself. And he probed their minds deeply, flushing out all their secrets. Steadily he increased the scope of his power until every mind at once was connected to his. Forth from them he drew the privacies of their souls, until, intoxicated with his new power, swollen with the pride of his godhood, he sent out a message to all those minds from his mind, saying, “HEAR THE VOICE OF DIGANT. IT IS DIGANT THE GOD THAT YOU SHALL WORSHIP.”
“One first must tell you that he has used these drugs himself, and found them not entirely satisfactory. True, they open the infinite. True, they let one merge with the Godhead. But only for moments: a few hours at best. And at the end of it, one is as alone as before. It is the illusion of the soul’s opening, not the opening itself. Whereas this planet produces a drug that can provide the real thing.”
“What?”
“In Sumara Borthan,” said Schweiz, “dwell those who fled the rule of the Covenant. One is told that they are savages, going naked and living on roots and seeds and fish; the cloak of civilization has dropped away from them and they have slipped back into barbarism. So one learned from a traveler who had visited that continent not long ago. One also learned that in Sumara Borthan they use a drug made from a certain powdered root, which has the capacity of opening mind to mind, so that each can read the inmost thoughts of the other. It is the very opposite of your Covenant, do you see? They know one another from the soul out, by way of this drug they eat.”
“One has heard stories of the savagery of those folk,” I said.
Schweiz put his face close to mine. “One confesses himself tempted by the Sumaran drug. One hopes that if he could ever get inside another mind, he could find that community of soul for which he has searched so long. It might be the bridge to the infinite that he seeks, the spiritual transformation. Eh? In quest of revelations he has tried many substances. Why not this?”
“If it exists.”
“It exists, your grace. This traveler who came from Sumara Borthan brought some of it with him to Manneran, and sold some of it to the curious Earthman.” Schweiz drew forth from a pocket a small glossy envelope, and held it toward me. It contained a small quantity of some white powder; it could have been sugar. “Here it is,” he said.
I stared at it as if he had pulled out a flask of poison.
“Your proposal?” I demanded. “Your experiment, Schweiz?”
“Let us share the Sumaran drug,” he said.
THIRTY-ONE
I MIGHT HAVE SLAPPED the powder from his hand and ordered his arrest. I might have commanded him to get away from me and never come near again. I might at the very least have cried out that it was impossible I would ever touch any such substance. But I did none of those things. I chose instead to be coolly intellectual, to show casual curiosity, to remain calm and play conversational games with him. Thus I encouraged him to lead me a little deeper into the quicksand.
I said, “Do you think that one is so eager to contravene the Covenant?”
“One thinks that you are a man of strong will and inquiring mind, who would not miss an opportunity for enlightenment.”
“Illegal enlightenment?”
“All true enlightenment is illegal at first, within its context. Even the religion of the Covenant: were your forefathers not driven out of other worlds for practicing it?”
“One mistrusts such analogy-making. We are not talking of religions now. We talk of a dangerous drug. You ask one to surrender all the training of his lifetime, and open himself to you as he has never done even to bond-kin, even to a drainer.”
“Yes.”
“And you imagine that one might be willing to do such a thing?”
“One imagines that you might well emerge transformed and cleansed, if you could bring yourself to try,” Schweiz said.
“One might also emerge scarred and twisted.”
“Doubtful. Knowledge never injures the soul. It only purges that which encrusts and saps the soul.”
“How glib you are, Schweiz! Look, though: can you believe it would be possible to give one’s inner secrets to a stranger, to a foreigner, to an otherworlder?”
“Why not? Better to a stranger than to a friend. Better to an Earthman than a fellow citizen. You’d have nothing to fear: the Earthman would never try to judge you by the standards of Borthan. There’d be no criticisms, no disapprovals of what’s under your skull. And the Earthman will leave this planet in a year or two, on a journey of hundreds of light-years, and what then will it matter that your mind once merged with his?”
“Why are you so eager to have this merger happen?”
“For eight moontimes,” he said, “this drug has been in one’s pocket, while one hunts for someone to share it with. It looked as though the search would be in vain. Then one met you, and saw your potential, your strength, your hidden rebelliousness—”
“One is aware of no rebelliousness, Schweiz. One accepts his world completely.”
“May one bring up the delicate matter of your attitude toward your bondsister? That seems a symptom of a fundamental discontent with the restrictions of your society.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
“You would know yourself better after sampling the Sumaran drug. You would have fewer perhapses and more certainties.”
“How can you say this, if you haven’t had the drug yourself?”
“So it seems to one.”
“It is impossible,” I said.
“An experiment. A secret pact. No one would ever know.”
“Impossible.”
“Is it that you fear to share your soul?”
“One is taught that such sharing is unholy.”
“The teachings can be wrong,” he said. “Have you never felt the temptation? Have you never tasted such ecstasy in a draining that you wished you might undergo the same experience with someone you loved, your grace?”
Again he caught me in a vulnerable place. “One has had such feelings occasionally,” I admitted. “Sitting before some ugly drainer, and imagining it was Noim instead, or Halum, and that the draining was a two-way flow—”
“Then you already long for this drug, and don’t realize it!”
“No. No.”
“Perhaps,” Schweiz suggested, “it is the idea of opening to a stranger that dismays you, and not the concept of opening itself. Perhaps you would take this drug with someone other than the Earthman, eh? With your bondbrother? With your bondsister?”
I considered that. Sitting down with Noim, who was to me like a second self, and reaching his mind on levels that had never been available to me before, and he reaching mine. Or with Halum—or with Halum—
Schweiz, you tempter!
He said, after letting me think a while, “Does the idea please you? Here, then. One will surrender his chance with the drug. Take it, use it, share it with one whom you love.” He pressed the envelope into my hand. It frightened me; I let it fall to the table as if it were aflame.
I said, “But that would deprive you of your hoped-for fulfillment.”
“No matter. One can get more of the drug. One may perhaps find another partner for the experiment. Meanwhile you would have known the ecstasy, your grace. Even an Earthman can be unselfish. Take it, your grace. Take it.”
I gave him a dark look. “Would it be, Schweiz, that this talk of taking the drug yourself was only pretense? That what you really look for is someone to offer himself as an experimental subject, so you can be sure the drug is safe before you risk it?”
“You misunderstand, your grace.”
“Maybe not. Maybe this is what you’ve been driving toward.” I saw myself administering the drug to Noim, saw him falling into convulsions before my eyes as I made ready to bring my own dose to my lips. I pushed the envelope back toward Schweiz. “No. The offer is refused. One appreciates the generosity, but one will not experiment on his loved ones, Schweiz.”
His face was very red. “This implication is unwarranted, your grace. The offer to relinquish one’s own share of the drug was made in good faith, and at no little cost to one’s own plans. But since you reject it, let us return to the original proposition. The two of us will sample the drug, in secrecy, as an experiment in possibilities. Let us find out together what its powers may be and what doors it can open for us. We would have much to gain from this adventure, one is sure.”
“One sees what you would have to gain,” I said. “But what purpose is there in it for—”
“Yourself?” Schweiz chuckled. Then he rammed me with the barbed hook. “Your grace, by making the experiment you would learn that the drug is safe, you would discover the proper dosage, you would lose your fear of the mind-opening itself. And then, after obtaining a further supply of the drug, you would be properly prepared to use it for a purpose from which your fears now hold you back. You could take the drug together with the only person whom you truly love. You could use it to open your mind to your bondsister Halum, and to open hers to you.”
THIRTY-TWO
THERE IS A STORY they tell to children who are still learning the Covenant, about the days when the gods had not yet ceased to walk the world in human form, and the first men had not yet arrived on Borthan. The gods at that time did not know they were divine, for they had no mortals about them for comparison, and so they were innocent beings, unaware of their powers, who lived in a simple way. They dwelled in Manneran (this is the source of Manneran’s claim to superior holiness, the legend that it was once the home of the gods) and ate berries and leaves, and went without clothing except in the mild Mannerangi winter, when they threw shawls of animal hide loosely over their shoulders. And there was nothing godlike about them.
One day two of these ungodlike gods decided they would go off to see something of the world. The idea for making such a journey came first to the god whose secret name is Kinnall, now the god who looks after wayfarers. (Yes, he for whom I was named.) This Kinnall invited the goddess Thirga to join him, she whose responsibility now is the protection of those who are in love. Thirga shared Kinnall’s restlessness and off they went.
From Manneran they walked west along the southern coast until they came to the shores of the Gulf of Sumar. Then they turned north, and passed through Stroin Gap just by the place where the Huishtor Mountains come to an end. They entered the Wet Lowlands, which they found less to their liking, and finally they ventured into the Frozen Lowlands, where they thought they would perish of the cold. So they turned south again, and this time they found themselves staring at the inland slopes of the Threishtor Mountains. There seemed no way for them to cross over this mighty range. They followed its eastern foothills south, but could not get out of the Burnt Lowlands, and they suffered great hardships, until at last they stumbled upon Threish Gate, and made their way through that difficult pass into the cool and foggy province of Threish.
On their first day in Threish the two gods discovered a place where a spring flowed out of a hillside. The opening in the hillside was nine-sided, and the rock surrounding the opening was so bright that it dazzled the eye, for it rippled and iridesced, and glowed with many colors constantly pulsing and changing, red and green and violet and ivory and turquoise and many more. And the water that came forth was of the same shimmering quality, having in it every color anyone ever had seen. The stream flowed only a short distance this way, and then was lost in the waters of a much larger brook, in which all the wondrous colors vanished.
Kinnall said, “We have wandered a long while in the Burnt Lowlands, and our throats are dry from thirst. Shall we drink?” And Thirga said, “Yes, let us drink,” and knelt by the opening in the hillside. She cupped her hands and filled them with the glittering water, and poured it into her mouth, and Kinnall drank also, and the taste of the water was so sweet that they thrust their faces right against the flow of the spring, gulping down all they could.
As they did this they experienced strange sensations of their bodies and minds. Kinnall looked toward Thirga and realized that he could see the thoughts within her soul, and they were thoughts of love for him. And she looked toward him, and saw his thoughts as well. “We are different now,” Kinnall said, and he did not even need words to convey his meaning, for Thirga understood him as soon as his thought formed. And she replied, “No, we are not different, but are merely able to understand the use of the gifts we have always had.”
And it was true. For they had many gifts, and they had never used them before. They could rise in the air and travel like birds; they could change the shape of their bodies; they could walk through the Burnt Lowlands or the Frozen Lowlands and feel no discomfort; they could live without taking in food; they could halt the aging of their flesh and become as young as they pleased; they could speak without saying words. All these things they might have done before coming to the spring, except that they had not known how, and now they were capable of using the skills with which they had been born. They had learned, by drinking the water of the bright spring, how to go about being gods.
Even so, they did not yet know that they were gods.
After some time they remembered the others who lived in Manneran, and flew back to tell them about the spring. The journey took only an instant. All their friends crowded round as Kinnall and Thirga spoke of the miracle of the spring, and demonstrated the powers they had mastered. When they were done, everyone in Manneran resolved to go to the spring, and set out in a long procession, through Stroin Gap and the Wet Lowlands and up the eastern slopes of the Threishtors to Threish Gate. Kinnall and Thirga flew above them, guiding them from day to day. Eventually they reached the place of the spring, and one by one they drank of it and became as gods. Then they scattered, some returning to Manneran, some going to Salla, some going even to Sumara Borthan or the far continents of Umbis, Dabis, and Tibis, since, now that they were as gods, there were no limits on the speed of their travel, and they wished to see those strange places. But Kinnall and Thirga settled down beside the spring in eastern Threish and were content to explore one another’s soul.
Many years passed, and then the starship of our forefathers came down in Threish, near the western shore. Men had at last reached Borthan. They built a small town and went about the task of collecting food for themselves. A certain man named Digant, who was among these settlers, ventured deep into the forest in search of meat-animals, and became lost, and roamed and roamed until finally he came to the place where Kinnall and Thirga lived. He had never seen any such as they before, nor they anyone such as he.
“What sort of creatures are you?” he asked.
Kinnall replied, “Once we were quite ordinary, but now we do quite well, for we never grow old, and we can fly faster than any bird, and our souls are open to each other, and we can take on any shape we please.
“Why, then, you are gods!” Digant cried.
“Gods? What are gods?”
And Digant explained that he was a man, and had no such powers as theirs, for men must use words to talk, and can neither fly nor change their shape, and grow older with each journey of the world around the sun, until the time of dying comes. Kinnall and Thirga listened with care, comparing themselves to Digant, and when he was done speaking they knew it was true, that he was a man and they were gods.
“Once we were almost like men ourselves,” Thirga admitted. “We felt hunger and grew old and spoke only by means of words and had to put one foot in front of the other to get from place to place. We lived like men out of ignorance, for we did not know our powers. But then things changed.”
“And what changed them?” Digant asked.
“Why,” said Kinnall in his innocence, “we drank from that glistening spring, and the water of it opened our eyes to our powers and allowed us to become as gods. That was all.”
Then Digant’s soul surged with excitement, for he told himself that he too could drink from the spring, and then he would join this pair in godhood. He would keep the spring a secret afterward, when he returned to the settlers on the coast, and they would worship him as their living god, and treat him with reverence, or he would destroy them. But Digant did not dare ask Kinnall and Thirga to let him drink from the spring, for he feared that they would refuse him, being jealous of their divinity. So he hatched a scheme to get them away from that place.
“Is it true,” he asked them, “that you can travel so fast that you are able to visit every part of this world in a single day?”
Kinnall assured him that this was true.
“It seems difficult to believe,” said Digant.
“We will give you proof,” Thirga said, and she touched her hand to Kinnall’s, and the two gods went aloft. They soared to the highest peak of the Threishtors and gathered snowflowers there; they descended into the Burnt Lowlands and scooped up a handful of the red soil; in the Wet Lowlands they collected herbs; by the Gulf of Sumar they took some liquor from a flesh-tree; on the shores of the Polar Gulf they pried out a sample of the eternal ice; then they leaped over the top of the world to frosty Tibis, and began their journey through the far continents, so that they might bring back to the doubting Digant something from every part of the world.
The moment Kinnall and Thirga had departed on this enterprise, Digant rushed to the spring of miracles. There he hesitated briefly, afraid that the gods might return suddenly and strike him down for his boldness; but they did not appear, and Digant thrust his face into the flow and drank deeply, thinking, Now I too shall be as a god. He filled his gut with the glowing water and swayed and grew dizzy, and fell to the ground. Is this godhood, he wondered? He tried to fly and could not. He tried to change his shape and could not. He failed in all these things because he had been a man to begin with, and not a god, and the spring could not change a man into a god, but could only help a god to realize his full powers.
But the spring gave Digant one gift. It enabled him to reach into the minds of the other men who had settled in Threish. As he lay on the ground, numb with disappointment, he heard a tiny tickling sound in the middle of his mind, and paid close heed to it and realized he was hearing the minds of his friends. And he found a way of amplifying the sound so that he could hear everything clearly: yes, and this was the mind of his wife, and this was the mind of his sister, and this was the mind of his sister’s husband, and Digant could look into any of them and any other mind, reading the innermost thoughts. This is godhood, he told himself. And he probed their minds deeply, flushing out all their secrets. Steadily he increased the scope of his power until every mind at once was connected to his. Forth from them he drew the privacies of their souls, until, intoxicated with his new power, swollen with the pride of his godhood, he sent out a message to all those minds from his mind, saying, “HEAR THE VOICE OF DIGANT. IT IS DIGANT THE GOD THAT YOU SHALL WORSHIP.”
