'Do you believe this?'

'Yes truly.'

'Then you don't believe Old Fei Yang will argue for your execution?'

Danlo shook his head. 'Oh, he may argue for it, but it will not be his choice to make.''Then what will determine which kind of feast we attend tonight?'

'I will,' Danlo said. 'There will be something I must do or not do.'

'And what is that?'

'I am not sure yet. I cannot ... quite see it. We will have to wait.'

Ede's face was now all alarm and calculation. Finally, in a low voice he said, 'If there's a fifty percent chance of your being executed, then surely you should try to escape.'

'Do you have a plan, then?'

'Of course,' Ede whispered. 'I'm good with plans. You could pretend that you've eaten bad fish, and ask to void yourself outside. When Ten Su Minye and his brothers open the door, you could overpower them.'

'Overpower ... three strong men?'

'You're a pilot of the Order,' Ede reminded him. 'Haven't you trained in the fighting arts?'

Danlo slowly nodded his head. 'The killing arts, they are called on Neverness.'

'Surely you can't think it's wrong to kill others who are about to kill you?'

Danlo bowed his head as he touched the scar above his eye. He breathed deeply, saying nothing.

'It would actually be quite easy,' Ede said. 'You could use one of the logs from the fire to break open Ten Su Minye's brains. And then you could run down to the beach, to your ship.'

With his eyes closed, Danlo tried not to envision what Ede had suggested. He tried not to see their little house at the edge of the forest, nor the broad, sandy beach which he might attain after only half a mile's sprint through the giant coastal trees. Most of all, he tried not to look upon his mind's creation of a nightmare, the vivid colours: the blackened log still glowing from the fire, the scattered white ashes, the redness of blood upon Ten Su Minye's forehead, upon the bearskins and walls, upon Danlo's trembling hands. Never killing, never harming another, not even in one's thoughts Danlo had made this vow long ago, and so he desperately tried not to see what any other man might have seen so easily.

'No,' Danlo said at last. 'I ... cannot escape this way.'

'But why not?'

In a slow, halting voice, in whispers and sighs and occasional silences, Danlo told Ede of his vow of ahimsa.

'But the Sani may kill you aren't you afraid?'

Danlo nodded his head, then smiled. 'Yes, I am afraid.'

'And so,' Ede asked, 'is it your plan just to wait here for the Sani's feast while you sit breathing like a Buddha? Toward what end?'

'Toward ... truly living,' Danlo said. 'Toward being more alive.'

'But what good is that if you're to be killed?'

'Being truly alive ... is good simply because it is good,' Danlo said, smiling. 'And more practically, it prepares the heart, the spirit the whole bodymind. So that when the moment comes, I will know what to do.'

Ede was quiet while he processed this. And then he asked, 'And to which moment do you refer?'

'The ... moment,' Danlo said. 'There is always a moment.'

'And now you sit speaking as mysteriously as a Buddha, too. I'm afraid I don't understand.'

Danlo sighed as he looked down at the flickering lights of Ede's face. Then he said, 'I am only speaking of the Now-moment. It is when the door opens. When ... nowness becomes thenness and the future is always and now. When one chooses, yes or no, which future will be. When there is nothing in the universe except one's will, to act or not act, to see, to know, to move to move the universe. There is always this moment, yes?'

But Danlo's explanation did little to ease Ede's perplexity. 'I'm not sure,' Ede said.

'For me, time is as continuous as the atomic clock built into this devotionary, and I must act according as my program runs.'

'I ... am sorry.'

'It is fundamental to my program, of course, that it continue to run. If you're executed, what will happen to me?'

'I ... do not know.'

'Well, I might be marooned on this Earth forever.'

'Perhaps another pilot of my Order might rescue you someday.'

'That's unlikely,' Ede said. 'Your finding me in the temple was the rarest of chances.'

'Still, there is a chance. And ... you are immortal, yes?'

'Immortal, in a way, but not indestructible.'

Danlo smiled sadly to himself. 'There is nothing in the universe ... that cannot be destroyed.'

'I suppose,' Ede said, 'that I might eventually convince these savages that I am their G.o.d, after all. They might build me an altar, set me upon it and worship me.'

Danlo thought about this while he stared at the thick wooden beams of the door. He breathed evenly, deeply, and then he said, 'Is this what you truly desire?'

For a moment, the Ede program hesitated, and then Ede said, 'Of course not.'

'I have wondered if we should tell the Sani about you,' Danlo said. 'About you ... as G.o.d.'

'Why not? Don't you believe in telling the truth?'

'Yes, but ... the truth that is not heard is not the truth.'

'The Sani's G.o.d is dead,' Ede said bitterly. 'That is the truth.'

Danlo shook his head. 'No, their G.o.d is still alive. For them, marvellously and beautifully alive.'

'I should tell them how the Silicon G.o.d murdered me.'

'If you told them this, they wouldn't believe you. And if they did believe you, it would leave a hole in their soul.'

'And through this hole would enter logic and reason.'

'No, only madness would enter. When a people believe nothing ... they will do anything.'

'Such as murder?'

With a long sigh, Danlo said, 'Murder is the least of it.'

'I don't understand you, Pilot. I thought you believed in believing in nothing.'

'Yes, but only for an individual, as an ideal ... to be sought.'

'But you once told me that you would destroy all beliefs if you could.'

'If I could.'

'You once said you'd destroy all religions.'

'Once, that was my intention.'

'And now?'

'There are religions that poison the human spirit. Whose doctrines cause human beings ... to fill the universe with their shaida acts. It is these religions only that I would see destroyed.'

'Only these?'

'I cannot make war on every religion or belief system in the galaxy. There are millions of them.''That's true,' Ede said with a smile. 'But I think you're quite fond of these Sani people, aren't you, Pilot?'

'Yes, I am,' Danlo said. For a moment he closed his eyes, and the cold currents of time swept him into the future, and he saw the Sani as they one day might be: Their tribe of some ten thousand strong would multiply a thousand times over and fill the Earth. And in this time perhaps a thousand years the strict and stern Sani religion would mutate, evolve and spread in many different forms to every continent of the world. There would be doctrinal heresies, schisms and abandonment of faith. Perhaps there would even be holy wars. But there would be religious revivals, too, and even though the Sani religion might be riven into a thousand different sects and wholly new ways of worship, the pure and luminous core of their faith might remain. Even after ten thousand years, when the Sani were no longer the Sani, they might still revere beauty. Halla, Danlo remembered, was the beauty of life. It was his hope that the Sani, of all the peoples of the race of man, might someday find a way to live on the Earth in harmony and beauty.

'Well,' Ede said, 'I don't understand how you could be in love with a people who are about to kill you.'

'In the same way ... that I love the world.'

'I think we should escape,' Ede reiterated. 'Now, through the door it's open, you know. The Sani don't have locks.'

Danlo smiled and picked up his flute. 'There is always a time ... for going through a different doorway.'

'Are you so eager to die?'

'No, truly I am not. But I am curious to know if I will die ... or live.'

Danlo returned to breathing upon his flute, then. For a long time he sat on the bearskin with the shakuhachi's ivory mouthpiece pressed to his lips. Without making a sound, he fingered a long, meditative song that the alien called Old Father had once taught him. When he finally grew tired, he lay down and slept in front of the fire.

Once, he awoke hungry and ate the entire bowl of blackberries as well as most of the walnuts. And then he slept again until dawn when he picked up his flute and silently played throughout the whole day until the cracks around the door began to darken with the fall of night.

Then, outside the guest house, there were voices. The door suddenly opened, and a very tired Ten Su Minye greeted Danlo politely. His brothers and five other men were there, too, waiting to escort Danlo to the centre of the village. Danlo walked slowly in the procession of naked men with the devotionary held in his right hand and the flute in his left. Sometime during the day the rain had stopped but it was colder than it had been the preceding day, clear and cold with the first stars of the evening showing bright in the sky. Danlo lifted his eyes to the brilliant heavens, wondering which group of stars might be the Fish constellation. He might have asked Ten Su Minye this if they hadn't first arrived at the village's central fire-pits, which were stoked with freshly-cut wood and fairly roaring with hot orange flames. It was between the two largest fire-pits that the Sani had laid out their feast. All the Sani except for one sick old man named Wan Su had turned out to greet Danlo. Ki Lin Shang and Reina An and their husbands and wives and children and cousins and nieces and nephews all stood formally around the fire-pits waiting to greet their guest. Old Fei Yang was there, too, standing as rigidly as his withered old body would allow. He would not look at Danlo, nor did he exchange pleasantries with any of the other thirty-nine elders who had arrived from the faraway villages during that day. Instead he stared down at his hands, as if he hoped to find a bit of beauty in the swollen knuckles and clawlike fingers misshapen from a lifetime of slitting open the bellies of salmon and other animals that he had killed. According to good Sani etiquette, he bowed to Danlo and motioned for him to sit beside him on the bearskins to his left. As Oldest of the Old, of course, Old Fei Yang had the position of honour at the centre of the elders. On his right were Ki Lin Shang and Reina An and Miliama Chu, one of three elders from the Owl Sani further up the coast. As if a signal had been given, all the other Sani around the other fire-pits sat on their bearskins, and the feast began.

Because Danlo was very hungry (and because all his senses were marvellously awakened), he tore into the colourful dishes before him with a rare joy of eating which he hadn't felt in a long time. There were many dishes to choose from. On great wooden platters before the fire were cuts of roasted venison and bear steaks, wild duck and goose and the mashed brains of various animals. The Sani relished salmon above all other foods, and so they were proud to serve up slices of smoked salmon in dill sauce, baked salmon with herbs and salmon fried, grilled, poached and braised into half a dozen different kinds of stew. Danlo, of course, would eat no meat; he had wondered if the Sani might find this dietary stricture to be strange or offensive. But when he explained his vow of ahimsa, the Sani immediately seemed to understand, even Old Fei Yang who reluctantly said, 'To respect the lives of the animals is beautiful.' It was beautiful, too, to respect the lives of plants, but Danlo had to eat something, and so he gladly partook of the vegetable dishes pa.s.sing from hand to hand all around him. The Sani women had baked a delicious cornbread spread with blackberry preserves, and Danlo filled himself with slice after slice before turning to the sweet potatoes, honeyed carrots and wild rice with pine nuts. And then there was a surprisingly spicy walnut salad and pickled cabbage and roasted chestnut meats. If he had wished, he might have sampled twenty different squash dishes or gorged himself on bowls of raspberries, elderberries, papaws or baked apples. But Danlo did not want to gorge. Although he had once been taught to 'eat for a season' whenever the opportunity presented itself, he did not want to fill his belly so full of food that there would be little room left for the proper intake of breath. Very soon, Danlo thought, it would be important that he be able to breathe properly and deeply.

'You still might escape,' Ede said. He spoke in a low voice amidst the clamour of conversation and clacking plates. Danlo held the devotionary computer in his lap, and he smiled because Ede had taken to whispering witticisms or warnings to him in between his translating duties. 'Look how these people eat their bellies are as swollen as blood ticks! If you ran toward your ship now, who could catch you?'

Indeed, most of the Sani had now eaten as much food as human beings could possibly hold. Many lay sprawled on their bearskins, holding their bellies and groaning. Many more were belching politely as they picked at their teeth with little slivers of wood and talked with family or friends. Reina An, looking out among the cooking fires at her well-fed people, decided that it was time for drinking the sacred blackberry beer. She conferred a moment with Ki Lin Shang and with Old Fei Yang, who nodded his head in agreement. And then she summoned her grandson, Kiyo Su, a young man with a nervous face which he tried to hide by smiling as often as possible.

Kiyo Su then went off to gather up his brothers and friends all the young men of the village. Soon they returned bearing skinfuls of blackberry beer. The Sani were more than ready to taste this sacred drink. As Kiyo Su and his brothers went around the fires, each Sani man, woman and child held out his wooden cup to be filled. When this was done, Kiyo Su and the others filled their own cups and turned toward the elders to await the recitation of the Yasa.

'We drink the beauty of G.o.d,' Old Fei Yang called out in his raspy voice. 'May all G.o.d's works be beautiful.'

Following Old Fei Yang's example, all the Sani put their lips to their beer. Danlo took a sip and tasted the strongly alcoholic liquor which was at once sweet and thick and bitter. He held his cup beneath his nose, inhaling the essence of wild blackberries all the while watching Old Fei Yang, and waiting.

'We drink the beauty of the world,' Reina An said. 'May all the world be beautiful.'

And then it was Ki Lin Shang's turn, and he sang out, 'We drink the tears of G.o.d.

May all our tears be beautiful.'

And so it went, each of the elders on Old Fei Yang's right reciting from the Yasa while the Sani sipped their bittersweet beer. When the last of them had finished, it came time for the other elders to make their libations. Since Danlo was sitting to Old Fei Yang's immediate left, it fell to him next to say the sacred words. No one expected him to know what to say: Danlo wasn't even a man of the Sani, much less an elder, and so everyone was surprised when he raised his cup and called out in a clear, strong voice, 'We drink the music of the world. May all our songs be beautiful.'

For a moment, all the Sani sat there stunned. n.o.body drank their sacred beer. Then Ki Lin Shang quietly said, 'These are not the words of the Yasa.'

'Truly ... they are,' Danlo said. 'I have spoken truly.'

Here, Old Fei Yang snapped his head in Danlo's direction, and with much anger, he said, 'The others who called themselves Architects they, too, thought that they could tell us about G.o.d.'

All through the village, men and women sat frozen on their bearskins, looking intently at Old Fei Yang as if awaiting a signal.

'But I would never hope ... to tell anyone about G.o.d,' Danlo said.

'Then you haven't come to our Earth to tell us about your G.o.d?' Reina An asked.

'No.'

'You haven't come here to tell us about this man named Ede who became G.o.d and Master of the Universe?'

'No truly I have not.'

Reina An pointed at Danlo's lap, down at the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede. The imago, Danlo saw, had frozen into motionlessness as had the Sani. For the moment, Ede neither spoke nor looked at Danlo.

'Then you don't believe this ugly idol is G.o.d?'

Danlo looked at Ede's sensuous lips, his crooked teeth, his black eyes blazing out of a bald head that was much too big for his body. He sensed that Ede's programs must be running furiously, even as Ede was forced to translate this last slur against himself.

'He is no more G.o.d than you or I,' Danlo said, smiling. 'He is no more G.o.d than the mud on my feet.'

No more, truly, Danlo thought. But no less.

This response seemed almost to mollify Old Fei Yang, who nodded his head sagely then asked, 'If you haven't come to our Earth to tell us about G.o.d, then what is the reason for your journey?'