'I've been chosen to come here so that you do understand,' she said.

She explained to Danlo that on the world of Alumit Bridge, in Iviunir and Iviohahn and a hundred other cities, there dwelt many Narain who had earned the chance to transcend themselves. And so they were invited to instantiate as luminous beings and cark out into this most highly-sought of all the cybernetic s.p.a.ces. They too had found their way here across the golden plain and the many thousands of paths through the forest. They too had been called to the sparkling pools below the waterfalls. And here, beneath a fine yellow sun, they met and talked and touched and joined, one into one, one and one into two, the twos into fours, and if they were skilful enough in the ways of overcoming themselves and merging into the higher wholes, someday after years of soul work, they might claim at last to have transcended their humanity. In their separate selves, as they wheeled about the dark tunnels of their cities in their robots, these Narain would be renowned as Transcendentals. But in their instantiation in the Field, especially in this exclusive s.p.a.ce called Heaven in the union of their many selves into something greater, someday it would be their triumph and glory to live only as the Transcended Ones.

'We're only human,' Katura Daru said as she held her hand out to the others standing around the pools. 'But someday we'll evolve.'

'I see. You will evolve into Transcended Ones, yes?'

'That is our work.'

'And do the Transcended Ones help you with this work?'

'Oh, yes that is part of their work.'

'I had thought that it was the Transcended Ones who called me to this place,' Danlo said.

'But of course it was.'

'Truly?'

'The Ones call all who are ready to come to them.'

'They call people here, but they do not ... live here themselves?'

'But of course they live here. We all live here, if we can.'

'Are the Transcended Ones invisible, then?'

'No, they aren't invisible.'

Danlo looked to the right, then to the left. He looked at the trees, the rocks, the fine mist thrown up into the air from the crash of the waterfalls. He saw the sun burning through this mist, and lovely rainbows, but there were no beings who appeared any different from Katura Daru or himself.

'And where are these Transcended Ones, then?'

'They live higher up the mountain.'

'I see. Then is it possible to go where they live?'

'No, it's not possible.'

'I see.'

'We must wait for them to come to us.'

'Wait ... how long?'

'Not long, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. They're coming now, to meet you.'

'Truly?'

'They're coming here.'

'Will I know them when I see them?'

'Of course.'

'What do these Transcended Ones look like then?''They look like themselves,' she said. 'They look beyond themselves.'

'I ... see,' Danlo said, though he did not really see at all.

'They look like that. Do you see? Over there that is what they are.'

So saying, Katura Daru pointed above the waterfalls higher up the mountain. Danlo turned to follow the line of her finger, and his eyes drank in an astonishing sight.

There, from over the rim of the rock faces, from out of the forests and the lower clouds, many beautiful b.a.l.l.s of light appeared and began falling slowly through the air. They floated down without wings, as light as b.u.t.terflies, as lovely as pearls. There were thousands of these lights. Some of them seemed the size of a dolphin, though a few were almost as large as the whales that swam through the cold oceans beyond Neverness Island. All were spherical in shape, and all shone like rainbows as if the substance of their beings was the same as Danlo's own luminous body. But even the dullest of these Transcended Ones shone more brightly than did Danlo or Katura Daru or anyone else waiting by the pools. To look at them was to marvel at the colours, the bands of purple and orchid pink, the flaming crimson whorls, the unique striature of diamond blue or lavender or ultramarine that marked each ball of light as different from the others. In truth, some of the larger lights were almost impossible to behold.

They burned as brightly as starbursts, and looking at them was like looking at the sun.

Down the mountain they came in their thousands of colours, floating down near the rock faces, touching the cold water of the falls. It seemed that they were coming straight toward Danlo. Their sudden appearance caused great excitement in Katura Daru and the others. They gathered by the pools and turned their faces toward the spheres of light falling down from the sky. They faced the Transcended Ones of Alumit Bridge: their sisters, their brothers, their fathers, their mothers, their masters, their G.o.ds.

'He has come,' Katura Daru said to them. She stood with her hand half-covering her eyes as she spoke to the Transcended Ones. 'Danlo wi Soli Ringess has come here to face you.'

Now the lights fell down and converged in the s.p.a.ce above the pools. They hung in the air like flame globes packed too closely together, but Danlo saw that none of them actually touched any other. Just above the pool at Danlo's feet, nine of the largest and brightest of the Transcended Ones gathered in a half circle that shone like a crescent moon. The light of their beings burned his eyes. Because he could not look at them directly, he stared down at the mirror-like pool before him and studied their glorious reflections.

Welcome, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. We meet again at last. May I present myself?

I am the One called Abraxax.

A strong, deep voice rolled over the pools and filled the air. It might have been difficult to determine the source of this golden voice, but as it sounded, one of the spheres in the crescent near Danlo flared almost like a star falling nova. This, then, he thought, must be the higher self of Isas Lel Abraxax. Somehow, the flame of Isas Lel's mind had joined with those of his meld mates to form the ball of light floating above the pool.

And may I present Maralah, Tyr, Manannan and Kane?

At the mention of these Transcended Ones' names, the lights nearest Abraxax flared more brightly for a moment and then returned to their colours. It was their way of bowing, Danlo thought. He remembered that the quiet Diverous Te was one of the Maralah quad while Kistur Ashtoreth shared transcendence in Manannan.

And Orunjan, El, Inari and Shahar?

One of the Transcended Ones, to the far left of Abraxax, sparkled with a lovely display of cobalt and crimson lights. This was Shahar, an elevenplex who was almost as famous as Abraxax himself. Lieswyr Ivioss was of Shahar, and Danlo could almost feel her presence in the way the lights flickered on and off, making unique patterns that beguiled him and somehow called him closer.

And this is Aesir, Narsinh, Varah, and Arawn, and Shamash, Rahu, Ninlil, Rhea...

Danlo scarcely listened to these names as Abraxax presented each Transcended One hovering above the pools. As there were some four thousand and eighty-four of these glorious beings waiting to meet Danlo, the presentations took much time. But time, in the cybernetic s.p.a.ce called Heaven, is strange. Danlo spent most of this time staring at the splendid lights of Shahar, and hours were as minutes, and in only moments, it seemed, each of the Transcended Ones had been honoured and named.

We are gathered here to decide if Danlo wi Soli Ringess should act as our emissary to Tannahill. Or, failing that, whether we should aid his journey there in showing him Tannahill's star. We have asked Danlo wi Soli Ringess to instantiate here so that he might face us directly and make his plea.

With this, the voice of Abraxax fell silent. Above the pools facing Danlo each of the thousands of light spheres floated patiently. And Katura Daru and the other luminous beings such as Danlo stood or sat or reclined on their rocks, and they were silent, too. They waited for Danlo to speak. They had come to hear his words, and more, they waited for Danlo to blaze with an inner truth and reveal the naked face of his being.

'The starfields of the galaxy are vast,' Danlo began. For a moment, it seemed that he was almost a true man, almost an incarnate being of flesh and bone. As he spoke, he could feel the sounds of his words vibrating in his throat. His voice left his lips and carried out across the rocks and the pools; it was almost as if he were standing in a public ice ring on Neverness addressing a swarm of real people. 'Vast ... are the light- distances, and the number of stars is almost uncountable, and yet the death of a single star casts a ... terrible light on all the others. A splendid light, truly, but a killing light, too a light that someday will fall on every city of every planet, everywhere. And in the Vild, so many stars. There may be millions of them. Millions of stars, dying, exploding, falling into supernovas. All these stars being killed. We now know why.

We know of the Old Church, on Tannahill. It is there that my Order would make a mission. It is there that I must journey if I can.'

Danlo went on in a like manner for a long time. Most of what he said to the Transcended Ones was not new. And all of what he said, in words, might have been spoken while he knelt on his cushion in the meeting room, with Isas Lel and Kistur Ashtoreth and Shahar and all the other Transcendentals watching him. They easily and faithfully might have transmitted his message to the Transcended Ones gathered here. But Danlo had wanted to face the Transcended Ones in the flesh, so to speak.

He had wanted to give them more than just his words. It had been his hope to stand before them much as a man, to look at them eye to eye and open his heart to them.

Except that these Transcended Ones were as eyeless as firestones, and they burned so brightly that he could not even look at them. And he himself, as an instantiated and luminous ent.i.ty, had no heart. Search though he might in the centre of his new being for the heart rhythms so familiar to him, he could feel almost nothing.

'And the rate of increase of the Vild's s.p.a.ces is possibly exponential. If the Vild were to expand into the galactic core where the stars are densest, possibly a chain reaction of supernovas might be set off. It is possible that the whole galaxy...'

As Danlo continued, he sensed that the thousands of Transcended Ones were indeed concentrating on more than just his words. Somehow, he thought, these brilliant and eyeless beings were staring at him. He looked down at his long, naked hands, then. The bits of colour flashing there continually changed both in pattern and intensity. Was it possible that information as to Danlo's cybernetic self was encoded in these shifting patterns? Might not the Transcended Ones penetrate his thoughts and emotions as easily as a cetic reading fear from the sweat on the palms of a man's hands? Often, ever since entering the Order, Danlo had wondered how much of one's deep self might be preserved in the programs and the process of instantiating into the cybernetic s.p.a.ces. How could such essential qualities as the terrible coldness of snow or a mother's fierce love for her child (or a man's hatred of himself) ever be rendered into symbols, models or instantiations carked out into the glittering neverness of the Field? The Narain, of course, believed that instantiation as a cybernetic ent.i.ty was the way to free the essential self from all those parts of their being that they reviled as carnal, animal, illusory, limited, and much too alive. Their collective dream was one of higher life, a truer life, and they held that it was only the truest and realest self that survived instantiation into facement or full icon or any of the higher degrees. A man's feeling for his own life and his deepest consciousness, they said, was mostly a fiction.

Could this truly be possible, Danlo wondered? Could it be that his deepest self was truly faceless like an ice sculpture melting in a warm wind or a hibakusha caught looking at a nuclear blast?

I cannot see them, Danlo thought. And if I cannot see them, how can they truly see me?

After Danlo had finished making his plea to the Transcended Ones, Maralah, Rhea and a fourplex named Bodhideva asked him about his Order, his education, his childhood among the primitive Alaloi tribes. They wanted to know the feeling of his love for mathematics, as well as his deeper love for the woman Tamara Ten Ashtoreth. Carefully, almost gently, they questioned his hate of killing, his hate for his former friend, Hanuman li Tosh, and most of all, his hate of the act of hatred itself. In truth, they wanted to know everything about him. Danlo sensed that these Transcended Ones could hear his thoughts almost before he spoke them. Their computers could look into the language centres of his brain and record the patterns of the neurons as they fired in clouds of crimson light. Some of the time, they might identify individual thoughts in these pretty patterns. And their computers could track the electro-chemical impulses as they ran along the nerves leading from the brain into the muscles of the tongue and throat, and thus they could predict which words he would speak. And so they could read the surface of his mind, but Danlo sensed that this electronic telepathy could not penetrate to his deeper thoughts, nor touch his memory in any way. This wilful limitation of scanning technology was part of the Transcendent Ones' ethics. For each of them indeed for any of the Narain instantiating into the Field one's mind was as sacred as a temple. A man (or woman) should share with others only those parts of himself that he wished to share. And these parts were most often only the virtuous ones: the clever ideas, the n.o.ble thoughts, the harmonious emotions, the three essential elements of the self that the Narain identified as goodness, truth and beauty.

How little they see of me, Danlo thought. How little they truly wish to see.

Some of the Transcended Ones, however, saw him perhaps more clearly than he might have imagined. Or rather, they saw him more hopefully; they focused upon those aspects of his character and talents that they hoped would make him an ideal emissary to the Architects of the Old Church. They argued for telling him the location of Tannahill. But other Transcended Ones seemed undecided. To entrust their fate to this strange man from the stars was almost beyond their powers of affirmation. For a long time, the Transcended Ones engaged in a vehement debate as to what they should do. Some such as Aesir, Ninlil, and Shahar vehemently opposed telling Danlo anything about Tannahill. Their strong emotions could be perceived as pulsings of ruby colour that rippled just beneath the surface of their round, radiant bodies. And then Shahar, who had hitherto almost shrieked her objections to pointing Danlo's way toward the Old Church, seemed to make an abrupt turn of heart. She decided to display her reasonableness. And so she turned the light of her being so that it shone upon Danlo's face, and made an astonishing proposal.

We invite Danlo wi Soli Ringess to share in our One. We would like to know him better, from the inside of his mind and ours. Only then will we know if we should show him the star that he desires to see.

Shahar further promised that if Danlo could persuade her of his worthiness, she would champion his cause to the other Transcended Ones, particularly to Ninlil and Siva and their numerous confederates who strongly opposed telling him anything about Tannahill. Although in many ways this suggestion made obvious sense, her openness toward inviting Danlo into herself shocked the usually serene Transcended Ones. It was almost as if she were a singleton woman proposing to mate with an alien or a dog.

Will you share with us, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?

For a long moment there was silence above the pools, and Katura Daru and the many luminous beings who had not yet gone beyond themselves looked upon Danlo with both envy and awe. The four thousand and eighty-four Transcended Ones, however, did not move; they hung in the air as motionlessly as stars on a winter night.

Abraxax and Maralah and Manannan and Tyr they each waited in a brilliant silence that fell over Danlo like a net woven of light.

'Yes,' Danlo said in his bold, clear voice. 'I will share ... your One.'

Then please come in.

Danlo, dwelling in his luminous body above the rocks of a bubbling pool, stared at Shahar for a long time. Then he smiled at the strangeness of what he was about to do, and he bowed before taking his first step toward this glittering Transcended One.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The One

The unreal never is; the real never is not.

- from the Bhagavad Gita, 2.16.

The ball of light that was Shahar separated itself from the other Transcended Ones and floated closer to Danlo. It hovered in the air only inches above the surface of a large, flat, wet rock. Somehow Danlo understood that he was to walk toward this light as he would move toward an open doorway. This he did, stepping carefully over the slick rock. The light of Shahar was so intense that he approached her with his hand held over his forehead to shield his eyes. Closer to her he came, and something about this great Transcended One opened, even as a whale's mouth might open. In truth, Shahar was as large and lovely as a killer whale, and perhaps she was as fierce, as forceful, as wild.

Is it so hard to share, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?

Danlo took the last step toward Shahar, and it was like stepping down into a clear pool of water. Or rather, it was like flying upward into a rainbow. As Danlo stepped into the blazing being called Shahar, his metaphors almost failed him. For a moment, the luminous tissues of his body melted into hers, and it was as if he had drunk from a wine bottle full of liquid light. He might have become lost in this intoxicating rush of light, but then he remembered who he really was and how he had come to be here.

This is the trap that the Ede warned me of, Danlo thought. This golden light is the honey, and I am the bee.

Danlo closed his eyes, then, and struggled to remember that his true self was still sitting on the little red cushion in the Transcendentals' meeting room. And there on the seat of a bright plastic robot, the true self of Lieswyr Ivioss sat too, and as for the other Transcendentals who shared the Shahar eleven, somewhere on the planet of Alumit Bridge, they each sat in other meeting rooms or lay in their apartments'

darkened cells, thinking their individual thoughts, feeling their individual feelings.

And even as Danlo had instantiated in the Field as an individual ent.i.ty, so it was with them. But since they were each one of many who were One, upon carking out into this golden cybernetic s.p.a.ce, their individuality had instantly melted away. On the great mountain above the waterfalls, they had met and melted and merged into the One called Shahar. They shared their thoughts, dreams, emotions. They completed each other's thoughts, even as they sculpted their individual selves to complement each other's temperaments. And so their sense of separateness vaporized like icicles under a hot sun, and they fused together into this glittering sphere of light.

Shahar is devious, Danlo thought. But she would rather conceive of herself as subtle, brilliant, sublime.

At last, Danlo opened his eyes. He beheld Shahar from the inside, where the light of her being appeared less brilliant and no longer blinded him. Indeed, now that he could see again, he became aware of the other beings who made up the substance and soul of Shahar. There were eleven of these Transcendental beings, each one instantiated into a form as luminous and varicoloured as his own. He recognized Lieswyr Ivioss from the blazing scarlet hues of her pa.s.sion and pride. Other Transcendentals were a.s.sociated with other names. These were Germana Pall, Sul Iviastalir, Ivria Tal, Maral Astroth, Adal Dei Chu, Husmahaman, Atara ivi Chimene, Duncan Iviwich, Ananda ivi Sitisat and Ordando Ede. Names, however, within the burning boundaries of Shahar's oneness, were not important. What mattered were the higher qualities of the self, the various strands of goodness, truth and beauty which each one could bring here and weave together to create their Transcended One. This making of a higher whole from many parts was a continual work of art. In some sense, Shahar would never be finished or complete; she was an evolving ent.i.ty whose soul could only grow like a Fravashi tapestry, infinitely in all directions, strand by golden strand.

And I am here to add to this weaving, Danlo thought. For a moment or ... forever.

Lieswyr Ivioss and her ten meld-mates seemed to be weaving Shahar's brilliance with the movements of their glittering bodies. They flitted about like b.u.t.terflies; darting, whirling, diving, hovering and always flying together in a cloud of light.

Theirs was an intricate dance: wingless, weightless, almost timeless. At any moment, two of them might be mating. This sharing did not occur s.e.xually and animalistically, as of a man's lingam entering the yoni in the heat of pa.s.sion, for none of the luminous beings including Danlo himself seemed to bear between their legs anything so crude as s.e.xual organs. Rather, they joined body to wraithlike body, the evanescent tissues of their beings running together as if they were amoebas who had opened their outer membranes to each other and let their cytoplasm flow together and merge into a single fluid. When a mating was successful, the two (or sometimes three) actually disappeared into one: a single womanman enlarged and deepened and blazing ever more intensely, whose iridescent hands were as long as a Bodhiworld exemplar's, whose eyes radiated light like double suns. Thus, at any moment, within the blazing sphere called Shahar, there might exist only ten individual beings, or nine, or sometimes only eight or seven or six. When Shahar was most completely herself, her eleven separate ones would merge utterly into One the Transcended One that called to Danlo with a voice like honeyed wine and pulled him inward, as if he were only a lost pilot falling down toward the almost infinite gravity of a blue giant star.

How can I be with so many? Danlo wondered. How can I be one with so many who are already One?

Indeed, it is always hard to join with others. The Narain Transcendentals laboured for a lifetime to achieve their desired unities. In the sculpting of the soul in the complementarities of goodness, truth and beauty the complexities of union increased almost exponentially with each new being who came into a One. Thus the difficulty increased, too, but so did the joy. And joy, he thought, was what the Narain really lived for.

They will try to trap me with joy, Danlo thought.

Because Shahar and other Transcended Ones did not trust him to journey to the Architects of the Old Church, they would try to keep him on Alumit Bridge (or rather, seduced within its glittering Field) in the only way that they could.

But what kind of joy?

Almost certainly, he thought, there was the joy of the meeting room's very real logic fields pulling at his brain. Its computers would be programmed to stimulate his neurons, to trigger the release of endorphins, epinephrine, serotonin and the other manifold chemicals of consciousness. Soon, perhaps, would come a moment of neurotransmitter storms and mind-lightning and that wholly artificial bliss that he knew as electronic samadhi. Or perhaps the Narain would not need to rely on such crude and mechanical techniques. Danlo sensed that the telepathy they shared through Shahar would be intoxicating and profound and would induce the most melting of ecstasies.

Danlo of the stars, you must let us in.

I have ... nothing that I would hide.You must let yourself into us.

Like this?

Almost. But first you must let go of yourself.

My ... self?

You must let go of your fear. Your deep hatreds and your pull toward despair. All your negative emotions you must let these go.

But aren't these pa.s.sions ... part of myself?