“How would you classify them?” Gina mused. “If animals move and plants don’t, what are they?”

“Why does it matter what you call them?” Hunt said. “When people have problems with questions like that, it’s usually because they’re trying to make reality fit something from their kit of standard labels. They’d be better off thinking about rewriting the labels.”

They contemplated the scenery in silence for a while.

“It’s funny how evolution works,” Gina said. “Purely random factors can send it all off in a completely new direction-ones that operate at high level, I mean, not just genetic mutation. About ninety-five percent of all species were supposed to have been wiped out in a mass extinction that happened around two hundred million years ago. It didn’t favor any particular kind of animal: large or small, marine or land-dwelling, complex or simple, or anything like that. Nothing can adapt for catastrophes on that kind of scale. So the survivors were simply the lucky five percent. Whole families vanished for no particular reason at all, and the few that were left determined the entire pattern of life subsequently.” She looked at Hunt, as if asking him to confirm it.

“I don’t know too much about that side of things,” he said. “Chris Danchekker’s the one you ought to be talking to.” He stood up and offered her a hand. “Speaking of which, we ought to be getting back. It’s about time you met the rest of the crew.”

They walked down to the lakeside, where a path brought them to a transit conveyor. Soon they were being whisked back through the Escherian maze, and arrived shortly afterward at the Terran section. As they crossed the mess area, Hunt noticed that the wallscreen that had previously showed the view outside was blank. He knew that the stress wave surrounding a Ganymean vessel cut it off from electromagnetic signals, including light, when it was under full gravity drive.

“VISAR,” he said aloud so that Gina could hear. “Is the ship under way already?”

“Since a little under fifteen minutes ago,” the machine confirmed. Which would have been typical of the Ganymean way of doing things: no fuss or ceremony; no formal announcements.

“So where are we now?” Hunt asked.

“Just about crossing the orbit of Mars.”

So UNSA might as well scrap all of its designs for the next fifty years, Hunt decided.

CHAPTER TWELVE

At a lonely place high among the peaks of the Wilderness of Rinjussin, Thrax came to a large, flat rock where the path divided. A monk was floating in midair above the rock, absorbed in his meditations. His sash bore the purple-spiral emblem representing the cloak of the night god, Nieru. Thrax had heard that as an exercise in learning to attract and ride the currents, adepts would support themselves on currents that they generated themselves by prayer. He waited several hours until the monk descended back onto the rock and looked at him.

“What do you stare at?” Thrax asked him.

“I contemplate the world,” the monk answered.

Thrax turned and looked back at the valley he had climbed, with its scene of barren slopes, shattered rock, and desolation. “Not much of a world to contemplate from here,” he commented. “Do I take it, then, that your world is within?”

“Within, and without. For the currents that bring visions of Hyperia speak within the mind; yet they flow from beyond Waroth. Thus, Hyperia is at the same time both within and without.”

“I, too, am in search of Hyperia,” Thrax said.

“Why would you seek it?” the monk asked.

“It is taught that the mission of the adepts who rise on the currents and depart from Waroth is to serve the gods in Hyperia. Such is my calling.”

“And what made you think that you would find it here, in Rinjussin?”

“I seek a Master known as Shingen-Hu, who, it is said, teaches in these parts.”

“This is the last place that you should come looking for Shingen-Hu,” the monk said.

Thrax reflected upon the statement. “Then my search has ended,” he replied finally. “That means he must be here. For obviously he is to be found in the last place I would look, since why would I continue looking after I found him?”

“Many come seeking Shingen-Hu. Most are fools. But I see that you are not foolish,” the monk said.

“So, can you tell me which path I must take?” Thrax asked.

“I can.”

“Then, speak.”

“One path leads to certain death. To know more, you must first ask the right question.”

Thrax had expected having to give answers. But to be required to come up with the question itself put a different complexion on things. He looked perplexed from one to the other of the two trails winding away on either side of the rock.

Then he said, “But death is certain eventually, whichever path one takes. Which path must I take, therefore, to achieve the most that is meaningful along the way?”

“How do you judge what is meaningful?” the monk challenged.

“Let Shingen-Hu be the judge,” Thrax answered.

“We are in troubled times. The currents that once shimmered and glinted across the night skies have become few and weak. Many come to learn, but few shall ride. Why, stranger, should Shingen-Hu choose you?”

“Again, let Shingen-Hu be the judge. I cannot give his reasons. Only mine.”

The monk nodded and seemed satisfied. “You come to serve, and not to demand,” he pronounced, climbing down from the rock. “Follow me. I will take you to Shingen-Hu.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The others had gone to take care of various chores, leaving Hunt and Gina together at the dinner table. They had all agreed to meet later in the mess area for a nightcap-or two, or maybe several.

Gina stared down at her coffee cup and unconsciously traced a question mark lightly on the tabletop with her finger. “Is it true that some of the animals on Jevlen have an uncanny resemblance to ones found in Earth’s mythology?” she asked after a long silence.

Hunt had been watching her, thinking to himself that she was the most refreshing personality he had encountered in a long time. It wasn’t just that she was curious about everything, which was an attraction in itself, and that she took the trouble to find out something about the things that intrigued her; she did it without making an attention-getting display of it, or taking it to the point of where it started to get tedious. Her judgment in knowing how far to go was just right, which was one of the first things in making people attractive to be around. In the course of the meal she had won the company’s acceptance by refraining from thrusting herself on them, listening to Danchekker’s expositions without pandering like a student, putting Duncan at ease by not flaunting her femininity, and avoiding triggering rivalry vibes from Sandy. In fact, she and Sandy had gotten along instantly, like sisters.

“Do you know, you’ve never come back with a line that I expected, yet,” Hunt replied.

“Seriously, I read about it somewhere. There’s a kind of horned wolf with talons that’s exactly like the Slavonic ‘kikimora.’ Another has parts of what look like a lion, a peacock, and a dog, just like the ‘simurgh’ of Iran. And would you believe a plumed, goggle-eyed reptile, practically identical to all those Mexican carvings?”

“Roman Catholicism became a symbol of Irish nationalism. What Saint Patrick brought was Christianity.”

“You mean the original?”

“Something a lot closer to it, anyhow. And it flourished because it fitted with the ways of the native culture. It spread from there through Scotland and England into northern Europe. But then it collided with the institutionalized Jevlenese counterfeit being pushed northward, and it was destroyed. The first papal mission didn’t reach England until a hundred sixty-five years after Patrick died.”