Kyr lowered his hands and raised the bowl and offered it to each of the men sitting near him. Spence reached his hand in and took some of the wispy stuff; it tore away in a long shred, pink in the firelight.
Then Kyr took some and set the bowl aside, saying, "To eat of the Essila is to mingle souls, to know another as you are known. Therefore, let no one eat of it who does not love the other."
Spence looked at each of the others. He had not put it into words before but yes, he did love Adjani and Gita. They had risked their lives to follow him, to help him, and he loved them for it. He could think of no other friends he trusted more.
Kyr seemed to be waiting while each made up his own mind and then, seeing that all were of one accord, he said, "Taste the sweetness of your love for each other. In the many there is One."
Kyr raised his fingers to his lips and the others followed his example, their eyes shining in the dancing light.
Spence felt the Essila melt as it touched his tongue and suddenly his mouth was full of the sweetest tasting substance he could have imagined-a sweetness beyond simple description. But it did not cloy or sicken in its sweetness, though it overwhelmed all other senses.
He swallowed and felt a spreading warmth surge through his midsection, tingling even to his extremities. He suddenly felt a closeness, a warmth he had never felt among others before. He looked across at Adjani and the slim Indian seemed to shine, his face glowing with a kind of subtle radiance.
He glanced at Gita and saw a wide grin of undiluted happiness gleaming on his round face. Two big teardrops slid slowly down his cheeks as he looked from one to the other of those around him.
Spence felt his own heart swell inside him until he thought it must burst. He felt himself higher, nobler, and more true than he had ever known himself to be in his life. He, too, felt radiant, absolutely glowing with kindness and compassion.
Part of this he knew to be emanating from the others as much as from himself. It was true; their very hearts and souls were mingling like rare and precious oils, each one increasing the worth of the other, yet losing nothing of its own value.
Spence felt himself lifted out of himself and he knew each of his friends as he knew himself. In that moment he knew their weaknesses and failings, yet loved them in spite of any shortcomings, forgiving them, as he forgave them in himself.
There was another presence he could not describe; it was utterly foreign to his frame of human reference, though it shared many of the same basic essences. This presence inside him he knew to be Kyr, and he loved the Martian for his utter, alien uniqueness and his freely flowing compassion.
He drank in these impressions and savored them, treasured them, cherished them. He wanted the moment to last forever and to have that incredible, unutterable sweetness on his tongue.
But Kyr raised the second globe and it opened before him. He took the upper part of the globe and handed it to Adjani, and then handed one to Gita, and in turn to Spence. Spence saw that there were several of these bowls nestled inside one another and Kyr withdrew one for himself. Then he poured from the lower half of the globe a liquid that sparkled in the firelight.
When each bowl had been filled with the liquid Kyr raised his own bowl and began to speak once more. "All rivers run to the sea; all roads reach their destination. In every beginning lies the seed of the end. But in Dal Elna there is only Beginning. In the many there is One."
Kyr brought the bowl to his lips and drank. Spence and the others followed his example.
The strange liquid had no taste that Spence could describe not sweet, at least not as sweet as the first substance had been, but not bitter either. It touched his lips with a tingle like a mild current of electricity applied to his skin.
He rolled the effervescent drink on his tongue and felt as if he had tasted cool fire-the stuff seemed almost alive. He swallowed it and felt its playful sting all the way down. He drank again, more deeply this time and let the cool fire dance on his tongue. The effect made him want to laugh out loud or burst into song. He felt the inner fire seeping into his veins, quickening his heart. Suddenly he was more alert, more conscious than ever in his life.
He looked through new eyes at the world, and what a world he saw! Though it was night and dark he could see the tall slender ranks of bamboo all around, saw the firelight dancing on their thin shafts. He saw narrow, tapering shapes of the leaves with the delicate saw-toothed edge individually and precisely drawn and duplicated. Each was a thing of exquisite, inexplicable beauty.
Above the leaping flames of the fire he saw an insect. In his heightened vision it became suspended in motion, moving in slow, graceful sweeps as its tiny, transparent wings beat the air. He could see the glitter of light scatter across its multi-celled eyes, and the iridescent gleam of its carapace. He saw its legs dangling as fine threads beneath its sectioned body and the gentle curl of its antennae along its back.
Raising his eyes he saw the heavens, at first dark, now almost bursting with the light of countless stars-each star shining with clear, crystalline light, hard-edged and fine with beams piercing as needles.
Everywhere he looked he saw some new wonder, some commonplace revealed in a way he had never seen it before. The ordinary had been transformed into the extraordinary, the normal into the supernormal.
His friends still sat in the same positions as before, but he saw them wholly changed. He saw not their outward appearance only, but now he saw their inner selves unmasked. And each was larger, more fair and strong in every way. They sat wrapped in shimmering auras of gold and violet, as if clothed in living fire. In their faces he glimpsed unfathomable tenderness, and something he could only call wisdom burned out from their eyes, but a wisdom purer and finer than any born of Earth.
Spence looked at Kyr and saw not the elongated Martian but a creature not unlike himself and the others, resembling them and yet slightly different in subtle ways he could not name.
And where before Spence had felt radiant, he felt now as if he were throwing off sparks. He caught fleeting glimpses of the colored rays as they streamed from him to blend with the light of the others.
Spence felt full to overflowing with the joyous, scintillating, reverberating love he felt for his friends. He felt the power of their love for him and for one another, and it was a mingling of deep strong water which flowed out in all directions from the center, like a fountain or a spring with an endless source.
But he sensed another subtle yet still distinct presence too. This presence interwove all the others and even his own, to hold them and to overlay them at the same time without losing its own distinction. In that heightened awareness he sent out the fingers of his mind to examine this presence. He extended his mind toward it and tentatively touched it. Instantly his mind recoiled, staggered as if by a blazing bolt of lightning.
He knew then that he had touched the Source itself.
He felt dizzy and intoxicated, completely shattered by that single brief encounter. Then his mind began to fill with thoughts strange and wonderful and terrifying in their clarity and force.
He saw galaxies swinging in the frozen deeps of space, flung like pebbles on an endless beach; he heard the roar of silence drowned by the music of the galactic movement. The song of the stars-all heaven was filled with it!
He saw worlds upon worlds springing into existence before nameless suns. On each world life leaped, up, sprung from the voice that had awakened it. Plants of every variety, animals of every description, human creatures as different as could be imagined, yet all possessing the divine inner spark that was the immutable stamp of the Maker.