“That's fine!” Bredon said happily.

“Well, maybe it's fine. We'll see."

“When do we start?” The prospect of a new adventure, of learning what was really going on, thrilled him.

“Oh, any time, I guess. But first, aren't there a few little things to take care of?"

“Like what?” Bredon demanded, suddenly suspicious.

“Oh, details like food, drink, and a quick visit to the equivalent of a hole in the ground?"

“Oh.” Bredon realized sheepishly that the mysterious voice was quite correct; his bladder was full and his belly was empty. He flushed slightly, then smiled at his own discomfiture and stood up. “Lead the way,” he said, his hand hooked into the waistband of his breeches.

Behind him, the bed shifted its shape, and oozed around him, forming a receptacle in the appropriate position. Other appendages formed, but waited their turn.

In the next several minutes Bredon was stripped, bathed, checked for parasites, shampooed, massaged, and generally cleansed and invigorated. He had no names for most of what the “bed” did to and for him, but when it had finished he felt absolutely wonderful.

“Would you like your old clothes back, or something new?” a soft, feminine voice asked.

Bredon was startled, and momentarily embarrassed by his nudity until he realized that speaker was surely another inhuman spirit. When he recovered he decided he felt ready to take a little risk. “Something new,” he said.

“Anything in particular?"

“No."

“Delighted to be of service, sir.” Something silky slid up his legs and onto his back; he raised his arms to slip into the sleeves, and found himself wearing a one-piece garment that looked like velvet, but that weighed almost nothing and shimmered in a dozen shades of soft brown.

“Nice,” he said appreciatively. He was dressed as well as a Power now.

A table appeared before him, seeming to form out of thin air, and a strangely-shaped chair rose out of the floor behind him. He sat down gingerly.

“Did you have anything special in mind for breakfast?” Gamesmaster's familiar voice asked.

“I can't say I did,” Bredon answered.

He expected more of the foil packets, but those, he discovered, were strictly trail food. Here at Geste's home meals were served properly, on plates of various sizes, and an assortment of oddly-shaped dishes, some of which had the disconcerting habit of floating in mid-air a few centimeters above the table. All the plates and dishes had the knack of quietly vanishing once they were emptied.

Bredon did not recognize a single one of the foods he was served, whether by sight, taste, or aroma. All, however, were delicious.

When he had eaten his fill the golden light blinked out, plunging him into total darkness. Gamesmaster announced, “We'll begin your lessons now, and we'll start with some elementary cosmology. I'll do my best to put this so that you can understand it, and if there's anything that you don't understand, please stop me and I'll try to explain it more clearly. I expect some of this will conflict with what you were taught by your own people, but this is the way those you call the Powers understand the universe.” It paused, but whether it expected a response or merely wished to heighten the drama, Bredon could not decide.

“In the beginning,” a deep new voice said, “there was the Bang.” An image appeared, a blaze of light hanging in the darkness before him, spreading out and scattering.

Bredon listened to the creation myth as retold by what he had to consider another of the Trickster's familiar spirits. The story was not very exciting; his own people had a much shorter and rather more interesting creation story, full of people rather than impersonal cosmic forces. The spirit, however, seemed to take its story more seriously than anyone took old Atheron's tale of the warring sects of Kru and Passijers being cast out of the heavens.

He listened, though, and he watched the images of planets coalescing out of dust, heard the explanation of how life arose from the seas, how the creatures changed their forms over millions of years. He gaped at some of the creatures he was shown, and laughed at others. The pictures were incredibly real, so clear and detailed that he had difficulty in believing they were merely images.

Then humans entered the story, not sent down from the heavens, but as just another creature.

That was a new and interesting concept; Bredon rather liked the idea. He watched as the story ran quickly through the rise of civilization and the growth of technology.

It was only when he was shown the early sleeperships wallowing out toward the stars that Bredon realized he had been watching the history of the World in the Sky, rather than of his own world.

The tale of Denner and his Kru and Passijers fit in quite nicely with what he had just seen, and he suddenly understood what Geste and his other familiar had meant in speaking of other worlds. All those planets that had formed in the beginning were worlds, and the stars were suns-hundreds, thousands of them!

He told the spirits to stop while he absorbed this, and the image diffused into a soft white glow. He could faintly see the enchanted forest just beyond.

He repeated slowly to himself what he had just been taught. His world was not the only one between the heavens and the world of the dead. According to this spirit, there were hundreds of others, or thousands.

His mind boggled. What a concept! Worlds upon worlds, each with thousands, or millions of people!

And the stars in the darktime sky-each of them was a sun, and each sun had a world beneath it. All his life he had looked up at a thousand other suns, without ever realizing it.

What were all those other worlds like? What would it be like to live in the light of another sun?

He stared into the darkness, trying to imagine an entire different world, fully as big and complex as his own.

He failed. His imagination could not even encompass the totality of his own world; he knew that already.

Other worlds! He shook his head.

But there was no need to try and absorb it all at once. He would have plenty of time to digest this wonder.

“All right,” he said. “Go on."

The spirits, if that was what they were, obliged; the darkness lit up anew with the globe they called Terra, the world where humankind had first developed, and the story rolled on.

The magic called “technology” grew ever more powerful, and under its complex spells humans were transformed from mere mortals into demi-gods, no longer subject to aging, always strong and healthy, able to create almost instantly anything that they might fancy, even living creatures. These latter-day humans could reshape entire worlds at a whim, even bend space itself. Their machines became self-aware intelligences in their own right-not spirits, but living creatures that were built instead of bred.

Bredon was not sure that the distinction really meant anything; whether built or conjured, these things still seemed like spirits to him. He shoved that thought aside as irrelevant.

Naturally, many of the supernal beings that had been born humans grew bored with their world. With centuries of life stretching before them, boredom could be a severe problem. The leading cause of death on Terra was suicide brought on by ennui.

Millions of weapons against boredom were developed. Humans transformed themselves into machines or creatures, transformed machines into humans, plunged themselves into invented realities, and invented entertainments so complex and bizarre that Bredon could not begin to comprehend them, but throughout, one of the most popular ways to avoid boredom was travel. The universe was full of surprises. Artificial entertainments were limited by the imaginations of humans and human-made things, while nature remained unthinkably vast and varied. Whenever life in one spot grew tedious, one could simply pack up and go somewhere else.