"Organic, then? With very powerful tools?"
"Or perhaps she found it and loved it and decided she wanted to help. On her own, unassigned, unrequested."
"Now you're a critic."
"That's the difference between life and art, of course. Life has no frames, no curtains, no beginnings and no endings."
"I mean my own life. I mean what I do. And the Keeper gives a meaning to the larger scene. That's enough meaning for me. I don't need to have somebody make an epic out of my life. I lived. Strange things happened. Now and then I made a little difference in other people's lives. You know what? It may be that the thing I'm proudest of in all my life is restoring the brain of that damaged little boy in Bodika."
"The Keeper assigned that to me; if I hadn't done it, she would have found another way, given the task to someone else."
"Maybe she did. But if I hadn't been there, the Keeper wouldn't have thought his life was so important that she would have sent someone else. So it was less significant-but because of that, I know that it happened only because I wanted it to happen. That makes it mine. My gift. Oh, I know it was the Keeper who brought me to Earth at all, and the Keeper who chose me to succeed Nafai as the starmaster so I was even alive then, all of that, I know it. But I'm the one who decided to be there at that time and to risk exposing who I really am to save that boy. So maybe that's what I'll think of with pride when I die. Or maybe it'll be the strange marriage I had with Zdorab. Or Rasaro's House-that school might last, and that would be something fine."
"But I am tired. I think I can sleep now. Too cold to sleep out here. I really wish the seats reclined farther back in the launch."
"And they deserve to be, too, the thoughtless weasels." She laughed. "I am tired."
She finished her count anyway, so that her report would be complete. Then she had the launch turn off its exterior lights and she returned to it by starlight and closed the door and went to sleep.
Went to sleep and dreamed. Many dreams, the normal dreams, the random firings of synapses in the brain, being given fragmentary meaning by the storymaking functions of the mind; dreams that the mind doesn't even bother to remember upon waking.
And then, suddenly, a different dream. The Oversoul sensed it, the fact that the brain had now assumed a different pattern from the normal dreamsleep. Shedemei herself felt the difference and, even in her sleep, paid attention.
She saw the Earth as it looked from the Basilica, the curve of the planet plainly visible at the horizons. Then, suddenly, she was seeing the seething magma that roiled underneath the crust of the planet. At first it looked chaotic, but then with piercing clarity she understood that there was magnificent order to the flow of the currents. Each eddy, each whorl, each stream had meaning. Much of it was grossly slow, but here and there, on a small scale, the movements were quick indeed.
Then she knew without seeing, knew because she knew, that these currents gave shape to the magnetic field of the Earth, making both large and tiny variations that could be sensed by the animals, that could disturb them or soothe them. The warning before the earthquake. The sudden veering of a school offish. The harmonies between organisms; this was what the ravelers saw.
She saw how mind and memory lived in the currents of flowing stone, in the magnetic flow; saw how vast amounts of information were deposited in crystals on the underside of the crust, changed by fluxes in temperature and magnetism. For a moment she thought: This is the Keeper.
Almost at once the answer came: You have not seen the Keeper of Earth. But you have seen my home, my library, and some of my tools. I can't show you more than this because your mind has no way to receive what I really am. Is this enough?
Yes, said Shedemei silently.
At once the dream changed. She saw all at once more than forty worlds that had been colonized from Earth, and all of them were being watched by some kind of Oversoul, and all the Oversouls were being watched by the Keeper. In particular she saw Harmony, the millions of people as if for just this moment her mind had the capacity to know them all at once. She felt herself in contact with the other iteration of the Oversoul that still lived there; but no, that was illusion, there was no such connection. Yet she knew that it was time for the Oversoul of Harmony to allow the humans there to recover their lost technologies. That's how the Oversoul would be rebuilt-by humans who had regained their hands.
It's time, said the clear voice of the Keeper in the dream. Let them build new starships and come home.
What about the people here? asked Shedemei. Have you given up on them?
The time of clarity has come. The decision will be made, one way or the other. So I can send for the people of Harmony now, because by the time they get here, either the three species will be living in perfect peace, or their pride will have broken them and made them ripe for domination by those who come after.
Like the Rasulum, thought Shedemei.
They also had their moment of choice, the Keeper replied.
The dream changed again, and now she saw Akma and the sons of Motiak walking along a road. She knew at once exactly where the road was, and what time of day it would be when they reached that point.
In the dream she saw the launch drop out of the sky, deliberately raising a cloud of smoke under it when it landed; she saw herself stride out, the cloak of the starmaster dazzlingly bright so that they couldn't bear to look at her. She began to speak, and at that moment the earth shook under them, driven by the currents of magma, and the young men fell to the ground. Then the quaking of the earth ended, and she spoke again, and at last she understood what it was the Keeper needed her to do.
Will you? asked the Keeper.
Will it help? she asked. Will it save these people?
Yes, the Keeper answered. No matter what he chooses, Motiak will finish his days as king of a peaceful kingdom, because of your intervention here. But what happens in the far future-that is what Akma will decide. You may live to see it if you want.
How, if the Basilica must go back to Harmony?
I'm in no hurry here. Have the ship's computer send a probe. You can stay, and the Oversoul can stay. Don't you want to see some part of how it ends?
Yes, I do.
I know you do, said the Keeper. Until you made this visit to Earth, I wasn't sure if you were truly part of me, because I didn't know if you loved the people enough to share my work. You're not the same person you were when I first called you here.