Poul Anderson: The Day of Their Return

“Well, what does he preach? What do Elders want? Why did they do what they have done?

“Again, it’s impossible to put in few words. I’m going to try but I know I will fail. Maybe your imagination can fill in gaps. You’ve certainly got good mind, sweetheart.

“Ancients, Elders, Builders, High Ones, Old Shen, whatever we call them—and Jaan won’t give them separate name, he says that would be worse misleading than ‘Caruith’ already is—evolved billions of years ago, near galactic center where stars are older and closer together. We’re way out on thin fringe of spiral arm, you remember. At that time, there had not been many generations of stars, elements heavier than helium were rare, planets with possibility of life were few. Elders went into space and found it lonelier than we can dream, we who have more inhabited worlds around than anybody has counted. They turned inward, they deliberately forced themselves to keep on evolving mind, lifetime after lifetime, because they had no one else to talk to—How I wish I could send you record of Jaan explaining!

“Something happened. He says he isn’t yet quite able to understand what. Split in race, in course of millions of years; not ideological difference as we think of ideology, but two different ways of perceiving, of evaluating reality, two different purposes to impose on universe. We dare not say one branch is good, one evil; we can only say they are irreconcilable. Call them Yang and Yin, but don’t try to say which is which.

“In crudest possible language, our Elders see goal of life as consciousness, transcendence of everything material, unification of mind not only in this galaxy but throughout cosmos, so its final collapse won’t be end but will be beginning. While Others seek—mystic oneness with energy—supreme experience of Acceptance—No, I don’t suppose you can fairly call them death-oriented.

“Jaan likes old Terran quotation I know, as describing Elders: To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ (Do you know it?) And for Others, what? Not ‘Kismet,’ really; that at least implies doing God’s will, and Others deny God altogether. Nor ‘nihilism,’ which I reckon implies desire for chaos, maybe as necessary for rebirth. What Others stand for is so alien that—Oh, I’ll write, knowing I’m wrong, that they believe rise, fall, and infinite extinction are our sole realities, and sole fulfillment that life can ultimately have is harmony with this curve.

“In contrast, Jaan says life, if it follows Elder star, will at last create God, become God.

“To that end, Elders have been watching new races arise on new planets, and helping them, guiding them, sometimes even bringing them into being like Didonians. They can’t watch always over everything; they haven’t over us. For Others have been at work too, and must be opposed.

“It’s not war as we understand war; not on that level. On our level, it is.

“Analogy again. You may be trying to arrive at some vital decision that will determine your entire future. You may be reasoning, you may be wrestling with your emotions, but it’s all in your mind; nobody else need see a thing.

“Only it’s not all in your mind. Unhealthy body means unhealthy thinking. Therefore, down on cellular level, your white blood corpuscles and antigens are waging relentless, violent war on invaders. And its outcome will have much to do with what happens in your head—maybe everything. Do you see?

“It’s like that. What intelligent life (I mean sophonts as we know them; Elders and Others are trans-intelligent) does is crucial. And one tiny bit of one galaxy, like ours, can be turning point. Effects multiply, you see. Just as it took few starfaring races to start many more on same course, irreversible change, so it could take few new races who go over to wholly new way of evolution for rest to do likewise eventually.

“Will that level be of Elders or of Others? Will we break old walls and reach, however painfully, for what is infinite, or will we find most harmonious, beautiful, noble way to move toward experience of oblivion?

“You see what I was getting at, that words like ‘positive’ and ‘negative,’ ‘active’ and ‘passive,’ ‘evolutionism’ and ‘nihilism,’ ‘good’ and ‘evil’ don’t mean anything in this context? Beings unimaginably far beyond us have two opposing ways of comprehending reality. Which are we to choose?

“We have no escape from choosing. We can accept authority, limitations, instructions; we can compromise; we can live out our personal lives safely; and it’s victory for Others throughout space we know, because right now Homo sapiens does happen to be leading species in these parts. Or we can take our risks, strike for our freedom, and if we win it, look for Elders to return and raise us, like children of theirs, toward being more than what we have ever been before.

“That’s what Jaan says. Tanya, darling, I just don’t know—”

She lifted eyes from the page. It flamed in her: I do. Already.

Nomi dwelt with her children in a two-room adobe at the bottom end of Grizzle Alley. Poverty flapped and racketed everywhere around them. It did not stink, for even the poorest Orcans were of cleanly habits and, while there was scant water to spare for washing, the air quickly parched out any malodors. Nor were there beggars; the Companions took in the desperately needy, and assigned them what work they were capable of doing. But ragged shapes crowded this quarter with turmoil: milling and yelling children, women overburdened with jugs and baskets, men plying their trades, day laborer, muledriver, carter, scavenger, artisan, butcher, tanner, priest, minstrel, vendor chanting or chaffering about his pitiful wares. Among battered brown walls, on tangled lanes of rutted iron-hard earth, Ivar felt more isolated than if he had been alone in the Dreary.

The mother of the prophet put him almost at ease. They had met briefly. Today he asked for Jaan, and heard the latter was absent, and was invited to come in and wait over a cup of tea. He felt a trifle guilty, for he had in fact made sure beforehand that Jaan was out, walking and earnestly talking with his disciples, less teaching them than using them for a sounding board while he groped his own way toward comprehension and integration of his double personality.

But I must learn more myself, before I make that terrible commitment he wants. And who can better give me some sense of what he really is, than this woman?

She was alone, the youngsters being at work or in school. The inside of the hut was therefore quiet, once its door had closed off street noise. Sunlight slanted dusty through the glass of narrow windows; few Orcans could afford vitryl. The room was cool, shadowy, crowded but, in its neatness, not cluttered. Nomi’s loom filled one corner, a half-finished piece of cloth revealing a subtle pattern of subdued hues. Across from it was a set of primitive kitchen facilities. Shut-beds for her and her oldest son took most of the remaining space. In the middle of the room was a plank table surrounded by benches, whereat she seated her guest. Food on high shelves or hung from the rafters—a little preserved meat, more dried vegetables and hardtack—made the air fragrant. At the rear an open doorway showed a second room, occupied mostly by bunks.

Nomi moved soft-footed across the clay floor, poured from the pot she had made ready, and sat down opposite Ivar in a rustle of skirts. She had been beautiful when young, and was still handsome in a haggard fashion. If anything, her gauntness enhanced a pair of wonderful gray eyes, such as Jaan had in heritage from her. The coarse blue garb, the hood which this patriarchal society laid over the heads of widows, on her were not demeaning; she had too much inner pride to need vanity.