The state of surpassment, in which the spirit moves beyond its ancient boundaries and can no longer be affected by fear or pain or any other illusory perception, comes only with great difficulty to the male human. It is his sorry burden that he can reach this condition only by extended states of deprivation, terror, agony, and the like, inflicted upon him either by himself or by others. It is no wonder, therefore, that primitive man in his consuming jealousy of the ease with which the female could achieve what he did only so rarely and so painfully, did everything he could to conceal her natural abilities away for all time. That he succeeded for so many thousands of years is a tribute to his total dedication to the cause of maintaining this patriarchal myth.
—from Woman Transcendent, by Ann Geheygan, p. 44
The woman led him to a clearing in the forest outside City Fra, to a place so silent that his ears hummed with the absence of sound. The nishia-bella trees rose all around him, more like tolerant giant creatures than plants. They had the nobility to keep still and allow the human beings to go about in peace, but Coyote felt their confined power and was nervously aware, here, of their breathing. He had grown accustomed to seeing the people casually riding their animals through the branches as if they were on solid ground, and he had seen groups of fifty or more holding gatherings on the flat places where several massive limbs came together; but when he stepped up into one of them, he always felt as if he should have asked permission first.
A platform had been built in the clearing some three feet off the ground, to clear the stream that flowed beneath it. It had squared-off posts at the corners and down its sides and a slanted roof to let the rain flow down. Shades of some strawlike material were rolled up tight to the roof except on the side from which the wind came most strongly, and there the pale yellow shades fell to the floor.
"She is there," the woman told him, pointing. "She is sleeping."
"At this hour?"
Coyote was amazed. It was an hour past dawn, at least; already the light was beginning to stream down through the cracks in the canopy of leaves and limbs high above their heads. Nobody slept past dawn on this planet, not even the sick. Everyone got up at the Wakers' call and prepared for morning service.
"We are not of the Old Faith," she reminded him. "The Wakers are a convenience for us at times, a nuisance at others, but never a necessity. And Drussa Silver has been struggling all through this night with a group of new converts who torment themselves over shadows; it is difficult sometimes to bring such people into peace with themselves."
"Then perhaps I should not disturb her," said Coyote hesitantly. "What do you think?"
"You must choose for yourself," she said.
"Help me a little, Citizen. I am not one of your people, after all—how can I know your customs?"
She reached over and took his hand in hers and smiled at him. "Come," she said, "we'll go to her, and you will wait beside her till she wakes. I must get back to the City, myself."
She led him up onto the platform, where he saw a dozen people rolled in the light square cloths that Shavvies carried with them wherever they went. They had the property, he was told, of keeping you warm when it was cold and cool when it was hot—not that it ever could be accurately described as hot anywhere but on the small central plains where the nishia-bella did not grow. Everywhere else it was always cool, even at midday.
"There," said the woman, indicating one of the sleeping figures with her free hand. "Sit there beside her; she will wake soon. She never sleeps for long, Citizen."
She was gone before he could thank her, swiftly and so silently that he knew she had not set her feet to the floor or to the ground. Disconcerting, these Shavvy habits—but no doubt very convenient and a big help to the transit bureaus.
He sat waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimness under the roof, and then at last he had a chance to look at Drussa Silver. He had grown curious, waiting.
He saw that she was beautiful, and he was glad of that. It was old-fashioned of him, but he would have been disappointed if she had been plain. She had gold-brown hair, parted smoothly in the middle and braided in the two long Shavvy plaits, bound with fiber. Her face was oval, her brows perfect, her cheekbones high, her mouth strong and ample and with a delicate curve, and her skin was a pale and rose-flushed brown. One brown arm and shoulder, free of the useful cloth, showed him the fineness of her body, the elegant strength of her hands. He sighed with satisfaction, because all is as it should be when a mythical woman turns out to be of a mythical beauty.
He watched the slow rise and fall of her breasts in the deep breathing of tranquil sleep, and the play of light across her skin when the wind blew the leaves into new patterns. He could have watched her forever in this peaceful place; he was hypnotized by the soft purl of the water flowing beneath him and the dappling of the light. When she spoke, he did not even start, so peaceful had he become.
"Child of Light," she said to him, opening her eyes and reaching for his hands, "you are welcome here, in spite of what you come to do."
He felt the chill of warning and knew he would need to be careful.
"I have come only to learn," he began. "I have—"
"You have come to prove me a fraud and a fake, a corrupter of the innocent, and to take me back to Mars-Central to be tried in your courts for my life, Citizen Jones. If you lie to me, however, your own usefulness will be undermined—does the smuggler judge the pirate?"
He was silent, feeling the strong pressure of her hands, trying to think quickly. He had been aware that his cover was weak. But this was total exposure, and it required an adjustment in his plans. But what sort of adjustment? Could she be only trying to trick him into an admission, based on no more than a shrewd and lucky guess?
She let his hands go and sat up, letting the cloth fall away, and in that gesture Coyote lost all the advantage that might have remained to him. He was accustomed to the naked bodies of both men and women. It had been seven hundred years and more since nakedness had been of any importance except on a few isolated planets of the Third Galaxy. But he had never ceased to know joy in seeing a lovely woman naked before him, and this was no ordinary body. Even among the synthetic prostitutes of the vice planets, whose flesh was surgically and chemically made perfect at enormous expense, he had never seen such flawlessness.
"All this perfection is a great nuisance," she said, touching her breasts, "and if it should fade, it would be a lessening of my burdens."
"There is no need for it to fade," said Coyote. "It would be a terrible waste."
"Nonsense," she said, pulling her tunic over her head and letting down her braids to be redone for the day. "If you are talking of cosmetic injections, my friend, I assure you they are not for me. This body is only an encumbrance to me."
"I don't understand," he said, although he understood perfectly well.
"Because," she said, "men desire it. It is natural that they should, I can see for myself that I am very beautiful. But desire is a barrier between me and the spirit of the men I seek to help, even when I am cloaked and hooded. I was given this body as a humiliation, I suppose, instead of something convenient and unspectacular."
She put her hair swiftly in order and stood up, folded her square of cloth and tucked it under her arm, and pulled him up to face her.
"There," she said. "Now we can get on with the business on which you came here."
When he failed to answer her, she laughed at him, leading him through the sleepers and off the platform into the trees. "It's no use, Citizen," she said gently. "I know all about you. Surely you did not think you would fool me with your fairy tales?"
"I'm afraid I don't follow you," he said.
"You, my poor Citizen, could never have gotten permission to land on Freeway if you were only a Student, however splendid and important your work might have been. Only a great deal of government pressure could have obtained that permission." She laughed and added, "Not to mention the fact that you walk like the law, talk like the law, smell like the law, and act like the law—I will grant that you do not look like a policeman."
"Oh well," Coyote sighed. "I give up then."
"You might as well."
"Evidently that is so. I think I was sold a bill of goods by my superiors—and not for the first time, I might add."
"We can get on with your mission here, then?"
"Yes."
"How? How are we to proceed? Are you a master theologian?"
"A what?"
She led him up a set of wedge-steps pegged into the trunk of a nishia-bella, and they began to walk along a branch as wide as a path, with the tree surrounding them and the ground dropping away below as they climbed.
"A master theologian," she repeated. "Are you going to ask me learned questions about the reality of a supreme being, Citizen? Are you going to try to trap me with ancient conundrums about the presence of evil in the world and the all-good omnipotence of God? Shall we try to determine whether I know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
Coyote stopped and leaned back against an upthrust branch, laughing helplessly.
"Well, then," she said, "if that's not what you have in mind, how do you propose to go about this matter of testing me?"
"I could pitch you into a fire and see if you burn," he teased.
"I would," she said. "I assure you. If you cut me, I will bleed. If you hold me under water, I will drown. The laws of the universe are not mocked, Citizen."
"Even by a daughter of the Light?"
"We are all sons and daughters of the Light."
"But you are different."
He said it flatly, watching her for any sign of hesitation, but she said at once, "Yes. I am different."
"Prove it."
"Prove it, Citizen?"
"Yes," he said. "I dee-double-dare you."
Her face was grave now, and he pushed his advantage, feeling that it was not likely to last.
"Do me a miracle, lady-O," he said bluntly. "Even better, do me two."
He saw the shock in her eyes and felt the first sensations of success. If she knew everything else about him, as she clearly did, she also knew that he was mind-deaf and that her illusions would be no good with him. She should be frightened now, and would have to find a clever theological way to refuse.
"Citizen," she said, her voice throbbing with an emotion he could not identify, "that is temptation." And she turned to go back down out of the tree, forcing him almost to run to keep up with her. He was not as surefooted in these trees as the Shavvies, who spent their lives among them, and he didn't like capering about like a mountain goat eighty feet above the ground; he didn't like it one bit. At the bottom he found her waiting for him beside the huge tree, seated on the hump of a root. Her face was cold with disapproval, and he found to his surprise that he didn't like that any better than he had liked his acrobatics in the air. He felt again like a child caught in some forbidden activity. She was good at what she did—no question about that—because he didn't impress easy.
"How do you mean, temptation?" he said, pretending he was neither winded nor shaking nor intimidated. "Define your terms!" A scholarly thing to say; he was proud of himself.
"To present me with such a proposition," she said, "is to tempt me. Do you a miracle, you say, as if I were a performer in a circus. My friend, do you think my powers are for that sort of use?"
He frowned, thinking, and tugged at his beard. He would have to choose his words carefully, and he was far from sure that the Dean's crash synopsis course in religious terms and concepts was going to see him through this.
"Citizen Silver," he said finally, "look at it this way. You have your work to do here, and I have mine. One of the ways that I can do my job is to spend six months here on Freeway, following you around, getting in your way and interfering with your life, putting your people to a lot of trouble and expense, and generally being a nuisance, until I just happen—by chance—to see something that satisfies me one way or another as to your ... uh ... your divinity."
"That would be a good way to do it, Citizen Jones," she said. "It would be good for my people to learn to be tolerant, and good for your spirit to observe our ways."
"Another way," he said, plunging on, "would be for you just to demonstrate to me that you are what you are, just that simply. Show me and I will take you away with me and get this business over with."
"You think I can be taken so easily?"
"I think that you will abide by the law," he said seriously. "The law says that anyone who uses religious techniques to defraud the people must stand trial for that offense. What sort of example would you set if you refused to go and be judged?"
"You are right, of course," she said. "I would go with you without objection." Her voice was so heavy with sorrow that his own heart was stabbed by it, and he looked at her with astonishment. What could he have said to cause her such pain? But her face was as serene as ever; the sadness had fled into the depths of her eyes.
"Look here," he said. "I understand what you are saying. If I am just curious, if what lies behind what I ask of you is like what lies behind people who go to see someone trapped and in pain and watch him rescued, if I am asking for an exhibition, Citizen Silver—then it is easy for you to find that out. Though I am mind-deaf, there is nothing wrong with my mindvoice. I will open my mind to you and let you see as freely as I see myself what is within my heart; and if you see only contemptible things there, I will agree to stay here and observe for as long as it may take. Agreed?"
She nodded slowly, and he closed his eyes and waited. He knew the sensation when someone entered his mind, although he would never be able to know what it felt like to be the one entering. For a long time he felt her within him, and he held his breath at the pleasure of it, knowing there was no way he could hide from her any of the things it meant for him ... And then she was gone and he opened his eyes.
"You speak the truth," she said softly. "There are no lies on your lips. And I am sorry that I cannot share my body with you, since you wish it so much. Surely you understand that it would not do, Citizen."
"Because you are divine."
She laughed. "No, there is nothing about divinity that is incompatible with either creativity or love, Citizen." Her face changed, then, and he saw once again the sorrow deepen in her eyes. "The problem is that many of my people are still in a stage of the soul where they ... where they worship my person, in a direct way. There are children who leave their hands unwashed for months because they have touched me. There are those who put my picture on the wall and pray before it, Citizen, because as yet they cannot go beyond that. It is an essential beginning, and a true way for those who need such things, but it requires great care and attention. You can see, surely, that in a land where such things exist, for me to lie with a man would cause a disastrous confusion. A disunity would be created where only unity should be."
"The point is clear," said Coyote, "much as I regret it."
"And now," she said, "as to this miracle you wanted ... "
"Yes. It will have to be really spectacular."
"Why? Why not a common, ordinary miracle?"
"Because, having seen what your followers can do—and they are not claiming to be divine—it is going to take something spectacular to impress me."
"What have you seen them do, Citizen, that makes you marvel so?"
"I have seen them walk the surface of the river as if they walked dry land."
"But that's nothing, Citizen. That is only a matter of understanding the water."
"So they tell me," said Coyote. "And there is that pretty trick practiced on me, you know—that bit of spinning me in the air like a piece of dust, while the one doing it stands there without moving a hair."
"I am sorry about those episodes, Citizen," she said. "They were foolish to do that to you."
"Yes, they were, because it showed me just what you people are capable of in the ordinary way."
"It is a matter of understanding where the spaces are in things," she said slowly. "There's nothing supernormal about it."
"Exactly. Now ... show me something supernormal."
The sorrow brimmed in her eyes again, and he almost spoke to stop her, unwilling to cause her whatever pain it was that she marked in that way. But before he could speak—before his wondering eyes—she became two women. Two perfect Drussa Silvers all in yellow, both with gleaming braids to the waist, and sorrowful eyes. And each of them became two, and each of those two again, until they were a multitude, and they joined hands in a circle, solemnly smiling, and began a grave and joyful dance there under the trees; and Coyote, his eyes blind with tears, dropped to his knees to worship the divine that he recognized at last without reservation.