Pat had said he looked like the inside of an egg, but he was not
prepared for the great ovoid poised there below him. He came up to
her with a rush and found he was even bigger by comparison. When they
touched, he heard her voice. There was a slight resistance as his mind
met hers and then she slipped inside his, so that he enclosed her mind
within his ovoid mind.
"One of the disadvantages of a Diver," she said quietly within him,
"is that we can only talk to each other by contact. A Psi could see our
thoughts radiating out like an aurora, but we can't. We travel this way
when two Divers are together, which isn't often, so that we both think
of going to the same place. If we do get separated, come back here
immediately and we'll start again."
"Fine."
"_Please._ The very _gentlest_ suggestion of vocalizing will do. That
was like a cannon."
"Sorry."
"Much better. Now, gently, out. Think of rising slowly.... That's
right."
They rose away from the Earth.
"Over there," she prompted, "is the galactic spiral arm we are in. See,
running from Orion? The Solar System is out here on a limb. Over here
is where we're going, deep into the Galaxy, our own galaxy. You'll soon
pick up the main roads. See that fan-shaped arch? That's a T-Tauri
variable, signposts to us. Think of being just off that one now."
He did--and there they were, in a dark lane of the Milky Way.
"Now you can imagine what would happen if we were moving separately and
turned our minds to different points. You have to go back and start
again then. Now, we're going down this dark lane."
They moved through the splendor of the Milky Way, through vast lanes
of fine dark nebulae, across a giant rift, past glowing clouds of
hydrogen and oxygen and bright expanding shells, rings within rings,
flowing out from intense stars in their center as if the star were a
pebble dropped in a pond of burning space, the planetary nebulae.
The Sagittarian region was well known to Pat and she commented on the
Lagoon, and Omega and Trifid Nebula suspended around them. The local
system they sought lay off a loose globular star cluster, one of a
crowd here deep in toward the center of the Galaxy, the bright core
around which the spiral arms of the entire Milky Way ponderously swung.
He was part engrossed in the technique of moving his mind, part awed
by the variety and beauty of the Galaxy, and part lost in the beauty
of the mind within him. She moved with deft, clear thought like the
chime of crystals. The sensory images of Earth were gross and distorted
projections of the way he saw her, but she was at once the beating
rhythm beneath rock-and-roll and the abstracted clarity of Chopin, the
summer wind and the warmth of a wine. He held her mind within his in a
new union so complete that anything else was mere fumbling.
"Thank you," he heard her voice say gently, and they sank down toward
the rings of small planets they had come to visit.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account