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species are still pressing a kind of lawsuit against the Aighors, and in the
interest of unity within Hafkan Bestmerit, the Aighors are complying with the
judgments.
 Hafkan Bestmerit is the only consolidation with no human members?
 If it can strictly be called a consolidation. It s a rather exclusive group.
Aighors, Minkies, Crocerians, and  some think  Perfidisians. But there s no
evidence Perfidisians associate with anyone. We guess there are about twenty
distinct species within Hafkan Bestmerit, some of whom we know little about.
 These Aighors, are they totally irrational? Kawashita said.
 Not at all. They re among the most inventive and intelligent species we ve
met. They re aggressive, but then they developed from a background where
extreme aggression was the only way to survive. Still, we re lucky they didn t
find us before we were ready to compete.
 But they destroyed their civilization several times.
 That s not unheard of, Anna said.  We ve found the remains of four thousand
spacefaring civilizations, of which maybe a hundred are going concerns today.
That appears to be the norm, judging from
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Beyond Heaven's River transmissions received from other galaxies.
 You have not traveled between galaxies?
 Only to the Magellans. A few exploratory ships are planned. But higher space
warps depend to a certain extent on large local bodies of mass for guidance.
The distances between the galaxies are forbidding because they re practically
empty. On the other hand, we ve yet to investigate the galactic core because
the stars are too densely packed. I ve heard the Aighors have a way of
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navigating hyperdense and hypodense geodesics  
 Excuse me, Kawashita said.  I can t keep pace looking up definitions on the
tapas.
 Don t worry. You re doing fine. I understand a lot less than I know, myself.
Poetic imagery is the only way some of these ideas can be grasped, unless
you re hooked up to a computer with specially augmented circuitry.
 Back to the Aighors. Have you had a war with them yet?
 Some skirmishes but no official wars. We may not be especially adept, but we
do develop fast, and our technology is the equal of theirs, point for point 
at least in transportable weapons and shields. They may have something  but
no, that s top secret. I m not supposed to know about it.
Kawashita grinned.  Now I am curious.
Anna suddenly resembled a little girl about to divulge a secret.  Don t tell
anyone, she said.  But we found parts of some of the ships that went into the
Ring Stars. Not my group  humans, though.
Something very odd had happened to the scraps. I m not sure what it was, but
one older physicist had a heart attack when he saw them.
Kawashita shook his head slowly; whether in disbelief or wonder, Anna couldn t
tell.  Do you believe in gods? he asked.
 I don t disbelieve in anything. I ve seen too much to be a complete agnostic,
so I suppose I do believe in something, yes.
 When I was a young boy, my mother let me attend a Christian Sunday school
service in Hiroshima. It was taught by an old Jesuit from Spain, and he said
that someday, when men looked far enough into space with their telescopes,
they would see the face of God glowering at them. Have you seen anything like
that?
Anna smiled.  I m sorry to be rude, but you re still asking quaint questions.
Not bad ones  just quaint.
We have legends. Lost ships, planets that disappear when they re landed,
paradises  but they re fairy
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Beyond Heaven's River tales for the most part.
 For a Japanese from my time, the universe would be filled with kami
, he said.  Aighors would be kami
, and so would Perfidisians.
Kami are not the same as the Christian God, but they are intelligent beings,
special ancestors, spirits sometimes, not omnipotent, however. And every star
is a goddess, every world a pearl. Does that give you awe?
Anna paused.  Sometimes I think I m too dense to be awed, she said,  or too
busy having fun. But somewhere, yes, I suppose I m a little scared of it all.
 I ve been lucky, coming to see it gradually, Kawashita said.  The person who
was a pilot, back in the twentieth century  he would be mad by now. Me, I am
just made nervous most of the time.
 Welcome to the world-anxiety of the modern human, Anna said, laughing.  Some
night, come to my observation bubble and look at the magnified and annotated
stars with me. Be prepared to shiver a little.
We haven t scratched the surface yet. Maybe God s face will glower down on us
some day. Maybe at the
Galaxy s core.
 No, there are six wings at the Galaxy s core, Kawashita said cryptically.
Anna couldn t get him to explain what he meant, but it seemed a kind of joke.
She pointed out the ship s engines on the chart and asked if he d like to do
something he could only do once.
 It does not sound pleasant, he said.   Once a philosopher, twice a
pervert, as Voltaire said.
 Oh, it isn t dangerous, and it doesn t change you any way you d notice. But
you can only do it once.
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 I ll decide when I see what it is.
She took him down the long tube separating the living quarters from the
vehicle bays and engines, then pointed him through a round hatch into a room
gleaming with bare metal surfaces. The rest of the
Peloros
was decorated with a variety of coordinated color schemes, but here, at its [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]