The air has cleared. A cold front from the sea struck the soggy grey clouds out of heaven sometime in the night and left us with a sharp white day. Today we must wait for our meditation. The thinderin have decreed that the session will take place in the early afternoon and so, unusually, we have the morning to ourselves. A special breakfast has been laid on by the sleek black bilachai acolytes from the village – little fried silver fish on slices of hot bread with boiled eggs, oat cakes and porridge to follow.
“We should go and see the others,” says the priest of the Order of the Holy Void (whose name is Ramon Avva). The meditations must be changing me. Once, I am convinced, I would have hated the thought of returning to these old failures, as though their defeated struggle was an infectious disease. Now I am more sanguine, mellow even.
“Alright,” I say, and am amused that I seem to have become the unofficial leader of the remaining pilgrims so that as soon as I have agreed they are all free to follow. How did that happen? Do they sense my superior capabilities in the meditations and defer to them? I don’t know.
After breakfast, we walk the coastal road southward away from Rillyon in the direction of Eryl Point, where there is supposed to be a charming port and a famously tall lighthouse, although we won’t get anything like that far. The grand old Amnyine avenues which once radiated from the Temple have long since worn away and this is a recent replacement surfaced in white stone chippings and the black ash of burnt vegetation. Traffic is light and slow, just a few bilachai steam carts and the occasional much larger trade wagon lumbering towards Rillyon laden with goods from the south. It’s easy walking on the road and we have plenty of time to step aside for the few vehicles, waving to their drivers as they pass. On our left, lacy crests foam on the tops of energetic waves beating against the promontory whilst on our right the silent jungle steams patiently under the diamond bright light of Silusia. A day of naked sunshine is uncommon in the summer season - in any season in fact. They don’t call it the ‘Rain Cities League’ for nothing.
I wonder how long it will take the Zed men to catch me. Silusia-Alpha is less than thirty light years from Earth, although it is outside the Solar Group and technically outside their jurisdiction. But I suffer from no illusions on that score. Niceties of legal form won’t stop them.
By solemn order of the Fourth Resource Management World Government, I have been declared an official ‘Pathogen of Gaia’. The Zed men take their duties very seriously. They are Gaia’s Immune System, and I am a true Foreign Body, legitimate prey. But I’m not the Pasteracht. I’m operating outside Their Majesties cosy system. I’m not part of the Disloyal Opposition. I’m part of the real opposition. We may be weak, scattered and lacking in unity of purpose but at least we’re truly independent. I don’t play by Their Majesties’ rules. If they want me, the Zed Men will have to come and get me.
“Why do the thinderin arrange the meditations like this?” one of the twins asks. I think it’s Tamsin.
“Like what?” says the awkward old woman with the nasty boots. My favourite troublemaker is enjoying her usual ill humour. Her name is Dovrich Galda, and she has confessed to a former occupation as an air traffic controller on Aster II. I can easily imagine her cutting some unfortunate captain down to size for sailing into the wrong flow stream. Today the white sunlight runs in gleaming razor edges on her steel grey hair, laced in a tightly knotted bun. There’s something unusual about her eyes. They have a red tint, and it looks a little bit sinister.
“Like someone has to fail at every stage. It seems so… artificial. Did the Amnyine make up these rules? I mean, why couldn’t we all learn and all benefit from passage to the higher lights?”
There is only a moment of silence before Ramon Avva succumbs to the perpetual priest’s temptation to explain away every spiritual problem.
“You must first remember,” he says, “that the thinderin do not consider it is important that every pilgrim complete the pilgrimage. Nor do they consider that retiring from the meditations is necessarily a failure.”
Or so they say, I think to myself in private disbelief.
“So, confronting your ‘Chromatic Truth’ is a success, is it?” Galda says cynically.
“Perhaps,” the priest answers mildly.
“You’ve got a bad attitude,” I say to Galda, and she glares at me before laughing sharply.
“But to answer your question,” Ramon continues patiently, “no one really knows how the amnyine used the Temple. The protocol for the current meditations is entirely a creation of the thinderin. The Light Guards have occupied Silusia-Alpha for many thousands of years and are now venerable members of the great Thinderin Forest. But according to their stories they were once refugees from a dispute between a powerful Seeker Clan and a defunct political structure they call the ‘Shadow Song Tendency’. The Light Guards have always had a strong belief in the freedom of the individual, in genetic diversity and in crucial choices whether forced by fate or chosen by free will. That is why they are amongst the most prominent users of the ‘life deck’ cards (although all thinderin use the cards today).
"I think they choose to arrange the pilgrimages with a structure similar to some of their life games. They would rather compel us to clear cut outcomes that assert our identity, even if it means an inevitable loss of exposure to the benefits of the Chromatic Meditations.”
“Quite the philosopher, aren’t you?” Galda says tartly but there is no real venom in it so I can tell she is impressed.
“Then we will have to see what happens,” Tamsin says firmly.
I glance at her briefly, catching something odd in the tone of her voice and see a look of suppressed determination in her eyes. On instinct I turn towards her sister and am unsurprised by her matching expression. It occurs to me that that some of the other pilgrims might have unconventional motives for this journey of enlightenment.
Once we have rounded the headland a smaller tributary track leads down into the jungle on our left. Soon we are immersed in the architecture of shadows cast by heavy columns of antique trees. We are silent for the ten minutes it takes to break out into an open glade descending towards a lustrous pool. The air is heavy with scent from rich purple blossoms of gatara, which hang in waxy clusters amidst the bright green tangle of shrubs choking the jungle at the side of the path. Large jewel bright insects mill around in lazy clouds over thick pads of vegetation, which have colonised the margins of the water. At the far side of the pool the track climbs back into shade again for a minute or so and then we find ourselves at the lip of a different kind of dell.
Three bilachai and two thinderin are waiting in a small hut just over the rise. They guard the passage to the true thinderin grove beyond.
I’ve seen a thinderin grove before, but I’ll be surprised if any of the others have. The trunks of the adult trees are white and papery grey, thick but not particularly tall. The bark is dense and grooved with cortical folds of intelligent wood, sleeping the sleep of ages. Thick boles swell outwards where twisting branches reach to catch the sunlight. Tiny oval leaves flutter like mauve flags, dappling the bare ground which has been scrupulously cleared of foliage by the gardeners; thinderin seedlings such as Willow and an honoured cadre of bilachai. As far as I know, no human has yet been considered trustworthy enough to fulfil this delicate spiritual and practical task.
The guards make a show of opening the long iron gateway to the grove. We are accompanied by one of the thinderin who asks us to call him “Aspen”.
“He looks just like Willow,” Tamsin whispers to me as we make our way along a winding footpath through the pleasant, dappled glade. It’s true. In their motile stage the thinderin do look very similar to the untrained eye. They have the same yellowish tripod legs, the same flat green multiply jointed, multiply rooted arms and the same bulbous fermenting belly. The wide celluloid lenses and photosensitive globes that serve them for eyes make them look a little like bug eyed monsters from some badly written piece of lurid twentieth century science fiction. They have no heads to speak of but a canopy of overlapping parasol growths, which glow vivid green and serve as super-efficient photosynthetic energy factories. They couple this ability with a complementary saprophytic biochemistry that enables them to extract nutrients from dead wood and soil simply by dipping tendrils into the ground. Unlike earthly plants though, whilst in the motile state they can extract the organic energy in a very short space of time and remarkably efficiently. In this sense, their biochemistry is more like that of a herbivorous mammal.
Thinderin seedlings hear and talk using a pair of double purpose, tightly stretched membranes around their midriffs. These membranes are natural microphones and natural speakers. If the taut fibres are ever torn, they will re grow, although the seedling will be deaf and dumb until the process is complete. Thinderin nervous systems can accurately record and duplicate a wide range of sounds and this near perfect reproduction gives rise to an eerie quality in their speech. Each word sounds as though it has been carefully selected from a dictionary but unless the speaker is repeating a sentence they have memorised, the combination of words does not run together with the inflections a human speaker would always impart. Often the thinderin can sound like some badly programmed computer, with unnatural pauses and words articulated too distinctly. From time to time when their own original thoughts are able to employ a replicated phrase exactly as they have heard it, they will drop the whole group of words into their speech, mimicking the human original’s voice more perfectly than any parrot. When a seedling has learned from many teachers it has a disconcerting multiplicity of accents combined in odd ways.
“How can you tell he’s a male?” Tamsin continues.
I shrug. “I don’t think it makes much difference to the seedlings.”
Aspen has overheard us. The membranes are very sensitive.
“Your fellow pilgrim is right up to a point. We thinderin do not breed until it is time to set down permanent roots. It is more accurate to say that I will be a male and Willow will be a female. We are sexually immature whilst we roam the worlds and usually remain so for at least seventy of your Earth standard years. Nevertheless, I know I am to be male, and this does make a difference, even to the life of a seedling.”
I’m intrigued, hoping to hear more about the nature of thinderin society. They fascinate me even though I often find them irritating. Any species that can maintain a thriving interstellar civilisation for more than 80,000 years must have something to teach a sapling race such as ours. But the thinderin are an opaque lot at best and Aspen clearly thinks he’s said enough.
There is a glade in the middle of the grove and at its centre is our destination, an elegant and expansive three-storey building standing on a cluster of thin stone stilts. The carved granite columns are roughly five metres tall, twisted in imitation of the style of the Temple façade. Branches from all the surrounding trees arch towards open windows on all floors and over its shallow pitched roof. Some enter through the windows so that the structure seems to be offered up to the trees. And since this is a thinderin grove and these trees are adult thinderin, there is truth in that appearance. It is a delicate angular sight with a spare beauty like something a classical Japanese painter might have glazed in blue and white china. An open ladder gives access to the bottom floor of the aerial house and Aspen climbs ahead of us.
The room we enter is decorated in white and pastel pinks and pale greys. There are low glass tables and cane chairs arranged round the walls. Large crystal jars, some as tall as two metres, stand here and there filled with pure water and tiny red fish. In the centre of the space there is a low pool and a fountain. Aspen drops a root into the water to drink.
Dywhyiss is waiting to greet us. She wears a grey woollen robe, which marks her out as a patient of this particular hospital, the hospital of those who in the words of the thinderin have “met their Chromatic Need”. I’m surprised to see that she is smiling, and she looks a good deal happier than she did before the Orange meditation. She rushes over to the girls and hugs them and even Galda gets a kiss on the cheek. It has only been a few days since we pilgrims met for the first time in Rillyon, and I’m surprised at her intensity. Do women always bond so quickly? Or is it just me that’s cold and aloof. I have a gut feeling that if I stick with the meditations I might find out and I might not want to know the answer.
“Are they treating you well?” Galda asks gruffly.
“I’m fine,” Dywhyiss assures us. “Aspen is acting as my councillor. We are reviewing the pattern of the orange meditation and preparing for my return to the Temple to perform it again.”
“When will that be?” one of the twins asks.
“When Dywhyiss is ready,” Aspen says, conveying very little information. But Dywhyiss doesn’t seem displeased by his interjection and is obviously content to let her therapy take its course. I’m more interested in Talamon Ka and Edulon-602.
“What about the others?” I interrupt somewhat rudely.
Dywhyiss looks a little disturbed.
“Come with me,” Aspen says.
We climb a black iron staircase to the second level of the building and emerge on a balcony overlooking a pale pink arena shaped like a shallow cone. The branches of adult thinderin shade the hall through the open archways of intricate windows. A horn sounds. From two doorways below us, Edulon-602 and Talamon Ka emerge. Like Dywhyiss they are clothed in grey. I’m surprised when Samsin clutches my hand, and her twin sister gives us a dirty look. I don’t understand what’s happening on this balcony and I don’t really understand what’s happening beneath us in the arena, although superficially it looks simple enough.
As we watch, Talamon Ka and Edulon-602 begin to beat seven kinds of bells out of one another. They have no weapons, but their bare fists are more than enough to bloody noses and blacken eyes. I watch in appalled fascination. Samsin squeezes my fingers more fiercely as the combat proceeds.
“What’s the point of this?” Ramon Avva asks. The Void priest is voicing my own question.
“They hate each other,” Aspen answers. “Talamon Ka sees himself as the perfect loyalist whilst Edulon-602 is the ultimate rebel even to the point of rebelling against his own kind. He’s a traitor’s kind of traitor.”
I wonder if the thinderin seedling is displaying any judgement in this coded remark despite their species professed neutrality in human internal disputes.
“I speak only of the truths revealed in the meditations,” Aspen says as if he is reading my mind. “We councillors must do our best with the truths we are offered. The fight is healthy. The red and the yellow meditations show it to be so. The pilgrims see themselves as violently opposed but we perceive that they are only different taints within the same type of soil. As your kind used to phrase it, they are two sides of the same coin.”
The last clause rolls out of Aspen with the smoothness of pre-packaging, a canned phrase from his high-level lexicon.
“It is not a coin I would ever wish to spend,” Ramon says earnestly.
“Then be thankful that you need not. We wish only to help each pilgrim to face his or her own Chromatic Truth. When Talamon Ka and Edulon-602 tire of their conflict they will be ready to return to the Temple, but not until then.”
Loyalty and rebellion, treachery and constancy; the thinderin cannot be right about this. Their analysis is a cheap trick offering no room for the concept of justice. I shudder with a mixture of revulsion, anger and anxiety. It is lucky for me that this particular coin is already spinning in the arena below us.
