The Godmakers

Chapter Ten

For Orne, there had been an intermediate period in a blank fog, then a time of pain and the gradual realization that he was in a crechepod. He had to be. He could remember the sudden disrupter explosion on Sheleb… the explosion like a silent force thrusting at him—no sound, just an enveloping nothingness.

Good old crechepod. It made him feel safe, shielded from outside perils. Things still went on inside him, though. He could remember… dreams? He wasn’t sure they really were dreams. There was something about a hoe and handles. He tried to recall the elusive thought pattern. He sensed his linkage with the crechepod and, beyond that, a connection with some kind of merciless manipulative system, a mass effect reducing all existence to a base level.

Is it possible that Man invented war and was trapped by his own invention? Orne wondered. Who are we in the I-A to set ourselves up as a board of angels to mediate in the affairs of all sentient life we contact?

Is it possible we are influenced by our universe in ways we don’t readily recognize?

He sensed his brain/mind/awareness churning, visualized all of this activity as a bizarre tool for symbolizing the drives and energy desires of all life. Somewhere within himself, he felt there was an ancient function, a thing of archaic tendencies which remained constant despite the marks of the evolution through which it had passed.

Abruptly, he felt himself in the presence of an overwhelming thought/presence. The most misguided effort of sentience is the attempt to alter the past, to weed out discrepancies, to insist on fellow-happiness at any price. To refrain from harming others is one thing; to design and order happiness for others and to enforce delivery invites an equal-and-opposite reaction.

Orne drifted off to sleep with this convoluted thought winding and twisting in his awareness.