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into the sky.
Of the strange beings that inhabited them, whose wondrous de vices could
operate themselves directly, without any intervention of mind.
It would be as one of those strange beings that he would emerge, Shingen-Hu
had told him. Most of the abilities that he knew would be lost. But he would
find, as he persevered and learned, that he didn't need them. For the
inhabitants of Hyperia knew none of the gods that held sway over Waroth. They
didn't need to bother with prayer, and the few gods that they did worship in
their own mysterious ways were as nothing ever revealed to any Warothian. The
Hyperians delegated their powers to complex magic objects, which they were
able to fashion as effortlessly as a Master could project a firebolt; thus
they freed themselves to devote their time to such higher things as amusement
and bodily comforts, without the daily drudgery of cultivating mystical
insights and developing powers of unaided thought.
But to begin with, he would feel lost and helpless when he emerged. He would
search in vain for reassurance from things that were familiar, knowing that
until he developed new powers of comprehension and came to terms with the
revelations which those new insights would open up, there would be no way
back. That would be when he should seek the security of his own kind among
those bearing the emblem of the purple spiral.
But he had been thoroughly trained. He was ready. Others were not so
fortunate, Shingen-Hu had said. In former times, when the currents had been
abundant and strong, it often happened that new initiates, or even novices,
would emerge into Hyperia ignorant and unprepared, without even having
glimpsed what lay ahead. Usually they were solitary learners, unschooled and
impatient.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Baumer had suggested a tour of the environs of PAC to give Gina a start at
getting her bearings in Shiban. After that, he said, he would introduce her to
some of the associations of Jevlenese and Terran historians engaged in
organizing the information coming to light on past Jevlenese meddlings with
Earth. They left PAC by the main entrance and crossed a plaza, where one of
the battery of escalators below the transportation terminal took them down
several levels to emerge into one of the major thoroughfares traversing the
district between PAC and the city center.
They passed an exchange market for used furniture, clothes, and householdjunk
that was situated in an open area between facing lines of dilapidated
storefronts and lesser buildings. Above, enormous ribs of an architecture that
belonged to a different scale soared and merged, enclosing a space vast enough
to hold a small mountain -- a monument to a vision in an alien mind that had
leapt above the commonplace as surely as the lines seemed to break free from
gravity...now stark and bare against the pale, orange-
smeared green of the sky, their original function long forgotten. A stream
connecting ornamental pools built on a series of terraces had run dry and
become a trash dump. Jevlenese in blue costumes were dancing to a strange,
repetitive chant, vaguely reminiscent of medieval plainsong, while a crowd
looked on apathetically. Insensible figures lay sprawled against walls along
the sidewalks.
It reminded Gina of a trip she had made to parts of the eastern
Mediterranean some years previously, off the regular tourist circuit. There,
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she had seen peasants tending goats amid the ruins of what had once been
splendid temples, and crude village hearths made of stones taken from palaces.
Once more she was looking at the promise of genius lost to unreason and sunken
into apathy.
The agitators and cult leaders who talked to the people blamed it all on the
Ganymeans. It was the result of withdrawing the services performed by
JEVEX, they said, and they called for the full functionality of the system to
be restored. In fact, the stagnation had begun long before the events that led
to JEVEX's being shut down. But the people had been conditioned to have short
memories, and they believed what the demagogues told them.
"This is what you get when degeneracy sets into a society," Baumer told her.
"There's never been any order or discipline. I blame it on the Thuriens for
not instituting any proper system of control. But then, they don't have any
concept of the word themselves."
The reason for Baumer's sudden change of mood still was not clear. He had no
interest in the kind of work that Gina had described, and he didn't come
across as the kind of person who would rush to do favors for strangers, or who
would put any great value on sociability. Her first inclination had been to
assume the attraction to be therefore mainly physical -- he had, after all,
been away from home and his own kind for almost half a year; but his manner
showed no hint of it, and the passion in his eyes when he spoke burned only
for visions of Jevlen's future. So if Baumer didn't have a reason, the reason
had to be someone else's -- and that could only be the Jevlenese that
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