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"To restate the situation, Life feeds on Chaos, but must exist within Order.
Chaos represents a background against which Life knows itself. This brings us
to another background, the condition called Stasis. This can be compared to a
magnet. Stasis attracts free energy to itself until the pressures of
nonmovement, of nonadaptation, grow too great and an explosion occurs.
Exploding, the forms once in Stasis go back to Chaos, to non-Order. One is
left with the unavoidable observation that Stasis leads always to Chaos."
"That's dandy," Orne said.
Emolirdo frowned, then: "This rule holds true on both the chemical-inanimate
level and the chemical-animate level. Ice, the stasis of water, explodes when
brought into abrupt contact with extreme heat. The frozen society explodes
when exposed to the heat of war or the burning contact of a strange new
society. Nature abhors stasis."
"The way it abhors a vacuum," Orne said, speaking only in the hope of turning
Emolirdo's words off. What was he driving at? "Why all of this talk of
Chaos, Order, Stasis?"
"We think in terms of energy systems," Emolirdo said. "That is the psi
approach. Do you have more questions?"
"You haven't explained anything," Orne said. "Words, just words. What's all
this have to do with Amel or your suspicion that I'm a . . . psi focus?"
"As to Amel," Emolirdo said, "that appears to be a stasis that does not
explode."
"Then maybe it isn't static."
"Very astute," Emolirdo said. "As to psi focus, that brings us to the problem
of miracles. You have been summoned to Amel because we consider you a worker
of miracles."
Pain stabbed through Orne's bandaged neck as he tried to turn his head.
"Miracles?" he croaked.
"The understanding of psi represents the understanding of miracles," Emolirdo
said in his didactic way. "There is a devil hi anything we don't understand.
Thus, miracles frighten us and fill us with feelings of insecurity."
"Such as that fellow who supposedly can jump from planet to planet without a
ship," Orne said.
"He does do it," Emolirdo said. "It's another form of miracle to wish a
device removed from your flesh and have that thing happen without harming
you."
"What would happen if I wished you removed from my presence?" Orne asked.
An odd half smile flickered across Emolirdo's mouth. It was as though he had
fought down an internal dispute on whether to cry or laugh and had solved it
by doing neither. He said:
"That might be interesting, especially if I countered with a wish of my own."
Orne felt confused. He said: "I'm not tracking on this."
Emolirdo shrugged. "I am only saying that the study of psi is the study of
miracles. We examine things that happen outside of recognized channels and in
spite of accepted rules. The religious call such things miracles. We say we
have encountered a psi phenomenon or the workings of a psi focus."
"Changing the label doesn't necessarily change the thing," Orne said. "I'm
still not tracking."
"Have you ever heard about the miracle caverns on the ancient planets?"
Emolirdo asked.
"I've heard the stories," Orne said.
"They are more than stories. Let me put it this way: Such places held
concealed shapes, convolutions which projected out of our apparent universe.
Except at such focus points, the raw and chaotic energies of the universe
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resist our desires for Order. But at such focal points, the raw energies of
outer Chaos becomes richly available and can be tamed. By the very act of
wishing it so, we mold this raw energy in unique new ways that defy our old
rules." Emolirdo's eyes blazed. He seemed to be fighting for control of
great inner excitement.
Orne wet his lips with his tongue. "Shapes?"
"The historical record is clear," Emolirdo said. "Men have bent wires, coiled
them, carved bits of plastic, jumbled odd assortments of apparently unrelated
objects . . . and miraculous things happen: A smooth metal surface becomes
tacky as though smeared with glue. A man draws a pentagram on a certain floor
and flames dance within it. Smoke curls from a strangely shaped bottle and
suddenly obeys a man's will. These are all shapes, you see?"
"So?"
"Then there are certain living creatures, including humans, who conceal such a
focus within themselves. They walk into . . . nothing and reappear
light-years away. They have only to look at a person suffering from an
incurable disease and the disease is cured. They raise the dead. They read
minds."
Orne tried to swallow in a dry throat. Emolirdo spoke with such an air of
confidence, of conviction. This was something beyond blind faith.
"But how does it help to call these things psi?" Orne asked.
"It takes these phenomena out of the realm of blind fear," Emolirdo said. He
bent toward Orne's bedside light, thrust a fist between the light and the
green wall at the head of the bed. "Look at this wall."
"I can't turn my head," Orne said.
"Sorry." Emolirdo withdrew his hand. "I was just making a shadow. You can
imagine it. Let us say there were sentient beings confined to the flat plane
of that wall and they saw the shadow of my fiSt. Could a genius among them
imagine the shape which cast the shadow  a shape projected from outside of
his dimension."
"It's an old, but interesting question," Orne said.
"What if a being within the wall plane fashioned a device which projected into
our dimension?" Emolirdo asked. "He would be like the legendary blind men
studying the elephant. His device would respond in ways that would not fit
his dimensions. He'd have to guess at the new patterns, set up all sorts of
optional postulates."
The skin of Orne's neck began to itch maddeningly under the bandage. He
resisted the urge to probe there with a finger. Bits of Chargon's folklore
flitted through his memory: the magicians of the forest, the little people
who granted wishes in ways that made the wishers regret their desires, the
cavern where the sick were cured.
The quick-heal itching lured his finger with almost irresistible force. He
groped for a pill on his bedstand, gulped it, waited for the relief.
"You are thinking," Emolirdo said.
"You put a new psi amplifier in my neck," Orne said. "For what purpose?"
"It's an improved device for signaling the presence of psi activity," Emolirdo
said. "It detects psi fields, the presence of focal shapes. It amplifies
your latent abilities. It enables you better to resist psi-induced emotions
and you can detect motivations in others through the reading of their
emotions. It may enable you to detect dangers to your person when those
dangers still are some distance away in time  prescience, if you will. I'm
laying on some parahypnoidal sessions for you which will make these effects
more understandable to you."
Orne felt a tingling in his neck, a vacant sensation in his stomach that
wasn't related to hunger. Danger?
"You'll recognize the prescient sensation," Emolirdo said. "It'll come upon
you as a peculiar kind of fear, perhaps mistaken for hunger. You'll sense a
lack of something, perhaps inside you or in the air you're breathing. It's a
very trustworthy signal of danger."
Orne felt the vacant sensation in his stomach. His skin was clammy with
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perspiration. The room's air tasted stale in his lungs. He wanted to reject
the sensations and Emolirdo's suggestive conversation, but a fact named
Stetson remained. Nobody in the I-A could be more coldly skeptical and Stet
had said to go through with this.
There was also the matter of the transceiver he had wished from his flesh.
"You're a little pale," Emolirdo said.
Orne managed a tight smile. "I think I feel your prescient warning right
now."
"Ahhhh. Describe your sensations."
Orne obeyed.
"Odd that it should happen so soon," Emolirdo said. "Can you identify a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]