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.I'd need to teach you a lot of stuff with ordinary sightand sound.""That's fine!" Bredon said happily."Well, maybe it's fine.We'll see.""When do we start?" The prospect of a new adventure, of learning what was really going on, thrilled him."Oh, anytime, I guess.But first, aren't there a few little things to take care of?""Like what?" Bredon demanded, suddenly suspicious."Oh, details like food, drink, and a quick visit to the equiva-lent of a hole in the ground?""Oh." Bredon realized sheepishly that the mysterious voice was quite correct; his bladder was full and hisbelly was empty.He flushed slightly, then smiled at his own discomfiture and stood up."Lead the way," hesaid, his hand hooked into the waistband of his breeches.Behind him, the bed shifted its shape, and oozed around him, forming a receptacle in the appropriateposition.Other append-ages formed, but waited their turn.In the next several minutes Bredon was stripped, bathed, checked for parasites, shampooed, massaged,and generally cleansed and invigorated.He had no names for most of what the "bed" did to and for him, butwhen it had finished he felt absolutely wonderful."Would you like your old clothes back, or something new?" a soft, feminine voice asked.Bredon was startled, and momentarily embarrassed by his nudity until he realized that speaker was surelyanother inhuman spirit.When he recovered he decided he felt ready to take a little risk."Something new,"he said."Anything in particular?""No.""Delighted to be of service, sir." Something silky slid up his legs and onto his back; he raised his arms toslip into the sleeves, and found himself wearing a one-piece garment that looked like velvet, but thatweighed almost nothing and shimmered in a dozen shades of soft brown."Nice," he said appreciatively.He was dressed as well as a Power now.A table appeared before him, seeming to form out of thin air, and a strangely shaped chair rose out of thefloor behind him.He sat down gingerly."Did you have anything special in mind for breakfast?" Gamesmaster's familiar voice asked."I can't say I did," Bredon answered.He expected more of the foil packets, but those, he discovered, were strictly trail food.Here at Geste'shome, meals were served properly, on plates of various sizes and an assortment of oddly shaped dishes,some of which had the disconcerting habit of floating in midair a few centimeters above the table.All theplates and dishes had the knack of quietly vanishing once they were emptied.Bredon did not recognize a single one of the foods he was served, whether by sight, taste, or aroma.All,however, were delicious.When he had eaten his fill the golden light blinked out, plunging him into total darkness.Gamesmasterannounced, "We'll begin your lessons now, and we'll start with some elementary cosmology.I'll do my bestto put this so that you can understand it, and if there's anything that you don't understand, please stop meand I'll try to explain it more clearly.I expect some of this will conflict with what you were taught by yourown people, but this is the way those you call the Powers understand the uni-verse." It paused, but whetherit expected a response or merely wished to heighten the drama, Bredon could not decide."In the beginning," a deep new voice said, "there was the Bang." An image appeared, a blaze of lighthanging in the darkness before him, spreading out and scattering.Bredon listened to the creation myth as retold by what he had to consider another of the Trickster'sfamiliar spirits.The story was not very exciting; his own people had a much shorter and rather moreinteresting creation story, full of people rather than impersonal cosmic forces.The spirit, however, seemedto take its story more seriously than anyone took old Atheron's tale of the warring sects of Kru andPassijers being cast out of the heavens.He listened, though, and he watched the images of planets coalescing out of dust, heard the explanation ofhow life arose from the seas, how the creatures changed their forms over mil-lions of years.He gaped atsome of the creatures he was shown, and laughed at others.The pictures were incredibly real, so clear anddetailed that he had difficulty believing they were merely images.Then humans entered the story, not sent down from the heav-ens, but as just another creature [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]