Chapter 11

Poetry, like consciousness, drops the insignificant digits.

—Raja Flattery, Shiprecords

SHIP’S WARNING that this could be the end of humankind left Flattery with a sense of emptiness.

He stared into the blackness which surrounded him, trying to find some relief. Would Ship really break the . . . recording? What did Ship mean by a recording?

Last chance.

His emotional responses told Flattery he had touched a deep core of affinity with his own kind. The thought that in some faraway future on a line through infinity there might be other humans to enjoy life as he had enjoyed it—this thought filled him with warm affections for such descendants.

“Do You really mean this is our last chance?” he asked.

“Much as it pains Me.” Ship’s response did not surprise him.

The words were torn from him: “Why don’t You just tell us how to . . .”

“Raj! How much of your free will would you give me!”

“How much would You take?”

“Believe Me, Raj, there are places where neither God nor Man dares intervene.”

“And You want me to go down to this planet, put Your question to them, and help them answer Your demand?”

“Would you do that?”

“Could I refuse?”

“I seek choice, Raj, not compulsion or chance. Will you accept?”

Flattery thought about this. He could refuse. Why not? What did he owe these . . . these . . . Shipmen, these replay survivors? But they were sufficiently human that he could interbreed with them. Human. And he still sensed that core of pain when he thought about a universe devoid of humans.

One last chance for humankind? It might be interesting . . . play. Or it might be one of Ship’s illusions.

“Is all this just illusion, Ship?”

“No. The flesh exists to feel the things that flesh feels. Doubt everything except that.”

“I either doubt everything or nothing.”

“So be it. Will you play despite your doubts?”

“Will You tell me more about this play?”

“If you ask a correct question.”

“What role am I playing?”

“Ahhhh . . .” It was a sigh of beatific grace. “You play the living challenge.”

Flattery knew that role. Living challenge. You made people find the best within themselves, a best which they might not suspect they possessed. But some would be destroyed by such a demand. Remembering the pain of responsibility for such destruction, he wanted help in his decision but knew he dared not ask directly. Perhaps if he learned more about Ship’s plans . . .

“Have You hidden in my memory things about the game that I should know?”

“Raj!” There was no mistaking the outrage. It flowed through him as though his body were a sudden sieve thrust beneath a hot cascade. Then, more softly: “I do not steal your memories, Raj.”

“Then I’m to be something different, a new factor, in this game. What else is different?”

“The place of the test possesses a difference so profound it may test you beyond your capacities, Raj.”