Now the last of humanity was faced with a massive alien lawlessness and needed to be saved, whether by divine intervention or through inner resources. Either one required leadership. The moral word must flourish again within human flesh, in order to save that flesh. Spirit must take hold of that flesh, or both would perish.

Slowly, half bewildered by his own thoughts, he got up, left his small cabin, and knocked on Justin’s door across the narrow passageway.

“Come in,” his friend’s voice said through the small speaker.

Joshua brushed the touchplate with his fingers. The door slid open and he stepped inside.

Justin turned from his table, where he had been working on his pad, and smiled, looking less pudgy than usual. “You seem confused.”

Joshua stood by the door and told him what he had been thinking.

Justin said, “I was thinking similarly, except that my thoughts were about the martyrdom of man. The crucifixion has happened again. What we mostneed now is a resurrection of humanity, of the very body of Christ, in Christian terms.”

“And in Buddhist terms?” Joshua asked.

“All of humanity, as far as we know, may be gathered up here in the Cat. That may be the central fact of the rest of our lives. We must inquire on this basis what actions will be open to us. If we see what can be done, we must ask if it should be done.”

Joshua grimaced. “But how far do you carry the Buddhist principle of tolerance for everyone? The Intruders are outside its circle, are they not?”

“We don’t know who or what they are or how we might have offended them, do we?”

“Are you serious?” Joshua asked. “Buddhism and Christianity are for humankind, not for aliens. It doesn’t much matter how we offended them, if we did. All that matters is that we must decide what to do now.”

“I suspect,” Justin said, “that you and I already know what must be done.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“The same as you—we must leave. And we both know that there are ways to do it. But will the others agree with us?”

“How can they not?” Joshua laughed, and felt desperation in the effort. “Aren’t we going to offer salvation?” He was silent for a moment. “There are a number of ways we can leave. I think we should take the least obvious one.”

“The road least traveled?” Justin asked.

“Never traveled is better,” Joshua said. “We’ve got to find an even better hiding place than these rings, hunker down, and increase our numbers.” He recalled Moses’s forty years of wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt, and realized that the ancient leader had not done so merely to permit the generations that had known sin to be consumed but to raise an army of young men that would cross the Jordan under Joshua’s leadership and conquer Canaan, aided of course by a superweapon, the Ark of the Covenant. It was a wonderful story, much simplified in the Bible. The reality of the conquest was long and complex, and the result much more ambiguous than the decisive victory claimed by the tellers of the tale.