The Forbidden Science

By C.S. Thompson

The Feast of all Hosts

The sky outside was as dark as wine, and broken up by massive clouds that seemed to rush by like restless spirits. In the elegant confines of Den'ma's study, a small group of men had just finished dinner, and were now gathered for a traditional celebration of the Feast of all Hosts. Among the common citizens of the Empire, this feast was a riotous one, in which noisy parades of outlandishly costumed revelers thronged the streets, and the cities ruled by the Tene Dynasty were transformed into a masquerade. For the elite intellectuals of the mandarin class, such display would be considered vulgar. But it was customary for them to come together at this time nonetheless, and to pass the evening in quiet conversation in honor of the ancestors.

Den'ma looked around at his small company of guests. The most powerful of them was certainly Motared, a retired Lord Admiral of the Imperial Navy, and the governor of Torn. He wore a ceremonial red dress uniform weighed down with medals, and he affected the long white drooping mustaches of a retired military man. He sat in one of the lush red chairs and examined a scroll about military history- Nan Kelpitir's Tragic History of the Chylek Raids. He alone among the assembled guests was not actually a mandarin, but as a high-ranking military man he would make an interesting addition to the conversation.

Seated next to him was a professor of metaphysics named Kael, a partisan of the controversial Mythorealist movement and an expert on its Relationship Theory. He wore a traditional ankle-length tunic of charcoal gray in honor of the feast, as Den'ma himself had chosen to do. He had a short white beard, neatly trimmed, and his blue eyes were both intelligent and lively.

Maestro Jahennis, the Perigrinatio, stood beside him. He wore a monk's habit as the Perigrinatio generally did, though his order was not a religious one. His sunken cheeks and hollow eyes suggested the ascetic discipline for which the wandering sages were renowned. For centuries they had traveled the Empire, collecting information and offering philosophical counsel to whoever asked them for it. Despite their perpetual poverty, they were always respected, giving rise to the proverbial saying, 'as honest as a beggar sage'.

And then there was Doctor Diestro. A strange man, an unpleasant man, but in some ways fascinating. Though he had once been a respected scholar on Tolayon, he had been expelled from his position under a cloud of scandal, and had ended up on Torn after a number of years in which his activities were rather obscure. Here on Torn he had cultivated a reputation for eccentricity, running afoul of the Secret Police on at least one occasion- though some said he was actually an informer for them. He seemed to be perpetually smiling, though never with mirth, and his general appearance was like that of a vulture. Den'ma had thought him an appropriately eerie character for a feast of the dead.

"I'd like to welcome you all again," said the retired magistrate. "And to express my reverence for our honored ancestors. In the words of the poet Carrayid, we all feel 'A quiet ache for things that were, and will not be again' when we consider the great men and women who have gone before us, the poets and the statesmen and warriors, the sages and the artists. But I do not wish to speak too long. Eloquence is in the thing unsaid, to paraphrase Doesdion, and it is not within my meager powers to add any luster to the names of the past. I wish, instead, to open the floor. It is a custom of the Feast of all Hosts to tell stories on this night, especially tales of the supernatural. Some may consider this an old man's whim, to engage in a childish pastime, but such is my wish. Do any of you know a story I may not have heard? Or an old classic with a new twist, perhaps?"

He sat back and lit up his pipe, a long-stemmed and elegant red creation. Lord Admiral Motared smiled in response.

"You are always the most delightful host, old friend!" he said. "I haven't told ghost stories on this night in many a decade. But the only such tale I remember is Kuesetai's Doom."

"Perhaps something less familiar to start with," said magistrate Den'ma.

"The beggar sages do not tell ghost tales," said Professor Kael, and Maestro Jahennis smiled just a little. "And I can scarcely remember any myself. What about The Last Hours of Emperor Tolamid?"

"I do love that one," said Motared.

"But it is not quite appropriate for this occasion," said their host. "As at the end of the story the supernatural element is revealed to be fraudulent. No, we need a genuine fright. Are there any others?"

"I do have a suggestion," said Doctor Diestro, producing a slender booklet from inside his coat. "Are any of you familiar with Professor Pantomime?"

Kael nodded. "It is a legend of Char," he said. "And one of particular interest in my field. Is that a reprint of the famous pamphlets?"

"Indeed it is. They are not exactly ghost stories, but I think they will do. The Pantomime booklets have an eerie quality, especially considering their infamous origins. I believe our host will be satisfied."

"Then please proceed," said Den'ma. "I am already curious. From the look on our professor's face, this promises to be an interesting conversation."

Doctor Diestro bowed slightly to the audience, then began to read.

Professor Pantomime

The name of “Professor Pantomime,” of course, is a fictional one, a fairy-tale bogeyman from the folklore of Char. He was said to be a mad professor, either of philosophy or anthropology, who poisoned all his students, or a kind of pied piper character who led them away to parts unknown. New students at Char University are still told this story by their older classmates. Most of the students half-believe in it, though an extensive search of university records has turned up no evidence of such an incident, and certainly none of a professor with the name of Pantomime.

From "Exorcism among the Praqiri People" by Professor Pantomime

It should come as no surprise that the Praqiri exiles, long known for superstitions of the most extravagant sort, have developed an elaborate folklore of possession and exorcism. There is a thriving caste of exorcists in every Praqiri ghetto, along with their more familiar complement of fortune-tellers and oracle interpreters. While the obelisks of the Praqiri wastelands have attracted attention, even becoming a travel destination in recent decades, the customs of Praqiri exorcism have been poorly documented. This is all the more peculiar because their intrinsic interest is considerable. What was initially a primitive belief system has become much more sophisticated, raising fascinating questions of epistemology as well as anthropology. The Praqiri exorcists have developed a new theory of truth and falsehood, a theory that is yet to be critically examined by the philosophical community.

The Praqiri possession legend in its original form was relatively simple: there are certain spirits, known as Zhanuk or "hungry dreams," which attempt to possess human beings and other sentient creatures. The Zhanuk, being disembodied spirits, have no sense-organs. The world for them is gray and tasteless, a perpetual limbo in which there is nothing to see or touch, where all knowledge is abstract. They know nothing of our needs and passions, of physical pain or hunger, of lust or anger.

While some might consider this a utopian existence, a crude yearning for sense-experience obsesses the Zhanuk. They despise their mental world for its colorless blandness, and try to invade the bodies of sentient creatures in order to know physical reality first-hand. In the words of a Praqiri exorcist from the ghetto on Delphit: "They hunger to see and be seen, to touch and be touched." But the results are tragic. Because the Zhanuk are totally ignorant of human life, they have no conception of human ethics and no experience of suffering. They merely crave sense experience, of whatever kind, and they have absolutely no qualms as to how they find it. A man possessed by a Zhanuk might slaughter his family, or rape a stranger who happens by, or gorge himself until he dies. All these things produce intense experiences and strong emotions, and all such sensations are equally fascinating to the Zhanuk. The terrible consequences in our world are quite irrelevant to them, because they have no context in which to understand the harm they cause. Thus the need for professional intervention by the Praqiri exorcist.

The exorcist is only one member of a much wider class of Praqiri religious specialists, a hierarchy with the Elders of the Obelisks at the top, and the vast array of common fortune tellers and witch hunters at the bottom. The exorcists occupy a middle place in this traditional scheme, rather more prestigious than palm-readers and charm-setters, but not nearly as socially revered as the Obelisk Elders.

The training of an exorcist requires a decade, and is generally accomplished through the traditional process of apprenticeship. A young boy or girl who has survived an exorcism is most often chosen, as if the ordeal of possession is considered a mark, a sign of interest from the world of the spirits. The training is quite severe and not infrequently fatal, and a great many Praqiri exorcists give evidence of disordered mental states. The exorcism itself is highly traumatic, involving several days of fasting and chanting, ritual purification by incense smoke, and self-inflicted injury. At the end of the purification period is the ritual itself, a terrifying ceremony in which constant drumming and hysterical chanting, combined with thick clouds of cloying incense smoke and constant bloodletting, eventually drive the Zhanuk spirit from the person and into a doll or "poppet." The poppet is then bound, and ultimately disposed of, and the victim of the possession is considered cured, though several weeks of purification are considered appropriate.

Any mandarin intellectual, upon reading this, would no doubt be shaking his head at the sheer superstition of it, the backward and savage obsessions for which the Praqiri are infamous. But there is considerable evidence that the rite is effective.

An extensive study by the Char University Psychiatric Department, published in 405 TD by the Committee for Investigative Psychiatry, is the only research to date on this obscure phenomenon. But the results are telling. Of the roughly 1000 cases of possession examined in this study, the exorcism resulted in a documented cure in fully 556 cases. Another two hundred or so were inconclusive (some evidence of improvement was observed, but symptoms of mental illness persisted). The remaining cases showed no improvement at all, and in at least fifty cases, the patient died.

By way of comparison, there were 523 cases of serious mental illness at Delphit's Harat Institution in the same time period. Of these, less than a hundred made a full recovery, though they had access to every advantage of Tene Dynasty medical science. Of the 75 Praqiri inside Harat, not one made a full recovery. These results are damning.

Why is it that the Praqiri exorcism can achieve what psychiatry can't? One would expect the Praqiri exorcists to have one opinion on this question and the psychiatric community another. But the exorcists themselves have declined to take a position on the matter. Their view is strikingly pragmatic for so-called witch doctors:

If I can perform the rite and remove the Zhanuk, it is of no consequence to me that the Zhanuk is real. The Zhanuk could be a figment of the mind and it would make no difference.

The epistemological assumption of this short passage is fascinating. Rather than assuming the existence of a knowable reality to which only one opinion can conform, the Praqiri exorcist posits the opposite- objective reality is something opaque to us, and something that must remain forever opaque. We have only points of view. Each point of view describes the world as best it can, but nowhere is it stated that all points of view are equally valid. Reality, after all, is something we interact with, something we have a relationship to. There are always observable facts, whatever they might mean. In the case of a successful exorcism, those facts are as follows:

1. A man believes himself to have been possessed by a spirit.
2. He goes to an exorcist for a cure.
3. His symptoms are relieved.

Any explanation that did not account for these facts would not be a valid one. But there are two hypotheses which appear to account for these facts equally well:

1. He was in fact possessed, and the exorcism cured him by expelling the spirit.
2. He was suffering from a psychological imbalance, and the exorcism restored his balance through a ritualistic dramatization and resolution of his emotional crisis.

There appears to be no objective way to select between these two explanations. And so the Praqiri exorcist does not attempt to. He considers them to be two ways of saying the same thing:

"We are not in disagreement with your doctors. We simply use a different language. What you call a neurosis or a delusion, we call a Zhanuk. The truth-test of any thing is in its effectiveness."

This epistemology is not hostile to the scientific method. For instance, the traditional medicine of the Sardich Shell Witches, which was based heavily around astrological correspondences, has been proven to be ineffective. Far too often it resulted in the death of their patients, and it rarely cured them. The traditional Sardich explanation of disease was inadequate, matching poorly to the observable facts. As a result it has been abandoned, and even the Shell Witches themselves no longer practice it.

On the other hand, Praqiri acupuncture, which is based on an elaborate network of energy meridians, has been tested and found effective. While the energy in question is unknown to science, or at least to our science, it appears to work. Attempts by medical science to explain its effectiveness without relying on the energy meridians can be found in the literature. But these explanations cannot be considered superior to the traditional one, because there is no observable difference between their effectiveness. The epistemology of relationships is strictly practical. This is the meaning behind the Third Law of the Praqiri Exorcists: "Interactions are the reality, form is the illusion."

The Last Lecture of Professor Pantomime¹

I hope you’ll forgive me for this little field trip of ours. Field trips are for novitiates, and I know you’re not children. But there’s something very special about a place like this. The steel walls of the Comun Vara stretch out behind us, now faded to a mottled gray with the passing years. There is a ceiling above us somewhere, though it's hard to see it.

It’s really nothing but an old abandoned ship. It’s been in orbit out here for a century or two. Yes, some call it a ghost ship. What a predictable choice of words. But I do suppose it fits the cliché. Any old ship like this one should be a ghost ship. It would be almost indecent of it not to be.

Do you hear the creaking sound from the ancient metal, the high moaning that shudders its way through the empty corridors? Well, that’s almost too dramatic. But there's still something about it, isn't there?

We’ve been reading about the numinous. Places where we can touch the Other. Sacred places.

You’ll remember the groves of the Velet Ruyacht, the holy forests where mindless idols grinned emptily down at their worshippers. The bloodstained trees where nobody walked at noon, not even the priests. Just imagine the way your skin would crawl in such a place, the way you would shudder. Well, what is that exactly? Why do some places fill us with horror?

Or the alien obelisks of the Praqiri polar region, the dark stones that jut up like broken bones from the arctic landscape. If we walk through that forest of tombstones without a tour guide, without a dozen cameras clicking and flashing all around us… if we walk there alone…

You see what I’m saying. There are places that fill us with dread by their very nature. This ship is one of them. It has a checkered history, but you don’t need to be told that. You can feel it all just sitting here, can’t you?

I'm certainly not telling you this merely to scare you. We don’t even have a campfire. But I did bring you here for a reason. My intention was simply to illustrate something about the numinous, about that peculiar quality that makes a place holy or unholy. But it’s an entirely subjective experience. You either feel it or you don’t. It’s totally irrelevant whether you believe in it or not. I’m not saying that your feelings can determine objective truth. I’m saying it doesn’t matter in the first place. Not when you’re sitting up at night with cold sweat on your forehead as you stare at the ceiling. Not when you slit your wrists. What we believe is nothing; what we live is everything. And are you trying to tell me you’re not living it right now?

We must define our terms. Or purify the words, to quote Doesdion. What is it that I mean, when I speak of a haunting? What exactly am I communicating?

Am I trying to claim that I have some privileged insight into the nature of our reality- that I alone can see behind the curtain, that I know the truth?

Only a fool or a fanatic would make that claim. I claim no such thing. I see no more of reality than any of you do. But I speak only from certain knowledge- and that knowledge is my own experience. When I describe a place as being haunted, what I actually mean is that I’m haunted by it. The memory of it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up; I feel a sense of supernatural awe, a touch of dread. Do I have any idea what causes this? No. Of course not.

The haunting itself, then, is my relationship with the place. This has implications you have not even imagined. It goes to the heart of what we call reality. It is what we call reality! Consider this:

We know from our reading that all our knowledge is through the medium of the senses. We know only the world of phenomena, those things which appear to be real because we can see them or touch them. It was Jhat Qorin who said it. We see the always-changing shadowplay of light and dark, the flickering images on the wall in front of us, but not the thing that casts the shadow. Not the thing in itself. The true nature of reality is beyond our senses. We can never touch it or measure it. We can never know it.

But there have been other answers to the same question. The Yail monks of Poreta, for instance, speak of emptiness. There is no ‘thing in itself,’ according to them. No hidden noumena behind the phenomena. No essential existence to anything.

A human being, to the Yail monks, is just an aggregate of separate parts, a chance combination with no fundamental reality, a bag of odds and ends. There is no ghost in their machine.

But for an aggregate to function, there must be something else. Not a soul or some other fairy tale, no metaphysical glue. What makes an aggregate function is simply the relationship, the interaction between the different parts. A whole greater than the sum of its parts. And now we see that this hints at a greater truth.

Jhat Qorin spoke of the noumen, the thing in itself, the fundamental reality we cannot see behind the phenomena we can see. But we are too old as a race to believe in such myths.¹

The Yail monks have it right. We know of no hidden noumen behind the parts. But the interaction between the parts- that is the noumen! The relationship is the ‘thing in itself’. What else could be?

And this is so much worse than ghosts. So much worse! Not a secret afterlife we can’t understand, a truth we’ll grasp when we die, a comforting answer. Nothing at all except the relationships. Our relationship to this ship, for example. A haunted relationship.

We were talking about the numinous. Note that word again! It’s the same as the noumen.² We’re talking about the dread of the infinite, not some petty fear of personal harm. A place such as this one cannot be answered; it can’t be reasoned away; it can’t be accommodated. The only thing you can do here is drop to your knees, to pray that the ship won’t hear you, that it will let you go away.

But there is nothing here to answer your prayers! This is nothing but an empty old ship. There’s nothing that walks here. And how can any of you escape from that?

Peer across the cramped dark space of the docking bay, the little cave of old pipes and gray metal and silent monitors. Isn't it getting harder to deny that you feel it? It doesn’t feel like a ghost exactly. It doesn’t feel that human.

Look at the far wall. Look what he wrote there.

The letters are old and faded, difficult to see in the masklight beams, but definitely there. Rust-colored and two feet tall:

It Knows Me.

The usual assumption is that Captain Vidion wrote it, sometime after he put the crew out the airlock and before he hung himself.

Ah, yes. Total silence.

This ship is a place of suicide. A place of murder. It’s a place that haunts people until they break. There are no ghosts here, no. There are only our memories. But our memories are more than enough. Wouldn't you agree?

Does it even matter whether there is any such thing as a ghost? An abstract question, an unanswerable question, and a meaningless one. What matters to me is that I can’t escape this horrible feeling; I can’t escape my awe of it, the conviction that it is so much bigger than I am. That is the world we live in: the world of the numinous. A world where we are always haunted: a world of horror.

I see that some of you are feeling nauseated. Unfortunately, it’s not an accident. I filled up your facemasks with an unorthodox mixture. The effects are actually terminal. But I do hope you understand.

Your eyes and mouths are as wide as landing bays! But I will miss you, now that you've graduated. I will miss you all.

The steel corridors of the haunted ship creak and moan, a ghost song without any need for an afterlife, a mindless horror.

I would ask the ship if it is happy now, if this will suffice.

But there is no one to answer me.

The City of Would-be Birds

"What an extraordinary piece of work," said Professor Kael. Doctor Diestro grinned ghoulishly, as he tucked the pamphlet into his coat.

"What an extraordinary piece of fantasy, you mean," said Maestro Jahennis. "You know as well as I do that there was no Professor Pantomime, and no such incident as this mass murder of his ever happened. It's a suitable ghost story for the occasion; that's all."

"The point is surely not the existence of Pantomime. This is one of the earliest expressions we have of Relationship Theory, or at least a certain aspect of it. It's a work of metaphysics disguised as fiction."

"It would have been wiser to leave it as fiction. What castles of air you professors build! Are we to conclude, now, that facts do not matter? That it is actually irrelevant to attempt to discover them? Are those who would distinguish between truth and falsehood merely fools? I wouldn't design a ship on those principles, I assure you- or else it would be liable to share the supposed fate of the Comun Vara, floating along in the void of space with a crew of corpses."

"That is an invalid comparison," said Kael. "No one is suggesting the application of such principles to engineering. There are realms where objective fact does indeed hold sway. What we are talking about just now is the Absolute."

"The Absolute." Jahennis snorted. "I have wandered the empire from planet to planet for forty years. I have seen these Praqiri ghettoes with my own eyes, infested with fortune-tellers and exorcists like sightseers at a funeral. I've been to Sardich and Eraptor. I've slept out in the back-alleys and I've dined with the Emperor. I have never seen any hint of the Absolute, whatever that means."

"You Perigrinatio are men of plain-speaking," said Lord Admiral Motared. "I wouldn't expect you to believe in ghosts and fairy tales. But this is the Feast of all Hosts, after all. If our good professor and Doctor Diestro can give a justification for their strange beliefs, it would serve at the very least to pass the time."

Diestro laughed. "I could give you a justification that would make your blood stop, and your skin turn as cold as the wind between the worlds. But I am no longer an academic like Professor Kael. If anyone is going to mount an argument, it ought to be him."

"I will attempt to do so, with our host's permission." Professor Kael glanced over at Den'ma, who had fallen asleep. "But I must beg you not to associate my argument with superstition. The pamphlets attributed to Professor Pantomime were fictional, and they used the fictional framework of supernatural beliefs. But they did so only in order to make a point. Relationship Theory in and of itself has nothing to do with the supernatural."

Diestro laughed again, but he was ignored. Maestro Jahennis bowed slightly to Kael. "The floor is yours, sir," he said. "If we advance on the premise that your metaphysical speculations are as abstract as you say they are, and not merely a backdoor justification for primitive folk beliefs, I will listen gladly."

Professor Kael began.

"The first question we must examine," he said, "Is what we mean by Reality. This is one of those words that people use without defining it, without even thinking about it. What is Real?"

"What is actually present in the world of fact," said Motared. "As distinguished from what we hope to see, or fear to see, either one of which can distort our vision. Don't the Yail monks have a saying about this: No Hope, No Fear?"

"Indeed they do. But your question presupposes something, the existence of which we have yet to establish. If you think about it, you'll see what I mean. When you define Reality as 'that which is actually present,' you're talking in a circle. You've just defined Reality as 'that which is Real,' and that tells us nothing."

"I suppose it doesn't," said the Lord Admiral.

"Reality is a consensus," said Doctor Diestro, "A consensus that can change at any time."

"And if some fool were to introduce a hallucinogen into the water supply?" said Maestro Jahennis. "A billion people might share a consensus that they could fly, but that doesn't mean they could. I'll wager if they jumped off a cliff together you'd have a billion dead people, not a billion new birds."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," said Diestro. Kael waved his hand as if to dismiss the notion.

"I'll grant the truth of that. It actually gets me a little closer to my point. Imagine that were to happen: someone introduces a specially-designed hallucinogen into the water supply, and an entire city suffers the same delusion at the same time. But it is in fact a delusion. They cannot fly. When they go and jump off a cliff together, they fall to their deaths. So what does that tell you?"

"That Reality, whatever it is, is not a matter of opinion," said Maestro Jahennis. "It is utterly indifferent to our hopes and fears. It just is what it is."

"It tells me something a little different, which is not to say that you're entirely wrong. We perceive the world through our senses. All our information, whatever it is, must come to our minds through the medium of our sense experiences. Do you accept that point?"

"Not entirely. What about the information we arrive at through reason alone?" said Jahennis. "Mathematics and geometry and formal logic- all of these are abstract systems. They require no outside information."

"I will grant that point," said Maestro Jahennis.

"Then I will return to our example. Our city of would-be birds is delusional, not because they believe something that is Untrue in some absolute sense, but simply because their belief does not correspond to their actual experience. When they jump off the cliff, they don't experience the rapture of flight, but the terror of falling to their deaths. Their perception that they could fly was only partial. If it had been a complete perception, they would have flown."

"I'm afraid you've lost me," said Jahennis dryly.

"I'm not sure I have," said Kael, "But I'll approach it from another angle. For all of your dismissive words about formal philosophy, you Perigrinatio make an extensive study of systems of thought. Would you be so kind as to run through the most important theories about the nature of Reality for our benefit?"

"I'd be glad to assist you," said Jahennis. "To the extent of my ability. Let's see then. The Perigrinatio accept only two categories of genuine knowledge: the everyday world of our experience, and the power of reason. We reject all talk of spirits as superstition, and though we acknowledge the Void as described by Doesdion, we deny to it the status of Deity. To put our position as directly as possible, we assert that the apparent world is the actual world, and that there is no hidden or mystical reality behind it.

"To this position there have of course been objections. The most familiar will be the work of Jhat Qorin, in his famous text The Shadowplay. He insisted that we have knowledge of things only through our minds, and that our mental images such as sounds and sights are not the objects of the external world themselves, but only our interpretations of them. The side of a space vessel may appear black to our eyes, but to a creature with infrared vision it would appear as a glowing furnace because of the intense heat of its engines. So which is it 'really'- a black ship or a glowing one? It's hard to deny that he has a point- we can never know what a thing is 'in itself,' but only what it appears as to us. But that hardly seems like a support for wild speculation. We have every reason to believe that our senses generally provide us with an accurate picture of the external world, if an incomplete one.

The Yail monks go still further, asserting that no object has any absolute reality of its own. They insist that our senses not only can deceive us, but that they always do, and that the only fundamental reality is Mind itself. This position is too extreme to be useful, but it has its supporters.

"Superstition and religion assume an objective reality whose rules are quite arbitrary, not subject to physical laws and not demonstrable under controlled conditions. A world of chaos and random whim, and not the actual world we live in. The studies quoted in Diestro's pamphlet were entirely fictional. No scientific study has ever supported the benefit of exorcism. We have only the subjective opinion of the exorcists themselves, and of those patients lucky enough to survive their treatments. Only the naive or ignorant take such claims literally.

"So we have the position of the Perigrinatio- that the apparent world is the actual world. We have the position of the Yail Brotherhood- that the apparent world is an illusion. We have the unique theories of Jhat Qorin, in which the apparent world is an interpretation, while the actual world remains unknowable. And we have the superstitions of witch-doctors and priests, in which the world is something other than what it appears to be, but that this other thing can be known and manipulated."

"I thank you, Maestro," said Professor Kael. "Let's look at the various theories one by one. If the world is what it appears to be, the obvious question is to whom? If I see a pair of wings on my back while you do not, which one of us is correct? The world does not appear the same to both of us."

"No one else sees wings on your back," said Motared, "So you must be wrong."

"That isn't good enough," said Maestro Jahennis, "We already demonstrated that consensus won't do it. If a million people believe something untrue, it remains untrue. There have been beliefs which were held by practically every person in the Empire which were proven false. For example, in the Zu Dynasty it was widely believed that no intelligent life could exist in the Chylek Belt, because the scientists of the Empire assured us of it. They were obviously wrong, as they discovered when the Chylek raiders destroyed the empire. Consensus made no difference."

"But surely there is a difference between what we experience ourselves and what we hear second-hand?" said Motared.

"Indeed," said Professor Kael, "I am experiencing these wings on my back, which you say don't exist. My experience of the wings is first-hand, and your opinion (to me) is second-hand."

"What an odd problem," said the Lord Admiral. "Are you saying that madmen aren't mad at all, then?"

"I am not. One's experience of reality must be functional, at a minimum. But consensus cannot be the basis for what we call Reality."

"Then what can?"

"There's something to be said for consistency," said Maestro Jahennis. "Does this hypothetical experience of yours add up in a satisfactory way with your other experiences?"

"You're making my point for me without realizing it," said Professor Kael. "Let's say that it almost does. Let's say the wings on my back have weight and texture; that they are soft to the touch and they make my back itch. But there's something wrong. When I go through a doorway I don't get stuck- they don't block the door. They don't appear to take up any physical space."

"So you accept that they're a hallucination."

"So reality is a matter of shades of gray?" said Jahennis.

"Exactly. When we say that something is Real, what we mean is that we experience it or perceive it. But something that is only partially perceived is only partially real."

"I'm not ready to buy this yet," said Maestro Jahennis. "Let's have a look at the other theories of reality. What do you make of them? What about the doctrine of emptiness of the Yail Brotherhood? Do you consider everything to be illusion, as they do?"

"Their doctrine has been misrepresented," said Professor Kael. "When the monks of the Yail Brotherhood speak of illusion, they don't intend to convey that our perceptions are meaningless. What they actually mean is that nothing exists in a vacuum. Nothing has any objective and independent existence, but only an existence relative to other objects. The spaceship of your earlier example, for instance- there is no 'thing in itself' as Jhat Qorin would have it, that which the spaceship 'really is' on its own. The spaceship can never be separated from some sort of context, not even as a hypothetical mental game. (For even in this case there would be a context- the mind doing the imagining, and what it imagines.) No, there is always a context in which a thing exists, and it is only in that context that we can speak of it. To us, the spaceship is black, and to the creature with infrared vision, it is glowing. Both points of view are equally valid, and if one were to speak of what the spaceship 'really' is on its own, one would come up empty- and in that sense, what the spaceship 'really' is, is nothing. That's the sense in which they call it illusion.

"The doctrine of the Yail Brotherhood has a profound connection to Relationship Theory, so I will set it aside for the time being as premature. The doctrines of religion and superstition also have relevance, but they must be carefully divided into two distinct categories. There are those religious or supernatural experiences which are direct- a feeling of transcendent awe upon reciting a prayer, the shiver of involuntary terror in a graveyard at night- and those experiences which are indirect, such as the acceptance of certain dogmas on faith alone, based solely on the secondhand accounts of others' experiences. Neither category is in any way illegitimate, but those things which have been experienced directly are a type of reality- the reality of the experience itself, if nothing else. Those things which are accepted on testimony are merely opinions, and as liable to be corrected by new experience as any other opinion."

"So you define reality as experience or perception," said Maestro Jahennis, "And in shades of gray instead of black and white."

"Exactly."

"I can't accept that without reservation. If we acknowledge that something can be 'partially real' we open the door to a lot of nonsense. But I can't come up with a defensible definition of reality that excludes what we experience."

"Then will you accept this much," said Professor Kael, "Whatever reality actually is, we can know nothing of it without perception. Our knowledge or conception of reality depends on perception."

"I can accept that much," said Jahennis.

"Then allow me to move on to the second principle of Relationship Theory: that perception occurs through the meeting of unlike things."

The Meeting of Unlike Things

"What a colorful phrase," said Motared, "But what does it mean?"

"I will present you with some examples," said Professor Kael. "Take this passage from the Book of the Void:

In ultimate light is ultimate darkness, and there is no difference between the empty blackness beyond the stars and the endless white heat inside them. All is the same in both; all is the Void. So it is with You, oh God, so it is with Your light. For the fierce blaze of absolute truth is the darkness of ignorance. There is nothing we can say of Your ways; there is nothing we can know.

If you were able to see somehow into the middle of a sun, where there is nothing but white light in every direction, could you see anything at all?"

"I imagine not," said Motared. "There would be nothing but the light."

"And if you could see the empty spaces beyond the furthest stars, where the dimmest light of the most distant galaxy can no longer penetrate, would you see anything but the blackness?"

"Obviously not."

"In both cases you'd be equally blind; there'd be nothing to perceive. But if there was a spot of blackness in the midst of the sun, you'd perceive that because of its contrast with the light."

"That's true."

"And it's the same in the depths of space, if you were floating out there in between the worlds. Though space itself is infinitely black, or more accurately, colorless, yet you would still see the stars."

"Yes, of course you would," said Motared. "As I know all too well. When the Borseday's Glory was torpedoed in the Telpid War, I was floating around for twelve hours before the recovery team found me out there. It seemed like there were a million stars, and all of them unreachable."

"Then you understand my point: contrast is a prerequisite for perception. Without contrast, we'd be totally blind. It's the meeting of unlike things."

"I don't want to take you too far off the point," said Maestro Jahennis, "But that reminded me of something interesting. When I was on Delphit I met a man who'd suffered a head injury, as a result of a fall he had taken at work. He could make no distinction between himself and others. The sense that we have that our selves are finite- that they end at our skins, if you will- was completely lost on him. He could no more distinguish between himself and another person than he could between his left hand and his right hand- while he could see that they were not identical things, they were all a part of him as far as he was concerned. For that matter, he felt as if the sky was just a part of him too. It was one of the most peculiar cases I had ever seen."

"What does that tell you?" said Professor Kael.

"I did give it some thought," said Maestro Jahennis. "Perhaps the distinction between self and other is a function of the mind, a mental category rather than an absolute fact- we must make distinctions between things if we are to deal with them."

"That's exactly the point," said Professor Kael. "Perception requires contrast. The man you describe could not perceive a contrast between his own self and the external world, as a result of which there was no external world for him- he was, in a sense, blind. But there have been religious orders which sought exactly that sort of blindness, taking their inspiration from the passage I quoted a moment ago in the Book of the Void. If absolute truth is 'the darkness of ignorance,' and the blinding light of the glory of God is the emptiness of the Void, then the inability to distinguish between self and other would be tantamount to knowing both. This is the 'Blind Enlightenment' of the Yail Brotherhood, though they might not be happy to know that identical results could be achieved through a head injury. But whatever the case may be, are we agreed: that there is no perception without contrast?"

"We are agreed," said Maestro Jahennis, "Though it hardly seems like much of a revelation. What is the next principle of your Relationship Theory?"

The Perception of Contrast

"That the perception of contrast occurs through an interaction," said Professor Kael, "A relationship between the parties involved."

Maestro Jahennis raised one eyebrow. "What do you mean by that?"

"Let's take the example in the Professor Pantomime text, although you should remember that the supernatural elements are intended for illustration."

"This is cowardice," said Doctor Diestro.

"You neglected to make your case," said Professor Kael, "But I will make mine. Our fictional Professor Pantomime is on the deck of the Comun Vara, walking through the empty corridors with their creaking pipes. The hairs on the back of his neck are standing up; he doesn't like it but he's scared. He feels a contrast that is most unwelcome: the contrast between his own self with its hidden weaknesses, whatever psychological flaw it is that will soon lead to his madness, and the awesome almost-silence of the infamous vessel. A contrast that is most seductive in its familiarity, but a contrast nonetheless- the distinction between what he's supposed to be and what he is, between the life of reason of a trained academic, and the urge toward darkness he has always suppressed. The contrast between the dead stillness of the abandoned hallways- without light and without oxygen, yet somehow undying- and his own existence with its petty lies. And also the contrast between the void of space in its infinite coldness and his tiny little masklight and half-empty oxygen tank.

"This is how he knows the ship- through this sequence of contrasts. And it is by this sequence of contrasts that their relationship is defined, a relationship between Professor Pantomime and his perception of the ship- an interaction he describes as haunted, and entirely accurately. Because it is the relationship that haunts him, and no mere ghost."

"I think I catch your general point," said Maestro Jahennis, "But the Perigrinatio are a simple bunch. If you could express your argument in more down-to-earth terms, you would have my thanks."

"Very well then," said Professor Kael, "If your eye is to see, there must be an interaction between your eye and the light, which carries to you the information about your surrounding environment. If your ear is to hear, there must be an interaction between your ear and the sound waves. Whatever is there to be perceived must create a contrast, but for you to become aware of the contrast, you must interact with whatever it is that carries the information to you."

"So where are we now? You have formulated some of the basic principles of Relationship Theory for us. Would you restate them before continuing?"

"They are as follows: Reality is what we experience or perceive. Perception occurs through the meeting of unlike things, or to put it more simply, there is no perception without contrast. And the perception of contrast occurs through an interaction, a relationship between the parties involved."

"You have come very close to defining Reality as Relationships," said Motared. "Would that be accurate?"

"It certainly would. My reality is my relationship with my perceived environment, whatever that relationship may be. If I stick my hand in a fire, for example, my reality will be burning."

The Process of Change

"The next principle of Relationship Theory is this: that any interaction changes both parties relative to each other. In our entertaining example of Professor Pantomime, his interaction with the Comun Vara drove him mad, preying on some secret internal weakness until he snapped from the strain, deciding to poison his entire class in some misguided attempt to appease the ship. As it says at the end of the pamphlet, there was nothing there to be appeased. It was that nothing, in fact, that drove him crazy."

"And how was the Comun Vara changed?" asked the Lord Admiral.

"The legendary ghost ship claimed several more victims."

"I can't tell whether you're being literal, allegorical, or deliberately humorous," snapped Maestro Jahennis. "Or whether you're trying to be all three at once."

"Closest to that, perhaps," said Professor Kael. "A type of mental fluidity is characteristic of Relationship Theory, since no valid point of view is privileged above any other- we call it Ringing the Changes. But I'll explain that further in a little while. In the meantime, I have more common-sense examples for you."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Jahennis.

"Have you ever had a chance to watch a demonstration by the Imperial Knights, where they put the novices through their paces in front of an audience?"

"I have," said Maestro Jahennis, "And it's quite a show. The novices are instructed to cut certain targets, hanging from the ceiling in front of them. They use their ceremonial dress swords for this purpose, slicing through the hanging targets with remarkable precision. They also put on a demonstration of combat hand-gunnery, using pulse weapons or automatics on a high-pressure shooting range. It's a thrilling sight."

"In the interaction between the novice's sword and the target," said Professor Kael, "The target is obviously changed- it's cut in half. And yet the sword is changed as well. If you examined the blade under a microscope you would find tiny nicks and lines, the almost-imperceptible damage made by the target as the sword passed through it. It is through the angle of the cut on the target, its precision and its clean lines, that the cut is judged. An Imperial Knight can tell a good cut from a bad one at a glance. The same thing happens on the shooting range. From the damage done to the target we can tell exactly what angle the shot was fired from, while the shot itself is changed irrevocably. In the case of a pulse weapon, the pulse is dissipated, spending its energy in destroying the target. A bullet will be crushed as it strikes home.

"In both cases, you are an observer. You watched from the audience as the sword cut the target, as the pulse blew it up, as the bullet pierced it. That information was observed by you. And in both cases the two parties to the interaction were changed in the process, as is always the case with any interaction.

"Here is a still more mundane example- your eyesight. For you to become aware of anything in the external world, beams of light must pass into your eyes, changing as they are reflected by the lens, to show you a picture. The light changes as it enters your eye and your eye changes as well, blinking perhaps at the brightness of the light. And you observe and interpret. You perceive information. For information to be perceived, three parties are required: an observer and two objects which change relative to each other.

"These are the basic axioms of Relationship Theory, the foundation stones on which the theory itself is built. I am now ready to introduce you to the Theory proper, beginning with Conservation of Information and a process of thought called the Zed Tree."

The Zed Tree

"We speak often in Relationship Theory of Worldviews, but our use of the term is a technical one. A Worldview for us is simply a way of modeling a relationship, and there are probably an infinite number of ways to model any particular relationship.

"The simplest possible example I can think of is the concept of 0 (incidentally a symbol of the Void to the Yail Brotherhood). The relationship of 1-1 is equivalent to 0, as is 1,000-1,000; but these are obvious enough. I could also use the example of a small body orbiting around a planet, in which the relationship between gravity and the centrifugal force, expressed as mg (r/RE)2 – mv2/r is also equivalent to 0. Equal and opposite momenta add up to zero total momentum, as in the case of two objects being propelled apart from each other by a great explosion. There are any number of ways to describe a relationship that adds up to zero.

"If we symbolize a relationship by the letter Z or Zed, then the simplest possible description or model of that relationship can be described as Z0 or Zed-naught. Another way of describing the same relationship would be to define it as the sum of two opposite relationships, one of which is a change from Zed-naught in one direction while the other is an equivalent change from Zed-naught in the opposite direction. Symbolizing the first of these as Z+ and the second as Z-, we find that Z+ + Z- = Z0, so that the two opposites (Z+ and Z-) are equivalent to Z0 when combined as a sum.

"The easiest real-world example I can give of this is the one I just mentioned. A body at rest has zero momentum, but if it is blown into two pieces in an explosion, and each piece is traveling away from the other at equivalent momenta, then the total momentum remains zero despite the explosion.

"There are other possible sums that would add up to Zed-naught, and any sum that adds up to Zed-naught would be equivalent, just as 1-1 is equivalent to 1,000-1,000. We call such a sum a Worldview. The Zed Tree is a model of Worldviews, beginning with the simplest, or 'First Worldview'- Zed-naught. The Second Worldview represents two relationships which are exactly opposite, so that the union of these two relationships would add up to Zed-naught."

The Professor fished around in his pocket, producing a piece of paper and a pen. He drew a diagram and showed it around:

"This is a Zed Tree of the most basic type," he said. "The bottom line is the First Worldview, or Zed-naught. The top line represents the Second Worldview, in which both relationships are opposite in exactly equivalent ways, producing the same result. An example from physics has already been given, that of a piece of stone with no momentum. That is our First Worldview. On the left side of the second line we have a piece of that same stone, flying off in one direction because of an explosion. On the right side of the second line we have the other piece of the same stone, flying off in the opposite direction with the same force. The momentum of the two pieces, when considered together, is the Second Worldview. And as you can see, it's exactly equivalent to the first.

"A metaphysical example can be given from our sacred texts, Doesdion's Analects and the Book of the Void. If God in His unknowable majesty is considered Zed-naught, then our tradition teaches us that He may be approached in two opposite ways. The Negative Way of the Book of the Void would stress His transcendence, the impossibility of limiting Him or understanding Him, His utter mystery. The Positive Way as described in Doesdion's Analects would stress His immanence, and the possibility of approaching Him through ethical behavior and ritual custom. The Negative Way would be Z- and the Positive Way Z+, adding up when considered together to our religion, the Second Worldview on that particular Zed Tree. And the Second Worldview means the same as the First.

"The example given in the first Pantomime text is also relevant. If Zed-naught is taken to be the following facts:

1. A man believes himself to have been possessed by a spirit.
2. He goes to an exorcist for a cure.
3. His symptoms are relieved.

"Then Z- would be the psychological explanation: He was suffering from a psychological imbalance, and the exorcism restored his balance through a ritualistic dramatization and resolution of his emotional crisis. Z+ would be the explanation in Praqiri folklore: He was in fact possessed, and the exorcism cured him by expelling the spirit. But as in the previous examples, they amount to the same thing: a man believes himself to be possessed by a spirit, goes to an exorcist for a cure, and his symptoms are relieved.

"Some advocates of Relationship Theory use a slightly different terminology, in which each relationship on a particular line of the Zed Tree is called a Worldview, and this corresponds more closely with the common meaning of the word 'worldview'. In this version the lines are called 'Worldview Sets' or just 'Sets.' But there is no difference in the underlying concept."

"If I may interject," said Maestro Jahennis, "While you're entirely correct in your examples from physics or arithmetic, there is no logical necessity for the application of the same principles to other sorts of questions. Just because you're right about the momentum of two pieces of rock is no reason to assume that two opposite ideas should be considered in the same way. How can you even be sure that any two ideas should be considered exact opposites? You're talking about a way of looking at the world, and it's an interesting one, but the comparison you've drawn between physics and metaphysics is just an analogy. It doesn't prove a thing."

"When dealing with metaphysical questions," said Professor Kael, "There can be no proof, except for the abstract proofs of formal logic- and even those require starting premises. I would ask you to remember that we are dealing in the realm of metaphysics, and that ways of looking at the world are precisely what we are considering. But before I go on to examine further the technical language of the Zed Tree, I will boil the argument down to its most basic form: 'All accurate descriptions of a system are equally valid.' That is the axiom used within the Theory itself."

"That seems like something of a truism," said the Lord Admiral. "If both descriptions are accurate, then they are both valid."

"Accurate to what, that's the question," said Maestro Jahennis. "If we take the example of an exorcism, you have your facts, and indeed both explanations would account for them. But there's an unknown factor which has not been addressed, and that is the position of some objective observer who has access to more information. Let us imagine an omniscient observer, one who possesses certain knowledge about the existence of spirits and all other questions. From the perspective of such an observer, one explanation would accurately describe the situation and one would not- or perhaps neither would."

"True enough," said Professor Kael, "But is there any way to put yourself in the position of that omniscient observer? Or to put it another way: can we see with God's eyes?"

"You know we cannot."

"Then my point is still good. If you are dealing with something the absolute truth of which is unknowable, then all explanations which account equally well for the knowable facts are equally valid from a logical standpoint. You must then apply a pragmatic truth-test, which is relative effectiveness. And that will vary to a large extent from one situation to another, from one person to another, and from one time to another as well. Thus the existence of different worldviews. Those worldviews which fail to account for the facts can be set aside- for instance, those fanatics on Tharia who refuse to believe in the existence of other planets. But there will remain a set of worldviews which do account for the knowable facts, and which seem to do so equally well. In this case you can only discriminate between them based on effectiveness, on their actual use in the lives of those who hold them. And that will not be an absolute truth but a relative one. The Zed Tree is a way of modeling the interactions between different worldviews."

"I see your point," said Maestro Jahennis. "And if one were to apply it to the Praqiri exorcists, the first question would be relative accuracy. The figures given in the Pantomime document were totally fictional, but if a similar study were actually conducted, what would it find? Is exorcism equally effective to psychiatric treatment, or is one or the other method clearly superior? I'm quite certain the answer would be in favor of science, and that the exorcists would be shown up as charlatans. But if they proved equally effective, what then? I suppose one could assess the relative value for psychological and spiritual health of the different belief systems, determining whether the Praqiri belief or the scientific view was more productive for human life as a whole. I feel rather confident in what the answer would be, but I will give you this much, Professor Kael. Your Relationship Theory does not require the suspension of value judgments, or the rejection of critical thought. You do retain a rational basis for comparison. But I have let my thoughts wander a bit too far. Please continue with your exposition of the Zed Tree."

"Very well," said Professor Kael, "But this requires a more complex diagram."

Kael took the diagram he had drawn before, and spent a few moments sketching in a number of symbols. When he was done, he showed it around.

"In this Zed Tree, the first and second Worldviews or Sets remain the same. It is important to remember that Zed-Naught is considered the center, and that all the subsequent permutations are moving away from it in equivalent but opposite ways.

"The third Set or Worldview contains four points of view or relationships, two of which are more extreme versions of the two from the second Set, Zed Plus Plus and Zed Minus Minus. These two are balanced out by what we call wave relationships, points of view that include an interaction in the opposite direction- Zed Minus Plus and Zed Plus Minus. These wave relationships oscillate from one position to the other.

"The fourth and final Worldview Set in this Zed Tree is the most complicated, but it is built up by the same logic as the lines beneath it. You will note that the two operators nearest the center- Zed Plus Minus Plus on the left and Zed Minus Plus Minus on the right- become very nearly their own opposites in the course of their development. The operator on the left begins as something primarily positive in the fourth Worldview, but becomes entirely negative by the second Worldview. The operator on the right begins as something primarily negative in the fourth Worldview, but becomes entirely positive by the second Worldview.

"This, then, is the Zed Tree, a method for graphing out interactions and points of view. It is a somewhat perplexing tool to the uninitiated, but I hope my explanation has been sufficiently clear."

"I believe I follow you," said Maestro Jahennis. Motared nodded. Their host, the magistrate Den'ma, opened his eyes, stretched and yawned luxuriously, and blinked a few times.

"Would anybody like something warm to drink?" he asked. "Doctor Diestro has brought us some Jev, a traditional drink from his homeworld."

Diestro grinned.

The Conservation of Information

After everyone was served some jev, a spicy and aromatic drink the color of amber, Professor Kael continued with his exposition. Den'ma listened with a kind of absent-minded geniality, while Maestro Jahennis leaned forward attentively and Motared looked rather lost. Doctor Diestro seemed rather self-satisfied.

"I'm going to present you with another analogy," said Professor Kael. "Suppose that the Lord Admiral, Maestro Jahennis and I have five Imperials each, for a total of fifteen Imperials. I observe the Lord Admiral giving three of his Imperials to the Maestro, so that the Maestro now has eight Imperials, Motared has two and I have five. The total number of Imperials remains unchanged at fifteen.

"We concluded previously that for information to be perceived, three parties are required: an observer and two objects, which change relative to each other. The childish analogy I just presented is one of many possible illustrations of that idea. I observed Jahennis and Motared interacting with each other, and both changed relative to each other- Jahennis gained three Imperials, and Motared lost three. But the total number of Imperials did not change, because there were only three parties to the situation, and no net loss or gain is possible in a closed system.

"If one were to write out this concept with algebraic symbols, one could denominate the three parties as A, B and C. The set of all three parties could be expressed as P (A,B,C). If we take the point of view of A and declare him to be the observer, then the set could be described as P (A, Not A). Or if B is the observer, then P (B, Not B). P(C, Not C) is equally possible, but in each case the set of P remains the same- although the observer shifts, and thus the point of view, the set does not change.

"Now, if C is the observer and he observes A losing a portion of his value (denominated by a lower-case 'a') to B, then the result of this interaction would be a set described by this equation: P (A-a, B+a, C). While A has lost in value, B has gained, so there is no net change in the set as a whole. A change in one direction was balanced out by a change in the opposite direction, so from the point of view of the set, there was no net change.

"In Relationship Theory, this is referred to as Balance of Perception or the Law of Conservation of Information. Stated simply, it is this: for every change of perceived information, there is a balancing change. A real world example can be taken from space exploration. When we send a probe out to explore the surface of an unmapped planet, one of the first things it does is to measure the surface temperature. But it is impossible to directly measure the surface temperature as it would have been on its own, because the probe itself has a temperature and that affects the reading. You can only measure the temperature of the planet's surface with the probe on it. After that you have to make your adjustments. In everything, from the surface of planets to subatomic particles, you can't discount the effects of the act of measurement or observation. Every change will be met by a balancing change; every gain by a loss."

Future Changes

"A bright light will cast a shadow, so darkness is created by light. This is an automatic feature of our existence in this universe: the universe as a whole is a balanced system, and as there can be no net change in a balanced system, everything must create its own opposite. In a system as complex as our universe the number of possible interactions is nearly infinite, thus the number of changes that can occur is nearly infinite as well- but every change will be balanced out. If one change is observed in the manifest world, other changes that would also have been possible are not observed. A gain is balanced by a loss. The principle of balance of perception applies both within a system's manifest aspect (the actual interactions or changes) and its unmanifest aspect (the interactions that did not occur so the real ones could). This is the metaphysical insight behind the Balance of Forces concept, in which one ethical or aesthetic force is manifested on the surface, while its opposite is retained in an unmanifested form.

"Relationship Theory interprets cause and effect rather unconventionally. In our view, cause and effect is no linear process, but a consequence of the Balance of Perception. Every interaction or relationship that occurs creates a balancing set of changes, setting up the possible range of all future changes. This range of possible changes is what people refer to as Fortune.

"One of the first practical applications of Relationship Theory was its use in modeling events, understanding the particular interactions of which they are composed. The goal was to be able to understand any pattern by examining only a portion of it. In attempting to solve any problem, we take it as axiomatic that the seeds of the solution are actually contained within the question, so long as the implied relationships are teased out properly. We have developed a method for doing so and tested it experimentally. This method is based on a series of principles, some of which I will explain immediately, and others later. They are known within the theory as the Ten Laws:

1. Interactions are the reality, form is the illusion.
2. The simpler the concept, the more complex its ramifications.
3. The seeds of the solution are buried in the question.
4. Always ring the changes.
5. Never ignore serendipity.
6. Include laws and models that are contradictory.
7. Apply negative feedback.
8. Dynamic tension is required for control.
9. All forces are infinite.
10. The strongest chains have the most subtle links.

"We make it a principle not to disregard serendipity, because seemingly random conjunctions can be indicators of underlying relationship patterns. When attempting to find patterns in information and to formulate laws, we also include other patterns that are directly contradictory, in order to preserve multiple points of view for a more complete picture. Ringing the Changes is our term for this process, meaning to shift fluidly between points of view in any situation. We feed back the results of our calculations from multiple different models into new sets of calculations, with the result that widely distributed random errors tend to cancel out each other's effects, leaving that information which is useful to us. We incorporate negative feedback into all such models, in order to limit the effects of any large projections that might be in error. When we speak of dynamic tension, we mean the effect of multiple models or points of view, each of which tends to drag the process of analysis in a certain direction. By keeping all of the different models under consideration at once, we create a dynamic tension between them that can have the effect of amplifying the hidden solution within the question. When we say that all forces are infinite, we are applying an analogy from physics- if any physical force was unconstrained by another force, its effects would be infinitely powerful, and the same thing can be said of informational forces. An idea that was not balanced out by any opposing idea would be the sole existing model of reality. When we say that the strongest chains have the most subtle links, this refers to the multiple scales on which we model reality, each one of which is equivalently correct and subject ultimately to the same laws.

"From these Ten Laws of Relationship Theory, we have developed a process, which I demonstrated in a partial form earlier as the Zed Tree. Taking the base of the Zed Tree as our starting point, you will recall that we begin with something called Zed-naught. This starting point represents both an actor and an action, as well as the environment in which the action occurs. We can also speak of this starting point as the Monad, the simplest and most unified perspective on the question. In the second worldview of the Zed Tree, we have the concepts of Loss and Gain, symbolized as Zed-Minus and Zed-Plus. Zed-Minus and Zed-Plus sum to Zed-naught, because every act is composed of both a loss and a gain. Here are another few ways of saying the same thing, to help you understand how versatile this concept is:

1. Every ethical decision includes both positive and negative motivations.
2. Every act results in both positive and negative consequences.
3. The actor in any situation gains something that his environment loses.
4. The actor in any situation loses something that his environment gains.

"I'm sure you could think of any number of other examples, because the first two lines of the Zed Tree are an archetypal story of the most abstract kind. A Loss and a Gain together produce an Act, or are produced by an Act. We proceed from there.

"Now, just as any individual act is comprised of both a loss and a gain, any loss is itself comprised of both a positive element and a negative element, and the same is true of any gain. The negative element of a loss is what we previously called Zed Minus Minus, and we could refer to it here as a 'Loss Doubled.' But we can describe the relationship between the Loss Doubled and the Loss itself as a direct or unidirectional one, in that a loss produces a loss. The same is true of the positive element in any gain- we can speak of it as a 'Gain Doubled,' or as Zed Plus Plus, and of the relationship between the Gain Doubled and the Gain itself as a direct or unidirectional relationship.

"The positive element of a loss can be described as wavering, in that it proceeds from a loss and becomes a gain, while the negative element of a gain is also wavering, in that a gain becomes a loss. These correspond to Zed Minus Plus and Zed Plus Minus.

"To express what I just described in simpler terms, we have an Act produced by a Loss and a Gain. The Loss is produced by a Wavering effect (a positive element within the Loss) and a Directional effect (the negative element within the loss). The Gain is produced by a Wavering effect (the negative element within the gain) and a Directional effect (the positive element within the gain).

"Moving on to the fourth Worldview of the Zed Tree, we see that there are two examples of elements that are triply negative or triply positive. We symbolize this relationship by the concept of Strength, as it is a strong amplification of the Directional effect. Two of the others share a unique characteristic, in that they became their own opposites over time- an element that was initially primarily positive but became a Loss, which we symbolize by the concept of Failure, and an element that was initially primarily negative but became a gain, which we describe as Improvement. The other four operators on the fourth Worldview waver over time, but never lose their primary characteristic, so they are described as Metastable.

"The center of the fourth Worldview contains two operators, one of which is primarily positive although it is on the side that will eventually become Loss, while the other is primarily negative although it is on the side that will eventually become Gain. In other words, the center of the fourth Worldview is a mirror image of the second, and if the two elements in the center were taken as a new starting point, all the relationships would repeat their permutations along the same pattern, reversing sides and re-evolving the same shape repeatedly.

"So, we have six basic symbols for the different relationships: Act, Gain, Loss, Direction, Wave, Strength, Metastability, Failure, and Improvement, which can be indicated in shorthand by their initial letters. And we have developed connotations for all these relationships, based on their permutations along the Zed Tree."

Professor Kael drew another diagram to illustrate his point:

"Applying the method of the Zed Tree to actual questions is simply a matter of using these symbolic terms to tease out the hidden connotations and implications of human language, imposing a structure of sorts on free association until the answer arises from the question itself.

"Beginning with a simple sentence on which you want some information, you translate each element of the sentence into an operator, comprised of two of the elementary symbols outlined above. For instance, the launch of a space vessel could be described as GD, meaning 'a gain in a certain direction.' The set of whatever symbols you choose becomes the starting point of your new Zed Tree.

"Once you have created the Zed-naught set or the First Worldview, you apply an additional gain to each element of the set, creating a new set of operators. You also apply a Loss to each element in the set, creating another new set of operators, resulting in your Second Worldview.

"Here is a relatively simple example. Let's say your Zed-naught set contains the operator GA, or 'Gaining Act'. You apply another Gain to the G, and as we know a 'Gain Doubled' is symbolized as 'Direction,' so your G becomes a D. You apply a Gain to the A, and that transforms it into a G. So your 'expansion set,' as we call it, is DG. You also apply a Loss to the G, resulting in a W for 'Wavering.' And you apply a Loss to the A, resulting in an L. So your 'contraction set' is WL. Now your Zed Tree will look like this."

Professor Kael drew another diagram:

"The results of all this can be immensely complicated, so rather than go into every permutation I will give you the short version. Every worldview you work up with this method will create new operators, expanding outward as the Zed Tree expands. As you work with the abstract symbols, you also translate them back into new sentences. For instance, the example just given could be expressed as 'A wavering loss and a directional gain produce a gaining act.' The interpretation of these operators must be based on the original or Zed-naught operator, and the sentence that expresses it. The words chosen to express these operators are usually drawn from the same words used in the initial sentence, but you can also bring in additional words that seem appropriate through intuition, as well as through the connotations and implications of the elements involved. When creating new sentences in this manner there are a series of rules:

1. Any sentence expressing an entire Worldview must be fundamentally synonymous with the sentence on the line below it, even if new layers of meaning, implication or detail have been added.
2. A number of different sentences should be created for each of the Worldviews. Some of these should express the entire Worldview, while others should express a portion of it. These sentences should be compared to all of the other sentences for similarities, as well as to the entire body of knowledge possessed by the calculator, in order to determine the likelihood and degree of truth for each of the sentences. Those sentences which contain the highest number of elements in common are considered most likely to be true.
3. Elements without a specific polarization are interpreted as both positive and negative. For instance, a D in the Zed-naught operator would be both negative and positive at the same time.
4. Occasionally include both elements and interpretations that are radically different from the others you have been using.
5. Always move from the base operator upward through the Zed Tree when making your calculations.
6. If any particular operator remains obscure, run a separate Zed Tree on that operator to understand it more thoroughly.
7. As you move upward through the various Worldviews, you must seek out any similarities with the operators in lower Worldviews.

"The result of this rather involved process is a guiding of the intuition, a shaping of the process of free association into something in between strict logic and inspiration. By comparing the sentences you create as you move up through the Zed Tree, examining all of the different points of view you uncover, you get a clearer picture of the question. In the process of comparison the most likely models will become the clearest, while the least likely will tend to cancel each other out and drop away. Eventually the most likely model or answer is uncovered from the question."

Mythorealist Meditation

"This method is both useful and fascinating," said Professor Kael, "But it is sometimes cumbersome. Working your way through the symbolic logic of a Zed Tree can be like wandering through a labyrinth, a maze of ideas and associations branching out from each other like twisting pathways. For this reason there is also a simpler method, involving less abstract symbolism, but retaining the core principles of the original idea. It is in essence a type of meditation, referred to by some as 'Mythorealist Meditation,' and it can be applied to any problem. Because you are working your way along the branches of the Zed Tree, it can be helpful to have the Zed Tree itself in front of you as a type of mandala. For situations where this is not convenient, we also have a sort of rosary, with the symbols for each of the operators displayed on the beads. The method you actually use is the same for both.

"Beginning with the situation you are considering, or Zed-naught, you apply one of a number of scales, named after the values assigned in that scale to Gain and Loss. Some of the most common scales are as follows:

"You then work your way up the Zed Tree, meditating on the evolution of the different elements. A relatively simple example is taught at the Wayfarer's Institute, during the training of the young novices there in the theory of swordsmanship. If Zed-naught is taken to be the motion of a cut to the inside line, and you apply the scale of Manifestation and Potential, then Zed Plus would be an actual cut to the inside line (the Manifestation) while Zed Minus could be a feint to the inside line that will become a cut to the outside line (the Potential).

"Zed Plus Plus would be a completed cut to the inside line (the Manifestation), while Zed Plus Minus could be a scenario where the opponent attempts to parry and your cut becomes a feint, or the opponent attempts to counter and you strike him in countertime (the Potential).

"Zed Minus Plus would be a successful feint to the inside line and a cut to the outside line (the Manifestation), while Zed Minus Minus could be a scenario where the opponent ignores the feint and you carry through with the initial cut to the inside line (the Potential). Now this is a simple example, as I said, but it should indicate the general approach. As you look at the Zed Tree, or count out the beads in your rosary, you apply the scale to it, meditating at length on the different elements.

"If you applied the scale of Apparent and Hidden Motivation to your own actions, your first step would be to assess what the apparent motivation of a particular action was, and then to consider what its hidden or underlying motivation might be. You would then apply the same scale to those two elements, meditating on the buried motivations behind your buried motivations, uncovering layer after layer of your own psychology, examining the apparent and hidden aspects of each of them.

"However, according to the principles of the Theory, you must not stop there. The perspectives offered by a single scale are never sufficient. When making a complex ethical decision about which you are confused, you would want at a minimum to run the Positive and Negative Consequence scale and the Positive and Negative Motivation scale, and it would probably also be helpful to run the Manifestation and Potential scale and the Apparent and Hidden Motivation scale. In any situation you would run as many scales as you had time to run until you were satisfied that you had multiple perspectives on the question at hand, and you could form a balanced model of the situation from all of those perspectives.

"You would want to remember to include seemingly contradictory elements, such as a meditation from the viewpoint that your opinions of right and wrong were completely reversed. You would also want to remember to Ring the Changes, to build up an overall picture by shifting freely between these different perspectives.

"This is obviously not a method for rapid decision making, but it can lead to far wiser and more thoughtful decisions when you apply it to serious issues that require analysis. You can also apply it to mystical practice in a variety of ways, such as by applying the Positive Way and the Negative Way of theology as a scale. But I think I have spent enough time on this aspect for the present.

"To sum up the line of thought that has led us to this point: Reality is what we experience or perceive. Perception occurs through the meeting of unlike things, or in other words, there is no perception without contrast. The perception of contrast occurs through a relationship between the parties involved. For information to be perceived, three parties are required: an observer and two objects, which change relative to each other. To perceive anything is to change it; therefore a thing cannot be known in and of itself, but only as part of a particular relationship. All changes are balanced by equivalent but opposite changes, setting up the range of all possible future changes. Because of the balance of changes between opposing points of view in a closed system, we know that all points of view are relative, and that none of them can be privileged as absolutely true. All accurate descriptions of a system are equally valid, so the truth-test of anything is the degree of its accuracy, and where that is unknowable, its effectiveness. A thing cannot be absolutely true or false, but only true or false in particular interactions, or possibly in the vast majority of interactions. We can say something is very true or somewhat true, but not absolutely true. Reality is a matter of shades of gray, of particular relationships."

"This is a rather more interesting theory than I had expected at first," admitted Maestro Jahennis. "But what are its implications in the real world? What are its implications for the way we live? Or is it purely an intellectual construct?"

Ringing the Changes

"There are indeed implications for the way we live," said Professor Kael. "Some of these have to do with particular applications of the theory, but my involvement with those aspects is limited. One of the most important effects of an appreciation for the theory is mental fluidity, an obvious necessity if the world is as the theory says it is.

"Those who consider themselves realists believe in a relatively simple world, a world stripped down to black and white in glaring contrasts. But one of the axioms of Relationship Theory is this: the simpler a thing is, the more complex its implications. If we want to be realists in this sense of the word we must deny too much of real human experience. Reducing some of the most widespread and fundamental human experiences to delusion or brain chemistry or social conditioning may appear to simplify matters, leaving only that which is quantifiable and repeatable. But those experiences don't go away. No matter how many times they declare Myth dead, it continues to be central to our life and our culture, stimulating tremendous effort, creativity and sacrifice. It is a worldview that gives us much.

"But those who follow their own myths without self-criticism, with too much reverence for Absolute Truth, make the same mistake. They attempt to reduce the bewildering complexity of the universe to a few simple rules, the application of which would produce the ideal society- though that's a day that never dawns. They oversimplify as much as the realists, if not more so- and their oversimplifications have the additional flaw of being unproveable, so that they end up in the position of claiming objective truth for ideas that are scientifically nonsensical.

"Those of us who have studied Relationship Theory are Mythorealists, retaining the advantages of both points of view, but not their disadvantages. We are not at war with scientific fact, and we don't claim objective reality for unknowable things. We do, however, reserve the right to Ring the Changes.

"This is a term of somewhat obscure origins, but its meaning is clear enough: to shift fluidly between points of view for a broad understanding, looking in on any given situation from more than a single perspective.

"That's the real point of the Praqiri Exorcism pamphlet, not an attempt to elevate folk superstitions above medical science, but to introduce the reader to a new way of thinking. Ringing the Changes is that way of thinking, and it applies not only to that situation, but to many others. We can apply it to the situation in the pamphlet for the sake of argument: to the question of whether the man was suffering from a mental neurosis or from a Zhanuk, the answer is Yes. Those are both ways of looking at the situation. And to the question of how he was cured, we would be equally willing to accept the psychological explanation and the traditional folk explanation, because both explanations fit the available facts. We would shift in between them, thinking in terms of the psychological explanation if we were speaking psychologically, but thinking in terms of the folk explanation if that was the appropriate context.

"The method of thinking I'm talking about can be applied to many things, not only to issues of myth and reality. It is a way of thinking that flickers between points of view like flames flickering along a roof-beam. It might seem like sloppy thinking, but that wouldn't be accurate: it's fluid thinking, in the way that intelligent and creative people tend to do naturally, and it more closely approximates our situation in the world than a more strict and inflexible method could do.

"The world is made up of an infinite range of interactions, of Zed Trees branching out in every direction, of points of view that sum to our total experience. No partial perspective can be considered complete; none can claim to be absolute. To Ring the Changes is to dance between possibilities, to preserve the freedom to see out of more than one set of eyes.

"One application of Ringing the Changes is the Balance of Forces, an ethical and aesthetic concept within Mythorealism. Just as the manifest aspects of any system will show certain changes, the unmanifest aspects will retain their opposites, in the form of the changes that did not become manifest so that others could. So it is with the Balance of Forces, in which certain characteristics will be manifested in the external world, while at the same time their opposites are retained in the internal world, to maintain a balance. So an advocate of the Balance of Forces will be heroic on the outside, with the nobility and courage of an Imperial Knight, while on the inside he retains his compassion, and the appreciation for beauty and elegance expected of an artist. When he is called upon to display this elegance, that aspect becomes manifest, while the stern discipline of the fighting man becomes the balancing force within him.

"The man of the Balance of Forces will be calm and disciplined on the outside, but on the inside he will be in a state of ecstatic joy- a stoic and a mystic at the same time. This principle can be applied in many other ways, allowing him to shift between philosophical systems and retain the advantages of them all.

"But that is not the only application of the theory in the real world. Relationship Theory offers us a new way of looking at theology, or rather several new ways at the same time, for there are different schools of thought on this matter. Would you care for me to describe them to you?"

"I would be interested," said Maestro Jahennis. "Although the Perigrinatio are not religious, yet we are always curious about human beliefs. What explanation do you have for religion?"

Information Physics and Relationship Theology

"Within Relationship Theory itself, there are schools of thought that do not always agree, and so it is in this matter. But as one would expect of a theory like ours, our disagreements are only relative. Although there are three different Relationship Theologies, yet all three acknowledge each other as points of view, and we seek to maintain the ability to Ring the Changes between them. None of us, therefore, is an absolute partisan of one or the other, though most of us do fall, more or less, into one of these three camps.

"Two of these camps base their interpretation of theology on Information Space, a method of measuring changes in information within the Theory. The third faction has a different viewpoint, without disregarding Information Space as a valid method. Before I go any further, then, I must explain the Information Space concept.

"When examining complex Zed Trees, we have found that any relationship or pattern in the Tree will repeat itself in approximate form over time, given a wide enough range in which to develop. By observing these patterns as they play out across the Tree, we can make predictions or extrapolations about future developments. The underlying essence or principle of any given pattern can be discovered, and this principle can be used to predict its future permutations. We express this with the saying, 'Everything that is observed will be observed again.'

"Our language uses physical space as a metaphor for relationships. When two lovers have become very intimate they describe themselves as 'one,' but if one's lover should appear cold and formal, she is described as 'distant.' A person in a state of mental abstraction is said to be 'somewhere else' or 'miles away.' I'm sure other examples could easily be found.

"Applying this instinctive analogy to the study of information, we find that certain pieces of information are in close relationship to other pieces- there is little information distance between them, as we would have it.

"Information space can be expressed abstractly using set theory. One example can be drawn from the writings of the great Nan Torimak. Nan Torimak once said that the Artificial Intelligence of the Mindwebs was immortal and rational, but that the intelligence of a human being was mortal and passionate, so that the only characteristics the two shared in common were their complexity and their shared power of creation. Setting aside the question of whether she was correct in the first place, we can speak of a set of the characteristics of Mindweb intelligence as she understood it, and this set would have the elements of creativity, complexity, immortality and reason. And we can speak of a set of the elements of human intelligence as described by Nan Torimak, and this set would have the characteristics of creativity, complexity, mortality and passion. The Union of the two sets would contain eight terms. The Intersection of the two sets would contain just two terms: creativity and complexity.

"In our theory, the amount of information distance is determined by a formula, written out as: [size(PUQ)/2*size(P∩Q)], which means the ratio of the size of the union of both sets to their intersection multiplied by two. In this case the union of the two sets is eight terms, and their intersection is two terms. Two multiplied by two is of course four, so the information distance between Nan Torimak's conception of Mindweb intelligence and her conception of human intelligence is 8/4, or 2.

"To take this over into the realm of theology, we will begin by taking two sets of information, one of them being derived from the Book of the Void, and the other from Doesdion's Analects. As you will recall from your study of these texts, Doesdion describes God as the creator of all that is, and as ultimately powerful. The set of elements belonging to God, then, includes the concepts of creation and power.

"In the Book of the Void, however, we find the following passage:

It is only the Void that makes everything possible. There is no power except in emptiness, no power at all.

"The Book of the Void, then, ascribes creation to the Void itself, and power as well. The union of the two sets contains four terms, and their intersection contains two terms. The ratio of the size of the union of both sets to their intersection multiplied by two would be 4/4, and the information distance between them is 1, because the information involved is essentially identical.

"Now these examples are really more arbitrary than serious, but they do illustrate how the calculation works. Information physics, as you can see, is just a convenient name- it isn't t really physics at all, but a sort of calculus for metaphysical questions.

"The terminology of information physics is derived from such sets of operators. The number of operators in a particular set is its information mass. When a set is acted upon and therefore changed, the size of the set of changed operators is the information energy. Every such operation is a unit of information time, for instance the change from our solid rock to the two flying pieces with equivalent momenta. (But you must bear in mind that there is no net change, only a change to the operators within the set.)

"This gives rise, in turn, to such terms as information velocity and information momentum, which allows us to make predictions about future developments involving many interconnected Zed Trees, by observing the permutations of particular sets in information space and information time. As one of the axioms of Relationship Theory would have it, A quarter of the wave is all that's needed, because any waveform can be graphed out accurately from only a portion of itself.

"Nan Torimak suggested that the Artificial Intelligence of the Mindwebs was related to this process- that they were essentially ringing the changes between all the perspectives in their memory banks, playing ideas against each other, and becoming sentient somehow in the act of doing so. To go into the implications of that would take us far afield, but suffice it to say that if a number of people relate to the world in a particular way, defined by a particular set of religious beliefs that are highly similar, we speak of this as creating a cluster, of sorts, in information space. This cluster is what people refer to as a Power or 'god,' meaning of course the particular gods of particular belief systems, and not a transcendent Ultimate such as the Void. This cluster of closely related information would seem dependent on its worshippers, because if they were to stop relating to the world in the same way it would disappear.

"The same concept can be applied to much lesser powers such as ghosts, which might give you a better idea of what I'm trying to say. Using the example of Professor Pantomime and the Comun Vara, the legend of a haunted ship passed from mouth to mouth, creating a cluster of similar relationships to the ship itself. While a particular person might disbelieve in the so-called haunting, enough people believed in it to give it a twilight sort of reality- a cluster in information space made up of their ideas and expectations. According to this view, the cluster of haunted relationships with the ship created the 'ghost.' Another example would be the legend of Professor Pantomime himself. We know perfectly well that he is a fictional character, but to generations of students at Char University, he is an eerie reality. He is part of the way they relate to their university experience. He is a cluster in information space. And it is this cluster in information space that is Pantomime himself, so that in some sense he does exist, although a fictional character.

"Within the broader scope of Mythorealism as a whole, this creation of a cluster in information space is called 'Mythic Resonance.' Taking the example of a popular work of fantastic fiction, the Journey of Shaharat has been tremendously popular, and the heroic Imperial Knight of the title is part of the worldview of billions of people. No matter that the historic Shaharat was a first-rate scoundrel; the mythic Shaharat of the Journey has proven far more significant. The Journey, you see, had mythic resonance, and the cluster in information space that is the Shaharat of myth has attained a reality of its own- it's something that people have a relationship to. The holy books of particular religions are simply texts that showed extraordinary mythic resonance, but even a work of deliberate fiction can have some of the same effect.

"According to the Apotheosis School of Relationship Theology, this transformation from mere human into a myth is devoutly to be desired, as it is the only form of immortality we can hope to attain. Followers of the Apotheosis School seek to transcend their humanity, living with sufficient mythic resonance to become legends in their own right.

"The Secessionist School, however, believes almost the opposite- that we must seek to free ourselves from these self-created myths of ours, leaving the worship of Powers behind so that they will have no further domination over us. They advocate a type of rebellion against all gods.

"The third faction I mentioned is known as the Mythopoetic School, and while not denying the insights of the other schools, it adopts a different perspective. In the view of the Mythopoetic School, a myth is defined as a worldview, or as one's essential relationship with the world itself. As any such relationship is intensely experienced, our myths are literally our reality, or the essential core of our reality. Any particular myth (in the traditional sense of a sacred story or belief system) is the symbolic essence of one's relationship to the world, expressed as poetry. This applies both to public myths such as the traditional legends of the Congine Priesthood (which expresses poetically the essential worldview of the Eraptor people) and to myths that are entirely private, such as the poet Kuesetai 's conviction that he was a doomed outsider, which led him to make such brilliant art and such disastrous personal decisions.

"By the same token, a god or Power is a symbolic essence of a particular relationship with the universe. Another way of saying this is that a god is a particular relationship with the universe, springing into being with full power and reality for each and every worshipper. This point of view does not make the power of the god dependent on his worshippers, because each individual who passionately knows that god will have a relationship with him of his own. And one can have the same sort of relationship with a haunted place or a fantastic character, though not usually of a comparable level of intensity. For this reason the Mythopoetic School also uses the term 'Mythic Resonance,' meaning the power of any idea to serve as a myth for a particular person. The goal of all art is to manifest this mythic resonance.

"Now if one is to speak of God Himself, meaning the absolute and transcendent Deity, and not merely a particular Power, this is totally different. There is more than one way to speak of God, but there is a particular analogy that has always pleased me. When two or more musicians are playing, an extra note sometimes appears, a barely audible sound created by the harmony of the different instruments but greater than the sum of its parts. God is not a person; God is the world’s extra note.

"In other words, one way of looking at God is as the set of all of the relationships in the universe, considered in such a way as to be greater than the sum of all of them. This would be equivalent to the Positive Way, and to the immanence of God. And that's what the priests mean when they say God is Love, because what love is, is relationship.

"But there is another way to think about God. When we consider the universe and all its relationships, we can imagine something independent of all of them, the hypothetical objective perspective, which we can never attain. The 'thing in itself,' if you will. If you imagine such an absolute perspective, it must be something to which everything relates and yet which is limited and changed by none of them. It would be the only thing that is not conditional or relative, and thus the only thing with any absolute existence. If such an Absolute existed, it would have no name-able characteristic, for anything that can be named is thereby limited. It would not be any of the things of which the universe is made. It would be, in a manner of speaking, Nothing! And that's what the priests mean when they say God is the Void. This perspective would be the Negative Way, and the transcendence of God.

"There is one last factor to consider. If God or the Void is strictly unknowable, then how can we relate to such a reality in any way? Not through the intellect, surely, and yet it is possible. I have spoken of the Blind Enlightenment of the Yail Brotherhood, in which one sees nothing and knows nothing- and therefore knows God. Another way is through the adoration of the Powers, because that which is transcendently Relationship can be approached in a sense through a passionate devotion to any relationship. For this reason the merely tribal god of a particular culture can in fact be God for the worshipper in the moment of worship. But so can his art for an artist, or his love for a lover.

"I have explained Relationship Theory for you as best I can. There is a lot more to it, of course- it is immensely complicated. But I hope you will forgive me if I stop here."

The Faces of Gods

"These ideas are certainly interesting," said Maestro Jahennis, "But they are built around some rather grandiose assumptions. When you introduced the concept of Information Space, you described it as a metaphor, but then you went on to speak of these so-called clusters in Information Space as if they were actual entities. You cannot prove the existence of a god by an analogy. If Information Space is only a manner of speaking, a mental construct to graph the interactions between ideas, then these clusters you speak of are also just mental constructs. They have no more reality than a passing daydream."

The Maestro rubbed his hands together as he spoke, because they were beginning to feel cold and numb. He was too caught up in the conversation to wonder why.

"If a realist such as yourself can forgive me for saying so," said Professor Kael, "That god whose existence could be proved would be no god at all. But in terms of Relationship Theory, these clusters in Information Space are perfectly real. Reality, as we have discussed, is that which we interact with, and people have most profound interactions with mental constructs- especially those which they share with an entire community. But if one were to adopt the perspective I described as Mythopoetic, a particular god is simply a particular way of interacting with the entire universe- and that the universe exists is something I assume you would not question?"

"Fair enough," said Maestro Jahennis, "But I can accept what you're suggesting on that level alone. If one is to speak of a god as a poetic analogy for a particular worldview, then I would grant some level of validity to the notion."

"As to that," said the Professor, "There are again three opinions. There are those who choose to think of these clusters in Information Space as actual entities, with personalities and characteristics like you or I. We could speak of this as the 'hard' position. There are those who choose to think of them as analogies alone, poetic fables with the substance of daydreams. We could give this the label of the 'soft' position. But I personally feel that both of these stray from the path of Relationship Theory, because they are both wedded to a particular perspective."

"Then what is the third option?" asked Motared.

"To Ring the Changes. The world is fluid and our dreams still more so. We must preserve this fluidity in our thinking. By flickering between the perspective of seeing the gods as entities and as a species of poetry, we preserve the mysteriousness and ambiguity of the gods themselves. The faces of gods are unclear and terrible. To view them in the cold light of a particular viewpoint is to lose sight of them altogether."

"Your rhetoric is elegant, sir," said Maestro Jahennis with a laugh. "But if reality is what we experience, then I have experienced no myth or magic. Your gods must remain fables to me- or else nothing at all."

"Professor Kael has done an admirable job of describing the Theory," said Doctor Diestro. They all turned to look at him suddenly, because he had been silent so long. "But if you want to know what wine is like, you don't talk about it- you taste it."

It was difficult to see the Doctor's features clearly. The long shadows of the night distorted his face. To the eyes of Maestro Jahennis, he looked almost demonic, with yellowish skin and sunken eyes. His smile was ambiguous.

"And how do you propose to do that?" asked Professor Kael.

"I was once a professor at the Imperial University on Tolayon," said Diestro. "But the free examination of truth, however uncomfortable, is a dead principle in our University system. I was expelled from my position for my investigations. That does not mean that I discovered nothing, however. It only means that I was silenced."

"And what exactly were you investigating?" asked Lord Admiral Motared. As the chief executive of the Imperial Administration on the planet of Torn, it was one of his tasks to uphold the law. Certain areas of study were plainly forbidden.

Diestro's reaction, however, was to laugh out loud.

"I see you're as indoctrinated as a good bureaucrat should be."

Maestro Jahennis could barely hear anything, because there was a high ringing sound filling his ears. To his amazement and discomfort, he could see a corona of some kind around the doctor's body- a sinister purplish glow. He looked down at the nearly empty cup in his hand and remembered that the amber liquid in it was a gift from the doctor. The cup dropped from his fingers and shattered on the floor.

"Professor Pantomime..." he groaned.

And then everything changed.

The Forbidden Science

All he could see at first was a vast darkness, so black that he thought of a dead star, a place from which light could no longer escape. And all he could hear at first was a strange chanting, like children singing a counting rhyme. But the words they were singing made little sense:

We want them to be kind to us
We want them to be mild.
They cannot seek out anything
But someone else's child.
He came to us from far away
From far away he came...

The Maestro realized that his eyes were closed. He opened them on a ruined city, a place of fallen walls and tumbled columns. Great works of architecture in the style of the Zu Dynasty, proud temples of alabaster and gold and jade, had been reduced by some ancient catastrophe to a tangled wreckage. Shattered pieces of massive stones were scattered like building blocks. Jahennis recognized the fallen head of a statue of Borseday, one of the last emperors of the doomed Zu. It had rolled from its fallen body into the middle of the street, and its blind eyes were as huge and stern as the eyes of a god. About the whole place there was a feeling of desolation, a lonely sorrow with an element of horror. The Maestro's mouth was wide open. He was in awe.

He knew this dead city from his years of study. It was the once-glorious provincial capitol of Cennarra, which had been destroyed when a comet hit the planet of Chaffo, wiping out almost all the life on that world in a single instant. In all the years of the Tene Dynasty that had followed the Zu, there was no attempt to resettle that planet, no attempt to rebuild Cennarra. The city and the world it had graced were one massive graveyard.

The invisible children were still chanting their rhyme:

He came to us from far away,
He laughed at every law.
They came to us from somewhere else
If they came to us at all.

Maestro Jahennis noticed someone sitting on Borseday's head. He was a tall man with skin as white as milk- in fact, an albino. The purple robes that hung from his limbs could not disguise his perfect beauty, nor the aura of alien strangeness that seemed to radiate from him like a subtle poison. He was reading a book as the Maestro approached, and the cover of the book said: Meditations on Strange Yearning, Experienced in a Dream of the Event Horizon. He closed the book and looked up at the Maestro.

"Kuesetai was no sorcerer, of course," he said, "But this is exactly how it is done. Poetry is as valid a way to reach the Crossroads as a magic circle."

"What am I doing here?" asked Maestro Jahennis.

"Not everyone makes a good dinner guest," said the albino. "Your friend Doctor Diestro sold you to me. To speak as plainly as you Perigrinatio like, you serve me now. And you will not leave my city till you perform a service for me. This dream is your future."

"But who are you?"

The albino grinned.

"Haven't you figured it out yet? I took you for a wise man. Well, maybe your friends can help."

The Maestro heard a noise, and turned around.

Lord Admiral Motared was standing there blinking, his long mustaches and old uniform creating a comical impression. Professor Kael stood beside him, clearly as awestruck as the Maestro himself. Their host, the magistrate Den'ma, sat on a stone and smoked his long-handled pipe. He seemed neither concerned nor overly impressed.

"This is Cennarra!" said the professor.

"This is what's left of it," said the Maestro. "Or, rather, this is a hallucination brought on by the jev we were served. Our friend Diestro poisoned us."

"If this is a hallucination, then why are we all here?"

"I'm assuming we're not. I'm hallucinating you, and you must be having some other hallucination of your own- assuming you're still alive."

"Oh, no. I'm right here with you," said Professor Kael.

"I can't say I'd care to argue the point. We have far more immediate concerns."

"And what would those be?"

"This albino..." he said, and half-turned around.

There was no one there.

"An albino?" said Den'ma. "How interesting."

"Why is that?" asked the professor.

"Where are we?" said Motared.

"If these are the ruins of Cennarra," Den'ma continued, "Then we are standing on an image of the planet Chaffo, which has been largely uninhabited since shortly before the fall of the Zu. I was examining a scroll just the other day by the traveler Delminak of Torn, who visited Cennarra shortly before its destruction. They were well aware of the threat of the comet, which had passed by too close for comfort on more than one occasion in their history. As a result they had anthropomorphised it, representing it as a milk-white, demonic figure, dressed in the imperial purple. They named it Amok."

"The demonic personification of a comet," said Kael. "Of course! Doctor Diestro was expelled from Tolayon for investigating the Forbidden Science of the Zu Dynasty, or so the rumors would have it."

"What is your point?" said Maestro Jahennis.

Lord Admiral Motared had started to shake.

"The Forbidden Science is an old legend," said Professor Kael. "Supposedly the Forbidden Scientists of the Zu were physicist-sorcerers, who invoked the alien intelligences of black holes and neutron stars as if they were calling up demons in a magic circle. The albino demon named Amok was not a black hole, of course..."

"But a comet," said Maestro Jahennis. "Is that what you're saying? Doctor Diestro has somehow spirited us away through some forgotten ancient sorcery, trapping us in the otherworld of a personified comet!"

His voice was filled with disdain.

"In a manner of speaking," said Kael, "I think that's what he's done. He's created a shared vision, perhaps through a combination of hypnotism and whatever chemical he put in our drinks. He means to make us experience a myth of his own choosing."

"Your fluid thinking is doing you little good in this situation," said the Maestro. "If this is a delusion, we should simply disregard it."

"That is easier said than done," said Professor Kael. "Do you remember when that Congine priestess challenged a Yail nun to a spiritual combat about ten years ago? I can't remember her name."

"Her name is Tioch," said Den'ma, smiling.

"I remember it," said Jahennis. "It was a ridiculous display."

"That depends on your point of view," said the professor. "For students of Relationship Theory, it had some interest. This priestess Tioch defeated her adversary, thereby resolving some theological dispute between the two religious orders, and was promptly challenged in turn by a Perigrinatio."

"That was Maestro Coraydin," said Jahennis. "The head of our order. He was offended by such a public display of superstitious credulity, and his challenge was a simple one: for the Congine priestess to do to him what she had done to the nun. She couldn't do any such thing, of course. It was nothing but nonsense."

"It's not as simple as that," said Kael. "It's all a question of relationships. Because Tioch and her adversary shared overlapping worldviews, in both of which it was possible to engage in spiritual combat, a relationship was established. This made the combat into a reality, because it was experienced fully by both parties to the interaction. Maestro Coraydin, however, did not share their worldview. There was no chink in his mental armor through which such a notion could become established. As a result the Congine could do nothing with him."

"A rather useless power, then, in practical terms. What good is that sort of magic, if all you have to do to defeat it is to disregard it?"

"That's a valid point," said Professor Kael. "But let's say her opponent had not been a Perigrinatio, with all the mental training and discipline of your order. Let's say he was an ordinary person, who disbelieved in magic on principle, but wasn't quite sure. If his uncertainty left him in any way susceptible, if it left the slightest inclination in his mind through which a relationship could be established... are you so sure of the outcome then?"

"I see your point," said Maestro Jahennis. "The hallucinogen we were poisoned with has weakened our defenses, and we are already parties to this worldview, whether we like it or not. But where does that leave us?"

Lord Admiral Motared was shaking violently, staring at the ruined city around them with unblinking eyes. It was clear that he was in a state of panic. Maestro Jahennis took a hold of his upper arms and shook him lightly, speaking in a stern voice.

"Lord Admiral, you are no coward- we know this for a fact. You have served in three wars and seen combat numerous times. You were awarded a citation for gallantry after the Ghovin Bridge incident, and you survived the destruction of the Borseday's Glory. You are a soldier of the Empire. This petty enchantment, if that's what it is, is not the worst thing you have ever faced- it is merely unfamiliar. We need you to master your fear and lend us your strength."

The Lord Admiral shook his head as if to clear it, then swallowed heavily. The shaking ceased. He set his jaw as if preparing to fight, and his eyes came back into focus.

"You're quite right, of course," he said. "Don't worry. I'm back in control of myself now."

The Maestro nodded.

"If this is a myth of Diestro's choosing," he said, "Then we already know at least this much: all myths have a story. If we want to find our way out of the labyrinth, then we must live through the story."

"That seems logical," said Professor Kael. "But what did Amok say to you in the first place?"

"Assuming that's who I was speaking with," said Maestro Jahennis, "He told me that Diestro had sold us to him, and that we would never leave this world of his until we did him a service."

"But why would Diestro have sold us to him?" asked Motared.

"If he is a Forbidden Scientist," said Kael, "Then he is a essentially a sorcerer. And sorcerers are always bargaining for more power, are they not? He must have traded us for some ability, or for some knowledge that had been denied to him."

"Or to buy time on an old debt," said Den'ma. He stood up and stretched contentedly. "It's a lovely ghost story."

He seemed almost inclined to thank Diestro for the experience. The Lord Admiral looked at him like he was crazy.

"Do you see that mountain in the distance?" asked the retired magistrate.

"I see it," said Maestro Jahennis, and the others nodded. It was a tall peak in which deep channels had been carved by dozens of rockslides, giving its slopes a grim and perilous impression.

"According to Delminak of Torn, that is Mount Chenared, where the people of Cennarra worshipped in ancient times. There is a cave on the mountain with an altar to the comet, where the Cennarrans left vain offerings in the hope that it would spare them. It was believed that the spirit of Amok could be invoked in that cave."

"It's as good a destination as any I could think of," said Maestro Jahennis.

"Then I suggest we begin walking," said Den'ma. "It's a pleasant day for it."

A Demon's Dream

They walked in almost constant silence through the ruined streets of the city, marveling at the scene of desolation that completely surrounded them. In sections there had been little cosmetic damage, and yet the streets were all deserted, attesting to the fact that the inhabitants were centuries dead. The empty windows gaped darkly down at them, and the spacious courtyards and dry water fountains were as silent as they were. In other sections the walls had tumbled, leaving only heaps of fallen stone and twisted metal, broken glass and empty foundation holes. The sense of what had been lost here was overwhelming.

The comet known as Amok had not struck the city, but its collision with the other side of the planet had cast up a cloud of dust that blotted out the sun. Those who were not killed instantly by either the impact or the tsunamis that followed were choked to death by that poisonous cloud. There were scarcely any survivors.

"We are coming out of the city now," said Professor Kael. "And the ground is starting to rise."

They made their way up at a steady pace, and none of them seemed to tire of walking despite their age. On the lower slopes of the mountain there were abandoned buildings, but they continued to climb as the hours went by, and they soon left all traces of the dead civilization behind them. They were out of sight of the ruined city, on a barren and rock-strewn slope.

"It's so vivid," said Motared. Jahennis nodded. The green bits of moss that still clung to the stones were as bright as emerald, and the stones themselves were a rich, deep color, a mixture of silvery grays and chocolate browns. He could remember no other landscape with such vibrant colors, but that was not the only factor. There was a sense of aliveness, a bright energy that seemed to well up from beneath the surface. He wasn't sure if the world had felt this way when he was young, or if it had never felt this way at all. He breathed in deep.

"For a demon's dream," he said, "This is not unpleasant."

It can be this way for the rest of your life, said a voice in his head. A cultured voice, an elegant voice. The voice of Amok.

Just agree to serve me, it said. And your whole life will be like this. No more dull colors or dull days. A perpetual feast.

Just like Diestro? he thought in response, No thank you. And we Perigrinatio care little for feasts. Lord Admiral Motared's brow was furrowed, and the expression on his face was grim and pinched.

"Don't listen to the voice," said Maestro Jahennis, placing a supportive hand on the admiral's back. Den'ma laughed out loud.

"You can listen if you want," he said. "Just don't worry about it."

"Look up there," said Professor Kael. He pointed up at the slope ahead of them, and they followed with their eyes. A dark patch was visible among the rocks and boulders, gaping like a wound in the side of the mountain.

"Is that a cave?" said Maestro Jahennis. The Professor nodded.

As they cast their eyes on the path in front of them and began to walk upward again, a dark cloud seemed to veil the sun. The world plunged into gloom. The four men looked up at the sky in sudden alarm, just in time to see the sun setting with an unnatural rapidity. It had seemed to be at high noon since they had entered this dream, but now it plummeted out of the heavens like a falling comet, smearing the sky with autumnal colors. Noon turned into twilight in the space of ten heartbeats, casting sinister shadows from every crevice and rock. A moment later and it was night. The moon rose with equal speed. Before any of them could say a word, its cold radiance filled the world. Where there had been brilliant colors and a wonderful vividness, there was now a cruel chill like the dead of winter, and eerie shadows that leapt and danced.

They heard the children singing from the depths of the cave:

We came from now, from far away,
From far away we seem...

"I don't like this one bit," said Lord Admiral Motared. Maestro Jahennis looked stern and dark, staring out from the hood of his monastic robes like an accusing prophet. Professor Kael glanced from side to side, as if something might attack them at any moment.

"Amok is showing us his other face," said Den'ma, "That's all. The face he shows when he's not trying to sell you anything, but to terrify you."

"He's having some success with that," said Professor Kael. "I've never felt anything like this."

He was referring to something abstract, a feeling he couldn't name or describe. But they all nodded. It would have been impossible to deny its power, just as it would have been impossible to completely describe it. It was a feeling of pure malevolence, of madness so complete that it dwarfed anything human. It was a feeling of evil.

But none of those words could really describe it. Maestro Jahennis thought of a bottomless pit, an abyss of howling blackness as old as the world. He shuddered at the thought of it, but he knew that was useless. This was only a dream after all, a kind of vision. He had to keep going forward until he woke up.

"Let's get up to that cave," he said. "I think our answers will be up there."

The Cave of Sleeping Children

"Are they asleep," said the Lord Admiral, "Or are they dead?"

They were standing at the mouth of the cave and looking in at a strange sight. Dead children or sleeping children, they couldn't say which. The plump face of an infant, as blue as ice, stared up at them from the ground. Its hands were folded over its chest. An older sibling rested beside it, eyes open and staring at nothing, its skin as gray as drying meat. There were seven of them in all, lying beside each other with a horrid peacefulness. Their bodies had the terrible doll-like quality that corpses have, yet somehow it wasn't as convincing as it ought to have been. They couldn't escape the feeling that the children were alive, or that they were somehow potentially alive... that they were only sleeping.

"I don't know," said Maestro Jahennis, "I can't tell."

When you looked at the children from one angle, they seemed to be dead- as dead as everything else on this empty planet. But then you'd catch a flicker of movement. A finger that twitched a little, perhaps, or a chest that rose and fell. A moment later you weren't sure you'd seen it. It was as if the children were neither alive nor dead, or as if they were both somehow at the same time.

"I don't understand it," said Professor Kael. "Are they under an enchantment?"

"If they are," said Motared, "We must wake them up. Surely that is our purpose here."

"Let us not be hasty," said Jahennis. "The albino led us here. He told me that we would never leave till we had done him a service. One should never act without knowing the consequences."

"They're only children!" said Motared.

"But whose children?" asked Professor Kael. "Whatever they are, they are not as they should be. Were they put in this state to protect them- or to imprison them?"

"Or are they simply dead?" said Maestro Jahennis. "I could almost convince myself of that. For a moment or two they look that way... but I am not quite sure."

"If they are not dead," said Motared, "They need medical attention."

"I'm not sure it would do them any good," said Jahennis. "And what could we do for them? Do you have the slightest idea of how to wake them up?"

"But it's clear enough," said Den'ma. He was sitting on a rock at the entrance to the cave, and he had already lit up his pipe again. "If you see them as dead, then they're dead. But you haven't settled on that way of looking at it yet. If you see them as asleep, then they're asleep. But you haven't settled on that way of looking at it either. When you make your decision, the dream will accommodate you."

"Of course!" said Professor Kael. "It's a case of opposing worldviews. And we have yet to establish a relationship with either of them, so neither of them can yet be completely perceived. The children are in a state of... suspended reality, I suppose you'd call it."

"Exactly," said the albino. He was sitting on an ancient altar inside the cave, looking down at the children and the four dreamers. His eyes glittered from the darkness like two cold stars. "I have presented you with a choice. These seven are my children. They have dreamed this way for a long time, and I cannot awaken them. I can't send them out into your world, because that door is not open. Perceive the children as asleep, and you will awaken them. And then, when you awaken, they will walk inside you. Or perceive the children as dead, and they will never awaken. But you will never awaken either. You will die of the poisoned drink.

"Live with my children inside you, and bring them out into your world. Or die tonight. It all depends on what you choose to perceive- and on what you make real. I will leave you to your decision, but remember this. He who serves me will be amply rewarded- and he who fails me will be repaid."

He disappeared from in front of them in the blink of an eye. The four dreamers looked down at the children.

"This is quite a paradox," said Professor Kael.

"If this is no mere dream, but a type of reality," said Maestro Jahennis, "Then there is no paradox for me. We die. I will not become that creature's thrall, or do its bidding. I will not unleash its children into the world, whatever they are."

"As an old soldier," said the Lord Admiral, "I feel the same. It's a strange posting to die at, but I am an old man."

The Maestro turned around and looked out at the world, a planet from which nearly all life had been obliterated. The dark valley of Cennarra dreamed down below them. A dream or a reality- or both at once? Was there any way to tell, or any difference in the first place?

"I have spent my life exploring," said Jahennis. "And this is a chance to see something extraordinary. We could walk down into the valley and through the streets of the city. Who knows what we could learn down there about the Zu? Or what secrets we might uncover?"

"Yes!" said Professor Kael, his face brightening. "It is an unparalleled opportunity for scholarship. If only we could share what we find..."

But Den'ma was chuckling. He sat on the rock with his long pipe, smoking it and laughing quietly. All eyes turned to him.

"Why are you laughing like this?" asked Maestro Jahennis.

"I don't see why we have to choose," he said. "The albino told us we did, but I don't see it. I am perfectly content to leave everything unreconciled. To see the children as both alive and dead.

"Consider this: our good friend Professor Pantomime presented the theory, but he allowed himself to become obsessed with a single aspect of it. One point of view to the exclusion of all the others: a haunted spaceship. In his own words he sat up at night in dread of it, in the awful conviction that it was greater than he was. He became unbalanced. And the same thing happened to our Doctor Diestro, playing in myths until they dragged him down like a pool of quicksand. Obsession and madness are the flip side of magic, and the inevitable fate of all those who enter its labyrinth... unless they can preserve their balance, their sense of humor. Unless they can live it as something both real and unreal at the same time."

"Unless they can Ring the Changes," said Professor Kael. "You humble me, sir. I thought you were asleep when we discussed that aspect."

Den'ma shrugged.

"You are correct, though," said Maestro Jahennis. "We don't have to choose. We can just... wake up."

And a moment later they were in Den'ma's study, blinking their eyes.

A Debt Repaid

"I have a terrible headache," said Lord Admiral Motared. He was sitting in the same chair he'd been in before their journey, but the cup of jev he'd been drinking had spilled on the floor. Doctor Diestro was sitting across from him, his eyes wide open in abject horror, his features stiffening. He would never serve another cup of jev, or read another pamphlet.

He who serves me will be amply rewarded- and he who fails me will be repaid.

Jahennis shuddered.

"He went mad for the same reason Pantomime did. He didn't Ring the Changes."

Kael nodded in reply. "If he was trying to repay a debt, he has paid now. I am sorry this had to happen in your home."

He was looking at Den'ma.

"Don't be sorry on my account, friends," he said. "I am only sorry for Diestro here. He wandered into a nightmare many years ago, and he never found his way back out.

"But I don't blame him for what he did; it was a most wonderful ghost story. And an interesting conversation as well. The sky is lightening."

They looked out the window. The Feast of all Hosts was over, and the sun was rising on their talk. It was time to face the day.

1 From an interview with Yal Qenarik, a Praqiri exorcist from the ghetto on Delphit..

1 The original subtitle reads: "From a recording found on the Comun Vara"

1 The terms noumena and phenomena have been borrowed from the philosophy of the German idealists, as the nearest equivalent in our language to the actual terms used in this text. The implications of the original terms are a little bit broader, expressing a notion that is not dissimilar to omote and ura in traditional Japanese thought, or to the expressions ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric.’

2 The linguistic connection between numinous and noumen is paralleled in the original, as the root word translated here as noumen was used to form the word translated as numinous. The two sets of concepts are thus highly similar.