Page 3 (1/2)

The all-pervading, characterless background of the universe - this is the void It is not object nor senses It is the region of illusions

- Kerro Panille, Buddha and Avata

WILD VARIETYacross the open plain between bulwarks of black crags The red-orange light of a single sun beat down on the purple shadows on the coarse sand and pebbles of the plain Vagrant winds whisked at randoave wary attention to these disturbances Occasional stubby plants with glistening silver leaves aligned themselves with the sun in the path of the naked band The band steered a course to avoid the plants

The people of the band showed only remote kinship with their human ancestry Most of theh this one did not walk at the point He had ropey gray arestion of hair on his slender body The head carried two golden eyes in bony extrusions at the temples, but there was no nose and only a tiny red circle of mouth There were no visible ears, but brown skin ht have been The arers and opposable thureen across his hairless chest

Beside the tall Theriex hobbled a pale and squat figure with no neck to support a hairless bulb of head Tiny red eyes, set close to a moist hole which trembled with each breath, could stare only where the body pointed The ears were gaping slits low at each side of the head Fat and corded ars were kneeless tubes without feet

Others in the band showed a similar diversity There were heads with reat coned nostrils and horned ears, dancers’ legs and some stumps They numbered forty-one in all and they huddled close as they walked, presenting a tight wall of flesh to the Pandoran wilderness So to each other as they stumbled and lurched their way across the plain Others maintained a small moat of open space There was little conversation - an occasional grunt or moan, sometimes a plaintive question directed at Theriex

"Where can we hide, Ther? Who will take us in?"

"If we can get to the other sea," Theriex said "The Avat"

"The Avata, yes, the Avata"

They spoke it as a prayer A deep ru voice in the band took it up then: "All-Human one, All-Avata one"

Another spoke: "Ther, tell us the story of Avata"

Theriex re: "Yes, Ther, tell us the stor the story, the stor"

Theriex raised a ropey hand for silence, then: "When Avata speaks of beginning, Avata speaks of rock and the brotherhood of rock Before rock there was sea, boiling sea, and the blisters of light that boiled it With the boiling and the cooling caone ht they joined in the relief of sediment and they rested"

Theriex had a thin whistling voice which carried over the shuffling sounds of the band’s passage He spoke to an odd rhythm which fitted itself to their reat whirl and the seas cooled Some feho joined remained joined Avata knows this because it is so, but the first word of Avata is rock"

"The rock, the rock," Theriex’s corowth on the run," Theriex said "Before rock Avata was tired and Avata was many and Avata had seen only the sea"

"We rip a rock," Theriex said, "to coil around it close and lie still, that is a new dreaes of moon, untired It was vine to leaf then, and in the new confidence of rock caift of the sea"

Theriex tipped his head back to look up at the metallic blue of the sky and, for a few paces, remained silent, then: "Coil of power, touch of touches! Avata captured lightning that day, curled tight around its rock, waiting out the silent centuries in darkness and in fear Then the first spark arced into the horrible night: ’Rock!’"

Once more, the others responded, "Rock! Rock! Rock!"

"Coil of power!" Theriex repeated "Avata knew rock before knowing Self; and the second spark snapped: I! Then the third, greatest of all: I! Not rock!"

"Not rock, not rock," the others responded

"The source is alith us," Theriex said, "as it is with that which we are not It is in reference that we are It is through the other that Self is known And where there is only one, there is nothing else Fro returns But for Avata there was rock, and because there was rock there was so was Self Thus, the finite becomes infinite One is not But we are joined in the infinite, in the closeness out of which all matter comes Let Avata’s rock steady you in the sea!"

For a tied and hobbled onithout co breezes, though, and one of the band with a sensitive nose detected this

"I smell Nerve Runners!" he said