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Shining
Sister Combine is on the phone! Can you talk to him?"
"Of course; give me the phone! Why, this is the most wonderful thing ever! Our
lovely
Sister's children!" There was a hint of tears in Gavro's eyes, and his hand
shook as he took the phone from the boy. "Brando, old friend! Isn't this
marvelous!"
The Shining Sister Combine, relatively dormant after the excitement of a
hundred and forty years before, became the center of public attention again.
Fresh contributions poured in. The Skystabber Observatory bubbled with
activity.
The first message to be beamed toward Shining Sister went out several
sleep-periods later, after Brando Lanorgo, the head adviser of Shining Sister
Combine, landed in his vertical-horizontal aircraft outside the observatory.
It was cobbled together, a compromise between several conflicting notions, and
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consisted of a bar of music, followed by the words: "Sister's Children, we
send you our love. Can you hear us?" and then a second bar of music. For the
equivalent of thirty sleep-periods it was repeated.
There was nothing that could be considered an answer, even by the most
enthusiastic, although other messages were picked up from time to time. Then
there came an unbroken radio silence from Shining Sister.
There had been some air and sea fighting in the Outward Islands during the
earlier phases of the Conquest of Dudak, and some of the aircraft, equipped
with radio, had reported hearing mysterious signals, of unknown origin,
consisting of what sounded like harp-music mixed with unintelligible
gibberish. The origin-point must have been somewhere along the line-of-sight,
because of the well-known behavior of radio waves on a planet with no
effective ionosphere. But no possible origin-point could be found.
Eventually, after prolonged enquiry, the thick report folder was relegated to
the inactive files. An archival clerk with a passion for the odd and
inexplicable saved it .when the seat of government was moved from Karkasha to
Urava in 2080.
In the years of peace which followed the conquest of Dudak and Gvarda and the
political victory in Zabash, the technique of sea-monster hunting was improved
by the introduction of aircraft-carrying hunter-ships and the use of
tethered-balloons and radio for spotting and directing. Consequently,
considerable radio-communication was going
on among the islands and on the Ocean Sea beyond. There were scattered
reports, only gradually consolidated, of mysterious signals being picked up.
The brain-cell in the Fish-
Oil Production Bureau who first noted the relationship between the reports did
some checking first on his own. Then he flew directly to Urava from Valkor
Island, where he was in charge of the refinery complex, and requested an
immediate audience with the
Successor-Controller, Torv-Varsov.
"I am Skalv-Dalkov, Citizen Successor-Controller," he announced, when led into
the simple, austere workroom from which Torv-Varsov controlled the affairs of
the planet.
Torv-Varsov put down the report, which he had read before admitting the
brain-cell.
"Fascinating," he said, "fascinating! You are sure about all of this, I
suppose?"
"We made cross-checks from two killer-boats, twelve degrees of the planet's
circumference apart. Citizen Successor-Controller," the fish-oil brain-cell
said. "There can be no question about it. The signals come from the Horizon
Object."
"Which, of course, means that the Horizon Object must be a world like our own,
inhabited by intelligent creatures who have attained a high degree of
civilization." Tov-
Varsov frowned. "You appreciate the implications of this, Citizen
Skalv-Dalkov?"
"I have tried not to. Citizen Successor-Controller," the other replied. "I am
familiar with the position taken by The Books of Tisse on this issue. This
world is the center of the Mind of Vran; the objects in the sky are all
trivial, and of small size."
"Yet now we have the direct evidence of instruments far less fallible than the
senses,"
Tov-Varsov replied. "Come now, Citizen, you have been trained as a brain cell.
You
L
should know that, for all He was inspired by Vran, the Blessed Tisse was a
scientifically illiterate, semi-skilled body-cell in the anarchic State of his
time. Furthermore, his writing, for all that it is the Revealed Word of Vran,
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was written to be understood by ignorant semi-barbarians."
"But the centricity of this world in the Mind of Vran is a fundamental "
Skalv-
Dalkov suddenly remembered just whom he was starting to lecture on theology,
and abruptly stopped and closed his mouth, hoping he didn't look as foolish as
he felt.
"My son, you are suffering from a lack of faith," Tov-Varsov said, assuming
his religious mantle, "coupled with a lack of imagination. Because science has
now discovered that the Horizon Object, based upon irrefutable evidence, must
be a world like our own, and is probably inhabited with people more or less
like ourselves, you feel that the religious doctrine of centricity is somehow
threatened. Is that not so?"
Skalv-Dalkov nodded humbly. "That was my thought, Successor-Controller," he
admitted.
"Do you not think that Vran can hold all objects, of whatever size, in his
mind?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then size is, clearly, irrelevant in this context. The distinction is clear.
Religion is of the spirit, therefore non-physical. Physical measurements, such
as size, weight, or distance, are of no relevance. Science is of the body,
therefore physical. There can be no possible conflict; each represents truth
of a different category."
"I see that now, Successor-Controller."
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