[...disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Okay?] [OH: by the way, thanks to Roger Zelazny, too.]

Primus blazed momentarily through the nav port as the ship hove around for its decel burn. Tak squinted reflexively even as the port's polarizer blacked out the direct glare. Ariel loomed and swung past his view, the thin magenta line of atmosphere showing no arc, at this distance, through the tiny circle of fused quartz that served as Tak's only view out. He lolled in his straps, weightless, staring, as he had every waking moment of his sixty-five day solitary journey. --This is what a drowning man would see,-- he thought, --having slipped below the surface. Horizon smaller than the rim of a bottle. Tak. His name would be Tak. He took the name from ancient lore of Earth-That-Was, because it suited him in so many ways. He had not used his own name in so long it truly was lost even to him. He had lost so much. Remembering, now, those everyday things he lacked was becoming a tediously redundant surprise. The burn began and the jerryrigged sling rose up to cradle his body. He switched the cabin lights on and scanned the display on the terminal plugged into the ship's system. UexAV cargo ships had no life-support pod. Tak had had to improvise. It suited him: a line of glowing plasma creeping across Ariel's night sky would herald his coming, but monitors would not look for a human cargo. ------------ Landfall and debarkation were absurdly easy. The ship was docked and shunted into a que with dozens of identical units by unseeing machinery, and Tak rappelled down to the deck and simply walked off. He realized it would sometimes have been useful to have travelled this way as an operative; and, he knew now, it would never have occurred to him then. Add Arrogance to his list of sins. The sky brightened as he rode the levitrack across the depot complex toward the Admin massif. The air was fresh and cool. Always, on Ariel, fresh and cool. What might they have put in the air, here? So many questions. Once you know to ask. Once your eyes have been forced open. Blocks upon blocks upon blocks--Admin grew gigantic. Tak worked across the lanes and stepped onto solid ground, joined the earliest few now filling up the walkways between dark FoamCrete towers, and immediately was as good as invisible. His dress was neither modest nor memorable, his stride was purposeful but unassuming, all a product of his training and conditioning. People didn't see an egoless man. Through tall doorless portals onto an immense expanse of polished stone and towards the security plaza he walked, pausing by the far wall to adjust one boot; and he watched the people pass. --There, a tall woman about equal to his body mass, Blue Clearance name tag, look how she walks, what her face hides from others--good. He straightened as she passed, drew several deep breaths and worked his head and throat into the necessary larynx-shape: The woman slipped off her silver finger-cuff and dropped it in her Possibles bag; she turned to the pressure plate just as she heard her name: "...Hello, Rachael." Oh, it couldn't be. She was afraid to look. She watched, without seeing, the oilslick swirls on the pressure plate as they pooled around her fingers and the plate flashed blue. She couldn't look. It couldn't be him, she'd sent him off and he was gone and she'd awakened alone this morning and it was wrong, wrong, oh, let it be him, let me try again, oh God please--she turned toward the wall where she'd heard her name, and no one smiled back at her, she whirled around, her sudden hope spinning away like the toss of her hair, and he wasn't, no, couldn't have, it was. She shook her head and looked down at the pressure plate, now glowing soft pink and reading ACCESS LEVEL 12 // PASSED 05:23A. --But she was still here, on this side of the gate; she touched the plate again and it turned black. ------------ Tak moved more rapidly here, past the gates, where there were none who didn't belong. He hadn't been here in years, but the logic of Alliance architecture never varied. He had to find a man. Parents, siblings, friends, what memories might have once filled him up had been stripped and he was empty. Once he'd thought that emptiness a clean, ascetic thing, a sort of non-Satori that allowed him motion without the resistance that mortal trappings would create; now, he knew that emptiness to be an illusion. The absence, then, had merely been of Substance. This new emptiness, more terrible than any Black glimpsed through the tiniest port, this was of Belief. He had to find his Teacher. There was little time. Tak was alone, this early, on this floor. He found a console that had been left in sleep mode and logged in with one of his codes, one he'd picked out himself years before against some unknown contingency. Staggeringly, it worked: the console glowed blue and he was in. Where to find-- The hands he remembered. Those hands, hardened and horned and featherlight, those hands worked his hands through the twenty-seven essential shapes until they settled into the bones. Those hands caressed the fragile pages of ancient texts, searching for the both of them that bridge from the Vedic roots of uncreation forward through Sun Tsu's resolve and ahead to the Tam Gene-derived physical perfection, and found it, and almost brought it to fruition. Those hands, that mind, this body: there had almost been a breakthrough there. Tak--he was Tak, now--and his Teacher, his great gentle deadly Teacher and ultimately his only connection to the humanity he left behind, they had almost succeded in turning this body into the perfect tool, the ultimate human vessel of utility greater than Humanity. And then his Teacher was gone. And the smile. That memory was hardest of all to bear. He had vanished--that long ago? The record ended abruptly, with a last entry regarding requisitions for bolts of heavy cloth and some sundry foodstuffs, and his Teacher was gone. It had not occurred to Tak, then, even to wonder at the absence. Now--ship dispatches offworld for the next two days, Persephone, Salisbury, Burnham Loop-- Miranda. No, no. That connection, that secret, would survive the next decade. The Loop, though, that was something: as The Quadrant nutated through the system, the trade routes shifted. Played hell with the market. His Teacher could disappear pretty thoroughly by dropping into the Loop. How do you hide a man so nearly a God? --Ah. Tak closed the console readups and scattered his access record. He hadn't considered as yet how he would get out of this building, let alone leave the planet; but it should be easy compared to the rest of his trail. ------------ Colored dawn shattered, raked in the razor nails of the Apsarases across the valley. Bo had watched the traveler all the previous day, a little plume of dust creeping along the valley floor, following the riverbed and fording shortly before the false sundown, to make camp at the foot of this mountain. Bo had watched the little glow of the traveler's fire until his eyelids slipped down and he had slept. Now the traveler was two-thirds upslope; he would arrive within the hour. Bo stretched the stiffness out of his bones and and, so doing, shook the cold into his clothes. Clear mornings were always colder, but Bo loved the play of planets and moons here in the last of darkness. It was worth waking to suffering, to be here in the night, the half-light and the light. The fire was small and intense when the traveler achieved the plateau. He stopped, stooped, and removed both boots; a gesture, presumably. "Good morning." "Good morning. Come here and warm yourself." The traveler put his boots down and wound himself into a sitting position. This man was for far more than walking, that was certain. "You've travelled far." "I've travelled for two Standard years." "--And far." Bo reached into his bag and pulled out some smoked goat. The traveler took the profferred gobbit, took it in both hands and held it a moment; then raised it to his mouth and tore some off, and chewed in silence while still regarding the remainder in his hands. The last pinpoints were almost gone now with the red dawn. Bo savored his meat and let the moment stretch out as it would. The traveler produced a flask. Water, with a trace of whiskey to kill the creepies. It was good. Body-warm. "I'm on a quest, Shepard." "Brother. Brother Bo, Tozan-Ryu monestary." "Down in the village they call you folk the Honkers." Bo chuckled. "I suspect they would. What do you seek ?" "I seek a man. Or word of a man." "Well. A man comes a long way to find a man, and of seeker and sought I still know nought." Now the traveler laughed. "I'm sorry. It's been a long time since I've spoken to folk, and longer since I've thought to name myself. I'm Tak." "Tak. I knew of a Tak, in a far-off place, in another time." "I am of that same sort, Brother. But I claim no Bright Spear." "An interesting name, of an interesting time. Have some more goat." Bo gave away the last of his food. It was a goodness, because this man was clearly wanting; and it was also a kindness, for Bo could see this man had questions he couldn't ask yet, partly because words were such an unfamiliar medium to him, and partly because the questions were such a heavy burden. He needed a diversion, for the moment, from himself. He was good monk material. But that wasn't going to happen. Presently he wiped his mouth, put his hands together and down into his lap. Three distinct motions, each completed before the next began. "I seek a man whom I believe came here, and became a monk. A man much like me in appearance and stature. He would have come here perhaps fourteen years ago." "I know the man." Tak raised his head and stared at Bo, very still, as though taking the whole of the man into his eyes for the first time. "How did you happen to be waiting for me here, Brother?" Bo laughed. "The answer to that, Tak, truly lies in our stars! --It was coincidence. But we all, here, know and love this man. He is the brightest and best of our Order." Tak's hands were folded, still, peaceful. But not relaxed: they seemed to hold each other still, as though if released they would fly on their own. "Is he here now?" "No. he comes occasionally; I saw him last, maybe--three years ago? He had been Shepard to a ship, of all things, out on the Rim. A pack of pirates, we said, and he'd just smile and bear the joke, but I know Book went where his heart sent him, he must have found good cause to be there. --He was on his way to Haven and stopped to visit, and we all--" Bo stopped. Never, never since he had taken the Order and picked up his flute, had he given a thought to his own mortality. Until now. "Book. You called him Book." "He took that name while he was here at the monestary. I never heard him name himself before that." The light in Tak's eyes--deepened. Not darkened. Deepened. Without a muscle relaxing, his spirit slacked within his face and he was drained. "He named himself, then. He named himself Book. Of course he did." Tak's hands--uncoiled. They opened, and he looked down at his smooth palms. He turned his hands over, clenched them lightly, opened them. "And he passed through here, and went on to Haven." "He traveled to Haven to live with the miners, yes." Tak sat, silent. Bo knew how to wait. He had never before thought what a monstrous waste of life waiting was, until now, but this man before him would control how the moment spun out and Bo was powerless to move it along. Tak sat, still and silent. Presently he took up the flask again, pulled the stopper and took a draught. He passed the flask to Bo. "Brother, I believe Book is dead." Bo drank the muddy water. He considered the flask, nodded. "You have knowledge of this?" "I know of things that lead me to this conclusion. And I believe, if Teacher were--if Shepard Book were alive after what else I know, I would know of that thing. He is dead." Tak's hands were on his knees, palm-up, open, far apart from each other. His head sank forward, hiding his face. It passed, the only moment of fear Bo could remember having. He shifted, pulled his feet underneath him in ZaZen, pulled against his spine until pops ran up like rungs breaking on a ladder. He felt the air rush in his throat, cold and dry. Now, he could wait, again. He heard Tak's sudden great intake of breath, and realized he had heard nothing at all from the man for a very long time. Tak's lungs filled, emptied, filled again; and presently he breathed like any other man would at this height. "Brother Bo, I have no place else that can have me. May I come and stay here?" "As long as you will."