"Not yet."

"Okay." Dr. Herat stretched and nodded at Michael. "Let me know when the lightning bolt hits. Meanwhile I'll be in my quarters."

Michael nodded. "I'm sure they'll see the logic of your argument, sir."

"I'm equally sure they won't. Would you care to bet on it?"

Michael shrugged. "I only bet when it's my idea."

"You're a wiser man than I, Bequith."

Michael couldn't summon a pithy reply in time, as Dr. Herat walked away. He'd never heard Herat talk like this. But then, this wasn't the first time the professor had surprised him.

Alongside the professor, Michael had walked the ruined streets of ancient races who travelled the stars before the dinosaurs died; had floated in deep space outside the wrecks of ancient star ships whose shattered sides glittered mirror-new in starlight. He had taken mining elevators through a kilometer of stone to look at the fossilized remains of an alien nuclear reactor. Michael was shocked with awe at each new discovery. He was inspired; the NeoShinto implants in his cerebrum made it easy for him to find the kami of each place they visited. The monks of Kimpurusha, who had sent Michael with Dr. Herat, believed that humanity could perceive the Divine only in the familiar environment in which the species had evolved. In deep space, surrounded by machinery and on worlds whose scale and physical laws were literally inhuman, the human heart quailed. Human spirits shriveled. In order to survive, the NeoShintoists believed, humans had to learn to find the Divine in each new place and the Divine presented itself in endlessly different ways.

In the dying days of their Order, Michael Bequith was a message they had cast into the ocean, hoping their teachings would live on through him.

For years, it had worked. Michael sent his encoded kami templates out to the galactic data net, using the best and most current tricks to maintain his anonymity. He heard that thousands if not millions of people were aware of his work and that it was a great comfort to them.

Then Dr. Herat's investigations turned to much more alien species and more terrifying places and Michael's courage began to falter.

Today he just felt restless. Apart from the gym or the galley there was only one other place to go in the station and that was back to his room. As he walked he wondered about Laurent Herat's state of mind.

Inside his room Michael flopped down on the bed and frowned at the gray ceiling. His own mood had been black lately, although for reasons other than Dr. Herat's. Herat had his faith in science and that was unshakable, even if it led him to conclusions that broke his heart. Up until a very short time ago, Michael would have said that he had a similar faith. But then they had visited one world too many and on Dis, he had finally run into the limits of his own beliefs.

He sat up and faced the little table in the corner, where he had placed a curved, half-broken piece of basaltic rock taken from the shoreline. This was a symbol of the kami of this world, chosen by Michael in consultation with the NeoShinto AI implanted in his skull. He and the AI had found this stone on the third day of his visit and at that time he had tried and failed to derive a mystical experience from it; he had not tried since. Now he drew the room's one chair next to the table and sat down to contemplate the stone again.

He placed his hand on the stone and closed his eyes, conjuring in memory the sight of the tidal bore coming in. He tried to recover every sense from that moment and wished again that he could have smelled the breeze and felt the cold air on his own skin. Because no one could go outside without a quarantine suit, touching this sterilized piece of basalt was as close as he would ever get to contacting the kami of Kadesh itself.

Still, touching the stone should awaken the proper reverence in him. He remembered the awe that he'd felt, seeing that wall of water rolling toward him. And he remembered the depth of it— the emeralds.

Emeralds… He called up the mental discipline of NeoShinto contemplation, let go of verbal thought and tried to become pure awareness.

The AI took over smoothly; no need for the constant discipline of meditation here. Michael felt his consciousness expand to fill the stone. He heard a sound like the tide, only deeper— the music of the Kadists, perhaps. He let it carry him away.

For a few moments he felt a reverberating awe, as if he were in the presence of some mighty being. He waited for the sensation to translate into something more, but it didn't happen. Missing was the sense of understanding. Also missing, the feeling of acceptance. Most of all, where was the sense of kinship-with-place that he had always been able to find before?

He stared at the stone, straining, for several long minutes. Then he shook his head, let the AI fall dormant again and flopped back on the cot. Rather than feeling elevated, it seemed he could feel the weight of Kadesh's ocean settling onto his shoulders.

He lay there with an arm flung over his face, thinking about the worlds he had seen and whose kami he had captured. Few people would ever have the luck to visit as many exotic places as he had in his service to Herat. After all, Herat was one of the vanguard of the Panspermia Institute— one of the select few who spent their careers in the field trying to identify and contact new intelligent species.

Michael remembered multiple star systems, worlds with suns scattered like diamonds across the sky; cold Galilean planets where they drilled hundreds of kilometers into the ice to find hidden oceans; he had walked in the ruined cities of a dozen extinct starfaring species. Everywhere, he had been able to find the spark of the Divine, hidden though it might be. Dr. Herat left these worlds with a greater understanding of humanity's relation to other species; Michael Bequith left each knowing what kind of religious observations would permit someone's spirit to thrive in that place, or alongside that species.

And then he and Dr. Herat had come to Dis and found things that whispered doubt into both their souls— so that now, Dr. Herat no longer believed in the ideals of Panspermia and Michael could no longer summon the kami of the worlds they visited.

He sat up and entered full lotus position. The hollow echo of Dis was sounding in his mind; he had to clear his consciousness, or he might fall into despair again. Just as he was beginning to gain control of his thoughts, an inscape daemon chimed.

"There's a message from the cruiser for Dr. Herat," said Meline; she was one of the few on this remote station who regularly remembered to notify Michael first about things. Michael's role was mysterious to these technicians, who mostly came from the oldest worlds of the Rights Economy and viewed the idea of service without remuneration as silly, if not criminal.

"Thanks, Meline. Route it to me and I'll let him know."

He opened his eyes— inscape would not write its images across his sensorium with them closed. The inscape window looked into some lounge aboard a starship; the only way to tell that this was a military craft and not a luxury liner was the row of high-gee couches along the wall and the uniform of the man who faced Michael now.

"Dr. Laurent Herat. This is Rear Admiral Crisler, you may remember me from my days at the Institute. You're being temporarily relieved of your appointment here, sir. I'm authorized to take you to a new assignment. If you'd join us aboard the Spirit of Luna, we'll debrief you at twenty-hundred hours." The window blinked out of existence, revealing the stateroom's gray wall.

So, it's happened. He sat up and looked around his tiny room glumly. It was early afternoon; they had a few hours to pack and say their good-byes.

Dr. Herat should never have written that report.