“Exactly,” declared the figure who stepped around a body already swelling in the oppressive and excessively humid heat. “Casualties of the war for freedom of belief. This . . . this is where the freedom of knowledge, the freedom to believe as one wishes, this is where it leads.”
Estafen shook his head. “This is where the triumph of faith over knowledge leads.” His eyes took in the pitcher on a small table, and the paper cups beside it, some overturned, and the sticky orangish liquid, now congealed on the rough wooden surface. “No one should have to drink the Kool-Aid of blind faith . . . like they did.”
“As they inevitably will, Estafen. As they will. This is what will be if you prevail.”
“Like all blind disciples of faith, like all True Believers, you show only what supports your view.”
“Like all blind disciples of knowledge, you insist that unrestricted knowledge and choice lead to peace and prosperity.”
“No,” replied Estafen, “choice leads to learning, and learning leads to both pain and transcendence, and an understanding that some will never learn, some will learn only what they wish to learn, and a few will learn all that they can . . . and they are the ones who are the foundation of greatness.”
“And greatness always fails.”
“So do peace and prosperity, with far less to show.”
Instead of waiting for the sky to split or some other reality to intrude, Estafen concentrated, focusing on the heavens as darkness flooded around the two, a darkness punctuated by points of light, stars indistinguishable from more-distant galaxies.
“What about this?” asked Estafen, gesturing to a strange contrivance dominated by a circular white bowl some four yards across, behind which was a largely cylindrical array of devices, including a long thin braided projection from the array. The contrivance was suspended in starry darkness, with points and smudges of lights encircling it.
“A mere child’s toy, barely able to leave its system.”
“Or this?”
The second device dwarfed the two, and behind it was a planet with wide rings lit by a distant sun.
“A more advanced toy, to be sure.”
Estafen concentrated even harder, reaching, searching, until he found the enormous circular gray mass that sped by the two figures suspended in darkness. “And that?”
“To what purpose? Spending years to reach a destination whose ecosystem is barely habitable?”
Estafen wrenched pseudo-but-future-real reality once more, and the two stood on a low rise with a setting sun at their back. The air was cool, but not cold, as it flowed over them. The prairie grasses stretched almost as far as either could see. Except in the distance rose towers that glittered all shades in the late, late, afternoon light.
“And what of this? A balance of ecology, technology, and”—Estafen pointed heavenward at the early evening star and then toward the towers—“the use of knowledge.”
“A brief period after all the millennia of conflict that will lead to this . . .” The other figure gestured . . . and vanished.
* * *
—
Estafen found himself in a city, one with a great square and a temple of aetherial order, a city that would doubtless exist . . . with yet another conflict between knowledge and belief . . . if he failed.
From the pale green sky swooped a gryphon with brass wings and amber claws, moving faster than anything had the right to fly, thought Estafen, as he scrambled under the rear of the bronzed turtle tank immobilized by the explosive Graecian firebombs. Not that it was supposed to happen this way. He looked around, searching for anything that resembled his objective, or what it might have manifested as.
On the far side of the Great Square was the Temple of Order, shimmering and untouched. He kept looking, while still sensing the gryphon, before he saw the library. Still knowledge! As soon as the gryphon pulled out of its aborted attack stoop, Estafen was on his feet, sprinting toward the half-demolished alabaster library, one of the first targets of the True Believers, its soaring height of nearly three hundred yards truncated to a stump