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outward and the other inward. This act separated consciousness from
unconsciousness even while she sank into
Thoughtcon trance. The trance itself permitted her to mediate between her
separated selves.
Below her, thirty-six other minds added their efforts to Habiba's. The
intense energy generated by this concentration lifted the cupola from the roof
of the cone and allowed it to turn with the swirling of the whirlpool in the
sea below them.
Higher and higher the cupola flew, piercing clouds and rising into the
stratosphere until the winds there buffeted it. Still it climbed, always
keeping its alignment with the cone far below.
Habiba knew she had never flown this high before but Dreens had never before
encountered a problem of this magnitude.
Earth must be a faulty idmage, she told herself.
At last, the cupola ceased rising but it was far out of the atmosphere. The
occupants survived now on air their combined energy idmaged and were warmed by
the heat of their own efforts, protected by this concentration from intrusions
of other thoughts and objects.
Habiba's released awareness flowed through all the stories of Earth she had
Shared, shutting out distractions. Every known facet of Earther existence
that Dreens had witnessed and told in their tax tales or other Sharings -- a
comprehensive picture within which she searched for Earther motivations --
absorbed her entire attention.
The cupola, without her to hold it, sped off laterally far beyond the Sea of
All Things. After a time no one could count, a solution occurred to her.
Habiba withdrew from the trance and found her cupola sitting in a meadow of
bright yellow flowers almost the same color as her icy-yellow
Thoughtcon aura.
Like the first childseed that I made fertile, she thought.
But these were not childseed flowers. All such plants were gone, picked by
her hands and never again to grow on Dreenor unless eternity demanded she
plant them.
With a pang, Habiba recalled the ancient odors of the childseed flowers.
Nevermore to enjoy such beauty? Something about nevermore things troubled and
frightened her. She wanted permanent creations or, at the very least,
renewable cycles. Would she ever again know childseed flowers?
Habiba longed either to learn the answer or to forget the question.
The Thoughtcon Elite remained entranced below her, breathing deeply, their
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energies decreasing.
Presently, they could be awakened.
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And I will be here -- Habiba the Eternal.
That was how her people saw her: Supreme Tax Collector, Mother of All, the
First Dreen. No family Elders lived below her home. She alone among Dreens
needed no mate. Dreens could not conceive of anyone or anything predating
Habiba. She had always ruled Dreenor and, therefore, commanded the universe.
She would always occupy that pinnacle.
Such reflections disturbed Habiba. She felt the discord worry its way down
the entranced hierarchy of the Thoughtcon.
There was a first memory in her awareness and she tried to avoid it but now
felt unable to escape.
I awakened. I remembered a void -- nothing in it. And I was a naked girl in
a great meadow of yellow flowers. How did I know to pick and store their
seeds?
She recalled the pleasant warmth of that long-ago meadow where she had idmaged
her first mudbrick shelter as a center for neat rows of stone containers
holding the child-seeds.
Countless containers.
Jars as large as her youthful body. They stretched farther than even her eyes
could see -- and her eyes saw farther than those of any other Dreen.
Nothing ever again grew where childseed plants flowered.
I filled all the jars: a sacred task. How did I know it was sacred?
The years of the harvest did not seem long to her immortal timesense. Any
measured time appeared minuscule when seen against eternity, Habiba thought.
And she called the harvest time "First
Day."
At dawn of "Second Day," another period of uncounted sunrises and sunsets,
Habiba spoke her first words:
"These are the childseeds of my people."
From seventy brown seeds, she brought forth the first children -- thirty-five
females and thirty-
five males. When they were born, that was the dawn of "Third Day," an
evermore period extending through this time of the Earth period.
Earth!
The shock-snap of this reality awakened the Elite.
"I have considered the erasure of Earth," she said.
"Mass capital punishment is unthinkable," Jongleur objected.
Habiba did not need to look down at Jongleur to know he stared at her in
fearful amazement. The familiarity of aeons told her every physical reaction
of her Chief Storyteller --
My firstborn.
"I reject erasure," Habiba said, "but not because capital punishment is
objectionable. Earth's death would precipitate a storytelling sickness. I
fear that our sensitive, creative minds might experience idmage withdrawal.
Would that not mean the death of all Dreens?"
Jongleur nodded. Habiba was so wise!
She shifted slightly on her perch. A thin vertical shadow cast by a visuplex
frame crossed to the right side of her face.
To Jongleur, the shadow was like the deep creases that etched her dear
features. He noted her
Thoughtcon aura subsiding -- the icy yellow visible to all of her people,
brighter and more
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