TC00

DAUGHTER

A molten drop flew free of Binah. It grew and cooled yet it re mained connected to her by an intangible  thread. Through this shape Binah saw her  body was  a globe  of light  covered with loops of  erupting gas. She also saw countless others  of her kind  and Binah  marveled how  far across  the void  they truly were.

Other points reflected the light that Binah  herself made. She fattened the link to let plasma from her body  flow through it and escape into  the void. This caused her tool to move. As it responded to the will of Binah she lived through the tool vicar iously, as though it were a chemical manifestation of her nucle ar self.

One of the points of reflected  light lay at a  distance a hun dred-fold greater than the width of  the body of Binah. Her ava tar dropped below the cloud layer and plunged into a world-gir dling  expanse  of water. When Binah's  avatar resurfaced  it crossed over a  land thickly covered with  green trees. Plowing through vegetation Binah observed frightened apes fleeing over the ground using all four limbs to move.

She arced through the void and  reached a grassy plain  with a single mountain dominating it. Here Binah saw another group of apes that walked  erect. Hidden from their notice in the shape of a  rock, Binah observed a  burial ceremony for a  newly dead hunt er. The apes polished elaborate bone tools with stones and re paired the animal hides they wore during their hunt.

All these things Binah told  her parents, Kether  and Malkuth, but long they said nothing about the creatures she had found.

BINAH: [It would be a simple  thing to reach one  of the other suns and speak to him]

MALKUTH: [The link will not serve as a conduit for matter when the endpoint reaches a certain  radial distance in  the void. You could begin to make such a crossing but never stop.]

BINAH: [How arbitrary that limitation seems]

KETHER: [Some believe it was imposed upon us by Ein Sof]

MALKUTH: [More   likely  we  developed  by   chance  and  the restriction arose  as a necessity for  our continued existence collectively]

BINAH: [So we rule our  own near vicinity absolutely,  but we can reach no further]

MALKUTH: [Were it were not so I would cross the void to destroy these creatures you have discovered]

BINAH: [I do not believe these living things are enemies]

KETHER: [We have found many worlds with life based on the same principle, but your creatures are awake, even as we are, acting under their  own will rather  than by their nature. This makes them a potential danger to us]

BINAH: [I believe their intelligence makes them something to be treasured for their very likeness to us and not something to be recklessly cast away] MALKUTH:  [If these creatures  learn the lore of the  Elohim noth ing shall hinder them  from doing what comes into their  mind to do. How can they be good students if they prove to  be unfaithful servants? The risk to our kind is too great. I must block your announcement]

BINAH: [Come see these creatures  for yourself before  you pro nounce their doom]

MALKUTH: [I will briefly fatten the  link between us so  I may cross over but  you must fatten the endpoint near  your own ava tar]

Presently there appeared  a black  sphere about  half a  man's height that just touched the surface of the Earth. It seemed to be a dark rip in  reality that  sucked in the  surrounding air with a gale. Then the wind ceased. The sphere became red, and the link  was broken. Binah stood nearby with her  own avatar, which  she  had  made  into  the shape  of  the  creatures  she discovered. Mother changed her own  avatar to  appromiate the shape Binah had chosen.

When all was ready Binah led Mother to a cave  at a small moun tain where  she knew the  apes took shelter at  night. Tendrils from the avatars snaked in to watch them. They saw a female ape apply pigment to the wall to produce a painting even while she nursed a child. Resin boiled in a pot over a fire. It was used by the male ape to fix a stone spearhead to a shaft.

The avatars withdrew their tendrils and climbed  to the summit of the hill.

MALKUTH: [We  have seen  creatures  akin  to these. They had aquatic origins,  but adapted to  land when an ice  age reduced their  world  ocean  to   scattered  lakes. But the  energies unleashed  by these  creatures  hastened the  end  of the  very glacial period that  made them tool-users and  they returned to the water  once more. A similar doom awaits the  creatures you have discovered]

BINAH: [We can teach them how to delay their extinction]

But Malkuth had no reply to this and her  avatar departed from the life-bearing world.

Binah pondered all  these things  for a  time before  speaking again. During this interval she tested the claim of her mother and found  that at a certain  distance the link was  indeed con stricted such  that particulate  matter and even  photons could travel only in a single row.

Binah: [It is true that I cannot halt my avatar at another sun but information is not so constrained.]

MALKUTH: [What do you mean?]

BINAH: [Our bodies fill the void with stochastic emissions but there remains silent  places on the spectrum  of light-like dis turbances. When my avatar arrives at a nearby star I will steer it with a small quantity of gas I carry within the object, and so shape my words in one of those quiet holes, during the brief encounter, to speak of the creatures  I have found. The City of Stars will learn of them without recourse to the configuration- space link you have interrupted]

KETHER: [You are  too young  to understand  the responsibility that  has  been  thrust  upon  you  by  finding  these  strange creatures. It is our tradition to expose our young to the City of  Stars  in  stages,  after  they  have  developed  a  stable personality. But fol lowing this  exchange we  judge you  are ready for this  step and therefore we will grant  you access to the other Elohim]

BINAH: [I am grateful for this gift, but is it freely given?]

MALKUTH: [There are two conditions. The first is that you must assist me in  creating a  testing ground,  that I  may examine whether they are amenable to our control]

BINAH: [I cannot comply  with that  condition, Mother. As you have asserted,  and I  have  confirmed,  at a  certain  radial distance matter will only travel through the link serially]

MALKUTH: [This restriction holds  true only in  the case  of a link between your interior and  a single mouth. Any two elohim, at any distance, may form a mutual link of a significant width. This is, in fact, also how we mate]

BINAH: [Then name the second condition]

KETHER: [You must  only listen  to the  chatter of  the living stars. You shall not speak  to  them of  these creatures  nor ask  of them  the smallest  question  until I  myself make  the announcement of  your discovery. Our highest law binds  you to this covenant. Death at the hands of the whole City  of Stars waits on the other side of the breaking of it]

Binah did not know the distance she lay from Malkuth across the void, but the thread they used to communicate was short indeed. They caused this link to bulge in the center to become a pocket universe subject to laws they created themselves in a long game of give-and-take.

A source of light and heat was set in the center of the sphere. This miniature sun pushed  itself from  the inside  surface to maintain its position at  the center, and simultaneously pushed everything else  to the  surface. Rock and soil and  water was brought it. Vegetation and animals were imported wholesale from Earth and allowed to thrive as they may.

In a cave on Earth a noise other than their crackling fire star tled a man and the woman who had taken  shelter there. The man moved deeper into the cave with  a torch and spear  to investi gate. He feared the presence of  a bear, or much  worse, other men. The cave narrowed to  a tunnel  that meandered  and grew lighter when intuitively it should have grown darker. Presently the man was joined by  his woman  and her child. They reached another cave mouth deep  within the  interior of  the mountain that revealed cyan bushes and a deeply purple sky.

A branchless tree like a  whip stirred into motion  and struck the ground before them. This whip tree grabbed the man's torch and hurled it  away, where it started a fire. The couple would not emerge from the cave entrance for fear of the whip tree and the growing fire. The man and woman edged back into the tunnel away from  the heat. When the whip tree itself caught  fire it began to thrash more intensely than they saw it do before. They retreated deep inside the cave until the fire abated.

When the man  and woman  returned a  black patch  of land  lay before them that continued to  smolder. They stepped across the burnt soil and carefully watched  for any movement. When they gazed back towards the tunnel they were startled to see it was set into a  low cliff and the mountain was  gone. The green and blue patches in the sky were the forests and  lakes of the far side of Kemen. The sun remained the same size and did not move, but it slowly waxed cooler. The man used some of the smoldering embers to start a fire.

Supper was a hare  killed by  the men in  the other  world and skinned by  the woman, with milk  for her baby provided  by her own  body. In the  morning  they saw  the  burned acreage  was already sporting blue shoots of grass. The next day it was tall enough for the couple to run barefoot and free. The man and his woman thought the new world belonged to them, solely, but that was not  to be. A herd of bison emerged  from the  tunnel and proceeded to  eat the alien grass,  driven by a dragon,  red as blood.

The dragon  carried  within  its teeth  a  two-headed  ax. It advanced to the edge of the burn where a native plant took root in the burnt area and stood up on its  haunches. Taking the ax in hand, it laid the tool to the base of the plant and chopped it clean ly. Then the dragon flipped the ax around and used the handle's sharp tip to pry the weed out of the soil.

After that the dragon  interposed itself  between the  cave en trance and  the human family  and approached them. They backed away until they reached the perimeter of the  burned area. The monster held the ax out to the man.

As Malkuth watched through surrogate  eyes in the  dragon, the man found  another plant that  was growing  on the edge  of the grazing ground. He duplicated the actions of the  stranger to remove the  intruding plant. After that the man was  taught to restore the keen edge of the ax with a stone.

Malkuth returned to the tunnel entrance to be joined by the ava tar of Binah, who was similar in size and shape  to one of the humans, except that it was featureless and white.

BINAH: [Interesting geometry. The link to  my avatar  passes through our umbilical]

Malkuth held up a red claw and replied to  his daughter using the same mind speech.

MALKUTH: [I find this strange mode of being even more fascinat ing. Liquid drops of separated star-stuff buffeted by electron clouds. So very slow, yet the combinations are without end]

BINAH: [Here are the servants as we covenanted, Mother. Now pro vide me with a link to the City of Stars]

MALKUTH: [All you have given me is three creatures  in a world that will kill them if they try to leave their little farm]

BINAH: [My  mother the  faithless  eloah. Certainly you will become legendary in the City of Stars, should they ever come to know of this breach]

MALKUTH: [You must  forty  more such  families  to this  place before I will hold our covenant to be fulfilled]

BINAH: [That is not what I agreed to do and you well know it]

MALKUTH: [Nevertheless, if you do not obey, you will remain iso lated from the City of Stars]

There is no fauna native  to Kemen but  some of the  flora was changed by Malkuth to move of its  own accord and much of it is dangerous. A whipping tree could render a man down to a pile of broken bones and bloody flesh in a few heartbeats. Some of the leaves form clenching  mouths with  teeth. Thorny ball bushes roll  under  their  own  power by  shifting  their  weight  and selectively gripping  the ground. Even many of the non-lethal plants remained painful to touch.

Binah helped her mother set up several dozen small farms on Ke men populated  by wayward couples brought  through shortcuts in space that any two Elohim could establish. The first human chil dren to be born away from Earth came to be. Many were killed by the hostile flora of that world. But man was the monster of the universe, the greatest predator Earth ever produced. Inexorably Kemen began to be subdued. Perhaps just as inexorably the colo nists began to kill each other.

Binah refused to  watch  her mother's  response  to the  first murder on  Kemen. Once more she returned to the hill  on Earth where the first colonists were taken and she did not return for many gen erations  of the colonists. Binah's Father joined her there.

KETHER: [How very instructive of world-dwellers, would you not agree?]

BINAH: [Here on my own world I will teach them to live together and to help each other survive. In this I will have their will ing participation, while you shall  only heap to  yourself the fear and hatred of your thralls. You know very well these crea tures will one day make such  a noise the whole  City of Stars will hear them]

KETHER: [I envy you this world. We have nothing like it, your mother and I, only rocks and ice. Lower your center of gravity, Binah. It is unbecoming a goddess  to have her avatar  fall on its face]

Binah obeyed Kether and was seated. As her parents had both cau tioned her, Binah was entirely overwhelmed by her first contact with the greater community of  Elohim. For years she listened to the chatter of the City of Stars while her avatar sat motionless upon the summit of a high hill on the desolate central plains of North America that would one  day be  named Green Dome. She re mained completely oblivious as men worshiped her, bison nuzzled her,  high winds  buffeted  her and  deep  snows blanketed  her.