Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   

   If all knowledge were within a man, and ignorance

   were wholly absent, that man would be consumed

   and cease to be. So ignorance is desirable, inasmuch

   as by that means he continues to exist...

   Jalaluddin Rumi Discourses



                                              PROLOGUE
   'Come in, Rajit,' the Teacher called; and the boy in the turban followed the echo
   of his knuckles into the room.

   (This must have been how it happened;)

   On one of the white plaster walls an emerald lizard poised, - the membrane of its
   throat trembling convulsively. The table bore crockery, school exercise books, a
   bronze statuette of a Tibetan god copulating with a highly gymnastic partner, and
   a large box. A louvre window intersected the rows of palms and the flowering
   tree outside, producing a chequerboard effect One of the two cane chairs was
   occupied by the African Teacher, the other by a Chinese whose olive green tunic
   and customary holster (which may or may not have contained a pistol) showed
   him to be a Dobdob, one of the police wing of the Space Communications
   Administration, Bardo, which also handled all the world's internal affairs.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (1 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   'I hear you'd like to be a lama when you're older, Rajit?'

   The boy nodded firmly.

   'More than anything!'

   'Why's that?' A pucker of amusement creased the face of the Chinese.

   To see India one day-' the boy blurted out.

   The Chinese cut him off angrily.

   'Do you feel confined, here in Africa? Here, is the same as everywhere else - part
   of human society. If you're a lama, what do you think you'll be preaching about?
   Tourism?' He made the last word sound obscene, which it was. 'What sort of
   people travel the world nowadays?'

   'Some sailors do.'

   'Oh yes - carrying essential supplies! That's just because everywhere isn't self-
   sufficient. Even the biggest of the sail-barges only need a few husband and wife
   teams to crew them-'

   'A computer trims the sails, I know.'

   'The barge is their world, not the ports they call at,'

   Rajit flushed.

   'But you travel, sir. There's nothing wrong with travel if you're really

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (2 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   contributing something.'

   'You're forthright, at least! Bardo officials travel, right enough - to co-ordinate
   the world and see that everyone is fed and cared for and correctly educated.
   Perhaps to find candidates for starflight, if we're lucky-'

   'I only want to visit places ... to contribute. Like you, sir. Only slowly, as a lama.'

   'Quite! The trick of being a lama is just that. To move gently from place to place,
   to teach the people social ecology. To repeat the good news of how the human
   body-field can be used to contact our star friends, without squeezing the world
   dry to build rocket-ships and other paraphernalia. The lama proves by his own
   example that there's no need for people to waste energy that way. He doesn't
   wander from town to town because he's been, allotted some sort of magic carpet,
   but because he's the perfect compass needle to point the true way. That way
   always points right here - wherever he is, in a little village like your Bagamoyo
   or a big far-off city like Bombay.'

   'I agree, sir.'

   'But you'd still like to see Bombay? Well, honesty's a fine thing, Rajit, At the
   same time, the really honest man also knows when to tell a lie. He knows when
   it's more true to tell a lie. Sometimes we have to tell little lies and play games,
   don't we? He who doesn't know how to do this is a fool. No one would want him
   for a lama.'

   The Chinese smiled.

   'You'll be a lama if you study hard - and learn to tell a lie convincingly, for the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (3 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   sake of pointing the way. In fact, you can even start right now, I have a little
   service to ask of you confidentially.'

   'I won't tell a soul, whatever it is,' Rajit promised fervently.

   A stray mosquito had blown into the room along with Rajit. It flew about now,
   trailing legs like loose threads, whining ever so faintly but persistently. The
   lizard made a rush across the plaster and froze above the Dobdob's head, a green
   flame.

   'You see that box on the table? Inside there's a coco-de-mer. Yes, a real one. It's
   quite heavy. Take it down to the shore. Secretly. I want you to dump that coco as
   though it had been washed up by the tide - but nowhere too conspicuous. Then
   get of the box. Smash it up. Now, there's a girl in this village Nailed Lila.'

   'Yes, we're good friends.'

   'So I've been told. I want you to make sure she finds that coco. By herself,
   though; on her own - that's essential. I'll leave it up to your own ingenuity to
   arrange. Point her the right way without her realizing it; and keep the other
   children out of the way. After she finds it-'

   Rajit listened carefully to every word.

   Outside, a dog barked in the hot dust, and the blue jacaranda bloomed.



                                                             ONE

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (4 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   When I was just eleven years old and my breasts were freshly budding I found a
   coco-de-mer washed ashore. It was tangled up in damp seaweed, though
   strangely it was quite dry itself. Cocos are huge, double coconuts. Because they
   resemble a woman's parted thighs and vulva, they've always been powerful ritual
   objects. The ocean had brought this one all the way from the Seychelles Islands,
   for me! Forgetting my sandals in the excitement of being singled out by fate (for
   I firmly believed I was destined for Bardo even then, though it was to be six
   years before the Dobdobs came to confirm it) I ran barefoot through the
   Bagamoyo streets, staggering under its weight, to show the prodigy to my
   friends. The Bardo Building - the former mosque - contained an ebony carving
   of a coco-de-mer, which we children had to dust and polish; but we'd never seen
   a real one. They're only found in the Seychelles. The southern equatorial current
   generally bears them all the other way: to India and Sri Lanka, where they've
   been treasured for centuries.

   Yussuf, Rajit, cousin Rose and Timothy crowded round.

   The black, polished double shell stood as high as my kneecap on the dusty road.
   The central cleft where the shell divided was smooth and milky white. Symbol
   of human love and joy - and more than that, the gateway to the stars.

   Our own thin, lanky, domestic coconut palms spiked the blue sky everywhere.
   Their clusters of nuts were only a fraction of the size of my coco: little skullfuls
   of milk. Tattered parasols of leaves drooped from the tops of their knobbly,
   banded trunks, providing the only shade for our village, apart from a few
   corrugated awnings along the shops, and an arcade outside the dispensary where
   patients could squat and gossip.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (5 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Dun, humpbacked cattle with tight, ribbed hides grazed right down on to the
   beach under the shade of these palms, nibbling seaweed at the high tide line, ,

   (Mer  means sea in French,' Rajit said knowingly. (All those facts crammed into
   his turban along with reams of oily black hair.)

   They never spoke French in India,' Yussuf protested. 'People always performed a
   ceremonial when they found a new coco!' Rajit said. 'We must do the same. Out
   at the tombs. That's the proper place!'

   'She ought to take it straight home,' mumbled Timothy the albino. He was scared
   of the old ruined Arab graveyard. Scared of spooks, since he looked like one
   himself. His skin was mottled pink and ivory, and his flesh had a poachy texture
   like thick sour milk. He was a sickly boy. We all know that he'd probably die in
   his early twenties, since albinos only live a little while. Rajit took an unkind
   advantage of his appearance in our games. Timothy was the perfect ghost.
   However, we were children, we didn't care, and Timothy still followed us round
   sheepishly, grateful not to be excluded. Tears sprang to his eyes as he begged us
   not to go to the tombs, and we told ourselves that it was just the sunlight hurting
   them.

   Cousin Rose and I were both black and glossy as polished ebony. We wore our
   hair plaited in tight corn rows. Our mothers, spent hours unwinding and retying
   them every weekend - a whole morning of fidget and chatter, during which we
   heard (for example) how Bibi Mwezi had poured boiling water over the
   contracapsule in her arm in her anxiety to conceive a child, and how she put up
   with the worsening pain for weeks till Mboya, the Barefoot Doctor, was hard put
   to it to save her whole arm from amputation. Or we heard the tale of how the


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (6 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   baobab tree gets its strange shape - for a baobab looks as though it's growing
   upside down, with its crown buried in the soil and its roots poking in the air.
   That tree is somebody whose head got stuck in the 'Divine Ground' by
   experimenting with Tantra, the yoga of love, without proper knowledge or
   safeguards. This was a cautionary tale put about by the lamas, and I mention it
   mainly to illustrate how we behaved with Timothy - because a huge baobab
   loomed over the Arab tombs and one day the tale suggested a game to Rajit. He
   uprooted a large stone to make a hole in the ground, and forced Timothy to stand
   on his hands, with his head hidden down the hole, while we stood round
   laughing at this white baobab tree with legs wagging in the air. Other times, we
   collected the fallen baobab pods, smooth as the heads of babies, with the lightest
   down of hair, to crack than open for their sweet sherbet.

   The graveyard sang with heat and insects. It was just after noon. For centuries
   now the old pillar tombs bad been rotting back into their natural state of coral,
   Pockmarks gnawed the blocks and columns; their plaster mouldings had nearly
   all fallen off. Most of the lime and gypsum mortar had washed loose during the
   past four hundred and fifty years, although there were still a few geometric
   friezes and even an unbroken blue and white Chinese bowl inset high up at the
   top of one pillar just underneath the turban-like knob. It bore the Chinese
   character for 'long life' (according to Rajit). All other inset plates and bowls had
   long since fallen out or been stolen.

   I carried my coco-de-mer up to the base of one tomb and propped it against the
   carved coral.

   'Whose tomb is it, Yussuf?'



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (7 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Yussuf, who could read Arabic, squinted up at the remains of the squiggly dotted
   script.

   'It says, that this is the tomb of the Muslims ...He is as Sultan Shonvi la-Haji...
   He died in the year something after the Flight of the Prophet, He must have been
   a salt trader Sultan Shonvi, The salt boss. That's what it means.'

   I tried to visualize the bearded Arab in his flowing robes and jewels. The slaves,
   the sacks of salt on their backs. Whipcracks. Laden dhows in the now silted-up
   creek. Before the Europeans came to this part of Africa. Then went home again.
   Before Americans brought sacks of grey dust from the seas of the Moon, and
   bags of red sand from the Martian deserts, at incredible cost. And abandoned the
   whole enterprise. Before the human race discovered the true way to the stars
   through the sexual union of Man and Woman.

   We were all so young then. Even Rajit, with the first soft bristles on his chin,
   was merely cruelly innocent when he made us carry out the masquerade that
   afternoon among the graves. He insisted that Timothy and I should act out the
   copulation of Black Kali and White Shiva. Kali the Destroyer stands for the
   ravages of time, Shiva for the eternal spirit of creativity. Thus, though Shiva is
   slain, a white corpse, he still has an erection, even in death, Kali rides upon his
   body, her four arms brandishing weapons, her red tongue sticking out in scorn.
   She's supposed to do so in a graveyard, by night.

   After dark the graveyard was always full of great scuttling crabs marching up
   from the sea, and the baobab tree glowed ghostly in the starlight. Sighs of wind
   through its branches sounded like lost souls to take possession of you.

   However, the sun was shining down on us right then, from overhead. Ants were

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (8 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   tunnelling through the bones of the long-dead Salt Boss, turning them into flutes
   and trumpets; and the hum and buzz of insects round about us sounded like
   music played on them, filtering up above the ground.

   'You'll have to take your clothes off, both of you,' ordered Rajit. 'Timothy must
   lie down with his eyes wide open. He's dead. He's the white corpse of Shiva. He
   has to be virile, of course.'

   'How can he be?' wondered cousin Rose. There's nothing to excite you when
   you're dead.'

   'But Timothy isn't really dead, he's only pretend-dead! Anyway, it has to be this
   way because Kali on top of Shiva means that you're leaving your physical body
   behind - by means of the sexuality of the body. Right, Lila? It's just a symbol for
   Bardo flight. So Timothy has to be virile just by thinking about it. He isn't to
   touch himself, because he's dead. He can't move, see?'

   'Tim will get awfully sunburnt. You know that his mother won't let him take his
   Clothes off to swim, in case his skin peels,' said Yussuf.

   'That's the salt water, not the sun!' '

   The only occasion when I'd seen Tim naked, he had looked like a great fat
   maggot, his flesh as spongy as white bread, with pink blotches as big as saucers.
   I loathed the prospect of touching his naked body with my own; no doubt Rajit
   was aware of this - and it added to his sadistic glee. Both Rajit and Yussuf had
   proved their newly-acquired virility recently, standing in the surf, squeezing
   their own white seed into the foam. But could Timothy produce anything? To be
   sure, he had a contracapsule implanted in his arm, just as they did, but the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (9 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Barefoot Doctor might only have given him one as a kindness, to save him, from
   the scorn of his peers. So, despite my repugnance, I was curious.;

   As we stood arguing a giant green mantis sprang on to a knob of the Salt Boss's
   tomb and glared at us - ten centimeters long with saw teeth on its open arms
   ready to snap shut like an animal trap; with globe eyes and very little brain
   behind them. A Female; and she was pregnant. Her swollen egg-case slumped
   beneath her angel's wings. A green Kali had come to watch over our little
   ceremony. Her arrival settled the matter.

   Timothy stripped off awkwardly and laid his blotchy body down by the tomb. It
   was a beached gasping fish's body. We all felt at once guilty, fascinated, excited.

   'Open your eyes,' said Rajit. 'Dead Shiva's eyes must stare,'

   'But what at?' Tears welled in Timothy's eyes.

   'At Kali, obviously. Now take your things off, Lila. Don't squat on him till he's
   virile, though. He has to do it by thought power.'

   'I can't!' said Timothy.

   I slipped off my Java-print frock and handed it to Rose.

   'Let's use the coco to help him!' giggled Rajit, 'Concentrate on the magic coco,
   Tim!'

   Rajit picked up the heavy coco and deposited it on Timothy's thighs, while I
   straddled them, pinning him down. Then Rajit pressed my hands down on the


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (10 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   coco and began rocking it to, and fro as though the coco shell was making love
   to the albino. He slapped and rubbed Timothy's flesh against the groove in the
   coco. It was like a sea-slug smacking concrete.

   Poor Tim stared blindly at me through a film of tears, while I rocked to and fro,
   clutching my coco, dreaming of space travel.

   'He's wet himself!' said Rose.,

   I scrambled clear and snatched my precious coco free.; Tim swung over on his
   side to escape our gaze, and blubbered quietly.

   Rose threw my dress back at me brusquely and knelt by the crying boy, stroking
   his wispy ginger curls, as slick with sweat as a bawling baby's skull.

   'We didn't mean to hurt you, Tim; It's only a game,' she crooned.

   None of us were looking at each other any more. We were ashamed. I stumbled
   when I stepped into my frock and tore the cotton on a toenaiL

   Back home, my mother greeted the advent of the coco with much delight that I
   might already have been accepted by Bardo tier the space programme. She called
   the neighbours in for bowls of coconut beer, and sent a message to Teacher
   Makindi, who soon arrived to take a drink. He seemed to see the coco I as
   something of an omen too. Naturally we all believed it after I that. Whereupon
   my aunt (Rose's mother) grew jealous. 'Hush, girl, it's just a lucky find, it doesn't
   mean anything. You're only eleven years old.' But I tapped the tiny bump of the
   capsule in my arm.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (11 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   I'm a woman,' I said, and drank my beer down. The fermented coconut juice
   buzzed in my throat.

   'I'm a womb-man,' I sang. 'My womb is Space!'

   After a while my head swam. I was already swimming through the psychic space
   inside me, out to fabled Procyon and far Barnard's Star.



                                                            TWO
   Our little group fell apart after the cemetery masquerade. A wedge had been
   driven between us. Timothy avoided us utterly now, a solitary ghost of a boy
   who'd used up his whole life's energy bearing the weight of my coco that day. He
   sat dully in school, dozing and lazy. He deliberately made his skin more
   repulsive by sitting out in the brightest sunshine till he was a kind of walking
   chrysalis, except that no butterfly would ever emerge from it, only the same
   white grub.

   Rose and I no longer had our hair corn-rowed together. My aunt let Rose's hair
   grow into a bush. My mother filled up the lonely gap of Saturday mornings more
   satisfyingly by entertaining Teacher Makindi, who continued calling round at
   our home to show me mandala prints during these hours of hair dressing, paying
   court to my mother on the side.

   Before long, Teacher Makindi was coming round constantly. When I was there,
   he spoke about Astromancy, about Psychic Spaceflight, and about Bardo, while
   Mother looked on proudly and hopefully. If I happened to be out of the house
   when he came visiting, Mother looked equally exhilarated on my return.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (12 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Our school lessons took up the five weekday mornings. Afternoons were for
   swimming, playing Go with pebbles on the beach, fishing or helping in the
   fields. Saturday - Restday -we could do what we liked, but every Sunday
   morning we had extra classes in the Bardo Building, the old mosque, on the
   significance of Bardo and Social Ecology - on outer space and the inner
   workings of the world, which had now joined hands. On successive Sundays,
   week in, week out, we learnt from Makiridi or from a visiting Barefoot lama
   precisely how the Social Ecology of Earth is sustained by our new knowledge of
   the stars and why the proper organization to administer the Earth's affairs is
   Bardo.

   Rajit, his sights set on being a lama, did well in Social Ecology. As he grew into
   adolescence, he gave up pranks and masquerades. His eyes were firmly fixed on
   the dusty road downcoast to Dar es Salaam, whence the computer-rigged sail-
   barges set out with their cargoes of sisal fibre, copper and salted eland carcasses,
   for the Persian Gulf and India. Dar es Salaam was the lama training centre for all
   East Africa.

   Bardo - and Astromancy. That was my best lesson. The word Bardo actually
   stands for Bureau of Astromancy Research and Development Organization. Two
   hundred years ago, in the Bad Old Days, they had had rocketships and dreamt of
   colonizing the stars. The Earth was becoming a desert while they shipped dust
   back from dead worlds.

   Then, in the far north of People's India, where Tantra, the yoga of sexual ecstasy,
   had kept a toehold through all the revolutions of the time, the woman known to
   us as Comrade Tara Dakini found herself for the first time in human history in

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (13 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   full true contact with a Rakshasa, one of the alien intelligences inhabiting the
   moon of the second planet of Barnard's Star; and the human race passed
   suddenly from one mode of science to another. The foundation of our knowledge
   shifted; our present world was born. Society shifted abruptly too: towards loving
   mutuality and stability. So we learnt. So the Teacher and the lamas told us.

   Teacher Makindi was thin, sleek and svelte in his blue tunic. Always
   encouraging and helpful, he kept remote from me at heart, however. I never
   quite ceased being in school, even at home when he visited (and later still, when
   he became my stepfather).

   'Astromancy,' he taught me one Saturday morning at home, while my hair was
   being done, reiterating the previous Sunday's lecture given by a lama passing
   through Bagamoyo on his preaching circuit, 'means communication with the
   stars by psychic means, just as necromancy means communication with the dead,
   in graveyards, when people believed in such things-'

   He smiled a private smile as though he knew all about our game among the
   graves, And Mother tugged my hair even tighter, exposing scalp as though
   preparing my skull for electrodes for my Bardo test, years in advance.

   Bardo. It was once a Tibetan word, before the Bureau took it over. There was an
   ancient Tibetan religious book called the Bardo Thodol, the so-called Book of the
   Dead; a tide which should really be translated as 'Liberation by Hearing on the
   After-Death Plane'. In the old days the Tibetan lamas used to read this book over
   corpses to guide departed souls to new bodies for reincarnation (or so they
   thought). However, the book's real value lay in the mental disciplines it
   contained for projecting the human mind beyond the body.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (14 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'There's a lot of confusion in that book, as in all religious texts,' smiled Makindi.
   'No one before the time of Comrade Tara Dakini realized that all religions and
   mythologies were simply interstellar messages from our friends out there, gone
   astray. All that nonsense about life after death! Let Men make a hell of the Earth,
   because there's a heaven elsewhere! We could never have true social ecology as
   long as that philosophy prevailed. No, Lila, when the body dies, the brain melts
   like a jellyfish in the sunshine. Consciousness melts too. You linger in the minds
   of other people for a while, in what you've made and done. You carry on
   socially. But individually? What is an "individual"? Are you an individual when
   you're asleep? You have no consciousness of yourself then. There's really very
   little individual consciousness, as such. It's an illusion.'

   The human race briefly hoped that Comrade Tara Dakinlj was indeed in contact
   with the souls of dead humans, that alien worlds were truly spirit abodes, as the
   ancient Tibetans believed. They were wrong. That was the last great illusion of
   humanity. With its passing, the old world passed. True aliens inhabited those
   alien worlds - and the psychic 'Bardo plane' happened to be the uniquely logical
   way for alien worlds to communicate with one another, not the way of the radio
   telescope. Indeed, a technological approach to Space dealt death to a culture,
   sooner or later, the aliens told humanity.

   The only true way was the way of the body-field. The human "body-field! How
   Makindi enthused about it - as indeed did each lama who passed through our
   village. And rightly so.

   Religions had always more or less acknowledged die existence of a body-field -
   a field of energy associated with living organism. Why else did Christianity have
   its saints with haloes? Why else did the head of Buddha, in meditation, wear a

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (15 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   bright corona? In the East the body-field had been charted for several millennia
   by various means: in highly abstract mandalas and other cosmic 'circuit
   diagrams', or, more practically, in acupuncture charts. But the superstitious
   masses doted on fakirs and miracles, while real holy men simply yearned for
   union with the great blank of nirvana.

   In the West the body-field was largely ignored by religion, and by science- Until
   an American called Cleve Backster wired up a lie detector to the leaf of a rubber
   plant on a whim one day, and discovered that all living matter, even an
   individual sperm or a single living cell, possesses 'primary perception' - an
   extended sensitivity field. Until a Russian called Kirlian photographed -
   electrically - the aura of his own body, and found it to be emitting flares of light
   corresponding to the ancient Chinese acupuncture points. Until leaves were
   filmed electrically, and seen to have a body-field that remained intact for a while
   even if the leaf was mutilated; proving that there was an energy body as well as a
   physical body. Given proper guidance and enough energy, the body-field could
   be beamed far from the body itself. Here at last the Eastern religions pruned their
   magic and mysticism, and the Western technologies found common ground.

   The 'astral-plane' - jeered at for years by Western science - was found at last to
   be the plane of the stars, indeed. Guides were waiting patiently, guides who had
   long been projecting their own, better-organized body-fields towards the human
   race, only to be taken for Gods or Devils, or phantoms of the afterlife - the very
   mistake made by those reincarnation minded Tibetans who wrote the Book off
   the Dead. 'The Book of Life' it should have been called, instead!

   'Can you lend me this Book of the Dead, even if it is a bit wrong? I'd like to read
   it.' He shook his head, regretfully.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (16 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   'I've only read a summary myself. You see, though it's a great classic it's also a
   profoundly misleading book. There are so many wrong notions in it. It took long
   enough to disentangle the sense from the nonsense! Bardo don't want people
   confusing themselves again. Besides, somebody might try to put it into practice
   all on his own. You know how much some people want to be accepted for Bardo
   travel.' (I knew!) 'But the Book of the Dead ignores a lot of the practical side -
   for instance the tantric yoga you need to free the body's energy, to fuel the Bardo
   journey. The Book of the Dead is only one wheel of

   Bardo. A truck can race along on one wheel for a while, but then it topples over!
   Tantric yoga is only one wheel too. Raising that kind of energy in private is
   really dangerous. You need to study mandala diagrams to train your mind, you
   need computers to monitor your brain waves - oh so much else,'

   'Comrade Tara Dakini must have been either a very clever woman, or very
   lucky, to fit it all together by herself!'

   'Well, the Rakshasas helped her- They set up the first mental embassy here on
   Earth, and of course they showed us how to fit our jigsaw pieces together. Part of
   one Eastern religion here, part of another mental discipline there.'

   'A mental embassy? What does it look like? I can't imagine.'

   'Oh, just a building, like any other,' he chuckled. I've seen photographs of the
   Procyon Embassy. It's a converted hotel, on Miami Beach. Barnard's Star use the
   Potala Palace in Tibet. The Yidags of Epsilon Indi use the Russian monastery
   near the old space centre in Kazakhstan. But the main thing is that you need a
   very special cast of mind to be just right for Bardo and not one tenth of one per

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (17 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   cent of human beings have it.'

   'I know. I mustn't feel disappointed-'

   However, Makindi and my mother exchanged a glance. I knew what they
   believed. Perhaps their love for one another was so cemented by this hope that
   they needed to believe it, true or not.

   I walked out into the blinding streets to be alone.

   Astromancy. For me, the world held another world cradled in its arms.

   Romance.

   I wasn't thinking of the erotic aspect of star flight, the need to take a love partner.
   I was imagining what it must be like to brush against such a being as a Rakshasa
   with one's mind. Those fiery, mercurial shape-shifters, those flying denizens of
   cloud-cities soaked in the ruddy orange glow of an alien sunlight! How did they
   manifest themselves in Lhasa? Was it as a blazing light or pillar of fire? The
   Rakshasas had been exploring our galaxy for ten thousand years on the Bardo
   plane, they said. After ten millennia they had still only reached five hundred
   light years out from Barnard's Star. It would take so much time to chart the
   whole galaxy and meet all the strange beings in it. A hundred thousand years
   might be too short. Yet free time was what we had now. That was the uniquely
   precious gift of Bardo. Breathing space!

   Sunlight boomed on the white street, cleaving a line of darkness under the
   rippling tin awnings, where an old man sat at his sewing table running off white
   linen tunic tops. His foot danced on the pedal; danced in the same spot all the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (18 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   time, as the whole world danced joyfully nowadays, not moving anywhere. As I
   passed him, he grinned dreamily and broken-toothedly.

   A bicycle lay on its side outside an open door. The ribbed track of its tyres
   uncoiled down the street like a very long sloughed snakeskin. A hen trod this
   path pedantically till a dog ran barking out of the house and scuttled it away in a
   clucking of affronted feathers. This was the pace of human life today. And this
   pace was exactly the same in Nairobi, New York, Moscow, Peking. We" had
   saved ourselves. All space and time was ours.

   There were still many large cities, true; but they were no longer the tumours of
   the twentieth century, as depicted in our school history book. That culture
   reached its breaking point because of its mad urge to conquer space with
   machines, and subdue the Earth the same way - as though Nature wasn't alive, a
   friend, and each plant did not have its own vital animated body-field but was a
   thing that needed poisons and chemicals to make it grow.

   Science had its proper place in life today: the computer rigging systems on the
   transocean sail-barges, or the solar energy panels for power, or the
   contracapsules in our arms limiting population to a sane level - all of them
   developed in the twentieth century, to be sure, but only as puny 'alternatives' to
   the main cancer of growth.

   We were surely very different souls now from the main mass of greedy, selfish
   competitors then - more like their Chinese, in fact, who had helped inaugurate
   the New Way while the West went bankrupt and the alien guides at last made
   contact Even their Chinese had had to discard their own false growth ideals,
   learnt from the West - though it was easier for them to reassert the cosmic forces


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (19 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   that had always subtly moulded the human soul and tied it to the stars, without
   our knowing it, They had traditions on their side.

   Very difficult for us now to understand the minds of twentieth century men -
   their blind thrust, like so many moles ramming themselves down dark tunnels in
   pursuit of wealth, power, spaceflight, super-highways, hectic travel, packaged
   electronic amusements! Our school history book, issued by Bardo, only stated
   the bare facts, the better to condemn the Bad Old Days-

   At least we knew our own minds. Nothing that they had wanted then, did we
   want now. And truly we had given up nothing, but rather gained a sane and
   healthy world; and friendship with star peoples.

   Calmness was a quality that I doubt they understood, those men and women of
   the previous 'civilization'. We were calm now - but vibrant as well, like living
   plants rooted in the earth, each with its own scintillating aura. We had seen
   enough Kirlian photos of these in school. Each static vegetable was really a
   galaxy of light and energy. If we were static, we also sang with life.



                                                        THREE
   Rajit came up to me in the street one day, carrying a glass and rubber mask with
   a pipe like a chimney sticking out of it.

   'It's called a snorkel. You can see underwater.' He stood fidgeting. 'My uncle
   found it in one of the old beach hotels. Do, you want to try it? Out on the island
   with me?'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (20 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Our fishermen never used anything like this. It was a genuine plaything from the
   age of waste. The breathing tube was even made of plastic. So his uncle had
   found it in one of the abandoned tourist hotels? In such perfect condition after all
   these years? I didn't really believe him. But as there was no other explanation,
   after a while I just had to believe him.

   Rajit had shot up tall and lanky since the cemetery days. He was many
   centimeters taller than me now, with fuzzy adolescent beard.

   'We can sail out with old man Mkwepu tomorrow. I already asked him. There's a
   whole different reality underwater. You can almost feel what Bardo flight is like.'

   I felt slightly repelled by the plastic tube. The whole world was once almost
   ruined by things like it: frivolities and trash by the cubic kilometer, using up
   resources uselessly. However, the mask was here and now, not two centuries ago
   - and I was curious to see what Rajit really wanted on the island. Evidently he
   felt it was time for more grown-up games than cemetery masquerades.

   On Saturday morning, therefore, we helped Mkwepu to load his nets and sisal
   fish baskets into the outrigger - a homemade job like all small fishing boats,
   marks of the adze notching the wood everywhere inside. Mkwepu had painted a
   yantra mandala on the prow for luck; the nest of interlocking triangles, four
   pointing upward and three downward, which stood for male and female forces
   respectively, with a dot in the centre that was the reputed entry-point to Bardo
   Space - when you learned to enter it! (I was already preparing myself to learn,
   though. Staring at yantras and other mandates by the hour, till they printed
   themselves on my mind's eye like new brain circuits- Mkwepu's painted yantra
   was crudely drawn, compared with the beautiful prints Makindi showed me, but


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (21 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   it still had a hypnotic effect.)

   The old man agreed merrily to maroon us on Sinda Island for the day, and we set
   sail for the fish shoals out there. Rajit had brought some palm wine, sweet coffee
   cakes and a pawpaw to feed us. He played a wooden flute as we sailed, tootling a
   glittering jagged melody that teased and excited.

   'We're sailing on the surface of reality,' he proclaimed importantly, taking the
   pipe from his lips to point at the foam sprinting past the prow. 'Soon you'll know
   what's underneath it all.'

   'I bet,' I laughed.

   For a long time we seemed very close to the shore, then suddenly we crossed
   some visual dividing line and we were a vast distance away. The mainland
   shrank to a green line pasted along the sea horizon.

   Apart from birds and crabs Sinda was deserted. Landcrabs as big as skulls
   scuttled among the spiky scrub. Speckled yellow weaver birds flitted through the
   tangle. Sooty gulls stamped up and down the beach at the tide line. Otherwise,
   only Rajit and I. Sea currents forked turbulently round the island some way
   offshore, leaving a hundred metres of slack inshore water rippling calmly back
   towards the beach.

   When we undressed, it was so different from the last childish time in the
   cemetery. My breasts were little black pears now, with cusps like horns of the
   quarter-moon. Rajit was gangly to the point of emaciation, bones poking through
   his flesh in far too many places. Unpinning his turban, he sent it snaking up the
   shore. Unpeeling his hairnet, he let the glossy black rope cascade down. He

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (22 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   looked like mad, skinny Kali in some frantic Calcutta oleograph. Little white
   camouflage crabs, thumbnail size, dived sideways into their steep tunnels; parts
   of the beach flickered and swallowed themselves.

   The mask made my breathing sound like snoring. My words boomed-and misted
   the face-plate. If Rajit looked strange with his hair let down, how strange did I
   look with a single blue plastic antler rearing from my head like a visible snake of
   Kundalini!

   I paddled out into the shallows, ducked my head, and thrust forward. Before
   long, as promised, I was floating in the sky of an alien world I'd never seen
   before-

   Corals branched and bloomed beneath: scarlet fans, purple tusks, violet dishes
   forming curious, tiered cities. Yellow brains squatted in fields of bristling
   urchins. The jet-black quills of the urchins waved softly in a liquid breeze, yet
   there was nothing soft or fleshy about the life, though bodies wore a soft jelly
   bloom, a velvet gel. This was a world where minerals had taken on static, garish
   life: a silicon planet with porous brain-masses and fungoid domes as its
   Thinkers, presiding over strange .cities, vividly bright, midway between life and
   stone.

   Tiny iridescent fish, more like darting flocks of birds, flashed through the cities,
   wings flickering and bubble-eyes staring. The cities seemed to be projecting
   these flickering motes of softer life through their skies as signals from one part
   to another. Would the cloud cities of the Rakshasa world, the forests of Asura,
   the Yidag bottle-beings seem any stranger?

   Abruptly, towers, tusks, tiers and brains all halted on one final sprawling lip. The

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (23 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   world fell sheer away I hung above a deep down precipice.

   Down. So far down. In the abyss, out of focus, amorphous shapes lumbered and
   blundered. The Deep was crowded with them. Yet, too, they were invisible They
   were just the blacknesses of the deep resisting light.

   Was this the way the space between the stars would look? Not an emptiness that
   impeded nothing, but something heavy as lead whose fabric clung to the traveller
   instead of letting him pass? Something with its own fierce gravity very different
   from the gravity of worlds? Compared with this, did planets possess any true
   gravity at all - or was gravity just a force of repulsion exerted on them by the
   heaviness of space?

   I hung mesmerized, scared to my wits' end, staring downwards. Drifting further
   outwards. Then a delta-shaped something flapped up towards me out of that stiff
   nothingness, detaching itself from its background, taking on colour, A fat
   rubbery sheet of matter congealed,, and flew at me till it was brilliant blue, with
   yellow eyes glowing from all parts of it. '

   Not eyes. No. Spots all over its skin.

   And then I recognized it.

   Its two actual eyes stared up at me. Its tail flicked a whip that could kill me.

   Thrashing my way back to the shallows, away from the sting-ray, I found Rajit
   floating on his back, hair spread around him like a veil. .

   When he stood up, the hair clung sleek and lank to his body, tracing lines of

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (24 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   force from head to loins, and he was a Siddha, a man of power of ancient days.
   His gaze was harsh and commanding. His smile, shy and hungry. We walked up
   the beach together and he passed the bottle of palm wine to me in such a formal,
   ceremonial way. A nervous gush of words from him, endearments, flattery,
   compliments? None of that. He said nothing. He only did, after I had drunk. And
   it was better that way. It was more shocking, alien and mysterious - yet
   something expected, too, something that lay in wait, had always lain in wait. We
   made love on the beach with fierce concentration like silent strangers, unlocking
   the sealed doors in our hearts and bodies. We shocked awake the hidden selves
   within ourselves.

   The next year was the year that the Dobdobs came for me.



                                                          FOUR
   A purge, taught Makindi, is a time when society gets rid of the poison in its
   bloodstream. Not by a blood-letting, however; that kind of wound takes too
   many years to heal. Society itself is wounded. Isolation is the proper cure.
   Putting the disease on ice. So the purged elements of the old world - the
   scientists against mankind, the false philosophers - were sent to live out the
   remainder of their days harmlessly in various quarantine areas which- were cold
   but bracing, with a certain purity of landscape. Dobdobs had needed guns then,
   to guard the social enemies. But who would compel a Dobdob to draw his gun
   nowadays? Who would refuse the honour of being chosen for Bardo, even if it
   meant never seeing home or family again? Not I, not anyone!

   A Dobdob team flew in to Bagamoyo by helicopter, the roaring chatter and the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (25 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   flashing blades thrilling us all. The once-monthly coastal bus, with its solar roof
   panels drinking in the African sun, was speed enough for our world at any other
   time - and the dhows calling in at sisal harvest. Aircraft were only for
   emergencies, disasters - and for the business of the Space Administration.

   There were three men in the team: the pilot, a tall, rangy Caucasian with blue
   eyes and straw-coloured hair; and two Asians - one with a merry, expansive face,
   chubby cheeks, full lips, protruding eyes, features slapped together like pats of
   butter; the other with an older, harder face, a clever commanding face.

   Makindi gestured Rajit to help the Dobdobs carry their equipment. My stepfather
   took one metal case, while Rajit struggled with the other, which proved heavier
   than he expected. Rajit ground to a halt in the sand; the blue-eyed Dobdob hefted
   the burden instead.

   We were to take the tests in the schoolhouse. Myself, my cousin Rose, and
   another more distant cousin from Kigongoni village, a few kilometres inland.
   Makindi and Mboya, the Barefoot Doctor, recommended suitable candidates on
   the basis of perception and memory tests, basic metabolic rhythm, half a dozen
   other factors.

   Soon, the merry Dobdob called me into Makindi's office and sat me down in a
   cane chair before the table. The room was dim, the louvres shut to a bright
   grating casting soft rainbows on the far wall. He chattered soothingly. There was
   no question of 'passing' or 'failing'. The hunt for a, body-field suitable for Bardo
   travel was more like the search for a rare blood group-

   I'm not nervous,' I said. 'Really I'm not.'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (26 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'Why not? Most people are.'

   just don't feel nervous, that's all.'

   'You're the girl who found the coco?'

   'Yes.'

   'So that's why you're not worried?'

   'I suppose so.'

   The other Dobdob laughed quietly, in the midst of tuning his testing machines.

   'I know that only a tiny number of people have the Bardo power in any useful
   form, and it's all pure chance who they are; even so-'

   The merry Dobdob let me ramble on.

   And yet, if I hadn't found the coco, would I ever have been so eager to imprint
   Makindi's mandalas on my mind? Ask anybody how Bardo made its choice of
   star travellers, and you would surely get the answer that every child on Earth had
   a chance. Yet at the same time the chance only happened on rare occasions:
   whereupon it was an honour, a privilege, a rare achievement. It was a privilege
   shared with everyone, however. So we felt no sense of resentment, or any
   inequality.

   The other Dobdob had checked his apparatus by now. Electrodes lay plugged
   into it, and earphones, and a kind of mask reminiscent of the snorkel (but
   opaque), and beside them a case of silver needles.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (27 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Delicately, the second man fixed the tiny electrodes to my scalp with dabs of
   paste, using touch alone to find the right spots, measuring my skull by the
   breadth of his own fingers, his eyes half-shut even in that dim light.

   He would play recordings of mantras through the earphones.

   How much did I know about mantras?

   I repeated what Makindi and the lamas had taught. Every single atom in the
   universe is a pattern of particles which themselves are simply interference
   patterns between primitive energy vibrations. The mantra sounds, devised in
   ancient India, mimic these basic vibrations. They are the root 'noises' from which
   reality is made. To utter mantras the right way, enough times, aligns the mind
   with basic universal rhythms.

   'Naturally I haven't ever heard any mantras,' I hastened to add. It would be
   playing with fire ... Awakening forces that the untrained mind could not control.

   The Dobdob touched his silver acupuncture needles.

   'We have to measure the main chakras of the body which resonate with the
   different mantra sounds. Tell me about the chakras, Lila.'

   The energy centres of the human body. 'Wheels.' Eastern medicine discovered
   them first. Western medicine finally accepted them two centuries ago - as East
   and West converged into one world. Kundalini, life energy of the body, rises
   through each successive chakra to the brain, thence out into the cosmos.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (28 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'We shall have to raise your kundalini force a little way to be , able to measure it.
   If you aren't accepted today, you must promise faithfully never to try to raise it
   on your own, using your memories of this test.'

   I promised.

   Playing with fire.

   'Now, the mask-'

   It was a stereoscope, for showing three-dimensional pictures. It would project a
   yantra mandala in depth before my eyes. The Dobdob held up a card.

   'This yantra. Do you know it?'

   I saw a dark walled square with four gateways. Inside the square, white lotus
   petals were arranged around a jet-black circle. At the centre of the circle blazed a
   white dot set within four white triangles pointing downwards. Of course I knew
   it. I had known it for years, thanks to Makindi, It was the Kali Yantra. The
   Yantra of Female Energy.

   The mask incorporated a retinascope, to shine pencils of light into the blind spots
   of my eyes where the millions of nerve fibres bunch together and open directly
   into the brain. Just as the spots of light at the heart of a yantra - the bindu dots -
   open, through a point, into infinity, so these blind spots in the retina are its
   special bindu dots, where the outer world of superficial realities passes through
   from sight into true vision, to the world of thought within;

   The Dobdob chose needles and sterilized them in alcohol. He asked me to strip

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (29 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   to the waist.

   ' The topmost chakra of all, in the brain, is called Sahasrara. Actually, Sahara
   might be a better word - because from there on is a vast immeasurable desert
   where you can easily get lost and die. The alien worlds are as distant as any oasis
   on Earth. This isn't the easy way to the stars, remember It's just the true and
   natural way.'

   The test began. I heard a dog bark, outside, then I was muffled in the earphones,
   blinded by the darkness of the mask. Lines of light shone out before my eyes, a
   cone of down-pointing triangles containing within them...blackness. They
   surrounded a blind black disc, like the sun in full eclipse - with a corona of white
   lotus petals and a seed of light at the heart of it, as though a hole was bored
   through whatever eclipsed the sun. That black sun gobbled light. The triangles
   confined the darkness, though. They wove an internal fence of light. In my
   deafness, I heard- the mantra. At first, indistinguishable from the soft pounding
   of air on my eardrums insulated by the ear-phone muffs. But then, in that
   thudding silence:

   HUM-HUM-HUM-

   Throbbing. Intensifying. Laying down resonances in my mind between past,
   present, future, till all time was one, and I was in all time.

   HUM, hummed each bright white corona petal as I rotated round that black sun
   from prominence to prominence, half in time, half in eternity.

   My navel glowed. An acupuncture needle must be there now. Or not there,
   perhaps - but somewhere else, communicating with the navel along the invisible,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (30 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   immaterial nerves of the body-field. A soft jewel of flame burnt painlessly yet
   insistently at that point in my body where my flesh folded into itself, and my
   body imagined an umbilical cord, pulsing with hot fluid, connecting me to the
   universal womb that I floated in, just as the bright-petalled black star floated,
   fenced by triangles, within a dark, walled courtyard.

   The petals of the corona took on a bluish tinge as the heavy darkness leaked
   outwards, becoming lilac, violet, purple. When they became black, the black sun
   disappeared as a separate entity. And I floated above a funnel of bright triangles
   which had ceased to be a cone of fences, barring access and exit, and had
   become an inverted pyramid of steps - a funnel leading downwards.

   The mantra changed to a brassy clanging.

   TRAM! TRAM! TRAM!

   The funnel oscillated dizzily. First it was a funnel, then a pyramid. It collapsed
   through its own dimensions, sickening me. One moment I was balanced on the
   bindu point itself, then it was deep below me and I was falling down down
   down. A pyramid pushed me up again.

   Between my breasts, a second warmth was glowing. It calmed these wild
   gyrations. I couldn't see the pyramid any more, only the deep funnel, the steps of
   light leading down to the central point of light. Only, it was not down now, it was
   out. Out of myself , out of the world!

   'HRIH! HRIH! HRIH!' came a strident keening in my ears, like the wail of a
   beast caught in a snare. And my throat burned.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (31 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   The fire in my navel had faded. I no longer knew where my legs were, couldn't
   place them. The whole top part of my body was drifting upwards out of them-

   So this was how it felt, when the Energy Body detached itself! I felt like a
   centaur, my Subtle Body rearing out of my Matter Body like the human out of
   the horse! , My throat burned incandescently. 'HRIH! HRIH!' I shrilled, with
   flaring, whinnying nostrils. The sound was me; I was the sound. Earphones? No
   earphones. This was the seed-sound of my own existence. I even knew which
   nostril this scream of breath was rushing out through: it was my left nostril, not
   my right.

   With a lurch, with a snap, one of my energy legs kicked loose; and the outermost
   of the five triangles sprang past me, jumped behind me - while the four
   remaining triangles swelled to fill all space. The bright dot dilated, became a
   disc...

   The HRIH! wail died to a buzzing. Triangles and bindu disc disappeared. Only
   after-images danced.

   Something - somebody - was pulling the earphones from my ears. Someone was
   speaking. Someone was lifting a mask from my eyes. A world reappeared: a
   room ghostly with dissolving geometries of mist, phantom dots and triangles.

   The Dobdobs pulled charts from the test machine. Their scrutiny stretched out
   interminably while I sat neglected, not knowing whether to button my dress.

   Finally the merry one glanced up and grinned.

   'Congratulations, Lila, You'll fly to the stars.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (32 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




                                                             FIVE
   There was barely a couple of hours to say goodbye - during which time the
   Dobdobs were busy testing first Rose and then my other cousin, with negative
   results - but I felt that haste was best. I was a sort of prodigy'now, a village
   miracle. Yet I was also something slightly frightening. I sensed this from
   people's anxious congratulations as they packed my mother's house to accept
   bowls of beer. I was going to travel to the stars, so that our village could stay as
   it was: immobile and secure. There was recoil in their good wishes - the equal
   and opposite reaction to my own impending flight

   My aunt, Rose's mother, came to kiss me goodbye. This quick visit, seemed to
   herald a reconciliation between herself and my mother. They embraced one
   another, united in fellowship of loss and gain, for what they lost in me they
   gained in each other; and they seemed happy to have it that way. The jealousy
   which had marked the years since I'd found the coco withered away. Soon, Rose
   would be visiting my mother's house again, taking over the place that I'd held in
   her heart. Rose didn't come, herself. Was she crying at home in disappointment?
   I would have been, in her position. Rajit had been accepted as a student at the
   lamasery, but that was ordinary news; he would have to stay in Bagamoyo for
   another three weeks before catching the bus southwards.

   At the end of this hectic interval, Makindi came home with the blond Dobdob;
   he kissed me perfunctorily on the forehead and surrendered custody of me.

   'Everyone crowded out to watch the helicopter take off, and wave frantically. At
   it, not at me. They'd already forgotten me.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (33 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   The palm trees, which had always borne their crowns so high, sank into the
   ground and became green starfish with black urchin shadows on a tawny cloth of
   earth. Landscape became a model of itself, a toy, from the air. People could lose
   the scale of things that way. The world became a map they could doodle on. No
   single field or tree was vital. More world was always unfolding - available,
   expendable. I could see how easily mobility brought a sense of careless
   exploitation.

   We flew away from the coastline at an angle, following the red strip of murram
   road as it cut through the lush green tangle round a small river, then through a
   couple of villages stippled by coconut palms. Tawny cows the size of dung
   beetles grazed among them. We were out over sisal plantations then: kilometres
   of green spikes forming a geometric grid across red earth. ,

   I sat with the pilot. He said his name was Sam - Sam Shaw - and he was from
   America. The two Dobdob testers sat behind, talking to each other in what I
   guessed was Chinese.

   That's right,' Sam nodded, when I asked. 'Liu's from China. The boss.'

   'And the other man?'

   'Yongden's a Tibetan. But don't trouble yourself with their names. They're both
   based in Africa, so you'll not be seeing them again. I'll only be with you, myself,
   till I can escort you to the Bardo Centre out in Florida. You'll like Florida. Warm
   seas, palm trees. More buildings and cities than here - more intensive agriculture.
   Oranges! You can smell them way off-'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (34 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'Cities?'

   .'Oh yes. Miami still houses close on quarter of a million people. That's
   excluding the Bardo Centre. And it'll go on housing them, since they service the
   Centre with power and supplies. That's not the biggest city in the world, either!
   Still, the decentralization policy's worked pretty well, particularly on old sores
   like the Asian cities and the American megalopolises. We're nearly down to
   optimum for human habitation everywhere spreading people back across the
   countryside. City dwellers no longer feel they're something special. Japan was
   one hell of a problem; but the Siberian and Australian emigration helped- We're
   picking up some other trainees on the way. You can make some friends on the
   flight.'

   'Do you come from Florida, Sam?'

   'Oh, places are just places,' he said, shrugging. "Any place is okay.'

   We flew for fifteen minutes, till some white towers hove into view, rising from
   low, knobbly, ravined hills, isolated in the midst of barren scrub. As we climbed
   higher, swinging towards them, the city itself - Dar es Salaam - appeared: a long
   fringe of red and white roofs around a blue bay beyond, where the sea curved
   back behind the hills.

   ''Here's the training campus. I guess your father and your Barefoot Doctor both
   trained here. We're just landing a while to drop off Liu and Yongden.'

   As we flew closer, the buildings looked more time-worn, less glittering. Walls
   wore a spiderweb of cracks where stucco was peeling. Roads had potholes.
   Roofing over walkways between the buildings had rusted through. Missing

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (35 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   paving stones exposed stretches of red, rutted mud. What did it matter if the road
   had potholes, now that it was only used for walking? It was hardly important if
   people got a little wet between buildings; they wouldn't melt.

   Men and women in variously coloured tunics strolled along the walkways to
   glass louvred classrooms. A squad were tilling gardens which stretched downhill
   from the classrooms to a sewage farm, beside which a hen range sported
   hundreds of birds - the brown earth surging, churning and fluttering. The white
   skyscrapers seemed inappropriate - such pompous, greedy buildings. I felt glad
   they were peeling, becoming realistic. They should be used, but not pampered.

   Sam dropped the helicopter to a landing on a potholed tarmac square between
   two teaching blocks. As the rotors winnowed to a halt, Liu - the Chinese - tapped
   me on the shoulder.

   'Ridiculously far from the city, stupidly luxurious, don't you agree?' (I did.) 'In
   time of famine they thought to build up a poor country thus. In their minds every
   country was a pyramid. So here was where a tiny percentage of children could be
   trained to become bits of the bottom of the bigger pyramid reaching up to the
   Moon and Mars high over the heads of the wretched.'

   Yongden patted me more gaily as he hopped down from the cab. 'Service, not
   privilege,' he grinned. Liu handed out the cases of test equipment, which
   Yongden hauled over to the nearest doorway where a barrow waited. Sam's
   finger was already pressing the ignition switch as Liu himself scrambled out and
   ducked away, The blades spun, blurring into a solid airy disc and skittering red
   grit away across faded car-parking lines; then the helicopter leapt into the air in a
   grasshopper spring.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (36 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   We weren't going to fly over the city, but direct to the airport west of it. I must
   have looked disappointed, since Sam tapped the fuel gauge and reminded me:
   'Every litre of'gas has to come three thousand kilometres by dhow - and you'll be
   travelling light years soon, Lila.'

   So we sped over bush with tall branching cactuses and baobabs where tiny boys
   herded more dun humpbacked cattle. A dozen factories fringed another
   pockmarked road, their tin roofs painted with the words CHAI, KATANI, VIATU.
   Tea, Sisal, Shoes. Beyond was an airfield, empty except for the little silver jet
   waiting for us on the runway. A wire fence kept cattle from straying on to it.
   Plovers and whimbrels wheeled away in fright from shallow rain ponds in the
   grass at our approach.

   A solitary African Dobdob emerged from the glass-topped control tower to greet
   us.

   'Little black girl in search of the stars, is it?' he said, a hint of venom in his voice.
   He rubbed his neck ponderously. 'So what really selected you out of all the
   others? Do you know? Real genuine mystics used to work all their lives long to
   perform a few miracles - like walking on fire, or stopping their hearts for half an
   hour. Nowadays a slip of a girl just walks in, to the whole damn universe! Who
   knows? Who knows anything?'

   'I suppose you wanted to be a Bardo flier?' I asked him sympathetically. He only
   scowled.

   'Now, look,' Sam interrupted angrily. 'You're part of the adventure too, and don't
   forget it. Every human being is.'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (37 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   The African Dobdob gestured at all the birds, now settling on to the water again.

   'What kind of adventure is this? Look at all the air traffic here!'

   Sam lost his temper with the man - and quite right too, I thought.

   'Would you prefer the sky full of planes - burning fuel and spewing smoke and
   carrying people nowhere for no good reason? What's the matter with you, man?
   Is the weather too hot for you here? Would you like somewhere cooler, where
   you can spend all day shovelling snow off your airstrip? No? Well, here's
   something to worry about for now - our flight plan.'

   Sam thrust a sheet of paper at the man. 'Kano, Dakar, Miami. So will you please
   clear us for take-off? Control some air traffic for us huh?'

   'Okay, I'm sorry. I apologize. Have a good flight, black girl.' The man grinned
   wryly. 'Follow your star'

   'I shall!'

   'A good flight is an efficient flight,' Sam said sanctimoniously, shepherding me
   inside the jet as the Dobdob tramped back to his control tower.

   Only a few seats were free. Most were stacked with cartons labelled MEDICAL
   SUPPLIES/BARDO MIAMI/AIRMAIL. It seemed an incredible distance to
   airlift medical supplies, unless there was some plague raging out of control in
   America.

   "No, it's nothing of the sort,' Sam retorted. He was still angry. None of my

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (38 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   business, his tone said. He chose me a seat by the window, bent over to fasten a
   seat belt.

   'It's about five hours to Kano in Nigeria. We'll stay the night there, pick up
   passengers in the morning. When we're airborne I'll come back and fix
   something to eat.' He went into the pilot's cabin and began warming the engines
   up; however, the door hadn't fully closed behind him, so I could hear his voice
   intermittently through the jet noise.

   'Flight MIA-65 to Dar Air Control. Request take-off clearance-'

   And we climbed upward, westward, towards jagged hills and a fat reddening
   sun. Crimson light soaked the few clouds

   stretched out thin across the land, and went on soaking them in the most
   prolonged sunset I'd ever seem We were chasing the sun across the world.

   'Liu?' I heard Sam saying into the radio after a time. I couldn't catch all of it. 'A
   bad apple rots the barrel, Liu. You can't have a Dobdob spreading resentment-
   So, maybe he does need more responsibility. Give him the chance to know the
   facts. The defence facts, right. If he won't co-operate then, he'll have to be put on
   ice-'

   I stared out of the window, wondering what that meant, but too delighted by the
   sunset-streaked bush to worry about it.

   Trees were dots with shadows spiking to the eastward like swarms of
   spermatozoa swimming over that rumpled magenta ground.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (39 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'Heck,' exclaimed Sam, when he finally swung out of his pilot's seat and noticed
   the open door. 'It was pure sour grapes. The man at the airfield, I mean- I'm
   envious of you myself. Imagine travelling all the way to the stars without using a
   litre of fuel! That's repaying society a million-fold.'

   The plane flew on, automatically. In a tiny galley down the aisle - inviting me to
   help, but actually just to watch him Sam cooked some savoury rolls of skimmed
   soyamilk wafers from the Florida soyafields. Taking a dozen dry brittle sheets he
   soaked them in a broth of prawn extract, wrapped them in cloth, steamed them,
   then rolled the mass out in a long pipe and sliced it into four. They were called
   Yuba rolls. He seemed proud of his cooking.

   After we'd eaten, the sun finally escaped ahead of us; and a yellow gibbous
   moon hung on its side in the sky - that distracting lantern now so wisely ignored
   by man. Our big, close moon might have been set in the sky deliberately and
   maliciously to lure us away from our true destiny: hung up there for
   technological man to howl at like a pack of jackals, I stared at it till I dozed, A
   barren ball of rock; the wrong way to the stars.

   Sam shook me awake, and retreated back into the cockpit, closing the door
   firmly this time. We were coming in to Kano, and I was befuddled by my early,
   abridged sleep.

   I glimpsed airfield lights before we landed, but these were promptly switched
   off. We went outside, into hot air so dry and dusty that it made my eyes sore.
   The half-moonlight disclosed a vast flatness with the bumps of two hills, or
   perhaps two pyramids or palaces, in the distance. Nearby, a dark building
   towered many storeys, though only the two lower floors had any lights in them.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (40 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Sam coughed and spat on the ground. Rubbing my flipflops to and fro, I found
   just how gritty the surface was: slippery with sand but with no tang of salt.

   We waited.

   'Over there's where we sleep. The high building. Luxury hotel once. International
   airport this, crossroads of Africa.' I could forgive Sam's sarcastic puritanism. He
   wasn't actually trying to spoil the journey for me. It was just that his job involved
   travelling all the time - and everyone knew that travelling like this, in expensive
   machines, was all wrong. He must have felt like a sort of volunteer criminal.

   At last two buttons of light growled towards us; a tanker lorry.

   The Arab driver climbed down and unloaded a fat pipe from clips along, the
   tanker; I saw more cartons marked 'medical supplies' heaped on the passenger
   seat.

   Sam signed some papers for the fuel to take us on to Dakar, then we set off to
   walk across half a kilometre of rock-hard soil or gritty concrete to our hotel.

   Morning sunrise glared through uncurtained glass. My hotel bedroom looked
   even starker in the daylight than it had done in the glow of a hurricane lamp the
   night before. The adjacent bathroom had no water on tap, only a pitcher standing
   in the dusty bath, with a septic can beside a dry toilet bowl where a ginger
   centipede lay shrivelled.

   Outside, the city of Kano was sheer desolation.

   Kilometres of baked earth gradually becoming dunes, and a road running south

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (41 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   from the hotel around a wasteland of rubble, beyond which mud-yellow walls
   enclosed white buildings like blocks of salt. The two camel-like humps I'd seen
   the night before rose from within the walls themselves - hills like two breasts,
   only no milk flowed from them. All was dry.

   A few white-robed figures rode camels and chalky horses down the road towards
   the distant city gates, and other people were stooping that way on foot with
   burdens on their backs: lasts under pellets of dung. Someone was herding goats
   below, but what they grazed on was a mystery. Ribbons of smoke rose from a
   tent camp outside the city walls.

   The sprawling emptiness gradually offered up more buildings, people and
   animals as I watched; but only sparsely. Kano doled out details grain by grain.

   The airport to the west was far huger than Dar airfield, and equally deserted,
   encroached upon not by birds and grass but by sand dunes.

   After I'd washed, in brackish water, Sam banged on the door came in.

   'What's wrong out there, Sam? Why's there a city In a desert? I thought that
   everyone had enough. The land's staving!

   'No, it's stabilized now. We're holding it stable. They're provided for. You
   mightn't believe it, but so many people lived here once, their shit alone made the
   soil bear double and treble - vegetables, nuts, millet, henna, you name it. The
   world's biggest piggeries fed on their scraps and leftovers. Then the desert
   moved south- And what happened? They still sent a ship to Mars, to bring back
   bags of dust while this sand was. choking a million souls to death! Whole
   peoples trekked south; to escape. What did they do then? They drew a line on the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (42 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   map and said, so far, no further. So-called economists told them that ten million
   had to die, so that other millions could live. They fixed that line just north of
   here. They laid it out with, electric fences and minefields - and all the time the
   great tourist jets were still landing out there, carrying tourists north and south!
   It's okay now. It may not look it, but it is. Come along and meet our passengers
   and we can get airborne. Two Hausa boysi going to Miami with you.'

   'Hausa?'

   .'Local language. Don't worry, they speak Arabic and English too. You shouldn't
   have trouble communicating. They're a couple of chatterboxes.'

   The two boys were identical twins. Which made it nearly impossible to tell
   which of them was Hamidou, and which was Abdoulaye. I soon thought of them
   as a sort of composite: Hamidou-A and Abdoulaye-H, with each partner
   alternately in the ascendant. This seemed to be how they thought of themselves.
   Their heads were thin and equine, with features that slanted down acutely
   towards pronounced jutting little chins, and large open nostrils. Their eyes shone
   large and glossy with thick fluttering lashes above tiny bumps of cheekbones.
   Their skin.was blacker than black; it shone as though buffed and polished by all
   the wind-borne sand.

   They chattered away to each other and to me indiscriminately in Hausa, Arabic
   and English, depending upon who was saying what to whom, switching
   languages in mid-stream, tuning me in and tuning me out of a triangle of talk
   where only two corners were real at any one moment, Good-humouredly,
   without malice or awkwardness, they simultaneously included and excluded me.
   It wasn't so much 'hard to follow them', as downright impossible - or else


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (43 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   perfectly simple! You were either with them; or not. Either there, Or not-there,
   with no in-between stage - and many times I found myself marooned out at an
   unreal, non-existent point.

   As identical twins, early attention had been lavished on them. Apparently Bardo
   was carrying out a research programme on the theory that since identical twins
   possess heightened empathy for each other's moods, this in itself might 'tune'
   their Energy Bodies to a higher pitch than ordinarily happens. They might
   educate themselves spontaneously to the cast of mind that Bardo was searching
   for; become more intensely aware of the shape of their inner being, because they
   saw it reflected directly in another person, and at the same time could detach
   themselves from Self because there was another, independent Self.

   They gave us tests years ago,' boasted Abdoulaye-H 'When we were just little
   boys,' added his twin. (Hamidou-A had a small pimple on his left cheek; one of
   his brother's long, tapering fingernails had snapped off short-) 'Our Teacher gave
   us yantras to visualize in different rooms.' 'Though they can't tell for sure if
   you're suitable till you're past puberty.'

   'I know that,'I said.

   'Your thinking's not properly, conceptual before, Concep-tual's the highest level
   of thought. You know what's real, but you know what's possible too.'

   'You can spin the Real from the web of possibilities.'

   'Since the mind's a spinning reel,' laughed Abdoulaye-H. (Broken fingernail.)

   Tüe country we flew over was badly bruised and battered: a pitted ochre

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (44 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   wasteland with flimsy interruptions of savannah that always died back to dust.
   Drab, wretched country.

   'It's not till adolescence, you see, that all the world's given facts really become
   free variables-'

   '-all capable of being isolated and recombined and per-mutated in a number of
   lattices!' .

   'Network analysis of n-dimensional space-' chattered Hamidou-A, poking my
   elbow. (Pimple on cheek.)

   '--composes the mandates of mature ideas!' his twin continued.

   'Have you learnt Boolean algebra, Lila?'

   'I didn't have time,' I said. Actually, I learnt very little about mathematics in
   school in Bagamoyo. It all seemed so ratified and abstract, what the twins were
   chanting on about. Trying to impress me? I don't think so. They were at once too
   natural and too detached to bother.

   'Yantras and mandalas are really quasi-Boolean lattices for use in our brain
   computer, you see-'

   '-to switch us overto the Bardo plane!'

   It's a bare world hereabouts. An abstract world. One thinks in abstractions, it's
   second nature,' apologized Abdoulaye-H. 'I know there are many ways to Bardo.
   One way isn't better than any other. So long as 'your mind and body-field get


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (45 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   organized. We're just algebraically inclined.' I began to warm to them. On the
   whole they seemed kindly disposed, for all their mutual intoxication and
   apparent bumptiousness and their mathematics. In fact, they were a little simple,
   even charming. Remarkably innocent, for children of desolation. Perhaps
   because their world, as they said, had always been pure and abstract.

   'Can you actually read each other's minds?' I asked.

   'We're a conjoint set,' giggled Hamidou-A. 'So we cap each other's minds!'

   'Then we cap each other's jokes!' "

   Which I didn't understand a word of; and the next moment they were prattling
   away in Arabic and Hausa alternately to each other, and I was left far out at a
   loose point in space.

   Fierce thermals rose above the baking ground; and we flew through a number of
   air pockets. The twins' chatter had the same effect: lifting me up then abruptly
   dropping me.

   Finally, we crossed dense patchworks of fields and glassy marshes, and suddenly
   there was the sea: bars of spume wrinkling a surface of blue tin. A peninsula
   shaped like a giraffe's head bore a dense white city out into the ocean, the neck
   curving around a bay where breakwaters enclosed ranks of quays. Several of the
   large trans-ocean sail-barges lay at anchor, canvas furled on their five masts.

   This was the biggest city I'd yet seen. It looked alive, organic, well-balanced -
   unlike Kano, battered by the Sahara. Tall buildings scaled down to shanty
   suburbs, then to farms; we touched down and taxied between millet and

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (46 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   groundnut fields.

   Sam told us that this was Yoff Airport, Dakar; but we were -only staying for half
   an hour, to pick up some fuel and another passenger, a Wolof girl.

   'Wolof's the local language,' I said breezily to the twins. It seemed a fair guess.
   Sam nodded.

   'She's called Maimouna.'

   When we climbed out to stretch our legs, the air was hot and wet as Bagamoyo's,
   which seemed to astonish and distress the twins. ,

   'Are you meant to breathe it?' gasped one. (Fingernail)

   'Or drink it?'his brother spluttered.

   We followed Sam round the jet, kicking our legs out exaggeratedly to flex them.
   Two other jets were parked unattended on the tarmac, and a trio of helicopters.
   Beyond the perimeter fence, some way off, women walked by with baskets on
   their heads, while trucks of farm produce - some solar-powered, others drawn by
   bullocks - trundled by at various speeds towards the centre of Dakar. I caught a
   faint reek of fish from ,an articulated truck driving the other way. But there was
   nowhere in particular for us to go; we were fenced in. All we could really taste
   of Senegal was the thick air. How barren plane travel actually was. I felt sorry
   for Sam; I admired him for putting up with a life in the sky, for the sake of the
   smooth running of Bardo's affairs.

   Maimouna's skin was milk chocolate. Her lips pouted, her eyes were sullen - or

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (47 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   sultry, I suppose. Her head was shaved bald and her eyebrows plucked to match.
   She was a wooden carving of Beauty. Her pout seemed to be an inbuilt part of
   her features. In other respects she had about as much facial, mobility as a
   carving. She seemed all image; as though she thought it vulgar to be less than an
   ideal image of herself.'

   Suspended from her pierced ear-lobes hung yellow glass globes encased in
   filigree wire nets, which bobbed about like miniature fishing floats. Personally, I
   thought these made her look as old-fashioned as though she had her lips pierced
   and great wooden plugs stuck in them; but obviously she thought highly of them.

   When the twins danced up to her irreverently, and clicked them with their
   fingernails, and cried, 'Ping!' 'Pong!' she looked highly offended.

   'Why don't you 'two boys wear something, so people can tell you apart!' I
   laughed. 'One of you could get your left ear pierced, and the other your right.'

   'We could wear haif a tunic each!' one twin said, giggling.

   'And half a hat!'

   'And half a set of chromosomes!'

   Maimouna just shrugged and marched on board the jet.

   Back inside, after refuelling, I found her sitting in the seat where I'd been, by the
   window. I sat down beside her.

   'Do you speak English?' I asked her, a little irritably. Then, for good measure,


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (48 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'Unasema Kiswahili?'

   She looked cool. 'Maimouna speaks English, French, Wolof and Chinese.
   Actually, I had hoped to be sent to Lhasa to communicate with the Rakshasas.
   You see, I had a Chinese Teacher, so I took the trouble to learn his language. Of
   course, you don't speak Chinese, so you'll never see Lhasa, will you?'

   'How do you know I don't speak Chinese?'

   She said something to me in Chinese and smiled faintly.

   'It's a complex language, dear.'

   'Are you from the coast? I'm from the other coast - the other side of Africa! I've
   been watching the whole continent go by-'

   'I'm sorry, do you want to sit by the window? Did Maimouna take your seat
   perhaps?'

   From across the aisle, Hamidou-A poked me in the ribs.

   'Watch out. First class bitchsnob.'

   'Why should I care about the view?' I said. 'I'm not a sightseer. Are you?' .

   'All that you mean is, it's all ocean from now on.' She yawned. 'Quite
   monotonous and dreary.'

   Sam finished piling cartons into the rear seats and scrambled back to the cabin,
   stopping to tell Maimouna to fasten her seat belt. We others already had.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (49 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   'No point in wearing the thing, till one's ready for takeoff, surely?'

   'Just be co-operative, will you?' Sam said, leaning over to buckle her in.

   'Maimouna always co-operates,' the girl purred. 'A selfish attitude absolutely
   ruins one for Bardo flight.'

   'How fortunate for you, having a Chinese Teacher,' I said sarcastically. 'What a
   pity it's all been wasted, as they don't speak Chinese in Miami.'

   Closing her eyes, she ignored me.

   Soon we were flying out over sea, more sea, then more sea again.

   Later, Sam announced: 'There's a hurricane building up in the Gulf of Mexico.
   Miami airport's closing, so we're going to land at the Cape.'

   'Cape Canaveral?'

   'The space port?'

   'That damned place,' scowled Sam.



                                                               SIX
   And so, on a fitful evening, with a storm brewing and red sunlight lancing low
   from brawling, accelerated clouds, we flew in over the abandoned launching
   sites. It was a flat, abstract place criss-crossed polygon-style by broad roads

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (50 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   linking the launch pads, which looked very much like a set of gargantuan yantra
   mandates pointed at the stars. As though the old space administration had built
   the right shapes, but done the wrong things with them! If they only could have
   unlocked the powers residing in the shapes they paved the earth with!

   A few steel gantries still stood erect and one gantry in particular still held a tall
   rocketship in its clasp, unlaunched these twenty decades: a magnificent penis-
   lingam. How almost right, yet how utterly wrong!

   'See,' cried the Hausa twins, 'it's a stupa!'

   Yes, it looked like that too: the spire from an Indian temple, hugely magnified.
   And of course the spire of an Indian temple is intended as a penis-lingam.

   'An American stupa! Stupendous!' laughed Abdoulaye-H.

   'What a shame they were in such a stupor that they didn't realize what it was!'

   'Stupid astronauts.'

   The black mass of storm clouds was piling up fast. Raindrops smeared across the
   windows. As we landed, on what must have been the longest runway in the
   world, fat bobbles blurred the glass; against the boiling darkness of the horizon I
   could still see a monolithic building, half a kilometre high at least, that seemed
   to suck the storm towards it, condensing the darkness into a, solid block.

   We slept in a small hospital, through the storm-tossed night. Dawn came mauve
   and violet, and only tatters of raincloud were scudding seawards now.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (51 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   After Sam had fixed breakfast of red beans on flapjacks, dolloped with syrup, we
   helped transfer the cargo of cartons from the plane to a small bus - Maimouna
   carrying fewer than the rest of us, scrutinizing the place names of origin on the
   labels with a knowledgeable air, as though it mattered. Then we drove off across
   the empty spaceport, bound for our true port of embarkation - where ecstasy, not
   hydrazine, would be our rocket fuel to the stars.

   'Why couldn't we fly on to Miami?' complained Maimouna.

   'It just so happens they were driving some more fuel in from Orlando overnight
   for your convenience, but the lorry skidded. Driver broke his arm. So the plane'll
   have to wait refuelling. Hell, but I hate this place. It insults the human spirit.'

   The monolith we'd seen the night before continued to dwarf us for a long time.
   Sam said it consisted of one single enormous room, the hugest room that man
   had ever made. It even had its own weather. Its own clouds and lightning inside.
   They had assembled spaceships in it.

   Leaving the spaceport, we drove along the centre of a six-lane highway, of
   which only the middle lanes were in good repair, overhauling occasional trailer-
   trucks loaded with fruit and vegetables, looking like mobile greenhouses with
   their overhead solar power panels. There was more traffic on an adjacent railway
   line; several trains passed, mainly hauling lumber, plumes of coal-smoke
   pouring from their funnels. Inland were rolling hills of orange groves, but
   hereabouts was a flat, well-irrigated landscape with people of all races - blacks,
   amer-indians, whites, all dressed in similar blue dungarees - working in fields of
   soya and sweetcorn, celery and radish.

   We passed through beachside cities of peeling palaces and overgrown gardens,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (52 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   where fishermen were repairing nets, caulking hulls and sewing sails under the
   lazy bend of palms. Processing factories vented rich smells of fish and fruit.
   VERO BEACH MULLETT MEAL. PALM BEACH PELLETED CITRUS
   PULP. FORT MERLE SOYAMILK SKIMMERY. DANIA DRIED BEAN
   PRODUCTS. Florida was noticeably more thickly populated than my own part
   of Africa, and all the passing towns gave the sense of having been far more
   crowded once - without, however, haying become 'ghosts' of their former selves.
   It was the frills and extravagances - the decayed amusement parks, hotels and
   such -that had been shut away and left to crumble or overgrow; just as the
   superhighway had been reduced to a simple road, The backbone of life remained
   - with a new spirit to it, witnessed by the billboards over the canals and
   waterways of Fort Lauderdale extolling social ecology and the way of Bardo-

   Male and Female contain within each other the Mandda of the Universe!

   To bring about a little change for a while isn't enough; it must be permanent!

   After Enlightenment, Chopping Wood and Carrying Water!

   Our Alien Friends help us Find Ourselves!

   Finally we arrived at Miami, a substantial city as Sam had said - though similarly
   thinned out and repaced - and Miami Beach, Bardo headquarters for the Western
   World.

   Fifteen kilometres of white palaces fronted the ocean, linked to the mainland city
   by causeways, for in reality this 'beach' was a long island. We pulled up at a
   checkpoint, manned by four armed Dobdobs, with grey bombs cipped to their
   belts, and machine-guns, their steel helmets decorated with the yantra sign. Yet

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (53 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   the fierceness of their naked weapons was fairly well belied by what they were
   actually doing. Two were sitting playing Go under a sun awning outside their slit-
   windowed concrete hut. A third was dangling a fishing line in the bay. Only the
   fourth man, who had been scanning birds in the lagoon with a pair of binoculars,
   paid attention to us.

   'Big smelly guns,' sniffed Abdoulaye-H, nevertheless, as Sam handed over a wad
   of papers to this man - including my own Bardo test charts, I noticed. The
   Dobdob took them away into the concrete hut.

   'Don't get the wrong idea about these guards,' Sam explained to the Hausa boy.
   'They're really a cross between data processors, keeping an eye on who's coining
   and going, and an honour guard for the Procyon Embassy. See, that's it, over
   there where the flag is. You need a little bit of ceremonial for star guests.' He
   pointed out a distant hotel, with antennae on its roof and a fluttering green
   banner.

   'If it's a mental embassy,' asked Maimouna innocently, 'why should you need
   real guns and a real flag?'

   'For us,' laughed Sam. 'For human beings. Seeing's believing. Still, it's amazing
   what people will believe. In the early days I hear there were even accusations
   that this place was some sort of luxury brothel for the world's new controllers.'

   'What is a brothel?' asked the other Hausa boy.

   Maimouna uttered a sleek laugh, and told him. 'Of course,' she added, 'people
   who thought that sort of thing would all have been purged, wouldn't they, Sam?
   But that's all ancient history - the camps in Antarctica are all closed down now,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (54 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   aren't they?' I wasn't sure whether she was simply showing off her knowledge
   again - or probing Sam. After what I'd heard Sam say over the radio to Liu - if he
   won't co-operate, he'll have to be put on ice - I felt like probing too.

   Sam just shrugged and remarked: 'You see, the flag's green because Asura is a
   forest world.'

   It was early afternoon. As we waited at the checkpoint, a convoy of slow battery-
   driven drop-side trucks, laden with cabbages, milk churns, plucked chickens and
   crates of eggs, drew up behind us, driven by men and women in blue dungarees.
   The two Dobdobs who had been playing Go got up and went to attend to them.
   A long barge which had been moving across the bay moored alongside one of
   the palaces to start loading refuse from a chute.

   Then the Dobdob came back from the hut with our documents and four plastic
   cards, two white ones and two red, which he handed over to Sam, to pass on to
   us.

   My card, a red one, had LILA MAKINDI embossed above a long number in
   computer type; the back of the card had several metallic strips across it.

   'That's a coded identity card giving your body-field profile from the tests. Your
   Bardo tunics'll have a special pocket for them,' Sam said.'Keep tüem safe till
   then.'

   Shutting my eyes, I ran my fingers along the bumps, to see if I could read my
   name by touch; Maimouna's voice purred in my ear.

   'Computers don't read credit cards with their fingers, my dear. All the data's

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (55 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   printed magnetically.'

   'Computers think by Boolean algebra,' Hamidou-A chipped in.'They think yantra
   thoughts!'

   The steel pole rose up and Sam drove the bus out along Broad Causeway. An old
   sign half way along had been overprinted with the slogan: Ecstasy is Mental
   Rocket Fuel!

   'It's a sort of credit card,' said Maimouna. 'In the old days people used to buy
   things with little bits of plastic like these. Of course, that sort of credit's all gone
   - but in a sense the world still exists on credit, doesn't it, Sam? Mental credit
   from our friends in space, wouldn't you say?'

   'Amazing,' was all Sam said. 'This was all one big mangrove swamp once, and
   now the Asurans of the star Procyon are here.'

   'In a manner of speaking,' teased the Wolof girl 'Mentally.'

   A second, more heavily armed checkpoint held us up briefly on the far side of
   Broad Causeway, while our 'credit' cards were run through a machine. Then we
   were let into a wire-fenced parking space. Exit gates led to various hotels. Sam
   drew up beside a gate giving directly on to marble steps, at the top of which
   glass doors revolved.

   Tour first briefing's in just two hours. We should have been here last night. Go
   on through. You're expected.'

   As he spoke, a tall Asian woman Dobdob came through the revolving door and

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (56 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   stood waiting. Sam bundled us out unceremoniously and we walked through the
   gate and up the steps.

   The woman led us into a large, lavish lobby. Green and gold tiles checkered the
   floor; glass galaxies of chandeliers hung from a high ceiling. Fuchsias and tree-
   ferns grew lushly in terracotta urns. Fat red carp circled lazfly in a pool, in the
   Centre of which stood a bronze Tibetan god, with water sprinkling from a cudgel
   in his left hand. His right hand supported a bronze woman copulating
   acrobatically with him, with one leg looped right around his waist.

   While the woman Dobdob was at a desk with our cards, we wandered round this
   jungle of a hall examining the various paintings, reliefs and carvings of love-
   making.

   One carving, on a plinth, was of a man and woman so completely and
   contortedly wrapped around one another that they'd become a perfect, cubic
   block of limbs. Had it not been for the red paint on the woman's body, and the
   white paint on the man's, there'd have been no way of knowing whose ams and
   legs were whose. Impossible contortions! We all stared at this one, wondering-

   The woman called us back and returned our cards, along with various lists and
   timetables,

   'The hotel has a beach out front. You're free to use it in your spare time,
   Otherwise you're restricted to this building. For organization reasons. Don't
   worry, you have plenty to do. Commencing at sixteen-thirrt. You'll see from the
   timetable that you're due in the lecture room on the third floor along with the rest
   of the new intake. The hotel manager will welcome you, on behalf of us all.' Her
   eyes drifted to Maimouna's , glass ear-globes, disapprovingly. 'Jewellery. We

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (57 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   don't allow the wearing of jewellery. It gets in the way of the helmets and
   interferes with the body-field-'

   'It's all right, they unclip.'

   'It is not all right! The function of art is to be an effective focus for the mind. Not
   a distraction, a frivolity. All the artwork that you can see here is effective. How
   on earth can you focus on something stuck away on your ears?'

   'I do think about them!' protested Maimouna. 'Each little glass globe is a world.
   The wires form yantras round the world, protecting it from harm. Do you see?'

   The woman nodded doubtfully.

   'I take them off every night and think how awful it would be if there wasn't a
   yantra like a fence around the world. What's inside the glass? There's a little
   spider locked in one and a fly in the other. In preserving fluid. Ancient enemies!
   Only my skull keeps them apart. My head and my brain. And the wire yantras.
   They're symbolic, you see, not decorative.'

   'Well, keep your lucky charms, if you must - in your room!'

   Maimouna flicked a glass globe and looked smug, as though she had proved
   something to herself. But frankly, a yantra wasn't a fence around the world at all!
   It was a means of reaching out - to other worlds. So I found her explanation
   ridiculous.

   I had been allocated a bright, soft, elegant bedroom with a narrow single bed in
   it. Our rooms were for rest, not love. (Indeed, I read, it was forbidden to make

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (58 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   love privately - or with anybody but an assigned Bardo partner.) On the wall
   hung a gay print of love-making, though. A man with a curly moustache and a
   woman with breasts like grapefruit, he and she both plump and languid, gazed in
   a hypnotic trance into each other's eyes. They were decked in jewellery: rings,
   bangles, combs and beads. Obviously before the time of Bardo! Air-conditioning
   vents bore faded labels, 'OUT OF USB', and the windows now had glass louvres
   to angle in the breeze. A white telephone hung by the bed, To use it, you had to
   push your, credit card into a slot.

   I found clothes laid out waiting on the bed -lightweight red cotton trousers with a
   draw-string waistband, and a red cotton blouse with a pocket containing
   notebook and pencil, and a smaller, empty pocket on which my name was
   stencilled, for my credit card.

   Down on the third floor, fifty young people of all races sat in the lecture room,
   girls dressed in red, boys in white. Everyone wore close-cropped hair, though
   only one boy, with skin like orange peel and protruding ears, had gone to
   Maimouna's extreme and shaved his skull entirely bare, to fit a Bardo helmet.

   The hotel manager, a red-haired blustery man, rapped his knuckles on a rostrum.

   Til try to keep this brief,' he said -rather inaccurately, as it turned out, "I
   welcome you all to Miami - from Hawaii, Scandinavia, Africa, Brazil, wherever
   your first home was. From now on your home is here, Bardo is the most
   important business the human race has ever involved itself in.: I take it you'll all
   agree to that! Bardo holds the world steady and reaches to the stars. That's
   because we work with human beings, not machines. Sure, we use machines too,
   as boosters, but they're not the main thing. The human mind is the main thing.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (59 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   The human body-field. We'll only survive by using that. Rakshasas tell us that
   the total lifespan of some planetary cultures - dead cultures - they've come across
   is just a few years, from growth spurt to collapse. They only know two worlds to
   date, besides themselves, that made it past the hurdle. The most important of
   them, for your purposes, is Asura. Someone tell me about the Asurans, then!
   Come on, don't be shy!'

   'They're trees,' said one voice,.

   'They're birds,' said another.

   'Actually, they're symbionts,' Maimouna's voice announced haughtily. 'Birds and
   trees coexisting symbiotically. Which means they depend on each other. The
   birds feed on the sap of the trees, for which in turn they provide higher brain
   functions. The two together form temporary higher-order beings-'

   'Right! Actually, it's an island world, Asura, with a million islands, each with its
   own little clump of interlinked trees. It just looks like a forest world, with a
   whole maze of straits and creeks all over the place, as there's no actual big sea or
   lake anywhere. Each island has its own little tree-clump. The trees provide a
   primary vegetable nervous system. The birds chip in with higher consciousness.
   Bird and tree plug into each other and depend on each other. Long ago, before
   symbiosis, the trees were busily soaking up solar radiation, becoming like great
   biological radar dishes, and the birds' brains were growing big by figuring -out
   the star patterns they navigated by. When symbiosis finally came, the brainy
   birds were able to apply analytical reason to the cosmic radiations which the
   trees were able to read on a primary, instinctual level.

   'On the wing, in isolation, a bird operates more instinctually than rationally, of

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (60 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   course. It's only by "plugging in" to the trees, by merging, that you get the full
   Asuran individual - bird plus tree. Still, each bird-personality flies off from its
   tree with a magnificent sense of emotional, social belonging. Those Asurans
   really know society, biologically. They're never submerged by the symbiosis -
   only enhanced.

   'Asura would be midway between the orbits of Earth and Mars, if it was in our
   own solar system. Only, Procyon is a hotter star than Sol, so the temperature
   averages out the same as Earth- Why is it called "Asura"? Just wait till you hear
   the sound of the wind through those leaves, and the wingbeats overhead! It's a
   beautiful world, Asura - and most of all in the social-ecological sense. The sheer
   harmony of feeding, mating, navigation, meditation - of sun-drinking and star-
   watching. It's all in balance.'

   Our first three months would mainly be taken up by physical and mental
   exercises, and lectures. In the mornings: lectures on ways of charting the body-
   field - from Chinese acupuncture, through Tibetan 'mental map' mandates, to Kir-
   lian high-voltage aura photography and the Backster Effect of 'primary
   perception' in all living cells - as well as Maths and Physics, particularly the
   general theory of the Action-at-a-Distance Cosmos, which allowed us to beam
   our body-field to the stars at the speed of thought. In the afternoons: physical
   activities - body-field co-ordination, yoga and sexual exercises.

   After the first few weeks in this 'Orientation Unit' each of us would be allocated
   a partner who had already flown to Asura, whereupon we would go to live in
   what they called the. 'Initiation Unit', another hotel. After about two more
   months, we should be ready to make our first mental journey to the stars, from
   the Procyon Embassy building itself.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (61 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   The three hundred hotels of Miami Beach housed approximately three thousand
   Bardo trainees, we learnt. Which posed huge organizational problems. This was
   why we were not to stray away from our own hotel. Inside the hotel, we were not
   to enter any areas of the building marked by. red swastika warning signs on the
   doors.

   'So: work hard. Train hard. Remember, we need round-the-clock vigilance at the
   Procyon Embassy, Our contact with them must never be lost-'

   And so the hotel manager's speech subsided.

   'Any questions, queries, problems?,' The three melted into one, because
   everything was still a question, a query, or a problem.

   'Obviously not right now,' he laughed 'Well, the bigger questions sort themselves
   out as time goes by? Any immediate difficulties, ask at the desk or phone down
   from your room,'

   Maimouna nudged me in the crowd, afterwards.

   'Why do Bardo need so many trainees?; Three thousand people training just to
   keep in touch with one world! In the old days there were only a couple of
   hundred astronauts, ever,'

   'That wasn't mental travel. It takes a lot of psychic energy.-You have to rest up
   between flights. Flights are shorter-'

   They've been training people for years and years, What's the urgency? Is Bardo
   flight so exhausting that they need these sort of numbers? I tell you, the manager

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (62 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   was scared of something - something about Bardo.'

   'Nonsense.'

   'Scared, my dear, as my fly is scared of my spider. I know. My Chinese Teacher
   laid his hands on my skull when I was ten years old. He stared into my eyes and
   said he saw the spider in my left eye and the fly in my right eye, and I'd always
   know them when I met them in my life. If Bardo spins mind webs into space,
   Lila, why was our manager sweating like a trapped fly?'

   Hamidou-A butted in. 'That fly and spider - it's just an image of the two sides of
   your own brain, Maimouna, to help you concentrate on integrating them. Didn't
   you realize? Fly must learn to trust the spider. Spider must learn not to want to
   eat the fly.'

   "The left side of your brain analyses,' echoed his brother. "It spins webs of
   analysis. The right side intuits. It flies into the beyond. Your Chinese Teacher
   was just taking your own personality into account with his fly and spider story -
   trading on your sly, suspicious nature, to make the best he could of you.'

   'You're always spinning webs for people, to prove how clever you are.'

   Take care you don't catch yourself in your own web!'



                                                        SEVEN
   During the first month, we attended lectures on the field phenomenon -we'd be
   using to make our almost instantaneous transition to Asura: Action at a Distance.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (63 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Our instructor, an Indian from Arizona, showed us a time-lapse film of a seed
   germinating, sprouting, becoming a full grown plant, flowering and dying. Then
   he ran the film backwards. The plant grew back into the seed again.

   Next he showed a film of a waterfall falling up a cliff face, instead of down.
   Then another film, of stones and dust flying together to form a solid boulder - at
   which we all laughed, it looked so silly.

   'That's a natural reaction - laughter,? commented the Indian. 'Time always flows
   in one direction only. So rivers never run backwards, and rubble never
   reorganizes itself into a boulder after you've dynamited it. Time flies forward
   like an arrow. It stands to reason, eh?

   'It so happens that it isn't reasonable at all! According to modern physics, events
   should always be reversible, theoretically. Consider the universe, overall. The
   universe is a unit. There isn't anything that isn't in the universe. Consequently all
   parts must be connected to all other parts. Strictly, there can't' be any "parts" at
   all! So what is it that links "near" to "far"?, What is it that links this single unit,
   the universe? Please consider a source of energy anywhere in the universe.
   Waves radiate outwards from this source at the speed of light. Radio waves, X-
   rays, visible light, whatever. We call all these energies "retarded" waves,
   because they arrive somewhere else later than they set off, whether it's a minute
   later or a million years later. Obviously it stands to reason that something should
   arrive later than it leaves. The effect has to follow the cause.

   'Just you try to prove it! According to Maxwell's fundamental equations for
   electro-magnetic fields, the opposite case is equally possible. "Advanced" waves
   can also exist, which travel back through time to converge on their so-called
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (64 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   "point of origin". As these must be in equal and opposite reaction to the emission
   of the retarded waves, we can call on Newton's Third Iaw to back us up here-'

   The Indian drew diagrams of radiating arrows and squiggly lines, and chalked up
   formulas which we scribbled down in our notebooks to study later and be asked
   questions on.

   'All this is theory. But does any waterfall actually flow back to its source? Does
   starlight ever really fly backwards through time to a star to arrive at the same
   time as it radiates it? Plainly not - to our eyes. Yet this has to be the case for the
   universe as a whole, or it simply couldn't hold together in one single unit. It has
   to act upon itself at a distance in this way. When a "retarded" wave reached
   Procyon from Sol, Procyon reacts with an "advanced" wave which travels back
   through time, to arrive at Sol just as the original retarded wave is setting out This
   is happening all the time, everywhere. The whole universe constantly and
   simultaneously interacts with every single event, every single charge. Only thus
   is it a "universe".

   'Whenever any event occurs - no matter how humble, just a single electric charge
   being jiggled - waves radiate outwards and forwards in time to the furthest,
   reaches of the universe, and simultaneously converge from these far reaches.
   That's the underlying fabric of Reality - the glue, the universal binding medium.
   That's the cosmic field.

   'It's this field through which the Bardo flier transmits his thoughts. You perceive
   an arrow of time. You live your lives by it. Yet cosmically there's no such thing -
   and all matter, your brains and bodies included, being simply bundles of charges,
   this is how your thought patterns can interact with the thoughts of the Asurans-'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (65 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   From a Dobdob Instructor called Ramon Fernandez, a Spanish American, we
   learnt more details about the peculiar beings who inhabited Procyon IV - those
   strange composites of Bird and Tree, the Asurans.

   At first it was hard to really feel, at gut level, how one kind of life-form, a Tree -
   however well endowed with 'primary perception' and however sensitive to
   cosmic rhythms - could possibly link up with another kind of life-form, a Bird -
   however , brainy it was - to form an integrated, higher-order being. Quite hard
   for us human beings to conceive - at least until we had ourselves experienced
   depth hypnosis and a number of consciousness-altering drugs and discovered
   how composite and often contradictory our own identities actually were; how
   many different states and subsystems of consciousness actually clustered in our
   own brains, not always even compatible with each other! We weren't quite the
   solid, connected individuals we imagined ourselves! In a sense, Asura reflected
   outwardly what was going on constantly inside our own heads-

   Each tree had one specialized feeding tube close to its fruiting body, at the most
   complex node of its vegetable sensory system. Here the birds roosted, plugging
   in to feed and to tap the tree's body-field.

   Usually each symbiosis only lasted a single day. At nightfall, the higher aerial
   consciousness of the bird detached itself from the chthonic senses of the tree to
   seek out a different base and form a new, and equally temporary, Asuran.
   Temporary, and unlikely to be repeated twice - yet at the same time there was a
   genuine world-wide continuity of awareness between all these separate
   individuals who came into being and dissolved again, so that experience and
   knowledge were diffused right across the planet; and handed down, too,
   cumulatively from generation to generation.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (66 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Certain birds roosted longer than usual in specific 'contact' trees these days,
   playing the role of Bardo communicators. These had undertaken the 'compact of
   stability', as it was called-

   In the numerical sense the population was fairly small. In the mental sense,
   though, it was huge since there were so many possible permutations of Bird and
   Tree, and constant variety was the rule rather than the exception. Obviously
   there was no need to 'increase and multiply' the sheer numbers of the population
   in order to broaden the range of individuals!

   Psychologically, because of the constant plugging in and unplugging, the
   Asurans had achieved, the detachment of mind sought for by generations of
   Earth mystics; while they remained at the same time perfectly connected social
   beings - unlike the mass of Earth's mystics in the past.

   The trees had always functioned as mighty, radiation absorbers: the bands of
   chloroplast stroma in the leaves photo-synthesizing adenosine triphosphate,
   phosphoroglyceric acid, fatty acids and amino acids. But it was the crucial
   adaptation of the leaves to 'night sight' - to radiations on radio and other
   wavebands from the stars, stimulated by bird-curiosity - that led the Asurans to
   key in to the Bardo plane. The Rakshasas actually made the breakthrough to
   Asura. They were the great initiators. That was 10,000 Earth years ago. Even
   then the Asurans were already very advanced in their understanding of the
   structure of the cosmos and the binding of space-time, because of their unique
   union of tree-receiver and bird consciousness.

   We also learnt something - in brief - about the two other alien races, the
   Rakshasas and the Yidags; though these weren't to be our speciality.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (67 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Rakshasas looked like inflatable balloon versions of the sting ray that I'd seen off
   Sinda, with squidlike 'arms' around their mouths. Their world was a moon
   orbiting the second gas-giant planet of Barnard's Star - which filled their sky
   with vivid swirls of orange, red and yellow. This accounted for the 'fire-mist'
   effect. Actually their world was very cold indeed.

   The gravity of their moon was too weak to hold its atmosphere. This constantly
   leaked into space. Fortunately for the existence of life on Rakshasa, the lost
   atmospheric gases all gathered in a tight band around the gas-giant, which
   happened to coincide perfectly with the orbit of the moon itself. Thus the moon
   scooped its atmosphere back from space as quickly as it lost it. Apparently this
   was the case with Saturn's moon Titan, in our own solar system...

   The weak gravity allowed the Rakshasas to pulse-jet about freely among the
   slender, spiring mountains of their moon; and even to escape from their world by
   inflating their body sacs to the utmost and soaring out into the band of
   atmosphere around the whole orbital path. Using their own bodies as spacecraft -
   at least within the confines of the doughnut band - they learn to navigate right
   around the gas-giant, becoming living satellites, though ones which had to return
   to their world for nourishment.

   They discovered how to use the whole gaseous doughnut as a huge natural
   antenna - three million kilometres from edge to edge, nine million kilometres in
   length. Modulating it by . storing within their own bodies the ionized gases
   produced by the charged field of the gas-giant's magnetosphere, they succeeded
   in producing a highly sensitive receiver-transmitter-



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (68 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   By contrast, Yidags were the real 'fire-beings'. These were massive, static,
   metallic-crystal 'jugs' inhabiting a blazing hot planet closest to its sun, almost
   naked to raw space.

   They drank in sunlight by day and stored it through the nights like so many
   organic batteries. Communication was by laser pulses in the deep infra-red. They
   even reproduced by this means - patiently building up new crystal forms of their
   kind by interference patterns of their laser beams falling upon the fluorosilicone
   pools. These beings were information analysts extraordinary; and their
   'consciousness' didn't so much dawn at 'birth' as accrue gradually as each bottle-
   being was slowly built towards maturity and began to accept more load in the
   'circuitry' of Yidag society. For the Yidags were methodically transforming the
   very surface of their world into an analytical, thinking nexus-

   Oddly, it was the Asurans from their sylvan watery world who made the
   breakthrough to Yidag on the Bardo plane, rather than the Rakshasas. The
   perpetual switching-in and switching-out pattern of life on Asura let the Bird-
   Trees appreciate more readily the world view of Yidag, where 'individuals' were
   only nodes in an evolving planetary network.



                                                         EIGHT
   'So what's the secret link between the three worlds?' Maimouna demanded one
   day as we piled out of class on to the beach.

   Was there one? Each world seemed very different from the next. Mineral
   creatures, shape-shifting tar balloons, birds in trees. Boiling, freezing, mild.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (69 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   The three worlds were all very stable, very patient, compared with what Earth
   had once been. I couldn't see how the Asurans or Rakshasas could ever have
   built up a technology, as we know it, given their basic lack of raw materials.
   Was technonology the devil, then? No, since the Yidags had built a technology -
   albeit an organic one. But the Yidags couldn't move about their world, except by
   proxy. Still, the Asurans were always flying about from place to place ... Maybe
   the fateful combination that wrecked up-and-coming civilizations was inorganic
   technology plus mobility plus intense individualism. Maybe this combination
   was almost inevitable for mammalian cultures, whether they evolved from proto-
   rats or proto-apes or proto-bears or whatever. Significantly, none of the aliens
   were mammals of any sort-

   The surf washed ashore, tossing weed and shells from the Atlantic. Fenced
   groins divided our beach into strips. Other intakes of students sat chattering in
   the sun beyond the fences, in separate compounds.

   'They're distinctly simple worlds!' said Maimouna, contemptuously. 'I mean,
   really simple-minded. I'll say that for a start. Particularly our precious Asura!'

   'Come along,' Hamidou-A protested, 'we're just starting to find out about it.
   You're so impatient. That's the whole trouble with us humans - wanting
   everything at once. Maybe that's our carnivore sickness: the primal hunt
   syndrome. If we hurry now, we're likely to trip up! It might take ten million
   years to spread the A.D. network through this galaxy alone, never mind to other
   galaxies. So what? That's just a wink of the eye, cosmically.'

   'It's a lot of time too,' I said. 'I can't help wondering whether civilizations will
   ever get round to visiting each other physically during it, in actual starships?'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (70 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   'What's the point? We already visit them, they visit us. Why build a tin can
   costing half the world's resources? Who would want to be shut up in it for years?'

   Inspired, Maimouna clapped her hands. 'Something out there must be building
   '"tin cans", though! It's bound to happen some time. Not every mobile technical
   culture absolutely has to destroy itself. Perhaps some forms of life can't ever
   travel the Bardo way. Not all human beings can. Maybe that's what Bardo is
   frightened of! Maybe the Rakshasas or Yidags have found out that things in tin
   cans are heading our way! Or maybe our "friends" just don't want us making tin
   cans, which is why they showed us a faster, easier way - to keep us away from
   them! To keep us out of the universe, while giving us the illusion of belonging!'

   'We never could have made tin cans,' objected Abdoulaye-H. 'The sort of world
   that made spaceships was already collapsing, even as it conquered the Moon - if
   you can call it conquering.'

   'Answer this, then! Bardo flight is practically instantaneous, right? Yet it's taken
   the Rakshasas ten thousand years to push out a few hundred light years. Why is
   it taking so long? What is Bardo having to push against? What force is against
   us?'

   The Hausa boy sighed. 'It's easy for us to visit the three established worlds,
   compared with what their own fliers are doing - leaping out into nowhere,
   catching a toehold on nothing.'

   'So you accept a wait of five or ten million years before we can ever cross this
   galaxy? My dear boy, what were we human beings ten million years ago?
   Nothing like what we are now! What will we be as far as that in the future?

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (71 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Completely different creatures, because of evolution. It's just stupid thinking of
   us, the human race, as any part of the future. We won't be. We can't be. I don't
   know how you imagine we can be.' 'It's my opinion that Bardo is a way of
   evolution for the human race from now on-'

   'Nonsense. How can it be? Evolution is genetics, not interstellar
   communications. At the present rate of progress, we'll disappear as a species
   long before there's any galactic civilization. It's too tragic. Don't you see, the
   human race will never know the universe because of Bardo.'

   'I'd say that the next evolutionary step involves learning alien information and
   incorporating it,' Abdoulaye-H said. 'Genetics is simply information transfer,
   basically; Look at the Yidags - there's a beautiful example of a society which is
   completely conscious of how information makes new individuals-' , 'Oh, aren't
   they a beautiful textbook example! They might have been specially invented for
   the purpose! That's what I mean about how simple-minded these three alien
   worlds are. They're so stripped down - like a set of equations!'

   'They succeeded,' said Abdoulaye-H with a shrug. 'The other cultures all went
   smash.'

   'So we're told.'

   'Anyway, I like them. They're clear, logical worlds. Not a mess.'

   The warm sea rolled in, line after line of bubbling foam soaking the Miami sand,
   percolating back. Except for the presence of the hotels, it could have been a
   million, or a billion years ago. And the year was only 2170. The Hausa boys
   were right. Humanity had been in existence in a civilized state on this planet for

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (72 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   such a tiny number of years. Maimouna would just have to curb her impatience.

   For exercises in training the mind and body-field we were driven out to the Villa
   Vizcaya, a few kilometres south through Miami City.

   Miami was modestly bustling with service facilities for the Centre. I noticed a
   number of one-time 'banks' and 'air-line' offices, with their names still stuck
   above their glass windows in a sort of comic indictment, though Dobdobs were
   plainly working inside on various kinds of records and administration as we
   passed, and the real names of the buildings were stencilled, more discreetly,
   across the doors. A certain 'Chase Manhattan Bank' was actually the 'South-
   Eastern States Contracap Agency'-

   Villa Vizcaya was a palace with formal gardens built by an eccentric rich man
   two hundred and fifty years earlier, in the style of an even earlier period: Italian
   Renaissance. Our Dob-dob Instructor was a mellow, oval-faced Persian called
   Shotai. His skin had. the lambent, amber tone of a peach. He led us through to a
   large geometrical water-garden flanked by orange trees and low white walls.
   Statues faced one another on plinths. Red arid yellow roses sprouted between
   lines of box hedge, punctuated by bushes. A tall, stupa-like fountain bubbled into
   an emerald pond inside low lotus-petal walls. Pathways and watercourses wove a
   kind of yantra design around it, a life-size yantra of which any visitor
   immediately became part. Set at the centre of the design, the fountain was its
   bindu point. It was die vanishing point of a garden of the mind.

   Shotai injected me with a perception-enhancing drug called MMDA - a synthetic
   compound from one of the essential oils of nutmeg, which stimulates intense
   eidetic displays, not of past experiences, but of the Now, the Present, and


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (73 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   strengthens the powers on concentrating on these and organizing them. It had
   none of the somewhat disorienting effects of the 'mind-dividing' drugs we'd been
   given earlier, in preparation for Asura, to show us how composite our own minds
   actually are. It was really a very old and natural drug in a new form. Nutmeg had
   been known to the ancient Hindu scriptures. The Persian Dobdob told me to
   stand stock still and concentrate all my attention on fixing every tree, every
   branch of every tree, every spray of leaves on every branch, in my mind's eye.
   Then I must memorize the roses, the hedges, the watercourses, the statues.

   For one whole hour at least I didn't move, but only stared.

   When I thought that I knew the garden perfectly, I shut my eyes and saw it,
   eidetically. The image remained sharp and dear. I spent half an hour seeing it,
   this way.

   Then, step by step, I began erasing what I saw.

   Erasing details at first, not specific items. Texture, richness of colour, length,
   breadth, depth: I drained away the garden's qualities one by one. Roses lost their
   hue. Trees became monochrome. Clusters of leaves, amorphous.

   The garden was now a child's grey charcoal sketch. Next, I began erasing the
   items themselves.

   This proved much more difficult. Shapes fought to remain in being - while I tried
   to retract-the trees into the earth, to make bare ground, empty channels, a dry
   fountain.

   Finally, I willed even the fountain into a mere line, standing upright, alone in flat-

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (74 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   land.

   This line I urged to diminish to a point.

   It shrank slowly, in my field of consciousness. It became one-dimensional.

   And I asked myself, as Shotai had told me to, what is the nature of a point? What
   sort of unique 'being' does a point possess? From our point of view here on
   Earth, all the stars were points because they were so far away. If I could make an
   earthly garden retreat to a point source, how could I make a point, on the other
   hand, turn into a star - the star Procyon? That was the task of Bardo flight.

   I could only do so by entering the point, by becoming the point in my own mind.

   I didn't succeed on the first day, nor the second! (I'm capsuling things, you see.)
   It took me till the fifth day to reduce the garden to bare bones, and till the
   seventh to reduce it all to a flat plane with a single upright line.

   Then, on the eighth day, the line receded to a point. And this was the seed point
   from which the whole universe of stars and gardens springs-

   I was doing well.

   Later, we spent days in the Vizcaya garden identifying ourselves with the
   shrubbery, instead of abolishing it.

   On these occasions I had to squat before a cone shrub on a velvet lawn. Fiercely
   and mutely, aided by another essential oil of nutmeg derivative, I had to force my
   existence to be its existence.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (75 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   No longer was I flesh and blood, but root and branch, leaf and sap. No longer did
   I have legs, but roots. No longer fingers, but stalks. No longer blood, but
   chlorophyll. No longer two eyes, but a thousand leaves catching the light.

   The whole purpose of this exercise was to prepare me to feel that I was a tree,
   growing on Asura.

   This was actually a far more difficult exercise than the other one. But the
   moment when it succeeded was more dramatic! After staring for several
   afternoons at the same shrub, my attention lapsed briefly. I was distracted by the
   flicker of sunlight on some egret's wing, flying seawards. When I looked at the
   shrub again, I was looking at myself. I was looking at a human body, out of my
   thousand leaves!

   I gasped in surprise.

   And Shotai the Persian was by me in a moment.

   'There!' he urged. 'You saw!' I nodded at him dumbly, though there was only that
   shrub there again before my eyes, and the blood was pounding through my own
   human body.

   After more such afternoons, I felt that I could simultaneously be present at two
   points in space; possess two'viewpoints '...

   In the hotel, after this success, I was fitted with a Bardo helmet. While I
   concentrated on recalling my experiences of the garden and the shrub, the helmet
   measured my brain Waves, feeding them to a computer. The Dobdob neurologist
   in charge told me that we all have actual physical maps inscribed in our brains,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (76 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   in an area called the hippocampus. I thought of it, fancifully - and perhaps not so
   inaccurately! - as a field of horses all galloping off on journeys in different
   directions at different speeds. The placing of objects in space maps on to
   columns of cells in the hippocampus. The mapping process and the map-reading
   process for recovering the information use the electrical theta rhythm of the
   hippocampus. This was what he was measuring. When I finally flew on the
   Bardo plane, a computer would monitor the 'map' of my journey via my helmet.

   And so we moved out of the Orientation Unit, to another hotel further south
   where we were teamed with our Bardo partners.

   The Hausa twins were paired with a freckled Irish redhead and a raven-haired
   amerindian. Maimouna took a young Japanese lover.

   And I met Ahmed Klimt, descendant of some central European guestworker who
   had emigrated to the once oil-rich Arab Confederacy long ago.



                                                            NINE
   Klimt was small, tough, wiry. At nineteen, he had already made several mental
   flights to Procyon. His skin was swarthy as dried meat polished by the sun.
   When he took off his white tunic to practise asana positions with me, there was
   hardly any flesh on his frame, only corded muscles rippling and oozing like
   snakes. The dark pupils of his eyes bored holes in me as I undressed, as though
   he was trying out a 'reduction to a void' exercise upon my own body! I felt his
   gaze dissolve my skin, my flesh, my fat cells. It dried up the fluid parts of me,
   reduced me to a piece of coral, an empty honeycomb. What he desired was not


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (77 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   me; but only to penetrate beyond me, into the space within my body and beyond
   it.

   I could never 'like' him. Still he was charged with magic power. His presence
   warped my feelings into a perverse intoxication.

   We were both naked now, apart from electroencephalograph skullcaps, and an
   adhesive pad fixed to my belly and wired to the cap. Klimt's skin was mottled
   with tiny moles on the thighs and shoulders, like flecks of gravel that had buried
   themselves at high velocity. It took me a minute or two to realize that the
   contracap was missing from the proper place on his,arm. A faint scar was the
   only trace left of it.

   'You haven't got a contraceptive ...'

   'You'll lose your capsule too, as soon as it's time for your first real flight.'

   'The contracaps alter the hormonal messages, Lila,' interrupted the voice of our
   Dobdob instructor from the observation room. 'That's how they work. But they
   throw the body-field out of balance. For our purposes, we have to remove them.
   The body channels have to be clear. After you've practised the basic sexual
   asanas together for a fortnight or so to tune your bodies to each other, we'll
   excise your capsule-'

   'Isn't there a risk of me getting pregnant, as soon as I start flying?'

   'Oh, it can take some people years to conceive. You don't automatically become
   pregnant the moment you're off contraceptives. Still, maybe now you see why
   we need so many Bardo fliers. There's what you might call an occupational

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (78 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   hazard involved.' Her voice was brisk and hearty. 'Actually, the whole Virginia
   Beach area south of here is set aside for precisely this contingency. It's a really
   beautiful educational environment.'

   'But- abortion. Surely?'

   'No, Lila, abortion is out of the question. It would ruin the balance of your body-
   field. Take you two or three years to recover, if at all. If you get pregnant, the
   child has to be born. Of course, this would seem terribly unfair in the outside
   world, with the population under such strict control. As though you had an
   indefinite number of free birth permits-'

   Yes, indeed, I remembered Bibi Mwezi's scalded arm. There would be
   resentment.

   'We have to be discreet. Not that the children suffer on account of it. Far from it!'

   'So you're probably a father, Ahmed?'

   'How should I know? I never asked. What on earth does that matter, compared
   with starflight? We're wasting time, Lila.'

   'I don't suppose the aliens have this problem, do they?'

   'Hardly, given their biology! But we have to work with the bodies we have. Let's
   work!'

   We pulled the helmets down from the lightweight, hyper-mobile booms
   swinging above us, and slipped them over our heads, clicking them on to the


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (79 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   skullcaps. We were using helmets without face masks for these practice runs, to
   damp the full kundalini effect. Mantra to listen to, but no yantra to watch. The
   helmet sat on me weightlessly, barely noticeable, apart from its blanketing
   silence. If I moved, it floated with me, light as down.

   Klimt was elegant, gymnastic and tireless in his love-making. Dare I say 'tender',
   too? For him, tenderness was simply perfect smoothness of performance. He
   didn't exactly confirm the existence of my body by his love-making! Rather, he
   denied it, dissolving my flesh into nerves, my nerves into energy.

   So, then, his limbs entangled with mine. He corrected my posture gently with
   flat palms. With fingernails and tip of tongue he traced the outline of my subtle
   body - that other body within my body, my energy body - searching the chakras
   in my navel, my throat. Finally, he entered me.

   The Bardo helmet hummed in my ears, singing the seed-sound:

   HUM,HUM,HUM-

   My brain vibrated with it, breathing HUM like air. My two hemispheres were
   like lungs drawing the rhythm into all the energy conduits of my body.
   Automatically I fell into the proper breathing pattern. I was conscious of the
   entry and exit of my breath, but ft was no longer just air: it was prana, the breath
   of being. I breathed from my deep abdomen like a baby. Kundalini power began
   uncoiling at the root of my spine, a flow of soft molten metal, lava from a
   volcano, spreading upwards.

   She was a fierce, intoxicating Other Creature living in me, this Kundalini. Yet
   she was also my own unknown root self. I hailed her: Greetings, Being of Fire

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (80 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   and Energy! Greetings, Creature of Destruction and Delight!

   TRAM, TRAM, TRAM, my lover throbbed. Kundalini rose higher through my
   belly. Then the mantra sound stopped.

   A slurred, slowed-down voice began ordering me to do something in a strange
   language.

   'Mulabhanda! Mu-la-bhan-da! the voice insisted urgently - sluggishly, time was
   so drawn out.

   I heard the word three times before I understood it. Then I remembered.
   'Bandhas' are the muscle contractions of yoga. 'Mulabhanda' is the anal
   contraction, which prevents ejaculation, and stops the rise of Kundalini. She was
   telling me to send my Kundalini down again. This was only an exercise, and I
   was already half lost in it!

   So the creature of fire and joy, destruction and delight, came to a halt and began
   sinking slowly down my spine again.

   Time speeded up.

   Klimt uncoiled himself sleekly from me.

   We lifted our helmets and they drifted up towards the ceiling on the booms and
   hung there. Our skullcaps and my belly pad came loose with faint plops and we
   laid them on the matting like bedraggled baby octopuses,

   When I tried to sttnd up, my body turned to rubber; sparks flashed before my


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (81 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   eyes, and Klimt supported me, with a faint grin.

   'You need a shower. Then food; then sleep,' he said functionally.

   In the anteroom, needles of icy water revived me. Soon after, I was eating
   ravenously with Klimt in the hotel refectory. I tried to talk to him about his home
   in North Africa, then about the likelihood of our having a baby (a possibility I
   was still trying to come to terms with) but I had to give up both these topics. He
   hadn't the slightest interest in either his origins or his potential offspring. I could
   just see him as a growing boy, wrapped in some white burnous, rushing out into
   the blank rippling desert at dawn, willing it to be the Bardo plane; reducing palm
   trees to lines, reducing himself to a one-dimensional person! A fanatic, from way
   back.

   Yet Ahmed Klimt was the first person I had met who had actually flown to the
   stars. Maybe star flight had this effect on one. Being so utterly remote from
   Earth in one's mind might cause a sort of madness, for all I knew. It might make
   you feel that the real world was only something glassy and transparent, which on
   closer inspection would dissolve into a void.

   Five weeks passed, and I was ready to fly...

   The Procyon Embassy had once been called Morningside Palace Hotel. Now,
   over it, a forked green banner rippled in a strong breeze, a dragon's tongue of
   flame. For an eye, the dragon wore a yantra.

   Klimt and I handed over our credit cards to the armed Dob-dob guards on the
   door, and they were fed through a desk console before being returned to us.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (82 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   What does the Asuran ambassador look like, Klimt? Do you see a tree growing
   in the middle of a room, or a whirl of light, or what?'

   'For heaven's sake, you don't see them here on Earth. How literal you are! We
   only see Asura through their eyes when we fly there. We need an Asuran
   receiver.'

   'They don't need a human receiver, to be here, you said.'

   'They're far more sophisticated than we are. They've been at it for tens of
   thousands of years. They can hang loose,'

   He waved his hand grandly. 'They could be anywhere, hanging in the air, if they
   wanted. We just wouldn't see them. Or hardly see them.'

   I thought about all the ghosts and devils that people had reported seeing since the
   dawn of records. Were those all half-glimpsed star-fliers? If so, why couldn't we
   see an Asuran here, if not in the flesh, at leasf as some kind of manifestation?

   'Guarding them gives the impression they're all safely locked up in their
   embassy!' laughed Klimt. 'Anyway, they say that "hanging loose", as we call it,
   is a terrible drain on energy. I suppose that's why it takes so long to push the
   sphere of Bardo flight further out.'

   A Dobdob led us to an elevator. We were whisked to the very top floor.

   Here, we received our pre-flight briefing in an anteroom with a small window,
   beyond which could be seen all the paraphernalia of space flight control: a big
   room with technicians at desk consoles; a glass-panel map of the world the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (83 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   length of one wall, criss-crossed by zigzagging lines; and cabinets with tape
   drums whirling, halting, whirling on. Actually, the mesh of security wire in the
   glass as well as the sheer thickness of the glass itself lent the scene a foggy,
   grainy, indistinct appearance.

   The Dobdob cautioned us once more about 'hook rays'. The Tibetan Book of the
   Dead constantly warns about the false attraction of other starlight, while in
   transit. Light from strange stars can lead you astray.

   After this statutory warning, he went on:

   'It's very important that you stack everything in your mind for debriefing
   afterwards. You're taking part in a debate of great scientific importance. If some
   of it sounds, well, queer or idiotic- believe me, just hang on to every scrap of it
   You'll be recorded during the flight, of course, but we need to double-check.

   'You'll be discussing "boundaries" basically - the logical structure of boundaries.
   It's a basic problem of knowledge, this. It poses the question of how much we
   can ever really know about ourselves, and, as a correlate, how much we can ever
   expect to know about the universe at large. A philosopher once asked: "How can
   you imagine a mind observing the whole of itself? If this mind was entirely taken
   up with observation what exactly would it be observing?" Well, if we're ever to
   understand the cosmos we have to solve this riddle -because mind and the
   universe have at least one thing in common: they are both complete, unique
   systems.

   'A universe has no boundary except itself. On the other hand, the universe might
   have boundaries built into itself internally, just as we do, so that it can be a
   universe - the one and only. Just as the mind can't inspect the whole of itself,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (84 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   neither can the universe - in spite of the binding glue of Action-at-a-Distance.
   What sort of boundaries has it got, though? Likewise, what sort of built-in
   boundaries has our own knowledge of it got? Are there "alternatives" to the
   universe that we know? Are there alternative universes within the overall
   framework of the universe, which we could gain access to?

   'Essentially, a boundary includes something inside itself -while excluding
   everything that isn't inside it. But this very fact implies that there's something
   positive and definite which gets excluded! So, can knowledge ever leak across
   such a boundary?

   'The Asurans are ideally set up to understand this, right down at gut level. Bird
   in the tree. Bird on the wing. Bird in another tree. They include themselves in a
   larger entity; then they exclude themselves by flying off to form another
   alternative being with a new mental perspective. And yet they carry over some
   continuity.

   'We need to find out from them whether ''our" universe -the one we know - is
   only a partial one. A sub-set of a larger universe. We need to find out whether an
   "alien" universe can partially share our own frame of reference - and, if so, what
   type of boundary we might have with it. In other words, how "leaky" is this
   bounded universe of ours?

   'The Asurans are very cute at boundary-crossing, given the kind of biological
   make-up and consciousness they have. So kindly discuss "boundaries" with
   them, for all you're worth! Even if you do feel you'd rather discuss something
   superficially more exciting on an alien planet.'



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (85 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   This was mainly addressed to me, Klimt's expression indicated that he knew it
   all already.

   Beyond the glass panel, tapes spun on cabinets, technicians turned dials, flipped
   switches, scribbled notes on printouts, as the Dobdob opened the padded door
   for us.

   So we entered the Contact Room to explore each other's bodies - and thus
   explore the universe.



                                                              TEN
   We held each other in dark silence. Then the sri yantra mandala glowed before
   my eyes. The mantra HUM! entered my ears. And we entered one another. The
   Kundalini rose with a firm, fierce glow. TRAM! TRAM! drummed the next
   mantra. We passed the second triangle. HRIH! HRIH! came a shrilling in my
   heart.

   RAM! RAM! went a gonging in my brain. Triangles fell away.

   OM! OM! boomed the greatest mantra of all; and the central bindu point
   exploded. It novaed out around me, sucking me down into the blaze of stars.
   Stars swept past me, forming irito a great ring - a torus of light from which 'hook
   rays' of silver and saffron and sapphire light beckoned, each photon promising to
   expand into a separate star, a world, a haven. The whole galaxy condensed into
   this ring of light, through the centre of which I flew, from one darkness towards
   another darkness; and the faster I flew, the further behind me the ring of light
   shrank - as though I was flying right out of the galaxy - till it became a mere
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (86 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   hoop in empty space, left far behind me: a presence which I did not so much see
   with my bodily eyes as sense with the pineal eye within my brain - with my third
   eye awakened! The sum of all the stars there were shrank behind me till they
   made up one large star, and then a single intense point-source of light - the only
   point of light in existence. I still seemed to be fleeing from it! Yet at the very
   instant that I fled away from it the fastest, because it was the only point that
   existed suddenly I found that every way led towards it. Abruptly it lay ahead of
   me rather than behind. So it became my destination - the only way that I could
   go.

   The point novaed out again, engulfing me in light. In daylight. The daylight of
   another sun.

   I was roosting in a tree. All its branches rose to the same height, supporting a
   stiff array of interlocking leaves, all canted towards the late afternoon sun. Not
   the sun of Earth. The sun of Procyon.

   I was a green bloom at the tree's tip, my wing-furled body a lozenge of bright
   viridian feathers, perfectly contained in my roosting node.

   I was practically a winged brain. Crop, gullet, stomach arid intestines had all
   atrophied as my brain enlarged. My food, rich sap, I soaked up entirely from my
   tree. Once a year my tiny reproductive organs swelled with oestrus, calling me to
   the Great Intermix, Each Asuran dusk, until recently, I also flew to the Little
   Intermix. After millennia my wings still beat strongly, though I no longer had
   legs or feet, and could only land in the crown of a tree, like an egg in an eggcup.

   What sort of creature was I? A Tree-Bird. A Whole Being, undivided. Yet one


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (87 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   that must divide so that I might become, by way of the Intermix, a new and
   different Whole Being. With something of the old.. Whereby I shared my wings
   down the millennia with all Asuran history, and right across this world with all
   the many other Identities I had been, and would be once again when this present
   compact of stability was over for me and my duty done to the 'humans'-

   With my hooded eyes half shut against the diminishing solar glare, I hunched
   like so many other green-skulled flowers pressing out the sapience of the trees
   beneath, all around our world.

   Green islands rose from the greea sea every few hundred wingbeats. Green water
   interrupted green land. There was no continuity between the sea and the land,
   except for our wing-beats. Land-life existed by exclusion of sea-chemistry; land-
   life looked to the burning sun. Our world was all frontiers and boundaries,
   interlacing one another. Inclusions and exclusions were everywhere.

   Asura, whispered the rising pre-dusk breeze, brushing the canted flanges of my
   leaves.

   The sun sank faster, swelling into a yolksac as it rested on the horizon - the
   broken egg of day, dripping underneath the curve of Asura.

   Yet the egg of day never really broke. Yolk only spilled into the hard white shell
   of others' days, elsewhere around the world. In the same way, the Intermix
   spilled the yolk of my previous Identity into the unbroken shell of a future
   Identity.

   A fellow Asuran sat on this same island as me, a few wing-beats away, keeping
   the compact of stability too. He was the Speaker, the Answerer, while I was the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (88 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   receiver of the human pair that nestled in my mind, the Questioner. Indeed I was
   the human pair. I was Lila- an Asuran Lila.

   As the sun went, my leaves canted back to begin the nightly starwatch.

   Perhaps human 'sleep' was a sort of Intermix? Not really. Human beings always
   woke up exactly the same people as before. How disappointing for them. They
   had my pity.

   Or rather, they believed they were the same people - while they were not even
   that...

   Asurd, Asura- Overhead, the first wings were beating to the Intermix.

   Together, Klimt and I were absorbed in this Asuran 'receiver' who was a full
   Asuran only by virtue of being two-in-one...

   'One and one is one,' I chirped at our Tree-Bird neighbour, Or sang. Or said. I
   don't know. Yet I conveyed a meaning.

   'Our name,' sang Klimt (who had been here before), 'is Cags Kyu-ma, I believe.
   Greetings' Words heard in my head; his voice lacked echo and timbre.

   'Greetings. Our own name is Nammk'a Dbyins. "Nammk'a" names the tree-nest.
   "Dbyins" names our free variable, the flying bird. But Cqgs Sgro-ma is your
   name now. Your free variable "Kyu-ma" flew away to the Intermix; Now the
   free variable "Sgro-ma" sits on the tree-nest, heeding the compact of stability.'
   And the Asuran added, enigmatically, 'Numbers build nests, as well as birds.
   Rational numbers as well as irrational ones,'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (89 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   'It's talking about mathematics,' Klimt's voice whispered.

   'Irrational numbers are numbers like "pi" - the ratio of the circumference of a
   circle to its diameter, you know.'

   'Roughly twenty-two over seven,' I said; I knew that much!

   'Very important number. You couldn't do geometry without it,' commented
   Klimt. 'It represents a real geometrical rela-tionship. The moment you draw a
   circle, pi exists. Yet it's entirely irrational. There's no rational answer to the sum
   "twenty-two over seven". You can divide twenty-two by seven for ever but you
   never get a real definite answer. Or take the square root of two- A simple little
   calculation. No exact solution. Only closer and closer approximations "nesting"
   around the theoretically perfect answer. It's one of the enigmas of numbers, this!
   An infinity of possible answers. So infinity is born in the act of thinking about
   numbers! Mind and infinity are linked in some strange way. Perhaps the infinite
   even needs thought, to bring it into being! '

   He posed a question, which I echoed dutifully: a hangover from his last visit, I
   guessed.

   'I still don't see why Number Two is different from Number One twice! You
   Asurans are only "one" when you're nesting, correct? But that still involves two
   separate beings- in your case Nammk'a the Tree plus Dbyins the Bird, How can
   two separate entities be the same as one?'

   The Asuran sang back 'Integer Two - that's to say the whole number "two" - is
   quite different from "two ones" put together. You may find this hard to see, but


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (90 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   actually a "number boundary" encloses Integer Two in the same way as it
   encloses Integer One. A whole infinite universe of fractional numbers, created
   by thought, nests between numbers One and Two. This universe is a unit of
   "oneness", bounded by a horizon of "twoness".'

   So we were on course. Boundaries and horizons.

   'Now consider the number two universe in its own right,' the tree-bird went on.
   'That's a larger universe. It includes the number One universe in one sense, since
   two obviously in-cludes one. But in another sense it excludes the possibility of
   oneness... That's why you human beings interest us. You can only come here
   when two of you are joined together in the sexual act. That's the only way you
   can tap enough energy. Perhaps because each of you has a brain with two
   separate sides to it, and a mind divided into conscious and unconscious. Very
   crudely speaking, there are two of each of you : that part which forms the
   personal consciousness at any one time - and all of the inaccessible and unknown
   remainder. Yet two doesn't become a real number in your minds, because you
   can't integrate these separate integers. You remain "one plus one" - isolated,
   partial beings.'

   'He's so right, Lila,' signed Klimt.. :The eternal division. Male and female, Shiva
   and Shakti, the twin hemispheres of the brain. Conscious and subconscious.
   We're always twofold. We have to unify these streams of being within ourselves!
   When we learn how to fuse them, well be one step further towards unravelling
   the universe.'

   'Yes, there are boundaries within us,' we admitted aloud, 'We can't ever
   consciously know our other self,'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (91 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'Your understanding of the universe is imprisoned compared with ours, you see,'
   replied Nammk'a Dbyins.; 'You never really think in Integer-Two terms, as an
   Asuran does naturally. You exist by division. The boundary within defeats you.
   We exist by union. Let me make it plain that these Real Numbers - One, Two,
   Three and Beyond - all correspond to real configurations of the Hyperuniverse,
   perceptible to beings operating on these number levels. All matter is a wave
   effect, is it not? Waves oscillate in multi-dimensional space. Yet your minds
   aren't yet organized to conceive multi-dimensional space, Ours are better
   organized for this-'

   'But I'm told our scientists understand mathematical for imaginary dimensions,'
   said Klimt.

   (The Hausa twins would have a field-day thrashing this out, I thought. Frankly, I
   was feeling more and more restless.)

   'Imaginary dimensions?' chirped the Asuran 'Imaginary?, Ah, but that's where
   you're wrong; There's nothing imaginary about these other dimensions, They
   really exist. Your minds simply aren't equipped to see them around you. Ours
   can see more of them than yours can. The whole destiny of Asura - and indeed
   we hope the destiny of other worlds -will be to contact higher-dimensional
   beings who actually. inhabit multiple dimensions. Only this way will the
   universe be understood. You might call them Gods or Demons, unable to see
   their actual nature- 'I want to fly,' I interrupted. To be embodied in a bird, and to
   have to roost in a tree, talking about numbers, instead of soaring in alien skies
   above an alien world! Maybe it was an instinct-prompting of my; host body, but
   how I yearned to join the Dusk Intermix. The beat of great wings whispering,
   Asura -enchanted me.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (92 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:11
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   I exerted my will.

   I found I could unfold a wing-

   I want to fly

   In the sky-' I sang, deliriously.

   My wing dangled laxly across the leaves.

   Something stopped it, held on to it, pinioned it.

   'You mustn't!' Klimt's voice roared at me. 'You'll kill us both if you pull this bird
   off the tree. Don't you understand, it becomes two separate, lesser beings. Pull
   them apart and you pull our minds apart too! Why should they ever reunite?
   We'd be lost. Mad, dying. Who wants to fly, anyway, when there's the whole
   universe to understand?'

   'Me. I want to. That's the excuse I'm always hearing. The stars are wide open to
   Us thanks to Bardo, so why should we move an inch! Now that we're here-'

   '-only in the mental sense-'

   '-we can't move either! What is Bardo, a prison?'

   'Look, what did flying ever bring people, but a few handfuls of dust from the
   next-door world? You've insulted our host, moving his wings like a puppet's.'

   I gave up. Sadly, I dragged my own arm mentally across the great leaf,to tuck it

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (93 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   by my side; and the wing furled itself again.

   'Nammk'a Dbyins?' queried Klimt.

   'Let us carry on talking about the nature of numbers and higher-dimensional
   beings,' chirped the Asuran, as though nothing had happened,

   We spent what seemed like several hours singing about the numbers from
   Nought to Six, their meaning, the nature of multi-dimensional space, and about
   boundaries and horizons, while the stars shone down on our leaves.

   By now we were losing power. Asura no longer looked so sharp. Fog was rising
   from the sea, drifting over the island. The stars were dimming in magnitude. The
   horizon seemed to shrink, physically drawing closer to us,

   'Klimt, it's changing-'

   'Yes. It does. Can you imagine how many centuries we'll have to practise mental
   flying before we can hang loose for days on end, like the Rakshasas in their hunt
   for new worlds, never mind about other dimensions?'

   Slowly the great leaves of the tree rose up round the roosting crown where we
   were, folding our flower back into a bud.

   The leaves crossed. They interlocked. Ranged round us in a yantra shape, they
   pressed us back through the bindu point again, through the midst of that blazing
   ring of lurking lights towards the darkness of Earth.

   The Kundalini fire died down. I froze. Utterly exhausted and drained, Klimt and


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (94 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   I had to be disentangled by the Dobdobs, who massaged us and wrapped us in
   blankets.

   We spent most of the next week debriefing, being checked out physically and
   psychologically, and limbering up for our next flight, scheduled for eight days
   ahead. At first my kundalini power seemed asleep - worn out. But by the fourth
   day my snake was rising briskly once again.

   As for my relationship with Klimt, alas- How mechanical he seemed compared
   with when we were flying! I feared he might be furious about my flight of fancy
   on Asura. (Or should I say my attempted flight? I'd been reprimanded for it by
   the Dobdobs. But I'd not been grounded or even threatened with grounding -
   which rather amazed me.) The more I thought about it, the more Klimt seemed
   like a living proof of something that Nammk'a Dbyins, the wise old tree-bird,
   had said: that human beings are conscious by virtue of being mainly
   unconscious. Only up above a certain frontier in our own minds does
   'consciousness' exist - in the form of a tiny arc of the whole circle of mental
   operations (and of course these operations aren't restricted to what goes on in the
   brain, since the muscles and nerves and body organs 'know' and 'remember' too,
   otherwise there'd be no body-field). Below this frontier are hidden away the vast
   majority of our mental processes. What was special about Nammk'a Dbyins,
   enabling him to spot this flaw in our make-up, was that his own 'arc' of
   consciousness could take flight independently and leave the rest of its circle
   behind. It could become the whole rather than the part - even though, in so
   doing, tne free-flying arc of the bird inevitably became conscious of less than
   when it participated in the tree-bird'circle'...

   I began to think of Klimt as a very small free arc. When he joined in a circle with

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (95 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   me, mentally and sexually, during Bardo flight be became a bit more
   communicative - a bit more conscious. He was able to rhapsodize intelligibly
   about what life meant - about how we must integrate ourselves. But he couldn't
   bring his extra bit of awareness back with him, except as the memory of a
   disconnected dream, trotted out in clipped tones to the Dobdobs at debriefing to
   be taped and filed away, I began to pity him.

   We flew again, on schedule. There was more talk from Nammk'a Dbyins about
   nest of numbers, and boundaries, and horizons in the mind - which I found more
   exciting this time, by applying the idea not to cosmoses and universes but to the
   simple problem of how Klimt, my lover (and, I suppose, myself too - though I
   couldn't really believe it), could be such limited beings in our make-up. This
   time, I felt that I was genuinely learning something, bringing something back
   with me.

   We returned again, exhausted.

   After ten days' duty, they let us rest for a fortnight.

   Maimouna and the Hausa twins had also been flying, and were resting up,
   Maimouna having started flying a few days earlier than I had. Loud and long she
   gossiped about her Own first flights as we sat watching the Atlantic wash in,
   green over blue; but always she spoke with an edge of sarcasm - a probing edge,

   'Those Asurans must be perfectly inexhaustible! Here we are, just look at us,
   tired out already. No wonder Bardo needs absolutely thousands of fliers. Yet a
   few Asurans cope with it for weeks on end.'

   'How do you tire out a tree?' asked Abdoulaye-H peevishly.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (96 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   'Ah,' said Maimouna, seizing her cue, 'can a tree ever get bored? We're all agreed
   that Bardo flight's perfectly thrilling. But once you get there- One little island, a
   few damn trees, the same old birds squawking on and on about numbers and
   geometry...

   'I had a fascinating talk,' protested Hamidou-A. "About set theory. What's
   included in a set, and what's excluded.' Mai-mouna groaned.

   'Me, too' his brother said. "We talked about transcendental numbers and
   uncountable infinite sets, then about the trans-finite number for Everything-That-
   Is, and whether the Whole can ever be equal to the Part. We talked about the
   Cardinal Number of the Continuum. They're all awfully important for finding
   out about the logic of the universe. Maybe universes, in the plural!'

   Maimouna looked supercilious.

   'I'll tell you a secret,' I said, boastfully. 'I tried to fly my bird. I know it was stupid
   of me. Really dangerous! But I wanted to do something. I tried to fly the bird
   and I flapped its wing. Klimt made me stop. I might have broken the Bardo link.'

   'The Asurans would forgive us,' said Abdoulaye-H. 'We're precious to the aliens.
   Only the fourth species in the link. The younger brothers.'

   'Precious as children. Taking our first steps. Bound to stumble.'

   'We can't afford to stumble, can we? Why? Why can't we children stumble?'
   demanded Maimouna. 'What would happen to us if the Bardo link got broken?'



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (97 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'A world civilization stumbling is different from a child stumbling. One big
   stumble and you're done for.'

   'Rubbish. I don't see what's so dangerous. Our whole history is a history of
   stumbling. We're still around. Talking of children, by the way,' she added slyly,
   I'm overdue, I'd say I'm pregnant!'

   Maimouna was perfectly right.



                                                     ELEVEN
   I soon realized that I was pregnant too. Dobdob medics took urine samples and
   confirmed it. Almost immediately, I was moved to a different hotel further south
   in the direction of Virginia Beach, the 'creche' area. From my new bedroom
   window, the green banner of the Embassy fluttered a full kilometre north of me.

   Maimouna had been sent to this hotel too. Appropriately, it was called the
   Fairchild; everyone in it was pregnant, though nobody would actually give birth
   there.

   'Quite a high casualty rate,' I remarked to Maimouna after my first childbirth-
   yoga class (which was her fourth, or fifth).

   'All that preparation, all that work, and now a silly thing like this!' she said. Her
   attitude to her pregnancy had soon changed from smugness to resentment How
   she loathed finding herself in the same category as a hundred others! 'Why did
   they have to send us flying at that time of the month? It's easy enough to know
   when it's safe, by a simple thermometer reading. I thought that's what they were

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (98 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   checking on, with all their damned medicals!'

   Personally, I felt emotionally positive about what was happening to me - as
   though I was a living yantra now; a human nest surrounding a central point of
   vital energy which was growing and burgeoning, to fill me up. The human body
   is the finest yantra of all, I remembered an instructor telling us.

   'No, Maimouna - it's important, being pregnant It's a sort of Bardo flight into
   yourself, don't you see? Suddenly there's this boundary actually inside you, and
   on the other side of it there's something strange and new - a different private
   universe, yet part of your universe too.'

   Maimouna sneered. 'The "little stranger"? I wonder how many times that
   particular cliche" has been uttered since the world began? Aren't we the lucky
   ones? Blessed with official birth permits after a mere four months'work!'

   'You've just made up your mind to hate this thing and sour it for everybody!'

   'Lila dear, I've been talking to the others. Hardly anyone flew more than twice.
   Second time pregnant, same as us. Bardo seem rather reckless, squandering their
   resources like this. Doesn't that strike you as a little odd? What's behind it?'

   Maimouna approached me furtively a few days later.

   'Come up to my room, Lila, I must show you something.'

   In the elevator, she whispered, 'I'm telling you in case any accidents happen to
   me. Such as a sudden miscarriage. Such as my not recovering and never seeing
   you again-'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...menten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (99 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   Her queer pair of ear-globes lay on the windowsill, spider and fly both trapped:
   the spider unable to get at the fly to eat it, the fly unable to escape. She scooped
   them up and clipped them on her ears, as though they would protect her from
   something.

   'You might have bent the wing of an Asuran bird, Lila, but I walked through a
   red swastika door that someone forgot to lock. That's far worse. I found things-'

   'What?'

   'A microfiche reader. Microphotos of some old books. I copied out some
   extracts.' She ran into the bathroom and returned with sheets torn out of one of
   our notebooks. 'This first bit's from an ancient text on Tantric Yoga. Hundreds of
   years old. It's about what Tantric Yoga is supposed to be! Read it. Then tell me
   what's wrong!'

   I read:

   If the sexual act is to be a genuine tantrik act it must NEVER end with the
   emission of semen. This is the meaning of the Sanskrit sentence? 'Bodhicittam
   notsrjet'. ('Semen must not be expelled'} Semen shall always be retained in the
   body. This is the whole purpose of the Mulabhanda contraction; to arrest the
   flow of sperm. The saint Tirumular writes in the text Tirumantiram: 'Velliyuruki
   ponyali otame.' In the Tamil language this means literally, 'Silver must not flow
   into Gold.' Yet this is not a prohibition against Alchemy. Far from it. The Siddha
   saints were preoccupied with the possibility of transmutation, just as they were
   preoccupied with medicine and breath control; they Sought to obtain
   immortality in this life. Here, in fact, Silver is a secret, arcane symbol for human

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (100 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   sperm, while Gold is a symbol for a woman's vulva. Yogis who allow ejaculation
   are consequently termed 'False Silversmiths'. Their efforts are worthless.

   'So why am I pregnant? Why are you? Why are so many other people, if there's a
   perfectly natural, practical way of stopping it - and if ejaculation is the very
   worst thing that can happen?'

   'A lot of these old texts are confused and garbled. We've been told that.'

   'A fine reason for locking them away! Read this, now. It's from the actual
   Tibetan Book of the Dead - the Bardo Thodol itself.'

   O nobly born, - I read - evil spirits are the Rakshasas, who possess the power of
   shape-shifting..

   O nobly born, do not fed attached to the dull green light of the Asura world. That
   is the karmic path of great jealousy. If you let yourself be caught by its hook-
   rays, you will fall into the Asura world and bury yourself forever in the
   intolerable unpleasantness of quarrels and arguments . . .

   O nobly born, if you are to be reborn as an Asuran, a charming woodland will
   be seen. Remember your revulsion; by no means enter it. Intolerable jealousy is
   locked up in those trees.

   'The Dobdobs told us that the people who wrote the Book of the Dead almost
   made a breakthrough. They almost picked up the star messages intact.
   Describing Asura as a forest of arguments isn't far wide of the mark!'

   'Lila, think! It wasn't the Asurans who were trying to contact us all those years

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (101 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   ago. It was supposed to be the Rakshasas! Where could all this about Asura have
   come from?' Maimouna thrust a third sheet of paper into my hand.

   'Now, the names, Lila!'

   O nobly born, there shall appear to you four jealous deities, guardians of the
   doors, namely Cags Kyu-ma, Cog Sgroma...

   You must know these to be merely images projected from your own mind. These
   shapes come from nowhere else but your own mind-

   Remember what these names stand for? Two parts of a Being which splits up
   and never comes together again the same way twice. The bird flies off its tree to
   the Intermix and another bird takes its place. How likely is it that the same
   couples were together hundreds of years ago, when the Tibetans were writing
   their book? Even swallowing the fact that it's the wrong world!'

   'Maybe they're common names on Asura? We don't know many Asuran names.'

   'Or words. Or anything. Are you surprised? There's a limit to how much people
   can be bothered to invent, to make fools of other people. "Images in your own
   mind," it says. "Shapes from nowhere." That's more like the truth. That's all
   Asura is It's a programmed hallucination! So are the other alien worlds. I told
   you they were too simple for real worlds. A real world has deserts and seas and
   forests and mountains and rivers and bush. A real world is disorderly and
   complex. Full of variety.'

   'Mars isn't. It's mainly deserts and craters.'



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (102 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'I mean live ones, not dead ones. A real live world is giraffes and donkeys, turtles
   and tarantulas, anteaters and antelopes. It's orchids and oranges, bananas and bo
   trees, cactuses and cucumbers. In alien terms! The same richness. It isn't Asura.
   One set of trees. One set of birds. Why, by the way, are the Asurans and
   Rakshasas described as hostile, venomous, nasty demons?'

   'Maybe when they were trying to establish mental contact, the ancient Tibetans
   thought the aliens were trying to invade their minds.'

   'That's why they say they're only figments of the imagination? Come along!'

   'When you're really scared of something... you might want to pretend it isn't
   there - like the ostrich pretends'

   'Nonsense. None of it hangs together. There are loopholes as big as-'

   She never got to say how big. At that moment two Dobdobs opened the bedroom
   door and marched in.

   A man and a woman, both of them Asians. I stared at them. I would never forget
   that moment. The woman laid her hand on the bedside telephone.

   'We were listening. You don't actually have to pick it up to be heard. We have to
   be careful so close to the heart of Bardo, you see, The moment you put your
   identity card in that reader to switch it on we had to do something, didn't we?
   What a shame we couldn't have spoken to you before you involved somebody
   else. You did that quickly enough! You're quite right about the aliens, of course.
   They're an invention - a programmed hallucination.'



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (103 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Maimouna flashed me a look of vindictive triumph.

   'You'll come with us now. We will show you what Bardo is really concerned
   with!' The woman smiled bleakly. 'You'll wish you had never found out.'

   'We're going to be sent to an ice-cap,' pouted Maimouna.

   Far from it! Your particular Bardo skills are far too ... let's say, protective, of us
   all. We will go to what is blithely called the Procyon Embassy. We will open
   some more closed doors for you!'

   'That hotel,' said the man, 'happens to be one of the three Command Control
   Centres for the defence of this whole damn planet. The others, of course, are in
   Kazakhstan and Lhasa'

   'For the defence of-?'

   There aren't any charming alien friends out in space. Space isn't friendly at all.
   You'll see.'

   'When we reached the Morningside Palace Hotel - the 'Embassy' - they took us
   down by elevator to the sub-basement. After passing through various red-
   swastika doors and being checked by guards, we finally entered a huge room
   closely resembling the Flight Control Room upstairs, except that this one was
   bigger and more intensively staffed. Dobdobs sat alertly at row on row of desk
   consoles. The display screen that took up almost the whole wall showed planet
   Earth as a small globe floating like a balloon in empty space: a simulated alien's
   eye view of our planet as it might appear from as far away as the Moon. The
   Dobdobs on duty here were nearly all Caucasians, speaking American or

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (104 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Russian.

   We sat at two vacant desks, flanked by our escorts.

   "First, we shall show you Earth's defence barrier itself.'

   (Defence - against what?) The man picked up a phone and spoke to a technician
   on the first bank of desks. The technician began flicking switches.

   As each switch fell, one triangle after another sprang into position around the
   little globe of the Earth, some pointing upwards and some downwards. Between
   them they held the planet firmly in their embrace, giving it long spikes like a
   child's drawing of a star.

   'Humans can't travel to the stars by mind power at all. That's one illusion you can
   discard right now. You can interact with near space in one respect, though, thank
   God! The pattern of human brain rhythms can be magnified and projected out
   along lines of force around the Earth, related to the planet's magnetic field. What
   you see up there is a simplification of the field effect. No doubt the general
   shape is familiar? A yantra mandala, in three dimensions, with Earth's globe
   inside at the centre. Together with your comrades in Kazakhstan and Lhasa, you
   weave a protective net around us all.'

   A second set of triangles intersected the first; its focal centre was further east-

   'In Kazakhstan, Russia.'

   A third yantra sprang into being, further complicating the latticework. The world
   poked out as many spines as a sea urchin now.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (105 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   'There is the Lhasa yantra. That makes up the total defence pattern for the
   present. When Bardo has enough skilled fliers we shall open a fourth centre in
   the Hawaiian islands, on Maui. It was always an old superstition in both East and
   West that you were safe from demons if you could draw a special magical shape
   and take refuge inside it. In Europe they called it the pentacle. The yantra
   mandala is the Eastern equivalent.'

   'There is a demon out there!' the woman declared bluntly. 'If "demon" is the right
   word! We call it the "Star Beast". We still have very little idea of its real nature -
   though we know how to protect ourselves from the consequences of its presence!
   Those consequences are insanity, and death - for everyone on Earth. Our only
   protection are the fliers of Bardo.'

   'If we'd been more advanced technically,' said the man, 'say, if we'd been able to
   harness the whole energy of the sun, maybe we could have devised weapons in
   the strictly material, mechanical sense. Sadly, we were about a thousand years
   below that level of technology. We did have deep space radars, fast computers
   and high-power war radars, though. Along with an age-old Eastern tradition of
   mental training - even though this had generally been sneered at by the West.
   Putting the two spheres of knowledge together, we had enough punch to amplify
   and beam our mental patterns of deep concentration in a protective mesh around
   the Earth.

   'The history you're taught is true enough, so far as it goes -chaos and mass death
   at the end of the twentieth century. Very few people outside the high commands
   ever knew the real cause. It was the approach of the Star Beast.'

   "What is a Star Beast?' 'What sort of thing is it?' Maimouna and I both asked at

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (106 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   once.

   'What indeed! How we would like to know the answer! We can only show you
   how it looks electronically. We can only show you its edges, its boundaries
   around our world.' The man phoned again and another technician responded by
   flicking switches.

   Suddenly all the empty space surrounding the 'nest' of Earth was infested by
   probing, pulsing, amorphous limbs of vivid colour: storms raging across the
   whole spectrum from red to violet - as though something was testing different
   frequencies (shown as colours) to penetrate the nest-

   The woman explained.

   'The violent discharges you're seeing are neural wavefronts - huge
   electromagnetic storms on the same frequencies as human brain rhythms. A
   "mind storm" is raging out there in near space, trying to think us out of
   existence. Clearly that isn't all of the Star Beast. It's just that bit affecting us, the
   bit surrounding us. We estimate that the creature actually stretches across light
   years. It may embrace dozens of stars and solar systems. That's what we're still
   trying to find out through our fliers!'

   The man took up the story.

   'The first sign of its imminent arrival in our vicinity was in 1995. That was the
   beginning of a kind of global mental breakdown. A brain sickness - pandemic
   catatonia. Scientists hunted in vain for a virus. They couldn't find one. Some of
   them attributed the breakdown to population stress. It was dreadful. One million
   people died in 1995, ten million the next year, forty million the year after.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (107 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   The woman produced a folder of photographs. We stared appalled at
   expressionless, idiot crowds squatting down and dying in the cities and the
   countryside. People withering like blighted grain. We looked at crowded
   hospitals, where the doctors may as well have been trying to spoon out the sea.
   We saw mass graves, lime pits, blazing funeral bonfires. Bodies were lying
   rotting in the streets. Then, photograph by photograph, she showed us the course
   of the illness - which struck with unbelievable suddenness. A man would be
   eating a meal one minute; his hand would freeze in mid-movement, half way to
   his mouth. He would simply starve to death.

   'In every instance,' she told us, 'the same abnormal brain rhythms showed up -
   the same scrambling of normal brain activity, as though people weren't able to
   think in synchronization with the real world, or real time, any longer. But it soon
   became obvious that the onset of illness directly correlated with the Earth's
   rotation. The proportion of victims even fell away with latitude. Before long,
   statistically there were enough people succumbing to locate an area in space
   which somehow corresponded to the illness. When the world's radio telescopes
   were suitably modified, they could pick up the same broadcasts that our nervous
   systems were picking up. The source of them was moving closer - a very large
   source.

   'We thought that maybe some entity out there had picked up our early radio
   broadcasts. Broadcasting ceased, except on an absolute emergency basis. But if
   it was just radio waves that were attracting it, why should it attack our nervous
   systems? Now we believe there may be a far more fundamental reason for the
   Star Beast: one that relates to the whole nature of the universe itself. Had we
   drawn ourselves to the attention of something huge and ancient in the universe,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (108 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   the way bacteria alert an immune system, sending antibodies hurrying to the
   affected spot? Look up there-'

   On the screen those tendrils, tentacles or wave-fronts pounced and stabbed at
   tiny Earth-

   'We're engulfed by it. We're a little alien cell inside its body. How large is it?
   God knows! Huge, from the first radio telescope estimates. A truly cosmic
   creature. But how does it think, if it's so large? How does it communicate
   internally? Conceivably by using tachyons - particles which can only travel
   faster than light. Its body might even be made of tachyon particles -which is why
   We can never see the thing, only detect its effects. If it does use tachyons, its
   thought processes could be instantaneous. In a strange sense they might even be
   simultaneous too - as though you could think all the thoughts of your whole life
   during one single instant in time, yet with that instant lasting for ever. It can't
   have our time sense at all, our consciousness of an arrow of time. And why
   should it? The universe as a whole doesn't obey a time-arrow - as you've already
   learnt. For the Star Beast, all events might be occurring perpetually in a total
   space-time continuum-'

   'On account of Action-at-a-Distance,' Maimouna interposed pertly, tapping her
   spider ear-globe as much as to say that she had always known there must be a
   Star Beast.

   The woman nodded. "Without the perpetual interplay of advanced and retarded
   waves produced by every single event everywhere, we couldn't have a coherent
   universe. That's why it is a universe. But let me ask you this. What if the Star
   Beast has evolved uniquely to perceive this kind of space-time? If it has evolved


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (109 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   to inhabit the actual reality of the cosmos, rather than the simple linear world-
   line we're adapted to? How will it see us then? Why, as a drastic disturbance of
   Nature's laws! A huge statistical bias in favour of retarded events, - constant
   progression from the past into the future, with no returning. The Beast transmits
   advanced waves at our minds, therefore, to rectify our sense of time - or,
   alternatively, destroy us.

   'The really horrifying possibility is that if the Star Beast evolved from the actual
   fabric of space-time itself, then maybe the Star Beast is a true inhabitant of the
   universe, and our own sort of life is only a sport, an anomaly, a deviation!'

   Up above, the Beast's internal horizons feinted and parried from all directions at
   the defence line of the Earth.

   'The Star Beast may be nearer to a God than anything else we can imagine,' the
   woman murmured, in awe. 'A cosmic mind, bred from the nature of being itself.
   And we've brought this tiger down upon our heads, because of the way our
   human minds think! What are we, then? Castoffs? Rejects? Faults? What kind of
   universe is this, then?'

   'At least, damn it, we can hold the Beast at bay!' swore the man.



                                                     TWELVE
   They took us up to a large bedroom on the eighth floor, with a swastika
   stencilled on the door. The room was furnished with two beds. The window was
   barred. Spread on the floor, outside the shower and toilet cubicle, was a large
   exercise mat, while a table bore a microfiche reader with a stack of micro-
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (110 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   photographed documents beside it. The woman sat down on one of the beds and
   motioned us to the other, while the man stood with his back to the door.

   'Now, our defence depends upon transmitting human thought patterns at the
   Beast, enormously amplified. The Beast tries to annul these, by responding to
   them with its own "thoughts". We can broadcast three or four repeats of past
   flights at it, though that's about the safe limit. That's why we can't automate the
   system and why we need a lot of individual fliers. But even if we could
   automate, we wouldn't. In the long run passive defence would be pointless. We
   have to find things out. That's why your Asura conversations are specially
   important: both the questions you ask and the answers you receive-'

   'You said the whole flight's an illusion! Asura's an illusion -a programmed
   hallucination!' ,

   'So it is. How sane do you think the world would be if everyone knew about that
   thing roosting overhead, year in and year put? We had to construct this fiction of
   the friendly alien worlds for public consumption. But we also have to keep it up
   for the fliers, because it's far better for raising Kundalini energy and getting data
   from the Beast that you fly open and innocent. So we programme your
   hippocampus with the "route" to Asura, and the Bardo helmet gives you a nice
   visual and auditory hallucination of trees and birds - which you accept, because
   the yantra shapes and mantra sounds effectively hypnotize you.'

   'Did we communicate with something alien, or not?'

   'Oh yes, Lila. You asked essential questions, The content of the flights may be
   an illusion - just as the window of that flight control room upstairs is only a


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (111 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   videotape screen! - but the formal structure of the flights is real: that's to say, the
   pattern of your thoughts during the flight, and your whole body-field. Of course,
   the Star Beast doesn't respond to what you speak to it, as such, but it has to
   respond to the way your thoughts are put together, when we broadcast your
   thought patterns at it. The answers you get back from the "Asurans" are mainly
   computer-synthesized. Regularized, so that they don't sound too nonsensical, and
   come through in human language. There's this feedback filter in the system,
   then. Still, we have learnt to match certain concept areas to certain wavelengths
   of the Beast with a fair degree of precision. Somd of what it "means" does
   genuinely filter through the conversation. I say "means"! That's better phrased as
   "its vision of the universe" - in so far as this in any way meshes with ours. That's
   why analysing the logical structure of barriers, horizons, the whole and the part,
   or the mathematics of its view of space-time, is so vital!'

   'We have to waste time having babies, with this threat hanging over our heads?'
   complained Maimouna.

   'I agree it's unfortunate. But it's unavoidable. The human body-field is pitiably
   weak, compared with the disruptions that the Beast can produce. We need the
   strongest possible stimuli to gear it up to peak working; and the really basic root
   experience of life - stronger even than the birth trauma, which your entry into
   Bardo space also imitates - is conception itself, the primal journey of egg and
   seed towards fertilization in the Fallopian tubes, and what happens when they
   meet-'

   'Nobody remembers that!' I protested. 'There isn't any brain then, to do any
   remembering.'



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (112 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'The cells remember, Lila. Didn't Backster find that isolated human sperm can
   sense damage to the mucous membranes of their donor's nose from fifteen metres
   away whenever he sniffs something corrosive? Didn't he find that hens' eggs
   "faint" when their batch companions are boiled anywhere near them? And what
   about the experiment where a plant hooked up to a galvanometer successfully
   identified the "criminal" who had killed another plant in the same room as it, in
   secret earlier on? That was the first solid scientific evidence of perception and
   memory in the living cell itself. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? How else
   could the first living matter have organized itself before any proper nervous
   system had developed?

   'So there's knowledge, believe me! We can best call up these biological
   memories during ovulation. That's when the Kun-dalini energy rises fiercest, to
   feed strength and pattern into the coming fusion of the body-fields of sperm and
   egg - recapitulating the events of the mother's own conception years before.
   That's when body and brain rhythms are strongest for the radar networks to
   amplify and project.' She smiled confidingly. 'Really, it's the women fliers who
   weave the network round the world. Male Kundalini is a feebler thing. The man's
   body-field can hardly be expected to gear itself up for conception rhythmically
   once a month!'

   'Poor Klimt!' I laughed. 'So proud of his manhood and his body. Doting on every
   word of that wife old alien bird!'

   'Ah, if there were any aliens- Technically, the body-field is an electromagnetic
   field effect in association with a plasma of highly ionized particles permeating
   and surrounding the whole body. But you can also regard the whole nervous
   system, including the brain, as an aerial approximately a thousand kilometres

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (113 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   long, folded up round itself, If there were any skilled or interested alien
   "transmitters" out there, and if there was any way that the jiggled charges of the
   body-field could be synchronized with the Action-at-a-Distance field effect, it's
   quite conceivable that you could receive some sort of message from the stars by
   way of the body-field. In the first years when the Backster Effect was being
   investigated there was even some evidence of biological communication going
   on over interstellar distances - which we were intercepting. Plants out in the
   California desert were recorded picking up pulsed signals - nature unknown -
   from the direction of Ursa

   'Alas, the Star Beast put a stop to any further experiments along these lines. It's
   the ultimate stifling blanket. And it's that we have to hold at bay, locally, right
   here. At least we can broadcast human body-field and thought patterns into the
   skies around the Earth using conventional machine transmitters. It works, thank
   God, so long as your body-field is at full strength.

   'We hope that fertilization won't occur Yet we're forced to set up prime
   conditions for it. Such a terrible shame, when high-quality Bardo talent occurs so
   sparsely-'

   'Yes, how do you detect us?' Maimouna pressed. And I added:

   'We seem to have been expected to pass the tests, years before we took them -
   even though everybody is supposed to have an equal chance!'

   'In the beginning it was by studying the brain rhythms of the Star Beast victims,
   then filming their body-fields using Kirlian aura photography. Thank God that
   acupuncture in particular had legitimized traditional Chinese body-field
   medicine in Western eyes long before the Star Beast came! Or we'd have been

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (114 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   lost. Nowadays, the whole thing's tested out by acupuncture, high-voltage aura
   filming and encephalographs at such ah early age that you won't remember it.
   The Barefoot Doctors are trained to test every child. That's our first screening.
   Later, the Teachers use aptitude tests to tell how best to develop and enhance a
   promising body-field: through playing Go, or studying algebra, or dancing
   Kathakali style, or whatever it is. Even affectation serves its purpose, Maimouna
   - whatever makes for a formal, energetic cast of mind.'

   'It's all decided years ago?'

   'The possibles are spotted. They mightn't develop, that's the snag. If we
   announced who the likely candidates were, this knowledge would be counter-
   productive. Encourage sloth and complacency. Besides, it would be terribly
   divisive, socially. All the Teachers and Barefoot Doctors are indoctrinated to
   keep this secret, with a fairly unbreakable conditioning.'

   'So much for equality!' laughed Maimouna harshly.

   The man scowled. 'Every human being has the same prospect of going mad and
   dying, if we don't succeed! I assure you there's democracy in that.'

   More gently, the woman said: 'It's necessary, for social stability. The whole
   fiction of the alien worlds - and everyone having the potential to fly to them. The
   irony of it is, the more access you have to information, and the nearer you are to
   the source, the more likely you are to see through it. So, the more strictly you
   have to be watched. The less you have to do with it, the fewer restrictions there
   are. It's the opposite of totalitarianism. Here, the elite are strictly supervised -
   and the ordinary people are blissfully free of the burden. Within obvious social


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (115 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   ecological ground rules. Actually, for you to grow up with the right cast of mind,
   society has to feel itself free and happy, with alien friends.'

   'How many Bardo fliers do see through Asura?' asked Maimouna anxiously -
   still wanting to be special, in some way or other.

   'Oh, quite a few,' smiled the woman. 'You'll be joining them-'

   The old spectre of the ice-cap?

   But no.

   'In Lhasa,' she went on. And Maimouna grinned hugely, in triumph.

   'You'll bear your children there. And work there afterwards. Lhasa is for those
   who know the truth. There'll be a Rakshasa facade instead. It's the most practical
   way to programme flights. We'll hypnotize you for the flights. You'll accept the
   fiction. Only, before and after, you'll know that it's just a facade. The real
   nightmare will be while you're fully awake. Knowing the Star Beast, and the
   utter enmity of the universe. It wasn't really so clever of you, finding out, you
   see.'

   Maimouna's smile crumpled; and I shivered too.

   Fabled Lhasa- yes. Another alien embassy.

   Another War Room.

   And the horror squeezing the Earth.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (116 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   We stayed locked behind the red swastika door for a week, spending part of our
   time in yoga exercises with a Dobdob medic supervising us; and rather more
   time poring over classified Bardo reports about the strange being enshrouding
   the Earth.

   The first shock of discovery receded. We began to feel excited in a childish way
   about confronting this mysterious invader, as heroines and champions of the
   world. Being pregnant seemed a minor problem compared with what we now
   knew. A baby could make itself. We had to consciously remake ourselves, to
   take in the enormity of the new knowledge.

   Gradually, from deep inside, sprang a biological awareness of the sheer righmess
   of the Defence Facts and the way they were being handled, That yantra nest
   about the Earth, and our own nests of flesh and blood protecting the budding
   foetuses within us, synchronized and meshed.

   It was Sam Shaw, again, who drove us out to Miami airport.

   We left at dawn, passing out through the checkpoint on Julia Tuttle Causeway.
   Maimouna was in a particularly ebullient, effervescent mood. Her callous
   sophistication seemed to have melted away, and a new Maimouna was emerging
   - positive and optimistic, full of anticipation. She wore her earglobes
   ostentatiously that day. Why not? They'd been an image of the true situation all
   along. A spider did indeed lurk in a web around the world, held in check. The fly
   of humanity really was restricted and locked in. Yet the sheer spread of that fly's
   wings held the hungry spider at bay!

   By contrast, Sam seemed sulky - calculating how much extra fuel would have to
   be wasted to fly us to Lhasa (where it seemed he was going anyway)?

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (117 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   'We're flying to Maui first,' he finally told Maimouna, in answer to her flood of
   questions.

   'Where they're building the new Bardo centre?'

   'I have to ferry some gear there.' He concentrated on his driving.

   'Unless there's some joy' insisted Maimouna, 'there's no point to life and we may
   as well let the Star Beast in! Let's enjoy the journey, can we? Please, Sam.'

   'Please do not mention the Star Beast in public, ever.'

   'We're alone, we're driving along in a jeep!'

   'We're out in the open, children. There must be no talking about the real purpose
   of Bardo, do you understand? I was thinking of driving you up to see the new
   centre on Haleakala Crater. If you can't keep your mouths shut about the most
   important secret in the world-'

   'We'll be quiet as mice,' we chorused.

   'What do you think would happen if we did start telling someone?' Maimouna
   whispered to me mischievously.

   Sam overheard it. 'Don't even think it.' He tapped his Dob-dob's holster. 'There
   are standing orders. Valuable as you are, God help me I'd have to stop you.'

   Which really soured the drive - though we could hardly believe his threat. The
   sheer casualness shocked me. The unarguing acceptance. In its way, it was more

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (118 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   shocking than the discovery of the Star Beast roosting over us. Because of its
   casualness, I began to believe it after a while. A little later, I began to agree with
   his attitude. A simple defence mechanism on my part? Identifying with the
   viewpoint of the threatener? Maybe. But it did seem to me that it was to the
   credit of Bardo that they hid the true facts from the world - and hid their hiding
   of them so skilfully! We Wouldn't have had a stable world of Social Ecology
   otherwise, or the new sense of social joy and joy in the human body. Yes, it had
   to be defended, with a gun if necessary.

   Possibly Sam's words were chosen more for their shock effect. The Dobdob's
   side-arm was almost wholly symbolic. He hadn't actually said that he'd use his
   gun, only that he'd 'stop' us. I sensed a puritanism in him, a repulsion at what we
   were doing - a denial of love's body and social joy, that made him bitter and
   resentful. In his heart of hearts, possibly he did regard Miami Beach as an
   ancient 'brothel', and he would have much preferred to fight the Star Beast, had it
   been possible, with bullets and rockets rather than with the fruit of human love.
   Only, he would never say so. Hence his sharp tongue.

   Yet this personality structure gave him his value, too. His sheer rigidity kept
   everything tightly under control, in his head. He was the most reliable sort of
   Dobdob to know the Defence Facts and also travel the whole world.

   This airport in mid-city was mostly given over to colonies of burrowing owls.
   Grass between the runways was rutted and tussocked by their quarrying. We
   took off.

   Hours later we landed in darkness on Maui.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (119 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   We spent the night in a hotel in a town called Kahuhui, after consuming bowls of
   a wild goat stew on an arcaded terrace overlooking a bay. A Hawaiian Dobdob, a
   fat wrestler of a man, dozed on the terrace outside our room all night in a cane
   rocking chair that creaked and creaked, reminding us that he was still there.

   In the morning, Maimouna pleaded that we might drive up into the mountains
   with Sam. Only later on did it occur to me that the very last thing that scrupulous
   Sam would have done would be to leave us thirty or forty kilometres out of sight
   while he drove up to the mountains alone!

   A truck stood waiting outside the hotel loaded with the usual scores' of cartons
   labelled MEDICAL SUPPLIES / AIRMAIL / URGENT. Body-field profiles, I
   assumed. Or Star Beast records. In fact, this was a world-wide emergency, as the
   human bacteria fought back against this cosmic attempt to kill them off.

   Personally, I didn't feel very much like a bacterium that morning; I throbbed
   with life, hilarity and happiness. Kahului was all quick, smiling patios, arcades
   and fountains. Sugar mills, molasses plants and pineapple canneries vented
   delicious aromas. Playgrounds were full of beautiful children with brown skins,
   amber skins, cream skins. Waterfalls of black hair cascaded, there were frizzy
   heads, and pigtails- They could all laugh and play because Bardo had managed
   to hide the horror in the skies. I'd have died to defend this unique, marvellous
   world and its cargo of life, that morning.

   The vegetation surged, scrambled and erupted. Earth was dense with vines and
   creepers splaying over factories and homes - ginger, jasmine, hibiscus. Trees
   with stiltlike aerial roots, with swordleaves. Trees with blooms of velvet, fluff,
   fearners. Trees with flowers like boiled crab claws. The air sang as much with


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (120 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   odours as colours. No wonder the children sang too. The Earth herself sang.
   Bardo were so right to do what they did.

   After driving through sugarcane fields, we began climbing and twisting through
   sloping horse and cattle pastures towards the highlands. The temperature cooled
   steadily; soon we were into eucalyptus groves and fern-choked ravines. Some
   trees wore red pompoms.

   At a place called Puu Nianiau the road divided into two carriageways, one lane
   neglected, with ferny potholes, the other recently patched, up which we rode
   easily. However, I was starting to feel sick at the change in altitude and had to
   gulp in great draughts of the cool, aromatic air to get sufficient oxygen. Soon I
   was shivering; Maimouna sneezed.

   'Anoraks behind my seat,' Sam said. 'Pull them on. We'll be at three thousand
   metres soon.'

   As we drove into misty cloud, the sun dimmed to a faint chalky lamp. Clusters of
   buildings loomed up, and two great bowl radars canted upwards, spiderwebs
   sagging with dew. As we pulled up at a checkpoint - a metal shack among
   ruined, tumbled stone huts - the sun burned through the mists. We had drawn up
   almost on the edge of a cliff, which plunged deep into queer, distorted terrain
   from which very tall yellow and purple cones reared their heads.

   When the Dobdob on duty handed back our cards, we drove up to one of several
   geodesic domes. Sam said to stay in the truck while he unloaded. As I was I
   sitting there, though, an agonizing cramp suddenly knotted the biceps of my
   right leg, which had been squashed against the seat. Muscles wrapped
   themselves up in a fiery ball.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (121 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   I moaned and writhed about like a fish on the end of a spear, then threw the door
   open and hauled myself out to hop about and massage the leg back to life. I
   limped away to look down the mysterious cliff, Maimouna in my wake.

   The cliff stretched off to right and left in a vast circle.'I realized I was actually
   looking down into a giant, dead volcano. Pastel mists swirled across a jungle
   floor spiked by those bright cinder obelisks, each one as tall as that abominable
   Vehicle Assembly Building at the Cape. Everything kept going out of focus
   down there, there was so much shimmer and distortion.

   Exclaiming, Maimouna pointed.

   A rainbow had arched between two of those giant pillars which stood as tall as
   mountains now, bridged by that spectral arc; underneath that luminous archway
   two alien figures stood, ghouls of painted fog, jerking giant limbs about

   'It's us. It's ourselves. Don't you see?' hissed Maimouna. She clenched her fist
   and immediately one of the giants clenched its fist back at us.

   Already the monsters were breaking up and drifting apart, like disintegrating
   souls.

   'Programmed hallucination," I whispered back. This must be a new alien world
   Bardo are going to discover. A mist-giant world. They must be testing their
   machines-'

   When Sam came over to take us back to the truck, he said no, this was just a
   natural phenomenon, but we didn't really believe him. We left that eerie place,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (122 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   where in a few more years other Lilas and Maimounas and Klimts would be
   making love and believing in the Bardo myth and discussing barriers and
   boundaries with huge frothing ghosts, and drove back down to the heat and
   perfume of the lowlands.

   In the hotel, I spent half an hour practising yoga. Maimouna wouldn't join in.
   Seeing herself so hugely enlarged in the crater seemed to have advanced her
   pregnancy perversely, making her all of a sudden bulky, torpid and querulous.



                                                  THIRTEEN
   Next day was all westwards over water, water, water: a blue blankness more
   monotonous than the sky. Sam dozed in the passenger cabin mostly while the jet
   bored on automatically, sandwiched between one realm of blue and another. At
   some point we ate a vast meal of cured pork mixed with spiced vegetables and
   some starchy purple paste. Hours, or minutes later - I couldn't say - we ate it all
   once again, as ravenously and gluttonously as the first time. And did we eat it yet
   again? Time vanished down the gullet of these monotonous, endearing feasts.
   Time solidified; it became fat and flesh. The jet plane was stuck fast in it. Our
   real Journey became the slow increase in our own weight: an increase in body,
   not in distance-

   When we reached land again, the coast of China's Fujian Province, mountains
   rolled over mountains in growing darkness till our jet was squeezing through a
   flat plane again - this time between black earth and a black sky- in which the
   stars were just random sparks on our retinas, faults of vision.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (123 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   We slept, we woke, we slept. All the time we were exhausted.

   I dreamt we were flying to the stars. When we arrived at a star after several
   centuries, it turned out to be only the actual size of one of our jet's windows.
   Alternatively, we ourselves had expanded enormously during the journey. The
   whole journey could have been purely and simply a slow process of inflation.
   We hadn't moved at all, only swollen grossly. My bloated body butted against
   this star (I was the jet plane now); and it stung me, burnt my belly with its fire.

   I woke in a sweat, believing I was a Star Beast myself, trying to digest a sun and
   its worlds. I had awful indigestion. I had to swill down cup after cup of milk to
   pacify my stomach.

   Finally, after a million years, we did land and creep out of the jet, shivering and
   gasping for air, staring around at huge amorphous star-iced mountains.

   Two Tibetan Dobdobs, with great sun-baked faces, purple cheekbones, fat
   hooded eyelids and long broad noses like horses, came to take charge of us. We
   couldn't speak their language, nor they ours. Any of ours. Maimouna tried out her
   Chinese, and gave up. Maybe she spoke the wrong dialect, They took us to a
   hospital clinic near the airfield, where, putting their fingers to their lips, they led
   us to two empty beds. We slept quickly, deeply and dreamlessly; the sleeping
   during the flight had tired us out so much.

   Crowing of cocks and clank of utensils woke us. Old women were shuffling
   about the dormitory in thick blue quilted gowns. Some made tea, others braided
   each other's hair. They grinned and cackled at us and brought us some tea in
   porcelain cups with red horses racing round them, their riders wearing long
   white scarves.,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (124 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   The tea tasted vile. Salty and greasy. As soon as I swallowed some I felt sick and
   my nausea turned the very air in the room to a thin, trembling greasy jelly.
   Everyone's face was saturated with that same flavour... I yearned for the sweet
   cakes that Rajit had plied me with on Sinda Island a lifetime ago. Oh for a
   spoonful of sugar, oh for a dozen spoonfuls ! What did I care if I rotted my teeth
   till they were as black as my Skin! I craved sugary night, not this bright oily day.

   I stared through the window at the outside world: anywhere, away from the
   wobbling, unctuous dormitory.

   I watched fields of ripe barley, with blue meandering irrigation channels.
   Feathery willows and poplars formed clumps and avenues. A long road, with a
   few early morning cyclists on it, led through a ceremonial arch topped with
   Chinese characters in wood or plastercast. The closer buildings were neat blocks
   of cement with glinting corrugated roofs. Further away were row on row of dun-
   coloured tenements looking Like muddy escarpments honeycombed with caves.
   Beyond all, a huge palace - or else a cliff looking very like a palace - towered up,
   itself dwarfed by the mountains.

   Far off, bells donged, setting the jelly trembling again. An old woman with a
   wall of white teeth touched me on the arm and took my half-full cup away, then
   brought it back again full, aswirl with fat.

   Somehow I reached a washbasin - and retched helplessly. The vomit only
   amounted to a few spoonfuls of clear, insipid liquid. Twisting my head to the
   tap, I sucked in mouthful of ice-cold water, rinsing and chewing till the nerves in
   my teeth ached.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (125 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Women gathered round, clucking helpfully. One of them went for assistance,
   and soon a Barefoot Doctor appeared: a cheery young woman in thick maroon
   woollen clothes, tough boots of hide, a leather satchel slung over her shoulder.
   She produced an oxygen pillow with a long rubber tube which she slipped into
   my nostril. Maimouna tried out her Chinese again, and this time was understood.
   Presently the Barefoot brought me a big cup of sugared milk and gestured me to
   drink it all. Slapping her medicine satchel, with a nod at the mountains, she
   departed, leaving the oxygen pillow with us.

   A while later, some food arrived. A mash of grilled barley, tea and butter.

   An hour after that, a jeep drew up outside. A Chinese Dob-dob walked in to
   greet us. His face was burnt as dark as anyone's.

   This was Feng. He would supervise our new way of life here in Tibet.

   I thought unkindly that he deserved his name - with such a wall of ivory teeth
   jutting from his upper jaw, like sawn-off, polished fangs, overlapping his lower
   set slightly. Maybe his jaw was deformed? Gaps between individual teeth hardly
   looked deep enough; teeth fused into a wall instead of forming a fence. Feng was
   surely the best collective name for them! , We left. He drove us along the road
   I'd been watching, past the hundred-year-old cement buildings, past the thousand-
   year-old tenement caves.

   The Potala Palace - for that was it - rose up vastly: a high ridge where scenery
   itself turned into architecture, where the two categories were confused. Walls
   sprouted from different levels of the clüfside, soaring up to different heights,
   all of them leaning backwards at a slight canting angle to one another, imitating


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (126 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   the sloping of a mountain towards a flat, plateau summit. Thus their weight
   appeared to float upwards towards the thin blue of space, rather than pressing
   down on the earth. Arrays of deep-cut windows picked out in black made the sun
   seem to be blazing down from directly overhead, producing dark shadows below
   the protruding lintels. In fact, the sun was nowhere near overhead. Yet so firmly
   did these lowering windows insist otherwise, that one couldn't help but search
   the zenith for a second, somehow more real sun, a truer cosmic sun . shining
   down on the building from an axle of the universe far out in space, from a point
   dictated by the perspective of the tilted walls.

   Golden canopies, or pavilions, were pitched like tents on the plateau-summit: a
   second world above the world.

   The Palace approaches had long since been mechanized. A concrete-lined tunnel
   bored straight into the hill. Into this we drove, after the obligatory halt at a
   checkpoint.

   A set of thick steel doors was recessed into the rock, and a second set ten metres
   further in. Thereafter the tunnel was pitch-dark, the only illumination coming
   from our own headlights.

   After several hundred metres of subterranean roadway, we swung into a domed
   cave and halted. Various tunnel mouths, swept by our lights, suggested a huge
   underground complex: an undertaking as vast below, perhaps, as the rearing of
   the Potala had been overhead. Chinese characters in faint luminous paint peered
   at us from steel doors and rock walls, faces of alien beasts. This must once have
   been an atomic bomb shelter for the people of Lhasa, Or else a military shelter,
   for a whole army.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (127 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   An elevator came down, lighting up the underground parking space briefly till
   we stepped inside; then its doors squeezed on the darkness of the cave, and up
   we sped. The doors reopened upon a room like a box of giant stone blocks, A
   hard earthen mound cut through the centre of the floor, poking out of a round
   gap in the stones as though the room was balanced on this pinnacle.

   'That's the top of Mount Potala,' Feng said. 'We call this room the Hinge Room.'

   So we entered the Rakshasa Embassy, castle of our confinement.

   During succeeding months, we practised childbirth yoga on the rooftops with a
   score of other girls and women in different stages of pregnancy, all of whom
   had, one way or another, seen through the 'happy myth' of Bardo - and also run
   up against the occupational hazard of Bardo flight. Gazing down from our lofty
   elevation upon the wormcast rows of houses and patchworks of fields, we felt
   ourselves utterly detached from the city. The Potala Palace miniaturized the
   world below it till we were giantesses scared we might injure it with our huge
   footprints if we took a careless step over the brink.

   The air grew colder as autumn advanced. Icy gales blew, and there was no more
   exercise on the rooftops. Instead we exercised in the Halls of the Sutras and the
   Great Funerary Halls within the building. We worked away at polishing gold
   altar lamps. We dusted porcelain, jade and enamel-ware. We even dug some old
   bullets out of faded millennium-old frescoes of Lhasa that showed the city full of
   red-roofed houses and lamaseries, with blue shrubs lining rivers wavy as tresses
   of curly hair - a city where everyone, labourers and monks alike, seemed to be
   wearing exactly the same rose-red robes. Here we were, wearing the red tunics
   of Bardo, almost like them.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (128 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   'It hasn't changed much,' observed Maimouna, as we patched a bullet hole,
   wondering who had fired the gun in this palace, and why, and when. Presumably
   during the upheavals of the year 2000, as the Star Beast came closer to the Earth,
   and world government had to be forged out of near-anarchy.

   Newly-pregnant, or newly-enlightened members joined our group; while others
   left to have their babies and recommence flight duty. Sometimes we would
   glimpse the new mothers, slim once more, down one of the passageways. But we
   were segregated from them, and we heeded the red swastikas now that we
   understood their urgency.

   One day I discovered the actual origin of the word Dobdob. One of the Tibetans
   told Maimouna and me, in Chinese. Long ago, when all those red-robed monks
   shown in the frescoes had meditated in the monasteries of Tibet, Dobdobs were
   policemen-monks who carried cudgels to hit people over the shoulder if they
   saw their attention wandering or caught them drifting off to sleep-

   We were all bound by rituals in this timeless stone limbo set above the world:
   rituals of our own bodies, schedules of gestation.



                                                FOURTEEN
   I wake up in my tiny cell bedroom in the back of the Palace (where slaves' or
   servants' quarters once were) hating my body for its perversities. My nails are
   turning brittle and cracking. I have to hold them away from the walls wherever I
   walk these days, in case they catch and splinter. My breasts plump fatter, turning
   themselves into chocolate hemispheres from which the nipples push like worms

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (129 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   from wet soil. Nipples are exceptionally tender and damp to the touch, while
   breasts themselves grow coarse with all the moisture settling in them, becoming
   thick granulous membrane-bags full of lumpy sodden sponge. They tug down
   from my shoulder blades, pulling the skin so taut that my collar bones stand out
   from deep hollows, giving the upper quarter of my body a ridiculously gaunt
   appearance.

   A hidden, ghost's hand is rubbing me out and drawing me back in again in
   cruder, darker lines. A thick streak of pure charcoal plunges downward from my
   navel, a faint signpost.

   Down in the Great Hall of the Sutras I polish whatever is smooth and round and
   golden.

   Alone in my cell, I follow the tracks of the foetus within me, amazed. See, here
   they are upon my belly! Upon my breasts! It's travelling somewhere, inside. Not
   walking; it hasn't proper feet yet. Yet it leaves dark oozy trails on me, from
   inside. I'm always one step behind it in trying to anticipate its moves, because I
   can't see it. Nor can it see me. Yet, still, there are these traces and tracks
   connecting us. I'm its horizon, its boundary. Nevertheless, it's it that curves me
   round itself. Otherwise I wouldn't be this shape. It curves me. It lays marks on
   my belly to measure me. But these marks broaden and coarsen as I curve, so that
   it can't really take my measure. Thus, in a strange way, we enclose one another
   mutually. Each one of us is the boundary of the other's boundary. Only the most
   indirect observations are possible.

   If the nature of the space that we both occupy, and warp, is a well-nigh insoluble
   problem, the time scale we share is even more questionable. For my dreams


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (130 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   carry me outside time, and there the foetus lies in wait for me. It is actually far
   older than me - as old as life itself, which it recapitulates. I have only lived
   eighteen years; whereas it has already straddled a billion years of evolution. So
   far as my sense of time goes, I feel myself balanced upon its vast (yet tiny!) base
   like another fotala impaled on the tip of a mountain hidden inside.

   I discuss this with Feng, who comes to see me. He nods approvingly at my
   analysis.

   'You'll be able to interrogate the Star Beast far more effectively after all this, you
   realize? You'll understand the nature of the problems better - the boundary
   between us and the rest of the universe, between our kind of consciousness, and
   the Star Beast's cosmic consciousness-'

   I wander down to the Sutra Hall where the thousand-year-old helmet of King
   Sang Zan Gan Bu, builder of the Potala, is kept and I try it on, pretending it is a
   Bardo helmet linked by computer and radar networks to that Beast in the sky. It
   bears inscriptions in Manchu, Mongol and Tibetan: all messages to Heaven.

   The golden helmet is too heavy, so I take it off and dust it with a rag instead.

   Feng draws me into fervent conversations about the origin of life, and the
   universe - fervent on his part, that is. He maintains that the universe couldn't
   have been started 'from outside', by any outside agency, or it wouldn't be a
   universe. No more could life have been started from outside: or it wouldn't be
   life, but mere machinery. Activity must be its own agent, its own begetter, he
   says; and this self-arising of life reflects the self-arising of the universe itself.
   Each is inconceivable without the other. He seems to think these metaphysics
   will all fall on receptive ears, because I'm pregnant.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (131 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Does he mean to imply that my pregnancy is necessary to the universe? Or the
   universe necessary to my pregnancy? I know what made me pregnant: Ahmed
   Klimt, and the (forgivable) manoeuvrings of Bardo. Even so, it doesn't quite feel
   that way, any more. The sheer fact of pregnancy has taken over and become a
   free agent- ''Life's implausible, Lila, do you realize? Statistically, it's ridiculous
   that that there should be life. So many possible chemical combinations! It would
   take far longer than the whole history of the universe to run through a fraction of
   them at random. Yet life arises, almost as soon as it could.'

   'If life's so necessary to the universe, why should the Star Beast try to wipe it
   out?'

   'A fair question. Suppose this: suppose that a universe can't -"know" its own
   nature, because it's "uni". Unique, a unit. It can't ever examine itself whole. To
   know itself, it might have to deny part of itself - the "knowing" part. It may have
   to disavow it. The Star Beast may be something of that sort, a disavowing aspect,
   a boundary-making aspect programmed into the structure of reality itself-'

   Thus Feng preaches on about the Cosmos, like some crazy Nammk'a Dbyins.
   And I wonder if the world has gone mad already; if the Beast is slipping into our
   minds, through our defences.

   Worse horror: if it has already slipped into me! Could Bardo's real plan be to
   extract and incarnate aspects of the phenomenon we call 'Star Beast' and give it a
   human body? I never did see into those creches and nurseries of Virginia Beach.
   The image now haunts me of inhuman beings penned up there: beings with
   queer, twisted consciousnesses, half of the Earth and half of the alien universe.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (132 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Beings which are just biological instruments for measuring the enigma of the
   universe in human terms.

   'The timeless babies of Virginia Beach,' Maimouna murmurs when I tell her,
   fascinated by the horror of it. 'Babies who are half and half- babies who straddle
   the boundary- probes-is it possible?'

   Is Feng leading me gently towards the realization that I'm likely to give birth to a
   monster?

   One still day, as a treat, Dobdobs escort us up to the rooftop, in thick quilted
   coats. Mountain peaks are snow-rimmed and a light snowfall has blanched the
   whole roof. In the bright sunlight, under that indigo sky, it is blinding. More
   snow And rain has fallen on Lhasa in the last two centuries than in the previous
   thousand years, since a great reafforestation by the Chinese before the Star Beast
   came. Maimouna proudly informs me of this - as if it is her doing. It's still fairly
   dry. Windy, dusty. We sit in one of the gold-roofed pavilions, while the bitter air
   burns our teeth and nostrils, staring at the mountains, camped out in nowhere on
   the fringe of space, sipping luke-warm butter-tea. Giantesses of many races and
   mixtures of races squat upon a dazzling iceberg, their bodies watching
   themselves blindly, wondering whatever is within-

   Sealed away from me, a strange being turns over and over within me in its own
   length. I am its universe of slimy tissue -heaving and undulating like a lung,
   flabbily panting for breath. My gas-cramped veins form lattices holding a
   mineral sea wherein the fattening fry flicks and somersaults.

   I am Ocean, lately pierced by lightning. The white-hot tip of lightning struck and
   left a sweet pungency, a drip of candle wax in the water. My waters clotted

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (133 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   round this soft fierce energy. Soon, a flimsy waxen stick sprouted fists and a
   head too big for it and began to batten up against my shores, its boundaries.

   Presently, it comes ashore, enters the placental forest, to become a giant newt
   lurking in wait for any observer behind one of the cyads, which squat pineapple-
   like in the garrulous, throbbing greenery. Attempting to evade the gaze of this
   newt (whilst walking about in my universe, which is myself, like a God on the
   First Day of Creation) my foot parts a trembling green scum; there's no land
   underneath me. I sink through jelly waters to the mucous plug of creation. I
   would pull it out. I would empty myself, and once more be blue space on bare
   rock! I pull and tug. Through the pale bilious light of these waters, weed-cords
   come swirling out from the central bole. More and more tendrils take hold of me
   as the water thickens in my throat and lungs-

   I wake up sick from dream thoughts. My ankles, swollen with fluid, will not
   grow thin again. My thighs press together. My lungs are crushed upwards from
   beneath. No deep breaths are to be taken any more - as my horizons squeeze
   together.

   If only I could go up again, right now this moment, to that gold tent pitched
   under the stars! Space enough up there, surely.

   No, there couldn't be enough I

   The whole mass of the universe would be pressing down in the form of the
   Horizon Beast that clamps round the Earth!

   'Feng-'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (134 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'Yes?'

   'I'm scared.'

   'Don't worry, our Barefoot Midwives are the finest. No harm can come to a baby
   that's Bardo-born. Or to a Bardo mother.'

   'It isn't that, Feng.'

   'Well? You have to say, you know.'

   Patient Feng. Not mad crazy Feng today. But Feng who is Master of the Great
   Wall that holds the Dragon back from devouring the Commune of Man. Feng
   who has such a perfect Potala wall of teeth; albeit something askew with the jaw.
   I trust you and distrust you at once. You're a man of great power. I know now;
   yet this isn't a society that brandishes its power. Instead, it conceals it carefully,
   erasing all hint of rank and hierarchy. Visible power corrupts a man and
   torments society, There can be no important men now, no politicians, presidents,
   kings or king-makers; only Humanity.

   'I'm still listening, Lila.'

   'I'm scared the baby won't be human,' I babble. 'I'm scared it'll have the Star
   Beast in it. Its thoughts will be all twisted up to tell you something about the
   Horizon Beast up there. That's what Bardo wants! Why is it always "medical
   supplies" that are flown around the world? What sort of supplies? Blood
   samples? No, genetic material! Samples of genetic codes, which only the big
   computers can unravel! What is it that makes someone a Bardo candidate?
   Something genetic! A potential- based on who was most vulnerable to the Star

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (135 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Beast illness. Something that will let us potentials make babies representing it.
   That's why we fly at prime time for conception. The Bardo fliers don't matter,
   Only their babies! Babies are what Bardo is all about.'

   'Babies are what the whole world is about, for the pregnant one,'he smiles.

   'No, Feng! Don't make fun of me. That's why the silver flows by the way of the
   gold. To manufacture mind-extensions of that thing up there. Because we can
   only understand it in human terms. These are the only human terms we dare
   work with - babies. No wonder the Miami creche is secret! Why isn't it in the
   middle of the Sahara desert surrounded by atomic bombs?'

   Feng shakes his head sympathetically.

   'You couldn't be more wrong. You have my word. Bardo is a humane
   organization in the literal sense. It's dedicated to Humanity. The Miami creche is
   secret for the sake of democracy, so that people won't feel there's any elite
   privileged group. Things mustn't be seen as even potentially divisive, Lila. We're
   all still individualistic, jealous apes at heart.'

   'How can democracy be upheld by lies?'

   'I don't see any lies. Information's controlled for the good of all. That isn't lying.
   How happy would it make everyone to know, and know impotently, about the
   Star Beast?'

   His eyes roam that fresco of old Lhasa with its uniforms. We are talking in the
   Great Hall of the Sutras. Probably the uniforms were only a convention of the
   artist, like the stylized waves in the river, and the single visual plane the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (136 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   buildings are all drawn in. He taps a figure seated in a small boat upon the
   mulberry river. The fisherman is naked; his rose tunic lies ashore.

   'It's a funny thing. Consciousness resides in the single individual. Yet the
   individual never can really comprehend what this thing, his consciousness, is. So
   it seems like a miracle: a "soul". Yet he desperately wants proof. Therefore he
   becomes a social animal.' His finger sketches in the praying monks, the prancing
   horsemen. 'Society seems like a larger consciousness which can know him. It
   isn't really. Not yet, at any rate. Since history began, society has only been the
   sum of the failure of all its separate parts to know themselves. Think of animals -
   how absorbed they are in nature! Then think of Man - how separated he is; how
   alienated. Yet that's how he can examine the world. Somehow Humanity must re-
   enter the world - the universe - with the consciousness it has acquired. When that
   happens, Humanity's whole history of alienation - Bardo's deceptions included -
   will be nothing. Once the ladder has been climbed, it can be pulled up safely
   behind you.'

   He traces a route from a band of monks meditating in a courtyard to a roofed
   bridge crossing a stream.

   'The water reflects. Did you know that the word "reflection" means "to bend
   again" - as light is bent back from a mirror? But how does a universe reflect on
   itself? Consider that word. "Universe" means "one turn". Not because light is
   bent back to its starting point around the curve of space. No, it means "one turn"
   because a universe is what might be seen by execut-ing the mental leap of
   turning around so quickly that you see yourself whole! The dog chases its own
   tail; one day it takes itself by surprise and catches up with itself! That's the
   moment of enlightenment.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (137 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   He seems to be deliberately teasing me now - scattering clues to some great
   secret at the same time as he is hoodwinking and confusing me.

   'Are you saying that the Star Beast is the spirit of the universe? That it's come to
   look at itself, in us - in Humanity?'

   The Universe-at-large manifesting itself?' says Feng, not answering, only
   echoing me. 'One wonders.' His teeth shine, predatory: an unbreachable barrier.
   Yes, a barrier can be predatory... If the Star Beast is, so is Feng.

   Then the universe seems to pour down from the stone roof in a jelly glue upon
   my head, suffocating me.

   Veins map my flesh: purple undercurrents flowing out from the sea within. My
   belly plumps with a stiff volume of liquid and limbs turning within themselves.
   Somehow gravity reverses and tugs the sea up against my lungs.

   I'm cloven from my navel downwards by a jet black line, far blacker than my
   skin now. The line splits me in two, anticipating the way I shall soon softly split
   apart like an overripe fruit and force out from inside me the boundary-being that
   lurks there.

   Cracked in two I am, like the coco-de-mer! Soft slabs of flesh face one another
   across a cleavage line. I am the Two-in-One from the Seychelles, and I'm
   stranded on my own shores.

   I swelter in the entrails of this chilly stone palace, in my quilted clothes, wailing
   for Spring and Birth.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (138 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




                                                     FIFTEEN
   I came out of my trance in the first week of April. Out of my womb-time.

   Childbirth was a kind of orgasm of all the time that had been suspended and
   stored up: a violent discharge of myself back into the world again, and of my
   baby into her world.

   By splitting apart we suddenly became two whole entities.

   She had the bumpy, downy skull of a pod from a baobab tree, and funny
   squashed features which I supposed would sort themselves out in time into an
   approximation of myself and Klimt. Her limbs were floppy and elastic, she
   would be a tall woman. Her skin was a light milky coffee colour, mild, smooth,
   with the only blemish on the back of her left thigh -a little maroon trefoil. The
   Barefoot Midwife said it would fade in a few weeks. Blue eyes stared up vaguely
   into mine. The world was still One to her. Her separation from me had hardly
   had time yet to be filtered through to her whole being. So she squalled, she
   sucked at me, she slept. And I called her Yungi. Yungiyungi is Swahili for water-
   lily. I thought of her floating in that lake within me, growing, budding,
   expanding, flowering-

   I bathed her, and dabbed surgical spirit on the scab of blood in her navel where
   the cord had been. But as I watched her, sleeping with lightly flickering eyelids,
   I couldn't stop myself wondering whether she would carry another deeper stain,
   the stain of the alien which wouldn't fade as the weeks went past- Why did the
   Midwife take so many smears of blood in the first three days, till the soles of


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (139 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Yungi's feet were all pinpricks?

   Feng came to congratulate me on the birth and tell me that I would be
   recommencing training exercises for flights to the 'Rakshasa World', with a
   Tibetan partner, and that my daughter would spend the day in the Palace creche.
   Horror welled up again.

   'Your daughter's just busy dreaming,' said Feng, about her flickering, closed
   eyes. 'Babies dream all the time during the first few days. They have to set the
   world in order. The blood tests are just routine precautions against jaundice. And
   we do need to be specially careful with lowland babies. The altitude, you know.
   Their bodies need to manufacture more red blood cells. Why didn't you ask the
   Midwife? Stop worrying. You've a fine baby. She's perfect. Be proud.'

   'What about her mind!'

   'Her mind is still only an idea of a mind.'

   'Will it be human, Feng?'

   He laughed. 'It ought to be! Seeing she's a human being. What else do you
   expect? Mind is a product of evolution as much as toes or teeth are.'

   'If it's stained by the alien thing- if some of the Beast leaked down the radar web
   into her! Yungi was only a code for a human being when I flew. That was her
   most vulnerable time! My body-field was being manipulated while I flew, wasn't
   it? The genetic code is such a tiny thing, in the egg or the sperm.'

   'I would say it is vast.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (140 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   'Vast, but so delicate.'

   'Oh, very resilient, Lila! Or we wouldn't be here, would we? We would have
   mutated all over the place, long ago. She's an utterly normal human being. Can't
   you see that, you perverse girl? Perhaps it's that that disappoints you.'

   'I don't see into her mind. Now I have to fly again, and become pregnant again.
   To make another "utterly normal" baby? Then another? How many years, how
   many babies? I feel like a cow!'

   Feng looked exasperated. 'We're expanding Bardo as fast as we can, to save you
   this sort of thing.'

   A Barefoot carried Yungi off to the creche; while Feng took me to meet Kushog,
   my Tibetan lover.

   Once more I practised the mental exercises I'd learnt in Miami. I reduced golden
   pagodas in the Funerary Halls to a line, then to a point. Wearing a Bardo helmet,
   I entered the yantra nest while the earphones hummed and trammed and hrihed.
   After a few weeks, I was ready to undertake the tantric yoga of love with
   Kushog-

   What a fat unctuous overgrown child this Kushog was!

   Seemingly composed of soft rubber, his bones included, he could master any
   love position. He spoke English quite fluently but utterly monotonously -
   chanting his sentences at me as though every sentence was a sacred incantation.
   All the words ran into each other. I could just imagine him five hundred years
   ago, the Chosen Blessed One from. a community of yak-herders, drawing magic

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (141 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   mandalas to ward off bloat and murrain from the herds, tussling with invisible
   demons, sweating himself into a self-induced terror as the imaginary devils
   nipped his folds of pampered flesh. Talkative as he was, it was worse
   communicating with him than it had been with the taciturn Klimt.

   On and on he chanted at me about the perils to sanity from the Star Beast.
   Proudly and maniacally he demonstrated an old Tibetan ritual called Chod, in
   which a lama persuaded himself that he's genuinely being devoured, flesh, blood
   and bones, by ravenous demons : crying out in sweaty terror that his bones were
   being cracked open and all the marrow sucked out, hooting as the wind whistled
   through the hollow bones, squealing as his skull was sawn open and his brains
   gnawed. After a while I understood only too well how the fat boy really loved
   the idea of the beastly thing behind the Rakshasa facade. That was more sexual
   to him than I was. He made love to it, turning our intercourse into a kind of vile
   chod ceremony,

   I met Maimouna again. She too was retraining for Bardo flight, having given
   birth to a son.

   She'd called him Doudou, and didn't seem to think very much of him.

   We were thrown together now by lectures on the 'Rakshasa world'. Maimouna
   complained about these at first, both in and out of class, on the grounds that they
   were a farce since all of us knew that the Rakshasa moon was just a programmed
   illusion, masking the horrid reality of the Star Beast. The Dobdob Instructor, a
   patient but insistent Chinese called Chang, was lecturing a group of about a
   dozen of us, alternating from English to French to Chinese to cope with our
   different languages, Maimouna, who spoke all three languages fluently, found


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (142 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   the triple repetition particularly galling; and said so.

   'It's all very well for the ordinary people outside to be fed this pap about the
   Rakshasas,' she objected to Chang at the beginning of one session. 'It's a nice
   dummy for them to suck. It was all right for us at Miami Beach before we found
   out the truth. But must we carry on with it?'

   'You need a mask,' said Chang. 'Just as a deep-sea diver needs a mask to protect
   him from the pressures of the deep. You need a filter. You simply can't stand the
   naked reality of what is up there. You need human thought-constructs to stand
   against the Star Beast and be able to investigate it. When you fly, you fly under
   light hypnosis - accepting this mask as, the reality, right? How can you accept it
   if you don't know what it is? So it is your duty to get to know all the "contours"
   of this mask. I insist on it.'

   Maimouna was still unconvinced.

   Put it another way. The Rakshasa facade bears the same relation to your real
   mission - which you now know! - as the art of archery bore to the notion of
   "enlightenment" in the Zen mystical system. You didn't study archery to become
   a perfect shot. You simply had to master the ritual perfectly so that you could
   achieve something else!'

   'I can hardly avoid memorizing what's repeated so many times,' said Maimouna
   sulkily, in an aside to me; not aloud to Chang. 'What does he know about diving,
   anyway? A mask doesn't keep pressure out, does it? I thought it helped you see
   more clearly.'

   'That's right,' I whispered. 'But surely you can see what he means. It's not his job

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (143 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   to know about diving.'

   'It seems to be nobody's job to know enough!'

   So we added to our store of knowledge about a non-existent alien species.
   Curiously enough, I found the Rakshasa moon more inventive and ingenious and
   complex than hitherto - now that I knew it to be a lie!

   Rakshasa was far below freezing point. A haze of hydrocarbon products,
   constantly formed by flash photolysis reaction in the lightning-torn, atmosphere-
   replenished skies had drenched the surface of the moon with a thick, ochreous
   tar of precipitated photolysis products and polymers, forming a shallow ocean of
   rich treacle-like organic compounds. In this ocean the ancient Rakshasas
   evolved, finally struggling out of the treacle on to land to colonize the spiring,
   porous mountains - expanding and contracting their bodies at will to flow
   through the honeycombed rock and, by inflating their flexible bodies with gas,
   flying through the clouds from spire to spire.

   At first, communication and the pursuit of smaller food-beasts was a matter of
   scent as much as of sight for them. Rakshasa body chemistry was based on giant
   lipid molecules, Chang told us; and lipid oils had been an essential ingredient in
   the old human business of perfume making. As the Rakshasas developed and as
   they moved further from the treacle ocean, vision became more important The
   pyrotechnic gas-giant filled most of their sky like a great roof ablaze wiith lights
   floating overhead. Their 'daylight' almost all came from there; Barnard's Star
   itself was quite a dull penny besides. As they colonized higher and higher zones
   their eyes grew keener, till sight became dominant and phosphorescent signal
   patches on their 'faces' began to play an abstract, language role. Chemical


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (144 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   secretions from their own bodies became the basis of an organic architecture as
   they etched and rearranged the porous mountains - easy enough in the low
   gravity - piling their homes higher and higher until finally the spires reached
   through tihe clouds into the fringes of space itself; whereupon they at last saw
   the gas-giant for what it truly was - another world, which their own moon was
   circling, just as both circled that orange penny of a star.

   So out they floated into quasi-space itself: into that thin doughnut of atmosphere
   encircling the whole of the gas-giant, growing ever more alert to the radiations
   of space, the flux and tides of the cosmos, and eventually to the cosmic Action-
   at-a-Distance field.

   Maimouna soon adjusted, and began to find the Rakshasa rigmarole intriguing
   too; or at least behaved as though she found it increasingly fascinating. The idea
   that our flying career would be one enormous facade from now on obviously
   appealed to the poseur in her. No doubt there was an element of currying favour,
   as well! She even began suggesting refinements and sophistications that could be
   added to the Rakshasa mask, which Chang politely declined, though in a
   commendatory sort of way.

   Before long she was asking eager questions about the Yidags too, badgering
   Chang about how that particular world was put together.

   They fly to Yidag from Russia, Maimouna. We don't need to go into that in
   detail here.'

   'It's so fascinating, Chang, the way the whole system is set up by Bardo. I really
   feel involved in it.'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (145 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   I'm glad to hear it.'

   'Do the Russian flyers know that Yidag is a lie? Or are they as raw and innocent
   as we were in Miami?'

   'It's not relevant.'

   She hesitated. 'Or- do they know something else, which even we don't know?'

   Chang looked completely baffled.

   'What on Earth do you mean? Can you think of something worse than the Star
   Beast? You're letting this new-found enthusiasm of yours run away with you,
   Maimouna. Please concentrate on the task in hand. It's big enough.'

   Maimouna protested. 'It's just because I admire how this war's been run so very
   much. The way the Earth is defended without there being any visible war at all.
   It's so clever. That's why I want to know everything. About Yidag too. I'm sure
   it'll make me a much better flier. Please, Chang! Do the Russian fliers know as
   much as we know?'

   Chang sighed.

   'They believe what you believed in Miami. Only they're busy flying to Yidag
   rather than Asura-'

   'Won't you tell us just a little more about Yidag? It's so ingenious, the way Bardo
   put these worlds together to fight the war!'

   Finally - flattered? - Chang gave in.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (146 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   So we all learnt some more about how the fictitious Yidag 'bottle-beings' soaked
   up energy from the fierce sunlight of Epsilon Indi for six Earth weeks on end;
   how they had clusters of photoelectric receptor cells growing on their heads, and
   how their skin was criss-crossed by piezoelectric crystals. Piezoelectric crystals
   are crystals which generate an electric current when they're distorted; thus the
   heating by day and the freeze-contraction during the long nights generated power
   too. As well as analysing their sun's radiations and starlight through their
   photoelectric cells, this piezoelectric skin of theirs let the Yidags monitor gravity
   pulses. They could feel fluxes in the structure of spacetime as intimately as we
   feel the pressure of a finger on our flesh, only far more minutely.

   The Yidags developed a high-level technology of mobile cyborg units and quasi-
   machines, all linked to themselves by laser. With this they were busily recasting
   their mineral world into a crystalline-metallic network of machines and
   organisms, On account of their basic rootedness, society was non-competitive;
   nor were the Yidags destroying their environment by such large scale
   engineering. They were simply reorganizing it organically.

   Maimouna smirked at her minor conquest of Chang.

   'Have you noticed something about Dobdobs?' she asked me. 'I heard from one
   of the Chinese fliers, who heard it from way back, that in the old days the
   Chinese People's Army got rid of badges of rank and glossy officers' uniforms
   because they looked undemocratic. But they still had to tell who was who. So
   they used pens and pencils. The more pens or pencils a soldier had stuck in his
   breast pocket, the higher he ranked. Have you noticed how the Dobdobs who
   didn't know about the Star Beast always seemed to have only a couple of pencils

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (147 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   in their top pocket - whereas Dobdobs like Chang who do know about the war
   have three?'

   I can't say that I had noticed, but now that I thought about it, it did seem that she
   was right. Mentally, I reconstructed my original Bardo test... The merry Dobdob,
   Youngden, might have had a couple of pencils in his pocket - whereas Liu,
   whom Sam Shaw Had radioed about the 'Defence Facts', certainly had three.
   That fretful airfield controller in Dar es Salaam? Two, perhaps- And the same
   with all our instructors at Miami Beach, so far as I could recall - up until we
   were 'arrested'. Thereafter, three pencils definitely seemed to be the norm-

   'Feng has four pencils in his pocket, hasn't he, Lila? So what does he know that
   Chang doesn't? He seems to take a special interest in you,' she added, fishing
   jealously.

   Obviously this was the real point at issue. Maimouna thought that I was closer to
   some seat of power. She didn't really care what Feng might know, any more than
   she cared a hoot about Yidags - only what extra power Feng might wield.

   'He hasn't told me anything special. Except that Bardo is devoted to Humanity,
   and that my Yungi is a fine baby whom I should be proud of.' Unlike your own
   attitude to Doudou, I thought. No doubt she could read my expression easily
   enough.

   Feng did seem to be hinting at something, though. All his talk about
   consciousness and the universe! Almost as though the Star Beast mightn't be
   such a bad thing after all-

   'Feng's just- more in charge. He has to think about the Star Beast. Whereas the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (148 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   others have to fight it. Someone's got to work out what it is! If the defenders
   spent all their time theorizing about what's attacking us-' I shrugged.

   The system mightn't work so smoothly?'

   'He's a senior administrator. And theorist, damn it! Busy working out ways to
   extract information about the Beast through human babies. That's the truth about
   his position. And the truth about yours and mine is that we'll both become
   pregnant again - when the silver flows by way of the gold! You can't escape, by
   ingratiating yourself with Chang and asking about Russia. They're not going to
   send you there to help fool more Bardo fliers to keep the system running
   smoothly! The lousy thing is that if it doesn't run smoothly, we all go mad.'

   Maimouna tapped her ear-globes archly. She wore them to lectures now, as
   though she wanted an opening to brag to Chang of how she'd guessed all along
   that there must be a Star Beast; but he took no notice of them.

   'I'll become pregnant again, will I?'

   'You'll be caught in the same old web.'

   'I shan't.'

   'Has your new partner promised to perform mulabkanda for you and keep his
   sperm to himself, then?'

   'No chance of that. Very proud type. He boasts he's descended from a Siddha
   saint called Mular. That's his name too. I don't care. He still won't be fathering
   any little Mulars off Maimouna.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (149 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   'How can you stop him?'

   She hesitated, then a cunning and braggartly look came over her face. She tapped
   her ears again.

   'Oh, my spider and my fly will help me. But I'll scratch your eyes out if you tell
   anybody-!' And so at last she confessed her long-nursed secret - out of pride and
   arrogance, which had to have an audience. Or else she would have burst her top,
   like a bottle of banana beer that had stood too long. (I think she did genuinely
   need a confidante and friend. But she had to protect her own self-image too!) '

   'Once, in the Senegal bush, in a dirty little village, an old blacksmith made these
   little glass globes for me. He was a magic man. He could read the future in the
   palms of my hands. One day, he predicted, they'll take.your contracap away from
   you, and you'll want it back again. You'll really want it! I'm giving you these two
   baubles to hang on your ears. They only look like baubles. If you unscrew the
   top of the spider globe and drink down all the juice inside, you'll never conceive.
   If you ever want to conceive again, you unscrew the other globe and drink the
   antidote. I had to spin a yarn about the globes being for meditating. That was all
   eyewash. Actually, dear, the spider and the fly are there to show which is which.'

   'What's in them?'

   'Juice from the roots of some scraggy sedgegrass. That's the contraceptive. It was
   an old folk medicine - lost now, except for that blacksmith. The old man was
   right about me needing it, wasn't he? He knew all about medicines too. He even
   knew they were taking genetic samples. So you see! He knew. He knew about
   purges too, and ice-caps. Or his father had told him. He was a hundred years old.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (150 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   He really doted on me, the old man. But he wouldn't speak out in public.'

   'They're bound to find that you've got something in your blood, when you don't
   conceive. You'll end up visiting an ice-cap yourself. For sabotage. How do you
   know how this stuff will affect your body-field? You could let a streamer of the
   Star Beast sneak in!'

   'An ice-cap?' she laughed. 'I'm going to find out what really runs Bardo - and I
   shan't find that out by being pregnant all the time. Who really rules the world?
   How do people graduate to a higher rung? Lhasa is just one step nearer to the
   truth -and that truth must be in Kazakhstan! Let's trust the benign intentions of
   Bardo. Sam Shaw was just scaring us with his little gun.' Her eyes shone
   greedily. 'I will be everything - or nothing. I'll take the risk. If they find out
   what's in my blood, that'll be very clever of them. My blacksmith said no one
   would ever, once it's inside me.'

   'Is there enough contraceptive juice for two people?'

   She seemed amazed that I should even think about it.

   My dear, the whole dose was meant for me. Otherwise it Won't work.'

   'You utterly selfish bitch! I can think of a far better reason for not conceiving
   babies here! Maybe you don't care what your little Doudou is. Whether he's
   human or not. I care if my baby's mind is full of alien thoughts - even if they
   take her away from me. I care if she's only an animal-machine for spying on that
   thing up there!'

   Maimouna hadn't thought of that! Full of her own schemes, she hadn't stopped to

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (151 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   think why Bardo wanted babies out of us. She only wanted power in the dirty
   system.

   'Why else do they want us pregnant?' I raged, under the gilded pagoda. 'What
   else do they want but baby biocomputers programmed with bits of that Star
   Beast!'

   'I'll find that out, won't I?' She chuckled. 'You shan't. You'll be too busy with
   other things.' Twisting the spider globe open, she shoved it to her lips and sucked.

   Nausea twisted her features as she drank her pickled spider. She didn't vomit it
   out, though. She composed herself. She smiled smugly, fervently, and
   superstitiously.

   'You tell anyone, and I'll hurt you. I may be in a position to help you later on. I'll
   remember my friends.'

   And off she stalked.



                                                     SIXTEEN
   The view from the window of Feng's office was vast but narrow It cut a deep
   oblong wedge into the Lhasa Valley and the flanking Tangla hills. The valley
   was patehily green with sprouting early crops. The plastered stone framing this
   was at least two metres thick, and painted jet black; it seemed you were in a
   cave, looking out through a crack.

   'We overheard your conversation with that silly girl, of course. There's a

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (152 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   microphone hidden in the pagoda, A voice-activated one, linked to the Battle
   Computer. The whole surveillance system is, actually. The tapes get erased
   unless the system picks up key words like, say contracap or ice-cap-'

   'So it's just like the telephones in our bedrooms' I felt disgusted. It wasn't that I
   wanted privacy... it was just so total.

   'No, no, those aren't rigged for special words. They record everything you say in
   the room. Because, you see, that would mean there was someone else with you.'
   Feng sounded so bland about it that his spying seemed the most natural thing in
   the world.

   Why should anything whatever said in a bedroom be noteworthy? Anything?
   Only one answer really. If someone else was in your room, you could just
   conceivably be making love freely and spontaneously. You could just possibly
   be making your own baby without your chosen Bardo partner. That mustn't ever
   happen. That would spoil Bardo's plans.

   'Spying makes the military men feel more secure in their jobs,' Feng said. I think
   it was meant as an apology, this time An excuse, anyway. 'Maimouna,' he went
   on, 'is not only venomously ambitious, but also rather stupid. Under that veneer
   of sophistication, she's as superstitious and gullible as.. oh, she really believes in
   magic - personally, for herself. Whereas you care. You think things through. Or
   try to.'

   'What are you going to do about that medicine she took?'

   'Nothing,'he smiled.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (153 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'She won't conceive! That'll spoil your whole plan - of babies for Bardo.'

   'She'll conceive all right! We analysed the contents of those earglobes ages ago.
   The first time'she was away from them in Miami. They're contraceptive and
   fertility drugs all right. Naturally occurring stuff - in sedgegrass and marshgrass
   roots - and highly effective. What the contracap releases into your system is a
   synthetic based on a similar sedgegrass, from Amazonia rather than Senegal.
   That old witch doctor must have been good, no doubt about it.' He leaned
   forward. 'We just Switched the fly and spider round. Maimouna has simply
   guaranteed her own fertility!'

   In spite of Maimouna's selfishness, I felt crestfallen on her behalf. Feng regarded
   me thoughtfully.

   'I'll tell you something else, Lila, because I think you're ready for it and because,
   as I say, you care. As Maimouna recognized in her power-crazy way, we do
   need some people -people with the right motives to, what did she say? - ah,
   graduate to a higher rung. I think you're that sort of person. As it happens, you're
   quite right about babies for Bardo. We do want them born.'

   knew it!'.

   'Though it's a shame you're right, so soon, because - not fishing to sound
   punitive - you can't innocently have any more babies now.'

   'Feng,' I shouted. 'What is Yungi? What have you made me make?'

   'There's no need to get annoyed. Maimouna was right about Bardo's benign
   intentions. Your daughter is the future. She's the way forward. She is hope.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (154 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   There are still the best reasons in the world for as few people as possible
   knowing "why that is.'

   The Star Beast, I know!'

   He shook his head, amused.

   'There is no Star Beast None at all.'

   'That's as much of a fairy story as the friendly aliens are. In the present
   unevolved state of Humanity fairy stories are fairly essential. Even so, different
   fairy stories suit different people. The average paranoid mind which was running
   the world, if gravitating to the top in politics and armies for hundreds years,
   prefers Evil Giants to Kindly Spirits. It feeds on hostility and threats - imaginary
   if not real It'll do its best to make them real! Those who penetrate the first mask
   of Bardo - the friendly alien worlds - are often of this sort. They're basically self-
   centred. Though they often dress this up as a sense mission. They suspect
   conspiracies too. They want to beat them - or join them. Those are the Sam
   Shaw's of this world| If Sam Shaw did know what the future actually has in store
   for us, he'd be its most malignant enemy, I promise you that As it is, he's a
   courier of wisdom and change without knowing it.'

   'All those Dobdobs in the war room downstairs in Miami-sincerely believe
   they're helping ward off a thing from the stars. It's a useful outlet for what you
   might call the perennial military mind; they're actually warding off their own
   aggression. Though God help us, if it is perennial, Bardo will have failed. I'm
   sorry Sam Shaw threatened you with his gun, by the way. Still, I'm sure it helped
   reinforce his faith in himself. Thus the real work gets done more smoothly.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (155 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'What work? You just told me there isn't any Star Beast!'

   'Nor is there. Let's think about evolution for a while, Lila, What does a species
   need to evolve successfully? An environment which is neither too poor nor too
   rich. For millions of years Earth was ideal: midway between poor and rich. Yet
   all this time immense energy resources lay buried in it. Oil, coal gas: a
   treacherous abundance. So when we developed technology we took off too
   suddenly and too sharply. Social and particularly mental evolution lagged sadly.

   'Technological evolution can easily become an end in itself: its own jurisdiction.
   It separates off from Humanity. It contains its own meaning. Technology seems
   like an adequate substitute for a proper system of knowledge because it dissects
   the world with, its tools and it even includes Man in its dissections. Yet it's
   pernicious. Somehow Man has to learn to know himself more directly. He has to
   become more aware of the nature of his own thoughts, instead of simply thinking
   them like an auto maton. The watchers in the cave - you know the myth? - have
   to swing round and see. There's so much light behind them but they only see
   shadows of existence.'

   The Potala Palace was all caves, I thought - a honeycomb of caves thrown up
   above ground by an upheaval of nature. Feng's room particularly was a cave.
   With his back persistently turned to the only source of light, he seemed to
   imagine that I was a shadow he was casting: his own projection, puppet and
   invention! Maimouna had been right after all, in her sly, suspicious way. If he
   could only execute one of those precious 'one full turns' of his and see himself as
   he actually was: a slavemaster of shadows, urging the shadows to know
   themselves while forever hiding the truth from them behind a whole series of
   screens - the Alien Worlds screen, the Star Beast screen - screens which would,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (156 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   needless to say, be lifted as soon as people's vision had improved! This wasn't
   any way to be wise and free. This wasn't anv way to see anything. I knew it in
   my heart Truth was open, not occult.

   'What is it that lies within us waiting to emerge? What is it that will seem so
   inevitable once it has emerged: as obvious then as it was unimaginable
   beforehand? What is the next evolutionary stage, Lila?' he asked me.

   The sun brightened the black paint of the window embrasure, a glossy gong of
   light. I laughed hysterically.

   'Who cares? Monkeys didn't change into humans overnight! It took millions of
   years. It would have been a very miserable monkey indeed that sat around asking
   itself what sort of being the coming human would be! You live your life now.'

   'Ah, that's where you're wrong. People got evolution equally wrong in the
   twentieth century when the technological hurricane was upon them,
   masquerading as salvation. They had such a puny span of recorded history to
   look back on that they had no real gut feeling for how alien - how essentially
   different - pre-humans, and pre-pre-humans before them, must have been. They
   just thought of them as more of themselves, minus tools and minus language.
   Nor could they conceive how alien future humans must be compared with them.
   Here again they just thought of themselves, this time with more tools; different,
   better tools, and their brains perhaps linked up to computers to speed their
   thoughts along. They blithely assumed that the future human must be much the
   same as themselves, too, because evolution obviously was such a very slow
   process.

   'Evolution isn't necessarily slow, Lila! A huge change can happen in a few

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (157 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   hundred years, given the right conditions. Do you know why? A major change in
   a species doesn't depend on a single gene site or a single mutation - but on
   dozens! One mutation crops up here, another crops up there; this process goes on
   for thousands of years-'

   'That sounds like a slow process to me.

   'Indeed it is, on the surface. Most mutations are recessive, which is why nothing
   appears on the surface. Nothing radically new is born. Yet the mutations are
   being submerged in the gene pool all the time. In reality, the whole gene pool is
   slowly being pre-adapted all this time for a new form of being. When the time is
   ripe this submerged new being can rush out. We've actually been submerging the
   future human in ourselves for thousands of years, and what could he be but a
   human being more fully conscious of himself? Humanity has been saturating
   itself throughout recorded history. Bardo's function is to be the seed crystal now!'

   'You can foresee the future, like Maimouna's blacksmith, can you? What is this
   future human supposed to be like, then?'

   Feng squinted at me shrewdly, balancing truth and falsehood in his mind, like a
   coin on a fingertip. A slight wobble either way- Lies - or the truth. What did it
   matter? I was sure that every truth would turn out to be a lie. There was no
   reaching truth. Full sunlight was pouring into the room, making it hard to read
   his face.

   'If life is a random process, Lila, then life simply hasn't had time to occur yet.
   Yet life has happened - as fast as possible!'

   'So you've said.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (158 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   'Is this only an outrageous accident? Or is there something in the physical
   structure of the universe itself which predisposes life to emerge? Bardo believe
   so. We believe that biology is "submerged" in physics. Likewise that there's a
   tendency in biological forms to generate consciousness. The present partial
   consciousness of Man- Or the whales and dolphins, perhaps. Within this present
   limited consciousness of ours, there must be-what else?'

   'So that's what the Star Beast stands for? And all this mystique of boundaries and
   frontiers? Something within us, which we can't reach?' What if there was a final
   truth I could reach? What if I really could break through the frontier of lies? I
   was almost blinded by the sunlight behind him. 'Direct manipulation of the genes
   by surgery was another of die great technological illusions,' he mused. To create
   a race of superhumans using the laser-scalpel and the electron microscope-
   ridiculous!'

   The sun couldn't really blind me. I had stared into the heart of yantras. I could
   fight it. The sun simply dissolved Feng; it made him as transparent as he
   deserved to be, as empty. I was more real than him.

   'Your fears about Yungi are groundless. Bardo's machines couldn't possibly
   tailor your baby's genes. Or build new ones. We, have to work with nature, not
   against her. How could one know in advance what Future Man would be?
   Automaton Man trying to predict and engineer Conscious Man would be like,
   oh, a computer trying to figure the workings of the mind that had programmed it.

   'That's all I want to say, right now. Think about it. This is, if you like, your first
   real lesson ever about Bardo.'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (159 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   The sun was a blazing toad now. It had crept out of the stonework to spit poison
   in my eyes.

   Feng rose from behind his desk, swallowing the toad, eclipsing me, dismissing
   me.

   I went back to my room, and soon they brought Yungi back from the creche. Her
   eyes were questioning the world now. She was a whole world questioning itself.
   She was a world thinking itself into being as she formed the world around
   herself, in her mind.

   She was hope? She was the Future?

   But what future?

   The pinpricks on her feet - scarcely distinguishable any more - reminded me of a
   strange story which a Barefoot Lama once told us children one Sunday in the
   former mosque. The story had sounded absurd at the time: a crazy joke and
   nothing more. It had stuck in my mind, perhaps on account of its absurdity. Now
   the story suddenly seemed mockingly true.

   Once upon a time some king wanted to send a secret message through enemy
   territory to the king of another country. There was no particular hurry about the
   message, so what they did was to shave the messenger's head and tattoo the
   message on to his scalp. Then they waited till his hair grew back and sent him on
   his way. The man duly carried the message, hidden on his head - where, of
   course, he couldn't read what it said any more than the frontier guards could. He
   carried it with complete success, and when he reached his destination he
   explained to the second king how to read the message. The king ordered a bowl

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (160 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   of hot water, soap and a razor, to be brought.

   When they shaved the messenger's head, what the secret message said was, 'Kill
   this man as soon as he arrives.' So they cut his throat, there and then, with the
   razor.

   I thought about this story now, as I looked at Yungi's baby feet. That message
   from one king to another across alien territory was just like Feng's prediction
   about what Man must become - a message carried by a human, yet completely
   hidden from him. When the message was read, it spelt the end of Man, his death.

   Alternatively, the story simply suggested that the less people knew about
   anything, the freer they were to live and be happy-

   A Tibetan Dobdob, who spoke only Tibetan, was sitting patiently on a three-
   legged stool outside my room. There was no way that I could warn Maimouna
   that her medicine had been switched.

   Three nights later, Kushog burst into my room, naked to the waist, wearing only
   his white draw-string trousers. He was deranged - with rage at me and a fearful
   frenzy directed at himself. He sweated and quivered like a jelly stimulated by a
   massive shot of adrenalin - posturing, exalted, fear-besotted, nihilistically
   ecstatic. His lips and cheeks flopped about in fishy suffocation. His eyes bulged
   like a bronze hyperthyroid god's. He carried a flickering, spooky candle half a
   metre tall. Whatever it was made of stank of charred flesh as though he'd torn off
   one of his own limbs and set fire to it for light. He waved it about like an arm,
   dashing hot wax in my face. I felt sparks of pain, then tightness as the wax dried
   and pulled. Great lunatic shapes danced around the walls. I thrust Yungi behind
   me, half-burying her in blankets. She flapped and mewed, but subsided safely.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (161 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   'You left me! You won't fly with me any more! So I have to fly on my own, all
   alone,' he chanted at me in his usual rabid monotone. Shaking his enormous
   candle, he distributed more blobs of burning fat indiscriminately on me, on the
   bed, on himself. I succeeded in making a tent for Yungi with the blankets, a
   protective pocket of air. I was terrified, but the only thing to do was talk to him,
   calm him. Had he been sent to me deliberately? Was this some new torment of
   Feng's, some new trick? There was supposed to be a Dobdob on guard outside,
   segregating me. If he'd fallen asleep, surely the noise of Kushog's ranting would
   wake him up? Unless he'd been told to turn a blind eye, and a deaf ear! Were the
   microphones listening to all this?

   'Did the Dobdob let you past him?'

   'He is my brother!'

   'What, he's actually your brother?'

   'He is my brother in nothingness! I helped him trample down his False Self while
   he sat there meditating. I extended my brotherly love to him, to liberate him!'

   'You mean, you killed him?' I was alone with him. Yungi too. No one was
   listening to Feng's microphones. If they were, then this was some sadistic test,
   either arranged with Kushog's full connivance, or else by playing upon his
   dementia, something easily aroused.

   'My brother's dead to the world.' Kushog grinned hugely. His lips stretched in a
   flared red bow around a mouthful of blunt yellow teeth: the teeth of a horse. His
   mouth chomped shut. He could bite a half-moon out of my arm if he wanted.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (162 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Suppose this was a test? Suppose that I had to decide whether or not to save
   myself by betraying Feng's confidence and telling Kushog that his precious
   defence of the Earth was all eyewash? That was surely the way to deflate him
   and drive him away-

   But what Kushog told me next bewildered me still further. For Kushog said that
   he had flown alone: to a new alien world more terrible than any of the three alien
   worlds so far 'discovered' - one which the Star Beast itself was responsible for
   inventing and throwing at the human psyche.

   'Why fly without a partner?' I began. 'You couldn't possibly conceive a-' A baby.
   I shut my mouth. Private knowledge. Feng knowledge.

   'They said I must fly alone to a new world the Star Beast has woven, full of half-
   beasts it has made. A world which reels us in to it with the fiercest hook rays. I
   was chosen because my soul is strong - because I can fight devils that consume
   me alive, because I am a master of the Way of Chod'

   'You really did fly without a woman?'

   'You left me alone,' he jeered, spattering more blazing grease from that third arm
   of his.

   'You wore the Bardo helmet? You still watched the yantra shapes? You heard the
   mantra, all alone?' I had to know what had happened to him. 'How did you get
   the power to fly? It takes a man and a woman together-'

   'You left me. You weren't there. But I'm strong.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (163 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   It wasn't my fault. However did you do it on your own?' If only I could flatter his
   vanity.

   'I performed chod, to fly! Difficult? Not for me! I burned my flesh and bones,
   my brains and blood into energy. The world I flew to was a chod world. You
   couldn't have stood it, woman! Its hook rays yearned for such a one as me. The
   Star Beast has grown more cunning. It knows that we throw alien worlds of the
   mind at it, as masks from behind which to question it. We were safe behind the
   Rakshasa mask till now. Now there's a new world in the heavens. The Star Beast
   has made a mind world and peopled it with horror beings, and our radars read it
   back at us. It pushes the Rakshasa mask aside. It lures fliers to a ceremony of
   chod, where those who aren't adepts will be eaten alive in body and mind. I had
   to fly. Who else?'

   'I'm sure you were the right one, Kushog.'

   He calmed a little as he chanted his story at me, beginning to look less like a pop-
   eyed fiend about to jump on me and tear my throat out with his great horse's
   teeth, and more like an utterly scared little fat boy telling the worst of nightmares.

   While he was telling his story, I racked my brains to explain this new alien
   world. Where had it come from? Why? He seemed to be telling the truth - or at
   least telling what had happened to him. It began to seem that Bardo had revived
   the craziest, most savage kind of Shamanism in the bowels of the Palace as a
   sadistic experiment.

   This was how he told it-



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (164 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




                                             SEVENTEEN
   A crisis in the War Room! Dobdobs crowded the desks, pushing buttons and
   twisting knobs, trying to douse red alarm lights. The great display screen showed
   the yantra nest around the planet being probed and feinted at by spikes of
   activity from outside, thrusting deeper and deeper. Occasional thin red lines of
   fire traversed the entire nest, stabbing right through the world. Earth's defences
   were being penetrated.

   The Star Beast was attempting a breakthrough, said the Dobdob who had
   summoned Kushog at the double. Unless the frontiers could be firmed, insanity
   would roam the world. A single suicide flier had to investigate, using different
   techniques. Would Kushog volunteer to face madness, to save the world from it?
   Oh yes, he breathed fervently, full of the self-devouring spirit of chod. Sole
   Guardian of Planet Earth against the mind plague, he was.

   For the first time in history, a human mind must hang free. He would have to let
   the Star Beast programme whatever illusions it chose into him. He would have to
   accept whatever alien vision it threw at him. That vision was a vital message to
   Humankind. He would have to learn it through pain and horror, if pain and
   horror there was. Accept it! Equally, there might be inconceivable bliss. Accept
   that too! And overcome it! Kushog promised. Going into the Contact Room, he
   donned the helmet and squashed his rubber limbs into lotus position. He watched
   the yantra mandala, his brain rang with the HUM!, the TRAM!, the HRIH!, the
   RAM!, and the OM! - and all the while he tormented himself with his own
   Tibetan ritual chod chants-

   Already the gases of an alien atmosphere were beginning to percolate into his
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (165 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   nostrils, enhancing colours and sensations, vastly distending time. (He was being
   drugged, obviously, by some psychedelic gas more powerful than the nutmeg
   essences used in my own training in Miami!) What rose up within him felt less
   like the familiar Kundalini serpent and more like a swollen python, digesting a
   goat - and the goat was himself.

   'Zab-cho shi-hto gong-pa rang-dol lay,' he boomed ritually, making his lungs
   into gongs. 'Bar-doi tho-dol chen-mo cho-nyid bar-doi ngo-tod zhu-so -' The
   opening of the Book of the Dead. 'Here we set ourselves face-to-face with the
   reality of the limbo state; and liberate ourselves on the After-Death plan by
   meditating upon peaceful and wrathful Gods-' So he recited to me.

   Between pulses of mantra sound, he clearly heard the hooting of trumpets made
   of human femur bones and a tetchy skull-drum tapping out in his brain and body-
   field rhythms never so heavily accented before. Death-wish rhythms. Rhythms
   of cruelty and violence in the Id.

   He flew.

   The bindu point flared out around him, with all the stars of the galaxy in it. They
   pinched tight to a bottleneck behind him, and vomited him into another world-

   Where there were red and blue mists, shifting lights, vague wet pastel hummocks
   and low domes like upside-down terracotta bowls.

   I guessed that it might be the inside of Haleakala Crater on Maui he was seeing,
   projected into his helmet. However, I couldn't break in to his possessed sing-
   song candle-waving chant to tell him, any more than holding out your hand halts
   a waterfall. For him, this had to be a world built by the Star Beast from the mind-
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (166 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   tattered remains of some alien people it had brushed by on its way to Earth and
   casually overwhelmed!

   A landscape of mud, mist and clay. The Beings that inhabited it looked not far
   removed from wet clay, either: their features barely sketched in, contours
   unfirmed, unfired. Clay-people.

   By way of speech, they only made one sound. A single glutinous slobbery bark.
   It never varied. It was the basic mantra of the death of meaning, the dissolution
   of language back into nature. It was at once all possible words, and no word at
   all. It was the sum total of inchoate sounds a baby babbles, thrashed into one
   noise, pronounced by a tongue of stiffening glue. One universal word, and no-
   word.

   It was the sort of word a universe might speak, if it had a mouth. A total word,
   affirming and denying everything at once. A paradox word.

   An insane, useless word.

   These Claypeople looked as if they were about to dissolve back into the primal
   clay. They were upright, bifurcate, walking slugs. Their bodies bounced about
   their dome village, stretching, contracting and undulating, never the same shape
   for very long. Pseudopod fingers at their wrist stumps, like snails' horns. Eyes
   like red fishes' gills, their mouths a slime-vent, opening and shutting all the time,
   barking their single word.

   This was surely the seed-sound that contains all other sounds. This was the
   primal mantra from which all others sprang. It came before mantras, particles or
   atoms, before stars or lives or consciousness, this ur-Om, this proto-Om that they
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (167 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   slobber-barked at one another, and at Kushog too - for he was one of them. He
   participated helplessly, hallucinatorily, in their life - if it could be called a life -
   though he could still think some Tibetan thoughts of his own about it. That word
   was the name of the boundary between Being and Non-Being. The first binding
   together of Being, which affirmed everything possible -and excluded, not
   'everything else', but rather pure nothing. Pure nothing was still very close.

   The Claypeople's village consisted of cone and cupola day huts, arranged in a
   double circle around a central plaza, which was dominated by a large hearth
   equipped with a roasting spit. The single break in this double circle gave on to a
   perfectly straight avenue flanked by twin rows of circular clay statues: statues,
   apparently, of Claypeople bending over in a hoop to touch the soles of their own
   feet. This avenue disappeared into the lurid fog which wrapped the village round
   in all directions.

   Apart from huts, statues, and the roasting-spit - made of stone, or a tangle of
   stalactites - all their world was soft and wet.

   What did they cook on the spit? Hard to tell. No charred bones or shells lay near
   it. Were there any firm-bodied creatures on this world at all? Hardly, judging by
   the floppy, rubbery appearance of the Claypeople, who must represent the
   highest form of life here, but who seemed to have nothing stiffer than gristle in
   them. Yet they had mastered fire! Charcoal glowed perpetually beneath the spit,
   sputtering faintly in the thick wet air, kept alive by a rota of Claypeople who
   squatted and blew on it. Maybe the fire had fallen from the skies one day: a
   meteor, or a blob of lava.

   Kushog never actually saw them eat or gather anything for eating. (Maybe the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (168 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   air was manna?) They also lacked any apparent genitals. This sort of creature
   could probably propagate by budding, or splitting. As he watched, the daylight
   dimmed, darkened, went black, then grey again, then diffusely milky, then a
   sombre purple,.and even briefly a strident aching yellow. Impossible to say what
   suns or moons or auroras caused these unpredictable lights; everything was so
   diffused by the cloudy air. There were no fixed points in space and time apart
   from the double circle of clay stones, the spit, the avenues of statues. Kushog's
   consciousness felt an enormous pressure upon it to sink back into
   preconsciousness, his words into prewords, his thoughts into prethought.

   Then came the dawn. It must have been a genuine sun-dawn. For the air blazed
   silver. The whole sky became the steel backside of a mirror. At this signal the
   Claypeople galvanized themselves and rushed to blow the charcoal under the spit
   into a fiercer glow. Silver air and steel sky had no heat as such in them, only a
   light-beyond-heat, almost a spiritual light.

   All the Claypeople, including Kushog, crowded round the cooking spit, blowing
   through their slime-vents, silent except for the hiss of the work. The stone spit
   was so firm. They were so shapeless and indeterminate. How could they ever
   have built it? They must have found it by a miracle.

   Abruptly, they seized one of their number, and slung him over the spit. They
   wrapped him in a full circle around it, tying his feet to his head with some tough
   rubbery fibres. One Clayperson stuck long thin clay pipes in the victim's mouth
   and rectum. Others slapped wet clay on his body. A few cranked the spit handle -
   in silence. Not even a hiss of breath now. Their 'word' hadn't been uttered a
   single time since dawn, Kushog realized.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (169 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   The fire glowed. They swung the spit. They slapped on fresh clay as the first
   coat baked.

   What had been an inchoate slug-like alien being was slowly and methodically
   transformed on the spit into something far more alien and hideous. It became one
   of those curved-over statues which marched far out into the mists, marking the
   only road out from the village into the rest of the world.

   At last, the cooked being screamed - breaking the silence. His nerves took over
   and cried out. The air rushed in and out of him in agony. Again and again came
   the cry. It was the same glutinous slobbery bark as the ur-Om noise. This was the
   sound that the fire forced out of him. This was the ultimate message, the final
   reality.

   As the baking statue became firmer and more solid, and as the spit swung round,
   the Claypeople took up that slobbery bark of final pain in chorus and hooted it
   back at their world, gesticulating with their snail's horn fingers at every single
   object in sight, themselves included, naming everything with the same all-
   purpose word.

   Kushog's slime-vent hooted it too-

   By this time in his story Kushog was chanting, sweating and barking - and I
   really believed he was cooking his own flesh with that vast candle, passing it
   back and forth about his half-naked body till I could smell the char of flesh.

   Yet what he chanted, however manic and staccato, was also strangely lucid - as
   though torture could produce not garbled feverish confessions, but on the
   contrary a perfect clarity of soul. He was making a huge noise by now - and

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (170 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   nobody came. Yungi, muffled in her tent, twanged like a harp to his cries. I
   could do nothing for her or for myself. I could only hope that Feng would come
   before much longer - before Kushog decided to hold that candle flame to me, to
   teach me to see his vision for myself.

   He knew now that these Claypeople, these Demon people, were reality itself -
   perpetually asserting itself in the midst of the ocean of becoming. Agreement on
   the nature of reality was astonishing to these Claypeople. All that they could say
   was that a thing is, not what it is. All that they could do was to fit a thing into
   itself and see how it fitted. Then it was. The fitting of a thing into its own shape
   formed the shape of their agreement on reality. That was how the universe fitted
   into itself, in order to be.: The universe ached with being - therefore the stars
   burned.

   'What is a universe?' cried Kushog. 'It is one thing. Yet it isn't One, it's
   Everything. But if there's nothing to compare it with, how can it have Laws?
   What is Law?'

   All that his Claypeople could do was to put the thing into itself again and again,
   and see that it fitted. Putting oneself into oneself made sense, made thought.

   The baking of the statue was finished, and the fire died back to a glow again.
   The mantra of existence had been confirmed for another day. The universe still
   existed. It still fitted into itself. It had given itself its own law. It had existed for
   as many days as there were statues leading from the village: their chronometer -
   and their compass as to the direction of reality.

   When the new statue had cooled sufficiently for clayflesh to touch it, a band of
   the Claypeople, Kushog among them, hoisted the artefact and bore it out at a

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (171 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   chanting run through the gap in the double circle, down the roadway.

   Purple and rose mist swirled around. The only firm ground seemed to be where
   the roadway led, in a narrow-straight line of pure geometry. To right and left,
   glimpsed between the walls of old statues, was vague glue - mere binding
   material midway between gas and mud. Where the road terminated, this gaseous
   muddy binding glue swirled ahead too, For the road led nowhere. Only out, into
   chaos.

   This wasn't a highway. It was a rule. A series. A proof of natural law.

   These statues weren't statues; they were definitions -enunciated in a vocabulary
   of pain. And the language of law was pain - because law always punished; it
   tortured into categories.

   The road appeared longer now. More chaos had been firmed by the time they
   placed the new statue at the end of the series, and trooped back, barking the
   sound-that-contained-all-sounds at the earlier statues.

   Different kinds of daylight, and dusk, and day or moonlight followed one
   another seemingly at random in the Clay people's world, till once more a silver-
   and-steel 'dawn' held its polished mirror back above them. This time it was
   Kushog himself whom the other Claypeople seized, draped over the spit, and
   bound head to toe - so that he performed one full turn, rejoining his own being
   like a snake swallowing itself.

   (While he was telling this, he rippled the molten candle underneath his throat
   and armpits, as though solidifying wax would transform his own human body
   into a Claypeople hoop.)

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (172 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   The world went dark when they slapped wet clay on his eyes. At first, the
   turning over and over of the hoop of his body afforded brief bouts of relief from
   the mounting pain and even the warm breeze sighing through his body from
   mouth-pipe to anus-pipe was strangely soothing. Then it became a hurricane of
   burning air, baking his entrails too, inside - tearing from him that One Word of
   Pain. No need to fear mispronunciation. No risk of getting it wrong. The
   geometry of his own body, bent over on itself, formed the trumpet proclaiming
   the single sound that fitted him most perfectly. Pain halted the world, in a cry.
   Pain was the only reality that absolutely must articulate itself to stop itself. His
   cry was the picture of pain, the pain pictured the world.

   The universe, Kushog knew in his delirium, seeks non-existence, nirvana. The
   universe, God, whatever the name of the total sum of everything might be, exists
   in a tragic agony, yearning not to be, never to have been. All its stars and
   galaxies, every particle of matter, every wave of radiation sears it. It has to fit
   itself into itself to articulate this pain, and the more fiercely it articulates this, the
   more persistently it exists, and creates itself. For it has wrapped time and matter
   round themselves, tying a knot in the midst of absolute nothing so that its end
   generates its beginning; so that its primal explosion and its final collapse wrap
   around each other too, eternally and simultaneously, now and always. Immense
   compassion overcame Kushog in the final moments of his agony, as his bent-
   around body screamed the root sound.

   Squeezed to an hourglass of burning, dripping wax, the candle finally burst
   between his fingers. Flame splattered, and extinguished. In the darkness of my
   cell, Kushog moaned a single sound which, having no change or variety, was
   like a very loud silence, the song of the vacuum of space.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (173 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Snatching Yungi from her tent of blankets, I fled from the room, banging my
   shoulder into Kushog, then into the door, which I slammed shut behind me.

   The Dobdob guard was silting on his stool - as motionless as a statue. He heard
   nothing. He saw nothing. He thought nothing.

   I tried to shake him by the shoulder. He was immovable, infinitely massive - an
   axle of the universe, holding tight all the cords of gravity for everywhere else.
   Being the pivot for everywhere else, he dared not move so much as an eyebrow.
   Dared not think one thought Or else the world would crumble from his
   inattention.

   He was hypnotized. Obviously, Kushog had done it, with his flickering candle
   flame. Kushog was cunning. He hadn't tried to resist the Dobdob's urge to guard
   the corridor. He had magnified it into a paralysing obsession. His fantasy visit to
   this new alien world had given him insight: at the cost of burning him out! So
   consumed by his alien chod encounter was he, indeed, that he had no human
   body left with which to beat or rape or punish me - as might have been his
   original plan. His quivering fat was all melted and insubstantial. The Dobdob's
   body, on the other hand, had grown as dense as matter at the core of a star. No
   wonder Kushog had claimed that the guard was his brother. Kushog had
   exchanged his substance with the guard; exchanged it for the guard's own soul.
   Together, the two Tibetans had reached a hideous mad nirvana, respectively of
   flame and stone.

   I fled on, till some Dobdobs found me and took me back to my cell, which was
   empty now - and took Yungi for observation, to the creche. The Dobdobs
   seemed almost as puzzled and confused as I was by what had happened.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (174 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   A new guard sat on the stool, fresh and innocent. I might have imagined it all.

   Except that my face was tight with wax. I scraped it off with my fingernail. It
   was real, all right.



                                                 EIGHTEEN
   Feng seemed genuinely embarrassed by the incident - and I was sure that he
   didn't quite understand it himself. Kushog's experience certainly had nothing to
   do with making babies!

   'Children sometimes pull the wings off flies,' he muttered. 'What can one do?
   They grow up- No, there are only Rakshasa flights from here. You're right. It
   was to be a man and a woman flying. What happened? An experimental mind-
   training programme got switched on-line by the computer, that was all. The
   Dobdobs down below acted on it. It shouldn't have been fed into the main
   system.'

   'Down below?'

   'Down in the old shelters where the War Room is.'

   'I suppose this was a trial run for the crater on Maiu? The mists and everything-'

   He smiled gratefully. The smile of someone who's glad that you've furnished a
   satisfactory explanation of your own accord. A smile of absolution.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (175 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   He also gave me a cup of tea. He had taken me up to one of the golden pavilions
   on the roof. By now, no longer pregnant, I thoroughly enjoyed the buttery salted
   taste of the Tibetan tea.

   I realized that I wasn't going- to learn any more about Kushog's flight from him.
   Instead, to distract me from one horror, he told me about another-

   He had an envelope full of photographs with him. I'd already seen prints of them
   in- Miami. The 'Star Beast victims'. I took one look and sneered.

   'They're all genuine, Lila. People really did sit down by the millions and die,
   starting in 1995. It wasn't a Star Beast, of course. It was a kind of encephalitis.
   Sleeping sickness.'

   It had appeared suddenly, and simultaneously, all over the world, Feng said. The
   same thing happened on a smaller scale eighty years earlier, during the First
   Global War. An inexplicable epidemic. It was as though part of the human race
   seemed bent on locking itself away from an impossible world. As though the
   patterns of life had become hopelessly tangled.

   The First War was terrible enough, yet in many ways the situation was much
   worse in the nineteen-nineties. Ceaseless brushfire wars all over the world,
   rampant sabotage, terrorism, revolution and counter-revolution, coup and
   bloodbath, collapse of government- As the world money system fell to pieces
   world trade increasingly became a matter of barter and blackmail. Land and sea
   were polluted; there was drought and famine. Always there was the threat of a
   final nuclear war, tightening its psychological screw. And television screens and
   radios connected at least half of the world's people permanently to the ongoing
   horrors like a set of ever-dripping taps, so that this was what swam before

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (176 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   people's eyes and buzzed in their ears day in and day out even when they weren't
   being burnt or blackmailed, starved or terrorized themselves. It was overload -
   and the only circuit-breaker to disconnect people was illness: physical illness,
   mental illness. In the rich countries that still had reasonable medical services,
   from thirty to sixty per cent of the population had to be treated for mental illness
   at least once in their lives. The 'infection' even began spreading to the biggest of
   the collective socialist states, China, which had tried to isolate itself. Finally
   there came the big epidemic. Millions of people would rather go into a coma
   than live in such a world. There had been sudden technological evolution; but no
   corresponding mental evolution.

   'The epidemic's victims couldn't see the patterns of life any more. They saw
   nothing. They froze. In mid-sentence. In mid- gesture - as you see. Their brain
   waves were very curious. New, complex patterns seemed to be trying to emerge
   - then breaking down from their own complexity. The higher brain funcitions
   were simply stalling, as a result. There was a drug called L-Dopa - Laevo-
   Dihydroxyphenylalanine, to the chemists -which could unfreeze these people for
   a while so that they could explain what they felt was happening to them. They
   said it felt as though they were being forced, for sheer survival, to grasp too huge
   a pattern of knowledge. Because they couldn't integrate it all, they froze, they
   Went dark, vanished to a point: from the sheer mental "gravity" of too much to
   perceive, too much forced upon them by a chaotic world,'

   "They couldn't cope-'

   'Oh no!' Feng leaned forward urgently, spilling a blob of tea: which spread out
   greasily. 'This was the paradox. They were the ones who were trying to cope!
   They were the ones whose nature made them try. They said they felt the capacity

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (177 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   in them struggling to emerge. But they failed, and illness swallowed them. The
   ones with hope were the uniquely vulnerable ones.'

   A yoga class had come out to exercise on a distant roof. Their Bardo uniforms
   were red and white flags, semaphors. I examined the red horses galloping around
   my cup.

   'I suppose those were the first Bardo fliers?' I queried finally.

   Feng almost sighed with relief, so glad that I'd understood. 'You said they were
   frozen!' I accused. 'You said they died like flies. How could such people breed
   and have any babies?' 'The L-Dopa drug unfroze them for long enough. And in
   sufficient numbers. Believe, me, they weren't reluctant. On the contrary! Randy
   as rabbits. It seemed to be an off spin of the illness- though perhaps this was a
   simple biological survival urge. At any rate, those were the most genetically
   "saturated" people on the planet, Lila - precursors of the more fully concious
   individual. The tragedy was that the awful pressures of twentieth century life
   were forcing them to act out a potential that was still only dormant in
   themselves. Forcing them to develop it prematurely in their own lives, instead of
   it being expressed in their children's or their children's children's. It like seemed
   like a cruel trick of Nature. Those who promised most, must die.'

   'So there was a Star Beast, within-' The image hit me of revivedzombies
   copulating, then being tossed aside as soon as they had mated and borne fruit-

   'The sickness acted as a pointer to who should be brought together. The epidemic
   showed us how to cast our net into the gene pool. Of course, we've refined our
   technique since then.' 'It's horrible.' I remembered the tale of a Zulu king, when
   the whites first invaded Africa. He set up his finest warriors for the whites to fire

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (178 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   their bullets at, simply to test their range and accuracy by where his warriors fell-

   'We could only save a number temporarily. After childbirth, we had to let them
   relapse ... But the epidemic spread for a long time. The human race had almost
   been ready to evolve a new, more conscious sort of being. Naturally, an
   epidemic of this scale - along with the sheer pandemic panic it was causing - was
   the last straw on the camel's back so far as the world's sagging governments were
   concerned. And, naturally the most important international organization was a
   World Health Organization, voted emergency powers by the world's
   governments to try to explain and stem the epidemic at all costs. Bardo was born
   out of this - guided by individuals of real vision who had been waiting in the
   wings while mediocrities and madmen ran the world.'

   Feng gestured grandiosely at the Tangla hills, just like that Zulu king setting out
   his warriors. The range might have been a genetic, not a geological formation.

   'World security was so weak and torn apart now, it was actually possible to
   impose a new form of society upon the world - one which wouldn't stress people
   to their breaking point, too soon.' (As Kushog had been stressed to his breaking
   point?) 'And to make it stick, worldwide. With blanket control of
   communications as a first major step - and the lie about Star Beast as the cause
   of sickness to fool the high commands in the stronger nations into acquiescence
   and collaboration This was the most magnificent forgery. It took a lot of scientist
   sympathizers to pull it off - a real brotherhood of those who were fed up with
   having politicians, generals and bureaucrats as bosses.

   'But- beyond stabilizing the world- the real point of Bardo is human evolution.
   Humanity could have evolved safely ans spontaneously over a longer period of

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (179 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   time but for the damned technological take-off! This isn't an area of free choice,
   anymore than breathing is. It's an inbuilt biological plan, programmed by the sort
   of universe we're in.'

   He peered at me.

   'You've a rare capacity for organizing patterns, Lila. It's a Bardo characteristic.
   Actually, you'd be the perfect casualty, if the world was still as complex and
   chaotic as it used to be, because you'd drive yourself to see too much- and you're
   not a future human yourself, you're just a forerunner.'

   'I suppose my Yungi is the one who'll know,' I mumbled miserably, utterly cut
   off from her, not caring that she was away from me in the creche.

   'She might be. We're positive that the physical universe is I structured to evolve
   life and consciousness. You might say that life is the universe's message to itself,
   about itself. Yungi might be it, yes. We're able to set up suitable physical
   circumstances for a higher consciousness to emerge. But I can't say yes or no. It
   may be her sons and daughters, or theirs.' Feng's eyes shone, his head swayed
   with a cobra-like absorption. 'What happened at the close of the twentieth
   century was the make-or-break of conscious life on this particular world. We
   already passed that hurdle successfully, through the most awful chaos and
   suffering. Maybe, perversely, because of it. It did show us the way ahead. It did
   let Bardo gain power-'

   Blue space was pressing down upon my brain, and upon the ring of barren
   mountains. Was I only ignorance and uncon-isciousness? Was I not awake at all?

   'Pain. And chaos. That was Kushog's trip the other night. Was that a blessing in

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (180 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   disguise? Did that wake him up and make him more conscious?'

   'It was a mistake. I told you.'

   I went to the creche the next day to see what they were doing to my Yungi to
   make her into a woman of the future. The fresh-replacement. Dobdob trailed
   after me uncertainly. He apparently hadn't any instructions to stop me going in
   that direction, away from Maimouna and other Bardo fliers whom I might
   contaminate; though as soon as I reached the creche, he made a telephone call to
   report where I was.

   The babies' cots were all wired for sound. Delicate feather-weight earphones
   were clipped to their skulls. The softest murmur of music hummed through the
   room. Slipping Yungi's phones off, I held them to my ear while the Barefoot on
   duty looked on: patiently, or apprehensively, I'm not sure which.

   The music was an Indian raga: a rippling river of bright, rapid, metallic sounds,
   a wire spider's web shining with beads of sun-soldered dew, reverberating in a
   complicated pattern, Where was the harm in such lovely music? I let the
   Barefoot the earphones away from me and clip them back gently on Yungi's
   skull. She slept, enmeshed in ragas, eyelids flickering.

   Summoned by the telephone call, Feng arrived as I was leaving.

   He led me towards his office, holding my elbow in a stilted crablike grip. 'Music
   is both sensuously appealing and mathematically exacting' he remarked primly
   as we walked along. 'Music reflects on itself. Its form is its content. That's what's
   unique about it, as an art. It helps, at a time when the infant brain is still
   patterning itself, programming its own gestalts of the world.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (181 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   When we arrived in that now familiar cave, he poured more butter tea from a big
   thermos bottle with an orange dragon chasing its tail around it.

   'That's really what the Asuran business of exclusions and inclusions and horizons
   is all about, Lila. How to bring the horizon of Man's knowledge inside Man, so
   that Man can understand how he thinks, instead of simply thinking
   automatically. How to wake up from the hypnotic slumber of ordinary
   consciousness, and learn to perceive what perceiving is! Because, really, most
   people spend all their lives in a light hypnotic trance. You do too, though you
   probably don't believe it.'

   'What will we know then, Feng? What's the use of it? Why can't people just live
   and be?'

   'You sound like a prehistoric animal asking, "Why should I evolve? What can I
   possibly evolve into? What's in it foi me?" I'll tell you what I felt when I first
   discovered the true plan of Bardo. I was a Bardo flier once, as well. I fathered
   some children, I suppose. Then I got suspicious. I started asking questions; and
   when they were finally answered - it was a moment of absolute wonder for me!
   A revelation. Because the universe "out there" stopped being an alien thing, right
   then! There was no external enemy Nature to be fought by Humanity and tamed.
   It had never been "out there"! That was only a hypnotic illusion. Nature was here
   in every atom of my being, in every moment of thought, all along - submerged in
   me, I'm made from its very texture. Future Humanity will know all this directly,
   in ordinary daily life.' His eyes shone. Surely I must see this too, they pleaded.
   'Not only that, but the cosmos actually makes itself out of the various
   consciousnesses in it which are evolving to understand it. Life isn't a chance


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (182 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   event in the universe. Life is an integrated part. So is thought. The universe
   generates life, Lila, so that ultimately consciousness will generate the universe!'

   I saw nothing. I was inside a mouth; and the mouth was shutting on me.

   'When I saw, I lost all doubts. I knew I had to work towards this. In the midst of
   the horrors of the nineteen-nineties, the human race was dragged upwards into
   greatness by something that had been within us all along. That's the really
   wonderful thing. You must see this and help the work. If only because you're
   directly a part of that future now, through Yungi. She's a lifeline to that future. I
   told you, she is Hope. But that future has to come about peacefully. The human
   race, as we know it now, has to be absorbed upwards. There mustn't be any
   conflict or venom between the Old and the New. There could so easily be - even
   now. The infuriating thing is that people are still quite capable of rising against
   Bardo - even the War Room Dobdobs! - to try to kill your Yungi and all the
   other Bardo offspring. Bardo has to work with subterfuge to save itself. That's
   why the real plan has to be hidden away.'

   'You mean to say that Bardo would declare war on the world if necessary? Then
   Bardo is a real Star Beast!'

   'Oh no. The moment we're forced to fight, we lose. So does the whole human
   race. All its hopes, lost. Because the hands and feet would have declared war on
   the head, and strangled it, leaving a senseless body with no judgement, no higher
   consciousness. That's why islands are being made ready-'

   'Such as Maui?'

   "No, much bigger than that. Ceylon is being cleared, and New Zealand and

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (183 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Cuba, in preparation. People are being resettled from those areas. It all has to be
   done so discreetly. You really have to help us. We need organizers. People to run
   the system. Not your Sam Shaws, who would shoot us dead if they knew - or
   your Maimounas either, whose motives are all wrong-'

   'Help you to drive people from their homes?.'

   'The whole world's our home. The whole universe is. Madagascar has already
   been cleared without any trouble - as a retirement zone for ex-Bardo fliers,'

   Tor worn-out breeding stock?'

   'Hardly! Bardo is the most humane system possible. We need senior
   administrators who understand the real problems, with feeling. I've chosen you
   as one. It's Yungi's future you're protecting.'

   'But Yungi's an alien!'I shouted, rising.

   'And your child. Who do you suppose that Asuran was you talked to in Miami?'

   'A programmed illusion. Probable responses to questions about barriers and
   things. Garbage in, garbage out,' I sneered, shrugging back into the seat.

   'Not at all,' he smiled courteously. 'It's the Bardo children themselves who
   operate the flights. Do yoa.think we keep them locked up underground? They
   know what's going on much better than you do. They use some highly
   sophisticated games equipment, hooked in to the Bardo helmets and the phoney
   Star Beast displays. The game is to keep up the alien masquerade



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (184 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   - with all the debate about mind and numbers and the cosmos

   - impeccably, and mesh this in perfectly with the body-field events of the flight.
   All this, mark you, on three simultaneous levels: the level of the friendly alien
   worlds, the level of the Star Beast war, and lastly and most importantly the
   human biology level. Of course, the debate with friendly aliens and the Star
   Beast war both really represent the same thing - only, in inverted terms! - the
   expansion of consciousness beyond its present boundaries-'

   'But babies are conceived during these flights! Are you saying that it's all just a
   game played with living human beings?'

   'Exactly! A game. A completely serious game. And children are conceived in the
   process. That's the whole point to it: to get the flier's body-field tuned for the
   critical period of conception. To harmonize the body-field "signature" of the
   Bardo child actually operating the game with the two adult lovers who carry
   submerged genes for such a child. To imprint this signature upon the mother's
   own body-field - already well trained to respond! - at a time when egg and sperm
   are coming together so that the chromosomes will link up in a positive pattern
   with the Bardo genes dominant It's perfectly possible to beat the supposed
   randomness of heredity, this way!

   'Don't forget what a sensitive receiver of body-field information a single sperm
   or an egg, or even a single cell, is. Evolutionarily, this plasma of ionized
   particles that we call the body-field forms the primary patterning system for
   organizing life. It's the earliest message device of living matter, Lila. Why, even
   inanimate crystals are brought into being by "preforms" -energy fields that
   anticipate the solid matter! The system exists even before life - for life to build


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (185 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   upon. Here, this force is brought to bear upon the message of life itself, locked
   up in the DNA codes, acting as a selective electromagnetic filter - right down at
   the germ-cell level - to attract the right combination out in the resulting zygote -
   the fertilized egg. An early follower of Backster's called Marcel Vogel was the
   first to show how people could think and feel their way down into the very,
   DNA molecules in a cell, using the body-field, and influence them.

   'The second flight, a week later, is to reinforce the field that's been imprinted,
   just in case the mother's womb aborts the slightly alien "wavelength" of the
   blastula - that's the pre-embryo stage, attached to the wall of the womb by now,
   with its future "map" determined, but still amorphous so far as the organization
   of the cells goes....

   'This is how Future Humanity presides over its own conception, Lila.; Almost by
   its own bootstraps! Obviously the Bardo children have to operate the game. How
   else? They show us the way - towards themselves. They've been being born and
   growing up for a long time now, in increasing numbers, with their own adults
   supervising them. It's down to a fine art now. And in the process of imprinting
   the pattern they educate and strengthen their own body-fields-'

   'They programme the flights? Then they programmed Kushog's flight - to drive
   him mad!'

   Feng shook his head impatiently. 'I already told you that was an accident! A
   mistake! Listen to me. Maimouna set wicked traps for you, that one did. Well,
   she's flying at noon -to get herself fertilized.' He chuckled. 'It's funny how people
   always imagine they get pregnant on the second flight, just because there are
   always two flights in succession...Come along and see for yourself, Lila. You'll


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (186 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   understand the process better.'

   'Do you think I want to see her making love? You sound like a brothel manager!'

   'No, it's abstract. Schematic - you'll see. No one-way mirrors. For the hundredth
   time, we respect human beings. What are we doing, otherwise?'

   My rage at Feng was by now so icy cold that it had frozen tight inside me. It
   couldn't function any more; it only sat inside me like a block doing nothing. And
   curiosity did draw me; I had to know.

   I nodded dumbly.

   He escorted me down to the Hinge Room at the bottom of the palace; thence
   down by the elevator to the huge cavern, where a jeep and a truck were parked,
   driverless and empty. He pushed a button by the elevator door to illuminate the
   cave temporarily, and led me across to one of'tthe great steel tunnel doors, where
   he pushed his 'credit' card into a slot and punched out a code on a little panel of
   numbered buttons.

   The door slid smoothly back into the cavern wall. Far behind, in the other
   direction, gleamed a distant penny of daylight where the exit road led out into
   Lhasa city,



                                                 NINETEEN
   We eventually reached a room duplicating the War Room underneath the
   Procyon Embassy in Miami. With the same rows of desk consoles. The same

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (187 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   display screens. The yantra nest The Star Beast looming. Twenty or thirty
   Dobdobs, each with three pencils, sat at the consoles monitoring the situation,

   'The men of war,' Feng murmured to me, as we passed by.

   The Raksbasa Embassy is always on a war footing, of course, but there was a
   genuine surprise alert not so long ago - as you know from poor Kushog's
   experience - so they're doubly on their toes during Maimouna's flight. These
   people are fighting a war. I hate to think who they would be fighting, if it weren't
   for the Star Beast.'

   I felt sympathy for these obsessed fanatics who all, now that I looked more
   closely, had something of a Sam Shaw about them - Chinese, Koreans, Mongols,
   Arabs or whatever race they were.

   'They'd be fighting your future human.'

   'Fighting our own future, yes. What a criminal prospect. Still, this way, even the
   potential criminals have a positive role to play. So they aren't criminals at all.
   They're saved. Put them in a War Room with nuclear missiles to fire and a
   human enemy to hate, though! Then they'd be real criminals.'

   We walked along a circuitous corridor lit by dim yellow lights. I had the
   impression that we came around almost a full circle in the end, bringing us
   nearly backing up against the War Room.

   Feng unlocked a bright, merry little room with a single large, kaleidoscopic
   machine in it, curving round a swivel chair, and looking like a computer
   keyboard mated to an organ in the most baroque, fantastic style. Over it, to left,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (188 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   right and centre, were three illuminated display screens. It was the machine itself
   that made the room seem merry, compared with the rest of this underground
   complex, where dour military purpose prevailed. This might have been a
   machine for playing music to all the senses at once - a scent and colour and taste
   organ, if such a thing existed! A machine for enchanting the whole human body-
   field. Dials and switches, pedals, buttons and pistons were all the colours of the
   rainbow.

   The machine was functioning of its own accord, though no one was sitting in the
   seat. Switches flipped, dials turned, pedals sank and rose fast and fluently. And
   the screen displays pulsed accordingly. It was quite a small machine, really. The
   swivel seat was deceptive - almost too small for most adults to sit at

   - A child's seat.

   On the left-hand screen floated the Star Beast, throbbing about the bindu point of
   planet Earth. As for the right-hand screen- Red clouds drifting past tall spires. A
   blazing, colour-drenched sky resting on spires- I saw a stingray swimming up
   out of the mists to meet me: and swelling out - till it had almost the same
   contours as the Star Beast. This must be an illusory 'Rakshasa' - and the
   landscape an illusion of the moon of Barnard's Star.

   The middle screen mystified me, though. A curious, soft skull swayed and
   trembled towards me, never still, never quite the same shape either. A great
   ram's skull. Its horns splayed out into soft buds at the tips. It had a single long
   nostril, with two minor cul-de-sacs near the top of it. And a great triangular
   lowered brow, from which pink tubes led out along the insides of the horns,
   away from the red bone of the brow. Away towards the end of one of these horns


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (189 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   glowed a tiny star of light: a bindu dot. For symmetry, this little star should have
   been on the forehead of the beast; perhaps it was moving towards that position,
   ever so slowly - then it would perfectly correspond with that star of light which
   was Earth, cocooned in its web of yantra forces. Ram's skull, Rakshasa and Star
   Beast were all basically the same shape. Unlike the Rakshasa illusion and the
   abstract Star Beast, though, the ram's skull looked more alive, more real, as it
   flexed and throbbed. The top of a 'spine' seemed to enter the base of the single
   'nostril' of the skull from below, too, pushing up and sinking down again, in a
   slow piston action.

   'Can you identify the middle screen, Lila?'

   'I don't know. It looks alive. Real.'

   'Indeed it is! That's a human womb, during love-making. It's Maimouna's womb,
   scanned through the belly-pad. She's flying, right now.'

   That dot of light. See? It's the egg coming along the Fallopian tube. When she
   flies again in eight days' time, it'll be fertilized and stuck fast in the womb,
   growing rapidly-'

   The star on the forehead, in place!

   The nostril was the vagina. The pink shield above - the lowered brow - was the
   uterus. The horns branching away were the Fallopian tubes, Of course!

   Switches flipped and pedals moved in and out spontaneously. On the screens,
   Star Beast and Rakshasa pulsed in patterns related to the events in Maimouna's
   body, the physical joining of her and her lover and the intersection of her own

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (190 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   body-field with her lover's; Mular, yes, that was his name. Star Beast and
   Rakshasa copied the changes in field configurations; copied - and modulated too,
   influencing the body-field events presiding over the egg's journey to conception.
   Lines of force rippled along the ram's horns, created a cradle of interference
   patterns, and the womb boomed faintly - a triangular drum with curved sides,
   held taut between two Fallopian tubes and a vagina.

   'This is just a slave unit, to record the moves. So we can supervise, if necessary.
   A back-up system. The machine actually being used is in a monastery on top of
   Mount Ga Dan some way east of here. That's your Tibetan equivalent of Virginia
   beach. For the Bardo born. A beautiful, isolated place,'

   The controls moved with a zombie life of their own, as though possessed.
   Somewhere, kilometres east of Lhasa, fingers were flickering over these pedals,
   playing body-field music.

   Childish feet were dancing on the pedals. One of the Bardo born was playing
   with creation, right inside Maimouna's womb.

   And with this toy he, or she, imprinted a pattern on the earliest moments of life-
   before life, even.

   With this toy a child was making a baby be something else,

   A baby such as my own Yungi!

   Enthralled, and horrified, I was only vaguely paying attention to Feng's words.

   '- How do you persuade submerged genes to express themselves, if you don't

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (191 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   know exactly which ones they are? What you can do is to provide the egg with
   the body-field environment that will draw them out, if they're there, from the
   moment of conception. The subtle body of old Taoist medicine is no figment of
   the imagination. It can certainly be brought to bear, this way, on something as
   delicate as the genome, as I said to you before.'

   Lights flickered, pedals moved. Somewhere upstairs, in a slow trance,
   Maimouna made love to her Indian, bewitched by false sights, false sounds, and
   hypnosis.

   'You must realize that the very physical elements themselves, such as sodium
   and potassium, of which our bodies and our brains are made exist because there
   are already forms -configurations - corresponding to them in the universe.
   Geometric entities of enormous power. Our brains exist, and function as they do,
   because these entities exist! And our brains are structured to evolve towards a
   knowledge of these underlying forms. Our ordinary body-field already
   represents them in a primitive way. The more integrated body-field of the Bardo-
   born represents them much better-'

   Some alien brat was playing music on her body: just as it had been played on
   mine, and hers, in Miami!

   '- Now, these forms aren't passive. They pull the wave-front of Being towards
   them. They act as attractors. That's how we draw Future Man into being. We
   collaborate with the geometry of the universe itself. The form of game we play
   on a machine like this, is the game of life unfolding to understand itself-'

   The idea of the whole world of living, working, breathing, loving human beings
   deliberately run as a biological game, for some warped ideal of an alien

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (192 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   superhumanity, sickened me. Feng was a traitor to the human race that already
   existed here and now. What existed was what mattered! Living now made a
   person - or a fish, for that matter - real. Worshipping the future was a sickness.
   An arrogance. A deceit. When Man tried to take control of his own evolution, he
   obviously became - inhuman. The proof was before my eyes - and burned into
   Kushog's brain. Inhumanity!

   'Attractor lines,' recited Feng. 'Canalized trajectories- spontaneous emergence-
   chreodic channels- levels of consciousness ... embryo ...body-field...' He gabbled
   his biological gospel at me.

   Maimouna would have sold herself to him at the drop of a hat for a taste of this
   sort of power.

   But I threw myself at the machine that was making an alien of her baby.

   I tore at the dials and switches. They wouldn't move. They were locked rigid -
   except when they moved of their own accord; then they forced my hands away,
   bruising and hurting them. I might as well have stuck my fingers into a running
   engine.

   I fought the machine in some accelerated moment of time -leaving Feng
   wallowing behind me in slow motion. Then he caught up with me and pulled me
   away roughly, anxiously hovering over his precious machine in case it was hurt.

   'Fool!' he said.

   And I hit him.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (193 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   My hand snatched a fire extinguisher from its bracket. It wasn't a fire
   extinguisher just then; I only knew what-it was afterwards. It was a club of red
   steel, the colour of pain and blood. My hand caught it and hit him with it.

   He slumped across his Body-field Organ. There was a little blood on the back of
   his skull, but not much, and he was still breathing; his pulse felt strong.

   He hadn't expected anyone could be angry enough to hit him, in the world that
   Bardo had brainwashed. Because he only thought about people as abstract
   things. Not as humans. Not as individuals. That was an oversight.

   Suddenly, I knew where I had to go. I pulled my own Bardo ; uniform off, then
   Feng's. Naked, his limbs were thin aad straw-coloured, with ridges and creases.
   He was a big crumpled spider. One of his pencils had fallen out of his pocket. I
   kicked it under the machine. Three pencils was quite enough spurious rank for
   me. I dressed in his clothes, then tied his wrists and ankles with my own torn-up
   tunic, gagged him, and stuffed the remains under his head to support it. He
   would be waking up. I tore out the telephone cable, then locked the door on him
   with his own key and raced back round the corridor in the direction of the War
   Room. The noise of my sandals slapped back from the walls like startled bats. I
   was perversely happy. I was shivering with happiness now.

   I ducked past the War Room, where those fools were betraying their world
   without knowing it. Arriving at last at the steel door, I pushed Feng's credit card
   into the slot and punched the same pattern of buttons as I'd seen him do.
   Intellectually, Feng might have known I have a good visual memory; he didn't
   take precautions against it.

   The door rolled back quietly. The parking space still held the jeep, though

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (194 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   someone had moved the truck out in the meanwhile.

   But I'd never driven anything in my life.

   And what about the checkpoint at the tunnel mouth? Would they really believe I
   was a Dobdob? I thought back. Was there a steel bar blocking the road, the same
   as at the Miami checkpoint?

   No, there wasn't. Because massive steel doors could block the tunnel entrance in
   a few seconds - so a simple pole wasn't necessary! I could drive straight out into
   the open.

   If I could drive. Shifting over into the passenger seat, I inspected the controls
   from that angle; from where I'd been sitting when Feng drove me here, with
   Maimouna in the rear. Concentrating, I tried to recall the pattern of movements
   of Feng's hands and feet when starting the vehicle and driving it; then I slid back
   into the driver's seat and turned the key. The engine sprang to life.

   The jeep promptly jumped forward a few paces and the engine died. At the same
   time the cavern lights, on their time-switch, blacked out, plunging me into
   darkness.

   I fumbled die jeep's headlights on and the rock wall lit up in front of me; also the
   speed-clock, but there was still precious little light in the jeep itself.

   And I thought. How once, long ago, in a shuttered room in Bagamoyo, a Chinese
   man had measured my skull with his fingers, in light almost as dim as this, with
   his eyes closed. His fingers had moved across my head by touch alone. To look
   with the eyes would have been to fail to see.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (195 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   So, calmly, I sat in the darkness, breathing in and out. After a while, I let my
   own body do what it chose to do, of its own accord. My hands and feet found
   that they knew what to do with the gear-stick and the three pedals on the floor.
   Pushing my foot down I pulled the stick into a nowhere-place, then backwards.
   My fingers switched the engine on again; my foot rose from the floor. The jeep
   backed out as I swung the wheel, and we were pointing the right way.

   The jeep bounded out of the cave, into the tunnel - bucking and lurching a little,
   since my body didn't know how to drive it all that well. Once it scraped the wall.
   But it drove; it drove. And fast.

   I passed the checkpoint at speed, waving a non-committal hand at the Dobdobs.
   One of them ran out into the road (in my mirror) and shouted after me; but I was
   already turning on to the long road with the archway and dodging cyclists, goats,
   a bullock.

   As soon as I was at least a kilometre from the palace I braked the jeep beside a
   group of boys in quilted jackets with long sleeves doubled at the cuffs. There
   was a chain of mountains to the east, and the road was heading almost due east;
   but which mountain was Mount Ga Dan?

   I repeated the name half a dozen times to the boys, miming 'Where?' One of
   them giggled helplessly, perhaps at my pronunciation; perhaps he had never met
   a black woman before. Another boy cuffed him reprovingly. A third boy laid his
   hand on mine, however, and pointed away down the road. Away and away.

   'Ga dan si' he confirmed. 'Ga dan si.'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (196 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   How far was it? I tried to gesture. The boy who had cuffed the giggler frowned
   at me and the other boy. When I tapped the pencils in my pocket, he only
   frowned more, and looked more suspicious. Why did I not know where it was, if
   I wanted to go there, even if I was wearing a Dobdob's uniform? He pursed his
   lips, then questioned me, politely but firmly in Tibetan; then in Chinese. I
   ignored him. Fortunately, so did the boy who was pointing my way to me. He
   ran round the front of the jeep and scrambled into the passenger seat, gesturing
   me to drive on. I had a guide. The other boy ran round the back of the jeep and
   plucked at his friend's sleeve sternly; but by then I was already driving off - with
   my guide laughing in the other boy's face. .

   In the mirror, I saw the boys running back along the road in the direction of the
   Potala. I drove faster, killing a hen in a spate of brown feathers.



                                                     TWENTY
   Eastwards out of Lhasa the road was wide and empty. I had more feel of the jeep
   by now and drove easily, looking around at the landscape, free and in the open
   for the first time in nearly two years.

   Thin copses of poplars separated green wheat fields from apple orchards. A
   caterpillar tractor, with wood smoke puffing from its funnel, was dragging a
   wide disc harrow through a vast field of soil. Riders on roan ponies were cutting
   over it, rifles with curved double bayonets over their shoulders. I guessed the
   double bayonets must be used for spearing any game they shot, at the gallop,
   without dismounting. A cement works was half hidden behind windbreaks of
   willows whose cascading foliage was white with dust-

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (197 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   My guide sat silent, realizing that we couldn't communicate. Did he think I was a
   proper Dobdob? Or was he a little rebel, off on an adventure? He had
   characteristically huge Tibetan features: strong nose and jaw, slabs of cheeks,
   and broadly-set eyes. However, an impish curiosity speckled his countenance,
   like gold in butter.

   The journey took the best part of an hour, I estimated. Mount Ga Dan must have
   been at least sixty kilometres from Lhasa. For thirty of these we were driving
   through tall pines and firs and spruces - product of the great reafforestation of
   which Maimouna boasted. Then at last we emerged on to a broad strip of waste
   land, fallow and unused, a sort of barren zone, a no-man's land; and the boy was
   pointing up, and nodding.

   Ga Dan was only properly a foothill to the stark, rocky giants behind it. Still, it
   looked big enough to me. Staring up into the sky, I could just make out large
   buildings clambering up one another to the summit like a flight of stairs.
   However, what lay lower down its flanks was hidden by steep forest. It looked as
   though the carpet of trees had been torn apart here and the end dragged up
   around the mountain in a cloak. Indeed, tonnes of topsoil must have been hauled
   back up the slopes at one time and bound with grass and bushes. Other
   neighbouring hills remained as sterile and stony as was Ga Dan nearer its
   summit.

   We drove across this no-man's land into the first dense foliage of the slopes. And
   here, in the woods, we came to a halt - firstly because the road took a sharp
   uphill turn, stalling the engine; but also because a large board by the roadside
   bore a red warning swastika, with lines of Tibetan and Chinese script. Through
   the foliage, coming to meet the road around the very next bend I caught sight of

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (198 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   a high wire fence, no doubt converging on a checkpoint. I pulled the hand brake
   on.

   The boy jerked a thumb inquiringly at my uniform, then up the road, urging me
   on. He wanted to see what was round the bend, beyond that fence. That was why
   he'd come. This was his adventure, his ambition. When I shook my head, he
   looked disappointed, then confused and alarmed - as though I was some demon
   he was caught in the woods with. Black Kali, who stamps on graves, no less!
   Deep down, he was probably as superstitious as Kushog.

   A cloud happened to pass over the sun just then. Its shadow swooped down
   through the woods, drinking the daylight. The boy uttered a cry and scrambled
   out of the jeep. He fled off as fast as his felt boots would carry him down the
   road - not, thank God, the other way.

   It was just as well to be rid of him. I ought to have dropped him off on the other
   side of the waste land. Abandoning the jeep myself, I cut away from the road
   through the trees.

   The woods were pleasantly scented and buzzy with insects, the ground underfoot
   softly crunchy with years of fallen pine needles.

   The fence, however, was high, sharply-barbed, and in good repair. Red swastika
   plaques dangled from it every hundred metres or so. A rabbit's bones and fur lay
   crumpled up against the wire. This might have been pure coincidence, but I
   didn't dare touch the fence now, in case it was electrified. It might well be.
   Fences around the eland parks inland from Bagamoyo were electrified to keep
   the beasts in.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (199 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   I followed the fence through the woods, right away from the road till I came to a
   stream that had undercut its banks, washing out sufficient space to wriggle
   through safely, at the cost of getting my uniform a bit wet and muddy. Then I
   really started to climb Mount Ga Dan, while the early afternoon sun
   intermittently stewed my neck through the branches. I paused frequently, not so
   much out of breath as to avoid an attack of giddiness at this height.

   The first sign of life I came to, after maybe twenty minutes, was an orange and
   white pagoda rising through the trees. Four zigzag storeys perched on top of
   each other with doors opening out on to each succeeding rooftop. On top of these
   four storeys squatted a round bastion with a doorway set into a splendid
   peacock's tail mosaic. This in turn supported a cubic room with a dome, from
   which rose the final, stubby cone of a minaret. A low doorway leading from the
   cube room on to the bastion roof was flanked by huge painted eyes: wavy and
   elongated under the flared brows of roof guttering.

   I walked around to the building's northern side, keeping to the trees.

   There, on the round bastion roof, a naked youth stood staring down at me. The
   youth had wings.

   The wings were white-feathered, tipped with red; each with a large black spot,
   like the mock eyes on a butterfly's wings.

   He walked closer to the edge. The wings stayed where they were. They weren't
   wings at all- but eyes - another pair of those undulating painted eyes. The black
   spots were the pupils of the eyes. Yet the shock junction of his naked body with
   the ornamented doorway behind him (and perhaps a touch of sunlight in my
   eyes) had really made me see a winged youth - till he moved. The illusion still
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (200 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   lingered, even so! His bare shoulders looked strangely deprived now - with the
   eye-wings floating disembodied behind him - as though the illusion wasn't
   exactly an accident, but that he had stood there deliberately to take advantage of
   it. His nude body looked as puce and stringy with muscle as a skinned rabbit's.
   Black hair was knotted behind his head. His face was sharply avian, with an
   eagle's beak of a nose.

   By now he was virtually standing over empty space, since there was nothing
   underneath the lip of tiles supporting him but a ten metre fall to the zigzag roof
   below. He poised himself, then suddenly squatted with a fluid motion. He
   lowered his legs over this thin rim and flipped his body forward and sideways.
   His arms twisted lithely upwards, so that his fingers caught the tile rim. This
   held him motionless for an instant. Then he dropped the rest of the way to the
   roof below. It was three or four times his own height that he dropped. Impact
   rolled him up into a ball. But he bounced up promptly, stepped to the edge of
   this next roof and dropped himelf off it too, using the same technique of catch
   and fall. And so on, down the other giant steps of the pagoda, to the ground -
   watching me all the time as though his gymnastics took no special concentration.

   He looked several years younger than me. Fourteen or fifteen. Hard to tell for
   sure, since the pagoda dwarfed him - yet equally he dwarfed it when he
   dismounted from it so casually; Since he was still staring at me intently, I parted
   the branches and stepped into the small clearing surrounding the pagoda.

   'I am Strider-Over-Buildings,' he told me (in Chinese first -I supposed - and then
   in English, when I looked blank).

   'Oh yes. And why do you stride over buildings? What's inside that building,

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (201 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   anyway?' I could see how his nose had been badly broken by a fall once. Which
   was why it looked so hooked. He hadn't always been so inhumanly agile. '

   He seemed surprised by the questions.

   'Buildings enclose human beings, don't they? Right! So, a Strider-Over-
   Buildings encloses these enclosures. Buildings are boundaries, consequently I
   bound over them.' He laughed. (Cackled?) 'Do you see the plan of this building?
   A yantra mandala in three dimensions-'

   'I see it.'

   'Yantras are simple mental maps. Therefore this building is a thought machine. A
   sort of brain.'

   'It contains a computer? One of your baby-making machines?'

   'You don't understand. This pagoda is a model of a brain. How is it a brain?
   Well, the lower floors are the ancient hind-brain, obviously. The round floor
   above is the midbrain. The floor of the Eyes, that's the forebrain. Man is a
   monkey riding on a lizard's back, which was once a fish. Look out of any
   window on the way up; a different view appears. The windows construct the
   views. Without the building, there would be no views. So how do you grasp the
   entire building, and all its views at once? Simple! My body strides over it, then
   the building is memorized inside my muscles. My body has mapped it. My
   movements become ideas. The muscles think too, you know. The pagoda is a
   mental exercise - for the body!

   'Come inside the building. Once inside it, you're inside me. We'll understand

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (202 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   each other better in the building.'

   'What's in it? I haven't time to waste!' It was mid-afternoon already. 'Is there
   anything in there?'

   'What is in there,' he retorted, 'is simply the chance of seeing what is outside. Of
   course, this chance couldn't exist, were it not for the building. The building
   contains itself, that's all!'

   'It's empty.'

   'Are you stupid? I just told you what is in it.'

   'Where are the machines Bardo uses? Further up the mountain?'

   'What is a machine, girl? Obviously this building is a machine. Depending on
   how you see it. A thinking-machine.'

   'I mean the machine for playing the Rakshasa game. Tell me the way, will you?
   You must know what a Rakshasa is?'

   'I was a Rakshasa. Any child is. That's before I became a Strider-Over-Buildings.
   Before I gave the problems to my own body to solve physically. How could I
   have found out anything about the meaning of this building, except by climbing
   it both inside and out?'

   'Damn you!' I swore, and ran on past him into the trees, uphill.

   A hundred metres higher, I looked back. The youth was still on the same level as
   me, watching me. He must have raced up inside the pagoda. He was back on the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (203 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   round roof, with 'wings' outstretched. Apparently hovering, levitating.

   I climbed for another half an hour after leaving this infuriating boy, and passed
   many other buildings, and structures resembling buildings, buried away in the
   woods. There were ancient Tibetan pavilions with verandahs and swooping
   golden roofs. There were blank oblong towers. Later, tucked away among the
   trees, were constructions quite alien in appearance, which seemed to belong to
   no human place or time, but rather to some zone of pure geometry.

   I circled a featureless, milky white sphere fifty metres high, made of glass or
   pottery, fitting into the lap of a dell like a huge egg in an eggcup. An impatient,
   finger-drumming music pulsed from inside it, as though it was getting ready to
   hatch.

   I came upon clusters of ten-metre-tall coloured crystals which were squeezing
   aside the trees, as though they'd sprouted of their own accord rather than been
   put there by anyone. Or, if they had been 'seeded' there, they were continuing to
   grow spontaneously. Among them were all kinds of polyhedra, from the simplest
   to the most complicated, with colours hovering between pure shades: colours at
   the visual borderlines where blue blends into green, or purple into violet, or even
   red into infra-red. For an instant I imagined I was actually seeing infra-red light
   from one of them with my own eyes. Light was astray in these groves of
   crystals; time too. Shining in the heart of one great diamond-shape was the white
   midday sun - though the real sun was sinking by now. A ruby shape held the
   swollen red ellipsoid of the dawn sun in it. A looming amethyst held night -
   velvet dark, with a galaxy of star-flecks, silver flakes suspended in black oil.

   Further on, inside a transparent golden crystal flask, apparently full of liquid, a

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (204 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   girl's nude body hung. Upright and motionless. She had small breasts, long
   trailing legs, all the; gawkiness of adolescence. Her toes didn't touch the base of
   the crystal flask, nor her head its top, which had a silver metal cap.. A trailing
   mosquito of a girl, trapped in amber, she hung there. Alive; with her eyes wide
   open; but not a finger twitched, not a bubble rose from her lips.

   Whatever was she floating in? It wasn't water, or she would have drifted
   upwards - unless, perhaps, she had learned to breathe water and her lungs were
   full of it!

   Pressing up against the golden, wall, I thought I could make out a thin membrane
   covering her body like a second skin. Maybe she took what oxygen she needed
   in her trance from the jelly-like fluid, through this second 'skin'

   Whatever was she studying by floating daylong in a vat of golden fluid, staring
   at the same point in space while the sun rose and set? Was she drugged, or was
   she there voluntarily? I had a vague feeling that she registered my presence, after
   a while. Just a feeling. I went away.

   Of the many other crystals I saw in this part of the woods, half a dozen held
   adolescent bodies floating in them.

   Yidags! I realized. That's what these crystals were. Some of them, anyway. A
   muzzy TV picture would show Yidags where the crystals stood - with human
   beings apparently reflected in them. The majority of Yidags must be in
   Kazakhstan but they were here too - great crystal bottles. With human bodies
   floating in them, in a trance.

   These crystals made the woods hum and purr around them, as though signals or

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (205 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   resonances were passing between them. At first I thought I was just hearing the
   hum of bees and grasshoppers. But - chirr! chirr! - there it was, off in the infra-
   red of sound.

   Next, a wet devastation opened out among the trees. A great scab of flattened,
   muddy slope, with a double circle of clay huts built in the midst of it and a lane
   of clay hoops leading out across the mud.

   Water trickled constantly down the incline, like lymph from ruptured tissues,
   spreading ooze and slime ankle-deep. And in this mess was built the village that
   Kushog had seen - with the same stone spit at the heart of all. The same
   Claypeople were moving about. I recognized them as human children in disguise
   only because the floppy black hooded coveralls they all wore had the hoods
   down at the moment. Fair tousled Caucasian heads, frizzled African heads,
   glossy Polynesian heads poked out. With heads fully hooded, I'd have seen a
   herd of slithering seals or walking worms - just as Kushog had. To move about
   at all through that tilted morass involved wriggling, sliding and undulating. All
   this water - source of the stream that had gained me access, and several other
   streams no doubt, nourishing the rich vegetation - must be pumped up Ga Dan,
   prodigally, all the way from the Kyi or Yalutsangpo-

   Overshadowing the village hung a long grey balloon tethered by cables - with
   banks of lights visible inside the skin which I guessed must change its present
   dank grey to silver 'dawn' or whatever else they chose to floodlight the village
   with. Aerials and other paraphernalia jutted out of a nacelle in its fat snout, some
   pointing at the ground and others westwards in the direction of Lhasa. While I
   watched, a spidery ladder uncoiled from the nacelle, letting a swaying black
   worm scramble down towards the mud.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (206 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   Did the Rakshasa world - wherever its stage-set was - have a similar balloon
   tethered overhead, as an imitation 'gas-giant'? Very likely!

   I certainly had no intention of getting caught up in any cooking games. I
   carefully skirted this sodden scab of open land, and headed on up through the
   trees,

   Till I came to the Prism.

   I'll call it that. That's what it looked like. A five-metre-high wedge of solid glass,
   or rock crystal, in the middle of a small clearing. It cast a fan of rainbow light
   across the earth; and the earth itself, hard and smooth as is china plate, had a
   mandala of thick silver wires or rods embedded in it like a complicated, life-size
   printed circuit. A schematic city with four gates at the four points of the
   compass, and as large as the foundations of a small house, this mandala seemed
   like the ground plan for a yet unbuilt building of considerable complexity,
   collapsed into two-dimensional space. Where the traditional mandala design
   places lotus blossoms and sacred umbrellas, there shone metal mirrors -
   discharging the prismatic light falling on that unreal, magic city out into the
   trees, the leaves flickering with rainbow colours like humming birds. A feather
   of violet sat on my shoulder. A wing of topaz danced on my palm. I felt the hot
   rush of living colour on my cheek.

   It was so enchanting; that tall translucent prism, the map of silver on the ground,
   the chromatic scattering. A detached, logical part of me recorded that in point of
   fact the prism wasn't planted at all deeply in the soil. On the contrary, it was
   resting right on the surface, upon a slightly concave base -like one of those
   rocking stones one hears about, deposited by glaciers upon mountains, which

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (207 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:12
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   look massively heavy, which a finger's touch can sway, yet which no force can
   topple. Indeed the breeze, gentle as it was, seemed to be swaying this prism as I
   watched, giving wings to light.

   As I stepped out of the foliage into the clearing, the walls and pathways of the
   mandala came even more alive with light

   They became a living mind-city before my eyes, a maze of consciousness. My
   feet walked forward of their own accord. Helplessly, not wishing to help myself,
   I entered the east gate of the mandala. All my life seemed to lead to this moment.

   And I was trapped.

   I was an abstract entity, made up of beams of light alone. All my thoughts and
   sensations were pure shapes of light. Yet I knew that I had a black, surly matter
   existence, really. What was matter, though? Matter was only energy bound up so
   tightly that it couldn't escape back into energy again - back into light. Yet there
   had to be matter (my solid black body) or what could light illuminate? There had
   to be matter, or light was unfulfilled. Without it, there would be no light. Was a
   ray of light 'light' while it was passing through space from its source to its
   destination? No, it was pure potential. It was pre-light. Light shines on
   something. The energy of light needed the dark energy locked up in matter, to
   fulfil itself. Yet the instant of seeing light extinguished light. Light was like the
   'present moment' of time. It hardly existed at all. It ceased to exist as soon as it
   came into being. Yet at the same time it was everything, the whole of everything
   there was, right now. And at the same time it was nothing: it had already ceased
   to exist. Energy was only a message from itself to itself, saying nothing except: I
   am! That was the whole message of light and life. Such an idiot message. Such


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (208 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   an idiot universe - that simply isl The Star Beast - this entity which existed in a
   total present that spanned all of time, and which represented the universe as a
   single instant- whereby the universe hardly existed at all, but merely floated as a
   tendency, a ripple in a void and a nothingness infinitely denser than any material
   cosmos! - this Star Beast which was pure Consciousness without any object but
   itself, swam out at me from the mandala. And swallowed me.



                                           TWENTY-ONE
   I woke up in a small stone room with a thin window showing (morning?) sky
   with huge puffs of cloud- It was so bright.

   Where was my Yüngi? Had she been born yet? Of course, or she wouldn't
   have a name! Where was she then?

   I remembered fat Kushog bursting into my room, after which they took my
   Yungi away in case he had injured her- But how could he have harmed her?
   With what? His own body had already been cooked, his feet stuffed in his
   mouth, till he evaporated - leaving only his mind running round in circles, in a
   hoop of clay! Claychildren had done this to him: Clay-children on a
   mountainside. Yungi had been taken from me to become one of them-

   Maimouna would be taken off too, to hang in golden fluid in a globe which the
   purring forest would wear in its ear-!

   And I'd been taken too - from Africa, from the magic of finding a coco-de-mer,
   from flame trees, from humpbacked cattle grazing on the beach, from the beauty
   of life buoyed up forever by our faith in our Alien Friends.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (209 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Now I lay in a stone balloon in the sky .. . As clouds unmasked the sun, light
   poured through the window slit, drenching the room. The bed fluoresced.
   Mandalas flared and spangled at me from the buckling, glowing stones of the
   walls; and I was thrown back into a clearing on a hillside, where I was entering
   the gate of the Mandala of Exalted Consciousness - wherein the Star Beast hides,
   with its monstrous knowledge of everything and nothing!

   'No!' I screamed, pressing my hands over my eyes. (There was light behind my
   eyelids, though! As if my eyelids had been cut off.)

   Someone walked into the room. Someone shuttered the window with a bang. I
   felt someone sit at the foot of my bed.

   As the light behind my eyelids dimmed, I opened my eyes again, a little way.
   The room was dimming too, its multiple images of itself sorting themselves out
   into one single stone cell.

   The someone who sat on my bed was Feng, with a bandaged head.

   'Where's my Yungi, Feng?'

   'In the Potala. In the creche. Being looked after, while you run away.' (Said quite
   gently, though.)

   'Where am I?'

   'You're in the Ga Dan monastery - right at the top of the mountain. That's where
   you wanted to get to, isn't it?'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (210 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy



   The room was fairly calm now, almost dim. A soothing stone cave, a burrow. I
   knew how mice must feel when they've escaped a hawk in the sun and dived
   deep down a hole. But while I thought how safe it was, the room rippled again!

   'Everything's floating, Feng! Nothing's holding it up, but itself!'

   'The building you're in, my dear, is quite solid, I assure you. It was put up in the
   year 1409 by a certain Zong Ka-pa, founder of the so-called Yellow Cap sect-'

   'Feng, I'm scared. The room came alive. No, my mind came alive. More alive, I
   mean. My mind was all mirrors for my thoughts. The mirrors were there to show
   me them, but all that I could think was mirror beyond mirror, with nothing in
   them. Feng, the universe doesn't mean anything, it just is. There's no meaning.
   Life is just being alive. I hit you, didn't I? I'm sorry. I had to-'

   'To see for yourself. Now you've seen. That's to say, you've seen a little. It
   overloaded you. Because you aren't ready to look at reality. Don't forget what a
   nest of separate sub-systems, often mutually deaf and dumb, your own mind is!
   How you drift from one phase of consciousness to another, buoyed up by the
   blithe illusion that the same "I" is always present. What a constant, repetitive
   chatter of noise goes on in your head, just to reassure you of your own identity
   and wisdom. Yungi may be able to see what you can't, when she's older. You'd
   better get some rest. Restore your equilibrium.'

   A bell jangled in the next room, or the one beyond. Feng excused himself.

   Though the room rocked and glowed, I got up after half a minute and followed
   him. The room immediately next to mine was empty, apart from a carved


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (211 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   wooden chair crawling with dragons, a large golden oil lamp, and a television.
   Out of curiosity, I switched the set on - and the familiar, throbbing ram's head
   swam into being. A Rakshasa - alias somebody's womb. The spawning ground
   for aliens, whose minds could match this Star Beast of a universe. Maybe in this
   very building sat a child as devilish as a Claything, playing biological music,
   luring humanity towards inhumanity.

   Feng's voice came from the room beyond. I glanced round the door. It was a
   largish hall, with a dazzling woven mandala of a carpet, and a few flat tasselled
   cushions to sit on, on the far side. The carpet wriggled and leered at me. It
   flowed forward to trap my feet. Each strand of dyed wool was a live sticky
   tendril beaded with bright attractive saliva to wrap round my legs and drag me
   down into its pattern to make more sticky poisonous threads.

   Slipping back into the darker anteroom, I listened to the two people who were
   sitting calmly on cushions on that awful, devouring carpet. One, of course, was
   Feng. The other was a pregnant young woman, with a round apricot face and
   black hair swept back in a pigtail which reached all the way to the carpet, where
   it warred with the weave, flicking and teasing it as she moved her head. A
   prehensile tail sprouting from the back of her head.

   Feng seemed angry. 'It isn't a pleasant or an easy task to rebuke your superiors,'
   he was saying tightly. 'However, I really should advise you that our ''Men of
   War" in the Embassy were quite upset by the escapade. Whose idea was it?
   Remember that ordinary human beings are still in the majority. Bardo has to
   concern itself with breeding out of them for at least another two centuries.'

   'But Feng, we've never tested the chrysalis procedure in interaction with old


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (212 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   humans.'

   'And now that boy Kushog's in a catatonic trance.'

   'His hypnosis of the guard showed a high degree of mental control. He may be in
   a chrysalis state of his own right now. When he comes out of it in another few
   weeks-'

   'No, he's showing the same brain pattern as for the encephalitis. The failure
   pattern. You ruined him.'

   'The experiment has to be tried. If we could force the chrysalis transition on the
   best of the old humans-'

   'Listen to me. The wasps' nest still has enough potential sting to destroy Bardo. If
   events took the wrong turn-'

   The woman interrupted. 'The Council think we should reduce the birth quota per
   head of population to zero point nine per couple. This will phase out the old
   population a little faster, but still quite gently. Over a period of, say, five
   hundred years, instead of seven. At the same time, it means we have
   progressively less genetic pool to draw on, to attain our own optimum population
   level. If we could induce change in the normal population, the whole process
   could be speeded up. That's the main reason for the recent interference. To see if
   it can be done. We know a lot more about the mental structures involved than in
   the beginning.'

   There's still a good argument for maintaining a large coexisting old population,
   you know! How many High Adepts can Nature afford? You have to have

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (213 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   farmers and technicians. You have to have administrators and social scientists.'

   'Like yourself, Feng, yes. But that isn't a stable solution. Not when the chrysalis
   phase is a general biological crisis for Humanity, as surely as puberty is. After a
   while you're going to find that the gene pool is fished dry, don't you see? The
   recessive characteristics will be far too diluted, in the residue. There'll be nothing
   left to emerge from Old Man. There'll be that huge residue.'

   'Who'll still form a majority, numerically.'

   'Exactly. That's why it will be marvellous if the Change could be induced in
   anyone with a promising body-field.'

   'What about the discrepancy between ourselves after the Change? We still
   understand so little about this. Are we all eventually supposed to become High
   Adepts, after another thousand years? Or will there always be the Low Adepts
   too? Or will they be phased out as well?'

   'Time and the Hligh Adepts will tell us that. We really should press ahead with
   the Kushog sort of thing, for everyone's benefit.'

   I stepped out into the hall, defying the shimmering carpet and all its sticky
   tendrils, stared straight into that bland apricot face and demanded:

   What are High Adepts? What is this about reducing the population to nothing?
   What are you talking about?'

   'Ah, Lila!' said the woman, unperturbed. 'That's your name, isn't it? You
   blundered into one of the Teaching Machines on your way up the mountain? But

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (214 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   you're still upright and sane. Congratulations. It encourages us to press ahead.'

   'Your carpet is trying to eat me, but I won't let it!'

   'Don't!' She laughed, smacking the floor, sending woven waves rippling towards
   me. 'Impertinent carpet. You'll have to walk across it, if you want an answer to
   your question.' She cocked her head on one side and waited, while the trailing
   end of her pigtail twitched from side to side like the tip of a cat's tail.

   'I don't know your name.' I stamped my foot on the carpet's -edge. The carpet
   subsided and behaved like a carpet wherever I walked, though distant parts of it
   continued to surge and heave and open chasms.

   'It's Fatumeh.'

   As soon as I reached the centre of the carpet - guarded by blue elephants
   flourishing umbrellas in their curly trunks - and stamped these down flat,
   Fatumeh uncoiled herself smoothly' from the cushion and held out her hand to
   pull me to safety. Briefly she held my hand to her belly, to emphasize that she
   was pregnant. Her gesture both blessed me and cautioned me. She seemed
   utterly innocent of any vileness in what had happened to Kushog or in what she
   was so casually discussing with Feng.

   'What people never actually realized, even when the theory of evolution was
   accepted,' she said gaily to me, as though continuing a conversation begun long
   ago - as indeed it had been, by Feng, 'is that Humanity didn't stand outside it- as
   an observer. On the contrary! Humanity would obviously have to pass away, as
   surely as the hominid pre-humans passed away. A new form of being was going
   to take its place. But how many people felt this in their guts? How many of the

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (215 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   old biologists, anthropologists or philosophers? Not many at all'

   'If I was a prehistoric fish and if there was any way you could really make me
   see my billionth descendant- I'd throw myself ashore in despair at being where I
   was. I'd lose the whole Wonder of living the life I actually had!'

   'Or you might just discover that you could breathe air, if you chucked yourself
   ashore like that!' She grinned. 'Even to be part of a long slow process of change
   and to know about it is surely exhilarating. Don't you think so? Just imagine how
   much more thrilling it must be actually to feel yourself evolve in this present life'

   'Individuals can't evolve. The Star Beast epidemic proved tüat. If there ever
   was a Star Beast epidemic!'

   'Did it prove that? Man is a neotenous animal, Lila. Once upon a time we would
   have defined this by saying that Man stays in a juvenile form for many years, up
   till adulthood. So there's plenty of time for a highly co-ordinated being to
   mature. But neoteny's quite common in nature, in another sense. Tadpoles and
   caterpillars are the neotenous forms of frog and butterfly. There's a chrysalis
   stage in between. During it, feeding and locomotion come to a full stop, while
   great developmental changes are taking place inside. Afterwards a new, different
   sort of being emerges.

   'Imagine the contrast in world-outlook, puny as their minds still are, between the
   caterpillar and the butterfly! Try to conceive the sheer reorganization of the
   nervous system which goes on at the same time as grosser physical changes -
   such as the sprouting of wings - are taking place! Let me tell you that up until
   now a human being has been neotenous all his life A larva from birth to death.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (216 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'Bardo brings together the submerged genes which allow a new human being to
   emerge from the Old Human. And it happens through a chrysalis stage - a
   puberty phase of the nervous system and body-field.'

   'Providing that it's properly prepared for,' added Feng. 'Even the Bardo-born
   might pass unawares through the critical stage if they weren't primed for it - if
   they weren't able to go into stasis in the Yidag bottles or the clay hoops. We
   need to blank out the noisy chattering input of irrelevancies before the mind can
   turn round and examine itself and make new internal connections. The human
   caterpillar has got to have chewed on the business of life for a few years first,
   though. Its mind has to carry enough material for the metamorphosis to work
   upon.'

   'A change in the pattern of the body-field tells us when the time is ripe,' nodded
   Fatutoeh. 'But Feng's right. The change still has to be triggered, and insulated-by
   blanking out in the Yidag bottle or the clay hoop. They're more than just
   ceremonial rites of passage; though they're that too. They're an environment for
   radical change - a physical chrysalis to wear while the mind turns inwards and
   the nerve-cells rewire themselves. I know. I've hung in the dazzling tank, and
   come out new.'

   'You don't look much like a butterfly to me. You haven't sprouted wings. You
   look like an ordinary human being.'

   'The mind changes form, the brain pathways forge new links; the limbs don't
   change. Still, if you filmed my body-field by the Kirlian high-voltage method
   you'd see wings, if wings are what you need to see. Body-field wings! Wings of
   energy which I couldn't have grown except in the chrysalis of a Yidag. Yidag's


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (217 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   far more than just a fantasy world that your comrades in Russia fly to. What are
   those supposed Yidag aliens? Superb data analysts! And they breed new Yidags.'

   'By laser beam interference patterns. I've heard.'

   'By being consciously aware of genetic data. They communicate genetic data
   openly, instead of its being hidden away in a coded sperm or egg package as it is
   with us. The information structure, you see, is revealed in the process of passing
   information, when two Yidags "mate". So the Yidag is the perfect emblem for
   the mind examining its own workings, and producing a new being as a
   consequence. Just as the Yidag game focuses the body-field properly during
   Bardo flights for the Russian fliers, so it prepares our children for the perfect
   chrysalis package. Do you see how neatly the "myth" and the facts of Bardo
   combine?'

   'There's nothing arbitrary about our alien worlds,' said Feng. 'Each in its own
   way is very thoughtfully designed to bring the Bardo stamp to bear upon the
   conception of a new child yanking the new pattern out of the Old Human pattern
   that submerges it! - at the very same time as it trains the child actually operating
   the game for the coming change in his own life.'

   I shivered. 'The "Old Human"? You're saying that there never have been any
   "full" humans in this world - till now?'

   'Exactly!' exclaimed Fatumeh. 'Only larval humans. Overgrown children whose
   capacity for the chrysalis change was just slowly building up, under the surface.
   No wonder the species acted so stupidly half the time! If the capacity ever did
   emerge accidentally in the past - and I suppose it must have done, by the laws of
   chance - any hope of going into stasis would be completely swamped by

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (218 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   normalizing, brainwashing feedback from Old Humanity. Encephalitis? Sleeping
   sickness?' She laughed. 'Those epidemics were just foreshadowings of what
   might be possible - but gone askew, before their time. The coma, in its mature
   form, is a positive not a negative event. Naturally, we're sorry about Kushog's
   accident- It may be that only the Bardo-born minority have brains "wired" to
   accept this sort of complex change. Still, we'll keep on trying.; Our High Adepts
   may find a way-'

   'So Kushog's accident was an experiment to force the change upon what you call
   an "Old Human"!'

   'Indeed it was. I'm not ashamed of it. He was switched online to an edited
   recording of the body-field and brain-wave functions of one of the Bardo-born
   undergoing the change - in a filmed location which I believe you've already seen.'

   'That filthy scab of mud-'

   'I still disagree with the experiment,' Feng said quietly.

   'Maybe the error was in feeding him a High Adept experience instead of a Low
   Adept one,' allowed Fatumeh. 'We ought to repeat the experiment with another
   flier, using a Low Adept recording this time. And the bottle instead of the day
   hoop.'

   'For goodness sake do it in Russia, then! In the normal Yidag context. Just so
   long as my Dobdobs in the Potala aren't ever thrown into a panic like that again!
   I really must insist.' You simply can't risk sowing doubts about the Star Beast. Or
   you'll be dead. The old human race will cut its own head off.'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (219 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'High Adepts, Low Adepts!' I cried. 'Are there differences among you super-
   people, too? Are some not "super" enough?'

   Fatumeh frowned briefly.

   'Low Adepts don't emerge from the chrysalis quite so deeply changed. The
   geometrical entities that draw life out of non-life - and consciousness out of
   living matter, and a higher consciousness still out of that! - aren't able to express
   themselves so fully. We can pretty well forecast from the body-fields of the
   growing children who will make the full leap, to High Adept - and who will only
   make half the leap. I'm only Low, myself.'

   'Does that upset you?'

   'Of course not. We stand between the High Adepts and the old humans, such as
   Feng - or yourself, who in turn stand between us and the mass of old humanity.
   Ours is a pivotal role. And we have made a leap, make no mistake.'

   'Made half a leap!'

   'Don't sneer. It only degrades you, Lila. Come! This is a matter for joy and
   celebration, not frowns and protests. Come down and see the emergence of an
   Adept. Today, as every day, we celebrate the smashing of another clay hoop or
   the decanting of another crystal bottle. To be a Low Adept is fine enough,
   believe me. I've gazed in that glass prism for hours, seeing the way things are.'
   She smiled dazzlingly.

   'Anybody can hallucinate. It's just a hallucination producer, that prism.'



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (220 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   'Not hallucinating, seeing.

   'I saw the planet Asura once, but it was all lies and illusion.'

   'I saw the young girl I had been,' she recounted raptly, 'the larva born of Bardo
   before I was a human being, and I saw the old woman I will be long after, my
   skin mummified yet stretching to contain this growing girl! For eternal moments
   I lived my whole life simultaneously, backward and forward, just as the universe
   itself exists. I lived my whole life through from beginning to end - not the exact
   details, but the general texture of my whole life - and it was good, even though it
   was terrifying too. It took a high indifference to overcome the terror, and profit
   from it.'

   'Yes, your high indifference for human beings!'

   'No, not that sort of indifference at all. A higher state Of mind - accepting, -
   existing. I was a simulation of God, pure consciousness, pure space, creating my
   life out of myself on a ripple of probabilities. I was the young person winding
   into the old, the old person woven around the young. The Prism held me tight
   and spun me within myself, like the "strange-ness spin" of an atomic particle.
   My hundred years' probabte life were pared to a point and dragged like wire
   through all my nerves, rewiring me to Universe-Time: time that is and isn't
   simultaneously - because the end of the universe, its highest co-ordination level,
   will form its own beginning. I live a little in Absolute Time now, Lila. Death
   means nothing to me. I always am. Can you understand this?'

   The horror of my entrapment in the Prism! 'This universe is just a light bulb
   switching on and burning out a moment later,' I said. 'And there's not even a light
   bulb or a switch or a power source! There's just a kind of knot tied in

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (221 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   nothingness that got pulled too tight and became something by accident for an
   instant. Is that what you saw? Is that wonderful?' ,

   'I saw it. And I stayed with it. It is wonderful. Because God is the void this knot
   is tied in - and I reached that void. Though what the nature of the void is remains
   for others, for Higher Adepts, to see- one day.'

   The carpet writhed and reared again. Molten gold flowed around the rivers of
   the mandate, bearing rabid energies along.

   Fatumeh tossed her pigtail. "What is the point of the Old Human - now that we
   have seen this? He has succeeded. He is fulfilled. Let him pass.'

   'What is the point of you - if you only want to be a void! What sort of existence
   is that?'

   'When we are one with the void behind the world one day, we will be able to tie
   that knot in the void ourselves. We will ; be God. We will be able to create out
   of nothing - maybe this universe, maybe another universe. Or universes. One
   day, together.'

   She began weaving shapes in the air, copying the warp and woof of the carpet
   with her hands. The tips of her fingers caught the sun. Her nails were mirrors.
   Where they moved, they still remained - as light-tracks burned into my retinas.
   They left indelible traces which the air retained. The mandala of the carpet wove
   itself into light, entire before my very eyes.

   'I always am, this moment always it,' Fatumeh sang. 'The boat goes round and
   round. Round these golden rivers of light! Nothing is lost that ever has been.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (222 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   There is nothing to mourn. I can halt time a little to show you this, I can lead you
   into the same river twice.'

   She wove till the carpet was complete, hanging there glowing. Then, with a
   sweep of her hand, she erased it

   At that instant, the sun jumped out of sight, behind the window frame. It moved
   in a leap - like the hand of a clock leaping forward from one minute to the next.

   My heart jerked with the shock. She had only mesmerized me with those
   flashing hands of hers! Hypnotized me. Made me dream my own picture of the
   carpet in mid-air. It was just a conjuring trick. My mind was so vulnerable, still.

   She'd not proved anything special. Anything!

   'When the dervishes danced themselves into a trance,' she said gaily, 'how much
   time passed for them?, Didn't they too dance to stop time? I can weave a shape
   that will halt time for myself for a whole day. For you, I can stop time for a few
   minutes. The mind weaves a chrysalis for-itself. One learns, inside it. About the
   knot tied in nothingness.'

   I don't know what Feng had seen. But he begged me, 'Come and see. A man, a
   woman. Two Adepts will be coming out to-! day. One from clay, one from
   liquid.'

   I went numbly, with him and Fatumeh.

   A crowd of children and youths tagged along with us, prancing and banging
   finger drums and cymbals, and blowing trumpets made of bone - human bone?

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (223 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   To welcome the emerging Adepts, Feng said. Naturally! It was plain enough to
   me that being drowned in a crystal of liquid or baked into a clay statue were
   initiation rites - to prove the power holders strong. A way of electing and
   perpetuating a private, secret ruling class, which seemed to have decided now
   that it could eventually do without any class of ordinary men to rule. Which, of
   course, was the surest, if maddest way of holding on to power forever! With
   what gusto Maimouna would have thrown herself into this routine!

   My vision was still playing tricks, and the top part of Mount Ga Dan seemed a
   very unreal town indeed as I stumbled down through the monastery buildings,
   the buildings flowing and twisting elastically like dream buildings; but I did note
   one blank tower equipped with huge horns and antennas which might have been
   the actual place where some brat was playing womb-music for transmission to
   Lhasa.

   But- had the glass Prism really been such a false experience? Such a phoney
   mystery? And only that?

   No! That wasn't true. I'd seen the Great Nothing, the Great Darkness at the root
   of all Light and Being. It had been a genuine vision - of horror.

   Yes! It was a lie. I'd just been dazzled into a fit, like an epileptic by flickering
   lights. In any case, either way there was nothing to be got out of it. No
   enhancement of life. No humanity.

   'The Asuran Intermix,' Fatumeh was saying, 'is a fine training for the young
   children in losing oneself and gaining access to a new and larger self-

   'You don't fly to Asura from Lhasa!'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (224 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   She indicated the huge aerials of buildings, blithely.

   'We're in contact with Miami and Kazakhstan all the time. We can fly to
   anywhere, from anywhere. You see, all three alien worlds are important teaching
   games, as well as genetic optimizers. Asura teaches the higher and lower mental
   states. Yidag prepares for the mental "puberty" change - the chrysalis shift - and
   lays the groundwork for teaching machines like the Prism. We have to have
   access to all of them. And, of course the High Adepts are busy designing new
   alien worlds, to incorporate new insights and techniques- It amuses our children
   richly that the outsiders take their mind games for actual realities-'

   'I bet it does!'

   The lowest of the old monastery buildings was the terminal for a funicular
   fatchet railway. A single line descended steeply into the upper reaches of the
   woods from here. We boarded a carriage (built like a flight of steps inside) and
   rode down. Off to the south I saw a lake of broken glass tilted on its side, the
   solar energy panels for the Ga Dan community. Trees flickered in front of these,
   so I stared down at the wooden floor to keep my mind and my eyesight clear.

   'Why do you put some Adepts through the hoop, and others in a bottle?' I asked
   quietly.

   Fatumeh replied, 'It's simply a question of which chrysalis seems more
   appropriate. As I said, we monitor the body-field and watch how well each child
   performs on the machines-'

   I felt sick.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (225 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   '-the Yidag bottle is a bit more outward-looking and connected to the world, if
   only because it lets the light in. Immersion in the liquid completely blurs any
   actual "view", of course. There's just sheer glow, rising with the dawn then
   dimming with the dusk like a very long sine wave - in a simple harmonic motion
   of light. So it's still a very cut-off experience. But the hoop cuts outside input
   right down to zero. It wraps the child up utterly in its own mind. Cuts it off as
   completely as a spaceman floating in a void where no stars are. Its own mind is
   all that it can confront.'

   'Isn't there some sense of touch? Some heat? Some pressure? The hoops must be
   a lot more painful than floating in a bottle. Kushog was tortured!'

   'No, the clothing protects. It insulates and isolates. It evens out temperature and
   pressure. In the initial stage, till the trance is deep enough, it actually cuts down
   sensation. You see, it's smeared inside with an anaesthetic gell. That's to begin
   with. Later, it dries out.'

   'Kushog-'

   '-wasn't ready for the experience. His imagination ran away with him.'

   'Why put him through it, then?'

   'He might have been ready. His obsession with chod- It would be nice to recruit
   directly from Old Humanity too. More continuity, if you like-'

   'Less guilt!'

   'There's no guilt. None at all.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (226 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   We quitted the train in a small clearing, where several woodland paths
   converged on an ancient carved slab a couple of metres high. Most of the old
   slab had been scratched and raked into illegibility, though not recently.

   'Peasants scraped the words off in the old days,' explained Feng. 'They thought
   they were magic. They brewed medicines with the powder.'

   Fatumeh grinned at human naivete. 'Taking their medicine the hard way!'

   To my mind, she and Feng belonged to a world of wild superstition too. Simply
   a higher version of it: more technical, more powerful. Reason and humanity had
   been tossed aside in a monstrous conspiracy, which had somehow seized control
   of the world in the midst of whatever troubles had actually brought down the
   previous rational, technological civilization which we'd all so cleverly been
   taught to loathe. How long had these worshippers of Future Man been infiltrating
   the world, till, they succeeded? For centuries? I would probably never know the
   real historical facts. History had been so cleverly warped, or erased. The most I
   could do was keep my eyes open and learn as much as I could in their
   stronghold- Somewhere, somehow, some truth could still be restored. There was
   still time enough, if their plan for erasing Humanity was to take several
   centuries, and if their servants, such as Feng, still felt insecure, afraid of the
   wasps' nest of all the ordinary human beings in the world.

   We walked through a glade, and came to the great golden crystal with the naked
   girl suspended in it. We squatted on our haunches in a circle with the others and
   waited. Minutes passed. More minutes. Everybody was quiet now.

   'Soon,' Fatumeh whispered, draping her pigtail over her belly.'It will be soon.'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (227 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   We watched for long minutes while sunshine flooded the crystal and insects
   buzzed loudly round it.

   'How do you know?' I forced myself to ask. 'Is there a time switch or something?'

   'No, nothing mechanical. You can tell by her height in the fluid. Ah. See?'

   A thin line of golden bubbles rose from the girl's lips. Quite suddenly she floated
   up till her head vanished from sight in the crystal's metal cap, which now began
   to rotate slowly. A dozen youngsters pressed forward to form a human pyramid
   up the side of the crystal, as the cap sprang loose and hung by a wire. The girl's
   head emerged, her eyes blinking. Her shoulders and arms pushed up, fluid
   rolling back down her skin into the vat as if it was all one single substance that
   could be infinitely stretched but never snapped. The sheer loyalty of its
   molecules was the reason for the membrane that I thought I'd seen protecting the
   girl's body.

   She swung her legs over the lip and perched there, flexing her body for a while,
   drawing deep breaths. Then swiftly she shinned down the backs of the human
   pyramid, which collapsed back to the ground around her. She stood there
   radiantly. -

   'How long has she been in that-?'

   '-Polywater,' added Feng. ;

   'Hush. Listen,' said Fatumeh.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (228 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   The girl spoke to everyone in the clearing, but it wasn't any language I knew.
   Syllables stuck together in blobs that became sentences, which themselves were
   blobs that formed larger blobs - Many-in-One. It was a language of flow like a
   whirlpool, a language of encirclement. It was a language that flowed like spilt
   mercury, bouncing, splitting, clustering, absorbing, in bright liquid blobs that all
   run together finally into one, yet carelessly handled could split into a thousand
   particles and be lost. That's how it sounded to me. It was a memorized mumbo
   jumbo. It was a magic ritual, such as the Old Magicians must have used to call
   down Storm Gods and Sun Gods, Gods of the Hunt, Gods of Power. A cryptic
   succession of nonsense syllables that made her seem a more primitive, not a
   superior form of human being at all!

   'She's been in the vat twenty days, this one,' remarked Fatumeh when the girl's
   recitation was at an end and she was leaving the glade accompanied by one of
   the adults. 'Her mind has been composing this- well, praise song, you could call
   it, while she was in there. She has a higher co-ordination brain capacity now. Her
   speech shows it. Important physical changes take place in the brain during the
   chrysalis phase, you see. The topology of thought grows more complex, more
   self-analytical. We all have an inborn programme for learning human speech.
   But the channel width of language is still very narrow - even though there are a
   vast number of unused simple sounds, in every language, that could widen it. For
   example, the whole of the English vocabulary can be reduced to one-syllable
   words without robbing it of any subtlety - there are so very many unused
   combinations! The chrysalis phase takes the speech programme one step further,
   by generating a potential for far denser, richer structures - with the language
   patterns of old as a sort of simpler, larval form. There's feedback-training from
   the evolved Adepts nowadays, to the time before she enters the chrysalis, of
   course. Now she'll have to refine her new speech among them. What we're

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (229 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   devising - and using, thanks to the chrysalis "re-wiring" - are higher order
   languages that can express vastly more, tersely. Actually describe the appearance
   of faces - or the activity of swimming, say - instead of just naming them with a
   crude label ...

   'Can a butterfly still crawl, after it has ceased to be a caterpillar? Of course, if it
   chooses to. Just as I am speaking to you - and Feng - now, in a way that you'll
   understand! But it's still crawling. It's clipping my wings for you. She's a Low
   Adept, like myself. The High Adepts, though- they can't clip their wings and be
   prehuman again so easily. Their concept environment is so different - their
   whole umwelt, their perceived environment. They represent the full chrysalis
   leap. That girl and I are still only partial leaps, midway between old and new-
   winged caterpillars, if you like. Actually, we hope to proceed to their level
   before the end of our lives. Far-Future Man as opposed, to merely Future Man -
   may very well have more chrysalis stages in store for him than we realize yet!'
   Her voice rose into a hymn of thanksgiving, a song of triumph. 'Including,
   perhaps, eventual disembodiment into a free psi-plasma state, a liberated body-
   field - without a body, able to draw energy from the sun, even from the fabric of
   space in ways we can't yet dream - till the stars are reached, that way! We will be
   angels, one day. Not I myself, but my children's children a hundred generations
   ahead. Though I live with them 'already, in Absolute Time. I am not lost; any
   more than Old Humanity is lost!

   'We may never die then, unless we choose. Perhaps we can embody ourselves
   temporarily then, in other animals on this and other worlds, even in trees, in
   anything alive - and be the tiger, or the giant saguaro cactus in the desert, or the
   whale in the sea, or even a beetle or a snail. These embodiments will only be
   games. It will be out in space - when we really learn to read the universe - that

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (230 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   we shall meet other great minds that are equals or superiors, and learn with them,
   or perhaps learn on our own, how it is that we will become God and bring into
   'being the universe which brought us into being] The gene pool will have to
   resaturate itself for generations, before this happens. That's the work, from now
   on.'

   She calmed down. We left the glade of the golden crystal, with the remaining
   celebrants, to hike through the woods towards the artificially wet scar of the
   Claypeople village.



                                          TWENTY-TWO
   To walk down that avenue of statues, knowing that there were human beings
   fastened up in some of them, made my skin crawl. The girl floating in golden
   liquid at least looked serene. The acceptable face of this inhuman, alien cult. But
   the baking of human flesh in clay to make a mental pupa revolted me and I
   flinched from contact with any of the vile objects - in as much as anyone could
   flinch without sliding through thick slime into another of them!

   The balloon was tethered low, forming a long grey roof. Bright sunlight couldn't
   play tricks with my eyesight, and I saw how foul, dank and mistaken all this was.
   This was the ultimate place where children were brought to pull the wings off
   flies.

   Half-way along the avenue, a crowd gathered round one of the statues. The
   majority were 'Claychildren' - their suits flopping about amorphously and their
   hoods pulled up over their heads. They stared out through red goggles, like a


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (231 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   band of mad lizard priests.

   The hoops were not so hooplike, after all. The human spine could hardly have
   stood so much abuse. They were more of a rounded triangle, with the body -
   hunched in a foetal position -forming the bent hypotenuse. In the village plaza,
   cane and spit baskets of the same shape - which Kushog, in his delirium, had
   failed to notice, or which had been edited out, somehow, for him - lay piled up
   waiting to be used as frames for new statues - banana-shaped boats for holding
   the body.

   Something wearing black shinned up the rope ladder to the nacelle of the
   balloon. Shortly after he or she entered it, intolerably bright blue light drenched
   the village, as the whole underside of the balloon lit up with powerful, yet
   diffused lamps. The lamps dimmed out, leaving the avenues haunted by ghostly
   images of the cky statues as wriggling spirits.

   More mystification - bright lights to blind you in the daytime!

   The clay on top of 'our' statue began cracking and crazing, shortly afterwards. It
   burst apart in a spray of dirty potsherds and splintered cane; a dried, black,
   leathery hand forced its way out, then a second wrinkled hand. Mummified
   hands. Baked, dried meat hands. What a horror - a body mummified alive, and
   still alive after it.

   The hands swung together in a swimming thrust, and forced framework and clay
   apart A featureless, withered head emerged. Followed by a shrivelled body.

   However, the dry black skin was already beginning to peel and shed itself. It was
   one of those slug-suits they wore, bone dry, ready for sloughing. One of those

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (232 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   null-sensation suits, slowly dried out and crisped, by body heat mainly I suppose,
   after the initial turning over the fire, till its tightening pull awoke the victim from
   his trance...

   Wearing it was a youth: unharmed, undamaged - his skin blanched white. His
   buttocks wriggled free. His feet kicked the remnants of the suit and clay away as
   he climbed down to the ground by himself, unassisted; a lesser distance than
   from the crystal's top. He tore the last black crepe fabric free from his eyes and
   mouth; and he spoke, too-

   Mumbo-jumbo!

   'His body speaks too, in concern with his mind,' whispered Fatumeh.'See how his
   whole body speaks!'

   As he spoke, the youth began oscillating. With immense concentration, he
   nodded his head, flexed his arms, bent his legs, and waggled his fingers - all in
   separate, contradictory rhythms, as though he was trying to suggest new axes to.
   three-dimensional space, trying with his own body to map out different
   dimensions at right angles to each other: each with its own particular frequency,
   yet all within this here-and-now space of ours. He looked... so distorted, so
   disjointed. Yet as he danced, and as he spoke on, in messages of the body -
   messages which his body seemed to communicate directly to my own muscles,
   and thus into my mind underneath my conscious awareness, without my knowing
   the content of what he was saying - the world itself began to distort, to fragment.
   I felt myself drawn inexorably in to his crazy multi-dimensional dance.

   'A High Adept,' breathed Fatumeh, "He will scale the heights'


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (233 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   A master hypnotist, she meant! I felt myself flying apart as though at the Dusk
   intermix on Asura; as though I'd actually made the bird fly from the tree - and
   Klimt's threatened calamity had followed. What happened then is hard for me to
   say - for this 'me' labelled Lila Makindi - because I flew apart into many separate
   selves. I had no self as such, for a long while. I remember now; but it wasn't the
   same as the experience. I was a hundred separate personalities, a hundred
   separate states of mind simply conspiring to think they had an identity together. I
   remember; but it isn't the experience -any more than the name 'swimming' shows
   the integrated complex motions of the body on the water. I was experiencing the
   disintegration of my phantom 'self' named Lila, into the separate coexisting
   spheres that underlay the 'field of Self'-

   I was: a Brain That Dreams- a wraith of fantasies conceming the remembered
   world, seeing them all with an internnal eye that had no consciousness of time,
   and hardly even knew how to focus. Any effort to focus it made it slide away,
   like a rolling socketless eyeball under the pressure of a finger, to refocus just as
   indefinitely on something else. If only I could wake this eye from its endless,
   rolling dream, I could tie a knot in this chaos of fantasies. Each knot I tied was a
   bow, that slipped free even as I tied it. I was only a Brain That Dreams.

   I was: A Brain That Works, That turns the head, that takes steps, plants the foot
   down, clenches fingers in a fist, opens the mouth to speak; a Brain that pumps
   lungs, beats the heart, swivels the eyeballs, flinches from fire, holds urine in the
   bladder, too. However, the Brain That Works was only the doing of these things,
   an automaton. It could not help my Brain That Dreams to tie that simple knot.

   I was: a Brain that Searches and Perceives. Even this state of mind swiftly flew
   apart into a Brain that Perceives, and a separate Brain That Searches, each

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (234 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   ignorant of the other. I perceived: a chaos of lights and colours that had no
   breadth, no depth, no height - a swirling blur without meaning, without
   dimensions. It made no sense. I searched - with all kinds of shapes and patterns,
   to fit on the world, to give it a form and make sense of it - but there was nothing
   to fit these on to, no communion with the Perceiving Brain, even though I
   perceived, and searched the very same scene (where a boy dicitator's limbs were
   disjointing rhythmically in a host of separate, private dances)-

   I was: a Brain That Remembers; a Brain That Records. I remembered and lived
   again my love-making with Rajit on Sinda Beach. His hair hung down in a
   black, water-twisted rope; my mouth was sweet and drunken with his palm-wine
   flavoured kisses. My Brain That Times and Locates raced away from the
   vividness of such total, resurrected memory -for this Brain That Remembers
   obeyed the same stasis of time as my Brain That Dreams; only, it dealt with
   What Was, rather than with What Might Be. With events not permutations.

   Somewhere between these brains, between dream and memory, there must be a
   Brain That Wills: a brain that turned all the possibilities of the world into one
   particular set of events, one reality; a brain that knotted the probable into the
   real- I couldn't find it! For there was no "I" to do the finding! The idea of "I" was
   only a conspiracy, an illusion. All possibilities existed. Everything - and nothing.
   And so my thought-states flew apart into lesser and lesser states: into cube, then
   line, then point, each along its own personal axis, of dreaming, working,
   perceiving, forming and searching, remembering - as the dancer bent each hand
   separately, in his dance, each finger of each hand, and each joint of each finger,
   in a semaphore performed with huge attention, that spoke directly to this flock of
   minds. The box of my skull and the scaffold of my body was the only agreement
   they had on who "I" was.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (235 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   If this was so for me, then indeed no human being really existed - yet! How I
   recoiled from this non-existence of myself, of all mankind, afterwardsl At the
   time it happened, though, there was no "I" to will me to recoil..

   Finally the world returned; and so did 'I'. The naked youth, his dance done,
   stalked intently out of the clay village - white as a worm hatched in human flesh,
   white as the droppings of a distempered dog!

   'You knew there, Lila,' insisted Feng.

   'I knew nothing,' I moaned. 'Hypnotism...hallucination- what do I know? Only
   that I'm always manipulated. Every human being is manipulated. But to be
   human is all there is for human beings, Just living in this world is wonderful.
   Loving. Tasting palm-wine on the lips. Swimming. Working, growing plants to
   eat-'

   'Being "human" in your terms,' sighed Fatumeh, 'is a state of hypnosis. "Just
   living" is just that! You couldn't hold yourself together there, could you? That's
   because there isn't really any coherent you to hold together. You're just a cluster
   of different states of mind, bound together in one large atom like so many
   electrons orbiting it. The electrons are leaping from orbit to orbit all the time,
   knocking each other out and excluding each other!'

   'Bardo is about the ... genocide of man, woman, human beings. Your Future Man
   will never exist. There'll always be something beyond, and beyond again. A dog
   never catches its tail, You're so wrong.' I tore a lump of jagged clay from the
   ruptured statue and pitched it high at the balloon. It fell short; It fell nowhere
   special.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (236 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   'Just because a more conscious human being is emerging out of Old Humanity, is
   that murder? So the butterfly murders the caterpillar?' said Fatumeh mockingly.

   I tore another lump free, bristling with needles of splintered cane, and I slashed
   at Feng and at pregnant Fatumeh. At least I was able to will that petty little
   attack - of my own free will!

   Not that I hurt Fatumeh; though I may have caught Feng. She waggled her hands
   in the air before my face; and time stuck fast for a moment, till she walked
   aside.: She was a very adept hypnotist. And I was three times vulnerable - from
   my first trapping in the Prism light; from Fatumeh's carpet-weaving trick; and
   now from the boy's mind-wrenching dance which made me doubt whether I was
   'I', a person at all. I was just a subject under her control. A puppet. An
   automatons

   Fatumeh shook her head sympathetically.; . 'Anybody can be hypnotized,' I
   cried. , 'No, Adepts can't be. Unless they want to be. But ordinary humans do
   hypnotize themselves almost all the time. That's quite true. Lightly or deeply.
   Your Old Human is still a preconscious creature, with brief gleams of true
   consciousness, fading almost as soon as they dawn. He's asleep. The lifelong
   dream is enticing and magnetic. Your Old Human can get very angry in his
   dreams. Like you, just now. He lashes out, to stay asleep. You must realize
   you've been shown something important today - woken up a little - not just
   fooled.'

   'I don't blame you for the shock reaction, Lila,' said Feng, touching his cheek,
   perhaps to hide a cut I'd made. Perhaps not, for I saw no blood. 'You can take a
   week to think about this. You'll have to decide then. That's long enough. We do

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (237 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   need administrators. Enthusiastic go-betweens. We'll certainly know whether
   you're telling the truth, when you say yes. As I sincerely hope you will. You're
   quite a transparent person, you know. We do know people.'

   Was I indeed? Who did Feng mean by 'we'? Grandeur by contamination!

   'Anyway, a simple Backster test can tell us if your yes is genuine. Any plant
   hooked up to a galvanometer will do.'

   'Otherwise,' said Fatumeh, 'you do realize that there's only one place left for you?'

   I remembered a red hen walking down a tyre track in Baga-moyo village,
   hypnotized by the regular line. Walking - until a dog raced out barking to break
   its trance-

   'Doesn't a dog fully exist then? Doesn't a hen fully exist?' I pleaded. 'Should we
   get rid of all the dogs and hens just because they're living in a dream?'



                                      TWENTY-THREE
   So I had a week to think things over, back in the Potala, by myself. A tough
   Mongol or Tartar drove me back to the Palace, alone. My door wasn't kept
   locked; but another patient, incommunicative guard sat in the corridor outside.

   Perhaps alien 'Adepts', far out in space, had indeed influenced the human mind.
   There must be other advanced thinking beings out there somewhere. So perhaps
   Bardo's lie was in some queer distorted sense the truth, to be discovered
   eventually by those 'disembodied' Adepts who would leave the Earth one day?

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (238 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Perhaps Bardo was even an alien experiment with Humanity, carried out so
   subtly and over so long a period that even Bardo didn't know about it! Carried
   out by intelligences so advanced that you would have to call them 'gods'! Does
   one argue with a God? Does one go against God's will?

   Like that hen in Bagamoyo, I brooded down this track, then down another; and
   always I was shocked away by a bark, in me: of anger.

   Yungi had been removed permanently to the custody of the creche. I didn't mind.
   She wasn't mine- Besides, Bardo had quite successfully taught the world for long
   enough to rein in the personal self ! All for the sake of a healthy human society,
   they said. It was really because they didn't think that the mass of people had any
   'selves' to bother with!

   Anger again. Fury at them.

   Bibi Mwezi had poured boiling water over her arm, to express her self!
   Maimouna had drunk a pickled spider down!

   It was nonsense about 'alien gods' guiding us. Faith in the Beyond used to be a
   fine excuse for ravaging this world with a clear conscience. There was just a
   different faith, now - in a different Beyond. Which let Bardo, with an equally
   clear conscience, pronounce sentence: Man is Past.

   All this time Feng left me alone.

   On the sixth day I demanded to see Yungi. I had to leave my room. It had
   become like one of their clay hoops fastened around me, cooking me into
   something I refused to be. The stone walls were mirrors, thrusting me back in

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (239 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   upon myself. Until I gave up my anger. Until I submitted. Believed.

   Suddenly I found I longed to see Yungi. Yet I was scared to see her, too. Did I
   only want to see her so that I could recoil from her? If I didn't recoil from her,
   but loved her and believed in her instead, why then I must clearly foresee the day
   when a gangling milk-coffee girl drifted down into a golden Yidag bottle,
   dangling there for days till finally she floated back up to the surface with a
   praise-song on her lips that I could only hear, not comprehend - a butterfly with
   wings invisible to me. Was I to love that strange, altered being, who could only
   feel a wry compassion for me?

   To know, I had to see her. It was she herself who must tell me how. My body
   said so.

   Opening the door, I said Feng's name to the Dobdob and pointed at the telephone
   nearby on the wait. He dialled and handed me the receiver.

   'Feng? Is that you? I must see Yungi. Only she can make my mind up for me.
   She's the part of me that's still outside of me. The part that I still can't reach. Can
   you understand that?'

   'Certainly. Pass the phone back to the Dobdob. I'll tell him to take you there.'

   When the Dobdob cradled the phone, he gestured me along the corridor with him
   in the direction of the creche.

   It was early evening now. A bright July evening. When we arrived in the creche
   the Sun was shining right through the window embrasures, illuminating the
   mandalas on the walls. The room hummed with that murmur of earphone music

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (240 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   like the drone of bees. Most of the babies were asleep. Over some of their cots
   hung large polyhedral mobiles of plastic or glass, turning slowly with shapes
   moving about inside them as they turned: kaleidoscope mobiles. The Dobdob
   greeted the Barefoot Nurse, who joined him by the door to chat softly.

   I found Yungi asleep, her head turned on one side, the eyelids like grey porcelain
   seashells. Her hands were bunched up by her head, near the humming earphones,
   the palms half open.

   One of those mobiles turned above her cot, presenting one transparent face after
   another so that she could watch the changing, scurrying shimmer inside it
   whenever she was awake.

   Kneeling beside her, I gazed up into it from her viewpoint, I saw a series of
   different illusion-mazes with a little red dragon running through each of them.
   The constant rotation of the mobile created the illusion that the little dragon was
   running this way and that, searching for a way through. At the same time, a
   multitude of small, cunningly arranged mirrors and sections of polarized glass
   altered the apparent layout of the maze while the polyhedron turned, so that the
   dragon image had to run a different way each time. An illusion chasing through
   illusions.

   Getting up, I twirled the mobile faster and Yungi's eyes opened. Her hands
   flapped against the mattress as though she was about to cry. On the cheek where
   she'd been sleeping was a pressure mark. I watched it slowly fading. Like the
   tiny handprint of a slap.

   Golden sunlight caught every dust mote in the air: the yolk of day, sieved from
   the white. I spun the maze mobile very fast, and Yungi burped. A curd-like drool

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (241 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   dribbled out of one side of her mouth. It smelt so faint, yet so penetrating. As if
   it could not to be washed away. If I as much as touched the curd with my
   fingertip the smell would sink into my skin forever.

   Kneeling down again, with the smell of the curd growing sickly strong; I stared
   up along with her at the vastly speeded-up series of races through the many
   possible different mazes.

   Dragon raced up one path. Which became another path. Which Dragon was
   already racing up again. Which became another path. Flash, flash, flash. The
   separate, alternative mazes fused into each other - till they were all happening at
   once. Till all options were equal, and Time got cancelled out by the inpouring of
   extra, co-existing Spaces. Till Time became Space. And glueing all these
   multiple Spaces together was that same intimate, nauseating stink of curd...

   Red dragon ran away into the distance, looking like a scuttling hen. Already he
   was setting out in pursuit of that same hen. For red hen, red dragon were the
   same beast - at different points!

   Dragon was a tiny Star Beast - the Star Beast of Yungi's mind, growing up. The
   beast that would feed on the hens of Humanity, scattering their feathers to the
   wind - though it was them all along. Yungi was watching me scuttle up and
   down in there, to left and right.

   Her curd stank of dragon's breath. My baby dragon! Where was the innocence of
   a dragon?

   Again she burped and drooled as she blinked into the many whirling mazes,
   which were all one-

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (242 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   'Lila!'

   A familiar voice. Silky and sly. Maimouna's. I straightened up dizzily.

   'What are you up to? Doting?' She laughed softly. My Dobdob guard looked
   doubtful but apparently the nurse reassured him. Maimouna must have been
   busy ingratiating herself. He didn't stop her coming in to speak to me.

   'You dropped out of sight. I haven't seen you for ages. Have you flown yet? I
   have, of course. I just finished my second flight.' She smiled confidently. 'I
   imagine I shall be flying again in another few weeks.'

   'Do you really? Well, which is your baby?'

   'Doudou? Who cares! I think he's down at the other end, unless they've moved
   him.'

   'Why visit him if you don't care?'

   I'm finding my way about, Lila dear. Feeling out the ground. Setting precedents.
   Discovering things.'

   'Insinuating yourself; I see. Tell me, do you still have that other ear-globe of
   yours? The one with the fly in it.'

   For a moment she looked horrified. She must know that the nurse spoke no
   English, but she glanced at the Dobdob anxiously.

   'Don't worry, he doesn't understand either-' Still, there were always Feng's

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (243 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   microphones to beware of. Maybe there were some hidden in the creche...

   Yungi's eyes were closing sleepily now that the mobile was slowing down to
   normal speed again.

   I murmured, 'Farewell, dragon daughter. And if you don't grow up - and if your
   life gets cut short - please remember that you've been alive. Which means that
   you've always been alive. You came into being. That must be better than not
   having ever been at all. Nothing's ever lost, my Star Beast daughter, isn't that so?'

   'What are you mumbling about?'

   'I want you to hug me, Maimounai I want you to look as though you really love
   me like a sister.'

   She approached me - rather as though I had a knife hidden upmysleevei

   'Hug me,'I pleaded.

   And she did indeed become ingratiatingly loving then -connivingly so, like a
   child trying to gain a present. She put her arms around me. I held her too, and
   whispered.

   'You're pregnant, Maimouna. Truly! They switched the spider and the fly around
   back in Miami. Feng told me. You drank the fertility drug instead. I saw your
   little egg drifting out along your Fallopian tube to meet Mular's sperm. Feng
   showed me it all on a scanner while you two lovers were flying. He was quite
   amused. You're going to have more babies. Till they retire you to Madagascar -
   yes, thats where they send you. You didn't know that - and that's just one thing- I'

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (244 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy




   Briefly, all too briefly, I tried to explain about the true aim of Bardo; to convey a
   little, just a little, of what I had seen.

   'They don't want you for a helper. If you still want power, there's only one way to
   get it. You'll have to tell the Dobdobs running the war what the Star Beast really
   is! And where to find it! On Earth, not sixty kilometres from here. Even here, in
   the creche-'

   I broke down; I cried in her arms. Because I was telling her to turn those men of
   war downstairs into warmongers once again.: I was telling her the way to revive
   the devil in Man...

   'But they needn't become baby-killers! The Bardo-born can easily miss the
   change in their lives if they aren't geared up for it. I could still take my Yungi
   away and raise her normally-'

   Did I really believe it? Weren't the Dobdobs all too likely to use their guns
   murderously and indiscriminately, in rage at the conspiracy they'd been so
   unwittingly protecting?

   Maybe not. Humanity might still rise against Bardo with a compassionate anger.
   There'd been one and a half centuries of Social Ecology - a blessing in itself,
   even if its foundations were a lie! We might still be able to keep the spirit of the
   society that Bardo had created, even in the midst of cutting, off its head- It
   mightn't happen too bloodily.

   'Make the ordinary Dobdobs understand what the Kushog emergency was really
   about! Lead them down the corridors to the room behind their War Room! Drink


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (245 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   your other drug so that you can lose the baby, then you'll have to fly again and
   go down there, won't you? You'll become their queen, their liberator. Fate threw
   us together so that you could have this chance.'

   She pulled away from me, frowning.

   'You really must hate me, mustn't you, Lila?' She lowered her voice with
   exaggerated caution. 'Just because I couldn't give you any of the drug! When I
   even took the trouble to explain how there was only enough for one dose! When
   I went out of my way to tell you!'

   'But- don't you believe- anything I said? I thought you wanted to find out what
   Feng really knew!' I stared at her, and I realized that actually she was looking
   utterly crafty. Oh yes, she had taken it in. She was just faking - while she
   thought about it!

   'If I did believe all that, my dear, would I run back to my room and drink that fly-
   juice just on your say-so?'

   'Wait till the end of the month. You'll know you've been tricked by then. And not
   by me.'

   'Obviously I shall wait till the end of die month.'

   'If it's too late by then-'

   'You see, there's a world of difference between a contraceptive - and an abortion
   drug! So you couldn't trick me, if that was the idea.'



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (246 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   '-you'll have to find some other way. Oh!' I realized what she had just said. Of
   course! Why else would they have left the fly-globe with her, if it was anything
   more than a mere toy during her pregnancy? No wonder I was puzzling her, as I
   grasped frantically at any straw. 'You must get down there somehow, Maimouna.
   If you're so clever at finding your way about!'

   'I'm sure I could.'

   'You must wake the Dobdobs up. Maybe you can work through Chang? But
   that5s dangerous - just telling one Dob-dob. You must tell them all! I can't
   manage it. You're still practically a free agent compared with me. You have to be
   their liberator. And everybody's!'

   'Maimouna shall make up her own mind what's best to believe,' she said with an
   oblique smile, detaching herself still further, veering towards the door. 'And
   what's best to do. Speaking as a free agent, I shall bear it all in mind, my dear, I
   promise you.'

   Yes she would. She must. Feng must see his contempt for fallible, human
   Maimouna rebound. I'd planted the seed. Even though it was the power, not the
   truth, she cared about!

   With a wink, she took her leave of me. Not as someone mocking me - but as my
   accomplice, I hoped.

   But what about me, now? My own time had run out. Feng had said they would
   know if I was telling the truth if I said yes and didn't really mean it. And if they
   were in any doubt, a mere plant hooked up to a galvanometer could tell them! I
   had to believe it. But if I said no, and my Dobdob guard reported me talking to

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (247 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   Maimouna - she would never be able to act, in my absence.

   Something had to distract him completely. Something that closed my case
   forever in Feng's mind too - leaving Maimouna free.

   Yungi lay naked in the cot except for the nappy tied round her middle. No
   pillow, of course. And too warm for a blanket this July night.

   A few clean nappy towels lay on a shelf. I snatched hold of these. My Dobdob
   was still looking vaguely out along the corridor, where Maimouna had departed.
   The nurse, then-! She would have to see me.

   I tugged the earphones off Yungi's head, waking her up with a little grunt of
   surprise. It took a while before she actually started crying at the disturbance.
   Such a while.

   Then I pressed the soft heap down upon her upturned, noisy face.

   I pressed gently. As ineffectively as I could.

   At last the nurse cried out in Tibetan.

   The Dobdob reached me first - pulling me away violently and quickly towards
   the door. It had surely only taken seconds but I couldn't be sure that Yungi was
   still alive. I couldn't see her! She might have breathed in strands of towd or
   vomited and choked on that.

   Neither could I hear her crying. I tried to hear her, how I tried. I cried out myself,
   involuntarily, as the Dobdob twisted my arms to rush me along the corridor. And


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (248 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   by then I was too far away to hear.



                                                 EPILOGUE
   It's winter and the wind rages like a wall of ice, up top. There's so much hail and
   snow in it, it may as well be ice: a stiff block scraping across the ice-cap from
   end to end. Nothing moves; everything is locked up tight. Even the wind is solid.
   Life stands still, transfixed.

   This place is called K22. K stands for Karma: the Indian word for what a
   person's deeds in life produce. Geographically, it's between West Ice Shelf and
   Shackleton Ice Shelf on the Antarctic coast. In summer I have to wear wooden
   spectacles with slits in them, to stop myself from going blind; the clothes I wear
   even then make me waddle like a penguin. In winter the storms force everyone
   underground for months on end.

   Elsewhere in the world, for the next few hundred years or maybe for the next
   few thousand years, they are busily upgrading the human race; that's to say
   phasing it out of existence. We don't discuss this too often, we prisoners. By now
   it seems incredible. We must have been sent here for some reason. Perhaps' we
   were saboteurs? Agents of the Star Beast? A certain woman called Maimouna
   obviously had no wish to be a saboteur. I waited and waited for us to be set free.
   Nothing happened. Maybe she had no chance, or failed.

   There are no permanent guards. We're left to ourselves, guarded by the
   environment. From time to time, Dobdobs who can't speak any of our languages
   inspect us and bring us more supplies. Bardo is a humane organization. Even if


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (249 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   not human? We're set tasks, too, by printed instructions, which we perform out
   of boredom, even when they're dangerous. Some long-lived radioactive waste
   still lies buried in the ice, here and there; so we keep a watch on the level of
   radio-activity with geiger counters. Or we drill down through the ice to discover
   what the world's climate was like thousands of years ago. I think they're afraid of
   a new ice age cramping their world. Or maybe hoping for it - to speed up events.
   Or else we do other chores.

   Karma 22 holds some five hundred people The oldest is seventy; he has been
   here more than half his life. We Antarcti-cans will be extinct before the human
   race itself. Fewer prisoners arrive every year. Conceivably Bardo is filling fresh
   camps elsewhere round the rim of the ice-cap, not wishing to overcrowd us?
   Who knows? Our nearest neighbours, K2.1 and K 23, are three hundred
   kilometres away to east and west; we have no contact.

   From time to time some of us still discuss the situation. On the whole
   despondently; old rebels have lost heart-

   The oldest prisoner spoke of someone called Hitler and his 'Nazi Party' who had
   waged open war on the world two centuries ago under the swastika banner,
   having mesmerized a whole nation into zombie soldiers. That group too had
   wanted to create a master race of superhumans. They too were sorcerers,
   mediums, who believed they were in touch with higher powers.

   An old woman corroborated. She'd read all this in some suppressed antique book
   too. However, she disagreed that the present state of the world was similar. Her
   anger had mellowed with age.

   'That man Hitler and his crew butchered millions of people and looted and burnt

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (250 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   the world. Bardo is benign.' It would be nicer to die believing that.

   "Maybe this is just a more successful second attempt we're living through!' I
   said, knowing next to nothing of the history they talked about. 'How can
   extermination ever be benign?'

   A negro from Southern Africa joined in. 'No one is exterminated. The world is a
   happy place.' He too used to think as I did - or he wouldn't be here.

   'Oh yes, for a few hundred years - till it's empty, except for them!"

   'Maybe Man as we know him has always been a precarious compromise,'
   suggested the old woman. 'Not the highest sort of life at all, but only something
   perched midway between the beasts-'

   '-And that Star Beast they worship!'

   'They don't worship it. They- aspire to it. You make them sound like Devil
   worshippers. I know it seems beastly, negative and terrifying to us - their sort of
   vision. I just don't happen to be Bardo-born. I don't understand what it might
   seem like to them.' We had all had more or less the same final experience, in
   Lhasa or whatever. Some people's spirit had been broken by it, even though they
   kept their sanity.

   'You're weak. You're old. I won't call you a traitor.'

   'We all have to live together, till we die,' nodded the old man. 'I still think that
   Evil - no, damn it, let's say a Power; an Alien Power, since it's very alien to us -
   has taken over the world, and we're locked up in a sort of human Hell because of

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (251 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   it. The damned thing is, we can't be sure!'

   'I can,' I said to the old man. He supported me, some way at least.

   'Did you see any actual evil?' the woman pressed.

   'What about manipulation, lies, genocide? Isn't that enough?'

   'But it isn't genocide,' protested the negro.

   'As for lies,' the old woman grieved 'they're right. If we're honest, our brains are
   lying nearly all the time, spinning fantasy after fantasy. Bardo has woven a
   coherent, peaceful fantasy of alien worlds, so that people won't start fantasizing
   hatreds and differences. Those who can't stop themselves from doing this have
   the Star Beast war to run. Whoever really wants truth - unless they're told it's
   something they haven't got? Then they only want it for the wrong reason, from
   resentment. And they can't have it anyway, because they aren't coherent -
   because they fluctuate from one moment to the next, from personal fantasy to
   personal fantasy.'

   'I'm talking about the facts' I insisted. "Not about this vision of the universe,
   which is just a horror, anyway.'

   The Prism! The knot tied in nothingness, by the turning around on itself of
   something unimaginable in a void so complete that it was denser than matter,
   denser than stars! The 'destiny' of the living fibres in the cord from which this
   knot was tied, to become conscious, then to become conscious of becoming
   conscious - so that this Cord of Being could learn how to knot itself! (At the
   same time there was no cord, except for the knot tied in it - even though that

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (252 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13
Ian Watson - Alien Embassy


   knot comprised a whole universe of galaxies and stars and atoms!) A knot tied in
   nothingness, only held together by the shaping of that knot itself, by the
   relatedness of itself to itself, by the reflection of itself within itself! Horrible!

   'I mean the facts about Bardo. I mean the fact that the human race - the
   wonderfulness of human life - is being reduced by Bardo year by year to a plane,
   then a line, then a point, so that it can disappear without a trace, while they
   "evolve" to chase this Nothing-Truth! Shall Man not even have the dignity of
   knowing he's being made to die out?'

   'We're just mourners, here on the ice, mourning Man, Lila,' the old woman said
   gently. 'We have lived. We have loved. We have burned bright. Now we're
   burning out. Nothing that ever existed is really lost Who has actually been
   killed? Nobody!'

   'That's the appalling, clever evil of it, compared with your Hitler or whatever he
   was called, without his cardboard superrace ! They've brainwashed you too.'

   Next summer, I shall set off westwards across the ice shelf towards K23, muffled
   up like a penguin, with packs of dried fish on my back. I may not arrive there.
   Probably I won't. When I do arrive, it may be just like here: another identical
   karma-prison. Who knows, I may even find a woman called Maimouna there? A
   woman who tried. If only I could believe that! Maybe the sheer fact of my
   arriving, of my leaping the gap, may shock them out of their apathy and
   acceptance over there.

   If I arrive, may I be the spark that leaps the gap! May I be the spark that sets the
   ice on fire!


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...enten/spaar/Ian%20Watson%20-%20Alien%20Embassy.html (253 of 253)20-2-2006 21:30:13