CLARION 209

William Greenleaf

"If you use the disk with her picture on it," Karyn added.

"Exactly. You mentioned that earlier, but I didn't see the significance. You said the personal Tal Tahir god changes each time a new High Elder is elected. You told me the new High Elder selects his own personal god."

"That's the way it's always been," Karyn said.

"Right. Which means Captain Anson from the starship Vanguard was probably the man who

discovered the disks and the chauka. That's probably what made him go off the deep end in the first place. But I wondered how the High Elder could simply select a Tal Tahir god. Now I think it was simple—he merely chose a new disk. That means the elders had a supply of the disks."

Karyn nodded. "That makes sense. But I don't see—"

"If you use the disk with Elli's picture, you get Elli. If you use the one with Lord Tern's picture, you get him instead. There are dozens of disks, each with a different picture." He paused to let them absorb that. "Doesn't that remind you of something?"

"Sure," Frakes said. "It's like a tridee cube. You pop it in your player and sit back in your favorite easy chair and watch the show."

"Right. The show is recorded in the cube. You can get any kind of show you want, from a murder mystery to a horror film to a nature documentary."

"Are you saying . . ." Karyn let the words trail off.

Paul nodded. "I think the Tal Tahir disks are the human equivalent of tridee cubes."

Silence descended over them while they absorbed what Paul had told them. Karyn broke it:

"Lord Tern was an actor?"

"Not an actor as such," Paul corrected. "I don't think the Tal Tahir disks were recorded with the same kind of shows we're accustomed to. I've learned a lot from Elli. The social orientation of the Tal Tahir—you can see it in everything they had, even the way their city was designed. They felt each other's emotions—and it would only be natural that their entertainment would be angled toward emotional experiences. If I'm right, some of those disks depict humor, and some depict the Tal Tahir equivalent of love stories, and some are Tal Tahir horror stories."

"Stories don't talk back to you," Frakes pointed out.

"These do," Paul said. "The technology of the Tal Tahir was also oriented toward emotional fulfillment. The disks were all designed to interact with the viewer."

Karyn looked at him sharply. "The disk of Lord Tern . . ."

"The disk Brill selected happened to be a horror story. Lord Tern portrayed a Tal Tahir with something inherently wrong. He hated youth rather than worshipping them. The role he played was that of a kra'ith leader who turned against his members."

"But Lord Tern wasn't dealing with a kra'ith," Karyn pointed out.

"Lord Tern thought he was dealing with a kra'ith. He fitted the structure of his story around Fairhope, the Holy Order and the human inhabitants of Clarion. And the mission he had to play out was to destroy his kra'ith. That was why he issued proclamations to establish the Sons of God and the God Wall."

"And Brill followed his orders to the letter," Karyn said bitterly.

Paul nodded. "Brill's interpretation of what Lord Tern did to his kra'ith members led to what Brill did to his own kra 'ith, which was in effect the entire population of Clarion."

"If Lord Tern was a horror disk," Karyn said,

"what was Elli?"

210 William Greenleaf

"I think she was a psychiatrist." Frakes issued an involuntary bark of laughter.

"A ... shrink?"

"It took me a long time to figure out why Dorland and I were having such a hard time

communicating with her," Paul went on. "Then I realized we weren't talking about the same thing. We were trying to get Elli to help us defeat Lord Tern and High Elder Brill. But Elli was designed to help members of a kra'ith overcome their problems and fit in better with their kra'ith brothers and sisters. Her job was to make kra 'ith members feel better about themselves. That's all she could understand, so she naturally assumed we'd called on her because we needed emotional help. She thought Dorland was a kra'ith leader seeking advice."

"No wonder you were confused," Karyn said.

"We were," Paul said. "Until we convinced her the entire planet of Clarion was our kra'ith. Then she understood, and she knew Lord Tern wasn't a good leader. So she offered the only advice she could. A new leader. Dorland."

Another silence intervened.

"If the disks are recordings," Karyn said at last,

"That means . . ." She turned to look at the chauka.

"It means," Paul said, "that the chauka and the disks are thousands of years old." He took the silver disk out of his pocket and looked down at it.

"We'll never get to meet the Tal Tahir. But I have a feeling they've left us something we'll find to be useful—"

A hoarse shout interrupted him, and Jacque

came clattering down the stairs. His words were drowned out by a sudden roar overhead. Paul looked up and saw a dozen silver warships hovering over the temple. The fuselage of each was emblazoned with a'bright blue crosshatch. The Fringe Alliance had arrived in force.