They heard a faint voice behind them. "Not all of us, Gill." The brothers turned. They saw Tak Laleen, dressed again in the white uniform of the missionary. She came slowly through the metal panel of a door.
"You see, it is possible for us to learn," she said when she stood within the room. "I have."
"Then all your people—"
"Not all of them. A few, if they're fortunate."
"You did it, Tak Laleen; most of our older survivors haven't."
"They watched you grow up. The change was so gradual, they weren't aware of it. I fell into your hands at the moment when you were yourselves discovering your potential capabilities. I followed the three of you when you ran away from the sphere police in Santa Barbara. One of you had touched my force-field capsule and drained away its power. I had to know how you did it. By intuition I guessed something very close to the truth, but even so it could have unhinged my mind if it hadn't been for Juan Pendillo. He taught me what he had taught you—a new point of view, a new way of looking at the world. He was so gentle and so patient, so easy to understand."
"And after all that, you ran away from the skyport and betrayed him."
"It was a put up job." She smiled. "Juan and I worked it out together. He wanted to force the city guards to attack the treaty area; but, if my people refused to believe what I told them, at least Gill would try to rescue his father and Lanny. We had to make the conflict begin before you were armed. If you won by using a machine, you might put your faith in machines again instead of yourselves. It was a risk for Juan and myself, but more so for you. No one really knew what you might be able to do, or what your ultimate limitations were."
"There are none," Gill said.
"I know that now, because I've made the reorientation myself. I didn't then. The rational mind is the only integrating factor in the chaos of the universe—Juan told me that. It is literally true. Mind creates the universe by interpreting it." She put her hand in Lanny's and looked up at the stars patterning the void of night. "I wish I might say that to my people and have them understand; but the clatter of our machines closes us in. Our world will die in violence and madness, the way the skyport died tonight. We may be able to help the survivors afterward; we can do nothing now."