‘Agreed, but where to begin?’
‘I asked earlier, why do we think? I may have some idea.’ Nakor paused, then continued, ‘Suppose for a moment the universe, everything in it, and everything that ever was or will be is linked.’
‘We share something in common?’ asked Dominic.
‘No, more than that; we are all the same.’ Looking at Pug and Miranda, Nakor said, ‘You call it magic. I call it tricks.’ To Dominic he said, ‘You call it prayer. But it’s all the same thing, and what it is . . .’
‘Yes?’ prompted Pug.
‘That’s where I run into a problem. I don’t know what it is. I call it “stuff.”‘ He sighed. ‘It’s some sort of basic thing, something that everything is made up of.’
‘You might have called it spirit,’ suggested Dominic.
‘You might have called it laundry,’ said Miranda dryly.
Nakor laughed. ‘Whatever it is, we’re all part of it, and it’s part of us.’
Pug was silent for a moment. ‘This is maddening. I feel as if I’m almost at the edge of understanding something, but it’s just outside my grasp.
‘And what does this have to do with putting things right?’
‘Everything. Nothing. I don’t know,’ said Nakor agreeably. ‘It’s just something I was thinking of.’
Tomas said, ‘Much of what you say echoes things I knew once, when I was one with Ashen-Shugar.’
Nakor said, ‘I think so. The universe is alive, a being of impossible complexity and vastness. It is, for want of a better term, a god. Maybe The God. I don’t know.’
‘Macros called it The Ultimate,’ said Tomas.
‘That’s good!’ said Nakor. ‘The Ultimate God, the One Above All as the Ishapians call Ishap.’
‘But you’re not talking of Ishap,’ said Dominic.
‘No, he’s an important god, but he’s not The Ultimate. I don’t think this Ultimate even has a name. He just Is.’ Nakor sighed. ‘Can you imagine a being with stars in its head, billions of them? We have blood and bile, it has worlds and comets and intelligent races . . . everything!’
Nakor was obviously excited by the image, and Pug glanced at Miranda, seeing her smile reflecting his own amusement at the strange little man’s pleasure.
‘The Ultimate, if you will, knows everything, is everything, but He’s a baby. How do babies learn?’
Pug, who had raised his children, said, ‘They watch, they are corrected by their parents, they mimic -’
‘But,’ interrupted Nakor, ‘if you’re God, and there’s no Mama God or Papa God, how do you learn?’
Miranda was caught up in the discourse and began to laugh. ‘I have no idea.’
‘You experiment,’ said Dominic.
‘Yes,’ said Nakor, and his grin became even wider. ‘You try things. You create things, like people, and you turn them loose to see what happens.’
Miranda said, ‘So we’re some sort of cosmic puppet theatre?’
‘No,’ said Nakor. ‘God isn’t watching us on a celestial stage, because God is also the puppets.’
‘I’m completely lost,’ admitted Pug.
‘We’re back to why we think,’ explained Nakor. ‘If God is everything, mind, spirit, thought, action, dirt, wind’ -he glanced at Miranda - ‘laundry, everything that is and can be, then each thing He is must be accounted for as having a purpose.
‘What is life for?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘It’s a way to evolve thought. And what is thought for? It’s a way to be aware, a stage between the physical and the spiritual. And time? It’s a good way to keep things separated. And lastly, why humans, and elves, and dragons, and other thinking creatures?’
Dominic said, ‘So that spirit can be self-conscious?’
Nakor said, ‘Right!’ He looked to be on the verge of doing a dance. ‘Each time one of us goes to Lims-Kragma’s hall, we’re sharing our life experience with God. Then we go back and do it again, over and over.’
Miranda didn’t look convinced. ‘So you’re saying we live in a universe where evil is just as much this God’s fault as good?’
‘Yes,’ said Nakor. ‘Because God doesn’t see it as good or evil; God’s learning about good and evil. To Him, it’s just the odd way certain creatures behave.’
‘Seems He’s slow,’ said Pug dryly.
‘No, He’s vast!’ insisted Nakor. ‘He’s doing this over and over a billion billion times a day, on a billion worlds!’
Tomas said, ‘At one time Pug and I asked Macros what the point was if we live in a universe this vast, this complex, should one little planet succumb to the Valheru. He told us the nature of the universe changed after the Chaos Wars and that a reemergence of the Valheru into Midkemia would change the order of things.’
‘I think not,’ said Nakor. ‘Oh, I mean it would be a very unhappy situation for everyone on Midkemia, but eventually the universe would right itself. God is learning. Of course, billions of people could die before something happened to set things right again.’