"You still don’t like the idea?" I asked.

"I’ve been thinking about it all night," Festina answered. "Why am I so against it? What’s so great about my current condition that makes godhood feel like diminishment? It must be… you know…" Embarrassed, she gestured toward the birthmark on her cheek. "I’m comfortable with feeling beleaguered. Always forced to struggle. Even when I succeed, I mistrust the success, so I run off to find another fight. I don’t know who I am unless I’m up to my eyeballs in shit."

"I’m the same way," Li said. "Sitting around is exasperating. I need to be on the attack, to charge into the slavering horde-"

"No," Festina interrupted, "that’s not what I mean. I’m no adrenaline junkie. I’m an Explorer, for God’s sake. We don’t seek out trouble; that’s unprofessional. But I just feel I have to… like I’m being called to exercise my humanity…"

She blushed — her good cheek turning red. "I told you, I’ve been brooding all night. Never a good thing. I start composing soliloquies. Trying to rationalize my contradictions. Why can’t I believe that advancement might work? Why does something in my head keep saying, Human, human, human, I must remain human… as if being human is the most sacred state in the universe and anything else is sacrilege. That’s bullshit. Homo sapiens are barely beyond monkeys. There must be something better… whether it’s achieved by microbes and dark energy, or by meditating over a thousand lifetimes until you find enlightenment. Run-of-the-mill humanity cannot be the peak of creation. No. No. A thousand times no." She shook her head fiercely… then let it sag. "But I bristle with mistrust at anything else. Becoming more than human seems either a false promise or a genuine evil. Human, human, I must remain human. That voice in my head won’t stop."

"That voice in your head is Mara," I told her. "The god of delusion and ignorance. Or if you regard gods as metaphors, it’s the voice of ego."

"If gods were metaphors," she said, "we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It’s the imminent chance of becoming a god that makes me feel this bleak." Abruptly, she broke into a laugh. "Hell, Youn Suu, maybe some people deserve to be gods… but me? On a heavenly throne? I wouldn’t know what to do with myself."

"If you became a god," Li said, "you’d know then. There’s no such thing as a god with self-doubt."

"Another reason I don’t trust gods." Festina turned her gaze toward the station — the giant alien head with its insect eyes and mandibles. "I look at that, and I ask how a whole world could choose to abandon their very flesh. Everyone on Muta planned to ascend… and if the experiment had worked, other Fuentes planets would have repeated the trick as soon as possible. In fact, the other Fuentes did ascend eventually; they found a different way to elevate themselves, and damned near the entire race chose to take the big leap. They were so eager to run from everything…" Her voice faded. "I don’t understand it."

"Maybe they were bored," Li said. "Like the Cashlings. So jaded with existence, they’d do anything to liven it up."

"Are you bored, Ambassador?" I asked.

"I’m cold and tired and hungry," he replied… as if that answered my question.

"In any civilization, some people are bound to be bored," Festina said. "But the whole species? Bored to the point where they’d rip their bodies into smoke in the hope of becoming something better?"

"The Unity does much the same," I pointed out. "They’re ready to engineer their bodies, their DNA, their language, their religion, all in the name of becoming more than human. The Technocracy is heading that way too. We haven’t gone as far as the Unity, but that’s because we’re in denial — publicly pretending we don’t believe in gene-splicing babies, while privately spending billions on the black market. I was engineered. Ubatu was too, right?"

She nodded… and looked grateful I’d involved her in the conversation rather than treating her like some speechless wad of flotsam heaped on the sand. I turned to Li. "Did your parents build you inside a test tube?"

"Of course," he said. "Otherwise, I couldn’t compete with engineered children. Everyone who rises to the top has boosted DNA."

He glanced at Festina as if he expected confirmation. "I have no idea whether I was engineered," Festina muttered. "I was adopted."

"So?" Li asked. "The adoption agency must have supplied your genetic history when you came of age."

"There was no adoption agency." Festina had dropped her gaze to the sand under our feet.

"You mean you were found on a doorstep?" Li asked.

"Yes. Literally." She lifted her head, and defiance burned in her eyes. "I was left on the steps of a church, all right? Presumably because my real parents didn’t want a blemished child." Festina jutted out her chin, raising her birthmarked cheek higher. "My adoptive parents weren’t so picky."

Suddenly, she whirled on me. "Why the hell are you smiling?"

"You were adopted," I said. I was more than just smiling — I was trying not to laugh. "You were adopted."

The exhilaration of comprehension. In the blink of an eye, I’d seen the truth. Why the Balrog kept filling my head with the Ghost Fountain Pagoda and the Arboretum of Heroes. Why the statues had become Tut and other Explorers, each one marked by an alien presence. Why the Balrog only infected Buddhist women, and even why that voice in Festina’s head kept repeating, Human, human, I must remain human.

I knew. I understood. Gods and Buddhas, demigods and myths. The Balrog and other powerful aliens working together on a project.

"Festina," I said, "you came out of nowhere, real parents unknown. You can jog half an hour with me on your shoulder and have enough strength left to fight two Rexies. You’re devoted to struggle, and refuse to rest on any sort of victory. Wherever there’s trouble in the galaxy, you happen to be in the neighborhood. Really, Festina, don’t you see?"

"See what?" she asked, her eyes fierce as lightning.

"That I’m not the only ringer in this fight." I gave her a rueful look. "We really are reverse mirror images."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"No. You don’t. That’s your nature. Facing down the universe, not sitting back to understand it. Prometheus, not Buddha. You mentioned Prometheus yourself while we were talking to Ohpa. You’re the classic Western hero who defies the gods for the sake of humanity."

She rolled her eyes. "I’m scarcely a hero, Youn Suu. Explorers who try to be heroes end up dead."

"You don’t have to try," I told her. "You just are. So am I. I’m an Eastern-style hero; you’re the Western version. Eastern heroes know; Western heroes do. Eastern heroes learn to accept; Western heroes fight to their dying breath. Eastern heroes are born with great fanfare in royal pleasure palaces; Western heroes are found floating in baskets and brought up by shepherds. Grotesque cliches, but that’s the point of the game."

"Game? What game?" Li grumbled.

I ignored him. "The players choose their pieces from threads of human culture." Threads of human culture: Kaisho had used that phrase in my dream. "The Balrog, for instance, picks Buddhist women. It seizes us, reshapes us, transforms us into our own cultural ideal. Bit by bit, we approach Tathagata. As for you, Festina… you’ve been chosen too. By some other powerful alien who’s working with the Balrog. Except that your patron picked the ideal embodied by Prometheus… and Hercules, Ulysses, all the god-defying monster-killers. You get the sword; I get the lotus. Meanwhile, someone else gets the plow, someone gets the scepter, someone gets the divine madness…"

"She’s babbling," Li said in disgust. "None of this makes-"

"Shut up!" Festina snapped. "I think this is important." She leaned close to me. "Who’s saying this? Youn Suu? Or the Balrog?"