Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read Online Free Page B

belief in what could not be known directly. I said that was a good definition of ‘illusion.’ She said no, she knew which was faith and which was direct experience, but if I wanted to believe in the Queen of Air and Darkness, I was muddying that distinction, by taking direct experience of deception for truth. I said there was more than one kind of truth and she wasn’t capable of seeing that psychological truth, the truth of fiction and poetry, has its own validity. I said the really intelligent mind could hold both the truth and untruth of the alien illusions in mind at the same time. She said that was semantic hogwash. I said she was incapable of seeing it because she was incapable of doing it. I said she was an idiot. Then we had a big fight.”
    Luke was startled. He’d expected an outburst, but not this eloquence. Anne sat there—mulish, belligerent, more subtle than he’d expected. Obviously she had thought about all this, perhaps even rehearsed it. She was intelligent and very unhappy. Luke would have to tread softly.
    “How did the fight end?”
    “I moved out. I’m sixteen, you know. I took a room in the transition dorm.”
    This useful structure, unique to Christmas Landing, provided three months’ free lodging to anyone who asked for it. The intention was to house newcomers to Christmas Landing while they organized their lives as outwayers, the farmers and ranchers and miners in the hinterlands who supported Roland. The transition dorm also housed those same outwayers who had failed in those endeavors and were returning, usually broke and sometimes broken, back to Portolondon. Several families reclaiming their stolen children had stayed in the transition dorm, as did the inevitable drifters, petty criminals, down-on-their-luck gamblers. Luke could imagine what Chief Halford thought of her daughter’s living there.
    “Anne,” he said gently, “have you thought what you might do when the three months are over?”
    “Yes. I went to Dr. Cardiff and offered myself as a liaison with the natives. I said I would go live with them and report back, and that way his scientific team would get another perspective on them than just talking to people like Mistherd.”
    He was staggered. “What . . . what did Dr. Cardiff say?”
    “He said no.”
    Of course he had. Project Recovery was bringing children back, not sending them out. And no matter what this frontier town said, to Luke, sixteen was still a child.
    Anne leaned forward in her chair. “You think it’s a stupid idea, too.”
    “Not necessarily.” She was looking for a fight, but she wasn’t going to get it from him. “In time, it may be a viable one. But neither the natives nor we may be ready for it just now.”
    “‘May,’ ‘may,’—aren’t you ever definite, doctor?”
    “Yes,” he said, and she got the joke and smiled. The tension dissipated a little, but only a little.
    “I’m going now,” she said. “The session’s over.”
    “Yes, it is, but Anne—don’t go thinking that I’m in the same camp as your mother. I think your . . . your interest in the natives and their abilities shows a genuine intellectual curiosity. And I believe you are stable enough to tell the difference between illusion and reality.”
    He was rewarded with her rare smile. “Thanks.” And then, fiercely, “All that people like my mother can think to do with illusion is wall themselves away from it. Instead of exploring what good it might bring to us.”
    It had not brought anything good to Mistherd, or to Shadow-of-a-Dream. Neither of them, however, had Anne’s obstinate clarity. At the same time, Luke was afraid that, in the effort to keep her from stopping therapy, he had offered her too much encouragement. Perhaps he should not have taken this assignment; he was too sick, too old. His head hurt.
    “I’ll see you Tuesday,” he said to Anne. All at once, and very unprofessionally, he was eager for her to leave.
    “Yes,” Anne said.
    But Tuesday