Star quest

characteristics, my lust, you'd buy time for yourself. You thought a good kiss would get me all heated up."
    "You aren't heated by anyone but old fools—"
    She leaped on top of a chair, sitting on the back, perfectly balanced, ready to spring upon a mouse. She looked down at the bed. "Old fool, is he? You don't know half of what he knows. None of us does. None of us can imagine just what he sees, Hero Tohm. Fool indeed! You're the fool. A damn fool, Hero Tohm. He has reason to babble: he
sees
. He sees it!"
    "It?" he asked, interested despite himself.
    "God!" she boomed, leaping from the chair to the dresser, sitting with her exquisite back to the mirror.
    "God, Hero Tohm. Seer sees God, and he can't take it Does that mean anything to you? Does it suggest anything? Seer looks down into the very heart of things, past the stars, beyond the realities and semi-realities and quasi-truths and what we call the Real Truths. It is all chaff to him, Hero Tohm. Seer looks around the bends we don't even know are there and peeks into corners we have forgotten about or never seen. He looks upon God. And it has driven him insane. Does that mean anything to you, Hero Tohm?"
    "I—" He started to sit up.
    "No. It wouldn't. You don't understand the concepts. But God, Hero Tohm, is a concept you should certainly be able to understand. Vaguely, at least. Don't tax your mind. You had God on your primitive little world, didn't you? Some kind of god. Wind God. Sun God. But God is nothing like you imagine him or I imagine him—or like anyone has ever imagined him. Seer knows what He is like, and Seer has been driven insane by the knowledge. So, Hero Tohm, what the Hell is God? What is it that could be so horrible that it has kept Seer babbling and weeping all these years? Maybe he doesn't see anything—just vast emptiness, pitch, void, godlessness. Maybe there is no God, Hero Tohm. But I don't think that's it. I think Seer could recover from that view. God is there. But God is something so horrible and with so many facets of terror that Seer never ceases to be horrified into insanity."
    Tohm grabbed his head in his hands as if to burst it, to smash it open. All he wanted was Tarnilee. He
thought
that was it. Wasn't it? He couldn't really put his finger on anything else. At least, he wouldn't let himself.
    She hissed scornfully. "Certainly I suckle him. He can't eat. It's not only a case of not being able to feed himself; there's more, much more, to it. He has reverted, Hero Tohm. If he could get his nourishment from a tube connected with his belly, he would be happy. He wants back in the womb, Hero Tohm. He wants swallowed. But he can't have that. Damn it, he should, but he can't. So there is nothing but breast feeding; that's the farthest back he can go. And he would starve it" he didn't have that Hell, maybe that would be better. Maybe it would be merciful to let his stomach curl in on itself, shrivel and toss about in agony, trying to gobble him up for nourishment. Hell, maybe we
should
put a bullet through his head and rip up his brain, let him bleed his soul out on the cement. But I won't. Corgi won't. The Old Man won't, and the Old Man has more guts and brains than all of us. There's something horrible about Seer and something holy too. Something holy that rubs off from that undescribed demon called God, Hero Tohm."
    "I didn't know."
    "Okay," she spat. "Then you didn't know. You
don't
know. But don't be so goddamn superior! Don't judge me, Hero Tohm, by what you think I should and should not do. Don't go setting my moral standards and values when you don't have the least understanding of what I am! Don't give me goody-goody nonsense. By now you should know the world is not goody-goody."
    He stood, crossed the space between them in a near leap, clutched her and dragged her from the dresser.
    "Get away from me!"
    "Mayna, listen—"
    She purred as he ran his hand through her great pile of hair.
    "Listen, I was confused. Hell, I don't know anything. I didn't ask to be here. I didn't ask to be ripped free from my village and plunged into confusion."
    She laced her arms around his back, cried into his shoulder.
    "I came looking for a girl. At first, I wanted only to find her and go home. I don't know any more. I have to find her now because that has been my motivation all along, that has been the thing that has kept me alive. It would be like cheating a dream if I stopped. So if I trampled on anyone, maybe it is worth it, maybe not But I