"I haven't. I'm only a dream. You're awake enough to realize that. You're making up both sides of this conversation."
"Then why am I making you up? What do I need to learn from you?"
"My fate," said Sayagi. "So far all your gambits have worked, but that's because you have always played against fools. Now Alai is in control of one enemy, Han Tzu another, and Pe
ter Wiggin is the most dangerous and subtle of all. Against these adversaries, you will not win so easily. Death lies down this road, Virlomi."
"I'm not afraid to die. I've faced death many times, and when the gods decide it's time for me to--"
"See, Virlomi? You've already forgotten that you don't believe in the gods."
"But I do, Sayagi. How else can I explain my string of impossible victories?"
"Superb training in Battle School. Your innate brilliance. Brave and wise Indians who awaited only a decisive leader to show them how to act like people worthy of their own civilization. And very, very stupid enemies."
"And couldn't it be the gods who arranged for me to have these things?"
"It was an unbroken network of causality leading back to the first human who wasn't a chimp. And farther back, to the coalescing of the planets around the sun. If you wish to call that God, go ahead."
"The cause of everything," said Virlomi. "The purpose of everything. And if there are no gods, then my own purposes will have to do."
"Making you the only god that actually exists."
"If I can call you back from the dead by the power of my mind alone, I'd say I'm pretty powerful."
Sayagi laughed. "Oh, Virlomi, if only we had lived! Such lovers we could have been! Such children we could have had!"
"You may have died, but I didn't."
"Didn't you? The real Virlomi died the day you escaped from Hyderabad, and this impostor has been playing the part ever since."
"No," said Virlomi. "The real Virlomi died the day she heard you had been killed."
"Now you say it. When I was alive, not one little kiss, nothing. I think you didn't even fall in love with me until I was safely dead."
"Go away," she said. "It's time for me to sleep."
"No," he said. "Wake up, light your lamp, and write down this vision. Even if it is only a manifestation of your unconscious, it's a fascinating one, and it's worth pondering over. Especially the part about love and marriage. You have some cockeyed plan to marry dynastically. But I tell you the only way you'll be happy is to marry a man who loves you, not one who covets India."
"I knew that," said Virlomi. "I just didn't think it mattered whether I was happy."
That's when Sayagi left her tent. She wrote and wrote and wrote. But when she woke in the morning, she found that she had written nothing. The writing was also part of the dream.
It didn't matter. She remembered. Even if he denied that he was really the spirit of her dead friend and mocked her for believing in the gods, she did believe, and knew that he was a spirit in transit, and that the gods had sent him to her to teach her.
The third visitor did not have to have help from the aides. He came walking in from empty fields, and he already wore the garb of a peasant. However, he was not dressed as an Indian peasant. He wore the clothing of a Chinese rice-paddy worker.
He placed himself at the very end of the line and bowed himself to the dust. He did not move forward when the line moved forward. Every Indian he allowed to pass in front of him. And when dusk came and Virlomi wept and said good-bye to all, he did not go.
The aides did not come to him. Instead, Virlomi emerged from the hut and walked to him in the darkness, carrying a lamp.
"Get up," she said to him. "You're a fool to come here unescorted."
He stood up. "So I was recognized?"
"Could you have possibly looked more Chinese?"
"Rumors are flying?"