ike the metamorphosis of a
caterpillar into a butterfly: a third-order being breaks out of the
chrysalis of its lifeline into fourth-order life. The leap from the
ripped cocoon of an unchanging reality is like the first animal's leap
when he ceases to be a plant, and the Change World is the core of
meaning behind the many myths of immortality.

"All evolution looks like a war at first--octopoids against monopoids,
mammals against reptiles. And it has a necessary dialectic: there must
be the thesis--we call it Snake--and the antithesis--Spider--before
there can be the ultimate synthesis, when all possibilities are fully
realized in one ultimate universe. The Change War isn't the blind
destruction it seems.

"Remember that the Serpent is your symbol of wisdom and the Spider your
sign for patience. The two names are rightly frightening to you, for all
high existence is a mixture of horror and delight. And don't be
surprised, Greta girl, at the range of my words and thoughts; in a way,
I've had a billion years to study Terra and learn her languages and
myths.

"Who are the real Spiders and Snakes, meaning who were the first
possibility-binders? Who was Adam, Greta girl? Who was Cain? Who were
Eve and Lilith?

"In binding all possibility, the Demons also bind the mental with the
material. All fourth-order beings live inside and outside all minds,
throughout the whole cosmos. Even this Place is, after its fashion, a
giant brain: its floor is the brainpan, the boundary of the Void is the
cortex of gray matter--yes, even the Major and Minor Maintainers are
analogues of the pineal and pituitary glands, which in some form sustain
all nervous systems.

"There's the real picture, Greta girl."

The feather-talk faded out and Illy's tendril tips merged into a soft
pad on which I fingered, "Thanks, Daddy Longlegs."

* * * * *

Chewing over in my mind what Illy had just told me, I looked back at the
gang around the piano. The party seemed to be breaking up; at least some
of them were chopping away at it. Sid had gone to the control divan and
was getting set to tune in Egypt. Mark and Kaby were there with him, all
bursting with eagerness and the vision of tanks on ranks of mounted
Zombie bowmen going up in a mushroom cloud; I thought of what Illy had
told me and I managed a smile--seems we've got to win and lose all the
battles, every which way.

Mark had just put on his Parthian costume, groan