Torivor truth

  “You want certainty that a torivor cannot lie,” Trillian said. “I understand why. Has anyone ever contradicted this idea?”

  “No, people seem to believe it,” Cole said. “But what if you’re waiting for the crucial moment to tell the perfect lie?”

  “I can mislead,” Trillian said. “But if I truly lie, my powers will unravel. The control I exert over my surroundings is a reflection of my sincerity. My wholeness of purpose. Torivors are not perfect. If we were perfect, I would work in complete harmony with Ramarro. He is not perfect either. But torivors are unconflicted. He never pledged total loyalty to me, nor I to him. We leave unpleasant matters unresolved. We do not lie about them. We are utterly true to ourselves and to our word.”

  “What if you’re lying now?” Cole asked.

  “Some examples from your life will help you glimpse the principle,” Trillian said. “In the echolands, you were tempted with the opportunity to go home. Could you have resisted that temptation if you did not sincerely want to save your friend
s?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cole answered.

  “When you fell into the slipstream in the echolands, could you have survived if your desire to rescue your friends was false? Could you have resisted the sweeping force of the slipstream and the bountiful summons of the homesong?”

  Cole remembered that arduous moment as the slipstream stripped the impurities from his power. He could have let go and zoomed into the beckoning afterlife of the Other. But he still had work to accomplish. Unfinished business. He had needed to save his friends.

  “No,” Cole said.

  “Heed me, Cole,” Trillian said. “I experienced that moment in your mind as vividly as if I had lived it. If I heard the summons of the homesong as you did under those conditions, I would have advanced into the next world. As a caveat, I am not sure that I would have heard the same music you did. I may not have a separate essence as you do. What I seem to be may be all I am. To die in time could be the true end of a torivor. But if I heard that song calling me onward to a superior eternity . . . I’m not sure what desire would be strong enough to anchor me to this one.”

  “You’re saying the slipstream worked like a lie detector,” Cole said.

  “Among other things, the slipstream proved the sincerity of your desire to save your friends,” Trillian said. “Insincerity would not have survived the slipstream. And with a torivor, the power that allows us to bend reality to our wills derives from our integrity. Knowing what I know, being who I am, to lie would be to lose the source of my power. To lie is not enticing. There is no urge to resist. In fact, if for some reason I did not care what it would do to me and I wanted to lie with all my heart, I do not believe it would be possible.”

Chapter 28