His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred

to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never

claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circum-

stances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit.

Silence, though, could. It was in the days of the rains that their prayers

went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of

prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri,

goddess of the Night. The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through

the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the

Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze

rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.

Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique...

-- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"