“Hello, can you get us down from here?”
“Oh, yes, certainly, I will, but tell me please, who are you and how did you get here? Where are your guides? Are they inside?”
The young woman answered: “We had no guides. I’m Cal, this is Poll. We found the rocket ship and took it ourselves, just the two of us, and now we would really like to get down from here.”
“For sure, for sure, I will get the stairway at once. But I have to tell you, this is very irregular, in fact unheard of. You really can’t have any idea of what you’ve done.” He spoke over his shoulder as he gathered his robe and got back into the car, heading back toward the tree line.
“I think we have more idea than you might guess,” countered Poll as he drove off.
“Yes, that’s for sure, but did you see how he was dressed? He was practically naked, except for that thin robe. And the woman without a name, she wasn’t much different. It makes me think this beautiful place has a very different life from ours. That’s perhaps why they think an initiation is necessary.”
“Well, I don’t want any initiation. I hated the Holo-casts back home and I’m sure I’ll hate whatever they have here.”
“You can’t know that, Poll. What they have here might be so totally different from what we had back in the Sector. We should at least find out.”
“Well, I don’t trust them. And you shouldn’t either. They could soon have us moon crazy just like that woman.”
They continued to watch from the hatch. After a few minutes they saw Jonas returning with the mobile stairs in tow behind his car. The woman without a name was following, her walking now much more direct. Jonas maneuvered the stairs in as close as he could and then he, with the woman helping, pushed and bumped them into position. He went to mount the staircase to help the newcomers, remembering they were always a little unsteady on their feet. But Poll and Cal had already started down. Their time in the rocket waiting had acclimatized them and they were desperate to exit the cabin. All the same, as the only official present, it was his duty to offer the formal welcome. He stood back at the bottom of the stairs.
“Welcome to the Homeland of Heaven. Welcome to humanity’s triumph, its last and best chance. My name is Jonas. Please accompany me as we proceed to the very first baths founded by the pioneers, the first building of the Immortals.”
Poll and Cal looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, but they allowed themselves to be led to the car and placed in the back seats. The woman without a name got in the front with Jonas who did not object—she was the closest thing he had to a crowd.
“Where did you say we were going?” Poll demanded.
“I am going to show you the ancient Baths. Unfortunately you will not be initiated there directly, not for some several hours, but at least I will show them to you. Then I'll take you to the rooms normally reserved for the initiates. There really is nowhere else to put you.”
Cal leant forward. “We understand this is causing you some trouble, Jonas, but really we are happy to go along with the arrangements you make. We have our own story to tell, and at some point we would like to do that, but we’re more than willing to learn yours.”
Jonas looked round and caught a glimpse at close quarters of the young woman talking to him. He saw her dark hair framing a wide forehead and features which were finely proportioned yet firm. But it was not her appearance that captured his attention so much as a feeling that he caught from her. He was completely taken by surprise: if he’d had to give it a name it would have been a great upwelling sense of life, but it was only later that he was able to put that term on it. At the moment he was too preoccupied with his need to maintain some order in the situation and the most he could register was a kind of shock. Shock, and a deep, electric attraction.
“I, I am very happy…I mean I am glad to be at your service.” And to cover his embarrassment he looked round at both of them, “I have no idea how you both managed to fly that shuttle. You must be very competent persons. I am sure I speak for the Heavenly Homeland: we are fortunate to have you here with us.”
The woman without a name suddenly joined the conversation. “You are a foolish person, Jonas, and have no idea of your words. These two flew here on wings of evil: they bring only plague into Heaven.”
Jonas was intensely irritated. He barely knew this woman and had actually never been in a conversation with her. He’d brought her along just to make up some sort of a party, yet now she was ruining the little bit of decorum he’d managed to achieve.
“You must excuse our company. This person resides in the Agora of the Baths and normally she bothers no one, but because everyone else is away at the festival suddenly she is important. Pay no heed. In the Homeland of Heaven very few people have these psychological problems, and even if they do they are able to live peacefully among us.” And he glared meaningfully at the woman.
She was immediately chastened and lapsed into silence. Poll had only half suppressed a laugh when the woman had spoken her mind, but Cal wanted to put Jonas at his ease and tried to lessen his embarrassment.
“Please don’t be concerned. We are very glad that you came to get us. And this woman without a name, she helped us. She told us where everybody had gone. We would have had no idea but for her.”
With these few words Cal immediately made everything seem pleasant. Jonas’ attraction to her washed through his soul and he was astonished. As an Immortal he experienced attraction in a casual, even slightly bored and cynical way. Now he felt a desire to be with this person and it had a freshness he had never known before. Skirting the Agora he drove the car to a space close to the Baths, approaching the ancient site at right angles. From there they continued on foot along a path bordered by ancient vines and low rough-hewn pillars, emerging to the side of the front portico. Arising before them was the dazzling marble facade with its columns and pediment, a place like nothing Cal and Poll had seen before, or even dreamed of. It filled them with a peculiar longing and at the same time a deep unease. There was something here way beyond their experience or comprehension.
“This is one of the most revered spots in the Heavenly Homeland, the first building that we established and the place where the experience of immortality first began. Unfortunately we cannot go inside as that is intended expressly for the event of initiation. You will have to wait until later for that to take place, when I have assembled all the relevant parties. But I want you at least to know of the great privilege that awaits you and to have a sense of the splendor that is now yours in the Homeland of Heaven.”
After his little speech he started back to the car and beckoned them to follow. “I must apologize if I seem abrupt but I really have to head back to get the others; without them there is no way of presenting things further.”
They returned to the vehicle and he took the road farther along the side of the Baths, swinging around at the other end and entering a small courtyard. They got out of the car and passed through a wooden door into a hall at the end of the building. It was a high marble and stone space with rooms to either side and what looked like a ceremonial entrance about one hundred and fifty paces opposite. He waved to the left and the right.
“Here are your rooms. You will find a shower to the right side of the courtyard outside. You will also find a change of robes and garments in the armoire there.” Then he pointed down the hallway to the great doors. “Down there is the other end of the ritual baths, the place where neophytes emerge after Initiation, after their whole world has been changed. This will be the case for you too, so please do not go in there for now. You won’t be able to see anything anyway—it is totally dark—and you might easily hurt yourselves.’
Turning to the woman who was still hovering in the background he told her to bring them food from the Agora. “Get some fruit and honey cakes from one of the stalls there, and also something to drink. I hardly need impress on you nothing should be said to disturb our new friends. They will shortly join us as Immortals and if
they have an unpleasant experience because of you it cannot be overlooked.”
And with that undisguised threat he returned to the car and was gone. The woman left too, perhaps to get the food, perhaps to avoid the risk of opening her mouth again. Cal and Poll were left in the elegant hallway looking at each other, feeling a powerful flux of emotion. Not ten hours ago they had been battling a brutal environment ruled by unquestioning Worship Leaders and murderous Icemen. They were still dressed in the uniform of that world, boots and therm-suits, which now felt stifling and absurd against a background of summer warmth and gleaming marble. At the same time they could not be comfortable about abandoning the badge of an existence in which they had struggled so hard to find the truth—as if, now they had found it, none of the struggle mattered. And that was apart from the awkwardness of having to put on robes the same as Jonas and the woman. Poll could not contain the tensions inside him and he let his feelings explode the moment Jonas was out of earshot, discharging on the one target he had, Cal.
“Fuck that guy! How the hell could you be so cozy with him, Cal? Don’t you understand, he’s one of the people who did this to us. Look around you! It’s a paradise, a total fucking playground, and we’ve probably seen nothing yet. While the Northerners, the Teppers, people like us, what kind of existence did we ever have? Nothing except work and survival. There’s no way we can cozy up with these people!”
Cal was taken aback. “Wow, Poll, what’s got into you? I was only making the guy feel OK. You just got out of a prison camp. We don’t want to end up in another one. Anyway, what do you want? Just like you say, there’s probably a lot more to see and find out yet, and they won’t tell us anything if they don’t trust us.”
“I said there’s more to see, not to find out. You can know for certain they set the whole thing up on the backs of the Teppers. All this perfect weather has to depend on the refrigeration zone. They would never have gone to the trouble otherwise. So, we already know where we stand, and who the enemy is!”
“Poll, you remind me exactly of how you used to be with the professors back in the Training Center, talking back to them and getting thrown out of class. You think because you’re so smart you don’t have to worry about how people react. Haven’t you learned anything? Your experience in the Camp showed you people will kill you without thinking twice, and here there are forces much bigger than those of the Camp, they have to be!”
Now it was Poll’s turn to be surprised. Cal had never spoken to him like this before. But it only made him angrier.
“Tell me then, seeing you’re so down with all this, what are they hiding inside those precious baths of theirs, eh? When they get you in there tomorrow it will be far too late to ask questions. I can only hope I have the chance to say I told you so!” And he stormed off toward one of the rooms, slamming the door as hard as he could behind him.
Cal headed back out to the courtyard, searching out the showers and the cupboard with fresh clothes. She had decided that despite the problem of the robes anything was preferable to the increasing sweat and itchiness of the therms. She also wanted to experience the shower, one of her greatest consolations back home in the TEP. Only now she would not be in a narrow cubicle with her eyes shut, relying on her imagination and images from the holograms. The world she had imagined back then seemed to have become real all around her. She wanted to know what a shower felt like here in the actual world of golden light and warmth. And after that she badly needed to sleep.
In his room Poll lay on his couch sweating and fuming. He unzipped the top of his therm-suit all the way down but he was still miserably hot. He could only bear it for a couple of minutes and then he swung himself round and crashed his feet to the floor. He pulled the top part of the one-piece suit off and tied the arms around his waist, leaving the synthetic undershirt below. Then he made a decision. He marched out of the room, heading down to the ceremonial doors at the far end of the hall. When he got to them he grasped the double handles and dragged them back against their heavy, close fit. As Jonas had warned it was pitch dark inside but immediately something else struck him, like a slap to the face. He was hit at once by the languid scent of the place as if something huge and of enormous beauty had just kissed him mockingly in the mouth. There was no way he could describe the scent: it was both a bouquet of rare flowers and a hint of bodily sense beyond anything he had imagined and it made his skin shiver. He thought spontaneously of the phrase Jonas had used, “the experience of immortality,” and it made him dizzy. He slowly shut the doors and turned around, staring at the hall and the exit door at the end. Cal was right: there were forces here much larger than anything they had encountered so far. His old feeling of grudging awe for what these people had done returned to him, despite his anger. He walked slowly back up and out the building, passing through the courtyard and onto the route by which they’d come. He was still very hot and tired but it was impossible to rest. He was going to make his way back to the Agora and see what he could discover there.
***
Cal had showered for nearly a whole hour and then put on a robe she found in the fitted cupboard next to the showers. She discovered a pair of sandals and adjusted the thongs until they held comfortably. She was so very tired but it was just not possible to sleep. There was a whole world out there and it called to her, just as the stars had called to her back in the Homeland. She had to see and experience at least a part of it, to feel the warm air and sense the earth beneath her feet. She walked from the gate of the courtyard out onto the road which skirted it to the south. Across from it was a vast open space, tanned and white, dotted with bushes and low trees, all shimmering in the heat. What was it that Jonas had called it, the “Homeland of Heaven?” And Poll had said “Paradise!” After all her life spent in the deadly cold whiteness of the North how could these names be anything but true?
She ran across the road out into the open bush, dancing in circles and flinging her arms wide above her head and singing random notes plucked from she knew not where. The air tingled on her skin, the sun caressed it, the scent of the plants around her intoxicated her. She was completely overwhelmed, feeling her body melt into its surroundings and wanting to let it do so. She found a bare patch and lay down on the sand. Her eyes were closed and she felt the generous warmth striking her limbs on all sides and penetrating the thin gauze of her robe. It was as if she’d never been alive before, as if everything before was not an existence at all, just a long dead sleep. Through her lids she could still see the glow of the sky and it was like a giant light was coming not from outside but inside her body. Gone were the hard display lights of the wall panels, the monitors and control banks back in the North, and instead there was only this vast single light infusing everything. There was nothing anymore to count and she let herself drift with the light, to surrender to it fully. After a long moment—she wasn’t sure how long—she heard something and opened her eyes. There was a small bird close to her; it had landed on a bush only a few feet away. She looked at the bird and the bird looked at her, and it was absolutely unlike the dead holograms. All at once it was as if some kind of communication passed between them. Something new moved in her and she didn’t know what it was. The bird flew off and she followed it until her eyes were dazzled and she could see it no longer.
She got to her feet. She really needed to sleep. That man Jonas said he would be returning soon, for an initiation, whatever that was. Also she'd argued with Poll. She needed to make up with him, but they were both too tired to think clearly. Right now she could not even remember what they'd been arguing about. She retraced her steps to the courtyard and the hall still in the happiest, most pleasant state she had ever experienced. She entered her room, closed the door and fell on her bed, into a deep dreamless sleep.
PART THREE
1. SURPRISE PARTY
Jonas drove as fast as he could in an electric car. The effects of his chemical experience at Doblepoble were now fading rapidly and he was obliged to fight an increasing drow
siness. But if ever a situation was urgent this was it. Two young people had arrived in the Homeland of Heaven unexpected and uninvited. The elaborate preparation which always greeted inductees had been completely missed. It meant they were now gaining experiences not expressly constructed for them, and who knows what thoughts and impressions they were forming. The results could be unpredictable. He badly needed to let others in the Homeland know so they could decide on a way to handle the situation.
The trouble was there was nobody with any expertise in this kind of problem. Everything had been set up hundreds of years ago and had worked with well-oiled efficiency, which meant no one had to think very much about it at all. Cyrus, he knew, would be aghast. Even if he found him with his full faculties Jonas doubted whether he’d respond helpfully. Members of the Sports Stars Selection Colony, people like Gaius and Emmanuelle, would be the angriest, seeing their careful work trashed like this. But probably, for that reason, they'd also be the ones best able to focus on the problem. Jonas decided he really should look for them first.
As he drove at frustratingly slow speed along the Appian Way he found himself thinking in a way he never had before, trying urgently to solve a real problem. This effort, alongside the overwhelming impact Cal had produced in him, made him feel unsettled and unhappy. He wanted to get out and push the car to help it along, so he could get to the Forum more quickly, share the whole thing with other people and return, if possible, to his normal relaxed state.
The sun was at full heat, just past its zenith. He felt hot and sticky under the roof of the car. The architectural wonders of the city were coming into sight and the shadows stood directly beneath the buildings. It was as if momentarily another darker layer had been added to their construction. The place looked surreal, lacking shape and solidity. When he reached the parking plaza in front of the great gate to the Avenue of the Monuments the familiar groups were gathered beneath the trees and on the steps of the palaces and temples. He drew the car to a stop, jumped out and started running. He had to find the key people as quickly as he could.
Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven Page 21
