Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven

by Anthony Bartlett

  The first morning after the fatal events she could not make the climb. The experience below in the canyon was so positive and she feared what the cliff top would say in contrast if she went up there. On the second morning, however, she did go up. She looked around quickly and everything was peaceful, just as it had always been; but she didn’t stay. On the third morning she stayed, sitting down in her circle of stones. She could not meditate as before, on the big dreamy questions like the composition of matter and love. Her mind returned like the recoil of a spring to what had happened in that place, and especially to Zena and how she had saved her. Zena had become Pascale’s friend, with total sincerity, like a child, and she had not hesitated to climb the cliff for her sake. The whole episode reminded Pascale of her Initiation vision, of the white dove that had settled on her chest and then almost as quickly had drowned. It was different though, because this time Zena had been the one to protect Pascale, saving her from death, or even worse.

  Because of this, her life was not her own any more, or not completely. Through Zena, and Palmiro and Jonas, she was spread out, beyond herself. Other people held part of her life in their bodies, their hearts. The fact that Zena was dead made the thought even more difficult and disturbing. How could a dead person hold a part of you? She remembered the fire and the plume of smoke which had carried Zena's remains away to the sky. The memory gave a very different meaning to particles of dust and light, and to the possibility of love being able to count them.

  Her thoughts and questions stopped there. She did not want to follow their path any further. Instead she let her mind go blank, looking out over the shattered earth with the sun glinting yellow along its edges. She remembered the sun back in the Northern Homeland, how distant and cold it seemed. Here the sun was always such a passionate thing, always bright and hot on your face. She turned toward it, shielding her eyes, and suddenly she felt much older.

  At that sudden feeling all that had happened before seemed to be the experience of a naive girl, who had not understood anything. It was as if she was looking at herself from a great height, and horribly annoyed and angry at her former self. She had been so locked inside her own feelings, so quick to choose the road for herself and others. She stood up and paced restlessly around her retreat. The events of that fateful morning flooded back on her, and she was there again, with Magus, Palmiro, Danny, Zena. Would any of this have happened if it had not been for her? No! Zena would not have been at the cliff top that morning and she would be alive now. As for Palmiro he would not be in Heaven at all.

  With a sudden aching free-fall inside her she recalled her conversation with him. It had been relegated to the back of her mind by all the intense drama, but now she remembered clearly he had been planning a terrible catastrophe, and even at this moment could be putting it in effect. She had pleaded with him, but again was she not directly responsible for bringing this situation about.

  Who had appointed her the decider of other people's fates? What made her so special? Sure, she saw things, counted things, found meaning in sunlight, stars and shapes. But who was to say she was right? And even if she was right, by what right did she drag other people into her schemes? She looked around at her circle of stones and they filled her with disgust. The scratched designs on some of them and the shapes of others recalled major events in her personal story, but they seemed infantile, self-obsessed. Infuriated she bent down and began hurling the stones outward, anywhere, just to break up the circle.

  She picked up the stone with the tent scratched on it and was just about to fling it to oblivion when she saw somebody on the skyline, a horse and rider. It was as if Danny and Palmiro were arriving all over again, as if the universe was repeating itself and mocking her. Was it, in fact, Palmiro? Had he thought better about his revolution or had he carried it through and come here to find refuge? She hesitated, between hope and dread, but then for the second time that morning the world flipped inside her. With an inner leap of joy that even surprised herself she recognized who was on the horse. It was not Palmiro but Jonas, her gentle-mannered historian and lover.

  She watched him nudge the horse through the stand of bushes and into the clearing. He saw her and dismounted slowly, his face a mixture of happiness and apprehension. She wondered how she looked to him, with her frayed denim dress, her pulled-back hair and her face she knew was so much older. The two former lovers approached each other like swimmers in a murky pool, seeking each other out in the dreck and half-light of everything that had happened since they were first in each other's arms.

  “Jonas, you came...”

  “Yes, Palmiro showed me the route. I am sorry I did not come before.”

  “No, no, how could you? I made things impossible for you.”

  They looked at each other, so different from their time together at the Historians Colony: she with a line of steel etched on her cheek, and he with smudges of pain beside his eyes. She was holding a rock and as he approached she dropped it, almost guiltily. She held out her hands to welcome him but stiff-armed, to keep him at a distance. He held her hands briefly, but feeling the barrier they made, he let them go.

  “Every day was made only of your absence, and each night I dreamed of you….”

  “Jonas, I am thrilled to see you, but terrible things have happened...”

  “Yes, Palmiro told me some of it, and now he has added to them. He is hiding at Danny's camp.”

  “Oh my God! What has he done? "

  “I'm not certain. He could speak only in gasps. I was waiting at the camp and Eboni helped him and me to the top. He was flat out and only woke up once. Eboni said something about him taking part in the Font Eterno Immersion. I believe he has done something irrevocable. But his actions helped me find you, and for that I can only be grateful.”

  “Palmiro is bringing the world to an end, and we are all caught up in the consequence. Yet it was I who started him on that road, and I have led you down it too.”

  “The day you and Palmiro showed up in Heaven, it was the best day of my life.”

  She took both his hands and pulled him to her, hugging him, but releasing him at once. “And your coming today, Jonas, is the best thing that happened to me for the longest time. But I am not what I was, and we cannot be that way again. It's not fair to you, or anyone...”

  “Pascale, I don't care about that. Really, I mean it. All the time we were apart I just wanted to be in the same room as you, the same house. Everything else I would give up gladly for that.”

  “Jonas, you say that and I know you mean it, but I have to tell you something plainly, so you understand it. It will hurt you, but you have to know. After the Initiation and then at your colony, I was using you. You were there for me and I made full use of it. At the time I loved it all, I loved you, and I still love you, but I am different now, and so sorry I did that.”

  Jonas was not hurt. He felt the weight of what she was saying, but it did not matter. Immortals all made use of each other, all the time. So, as far as that was concerned, he had made use of Pascale. But now he had made a choice for something else, more profound, and the past did not count. He was not offended by it, he just wanted to move beyond it, and it was important that Pascale understood this. The essential thing was that because of her people had made choices for something new and different. He saw this very clearly and began to understand what his role might be in his relationship with her.

  “Pascale, it doesn't matter. I'm glad you did what you did. Everything has changed now, because of you, but it all started back then. I'm glad I was able to be there for you, with you.”

  A kind of dam broke inside of Pascale. She began to sob, tears welling from her eyes, her frame hunched and rocking. Jonas put out his hands and instinctively she reached out her own, this time pressing herself to him and allowing herself to be enfolded in his embrace. She sank her head on his shoulder, letting all the tension, the fear, the struggle and the grief of the canyon pour itself out onto him. He let it happen, overwhelmed that o
nce more they were together and it was good and wonderful to him to feel her closeness and the wetness of her tears.

  “Thank you, Jonas,” she said at last. She was drained of her anger, but still she was older, different. “You have given me more than I can say or even know. Will you come down to the canyon with me? I want to show you everything, and the people there will be so happy to see you. You can tether your horse here, it will be safe during daylight and Danny will ride up to get it.”

  Jonas went to secure the horse. He would follow Pascale willingly. He was ready to climb down to the canyon, ready to go with her anywhere.

  PART FIVE

  1. THE PLAGUE

  Once it began it happened with devastating speed. Sarobindo became sick directly following the Immersion and within twenty hours he was dead. He sneezed and coughed and he couldn't stop. His temperature spiked, then he fainted, lapsing into fever and delirium. Those around him were terrified and totally at a loss. There were no illnesses in Heaven. The impact of harmful bacteria had been eliminated as a side-effect of the immortality enzyme, overwhelming any pathology. As for viruses, the population had been screened and inoculated for all known illnesses. Should a fresh virus have somehow crept into Heaven, the Immortals' immune systems were so strong it was swept away without anyone even noticing. The only thing left was an occasional allergy for which there were dozens of treatments. And an allergy is what his disciples initially suspected. There must have been something in the environment to which he was reacting. The thought did obviously occur that the new element in the ceremony was Palmiro, so perhaps the reaction was linked to him, but simply as an allergy.

  When Sarobindo fainted they realized he had something worse. They didn't know where to turn. The Plastic Surgery Colony doubled as a First Aid center for cuts and broken bones, and it was the only thing anyone could think of as a possible medical resource. Alceste and another disciple called Jamal were dispatched to inform them and get advice. As the two of them hurried through the horde of stragglers still exiting from the Font Eterno, Alceste herself began to sneeze. Then she started to cough, and after a couple of minutes fighting the sting in her nose and the rough edge in her throat, she knew that what Sarobindo had was beginning now in her.

  So many long years had passed since anyone had experienced it that the concept of droplet-borne infection had more or less been forgotten. Yet now the evidence of some connection between Sarobinbdo and Alceste was begging to be recognized in each explosive sneeze. She stopped and told Jamal he had to go on alone. She was beginning to feel weak and dizzy and might not make it. The symptoms could well start with him too, and he had to get the information to the experts before he was struck down.

  By this time, however, she had sneezed and coughed in close proximity to numerous individuals in the crowd and two or three of them had contracted the infection. She struggled to the bleachers overlooking the racetrack and sat down, coughing violently. She felt dreadful, a sense of sickness deepening inside her, as if her vital organs were collapsing until there was nothing left. She had a sudden horrible realization that she was, in fact, dying. She experienced a vacuous fear and a gripping sense of loss. Nothing had prepared or warned her of this. Death had descended out of the night sky like an invisible bird of prey, carrying her off in the blink of an eye and without appeal. The endless satisfactions of Heaven were disappearing in an instant. She tried to scream but she could only gasp and cough, again uncontrollably. She slumped over unconscious, rolling from the seat and falling between the bleachers out of sight.

  Jamal had made it across the park to the terminus and the continuous circuit of trams that ran from there along the Avenue of Monuments. He took the next one in line and began sneezing almost at once. By the time he got to the parking lot he was coughing and feeling dizzy. He knew he wouldn't make it. It was over an hour's drive to the colony and he would not keep going that long. If this was the way for Sarobindo, him and Alceste he had to believe the remaining disciples back at the Font Eterno would be falling too. He had to warn somebody.

  There was a public phone line to the fire brigade outside the first monument, a replica of the Taj Mahal. He limped, coughing and wheezing, back through the huge Babylonian-style gate leading to the Avenue. A couple of hundred paces past the reflecting pool he found the booth with the phone. The blood was pounding in his head and the reflecting pool and the brilliant white domes and minarets were swimming around his head. He could not remember the last time he had used a phone and did not know what to do. He picked up the headset and heard a voice telling him to wait and his call would be answered very shortly. After about ten seconds, a live voice came on the line and asked him where the fire was. Jamal tried to say there was no fire rather an impossible sickness mowing people down, but all that came out was a ferocious bout of coughing punctuated by unintelligible words. He could hear the operator asking him to please repeat what he had said but he could hardly breathe. He felt his legs buckle under him and he saw the night sky above twisting into a vortex and the empty universe spiraling through it.

  Back at the Font Eterno, Padma was sneezing into the folds of her orange robe. She had left Sarobindo's room when the announcer and another assistant had started coughing furiously. Sarobindo lay semi-conscious on his bed. His breathing was harsh and every now and again he would thrash frantically from side to side. She had understood with sudden clarity he was dying. When the other two showed symptoms she knew with the same clarity they would die as well. Now she too had joined their ranks. Nothing like this had ever been seen in Heaven and it was happening faster than anyone had time to think or plan. All of Sarobindo's constant meditation on death, which before was a limitless mystical game, had become in the space of minutes, a brute reality. Death moved among the disciples, instantly and totally recognizable, a guest constantly invited but never expected. She felt there was an animal inside her chest, tearing at her lungs. She coughed harshly and remembered Palmiro. She recalled his unorthodox request to take part in the Immersion and how sick he too had been at the end. His participation had to be the cause of what was happening. But how, and why? Why would he do something like this, so necessarily premeditated and ruthless?

  She crossed the great hall with its braziers of burning incense, the effort and the smoke both intensifying her coughing. Gasping she entered the room where Palmiro had been and cast around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She went to the small table and opened its drawer. Inside there was a notepad and pen. She took it out and wrote a note between spasms of coughing. “We are dying, all of us, those with the Mahatma. Something to do with the man, Palmiro. He was in this room. Search it, and you must find his friends too. One of them was Omar.”

  She tore off the sheet and laid it on the table. The jug of water was in front of her and overpowered by another bout of coughing she poured some into the glass and took a drink. As she swallowed she caught the sweet pungent taste and a slight syrupy texture. “Oh my God, it's a drug, a drug. That's how he did the Immersion!”

  The idea of anyone using a drug to fake an Immersion was almost inconceivable, it was so alien to the devotion in which the Font Eterno was held. The fact served to deepen the horrible cynicism she felt arising from the whole thing, but she had no further chance to reflect for she coughed again and this time began to heave uncontrollably. She dropped the glass, staggering instinctively toward the pool. Hunched over at its edge, she spewed the contents of her stomach, her head spinning. Her sight blurred and her limbs went slack. Helplessly she pitched forward, falling face down in the contaminated water. Within minutes she had drowned.

  The infection could perhaps have been contained if not for another circumstance. The rapid onset and term of the disease might well have slowed its spread, and provided more general warning, if it were not for a woman who had been on the bus with Jamal. Her name was Ivana. She lived in the Farming Colony providing overall care of the collective vegetable plots and greenhouses worked by Immortals. She took great pride in
ensuring the freshness and flavor of the vegetables grown for the Heavenly tables and she regularly accompanied deliveries to the daily market located at the heart of the Heavenly Homeland. She had arrived in Heaven about twenty five years before, recruited in the usual fashion as an outstanding athlete of great physical beauty. That meant that she was still relatively young from a chronological point of view and her body had only just begun to make use of the immortality enzyme, while retaining some capacity for normal regeneration. So when Jamal began a wild bout of sneezing in the seat behind her, she caught the germ but she did not become acutely ill. She showed symptoms but once again people around her thought it must be an allergy, something to be sorted out by an herbal remedy or acupuncture.

  She spent an uncomfortable night but got up early the next morning and accompanied the trays of tomatoes, lettuce, onions and leeks to the market. Everything was misted down with fine spray before being placed in the delivery vehicle and her bursts of sneezing simply mixed with the droplets on the food. She continued to sneeze during the whole of the morning as she served the busy throng of patrons around the stalls. Later that evening much of the produce was eaten fresh and the microbe proved extraordinarily resilient, staying alive all the way to ingestion by hundreds and hundreds of Immortals. By the following day, Heaven was in the grip of a full-scale epidemic, with many thousands of people infected, and going on to infect others exponentially. At this point it was impossible to stop the spread of the disease.