Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven

by Anthony Bartlett

  He gripped himself around his stomach and groaned and cried out. He had made happen the very thing that Pascale had pleaded with him not to, and he had done so as the most pathetic slave of Adorno. He had simply blinded himself to what he was doing. Because of his terrible self-deception his thoughts had not been concerned with getting Pascale out of the canyon, rather his actions had set a trap for her. A trap which had now sprung.

  He had never felt so disgusted and repelled by himself. How had he become such a tool, and an arrogant and hateful one at that? How had he betrayed the best friend he ever had? He felt like going out on the ledge and throwing himself from it, in order just to end it. He got up from his bed-roll and paced around thinking that, yes, he should do this. The only thing that stopped him was the slim chance he might yet rescue Pascale, and destroying that final chance would make him even more contemptible than he already was. Finally, he threw himself back on his blanket and curled up. He let his mind go blank, which it did more or less on its own, because every thought was too painful and impossible. He became as close as materially possible to the rock and broken land beneath him. At last he slept.

  He dreamed he was in a dark underground space. There was a procession, white robed figures emerging from a long gloomy corridor. Suddenly he could see Pascale. She was being brought for trial. Gaius was there, he was screaming at her, “You destroyed the Weather Shield, you brought the plague. You are a demon from hell!” Palmiro was trying to speak, trying to say it was not her who had done these things, it was him! But nothing came from his mouth.

  He woke up sweating and his heart aching with a bottomless ache. He thought the walls of his chest would cave in, so emptied out and hopeless he felt. It was night but unlike always before he could not see the stars. The haze in the sky during the day seemed to have continued and was now obscuring the starlight. He shut his eyes and sobbed quietly to himself. “I am sorry, so sorry...so sorry.” He did not think it was possible to feel more wretched, despairing and alone. He continued to repeat these words to himself, over and over, until once again he slept, from sheer grief. And once more he dreamed.

  He was in the Northern Homeland and Finn was walking toward him across the ice. Suddenly it cracked, and Finn fell and disappeared. Then just as suddenly there was Pascale. She came across the icefield with calm confidence, leaning down into the crack. With two hands she pulled the boy free. Finn came up out of the crevasse smiling and laughing as if it were all a game. Palmiro felt a tremendous love welling up inside him, a thing so physical it shocked him, even in his dream, and brought him to semi-consciousness. He never wanted the feeling to go, so he just lay there between sleeping and waking, not thinking, not trying to reason, just holding onto the sensation in his heart. Finally, as he lay there, the feeling was so sure and solid he simply opened his eyes. Pascale was standing right there in front of him, beautiful and smiling. His first thought was “How did she escape and get here?” She said, “It's all going to be alright, Palmiro. Don't worry. Everything was for the best. Go and rescue Finn!”

  She was so calm, like in the dream, and her words so strange that the next moment he could not believe his senses. He blinked to see if he really had opened his eyes, and in the instant he opened them again, all he could see was the faint glow of the sky above him as the sun came up.

  Yet there was no doubting the sense of a presence among the rock walls of the enclosure, as if a beloved friend had just left the room. He could almost smell her. He was startled and jumped up directly, looking round him to see where the figure had gone. There was nothing, just the quiet space and his horse observing him in the gray and pinkish light. The feeling of love was still with him.

  He went to look outside on the ridge. He saw nothing, but the sky was on fire in the east. From end to end the horizon was a quivering red curtain that expanded even as he watched. It was a dawn like he had never seen before and he was mesmerized. Inch by inch the sky turned crimson and amber with long smoking tendrils of flame reaching across to where he stood. It seemed the two events were connected, seeing Pascale and the radiant sky. The sky, he was sure, was exceptional because of atmospheric changes, but it was also true something huge was happening to him. He had never really seen anything before. He had always been thinking about his world, seeing it because he was thinking about it, never just seeing it. Now in the space of a few moments his vision was transformed, both blinded and made to see all over again, and all he could ever do was see. At the same time, with that, there was a pleasure and happiness he had never tasted before. He did not know himself and he stood there soaking up the electric newness all around him.

  The morning tasted fresh, like freedom, like those memories of childhood when you see your first clouds, first flowers, first bees, first grass, except he'd never really seen any of those things. All things had always been the same and never new, even when he first saw them in the holograms. He realized that nothing had ever been new until now, and the newness was astonishing and dizzying. He could smell it and breathe it and he was light-headed with the unforeseen youth of everything.

  What had he seen when he saw Pascale? How had he heard those words? The questions crossed his mind, but he did not wish to pursue them. With the humility of his total failure he did not know the answers anymore and he was ready not to demand them. Everything had changed, from despair to light, from sour darkness to...what? To life! How could he go back on that?

  He remembered how beautiful she was, in a white dress and diamonds in her hair. Of course he was in love with her! More than ever, more than he understood. To be in love was unlike anything else. He did not want Pascale in the usual romantic way, he thought. She had not come to him like that. He could not really give it words but her love had changed everything for him. He allowed himself to wonder what had come first, his love or the vision. He didn't know and he knew he would never know. In any case, was there a real difference? Whether there was or not he knew that from now on his own life would be different. He would live for this love, not for any intellectual or selfish pursuit. He would go now directly to meet Jonas and tell him about his changed world. If anyone would understand it would be Jonas. Jonas had always loved Pascale.

  He saddled his horse, gathered a few supplies and set off down the ridge. It would take him until the afternoon to get to the ascent but he could not remain in one place anyway. He was bursting with life and he had to be on the move. As he got to the bottom of the ridge and skittered down onto the level, he realized that the ill effects of the immersion seemed to have disappeared. His lungs felt back to normal and the dull ache in his head had gone. He gripped his horse with his knees and threw his hands wide in the air, yelling to the echo. And then he was laughing to himself, for doing something he had never dreamed possible.

  Down in the canyon he was not able to get a wide view, so he could not be sure of the progress of the weather. Still, the sky was now more of its normal color, with only some patches of the haze remaining. He thought of the storm the previous night and its implications for both Heaven and the Northern Homeland, but he refused to dwell on them. There was a time for all that and it was not now.

  Right now for the first time in his life he was free to see what was around him and he was not about to miss it for the sake of anything in the abstract. He saw the colors of the canyon, from salt white, to tan to bronze. He felt the age of the rocks and the labor of the earth in bringing forth this rugged landscape. He saw the yucca and the bunchgrass, the desert flowers and the birds, finches, hummingbirds…a hawk. All the while it was as if everything was bright inside him and he couldn't stop being happy.

  It was the mid-afternoon when he climbed the switchback track up to the plateau for his appointment with Jonas. He'd almost forgotten the purpose of their meeting and it was only as he made the twisting climb to the mesa that he remembered, almost with a shock, that he was returning to Heaven in order to find and rescue Pascale. He had seen her that very morning and she had remained in his mind's
eye ever since, so why would he be looking for her up here? As he rounded the last-but-one bend, walking ahead of his mount up the gradient, he could see a figure at the next and final turn. It was Jonas but he was not looking out for him. Rather he was sitting on a rock with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed almost to the same level. It was a picture of exhaustion and despair. When Palmiro drew closer he did not look up, and, eventually, when Palmiro was right next to him, he had to call out to him.

  “Jonas, what on earth's the matter? What has happened?”

  Slowly Jonas looked up but he didn't speak. His face was pinched and haggard, almost as if he were dying. For a moment Palmiro thought he had caught the infection, but then he understood that Jonas' pain was something else, something within him. Instantly all his frame of thought shifted, like a wall in reality collapsing to reveal another one utterly different. He understood. Pascale was dead. There could be no doubt of it.

  “Oh my God, what did they do?”

  His day of delight came crashing up against another day. How had it been possible that he had not thought of what had actually happened to Pascale? All the terrible possibilities had been blocked from his mind by the experience of the vision. Now he was meeting the other half of the truth head on, here at the head of the trail.

  “Tell me, Jonas. Speak, tell me!”

  Jonas at last found his voice. It was just a whisper and Palmiro had to bend to listen to him. “What did you do, what did you do? You and your plans, you brought everything down on her.”

  “Please, Jonas, tell me. What happened?

  “They took her to the Font Eterno and they threw her in, that's what happened. They turned on the Sea of Chaos and put her in.”

  It was Palmiro's turn to be speechless. Somewhere in the back of his mind he'd thought surely she was dead, but he'd never pursued the thought. The joy of his encounter with her had been far too vibrant and real. But this! He gave a harsh cry. They had done the very thing to her which he had risked three days ago in his plan to bring down Sarobindo.

  “They stripped her of her wedding dress and threw her in naked. It was a man named Omar who led them.”

  Of course, Omar. Very likely he'd been questioned and was furious at being tricked and blamed. So it was just as Jonas said: his actions had unleashed a terrible assault on her, one that should have been his own fate. Yet Pascale herself had come to him this morning and told him everything was for the best, and would not that include even this? He was struggling to assert the earlier revolution that had taken place inside him.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday, in the afternoon, just as the storm hit.”

  “It's OK Jonas. She is alive. Don't ask me how. I saw her and it has changed everything.”

  Jonas gazed at him bleakly. His pallid face flickered. “What? Is this some other crazy idea of yours? Not only have you got her murdered, you are mocking her suffering too.”

  “No, no, Jonas. I'm absolutely serious. I know she's alive. And even the Particle Accelerator, it fits with her whole way. What was it she said, “Love counts faster than light?” That means her love was faster than the machine, she counted quicker than it, and she, her body, her love, is pure information which is still alive. It is nowhere and everywhere, and it can reshape everything.”

  Palmiro spoke of the night he had endured and his vision in the morning and the way it had made him feel. A feeling he never wanted to lose. He was astonished at his own words, uncertain of where they came from. Yet he truly did believe them. Jonas was still regarding him blankly, hardly hearing what he was saying and not following any of it. His words did have the effect, however, of getting him to voice his own story. He cut across Palmiro and began to speak, mechanically, in a monotone.

  “I came up here yesterday, and rode to the Avenue of the Monuments. There were lots of bodies. It was dark and everything was still wet. I went into the Capitol to spend the night and I met Stavros there. He had been sheltering since the afternoon. The others had gone with Omar to his colony. Stavros told me everything, the abomination that took place. He was a broken man. The night I spent with him was the worst of my life, worse than the one in the canyon after Pascale’s arrest. Now what is this latest folly you are telling me?”

  “This thing that happened to me, Jonas, is the biggest thing in my life. Bigger than coming here to Heaven, bigger than my studies, bigger even than this terrible disease I unleashed. If not, I would be in despair myself and would probably end my own life.”

  This time Jonas understood Palmiro meant what he was saying and he felt, yet again, Palmiro was pushing him toward something new, but so farfetched he couldn't begin to consider it. At the same time Palmiro's shockingly positive attitude in face of the horror shifted him, whether he liked it or not. The morning after the night with Stavros he had dragged himself to the head of the trail out of loyalty to Pascale's friends, without any sense of a future. Now Palmiro was once more opening a door in front of him, and although he could see nothing on the other side it did mean, at least for Palmiro, the story of Pascale was not over.

  Palmiro questioned him about Stavros. “That man, the agent, what happened to him? Why did he feel bad?”

  “He never wanted Pascale to die. He said Omar tricked him. Omar claimed she would break and give information about you.”

  “I think you need to go find him again. He needs to know what Pascale told me, that it was for the best. Tell him about Danny. He could join him out in the canyons.”

  “You're saying I should tell him I'm in contact with you? He'll think I was part of the conspiracy and arrest me on the spot.”

  “No, he won't. The whole thing has changed, and he will change too. Something different has to happen now in Heaven and he needs to be part of it. In the meantime I have business to attend to, at Adorno's. After you speak with Stavros you could come and meet me there.”

  Jonas continued to observe him with a mixture of incredulity and pain, saying nothing.

  “Look, I know all this is very difficult for you to take in, but I'm asking you to believe what I told you, what she told me…everything was for the best!”

  He did not wait for an answer but turned and mounted his horse, pointing it up the trail to the plateau. Jonas said, “Wait! Tell me, please, what did she look like?”

  Palmiro stopped. He got down one more time and faced him. “I was asleep, then I was awake. I opened my eyes and she was right there. She was in the dress you described, but her smile and her eyes were the most beautiful. They saw everything but they also made my soul feel light, as if it had its own light inside, and they still do. "

  He remounted his horse and started up the trail. Looking over his shoulder he shouted, “Don't worry, Jonas, you will see her too.”

  6. RIDING ALONE

  The late afternoon was brassy yellow as Palmiro trotted along the single-track road, heading north and west toward the Appian Way. He saw very few living people. One lone man standing on the side of the road stared at him as he went by. He did not stop to talk, especially when the man called out, “Hey, hey, you!” He was sure by now that whoever had survived had heard his name and description, and knew he was on the run. At the same time, he felt reasonably safe, so long as he kept on the move. From Jonas' descriptions the hunt for him lacked any organization. Still, he could never be sure, and he was constantly on the lookout for any body of people on horseback. If he were to meet a group of vigilantes he would be in desperate trouble.

  Everywhere there was the scent of death. It was not so much physical as a palpable sensation that behind every hill, every wall, every line of trees there were dead and dying people. Indeed, in the fields and vineyards he saw glimpses of bodies and when he passed the driveways and workshops of the colonies there were corpses scattered by the entrances and doorways. Once he stopped to look and was able to observe the remarkable loss of mass, as if the person was immensely old and had shrunk to little more than skin on a stick frame. He reflected th
e anti-enzyme was so aggressive most of the cytoplasm was lost within the first twelve to fifteen hours and the organs all but destroyed. It meant, in fact, there was little odor, little more than that of a dry, faintly rank cloth. But the sense of death and its power was immense.

  The day was still hot, but as he left the shrub land behind and gained the main highway the tops of the spruce and pine on the northern hills were beginning to shake in a way unprecedented for Heaven. Directly to his front the red ball of the sun was going down framed in a thick misty halo, again something he'd never seen before. It was as if the skies were announcing themselves all over again and the endless present of immortality was being swallowed up again by change and time. People dying was part of that. Every individual who died signified something come to an end but also something begun. Perhaps this was another reason Immortals had been so fascinated with Sarobindo's play-acting: it meant they were escaping the tyranny of sameness, always on the brink of something new. Yet not quite. It was never truly new. That, he said to himself, is why something like he had done had to be done, in order to bring about something honestly and truly new.

  He wasn't making excuses for himself. He wasn't justifying what he had done. He knew where his guilt lay. He did not think it was in the deaths, despite the horror all around. The shriveled corpses seemed to proclaim the natural life-span of these people was well and truly complete. Rather, it was in the power he had assumed to make choices for them. That is exactly what the Immortals had always done, assuming power over countless generations of Teppers. They had even assumed power over life itself. It was in order to undo that power he had taken action, but in the process he’d repeated exactly their way of doing things.