Lord of Light

by Roger Zelazny

  "Open a fruit and there is a seed within it. Is that the center? Open the seed and there is nothing within it. Is that the center? We are two different persons from the master and the mistress of battles. It was good to have known those two, but that is all."

  "Did you go to dwell outside of Heaven because you were tired of me?"

  "I wanted a change of perspective."

  "There have been long years over which I have hated you for departing. Then there have been times when I sat in the room called Despair, but was too much of a coward to walk beyond Worldsend. Then again, there have been times when I have forgiven you and invoked the seven Rishi to bring your image before me, so that I looked upon you as you went about your day, and it was almost as though we walked together once again. Other times I have desired your death, but you turned my executioner into a friend as you turn my wrath into forgiveness. Do you mean to say that you feel nothing for me?"

  "I mean to say that I no longer love you. It would be nice if there were some one thing constant and unchanging in the universe. If there is such a thing, then it is a thing which would have to be stronger than love, and it is a thing which I do not know."

  "I have not changed, Sam."

  "Think carefully. Lady, over all that you have said, over all that you have recalled for me this day. It is not really the man whom you have been remembering. It is the days of carnage through which the two of you rode together. The world is come into a tamer age now. You long for the fire and the steel of old. You think it is the man, but it is the destiny the two of you shared for a time, the destiny which is past, that stirs your mind, and you call it love."

  "Whatever I call it, it has not changed! Its days are not past. It is a constant thing within the universe, and I call you to come share it with me once again!"

  "What of Lord Yama?"

  "What of him? You have dealt with those who would be numbered as his peers, did they still live."

  "I take it, then, that it is his Aspect for which you care?"

  She smiled, within the shadows and the wind.

  "Of course."

  "Lady, Lady, Lady, forget me! Go live with Yama and be his love. Our days are past, and I do not wish to recall them. They were good, but they are past. As there is a time for everything, there is a time also for the end of anything. This is an age for the consolidation of man's gains upon this world. This is a time for the sharing of knowledge, not the crossing of blades."

  "Would you fight Heaven for this knowledge? Would you attempt to break the Celestial City, to open its vaults to the world?"

  "You know that I would."

  "Then we may yet have a common cause."

  "No, Lady, do not deceive yourself. Your allegiance lies with Heaven, not with the world. You know that. If I won my freedom and you joined with me and we fought, perhaps you would be happy for a time. But win or lose, in the end I fear you would be unhappier than before."

  "Hear me, soft-hearted saint of the purple grove. It is quite kind of you to anticipate my feelings, but Kali casts her allegiances where she will, owing nothing to anyone, but as she chooses. She is the mercenary goddess, remember that! Perhaps all that you have said is true, and she lies when she tells you she loves you still. Being ruthless and full of the battle lust, however, she follows the smell of blood. I feel that she may yet become an Accelerationist."

  "Take care what you say, goddess. Who knows what may be listening?"

  "None listens," said she, "for seldom are words spoken within this place."

  "All the more reason for someone to be curious when they are."

  She sat for a time in silence, then, "None listens," she said.

  "Your powers have grown."

  "Yes. What of yours?"

  "About the same, I think."

  "Then will you accept my sword, my wheel, my bow, in the name of Accelerationism?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "You give your promises too easily. You break them as readily as you make them, and because of this I can never trust you. If we fight and we win in the name of Accelerationism, it may also be the last great battle of this world. This is a thing you could not desire, nor permit to occur."

  "You are a fool to speak of last great battles, Sam, for the last great battle is always the next one. Shall I come to you in a more comely shape to convince you that I speak the truth? Shall I embrace you in a body with the seal of virginity set upon it? Will this make you to trust my word?"

  "Doubt, Lady, is the chastity of the mind, and I bear its seal upon my own."

  "Then know that I did but bring you here to this place to torment you, and that you are correct—I spit upon your Accelerationism, and I have already numbered your days. I sought to give you false hopes, that you may be cast down from a greater height. It is only your stupidity and your weakness that have saved you from this."

  "I am sorry. Kali—"

  "I do not want your apology! I would have liked your love, though, so that I might have used it against you at the end of your days, to make them pass the harder. But, as you say, we have changed too much—and you are no longer worth the trouble. Do not think that I could not have made you love me again, either, with smiles and with caresses as of old. For I feel the heat within you, and it is an easy thing for me to fan it in a man. You are not worth a mighty death, however, falling from the heights of passion to the depths of despair. I do not have the time to give you more than my contempt."

  The stars wheeled about them, frictionless and fiery, and her hand was gone from beneath his own, as she poured two more cups of soma to warm them against the night.

  "Kali?"

  "Yes?"

  "If it will give you any satisfaction in the end, I still care for you. Either there is no such thing as love, or the word does not mean what I have thought it to mean on many different occasions. It is a feeling without a name, really—better to leave it at that. So take it and go away and have your fun with it. You know that we would both be at one another's throats again one day, as soon as we had run out of common enemies. We had many fine reconciliations, but were they ever worth the pain that preceded them? Know that you have won and that you are the goddess I worship — for are not worship and religious awe a combination of love and hate, desire and fear?"

  They drank their soma in the room called Heartbreak, and the spell of Kubera lay about them.

  Kali spoke:

  "Shall I fall upon you and kiss you now, saying that I lied when I said I lied—so that you may laugh and say you lied, to achieve a final revenge? Go to, Lord Siddhartha! Better one of us died in Hellwell, for great is the pride of the First. We should not have come here—to this place."

  "No."

  "Shall we then depart?"

  "No."

  "In this, I agree. Let us sit here and worship one another for a time."

  Her hand fell upon his own, caressed it. "Sam?"

  "Yes?"

  "Would you like to make love to me?"

  "And so seal my doom? Of course."

  "Then let us go into the room called Despair, where the winds stand stilled and where there is a couch . . ."

  He followed her from Heartbreak to Despair, his pulse quickening in his throat, and when he had laid her bare on the couch and placed his hand upon the soft whiteness of her belly, he knew that Kubera was indeed the mightiest of the Lokapalas—for the feeling to which that room had been dedicated filled him, even as his desires mounted within him and he upon her—there came a loosening, a tightening, a sigh, and the ultimate tears burning to be shed.

  "What is it you wish, Mistress Maya?"

  "Tell me of Accelerationism, Tak of the Archives."

  Tak stretched his great lean frame and his chair adjusted backward with a creak.

  Behind him, the data banks were still, and certain rare records filled the long, high bookshelves with their colorful bindings and the air with their musty smells.

  He handled the lady before him with his eyes, smile
d and shook his head. She wore green, tightly, and an impatient look; her hair was an insolent red, and faint freckles flecked her nose and the hemispheres of her cheeks. Her hips and shoulders were wide, and her narrow waist tightly disciplined against this tendency.

  "Why do you shake your head? Everyone comes to you for information."

  "You are young, mistress. Three avatars, if I am not mistaken. lie behind you. At this point in your career, I am certain that you do not really wish to have your name placed upon the special list of those younger ones who seek this knowledge."

  "List?"

  "List."

  "Why should there be a list of such inquirers?"

  Tak shrugged. "Gods collect the strangest things, and certain among them save lists."

  "I have always heard Accelerationism mentioned as a completely dead issue."

  "So why this sudden interest in the dead?"

  She laughed, and her green eyes bored into his gray ones.

  The Archives exploded around him, and he stood in the ballroom halfway up Milehigh Spire. It was night, so late that it would soon be morning. A party had obviously been going on for a long while; but now the crowd in which he stood had come together in the corner of the room. They were leaning, and they were sitting and reclining, and all of them listening to the short, dark, husky man who stood beside the goddess Kali and talked. This was Great-Souled Sam the Buddha, who, with his warden, had just arrived. He was talking of Buddhism and Accelerationism, and of the days of the binding, and Hellwell, and the blasphemies of Lord Siddhartha in the city of Mahartha by the sea. He was talking, and his voice went on and on, hypnotic, and he radiated power and confidence and warmth, hypnotic, and his words went on and on and on, as the crowd slowly passed out and fell down around him. All of the women were quite ugly, except for Maya, who tittered then and clapped her hands, bringing back the Archives about them, and Tak again to his chair, his smile still upon his lips.

  "So why this sudden interest in the dead?" he repeated.

  "He is not dead, that one!"

  "No?" said Tak. "He isn't? . . . Mistress Maya, he was dead the moment he set foot within the Celestial City. Forget him. Forget his words. Let it be as if he never existed. Leave no trace of him within your mind. One day you will seek renewal—so know that the Masters of Karma will seek after this one within every mind that passes through their halls. The Buddha and his words are an abomination in the eyes of the gods."

  "But why?"

  "He is a bomb-throwing anarchist, a hairy-eyed revolutionary. He seeks to pull down Heaven itself. If you want more scientific information, I'll have to use the machines to retrieve the data. Would you care to sign an authorization for this?"

  "No . . ."

  "Then put him out of your mind and lock the door."

  "He is really that bad?"

  "He's worse."

  "Then why do you smile as you say these things?"

  "Because I'm not a very serious person. Character has nothing to do with my message, however. So heed it."

  "You seem to know all about it. Are archivists themselves immune to these lists?"

  "Hardly. My name is first upon it. But this is not because I am an archivist. He is my father."

  "That one? Your father?"

  "Yes. You speak as one quite young, however. I doubt that he is even aware that he fathered me. What is paternity to the gods, who inhabit a succession of bodies, begetting scores of offspring by others who also change bodies four or five times a century? I am the son of a body he once inhabited, born of another who also passed through many, and I myself no longer live in the same body I was born into. The relationship, therefore, is quite intangible, and interesting primarily on levels of speculative metaphysics. What is the true father of a man? The circumstances which brought together the two bodies which begat him? Was it the fact that, for some reason, at one moment in time, these two pleased one another beyond any possible alternatives? If so, why? Was it the simple hunger of the flesh, or was it curiosity, or the will? Or was it something else? Pity? Loneliness? The desire to dominate? What feeling, or what thought was father to the body in which I first came into consciousness? I know that the man who inhabited that particular father-body at that particular instant of time is a complicated and powerful personality. Chromosomes mean nothing to us, not really. If we live, we do not carry these hallmarks down through the ages. We really inherit nothing at all, save for occasional endowments of property and cash. The bodies mean so little in the long run that it is far more interesting to speculate as to the mental processes which plucked us forth from chaos. I am pleased that it was he who called me to life, and I often conjecture as to the reasons. I see that your face is suddenly lacking in color, mistress. I did not mean to upset you with this talk, simply to satisfy your curiosity somewhat, and to lay upon your mind some of the thinking we old ones do upon these matters. One day you, too, will look upon it in this light, I am certain. But I am sorry to see you looking so distressed. Pray sit down. Forgive my prattle. You are the Mistress of Illusion. Are not the things of which I have spoken akin to the very stuff with which you work? I am certain that you can tell from the manner in which I speak why my name is first upon the list I mentioned. It is a case of hero worship, I suppose. My creator is quite distinguished. . . . Now you are looking somewhat flushed. Would you care for a cool drink? Wait here a moment... There. Sip this. Now then, about Accelerationism — it is a simple doctrine of sharing. It proposes that we of Heaven give unto those who dwell below of our knowledge and powers and substance. This act of charity would be directed to the end of raising their condition of existence to a higher level, akin to that which we ourselves occupy. Then every man would be as a god, you see. The result of this, of course, would be that there would no longer be any gods, only men. We would give them knowledge of the sciences and the arts, which we possess, and in so doing we would destroy their simple faith and remove all basis for their hoping that things will be better—for the best way to destroy faith or hope is to let it be realized. Why should we permit men to suffer this burden of godhood collectively, as the Accelerationists wished, when we do grant it to them individually when they come to deserve it? In his sixtieth year a man passes through the Halls of Karma. He is judged, and if he has done well, observing the rules and restrictions of his caste, paying the proper observances to Heaven, advancing himself intellectually and morally, then this man will be incarnated into a higher caste, eventually achieving godhood itself and coming to dwell here in the City. Each man eventually receives his just desserts—barring unfortunate accidents, of course—and so each man, rather than society as a sudden whole, may come into the divine inheritance which the ambitious Accelerationists wished to scatter wholesale before everyone, even those who were unready. You can see that this attitude was dreadfully unfair and proletarian-oriented. What they really wanted to do was to lower the requirements for godhood. These requirements are necessarily strict. Would you give the power of Shiva, of Yama, or of Agni into the hands of an infant? Not unless you are a fool, you wouldn't Not unless you wished to wake up one morning and see that the world no longer existed. This is what the Accelerationists would have wrought, though, and this is why they were stopped. Now you know all about Accelerationism... My, you look awfully warm. May I hang your garment while I get you another drink?.. Very good... Now, where were we, Maya? Oh yes — the beetles in the pudding... Well, the Accelerationists claimed that everything I have just said would be true, excepting for the fact that the system is corrupt. They cast aspersions upon the probity of those who authorized incarnation. Some even dared claim that Heaven was comprised of an immortal aristocracy of wilful hedonists who played games with the world. Others dared to say that the best of men never achieve godhood, but meet ultimately with the real death or incarnation into a lower life form. Some others would even say that one such as yourself had been chosen for deification only because your original form and attitude struck the fancy of some lustful divinity, rat
her than for your other obvious virtues, my dear.. My, you're full of freckles, aren't you?.. Yes, these are the things those thrice-damned Accelerationists preached. These are the things, the accusations, that the father of my spirit stands for, I am ashamed to say. What can one do with such a heritage but wonder at it? He rides a cycle of mighty days, and he represents the last great schism among the gods. Evil though he obviously is, he is a mighty figure, this father of my spirit, and I respect him as the sons of old did the fathers of their bodies... Are you cold now? Here, let me... There... There... There... Come, now weave us an illusion, my lovely, where we walk in a world that is free of such foolishness... This way now. Turn here... Now let there be a new Eden within this bunker, my moist-lipped one of the green eyes... What is that?.. What is it that is paramount within me at this instant of time?.. Truth, my love — and sincerity — and the desire to share..."

  Ganesha the god-maker walked with Shiva in the forest of Kaniburrha.

  "Lord of Destruction," he said, "I understand that you already seek reprisal against those here in the City who mark the words of Siddhartha with more than a smirk of dismissal."

  "Of course," said Shiva.

  "By so doing, you destroy his effectiveness."

  "'Effectiveness'? Explain what you mean."

  "Kill me that green bird on yonder limb."

  Shiva gestured with his trident and the bird fell.

  "Now kill me its mate."

  "I do not see her."

  "Then kill me any other from among its flock."

  "I see none."

  "And now that it lies dead, you will not. So, if you wish, strike at the first who harken to the words of Siddhartha."

  "I gather your meaning, Ganesha. He shall walk free, for a time. He shall."