“Baiyaan took a huge risk leaving the fate of humanity in your hands. You might never have become T’hn’uuth. Your power may not have developed fully enough. Your intelligence may have been insufficient to get the better of the Rozzers. But, despite the odds against it, his risk paid off. You prevailed. Humanity survived. Baiyaan has petitioned us to study your species, to see why he believes the established path for the development of intelligent life should be ignored in your planet’s case. And, in Baiyaan’s opinion, why that path should be avoided in future. He believes your kind should not be moved aside to make room for a species with more potential.”
“Why? What’s different about us?” said Seb.
Fypp stopped playing and turned to face Seb, standing on the chair. In her left hand, she held a lotus blossom. A string of wooden beads dangled from her right hand.
A rosary? Prayer beads of some kind?
In her saffron robes, with her shaven head and a serene expression on her face, Fypp looked every inch a bodhisattva.
“Religion,” she said, jumping lightly down. “Well, not really, more a quality he claims is threaded through the freak show you call religion.” She walked to the edge of the cabin and motioned Seb to follow, holding out her hand.
“Come on,” she said, “I’ll show you. But then you have to promise me you’ll vote.”
11
When Seb took Fypp’s hand and stepped from the wooden floor of the cabin, everything changed. The room behind them disappeared, along with much of the light. He blinked a few times to adjust, then struggled to understand what Fypp was trying to show him.
“I have visited your world,” she said. “More than once. I must admit to a certain fascination with it.”
They were standing in a room filled with pairs of shoes. Looking behind him, where the cabin had been moments earlier, a courtyard had appeared. The floor was well-trodden hard earth, and there was a fountain in the center, adding moisture to the otherwise dust-dry air. Fypp tugged at his hand, and he followed her into the next room. It was a hall; big, open, its architecture ornate. One wall, in particular, featured a semicircular niche filled with some sort of intricately crafted beaten metal. On the floor, hundreds of men were prostrating themselves in the direction of this niche. Seb realized he was standing in a huge mosque. He remembered a PBS documentary. The niche in the wall was the mihrab, which indicated the position of Mecca, relative to the mosque. He felt slightly awed by the sight of so many people performing the same acts with such fervor and devotion.
Fypp pulled at his hand again, and he followed her through a low door. They were inside a much smaller room now, lit by candles. They followed a group of people wearing white as they left the room, carrying a body. The sky was full of the colors of a stunning sunset. Songs—hymns of some kind in a language Seb did not recognize—were being sung. Rice balls were tucked in around the corpse, and a tearful man in his forties was placing a necklace of wooden beads around the dead woman’s neck. Others placed flowers there. The group was heading toward a huge river, where a solitary figure—possibly a priest—waited beside a flaming torch.
Suddenly the scene changed again, and Seb found his footsteps echoing on a hardwood floor as he and Fypp watched a roomful of men chanting, prayer books in their hands, a small black box tied onto one bicep and another onto their foreheads just underneath the edge of their skullcaps.
Seb turned toward the altar and saw a huge ornate crucifix there. In surprise, he turned back to the men, but they were gone, as was the synagogue; replaced by a large church, its worshipers making the sign of the cross as they recited the Nicene Creed. Seb felt the old habits kick in; he could have chanted the words even now, nearly two decades after he last set foot in a church.
Fypp offered no respite, just led him by the hand through a bewildering array of places of worship and their rituals, some of which he recognized, although many were completely unknown to him. He shook his head at this demonstration of his world’s religiosity; the intensity, commitment, and diversity. And he asked himself the same question that kept him out of church.
How can any of them seriously claim they are right and everyone else is wrong?
Seb knew he was being slightly unfair, but seeing dozens of religious practices brought it into sharp focus for him - and he’d never had that question answered to his satisfaction.
He turned to Fypp after they left a line of masked Jains, who were sweeping the path before them to ensure they didn’t inadvertently tread on an insect.
“Okay, I think I get the point.”
“Not yet you don’t,” she said, and led him through a series of smaller rooms. Some rooms had just one occupant, others a handful, a few, many more. The people in these rooms were incredibly diverse; all races, genders, and ages were represented. The only prevailing commonality was silence. Each room was full of silence. Never before had Seb been quite so aware of silence as a presence, as opposed to an absence. He felt an immediate kinship with these people as his own practice of contemplation provided a thread linking all the practices he had seen in the silent spaces.
“Sufi, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, the Order, Atheist, Hindu, Shinto, Jain, Taoism, Shaman, Pagan,” said Fypp. “Oh, and there’s her.”
She tugged at his hand one more time as they walked through door taking them out of a zazen hall filled with shaven-headed children who looked like Fypp, out onto a hillside.
It was dawn here, and a thin rain accompanied the mist that rolled gently across the face of the mountain. There was a simple wooden structure with smoke curling out of a chimney. In front of the building, sloping down away from it, was a vegetable garden. Halfway along a row of white-flowering potato drills, a middle-aged woman wearing dirty trainers, jeans, and an old sweater was finishing some planting. She smoothed the earth down over the last seed, then brushed the soil from her hands. She watched the sun for a few minutes, as its light began to make some headway against the mist, the mountains gaining in solidity second by second. Then she stood and walked to the house, where she made coffee and porridge, before bringing mug and bowl out onto the deck and breakfasting there. The silence and stillness were full of sound and movement. Rain bounced off leaves, small birds sang to claim their territory, trees stretched in the breeze, there was a scurrying of tiny animals and insects, and the almost imperceptible movement of growing things. A wooden spoon scraping on the edge of a tin bowl. The woman’s breathing.
“That’s what Baiyaan wanted us to see,” said Fypp. They were back in the clearing outside the cabin. Seb looked at Baiyaan, Bok, and Kaani, still sitting at the table.
“I don’t understand,” said Seb. “Other worlds, other cultures have religions, don’t they?”
“Yeah. Kinda,” said Fypp. “Well, no. Actually, not really. You’re pretty unusual. Just don’t know yet if that makes you outliers or an evolutionary dead end.””
“What do you mean?”
“Well, religion does pop up here and there in other species. It’s not entirely unheard of. But it never survives. In the earliest stages of intelligent life, a Creator is sometimes posited, but the notion never really gains traction. And, well, once a species starts using Manna and developing technologically, they regard such superstitions as a slightly embarrassing part of growing up. Like body odor. Or excessive masturbation.”
Seb laughed at that.
“You’re outrageous, Fypp,” he said.
“Outrageous?” she said, giggling. “Hardly. You should have met me three and a half million years ago. Well…” She scratched her chin thoughtfully. “Actually, no. Maybe not. Probably best that you didn’t.”
“We’re backward, then? Humanity, I mean. We’re clinging onto embarrassing superstitions. So why the fascination with us?”
“Well, remember I’m talking about billions of different species here. Only a few million developed religions, and, of those few million, all religion disappeared over time. All religion. The most religious species on record—other
than humanity—had six different religions at its zenith.”
“Six?” said Seb.
“Six. And you have tens of thousands.”
“Why?” said Seb. “What makes us different?”
“That’s what Baiyaan was there to find out. He thinks you’re onto something.”
Seb thought about the whirlwind tour they had just taken. The different dress codes, different rituals, the opposing belief systems. The self-defeating claims of exclusivity. The hostility, not just between proponents of different faiths, but often between those claiming to follow the same tradition. He remembered a homily by a visiting priest during his time in the Catholic orphanage. The old man, his liver-spotted bald head progressively reddening as he spoke, had delivered his conclusions with such absolute certainty, that—had his opinions not been stunningly offensive to anyone with a rudimentary grasp of physics and logic—he might have converted Seb through the power of his righteous conviction alone. Father O’Hanoran had spent the entire service in a state of unusual rigidity and, as the old priest finished up, he muttered a word with just enough volume to be heard by almost everyone in the place: “Bullshit.”
“I don’t understand,” said Seb. “All those different beliefs, all those rituals, the—”
“Oh,” said Fypp, grinning at him, “not that. No, that’s just the label on the bottle. Baiyaan says there’s something inside. And he says if we keep letting the Rozzers control the future of intelligent life, we’ll never find out what that is.”
“Do you mean God?”
Fypp shook her head at him. “Funny. You said that word, and it just entered my consciousness as a meaningless sound. You may as well have coughed. Or farted. There’s nothing that corresponds, no way to translate. Now, I’ve done a little reading on this, found out about some of the explorers. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Meister Eckhart, Krishnamurti, Shams. That bunch.”
“That bunch?” repeated Seb, weakly.
“Yeah. They either used metaphors or refused to define ultimate reality. Buddha even described such definitions and teachings as being like a finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. I like that.”
“So, let me try to get this straight in my own mind. Billy Joe—Baiyaan—saved my life and made me a World Walker because he hoped I would save humanity. He wanted humanity to survive because he thinks our thousands of religions might, somehow, underneath all the layers of crap, reveal a way of experiencing ultimate reality, the ground of all being?”
Fypp was nodding. “Finger. Moon,” she said.
Seb turned to look into the face of the ancient child.
“And what do you think?”
Fypp scowled in thought. “I think it’s…” She hesitated, searching for the right word. This was the most earnest and sincere Seb had seen her yet. He wondered what English word he would hear when she finally settled on the best way to express her opinion. Her face cleared and she smiled brightly.
“I think it’s probably all bollocks,” she said.
“Let’s vote.” The voice came from the cabin. Fypp and Seb turned to see Kaani standing at the edge of the room, her long hair blowing around her face despite the fact that there was no wind. Seb supposed this, along with the fact that her eyes had become hard, glittering and unblinking, was supposed to convey impatience and anger. In which case, it was working.
Fypp skipped ahead of him. When she reached Kaani, she leaped up and knocked the pointed hat off the old woman’s head, jamming it on her own before running round the cabin laughing. After a few circuits, during which Kaani actively ignored her, she ran headlong into the edge of the table and fell heavily onto the floor.
Seb went to her and gently pulled the hat from her head, only to find another, identical hat, beneath. Removing that one revealed another, then another, and another. After the sixth hat, he stopped and sat back at the table. The hats immediately grew legs—tiny, hairy, muscular legs, he noticed—and sprang up, racing around the cabin before jumping into the grass and heading for the forest. Just as the last hat was about to disappear into the trees, it paused, raised one leg, and—quite deliberately and distinctly—broke wind.
“Can’t you take anything seriously?” said Kaani, a new hat now back on her own head.
Fypp joined them at the table, shaking her head at their lack of humor.
“Not so much, these days, Kaani,” she said. “I’d have thought you might understand that.”
Kaani made an indeterminable sound and looked round at her fellow T’hn’uuth.
“Baiyaan wishes us to call a halt to the Rozzers’ creation, and stewardship, of intelligent life in the universe. To this end, he has already intervened unilaterally, breaking all normal ethical boundaries by artificially accelerating the evolution of a T’hn’uuth. In his defense, he cites the possibility of discovering the true nature of reality through spiritual practice, as opposed to using reason to draw valid conclusions from measurable results. And this merits assembling the council.”
“Kaani,” warned Bok in his deep rumble.
“Well,” she continued. Her heavily-lined face and large nose proved able to suggest disdain and contempt without much effort. Her next words emerged as if they pained her to even speak them. “Spiritual practice. We have heard enough.”
“Wait,” said Seb. “If Baiyaan loses this vote, what happens to Earth?”
“Nothing,” said Kaani. “Over time, another species will develop sufficient intelligence to use Manna. I’m sure humans will survive - many evolutionary dead-ends hang on for millions of years.”
“Oh, thanks,” said Seb, wondering if sarcasm was detectable. Kaani’s glare confirmed that it was.
“And Baiyaan?” he said.
“Exiled,” said Bok.
There was silence around the table now.
“Those in favor of Baiyaan’s actions. Vote.”
Baiyaan finally stirred, his long, thin fingers pointing up. Seb raised his hand. He looked around the table. No one else had moved.
After a few seconds, Baiyaan dropped his hand, and Seb did the same.
“Against Baiyaan. Vote.”
Kaani’s hand went up immediately. Bok, unhurried as always, raised his own giant hand next.
Everyone turned to look at Fypp.
12
In the short time Seb had known her, Fypp had proven to be someone who seemed to revel in causing consternation, keen to provoke a reaction. Easily bored, playful, a trickster. Occasional flashes of information hinting at her real age and experience came from Seb’s interaction with her Manna, and it was a confusing picture.
After being asked to vote, she turned and stepped out of the cabin so that—so she claimed—she could “have a little think, away from you stiffs.” Colorful juggling balls appeared in her hands, and she spent a few minutes struggling to coordinate keeping all three moving. She squealed when she finally achieved it.
Seb heard an odd cracking sound from across the table. Kaani was grinding her teeth.
The surreality of the situation somehow made the importance of the decision for which they were all waiting seem less important. Seb slowly became aware that this was because he was feeling the effects of Fypp’s Manna more keenly than that of any of the other T’hn’uuth.
Fypp was a being of such power that Seb was only able to comprehend a fraction of the information her Manna provided. The sensation reminded Seb of a conversation with a guitarist he’d once listened to in a restaurant in Greece. Seb and Mee had both loved his playing, and had sat in on a couple of numbers, much to the guitarist’s pleasure. After the gig, they had spoken for a while in broken French, the only common language they could find, as neither Seb nor Mee spoke any Greek and the guitarist only knew a few English words. The experience had been frustrating and fascinating in equal measure. Seb had finally, triumphantly, turned to Mee and said,
“See? Musicians can communicate in any language. Anatol is just going to fetch a CD by his favorite songwriter for me.”
> When, a few minutes later, Anatol had returned with a pair of socks and a cheese grater, Mee had laughed so hard, so long and so loudly that the owner of the restaurant had asked them to leave.
Seb wondered if the patchy communication he detected from Fypp was deliberate. How much could a being billions of years old have in common with its fellow T’hn’uuth, let alone him? For all he knew, he could be perceiving just the tiniest fraction of Fypp, the rest of her—dark, impenetrable, impossibly complex—forever beyond his comprehension.
Or she could just be senile, of course.
Fypp had mastered the art of juggling three balls now and was moving on to machetes. Five of them. Then seven. Soon the air was filled with gleaming metal, and Fypp’s hands and arms were a blur of speed.
“PLEASE.” The shout came from Kaani who was standing now. Fypp paid no attention for a few seconds, then threw each machete higher on her next round of juggling, until all of them were in the air far above her. Then she walked back to the cabin.
Seb watched the machetes fall. The first one hit the ground with a wholly unexpected slapping sound. Seb looked more closely at the silvery object on the floor, which was now jerking and twitching in a strangely familiar way. Within seconds, as all the other machetes hit the ground with a spattering reminiscent of fat raindrops on a tin roof, Seb saw they had turned into fish. Big, silver fish, as long as his arm, wriggling and gasping for a few seconds, then diving into the ground itself, which accepted them like liquid.
Fypp didn’t even turn to look at her creations, just jumped lightly into the room and regarded Kaani with a petulant expression.
“Don’t rush me,” she said. “I’d kinda hoped, during the seven thousand years since I last saw you, you might have learned a little patience.”
Kaani didn’t reply, just waited for Fypp to announce her decision.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 101
