Nirvana Effect

by Craig Gehring

  “I will get some eucalyptus paste to help with the pain. It soothes the nerves after the liquid,” said Mahanta.

  “I could definitely use some soothing. What was that stuff? What did you put in me? And in you?” Edward stuttered trying to get out all his questions at once.

  Mahanta smiled warmly. “I have many questions for you, too. All that in time.” The young man sighed as he stood up. “First, there is a challenge we must face. Can you sit?”

  “I don’t know.” Edward hated the idea, but there was urgency in Mahanta’s voice.

  “Let’s try,” said Mahanta. He helped Edward up into a sitting position. The motion was all Edward could bear.

  “Quiet!” whispered Mahanta. Edward realized he had screamed. “Hurts?” Mahanta asked.

  “Yes. I can’t take it. I need to lie down.”

  “Can you stand?” asked Mahanta

  “Oh, God, no,” said Edward.

  The crowd outside kept shouting. They were getting loud enough for Edward to make out some of the words. Manassa. White man.

  “Your ‘no’ is not a sufficient answer today,” said Mahanta.

  “What is this crowd?”

  “They want to kill you.”

  Oh, God.

  “You do not recognize their living god. This is a holy house, this hut, consecrated to me and those I command. It should be safe for you so long as I deem it, but unholy men might creep in the dark of night and kill you despite my commandments. Such is the force of our traditions.” This he said quickly, in the rolling poetry of traditional Onge. The older tongue was easier for Edward to follow, being closer to its Indo-European roots.

  “What must we do?” asked Edward.

  “I have a question for you, Jesuit.” A question that you obviously don’t want to ask. There was pain in Mahanta’s eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “Would your lord Jesus desire you to spit on his face if it eased your suffering?”

  Edward thought it over. There was an awful hole in his stomach as he started to see where this was going. “Yes.”

  “Today you must spit and ease your suffering.” Mahanta waited for Edward to prompt him further, but the priest said nothing.

  “If you desire to live today, you must renounce your God and bow to me, proclaiming me the only living god on Earth, with the power to change the destiny of nations. It must be said this way.” Again he said this in traditional Onge, flatly. The prospect didn’t excite Mahanta one bit - in fact, it seemed to disgust him. Edward was feeling nauseated, himself.

  Mahanta continued matter-of-factly. “I will announce that I have healed you with my powers, that you have come to see the light and that you are now my servant, higher than all Onge for you are the only mortal who may sleep in my house. I have calculated this in trance. This is the only path I see in which you may survive. Nockwe has grown ill and can no longer help protect you. Dook gains power by the day. It will only be a matter of time before tradition kills you. Perhaps today.” This was no argument. Just the facts.

  Edward turned his head to vomit beside the bed. His body spasmed in pain as he retched. This didn’t faze Mahanta at all; rather, it was as though he’d expected it.

  “Of course, your God will still live and be your God. I am no god at all, merely a…scientist.” He said this last word measuredly, in English. There was no Onge word for it. “This is all just a matter of survival. I know this is happening fast, but we have no other options at this point. I’m glad you finally woke up when you did. Are you ready?”

  Edward knew he had no choice but to be ready. Whether Mahanta’s logic was correct or not was inconsequential. Whether or not his intentions were pure did not matter. If Mahanta told him to eat manure Edward would have to comply. Edward was too weak physically to defy his only protector. He did not want to die. He didn’t feel that God wanted him to die, either.

  Edward heard one man’s voice ring out clearly over the wild hubbub outside. “Give us the white man!” He was followed by an approving roar.

  God, please forgive me. Edward had prayed more in one week than he had in a year. “Yes, I’m ready.”

  Mahanta nodded. “It is important, Edward, that during your brief demonstration to the tribe, that you look completely healthy. Is that understood?” Edward nodded. “I can’t give you any more of the nectar. You’ve had three injections in less than two moons. I’ve never had to experience the degree of pain that I know you now feel.” There was a touch of compassion in his tone that Edward somehow found reassuring. “Let us stand.”

  Edward couldn’t help but scream again, though this time he was well aware of it. Once moving, he found it helped to stay moving. He wobbled back and forth, his vision almost seared out by the pain.

  “Breathe more quickly. Increase your heart rate. Release your adrenal glands...get angry…Don’t look it, though.” advised Mahanta.

  Oddly, Edward found that he could follow the commands, not nearly as thoroughly as he would have been able to while in that trance, but he started to feel his heart rate go up and the pain ease a bit. It was still unbearable.

  “Are you okay?” asked Mahanta.

  Edward did not speak, but almost swooned. Mahanta propped him up.

  “You will need to speak loud and clear out there,” said the Onge. “You will need to look healed. And you will need to stand tall, and then bow to me.”

  Edward breathed in deep and wiped the tears out of his eyes. He let out a long, frustrated groan. “Let’s go,” he muttered.

  He leaned against Mahanta, shuffling all the way to the entrance of the hut. Bamboo reeds hung from the arch of the door by strings to make a rigid sort of drape. Mahanta deposited Edward to lean against the wall just inside and walked out to the crowd.

  6

  The tribe stopped their shouting. They had long awaited this hour to hear the wisdom of their Manassa. They knelt before him, the white man momentarily forgotten.

  Already, their god had conjured the clouds; the rains had come for two days just as he had foretold. He had, of course, slain the panther. He had defeated the medicine man, even though the medicine man had cheated and attacked Manassa unarmed upon his triumphant return. Manassa had even healed a child, Tomy, of demons.

  Every day, for a short time, Manassa talked to his people.

  The tribesman Tien, on his knees, pushed his way closer to Manassa. He had a mission that would fail if he did get near.

  Even if Tien’s deed meant his death it would be for the greater good of the tribe and his god. He was to slay the white man on sight. If the white man didn’t come out, Tien was to wait in the night and assassinate him as he slept.

  Others were agitating the crowd to draw out the white man. Tien was to wait at the front of the crowd, his dagger in hand. But the crowd was thick, thicker than any other day. Tien could not get up to the front; the people there were jealous and kept pushing him back. They refused to be far from Manassa. They had waited all day to be near Him.

  “MY PEOPLE!” shouted Manassa in the traditional Onge tongue he favored. My great god, thought Tien. He had been one to see Manassa fight the panther, and again fight the medicine man. Earlier, he’d seen Manassa shatter the medicine man’s spear. He had no doubt in his mind that this boy was the immortal of their legends.

  “Manassa!” shouted the crowd in unison, Tien along with them. He was several rows back. Now that everyone was kneeling it was difficult edging closer.

  “YOU ARE THE CHOSEN!” shouted Manassa.

  “As are you, our god!” said the tribe.

  “Hear me today, my people. A mighty miracle is at hand. Here today is the first shudder of a powerful earthquake. Here is the first branch bent by an unstoppable typhoon. Here is our first advance to the high throne to which the Onge are destined.” Tien had never learned traditional Onge. He did not understand what Manassa was saying. He would hear the story later, from Dook or another. He could not help but be excited, though, by the tone of his god’s words,
by the rustling enthusiasm of the tribe all around him.

  Dook had explained it all to him. All was as had been prophesied for generation upon generation. Their living god would lead the tribe to become the chieftains over all chieftains…

  Manassa continued. “I told you that past the horizon, where the sun sets, lies a land ruled by the white man, a land of untold riches and plenty. Though we know of them, they know not of us. We are but a speck to them, a termite, an ant. They know not that their living god walks the earth today. They fear not the Chosen Tribe.

  “But today, Manassa has made the white man his slave, has made the white man to recognize the living god. For today, the white man, the Jesus-man-no-more, Edward Styles, is healed!” He dramatically pulled aside the bamboo reeds. The white man exited the temple.

  The priest stood resolutely, every muscle in his body tense. There was no sign of his head injury. Tien had seen Edward’s body in the clearing after the panther fight. There was no way he could be standing so soon; no human could recover so quickly. White demon. He is here to work his witchcraft on our god. He wished he knew what Manassa was saying. It would help him kill this demon.

  Tien felt a fluttering in his stomach, the same that he got while on the hunt. A part of him wished the white man had never shown himself. He did not want to have to perform. I must not fail. Dook had promised to kill him if he failed. Tien gripped his knife’s reassuring handle. To succeed was glory.

  “I am healed!” shouted Edward, also in traditional Onge. “I am grateful eternally. I renounce my God and my ways.” Edward took the cross hanging from his neck and broke it off its necklace. He threw it to the ground. “Manassa, you are my god, the only living god on earth, with the power to change nations.”

  Tien slid the dagger from its sheath. Odd the priest was throwing down his necklace. Perhaps he was working some kind of spell. He was always wearing that strange cross. Why is Manassa permitting him to do his magic?

  Tien launched through the rows of onlookers. They resisted his surge instinctively but he pushed through. Finally, he was in the open, stumbling forward, the white man within his reach. He leapt to plunge his knife into the kneeling priest’s back.

  In a flash, Manassa interposed himself in front of the white man. Tien couldn’t stop his momentum. Manassa chopped the knife out of Tien’s hand before it reached him. Oh, gods, thought Tien. I attacked our god!

  “TIEN!!!” shouted Manassa.

  Tien collapsed on the ground, trembling. He sensed the eyes of the Onge upon him.

  Manassa loomed over him. Tien felt his shadow. It would be nothing for Manassa to shove the dropped dagger into his head. He’d seen what Manassa had done to the panther.

  “My child!” shouted Manassa. “Think you a dagger can stop a god?” It was in that old Onge tongue, again. Tien risked looking up at him. Manassa narrowed his eyes.

  “I…” Tien mumbled. He looked back down at the ground. “I don’t know what you’re saying, my lord,” he mumbled in vulgar Onge.

  “My child,” Manassa said, matching his dialect. The god sized up Tien and the silent crowd. “You didn’t hear my words, unmindful of the tongue of our ancestors. Others have heard my words, however, and still they disobey. For them there will be no mercy.” Manassa’s eyes locked with Dook’s, but only for a second. “I thank you for your service and your heart, but this white man recognizes me now as his god.”

  Manassa glanced over at the white man. He was shaking heavily. Perhaps he’d gone into terror over the assassination attempt.

  “The white man is now my chosen servant,” continued Manassa. “Let it be known that he is higher than all mortals, for he is the first of foreign lands to recognize the true living god, and he shall be the only mortal to ever sleep in my temple. So it is said, so it is. The words of Manassa.” He said the last in traditional Onge. Every word was memorized by the old women to be added to the oral history.

  Manassa forcefully grabbed the white man and practically threw him into the hut. Edward was trembling all over. Apparently, the incident had given him quite a fright. Our god does not permit weakness.

  “LONG LIVE OUR TRIBE!” shouted Manassa, retreating back into the hut.

  “ETERNAL IS OUR LIVING GOD!” chanted the tribe. They stood. Tien plunged into the crowd. He had to get away.

  Tien made it only ten yards before Dook seized him by the shoulders and threw him to the ground once more.

  Tien cried out, holding his hands before him begging for mercy. “It was the will of the god.”

  Dook spit on him and growled. “Perhaps. But that foreigner will be dead along with the other, despite your cowardice. I will be chieftain of the living god, and your idiocy won’t stop me.” Dook kicked him and walked away.

  Tien noticed the boy Tomy walking past. Had he been listening? Tien dismissed it. He was just a boy.

  Tien pulled himself up. It was not yet noon, and it had already been far too long a day.

  7

  James ordered wine. Callista asked for water. Well, at least I’ve got her here, finally.

  This had been his life’s work for close to a year. At least it had kept his mind occupied. He had developed much more unsavory hobbies in his earlier years. “Callista-courting” was the most therapeutic of the vices he’d indulged in so far.

  Not only was she completely out of his league; she knew it, without even an inkling of his shady past.

  They were seated at a table for two in a restaurant that James had chosen months earlier. The lighting was low, and the noise level sufficient to allow for intimacy without having to speak too loudly. The sea-drenched breeze wafting in from the outside dining area reminded him of the Mediterranean. She reminded him of the Mediterranean. He missed it.

  “I can’t believe you brought them all the way to their farm! You bottomed out your car five times!” she laughed. “The roads were terrible.”

  “A promise is a promise,” he said nonchalantly. He’d need to get a mechanic to look at his car in the morning, but it was worth it to impress her. She had already impressed him.

  She had the thin, chiseled elegance that he admired in Americans, but there was a posture and certainty in her that led him to believe she’d traveled. “You’re an American from England, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “You’re an Australian from Melbourne,” she countered. It wasn’t a question.

  “Actually, from a little bit north of the city. Born in Sydney, though. How’d you know?” He was surprised. She’d figured him at least as well as he’d managed to figure her.

  She shrugged. “Lucky guess. I was born in New Jersey. Left there by the time I was six for London.”

  “Does it show in my accent?” asked Seacrest, still stuck on her deduction. “I’ve spent a good deal of time abroad. Wouldn’t think it was so obvious, my accent. Is it obvious?”

  “It just shows. I knew a man from Melbourne. My father worked at the American Embassy in London. I practically grew up there. Met all kinds of people from all sorts of places.” She sipped her water. He sipped his wine.

  “Have you travelled much?”

  “Not as much as I’d like. We stayed pretty rooted in England. I even ended up going to school there.”

  “Well, how do you like this island?” he asked. “Good change of pace?”

  “Well, it’s what I asked for,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I was looking to do something like this. For me it was a good opportunity, strange as that may sound. What about you?”

  I hate it. I can’t wait to get off this ridiculous rock. I’d rather drown in my own piss than stay here another year. “Well, I’m here right now, so I may as well make the most of it.” He sipped his wine again. He needed to change the subject. That was all he could tell her. One more question and he’d really have to start lying. He shifted in his seat and smiled. “Anyway, tell me, why is it so hard to get a date with Dr. Knowles?”

  She laughed.
>
  “Are you married with five illegitimate children and three adopted Chinese babies?” he asked quite seriously.

  She laughed again. “No.” She smiled. “Is this a date, Dr. Seacrest?” she asked, matching his serious tone.

  He smiled. Can’t get anything past this one. “I’m paying, so it’s a date. And your purse is locked in my ‘vette, so you can’t do anything about it.” He gauged her response. She was making a decision.

  “Well, I guess it’s official,” she said. “You’re on a date, and I’m a hostage.” The waiter put the appetizer on their table.

  Toughie. “You’re lucky. Usually I take my hostages to rundown bars. You’re more in the ‘distinguished captive’ category.”

  She looked at the candle in the middle of the table and watched the dance of the flame. She didn’t look up at him as she spoke. “You know, James, I appreciate you taking me out to dinner.”

  He’d known this about her. She hadn’t done this in a while. She’s got a long story. He had decided he wanted her anyway, even though he knew he’d be competing with a ghost. The challenge suited him. He’d just have to take things a lot slower with her than he was used to.

  I guess I’ve got a thing for the good Dr. Knowles. “Well, Callista, I appreciate you joining me. I hope maybe we can do it again.”

  She looked up at him and smiled. Whatever had shadowed her face a moment before was gone. “Well, all you have to do is lock my purse in your Corvette and, rest assured, I’ll follow you to the end of my days.”

  8

  Edward could not sleep.

  For one, he hurt too much. He was exhausted by pain past the point of rest.

  But that’s not it. He was thinking.

  Since he’d had the trance, he could not stop thinking.

  He was thinking about the periodic table in just that moment. He saw it projected in his mind’s eye on the dark ceiling of the temple.