“To whom, Bakrish?”
“To yourself, to all of those you may influence. Out of this test comes a rare kind of understanding, for it is …”
He broke off at a scraping sound behind them. Orne turned, saw two acolytes depositing a heavy, square-armed chair on the floor facing the barrier wall. They cast frightened glances at Orne, scurried away toward one of the bronze doors.
“They fear me,” Orne said, nodding toward the door where the acolytes had fled. “Does that mean they hate me?”
“They stand in awe of you,” Bakrish said. “They are prepared to offer you reverence. It would be difficult for me to say how much of awe and reverence represents suppressed hate.”
“I see.”
Bakrish said: “I merely follow orders here, Orne. I beg of you not to hate me, nor to hate anyone. Do not harbor hate during this test.”
“Why do those two stand in awe of me and prepared to reverence me?” Orne asked, his gaze still on the door where the acolytes had gone.
“Word of you has gone forth,” Bakrish said. “They know this test. The fabric of our universe is woven into it. Many things hang in the balance here when a potential psi focus is concerned. The possibilities are infinite.”
Orne probed for Bakrish’s motives. The priest obviously sensed the probe. He said: “I am terrified. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“Why?”
“In my ordeal, this test almost proved fatal. I had sequestered a core of hate. This place clutches at me even now.” He shivered.
Orne found the priest’s fear unsteadying.
Bakrish said: “I would deem it a favor if you would pray with me now.”
“To whom?” Orne asked.
“To any force in which we have faith,” Bakrish said. “To ourselves, to the One God, to each other. It does not matter; only it helps if we pray.”
Bakrish clasped his hands, bowed his head.
After a moment’s hesitation, Orne imitated him.
***
Chapter Twenty-Three
Which is the better: a good friend, a good heart, a good eye, a good neighbor, a good wife, or the understanding of consequences? It is none of these. A warm and sensitive soul which knows the worth of fellowship and the price of the individual dignity—this is best.
—BAKRISH as a student to his guru
“Why did you choose Bakrish to guide him in the ordeal?” Macrithy asked the Abbod.
They stood in the Abbod’s study, Macrithy having returned to report that Orne had passed the first test. A smell of sulfur dominated the room and it seemed oppressively hot to Macrithy, although the fire had died in the fireplace.
The Abbod bowed his head over the standing easel, spoke without turning and without observing that Macrithy had coveted this honor for himself.
“I chose Bakrish because of something he said when he was my student,” the Abbod murmured. “There are times, you know, when even a god needs a friend.”
“What’s that smell in here?” Macrithy asked. “Have you been burning something odd in the fireplace, Reverend Abbod?”
“I have tested my own soul in hellfire,” the Abbod said, knowing that his tone betrayed his dissatisfaction with Macrithy. To soften this, he added: “Pray for me, my dear friend. Pray for me.”
***
Chapter Twenty-Four
The teacher who does not learn from his students does not teach. The student who sneers at his teacher’s true knowledge is like one who chooses unripe grapes and scorns the sweet fruit of the vine which has been allowed to ripen in its own time.
—Sayings of the ABBODS
“You must sit in that chair,” Bakrish said when they had finished praying. He indicated the squat, ugly shape facing the barrier wall.
Orne looked at the chair, noted an inverted metallic bowl fitted to swing over the seat. There was prescient tension in that chair. Orne felt his heartbeats pumping pressure into this moment.
“Sometimes we go for the sake of going.” The words rang in his memory and he wondered who had said them. The great wheel was turning.
Orne crossed to the chair, sat down. In the act of sitting, he felt the sense of peril come to full surge within him. Metal bands leaped from concealed openings in the chair, pinned his arms, circled his chest and legs. He surged against them, twisting.
“Do not struggle,” Bakrish warned. “You cannot escape.”
“Why didn’t you warn me I’d be pinned here?” Orne demanded.
“I did not know. Truly. The chair is part of the psi machine and, through you, has a life of its own. Please, Orne, I beg of you as a friend: do not struggle, do not hate us. Hate magnifies your danger manyfold. It could cause you to fail.”
“Dragging you down with me?”
“Quite likely,” Bakrish said. “One cannot escape the consequences of his hate.” He glanced around the enormous room. “And I once hated in this place.” He sighed, moved behind the chair and shifted the inverted bowl until it could be lowered over Orne’s head. “Do not move suddenly or try to jerk away. The microfilament probes within this bowl will cause you great pain if you do.” Bakrish lowered the bowl.
Orne felt something touch his scalp in many places, a crawling and tickling sensation. “What is this thing?” he asked, his voice echoing oddly in his ears. And he wondered suddenly: Why am I going through with this? Why do I take their word for everything?
“This is one of the great psi machines,” Bakrish said. He adjusted something on the back of the chair. Metal clicked. “Can you see the wall in front of you?”
Orne stared straight ahead under the lip of the bowl. “Yes.”
“Observe that wall,” Bakrish said. “It can manifest your most latent urges. With this machine, you can bring about miracles. You can call forth the dead, do many wonders. You may be on the brink of a profound mystical experience.”
Orne tried to swallow in a dry throat. “If I wanted my father to appear here he would?”
“He is deceased?”
“Yes.”
“Then it could happen.”
“It would really be my father, alive ... himself?”
“Yes. But let me caution you. The things you see here will not be hallucinations. If you are successful in calling forth the dead, what you call forth will be that dead person and ... something more.”
The back of Orne’s right arm tingled and itched. He longed to scratch it. “What do you mean more?”
“It is a living paradox,” Bakrish said. “Any creature manifested here through your will must be invested with your psyche as well as its own. Its matter will impinge upon your matter in ways which cannot be predicted. All of your memories will be available to whatever living flesh you call forth.”
“My memories? But ... "
“Hear me, Orne. This is important. In some cases, your creations may fully understand their duality. Others will reject your half of the creation out of hand. They may not have the capacity to straddle this dependence. Some of them may even lack sentience.”
Orne felt the fear driving Bakrish’s words, sensed the sincerity, and thought: He believes this.
That didn’t make all of this true, but it added a peculiar weight to the priest’s words.
“Why have I been trapped in this chair?” Orne asked.
“I am not sure. Perhaps it was important that you not run away from yourself.” Bakrish put a hand on Orne’s shoulder, pressed gently. “I must leave now, but I will pray for you. May grace and faith guide you.”
Orne heard a swishing of robes as the priest strode away. A door banged with a hollow sharpness which lost itself in the giant room. Infinite loneliness penetrated Orne.
Presently, a faint humming like a distant bee sound grew audible. The psi amplifier in Orne’s neck tugged painfully, and he felt the flare of psi forces around him. The barrier wall blinked alive, became a rich and glassy green. It began to crawl with iridescent purple lines. They squirmed and writhed like countless glowing worms trapped in a v
iscid green aquarium.
Orne drew in a shuddering breath. Fear hammered at him.
The crawling purple lines held a hypnotic fascination. Some appeared to waft out of the wall toward him. The shape of Diana’s face glowed momentarily among the lines. He tried to hold the image, saw it melt away.
I don’t want her here in this dangerous place, he thought.
Shapes of deformity squirmed across the wall. They coalesced abruptly into the outline of a Shriggar, the saw-toothed lizard Chargonian mothers invoked to frighten their children into obedience. The image took on more substance. It developed scaly yellow plates and stalk eyes.
Time slowed to a grinding, creeping pace for Orne. He thought back to his Chargon childhood, to the terror memories, told himself: But even then the Shriggar were extinct. My great-great-grandfather saw the last specimen.
Memories persisted, driving him down a long corridor full of empty echoes that suggested insanity, drugged gibbering. Down ... down ... down ... He recalled childish laughter, a kitchen, his mother as a young woman. There were his sisters screaming derisively as he cowered, ashamed. He had been three years old and he had come running into the house to babble in terror that he had seen a Shriggar in the deep shadows of the creek gully.
Laughing girls! Hateful little girls! “He thinks he saw a Shriggar!” “Hush now, you two.” Amusement, even there in his mother’s voice. He knew it now.
On the green wall, the Shriggar outline bulged outward. One taloned foot extended itself to the floor. The Shriggar stepped fully from the wall. It was twice as tall as a man and with stalked eyes swiveling right, left ...
Orne jerked his awareness out of the memories, felt painful throbbing as his head movement disturbed the microfilament probes.
Talons scratched on the floor as the Shriggar took three investigative steps away from the wall.
Orne tasted the sourness of terror in his mouth. He thought: My ancestors were hunted by such a creature. The panic was in his genes. He recognized this as every sense focused on the nightmare lizard.
Yellow scales rasped with every breath the thing took. The narrow, birdlike head twisted to one side, lowered. Its beak mouth opened to reveal a forked tongue and sawteeth. Primordial instinct pressed Orne back in his chair. He smelled the stink of the creature—sickly sweet with overtones of sour cream and swamp.
The Shriggar bobbed its head and coughed: “Chunk!” Stalk eyes moved, centered on Orne. One taloned foot lifted and it plunged into motion toward the man trapped in the chair. The high-stepping lope stopped about four meters away. The lizard cocked its head to one side while it examined Orne.
The beast stink of the thing almost overpowered Orne’s senses. He stared up at it, aware of painful constriction across his chest, the probing eyes.
The green wall behind the Shriggar continued to wriggle with iridescent purple lines. The movement was a background blur on Orne’s vision. He could not shift his focus from the lizard. The Shriggar ventured closer. Orne smelled the fetid swamp ooze on its breath.
This has to be hallucination, Orne told himself. I don’t care what Bakrish said: This is hallucination. Shriggar are extinct. Another thought blinked at him in the sway of the lizard’s terrible beak: The priests of Amel could’ve bred zoo specimens. How does anyone know what’s been done here in the name of religion?
The Shriggar cocked its head to the other side, moved its stalked eyes to within a meter of Orne’s face. Something else solidified at the green wall. Orne moved only his eyes to discover what lay in this new movement.
Two children dressed in scanty sun aprons skipped onto the stone floor. Their footsteps echoed. Childish giggling rang in the vast emptiness of the domed room. One child appeared to be about five years old, the other slightly older—possibly eight.
They betrayed the Chargon heaviness of body. The older child carried a small bucket and a toy shovel. They stopped, looked around them in sudden confused silence.
The smaller one said: “Maddie, where are we?”
At the sound, the Shriggar turned its head, bent its stalked eyes toward the children.
The older child shrieked.
The Shriggar whirled, talons scratching and slipping, lunged into its high-stepping lope.
In horrified shock, Orne recognized the children: his two sisters, the ones who’d laughed at his fearful cries on that long-ago day. It was as though he had brought this incident into being for the sole purpose of venting his hate, inflicting upon these children the thing they had derided.
“Run!” he shouted. “Run!”
But there was no moving the two children from their frozen terror.
The Shriggar swooped upon the children, blocking them from Orne’s view. There was a childish shriek which was cut off with abrupt finality. Unable to stop, the lizard hit the green wall and melted into it, became wriggling lines.
The older child lay sprawled on the floor still clutching her bucket and toy shovel. A red smear marked the stones beside her. She stared across the room at Orne, slowly got to her feet.
This can’t be real, Orne thought. No matter what Bakrish said.
He stared at the wall, expecting the Shriggar to reappear, but aware the beast had served its purpose. Without words, it had spoken to him. He saw that it had really been a part of himself. That was what Bakrish had meant. That thing was my beast.
The child began walking toward Orne, swinging her bucket. Her right hand clutched the toy shovel. She glared fixedly at Orne.
It’s Maddie, he thought. It’s Maddie as she was. But she’s a grown woman now, married and with children of her own. What have I created?
Flecks of sand marked the child’s legs and cheeks. One of her red braids hung down partly undone. She appeared angry, shivering with a child’s fury. She stopped about two meters from Orne.
“You did that!” she accused. Orne shuddered at the madness in the child’s voice. “You killed Laurie!” she accused. “It was you.”
“No, Maddie, no,” Orne whispered.
She lifted the bucket, hurled its contents at him. He shut his eyes, felt sand deluge his face, felt the bowl on his head. It ran down his cheeks, fell on his arms, his chest, his lap. He shook his head to dislodge the sand on his cheeks and pain coursed through him as the movement disrupted the microfilaments connected to his scalp.
Through slitted eyes, Orne saw the dancing lines on the green wall leap into wild motion—bending, twisting, flinging. Orne stared at the green and purple frenzy through a red haze of pain. He remembered the priest’s warning that any life he called forth here would contain his own psyche as well as its own.
“Maddie,” he said, “please try to under—”
“You tried to get into my head!” she screamed. “I pushed you out and you can’t get back!”
Bakrish had said it: “Others may reject your half of the creation out of hand.”
Child Maddie had rejected him because her eight-year-old mind could not accept such an experience.
Realizing this, Orne recognized that he was accepting this occurrence as reality and not as hallucination. He thought: What can I say to her? How can I undo this?
“I’m going to kill you!” Maddie screamed.
She hurled herself at him, the toy shovel swinging. Light glinted from the tiny blade. It slashed down on his right arm and pain exploded there. Blood darkened the sleeve of his toga.
Orne felt himself caught up in nightmare. Words leaped to his lips. “Maddie! Stop that or God will punish you!”
She drew back, preparing herself for a new assault.
More movement at the wall caught Orne’s attention. A white-robed figure in a red turban came striding out of the wall: a tall man with gleaming eyes, the face of a tortured ascetic—long gray beard parted in the Sufi style.
Orne whispered the name: “Mahmud!”
A gigantic tri-di of that face and figure dominated the rear wall of the inner mosque Orne had attended on Chargon.
God will
punish you!
Orne remembered standing beside an uncle, staring up at that image in the mosque, bowing to it.
Mahmud strode up behind the child, caught her arm as she started another blow with the shovel. She twisted, struggling, but he held her, turning her arm slowly, methodically. A bone snapped. The child screamed and screamed and ...
“Don’t!” Orne protested.
Mahmud had a low, rumbling voice. He said: “One does not command God’s agent to stop His just punishments.” He lifted the child by the hair, caught up the fallen shovel, slashed it across her neck.
The screaming stopped. Blood spurted over his gown. He let the now limp figure fall to the floor, dropped the shovel, faced Orne.
Nightmare! Orne thought. This has to be a nightmare!
“You think this is a nightmare,” Mahmud rumbled.
Orne remembered what Bakrish had said: If this creature were real, it could think with his memories. He rejected this thought. “You are a nightmare.”
“Your creation has done its work,” Mahmud said. “It had to be disposed of, you know. It was embodied by hate and not by love. You were warned about that.”
Orne felt guilty, sickened and angry. He recalled that this test involved understanding miracles. “Was this supposed to be a miracle?” he asked. “This was a profound mystical experience?”
“You should’ve talked to the Shriggar,” Mahmud said. “It would’ve discussed cities of glass, the meanings of war, politics and that sort of thing. I will be more demanding. For one thing, I wish to know what you believe constitutes a miracle.”
An air of suspense enclosed Orne. Prescient fear sucked at his vitals.
“What is a miracle?” Mahmud demanded.
Orne felt his heart hammering. He had difficulty focusing on the question, stammered: “Are you really an agent of God?”
“Quibbles and labels!” Mahmud barked. “Haven’t you learned yet about labels? The universe is one thing! We cannot cut it into pieces with our puny expediencies. The universe exists beyond the labels!”
A tingling sense of madness prickled through Orne. He felt himself balanced on the edge of chaos. What is a miracle? he wondered. He recalled Emolirdo’s didactic words: chaos ... order ... energy. Psi equals miracles.
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