by Frank Lauria
He waited for a moment, poising his hands before starting the count
Orient felt a spasm of cold shoot through his thought as he opened his mind to increase the efficiency of his breath. He held the pattern and continued his slow free fall toward the deep light.
“One… ”
The turbulence whirled in again, buffeting his direction.
“Two… ”
He veered back at a shallow angle and the turbulence crashed against him, sending him toward the barren stream of another orbit.
“Three.”
The lights went out and the noise hushed as the stadium submerged into complete darkness.
The sudden flare of eighty thousand beads of flame evaporated the darkness, illuminating the entire arena with a full rosy glow that rippled with the delighted sigh of the spectators.
Orient saw two men walking down the aisle to the platform. Just behind them, six men, dressed identically in tan raincoats and brown hats, accompanied a girl in a wheelchair. Susej followed the wheelchair, walking alone, his head bowed.
“Mr. and Mrs. America, your sweetheart and mine, the first lady of courage, Kane Mulnew.” The sound of Weldon’s voice was lost in the great roar that rumbled the walls of the stadium.
As the roar diminished the arc lights came up, the brilliant beams glazing the soft surface of the match glow.
When the girl reached the stage, the roar rose to a new peak.
Susej stood at the base of the ramp, waiting until the girl had received her ovation before mounting the platform.
He stood behind the wheelchair, head down, while Weldon waited for the noise to subside.
“Tonight”—Weldon was standing with his hat placed over his heart—“tonight, we are all privileged to be here”—he paused—“to see a great miracle, and learn a great lesson, and receive a great gift. This man”—he pointed behind him with his hat, his face toward the microphone—“is here to give us the gift.”
Orient hugged the familiar fabric of his entry point as the looming force of the turbulence battered at his hold. He let the prayer fuse his grip and pushed back into the chill fury of the winds…
“I ask only for complete silence,” Weldon said, “and I give you Susej.”
There was no sound in the stadium as the priest slowly raised his head. Weldon stepped away from the microphone and sat down.
Orient pushed back through the howling storm and felt for the orbit of his faith.
Susej passed his hands over the girl in the wheelchair.
The winds came hurtling against Orient, tearing him brutally from his prayer, sending him toward the churning center of the whirlpool.
Orient pushed out as he left his leverage and hurled himself away from the freezing momentum of the vortex. He pierced the icy skin of motion and found the huddling combined presence of his pilgrims. He twisted like some phenomenal end to make the completion.
The priest was standing well back from the microphones, but his whisper carried through the stillness in the arena.
“Helon. Taul. Varf.” He was chanting the spell of destruction.
Outside the bubble of their orbit the winds drew back and began to intensify.
“AGLA. CASOLY. PAN.” Susej’s voice grew louder, cutting through the thick hush in the stands and over the field. It began to rain.
Orient intensified the orbit, spinning it faster as the winds buffeted their flimsy balance.
“LUCIFER. OUYAR. CHAMERON.”
The girl sat motionless in her wheelchair.
“VENITE BEELZEBUTH.”
A juggernaut of frozen suns exploded against Orient, splintering his thought into dissolving snow crystals. The pilgrims’ interlocked orbit was dispersed and he was directionless, tumbling blindly through the wildly spreading blizzard.
His own being was dispersing uncontrollably, thinning like some volatile gas through the alien void. Then he sensed the glow of Argyle’s devotion plodding through the storm, and the warmth made him whole, the glow guiding them all back to a precarious orbit formed by the unstable elements of a faint prayer.
“VENITE BEELZEBUTH.” Susej’s words hissed like molten steel, searing the soft patter of rain into a cloying steam.
The crowd sighed and shifted furtively.
Orient felt the orbit define itself with renewed authority as it rotated through the senseless turbulence.
The crowd rustled. The cure was taking more time than they expected. Doubt dampened the crisp vibration of unerring power humming through the charged spectators. Doubt was sagging the thrust of the priest’s momentum.
Each time Orient withstood Susej’s force he gained advantage. Each time Susej failed to scatter the prayer he lost mass, the weight of the crowd’s faith scraped against the friction of fear and settled into the gummy substance of uncertainty.
Susej’s energy stretched toward the circling presence of Orient’s defiance. The specific identity of the prayer began to pulse, sending the sure rhythms of the pilgrims’ synchronized faith through the atonal screech of the void.
Susej stumbled over the final syllables of his chant, the mistake rendering the spell useless. Without pausing he began again, carefully intoning the words, leaning on their syncopation—stressing the rise and fall of his voice until the throng started nodding, their heads bobbing time to the drive of his incantation.
Susej’s irresistible cadence gathered the full concentration of the crowd, and the energy converged inside him, heavier than anything he had wielded before. Recklessly he hurled the perfect words against the rearing sky, his voice slurring with the intoxication of limitless power…
Orient felt the orbit collapse and he was abruptly wrenched back to consciousness. He shut his eyes. A collective grunt of satisfaction escaped from eighty-thousand ecstasy- riddled worshippers as the energy accumulated to proportions far greater than its potential, imploding then exploding again, accelerating past its existence. Then something began to emerge from the motion. With a single thrust it separated from its birth, twisted, and began to swallow an entire universe of actuality.
Orient tried to reach back into himself against the tremendous, increasing weight that was squeezing pain into every nuance of his being… he reached back into the pain…
The sudden plummeting of the boat crushed him against the deck. The wood buckled and splintered as the hull smacked against the glazed, unyielding surface of the water. As it struck, the shivering boat spun and nosed straight up, sucked upward by a mounting surge of sizzling water.
He knew he was finished. Another moment and the vessel would surrender to the mindless rage of the strutting typhoon. The blood whirled in his body, spinning him into an endless vertigo.
He opened his eyes and screamed her name against the whining blackness that was rushing up to meet him. The luminous figure of a woman, drifting serenely through the howling sky, cut off the cry in his throat. He strained to glimpse her face as he rolled in the pitching darkness.
Then he saw her, hovering above the churning waters.
A sob of triumph bubbled on his lips as he recognized the calm face of the goddess Urvashi. He tried to rise but failed, the force of the storm swatting him down to the slippery surface of the broken deck.
Urvashi was motionless, in the spiraling, restless force of the gale. He began crawling toward her across the disintegrating deck, never taking his eyes from her sublime face.
The vessel listed and lazily started to crumble. He gripped the rail and pulled himself into a crouch.
In the fraction of a thought that he clung to the rail he comprehended that Urvashi had come to claim her forfeit. He had broken his solemn vow and tasted another woman’s love. He had let the servant girl delude him and now he would be set adrift in the void—his destiny lost to him because of his weakness.
Urvashi held out her arms. With a grunt of impatience he leaped out over the foaming waters. He flew to the goddess like an arrow dispatched from Rama’s bow, his fingers grabbing for the fo
ld of her glistening sari. But his flight became a sickening drop to the waiting darkness, and he was pulled down to the water’s frigid belly.
He let himself be devoured, calling the name of his love as life was squeezed from his lungs and the brine stuffed his mouth, smothering the last feeble twitch of his will…
Time compressed… he was dying in countless lifetimes… all his existences collapsed at the junction of his death… crushing together before they exploded…
Orient’s eyes were forced open by the relentless pressure on his throat, his vision stretching into a blur as his eyes pushed out from his skull. He kicked out, his hands gripping the arms of his seat. And then the blur collapsed, washing away every memory of his vision…
XXV
A dark blue sun fed at the brown sky. He was at the outskirts of a low, sprawling city situated on an immense plain of rubble. As he neared the listing rows of shacks he saw that they were made of thin slabs of rusted metal. There were no windows. He walked with great difficulty through the tangle of refuse that was everywhere. Tin cans, hub caps, gears, shreds of cloth and page after page of newspaper congealed into a hostile soil.
Around him, small groups of people, their faces hidden by coarse gray cloaks, stepped deliberately through the snarl of junk, bending low to examine the objects at their feet.
Every so often one of them would rise, holding something to his cloak, turn, and shuffle slowly toward the interior of the city, where he became part of a great line of hooded figures all going in the same direction.
He joined the line and began moving with it. For a long time there was only the curious soundlessness. Then he heard the gibbering yelps of words said backwards.
The line moved slowly forward. The thin sounds grew stronger.
The line stopped. He pushed forward through the hooded figures.
He arrived at the base of a great pile of twisted metal shored up by heaps of moldering litter. At the cap of the hill, high above him, the priest stood chanting over the naked body of a black-haired girl lying on a table. A silver dagger protruded from the space between her breasts. The priest’s hands caressed her writhing belly as he sang.
He began the stumbling climb to the distant summit. He moved slowly, not knowing where he was or the reason for his need to reach the crest. He wanted to stop, to rest and think, but his body responded only to the need to reach the priest.
His foot went out from under him, throwing him forward on his chest. His hand reached out to check his slide as the ground gave way and he began slipping back. His fingers dug into the crumbling soil and grabbed a piece of smooth metal. He slid for a short distance, then stopped.
He pushed himself up to his knees, his hand still gripping the chunk of metal. He opened his fingers and saw a silver case in his palm. He started forward again, holding the case in front of him as he crawled.
The priest touched the shaft in the girl’s chest. The case was a snake in his hand, lashing wildly around his arm.
He whipped the snake away from him, crushing its head against the corroded door of an automobile. The snake twitched and became a gem-crusted scepter.
The priest’s hand closed around the silver shaft. The girl jackknifed, a convulsive shock jerking her knees to her belly.
As he reached the scepter it became a single, radiating jewel, a shimmering stone that vibrated with an intense light. A light whose source was generated in the center of the jewel itself.
He felt his ultimate senses quiver in the presence of the precious fragment. It was the light. The source of all light. He remembered his quest and realized he had achieved completion. He bent close to the stone but he did not touch it.
“Why do you hesitate?” the priest barked. “Is that not what you seek?”
He looked up. The priest was smiling down at him, his restless hands moving over the girl’s arms and neck.
“Yes,” he said, “I seek the light.”
“It is there in front of you. The light.”
He nodded.
“It is yours, now.”
“We will create a new infinity,” the priest insisted.
The priest moved his hand to the silver knife in the girl’s body. He reached down for the light.
“I am master of all this. I have given you your light,” the priest said softly.
As Orient’s fingers touched the source of his quest his reason exploded into streaking flares of desire.
“Take it, it is yours,” the priest commanded.
His hand became beautiful around the stone, the light charging his fingers with a warmth that penetrated his thought and soothed the confusion there.
“Yours,” the priest whispered.
His being began to gnaw on the priest’s bargain. He held the light to his body and looked warily around him. He was alone.
He held the fragment above his head and called to the hooded figures gathered around the base of the hill. One of them began making the climb up the treacherous slope.
He held the light in front of his face and stared directly into the source. Now he had won everything he had sought through a maze of lifetimes.
He knew now that he was greater than his quest. Greater than the light.
He looked at the liquid chunk of incandescence resting on rotting metal. “And you?” he asked, not knowing how the words had been formed.
The priest pointed to the dark sun. “That is mine,” he said.
He looked up questioningly.
“I wield my sun. You, your light. Together we will share the destiny of existence. Together we can combine into the new water of a new universe,” the priest whispered.
“What do you propose?” he asked, eager to learn.
“I propose causing the movement from the potential of the All to the actual of the All. I propose an eternity of gratification.”
Orient crouched on the unsteady slope, staring at the light and listening to the excitement of the thought.
“We,” the priest thundered, “we will be the All. We will be the first cause of a new direction. We will be greater than being, nothingness, plus, minus… greater than existence.”
He listened, nodding his head.
“You and I will be infinite over a finite existence. An existence stamped with the impression of our consciousness.”
He nodded. It was true. It could be so.
He tried to stand, his hand hovering over the light.
A snarl of exultation curled his mouth, his lips twisting over the sweet taste of infinity melting on his tongue.
He knew now that he was meant to lead existence forward. He threw his head back and roared a challenge at the priest’s dark sun.
The priest began to laugh then, and he laughed with him, not knowing why.
His laughter became a shriek of fear as he saw the hooded figure approaching him. He clutched the light to his chest and backed off. The figure stopped. The long, gray cloak fell away.
A beautiful child was standing before him. She stretched out her hand. Chuckling at his foolish fright, he dropped down to one knee and nodded to her. He mused on the treasures he would show her as she moved nimbly toward him.
She was almost within reach of his outstretched hand when the awkward, halting cadence of a rhyme touched his memory. His memory.
Orient drew back, looking up as a sudden flood of consciousness rushed to fill him.
Malta was shuddering with effort, straining to form the nonsense words, her face running with tears and her body lifting against the bursts of pain that riddled her senses.
He remembered his name and his love for her. He began to sing the child’s song, his voice rising as hers trailed off. Then he felt the pure momentum of combined faith congeal inside him and he was strong with renewed balance.
The priest’s hands gripped the shaft in Malta’s body, transforming the fading notes of her song into an unceasing wail.
The child was at Orient’s side. She touched his hand and Malta’s wail became a scream of ter
ror.
Orient repeated the words of the song, chanting stubbornly as the girl pressed her hand against his mouth, warning him to be silent. He remembered her face. She was the child who had tricked him. She was the girl who had come to him as Malta.
He pushed at her hand and she fell away from him, sliding down with the crashing waves of refuse, rolling faster and faster as she neared the bottom.
He looked up.
The priest was tugging at the dagger imbedded in Malta’s… chest. She was whimpering with fright, trying to tear his fingers away.
“You must stop,” the priest said calmly, “or you will lose everything.”
“What do you mean?” Orient demanded. He held the stone above his head. “I have the light.”
“Without my sun you have nothing. With me you are infinite. With me you will lead existence to a new destiny.”
Orient shook his head. “You are one and I am four,” he explained. “And soon I will be eight and then sixteen… until I have become all consciousness and all consciousness becomes infinity.”
The priest started to speak, but Orient cut him off.
“There will be no leaders to take existence forward,” he said. “Existence will join to fulfill its own potential.”
“We will create a new ritual of change,” the priest insisted.
“The natural ritual of natural change will create itself,” Orient said.
“No,” the priest said, “my will shall be done.” His hands began pulling the shaft from Malta’s body.
Orient felt the purpose snap his wrist as he hurled the chunk of light at the priest. The stone struck him in the face, shattering into a hundred flashing fragments. The priest staggered back, reeling at the edge of the summit. Orient saw a section of the hill under the priest’s feet collapse, breaking away intact so that for an instant he stood poised, balanced like a dancer on the slow sliding crest, before the wave parted and he skidded headlong down the crumbling slope.
Orient crouched low on the unsteady surface as the priest tumbled past him, then he turned and began working his way to the summit.
