Empire V

by Victor Pelevin

  ‘It’s personal.’

  ‘Does it have anything to do with his role in your fate? I mean Brahma perishing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you really thought this through?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Rama,’ said Loki, ‘I must warn you this is not a joke. If you really want to issue a challenge to Mithra, I shall set the wheels in motion. But if I do and you change your mind, it could lead to a most embarrassing situation.’

  ‘I. Really. Want. To. Challenge. Mithra,’ I repeated. ‘And I shall not change my mind.’

  ‘Well, then. What is your preference in the matter of weapons? The rules say the choice lies with the person who is challenged, but a consensus is sometimes possible.’

  ‘Entirely at your discretion.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ said Loki. ‘In that case please email me a Duel Order. If you don’t remember what that is, you are obliged to set out in it the penalty you wish to be applied to Mithra should you prevail. But don’t do it now. Write it tomorrow morning, when your head is clear, and when you have had a chance to think it over once again. When I receive it, I shall act.’

  ‘Good. What form should my letter take?’

  ‘I shall send you a template. Generally speaking, the form is not laid down, but the final line must be exactly as follows: “In this connection I am ready to meet God”.’

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘Not at all. This is no place for a joke. A duel is a very serious matter. One must be clearly aware of the unthinkable horror that may have to be faced as a result …’

  VILLA DEI MISTERI

  To Loki IX from Rama II

  Confidential

  Duel Order

  Mithra VI abuses his mentoring responsibilities in respect of young vampires. Instead of helping them to find their place in the ranks, he takes advantage of their inexperience to worm his way into their confidence, after which he exploits their trust in the most cynical manner. Discretion prevents me going into details. But honour demands that I punish the scoundrel. He must absolutely and categorically be forbidden to have any contact with young vampires of the latest intake.

  In this connection I am ready to meet God.

  Rama the Second

  I read my letter through. ‘Honour demands that I punish the scoundrel’ struck me as too pretentious. I changed the phrase to ‘I cannot stand by with folded arms’. Reading it a second time I realised that it might appear as though Mithra’s victim was myself. I altered ‘discretion prevents’ to ‘discretion and compassion prevent’.

  All was now in order with the letter. I sent it by email to Loki (his login name was, appropriately enough, ‘sadodesperado’) and awaited his reply.

  Half an hour later my phone rang.

  ‘I hope you have thoroughly thought this through,’ said Loki, ‘because the business is already in train.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ I replied. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. Mithra is writing his Duel Order as we speak. Incidentally, he did not seem at all surprised. What has been going on between you two, eh?’

  I kept silent. After breathing for a while into the handset Loki realised his question was not going to be answered, and continued:

  ‘The preparations will take a few days – we have to decide when, and how. Once this is settled I will get back in touch with you … Prepare yourself for a hard road, young man. Start thinking of the eternal.’

  He replaced the receiver.

  Loki was, of course, joking about the eternal. But, as they say, in every joke there is a grain of truth. I looked back up to the computer screen where my Duel Order was still open. Everything in it was clear and precise – except the reference to meeting God on which Loki had insisted. Putting my name to that had been a piece of deviousness on my part.

  It was a phrase whose meaning I could not grasp at all. I was a god myself; my experience of the previous day had made that plain enough. The problem, however, was that I could not repeat it. To become a god again, I needed bablos.

  At this point I reached a logical impasse – could I truly be a god if my perception and experience of the divine depended on a cause external to myself? A theologian would argue that I could not. Then, if I was not a god but something else, whom would I be meeting in the event of force majeure?

  I was seized by horrible misgivings. I began to pace about the apartment, fixing on various objects in the hope that one or other of them would send me a secret sign or would redirect my reflections. The black and white picture of the bat; Napoleon on his horse; the two fastidious nymphettes … if any of my Penates knew the answer, they were keeping the secret close to their chest.

  Eventually my aimless wanderings brought me to the filing cabinet. I sat on the sofa and began to leaf through the catalogue. Nothing leaped out at me. Then I remembered that in the escritoire there had been some undocumented test tubes from the literature section. I opened it and started to look through the preparations in the hope of encountering something theological, but nothing there seemed appropriate to the high seriousness of the moment. I found one or two, such as: ‘Tyutchev + Internet slang’ and ‘Isaak Babel + 2% Marquis de Sade’ but they failed to awaken my interest.

  Suddenly, into my head came the very person with whom I ought to be discussing this question.

  Going over to the window I glanced outside. My car was parked on the other side of the street. Through its open window I could see the fixed look of resentment on Ivan’s face – he was reading an “ironic detective” story. A day or two previously I had asked him where the irony was, and this had offended him even more. I took my phone out of my pocket; a few seconds later the signal reached its target, Ivan lifted his head, and I heard his voice:

  ‘Good morning, Chief.’

  ‘I have to go to see Osiris,’ I said. ‘In about ten minutes’ time. I’ll just change my clothes and have a quick cup of coffee.’

  At Osiris’s nothing much had changed. The door was opened by the bewhiskered Moldavian, who had in the meantime somehow managed to become even thinner and more pinched, and his skin more parchment-like. The card-players in the big room took not the slightest notice of me.

  Osiris listened to my account of the Red Ceremony with the supercilious smile of a seasoned psychonaut hearing his neighbour’s small son tell of his first experience with a cigarette end stolen from an ashtray.

  ‘What was it that I sensed?’ I asked. ‘Was it God?’

  ‘It’s customary to believe so,’ replied Osiris, ‘but in reality no one knows. In olden times people used to call it “the shiver of the cloak”. Vampires had no way of interpreting what they were experiencing until people came up with the notion of God.’

  ‘Did people come up with the idea of God, or did they discover that he exists?’

  ‘It’s the same thing.’

  ‘How?’

  Osiris sighed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Let me explain it one more time. Once upon a time the monkeys had what amounted to a still set up for them in their noddles. The still began to produce bablos. But alongside its primary product it began to produce other fractions as by-products. One of these fractions is called “the universe”. Another is called “truth”. A third is called “God”. Now you are asking me: did the monkeys invent this third fraction or did they discover it? I really do not know how to answer this question.’

  ‘You said that vampires come near to the presence of God when they imbibe bablos,’ I reminded Osiris.

  ‘Quite right, of course they do. This secondary fraction is an integral part of the primary product, and the vampire senses this. God and bablos are like petrol and diesel, both of which are produced when oil is refined. Vampires need to consume bablos, and for us God is a by-product. For human beings it happens to be a very valuable by-product. We don’t object as long as
people don’t start trying to flog it to us as universal truth.’

  ‘Does this ever happen?’ I asked.

  Osiris waved his hand airily.

  ‘Almost invariably. For that reason it is essential always to have with you a death candy. Better still, two or three.’

  I thought for a while, and then said:

  ‘But then I think there is a contradiction in terms. If God is a waste product from an industrial process, how could he send the Mighty Bat here?’

  ‘That is the nub of the whole thing. If God was something else, the Mighty Bat would have been able to rebel, to resist through all eternity, and at some point prevail. But how can one conquer the waste product of an industrial process that has sent one into exile? Not even Ishtar would have been able to do that. Therein lies the full horror of the situation.’

  I was beginning to appreciate the fanaticism of my interlocutor’s logic. I would have to put the question in another way.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Then please tell me, does God appear purely as a by-product of the manufacturing process of bablos? Or does this by-product bear witness to the existence of God in reality? You cannot say these are one and the same thing.’

  ‘No, they are not quite the same thing,’ agreed Osiris. ‘There was a time in antiquity when vampires argued about that very matter.’

  ‘What conclusion did they come to?’

  ‘No conclusion. They simply stopped arguing and turned their attention to other things.’

  ‘Why did they do that?’

  ‘Because,’ said Osiris leaning forward out of his niche, ‘if God exists, he does not want to exist for us. And if he does not want to exist for us, it follows that for us he does not.’

  ‘But if God does not exist, why is there a word for him?’

  ‘Because this word, together with all other words and concepts, is needed for the production of bablos.’

  ‘I see that,’ I said. ‘But why then does it have the meaning that it does?’

  ‘God is a creator. Words also create.’

  ‘But you said they reflect.’

  ‘Creation and reflection are the same thing.’

  ‘How?’

  Osiris smiled.

  ‘This is not accessible to human intelligence, so do not try to understand it, just trust me. It seems to us that words reflect the world in which we live, but in reality they create it, in the same way as words create God. It is for this reason that God changes so fundamentally according to the dialectics of language.’

  ‘This all has to do with words?’

  ‘Of course. As is even written in the holy scriptures of humanity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made …” You understand what that is all about?’

  ‘I know what is meant by “and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”,’ I replied. ‘Enlil Maratovich explained that. But that is not what we were talking about.’

  ‘These words explain the principle of how Mind “B” works. The key phrase here is “the Word was with God and the Word was God”. It means that Mind “B” consists of two mirrors which reflect one another. Surely you can understand that? “God” is the word which creates God. What people call God appears in Mind “B” in exactly the same way as the image of a brick appears when it is produced by the word “brick”. The only difference is that a brick possesses form, while God has no form. It is precisely this quality of Mind “B” that makes God conditionally visible.’

  ‘I have the impression,’ I said, ‘that theologians have a rather more profound interpretation of the phrase “and the Word was God”.’

  ‘No profundity about it at all. There is only the word “profound”, and whatever you do to yourself when you hear it. Vampires must be masters of discourse, not its victims.’

  ‘May I ask a stupid question?’ I asked.

  ‘Am I to suppose all your other questions have been intelligent? Be my guest.’

  ‘Does God actually exist?’

  ‘Why should he not? I repeat, he exists in the Mind “B” of every participant in the enterprise. If God did not exist, how would we be able to talk about him? But in what capacity he exists – that is quite another matter.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Again you are telling me that he exists as a word. But that’s not what I am asking about.’

  ‘What are you asking about, then?’

  ‘You said that Mind “A” is a mirror. Then you said that reflecting and creating are the same thing. Can one therefore say that God is present in every living creature as a Mind “A”?’

  Osiris laughed.

  ‘One can indeed say that,’ he replied. ‘But everything that we say will be composed of words, and any word which is presented to Mind “A” converts it instantly into Mind “B”. All words are by definition contained within the money gland. The Mind “A” of which you speak is not actually Mind “A” but merely the reflection of the words “Mind ‘A’”. Anything at all of which we are able to speak is source material for the production of bablos. And at the same time a by-product of its brewing. It is a closed circle.’

  I found this depressing.

  ‘Could we drop the philosophy for a while?’ I asked. ‘Let’s try speaking in direct terms. Is God present in us?’

  ‘God is present in us. But we are not present in him.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘Do you know what a one-way mirror is, through which you can see in only one direction? It’s like that.’

  ‘Why is everything arranged in such a dreadful way?’

  ‘You must remember that we are children of an exiled bat who is suffering loss of memory. And we live in a dimension where God appears merely as a by-product of the production of bablos. What more do you want?’

  ‘Almost nothing,’ I said. ‘Do vampires have any form of religion?’

  ‘Thank you, that’s all we need.’

  ‘What do vampires call God?’

  ‘God. With a capital “G”. Because a god with a small “g” is what we are. But God is not God’s name, it is only what we call him. Vampires know that God will always be outside the confines of a name.’

  ‘Do vampires observe any kind of religious rites?’

  Instead of answering, Osiris smiled a crooked smile. My next question might, I thought, appear impolite, but I decided to ask it.

  ‘The teaching you are now imparting to me – is it true?’

  Osiris hemmed and hawed.

  ‘You have been asking me about vampire traditions, and I have been telling you what they are. As to the truth of the traditions, that is quite a different question.’

  ‘All the same, may I ask it? Are the traditions true?’

  Osiris looked at me for some time before replying.

  ‘You see, Rama,’ he said, ‘when you are young your organism produces all the hormones it needs, and the receptors in your brain function as they are supposed to. At that time of your life any “two times two equals four” proposition will radiate the infallible light of truth. But it is no more than reflected light from your life-force. It is the same with music. When you are young there is so much wonderful music to be heard, but as time goes by, somehow the music people write doesn’t seem to be as good as it used to be. Every person thinks like this as they get older. Or, take women. When you are young, they seem irresistibly attractive. But when you get beyond sixty, say, and start having health problems of one kind or another, all that seems less important than how your digestive system functions, or your joints …’

  ‘So you’re saying that truth resides within us?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. But people often load into terms like that more elevated meanings than they can sustain. This is futile. Truth is essen
tially chemical, not metaphysical. So long as you possess sufficient life-force, you will always be able to find the necessary verbal forms to reflect it. You can always think up a combination of words that will provoke the required excitation in your neuronal pathways, and that you will experience as the blessed breath of truth. But in fact, precisely which words are used is of little importance because one word is much the same as another: all words are merely mirrors in which the mind is reflected.’

  This began to irritate me.

  ‘But then,’ I said, ‘you are contradicting yourself.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You are not an ordinary vampire: you are a follower of Tolstoy. If truth is no more than a chemical reaction, why did you embark on a spiritual path? Why did you embark on the simple life?’

  ‘Because I did,’ replied Osiris, looking at his watch. ‘You’ll be going in a moment, and I shall call in the immigrant workers. I shall swallow two hundred grams of red liquid with vodka, and everything will become truth once more. The cracks in the wall will be true, so will the dust on the floor, even the rumbling in my stomach. But at the present moment everything is a lie …’

  ‘If everything in the end comes down to chemistry and bablos, why do concepts like God, truth or the universe exist at all? Where do they come from?’

  ‘Mind “B” has two operating phases, a productive phase and a non-productive phase. In its productive phase a man produces Aggregate “M-5”. The unproductive phase is when no bablos is being produced. It is the decompression stroke of a piston. Mind “B” is not switched off during this part of the cycle, but what occupies it can be any meaningless abstraction you fancy. “What is truth?” “Does God exist?” “Where did the world come from?” – all that nonsense you first came to see me about. Multiplied by parallel mirrors, these questions grow into unrecognisable distortions, undergo a phase shift, and at a certain moment come to be recognised as answers to themselves. Then a wave of excitation passes along the brain’s neuronal pathways, and the man concludes that he has hit on the truth. For that reason all human truths have the same equation format, in which one concept hooks on to another. “God is spirit.” “Death is inevitable.” “Two twos make four.” “E=mc2”. There is no particular harm in this, but if there are too many of these equations the output of bablos falls. Therefore we cannot allow human culture to drift without direction. If necessary, we force it back with an iron hand onto the proper path.’