by V. Cobe
I followed Ahavja to a narrow tunnel that became narrower as we walked it. I’d been there, a long time ago. We entered a small room illuminated by a few candles on top of a wooden table. That and a small bench also made of wood with clothing on it were the only items in the room.
“Put on the mantle, and when you’re ready, go back there and enter through the large door,” she instructed, pointing in the direction from where we had entered. “You know how this works, right?”
I nodded.
She walked to the bench, grabbed the mantle, raised it at the height of my eyes and handed it to me. It was in the magic indigo of the niche.
“When you’re ready. I’ll be waiting at the end of the route. Good luck.” And she left the room, closing the door behind her.
I knew what I had to do. I took off everything, including my underwear. The piece of fabric that was waiting for me, soft and thick, like some kind of suede, was no more than a closed mantle, with openings only for the legs, head and arms. Drawn in the front was the black symbol of Umbra, filled with the eye of Intellectus.
I pulled the mantle over my head and stepped, barefoot, into the other room. I stopped in front of the large door, took a deep breath and pushed it hard.
If everything remained as before, I’d have three riddles ahead of me before reaching the room where I would become a real intellectualis.
I moved forward. The familiar sound of water running and dripping echoed through the dark room. At the center was a mechanism the size of a stove, made of balls of different sizes and colors, that spun in circles. The only light came from them. They were no more than small globes with lamps inside.
I approached it. It was a representation of the planets. They spun at different heights and at different speeds and were attached to chains extending from the interior of the machine that circled and made winches rotate. Along one side of the machine was written:
Tremble before him, all the earth!
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
Chronicles 1 16:30
The first big controversy.
A blue and green ball, representing the Earth, was at the center of that solar system. Around it spun a big yellow ball, and the other planets spun in wider circles.
Centuries had pass before the Institution admitted the existence of other celestial bodies without associating them with occult or paranormal phenomena. But the real formation of the solar system was still kept hidden from the people. Through Irá, I knew that the Institution and its physicists knew the truth, but no one dared to say it in public. The Institution would lose a lot of power; it was never wrong and it never lied.
I touched one ball with my finger. The machine didn’t rotate too fast, so it was easy to stop the Sun. I moved it to the center and placed Earth after Venus. Our world began to orbit around the sun.
In front of me I heard a click. A door opened.
It seemed that I’d passed the first test. Two to go.
I entered the next chamber. There were only two light sources located in the middle of the room, both thin: a small candle above the door on the other side of the room, and a white lamp inside a glass box the same size as the previous machine.
I approached the box with caution. The ground was cold beneath my bare feet. The front side had a hole as thick as an arm, behind which three keys each rested on three cushioned supports.
Above each key were three photographs of umbriferos. I knew them all. But whatever that was, I decided not to attempt anything without being certain of what I had to do.
I tried to concentrate. The three people in the photos were Umbra celebrities. The first picture was of Qammu Noqs (or Pallu Port, up there), an eighteenth century historian who had become famous in Umbra after being burned at the stake by the Institution because of his boldness to independently publish the book, A Little Big Misconception. A heretical, blasphemous book that the Institution would’ve destroyed completely if not for the cunning and speed of Intellectus, which managed to save part of a copy. In the picture, one could see only his scowling face, which came with the fame he had. His hair was very white and his eyes a piercing blue – a great replica of a known painting of the man, which existed only in the underworld, because that too the Institution had tried to eliminate.
The second photo, in black and white, was of Socesv Dqors. His head was resting on his hand, with the index finger stretched along the temple. He showed an almost neutral expression, with a subtle unhappy gaze. He was a poet of the North American Umbra of the early twentieth century. His work was published only under the earth, away from the Institution’s censorship.
The third photo, also in black and white, was of a man named Nesasí of Ruah, a pianist whose work was much appreciated within the Intellectus niche. However, the truth was that Nesasí was niched to Festum, though he was often mistaken for an intellectualis. Aged about forty years, he was sitting in profile on what looked like a beach terrace and staring at the sea with a smile and a pen on his lips.
I could exclude the last one because it was a trick: he wasn’t one of us. I just hoped that was the right reasoning.
I tried to remember the works of each of them. Of the historian, I knew just that. I’d never read his work and didn’t know what it was about. Of Dqors, I knew some phrases of poems but couldn’t think of anything that could help me.
And I had to hurry if I wanted to get a high ranking.
I looked around for something else until I noticed the candle above the door. It was illuminating something. In the distance, the letters were practically invisible, but as soon as I got close, it became legible:
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I’ll forgive the great big one on me.
Socesv Dqors. I went back to the glass box, stuck my hand through the hole and took a deep breath. I glanced back at the photograph of Nesasí. But there was no doubt: we had recited Dqors in various gatherings when I was a teenager.
As I grabbed the key under the photograph of Dqors, a glass bar fell onto my fist and blocked access to the other keys.
I ran to the door with my heart pounding, put the key in, rotated it and… second test passed.
I entered the next chamber, also dark and small. I had this strange feeling that the room was always the same one.
At the center was a tree lit from the bottom up. In the earth circle that grounded it bubbled small pools of water in which words floated: knowledge, vision, information, true.
The Tree of Knowledge.
I confirmed that it was an apple tree, knowing, however, that in the Bible there was nothing that indicated the species of the tree.
The story was well known: the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, by Eve’s ‘fault’, because she had eaten the fruit of the one tree they could not touch – the Tree of Knowledge. This blatantly revealed the form of action of the Institution: if you wanted to be a part of it, you could not seek knowledge; and if you wanted to stop being ignorant, you would be expelled. At least that was my interpretation.
But the Institution wasn’t stupid; it knew this thought could arise. And so she taught that this story was about Eve’s disobedience to what God had commanded, and that the Tree of Knowledge represented what God knew, and that Man could never have the pretension of wanting to know. Or that it was not through knowledge that one would reach God, but through faith. Or that the knowledge that the tree gave those who consumed its fruit was the knowledge of sin, sex and evil. It was what served the best.
But why would God blame Adam and Eve if it was the Devil who seduced the poor woman and deceived her, leading her to eat the apple? My father was a man and was less tyrannical than that.
I didn’t care what the Institution said; the message behind that story was simple: do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge, stay ignorant and you will not be expelled.
I laid my eyes on the tree in front of me. Would I have to eat an apple? Would I be challenging the Institution by doing
so, just like Adam and Eve?
I stretched myself and picked one, rotated it in my hand and read what was written all the way around in four lines:
Here,
Knowledge is not prohibited.
It is open
To all who have the hunger of knowing.
I took a bite. It was a normal apple, with a slightly acidic flavor. I ate it to the core, bite after bite, but found nothing.
If knowledge was not prohibited there, as was said on the apples, then I could eat them at my will. Maybe I’d have to eat all the apples. On the other hand, if the apples weren’t forbidden, there’d be no challenge to the Institution. They were not the apples of knowledge. Perhaps the puzzle was related to the fact that there was nothing in the Bible linking apples to the Tree of Knowledge. My mind was a mess.
I crouched near an effervescent pool, flooded with words, and touched it with a finger.
“Here knowledge is not prohibited.” It made sense that I had to eat an apple. Maybe I’d have to find the apple. But they were all the same; they all had the same phrase.
Nerves took over me. I wondered how much time had passed. I sat down with trembling hands and looked at the door on the other side. I couldn’t come in last place; the Conclave expected more from me.
Then I realized the clue was in the second sentence. I went to the door and turned the handle. “It is open to all who have the hunger of knowing”. In Intellectus, if you wanted to know something, you just had to look for it; there were no imposed barriers, there was no forbidden tree. You just had to come and enter.
But the door didn’t open, and a violent and muffled sound came up behind me: the gigantic tree was being swallowed up by the earth, as if it was in quicksand.
In a panic, I gathered as many apples as I could, but suspected I had jeopardized any chance of becoming an intellectualis again.
The tree kept going down, and the puddles with the words had all disappeared. I could only wait until it was over.
When the last green apple leaf was swallowed, a golden key remained on the turned Earth.
I grabbed it and ran to the door. I only relaxed when I heard the click of the lock. Knowledge is open to whoever wants it, but remains protected. Good.
I sighed in relief. Maybe that was the second-best solution to the problem, but the important thing was I had passed the three puzzles.
I closed the door behind me. I was in a circular room that inclined as one approached the center, like a funnel. Around it stood small stone countertops, like in an auditorium, where about ten figures were sitting, and whose faces could not be distinguished in the dark. I figured Qepiem was among them.
As soon as I stepped onto the small lapis lazuli altar in the center, a shadow emerged from the other side of the circle. It was Ebsa, the leader. He was wearing an indigo blue cloak, clearly visible in the candlelight surrounding the center circle. The color shined and waved as if the mantle was made of light, but it was the indigo blue rim that crowned him, from which hung the eye of the Intellectus that sparkled with the greatest intensity.
He opened a book in the palms of his hands and read, “‘There are no commandments. But there are some rules for your protection.’”
Two men in anil cloaks came out of the shadows. Each took one of my arms, forced me to kneel facing Ebsa, and raised my chin with their hands.
“You cannot talk about Umbra on the upper lands.”
A woman appeared beside Ebsa, bringing a piece of cloth. She put it in my mouth gently. I didn’t spit it out.
“You cannot reveal to members of other niches or the non-niched anything you see or hear in any meeting of this niche, unless otherwise indicated by an upper member.”
The woman opened a box. She stirred the inside for a while and then took out her hand, with the index finger extended and stained with indigo. She drew a horizontal line on my forehead and a circle just above my eyebrows in the center.
“You shall pass on to a higher member any suspicious information on the niche that comes to your knowledge.”
The men gripping my arms held me around my torso too, one on each side. A third came and locked my head in his hands.
The worst was coming.
The woman came with a steaming iron stick with a small embroidery on the end, like a stamp. She raised the eyelid of my left eye. The previous Umbrification mark was probably still visible underneath.
I had to concentrate. I had to remain still.
She took the tip of the iron next to my eye. I looked down. The heat emanating from the metal about to touch my inner eyelid skin maddened me.
I bit the cloth with all my might, waiting, but the pain was too strong. I roared with no control, trying to stay still as the symbol of Intellectus was again branded under my eyelid.
The leader’s voice rose louder than my screams.
“Do you swear to comply with the rules given here, whatever the price?”
The pain was unbearable. Fortunately, they didn’t release my eyelid until the wound began to cool.
“Yes!”
My veins were about to explode from the force with which I was biting the cloth. Sweat ran down my cheeks. But it would all be worth it.
With blurred vision, I glimpsed the black and indigo figure of Ebsa putting the book down and gesturing the symbol of Umbra. Liquid ran from my left eye down my face.
Ebsa said, before I lost consciousness, “Portas signum aeternum. Nunc nostrum. By the power that I carry, I declare you as of this moment an intellectualis.”
I woke up in my bed at home with pain in my left eye. In the bathroom mirror, I saw my reflection. I had a bandage on my eye. I removed it. My eyelid was swollen and slightly dark, but it just looked like I had been punched. I didn’t dare peek underneath.
I left the room and went downstairs.
“Good morning,” said the familiar voice of Qepiem Thirteen behind me.
Qepiem, or rather, Peniel, given that we were above, was standing in the doorway, dressed in a white shirt and dark blue jeans, unmasked.
“Good morning,” I said.
“You’re seeing my face,” he said with a slight smile.
“Yes… I thought you guys never showed it.”
“I trust you.”
“What happened yesterday?”
“You passed out, and I brought you here. No one followed us.”
“They already know where I live, don’t doubt it.”
I followed him into the kitchen, where a bowl of soup was waiting for me.
“You did well in the enigmas.”
“That’s what they said? The last one didn’t go so well.”
“The leader was happy, at least.”
“Later tonight we’ll see.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I spend the day with Alem. Once the curfew bell rings, I descend. I’ll meet you at the usual place. We’ll watch the Winners Ceremony and search for that man….”
My mind was too messed up to translate Qefso Nokabo. He nodded.
“Understood.”
“Let’s see what he has to say.”
