The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  It surprised him how much cryptography theory—something Lumekki had taught him for military purposes—applied to the study of creation codes and to the operation of the massive calculating engines. U’Sumi could only follow the details superficially, but it was enough for him to discern something of the big picture. Apparently, visiting priests normally used his suite and its reading or viewing selection.

  A’Nu-Ahki’s son once might have indignantly burned such books; a practice he now realized his father had never advocated and which U’Sumi had only seen done by Seer Clan radicals like Belkrini. Instead, U’Sumi thought like a soldier—Lumekki had taught him to know his enemy. The library provided an opportunity to do this in a detail never before available.

  While there was nothing directly about the Elyo, there were many volumes written by a priest named Epymetu on anatomy, living cells, and the creation codes. It was self-evident that the Consortium designed the creature Typhunu to mesh with his machine. Psydonu had also hinted that the Elyo was “engineered from the broadest combination of creation codes that Mother Earth brought forth in the beginning.”

  U’Sumi had learned at Nestrigati’s Academy that living things consisted of “simple cells”—little more than energy-animated gelatinous sacks with a few rudimentary organelles. Here he discovered there was no such thing as a “simple cell.” While Nestrigati’s texts had mentioned creation codes, there had been no exploration of their broader philosophic, theological, and ethical implications. Epymetu wrote in considerable detail—more than U’Sumi could have imagined—yet he not only avoided the implications, but also absurdly claimed that coded order and engineering somehow proved that life arose spontaneously to create itself!

  It occurred to U’Sumi for the first time that Lumekkor’s Guild supplied the natural philosophy texts used at his academy for “general education purposes” on a subject where nobody in the Orthodox City-States had any direct engineering experience. Since Aztlan’s priesthood had broken away from the Temple of Ayar Adi’In—which Lumekkor sponsored—while U’Sumi had attended that academy, it stood to reason that Lumekkor’s Temple—and its secular technocratic Guild—also knew what Epymetu did. The implications of this were staggering.

  U’Sumi had just uncovered the truth that the concept of a “simple living cell” was a carefully cultivated academic myth designed to shut out of the education process all but the most ideologically-controlled priests. This gave an illusion of education to those outside the Temple (and the Guild) by discouraging any real exploration of the natural design implications raised by the self-evident mechanical details of the creation codes. He now sought to dig deeper into the texts to find the motive.

  In one codex, Epymetu wrote that within the command center of every living cell were long spiral scroll racks that held slots containing divine writing made up of the four prime Elementals, fire, air, earth, and water. The Elementals were nothing in themselves—not actual particles of earth or fire, for example—they represented chemical letters in sequences of coded information. The term creation code was no mere hyperbole for a naturally self-ordering alchemy reaction that the Elementals did by nature of their own alchemic properties. Rather, the information itself was real.

  Each of the millions of slots on the spiral scroll racks in each cell held differing combinations of the basic Elemental symbols. The slots together represented sequences of instruction that were read by tiny devices in each cell, which told other parts of the cell—tiny engines of unimaginable complexity for energy conversion, replication, waste disposal, and dozens of other vital functions—how to replicate and arrange into different tissues, organs, or even creatures. The cell’s ability to function depended on every system; information required existing machinery to pass itself on and the machinery required the information in order to replicate itself.

  Other books in the scroll library described the alchemy of the Elemental letters, but U’Sumi found these beyond his abilities. He wondered how the priests could see such fabulous engineering, with coded information operating living systems, without recognizing how a singular mind of immense power and subtlety must have designed it all.

  The texts surprised him on one another thing, which they were quite clear on: The “gods”—whether called “Powers” or “Watchers”—had not authored the creation codes. The texts described the gods merely as a more advanced order of manipulators than the priests and priestesses, who imitated them. The gods were essentially no better than amplified men with magnified passions and vices. They did not create; they utilized—just as his father had said during his conversation with Psydonu.

  U’Sumi sadly considered the good this knowledge could accomplish, if only it were in the hands of those who respected the Designer of the codes. Yet even the faithful would not be above such temptation. The Watchers had not been. They had fallen from a far greater height than man had.

  Each day of reading and viewing ended in a deeper, more frightening conviction that the Temples of Lumekkor and now Aztlan, in playing with human and animal creation codes without E’Yahavah’s ethical limits, had unleashed uncontrollably devastating consequences into the very balance of life on Earth. His father’s vision up on Mount N’Zar had predicted as much.

  U’Sumi peered up at the two-headed lizard and shuddered.

  A

  bout three weeks after they had separated U’Sumi from his father, a squad of Cyclops guards summoned him for Psydonu’s confirmation ceremony. They gave him purple robes and told him that he would stand up on the dais with his father, the High Priestess, and “the Mighty One.”

  He dressed quickly, after which they led him to the lift shaft.

  Once topside, the doors slid open to a dull mayhem. The circular auditorium surged with Psydonu’s devoted throngs, which parted like water before the prow of a ship to let the giants and U’Sumi pass down to the center. A’Nu-Ahki waited at the fountain pavement before the choir. Someone had removed Psydonu’s throne and dais, leaving an empty pool-like depression in its place.

  The murmuring crowd went instantly silent when the singers chanted an amplified song. “Behold! Behold! Behold! The throne of judgment rises from Underworld to Earth and then the heavenlies!”

  A grating of granite on granite drew U’Sumi’s eyes to the empty pool beneath where the dais had been. The depression’s bottom slid aside to reveal a hole, from which fire jets shot up about halfway to the ceiling arc. Amid the flaming roar, the closed pod of Psydonu’s lift rose through the floor. Its gold petals slowly opened to reveal the rotating platform and throne only after the fire jets died when it reached the surface. Psydonu unveiled himself with arms in the air and a glassy-eyed smile, drinking in the adulation of his multitudes like the very wine of heaven.

  The sycophant minstrels sang, “It is not the throne that rotates, but the world that revolves around the throne!”

  “Yes, yes; and all that!” Psydonu’s voice echoed from a quickfire sound-enhancer hidden somewhere in the workings of his chair. He released the gears, bringing his vehicle to a halt, again right in front of A’Nu-Ahki.

  The crowds went wild. Shrieking women tore off their upper clothes and tossed them at the Titan, tears running down their faces. Roaring men cut their palms with ceremonial daggers to swear blood oaths of allegiance. Row upon row of the mob jumped and chanted Psydonu’s name in rhythmic shouts so loud that U’Sumi could actually feel the words beat upon his skin.

  “Thank you, my devoted ones, thank you! But save it all for the festival afterward; business first, celebration after!”

  The choir chanted, “Business first, celebration after!” The court scribes recorded the phrase on scrolls of milled papyrus, to add later to Psydonu’s expanding collection of mystical proverbs.

  After much effort, the worshipers settled into a dull roar over which the Giant must have felt he could finally compete. He rose from his throne, arms and hands swirling in an overdone, almost ritualistic body language to address his audience. “First, I
wish to announce that the war goes well. The infidels of Lumekkor continue to fall back through the Balimar region. Our naval campaign for the Yawam Tsafuni, while undergoing an enemy counter-offensive that started last week, is still much in our favor. I predict we will soon re-establish our blockade of Ayur L’Mekku by sea, and gut the soft underbelly of T’Vul-qayin by land! Bad’Tavira shall fall!”

  U’Sumi figured the Giant’s lapse into his Far West dialect referred to Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi, and to Lumekkor’s foundry city of Bab’Tubila.

  The crowds again broke into frenzy. The Titan and his chorus had to spend another ten minutes bringing them back down to earth.

  U’Sumi looked to his father with concern. The good news was that the armies were staying in Balimar and seemed focused northward. The bad news was that from Balimar they could pour south into Seti at their leisure.

  Psydonu continued, “At this time, I would like to ask the principals of this confirmation ceremony to join me up here on the dais as I introduce them by name. The first needs no introduction, since she is High Priestess of the North; Mistress of the Divine Mysteries of Creation, Pandura, the widow and protégé of our great sorcerer-priest Epymetu…”

  A fabulous woman of milk skin with golden red-streaked hair slinked from behind the minstrels, past U’Sumi, on up to the dais. Her treacherous curves seemed ready to split open a two-pieced magenta uniform that looked as though someone had painted it over her body in liquid form.

  She gazed right through U’Sumi when she passed him and smiled. Green preying mantis eyes, void in their insect-queen coldness of even the passion her lips suggested, withered his composure. Despite the soft face and toned muscles of youth, Pandura’s authoritative bearing revealed the age and subtlety of a woman in her upper two hundreds.

  “Next is the righteous Seer of Akh’Uzan, Valley of Seers; A’Nu-Ahki, Son of Q’Enukki, who rode up into the heavens upon a fiery chariot!”

  U’Sumi’s father slowly joined Psydonu and Pandura on the circle.

  “Lastly, I give you he who, on this day, shall be my very own baby brother, a young seer in training himself; U’Sunu, son of A’Nu-Ahki!”

  “Couldn’t even get the name right,” U’Sumi muttered, as he went up onto the throne. The dais circle could barely fit the four of them. He found himself pressed behind Pandura in a most disturbing way—especially when she leaned back into him ever so slightly. Her hair smelled of cloying lilacs.

  “This is a day of destiny for the entire world,” Psydonu continued. “By the Holy Powers, I have shown myself able to slay the Dragon and crush its head, even as I shall also do here at the arena after this confirmation is complete. It was this very seer, A’Nu-Ahki, who by power normally beyond mere mortal strength, discovered how to subdue Gryndel. By following his way, I shall go beyond him to the glory predicted for me at the dawn of time!

  “Those who wait for me at the arena, because there was not enough room here, shall not be disappointed. But I get ahead of myself. I turn the proceedings now over to my mentor, A’Nu-Ahki the Gryndel Slayer, Son of Q’Enukki the Great Seer from the mystical valley of Akh’Uzan.”

  U’Sumi rolled his eyes. Yes people; its mystical waters from the valley’s mystical streams that’s making the world so mystically stupid…

  Again, the throng erupted into applause. The face of a stranger, however, could not evoke the insanity Psydonu merited. A’Nu-Ahki did not have to signal to calm the uproar.

  U’Sumi waited while his father hooked on the collar piece of the sound-enhancer. Will he serve this mad man to save my life?

  “The prophecies are explicit,” A’Nu-Ahki said. “The Promised Seed is the ultimate monster-killer, who must be born uniquely of Divine order. He must also be a son of Seti the Appointed, of the Chosen Line through Q’Enukki. This raises the question of, what is the ultimate monster? The tablets point to a being we call the Basilisk, whose constellation marks out these events in the skies. This Monster drew us into rebellion with him by deceit at the Beginning. In some presently unknown sense, the Basilisk shall bruise the Seed’s heal, while the Seed shall crush the Basilisk’s head.

  “But what does that all mean? Is it about an arena sport? However often you ritualistically mimic this conflict on some dumb arena beast, it means that the Basilisk, who is a spirit of evil, will deeply wound the Promised Seed in a fight for mastery over humanity and the cosmos that the Creator originally charged humanity to govern. In the end, the Monster-slayer will destroy the Dragon’s headship—his authority over Man and Nature, with his ability to manipulate the cosmos and wreak havoc in it.”

  U’Sumi watched the many blank stares in the audience. They lacked even the attention span to follow his father’s abbreviated explanation of the historical meaning of what they had supposedly gathered there to see.

  A’Nu-Ahki must have noticed their lack of comprehension too. He tried to speak even more simply. “Since our First Father’s disobedience caused the Great Curse, which brought death to all living things, it will be by obedience that the Seed shall conquer death. Though E’Yahavah made the First Man innocent, our father chose freely to embrace first-hand knowledge of evil by partaking in it, rather than trusting the Creator’s warning against it.

  “This decision affected his view of reality—he knew he was naked and became afraid. Afterward the Creator cursed all of creation. Everything was changed—down to the very particles of our First Father’s body, which included his very creation codes. Our natural bend toward evil effectively became an inherited trait—not from creation codes—but because our bodies are made of cursed material in a cursed cosmos, including those codes. By law, curses pass from father to son—or so it was in the Beginning. Thus, the Promised Seed must be specially conceived—the Seed of a Woman.”

  A’Nu-Ahki turned to Psydonu and gazed deep into his eyes. “Can you, titan, substantiate your mother’s lineage; was your conception divinely executed in a non-corrupt way? Is your personal conduct without fault? Or are you as other titans, born by monstrous perversions, full of lies and violence, a seed of the very fallen Watchers whose master the true Seed must crush? I charge you in the name of the Creator, E’Yahavah A’Nu—who has empowered me to see through any lie—answer me now!”

  P

  sydonu had gotten more than he had bargained for.

  It would have been an easy enough thing to stop it—should have been an easy thing. He had barely dreamed that A’Nu-Ahki would risk the life of his son on some minor esoteric detail of prophetic interpretation, although he had prepared for that possibility.

  Nevertheless, it had taken the Titan two bottles of opiated tonic even to get out of bed that morning. Now the Terrible One nobody else could see stood right behind A’Nu-Ahki and the lad—on one of the opened metal enclosure bud “petals” around the very throne pedestal itself! He stroked that battle-axe of his and smiled, taunting Psydonu to try to stop it.

  A’Nu-Ahki pounded question after question at him, laying down patterns of logic that broke through every answer Psydonu could make. Everybody heard him change the details of his birth and relationship with his mother a dozen times before the interrogation finally wound to a close.

  “Why isn’t your mother, the infamous Klyeto of Psydonis, here to testify?” A’Nu-Ahki demanded, after he had badgered him into three contradictory accounts of his early childhood.

  “She’s visiting relatives by Dragonwood.”

  The audience’s distressed murmur matched the increasing rumble of the Titan’s own gastric juices.

  “I’ve heard enough. I will confer with my son and seek El-N’Lil’s breath to speak his word.”

  Psydonu held his finger over the flashing red button on his chair arm console, poised to activate his fail-safe.

  A’Nu-Ahki and U’Sumi seemed to mumble amongst themselves forever—what is the big problem? Either declare me the Monster-Killer, or don’t! It won’t matter either way!

  Then Psydonu peered up at the Terrible One again and r
ealized that it would matter very much. The fail-safe was far from foolproof and the official explanation that would go out in its wake would raise more questions than it could answer. What if A’Nu-Ahki behaves this way because he sees the Terrible One too; what if he somehow controls the Terrible One?

  A’Nu-Ahki turned from his son and faced Psydonu. “El-N’Lil has spoken to us both,” he said. “By wisdom from the Divine Name, I find the claim of Psydonu the Titan to be false. He is not the Seed of Promise!”

  One of the Cyclops guards snarled, drew his sword, and leaped for the dais ramp to get at A’Nu-Ahki.

  Psydonu’s reflexes were faster. He punched the flashing button on his console. The golden petal ramps snapped shut into their protective bud. The Terrible One somehow vanished, while the Cyclops flipped helplessly over the dais in the ramp’s recoil. Psydonu heard him land in a fountain on the other side with a cursing splash. Multiple slamming sounds penetrated the bud—what Psydonu knew to be steel barricades dropping down to block the exits of the tower auditorium.

  The giant flower that had swallowed Psydonu, A’Nu-Ahki, U’Sumi, and Pandura sank rapidly into the floor amid the noise of fiery jets.

  “W

  elcome to Underworld!” Psydonu said, once the throne had stopped its descent. One of the ramp petals opened with an echoing clang.

  “You expect us to believe that this is Underworld?” A’Nu-Ahki laughed—before he saw what was outside the opening behind him. “We may not have your technology, but we’re not stupid!”

  They stepped into the dim red-lit cavern and paused. U’Sumi—who had seen a sliver of the outside—was now sure that his father was wrong.