“What?” K gives Erasmus a long, wide-eyed stare. All he’s doing is trying to make sense of the nature of the Freesia clones, that damned talking owl, and the mirrors with memories. “What exactly do you mean by that, Professor Erasmus?”
“Well, well. It sounds like I just put my foot in my mouth,” Erasmus says. “Best you forget about this ‘destruction of the universe’ business I just mentioned.”
“Now that you mention it, there was a question in the exam about this whole ‘destruction of the world’ business. Is all this connected, somehow?”
“Ah yes, that question. The third question on the first day, if I recall correctly.”
“Yes. Everyone in the examination hall kept nattering on and on about it. They were saying something about how unprecedented that question was.”
“Not surprised at all. I served on the committee that put together the exam this year. Even we couldn’t figure out what the intention behind that question might be.”
“Meaning?”
“The questions on the first day of the exam—all three of them—were written up and communicated to us by none other than the central council of the Papal Court itself.
Erasmus explains that this was an unprecedented change in the procedure.
“In fact, there were all sorts of grumblings within the committee itself, so we made a formal inquiry to the Papal Court. But when we received no guidance from them, we had little choice but to present the questions as they were.”
“So I take it the committee didn’t evaluate the first day’s questions either?”
“Exactly. For the first day, the central council of the Papal Court did all the evaluations themselves. So, even if you were to ask me now, I couldn’t tell you the correct answers to those questions.”
Hearing all this sends a strange tingle up K’s spine.
“Thinking about it some more, I’m sure the central council had something specific in mind,” Erasmus says. “Take me, for example. I work in the field of Sacred Astrometrics. There’s a way to make sense of it from the perspective of my field. Consider the issue of who brought about our Millennium of Prosperity. Who will bring about its end? The data in my field point to only one possible answer to these questions.”
I don’t get it. He knows something here. But there’s something he’s not telling me.
Erasmus continues:
“The foundation of my field is the view that our world was brought about through God’s ‘dream.’ There’s a reason it’s Sacred Astrometrics, after all. But there’s another view. What if it were not God but the Devil who is doing the dreaming, and our universe is the manifestation of this dream.”
K’s confusion only deepens.
“What?” he says. “So, are you saying the Papal Court is trying to identify adherents of such a perspective?”
“Possibly. The thing is, not many know about this yet, but something seems to be going on within the inner circle of the Papal Court. Not much from inside there ever leaks out, so the best anyone can do is speculate. But of course, there’s always talk among the officers of the Sacred Service. I mean, why else would a new pope not be promoted yet? It’s been five years since the death of Job Kerim II. But that’s just one piece of evidence of the strange machinations taking place.”
“Yeah. About that, I was there at the Papal Court the other day, so I heard some of the stories. I even saw the ghost. Darko Dachilko’s ghost. Wait a second, Professor, the previous pope—didn’t he pass away right after Planet Bosch Research was added to the list of Holy Disciplines?”
“That’s correct. Wait, did you just say that you saw the ghost?”
“I did. Through the window leading into the pope’s private quarters. Anyway, the book on Planet Bosch you showed me yesterday noted the date of when Planet Bosch Research was appended to the list of Holy Disciplines. It just crossed my mind that maybe these two events are linked together somehow.”
Erasmus nods repeatedly.
“I think you’re on to something,” he says. “Job Kerim II’s death did indeed happen right after. Since then, the seat has been empty. By the way, were you aware that there’s another man brought in to do Planet Bosch research?”
“Yes, his name is Abir. He teaches at a regional university. Specializes in the visual arts of the Twilight Era.”
“I see,” Erasmus leans toward K. “You know, the first time around, they assigned quite a few candidates to the center. But then, every single one of them vanished off the face of Earth. No one can locate anyone from that group.”
“What? Did they all travel to Planet Bosch?”
“Could be. But there’s another theory. I don’t mean to scare you, but there’s a rumor going around that every single one of them was killed by that ghost.”
“What? Professor Erasmus! Please don’t try to scare me with these strange jokes.”
There is no hiding the pallor on K’s face.
The Quadrinity
1
Warm effervescent water overflows off the edges of a bathtub made from hewn rusty-red stones, so polished that its smooth surface has become almost reflective. A pitcher plant sits inside a flowerpot next to the tub. Its sweet dew entices a nearby fly into its snare. Slowly, the fly slides down the plant’s dew-slicked trunk.
Other potted plants—ferns, hemp, and palms—surround the pitcher plant, forming a makeshift curtain concealing the bathing woman inside the bathtub. The woman picks a flower from one of the black orchids, drawing it to her delicate nose. Eyes closed, she imbibes its bold and seductive fragrance in one deep breath, only to then let the orchid flower slip between her long fingers, scattering its petals onto the surface of the warm water. The petals float toward the sides of the bathtub, where they linger for a moment before finally washing over the edge one by one.
Another day in the Holy Empire, another afternoon of dozing off.
What is it that the woman yearns for as she slips her fingers down to the swell of her breasts, ever so gently caressing them? Does her body still tingle with every vivid recollection of the days she spent beneath that banyan tree? Does a bittersweet memory of the young man suckling at her breast remain etched on her very body?
I wish I could see him, let him suckle my breasts once more.
Ah, a mother’s longing for her child! The chance to see her son, once wrenched away from her arms by the twisting weave of space and time, gave her much solace. But that brief time with him is now over.
She stretches her slender neck to steal a glance of the inside of the pitcher plant next to her. The fallen fly has already dissolved.
Just like me.
All that’s left for her now is to languish in her pool of ennui, to daydream once again.
All this should have been nothing more than occurrences happening on another world, on the other side of the universe. Yet why does she find this other world inhabited by her son to be more real to her? Is it because this world without her son is little more than a threshold, a place of passage?
Now waking from her dream, the woman rises from her bath.
“Amalia! Amalia!”
The woman calls out for her hidden handmaiden with a voice endowed with an enchanting luster and a solemn dignity.
“Yes, Lady Piponoclara.”
There is an almost mechanical quality to the handmaiden’s response.
“I’m coming out,” the woman says. “Dry me off.”
The woman lifts her legs over the edge of the bathtub, exposing her slender body as she steps out. Betraying no hint of embarrassment, she stands before her handmaiden with her legs slightly parted as her handmaiden dries her off from her legs up with a white towel. All the while, she gazes at a full-length 3-D mirror, studying her own body with unabashed eyes.
The woman walks off the tiled floor, making her way to the dressing room. Still with Amalia’s assistance, she slips on a set of black underwear, then drapes a matching black gown over it all. Her gown flutters with the delicacy of a butt
erfly as she walks through the lounge on her way to the garden.
High walls on every side envelop the inner courtyard garden. Arranged on the ground are alternating black and white tiles that form a pathway leading toward a pond with a fountain in the center of the garden. Black water lilies blossom in the pond, all under the cool shade of the lush green leaves of the subtropical trees, with black fruits hanging from their branches. Hibiscus flowers, their unusual black petals in full bloom, surround the pond.
“Amalia!”
After calling to her handmaiden once more, the woman removes the gown and underwear she had just put on earlier.
Her handmaiden gives the same response as before.
“Yes, Lady Piponoclara.”
The woman stretches out atop a low bed while her handmaiden kneels beside her. The handmaiden drags a small cart close to her, then pulls out one of its drawers. Bottles upon bottles of perfumed oils fill the drawer. She takes out one of them and begins to massage oil onto the woman’s back.
Someone inside the bedroom can easily spy on both women. The bedroom lies beyond a door in the lounge, cracked open just enough to see the large mirror installed on one wall. When viewed from just the right angle, its surface reflects the scene from the garden. Installed on the wall opposite the mirror is an artificial waterfall that serves in place of an air-conditioning unit. The falling water powers a set of multicolored gears, which propel a four-bladed fan attached to the ceiling of the room. It also activates the playback of breezy melodic music. While it is difficult to ascertain the workings of the contraption, one thing is certain. The texture of the music it plays is exquisite.
But there is no one here to spy on them. All appearances suggest that only these two women reside in this version of Clara Hall, existing on this side of the universe. Moreover, the handmaiden Amalia exhibits a distinct stiltedness to her movements. Indeed, a closer inspection reveals her secret in an instant—Amalia appears to be a mechanical doll of some sort.
The heat of the sun sears the arms of the date palms beyond this Clara Hall. The outer walls of the hall are painted in a solid white, dazzling under the light of the sun. This Clara Hall stands in the same northern suburbs of the capital city of Igitur, with the same rows upon rows of elegant homes that mark it as an affluent residential neighborhood.
Smaller rolling hills dot the landscape beyond the high plateau of the capital, seemingly expanding all the way out to the hinterlands under the boundless vista of the cloudless blue sky. But below the horizon, patches of the dark-brown color of devastation blot the terrain as far as the eye can see. With the incessant haze rising from the scorched earth, the whole area looks as if it were shimmering.
Like a navel marking the center of the belly, a solitary crag juts out of the ground. High walls surround the summit, enveloping within them a round white tower known by the name of the Holy Igitur Monastery, so beautiful as it shimmers in the haze that it looks almost unreal. All too easy to mistake its gleaming for nothing more than a mirage.
2
K marches toward this white tower under the blazing heat of the sun. His feet tread on a wasteland so searing hot it might as well have been an empty frying pan left forgotten on the stove. It is a torturous heat far beyond what he could have ever imagined.
The rocky trail K walks is the only road out of the capital. It leads straight to the crag where the Holy Igitur Monastery stands. Turn your head one way and you come face-to-face with the walls surrounding the capital looming above you. A faint line of white sand cuts across the ground just outside the base of the city walls, the only remnant of what used to be a beach. Now, sun-blackened vegetation covers much of what was once a white sandy shore. Could this land have once been the sea floor? The vestiges of the centuries-old ruins of salt extraction plants certainly suggest as much.
Not a single tree as far as the eye can see.
Even the wind steals away your breath.
“So hot . . .”
His waterskin has long been emptied. K curses at the sky. The white-hot rays of the sun above his head burn brighter, as if ready to burst into an explosion.
What’s the point of cursing at the sky now?
Halfway to his destination now—or at least that’s what the sign left by the road like a grave marker informs him.
This is what K wants. This torture is what K seeks.
This morning, an official at City Hall tried to steer K from this path he had chosen.
“Don’t do it. It would be insane to try to make your way to the monastery at this hour. Temperatures will go up so high that you could boil an egg under the sun. Follow the others, and go by horse in the evening, when it’s cooler.”
This is what he told K when he returned the registration paperwork with his signature affixed. “The assembly isn’t scheduled to begin until later tonight. There’s really no need to rush off now,” the official added.
“Fine, I’ll just head over there on foot after the sun goes down,” K said.
The officer shook his head.
“That’s even more dangerous!”
“Why?”
“There are snakes all over the place along the way. Poisonous snakes. You’ll never survive a bite from one of them.”
But in the end, K went off despite these warnings. Of course, there was the fact that he had no money to purchase a horse. But more than that, in his heart, what K truly sought was punishment. Feelings of shame at his actions from the previous night welled up from the bottom of his heart. That orgy that unfolded between him and the Freesias left indelible memories on K’s body.
No longer does K’s sweat flow. His mouth too has dried out. At this rate, his body will soon be drained of all its fluids until it turns into a pile of shriveled-up, sun-dried flesh in this utterly dry heat.
K stops to look for shade. He’s in luck—a large boulder had rolled up from somewhere to a spot a few steps just off the road. The sun is still high up in the sky, so it barely casts any shadow. But that’s still far better than staying exposed to the direct sunlight. K steps off the road and squeezes his body into this tiny bit of shade.
Heeding the warnings, K first checks for any venomous snakes lurking underneath the rock. Not seeing any, he lies down on the ground, repurposing his waterskin into a pillow. Being in the shadow of the rock should at least let him hold out for a bit longer.
He is supposed to be heading toward the monastery. But this intense heat has given K a slight headache. All he can do now is to behold it from a distance. So vivid is it in the searing heat of the air that it looks almost unreal. The haze refracts the air around it, giving it a somewhat deformed appearance. As he stares at the glistening white tower, a vague vertigo begins to overcome him. Such a strange, indescribable sensation. Still conscious but with a blurred sense of time and space. His surroundings lose all sense of solidity, as if he has somehow crossed the threshold of this reality itself.
For K, the hazy sight of the white tower of the Holy Igitur Monastery standing atop the darkened crag passes from mere mirage to something else, to something like a structure seeping in from another dimension. At first, it is only the tower. But soon after, this curious vision takes hold of everything before his eyes. He is overcome by the sensation of some kind of invisible wave from another dimension steadily advancing toward his body, and a ripple of fear washes over him. But once this extradimensional wave sweeps over him, this fear turns into relief.
K refuses to let go of this feeling of rapture. Gently, he closes his eyes. Somehow, in his mind’s eye, the swell of the bosom of the beggar woman and the white tower of the Holy Igitur Monastery become one.
Sunset approaches by the time K notices anything amiss. He falls into a deep slumber while still in a state of rapture. The cool luscious sensation on his skin turns into the touch of Eva’s arm in his dreams. They are sitting by the water and talking.
But something startles K awake. A huge yellow-and-black-banded snake coils itself around his feet. K’s bl
ood curdles. One false move is all it will take to be bitten. His hands grope his surroundings for a stick or a rock—anything he can use as a weapon. But no such luck. The snake must have noticed him waking. It raises its head.
Looks like this is the end.
The snake starts to uncoil itself before his eyes.
That is when it happens. Without warning—without any warning at all—a deformed black hand materializes out of thin air, grabbing the snake by its neck. The snake’s mouth snaps open in a high-pitched shriek. Its scales glint as it squirms violently in the air. It tries to coil itself around the misshapen hand. But its efforts are futile. The six-fingered hand is already cut off, dripping blood from the wrist. Nothing for the snake to grab hold of.
The hand and the snake struggle with each other. Suddenly, they shoot upwards into the air. All K can do is watch the scene before him in a daze.
They dart up so high into the sky that K loses sight of them for an instant. But not long after, the snake plummets back to earth as its scales glint in the setting sun. Its head strikes against the rock face on landing. It dies instantly.
All this time, K remains flat on his back. Only after the whole ordeal ends does he regain his senses. Did he just see a miracle? What other explanation could there be for what K has just witnessed?
“K, is that you? Are you all right? How’d you end up here?”
K turns his eyes toward the voice. He sees a man on horseback lit up from behind by the setting sun. With the sun behind his back, the man first appears to K like a saint outlined by a scintillating halo of light. But it soon becomes clear that he is the Stellar Chess player Hoffman.
Behind Hoffman stands a column of more men, all marching toward the monastery on horseback, all casting long shadows behind them.
As K ponders whether to tell him about the miracle that he witnessed, Hoffman offers him a ride, an offer that K promptly accepts.
The Sacred Era: A Novel (Parallel Futures) Page 9
