The Dark Design

by Philip José Farmer

  What did it all mean? Without immortality, it meant nothing.

  There were people who said that life was the excuse for life, its only reason.

  These were fools, self-deluded. No matter how intelligent they might be in other matters, they were fools in this. Self-blinkered, emotional idiots.

  On the other hand, why should human beings have another chance at an afterlife? They were such miserable, conniving, self-deceiving, hypocritical wretches. Even the best were. He knew no saints, though he admitted that there might have been and might be some. It seemed to him that only saints would be worthy of immortality. Even so, he doubted the claims of some of those who had been awarded halos.

  Take St. Augustine, for instance. “Asshole” was the only word that fitted him. A monster of ego and selfishness.

  St. Francis was about as saintly as a person could be. But he was undoubtedly psychotic. Kissing a leper’s sores to demonstrate humility, indeed!

  Still, as Peter’s wife had pointed out, no one was perfect.

  Then there was Jesus, though there was no proof that he was a saint. In fact, it was evident from the New Testament that he had restricted salvation to the Jews. But they had rejected him. And so, St. Paul, finding that the Jews were not about to give up the religion for which they had fought so hard and suffered so much, had turned to the Gentiles. He made certain compromises, and Christianity, better named Paulism, was launched. But St. Paul was a sexual pervert, since total sexual abstinence was a perversion.

  That made Jesus a pervert, too.

  However, some people just did not have much sex drive. Perhaps Jesus and Paul had been such. Or they had sublimated their drive in something more important, their desire to have people see the Truth.

  Buddha was perhaps a saint. Heir to a throne, to riches and power, married to a lovely princess who had borne him children, he had given all these up. The miseries and wretchedness of the poor, the stark unavoidability of death, had sent him wandering through India, seeking the Truth. And so he had founded Buddhism, eventually rejected by the very people, the Hindus, whom he had tried to help. His disciples had taken it elsewhere, however, and there it had thrived. Just as St. Paul had taken the teachings of Jesus from his native land and planted its seeds among foreigners.

  The religions of Jesus, Paul, and Buddha had started to degenerate before their founders were cold in their graves. Just as St. Francis’ order had begun corrupting before its founder’s body was rotten.

  On an afternoon while the Razzle Dazzle was sailing along, a good breeze behind its sails, Frigate told Nur el-Musafir these thoughts. They were sitting against the bulkhead of the forecastle, smoking cigars and looking idly at the people on the bank. The Frisco Kid was at the wheel, and the others were talking or playing chess.

  “The trouble with you, Peter—one of the troubles—is you worry too much about other people’s behavior. And you have too high ideals for them, ideals which you yourself don’t try to live up to.”

  “I know I can’t live up to them, so I make no pretense,” Frigate said.

  “But it bothers me that others claim to have these ideals and to be living up to them. If I point out that they aren’t, they get angry.”

  The little Moor chuckled. “Naturally. Your criticism threatens their self-image. If that were to be destroyed, they, too, would be destroyed. At least, they think so.”

  “I know that,” Frigate said. “That’s why I quit doing that long ago. I learned on Earth to keep quiet about such matters. Besides, people got very angry and some even threatened violence. I can’t stand anger or violence.”

  “Yet you are a very angry person. And I think your abhorrence of violence stems from fear of being violent yourself. You were—are—afraid that you’d hurt someone else. Which is why you suppressed that violence in yourself.

  “But as a writer, you could express it. It would be done impersonally, as it were. You wouldn’t be doing it in a face-to-face situation.”

  “I know all that.”

  “Then why haven’t you done something about it?”

  “I have. I tried various therapies, disciplines, and religions. Psychoanalysis, Dianetics, Scientology, Zen, transcendental meditation, Nichirenism, group therapy, Christian Science, and fundamental Christianity. And I was strongly tempted to become a Roman Catholic.”

  “I never heard of most of those, of course,” Nur said. “Nor do I need to know what they were. The fault lies in yourself, regardless of the validity of these. By your own admission, you never stuck to any of them long. You didn’t give them a chance.”

  “That,” Frigate said, “was because, once in them, I could see their flaws. And I had a chance to study the people practicing them. Most of these religions and disciplines were having some beneficial effect on their practitioners. But not nearly what was claimed for them. And the practitioners were fooling themselves about much of the benefits claimed.”

  “Besides, you didn’t have the stick-to-itiveness needed,” Nur said. “I think that comes from fear of being changed. You desire change, yet dread it. And the fear wins out.”

  “I know that, too,” Frigate said.

  “Yet you have done nothing to overcome that fear.”

  “Not nothing. A little.”

  “But not enough.”

  “Yes. However, as I got older, I did make some progress. And here I have made even more.”

  “But not nearly enough?”

  “No.”

  “What good is self-knowledge if the will to act on it is lacking?”

  “Not much,” Frigate said.

  “Then you must find a way to make your will to act overcome your will not to act.”

  Nur paused, smiling, his little black eyes bright.

  “Of course, you will tell me you know all that. Next, you will ask me if I can show you the way. And I will reply that you must first be willing to let me show you the way. You are not as yet ready, though you think you are. And you may never be, which is a pity. You have potentiality.”

  “Everybody has potentiality.”

  Nur looked up at Frigate. “In a sense, yes. In another sense, no.”

  “Mind explaining that?”

  Nur rubbed his huge nose with a small, thin hand and then pitched his cigar across over the deck and over the railing. He picked up his bamboo flute and looked at it but laid it down.

  “When the time comes, if it ever does.”

  He looked sideways at Frigate.

  “You feel rejected? Yes. I know that you react too strongly to rejection. Which is one reason that you have always tried to avoid situations in which you might be rejected. Though why you should then have become a fiction writer is a mystery to me. Or is it? You did persist in your intended profession despite initial rejections. Though, according to your own story, you often let long periods of time elapse before you tried again. But you persisted.

  “Be that as it may, it is up to you to decide if you will be disheartened by my refusing you at this time. Try me later. When you know that you are at least a fit candidate.”

  Frigate was silent for a long while. Nur put the flute to his lips and presently a weird wailing, rising and falling, issued. Nur was never without the instrument when off duty. Sometimes he would content himself with short pieces, lyrics, presumably. Other times, he would sit cross-legged on top of the forecastle for hours, the flute silent, his eyes closed. At such time, his request that he not be interrupted was honored. Frigate knew that Nur was putting himself into some sort of trance then. But so far he had not asked him more than one question about it.

  Nur had said, “You need not know. As yet.”

  Nur-ed-din ibn Ali el-Hallaq (Light-of-the-faith, son of Ali the barber) fascinated Frigate. Nur had been born in 1164 A.D. in Córdoba, held by the Moslems since 711 A.D. Moorish Iberia was then near the apotheosis of Saracenic civilization, which Nur had beheld in all its glory. Christian Europe, compared to the brilliant culture of the Moslems, was still in the Dark A
ges. Art, science, philosophy, medicine, literature, poetry flourished in the great centers of population of Islam. The Western cities: Iberian Córdoba, Seville, and Granada, and the Eastern cities: Baghdad and Alexandria, had no rivals, except in faraway China.

  The wealthy Christians sent their sons to the Iberian universities to get an education unobtainable in London, Paris, and Rome. The sons of the poor went there to beg for bread while they learned. And from these schools the Christians went back to transmit what they had imbibed at the feet of the robed masters.

  Moorish Iberia was a strange and splendid country, ruled by men who differed in degree of faith and dogmatism. Some were intolerant and harsh. Others were broad-minded, tolerant enough to appoint Christians and Jews as their viziers, inclined to the arts and the sciences, welcoming all foreigners, eager to learn from them, soft on matters of religion.

  Nur’s father plied his trade in the vast palace outside Córdoba, the near city of Medinat az-Zahra. In Nur’s time this had been fabled throughout the world, but in Frigate’s there was scarcely a trace left. Nur was born there and learned his father’s craft. He desired to be something else, and, since he was bright, his father used his connections with his wealthy patrons to advance his son. Having demonstrated his aptitude for literature, music, mathematics, alchemy, and theology, Nur went to the best school in Córdoba. There he mingled with the rich and the poor, the important and the insignificant, the Northern Christian and the Nubian black.

  It was also there that he met Muyid-ed-din ibn el-Arabi. This young man was to become the greatest love poet of his times, and echoes of his songs would be found in those of the Provençal and German troubadors. The rich and handsome youth, liking the poor and ugly son of a barber, invited him in 1202 to accompany him to a pilgrimage to Mecca. During the journey through North Africa, they met a group of Persian immigrants, Sufis. Nur had encountered this discipline before, but talking to the Persians decided him to be a disciple. However, at the moment, he found no master who would accept his petition for candidacy. Nur continued with el-Arabi to Egypt, where both were accused of heresy by fanatics and narrowly escaped being murdered.

  After completing their hajj in Mecca, they journeyed to Palestine, Syria, Persia, and India. This took four years, at the end of which they returned to their native city, spending a year on the voyage. In Córdoba both were, for a time, the pupils of the Sufi woman, Fatima bint Waliyya. The Sufis regarded men and women as being equal and so scandalized the orthodox. These were sure that if men and women mingled socially, it could only be for sexual purposes.

  Fatima sent Nur to Baghdad to study under a famous master there. After some months, his master sent him back to Córdoba to another great teacher. But when the Christians took Córdoba after a savage war, Nur went with his master to Granada.

  After several years there, Nur started on the series of wanderings that earned him his lackab, his nickname, el-Musafir, the Traveler. After Rome, where letters of introduction from el-Arabi and Fatima gave him safe conduct, he journeyed to Greece, to Turkey, Persia again, Afghanistan, India again, Ceylon, Indonesia, China, and Japan.

  Settling down in holy Damascus, he earned his living as a musician and, as a tasawwuf or Sufi master, accepted a number of disciples. After seven years, he set out once more. He went up the Volga and across Finland and Sweden, then across the Baltic Sea to the land of the idol worshippers, the savage Prussians. Here, after escaping sacrifice to a wooden statue of a god, he made his way westward through Germany. Northern France and then England and Ireland became part of his itinerary.

  At the time Nur was in London, Richard I, surnamed Coeur de Lion, was king. Richard was not in England then, being engaged in the siege of the Castle of Chalus in the Limousin, France. Richard was killed by an arrow from the castle the following month, and his brother John was crowned in May. Nur witnessed the ceremonies in the city. Some time after, he actually succeeded in gaining an audience with King John. He found him to be a charming and witty man, interested in Islam culture and in Sufism. John was especially fascinated by Nur’s reports of far-off lands.

  “Traveling in those days was at best arduous and dangerous,” Frigate said. “Even the so-called civilized countries were no picnic. Religious hatred was prevalent. How could you, a Moslem, alone, without protection or money, travel safely in the Christian lands? Especially when the Crusades were going on then and religious hatred was endemic?”

  Nur had shrugged. “Usually I put myself under the protection of the dignitaries of the state religions of those countries. And these got me civil protection. The church leaders were more concerned with heretics in their own faith than in infidels. In their own provinces, anyway.

  “At other times, my very poverty was my safeguard. Robbers were not interested in me. When I traveled in rural areas, I would earn my keep and provide amusement by my flute playing and by my skill as a juggler, acrobat, and magician. Also, I am a great linguist, and I could pick up the language or the dialect of a place very quickly. I also told stories and jokes. You see, people everywhere were crazy for novelty, for entertainment. They welcomed me most places, though I did have a number of hostile receptions here and there. What did they care if I was a Moslem? I was harmless, and I gave them joy.

  “Besides, I radiated an assurance of friendliness. That is something that we can do.”

  Returning to Granada, and finding the atmosphere there changed, not friendly to Sufis, he had gone to Khorasan. After teaching there for several years, he made another trip to Mecca. From southern Arabia he had traveled on a trading ship to the shores of Zanzibar and then to southeast Africa. Returning to Baghdad, he lived there until his death at the age of ninety-four.

  The Mongols under Hulagu, Jenghiz Khan’s grandson, stormed into Baghdad, slaughtering and plundering. Within forty days, hundreds of thousands of its citizens were slain. Nur was one of them. He was sitting in his little room playing on the flute when a squat, slant-eyed, blood-drenched soldier burst in. Nur continued his song until the Mongol brought his sword down upon his neck.

  “The Mongols devastated the Mideast,” Frigate had said. “Never in history has such desolation been wrought in such a short time. Before the Mongols left, they murdered half the population, and they had destroyed everything from canals to buildings. In my time, six hundred years later, the Mideast still had not recovered.”

  “They were indeed the Scourge of Allah,” Nur had said. “Yet there were good men and women among them.”

  Now, sitting by the little man, watching the dark-skinned betelnut chewers on shore, Frigate was thinking about chance. What destiny had crossed the paths of a man born in midwestern America in 1918 and of one born in Moslem Spain in 1164? Was destiny anything but chance? Probably. But the odds against this happening on Earth were infinity to one. Then the Riverworld had changed the odds, and here they were.

  It was that evening, after his conversation with Nur, that all sat in the captain’s cabin. The ship was anchored near the shore, and fish-oil lamps lit their poker game. After Tom Rider had cleaned up the final big pot—cigarettes were the stakes—they had a bull session. Nur told them two tales of the Mullah Nasruddin. Nasruddin (Eagle-of-the-Faith) was a figure of Moslem folk tales, a mad dervish, a simpleton whose adventures were really lessons in wisdom.

  Nur sipped on his scotch whiskey—he never drank more than two ounces a day—and said, “Captain, you’ve told the tale about Pat and Mike, the priest, rabbi, and minister. It’s a funny story, but it does tell a person something about patterns of thinking. Pat and Mike are figures of Western folklore. Let me tell you about one from the East.

  “One day a man came by the house of the Mullah Nasruddin and observed him walking around it, throwing bread crumbs on the ground.

  “‘Why in the world are you doing that, Mullah?’ the man said.

  “‘I’m keeping the tigers away.’

  “‘But,’ the man said, ‘there are no tigers around here.’

  “‘Exact
ly. It works, doesn’t it?’”

  They laughed, and then Frigate said, “Nur, how old is that story?”

  “It was at least two thousand years old when I was born. It originated among the Sufis as a teaching tale. Why?”

  “Because,” Frigate said, “I heard the same story, in a different form, in the 1950s or thereabouts. There was this Englishman, and he was kneeling in the street, chalking a line on the curb. A friend, coming along, said, ‘Why are you doing that?’

  “‘To keep the lions away.’

  “‘But there are no lions in England.’

  “‘See?’”

  “By God, I heard the same story when I was a kid in Frisco,” Farrington bellowed. “Only it was an Irishman then.”

  “Many of the instructive Nasruddin stories have become mere jokes,” Nur said. “The populace tells them for fun, but they were originally meant to be taken seriously. Here’s another.

  “Nasruddin crossed the border from Persia to India on his donkey many times. Each time, the donkey carried large bundles of straw on his back. But when Nasruddin returned, the donkey carried nothing. Each time, the customs guard searched Nasruddin, but he could not find any contraband.

  “The guard would always ask Nasruddin what he was carrying. The Mullah would always reply, ‘I am smuggling,’ and he would smile.

  “After many years, Nasruddin retired to Egypt. The customs man went to him and said, ‘Very well, Nasruddin. Tell me, now it’s safe for you. What were you smuggling?’

  “‘Donkeys.’”

  They laughed again, and Frigate said, “I heard the same story in Arizona. Only this time the smuggler was Pancho, and he was crossing the border from Mexico to the United States.”

  “I suppose every story is an old one,” Tom Rider drawled. “Probably started with the cave man.”

  “Perhaps,” Nur said. “But it is a tradition that these stories were originated by the Sufis long before Mohammed was born. They are designed to teach people how to change their patterns of thinking, though they are amusing in themselves. Of course, they are used in the simplest, the first, stage of teaching by the masters.