“Please,” Bakrish said. “I am here to help you. It is more dangerous to turn back than it is to go ahead. Far more dangerous.”
Orne sensed sincerity in the words, turned and met a pleading stare in the priest’s dark eyes.
“Please,” Bakrish said.
Orne took a deep breath, stepped into the cell. He felt a slight easing of the danger signal but it remained strong and insistent.
“Flat on your back,” Bakrish said.
Orne stretched out on the floor. The stone chilled his back through the thick toga.
Bakrish said: “Once you start on your ordeal, the only way out is to go through it. Remember that.”
“Have you been through this?” Orne asked. He felt oddly silly stretched out on the floor. Bakrish, seen from this angle, appeared tall and powerful in the doorway.
“But of course,” Bakrish said.
If his psi awareness could be trusted, Orne thought he detected profound sympathy at the priest’s emotive base. “What’s at the other end of this ordeal?” Orne asked.
“That’s for each to discover for himself.”
“Is it really more dangerous for me to back out now?" Orne asked. He raised himself on one elbow. “I think you’re just using me, maybe in an experiment.”
A sense of regret radiated from Bakrish. He said: “When the scientist sees that his experiment has failed, he is not necessarily barred from further attempts ... using new equipment. You truly have no choice. Flat on your back now; it is safest for you.”
Orne obeyed, said: “Then let’s get on with it.”
“As you command,” Bakrish said. He stepped back and the doorway vanished. No sign of it remained in the wall.
Orne felt his throat go dry, studied his cell. It appeared to be about four meters long, two meters wide, some ten meters high. The mottled stone ceiling was blurred, though, and he thought the room could be higher. The pale illumination could have been designed to confuse the senses. The prescient warning remained within him, a tense reminder of peril.
Abruptly, Bakrish’s voice filled the room, sourceless and booming. It was everywhere, all around and within Orne. Bakrish said: “You are within the psi machine. It encloses you. The ordeal you are entering is ancient and it is exacting. It is to test the quality of your faith. Failure means loss of your life, loss of your soul ... or of both.”
Orne clenched his hands into fists. Perspiration bathed his palms. He felt an abrupt increase in background psi activity.
Faith? He found himself remembering his ordeal in the crechepod and the dream that once had plagued him.
Gods are made, not born.
In the crechepod he had rebuilt his own being, coming back from death, discarding old ways, old nightmares.
A test of faith? In what could he possibly have faith? In himself? He recalled the time of the crechepod and his sense of questioning. He had questioned the I-A then, awareness churning. Somewhere within himself he had sensed an ancient function, a thing of archaic tendencies.
He remembered then his one-part definition of existence: I am one being. I exist. That is enough. I give life to myself. There was something to be taken on faith.
Again, the voice of Bakrish boomed in the cell: “Immerse your selfdom in the mystical stream, Orne. What can you possibly fear?”
Orne sensed the psi pressures focused upon him, all of the evidences of deep and hidden intent. He said: “I like to know where I’m going, Bakrish.”
“Sometimes we go for the sake of going,” Bakrish said.
“Nuts!”
“When you press the stud which turns on a room’s lights you act on faith,” Bakrish said. “You have faith that there will be light.”
“I have faith in past experience,” Orne said.
“What about the first time, the time of no experience?”
“I must’ve been surprised.”
“Do you possess awareness of every experience available to humankind?” Bakrish asked.
“I guess not.”
“Then prepare yourself for surprises. I must tell you now that no lighting mechanism exists in your cell. The light you see exists because you desire it and for no other reason.”
“What …”
Darkness engulfed the room, Stygian and sense-denying. His prescient awareness of peril clamored.
Bakrish’s husky whisper filled the darkness: “Have faith, my student.”
Orne fought down the urgent desire to leap up and dash toward the doorwall, to pound on it. There had to be a doorway there! But he sensed the matter-of-fact grimness in the priest’s warning. Death lay in flight. There was no turning back.
A smoky glow appeared high up in the cell and coiled downward toward Orne. Light? It did not fit his definition of light, but appeared to have a life of its own, an inward source of glowing.
Orne brought his right hand in front of his eyes. He could see the hand only in outline against the glowing. The radiance cast no light into the cell. The sense of pressure increased with each heartbeat.
He thought: It became dark when I doubted.
Did the milky light that had been in the cell represent an opposition to darkness, a fear of darkness? Shadowless illumination flickered into being throughout the cell, but it was dimmer than it had been at first, and a black cloud boiled near the ceiling where the smoky radiance had been. The cloud beckoned like the outer darkness of deepest space.
Orne stared at the cloud, terrified by it. The sense-denying darkness returned. Once more, the smoky radiance glowed near the ceiling.
Prescient fear screamed in Orne. He closed his eyes in the effort to put down that fear and to concentrate. As his eyes closed, the fear eased. His eyes snapped open in shock.
Fear!
The ghostly glowing dipped nearer.
Eyes closed!
The sense of immediate peril retreated.
He thought: Fear equals darkness. The darkness beckons even when there is light.
He calmed his breathing pattern, concentrated on the inward focus.
Faith? Did that mean blind faith? Fear brought the darkness. What did they want of him? I exist. That is enough.
He forced his eyes to open, stared upward into the cell’s lightless void. The dangerous glowing coiled toward him. Even in utter darkness there was false light. It was not real light because he could not see by it. It was antilight. He could detect its presence anywhere, even in darkness.
Orne recalled a time long ago in his Chargon childhood, a time of darkness in his own bedroom. Moon shadows had been translated into monsters. He had pressed his eyes tightly closed, fearful that he would see things too horrible to contemplate if he opened them.
False light.
Orne stared upward at the coiling radiance. Did false light equal false faith? The radiance coiled backward onto itself. Did the utter darkness equal utter absence of faith? The radiance winked out.
Is it enough to have faith in my own existence? Orne wondered.
The cell remained dark and dangerous. He smelled the stone dampness. Creeping sounds infected the darkness—claw scrabbles, hisses and scratches, slitherings and squeaks. Orne invested the sounds with every shape of terror his imagination could produce: poisonous lizards, insane monsters, deadly snakes, fang-toothed crawling things out of nightmares. The sense of peril enfolded him. He lay suspended in it.
Bakrish’s hoarse whisper snaked through the darkness: “Are your eyes open, Orne?”
Orne’s lips trembled with the effort to answer: “Yes.”
“What do you see?”
The question produced an image which danced on the black field in front of Orne. He saw Bakrish in an eerie red light, face contorted with agony, his body leaping, capering ...
“What do you see?” Bakrish demanded.
“I see you. I see you in Sadun’s inferno.”
“In the hell of Mahmud?”
“Yes. Why do I see that?”
“Do you not prefer the light, Orne?”
There was terror in Bakrish’s voice.
“Why do I see you in hell, Bakrish?”
“I beg of you, Orne! Choose the light. Have faith!”
“But why do I see you in …”
Orne broke off, caught by the sensation that something had peered inside him with heavy deliberation. It had checked his thoughts, examined his vital processes and every unspoken desire, weighted his soul and cataloged it.
A new kind of awareness remained. Orne knew that if he willed it, Bakrish would be cast into the deepest torture pit of Mahmud’s nightmares. He had only to wish it.
Why not? he asked himself.
Then again: Why? Who was he to make such a decision? Had Bakrish earned eternity of Mahmud’s hate? Was Bakrish the one who had set out to destroy the I-A?
Bakrish was a minion, a mere priest. The Abbod Halmyrach, however ...
Groaning and creaking filled the cell. A tongue of flame leaped out of the darkness above Orne, a fiery lance poised and aimed, casting a ruddy glow on the cell’s walls.
Prescient warning clawed at Orne’s stomach.
Who was a proper target for Mahmud’s fanatical violence? If the wish were made, would it strike only one target? What of the one who wished this thing? Was a backlash possible? Would I join the Abbod in hell? Orne possessed the certain awareness that he could in this instant do a dangerous and devilish thing. He could cast a fellow human into eternal agony.
What human and why? Was possession of an ability the license to use it? He found himself revolted by the momentary temptation to do this thing.
No human deserved that. No human ever had deserved it.
I exist, he thought. That is enough. Do I fear myself? The dancing flame winked out of existence. It left the darkness and its hissings, scrabblings, slitherings.
Orne felt his own fingernails trembling against the floor. Realization swept over him.
Claws!
He stilled his hands, laughed aloud as the claw sound stopped. He felt his feet writhing with involuntary efforts at flight. He stilled his feet.
The suggestive slithering vanished. Only the hissing remained.
He realized it was his own breath fighting its way through his clenched teeth.
Laughter convulsed him.
Light!
Brilliant light flared in the cell.
With sudden perversity, Orne rejected the light and darkness returned—a warm and quiet darkness.
He knew the psi machine around him was responding to his innermost wishes, to those wishes uncensored by doubting consciousness, to those wishes in which he had faith.
I exist.
Light was his for the wishing, but he had chosen this darkness. In the sudden release of tensions, Orne ignored Bakrish’s warning, got to his feet. Being on his back had made it easier to understand his own innermost passivity, the assumptions and acceptances which clouded his being. The clouds were gone now.
Orne smiled into the darkness, called out: “Bakrish, open the door.”
A psi probe peered into Orne, slow and ponderous. He recognized Bakrish in it.
“You can see I have faith,” Orne said. “Open up.”
“Open it yourself,” Bakrish said.
Orne willed it: Show me, Bakrish.
A sandy scraping filled the cell. Light fanned inward from the side as the entire wall opened. Orne looked out at Bakrish, a shadow framed against light like a robed statue.
The Hynd stepped forward, jerked to a halt as he saw Orne standing in darkness. “Did you not prefer the light, Orne?”
“No.”
“But you’re standing, unafraid of my warning. You must have understood the test.”
“I understood,” Orne agreed. “The psi machine obeys my uncensored will. That’s faith, the uncensored will.”
“You understand and still choose the dark?”
“Does that bother you, Bakrish?”
“Yes.”
“For the moment, I find that useful,” Orne said.
“I see.” Bakrish bowed his shaven head. “I thank you for sparing me.”
“You know about that?” Orne was surprised.
“I felt the flames and the heat. I smelled the burning. I sensed my own screams of agony.” Bakrish shook his head. “The life of a guru on Amel is not an easy one. There exist too many possibilities.”
“You were safe," Orne said. “I censored my will.”
“Therein lies the most enlightened degree of faith,” Bakrish murmured. He brought up his hands, palms together and once more bowed to Orne.
Orne stepped out of the dark cell. “Is that all there is to my ordeal?”
“Oh, that was merely the initial step,” Bakrish said. “There are seven steps: the test of faith, the test of the miracle and its two faces, the test of dogma and ceremony, the test of ethics, the test of religious ideal, the test of service to life, and the test of the personal mystique. They do not necessarily fall in that order and sometimes are not distinctly separated.”
Orne tasted a sense of exhilaration, sensed that his prescient awareness of peril had receded. He said: “Let’s get on with it.”
Bakrish sighed, said: “Holy Rama defend me.” Then: “Very well, the two faces of the miracle; that is indicated next.”
The sense of peril came alive once more in Orne. He fought to ignore it, thinking: I have faith in myself. I can conquer my fear.
Angrily, Orne said: “The sooner we get through this, the sooner I see the Abbod. That’s why I’m here.”
“Is that the only reason?" Bakrish asked.
Orne hesitated, then: “Of course not. But he’s the one who’s putting the heat on the I-A. When I’ve solved all of your riddles, I’ll still have him to solve.”
“He is the one who summoned you, that is true,” Bakrish said.
“I thought of casting him into hell,” Orne said.
Bakrish paled. “The Abbod?”
“Yes.”
“Rama, guard us!”
“Lewis Orne guard you,” Orne said. “Let’s get on with it.”
***
Chapter Twenty-Two
The pattern of massive lethal violence, that phenomenon we call war, is maintained by a guilt-fear-hate syndrome which is transmitted much in the manner of a disease by social conditioning. Although lack of immunity to this disease is a very human thing, the disease itself is not a necessary and natural condition of human existence. Among those conditioned patterns which transmit the war virus you will find the following—the justification of past mistakes, feelings of self-righteousness and the need to maintain such feelings ...
—UMBO STETSON,
Lectures to the Antiwar College
Bakrish stopped before a heavy bronze door at the end of a long hall down which he had guided Orne. The priest turned an ornate handle cast in the form of a sunburst with long projecting rays. He threw his shoulder against the door and it creaked open.
He said: “We generally don’t come this way. These two tests seldom follow each other in the same ordeal.”
Orne stepped through the door after Bakrish, found himself in a gigantic room. Stone and plastrete walls curved away to a domed ceiling far above them. Slit windows in the high curve of the ceiling admitted thin shafts of light that glittered downward through gilt dust. Orne’s gaze followed the light down to its focus on a straight wall barrier about twenty meters high and forty or fifty meters long. The wall was chopped off and appeared incomplete in the middle of the immense room, dwarfed by the space around it.
Bakrish circled around behind Orne, closed the heavy door. He nodded toward the barrier wall. “We go there.”
He led the way; Orne followed. Their slapping sandals created an oddly delayed echo. The smell of damp stone was a bitter taste in Orne’s nostrils. He glanced left, saw evenly spaced doors around the room’s perimeter—bronze doors appearing identical to the one they had entered. Looking over his shoulder, he tried to pick out their door. It was lost in the ring of samenes
s.
Bakrish came to a halt about ten meters from the center of the odd barrier wall. Orne stopped beside him. The wall’s surface appeared to be smooth gray plastrete, featureless, but menacing. Orne felt his prescient fear increase as he stared at the wall. The fear came like the surging and receding of waves on a beach. Emolirdo had interpreted this as infinite possibilities in a situation basically perilous.
What was there in a blank wall to produce such a warning?
Bakrish glanced at Orne. “Is it not true, my student, that one should obey the orders of his superiors?”
The priest’s voice carried a hollow echo in the room’s immensity. Orne coughed to clear the rasping dryness of his throat. “If the orders make sense and the ones who give them are truly superior, I suppose so. Why do you ask?”
“Orne, you were sent here as a spy, as an agent of the I-A. By rights, anything that happens to you here is the concern of your superiors and no concern of ours.”
Orne tensed. “What’re you driving at?”
Sweat gleamed on Bakrish’s forehead. He looked down at Orne, the dark eyes glistening. “These machines terrify us sometimes, Orne. They are unpredictable in any absolute sense. Anyone who comes within their field can be subjected to their power.”
“Like back there when you were hanging on the edge of the inferno?”
“Yes.” Bakrish shuddered.
“But you still want me to go through with this?”
“You must. It is the only way you can accomplish what you were sent here to do. You could not stop, you do not want to stop. The wheel of the Great Mandala is turning.”
“I was not sent here,” Orne said. “The Abbod summoned me. I am your concern, Bakrish. Otherwise you would not be here with me. Where is your own faith?”
Bakrish pressed his palms together, placed them in front of his nose and bowed. “The student teaches the guru.”
“Why do you voice these fears?” Orne asked.
Bakrish lowered his hands. “It is because you still suspect us and fear us. I reflect your own fears. This emotion leads to hate. You saw that in your first test. But in the test you are about to undergo, hate represents the supreme danger.”