Mesopotamia - The Redeemer (17 page)

Nergal entered the room followed by
Neti, holding a crate that was making rustling noises. The three of
them stood frozen, heads bowed, and murmured a few ritual words in
a language he did not understand. Atar bowed his head like them and
waited for them to turn their eyes toward him. When Nergal lowered
both his hands into the crate, Atar could scarcely breathe out of
suspense. In his right hand, Nergal grasped a slaughtering knife
and in his left he clutched the neck of a small black fluttering
chicken.

“In the name of the holy serpent,
Master of Light!” proclaimed Nergal. In one dramatic motion, he
sliced off the chicken's head and sucked the blood from his gaping
neck. He held on tightly to the headless chicken who was furiously
flailing his legs and wings, sending feathers flying all around.
Neti watched with obvious relish as Atar's face paled. Atar felt
his insides churning. Unanswerable questions flooded his brain:
'How much time do I have to weigh my words? How do I suppress my
disgust and make rational decisions? How come Sin did not react
with the same sadistic pleasure that Neti displayed? What must I do
according to the Pythagorean code? Is it permissible to participate
in the offering of sacrifices and consumption of living animals?
What will happen if I don't participate in the ritual? At best, I
will be exiled back to Octavia. At worst, I will be imprisoned
here. No, worse than that—they will kill me. And what will happen
if I do drink the blood? Will that indeed cause them to open up to
me? To trust me? Please forgive me, my Gods and my teachers;
forgive me, chicken. I have no choice but to act as my own witness,
to take a chance alone and act to the best of my ability.'

“This is a great honor that we
bestow upon you, Atar the Pythagorean,” said Nergal with
bloodstained lips and teeth, “an honor commensurate with the anger
and hatred we harbor toward you.” He pulled out the second flailing
chicken and placed it in Atar's hand, along with the knife that was
still dripping with blood. Horror seized Atar from the tips of his
fingers, which were wrapped around the chicken’s neck, down to his
very core. With great difficulty, he contained the overpowering
tremors and muttered heavily, “In the name of the holy serpent,
Master of Light.” He decapitated the chicken in one swift motion
and pressed his lips to the severed neck. The chicken convulsed in
his hands. The blood gushed from the slit throat in pulsing spurts,
spraying out onto his silver suit and staining it. He swallowed and
gulped the hot, salty and sticky blood; he felt himself reanimating
the life-force of the chicken into his own soul. He sensed how his
own life was running out.

“Come with me!” Nergal's voice
unsettled him and shook him back to reality.

Malaise gripped Atar as he laid the
beheaded and twitching chicken corpse on the floor alongside the
other corpse, which was still bleeding. He followed Nergal and Sin.
His brain was engrossed in attempting to comprehend what he had
just done and left him with little room to ponder his current
task.

Atar struggled to contain his
revulsion and fear and tried to engage his stunned and numb brain
in order to understand what was happening. Are they trying to make
me become Gnostic? Or perhaps humiliate me as a Pythagorean?

Nergal signaled to Neti to join him
but told Sin, “Take him to the facility.”

Something changed once Nergal and
Neti left—the dread lifted. It seemed like Sin's composure had
changed in some way. He was less tense. Atar cleaned the sticky
blood off his teeth with his tongue and tried to think rationally:
the ritual had not been a sacrificial offering. In most religions,
a sacrifice was part of a triangular relationship involving the
God, the man and the sacrifice—a sort of cyclical deal involving at
least three partners and usually a priest as well, serving the
function of intermediary. Here, there were only two parties, the
man and the chicken; there was no God here. There was hardly a man
here. Atar needed to suppress his fear again. He thought about his
purpose in this incarnation of life. What type of death should he
anticipate, and how? Would Nergal drink his blood as if he were a
chicken?

The sound of clattering cars could
be heard outside. He extracted himself from his anxiety with a
stoic perspective. It was as if he were watching himself from a
distance, far away in space, like a speck of dust on a grain of
sand called Earth. He consoled himself by thinking about the beauty
of the universe that would endure even after he was gone, the
vitality that still bubbled up inside of him and his longing for
Orithea and Sophia. He continued to sit silently opposite Sin. He
had nothing to say. Sin was silent, head bowed, examining his
fingernails. Without lifting his head, he looked at Atar through
his eyebrows with a rigid gaze.

“Come with me.” Sin rose to his
feet and exited the headquarters room into the subterranean
corridors. Sin appeared less threatening—as well as less
threatened—than he had been earlier in the presence of Nergal. In
place of fear, Sin's expression was now one of gloom. Sin leapt
onto an empty slow-moving car and Atar followed. Sin gripped the
handle and steered the car through the passageways. Atar saw
production rooms where machines were being built by teams of
workers who swarmed around them like ants tending to their
kingdom.

“What is the true purpose of your
mission?” asked Sin in tone that was slightly less severe.

“As you already know, my mission is
to collect living specimens, as well as to bridge the gaps between
our cultures should the opportunity arise.”

“Why do you desire peace with us?
You have finally succeeded in distancing yourselves from the pains
of Earth, with its diseases and wars. Why would you want to have
anything to do with it?” Sin was not cynical like Nergal.

“We are all a part of one human
race, and at the end of the day, we will never be complete without
peace between the different human sects.”

“Ever since the rift between
Orpheus and Adamas, you managed to flourish without us." After a
long pause he asked: "Is it true that you can create any type of
material with the processor?”

The car took a sharp turn and Atar
was pressed against the wall of the car. “Not yet. We are still in
the initial stages of research.”

“And you are not afraid that it
will be used for evil purposes?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you can create any material
with it, then you can create very dangerous substances.”

Atar did not understand what Sin
was implying. Sin stopped the car. Atar followed him into a room
that was surprisingly white and brightly lit. There was a wooden
board on the opposite wall that was flanked by two metal
candlesticks holding lit candles. In the center of the board,
enclosed in a glass case, was an ancient clay tablet inscribed with
a cuneiform inscription. Only then did he notice a white
rectangular box that stood in the center of the room. The box was
opaque and shiny with rounded edges.

“This is the module,” said Sin,
pointing to the rectangular box.

'If so, then it's true,' thought
Atar. Over the years, he had heard various rumors about the module.
He was curious about what appeared to be a display for the clay
tablet, but he remained focused on the matter at hand and asked,
“What is the module?”

Sin looked to the side and
explained in a flat, tired voice, “It is a weapon of destruction.
The module is based on the creation constant. Do you
understand?”

Atar did not want to
understand.

“I harnessed the discoveries made
by Pythagoras and Adamas in order to invent this device.” Sin shot
a glance of love mingled with loathing toward the white box.

“Adamas?”

“Yes. You see, your Orpheus
discovered that matter is the constant movement of empty molecules
arranged in a coil. When this movement is stopped, matter reverts
back to its original state of nothingness.”

“Correct.”

“And there is a constant
relationship between the radius of the helical twist and the height
of the distance between the curves. This fractal constant remains
the same in subatomic particles as well as in entire solar systems
arranged within a galaxy.”

“Correct.”

“And Adamas...” Sin hesitated as if
he were unsure, but then continued, “Adamas figured out the amount
of energy required to cause one of the curves in the coil to
collapse and thereby close the cycle. The collapse of one small
curve in the tiniest helical twist turns the coil into a hoop. That
is all that is required to destroy matter. And thus begins a chain
reaction in which all of the coils collapse. Combined with your
particle processor, when it is completed, the module could create
the most dangerous material ever,” said Sin nonchalantly while
examining his fingernails.

Atar began to comprehend the
significance of the module. He calculated the danger that it may
potentially cause. 'I must warn Octavia,' he thought. Although he
still did not understand why Sin was revealing all of this
information to him, he knew that he should take advantage of the
opportunity. “What material?” he asked coolly.

“Nothingness.”

Atar shot a sideways, inquisitive
glance at him.

Sin turned to him, raised his
melancholy eyes and began to speak in a slow monotone. “With the
help of this device, the Gnostics can destroy everything within a
range of one hundred thousand light years. The significance of that
is that the entirety of the Milky Way nebula, together with all
humankind as well as all the heavenly bodies, will turn into
nothingness.”

Atar was horrified and fought
against the wave of information that threatened to drown him, when
all of a sudden, something dawned on him—a small but significant
detail.

“You said 'the Gnostics'. You did
not say 'we'.”

Sin was silent.

“Did Nergal agree to your showing
me the module?”

“Yes.”

“Why does Nergal want me to know
about the module?” Atar did not understand.

“So that you would contribute your
knowledge to help develop and adapt it to work with the Pythagorean
processor. Surely, you are very familiar with the processor,”
continued Sin with chilling indifference.

“I would rather die than help
you!”

“You cannot die unless Nergal
decides you will. They can extract all of your knowledge about the
Pythagorean processor technology without giving you the option of
death.”

Atar imagined that he heard a trace
of compassion in Sin's voice and immediately told himself that it
was likely that he may just be craving a slight gesture of human
warmth and had merely projected that desire on Sin. He was silent
and lowered his gaze.

“Atar.”

Atar raised his head. Sin's eyes
were suddenly soft. “You are not a Gnostic,” said Atar.

“I was, once.”

“The module is yours.”

“I created it, but it is no longer
mine. I have no interest in destruction.”

“You trust me, if you are telling
me this.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Sin was silent.

“Why?” repeated Atar after a long
time had passed.

“I created this module with my very
own hands. Piece by piece, I fashioned this death machine. And now
I want to destroy it.”

Atar calculated his doom. “You want
to destroy the module?”

“Yes.”

“Is that possible?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Sin was quiet. Then he proclaimed,
“You failed the test of the blood ritual!”

“How could I have failed? I
decapitated the chicken and drank its blood!”

“You had no chance of passing the
test. Nergal knew you would fail. You were not supposed to
demonstrate your ability to carry out the act, but rather to do it
without mercy, revulsion or shock. Had you passed the test, you
would have been made a Gnostic, because according to Gnostic law,
every man has the right to request to take the test or refuse to
take the test, and every man who passes this test has the right to
join the Gnostics. Whoever fails is put to death. You failed
because your revulsion overcame you. They won't kill you, however,
until they have extracted all of the information that they need
from you. But when you failed the test of the blood ritual, you
passed my own test.”

“And what test was that?”

“The test that determined that I
could include you in my plan. Come with me.”

“
W
hat happened?” asked
Thales. She looked agitated.

“Everything's fine,” she lied.

“It's that spy again. What is he
doing to you?” Thales was angry. “He is undermining your equanimity
with his tricks.”

“He's not hurting me, Thales, and
he's not a spy.” She stood up to pour herself a cup of water.

“Something's not right here. Ever
since he arrived, you stopped joining me on expeditions in the
simulator.”

“You know how much work I have,
Thales.”

“Not any more than you usually
have. And you even neglect some of your work.”

“What?” she asked indignantly.

“It's true. I'm sorry to say it,
but last night I checked the calibration and the synchronization of
the spheres was imbalanced. I had to correct it myself.”

“It can't be.”

“See for yourself.” Thales summoned
the synchronization log to the display screen and showed her the
hour of correction work he had done. She blushed with
embarrassment.

“He is disrupting your sense of
balance.”

Her face flushed. “Careful, Thales.
I am the master of this station, even if I made one small
calibration error,” she said firmly.

“The error is not significant;
rather the fact that something like this has never happened to you
until now.” He paused and decided to proceed anyway in expressing
what was on his mind. “We need to get rid of him. He's
dangerous.”