Mesopotamia - The Redeemer (40 page)

With her left hand, she drew the
black chicken close to her and gently grasped its neck while the
bloodstained blade glinted in her right hand. Without hesitation,
she uttered the blessing.

“In the name of the Sacred Serpent,
Master of Light,” she said, adding, “I shall drink the blood of the
chicken to you, Truth, and to the life of compassion that you
deserve.”

The severed head of the chicken
fell to the floor while Sophia calmly swallowed the blood of the
chicken in deep gulps and firmly held the fluttering body. She
continued to take in the liquid that warmed her insides even after
the chicken's small heart had ceased to pump its blood into her.
When she finally placed it on the floor next to Truth's chicken,
not even a drop of blood trickled out onto the floor. All that
remained was a faint plume of feathers that stuck to her
fingers.

Everyone was in shock. The
audio-visual system was silent. Enosh was repulsed by the sight of
Sophia's bloodied lips. Truth could not look directly at Sophia.
The soldiers and pilots were silent in confusion and admiration:
never had they seen a non-Gnostic person perform the blood ritual
with such calmness. Even among the Gnostics, who were required to
perform the test as part of their training, very few were able to
demonstrate such self-control. The audio-visual system rustled with
the Gnostics' murmurs. She had passed the test. None of the
Gnostics could deny that.

“Death to the Pythagorean female!”
cried someone in the audio-visual system, but no one replied.

Enosh, full of love and pride,
feared for Sophia's safety.

“Speak, Pythagorean female,” hissed
Truth reluctantly.

She took a deep breath. “We
Pythagoreans have committed a grave sin. I plead guilty on behalf
of the Pythagoreans and on behalf of Orpheus, who abandon Earth and
ignored the fate of those who remained there.” Sophia swallowed her
saliva that was thick from the blood and continued. “Orpheus and
his successors, myself included, are all guilty for abandoning
Earth. I am not satisfied with merely feeling guilty or with any
punishment you may impose upon me; I want to utilize this
opportunity to take responsibility for my choices and correct what
I can. To that end, I must listen to your claims against me, Truth.
What are your accusations against me?”

'She just won't stop. Where is this
headed?' he asked himself uneasily. His face became grave. He would
have preferred to blast her head off, but he must uphold the
Gnostic law since all of his soldiers were watching. “I accuse you
of pretentiousness, boastfulness, ostracism—the same crimes that
you mentioned, but I disagree with the point at which you choose to
begin your story.”

Truth understood that Flash had
been right. He shouldn't have provided the Pythagorean with an
opportunity to speak, but there was no turning back now. All he
could do was seize the opportunity and use her words against her in
order to reinforce the Gnostic version of history and strengthen
his own soldiers' devotion.

“The ostracism began three thousand
years ago with Pythagoras himself. You are not aware of it, or
perhaps it is easier for you to ignore the fact, but those of
Pythagoras' students who did not pass his tests were symbolically
put to death. They were expelled from his academy in Croton and
were forbidden from returning. Pythagoras forbade his remaining
students from speaking with them and they mourned for the former
students as if they had actually died. Monuments were erected in
their memories. But Pythagoras was not satisfied with symbolic
death. Hypsos, Pythagoras' student, discovered the limitations of
Pythagorean mathematics and, by association, the limitations of
Pythagoras as the man who had created it. He discovered the
existence of the irrational number, the number which disrupted
their harmonious view of the universe. Pythagoras' pacifist
hypocrisy was revealed when he ordered that Hypsos be drowned.”

Most of the Gnostics that were
listening on the audio-visual system were familiar with the claims
against Pythagoras, which were brought up and taught in their
Gnostic training.

“Wasn't this an attempt on
Pythagoras' part to become a human God?” his voice boomed. “Just as
the Pythagoreans rejected the rest of humanity, so too did their
mathematics reject anything that did not conform to their imaginary
harmony. They did not succeed in including irrational numbers, zero
and the lack represented by negative numbers in their cosmic order.
In the same way, Orpheus snubbed the Gnosis and the Earth.”

“Cursed Pythagoras! Cursed
Orpheus!” the voices rang out from the audio-visual system.

“Death to the Pythagorean female!
Death, death, death,” they roared.

“Silence!” ordered Truth and waited
until it was quiet. Only then he continued, “The Pythagoreans
committed the sin of separating themselves. They murdered one of
their students in cold blood for publicly revealing the
dodecahedron, the secret of the geometric shape that is made of
twelve pentagonal sides. A geometric shape is more important to
them than a human life, a human life that belonged to one of their
own, no less.” He was silent for a moment and then continued. “And
how do you explain, Pythagorean,” he spit the word out
disdainfully, “the Pythagorean pretense of not causing harm to any
living thing?”

Sophia looked at him
quizzically.

“You do not know, or perhaps you
don't want to know? When Pythagoras formulated the mathematical
theorem that bears his name, he sacrificed one hundred oxen. How
does a pacifistic vegetarian sacrifice oxen to mark his
discoveries? Are you surprised at the fact that he made his
neighbors burn down his house with himself and his students inside
it? And are you surprised that you and your people will encounter
that same fate, Pythagorean?”

Truth succeeded in convincing his
men that their spiritual path had historical legitimacy. Sophia was
familiar with the allegations he raised, though she had never once
believed in their veracity, except for the fire incident. Her
intentions, however, were not to win the argument; her sole
purpose, as Enosh had put it, was as follows: to cause Truth to
take notice of her, so see her as a conversational peer, a partner
to his social community. So far, she had succeeded in doing so.

“I accept all the sins of my
ancestors upon myself. According to what you said, Truth,
Pythagoras delineated the borders of who was to be accepted versus
who was to be rejected. According to what you said, he should have
accepted whoever wanted to join him or he should have joined with
others. I want to pose a question for you now: Where do you
determine your boundaries of acceptance? Who do you include in your
circle of acceptance and who do you reject? And upon what do you
base this?”

“The Gnostic knowledge is based on
the concept of the disrupted unity of the universe. Our world is
currently ostracized. We were all exiled from the source, from the
Pleroma of the completeness of the Gods. We Gnostics know this. Our
entire purpose is to extract the outcast divine spark from its
confines of the material world and return it to its rightful place.
We are all outcasts, trapped within the material world.”

Sophia knew that her words would
only serve to incite Truth and that he was likely to respond, but
she had no other choice but to continue to try to arouse his
feelings. “What you are saying is that you place the demarcation of
belonging between the spiritual and material realms, but in
practice you place it somewhere else entirely.”

He furrowed his brow.

“You agree that in the Blood
Challenge, the chickens were sacrificed in order to mark my
inclusion as one who bears the right to speak, correct?”

“Indeed,” he grunted impatiently,
wary of where her argument was heading.

“That is to say, the chicken, you
and I are a trio. From this trio comes one—the chicken externally
defines the two of us, me and you, as partners in discourse. The
ancient Pythagoreans rejected the Crotonians of southern Italy and
the new Pythagoreans rejected the Gnostics of Earth. This was done
in order to internally consolidate themselves into a group.”

Truth understood that she was
building up toward a logical conclusion that would not benefit his
stance, but he had no way of backing out now. “Finish up before my
patience runs out,” he growled with controlled irritation.

“And so,” replied Sophia, trying to
apply all of the knowledge that she had acquired from Enosh, “you
are using an impure totem, the rejected chicken, to delineate and
define the human community from the bottom up. You use the sacred
totem, the Serpentine Master of Light, to define the human
community from the top down. The chicken from below and the serpent
from above symbolize the boundaries of humanity. Between the
chicken and the serpent, you outline the boundaries of humanity.
When you sacrifice a chicken in the name of the Master of Light,
you connect them in a definitive loop that encircles humanity.
Despite the Gnostic insistence on viewing man as an abomination,
you are the ones who marks the borders of inclusion that separates
animals from humans. The ritual leaves animals on the outside of
the circle and leaves humanity as the inclusive group. I requested
to partake of the Blood Challenge in order to express my agreement
to the brotherhood of humanity that exists between us. Since I
passed the test, you must see me as an equal sister.”

He was speechless for the duration
of a few seconds. She remained silent only in order to emphasize
his silence as agreement and then continued before he could
speak:

“The Blood Challenge is an
expression of something else as well: the exploitation and
rejection of the chicken. Who drank your blood, Truth? Who drained
your soul from you, Truth? I can hear your pain but do not know
what it is.”

The harmonious sounds of the
spheres of light rose by an octave.

'Cursed witch,' thought Truth. 'You
will not ensnare me in your trickery.' Truth raised his voice. “The
pain is not personal pain, Pythagorean. It is the pain of Ishtar,
who lost her son Yaldabaoth, the demiurge, to the material world.
The pain is that of aeon Yaldabaoth, who fell from the heavenly
stars and aeons, from the pleroma, and cannot find his way back
home.”

“The stars and the aeons are deaf
and dumb. But you are right. I no longer believe in Pythagoras, who
claimed that he could hear the melody of the stars in their paths.
I no longer believe that stars can hear your pain nor partake of
it. The stars are indifferent. I understand your anger toward the
silence of the stars. I understand your attempt to transform your
personal pain into a metaphysical cosmic phenomenon. It is much
easier to believe that you belong to an abandoned world than to
believe that the world has abandoned you.”

Truth intended to firmly curtail
her speech but she continued.

“Cursed are the stars that continue
on their paths while your loved ones abandon you. Cursed is the sun
that shines while your soul is gloomy. There is no sacred
Pythagorean mathematics. There is no pleroma of sacred aeons. There
is only human pain, my pain, Smoke's pain, your pain.”

Only now was Truth afforded the
opportunity to think about Smoke. “Silence her,” he ordered
darkly.

The Atheist fleet was now speeding
through space—dozens of various types of warships, including
bombers carrying ammunition, landing craft and field generator
equipment. Leading the forces were Diotima and the chief of general
headquarters, Bruno, who maintained constant communication with the
fleet behind them via the dispatch stations they had scattered.
Diotima repeatedly checked the communication with the forces'
commanding transmissions. She ensured that the units were stationed
correctly around Samos and checked the secret attack codes, along
with many other critical details. Finally, she understood that she
was impeding their ability to focus on their work and left them
alone. Despite the extreme speed accrued by the commanding ship
since it left Octavia, the distance to Samos was still great. They
hoped to achieve contact at any moment via the transmission
stations. Diotima touched Bruno's hand and sensed his tension and
apprehension. She thought that she needed to calm herself down
before attempting to calm him.

“That's the problem with Atheism,”
she said.

“What is the problem?” asked
Bruno.

“There is a limit to optimism. Had
I believed beyond the shadow of a doubt in the existence of some
sort of divine power, I would be much calmer. I would be able to
tell myself that everything was going to be fine, since the ways of
God are secret and that He is working for my benefit in any event.
I would pray and feel like I invested some additional small effort
to quell the sense of helplessness.”

“Ah,” said Bruno understandingly.
“So believe in a higher power. I won't tell anyone,” he said with
artificial simplicity.

“Well, okay, if you don't tell
anyone...” She was unable to finish the sentence. The audio-visual
display began to pick up signals. It began as an indecipherable
noise but quickly became sharper and clearer.

“Silence her. I'll tell you,
Pythagorean, something about the pain of the universe—pain as told
through the words of an angel, the messenger of the aeons, to the
knowledgeable men and recorded in the Ginza Rabba:

Before the worlds existed, there
was the great fruit

Painfully he was created from it
and came unto himself

And became the God, Master of
Light.

From the noble and sublime Master
of Light

Came the ethereal piercing
rays.

From the radiant ether came the
burning fire.

From the fire came the light.

From the power of the Master of
Light,