Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (35 page)

  
Silence fell again. 

  
The hermit bided his time.  His dark eyes were intense and burning with the
flaming wick, unravelling the hidden schemes out of those quasi-imperceptible
tells in the commissioner’s blank stare.  The unassailable, dead logicality
that permeated his every word and gesture mirrored the very system that gave
him and everyone else their purpose; a being without cause above his function, a
figure of dead neutrality, a machine.  And the mechanicalness of his scope was
clear enough, but the method raised a few questions -- one in particular. 
Seeing as how they had already had the opportunity to expel the girl…

  
“Why
now
and not before?”

  
Eastman was slow with his answer: “Everything happens when, and as, it is
supposed to.”

  
“Indeed,” nodded the hermit. 

  
And the answer could only mean one thing.  Saul Vartanian was
alive, and
very probably on the brink of being broken.  Every measured step had been designed
to the point of choreography, specifically to bring him to this moment. 

  
“Why not simply take her away?” he asked. 

 
 “There are rules to what we do.”

  
”…Freedom,” the hermit hummed and nodded.

  
“We are here to serve and abet the will, not defy it.”

  
“But
I
can.”

  
“Of course.” Eastman bowed his head.  “Freedom demands it.”

  
“So, you are leaving his fate to me.”

  
“All we are offering you is a choice.  His fate, like yours, is determined
either way.  It is written in nature.  No one can change it.”

  
“I see…” hummed the hermit.  A subtle smile emerged across the rucked and ashen
feature.  

  
“Then we understand each another.”

  
“I think we do…  There
is
, however just one problem:  The choice is not
mine to make.”

  
Eastman’s beady eyes inclined with an air of curiosity.  The hermit’s smile
faded from him and there was another long silence, after which he spoke again. 
In a raised voice, keeping his eyes fixed on the commissioner with consistent
intensity, he called out: “I hear you there, child.”

  
There was a brief pause.  Eastman turned toward the open doorway. 

  
A few tentative seconds after the hermit spoke, Naomi peeped out from behind
the door, where she had been standing, listening.  She came forward with an
anxious sigh and the hermit rotated his graying old head over his shoulder.

 
 “Come here,” he said.

  
She obeyed without a word, and the commissioner’s eyes followed her closely as
she came toward them.  The old hermit lifted her up and settled her upon his
lap and the gleaming eyes turned up searchingly at the grizzled old head.

  
“Do you know this man?” he asked, looking down at her.

  
She turned and set her innocent stare upon the commissioner, and something in him
seemed to writhe with unease the instant their eyes met. 

  
“Why is he here?” she asked.

  
“He’s come to offer us freedom,” replied the hermit. “From this place …
forever.  To leave and never come back.”

  
The girl looked back up at the old hermit with a searching gaze.

  
“What about Saul?” she asked

  
The hermit looked away and was silent. 

 
 Naomi lowered her saddened as though she would break into tears again at any
moment.  But before long she turned her eyes back up and spoke:

 
“Faith,” she said, simply.

  
The hermit bowed his head.

  
There was silence again, and in the midst of the silence, Naomi turned her eyes
back toward Eastman.   “Saul promised he’ll back,” she said.  “I promised I’d
wait for him.” 

  
She lingered a little while before turning her bidding eyes back up to the old
hermit.  He lowered her back to the floor, and as soon as her feet touched the
ground, she toddled out of the room, and the silence between the two dark
figures endured until the sound of the little footsteps climbing the stairs
ended with the shutting of a door.

  
“You have your answer,” spoke the hermit.

  
The commissioner bowed his head with seeming approval.  He checked the time on
his watch and, apparently seeing that he had expended about as much time as the
reason for his visit warranted, rose from his seat and took up his coat.  His
arms automatically slipped into the sleeves.  Then, taking his briefcase, cast
one last supercilious look upon the old hermit.

  
“I needn’t tell you this is highly irrational,” said Eastman.

  
“Reason,” said the hermit, “is sordidly overrated.”

  
“You know this will change nothing.”

  
“Yes… and no.”

  
The hermit slowly rose from his chair and regarded the commissioner with a look
of premonition. “Perhaps not soon, Mr. Eastman,” he said, his voice ominous, “but,
in time, I think you will find it will change … just about everything.”

  
Faint murmurs through the dark brought him back to being.  

  
For what seemed like hours he was a dead vessel of sensation rousing, not
knowing where he was, whence he’d come or wither he was going, and the
resonances of steady footfalls and a steady monotone in the background were all
that were until the light came in shallow pulses of white.  The pulses
brightened, then dimmed and then brightened more still.  When his sense of
equilibrium came and his vision cleared, he realised that he was on his back.

 
 The lights winked from the passing ceiling and the faint murmurs grew into
blaring echoes.  It may have been another nightmare, but there was no way to
tell the difference between one hell and another anymore.  Thoughts flitted
through his mind in an incomprehensible flux, like pieces of a shattered
pattern. 

  
When the ceiling lights passed, he could see the shadows of the marching
figures on either side of him, stretching and receding on the walls.  He wanted
to rise, but his body would not start to impulse.  The shadows stopped when the
lights went out.  The footsteps departed and he was alone in the dark.  There
sounded an electromechanical hum and he suddenly felt another shift in
equilibrium.  Though he knew his body was being moved, he felt nothing.  It was
a strange, ghostly feeling, as though his mind occupied a space that was not
his own.  And since he had, at present, no memory of being alive, he supposed
he must be dead. 

  
The long intermission of soundless gloom could have gone on forever.

  
A broad beam of pale light beamed down from the ceiling, lighting up a five-yard
circle of bare floor.  It was only after the light shone down on him that he
realised he was upright, and that the bed on which he had been lying had
someway morphed into a seat which hugged the whole of his body mould-like from
head to toe. 

  
Dead from the skull down, unable to move his neck, his eyes flitted about in
their sockets.  His flesh was bare and flayed to the point that the blood-red
insignia on his arms blended into raw skin and his chest rose with involuntary
breaths, squalling with each inhale as a mask fed the air into his lungs with
intermittent wafts.  He willed to move again and still nothing.  Not even a
twitch of the finger. 

  
Through the shadows beyond the column of light, he saw what appeared to be a
host of vague silhouetted figures sitting above, behind and around him.  The
outlines of their grim and overlapping heads were all directed at the centre of
the chamber, and directly ahead of him was a wall of pitch black. 

  
A frame of light appeared through the wall of black as a door opened and a dark
silhouette momentarily appeared against the backdrop of light before the doors
closed again.  The sound of evenly tapping heels approached and terminated when
the ominous figure stopped directly before him.  The figure lifted its head. 
The shadow over his feature receded and the round lenses of his pince-nez were
opaque through the glare of the overhead light. 

  
“Welcome back, Saul.”

  
Pope removed his glasses and stood, silently gazing at his patient.  His air
was different – more explicit:  The smile on his face was clear and his azure
eyes flashed with purpose.  A sudden murderous impulse engulfed Saul’s thoughts
at first sight of him.  Low, feral growls rolled with his steady breaths.  He
was powerless. 

  
“Neural blockers,” said Pope, shortly.  “Drugless sedatives:  They work by
shutting off neural signals directly at the brain.”  He stepped forward and
began to pace around the circle of light.  “Don’t worry,” he continued, “your
lucidity will not be affected in any way.  You should know, however, that it is
within our control to shut off your brain at any time and that we shall do so
as soon as we feel you are no longer able to continue with these sessions,
however long they may last -- hours, days, months … years.  There will be no
way for you to tell.  You will have no comprehension of the world beyond this
space until our time is at an end.” 

  
Pope stopped pacing as soon as he came full circle.  His eyes flashed and his
countenance darkened. 

  
“Now, before we begin,” he concluded. “You may ask your questions.”

  
There was a seeming deliberation in his every act, down to the inflection of
his speech.  It was as though he were re-enacting something.   The troubling
thought entered Saul’s mind that this was not the first time the two of them
had been here.  The air rushed into his throat.  He looked up and a wraithlike
voice proceeded from his mask:

  
“How am I here?”

  
His throat rasped and burned as though he were breathing fire.

  
“You came here,” said Pope.

  
He paused for air to refill his lungs.

 
“What happened to me?”

 
“You were found wandering the desert some seventy miles west of Dolinovka,” said
Pope, as he began to form circles with his paces again.  “You must have
followed the sun for three days…” 

  
Pope’s voice faded into the visions, which returned to him in flashes:  The
mountain of smoldering corpses, the blood spraying his face and the howls that
shredded the walls of his throat until he was mute.  A flash later and he was
alone: wandering, wailing in the wilderness, bare-bodied, his gear pried from
his body.  The sun rose and beat down on his flesh by day and the cold ravaged
the rawhide by night.  He remembered the grinding aches in his joints and the
dehydration and the cracks and tears forming in the exposed skin.  By all known
laws of nature, he should have been dead by the third day, but still he marched
on, following his shadow by morning and the setting sun by noon, the moon and
stars by night; never stopping. 

  
Why had he begun?  Where had he been going?

  
“Do you remember, Saul?”

  
The visions disappeared and Pope was standing over him again, hands crossed at
his back, the bleak, frigid blue orbs shining through shadow. 

  
“I remember.”

  
His eyes peered around the room again.  His vision sharpened and he could just
about make out the obscure faces of the onlookers around him.  He was sure he
could see Eastman across the floor, lying back in his seat with his head rested
on his fingertips.  The studious gaze pierced through the shadow. 

  
“Where am I?” he asked

  
Pope took a deep breath and exhaled.

  
“The final resting place of all defectors,”  he replied ominously.

  
A rush of air filled his lungs again. 

   “Do
you know why we are here?” asked the neuralist.

  
Up to that point he had only had a sense of what was going on. 

  
“Yes,” he answered with vague relief. 

  
Just kill me and be done with it,
he thought.

  
The smirk curled in the neuralist’s lips. 

  
“Do you want to die, Saul?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Then why did you not kill yourself when you had the chance?”

  
The question blindsided him.  And then – just then – he remembered.  He
remembered why he began the long march in the desert, why he did not take his
own life in spite of his every impulse to do so.  The promise.  

  
“Naomi...”

  
Pope hummed and shook his head and began to pace around again.

 
“She has … obliged you to live.”  It was the first time he heard the neuralist
snicker.  “The irony of you never ceases to fascinate me, Saul.”

  
“Where is she?”

  
“You ache for the release of death,” the neuralist continued as though he had
not heard the question, “but as long as
she
lives, you cannot die.  All
this time and blood wasted chasing an illusion of freedom.  Now you would beg
us to take it all away from you.”

  
“You lied to me.”

  
“No,” Pope exclaimed, his voice deepening severely.  “No, Saul.  All we did was
foster your own defective desires.  The rest you achieved all by yourself. 
Fate brought you to us.  You will come to understand all of this soon, and more
–
much
more.  We tried to warn you this would happen, but you refused to
listen.  You would not trust us.  Even now, reduced to the point of embracing
your own demise, you still perceive us as your enemies.”

  
“What do you want with me?”

  
“I am trying to
save
you.”

  
“Why?”

  
“A reasonable question.  There are several reasons.”

  
Pope began to pace around again as he explained: “The UMC derives no benefit
from your death.  Every life lost anywhere, except the warzones, is a life
wasted.  Economic efficiency demands that we extract as much use from you as we
possibly can by the means available to us.   Not to mention the fact that rare
oddities such as you provide us with valuable data for future research.  Even
if we fail with you, we continue to perfect our methods. 
We
learn from
your
mistakes.  That is progress.”

  
“Progress…” he repeated with revulsion.

  
“Yes, progress.”  Pope had stopped pacing with his back turned.  “Efficiency –
quantifiable improvement – the continual refinement and unfettered expression
of free man:  Progress.  It is, fundamentally, the only
thing that
matters.  It is our purpose.  Or, rather, I should say: it is our fate.

  
Pope turned on his heels to face him again and drew the long pen from his inner
pocket.  He raised his hand in the air and pressed on the end of the small
device. Suddenly, something began to rise slowly from the floor between them: 
A small cylindrical pedestal.  And as it rose, the light from above shone over
a hollow set exactly in the middle of the top.

  
“Survival,” Pope pronounced, stepping forward, “the final adjudicator of truth.” 
He tucked his hand into his inner pockets and continued to speak.  “We are, by
definition, machines for the propagation of D – N – A.  That sole purpose finds
its root in our primordial beginnings down to the very last cell.  From that
premise we infer the only viable definition of insanity…”  At this point, Pope drew
the silver, cubic device from all their previous meetings, and set it in the
hollow on top of the pedestal and little veins of light instantly shone along
the outer shell.  Something glimmered like gloss through the gloom, something
broad and high -- the same distinct gleaming shimmer that followed the moment
after a holoscreen was switched on.

 
  Pope crossed his arms at his back and sauntered away, enunciating:  “A firm
and righteous determination toward feelings or beliefs consistently proven to
lead to self-destruction, all the while expecting a different result: 
That …
is insanity.” 

 
 He stopped on the last word and, with his back turned, continued:

  
“You are here, Saul, because you have failed the test of reason set by your
very genes.”  He began to pace around again.  “Oh, I know what you are
thinking: Why go through all the trouble of trying to change what is already
inscribed in fate?  Well, the simple truth is: we do
not
expect to
change you.  We never have.  Like progress, change can be abetted to some
degree.  However, we realise that no one can truly change what they are – not
ever…”

  
“You are wrong.”

  
An impregnable silence settled on the theatron with those three words.

 
 Pope’s head rose. 

  
“What was that, Saul?”

  
“We can change,” he said.  “The world can change.”

  
“How?”

  
A rush of air filled his lungs. 

  
“Love.”

  
“…I see,” Pope purred as he began pacing around again.  “You believe that love
is something more than mere natural impulse, a force for some greater good,
perhaps.”  The seriousness of Pope’s reply was almost as surprising as its
accuracy.

  
“It has to be,” he said.

  
“Why?”

  
“Because it changes people.”