The Godmakers (17 page)

"Rama, guard us!"

"Lewis Orne guard you," Orne said. "Let's get on with it."

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 sameness.

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 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."

"To whom, Bakrish?"

"To yourself, to all of those you may influence. Out of this test comes a rare kind of understanding, for it is . . ."

He broke off at a scraping sound behind them. Orne turned, saw two acolytes depositing a heavy, square-armed chair on the floor facing the barrier wall.

They cast frightened glances at Orne, scurried away toward one of the bronze doors.

"They fear me," Orne said, nodding toward the door where the acolytes had fled. "Does that mean they hate me?"

"They stand in awe of you," Bakrish said. "They are prepared to offer you reverence. It would be difficult for me to say how much of awe and reverence represents suppressed hate."

"I see."

Bakrish said: "I merely follow orders here, Orne. I beg of you not to hate me nor to hate anyone. Do not harbor hate during this test."

"Why do those two stand in awe of me and prepared to reverence me?" Orne asked, his gaze still on the door where the acolytes had gone.

"Word of you has gone forth," Bakrish said. "They know this test. The fabric of our universe is woven into it. Many things hang in the balance here when a potential psi focus is concerned. The possibilities are infinite."

Orne probed for Bakrish's motives. The priest obviously sensed the probe. He said: "I am terrified. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Why?"

"In my ordeal, this test almost proved fatal. I had sequestered a core of hate. This place clutches at me even now." He shivered.

Orne found the priest's fear unsteadying. Bakrish said: "I would deem it a favor if you would pray with me now."

"To whom?" Orne asked.

"To any force in which we have faith," Bakrish said. "To ourselves, to the One God, to each other. It does not matter; only it helps if we pray."

Bakrish clasped his hands, bowed his head.

After a moment's hesitation, Orne imitated him.

Which is the better: a good friend, a good heart, a good eye, a good neighbor, a good wife, or the understanding of consequences? It is none of these. A warm and sensitive soul which knows the worth of fellowship and the price of the individual dignity -- this is best.

-- BAKRISH as a student to his guru

"Why did you choose Bakrish to guide him in the ordeal?" Macrithy asked the Abbod.

They stood in the Abbod's study, Macrithy having returned to report that Orne had passed the first test. A smell of sulfur dominated the room and it seemed oppressively hot to Macrithy, although the fire had died in the fireplace.

The Abbod bowed his head over the standing easel, spoke without turning and without observing that Macrithy had coveted this honor for himself.

"I chose Bakrish because of something he said when he was my student," the Abbod murmured. "There are times, you know, when even a god needs a friend."

"What's that smell in here?" Macrithy asked. "Have you been burning something odd in the fireplace, Reverend Abbod?"

"I have tested my own soul in hellfire," the Abbod said, knowing that his tone betrayed his dissatisfaction with Macrithy. To soften this, he added: "Pray for me, my dear friend. Pray for me."

The teacher who does not learn from his students does not teach. The student who sneers at his teacher's true knowledge is like one who chooses unripe grapes and scorns the sweet fruit of the vine which has been allowed to ripen in its own time.

-- Sayings of the ABBODS

"You must sit in that chair," Bakrish said when they had finished praying.

He indicated the squat, ugly shape facing the barrier wall.

Orne looked at the chair, noted an inverted metallic bowl fitted to swing over the seat. There was prescient tension in that chair. Orne felt his heartbeats pumping pressure into this moment

"Sometimes we go for the sake of going." The words rang in his memory and he wondered who had said them. The great wheel was turning. Orne crossed to the chair, sat down. In the act of sitting, he felt the sense of peril come to full surge within him. Metal bands leaped from concealed openings in the chair, pinned his arms, circled his chest and legs. He surged against them, twisting.

"Do not struggle," Bakrish warned. "You cannot escape."

"Why didn't you warn me I'd be pinned here?" Orne demanded.

"I did not know. Truly. The chair is part of the psi machine and, through you, has a life of its own. Please, Orne, I beg of you as a friend: do not struggle, do not hate us. Hate magnifies your danger manyfold. It could cause you to fail."

"Dragging you down with me?"

"Quite likely," Bakrish said. "One cannot escape the consequences of his hate." He glanced around the enormous room. "And I once hated in this place." He sighed, moved behind the chair and shifted the inverted bowl until it could be lowered over Orne's head. "Do not move suddenly or try to jerk away. The microfilament probes within this bowl will cause you great pain if you do."

Bakrish lowered the bowl.

Orne felt something touch his scalp in many places, a crawling and tickling sensation. "What is this thing?" he asked, his voice echoing oddly in his ears. And he wondered suddenly: Why am I going through with this? Why do I take their word for everything?

"This is one of the great psi machines," Bakrish said. He adjusted something on the back of the chair. Metal clicked. "Can you see the wall in front of you?"

Orne stared straight ahead under the lip of the bowl. "Yes."

"Observe that wall," Bakrish said. "It can manifest your most latent urges.

With this machine, you can bring about miracles. You can call forth the dead, do many wonders. You may be on the brink of a profound mystical experience."

Orne tried to swallow in a dry throat "If I wanted my father to appear here he would?"

"He is deceased?"

"Yes."

"Then it could happen."

"It would really be my father, alive . . . himself?"

"Yes. But let me caution you. The things you see here will not be hallucinations. If you are successful in calling forth the dead, what you call forth will be that dead person and . . . something more."

The back of Orne's right arm tingled and itched. He longed to scratch it.

"What do you mean more?"

"It is a living paradox," Bakrish said. "Any creature manifested here through your will must be invested with your psyche as well as its own. Its matter will impinge upon your matter in ways which cannot be predicted. All of your memories will be available to whatever living flesh you call forth."

"My memories? But . . ."

"Hear me, Orne. This is important. In some cases, your creates may fully understand their duality. Others will reject your half of the creation out of hand. They may not have the capacity to straddle this dependence. Some of them may even lack sentience."

Orne felt the fear driving Bakrish's words, sensed the sincerity, and thought: He believes this. That didn't make all of this true, but it added a peculiar weight to the priest's words.

"Why have I been trapped in this chair?" Orne asked.

"I am not sure. Perhaps it was important that you not run away from yourself." Bakrish put a hand on Orne's shoulder, pressed gently. "I must leave now, but I will pray for you. May grace and faith guide you."

Orne heard a swishing of robes as the priest strode away. A door banged with a hollow sharpness which lost itself in the giant room. Infinite loneliness penetrated Orne.

Presently, a faint humming like a distant bee sound grew audible. The psi amplifier in Orne's neck tugged painfully, and he felt the flare of psi forces around him. The barrier wall blinked alive, became a rich and glassy green.

It began to crawl with iridescent purple lines. They squirmed and writhed like countless glowing worms trapped in a viscid green aquarium.

Orne drew in a shuddering breath. Fear hammered at him. The crawling purple lines held a hypnotic fascination. Some appeared to waft out of the wall toward him. The shape of Diana's face glowed momentarily among the lines. He tried to hold the image, saw it melt away.

I don't want her here in this dangerous place, he thought.

Shapes of deformity squirmed across the wall. They coalesced abruptly into the outline of a Shriggar, the saw-toothed lizard Chargonian mothers invoked to frighten their children into obedience. The image took on more substance.

It developed scaly yellow plates and stalk eyes.

Time slowed to a grinding, creeping pace for Orne. He thought back to his Chargon childhood, to the terror memories, told himself: But even then the Shriggar •were extinct. My great-great-grandfather saw the last specimen.

Memories persisted, driving him down a long corridor full of empty echoes that suggested insanity, drugged gibbering. Down . . . down . . . down . . . He recalled childish laughter, a kitchen, his mother as a young woman. There were his sisters screaming derisively as he cowered, ashamed. He had been three years old and he had come running into the house to babble in terror that he had seen a Shriggar in the deep shadows of the creek gully.

Laughing girls! Hateful little girls! "He thinks he saw a Shriggar!" "Hush now, you two." Amusement, even there in his mother's voice. He knew it now.

On the green wall, the Shriggar outline bulged outward. One taloned foot extended itself to the floor. The Shriggar stepped fully from the wall. It was twice as tall as a man and with stalked eyes swiveling right, left . . .

Orne jerked his awareness out of the memories, felt painful throbbing as his head movement disturbed the microfilament probes.

Talons scratched on the floor as the Shriggar took three investigative steps away from the wall.

Orne tasted the sourness of terror in his mouth. He thought: My ancestors were hunted by such a creature. The panic was in his genes. He recognized this as every sense focused on the nightmare lizard.