“In weakness, I turned on my own. I became a part of the evil.”
Now the young man was wearing an SS uniform, his cold eyes watching a stream of people being ushered into gas chambers.
“The Nazis were obsessed with the occult. Aryan is a Sanskrit word—Iran literally means ‘land of the Aryan.’ Did you know that?” Mikhail arched his eyebrows.
Vince shook his head.
“Hitler’s prized possession was an ancient Buddhist statue from the Indus Valley, carved from a meteorite. He claimed it contained the ultimate power over reality and death, the fountain of everlasting youth.”
Vince saw an image of the statue, enshrined on an oak table in the middle of the Berghof.
“That didn’t work out too well,” Vince muttered.
Mikhail ignored him. “It was the real reason he started the Nazi space program and planned moon bases—to search for more of it—for the exotic crystals it contained. Some secret societies called it Vril, but there have been many names.”
“Why are you showing me all of this?” asked Vince.
“I know that you’ve studied the ancient manuscripts.” Mikhail sat up and leaned into the table, looking straight into Vince’s eyes. “Whomever understands this message shall never die. Does this sound familiar, Mr. Indigo?”
Vince nodded.
“The Gospel of Saint Thomas.” Mikhail went on: “When you make two into one, when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and when you make male and female into a single one, when you make eyes in place of an eye, and hands in place of a hand, then you will enter.” Mikhail paused. “…the last word is untranslatable. These texts were dug up in Nag Hammadi at the end of 1945. I was part of a team that found them.”
“Can you get to the point?”
“Connect the dots,” replied Mikhail. “Have you ever heard of the Voynich manuscript?”
The Voynich manuscript. Vince had heard of it, but didn’t know what it was. He instructed Hotstuff to search their internal data files.
“But you have seen the Buddhist statues, the ones with many heads and hands.”
Vince nodded. Like the ones he’d seen in the Chenrezig monastery.
Mikhail leaned back from the table. “Your Mr. Jimmy Scadden is not just a madman, but I think influenced by something I’ve seen before. Willy’s body contains the key to unlocking the secret.”
Vince just stared at him. “What secret?”
“Toward the end of the Second World War, I fought with the Afrikaan units with the Rommel, the Desert Fox. Our units were destroyed by the Allies, but I escaped capture. I met someone out there.”
An alert wailed in Vince’s audio channels. Mikhail scowled, summoning a graphic that hovered over the table.
“It seems our friends aren’t done yet.” An image of drones skimming the Louisiana bayous spun into the space between the tables. “We need to cut this short and send you back to Connors.” He stood up.
Vince held out one hand. “Wait. Who did you meet?”
Mikhail stared at Vince. “I think you just met one at Pontchartrain.” Mikhail began deconstructing the world they were in, the mountains and forests collapsing to an interior point of space. “There are those that walk among us that are not of us.” He uploaded a document to Vince as he vanished. “The Nag Hammadi texts weren’t all that I found.”
21
There are no atheists in foxholes. Picking up a fistful of hot sand, Bob watched it pour through his fingers, just like the grains of life felt like they were being sucked from him and into the scorching air. He squinted into the sun. There are no atheists stranded alone in the middle of Sahara, either.
Then again, he wasn’t alone.
“The mind creates suffering as a natural product of complex processes.” The priest was always walking ahead of him, leading the way. “Nothing can really be said to be ‘I’ or ‘me,’ we are all one.” He fixed Bob with his black eyes. “You need to get up.”
This suffering isn’t shared, Bob wanted to scream as he pulled himself back to his feet. But the priest had to be hurting as well, and Bob was the one who had insisted they come this way, out into the deep desert. Even a Bedouin had to feel this heat. It wasn’t just the heat. With zero humidity, every molecule of water on the inside of his body wanted to get outside. Bob desperately wanted to rest, to dig his way into the cool sand beneath the surface, to bury himself. Please make this wind stop. It was eating into his skin like a blowtorch.
“We need to keep moving,” the priest insisted.
So far they had connected with two oases, stopping at each to fill their canteens and themselves with as much water as they could. And to eat, but Bob tried to forget this. He steeled himself and plodded off behind the priest. Each breath felt like it was burning his lungs, as if the oxygen within it were on fire. They were nearing the top of a sand dune, hundreds of feet high, and on each footstep he would crunch through the stiff top layer of sand, his foot sinking underneath.
Toothface was still hunting them. From time to time a drone would appear in the immense blue sky, or a swarm of hunting beebots would buzz at the peripheries of his consciousness. Each time, the priest would hide them in the folds of the desertscape.
“How much farther?” He’d been out of water for a day.
“Not much more now.” The priest returned a few steps to support Bob, pulling him up to the top of the ridge.
Bob laughed, and would have cried if any tears were left in him. He’d hoped to see another gaping hole into the bowels of the Earth, dark cliffs guarding a hidden sanctuary of palms. But all that greeted them on the other side was an endless sea of white dunes, riding all the way to the horizon.
“Come.” The priest held Bob’s hand. “Follow my voice.” He led the way down. “There are many kinds of intelligence, just as there are many kinds of suffering. It seems a hopeless, endless cycle, but one that can be broken…”
Bob closed his eyes and tried to follow, but his legs buckled, spilling him down the side of the dune. In his mind he tried to get up, but his body remained still, his face to the sun, his eyes closed.
The priest knelt beside him in the sand, his hand on Bob’s shoulder. “We are close. Not much further now.”
But Bob couldn’t will his body to move.
Bob had never really contemplated death before. On Atopia, it seemed like something that happened to other people, in some remote parts of the world, like catching malaria. How did I arrive here? There was the story, and then the story of how the story was told in his head, and then there was the story of the parts that were left out. Why had Patricia asked him to do this?
Opening his eyes, he saw the comet hanging in the sky next to the sun. I’m not afraid, I’m just so tired. And then the voice again in his head, the anger, telling him not to give up, to get up. He pushed himself up on one elbow.
The priest loomed over him, blotting out the sun.
Bob’s mind circled around and around. I must exist in other universes. So my echo will live on. It doesn’t matter. Suffering is worse than just letting go. Oblivion is peace. His body slumped back into the sand.
“Don’t give up yet.” The priest was close, his breath on Bob’s cheek. “Open yourself to me, there is still hope.”
Bob closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the mind of the priest near. Open to me, the priest asked again, and Bob released, feeling the spirit of the priest flow into him.
“In the oceans, when you were surfing, do you remember?”
“Yes,” Bob replied, his mind floating.
“Your little friends, the plankton, you summoned them to support you if there was danger.”