We come from the All-One and return to the All-One. How can we keep anything from the Source that was and the End that is?
“He has arrived, Reverend Abbod,” the priest said. “Bakrish is with him now.”
The Abbod Halmyrach stood at a scribe’s easel, his bare feet on an orange rug that matched his long robe. The room, its windows shuttered against Amel’s glaring sunlight, appeared shadowy and archaic. Dim light came from ancient glowglobes which hovered in the upper corners of the room. There were wood walls and a fireplace with orange coals in it behind the Abbod. His narrow face with its long nose and thin-lipped mouth appeared calm, but the Abbod was acutely aware of his room, of the oily shadows on the wood walls, the scratching of the priest’s sandals on the floor beyond the rug, the faint stirrings of the fire dying in the fireplace.
This priest reporting now, Macrithy, was one of the Abbod’s most trusted observers, but the man’s appearance—long black hair with deep sideburns framing a smoothly rounded face, the dark stovepipe suit and reversed white collar—bothered the Abbod. Macrithy looked too much like an historical illustration from accounts of the Second Inquisition. One did not, however, question religious accouterments which came under the freedoms of the Ecumenical Truce.
“I sensed his arrival,” the Abbod said. He turned back to the easel, writing with pen on paper because it pleased him to keep the ancient ways alive. “There does not seem to be any doubt he is the one.”
Macrithy said: “He has made the three transcendent steps, but there is no certainty he will survive his ordeal and discover you, who summoned him.”
“To discover has many meanings,” the Abbod said. “Have you read my brother’s report?”
“I have read it, Reverend Abbod.”
The Abbod looked up from his writing. “I saw the little green box, you know. I saw it in a vision in the instant before the Shriggar appeared to us. I also saw my brother and felt the transcendent influence on his emotions brought about by that moment. It fascinates me the way the prediction follows so precisely upon the Shriggar’s words. It tracks, as they say.” He returned to his writing.
“Reverend Abbod,” Macrithy said, “The game of war, the city of glass and the time of politics are past. I have studied your account of the god making. It is now time for us to fear the consequences of our daring.”
“And I am afraid,” the Abbod said, not looking up.
“We all are,” Macrithy said.
“But think of it,” the Abbod said, putting a punctuation mark on his writing with a flourishing gesture. “This is our first human! What have we touched in the past—a mountain on Talies, the Speaking Stone of Krinth, the Mouse God on Old Earth, animate and inanimate elements of that ilk. Now, we have our first human god.”
“There’ve been others,” Macrithy said.
“But not of our making!”
“We may regret it,” Macrithy muttered.
“Oh, I already do,” the Abbod said. “But there’s no changing that now, is there?”
Chapter Twenty-One
The day is short and the work is great, and the workers are lazy, but the reward is large and our Master urges us to make haste.
“This is called ‘The cell of meditation-on-faith,’” Bakrish said, gesturing toward the room whose door he had opened for Orne.
“You are required to stretch out on the floor in there flat on your back. Do not sit or stand until I give permission. It is very dangerous.”
“Why?” Orne leaned in, studied the room.
It was a high and narrow place. Walls, floor and ceiling appeared to be white stone veined by thin brown lines like insect tracks. Pale-white light, sourceless and flat as skimmed milk, filled the room. A smell of damp stone and fungus permeated the space.
“This is a psi machine of great potency,” Bakrish said. “Flat on your back, you are relatively safe. Accept my word for it; I have seen the results of disbelief.” He shuddered.
Orne cleared his throat. He felt cold. The vacant place in his stomach was a distended bag warning him of terrible peril. He said: “What if I refuse to go through with this?”
“Please,” Bakrish said. “I am here to help you. It is more dangerous to turn back than it is to go ahead. Far more dangerous.”
Orne sensed sincerity in the words, turned and met a pleading stare in the priest’s dark eyes.
“Please,” Bakrish said.
Orne took a deep breath, stepped into the cell. He felt a slight easing of the danger signal but it remained strong and insistent.
“Flat on your back,” Bakrish said.
Orne stretched out on the floor. The stone chilled his back through the thick toga.
Bakrish said: “Once you start on your ordeal, the only way out is to go through it. Remember that.”
“Have you been through this?” Orne asked. He felt oddly silly stretched out on the floor. Bakrish, seen from this angle, appeared tall and powerful in the doorway.
“But of course,” Bakrish said.
If his psi awareness could be trusted, Orne thought he detected profound sympathy at the priest’s emotive base. “What’s at the other end of this ordeal?” Orne asked.
“That’s for each to discover for himself.”
“Is it really more dangerous for me to back out now?" Orne asked. He raised himself on one elbow. “I think you’re just using me, maybe in an experiment.”
A sense of regret radiated from Bakrish. He said: “When the scientist sees that his experiment has failed, he is not necessarily barred from further attempts… using new equipment. You truly have no choice. Flat on your back now; it is safest for you.”
Orne obeyed, said: “Then let’s get on with it.”
“As you command,” Bakrish said. He stepped back and the doorway vanished. No sign of it remained in the wall.
Orne felt his throat go dry, studied his cell. It appeared to be about four meters long, two meters wide, some ten meters high. The mottled stone ceiling was blurred, though, and he thought the room could be higher. The pale illumination could have been designed to confuse the senses. The prescient warning remained within him, a tense reminder of peril.
Abruptly, Bakrish’s voice filled the room, sourceless and booming. It was everywhere, all around and within Orne. Bakrish said: “You are within the psi machine. It encloses you. The ordeal you are entering is ancient and it is exacting. It is to test the quality of your faith. Failure means loss of your life, loss of your soul… or of both.”
Orne clenched his hands into fists. Perspiration bathed his palms. He felt an abrupt increase in background psi activity.
Faith? He found himself remembering his ordeal in the crechepod and the dream that once had plagued him.
Gods are made, not born.
In the crechepod he had rebuilt his own being, coming back from death, discarding old ways, old nightmares.
A test of faith? In what could he possibly have faith? In himself? He recalled the time of the crechepod and his sense of questioning. He had questioned the I-A then, awareness churning. Somewhere within himself he had sensed an ancient function, a thing of archaic tendencies.
He remembered then his one-part definition of existence: I am one being. I exist. That is enough. I give life to myself. There was something to be taken on faith.
Again, the voice of Bakrish boomed in the celclass="underline" “Immerse your selfdom in the mystical stream, Orne. What can you possibly fear?”
Orne sensed the psi pressures focused upon him, all of the evidences of deep and hidden intent. He said: “I like to know where I’m going, Bakrish.”