God will punish you!
Orne remembered standing beside an uncle, staring up at that image in the mosque, bowing to it.
Mahmud strode up behind the child, caught her arm as she started another blow with the shovel. She twisted, struggling, but he held her, turning her arm slowly, methodically. A bone snapped. The child screamed and screamed and…
“Don’t!” Orne protested.
Mahmud had a low, rumbling voice. He said: “One does not command God’s agent to stop His just punishments.” He lifted the child by the hair, caught up the fallen shovel, slashed it across her neck.
The screaming stopped. Blood spurted over his gown. He let the now limp figure fall to the floor, dropped the shovel, faced Orne.
Nightmare! Orne thought. This has to be a nightmare!
“You think this is a nightmare,” Mahmud rumbled.
Orne remembered what Bakrish had said: If this creature were real, it could think with his memories. He rejected this thought. “You are a nightmare.”
“Your creation has done its work,” Mahmud said. “It had to be disposed of, you know. It was embodied by hate and not by love. You were warned about that.”
Orne felt guilty, sickened and angry. He recalled that this test involved understanding miracles. “Was this supposed to be a miracle?” he asked. “This was a profound mystical experience?”
“You should’ve talked to the Shriggar,” Mahmud said. “It would’ve discussed cities of glass, the meanings of war, politics and that sort of thing. I will be more demanding. For one thing, I wish to know what you believe constitutes a miracle.”
An air of suspense enclosed Orne. Prescient fear sucked at his vitals.
“What is a miracle?” Mahmud demanded.
Orne felt his heart hammering. He had difficulty focusing on the question, stammered: “Are you really an agent of God?”
“Quibbles and labels!” Mahmud barked. “Haven’t you learned yet about labels? The universe is one thing! We cannot cut it into pieces with our puny expediencies. The universe exists beyond the labels!”
A tingling sense of madness prickled through Orne. He felt himself balanced on the edge of chaos. What is a miracle? he wondered. He recalled Emolirdo’s didactic words: chaos… order… energy. Psi equals miracles.
Words, more words. Where was his faith?
I exist, he thought. That is enough.
“I am a miracle,” he said.
“Ohhh, very good,” Mahmud said. “Psi focus, eh? Energy from chaos shaped into duration. But is a miracle good or evil?”
Orne took a shuddering breath. “I’ve always heard that miracles are good, but they really don’t have to be good or evil. Good and evil relate to motives. Miracles just are.”
“Men have motives,” Mahmud said.
“Men can be good or evil by any definitions they want,” Orne said. “Where’s the miracle in that?”
Mahmud stared down his nose at Orne. “Are you good or evil?”
Orne returned the stare. Winning through this test in his ordeal had taken on a profound meaning for him. He accepted now that this Mahmud was real. What was the prophet trying to make him say?
“How can I be good or evil to myself?” Orne asked.
“Is that your answer?”
Orne felt danger in the question, said: “You’re trying to get me to say that men create gods to enforce their definitions of good and evil!”
“Oh? Is that the source of godliness? Come now, my friend. I know your mind; you have the answer in it.”
Am I good or evil? Orne asked himself. He forced his attention onto the question, but it was like wading upstream in a swift river. His thoughts twisted and turned, showed a tendency to scatter. He said: “I’m… if I’m one with all the universe, then I am God. I am creation. I am the miracle. How can that be good or evil?”
“What is it about creation?” Mahmud demanded. “Answer me that! Stop evading!”
Orne swallowed, recalled the nightmare sequence of this test. Creation? And he wondered if the great psi machine amplified the energy humans called religion.
He thought: Bakrish said I could bring the dead to life here. Religion’s supposed to have a monopoly on that. But how do I separate psi from religion from creation? The original Mahmud’s been dead for centuries. If I have recreated him, how do his questions relate to me? And there was always the possibility this whole thing was some form of hallucination despite the peculiar sense of reality of it.
“You know the answer,” Mahmud insisted.
Pressed to his limits, Orne said: “By definition, a creation may act independently of its creator. You are independent of me even though you partake of me. I have cast you loose, given you your freedom. How can I judge you, then? You cannot be good or evil except in your own eyes. Nor can I!” Exultantly, he demanded: “Am I good or evil, Mahmud?”
“Thou sayest it for thyself and, thereby, are reborn an innocent,” Mahmud said. “Thou hast learned thy lesson and I bless thee for it.”
The robed figure bent, lifted the dead child. There was an odd tenderness in Mahmud’s motions. He turned away, marched back into the writhing green wall. Silence blanketed the room.
The dancing purple lines became almost static, moved in viscous torpor.
Orne felt his body bathed in perspiration. His head ached. His arm throbbed where Maddie had slashed it. His breath came in gasping sobs, as though he had been running.
A bronze clangor echoed behind him. The green wall returned to its featureless gray. Footsteps slapped the floor. Hands worked at the bowl on Orne’s head, lifted it gently. The straps that had confined him fell away.
Bakrish came around to stand in front of Orne.
“You said it was an ordeal,” Orne panted.
“And I warned you about hate,” Bakrish said. “But you are alive and in possession of your soul.”
“How do you know if I still have my soul?”
“One knows by the absence,” Bakrish murmured. He glanced at Orne’s wounded arm. “We must get that bandaged. It’s night now and time for the next step.”
“Night?”
Orne peered up at the slitted windows in the dome. They gave him a view of darkness punctured by stars. He looked around the giant room, realized the shadowless exciter-light of glow-globes had replaced the daylight. He said: “Time goes quickly here.”
“For some it does,” Bakrish sighed. “Not for others.” He motioned for Orne to get up. “Come along.”
“Let me rest a moment. I’m worn out.”
“We’ll give you an energy pill when we bandage your arm. Hurry along now!”
“What’s the rush? What am I supposed to do now?”
“It is apparent that you understand the two faces of a miracle,” Bakrish said. “I observe that you have a personal mystique, an ethic in the service of life, but there is much more to your ordeal and the time is short.”
“What’s next?” Orne asked.
“You must walk through the shadow of dogma and ceremony. It is written that motive is the father of ethics and caution is the brother of fear…” Bakrish paused. “…and fear is the daughter of pain.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Silence is the guardian of wisdom, but loud jesting and levity lead a man into his own ignorance. Where there is ignorance there is no understanding of God.
“He shows a nice restraint,” the Abbod said. “I observe that in him: a nice restraint. He doesn’t play with his powers.”
The Abbod sat on a low stool in front of his fireplace, Macrithy standing behind him with the latest report on Orne. In spite of the hopeful words, there was sadness in the Abbod’s voice.