Caleb stopped, doubling over.
Even as he heard the words, they came: an unrelenting sequence of glimpses into other places and times, strangers all becoming familiar: relatives, friends, lovers; parents and children he never had. A succession of homes and worlds, of unfamiliar horizons, unknown shores, passionate embraces, longing kisses and mournful goodbyes, heartbreaking loss, uncontrollable bliss, achievements and failures, books read, so many books read, some written, some spoken, some taught, lives changed, minds expanded, lives upon lives he’d never lived and yet…
He’d lived them all.
“Oh my God,” he said, and now Raiden smiled.
“You know now, don’t you?”
Another glimpse: back in the Sno-Cat just now. Freezing, teeth chattering, battling hypothermia… the canteen…
“You gave me something in the tea.”
Raiden whistled. “You really are good at this.”
“The same thing they drilled for in 1951.”
Raiden just kept smiling, a smile of pride and amazement. “I was there, you know.”
Another flash: a short man, old and wizened, in a bright red parka. General stripes on his arm, pointing, directing the action. The drill… pushing through the crimson shield that reacted only weakly to the intrusion…
“The flaming sword,” Caleb said. “Some kind of gate between dimensions. Ours and… wherever this tree really is. It resonates, vibrates and repels with accelerated force, anything attempting to break through. But a minor, millimeter wide diamond needle, inserted gently, slowly…”
“So freaking slowly,” Raiden said, closing his eyes, as if remembering…
Caleb sees again: the general in red, impatiently looking at the clock on a desk, waiting as the needle drill extended and extended — fifty feet past the surging, sputtering fiery entrance point, localized over a six-foot oval section around the needle. Cameras rolling, filming, computers reading energy levels off the charts, but the needle still progressing. To the tree, and drilling into its trunk. Slowly, slowly, millimeter by millimeter until…
Through the fossilized bark, through layer after layer of something beyond carbon and organic molecules, beyond anything natural. To the next layer and the next until…
The tube began to turn golden-hued. And a nectar the consistency of honey surged backwards to the tanks…
Caleb gasped, returning to the present. He stared, wide-eyed at Raiden, and now all his strange proclamations about long life, past glories and deemed worthiness came back to him. He asked the question, in his mind, as well as in his souclass="underline"
“Who were you?”
To which Raiden grinned even wider, prouder, and almost laughed out the response, lost in a wave of images and sights bombarding Caleb’s senses.
“You won’t be all that surprised,” he heard echoed off the branches, the ancient walls, the lonely statues and artifacts, as the images came:
Scenes of men in familiar places, and women on thrones. On horseback, leading armies, decimating cities on their orders, riding into battle after battle. Conquering, laying waste, enslaving and eradicating. Building and expanding. The familiar sights of Egypt, of Alexandria, even the Pharos itself.
“Oh…” he heard himself say.
Familiar barren terrains in Mongolia, yurt tents and an army raising drinks to a leader on horseback…
“Genghis… Alexander… Cleopatra… Hannibal… I think. Other generals and leaders and…”
“You get the picture,” Raiden said. “And you know now, not only are we linked, in our past as well as our present, but I was destined for this. To lead. To conquer, to rule.”
He spread his arms wide, blocking the sight of what was beyond: of who was beyond. Who are on those tables? And who are those two forms standing guard over the six adult-shaped bodies, and are they asleep — or dead? And in the center, two… smaller ones!
The twins! Caleb’s heart raced. He had to move, but the realization of what he had just seen held him back.
Raiden continued speaking. “You’ve seen for yourself, your own true lineage and past. You’re the scholar, the seeker of knowledge. And you’ve come here to the ultimate stage. To the storehouse of the infinite.”
Caleb’s mouth was dry, full of sand or brittle ice, ancient as lunar dust. He trembled, his heart raced, and he felt himself sweating despite the cold.
“This is no minor vault guarded with childish traps. No sealed off tomb or walled in chamber of secrets. This is it, Caleb. The Tree of Knowledge. Forget Good and Evil — those are human concepts. What’s beyond, what’s really beyond… once you drink of its Blood, eat of its Fruit, is the realization that what Adam consumed was just the first bite of something far more nourishing.”
He clenched his fist, and in the other, something flashed: thin and metallic, and in a heartbeat, he was behind Caleb, thrusting a needle into his neck and then withdrawing it.
Caleb staggered, feeling a rush of fire down the right side of his body. He spun around, teetered to the edge of the walkway, then staggered back, toward the center before the bridge. Into the circle of tables, where two hulking jackal-masked guards backed away, spears pointing at him. Caleb had the comical feeling they were ceremonial and yet, the deadliest foes any could imagine, set here to protect… whatever this was.
“The Children of Horus,” Raiden said, walking into the faint illumination. He tossed the syringe in the direction of the tree — and the localized flaming eruption lit up the area.
Caleb dropped to his knees, surrounded by six reclining forms. Sleeping — and dreaming?
“My brethren who have gone before me… induced into their astral state to allow them passage to become worthy.”
Astral state? “Worthy?”
“To pass beyond the sword. The only way. No physical bodies, we found, nothing but angels that could dance on the head of a pin… or a needle in the case of the sap we extracted.”
“Of course,” Caleb whispered, eyes glazing over. His body becoming numb. Had to think, had to stay here, and focus. The twins… Were they right there? Something was wrong. They weren’t moving. “What did you put in me?”
“First, you drank the tea. With the sap of knowledge.”
“Which expanded my mind, connected my… lives?”
“Yes. Reincarnation… or whatever the term. I’m sure you have a different sense of how it works, with the ultimate pool of shared consciousness, or what have you. But the sap lifts the amnesia. It lets you see, lets you remember your unbroken chain of lives — the memories and experiences that are rightfully yours.”
He made a fist again, clenching his teeth.
“That was the gift denied us at the Garden. The gift the serpent dangled in Adam’s path. Why forget it all and start over every time? A long, desperate climb just to remember everything you worked so hard for last go-around?” He almost spit out the words in disdain.
Caleb blinked. Tried to answer but could barely stay on his knees. Wanted to talk about writing, about learning, about passing on knowledge to the next generation, but he couldn’t find the logic in any of it. Not when his mind had been blown open, and the meaninglessness of individual moments and achievements paled before an unshakeable history of experience.
Raiden held up his arms. “Every life, I’ve tried to come back here. Something in my soul, programmed to try and get here, to regain that memory. But it wasn’t until a recent incarnation, a Japanese soldier and adventurer, that I found the means. And the opportunity. Found the charm…”