Dante's Equation Part 48

Denton was sick for three days. He felt guilty. He was taking up someone's hut and not helping gather food at all. If he were in Sapphia, he'd be dino meat. But he couldn't help it. His legs were watery and the thing that burned in his throat had expanded into his stomach and bowels. He had a terrible headache and he couldn't catch his breath. It was some native bug, he knew, something horrible, like smallpox or malaria. He lay in his hut wanting to die.

On the third morning, Yule visited him. He felt Denton's head and limbs, made him open his mouth, and looked in his eyes. Then he sat back on his heels.

"This is a sickness of the head," he said.

So much for native medicine,Denton thought.

The old man lit up a weed. "Tonight I make a special drink. With this drink, you can see G.o.d. If you take some of this drink with me, you will maybe see what is wrong in your heart."

"No thank you," Denton said.

Yule smiled. "You can stay sick also. It is up to you."

That night, Denton let himself into the old man's hut. It was no different from any of the others in the village on the outside. Inside, the smoke was thick and it had a sharp, bitter taste. Over the fire pit, a pot was boiling. Yule squatted next to it, his long skinny legs folded like a crane's. He wore an undyed tunic. The only other person present was a young male who attended the pot, throwing in dried herbs in pinches and stirring carefully.

It was about what Denton had expected, but he almost chickened out. He had nothing against hallucinogenics. They were all very well and good in the right place and time. But taking major drugs while he was already sick as a dog had little appeal.

Yule was looking at him.

Denton cleared his throat trying to disengage the lump. d.a.m.n, it hurt so freaking bad. "Do you truly think this will help?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Denton's legs were shaky, strengthless. He took a seat on a blanket and propped his back up against the wall, panting.

Words were chanted over the potion; gestures were made in the air. It was all very Carlos Castaneda. Into the potion went the juice of several black spiky fruits. There was more stirring. Steam was coming from the pot now and, along with the smoke, created a miasma in the air. The potion was poured into a cup and it was thick like dirty oil and only slightly greener. Denton got a whiff of it on a breeze-yeasty and bad, like something that had lain in a mausoleum for several weeks.

But somehow it didn't matter anymore. The smoke was settling his stomach, soothing his throat, and making him feel . . . drowsy. Cool. He relaxed into the wall more and more, his limbs heavy. It was the first relief he'd had in days.

The a.s.sistant had prepared a blanket for the old man on the opposite side of the fire. Yule lowered himself down and stretched out on his back. When he had arranged himself he raised his torso on one elbow and reached out his hand. The a.s.sistant placed the cup in it. Yule muttered a final prayer or incantation and then took a large gulp. He handed the cup back to the a.s.sistant and lay down, shutting his eyes. The a.s.sistant rose and came over to Denton. Denton watched him approach from the far, far, far side of the moon. And when the hand stretched out to him holding the cup, his own hand reached up and took it.

The stuff in the cup tasted bad-badbad. It was a taste that said,You really shouldn't drink me . It was a taste that said,This stuff is not intended for living things . With its hideousness it snapped him out of his warm and fuzzy state. He had to swallow repeatedly to keep it down. He scanned for water, anything, but there was nothing in sight.

Time got indistinct. How long had he been looking for water? He didn't know. But the cup was gone and the a.s.sistant was on the other side of the fire. Denton looked at Yule's face. The old man was changing. Denton saw a tremor go through Yule's lean body. He lookeds.h.i.+nier in the firelight. A veil of sweat had broken out all over his skin. He was absolutely still. Denton could not see him breathing. He appeared dead.

The floor began to spin. Denton crawled onto his back on his blanket. The fabric was rough and scratchy against the skin of his arms. The texture of the ceiling swam, as if covered with insects. The air grew thick and hot.

These were distant facts, lightly noted, as a co-pilot might a.s.similate the state of certain levers and lights before take-off. Denton closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but that was like trying to fly through the air after being hit by a truck. He had no choice and no control. He was falling. . . .

He was lying pinned to the blanket, deep under, deep, deep under. He had been under for some time. He became aware of someone speaking in the hut, low, mumbling words that seemed meaningful even though he couldn't make them out. He opened his eyes.

He could see nothing. The hut was pitch-black. He could feel the rough texture of the blanket under his stomach and chest, felt its fibrous stamp on his cheek, heard his own breath. He turned over on his back and, just as he did so, saw a figure slipping out the doorway of the hut. The figure was dressed in a strange outfit-bare feet and a woolen s.h.i.+ft of the type popularized in Christian paintings. It was s.h.i.+ning white. And he knew who the man was, even from the back: Kobinski.

Denton called out his name, but nothing came from his mouth. He wanted to get up, to follow Kobinski, but couldn't move. The fire nearby was smoldering embers. Hadn't it just been dark? Where was everyone? Was he really awake? Had he been dreaming earlier? Had he only dreamed he had seen Kobinski?

He was about to call out for help when a noise came to him, subtle and soft but absolutely the most terrifying sound he had ever heard. He froze, listening. . . . There. A sound like an enormous, heavy snuffle. It was the sound of some extremely large animal scenting the air, and it was right on the other side of the wall.

Askalkit . There was askalkit outside the hut. At any moment its jaws would rip through the gra.s.s roof, delicately, like peeling tinfoil back from a chicken breast, and Denton would feel its teeth dig into him like ten-inch knives as it grabbed him around his rib cage, swung him up into the air, and bite him in two. He could almost feel the slimy texture of the beast's throat as he went down, suffocating.

He was suffocating. Where was he? He was on the blanket. Theskalkit was only a few inches away, on the other side of a roof made of freaking fronds. Dare he whisper for help? Dare he move? Denton forced his head to turn and now he could see the old man. The a.s.sistant was gone; only the old man was there. He was floating several feet above his blanket, eyes shut utterly to this world, not breathing.

Now the beast was pawing the logs of the wall, high up, nearly at the roofline. Denton thought he could see the roof s.h.i.+mmy and shake as the enormous nose pushed at it, testing. His heart was racing so fast it hurt. He had never been this terrified in his life-well, yes, he had, when he'd been watching theskalkits eat the Sapphians. He had never wanted to be that afraid again and now he was. He was that afraid. To be dead and gone would be better than this. The terror was nauseating. It was unbearable. He could die from this fear alone.

Buthe was creating the terror. He could choose it-he did have that power, didn't he? A rabbit cornered by a dog cannot choose not to be afraid. But a human can choose, can't he? A man can choose.

He closed his eyes.

Kobinski. He was the key to all of this. Denton had almost forgotten that. He had read Kobinski's ma.n.u.script but hadn't understood it, not really. It had rolled off his oiled skin like almost everything did. But now he could almost see the binder in front of him, could sense that this was what he needed, that this was what had been burning inside him and what could give him relief.

What had Kobinski said about these other worlds? About going through the light?

The binder opened. And suddenly the hut and theskalkit were gone. And Denton was looking at, wa.s.suspended in , the night sky.

It was breathtaking, so crisp and real. He could see stars by the millions in front of him and then the entire universe filling the dark sky. Its galaxies were mere dots and clouds of dots, their color blazing primarily white but dusted with blue and purple and red, tiny arms spiraling like dancers.

He blinked and everything s.h.i.+fted. Now the universe was far away, no bigger than a harvest moon. And it was not alone. There were hundreds, thousands of universes filling the sky, and then he blinked again and now he could see the ladder. The dazzling wispy b.a.l.l.s of light were on a tilted continuum, forming a rectangle in the void. At the right end of the ladder the universes grew increasingly smaller and dimmer until the tip of the continuum was an inky unredeemed blackness. At the left end of the ladder the universes became more increasingly bathed in light until all individual stars were lost from view in a s.h.i.+ning brightness.

Jacob's ladder.

Denton cried at its beauty and mystery, at the inconceivable vastness of its scale in time and s.p.a.ce. He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight, and when he opened them again, he saw the kabbalah Tree of Life, the round nodes of thesephirot s.h.i.+ning. Jacob's ladder was gone and yet it was not. Denton understood that the tree ofsephirot was the ladder, that it was somehow even bigger than that, that, in a way, itwas G.o.d.

The whole of the vision was too overwhelming, so he tried to look at eachsephirot in turn. He named each one and its attributes,chesed ,chochmah,binah,gevorah,hod,netzach, watching them dance before him.

And then he understood.

Chesed, chochmah.He had identified himself immediately when he'd first read those descriptions. He waschesed ,chochmah ,netzach , and this world he had come to-that's what it was, what it was made of, what the people were. He understood. He understood.

Oh G.o.d, he understood.

Hewas the Sapphians. He had loathed their shallowness, their falsity, their disloyalty and selfishness, their frivolousness, their cruelty that was even more inexcusable for being thoughtless. . . . And he knew himself for the first time.

You'll find a way to do exactly what you want to do, Dent. You always do.

And, even now, if he had the chance, yes, if he knew for certain that he himself would be spared, he would go back to life in the gorge in an instant. In a freakingheartbeat .

There were no words, nor even thought images, for the depth at which he felt this, at which he understood the parallels or how appalling, how accurate, they were, how devastatingly deep they went. There was no expression for how much he loathed himself, or the despair of knowing that there was no escape, that even if he killed himself he could not escape his own soul. These things werechochmah , the wisdom that has no form.

And yet they filled the universe. He felt as though his being, his essence, was a tiny candle that could be snuffed out in sheer scale of it. In the scheme of things, in that almost infinite multiverse of the ladder, he was less than insignificant. Relatively speaking, he did not exist. And yet the fact that he did exist seemed to imply some taint in the fabric of that cosmos, some terrible flaw that threatened everything.

He understood now what it meant to look into the face of G.o.d, to really see the good and the bad, in all their splendor. For a moment he teetered on the brink of nonexistence. Then Denton's tiny candle puffed out.

19.3. Thirty-Seventy Aharon Handalman

In a few hours the closing ceremonies of the Festival would begin. The heretic would be executed, and whatever was going to happen would happen.

My Lord could not sleep. His brain would not give up the fight but continued to flail about like a man in the sea. He knew meditation techniques to quiet his mind, but it had been years since he'd used them and to do so now felt hypocritical. They called on G.o.d. Hadn't he rejected any a.s.sistance from G.o.d years ago? So the thoughts did their worst to him: Tevach, Aharon, Argeh, the heretic, Wallick,The Book of Torment .

Aharon had asked him,What will happen to you, Yosef? When you die?

He had not contemplated such a thing before. Oh, he had always been aware that he was d.a.m.ning himself. He had d.a.m.ned himself with great willfullness. But with Wallick gone, the thought of his own death became much more concrete. He had been Job cursing at G.o.d. And that had been enough, in his anger and despair; that was the role he had chosen for himself.

Just curse G.o.d and die, Job.

So Job's friends had advised him, and there was, in that statement, an implied end, a yearned-for finality.

The trouble was, it was not the end. Certain as the sun rose, even here, pale and distant, he, too, would rise again. And he would not, in his new incarnation, have the benefit of his anger. He would not even recognize the name:Isaac Kobinski. Everything came to an end, even our most cherished torments. That was the law. Just as it was the law, also, that nothing ever truly ended. His soul, his energy, would remain on the ladder long after this lifetime's woes had sunk into a past so ancient that the entire life of the multiverse so far was but the first shuddering breath of it.

He might reincarnate in his next life on Gehenna, a tiny Fiore infant, sentenced to this world of rocky hards.h.i.+p without the benefit of his memories to give that life a diabolical purpose. The thought of being sentenced here, with no idea that there were places better than this, with no hope of an education, no deep theological reasons for rejecting G.o.d-that was true horror. It was one thing tochoose rebellion, to have chosen it from a place of high learning, as he had. It was another to wallow in rebellion's h.e.l.lhole in ignorance.

Aharon was right. You might as well be angry at the phenomenon of photosynthesis.You cannot win.

My Lord gazed out over the town. It was nearly dawn and quiet now. But earlier in the night there had been stirrings, shadows in the streets: scuttling mice and scuttling rats, hiding and whispering, making plans. He was seated in the deep recess of a window seat, the cold stone around him cus.h.i.+oned and warmed by a blanket. It was one of the largest windows in the House of Divine Ordinance, and although the gla.s.s was not clear by Earth standards, he could see the town below, lit by the conjunction of Gehenna's moons. He turned his head to look at the bed where Erya slept-not for carnal purposes, he couldn't even imagine such with a Fiore, but to provide some warmth for his aching joints. He looked, too, at Tevach, snoring on his mat at the foot of My Lord's bed.That little mouse had scuttled out, when he thought My Lord was asleep, and had scuttled back in an hour ago. My Lord had observed both, feigning sleep, and had not said a word.

He could wake either of them, talk, get a ma.s.sage for the pain, anything to be spared these thoughts. But he didn't wake them and the thoughts marched on. It was as though Wallick had been the black underpinning beneath the decaying tower of his soul and now that underpinning was gone. His soul was poised over the chasm and starting to fall in upon itself and he could not stop it.

For example, what if even Fiori was too good for his detached soul? When he had first discovered the heavens and h.e.l.ls in his physics, he had tried to work out models of what they might be like. He had antic.i.p.ated heavier gravity; gravityis gevorah. And although he really had no idea what the Fiore or the landscape would be like, he had not been wrong about the general principle. He had also imagined a worldworse than this, a true Gehenna, the far right rungs of Jacob's ladder. He had imagined a world where gravity was so dense that life was nothing more than blobs of flesh attached to the planet's surface like stones. There would be no mobility at all in that world, like the hideous punishment of Dante's ninth circle, where men were buried up to their necks in a lake of ice. And these blobs would congregate like the bubbles in foam or like crystals-how else could they reproduce? And to those who lived in this bubble-ma.s.s of base sentience there would be almost nothing redeeming-almost no light and warmth, little food, none of the blessings of family, music, home. It would make Fiori look like Paradise. And G.o.d-Yahweh-that evasive magician, wouldn't even have to condemn Yosef to such a fate. It was the simple nature of the universe: like to like, like to like, like to like. He could end up there.

My Lord was so lost in thought that he didn't hear the sounds at first. He stiffened as they registered: stealthy footsteps, the creak of the door. There was something altogether too quiet about it-even Tevach sneaking in was not that quiet, and Tevach was asleep on his mat.

Kobinski leaned forward, his knees screaming in protest, to peer around the wall.

A Fiore was sneaking up to his bed. The dark shape raised its arms high-he could see a knife in the furry hands-and plunged it down into the bedclothes.

My Lord gasped. The sound was covered by a wetthunk as the knife made contact. There was a soft cry from the bed. The intruder took a few steps back, arms wide in alarm, the long, b.l.o.o.d.y dagger in one hand. He made a panicked animal noise and turned to Tevach. As he leaned over the sleeping mouse, the intruder's face fell into the moonlight from the window: it was Sevace, Argeh's bodyguard. Sevace would have seen My Lord in the window, had he turned his head, but he did not. He dropped the blade at Tevach's side and fled. Even brutal Sevace was frightened, murdering a G.o.d.

For a few moments My Lord sat stunned. Argeh had finally tried it. It was almost a relief that it was done, that the long years of waiting were over. He moved, painfully, off the window ledge. He could see the shape beneath the covers as he approached the bed. He saw, too, the blood spreading across the skins.Erya. He lowered the blanket and saw that she was dead, stabbed through the back into her heart. It had been a quick death at least. He pulled the blanket over her. Tevach still snored, though his twitching limbs indicated disturbed dreams. My Lord picked up the dagger that had been left near his trusted servant's hand.

This is what comes to you, Tevach. This is what happens when you play with treason. Your allegiance with the heretic, your sneaking about, made it simple enough-get rid of me and blame you.

The strategic nature of this thought cleared away his shock.

His guards were slumped in front of the doorway. He checked Decher-his pulse was steady. Perhaps they'd been drugged, but they were alive. He tried to rouse his captain and was rewarded with a groggy growl.

"Get up," My Lord whispered tersely. "Go check on the messenger and make sure he is safe."

Decher reported that Aharon Handalman was sleeping, unharmed, his guards alert and ready. My Lord was not surprised. The night Wallick died he'd seen a certain realization on Argeh's face, though he hadn't known what it meant at the time. The realization was this: as long as there was a mask, who really cared what-or who-was behind it?

Argeh came to My Lord's quarters at the first light of dawn. He was received by Decher and four of My Lord's guards. My Lord could hear the surprised words spoken in the corridor; then Argeh burst into the room. My Lord sat on his bed, waiting. With Argeh was Sevace, his would-be a.s.sa.s.sin. They both looked at him with horror.

"Why do you burst in on me?" My Lord picked up his mask from a table near the bed and put it on as the guards averted their eyes.

Argeh stood speechless. At the foot of the bed, Tevach snored.

"I apologize . . . My Lord. I only wanted to . . . We had word that you were in danger."

My Lord tilted his head back in the ironic Fiore style, the blankness of the mask giving it a crueler bent. "Your regard touches my heart, Argeh. Good Festival to you. Now leave."

My Lord peered out at the streets anxiously as they approached the arena. His eyes fell on faces, on hands, searching for hints of rebellion. He saw one male Fiore signal another over the crowd. Followers of the heretic?

He leaned back in the seat of the carriage, sighing. The eyes of the Jew were on him.

"I was hoping you would come back to visit me," Aharon said, "and we could talk some more."

My Lord fluttered his fingers in a gesture of indifference. "There is nothing to be said." The depth of that answer did not come through. He tried again. "It has been enough just to see you. Your presence has meant more than you know. It has been a long time since I've seen one of my own."

Aharon inclined his head, accepting the compliment, but he looked a little guilty. "I-I have something to confess. Tevach took me to see the heretic at the prison."

My Lord had already guessed. He had known it the night he had stood there and had heard teachings fromThe Book of Torment echoing through the House of Cleansing.

"You saw Wallick, too," My Lord said tightly. "I don't know what you said to him, but he was quite changed."

Aharon's eyes widened. Two spots of flame appeared on his cheeks. "No. I didn't go into that room, Yosef. I didn't evenlook. Because what's yours is yours. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know that I don't judge you, no matter what. I don't have the right."

The hard places in Kobinski ground together as though in agony. It took a moment for My Lord to collect himself. "Thank you," he said simply. He reached into his robe and brought forth a piece of parchment. "You will not be able to stay here after the Festival. I prepared this map for you. It shows the way to a small rural town called Chebia. Tevach's family is there. It is a modest place, but the Fiori are decent. They will help you."

"I thought maybe . . . the gateway. What you said before . . . " Aharon looked embarra.s.sed.

My Lord leaned his head back on the rough seat, studying the Jew's face. It was strange how you couldsee chesed . Like water it softened the lines made by life's bitterness, made the eyes wetter and more open as though they had been flooded. Fiori had done its work on Aharon in a way it had never done for My Lord, in a way he had never allowed it to do. It hurt My Lord to see it, the way hope hurts one who is hopeless, the way the sight of a newborn hurts one who is childless.

"You've changed, Aharon. Perhaps enough to trigger the gateway; I don't know. It takes a significant difference between your own wave and that of the planet to trigger a gateway. But even if you did go through, there is no telling where you would end up. Even if you made it to the fifty-fifty universe, you have to understand that there are thousands of worlds there. The odds of your appearing on Earth are infinitesimal. I'm sorry. Still, I have marked the place on the map also. It is up to you whether you wish to try it someday or not."

Aharon's eyes were bright and somber as this news sank in. He sighed. "I see. I have felt . . . Your book has been a great help to me, Yosef, but I still have much work to do. Maybe you and I could work together? Maybe we could both go to Tevach's family?"

"Time is not a river, Aharon; it's a tapestry. All the threads we've woven over a lifetime create the present. I wish I could go back and change those threads, but I cannot."

Aharon looked baffled.

"There is no time left for me," My Lord clarified.

"Don't say such a thing! You have so much to give. What about your mind, your work?"

My Lord closed his eyes, amazed at how quaint those words sounded. "Believe me when I say that the time for me to be Yosef Kobinski, the teacher and scholar, came and went long ago. Whatever I had to give to the world, it was given in that book. What is left-what is left is between me and G.o.d and no one else."

"I can't accept that."

My Lord looked at Aharon and smiled. "If there is one thing youcan do for me, it is to accept, accept that Kobinski died in Auschwitz. Because that is what truly happened, and that is what I want."