Paragaea (20 page)

“This Ikaru, then, was your purloined body?” Leena asked as they broke camp in the morning, setting out for another day's ride across the plains.

“So I immediately surmised,” Benu answered, climbing into the saddle.

“And yet you said Ikaru was your son?” Balam asked, cinching up the saddle on his lead draft horse.

“Though I lack the generative capacity, in all regards I have come to look upon Ikaru as a kind of offspring, so the term is correct. From the first words we exchanged, though, I knew I had failed my son.”

Weakened and hardly able to move,
Benu said
, I was deposited at the feet of the presbyter, who was seated on the throne. The uniformed man who had escorted me from my cell departed through a side door,
and the presbyter and I were left alone in the audience chamber. I had energy enough to speak, but could not have taken a step unaided without depleting the last of my reserves.

“Who are you?” Presbyter Ikaru asked imperiously. “There is some connection between the two of us—that much is obvious. With your lack of body hair, your alabaster skin, and unusual eyes…we could be brothers. I had thought I was the only one of my kind, having seen only one other like me in all my long years, and that one already dead.”

I understood at once the reason for my long imprisonment. This Ikaru was aware of the weakness of our artificial form, and when he received word that a being who resembled himself so nearly had been discovered in the streets of Susa, he ordered me captured, and kept imprisoned out of reach of the sun's rays.

“Answer me,” Ikaru repeated, growing agitated. I could tell he was impatient, having waited now long months for me to weaken to the point where I could be safely interrogated.

“I am an artificial being,” I explained, though he doubtless knew. “I was forged to act as a probe for the wizard-kings of Atla, a culture that has long since sealed itself off from any congress with the outside world, millennia ago.”

Ikaru regarded me for a long moment, scratching his chin. Though his skin was as pale as mine, it bore the scars and abrasions of many injuries, and the years hung on him more heavily than on me.

“Am I a probe, too, then?” Ikaru asked at length. “But my memory stretches back little more than six centuries, not over millennia. Why was I constructed, and by whom?”

“I may be able to answer those questions,” I told him, “but I must first know what you remember of your earliest moments. And how did you come to rule this island nation, so changed since last I saw it?”

“Very well,” Ikaru answered, as though he were granting me some magnanimous boon. “My first memories are of waking up, confused and alone, in a ruined temple some centuries ago. On the floor at my
feet lay an ancient man, with unseeing eyes like glittering opals, who appeared to all indications to be dead. On reflection, I quickly came to realize that while I had some basic knowledge—familiarity with language, knowledge of geography, and so forth—I had no notion who I was. I staggered out of the temple, past strange rows of statues, past small biting creatures who gnashed their teeth at my feet and ankles but caused no injury, out into the jungle.”

He paused, and his hand drifted across his forehead dreamily, as though he were brushing away a spider's web.

“I've had so little occasion to recall those early days in the last few centuries that I find a strangely…emotional response to my now recounting them.” Ikaru paused, and straightened on the throne. “In any event, not knowing where I should go, nor what I should do, I found myself traveling north, wandering aimlessly, searching for some idea who I was. I came upon a settlement of the Pakunari of Ogansa Valley, and passed some years among them. It was the Pakunari who named me Ikaru, which means ‘ageless' in their tongue.”

A faint smile played on his lips, and then faded, as a shadow seemed to pass over him.

“In time, though, the hairy creatures came to view me with suspicion. While they aged and died, I remained young and unmarred, and when a particularly cruel season saw a large number of their young and old killed by plague, I was blamed. But they could not harm me, and were forced instead to settle for driving me out. I traveled south, skirting the western edge of the Rim Mountains, moving from fishing village to fishing village. I passed a few years on a whaling vessel, and eventually jumped ship on the island of Croatoan. But the strange habits of the island's distributed consciousness unsettled me, and I soon moved on. I traveled through the Eastern Desert, spent a few years as the prisoner of a cohort of the Nonae, who had the good fortune to catch me in a weakened state and to bind my hands and feet with bonds that were proof even against my great strength.
The Nonae kept me as a kind of pet, a toy for their amusement. I eventually escaped, killing the entire cohort in the process, and made my way to Masjid Logos, where I found work illuminating manuscripts at a scholarium.

“From my time among the Nonae, I had learned the possible uses of a strong warrior caste, and to what ends a nation dedicated to warfare could be directed. While illuminating religious texts in Masjid Logos, I learned the powerful effects that doctrine could have, even when not founded on experiential data of any kind. Were one to establish a warrior caste motivated by religious doctrine, I reasoned, great things could be accomplished.”

Ikaru waved a hand around the audience chamber, indicating the map of the island on the far wall.

“Pentexoire is my second attempt to put this theory into practice. My previous attempt was in a Sakrian township a few days' travel outside of Azuria. The presence of surrounding cultures, though, proved too much a contaminating influence, and within a few generations the populace rejected my temporal and spiritual authority, and I was forced to flee ahead of an angry mob. For my next and latest experiment in social controls, then, I selected an island culture, isolated both by geography and circumstance from outside contamination.”

“What is the purpose of these…‘experiments'?” I asked.

“I have seen organic culture at its best and worst, and I have come to question whether organics, with their short-lived vantage, are best suited to govern their own destinies. It seems to me that organic culture would be better served to look to a superior intellect for governance, one with a longer view of history.”

“And yours, naturally, is the superior intellect in question?”

“Naturally,” Ikaru said, without a hint of irony. “And given that it is my responsibility to govern, it is in my subjects' best interests that I devise the means of social controls that will result in the most effective organization and structure of culture.”

The presbyter leaned forward, regarding me closely.

“Now,” he said, “I believe you owe me some answers. Having heard what you have of my earliest memories, and my activities since, are you now in a position to address my origins?”

“You were never intended to develop an independent consciousness. The knowledge you possessed on first waking was the basic programming incorporated into the secondary control system housed in your skull. The cavity on your chest is intended to house the personality core of Benu, which is now incorporated instead into this body.” Benu indicated the gem on his chest. “Herein reside the thoughts and memories which should have been yours on wakening.”

“So you hold the mind that was intended to be mine?” Ikaru said. “But who constructed you, then?”

“The same hand that constructed you,” Benu answered. “My earlier self, the former Benu, whom you mistook for a corpse on the temple floor upon awakening. I was not dead, but only momentarily deactivated, having failed to transfer the personality core in time. Had all gone as planned, when your eyes opened, you would have had my memories. Instead, I was forced to build this new form.”

“And that is why we look as alike as brothers?”

“Yes. We share the same basic design, though the minute details differ from iteration to iteration.”

“Fascinating,” Ikaru said. “And how is it that our internal processes function? I have, of course, surmised the need for direct sunlight, but the mechanisms through which our bodies collect and store energy elude me.”

I had little desire to engage in lengthy discourse about my systemic processes at that juncture. I was at the disadvantage, in my weakened state, and had begun to suspect that my “offspring's” motives were not the purest. I could allow that he had, in first learning of my arrival, wanted to take all precaution before our initial meeting, but having spent some time in his company, I had come to the conclusion that his every
attention was bent on the domination of his subjected nation, and that he had no intention of us ever meeting one another on equal footing.

I answered his further questions, though, my answers as lengthy and circuitous as possible. It seemed that Ikaru, having learned of his origins for the first time, was so distracted that he had not noticed the passage of time, nor the fact that the first light of dawn had already begun to pink the eastern sky. Even the feeble rays of this early gloaming were enough to begin slowly to replenish my long-discharged stores of energy.

When I had explained the rudiments of our bodies' internal processes, Ikaru held up a hand to silence me, and looked at the gem on my chest contemplatively.

“I wonder what would eventuate,” he said, “if I removed the personality core from your body and installed it in myself?” He pulled apart his jet-and-crimson robes, revealing the cavity at the center of his chest. “Would I merely gain your memories and knowledge, all that you possess and have learned? Or would my personality be subsumed by the personality of Benu?”

“I don't know,” I told him, and while I honestly didn't, I had no desire to find out.

“Perhaps, then,” Ikaru said at length, “I will just keep you imprisoned in the oubliette. Then I could interrogate you at my leisure, to take from you what knowledge I might find of utility. I would very much like to learn more about our original designers, these wizard-kings of Atla, who seem so cavalierly to have discarded their probes into the world.”

“Ikaru,” I said, looking upon him with genuine sympathy, “if I have learned anything in my long years of wandering this circle of lands, it is that the best use of power seldom ever lies in its exercise. My fear for you is that, having set yourself up as master of this nation of people, you have lost all perspective. I have, in my time, been subject to many of the same temptations which now drive you. I would help you, if you'd let me, avoid the mistakes which I have made, and
which I have seen others make, so that you can make the best use of your time on this globe.”

“Nonsense,” Ikaru replied, dismissing my words with a wave of his hand. “My perspective is my own, thank you, and what lessons I'll learn from you will be of my own choosing, not your soporific platitudes. Power exists to be used. In the potential it is meaningless; only when made actual is it of any utility.”

“In that case,” I said, “I will not remain your prisoner any longer than I already have. And I have no desire whatsoever to help advance your plans.”

Before Ikaru could respond, I made my move.

My strength still at perilously low levels, in a single motion I rose to my feet and launched myself bodily at the nearest window. I sailed out into the sunrise and plunged down dozens of stories, my landing creating a small impact crater. I climbed unsteadily to my feet, and made my way into the twisting streets of Susa, managing to keep a few steps ahead of the presbyter's guards. Within a matter of days, I was on a ship bound for Taured, my strength regained, putting Pentexoire forever behind me.

I had considered staying on the island, remaining in hiding while locating pockets of dissidents, and helping to mount a resistance to the presbyter's rule. Cleaning up Ikaru's mess. But the historical processes involved were inevitable, and eventually the Pentexoireans would rid themselves of Ikaru on their own. Perhaps not in the present generation, perhaps even not for centuries, but eventually. And when they did, when Ikaru saw that organic cultures will not suffer a dictator interminably, then perhaps my son would learn that he had chosen the wrong path.