Watson, Ian - Novel 06 (17 page)

 
          
“Of
the dead, who do not die.”

           
“And this same substance is growing
on us now, as its hosts? You’ve been waiting for this to happen!”

 
          
“Of
course. Your friend is in this state because he is growing sensitive to
Askatharli. When you first arrived you were naked, birds without feathers. Your
blood was empty. Don’t you wonder how easily you understand my words now?”

 
          
“Oh
yes”
I cry.

           
“The words speak to you, through the
Askatharli life in you.”

 
          
“A
parasite,” murmurs Rene. “It’s something—some kind of life form.”

 
          
Zoe
frowns, inspecting the tiny golden hairs on her black skin. “A metaphysical
parasite?”

 
          
“And
the Central Committee waits above,” says Wu. “The
College
of
Shamans
.” Suddenly she’s shocked by the
realization. “Surely you mean . . . we’ll talk to the Paravarthun across a
distance? They’re not actually
here
?”

 
          
“They
are all heroes, bonded to a dead beloved. So they will step through Askatharli
space from there, to here. You cannot do this until your bond-beloved dies. Go
up. Samti, who will be a hero, will lead you. We shall watch Ritchie Blue’s
dream.”

 
          
At
a sign from the Tharliparan, Vilo steps out on to the blank glassy floor.
Ritchie marches in tandem with her.

 
          
“I
want to watch,” says Wu.

 
          
“Later.
There’ll be time.”

 
          
“Come
along,” says Samti.

 
          
The ramp should lead up to a smaller
chamber.

 
          
It
doesn’t. Instead, up here, a luminous glassy surface stretches away in all
directions. ‘Our’ floor is only one of many. The inside peak of ‘our’ pyramid
is lost in a mist of light, high above, if it’s there at all. Insubstantial
veils separate each adjacent floor from the next, eventually merging in a fog
that is the only boundary.

 
          
“We’re
in
all
the pyramids,” murmurs Zoe,
awed.

 
          
“Each
connects with all the others in Askatharli space,” says Samti. “A hero can imagine
his journey from here to there across the whole world. Wherever you are, each
is at the centre of all the others.”

 
          
From
different directions figures approach us, becoming more recognizable as they
pierce the veils: a dozen masked Getkans, navigating by reflection in their
mirror shields—and a weirder creature, too. Is it one of the grotesque Gods of
the dream?

 
          
At
last they all step through the veil surrounding our floor. Some pull off their
masks. Getkan eyes drink us.

 
          
The
weird creature disposes of a bowl-like mask, and its mirror shield, upon the
floor.

 
          
It’s
as squat as a barrel, with two low stout legs. Long slanted purple eyes regard
us. A parrot’s beak of a mouth is covered by a filter membrane, a see-through
surgical mask. It is vaguely humanoid. Vaguely. Massive short arms end in a
cluster of long thick finger-tentacles, like a dangling of dark coshes—but
these branch again into tinier fingers, and fingers beyond fingers,
micromanipulators. The barrel being wears a hide as dark as a rubber tyre; it’s
clad in a bilious tawny haze of hairs. A tank is strapped to its back; tubes
lead in to the nostril slits above its beak. Surely Gods don’t need breathing
apparatus.

 
 
          
“This
is a hero from the heavy world, Zerain,” says Samti. “Its star circles in our
northern sky. It shines bright and blue. He is an ambassador between Zerain and
Getka, through Askatharli. His form is appropriate to his world.” Samti uses
the dyad mode appropriate to a hero who is two persons, one alive, one dead.

 
          
From
its parrot beak the barrel booms at us in Getkasaali. Maybe the voice would
sound mellower, more highly pitched in its own dense native atmosphere.

 
          
“Welcome,
children of your star. We embrace you, fellow beings of imagination—” I hope
you don’t. Either you would crush us—or tickle us to death.

 
          
“We
are asked to address you, since we are an alien, as are you yourselves—and
since
our
experience will become
yours. At this early stage in your awakening you may still doubt the truth, as
the Getkans tell it to you. But it is the truth.”

 
          
The
Zeraini twitches its micromanipulative fingers-beyond- fingers, as though
sketching in microscopic detail. A gross, if dwarfish being at first glance,
nevertheless hierarchies of touch exist at the end of its stumpy arms.

 
          
“In
Askatharli space there are centres of generation—jewels within the setting of
the Imagining. The law of the veil—by which the world shall see only itself, in
the mirror which it is— is partly suspended in these jewel regions. So rich is
the Imagining here, so bright the faces of the jewel, that worldly existence
can be dual: both of the world, yet beyond it. So rich is it, that entities
with no personal being of their own, which are intermediate between the
Imagining and the world, may project into reality if reality calls them forth.”

 
          
“Angels,”
murmurs Zoe.

 
          
Its
tiny micromanipulators stroke that bilious fur. “This intermediate life
possesses a tropism towards actual life, just as actual life possesses a
tropism towards the Beyond—which breathes life forth, so that the Beyond may
know itself. Within the rays of the jewel this intermediate life can co-exist
with individual life and let that life subsist, fully aware, in Askatharli
space. It is all around you on this world. A tiny part of it exists physically—a
mere hair. The rest is a thing of the imagination, which dreams the physical
part.”

 
          
“This
is a life form of ... the imagination, and it grows out into the real world?”
asks Rene, bemused. “It puts down actual roots, in us?”

           
“A life form? Not exactly. Its only
‘life’ is ours. Its only form is the form that we provide. Yet it vibrates in
tune with Askatharli, its origin—and with us. When we die, it links our aska to
the living bond-beloved. It lets that bond-beloved move physically,
via
Askatharli, even from world to
world. Soon, when you sleep, you will join the sculpted dreams of what this
world Getka symbolises. Later you will link with your home world, through
death, and step through as we step through from Getka to Zerain. Then your
world will sculpt its own dreams in Askatharli. We shall visit them; you shall
visit ours.”

 
          
“Why
didn’t they warn us that we’d become hosts for this Askatharli life stuff?”
cries Wu angrily.

 
          
“Could
you have left this world?” asks one of the Getkans gently, stepping forward.
“The vile Group-ones stole your ship.”

 
          
“You
would have been afraid,” remarks another. “Now, of course, the way back isn’t
by ship at all, you see.”

 
          
“True,”
booms the squat Zeraini. “Do not fear it.”

 
          
“How
was our world contacted?” Wu demands.

 
          
“By
a dreaming of the dead—askas bonded to askas in a higher synthesis,” says one
of the Paravarthun. “We, who are still part-alive, do not see on to that plane
yet. You were the receivers of that dream, inserted into your mind space,
sensed from afar and given substance by your own imaginings. Now that you have
come here physically—led through Askatharli space—you too can die and, guided
by your own dead back to your world, open the doorway through which the
Askatharli life itself will flow.”

 
          
“We
get home, but only if we bring this golden life form with us, to infect
everyone!” (Isn’t this what the Chinese on our expedition were searching for: a
psychic tool of power?)

 
          
“It
bestows conscious mastery of the Beyond,” says a Paravarthun.

 
          
The
Zeraini barrel retracts its micromanipulators inside their cosh-grooves, and
folds the coshes into a burly paw. “You had to be able to build ships in low
space, to come here,” it observes. “Soon you won’t need such toys any more.”

           
“Is that the crime of the ‘vile’
Group-ones, then: technology?”

 
          
“Those
are a single entity, with a machine for their lord. This blinds them to the
beauty of the dream worlds. They cannot enter them.”

 
          
“Where
do they come from?” asks Ren6.

 
          
“They
are from another star system, far from any wellspring. They arise on the
periphery of the waves of life. They are an aberration. To them the universe is
simply a machine, and since the universe is only the symbol for what lies
beyond it they will try to make this mechanical madness the reality of the
universe. They cannot penetrate the inner richness of the jewel, yet they haunt
this system now with their machines and slave-units. They move slowly across
the star fields—”

 
          
“We
believe that your lost friends might still be alive,” says another of the
Paravarthun. “The Group-ones may hope to spy through them, and try to
manipulate this zone that they cannot enjoy—try to alter its nature to their
will and make the very energies of the archetypes mechanical. Askatharli is
fluid, you see. Perhaps the general imagination, if warped by them, can alter
and become mechanical.”

 
          
“Do
all the people of your race wear this golden hair by now?” Ren6 asks the barrel
being.

 
          
The
Zeraini unsheathes its micromanipulators once again to preen itself. “This is
the stuff of Askatharli, the link with the Beyond.”

 
          
“You
don’t answer the question, sir.” How does one address an exalted ambassador
from one star system to another?

 
          
The
barrel shifts from one stout foot to the other. “How else, since the door was
opened and we all became lords of our dreams? The Askatharli matter grows upon
life, and when that life has ended in this world the matter still remains—to be
made into tools of vision, tools of passage through the Beyond. Come to us, at
the boundary of the world, to meet the death demon within yourselves which will
take one of you, while you in turn slay it. Then you may open the door, as a
hero. You have guides. We wait for you.”

 
          
“How
fast did the Askatharli life pour into your world through this door? How
quickly did it affect your race? Did they all accept it?” Is Rene thinking of
the cruel dream, as I am? A symbolic drama of resistance, of attempted
quarantine and de- lousing by hard-line mechanical souls.

           
The barrel hesitates. “We live in
High Time now, not Low Time, and High Time is all one. So there is no answer.”

 
          
Those
who have removed their masks don them again. They begin to move out through the
veils. The Zeraini raises its paw. Tiny fingers beckon us, as it stumps away.
Peter tries to follow. So do I. But there’s resistance. We pop back like corks
from the veil.

 
          
“There’s
nothing
, but you just can’t penetrate
it! ” he breathes, as the Getkans and the Zeraini grow fainter, more remote,
out on that field of light till we see them no more.

 
          
So
when Peter or I die (by what manner of death?) on the fringes of Getka, we
shall become as Gods or angels? His ‘angel’ —or mine—may accomplish miracles,
so long as the Askatharli stuff has taken root in us. The old sky-contact
restored; the suffocating weight of history and data lifted! Yes, it’s my
nostalgia, my yearning. Peter’s too.

 
          
Samti
touches me, electrically. “We can’t pass through here yet. We’re only
pre-heroes. All of us.”

 
          
“How
is
this done? The passage through?”
frets Wu.

 
          
“You
think that the world is real,” says Samti quietly. “But though it is solidly
present it is only a projection from elsewhere. Creation is renewed and
annihilated with every breath of the Imagining. This happens too fast for any
ordinary being to notice it. Yet heroes can act upon it. A hero transfers his
renewal, step by step, to a different location. You and I, fixed in this world,
cannot yet do this. Only when one of our dyad dies and re-enters the general
imagination, while remaining bond-lord of the living being, do we achieve it.”
(Curiously, Zoe is staring at him as though this is something that she already
knows . . .)

 
          
Wu’s
hackles rise. She moves threateningly close to me.

 
          
“So,
my fine proxemicist, these Zeraini have surrendered their history for the sake
of revelations? High Time doesn’t permit them to think historically! I wonder
what history the Getkans had to give up? Peasants still have to plough the
fields, I notice— even if they all climb the sleep tree every night for their
dose of opium. This superstructure of fairyland still requires a solid base.”

           
“That’s true enough,” nods Rene.
“What
did
happen? And when? Or has
this always been evolving along with them, near to this ‘jewel’?”

 
          
Ren6
speaks in English, as did Wu. Getkasaali tenses are all simply inflections of
the present tense, at root. They are ‘metapresents’ which we simply rethink as
past or future. Whatever happens is eternally implicit, and simply becomes
explicit. History? No such concept exists—or perhaps there’s a term, but it’s a
pejorative one, suggesting entropy, decay. The ladder, once climbed, is needed
no longer and is of no further significance . ..