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In the mirage of these mingling sensation, Noel
could still feel Xavier's mind; mercifully it was quickly freed from pain.
He seemed to be hovering around the point in the homogeneous mass of boiling
rock where his body had been. Xavier was still aware of his contact with
Noel, and could dimly perceive that Noel was walking from the control room
to Marinima's chamber.
Noel walked in a daze to the old man's room, signalling Steven to take charge.
In Noel and Marinima's discussions on the fulfilment of his prophecy they
had agreed that in the event of Xavier's death Marinima was going to use
Noel as a channel to guide Xavier in his dying - through the 'Bardo' world
as Marinima called it. The Bardo was a transition state between death and
one's next birth, and guidance from one's religious teacher was essential.
When he reached the old man Noel told him that the Fusodrome was lost, and
explained, with some difficulty because of his emotion, that Xavier was
now dead, but still in contact. Marinima nodded and said:
"So it has come about."
He was silent for a moment and then said:
"Do you feel strong enough for this?"
Noel nodded.
"Good. I will speak to you as if you are the deceased, and you will
transmit my words to Xavier. Okay?"
Noel nodded again, and suddenly both men felt the ground shake beneath them.
They exchanged glances and then Marinima continued.
"The first stage of death, the one that Xavier is entering, is critical.
It is intensely luminous, and Xavier will have no sense of identity."
Noel became aware of this: Xavier had now dissolved and was aware only of
a luminous emptiness. It was almost unbearably blissful.
"This must be heaven!" said Noel, involuntarily.
Marinima just nodded and said:
"The instructions at this stage are as follows: Xavier is reminded
of his dignity in life, and the selfless role he took on in this battle,
overcoming his weakness at the critical point. He is to bring to mind the
vision of his inner nature that I showed to him in the moment of his crisis,
and to dwell on it. If he can remain tranquil in this holding to him of
the vision, he will become one with the luminous state, and achieve liberation:
he will become one with the imperishable."
Marinima was silent for a while as Noel transmitted the instructions.
"Please repeat these instructions to him from time to time as he remains
in the luminous stage."
Over a period, as Noel transmitted the same instructions to him at intervals,
Xavier seemed to fall from the tranquil state, and become aware of himself,
in the sense of thoughts of his identity emerging.
"Instruct Xavier now to stay with the meditation on the eternal, the
unlimited."
For a time longer Xavier stayed in the luminous region, but eventually his
consciousness became crystalised and he entered the second stage. Marinima
told Noel to repeat the last instructions at intervals, saying that if one
does not transcend in the first luminous stage it is still possible to do
so easily in the second, though the identification with the self has arisen.
In this stage Xavier knew himself and knew himself to be dead: Noel, sharing
in his death, and in the instruction and commentary from Marinima, was deeply
affected. Several hours later Marinima told him that Xavier would be like
this for some time now, and that he should rest for a while. Noel, in a
state of exhaustion, and hardly conscious of his surroundings, left the
old man, and returned to the others.
Noel only became aware of his surroundings gradually, to find Prunella holding
his hand close to him sobbing, watching the huge mushroom cloud on their
screens. The control room in the Commune housed their communications equipment
and television screens; it was a small room with old bits of furniture scattered
about it and a patchwork of cabling and conduits. Like all the rooms in
the cavern its walls were a temporary structure and merely served to divide
areas under the common ceiling of the roughly-hewn vault they occupied.
A dozen people and droids were sitting on whatever they could, while Noel
and Prunella shared a worn-out sofa directly in front of the screens. What
she saw through the cameras, Noel had perceived directly. The initial blast
had flattened everything for miles around the Fusodrome: the trees and vegetation
on the circumference of the holocaust were incinerated, and further away
forests were blown away like matchsticks. As the mushroom cloud rose above
the plain, vast electrical storms sent lightning streaking across the sky.
Inside the cavern the ground shook, and they could hear the distant rumble
of explosions. The cameras showed a darkness grow. Tons of rock thrown into
the air by the blast fell in heavy thundering showers, while the dust and
lighter particles stayed aloft, blocking out the light of the sun. Soon
the vistas shown on the screens were quite dark, only the cameras pointing
to where the Fusodrome had been showing a huge orange fireball. Others were
illuminated dimly by burning forests and croplands. Man and wife, lovers,
parents and children, droids; all watched this on screens throughout the
cavern, and hugged each other close as they watched in near silence the
awful artificial night that enveloped their homeland. Only a few children
cried.
Noel fell into a deep sleep as he sat, and Prunella laid him out on the
couch. She took his hand, but could not tear her gaze away from the screens.
It had not occurred to anyone to congratulate their engineers on having
preserved their lives; all they could think of was the loss of life on the
enormous scale that they were witnessing outside the safety of their shelter.
Some cameras had picked up the movement of a few people caught in the open
by the blast. They were obviously blinded and were dying on their feet.
One camera, which scanned across the doors to the cavern, showed burning
grass and some wild animals running, crazed by the flames and half-blinded
from the first glare of the blast.
Noel was wakened later with instructions to return to Marinima.
"I can see that you are exhausted," said the old man. "Are
you prepared to go on?"
"Yes, yes," Noel said fervently.
"Good."
Noel made contact with Xavier again, and was immediately aware of a growing
agitation in him.
"Xavier is entering the third Bardo state, where the fruits of his
former actions manifest themselves in his mind in all kinds of ways. It
is very important that he receives instruction now."
Noel had to give Xavier a prayer to repeat through this part of his journey
through the Bardo:
Now when the Bardo of apparitions dawns
upon me,
I will abandon all thoughts of fear and
terror,
I will recognise whatever appears as my
projection,
and know it to be a vision of the Bardo;
now that I have reached this crucial point
I will not fear the peaceful and wrathful
ones, my own projections.
Noel reported to Marinima how the manifestations of the third Bardo realm
appeared to Xavier: a terrifying shimmering brightness, followed by thunderclaps
so violent as if from a thousand storms, and rays of coloured light. Xavier
was instructed continually by Marinima to see these as his own projections,
and to be aware of the apparitions to come as the same. After a period of
hours in contact with Xavier in the Bardo state, Marinima told Noel to withdraw
and rest again, for Xavier would be in this stage for several days. For
Noel the violent outcome in the living world and the growing violence of
Xavier's inner world were beginning to mingle in his mind and exhaust him
deeply. Noel returned to the couch in the control room, but the unfolding
drama that they watched on their screens kept him awake.
The clocks inside the cavern showed them later that it was really night-time,
while they continued to watch the now unchanging scenes of darkness and
fire. There had been no signs of any movement or life for some hours, neither
human or animal. Men and women alike had wept; most of the children were
now asleep. Most pathetic were the occasional whimpers from some of the
animals they had brought with them into the cavern, distressed by the tremors
that shook the mountain ranges.
The hours of the night went by, and one by one the people lay down to sleep;
some where they had sat for hours by the screens, others in their quarters.
Prunella kept watch over Noel, who had finally succumbed to his exhaustion.
Marinima had told her that Noel would be all right after a good sleep; Prunella
herself could not rest. She knew that Noel had been with Xavier at his death,
and the only thing she wanted now was to know his dying thoughts. Finally
she too laid her head back on the couch and drifted into sleep. Through
the night some stayed awake; they just stared as though mesmerised at the
unchanging views on the screens.
Noel was unconscious for nearly a day; Prunella dozed fitfully by his side.
Marinima came now and then to check on Noel and to reassure her. Finally
Noel awoke; he was almost too weak to speak, but seeing Prunella's anxious
face, he managed to tell her of Xavier's last moments. Her eyes were wet
as Noel told her that Xavier had finally understood her actions, had blessed
her, and had died at peace with himself, and that Marinima was guiding his
soul through the Bardo, through Noel as a medium. She stroked Noel's hand
over and over again.
"It took that poor dying soldier to tell him what he most needed to
know: that he was a mortal man like all of us."
She whispered this to Noel. He smiled faintly at her and fell asleep again.
Over the next few days the people of the Commune came to terms with their
new life. Scientists amongst them reckoned that they would be there for
at least a year before radiation levels sank low enough for them to be able
to open the doors. As Noel's prophecies had so far come true, the idea of
the boat was at last taken seriously.
After a few days rest Noel returned to Marinima's room and continued with
transmitting the old man's guidance. Xavier was in thrall to an apparition
of a god-like figure and his female consort, both of them apparently his
own projections, and the instructions now were to pray to them for guidance
and compassion. The apparitions would guide him through the next stage of
the Bardo, where a soft white light would pull him away to the realm of
ethereal beings: the temptation to join them had to be overcome. At the
next stage he would be attracted to a soft yellow light and to 'hungry ghosts':
projections from Xavier's unconscious mind. At each stage a compassionate
being would be present: a symbol of Xavier's higher consciousness that he
should pray to, and at each stage the overwhelming attraction of the lower
stage, and the symbolic representation of them in the form of jealous gods,
animals, and so on, would assert itself. Marinima was surprised to hear
Noel report that the apparitions included many of the artificial developments
that culminated in the present-day androids: in the Bardo they appeared
to Xavier as fantastic machines built out of absurd combinations of household
appliances, factory robots, and vehicle parts.
"I should have expected this," he chuckled. "The ancient
texts that dealt with the liberation through hearing in the Bardo had not
been aware of androids."
Marinima also told Noel that this descent through the Bardo was a long process,
and that Xavier had a truly noble spirit, and could attain liberation even
in the last stages. For now they were to leave him to deal with his apparitions,
with a reminder again of appropriate prayers.
Looking at the screens one day they noticed that the orange glow over what
had been the Fusodrome, which had been diminishing steadily, seemed to be
increasing again. Also increased rumblings and earth tremors could be felt.
"Its volcanic action," said Noel. "The nuclear explosion
is causing a movement of the Earth's crust."
A few days after that the rains started.
Over the next weeks their cameras showed a gradual lightening of the skies
to a dull grey. Rain fell incessantly. It gave them a comforting feeling
somehow; it slowly washed away the traces of world they had known. The distant
seismic rumblings told them of the fulfilling of the last part of Noel's
prophesy: the sinking of the Continent. About a month after the melt-down
of the Fusodrome the fault close to which it lay had opened enough for the
sea to pour in from the coastal regions. It was a spectacular sight. The
original fireball had died down to be replaced by fountains of molten lava
as the crust was breached. This distant orange light against the complete
blackness had faded as the skies had turned from black to grey. Now, as
the sea poured into the raging nuclear fissure, a vast column of boiling
water and steam shot into the sky spreading another lethal dose of radiation
across the already sterile landscape. In this period, Noel's occasional
contacts with Xavier showed him a terrifying panorama of apparitions, which
at times Xavier could see as merely phantoms, and which at other times quite
overwhelmed him. Xavier, though pulled down through the Bardo regions by
his unconscious desires, nevertheless maintained his courage, and often
managed to completely dispel the apparitions. Marinima told Noel that Xavier
was his greatest disciple, and that no-one before amongst his followers
had travelled this path with such clarity and purity.
Later the cameras showed water spreading over what had been the desert.
As the months passed the plains were covered. They were now on an island,
a mountain range of lifeless rock.
The members of the Commune, both droid and human, pitted themselves against
the task of constructing their boat. The calculations made half a year ago
in haste would come to be tested. Had they food and water to last them?
Would the waters rise faster than the radiation levels would subside? Would
the massive doors open again? What would the Old World have in store for
them if their boat did take them there? Would only the droids be the final
survivors?
Many weeks after the death of Xavier, Marinima informed Noel that he was
required to guide his friend through the final Bardo stages. The purpose
here was to help Xavier avoid the last stage of his downward travel, that
of entering a womb, or, if that could not be prevented, to seek a 'high'
birth. Marinima explained that in the spiritual life, the parents' own state
of grace could make all the difference to a child: it would not have to
painfully acquire the necessary purity of action against the baser influences
of lesser parents. The first stage was to help Xavier resist the sexual
fascination of love-making: his spirit would be instinctively drawn to a
couple somewhere in the world in the act of copulation. Marinima stressed
that many old-world religions had made the mistake of attaching sin and
guilt to the sexual act, and that this missed the point: a greater union
was available, and the same energy could be directed towards that instead.
Noel made contact with Xavier, and found indeed that Xavier's memories of
love-making with Prunella were active, and he was drawing pleasure from
them. Mingled with this were visions of robots and manufacturing machinery:
bearings, spigots, integrated circuits, pipes, sensors, and wires. Noel
smiled suddenly.
"You are with Xavier," asked Marinima.
"Yes."
"Then here are the instructions for closing the womb-entrance."
Marinima gave Noel a second prayer to repeat to Xavier:
Now when the bardo of becoming dawns upon
me,
I will concentrate my mind one-pointedly
and strive to prolong the results of good
actions,
close the womb-entrance and think of resistance;
this is the time when perseverance and pure
thought are needed,
abandon jealousy and meditate on the Master
and his consort.
Marinima explained the prayer to Noel, saying that the male soul is drawn
to visions of the female in the act of copulation, and experiences intense
jealousy of the male. A female soul would experience the reverse. The male
would be drawn by images of the female genitals, and this would open the
mother's womb to his soul: his task was to abandon both love for the potential
mother, and jealousy for the father. The technique was to meditate on the
Master and his consort. The transference of the basic energies of attraction
and jealousy to the Master and his imagined consort were dependant on a
mutation of love into devotion; if he was successful in this he would transcend
both birth and death. The womb-entrance would be closed to him forever.
"We cannot do more now," said Marinima. "In a few days time,
if this prayer is failing him, we will instruct him on the choosing of a
womb-entrance."
When they met again, Noel found Xavier yielding to the downward pull of
re-birth, having for long periods used the prayer successfully. His devotion
to Marinima was intense, but his life with Prunella, and the mystery of
birth that he had not been able to participate in as an android, had overcome
the transcendent influence. Noel was to help him seek his new parents, guided
by the intense longing to be as Marinima. The prayer given to him now was
to help him seek parents of the greatest innocence and purity.
Noel reflected on Xavier's visions of the female genitals, and he thought
about Sarah, and his state of mind in the weeks after their night together.
"Is the attraction to copulation after death related to voyeurism in
adult life?" asked Noel.
"Indeed. The spirit in death is drawn to the source of life as one
of its most powerful shaping forces; the physical sexual urge in life is
always accompanied by the spirit's association with the means of incarnation.
A voyeur is acting out the spirit's behaviour in the lower Bardo regions"
"So how are the souls of androids drawn to the assembly lines on which
they are made?"
"An interesting question. I reflected on this years ago, and concluded,
from observations of the way that people were absorbed and fascinated with
technology, that there is a parallel with the sexual instinct. Consider:
the second most creative act, after childbirth, is creating a machine."
Noel pondered this for a while.
"What about a painting, isn't that a more creative act? Why a machine?"
Marinima smiled.
"The basic thing about a machine is that it responds in some way or
other to stimuli: this is the chief characteristic of a living thing. An
android for example has extremely complex responses."
Noel looked at Marinima for a moment, and realised suddenly from Marinima's
expression that he was being challenged. The Master was testing to see how
much his pupil had learned from him, and to Noel it felt like a physical
slap. He gazed at Marinima, his thought-processes stilled by Marinima's
subtle yet almost violent confrontation, and felt for a split-second a shrinking
in his being. His earliest programming rose up and confirmed to him his
inferior status: an android is just a machine, an android is just a machine.
This was swept away by an energy, an anger, perhaps triggered by the imperceptible
air of scorn in the old man's eyes, which brushed aside his lingering doubts.
Suddenly he was beyond anger. Noel had learned too much to succumb to the
past any more: he had experienced the death of a man at his own hands, he
had made love to a woman, and beyond all his experiences there had grown
in him the deepest knowledge of who he was. Marinima's eyes had changed
again, and his face, which briefly seemed harsh, even ferocious, softened
and became luminous; Noel found that he was not looking at him with his
eyes, but with a more sensitive perception. He felt Marinima to be like
a fountain or volcano, pouring his being into him, like he had once showed
himself to Xavier. It happened for only an instant, but Noel could not speak
afterwards; he could not re-engage in language. Time disappeared, and he
felt a floating sensation. He could not say how long he stayed in this state.
"Good," said Marinima eventually in a soft voice. "Stay in
silence for a while. Come to me every afternoon. I will instruct the others
not to disturb you. There is nothing more that you can do for Xavier now."
Noel entered a new pattern of life in the cavern, almost disappearing from
the life of the community. During this period Prunella gave birth to a baby
boy. It was the first child to be born in the cavern, living its first months
under artificial light. She called him Xavier.
The waters rose steadily; the boat took shape in the cavern. One day their
cameras picked up movements in the hills above them, which turned out to
be a party of droids. Having foreseen the possibility of some survivors
being driven towards them by the rising waters, they had installed a communication
system. Steven, who was managing the day-to-day running of the Commune with
Francis, broadcast a message which echoed around the hills. The droids stopped
dead in their tracks for a moment, and then jumped for joy. Steven directed
them down to the doors of the cavern, where they could speak to him. They
had been living in the North, close to a group of boat people. As the first
blasts from the Fusodrome were heard around the Continent, many such groups
had launched their crudely-built vessels, mostly to perish in the huge tidal
waves that followed. The droids had headed South for the mountains, passing
thousands of dying people, where the radiation levels even now were fatal
to humans. Prunella enquired after George. They had heard of him; they believed
that he had gone to sea with one of the groups of boat people; he was with
a woman called Sarah. It was not likely that they had survived. Steven told
them that they could not open the doors for several months yet, but if things
went well, that they could join them on the boat. In the meantime they could
help by clearing the metal slipways outside the cavern from some of the
charred tree trunks that had fallen on them, and to scout around the hills
for more survivors.
The news of some other survivors, even though their party included no humans,
gave some comfort to the Commune.
Noel remained in silence during a period of several months, spending each
afternoon with Marinima. The old man lay in his bed, and the android sat
near him, with no thoughts in his mind and no sensation of time. A silent
transmission was taking place, involving no content, no subject matter that
could be described in words, symbols, or pictures.
Noel was at Marinima's bedside one day when the old man broke the months-long
silence and whispered to him that it was time to speak again. He had news
for Noel: he was dying, and wanted to discuss many things with him before
his death. Noel found it agonising to use his powers of speech and rational
thinking again, but the shock of the Marinima's announcement helped him
to overcome the initial difficulties. One of the first things that Marinima
told him was that after too long a period of silence it would became impossible
to regain the faculty of speech, and he should be aware of this. Noel broke
the news to the Commune, which was shocked and grieved. In the following
weeks Marinima showed Noel his library.
"If your journey is successful, you will start a new life with very
simple people. This does not mean that they do not have the spiritual capacity,
not at all, but your language and metaphor will have to change radically
to work with them. I have many ancient texts here that come from periods
in our own history when a different spirituality was common. In particular,
you will find that people with no technology are more in tune with Nature:
this can make them more sensitive, but also more animistic: they easily
believe that spirits control the untamable elements around them. These old
writings are from sages of the primitive times, and they may help you. Also
you will find a copy of the 'Book of Exultation', which will help you if
you have to deal with the Brotherhood."
Marinima was anxious that the religious history of the Continent was not
lost, and Noel promised that the safety of all the written collections would
remain a priority for him. At first the old man's assumption that he would
continue Marinima's teaching had surprised him, but it soon became clear
to him that this was his destiny: everything over the last few years had
brought him to this point. Marinima lost strength rapidly after this, and
died peacefully in his bed. The whole Commune went into mourning, and even
Noel wept. After his death Noel became even more distant and reserved, spending
much time on his own.
After a long solitary period Noel began to take a more active part in the
life of the community again, instinctively giving them the leadership that
was lost with Marinima. He would watch again the screens with them that
gave them pictures of the outside world. As the waters at the foot of the
mountain rose further Noel recognised from his dreams the strange coloured
luminescences in the water. At night it was a beautiful sight on the scanners.
The water was only a few hundred feet below them now, and in the dark it
shone and glistened like a living thing. The fact that all these small details
came to be true gave Noel the certainty that his final glimpses of them
launching the boat and sailing out to the Old World would also come true.
Noel tried to describe to Prunella how he felt now that the cataclysm was
past. One part of him felt that an enormous burden had been lifted from
him. He no longer needed to dream of death and destruction; it was now a
memory that he could allow to fade. Another part of him felt that he was
now spent. He shared these things with her, for they were visible, but a
much deeper change had taken place in him, since his last intense encounters
with Marinima. The months in silence had broken his continuity with the
past.
Finally the radiation levels outside dropped low enough for them to briefly
open the doors. The humans in the cavern were told to draw back into its
recesses, while the engineers opened the door a few feet. It grated back
inch by inch making a shrieking sound; the outside metal skin of the doors
had become warped. Once open enough for Steven and the others to leave they
stopped the motors. Steven was the first. He ran out and hugged the droids
that had patiently camped outside for the last few months. Noel followed
Steven out, greeting the waiting droids with a quiet dignity, and then sat
down and looked at the sea. He could not believe that what he had seen in
his dreams, and on the cameras, now lay before him: the land he had been
created in, and had worked in for six hundred years, was irrevocably gone.
A little later they inspected the doors, which would need some repair before
they could be fully slid back. The boat was complete now, and it was just
a question of waiting. They could only pray that the waters would not rise
any faster. Every day one of the droids went to measure its level at low
and high tide, and their scientists plotted the gradual fall in radiation
levels. The two curves were displayed in the cavern.
They built temporary doors to cover the gap between the main doors, allowing
the droids easy access to the outside without allowing radiation in. As
work progressed on the main doors, Noel took to walking alone each day in
the mountains.
As the weeks passed the curves posted daily looked more and more promising.
The radiation levels were falling rapidly, and would soon be tolerable for
humans. However after a time the new curves predicted an unexpected problem;
their boat was too high for the water level. They could sit it out of course
and wait for the sea to rise further, but all the time they would be consuming
their limited resources of food and water. In the end they decided to launch
the boat part of the way, dig up the tracks behind them, lay them down in
front, and so on. It would be a painstaking operation, edging the boat down
the mountain into the sea, but the thought of just sitting and waiting for
the water to meet them was unbearable.
With a cheering that matched their euphoria on first closing the doors,
they watched them grate and squeak open. Last-minute repairs were made to
the existing slipway, and on the next day they started to inch the boat
out. It towered above them with its three layers of decks, only just clearing
the top of the cavern entrance.
It took them a week of back-breaking work to let the massive boat down the
tracks towards the sea. The old marine manuals only gave them a rough idea
of how to proceed; they had to learn from their mistakes as they went on.
The tension as it slipped the last few feet into the sea was unbearable,
but it floated. They built a crude jetty for it, and eventually they loaded
it with their precious supplies and remaining machinery: their world would
shrunk now to the size of the boat, and its cramped quarters. Many animals
had been brought because centuries of breeding had given them hardy domestic
strains that they hoped to propagate in the Old World, and the various gruntings
and bleatings that they made was a strange comfort to them. It was also
a reminder of a return to an ancient way of life.
Noel presided over the simple farewell ceremony as the nuclear engines began
to turn the propellers in earnest and they pulled away from their landing.
The small engines that they had space for in the boat would give them a
slow drift to the East, and generate some electricity for them: Noel felt
that they would be a long time at sea. He stood on the deck for hours leaning
on the railings and staring out over the ocean. In a few days the last trace
of the Continent had disappeared from view, and, as he looked over the uniform
expanses in the direction of where they had come from, he reflected that
where man had been Nature left no trace.
While Steven and Francis shared the management of the boat and its community,
any disputes came to be settled by Noel. His ability to listen, and then
to point out a solution, and above all to take the heat out if it, proved
a great asset to the community. After a while they acquired the habit of
sitting with him each evening, even if there were no problems, and he would
speak to them and answer questions. Prunella loved these sessions, and listened
to him with great attention. The loss of Xavier and the destruction of the
Continent had changed her: with her child she was playful and light-hearted,
but an earnestness had settled on her which was apparent when she was with
the adults. One day she asked to see Noel, and asked him for a new name.
"The past has been taken from me by force," she said. "A
new name would mean that I was not so passive in this loss, it would mean
a future."
She lowered her eyes.
"Xavier was a disciple to Marinima. I couldn't really understand it
at the time, and although I spent much time around Marinima, he did not
reach me. In a strange way you have now. During the time I spend near you
in the evening gatherings I feel your peace, and I know that your grace
is working on me. I want you to give me a new name, if you would accept
me as your disciple."
Noel reflected on her request, and then gave her the name Theodora; he told
her that the name meant the gift of God, and asked the community to call
her by that name. After a while others followed suit, and Noel became the
spiritual father of the community, giving them hope and peace on their long
voyage. Only Francis objected to Noel's new position: he could not, despite
everything, give Noel the place in his heart that Marinima had occupied,
and a few others decided to follow him rather than Noel. When they reached
the Old World this grew into the first schism in their community.
Theodora herself became respected as a teacher in her own right, and began
to compile a diary of the question and answer sessions with Noel. Their
evening gatherings had acquired a structure: firstly disputes or problems
were settled that Steven and Francis had been unable to resolve; secondly
there were questions and answers; and finally they sat in silence with the
Master. Theodora found that many of the questions were repeated, and eventually
she edited her diary into a compilation that they crudely reproduced and
distributed amongst their community when it began to flourish in the Old
World.
One of the main passages in the diary concerned a question put to Noel about
the Brotherhood: he took the opportunity to touch on many issues that he
held important. Noel stressed that the Brothers had responded, like many
others, to the need for change in their highly-structured and almost catatonic
society, but had travelled a destructive path. Their ideas of the will to
power, and the concentration of power in the hands of a few adepts, were
the root of disaster. Their philosophy was one of exultation, so
close to, yet it its outcome diametrically opposite to, another path, that
of exaltation. Noel explained that exultation was the sense
of triumph, a personal victory at the expense of others, while exaltation
was an elevated state that depended on selflessness. In this latter state
a gain to another was one's own, and a loss to another was one's own. Noel
made much of the difference in approach, and told his community that without
the technological base to their lives that they had previously lived with,
they would be more dependant on each other. It was a time to learn to love
again.
The boat with its three decks, planned for in the last days of a civilisation
in turmoil, had been designed more by guess-work than a real consideration
of their needs. Items not seen as necessities, such as cosmetics and razors,
had been deliberately left behind, but unforeseen shortages cropped up:
they soon ran out of contraceptives and footwear. The limited capacity for
generating electricity also became a problem as the temperatures dropped
(the continuous cloud cover saw to that), and they had to use what supply
they had to keep warm, resulting in the jettisoning of much electrical equipment.
Even basic power tools for building and repairing the structures of the
boat could not be repaired and had to be discarded as they broke down. The
sophisticated infrastructure that had maintained their comforts was gone,
and they were having to re-learn the use of ancient tools and devices. The
skills of carpentry replaced those of the mechanic; the scribe replaced
the database; washing was done by hand, and inexorably they had to turn
to their animals to provide food and hides. They were forced to the repulsive
tasks of slaughter and curing, and the laborious methods of soap-making,
spinning, and weaving. Fish became an important part of their diet, and
much effort went into the production of different types of net, which often
broke as the unfamiliar bulk of the mid-ocean sea-creatures proved too much
for them. The community had to live with smells that had long been kept
away from them, and one would often see someone rush up to the deck for
fresh air, escaping from their stinking labours down below. However, the
many time-consuming tasks had the probable benefit of distracting the community
from the shock of their losses, and from their anxieties about the future.
They also felt that they were preparing themselves for the Old World.
Noel became rather fragile and slow, but spent less time in silence. He
would often join the community at work or at mealtimes with no ceremony,
seeming to sit with people at random. He would ask them how they were, and
encourage them with little stories and anecdotes and what seemed to be an
inexhaustible optimism. No one felt awkward with him, but to many he was
the living God amongst them, and he did not discourage their reverence,
mindful of Marinima's suggestion that the older religious ways would need
to be revived. With age he seemed to have become taller, and the sclerotic
of his eyes had acquired a deep red colour. He refused Theodora's offers
of better clothes when his own became shabby and torn: the community as
a whole was undergoing the same transformation as they were cut off for
ever from the industries of the vanished Continent.
When he felt that the time had come, Noel entrusted Theodora with releasing
the doves.
Author's Notes
Some of the writings of the Continent were preserved in the great Library
of Alexandria until the seventh century A.D., when it was burned down and
all records were finally lost.
The Old Testament correctly gives the age of the Builder of the Ark as six
hundred years at the time of the Flood. Incorrect, however, is the assumption
that he lay drunk on his bed (Genesis 9,21). As we know, his eyes
were merely very red.
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