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As the days went on, Noel enjoyed each new exercise
more and more, and he felt an expansion, a restfulness, a peace, that grew
from day to day. The idyllic atmosphere of the commune gradually seemed
more natural, and he began to forget his disturbing nightmares and the resolve
to get at the root of them. The tensions of Poets Quarter, and the rather
cold atmosphere of his previous existence in the factories seemed to recede
as the warmth of his companions, both human and droid, grew on him.
The leader of their group, Francis, was rather brusque and efficient in
his manner, quite the opposite to Marinima. He had an intense manner and
took the exercises very seriously. He seemed to like Noel though. After
about a week, it was Noel's turn for an individual session with Marinima.
The old man seemed to like Noel as well, and asked him how the course was
going.
"It is quite unlike anything that I have known before," said Noel.
"It is difficult to get used to the idea of putting so much time and
effort into something that only benefits oneself."
"And do you think that it benefits you?"
"Oh yes. I have never felt so restful and contented. Each new exercise
is a new adventure."
"What about your blackouts and dreams?"
"They seem to have gone recently."
"Hmm. The mind can play strange tricks on one in these circumstances.
Tell me, does an image of the sea come to your mind when meditating?"
"Why no. At least, now you mention it, I suddenly do see the sea. Its
very odd." Noel paused. He suddenly felt an anxiety and panic that
was connected with the image.
"Shut your eyes," said Marinima. "Relax in your seat. Let
the images come. Do not be afraid of them."
Noel shut his eyes and relaxed; his internal defences were lowered after
a week of meditation. The image of a brilliantly lit grey seascape flooded
his mind. It was like the dream he had experienced when on holiday with
George, it was also like the pictures in the game at the fair, and fragments
that had come into countless of his dreams. This time Noel became completely
lost in the images. He was on a boat or vessel of some kind in the middle
of the sea and the sky was lurid, quite unlike the sky Noel knew. The waves
seemed to be made of glass and moved heavily and noiselessly. A tremendous
sadness filled Noel. It was as though a catastrophe had taken place, a catastrophe
in which everything dear to him had been lost. The fixed vision of the sea
was as though from the eyes of someone staring, staring, looking to forget,
looking to find something in the grey expanse or to lose themselves in it.
The intensity of the feeling of vastness and loss, and the brilliance of
the luminous grey sea quite overpowered Noel. He must have sat for some
time lost in his vision before he became aware again of Marinima and the
room that they were in.
The old man nodded as though he were satisfied with Noel.
"You can tell me about it at a later date. I will see you again next
week. Take care with yourself for the rest of the day. You will find that
sometimes meditation will throw up experiences which will drain you of all
your strength, even though you have not moved."
As Noel rose to leave Marinima he was surprised to find that he did indeed
feel very unsteady. The normal surroundings of the Commune seemed rather
distant as the images of the seascape still haunted his mind. Noel retired
to his bed and slept a deep exhausted sleep.
On the next day Noel felt withdrawn and sombre. The vision left him with
a feeling of having touched on something precious, and yet disturbing. He
was one tantalising step closer to knowing what it was that pressed on his
mind; its urgency was now greater, but he had no sense yet of a resolution.
He attended the meditation class in the morning, but could not pay attention
to the teacher. After a while Francis came round to him and whispered to
him to take the day off.
"Meditation will shake loose all kinds of things in you. You would
be better to rest for a while. The spirit can only stand so much at a time."
His tone was kindly, and Noel was glad to follow the suggestion. He retired
to the dormitory and slept for some hours. Noel woke later feeling a little
restless and decided to take a walk in the hills at the back of the Commune.
Walking steadily for a while he found himself some distance from the compound
and already some height above it. He sat down on a rock and looked at the
view. He was looking South, towards the Capital and the Fusodrome on its
outskirts; they were nothing more than a smudge and a glow on the horizon,
separated from him by the ochre-yellow tundra of the plains. Closer to him,
at the foothills of the mountains, were forests, and between their green-prickling
flanks he could make out the curling highway that had brought him there.
Noel realised that he was very tired. A mixture of feelings; of great peace,
of sombreness, and of melancholy overtook him again. The images of the sea
returned in his mind and to Noel's alarm his vision started to play tricks
on him as he stared towards the horizon: what he saw became coarse-grained
in appearance like at the time of the fair in Poets Quarter. Noel thought
of Xavier's remark about early droid vision and he felt a sudden fear as
he connected this fact with the possibilities of reversion. He found that
if he moved his eyes normal vision would return again, but only briefly.
In an odd way Noel did not have the will to keep his eyes moving. After
a while he found himself staring fixedly at the horizon, and his normal
vision deserted him completely. His thoughts slowed down to a trickle, like
on the first day of the course.
The little phrase came back into his mind:
"The only way out is up."
Suddenly the phrase seemed of significance again. Noel gasped as a jolt
shook his body, and his hands clenched and unclenched as though he were
about to have a fit. The jolts continued, becoming stronger and stronger,
and eventually he tumbled off the rock onto the grass around it and lay
there, his whole body shaking. His eyes were tightly screwed up and the
vision of the sea returned to him. This time it seemed that he was standing
right there on the rock above the Commune looking out at the sea with its
curious dream-like texture, rather than at the sandy plain which actually
lay before him. In his mind it glistened with a thousand different colours
as if on fire. The sky too shimmered with strange colourations as though
reflecting the sea. The images were coarse-grained and unreal, in his mind
there was a disquieting silence accompanying the images. Strange waves rolled
like ice or glass in the silence, and a diffuse purple and orange conglomeration
of points of light hung over the horizon. After a long period of time the
colours faded slowly and he seemed to slide down towards the sea on some
kind of platform. In a sudden insight into his vision that shook him to
his depths, Noel realised that he was on a boat being launched from that
hill into the sea. The boat and the hill elements of his previous dreams
had come together, and the significance of the recurring little phrase was
suddenly revealed as linked with these elements. Gradually the images faded
and the spasms that shook his body subsided. Noel fell into a deep sleep.
He was found later by the droids patrolling the Commune perimeter, and carried
back to the dormitory. He slept right through to the following morning:
the droid medic, having examined the sleeping droid, diagnosed simple fatigue.
For several days after this experience Noel was unable to participate in
the course. As Marinima had warned him, the results of his meditations,
which his visions undoubtedly were, had cost him an enormous amount of strength.
It was not the mechanical strength of his body that was depleted so much
as that mysterious quality of vitality that deserts one in an illness, whether
of the body or of the mind.
Noel felt oddly unwilling to share the content of his visions with anyone,
though to himself he had reached a new state of certainty, that put much
of his previous anxieties and fits of dread behind him. He was also finally
convinced that his dreams were visions of the future.
After a few days, he joined the others again. He could not quite recapture
the light-hearted enjoyment that he had felt at the beginning of the course
however. As the course progressed over the following days he had the feeling
that his vision of the sea was now receding in his mind. It had obviously
been in the background, just beyond the reach of his thoughts for some years
now. He felt that part of his burden was gone, in that the dreams had been
leading him towards this point that he had now reached. However, he still
needed the last key to his troubling visions; one element was still missing.
The course finished without Noel experiencing the visions again and he found
that the discipline of the daily routine helped him regain his usual equilibrium.
The last day of the course came very quickly, by which time Noel had decided
that he would return to Poets Quarter. Noel woke up early the next day and
he said goodbye to the other participants on the course after breakfast.
David, the young man whom Noel had so upset at the beginning of the course,
came up to him a little sheepishly.
"I seem to have been avoiding you since our last conversation,"
he said. "The fact is that what you said disturbed me so much that
in the end I went and talked to Marinima about it. He told me that I had
accepted droids as people only in an intellectual kind of way, as a theory.
Deep down I had clung to the belief in you as machines. He was quite right.
My parents were League supporters, and though I had rebelled against everything
they stood for, my upbringing was not so easily erased. Its a terrible thing
to face that one is so deeply prejudiced." He tailed off awkwardly.
Noel scratched his head and smiled.
"You have faced it now, haven't you?" he said.
David nodded and they shook hands warmly. Noel told him to look him up in
Poets Quarter if he were ever there, but the young man looked a little alarmed
at the idea, so Noel did not press him. Noel repeated this offer to Roger
Badcock who was more receptive to it; they had become good friends over
the period. Noel then made his way to Marinima's apartments where the old
man received him with a welcoming smile. He questioned Noel about the course.
"Hmm. I think you are very wise to travel back to the Capital for a
while. It will balance you up a bit. As I said at the beginning of the course,
the tricks and techniques are not important, and are best forgotten now
that they have served their purpose. Too many people become rather dependent
on them. However I don't think you will. You will see Xavier and Prunella.
Give them my love."
They embraced, and Noel left the Commune with a truck taking visitors back
to the City. As Noel sat in the back of the truck with some people he had
met on the course, his mind kept turning to Marinima. The physical touch
of the man in his gentle embrace left him with a great feeling of contentment.
This is what lovers must feel, he thought. He thought back to George with
affection, and to Xavier and Prunella. I must do what I can to help save
them all, he thought, if at all possible.
That evening he rejoined Xavier and Prunella at their apartment. They made
a big fuss of him and welcomed him back. He settled in with them and they
told him of developments at the power stations. There was an increase in
the number of droids finding their way into the Quarter who wanted to be
taken to the Commune, and it was agreed that Noel would help Xavier organise
transport and disguises for them.
Prunella looked at Noel from time to time. She commented that his stay at
the Commune had changed him. Noel agreed with her but did not tell her,
or anyone else, about his visions of the sea.
Some weeks after his return to the Quarter they took him out to a night-club
where the latest music from Zero and his contemporaries was playing loudly.
They drank and danced, Noel feeling somehow more at home with it all this
time. As they sat down at the tables with other droid and human friends,
Noel looked at them all and thought of the car bursting into flames, the
death of the woman rider in the arena, and the visions of the dazzling grey-light
sea. Somehow he knew that he had a role to play in the unfolding of events
within the Continent. Even in the midst of their enjoyment of the evening,
the impending confrontation between the A.D. League and the strange mixture
of forces seeking the preservation of their society was in everybody's minds.
The very pace of life in the Poets Quarter seemed to come from this tension.
The following morning Noel was the first to wake. There was bright sunshine
streaming through the gaps in the curtaining. Xavier, Prunella, and Noel
had all tumbled onto beds in the back room. Noel got up, and seeing that
Prunella had woken, he clutched his head and started groaning. Prunella
looked at him startled.
"My head, my head," Noel said imitating the husky voice of someone
with a hangover. He grimaced, looking at Prunella out of the corner of his
eye.
"My mouth feels like the bottom of a parrot's cage," he croaked.
Xavier hauled himself out from his bed and walked with an exaggerated unsteadiness
over to Noel. He planted himself, swaying slightly, in front of Noel and
screwed up his face.
"What are you talking about?" he asked belligerently. "Your
mouth is always full of shit."
"You bastard," said Noel, with a slight slur and swung a fist
vaguely at Xavier's head.
"Grrr," said Xavier and lunged at Noel. They fell in a heap on
the floor. After a struggle Noel managed to extricate his head from under
Xavier's chest and looked him in the eyes with a mock-drunken solemnity.
They burst out laughing. Unable to control their mirth, they rolled around
the floor in fits of laughter.
"Oh you idiots," said Prunella, "how can you be so cheerful
first thing in the morning?"
At this the two androids got up, rubbing their eyes and yawning between
grins. They wandered around the room with their arms outstretched and their
eyes screwed up.
"Coffee. Must have coffee," muttered Noel.
Xavier stumbled into the bed where Prunella lay staring at them and fell
on top of her.
"Ouch," she cried. Noel fell on top of Xavier.
"Oof," she wailed. "Oh really, you two are impossible. Ow!"
They shifted off her.
"You forget how heavy you metal lumps are," she said irritably.
"Why don't you make yourselves useful and make some breakfast?"
"Sorry," said Xavier, grinning.
"Sorry," said Noel.
They got of the bed and, bowing to her in a ridiculous fashion, walked backwards
together towards the kitchen door. Still bowing, they converged on the doorway
and pretended to get stuck.
"So sorry," said Xavier.
Noel echoed him.
Xavier repeated himself. Noel, trying to bow sideways to Xavier said:
"You first."
"No, you first."
"No, no. You first"
Finally Prunella laughed and threw a pillow at them.
"Grrr. Why do I live with you imbeciles?"
Noel and Xavier burst out laughing again and disappeared into the kitchen.
Prunella joined them a little later, and the three of them sat on the balcony
looking out over Poets Quarter, Xavier and Noel on either side of her. The
sky was full of little clouds moulded by the early morning sun, and a haze
was visible around some of the ruined tenement blocks in the distance. On
the roof of the house just opposite, and a little below them, various weeds
grew with bright yellow clusters of petals and some with little violet bells
that stood out vividly against their green stems and the grey mortar of
the decaying building.
Prunella munched her breakfast cereal absently staring out at the view.
The cereal was dark brown, floating in some goat's milk that was available
everywhere in the Quarter. Xavier looked down at the bowl of mushy food,
and up at Noel. Noel caught his eye and also looked down at the bowl.
"Are you thinking what I am thinking?" he said to Xavier over
Prunella's head. Chewing her cereal she looked first at Noel and then at
Xavier. They ventured nothing further and so she looked ahead at the view
again.
"You know that I am thinking what you are thinking," said Xavier
solemnly. Prunella furrowed her brow.
"Then you know that I know that you are thinking the same thing that
I am thinking about that bowl of cereal," said Noel in the same tone.
Prunella looked down at her cereal, frowning. She pursed her lips and twitched
them from side to side. Xavier and Noel looked down at her cereal, and then,
in perfect unison, and to the tune of an ancient hymn, they slowly sang:
"We - think - that - your - bowl - of - cereal - reminds - us - of
- parrot - shit," stretching out the last couple of words into a ridiculous
harmony.
Prunella coughed and spluttered, showering the table with bits of half-chewed
cereal. They patted her on the back sympathetically, grinning at each other.
Between coughing and laughing she said to them:
"You two are in a daft mood today. I can't eat any more of that now."
She pushed the bowl away and looked crossly at it. This set the two off
into fits of laughter again. Prunella looked sternly first at one and then
at the other, but she could not help it. Slowly a grin spread across her
face. As their laughter subsided she put her arms around them and rested
her head first on Xavier's shoulder and then on Noel's. They were quiet.
"I love you both," she whispered after a while.
At the other end of the Continent Zebulun March and Dan Amalek looked down
from a parapet at a hollow in the landscape that concealed its contents
well from the surrounding sparsely-populated countryside. Zebulun was making
one of his rare 'professional' trips away from his practice in the Capital,
those trips that allowed him a sojourn within the Brotherhood's main retreat
and secret fortification. He had been congratulated on the success of his
mission, and was basking in the appreciation of his normally reserved and
taciturn Brothers. The two men were waiting for a briefing with the Council
of Elders. During the wait Dan had pointed out the developments in the Bowl
that housed the 'material' that Zebulun himself had contributed to over
the years. These consisted of two small enclosures with primitive wooden
buildings and outhouses amongst a profusion of trees at opposite ends of
a hilly common.
Their conversation was interrupted by the call to audience. Hushed, they
entered an archway and walked through dimly-lit tunnels, taking an endless
succession of turnings at the behest of their silent guides, until finally
entering a chamber deep within the hillside. It was lit only by torches
mounted in finely-wrought iron caskets placed regularly around the room.
As they stood there, Zebulun could gradually make out the sectioned walls
that made up the perfectly cylindrical chamber, fashioned with precision-guided
laser cutters that could inlay stone into stone with tolerances of only
microns; different granites and polished lava-stones made up the intricate
designs that formulated the heritage of the Brotherhood. Two of the sections
bore the scars of some terrible battle of long ago, but the gouges and chips
had never been repaired: the Brotherhood had pursued its illicit technological
researches with only one goal in mind - that of flight - and had not wasted
its energies on the more mundane benefits of science. The overall effect
of the chamber was to bring Zebulun, a junior in the Brotherhood hierarchy,
to a state that combined an acute dread with an exultation and sense of
power that was overwhelming. He stole a glance at his companion. Amalek's
forcedly cheerful persona was gone, and his florid features had set into
an impassivity matched by his expressionless eyes. Dan would be amongst
the Elders one day, and only the complete master over his lower nature could
hope for this.
Zebulun knew that the waiting was part of the ritual, and repeatedly yanked
his wandering mind back to the discipline of silent awareness. After a period
the discipline established itself, and Zebulun could observe with relative
tranquillity the entrance of three tall men dressed in the sober garb of
the Elders. They seated themselves and beckoned Dan and Zebulun closer.
Dan stopped some distance from them, but Zebulun was brought in front of
them, giving him an opportunity to examine their features. The first had
a haughty air with bushy eyebrows that contrasted with his otherwise clean-shaven
skin; the second had bulging eyes set in a dark, gaunt face; and the third
had one penetrating blue eye and another that was rheumy and pointed in
the wrong direction. The first started talking, using a VocoSynth to augment
the remains of his cancer-ridden speech production:
"We are grateful to the Brother for help in rescuing our re-born Elder.
The Brother will be pleased to hear that the infant is well, and growing
in the Way. You have both served to help in the testing and development
of the Prototype."
There was silence for a while, and Zebulun could hear in his mind the flattened
electronic syllables of the last word echo and take on the significance
intended: the zeesuit was their symbol of, and means to, the New World.
Zebulun had made the tiniest of nods in response to the Elder's words, and
remained standing, hoping that his exterior projected some of the dignity
and solemnity that he was trying to infuse his mind with.
"Your location and recent experience have suggested to us that you
should be entrusted with a second mission, a more demanding one, which we
shall inform you of in the near future."
Again the flattened syllables echoed in his mind, in particular the word
entrusted which the Elder had given a peculiar inflection. Zebulun
nodded again, a little more hesitantly, and abruptly the interview was over,
indicated by a mere contraction of the bushy eyebrows. He knew better than
to question Dan about the mission, contenting himself with confirming arrangements
for the events of the next few days.
The following morning began with ritual chanting: the ancient words
of power were intoned over and over again, but this day with a special fervour.
They were to carry out the first full-scale mock-up of their New World that
evening. In their perception of the new order, the Brothers, limited as
they were to less than a thousand men, would take control over the savage
continents by the simple combination of their discipline and the one enforcing
device each one would be equipped with: the zeesuit. Zebulun had been taught,
along with other junior Brothers, that the mistakes of the Brotherhood in
the Civil War had shown them this: technology in most forms could only weaken
them, but by the judicious use of a single artefact they would fulfil their
destiny. That evening the twenty or so Brothers equipped with their existing
zeesuits would present a sort of theatre-play to the rest, as a celebration
of their entry into the Last Phase. Zebulun was chosen amongst them for
his pioneering use of the zeesuit.
After the chanting there was a tense silence. A ceremony was to be performed
as part of the service on this day: a recital of some of the verses of the
Book of Exultation, one of the oldest and most secret of their texts. A
very fat Elder gathered his cloak around him and slowly mounted an overhanging
pulpit fashioned from curved and shining metals. The clearing of his throat
echoed around the vault, and he began to chant in a high-pitched voice:
"The wise teach the wisdom of honourable action that one may sleep
well at night."
The Brothers roared their response with a pent-up vigour that expressed
their recently re-kindled sense of destiny:
"We laugh at this wisdom!"
The cantor paused for the echoes to die down, visibly bolstered by the power
in their voices, and then continued:
"The wise teach of an afterworld where the poor are rewarded."
The response came:
"The sick and the dying invented it, the impotent believe in it!"
"The wise teach distrust of the body."
"There is more reason in our bodies than in their best wisdom!"
"The pale criminal is ashamed in the dock."
"His pure murdering was tainted by theft!"
"Many are the books of the wise."
"Love only those that are written in blood!"
"The tree stands tall on the mountainside."
"To go high it has roots deep in evil!"
"The wise preach the virtue of death and of life everlasting."
"May the superfluous follow this teaching and remove themselves!"
"The virtuous shall have no enemies."
"May we have great enemies!"
"The wise have created the New Constitution."
"It is for the many-too-many, for the superfluous!"
"Like flies in the market, the many-too-many will stand in our way."
"It is not our fate to be fly-swats!"
"The wise advocate chastity."
"And the bitch Sensuality glares from all they do!"
"Be willing to wage war for a Brother."
"To wage war you must be capable of being an enemy!"
"The wise show us our common humanity."
"What is evil to one is decked in purple honours by another!"
"The wise teach us love of our neighbour."
"This is only bad love of oneself!"
"The ordinary man says it is a crime to be alone."
"We circle alone above them, we descend to make chaos!"
"The adder bites a Brother by mistake."
"It is not rich enough so it takes back the poison!"
"The ordinary man breeds from boredom."
"We shall propagate onwards and upwards!"
"What is the highest virtue of the ordinary man?"
"Choosing the right moment to die!"
The echoes of the last response died away to silence. The fat Elder was
almost purple with the effort of recitation, and Zebulun, glancing surreptitiously
amongst the Brothers, could see their chests heaving. He brought his own
breathing under control in the way that they had been trained, and stood
in the hall until the great brass gong was struck. The Brothers filed out,
still in silence, each one to make his preparations for the evening.
They gathered later in the fading light in front of the Council of Elders,
overlooking the bowl-shaped formation that housed the unfortunate men and
women captured and drugged by the Brotherhood. The serum, developed in part
by Zebulun, destroyed their memories and reduced them to a state where they
were moulded by the harsh conditions that they were kept in: they became
like the savages of the Old World.
The zeesuited Brothers, Zebulun amongst them, separated into two groups,
bowed, and on a sign from one of the Elders flew to separate points low
over the depression. Zebulun felt the eyes of the Elders and the assembled
Brothers viewing them, and gloried in his and their destinies, now to be
demonstrated, and soon to become a reality for them all. He saw the fires,
first as small specks of light, and then growing behind the two groups of
primitive huts, the first yells and then screams, and watched as the two
masses of squat-looking men and women stumbled out of their huts at opposite
ends of the common. As they assembled, shouting and grunting, a zeeman flew
down to each group and hovered, lit fluorescently just above them. There
was silence. The 'savages' fell to their knees, heads touching the rough
grass that their animals grazed on, and began to moan a low chant. The zeemen
instructed them in an ancient tongue, as the flames engulfed their dwellings
behind them, and suddenly they roared a single word in unison, muffled as
they still faced the ground. The roar was echoed by their counterparts facing
them, and on a command from the zeemen they rose to their feet and roared
again, brandishing their weapons. They beat their drums, blew their horns,
and banged their spears against primitive bronze shields. The ragged lines
of warriors were brought into formation, facing each other across the common,
in the middle of which stood a stone monument on a mound. The two zeemen
generals then screamed an order, there was silence, and they rose together
and simultaneously released electric bolts at the metal tip of the monument.
It was bathed for an instant in a blue glow, pierced by a virulent white
vein of electricity as the charge ran down the ancient copper strap and
spread radially over the dewy grass.
The thunderclap that accompanied the bolt echoed around the hollow, and
the two primitive armies ran towards each other making a fearful din. The
first screams of real agony came as men in the front lines fell to arrows,
and hand-to-hand fighting began at the base of the mound. Zebulun and his
team circled above, relaying pictures of the battle below to the screens
set up in front of the Brothers. Their craving for this first piece of 'reality'
on the Continent for centuries meant that they had to see it all, but in
the end they felt a little cheated: only the Brothers in the air could really
get a sense of the combat. The two sides were well matched, and the ground
leading up to the monument was occupied first by one group and then by the
other. Following radio instructions from the Elders the airborne Brothers
began to intervene with their bolts to protect warriors that emerged over
the rest, and who received the support of this Elder or that, and eventually
only the finest, strongest and bravest of the artificial 'savages' were
left. The Brothers finally had what they craved for: a descent into the
primitive purity of physical combat where human intelligence focused only
on the will to live and conquer.
The battle absorbed the community long into the night, with a handful of
remaining warriors attracting the shifting patronage of different Elders,
until eventually the instructions were given to destroy even these last
heroes and finish the 'demonstration'. Each and every Brother now saw his
destiny: they would in small teams present themselves as Gods to the men
of the savage continents, shape armies in their own image, and rule over
a pure world of physical survival. Great Empires would be won and lost,
and once a year they would assemble and celebrate their Brotherhood and
confirm themselves in the true Way. While they gloried in this vision, not
one of them considered the reality of the dead and injured lying in the
dark beyond them.
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