Ten Directions

by Samuel Winburn

  Kalsang shook his head doubtfully. The gesture deflated the man's hopeful smile. "Yes, are you are named August Bridges?"

  "Ah ha." The man reclined back in his webbing.

  And so it was. Kalsang was pleased to have remembered. But, who was August Bridges? Then he remembered.

  Amazing. There was no doubt that this was the same man, but it was extraordinary. August Bridges was so powerful. How could he be here? Kalsang felt sure he was hallucinating, and it didn’t instill confidence watching d'Song and the others wandering about in the background. That the ship was full of aliens was more likely than this. There he was, the very face Kalsang had imagined had tried to murder him to hide the truth of the message from the stars. The very man. It was too unbelievable, but there he was.

  And here he, Kalsang, was also. Isn’t it? He had survived. Equally impossible.

  August, the man at the center of the whole mandala, was sitting here, with Kalsang, an ordinary monk, in the middle of vast empty space.

  “Lamala?”

  But even the omniscient mind of his precious teacher could not bend space and time to make something as extraordinary as this happen. Could it be possible?

  Trying in vain to fit the impossible into the reasonable, Kalsang fell naturally into the routine of analysing the situation using Buddhist logic. His mind, his Lama’s mind, mind itself, although able to shape reality by the labels it applied was not autonomous from that which it labelled. So, there was no separate omnipotent mind. On the other hand, the materialists might say they were tiny points in an unimaginably vast objective frame and, if so, August and his meeting was too improbable to occur. Isn’t it? They were so insignificant. But the universe was not like that. The universe was composed of its parts, all equally insignificant. No universe existed separate from those parts and, so, equally dissolved into insignificance. Instead, everything arose together, in non-dual dependence, a symphony of liberated energies dancing together from time without beginning.

  But the reality was too enormous to wrap up like this in mere concepts. Kalsang felt the cause, and his part in it, binding the whole galaxy, passing through stars and lifetimes to manifest in this moment. Tentacles sprouted from his legs and new heads opened out of his neck like birch buds popping in early spring. His body was interchangeably human and alien until he became uncertain of the distinction, blending with the many faces and limbs of enlightenment. A single heartfelt intention was bearing fruit in a continuum of being that stretched from so long ago and far away. Centuries of momentum made the impossible inevitable. Kalsang was the name currently attached to one part of it. August was also attached, in another way. As the wave travelled through their lives it had crested in their having tea, here in the middle of nowhere.

  “You are looking very handsome Melded One,” teased d'Song.

  Kalsang had not felt more whole and alive in a long time. He smiled warily at August. What were they creating now he wondered?

  Chapter 31 - August

  Uselessness hung heavily on August. The sluggishness of his exhausted body had been a helpful counter to his derangement and hyperactive imagination. Now that his body had begun to repair, and his insanity had subsided, his increasing reliance on the comforting regularity and relaxed presence of his unlikely shipmate began to bother him. It was shameful, in fact dangerous, to feel not wholly in possession of his fate.

  August devoted the first efforts of this new phase of his rehabilitation to clean the Icarus. The automated scrubbers, with the assistance of gravity provided by the Garuda, had rapidly cleaned the air, stripping away the filth and stench and replacing it with a dry, antiseptic odor. The walls required vacuuming and scrubbing, and every crevice harboured new challenges. He found the action therapeutic, as if, as the monk had suggested, the offal and grime on the walls were the stains on his soul. If only it were so easy to wash those away.

  He became possessive of the project. He shooed off the monk’s attempts to pitch in until the inscrutable little man dutifully retired to his hermitage on the other ship. The actions of cleaning, the friction of hands and scrub brush on the walls and floor, were like painting reality back into his surroundings. The sweat and resistance returned his body to him, exorcising the wraith that had until recently inhabited that zone. Sometimes his thoughts broke in, like a drunkard invading a prayer meeting, and the brush became a weapon of vengeance, obliterating his enemy. It was not difficult to image Gudanko's treacherous essence into the slimy ooze fleeing before him.

  Engrossed in his task, August lost track of time. When he stood back to admire his progress he was surprised at how much of it he had made. There remained very little of the open wall that he hadn’t scrubbed clean. Ignoring the protests from his stomach he approached the darker crevices.

  Prostrate in an open vent he felt a hand grip his leg.

  Now what did that monk want? When August slid out of the vent he found himself alone. The monk was nowhere in the Icarus. Perhaps he had imagined it.

  Returning to his work he heard movement and a sharp bang behind him, as if the monk had knocked over something big.

  “Hello?”

  No answer.

  Suddenly August felt compromised in his position, laying with his arms and head stuck in the vent and his belly exposed without. What if an assassin was hiding elsewhere in the monk’s ship? It was a stupid thought, but enough to make him jerk and scramble out of the vent. The room was empty.

  “August.”

  Illya’s whisper sent a shiver through him. August scanned the room for something sharp.

  “August.”

  Wielding his brush, August advanced into the aft cabin.

  “Who do you love?”

  August stopped and shook himself. Was he going mad again?

  His heart beating, August dropped the brush and scrambled as quickly as he could through the airlock, back to Kalsang, back to sanity.

  Kalsang was sitting there, ensconced in his meditation, eyes half-closed and working his beads. August, convinced Illya was following him moved as close to the monk as possible, huddling into a protective presence. Kalsang opened his eyes and smiled at him.

  “August-la. Are you all right?”

  Kalsang looked up but his eyes went somewhere else in the room and he smiled cheerfully. Why did it sometimes look as though the monk was relating with some invisible persons lounging about the room with them? Could he see Illya?

  “Is there something August?” Kalsang inquired in a calm voice.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Okay, okay. I will make us something for tea.” Without further ado the monk stood and left him, chasing the shadows before him as he went.

  Feeling alone again, August cast his eyes around for something to do that would distract him from his ghosts. The monk had left his neurovisor behind. He had noticed that the monk often took it off when he meditated. It occurred to him that this was an opportunity to find out the truth behind his little friend.

  When August had first heard that the monk had disappeared off the grid he was in the thick of construction on the worm hole. Still the news brought him low. He had grieved for the brave soul who had made ultimate sacrifices to bring his Dream into fruition. Perhaps, he had told himself, there was yet hope that the man had survived despite the loss of communication and was on his way home. It was this hope he had shared in the requisite press release to the shareholders. A generous donation had been made to the monk’s monastery to sponsor prayers for their lost comrade. Now here they were together. The timing was right, but it was too incredible. It had to be checked out.

  Keeping an eye down the airlock corridor, August warily donned the monk’s neurovisor. He grunted from the shock - inserting another person’s custom fitted neurovisor was very painful. As icy electric fingers dove into his brain, August coughed and threw up in his mouth and, with a concerted act of will, swallowed it back down.

  A neuroview emerged, fuzzy and shaky, but with the standard Mirtopik mnemes
still recognisable. August thought his way through the security workarounds Calvin30 had schooled him in and scanned the opened field for summaries.

  Visions flickered through August’s mind like half remembered memories of dreams. Long and complex sequences recording various ship malfunctions for later reference. All manner of recorded visualisations of strange religious iconography and memories of other monks talking or mumbling prayers or performing monotonous rituals. Silly and sentimental neuropics of animals and nature landscapes downloaded from the neuronet. Targeted recordings, marked by Mirtopik’s deep space science division, zoomed in across an alien landscape of pink ice and strange dark geysers.

  His heart pounded as he suddenly flew upwards from a jerky and panicked panorama of a coral and black streaked world receding below towards an improbably small fleck of white growing into what he recognised as a deep space transporter, the same model as the Garuda, at the end of the trajectory. He recognised the world below as Triton. So, the monk’s impossible story was true.

  August steadied himself from the rush and his gaze snapped back to monitor the airlock for Kalsang’s return. He took deep breaths before he re-entered the neuroview, reminding himself to keep part of his attention on look-out down the airlock corridor.

  To confirm his discovery August sought out some of the uncleaned extra-terrestrial transmissions that he remembered pouring over as they first downloaded, recorded in his memory in loving detail. There they were, unblemished and complete, not chopped and tagged by the commercial-in-confidence people as the rest of the world would have seen them. They were all there down to the last fateful transmission in the file catalogue.

  Something was wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Long shadows fell down the airlock passage indicating the monk’s movements.

  August concentrated hard on the list scrolling past in his imagination. And then he saw it. The dates were all wrong, recorded weeks or months before he had first seen them. He zoomed in to confirm when they had been downloaded. Perhaps there was some technical delay of which he had never been briefed. The log confirmed that they had been transmitted to Earth first on the day they were recorded and then, inexplicably, a second time on dates that matched what he remembered, and a third time for the ‘official’ download.

  Kalsang’s long shadow strolled across the threshold into the room. August reached for his forehead and then paused. The neuroprint requesting the downloads. It was Gudanko’s. August recoiled with shock as his hands gripped the neurovisor preparing to pull it off before he was discovered.

  Returning fingers gripped around the lip of the airlock and August ripped the neurovisor out, hurling it towards the monk’s webbing, which launched him backwards.

  Pain powered through his body as it jerked into an epileptic fit, doubling over, his teeth cracking against each other as they sliced through the tip of his tongue. Firm, smooth hands pulled him downwards as he fell into darkness.

  Sometime later he awoke, his vision blurry and his mouth aching and dry from the gauze packed into it. He was tucked comfortably into the monk’s sleep webbing. Kalsang hovered in the middle of the cabin, legs crossed and hanging in another webbing.

  August squinted, sizing up his newly unmasked enemy with respect. The sophistication of this plot was astonishing in its scope. He had no idea where it was heading or how the monk was involved, as he surely must be.

  Imagine rigging the Triton array with a dual transponder and to slip this past even Calvin30 for so long. August grinned despite himself - the little smart ass had finally missed something, and a security breach of this magnitude was an unforgivable mistake. Gudanko would have had plenty of lead time to prepare, to undercut his position, to poison the Board in advance of any new discovery, which explained perfectly the loss of confidence and threats to kill off the ET programme. Once the goods had been delivered, when August’s grand bet had paid off spectacularly, they’d brought in the assassins. When that failed, the evil toad pulls in his conspirator, this harmless looking monk, to cross the solar system to clean up for him.

  Of course, the Triton station had failed nearly a year past. To meet him here on such an exact trajectory, could it all have been planned from that far back? August groaned, and the monk pulled up next to him to replace the gauze on his forehead. Why, thought August, doesn’t he simply finish me off now when I am incapacitated or, more to the point, before when I was more a wreck? Why help me?

  Perhaps the monk simply needed his company for the long road home, but there was something else. August prided himself on being a good judge of people and the monk did not seem to have an insincere bone in his body. More likely he was also a pawn in this game. Perhaps they both simply being collected together, to be secretly dropped into some unnamed lunar crater when they arrived back home, conveniently disposing of two birds with one stone? How had the monk survived in the first place? Any sensible scenario eluded August. He decided to bide his time.

  As the hours unrolled along the long passage to Mars, August became convinced of the monk’s innocence. After watching him carefully, it occurred him that the monk seemed peculiarly guileless, more so than perhaps any person he had ever met. Even Gregori. More than that, this assumption came with a certain convenience. The demons of his own mind still lay waiting and were presently a more imminent threat. August allowed himself to relax and enjoy the rare luxury of a companion.

  He regaled Kalsang with his story, his personal hagiography. August the visionary who rose as a humble servant among the Nets repairing the damaged Earth until he saw the chance to touch the stars. The conquering of Mirtopik and the launching of the remote listening posts to Europa and Triton. The collection of alien civilizations that had earned him respect even while living in the exile, an injustice that had been so ungraciously imposed upon him by his former comrades.

  Kalsang proved to be a poor audience. He was polite but yawned and looked around out of boredom.

  His mother. August had mentioned her as a footnote. Suddenly Kalsang was all questions. What was her name? How long had she lived and how had she died and how had he felt about it?

  “She left us long before she died, and I have not visited her grave,” August snapped.

  “But I think you were a good son to her,” Kalsang added hopefully.

  “Yes, I was a good son. Yes, I have been. But she could not be a good mother.”

  August, red faced, had sulked for hours after that exchange, but was drawn back to the telling of his autobiographical epic. Some monk’s bad manners should not interrupt the important task of practicing the reclamation of his legend.

  Later, as he recounted the days in Siberia and the creation of Mirtopik, the unprecedented union of Net and Com that had catapulted him into space, Kalsang had the audacity to bring the story back to Illya.

  “This man? You say you killed him?”

  “Not myself, no, but I feel responsible for it. He killed himself really.” August pushed on without explanation.

  “And your friends from the Net, where are they now?”

  Gregori and Anya, where had they gone? August had no idea.

  “Why should I know?” he grimaced, and then, in a resigned voice, explained, “It has been too long, I do not know what has become of them. I should not care. You see, they turned against me. They were not my friends in the end.”

  “That is how it is,” replied the monk with a sad shrug.

  Backing off, the monk became a less active listener, allowing August to finish his stories uninterrupted, and this was preferable.

  As August arrived at the end of his story, delivered in increments over days that had no boundaries, August noticed a focus return to the monk. As he mentioned the last transmission, the Golden Prize, the grand glory of his career and especially the building of the wormhole through space to Mercury Kalsang’s inscrutable face turned pale. Why?

  Those fleeting expressions surprised August but gave him an idea. Could Gudanko’s betrayal also be the monk’s tra
gedy? It didn’t add up. Why would Gudanko kill the goose that laid the golden eggs? Unless the monk knew too much. Turning off the lights would not have damaged the assets, but it might have covered up some collaboration. What would have been significant enough to trigger homicide? Nothing made sense.

  August continued, describing his ascent to divinity and the moment of treachery, where his rightful place at the prow of this grand new era had been taken by a pretender. Now, there was an opportunity to help right this wrong and return custodianship of this incredibly powerful technology to a true leader of vision and responsibility.

  August sat up to his full height to emphasize the point, his hair straining to retrieve its former stature, weaving a spell to draw Kalsang out from behind that damn neutral civility. He appealed to the monk’s sense of mission, which must surely sit behind a monk’s decision to give up women and pleasure and life and go into exile.

  As his center of gravity shifted, August began to slowly pivot backwards in the webbing. The pivot occurred so incrementally that August did not notice his predicament until too late. He finished dangling ridiculously in his webbing with his back to the monk, his hair grazing the floor. When Kalsang reached to help him, August brushed him angrily away and the gesture pushed him back into a bulkhead where he banged his head. Sputtering in indignation August roared, “Gudanko doesn't know who he is playing with.”

  He noticed an expression of concern flash across the monk’s placid face. He had managed to touch something there. Steadying himself, August smiled awkwardly as he pulled himself together.

  “There are dangers with the technology that this man does not fully appreciate. Only a responsible person should oversee it. Someone with a truly altruistic vision such as myself. Not this man with blood on his hands.” August sighed theatrically. “Perhaps it is more than any man should be responsible for.”

  Kalsang’s expression shifted into an intent gaze that felt like it was shining light into some dark corner of Augusts’ soul that no one cared to look into anymore. August smiled weakly back. The monk raised his eyebrows to some unseen audience.