They led him to one of many caves. Within, he saw jugs of water, some seeds, a comfortable cushion. He unrolled his own mat, and slept.
Day was more shadowed here than on the plain, and they had a spring which caused this valley, hanging like a suspended bowl far above the plain, to bloom with strange plants.
He woke before dawn to find them gathered around him, waiting. He didn't even reflect on what was happening. He had sat zazen every morning for years, and he sat today too. They all did. Their long, slim limbs easily twisted into lotus.
Kyo was finished long before them. So as not to disturb them, he said his vows silently, stood with the merest rustle of robe, and walked further into the recessed valley.
Soon, red foliage cloaked the lower portions of the cliffs. Flowerlike yellow growths were stark and strong against blue lava rock. He passed a patch where grains he and his fellow monks lived on flourished. He hoped they were watering the garden. He missed them, and Roshi.
Roshi. They meant him to be their Roshi. The craziness of his situation electrified him.
His hearty laugh echoed throughout the little valley.
They came floating up the valley then, and hovered around him in doubtful attitudes. One touched his mouth, the tears on his face, observed Kyo questioningly.
"I am laughing," he said, filled with wonder; delight. He could not, literally, remember when he had last laughed. When he was a kid, with Io, stealing Chinese crack seed from under his Auntie's nose? Out surfing Makaha, rushing shoreward balanced on the lip of a killer wave? On his wedding day?
Laughing, echoed his mind in nineteen whispers.
He set to getting his strange dharma charges, who called themselves Hanalb, into shape. Sitting before his cave one evening, he went over his usual roster of puzzlement.
How did these creatures reproduce? Eggs? Cloning? He had no idea. There were no youngsters. When he asked, he encountered a wall of deep sadness. A sadness so deep they could not formulate any thoughts about it.
He turned to another constant in his roster.
Beer.
With the reverence of ritual, he took his little packet of yeast from its cool resting place in the cave. He ran his thumb over the smooth plastic bag, yearning to unleash the power within. He could do it here. There was plenty of grain at this higher elevation. How he wanted to have something to drink! He still clung to memories, and the memory of entering neon-lit bars in Honolulu at two a.m. was tensho-like. He had to let it go, yet it fell squarely into the category of holy.
The Hanalb thought him a Roshi. He didn't quite understand that responsibility; until he did, perhaps it was best to wait to carry out this enterprise. He had failed at everything else; when he drank, he was able to forget, for a little while, that nagging, gnawing feeling that he could face nothing, that he was worthless. A pleasant little forgetting. Immensely pleasant...
He sighed, returned the package to its niche, and left the cave.
One morning, he noticed that two of his monks were gone. From beneath lowered eyelids he counted. Yes, only seventeen. His first reaction was that of old Kyo. He would wait, see, and learn.
But then he was all fierce Roshi. Not thinking. Just doing.
Where are Tyseralise and Miniell? he asked sternly.
Not one of them shifted in their meditational attitude; not one blinked.
Where? he shouted, then "Where?" aloud.
One of them rose, and took him by the hand. He was led to the lip of the cliff, where he stood, staring.
Finally he made them out, two tiny dots moving across the lava field.
"They will die! We must go get them!"
The creature beside him shook his head, and when Kyo took a step down the faint path etched into the sheer cliff, the creature grabbed him with powerful arms and dragged him back from the cliff.
Kyo shrugged him off. "Where are the ones who brought us to this planet?" he asked the air. "The ones with the ships?" This tiny enclave existed in the same primitive manner as the monks across the lava plains. They used no technology at all.
The Hanalb would answer none of his questions.
Kyo turned away, and hiked up the valley with furious speed. Following a faint path up a side valley, he came to a cave he had discovered soon after he arrived. At the back was a tunnel. Next to the tunnel, on the floor, was a ceremonial bowl of blue lava.
Kyo had flirted with the thought of entering it before, but feared becoming lost, falling into a fissure, or worse.
Now, brimming with frustration, he crawled inside.
The intense darkness was oppressive, but he continued crawling. He determined to go as far as he possibly could, no matter what. The tunnel narrowed. His shoulders were wider than those of the Hanalb, and he feared getting stuck, but the thought that the Hanalb used this as a passageway forced him to continue.
Finally, after what seemed ages of crawling through the dank, still darkness, he emerged onto a tiny ledge, scraped and bleeding.
What he saw made his chest ache with joy.
A small, intricate settlement blazed white far out on the blue lava plain, reminding him of a lone rogue white-topped wave on the blue Pacific.
Next to it was the ship he remembered from Honolulu, or one like it: tiny, no longer luminous. He looked at it for a long time, struck by the dreamlike quality of what he saw, the bizarre and absolutely outrageous fact of his presence here.
Wherever "here" was.
Kyo slid from ledge to ledge until he found a path leading down.
When he found the first body he sat next to it for a long while. His heart contracted in simple, unrelenting pain.
After the fifth body, he stopped counting. There were too many, each in the same position, which he suspected had ceremonial significance.
At the top of the final foothill before the lava sloped gently to the plain where the buildings sat, he paused.
The place seemed deserted. The sharp, intense beauty of its gracefully intersecting planes, opalescent as they caught the light, reminded him of wings.
Linda's wings, as she floated on the wind, outlined against the achingly blue Pacific.
Hanalb wings. On what were they meant to glide?
The ship was still several miles away. These people can fly, Kyo thought fiercely. They came to Earth. What has happened to them? Battling tears, Kyo descended the last few miles until he came to the wall surrounding the buildings.
A frieze along the top, about a half-meter high, depicted an astounding assortment of beings. As the sky lost light, Kyo circumnavigated the city, scrutinizing the graphics.
He saw what he realized were the developmental stages of one species after another, as from one of his old biology texts, depicted with salmon-pink stone inlaid on polished blue lava.
Each series of pictures ended with a schema of a solar system, and tiny, intricate signs which he assumed was the Hanalb written language.
Directions?
A final, winged Hanalb divided each segment from the next like a period.
Once Kyo understood, he moved frantically around the wall, searching for the pictorial statement which would show him the developmental stages of the Hanalb.
He found none. There was only the winged Hanalb at the end of each and every series. He was overwhelmed by the number of beings with which the Hanalb were apparently familiar, beings which crawled, swam, or ambulated on oddly shaped limbs covered with fur, scales, skin, beholding life through eyes which dazzled by force of their sheer variety.
Then he found the human segment.
All the phases of reproduction were painstakingly shown. Each stage of growth was portrayed. He recognized a Tibetan monk, a Catholic nun, a tall black woman dressed in ritual garb he did not recognize. He pressed his hand against the large graven Earth; the polished blue surface was cold. Asia was just a rough edge; Hawaii, a tiny string of dots.
Next to that, unmistakably, a nun sat in zazen, followed by a winged Hanalb, sitting in lotus.
"Enough!" he shouted. He hoisted himself over the wall and dropped onto a narrow street of polished lava.
Yes, the city was empty, eerily quiet. He swiftly passed two streets and crossed courtyards where fountains splashed and huge flowering plants overflowed their receptacles; walked beneath tiered balconies and searched the open abodes for signs of life.
He could see the ship beyond the city, glowing blue in the last reflected rays of light. He imagined, briefly, climbing inside, seeing controls which he couldn't master, yet somehow doing it, and setting a course for... where?
Where?
The question reverberated through his being, filling him with melancholy which hit with inescapable force.
Then someone called his name from the shadows in a faint, raspy voice.
"Kyo!"
Long used to the mindspeech of the Hanalb, he turned; waited for a long, silent moment.
"Come."
Kyo wanted to turn and run, back to his tunnel, back to his cave, back to his safe sangha. But the voice held him.
It was human.
"Who is it?" he asked, but the words came out like rusty water from an unprimed pump. He cleared his throat. "Who is it?" he demanded, sternly. Odd authority flooded him.
Receiving no reply, he stepped, stepped, and then more boldly still, strode toward the source of the voice.
He entered an intricately tiled courtyard, smooth and heat-holding in evening's sudden coolness.
Though the light was dim, he saw a Hanalb propped against the wall, obviously weak and barely able to speak.
He knelt and examined the face.
Memories surfaced: the Pantheon, a place in Honolulu that had refreshed him A talk more mindspeech than words, a testing of his depths.
"Kalihi?" He was chilled to realize that, though some metamorphosis had taken place, he did indeed recognize his Auntie's friend. Kyo gazed for a long moment on this Hanalb, trying to see which elements gave him such certainty.
A set of head; the way her features meshed; the bladelike face which was mostly nose. The strong, pure glance, which, though suffused with suffering, conveyed a deep, universal amusement with existence and herself as a part of it.
Kyo embraced her. Her body felt as fragile as that of an insect; her skin was rough and dry.
"But you are human," he whispered.
She shook her head. Never. But - yes.
"What do you mean by that, Kalihi?" Kyo's voice was hard and demanding. He could tell she was dying, yet he wanted to shake answers from her.
Once we grow wings, speech is difficult, was all she said.
But Kyo had learned to read their expressions, and she seemed to be smiling. Her enigmatic refusal to reply angered him.
"Yes, what a joke," he shouted. "I was brought here!" he shouted. "Taken from my home."
Earth is dead. It was destroyed by an asteroid soon after you left. You are alive. She nodded toward a half-drunk bottle of sake. Be glad. Drink.
Alive? What did he know about being alive? Why did he deserve to live, when everyone else was dead? "You drink!" he said, rising, robes whirling around him. He grabbed the bottle and tilted it against her mouth. She swallowed. "Why are you dying? Why do the Hanalb die?" He felt his eyes fill with tears. "You just walk out onto the plains and die. Where is everyone? I have no one to tell me these things. Please, Kalihi. Please. Why did you take me from Earth? An entire race of beings is gone. Why didn't you bring some women? Or at least some genetic material -" he was working himself into a rage when she stopped him with her clear, precise thoughts.
Genetic material. What good do you suppose genetic material is? It's everywhere, Kyo. In spite of that, all has failed. The beautiful experiment has failed. I thought to live here for a long time, after returning, to think, to work, but -
"What experiment has failed?"
She tilted her head as if gauging him. Why do you strive for enlightenment, Kyo? Why do you believe that such a state exists at all? Do you ever wonder about that?
"I think of little else."
Tell me, Kyo: can you save others with your transmission? That's what you're here for.
Though so sophisticated, they held this strange delusion. He would do anything to save the Hanalb. But he was helpless, stupid. "I have nothing to transmit. Nothing. I have experienced no realization. Such a transmission is passed from Zen Master to Zen Master after years of preparation. It isn't passed to - to idiots like me. I can save no one. Least of all myself."
Her silence, in the darkness which had fallen, had a curious quality he didn't understand. Finally, her thoughts sounded again.
There is another way.
"After someone has done a lot of work, Kalihi. That sort of thing doesn't happen to people like me." He knew what she meant. Buddhist texts often stated that enlightenment could occur without transmission - or simply, when the moment was exactly right, be triggered by an otherwise insignificant event.
It happens precisely to people like you. And for a very good reason.
He said, as evenly as he could, "Tell me what you mean."
Isn't it paradise, she replied, laboriously, to believe that true consciousness is possible? Even now, even at the end of everything?
Kyo didn't reply. He felt no paradise, only despair.
A moon was rising, so he could still see her face, fissured more deeply than any other Hanalb's he had seen. It occurred to him that he'd never seen one without wings, and he wondered what they looked like.
She gazed at the stars, which had spread brilliantly into that dark void which stopped his heart with pain and distance each time he looked at it. So many beautiful places. So many beings.
She was wandering. He followed her mind on this new track.
"The Hanalb have travelled to places other than Earth?"
Everywhere, she sighed, and that sigh generated for him a comprehension of the probable dimensions of the Hanalb empire. Everywhere searching for the thought, the place-of-mind, that would keep us from growing wings. Or... take us to the next stage. There must be one. There must.
Kyo smoothed her beautiful wings reverently. How could he save the Hanalb from their own wings, from something that seemed a natural unfolding of life -
And death.
"Will other Hanalb come?" he asked, his heart beating fast. If only! "Perhaps - return with answers? With - someone who knows how to use these technologies - whatever must be here, whatever gave you the ability to -"
I do not know, she replied. But her thought was limned with darkness. Perhaps she knew, and didn't want to tell him the truth. Or think it, even to herself. Perhaps this was just an outpost, an emergency stopping place...
"Kalihi, where is your home planet?" He hoped she would point vaguely at some quadrant of the sky.
Everywhere, she answered without hesitation.
Kyo shivered once, violently, at the idea which occurred to him at that single word.
"Kalihi," he asked, "Where then are the Hanalb children?"
Her whisper in Kyo's mind set it on fire.
Once, we were everywhere.
She looked at him then with a gaze so powerful it wracked him.
In her eyes he saw beautiful Earth, lyric and fine, forever lost. How had he ever thought his own life important? The questions which left him sleepless: Who am I? Why am I here? intensified, until he felt surrounded by a crowd roaring in his ears, within his very brain.
Kalihi's wings, arching up from her shoulders and enfolding her arms, reminded him, once more, of Linda's wings, and that they had not worked. Linda had wanted him to be her wings. To simply ask the right question. With a word at the right time - with perhaps just a smile, a transmission of love through space - he could have saved her. That thought renewed his agony a hundredfold. It twisted within him, unbearable. There was no escape. There never would be.
At that instant, trembling, vision locked with an alien being, he felt the universe splinter and reform around him: new, simple, complete.
> Kalihi closed her eyes. Her wings shuddered.
He knew, without checking, that she was dead. It seemed to him at that moment that she had just been waiting for him to come before letting go. How? He did not know. It did not matter.
That was her transmission.
He stood, and planted his feet far apart.
His shout was a force that came from the roots of the planet and found its destination in the hearts of distant stars.
In the silence that followed, a hot wind rushed through the leaves of the deserted gardens, and those stars pulsed above.
The tang of alien herbs overlay the scent of water from the fountains. That scent of life was replaced, when he passed out through the gate, by a dry, dusty wind that made him feel shrunken and old.
He climbed the cliff in the light of the planet's moon, not caring if he slipped. He thought nothing as he crawled through the tunnel and collapsed on the other side.
But he could not stop his dreams. A myriad of beings grew from nothing, bursting with life, and danced a rapid, weaving dance while he watched helplessly, unable to dance with them. Then they dwindled to a small, glowing dot which hung in space an instant before it vanished forever.
Kyo woke lying on his back just outside the tunnel. He opened his eyes and was confronted by the alien sky, tauntingly blue as a mid-Pacific day. His first thought was of Kalihi's answers.
Everywhere, their children.
Everywhere, their home planet.
How plastic, he wondered, is the basis of life? How mutable is the physiological basis of consciousness? He remembered that when he was in medical school, a renegade movement claimed that thought could alter the course of disease. Ridiculed, of course, by him as well as most people. Maybe, maybe not. But thought, translated into action - into vaccines, visualizing machines, genetic therapies - could. What else could thought do? Time was so vast for the Hanalb, and they had tried so many things, that thought-into-vaccine was probably as short an iteration as an eyeblink was to him. However long he lived, he doubted that he could understand, much less master, the technology the Hanalb had let go of. Or at least, it seemed from his point of view that they had. That might be true. It might not be true. A glowing ship might arrive in the next instant. What if it did?
Engineering Infinity Page 14