Nirvana Effect

by Craig Gehring

  Mahanta is not able to help - he’s no match for Dook physically. Only one person had a chance at interceding successfully for Nockwe. It was the only person under trance.

  Under the nirvana effect, the present was crisp and real to Edward. The past was just as definite. He could move his consciousness to any moment of it.

  He could move his consciousness to the future, as well, and calculate. It was much less real. It lay across many paths, many probabilities. Most real was the present and the few seconds leading from it. Less real lay the infinitude of survival patterns or deaths that lay ahead of Edward and his allies. Many portals led to his goals, his dreams, and survival. Few doors were open past this encounter.

  And still, Edward yelled the words of intercession.

  Mahanta turned abruptly to Edward in shock.

  Dook froze. Nockwe craned his neck up to see his benefactor. The hundred voices of the crowd all started jabbering at once. Edward could pick out every single one. “The white man intercedes! He’ll surely die. Thank the gods. Nockwe might live. He can’t do that. That’s Manassa’s slave.”

  Mahanta grabbed his arm. “You’re still trancing?” Edward nodded slightly. “That’s no assurance of victory. And the trance will end any time now. You were meditating for a while before I disturbed you.”

  Tell me something I don’t know.

  Mahanta slid a long dagger into his hand. The Jesuit gripped the handle. Smooth, well-sanded wood gave some weight to the slender, sharp blade. “These fights are to the death,” cautioned Mahanta. “Don’t be a forgiving priest, or you’ll end up the sacrifice.”

  Edward knew that outside of the nirvana effect, he would have difficulty delivering the fatal blow. He had never killed a man, and never wanted to. He shoved those thoughts away, along with the fear. The truth of the matter was that if Dook killed Nockwe, his own life was on the line. This was strictly self-defense from here on out; kill or be killed.

  Dook had made one long glance at Edward to size him up, but now refused to look at him. Instead, Dook spoke slowly, directly to Manassa, with one knee on the ground.

  “My lord, with all respect to your white magic servant, only a man of the tribe may participate in a challenge.” Nockwe writhed on the ground beside Dook, coughing.

  Mahanta surveyed the crowd. All eyes were on their living god, now. Mahanta matched Dook’s pacing. “So it was said by our ancestors, that the living god shall have all manner of creatures as his warriors. His servants shall number the thousands, of every race and nation of earth. My servant fights in my stead.”

  A harsh murmuring rippled through the crowd, chased by silence. The silence was golden to Edward. It seemed to shock Dook to his very core. Dook obviously hadn’t foreseen this eventuality. He had been stopped by his own living god at the moment of his greatest triumph.

  Dook clanged his daggers. Edward advanced into the middle of the dirt, then immediately drew back into the crowd, reshaping their arena so that Nockwe was now on the ground behind the audience. Bri’ley’na rushed to the side of the fallen chieftain and began to attend to him.

  Edward noticed the after-pain was starting to edge into his consciousness. He shoved it out of his mind, to the same place he’d moved the fear. In its place, he heightened his senses and pumped adrenaline throughout his body to prepare for the exertion to come. He knew he would not have much time, just like Nockwe and Tien hadn’t had much time. In mere minutes, the nirvana effect would be gone, and he would just be a puny white priest battling an animalistic primitive who lived by the hunt and the kill.

  Dook tested him quickly, jabbing gamely after they circled once. Edward saw the vector of the knife, saw that it would miss him, and refused to react, Dook’s swing falling mere inches from his body. The priest then swung his own dagger at the Onge, but Dook’s natural reaction time was far better than Edward’s. Dook feigned a sidestep, then swung under Edward’s blow, coming up with a knife aimed directly at Edward’s abdomen.

  Edward perceived every motion, every possibility. It was as though he were fighting the entire battle in slow motion, where he perceived one hundred seconds for Dook’s one. But he knew that even if the trance held out, there was a great chance he would not survive this encounter. The trance seemed to not be enough.

  Edward had new data now, data that might have kept him from ever stepping into the ring a minute ago. He hadn’t seen Dook fighting an able opponent. No wonder Mahanta had looked so incredulous. Dook was just so much more physically able than Edward was. The native was a killing machine.

  As Edward read Dook’s jab, he twisted his body backwards into the air. It was the only way out of the blow. His foot caught Dook’s wrist as he flew. The dagger went flying out of the Onge’s hand, but Dook still had another, and Edward didn’t land on his feet in the follow-through. Instead, he had to roll away and back up.

  In that moment Dook was already back on top of him, swinging furiously to press his advantage. Dook had the initiative.

  Edward was able to read each of Dook’s moves at its onset, at the first tension of the first muscle of his arms or legs. Every ripple of muscle foretold a change in direction. Edward knew exactly where Dook’s weapon was flying and exactly where his own body was in relation to it, as though he were fighting in an almost infinite slow motion. Still, it taxed Edward to the limit of his abilities just to keep the dagger out of his gut.

  The surrounding Onge crowd was silent, totally absorbed. They seemed awe-struck, watching as each of Dook’s swings drew a little closer, as the white man kept up his impossible dodges.

  Edward was unable to counterattack. Dook would inevitably hit him if he didn’t do something.

  Dook made a long lance at him. Edward stumbled back to avoid the dagger to his chest. He heard Mahanta instinctively cry out. The tribe shouted, too.

  Dook was about to pounce on him. Edward knew he needed the initiative, just one minute in which he had control of the fight. He probably only had a minute left.

  Edward let loose a bloodcurdling war cry. It was enough to make Dook flinch. As Edward stumbled backward, he planted his left foot and pushed off to hurl his knife through the air at Dook’s head. Dook ducked it, as Edward had foreseen, but lost his eye contact with the priest. That was all the distraction Edward needed.

  Edward dove, grasping Dook’s weapon. Dook tried to swing, but at the close distance Edward could feel every tension in Dook’s body. In the trance, Dook was an open book to Edward. Edward moved simultaneously with him in a deadly dance that kept the Onge from ever getting in a blow.

  Edward worked Dook’s arm around in an expert pattern…he’d seen it once…somewhere…something in his mind urged him through the motions. Edward leapt to Dook’s left, then behind him, all with the primitive’s arm in tow. Finally, Edward wrenched Dook’s arm around in a complete circle using both hands, and Dook flipped, his back slamming into the ground.

  Edward wrenched the dagger out of Dook’s hand. The Onge was defenseless, his arms flying up far too slowly to stop Edward’s inevitable killing blow.

  Stop! With a gut-wrenching twist on Edward’s nerves, the trance ended. He could not kill a man. He would try to give him mercy.

  No, he’ll kill me! Kill him! It was only a moment of hesitation, but that was all Dook needed to reach Edward’s wrist and deflect the blow.

  Dook kicked and rolled, and now it was Dook with the knife, Dook on top of Edward, Dook driving down his blade toward Edward’s throat.

  Edward could no longer break apart the perceptions. The slow motion of the battle rushed into a fast forward.

  As the knife rushed down, Edward thought of Callista. In the end he gripped her in his mind’s eye as though he might take her with him to the hereafter if he held hard enough.

  Thud. Dook’s body jerked to Edward’s side as though yanked by unseen strings. For a moment Edward did not react. Where Dook had loomed, there was only sky. The dagger had fallen away.

  Edward scampered up. Dook had a
long spear running out of his temple. Blood rushed from his skull and mingled with the muddy ground. Tien lay awkwardly on the ground nearby, his right hand still gripping the spear’s handle. He had lunged with spear in hand and collapsed once he’d hit his target.

  “Get him, get Tien, kill him! He’s broken the law!” The tribe shouted in uproar. The Onge surged into the ring and gathered around Tien and Dook. Edward slid through the crowd away from the scene, momentarily forgotten.

  A couple of the younger men grabbed Tien and started to drag him away. Tien’s woman shrieked.

  Mahanta burst into the center of the crowd. The tribe backed away. The Onge god examined the bodies. Both were dead. Tien’s tongue lolled out, his body limp, his face frozen in a determined scowl. His veins looked green, his skin pale.

  “He’s dead. The gods killed him for his law-breaking. He’s dead,” Edward heard the Onge muttering.

  “He lives!” shouted Manassa. The tribe quieted, stepping back even further to give their god a wide berth. Mahanta continued in the traditional tongue of the Onge. “He lives on with the fallen as a hero, for Dook poisoned him before he ever was challenged.”

  “Poisoned….he was poisoned…Dook poisoned him…” murmured the tribe.

  “Dook was to punish the whole tribe in his lawlessness. He would have been the end of our customs. He would have been the end of our tribe. Let this be known as the day that Tien, son of A’lan, saved our tribe from the traitor. Let it be known. These are the words of Manassa.”

  Mahanta abruptly left the circle without even waiting for his tribe’s response.

  16

  Edward followed Mahanta in lock step. They soon reached the temple. No one had followed them. The tribe was absorbed with handling the bodies of the two fallen.

  “Tien will be properly buried. Dook will be dragged into the woods,” Mahanta said matter-of-factly as they entered the hut. Edward feigned an interested glance. The pain had started. “The after-effects?” asked Mahanta.

  “Not as bad as before,” answered Edward.

  “You had him. The trance ended as you were striking.” It was not a question. Edward nodded. “That was stupid.”

  Edward shrugged.

  “Is that all you have to say, white man?” asked Mahanta. He was downright hot. His fists were in knots. “I can understand your logic - you were the most likely to defeat Dook between you and me.

  If Nockwe died, Dook might finish what he had started through Tien and have you killed…but still…”

  “Actually, that thought never occurred to me,” said Edward.

  Mahanta glowered . Edward was only inciting the Onge’s rage.

  “Nockwe spared my life that night at the coming-of-age. I felt it was only right to help him. I like him,” explained Edward. He chuckled.

  “You like him?! You did that because you like him?!” shouted Mahanta. He tugged at his hair, his voice filling up the temple.

  Edward felt frustrated. Mahanta had no right to talk to him like that, Onge god or no. “You know, there is such a thing as honor,” said Edward. “There is such a thing as doing the right thing.”

  “The right thing?” echoed Mahanta. He sighed and looked at the ground. He started laughing. At first, it was just a chuckle, but soon the rage melted into mirth. He lost his breath before finally settling down. Edward watched him incredulously.

  “You Christian martyr…” muttered Mahanta at length between chuckles. “Well, it worked this time. Maybe I should study your knight-like methods.”

  Edward was disarmed by Mahanta’s change in mood. “Maybe you shouldn’t,” said Edward. “I almost got slaughtered.”

  “You were certain, weren’t you, that you could beat him,” said Mahanta.

  Edward shook his head ‘no’, then reconsidered. “Yeah, I guess I was. And then I was very certain I was going to lose,” he said. “So I had to change the game and re-take the advantage. Then I was very sure I was going to beat him again. Then the trance wore off,” added Edward.

  Mahanta nodded. “I call it trance certainty.”

  “Trance certainty?” Edward repeated.

  “It’s a phenomenon I’ve encountered. I’ve observed a great magnification in the emotions of certainty and confidence while I’ve been under trance.”

  “Hmmm…” said Edward, thinking over his own experience.

  “Apparently, since a mind under trance has a great ability to cause the future, the mind tends to feel certainty about any course one decides to take. Even minute probabilities can seem great certainties while in trance.”

  “It’s a false certainty,” said Edward.

  “Well, not necessarily false at all. For example, let us say it was a little more right to you than wrong to jump into that fight. Well, even this slight differential in rightness and wrongness becomes a dead certainty in trance,” said Mahanta.

  Edward nodded. “I see.”

  “It’s key not to use one’s understanding in normal life to entirely evaluate data and conclusions while under trance. Trance has a different feel and feedback than normal life.”

  “Kind of like a blind man who gets his vision restored might react incorrectly to various sights for a while,” said Edward.

  “Yes, kind of like that. But don’t get me wrong. It seems that certainty has a great value. Certainty seems to me to be necessary for successful action.”

  They talked all night, mulling over Edward’s experience with the substance, comparing notes. They resisted the urge to philosophize, and stuck mainly to the facts and details of what Edward had learned while under trance and how Mahanta’s trances differed. They agreed on working on reducing the after-pain as a primary research goal, and Edward threw out some of his ideas.

  But when he finally lay down on his pallet, Edward could not stop mulling over Mahanta’s initial rage and condescension.

  There was another side to Mahanta that Mahanta did not want seen by the likes of Edward. Edward decided to protect himself from that side. Mahanta had given good advice. The only way he could trust Mahanta was to not trust him at all.

  Before he finally slept, he ripped the back page out of his journal and wrote a note. He rolled it into a tube. He scratched the bottom of the wooden crucifix hanging from his hut. He then carried the tube to the southernmost free-standing tree in the village and buried the tube three feet deep three feet south of the trunk. He was sure he was not followed. That was important, since it was his only “card in the hole,” literally and figuratively.

  It was an old Jesuit trick.

  17

  Dr. James Seacrest was knocking on her door. Callista was watching him through the peephole. Behind him she could see a red, distorted blob that could only be the cherry apple ‘95 Corvette that he’d bottomed out repeatedly in an effort to gain a date with her.

  She made the mistake of pressing up against the door to get a better look out the peephole. The deadbolt clicked against the jamb.

  “Callista?” asked Seacrest. “Are you there?” He squinted a bit.

  Oh, God, I don’t want to do this right now. After Friday night, she’d avoided him. He’d called several times. She didn’t answer or call back. He’d showed up to the clinic twice. She’d had Duiyon tell him that Dr. Knowles was still seeing patients.

  Watching that boy come back to life, watching that mother die and then resurrect all in the span of an eternal night, had touched a raw nerve. It was a desperation, a rush, an affinity that she hadn’t felt since her college years before med school.

  She still missed the man she’d almost married eight years ago. She had dated, of course, and tried to forget him. She’d buried her regrets in the middle of a nowhere called Lisbaad.

  And yet it had resurfaced, as it always did. She shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  Ridiculous. She chose this one particular island so she might have a chance to relive her past. And yet she tried to bury it. Ridiculous.

  She was right to bury, to forget. She had
to assume he would never come; she had to get on with her life. The many voices of her friends, her family and herself all told her that.

  She’d keep things going with Seacrest. He was a handsome man, a doctor, older than her, but still in his prime. No reason to stop. It might come to something. It might come to the new start she so hoped for.

  She would ruin it, though, if she saw him before she got her head straight.

  She couldn’t think of anything to answer him. He’d heard her. She couldn’t avoid him anymore. She saw him pace a bit on the porch. He probably feels like a fool.

  “Coming!” cried Callista, as though she’d just heard him. “Just a minute!”

  She sat down on the bench in her foyer and composed her thoughts. She breathed and thought. She wiped a tear off her face.

  You’re coming apart at the seams, Callista. It’s just a boy out there. You’re acting like a traumatized wacko. You are Doctor Callista Knowles, not Cali, Oxford undergrad with a melting heart. Pull yourself together.

  She saw him, though, in her mind’s eye. He wouldn’t bury, not yet. So she just tucked him into a corner of her mind and stood up. She opened the door.

  Seacrest had flowers behind his back. He showed them to her. She smiled, but it took her too long to do so. She saw him reset his stance. It wasn’t a look she was used to from the typically over-confident Seacrest.

  “Hello, Callista,” said Seacrest, gently passing her the flowers.

  “Hello, James,” said Callista. “And thank you.”

  “No problem,” said James. He examined her face, then fiddled with his pockets a bit. He seemed to be deliberating on something - something he’d seen in her eyes. He sighed quietly and smiled. “Thank you for the lovely evening Friday night. It was very good for my soul.”

  She smiled back at him weakly. “You have a soul?” she muttered.

  “Occasionally.” He smiled. She could tell it was only for her benefit. His body was a lot slacker than it had been just a second ago. Excitement had been replaced by something almost fatherly. “I want to let you know that whenever you’d like, I’d love to enjoy another dinner with you. And if that’s never, I’ll understand.”