World Walker 1: The World Walker

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  Father O sat still for minutes, his eyes closed. Initially, Seb was shaking, but as time went by he became calmer, his breathing returning to normal. The facts were the facts, nothing could change that. But he couldn't carry on like this.

  "Have you ever experienced the presence of God?" were Father O's first words after ten minutes silence. Seb felt his mood drop even further. Was that where this was heading? A religious lecture? He felt a spark of defiance rise up as he reached the limits of desperation.

  "I'm not sure I even believe in God, Father," he said. Father O didn't react, just looked at him, his expression, kind, concerned but still completely calm.

  "Well, for now, let me just posit two possible hypotheses," said the priest. Many boys rolled their eyes when he started speaking like this in the classroom, but Seb usually felt a secret thrill hearing someone use language imaginatively. Now didn't quite seem the appropriate time, but Father O was Father O, and he wasn't about to change his style of communication to pander to the miserable boy sat opposite. "Firstly, can you accept that the God you don't believe in doesn't exist?"

  Seb let that one whirl around his forebrain for a few seconds, then nodded cautiously.

  "Good. Secondly, would you find my initial question easier to ponder if I substituted the word 'reality' for the one you currently find troublesome? Like so: have you ever experienced the presence of reality, Seb?"

  Seb caught himself before he went with the impulse to respond immediately in the affirmative. Again, Father O's conversational teaching style was at play here. Socratic dialogue; by asking questions, he hoped to help his interlocutor reach the logical conclusion by answering them fairly. As soon as Seb gave the question more than a brief examination, he found it wasn't quite that simple.

  "Um, it depends what you mean by reality," he said.

  "How so?" said Father O.

  "Well, er, what you experience might be different to me. I could never know really."

  Father O nodded. "And?"

  "And if we can't agree on what reality is, I can't really say I've experienced it."

  Father O leaned back, the old leather chair creaking under his weight. "Yes," he said, "quite. And much food for thought there. A couple thousand years of academic discourse hasn't solved that one yet. Let's make this a little more pertinent. To experience reality - whatever that might be - purely, would we not have to do so without preconceptions, opinions? Without filters - both cultural and personal?"

  Seb thought again. "But how can we do that?"

  "We can't," said Father O, and laughed. Loudly.

  ""Big help," muttered Seb, but Father O just smiled and leaned forward.

  "Seb," he said, "I want to teach you a technique which will help you experience reality. This technique will not help you to achieve anything. You will never improve at it, because you are already perfect. But it's the work of a lifetime."

  Seb looked blankly at him. "You're not making sense," he said.

  "Good!" said Father O. "This has very little to do with what our societal consensus would accept as sense. However, I believe it's the calling of every human being."

  Seb narrowed his eyes. "Is this some Catholic religious thing?" he said.

  Father O sighed. "Religion is often a beautiful thing, but it can also be a monster," he said. "Don't think of it as a corrupt institution, however accurate that might be. Try thinking of it as a scaffold around the Truth. Sometimes it can be helpful, sometimes it obscures what it professes to reveal. Perhaps Truth, Reality, God, is ungraspable by human minds. Perhaps we can only be grasped by it. Don't get caught up in the chatter and the display, Seb. It's what's underneath that matters. I, personally, have found my vocation helpful in approaching this Mystery, but that doesn't mean it's right for you. You could equally be a Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, Atheist. It's all just words. And what I want to pass on to you cannot be taught, only learned. Without words."

  "How the hell did you get into priest school?" said Seb. Father O stared it him for a few seconds. Then he laughed uproariously and stood up.

  "Seb, you're a good person. What you did was wrong. That particular combination will shape your future. But the past is dead. I don't mean to diminish the seriousness of what happened. You rightly feel remorse and I don't think what has happened will ever leave you. I certainly hope not. It will become part of you. And, whatever you believe, God's forgiveness is greater than any human mind can conceive. They taught me that at priest school." He winked at Seb. "Now go and get some sleep. Be here at 6:15 tomorrow morning."

  Chapter 27

  New York

  Present day

  The penthouse suite of Manhattan's Keystone Hotel was furnished in such a way that suggested good taste while simultaneously making it obvious only the insanely rich could afford to stay there. There was only one suite on the top floor, a private elevator coded to respond to the thumb print of the current occupant the only way in. Sonia Svetlana was the current occupant, but even the Keystone's paranoid precautions to ensure privacy weren't enough for her. She rented the entire hotel for a year paid in advance. The owner, a career woman who had quietly built one of the biggest property empires in the country, had barely raised an eyebrow when the offer was made. A week later, all but six of the hotel staff left on 12-month sabbaticals, their bonuses generous enough to ensure none of them would have to work until their return.

  The Acolytes of Satan moved in the day after the staff cleared the building. Sonia was always amused by the way Americans reacted to the name of her organization. Most assumed it was some kind of European fashion brand, as Sonia's outfits were always handmade. Some thought it must be a death metal band. On one memorable occasion, a conference room had been booked under the name The acrobats of Santa. Sonia, often suspected of having no sense of humor, liked to think her response on that occasion proved otherwise. She had only blinded the booking manager in one eye. Actually, the name was the idea of her predecessor, Magnus, possibly his only good idea. He called it 'hiding in plain sight' and his hunch proved to be absolutely correct.

  "Call ourselves the Deltox Corporation or some such nonsense and we're heading for a fall," he said. "If there's ever a whiff of scandal, a whisper about what really goes on in our board meetings, the media will be all over us. But tell them we believe in the devil and we'll be laughed at, shunned, but never taken seriously. Put up a website, release a quarterly newsletter with small ads selling wizards' cloaks and cauldrons and we'll be dismissed as harmless eccentrics from the old country."

  So that's what they'd done. And it had worked just the way Magnus had said it would. They had only ever received one letter from the US Government, and that was to remind them that, as a religious organization, they were entitled to register themselves as a charity and claim tax breaks.

  After deposing Magnus in a fashion gory enough to discourage any challengers for the foreseeable future, Sonia had implemented the Light-bringer Initiative. The Initiative was simple, brutal and effective: a systematic wiping out of Manna users powerful enough to present a threat to the Acolytes. There were very few names on the list she compiled. Most Users were barely aware of the potential of their abilities. The Acolytes' successful operations in Australia, Germany and Japan were the culmination of five years of hard work, identifying, infiltrating and finding the weaknesses of these powerful individuals. A month ago, there was only one name left on the list, and a name was still all they had. Mason. Their adversary here had proved to be so obsessively secretive that he was virtually invisible. But if the prophecies were to be fulfilled and Satan returned to his rightful place of power, he would have to be found and sacrificed. So the Acolytes had decamped to America and taken over the Keystone, as the only slight lead they'd found suggested New York was where they'd find Mason. Then, just under a week ago, everything had changed.

  Sonia had been awake when it happened, checking on the health of her collection. The collection currently consisted of five young men between the ages 19-24. Half
of the penthouse suite had been cleared of furniture, the only decoration now a huge five-pointed star on the floor. At each point of the star stood a wooden X, made up of two thick oak beams eight feet long. The men were tied spreadeagled to these crosses. They were upside-down, gagged, their ankles and wrists tied firmly in place. Their bodies had, over the three days they had been suspended, lost their original color and taken on a gray-white, sickly hue. Under each of their wrists was a drainpipe. When she bled them, their blood was carefully channelled, joining where the system of drainpipes met, gradually filling a clay jug thought to be thousands of years old.

  Blood from living sacrifices was considered essential by the Acolytes. Sonia painted the ancient symbols onto her naked body with the freshest blood available, conducting arcane rituals passed down over many centuries. Standing in the center of the pentangle, feeling the terror of the dying men around her, always produced a thrill. The sacrifices were kept alive as long as possible by attending to their essential needs, but only the strongest survived more than 72 hours. As the rituals took place every full moon, a constant supply was needed. New York had turned out to be one of the easier places to find victims, one of many points in its favor, which included good connections by air and excellent sushi. All in all, Sonia was feeling content and confident. They would find Mason, it was just a matter of time.

  That night, as she neared the end of the ritual, she suddenly felt the skin of her scalp prickle and a hum begin in her brain. It was like a powerful machine starting up. Among the Acolytes, she had always been the most sensitive. She had felt it before, whenever she was in a hundred miles of someone using Manna on a large scale. This felt different. The engine in her brain screamed with energy and she dropped to her knees. The intensity was greater than anything she'd yet experienced. She knew immediately that this was new, a new User, someone more powerful than anyone the Acolytes had yet encountered. Alongside her shock - and the pain caused by the sudden awareness - she felt the thrill of knowing this individual was undoubtedly the most powerful User in the country, maybe even the planet. Mason could wait. She would need to follow the trace to its source.

  An hour later, she knelt in absolute stillness as the last inverted man twitched and became still. She had followed the threads of awareness from the machine in her head toward the burst of Manna that had started it. As her eyes opened, she gasped. Because of the strength of the sensation, she had assumed the User was a block or two away, no more. But she was wrong. He - and it was definitely a he - was more than 2,000 miles away.

  That evening, she and three senior Acolytes boarded a plane to Los Angeles. From there, she picked up their quarry's trail and left for Las Vegas. Sonia's encounter with the man in the casino was both the most humbling and the most exciting of her life. He had survived. Not just defeating the team of experts they had used to capture him, but her Manna-fueled onslaught. She had returned to New York thoughtful and focused. It was going to take more than just her power to destroy him. But she would destroy him. She would harness the combined power of all the Acolytes with her if necessary. Mason could wait. She had encountered the most powerful User in recorded history. Surely this would be enough to summon her master. And, thanks to a candid photograph taken in the Casino, she now had a name for the final sacrifice: Sebastian Varden.

  Chapter 28

  Las Vegas

  The garden turned out to be the patch of ground hemmed in by the horseshoe of trailers. Mee just stood and stared. Bob was startled by the incongruity for a second, then his military training kicked in and his gaze swept the area, first left to right, then up. In his army days, he would have been looking for entrances, exits. Checking for vulnerabilities, weak points - useful knowledge for both defenders and attackers. His military brain analyzed the information - because of the rocky hill it backed onto, the only way in or out of the garden was through the back door of any one of the seven trailers. From the north, south or west, it was hidden by the way the trailers were arranged. From the east, the rocky scree-sided hill blocked the view. Which left above. And dozens of umbrellas, parasols, gazebos and various faded pieces of material covered the entire area. From above, from a plane or helicopter, the whole place would be effectively camouflaged. But why would you want to hide a garden? Bob cleared his throat.

  "Why would you want to hide a g-," he said. Then he stopped using his training and looked properly for the first time. Because of the total shade provided by the makeshift cover, the garden never saw any sunlight. Bob was no horticulturalist, but he knew enough to work out that total lack of sunlight would prevent photosynthesis. In other words, nothing could grow. And yet what he was looking at wouldn't have looked out of place in the finals of some community gardening competition. Every shade of green was on display, plus orange, purple, white, yellow, reds peeping through at intervals between the lush canopy. Bob recognized some thin leafy tendrils pointing out of the rich, dark soil near him. They were carrots, he knew that. Where the hell did rich, dark soil come from in a desert?

  The woman who'd introduced herself as Diane laughed openly and goodnaturedly at the bewildered expressions on the faces of Mee and Bob.

  "We forget how it feels, seeing it for the first time," she said. She walked down a grassed pathway, which neatly bisected the space before branching off in both directions to allow access to other areas of the garden. Mee hung back a little, her brain whirring with questions. Bob walked at Diane's side. He was a practical man and he was struggling with the events of the previous 48 hours. A friend had died, come back to life and moved at inhuman speed. His beautiful dog had been cruelly killed. And now he, Mee and Seb were being pursued by some kind of ruthless secret military unit, probably with the knowledge and funding of the government. And one word was on his mind, begging to be spoken. He gave in to the pressure.

  "Irrigation!" he said. Diane lifted an eyebrow.

  "How do you do it?" he said. "You don't have a single channel cut into the dirt here, no hosepipes coming from the trailers. And it would take gallons every day to keep this going. I saw carrots. What else do you have growing here?"

  Diane thought for a moment.

  "As far as I remember," she said, "we have onions, garlic, shallots, leeks, peas, zucchini, eggplant, cabbage, broccoli, bok choi, cilantro, celery, lettuce, chicory, artichokes, tomatoes, peppers, soybeans and lentils."

  "Not bad," said Bob, "considering they're not getting water. Or sunlight." He stopped. There was something that had been bugging him, now he knew what it was. Underneath the canopy, the entire garden should have been dark, but it wasn't. Somehow it was being lit, but not by any kind of lighting Bob was familiar with. No one area was brighter than another and the overall effect was that of mid-afternoon sunlight. He checked for the source of it but came up empty. No light bulbs, no lamps, no nothing. Whatever technology was at play here, every gardener in the world would want it.

  At the center of the garden was a section that had been allowed to retain its native quality - that of dry, thin, dusty soil. There were pebbles strewn across it. As Bob and Meera got closer, what seemed random at first revealed itself to be words, spelled out by careful placement of hundreds of small stones.

  μαθαίνουν διδάσκω περιμένετε

  "Greek?" said Mee. Bob turned and looked at her.

  "You're full of surprises," he said. "What does it say?"

  Mee wrinkled up her nose.

  "I know what Greek looks like," she said, "but I wouldn't have the first clue what it says."

  Diane turned to face them.

  "Learn, teach, wait," she said. "It's what we try to live by."

  "Is that it?" said Mee. "No big holy book?"

  "No," said Diane. "No book."

  "Not even a leaflet?" said Mee. Diane shook her head.

  "Website? Social media?"

  "No," said Diane. Mee considered for a moment.

  "Now I'm confused," she said. "You're some kind of religious community, right?"


  "That's as good a description as any," said Diane.

  "So people join you, right? Become part of the community?"

  "Yes they do," said Diane.

  "But you have no books in the stores, no leaflets and no online presence at all. So how come you haven't died out? How long have you people been going? How many of you are there? And why have I never heard of you?"

  "Let's sit down," said Diane. The grass was dry, the earth beneath yielding and comfortable.

  "The Order is a very private community," she said. "Private, not secretive. It started between 1700-1800 years ago in the Middle East. Our founder was a hermit who devoted his or her life to discovering the nature of reality as experienced by humans. We don't know for sure whether it was a man or a woman. It's certainly unimportant. But most anecdotal accounts speak of a man, so that's the pronoun I'll use. He didn't follow any particular wisdom tradition, although it is very likely that he would have been influenced by Buddhism, Hinduism and, possibly, early Christianity, which was going through quite an upheaval at that time."

  "In what sense?" said Bob.

  "Well, it had been adopted as the official state religion by the Roman Emperor Constantine," said Diane. "A mixed blessing, at best. It probably ensured the survival of Christianity as a religion, but the compromises involved split the early church. There was a very strong movement by zealous followers away from the watered-down version - as they saw it. Thousands of them moved into the deserts. Small communities sprang up. Some went further and sought absolute solitude."

  "And your founder was one of them?"

  "In a way, yes, we believe so. But not as a Christian. Just as a hermit, a holy man, an ascetic. He spent many years alone before having some kind of experience, a vision of sorts, after which he left his cave and began to travel. During this time, he would camp just outside settlements and wait. He might remain there for a few months, during which time, local people would seek him out for spiritual guidance. Some would stay. He would move on and leave them to continue practicing what he taught."