by Adele Abbot
Gods, from the small strutting self-important kind to the great aloof beings who can barely comprehend the verities of physical life—Calistrope had met enough. And he did not care to be coerced into proselytizing for any of them.
Roli, next to Ponderos, whispered to him. Ponderos nodded and leaned towards Calistrope. “Keep Turain talking,” he whispered and Calistrope was left to keep the conversation afloat alone.
“What do you need a congregation for?” he asked. “The truly ancient Gods think their own thoughts. They do not wish communion with the likes of us poor mortals—um, souls.”
“Souls? Look around you man. Look at the souls of the millions upon millions who once worshipped me. They sleep here now, dreaming beatific dreams for all eternity. No more toil and hardship, eternal bliss is their lot.”
Calistrope could think of little that he would care less for. However, he kept the thought to himself. “Souls?” he asked. “What souls?”
“All about you. The baubles that even now, you tread on so thoughtlessly. They were my worshippers and have come into their own reward.”
With alacrity, Calistrope stepped off the blue gems under his feet. “Souls?” he said in wonderment.
“Souls. You live, little man, then you die. Without a patron such as myself, what happens? Pff! Your soul flits away like a moth and expires. Here you will sleep and dream forever.”
Calistrope shook his head. “I have already lived more lives than I can remember,” he said. There were subdued sounds from behind the dais; a glimpse of movement. “And they have all been filled with more interesting things to do than dream.”
Turain did not answer him. The God’s eyes seemed focused on eternity, his jaw gaped.
“Turain?” Calistrope went closer. There were more sounds from the rear of the dais and Turain’s eyes snapped wide open, Calistrope could feel their blaze like hot sun upon his skin. The hand reached out faster than a bolt of lightning, the tip of the God’s index finger brushed against his chest, light flooded Calistrope’s brain.
Joy and happiness, ineffable pleasure, sublime contentment… brilliance, radiance, warmth. It visibly streamed towards him from Turain—a beautiful youth whose smile was like the springtime sun. Tenderness enfolded Calistrope; love, compassion, sweeter than a mother’s for her new-born infant enveloped him, buoyed him up.
Here was Calistrope’s heart’s desire, everything he had ever sought after, everything he would ever need.
Calistrope was bathed in the warm glow, the beneficent rays of a young sun caressing his body, his mind, his soul… and it all suddenly died away…
Darkness, cold, loneliness. A loneliness such as he had never felt before came over Calistrope. He wept great tears of grief, rivers of anguish. He lay on the hard ground of that brilliantly lit place and cried in the utter desolation of the darkness of the God’s going.
“Calistrope. Cal…” A warm, hard muscled arm cradled his head. A familiar hand stroked his brow. “Whatever is it that ails you my friend?”
Calistrope looked up, silhouetted against the brightness was the dark shape of a familiar face, a friend who had loved him since long before their present memories began.
“It’s Ponderos,” said the friend.
“Ponderos,” Calistrope sighed and with a great effort, pulled himself to a sitting position. He looked up at the now still statue of Turain and shivered.
“It’s all right Calistrope. We found the key and turned it off.”
“Off?” Calistrope’s brow wrinkled. He touched me Ponderos. He poured his love into me. It was like… like… I can’t explain it Ponderos, I can’t describe it. Now that it’s gone, it’s like the greatest loss I’ve ever suffered.”
“It was an automaton, Calistrope.”
Calistrope shook his head. “All that love, just for the taking.”
“Not real Calistrope,” Ponderos, his voice harsh, wrestled Calistrope to his feet and together, he and Roli marched him around the side of the dais to the back. “Not real, Calistrope, look.”
Calistrope was still on the edge of despair but he allowed himself to be manhandled and pushed onto his knees beside a hole torn into the back of the dais.
“Roli noticed it first. The statue is part of the throne—or vice versa. Turain couldn’t leave his seat, it’s all a clever working model.”
Calistrope peered into the hole where a panel had been torn away. Inside, the dais was hollow. Pipes sprouted from the ground and connected to pumps and cylinders which were, in turn, connected to wheels and gears and levers. More tubes ran up the inside of a dark shell—what could only be the torso of the seated God on the throne above them.
On a casing, just inside the opening, was a handle. It rested in an upright position. Roli took hold of it and wrenched it downward, it turned on pivots through 180 degrees. There was a sigh of in-drawn breath from above them, an exhalation…
Calistrope’s eyes swiveled upwards in their sockets and he slumped forward. Softness engulfed him, tender thoughts stroked his mind, loving… “Off,” he groaned. “Turn it off for God’s sake, turn it off…”
The sensations faded and he opened his eyes once more. His head was haunted, his mind tormented by the remembrance of that suffocating love, the terrible certainty that here was the one true God.
“Can you break it Ponderos? Break it so that it can never be used again,” Calistrope sat down with his back against the side of the dais and when he heard the shriek of tearing metal, he nodded. “Thank you my friend.”
Later, as they supported him to the doorway, Calistrope asked: “What’s a penny?”
Neither Ponderos nor Roli could give him an answer.
“Something I heard once,” he told them. “A priest, I think. I’d stolen a jewel for him. “God’s are ten a penny, nowadays.” He said.”
Outside, after some time had gone by, Roli went to the pool in front of Al Jehan’s Monument and caught three of the silvery fish. Baked, they proved very good to eat.
Calistrope sat and ate what was given him and drank when the cup came around. All those souls, he mused. As lovely as gems and as hard. What would happen to them now, now that their God was dead? What was there to inspire their endless dreams?
While Roli slept and the hours passed by and the curious piebald moon rode the skies of the exhibition space, Calistrope sat and told Ponderos of what he had experienced.
Ponderos, brow wrinkled, tried to make his friend realize that it was all a sham. “This is an exhibition, Calistrope, of ancient monuments. There was no God in there, just a clever model.”
“I felt Turain’s touch, Ponderos,” Calistrope reached over and placed his hands on either side of Ponderos’ skull. “Inside. I spoke to him…”
“We all spoke to him.”
“… and him to me. Terrible and beautiful, Ponderos. Incredible.”
“Ersatz emotions, ersatz feelings. They were projected by the machinery underneath the throne, so that whoever the automaton touched could feel what the power of a God felt like.”
“Well,” said Calistrope, only partly convinced. “Perhaps you are right. I hope you are.”
A fish leapt from the water at their side and splashed home again. The sudden noise disturbed Roli and the lad sat up, his hair disheveled and eyes puffy. He shuffled over to the fire and poked about in the ashes until he found a few fragments of the fish they’d baked between the hearth stones.
“Well?” he asked between swallows. “What do we do now? Anyone—“ he picked a flake of white fish meat from between his teeth, “know how to get out of here?”
“I’ve no idea at the moment,” said Calistrope. “Perhaps the same way we got in here, by wanting to.”
“However we do it,” said Ponderos, “it would be better to walk east from here until we come to the end of this little cosmos. Distances are not so great in here; we would save ourselves some effort.”
Calistrope raised his eyebrows. “I never thought to hear you advocate an easy w
ay, my friend.”
“That tumble from the cliffs has aged me, Calistrope. While I have to favor these ribs, anyway.”
Roli grunted. “An easy way is the way to go,” he fished in his pocket and pulled out a grimy kerchief on which to wipe his greasy fingers. A shower of clear blue stones fell from the folds as he shook it out. “Hmm. Forgotten those,” Roli began to pick them up.
Calistrope waited until he had picked up every one he could find. “You’d better put them back where you found them,” he said.
Roli looked at him oddly. “Put them back? There’s a Guildmaster’s ransom here Calistrope. You should be pleased with my foresight, we’ll all be rich men when we return.”
“They’re souls Roli, not gems.”
“Come now Calistrope, They may not be sapphires but I’d thought we’d cleared all that up. Not souls again.”
Calistrope shook his head. “Whatever. They are not sapphires, Roli. Have you never seen a sapphire?”
“Of course not. A few copper flakes was the best haul I ever made.”
Calistrope fumbled in his bag and brought out a flashing blue stone which caught the mixture of silver moonlight and the magenta sunlight and threw it back in a score of different directions and blues. “That’s a sapphire. Cut, of course and polished,” he handed it to Roli who compared it with those from Turain’s palace. Reluctantly and somewhat crestfallen, he handed it back.
“Keep it,” said Calistrope and Roli was at a loss. “I can always make another.”
Eventually, Roli settled on delight as the pre-eminent emotion and dropped the other stones into the moss and short leaves.
Ponderos broke in. “Shall we go?”
“Oh no.” The voice was not Calistrope’s nor Roli’s but that of a sudden newcomer who’s form wavered like a coil of smoke on a still day. As they turned to regard the newcomer, the figure strengthened, grew firm, became that of a man in his middle years, a man with a thin acetic face and long somewhat unkempt hair. He was dressed in a blue robe which both matched his eyes and the blue stones which Roli had thrown away a minute or two before.
“No,” said the man again, his voice more vigorous than before. “Certainly you have done us a service but having gone this far, surely you cannot go without finishing the task you began.” What started as a threat ended almost as a plea.
“And what task is that?” asked Ponderos, a dangerous edge to his voice.
“You have freed twenty seven of us. You must free the rest who still sleep and dream the insipid fancies foisted upon us by Turain.
“And how, pray, would we do that? Hmm? Twenty-seven of you out here, how many millions of you in there?” Ponderos asked as he saw the vaporous forms of other men and women burgeoning from the fallen soul-stones. “In the Palace of Turain the God?”
“There must be a way.” The shade almost wept. “There must.”
“I can think of none,” Ponderos was cool. “Whatever we did, it would be a grain of sand on a beach. A nothing. If we labored a, er, a lifetime, it would still be nothing.”
Calistrope laid a hand on his arm. “Let us think about it Ponderos, at least. Let us sit down here and think. Perhaps there is a way,” he looked at the released soul. “Sir, what is your name? Do such as yourselves have names?”
They sat down. The shades gathered about them.
“I am Arctorius, from the Delphine.”
“And I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Calistrope,” Calistrope introduced the others and then turned to Roli. “Roli, have you more of the stones on your person?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then give one to our ectoplasmic friend here.”
Roli took out a green stone and offered it. Arctorius took it and looked at it. “From the Alamatera.”
“Beside the point,” said Calistrope. “The point is, that you can hold it, you have enough substance to carry the stones.”
The other nodded.
“Then each of you go back into the palace and bring out a double handful. Wait until they sublime or whatever you call it and let each one who returns bring out two handfuls. It will take a long time to—to resuscitate the many millions but it can be done and with no great effort from any of you.”
“We cannot go in there. The light will condense the souls into hard stones again. That is what it is there for.”
“The light?”
The other nodded slowly.
“Hmm. I wonder if the stones float. Roli…”
“Why?” asked Ponderos.
“Perhaps we could float them all out with water.”
“And where would the water come from?”
“That’s a different problem. Roli…”
“No it isn’t, Calistrope. It’s the same problem.”
“Well, there is a certain logic in what you say. Still…” Calistrope thought for some time and then grinned. “Another solution occurs. If these, er—evaporated? If these souls can carry the soul stones, are they material enough to carry ordinary stone? Would you try it? Lift that one there, the flat one.”
Arctorius bent and took hold of the stone. He straightened up, lifted the slab.”
“Good,” said Calistrope and grinned again. “The solution then, is simple. The roof of the pyramid is formed from slabs of stone, so we lift a slab and let natural light into the palace. The natural light will resuscitate your fellows—at least, I think so. Roli?”
Roli turned, a question in his expression.
“Be so good as to take two stones and put them on the ground. Keep your hand over one of them.”
Roli did as he was bid and Calistrope put his own kerchief—considerably cleaner than Roli’s—over the lad’s hand. “Now we wait.”
They waited. A streamer of white vapor eventually curled up from the uncovered stone, the vapor darkened, took on form, color; a lovely young woman looked down at them with sparkling but puzzled eyes.
Calistrope took the square of linen off the other gem which, in due course, became a young man with an age and racial aspects similar to those of the woman.
“You see?” asked Calistrope, looking back at the main group. “Natural light. That is what brings you back to life.”
“You have a clever mind,” said the speaker for the souls.
“Indeed I have,” Calistrope replied, his grin a trifle too wolfish to be entirely trusted. “Now. I said we will lift the slabs, but the we was purely rhetorical. You will lift the slabs—although my muscular friend here, will, I am certain, be happy to lift the first one for you. Will you do that, Ponderos?”
“Naturally. Follow me, Arctorius.” Ponderos crossed to the pyramid to do as Calistrope had asked. “Your deductions were brilliant, Calistrope. As always, of course,” he said as he passed by Calistrope.
Ponderos climbed part way up the twenty degree slope and began checking the stones which faced it. He found a slab that seemed less secure than most and slowly worked it free, letting it slide down the slope to the ground. Another followed it and another. Light from within shone on his face.
“Quite enough, Ponderos,” Calistrope called, hoping that what he had seen had gone unnoticed.
Straightening up, Ponderos waved and slid down the slope, jumping over the several squares of stone that had preceded him.
“Now,” said Calistrope. “Your turn.” And as first one, then another, began to scramble up the slope, Calistrope ushered his two friends away with some urgency. “Time we left, too,” he told them.
“Calistrope, the light inside the palace is really very strong. It might swamp the daylight on the outside.”
“That is a possibility. A very real possibility and one which I have taken into account. Ponderos, I would prefer to leave quite soon.”
There was a sort of long, drawn-out ping from above them. Calistrope guessed it was the sound made by a soul being reduced to a small, hard stone.
“In fact, I wish to leave immediately.”
Roli had heard the start of the conversa
tion and had not waited for its outcome. He was already halfway to the barrier when the sound of conversation among the reconstituted souls changed from heated to enraged. Ponderos and Calistrope lost no time in catching up with him.
At the barrier, they stood with hands against the unseen surface. “Now, want to get out of here with all your strength.” The crowd of souls was coming nearer. “Concentrate. All else is inconsequential.”
In the end, it was not a matter of mental muscle; rather, it was more the way in which the problem was considered. Roli was first to find the trick. Perhaps his past history of thievery helped or perhaps it was the familiar sound of angry voices in pursuit or even the combination of both which made him take the mental side-step past the barrier rather than through it.
Moments later, Calistrope and then Ponderos joined him and turned to look back through the boundary. Inside, the preserved world was as it had been when they first came upon it: a tall statue with a serene countenance, a beautiful mausoleum reflected in a placid sheet of water, a large low pyramid.
They walked parallel with the river, along the bank towards Turain’s Palace and by chance, Roli chose that moment to look back over his shoulder. He plucked wildly at Calistrope’s sleeve and then pulled Ponderos to a halt. “Look,” he gasped at last and pointed.
Little more than a chain away from them, directly in front of Al Jehan’s Mausoleum, three figures stood: a tall spare fellow in a midnight blue surcoat, a slightly shorter but much broader man and a youth. At the point where they, themselves, had first slipped through the barrier, the three others contrived to pass through also. Inside, they were visible for a few moments against the light from the placid pool, then they faded from view.
Calistrope cleared his throat and turned resolutely away and began to walk. Ponderos and then Roli followed after. They walked for an hour, passing Turain’s Palace, which stood within its shell, unaltered: plain, craggy, unadorned. Intact.
Old days came and went. The valley they traveled along—sometimes narrow, sometimes with many leagues separating the high walls—meandered onward towards the East.