by Iain Banks
This is called Receiving.
Naturally, some people hear the Voice of God more clearly than others, and they are usually called prophets.
A prophet's first vision or revelation will tend to be the most intense but also the most debased by all that the prophet has experienced before. It follows that the first codification of that revelation will be the least perfect, the most contaminated by the prejudices and misunderstandings of the prophet. The full story, the real message only comes out gradually, over time, through revisions, glosses and apparent marginalia, all the result of God's persisting attempts to make Themself clear through the imperfect receiver that is the human soul.
Much of what other prophets have said, before all the above was made clear to our Founder, may be useful and true, but because their teachings have been corrupted by being institutionalised in the form of large religions, they will have lost much of their force.
The best strategy is to treat the revelations and teachings of others with cautious respect, but rely most fully on the teachings of our own OverSeer and listen to the Voice from inside all of us, the Voice from God.
Merit and calmness are to be found in the out-of-the-way, the byways of life; in the unnoticed, in the hidden and ignored, in the interstices; amongst the gaps between the slabs in the pavement of life (this is called the Principle of Indirectness, or the Principle of Interstitiality).
Therefore there is goodness and the potential for enlightenment in doing things differently, seemingly just for the sake of it.
The less conventional and normal one's life is, the less interference, the less jamming one will experience from the machinery of civilisation and the more receptive one will therefore be to God's signals.
Being born on the 29th of February is a good start.
* * *
Is it starting to become clear? The fact that I am not taking a train or a bus or even hitch-hiking to Edinburgh but instead am floating and paddling down this virtually untravelled stretch of twisty, muddy old river with the full intention of walking round half the city when I get there is because to do so is important for the holiness of my mission; to travel so is to sanctify the act of journeying itself and correspondingly increase my chances of success when I arrive at my eventual destination because I am travelling in the uncluttered sight of God, with a soul as uncontaminated by the fuss of Unsaved life as possible.
I paddled on into the misty, brightening morning, passing between more fields where cattle stood, coming within hearing of the main road, and seeing the roofs of a few farms and houses over the grassy river banks. I passed the remains of what must have been a small suspension foot-bridge in the shape of two obelisk-like concrete structures, standing facing each other across the brown waters. Near Craigforth House I had to negotiate a river-wide blockage of tangled tree-trunks and debris, and almost left my hat behind, snagged on a grey, weed-hung branch. I went under a pair of bridges and then swung round another bend to where the Forth is joined by the Teith. An army base lay to my right. The matt green aluminium hulls stacked on the grass were the only boats I had ever seen on the river upstream from this point.
I passed under the concrete expanse of the motorway; one lorry rumbled overhead in the sparkling mist. Immediately, the current increased as I approached some small low islands and passed two fishermen on the left bank, standing on the first sandy shore I had seen; then I heard the rush of water ahead, and knew the tidal weir lay before me.
The tide was in and the rapids negligible; my inner-tube craft bumped into a couple of submerged rocks and I'll own that my heart did beat a little faster as I was swept down the broad white slope of rushing water, but the total drop must have been less than two feet and I estimated that the worst I risked was a soaking. I got a few odd looks floating through Stirling, but you become used to stares when you're a Luskentyrian.
* * *
I had hardly slept that night. After our various councils of war and a long briefing session with my Grandfather in his sitting room, part of which Allan sat in on (during which, it must be said, Grandfather became gradually the worse for wear courtesy of a bottle of whisky), it had been late into the lamp-lit darkness when Brother Indra had reappeared from his workshop to declare himself satisfied with his alterations to the old black inner-tube. The inner-tube had been the largest of the inflatables the children had been using in the river during the previous summer; we had no paddle as such but Indra suggested the trenching tool. Sister Jess left for Gargunnock, the nearest village, where she would post a letter to my half-brother Zeb, in London, telling him to expect me within the next few days. On the way back she would call in at the Woodbeans' house and use their telephone to send a signal telling of my coming to the house of Gertie Fossil (a process much more long-winded than the words I have just used to describe it).
Meanwhile I had been given the old kit-bag which had been in our Order almost since it was founded and which had something of the status of a holy relic with us, and chosen what I would put into it. Sister Erin handed me a thick roll of paper cash, bound with a rubber band and sealed inside a plastic bag. I had already thought about this, and thanked her and the others, but then sorted out the twenty-nine one-pound notes and handed the rest back.
My Grandfather watched as I did this; I saw tears in his eyes, and he came over and crushed me to him, hugging me fiercely and saying, 'Ah, God; Isis, child! Isis, Isis, child!' and slapping me vigorously on the back. Allan smiled tremulously at the two of us, his face still pale. Erin's jaw had the set that meant she was biting her tongue; she forced a smile.
'You will make sure you come back in time for the Festival, won't you, child?' Salvador said, pulling away from wetting my shirt collar with his tears. 'You have to be there; more than anybody, you must be there. You will be back?'
'Please God it won't take anything like that long to talk to Morag,' I told him, holding his fleshy forearms. 'I hope I shall be back for the Full Moon Service, in the middle of the month. But if it does take longer, I shall…' I took a deep breath. 'I shall return in any event, in good time for the Festival.'
'It's so important,' Grandfather said, nodding. He patted my cheek. 'So important. I may not see another.' He blinked rapidly.
'You will,' I told him, 'but anyway, don't worry. Everything will be all right.'
'Sweet child!' He hugged me again.
* * *
With the preparations complete, Grandfather called a short after-supper service to ask for the blessing of God on my mission.
I found a morsel of time, late on, to slip out and away across the dark bridge to the Woodbeans' house on the far bank, to tell Sophi that I had to leave and to say goodbye.
CHAPTER FOUR
My thoughts that night - as I lay in my hammock in my room in the farmhouse - centred around the coming trip, and the possible reasons for my cousin Morag's apostasy. I knew that sleep was probably impossible and that if I did drift off it would probably be just before I was due to be awakened, leaving me feeling shaky and disoriented and tired for much of the day, but I was resigned to this, and it is anyway well known that in such waking tiredness one can often experience a trance-like state which opens one all the better to the voice of the Creator.
Morag and I had been close friends even though she was four years my senior - I had always mixed easily with Community children older than myself, my special status as the Elect conferring the equivalent of a handful of years added to my actual age. Morag and I got on especially well, despite the difference in our years, sharing an interest in music and, I suppose, a similar demeanour. Morag is the daughter of my aunt Brigit, who left us six years ago. Aunt Brigit joined a Millennialist cult based in Idaho in the United States of America; one of those strange sects who appear to think salvation grows out of the barrel of a gun. She came back for the last Festival of Love, but spent most of her time trying to convert us to her new faith, although to no avail, of course (we are, arguably, far too tolerant sometimes). Aunt Brigit was
never entirely sure who Morag's father was, which is a not uncommon result of the Community's informality, and one of those unfortunate trends which can help give credence to the more sensationalistic media reports about us. Certainly my Grandfather always treated her like a daughter, but then Salvador has always behaved as though all the Order children are his own, probably just to express his love for all the Saved, but perhaps just to be on the safe side.
Brigit's daughter is a tall, perfectly proportioned creature with bounteous brown-red hair and eyes deep and blue and big as an ocean; her saving flaw was a rather wide gap between her two front teeth, though - much to our disappointment - she'd had that seen to when she too came back to visit us four years ago.
I think that in any other upbringing Morag would never have developed the talent she had for music; she would have learned too early that her looks were a facile passport to whatever she might desire, and so have been spoiled, wasted, even as a person, fit only to hang on a rich man's arm, signalling his status by her pampered glamour and her over-priced clothes, and with nothing more to temper the vacuity of her existence than the prospect of bearing him children they could spoil together.
Instead, she grew up with us, in the Community, where plain clothes, no make-up, a practical hair-cut and just a general lack of concern with looks mitigates against such distraction, and so was given the time to discover that the greatest gift God had seen fit to bestow upon her was something less ephemeral than physical beauty. Morag learned to play the violin, then the cello, then later the viola da gamba, and eventually the baryton (a kind of viola da gamba with extra, resonating strings) not just with fluent, flawless technique but with an emotional intensity and an intuitive understanding for the music that at first belied her lack of years, and later continued to develop and mature. Though they are expressed with all due modesty, it is obvious from her letters that she, almost alone, has been responsible for the revival of interest in the baryton as an instrument, and through her appearances and recordings given pleasure to many thousands of people. I hope we are not guilty of vanity in feeling as proud of her as we do, and even in some small way partially responsible for her achievements.
The weather turned bright and sunny; I put on my hat to shield my head from the sun. I floated alongside acres of huge, windowless warehouses and passed Alloa with the ebbing tide, taking a rest from my paddling as I lunched on clapshot naan and ghobi stovies and drank some water from my bottle. During the afternoon the wind freshened from the west and helped drive me down river, past a huge power station and under Kincardine Bridge. I paddled with renewed vigour, hugging the southern shore with its gleaming mud-flats; to the north lay another gigantic generating station, while to my right the smokes, steams and flares of the Grangemouth oil refinery leaned away from the breeze, pointing the way towards Edinburgh.
I had been to Gertie Fossil's in Edinburgh once before, when I was sixteen, so at least as far as there I knew where I was going. London was another matter. That city is almost as much a magnet for young Orderites as it is for the average youthful Scot, and as well as my cousin Morag and Brother Zeb, it had attracted various others from the Community, including, for a year, my brother Allan, who had also harboured some musical ambitions. He went to London with two friends he had made at the agricultural college in Cirencester where he'd been sent to study farm management. He has played the whole thing down since, but I got the impression he was sorely disappointed by his failure to make something of himself in the big city. I know that he joined a rock music ensemble while he was there and apparently played some form of portable electric organ, however it would seem that whatever visions of stardom he may have cherished came to nothing, and after what I suspect was a generally humiliating experience he returned, adamant both that his place and his work and his destiny were with us in the Order and that he would never again set foot in that vast inhuman fleshpot, epicentre of Clutter and scourge of dreams.
The day wore on; I paddled through the chopping water, taking rests when my arms grew too tired and sore and shifting my position as best I could to ease an ache in my back, which was wet from getting splashed by the waves. Ahead, perhaps ten miles in the distance, I could see the two great bridges over the river, and was heartened by the sight, knowing Edinburgh was not too far beyond. I took the trenching tool in my by now rather raw hands and paddled on.
If I was finding my journey tiring and painful, I reflected that it was as nothing compared to the seminal aquatic rebirth undergone by my Grandfather, four and half decades earlier.
* * *
The seeds of our sect were sown one wind-fierce night on the shores of the island of Harris, in the Outer Hebrides.
It was the last hour of the last day of September 1948 and in the first great storm of the season, the Atlantic wind threw the oceanic rollers at the fractured coast in waves of darkness edged by boiling foam; rain and salt-spray merged in the darkness of the storm to roll across the seaward land, bringing the taste of the sea miles inland, beyond even the thunderous hollow booming of the waves falling on the rocks and sands.
Two frightened Asian women sat huddled together around a single scented candle in an old van sheltering in the dunes behind a long dark beach, listening to the waves pound and the wind howl and the rain rattle on the wood and canvas roof of the ancient vehicle, which rocked and creaked on its leaf springs with each furious gust and seemed likely to tip over and crash into the sand at any moment.
The two women were sisters; their names were Aasni and Zhobelia Asis and they were outcasts, refugees. They were Khalmakistanis, daughters of the first family of Asians to settle in the Hebrides. Their family had established a business running a travelling shop round the islands and had become surprisingly well accepted for a place where hanging out washing on a Sunday is considered tantamount to blasphemy.
Khalmakistan is a mountainous region on the southern fringes of the Himalayas currently disputed by India and Pakistan; in this it is similar to Kashmir, though the inhabitants of each statelet share little else except a mutual contempt. Aasni and Zhobelia were the first of the family's second generation, and generally regarded as having had their heads turned by the bright lights of Stornoway; at any rate they were thought too head-strong and Westernised for their own good or that of the family. Had their family acted quickly enough they might have had the two girls successfully married off to suitable suitors summoned from the sub-continent before they got too used to making up their own minds, but as it was the Second World War intervened and almost seven years were to pass before an easing of both travelling and rationing restrictions created favourable conditions for a match to be arranged. By then, however, it was too late.
It was determined that the two sisters should be offered in marriage to two brothers from a family well known to their parents; certainly the brothers concerned were elderly, but their family was well off, known to be long-lived, and the menfolk in particular were notorious for being fecund well into their twilight years. Besides, as their father told them, he was sure they would be the first to admit that a steadying hand, even if it was wrinkled and a bit shaky, was exactly and manifestly what the two girls needed.
Perhaps infected by the spirit of independence sweeping the Raj itself, and catching something of the mood of female emancipation the war had helped to bring about by putting women into factories, uniforms, jobs and a degree of economic control - perhaps simply having seen one propaganda film too many about jolly Soviet crane drivers at the Stornoway Alhambra -the sisters refused point blank, and the eventual result was that they took the extraordinary step - in the eyes of both their original culture and that which they now found themselves part of - of estranging themselves completely from their family and going into competition with them.
They had some savings and they borrowed money from a sympathetic free-thinking farmer who was himself something of an outsider in that land of the Free Kirk. They bought an old van which had been used as a mobile library round the isla
nds, and some stock; they sold the bacon, lard and beef that their family would not touch and for a few months they sold alcohol too until the excise men brought them to book and explained the niceties of the licensing system to them (luckily they were not also asked to produce a driving licence). They were barely making a living, they had to sleep in the back of the van, they were forever ordering far too much or much too little stock, they were constantly running foul of the rationing authorities and they were utterly miserable without their family but at least they were free, and that and each other's company was about all they had to hold on to.
That day, before the storm had darkened the horizon, they had washed their bedding on some stones in a river which decanted into Loch Laxdale and left it to dry while they went about their business in Lewis.(Lewis and Harris are referred to as separate islands though in fact they are both thoroughly linked and decisively separated by a range of - by Himalayan standards - small but impressively craggy mountains. The Harris folk are generally smaller and darker than the people of Lewis, a phenomenon popular myth ascribes to the romantic efforts of hordes of swarthy Spaniards washed ashore after Armada ships were wrecked off the rock-ragged Harris coast but which is probably no more than the difference between Celtic and Norse ancestry.)
By the time the sisters had rushed back through the quickly steepening gloom of mid-afternoon the rain had already started, and when they got to where they had left their bedding the wind had flung most of it against a barbed-wire fence and thrown the rest of it into the swollen river. The rain was heavy and almost horizontal by then and the sheets and blankets on the fence could hardly have been wetter had they too been dumped in the river. The sisters salvaged their sodden bedding and retreated to their van, driving it to a hollow in the dunes nearby where they could shelter from the storm.