The young man breathed deeply two hundred times, as he did every morning and every night, with an additional three hundred counts during the day. This gave him a daily total of seven hundred conscious breaths. It took no more than a little awareness from time to time during the day to bring the total to a blessed thousand, the goal of those on Madame Gupta’s Million Breath program, designed to lead one to full Awakening within three years.
He had completed five breaths before he remembered his name: Corwin Kimball. Another ten before he remembered where he was, how he had come to be here, and what this day would mean. This would be a day like no other. Nothing in his life would ever be the same again.
The mandala patch displayed a meld of chrysanthemums and lightning bolts. As he stared at it, in his imagination the lines became dynamic rather than static. When he closed his eyes, they danced in the darkness.
At eight forty-five came the rap of knuckles against his door. Corwin Kimball opened his eyes. “Yes?”
The unpainted wooden panel opened, revealing a tall, thin woman in a golden robe belted with braided white rope. Corwin recognized her immediately, of course: Sister Solitude, her broad face and heavy jaw set in a smile, eyes filled with light and love.
“It is time,” she said. Although ordinarily her voice was rather nasal, this morning it was so suffused with joy that it, and she, seemed almost beautiful despite the strong jaw and coarse complexion.
Corwin took a last breath, exhaled harshly, and then swung his legs over to the floor. His naked toes gripped at the woven reed mat beside the bed, a hint of asceticism within Castle Delonega’s appalling luxury. He savored the contact, even the chill. He stood, donned his yellow robe (not golden, like that of Sister Solitude, not quite yet), and sashed his waist with a white belt that might have seemed more appropriate in a martial arts school than a place of more blissful discipline.
“I’m ready,” he said. Sister Solitude—not her birth name, of course; all the adepts, all the Golden Robes, had taken new names, appropriate to their new stations in life—nodded, and held the door for Corwin. He slipped on his sandals. Took a dish of ramen out of the microwave, thought about eating it, then decided to leave it atop the little box for later. There were dirty dishes in the sink, but he’d either come back and do them later, or leave them for the staff.
Was that wrong?
Before passing the threshold, he looked back at the place where he had slept for the last year.
He would miss them: the books, the incense burner, the thin mattress on which he had spent so many solitary hours. He wished to sear their images into his mind, feel the texture of the floor, even listen to the music of the water pipes in the walls.
There was a last time for everything.
* * *
Corwin left the castle and took his final walk through the maze, a memorized warren of twisting paths that skirted the grotto then took him south to the library building. And beneath the library, the original opening to the mine. It was said that there was an additional entrance beneath the castle, that in fact the entire area was honeycombed with connecting passageways, but Corwin had no personal knowledge of such things, and could not say.
The Sanctuary was nearly deserted now, buses arriving late last night to take most of them to a sister center in Louisiana for the holidays. But not so long ago, the Salvation Sanctuary had been full. Devotees had strolled contemplatively through the maze, past the topiary lions, in the shadows of the rosebushes. The aromas still fascinated him, drew him no less today than they had from the very beginning.
Step … breathe.
Step … breathe.
Contracting his abdominal muscles in rhythm with each step, compressing, creating an exhalation. Allowing it to expand again, allowing air pressure to fill his lungs. Active exhalation, passive inhalation. As Madame Gupta instructed. As the great Savagi had taught before her. Still, he smiled at this small miracle, thinking that in fifteen years of yoga practice no other teacher had even hinted at this secret, or explained what it meant in the arena of calmness, mindfulness. So long as one could maintain such a pattern, stress could not devolve to strain, which was the real destroyer. And when a devotee dedicated himself to the path, did the things he was told in proper sequence and trained himself to yield but not break … this was the path to adulthood. Awakening. Perhaps even that elusive spiritual quality called enlightenment.
Such a small thing. Such a lovely gift from Savagi, the greatest man who had ever drawn breath.
More than anything in his world, Corwin wished to be worthy of that gift. And by the very fact of being chosen on this most important of days, he knew that his feet were firmly planted on the righteous path.
A willowy figure presented itself, by some trick of the light seeming to hover before a cluster of yellow roses. A sweet, kind face, and a slender, strong body held with the kind of feminine grace that, once upon a time, might have triggered an entirely unbrotherly response.
Savagi did not demonize sex, as did lesser gurus. Amongst the casual devotees, carnal relationships were common if not encouraged. And among the advanced, bonded pairs were frequent. But the intermediate phase was delicate, and could be disrupted by the quest for physical pleasure. Better to seek joy.
Pleasure is in the body, Savagi had said. Happiness is in the mind. But joy is a thing of the spirit.
He, Corwin, was in that awkward place, had been, would continue to be until this critical day was past. When it was over, he would be out in the world again, sharing the word of Savagi, and the health practices of Madame Gupta, with all of creation. And at that point it would be permissible, even encouraged, for him to enter into intimate physical relationships. After all, they were building community. Crafting the future.
And at that time, he knew, Maya Tanaka, the golden-skinned girl at the rosebush, would rank high among those he would desire.
“You, too?” she asked. Her green eyes were so very bright.
“Yes,” he replied. “Pray for me.”
Her answering smile was brilliant. “You don’t need my prayers,” she said. “You’re the strongest of us.”
“We always need prayers,” he replied, and extended his hand. The touch of her fingers struck little sparks in his heart. If he turned his head sideways, squinted just so he could see the flux and flow of her aura …
Perhaps just an illusion of light. Perhaps not. It mattered little. It was possible that he would be sent to Costa Rica. He’d heard that Madame Gupta had established a pod there. Maya had also been chosen for the day’s ceremony. Their souls vibrated on the same frequency. It was possible that they were soul mates. If that was true, then one day, perhaps soon, they would be together.
“Be well,” he said.
“Be well,” she replied.
As he passed through the garden his thoughts returned to Maya Tanaka. That … was a distraction from the task ahead. Again he concentrated on his breathing, balancing every step to create a contractive exhalation, defocusing his eyesight slightly to deny single-point focus, that disciplined state to which he now so naturally defaulted.
Behind him Sister Solitude touched his shoulder lightly, guiding him toward the main building. For just a moment, he felt irritation. He was going. There was no need for guidance. He was far beyond that.
The brown brick central building’s double doors opened, and the senior security guard smiled at him. Security wore blue robes, or shirts, as opposed to the gold robes of the spiritual staff, the purple-suited tech staff, or the white robes of the aspirants. This Blue Robe was a prim man, with brown hair and pale skin, as if he never saw the sun. Tall, but so perfectly proportioned that he somehow seemed shorter than he actually was. His name was Tony Killinger. Killinger rarely smiled, and never seemed to laugh. If Corwin hadn’t known the idea was absurd, he’d have thought the other security people were afraid of Tony Killinger.
There was a vaguely martial feeling to Tony and the others. Police, perhaps. Only six Red Robes in th
e compound, providing special security and protection for Madame Gupta’s priceless library of occult books, including La Très Sainte Trinosophie, Aleister Crowley’s complete Equinox, and Savagi’s legendary Transformations. Corwin understood the need, but wished it was unnecessary. Perhaps he could help birth a world beyond dishonesty. In fact, at that very moment, he committed to creating that world. As unworthy as such reactions might be, the Blue Robes made him uncomfortable. Far be it from him to question Madame Gupta’s wisdom, but still …
“Stairs to the left,” the big man said, unnecessarily. The Blue Robe paused outside the threshold, as if it were a barrier, then seemed to ease his way across it.
The parquet tile floors were clean but worn, probably had been last replaced thirty years before, an odd contrast with the rest of the building. Corwin entered the elevator and descended two hundred feet, into the mine’s cool depths. As the doors slid open, the laboratory sounds grew from a whisper to a babble.
This was the meditation lab, the place where ancient spiritual practices met the scientific measurements of the future. Biofeedback, neurofeedback, CAT scans, and biometrics whose names he couldn’t imagine. Together they churned out gigabytes of data concerning body fat, reflex, digestive efficiency … as well as all the measurements that composed the modern lie detector: galvanic skin response, pupillary dilation, heart rate, respiratory depth, and so much more.
Binaural sound synthesizers, designed to induce the same levels of trance state ordinarily experienced only by Zen monks. Patterns of light and even scent generators, controlled and measured in feedback loops, giving even the least aware among them a concept of his progress on the internal voyage.
Corwin had gone far, far beyond the need for such things. That was clear by the fact that it was he, Corwin, who had been chosen to begin this next phase.
“Are you prepared?” Master Bishop said. Bishop was a tall, purple-robed, broad-shouldered black man with a McCartneyesque English accent. A man of strength and compassion, even if his external demeanor was often a bit distant. He seemed to be the leader of the Purple Robes: technical people who looked like they would have been more comfortable in white lab smocks.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
Corwin was escorted to a locked door. Sister Solitude pressed an app icon on her cell phone, and the door clicked open. Beyond it was another flight of stairs, descending into a darkness relieved by the flick of another switch.
A short flight. The lights at the bottom were just whispering to life as they reached the last step. Corwin glanced up and down the corridor. Thirteen doors. Most were dark, but light shone from beneath the farthest to the right. He had heard that the tunnel ran from the mine all the way northwest to the castle, but he could not vouch for or against that idea.
“Everything is in place,” Bishop said. “We want everything perfect for you.”
Sister Solitude unlocked and opened the door. Corwin almost cried with joy as he stepped through. The room beyond was simple.
In fact, there was almost nothing in it at all, and no windows. No furniture, save for a steel coffin.
“Here,” Master Bishop said. On a hanger next to the door was suspended a yellow mesh jumpsuit, webbed with sensors.
This routine was all very familiar to Corwin by now. He stripped off his robe and stepped into the suit, the mesh snug against his thighs and chest as black Velcro straps were lashed into place.
The tile was cool against his toes, his heels, the balls of his feet. He flinched a bit as the sensors were zipped up against his chest. They tickled against his nipples.
Suddenly, and unworthily, he was thinking of Maya again. Banish those thoughts, he said to himself. Madame would not be pleased. Not now.
Later perhaps. He allowed himself the thinnest of smiles.
“Remember,” Sister Solitude whispered, smoothing the suit into place. “Think of a chrysanthemum.”
He nodded, and now, just now, the first feather of nervousness touched him. He looked at the steel coffin, and something old, something of his previous life, whispered to him.
You don’t want to get into that, it said. You really, really don’t want to do this.
“I’m ready,” he said, lying to his inner voices. Master Bishop opened the top of the coffin. As he did, Sister Solitude quietly attached cables to Corwin’s wrists and ankles.
Despite its outer appearance the box wasn’t really a coffin, of course. It was actually a float tank, holding eleven inches of water within which was dissolved eight hundred pounds of Epsom salts, a supersaturated solution on which a human being could bob like a cork.
He slipped into it, the water almost skin temperature, warm against his nakedness. The yellow mesh was, he supposed, more measurement than modesty.
Corwin reclined, looking up as the lower section of door was closed, leaving only the portion over his face. Master Bishop and Sister Solitude smiled down at him in the darkness, their faces so filled with light and love that they seemed, at that moment, almost angelic.
“This is your moment,” Master Bishop said. “You know what to do.” Then he closed the panel.
Darkness. Corwin had been in the box before, of course, and always previously suffered a bit from claustrophobia and light withdrawal. In fact, one way or another those conditions had plagued him most of his life.
But Savagi, through Madame Gupta, had taught him that all fears are different forms of the primal terrors of death and separation. Cut the root and the flowers die.
He was not afraid. Corwin was no longer the man he had been, the boy he had been, and he owed it all to Gupta and the long-dead master Savagi. And perhaps the Other as well, the man who had made so many discoveries, and died a martyr.
The darkness was complete long enough for the first stirrings of panic …
And then light blossomed.
Eight inches from his face, an LCD monitor flickered to life. The light rose slowly, so as not to cause discomfort. Corwin floated in a sea of lukewarm salt, relaxed as an infant in the womb, exhaling and then allowing his body to welcome in the murmuring air.
He had not noticed precisely when the sound began, but it was now weaving its web around him, facilitated by hidden speakers. A comforting whisper seemed to arise from the water itself. He could not quite make out the voices, but a year previously he had been allowed to listen to an isolated audio track, back when he had just begun this sacred journey. Voices male and female exhorted him to relax, give in, and yet paradoxically to focus. It was walking the line between these, resolving the apparent duality that gave power. That pierced the illusions of maya.
He laughed at the pun. His Maya was no illusion. She was a woman of flesh and blood and …
Corwin felt himself sinking. Calming. Focusing and releasing. There was the paradox, the thing that he had never understood until experiencing. It did not make sense, but then again, not every truth did.
For an instant, he felt as if he was pressing against a membrane. On the other side of that membrane was … what? A person. A man. He had never seen this man, but had a sensation of someone of power and privilege. Someone … that face. Had he seen it somewhere, on a news program, perhaps?
Why would he be thinking of a man he had never met, and whose name he didn’t know…?
* * *
Even now, over a hundred and twenty years after the first execution by electrocution, there is disagreement about what, precisely, kills the victim.
Corwin Kimball had been wired for three thousand volts and six amps. Electricity seeks the fastest way to the ground. Skin has a relatively high resistance rate, so it goes deep, into muscles and veins into the brain, sinuses, and eye sockets. Eventually, the brain’s respiratory centers are affected, and the heart fibrillates violently. If the event is badly mismanaged, the body can literally barbecue like a roast pig.
If Corwin had been capable of observing what was happening to him, perhaps he would have been able to answer the argument.
B
ut he was not, and could not. And in truth, that was the only mercy that Corwin Kimball received on that balmy December day.
CHAPTER 27
1:45 P.M. EST
Tony Killinger and the woman sometimes known as Sister Solitude, and more often as Maureen Skotak, entered the flotation room. They removed Corwin Kimball’s corpse from the tank, and detached the wires from ankles and wrists. It was a little wrinkled from the water, and singed where the wires had connected. Wet and glistening, they stowed it in a body bag. Just before they zipped it up, the woman spoke. The former Sister Solitude’s broad jaw seemed somehow more prominent in her current red uniform. “They really don’t have any idea, Tony?”
In his time, Tony Killinger had been both a police officer and an inmate of the Georgia State Corrections institution, indiscretions in the former having led directly to the latter. Despite a heavy Louisiana drawl, he spoke with great precision, as if he might have had a speech impediment in his youth. He was strong enough to lift the body without apparent effort, save for a slight reddening of his pale complexion.
“Would you get in this damned box if you knew? Watch the feet.”
They lifted the body onto a cart, then rolled the cart out and through the halls.
Tony produced a key and opened a gate, leading to a refrigerated steel-lined room. Twenty-three identical body bags were lined up side by side on the floor, covered with thin frost. The woman sniffed. “How much longer?”
“Until January,” Tony said.
“And then?”
“Then escrow clears, and we get paid.”
They left the room, and the door closed behind them, leaving only the darkness and the dead.
Corwin knew nothing, of course. But if he had retained life and consciousness, he might have noticed that the bag next to him contained the former Maya Tanaka. And he might have found it ironic, if not pleasing, to know that they had indeed found their way to one another, in the end.
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