A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  Then he returned his full attention to Q’Enukki.

  Samuille could tell—through eyes that detected infrared, ultraviolet, gamma, and x-ray parts of the light spectrum as easily as humans saw colors—that his charge was transfixed first by the approaching super-comet, and then by the growing blue bead of the planet Tiamatu. Q’Enukki absorbed more information than his mind had ever processed before, as images and spoken words about the imminent event must have bombarded him simultaneously from future and past. Ahh, the physics of Meaning…

  Something was wrong.

  Q’Enukki’s energy field became severely agitated and began destabilizing fast. His enhancements! All-knowing E’Yahavah, please give me wisdom! I cannot tell what he is thinking! Is he seeing something of which I cannot grasp the significance?

  The eternal side of the Gate-window-creature opened and closed so softly that Samuille barely noticed the momentary shifting of frames-of-reference. He knew Q’Enukki could not have sensed it, even with his enhancements. That mind-coding still had multiple redundant blocks on it. The Watcher could not be certain his charge might not sense the new presence inside the transit bubble, but he doubted it. Samuille had not expected direct intervention, simply the Breath of El-N’Lil in his thoughts.

  The Word-Speaker spoke directly into his mind, “Do not fear, Samuille. He is having a severe crisis of trust, which is not surprising. He fears we will leave the Earth completely dead, as Tiamatu has always been dead. I do not fault him for this; we are so grieved with his people, and with those of yours who violated their place, that the universe and upper heavens cannot contain it. My Word, which tasted sweet when he prophesied it to a simpler generation, now grows bitter in his stomach the more its full implications unfold. So, yes, it is not surprising he should feel this way!”

  Samuille felt trapped by conflicting directives. What do I do?

  “Speak to him with voice, not mind-projection. Hold nothing back, if asked, but reassure him that I will leave him children in a world they can survive on; that despite the approaching terrors, my promises stand.”

  Samuille had no trouble understanding the intensity of his Master’s grief, but that the Word-Speaker should identify with the man’s failing—which seemed to be building for some kind of dark outburst—rather than take offense at it, mystified him. “As you command, my El.”

  “Do not fear,” Samuille said to Q’Enukki, “E’Yahavah has promised you that the Earth shall not become a dead world, though it will be close.”

  Q’Enukki clenched his teeth and screamed, “E’Yahavah could have stopped all this at any time! What could possibly be worth subjecting an entire universe to such drawn out agony at such an unthinkable cost?”

  Horror compressed Samuille like a squeezing fist. Something huge and dark instantly blocked his future-past-layered sight and shrouded Q’Enukki like a black cloud. I somehow said things wrong! He’s going over! He is giving up entirely! This is unthinkable! Unbearable!

  The Word Speaker stood behind Samuille and gripped the frightened Watcher’s shoulder. “Do for him as I do for you.”

  Samuille reached out a warm hand to grip Q’Enukki’s shoulder, as the man broke down and wept. The Watcher’s terror vanished, replaced by a deep empathic sadness that he now knew all humans sensitive to the Great Loss must share. It came as a sonorous music, modulating the wavelength of Q’Enukki’s aurora, heartbreaking and beautiful, alien, and beyond anything the Watcher had ever experienced. Already the man’s mind ordered the patterns into a creative lament, the content of which was unreadable, though the aurora patterns matched the signature profile for deep grief.

  “Some explaining is in order, Samuille.”

  Master, you do not owe any explanations…

  “I give one to him nonetheless. It is an expression of love.”

  Samuille gathered his thoughts and said to Q’Enukki; “You are worth it, my friend—you and others like you.”

  The man said, “How can that be?”

  Samuille’s words flowed through him like cool water. “When faced with the choice between expressing his love through creation and no further expression of love outside his own continuum, E’Yahavah chose to create others with the potential to share his love. Yet love has no meaning without choice. Although the Creator knew his sentient creatures would choose to reject him and bring horrendous consequences upon themselves and their cosmos, he deemed that the greater evil would be for him not to create.”

  Q’Enukki’s aurora began to collapse as he responded. “How can that be the greater evil? It is not as if E’Yahavah needs the likes of us! We create nothing that does not twist into something hideous!”

  The Watcher neared panic for the first time in his long life, but the One behind him held him steady. “It is true that E’Yahavah does not need. That does not mean he has no love beyond the continuum of A’Nu, El-N’Lil, and the Word-Speaker.”

  Q’Enukki’s aurora began to stabilize just a little. “Please explain.”

  “That’s it, Samuille. Keep your voice steady…”

  “The E’Yahavah Eluhar built into their creation a mysterious aspect of their own nature that my order does not understand completely—the ability to bring good out of evil in spite of evil’s intent. E’Yahavah did not directly create evil, nor was it programmed into sentient creations, though a sentient creature could choose it. But E’Yahavah knew the self-evident; that once other beings are created with the capacity of real choice, it is only a matter of time before some of them will make the wrong one and bring devastating consequences into the entire created system.”

  Q’Enukki said, “Death and decay.”

  “Yes. That is why E’Yahavah limited the choices of created ones and built into the system a restorative program based solely on his own promise to pay the ultimate price. I have only limited knowledge of this program, but I assure you it exists. You have already seen select parts of it.”

  “I do not understand. I do not wish to accuse the Divine Name, but if this is so, then isn’t creating any being with the ability to make real choices effectively the same as creating evil?”

  “Only if creating evil is the goal. A man may do great good, knowing that many shall take advantage of his acts to do evil. Should he therefore do no good? A father provides good gifts for his children, who then may build on that good or use their benefits to evil ends. Should fathers give nothing to their children? For a creature to choose against the nature of the Great God is for that creature to fall into evil and take on its nature. It has real consequences that eventually reach a point of no return.

  “E’Yahavah cursed the cosmos so that it would fit humanity’s fallen nature for a time. Evil is not the goal. Since humanity did not restrain evil when it would have been easier to do so, E’Yahavah’s wrath falls so that all whom he shall recover can be born and restored in the times yet to come. For the Creator shall bring forth good even out of this deep evil that humanity has chosen. He will execute his program and redeem some of his creation.”

  “Which part?” Q’Enukki asked. “They are altogether as I am—futile and empty!”

  Samuille said, “The First Mother’s conception was multiplied to include the Basilisk’s seed as well as the Divine. Neither group is full yet. All are human, none truly hybrid, despite distortions done to their creation codes. Even animal-human chimeras fall on either the human side or the animal, though men cannot often tell which, and fail even to ask the question. Our Master considers you and those like you to be worth far more than anything or anyone that might be lost in the Curse. Yet each person’s ability to choose their master becomes real.”

  Q’Enukki’s voice cracked. “How?”

  “Although E’Yahavah knows the outcome and has chosen those who are his; men who are trapped in the realm of space, velocity, and linear time must have the chance to demonstrate for themselves and their world which side of the struggle they are on. It is at that point—the beforehand choice made by the Divine Name
in the rescue of some, and the real human decision to return to him or flee—that language paradoxes between the eternal and the temporal are most felt. It is the intersection where time meets eternity. But we must stop this discussion for now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the time has come for the end to begin.”

  The Word-Speaker of E’Yahavah squeezed Samuille’s shoulder. “Not yet. We can wait a moment longer. There is more.”

  Q’Enukki seemed to wrestle with uneasy thoughts—Samuille saw beyond the color spectrum of white light and thus noticed the shifting of quickfire discharges inside the man’s brain.

  The Word-Speaker projected into Samuille’s mind, while shielding his thoughts from the man. “He does not want to countermand you, and by extension, me. Invite him to speak.”

  Samuille gently squeezed the Seer’s shoulder, as E’Yahavah had done to him. “I sense there is something more. Perhaps the ‘beginning of the end’ can wait long enough for us to resolve whatever troubles you.”

  Q’Enukki gave a nervous laugh. “It is not the things I do not understand about what you have told me that trouble me, but the things I do understand.”

  The words came through Samuille more than from him, for his own understanding grew with their expression. “Does E’Yahavah promise to restore Aeden, perfect and good, as in the beginning?”

  “Yes, perfect and good.”

  “No; he promises something better.”

  Q’Enukki energy field spiked. “What could possibly be better than goodness and perfection restored?”

  Samuille said, “Goodness and perfection with compassionate understanding. In the beginning, there was no moral flaw in creation and it all functioned in harmony, yes, but it is one thing for E’Yahavah to create perfect automatons programmed to obey a perfect law; it is quite another to produce other beings who are also creative and who internally shun the monstrousness of sin freely and deeply. There is a difference between the goodness at Creation and the goodness that comes only after Redemption.”

  “What is that difference?”

  Samuille paused, letting the words fill him like a vessel. “I’m told that the Good at Creation was perfectionistic and must forever guard against the deviant choices of any created others. The Good at Redemption however, empathizes and restores the ‘others’ from ruin—the ‘others’ understand the folly of sin in their deepest parts and have no desire to return there. They appreciate meaning and E’Yahavah’s friendship from enlarged hearts. ”

  “Are you saying the Evil was necessary?”

  “No. Just that E’Yahavah was willing to suffer it out of love for you and those like you. It would have been better had the Evil been shunned. Knowing that you would not shun it, however, E’Yahavah took it upon himself to pay the ultimate price, and suffer it for your sakes. He has not revealed how he will do that to me, but He has promised that he will.”

  “I still do not completely understand, but I accept.”

  Samuille smiled. “As do I. We can never know what might have been, had Atum refused the fruit, or if Shining One had not rebelled. We can know only that the Evil is something E’Yahavah suffered, not his character or goal for creation. Because of his character, we can also know that Evil will have an end. This will not remove your horror at what you are about to see, nor should it, but it can make it bearable until the time of the Greater Good and the Greater Joy.”

  ‘I hope,’ said the Steward, ‘that you have not already broken any of these rules?’

  John’s heart began to thump, and his eyes bulged more and more, and he was at his wit’s end when the Steward took the mask off and looked at John with his real face and said, ‘Better tell a lie, old chap, better tell a lie. Easiest for all concerned,’ and popped the mask on his face all in a flash.

  John gulped and said quickly, ‘Oh, no, sir.’

  ‘That is just as well,’ said the Steward through the mask. ‘Because, you know, if you did break any of them and the Landlord got to know of it, do you know what he’d do to you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said John: and the Steward’s eyes seemed to be twinkling dreadfully through the holes of the mask.

  ‘He’d take you and shut you up for ever and ever in a black hole full of snakes and scorpions as large as lobsters—for ever and ever. And besides that, he is such a kind, good man, so very, very kind, that I am sure you would never want to displease him.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said John. ‘But, please, sir… supposing I did break one, one little one, just by accident, you know. Could nothing stop the snakes and lobsters?’

  ‘Ah!…’ said the Steward; and then he sat down and talked for a long time, but John could not understand a single syllable.

  —C.S. Lewis

  The Pilgrim’s Regress, Chapter 1; The Rules

  1

  Shrine

  Tiva knelt on the biting pebbles her father had scattered over the pavement inside the new Shrine cave. Glancing furtively to either side, she repeated the Grand Worship Antiphon of Q’Enukki just loud enough for the Acolyte to hear, but not loud enough to disturb the other patrons in the display chamber. The Three Treasures sat before her in a crystal case between two ceremonial Dragon-slayer guards; sacred icons to protect Akh’Uzan’s valley from the destruction everybody knew was coming.

  It was crucial the Acolyte hear Tiva’s devotion. For he could either let her move on to her other duties unhindered or make her life a living Under-world by reporting some failing, real or imagined, to their father.

  Yargat, her eldest brother from her mother’s previous fertility cycle, had joined the acolytic order the year Tiva was born. He worked the Shrine every other day, so she could never evade his shadow for long. All her life it had been, “Yargat this, Yargat that, or Yargat never did such things when he was a boy”—as if he could do no wrong!

  Tiva sometimes wished she could tell her parents a few things about their precious Yargat—although she wouldn’t have known where to start. It surprised her how little she actually knew about him herself, considering.

  He doesn’t love his new wife, for one thing. Then again, why would he? He should never have divorced his first wife. She was nice, at least.

  It bothered Tiva that her brother was already on his second wife—not that this had anything to do with anything—but it helped occupy her mind in the damp boredom of the Shrine. Yargat’s first wife was only a dim memory; a smiling dark lady with large, gentle hands, that used to hold Tiva close as a small child—more than Mother had, it often seemed. Nobody in the family ever mentioned Yargat’s first wife. Father said that Yargat had divorced her for some kind of uncleanness—whatever that meant. The woman had since left the valley. That was odd because she never smelt bad.

  Yargat’s second wife—a dull turnip of a wench who reeked like sour lentil soup—rarely spoke around her husband’s family. Tiva found this normal enough. It also made the Turnip Lady easier to avoid, which Tiva also found just fine, because in most families, the women chattered endlessly together until everybody knew everything about everyone else.

  Fortunately, of the women in Tiva’s family, only Mother did much talking and usually that was only to distract dinnertime conversations away from what wasn’t being said. For Tiva, what wasn’t being said was far more interesting than what was. “What wasn’t said” actually controlled life at home, and in her rambling private thoughts that wandered like uneasy ghosts though the endless labyrinth of her mind. The problem was that Tiva had never figured out how to say what wasn’t said even to herself.

  Her acolyte brother was no help there.

  She shifted again on the Shrine’s gritty floor. Her imagination could only whisk her so far from the kernels that dug into her knees, even if what passed for sanity depended on her ability to withdraw into that inner world.

  Yargat stood beside her, motionless and silent, like some horrible gnarled tree. Unpredictable—with big octopus eyes that peered through her in a way that she could always feel—h
e often frightened her even more than Father did. At other times, he seemed like her only protection from the Fear.

  Tiva knew that despite everything she hated about Yargat, he usually covered for her with their parents when she came to Shrine late from playing with Tsuli after class. On the other hand, there were also those random times when he said weird, horrible things to Father about her, just to show how easily he could get her punished. Either way, he was the only one who seemed to understand the Fear—at least she hoped he understood it.

  Whether secret benefactor or hidden snare, when it came to dealing with Yargat, Tiva had decided long ago that it was best just to try to think of other things. The praise chants helped—their memorized repetition droned on meaninglessly enough that she could mouth them while her thoughts flew to more pleasant places, or at least, more interesting ones. She vaguely knew that her thoughts were more complex than those of most girls her age—ever shifting, calculating behind eyes that took in everything,—seeking ways to fill in all the maddening blanks.

  There were lots of those.

  A heavy hand rested on her shoulder and brushed aside some black curls that had fallen out below her bulky veil. Tiva shuddered.

  “Your Celebration of the Promise is complete,” her brother intoned in his affected Low Archaic dialect. “Go home to Mother and eat the evening meal; for Atum-Ra has seen your devotion and is pleased—may the Divine Name be praised. Hurry now. I will give you a good report. Mother told me to remind you that Father has called a meeting of the Dragon-slayers tonight. She will be with the ladies to prepare refreshments, so you will need to watch the young ones until after midnight. I will come to check on you.”

  Tiva readjusted her veil. If I can keep from dwelling on it, maybe it won’t eat up my whole life. Maybe there’s hope for some kind of sanity—even if it’s only the make-pretend kind.

  She rose and turned to leave, knees aching from her celebration.

  “You have a birthday coming up soon, do you not?” Yargat asked, just as she reached the archway to temporary freedom.