Commandment (7 page)

“Please, relax. It’s much easier that way,” the scholar cautioned her. The Acaanan looked around hesitantly for others who might be taking an undue interest in the dialogue. Perhaps she had been a bit hasty in abandoning the former pair. At least their mutual revelry diverted some unwanted attention.

“Who are you looking for?” the spectacled scholar queried. “Are you expecting someone?”

Lakif was somehow reminded of Lucretia at this point. Indeed, Lysander and Demetrius hadn’t apparently taken note of the reedy scholar. Was he akin to Lucretia, a will-o’-the-wisp willing to lure the Acaanan into its enchanted realm for hours? Lakif had an idea.

“Excuse me.” Lakif flagged down a scantily clad lad who was strutting by. “I would like a drink, whatever he recommends.” Lakif pointed to the pipe-puffer. If he was indeed a specter such as Lucretia, the waiter wouldn’t be able to see him.

“What do you recommend, doctor?” The waiter’s voice warbled with the maturation of adolescence.

“Two scruples of peony, a pot of steaming water, and two cups,” the doctor replied with a mien of sophistication.

The order taken, the lad scurried off. At least Lakif knew the doctor was of flesh and blood.

“What type of liquor was that?” She questioned the doctor’s choice.

“It’s a tea.”

Lakif groused. She had traded in wine for tea! She looked around a second time.

“I ask again, were you expecting somebody?”

“No. I just thought that…” Lakif faltered before the sober visage. She felt that everyone was staring at her now. Her uneasiness was not lost on the doctor.

“What bothers you so?” The doctor sucked on his pipe, and a white ring rose above his head like a divine halo.

“I thought that others might be…” Lakif fumbled.

“Who?” The gentleman looked genuinely surprised.

“Them!” Lakif’s hand whirled in the air. “The other members!”

“Members? A curious choice for a word, quite phallic. And what are they doing?”

“Watching us…I mean me!” Lakif explained.

“Why would they do that?” The lens of the scholar’s glasses flashed with reflected light, like an interrogator’s lamp directed in the Acaanan’s face.

“Because…I’m different.”

“How so?” the doctor replied, leaning back in his chair and interlacing his fingers.

“I’m an Acaanan…and they are Human.”

“And?”

“Humans hate Acaanans!” Lakif spat out. “Everyone knows that!”

“I see you haven’t faced your own latent homosexuality.”

“What?” Lakif shrieked. “I said…”

“You claimed that they were spying on you,” the doctor replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “Paranoia is just a manifestation of repressed homosexuality.”

“Pardon?” Lakif’s voice shrilled as much as the juvenile waiter’s.

“It’s all expressed through unconscious defense mechanisms, of course. You see, ‘I love them,’ seen as an unacceptable impulse, is transformed or reversed to its opposite. Namely, ‘I hate them.’ In technical jargon, this is called
reaction formation
. Then, ‘I hate them’ is changed into ‘they hate me,’ a simple projection of your feelings on to another. Ergo, paranoia is simply the external manifestation of an inner struggle with your own despised homosexuality.”

Lakif had absolutely no idea what gibberish the scholar was spewing.

“So forget the tea and drink of wine. Let it imbue your spirit with the taste of experimentation. The superego is soluble in alcohol, the so-called
superego lacuna
.”

“I’m not homosexual,” Lakif corrected.

“Denial is the very foundation of…” The doctor twirled his pipe.

“I said I’m not homosexual!” Lakif truncated the scholar before he could conjure up any other preposterous theories. She froze. Her vehement denial had not gone unnoticed by several nearby scholars.

“Then you’re preaching to the wrong choir, lad,” the fellow concluded and blew into his empty pipe. He then threw her a mischievous wink. Lakif realized that he must have noted her awkwardness before the two scholars and had twitted her.

“You’ve had some good amusement at my expense. By the way, I’m a woman.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“Who are you?” Lakif asked.

“Galen Johem, doctor,” he began packing his pipe anew.

“You are a medical doctor?” Lakif was eager to pick the scholar’s brain on a host of ailments that plagued her. She couldn’t recall the last time she had spoken with a doctor. It was certainly before adolescence. Although the details were vague, she recalled it was a harrowing experience.

“My specialty is abnormal psychiatry,” Galen clarified.

“I see.” Lakif nodded, although she hadn’t a notion what the doctor was referring to. “So why do you want to speak with me?”

“To crack open an Acaanan’s mind is to breach the forbidden fortress of mental afflictions. It is nothing less than drinking from the Holy Grail of abnormal psychiatry. No psychiatrist worth his degree would squander the opportunity.”

“I see. I suppose I’m honored.” The doctor had made it sound like the mental disturbances accredited Acaanans were positive attributes. “What did you wish to discuss?”

“Lie back and let’s start from the beginning.” The analyst set down the pipe and armed himself with the clipboard and quill. “Tell me of your parents; anything that leaps to mind.”

“I don’t remember much of them.” Lakif dismissed her interrogator.

“Surely there must be…”

“Enough!” Lakif snapped, silencing the prying analyst. The very first question had struck a nerve. “I’m not interested in being a guinea pig for your mental scalpel.”

“That’s a pity. You are free to leave at any time,” Galen informed her. Lakif stood and was about to leave when she was struck by an idea.

“Doctor. Perhaps we can speak on another issue.”

“Of course.”

Lakif resumed her seat. Torkoth’s plight had weighed heavily on her mind all morning, and the doctor seemed the expert to shed some light on Torkoth’s condition. “Is it possible that a wound to the rear of the head can cause one to forget events?”

Galen nibbled on the quill’s tip.

“Trauma can certainly cause concussions and brief loss of consciousness. There would of course be a lack of recall in such a state.”

“Not unconsciousness,” Lakif said, correcting him. “I mean actual amnesia that persists in the awakened state.”

“Retrograde or anterograde?” the doctor asked.

“Pardon? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Is the issue a difficulty remembering the past or remembering new information?”

“The former.” Lakif fumed over the unnecessarily complex jargon of doctors. “Can a wound cause this type of amnesia?”

“Of course. Certain blocks of time may be erased.”

“I mean, forget
everything
—especially personal details,” Lakif interrupted the psychoanalyst. “Could such a person have absolutely no recall of his past life up to a given moment?”

“It’s possible,” the doctor mused.

“
Possible
?” Lakif longed for a one-handed doctor, for only such an individual could give her a straight answer and not the proverbial “on the one hand.”

“It could be a result of trauma causing organic brain injury, but a pervasive amnesia could be rooted in psychological issues as well.”

“Psychological? How so?” Lakif was enthused with the theme.

“There are certain dissociative states characterized by amnesia.”

“Dissociative?” Lakif could hardly pronounce the word and not without a spray of spit.

“Dissociation is a form of disconnection from oneself, where one literally loses one’s sense of identity. Perhaps you are familiar with hypnosis.”

“I’ve heard of it. I thought it was bunk.”

“Hypnosis is a form of induced dissociation. Another common example is daydreaming. Well, you should appreciate this more than most, for Acaanans are an encyclopedia of such disorders. In fact, my mentor studied the phenomenon with several volunteer Acaanan subjects…” He trailed off before Lakif’s blank look. The psychiatrist seemed to recognize that he was getting derailed. “In any event, trauma, or more appropriately a
psychologically
traumatic experience, can propel one into such a state.”

“The individual in question isn’t in a trance?”

“In effect, yes. But such a trance could not be appreciated by others. He would behave normally. In fact, in one such disorder, the dissociated individual adopts a new identity with no recall of his past. Sometimes this involves uprooting and traveling great distances, which seems to aid in the divorce process. Thus, the disorder is dubbed fugue, which means
flight.”

“I see.” Lakif nodded. “That’s very interesting, even to a laywoman.”

“Of course, such instances are exceedingly rare. Much more commonly, the patient is malingering.”

“Malingering?” Another ungainly word confounded Lakif.

“That’s medical talk for
faking it
.” The doctor’s fingers danced in the air, as if he was speaking with them. “These people often have a very real reason to disappear.”

“Such as?”

“Escape for instance.”

“From?”

“A debtor, a spouse, a criminal record, a malfeasance—take your pick. The list is extensive.”

“How can you distinguish between the phonies and the ones with the true dissociation syndrome?”

“It can be challenging, to be sure. There is no cookie-cutter recipe.”

Lakif’s gaze drifted past the psychologist and toward the quadrivium. The speaker was orating fiercely, but his speech was lost amid the intervening intellectual babble. She began to tune the current topic out. As the Half-man was no longer in her life, the question of diagnosing his personal issues no longer held much appeal.

“The Laureates are certainly a no nonsense lot.” Lakif pointed out the sequestered forum.

“That circle has achieved the acme of learning. You are interested in hearing them?”

Lakif nodded eagerly.

“Go and catch an earful. But a word of caution: don’t interrupt them.”

Lakif thanked the psychiatrist for his insight and left, threading among the scholars toward the secluded enclave.

L
AKIF CREPT FORWARD AND HID BEHIND ONE OF THE ENCIRCLING STATUES.
It was of a shapely female, but both arms were missing, as if they had been sawed off. Nevertheless, it shielded her approach so she could spy on the circle—unseen. Based on the praise heaved on them from the other scholars, Lakif knew that this cohort was held in the utmost regard and thus afforded the luxury of a semi-private auditorium to hold their theses.

She peered cautiously from behind the statue’s breast, like a child spying on her parents in lovemaking. Unlike the prattling philosophers in the Tabernacle proper, this was a subdued circle. Its constituents sat in silent deference before their orating colleague. The whole assembly was hoary, among the most aged men in the Tabernacle. Clearly, the Titan’s Toe was a veritable gerontocracy where advancement and prestige came with years. Of all in the Tabernacle, they uniquely wore gilded laurel wreaths as crowns. To the Acaanan, the golden bays represented the halos of a divine hierarchy.

Six cushions were set at equal distance around the circle. Five were occupied by Laureates—the sixth was empty. Its occupant stood center stage. The lecturer was an elderly man with a white, fine-trimmed beard. Lakif noted that his twinkling eyes were different colors. As she peeked around the chipped breast, she caught the tail end of the lecture.

“From his citadel in the pit of Nessus, the Trigeminal Lord mercilessly orchestrated the final annihilation of the allied army. As he was deaf and dumb, his orders were issued through his terrible vassal, Geriod. The Lord’s giant sentry, ever vigilant at the mouth of Nessus, orchestrated every minutia of the enemy’s stratagem. So loud was Geriod’s voice that it carried all the way to the Plains of Phlegra. He spoke in a hundred voices all at once, such that each and every one of his maligned minions could clearly hear no matter how clouded its own senses were with depraved malignity.”

He continued. “Thus, in the year 133 ante-tribunal on the fourth day of Mars, the remaining forces of the Minauros legion gathered on the plains of Phlegra. They were lead by the embattled general Grimpkin who had just returned from the failed expedition to the Typhon Fells. Later that day, they were joined by forces of the shattered Aerock Regime. Dispirited and leaderless, the clans readily rallied under the command of general Grimpkin.

“Shortly after sunrise on the fifth day of Mars, the army of the Trigeminal Lord crossed the river Acheron. Their juggernaut advance splintered the allied outposts camped there. At mid-morning, the bulk of the allied army had coalesced to oppose the advance. As providence would have it, the Cyclopes of Rime Isle arrived in the nick of time. They marched in from the great northern sea.

“By noon the final battle commenced, and tender Phlegra was rocked by its savagery. For five fateful hours, the battle waged unchecked. Smoke choked the sky, and Acheron flowed red. So many corpses clogged its course that the river overflowed its banks.

“The enemy numbered several times the allies in number. But Grimpkin’s forces fought against more than a vastly superior adversary; they waged struggle against the clock. The three toady spirits that had summoned the kings of the world had decreed that should Grimpkin’s flag speckle in the last rays of light, victory would be theirs.

“Geriod pressed his war machine, hoping to decimate the allied army as swiftly as possible. Such carnage the world has never seen, nor will ever see again. With still an ample span to sunset, the outlook was grim. The Aerock clans were utterly annihilated, slain to a man. Even the Cyclopes suffered grievous losses. Grimpkin’s own legion was razed to but a few hundred men. But they struggled on until their limbs cried out with pain. It looked as if doom was imminent.

“Finally, the last wink of light vanished, glinting off the general Grimpkin’s blood-speckled helm. In the steepening sky, a light appeared! All eyes turned skyward, for that light smothered all hostilities with wonder. A blazing meteor arched through the heavens. It streaked across the firmament toward the east, its passage shredding the sky with a trumpeting squeal.