Context (58 page)

She
lay there, mouth open. Half-turned, by an immensity of effort, to catch sweet
falling raindrops in her blistered, swollen mouth.

Awakening...

Thunder, in the purple skies.
Silver rain, falling harder.

Beating against her.

Large drops splashing, breaking
apart, painfully healing, as though she could absorb the life fluid directly
through her skin—

Danger.

Washing against her face. A flat
stream, bubbling.

Lying in it.

Danger, still.

Floods...

Too weak to move.

But she had to remember the
floods.

Get moving.

This was the desert, where
riverbeds survive as sun-hardened channels, concrete-hard rippled ground in the
baking conditions. And become a sudden home to raging flash floods when the
storms finally arrive.

Get moving now.

Rain
hammered strength into her, and she rose—slowly, slowly—onto hands and knees,
and began to crawl. Head down, squinting from time to time through the rain,
sighting her destination.

A flat rock, standing in the
arroyo’s centre.

But roiling water rushed around
her wrists, above her knees, foaming and bubbling with a strength which could
snatch back life more quickly than it had returned it to her.

Flat rock, in midstream. If the
waters did not rise too far, she would be safe.

If she could reach it...

Sheets of rain fell.

Got it.

And fell.

Stone, slippery in the wet. Her
fingers skidded off it, but she grabbed again and her grip held. And she
pulled.

Climb. That’s it.

Ro hauled herself on top of the
flat-topped rock and knelt there, gasping, while wind and rain washed all
around, and in the black and purple sky, white lightning cracked and thunder
bellowed.

It’s time...

And then it happened.

This is my time.

Happened, as perhaps some part of
her had always known it would.

Time.

Floodwaters rising rapidly, the
false night darkening almost to pitch black, while overhead a sense of massive
electric potential was building, accumulating, great enough to—

It struck.

White lightning blazed downwards
-

Time... to live.

— and struck the flat rock.

But did
not
dissipate.

And then another bolt.

Yes.

A third.

But the lightning remained:
glowing bolts connecting earth to heaven, upward-flowing electrons coruscating
as they rose. Hissing and crackling, rippling white fire pillars reared up into
darkness.

Another crack.

Fourth.

Again, again: fifth and sixth.

I’m going to live.

Grimly, Ro forced herself to
stand.

And then, incredibly, she
laughed.

While all about her, on the
flat-topped rock, white lightning played and danced, glowed and cracked.

I’m going to live, my father!

And blazed.

Hissed, steam rising.

And burned.

<>

~ * ~

31

NULAPEIRON
AD 3420

Brother
Tom began his prayers early.

First, the dynamic warm-up
devotions. And then he ran: day one of forty-nine, pacing himself for a
forty-nine-klick offering before the Way. Along a dark, clean tunnel—he moved;
the world flowed past.

Logos, I devote myself to thee.

For it is the world, the universe
which thinks.

I
do not exist.

The ego, the
I
, is an atom
of self-awareness: one cog in the cosmic mechanism, a unit vector in the
infinite nöomatrix by which the universe perceives itself.

Beyond thought...

I am nothing.

... he ran.

Back
in the refectory, he drank deeply from a bowl. Then he sat back, eyes closed,
and shuddered in ecstasy as electrolytes flooded through him, replenishing the
muscles, while zentropes recharged his mind.

‘How goes it, Brother Tom?’

‘Well, Brother Thrumik.’

Tears sprang to Tom’s eyes.

He was so lucky, being here ...

Thrumik laid a reassuring hand
upon his shoulder.

‘I know, my brother.’

And
so it continued, the seven-squared sequence, until the forty-eighth night
arrived.

It was the eve of his final run
in this extended devotion, and he remembered Brother Alvam’s spiritual glow
when he had completed the
novadecenovena
runs. And wondered if, with a
night of fasting and no sleep, he himself might gain a fraction of that grace.

Neither eating nor drinking, Tom
meditated alone in his cell.

But drowsiness caused his head to
nod, so he rose, walked to the Outer Court—exchanging bows with the
guardian-monks—and passed through the bronze doorway to the deserted
marketplace beyond.

The nightwatchman, in his
tattered surcoat, leaning on his staff, observed without comment.

One with Logos.

Tom began to run: slowly,
silently, emphasizing heel-to-toe.

Logos is one.