Jango (10 page)

Hurrying now, he blundered past pillars, his feet skidding on the marble floor smoothed by the prostrations of pilgrims. The light that shone from within grew brighter the nearer he came, until it was dazzling him. He blinked and scrunched up his eyes, wanting to see through the pattern of star-shaped and diamond-shaped holes the source of the light, but all he could see was brightness.

Now he had reached the screen. Now his flushed face was pressed to its cool surface. Now his eyes found a single star hole and gazed through the silver metal, which his breath misted all round. Now he saw the light clearly. It was immense, like the disc of the rising sun, and it would have blinded him with its power, except that sitting before it, cross-legged on the ground, was the figure of a man. All the light was behind him, so he was entirely in silhouette. The edges of his silhouette shimmered and melted into the brightness—it was impossible to tell who or what he was. But he was inside the Garden, and he was irradiated by this nighttime sun. There could be no question as to his identity.

Seeker was in the presence of the Here and Now.

He slipped to his knees, face still pressed to the screen, and abandoned himself to a helpless torrent of prayer.

"Wise Father, forgive me for failing you. I need light to see my way. Don't leave me in the darkness. All I ask is to serve you. All I ask is to know that my days have a purpose. Don't let it all be for nothing."

Exhausted, he slipped farther down, to the cold marble floor. Involuntarily his eyes closed. He heard a voice speak to him.

"Nothing is dependable. Nothing lasts."

"No!" he cried. "Don't fail me!"

Rising to his feet, he spread his arms wide and pressed all his body to the silver screen. The dazzling light filled his eyes and the burning heat scorched his skin.

"Show me my way! Tell me what I'm to do!"

But no answer came. Instead, the light and the heat from within the Garden flowed on through the silver screen, melting his body into helplessness. The one terrible word echoed in his brain, mocking his hopes.

Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

So there was nothing after all. Nothing to strive for, nothing to believe in. Only this annihilating light. Its pure stream pierced him and flooded him, washing away his fears and his desires until there were no shadows left in him and he was formed of light.

After this came Seeker's surrender. He surrendered all ambition and all hope of meaning. He surrendered his pride and his dreams. In their place came an immense emptiness; and in the emptiness lay limitless power.

Seeker had found his true strength.

The candle burned on the table beside the half-full glass of water. He moved his head, which was lying on the bed, and saw the walls and the sloping ceiling of his room. Then he looked back at the candle. It burned with a steady flame. Its light was reflected in the water glass, refracted and repeated many times. The glass was transparent, and the water was transparent, and yet he could look and say: there's water, there's glass. How?

He laughed to himself.

"Why am I laughing? Am I happy?"

He stood up, then stretched and yawned, reaching his arms as high as he could go, feeling his fingers tingle. Then he went to the table and sat himself down on the chair beside it and looked closely at the water glass.

Really, now that he noticed it, water in a glass was something quite extraordinary. It was, in a sense, nothing surrounded by nothing.

"I'm a nothing, too," he told himself, smiling for no very good reason. "I'm a nobody going nowhere for no reason."

He laughed at that more than ever.

"Hey ho!" He chuckled. "I must be jango."

Jango?

"What am I saying? There's no such word."

But now there was such a word, because he had said it. Jango. What was more, he knew just what it meant. It meant playfully mad. Crazy, but in a harmless and delightful way.

"Yes. No doubt about it. I'm jango."

At that he rocked back and forth on his chair and laughed until the tears streamed down his cheeks.

"I suppose I've lost my mind," he said to himself. "But I don't see that it much matters. I didn't need it."

He reached out for the glass of water, meaning to have a drink. But it wobbled about in the glass in so very interesting a manner that, instead of drinking it, he looked at it, then looked through it at the candle flame, which it made smaller and farther away.

"Well, well, well," he said aloud. "The glass of water is jango, too."

Then it struck him that quite possibly the whole world was jango. He liked that idea so much that he explored it further.

This was how his teacher found him: sitting on the chair, holding the glass of water before him, contemplating the oddity of all things.

"How is it?" she asked him.

"Terrible," he said, putting down the glass. "Couldn't be worse."

"Whenever you want to go," she said, "you can go."

"Certainly I can," he replied. "And certainly I shall. Just as soon as I can make up my mind that there's more point in going than in staying. And since there's no point in either, that may take me some time."

He laughed merrily.

"Hey ho, jango!" he added, feeling that this made the situation much clearer.

Miriander looked at him intently.

"What did you say?"

"Jango!" cried Seeker. "It's my new word."

"Can it really be so?" she said.

"Yes," said Seeker. "Everything is so. So very so."

"What have you learned in the night?"

"Nothing," said Seeker. "Nothing is dependable. Nothing lasts."

Miriander kept her gaze on him, searching his face.

"I'm jango," he said happily.

She reached out one hand and stroked his face, from his eyes to his mouth. He became calm at last.

"Perhaps you really are," said Miriander softly.

"It doesn't matter," said Seeker. "I've failed. I'm the only one who's failed."

"Why do you say that?"

"Morning Star told me. When she came in the night."

"No one came to you in the night."

"Yes. She did. And the Wildman came. And you came."

"No one came to you in the night."

"And I went to the Cloister Court, and there was a light in the Garden, and the Wise Father was there."

Miriander heard this in silence.

"It was he who told me. Nothing lasts."

"Seeker," said his teacher at last. "This is very important. Look me in the eyes."

He did so.

"Was this a dream?"

"It might have been a dream," he replied, "but I don't think so."

"You saw a light in the Garden? You saw the Wise Father?"

"Yes."

"Did you see his face?"

"No. The light was behind him."

"The light was very bright?"

"Brighter than bright! So bright there was nothing else."

"If this is true, you've seen more than I've ever seen."

She took the glass of water from the table, and with a sudden twist of her wrist, she threw the water at Seeker. It splashed cold on his face, shocking him.

"Stand!" she said, and he stood.

She herself stood before him.

"Look into my eyes."

He looked into her eyes.

"If you are my master now—make me fall."

Seeker was puzzled and was about to ask how he was to do this. But then, looking into his teacher's eyes, it struck him that it was simple. He had only to want it enough, and he could will her to fall.

He willed it.

Miriander fell.

A
SHARP WIND WAS BLOWING OFF THE LAKE AS THE
crowd waited, shivering, in the temple square. A bank of gray cloud to the east threatened rain. Some of the patient people had been in the square since dawn and had brought thick blankets to keep themselves warm. Some had come every week for months, in the hope of being chosen. One of them, a small balding man in a fur coat, was at the Choosing for the first time. At his feet, attached to a short cord, stood a peculiar wheeled carriage, a little like a child's toy wagon, only narrower and taller. Its owner had come early to secure a position near the front of the throng. He wanted to make sure that the priest-king of Radiance saw him.

Now at last there were signs that the ceremony was about to begin. A detachment of axers filed out and placed themselves between the crowd and the temple steps, facing the people and rattling chains in their hands. A buzz of anticipation ran through the crowd. A surge from the back drove the front rows forward until they were stumbling against the axers.

"Back!" roared the axers. "Make room!"

Then the great temple doors began to part, pushed from within by scarlet-clad servants of the priest-king. When the doors were fully open, a line of gong bearers filed out and stood on either side of the doorway. They struck their gongs, making soft shivery sounds, and a column of lower priests came marching out of the temple, bearing fire basins. The smoke streamed in the wind, and the smell of burning cedarwood filled the square. After the lower priests came the higher priests, in their gold capes and holding long thin canes that reached high above their heads. And after the higher priests came the priest-king himself, a full head taller than the others, his golden corona gleaming in the orange light of the fires.

"Choose me, Radiant Leader! Choose me!"

The people sighed and crowded forward, and the axers pushed them back. From all across the temple square, like dry leaves in the wind, came the rustling whisper of sound.

"Choose me! Choose me!"

But none looked up at the priest-king. The priests on either side lowered their gaze in his presence. No one looked directly on the glory of the son of the Great Power, for so it was ordered. Nor did the people shout loudly to draw attention to themselves, much as they longed to be chosen. They knew that only the humble deserved the reward, and they believed that Radiant Leader had the power to see into their hearts.

The soft jangling of the gongs now ceased, and Radiant Leader spoke to his people.

"Who seeks eternal life?"

"We do!" murmured the crowd. "We do!"

"Who is worthy of eternal life?"

"We are! We are!"

They called back in low voices, without raising their eyes.

"Who will wear the white of the pilgrim, and live forever?"

"I will! I will!"

"Prepare for the Choosing."

The people stood now in utter silence with their heads bowed. The higher priests reached out their long slender canes and watched the priest-king's right hand. With one jewelled forefinger extended, Radiant Leader pointed into the crowd. A cane dipped, then tapped the head of a young woman.

"Saved!"

She raised her hands high above her head and cried out ecstatically, "Take me up into the harvest!"

The priest-king pointed again, then another cane dipped, and another supplicant was chosen. And another, and another. As they were chosen, they were led away by lower priests standing at the edge of the crowd.

Radiant Leader's gaze, passing back and forth over the bowed heads before him, came to a sudden stop on one balding head that was not bowed. Alone among the hundreds in the square, this man looked up boldly, even impertinently, evidently determined to catch the priest-king's attention.

Radiant Leader recognized him at once.

The audience room in the temple was long and high, with a magnificent vaulted ceiling supported by golden pillars. Radiant Leader's receiving throne stood at the far end on a raised dais. The little man entered, pulling his wheeled contraption behind him, and marched boldly down the hall. He seemed to be singing as he came. Radiant Leader, seated on his throne in solitary splendor, watched him approach with conflicting emotions. This absurd man might prove to be a serious problem for him, or he might prove to be the answer to all his problems.

Now that he was closer, the song became audible.

"
High, high, watch it fly!
Like an onion in the sky!
"

So he had gone mad. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

The little man came to a stop before him at last. He did not avert his gaze. He didn't bow. He stood there grinning like a fool.

"Professor Evor Ortus," said Radiant Leader. "Why aren't you dead?"

"Why should I be dead?" said the little man. "I'm not sick, nor am I old enough to die of natural causes."

"I searched for you. My men searched for you. You were nowhere to be found."

"That may be so. But lost is not dead."

He tipped his head to one side and studied the priest-king like a bird.

"Have you grown taller?" he said. "I remember you as quite a shorty. Ah yes, I see the trick of it. The furniture round you is made small. And your attendants out there—picked for their small stature, I suppose."

Radiant Leader's face turned a dull red. It was many months since anyone had dared to speak to him with such irreverence.

"I am Radiant Leader!" he said sharply. "I can have you thrown from the temple rock."

"You won't do that," said the professor, quite unafraid. "And you're not Radiant Leader. You're the old king's secretary in a shiny frock."

Radiant Leader stared at the insolent man, in grim silence, for a few long moments. His first instinct was to summon his axers and order them to dash out the professor's brains. But he controlled himself. There was a matter of vital importance to be settled first. Once, not so long ago, Professor Ortus had held the key to the most powerful weapon ever made.

Could he do it again?

"They won't stop me this time," said the little man, with a chuckle.

"Who are you talking about?"

"The hoodies." He nudged his wooden toy with one foot. "This time I've got a flying onion. This time we destroy Anacrea."

Before Radiant Leader could ask for an explanation, the far doors burst open and in hurried an attendant priest, his eyes on the ground.

"Radiance!" he cried. "Danger! War!"

Behind the priest came three travel-stained axers. They threw themselves to their knees and bowed their heads and cried out their news in a wild jumble of words.