Authors: Craig Gehring
Disconnect. Disconnection.
He felt a peace that he
had achieved only once before.
Three weeks into the arduous retreat he’d taken to qualify as a Jesuit, he had sat u
pon a mountain top from one sunrise
to the next. He’d achieved a total serenity, a detachment from this world. He had not hungered or tired. He’d felt at one with the universe.
His mentor had called it “being with God”. He knew of other faiths that had terms for the same thing. It was this experience that most Jesuits shared, in the tradition of their patron saint, Ignatious, which caused their order to be more liberal than most of their Catholic brethren.
The sensation he felt now (or rather, the lack of it) was far stronger than anything he’d experienced on the mountaintop.
Total disconnect.
Life is. I am.
Perception was perception, which had its own realities and significances and no particular emotional connotation unless he chose to have it. Detached, he could view his surroundings far
more clearly.
The awareness dawned on him that, he had total control of his senses. His perceptions
churned through his mind like a clear, unstoppable river
. He could draw from it as he chose.
A flood of sensation
.
And nothing. As I choose.
His perceptions and memories seemed without limit. Experimentally, he stretched his hearing. He heard an Onge wife arguing her husband into gathering more firewood. They were in another hut.
He shut off his hearing entirely. The world turned silent. He was mute. He turned it on again.
He sensed Bri’ley’na had left the giant hut.
Edward wanted to know what had happened to him. Perhaps in this strange, heightened state of awareness he could reach
an answer
without having to rely on the cryptic Onge.
When he began to examine his memory, Edward was startled to discover that he
knew
with certainty the whole path of his life. He could dive into his past and pull up a full recollection of what he’d witnessed - every sight, sound and sensation instantly available.
A Christmas kiss. Callista.
He re-experienced it as though he were living it.
The fireplace. The music playing. Her warmth.
He rapidly flicked through a dozen more memories. All were shockingly complete. What was more, he could just pull up data.
What was the name of my first grade teacher?
The answer flashed into his mind the instant he formed the question.
He picked a random number.
Element number 64?
Gadolinium.
He’d never memorized the periodic table before. His mind had pulled its response from a distant memory of the chart.
He closed his eyes. He started calculating. His mind leaped to associations which had never occurred to him five minutes before. Huge chunks of his data, his education, his memory blew into view to assist him in evaluation. He rapidly inspected old conclusions and
faulty
evaluations, blew them out like so many cobwebs. He could see everything from his schooling, and yet could know without looking at any of it.
One of the first mysteries he’d been working on since he’d awakened came to light in little more than a glance.
Manassa. Mahanta. Mahanta’s words to the crowd. “No mortal Mahanta leaves here tonight.” The Onge root of Manassa: ‘mana’ - of Polynesian origin, meaning ‘powerful, magical, of gods’, and ‘sa’ - Onge for ‘boy, child’. Mahanta’s words: “As it is sung in the psalms of our ancestors, I shall slay the panther as a child, and defying my elders, remain a child im
mortal.” The hut. The “throne
.
”
Mahanta died. Manassa lives. They are the same - Manassa is the boy now deified.
In those minutes he r
eached many other conclusions, resolving
the past, the present, and what might lay in store. Much of it might have perturbed him if he weren’t so
detached
. The emotion connected to the facts with which he calculated had distorted and blocked them from use.
Much needed to be contemplated further, but at present there was an immediate threat to his survival.
He wondered at how he’d been able to go so far off on a tangent. He had to secure his own survival, not experiment with his mind.
Mahanta
. My life is in the hands of this
young man
.
Edward assessed his chances at escape. Mahanta could not be predicted, and Edward’s condition was
more than
questionable.
The young man took this drug, and so killed the panther to become a god in the eyes of his people. He is a powerful threat.
Edward sorted through every encounter he’d had with Mahanta in his months at the village.
In retrospect, it was no wonder he’d been so inquisitive, yet so reserved, and why there’d been such
strangeness
about him. He must have been planning this for a long time.
Observation: Mahanta gave me this drug.
Evaluation: If he had reason to fear me, he would not.
Conclusion: He has a purpose for me, so he will not kill me yet or permit me be killed.
With that matter put to rest, at least for the immediate present, Edward worried over what intentions the Onge had for him since they knew he’d spied on their ceremony.
He remembered Nockwe’s injunction: “If the tribe learns what you saw, either I or someone else will have to end your life.” Edward wondered now if there were any teeth left to that threat.
Considering this hut, it seems Mahanta has established control. The whole tribe must have worked day and night to erect this “temple”. As long as I am useful to him, I have no threats to worry about.
Edward had no idea what that use might be.
He turned his attention to his injury, realizing that he had subconsciously shut off the pain coming from his head to aid his concentration.
He deliberately turned the
perception of
pain back on in full. The devil took out his pitchfork again and began wreaking havoc on his brain and the nerves along his body. He was amazed at how much control he had over his own perceptions, even the undesirable ones.
Edward could sense every part of his body - every gland, every organ, every function. He noticed his pulse was racing. He could detect the subtle rush of blood along his veins, the pressure that forced the oxygen-laden cells to all his organs.
He slowed his heart rate as easily as he might consciously slow his breathing. He had once seen a medicine man do the same. The witch doctor had even stopped circulation in his hand for a time, but it had taken much hypnosis and to-do.
Edward just monitored his heart rate at will. He knew that if he so desired, he could take conscious command of every function of his body, automatic or otherwise.
What was this drug in his system? What was this trance he’d entered into?
It was too real for him to think he was dreaming or delusional. It was the most real
moment of his life.
There was a task he had to tend to before he wasted any more time. He remembered the simple words of Bri’ley’na. “
Fix your head.”
Edward explored his injury without moving. He could sense it. His body knew what was happening. There seemed to be a near-fracture in his skull that was giving him the trouble. The bone was weak and the tissue bruised. Blood pooled
in places it shouldn’t
. The bone would weaken further. His mind knew what was wrong.
He sensed an energy near the injury, one that he couldn’t touch. It seemed to have its own perceptions connected to it,
neurons
that kept firing off the same signal.
He picked up what it was broadcasting.
The impact of the kick. Nockwe kicked me and then…nothing.
There was something there. There were other kicks. He kept prying, and finally it flew into view of his consciousness.
The damaged cells had recorded their attacker. They were just energy waves, playing over and over again from the nerve bundle. His mind translated
them
into something he could make sense out of.
Nockwe shouts. Then others. The impact. More impacts. Nockwe says to get away, to leave him be, that he is dead, and if not he will be tried.
The pain, the voices
.
Mahanta’s voice.
The pain subsided noticeably. Connected nerve bundles were helping it discharge as he played
the energy of his attention across the damaged area.
Finally, the nerves stopped sending out their distress signal.
Fascinating.
Edward’s glandular system
had tried to go into moti
on to heal the fracture,
but the hormones and blood cells never reached the injured area. The misfiring nerves had kept telling his body over and over again that he was still being injured. Edward got the glands going again.
He remembered back to his classes in medicine. The Jesuits were so well-trained. There were certain healing conditions one tried to create in a body. Regular heart rate, regular breathing, increased circulation. Reduced pain. High protein intake. The first four he enforced directly on his body by will alone. The last he substituted by working his stomach glands out of starvation mode. It might deplete his store of resources but he needed his head mobile and functional. He needed to heal.
And of course, the last healing condition was a given. Sleep. He directed his body to it and instantly he was out.
Doctor Callista Knowles treated her last patient of the day. He was a small native boy whose father had offered a chicken in exchange for medical care.
She had declined the payment. Callista was a doctor, not a farmer, and in the
three
years she had practiced in the port city of Lisba
a
d, natives paying anything at all had been few and far between. She made her way with a grant from St. Mary’s and the occasional paying foreigner who found his way into her clinic from the docks.
The
two islanders
had knocked on her door after hours.
Callista
had locked up more than half an hour earlier, but she could tell that the man must have trekked from an outlying area.
The boy was in no shape to walk; his father must have carried him most of the way. The man’s legs trembled. His body
had
sagged with relief when
Callista
opened the door.
She put her hand on the boy’s head. She had stopped using thermometers after the first month in Lisb
aa
d, unless it was a paying patient who would expect it. The back of her palm did
just as well
.
The boy
was running a fever, but not too bad. His father looked at her expectantly. She smiled to reassure him.
She checked the boy’s eyes, mouth, and ears. The boy coughed. She checked his lungs with her stethoscope. She made breathing motions to him
and got him to mimic her
. She didn’t like what she heard.
“His lungs are sick,” she told the father in Tamil. “He is hot, he has a fever.” She went to her medicine closet and pulled out the last of her antibiotics. There would be another shipment in a couple days. Until then the island would have to cope. She’d be sure to point out
the deficiency
to the next inspector from St. Mary’s. “You are a farmer?” she asked the father.
The man nodded.
“You are not to let him work for two weeks. Every day you are to give him one of these, until they are all gone. Do not save them. They will go bad. Do exactly as I say.”
The man nodded.
“What did I say?” she asked.
“No work, these every day,” said the father. Tamil was obviously not his
first or even second language
. On this island, everyone spoke a bit of everything, though. He pointed at the medicine bottle full of pills from the clinic’s dispensary.
She nodded. “Very good.”
“No work?”
asked the little boy in much better Tamil than her father. “And candy every day? Yippee!” He rocked back and forth on the exam table with all the enthusiasm he could muster. He coughed again.
“Not candy, medicine. Only one each day. It doesn’t taste good. And no running around and playing, either. Rest.”
The boy sagged his shoulders. She couldn’t suppress her smile.
He would make it, and
she needn’t worry
.
She said to the father, “Come back in three months. Free. Duiyon will make you an appointment.”