Nectar of Heaven

Chapter Four

Waking, Rham Kalova looked at the groined roof of the bedchamber, seeing the lights which ran across the stones, the central orb now brightly cerulean. The wind from the sea, the skies clear, the temperature rising, humidity low, the time three hours after dawn, details absorbed even as he turned to examine more signals, feeling the same warm satisfaction he had felt when he checked the weather. The twenty highest stockholders had altered their holdings little during the night, but Arment had plunged heavily in mining while Barracola had shed his offshore investments. Fools, the pair of them, and he felt the snug comfort of continued security. While they acted in such a wild manner his major holding was safe but, he knew, even as he warmed to the safety indicated by the signals, the wolves would be gathering. Sharper now, hungrier, eager for the kill-but again he would outwit them all. He and Cyber Zao.

Musing, he felt a sharp envy at the other's ability even while recognizing his own dependency. To be able to predict the course of events from a bare handful of data, to extrapolate the most probable path any act would incur and so both to anticipate and guard against the inevitable reaction was tantamount to having the ability to manipulate the future. But Zao was quick to deny this ability, insisting that he could do no more than advise, to use trained logic and skill to make his predictions, and yet that same logic and skill had bested savage attacks on his holdings and maintained him as the Maximus, the acknowledged ruler of Sacaweena.

Yet he could be bested given the right opportunity, the right combination of circumstances despite the advice of the cyber. When greed grew too strong, and so did the hunger for power and the envy in which he was held, then they would strike and it would take all his skill and cunning to forestall the attack. Only their mutual hate and antagonism had saved him since that time, years ago now, when he had taken the greatest risk of his life and had, incredibly, won.

Won to rule the world and to lie in an uneasy bed.

The lights changed as he watched, showing the flow of holdings; Lobel had gained at Prador's expense, Chargel was edging upwards as was Traske. A combination? It was most probable and the threat, though small, could not be ignored. He would monitor the increase and take steps to negate it should it rise too high. An alliance with Veden? One with Macari? Both were lacking in ambition and neither had love for the others. Well, he would see-for now it was enough simply to watch.

A bell chimed and a soft voice whispered from the air. "Maximus, the hour has come for your waking. Do you wish to continue your repose?"

"No." He softened the snap of his voice. "I am awake. Instruct Cyber Zao to attend me."

An unnecessary precaution, but having paid the fee to the Cyclan there was no reason why he should not make use of the service provided. He halted the movement of his hand; to summon aid was to admit, if only to himself, the growing weakness of his body, yet to refuse it was to act without calculated logic. Would Zao refuse?

The answer caused him to throw back the covers and rise from the bed, to stand with one hand clutching the ornate headboard. A cyber did not admit to physical weakness; to Zao his body was a machine, an artifact of flesh and blood to be fueled and maintained in a state of optimum condition but never to be pampered lest it develop ingrained weakness of its own. An odd concept-could a body have a will and desire not of the brain? Appetites and passions divorced from conscious decision?

A question to be mulled over later but now other work had to be done. He released his grip on the board, thankful the expected dizziness had not materialized-further proof of Zao's skill. The new medication he had suggested seemed to be working. His mind, too, held a new brilliance-the thought, as to the individual life of the body, for example, and things seemed to be sharper, clearer than before. Or it could be the result of contrast-a man with repaired vision often thought he saw better than before when the truth was that he had forgotten the power of his sight when young.

These musings had no place and he moved toward the bathroom, the mirrors fogging as they reacted to his presence, water streaming from above as he stepped into the shower. A gentle rain of soothing warmth, strengthening to a driving storm, a blast of stinging droplets. A torment he endured for moments only then the pressure eased and again he stood in a warm and soothing rain as lather graced his body to be washed away, replaced with more, followed by effulgent lotions and delicate perfume.

A trace, no more, he had no liking for the prevailing fashion, but even so he wrinkled his nose as he stepped toward the mirrors. Fernesh, he guessed, with some rose and a touch of musk. A blend suitable for his years and dignity and an armor against any unsuspected exudation. A ruler should be sweet to the nostrils of his people in more ways than one.

Sweet and strong, but as the mirrors cleared to his command he saw his failure.

Still tall, his shoulders wide, the face still with a stern, patrician grace, yet the flesh of chest and stomach betrayed their weakness, the wasting of muscle in arms and thighs, the shrinkage of calves, the ugly protrusions of the bones of feet and knees. Surgical art could only do so much and to hope for more was to yearn for the impossible. Patching and grafting, toning, regrowths, transplanting of hair, replacements- all were but delaying tactics against the relentless pressure of age. And, each day it seemed, the battle was a little more lost, the victory of the grave a little closer.

Why did men have to die?

Why did he-when he had so much?

The chime broke his introspection, the soft voice a velvet caress. "Maximus, Cyber Zao awaits your pleasure."

"Let him wait-no!" The Cyclan was not to be flouted. "Let him be admitted."

An honor he wouldn't recognize or, if he did, would fail to appreciate. To him as to all cybers such things were of little value; demonstrations of the emotional sickness from which they did not suffer. Had he ordered, Zao would have waited his pleasure and felt no anger or irritation as now he would feel no pleasure or satisfaction. The only joy any cyber could experience was that of mental achievement.

He rose as Kalova entered the lounge from the bathroom, a robe covering his nakedness. An ornate thing of fine weave blazoned with intricate designs in a variety of colors with glitter at sleeves and throat. A robe which seemed cheap and gaudy in contrast to the cyber's own; one of scarlet, the Seal of the Cyclan proud on its breast.

"My Lord!" A salutation accompanied by a slight inclination of the shaven head. "I trust you are well?"

"Well enough."

"Your orders, my lord?"

Kalova gestured to the wall, the blaze of signals matching those in his bedroom. "What do you think?" He waited, one hand smoothing back the still-damp mane of his hair. Thick locks streaked with gray which hung low over the nape of his neck, trimmed and shaped to accentuate the clean lines of his profile. "Well?"

"Normal movement, my lord." Zao was, always, calm, his tone a smooth modulation divorced of all irritating qualities. "There was a storm during the night, and a rise in the ion count usually results in heightened emotions. The trading, while at a time frantic, leveled out an hour before dawn. My prediction is that by noon the situation will be much the same as yesterday with the exception of the holdings of Arment and Barracola. The former will rise and the latter fall."

"And later?"

"Each trend will reverse."

"The rest?" Kalova was asking too much and he knew it. "Never mind. Can you assess Chargel and Traske?"

A stupid question and he had betrayed his concern by asking it. Given the data, Zao could provide the probable outcome. To have phrased the request in the way he had smacked of doubt as to the cyber's ability. Better to have given a straight order. Better still to have remained silent. The day he was unable to check the situation for himself would be the day he would be bested. That day was not yet.

"They are planning something, right? Uniting to achieve a common goal. But what? They don't have the power to threaten me and aren't popular enough to gain the support of many others. A kill, you think? Against whom?"

Zao didn't hesitate. "Their target is Prador, my lord."

"Prador?" The lights shifted, blinked, settled to tell the man's holdings. "Prador!" Kalova studied the signals. "Holdings in mining, offshore installations, refining, property, land to the north-what can they hope to gain from him?"

"A new vein of copper has been discovered in the Tamplin mine," said Zao. "Major control will determine the extent of production and the acquiring of Prador's shares will give Arment that control. Chargel and Traske have united to prevent that from happening. They will bring pressure to bear with other interested parties and force Prador to yield the stock to them."

And, once the pressure was on, the man would have his back to the wall.

"If I back Arment to gain control what will be the outcome?"

"That depends on your decision as to the production. Limited, it will force the price up and lead to inflation. Expanded, it will cheapen the product but at the same time increase the value of the shares because of gained turnover. Continued, the trend will negate all its beneficial qualities by creating a glut. Workers will be discharged, consumption be lowered, recession induced. The trend will reverse itself, naturally, but not for a number of years." Zao added, "The prediction is in the order of 99.5 probability."

"Not certainty?"

"There can be no such thing as absolute certainty, my lord." Zao was patient. "Always there remains the unknown factor which must be taken into account. Events of astronomical improbability which yet could occur."

Such as a man living forever? A possibility the Cyclan must accept. Did cybers fear death? Would Zao, for example, fight to the last to retain his individual identity?

A question the cyber could have answered but never would. When old he would be taken, his brain freed of its hampering prison of flesh, placed in a vat of nutrient fluid and added to the other brains forming the tremendous complex of Central Intelligence. To live for endless millennia, conscious and aware, safely buried beneath miles of rock on a bleak and lonely world. His destiny and reward-if he did not fail.

Carmodyne had built the church, hiring the best architects and designers, using the best of materials to construct a soaring edifice of arches and gables, of peaks and a soaring tower in which he had set a sonorous bell.

Brother Tobol had objected.

"Why the bell, my lord?"

"Why?" Carmodyne, big, bluff, impetuous, had snorted his impatience. "Why to summon the worshipers, of course."

"To summon?" Brave in his annoyance, Tobol had shaken his head. "We do not issue orders, my lord. We do not demand suppliants to come to us. The Church of Universal Brotherhood wields no compulsion."

"But how else can they tell when to come to worship?"

"To worship what? Stones? Glass? Metal? Faith is not housed in buildings, my lord. It lives in the heart."

Carmodyne had been hurt. "Are you saying you don't like the building? That you object to my having given it to you?"

The last, at least Tobol could answer with inoffensive truth.

"My lord we are grateful for all you do. For all you give. For your generosity and kindness and concern. If I have offended I crave forgiveness." A trained psychologist, Tobol knew how to play on emotion. Knew also when to be humble, when to sooth and, despite his misapplied generosity, Carmodyne had meant well.

A man now dead but the building he had left remained a burden to the church as it did to his heiress. Looking up at the soaring tower, Fiona Velen pursed her lips with barely disguised anger.

"The fool! To have spent so much for so little! Typical of my uncle but now I have to meet the cost. How much do you think it would bring at auction?"

"Very little, my lady." Brother Tobol, now older by a year, shrugged thin shoulders beneath the brown homespun of his robe. "The adornments are built into the fabric and removing them would cost more than they are worth. The design is hardly suited to commercial purposes nor does it lend itself to regular habitation. Your uncle, I fear, was poorly advised."

By romantic notions culled from old books and legends.

Tales of an age which had never been illustrated by cities and towers of the imagination. Castles, strongholds, places of ancient worship-what had made the fool spend so much?

Watching the play of emotion over her strongly boned face the monk said quietly, "There will be no protest at any decision you choose to make. In the meantime, may it be used as your uncle intended?"

A memorial if nothing else, and a living one; despite her anger she had to admit that. If only the charges had been settled she would have been able to look at it with greater pleasure for, in its way, it was a masterpiece. But who could use beauty as collateral? Buy shares with artistic appreciation?

The land it stood on could be sold, of course, and the new owner would be responsible for upkeep and charges due. Arment? A moment and she rejected the idea; the man was too busy building his holdings. Judd? Attracted to her as he was he could be less than cautious but she knew him too well not to guess at the price. One she was reluctant to pay. Prador? Hurt by the recent attack he was in no condition to do other than lick his wounds. Helm? If he bought it at all it would be to convert it to rubble.

The problem annoyed her. Deals were made in the comfort of detachment; lands and properties bought, sold, offered at auction in an endless flow of manipulation. To see the place, to talk to the monk, to imagine her uncle standing where she was standing now, remembering his voice, his manner, his infectious laughter-what had made him do it?

"Some wine, my lady?" Tobol glanced at the ruby sun now low in the green-hazed sky. "Some food, perhaps? We have cakes and bread spiced with various flavors. A hobby," he confessed. "To mix and knead and bake. Had I not joined the church I think I would have been happy as a baker."

And he would have made a good one, she decided after tasting the proffered delicacies. As Samuel would have made a good vintner if the wine was of his making. As Jeld, the youngest, a good attendant. He had been both deft and silent, not even the sandals covering the bareness of his feet audible on the tessellated floor. Only the burning intensity of his eyes had spoiled the image of the perfect servitor.

The eyes of a fanatic-but all monks had to be that. Why else did they choose to live as they did?

"Some more cake, my lady?" Tobol gestured to a plate heaped with elaborate confections of sugar and nuts crusting convoluted pastry. "A little more wine?" He signaled for the table to be cleared as, again, she shook her head. "Would you care to see more of the church? There is an interesting carving in the northeast corner which may amuse you and the pattern of light thrown on the paving from the clerestory is at its best this time of day."

The food and wine had soothed her and she had spent too much time not to waste a little more. The carving lived up to its promise and she was entranced by the cunning pattern of light which threw the interior into a cavern dusted with rainbows. Carmodyne's work? Had he ordered the placing of the tinted glass as he must have commissioned the carving?

She remembered the face, the unmistakable parody of his own, the lips curved in laughter, the eyes crinkled with smiles. A gross, almost grotesque image, and yet it held a certain magic. As did the flowing pattern of light, the combination of hues, shadows, striations. Again she wondered why he had done it. Why build such an edifice? A question she put bluntly to Tobol.

For a moment he hesitated then said, "I believe it was because he loved beauty, my lady. Not, perhaps, the frail and delicate beauty of a flower but something on a grander scale. It had to be big and bright and splendid so he built something high and wide and filled it with light."

Light and space and hope for the afflicted. She wondered why the monk had neglected to mention that, and had failed, also, to stress the comfort given to those who came to receive it. These questions were an irritation-why was she so concerned? Carmodyne was dead and his dream should die with him.

Watching the raft as it carried her back to the city and her home, Brother Jeld said bitterly, "Well, there she goes. How long now before the church is in ruins?"

"A building is not the Church," said Tobol firmly. "We can do without it if we must."

"To use the one you started with? The tent set up at the edge of the field? Small accomplishment for two decades of labor, Brother."

A score of years during which Jeld had grown from boy into man. Time to be accepted as a novice, to be tested, trained, to become a fully fledged monk and to be sent to Sacaweena on his first mission.

Tobol wished he had been sent elsewhere.

This was an uncharitable thought and he did his best to crush it but, as at the present, it returned to disturb his equilibrium. Was it pride which made him chafe at the younger man? If so it was a sin and must be eradicated, but it was a sin which Jeld more than shared. Pride in position and attainment led to the pain of others; servants, those less high, those needing support. Pride in possessions warped the basic fabric of human nature, for to love things more than living creatures was to invite evil.

Did Jeld hold the building in higher regard than his sworn purpose in life?

Watching him, Tobol was reluctant to believe it. The face, limned by the dying light of the sun now resting on the watery horizon, held the firm resolution of youthful dedication, but that was to be expected. As was the fire in the eyes, the impatience, the fretting at what must have seemed illogical barriers. As, too, was the yearning for power, the ability to sweep aside all the obstructions which hindered the final glory of Man.

The moment when each could look at the other and realize the basic truth. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

The millennium which he would never see. As Jeld would never see or any monk now living. Men bred too fast and traveled too far for that but even while accepting that he would never see the culmination of his work, Tobol was content to do what he could-to alleviate suffering, to feed the starving, to comfort those in need. To set the example he wished others to follow.

A point he emphasized as he walked with Jeld across the sward surrounding the church.

"Of all dangers men face when dealing with their fellows pride is the most insidious. It seems so natural to display success, to show the world we have gained an advantage or achieved a measure of gratification. A man will boast of a new raft, a boat, his promotion. A woman of her new gown, her new home, a better situation. Small things, harmless it would appear, but that appearance is deceptive. For such things feed envy and envy can destroy."

"The church," said Jeld. "You are talking about the church."

This time Tobol made no play on the word. "Yes, Brother, this church. I was against it from the first and I thought you knew why. How many faiths have foundered because the original intention became lost in a desire for pomp and possessions? That danger we must avoid above all others, for to display wealth would set us apart from those we are dedicated to serve. Pride can have no place in our existence."

Which was why all monks, even the highest, wore the same brown robe, the same sandals on bare feet, had the same look of deprivation.

Food was for the starving and to wear a gem was to insult those to whom the bauble would mean food and warmth and medicine. To preach was to offend with its assumption of superiority and was itself a display of pride. To serve. To help the afflicted. To tend the sick and ill and to ease the hearts and souls of the troubled-the life of a monk.

"Is there nothing we can do?" Jeld halted to look beyond the church at the ocean below the high ground on which it stood. The light from the sun painted the spire with ruby, turning it into a glowing pillar of flame. "If she decides against us-what can we do?"

"We can hope," said Tobol quietly. "And pray."

There was nothing else and the younger man knew it. Even so, Tobol saw the sudden clenching of his hand, the tension made manifest in the jaw, the throat, signs obvious to the trained eye, even though the face had remained impassive in the frame of the thrown-back cowl. Impatience controlled but present, and the old monk could feel sympathy. How often, when young, had he felt the same frustration?

Too often and too long ago but the time which had seamed his face and taken his hair had also curbed his impatience. As it would curb Jeld's. As it would teach him that, while a monk needed to feel, yet that feeling must not be too narrow, too intense. It was right to care for the sick-but all the sick. To be concerned over the poor-but all the poor. That to burn yourself out over one individual was to rob the rest. To care too much about one building to diminish the importance of all other churches.

Yet the one Carmodyne had built would be missed.

He let his eyes run over the structure as they made their way back. A computer had determined stress levels and tolerances, the optimum spans and arches, but an artist had placed his own imprint on the whole and the man finally responsible had sealed that with his own peccadilloes.

The carving, for instance, had he ordered the mason to be so outrageous? The mosaic in the south transept-had he planned the transfiguration when light struck it at certain times of the day? Curtains had shielded the area and nullified the original intention-if intention it had been-but could the subtle depiction of interwound figures have been anything else? The explicit activity in which they were engaged?

A scene not likely to appeal to the new owner with her reputation for fastidious modesty. One probably exaggerated but built on a foundation of truth. He had been right not to have mentioned it, the carving had been enough, but Tobol didn't think he had made a mistake. The woman was grown, adult, a person of experience and one who must know something of the basic facts of life. Sex, of course, but more than that; the humor which lurked in unsuspected places as did farce and tragedy, pleasure and pain.

Would she sell?

Tobol recalled the way she had looked when examining the exterior of the church. Her eyes had held contempt if not for the building then for the man who had ordered it. The reason he had shown her the carving; if bad blood had existed between them the depiction may have shown a side of her uncle she hadn't known.

By contrast the interior of the church was dark; the light which had illuminated the tessellated floor now touching the upper reaches, casting smoke-like shadows on the groins, the vaulted spaces. In the dusk the suppliants waited with their usual patience. As he took his place one came to kneel in the cubicle before him; a man with a pale, tormented face, thin, knotted hands which clenched and clenched again as if they were animals beyond his control.

A man in need and Tobol listened to his litany of petty sins, studying the pale face now illuminated by the swirling colors of the benediction light.

"… neighbor's wife and we did wrong when he was kept late at the factory. A good man and I can't look into his eyes now and I'm sure he must suspect something because he used to wait for me to walk home with him and now he doesn't and…"

Suspicion and terror of punishment coupled with an inner guilt and sense of shame to create a situation verging on the borders of insanity. A less sensitive man would have suffered less, a more brutal one not at all, but they too had their fears and guilts and terrors which haunted their lives.

"Look into the light," said Tobol as the litany came to an end. "Look into the light of forgiveness. Bathe in the flame of righteousness and be cleansed of all sin. Be freed of pain. Of suffering. Yield to the benediction of the Universal Brotherhood."

The light was hypnotic, the suppliant responsive, the monk skilled in his application. The pale face relaxed, the hands, the body, as he slipped into a trance, in which he would suffer subjective penance later to receive the bread of forgiveness.

And if some came only for the wafer of concentrate it didn't matter. Each, while under the light, was conditioned never to kill. Potential murder prevented for the cost of a little food-it was a fair exchange.