Penumbra

24

Bennett stared at the gaunt figure of Carstairs in the entrance of the temple.

“Welcome,” Carstairs repeated. “We are preparing a ceremony of reception for you.”

“Klien killed you?” Mackendrick said, voicing Bennett’s incredulity.

“We never really die,” Carstairs said. “We merely relinquish our physical forms when the time is right, and, move on. When I died, the time was not right for me to move on. First, I had to learn.”

Bennett heard Ten Lee beside him. “Yes…” she whispered to herself.

Carstairs lifted a hand. “Come, I will explain. If you would care to follow me.”

Mackendrick looked around the group, his face frozen with shock and hope. He gripped Rana’s hand and followed as Carstairs turned and walked into the shadowy portal. Bennett, Ten Lee and Hupcka joined them.

They passed down a wide, high corridor, leaving the pink fungal glow behind them. They switched on their flashlights and filled the corridor with a hundred dazzling reflections.

Carstairs turned. “Please, in the temple, only the light of naked flames.”

Obediently they switched off the flashlights. Bennett walked on, blinded by the absence of light in this midnight tunnel. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw a faint source of illumination far ahead. He felt a hand grip his, small and warm: Rana. They left the corridor and entered the great circular chamber, illuminated by the flames of perhaps a hundred tiny candles set high in the curving walls.

Mackendrick, Rana and Bennett were the first into the chamber after Carstairs, and they stopped and stared at what was revealed in the fitful candlelight. Bennett’s pulse quickened and fear clutched at his chest.

Stationed like silent sentries around the circumference of the chamber, Bennett made out the tall and shadowy shapes of the Ancients—the Ahloi, as Carstairs called them. They stood unmoving, their long arms by their sides, even longer legs slightly bent at the knees. Rana almost collapsed against him in shock. He took her weight, wishing that someone would likewise support him.

Carstairs, ahead, turned to them. “Please,” he said. “Follow me.”

“Where…” Bennett began. “I mean, where are we going?”

“There is much I must explain,” said their guide. “This way.”

He turned and led them across the chamber, past a short, central stone, towards a dark square set into the floor. As they approached, Bennett made out a flight of stairs. He followed Carstairs down the steps, Rana supported between himself and Mackendrick. Ten Lee and Hupcka brought up the rear.

The meagre illumination from the candles in the chamber lit their way down the short staircase. Then they were in another wide, high corridor, receding into absolute darkness. Bennett heard Carstairs’ footsteps ahead, checked that the others were with him, and followed.

They walked for perhaps ten minutes before the darkness was alleviated by a light in the distance. It appeared tiny at first, a mere speck like a star, but rapidly grew as they approached. At last they made out the shape of the tunnel ahead, the walls, floor and ceiling receding in perspective to form a square exit filled with a familiar opalescent glow.

Bennett knew where he had seen such light before, but he found it hard to believe that this was the same. Then he felt the lapping of a faint wind about his face, and knew that his eyes had not been deceived. They were emerging from the mountainside, into the light of Tenebrae.

They arrived at the end of the corridor, and Bennett halted and stared out. An ever-widening flight of stairs fanned out from the exit of the corridor and descended the flank of the mountain. Far below a vast sea was contained and encircled by a rearing rampart of cliffs like the inner wall of a volcano. Let into the almost sheer face of the rock were dark slits like windows, hundreds of them, thousands in fact, in serried rows one above the other. Bennett moved his gaze from the far wall of the mountain, around in a great sweep, to the sheer cliff faces on either side of the corridor’s exit. Here he could see that each of the window slits was at least ten metres tall, carved into the mountainside to form great, cavernous chambers.

Carstairs made a sweeping gesture to encompass the whole spectacular design. “Welcome to the monastery of Ahloi-tennay,” he said.

Bennett looked around at his friends. He knew that the expressions of wonder on their faces matched his own.

Only then did he see the statues, small compared to the great slit windows, that stood in a great phalanx on a ledge to either side of the exit and encompassed the entire sea. He could make out the details only of the first dozen or so. They were carvings from the natural rock of… at first he assumed they were animals, and then revised his opinion. Among the first few statues was that of an upright being, a humanoid with a regal bearing; it possessed a great domed skull, tiny childlike features, its body enveloped in a robe. Next to it was something very much like an upright scorpion, and next to this an ursine being, and then an arachnid with great faceted eyes and ferocious mandibles. Bennett began counting the statues, and reached a hundred before the diminishing perspective defeated his vision.

Carstairs turned to them, silhouetted against the opalescent dome of Tenebrae, and spread his hands.

“The Ahloi are an ancient race,” he said. “They are the most ancient race in the universe. They are the only survivors among the many who inhabited the young universe, billions of years ago. They were once a materialistic race like any other, but while their fellows across the many galaxies wasted themselves in futile aggression or the hedonism that results from the pursuit of materialism, the Ahloi managed to survive this stage of their evolution. In time, over many millennia, they became contemplative beings.

“They crossed the universe by means of star-flight unimaginable to us and lost to the present Ahloi. They seeded many galaxies, and settled to fulfil their self-appointed roles of guardians, or teachers. Over time, over millions of years, many races came to the planets inhabited by the strange and wise beings, often accidentally, and then purposefully when they heard the Ahloi’s message.

“Homefall, or Ahloi-tennay as we call this world, is where the Ahloi set up their monastery, their ministry, in this galaxy. We have received many novices in our time, as you can see.” Here Carstairs gestured at the statues to either side of the exit. “They came, and we healed them, and in so doing they saw the light of the truth, and some remained with us in contemplation until they relinquished their forms and became part of the shannath, or nirvana, while others returned to their planets of origin.”

Mackendrick said, “They were dying, these individuals, and the Ahloi cured them?”

“They were not dying, as such,” Carstairs replied. “We cured them of the many ills the flesh is heir to, diseases if they were diseased, or merely the blight of ageing. You see, nature has imposed cruel limitations upon the lifespans of its many races. In the terribly short spans they were allowed to live—often only long enough to reach adulthood and reproduce—they were unable to mature spiritually. They were like fireflies; just as they begin to apprehend the wider world they are cruelly snuffed out. Humans, too, are such a race. We need more time, extra years, in which to contemplate the truth of existence. The Ahloi refuse no one in their desire to propagate contemplation of the truth.”

“But if all races came here,” Bennett said, “then Ahloi-tennay would be overrun.”

Carstairs’ calm smile halted his objection. “But Josh, over the millennia, entire races have sought the ministrations of the Ahloi. Entire planets have passed through our portals, and been cured and informed of the truth, and returned to their own worlds to consider those truths. In time, of course, these individuals pass on, relinquish their physical forms, just as I will in years to come. The Ahloi have given them that most precious gift of all, that which normally cannot be gained: the gift of time.”

Ten Lee said, “It is the belief of my people that, although we do not have time to gain the truth in one life, we are reborn into others so that the quest for the truth can be continued. Like this, after many lives, we at last arrive and become at one with sunyata.”

Carstairs bowed his head. “Your way is valid and true,” he said. “But the Ahloi considered it a source of much misery and suffering, this endless cycle of rebirth. Our way is a short cut, if you like, a means of achieving what you call sunyata in one, albeit extended, lifetime. But each form is valid, Ten Lee. Follow your own path, if you wish. Or you may join with us.”

Into the silence that followed Carstairs’ words, Mackendrick said, “You refuse no one? You will take me?”

Hesitation showed on Ten Lee’s face. Then she stepped forward. “And me?”

Carstairs gestured at the group. “We will take you all, if that is what you wish.”

“You say ‘we’,” Mackendrick said. “You sound as if you belong to the Ahloi now, as if you’re a part of them?”

Carstairs nodded. “That is true. When you apprehend a universal truth, when you share something as fundamental as the Ahloi’s knowledge, then it is impossible not to become a part of what they are.”

“But they haven’t taken you over?” he asked.

Carstairs laughed at this. “You use the combative terms typical of the human race,” he said. “In essence, of course, they have taken me over, for it is a fact that I now believe what they believe, and what is being ‘taken over’ if not coming to believe in the truth as perceived by others? But I can assure you that it is an entirely passive and beneficial form of take-over. We share in the joy that contemplation affords, and if you wish to join us you are welcome.”

Mackendrick said, “When you have cured me, then must I remain here?”

“My friend,” Carstairs said with patience, “we make you do nothing. We show you the light, that is all. However, once you have perceived the way, then you will be unlikely to want to return to the life and the world you knew. It will seem shallow and superficial. The ways of materialism will hinder your concentration. In all likelihood you will wish to remain here, with us.”

Mackendrick nodded. “I am ready,” he said at last.

“Then, if you would like to return with me to the Chamber of Rebirth? Please,” he gestured to the others, “you are welcome to observe, or even join, the ritual.”

He moved back into the tunnel, soon disappearing into the darkness. Bennett looked about him one last time, at the great circular sea and the encompassing mountains, the statues of the legion of aliens long since passed from this world. Then he followed Carstairs, Rana still holding on to him as if in fear.

On the long walk back to the chamber, Bennett considered the words of Carstairs, the convert to this strange alien belief system. He supposed the crux of whether or not one believed in the way of the Ahloi was how one viewed their power of bringing the dead back to life. Did their ability necessarily mean that their belief system was correct?

He stopped himself there. What proof was there that the aliens could bring the dead back to life? He wondered if he was being materialistic and crass in his analysis of something so amazing as the promise of rebirth.

They climbed the steps, and they saw that now the chamber was bathed in torchlight. The obsidian walls reflected the bright orange flares of a hundred flaming brands. As they emerged into the chamber, Bennett halted and stared about him. The Ahloi stood in a great circle, their gaunt forms thrown into stark relief by the flickering torches held aloft by every other individual.

Those without torches stepped forward to form a smaller, tighter circle. Carstairs moved to the central stone. He was joined by two of the tall, stiffly articulated aliens. The Ahloi bent their knees and lowered their long heads as if to speak to him. Bennett heard a rapid series of clicks and whistles. Then another Ahloi came hurriedly into the chamber, moving with the spry articulation of an insect. The alien approached Carstairs, bent and hurriedly addressed the human.

Carstairs swung around, facing the corridor down which they had originally entered the chamber. He hurried back to Mackendrick and the others.

“You have been followed,” he said. “Already he has slain many Ahloi.”

They turned and stared. Bennett wondered what Carstairs was talking about. Who could have possibly followed them all this way?

Seconds later a figure emerged from the mouth of the opposite corridor. Bennett stared at the intruder, who paused on the threshold of the chamber. His face, in the light of the flames, was soaked in sweat and appeared just a little insane. He held a laser pistol in each hand and raised them as he took in the gathering.

Beside Bennett, Rana gasped. “Klien!”

Bennett recognised the security chief who had interviewed him in Calcutta four months ago, and knew then how Klien had managed to follow them here.

Carstairs stepped forward, arms raised in a gesture of reconciliation. “Klien?” he said. “Is it you, Klien? I never thought we would meet again.”

“We watched their ceremony of rebirth, Carstairs,” Klien said, his voice cracking, “and I couldn’t allow you to spread the word. So I killed you, and then these… these devils brought you back to life!” He gave a terrible laugh and shook his head. “I knew what I saw, but over the years I began to doubt. I almost convinced myself that I’d been tricked.”

it was no trick, Klien,” Carstairs interrupted. “The Ahloi possess the ability to heal the sick, bring the dead back to life.” He paused, then spread his arms. “Look at me, Klien. I live.”

“No!” Klien cried, raising a pistol and taking aim at Carstairs.

“Please!” Carstairs said. “Please, no violence. I beg you.”

“I will kill you first,” Klien cried, “and then dispose of the Ancients.” He looked around at the group of humans. “You have been deceived by the ways of the devil and you will repent at your leisure in hell.”

Bennett almost wept. How banal Klien’s punitive theology seemed in light of what he had heard from Carstairs. He would rather believe neither, in his ignorance and materialism, but if pressed he would have no hesitation in siding with Carstairs and his alien cohorts.

Carstairs took a step forward, and Bennett could only watch as Klien casually pulled the trigger of his pistol. The laser fire lanced instantly across the chamber, bright as lightning, and in the dark aftermath of the shot Carstairs crumpled to the ground.

Then Klien cried and began firing at random. The effect was gruesomely beautiful, as sapphire spears of laser light criss-crossed the chamber and illuminated the falling figures of the Ancients. At that second Hans Hupcka yelled out and charged. He was almost upon the assassin before Klien reacted. He fired, the bright flash dazzling Bennett. He grabbed Rana and dragged her to the floor. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Hupcka lying dead—obviously, horribly dead—beside the central stone.

Klien continued with the slaughter, and for long seconds a series of flashes snapped on and off around the chamber. Oddly, the Ahloi stood unmoving, facing Klien’s insane rage with the fatalism of true believers. Klien was turning like a homicidal dervish, crying out as he fired. One by one the Ahloi tumbled grotesquely, their cries high-pitched and inhuman, and hit the floor with a chitinous rattle of limbs.

Bennett shook Rana from him, but she grabbed his hand and would not let go. “No!” she cried. “He’ll kill you!”

Brutally he pushed her away and scrambled around the chamber in the brief periods of darkness between the bursts of laser fire, attempting to get on Klien’s blind side. He was overcome with the need for vengeance, a rage he had never before experienced.

He leaped towards Klien, and at that precise second the madman turned and fired. The charge tore past Bennett’s head, the heat burning his hair, and a second later he impacted with Klien and knocked him from his feet. They struck the stone floor and rolled, Klien roaring with rage beneath him as one pistol skittered away across the polished stone floor. Bennett wrestled with Klien for the second pistol, pulled it from him and tried to roll away and shoot. Klien dived after him, pinning him to the floor and reaching for the laser.

Bennett felt a painful grip on his wrist, and then Klien was forcing the pistol little by little towards Bennett’s head. Klien seemed possessed with the strength of the insane, and Bennett felt his resistance weakening as the bulbous barrel of the laser pistol moved closer to his face.

He closed his eyes, heard the quick hiss of a shot, and Klien spasmed on top of him.

When he opened his eyes he saw Rana standing nearby, frozen in contemplation of the enormity of her actions, the laser pistol Klien had dropped now gripped in her outstretched hands. Klien toppled from him, the lower half of his skull a shattered gourd spilling the viscous liquid of his brains.

Rana ran to Bennett’s side and helped him to his feet. Mackendrick joined them, taking his daughter in his arms without a word. The humans huddled in a group in the centre of the chamber and watched the activity of the Ahloi all around them.

More Ancients were hurrying into the chamber, their clicking legs working like stilts; they gathered about the dead and fallen, lifting the lifeless bodies and carrying them down the steps and away. They seemed to approach Carstairs with especial reverence, half a dozen Ahloi lifting him with care, caressing his body with their long-fingered hands.

Bennett was aware of movement behind him. When he turned he looked into the attenuated, insectoid visage of an Ancient. Its swollen ruby eyes regarded him without discernible emotion. It opened its mandibles, and beneath its clicks and hisses Bennett made out the whispered aspiration of words.

“Bennett…” it said in a hot rushing breath. “They will be taken… resurrected. In time they will live again.”

Bennett shook his head, turned and watched the dead as they were carried from the chamber.

Hupcka’s great body was lifted by four Ahloi and borne away, his leonine head hanging lifeless, his chest a charred mess where the laser had impacted. Next came the perpetrator of the killings; three Ancients hurried away with Klien’s macabre remains.

He looked at the Ahloi beside him. “What will happen to Klien?” he asked.

“Like the others,” the alien breathed, “he too will be brought back to life.”

“But he will be punished?”

The alien regarded Bennett with all the expression of a praying mantis. “Punish?” it breathed, as if that word were missing from its vocabulary.

Perhaps, Bennett thought, an indefinite period in which to contemplate the error of his ways would be punishment enough for Klien. He checked himself. He was taking for granted something that hours ago he would have considered impossible.

“Is it really possible?” he asked. “I mean, how can you… ?”

“No injury is beyond our ability to repair,” the alien whistled. “It will take longer to effect their transcendence, but we have time in abundance. And now…” The tall Ahloi turned to Mackendrick. “Carstairs informed us that you were ill, that you sought the truth.”

The alien moved to the centre of the chamber and stationed itself beside the nub of stone. It was joined by another, this one bearing a flaming brand. As Bennett looked about him, he realised that the Chamber of Rebirth was no longer a scene of carnage. As if nothing untoward had occurred, a circle of Ancients stood about its circumference.

The alien who had spoken to Bennett now lifted a long, skeletal arm and gestured to Mackendrick, who stepped slowly forward.

Rana moved from Bennett’s side, rushed to her father and held him. For long seconds they embraced, Rana sobbing like a child, before Mackendrick released her, coaxing her with gentle whispers to rejoin Bennett. She nodded and stumbled across the chamber. Bennett pulled her to him, holding her as they watched with a sense of awe and disbelief.

Mackendrick took his place between the two aliens.

“First,” the Ahloi said, “you will be touched… granted a glimpse of the way. You will make your decision, and if you wish salvation, then the ceremony will commence.”

Mackendrick raised his head. He seemed a small figure, reduced by age and illness. He stared back at Bennett, Ten Lee and his daughter, something proud and at the same time apprehensive in his eyes.

“I’m ready,” he said at last.

The alien reached out, spanned Mackendrick’s head with its long fingers, and Mackendrick staggered but remained upright. The alien lowered its long head and whispered to him. Mackendrick raised his face to the alien and spoke, then seated himself on the central stone.

The Ancient turned towards Bennett, Rana and Ten Lee. “Mackendrick has perceived the way, and wishes to join us.”

At once, the Ahloi stationed around the chamber moved forward, causing great disorienting shadows to fly and flap around them. They surrounded Mackendrick in an orderly yet frightening melee, a ritual Bennett found dreadful in its similarity to nothing in his experience. It was as if the aliens were devouring the human, taking something from him instead of giving. For long minutes they reached out with attenuated arms and caressed Mackendrick with long fluttering fingers, obscuring him from sight. Bennett was aware of a charge in the atmosphere of the chamber, as if, truly, the miraculous was being performed.

Then the Ahloi backed off, resumed their silent stations around the chamber, and the Mackendrick seated on the stone seemed like a man transformed. His face glowed, Bennett thought, though it might only have been an effect of the torchlight, and his posture was that of a man years younger, no longer bent with age and pain.

He stood and walked to Bennett and Rana. He embraced his daughter, touched Bennett’s arm in a wordless communication of his joy and transformation.

“Father?” Rana began.

“I must go now,” he said. “I… there are many things I need to consider. In time we will meet again, talk…”

He staggered, almost fell. Quickly two Ahloi moved to his side, caught him under the arms and carried him from the chamber.

Bennett turned back to the central stone. Ten Lee squeezed his hand, then let go and hurried towards the Ancient pair.

“Ten!” Bennett said. He wanted to say something, a farewell that might fully express his sense of loss, but she was already stationed before the central stone.

The alien without fire reached out, spread its fingers across her shaven skull, and Ten Lee rocked and gasped at its touch. She took her place upon the stone, and again the ceremony was repeated. The Ahloi moved to her, enveloped her, two circles of dark and light, obscuring her from sight, and when they backed away she too had been affected, and the look upon her face, her expression of hallowed rapture, convinced Bennett.

She tried to stand, but collapsed, and was carried by two Ahloi from the chamber.

The alien stepped forward. “Please, if anyone else…” It gestured to the stone.

Bennett took a step forward. He thought only of Carstairs’ description of the Ahloi and their way, and it seemed so right to him. He felt Rana’s hand in his, restraining him. He heard her say something, but her words were reduced, stripped of meaning, just so many sounds conveying emotions beyond his comprehension.

He stepped forward and moved slowly towards the waiting Ancients, then stood between them and turned, and across the chamber Rana seemed so small and vulnerable as she stared at him with tearful eyes. She reached out to him, pleaded with him to think about what he was doing, and in that second Bennett wanted to explain to her that he was trying to leave all the pain behind.

He inclined his head, trying to prepare himself for this foretaste of the universal truth, but he knew that preparation was impossible. The Ahloi reached out and touched his head with hard, cold fingers.

Instantly his awareness was transformed. He knew nothing of time. The concept of duration was meaningless. A part of him knew that Mackendrick and Ten Lee had experienced this foretaste for as long as the Ahloi’s hand had spanned their skulls—a matter of seconds only—and yet it seemed to him that the time during which he experienced the wonder of the universal essence was limitless.

He was at once aware of himself as an individual identity, and aware too of the many other countless identities that constituted a whole; a kind of gestalt mind, and yet not a mind but an essence made up of every living thing that had ever been. It was an ocean of life that underpinned this reality, an essential ur-reality from which life as he had known it sprang and to which it would return. He seemed always on the verge of mentally apprehending this universal truth, this essence, but prevented from doing so by the fact that this was a foretaste only, that he had not yet relinquished his human form and joined the gestalt.

He knew that he was experiencing the truth not through any of his usual senses: he could not see the gestalt, or hear it, or even touch it. He sensed it, was aware of the fact of the ur-reality with a part of his mind he had never before been fortunate enough to use. Apprehending this, he thought his way into the ocean of universal life, wanting to become part of it and yet proscribed from taking that final step. A part of him reached out, searching for something, needing something he sensed was there, he knew should be there, but could not find.

With that same part of his mind, which he had never before used, he asked for Ella. He discerned her essence on the very edge of his consciousness, a faint presence like an elusive ghost. And as he failed to make contact, as he felt within him an awful ache of loss, he heard a voice that was not a voice, felt an explanation enter his consciousness. He was told, or he was suddenly aware, that though the essence of Ella, and of his father and mother, and indeed everyone else who had ever existed, was maintained in this limitless ur-reality, they were now a vast and indivisible whole that could not be said to be made up of individuals, but which was something more. He understood that, because he was still an individual, still part of the realm of the physical; he could not truly apprehend the wonder of the truth, could grasp but a fleeting glimpse. Only when he relinquished his present material life would he conjoin with the ultimate, the infinite and eternal.

He understood then that human life was in some way an aberration, his existence like an individual drop of water thrown from an ocean, which would exist alone for a time before it was drawn irrevocably back into the body of the vastness to which it truly belonged. It was as if life was a travail of hardship through which one had to pass to truly appreciate the sublimity of the essence, and upon realising this the man who was Bennett was granted something of how it felt to be part of the whole. It was, he thought later, a feeling very much like, but greater than, the sacred experience of being loved, of being accepted and accepting and knowing only the rightness of belonging.

And then the Ahloi removed its hand from his head, and Bennett lost consciousness.