The Godmakers

Chapter Twenty-Two

Bakrish stopped before a heavy bronze door at the end of a long hall down which he had guided Orne. The priest turned an ornate handle cast in the form of a sunburst with long projecting rays. He threw his shoulder against the door and it creaked open.

He said: “We generally don’t come this way. These two tests seldom follow each other in the same ordeal.”

Orne stepped through the door after Bakrish, found himself in a gigantic room. Stone and plastrete walls curved away to a domed ceiling far above them. Slit windows in the high curve of the ceiling admitted thin shafts of light that glittered downward through gilt dust. Orne’s gaze followed the light down to its focus on a straight wall barrier about twenty meters high and forty or fifty meters long. The wall was chopped off and appeared incomplete in the middle of the immense room, dwarfed by the space around it.

Bakrish circled around behind Orne, closed the heavy door. He nodded toward the barrier wall. “We go there.”

He led the way; Orne followed. Their slapping sandals created an oddly delayed echo. The smell of damp stone was a bitter taste in Orne’s nostrils. He glanced left, saw evenly spaced doors around the room’s perimeter—bronze doors appearing identical to the one they had entered. Looking over his shoulder, he tried to pick out their door. It was lost in the ring of sameness.

Bakrish came to a halt about ten meters from the center of the odd barrier wall. Orne stopped beside him. The wall’s surface appeared to be smooth gray plastrete, featureless, but menacing. Orne felt his prescient fear increase as he stared at the wall. The fear came like the surging and receding of waves on a beach. Emolirdo had interpreted this as infinite possibilities in a situation basically perilous.

What was there in a blank wall to produce such a warning?

Bakrish glanced at Orne. “Is it not true, my student, that one should obey the orders of his superiors?”

The priest’s voice carried a hollow echo in the room’s immensity. Orne coughed to clear the rasping dryness of his throat. “If the orders make sense and the ones who give them are truly superior, I suppose so. Why do you ask?”

“Orne, you were sent here as a spy, as an agent of the I-A. By rights, anything that happens to you here is the concern of your superiors and no concern of ours.”

Orne tensed. “What’re you driving at?”

Sweat gleamed on Bakrish’s forehead. He looked down at Orne, the dark eyes glistening. “These machines terrify us sometimes, Orne. They are unpredictable in any absolute sense. Anyone who comes within their field can be subjected to their power.”

“Like back there when you were hanging on the edge of the inferno?”

“Yes.” Bakrish shuddered.

“But you still want me to go through with this?”

“You must. It is the only way you can accomplish what you were sent here to do. You could not stop, you do not want to stop. The wheel of the Great Mandala is turning.”

“I was not sent here,” Orne said. “The Abbod summoned me. I am your concern, Bakrish. Otherwise you would not be here with me. Where is your own faith?”

Bakrish pressed his palms together, placed them in front of his nose and bowed. “The student teaches the guru.”

“Why do you voice these fears?” Orne asked.

Bakrish lowered his hands. “It is because you still suspect us and fear us. I reflect your own fears. This emotion leads to hate. You saw that in your first test. But in the test you are about to undergo, hate represents the supreme danger.”

“To whom, Bakrish?”

“To yourself, to all of those you may influence. Out of this test comes a rare kind of understanding, for it is…”

He broke off at a scraping sound behind them. Orne turned, saw two acolytes depositing a heavy, square-armed chair on the floor facing the barrier wall. They cast frightened glances at Orne, scurried away toward one of the bronze doors.

“They fear me,” Orne said, nodding toward the door where the acolytes had fled. “Does that mean they hate me?”

“They stand in awe of you,” Bakrish said. “They are prepared to offer you reverence. It would be difficult for me to say how much of awe and reverence represents suppressed hate.”

“I see.”

Bakrish said: “I merely follow orders here, Orne. I beg of you not to hate me, nor to hate anyone. Do not harbor hate during this test.”

“Why do those two stand in awe of me and prepared to reverence me?” Orne asked, his gaze still on the door where the acolytes had gone.

“Word of you has gone forth,” Bakrish said. “They know this test. The fabric of our universe is woven into it. Many things hang in the balance here when a potential psi focus is concerned. The possibilities are infinite.”

Orne probed for Bakrish’s motives. The priest obviously sensed the probe. He said: “I am terrified. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Why?”

“In my ordeal, this test almost proved fatal. I had sequestered a core of hate. This place clutches at me even now.” He shivered.

Orne found the priest’s fear unsteadying.

Bakrish said: “I would deem it a favor if you would pray with me now.”

“To whom?” Orne asked.

“To any force in which we have faith,” Bakrish said. “To ourselves, to the One God, to each other. It does not matter; only it helps if we pray.”

Bakrish clasped his hands, bowed his head.

After a moment’s hesitation, Orne imitated him.