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  How stupid, the Neighbors seem to say. These Kambu wanted to rain down rocks on our heads and waited until we were all through!

  The beauty of the Machine, thinks Kai, is that it is not a presence. It is an absence. There is nothing for the Neighbors or any of their mages to sense.

  Then a cry goes up from the Neighbors.

  They have cast their first spell, and it hasn’t worked.

  The stones settle with a crash and a raising of dust, closing the pass. The Neighbors cannot get out.

  There is no magic here, only swords. The Neighbors are unarmed.

  The ten acolytes of Hero Kai leap from the battlement walls onto the single silken threads, and they slide down. They balance holding out two singing swords in each hand, outstretched like wings. They somersault onto the ground.

  Then they whirligig their way across the plain, spinning into the soft and real flesh of the Neighbors.

  The monks, the farmers, and the sons without titles advance.

  To be sure of victory, the Neighbors sent three thousand of their finest warrior sorcerers.

  Within five minutes, all of them are dead.

  Again, Kai cries like an eagle and flings his swords over his head. Blood whips from the blades in midair as if the weapons themselves are bleeding.

  The Sons of Kambu cheer. They run to Kai and pat his back. They dip and hold up their hands in prayer toward him. Some of them prostrate themselves on the ground to him, but laughing, he shakes his head and helps them stand.

  “We have all won!” he cries, and all the valley tolls like a giant bell of stone, ringing with many voices.

  Kai laughs and turns, and he runs up the silken thread. True he slows somewhat near the summit, but he gains the top of the battlements and all the citizens roar all the louder.

  He hops down from the wall in front of the King. The King looks like a skeleton.

  Kai knows from the man’s face. He had thought his only duty was to stay in office. This King liked the Neighbors because they kept him in his palace.

  “You are a king for real now,” says Kai. “Better start ruling and stop consuming.”

  The King gives a sad, sick smile. Kai seizes his hand, pulls him to the top of the battlements, and holds the King’s hand aloft. All Likelihood cheers its King and all his sacred paraphernalia.

  The fiction is maintained.

  You will have to lie to others, but never lie to yourself

  It has been a year without wonders.

  The mountain rice paddies require unending maintenance. Gates have to be opened to let them drain. The gates must be closed promptly or the terraces dry out. Heavy stones must be rolled back into place. Spills of precious topsoil must be scooped back into the fold. The replanting of nursery rice keeps people bent over for a week. The ligaments in the smalls of their backs tear.

  The monsoons are late and small. Water has to be pumped up from the valley floor.

  Too many people crowd in, and there are disputes. The original villagers had no system of land registration. The newcomers steal their terraces only to have them stolen in turn.

  So the King assigns fields. What happens when those assigned fields dry out and there are no more fields to register?

  The King is pleased. He looks less of a man than ever, like someone recovering from malaria, but he smiles. “Of course, in the old days, I could have called up rain like that.” He snaps his fingers.

  Kai’s reply is placid. “Now you have the opportunity to be responsible in a new way. You will have to join us in thought.”

  The King chuckles. “Responsible? The King is not supposed to be responsible. The King just is the King. Unless he is prevented from embodying the health of the country.”

  “You never did. You embodied the disease.”

  Kai goes for a walk.

  He walks through the court that has gathered around the King. It is thriving, full of superior people in blue cloth with gold flowers. They gather murmuring in distinguished groups, and turn and mutter as Kai passes them.

  He is relieved to be free of them. He clambers down the wooden ladder that is the entrance to the royal palace. The palace is one of the original, graceful, dilapidated village buildings. He likes it. What better way to say that here everyone shares the wealth and the labor? He himself plants rice.

  Kai loves this new Kingdom. Everywhere he sees the work of God, God who hates miracles because they are so unfair.

  He smiles at a beautiful Daughter of Kambu. She grins a strange closelipped smile that looks neither serene nor spontaneous. She is smiling so that she does not show her rotten teeth.

  Kai walks through the market. The Neighbors harass caravans bound for Likelihood. The old trade route is kept open only through continuing force of arms. The noble sons who guard the passes come home wrapped in silk for cremation.

  The high mountain steppes are good for only one crop of rice each year. They don’t support fruit trees. The stall-owners sell no longan, rambuttan, or jackfruit. The market stinks of rotten old bananas and aged mushy pineapples. People cover their faces when they walk through it. Everyone looks very lean and fit.

  They still greet each other beautifully, and the sun still shines on this glorious day.

  It doesn’t rain.

  The amphitheater of paddies all around them echoes with the sound of labor—axes chopping stone, men grunting as they pump water, an argument because one man threw all his cleared pebbles into another man’s field.

  Kai himself has tiny new brown spots all over the back of his hand. “I’m getting old,” he tells himself. “It is the natural way.”

  At the far side of the filthy market is one of the hastily constructed new houses, built from cast-off timber and tumbles of stone. Sons of Kambu are not used to building houses out of stone. They are not used to the winter wind that blows through the chinks.

  Inside the house, a man is screaming in pain.

  Hero Kai does not need to climb the ladder to see in. He can duck his head into the low shelter.

  “Can I help?” he asks. He expects surprised pleasure at being visited by a Hero in the making. He imagines polite bowing and hands held up in prayer. A middle-aged woman whose swollen belly is popping the buttons of her shirt looks at him sullenly.

  The old man, quivering, sits up. “No you can’t!” he says. “Go away, go away and take my pain with you! May it eat your joints!”

  Kai is taken aback. “I am so sorry you are ill.”

  The man shouts again. “I am not an opportunity for you to earn merit!”

  Kai feels the blood in his cheeks prickle.

  The man drops back. “Curse you, God, for accepting all my offerings and letting me die! Curse you, God, for creating pain. Go away, God, with all your high thoughts and sharp rocks. Blast every living slug, mosquito, spider, snake, civet, all of the thieving, biting things you created! Die, God! Like me! Die!”

  Kai feels deafened by the words. He staggers back.

  He turns and sees a ring of people around him. They are all grinning smugly. A young man with a particularly nasty smile starts to recite what sounds like a Chbap.

  Oh great wise man with all your strength

  Too big, you crush us like a mill

  Too big, you soak up all our pride

  Too strong, you sit on us like an ox.

  Too clever, you take away all our comfort

  Just because you do not need it.

  The circle of people all chuckle. Kai reaches for his sword. He stops himself.

  “I will think about what you say,” he says. And waits for a respectful response.

  “What will you do?” asks the smug young man.

  Kai acknowledges that with a stiff shake of the head. He feels awkward and foolish as he walks away.

  “Die, Big Man! Die!” screams the man in the house.

  Kai draws Arun to one side and takes him for a walk out into the hills where spies can be easily seen.

  “It is the way of the worl
d, Arun. You offer people good things, but still they will always complain. To rule, you have to scare them as well as flatter them. We have not used fear. You and the Ten, go out among the town and drink some of these terrible fermentations people brew from the rotten fruit. Pretend to get drunk. Listen to who criticizes.”

  Kai sighs. “Then we will round them all up and pile stones on top of them.”

  Organized retreat is a form of advance

  Another army pauses at the top of the fallen rubble.

  Sunlight glints on metal. They are armored, and some of the armor is Kambu. Banners in the shape of flames flutter in the wind. Gongs and blaring trumpets signal some kind of advance.

  The King sits cross-legged on the battlements consulting the Oracle, which of course no longer works here. The yarrow stalks clatter meaninglessly onto the paving. “It seems we have visitors,” the King says, croaking and wheedling with an old man’s voice.

  Kai glares into the distance.

  People have formed a long line along the rice terraces over the pass. They appear to be prizing free large sections of the cliff face. Huge flat plates of stone break away, land, rock, and settle.

  Something like a staircase is being built down from the top of the dam.

  This time the Neighbors know magic will not protect them. And they seem to have been joined by Kambu allies.

  As he did two years ago, Kai keens like a eagle. It is the call to arms.

  There is only silence. A baby wails somewhere.

  He keens again and again. Likelihood remains still. Kai hears only wind in response.

  The King chuckles and shakes his head.

  Kai turns, and the King’s courtiers block the ladder down. Kai looks at the beautiful superior cloth and imagines it sliced cleanly.

  These are not soldiers. Kai puts his hand on the handle of one of his swords, and they flinch and step back. They will not fight him, but they are far from harmless. He walks forward and they step aside to let him through. He beheads them all anyway.

  Then he saunters back to the King, hoists him to his feet, and jams a sword to this throat. “You have the benefit of one escape, because you are my King. But I don’t respect you, and I have no use for you. Next time, you’re dead.”

  The skinny old man quivers in his grasp bending backward over the edge of the wall.

  Kai looks and counts. He sees the Neighbors whose helmets are round with a spike on the top, and he notes the lotus-blossom helmets of his own people. He counts them. Superior people outside Likelihood still depend on the King for their titles. They have come to get him, to take him back, to reclaim their superiority.

  One thousand he counts. Estimate another thousand there. Three thousand?

  There are more Kambu in this army than there are Neighbors.

  He darts down the steps and into the Palace.

  He can trust his secret police, most of them. He can trust the Ten. He needs nobody else with him.

  Underneath the royal palace, on the slope amid its stilts, there hangs a chute for washing waste down over the hills. Kai called it the Tipping of the Balance, and it is the agreed meeting place in case of disaster.

  The Ten are all there, with Arun.

  Kai explains why they are not fighting. “We did not set out on this great scheme to become killers of the Sons of Kambu.”

  He is just a little surprised, just a little disappointed, when there is an urgent murmur of assent from even his most loyal.

  “Go pack. Gather anyone you see along the way whom we have marked as Likely. Ask them to come with us, but do not wait. Our aim now is to be long gone by the time the new army gets here.”

  “But the Machine…”

  Kai sighs and marvels at his own powers of acceptance. “The Machine is doomed.”

  All clatter away except for Arun. Arun says, “My only friend is you. The only person I respect is you. I will be with you until the end.” The two men hug.

  “Brother,” declares Kai. This is a promotion.

  They go back to the battlements, stepping over a few heads.

  The wave of troops advances. They recite the Loyalty Chbap.

  Respect the King, for the job of the King

  Is to eat the country.

  He eats the country so that it can be processed

  Through his sacred alimentary canal.

  It comes out rich fertilizer for us to live on.

  Kai chuckles. “And the country is shit.”

  The loyal Ten come back, bringing, perhaps thirty Likely others with them.

  “Enough,” says Kai. And with measured pace they begin to climb.

  From high in the hills, they look down on misty distance. Elephants have lumbered up and over the heap of stone, hauling a battering ram. Great silk-cotton logs slam repeatedly into the side of the Machine.

  Kai can hear the breaking of the clay even from this great distance. A sparkling vapor dazzles its way out of the new mouth. It washes over the elephants, and they burn and shrivel. Their great legs twist, collapsing into heaps of ash.

  Even on the high mountainside where the Ten stand, the air starts to buzz unpleasantly like a blow to the elbow.

  Kai makes one sharp shrill cry. The fat under his skin seethes up and he burns again.

  He contorts for a moment, stretching his neck, shoulders and arms. He shivers his way back into normal standing position, mastering himself and the fire.

  “Now it’s their turn to cheer,” he says. He starts to climb again.

  Only Arun can lay a comforting hand on his burning flesh.

  Become evil to do good

  A year later only the Ten are left.

  They live in a cave, surviving on what they can hunt. They shiver in furs and spend the long dark hours in meditation. A hard life is what they have come to love, and despite all their virtues, they have become hard men. There are few words and no laughter between them.

  Except for Arun. Curiously, he has learned how to laugh. He tells jokes to himself, the Ten, and sometimes even to Kai, when he can find him.

  “Master, come back. We need you to warm the walls.”

  Kai has retreated into the high snows. He perches on icy crags, buffeted by howling winds. The snow sputters on his skin and melts in a perfect circle all around him. The rocks he sits on have the dull metallic look of stones in a steam bath. Trails of vapor hiss from them.

  “At least you will be very clean,” says Arun again. He crouches near Kai with a pot of stew. Already the stew is icy cold, which is how Kai likes it. It cools his throat as he swallows. Arun feeds him with a spoon he himself has chipped out of stone.

  Arun sits in the shelter of Kai’s warmth, and places the pot of stew on Kai’s lap to heat it up. He tries to make conversation.

  “You should come and burn the cave clean for us!” Arun says, but the gale drowns out his words.

  “To tell you the truth, the Ten all think I am still a slave. I do all the work!” Still no response. Being with Kai now can be lonelier than being without him. Arun eats his boiling-hot stew.

  The gray sky edges toward blue. Arun cannot be caught out on icy trails at night. Arun hugs Kai, though it sears his hides and makes them stink.

  Kai looks pained and saddened, staring at something quite definite in all that swirling cloud and snow.

  Arun stands up, shouts goodbye, gets no answer, and then turns and walks into the blizzard.

  Kai sits alone. The wind drives the snow sideways. The world gets bluer, almost turquoise.

  Then, swelling out of the storm and the hillside comes a giant stranger made of air and hardship, rock and salt, wind and sleet.

  The Buddha was tempted by Mala, the World. Mala offered the Buddha kingship, and the power to do good in the real world.

  “Well,” says the World. “Here’s a fine place for a Hero to end up. Happy in your work?”

  “I know who you are,” says Kai through broken teeth that glow like embers.

  “I know a good dentist,” says
Mala. “I made him myself.”

  The World sits down and sighs in a showy, airy way. “Now what do I have here? Oh, cooling ices. They are made in a city called Baghdad. It’s a desert town, quite sophisticated, fiercely hot. They have learned how to transport ice and make sweet delights from it that are colder even that this snow. Magic ices, that would soothe your fiery throat.”

  Kai chuckles, puffing out smoke and ash from his burnt windpipe. “Go to hell,” he says.

  “That’s where I am. Hell is wherever you are, my friend,” says Mala. “Freezing and burning for the rest of your life? Sounds familiar to me. Myself, I prefer comfort, the here and now, and if a little bit of magic gets us what we most desire, I, the World-as-it-actually-is, don’t see any reason to forego it.”

  “It is not the will of God.”

  Mala sighs. “I have no idea what the will of God is. And, my would-be Hero, neither do you. By the way, you have not achieved Heroism.”

  “I know that.”

  “Think you’ll find it in your navel?”

  “Better place to look than up your ass.”

  “My my, we are sharp this morning, aren’t we? A year of agony tends to do that to people. How about looking for Heroism in reality?”

  “I do.”

  “Haven’t found it, have you? Look, I’m the entire world and I have many places to be at once. So I’ll say this once only and quickly. Your aim was not to destroy magic. Your aim was to free your kingdom from the Neighbors. I’m sorry to have to make this clear to you, but the only way to do that in the World is to destroy the Neighbors. So why not take the most direct and intelligent route? Destroy them through magic?”

  Kai sits unmoved, eyes closed. “All I have to do is give up enlightenment.”

  The World’s laughter melds with the sound of the storm. “You are so far from achieving enlightenment! You’ve killed too many people! You’ll be lucky to reborn as a frog!”