Beneath Ceaseless Skies #26 Read online

  “What drove you to the priesthood?” I ask.

  “Drove me, Philip?” She asks, snapped back from melancholy with a playful eyebrow raised.

  “Oh come on, madam... Pree, surely you must admit that the priesthood is a refuge, a last home for those too terrified by the truth to turn and face it.”

  “The truth?” she says. “And what is that?”

  “You are avoiding the question.”

  “As are you.”

  “Please,” I say, stifling a smile, “do not make me resort to the stratagem of pointing out that I asked first.”

  “Belief.” She smiles at me.

  “Belief in what?”

  “What can you think? Belief in the Gods, in Their teachings, in the sanctity of the temples, in it all.”

  “Again,” I say, “you avoid my question.”

  “I answered in full.”

  “Then let me rephrase: what led you to belief?”

  “But I asked you something first.” She is demure, hands clasped behind her back. Her eyes are the only hint that she is fully ware of the exasperation she is inspiring within me. “What is the truth?” she repeats.

  “The truth is that which can be discovered,” I state, “that which can be proven and repeated, that which our senses cannot deny.”

  “And so what am I?” she asks. “Do your senses deny me? Can you prove me?”

  “I am in the process of elucidating those very facts.” I am flippant but only because the question shakes me. She seems to have come fully equipped with the tools to undermine my firmest hypotheses. Is she a manifestation of my own insecurity, my own fears about the truth that lies behind my own studies? Is she here to make it easier for me to take refuge in the collective madness of religion instead of standing to face the possibility of failure?

  “Now,” I say, attempting to abort this train of thought, “answer my question. What led you to belief?”

  “A promise.”

  “What promise?”

  “I promised my mother that I would go to temple.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted a doll.”

  “A doll?” We are both smiling.

  “I was seven years old. I wanted a doll but I did not go to temple. I promised my mother that I would go to temple every week for a year if she would promise to buy me a doll.” She laughs at the memory, but, of course, she has no memory.

  “This is an anecdote you tell?”

  “Yes, at the beginning of the narrative.”

  “Before I can hear you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which is the purpose of my questioning—you remember only those events which occur within the narrative. You believe only because that is your role.”

  She looks at me long and steady. Finally, she says, “You have sought to trick me.”

  “No—” I begin.

  “Yes. Yes you have. You want me to concede to your point, and state, ‘why yes, Philip, how right you are, how groundless my beliefs are.’ But you have tricked yourself.”

  “Pree—” But there is no cutting her off, she is angry with me now.

  “I believe because of my whole life. Because of the sum of things. And because I trust more than my senses. And that is why, when my life starts anew each time you turn the handle in your machine and I relive events, I do not tear my priestess’s habit from my shoulders and go running into the dark. Because I believe.”

  I sit cowed and ashamed, my cleverness ripped and spoiled.

  “Do you wish for me to put the filmcards away? If you ask me I shall ensure that you are freed from your pain.”

  She shakes her head again and again. “I talk to you Philip and you do not listen. You are too wrapped up in your own preconceptions. Listen carefully: I choose to stay.”

  “You are trapped by your faith.” It is a lament, not an accusation.

  She is still exasperated with me. “Are you trapped by the beating of your own heart? By each breath you draw?”

  “Yes!” I shout it, scream it, trying to make her see what those who imprisoned me could not see. “We are all imprisoned in these casements of slowly decaying flesh, in the caskets of our gradually slowing minds. We have so few years to live before we are confronted with a life full of mistakes and wrong turns, so that by the time we see where we truly are we have no time to set things straight.” I pull at the skin of my cheek. “This traps me as much as these walls.”

  “Why were you imprisoned Philip?” Her voice is quiet.

  “Because I dared to speak the truth. Because I recognize the imperfection in our bodies and would perfect them. Because I would not turn to worm-food as my Pater did. Because I seek a way to stop the slow decay that holds us all prisoner. Because I seek to never return to the earth, but to live immortal. Because of that.” I slow my breathing. “Because of that.”

  She says but one word. “Blasphemer.”

  It is two nights before I place the filmcards back in the slot. She is quiet with me, gentle. I am calm in my turn. We exchange pleasantries, inconsequential observations, discuss things without controversy. She asks me about my childhood, my current conditions. She tells me the names she has for her canaries. Things continue this way.

  My studies progress. The number of my specimens waxes and wanes. I grow sick of eating eggs for a while. I carry on trying to elucidate a third variable. Injections of salt and other preservative chymicks meet with little success. For a long time I am interested in the properties of gold, which is valued by all who are alive, though it seems to me to have no inherently useful properties. I try coating animals in thin layers, inserting small samples into my subjects’ food and livers, slipping small scraps beneath the skin of the forehead. Later, I try quicksilver with even less success.

  At Pree’s suggestion I grow a beard. She tells me that she enjoys watching its growth, the slow change that occurs on my side of the screen, the eventual thickening of stubble, the effects of trimming. After she has observed it once, I shave myself clean and proceed to grow it anew. She likes this. For my part, I enjoy her consistency, her reliability and predictability. I grow comfortable and easy in her company.

  “Philip,” she says one day, “do you never become dispirited?”

  “By what?”

  “Failure.”

  “What failure?”

  “All your animals die.”

  “I need only one to survive.”

  She smiles. “You know, Philip,” she says and pauses.

  “What?”

  “I think you are a religious man.”

  “What?” I exclaim, half-laughing.

  “Not the public religion, no, but your own private one. You believe in the truth.

  “I do not believe in the truth. I know it.”

  “How?”

  “I see the world around me. The truth explains it without recourse to mysticism and hand-waving.”

  “Does it explain me?” She sounds almost wistful.

  “It will,” I promise her.

  Later, unable to sleep, I turn up the gas lamps and open my journals to write.

  It appears that L=BXT where X is one or more additional variables. Different species of animal survive different lengths of time, therefore they must vary in the amount they are (or are not) affected by X. The most extreme example of this is Pree, who lives briefly but is constantly reborn. This, of course, presumes she is alive, and I pursue this line of thought with a judicious quantity of caution. However, it would appear that, for her, at a certain moment X abruptly changes, either increasing or decreasing hugely over a very short period, bringing her to life. The inverse occurs at her demise.

  The obvious culprit is the projector. Indeed if this device could be postulated to have a life (which, of course, it does not) then its “life” mirrors that of Pree. I turn the handle, the cards flow, the bulb springs to brightness, and she lives once more.

  The bulb....

  Without it no image could be cast. Without it there is
no life. Her life is dependent upon the bulb!

  I look up. Is that it? Is it a quality of the light? I live in the flicker of gaslight. We all do. Is that it? Could that be why we expire?

  I pace the room in a fervor, a million experiments formulating in my mind. But there are doubts, uncertainties. I must not rush in. My bulbs are limited and I lack the resources to create more. Even if this is the secret, what good would it do me when my supplies fail? Damn these walls! Damn these locked doors!

  Perhaps there is more.... Pree lives for herself from the bulb’s first flicker, but it is only when the door shuts that she lives for me. Something to do with the visual, with the way the slamming door affects the light? The interference of light and sound, for that is the first sound I hear. But there was a time before... when there was no sound. What caused the change?

  Klaxon... the wine... the light bulb's flare... the dynamo springing....

  Some perhaps, my Mater for sure, would call it divine inspiration, would drop to their knees and cry out in thanks. Some would ululate and praise that the center holds true. I simply smile and appreciate the smooth lines of human ingenuity intersecting deep within my racing mind.

  Electricity.

  I force myself to sleep. It is near impossible but I have much to prepare, much to calculate. I must not get this wrong. I must be well rested. When I rise I set to work, assembling my apparatus, stripped to my breeches, sweating like a common laborer. As the day turns into its final fourth, I set up my safety net, my just-in-case. I take a Damselfly, fresh-hatched, shortest lived of my subjects, and place it in the full glare of single bulb. There are flies too, water. I do not wish to eliminate B from my equation. All else must be controlled.

  I then proceed back to he projector and begin, with barely controlled excitement, to turn the handle. Action unfolds. The door slams. Pree turns to me and peers at the room.

  “What have you done?”

  “I have prepared a method of telling the truth.” I attempt to keep the appropriate sense of decorum, as befits such endeavors, in my voice, but I am giddy as a child.

  “Whatever can you mean?” She looks at me, bemused, but infected slightly by my enthusiasm.

  “Life and its extension. Your life.”

  “What do you mean to do, Philip?” And her excitement is tempered now, but mine cannot be stopped.

  “Electricity is the key. It was with a surge of it that you came to me. With more, I am convinced, I can bring you closer. I can extend your life from its few painful minutes, and make it something more.”

  “Closer to you?”

  But I am barely listening I am so caught up in the rhythm of the experiment, of the filmcards clattering through the projector.

  “When I connect this rod to the projector’s handle, I shall engage this more substantial dynamo.” I point. “This, in turn, shall cause a current to flow through a circuit. An integral part of that circuit is the metal plates onto which your image is now projected.”

  Removing the massive metal tabletop and mounting it on the wall took me longer than the construction of the new dynamo.

  “And then?” Her tone is nervous, certainly, but there is something else there, something I am unsure about.

  “Even an experiment repeated a hundred times before may give an unexpected result. With this one I have no expectations, only hopes.” It is as honest an answer as I can give, the bare, stark truth. “Do you wish me to proceed?”

  She hesitates, then, “Yes.”

  I connect the lever.

  The resistance to my turning is instantly increased. The steady patter of filmcards falters. Grunting I grip the handle with both hands. On the metal screen Pree moves jerkily, stilted and slow, then I find my rhythm again. The dynamo whirs. Pree springs to life.

  She stands watching my efforts, one hand to her mouth. The dynamo’s whine increases in pitch and intensity. Beneath it I can hear the soft whispering crackle of electricity.

  I crank harder. The light bulb glows brighter. Pree is moving at an accelerated speed, almost made absurd, her voice too high, her words unintelligible. Her belly swells. And this must work. It must work.

  The image on the screen starts to flicker, to shimmer. The bulb is glowing so brightly that almost the whole image is white.

  “Yes!” I shout it. “Yes!” Pree flies around the screen.

  And then she dies. She dies again. The child surveys me, and the final filmcard falls into the projectors exit tray.

  “No!” I scream it. I curse. I flail. I beat the dynamo until my fists break open and bleed. No! No, no, no.

  Then a terrible thought. I saw the image flicker, and mayhap something happened... but the last thing I hoped for.

  With shaking hands I uncouple the circuit and reload the filmcards. I watch Pree move in her familiar patterns across the screen with an intense desperations. The rapist draws near. My heart is in my mouth. Let it be a truth I can bear.

  The door slams shut.

  She turns to me.

  "Philip?"

  Relief floods me, engulfs me, sweeps through my system in a flush of white heat. My breath is short, sharp, and sweet.

  “I thought I had lost you.” We both speak the words as one.

  “I have never been more scared,” she says. “Not even as the rapist approaches.”

  “Not even when my Pater told me of his sickness.”

  “I love you.”

  The projector’s handle slips from my fingers. Pree’s face is frozen before me, her lips still forming the final syllable. My head is a jangle with emotions. They clamor in my head. And can this tumult be the more refined feeling of the heart?

  I know the truth at once.

  I pick up the handle and begin to turn. Pree’s face fills the screen.

  Her beautiful face.

  “I love you,” I reply.

  The night is full of further professions, the expression of more sentiments that I once found maudlin and which now thrum through me, as powerful as any symphony. Failure is eclipsed by this wholly unforeseen success.

  Still, after the filmcards end—the birth more poignant than ever before, bringing me to a flood of tears—the weight of failure hangs cloying upon me. If not electricity then what? Again I return to the possibility of the light itself, but when I check upon my Damselfly; it lies dead and alone.

  In the following spans I throw myself into research. Subsequent experiments with the bulb shone upon mammals are as disappointing as those performed upon the Damselfly. However, I expected this and soon curtail it as an avenue of investigation.

  My further experiments with electricity, however, are a seemingly endless supply of discoveries and hope.

  “It is an undeniable part of the equation,” I tell Pree one night, “but exactly how it fits eludes me. In dead subjects it brings the semblance of life, reinvigorating muscles and other tissues, but there is no coordination. In living tissue it causes damage or death. It is simultaneously fascinating and infuriating. I have worked with different voltages, types of conductive wire, but the essential parameter....” I bury my hands in my hair. It feels thin.

  “Hush,” Pree soothes. “Hush yourself.”

  “I wish I could just hold you.”

  Pree smiles. “That would be a fine day.”

  “It should be today! Yesterday!” My hands are in my hair again. But I can feel time slipping past us. The inevitable decline of the body. For the first time the threat of failure stalks me. Because, for the first time, I truly have something to lose.

  “I will always be here,” she says, and if blessing her would achieve anything I would bless her.

  “But I will not. And every time I watch you die, a piece of me dies too.”

  She looks at me, love and sadness in her eyes and something else. Nervousness?

  “Have you ever thought....” Then she tails off, the remainder unsaid.

  “What?” I ask.

  “No,” she says, “I know your answer.”
/>   “Ask me.” Still she hesitates. “Please.”

  “Have you ever thought that, perhaps, more than simple physics were involved the night we came together, more than what you can measure?”

  “Such as?” My brows furrow.

  “Do you ever consider that divine intervention was involved?”

  “The only divine intervention that ever occurred to me happened at the hands of those who sealed me in this place.” I indicate my closed windows, my locked doors.

  “I knew your answer.” She smiles sadly, but I sense that her sadness is for me, not herself.

  “It makes no sense. Even if the Gods existed, why would They interfere on my part? I was offering no prayers that night. Nor have I in many a year.”

  “I was praying,” Pree says quietly. “Before I met you all I did in here was pray. Pray for you, though I knew you not.”

  “As much as that endears you to my heart, you know I cannot believe that it affected things.”

  “But would you?”

  “Would I what?”

  She hesitates. “The night you... tried. The night you made me a part of your circuit. Something happened. Something wavered between us. We both saw something change. Perhaps.... Perhaps there.... Perhaps you could try again, repeat the experiment, but this time, maybe, you could pray for me.” Her eyes weigh upon me, soft and cool, one tooth catching her lower lip.

  “You know what you ask of me?” I keep all harshness from my voice. “You ask me to do what is the antithesis to all I hold dear, to deny myself.”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “No, I would not ask that of you. And if I do ask that then deny me and I shall bow my head in understanding. But if all I ask is for you to bend in your steadfastness, for you to consider, albeit briefly, that my firmest beliefs are not based on delusion, to give me love’s due, to compromise, then please do so.”

  I stand watching her belly grow. The truth does not compromise. The truth is simple and pure. To compromise it is to obscure it and I have sworn not to do that. If I had I would not have suffered this fate. If I had compromised I would not have met Pree.

  And yet....

  I hesitate. The expression on Pree’s face is pained. For all the world, I wish to remove that expression.