Mobius (40 page)

Marden led us to the stage and stopped the children’s music with an authoritative gesture. All who danced became still and gazed with big pupils to the stage. Marden introduced us, and we were met with little interest. Marden again gestured to the children, who resumed huffing and puffing into their gourds.

“Your presence is acknowledged,” said Marden. “You may roam our lands as you please. Help yourself to the beverages and cuisine laid out for the celebration. You’ll discover the droobsy mouse to be a versatile creature.”

Marden departed and we found our way to the perimeter of the patio, where long serving tables were piled high with many foreign dishes. Morion was quick to find a large cask full of small animal bladders filled with a golden ale.

I noticed Fanbert continuing to utilize his ocular device. “Have you discovered any sign of the Prophets? Ten minutes ago, I noticed the phenomenon pulse and shimmer, as if it could barely maintain its current size.”

“It may take more time than we have. This ocular device is inefficient for searching large areas.”

Orsteen devoured a cheese-filled droobsy mouse. “Why don’t we just ask Marden if his people have seen these Prophets?”

“Why not, indeed?” I said, now searching the crowd for Marden.

“No need!” proclaimed Fanbert. “Our search has ended.”

Fanbert looked down the length of the flower garden, where stood a row of statues, chiseled from a lustrous jade stone. They were unlike the race celebrating on the patio. They wore a modest garb indicative of a lifestyle unconcerned with fashion. Yet, on their heads they wore skullcaps decorated with a unique arrangement of feathers, suggesting rank or status.

“They’re just statues,” I said.

“Statues of the Prophets!” replied Fanbert, who rewarded himself with an ale-bladder. “Don’t you see? These are the Elevated Ones. I’ll show you. Gather around me.”

Fanbert transported us back to the grass-carpeted clearing, where the many telescopes pointed to the sky. He guided us to the closest telescope and peered through the peephole. He raised his head and smiled triumphantly. He signaled me to take a turn at the peephole. “Behold, a Prophet!”

The telescope was fixed on a single figure floating, motionless, high above the snow-capped peak and left to exist in a frozen moment. I manipulated a knob near the peephole, so the telescope zoomed out. All the Prophets came into view. They hung close together, forming a disc of bodies, to the effect that the mountaintop wore a halo of men.

I withdrew from the peephole. “And I thought Marden and his fellow Devotees were wild-eyed lunatics, awaiting gods born from the imagination of their ancestors.”

Orsteen took his turn at the peephole. “How do we get them down? We don’t have a ship or anti-gravity belts.”

“We only need one of them,” said Fanbert. “I can grab him from the sky with the help of my dimensional transporter.”

“Can you do it now?” I asked, feeling the tug of the phenomenon on my mind.

“Absolutely.” Fanbert opened his bag and retrieved the device required to wake the Prophet from temporal stasis. He sharpened his attention above the mountain and vanished.

Through the peephole, I saw Fanbert materialize above the Prophet he’d selected. During the subsequent three-meter fall, Fanbert activated the device, causing the Prophet to come out of stasis and fall alongside him. Fanbert grabbed on to him and engaged his dimensional transporter.

I pulled away from the peephole. Fanbert and the Prophet appeared beside me.

The Prophet stomped his foot on the ground, apparently to guarantee he was no longer falling. With eyes conveying great intelligence, he inspected us. Before he could speak, he was thrown to his knees by an invisible force. He clutched his skull with two large hands, disheveling the arrangement of feathers on his skullcap. He then applied to his skull what seemed the full force of his grip, as if trying to break an unbreakable egg. His face twisted in pain.

“The feedback’s too powerful!” cried the Prophet. “It’s too much! My mind can’t handle it!”

“What’s he talking about?” I asked.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” responded Fanbert.

The Prophet struggled to control his seizure. I tried to help him from the ground, but he pushed me away. He examined me with odd intensity and then focused on the sky, where the celestial phenomenon shimmered and pulsed.

“It’s begun!” said the Prophet, looking to Fanbert with familiarity. “We could’ve prevented this, but you stopped us!”

Why does he care about the celestial phenomenon?
I thought.
Weren’t they trying to assassinate Nara-Narayana?

“You’re confused,” I said. “The celestial phenomenon is the work of the Fume. He’s trying to birth a god from the souls of all humankind. We must find Nara-Narayana. She’s our only hope to stop this apocalypse.”

The Prophet made a mocking laugh that progressed into a cough of pain. “You fools! Do you think I’m ignorant? Of course this is the work of the Fume! You don’t know what the celestial phenomenon is, do you?”

I grabbed him by the shoulders. “We only want to find Nara-Narayana.”

The Prophet laughed insanely. He pushed his hand toward the sky and pointed to the celestial phenomenon. “Are you blind? She’s right in front of you, oozing out upon the universe. The celestial phenomenon
is
Nara-Narayana.”

“My God,” I uttered. “If the phenomenon is Nara-Narayana, then we’re fucked.”

Fanbert’s nostrils flared. “You’re just as crazy as the day we put you into stasis, two hundred thousand years ago. If you knew this was coming, why didn’t you tell us?”

“No more questions! I can’t tolerate the feedback!” The Prophet’s eyes bulged, as if a pressure from inside his skull grew to uncontainable levels. “Take me to my ship. I must stop this pain.”

Fanbert transported us to one of the ships. The Devotees clinging to the hull caught sight of the Prophet and apparently recognized him as an Elevated One.

Hysterical cries rained down: “An Elevated One has returned! He has come to take us to the Celestial Homeworld!”

And, from even higher above: “We’ve served you with all the diligence and zeal possible! We praise your return! Take us to the Celestial Homeworld. Please!”

A hundred Devotees frantically descended. The squish-squelch of their suction cups produced a bizarre chorus.

“Where’s the entrance?” I cried. “Fanbert! Transport us inside the ship!”

“I can’t,” responded Fanbert. “The Prophets built it so Guardians couldn’t transport inside. From what I remember, the main portal is at the base of the ship. It’s now buried.”

I shook the Prophet who kneeled on the ground in pain. “Are there any other portals?”

The Prophet lifted his head. “No.”

“I have a solution,” said Orsteen, presenting the entropy gun. He raised it to the hull and let loose a stream of energy that vaporized the metal. “The door’s open,” he said, nodding with satisfaction.

I turned to Orsteen and Morion. “Keep the Devotees at bay. We don’t have time to deal with their fairy tales.”

“You got it,” said Orsteen.

I lifted the Prophet over my shoulder and entered the ship.

The Prophet pointed a finger, guiding us. “Take the lift up twelve decks, veer left, and then proceed to the end of the corridor.”

There we came to a small chamber. Within rested a single metal chair. I placed the Prophet into the chair and three metal posts rose from the floor and surrounded him. I heard an electrical buzz as the silver posts glowed.

With great care, the Prophet began removing the skullcap from his bulbous head. When finally he pried it free, Fanbert and I noticed a substantial part of the Prophet’s brain protruding from a hole in his skull.

“Why have you mutilated yourself?” I asked, approaching the Prophet.

“Keep your distance!” said the Prophet. “I must undergo a special treatment to undo the modifications made to my biolinguistic lobe.” He spoke a command word and the three silver posts projected energized beams toward his head. They carried through the air like ripples of heat rising off hot sand. The Prophet closed his eyes and accepted the strange energy.

“Will this take long?” I asked. “Time is a noose around our necks, constricting tighter with every passing second.”

The Prophet opened his eyes. “It might take a while.”

“Can you speak during the process?”

“I can, but at any moment my biolinguistic lobe may fail, in which case, you won’t be able to understand me. If this occurs, I’ll probably die.”

“Then immediately tell us about Nara-Narayana and the Fume’s plans to birth a god from the souls of humankind.” I looked at the Prophet’s protruding brain matter and saw it undulate. “And what exactly have you done to your biolinguistic lobe that needs undoing?”

“I’ll start at the beginning, twenty-one million years ago, when the first world, Brahman, was colonized by the survivors of the Brahman Station.” The Prophet paused, as if coping with a surge of pain. “After two millennia, Brahman became a thriving world of high spirits and great minds. And, like their ancestors of the Terran star, the adventurer within their human souls awakened. They yearned to travel the stars and discover new worlds.

“The threat of paradox, however, hung rich on the minds of scientists, philosophers, and laymen alike. And for this reason they established the Guardian Army. But they soon realized that even the greatest army wouldn’t be sufficient to monitor over twenty-one million years of human expansion into the universe. There would be too many worlds, too many people, and too many possibilities. Paradox could be caused by even the slightest contact with the Terran solar system or any of the seven galaxies inhabited by the Fume.

“To appease these concerns, a great thinker named Sensimion created Nara-Narayana—an incorruptible entity who would serve as the leader of the Guardian Army. She was engineered with a genome beyond any deca-helix species that has ever existed. But the true nature of Nara-Narayana, the true depth of her power and awareness over the Brahman Sprawl, is undeniably the greatest secret in the human universe.” The Prophet was again struck to silence.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine.” The Prophet continued his story: “The secret that’s been kept from all who’ve lived in the Brahman Sprawl has to do with the architecture that allows Nara-Narayana to monitor them.” The Prophet again paused.

“What architecture?” said Fanbert. “What do you mean?”

“Before anyone from Brahman was allowed to use the dimensional gateway technology to travel beyond that first planet, Sensimion released a virus into the population. Once it entered a host, it induced a genetic alteration, causing the next generation to be born with biolinguistic lobes. No one but Sensimion was aware of this genetic alteration. It was eventually believed that the biolinguistic lobe was a miracle of evolution, allowing human races to understand each other on a psychic level, thus eliminating any language barriers. But this was only a side effect. The true purpose of the biolinguistic lobe was to connect the thoughts of every human in the Brahman Sprawl to Nara-Narayana. In effect, she was created to be a nexus of thought for all humankind. We’re all connected to her. She’s the ultimate Guardian, able to hear the thoughts of the one quadrillion people inhabiting the Brahman Sprawl. She’s a demigod to humankind.”

“My god!” said Fanbert. “Such a feat of biological technology would be a challenge now—even more so twenty-one million years ago.”

I touched the back of my head. “Can she hear my thoughts now?”

“She can hear the thoughts of everyone,” said the Prophet.

Fanbert made a distant look. “This is how she ruled over the Guardian Army. This is how she prevented a paradox.”

The Prophet looked at us ominously. “The creation of Nara-Narayana
did
prevent paradox, but at the cost of falling victim to the Fume’s ultimate plan. Fanbert, you’re correct in your impression of the level of biological technology required to create Nara-Narayana and the biolinguistic lobes. For it was, in fact, the Fume who planted the design of Nara-Narayana’s architecture into the mind of that great scientist, Sensimion, who ultimately created her.”

I couldn’t believe it. Sensimion had also been manipulated by the Fume in the sanitarium.