Paradise Tales (7 page)

“No, they can’t. Nothing is more fragile than faith.”

“Are you warning me of danger, or asking me to retire? Or just threatening to kill me?”

“All three,” says Arun. “These gods of yours get bored. They do terrible things. They send plagues just to keep us in line, and make us pray and give more offerings.”

“Sounds like the Ten.”

“Oh, we are human. They are not. We can still sympathize. They consume. Poor people always get consumed.”

“That is the way of the World,” sighs Kai.

“Friend of yours, is he?” Arun asks.

“Yes.”

Arun goes still. He strokes Kai’s head. “You have been serving everything we are taught to shun. So have I.”

“Well, there is no guarantee that what we were taught was true. How long can you lie on top of me with a sword at my throat?”

“Until we both die,” says Arun, passion in his eyes.

Kai chuckles. “You are so like me when I was young.”

Then he says it again in despair. “You are the closest thing I have to a son.”

Arun says the obvious. “Then. Make me King.”

Kai considers. “There is no such thing as an ex-King who is still alive. I have another proposal. I really like this idea, by the way. I make you Regent. You rule here. And I? I go on retreat and I try to recover a little bit of merit before I die. Enough to get me out of hell and perhaps be reborn as an insect or a slug.”

“You will declare me your legitimate son, fathered in your youth. Your flesh and blood, your rightful heir. You will give me the title of Crown Prince.”

“You’re making demands, and all you have is a sword.”

“No, Father. I have your love. And you don’t want to be stuck in hell or reborn as a slug, and I don’t want that for you either. I want to see Kai restored to himself.”

They look at each other a moment, pat each other’s arms, chuckle and sit up.

“What will you do as Regent?” Kai asks.

“I’ll make us all Buddhists. But I’ll let the worship of the old gods continue. I’ll starve them slowly. And I’ll make sure that dear old Mala is convinced that I will always give him his due.”

“Like father, like son.”

“Not always,” says Arun.

The next day King Kai declares publicly that Arun is his natural son and heir. He makes him Crown Prince and announces his retirement from the capital. Arun will rule in his stead. Kai passes him the Sacred Sword. There is wild, ecstatic cheering at this delightful development.

There are some hours of light ceremonials, a bit of singing and dancing and drinking holy water. Then Arun mounts the dais. He looks down at the sad-eyed throne and says, “Get this terrible thing out of here and cremate it with honors.”

Kai packs what he took with him on that first quest nine years ago. The Likely Ten, now terrible to behold, safely escort Kai to the gates of the royal precinct, just to be sure that he really has gone. With every step he chuckles.

He walks across the fields, toward the lake and across the kingdom. Everywhere people treat him with respect and kindness. This is due in part to a new Chbap that Arun commissioned and paid to have chanters repeat.

Imitate the wisdom of the Great King Kai

Know when to pass responsibility to your son

Depart in good cheer

For that quieter kingdom of the world

Where wisdom is found in small things.

Villagers recognize him, and beg him stay to chant at weddings. He does so in good cheer. No one accuses him of anything. Women who remember how handsome he once was place garlands of flowers around his neck and hold up their hands in prayer.

He finally arrives at the place where the paths wind back on themselves and the trees close over. “Undo!” he says again.

He finds the City of Likelihood, deserted and forlorn.

He goes to the simple house of unsteady stone in which another old man died in pain. Kai unrolls a mat and finds a forgotten bowl and spoon. Even after all these years with some of the dykes fallen, sparse rice still whispers in the thousand paddies. They climb toward heaven like stairs.

He gathers rice and stores it, some for seed, for there will be only one crop. The many deserted wooden houses will provide him with firewood. He takes the opportunity to prepare for death and accept the world as it is, and finds that there is surprisingly little to contemplate.

He draws in a breath, and goes down into the valley to carry out his plan.

He goes to the Machine. He is able to step through the breakage into its huge hollow coil. He climbs up the scaffolding and flaps the broken reed panels that once powered its engines. Some clay, some reed, some time—that will be all it needs.

The Machine was built in a dead whirlpool because of the centuries of sediment deposited there. Finding clay is easy. So is finding firewood. Kai hauls huge evergreens down from the hills and lets them dry until they are tinder. He touches them and they catch fire, for magic now rules everywhere, even in Likelihood. He bakes new sections of tube. He weaves the reed into new blades for windmills.

The Machine takes shape, the panels turn in the wind, and Kai sighs with satisfaction. He remembers the original inhabitants.

It’s never properly been turned on.

Don’t give him ideas!

Too late to avoid that, I’m afraid.

Kai once asked, “What would it do?”

“Buzz the world,” said one old man.

Kai slides shut portal after portal. The old machine hums. Kai remembers the one bolted portal at the top that was left open.

Kai the warrior monk stands back and then runs up and over the round smooth sides.

Over the last open portal dances something that looks like stars. Kai, the man of magicked fire, reaches through them, pulls the bolt shut, and locks it. He survives the sparkling blast, where elephants could not. All it does is quench his fire like cooling water.

And all the World is deprived of magic.

Mala descends howling in rage and grief and betrayal, and Kai smiles at him. Just after his giant wings drop off, Mala melts harmlessly into the ground, personified no longer.

No more miracles.

In all the temples in the lands of Kambu, the voices of the gods whisper once like dust before being blown away. Then their halls are empty. The statues are wrapped, the oracles speak, but with voices that in their hearts they know are their own.

Kai is released for one last time from the fire in his body. He has changed the whole world forever. He made the world in which we now live. Which can hardly be called heroism completing itself through inaction.

Soon after, he gets sick and dies alone in agony in the tiny house of wood and stone.

And what of heroism?

Well, the Rules don’t understand it, but they sound good, and at least they don’t say that you become a hero by being kind and doing your duty.

Heroism consists of the moment that you are cheered by thousands. Heroism resides in the eyes of other people, and what you can get them to believe.

It can also be secret, without praise, and known to no one except you. That kind is a lot less fun.

Heroism, if you want it, resides nowhere, and everywhere, in the air, whether it buzzes with magic or not. In the hard, merciless world of Likelihood, there is no meaning, except in moments. There are also no Rules.

The old gods had been unstitched into ordinary molecules. The pretty magic of kings no longer worked. Kai’s new railway, roads, and cities were an enticement.

Steamboats arrived from the West, bearing cannons and ambitious, likely people.

So I dig back at her. “That’s a shame, Mom. A few years later and I would have been embryo-screened and you could have just aborted me.”

Mom just sniffs. “That was a cheap shot.”

Yeah, it was. NeoChristians are about the only people who
don’t
abort homosexual fetuses. Everybody else does. What do they call it? Parental choice.

So Mom looks at me with this real tough face and says, “I hope you think you’ve given yourself a happy birthday.” And that’s all the conversation we have about it.

My little brother is pretending he isn’t there and that he isn’t happy. My little brother is shaped like a pineapple. He’s fat and he has asthma and he’s really good at being sneaky and not playing by the rules. I was always the big brother who tolerated stuff and tried to help Mom along. Her good little boy. Only now I’m samesex. Which to a NeoChristian Mom is like finding out your son likes dressing up as a baby and being jerked off by animals. Sometimes I think Neo is just a way to find new reasons to hate the same old things.

What really dents my paintwork is that Mom is smart. What she likes about Neo is that it’s Darwinian. Last summer she’s reading this article “Samesex Gene Planted by Aliens?” And she’s rolling her eyes at it. “The least they could do is get the science straight,” she says. “It’s not one gene and it’s not one part of the brain.” But then she said, “But you gotta wonder, why is there a gene like that in the first place?”

My mom really does think that there’s a chance that homos are an alien plot. Please do not fall over laughing, it hurts too much.

Ever since the Artifacts were found, people have been imagining little green men landing on this beautiful blue planet and just going off again. So people scare themselves wondering if the aliens are about to come back with a nice big army.

Then about five years ago, it turned out that the genes that control sexual orientation have some very unusual sugars, and all of a sudden there’s this conspiracy theory that aliens created the samesex gene as some kind of weapon. Undermine our reproductive capacity. Even though when they landed we were all triblodites or whatever. Maybe having homos is supposed to soften us up for conquest. Hey, if the aliens invade, I promise, I’ll fight too OK?

On my way to school I ring Billy and tell him. “Mom found out. She read your mail.”

Billy sounds stripped for action. “Did she go crazy?”

“She went laconic. You could just hear her thinking: you gotta own this, Ronald, you did this to yourself, Ronald.”

“It’s better than crying.”

Billy’s in Comportment class. He believes all that shit. To be fair to him, that “you gotta own this” was me digging at some of the stuff he comes out with. That stuff pisses me off. In fact right now, everything pisses me off. Right now, it’s like my guts are twisting and I want to go break something.

Comportment says you’ve got to own the fact people don’t like you, own the fact you got fat hips, own the fact you’re no good in math, own the fact that glacial lakes are collapsing onto Tibetan monasteries. Comportment says hey, you’re complaining about the Chinese treatment of Tibet, but what have you personally done about it?

It’s like: we’ll make everybody who has no power feel it’s their fault if stuff goes wrong, so the big people don’t have to do anything about it.

My mom hates me being a homo. She likes being a big tough lady even more. So she, like, doesn’t get all upset or cry or even say much about it. Being a tough lady is her way of feeling good about her son being an alien plot.

Billy is too focused on being Joe Cool-and-Out to cut me any slack. His stab at being sympathetic is “You should have just told her straight up, like I told you.”

I say back to him in this Minnie Mouse voice, “I acknowledge that you are absolutely right.” That’s another line he’s used on me.

He’s silent for a sec and then says, “Well, don’t be a bitch with me about it.”

“It’s my authentic response to an emotionally charged situation.” Still sounding like Minnie Mouse.

I’m mad at him. I’m mad at him because he just won’t unbend. Nobody unbends. It’s bad comportment.

Billy comes back at me. “This is just you going back to being a baby. Only you don’t have tantrums, you just whine.”

“Billy. My NeoChristian Mom now knows I’m samesex. Could I have some sympathy?”

“Who’s died, Ron? Anybody dead around here? Did you lose any limbs in the detonation? Or are you just getting all significant on my ass?”

“No. I’m looking for a friend. I’ll try and find one, you know, someone who likes me and not my dick?”

And I hang up.

Like I said, I’m so mad.

I’m mad sitting here right now. I got my stupid kid brother who’s been giggling all day, like it’s such an achievement he likes pussy. I got my Mom doing the household accounts and her shares and her rollovers, and she’s bellowing into the voice recognition and it’s like: look at me having to do all the work around here. I’m realizing that I’ve probably screwed up my relationship with Billy and wondering if I really am the incredible wimp he thinks I am.

It’s like everything all around me is Jell-O and it’s setting into lemon-line, which I hate. I’m out. My brother knows and will try to give me a hard time, and if he does I’ll slug his fat face. My Mom is being hard ass, and so I’m going to be hard ass back. I’m not an athlete, I’m not Joe Cool-and-Out, and I’ll never go to Mom’s Neo seminars.

I’m just sitting here all alone thinking: how can I win? What can I do?