To Touch the Face of God

So a little explanation: Facebook is…idiosyncratic, and demands that I only share documents via a link. To that end, if I’m ever going to share this short story, I must do so online elsewhere. And where else is “elsewhere” than WordPress? Please enjoy or hate my latest indulgence in cod philosophy in the indescribable “To Touch the Face of God”, an exclusive yet not necessarily without derivation short story by your reviewer:

 

To Touch the Face of God

Inuro sucked in a deep breath, and the mildew musk of the bar filled his body and mind. On a day unlike today the fug would’ve been reassuring: the smell of people, of activity, of distraction. Today, he wasn’t in the mood. He dipped his head and sipped absent-mindedly at his drink and shivered as the sweet nectar trembled through him. In the near-darkness of the bar and his preoccupation, he failed to notice the fellow sidle up to his secluded nook at the back of the bar.

“Inuro, six-two-three?”

Inuro turned his head halfway round to the uninvited voice.

“Yes,” he managed. Keep it brief, he thought. No-one likes a one-sided conversation.

“It is well to find you. I have a proposition for you.”

Well, great, thought Inuro. So much for a quiet post-shift.

“May I join you?” asked the intruder.

“Well great,” began Inuro, then he snapped his jaw shut in embarrassment. “I mean, erm, sorry. Didn’t mean for that to come out. Now’s not a good time.” He returned to his drink and hid his face as he slurped deeply. Lifting his head however, he found the unwelcome one still standing there, with a look on his face that seemed unperturbed by his refusal. There was a passivity to his expression that looked as though it could wait until it heard the answer it wanted, however long that might be. But in his eyes, there was nothing placid, but hungry, searching, infinitely curious. For someone like Inuro, on a night like this, in a place such as this the look, steeped in that unsettling duality, was equal parts inciting and troubling.

“I apologise,” the stranger began, “for remaining against your wish. Be assured that were there another whom I could be certain would hear what I have to say, I would leave this place at once and you would never see me again but for a chance glimpse in a crowd. As it is, however, I can seek no other.”

Interest piqued, for sure. Inuro paused in thought, and his head steadily sank downwards to eye-level with his drink. At a certain declination of his gaze images and memories of Chinti seeped back into his conscious mind, like a leak hoped stopped up, and mostly out of pride he pulled himself out of this fugue. Bringing his head back up and locking eyes with the stranger, he emitted a brief half-sigh and engaged, unwillingly, with the life immediate.

“If I can’t get rid of you, and you won’t make yourself scarce, then I suppose I’ve just got to hear this out.” The stranger’s face brightened and gave Inuro the feeling that kindling was catching alight.

“Thank you for your amenability,” he began, before Inuro’s half-buried frustration sprang back to the fore.

“But once I’ve heard what you have to say, I’m going to finish my drink, go home and wait until I’ve got to do all…this –” Inuro waved dismissively around, “from the beginning.”

“Such would be your prerogative. I certainly shall not keep you from productive activity,” replied the stranger, without a hint of sincerity behind his eyes. “The Sovereign will have her due, of course.”

“Hmm,” nodded Inuro with finality.

“Although, it is my suspicion that you will not awaken tomorrow with thoughts of work and toil. Not once you have heard what I have sought you out to say.”

Inuro scoffed and inclined his head in contempt of the suggestion.

“Look, I’ve not got up in the morning to thoughts of work and toil for days now. So, don’t get your hopes up.”

“Hmm, yes, your personal difficulties. I shall not pretend to understand your predicament. Nevertheless, I remain steadfast in my certainty that your attention will be fully engaged with my proposition, once you have heard it.”

Inuro was a wilful individual, and nothing riled him quite like other people being so damned certain about his feelings, and what they could do to change them. “I’m a mature adult,” thought Inuro with recalcitrance, “I know bloody well how I feel.”

“I don’t know where you get off telling me that, considering you seem to know what I’m going through. In fact, quite aside from not knowing where you get off, I don’t even know who you are –”

“Pipiliko. Pipiliko two-two-one,” the stranger now known as Pipiliko supplied.

“Pipiliko. Right. Well, I’ll hear your pitch, but I’m liable to leave if –” Inuro paused for a beat as the information circulated through his mind. “Did, did you just say your name was Pipiliko two-two-one?”

Without a hint of emotional reaction, Pipiliko confirmed his name.

“Two-two-one? What in earth are you doing here?” By the nomenclature of the subterranean state, names included essential social information. Inuro six-two-three was Inuro, denizen of Level Six, of the third family on that level, and the third child of that family. Levels were named in reverse order, with Level One comprising the palace complex of the Sovereign, rising up to Level Seventeen just below the surface. Citizens of Level Two, therefore, were the most important members of society, almost aristocrats, second only to the Sovereign herself. In the rigid hierarchy of the state, sticking together within your class was woven into the fabric of society. A Two-er like Pipiliko could, in theory, go wherever he pleased, save Level One except on special occasions, but it was as irregular as the look that Inuro now received from his new drinking partner.

“Perhaps now you begin to understand that I have not come here to vex you for my own amusement, or on some decadent whim. You have said you will hear my proposition, will you yet do so?”

With a furrowed scowl of confusion, Inuro acquiesced, and Pipiliko’s eyes widened.

 

*****

 

The mind, taking on new information, is not unlike taking a drink of water. So long as one sips at the liquid it can be swallowed comfortably as more is drunk. Inuro, meandering back through the winding tunnels of Level Six, felt as though he’d been gulping water without even sparing a thought to breathe. His head was swimming from drink and new ideas. Or was it old ideas, expressed anew? He could barely walk straight, let alone think straight. He came up alongside his cavern, entered and collapsed into a sleeping posture, and set his mind to swallowing all the water.

Pipiliko was like a social surgeon. He seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Inuro’s nerves and buttons and had pressed and pulled here and there as he suggested his theory and supplied his considerations of it. Inuro had, for a deeply provocative but merciful hour, been almost entirely free of thoughts of Chinti as Pipiliko had drawn him into a world of philosophy and curiosity.

His proposition, in short, was an expedition.

“Do you know of the Harclay Mountains, the range that runs from east to west, found one day’s travel north of here?” he’d asked.

Inuro of course knew the range, everyone who worked outside the city knew of the Harclays, which formed a natural (and quite impenetrable) barrier between their collective home and the world beyond. “They’re impenetrable,” he’d added after confirming his awareness, as if he owed Pipiliko some extra knowledge.

“Impenetrable, certainly,” Pipiliko had replied. “But not insurmountable.” Inuro had had his chance to scoff again, at this. Why, after all, would anyone deign to climb the Harclays? The range was, without a doubt, the most elevated natural feature in the region, climbing it would certainly take the best part of a day, maybe longer. And for what? No-one had ever been up there but the name gave it all away; ‘Harclay’ was a portmanteau of ‘hard’ and ‘clay’, for the rock of the mountain had the same flat grey of clay deposits, with none of the softness. Certainly nothing grew in it, and if the summit of the range was composed of the same hard clay, then nothing would grow up there, either. Inuro had wondered about it, of course; he was considered something of a dreamer. But he’d been quite sure, until Pipiliko asked about the mountains, that the hard clay did indeed comprise the mountains up to the highest height, and at any rate it would surely be too elevated for plants to grow up there.

Pipiliko had not finished his pitch, however, and he had only one thing that was not philosophical to add to their discussion of the Harclays.

“I’ve climbed them,” he’d said. Inuro had sobered up in that instant; his present state was the result of trying to forget everything he’d heard, without success. But Pipiliko’s account of his journey and ascent, it was all right, the route he’d taken, the scenery as he made his way, even the details. The forest had grown thicker and taller as he approached the foothills, he’d said, the leaf-fins that ran the length of the trunks from base to canopy had become wider and greener. Inuro had ranged far afield in his younger days, and too had seen the domineering vegetation. “So, he’s been there, for sure. And he’s climbed it…no, it’s not possible!” he thought, nursing his pulsating headache with shallow breath and soft movement.

Despite the impossibility, Inuro couldn’t deny the tremor of excitement he’d felt at the idea. “There is something to be witnessed, at the summit,” Pipiliko had added, with a far-away expression. “There is more than you can imagine.” Inuro had pressed him on this, and Pipiliko’s explanation had answered some and asked far more. “There is another world out there.”

“Another, another region, you mean? More land, beyond the range. Forests, savannas, space to live?”

“All that, and more. More that even I do not understand.” That had turned Inuro’s tremor of excitement into something darker, more uncertain and ill-defined.

“Tell me, Inuro,” Pipiliko had continued, after a moment of distant thought. “Why do we live as we do?”

“You mean…here, in the city?”

“I mean that, yes, but I mean more too. I know you wonder why our society exists as it does, this is why I have sought you out. But do you wonder, as I do, why we live here, in this region that has been our home for generations? Why not elsewhere? And why have we only such sporadic contact with other cities as for them to be almost myths to the young? And furthermore, why do we live underground?”

That last thought had almost driven Inuro from the bar. He was a thinker, it was true. He was smarter than manual labour demanded, and the hours of toil under the heat of the sun and in the dark damp of the city gave him plenty of room to consider the nature of life. However, to even the most far-sighted dreamers there remain social and cultural constants, things no-one thinks to ask or wonder about, because they are so intrinsic to ordinary life. One might as well wonder, philosophically speaking, why we drink water! The idea that life underground, which was simply ‘life’, could be questioned was unsettling in a profound way. That life could ever be anything else was…was impossible.

“There is more to my wonder, as I expect there is to you. Why –” and at this Pipiliko leaned in so close that Inuro could smell his earthy breath, “do we toil for the Sovereign?”

“I should’ve left then,” Inuro regretted. If life underground was not questioned, service to the Sovereign could not be questioned. He’d been unable to answer at the point, because memories of Chinti had coalesced in his mind, and until Pipiliko’s conversation snapped him out of it he’d been unable to put any mental distance between himself and his remembered and heart-wrenching goodbye. He had as much power to choose between service and independence as Chinti, he thought. And Chinti hadn’t even thought, she’s simply served. It was her duty, his duty, Pipiliko’s too.

“Why are you asking me all these questions, what do you want from me,” he’d eventually asked, when his frustration at the conversation overcame his curiosity. “Do you want me to say I don’t want to serve? Do you want to hear that I want to live…to live above ground? You want me to come with you, but what for, to see the summit of the Harclays and another expanse of land? What’s this all for?”

Pipiliko had been silent for a time, and just as Inuro’s impatience was about to drive him home, there came the reply.

“It is for discovery. Not pedestrian discovery, of new food and new possibilities for expansion. There is something out there, something the like of which we have never seen, something which I cannot understand, because whatever it is, it exists beyond the framework of our existence.”

“You sound like you’ve found God,” replied Inuro derisively.

“There is no God but the Sovereign,” Pipiliko replied at increased volume. Some sort of cover, perhaps.

“Hm.”

“This…thing, this entity, this world, it is not within our understanding because it defies the manner in which we understand the world. Tell me, Inuro, how would you measure a distance?”

“In lengths, of course, in fors,” Inuro replied with a scowl of ignorance.

“Yes, indeed. Now, consider the distance from here to the Harclay foothills. How many fors do you believe that is?

“I don’t know. Twenty thousand, maybe more? I don’t know, I’ve never counted, but that’s how far people say it is.”

“Your estimate is reasonable. And what of the Harclays themselves, how high do you believe the summit to be?”

Inuro had shrugged with clueless frustration and indifference at the question.

“A thousand or so? I don’t know, I’ve not seen them that close in, in I don’t know how long. Where is this going?”

Pipiliko had nodded slowly as though Inuro was getting it, which irked him because he felt no closer to understanding what the funny little aristocrat was getting at.

“Consider a distance far greater than that between the city and the Harclay Mountain Range. Infinitely tall, or infinitely wide. How would you perceive such a thing? And how would you measure it?”

Inuro had been stumped by the preposterousness of the query. But he’d closed his eyes and imagined the tallest thing he could think of and extended it indefinitely. The Harclays, their flat grey rising into the sky forever, until he couldn’t see the top…

“I suppose I’d have no way to measure it,” he replied from behind eyes blind with imagination. “I wouldn’t be able to see the top, the light would be too bright and distance would blur whatever it is I’m supposed to be measuring into nothingness.” He opened his eyes to find Pipiliko staring at him, nodding softly and bidding him to continue. “Well that’s just it, I couldn’t measure it because it would just seem to go on forever, I’d have no way of telling where it ends.”

“Quite right. Perhaps you are beginning to understand what I propose, and why.”

“You mean…you’ve found something infinitely tall, or wide?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.”

“Well that’s illuminating.”

“Perhaps now you see why I have spoken to you. I intend on finding out what it is that I’ve discovered. But I cannot do this alone. It is a long journey, and far from the safety of the city. I risked my life making the journey once before, I cannot risk it again without being certain that I can return, to share my findings. To that end, I require assistance, assistance from individuals with a mind to look upon what I’ve discovered and not be cowed by awe into passivity.”

“And you think that’s me?”

“You will be one of our party, yes.”

“You seem pretty sure of that. What makes you think I’m willing to go all the way up there, how do you know I’ve got the…the mental strength to see whatever it is you want me to see?”

“I am certain that you will join me, because I am certain that your motivation to make the journey surrounds you here, in the city. As for your fortitude…we shall only be certain of that once we glimpse the impossible.”

Drifting off slowly, alone in his cavern, Inuro reflected on all of this, and realised Pipiliko was right. Not about his mental strength, nor even necessarily about his status as a dreamer. He was, however, completely correct that everything that would motivate someone like Inuro six-two-three to leave his home on the vague promise of mind-expanding adventure was around him, right now, bearing in on him from all sides like the wet walls of the city’s caverns and tunnels.

 

*****

 

“I am glad to find you here again, Inuro six-two-three,” Pipiliko declared, as he positioned himself (uninvited) at Inuro’s nook in the bar. “Though not to see you drinking as you do. It is troubling, for on our journey you will have neither the time nor opportunity to partake.”

“I’m still not decided,” Inuro grumbled in reply, annoyed that his only private ritual seemed now cursed with permanent interruption.

“You are decided, or else you would not be here, at our appointed time. But turn your attention from regret and recrimination and consider matters at hand.” Pipiliko made a summoning gesture, and a second individual moved heavily towards the pair. “I have sourced our companion for the journey. Inuro six-two-three, this is Miro nine-five-seven.”

Miro was built, it seemed to Inuro, twice his size. By his body, evidently strong, and by his name, evidently a surface-worker, Miro said little but greeted Inuro in the customary fashion; forehead to forehead. Inuro accepted the arrival, but his brain began to turn. What was the nature of this little party? What were their roles, and how did their roles hint at what Pipiliko anticipated? Miro to be the muscle, Pipiliko the director-researcher, and himself…a porter? A guide? No, Miro and Pipiliko would serve those functions as well. So, just a third man? Two’s company, but their people liked to be among crowds. It brought a sense of security, of normality. Was that it, then? Did Pipiliko so expect his discovery to be shocking in the extreme that he hoped to rely on nebulous group psychology to maintain cohesion and purpose? And was that to be Inuro’s job, hang around and keep the functional members of the group on task? It seemed absurd, and looking at group only made Inuro feel more that this endeavour was somewhere between a waste of time and a waste of life, built on the promise of an aristocrat with too much of…everything to consider the risk? He didn’t get the space to think about it, however, because the faintly imperious Pipiliko was already detailing the nature, direction and length of their journey, and compiling an inventory of their needs as he went. Miro was already listening in polite silence, and Inuro too was taken along for the ride.

The journey, the two hired-hands were told, would take them three days. Not far, really, but far enough to be out of the range of help or coincidental meetings with surface-workers, and so they would need to be prepared to fend for themselves, carry what they could and forage for what they could not. They would proceed across the dusty flatlands that surrounded the main city gate, due north, with a view to reaching the edges of the forest by nightfall. There they would make camp and resume their journey through the thickest part of the forest the following day. It would be more difficult going on the second day because of the terrain, but it would spare them the risks of travelling a faster route from clearing to clearing, where local wildlife could take a hungry interest in them. They could, however, make it to the foothills by nightfall, so long as they kept up a good pace. The third day promised to be the most gruelling of all, with every hour of sunlight given over to the great climb up the face of the Harclays. Pipiliko assured his hires that the face of the mountains was rough and pocked enough that they would be able to climb it under their own power, but it would nevertheless be an intimidating experience. To climb the highest height in the region, unaided! Miro’s face however, as Inuro studied it in that moment, seemed nonplussed by the suggestion, and so Inuro decided that that was just another thing he’d have to deal with quietly, on his own. “Business as usual,” he thought.

That night was another burdened with sleeplessness, with shifting images of Chinti and half-suppressed memories of terminal parting. On just one occasion Inuro let himself submit to the images as they emerged and they swirled, gaseous, into solidity. Chinti’s forehead, pressed to his and his pushing back, so hard he hoped they’d fuse and she’d remain with him forever. But the pressure lifted, and her head was backing away from his, no longer dominating his eyeline. In the periphery, two guards watched on with granite indifference, and no sooner had he released Chinti’s hands from his desperate and tearful grasp they were on her, guiding her about on the spot with irresistible force. Out of the cavern they guided her, and from the threshold Inuro watched the woman he loved move down the tunnel, on her way down to Level One. She hadn’t looked back at him, hadn’t cried out. Had she loved him? Inuro knew she had but her entirely passive manner as she was marched out of his life had never left him. Or was it that she was so dutiful that she thought nothing of what she must leave behind, her life, love and the city, only what she could do for its survival. It was a paradox that dogged Inuro. Caught between his admiration for her sense of self-sacrifice and his rage at her leaving (“by choice!”), he drifted tonight, like so many nights, between acceptance and disbelief. And as his dozing mind considered ‘disbelief’, he saw all the city beneath him: the tunnels and the caverns, the people milling, going this way and that, teeming crowds at work and play, and through them Chinti, flanked by unforgiving guards, marching down…infinitely down.

 

*****

 

As the sun glimpsed over the horizon, and deigned to climb the sky, three columns emerged from the city gate and weaved outward, forking like lightning as work groups detatched from the whole, and the people of the city went about their toil. Like a bolt passing through a fog cloud, a final and tiny fork snapped away, and from far above three figures could be seen making their way northwards.

The party had discussed the intricacies of the plan’s beginning more than anything, as extricating themselves from their assigned duties would prove most troublesome. A sparse harvest however had galvanised the workers, and the three found their way unimpeded by awkward questions. By noon, they were well out of sight of their fellow citizens, even across the flat savanna that surrounded the city, and the mood lightened noticeably. Inuro remained on edge: against his back he could feel the southerly wind of the dry season, wafting pulses of desiccating heat and dust. His people were well accustomed to the dark and damp in which they made their home, but to Inuro the dry season was the anniversary of Chinti’s leaving, and each strike of hot air blew guilt-ridden recollection to the forefront of his mind. “Distract yourself,” he coached, and he picked up his pace, catching up with Miro, who advanced steadily yet swiftly under his burden of supplies.

“Miro.”

“Inuro. What is it?”

Inuro paused. He didn’t have anything to say and Miro, silent unless otherwise invited, had barely said a word to him that hadn’t been said to the party as a whole. Inuro fumbled in his brain for something common to the pair of them.

“Why did you come on this expedition?”

“Pipiliko sought me out.”

“That’s all? Well, then do you know why he went looking for you?”

“I would not remain in the city.”

“Would not?”

“Would not, could not. Shall not. I was motivated to leave before he found me, but it was his proposition  that committed me to the scheme.”

Inuro reflected a moment.

“So, what was motivating you to leave?”

“I do not know you well enough. It is my own business, I’d thank you to treat it that way.”

Inuro hadn’t expected this. Renegades are renegades, and so a certain amount of personal baggage was to be expected. But Miro’s unwillingness to share was uncharacteristic of a city-dweller and, considering their unique circumstances, Inuro had expected the degree of camaraderie associated with risk shared. Could it be that whatever had compelled Miro to leave the city was more monstrous than Inuro’s own bereavement? Or perhaps Miro too had had a sweetheart, someone whom had left him. Or been taken from him? Speculation wouldn’t serve him, however. It takes a certain kind of person to risk social and literal death to journey on the vague promise of discovery of the infinite, and whatever had lit the fire under Miro’s feet must surely have been nothing like common or garden wanderlust. But then –

“Why are you here, Inuro six-two-three?”

That was unusually formal, for an elective exile from his home. Where was Miro’s head, while Inuro’s wandered?

“I…,” Inuro began, before realising that there was no one reason, and no real reason he was willing to share with someone he barely knew. “I couldn’t stay in the city.”

“Could not?” asked Miro, with a piercing look.

“Heh, couldn’t, wouldn’t,” Inuro replied. “There’s nothing for me there. And if what Pipiliko promises is real, then I have every reason to be here, if not to be back there.”

Miro nodded with in a subtle gesture that Inuro tool for approval. He said nothing, and remained silent for close to an hour, before speaking as though the conversation had never ended.

“What do you think, Inuro, of the Two-er’s so-called discovery?

Inuro hesitated, as though he’d been caught in the act.

“I’m not sure,” he began ineffectually, unwilling to confess his doubt.

“He never told me anything specific, and when I tried to pin him down on any of it, all he had to say was ‘perhaps, perhaps not’. But I don’t know. I…trust him? No, that’s not it, I don’t know him, but I can’t shake the feeling that he really has discovered something important. I can’t explain it.” Inuro looked at Miro, a little sheepishly.

“I understand what you mean,” he replied, gazing north. “He told me no details that I could measure, that I could conceive, only vague ideas and promises. But everything he promised…I could not help but find myself convinced. I feel that I must find whatever it is he has discovered, because if it really exists then any risk is worth its rediscovery.”

“That’s what I’m not sure about, how can we know it’s worth finding? I mean, what do you think he’s been talking about?”

Miro flashed his first emotion Inuro had ever seen, one of sudden dumbfoundedness, as though he’d never expected to be asked and had never formed an answer

“Pipiliko has discovered a new world,” he repeated, not in his own words but in Pipiliko’s, “a new place with new people. New opportunities.”

“New people? How do you figure that?”

Miro looked at him faintly conspiratorially.

“He…spoke to you of the infinite, did he not?”

“Oh, yes, he did. I just…”

“Just what?”

“Well, I sort of took it more, you know, as a metaphor.”

Miro shook his head pityingly, and declared confidently, “it is no metaphor. Do not ask me how I know, I only do. The infinite must, by the nature of infinity, mean all things. If infinity lies beyond the Harclays, then new lands and new cities must surely exist. That is what we must find.” And with that Miro left the conversation as though it now, this time, were concluded. Inuro let his gaze fall back onto their path, just as the forest, winding and contorted and green, was rising up out of the horizon. He’d learned a little more, then, it just wasn’t about anything concrete. “But Miro’s the dead set type of person,” he thought, “I can’t imagine how he’ll react if there’s nothing up there, but I’d better not have an argument with him just before we reach the summit.” The thought was unsettling, because nothing about their meetings in the bar, their departure from the city or their sparse conversations had given Inuro any impression of his traveling companions’ personalities. There was something reassuring about Miro’s own certainty in what they would find over the Harclays, but his being here also felt incongruous. They had no idea what they would find, and if Pipiliko’s expression of the discovery was anything to go by, it would so defy their understanding that it could surely not be something as straightforward as an undiscovered country. Miro’s surety was out of place, he concluded. “So am I,” the back of his mind provided.

The day’s voyaging came to a close once the distant curls of trees became towering trunks at proximity. The walking ached Inuro, and he rested himself against one of the trunks and massaged his limbs while Miro compiled their supplies and buried them for safekeeping within a mound of stones. Pipiliko meanwhile was tending to their shelter, cutting down saplings and weaving their supple trunks and broad fin-like leaves into a protective sheet. The work done, Miro excused himself, curled up, and slept without a word.

“Let us talk, Inuro,” Pipiliko invited, without a hint of invitation in his voice. Inuro was feeling as though he were being dragged this way and that, but for lack of any reason to do anything else, and feeling quite destabilised as it was, he sat down next to the expedition leader.

“I have considered our journey, and our purpose. My conclusion tonight is that I have been remiss.”

Inuro looked quizzically at him.

“Remiss? Why?”

“I told you very little of our purpose in the bar, and have been unwilling to share more while the agents of the Sovereign were in proximity. We are now of course day’s travel away from another living soul, and so I am content to enlighten you.”

Inuro shuffled into a more rested position, but felt tense nonetheless.

“I told you that our destination had a quality of infinity about it. I know well what this means to Miro, but we have not until now had the opportunity to discuss your regard for it. What do you think you will discover?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, that’s not a good answer. But it’s the truth. You asked me to imagine the infinite, but I can’t, I have no frame of reference for it. I’m not sure what to make of it, but I know Miro isn’t right and I don’t think you’re going to tell me what it is. So I don’t know, is my answer, and it’s frustrating because right now, all reason I have for being here is just about why I can’t be back in the city. I have no reason to keep going.” Inuro finished, and sat back with a spent sigh. He’d been holding in more than he thought. But to his surprise, Pipiliko smiled at him with something avuncular behind his deep, dark eyes.

“That is a fair answer. A quite correct answer, too, for you are right to say that I have told you nothing upon which you could base a definition of our goal. But I wonder if you would benefit from knowing what I believe we will find over the Harclays, what I believe I have discovered?”

Inuro nodded eagerly. “Give me a reason, because I’ve got nothing,” he thought.

“You joked that I had found faith, but you could not have anticipated how correct you were,” Pipiliko began, “I believe that I have found God.”

Inuro was quietly stunned, in that way people are when the scale of a revelation outstrips the expectation. The totality of Pipiliko’s explanation began to seep like rainwater through earth into his consciousness, and reality snapped into flint-sharp focus.

“You…God? You’ve found God? What, just sat up on top of the mountains, waiting for us to come up there and say hello?”

Pipiliko chuckled knowingly and replied, “no Inuro, God is not simply ‘sat up on top of the mountains’. Ah, I would’ve hoped your imagination would fill what gaps in your understanding your reason cannot. Perhaps it is too early, perhaps you have not had the opportunity to stretch your imagination sufficiently. No, Inuro, we will not simply ‘find’ God as you describe. Make no mistake, however, God is up there, waiting to be found.”

“You’re very certain of that. Miro’s certain about what he thinks we’ll find. The two don’t match.”

Pipiliko frowned momentarily.

“No, we are not in accordance, it is true. This troubles me and leaves me to wonder if I have selected the right companions. I had hoped you would both come to my conclusion independently. As it is, I must enlighten him also. I am confident that he, however, will achieve full understanding the moment we crest the summit. But for you, Inuro,” he paused, thoughtful. “You are a sceptic by nature, and distrustful of authority by circumstance and experience. I knew you would face a challenge in accepting that what I tell you I have discovered is in fact what we will find. Yours however is a mind quite unique in our society, for asking too many questions is by now against the instincts of almost all. You will find God only through great difficulty, but I am confident that once you find it, you will have opened a door to a more wonder and possibility than Miro or any person of the city could conceive.”

Inuro sat, a little dumbfounded, processing what felt like a mixture of criticism and praise. Why had Pipiliko waited so long to say all this? Of course talk of authority above and beyond the Sovereign would not go down well back in the city, but he could’ve used more clear language. And why did he feel like the ‘God’ answer was not quite right? Maybe Pipiliko was right, that he was a sceptic. Not beyond belief, he hoped, but perhaps he was just so against believing in anything that God was just another drop of water in the pond of it-doesn’t-matter. None of any of it fit together right. Pipiliko, distant yet certain; Miro, immediate and certain; himself, a million fors away and not sure why he was going this way, not sure why he wasn’t going that way. That said, maybe it wasn’t something he could lay at Pipiliko or Miro’s feet. He’d not felt like anything fit together for a year, not felt a reason to do one thing or another. Not felt a reason to be…it hit him THWACK! in the head, all in an instant like being thrown into cold water. ‘Not felt a reason’, ha! No reason is no purpose, and he’d been without a purpose for a year, a purpose he had chosen, one that meant anything to him. Well, this was a situation lacking any reason, he was a situation lacking any reason, and he wouldn’t find it back in the city. Faintly dejectedly, Inuro realised that his only hope for purpose lay ahead. He wasn’t convinced Pipiliko’s discovery was everything he said it would be, he was determined not to take all of that at face value, but he felt somewhat softened by his realisation. Perhaps there was a little space in his little heart that could open himself up to possibility. If not infinite possibility, at any rate. But his head was swimming now, and Inuro felt sleep descend on him with the oncoming gloom of night.

 

*****

 

Inuro’s dreams were intense, and unsettling in a way new to him. He was back in the city, at the threshold of his home. Chinti was gone, and nowhere to be seen. He could see, and hear and feel everyone around him, on all the levels, piled into caverns and flowing like water through the tunnels. He felt surrounded and intimidated. Almost instinctively, he looked directly down, his heart and eyes searching as one for Chinti in her last known location. Between the clusters  and columns of city people he found nothing, however, and beyond them only the darkness of depth. But Inuro felt angry, demanding, and more purposeful than he’d felt in that whole year past. He searched further, down, always down. His body did not move but he felt his mind, his awareness descend, and pockets of people slid up past him, behind him. Eventually, there was only darkness, on all sides, and only thundering feet above him. Suddenly, he felt afraid. Old habits, old lessons, old instincts crept into him awareness at the edges, and looking down he felt he could go no further. He was about to relax and allow his mind to rise back up, when he allowed himself one last hopeful look down. In an instant the heat drained from his body and though he was not using them, he felt his limbs lock. He could not look away from the darkness, and yet could not bear to keep doing so. And in the darkness, directly down at the heart of the gloom, condensed into a single point, he felt all the fear and all the love he’d ever felt in his life.

 

*****

 

As black gave way, Inuro felt green take its turn in the light. He opened his eyes to the muted glare of sunlight, filtering through the green of the trees, breaking through in tight beams where the weave was imperfect. The air smelled hot and dry, and subtly sharp with the aroma of chlorophyll. For a short moment, he relished the heat and let it cook away the coldness of his night’s dreaming. Then suddenly and quite unceremoniously, the makeshift awning was whipped away, and sunlight assaulted him. He blinked his eyes half-open, and found Miro standing over him with a look of determined impatience.

“Rise, Inuro. The pilgrimage awaits.”

Pilgrimage? Inuro heaved himself onto his feet.

“Pilgrimage? What do you mean?” he said, before realisation brushed away the vestiges of sleep. Pipiliko had filled Miro in.

“He has told me that you know what he has discovered,” Miro explained. “God waits for us over the mountains. It would be impolite to keep the divine in suspense. We have a long march ahead. Let’s go.”

Inuro looked northwards, and saw Pipiliko a short distance away, already on the move. Miro shuffled after him. Scooping up the morsel Miro had left him and stuffing it hungrily into his mouth, Inuro trotted after the pair.

The savanna was now firmly behind them, and the trees were already growing tall. At the outskirts, the trunks rose to their characteristic tapered top in just a few fors, but now the greatest of them must’ve been three times that height, so that to even see the fine tips of the canopy Inuro had to crane his neck. Their leaf fins were broad, too, a whole for across, and so thick that he may not have had the strength to tear them. At the forest floor, the light only broke in in irregular bursts, leaving a lot of the party’s walking mired in half-light. It was slow going, and feeling more purposeful than he had the previous day, Inuro found himself frustrated at their languorous progress. Seeking some distraction from the immediate and repetitive problem of the terrible footing, he picked up his pace and sought out Miro.

“So, Pipiliko told you what he thinks.”

Miro glanced at him as though he were a distraction, then looking forward replied, “I do not believe it is what he thinks, it is what he knows.”

“You’re very sure of that, for someone who doubted him yesterday.”

“I did not doubt him,” Miro answered, a little testily. “I had not ordered my thoughts, but his revelation has only informed my existing understanding. Although I will concede that I still do not fully trust him.” Miro moved his mouth thoughtfully, then added with firmness, “We will find God beyond the Harclays.”

For a moment, Inuro envied Miro’s certainty. It felt from this side like a purpose he’d once forgotten. But then his curiosity got the better of him:

“Miro, why are you here? I mean, not back there? Maybe you don’t trust me enough yet either, but,” and at this he searched for a thread to pull on, “I just don’t understand how you can be so sure of what we’re doing, and I know Pipiliko hasn’t given you your focus in a short chat. Why can’t you be in the city?”

Miro looked pained, for more than a moment, before something conjured from within wiped his face clear and purposeful once again.

“I suppose it is no matter whether or not I tell you. When we return to the city we will have other priorities, and so I suspect revealing this to you may do no harm,” he decided with a deep and measured sigh.

“I have lost someone. Someone very dear to me, some people very dear to me. They were taken, but they also went, willingly. At the Sovereign’s command, I know this. And for many years I have thought of my duty to the city, to my people to the Sovereign. Now, with Pipiliko’s words ringing in my head and my desire beating in my heart, I cannot continue blithely on in the face of the injustice I have endured. I must make a change. To do anything else would dishonour the memory of my most beloved.”

Inuro wondered coldly if they were on the same page.

“The Sovereign…she took your love? Your family?”

Through a clenched jaw, Miro inclined his head in the slightest nod.

“Miro, I know what you feel –”

Miro turned and snapped, “how could you? You know nothing of my loss, you know nothing of my pain, my motivations for being here!”

“Yes, I do! I –” Inuro paused. He’d never told anyone what had happened, beyond what they knew just happens in the city, and how he’d felt. “I saw her go. She was taken but she wasn’t taken away. She went. She chose to, God, she chose to go. And I spend every night between sleeping and waking wondering why she did. Was it duty? I loved her for it, I respected her for it. But wasn’t our love worth more? So didn’t she love me? I know that she did, but to leave, like that, for a purpose we all know, is that what you do to someone you love?” Inuro stalled, stuck at the question whose answer had always eluded him. Besides, he was spent. His head pulsed with anger and regret and a little shame at how suddenly and inarticulately he’d let out all his pent-up emotion. Miro looked at him with a mixture of surprise and sympathy.

“Inuro, I…,” he attempted, before second-guessing himself. “I’m sorry. I wish there were more I could say. More that I could do. But I am as powerless as you. You asked me why I’m here, making this pilgrimage? It’s because I must either escape the city or find the power I need to undo it.”

Caught up in his own, now public, self-pity Inuro heard the words wash over him until Miro’s last threat.

“The power to undo it?”

“Yes, Inuro. I mean to put an end to it. The injustice. The squalor. The compulsion of good, loving people being marched to their ends far beneath the ground. It cannot continue. I cannot allow it.”

Inuro felt a shudder of cold despite the warm wind. If he could return to the city, so could Miro, and that would be the end of everything. The end of everything…was that what Inuro wanted? What would Pipiliko make of this, he wondered. The party passed momentarily though a thicker patch of the forest, and the light above was muted into a wash of green. Inuro felt eyes on his back, but there was nothing there. Carrying on, it felt as though the eyes were inside him, looking through his own and staring up into his brain, scrutinising everything.

 

*****

 

“Miro is a determined soul,” Pipiliko praised, “he may not understand the nature of the infinite at this time, but his heart is open to it. What one seeks one will surely find.”

“I’ll give him that,” Inuro conceded, “but you do know why he’s here, don’t you?”

Pipiliko nodded absent-mindedly, as though he didn’t know but wanted to provide a good answer quickly that would give him his space.

“I’ve been trying to understand why you’re so keen to find God, and I think it might be for the same reasons as me.”

“Hmm?” replied Pipiliko, with a rising inflection of pleasant approval.

“It’s intellectual, for me, for you. I can’t be in the city anymore, and if there’s something infinite out there, then it has to be better than the life back there. And whatever is driving you on, I think it’s more about what’s over the mountains that what’s under the ground.” Pipiliko nodded more committedly this time. “But Miro…he’s fixated, and I can’t tell what he’s more fixated on, finding God or finding a way to bring God, and all his wrath, down upon the city. It’s like he’s caught between one world and the next, everything about the old driving him to the new and all the promise of the new anchoring him in the old.”

Inuro finished and let a beat pass, then glanced at Pipiliko. He was staring straight ahead, with a smile of reverie on his face, his eyes a thousand leagues deep. Presently, he returned to real life.

“I’m glad you understand, Inuro. I was so looking forward to speaking to you properly, without the prying eyes and ears of the city around us.”

“Prying eyes,” thought Inuro, as a disturbing thought came back to him.

“About that,” he began hesitantly, and Pipiliko looked at him with a sudden seriousness. “I’ve had this feeling. I can’t explain it. It’s…as though I’m being watched. And it’s not ‘watched’ like ‘watched’ by a predator. It’s like being watched as though I’m in an experiment or watched by a prison guard. I can’t understand it, but I also can’t believe it’s just me, for some reason. And I’ve felt it at night too, I think. In my dreams. I don’t suppose you –” Inuro turned to Pipiliko, but he wasn’t there. He turned back on himself and saw the leader a for or two back, stock still.

“Pi-Pipiliko? Is everything…oh. I see.”

Pipiliko had a haunted look about him, as though he’d just become aware he’d been feeling something for some time, and not addressed it.

“Yes, Inuro. I sense that as well. It is…troubling, to say the least. I shall think on it. Go, help Miro with the supplies.”

Inuro looked at Pipiliko somewhat helplessly, then set off back south the few fors between him and Miro.

“Why has he stopped?” Miro demanded, not forcefully.

“He’s…,” Inuro searched, “thinking. I’m not quite sure what about, not yet. I suspect he’ll tell us, or more likely he’ll tell one of us, and then the other.”

“It is unsettling,” Miro concluded. “This is no time for thinking. What is there to think about? We have a day’s travel, a day’s climb, and then eternity to consider what comes next. Thinking can wait until then.” And with that, Miro forged ahead.

“I’m not sure it can,” thought Inuro, bitterly.

 

*****

 

The Harclays lay before the party. Taller than anything Inuro had ever seen, flat and grey and extending east and west as far as the treetops would permit him to see. The very top, the edge over which he would not see for another day, was curiously inviting, but the rest of the vast mountain face was forbidding in the extreme. It seemed to rise by a will of its own out of the ground, with the local trees brushing lazily against the rock in the sunset breeze.

That night at camp all three voyagers were awake, not for lack of tiredness, but for anticipation on the part of the hired-hands and all-consuming reflection on the part of the expedition leader.  They ate in silence, two of them at least, while Pipiliko sat, eyes closed, somewhere else in his mind. For people of the city, too much quiet is intolerable. Born amidst the chattering and clattering of activity, great expanses of quiet and idleness are challenging for them. So it was that when Inuro was about to yell something, anything, to break the silence, Pipiliko’s eyes snapped open and his face was alight with confirmation.

“I have given it considerable thought, and have meditated this evening, in the hope that I can divine the source of that which troubles us all.” Inuro looked suddenly at Miro, who was still staring with desperate intent at Pipiliko. So, he’d felt it too. “I have found the answer.”

“Well?” asked Inuro.

“There is more than one God.”

Miro looked flabbergasted, and Inuro’s face was screwed up in a not entirely humourlessly doubtful expression.

“More than one?”

“Indeed.”

“Why do you tell us this? Explain,” demanded Miro.

“It is clear to me, considering the experiences you have related to me and the content of our dreams, that there are two gods. One lies beyond us, northwards and up. The other lies behind us, beneath us, within us.” Miro looked beyond understanding, but Inuro felt a pattern forming. He decided to test it.

“You mean, there’s a duality?”

Pipiliko flashed an expression of excitement and looked directly at Inuro.

“Yes, yes quite right,” he enthused. “Two gods, equal and opposite. One outside and beyond, to reach and to whom to aspire. One within and behind us, to defy and escape. One good and great, and one not less great but wholly lacking in good.”

Inuro felt a flicker of dissatisfaction, but if Miro shared it he wasn’t showing it. Considering his rapt attention, Inuro suspected he didn’t share it.

“This all feels, well, a little speculative,” Inuro proposed. Pipiliko looked, contrary to his meditative distance earlier, completely entranced by Inuro and his doubt. Miro was still chewing over Pipiliko’s latest proclamation.

“Perhaps, but how then, Inuro, do you explain the nature of your dreams, and the sensation of dreadful cold despite the hot winds? Would you tell me again, of your recent dreams? Spare no detail.”

Against his better judgement, Inuro recounted his ghostly descent through the city, contextualising his search for Chinti, reflecting on the fear he felt as he descended, and explaining that it was not just fear he felt, but love also, separate but merged at the same time, divided by their mutual exclusivity but also united in a feeling off terrible awe. All the while, Miro listened motionless, while Pipiliko nodded and murmured acknowledgement.

“Do you not find the proof within yourself?” Pipiliko offered, once Inuro was done. “The darkness within, beneath, do you not feel within your soul that this is what I describe? An infinite depth to match the infinity of God above?”

Inuro wasn’t sure that he did, but he also wasn’t sure that he didn’t. He wasn’t sure of anything, and the sense of purpose he’d felt the previous night was too distant to recover in that moment. But if Pipiliko was right…it changed nothing. He had to keep going. Miro had been right, in his way. Whatever lay ahead was worth the risk of leaving the city, it was worth the risk of traveling so far. It was even worth the risk of this nebulous idea of a dark god lurking within, calling to him.

“This changes nothing,” Miro decided. “None of what you say disproves the God beyond the Harclays. If there is a god to be avoided then so be it, avoid him I shall. But my goal remains the same: conquer the mountains and find God.”

Pipiliko nodded sagely. Inuro still felt incomplete.

“So, what are you interpreting from my dreams? The darkness beneath the city, the fusion of love and fear, why does that suggest another god to you? Could it not be more literal? Does it have to be a metaphor?”

“You believe,” Miro began, an almost imperceptible tremble to his voice. “That what you have felt is from the Sovereign?” Miro heard himself say the words, and a shiver ran down his back.

“I don’t know,” Inuro replied, “I just need to know. Think about all the angles. I mean, I’ve never seen the Sovereign, I don’t think any of us have, so how do we know that there isn’t in fact a dark god down there, and not her? Or, is she the dark goddess? Or is there nothing down there, no Sovereign, no god, nothing? I just don’t see how we can be sure of any of it.”

“The metaphor is clear,” Pipiliko determined. “I believe the Sovereign has taken her place in your dreams in order for your mind to contextualise the unimaginable truth you have felt. We have all lost something to the Sovereign,” he continued, a little wistfully, “and so her omnipresence is a byword for infinity, a common idea to us all that makes clear the nature of the anathema, the God in opposition to the God we seek.”

Miro seemed to accept this. “He would,” thought Inuro, “he’s already decided what he’s going to do, and Pipiliko’s just turned the thing he hates most into an even more clear-cut villain in his head. It matches his worldview, so it works for him.” So why didn’t it work for Inuro?

 

*****

 

“Is there a Level Zero,” Inuro’s sleeping mind wondered. He was back in the city again, and again drifting downwards into the indescribable black. The fear was back, and the love too, and they were moving closer together. But this time it was different. This time, the passive darkness spoke. Inuro’s body seized, because it spoke in Chinti’s voice.

“Come back to me, Inuro.”

Silence.

“Don’t leave me, Inuro.”

He could not answer, could not move. He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to leave, and didn’t want Chinti’s voice ever to go away.

“You belong here, Inuro. With me. Come to me, love me.”

He hung in the expanse of nothingness, savouring every word, and choked up when he heard, for the first time in over a year, ‘love’ spoken in Chinti’s voice. Whether or not he was going back, Inuro’s disparate awareness knew he didn’t want t leave. He didn’t want to wake up. But behind that voice was another’s mind. The words were not Chinti’s, they never had been. A larger, deeper mind was writing her script, and she was nothing but an invisible mouthpiece.

“You’re gone,” he managed, through tears. “I can’t come back to you.”

“You’re gone,” the reply came, subtly laced with bitterness. “You left me.”

“I,” Inuro began defiantly, before feeling he had nothing to be defiant about. “I haven’t gone.”

“Then where are you?!” Chinti’s voice screamed.

And with that, Inuro was snapped an infinity up, through the city, into the sky and into the sun, and the light filled his eyes.

 

*****

 

“Inuro!”

He jerked awake, as though he’d fallen back to earth.

“I have been trying to rouse you for some time. Did you…?”

Inuro rubbed his eyes and nodded wearily. Miro scowled with preoccupation.

“I saw them too,” he supplied. “All of them, marching in file down. None of them cried out, but it was all I could do not to follow them. The deep beckoned to me, Inuro. I could scarcely resist.”

“Me too,” replied Inuro, vacantly. “But she did call out to me. And Miro,” Inuro paused as he felt the sting of welling tears. “Miro, I wanted to go. I wanted to let myself go and fall into the darkness. You said it was a risk worth taking, coming here.”

“Yes, I did, and yes, it is,” Miro urged.

“I would’ve gone down there, down forever into the darkness, if only it meant I’d see her again.”

“That is what you must fight, Inuro. If the God of Darkness is inside all of us, then you must keep your focus outside yourself, and fight to remain in the light.”

Inuro had no energy to fight, but he also had no energy to argue. Gazing over at the sheer face of the Harclays, he saw Pipiliko testing his grip in the pits and pockmarks of the rock. “I can only go up, even if I want to go down,” he thought.

“I am with you, friend,” Miro said, placing a meaty hand on Inuro’s. “Our pilgrimage is almost done, and all will be well.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” Inuro couldn’t bring himself to say.

The party addressed the face of the indomitable Harclays. Looking up, Inuro couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t lying on the ground, looking out ahead; the face seemed almost perfectly flat and uniform. But it would make for good climbing, Pipiliko had been right about that. The surface may have looked smooth at a distance, but up close it was stippled with lumps and gouged with holes and recesses. Wordlessly, the three began their ascent.

After twenty fors or so, Inuro paused and dared a look over his shoulder. Miro had of course advised that he not look down, but surely out was okay? Besides, the party was now above the canopy, and Inuro relished an opportunity to see the world he new from the most distant, most elevated vantage he’d ever been afforded. The vista was unparalleled: spiky parapets of treetops, running out from under him and away for a day, until it blurred with the sandy brown of the savanna. The city gate was invisible at this distance, even though he knew that at this hour the workers would be filling the city’s environs, pouring this way and that, lifting, moving digging. The sun gleaned overhead and washed the land so bright that he could scarcely look at it for more than a moment at a time. But each time he opened his eyes…this was as close to his life as he’d felt in as long as he could remember. Perverse, then, that he was a terminal drop above it all. “I hope this is what God looks like,” he dreamed, knowing full well that it was not.

 

The climb did not take the full day. Inuro was the last to peek over the summit, and was helped up over the sheer edge by Pipiliko. Miro, he saw, was standing motionless, bereft of words and action, staring out across the expanse. Inuro could see why in an instant.

 

The land that lay before them, at the foot of the other side of the Harclays, them was unlike anything Inuro had ever seen. Well, it was rock, certainly, I had to be with that dark colour and jagged form. But why did it look the way it did? A vast, immeasurably vast, canyon lay before them. But not a canyon, exactly, fairer to say a network of canyons, a maze of towering mesas in dense black rock, with deep and tightly winding troughs running around and between them. How many rivers must’ve once flowed here to carve this reason-defying landscape, a hundred thousand? The plateaus steamed and stank in the heat, as black storm clouds raced by quickly over the plateaus. and for a few minutes the three simply watched nothing go by. Each was trying to process through his own lens what this bizarre and unseen world was, and what it meant to their expedition, their purpose, their worldview. Miro spoke first.

 

“What is this, Pipiliko? Where is God?”

“This is the next phase of our journey. God awaits us on the other side.”

“You made no mention of this,” Miro retorted, visibly angry. “You promised me we would find God beyond the Harclays, Two-er. Where is my divinity? Where is my deliverance?!”

Pipiliko, as though he’d anticipated this, did not miss a beat.

“This is your divinity, Miro. Not its face, but it’s heart, it’s essence. See you how the land stretches on beyond the horizon?” Miro nodded a reluctant agreement. “And do you both remember what I said to you of the nature of the infinite? That it defies measurement?” Now it was Inuro’s turn to join the nodding chorus. “Then consider this within your understanding of the divine. I told you nothing particular of our destination because I knew you had no means to understand it, no reference against which to compare it. Do you understand now? Of course you do not, it is yet too early. But I meant this vista to be your induction into the infinite mind set. A world you cannot understand, that seems to stretch forever. What else could come beyond it, but the true face of the infinite itself?”

Miro seemed to have accepted some of Pipiliko’s speech, but to Inuro he looked more cowed. Inuro didn’t know what to make of it, but curiously he didn’t feel betrayed, as it appeared Miro did.

“Tell me what we will find across the canyon,” Miro said finally. “Spare no details, I have come as far as you bid me on nothing but a promise; to go further I will have more.”

“It cannot be explained, only seen.”

“What nonsense is this? You tell me there is something beyond belief across the Harclays, and in reality it is an immeasurably vast canyon. Why, then, could you not have told me that such a thing lay where it does, let me imagine it, then subject it to proof once we arrived?”

“You would not have understood as I wanted you to understand. Without that, you would not understand what is to come.”

“You mock me, aristocrat. What do you know of what I understand? You say you have lost to the Sovereign along with us all, but you understand nothing of my motivation to be here. Have you seen death? You tell us you have shared our dreams, and assure us it is the work of a god antithetical to a god we did not know mere days ago. You say we cannot measure the infinite, yet the only arbiter of that assessment is you. What do you know of infinity? What right do you have?!” Miro was almost foaming at the mouth, his joints tense and his hands clenched, shaking with ill-directed rage. Inuro was trembling too, but Pipiliko was completely still, though not tranquil; he wore that haunted look he had when Inuro divulged his sensation of scrutiny. Maybe it was his turn to weigh in.

“Pipiliko, say something. You have to, you owe us that. What’s giving you that look, what are you afraid of?” Inuro didn’t find out what Pipiliko feared, because some word in his sentence flipped a switch in the leader’s mind. He turned without a word, and made for the cliff edge, and descended. Inuro looked at Miro with a fusion of hope and worry.

“Inuro, I will cross the canyon. I said the risk was worth the reward, and despite myself I still believe it is so. Make no mistake, however,” and at this Miro clasped Inuro’s shoulder in his grip and leaned in, “if we reach the other side, and I do not find God, I will kill Pipiliko.” With that, Miro set off after Pipiliko with what Inuro hoped was not quite yet murderous intent. He turned around, and looked over the land he’d been traveling. It hit him softly that this was the first time he’d seen it from this height. He’d not had a great deal to look forward to, committing on promises alone, but he had promised himself that he’d take in that particular view, see everything he and everyone else in the city had ever known, from the only vantage point that could represent it all, at once, in a single blink of the eye. And it was beautiful: the warm sunny wind conjured no old memories, but simply set the scene, the sea of pointed treetops, the vastness of the savanna, the smell of dust and vegetation and freedom in the air. He’d spent a year in elective isolation but only now did he fully appreciate what simple pleasures he’d refused himself. If God were not ahead, he thought, then this would do as nicely. Reluctantly, he turned back towards the forbidding black crags and mesas that stretched forever ahead, and began his descent.

 

*****

 

The climb down had been a short one, relative to the distance they’d already travelled and very much relative to the seemingly unending expanse the canyon had appeared from above. But by the time the three had congregated at the base of the foreign side of the Harclays, Miro simmering, Inuro restless and Pipiliko distant yet determined, they set off. This low down, the mesas of the canyon rose not as high as Inuro would’ve expected, at the very most five fors, barely the height of medium-sized trees. But the rock was hot and black, baked in the sun, and even the highest mesas didn’t offer much in the way of shade. It was curious rock, too: Inuro had of course seen all kinds of rock, but never one that had such a…flow to it. Like it had been magma once. Could that be it, that this was volcanic land? Inuro hadn’t seen anything from the Harclays’ summit that suggested a source, but he could see what he could see and touch what he could touch. Miro, characteristically, was uninterested in the mineral composition of the ancient landscape, and Pipiliko was forging ever ahead as though propelled by wind. He sped up as best he could, so as to avoid losing his companions in the tight winds of the canyon floor. It was hard going, harder than the forest, because the ground was uneven everywhere, and aside from a more open pocket here and there, he could at best fit himself down a narrow path, with no-one beside him. He and Miro, therefore, were at Pipiliko’s mercy as far as navigation was concerned. Considering their circumstances, however, that may not have been to their detriment. Pipiliko claimed to have crossed the canyon before, and whenever he shouted directions back down the short column his voice betrayed none of the preoccupation that Inuro was sure he must’ve felt. Either he was confident in his experience, or fervent in his belief that going north was their calling, a matter of destiny.

The group had been on the move for only a short time before shock struck them from above. “It must’ve been the storms we saw,” Miro would add later, as much to reassure himself as anyone else. It came as fast as it went, a sudden pitch black line sliced across the tops of the mesas, injecting a rapid gust into the canyon below. Had the footing been more favourable Inuro thought it likely they’d all have been scooped up and cast into the path of the storm itself. Fortune, and the curious arrangement of the rock, were on their side however and the group remained intact. Physically intact, at least. Each felt, in their own way, the mental integrity of the group disintegrating. What made the situation worse was the nature of the storms; they always came in pairs, whoosh WHOOSH, whoosh WHOOSH, flying with reckless abandon overhead and without warning, save for a subtle rumble in the rock. Inuro learned quickly to sense that tremor and grab ahold of wherever he stood, and passed his advice up the column. Nothing was the same, however, after that first pass of the storms. Though the sun shined down on them and lit up the canyon floor, the moment of darkness took each member of the party back to the darkness of their dreams, conjured up the isolation and the detachment. Inuro, blessedly free from spectral and shifting images of Chinti, was now feeling plagued by her. Behind each irregular crag and corner he thought he saw her, with each whip and squeal of wind he thought he detected a syllable in her voice. Miro was marching faster now, and while Inuro couldn’t see whether or not he was trying to keep pace with Pipiliko, he knew Miro’s motivation came from within. Who did he see within the black of the rock, how many people he’d lost screamed in fear as the winds flashed past them? And what of Pipiliko? He’d said, cryptically, that they’d all lost something to the Sovereign. Chinti had been his but had been summoned below. Miro had had…who knows, and who knows how many, and the Sovereign had taken them all down to Level One. What about Pipiliko?

Inuro had precious little time to wonder, because the pace of the storms continued unabated, and slowed the party’s progress to a near crawl. Miro had passed the message back from Pipiliko that these conditions had been expected (by him, if no one else), and they would soon reach the eye of the storm, where the storms would not strike. Inuro took the news in stride; he was not in the frame of mind to count on anything, least of all anything coming from the man at the front. He continued as they all did, now settled into the rhythm of rumble rumble rumble GRAB FLASH beat FLASH, and against all odds he found the regularity of the storms a curious comfort. It was reassuring to him that, in a strange land on a voyage to something he was assured he’d not understand that danger could at least be expected to keep a steady time. But the images didn’t fade, and Chinti was behind every rock, peeking out at him from behind, calling him back in words he couldn’t hear.

Presently, the three stopped as Pipiliko declared the spot to be in the eye of the storm, and that they would face yet another day of walking. Miro was barely concealing his rage, but held to his promise to keep going until the far side of the canyon. Inuro, feeling helpless to mediate between Miro and Pipiliko, simply acquiesced and found himself a nook in which he could sleep.

There, at the base of a pillar of unfamiliar rock in unfamiliar territory, he spent the most fitful night of his life. Chinti was there, in person and in voice, but she was lost, not amidst the flurry of people in the city, but drowned out by a deep and cavernous thrum from below. He craned his head down, and willing himself down with all the dregs of his shattered bravery he descended into the dark. Sound began to emerge from the inky depths, incoherent and cacophonous sound, but as he listened to make sense of it the sound began to swirl together, distinct pitches all merging, some disappearing entirely as the blurred with others. Identifiable noise began to make itself known, speech began to form:

“Return,” it spoke.

Inuro was paralysed.

“Return,” the voice repeated. It was no voice Inuro had ever heard before, but he couldn’t explain its familiarity.

“No,” he managed.

“Return. Now.”

“No!” Inuro shouted back, suddenly defiant. The voice murmured in shifting tones, then from the blackness:

“Inuro!” Chinti said.

“Chinti?”

“Inuro! It’s me! Where are you?”

“Chinti! I…I don’t know where I am, Chinti,” Inuro stammered, overwhelmed.

“It’s lonely here, and I can’t see you,” she said. “I don’t know where you are. Why aren’t you here? Come back!”

“Chinti, I,” Inuro began, then he realised he couldn’t answer her question. “Chinti, I can’t come back.”

“Inuro! Please, come back to me!”

“I can’t come back!” Inuro yelled, through flowing tears. “I can’t come back to you. I…I just can’t.”

“Why?” she asked. Inuro hadn’t expected the darkness to ask him a question, and it seemed particularly perverse that it should take Chinti’s voice to ask it.

“Because you’re dead,” Inuro answered flatly. “You’re dead, and I can’t bring you back, and I can’t come back because you’re dead. God, if only I had the power, I’d…but I can’t, Chinti, I can’t. You’re gone, and there’s nothing I can do about it and I hate it and I’m angry at it and I’m ashamed at it but you’re gone and there’s nothing else to say.”

The darkness hung around him, watching for a moment. Then suddenly he was flying up, back into the city. He relaxed and waited, expecting his dreams to take him up into the sky again, but he came to a stop in a large cavern full of people. They turned to him as his movement slowed and stopped just above the floor. Slowly, and without threat, they moved towards him. One, a young woman, reached out to him and placed her hand on his arm, with all the weight of spider silk. The rest followed suit, as though he were a prophet granting blessings, and each touch was warmth like he’d not felt since the day Chinti walked, freely yet flanked by guards, out of his life. He looked at each, everyone he could, and stared deeply into their eyes. All bore faces of sympathy, of regret, of pity. He wanted none of these feelings, least of all in himself, but he couldn’t bear the thought of them removing their hands from him. He realised how much he’d missed the simplicity of closeness, of physical intimacy, and even though there were more people around him than he could count, he felt as though he loved all of them.

 

*****

 

The voice drifted into Inuro’s awareness as sleep dissipated.

“I am glad, Inuro, that this will be the last time that I have to wake you, after everyone else,” Miro said.

“Hrmmm,” Inuro managed, rolling from one uncomfortable jut of rock onto another.

“Inuro! Get up! Don’t face your destiny lying down!”

“I’m up, I’m up,” Inuro burbled, rising. Pipiliko was stood a little way off, looking faintly impatient.

“He tells me that we are less than a day from the far side of the canyon. I would not have believed it, seeing it from atop the Harclays, but perhaps the storms clouded the view. Come.”

Inuro shook the sleep and bad dreams from his head and made his way. The going was no easier, but perhaps it was the imminence of their destination that made Inuro feel that the time flew. They seemed barely to have begun, before they came upon something that joined Inuro’s growing list of things he could not have anticipated, and could not have understood. The canyon had wound on, endlessly on, with each narrow pass no different than the last, until this. A looming, flat, grey rock face. He and Miro looked up as one, while Pipiliko looked on passively.

“Another mountain?” Inuro asked quizzically.

“What is this? Explain yourself, Two-er,” Miro spat.

“I cannot explain its existence, I simply know that it is. Just as the Harclays separate our home from this canyon, so does this mountain act as a gate to the next.”

“The next? No more vacillating, tell me now,” Miro demanded, squaring up to Pipiliko. “Have you brought us days from the city, further than any of our people have travelled before, simply to climb mountain after mountain?

“I have not. This is our final obstacle.”

“Yet another! And how many more after, do you know? I have suffered, Two-er, more than you know, and yet you mock me, you toy with me, dragging me this far without explanation, without reason!”

“I know of your pain, but it is nothing compared to what lies above.”

“Nothing?! You dishonour yourself, and me, with those words. You do not understand my pain! You have lost nothing!”

Pipiliko stared dumbly into the mid-distance. Inuro wondered, but felt sure he had nothing to say, or would at any rate say nothing. For who could? Miro’s loss was unknown but perhaps incalculable, as incalculable as the infinity Pipiliko had promised. Inuro’s suspicions were correct: Pipiliko broke from his trance, and turned to the mountain face, and grasped ahold.

“Your pain is nothing, compared to what you will see above.” And with that, he climbed.

“Well,” thought Inuro, “if Miro’s going to come through on his promise, he’d better get climbing. Pipiliko isn’t dying down here.”

Miro could tell this was the case as well, for he sprung at the rock and began to ascend with voracious alacrity. Inuro, driven on by lack of reason to remain where he was and a (shameful) curiosity at what he’d see transpire between his two companions, joined them in the climb.

 

*****

 

It was breathtaking. There was no eloquent way to relate it, no clever trick of reason or science, nor any metaphysical explanation Inuro could imagine. What lay before them was a mountain, certainly, for it had the same flat, grey appearance of the Harclays and the as yet unnamed range the party had just scaled. But just as Pipiliko had promised, it reached into the sky, and beyond what they could imagine. Inuro stood still, slowing his breathing in an attempt to control himself and take stock of what he was looking at. Vast simply didn’t cut it, the rock was eternal. The rock was all. It extended east and west beyond the horizon, and cut its own horizon in the sky as it reached, unimpeded by height or gravity, beyond the stretch of understanding and imagination. Flat, uniform, perfect. For a moment, gazing up at the unlimited nature of infinity, Inuro forgot to breathe.

“This is it,” Pipiliko offered, unnecessarily. “Do you see now why I could not simply tell you what I had found?”

“It is…,” Miro began ineffectually, “it is magnificent. I cannot believe it.”

“Believe it. It is real,” Pipiliko replied, knocking on the rock.

“But how does it,” Inuro attempted, “how does it, you know, stay up? How big is it?”

“The divine is beyond our reason, as I have told you. And you ask an incorrect question; it does not stay up by any special artifice, it simply…exists.”

Miro was pacing, consumed by awe but trying with his feet to root himself in reality. “I must apologise, Pipiliko,” he eventually said, “you told me my losses were unimportant. Against this…this unbelievable entity, I cannot disagree.” Pipiliko smiled with sympathy in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Inuro considered, as both Pipiliko and Miro’s head turned towards him in sudden surprise. “It’s just that…I mean, how do we know goes on forever? How do we know this is infinite?” Pipiliko seemed to be somewhere between amusement and satisfaction, while Miro looked horrified.

“We do not, chuckled Pipiliko, lightest in spirit Inuro had ever seen him. “But I trust that it does. I feel that it does, I believe that it does.”

“Is that what infinity is? Belief? Surprise at something indescribable and transmuted into belief of certainty?” Inuro asked.

“Consider you own losses, Inuro. Now consider the infinite entity, reaching beyond your wildest dreams. Can you deny that it is infinite?”

Inuro wavered, then found his composure. If this was the infinite, then he was damned well going to be sure about it.

“No, Pipiliko, I cannot deny that it is infinite. But I cannot say with certainty that it is infinite either. All I know is that it reaches beyond the sky, beyond the limits of my vision. But that isn’t proof, it’s just an absence of surety.”

Miro was pacing more frantically now, hearing what Inuro had to say and folding it into his understanding, but Pipiliko was undeterred:

“It may not be proof, I concede that, and am glad you have wondered so.”

In that moment, everything snapped into sharp focus in Inuro’s mind. The view over the canyon was crystal, and he felt he could see all the way to the Harclays. And he  saw where he stood, with these two city people, at the base of a mountain he was promised rose up forever. He knew his place in things; Pipiliko was no leader, and Miro was not the muscle. This was not a voyage of discovery but a fathoming of the divine. Pipiliko played the part of pastor, of bishop, of religious leader. Miro was the zealot, passionate in his belief…whatever that belief was guided to be. And himself? The sceptic, the one who asks questions, the one who confirms by their denial the belief of the faithful. Pipiliko had been driving on, distant and undeterred because he truly believed, and Miro had followed him because he wanted, desperately, to believe as well, and to receive his due from God. Inuro had tagged along, less out of will to find what lay ahead but more out of fear to return to a life he loathed, and had no remaining stake in. Pipiliko hadn’t lied to them but he’d brought them all this way through the valley of death to confirm, before his first acolyte and his doubtful friend, that he had indeed discovered divinity. Mustering his final ounces of uncertainty and frustration at truth undiscovered, Inuro turned directly to Pipiliko.

“You said that we have all lost something to the Sovereign. I lost my love, you all know that. Miro has lost too, more than me perhaps, an unknown number of people to an uncountable injustice. I know the Sovereign. She reigns over us all, and we all do her bidding as it pleases her. Last year we suffered the worst famine in living memory, and what did we do? We sacrificed our own people, the ones we love, so that she might live. And for what? Well, tell me now, Pipiliko, and know that if you don’t answer me then Miro will kill you, what have you lost? Tell me! What have you lost?!”

Pipiliko was a million fors away, entranced by the infinitely tall and infinitely wide expanse of rock.

“TELL ME!” Inuro roared, with no patience left. Pipiliko snapped back to face him, and his eyes bore an expression of contrition and futility.

“I,” he began shakily, “I have lost nobody. But I am a victim, like you. The Sovereign reigns with power and persuasion,” he attempted. “Her bidding is done, before you choose to act. Your choice is made for you. I could not…,” he trailed off.

“Could not what,” Miro demanded, stone-faced.

“I could not refuse,” Pipiliko continued. “She, she ordered that her survival, the survival of the city, be ensured. She demanded that we, that I…”

“Now is no time to stop, preacher,” Inuro warned.

“She demanded that I bring her sustenance. That I find those whose duty outstripped their desire to live. The best of the people, she decreed that I bring her. And I did. I did! Because she cannot be refused, she cannot be ignored! She will have her due, whether we choose to refuse or not!” At that Pipiliko broke into a pitiful sob. Inuro looked at Miro with a face that asked a question, and Miro looked back with one that answered it.

“You killed them,” Miro intoned. “You led them t their deaths, all of them. My Amanala, Inuro’s Chinti, and all my brothers, every noble soul.” Pipiliko nodded shamefully through his tears. Inuro’s mind swirled in red and black.

“But you don’t understand, you can’t understand!” Pipiliko maintained. “You don’t know what I’ve lost, you can’t begin to imagine, any more than you can understand what you see now,” he wailed, gesturing to the rock. “She has taken more from me than incidental lives, she has taken my liberty, my own self, my power to choose who I am, what I do, my very purpose! Do you see now why I brought you here? Why I have confronted you with divinity itself? It is charity! It is the will to show others than there is something greater out there than the will of the Sovereign! We can be somewhere, something else! And I grieve your losses as I grieve mine, but do they not pale in comparison to this?”

“Pale in comparison…to a rock face?” Inuro asked, without emotion. Miro was no longer pacing, but almost crouched, ready. He waited a beat, then without invitation or warning, he pounced.

Inuro had never seen anything like it. He’d never seen death, never seen a dead body. But Miro attacked without restraint, without mercy. He leapt onto Pipiliko, straddled him in a single move, and using their bodies for leverage he grasped Pipiliko’s arm, and wrenched.

“I have felt betrayal; no longer!” he roared, and finished his action. Pipiliko’s arm came away from his shoulder in a single movement. Inuro’s stomach lurched. But Miro was not finished. He wheeled round on Pipiliko’s back, seized his legs, crossed them and heaved, tearing them in ichorous spurts from their joints. Pipiliko screamed in agony, a scream that could not match his pain but was all his taxed lungs could muster. Miro continued in his frenzy, grabbing and pulling, here and there beating and thrashing, pummelling and emptying himself of all his rage, all the injustice a Level Nine nobody had pent up over the years. It seemed he  was dismantling the whole system, every guard, every custom, every law with each squelching tear and heavy pound. He ripped and gouged as though this were the dark god itself, and he the exorcist, until Pipiliko’s delimbed and lifeless body lay silent, unmoving, on the foreign ground.

Miro clambered off Pipiliko’s remains and looked Inuro dead in the eye. Inuro felt no fear, but he felt no release as he suspected Miro must’ve. Miro was breathing heavily, rapidly, but with grim satisfaction.

“The aristocrat is no more,” he concluded. Inuro nodded slowly, still processing the carnage he’d witnessed.

“So our journey is over,” Miro continued. “The infinite,” he gestured disrespectfully towards the rock, “remains, should you wish to consider it longer. I have no reason to remain, and I have no reason to continue. I shall return to the city.”

“To do what?” Inuro queried, hesitantly.

“To do the same again, until I join my love and my brothers in the hereafter,” Miro replied with certainty. With that he turned around and walked, at a surprisingly leisurely pace, back towards the cliff edge. “Call this the Pipiliko Mountain Range, if you like,” he offered, “those who knew him will know not to journey so far.” He turned, let his legs slip gently over the edge, and descended.

Inuro watched him go, and then turned back to the rock face. It was unimaginably large, he had to concede. But divine? Would divinity lead a loyal follower all the way here? All the way to their death, at the hands of the world’s first apostate, for naught? “What was the point of it all?” Inuro wondered. “Maybe it wasn’t for nothing,” he entertained, “maybe there’s a lesson here. A lesson in the nature of infinity.” “Because if it’s not infinite, then our problems matter, our grief matters, and then in that case it’s down to us to deal with the aftershock,” he thought. Or, Pipiliko was a madman, driven out of the city as I was: not in search of the divine but in search of escape from the darkness. “I don’t suppose I shall ever know what Pipiliko’s loss felt like. Because I’ve never known a lss of liberty, not like him.” And Chinti never knew that loss either, he realised. Everything she did was her own choice. She said goodbye. She walked out of the door. She let the guards follow her, as she made her own way down to certain death, and the prayed-for survival of the Sovereign. “No matter what, Chinti made her own choices,” Inuro said to himself. He looked again at the sheer rock, looked up at the precise point where grey rock merged with blue-white sky. “She made her own choice, and I have to make mine,” he concluded. He reached out to the rock, the cold and indifferent rock, and placed his hands in a pair of receptive nooks.

 

*****

 

Nobody noticed the ant, Inuro, as he felt the rock with the exploratory touch of a new lover. He tried the handholds in total isolation despite the flurry of activity that surrounded him. They were as oblivious of him as he was of them. But they marched on, about their banal lives, as he felt the face of the infinite, and none were any the wiser. The cars continued to roll across the craggy asphalt as they always had done. Above them all the sun shined placidly, ignorantly, uncaringly.

 

To Touch the Face of God – 10 out of 9, an absolute bloody masterpiece. At least it would be if the author hadn’t spent weeks reading the Known Space books and imbibing all the dialogue contained therein. But seriously, this is a first draft and I couldn’t leave it on my computer. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

 

 

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