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constant movement.
'My father is dead, reverence.' The first words spoken by Kherzaki. The voice
isn't Constantine's, but that of a near cousin: Kherzaki's opera training
gives him a resonance and authority similar to Constantine's even though the
timbre is different, smoothly flowing liquid rather than tempered steel.
'Everything returns to the Shield in the end.' It's the abbot speaking, a
wizened man with a birdlike tilt to his head, a twittering voice, a holy
symbol tattooed on his forehead and eerie blue blobs of mascara on his eyes.
i request leave to attend his funeral.'
'You may have it, child of matter,' says the abbot.
Kherzaki gratefully inclines his head. 'I ask first for a gift of your
wisdom.'
'The gift is not mine,' the abbot demurs, 'but that of the Great Path of
Superior Perfection.'
'I wish to inquire about evil.'
'Evil is a transient phenomenon that cannot sustain itself. Purify your mind
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and heart of desire, and evil can gain no lodgment therein.'
The student is persistent. 'And what of exterior evil? Can it be overcome
through action?'
'All evil is transient. By its nature it cannot sustain itself. No action is
necessary, nor required.'
Kherzaki's deep eyes glitter. 'If evil is transient, then the transience is
because evil destroys itself, and that destruction is inevitable. Cannot
people of virtue aid evil in its self-destruction, so as to prevent its
innocent victims from suffering?'
The abbot frowns. 'All weapons turn against their owners, child of matter.
All desire corrupts. All action is futile. If you wish to aid those who
suffer, then teach them to live without desire.'
'Without desire for food for their children? Without desire for hope? Without
desire for liberty or justice?'
'Just so.'
There is a long pause, and then Kherzaki turns and leaves. The abbot gives a
bemused smile and sips gratefully at his tea.
And Kherzaki, in his room, breaks his prayer sticks over his knee, leaves his
robes in the closet, washes the ritual daubings from his face, and goes forth
to make revolution.
It's not precisely history - Aiah knows that Constantine left the School of
Radritha some years before he made his bid for Cheloki, and that Constantine's
father survived, under house arrest, into the civil war that followed. The
chromoplay names no real names: Kherzaki's character is called Clothius, the
monastery is a fictional one, though characteristic of its type, and the
metropolis over which Kherzaki strives is called Lokhamar. The
fictionalizations are transparent but somehow aid the chromo's purpose; the
characters aren't so much anonyms as literary constructs, a thing in keeping
with the entire chromoplay, which is highly stylized, as if inspired by
Kherzaki's world of the opera. The actions are grander than in reality, the
colors brighter, the gestures more sweeping, the silences more profound. The
heightened style transforms a kind of historical outline into a mighty
tragedy, a form far more powerful than the merely true.
Kherzaki is never less than magnificent. He attempts no imitation of
Constantine, but there are occasional intriguing echoes: an impatient gesture
or pantherish glance, or phrases that Aiah remembers falling from
Constantine's lips. The actor is particularly effective at the end, after all
hope is gone, striving to maintain his brittle dignity while trying to
negotiate his own exile and the surrender of his metropolis to the corrupt
forces that have brought about the destruction of all his schemes.
Aiah is thrilled to the marrow, and she's not alone, because at the end the
audience burst into applause right along with her. She's never seen a
biography of such scope, nor a worthier testimony to someone's life and
thought.
There's a brief intermission, after which there will be a live report from the
huge premiere party. After the five-course dinner that was the chromoplay,
Aiah isn't particularly interested in more bonbons from celebrities, so she
rises and adjusts her jacket. Her doorman rises to give her room to pass.
'Good chromo,' he says.
'I think Constantine should be pleased.'
'Constantine?' His brow furrows. 'Was he in the cast? I don't remember seeing
him.'
Aiah looks at the man. it was about Constantine, about his life. Clothius was
Constantine.'
The doorman blinks. 'Oh. Is that why he's famous, then? I never knew.' And
then, at Aiah's startled look, he adds, i don't much keep up with the news.'
Aiah makes an effort to master her surprise. 'Well, I'm glad you liked it,
anyway.' She shuffles past him on her way to the aisle.
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'When is that gentleman of yours coming back?' the doorman asks.
Aiah shrugs and calls an answer over her shoulder.
'Who knows?'
Aiah takes a cab to Terminal. At the start of the weekend the streets are
fairly full, with long lines outside the fashionable clubs and Shieldlight
glittering bright on beads and jewelry. In the poorer areas like Terminal,
whole blocks are barricaded off for street dances, with local bands playing
atop flatbed trucks and vendors selling food, intoxi- cants and aphrodisiacs
from shops set up in the outdoor scaffolding.
Aiah tells the driver to take her past the building that holds Kremag and
Associates, but the street is blocked off - not with a block party, she sees,
but by police. Flashing lights throb against the walls of the buildings, and
there's a touch of pepper gas in the air that makes Aiah's eyes smart. A line
of complaining people, bystanders apparently, lie on the sidewalk with wet
towels over their eyes, supervised by indifferent ambulance personnel.
The police would never have used gas so freely in a rich neighborhood.
Still, Aiah is pleased to be able to give Constantine good news. She tells the
cab to head for the Landmark, and as it turns away from the barriers, and
rolls past the huge bulk of the housing project, Aiah sees Khoriak's blond
head gleaming from a shop doorway.
Her news won't be news after all, Aiah thinks.
Security is already in place at the Landmark, along with a meal of cold
noodles, pate, fruit and a fine amber wine. She eats, bathes, banishes
weariness with a dose of plasm, and finds a gift from Constantine on the bed:
a negligee of golden silk, a matching robe, bottles of Cedralla perfume and
body oil. Aiah adds the ivory necklace that Constantine gave her, the carved
white Trigram hanging low between her breasts. For a luxurious moment, as Aiah
anoints herself, the fantasy of the kept woman floats through her mind again,
the limousine, the shopping binges, the pug dog .. .
Pretty silly, she considers. She can't see Constantine long keeping company
with a woman so utterly useless.
Constantine arrives, face and form concealed in a hooded sweatshirt that makes
him look like a retired prizefighter. 'I believe I've decoyed the reporters,'
he says cheerfully. 'A last-minute switch of aerocars, and Martinus dressed in
my hat and coat with a little plasm-glamor on his face. He should have led
them all back to Mage Towers.'
Aiah congratulates him. He pulls the sweatshirt off over his head and tosses
it on a chair. 'Did you like the chromo-play?' he asks.
it was magnificent.'
Constantine seems pleased with himself. 'They will wonder, won't they, if the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]