that would inspire us all!
Day the Fifth. Day the Sixth. Day the Seventh. Day the Eighth. Day the Ninth…
The days began to blur. Some explored, some built the Temple, some trained in warfare strategies and honed their fighting skills.
And others spent all their time discussing the science of the Ka’un and the geography of our world. Each part of the interior world was to be charted; each creature in the interior world was to prepare for what by now we all knew was inevitable: full-scale war against the Ka’un.
Thus had I turned these creatures into an army fit to vanquish the most fierce of enemies. And I had also made them think. Just as, in her own exceptional way, Sai-ias had made me think.
For I had been so very certain, for all my life, that the way of my people was the rightest and most apt way. But now I had come to doubt it all. All the values I had assumed and trusted and relied upon-I now challenged them, utterly.
War is glory? Death is the supreme achievement for a warrior? Prowess in a duel is a sign of moral superiority?
All these beliefs now seemed to me-well, fatuous really.
War may be necessary; military might may be prudent; but there really are, it now dawned on me, more important things in life.
Thus had Sai-ias taught me; for my mind too, I realised, had been cluttered with myths. Blind and foolish beliefs that could not withstand the cool stare of compassion.
In comparable fashion, the creatures on this ship assumed they knew the truth about their world; but they did not. Their assumptions were false; their beliefs were absurd.
Thus had they been, for so many years, and in every respect, the dupes of the evil Ka’un.
I had one final surprise for them.
We were sitting, a small group of us-Sai-ias, Quipu, Fray, Lirilla, Doro, and I-in the fields by the forest, in the warm sun. Doro was a shadow on the grass, we barely knew he was there. But he was always there. Fray was restless, but determined to listen to my words. Quipu was animated, gesticulating with his two hands and bobbing his five heads as he mentally wrestled with thorny problems about the physics of the Hell Ship.
I then discussed with them my various theories.
“You have told me that for many years you have believed the air translates,” I said, preparing the ground for my argument. “And it also hears every word we say.”
“Correct, that was indeed once our belief,” said Quipu Three.
“And it allows us all to breathe, though the atmospheres of our planets are very different.”
“Correct again,” Quipu One concurred.
“And the Tower is the home of the Ka’un; and the air generates light; and creatures who fall into Despair live for all eternity?”
“All fallacies, we see that now,” conceded Quipu One.
“Yet you’ve already said all this!” chided Quipu Three.
“Don’t be discourteous,” said Quipu Five, critically.
“Let the creature speak,” ordered Quipu Four.
“Even if he is annoyingly repetitious,” Quipu Two sniped.
“My point now is: how do we know all this?” I asked.
Baffled stares greeted me.
But this was the crux of it!
All on the Hell Ship lived their lives according to various beliefs-or, as I would term them, myths. But where did these fucking myths come from?
Quipu shrugged, five-foldly. “These are things we simply know,” Quipu One said. And Quipu Two added:
“Some knowledge is like that. Geometry, the difference between up and down, mathematics. It is called innate knowledge.”
“Is there any other kind?” Sai-ias asked; and I marvelled once more at the oddness of her mind.
“Innate knowledge, that turns out to be utterly false?” I pointed out gently.
The Quipus took my point. But Lirilla, Fray, Doro and Sai-ias still had no notion what I was driving at.
“Another question: Why have slaves?” I continued.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” said Fray, irascibly.
“If they were really all powerful,” I argued, “the Ka’un wouldn’t need you to fight their godsforsaken battles. They have technology. They have weapons. But they are few. Remember that. And they are cowering from us now, afraid.”
They pondered my words, and saw the sense. Then I waited a few moments more.
“There is something else,” said Sai-ias, astutely, “that you want to explain to us. Isn’t there?”
I smiled. “Let me show you, instead.”
They journeyed with me to the mountains; and from there I led them into a cavern in the rock. The cavern was wide, but even so Sai-ias had to compress her body five-fold to get through. Quipu followed, agile on his five legs, Fray lumbered after him; Lirilla flew ahead; while I leaped confidently from rock to rock.
And there we found an underground waterfall, spilling out of the mountain.
“This is the source,” I said, “of the well of the water of life.” And I took a knife and gouged a line in my arm. Blood flowed; then I dipped the arm in the water. When I removed it, the cut was healed instantly, without so much as a delay of a few seconds.
Then I reached into the water and pulled out a large sack. I opened the sack.
Inside the sack was one of the brains of Djamrock, sundered into many parts, but still pulsing as it had when it was alive.
“What is this?” Sai-ias asked, shocked.
“I retrieved it,” I said, “from-I do not care to elaborate-from the leavings of Cuzco that were-voided-after he killed Djamrock, and before he was banished. This is the brain of Djamrock, or parts of it.” I prodded the flesh of the brain segments with a finger; it throbbed. “The cells are alive, though Djamrock’s mind is dead. But the flesh, you see, doesn’t rot.”
“What have you done?” said Sai-ias, in appalled tones.
“I am performing an experiment,” I told her sharply. “Into the nature of our captivity.”
The dead shards of brain pulsed, eerily; the mood of my listeners had turned dark and sombre. But I ignored the bleak mood and continued.
“Facts and myths,” I said. “Let us consider them in turn.
“The first myth: we on the ship cannot die. Not true; Djamrock was killed and now he is dead; these are merely cell samples. You believe his consciousness lives on in his sundered body? I ask you, what evidence do you have for that? It is just a belief, a superstition. Let us discount it.
“The second myth; the air translates. Who told you that? No one. How do you know it then? Because some things are just known, like… geometry? That’s one possibility, but it makes little sense.
“So think about this,” I said, softly, letting my words enter their minds like a whisper on the breeze. “What if the thought were planted in your head. Like a whisper, on the breeze. A thought that says: ‘The air you breathe can translate your every word.’ Easily done.”
“A thought, in the head? It’s impossible,” said Quipu.
“In my civilisation,” I said, “we have a thing called a pakla, inserted into the brains of each of us. It allows us to communicate at a distance. And we can use the pakla to translate. You program it with data about the languages involved, and it turns alien speech automatically into words I understand. I have used it often thus.”
“Pakla?” asked Quipu One.
“That’s our name for what you call a smallworlds mechanoid mind, and some of the creatures on this ship call-well, whatever. It’s convergent evolution at work; many species have achieved the same technological breakthroughs.”
“Not mine,” Sai-ias said. “We have no use for mechanical brains.”
“Nor ours,” said Quipu One. “We remember every fact we encounter; numbers are like music to us; we could not create a machine cleverer than I.”
“Or I,” added Quipu Two, competitively.
