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Chapter Eight
The Prima Materia has been dissolved, blended, inseminated with the Seed of transformation, wisely nurtured and the essential Elements selected out and placed in Cosmosis. These Elements are now prepared to be activated by my Wizard empowered shock.
My gesture to transmit this may vary from a gentle nudge to a traumatizing jolt to the body or mind. This is done with appropriate force, timing and intention, as the I intuit is needed. I create uncertain, unsettling circumstances to activate excitation or fear, even to disorder and insanity if called for in the Work. I am skilled at unsettling and confusing, Others and myself. Bedevilment is a supreme art of mine. I need not punish as the range of my powers let me use a glance to bring discomfort, even pain and turbulence.
This Procedure shakes loose old forms and stances. It can startle and alert attention and interest in the seeker. It calls for new footing and direction. It carries the forceful message and energy to initiate a new beginning. It can provoke that step off the end of one's world. This completes the preparatory Procedures and activates the Prima Materia into its next level of unfoldment.
We call this activating jolt in the Work:
PERTURBIO or SHOCK
"That's quite a thought-provoking sight, your Tree of Life," Jason commented to Plang with sarcastic humor after they sat down. "We refer to it as the Pivot of the Universe," the Wizard wagged his head sadly in answer. "Yet the way we care for it shows the quality of our inner lives. Therefore such mental squalor and self-enslavement around us." The procession had dried to a trickle of stragglers -the lame, aged, and a few penitents practicing various gyrations along the road as a form of locomotion. Most of the roadside spectators had gone. "Shall we make a move," Plang suggested, standing with a brisk smile. "I'm ready to go," sighed Melissa with relief. She looked and sounded cross, pouting as though she were being put upon. Plang's tactics didn't seem to have the same success with her as last night. "Oh," she turned to him, mockery glinting through her humor, "you mean to... the Temple ." She slipped a finger into her navel through her mini-frock, hips slowly easing to one side as if some hydraulic motion had been released. Jason saw by the old man's intentionally held neutral expression, she was getting to him. She excelled at that. They found their chariot taxi, Charon still in his steel shell. The black glint of his pupiless eyes engulfed them as he opened the doors and they packed ourselves inside. Jason kidded himself about his morbid reaction to the driver, but an overawing sense of premonition kept it in place. The engine coughed twice, started, then again they went hurling in a weaving path through the city. M. Tussaud's guided tour, besides setting Jason's mythic mind spinning like a kaleidoscope, led Jason to understand that there was no possible softened, secondhand approach to making a decision about the Enlightour. He was being drawn to know his own terrible truth. To discover what this was about, he knew he had to experience it face to face. Plang sat between Melissa and him in the back of the mini-taxi. Jason enjoyed the old man's presence pressed against his side, his head about even with Jason's shoulder. In front, M. Tussaud, with his nude scalp and neck in genteel reserve, was a humorous contrast for the driver's thick neck and pelt of black hair. "Where was the Dreamer in that procession of the Imagos?" Jason asked. "He was portrayed as one of them in the dance last night." "I am considered his Imago." The old man's tone and manner seemed cool, matter of facct. "The role that I play as Imago will at the Temple . It is a sacred celebration left to us from our First Times, perhaps because each of our conquerors confused it with something in his own creed and so let it be." A warm humor came into his voice. "I have carried out this role in endless Festivals, the role of sounding the Call. It goes with my Office, sanctified by ages of usage. But today I not only sound the Pushu's Call. Today I also sound my own," the Wizard said with contentment, patting Jason's shoulder. "A man may have many friends and many followers, but he can have only one Pushu." Melissa kept her gaze out the window, as pointedly ignoring him as she'd done at the Investure with the Abbot. "What does that name mean, anyway?. Is it your real name or a title?" Jason asked, still trying to get a handle on this doubt. "Plang Mengli means the Dreamer from First Times. That's who I am," he stated. "No. I mean, were you born with that name?" "Yes, yes, with the name only was I born. Tell me, what does your name mean?" Plang asked Jason with pointedness. "What is it supposed to communicate?" He fixed his gaze through Jason's eyes. Jason paused, hoping the Wizard would hear his thoughts as well as his words, so that he could catch the depth of meaning that explaining his name had for him. "Jason was an ancient Greek mythic hero. He went on a voyage. He roamed their world and had man incredible anventures in his quest for a golden sheepskin that had marvelous powers to heal and transform. His quest was also a trial, a task he could prove himself and claim his rightful throne. And Bardow is what the Tibetans call the realm between lives, the spirit worlds. In my telling of Jason's quest that's where the mythic Jason had to seek for his treasure." Plang gave him a warm smile. "So there are resonations of the Call there too. Jason Bardow -seeker of the transforming treasure in the realms of the psyche. I have a good sense of which Enlightour would suit you best..." Jason was excited that Plang also saw that similarity. Another note of confirmation. The quest for the Golden Fleece seemed much like the Pushu's Call, to swim up against the Cosmic Whirlpool, to reach the wondrous in mythic realms. Another fitting together, though still fuzzy, ill-defined. Whatever was behind this mythologizing -the quest for the Golden Fleece or the Call to First Times- Jason felt a truth as ancient as the rites of shamanism: sacrifice and rebirth, dismemberment and reincarnation as a new empowered self. "If I understand correctly, Plang Mengli, this Enlightour is the legendary technique passed on by the original Plang Mengli." "Of course." the old man assured him. "But understand that it is shaped by our direct experience and contact with each other through it. Quite different from a packaged tour." The vibrations of Plang's laugh touched Jason's belly at the scar from his stabbing on his last assignment. "My interests in this are the same as yours," Plang assured Jason. "I participate as fully as you to open the Mystery. But, in some ways I am simply a spectator. Even that name, Enlightour was coined by an early devotee who felt it would inform the Western ear better than simply the Call." Jason pictured some of those techniques of inducing a trance or ecstasy he'd tried in his questing with Phineus. He hoped the Wizard's approachd was more sophisticated as those had very little long term interest for him. He was too demanding and cynical to so innocently let loose of the moorings that fixed him in day to day consciousness. But, this approach of Plang's seems to have worked for different kinds of people, from Phineus to movie stars. Maybe this was a technique of initiation that could work for him as well, that bridge he was seeking since those days when ideals carried weight in his life. To live in the Spiral without drowning, as Plang described it. That's the gymnastics required of the soul. Then relationship with the whole world would be changed. How wonderful that must be, Jason imagined the feel of it with anticipation. "Could this Enlightour be described as an initiation that frees one from the Spiral, that gives rise to a transformed personality?" he hopefully asked Plang. Their encasing taxi took a sudden jerking swerve around a crowd, spectators on their way to the Navel-Temple. Violently, as if one mass of flesh, the three of them in the back seat slammed to one side, then the other. The old man gasped, the wind knocked out of him. Jason was about to suggest some restraint on their demonic driver, when Plang snapped at him, "Why is it, the first thing you people ask about is personality? Always you are after special glitter that everyone can see how special you are. What do you think, I give you a magic jingle to make your eyes bright? Or maybe I will kiss your forehead and you could see lights, hear music and feel very, very exalted. A wonderful sparkle to cover all that nasty reality." His voice was caustic and unpleasant. "I am a Wizard, not a merchandiser. Nothing to sell for servicing personality." By this time the old man was very upset and personality was said like a nasty word. "You people keep on coming for some advantage," he drawled out mockingly. 'Oh, Wizard, we just need your kind help in this matter... There is this marriage to be arranged... He has a devil... She has taken a lover... I want special powers...' Hopeless! I do not explain the Spiral. Don't ask again! If you have the Call and are ready to respond, perhaps I can help." The Wizard was really scolding him. Jason tried to dismiss it as a carry- over of his irritation with Melissa. But his denouncing use of the word personality burnt the last inch of Jason's fuse. His body reacted to his anger, jaw braced tight against his teeth, that thing inside him shaking and ready to snap open like a switchblade. Melissa kept looking out the window with pretended interest, snickering and enjoying Plang's scolding him. "This dream about yourself you feel you must believe in order to survive. That's what's behind all your interest in explanations, trying to figure some way to get all this to fit in, to substantiate that phony dream. That what you're always talking to yourself about from inside that misty bubble. Your personality, as you so dramatically imagine it, is but a total jumble of happenstance and compensations. It's you discussing with yourself how you can get everything you imagine you want. And to be more exact, that inner jabbering is not really a wanting. Wanting, I think, is a real response to need. Yours is more willful delusion and self-indulging fantasy, a constantly mended and rewoven disguise for you to hide behind, a cover-up so you don't have to face your real emptiness and needs. I believe you have a saying, 'The lights are on but there's nobody home'. "You seek, weigh, judge, balance, construct, trying to manufacture a reality to fit in with your pretends. A farce you are constantly playing at but never seeing through." The Wizard's tone grew more accusing. "The surface mind does not create reality. It can only try to observe it. If it pretends to be the source, it undertakes a task that overwhelms it. Those expectations magnify the fear it attempts to hide. Remember not to forget that! I tell you something else that it would be good for you to accept?" the old man said with less bite. "What you want and what you don't want are not major factors in determining what happens." He jabbed a finger at Jason. "Do you often keep smoking one cigarette after another.?" he demanded sharply. "Only when he wants to make himself sick," Melissa informed. "Or someone else nearbye." She leaned to look around Plang, smiled at Jason and meaningfully glanced at his lighter as it rolled back and forth through his fingers from hand to hand. She knew full well what his feelings were. "You are desperate and moved. That is good. And I received the confirming Omen reading. That also is good. But neither you nor I can arrange this. It must be received. I tell you again, stop you hesitations and rushes, your fears and enthusiasm. The Spiral will not be stretched or compressed. It will have its own way. Which is the right way." His blast of aggression seemed spent. His voice became less sharp, his gestures less cutting. As his own reactions relaxed, it struck Jason that he hadn't been swept away by Plang's tirade. Jason understood that the Wizard was present and intent behind it, guiding it for purposes and effects of his own. His first impression was that he was a venting his irritation at a convenient pretext, a human enough foible. But he was disappointed in Plang. Yet, rather than his usual defensive guarded cynicism something made Jason wonder if this wasn't the wise teacher using love to tug and push. 'The magnet that to attract, repels.' Seeing him so willingly take the bait, was this jerking him around his way to set the hook? Maybe it wasn't the awkward disclosure of his self-life as irritating and irrational as his own, but a game that he was playing --enticing, then repelling, preparing to entice again. Two edges, biting at him, softening him up. He hoped his purposes were loving. " The only preparation for responding to the Call is to realize that no preparation is possible. I am trying to help you give up trying to arrange, to justify and explain everything. For you, right now, giving all that up now is a matter of survival." As he spoke, he became warm towards Jason again. The storm had passed. The Wizard was calm, no rancor left at all. Like a tropical storm that flashes violent and dark, then ends in an instant and leaves a wide blue sky. "Being really prepared means the awareness that whatever befalls you is that Mystery unfolding. That inner self-substantiating conversations disappears when you actively but selflessly participates with the Spiral. You are freed from the self-hallucinating, the wakeless dream of so-called normal consciousness." "Really is a lot to let go of." Jason was getting a taste of what the Wizard was talking about. "Yes. Every thing. Every day," he affirmed, in dead earnest. Then a grin leapt to his face." It is the ultimate metaphysical reducing program. You can think anything you want. But you must not believe it!"
To prepare the Element to readiness for change I must bring it to its edge, where it may release, Not beyond where it defends in survival reflex, seals, hardens, goes remote beyond my reach.
Plang grinned at Jason, his bosom friend again, sweetly almost shyly, guilelessly pouring love at him. "It is a discovery, an unveiling of the Timeless that everything takes part in." The words the Wizard was using didn't matter to Jason now. The old man was talking to him from his open heart now. "The Call is echoing to you from every corner of your life. Your dreams too, I know. You have arrived at the time. Within and outside you all is prepared." Plang contorted around in his seat to take Jason's hand. "Your being here is as much the Spiral's provision as is the need that has ripened so well inside you." " For a healthy fee, no doubt," Melissa commented in a half snicker. "I think he understands what you mean, Plang." It didn't matter how much nastiness she flung into the air. He was talking to the new parts of him, the recently awakened parts. He waited for some word from him as he deeply studied his eyes. "I am being convinced" was all He could say. "When the time seems right..." "And it'll serve you damn right," Melissa said with bitter amusement. As they arrived at the Temple of the Navel, their tin dungeon gave them one last slam as it jolted to a halt. Melissa gave him an odd look over her shoulder as she crawled out. He self-consciously took his hand back from the old man and got out on his side. They had passed the Temple's huge courtyard in their rickshaw ride from the airport the day before. Then it was a sea of humanity, writhing with commerce. Fruit and spice sellers calling out their wares, sorting and resorting their bright display to catch the passerby's eye. The courtyard was flooded with humanity today too, but now silent, unmoving, expectant. The Imagos' carts were lined up in the street beside the courtyard, sacred vehicles that belonged in museums or curios shops. Looming up from the center of the masses was the Tower of the Temple of the Navel with seven ascending, red-tiled roofed porches, very much the center of attention. Driving by earlier, Jason hadn't paid much attention to the low Temple next to it. Now he did and felt it was another whimsy. Offspring of pagoda and a mosque. Plang led them to a doorway, huge and hobnailed, in the base of the Tower. He entered and beckoned them to follow. It was cool and cave-like within. A feeling of sanctuary greeted them. Before them stood a staircase of huge stones barely three feet wide that clung to the Tower's wall. They ascended the spiraling stairway, one by one, hugging the wall. At the end of the first turn just above the doorway there was a tall window and a ledge we'd seen from below. Plang continued, beckoning them on. At the third opening, he led them out to the porch. "My calling takes me to the Seventh Portal. We will meet afterwards. And Tussaud is with you, should you have need. This old Wizard has his duties too." He nodded cheerfully and went back in to the stairway to ascend further. They looked down over the silent mass of several hundred near-naked men and boys, huddled together, like captives going to the block, a deep cluster of spectators deep around them. "Creepy, isn't it," Melissa moaned, in fear or awe. "What's happening here? All those naked people..." They both look questioningly at M. Tussaud. He benignly smiled back. "This is the moment of the Offering. This is the gesture that fulfills and seals this Festival of the Call. Now you will see what it is the Pushu offers to those about him that makes him the Bearer of the Two-edged Gift both honored and despised. We have subjected the Imagos to our praise and blame. Now there is the balancing. All wrongs are righted in all realms. Out of thankfulness and courage, we offer the only thing that is ours to offer. These penitents make the gesture for all of us. We are all penitents here. We know that being alive is wounding, and that sacrifice enlivens. It is the shadow part of being alive. "The Imagos have received our praise and disdain. And now they will have their retribution." It sounded sinister to him but he explained it in a light, amused tone. Melissa leaned close to Jason. "I don't know if I'm ready for this." She was asking for help. He knew he was not willing to miss this. He shrugged at her briefly then continued to look down on the compressed mass of humanity with fascination. The Pushu came down from his cart with the donkey tail wrapped round his head. He worked his way to the center of the penitents, not shouting or abusive as he'd been before, but silent, intently focused. Everyone made way for him. "Now you'll see the great service the Pushu performs. He takes the gift of the Call and shares it with all. This Sacramental Wounding brings the Spiral back into to balance," M. Tussaud explained mysteriously. "Only a few of them below are true penitents. Some are real holy men with their own dark reasons for taking part. But mostly they are the poor hired by others to accrue good merit in their name or to pay off some vow. But afterwards the Temple gives them all a good meal that is considered a sacrament too. For many, a belly full of rice is a good enticement to take part in this. The tense, still feeling in the masses of people below confirmed that it would not be long. Reverberations of a heavy gong began to roll out from a chamber above them, the whole Tower echoing as one cone of sound. Slowly, at first, at the rate of sleep's breath, the tempo of the gong gradually increased. Then came blasts of a throaty horn and the masses raised their voices, intoning the same chant they had woven through the streets since last night. From the seventh, topmost porch, came a wavering thread of invocation. A heavy and mature voice chanted almost pleading. It took him some moments before he realized that is was Plang as he intoned a line a few times with a touching, bittersweet melody. Jason knew, "That must be the Call that Plang's chanting", he whispered to Melissa. The intricate litany lasted some minutes, his voice filling the Temple's packed yard and out beyond. Everyone listened, heads bowed, unmoving, in a deep, receptive hush. The bare-chested penitents moved to this hymn as if to a set of instructions. Hands joined they began with a slow shuffling to move counterclockwise, encircling the Pushu. The island of men and boys gathered closer round the Pushu, swaying to the gong's hypnotic pulse. Tightness and fear left their faces. The Ceremony had taken over. The Pushu called out and they moved into a kind of dance. A tiny shuffled step became a slow pinwheel of bare bodies with the Pushu as its hub. "A bit like the Rockettes, huh...?" Melissa hissed in his ear, fear strong in her look and tone. Jason turned his palm out to her, as an offering. She came over and took it, leaning on the balustrade. "I don't think I've ever seen anything that makes me feel the way... I don't know, Jason. I'm kind of spooked. Like there's too much happening on so many different levels, I don't know what's real anymore." He saw her dismay and wanted to give her some support. He squeezed her hand and nodded assurance. He gestured with his eyes below at the human pool swirling with the gong's increasing rhythm. As the tempo grew too fast for the younger boys to keep up, men lifted them to their shoulders. A few women's ragged sobs broke free from the enclosing crowd. Again there was a signal from the blaring horn. The frenzied trance of gongs and cymbals, the moans and cries and frenzied dance of the penitents, gradually diminished, like a storm coming to rest. It stopped. There was stillness, attentive silence as before. A long pause, silent and attentive, allowing the mind time to settle. Then another chant came from above, mournful and longing. The Pushu raised his arms towards it, as if to receive some gift, a blessing or power. As Plang continued in his plaintive cry, the Pushu gestured, appearing to bathe himself in this sacred down pouring. Then, apparently satisfied with his self-drenching, he turned and seemed to pour it from his cupped hands over the shaved head and shoulders of the man in front of him. The Pushu then began to rub and pat on the man, working over his face, bare back, shoulders and chest. "The Pushu shares the blessings of his Call," M. Tussaud whispered. As the melancholy chant was repeated, this man in turn, as well as the Pushu, made the motions of anointing and rubbing on the men next to them. They, in turn, did the same to others. The gesture blossomed out into the same cartwheel spiral the dance had followed. A moan rose from the throats of the watchers as the pattern of benediction and sacrifice widened. The pitch rose to hoots. The tension, in some, tightened to a screech. He was raptly watching, when Melissa suddenly clutched his hand with more strength that I'd thought she had. "What is that?" she gasped. It was a long moment before it clicked into his awareness. "Coloring of some sort," he suggested in irony. "My God!" she gasped in a choked back sob. "They're bleeding... They must be cutting at each other." Sudden hysteria overtook her. "I don't understand this... Have to get away..." she begged, burying her face at his shoulder. I didn't mind seeing her in some discomfort, not after the pleasure she took in his scolding from Plang earlier. Raw blood was always her phobia. She would have to fend for herself. "Yes, this is how the grace of the Call is passed along so all may gain from it. The Two-edged Gift, you know," M. Tussaud gently explained. "Therefore the Pushu is honored and hated." All but the Pushu now had trickles of blood down their faces, chests and arms. He hadn't been rubbed on. Some had beautifully confused expressions on their faces, a mixture of penance, self-abasement, and self-abuse. They turned around, one by one, to face out towards the Imagos' carts in the street. M. Tussaud kept up some scraps of translation for them as they threatened, cajoled and begged the Imagos for less misery and hardship in their lives. The sheer back-to-front madness of it made sense to some primal part of his soul, nurturing his resolve. He stared at the Pushu and wondered if I'd be ready to poke out an eye to have a chance at that role. Amidst the crowds' moans, another sound started flowing down on them, a sound Jason could not imagine a man making. The Wizard was weeping with open, gut-wrenching grief and laughing fully and joyfully with the same breath. Bliss and terror, abandonment and wretched pain. A state of madness, that was clear. He knew in his being, from his own vision, that Plang was filled with the light of the Sun of Truth. That's how he could hold all opposites. He held that merging for them too. He made it easier for them to reach, to join with him as he dissolved some barrier between worlds. Great relief and jubilation arose. The crowds' moans turned to sighs and laugher of relief. The whirling pattern dissolved, and the penitents reached out to hug one another. There were joyful calls and clapping and hoots of well- earned celebration. He was completely taken with it all. This was his Call they were acting out. He was jubilant with this treasure of living myth-wisdom taking place. But Melissa was really hurting. "Get me out of here," she muttered with slow deliberateness. "Now!" Jason motioned to M. Tussaud "We'd better go. She's not taking this too well." With his arm clasped around her shoulders, he led her away from the scene and down the spiraling stairway. M. Tussaud followed. He softly reassured her, "Please have no distress for those consecrated ones. The Imagos are with them. They have no personal pain. No suffering." When they reached the first level and the doorway, they found a stirring in the crowd. The Pushu was being carried on two men's shoulders, waving the donkey tail around over his head and motioning towards the Temple. Huge vats of water were carried on donkey back for everyone to rinse with amidst the jubilation. The double porticos of the Temple were opened to release the smells of savory cooking. As the masses of people began moving, stirred by the Ceremony and smells, Jason remembered Plang's fear of a demonstration or violence from the N.U.B. It struck him this would be a good time for one. But all went smoothly. "The feast in the Temple will follow. Would you like to enjoy that also?," M. Tussaud pleasantly asked Melissa. She merely scowled at him. A pathway to the Temple was opened in the crowd for the penitents. One by one they passed near Melissa and Jason. Many of those passing faces as they entered the Temple looked into the Temple's dark interior with anticipation, smiled and bowed motions to people they passed, some leaving crimson footsteps. He was struck that, for many, the bleeding had stopped quickly with apparently little or no skin injury. "What do they rub with?" he asked M. Tussaud "There is a salt from sacred mines. It does the job with little harm." One naked child, sitting astride a smiling man's shoulders, gaily waved at Melissa and wiped a last trickle of blood from dripping into his eyes. Her eyes fixed tenderly on the child, flinched closed, and came back brokenhearted. She flung herself free of the crowd, dragging him behind by the wrist. Then she suddenly stopped them in their tracks. "Look up ahead, "she whispered with sinister overtones. Next to the their mini-taxi was Plang deep in conversation with Mr. Abernathy, and the demonic taxi driver. Another familiar looking man was with standing with them, but he got away at our approach before he could be certain who it was. "Was that Plang's coachman with them? No, its Bapu the Coffee-Maker," she stated with grim finality. "He told us he reported to the C.I..A. That he was on our side. Now we catch them like this. I know something awful will happen. They're planning to kill us." She was completely taken with terror. Jason took her firmly by the shoulders. "Now what's going on with you?" he demanded in a whisper. "What are you so worked up about? Violence, blood. That's our bread and butter. Yes, it's horrible. But the point is that this is the way we run our lives." She looked at him stonily through frowning eyes. "I see something terrible is taking shape, and either you don't see it, or you no longer care." She walked ahead by herself and, without meeting anyone's eyes, slid into the front seat of the taxi. The Wizard watched all this with concerned sadness as he walked towards them. "I must excuse myself for not coming back to you. I could not fight my way back through the crowd. And I was fortunate in running into some friends. Do you know, we have just discovered that all of us, including the taxi-man, have served as penitents in this Ceremony of the Call. Then it had such much personal meaning." He motioned them towards the taxi. "Barbaric" Melissa hissed without budging. "Yes..." Plang agreed. "But we were young and poor. And one eats a meal fit for a sultan afterwards. The wounds of the flesh heal quickly," he laughed, "but the splendid memories of the dance and food remain. Even now." He smiled and nodded slowly. "All your claptrap doesn't change the plain fact you're savages," Melissa sharply broke in, apparently including Jason in the verdict. The Wizard looked at him. "I am sorry if Miss Alma found something in the Festival displeasing. Sometimes strangers do. Perhaps she would like to return to your Hotel?" "Definitely," she snapped back. Plang Mengli bid M. Tussaud good-bye, and told Mr. Abernathy to remember their appointment after tomorrow's Talk. He nodded good-bye to them and they got into the taxi's back seat. "I am sorry that you found something in the Festival..." the old man began to appease Melissa as we drove away. She cut him off. "I don't care to discuss it." She stared straight-ahead through the front window, her neck held taut, unrelenting. There was strained silence for some while. Only their taxi-man's bestial breathing. "Ugly. Ugly and brutal..." Melissa muttered, perhaps thinking aloud. "Of course you are right, Melissa. But sometimes the ugly and brutal has function," Plang answered in a gentle, conciliatory tone. "Is that your connection with that Abernathy character? You admitted he was subversive. And don't teach at me!" "Excuse me. It is my last intention to be offensive," he told her gently. "But if I might suggest, Mr. Kwim-Mu Abernathy's way pertains to him alone. It is precarious to get caught up with his spiral making." " You'd be horrified if something like that happening back home," she rebuked him, face locked forward. " People letting themselves get cut up and bleeding for a meal. It's.., it's barbaric!..." "Melissa, try to understand this as a religious ceremony." He was getting a little short tempered myself. "We heard M. Tussaud's explanations." "So, you're convinced that by labeling something mythic, or symbolic or religious, you can get away with anything." "These people were voluntary penitents, even if bleeding for nothing more than a good meal and a role in a traditional ritual. With no offense to Plang, in this part of the world religion can get carried to extremes. But if we happened to be over the border in Fu-Ping, where the Wizard's spell of harmlessness doesn't hold, we'd see people bleeding without any reason. They're not going to get up smiling for a fine meal afterwards, because they are being slaughtered by other nations' power lusts, one of which pays their bills." His voice stayed fairly even. "Ohh... It's like that with you, is it," she sputtered "You...you..." Her head still didn't budge from straight ahead, but he heard her tears of exasperation. The rest of the buffeting ride back through the empty streets was in a tight, unpleasant silence. It lasted through Plang's leave-taking at the Hotel door. It was 3:14 p.m. when they reached the room.
Click on the chapters from the list on top left. Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2010 |
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