Barrington Bayley - The Pillars of Eternity

He stopped at the card called the Universe. One way which the colonnader cards differed from the degraded decks was that however familiar the images became they seemed fresh and new each time one looked at them. Boaz could still intuit original nuances, even after years of study.

The Universe showed a city set on an island, amid a wavy blue-green sea. Gaily-garbed people thronged the balconies, traversed the walkways, ascended and descended the upthrusting towers, appeared briefly at countless windows. The meaning of the card was relatively simple (though a wealth of more technical ideas was encoded in the shapes and numbers of its towers and shafts). It expressed the basic colonnader idea that the universe was an organized whole, and that all sentient beings in it were, so to speak, citizens of a common polis .

Boaz thumbed out two more cards: the Priestess, which was the Universe’s complementary card at the other end of the twenty-one card sequence, and Strength, which as the middle pivotal card of the whole sequence linked them together. The three cards comprised a potent triad. The Priestess was a card of ceaseless allure and enchantment. She sat on a throne, smiling in benign, pleased fashion at the beholder. The pillars Joachim and Boaz flanked her rear, the space between them screened by a veil merging with the wimple she wore as a headdress. On her lap lay an open book, whose pages she turned one by one, unendingly. Each leaf of this book, the reverse of which was left blank, bore exactly the same image: a miniature of the card called the Universe. It was complete in every detail, every tower, every traverse, every citizen, every tiny motion. Again and again the city reappeared, absolutely unvarying from page to page, vanishing for the moment that the leaf was turned.

Thus was the doctrine of the world’s eternal recurrence explicated.

Strength, the card through which the other two interacted was also a female card. A willowy woman, wearing a flowing gown, stood on a bare landscape. Her face was serene and gentle. In her two hands she held the jaws of a lion, which somehow seemed to merge with or emerge from her pelvis.

Some called the card Nature, or the Strength of Nature. Others Force, or Conservation. Few without colonnader training knew what it really signified: the obdurate rock-steadiness of natural forces, which were absolutely self-regulating in the cosmic context, and which could not be made to swerve or alter by a single iota.

Madrigo had explained: ‘Imagine a force which whenever it acts calls into play a countervailing force which instantly dampens it down. Such a force would display no positive characteristic, and would be undetectable. It would be indistinguishable from empty void. And yet it might be nature’s ultimate force that maintains all others.

‘Such a force exists. It is indeed the ultimate conserving force, the absolute bedrock of nature. It cannot be detected. Neither can it be interfered with, even in the least degree…‘

Boaz laid out the three cards in a triangle. Here was the Priestess, the birth of the universe when the twin pillars of existence separated from one another and matter unfolded from potentiality, just like a book opening. Here was the Universe: the world-city itself, no more than a detail in the Priestess. And here, at the other corner of the triangle, was Strength, the linking card. This explained, to the superior understanding, why it was that the world could only exist in the mode of eternal repetition, for otherwise there would be no unity to nature, no strength….

The cards distressed him and he rose from the occasional table where he had been seated, to go pacing about the narrow space.

Eternal recurrence… it was his burden. Should it not be everyone’s? What was more depressing than that one’s life must be repeated endlessly, to the last unalterable syllable?… But to the common man this knowledge had no meaning, he realized. It was an equation in a book. Only to a philosopher, to Boaz who had had the sure proof of the equation shown to him, for whom it had become a part of everyday thought, was it as real as yesterday, tomorrow, or today.

His stricken look amazed Romrey. He stared up at the shipkeeper. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Did you see something in the cards?’

‘If you like,’ Boaz answered brusquely.

‘You know,’ Romrey said, after a thoughtful pause, ‘it’s probably not good manners after you saved my life, but I’m curious about you. You look like one lonely man to me.’

Words came from Boaz before he had to time to check them. ‘Loneliness: an abyss without a bottom, into which to fall, without limit. So it must be.’

The intensity of Boaz’s pronouncement took Romrey aback slightly. ‘Nobody need be that alone,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you’d mind telling me what you’re hoping to find here on the Wanderer. It’s probably not money, like the rest of us.’

When Boaz ignored him, he slipped his carborundum cards out of his pocket. ‘Well, maybe these can tell me,’ he said, and began to shuffle preparatory to dealing them out for a reading.

He had half feared that Boaz would react to his temerity by turning him out onto the surface to fend for himself, regardless of colonnader ethics. Boaz, indeed, seemed angry. He knocked the cards from Romrey’s hand.

‘This trash will tell you nothing.’ He spoke thickly. ‘Your pack has not the depth. Very well, you importuning thief, I will tell you. Who knows, perhaps you have the intelligence to understand it. But first you must be able to understand that there could be a man who has suffered in a way unknown by any other being in the history of creation. Could you believe in inconceivable suffering? Does it sound like a melodramatic exaggeration? No, it is literally true, and I am that man. I will not explain how, except to say that science, in seeking greater good, has wrought the greatest ever evil, and that the school of mental calm is responsible for such agony as to make calm impossible. All my actions are directed toward escaping from this agony. And that is why I am on Meirjain.’

‘You suffer it now ?’ Romrey inquired.

‘It is in the past.’ Boaz turned away to hide his haunted eyes.

‘Then you already have escaped it,’ Romrey said, puzzled. He shrugged. ‘If the memory is unbearable, you could always have it erased.’

‘No!’ Boaz turned to Romrey again. His expression was savage. ‘Don’t you see? The universe repeats. Everything that has gone before must come again, and again, forever and ever. It lies before me.’

‘Yes, of course,’ muttered Romrey, though he showed by his quizzical expression that the idea was barely comprehensible to him.

Suddenly he laughed softly. ‘It is time-gems you’re after, then! You want time travel, right? To travel back and change what happened… whatever it was….’

‘The past? Why change the past?’ Boaz shook his head. ‘You disappoint me, Gare. Do you know nothing of cosmology? The future is the past. Because the future has already occurred, countless times in the past. What has been must be, again and again. Do you see, Gare? What has been must be, again and again. I must change the future , abolish predestination, put time on a new track.’

‘Past, present or future, everybody knows time is immutable – predestined, as you put it. The world goes from phase to phase of the same eternal cycle. It’s a law.’

‘Time has been immutable till now .’ Boaz slammed his fist on the table, causing the cards he had laid there to jump. ‘You are wrong. It is not a law. It is a circumstance. Nature is strong, but not omnipotent. Indeed, her strength can be used against her.’