Nirvana Effect (14 page)

Nockwe strained to
lift himself, only to collapse again.  Dook was back onto his feet, grabbing his
daggers from the ground. 
Hi
s lips curled into a savage smile.  The illness had finally overcome Nockwe, as the poison had overcome Tien.  Still hunched over from the blow to his stomach, Dook swaggered as best he could to the chieftain.  His time had come
to claim Nockwe’s flag
.

Nockwe managed to
roll
himself up to his hands and knees and made a grab for his dagger in the dirt. 

It was to no
avail
.  Dook idly kicked Nockwe in the head.  Dook was showboating.  The dagger flew
back
out of Nockwe’s hands
as he
collapsed again the ground. 
He
pushed the dirt
, struggling to get back up
.  His muscles trembled but would not move him. 

Dook laughed, checking out the
horrified
crowd.  He wasn’t getting the response he wanted, but he was certainly enjoying himself. 

Dook grabbed Nockwe by the hair.  “Stand up!” he shouted as he yanked Nockwe into a
standing position.  Nockwe used the momentum to lunge at Dook, but to no avail.  Dook simply threw him by the hair back into the dirt.

  Dook
wielded his knife
once more to finish the job.

“
At’tan!  At’tan!
”

Edward had made an instantaneous calculation of hundreds of factors.  Much of his calculation involved the future and his survival chances.  The course he chose had many possible dead-ends, most of them i
mmediately
, but he felt he
had
to choose it.  He would not have Nockwe’s blood on h
is hands.  Nockwe had spared Edward’s
life.

Mahanta is not able to help - he’s no match for Dook physically.
  Only one person had a chance at interceding successfully for Nockwe.  It was the only person under trance.

Under the nirvana effect, the present was crisp and real to Edward.  The past was just as definite.  He could move his consciousness to any moment of it. 

He could move his consciousness to the future, as well, and calculate.  It was much less real.  It lay across many paths, many probabilities.  Most real was the present and the few seconds leading from it.  Less real lay the infinitude of survival patterns or deaths that lay ahead of Edward and his allies.  Many portals led to his goals, his dreams, and survival.  Few doors were open past this encounter.

And still,
Edward
yelled the words of intercession.

Mahan
ta turned abruptly to Edward in shock
.

Dook froze.  Nockwe craned his neck up to see his benefactor.  The hundred voices of the crowd all started jabbering at once.  Edward could pick out every single one.  “The white man intercedes!  He’ll surely die.  Thank the gods.  Nockwe might live.  He
can’t do that.  That’s Manassa
’s slave.”

Mahanta grabbed his arm.  “You’re still trancing?”  Edward nodded slightly.  “That’s no assurance of victory.  And
the trance
will end any time now.  You were meditating for a while before I disturbed you.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

Mahanta slid a long dagger into his hand.  The Jesuit gripped th
e handle.  Smooth, well-sanded wood
gave some weight to the slender, sharp blade.  “These fights are to the death,” cautioned Mahanta.  “Don’t be a forgiving priest, or you’ll end up the sacrifice.”

Edward knew that outside of the nirvana effect, he would have difficulty delivering the fatal blow.  He had never killed a man, and never wanted to.  He shoved those thoughts away, along with the fear.  The truth of the matter was that if Dook killed Nockwe, his own life was on the line.  This was strictly
self-defense from here on out;
kill or be killed.

Dook had made one long glance at Edward to size him up, but now refused to look at him.  Instead, Dook spoke slowly, directly to Manassa, with one knee on the ground.

“My lord, with all respect to your white magic servant, only a man of the tribe may participate in a challenge.”  Nockwe writhed on the ground beside Dook, coughing.

Mahanta surveyed the crowd.  All eyes were on their living
god, now.  Mahanta matched Dook’
s pacing.  “So it was said by our ancestors, that the living god shall have all manner of creatures as his warriors.  His servants shall number the thousands, of every race and nation of earth.  My servant fights in my stead.”

A harsh murmuring rippled through the crowd, chased by silence.  The silence was golden to Edward.  It seemed to shock Dook to his very core.  Dook obviously hadn’t foreseen this eventuality.  He had been stopped by his own living god at the moment of his greatest triumph.

Dook clanged his daggers.  Edward advanced into the middle of the dirt, then immediately drew back into the crowd, reshaping their arena so that Nockwe was now on the ground behind the audience.   Bri’ley’na rushed to the side of the fallen chieftain and began to attend to him. 

Edward noticed the after-pain was starting to edge into his consciousness.  He shoved it out of
his mind, to the same place he’d moved
the fear.  In its place, he heightened his senses and pumped adrenaline throughout his body to prepare for the exertion to come.  He knew he would not have much time,
just like Nockwe and Tien hadn’
t had much time.  In mere minutes, the nirvana effect would be gone, and he would just be a puny white priest battling an animalistic primitive
who
lived by the hunt and the kill.

Dook tested him quickly, jabbing gamely after they circled once.  Edward saw the vector of the knife, saw that it would miss him, and refused to react, Dook’s swing falling mere inches from his body.  The priest then swung his own dagger at the Onge, but Dook’s natural reaction time was far better than Edward’s.  Dook feigned a sidestep, then swung
under
Edward’s blow, coming up with a knife aimed directly at Edward’s abdomen. 

Edward perceived every motion, every possibility.  It was as though he were fighting the entire battle in slow motion, where he perceived one hundred seconds for Dook’s one.  But he knew that even if the trance held out, there was a great chance he would not survive this encounter.  The trance seemed to not be enough.

Edward had new data now, data that might have kept him from ever stepping into the ring a minute ago.  He hadn’t seen Dook fighting an able opponent.  No wonder Mahanta had looked so incredulous.  Dook was just so m
uch more physically able than Edward
was.  The native was a killing machine.

As Edward read Dook’s jab, he
twisted
his body
backwards into the air. 
It was the only way out of the blow. 
His foot caught Dook’s wrist
as he flew.
  The dagger went flying out of the Onge’s hand, but Dook still had another, and Edward didn’t land on his feet in the follow-through.  Instead, he had to roll away and back up.

In that moment Dook was already back on top of him, swinging furiously to press his advantage.  Dook had the initiative. 

Edward was able to read each
of Dook’s
move
s
at its onset, at the first tension of the first muscle of his arms or legs.  Every ripple of muscle foretold a change in direction.  Edward knew exactly where Dook’s weapon was flying and exactly where his own body was in relation to it, as though he were fighting in an almost infinite slow motion.  Still, it taxed Edward to the limit of his
abilities just to keep the dagger out of his gut.  

The
surrounding
Onge
crowd was
silent,
totally absorbed.  They seemed awe-struck, watching as e
ach of Dook’s swings drew a little closer
, as the white man kept up his impossible dodges
. 

Edward was
una
ble to counterattack.  Dook would inevitably hit him if he didn’t
do something
.

Dook made a long lance at him.  Edward stumbled back to avoid the dagger to his chest.  He heard Mahanta instinctively cry out.  The tribe shouted, too. 

Dook was about to pounce on him.  Edward knew he needed the initiative, just one minute in which he had control of the fight.  He probably only had a minute left.  

Edward let loose a bloodcurdling war cry
.  It was enough to make Dook flinch.
As Edward stumbled backward, he planted his left foot and pushed off to hurl his knife through the air at Dook’s head.
Dook ducked it, as Edward had foreseen, but lost his eye contact with the priest.  That was all the distraction Edward needed. 

Edward dove, grasping Dook’s weapon
.  Dook tried to swing, but
at the close distance
Edward could fe
el every tension in Dook’s body.  In the trance, Dook was an open book to Edward. 
Edward moved
simultaneously
with
him
in a deadly dance that
kept the Onge from ever getting in a blow. 

Edward worked Dook’s arm around in an expert pattern…he’d seen it once…some
where…something in his mind urged
him
through the motions.  Edward leapt to Dook’s left, then behind him, all with the primitive’s arm in tow.  Finally, Edward wrenched Dook’s arm around in a complete circle using both hands, and Dook flipped, his back slamming into the ground. 

Edward wrenched the dagger out of Dook’s hand.  The Onge was defenseless, his arms flying up far too slowly to stop Edward’s inevitable killing blow.

Stop!
  With a gut-wrenching twist on Edward’s nerves, the trance ended.  He could not kill a man.  He would try to give him mercy.

No, he’ll kill me! 
K
ill him!
  It was only a
moment of
hesitation, but that was all Dook needed to reach Edward’s wrist and deflect the blow. 

Dook kicked and rolled, and now it was Dook with the knife, Dook on top of Edward, Dook driving down his blade toward Edward’s throat. 

Edward could no longer break apart the perceptions.  The slow motion of the batt
le rushed into a fast forward.

As the knife rushed down, Edward thought of Callista.  In the end he gripped her in his mind’s eye as though he might take her with him to the hereafter if he held hard enough.

Thud
.  Dook’s body jerked to Edward’s
side
as though yanked by unseen strings. 
For a moment Edward did not react.  Where Dook had loomed, there was only sky.  The dagger had fallen away.

Edward scampered up.  Dook had a long spear running out of his temple.  Blood
rushed from his skull and mingled with the muddy ground.  Tien lay
awkwardly
on the ground nearby, his right hand still gripping the spear’s handle.  He
had lunged with spear in hand and collapsed once he’d hit his target
.

“Ge
t him, get Tien, kill him!  H
e’s broken the law!”  Th
e tribe shouted in uproar.  The Onge surged into the ring
and gathered around Tien and Dook.  Edward slid through the crowd away from the scene, momentarily forgotten.

A couple of the younger men grabbed Tien and started to drag him away.  Tien’s woman shrieked.

Mahanta burst into the center of the crowd.  The tribe backed
away. 
The Onge god examined the bodies. 
Both
were dead.
  Tien’s tongue lolled out, his body limp, his face frozen in a determined scowl.  His veins looked green, his skin pale.

“He’s dead.  The gods killed him for his law-breaking.  He’s dead,” Edward heard the Onge muttering.

“He lives!” shouted Manassa.  The tribe quieted, stepping back even further to give their god a
wide berth
.  Mahanta continued in the traditional tongue of the Onge.  “He lives on with the fallen as a hero, for Dook poisoned him before he ever was challenged.”

“Poisoned….he was poisoned…Dook poisoned him…” murmured the tribe.

“Dook was to punish the whole tribe in his lawlessness.  He would have been the end of our customs.  He would have been the end of our tribe.  Let this be known as the day that Tien, son of A’lan, saved our tribe from the traitor.  Let it be known.  These are the words of Manassa.”

Ma
hant
a abruptly l
eft the circle without even waiting for his tribe’s response.

Edward followed Mahanta in lock step.  They soon reached the temple.  No one had followed them.  The tribe was absorbed with handling the bodies of the two fallen.