Nirvana Effect (24 page)

“You have done me no wrong with your anger, Nockwe.  You have done me no wrong.  You are the sort who only trusts
another man
if you hold a knife to his neck.  It is why
you are so valuable to our people
.  I will permit you to hold it as close to my neck as you like.  I know you will only threaten me if I threaten the tribe.”

Manassa’s voice
remained quiet and firm.  He
edged even closer to Nockwe.

“Do not ever put the tribe at risk like this, again, Nockwe.  I love the Onge as much as you do.  My vision is the future of our race.  Do not endanger it with stupidity.  You may blame whoever you wish, but deep down you know the truth.”  Manassa walked past him. 

Nockwe did not turn. 

“Nockwe,” said Manassa.  “Do not waste any time in getting your dogs in line.  Our world
turns
ever more quickly.  I fear that we will need to
move much sooner than planned.”

Manassa left.

Nockwe knelt and mourned. 

Inge had been Nockwe’s father’s best friend.  He was as an uncle to Nockwe. 
The chieftain
could see the corpse of Inge
on the backs of his eyelids
. 
The body
had eight bleeding holes.  Glis had stabbed him eight times.  Inge’s face was frozen in an awful contortion of pain.  His body had reeked of feces and urine
; his
eyes stared out into the sky.  Nockwe knew Inge’s eyes were looking for his chieftain, for help and for justice.  But Nockwe had b
een outside of the village on
errand for Manassa when the challenge had occurred.  Inge was dead before Nockwe ever set foot back into the village.

I must be smarter, and stronger, in many more ways than before.  Else I may lose everything. 
He thought of his wife, children, and village.  He thought of them all with bloody holes in their bodies. 

He knew Manassa was right.  He shouldn’t have to trust Manassa.  He should know.  In such a situation as his, it was weak to trust anyone.  It was better
simply to know and control everything
. 

I will do this, starting with the inner circle.  Starting with Glis.

Manassa may be a snake, but he is an enlightened snake…Onge through and through…fitting a god as any…

Edward rushed through the back door in exam room two.  He
tripped
down
the back
steps
to the dirt service road behind the clinic.

A car was pulling away, kicking up dust. 
Callista. 
Edward ran after her, yelling her name.
  Edward had an awful feeling that she wouldn’t hear him.

The car stopped.  The passenger door kicked out. 
He caught up and
jumped in.  His heart was racing faster than when Nockwe
threatened him with his spear
.

Callista
was sitting in the driver seat.  She
smiled
unnervingly
.  He looked away, reminded of the de
liberate “It’s good to see you,”
that she’d given him earlier.  In his college days, that mannerism had meant
the perfect storm
was brewing.

She drove out of town. 
He
stopped studying the road and instead turned his gaze to her.  His eyes caught the curve of her lips.
 
It was a real smile.
 
She was genuinely happy.  He could tell even though they hadn’t spoken, yet.
 

He noticed he was smiling, too.  He had a distinct falling sensation, the nervous jitters of temptation.  Again he turned his eyes away. 
We are on different courses, now.  This is a nice
twist, seeing her again, but that’s all it is
.

Edward’s future was too short in too many directions, now.  No path he foresaw, however brief, included
someone else
. 
Too risky for me and too risky for her.

It didn’t take long to get to the outskirts of
Lisbaad
.  Once they reached the limits of the town, it was as though someone had turned off the car’s mute switch.

“I’m going to help you, Edward, if I can,” she said.  Her voice sounded chipper, much younger than it had been just hours before.  “And you’re going to help me.”

He was afraid of where t
he conversation was leading, so he pre-empted her
.  “Thank you, Callista.  Maybe you can help me.  And I’d be more than happy to help you if I can.”  He didn’t want to know what that was, so he didn’t give her time to say it.  He just went right on.  “I need help distilling an active ingredient and making it into a tablet.”

“A tablet?” she asked.

“Right.  I need some excipients, something to tabletize an active ingredient, to take under the tongue.”

“A medicine?” she asked, curiously.

“Of sorts,” he replied.

He knew her mind.  There were many questions she would want answered.  She’d keep asking questions until it made sense to her.  And the prime question had nothing to do with the “medicine”, but rather why he had avoided a member of his own priesthood.  He hadn’t thought up an answer for that one yet.

The car jostled over a few bumps in the road.  Callista
didn’t ask any
more questions.  Instead, she said, “Okay.  I can help with that.”  The simple statement
surprised him.

That was easy.
  “Thank you.”  Edward had expected to have difficulty finding the necessary equipment.  He’d feared that even
after
overcoming the hurdle,
he wouldn’t have the technical skill to make it happen.

He was sure that if anyone could
tabletize the substance
, though, it would be Callista, and with the greatest of professional ease.  If anything, she was competent.  If she said she could do something, she could.

“You know, Edward, I was very distraught when I saw you today,” she said, not missing a beat.  “I didn’t expect that.  Well, I didn’t expect to ever see you, even though maybe I hoped I would.  I don’t know whether what you said about wanting to see me, looking for me, and all that was true.” 
It was. 
“I don’t know about that.  But I think that maybe what it is…well…I’m just going to tell you everything.  And you can take it or leave it.”

“All right,” Edward said.  He had no idea where she was going with this.

“Edward Styles, when I first met you, I paid you no mind.  I didn’t.  I’ll admit that.  I’ll tell you why: I’d never heard of you.  My friends, my parents had never talked about you.  I’d never seen you at one of the parties that my father was always dragging me to.  It was as though I couldn’t see you.  You were invisible, one of
those
handsome boys.  Out of the question.  I would marry someone with family.”

Edward couldn’t help but comment.  “You sound very British right now.”

Her smile broadened.  He’d almost forgotten what it was like to
create
that kind of reaction in her.  “Well, ‘roight’ you ‘a
h’, then,” she said, feigning a
horrendous English accent.  “And I know you know this.  We
’ve
talked about it countless times, when we were younger.  But I think it’s important to mention again so that you can understand…with it all in perspective.” 

She drove for a little while longer.  He had nothing to say.  He couldn’t say anything.  It wasn’t any sort of conversation he felt he could encourage.  It wasn’t that he was a priest; he wasn’t a priest anymore, not in his mind.  It was that to make her a part of his life
would mean to pull her aboard the
runaway train.

And yet he couldn’t make himself stop her, either.  The idea of getting some answers to all those questions he’d walked away from nearly a decade ago was irresistible.

“You told me you loved me from the first moment you saw me.  You meant that?” she asked.

He was quiet, looking out at the road ahead.  He hesitated too long. 

“I know you’re a priest, now, Edward, believe me, I know it.  But I knew you before you were a priest…”  Her voice threatened to lose the jocularity she had so enjoyed just moments earlier.

He laughed and turned to face her.  She was still looking out at the rode as she drove. 
The sun was starting to set
.  They were making their way to a fenced residential area.  “Of course I meant that.  You’d always ask that and I’d always answer I meant it.”

“Well, it wasn’t that way for me.  I might have told you it was the same for me, but it
wasn’t.  It wasn’t the same.  And I think because of that it was far worse.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“When I first met you, I didn’t see you.  But you made me see you.  Your soul made me finally see you.  It was nothing you tried to do.  You just…you just shone.” 

Edward could not voice a single one of the replies that whizzed through his mind.  He couldn’t reminisce with her.  He couldn’t tell her,
you shone, too.  You were the sun to me.  You
had me in
orbit.  You made me happy. 

She glanced his way before continuing her monologue to the windshield.

“It was my own choice, to be with you.  It was probably the first choice I made of my own - my choice.  Not what my parents wanted
, not even colored by what they wanted
.  I knew from my own observation, from a total certainty deep within me, that you were my one - and that you would achieve great
things
- that together, we could
be happy
.”

She’d never been so frank with him.  In fact, she’d never been the one to tell him such things.  He’d known them, he’d thought them, he’d felt them, but she’d never said them.  Perhaps it had never occurred to her it needed to be said.  But as she
finally
said it he felt an unexpected relief - that big question mark in his life was finally getting erased. 
Had it been real?

The relief disappeared as the next
realization hit him like a truck
.  A painful exclamation point had taken the place of the question mark.

It had been real!

Because of that one question mark, he
had buried his dreams.  He had joined the Jesuits on that question mark.  He had given up science on that question mark. 

That question mark was disintegrating as he rode in the car next to the woman he had once loved to the exclusion of all else.  A decade ago, his dream had consumed him.  He
’d
studied her much more than school, he’d worked
hard
so that he might buy her things.  His friends were only a way to pass the time when he didn’t have her company. 

It had been an immature love.  In their senior year it had blossomed…He had to stop thinking about it.  He was glad she started talking again.

“I know I never told you that.  I’m sorry I didn’t, I really am,” she said.  “I never thought you had a doubt.  Looking back on it, I see you could.  Looking back on it, I see a lot.  As part of my schooling, we studied psychology…I had to counsel some people during my residency…seeing their troubles objectively - I saw my own.  I didn’t…”

“It’s all right.  It’s fine.” 
You were wonderful
.  He couldn’t say that.  Without saying it he came off conceited, but he restrain
ed himself from saying it.
“It’
s not fine,” she insisted.  “I’ve looked back on it a lot.  Maybe that’s why…well…
anyway, I
didn’t tell you.  It was just a stupid thing.  You were my one decision.  I saw it all the way through.  But I was trapped, Edward.  I realized this now.  I was trapped - so trapped
that I didn’t even see I had six
cage walls all around me.”

Edward felt raw, naked, his body locked in the seat.  His mind rushed, but it all
flowed to nothing.  He was forgetting to breathe.  He’d lost all cont
ext to their conversation.  He felt
ripped into another world. 

For a moment, he’d never taken the substance.  He’d never been a missionary.  He’d never left her side.  He was there, at his knee, opening up his ring box in the empty park in his stupid tux, looking for a “yes” in her eyes.

“You see, you were my one decision, Edward,” she said.  “But there were so many others.  You were one drop of dew caught in a web.  What school I went to, what career I took on - and then discarded for married life - where I traveled, who I knew, all these had been determined for me.  They were determined for me in such a way and so thoroughly that I thought I’d determined them myself.  That day…” Her voice trailed off.  She looked over at him.  Two tears ran out of his eyes, one creeping down each cheek. 
He turned his eyes down to the floorboard.  It was too much to take in
.
The relief left him too open to the pain
,
and it was all he could do to still track with her voice.