The Cult of Loving Kindness (33 page)

This was Miss Azimuth. She was busy sewing, and her brittle fingers moved over the surface of a white expanse of silk. Her joints were swollen and arthritic, yet perhaps there was some medication in the drugs she took to keep her skillful, to make it possible to sit that way upon the blanket without pain. The pupils of her eyes, when she raised them to look at Brother Longo, were shrunken down to dots.

“It’s a shroud,” she said.

She had thimbles on three fingers of her right hand. Her needle fluttered over the surface of the silk, making exquisite small stitches with a golden thread. Occasionally as she moved her elbow or her wrist the joint would creak. Nanda Dev, standing a dozen feet away, heard it from time to time, interrupting the rhythm of the bishop’s voice.

The bishop raised her hand. “The tragedy is,” she said, “how the best intentions go astray, and you can do such harm. Maybe in your own families you have seen how someone might have some idea about what to do, what game to play. Maybe your brothers or your sisters have tried to convince you to do something against your will. And even if you can admit later that their idea was good, it doesn’t matter. It’s too late. Sometimes I have seen such anger among the youngest children, such bitter words and fighting. It’s because your ideas clash together, even with your friends, and they draw your bodies after them. A wise man taught me when I was a child. Now he is dead—he told me: ‘What is it worth fighting for? Worth hurting and worth being hurt. Name it, and you will see it disappear into the air.’

“No. We must pull back our bodies from these conflicts. My father said that they will disappear, but not immediately. Maybe these ideas will fight against each other all around us for a little while. But then maybe it will be like a cradle when your mother’s hand stops rocking. First it rocks for a while by itself, then less, and then it stops.

“Now this old man once told me the story of a war. And he said the tragedy of this war, which started as a fight against a terrible unfairness, was how quickly it turned into nothing, even though the people kept on fighting. Even as the forces of oppression were defeated, how quickly the men who understood ideas were replaced by men who understood ideas and power, and then by men who understood power only. So that in a few months nothing had changed, after all that death. Only the names and faces of the kings.

“It is for this reason that we must not hurt each other. It is for this reason that we must not try to hurt another living creature—not the smallest insect. It is for this reason that we must love each other and ignore our differences. It is for this reason that we must try and live in loving kindness with each other—because we have no choice. People say that these things can be disallowed sometimes, because of their ideas. But their ideas can never be fulfilled. Their goal can never be achieved, and we are left with what we do. What we do and what we are. And once we realize this, once we let go of these ideas which hurt us, then can we find peace.”

In the glade, the children sat with their mouths open, staring with blank incomprehension as their mothers dozed in the shadows. But Miss Azimuth was listening as she stitched, nodding her little doll’s head sometimes. Longo Starbridge was squatting on his heavy hams. Nanda Dev went to him and bent down. “Sir—does she know about all that?” he whispered, gesturing with his head back to the burnt town.

Brother Longo shrugged. “Her tent is on the far side. We have kept her separate.”

“She doesn’t know?”

“She doesn’t want to know.”

When he stood up again, Nanda Dev felt suddenly light-headed. For an instant, his vision was clouded with small shining specks. As he watched, they vanished. So beautiful she was, the last bishop of Charn, her words disappearing as she spoke them. Behind her, the big stranger with his ragged T-shirt and his angry face.

“She speaks of Paradise,” said the old woman on the blanket, her voice faint and far away. “Already her thoughts are in Paradise.” She had put aside her sewing, and wrapped it into an untidy ball in her black-skirted lap. Needles stuck from it at odd angles, each with its pennant of thread.

Longo Starbridge took out a stick of chewing gum. He rubbed the gum into a ball and placed it in the pouch of his lip, dropping the bright paper on the grass. “Tell him about the woodman,” he said.

The old woman cocked her head. “I have prepared a map, you see. It shows the location of her tent. And here’s a list of what you’ll need. Though it’s not you, is it? The woodman is not you.”

“Not me,” said Nanda Dev.

“No, he is dressed in black, you see. The gathering man. All black with a black hood. And he is carrying an axe with a single blade. And when he cuts the flower on the stump, he never needs more than one stroke—just one, you see. It’s all he needs.”

“The tent is isolated,” said Longo Starbridge. “There will be no guard.”

“No guard but the angel of our God,” pursued Miss Azimuth. She held an envelope in her dry hand. “I have marked the hour on the margin. These are my calculations, which I made with Reverend Porphyry. Five-fifteen on the morning of the seventy-third. Just after dawn, you see—in the first light of day. The woodman, is he a strong man?”

“I don’t know,” said Nanda Dev. He was looking at Cassia, and his mouth was dry.

“He is the incarnate cruelty,” sighed Miss Azimuth. “He is the evil of the world. He is the woodman, who chopped the tree of the Lord’s faith, who chops the flower on the stump. But that stroke will be his last. We will rise against him. For there is something breaking in the engine of my heart—we will rise up.”

“Take the envelope,” said Longo Starbridge. The smile on his face was strange, illegible, and it revealed inside his lip the plug of gum.

But Nanda Dev was walking forward through the glade.

“My father had a teacher,” Cassia was saying. “I saw him once, and this is what he told me: ‘It is in your heart that you are free or bound, happy or unhappy. Therefore do not strive against events …’ ” She broke off when the miner stood before her, among the sleepy children.

He knelt down by Mama Jobe, by Servant of God. “I need your blessing for my wife and son,” he said.

 

The emergency at Carbontown brought out the best and worst in Benjamin Cathartes. When Professor Marchpane was attacked, he had sent the overseer to run for help while he faced down the crowd. He had stood alone over the inert body of the old man. In the heat and the glare and the crashing of the railway he had seen little, he had heard little. The light reflected off a ring of ugly faces. There were shouts and curses. Someone threw a stone. And no one came to help, although the old man was bleeding from the back of his head. Cathartes had ripped part of the sleeve from his new shirt and bound it round the wet place in the old man’s hair. Then he lifted him into his arms and struggled a few steps with him along the concrete curb, until one of the engineers came out from the blockhouse. He took Marchpane’s legs. Then a third man, a miner, had appeared out of the crowd, and all together they carried the professor by the runoff sheds, up along the maidan. There they had met the hospital security detachment.

 

In the days that followed, Cathartes took over the operation of the mine. This was made possible by his standing in the university hierarchy, as well as his energy and presumption. No one else among the corps of engineers and officers was eager to take responsibility during such a delicate time. But Cathartes had his baggage moved from his guest bedroom to the office of the president’s executive assistant, and he commandeered the boardroom for his meetings. Unknown to the staff, ignorant of any principle of metallurgy or engineering, ignorant of any fact relating to the daily function of the company or the facility, nevertheless he was decisive. He was sure of his decisions. Professor Marchpane flickered in and out of consciousness; he languished in intensive care, and in the meantime Cathartes met with the captain of security and all the area commanders. He toured the razorwire chain-link fence that ran along the forty-mile perimeter. He sent runners out of Lameru, to Cochinoor, to Baahl—to anywhere that they might have a working telephone or an ansible. He sent a runner to the radio transmitter at Raban—a ninety-mile distance—and then another and another, in case the first was waylaid. He had technicians working round the clock upon the helicopter. Walking in a phalanx of armed overseers, he toured every section of the mine. He gave a speech. He met with the miners’ grievance committee and released from prison some of the old union leaders.

On September seventieth, the Cult of Loving Kindness blew up the access road in seven places and destroyed two bridges on the rail link to Charn. On the seventy-first, a small detachment of the soldiers of Paradise attacked the fence; they were easily repulsed.

On the seventy-second, Cathartes met with Nanda Dev for a few hours. That morning the security police, acting on a tip, had caught the man who had attacked Professor Marchpane. They had cornered him in Carbontown in his wife’s cousin’s house. They had dragged him out and dragged him up to the company for judgment. A rat-faced man, he had refused to talk.

“What do you think?” asked Cathartes, standing with his hands clasped behind him, looking out the window of his new office. He was dressed in his full academic uniform with the star-shaped insignia of his degree—first-class honors in comparative theology—pinned over his throat.

Behind him stood Nanda Dev, working his bare feet into the carpet. “Now is a good time to be strong,” he said, his voice soft and deferential.

“I wonder.” Cathartes turned into the room. He leaned back against the windowsill. “What if this was part of a conspiracy?”

Nanda Dev was silent. He waited, his eyes almost closed, while Cathartes picked at the corner of his lip—“I wonder. The man said nothing. And I asked him pointedly. I asked him repeatedly. Doesn’t that suggest something to you?”

“I tell you all I know,” said Nanda Dev.

“Yes. But maybe your methods of communication are not what they once were. How do you explain these conversations to your friends?”

“I say I am feeding you lies, sir.”

“I see.”

The office was a small rich room. The executive assistant had lined the walls with hardwood paneling, covered the floor with knotted carpets. Three framed photographs of the present governor of Charn hung above the desk. The one in the middle was dedicated and signed.

Nanda Dev contemplated the governor’s glassy smile. “I don’t think it matters. If there was a plan or not—you want to show your strength, sir. You want to show you don’t care.”

“I wonder. My security head told me to be careful. And Marchpane was conscious long enough to ask for the man’s pardon.”

“No,” said Nanda Dev. “You have already released some prisoners. That’s good. Now you can show your strength.”

Cathartes touched his lips. “Perhaps,” he said. “In principle.”

“There is a whipping post on the maidan,” suggested Nanda Dev.

On the desk, under the governor’s photograph, lay Miss Azimuth’s map. Beside it a black shirt, a black pair of pants, and a black hood. Weighing down the pile, a single-bladed axe, which Nanda Dev had bought at Lameru.

Cathartes stood up from the window. He moved over to the desk. “It seems cruel,” he said, laying his finger on the map. “But maybe there are times when cruelty is the only language people understand.”

“They are strong men,” said Nanda Dev. “They respect strength in others.”

“Tell me why her tent is left unguarded. You’re sure they won’t have moved during the night?”

“I’m sure.”

“Why is she left alone?”

“Because you gave me money. So I paid the guard. Besides, there is someone in the cult who wants her dead.”

“Perhaps you could have paid him to do the thing himself.”

“No, sir,” said Nanda Dev. “It must be like I said. Paying the guard, that’s just to make sure. But they’re so scared of the gathering man, they’d let him walk right through the camp.”

“I wonder. Will they let him walk away again?”

“I told you. They won’t lift a finger to protect her. Not if he’s dressed like that. They think it’s—I don’t know—a spirit. Sent to punish the false prophets.”

“Hunh. Is that what it’s come to mean? ‘He cuts the lily on the stump’—it’s from the dreams of Freedom Love.”

As he spoke, Cathartes moved his hand to the axe blade, and ran his finger down the edge. “All this is distasteful,” he continued. “I am an intellectual.”

“Just tell him to be quiet,” said Nanda Dev after a pause. “Tell him to make sure to hide. They’ll recognize the cut and that’s enough. Tell him to leave the axe. Leave it as it lies. The clothes—that’s just in case.”

Soon after that, he left. And as the door closed behind him and the air expanded in his chest, he felt a sudden urge to cry out. He stood in the open air, on the steel catwalk. It was late afternoon.

There was a red glow in the dark polluted air of Carbontown. The wind, strong for that season, was hot and full of grit. As Nanda Dev ran down the metal steps, it whistled through the open girders.

He paused to pick a splinter from his eye. The catwalk led across toward the elevator cages, and it was stirring slightly in the wind. Six people waited at the elevator; unable to tolerate the sight of them, Nanda Dev turned instead toward the emergency stairs, which zigzagged out of sight. Disused, it was littered with loose newspaper and soda cans. Two hundred steel steps descended to the rock—not a huge distance, but Nanda Dev was tired. He stopped to rest at the halfway balcony, and stood looking at the lights of Carbontown through the intervening struts.

The company offices had won the governor’s gold medal for design six months before. The architect, a foreigner, had since gone on to other projects, but this one was his best. The company had given him the site: a sheer rock ridge above the mine. And they had requested him to keep the building separate in its look and feel from the other squat concrete mine buildings nearby, while at the same time staying within certain budgetary constraints. The result was a cube of steel scaffolding with rooms and offices suspended in it, joined by open walkways. The architect had wanted to maintain a certain utilitarian character—the catwalks and the bridges were steel versions of the ones down in the pit, and the elevators were authentic miners’ cages. He had thought the contrast with the luxurious suites of offices would provide the building with aesthetic tension.