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'The Caste War?' he asked, and immediately felt stupid.
'Yes, of course the Caste War,' Visquile snapped. He composed himself again.
'The Chelgrian-Puen have told us that the old rules apply.'
'The old rules?' He thought he already knew what was meant.
'They must be avenged.'
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r r
'A soul for a soul?' This was the stuff of barbarism, of the old cruel gods. The
death of each Chelgrian had to be balanced by the death of an enemy, and
until that balance had been achieved the fallen warriors were held from
heaven.
'Why ought one to leap to the idea of a one-to-one correspondence?' the
Estodien asked, with a cold smile. 'Perhaps one death would be all that might
be required. One important death.' He looked away again.
Quilan was silent for a while, and motionless. When Visquile did not look
back to him from the window and the view, he said, 'One death?'
The Estodien fixed him with his gaze again. 'One important death. Much
might result from that.' He looked away, humming a tune. Quilan recognised
the melody; it was by Mahrai Ziller.
Absence of Gravitas
'The point is: what happens in heaven?'
'Unknowable wonderfulness?'
'Nonsense. The answer is nothing. Nothing can happen because if something
happens, in fact if something can happen, then it doesn't represent eternity.
Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that
is almost a definition of what life is: change.'
'Have you always thought that?'
'If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the
possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances - and that must
include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse - then you don't
have life after death; you just have death.'
'There are those who believe that after death the soul is recreated into
another being.'
'That is conservative and a little stupid, certainly, but not actually idiotic.'
'And there are those who believe that, upon death, the soul is allowed to
create its own universe.'
'Monomaniacal and laughable as well as provably wrong.'
'Then there are those who believe that the soul-'
'Well, there are all sorts of different beliefs. However, the ones that interest
me are those concerning the idea of heaven. That's the idiocy it annoys me
that others cannot see.'
'Of course, you could just be wrong.'
'Don't be ridiculous.'
'In any case, even if heaven did not exist originally, people have created it. It
does exist. In fact, lots of different heavens exist.'
'Pa! Technology. These so-called heavens will not last. There will be war in
them, or between them.'
'And the Sublimed?'
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r r
'At last; something beyond heaven. And unfortunately therefore useless. But a
start. Or rather an end. Or a start, again, of another sort of life, so proving my
point.'
'You've lost me.'
'We're all lost. We are found dead.'
' ... Are you really a professor of divinity?'
'Of course I am! You mean it isn't obvious?'
'Cr Ziller! You met the other Chelgrian yet?'
'I'm sorry, have we met?'
'Yeah, that's what I'm asking.'
'No, I meant have you and I met?'
'Trelsen Scofford. We met at the Gidhoutan's.'
'Did we?'
'You said what I said about your stuff was "singular" and "uniquely
viewpointed".'
'I think I hear myself in there somewhere.'
'Great! So, you met this guy yet?'
'No.'
'No? But he's been here twenty days! Someone said he only lives-'
'Are you really as ignorant as you appear, Trelsen, or is this some sort of
bizarre act, perhaps even meant to be amusing?'
'Sorry?'
'You should be. If you paid more than the most passing-'
'I just heard there was another Chelgrian-'
'-attention to what's going on you'd know that the "other Chelgrian" is a
feudal tough, a professional bully come to attempt to persuade me to go back
with him to a society I despise. I have no intention of meeting the wretch.'
'Oh. I didn't realise.'
'Then you're simply ignorant rather than malevolent. Congratulations.'
'So you're not going to meet him at all?'
'That's right; not at all. My plan is that after keeping him waiting for a few [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]