“Therefore, I say unto you, the esthetics of what you have witnessed this evening were of a high order. You may ask me, then, ‘How am I to know that which is beautiful and that which is ugly, and be moved to act thereby?’ This question, I say, you must answer for yourself. To do this, first forget what I have spoken, for I have said nothing. Dwell now upon the Nameless.” He raised his right hand and bowed his head.
Yama stood, Ratri stood, Tak appeared upon a table.
The four of them left together, knowing the machineries of Karma to have been defeated for a time.
They walked through the jagged brilliance of the morning, beneath the Bridge of the Gods. Tall fronds, still wet with the night’s rain, glistened at the sides of the trail. The tops of trees and the peaks of the distant mountains rippled beyond the rising vapors. The day was cloudless. The faint breezes of morning still bore a trace of the night’s cold. The clicking and buzzing and chirping of the jungle accompanied the monks as they walked. The monastery from which they had departed was only partly visible above the upper reaches of the treetops; high in the air above it, a twisting line of smoke endorsed the heavens.
Ratri’s servitors bore her litter in the midst of the moving party of monks, servants and her small guard of warriors. Sam and Yama walked near the head of the band. Silent overhead, Tak followed, passing among leaves and branches, unseen.
“The pyre still blazes,” said Yama.
“Yes.”
“They burn the wanderer who suffered a heart attack as he took his rest among them.”
“This is true.”
“For a spur of the moment thing, you came up with a fairly engaging sermon.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you really believe what you preached?”
Sam laughed. “I’m very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I’m a liar.”
Yama snorted. “The rod of Trimurti still falls upon the backs of men. Nirriti stirs within his dark lair; he harasses the seaways of the south. Do you plan on spending another lifetime indulging in metaphysics—to find new justification for opposing your enemies? Your talk last night sounded as if you have reverted to considering why again, rather than how.”
“No,” said Sam, “I just wanted to try another line on the audience. It is difficult to stir rebellion among those to whom all things are good. There is no room for evil in their minds, despite the fact that they suffer it constantly. The slave upon the rack who knows that he will be born again—perhaps as a fat merchant — if he suffers willingly—his outlook is not the same as that of a man with but one life to live. He can bear anything, knowing that great as his present pain may be, his future pleasure will rise higher. If such a one does not choose to believe in good or evil, perhaps then beauty and ugliness can be made to serve him as well. Only the names have been changed.”
“This, then, is the new, official party line?” asked Yama.
“It is,” said Sam.
Yama’s hand passed through an invisible slit in his robe and emerged with a dagger, which he raised in salute.
“To beauty,” he said. “Down with ugliness!”
A wave of silence passed across the jungle. All the life-sounds about them ceased.
Yama raised one hand, returning the dagger to its hidden sheath with the other.
“Halt!” he cried out.
He looked upward, squinting against the sun, head cocked to his right.
“Off the trail! Into the brush!” he called.
They moved. Saffron-cloaked bodies flashed from off the trail. Ratri’s litter was borne in among the trees. She now stood at Yama’s side.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Listen!”
It came then, riding down the sky on a blast of sound. It flashed above the peaks of the mountains, crossed over the monastery, whipping the smokes into invisibility. Explosions of sound trumpeted its coming, and the air quaked as it cut its way through the wind and the light.
It was a great-looped tau cross, a tail of fire streaming behind it.