Page 59 of The Enduring Universe
“Why?” she persisted. “Because all your consciousnesses are connected? Or because you Ecstatics are connected in some special way?”
“Both,” he muttered. “In varying degrees.”
All Ecstatics had an affinity for each other, he had learned this much. Back in Nakshar, when the falcon had once tried to take him over, he had summoned a few Ecstatics to him without his knowledge. Consciousnesses were connected after all, this was the truth of their world—and if the Moment connected all architects in a way, then it stood to reason that the Deepness did the same for Ecstatics. If some Ecstatics had found the Deepness due to his desperation, then did it not make sense that he could bring them to the everpower in the same fashion? He was as desperate now as he had been during his fight with the falcon-yaksha, except this time he had control over his desperation. This class was an attempt to train them with restraint. He would much prefer to do it this way than have them find the power at a time when he could do little to direct it.
Ahilya watched him, waiting to see if he’d say more. Naila stopped eating, to look at him askance.
“For the love of survival,” the Maze Architect murmured, “would it kill you to give her a straight and full answer for once, sir?”
It was Ahilya who answered. “He does not trust me. He does not trust how much of me is still me, and how much the Virohi.”
Naila quietened at that, and Ahilya looked away too, but Iravan could see in the trembling of her lips how much it had cost her to admit that. She did not blame him for his distrust, not this time. She was suffering the consequences of the Virohi too. Perhaps she had already lost herself. He alone knew the pain of that.
He did not realize what he was doing until she jerked back. His hand covered hers, squeezing it in comfort. “I’m sorry,” Iravan said quietly. “I am not trying to be oblique. If I can answer something fully, I will. Please ask.”
Ahilya nodded and slipped her hand out of his grip. His palm curled ever so slightly as if to trap her touch in his.
“You wanted to know everything we discovered,” she said. “The Virohi are overwriting citizens and I have been told to destroy them for you.”
Iravan raised an eyebrow. He had predicted the contamination of Irshar’s society long ago. The overwriting did not surprise him, but Ahilya being here did.
“Then you finally see reason?” he asked. An excited edge entered his voice. He leaned forward. “Do you knowhowto destroy them?”
Her fingers circled the heartpoison bracelet around her wrist. Ahilya studied it for a long time, then looked up to meet his gaze.
“Do you have footage from Dhruv’s drones?” she asked. “From when the Virohi emerged out of Irshar?”
His excitement still skulked under his skin, but he tapped at his bead bracelets and entered the sequence to access those sungineering records. Holograms hovered over his wrist, showing the three ofthem the events from a few weeks ago. Irshar crumbling. The Virohi coming alive in strange shapes, pulling out of the architecture. The jungle motionless, then lurching with imminent storms. Ahilya made him pause the recording several times—to watch the Virohi lurking near the vriksh before they attacked Iravan, and then again to study the jungle which was quiescent for so long even though the cosmic creatures had emerged from Irshar.
Finally, she leaned back. She seemed relieved.
“What did you see, councilor?” Iravan asked quietly.
Ahilya opened her eyes. “We all saw the same thing,” she said. “The jungle was not under attack from the Virohi after they came alive. The cosmic creatures were just hovering by the core tree. They were confused.”
“But the jungle changed even if the drones didn’t record it,” Naila said. “Your expedition experienced it, didn’t it? Massive mountains forming, hills and trees levelled.”
“Yes. But all that occurred only after the Moment shattered. It was not an effect of the Virohi’s extraction. Not even the Virohi’s intent. The landscape changed because of what happened to the Moment.”
“And is that important?” Iravan asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes. It is.” Ahilya met his gaze. “I think there is a reason the Virohi began overwriting us. They were scared.”
“Of what?”
“The same thing you were. The immensity of our planet. I’ve never seen them like that. Desperate, angry, selfish, yes—but never terrified in this manner. There is more here, something that is forcing them to overwrite us, some kind of defense mechanism.”
Iravan studied her. Shewouldsay something like this, words of a corrupted mind, intent on saving the Virohi. But she was also simply Ahilya. Could he afford not to listen to her?
“Indulge me,” she said softly, reading him, and Iravan cracked a smile. He gestured for her to proceed.
Ahilya took a deep breath. “Through all the time that I have known them, the Virohi have wanted form,” she said. “They have wanted to be bound by physical law, in order to experience life in a way they have not done before. They escaped their home planet, which was on the brink of destruction, to evade erasure. I have come to know the cosmic creatures closely, and all along they have wished to find immortality and eternity, while needing to be bound physically. It is a contradiction, don’t you think? The cycle of birth and rebirth in our world gave them an opportunity to manifest such a contradictory desire when they found a kind of immortality in the architects and yakshas. Reincarnation allowed them to live forever. They found a way to endure, even if the act unleashed earthrages.”
“You paint a sympathetic picture of these creatures,” Iravan said, frowning. “But you cannot simply dismiss the earthrages as a side-effect. They might not have unleashed the rages immediately after their release from Irshar, but it was only a matter of time. They’ve already attempted to destroy our world, driven by their mad desire to seek form. We found sanctuary in the skies, but I have seen the manner in which they plundered other worlds. They destroyed everything there, and they would destroy us too.”
“Yes, but once they found our planet, they never again sought to go to those other planets,” Ahilya said. “Here, on our world, they found beings such as us who were complex consciousnesses. After all, humans existed long before trajection did. You and I saw that in the caves in the habitat long ago. Our planet perhaps was the only one they visited where life had evolved to host complex beings such as us—beings that could give them what they sought.”
Within Iravan’s Etherium, Nidhirv flashed for an instant. In that man’s time, the cosmic creatures had been invited to split. Nidhirvhad been initiated as an architect in a ceremony where he had helped bring the Virohi into birth, creating the split of an architect and a yaksha. Earthrages in that time had been smaller things, more contained, and Ecstasy had been encouraged—as had been the unification with an architect’s yaksha. Vishwam had indicated that their world, their culture, was special—the final eventual home of the cosmic creatures. Everything Ahilya hypothesized corroborated Iravan’s knowledge. It made him uncomfortable, as if she were secretly trying to manipulate him.
