Page 60 of The Enduring Universe
“What is your point?” he asked.
“When you shattered the Moment, the cosmic creatures grew mad. I remember the way they screeched, and in the Etherium I saw them, weeping, grieving, always grieving. They attacked you in the skies not because you were trying to eliminate them, but because you shattered the Moment.”
“You’re saying they care about the Moment?” Iravan asked skeptically. “They havedestroyedthe Moment—they ripped it apart each time they attempted to take birth in our world. They infiltrated it to infect the architects.”
“If you choose to look at it that way, yes, they did destroy the Moment. But in another way, the Moment has always been their home, their plane of existence. Earthrages occurred from the very beginning because the Virohi—this alien species—tried to embed themselves into the planet through the Moment. The cosmic creatures are formless beings, but in the Moment they found a kind of form. Trajection came to our species because of their activity in the Moment, and you and I could only trap the Virohi in the Moment. It all revolves around that dimension. Of course, they care.”
Iravan said nothing, but he could not deny the sense in her words. He himself had seen the form of the Virohi in the Moment, not just when he and Ahilya had trapped one creature, but afterward,when he had wrenched the entire hive through the Conduit to explode them with his sungineering bomb. Outside the Moment, the Virohi had looked like snaky, sinuous smoke, but within the Moment, he had seen their stars.
Shaped like rocks that melted into moisture, or like orbs that shifted with a thousand fires, the Virohi’s stars had looked like no other possibility Iravan had ever encountered. It was as if even the Moment with its infinity could not truly contain their shape. Architects presented as dust motes, but true creatures of infinity like the Virohi… of course, they had found some kind of a home in the Moment. This is how they must have always existed. Iravan had been unable to see them that way before the eversion, but once Nidhirv had seen the Virohi in such a form, bringing their consciousness into life as an architect during a birthing ceremony.
Naila’s brows arched in understanding. “If they care about the Moment… Then you think the overwriting was triggered because the Moment was destroyed?”
Ahilya turned to her. “I think the destruction of the Moment is connected to the overwriting, yes. And I think if we neglect to address this larger reason—whatever it may be—then we will be inviting a bigger problem.”
Still, Iravan said nothing. Everything Ahilya said indicated a corrupted mind, hell bent on defending the pestilence of the cosmic creatures, but he had visited the core tree in the dead of the night several times in an attempt to understand how to extract the Virohi. He had felt the Virohi’s grief, seeping through the tree. Ahilya’s council did not understand it—and Iravan was not about to explain it to them—but had she not embedded the Virohi in the tree, the cosmic creatures would have destroyed him and the planet in their madness, before being destroyed themselves. Without the Moment, they would never be able to find any kindof form. The planet would have ruptured slowly but surely, and the Virohi would have diminished too, decaying until they were no more—unable to escape to another dimension, unable to rebirth, trapped on this plane.
Ahilya had saved them all. She would not take credit for it, he knew; he had seen the way her own council constrained her, and how she seemed to allow it. But even if what she said about the Virohi’s intentions was true, it still did not change the threat.
“I am grateful for what you did for me,” he said. “But none of this changes the corruption we face due to the Virohi’s actions. Now that the Virohi are in the tree, they cannot escape it. Your council is not wrong—no matter what they are escaping, the cosmic creatures will defile us. This is the prime opportunity to destroy them and be done with them. You should listen to your council.”
“I think they’re mistaken,” Ahilya said flatly. “Iravan, think of what happened immediately after the Moment shattered. It wasn’t simply another earthrage beginning. This was a total reconstruction of the planet in a way, a distortion. Hills appearing out of nowhere, chasms opening, trees growing against nature’s laws. This was not just something occurring on the surface of the earth, or in the skies like a skyrage. This was overarching, comprehensive. A level of storm we have not seen before, occurring from deep within the planet’s bowels. A reckoning, seeping into the very elements of air and water, metal and soil, changing all rules and coming at us from the very core What would you even call something like that?”
“Planetrage,” Naila said quietly. Her eyes were wide.
“Yes,” Ahilya said, turning to her, relief on her face that someone had understood her. “That’s exactly right.”
Planetrage, Iravan repeated in his mind.
It was a good term for it, for what else could describe the way the earth had rioted. The way in which air had become vacuum,and dust had turned into icicles, and boulders and rocks had tried to harm him. Ahilya was speaking of the time when the Moment had shattered and the planetrage had first roared, but the planetrage five days ago had been triggered by him. He had manipulated the jungle with his everpower, attempting to grow food for the ashram, find the yakshas, create a home for the small creatures. All those things were accumulations, one thing piled on top of the other, his every use of the everpower a distortion of the planet. The will of the planet was to remain a certain way, but with the everpower he trajected it to become something else.
The consequences of his fight with the planet were the same as an earthrage created by a Virohi’s split. Perhaps the Virohi had seen it coming. Perhaps they knew this would be a consequence. What the cosmic creatures had done to the planet by splitting themselves was trajection too, perhaps with an ancient and inscrutable form of the everpower. The earthrages weren’t caused by the split. They were caused by the Virohi’s forced investiture into the planet, while the planet defended itself.
Trajection, Ecstasy, and everpower—each of those destroyed the planet in a similar way, all of them a disease. Iravan had been hoping to teach his Ecstatics the everpower, but if Ahilya was right—and she was—then any use of it would simply magnify another planetrage. Within trajection, after all, lay the seed of its demise. No matter what he did, he was doomed to fail.
I cannot escape it, he thought numbly, his head spinning.I will forever be my own enemy. Doomed to destroy, never to build.How ironic he had once been an architect.
He had always meant to annihilate the Virohi, but what he needed to do was destroyhimself. Every trace of this awful power, sooner or later, removed. Every part of him reduced into nothing.
“I think the planetrage is the greater threat, Iravan,” Ahilyasaid, into his silence. “We need to focus on ending that. When the Moment shattered, the planetrage started, and we experienced it again five days ago. But all of these were just the first tremors—which flattened the land already, killed hundreds of people. Next time it could be worse. Whether or not you destroy the Virohi, the planetrage will continue until you reconstruct the Moment. We will all be gone.” Her voice grew quiet, insistent, and she reached forward to take his hand, her fingers fluttering over his heartpoison bracelet. “You are the only one who can repair the Moment,” she said softly. “If you found a way to stop this greater threat, would that not be making greater amends?”
There it was, always the thing that separated them. Her desire to save those creatures. Not the planet, not humanity, but for some reason, the cosmic creatures.
Iravan snapped back into himself as if he had been struck.
He stood up, wrenching his hand back.
“You are trying to manipulate me,” he said coldly.
Ahilya stood up too, slowly. “Iravan, no,” she said. “I’m really not.”
“No?” he sneered. “What am I to conclude from this? You want me to spare the Virohi, against your own council’s wish. You want me distracted, repairing the Moment now when you don’t need to hold me to this anymore.” His fingers circled the dark bracelet, and he snapped it into two. It had been useless to contain him anyway, when he was above those ailments. He had been wearing it as a courtesy, a promise given, but he had already fulfilled his promise.
“I have given aid to you,” he said. “Medicines, food, technology, that is why you needed the Moment repaired. You know that you have no more hold over me, and this is why you come, making arguments about newer threats. You have the means to destroy the Virohi but you don’t want to use it. You think you can sway me withyour arguments, but I can see how well you’ve thought them out, wanting me to follow along. Do you take me for a fool, Ahilya?”
“In many ways, yes,” she replied evenly, but there was no heat in her voice. “But you have acted with reason before, Iravan, though I could not agree with you. Listen to me now. I am not lying about any of this.”
“You are trying to change my capital desire,” he said. “This is what you have been attempting to do from the very start. That’s why you had me make the heartpoison bracelets in the first place. Deny it and be a liar.”
