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I didn't kill them myself, I didn't wish them dead, and if I could have
prevented it I would, but they died none the less. And these boys,' nodding
to the two mages, 'at least volunteered.'
Aiah had forgotten the cost of the Cheloki wars, the destruction of a
metropolis as thorough as the devastation that had been wrought in Barkazi.
She licks her lips, i wouldn't want that sort of responsibility,' she says.
He leans closer to her, his deep voice almost a whisper but still powered by
his ferocious energy, a low rumble that Aiah can feel in her toes. 'Miss Aiah,
your sentiment is too late. You've given me power, and are as responsible as
anyone for what follows. And,' almost offhand, 'there have already been
deaths.'
Aiah stares at him in horror. Forget the man, she remembers, the problem is
over.
'They were bad people, I believe, and dangerous,' Con-stantine says. 'If that
knowledge will help you sleep.'
'I don't think it will,' Aiah says.
He steps back, lets his hand fall from her shoulder, gives her an appraising
glance. 'I have had sleepless hours myself,' he says, 'but by and by they
passed.' He reaches out, takes her wrist as he has in all their lessons
together. 'Shall we have your lesson now?' he asks. 'Or were these last
moments lesson enough?'
We seek to enlarge our scope. Our power. Sorya's words.
Power, Aiah thinks. Perhaps she ought to get used to it.
'The lesson, if you please,' she says, and lets him lead her to a console.
GARGELIUS ENCHUK WEARS GULMAN SHOES!
Why Don't You?
'The School of Radritha defines three sorts of power,' Con-stantine says.
'Power over the self, power over others, and power over reality. And of these,
they conceive the first to be the only worthwhile goal, because they consider
the only thing a man can know truly is his own mind, and his knowledge of
anything else is but a reflection of his inward sight. Which is why I broke
with them finally, because their scope was limited only to self-knowledge and
self-mastery, without any conception of what the self-mastery is for.
i will agree that power over the self is primary,' he says, nodding, 'because
with self-knowledge and self-mastery, power over others and over reality will
naturally follow. The School had power  some of the most powerful minds I've
ever met - but it had withdrawn entirely into self-contemplation. And was a
little smug about it, truthfully.'
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Aiah sips at her wine as the Elton cruises away from the factory. The shift's
lesson had flushed her with plasm. Power sings in her blood, a chorus of
exhilaration and control. But now she finds the wine a little bitter, and
Constantine's discourse on power the last thing she wants to hear.
Already been deaths . .. She hadn't wanted to think about it until
Constantine's whisper had forced her to confront the fact. And now she is
compelled to wonder whether her efforts to educate herself in the use of plasm
are worth the loss of life.
'The School desired to give their initiates freedom,' Con-stantine continues.
'Freedom from passion, from impulse, from - in essence - the world itself.
Imagine the reaction of my family,' he smiles, 'when I told them I wished to
study there. The School stood in opposition to everything they held dear, and
that, I imagine, is why I wished to go.' He shrugs.
'But detachment from all things?' he says. 'Is that not also a trap? To say
that nothing matters, or that nothing should matter, except that which occurs
in the perfectly passionless mind ...' He utters a black, sneering laugh.
'This they call freedom? Skulking in their meditation chambers, hiding from
the sight of the world, peering obsessively at the landscape of their own
minds, terrified they might be caught in an impulse, an emotion, an urge...'
Detachment, Aiah decides, seems like a pretty good idea right now. Let us, she
thinks, consider the problem dispassionately. People, I am informed bad
people, have died. Although I do not absolutely know that these are the people
who attacked me, I nevertheless suspect that they are. In which case I have
evidence, written on my bones with the toes of boots, that they were in fact
bad people, and therefore deserved punishment.
'Avoidance of passion does not conquer passion,' Con-stantine continues, 'and
the School of Radritha, for all the power of their minds, seemed not to know
this. They did not conquer passion, they merely denied it. And that is why
they were so afraid of power, because they knew it was dangerous to them . . .
power becomes a slave to passion so easily, and to an unacknowledged passion
easiest of all.'
And, Aiah thinks, if they are dead, I did not kill them. I didn't ask for it
to be done, I didn't have it done. And so, perhaps, it has nothing to do with
me at all.
Colored light floods the car, and a distant scream: an advert tumbling down
the canyon of the street, crying its wares with a siren voice.
'Though it is true that a man who is a servant of his passions is not free,'
Constantine says, 'neither is a man in flight from those same passions. And,
since the passions are an inevitable consequence of our own humanity, it is
impossible to eliminate them so long as we wish to remain human. But Radritha
was wrong: it isn't passions that make us weak, but rather uncontrollable
passions. Harness the passions and reason together, and the person, the real
person, becomes free . .. and capable of liberating others, which is the only
defensible use of power.'
But, Aiah thinks, if these deaths have nothing to do with me, why don't I
simply ask Constantine what happened?
Because, she concludes, I am afraid of the answer.
Constantine's flow of words comes to a halt. He looks at Aiah appraisingly. i
see my discourse has failed in its intended purpose,' he says. 'You remain
buried in your own thoughts.'
'Yes.' She is unable, for some^ reason, to turn her face to him, to achieve
any level of personal contact. She stares instead at the seat opposite her.
Tries to achieve detachment.
'Perhaps my discourse on power was too abstract for the purpose,' he says. 'I
wanted to point out that my ultimate goals are not abstract, but concrete: the
New City, power, and liberty. And not for me alone, but for all. And-' he
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licks his lips, 'sacrifices occur. In a world as entrenched as ours, thousands
of years without substantial change, revolution does not happen easily, or
neatly, or without consequence. From a strictly practical view, a little
ruthlessness now may save much blood later.'
Constantine pauses, then impatiently dismisses his own argument with a
contemptuous wave of his hand. Without warning, moving with absolute
suddenness and intensity, he snatches Aiah's wrist, the same grasp used when
giving her instruction; but now a different power than plasm flows from him,
lights the furious energy in his eyes -passion, she realizes, startled, but of
a different order from what she's accustomed to. A world-eating passion,
fierce and hungry and able, without constraint or compromise. No School of
Radritha, she knows, could possibly suppress this.
'Listen, Miss Aiah,' he says, and she recognizes the powerful whisper again,
the deep voice that resonates in her bones, 'if the New City comes into being, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]