22: Atum’s Lotus

Harmonious and complex music was drifting from the door. We passed through to a wondrously surreal landscape, alighting upon a ridge of woven furrows. From here we had a deep view of gorges, undulating hills and rangy mountains. The space within the gall was warped to enormous size—I could barely see to the opposite side.

A choir of voices surrounded us, like a hundred Tuvan monks throat-singing a chant, with each voice layered into three or four overtones. A steady tabla beat threaded beneath the chant, and wrapped around it were sweet filigreed lines of melody, as if from electric guitars. Atum’s Lotus was both shape and sound.

Looking into the deep spaces around us, I saw peaks alternating with saddles, and a deep valley meandering to our right. Low, curved walls wove back and forth along the landscape’s ridges. They were like waist-high stone fences, curved in elegant rhythms that I could hear as lines of music within the chants.

The steeper slopes were terraced as if by rice paddies, with a puckered crater within each level spots. These lace-edged craters held their own little worlds of shape, echoing the larger landscape, this intricate Atum’s Lotus that filled the geranium’s gall. Mimicking the visual effect, each of the notes within the walls of sound around us was itself an intricate harmony of tinier notes.

Atum’s Lotus was spun from rubbery, high-grade kessence—translucent and delicately shaded, like the substance of those lizards that the nobles ate. Yellows shaded to greens and mauves, faint struts of ultramarine glowed within. I surmised that Atum’s Lotus was in some sense a part of the geranium plant itself.

Every particle of the great construct was vibrating, and the sounds came and went—sometimes as gentle as birdsong wafted upon a summer breeze, sometimes as rich and all-encompassing as a jam-band in concert, sometimes like a symphony orchestra, occasionally settling down to a trance-inducing drone.

The great Lotus encompassed incalculable layers of detail. The ridge we’d landed on was lush with plant-like shapes—ferns, sunflowers, broccoli, toadstools, ferns. A sort of prickly pear cactus slumped beside me. Instead of thorns, its soft pads bore waving little elephant trunks.

The walls of the nearby valley had steepened, and some of its loose-lipped craters had morphed into caverns. Every part of Atum’s Lotus was in slow, continuous motion, ceaselessly groping for fresh forms. And everything had a musical voice. For a moment I felt peace.

But then my sense of crisis came welling up again. It was easy to believe that this intricate growth would consume large amounts of kessence. Yet—how could the debts have mounted to the point where the Duke wanted to drain Earth dry? Madness.

Weena turned her face up, as if sniffing the air, then led me down the valley’s slope. We made our way to a trellised balcony within one of the caverns, and found a gently curved ledge with fresh doorways opening off it. Everything was shimmering with subtle layers of hue. Sweet arpeggios of chimes cascaded from the walls. And leaning on the porch’s wavy railing was—Charles Howard.

“Jim Oster?” he said, regarding me with his dreamy eyes. He wore the form of a muscular, suit-dressed man with a poet’s bearded face. He reached out his hand and we shook.

“Hello, Charles,” I said cautiously. Mijjy was letting me talk again. “This is exquisite.”

“Atum’s Lotus,” said Charles. “Perhaps I’m near the culmination. I’ve been hoping to find a path to the heart of heaven—just short of the goddess’s face.”

So—another maniac. “How are you making these shapes and sounds?” I asked, leaning against the reverberant railing beside him. Weena stood to one side, watching and listening. With a low rumble, the cavern around us was opening wider. And a chuckling washboard of ripples had formed in the kessence beneath our feet.

“It’s an abstract process of evolution,” said Charles. “But I’ll assume you don’t want a lecture. Suffice it to say that, some years ago, I inveigled the Duke into letting his geranium inaugurate my own mutational theater. My original claim was that I’d build him a solid tunnel between Flimsy to Earth. A tunnel that doesn’t erase your personality or your kessence body. Weena and I had plans to return to Earth, all along, and we didn’t want to go through the mind-blanching light at Flimsy’s core. And of course the Duke and Duchess wanted a tunnel so they could invade Earth with jivas.”

“And now Weena has a tunnel,” I said, not sure where this conversation was going.

“Thanks to me,” said Charles. “I’m the one who told her that Flimsy lies within every electron on Earth. And thus she was able to use a border snail to accomplish this rather humdrum goal.”

“I know all about it,” I said. “I’m the one who nicked the electron for Weena—so she had a place to set up her snail. It was a horrible mistake. I lost my wife.”

“Life is sad,” said Charles, and changed the subject. “I suppose you’ve nicked Weena as well. She’s a sportive lass. I’ve rather lost my zest for catering to her sensual appetites.”

“Charles!” interjected Weena. “You’re terrible.”

“Never mind all that,” I growled, impatient to learn something that might help Val. “Give me some real info. Tell me about the evolution of Atum’s Lotus, Charles. Don’t hold back. I’m a genomicist.”

“Genomicist?” said Charles slowly. “Is that a new word? Genes, yes. My basic idea is that there’s an underlying hieroglyph for every shape—and every shape in turn represents a sound. The hieroglyphs are seeds, if you will. For quite some time, I’ve been absorbed in seeds that encode values for an octave of characteristic qualities: lassitude, rectitude, passion, fecundity, savor, transparency, fluidity and stink. In my model, the abstract space of all possible seed hieroglyphs is eight-dimensional. And Atum’s Lotus is showing me tactile and sensual cross-sections of this parameter space’s meta-form.” Charles hunched forward and wriggled his fingers in my face. “Floopy goopy. Beauty is sooth.” Weena giggled.

Rather than trying to tease out the meanings of Charles’s gnomic utterances, I posed a different question. “Why does Atum’s Lotus use so much kessence?”

“It’s not that any one three-dimensional view of the underlying Atum’s Lotus is so difficult to create. It’s the search for the next view that’s the crusher. Searches ramify like river valleys, like branching trees, like life stories. Searching for the most exalted view of an eight-dimensional parameter space burns through the kessence like a blast furnace through cord wood. And the more finely I tune my simulations, the more expensive the search becomes.”

“But why do you have to search at all?”

“I’ve tracing a gyre through a space of form and sound,” said Charles. “At this moment, for instance, our image of Atum’s Lotus is quite lovely, but suppose we were to add a mountain over there, or perhaps a gorge? Do we need the sound of trumpets? Should the crater-mouths resemble platypus beaks? What if our forms deliquesce into globs and our sounds become burbles? I’m mimicking evolution, and I’m close to finding a bidirectional highway to the core of Flimsy—and beyond that—who knows? Perhaps a passageway to a heaven beyond heaven.”

“Evolution,” I echoed, not really understanding Charles’s line of thought. “You must know that evolution is slow. Life on Earth’s been cooking for billions of years.”

“But I’ve hewn to an accelerated pace,” said Charles. “Many, many times per second, our cunning geranium creates previews of the nearby topographies, assesses them, displays the best, and thus nudges my view of Atum’s Lotus a step closer to the magic mantra of a safe and solid ladder to heaven. I muse and contemplate as we wind our way up the celestial hill, making each step firm and level. And by now—as Weena may have told you and our patrons—we’ve all but reached our goal.”

“I have some unfortunate tidings, Charles,” interrupted Weena. “The Duchess fails to see the value of your ladder to heaven, and she’s turned the Duke against us too. They wish to terminate your quest. They keep harping on our burdensome debt to the Bulbers.”

“A debtor in life; a debtor in death,” said Charles.

“Poor dear, “chirped Weena. “We have partial solutions. The Duke will use Jim here as our inter-world mailman. He’ll journey to Earth to deliver some jiva eggs. The jivas will drain off kessence and pump it back to the castle. And in this wise, we’ll get the Bulbers off our necks.”

“That would be agreeable,” said Charles mildly. “The Bulbers are tiresomely importunate. Yesterday one of them poked his smelly snout in here—as if he were a landlord inspecting his flat.”

“Boss Blinks,” said Weena, shaking her head. “A true vulgarian. But, as I say, Jim’s eggs will bring in the payment that Blinks awaits.”

Lulled by Charles’s jargon and the talk of plans, Mijjy had let her attention wander. I seized the opportunity to speak out against the eggs.

“Ten fucking thousand jivas!” I cried, shaking Charles by the shoulders, praying that he might help. “They’ll destroy our planet! Earth is where the real evolution is happening. You guys are going to trash it for the sake of some meaningless mind-game.”

And then Mijjy was at me again. That same strangling pain encircled my throat. A hot needle entered the teep region of my soul. I gagged and dropped to my knees.

Nobody said anything for a few minutes. Charles and Weena looked more embarrassed than sympathetic. The flims were accustomed to seeing jivas exert their control. As the seconds oozed past, our cavern turned inside out, so that now our balcony was a balustrade upon a rounded hill top.

When Mijjy had finally relented, I rose cautiously to my feet, crouching over like an aged, aged man. Charles patted me on the shoulder. In the background, a vast, slow concerto rose and fell.

“So you fear bringing an Apocalypse upon Earth?” said Charles, trying to smooth things over. “In certain moods, I might once have welcomed a final cataclysm. The human race runs universities like factories. They benumb themselves with fripperies. And rarely does an independent thinker attain a proper post.” He smiled. “But I’ve overcome my old grudges. There’s the children to think of, the young lovers, the men and women in the full vigor of life, the aged duffers gumming crusts of bread. Let the people live, I say. We shouldn’t harm our dear Mother Earth.”

“And we shan’t, Charles,” said Weena brightly. “You mustn’t fret about it. Atum’s Lotus is more important than mere bookkeeping. Jim’s going to square things, and I’m sure the Earthlings will be fine. Did I tell you that I’m hoping to collect a commission on the Earth-based kessence flow? I can use my share to keep Atum’s Lotus alive. But arranging this is touchy, as the Duke and Duchess have turned so cold towards me of late. To make things worse, the Earthmost Jiva still nurses a hope of eating Atum’s Lotus.”

Charles shrugged, not really listening to her. “At this point it wouldn’t much matter if we did halt the evolution of Atum’s Lotus,” he murmured, idly fiddling with a row of puckers on the railing “As I’m telling you, it’s all but done. In the morning we’ll have the chant.” He flicked a sucker-disk, provoking a surprised little honk.

“I wish I could visit the center of Flimsy, too,” I said in a neutral tone, not wanting to rile Mijjy. “I think my wife Val is there. Unless she’s already been wiped blank and reincarnated.”

“The Atum’s Lotus ladder-mantra should indeed be of use,” said Charles. “I believe it leads to a perch wherefrom one sees the goddess face to face.”

“I’ve been there before,” I said, thinking this over. “Like—camping with Val at Four Mile Beach? Heaven and the goddess are everywhere, if only you look.”

Charles laughed. “The heaven beyond heaven is Earth! Well said, wise fool. Tarry with me, and we can plan the next installments of our careers.”

“I’d enjoy that,” I said. I’d decided Charles was a good guy.

He glanced over at Weena. Was that a glint of cunning I saw in his deep eyes? “No need to stand guard over us, ” he told her. “I know you have much to do. Leave Jim in my care. Nothing can happen. Our jivas oversee our every word.”

“Very well,” said Weena. “I’m planning to rise quite early tomorrow morning—I have another meeting with the Duke. I’m going to revisit the issue of me getting that commission. Truly, he owes me fifteen percent, don’t you agree? After all, I’m the one who brought in our transcendental mailman.” She chucked me under the chin. “You’ll be content here in Atum’s Lotus, Jim?”

“Happy as clam,” I said. “Waiting for my eggs.” My touch of sarcasm provoked a warning pulse of pain.

Accompanied by a rising arpeggio of saxophone sounds, Weena drifted out through the hole in the top of the gall. Charles and I were alone. With Mijjy so vigilant, I didn’t feel like talking. Charles understood. He, too, had a resident jiva to contend with. He merely gestured that I take a seat beside him. We lounged in companionable silence on a ledge of Atum’s Lotus, gazing out at the slow, solemn beauty, savoring the ever-changing sounds. I felt myself a part of this great system, as if I were a gargoyle carved into a cathedral’s stones, gently vibrating to the sounds of a massed choir within.

After awhile, I found myself thinking about Charles’s future, and about how to avoid delivering those eggs. Ever so slowly, I realized that Charles was in fact talking to me about these things. He was using a low-level vibrational channel, imperceptible to the jivas. His conversation came in scraps, as a series of disconnected, sleepy thoughts. It was quite unlike spoken words, and far more oblique than jiva-mediated teep.

I glanced over at the man, and he gazed back at me, poker-faced. And still the images came. I saw the border snail withdrawing from her hole. I saw Charles flying in a circle around the towering, misty goddess of Flimsy. I saw myself exploding the Earthmost Jiva with a bomb.

I refrained from fully engaging my conscious mind, lest our jivas pick up on our seditious fancies. I thought of Four Mile Beach north of Santa Cruz—I visualized the seabirds upon the sand, the happy chaos of the waves, the mounded knots of kelp, and the cliff-swallows in their mud-daubed nests. I thought that, compared to the living beach, Atum’s Lotus was, after all, a bit dull.

Charles replied with a diagram of a higher-dimensional inversion map that could fit a universe inside an electron—complete with a ladder to its center. He thought of a woman with a sweet and sad smile that might take a lifetime to decipher. This was the wife he’d left behind.

I thought of the flower-filled meadows above Four Mile Beach, of a fern-green grotto there with a twinkling pool of minnows, and of Val’s ashes buried in the sandy soil.

Charles and I were on the same wavelength.

He was done marking time—my arrival had jolted him loose. He was ready for the journey to the heart of Flimsy, eager to meet the goddess, and perhaps on the point of diving into her core. Early tomorrow morning, he’d let the new chant of Atum’s Lotus propel him to the center of Flimsy—a trip beyond the powers of simple teleportation.

And me? How was I to save the Earth and seek out Val? Charles now seemed to be suggesting a technique for killing jivas via a kind of psychic bazooka. The plan had something to do with a baseball gun—and something to do with an epic Halloween rock concert where I’d painted myself black and had dusted myself with glitter to look like the night sky. A third element was needed as well, and Charles seemed to say I could get it from Ginnie if I saw her again.

Our conversation was in a very allusive and figurative form, far below the level of our conscious minds. And all the while, the artificial landscape around us was blooming in ever-mounting crescendos. Atum’s Lotus was slowly approaching an apotheosis. Over and over, just when the process seemed complete, a new set of frills would develop, complete with a new thread of melody to divert the mounting chorus down a yet subtler path.

At some point I dropped off to sleep, pillowing my head on the soft flesh of this throbbing musical plant. I entered a looping dream wherein I reviewed my exchanges with Charles Howard, polishing and editing the memories—gradually honing them towards an explicit plan of action. I was at one with Atum’s Lotus.

I awoke to Charles shaking my shoulder. The roof overhead had been torn away. Atum’s Lotus was broadcasting a solemn mantra overlaid with shrilling strings. A flowing river of light was etched against the sky. It took me a moment to realize that this was a giant jiva feeler. It was the Earthmost Jiva, avidly probing into our hideaway.

“Here comes the bully beet,” said Charles. “The long-expected surprise attack. I’m ready. And Atum’s Lotus is done.” He was standing beside me, glaring up at the cruel tendril. “You’ll vanquish them, Jim. You’ll save the world. You and the surfer girl.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll shuffle off my mortal coil and be reborn a squalling babe. As you say, the heaven beyond heaven is our original home.”

The Earthmost Jiva’s tendril slapped up against Charles. Atum’s Lotus pulsed a massive drum-beat in sympathy. Charles’s resident jiva popped out and scurried off like the cowardly parasite that she was. But the man himself stood firm in the face of his fate. The glowing tentacle forked and branched, sending roots into each part of my friend’s hearty frame. Charles laughed, as if welcoming his physical annihilation.

In seconds, the Earthmost Jiva had drained Charles down to an idiosyncratic sprinkle which was the refined essence of the man’s soul. I saw a hypnotically tumbling shape that was covered on every side with flickering, mutating hieroglyphs—perhaps spelling out the sequence of archetypes that had been Charles’s life story.

The Earthmost Jiva would have liked to devour this darting sprinkle as well—but Charles invoked the perfected power of Atum’s Lotus. The great shape pulsed out a rhythmic chant that was the sought-for ladder-mantra.

Seized by the wave of sound, Charles’s sprinkle spun in the air for a moment, and then he shot upwards and disappeared, presumably on his way to the core of Flimsy. And perhaps from there he’d pass on to the heaven beyond heaven which is Earth.

Enraged by losing her prey, the Earthmost Jiva thrust her tendrils the deeper into Atum’s Lotus. In her fury, she was strip-mining scars into the exquisitely articulated hills and vales. But still the great Lotus’s supernal ladder-mantra could still be heard.

Spitefully the monster jiva’s tendrils wrapped around me. Should I ride the mantra to Flimsy’s core? But Mijjy was puppeteering me from within, holding me back. And now the Duchess came onto the scene. I glimpsed her outline against the blazing curve of the bulbous jiva.

“Go back to being a sun!” she yelled at the Earthmost Jiva. “Do it, you stupid, greedy beet! This Lotus is our personal stash, okay? It’s fine that you killed Charles Howard, but Jim Oster is the guy who’s gonna deliver your eggs! Leave him the fuck alone.”

“Jim traitor secret plan jiva gun!” blustered the great jiva. But she released me nonetheless.

The Duchess looked into my mind, and quizzed Mijjy. Fortunately she had little to reveal. My conscious mind held only an inchoate wish to shoot a jiva with a bazooka.

“Acting all weird and sly won’t get you off the hook, Jim,” said the Duchess, landing at my side. “You’re still making that delivery to clear our debt to the Bulbers. We’ll have the eggs for you this afternoon.”

Overhearing that, the Earthmost Jiva teeped something about the difficulty of making so many eggs on short order.

“That’s what you’re frikkin’ supposed to be doing!” screamed the Duchess. “Instead of trashing our property. How would you like it if I invite a gang of yuels here to sing lullabies in your nest? I want those motherfucking eggs!” Her voice softened just a bit. “And maybe then we’ll see about getting you some scraps of Atum’s Lotus.”

The Earthmost Jiva backed away. She really was a little afraid of the Duchess. Meanwhile the great wobbly blossom of Atum’s Lotus was healing itself, all the while playing symphonic variations of Charles’s ladder-mantra, endlessly elaborating her sounds and her forms. And the great gall on the side of the stem was sealing its roof back over.

“Come with me now, Jim,” said the Duchess. Once again, a pale white mat of geranium vines formed beneath our feet. Bathed in the bright, hostile light of the Earthmost Jiva, the Duchess and I rose towards the geranium’s uppermost leaf.