The Magic Labyrinth (38 page)

They came to another bay marked by characters in bas-relief and containing a lift shaft. Burton looked up and down this, hoping that he might see something to help them. It was as empty as the other.

When they had left this, Frigate said, “I wonder if Piscator is still alive? If only he’d come by…”

“If only!” Burton said. “We can’t live by
if only,
even if you do most of the time.”

Frigate looked hurt.

Nur said, “Piscator, as I understand it, was a Sufi. That may explain why he got through the gateway on top of the tower. From what I’ve heard, I’d venture that there’s some sort of force, analogous to an electromagnetic field, perhaps, that prevents those who haven’t attained a certain ethical level from entering.”

“He must have been different from most Sufis I’ve seen, yourself excepted,” Burton said. “Those I knew in Egypt were rogues.”

“There are true Sufis and false Sufis,” Nur said, paying no attention to the sneer in Burton’s voice. “Anyway, I suspect that the
wathan
reflects the ethical or spiritual development of the individuals and what it shows would make the repulsion field admit or deny entrance to a person.”

“Then how would X get in that way? He’s obviously not as ethically developed as the others.”

“You don’t know that,” Nur said. “If what he says about the other Ethicals is true…”

He stopped talking for a moment. Then he said, “If the gateway field admits only the highly ethical, then X made his secret room to avoid that field. But he must have done it when the tower was built, must have planned it before then. So that even then he knew he wouldn’t be admitted into the gateway.”

“No,” Burton said. “The others would have been able to see his
wathan.
If they did, they’d know that he had degenerated, changed, anyway. And they’d have known that he was the renegade.”

Frigate said, “Maybe the reason his
wathan
looked okay was that he had some device to distort it from its natural appearance. I mean…from the appearance it would have had if he hadn’t used some kind of distorter. That way, he’d not only have passed as normal among his fellows, he’d have fooled the gateway field.”

“That is possible,” Nur said. “But wouldn’t his colleagues know about distorters?”

“Not if they’d never seen or heard of one. It may have been X’s invention.”

Burton said, “And he had his hideaway so that he could leave the tower without anybody else knowing it.”

“That implies that there are no radar devices on the tower,” Frigate said.

“Well?” Burton said. “If there had been, they would’ve detected the first and second expeditions when they came down the ledge. The radar might also have spotted the cave, though I suppose its operators wouldn’t have thought anything about it if it had been noted. No, there was no radar scanning the sea and the mountains. Why should there be? The Ethicals didn’t believe that anybody would get that far.”

Nur said, “We all have
wathans,
if what the Council of Twelve told you was true. You saw theirs. What I don’t understand is why they couldn’t have tracked you down long before they did. Surely, a photograph of your
wathan
was in the records of that giant computer Spruce mentioned. I would suppose that everybody’s was.”

“Perhaps X arranged it so that the record in the computer wasn’t a true image of my
wathan,
” Burton said. “Perhaps that was why the agent Agneau was carrying a photograph of my physical person.”

“I think that the Ethicals must have scanner satellites up there,” Frigate said. “Maybe these could locate your
wathan.
But they couldn’t find it because your
wathan
was distorted.”

“Hmm,” Nur said. “I wonder if distorting the
wathan
also results in distorting its owner’s psyche?”

Burton said, “You may remember de Marbot’s report of Clemens’ analysis of the connection between the
wathan
or
ka
or soul, call it what you will, and the body? The conclusion was that the
wathan
is the essence of the person. Otherwise, it is irrelevant. It does no good to reattach the
wathan
to a duplicated body because the duplicate isn’t the same as the original. Similar to the nth degree, yes, but not the
same.
If the
wathan
or soul
is
the persona, the seat of self-consciousness, then the physical brain is not self-aware. Without the
wathan,
the human body would have intelligence but no self-awareness. No concept of
I
. The
wathan
uses the physical as a man uses a horse or an automobile.

“Perhaps the comparison isn’t correct. The
wathan
-body combination is more like a centaur. A melding. Both the man-part and the horse-part need each other for perfect functioning. One without the other is useless. It may be that the
wathan
itself needs a body to become self-conscious. Certainly, the Ethicals said that the undeveloped
wathan
wanders in some sort of space when it’s loosed by the body’s death. And then the
wathan
is not just unaware of its own self but of anything. It’s unconscious.

“Yet, according to our theory, the body generates the
wathan.
How, I don’t know, don’t even have a hypothesis. But without the body, a
wathan
can’t come into existence. There are embryo
wathans
in the body embryos, and infant
wathans
in the infant body. Like the body, the
wathan
grows into adulthood.

“However, there are two stages of adulthood. Let’s call the later stage super
wathan
hood. If a
wathan
doesn’t attain a certain ethical or spiritual level, it’s destined to wander forever after the body’s death, unaware of itself.

“Unless, as happened here, a duplicate body is made and by some affinity the
wathan
reattaches itself to the duplicate body. This duplicate body would be intelligent but would have no concept of
I
. The
wathan
attached to it would have the self-awareness. But it couldn’t have it until it interacted with the body.

“Without
wathans,
humans would have evolved from apes, would have had language, would have had technology and science, but no religion, yet would not have had any more knowledge of the self than an ant.”

Frigate said, “What kind of language would that be? I mean, try to imagine a language in which no pronouns for
I
and
me
exist. And probably no
you
or
yours
either. To tell the truth, I don’t think they’d develop language. Not as we know it, anyway. They’d just be highly intelligent animals. Living machines which would not depend upon instinct as much as animals do.”

“We can talk about that some other time.”

“Yeah, but what about the chimpanzees?”

“They must have had a rudimentary
wathan
which had a low-level consciousness of their
I
. However, it was never proved that apes did have language or self-awareness.

“The
wathan
itself can’t develop self-awareness unless it has a body. If the body has a stunted brain, then the
wathan
is stunted. Hence, it can attain only to a certain low ethical level.”

“No!” Frigate said. “You’re confusing intelligence with morality. You and I have known too many people with a high intelligence and low ethical development and vice versa to believe that a high IQ is a necessary accompaniment to a high moral quotient.”

“Yaas, but you forget about the will.”

They came to another bay. Burton looked along the shaft. “Nothing here.”

They walked on while Burton resumed the role of Socrates.

“The will. We have to assume that it’s not entirely free. It’s affected by events outside the body, its exterior environment, and by internal events, the inside environment. Injuries physical or mental, diseases, chemical changes, and so forth, can change a person’s will. A maniac may have been a
good
person before a disease or injury made him into a torturer and killer. Psychological or chemical factors may make multiple personalities or a psychic cripple or monster.

“I suggest that the
wathan
is so closely connected with the body that it reflects the body’s mental changes. And a
wathan
attached to an idiot or imbecile is itself idiotic or imbecilic.

“That is why the Ethicals have resurrected idiots and imbeciles elsewhere—if our speculations are correct—so that these may get special treatment. Through the medical science of the Ethicals, the retarded are enabled to have fully developed brains. Hence, they also have highly developed
wathans
with a full potentiality for a choice between good and evil.”

“And,” Nur said, “the opportunity to become super-
wathans
and so reunited with God. I’ve been listening carefully to you, Burton. I don’t agree with much of what you’ve said. One implication is that God doesn’t care about His souls. He wouldn’t allow them to float around as unconscious things. He has made provision for all of them.”

“Perhaps God—if there is one—
doesn’t
care,” Burton said. “There is no evidence whatsoever that He does.

“Anyway, I argue that the human being without a
wathan
has no free will. That is, the ability to make choices between or among moral alternatives. To surpass the demands of body and environment and personal inclination. To lift one’s self, as it were, by the self’s bootstraps. Only the
wathan
has the free will and the self-awareness. But I admit that it has to express these through the vehicle of the body. And I admit that the
wathan
closely interacts with and is affected by the body.

“Indeed, the
wathan
must get its personality traits, most of them, anyway, from the body.”

Frigate said, “Well then. Aren’t we back where we started? We still can’t make a clear distinction between the
wathan
and the body. If the
wathan
furnishes the concept of the
I
and the free will, it’s still dependent upon the body for its character traits and everything else in the genetic and nervous systems. These are actually images which it absorbs. Or photocopies. So, in that sense, the
wathan
is only a copy, not the original.

“Thus, when the body dies, it stays dead. The
wathan
floats off, whatever that means. It has the duplicated emotions and thoughts and all that which make up a persona. It also has the free will and the self-awareness if it’s reattached to a duplicate body. But it isn’t the
same
person.”

“What you’ve just proved,” Aphra Behn said, “is that there is no soul, not in the way it’s commonly conceived of. Or, if there is one, it’s superfluous, it has nothing to do with the immortality of the individual.”

Tai-Peng spoke for the first time since Burton had brought up the subject.

“I’d say that the
wathan
part is all that matters. It’s the only immortal part, the only thing the Ethicals can preserve. It must be the same thing as the
ka
of the Chancers.”

“Then the
wathan
is a half-assed thing!” Frigate cried. “A part only of me, the creature that died on Earth! I can’t truly be resurrected unless my original body is resurrected!”

“It’s the part that God wants and which he will absorb,” Nur said.

“Who wants to be absorbed? I want to be I, the whole creature, the entire!”

“You will have the ecstasy of being part of God’s body.”

“So what? I won’t be I anymore!”

“But on Earth you as an adult weren’t the same person you were at fifty,” Nur said. “Your whole being, at every second of your life, was and is in the process of change. The atoms composing your body at birth were not the same as when you were eight. They’d been replaced by other atoms. Nor were they the same when you were fifty as when you were forty.

“Your body changed, and with it your mind, your store of memories, your beliefs, your attitudes, your reactions. You were never the
same.

“And when—or if—you, the creature, the creation, should return to the Creator, you will change then. It will be the last change. You will abide forever in the Unchanging. Unchanging because He has no need for changing. He is perfect.”

“Bullshit!” Frigate said, his face red, his hands clenched. “There is the essence of me, the unchanging thing that wants to live forever, however imperfect! Though I strive for perfection! Which may not be attainable! But the striving is the thing, that which makes life endurable, though sometimes life itself becomes almost unendurable! I want to be I, forever lasting! No matter what the change, there is something in me, an unchanging identity, the soul, whatever, that resists death, loathes it, declares it to be unnatural! Death is both insult and injury and, in a sense, unthinkable!

“If the Creator has a plan for us, why doesn’t He tell us what it is? Are we so stupid that we can’t understand it? He should tell it to us directly! The books that the prophets, the revelators, and the revisionists wrote, claiming to have authority from God Himself, to have taken His dictations, these so-called revelations are false! They make no sense! Besides, they contradict each other! Does God make contradictory statements?”

“They only seem contradictory,” Nur said. “When you’ve attained a higher stage of thinking, you’ll see that the contradictions are not what they appear to be.”

“Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis! That’s all right for human logic! But I still maintain that we shouldn’t have been left in ignorance. We should have been shown the Plan. Then we could make our choice, go along with the Plan or reject it!”

“You’re still in a lower stage of development, and you seem to be stuck in it,” Nur said. “Remember the chimpanzees. They got to a certain level, but they could not progress further. They made a wrong choice, and…”