Best Laid Plans Read Online Free PDF Page B

not?’ Tajen seemed more exasperated than angry. He had evidently had this conversation many times before. ‘These fools,’ Tajen spoke more softly, his arm sweeping out to indicate the Luminaries who were no longer visible, ‘are witless ecstatics, little better than the smokers of opium. If sensual pleasure could be prolonged for eternity, they would take their rest and call it Araboth.’
    ‘But how do you know that isn’t what Araboth is?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Tajen sighed, ‘but I feel strongly the lack of concern for others, for the millions of humans still struggling, for the heaving and groaning of Creation. Ain cares; I have to believe that. I care, and I am not prepared to rest on my laurels until every last atom of Creation has been brought into Ain’s loving embrace.’
    Shader stared at his fingers clenching around a tuft of grass. He pulled out a fistful of rose-scented sod and held it before his face. Heaviness settled throughout his new form, his heavenly body. He felt suddenly weary, like he’d returned to the fight after he’d thought the battle won.
    ‘Here we are in such harmony,’ he said, letting the soil crumble between his fingers. ‘Our bodies are perfect. We can move anywhere at will, and in an instant. We cannot die. Perhaps if we can cultivate this concern for others that you mention we will have good cause to feel content.’ He didn’t believe a word of it. The illusion had already passed like the innocence of childhood.
    ‘Union with Ain should make us more real, Deacon Shader. There is no depth of reality here. I once thought as the others do, but then I began to have the nagging feeling that something was missing. What I have said to you is as much as I am able to grasp. I feel disconnected from life here, marginalized from existence. If we remain here then we may lie outside the world’s salvation. Your arrival, and Jarmin’s, has only made matters seem more urgent. Where are the others going after death? Why did you come here? What does this mean for the rest of us?’
    ‘Then what must we do?’
    ‘I wish I knew!’ Tajen cried with a mixture of frustration and despair. ‘But there is something about you and Jarmin that reminds me of what we have lost. You must think, Deacon Shader, try to remember the circumstances of your life, and, more importantly, your death. Therein lies the way out of this limbo, I suspect.’
     
     

IN THE SERVICE OF THE ARCHON
     
    S ammy stood upon an impossibly tall pillar amidst a whirlwind of shifting colours and deafening roars. He teetered dangerously and should have fallen, but his body remained taut, his feet rooted to the summit as if they grew from it. He chanced a look downwards, but could see only a yawning hole of blackness, a clinging mist covering its mouth like a cobweb.
    There was a tremendous crash and then searing jags of lightning blasted apart his thoughts. He was dead, he knew it. He wanted to cry out, but didn’t know how. There was nothing; nothing but a churning in his stomach and fire behind the eyes. Something bubbled up from deep inside him—a jumble of white-hot letters that formed into words and shattered, formed and shattered. Somehow, he knew he was being asked a question. He couldn’t hear it; couldn’t read it in the dizzying patterns of letters, but he felt it pulsing in his veins, squeezing through his innards, and rippling beneath his skin. His answer, though he had no idea why, was an unspoken yes.
    All was still.
    Sammy felt the softness of a cushion beneath him. He was sitting in an armchair before an open fire. A thickly woven rug formed a rectangle atop polished wooden floorboards. Soft sunlight filtered through latticed windows flanked by velvet curtains. It was like a storybook room. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he’d dozed off while Mummy was reading to him. Maybe she’d be there if only he could wake up. But the heat from the fire felt far too real; the fabric of the chair was rough and