From alt.pub.dragons-inn Thu Oct 27 15:45:50 1994 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:7841 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!netcomsv!decwrl!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!caen!crl.dec.com!crl.dec.com!jac.zko.dec.com!leggy.zk3.dec.com!orb!not-for-mail From: Andrea.Evans@Orb.Nashua.NH.US Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [KAN] Passing Bell Date: 26 Oct 1994 22:21:17 -0000 Organization: Duchy of Wabesylvan Obspauk Lines: 134 Sender: news@Orb.Nashua.NH.US Message-ID: <199410262221.SAA01344@Orb.Nashua.NH.US> Usual ADMIN stuff: The character of Kadrys and this post are copyrighted 1994 by Andrea Evans. All other characters are the property of Penny Hutchison, and are used by permission. This post may be distributed and archived via standard Usenet and Altnet channels. All other rights, including right of repost, are reserved to the author. This follows on immediately after "Requiem". ====================================================================== Kadrys stood, watching ar'Elya leave, sharing the profound waiting stillness of her garden. Then the stillness broke as he stretched with languid grace, rising onto his toes and reaching his hands toward the skies. As he raised his face to the clear morning, his eyes narrowed against a sky they saw as a sheet of searing white glare. He eased out of the stretch, bowing his head and heaving a long slow sigh. The tension drained away from his body like the ebb of the tide, a fading whisper rising to his ears from the shore beyond the courtyard walls. His eyelids lowered, the lashes deepening the shadows round his eyes. His lips curved in a smile of drowsy contentment. He shed his clothes as carelessly as forgotten ideas. 'So much happening so soon... Ahhh, I need to rest...' he sighed in the quiet of his mind. Then he sank to his knees and his hands slid into the moist earth, started to push it aside. With inhuman, liquid ease he vanished from view. Buried deep within the cradling loam, a heartbeat slowed, slowed, and ceased. A body lay stilled in death, a soul arose from its bonds to wander, briefly free... --- Darkness. Surrounding him on all sides. No longer the intimate, enfolding darkness of the earth, but an empty darkness that whispered of distance, of eternal lightless space. Then, far, far away, a spark of light. Clear and poignant as the first tiny star. Then, the light grew and intensified, shining like the soul of all crystal. As it drew nearer it resolved into a whirling, multifaceted shape: a snowflake made of glittering mirrors. The light built until everything was blurred in whiteness, and then it faded a little. Kadrys could just see a beautiful woman amid the radiance, could just discern her shining silver eyes. ar'Elya. He smiled warmly at her, tried to come closer, but somehow he was powerless to move. The sensation had an ancient familiarity: the immobility that often featured in mortal nightmares. He had no time to wonder about it, for the next moment the woman spoke. Her voice was like ar'Elya's, but it held none of her warmth. "You smile at me. Are you so deluded by your lust that you welcome the instrument of your death?" The word was like an icicle stabbing into his heart. "My d... ...What?" he gasped. She laughed, a high peal of mockery that rang in his mind. "Oh, don't gape at me. Can you really be so ignorant? No, I wouldn't bother to personally soil my hands with your insignificant life. But I will bring about your death all the same... And I will not do so alone. You yourself have already sealed your fate! You have freely chosen to participate in your doom. And I will not be the slayer, but something far greater will. Something you can neither fight nor flee. The universe itself. The balance of life requires your death." She stared searchingly at him, impaling him on a gaze like a silver lance. "No, don't try to deny it. You know what I'm talking about. Deep inside, you know. You've been ignoring it all this time, ever since you made your fatal mistake." She smiled, a smile with the same deadly brilliance as a holy talisman. "Allow me to - enlighten you. Over the years, you've seen that in every species, birthrate - or more precisely, replacement rate - is closely linked to deathrate. The longer lived a being is, the slower its rate of reproduction must always be. After the reproduction period of life is finished, that individual is of no further importance, and death follows swiftly. These things are vital, else the universe would be choked by one species, and this is something the balance with other life forms will never permit." Again, that maddening, ringing laugh. "Now do you see?" she resumed. "You have survived all this time, because you have never once replaced yourself. You never fathered a child while you lived. You never even raised up another soul after you died. The universe did not deny you those extra years, because you added no extra burden to it during those years. Your existence was a sterile one, so it was suffered to continue. ...But now? At long last, lust has found a way. You have finally fathered a child. You have replaced yourself. So now, you are superfluous. Expendable. Doomed. In the long run, which is the only sense of any interest to you now, you cannot possibly continue to survive. The universe demands your death." It was too much. He could not run, he could not hide from her words. That it was _she_ who told him these pitiless truths, was the final, crushing blow. He bowed before her, curling inward upon himself, overwhelmed by pain, before raising his head to cry a protest at this cruel twist of fate, howling into the empty darkness and the cold light. He had expected more laughter, but only silence followed his cry. He stared up at her, straining his senses against her punishing radiance. She was studying his reaction with the cool, detached interest of a scientist bent over a dissection tray. At last, she spoke once more. "There could be a way for you to live..." she murmured appraisingly. Hope soared suddenly in him. She nodded fractionally, and continued. "Yes, there could be a way indeed. Remember what I said? The critical factor is not birthrate, but replacement rate. Your life is not superfluous, as long as it is not replaced..." Silence. A silence that thrummed with tension. "Either your replacement, or _you_ must die!" She hammered the words home, driving them past the screaming emptiness of his shock. "You have _one_ last chance at life! Choose! His life, or yours! Who will live? Who will die? Death for a clone, a diminished copy scarce created, or final death and eternal damnation for _you_! Which do you _truly_ want? Choose! _NOW!_" She loomed over him, her eyes piercing to his depths, laying his secret desires bare... The horror of it pounded at him, tearing at his soul, reaving it of all sensation. With the last shreds of his will he wrenched himself away, plummeting into the welcome oblivion of his grave. ====================================================================== [Note:] The title, "Passing Bell", refers to "the hallowed bell which used to be rung when persons were _in_extremis_, to scare away evil spirits which might be lurking ready to snatch the soul while passing from the body ... The bell rung at a funeral is sometimes improperly called the 'passing bell'." -- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. Thanks to Penny Hutchison for the title and this quote.