The Pillars of Eternity

The cards distressed him and he rose from the occasional table where he had been seated, to go pacing about the narrow space.

Eternal recurrence … it was his burden. Should it not be everyone’s? What was more depressing than that one’s life must be repeated endlessly, to the last unalterable syllable? … But to the common man this knowledge had no meaning, he realized. It was an equation in a book. Only to a philosopher, to Boaz who had had the sure proof of the equation shown to him, for whom it had become a part of everyday thought, was it as real as yesterday, tomorrow, or today.

His stricken look amazed Romrey. He stared up at the shipkeeper. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Did you see something in the cards?’

‘If you like,’ Boaz answered brusquely.

‘You know,’ Romrey said, after a thoughtful pause, ‘it’s probably not good manners after you saved my life, but I’m curious about you. You look like one lonely man to me.’

Words came from Boaz before he had to time to check them. ‘Loneliness: an abyss without a bottom, into which to fall, without limit. So it must be.’

The intensity of Boaz’s pronouncement took Romrey aback slightly. ‘Nobody need be that alone,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you’d mind telling me what you’re hoping to find here on the Wanderer. It’s probably not money, like the rest of us.’

When Boaz ignored him, he slipped his carborundum cards out of his pocket. ‘Well, maybe these can tell me,’ he said, and began to shuffle preparatory to dealing them out for a reading.

He had half feared that Boaz would react to his temerity by turning him out onto the surface to fend for himself, regardless of colonnader ethics. Boaz, indeed, seemed angry. He knocked the cards from Romrey’s hand.

‘This trash will tell you nothing.’ He spoke thickly. ‘Your pack has not the depth. Very well, you importuning thief, I will tell you. Who knows, perhaps you have the intelligence to understand it. But first you must be able to understand that there could be a man who has suffered in a way unknown by any other being in the history of creation. Could you believe in inconceivable suffering? Does it sound like a melodramatic exaggeration? No, it is literally true, and I am that man. I will not explain how, except to say that science, in seeking greater good, has wrought the greatest ever evil, and that the school of mental calm is responsible for such agony as to make calm impossible. All my actions are directed toward escaping from this agony. And that is why I am on Meirjain.’

‘You suffer it now?’ Romrey inquired.

‘It is in the past.’ Boaz turned away to hide his haunted eyes.

‘Then you already have escaped it,’ Romrey said, puzzled. He shrugged. ‘If the memory is unbearable, you could always have it erased.’

‘No!’ Boaz turned to Romrey again. His expression was savage. ‘Don’t you see? The universe repeats. Everything that has gone before must come again, and again, forever and ever. It lies before me.’

‘Yes, of course,’ muttered Romrey, though he showed by his quizzical expression that the idea was barely comprehensible to him.

Suddenly he laughed softly. ‘It is time-gems you’re after, then! You want time travel, right? To travel back and change what happened … whatever it was….’

‘The past? Why change the past?’ Boaz shook his head. ‘You disappoint me, Gare. Do you know nothing of cosmology? The future is the past. Because the future has already occurred, countless times in the past. What has been must be, again and again. Do you see, Gare? What has been must be, again and again. I must change the future, abolish predestination, put time on a new track.’

‘Past, present or future, everybody knows time is immutable – predestined, as you put it. The world goes from phase to phase of the same eternal cycle. It’s a law.’

‘Time has been immutable till now.’ Boaz slammed his fist on the table, causing the cards he had laid there to jump. ‘You are wrong. It is not a law. It is a circumstance. Nature is strong, but not omnipotent. Indeed, her strength can be used against her.’

It was on this point that all his hopes were pinned. He had studied all the data obtained by scientists, and all the arguments of the philosophers, and he had concluded that nothing made predestination an absolute law. It was a consequence of the strength of nature, that was all. The sheer weight of the universe, so to speak, caused events to run an identical course with each manifestation. If someone could be strong enough, or clever enough….