The Pillars of Eternity

‘Matters are different now, of course. I have no doubt you have been abused a great deal.’

He nodded, as though the silent youth had given him some answer. ‘Nature has taken over. Compassion is to some extent artificial, a product of urban life. It is more normal for a malformed specimen to be attacked and driven out by the community. That is how it is with animals, and so it is with the village mentality into which most of civilization has declined.’

‘And what of you?’ Boaz challenged.

Again the bonemaker smiled. ‘We are what are known as “colonnaders”,’ he replied.

Boaz had never heard of colonnade philosophy, and this news meant nothing to him. But it was important, he was told, that he should be instructed in it. Silicon bones were intended for people of philosophic attainment, and it was necessary to test out their effects as completely as possible.

Aurelius was in fact the planet from which colonnade philosophy had emanated. After examining him, the bonemakers proclaimed that lengthy preparation would be needed before the final operation. Suitable bones would have to be manufactured to his dimensions, and besides there was much in his musculature to be rectified. Meantime they carried out some temporary corrective work. Boaz could now walk with a limp, again with the help of a stick, though his leg muscles were assisted by calipers and fired by adplants.

Hyton took him to Theta, the city in the equatorial sunbelt which was the home of colonnade thought. Colonnaders did not, in fact, call themselves colonnaders at all. The word was a popularism, coined from Theta’s distinctive architectural feature – its immensely long and spacious colonnades and peristyles which made the flower-decked city so delightful. To themselves, the colonnaders were merely philosophers – ‘lovers of wisdom’.

Along these airy pathways Boaz learned the refined pleasure of cool discourse. Aurelius was yet another class-C planet: another with a lemon sherbet sky, investing the colonnades with a crocus-colored radiance, as though the stone itself were soaked in saffron. Gazing down the endless perspectives was like staring into a benign infinity, while unfamiliar and marvellous ideas suffused Boaz’s brain.

Hyton introduced him to a man called Madrigo, whom he was eventually to look upon as his mentor. Madrigo paid no attention to his lack of experience in the world; he informed him from the start that this was of no moment. At first Boaz was inclined, more or less by a reflex learned on Corsair, to seek small advantages for himself, even to try to manipulate those around him. But this quickly faded when it met with no response.

Instead he began to emulate the behaviour of the people around him: the dispassionate considerateness, the assumption of good will on the part of others – for all conscious beings, Madrigo assured him, were in reality common citizens of a single city, the city of the universe.

But most important of all was the attitude Madrigo taught him to adopt toward himself. The mental condition striven for by colonnader training was known as ataraxy; undisturbed consciousness, or stoical indifference to events.

‘Everything is transitory, everything is arbitrary, yet at the same time everything is inevitable,’ Madrigo told him. ‘Whatever happens to you must be borne, without resentment if bad, without glee if good. Your own unconditioned consciousness is the secret of life.’

‘You can’t help your feelings,’ Boaz mumbled.

‘That is why you are here. You will learn to recognize your feelings, and not to be ruled by them. It will come.’

And he did learn. Guided by Madrigo, he made what was to him an amazing discovery: that his own feelings were not the most important things in the world, not even to himself. He learned to detach himself from troublesome emotions, to treat them as objects external to himself. When he did this, he found that his senses grew a little sharper, his attention span a little longer. Gradually, too, he found that behind the cruder kind of emotions, based on desire or the thwarting of it, were feelings of a broader sort – warmth toward others, pleasure that was softer, more voluptuous. These, too, Madrigo warned him, he must not become attached to. He must always remember that the world was, in a sense, illusory.

Boaz balked at this. ‘It seems pretty real to me,’ he sniffed.

‘So it is; it is real, but it is not self-sustaining. Everything that happens passes, and fades, and so it is as if it had never been – until it happens again.’