Why Gahaziel Gave Up Saging (© Biswapriya Purkayastha)
Page 2
This
happened a long time ago (Gahaziel said), when I was a young man, not
much older than you lot. It was just after the Great Collapse, and people were
still picking up the pieces. Nobody had much of an idea of what was coming,
only that everything had changed, forever. In times like that, sages are much
in demand. I was
coming up north through the areas where the industrial units had stood before
the Great Collapse. Now, of course, they were piles of rusting ruins, full of
angry and lost people looking for their lives. Back then,
you must understand, there was no Gang Government, no local barons enforcing
the peace. Everyone had to pretty much fend for themselves, and any stranger
was an enemy unless he could prove that he could be useful in some way. Of
course, each group had different requirements, so that anyone who could satisfy
one lot wouldn’t necessarily pass unscathed through the next. Only a sage could
give everyone what they wanted, which was hopeful words, even if the hope was
utter bullshit. So I became a sage. Even
though I’d only adopted the profession as a necessity of survival, I found I’d
a definite flair for it. Of course, I wasn’t the only sage moving through the
country – many others had had the same idea, and each one was in direct
competition to all the rest, looking for a unique selling point. What made me
successful, I think, was that I didn’t really care. See here –
I’d had a bad time in the Great Collapse. I’d lost everything I had, including
a nice thing I’d set up with a girl. I was moving north, but without a specific
destination in mind, and without really caring if I got there or had to turn
back. So I wasn’t particularly trying to please anyone. I just told them what I
really thought. I didn’t
fully qualify as a sage, of course, until I’d acquired a retinue of disciples.
There weren’t that many of them, four or five at most, and it doesn’t matter
who they were because none stuck around for very long. But having a few
disciples gave me credibility – each time I arrived at a new town, retinue in
tow, I didn’t have to establish all over again that I was a sage and nobody
should kill me or drive me away. Actually,
things were going so well that I didn’t head north right away as I’d originally
planned. As I said, there wasn’t anything really important up there in any
case. So I spent a couple of years meandering back and forth through the belt,
earning my way by offering my sage’s wisdom, and I didn’t really see any reason
why things shouldn’t go on like this for decades to come. Of course,
we did hear the talk of the gang bosses setting up regional governments, but in
the former industrial belt there was only chaos and total social breakdown.
People had to go about with knives and homemade spears, and those who were
fortunate enough to have houses to live in made them into miniature fortresses.
Any source of food or clothing was a vital asset, to be guarded at all costs.
And there wasn’t even a hope of getting help if one fell ill. It was a perfect
time to be a sage, better than it ever has been before or since. Then one
night I was leaving a town on the industrial zone when it first happened. I’d
spent several happy weeks in that town – the inhabitants hung on to my words
with pathetic eagerness and the women...well, let’s say the women threw
themselves at me in such numbers that I was spoilt for choice. But, as always
happens, one of them began growing clingy and talking of settling down, and
some of the local young men began getting jealous, and I decided to leave while
the leaving was good. At this
time I had only three disciples – two men and a young woman – and they had
their own little jealous triangle on. It didn’t matter to me what they did with
each other, of course, and this particular trio had got on my nerves so
completely that I didn’t really mind if they chose not to tag along with me.
But I needed them to establish my sage credentials, so I went and hunted them
up. I arrived just as the two men were about to go for each other, knives drawn,
while the woman squawked shrill encouragement and advice impartially to both.
Total idiots, as I said, and once again I was tempted to leave them all behind. [ Continue to page 3 ] |