Private empires are a luxury of the past, but
Belperron was determined that he should have one too. Every night since moving
into his isolated house beyond Gualeguaychú, he dreamed of his previous lives.
He had been a hero in every incarnation, fighting in battles from the dawn of
recorded history to a time just before his birth. It was clear he was destined
for greatness. But he wished to surpass these earlier exploits. He imagined a
domain with his name stretching from the Pampas to the Serra do Mar. To achieve
this he needed to rely on his own myriad initiatives and innumerable muscles.
He planned to summon his other selves into the present. They would serve him,
for he was them, the next step in their mystical evolution. He had read enough
on the subject to know that the law of karma is logical and progressive. They
had led marvellous lives and so he had been reborn as the finest of all. His
present incarnation must be the highest self he had ever attained.
His house was large and lonely with many rooms. He
planned his campaign in a chair on the patio. An army made up of all the heroes
he had ever been would march right across Uruguay to Rio Grande do Sul, seizing
every town on the way and establishing garrisons there. Once he reached the sea
he would turn back. He would fix his capital in Artigas or Quaraí at the centre
of his kingdom. It would be interesting to inspect his troops in chronological
order. Any man who died in battle would have a memorial in the grateful bones
of his successor. The situation would be strange. And yet Belperron believed
the philosophical difficulties might take care of themselves. He was a man of
action and preferred dangers to doubts. He owned a long knife with a wavy blade
which he liked to toss in the air and catch by the handle. This was just a
method of killing time before he could employ his talent for aggression in real
combat. When he cut his hand, he never bandaged the wound.
He knew a man in Montevideo who was a dealer in rare
books. He wrote a letter to this friend, reminding him of a favour owed, a
trivial matter concerned with a false passport. Herr Otto Linde had contacts in
India who in turn knew of obscure manuscripts in temples in Bali. Within a
year, Belperron had the secret in his possession. He opened the parcel with his
long blade and held the parchment in his scarred hands. He had already taught
himself the tongue of the Majapahit scholars. Because he did not want
unexpected visitors, he locked every window and door in his house. Even out
here, an occasional rider might pass and decide to beg a cup of yerba mate
or spoonful of dulce de leche. Belperron washed his face before
conducting the difficult ritual. He was quick to learn secrets and mysteries.
His sharp mind and talent for business were rewards for so many generations of
heroic life, the product of centuries of good karma, accumulated through past
deeds.
But the riches he had already won, and those he had
spent buying this vast house, were nothing compared with what awaited him.
Thoughts of his empire swam in the candlelight before him, washed on the tides
of flickering orange as he spoke the ancient words over the flames. The spell
was done. His cleverness and determination had pulled all his other
incarnations from their own ages into his present. He had focussed the broad
waveband of his cosmic soul to a point no larger or longer than his house.
There was a sound of inverse thunder. The hundred empty rooms were now full.
The displaced air rushed through the keyholes and chinks in the walls. The
candles extinguished themselves. Belperron stood, but he did not need to move
to understand his fatal mistake. It was all around. It pressed tightly against
him from every direction. He cursed Herr Otto Linde and all books and empires,
but there was too little free air to carry his words. Soft bodies absorbed the
sounds, even as they made their own noises. And most were not men.
The spell which lurked in the crumbling manuscripts
was less specific than he had assumed. Once chanted correctly, it summoned to
one place and time all the incarnations of the operator. Not merely
those of the past but also every future self. Possibly it was a sin to conduct
the ritual. More likely Belperron's crime was his ambition, his desire to
create a private empire. The brutality of this scheme was so great, its evil so
deep, that it negated all his previous good karma. It returned his soul to the
bottom of the evolutionary mound. His next incarnation, the one destined
after his death, was far below the merely human. And all the subsequent
incarnations were gradual improvements on this lowest being, a slow return to
the long climb back to fish, reptile, dog, ape, barbarian. Recorded history is
not so very old. All the past heroes he had ever been were with him in the
house, but so were all the base creatures he would become. There were only
several hundred of the former, but millions, even billions, of the latter.
The future of Belperron was longer than his past. But
only for his soul, not his current body. During the hour which followed the
successful implementation of the spell, the past heroes who formed his
invincible army were devoured, stung, bitten, strangled or crushed to a second
death by the enormous variety of beasts also present. There was no escape. The
exits were locked. A rider who passed the house saw it shake on its foundations
and assumed he was witnessing a tremor. He did not pause. The shadow of a
crocodile passed across an upper window. The wicks were out and smoking, so
this hideous profile must have been cast by a more surprising source of light,
a knot of fireflies or glow-worms. Much later, when looters came to raid the
house, they found only a jumble of rotting carcasses in peculiar combinations.
The stench of millennia chased them out. Belperron himself had died of the
plague. A single germ had entered his bloodstream and multiplied. It was an
almost infinitely debased version of himself.
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