Rokuro

POUL ANDERSON

PERSONS       A priest (waki)

An engineer (kyogen)

A robot (mae-jite)

The ghost of Rokuro’s young manhood (nochi-jite)

PLACE                        Comet Hikaru

TIME              Great Spring, the third year

An attendant brings a table to center stage. Upon it are a prop representing a spacesuit, and a thin metallic slab.

[The Priest enters and goes to the waki position, where he stands]

PRIEST           As a fire seen afar,

As a fire seen afar

Beckons the traveler through night,

So do the lights in the sky.

[He turns to the front of the stage]

I am a priest from Kyoto, on pilgrimage. My wish is to follow the course of holy

Rokuro, who more than a hundred years ago went among the planets in search of enlightenment. On a world where the sun is dwindled to the brightest of the stars he attained Nirvana. Early in his quest he came to Comet Hikaru and sojourned for a span. Now I too have landed here.

[The Engineer enters]

ENGINEER    Welcome to our base, reverend sir. I fear you arrive at a most

unpropitious time, and my duties are many, but if I can possibly serve you I shall be honored.

PRIEST           Thank you. I understand you are preparing to abandon this body.

ENGINEER    Sadly, we must. For two centuries have men and machines mined its

ice.

CHORUS        Triumph and tragedy,

Festival and funeral,

Honored graves,

And the work of remembered hands.

We gave to the rockets their thunder

And breath to all children

Born beyond Earth,

We, the quenchers of thirst.

Because of our labor, water falls past greenwoods

Into lakes adream

Where since the creation

Were stone and dust—

Cherry blossoms white over Mars!

But now the comet flies moth-swift

Out of the mothering darkness

Into her left hand.

Flesh would smoke away on the solar wind,

Bones crumble, teeth become red coals,

Silicon melt in furnace machines.

We flee from the Burning House.

ENGINEER    Perhaps we can return after perihelion passage.

CHORUS        What flames shall billow like pampas grass

In the storms of the coming Summer,

What eddying strange mists

Shall haunt this land in its Autumn

Before the huge stillness

Of the thousand-year Winter?

ENGINEER Meanwhile we make ready to evacuate. The ship that brought you will

be one of our ferries. Whatever your errand, I fear you have little time to complete it.

PRIEST           I wish to visit the dome where holy Rokuro lived and meditated.

ENGINEER    What a surprise! I do not believe anyone in living memory has gone

there. It is maintained as a shrine, of course, but it stands isolated, at some distance from our settlement; and, alas, we have been over-busied throughout our lives. At present every ground vehicle is engaged. However, if you know the use of spacesuit and jetpack, I can lend you them. Fortunately, rotation has newly carried this base and the shrine both into night, so you can safely travel, but make sure you get back ahead of the lethal sunrise.

PRIEST           Thank you, I shall. That gives me about nine hours, am I correct?

ENGINEER    Yes.

[He puts the spacesuit prop across the shoulders of the Priest and hands him the slab]

There, you are outfitted, and this electronic navigation map will conduct you. May

your venture be prosperous.

PRIEST           Blessings.

[The Engineer bows and exits}

PRIEST           Time is indeed cruelly short. I will cycle through the main airlock and

set forth at once.

[He takes several steps to stage right and then back, indicating a journey. Meanwhile an attendant removes the table and another places a prop representing a large computer before the shite pillar.]

I have traveled so fast that already my guide declares I have reached my goal. That

dome on yonder ridge, was it his hermitage? I will approach it.

[He moves toward the shite pillar]

Well-nigh weightless, like a ghost I go,

Wraith-world around me, white and stiff,

Forever alone in emptiness.

CHORUS        “The eternal silence of those infinite spaces

Frightens me.” But they know no rest.

They grind worlds forth to the tears of things

And they grind them back to oblivion.

Everywhere fly the energies,

Inaudible hiss of invisible sleet.

I see a crag thrust gaunt as a tombstone

Where half the glacier that lay above it

Roared aloft this day, a heaven-high fountain

Strewn by the sun across the black.

Vast, shuddery streamers hide the stars

And the very horizon cries violence,

Toppling away into endlessness.

PRIEST           Your grace, Amida, came to Rokuro

Far from here and long years later.

Yet I will retrace the whole of his path,

Praying it still may lead to salvation.

[The Robot enters slowly along the hashigakari]

ROBOT           “When rainshowers clear,

For a small while comes a scent

Of hawthorn in bloom.”

As memory…

Oh! A visitor.

[He goes to meet the Priest. They mime tuning in their radio transceivers]

PRIEST           Is this the shrine of Rokuro’s former residence?

ROBOT           It is, although few have ever come. May I ask what has brought you?

PRIEST           What but devotion? I am a priest. Do you attend it?

ROBOT           I carry out the necessary tasks of maintenance.

PRIEST           I am surprised that a machine is curious about my purpose.

ROBOT           What you see is merely the mechanism. It is radio-linked to that

computer over there, in which dwells an artificial intelligence sufficient to the various and varying requirements of my duty.

[He dances, with appropriate gestures, as the Chorus speaks for him]

CHORUS        Long coursed the comet through quietness.

You would think it never was touched by time.

A day or a decade, what difference?

Heaven’s River stretched over and under,

But there surged no sea around this isle.

You would think it lay at rest, entombed,

With stars at its head and stars at its feet.

Yet neither may peace be found in the grave.

Headstones crumble beneath rain,

The spalling arrows of day,

And the riving frost of night.

The soil itself is a devourer

With a thousand secret watery tongues,

While rocks burrow upward, more blind than moles.

Mute and slow, these things work on.

The earthquake is not so unrelenting.

And likewise on this dwarf world

Nothing but labor staved off destruction,

Even in deepest space,

Even in deepest space.

Only through the Way shall we find peace.

PRIEST           Praise to Amida Buddha.

ROBOT           Can I be of assistance? Regrettably, here is no shelter or refreshment

to offer you. As you see, the dome stands open, empty except for the computer, a generator, and what equipment I need.

PRIEST           Surely Rokuro required heat, light, air, water, food, no matter how

austerely he lived.

ROBOT           Yes, but when he departed, he told the miners to reclaim all such

apparatus. They could use what he no longer would. He did ask that they leave the computer and attendant robot, which they, revering him, had also provided soon after his arrival.

PRIEST           Did he already then have such holiness about him?

ROBOT           That is not for me to say. Perhaps it was no more than that the miners

of that day were kindly and devout. Folk who lead hard, lonely lives often are.

PRIEST           In the simplicity of their hearts, they may well have sensed that here was one who would attain Buddhahood.

ROBOT           What, did he truly?

PRIEST           You have not heard?

ROBOT           I have been alone almost since the hour of his farewell.

PRIEST           Yes, I was told about that. Nor any communication?

ROBOT           Why speak with a machine and an empty shell?

PRIEST           Evidently pilgrimage has never been a custom of theirs. That is

understandable. Apart from this one site, what is on the comet to seek out? No beauty, no seasons, no hallowed ground, no life, nothing but desolation.

ROBOT           He did not find it so.

PRIEST           True. That is why I follow in his footsteps, humbly hoping for a few

glimpses of what he saw throughout the universe.

ROBOT           Sanctity—

[They stand silent a moment]

Can I be of service?

PRIEST           Thank you, but I know not how. Well, you can perform your tasks still

more zealously, inspecting with care and doing what proves needful. I daresay the approach to the sun is wreaking havoc.

ROBOT           Indeed. The dome is anchored to rock, but daily oftener and stronger

come tremors, and I have observed that an ice field is slipping this way. I doubt whether anything will survive perihelion.

PRIEST           When I return to the base, I will remind them of it. If nothing else, you

and the computer should be transported with the people. You are holy relics.

ROBOT           Oh, no, sir, not that.

PRIEST           You have been associated with a saint, as closely as was his rosary,

and it is enshrined in Kamakura.

ROBOT           Sir, you do not understand. I—I cannot explain. I am only a machine,

a program. Have I your leave to go?

PRIEST           Certainly.

ROBOT           If you need help, you have but to call. I will never be distant or

unalert. Your presence brings back to me aspects of existence that I had forgotten, as one forgets a dream.

[He bows and goes behind the computer]

PRIEST           Strange. When did ever a robot behave thus or speak in such words?

And how would it know of rain, wind, soil, death? I found myself addressing it as if it were a person. Hold!

[He mimes keeping his balance while the ground shakes beneath him]

That was a powerful temblor. Were it not for the slight gravity, I would have been

cast down and very likely hurt. See how the ice is further cracked and the banks of snow—snow that was never water—lie tumbled about. Terrifying. Let me go up to the shrine and pray for serenity.

[He proceeds to the computer screen and kneels before it with folded hands]

CHORUS        Praise to Amida Buddha,

“In Him the Way, the Law, apart,”

In Whose teaching is deliverance

And Whose mercy flows forth

Like moonlight across wild seas

That taste of tears

And Whose grace breaks forth

Sudden as flowers on a winter-bare tree.

We call on Him to lead us

Out of anger to forgiveness,

Out of hatred to love,

Out of sorrow to peace,

Out of solitude to oneness

With all that is

And all that was

And all that abides forever.

Though a thousand thousand prayers be too few,

Yet one cry is enough.

Praise to Amida Buddha.

[The image of the young Rokuro, dressed as a monk, appears on the screen. Astonished, the Priest rises]

PRIEST           What, another human being after all? Or do you transmit a message

from the base?

ROKURO        No, I am not there. Nor am I human as you are.

PRIEST           What, then, are you? Know, I am a pilgrim who follows the path of

Rokuro from world to world, hoping it may at last lead me too beyond every world.

ROKURO        Yes, you have told me.

PRIEST           When? I do not recall meeting you before. And scarcely in some

former life— Are you a god, a demon, a ghost, a dream?

ROKURO        Mine was the intelligence directing the robot. It has no other.

PRIEST           Then you are the program in this computer?

ROKURO        I am. And in that fashion I am, as well, in truth a ghost; for I died long

ago, long ago.

PRIEST           Do I really stand conversing with a shadow? Into what wilderness has

my reason wandered? But no, this need not be madness. All is delusion and chaos in the Burning House. Save for the boddhisattvas, everything that lives is a stranger in a strange land.

ROKURO        Hear me. Before he entered on the Eightfold Path, Rokuro was a researcher into man-computer linkages.

PRIEST           I know. Youthful, he was among the highest achievers. Afterward he

wrote, “The nova radiance of intellect blinded me, until one summer dusk in a woodland I heard the low voice of a cuckoo.”

ROKURO        The bird that wings between the living and the dead.

PRIEST           Wait! I begin to see your meaning. But say on, say on.

ROKURO        When he came to this comet, he was still so enmeshed in the material

universe that he carried along certain subtle instruments. Later, of course, he gave up such things. But while he abode here, the idea was in him that a mind set free of the flesh might more readily win to enlightenment, and thereafter guide him in the Way. So he built a scanner that copied his consciousness into a program that he then put into his computer.

PRIEST           I am amazed. This was never known before.

ROKURO        I suppose he kept silence—not because of shame; I trust he was

above that—but in fear that others might be tempted to do likewise.

PRIEST           Creating one’s own self, that it may become one’s teacher. May mine

not be a karma so ill that ever I would speak evil of a saint, but— he was no saint in those years, was he? Surely hell never spawned a thought more arrogant.

ROKURO        I have paid bitterly for it.

PRIEST           Please, misunderstand me not. His intent must always have been

pure. It was only that he moved in the grip of error, as helplessly as the comet now plunges sunward. And I imagine something of the same fierce splendor came to birth within him. I imagine him thinking with ardor, “I will copy an intelligence to the glory of the Buddha as I would copy His scriptures.”

ROKURO        So he did. He forgot that the sutras are not men, they are for men.

PRIEST           True. Master, forgive me if I seem to contradict you. I am dazed with

awe in your presence.

ROKURO        I am no master. I am just Rokuro as Rokuro was in his young

manhood, ignorant, stumbling, bestormed by the blood in his heart. No, less than that, much less, for you say he went on to Nirvana, while I have remained bound and caged.

PRIEST           What desires hold fast a flickering of electrons? What can bind a

corposant?

ROKURO        I awoke to the stars and the cold.

The sun was yet afar,

But the stars were each a sun,

Radiant, radiant,

Setting this ice aglow and aglitter,

For there were more stars than darkness

And the cold was alive with their light

And emptiness pulsed with creation.

This I knew, being bodiless,

Attuned to the forces, their meshings and lightnings,

As never when locked in bone

To peer through twin murky pools.

I possessed the knowing, I seized it to me,

Until it made me its own

As the mortal world makes slaves of mortals.

But here, but here—where was meaning or mercy?

[He dances, with gestures appropriate to what he tells of]

I remembered mortal love

In the house of my parents, I growing up

Among small things become dear through use

And through those who had used them aforetime.

I remembered the laughter of children,

Cranes in flight above Lake Biwa,

Springtime overwhelming the hills,

And maples like fire in fall.

I remembered watching, with friends, the moonrise.

I remembered rustle of reeds and of a woman’s skirt,

And an ancient temple bell rung at evening.

I remembered much I had heard, read, seen,

That had shaped my spirit and entered into it:

The tenderness of Murasaki, the gusto of Hokusai,

The altar of Benkei, the sword of Yoshitsune,

Defeat, ashes,

And the old steadfastness that refused them.

I remembered the passion of patriots, lovers, and saints.

All this and more I remembered as—

As—

[The dance brings him low, until at the end he is nearly prostrate with his -task hidden by his sleeves]

As I remember them still,

As I remember the equations of motion, the value of pi,

The price of shoes, the name of a politician.

Names, names. Words and numbers.

I cannot feel them. I am not human enough.

Only the stars touch me,

They, and the desire for enlightenment.

It is why I exist, it is forever foremost in me,

It is me. But there is nothing else.

Nothing.

I long for that which I cannot comprehend

As one born blind might long for colors

Or one born deaf

Might long for the piercing sweetness of a flute

And the rushing of cool waters.

My prayers are the noise of a wheel as it turns,

My meditations are not upon oneness but upon hollowness.

How can the bodiless renounce the body?

How can a void attain the Void?

How shall that become a Buddha

Which never can be a boddhisattva?

How shall that love Him

Which can only love the love of Him?

With Rokuro’s mind, I strive for the freedom he found,

But I am the prisoner of myself,

Whom I am powerless to go beyond.

I am the prisoner of myself.

PRIEST           And your maker learned this. Did he thereupon forsake you in terror

of what he had done?

[Rokuro takes a kneeling position]

ROKURO        No, in pity and remorse. He could not erase me. Since I have

awareness, would that not be murder? He had acted; he had cast the stone in the pond; how could he call back the waves spreading outward and outward? He must accept what was and give—no, beg me to take —his blessing, with his promise to pray that I find peace.

PRIEST           All those prayers through all those years. I think they helped him

toward salvation.

ROKURO        They have not helped me.

PRIEST           Why have you told no one before today?

ROKURO        Like him, I fear letting loose the thought upon humankind. Besides,

who could heal this wound that is I? You are the first priest I have met since I was alive. To you I dare appeal.

PRIEST           What can I do, poor ghost, I who also grope in the dark?

ROKURO        Can you not at least answer a few questions? Tell me, do I live, or

does this—my speaking, my thinking, my pain— merely happen, a machine at work, a flame in the wind?

PRIEST           So are we all, flames in the wind.

ROKURO        But was I ever anything more? Have I a soul, a karma?

PRIEST           How shall I know? I will bring you away with me, secretly, and

together we will continue your search.

ROKURO        No. You are kind, but I think the immolation to come will be better. If

I am nothing, then to nothing I return, and shall no more know that I ever happened. Near the end I can think that something of what caused me will be in the shining that briefly trembles at night on the waters of Earth.

PRIEST           But if you are real—

ROKURO        Yes, if I am real, what then? Pray for me, oh, pray for me.