Patron's face was hidden, the delicate nape of his neck covered tightly with a white collar, a jacket half slipping down his rounded back. Kizu re- membered seeing that gray jacket during their midnight poetry sessions, but the clothes he had on now were brand new. Perhaps he had several sets.
Wearing fine clothes must be a habit he picked up in his former days as an eager missionary. Another thought struck Kizu; namely, that Patron wore these brand-new clothes because he knew a deep trance was coming on.
Could this state really be only a preliminary? Patron seemed totally absorbed. He held his body in a way you would never expect from a living human being. He sat there, utterly still, every semblance of humanity gone, as if he were carved out of wood or wrought out of metal.
"He's held this position for over ten hours?" Kizu whispered. "Isn't it painful?"
"He doesn't seem to feel any pain. But physically there may be some damage. You know, like when kids bite their lips before the anesthetic wears off at the dentist."
"Why isn't this considered a deep trance?"
"He's too calm. In a deep trance his body moves. Before he goes into a deep trance he acts like this for a short while, and then it's as though he's toss- ing and turning in his sleep. That's the usual pattern. Only when something prevents him from going into a deep trance is he like this, as if he's in a chrysa- lis, for such a long time."
The two of them kept their voices down. Even after they stopped talk- ing, they stayed leaning close to each other, gazing at this unnatural shape in front of them, an object it would be difficult to call a living thing. Guide cleared his throat as if sighing and spoke in a low yet distinct voice. Once, he said, they had had a doctor, a specialist, measure Patron before and after a trance using some specialized equipment. This was twelve or thirteen years ago, done at the request of a TV network. Patron's brain waves and EKG were incredibly calm, his breathing and pulse barely detectable. For a person to have readings at this level and still be alive, the specialist explained, was truly remarkable.
"What about when he's in a trance?" Kizu asked.
"We couldn't attach any measuring instruments," Guide said. "His movements are so violent that after a deep trance he's completely spent, physically and emotionally. After he's come back, he says all sorts of complex things, as if he's possessed. He says he's standing in front of a kind of three- dimensional mesh, a display screen on which a blur of light is continuously changing, receiving information.
"Patron seems to confront some kind of white glowing object. When you look at him when he's like this, it's as if his body is reacting to each bit of information he's receiving, moving constantly, never static. It's too much to bear. When I try to help him interpret all this, I realize the amount and qual- ity of information he receives is amazing. That's one of his real trances. His fate is to have this very rare ability. This might sound exaggerated, but Patron can freely view the entire course of human history and experience every last detail. He traces it all with his own body. He conveys to us what he's learned about the history of mankind and even its future, speaking to us-in the present-of the end time."
"What is this blur of light you mentioned?"
"As someone who's listened to what Patron says after he returns from his trances, transmitting what that's all about is my job." Saying this, Guide, who'd been listening to some inner voice, now lifted his head as if to turn his ear to sounds from the world outside.
Kizu heard a car pull up and stop in the road beyond the garden, and several people came quietly into the residence.
"Dancer will take over now," Guide said. "I'll see you home, Professor.
Ikuo will have to come back later, so I can ride with you and we can talk some more."
Guide turned once again to the thing, sitting there like a strangely twisted statue, and then faced Kizu. His eyes now adjusted to the dark, Kizu could read the strong emotions rising to the surface in Guide's face. His ex- pression held, at one and the same time, a fierce penetrating look and a look that could have been either pity or love.
Kizu was about to stand up after Guide when a small, sunburned ener- getic old doctor came in-a minitank of a man, to use a phrase that Kizu and his friends had used when they were boys-together with Dancer. Ignoring their bows, the doctor strode right up to Patron, peered at him, and faced Dancer.
"It's exactly the same as in the past," the doctor said, in a nostalgic tone.
"If he's been this way until now, he'll be okay. But he might have one of his deep trances, so I'll sleep here tonight in his bed. I'll keep an eye on him, but I'm sure he'll be fine."
3
"About these deep trances again, you said that Patron sees a net that shows the entire history of the human race?" Kizu had had them park his Mustang in the garage and was now in the minivan, with Ikuo at the wheel and Guide alongside him. "No matter how big this white blur of light is, wouldn't individual people, and the groups they form, be no bigger than a cell? Or is this just some kind of metaphor, a model for a certain historical perspective?"
"It's neither a metaphor nor a model," Guide replied. (At that instant, Kizu caught an unexpected whiff of alcohol. Later, when asked, Ikuo said Guide only drank occasionally.) "No matter how minute something might be, Patron actually sees it. A cell can't be seen by the naked eye, but can you use physical parameters to measure what the visionary eye detects? Patron sees the entire world, from the beginning of time to the very end, as one whole vision.
"Inside that would be included, as one particle, you, on the verge of making an important decision about your life, and me, talking here with you.
Both present as eternal moments."
"If I were counting on death to help me escape myself," Kizu said, "that net would indeed be a kind of hell."
"I don't believe Patron is viewing hell in his visions," Guide replied seriously. "It's not as if he chooses what to see, as if he's purposefully inter- preting a satellite photograph, but rather that he's grasping the entire struc- ture oí this huge net of blurred white light. That's the stance he takes, I think, when he's in a trance.
"After one of his major trances, Patron talked with me about that. It's not like the blur of light is projected out in space but more like a bottomless hollow. The entire hollow is a kind of spinning and weaving net, and the net with its countless layers is a screen that reveals human existence in one fell swoop, from its beginning to its end, and each point on that net is moving forward. It covers everything from the origins of time-nothing other than the first signs of the Big Bang to come-to the time when everything flows back to the one ultimate being. That whole huge spinning hollow, Patron told me, you could call God. In other words, as he sits there with his head between his knees like a weighed-down fetus, he's about to embark on a trance in which he'll come face-to-face with that God."
"If that's what God is, it's just another way of saying there is no God."
Ikuo's eyes looked straight forward as he drove, his taut shoulders, twice the size of Patron's, filled with the tension of his remark.
"What do you mean, there is no God?" Guide asked him back.
"Saying that God is this hollow of the whole world is the same thing as saying there isn't any God, right?"
"But by saying that God is this hollow you're admitting there is a God."