"I see," Merlin said slowly, his frustration with the AI's lack of spontaneity and initiative fading as he contemplated the numbers.
I know what she was up to, he thought, and his mental tone was almost awed. My God, she was creating a second string for her how, and she didn't even tell the Commodore. That's the only possible reason he wouldn't have told me about it in his message. He frowned. Was this something she'd intended to do all along, or did it only occur to her after they'd officially separated because of their supposed disagreement? And how did she manage to doctor the records without Langhorne and Bédard realizing what she'd done?
There was no way for anyone to know the answers to any of those questions at this distant remove. But if Merlin didn't know how Pei Shan-wei had done it, he did know what she'd attempted.
He flipped ahead through the recorded pages of Jeremiah Knowles' journal to the passage he wanted.
". . . no more idea of the truth, then, than any of our fellow Adams and Eves. None of us were aware of the mental programming Bédard had carried out at Langhorne's orders. But when Dr. Pei realized what Langhorne had done, she took measures of her own. There was no way for her or any member of her staff in the Alexandria enclave to restore the memories of our past lives which had been taken from us. But, unknown to Langhorne and Bédard, she had secretly retained three NEATs. With them, she was able to reeducate a handful of the original colonists. We were among them. "
Merlin nodded to himself Of course that was what she'd done. It had been risky just to retain the Neural Education and Training machines, no doubt, given Langhorne's plans and willingness to crush any opposition, and actually using them on the colonists would have been even more dangerous. But it couldn't have been any riskier than her open refusal to destroy the records of the truth stored in Alexandria. Unfortunately, neither had been enough.
I can't believe this has all been just sitting here for over seven hundred local years, he thought. I wonder if any of her other "sleepers" survived Alexandria's destruction? And if they did, did they leave a record like "Saint Zherneau's," or did they simply dive as deep into their cover identities as they could? And how in Hell did this journal of his manage to survive when the Brethren finally found it?
He had no idea how to answer any of those questions, either . . . but he rather suspected that he knew someone who did.
* * * *
"His Eminence will see you now, Captain Athrawes."
"Thank you, Father," Merlin said as the under-priest opened the door to Archbishop Maikel's office and bowed the visitor through it.
Sunlight poured through the window that looked out across Tellesberg to the broad, blue waters of the harbor. A dense forest of masts and yards grew out of the waterfront, birds and wyverns rode the updrafts, hovering gracefully as the thoughts of God, and weather-stained sails dotted the harbor beyond them. Staynair's office was located on the lofty (for Safehold) Archbishop's Palace's third floor, and Merlin could see down into the busy streets, where people, dragon-drawn freight wagons, and horse-drawn streetcars seethed and bustled.
"Seijin Merlin," Staynair greeted him, holding out his ring hand with a smile. "How nice to see you again."
"And so very unexpected, I'm sure, Your Eminence," Merlin murmured as he brushed his lips across the proffered ring.
"No, not unexpected," Staynair acknowledged. He sat backdown behind his desk and a wave of his hand invited Merlin to sit in the comfortable chair on the far side of it. He continued to smile as his guest settled into the chair, but the smile had turned a bit more tense, Merlin observed.
"May I assume, Your Eminence, that any conversation you and I might have here today won't be overheard by other ears?"
"Of course you may." Staynair frowned slightly. "My staff understands that unless I specifically tell them otherwise, any conversation I have in this office is as privileged as any other confession."
"I was reasonably confident that was the case, Your Eminence. Under the circumstances, however, I felt I had no option but to be certain of it."
"I suppose that's understandable enough," Staynair conceded. "And I'm quite aware that Zhon and I handed you a rather . . . significant surprise, shall we say, yesterday."
"Oh, you could certainly describe it that way, Your Eminence." Merlin smiled dryly.
"And I'm sure you have questions," Staynair continued. "Under the circumstances, I think it might be simpler for you to just go ahead and ask them rather than having me attempt to explain everything."
"I imagine that explaining 'everything' is going to take considerably more than a single afternoon," Merlin said, and Staynair actually chuckled.
"Very well, then, Your Eminence," Merlin continued, "I suppose my first question has to be why 'Saint Zherneau's' journal and the other documents with it weren't simply destroyed, or handed over to the Inquisition, when they were finally rediscovered?"
"Partly because they weren't 'rediscovered' at all, Seijin Merlin." Staynair leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. "The Brethren of Saint Zherneau always knew exactly where all of them were; we simply didn't know what they were. Saint Zherneau and Saint Evahlyn left them sealed, with solemn directions for the Brethren to leave them that way for three hundred and fifty years after their deaths. Their instructions were followed to the letter."
"And the reason they weren't simply destroyed or regarded as the most heinous possible heresy when they were unsealed?"
"There, I think, you see the planning—or the impact, at least—of Saint Zherneau," Staynair said seriously. "Most of the religious philosophy and thought of Saint Zherneau and Saint Evahlyn was as orthodox as Mother Church could possibly have asked. For reasons which make perfectly good sense, I'm sure, now that you've had an opportunity to read his journal. You did read it overnight, didn't you, Seijin?"
"Yes, I did." Merlin regarded the archbishop with a speculative gaze.
"I assumed that was why you examined each page individually at Saint Zherneau's," Staynair murmured. Merlin cocked an eyebrow, and the archbishop smiled slightly. "The ability of the seijin to memorize things at a glance is a part of their legendary prowess. In fact, I rather suspect that was one of the reasons you decided to become one."
"I see." Merlin leaned back in his own chair and rested his elbows on its upholstered arms, steepling his fingertips across his chest. "Please, Your Eminence. Continue with your explanation."
"Of course, Seijin" Staynair agreed with a slightly ironic nod. "Let me see, where was I? Ah, yes. The single aspect in which Saint Zherneau's teachings departed from the mainstream of Church thought was the fashion in which he and Saint Evahlyn both emphasized tolerance and toleration so strongly and made it so central to their thought. The responsibility of all godly people to see all other human beings as their true brothers and sisters in God. To reason and remonstrate with those who might be in error, rather than condemning without seeking to understand. And to be open to the possibility that those who disagree with them may, in fact, prove in the end to be correct—or, at least, closer to correct—than they themselves had been at the beginning of the disagreement."
The archbishop paused, shaking his head. Then he looked away, gazing out his office window at the roofs and spires of Tellesberg.
"There is a reason Charis has worried the Inquisition for so long," he said quietly, "and not all of it was simple paranoia on the part of Inquisitors like Clyntahn. Despite the small size of the Monastery of Saint Zherneau, the Brethren of Saint Zherneau have wielded a disproportionate influence here in Charis for generations.
"Many of our local clergy have passed through Saint Zherneau's at one time or another. Indeed, I've often wondered what would have happened had the Inquisition been able to cross-post our clergy the way it has the mainland clergy. One thing, I suspect, is that it might have learned of Saint Zherneau's. . . influence if more of our homegrown priests had been assigned to mainland parishes. Not to mention what might have happened had the Church'
s senior positions here in Charis been more completely filled by foreigners. Fortunately, the Inquisition's distrust of Charisian orthodoxy has left the Church disinclined to expose other congregations to our contaminating notions, so very few of our local clergy have been posted to churches outside Charis itself. And the difficulty in getting senior churchmen to agree to serve out here at the edge of the world has worked in our favor in many ways, as well. Not least is that none of the relatively small number of truly senior clergy sent into Charis have even begun to suspect what the Brethren of Saint Zherneau have truly become here in the Kingdom and the Archbishopric."
"And what have they become, Your Eminence?" Merlin asked quietly.
"Agents of subversion," Staynair said simply. "Only a very small handful of the most senior Brethren are aware of the existence of Saint Zherneau's Journal or any of the other documents. Outside that handful, none of them have ever heard of a book called The History of the Terran Federation, or of a document called The Declaration of Independence. What every Brother of Saint Zherneau has been taught, however, is that every individual is responsible for his or her personal relationship with God. The Inquisition would most certainly find that teaching pernicious, even though it's precisely what the Holy Writ says. Because, Seijin Merlin," the archbishop looked back from the window, his eyes dark and intense, "a personal relationship implies both toleration and questions. It implies a personal search for God, a need to understand one's relationship with Him for oneself, not simply the regurgitation of official doctrine and catechisms."
Merlin nodded slowly as he felt previously unsuspected puzzle pieces slotting into position. So that was the explanation—or part of the explanation at least—for the openness, the sense of inclusiveness, which had attracted Nimue Alban to Charis and its society when she first set about seeking a proper base of operations.
"Almost every Brother of Saint Zherneau is aware that our emphasis on personal relationships with God would not find favor with the Inquisition," Staynair continued. "But not one of them, to the best of our knowledge, has ever brought the philosophy of Saint Zherneau to the Inquisition's attention. And that, Merlin, is because there is something in most men which cries out to know God. To find that personal, direct relationship with Him. The Brethren of Saint Zherneau—all of the Brethren of Saint Zherneau—recognize that wellspring of personal faith and belief within themselves. And although we never specifically address the point, all of them know it must be both protected and passed on."
"And it's also the first line of defense, isn't it, Your Eminence?" Merlin said shrewdly.
"Of course it is." Staynair's smile was crooked. "As I say, very few of the Brethren have ever learned the full truth of Saint Zherneau's writings. But by protecting and preserving the portions of Saint Zherneau's teachings of which they are aware, they also protect and preserve the portion of which they are not aware. For reasons I'm sure you can understand, it's been necessary to limit complete knowledge to a relatively small number of people. That's been a problem for many of us over the centuries, because it goes against the grain to deceive, even if only by omission, those who are truly our brothers. Yet we've had no choice, and so the majority of the Brethren have always viewed our purpose as gradual reform—as teaching the clergy to truly serve the souls of God's children rather than the wealth and power of Mother Church.
"Even that has scarcely been a safe mission over the years, of course. But many of our number, the majority of whom do not know of the existence of Zherneau's journal, have risen to relatively high positions in our local churches, and from those positions, they've sheltered and aided other Brethren of Saint Zherneau. Which is, of course, one reason why such a high percentage of our local priests were prepared to support our break with the Council of Vicars."
"I can see that, too," Merlin agreed.
"Don't misunderstand me, Merlin," Staynair said soberly. "When Zherneau's journal was first unsealed four hundred years ago, it was deeply shocking to the then Abbot. Only his own deep-seated faith in the teachings of Saint Zherneau kept him from doing one of the things you'd wondered about. He very seriously considered simply destroying all of it, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Even the 'mainstream Church' has a deep and abiding reverence for written testimony. That goes back to the original Adams and Eves who wrote The Testimonies, I suppose. And, of course, four hundred years ago, there were far fewer literate Safeholdians than there are today."
Merlin nodded again. The Church of God Awaiting's historical and doctrinal experience included none of the textual disputes of terrestrial tradition. The documents which composed the Church's official canon had been defined by the archangels themselves, not by any potentially fallible councils of humans, which automatically placed them beyond any possibility of dispute. And there was no tradition of "false gospels" or other fraudulent documents deliberately constructed to discredit the Church's faith in its formative period. There'd been no "formative period," and any attempt to produce such "false gospels" would have been buried without a trace under the writings of eight million literate colonists. As a consequence, Safehold approached the historicity of the Church with a completely different mindset from that of terrestrial theologians. Every scrap of history only proved the accuracy of the Church's traditions, and so became one more pillar of support, not a seedbed of skepticism.
Of course, that could change, couldn't it? As the decades in centuries passed in a society deliberately locked into muscle and wind power, with all of the hard labor required to support such a society, that universal literacy had disappeared. By and large—there had been exceptions, especially in the Church—only the upper classes had retained the leisure time to become literate. And as the ability to read and write had become less and less common, the reverence of the common (and illiterate) man and woman for the written records whose mysteries they could not penetrate had become paradoxically greater and greater.
And that must have suited the Council of Vicars just fine, he thought grimly. In fact, "Mother Church" may well have encouraged the trend, since the illiterate members of the Church became completely dependent upon their hierarchy to instruct them about the contents of those mysterious books they could no longer read for themselves. And that, in turn, became one more tool for strangling independence of thought in its cradle. On the other hand, the fact that literacy's been on the upswing again for a century or so is one of the reasons the wheels are threatening to come off their neat little mind-control machine, isn't it?
"Despite the temptation to simply destroy the journal and other documents, he chose not to," Staynair said. "It must have been an incredibly difficult decision for him. But in addition to the journal itself he had the letter Saint Zherneau had left for whoever finally unsealed the vault. And, of course, he had ample historical evidence to support the fact that Saint Zherneau had indeed, been an Adam himself That Saint Evahlyn had been an Eve. That' coupled with all of the public writings the two of them had left—including sections in The Testimonies—was enough to stop him from simply labeling the journal the ravings of a mad heretic. And the fact that he knew the books included with the journal had been sealed in the same vault for the better part of four hundred years proved they, too, must date from the Creation itself or immediately after it.
"Or, of course"—the archbishop's eyes bored into Merlin's—"from before it."
Merlin nodded once again. Personally, despite all of the Church's traditional reverence for history and historical documents, he suspected Staynair was probably understating even now the incredible depth of the spiritual struggle that long-ago Abbot of Saint Zherneau's must have faced. The degree of intellectual integrity it must have taken to make—and accept—the connections Staynair had just summarized so concisely in the face of every single word of the Church's official doctrine was difficult even to imagine.
"Forgive me, Your Eminence," he said slowly, "and please, don't take this as any sort of attack. But with this journal, and the othe
r documents in your possession, you've known all along that the Church's entire doctrine, all of its theology and teachings, are built upon a monstrous lie. Yet not only did you never denounce the lie, but you've actually supported it."
"You would have made a splendid Inquisitor yourself, Merlin," Staynair said, his smile more crooked than ever. "I mean an Inquisitor of Father Paityr's sort, not that pig Clyntahn's, of course."
"In what way, Your Eminence?"
"You understand how to direct questions that force a man to look straightly at what he truly believes, not simply what he's convinced himself he believes.
"In answer to your perfectly valid question, however, we must plead guilty, but with extenuating circumstances. As, I feel quite confident, you already understood before you asked.
"Had we openly opposed Church doctrine, proclaimed that every word of the Holy Writ was a lie, we would merely have provoked the destruction of Charis centuries earlier. Perhaps the Inquisition might have settled for simply exterminating those who brought the disturbing message, but I think not. I think too much of Langhorne's and Schueler's intolerance and . . . thoroughness clings to the Inquisition even today." The archbishop shook his head. "I've read Saint Zherneau's account of what truly happened in the destruction of the Alexandria enclave, what truly happened on the dreadful night when it was transformed into Armageddon Reef I do not have the background to understand how simply dropping rocks could have had the effect Saint Zherneau describes, but I fully accept the accuracy of his testimony. And if the Inquisition of today lacks the Rakurai, the Group of Four has just demonstrated that it continues to command swords in plenty.
"So, since we dared not openly oppose the Church's lies lest we achieve nothing but the destruction of the only evidence that they were lies, the Brethren of Saint Zherneau—those of the Brethren who knew the truth, at least—dedicated themselves to gradually building a different sort of Church here in Charis. Even that much constituted a deadly risk. We recognized that, eventually, the Inquisition would undoubtedly react as, in fact, Clyntahn has reacted. We'd hoped it wouldn't be this soon, and it probably wouldn't have been if Clyntahn hadn't become Grand Inquisitor. Yet he did, and we'd already pushed too far, made too many changes of which Mother Church disapproved. The truth of the matter is, Merlin, that Clyntahn has been right all along about the danger Charis poses to his precious orthodoxy. I rather doubt he's felt that way on the basis of any reasoned consideration of the evidence, but his instincts have not played him false where we are concerned."