“Shit,” sneered Lurilile, puckering her lips and making kisses at him. “Everyone knows that.”
“Might be kind of fun to find out if the OA can think.”
“Might be kind of fun to find out if the OA is alive.”
“That, too.”
“Though, if taking bribes is evidence of life, we know parts of it are burgeoning.”
Cringh smiled sweetly. His colleagues from Phansure were not serious enough about religion to feel guilty about buying and selling it. On the other hand, his colleague the Bishop Absolute from Ahabar certainly was. As were some of the xeno-theo-whats-its. Lurilile had been trying for almost a year to find out who, and Notadamdirabong wasn’t going to tell her. He liked having her around too much to give her what she wanted.
“Be interesting to find out,” he said again, pulling himself out of the chair he’d been sitting in for several hours.
“Not going to read it here?”
“In my suite, I think. Besides, it’s nearly dinner time.”
“Wouldn’t want to miss that,” purred Lurilile, with a delicate, elbow punch into the Notable Scholar’s well-padded ribs. “No sir. Can’t miss dinner.”
Cringh smiled sweetly once more. Actually, he had already leafed through the document enough to have seen the page upon which someone had set down a series of brief, though elegantly lettered, questions.
1. How does one define God?
2. How does one know if a God is real?
3. Does a God have to create a race of intelligent creatures in order for that race to consider Him/Her a God?
4. Can a God adopt a people who already exist?
5. If a people become holy because of the influence of something, is that something likely a God?
6. If the answer to the foregoing is “no,” then what should we call it?
And finally, the questions Cringh immediately recognized as at the crux of the matter, from the view point of the Baidee:
7. Could the Overmind have created or allowed the creation of some smaller, lesser Gods or pseudo-Gods for any reason at all?
8. If the Overmind could not have done so, then shouldn’t we immediately dispose of any smaller things of that description we might happen to discover?
“Unofficially, of course,” said Cringh to himself, leaning rather more heavily than was absolutely necessary upon Lurilile. Sometimes he called her Abishag. He had forgotten exactly where he’d encountered that name during his studies, in some ancient volume or other. He connected it to Voorstod, somehow, which meant he had probably read it while researching Voorstoder beliefs, which meant Abishag must have been an ancient tribal beauty mentioned in the tribal scriptures. A young woman obtained to warm the bed of an old, cold chieftain, as he recalled. A chieftain not too distantly related to the ancient chieftains of the Voorstoders. Equally old and cold, no doubt.
“What are you thinking?” Lurilile wanted to know.
“I’m thinking things could get very lively around here quite shortly,” he said. “For a change.”
“Oh, goody,” she replied.
• At Settlement Three on Hobbs Land there had been deaths. A couple of the more violent and contentious of the inhabitants, one of them a Soames brother, had decided to leave Hobbs Land, a decision with which the settlement had been in complete agreement and sympathy. However, before the two could get themselves gone, they had happened upon an excuse for a fight, and the fight had ended with both dead. All in all, thought most of the people of Settlement Three, good riddance.
However, there were two bodies to dispose of. For some reason, it did not seem to anyone that the proper place to put the two bodies was in the Settlement Three graveyard.
“We think they ought to go up on the escarpment,” said Topman Harribon Kruss to Dern Blass, with no effort at all toward explaining himself or thinking up a logical reason for the course he was suggesting.
“On the escarpment,” repeated Dern, casting a look at Spiggy and Jamice, who happened to be with him.
“It’s very nice up there,” said Spiggy, apropos of nothing. “I agree, it would be nice to have a memorial park up there. Burial space near the settlements could be put to better use.”
“Memorial park,” repeated Dern, remembering not to try and make sense out of it.
“For everybody,” agreed Jamice, nodding her head. “One nice cemetery up there for all the settlements. Among the topes. It’s only a daywatch away, by flier.”
“Right,” said Topman Kruss, as he left to go make arrangements. “I knew it would be all right.”
Out of curiosity, Dern attended the interment. The two bodies were laid to rest in shallow graves in the wedge-shaped space between two of the long, strange mounds Volsa had discovered. Several cats, who had come along in the flier, scattered into the surrounding forest and emerged with dead ferfs in their jaws, which they dropped into the graves as they were being filled.
“Those two people never did get along, did they?” Dern asked the Topman, indicating the two graves. “Seems to me I saw reports about their orneriness all the time.”
“They always fought. Each other or somebody else,” said Harribon. “Lately, you know, people who don’t get along sort of get up and leave. Have you noticed that? I’ve had four leave from Three, including these two; five or six left Four; and so on. These two were going to emigrate, but they got overtaken by bellicosity before they had a chance.”
“I have noticed a number of departures lately,” Dern agreed.
“Not in Settlement One,” said Harribon. “All their departures took place years and years ago, shortly after the settlement was started. Funny thing. That’s one of the things I was most interested in about Settlement One. I thought their low hostility-high productivity record might be explained by the mix of people they had. Dracun and I were going to find out about that, but then things happened and it slipped my mind for a while. Then later on I remembered it and looked it up. The rest of us settlements had people coming and going, some of them not fitting in, a constant flux. Settlement One lost a few people during the early years, and then they didn’t lose any more. It made me curious, so I checked out a few of the families who left. Osmer was one. He came in about year twelve, stayed a few years, then left. Couple of years after he left here, he was executed for killing a dozen Glottles. His family moved on somewhere else after that.”
“Almost like he was sorted out to start with,” suggested Dern.
“Almost like that, yes,” said Harribon. “Well, the rest of us have been getting sorted out lately.” He pointed at the graves. “People like these guys somehow just can’t stop fighting. Mad at the universe, they are. Born that way, I guess.”
“So it doesn’t work for everybody,” mused Dern.
“It?”
“Don’t go dumb on me, Kruss. You know what I mean. In Settlement Three, the God Elitia doesn’t work for everyone.”
Harribon gave him a long, level look. “In Central Management, the God Horgy doesn’t work for everybody. Ninety-nine percent of everybody, but not all.”
“Be interesting to see what happens in Voorstod, won’t it,” said Dern. “You heard about that?”
Harribon nodded. “Sal Girat told me. I’ve been going over to keep company with Sal quite a bit lately. She says her mother went to Voorstod. Also Sam. Plus the little Wilm girl. Only reason I could figure for the little Wilm girl to go was … well. Is that what they went for?”
Dern shrugged elaborately. “All I know is what I feel in my bones, Topman.” He turned back to the burials to see a large orange cat drop a final ferf into the grave be fore the last few spadefuls of earth covered it. Spiggy was watching the cat curiously.
“There,” yowled the cat. “That does it.”
Spiggy said something yowllike in response, which Dern interpreted as, “Thanks for your help.”
“So we’ll all bury our people up here from now on,” said Dern.
“You feel that in your bones, do you?”
“You brought it up, Topman.”
Harribon Kruss rubbed his neck and smiled, wryly. Yes, he had brought it up. And from now on, they’d all bring their people up. Because it seemed like a good idea. Because it was a way, a convenience, a kindness.
• It took two days for the search-and-seize line of troops to cross Green Hurrah. Many of the people of Green Hurrah were known to men of Karth’s command. The army had been stationed in Jeramish for years, and they had made repeated forays into Green Hurrah, encountering the people who lived there on almost a daily basis. Persons who could not be identified or vouched for by trusted inhabitants were sent to the rear, under escort. Three camps had been set up at the border of Green Hurrah, and two of them were already swollen with internees from Ahabar. By nightfall of the second day, the line of men had reached the coast on either side of the thin neck of Skelp, and barriers were being constructed across that neck and all along the shore.
Across the main roads leading into Skelp, barricades had been set up—deep ditches, fences, overlapping suppressor fields to bring fliers down. Other suppressor fields covered the coastlines to either side, and beyond the fields were automatic weapons to bring down anything coming from the sea.
“What if people from Voorstod tried to go straight out, north?” asked Sam, curiously, pointing at the top of the chart. Across the room, Saturday and Maire sat at the table, remnants of a midafternoon meal scattered before them. Maire was slumped deeply into her chair in an attitude of dejection.
The Commander reached for another chart, showed Sam a line of coast north of Voorstod. “Icecap,” he said. “Beyond that, open ocean. Beyond that, the province of Caerthop and more guns. East and west, gunships with suppressors. They’d have to go straight out, off Ahabar, to escape this blockade.”
“Can they?”
“Not that we know of. No Doors. No intrasystem fliers.”
“No army?”
“No. They’ve always advocated terrorist tactics, not battle. Their biggest group is their Faithful, the brethren of the Cause led by that group of fanatics they call the prophets. If you ever want to meet a wildman, meet a prophet. But, in addition to the Cause, there are probably a hundred splinter groups, all of them devoted to terrorism of one kind or another, some of them with only half a dozen members. One nice thing about them, they’ve never been able to work together. No man of Voorstod takes orders from any other man of Voorstod. Has to do with their Doctrine of Freedom.”
“Uhm,” said Sam, who had never listened when Maire had explained the doctrine. “How many do you think there are in there who would fight you?”
“Fifty thousand Faithful, anywhere from twelve to eighty lifeyears old. Whipped up by their prophets, they’d run naked into the guns; I’ve seen them do it. Other groups? A few hundred each, maybe a thousand in the largest of them.”
“And how many in your army?”
Karth snorted. “Three million, if we call up the reserves. I’ve a million men involved in this blockade.”
“Then there’s no question you can go in and crush any opposition.”
“No question.”
“But many will die if you do.”
“Before we got there, they’d kill all the Gharm they could get to, I imagine. Plus many of the women and children. These men are the kind who would kill their slaves and families rather than let us free them.”
“No matter what the women want?” The question was surprised out of Sam. It was not one he wanted an answer to.
“Women have no rights in Voorstod except under System law. It always surprised me that they let their women leave. I always expected to hear they’d locked them up.”
“Too much trouble,” said Maire, roused from her dejection. “More trouble than we were worth, so they said.”
“But no longer?” Karth asked her.
“You’ve got to understand they’re a puritan people, Commander. Sex is a very powerful taboo among Voorstoders. They delay it and forestall it when they can. The prophets of the Cause tell them sex is power, and being celibate stores up their power. The priests tell them married sex is all right, but only that. Both priests and prophets tell them not to look at women, not to think of women, that women are evil snares of the devil. And all women past puberty wear robes that cover all of them but their eyes. So they wouldn’t have been inclined to hang on to us, not until now.” She sat up, rubbing her head.
“We were commodities, not valuable ones, but there comes a point at which there probably aren’t enough boy babies being born to make up for the Faithful who die,” she said. “Sam suggested that, and the more I think of it, that has to be it. That’s why they wanted me back, so I could keep others from leaving with my songs. But I fiddled around, making plans, trying to be sure we could get Jep out safely, and I may have fouled up the whole thing. I was supposed to be here long ago. I wasn’t supposed to arrive at the same time as that concert. I wasn’t supposed to be sitting there, watching. They thought to have me safe in Voorstod long before that happened. If they thought at all.”
“They didn’t foresee what Queen Wilhulmia would do either,” said Saturday, shivering. She knew that what had started out as a dangerous exercise was now doubly so. The men in Voorstod would be anxious, fidgety, liable to strike out at anyone and everyone. She could feel their animosity like a palpable thing, like a wind blowing from the north. When she shut her eyes, she saw arms, pointed upward, handless, blood fountaining from the wrists. They were her own arms. She saw a throat cut. Her own throat. She fought down terror and asked, “When is the guide coming?”
“Yes,” said Sam. “When is the guide coming?”
“She’s here,” said Karth. “Been here for a while. I told her you’d finish your food before you started out with her.”
“Where does she take us?”
“Right through Skelp into Wander. The Squire of Wander will give you food and a bed tonight, then he’ll send you on to Selmouth, in County Leward. That’s as far as we’ve been able to plan. After that, you’ll have to deal with the Faithful, for they’re the ones who have the boy.”
The Commander crossed the room and knelt before Saturday, taking her cold hands into his own. “I can’t talk you out of this? It seems a dangerous and useless endeavor, Saturday Wilm. You could stay here in Ahabar, become a concert singer, have young men—maybe even old men—sending you flowers.”
She assayed a smile, managed to arrange a fairly good one, a little tremulous. “No sir, you can’t talk me out of this.”
“It’s a religious matter,” said Prince Rals from across the room. “So she says.”
The Commander looked at Maire, as though for verification of this. Maire merely smiled, a wry smile. Well, it was religious, in a way.
“Is it?” the Commander demanded of her.
“It is,” she nodded. “Yes. If you must have a category for it, Commander, you may file it under religious matters.”
The Commander shrugged; very well, his shoulders seemed to say. Oh, very well. He went to the door and beckoned. A woman came into the light, a person of middle-life, her hair turning gray at the temples, her face lined. “This is your guide,” he said to them.
“I’m your guide,” she agreed. “I don’t tell you my name. You call me Missus. There’s a vehicle outside.”
Sam knelt before his mother and reached up to kiss her, his lips gently touching the edge of her own. He hugged her.
“Oh, Sammy. Why are you here?” she asked him. “I wish I knew.”
“Here to keep Saturday company,” he said. “Why else.” For the moment, keeping Saturday company was the only reason he let himself admit to out loud. Later he would consider others. Such as acting the true hero and bringing an end to these senseless misunderstandings between people. Last night, deep in the dark, Sam had lain awake questioning himself, doubting himself, telling himself he was stubborn and intransigent.
“Maybe you’re supposed to be,” a voice in his mind had said. Theseus, maybe. “Mayb
e you’re supposed to be. Maybe there’s a reason.”
Heroes, he thought, had to be stubborn perhaps, had to be intransigent, had to cleave to their ideas no matter how many people tried to sway them, even if those people were their mothers or sisters or friends.
The two of them, man and girl, went out into the night with their small packs of clothing and food. No weapons. Carrying a weapon in Voorstod, so said Karth, would get them killed faster than anything. Besides, neither of them knew anything about using weapons. They were farmers. Act like farmers. Sam, ready to object to that, had swallowed his words and pretended to accept them.
They climbed through the barricade, watched stoically by a hundred troopers. Missus put them in the back of the much-used vehicle with their packs, then drove them out of the occupied area and onto the wide road leading north. Theirs was the only vehicle on the road.
“Do the people of Voorstod know they’re cut off from Ahabar?” Sam asked.
“We have eyes and ears,” said the woman. “There’ll be men going out tonight, seeing can they get through. By tomorrow, everyone will know how tight the blockade is, or whether the Queen is only playing with us.”
“Do the people of Voorstod know why?”
“Something the Cause did. They’re not saying what it was.”
In a bleak, emotionless voice, Saturday told her what the Cause had done.
“Seems a small thing to cause so much ruckus,” the woman said. “One Gharm. Here there’s hundreds every year. Whipped. Hands cut off. Feet cut off. Blinded.”
Sam turned his head away. Surely, he thought, surely she didn’t believe that. One, as a terrorist ploy, but not hundreds.
“You don’t sound as though you care,” said Saturday, sickened.
“If I cared about every Gharm that got mutilated, I’d do nothing but care,” the woman responded. “I save my caring for what I can help.”
“Your children?”
“What I can help,” the woman said, shutting off the conversation.