“You’ve already got me into trouble, you devil,” she told Fremant, who had dismounted. “Some brutes from the Center was round here asking all about you. Said I should not have lodged you. I’m in fear of my life, I am.”
“Look, Bellamia, we’re in great haste. Here’s the money I owe you.”
He held the money out to her.
“Money’s no good to me if my throat’s cut, is it now?” She pulled her door wide open. “Here, take me with you, wherever you’re going. I’ll cook for the lot of you.”
“It means trouble to take a woman with us,” said Ragundy, the bald youth.
“I’ll give you trouble if you trouble me,” she told him.
Bellamia had been sleeping in her clothes and now appeared ready to leave immediately.
“What about the parrot?” Fremant asked.
“To hell with the parrot,” she replied. “I’ll let it go free.”
After a short argument, Essanits ordered her to mount his horse behind him and to hold tight. He hauled her into position. Then they were off.
THE CONTINENT ON THE EDGE of which Stygia City perched had long ago tipped toward the ocean. Thus, leaving Stygia City to travel inland entailed a steady climb upward—not exactly steep at first, but unremitting: unremitting until the horsemen came, on the second day, to a veritable hill, which marked the beginning of more broken terrain, and a different kind of land.
“Everyone dismount,” Essanits ordered. He helped Bellamia down from his horse.
The others also dismounted, looking about them rather uncertainly.
“We must offer thanks to God for keeping us in safety so far.”
“God?” exclaimed Ragundy. “We left God behind long since.”
“Jesus Christ visited this planet only for a short while, leaving never to return. From that absence stem many of our problems,” Essanits declared. He lifted his eyes. “We offer thanks to God, if he is listening, for our safety so far, and for our arrival in a territory where we are free of the pollutions of Stygia City. Keep us steadfast and may we enter more fully into your mind. Amen.”
Embarrassed, Fremant and Ragundy muttered their own amens in response.
Ragundy asked if God’s mind included women. To which Essanits replied patiently, “You will always try to vex me, Ragundy. You voice your own troubled character. When you tire of doing so, you will move nearer to God and feel happier. I pray for that day.”
Bellamia was more strident. “Just supposing there was a god, he’d be more likely to include me than a little dottle like you!”
“Ah, shut up, the pair of you,” said Oniversin.
“We must all hold our tongues,” said Essanits, “in the hope that good sense may thereby govern our lips.”
Fremant asked what they were going to do now.
Wordlessly, Essanits flung up an arm and pointed into the hills.
They mounted their horses, which had been grazing, and headed onward again.
Now there was a faint trail, leading among boulders. Some boulders were the size of houses. Many had streaks of colored clay in them, yellow zigzags through the rock. At the feet of these boulders grew various plants. Some were in bloom, bearing modest black-and-white petals. Bellamia wanted to dismount to pick some but Essanits would not stop.
As the horses picked their way along, small wingless birdlike insects flitted among the boulders, clucking their disgust at human intrusion.
On the following day, they came on a more open space, where the ground was level. Ahead of them lay a small hill. On the hill, and below it, stood a scatter of houses.
“Yonder is Haven,” said Essanits, “where we shall be favorably received.”
It was as he said. Nearer the houses, they dismounted so as not to appear formidable to a small group of people who were coming to greet them.
The greetings were serious and unsmiling but friendly nevertheless. The newcomers were welcomed into the village, Fremant leading Snowflake. He felt the strangeness of the place; the sense of being an Eternal Stranger, as Breeth had called him, came upon him. He struggled with himself.
“Thanks be to Jesus Christ, who guided us here,” Essanits had said to the crowd, before dismounting.
Many of the cottages were built on stilts, with ladders leading up to the living quarters. Insectoid creatures resembling small goats were kept tethered under the houses, together with an occasional horse, and the roofs of the houses were covered with turf. A forge and a stable with horses for hire stood together on one side of the square. Another house sold milk and cheese of a kind called katchkall.
A stiltless cottage housed a potter; behind his cottage was a litter of broken pots, their brown fragments resembling the wreckage of the shells of marine creatures. Above the potter, Fremant was told, lived a man, a hermit, who made clothes. One of the houses standing on what served as the village square was reserved for guests, and here the newcomers were installed.
On the whole, the village of Haven did not present a welcoming appearance. Centuries of technology had brought these humans here; now they gave every appearance of having sunk back to Earth’s Middle Ages.
It seemed to Fremant at first that the population of Haven consisted either of babies or of the aged. Instead of sounds of music came the sound of babies crying, or at the least uttering cries. He found the cries particularly unnerving. On closer inspection, the aged were less aged than withered, worn out by their labors in the fields. The seed stored in the holds of the New Worlds, which had brought them to Stygia, was unsuited to the soil of Stygia. And the soil was mainly barren, as many readily complained.
Despite its name, Haven was a harsh environment, where music and laughter were lacking. An old man, by name Deselden, reinforced the gloom with his sermons—to which most people listened, for want of better entertainment.
Essanits was known here and given a courteous welcome. In particular, two rows of neatly dressed children, one of boys, one of girls, sang a chant for their visitor, repeating over and over the phrase, “May you find some comfort here, and in Jesus.” After their song, they stood quietly, well-behaved under the control of a gray-haired woman who introduced herself as Liddley. She was known as “The Schoolteacher.”
The portly elder by the name of Deselden, who clearly wielded local authority, gave a rambling speech and uttered a prayer, long in words and strong in self-abasement, in Essanits’s honor, to which Essanits responded in kind. That evening, they were served a frugal meal, on the understanding that they would have to cook for themselves the next day. Bellamia was pleased to hear that.
“The water from their well tastes vile,” she said, behind her hand. “Vile! I’ll have to boil every drop of it or else we’ll fall ill.”
The horses were stabled below the guest house. When the company lay on mattresses to sleep, the restless movements of the horses could be heard beneath their heads.
The noise sounded like doors slamming. As Fremant lay drowsing, the cries came to him again, and he could hear men talking.
One voice was familiar. He remembered the cultivated American tones from long ago. The name came back to him on a tide of fear. Abraham Ramson! With the recognition dawned the knowledge that he was lying shackled on a hard floor.
Abraham Ramson was saying, “…wasting our time. Set him free, Algy. He’s a nobody. He wants to feel British. He has some English or Irish wife, whatever her name is, and he has written what he thinks is a funny book. I scanned it. It’s stupid and harmless.”
Another voice said, “But he does talk about the prime minister being assassinated.”
Ramson replied. “So what? I am inclined to believe him when he says it was intended as humor. Had he really planned to assassinate your PM, he would hardly be likely to put the idea into print, would he, now?”
“Okay, so what? You advocate setting him free, Abraham?”
“Sure do. Show the little bastard mercy. Kick him out on the street! Get rid of him! He’s free to go.”
&n
bsp; “ENJOY WHAT YOU CALL YOUR FREEDOM,” Essanits told Fremant. “You can live here in Haven and regain spiritual qualities.” He and Fremant, together with Bellamia, Ragundy, and Oniversin, were breaking their fast with bread and honey and glasses of water from the village well. The water did indeed taste vile.
After the meal, Fremant and Ragundy took a walk about the village. Fremant tried to shake off the hollow feeling that he was not really here. “I must be sick,” he told himself. A large cross stood on one side of the square, to which Ragundy drew their attention. “That’s Essanits’s sign,” he said. “You must know by now he’s a bit cracked about this feller Jesus. Who was Jesus, do you know? I don’t remember him from the ship.”
“So much has been lost.”
“But do we want it back? Present’s bad enough without Jesus.”
“He was assassinated, that’s all I know, or care.” He sighed, thinking of his vow to kill Astaroth.
They had reason to learn more that evening. Haven was quiet during the day. Late in the afternoon, the villagers returned wearily from the fields, some bringing livestock with them. Their faces were worn. Many went straight to lie down awhile. They congregated in the square as the sun was setting behind the shoulder of a distant mountain, and Elder Deselden addressed them.
“‘Why did we come this long way from our home planet?’ That is a question often on our lips, the big question we often ask ourselves. ‘Why did we come this long way?’ Is it not like the case of old age, when we see we have come a long way from our childhood? We have with us visitors who have come just a short way, from Stygia City. But Stygia City is a long way distant where the spirit is concerned. There in that city, the laws of wicked men, Astaroth and his party, rule. Here in Haven, we submit to the rule of none other than Jesus Christ.
“At the least, we try to submit to Christ’s rule, because his rule is spiritual freedom, and spiritual freedom is hard to win. We must always strive for it, as best we can.
“There is honor in being poor, not least because Christ Jesus was poor. Christ never came to this world. He never set foot on Stygia. We eke out our existence on unhallowed ground. For that very reason God looks down on us all with contempt, and we must humble ourselves. If we do so, sincerely, with all our hearts, we shall in the end be with Christ to live in a glory very different from how we live now.
“Brother Essanits, the great saint of our order, will pray for our salvation.”
At these words, all present bowed their heads, or all but Ragundy, who whispered to Fremant, “No offense, but I’m off…” He disappeared.
Essanits said in a loud voice, “Lord God, I do not believe, as our brother, Deselden, does, that you look down upon us in contempt, nor even with loving judgment. I do not believe you look upon us at all, having decided that we have all sinned by killing off the native people of Stygia, the Dogovers. In that, I am the most guilty. I was a slave to the will of the people, and of Astaroth. When I saw all those dead bodies, for which I must bear responsibility, I cried—and then, O God, then you saw my tears.
“I believe that Jesus walked on this planet, looking for us, and did not find us.
“Cast your eyes upon us, Lord God, and bless us and this planet we have inherited, so that we may live in peace with ourselves, and not in eternal torment. Amen.”
“Amen,” said the crowd, uplifted. They then looked about themselves as if coming out of a daze. A woman with a small child clutched to her breast knelt and kissed Essanits’s hand, but most people appeared not to know what to do next, drifting off to their various cottages.
Elder Deselden took Essanits aside. Four disciples came with him, humble and anxious. Deselden spoke controlledly, but his look was one of hate. “Brother, you contradict my teachings and you speak heresy. Jesus never walked here. This is a heathen place, filled with alien life without a god. You blaspheme to say that Jesus ever set foot here. You think insects have a god? I forbid you to address my people again.”
Essanits controlled his anger; but later he said to the gray-haired woman, Liddley, who attended him, that he understood Elder Deselden to lay claim of ownership to much of the land thereabouts, which was an unholy thing to do.
Liddley said in response, “Land should be free, as air and water are free. But the land is overrun by little dacoims, which spoil the crops. By promising to rid us of dacoims, so Master Deselden took control of the land. Still the dacoims come and multiply, so Deselden keeps a hold on the land.”
Having listened carefully, Essanits was puzzled. “How is that?” he asked.
The woman looked around her nervously. “Once a year he holds a shooting party, to kill the dacoims by the dozen. Only he can afford the guns and the bullets.”
He frowned at her. “Where does he get guns and bullets from?”
She gestured helplessly. “They’re made locally. A gunsmith by name Utrersin. A good man in a bad trade.”
“But how does this holy man afford such things?”
She sighed heavily. “We who work on the land pay Deselden a small tithe of our earnings. It’s little enough, but it keeps most of us in poverty.”
He laid his hands on her head and looked with sorrow into her gray eyes. He blessed her.
As a result of Essanits’s display of holiness, Fremant was afraid to speak to him. He sought out the company of Bellamia, and her usual good sense.
Bellamia was up to her elbows in flour in a large bowl. “This flour, such as it is, I can turn into a crust for a pie. It will be quite diff’rent. I can’t see how Essanits can turn folk into something quite diff’rent. If God had wanted us to be decent people, he could have made us decent. Why not?”
“We do try to be decent, Bellamia.”
“Some do, some don’t. But why make it so hard? So damned hard…The whole setup of life is against us. You have to grab what you can get, don’t you? I mean, to survive. Just to survive.”
Fremant did not agree. The long journey from Earth had been made in the hope of finding a better place. It was just a pity that various factions had sprung up on the ship after Reconstitution. But you could claim, he said, that life was better, if harder, in Haven than in the city they had left.
“No, that ain’t so. We were sheltered in Stygia City. These folk here live like beasts, scraping a living from the land, and they’ve got this cult thing to plague them. Who’s this Jesus they’re on about, I’d like to know?”
“Well, the children appear happy and content, on the whole.”
“Appear? Appear? All sorts of things appear, don’t they, dear?”
Privately, Fremant thought to himself that Bellamia’s mind was not likely to open up to new ideas. He saw that Essanits was a tormented man, and that the idea of a benevolent god looking down from space was calming to his spirit. For the present, his thoughts went no further than that.
He awoke on the following morning to the realization he was free. There was nothing he had to do, no questions he had to answer, no duties to perform for a harsh master. He found it an uneasy sensation, as if he had suddenly ceased to have a function. He asked himself if he should not be unrestrainedly glad to be free. Yet there was a shadow behind his thought.
He ventured to say as much, rather jokingly, to Essanits, over breakfast.
“Only in the service of God are we truly free.”
Essanits’s statement irritated Fremant.
“That’s not what I mean by free.”
Essanits looked at him with a half-smile on his broad face. “Doubtless. What you mean by ‘free’ is to be at the mercy of your own random desires. What I mean by being free is free to travel down a straight road toward the perfect life of Christ.”
He thought Essanits was mad. Essanits smiled and nodded, well in agreement with himself.
“How can you know about this ‘perfect life of Christ’?”
“Happily, certain important discs survived the havoc of those final years on the ship.”
Fremant looked for Bellamia but
she was nowhere to be seen. He inquired of Liddley, who said she had seen her going to work with a local man who made clothes.
“It’s none of your business what she does,” said Liddley, with a smile.
Fremant eyed her challengingly. “You have a certain air of independence about you. How’s that?”
Liddley made a dismissive gesture. “I have escaped from the land. My man works there but I have little in common with him. He does not think. I earn a pittance looking after people and children. That forces you to think…”
She pulled aside a sort of cape which covered her torso, to reveal a small child cradled there.
Fremant stared at it aghast. It was yellow of flesh. Its little arms were showing, clutching the cloth which supported it; they were thin as chicken legs. It did not move.
“This is the way I get my living,” said Liddley. “Apart from my teaching work, for which parents pay me what little they can.”
The mite at her breast had an overlarge hairless skull. Its body was withered, seemingly age-old. It stared unblinkingly at Fremant with opaque eyes, mouth drawn into a smile of queer meditative mirth.
“What is it?” he asked.
“She’s dying,” said Liddley, without emotion. She restored the cape over the baby. “Stygia doesn’t suit her. Sleep now, poor little love…”
FREMANT WAS TIRED OF SORROW and of sorrowing people. He needed something—he knew not what. At least he could be free to enjoy a little solitude.
He roamed out on the nearby hillsides, enjoying the fresh air, the songs of the various insects, the color and life of everything in his view. Sometimes he lay on the small, brittle herbs that grew here, stretched out, staring into the sky, gazing into its depths as into the depths of a clear pool.
Dacoims were abundant. He watched them. They were frisky little things, armor-plated, with large baby eyes—presumably, he guessed, so that they could see during Dimoff.
For many days he walked, entranced by what he thought of as the emptiness of the country. He came to a small pool, fed by a stream and shaded by an old tree. The sweet sound of flowing water detained him. He stripped off his few clothes, to search his body for signs of torture, the scars that tyranny had left, like markings on a map. He found nothing. Since he was naked, he plunged into the pool. The cold of the water made him gasp.