“What use would I have for such a cumbersome contraption?” He was really quite pleased. Hoemei’s ability to locate his men in Soebo had made an immense impression. Better yet, Bendaein wouldn’t know what to make of it and the Mnankrei might never suspect worse than a soup pot.
“You’re a dunderhead. I don’t even like you. Am I to receive no thanks?”
He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Anytime. All you want.”
She stiffened under his arm. “Not that kind!”
He held onto her body, refusing to be rejected. “Kathein. We love you.”
She sneered. “That’s over. I have my own life and my own family, and my own lovers, if you please!”
Joesai was bewildered by her hostility. Few women had ever loved him. The ones who had still held him. He clenched his mind until the pain went away, then searched for some common ground. “Teenae spoke of the wonders of the new Voice of God.”
“… that you nearly lost for us!”
He grinned contritely.
“More of God’s words have appeared this high morning.” She sighed. “Joesai, I’m truly sorry if I’m irascible. I’m terrified. God is speaking to us; He has broken His Silence, and it’s not what I expected. I need your opinion. You. Your opinion. You’re the only person I know who cares enough about the heavens to understand what it might mean. I’ll show you the latest silvergraphs.”
There were only four clear pages of writings — in an alphabet that was almost familiar in a dialect that almost made sense. He puzzled over the script. “I don’t understand the key words. ‘Destroyer’ sounds like a grain mill. Pulverizer? But ‘cruiser’ and ‘battlegod’?”
“A god who plays games, I thought.”
“Twelve-inch guns?”
“There was a gungod in another fragment.”
“It is very obscure.”
“A form of the word ‘kill’ is used eighteen times in those four pages.”
“I noticed that. This is an ancient language. It speaks of the world of the Heroic Solo Chant.” Joesai was awed to the point of religious revelation. “He sets His tale in the World of the Sky.”
“What would ‘weapon’ mean? Here” — she pointed — “I thought it meant a knife because it is used to kill, but the other reference” — she pointed again — “refers to a cart. A knife with wheels?”
“Let’s make ritual to reveal more pages.”
“No. You have to go. Go now! Keep these pages. I have copies.”
“Kathein. I came to see you.”
“Out!” she flared. “Or I’ll have you thrown out! Can’t you see I’m busy? And take your rayvoice. Hoemei will assign a man to you to care for it.”
He gazed at her morosely, unwilling to leave. Her craftsmen were watching him.
“I know,” she said, scorning his open love. “You’d kill for me. Now get out!”
35
One cannot take a coward on dangerous missions or trust one’s fortune to a fool. How then are cowards and fools to be employed? Fatten them while they entertain you. They are fodder for hard times.
VERY CAREFULLY FROM behind the sand bags Joesai pulled the wire attached to the thumb that tripped the hammer. The air cracked! Then: deaf silence. Neither Joesai nor Gaet breathed for heartbeats. They ran over and examined the acrid-smelling tube. It wasn’t split. A hole had appeared in the wooden target.
“God’s Streak!” said Gaet, jumping up and down like a boy.
Joesai roared with laughter. “By God! You just tell those og’Sieth to build something and they build it.”
Joesai opened the breach and put in another cartridge and screwed the breach closed. The cartridges had taken him a whole day to make. It was easy to use Shoemi’s Method to calculate the structure of an organic compound that would break down into gases with a sudden release of energy — but cooking up the compound itself was scary. Such molecules are fragile. In the end he had used two explosives, one to detonate the other. God had said nothing to suggest an appropriate explosive and he wasn’t sure that he had the right ones.
“This pressure tube has use in some ritual?” asked Gaet.
“God alone knows. It is used for putting holes in things.” The larger brother examined the hole in the wooden target with some care. A drill would have done much better. “I think it is mainly used to punch holes in distant people. A knife for cowards.”
“A killing tool?” Gaet was not sure how it could be used in such a fashion. Perhaps the tube could be set up so that someone tripped over the trigger wire.
“It is held against the shoulder. You pull the metal thumb with your forefinger while you keep the tube lined up with whatever you wish to hole. Do you want to grasp it in your hands for the next explosion?” Joesai enjoyed teasing his brother.
“Do I look the fool?”
Joesai was cracking up laughing. “Not a fool. Perhaps a coward? You’re not going to take God’s word that such is safe?”
“Suddenly I hear Oelita’s voice preaching atheism in my ear.”
“She has begun to talk to you?”
“Yes.”
“Same old bees in her robe?”
“She’s not going to change. Why should we all believe the same thing?”
“Why should we believe lies? Go ahead, believe a stone is a potato — but you’ll break your teeth! She signs contracts with Hoemei as if she were Kaiel. Ho. I grant you that she is as tough as the bi-wood that bends but cannot be carved. Still her mind is pudding.”
“She has a simple reverence for life that I respect.”
“She has a simpleminded reverence for falsehood. Before I leave I shall show her God. I vow that.”
“The Death Rite is ended!” said Gaet as a command.
Joesai smiled cunningly. “You would protect her from words?”
“Husband, she’s had enough,” Gaet pleaded.
“You pity her,” Joesai exclaimed in astonishment. They were creche and they did not pity. To pity was to insult. “She rots your mind with her sexy wiggle. How is it that you did not answer my question? If a Trial of Words destroys her, can she be Kaiel?”
“How will you show her the truth of God? How can you show the sky to a blind man?”
“And I ask you, how can she deny the revelations of God that appear from her own crystal? I’ll show her this.” He shook his steel spitter-of-lead-pebbles. “How could I have built this except at the command of God?” He mused, holding God’s revealed weapon. “What I hold is called a ‘rifle’. Actually the description was enigmatic and I had to use my imagination. I had quite a discussion with your og’Sieth friend trying to reconstruct the fine details. Teenae verified my logic. The deduction demanded skill because there was no description of how the rifle worked. All I have is a few anecdotal recountings of its use. The World in the Sky is a weird world of killers. I’ll show you a passage when we go back to the Palace that tells the story of hill people wandering around with rifles holing Russian priests who live inside mobile temples of steel four thumbs thick. That impressed me.”
“A God who preaches killing will not impress Oelita.”
Joesai lifted the rifle to his shoulder and aimed into the hill…
“No!” screamed Gaet.
… and pulled the metal thumb. There was another crack! a terrible impact against his shoulder, and a flying chip of stone. “The logic that will destroy her mind if she is unwilling to change is this: God saved us from a world where they were breeding only for better killers. He did not speak to us of this until we had learned of ourselves to breed for better values. Now He tells us how to kill again through Oelita who has brought us His words. It is a test to see what we have learned. God is Oelita’s partner. Can her mind survive knowing that? God abhors Death and through her gives us limitless new ways of Death. What Oelita cannot face today, and must face if she is to survive, is that Death will stop neither for her nor for God. Death is senior to us all. We win only by tricking Death to our own purpose, which is the breeding of kalothi.”