But it was her crystal.
Who could write so small in visible-invisible ink? Who could conceive such stories where violence was the only means of transferring power? They could invent stories, but who could invent so many? Where was the Getan who would tell a story of mass murder without ending the story in a gluttonous Feast? Helplessly she moved through the crowd of feverish Kaiel, seeking Joesai. He was staring at silvergraph pictures.
He showed her one. A pair. To the right was a burning child running along a road beside a burning village with the title Vietnam. To the left was a burning child leaping off a road with a rocky mountain village in the background titled Afghanistan. The collective title was The Superpowers and The Third World. She remembered her twins roasting upon the spit.
“Have you found no love among all this?” she asked.
Silently he showed her another silvergraph. A woman was being stretched apart by a machine. The Dominicans Save the Soul of a Heretic. “Or would you prefer a tale of the Christian clan exterminating the clan of Albigensians in the name of love?” He laughed and handed her some dried bees to munch on. “While you are putting it all together think about why you can eat raw bees and why eating any other insect will sicken you unto death.”
“You think the only explanation for this is God, don’t you?”
“I’ll listen to a better one.”
She changed the subject. “What’s that?”
“The script underneath says it is a steel beetle big enough to carry five men in its belly across the desert. Its duty is to throw metal rocks at men.”
“How horrible!”
“I’m getting ideas.”
“Joesai!”
“This one I like especially. It is a giant intelligent candle that rides on the strength of its flame from one city to the other side of a world where it is cunning enough to find another city which it extinguishes in one blow by conjuring a bowl of sunfire.”
“Joesai!”
He smiled at her, glad to share his own horror with someone he knew could understand. “I don’t always think Death thoughts. Anything with jumping legs that strong could jump up to God and talk to Him. I have some questions to ask.”
“Would you ever descend upon a city and kill more people than you could eat?” she asked.
“What a stink that would make. Kalothi can be overwhelmed. What is the point?”
“I’m confused. I don’t know what anything means anymore.”
“It’s obvious what it means.”
“For a simpleton like you, everything is obvious. You invoke God. God can be used to explain everything!” She was livid.
“Can’t you tell what it means?” he asked gently. “This Riethe is the world from whence we came! Don’t the Chants say that God brought us across His Sky to save us? This is what He was saving us from.”
“You don’t even know your Chants.” She was scornful. “The Chants mention Riethe but they say we fell from the Star Yarieun.”
“There is no agreement on that. The same Chants vary from clan to clan and land to land. The Outpacing Chant that I am most familiar with mentions Yarieun, which we call Yarmieu, as the last resting place.”
“How can the Race be saved from itself by moving across a sky?” She was full of scorn. “If I am poisoned and live in Sorrow, will moving myself to Kaiel-hontokae leave my poison behind? If I am afraid of my navel, will changing houses change that? If I chew my nails, will moving to the dark side of Geta give me long nails? You can’t run from here because here is always where you are!”
Without letting Joesai reply, she lost herself in the crowd and left the Palace. She stood beneath the nested ovoids, her mind in chaos. Who were the Riethe and their Cult of Death? Her maelot theory of human evolution no longer made sense.
There was a God.
Her world reeled. It was madness. There was no God but God had revealed Himself. She turned back to the great door of the Palace, insanity striking her senses. Joesai was standing there. Joesai was God, and God was Death, and Death had found her, grinning.
She backed away. “Don’t come near me!” He took a step closer and she shifted two steps into the street. She was pregnant by Hoemei, and had been on the verge of creating the blood that would wash the child away, and now Joesai was coming after it with death, and she wasn’t going to give anyone that child. Not again. Not ever again. “Go away,” she said. He came closer and there was no one else about. “I’ll kill you!” she cried with deadly intent.
He paused. She was confused. How could she kill God? When God fell into the sea like a lost glowsting, He merely rose out of the mountains again to reclaim His Sky. Her fists were clenched in front of her. “Go away!” He left and she turned and ran, stumbling in the mud somewhere, to lie against the cobblestones of a filthy gutter.
She thought of her defiance; she thought of the people she had turned from God, fomenting rebellion, and the honors she had just seen that God had taken them from, that she had carried around with her all her life since she had been a child.
“Oh God, forgive me. I’ve blasphemed. I knew You and I rejected You, and my heart is full of sorrow.” She rubbed her face in the dirt. “Oh God of Sky and Stars and Wandering, thank You for bringing us here from whatever misery You saved us from. I thank You again and again.” She rubbed her tears into the mud, her fingers clutching stone. “Forgive me.”
38
No man can live in the future, but those who are not caught up by the struggle for some future find deadly surprises in their now!
A HARD-EARNED gold coin can slip through a hole in a pocket. In this fashion Oelita vanished.
Aesoe, wearing only sandals with bath towel draped about his shoulders, raged and paced in his den, his genitals swinging to his wrath like gongs. He gestured quick motions that seemed to skin an invisible adversary. His Liethe, whichever one he had kept for the pillows — Hoemei remained unable to discriminate between them — lay sprawled on the cushions of the bed, a sheet between her legs, head buried from the ranting, tortured by a whisky hangover. She wore a tiny amulet on a single fine chain of gold about her neck.
Hoemei, unshaven and unslept and still in party dress, moved not a muscle. He carried a note from the Gentle Heretic, all they had been able to find of her. It said: “Forgive me for being wrong. Please, please take good care of my people.” Nothing more.
Aesoe raved. “See that Joesai banishes himself from Kaiel-hontokae by the first sunset of the Reaper or I will personally conduct services for his Ritual Suicide at the Temple of Human Destiny! He is a meddling nuisance, fouling the best plans of genius to soothe his woman-hating heart! And you meddle, too! Your sly hand is creeping everywhere. I told you and I tell you; that woman is vital. Find her! Will I graft the skin of you, still alive, to the wheels of wagons? Will I use your wired jawbone as a paper holder?”
The maran-Kaiel had already searched for her, of course, all during the remainder of the night, but had not found her. How does one find a woman who, as a youth, had wandered the desert plains with a shrewd father-teacher who lived to walk in the open world beneath the sky? Teenae was still out asking questions among the Ivieth. The task was hopeless.
Events disgruntled Hoemei. He had grown fond of Oelita. Her energy and intelligence pleased him, even to the point where he had been seriously dreaming of taking her as a replacement for Kathein. The family was far less sure of her suitability but he saw them beginning to meld with her, even Joesai in his churlish way. Gaet warmed to a woman easily, without agonizing debate. Teenae was outwardly friendly from the start, but was secretly threatened by another woman until she had a chance to know her well. Noe merely demanded that another woman be kind, affectionate, and easy to live with — and unquestioningly loyal to the family.