It had been extreme good fortune that the Jew had papers on him, and such a nice, convincing sheaf of them, too. But good fortune of any kind should never be relied upon on Fiori. Still, the assembly had been impressed—it seemed to improve his shaky position with them. Argeh, on the other hand, had not believed a word.
My Lord had struggled with Argeh for thirty years, since he’d first seen that flattened face in his cell, standing behind the old one’s—Ehlah’s—shoulder. Ehlah had declared My Lord an envoy from Mahava, not because he believed it but because the Fiore had been in one of their typical points of crisis and needed a diversion. My Lord had been set up as that diversion, a new hope—in reality, a puppet icon. Argeh eventually replaced Ehlah as high priest, and he’d been seeking to both use and discredit My Lord ever since. Argeh played the game ruthlessly.
The carriage stopped. Tevach helped him down, taking My Lord’s full weight on his rounded shoulders. My Lord was wracked with pain at every step, but he walked into the House of Cleansing upright. Before him the Fiore groveled; behind him they kissed the stones his feet had touched. He moved past the attendants and those waiting in line for a purgative beating, hiding his limp as best he could.
Down long corridors, down flights of stone stairs, and the pain in his knees was the reason he did not come very often anymore. Screams and wracking sobs greeted his ears, bounced off the stone, also the sounds of whipping, the dull thud of stones and wood on flesh, even—there—the sound of breaking bone. It took a great deal to break Fiore bones, hard as iron rods, condensed by gravity. But the priests were quite skilled and they were artisans besides. Torture was one of the few creative outlets on Gehenna.
Outside the door of the special cell waited Gehvis, the physician.
“What do you want?” My Lord snapped, impatient in his pain.
“Apologies for my unworthiness, My Lord, but I fear…”
“Hurry and speak.”
“We have sustained the evil one for many years, but the end is coming soon.” Gehvis was bowing so low, he looked like he was staring at My Lord’s knees. My Lord had an urge to kick him.
“I have heard you. Now let me past.”
Inside the cell, the attendants hastened to turn up the lamps and back from the room. My Lord turned to the body lying on the table. Tevach helped him lower himself into the single chair. He stared for a long time, sighing deeply.
“And how are we feeling today, Wallick?” he asked softly, in German.
There was a wet sound as the figure made an attempt to lick its lips.
“Water, Tevach.”
Tevach fetched a cup and poured a little into Wallick’s mouth. It seemed to revive him.
My Lord had come for reassurance, but now that he was here he could see it was a mistake. Why had he stayed, Handalman had asked. This was why. He was chained here by the odious mass on the table, by a force even stronger than Fiorian gravity—hatred. But there was something new in his perception of the bruised, broken, and partially skinned carcass in front of him. It felt as though he were looking at it through someone else’s eyes, the bearded Jew’s no doubt. The sight did not reassure him at all.
He closed his eyes. For my son, Wallick. For all the others, too, but mostly for my Isaac.
The Fiore excelled at few things. If you were in a universe where, for example, higher technology existed and beings could shop from planet to planet (which was not the thirty-seventy universe, to be sure), there would be little you would care to export from Fiori. The planet produced few precious metals or gems beyond dribs and drabs of gold. It had no great works of art, only truly hideous religious artifacts. There were no appetizing native dishes. Its inhabitants had never developed enviable learning or skills, and even though they were physically strong, they had so short a life expectancy as to make their value as slave labor questionable. But the Fiore were masters of mutilation. It was intertwined with the very foundation of their culture, their entire cosmological system. Their sacred book told the tale through words and morbid pictures.
There were two forces in the universe: God the good, called Mahava, and the evil demon, Charvah. Mahava was busy creating wonders, such as the sun and the heavens, but Charvah, a less powerful entity, was spiteful and jealous, so he regularly spit out impurities, sullying Mahava’s creation. Mahava’s wife, Magehna, had the task of going around sucking up all these impurities, which she would then shit out in a specific corner of the universe where they could be isolated and repurified.
That cesspool was Fiori.
Since nothing divine, no bit of creation, could ever be destroyed, these impurities, these feces that were the Fiore, had to work to repurify themselves and thus be fit to reenter the glorious part of creation when they died. Purification came through fire, pain, humility, mortification.
It was amazing to witness the fact that on a planet where life was already 70 percent evil (that had been Kobinski’s estimate shortly after his arrival, based on his gravitational calculations), the inhabitants had built up a culture in which they inflicted further evil upon themselves. Yet what other example did they have? Life beat them down at every opportunity; therefore, it must be divine will that they be beaten down. Kobinski had once hypothesized that their propensity for mortification was part of that 70 percent evil. Massive depression, suicidal self-loathing, these were problems reserved for the unfortunate on Earth. Here they were the norm.
Not every Fiori bought into this scheme. There were the rare few, like Tevach, who secretly loathed the torture. But there were also the ones, and they were not so few, who relished it. As for the starving masses, they simply did what they were told, as Catholics fasted. The Fiore were very tough. Wallick was tough also. He had lasted thirty years.
My Lord rubbed his lips with a finger as he looked at his enemy.
That portly, pious little Jew, what did he know about suffering? Yosef Kobinski, he understood, he alone, who had known the greatest goodness, the greatest sweetness, and lost it; who had experienced firsthand the depredations and mockery of life that was the Nazi regime; who had then come to know intimately this hell that God created for His beloved creatures. He’d understood God as deeply as perhaps any man had ever understood Him, had seen His face more clearly and more horribly, too, in the kabbalistic way: the black head and the white, the long black locks of hair and the white, evil and good, two heads on one body, destruction and creation. Two faces—and he’d shaken his fist in both of them.
His old companion licked his lips and tried to speak. My Lord leaned forward, waiting, watching the painful struggle.
“Bitte,” Wallick said, after much effort. Please.
My Lord sat back drolly. Wallick never had been very original.
“Leave me, Tevach,” My Lord said.
After Tevach shuffled out, My Lord began to recite Wallick’s crimes. The German tongue was an appropriate language for the recitation, appropriately harsh and literal. He spoke softly and calmly, as he always did: This is what you did to my son.
In 1941, the villagers had come to him, and they’d said, “The old rebbe is dead; it’s up to you now. Tell us what to do about these Germans? What should we think? Should we run away or stay put?”
And from the vast wisdom of his learning Kobinski had answered, “Things only get so bad before they get better,” and, “The pendulum always swings the other way.”