"Go ask the Bishop; maybe he'll let you out early for bad behavior." I pop the toast, butter it, then scoop both eggs out of the water and onto my plate. "I wish."
"How about we walk to Church today?" Sam suggests hesitantly, as I'm finishing breakfast. "It's about two kilometers. That sounds a long way, but"
"It also sounds like a good idea to me," I say, before he can talk himself out of it. "I'll wear my work shoes."
"Good. I'll meet you down here in ten minutes." He brushes against me on his way out of the kitchen, and I startle, but he doesn't seem to notice. Something's going on inside his head, and not being able to open up and ask is frustrating.
Two kilometers is a nice morning walk, and Sam lets me hold his hand as we stroll along the quiet avenues beneath trees suddenly exploding with green and blue-black leaves. We have to walk through three tunnels between zones to get to the neighborhood of the Churchthere are no lines of sight longer than half a kilometer, perhaps because that would make it obvious that our landscapes are cut from the inner surfaces of conic sections rather than glued to the outside of a sphere by natural gravitybut we see barely anyone. Most folks travel to Church by taxi, and they won't be leaving their homes until we're nearly there.
The Church service starts out anticlimactic for me, but probably not for anyone else. After leading the congregation into a tub-thumping rendition of "First We Take Manhattan," Fiore launches into a longperoration on the nature of obedience, crime, our place in society, and our duties to one another.
"Is it not true that we were placed here to enjoy the benefits of civilization and to raise a great society for the betterment of our children and the achievement of a morally pure state?" he thunders from the pulpit, eyes focused glassily on an infinity that lurks just behind the back wall. "And to this end, isn't it the case that our social order, being the earthly antecedent of a Platonic ideal society, must be defended so that it has room to mature and bear the fruit of utopia?" A real tub-thumper , I realize uneasily. I wonder where he's going? People are shuffling in the row behind me; I'm not the only one with a guilty conscience.
"This being the case, can we admit to our society one who violates its cardinal rules? Must we forebear from criticizing the sins out of consideration for the sensibilities of the sinner?" He demands. "Or for the sensibilities of those who, unknowing, live side by side with the personification of vice incarnate?"
Here it comes. I feel a mortal sense of dread, my stomach loosening in anticipation of the denunciation I can feel coming. There's got to be more to this than a furtive library book, and I have a horrible sinking feeling that he's figured out the soap impression and the plaster of paris and the mold I'm preparing for the duplicate keys
"No!" Fiore booms from the pulpit. "This cannot be!" He thumps the rail with one fist. "But it grieves me to say that it is that Esther and Phil are not merely adulterating their souls by sneaking their vile intimacies behind the backs of their ignorant and abused spouses, but are adulterating the fabric of society itself !"
Huh? It's not me that he's going after, but the thrill of relief doesn't last long: There's a loud grumble of rage from the congregation, led by cohort three, whose members are the ones Fiore is accusing. Everyone else looks round and I turn round with themnot to go with the crowd could be dangerous right nowand see a turbulent knot a couple of rows back, where well-dressed churchgoers are turning on each other. A frightened female and a defensive-looking male with dark hair are looking around apprehensively, not making eye contact, but trying toyes,they're looking for escape routes as Fiore continues. Something tells me they're too late.
"I would like to thank Jen in particular for bringing this matter to my attention," Fiore says coolly. My netlink dings, registering the arrival of more points than I'd normally rack up in a month, an upward adjustment I can blame on the fact that I'm in the same cohort as the little snitch. She's scored big-time with this accusation of adultery. "And I ask you, what are we going to do about the sickness in our midst?" Fiore scans the audience from his pulpit. "What is to be done to cleanse our society?"
My sick sense of dread is back with a vengeance. This is going to be a whole lot worse than anything I'd anticipated. Normally, Fiore singles a handful out for ridicule, laughter, the pointed finger of contempta minor humiliation for sneaking a library book out of the reference section would be nothing out of the ordinary. But this is big bad stuff, two people caught subverting the social foundations of the experiment. Fiore is on a roll of righteous indignation, and the atmosphere is getting very ugly indeed. A roar goes up from the back benches, incoherent rage and anger, and I grab Sam's hand. Then I check my netlink and freeze. He's fined cohort three all the points he's just given to Jen! "Let's get out of here before it turns nasty," I mutter into Sam's ear, and he nods and grips my hand back tightly. People are standing up and shouting, so I sidle toward the side of the aisle as fast as I can, using my elbows when I have to. I can see Mick on the other side, yelling something, the tendons on the sides of his neck standing out like cables. I don't see Cass. I keep moving. There's a storm brewing, and this isn't the time or place to stop and ask.
Behind me Fiore shouts something about natural justice, but he's barely audible over the crowd. The doors are open, and people are spilling out into the car park. I gasp with pain as someone stomps on my left foot, but I stay upright and sense rather than see Sam following me. I make it through the crush in the doorway and keep going, dodging small clumps of people and a struggling figure, then Sam catches up with me. "Let's go ," I tell him, grabbing his hand.
There are people in front of us, clustered aroundit's Jen. "Reeve!" she calls.
I can't ignore her without being obvious. "What do you want?" I ask.
"Help us." She grins widely, her eyes sparkling with excitement as she spreads her arms. She's wearing a little black-silk number that displays her secondary sexual characteristics by providing just a wisp of contrast: her chest is heaving as if she's about to have an orgasm. "Come on!" She gestures at the dark knot near the Church entrance. "We're going to have a party!"
"What do you mean?" I demand, looking past her. Her husband, Chris, is conspicuously absent. Instead, she's acquired a cohort of her own, followers or admirers or something, Grace from twelve and Mina from nine and Tina from sevenall of them are from newer cohorts than our ownand they're watching her, looking to her as if she's a leader...
"Purify the polity!" she says, almost playfully. "Come on! Together we can keep everyone in line and hold everything togetherand earn loads more pointsif we make a strong enough statement right now. Send the deviants and perverts a message." She looks at me enthusiastically. "Right?"
"Uh, right," I mumble, backing away until I bump into Sam, who's come up behind me. "You're going to teach them a lesson, huh?"
I feel Sam's hand tightening on my shoulder, warning me not to go too far, but Jen's in no mood to pick up minor details like sarcasm: "That's right!" She's almost rapturous. "It's going to be real fun. I got Chris and Mick ready"
There's a high-pitched scream from somewhere behind us. "Excuse us," I mumble, "I don't feel so good." Sam shoves me forward, and I stumble past Jen, still stammering out excuses, but the situation isn't critical. Jen doesn't have time to waste on broken reeds and moral imbeciles, and she's already drifting toward the group in the Church door, shouting something about community values.
We make it to the edge of the car park before I stumble again and grab hold of Sam's arm. "We've got to stop them," I hear myself saying. I wonder what that toad Fiore thought he was unleashing when he transferred so many points from one cohort to another. Doing that to the score whores is only going to have one result. At the very least, cohort three is going to rip the shit out of Phil and Estherbut now we've got Jen, trying to spin the whole thing as social cleansing in order to position herself at the head of a mob. I can see a hideous new reality taking shape here, and I want nothing to do with it.