“Reawakened, not re-created—the old dragon but slept. They did not finish it off, thy ancestors, after their surface victory, they did not chase the worm to see how deep it coiled.” Dominic leaned back, the black over-cape of his habit falling back to let the white folds of the lower layer pool between the roundness of his breasts. “We spent ten thousand years perfecting gender, more: gendered clothing, gendered gestures, gendered language, gendered thought, a hundred thousand tools of seduction, so literally all a maiden had to do was let a glimpse of ankle show beneath her skirts to blind almost anyone with thoughts of sex. Since the worst of both sides in the Church War were also those that separated the sexes most, fear wedded gender to religion’s poison in the survivors’ minds. Suddenly neutered dress and speech were mandatory to proclaim one’s allegiance to the ‘good guys,’ and anyone who used skirts and ties and ‘he’s and ‘she’s—even in nontraditional ways—invited the label ‘zealot.’ So the Great ‘They’ Silence fell, but our ancestors didn’t purge the libraries and history books, didn’t ban the costumes from the stage and screen, and those are enough to teach us gender’s old language, the cues of dress and gait, which even today thou understandeth as clearly as ‘thee’ and ‘thou.’”
“Understand and hate,” Carlyle spat back.
Dominic shook his tonsured head. “Yes, it is easy to mistake other strong feelings for hate. But you know what you feel here isn’t hate. The outside world has had barely three centuries to develop neuter seduction, while gender had millennia. Once thou bitest the peach thou canst not stomach bland gruel anymore. I knew thou wouldst come back. It’s amazing what members will do to keep coming back. Selling out a friend or fixing a vote is nothing, I mean real work: founding a business, starting a career in politics and fighting to the top as Casimir Perry has, because they know that at the top the fruit is sweeter. Madame doesn’t just make them addicts, she uses the addiction to make them vocateurs.”
“No. It’s strong, it isn’t that strong.”
“Read any Eighteenth-Century novel, or, better yet, nonfiction. Thou thinkest Marie-Antoinette commanded the nobility of France with her good diction?”
“I don’t think six hundred years of social progress can be undone that easily.”
Dominic’s eyes sparkled. “And since everyone agrees with thee, no one’s resisting. As with smallpox, you are more vulnerable now than in the filthy past, since without exposure you build no resistance, yet we do not vaccinate against a thing defeated. The more people insist that feminism has won, the more they blind themselves to its remaining foes.” He paused to slurp an eager breath, as if braced by the wind of his own words. “But we are not here to talk of gender, but of theology. Thou hast not had a session in three weeks, and thou’st had a number of theological shocks in that time.”
Carlyle crossed her arms. “You’re not my sensayer.”
“Dost thou really believe in thy Clockmaker? Is that genuinely belief thou feelest inside thee, or something weaker, a wish, wishing it were so, this easy answer, while in truth thou fearest something worse?”
“I refuse to do this.”
The stool creaked as Dominic leaned forward. “Does that not prove me right? If thy belief were strong, thou wouldst have nothing to fear in letting me nip at it. Thou wishest desperately for thy Clockmaker to exist, but desperation is not faith. How canst thou tell if thou believest?”
“Because I love God!” Carlyle declared, with all the strength and fervor with which she had risen from bed that morning, every morning, marking on her calendar how each day was sacred to so many names for God.
Dominic’s smile widened. “Thou lovest Him, dost thou?”
“I do. I love God and I love this universe They made: nature, humanity, all Creation. Sometimes I look out the window, or bite into an apple, and actually start crying at how wonderful it is that everything exists. God did all that. The world is our window onto God, and it is so infinitely beautiful that sometimes I think I’m just going to burst with how much I love it!”
The grim monk scratched the bare rim of his tonsure. “And thou thinkest thou canst not love something that thou dost not believe in?”
“Exactly.” Carlyle dug her fingers into the time-grayed fringes of her own long scarf. “I’ve heard your arguments before, from Julia, that there are so many reasons to want to believe in Deism that you can’t be sure if you really do. I do sometimes feel rational doubt, for that reason or others, but then I see the infinite detail of an insect, or taste snow, and then I know I love, and I believe.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed until only the black remained; I have seen him glare so at Helo?se passing in the halls with her tranquil smile, and sometimes at myself. “It is easy to love something one does not believe in,” he began. “Think of an idealist, a dreamer, a Utopian, how often you see them burst into tears at the beauty of a future they imagine. Thou hast read books, seen movies, wept and rejoiced at the sorrows and triumphs of fiction. What is that if not love for something thou knowest does not exist?”
“That’s not the same.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t deny that that’s love, but there are lots of kinds of love, like the love one feels for bash’mates, or friends. This is different.”
“Stronger?” Dominic tested.
“Y-yes.” Carlyle’s voice was weakening.
Where art thou, Mycroft? Stop this. Stop this soon!
“Thy love is special, then? Thou lovest thy God more truly than others love that which they love most?”
“No. No, of course not.” Carlyle lost the strength to look at Dominic, her eyes ranging the room, the floor, the ranks of books stacked by the walls, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Averroes, ready with a thousand portraits of God, or of His absence.
Dominic leaned forward. “Why not call thy love special? Thou art not merely a sensayer but a vocateur. Thou hast devoted thy life to thy God, sacrificed thy leisure hours for Him, thy studies, thy passions. Few men weep daily for love of anything, as thou dost. Is that not the sort of special love that Saints are supposed to have, and Prophets?”
“No.” Carlyle had seemed almost prepared to rise, but slumped again against the door, hiding behind her hair. “It’s not special like that. I’m not special like that.”
“Because if thou wert special thou wouldst not have fallen?”
Carlyle choked. “You stole my files.…”
Dominic adjusted the stole-scarf across his shoulders. “I didn’t have to steal them, I’m thy sensayer. Four years ago a parishioner let slip in a session that she was plotting murder to avenge her lost ba’pas, and thou brokest thine oath and tippedest off the police.”
“I couldn’t—”
“Thy sacred oath,” Dominic pressed, “for we all hold our oaths as sensayers sacred, secular as they may be. One who loved God as perfectly as thou claimest to should not hesitate to die, or let another die, to keep a sacred oath.”
Wetness leaked in tracks down Carlyle’s cheeks. “Please stop.”
“Thou brokest thy sacred oath,” the monk jabbed, “because thou didst not trust thy God enough to let Providence judge whether the victim should live or die. A Deistic God asks practically nothing of His priests, but still thou hast managed to betray Him. Very impressive.”
“Stop!”
“Thou falteredest because thou dost not truly believe, thou only wishest to.”
“I do believe!”
“Thou dost not, here’s thy proof: thy love remains unchanged to this day, yes?”
“Of course.”
“Yet today thou knowest thy Clockmaker does not exist. Thou hast seen Bridger, Bridger’s power, miracles. This Universe’s God does not sit back and let the world tick on its way. He intervened before thine eyes. Thou hast proof that thou wert wrong about the nature of thy God.” Dominic leaned forward, eyes alight with victory. “If that did not affect thy belief, then thou didst not believe to begin with. Tell me I am wrong.”
“I … I didn’t want…” Sobs wracked Carlyle’s frame, like storm waves lashing at a buoy tethered in harsh current. “It’s true. The Clockmaker, if … They wouldn’t…” Words failed. Sobs swelled. Carlyle dug her fingers hard enough into her scarf to cut the fibers with the dull remnants evolution has left of human claws, and, like an infant, screamed.
Thou art overtardy in thy rescue, Mycroft. Thy God, too.
I know, reader. I feel it worse than you, for you simply read, while I can hear the screams Dominic wrings from this shaking wretch. But what can I do? There are many doors between the study where I had been serving and Dominic’s distant cell. As for the tardiness of God, Providence must answer to its own unknowable design before it answers prayers, reader, even your own.
Hungry Dominic was not yet sated. “I saw the child in the shower, thou knowst,” he pressed. “I had been curious, after I watched him on the beach, why such a playful child swam fully clothed. Mycroft’s orders, I imagine.”
“Huh?”
“He has no navel.”