The Heretic (General)

4

It took them the better part of a halfwatch to find a way to the Bruneberg River bank. Most of the town’s edifices were built to hang over the edge to take advantage of the River for both a source of water and a ready-made sewer and garbage dump. Then they had to find a livery in which to leave the donts, for the path down was only wide enough for a man. Abel brought his carbine, his dragon pistol, and two knives, one of which he gave to Golitsin, more for the priest’s comfort than with any thought that Golitsin might be skilled enough to use it to fend off a carnadon. Abel wasn’t sure if he was himself.

Abel took the lead, and they wound their way down and then along a trail cut into the bank. There were carnadons aplenty lounging not far below them, but they seemed curiously inert.

“Probably well-fed on shit and dak bones,” Golitsin murmured, though it sounded more like a hope expressed than a certainty to Abel.

Then they were beneath the overhanging buildings of Bruneberg. At first, the floors did not stretch so far out, and they merely walked in shadow. But as they drew farther under what they knew must be the denser part of town, they passed deep-set pilings and pierlike supports that ran in lines out into the River itself.

“This is the path the repair crew has to take to replace pilings,” Abel said. “I’ll bet they come down here with a military guard armed to the teeth, too.”

“Pity we didn’t,” murmured Golitsin.

On they went, and now they were well under the buildings, which stretched onward, out over the River. The light grew faint and the way forward dark as night.

“And pity we didn’t think to bring torches,” Golitsin put in not long afterward.

Abel grunted his agreement. Too late now.

I have an estimate of the probability of carnadon attack, Center announced. But I will refrain from stating the exact odds in order not to further contribute toward them by the very alarm they will cause, and merely admonish you to be careful.

Great, thought Abel. Thanks for the warning.

There was a pinpoint of light ahead. Then the pinpoint divided into several flickers. As they drew closer, Abel saw that it was the light of four oil lamps. Each was set on a large, flat River stone and formed a square. In the middle of the square, on a patch of mud, sat one who could be no other than the hermit they sought.

Abel stood back now, and Golitsin took the lead as they approached.

The hermit turned his head once and gave them a long look, then turned his gaze away and back down the bank’s slope to the River.

“Brother,” Golitsin called as they drew near. “I am a priest of Treville. I was told I might find you here.”

The hermit didn’t answer.

Then they reached the square of lighted lamps, and Golitsin halted.

“Brother?” he said. “May we talk? We have come along an…interesting…path to see you.”

Still the hermit did not reply. But after a moment, he released a deep sigh and turned toward them.

Abel had expected an old man, but he was not old at all. Weatherbeaten, yes, and with hair that had not seen a comb or cutting knife for many a three-moon. But the eyes were not watery and yellowed, but quick and alert. And the face was not lined with age, but only spattered with dirt. In fact, the hermit appeared to be younger than Golitsin.

“Brother, we have some questions for you,” Golitsin continued. “And we have brought food to share, if you want. May we sit with you?”

At the sound of the word “food,” the hermit shuddered, as a dont might that has caught the scent of barn and bedding. He rocked back and forth and had to hold his knees to his chest to stop himself.

Abel handed Golitsin the bread and cheese they’d brought along, and Golitsin handed them both to the hermit.

The man stared at them for a moment, then quickly reached out and snatched the offered gifts. He attacked the bread immediately, biting off and swallowing huge chunks until the entire loaf was gone. The dak cheese he turned in his hand and considered. Then he drew his hand back and threw it as far as he could down the bank to the River below. It landed not far from the shore.

Immediately there came a series of roars and the shuffle of scaled flesh as the carnadons moved in on the suddenly available delicacy. Abel couldn’t see what was happening there, but he was quite sure he did not want to be anywhere near whatever it was.

“Too smelly,” the hermit said. “Never get away with it.”

Golitsin took these words as an invitation, and he stepped within the square formed by the four stones with lamps upon them and motioned Abel to follow. They sat cross-legged near the hermit. The ground had been flattened here, but there was still a slight slope downward, toward the River. Enough to cause Abel the feeling he was sliding, or the ground sliding under him, and that he might soon be, like the cheese, among the hungry carnadons himself. He held even more tightly to his musket, which he had rested over his knees.

“What is your name, brother?” Golitsin asked.

The hermit bobbed a couple of times, and, not looking directly at them, but below toward the dark River, answered. “Friedman,” he said.

“Friedman?” Golitsin replied. “You are…military liaison, are you not?”

The hermit—Friedman—laughed. It was an ugly snort, with no real mirth in it. “Military liaison,” he pronounced, as if chewing the words and finding them bitter. “Yes. Doing it now. Liaising.”

“Brother, what has happened to you? Why are you here?”

“My retreat,” he said. “Prelate ordered me to take one. A long one. So I did.”

“He surely didn’t mean this.”

“Very specific,” Friedman replied. “‘Get your ass where the sun doesn’t shine, you meddlesome bastard,’ he said.” Friedman shook his head sadly. “True, too, the bastard part. Mother couldn’t help it. Father ran a shipping house, she told me once, and had his own family to look after.”

Golitsin reached out, touched Friedman’s knee, but the other flinched back.

“We came to see about Treville’s powder shipment,” Golitsin said gently.

Another snorting laugh from the hermit. “Ah,” he said. “Good luck with that.”

“You don’t think we’ll find it.”

“Isn’t lost,” Friedman said. “Never was.”

“What do you mean?” Abel spoke for the first time, which caused the hermit to jerk his head in Abel’s direction. He stared hard, but his gaze did not seem unkind to Abel.

“Soldier,” he said.

“Yes,” Abel replied. “What do you mean, it isn’t lost? Where is it?”

“The Redlands,” said Friedman. “Traded for…peace, I guess you could call it. Being let alone.”

“Traded to the Blaskoye? Or to the eastern barbarians?” Abel asked.

“East, west—it’s all Blaskoye now,” replied Friedman.

“They’ve established ties across the Valley?” Abel asked incredulously.

Friedman nodded.

“How?”

“Cascade,” said the hermit.

“And what do they…pay in return for passage, for the powder?”

“Protection. Women. Some male slaves, though all are sure not to call them that, lest Zentrum smite them down.” The snort again. “Lest Zentrum smite them down.” He nodded, as if he were in on a joke only he understood.

“Have you reported this to Lindron, Brother?” Golitsin gently inquired. “Sure this will bring down the wrath of the Tabernacle upon these people.”

“Verdrick tried,” the hermit said with a sad shake of his head.

“Damion Verdrick, the Temple Chief of Staff?”

“Left one day for Lindron. Found him the next day outside the Cascade temple gate. Thought he was sleeping. Then I turned him over and saw he couldn’t be, with his dick cut off and stuffed in his mouth, and his eyes gouged out like that.”

“Ah,” said Golitsin.

The three of them sat in silence for a while. Oddly, it was the hermit who broke the quiet.

“Show you another way up,” he said. “Not so dangerous. Better.”

“But we want to take you with us,” Golitsin said. “They aren’t going to kill us. We’d be missed in Treville. You can come with us. Escape.”

Friedman firmly shook his head. “No,” he said.

“But Brother Friedman—”

“Not afraid,” he said. “Not anymore. All part of Zentrum’s plan. I know that now.” He turned back toward the darkness, the sound of the River below. “That’s the thrice-damned thing. I know.”

“Surely not,” said Golitsin.

“Oh yes,” said Friedman. “Seen it. Took the disk from the priest’s mouth while he was in his cups. Put it in mine.”

“The…what are you talking about?”

“You don’t know about it. Only the prelates know. When he’s raised up. The disk for his mouth, the one that speaks the Presence to his mind.”

Can this be? Abel thought. Is he telling the truth?

Working, said Center. And then a moment later: Confirmed. A waferlike communication device fitted to the palate. Matches known parameters for period-appropriate quantum communication device.

The hermit turned back toward them, and there was wildness in his eyes. “I saw the mind of Zentrum. The Blood Winds. The death. The horror that is coming. I saw it all. I saw that it doesn’t matter what I do, what anyone does. I saw the Plan. The bright and shining Plan. And I knew all I could do was hide. Hide here. And wait for the Plan to become the Act. For Zentrum does not lie. Zentrum is all that is true. And now I know. Now I know. He hates us for our unbalance, for His own holy requirement always to maintain the scales of Law and Stasis. We are despised of Zentrum, and we deserve it. I deserve it.” Friedman began to rock back and forth in his muddy spot between the lamps. “I deserve it, I deserve it,” he chanted.

“By the Law and the Land, brother,” muttered Golitsin. He reached to touch the shoulder of the hermit, but Friedman flung his hand away. He continued his rocking and moaning.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Abel. Before he could question it, turn over his decision, he acted. Rising up, he stepped past Golitsin and launched himself at the hermit priest. He landed on top of Friedman and with a quick shove, threw the hermit on his back. The man was stronger than he looked, and he began to struggle. Abel found his musket still in his hand, and he brought it down horizontally across the hermit’s neck, pinning him down against the mud, crushing his windpipe, choking the priest.

“Help me,” Abel called to Golitsin.

“Help you what?”

“Hold him,” Abel replied. “Get one side of my gun. Let me free a hand.”

Golitsin moved as if in a trance to obey him. “Abel, don’t kill him,” he whispered.

“I’m not trying to kill him,” Abel gasped, still struggling to hold the hermit down.

Then Golitsin was beside him, and together they held either end of the musket across the hermit’s throat. Abel took his free hand from the musket and thrust it to Friedman’s mouth. With his fist, he dug at the lips until he had the mouth open and felt the teeth trying to bite down on the meat of his palm. No use. The hermit’s biting days were over, and what he had remaining was mostly gum now, and disease-softened gum at that. Abel freed a finger within the mouth. Two. Dug. Dug beyond the squirming tongue. Found the roof the mouth. The bump that should not be there. Dug harder, pushed in his nails.

And got hold of it. The disk. The host.

And, with the hermit screaming bloody murder, Abel pulled the disk out. He clenched his palm, holding it there. “Got it,” he said. “By the Lady’s Bones, I got it!”

Suddenly, the hermit ceased struggling. He lay utterly still. At a concerned glance from Golitsin, the two men simultaneously lessened the pressure of the musket barrel across Freidman’s throat.

And then the hermit began to sob. Great wracking sobs that echoed underneath the buildings. “No, no,” he cried. “Gone, gone, forever gone.”

Golitsin shook his head. “Poor fellow,” he said.

Abel held out his palm, showing the spit-wet, bloodstained disk. “Look at this thing,” he said. “What is it?”

Golitsin shook his head. “I really don’t know,” he said. “There are rumors. Tales of what it means to be elevated to prelate. I always thought those stories were all dakshit. But now…”

A Mark 9 ZhUdRp5 quantum transceiver, said Center. This is the ZhUd model prior to the Mark 10, which was auto-tuning. The Mark 9 cannot be used alone, but is dependent upon a hub, which is probably contained somewhere in the Tabernacle of Lindron. It was necessary to condition the disk and the individual user’s neural pathways using a separate nanotechnological infusion known as a cerebral serrate. Without the introduction of the serrate, which obviously Friedman did not receive, the transceiver would have used whatever brain-to-skin pathways that existed and were available. Uncontrolled on either receiving or transmission ends.

Friedman steals the disk, looks upon the Mind of God bare, and it drives him dakshit crazy, thought Abel.

Imprecise formulation, but a close enough metaphorical approximation, Center replied dryly.

What are we going to do about it?

There is little to do. His neural pathways are scrambled, with an eighty-four point six chance that they are damaged beyond repair. He is not in a fit state to travel, and he will lose whatever sense he has within the next few hours.

“We have to get him somewhere safe,” said Golitsin. “Find someone to take care of him.”

“Who?” said Abel.

“I’m not sure, but we can’t just—”

With a roar, Friedman threw himself forward against the now lightly held musket and flung them both to the side with the power of his movement.

Golitsin recovered first, and leapt after the hermit, to no avail. Friedman was already away as Golitsin’s fingers grazed the heel of the fleeing priest.

“Friedman,” Golitsin called. “Brother!”

Then Abel saw where Golitsin was looking. Down the slope of the bank. Friedman was running full tilt down into the darkness toward the sound of the rushing water.

Golitsin turned around, reached for a lamp, but Abel knocked his hand away. “I have to go after him,” said Golitsin.

“No,” Abel said.

“But—”

“No,” Abel said, and steadied his grip on the priest’s arm. No matter what, he was not going to let go now.

Then from below came the cry. It almost sounded like joy. “Alaha Zentrum!”

Then the carnadon roar. The scrape of scales. The flat flap of a mighty tail against the muddy Land.

Then the screams. The human screams.

Then those screams stopped, and there was only the scrape of scales and the low grunts of satiation.

“Do you think he made it to the water, at least?” Golitsin asked.

“Do you?”

“No.”

They sat within the square of lamps for a time, until all was silent once more.

“He said there was a better way up,” Golitsin said.

“Yes,” Abel said. He nodded toward one side of the square. “I see a trail.”

Golitsin followed his gaze. “Scout’s eyes,” he finally said. “I don’t see anything.”

“Good thing you’re not a Scout, then,” Abel said. “And I am not a priest.”

Abel reached out his hand with the wafer in it.

I think this is best for now, he thought.

Perhaps, said Center. The max and min optimals become very difficult to calculate from such a nexus.

Abel is right, Raj said. It is best. For now.

How about that? He called me directly by my name and not “the lad,” Abel thought—but he carefully kept the thought from reaching the state of mental expression.

“Will you take this?” Abel said to Golitsin. “And will you promise not to use it?”

Golitsin required a moment to realize what Abel meant. Then Abel opened his hand and revealed the quantum communication disk.

“Maybe I shouldn’t take it,” the priest said.

“I think you should,” Abel replied. “You said it yourself: you may be a bad priest, but you’re not that kind of bad priest. You’ll keep it safe.”

Golitsin considered a moment more. “All right,” he finally said. He reached out a hand, and Abel dropped it into his palm. The priest withdrew his hand and found a place to tuck it within his robes. Evidently there were quite a few pockets therein of which Abel had previously been unaware.

Golitsin turned upslope. “So, Scout, do your scouting,” he said. “Get us the hell out of here.”

“My pleasure,” Abel replied. And, after a moment of reading the muddy ground, he had the trail all right, the shortcut, and led them upward toward the day.

They emerged, as Abel had suspected they might, through the seat of a public toilet, greatly surprising a washerwoman who had her hand on the door to enter when it flew open and two men emerged from the privy—a soldier and a priest.

“By the Stasis,” she exclaimed as they rushed past her, begging her pardon, and lost themselves in the crowded street.