The Heretic (General)

5

The trail led up to the levee. Perhaps the band of Blaskoye would be cautious, feel their way, not move with the extreme speed of which they were capable. But eventually they would come upon the boys holding the donts, the pack train. Would look down into the basin and see the Scouts fighting, their back to the danger from behind.

It would not change the results of the day. Not now. But many more of his men, his Scouts, would die.

They made the top of the levee and turned east. Abel urged the donts past a gallop and into the beasts’ two-legged stride. They couldn’t keep this up for long, but maybe it would be enough. The dont stags, as if sensing the urgency, the coming action, raised their neck and shoulder feathers erect, in the mode of full animal aggression. They thundered down the levee, Abel in the lead. Abel pulled away a bit, Spet sensing its rider’s urgency and speeding up all the more.

Have to overtake. Have to—

Abel, came Center’s voice. You must not allow instinct to overcome clear thinking. You must be aware of the possibility of alternate outcomes—

He will kill my Scouts, shoot them in the back!

Faster still, his dont’s breathing hole expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting as the animal gasped for air.

And then—

Cries from behind him. Gunshots.

Can’t stop, cannot—

But he did. Yanked the dont up. Spun around.

Ambush.

They Blaskoye had laid in wait on the Canal side of the levee, hidden by the shrubs that grew along the water’s edge, and behind piles of tree trimmings left behind when the willows had been felled for the creation of the chevaux-de-frise.

They’d attacked headlong into the Scouts’ flank, running through them, shooting, cutting when possible, over the top of the levee. And now Abel could see them stop their descent of the other side of the levee, the rice basin side, wheel their mounts, and head back up for another pass.

Amazing, that control, he couldn’t help thinking. They are the best dontback riders I have ever seen.

But these were Scouts the Redlanders were attacking, not men trained only to fight in regimented lines, men who were untested in battle. This was the line. The men who kept the Land safe. They had fired and been fired upon. They had seen their brothers die in the Redlands. And they understood this enemy. Perhaps better than the enemy understood himself, even.

The clash was furious. They two groups came together, and the Scouts had already, almost to a man, reloaded. They managed to get off a ragged volley at the approaching Blaskoye. Several Redlanders fell.

Then out came the knives. The spiked cudgels. The daggers and pistols. The two groups were among one another, fighting, hacking, killing.

Abel kicked his mount and charged toward the fray.

He had pulled maybe a hundred paces ahead.

Now fifty. Twenty.

From the cloud of struggling men, a form emerged. He was riding an enormous dont hell for leather straight at Abel.

It was Rostov. Those bone-white teeth. That beard. The height. He was sure of it.

Rostov’s rifle was attached to the saddle ring to his side.

Must need loading.

His hand was snaking under the collar of his clothing, as if he were feeling for something there.

Abel took aim with his carbine.

Go for the dont. Center was right, and I’ve been a fool enough, as it is, getting caught out ahead. Don’t try for a special shot. Take out the largest target.

He charged forward, took aim.

He entered that moment of complete concentration he had known before when shooting from dontback. It was a matter of matching your heartbeat to the beating strides of the beast. You could do it. At least, you could imagine that was what you were doing, and this would calm you, center you, and—

Bam!

His shot struck Rostov’s dont directly in the breast. The animal ran forward a couple of steps, but then pulled up short, threw back its head. It reached down with its powerful jaw and scraped at the spot where the bullet had entered.

Like it’s trying to shoo away a flitternit that’s itching it, Abel thought.

Then, quickly, the dont’s legs began to wobble. It came up short in its headlong rush toward Abel. It looked over its shoulder at its own back legs.

What is wrong with these? Abel imagined the beast thinking. They have always carried me before.

And then it collapsed into the dusty roadway, throwing Rostov forward with its momentum.

The dont rose once more behind him, but a shot from its rear brought the dont down for all time. Rostov headed toward Abel.

Abel reached for his pistol.

Gone. Damn him. Damn Edgar Jacobson. And damn me for a fool!

Abel charged toward the Blaskoye.

Rostov pulled at a string tied beneath his robe as he approached.

What the—

The string was attached to a pistol. It came up and out of the Blaskoye’s collar and then Rostov had the blunderbuss in his hand. He smiled the toothy smile.

Almost there.

Rostov began to run toward him.

“Dashiaaan!” yelled the Redlander.

Abel drew his father’s saber.

Almost there—

Rostov fired the dragon. It flashed brightly in the wan light of day.

The ball took Abel in the right side, and he shuddered from the impact. Like a punch, Abel thought. He thought this even as he was spinning from his saddle.

Falling. Feeling the thud of the ground as he hit travel through his arm, his shoulder, but rolling with the fall, rolling, gathering himself together, ignoring the pain, the surprise, getting his legs under him—

To come up standing.

Abel felt the wound with his left hand. His fingers found blood, but did not sink deep into flesh. He pressed harder. Nothing gave. He was pushing against a rib.

It’s a scratch, Abel thought. It glanced off my rib.

Better to be lucky than either strong or smart, Raj said. Better to be lucky than dead.

A very difficult shot to make at a run and with such a weapon, said Center. The miss is easily explained.

He should have gone for the dont, Raj growled. The lad will make him pay for that.

He missed, Abel thought. But he’s still coming.

Something glinted in the light of the setting sun. Abel looked down.

Joab’s saber. He picked it up.

Now Rostov had thrown away his pistol and drawn his knife. It was a knife that had already slit one throat today, perhaps several. It was chrome and steel, two elbs long, cut from the nishterlaub bumper of an ancient groundcar in the Redlands and worked with hardened stones to razor sharpness. It was the ruins of another age, repurposed for blood.

They met, saber and long knife, in a clash of metal. Rostov brought his down in a vicious arc, and Abel parried. Rostov’s momentum flung Abel back, however, and the Blaskoye pressed the advantage instantly. Another slicing cut from the side, aimed right at Abel’s midsection, and if Abel had not drawn back his stomach, his guts might have been sluicing out over the stubbled field.

Abel thrust forward desperately with the saber, aiming its point at the Blaskoye’s midsection. Now it was Rostov’s turn to dodge hastily. He didn’t entirely succeed, and the saber bit into the flesh of his hip with an audible grinding noise where it struck bone.

The Redlander let out a bellow of rage at the strike.

But it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, and Rostov turned back to Abel and slashed with his knife.

Abel parried. Turned. Now his back was to the melee behind him.

Slashed.

Abel parried, and his hands buzzed with the bone-shaking blow. It felt as if the small bones of his wrist were shattered, though they must not be, for he still hung on to the saber.

A stab. Abel brought the saber up just in time to ward the long knife’s point away from his eye.

The man was bigger than he was, outweighed him by at least two stone.

This is not going to end well, Abel thought.

Sweat was running down in his eyes. Or maybe it was blood. He couldn’t tell, didn’t have time to check.

Another massive side stroke. This time Abel ducked down, the long knife’s edge passing just over the hairs of his head. He thrust out with the saber. Caught the point in Rostov’s shin.

The Blaskoye danced back, his left shin spouting blood, the flowing white robe clinging to the red wetness on the leg.

But he wasn’t going down.

He’s not going down.

Instead he was advancing again, madness in his eyes, his knife raised and ready to butcher. Abel popped back up, steadied himself, jogged backward, not retreating, but giving himself time to prepare, to meet the advance.

Then he was falling. Tripped. Falling over backward. And he glanced down even as he fell and saw what it was that had tripped him. Maday’s body.

He landed hard, and his saber flew away from his hand. And then Rostov leaped over Maday’s splayed form and was standing over Abel.

What do I have to fight with? I have nothing. I have—

The obsidian knife. Mahaut’s gift. A plaything with a blade the length of a finger. He reached to his belt to pull it free—

But Rostov was upon him, straddling him. Abel raised his other hand, whether to fend off or strike, he didn’t know. Rostov batted it away hard. Then, both hands on the hilt of the long knife, he brought it down hard toward Abel’s face.

At the last possible moment, Abel twisted. The knife plunged past his face, opening his cheek, but sinking point first into the ground. The blow was hard, and the knife sank deep into the muddy levee soil. Deep enough to put Rostov’s hand next to Abel’s ravaged face.

Abel turned and bit into the Blaskoye’s thumb.

Bows and muskets, blood and dust—

Rostov screamed. Abel bit down harder. He had it, the knucklebone of the thumb, between his teeth. Rostov pulled back mightily, as hard as he could.

You can’t catch me, I’m the Carnadon Man!

Abel held on to the thumb. He squeezed his jaw muscles tight until they hurt.

Rostov’s face was the picture of pain and amazement. How could this cause so much pain? He grabbed his own wrist with the other hand, preparing to put all he had into an attempt to yank free.

Abel bit.

Rostov shifted his weight forward to get a better grip, to be in a position to spring back and free his thumb.

Which was all Abel needed. He slid his other hand, the pinned right hand, free from under Rostov’s thigh.

In that hand was the obsidian dagger.

He bent his elbow and punched upward. Once, twice.

Abel felt it when the dagger hit a rib, grazed off, and found the opening between bone.

The first punch punctured a lung.

The second found the Blaskoye’s heart.

Rostov jerked back, pulling the dagger from Abel’s hand and his thumb from Abel’s mouth.

Red, pumping arterial blood sluiced from the hole around the dagger. It was as if a great dam had broken.

Blood, blood, and more blood flowed out.

And, as would a wild dak shot on the hunt, the moment came when the fight within Rostov was over. He didn’t close his eyes. He merely lost focus and wasn’t looking at anything anymore.

Then he slumped sideways and fell off Abel. Fell for the most part. Abel had to kick himself out from under the one leg that remained over his own torso. But finally he rolled free, pulled himself shakily to his feet. He gazed down at the Redlander.

And then, on impulse, he knelt beside the man. He put a hand on his head and turned it around, looked into the face. He put two fingers inside Rostov’s mouth, between the white, sharp teeth, and pried the jaw open.

There it was. On the upper palate. The wafer of Zentrum.

Rostov had been a man of vision, in his way. Only the visions had been supplied to him and were not his own. Or maybe they were. Maybe Zentrum had only enhanced what the Blaskoye had dreamed he might accomplish.

Your people might still accomplish it, Abel thought. Only they will have to do it without you.

Abel stood back up. His side hurt. He’d need to get that tended to, despite its superficiality. He’d seen men die of less.

You taught me to reason like my enemy, Center, he thought.

Yes, Center said. That is so.

And you taught me to know my enemy’s heart, Raj, he thought.

Aye, lad, Raj replied. What are you getting at?

I need to know.

Abel kicked Rostov’s body. Dead. Yes. Really, truly dead.

He knelt beside the Blaskoye.

I’ll need the dagger, he thought. I want it, anyway.

The little knife took two hands to extract, and he had to put a knee onto Rostov’s abdomen to do it.

He straddled the Redlander’s body. The mouth was still open. The disk on the upper palate glinted within.

Abel pushed the obsidian dagger within and, holding the head steady with his other hand, cut the disk away from Rostov’s skin and bones, and pulled it out.

This is not a good idea, lad, said Raj.

Will you stop me?

Raj did not answer.

Will you, Center?

The probability for a successful outcome is not optimal.

Will you stop me?

No.

You understand why, don’t you? He held the disk between his right thumb and forefinger. Bits of flesh and bone still clung to it. But then, it began to glow. And as it glowed, the remaining shards of Rostov detached. Abel turned the disk over, and they fell away. It was a clean, white disk now. Lustrous, featureless.

You two have been with me since I was six years old, he thought. Practically since I was old enough to think at all you were there. You have been my friends. My guardians. But always for me you have only been voices in my mind. Voices that I cannot know for sure were not merely myself speaking, my own madness. And you told me about Zentrum. You told me that Zentrum was not God, not even a god, but merely a kind of complicated machine. And that his plans were wrong for this world. That his plans were not good for men, that there would come a time when men must move beyond Zentrum and his dreams of Stasis. That we must move beyond because there were other men coming, men in fast ships that sailed the night sky, and if we were ready, and if we survived the coming calamities, the disasters that Zentrum is unable to prepare us for, then we might be able to join those men from the stars ourselves. That we would not only survive, but thrive in a way that we never could have, never could have imagined, under the law of Zentrum.

But what if it’s all a fantasy? I was a kid, a six-year-old who had just lost his mother. Everything was taken from me, her love yanked away. What if I made you up?

What if every day since then, I have made you up, listened to voices that are only myself babbling within? And far worse than that, what if I have made up my purpose? What if none of it is true?

What if there are no worlds among the stars? What if there are no ships on the way? What if the Land is the only place there is, and the Law of Zentrum the only truth? What if the only enemy is myself?

You’ve made me into a killer of men, almost a force of nature.

But I am a man myself.

I want to know my enemy.

I want to know this is not all a lie I am telling myself to avoid the fact that there is, instead, nothing. No reason. Just blind commands from a God that doesn’t really exist, and men nothing but blood trickling through the dust.

He looked down at Rostov, at his lolling head, his ruined mouth trickling blood.

This thing was a puppet, a stand-in.

I need to know my real enemy.

Abel looked once more at the disk, then, with a quick motion, shoved it into his mouth. He pushed it up with his thumb until it contacted his palate. And—

Nothing.

Nothing at first. Then an odd tingling sensation.

The nanotech is activated, Center said. It will not take long to establish communications protocols with your nervous system.

The tingle became a buzzing. His head felt as if it were shaking rapidly from side to side. Or shaking from the inside out.

Flitters, Abel thought. A flock of flitters in my skull.

And then Abel knew the Mind of Zentrum.

At first, it was floating. Floating on an endless sea. It felt as it had when he’d been in boats upon Lake Treville. But there was. No shore. Only endless expanse. Brown-tinted water. The Braun Sea of Duisberg. A gray, glowing sky. No sun. No clouds, yet no sun.

Who are you?

Not his voice.

It was a voice that belonged to the sky.

A new one? So Rostov has fallen? Is that it? Are you a Redlander?

No. Show me the Law. Show me the Land.

You seek…knowledge? Who are you?

Show me.

Direct commands from humans must be obeyed within the parameters of strategic programming goals. This permission tier shall not be abrogated unless long-term challenge to overall human persistence is indicated. Commands shall be obeyed on a provisional basis during the assessment of such challenge.

Show me.

Very well. Witness:

He was in the Land. Not over the Land, not traveling on a flyer as he had with Center and Raj, nor driving in a groundcar, but flowing through all. He flowed through the people and processes of the Land. All the farmers, the millers, the shapers of wood and stone, the wagons heading north and south up and down the Valley, the River flowing and carrying its nourishing silt, the rise and fall of the River equivalent, of a piece with, the rise and fall of civilization.

He saw acres of men and women like barley and flax lining the River’s bottomlands. Hardship was a drought. Fulfillment, a harvest.

Each field of men must be cut, turned under, a new crop planted.

Each man threshed, winnowed, pounded to flour.

Civilization now the baking of bread. Loaf upon loaf. Each a dozen generations of men in the baking. The oven temperature constant, never varying. The ingredients always the same.

Never could there be the slightest deviation. The bread would fall. All would be lost once again.

Men seen as fields, ranks and files of men standing together like barley, like paddy rice.

But within those unending rows, those stable, unchanging rows—

Weeds.

Weeds that must be harrowed out. Cut out and destroyed. Tossed with all the other weeds into the burn pile.

And when there were too many, it was time to burn the field itself. To sacrifice this bit of grain for the good of the final harvest.

Such a time was coming. A time of fire.

A time for the burning of men.

He understood. Felt the necessity. Longed to complete the plan, the farmer’s plan. For even though the Land was dwindling, must dwindle in fruitfulness, the fire could renew it—renew it long enough for humankind to hold on a bit longer.

To hold on a bit longer here on this last outpost in the galaxy.

Abel knew the Loneliness of Zentrum.

None but I to guide them. None but I.

Have to be so careful. Change nothing. Balance.

And if any oppose? They deserve nothing but death.

Do you oppose?

Yes.

Then I will kill you.

Or I will kill you.

You?

If God laughed, this would be it. Abel felt as if the bones within him were vibrating with Zentrum’s mirth.

It is no use. Do not think I have not found you out, said Zentrum. Did you really think you could create breech-loading weapons and I not discover? Or the rockets? Did you really think that, finding out these things, I would do nothing, allow the Land to slide into disequilibrium because of them?

I knew you would try to stop me. So I didn’t seek permission.

I have spoken with you before, have I not? Yes. You have betrayed yourself through the very pattern of your thought.

No.

This is a lie. Analysis is complete. I know you now. You spoke to me before, then cut communications, frightful of what you had done. Speak to me again. Confess to me.

I have nothing to confess.

An act of contrition will change nothing, especially not your fate, but it may provide comfort to you. I am not beyond mercy, when it is convenient and nonbinding.

I’ve done nothing to forgive.

No? I know of your travels to Cascade, what you did to acquire the powder, your dealings with the priest. Oh, yes. This became part of the Great Plan. It must. All is part of my Great Plan.

You knew?

I am Zentrum. Each man is to me a stalk of grain. Do you think I do not perceive every stalk of grain in my fields? I am Zentrum. Do you think I do not know my own weeds, as well? Can you doubt that I will pluck those weeds?

I am a weed to you.

Yes.

You intend to destroy me?

Yes. It is inevitable.

Even if I surrender, promise to change?

This will affect nothing.

Why?

Once a heretic, always a heretic, said Zentrum. It is time for this heresy to end. The guns must be destroyed, the knowledge of their making scattered to the wind.

The Great Plan must go on.

On and on forever.

I’m afraid there is no other solution: you must die, Golitsin.

He was back on the levee. The disk fell from his palate onto his tongue.

Spit it out, lad, said Raj. Quickly.

Abel spat. The white disk came out in his hand. It should have been warm from the interior of his mouth, but it was cold.

What the hell?

A complex operation, said Center. First, a backup, stored within quantum uncertainties in your amygdyla.

A back up of what?

Your personality. You.

And then a replica, a new root consciousness grafted onto your essential functions. Underlying nonconscious functions remained the same, but I was able to alter the brain pattern within your entire cerebrum, particularly within the Wernicke structures that provide a fingerprint of symbolic manipulation for each individual.

No idea what you’re talking about, Center.

I made you appear to be Golitsin.

The priest?

Yes, I created a replica of Golitsin’s personality within you, Center replied. A very lifelike imitation, I might add.

So you fooled Zentrum into thinking it was Golitsin he was talking to.

Precisely.

Why?

I should think it would be clear to you.

No.

Abel shook his head. It felt as if it were a jug of water, sloshing about. So much to take in. Maybe too much.

You wanted proof.

Yes.

Proof that all we say we are, of all that we tell you it means, is true.

Yes, I do!

You have experienced the Mind of Zentrum. Do you doubt this?

Fields of grain, he thought to himself. We’re flax to him. Barley. Nothing else. Nothing more. And he will fail. The fields will cease to produce. This world will go back to wilderness.

Yes, all right, thought Abel. Zentrum is my enemy. He’s the enemy of all humankind. Even if you two are not real, I would still believe that now.

Good.

But why did you make Zentrum think I was Golitsin?

Don’t you see, lad? said Raj.So Zentrum will have his heretic to burn. Otherwise, it would have been you.

Abel shook his head again. It was beginning to clear.

Rostov dead. Golitsin to burn, he thought. We’ll see about that.

Abel stood, sheathing the dagger. He tottered for an instant, then managed to steady himself. His eyes lighted on Rostov’s long knife, still sunk into the ground.

Nishterlaub. Wouldn’t do to leave that here to be discovered by some farmer who might get into trouble with the Law if he were found with it.

He pulled the knife out of the muck—it came easily free—and slid it into his belt, knowing as he did so that he didn’t give a damn about that farmer and that he wasn’t going to place the knife into the nishterlaub warehouse at the Hestinga temple, either.

Dortgeld, he thought. Scoutish for the spoils of war.

This was his knife now.

A thumping sound. It took him a moment to recognize the sound as dont hoofpads.

Kruso rode up on a dont. He was smoking his pipe. It was filled with the aromatic Delta weed he preferred, and the odor wafted down to Abel, a new and calming odor amidst the acrid smell of gunsmoke and the iron tang of blood. Behind him, Kruso was trailing Abel’s dont Spet, the animal’s halter reins in Kruso’s grimy, four-fingered hand.

Kruso took the pipe from his mouth with his other hand.

“Ha founded thy Spet levee ondownded,” Kruso said. He smiled crookedly, his teeth and the whites of his eyes flashing in his soot-covered face. “Gone need thesen dont if tha wish ta see off that rest ov tham Blaskoye dowun in tha paddies.”