Bloodstone

'Then why call us down here? Sounds like it's all sewn up.'

Saul sipped his wine. Then, There is a complication, Jacob.'

There usually is.'

The burning of the church. There was a Preacher who survived. He hunted down five of my men and killed them. Yesterday I had a long talk with a local man who knows the Preacher — has known him for twenty years.'

'Cut to the chase, Saul. I don't need the gift wrapping.'

'I think you do. The Preacher came here twenty years ago, just after the Blessed Coming of our sainted Deacon. He was a young man, maybe twenty. But this local man told me an interesting story. He said the Preacher was in fact much older, and that he'd regained his youth through a Daniel Stone in a tower.'

'Sounds like he's either drunk or an idiot,' said Moon, draining his wine and reaching for the bottle.

'He's neither. And I know the Daniel Stone was in that tower, because the Deacon and I went there fifteen years ago. We saw what was left of it, its power gone. It was huge, Jacob, big enough to hold planes and ships in stasis for hundreds of years. Now the man who took the last of its power, in order to become young again, was Jon Shannow.'

Moon froze. 'You've got to be joking!'

'Not at all, Jacob. The Jerusalem Man. The one and only. The new Elijah.'

'And you think this Preacher was Jon Shannow? Why the Hell would he stay in this lousy backwater if he was the Jerusalem Man? He could have been rich beyond his dreams.'

'I don't know his reasons, but I believe it to be the truth. He rode out and slew our comrades, and now he is somewhere out there.' Saul waved his hand towards the window.

Moon glanced up. 'Jesus, man, but couldn't he put the fox in the hen-house? He could finish the myth of the Deacon right enough, prove him to be a pompous old windbag and a liar to boot.'

'I don't think so,' said Saul. The Jerusalem Man is too much a part of myth now. People would expect to see the halo. No, that is only one part of the problem. Firstly, we don't want the Deacon discredited

— since I am his heir. And I want the kingdom united behind me as it is behind him. But secondly, Beth McAdam was once the man's mistress. There could well be residual good feeling between them. When she is dispossessed, or killed, I don't want the likes of Jon Shannow hunting me.'

'What about this man who knows the truth?'

'Well, he is another matter. At the moment he is useful to me, but he has promised to stand Oath for Beth McAdam in ten days. The night before the Oath Taking you will kill him.'

'Has he got a pretty wife?'

Saul laughed aloud. 'Pretty? Else Broome? She looks like an overweight sow that's been squeezed into a dress.'

'Fat, eh? I like 'em fat,' said Jacob Moon.

* * *

Dr Meredith found the old stranger irritating beyond belief. Jeremiah, on the other hand, seemed amused, but then everyone knew that Jeremiah loved a good debate. Even Isis listened spellbound.

'How can you argue against the development of reason, or science?' pressed the doctor.

'Easily,' answered Jake. 'Centuries ago a man in Ancient Greece came up with the theory that all matter, however huge, from a planet down to a rock, is made up of tiny component parts. The tiniest of these he called atoms, which is Greek for uncuttable. Man being what he is, he just had to cut the uncuttable. And look where we are! Man is a hunting, killing animal. A predator. Every advance he makes is ultimately linked to destruction, either physical or moral.'

'What of medicine?' Dr Meredith persisted. The world before the Fall made magnificent advances in the controlling of disease.'

'Yes, they did,' agreed Jake, 'and they moved into genetic engineering, in order that animal parts could be used for transplant into humans. Hence the Wolvers and the other poor mutated creatures who stalk this planet. Hence the awful build-up of chemical weapons, bacteria and plague germs that were dumped into what was the Atlantic and have now poisoned vast areas of our present land.'

Jake stood and moved to the water barrel, filling his tin mug. 'You can pin it all on one example,' he said.

'Christ told people to love one another and to do good to them that hates you. He said all men were brothers and that we should love our neighbours as ourselves. Within a few hundred years men were arguing about what this meant. Then they went to war over it, and slaughtered one another in order to prove that their version of love thy neighbour was the best system.'

Jeremiah laughed aloud. 'Ah, Jake,' he said, 'you surely do have a way with words. You and the Deacon have a lot in common.'

'Yep,' said Jake. 'Him in his ivory tower and me on my mule. We know how the world works, the Deacon and me.'

'The Deacon is evil,' said Meredith. 'Plain and simple.'

Jake shook his head. 'Nothing in this God-forsaken world is plain and simple, boy. Except death. That's the only sure thing you can guarantee: we're all going to die. Apart from that it's just a sea of complexity.

But I would disagree with you about the Deacon. He's just a man who likes to see firm lines drawn. I was in Unity when he was Chief Magistrate; he made some good calls, to my mind.'

'Ah, yes,' sneered Meredith. 'Like public murder. Dragging a man through the streets to be executed in front of his family.'

'You're twisting it just a mite,' said Jake. 'You're talking about the villain meeting his punishment at the scene of his crime. I don't think that is too bad; it lets folk see that justice is done.'

'That's not justice,' stormed Meredith. That's barbarity!'

'These are barbarous times, doctor. But you could argue that it comes down to values. What value do we place on a life? The Deacon says that back in his time a killer could be walking the streets within a couple of years, sometimes less. Even mass killers could be released at some time. So the value they put on a human life was two years. Life was awful cheap in those days. At least with the Deacon a killer knows he will get just what his victim got. No more, no less.'

'And what if the court is wrong?' asked Meredith. 'What if an innocent man is found guilty?'

'What about it?' replied Jake. 'It's sad, sure enough, but then mistakes happen, don't they? It doesn't mean the system is wrong. A doctor once told a man I knew he was getting too fat and needed to exercise. He went on a diet and dropped dead. What are we supposed to do? Encourage everybody to get fat just in case there's another lard-belly with a weak heart?'

‘That's an outrageous view!'

Jake grinned, and Jeremiah stepped in. 'What about forgiveness, Jake? Didn't Christ talk about that too?'

'Well, you can forgive a man — and still hang him.'

‘This is too much!' hissed Dr Meredith, rising from the fireside and stalking back to his wagon.

'Do you see everything so simply, Jake?' asked Isis. 'Is it all black and white for you? Truly?'

The old man gazed at her and his smile faded. 'Nothing is simple, Isis, no matter how hard we try to make it so. I wish it was. Young Doctor Meredith is not wrong. Life is the greatest gift, and every man and woman has infinite possibilities for good or evil. Sometimes for both.' The night breeze strengthened, fanning the flames of the fire. Jake shivered and pulled his old sheepskin coat more tightly around his shoulders. 'But I suppose the question is really one of focus. For a society to succeed it must have strong rules to protect the weak and yet inspire the strong. You agree?'

'Of course,' said Isis.

'Ah, but now the complications begin. In nature the weak perish, the strong survive. So then, if we protect the weak they will flourish, growing like weeds within the society, needing more and more protection, until finally the weak so outnumber the strong that — in a democracy — they rule, and make laws encouraging even more weakness. That society will sicken and die, slowly falling apart as it sows the seeds of its own destruction.'