“A God who preaches killing will not impress Oelita.”
Joesai lifted the rifle to his shoulder and aimed into the hill…
“No!” screamed Gaet.
… and pulled the metal thumb. There was another crack! a terrible impact against his shoulder, and a flying chip of stone. “The logic that will destroy her mind if she is unwilling to change is this: God saved us from a world where they were breeding only for better killers. He did not speak to us of this until we had learned of ourselves to breed for better values. Now He tells us how to kill again through Oelita who has brought us His words. It is a test to see what we have learned. God is Oelita’s partner. Can her mind survive knowing that? God abhors Death and through her gives us limitless new ways of Death. What Oelita cannot face today, and must face if she is to survive, is that Death will stop neither for her nor for God. Death is senior to us all. We win only by tricking Death to our own purpose, which is the breeding of kalothi.”
The argument continued while they loaded and flung five lead pebbles. It slogged along intermittently as Getasun, at highnode, found the brothers concentrating their attention on a test of the portable rayvoice. They contacted the Palace and left a message for Hoemei that said simply, “Creche reunion of the Wooden Triangle at sunset.” The argument continued more vigorously on Gaet’s skrei-wheel, bumping back into the city, packsack loaded on the bars and rifle lashed to Joesai’s shoulders. When Hoemei met them in his Palace apartment, its tables readied with cold feast, one of the Liethe playing softly as she sat by the window, legs crossed, the argument languished into an off trail and had to be reintroduced later.
The Liethe, unhurried, concluded her melodious piece before she rose, bowed, and helped them out of their clothes. She was temporarily waylaid in her gentle task by a fascination for the cold steel tube with its strange attachments. “What is this?” Her fingers stroked the barrel.
“A device for quieting inquisitive women,” Joesai joked.
Receiving his joke as a command to be silent, she led them to their bath without even a rustle from her robe. Her delicate hands began to massage away their tiredness, with the dirt, running the warm water over their bodies in a relaxing glory.
Hoemei pulled up a cushion. “I hear Kathein has found the title page.”
“Have you been reading the revelations?” asked Joesai.
“I haven’t had a moment! God’s Feet have been kicking me. Tonight I have a tryst with Teenae for the evening and she promises to read to me selections from the foul book if I properly satisfy her bodily hungers. I’ve missed the excitement. My God, on top of everything I now have duties to the Gathering.”
“Bendaein won’t use you!” Joesai spat scornfully.
Hoemei sighed. “I’m into the Gathering because of you. Some private organizing for your benefit. Bendaein knows nothing of my efforts.”
Joesai glared at Hoemei, telling him to shut up while they were in the same room with one of Aesoe’s spies.
“She’s loyal to me, Joesai.”
“You’d trust your own mother, if you had one.”
“It was Honey who found your men in Soebo.”
Without missing a knead of his muscles, she spoke. “They are held underground at the Temple of Raging Seas. Some high sea priest thinks it will prove useful to keep them alive.”
“She is apprenticed to rayvoice work with me. Aesoe does not know and would not be pleased.”
Joesai turned to the woman with the smooth skin who had stripped herself to the waist so that she would not wet her robe. “So it was you who set my heart at rest? I thank you.” He reached over and squeezed her wrist with a vice grip that was the custom when acknowledging a debt that would be paid whenever it was called, now or a generation from now.
“All I will ever need is to serve you well.” She dropped her eyes and concentrated on washing his knees.
Immediately he began to like this strange being regardless of his unwillingness to trust her. He thought for several more heartbeats about trusting her. Nevertheless he changed the subject to a non-sensitive topic. “What does the title page say?”
“God is revealing to us the History of Man. Oelita’s crystal is a fragment of Volume 1: The Cradle Earth.”
“Earth — the Riethe of the Heroic Solo Chant!” yelped Joesai in an eruption of water that drowned Gaet and spattered the Liethe.
“Very possibly. There are eight major parts to the Cradle Volume. We have only Sequence 1: The Forge of War.”
“Those damn words that mean nothing!” stormed Joesai. “I have fourteen pages from Kathein by now, and most of it doesn’t make sense.”
Gaet had riffled through his neat memory for names and places and was smiling. “Forge would mean furnace or kiln or crematorium. There is a reference to a fierj in the Children’s Chant. ‘Gowan gaien to fierj the shoes for Horse.’ Among the og-Sieth on the shores of the Aramap the word foerj means to work softened metal. It is sometimes used as a synonym for cremation as in the curse, ‘May your poisoned innards be foerged while your family starves.’”
“I’ve crossed the word ‘war’ in my readings,” Joesai recalled. “It means nothing to me. It occurs in conjunction with the words ‘kill’ and ‘peace’. I speculate that it is a killing game and peace the opening move.”
“I have read none of it so I cannot guess,” said Hoemei. “Kathein favors the translation ‘Furnace of Violence’, others prefer ‘The Kiln of Fire’ or simply ‘The Crematorium’.”
“There are references to crematoriums,” continued Joesai. “The People of the Sky are not nourished by the people they kill so it is logical to infer that poisoning is a widespread means of inducing Contribution. Or did they poison themselves to deny their enemy nourishment? I found one reference to factory crematoriums on a scale vaster than I would believe had I not seen God’s word of its truth. The whole population of Kaiel-hontokae would be consumed in weeks by such a Black Temple. Then there was a reference to a city that flamed so fiercely in a firestorm that its whole population was burned or asphyxiated. Many sentences contain messages by powerful priests implying a readiness to vaporize cities. Burning defenseless villages was a popular aspect of the game. The children danced as torches for the victors. But crematorium is not specific enough. What of the rifle? I like Gaet’s og’Sieth word ‘foerj’. Into what shape would such violence work a man’s metal? We can thank God for our deliverance.”
“Praise God if such was the world of our conception,” said Gaet.
“Praise God,” said Hoemei with ritual fervor.
The Liethe girl said nothing. She dried their dripping bodies and brought them lounging robes dyed with red alizarin and went back to her tiny string instrument that permeated the conversation, listening.
“Do read about their clan interlockings, Hoemei. You’ll be fascinated. They had priest clans as dedicated to random killing as we are to kalothi.”
Hoemei was devouring bread with gobs of bean and nut spread in profane taimu sauce. “Did they have a central government?”
“I don’t think so, I’m confused. What can fourteen pages say of something as complex as an oz’Numae tapestry? I think the Marx priests formed a great government once but they had communication problems and broke up into Russians, Imperialists, Communists, Chinese, Socialists, Runindogs, Libyans, Fascists, Lackies, Trotskies, Gaulists, Revisionists, Kgbers, and Albanians. After that my memory runs out. The other side was simpler. There were the Amerikan priests and the Israeli priests, and their allies the Opeckers, the Capitalists, the Multinationals and the Degeneratburjwa.”
“Who won?” asked Hoemei with his mouth full.