I stopped strolling, stepped in front of him and faced him. “Zeb, anything you know about it-or can guess—I want to hear. It’s important to me.”
“Easy now! You were afraid of shocking me; it could be that I don’t want to shock you.”
“What do you mean? Tell me!”
“Easy, I said. We’re out strolling, remember, without a care in the world, talking about our butterfly collections and wondering if we’ll have stewed beef again for dinner tonight.”
Still fuming, I let him take me along with him. He went on more quietly, “John, you obviously aren’t the type to learn things just by keeping your ear to the ground—and you’ve not yet studied any of the Inner Mysteries, now have you?”
“You know I haven’t. The psych classification officer hasn’t cleared me for the course. I don’t know why.”
“I should have let you read some of the installments while I was boning it. No, that was before you graduated. Too bad, for they explain things in much more delicate language than I know how to use—and justify every bit of it thoroughly, if you care for the dialectics of religious theory. John, what is your notion of the duties of the Virgins?”
“Why, they wait on him, and cook his food, and so forth.”
“They surely do. And so forth. This Sister Judith-an innocent little country girl the way you describe her. Pretty devout, do you think?”
I answered somewhat stiffly that her devoutness had first attracted me to her. Perhaps I believed it.
“Well, it could be that she simply became shocked at overhearing a rather worldly and cynical discussion between the Holy One and, oh, say the High Bursar-taxes and tithes and the best way to squeeze them out of the peasants. It might be something like that, although the scribe for such a conference would hardly be a grass-green Virgin on her first service. No, it was almost certainly the ‘And so forth.’”
“Huh? I don’t follow you.”
Zeb sighed. “You really are one of God’s innocents, aren’t you? Holy Name, I thought you knew and were just to stubbornly straight-laced to admit it. Why, even the Angels carry on with the Virgins at times, after the Prophet is through with them. Not to mention the priests and the deacons. I remember a time when—“He broke off suddenly, catching sight of my face. “Wipe that look off your face! Do you want somebody to notice us?”
I tried to do so, with terrible thoughts jangling around inside my head. Zeb went on quietly, “It’s my guess, if it matters that much to you, that your friend Judith still merits the title “Virgin” in the purely physical sense as well as the spiritual. She might even stay that way, if the Holy One is as angry with her as he probably was. She is probably as dense as you are and failed to understand the symbolic explanations given her-then blew her top when it came to the point where she couldn’t fail to understand, so he kicked her out. Small wonder!”
I stopped again, muttering to myself biblical expressions I hardly thought I knew. Zeb stopped, too, and stood looking at me with a smile of cynical tolerance. “Zeb,” I said, almost pleading with him, “these are terrible things. Terrible! Don’t tell me that you approve?”
“Approve? Man, it’s all part of the Plan. I’m sorry you haven’t been cleared for higher study. See here, I’ll give you a rough briefing. God wastes not. Right?”
“That’s sound doctrine.”
“God requires nothing of man beyond his strength. Right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Shut up. God commands man to be fruitful. The Prophet Incarnate, being especially holy, is required to be especially fruitful. That’s the gist of it; you can pick up the fine points when you study it. In the meantime, if the Prophet can humble himself to the flesh in order to do his plain duty, who are you to raise a ruction? Answer me that.”
I could not answer, of course, and we continued our walk in silence. I had to admit the logic of what he had said and that the conclusions were built up from the revealed doctrines. The trouble was that I wanted to eject the conclusions, throw them up as if they had been something poisonous I had swallowed.
Presently I was consoling myself with the thought that Zeb felt sure that Judith had not been harmed. I began to feel better, telling myself that Zeb was right, that it was not my place, most decidedly not my place, to sit in moral judgment on the Holy Prophet Incarnate.
My mind was just getting round to worrying the thought that my relief over Judith arose solely from the fact that I had looked on her sinfully, that there could not possibly be one rule for one holy deaconess, another rule for all the rest, and I was beginning to be unhappy again—when Zeb stopped suddenly. “What was that?”
We hurried to the parapet of the terrace and looked down the wall. The south wall lies close to the city proper. A crowd of fifty or sixty people was charging up the slope that led to the Palace walls. Ahead of them, running with head averted, was a man dressed in a long gabardine. He was headed for the Sanctuary gate.
Zebadiah looked down and answered himself. “That’s what the racket is-some of the rabble stoning a pariah. He probably was careless enough to be caught outside the ghetto after five.” He stared down and shook his head. “I don’t think he is going to make it.”
Zeb’s prediction was realized at once, a large rock caught the man between the shoulder blades, he stumbled and went down. They were on him at once. He struggled to his knees, was struck by a dozen stones, went down in a heap. He gave a broken high-pitched wail, then drew a fold of the gabardine across his dark eyes and strong Roman nose.
A moment later there was nothing to be seen but a pile of rocks and a protruding slippered foot. It jerked and was still.
I turned away, nauseated. Zebediah caught my expression.
“Why,” I said defensively, “do these pariahs persist in their heresy? They seem such harmless fellows otherwise.”
He cocked a brow at me. “Perhaps it’s not heresy to them. Didn’t you see that fellow resign himself to his God?”
“But that is not the true God.”
“He must have thought otherwise.”
“But they all know better; we’ve told them often enough.”
He smiled in so irritating a fashion that I blurted out, “I don’t understand you, Zeb-blessed if I do! Ten minutes ago you were introducing me in correct doctrine; now you seem to be defending heresy. Reconcile that.”
He shrugged. “Oh, I can play the Devil’s advocate. I made the debate team at the Point, remember? I’ll be a famous theologian someday-if the Grand Inquisitor doesn’t get me first.”
“Well . . . Look-you do think it’s right to stone the ungodly? Don’t you?”
He changed the subject abruptly. “did you notice who cast the first stone?” I hadn’t and told him so; all I remembered was that it was a man in country clothes, rather than a woman or a child.
“It was Snotty Fasset.” Zeb’s lip curled.
I recalled Fassett too well; he was two classes senior to me and had made my plebe year something I want to forget. “so that’s how it was,” I answered slowly. “Zeb, I don’t think I could stomach intelligence work.”
“Certainly not as an agent provocateur,” he agreed. “still, I suppose the Council needs these incidents occasionally. These rumors about the Cabal and all . . .”
I caught up this last remark. “Zeb, do you really think there is anything to this Cabal? I can’t believe that there is any organized disloyalty to the Prophet.”
“Well-there has certainly been some trouble out on the West Coast. Oh, forget it; our job is to keep the watch here.”
CHAPTER 2
But we were not allowed to forget it; two days later the inner guard was doubled. I did not see how there could be any real danger, as the Palace was as strong a fortress as ever was built, with its lower recesses immune even to fission bombs. Besides that, a person entering the Palace, even from the Temple grounds, would be challenged and identified a dozen times before he reached the Angel on guard outside the Prophet’s own quarters. Nevertheless people in high places were getting jumpy; there must be something to it.