It had been deeply shocking for Manekato to hear such critical sentiments expressed by a mere lower hominid.
Still, Without-Name had become an increasing distraction, a wild blood-stained rogue planet crashing through the orderly solar system of purpose and knowledge acquisition which Manekato had sought to establish. Babo and others had expressed relief when Without-Name had finally failed to return from one of her ambiguous jaunts. But Manekato had sensed that Without-Name would cause them all severe and unwelcome problems yet.
Finally Manekato had been disturbed by a cacophony of cries, coming from deep in the nearby belt of forest. Something there had died, in great pain and anguish; and Manekato had had a powerful intuition that it was time for her to seek out Without-Name and meet her on her own terms.
And so here she was, just another hominid picking her way through the forest.
She emerged from the bank of trees. Beyond a stretch of rock-strewn ground, a low cliff rose: broken and eroded, perhaps limestone, pocked with hollows and low caves, overgrown with moss and struggling trees. Somewhere water trickled.
The sky was clouded over. The place was claustrophobic, enclosing. She could smell blood, and dread gathered in her heart.
A hominid walked out of one of the caves. To judge by the sewn skins he wore, he was a Zealot, like the specimen Without-Name had brought back to the camp. He carried a crossbow, and his tunic and leggings were splashed with dirt and blood. He saw Manekato, standing alone at the edge of the forest. His eyes widened. He dropped his bow and ran back into the cave. “Daemons! Strange Daemons!”
Manekato gathered her courage. She stepped forward, crossing the rock-strewn floor.
She paused in the cave’s entrance, giving her eyes time to adapt to this deeper dark. The cave’s roof was a layer of rock just above her head. It was worn smooth, as if by the touching of many fingers; perhaps this place had been inhabited for many generations. The cave stank of hominid, of crudely prepared food, of stale urine and faeces and sweat — and of blood.
A shadow moved before her. As it approached the light, it coalesced into the form of Without-Name. Her fur was splashed with blood, and a gouge had been cut into her arm.
“I suppose I have been expecting you,” she growled. “Are you aware what a target you provide, silhouetted against the light? We have not fought a war for a million years, Manekato; we have lost our instincts for survival.”
“What have you done, Renemenagota?” Manekato reached out and touched the wound in the other’s arm. It was a deep slice over the bicep, still leaking blood — it had not even been cleaned. “I see your victims did not submit quietly.”
Without-Name barked laughter. “It was glorious. Come.”
She turned and led the way deeper into the cave, and Manekato followed reluctantly.
At the back of the cave a lamp of what looked like burning animal fat flickered in a hollow on one wall; the rock above was streaked with black grease. By its light Manekato saw she was walking over scorched patches of dirt — hearths, perhaps, all cold and disused. Bits of stone and bone and wood were scattered everywhere. At the rear of the cave, animal skins had been stretched over rough frames of wood.
There were hominids here. They were Zealots, dressed in their characteristic garb of crudely sewn skin. When Manekato knuckle-walked towards them they yelled and grabbed their weapons.
Without-Name held up her hands. “She is weak. She will not harm you.”
The Zealots hurried out of her way, jabbering their alarm to each other.
Beyond the Zealots there was a mound of slumped forms.
They were hominids, all dead. They were the powerful squat creatures Nemoto called Hams. They had been slaughtered by crossbow bolts and spear thrusts. They had not died easily: ripped throats and gouged eyes and severed limbs testified to that, as did the injuries nursed by the Zealots. Blood soaked through the grisly heap, and spilled guts glistened on the floor beneath.
Without-Name’s eyes glittered. “You cannot engage these fellows hand-to-hand; the power of these stocky bodies is simply too great. But they work strictly short range. And so they fell to our bows and throwing spears as they tried to close with us, one after the other. Once they were down it was a case of moving in to finish them off. But they fought on even with their bellies torn open, their throats cut. Well, this was their home for uncounted generations — you can see that — they were fighting as we would for our Farms…”
Manekato discerned a smaller bundle, laid on top of the heap of corpses. It was an infant, its age impossible to tell, one leg bent back at an impossible angle. “Did this little one give you a good spectacle, Renemenagota?”
Without-Name shrugged. “The Zealots took most of the smaller infants back to their stockade. You can’t tame an adult Ham, you see; you have to get them young to break them. This one wouldn’t leave its mother’s side. The efforts to remove it resulted in a snapped leg.” She grinned, her teeth showing bright in the gloom. “Praisegod Michael was here. Their leader, you see; the leader of the Zealots. He uttered words over the corpses, blessing them, commending their souls to the afterlife he believes awaits us — or rather awaits his sort of hominid; he isn’t so sure about the rest of us. Michael said his prayers over this little creature and then cut its throat. A delicious contradiction, don’t you think?
“You should see the ambition that burns in Michael’s eyes’. He dreams of cleansing his world of such creatures of the Devil as this — what an ambition! but he has lacked the understanding to make it so. He was wary of me when I approached him — no, contemptuous, because for him I am less than human. But I forced him to listen to me. I made him see that by taking his captives and training them properly, he increases his resources, you see, which he can deploy for further conquest; once initiated, it is a simple exponential growth.”
“You spoke to this monster — you are working with him?” Manekato said tightly, “Whoever this Praisegod is, his reasons for wishing to destroy the Hams and the others have surely more to do with the flaws in his own heart than any ideological justification.”
Without-Name grabbed her arm and held it tight; Manekato felt moisture, blood and sweat, soaking into her fur. “Of course Praisegod Michael is mad. But it is a glorious madness.”
Manekato prised her arm away from Without-Name’s grip. Regretfully she said, “Glorious or not, I have to stop you.”
Without-Name laughed. “You do not have the imagination or the courage for that, Manekato.”
The Zealots were returning to the pile of Ham corpses. They were cutting away ears and hands, perhaps as trophies. But their movements were characteristically sluggish, like pale worms moving in the dark.
Joshua:
Joshua lay on the filth-crusted floor of his cell.
He was left alone for days. It was worse than any beating. There was nobody to look at him.
The People of the Grey Earth were never alone by choice. They spent their entire lives in their tight-knit communities, surrounded day and night by the same faces, change coming only through the slow tide of birth and death. Some women spent their entire lives within a hundred paces of where they were born. Even parties of hunters who ranged farther in search of big game would not mix with other groups of hominids, even other Hams; strangers were like faces in a dream, remote, not real.
He tried to picture the hut, the people coming and going about their business. He tried to recall the faces of Abel and Saul and Mary and Ruth and the others. The life of the people was going on, even though he was not there to be looked at — just as it had continued after the death of Jacob, the endless round of days and nights, of eating and sleeping and fornicating, of birth and love and death.