“What is it you see, boy? Can you read? Can you read the Lord’s words? Do you hear what they tell you?” Showing his sporadic, chilling tenderness, Praisegod Michael was kneeling on the floor, with Joshua’s head on his lap.
His mouth dry, his tongue thick, Joshua whispered, “People.”
“People?” Praisegod Michael stared at the marks. “These are words, and these are pictures. The words speak to us… Ah, but they do not, do they? Marks on the wall do not speak. They are symbols, of the sounds we make when we speak, which are themselves symbols of the thoughts we concoct… Is that what you mean?” His hands explored Joshua’s body with a rough eagerness. “What lies inside that cavernous head of yours? The words you utter are themselves symbolic — but your kind have no books, no art. Is that why you cannot understand? Would you like me to tell you what those letters say to me?” He pointed at the wall. “After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in Heaven. Revelation 4,1.”
“Heav’n,” Joshua mumbled.
“The sky, child, where we will pass when we die.”
Joshua twisted his head to see Praisegod’s face. “Dead.”
“No.” Praisegod was almost crooning, and he rocked Joshua back and forth. “No, you poor innocent. You are alive. And when you die, you will be alive again in Christ — if His mercy extends to your kind…”
“Dead,” said Joshua. “Dead. Gone. Like Jacob.”
“Dead but not gone! The corpse in the ground is the seed that is planted in the earth. So we will all bloom in the spring of the Lord. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. But I am talking in symbols again, ain’t I? A man is not a seed. But a man is like a seed.”
Suddenly he pushed Joshua away. The Ham’s head clattered on the floor, jarring his aching tooth.
“You can know nothing of what I speak, for your head is empty of symbols… Ah, but what if my religion is nothing but symbols — is that what you are thinking? — the symbol of the seed, the Mother and Child — a dream concocted by words rattling in my empty head?” Now Joshua felt kicks, hard, frantic, aimed at his back and buttocks. “0 you witness to the Flood, 0 you underman! See how you have planted doubts in my mind! How clever you are, how cunning! You and that Daemon of the forest, Renemenagota, she of the ape build and mocking, wise eyes… The Daemons make me promises. They can take my vision and make it real, make this antediluvian island a godly place. So they say. So she says. Ah, but in her dark eyes I sense mockery, Joshua! Do you know her? Did she send you?… How you madden me! Are you agents of Satan, sent to confuse me with your whispers of God’s work?…”
But now Praisegod leaned over Joshua again and grabbed his face. Joshua saw how his eyes were red and brimming with tears, his face swollen as if by weeping. “Can sin exist here? The brutes who serve me have their Runner women, their whores with the bodies of angels and the heads of apes. I, I am not of that kind… But now, here! Here!” He grabbed Joshua’s bound hands and pushed them into his crotch; Joshua could feel a skinny erection. “You are destroying me!”
And the beatings went on.
Joshua lay on the floor, his own blood sticky under his face. Pieces moved around in his head, just as they had before: when he saw the sky seed fall from the sky, when he put together the cobble from the bits of shattered stone.
The kind Skinny’s face peered through a cloud of pain and black-edged exhaustion.
He whispered, “Fore me was door standin” open Heaven.”
Praisegod Michael was here. Panting, he gazed into Joshua’s eyes. “What did you say?”
But Joshua was, for now, immersed in his own head, where the pieces were orbiting one another, the flakes sticking to the core of the cobble one by one. The Grey Earth. The seed that fell from the air. The door in the sky.
Joshua was, in his way, a genius. Certainly none of his kind had experienced such a revelation before.
“Heav’n,” he said at last.
Praisegod Michael pushed his ear close to his mouth to hear.
“Heav’n is th” Grey Earth. Th” seed. Th” seed takes th” people. Th” people pass through th” door. Door to heaven. To Grey Earth.”
“By God’s eyes.” Praisegod Michael stumbled back. “Is it possible you believe?”
Joshua tried to raise his head. “Believe,” he said, for he did, suddenly, deeply and truly. “Th” door in th” sky. Th” Grey Earth.”
Praisegod Michael stalked around the cell, muttering. “I have never heard an ape-thing like yourself utter such words. Is it possible you have faith? And if so, must you therefore have a soul?” Again he stroked the heavy ridges over Joshua’s eyes, and he pressed his gaunt body close to the Ham’s. “You intrigue me. You madden me. I love you. I despise you.” He leaned closer to the Ham, and kissed him full on the lips. Joshua tasted sourness, a rank staleness.
“Graah—” Praisegod rolled away, lying sprawled on the floor, and vomited, so that thin bile spread across the shining floor.
Then he stood, trembling, striving for composure. “I would kill you. But if you have the soul of a man — I will not risk damnation for you — if you have not damned me already!” He smiled, suddenly cold, still. “I will send you out. You will spread the Word to your kind. You will be a Saul of the apes.” He raised his pale eyes to the light from the window. “A mission, yes, with you as my acolyte — you, a pre-Adamite man-ape.”
Joshua stared at him, understanding nothing, thinking of a door in the sky.
But now Praisegod stood over him again, and again he spoke tenderly. “I will help you.” He reached into his clothing and produced a knife. It was not of stone; it glittered like ice, though Joshua could see how worn and scuffed it was. “No beast should speak the Word of God. Here.” He put his fingers inside Joshua’s mouth. The fingers tasted of burning. He pushed down, until Joshua’s mighty jaw dropped.
Then, without warning, he grabbed Joshua’s tongue and dragged it out of his mouth. Joshua felt the slash, a stab of pain.
Blood sprayed over Praisegod Michael.
Shadow:
The next morning the women surrounded Silverneck, as usual. With their infants clambering over them, they munched on figs.
With a crash, One-eye fell from his tree. His hands and feet left a smear of blood where they touched bark or leaves, for several of his fingers and toes had been nipped off. White bone showed in a huge deep wound on the side of his head. And his penis was almost severed, dangling by a thread of skin. His fur was matted by blood and piss and panic shit.
The women stared.
He looked about vaguely, as if blinded, and he mewled like an infant. Then he stumbled away, alone, into the deeper forest.
Shadow walked out of the tree cover.
Silverneck moved aside for her. One of the younger women growled, but Shadow punched her in the side of the head, so hard she was knocked sideways. Shadow sat with the group, and clawed figs into her mouth. But nobody looked at her, nobody groomed her, and even the children avoided her.
That night, when the roosting calls went out. One-eye did not return.
Reid Malenfant:
Malenfant was kept chained up in a dark, filthy cell. It was just a brick-lined pit, its damp mud floor lined with packed-down filth. The only light came from a grilled window high in the ceiling. The door was heavy with a massive wooden bolt on the outside.
He reached out to touch the walls. The bricks were rotten. Maybe he could dig out handholds and climb up to that window.
And then what? What then, after you climb out into the middle of Praisegod’s courtyard?…
You are not dealing with rational people, Malenfant.