“You left me a trail.”
“You didn’t have to follow it.”
“Yes, I did.” He eyed her accusingly.
“Come back here where we can’t be seen.” She rolled over and crawled back into the cavern entrance, taking the gun with her. Nimmy followed. The rock overhead was less than ceiling height, and he could not stand up, but in the dim light from the door he could see a mattress on the floor, a saddle, a low table with a candle on it, and several wooden boxes.
“You’ve been living here!”
“Only for three days. Your employer told the sisters to turn me out. I’ve made my last trip to Valana. I’m not welcome at the Secretariat anymore. Our people will have to get somebody else. I’m going back home alone. That’s my horse you saw outside.”
“But why? His Eminence told me you trade silver for scrip, but—”
“Scrip?” She laughed. “Yes, that’s truth. Not the whole truth, but true. He doesn’t want me to handle it anymore because of you and me, and because of Jæsis. Jæsis was one of ours. And now your cardinal thinks we have a spy among us. He may be right, but it’s not me.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
“I swiped it from one of the crates in our shipment.”
“Shipment?”
“From the Secretariat to New Jerusalem, of course.”
Nimmy was incredulous. “We are giving you guns?”
“Not giving. Selling us some, depending on us to store some for the Secretary’s own arsenal. Didn’t you know? We’re bigger than you think, a nation almost. The mountains are easy to defend.”
“I don’t think I should have come here,” he said in alarm.
She caught his arm as he backed toward the door. “We won’t talk about it anymore. I thought you knew.” Her hand moved up his arm under the sleeve of his robe, caressing. “You’re nice and furry.”
He sat down again. The gun was lying on one of the packing crates. He picked it up.
“Be careful, it’s loaded. I was afraid, staying here alone. That’s the smallest model, but it shoots five times. Here, I’ll show you.” She took the weapon from him, manipulated it, and five brass objects fell one at a time out of the gun into her lap.
“If those are the bullets, where is the powder?”
She handed one of them to him. “The lead part is the bullet. The brass part contains the powder. Now watch this.” She cocked it and part of the gun rotated through a small angle. She pulled the trigger, and cocked it again, causing another rotation. “See? It shoots five times. And it’s this easy to reload.” She turned the cylinder one click at a time and dropped the cartridges back into their chambers.
“But how do you reload the cartridges?”
“You don’t, in the field. You carry a lot of cartridges with you. There’s a loading press back at your base, if you don’t lose the casings.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Neither has the Texark cavalry. The guns come from the west coast. I think the design came from Cardinal Ri’s country, but it was probably copied from the ancients.” She put the gun away, and embraced him suddenly. “I’m not going to see you again. Let’s make love—any way we can.”
Resigned to what he had started, he did what he could to please her. They lay on the mattress, rubbing bodies and kissing. God, she is beautiful, he noticed in the faint light from the entrance. Spirit in the primordial ooze fucked the Earth, and the Earth gave birth to her, golden-haired as the new corn and laughing in the wind. O Day Maiden, thy name is Ædrea, and I love you.
“Fujæ Go!”
“What?” she whispered, squirming under him and grinning at her own pleasure.
“Fujæ Go, It is one of the names of—”
“What?”
He remained silent, watching her violet eyes search his own.
“Unspeakable?” she guessed.
“You, are, almost, awake,” he groaned in sudden orgasm.
“Oh, let me take it. Like before!” She reached down with her hand and caught his discharge.
Spent, he nevertheless started up in total surprise. She was rubbing it into herself, into that tiny orifice no larger than a buzzard-quill pen. “What are you doing?” Nimmy gasped.
Still grinning, she said, “Getting pregnant. Like last time. I’m way late for my period since we did it.”
Stunned, he sat up. It had been black as pitch in Shard’s root cellar, and he had been too drunk to be certain what happened, and he could feel it but not see it, in spite of what he said in confession to an old onetime hermit.
“Nimmy, you’re white as a sheet!”
“Why?”
“Shard had me stitched up by a surgeon, and he won’t have it undone, and he’s my father, and I love him, and I won’t defy him, but this way I can let a baby tear it open, if he won’t let a surgeon cut me.”
“Oh, my God!” He rolled over with his face in his hands.
“Nimmy, please don’t cry.” She held his shoulders and tried to keep him from shaking so. “Oh, please!—I didn’t mean to make you unhappy. I just picked you to have a baby with. You!”
Nimmy felt dizzy and sick. There seemed to be only a moment of blackness, but when he awoke and went outside, Ædrea and the white gelding were gone. He was alone in front of the tiny cavern. She had written in the sand: Goodbye, Nimmy. You really are a monk.
He saw her in town again, however, on his way home from the hills. Walking down the street, he looked over his shoulder at the sound of a horse and saw Ædrea slowly overtaking him. She shook her head quickly, but barely looked at him. He nodded understanding and kept going. She had stopped somewhere along the way, but had to come through town to go back home by the main road. Blacktooth, who was wearing his Leibowitzian novice’s robe, turned a corner and just avoided running into another man, who was skipping rope. He wore a wood and leather harness which held a harmonica up to his mouth. He played a rapid but recognizable Salve Regina while he jumped the rope; a cup on the ground at his side asked for, and had collected, a few coins. Blacktooth suppressed a sharp gasp and tried to pass behind him as quietly as possible. For there wearing a Leibowitzian postulant’s robe in the road was Torrildo playing the fool for coins. Blacktooth had gone about six paces when the music and the slapping of the rope suddenly stopped, so that he could hear the tread of hooves of his love’s mount as she too passed the excommunicated musical mendicant.
“Hey, Blacktooth. Darling!” Torri called.
Blacktooth broke into a fast trot. Behind him, he could hear them. Ædrea stopped to exchange pleasantries with Torrildo, whom she had apparently met before.
“Oh, so he was the one!” he heard her say as he fled.
The sound came from the chapel, a whishingslap followed by a moan. It was repeated every two or three seconds. His Eminence Cardinal Brownpony stopped to listen, then walked inside. After three days of absence without leave, his secretary for Nomad affairs was found at last. Blacktooth was kneeling before the altar of the Virgin in the Secretariat’s private chapel; he was flagellating himself with a scourge of thongs.
“Stop it,” the cardinal said quietly, but the sound went on. Whish, slap, moan. Pause. Whish, slap, moan. Pause.
The head of SEEC cleared his throat loudly. “Nimmy, stop it!”
Finding himself ignored, he turned toward his office, the Axe at his elbow. “Come see me as soon as you can,” he called over his shoulder as the flogging continued. “We have an audience with His Holiness early tomorrow. It’s about your petition.”