The girl turned from him again, looked to Ushana.
‘Kill him,’ Ushana said.
The girl bowed her head in acquiescence, but she didn’t move. She wanted to be sure. ‘For what crime?’ she asked.
The boy had no idea what was being said. He looked from her to Ushana and back again. Perhaps he thought that she was passing on what he’d said to her.
‘For no crime. Kill him because I tell you to.’
And she did. With her bare hands, because no weapon had been specified. Afterwards, though she wept, she wept in silence, and nobody in the dormitory had any inkling of it.
Ronald Stephen Pinkus was not of the People. It was wrong to cry for him, and it was shaming. Next time, she promised herself, she would do better.
And so, in due course, she was sent back to Kuutma, with a note from her teachers that was notable for its brevity: ‘She’s ready.’
He welcomed her with a fatherly embrace, expressing great satisfaction in her accomplishments. The girl thanked him graciously. Neither of them mentioned the mark that Rithuel had given her for psychology, and so she was saved from the necessity of criticising one of her teachers.
Kuutma gave her fresh fruit and water spiced with cloves and cinnamon. He offered her wine, too, but the girl wasn’t fond of wine. Alcohol interfered with her body’s uptake of kelalit, slowing it down unpredictably.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, in the same room in which they had met, three years before.
That meeting was on Kuutma’s mind, too. ‘I told you once that I had a plan for you,’ he said to her. ‘It’s time, now, for that plan to be put into effect.’
The girl experienced a moment of very pleasurable disorientation, a shifting of her mental perspectives sudden enough to induce mild vertigo. If Kuutma had summoned her here to command her into action, then she was now a Messenger. Those simple words were her graduation ceremony, her induction into the ranks of his Elohim.
‘I’m ready,’ she said.
‘Good.’ He filled her glass with water, then his own. The wine, it seemed, had been brought only in case she wanted it. ‘But you need to know that this is an unusual assignment — an unusual situation, in every respect — and you’ll be within your rights to refuse it.’
The girl nodded. She wondered what Kuutma could possibly ask of her, in the name of the city and the People, that she would refuse — or would even hesitate before accepting.
‘You know that one of the elders has left us. An elder, I should say, in name only. He is younger than me, in fact.’
‘Yes,’ the girl said. And then, ‘Of course.’
‘He was the Yedimah,’ Kuutma said. ‘The Seed. The one who, in the sittings of the Sima, is deputed to look to the future and argue in favour of change. But he has forfeited that position, of course, and the name. He is who he was. Avra Shekolni.
‘Shekolni took his writ too far with the rest of the Council of Elders, bringing into question the most profound and sacred of the principles by which we live. His premise, essentially, was that the People have misinterpreted the nature of the bargain God made with us — that our entire way of life is founded on a misunderstanding. God promised us the Earth, Shekolni said, but He didn’t promise to deliver it to us: He expected us to take action ourselves to accomplish His will. You see the problem with this position, sister?’
The girl did, and said so.
‘Then expound it for me.’
‘The Adamites outnumber us by many thousands to one. And their history is one of uninterrupted war, so their weapons are advanced far beyond anything we can match. That’s why we hide. If we tried to fight, we couldn’t possibly win. So we wait. We wait for God’s judgement.’
‘An excellent summary,’ said Kuutma. ‘And the council spoke to Shekolni in that wise, seeking to correct his thinking. But, as you know, he wouldn’t take correction. He was expelled from the Sima. And then he left Ginat’Dania itself. It’s not known how he was able to get out of the city without sanction or permission, but it’s certain that he did. We’ve searched far and wide for him since, but found no trace.’
The girl nodded, but didn’t speak. She would ask questions only if she was invited to.
‘Bad as this was,’ Kuutma went on, ‘we now know that there is worse. Shekolni made contact, out among the Nations, with a Messenger — or rather a Summoner, a commander of Messengers — who seems to share his unsanctioned views. The commander in question, Ber Lusim, was a great man in his time — so formidable, and I might venture to say, so cruel a warrior that he was sometimes called, by those who knew him, the Demon. The previous Kuutma relied on him absolutely. But then, perhaps ten years ago, Lusim fell into disgrace. He failed in his sacred duties. There were deaths — from among our number, not Adamite deaths — that could have been avoided.
‘The old Kuutma called Ber Lusim back so that he could be punished, but he refused to come. When Messengers were sent to recall him, he disappeared. It was only then that we realised how strong a cult of personality had grown up around him — for a great many Messengers who knew him and had sojourned with him among the Nations now followed him into exile. They dropped from our radar — went native, we thought, although if anything the truth seems to be the opposite of that. They hold themselves aloof, still, from the Adamites, even though they’ve foresworn all contact with the People and with Ginat’Dania. Theirs must be an intolerably lonely existence.
‘But somehow, as I said, Avra Shekolni found Ber Lusim. At first this was only a guess: Shekolni disappeared so completely, we theorised that he must have had help. Then Ber Lusim contacted us himself and said that Shekolni had been sent to him and his followers by God — and he thanked us for being instrumental in the forwarding of that gift. He warned us not to look for Shekolni and he told us — I quote exactly — to hold ourselves ready for judgement.’
Kuutma paused for a moment and took a sip of his water. He swirled it in his mouth, as though trying to rid himself of a sour taste. Then he swallowed.
‘I sent a reply to Ber Lusim,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Or at least, I sent forth one of my Elohim at a time and in a place where I guessed — correctly — that Ber Lusim would be sure to intercept him. I warned Lusim that Shekolni was a heretic. And I urged him to come back into Ginat’Dania, among the People, where he belongs.’
‘He ignored the summons,’ the girl guessed.
‘Yes, he did. But more. This will distress you, sister. Remember that God ordains all things and brings forth good from evil. Ber Lusim scarred the face of my emissary with blades and hot irons, making him so hideous that all who saw him flinched and looked away. Branding my servant in this way was an insult aimed at me. This innocent man’s face was only the paper on which Lusim chose to write his message.’
The girl was inured to violence, but this still shocked her to the core. Her stomach convulsed and her gorge rose sour in her throat. She missed some of Kuutma’s words as she struggled to regain her equanimity.
‘—of course impossible, now, for that man to go back out into the world. He was forced to forsake his calling. And beyond that, the shame is very great. He’s asked leave to kill himself, but I’ve told him to reflect a little and to spend time with family and friends. I hope that will be enough to draw him back into the normal business of life, which has an enormous healing power in itself.’