“Oh.” With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Sebastian realized he had stumbled into a nest of lunatics. Just my luck, he thought glumly. When things started going bad for you, they went on that way for a long time. That was the real nature of the universe.
“The better to oppress the righteous.” The leader sank into the ongoing currents of his own thoughts, though he continued to speak aloud. His frail shoulders slumped inside the white jumpsuit, like an insect folding itself into a semi-resting posture. “Though in reality, the Masked One, the deceiver and oppressor, does the righteous a service through its cruelty. A paradox. Inasmuch as it is only through the experience of oppression, of suffering, that one becomes human. Through suffering, one becomes the object of compassion. You know all this, don’t you? That is how the one who sees only suffering, the Eye of Compassion, becomes aware of your existence; she sees no other thing, is blind to all except those who suffer.”
The leader ran elongated, skeletal fingers through his beard, the undertones of his voice skewing toward the speculative. “Once, humans-humans such as us-suffered; that was the bread and salt of our existence. That was a long time ago. Now we have become that which causes suffering-not on an individual basis, but as a species; we have become one of the masks behind which the great deceiver and oppressor manifests itself in this universe. The question then becomes . . .” One of the others, a young man, hollow-checked and febrile, stood nearby, transcribing the leader’s words into an old-fashioned manual steno pad.
“Whether the Masked One, by causing suffering, acts as a necessary precursive agent of its compassionate opposite?” The bearded man looked round from the corner of his eye.
The glance, and its accompanying expectant silence, made Sebastian nervous. “I wouldn’t know.” He tightened the hold of his forearm around Colonel Fuzzy’s shoulder.
“Are you sure,” the leader inquired hopefully, “that you’re not with the police?”
“Positive.”
“Well . . . we shall ‘hang in there,’ as you advise. For the sake of those more human than us. Those blessed ones.”
It suddenly dawned on him who these people were. Hell’s bells, thought Sebastian.
They’re rep-symps. He’d heard rumors, before he’d first come out to the sideways world, that certain congregations of the true believers frequented the zone. Living a basically reclusive life, he hadn’t encountered them before.
“Look, it seems to me that you’re going about it all wrong.” He could afford to be helpful; he had nothing against them. He let go of the teddy bear long enough to wave off the smoke that was getting into his nose and making him sneeze. “If you want to get busted by the police, you oughtta go where the police mainly are. It’s no good being out in nowheresville. The cops probably don’t even want to bother with you, long as you stay someplace like this. You should go into the city—”
“We’ve done that.” A younger, darker-bearded version of the leader spoke up. He had fanatic eyes, whites showing all around the pupils. “We have our uses for the city.” A dirty word, the way he spat it out. “And we have taken our message there. Not just in words, but in deed as well. We brought down in flames one of the voices of the deceiver, and upon its carcass we gave forth our testimony.”
“Gosh.” It sounded scary, even though he had no idea of what the man was exactly talking about. Though he was pretty sure it involved criminal activity of some kind; these people were religiously obsessive types, after all, capable of anything. Morally, if not in terms of actual accomplishment. He was beginning to have second thoughts about keeping company with them; the police might come all the way out here, to kick ass and take names, as the saying went. If they’d been sufficiently provoked.
“If you really want my opinion, I’d say you should rethink just what it is you’re going for,” he said. “This martyrdom thing, and all.” Sebastian wished that he and his companions had just circled around the fires and continued on their way, instead of poking their noses in here. “I just don’t see where it gets you anything.” Except in your crackpot heads, he thought to himself. “Bringing the heat down on yourselves is not something you should care to have happen. Or any kind of bad shit. Suffering’s not all that great; believe me, I should know.”
The assembled people glanced at one another. Significant glances, indicating a measure of worry about the strangers that had wandered into their midst.
“Listen to me.” Sebastian heard his own voice, louder and more fervent. As though he were the one testifying now. “I know what I’m talking about. Suffering sucks. I just lost the woman I love-again, for the second time. She was shot right in front of me. And she was a replicant, too; or at least she’d been one—”
The bearded leader peered closer at him. “Yes,” he said after a moment’s inspection, during which Colonel Fuzzy had hissed and drawn back. “I can see that you speak the truth.”
He laid a wrinkled, cordite-smelling hand on top of Sebastian’s head. “You have the aspect of the blessed about you. Suffering has given you that. You are nearly human, yourself.”
“Well . . . thanks. I guess.” What the hell was this old doozer talking about?
“But there is more for you to suffer.” The leader raised his hand in a gesture of benediction. “For you to complete your journey.”
“Rats.” He didn’t even know where he was going.
“Come with me. I have something to give you.”
Mounted on the back of the teddy bear, Sebastian followed after the old man. Squeaker trailed behind, glancing over his shoulder at the other people, his elongated nose twitching with suspicion.
“You can’t stay with us.” At the flickering limit of the fires’ glow, the old man rummaged through a duffel bag he’d drawn out of a military-surplus canvas tent. “You have your own destiny. But this might help you. It’s a holy relic.” He turned and laid a rectangular object in Sebastian’s hand.
Something metal, lightweight aluminum, with a few dents and scratches, indicators of age.
Smaller things, of metal and possibly glass, rattled inside as Sebastian turned it around. He held it up so the faint orangish light hit it. On the box’s lid was a prominent mark in the form of a red cross. “It’s a first-aid kit.” That could be helpful, actually; he didn’t have one in the supplies they’d dragged along with them.
“Look closer.”
He did, nose almost touching the metal. Smaller words, stamped into the surface.
Sebastian spelled them out. “Salamander . . . no, that’s not right.” Sebastian squinted.
“Salander. That’s it. Salander 3.” He supposed it was the name of the ship that the kit had come from. It sounded vaguely familiar. Maybe a star ship, one of the old explorer types that’d gone out past the limits of the solar system.
The old man nodded. “I was there . . . when it came back to us. Bearing its message. Written in the eyes of its dead.” The grey-streaked beard lifted from the front of the jumpsuit, as he raised his eyes to the night sky. “They were the first to know. What all shall know someday. They traveled, and returned. They saw. And brought back the message . . .”
“What message?”
For a moment, it seemed as if the leader hadn’t heard him. “Of our damnation,” he spoke at last. “Or our salvation.” He turned a wan smile on the figures before him. “We’re still not quite sure yet.”
Maybe you should work on that, thought Sebastian. He didn’t look up at the old man, but concentrated on fiddling with the metal box.
“There is one who knows . . .” The bearded leader’s voice drifted into deep musing.