Understanding salvation was the key to understanding God. And the Son of God was the key to salvation. Kdaptist rigor had found the way. His mighty frame stirred in the attic, shaking spiders into their cracks. Through His Son, Hwass could reach God.
Clandeboye had planted on Hwass a homing device no more sophisticated than those the ARM used to map the wanderings of criminals. In the München workshop he showed his legless electronics Hero how to remove it and how to plant it on a young Kdaptist of the correct height and color who was to proceed to a safe house farther south—and stay there until Hwass returned.
He chose a time before the rising of Beta, in the dark of the night, to slip from the back of a truck into the forest outside of München, intending to place himself far from any city. The holy quest for the Son of God began as a kind of reverse hunt, avoiding everything, loping quickly, silently, tirelessly, always out of sight and smell—hiding himself by day, moving by night and by the pale ardor of Beta—until he was totally beyond human habitation. The journey was endless joy. Many times he broke his trail so that it could never be followed. It was joy to hunt the Son of God.
Each evening the quetzbirds gargled on their night hunt. They hunted only when Alpha had set but were most active when brilliant Beta dominated the night sky of stars. Once he saw one on a log munching a luminescent fungus, its brilliant feathers eerily glowing. The smell of the bird and the tang of broken fungus was a forest poem. How could he ever give this up again for civilization?
On the third day he sniffed the smoke of a human bonfire and thought he might have found the Son. He smelled burning oak from Earth, mixed with slightly green bundlestick. Fresh meat on the fire was too hot and charring blood was ablaze. He could detect human sweat and sourbeer, a background of spicy insect pheromones, moist soil. But long before he was close enough to see his prey he smelled its female scent. Not the Son of God. Avoiding the woman, he came to a steep slope that overlooked the stars. He reveled in the stars, then plunged on, silently swift.
At dawn he found a grassy meadow being grazed by a small herd of six-legged sprinters, hardly taller than the grass itself. He was tempted and hungry but he did not attack. This was a religious mission and hunger drove a keener spirit. Now he was well beyond the boundaries of human settlement. It made the hunt venturesome because his prey was a man. Beta was now the only star in the dawn sky.
Two days later, still deliberately fasting, eating only the odd rodent, ravenous, he found his first spoor, fish skins by a stream. By that evening, at Alpha-set, he had located the cabin, its log walls twice the length of a man, made from thin logs one man could haul and notch. The roof was pond reeds. Best of all was the smell of male. Hwass had saturated his orange fur in pond muck for the sake of invisibility. He could have attacked the recluse and killed him then—deadly claws against an ancient hunting rifle—but for religious reasons it was necessary to capture the Son of God alive.
He waited. Animals moved in the forest, breaking twigs. Insects whistled and sprayed the air with their mating scents. A Terran squirrel warned the forest with indignant quarreling. Hwass remained silent, his thin, wing-like ears extended, listening for the man to settle in for sleep, nose relishing the night air, waiting. But he had to act before Beta-rise.
Darkness. Wide pupils. The human stirrings ceased. Time to act. Only the cloud-diffused starlight and his flared nostrils guided him noiselessly across the lightless moor. It was so dark he had to finger-feel his way across the logs to find the opening. Carefully his mind measured the inside of the dwelling so that his strike might be quick and accurate.
Hwass reached an arm deep into the open-shuttered window.
Rudely he dragged the naked man through the opening with a hand tightly closed over the man’s mouth. “Hey now, easy does it,” mmmphed the struggling hermit. But the kzin was trussing his prey before the victim was fully awake. Surprise over, adrenaline surging, the Lamb of God fought with a silent clawing ferocity until he could no longer move at all. Immobile, his mouth free, he snapped, “I didn’t do it I’m not responsible! Gimme my clothes!” He glanced furtively at bear-black ghosts spread over a nearby bush. His patched shirt and utility trousers were molded from forever fabric, frayed beyond the bounds of forever, now recovering from awash and clubbing by the stream’s shore. They were valuable to him.
“You iss Son of God,” Hwass answered gently, relieved that he had indeed captured a male. If it had been a female he would have had to put it back, or to kill it for the sake of silence.
“Hey, you’ve got the wrong man!” came a desperate croak.
“No. You iss His perfect Son.”
“Not me. My grandfather came to Wunderland to get away from that mouth-flap.”
“Your Grandfather iss everywhere at all and once,” said the kzin. “He iss with you now. You iss holy.”
“Tell Myrtle. To her I’m teufel. Already I’ve skipped out on two wives. I’m a mean cantankerous no-good who likes to fish and to rot in the woods by myself. Peaceful like.”
“I iss captured God’s Son,” Hwass hissed threateningly, a theologian daring to be contradicted.
The hermit was surprised that kzin were still loose in the woods after sixteen years. This one had gone crazy after all that time. Still, the panic in him forced him to argue. The cantankerous wife-deserter said the first inane thing that came to his head. “My teeth are rotten. You can’t believe the Son of God would be plagued by rotten teeth,” he suggested hopefully.
“All male mens iss the Son of God, teeth or no. You iss the Son of God I hunt. Men’s Bible iss say that the Son of God may be found anywhere in any disguise, even in dungeon. Matthew 25:40.”
“Finagle save me!”
Hwass hissed. “Finagle iss atheist devil-beast. Cannot touch Son of God.”
The hermit took a moment to consider screaming at the top of his lungs—but there was no one to hear. With his arms tied to his sides, his only weapon was reason. “Whatever you want, you’ve got. Tell me and I’ll give it to you. I’ll kiss the ground you pee on.”
“You iss the true-form.”
“What does that mean?”
“You iss beautiful and iss shape in the image of God.”
“My mother used to stare at me like that.”
“Not to talk of mother. The mother of the Son iss soulless animal!”
“Does that mean you’re not a Catholic?”
“Tonight we converse only importantly with Father of Son.”
The old hermit was beginning to feel sarcastic. “Hey Dad!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Company!”
“Silence!” Hwass snarled. “Serious matters iss upon us. Your Father iss stressed at sins of all humankinds, men’s lying, deceit, vanity, cowardice, and dishonorable scheming as you mens iss talk out of two sides of your head! Mens iss the greatest sinner of all sentients. A great sorrow.
“He has at your sinning in His liver and iss wish to help you mens, all too much, for you iss been made in true-form of God. He weeps at men’s deviations from true path. He wishes to help you to path of righteousness. He iss obsessed with helping you. Sorrow iss pain to bear—even for one who iss God. He iss so filled with crazy driving sorrow fixating His attention that He iss neglect His other kittens. This you iss will correct.”
“Riiight!”
“You iss now to lay God’s liver to its ease.”
“If you’ll untie me, I’ll gladly go to my knees and pray to God fervently. Say your prayer and I’ll say it with you. I’m praying already.”