Shut up, old man! The universe wasn’t supposed to be literal.
The grandfather held tightly to his grandson’s hand and they were back in München with the painted wooden Christ. “He wanted to take on the world’s sins. He wanted to suffer in your place, and he suffered. But he didn’t save anyone. A sin is something even Jesus can’t take from you. A sin is something you can’t give away. You can’t even run away from it.”
Shut up. Let me die. He was dying of regret. I could be with Cindy-belle now, and the boy grown up, and my mad kzin would have found someone else, some other sinner. Too soon old; too late wise. Why didn’t the raving old ghost just shut up!
From parched lips almost too stiff to speak, he asked for water. If the damn ratcat had read the Bible, like he claimed, he’d hold up a rag soaked in vinegar. The man fainted. He woke. He found a cup of stream water in front of his face… attached to a pole that went all the way down there to a crazy kzin wearing the outsized mask of a man’s face. Why water and not vinegar? Did the rat kzin want him alive to suffer longer? He smiled through cracked lips. He was warm and cozy. Pain was its own anesthetic. He was floating. Still, he wanted the water and slurped at it awkwardly. The water revived him but he wished it hadn’t because his grandfather was still chattering away. That damn old man was never going to give him any peace; somber advice right up to the end. They were having beer in a trunkshuppen in wartime München.
“The road you’re taking, son, running away from your wife, letting father handle it—that leads nowhere but to death. No matter where you run, son, all you’ll find there is your own deathbed, and the faster you run, the quicker you’ll get there.”
The cantankerous hermit was choking again. This time he was grown—up and at the end of his life. When he tried to stiffen, his legs refused to obey. He couldn’t breathe with limp legs and he couldn’t talk his legs into helping him. He was pleading with his legs to raise his body when he blacked out.
The kzin was watching intently.
At the exact moment of death the man-beasts would all be saved, at least temporarily. Every man, across all the realms of men, would be in a state of grace. Their suffering would die as the Son died. And God would no longer be distracted by the pain emanating from their multiple true-shapes.
He prayed. Grant the Bearded God tranquility! The Great God’s Patriarchal courage and bravery and strength were about to be restored by the sacrifice of His Son. Rejuvenated, He would be alert and ready to listen to all who called upon Him, not just the whining of His favorites.
The body on the cross slumped, convulsed, was still. Hwass turned to the smaller cross, God’s antenna. Now! The mask respecting the true-form was firmly upon his muzzle. He composed himself. In the air were the songs of heaven and the smells of glory. His hunter’s senses felt the full attention of God. He delivered only one request, a resonant, powerful request, carefully phrased in the purrs of the Dominated Tense of the Hero’s Tongue:
“Mighty Patriarch, Son of the Grandfather, and Father of the Son,” he began formally, “the aroma of Your piss emanates from every star. As Your feces was dropped into the mud of Earth to bring forth the true-shape, I throw my soul to the mud of Kzin to bring forth loyalty to God’s purpose. Obedient children I promise You.”
Hwass was remembering a lost life on the sheep estates of Wunderland. “A fanged dog may be ugly in Your eyes. An untamed dog may kill sheep. But a fanged dog who has been bred to the faith is a shepherd.”
Then he made his plea. “Place in my loyal claws the hypershunt drive so that my brave kzinti may move freely to their destiny! Let us guide Your true-shaped children. We will discipline their behavior! In the whole of the galaxy, You command no greater race than the race of Heroes. Use us. I ask no more.”
After a respectful silence, Hwass-Hwasschoaw feasted upon the body of the Son of God so that he might share in the grace of the true-form, as God had commanded in Matthew 26:26, and drank of the blood, all of it, which was shed for the remission of sins as commanded in Matthew 26:27-28.
Chapter 10
When Major Yankee Clandeboye tried to organize an expedition to Hssin he discovered just how many naval officers he had alienated. He had full authority to mount such an expedition, but it took more than authority; it took cooperation. Whatever request he made was referred to some other naval department. Clearly Admiral Jenkins was not cooperating.
From the scuttlebutt he learned that Admiral Jenkins, in command of the Eighth Fleet based at Wunderland, had been involved in a running internecine war with General Fry for years, a covert war involving character assassination by secret ballot, redirected supplies, gerrymandering, reluctance to share ideas and innovations, officer sidelining—and an overt war over budgets and weapons procurement. They had policy quarrels, philosophical differences, and they belonged to competing power blocs. A sort of simmering truce had been in place since their last open conflict during the invasion of Down.
One informant thought it was funny. “He actually enjoys his little wars. Keeps about six or seven fronts going at the same time. He once tried to have Buford Early court-martialed. Didn’t succeed but sure kept the volcanoes puffing.”
“Admiral Jenkins did that?” Yankee was incredulous.
“No. General Fry.”
“And the ARM just lets my boss get away with it?”
“What can they do? Fry has goldskin roots. The goldskins and ARM collaborate reluctantly. You know, Belter and flatlander rivalry.”
“And I thought I was unpopular!”
The higher authorities of the ARM had done their best to keep such disputes compartmentalized. Yet the very structure of the Amalgamated Regional Militia exacerbated such conflicts. The ARM had never been designed to wage war against the kzin or mediate between alien races. For 350 years it had shaped itself to find and suppress military technologies rather than to use them. The ARM’S military response to the kzinti had been hastily cobbled together out of the wrong pieces of bureaucracy.
Yankee’s men suggested that they bypass Jenkins and go back to Sol and pick up a ship. Besides the fact that this option put a ten-light-year (thirty-day) dogleg detour into the Hssin trip, it wasn’t the kind of failure that Clandeboye had the courage to pass on to Fry to fix—the old game player had doubtless moved him into this hotseat quite deliberately.
He was left crawling from rumor factory to rumor factory, grasping at wild stories for some kind of lever into his problem. Perhaps, he thought ironically, he could lay charges of mutiny against Jenkins. Good idea; bad odds. It was in such a mood that he accepted Brobding Shaeffer’s invitation to dinner at Tiamat’s Star Well. Brobding was always a good source of gossip.
The Star Well was more formal than Yankee liked, complete with a flatland headwaiter with black suit and oyster-sized turquoise jacket buttons who actually escorted him to the Shaeffer table on one of the tiers overlooking the well. His eyes fell off the rim—down to the beginning of the universe. It was vaguely disconcerting to know that a structural failure in the “skin” would suck him through the floor into an even better view of the stars. If you hadn’t noticed that Tiamat was rotating, its motion was brilliantly obvious here; the constellation of Pavo was just slipping across the bottom of the well. He recognized Peacock from his days as starstruck navigator. Binary giants, period 11.7 days. Minds were filled with such useless detail.