Insider

sold the land didn't own it. The Earthman had seen that he was being hoodwinked and now he kicked out everybody who came with a complaint about the land as cheaters.

'I didn't get much from the Earthmen for my field — an empty can and a kick in the butt,' Ashinik thought. Ashinik left for his relatives in the neighboring province, but he got sick on the way. An old couple picked him up and ministered to him. Having learned that the total strangers washed him and spoon fed him, the youth burst into tears — it was the fourth year he lived as a snail without a shell, only a lazy man wouldn't step on him.

The people, who nursed Ashinik back to health, were tanners. Ashinik started helping them with their work and with the house. At first, Ashinik didn't notice anything except that they didn't eat meat in the house but then, listening to the masters' conversations, he started to realize that his hosts were some sect's members. This sect had existed for a long time and it was based on a prophecy about iron people who would appear from underground to destroy the Empire. On numerous occasions, they had taken barbarians and rebels for iron men but then a rebel would become an Emperor and it would become clear that the prophecy was not about him. The masters hinted to Ashinik a number of times that Earthmen were these iron demons, and that they wanted to destroy the Empire and that the mine, he was invited to work on, was nothing else but a hole to hell — the demons would drag him down there and eat him.

At first, Ashinik didn't really believe it. He had also heard some really dirty gossip about zealots — they were rumored to entice people with their lies, nurse the infirm, pick up orphans, and then preach stupid stuff and engage them in orgies and even worse on their meetings. But he felt uncomfortable arguing with the elders who had saved his life and he also had nowhere else to go.

Soon, they took him to a meeting where they directly said that Earthmen were demons and all the things they owned were either phantoms or had been stolen from the gods. Then a teacher, clothed in white, in front of their eyes grew a golden staircase out of a seed, climbed up it to the skies and came back with a fancy pot that the gods gave him.

Ashinik started taking part in the weekly meetings but doubts assailed him. 'Of course, all I got from the Earthmen for my field was an empty can and a kick in the butt,' Ashinik thought. 'But if I consider everybody I got a kick in the butt from to be demons, there would be more demons than people.' Finally, these thoughts hurt him so unbearably that once in the repair shop Ashinik fainted and crashed to the ground. When he came back to his senses, people were crowded around him — it appeared that a great spirit had seized him and he had been preaching.

Ashinik was taken to the teachers, they housed him with them. Since Ashinik's words were always taken with great attention, the fits started to happen more and more often but Ashinik never remembered what he was saying. Thanks to his prophecy gift and natural cleverness, Ashinik suddenly started to climb quickly up the hierarchical ladder. Ashinik was especially shocked by the following. The zealots he found himself with at first believed that Earthmen were really demons. On the second level, they told him that words iron devil and demon with respect to Earthmen should be treated metaphorically and Earthmen live on the sky rather than underground. He was told that the stupider were the rumors about Earthmen, the easier the dumb people would believe them. But on the third level, he was told that Earthmen were demons! And they explained to him that the more metaphorical the prophecies' interpretations were, the easier would silly officials believe them since they wouldn't see the gut sense behind the false reasoning. And on the fourth level, he was told again that the prophecy should be treated metaphorically!

When he achieved the seventh level — there were ten of them all in all — Ashinik couldn't distinguish anymore where a metaphor was, where the reality was and where the deep meaning of both of them was. Talking to a commoner, he spoke as if he was on the first level. Talking to an educated man, he spoke as if he was on the second level. He believed what his audience could believe. Thanks to that, his sermons gathered huge crowds. He was also taught to prophecy right at the meetings and he usually remembered what he had said.

Four years passed this way — Ashinik was now twenty. Once the White Elder called and commanded him to leave for Assalah village on Chakhar border. He said,

'The demons build their holes there. They call this hole a spaceport and they say that they fly to the sky out of these holes, but, in reality, these holes go underground all the way to hell. The Assalah demons wronged our peasants mightily and we have a strong society there. But yesterday the society head died. Go to Assalah and take his place.'

X X X

This time the trip to the capital took eight hours instead of two months — the next day's morning a yellow bus left Ashinik at the road fork going to spaceport.

Ashinik threw his sack over his shoulder and started walking. The trucks, looking like huge silk worms, flew past him to the construction, a cloud of dust and bad smells hung over the road and in the fields, recoiling from the curb, ripening rice ears were covered with a thick layer of cement dust. It was a long walk and Ashinik tried waving a twig several times to hitch a ride but nobody stopped. Even during the worst war years Ashinik remembered always being able to get a ride from a passerby in a cart. They could kill you once they had picked you up, but at least they would always pick you up.

Suddenly a car slowed down. Ashinik nervously saw that it was not a truck but rather a passenger car shaped like a tiny bug. The driver threw open a door — after a brief hesitation Ashinik climbed inside. They drove in silence for a while.

'Are you going to the construction site?' the driver asked. He spoke in demon's brogue.

'No,' Ashinik replied, 'I am going to the village.'

'Who are you going to?'

'My uncle called me in. His son died — maybe he will adopt me.'

'There are a lot of zealots,' the driver said, 'in this village. Following the Way. Are you one of them?'

'Yes.'

'What level are you?'

'What do you know about levels?'

The driver looked the lad over — he had a round good-natured face, wide lips and adjoining thick eyebrows over his beautiful brown eyes.

'A week ago,' the driver said, 'the local Following the Way man died. You are coming to replace him, aren't you?'

'What do you do?'

'My name is Terence Bemish, I am the Assalah company director.'

Ashinik swallowed.

'Do you pick all passersby up or did you know that I was coming?'

'I pick all the bums up,' Bemish said. 'The drivers at the construction rarely give a ride to anybody and if you are a bum, they might even kill you. They have already killed two people this way.'

'Your workers aren't any good.'

'It's difficult to get any worse. They drink, steal, and make the newcomers do the same. There are gangs among them. Two of them were caught yesterday — they sold an anti-corrosion paint box. How much do you think they sold it for? They sold it for a rice vodka crock! Yesterday, one guard shot at another guard — he was boozed up. They arrested him, started an investigation and discovered that he was wanted in the capital for robbery and murder. Everybody who wants to escape the capital after screwing something up there, go here.'

'Yes,' Ashinik said, 'it's not easy. I have never had to own people that drink, steal and eat meat. A master is like a seed and his subordinate is like grass that grows out of the seed. Grass follows seeds. It's not surprising that the demons' servants steal anti-corrosion paint from them.'

Bemish was so upset by this comment that he lost his self control. His true nature emerged and Ashinik noticed at once that Bemish's head was really just a meat egg. Ashinik felt himself very uncomfortable. 'What if he asks now — do you really think I am a demon?'

But Bemish didn't ask anything like this, he shook his meat egg and said.

'The village is just beyond this hill. Would you be uncomfortable entering the village in my car? Would you like to get out at the turn?'

'Not a problem at all,' Ashinik said.

In the evening, the whole village listened to their new prophet's stories about riding in the chief demon's