“I guess the only way one could tell would be to compare two complete planets, one with you and one without …”
“It doesn’t do any good talking to it, Topman,” murmured Saturday. “It can’t hear you. It isn’t here.”
“Yet,” said Sam. “Though it feels like it’s here.”
“Just what we’re carrying around inside us. Not enough to do anything much when it’s separated like this. Enough to keep us from panicking, maybe, but that’s all. Not even enough of itself to reproduce if we got killed and buried.”
Sam thought about that. “Too bad.”
“Mom said to remind you. Just in case you get any … heroic ideas.”
Saturday might not have thought of that, but Africa had. Africa had worried aloud about Sam endangering them both by doing something … crazy.
Saturday sighed, still half-asleep. “We’ll be more use to it alive, Topman. Let’s try to stay alive.”
• On the hill above Sarby, Jep sat in the temple with half a dozen Gharm, including several he had not seen before. He still wore the collar, though he hadn’t seen any of the conspirators for two days.
“Is she coming?” they asked. “She-Goes-On-Creating?”
“She’s coming,” said Jep. “I don’t know how long it will take her, but she’s coming.”
• “You know,” said Rasiel Plum, Chairman of the Native Matters Advisory, as he ran his finger down the list of questions he had been given by Notadamdirabong Cringh, “this is very interesting. Why are you showing it to me?”
Cringh ducked his head into his shoulder and considered the matter. “Well, we two are old colleagues, Rasiel. Two of the twenty-one Actual Members of Authority, so I would naturally turn to you for help.”
“I know, Notty, but that’s not the reason.”
Notadam sighed. “The head of the Circle of Scrutators of the High Baidee wants the questions considered, unofficially, by the Religion Advisory. But, as my aide put it—succinctly, I thought—how can you ask an unofficial question of a very official body? Without causing, that is, a stink?
“Let us suppose I asked the questions. Everyone would assume immediately that the High Baidee is out to destroy someone’s religion, someone else’s religion, that is. There are those rumors, you know, the old ones about the Blight. We High Baidee are accused—wrongly, need I say, but accusations of that kind color other peoples’ attitudes. So if I ask these questions, particularly if I include the last few questions, rumor will brew like tea, with everyone smelling it. And once that rumor gets started, people will get anxious, memoranda will begin flying here and there, chaos will result. That isn’t what the head of the Circle of Scrutators had in mind, I’m sure, but it’s inevitable if I’m known to be involved.”
Rasiel nodded, agreeing. That was what would happen.
“However, if the questions come from you, Rasiel, they could be considered unofficial. The Native Matters Advisory might simply need to know about something religious because some native peoples have questions. Perhaps the Hosmer are becoming interested in theology. Or something. Coming from you, it’s no threat, if you take my meaning.”
“Is the High Baidee out to destroy someone else’s religion?” asked Rasiel, unamused by the idea.
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Not a nice idea at all, Notadam. Not one I would approve of in either an official or unofficial capacity.”
“If any Baidee ever did such a thing, Rasiel, it wouldn’t be old farts like me. It would be some young firebrands with more energy than sense, and they would do it because they would regard the religion in question as a kind of disease.”
“Catching, is it?”
“Seemingly so. Or, perhaps I should say, suspected to be so.”
“That could be ugly. People turn all fanatic, do they? Rant and rave against the unholy? Claim to have the only source of truth? Execute people for heresy? Burn people at the stake? Shovel them wholesale into ovens?” Rasiel was a student of human history, including its more barbaric periods.
Cringh took some time before he answered, and when he did, it was with a musing tone that made Rasiel look at him sharply. “No, as a matter of fact, people seem to turn cooperative and kind and virtually incapable of hurting others.”
There was a long silence.
“Young firebrands, you say?” asked Rasiel Plum, wonderingly.
“Every religion has its zealots,” said Cringh.
“It was some such young berserkers who wiped out the invasion force that hit Thyker, when was it?”
“A long time ago.”
“Any current special bunch of firecrackers?”
“A fellow named Howdabeen Churry has a group that calls itself The Arm of the Prophetess.”
“Why do they call themselves that?”
“Why do the Voorstod terrorists call themselves the Faithful?”
Another long silence.
“Well,” said Rasiel Plum. “I suppose I could ask the questions. Some of them. Unofficially.” He looked at the list in front of him. “Let’s start with questions one, two, four, and five.”
• Sam and Saturday were picked up by another vehicle on the morning following their stay with whomever it had been at Wander Keep. This time the driver was a laconic man of about seventy, gray-haired and knob-jawed, who sang tunelessly to himself during the entire trip to Selmouth, seemingly deaf to anything they said.
When he let them out in a cobbled street in front of a tavern, he pointed to the tavern and said, “In there. Tell the provider you’re looking for passage north.”
“How far north?” asked Sam.
“The word is, you’ll learn that in Cloud,” said the driver, spitting at Sam’s feet.
“Is there a church here?” asked Saturday.
The driver stared at her. “Use your eyes, girl,” he said at last. “Or your ears. Towers and bells, that’s churches.”
“A church?” asked Sam as they turned away.
“Funerals,” said Saturday. “Maire told me this religion has funerals.”
Sam nodded thoughtfully. Maire had indeed talked of the religion of Voorstod, or rather the religions, for the priests had one and the prophets another, though they often seemed to be the two sides of one coin. It was the prophets
