Phaed smiled his wolf smile and shook Sam’s hand from his arm. “Awateh hasn’t said, boy. Ahabar, I shouldn’t be surprised. There’d be a certain pleasure in that.”
“What will you do?”
“What do you mean, boy, what will I do?”
“There’ll be nobody left to kill, Dad.”
His hand twitched at his belt, where his whip still hung. “Oh, there’ll be disciplining still to do, I imagine. We’ll need some to serve us. The Gharm, likely. Plenty of them left on Ahabar, and we’ll save a number for ourselves.”
“Oh no, Dad. Let me tell you a tale. A legend of my own. The Gharm are all dead, hadn’t you heard? A kind of plague came swiftly and killed them all. Right after you went to Ninfadel. They’re dead. There are no more Gharm.”
Phaed breathed heavily through his nose. “All of ‘em?”
“So I heard. Yes.” Sam smiled at the sky where the stars showed green through a high veil of mist. A wind had come up and the clouds above were whipping about in it, first one way then another, as in a caldron, the clouds themselves showing green.
“Well, there’s others. Maybe we’ll keep some Ahabar babes and bring them up to the whip. Maybe we’ll …”
“No, no, Dad. I hadn’t finished my tale! The soldiers have already gone there. They’re killing everyone, didn’t you know? Everyone on Phansure, and Ahabar, and Thyker. All the moons and little planets, too. Soon there’ll be no one left. Except for us few left here on Hobbs Land, and we’ll be dead soon. I only came to say goodbye, and because I was interested in knowing what you were going to do now.”
“Do now,” said Phaed, panting. “Do now?”
“Were the women left on Ninfadel, Dad?”
“The prophet thought that best.”
“Ah, well that’s a pity. They must have gotten lonesome after the prophet and all you men left, so they went through the Door. There were soldiers there, naturally, and your women didn’t know the answers to the questions. I know you told me there was no sense teaching women anything important. Well, so, the soldiers killed them all, the women and children, all the animals. Everyone’s dead but those of you here, Dad. You prophets. You Faithful. You men.”
Phaed made a munching motion with his jaw, as though chewing at something hard. “All but us.”
Sam watched Phaed’s face, wondering at what he saw there. This was the end the man had foretold, the end he had longed for, and yet, now that he thought it had come, he did not rejoice!
“But isn’t that all right, Dad? It must be all right. You told me so yourself. Kill, and maim, and torture, and howl, and threaten. Utter curses. Make laws. So long as the last one alive is one of the Faithful, that’s all that matters. You taught me that yourself!”
Phaed began to run, long strides, his breath heaving up out of his chest. Sam took a pace or two after him, but then slowed down and watched him go. Far ahead was a prophet, and Phaed was trying to catch up to him.
Sam kept on walking, not hurrying. After a time he came within hearing distance of the two.
“My son says so,” Phaed was crying in a frantic voice. “Gone. Everything’s gone. The soldiers are already killing everything, everywhere. We’ll be the only ones left. We and the people here on this place.”
“Then the task is complete,” sighed the prophet. “The Great Work is accomplished. We may die. Paradise awaits.”
“But …” cried Phaed. “It wasn’t supposed to be so quickr!”
The prophet had left him. Phaed began running again, passed the prophet and went on toward the east. Sam could hear him panting.
When Sam came up to the prophet, he said curiously, “Is there any need to keep on walking? Now that it’s over?”
“True,” said the prophet. “Oh, that’s true.” He sat down on the ground, put his head upon his knees and began to sway gently, as though rocked in someone’s arms.
Sam brushed at his own face where a fine dust was settling. The same dust settled on the crouched prophet, who did not move to brush it away. Sam breathed in the dust and sneezed, spewing it out again, before continuing in the direction his father had gone. He passed a great soldier standing motionless at the foot of a hill.
“What is …?” called the soldier. “What is …?”
Sam stood quietly, waiting for the question, but after a time the soldier stopped asking, as though it had forgotten the challenge. Little lights flickered on the soldier’s head and at the ends of extensible arms. The lights dimmed, flickered, went out.
Sam brushed dust from his eyebrows, leaned over and shook dust from his face. The stuff was dark and powdery, yet it did not cake. Each infinitesimal particle fell away separately, as though rejecting him. He held out his hand, flat, seeing the dust accumulate from the air, covering his skin. When he turned his hand over, it fell away. Sam was not what it wanted to rest on. Sam was not fertile soil for it.
As he went farther east, he saw more and more of the halted soldiers. The farther east, the more blurred their outlines were. Sam stopped beside one elephantine warrior with a pair of giant treads, and poked a finger between two adjacent plates. The space, which should have been open, was filled with a hard, wooden growth. The same growth, tissue thin, lay across every surface. The soldier was being encased, enclosed.
The core of every soldier of Enforcement was of psuedoflesh, an organic compound. Fungi needed organic compounds in order to grow. Sam found himself wondering if pseudoflesh might not be a good growth medium for the mushroom house …
Phaed was just ahead of him, talking to a circle of prophets.
“My son says the soldiers have gone to Ahabar, to Phansure. Already. Already killing everyone. They
