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 Wunderkind 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”
“You iss not pray. You iss take all mens sins to your soul with courage of true warrior, thus relieving God of His grief for mens. You iss be guilty for all sins. You iss accept all punishment. You iss forgive all mens their transgressions, wipe them clean with your suffering and make God glad again. This iss duty I require of Son of God.”
While the trussed Son of God peered helplessly into the gloom, the devout kzin used his torch to fella straight tree. Flaking muck flickered on slick fur. The giant cut his log into two parts. He notched them and lashed together a sturdy cross. He measured the man’s arm span while the man pleaded hysterically, now aware of his fate. Holes were drilled at the right place on the crossbeam. Holes were drilled in his wrists which carefully avoided all major arteries and veins. The kzin used ironwood pegs to secure the Son of God to the cross and raised him to the night, higher than a kzin’s eye. It began to rain.
In the pouring rain, Hwass cheerfully cut and built two smaller crosses which he erected to the right and left of the crucified Son of God, one for the invisible Grandfather and the other to call God to the scene so that He would know He was wanted. When the clouds began to clear, Beta was rising through the misty frees and the hermit, in the first delirium of his pain, could actually see his enemy sitting on the wet moor weaving-what was it? a basket?
Hwass-Hwasschoaw was weaving a human mask of pliant bark to replace the mask of human skin he had not been able to bring with him. Basket weaving was one of the skills he had ordered his father’s slaves to teach him as a youth. His patriarch had not allowed him to observe a slave without learning how to do all that the slave was doing. Once he had killed one of his father’s metal-working slaves for refusing to teach him the art of variable alloying. His father commended his act by sharing in the bloody meal-even though he had lost a valuable properly.
It was predestined from birth that Hwass was to become Patriarch’s-Eye, an unmentionable name he was to carry in priority to all other social names he might be known by. Eyes sometimes led quiet lives of observance. Sometimes their lives became livery affairs of survival by wit where even the most impractical skill might be the key to survival. His father had ordered him to learn everything.
While he wove, he recalled his father’s words. “A master who cannot do what his slaves do has become like an unskilled animal. A kzin is owned by his slaves if they are more clever than he.” His father was born on W’kkai of the Kzin aristocracy, nominally a member of the W’kkai aristocracy, but more of Kzin than of W’kkai. He had only contempt for the W’kkai habit of letting their slaves be the custodians of their gestalt.
He did not have to kill his father’s basket weavers for they were enthusiastic in teaching him all they knew. The mask shaped up nicely. The skin was finely woven with shaped cheekbones and cleft chin and protruding eyebrows. The eyes were of stream-polished quartz. The hair was of fine plant fiber which he pounded clean while the Son of God was dying with his awful burden of sin.
Day came and night, and the pallor of Beta, and the dawn of Alpha. In his delirium the hermit was taken to a ghostly remembrance of Munchen in the spring of a year when Beta was an evening star. It cast shadows the
