The Heretic

No.

You understand why, don’t you? He held the disk between his right thumb and forefinger. Bits of flesh and bone still clung to it. But then, it began to glow. And as it glowed, the remaining shards of Rostov detached. Abel turned the disk over, and they fell away. It was a clean, white disk now. Lustrous, featureless.

You two have been with me since I was six years old, he thought. Practically since I was old enough to think at all you were there. You have been my friends. My guardians. But always for me you have only been voices in my mind. Voices that I cannot know for sure were not merely myself speaking, my own madness. And you told me about Zentrum. You told me that Zentrum was not God, not even a god, but merely a kind of complicated machine. And that his plans were wrong for this world. That his plans were not good for men, that there would come a time when men must move beyond Zentrum and his dreams of Stasis. That we must move beyond because there were other men coming, men in fast ships that sailed the night sky, and if we were ready, and if we survived the coming calamities, the disasters that Zentrum is unable to prepare us for, then we might be able to join those men from the stars ourselves. That we would not only survive, but thrive in a way that we never could have, never could have imagined, under the law of Zentrum.

But what if it’s all a fantasy? I was a kid, a six-year-old who had just lost his mother. Everything was taken from me, her love yanked away. What if I made you up?

What if every day since then, I have made you up, listened to voices that are only myself babbling within? And far worse than that, what if I have made up my purpose? What if none of it is true?

What if there are no worlds among the stars? What if there are no ships on the way? What if the Land is the only place there is, and the Law of Zentrum the only truth? What if the only enemy is myself?

You’ve made me into a killer of men, almost a force of nature.

But I am a man myself.

I want to know my enemy.

I want to know this is not all a lie I am telling myself to avoid the fact that there is, instead, nothing. No reason. Just blind commands from a God that doesn’t really exist, and men nothing but blood trickling through the dust.

He looked down at Rostov, at his lolling head, his ruined mouth trickling blood.

This thing was a puppet, a stand-in.

I need to know my real enemy.

Abel looked once more at the disk, then, with a quick motion, shoved it into his mouth. He pushed it up with his thumb until it contacted his palate. And-

Nothing.

Nothing at first. Then an odd tingling sensation.

The nanotech is activated, Center said. It will not take long to establish communications protocols with your nervous system.

The tingle became a buzzing. His head felt as if it were shaking rapidly from side to side. Or shaking from the inside out.

Flitters, Abel thought. A flock of flitters in my skull.

And then Abel knew the Mind of Zentrum.

At first, it was floating. Floating on an endless sea. It felt as it had when he’d been in boats upon Lake Treville. But there was. No shore. Only endless expanse. Brown-tinted water. The Braun Sea of Duisberg. A gray, glowing sky. No sun. No clouds, yet no sun.

Who are you?

Not his voice.

It was a voice that belonged to the sky.

A new one? So Rostov has fallen? Is that it? Are you a Redlander?

No. Show me the Law. Show me the Land.

You seek…knowledge? Who are you?

Show me.

Direct commands from humans must be obeyed within the parameters of strategic programming goals. This permission tier shall not be abrogated unless long-term challenge to overall human persistence is indicated. Commands shall be obeyed on a provisional basis during the assessment of such challenge.

Show me.

Very well. Witness:

He was in the Land. Not over the Land, not traveling on a flyer as he had with Center and Raj, nor driving in a groundcar, but flowing through all. He flowed through the people and processes of the Land. All the farmers, the millers, the shapers of wood and stone, the wagons heading north and south up and down the Valley, the River flowing and carrying its nourishing silt, the rise and fall of the River equivalent, of a piece with, the rise and fall of civilization.

He saw acres of men and women like barley and flax lining the River’s bottomlands. Hardship was a drought. Fulfillment, a harvest.

Each field of men must be cut, turned under, a new crop planted.

Each man threshed, winnowed, pounded to flour.

Civilization now the baking of bread. Loaf upon loaf. Each a dozen generations of men in the baking. The oven temperature constant, never varying. The ingredients always the same.

Never could there be the slightest deviation. The bread would fall. All would be lost once again.

Men seen as fields, ranks and files of men standing together like barley, like paddy rice.

But within those unending rows, those stable, unchanging rows-

Weeds.

Weeds that must be harrowed out. Cut out and destroyed. Tossed with all the other weeds into the burn pile.

And when there were too many, it was time to burn the field itself. To sacrifice this bit of grain for the good of the final harvest.

Such a time was coming. A time of fire.

A time for the burning of men.

He understood. Felt the necessity. Longed to complete the plan, the farmer’s plan. For even though the Land was dwindling, must dwindle in fruitfulness, the fire could renew it-renew it long enough for humankind to hold on a bit longer.

To hold on a bit longer here on this last outpost in the galaxy.

Abel knew the Loneliness of Zentrum.

None but I to guide them. None but I.

Have to be so careful. Change nothing. Balance.

And if any oppose? They deserve nothing but death.

Do you oppose?

Yes.

Then I will kill you.

Or I will kill you.

You?

If God laughed, this would be it. Abel felt as if the bones within him were vibrating with Zentrum’s mirth.

It is no use.Do not think I have not found you out, said Zentrum. Did you really think you could create breech-loading weapons and I not discover? Or the rockets? Did you really think that, finding out these things, I would do nothing, allow the Land to slide into disequilibrium because of them?

I knew you would try to stop me. So I didn’t seek permission.