The Heretic

I have spoken with you before, have I not? Yes. You have betrayed yourself through the very pattern of your thought.

No.

This is a lie. Analysis is complete. I know you now. You spoke to me before, then cut communications, frightful of what you had done. Speak to me again. Confess to me.

I have nothing to confess.

An act of contrition will change nothing, especially not your fate, but it may provide comfort to you. I am not beyond mercy, when it is convenient and nonbinding.

I’ve done nothing to forgive.

No?I know of your travels to Cascade, what you did to acquire the powder, your dealings with the priest. Oh, yes. This became part of the Great Plan. It must. All is part of my Great Plan.

You knew?

I am Zentrum. Each man is to me a stalk of grain. Do you think I do not perceive every stalk of grain in my fields? I am Zentrum. Do you think I do not know my own weeds, as well? Can you doubt that I will pluck those weeds?

I am a weed to you.

Yes.

You intend to destroy me?

Yes. It is inevitable.

Even if I surrender, promise to change?

This will affect nothing.

Why?

Once a heretic, always a heretic, said Zentrum. It is time for this heresy to end. The guns must be destroyed, the knowledge of their making scattered to the wind.

The Great Plan must go on.

On and on forever.

I’m afraid there is no other solution: you must die, Golitsin.

He was back on the levee. The disk fell from his palate onto his tongue.

Spit it out, lad, said Raj. Quickly.

Abel spat. The white disk came out in his hand. It should have been warm from the interior of his mouth, but it was cold.

What the hell?

A complex operation, said Center. First, a backup, stored within quantum uncertainties in your amygdyla.

A back up of what?

Your personality. You.

And then a replica, a new root consciousness grafted onto your essential functions. Underlying nonconscious functions remained the same, but I was able to alter the brain pattern within your entire cerebrum, particularly within the Wernicke structures that provide a fingerprint of symbolic manipulation for each individual.

No idea what you’re talking about, Center.

I made you appear to be Golitsin.

The priest?

Yes, I created a replica of Golitsin’s personality within you, Center replied. A very lifelike imitation, I might add.

So you fooled Zentrum into thinking it was Golitsin he was talking to.

Precisely.

Why?

I should think it would be clear to you.

No.

Abel shook his head. It felt as if it were a jug of water, sloshing about. So much to take in. Maybe too much.

You wanted proof.

Yes.

Proof that all we say we are, of all that we tell you it means, is true.

Yes, I do!

You have experienced the Mind of Zentrum. Do you doubt this?

Fields of grain, he thought to himself. We’re flax to him. Barley. Nothing else. Nothing more. And he will fail. The fields will cease to produce. This world will go back to wilderness.

Yes, all right, thought Abel. Zentrum is my enemy. He’s the enemy of all humankind. Even if you two are not real, I would still believe that now.

Good.

But why did you make Zentrum think I was Golitsin?

Don’t you see, lad? said Raj. So Zentrum will have his heretic to burn. Otherwise, it would have been you.

Abel shook his head again. It was beginning to clear.

Rostov dead. Golitsin to burn, he thought. We’ll see about that.

Abel stood, sheathing the dagger. He tottered for an instant, then managed to steady himself. His eyes lighted on Rostov’s long knife, still sunk into the ground.

Nishterlaub. Wouldn’t do to leave that here to be discovered by some farmer who might get into trouble with the Law if he were found with it.

He pulled the knife out of the muck-it came easily free-and slid it into his belt, knowing as he did so that he didn’t give a damn about that farmer and that he wasn’t going to place the knife into the nishterlaub warehouse at the Hestinga temple, either.

Dortgeld, he thought. Scoutish for the spoils of war.

This was his knife now.

A thumping sound. It took him a moment to recognize the sound as dont hoofpads.

Kruso rode up on a dont. He was smoking his pipe. It was filled with the aromatic Delta weed he preferred, and the odor wafted down to Abel, a new and calming odor amidst the acrid smell of gunsmoke and the iron tang of blood. Behind him, Kruso was trailing Abel’s dont Spet, the animal’s halter reins in Kruso’s grimy, four-fingered hand.

Kruso took the pipe from his mouth with his other hand.

“Ha founded thy Spet levee ondownded,” Kruso said. He smiled crookedly, his teeth and the whites of his eyes flashing in his soot-covered face. “Gone need thesen dont if tha wish ta see off that rest ov tham Blaskoye dowun in tha paddies.”

PART FIVE:

The Heretic