The Heretic

“You’re in the district prelate’s house, lying on his wife’s sleeping pallet,” Raj replied. “Your father and she are watching over you until you wake up. You managed to give yourself a fine concussion.”

Raj smiled. His big white teeth shone brightly in his black beard, making him look less like a wastelander and more like a Redland barbarian.

“Father found me?” Abel asked.

“That he did,” Raj replied. “The high priest was with him, too. It caused quite a stir. You got picked up and taken to Prelate Zilkovsky’s home on a private litter.”

“Father must be worried.”

“He was. And by the sound of his voice, a bit terrified that he would lose you as he did his woman. I would not expect him to be in a happy mood when you wake up.”

Observe:

Abel was in the priest’s house. He lay propped up on pillows upon a sleeping pallet. The walls of the room were painted white with a wash that Abel knew had to be very expensive. He smelled the familiar odor of surkrat cooking somewhere, a dish his mother had made. His father paced back and forth, his sandals slapping in rhythm against the ceramic tile floor.

Then Abel was back in the mirrored room.

“I want to wake up. I want to tell Father I’m all right.”

“In good time,” Raj answered. He hunched down to face Abel eye to eye. “Let Center do his work upon you first, lad.” Raj settled into a crisscross position on the floor. He did not fidget, and seemed like a man accustomed to occasionally sitting on floors-or wherever the situation called for.

“You’re Raj.”

“Yes, lad.”

“You dress funny, but you look kind of like a man.”

Raj smiled. His teeth flashed within his dark beard. “That’s right, lad, I’m a simulation,” he said. “But a good one. I even manage to fool myself.”

“You’re not real.”

“I used to be.” Raj nodded as if remembering, though how could a simulation really remember anything? “A fighter. Then a soldier. Helped bring a world or two out of darkness.”

“And Center?”

“Center is no simulation. He’s here on Duisberg, contained in that capsule in the storehouse. And, in a way, so am I.”

“Then how come I see you when I’m supposed to be asleep in the prelate’s house?”

Raj nodded, thinking. Then he smiled and spoke. “You know how the Signal Corps has those towers along the road?”

“Those are for wigwag. You can send a message, or get one.”

“Well, think of it like this: there’s a little wigwag tower in your head now, lad. We talk to you that way.”

“And you can change things?”

“What do you mean?”

“In my head. Like make me forget about my mother. Wipe her out. You could do that, couldn’t you? And when you find out I’m not the one you’re looking for, you’re going to wipe her out. Like a rake on sand.”

He felt a sob coming on. How could you sob in simulation? You shouldn’t be able to. It wasn’t fair.

“Lad, we won’t take your mother away.”

Abel felt his teeth clenching, his whole body clenching. He didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to admit it even to himself.

“You won’t?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“What?” said Raj. “I don’t understand, lad.”

“Because I’m forgetting what she looked like,” he said.

Raj’s hard face softened. “So that’s it.”

Interesting. The room filled with Center’s voice. Your precipitous action was a distant outlier in my own calculations. It’s not often that I am outthought, especially by a six-year- old.

But now that he had his point, Abel was not going to let go of it. He was being stubborn. He didn’t care. “You can wipe my mother away, can’t you?”

Raj nodded. “We could, lad.”

“Leave her alone,” Abel said. “Just leave her alone.”

Raj reached out, touched Abel’s shoulder, but Abel jerked away. “I’ll kill you both if you touch her,” he murmured.

“You have my word, lad,” Raj said. “Wouldn’t serve any purpose.”

“You’re a simulation. You’re just…you’re just a nothing. I don’t like you. I don’t trust you.”

Raj shook his head. Abel risked a glance at him. He seemed sad.

“It’s the way of all things,” he said. “Maybe we’ll earn your friendship, Abel. But we’re going to have to stick together anyway.”

“How come you are doing this to me?”

“We have to reach you when you are little, before the Law of Zentrum gets all the way beaten into your brain, that’s why.”

Suddenly, as loud as he could, Abel formed a thought. He wasn’t going to say it. He was going to shout it. I can get both of you out of my head! Any time, I can!

That is correct, Abel. But at the cost of your own life, said Center.

I’d rather be dead than a slave.

Raj rose to his knees from the crisscross sitting position. For a moment, he looked Abel straight in the eyes. Abel returned the gaze with a glare.

Raj took Abel by the shoulders. Abel looked down at the backs of Raj’s big hands.

He could shake me to death with those. Well, let him try.

Abel pushed Raj’s hands away, crossed his own arms, and continued to glare.

Then Raj threw his shaggy head back and began to laugh. “Oh, we’ve found the one, all right!”

4

The classroom was stuffy and smelled of dont piss. It had once been a stable; there were no windows, and the floor sand was not packed, much less paved over. Bits of straw from its previous life could still be kicked up, and Abel suspected this was where the urine odor still resided. Abel knew he ought to feel lucky. Most of the people of the Land, even those from First Families, never learned to read, and resorted to an abacus when numbers began to move much past twenty. With his father’s permission, the officers with children had pooled their resources to hire a teacher and had rented the space from the military garrison.

Reading had come easily to Abel. Math had not.

With class a half day on Mondays and Fridays, and, of course instruction in the Law and Stasis taking up all of Thursday, Abel had begun to spend a great deal of time inside his thoughts, talking to the voices he still was not quite sure were real, but that he knew had proved to be quite helpful at times.

But the voices, Raj and Center, would not give him the damn answers. At least they hadn’t yet. He was determined to keep asking for help, because wheedling was easier than attempting another meaningless word problem of the sort the instructor, Lieutenant Milovich, seemed to take such pleasure in assigning.

I hope you know us better than that now, lad, Raj said. We’re here to give you more options, not turn you into a suckling babe