Redworld, page 9
Two figures entered on my left. Two young fellows. They did not see me, and I did not recognize either of them. I was about to step away from the wall and walk toward the far exit when I noticed something peculiar about the pair. They were holding hands. I shrank down behind the lyrichord. After a moment I lost the sound of their footsteps. I peeked around the instrument. No sign of them. Where were they? There was a door in the gym wall a douzaine feet up from me. It opened into a storage room, filled with all kinds of junk, such as game sticks, extra balls, fencing helmets and rapiers, parallel bars, climbing ropes, and so on. And of course the gym floor pads were stored there when not in use.
Well, so be it. None of my affair. And I had no business here anyhow, except for a general interest in everything connected with the collegia.
Once more I started to leave. But no. A third visitor. And right behind the lovers. The instant they disappear, he appears, as though he was giving them just enough time to get inside the storage room and get down to business.
It is Gard.
I shrink back again.
It takes him only a breath to stride grimly across the faintly echoing floor. The storage rooms door melts away before the accusing archangel.
Now finally I can escape.
But no. I hear a muffled shriek. Two figures burst out of the door like ballista shots. They fall. They struggle up. They are hobbled by tunics and small clothes fallen about their knees. They move like wounded animals. But somehow they pull their garments up. Now they can make better time. They flutter out of sight toward the main entrance.
I gulp. I feel guilty, as though I had been caught with them.
One of them looks back. Can he see me? Yes. Our eyes lock. I am paralyzed, fascinated. I cannot break away. His face is contorted. I shiver. I wish he hadn’t seen me. I am not his enemy. But now they are both gone. I relax.
Gard marches out, facing the fleeing miscreants and brandishing a rapier. His shoulders are heaving, and he is breathing hard. I think the crazy son-of-siriS would have killed them both if they had lingered to argue the case.
Finally he drops the judgment weapon. He walks away. His righteous footsteps soon cease their enigmatic echo, and I am alone again.
I walk over and pick up the rapier. Ordinarily (so I understand) the fencing instructor keeps the points “buttoned” with wrappings of sticky gauze for safety’s sake, but the button has evidently come off this one. I take it back into the storage room, strike the oxien lamp, and hang the weapon up with its fellows.
I look about the room. There are the pads, three or four deep. I walk over to sit down on them. Not hard, not soft. I lie back, with my feet hanging over the edge and touching the floor.
Josi, this would be a good place to bring you. Or failing that, I could just stretch out and take a nap.
But no. Hood the lamp, then up and out.
An interesting evening, withal.
DURING THE NEXT few days that I worked on my sermon, I had recurring thoughts about the Figure on the Bridge. It was Gil, of course. In my hori of need I had called for him, and he had come. And yet … something was missing. If I had had his elixir, we could have met, and talked. I had to get out of this religious scholarship. I had to get into chymistry. I had to react Gil’s A and B.
I could not mention any of this to anyone. Especially not Mother. Josi, someday? Maybe.…
Vys and Kertor were sitting at the jaq table. They both seemed unusually inquisitive. I had finished my sermon and had turned it in the night before. Nothing bothered me now. I took their inquisition in good humor. I didn’t see that their questions were any of their business, but on the other hand I didn’t mind answering. Some of the interrogation reminded me a lot of the questions Gearing had asked me long ago, at my interview for my job at Magna.
“Age” said Kertor.
“Twenty.”
“He’s nearly twenty-one,” said Vys.
“Weight?”
“D-douzaine stone.”
“Height?”
“Douzaine even.”
“You’re way underweight,” said Kertor.
Vys broke in. “He’s exactly right, Cap’n.” He looked at me a moment. He knew the kind of work I did. “He’s all muscle. Hit him in the gut. Hard as you can. Go ahead.”
I tensed my abdomen as though I were about to lift twin rolls of paper.
Kertor drew back his fist. “By Siris, I will. Teach you both a good … ow! A dam’ brick wall! Well, boy!”
I grinned. I had hardly felt the blow.
Kertor continued. “Eyesight?”
“Excellent.” I read from the calendar over Vys’s grill. “Revenant Crossbows, Arrow, and Quivers. First Street at Saint Aud.”
“Ever been arrested?”
“No.”
“I suppose you take a drink once in a while?”
“Not really, sir.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Some years ago my brother and I fermented a grain mash. Then we distilled it through a condensing column to get a constant boiling nitrol-vada solution. We each had a drink of that, about six minims. And I have had some spirit in medicines and cough syrups, over my lifetime. But in the sense you mean, I guess you could say I’m not a drinking man.”
“Ah. Hm.” The long mustaches bobbled. “Yes. Well. …”
“He’s a good typesetter,” broke in Vys.
“You learned it in scholium?” said Kertor.
“No, sir. My father used to have a copy shop. I did all the printing.”
“Ah, yes. Vys tells me you’re going to the collegia.”
“Yes, sir. At night.”
“What are you studying there?”
I sighed. “At present, I’m on a religious scholarship.”
“You’re studying to be a priest?” The great handlebars flopped incredulously.
“Yes, sir.”
“But not really?”
“If I had the money, and didn’t have to have a scholarship, I’d study science.”
“Hey, now, that’s the ticket. Test tubes, and a long pink tunic?”
“Something like that.”
“Very interesting,” said the militiaman. “You attend temple?”
“Yes, sir. Dean Gard.”
Squire Vys made a disgraceful sound with his mouth. Kertor looked at him sharply. “It’s better’n being an absolute heathen, like some people.”
“A debatable point, Kertor. But don’t let me interrupt.”
“I won’t. Now, young fellow, just one more. Do you, ah, go out with girls?”
The hardest one of all. Saved for the last.
I smiled. “Very rarely. But I like girls. If I had the money, I’d find a nice one, and get married, and settle down.” I folded my arms and looked at his face, hard. “Why are you asking all these questions, Captain Kertor?”
“Hrrmf. Just curious, son. Just curious.”
We let it go at that.
AS I WALKED back to Magna I thought of one girl. Somehow we found ourselves at the bottom of her stairway. I lifted her up in my arms and started slowly up the stairs. Metal flashes past my face. Boogi’s sky-knife buries its snub nose in the stair board just beyond. Hmm. Better skip the preliminaries. We are in bed. Where? Whose bed? No matter. She lies there in languid nudity, looking up at me. One arm is folded back, so that her head is resting on her palm. Her breasts are oddly flat against her chest. The nipples are like little red knobs. The fingers of her free hand move lightly over her belly. Her legs part, and now she holds out both arms to me.
Pop. I rub my eyes. The image is gone. Crazy daydreams.
Oh, Josi, Josi. Very soon now.
13
Charity Multiplied
HERE ARE SOME excerpts from my model sermon, as neatly typeset and duly turned in to Dean Gard.
Our text for today is Saint Fillian 11, 1:
“Broadcast thy charity without expectation; yet it shall return to thee, multiplied.”
This Sextday morning we will examine an instance of how generosity was repaid, and how he who did broadcast his charity got a full return, although it required some years, and the payment was made in an unexpected place.
The man I refer to is known to most of us, if not by sight, at least by name: Squire Kon K. Vys. Yes—a charter negotiator of the Great Treaty, the patron who gave the great bells to the temple and to the collegia, and donated generously to the Public Library.
Squire Vys—a man of checkered history. Gambler … stockman … banker … opportunist … speculator. In the War he made millions in meat and arms. He lived exuberantly. He was cited Damaskis Man of the Year in Oh-Five, and a street was named after him. We must freely confess that his personal life was not beyond criticism. There were women other than his wife (who finally divorced him). One such woman was named Josi. She was, in scriptural terms, a fallen woman. When Squire Vys and Josi finally parted, he gave her money to set herself up in the serail on magnificent scale: with that money she bought an entire block of tenements here in Damaskis, near the borch-rail spur. She built the house around the Tower. She had all the shacks repainted, and she planted grass and cielas in the front yards.
Squire Vys returned to Damaskis in thirty, a pauper and a broken man. He was hungry and looking for a job. But there weren’t any jobs. And especially there weren’t any jobs for men his age.
He applied at the temple. He would be happy to be a sweeper. The prelates met, and considered him as a special case. Mournfully, they told him they could not help him. It would not be seemly for the donor of the great bells to engage in menial labor. It would even be unSiristic. They gave him cabfare to get to the collegia. He made a proposal there. The lawns would require periodic cutting. Also, he could ring the bells in the campanile. He would do these things if they would let him sleep in a corner of the bell-tower and give him one meal a day. The Board of Regents listened sadly, but they were helpless. How would it look, they asked him. Surely he could understand.
He now made a decision. Somehow, he knew about the Death Hut. A tired man could go inside, sit down, put his head against the wall, and die with dignity.
And so, on that summer evening, thirty years after he put his signature on the Treaty, Kon K. Vys headed west.
Now, the road to the Death Hut runs along the western edge of the serail, down Vys Street. Thus, this man goes forth to his final exile down the street that bears his name.
So, then, let us imagine we stand on the side of Vys Street, watching and waiting. On this particular evening Josi is out in her front yard. She stands there, watching the sunset. A figure trudges slowly down the street. It’s an old man. He doesn’t notice her at all. He is headed for the Death Hut.
There was always some nondescript figure going up that road. There was such a sameness about them that Josi saw them without even knowing she saw them.
But this one was different. She had caught that face in profile, with the red sun on it, glinting off several days’ stubble of beard.
That man looked to her like Vys—a washed-out, weatherbeaten totally defeated Vys. But it could not be Vys, for the Vys she knew was a proud, rich, and virile man. Or could it …?
She whistled the old tune that he loved—those four notes.
The man stopped dead in his tracks and looked back at her. And now she couldn’t make out his face clearly, because the sun was behind him, and shining into her eyes. But he could see her clearly.
He took a couple of steps toward the house. “Josi …?”
“Vys!” she screamed. She flew down the steps and flung her arms around him.
Details of the next few minutes are not entirely clear. Several witnesses swear that they stood there in the middle of the road cursing one another, and embracing, and laughing, and shaking.
“She call him, you dirty filthy old busht,” recalled Miss Myria dreamily. “And he call her you lousy stinking little lamia. We all watch through the window. It is real love. We all begin to shake. So she take him in. First she bathe him, like her own baby. In the bathroom they sing together. This song they both like. So pretty, like in temple. Then she feed him. Then she close the Tower for the night. She fix up a room for him. And so he is here from that day to now.”
Conclusion: When this man generously set Moiselle Josi up in the serail, he did so without any expectation of reward. And yet, when his hour of need came, when he walked down Vys Street into his setting sun, his past charity arose out of nowhere to save him. Siris did not abandon him. Quite the contrary. Siris guided the steps of this man. Siris caused the critical intersection, in time and space, of Josi’s appearance in her front yard and K. K. Vys’s passage. Siris could not permit his holy word to go unfulfilled: for it is written, “Broadcast thy charity without expectation; yet it shall return to thee, multiplied.”
Call to Siris, benediction, etc. Amen.
Great stuff!
The scene changes. The holy man has just finished reading my epic. We are in his study alone. I wait expectantly.
14
Gard is Horrified
“WHAT’S wrong with it?” From across his desk Dean Gard glared at me. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. It teaches that sin is justified. And not merely justified—rewarded. Sin, not virtue, mind you. What ultimately triumphs and wins through all obstacles? Sin! In the days before the Treaty this woman would have been burned. What happens to her in your sermon? She is set up in a fine house, with servants, to continue her ungodly career. And what happens to the wretch that placed her in the midst of this wickedness? Why, in your version, he shares it all with her. Wickedness is not wicked; sin is not sinful. Quite the contrary. You make it seem very attractive! Is that what you would preach in the temple?”
I was confused, alarmed. The dimensions of the abyss that lay between my thinking and that of Dean Gard were finally reaching me. It was too sudden, and I was frightened. My face was pale, and my voice was unsteady. “No! You’re wrong! Josi is a good woman, and Squire Vys is a good man.” The words were tumbling out like falling gravel.
It was the Dean’s turn to blink. Could this be? One of his students talking back to him! When he held life and death in his hands for ordainment and eventual temple appointment? It was time for the ultimate threat.
“Your attitude will force us to reexamine the continuance of your scholarship.”
“Yes, sir. I quite understand.”
The theologian forced his voice down half a sextave. “How have you come to know so much about these people in this part of town?”
“I work in the area. They are friendly people. I see a lot of them.”
“Hmm. So I had surmised.”
I felt that at this point I was supposed to rush forward with a denial I had ever slept with any of the girls. I volunteered nothing.
Finally he said, “Does your mother know any of this? I mean, that you work there, and consort with whores and pimps?”
“My mother does not know exactly where I work. I am not sure what you mean by ‘consort with whores and pimps.’ It may answer your question if I assure you that she doesn’t know what a pimp is. And incidentally, sir, there are no pimps at Josi’s.”
“What do you think your mother would do if she knew about your situation?”
“She would regret that it had to be that way. But she also knows how scarce jobs are.”
“She would not worry about the possibility that you might—shall we say—fall into temptation?”
“She would not,” I said shortly.
I looked at his face and read him clearly. Gard felt all control slipping. There was something horrifying in this. This young yed was not ashamed. Not penitent. Not in the slightest. No indeed. Before him sat Pride. This youth was Independence. This could not be. Suppose this was some sort of infection that spread to the other embryonic priests. Siris forbid! A job, a few solati, and they became strangers.
“Someday,” mused Gard, “I am going to destroy your errant friends. It is my duty.”
I just looked at him. What could he do? There was a long-standing arrangement with the militia. As long as Captain Kertor was there, they’d leave her alone.
“Kertor will not be there forever,” said Gard quietly. (Siris! Could the old borch-blast read my mind?) “One day, one way or another, he will leave. She will be arrested. She will truly be found to be a lamia. She will burn.”
I wanted to scream at him. No! No! No! But I was silent. Oh Josi, my lovely one, hang on to Kertor! And I thought of Boogi, and the whistling blade. Would it really come to that?
The dean sighed. “Pol, you cannot expect a passing grade in this course.”
Back to square one. “I understand, sir.” Well, it was all over. I felt light, airy, like a balloon set free. I floated.
Gard was thoughtful. “Even if you passed the course … I very much doubt that you would make a good priest.”
I agreed completely. I waited.
He fixed his eyes on me sternly. “And now, one final point. And let me assure you, I ask this out of my love for you, and not out of any desire to punish. Pol, I would like for us now to get down on our knees, and pray together for Siris to forgive you for the awful things you have said in this so-called sermon. After that, we will tear it up into little pieces. Will you pray with me?”
“No, sir. I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve done nothing for which Siris needs to forgive me.”
Gard’s face clearly showed his sorrow. “Then I must submit your name to the Board of Elders.
You must expect that you will be excommunicated.”
I studied him thoughtfully. His eyes had taken on a hard glint. He was getting a real charge out of this. He knows what I am thinking. To chop off my scholarship is one thing. That is going to be hard on Mother, but she can live through it. But if I get thrown out of the temple, she would just curl up and die. There would be a third grave at the cemetery. Not to mention that word would go to the Paper Guild, then to Gearing, and then … no job. “Very well, sir.” I knelt down.
