By Heresies Distressed

by David Weber

  “I’d almost rather she did blame me,” Cayleb said very quietly, looking down at his hand as he toyed with a box of marker tokens on the edge of the map table.

  This time, Merlin made no reply. Silence hovered for several seconds, and then Cayleb straightened once more.

  “All right,” he said more briskly. “I think you’re right about Nahrmahn, so I suppose I’d better send word that I want to see him.”

  “And while we’re waiting,” Merlin said, “you and I need to give some thought to the minor problem of figuring out how an emperor, who’s also his own field commander, can disappear from his headquarters encampment for at least—oh, four or five hours in the middle of the night, shall we say?”

  “Not to mention how we get the aforesaid emperor and field commander out of his headquarters encampment in the first place,” Cayleb agreed. He shook his head and chuckled. “I’m really looking forward to actually seeing this ‘recon skimmer’ of yours—scared to death, mind you, but looking forward to it. But coming up with a way to get me out of here is going to be a lot harder than simply figuring out how to accomplish something as minor as, oh, convincing Hektor of Corisande that I’m really his best friend.”

  . XVII .

  A Recon Skimmer in Flight,

  Above Carter’s Ocean

  Cayleb Ahrmahk’s nose was pressed firmly against the inner skin of the armorplast canopy as the recon skimmer tore through the night heavens. He was the first native Safeholdian to actually fly in well over eight centuries, and Merlin could almost physically feel the young man’s delight as the emperor sat in the flight couch behind his.

  Getting the two of them out of the encampment had proved far simpler than Cayleb, at least, had assumed it would. It wasn’t his fault he’d overestimated the difficulties, of course; unlike Merlin, he hadn’t known about things like portable holographic projectors. Like the skimmer’s smart skin, the projector strapped to Merlin’s belt worked best under conditions of less than optimal visibility, but they’d been fortunate in the rain clouds which had moved in during the late afternoon. The rain hadn’t come down very hard, but its mistiness had reduced visibility and helped the two of them blend into their background well enough that they’d been able to get a considerably earlier start, well before full darkness had fallen.

  There hadn’t been much point in leaving any sooner than that, given the time difference. Nineteen hundred in Corisande was only thirteen hundred in Tellesberg, but Merlin was just as happy to have the extra time in hand. It meant he didn’t have to fly at high Mach numbers this time, which was good, since there weren’t any handy thunderstorms to conceal his sonic boom and he’d just as soon not fly so fast he had to worry about the skimmer’s skin temperature being picked up by any orbital sensors that didn’t belong to him. And he preferred to get there a little early if he could. He could always spend the time circling high above Tellesberg, impossible for anyone to see from the ground below, and the earlier he could set the two of them down on Sharleyan’s balcony, the better.

  Cayleb had reminded Merlin rather forcibly of the emperor’s younger brother when he actually saw the skimmer. In fact, if Merlin wanted to be accurate, he’d seemed younger than Crown Prince Zhan as Owl brought the vehicle into a smooth hover and deactivated the stealth features.

  “Oh, my!” the emperor had murmured, watching through huge eyes as the skimmer abruptly snapped into visibility and settled gently into the drift of dead leaves carpeting the woodland clearing two miles outside his camp’s perimeter.

  His obvious delight had caused Merlin to look at the skimmer’s lean, rakish gracefulness through fresh eyes, although he could scarcely imagine how its needle-nosed sleekness and swept wings must look to someone who hadn’t grown up in a high-tech universe. Cayleb’s reaction underscored the vast gulf between Nimue Alban’s life experience and his own in a way that Merlin’s time here on Safehold really hadn’t.

  The emperor had watched the canopy slide back and the boarding ladder extend itself, then clambered up it just a bit gingerly under Merlin’s tutelage. He’d settled into the rear flight couch, and somehow he’d managed not to jump right back up out of it as its surface moved under him, configuring itself to the contours of his body. Fortunately, Merlin had warned him what would happen, but his astonishment had been obvious, anyway.

  Merlin had taken him patiently through the various displays. He hadn’t bothered to warn Cayleb not to touch anything he hadn’t been specifically told he could touch. First, because Cayleb was smart enough not to do anything of the sort, anyway. Second, because Merlin had locked all of the flight controls to the front cockpit. He’d shown the emperor how to reconfigure his visual displays so that he could direct the skimmer’s after optical head wherever he wanted to, and Cayleb had spent the first thirty or forty minutes of their flight delightedly swiveling the head and zooming in on the land, ocean, and islands under them.

  He’d also spent those same thirty or forty minutes chattering about everything he could see from an altitude of just over sixty-five thousand feet. But now, finally, he’d sobered.

  “So this is what Langhorne and the others took away from all of us,” he said softly, sitting back in his seat again at last.

  “This is a part of what they took away from you,” Merlin corrected gently. “Believe me, Cayleb. As exciting and novel as all of this is for you, it’s barely scratching the surface of what Shan-wei wanted to give back to your ancestors. Oh, Langhorne and the mission planners were right about one thing—for the first three centuries or so, they had to bury any memory of the infrastructure that could have produced something like this skimmer. The stealth systems built into it, and the fact that its signature would be so tiny and hard to pick up anyway, meant they could operate at least some similar vehicles without risking anything the Gbaba could have picked up without doing a detailed in-atmosphere search. And if they’d gotten close enough to do an in-atmosphere search, it wouldn’t have mattered whether Safehold had possessed advanced technology or not.

  “But you could have had this back—and everything else that goes with it—four or five hundred years ago without worrying about whether or not the Gbaba would stumble across you. Or, at least, without worrying that they’d spot you because they were actively looking for you, at any rate. That’s what they took away from you, and from your parents, and your grandparents, and your great-grandparents.”

  “We could have had the stars,” Cayleb half-whispered.

  “With the exercise of a little bit of caution, yes,” Merlin agreed. “In fact, from the starting point of the knowledge Shan-wei was trying to preserve in Alexandria, by now humanity would probably have developed a high enough level of technology to go looking for the Gbaba, instead of the other way around. Not to mention the fact that the average lifespan for someone born when Nimue Alban was alive was in excess of three hundred years.”

  “Or the minor consideration that the lying bastards left us stuck with ‘spiritual shepherds’ like Clyntahn,” Cayleb added harshly.

  “Or that,” Merlin agreed.

  “You know, Merlin,” Cayleb said in a rather different voice, “up until this moment, despite Saint Zherneau’s journal and the other documents, I haven’t really been able to wrap my mind around what you mean when you talk about ‘advanced technology.’ Maybe that’s because I haven’t really tried to. I’ve been too concerned, too focused, on just surviving to really try to imagine what the future—or maybe I should say the past—could have been like. I guess the fact that you’re alive, and the incredible things I’ve seen you do, should have given me a clue, but to be honest, I’ve still been thinking of you like Seijin Kohdy. You’re not ‘technology,’ not something one of Howsmyn’s mechanics might’ve designed or built if they’d only had the right collection of nuts and bolts and the right wrench. You’re magic—any ninny could tell that! But now—”

  He broke off, and as Merlin glanced into the small view screen beside the pilot’s right knee, the p
ickup in the rear cockpit showed him the emperor’s shrug.

  “There was a writer once, back on Old Earth,” he said. “He died over three hundred years—three hundred Old Earth years; that would be about three hundred and thirty Safeholdian years—before we met the Gbaba, but he wrote something called ‘science-fiction.’ His name was Clarke, and he said that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic.”

  “ ‘Indistinguishable from magic,’ ” Cayleb repeated softly, then nodded. “That’s a good way to think of it, I suppose. And it makes me feel a little better, a little less like some sort of ignorant savage.”

  “That’s good, because there’s nothing ‘ignorant savage’ about you, Sharleyan, Nahrmahn—not even Hektor. Within the scope of the worldview you’ve been permitted by the Church, you’re as smart, capable, and inventive as anyone in the history of mankind, Cayleb. In fact, while I wouldn’t want you to get a swelled head or anything, you and Sharleyan are pretty damned incredible, when you come right down to it. All we have to do is break down the barriers Langhorne and Bédard built to keep you all in prison, and that intelligence, capability, and inventiveness will do the rest.”

  “Of course, breaking down the barriers is going to take more than simply defeating the Group of Four,” Cayleb said. “I know you already told me that, but now, looking at all this, I think I finally realize what you really meant. Nobody who’s grown up on Safehold is going to be ready for something like this without an awful lot of advance preparation. And I see now exactly why you said you can’t just hand this over. Why we have to learn to build it—and accept it as something which isn’t ‘evil’—for ourselves.”

  “As Maikel says, one battle at a time,” Merlin agreed. “First, we break the Temple’s political and economic stranglehold; after that, we tackle the lies in the Writ, itself. And that, Cayleb, is going to be an even tougher fight, in a lot of ways. The fact that eight million literate colonists left so many letters and journals and personal accounts—absolutely honest ones, as far as they knew—of how they interacted with the ‘archangels,’ and about their experiences on the day of Creation itself, is going to leave us with a nightmare when we try to tell everyone they’re all lies. The mere fact that I have a cave stuffed with technological toys isn’t going to ‘magically’ make nine hundred years of faith disappear overnight . . . or make the people who share that faith feel one bit happier about the possibility of falling for ‘Shan-wei’s snares.’ That’s why we need people like Howsmyn, Rhaiyan, Rahzhyr Mahklyn, and all the rest. The Safeholdian ‘scientific revolution’ is going to have to come from within, not be handed over by some supernatural minion of Shan-wei, and the mindset that goes with it is going to have to infect the entire planet. I only hope we can avoid an entire series of religious wars between the people eager to embrace the new and the people desperate to defend the old as their only hope of salvation.”

  “I’m not going to see Safehold building these ‘recon skimmers’ in my lifetime, am I?” Cayleb asked softly.

  “I don’t think so,” Merlin confirmed, equally softly. “I wish you were, and I suppose it could happen. But I’m afraid of what would happen if we crammed the truth at everyone that quickly. Maybe things will change, maybe I’m being too pessimistic. But I’ve got enough blood on my hands already, Cayleb. I don’t want any more than there has to be.”

  “I think I’m finally beginning to understand why you’re so lonely, too,” Cayleb said. “You’re not just the only person who remembers where we all really came from. You’re the one person who’s going to see people like me and Father and Sharleyan die and leave you to go on, fighting the same fight without them.”

  “Yes.” Cayleb could hardly hear the single word, and Merlin closed his eyes briefly. “Yes,” he repeated more loudly. “And if you want to look at it one way, I think I’ve got a very good chance of being personally responsible for more bloodshed than any other single person in history.”

  “Dragon shit!” Cayleb snapped the two words so sharply that Merlin twitched upright in his flight couch. “Don’t go borrowing guilt, Merlin!” the emperor continued in an only marginally less sharp tone. “Langhorne and Bédard and Schueler are the ones who built this mess, and Clyntahn and Maigwair and Trynair are the ones who were willing to murder an entire kingdom to prop it up! Do you think that somehow all of that would magically stop if you’d simply decided to leave ‘well enough alone’? You’re not that stupid.”

  “But—”

  “And don’t give me any ‘buts,’ either,” the Emperor of Charis growled. “It’s a mess, thousands of people are going to be killed, maybe millions of them, and you—and I, and my children, and my grandchildren, if that’s what it takes—are going to be right in the middle of it. But in the end, Merlin Athrawes—or Nimue Alban—the truth is going to win. And part of that truth is the fact that a batch of self-serving, corrupt tyrants chose to use God Himself as a prison for all the rest of us. I remember something I read in that History of the Terran Federation Saint Zherneau left. Something about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots. Personally, I’d just as soon water it with the blood of a few tyrants, but that doesn’t change the truth that sometimes people have to die for the things they believe in, for the freedom they want for themselves and their children. And it doesn’t make you responsible for it, either. Blame the people who built the prison, the ones who’ve spent so long trying to strangle the tree. Don’t blame the person trying to tear that prison down.”

  Silence hovered in the recon skimmer’s cockpit for several seconds, and then Merlin Athrawes smiled crookedly.

  “I’ll try, Your Majesty,” he said. “I’ll try.”

  . XVIII .

  Empress Sharleyan’s Suite,

  Royal Palace,

  City of Tellesberg,

  Kingdom of Charis

  The Empress of Charis sat curled up in the comfortable armchair in her luxurious suite in Tellesberg Palace with her feet tucked under her. It was the way she’d sat when she was worried ever since she’d been a little girl, despite the best efforts of her mother, Baron Green Mountain, her uncle, and Sairaih Hahlmyn to break her of the habit. She’d never been quite certain why a queen wasn’t supposed to sit that way, at least in private, and her various relatives and loyal retainers had discovered that her stubbornness extended to more than simply matters of state.

  She smiled almost wistfully at the thought. It was comforting to think of such ordinary, everyday arguments and decisions, rather than the monumental upheavals of the last two days. As frightening as the world she faced had sometimes been before, at least she’d always been reasonably confident she understood it. Now, it was as if a doorway she hadn’t even known existed had been opened, revealing the existence of an entirely new layer of reality, one that threatened to stand every comfortable, known fact on its head. She’d begun to feel at home here in Charis, only to find herself once again in a new and unknown land, and this time she had no map, no shelter, and no guide to explain its frightening mysteries to her.

  The thought sent a stab of loneliness through her, and she looked around her suite. It was larger and airier than the one she’d enjoyed in her “own” palace in Cherayth, with the pointed arches, high ceilings, thick, heat-shedding walls, and windowed doors of Charisian architecture. She’d grown accustomed to its exoticness in the months since Cayleb’s departure. What she hadn’t grown accustomed to—and didn’t want to grow accustomed to—was Cayleb’s absence.

  You’ve got more to be worried about than that, you nincompoop! she told herself sternly. You’ve only been married to the man for seven months, and he’s been gone for almost six of them! Don’t you think it might be a little more sensible to spend your time worrying about whether or not Merlin is a demon, after all, than how much you miss a man you’ve hardly had time to even start to know?

  No doubt it would have been. And, in fairness, she had spent quite a bit of time worrying about that very point, des
pite Archbishop Maikel’s reassurance. Her relief when the archbishop confirmed that he’d known the truth about Captain Athrawes all along had been the next best thing to unspeakable, although he’d declined to be more specific about that truth until after she’d spoken again with Merlin and Cayleb. That had been more than a little frustrating, but she’d had to admit that it made perfectly good sense under the circumstances. And the archbishop’s serenity when he confirmed that he knew about Merlin had done more to relieve her mind than she might have believed possible, although the fact that Staynair honestly believed Merlin was neither a demon nor an angel didn’t necessarily mean the archbishop was correct. Nonetheless, she’d told herself, if Archbishop Maikel was prepared to grant Merlin the benefit of the doubt, the least she could do was listen to what the seijin had to say. Especially since, as she’d pointed out to him herself in the smoke, blood, and bodies of the failed assassination attempt, she would most certainly have been dead along with the members of her guard detail without him.

  Her eyes darkened, and she felt her lower lip trying to quiver once again as she thought about the men who had died to keep her alive. It had been their job, their duty, just as she had duties and responsibilities. She knew that. Yet knowing was a frail shield against the faces she would never see again . . . and the faces of the wives, children, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers they’d left behind.