by Steve Perry
He had attended to all the little details, to keep himself occupied, but he had neglected an important one: Where was he going to go?
True, he didn't have to decide here, since he would only be taking a connecting boxcar to a major port in Australia. Still, sooner or later, he'd need a destination. There was never any question of his staying on Earth. He couldn't be that close and not find excuses to flit back and see Moon and the others. Assuming she would allow it.
He thought briefly of retracing his earlier paths. Going home to Cibule, to see if his father still lived.
Maybe going to Vishnu, even Thompson's Gazelle, to look up Dindabe. But—no. Old paths were just that. He knew on some level there was nothing to be gained that way.
So, which way, O wandering priest?
In the back of his mind, he had a glimmering that he'd played with: Koji. The single planet of the Heiwa System was known through the galaxy as the center for religion. Millions of pilgrims found their way to Koji every year, to study, to teach, to seek out answers to questions beyond logic's ability to adequately cover. If a religion was organized above the stone-age level, it probably had a branch on Koji.
Buddhists, Jesuits, Tillbedjare, Libhobers, Trimenagists, Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers—Koji welcomed them all; more, a de facto truce existed with the Confed—somebody was bright enough to realize that movements with billions of followers might be best left alone as much as possible. Maintaining civil order was difficult enough; fighting religious wars did not greatly interest the Confed. Fanatics would stand until the last man—witness the Battle of Mwanamamke in the Bibi Arusi System, led by Thomas Reserve Shamba and his Right-to-Freedom sect in the late 22nd Century. The Confed had won, but the victory had been pyrrhic. It had been expensive, time consuming and bad press, too. No, the Confed treaded lightly on Koji when it walked there at all, and it watched very carefully for bare and holy toes where it stepped.
So—Koji?
Might as well.
The ship bent and warped normal space, courtesy of the Scales-Waller Augmented Reality Analog Instigation Construct, more popularly known as the bender drive. The math and metaphysics of the drive were both highly unlikely and, according to some, downright impossible, but they had given man interstellar space. Some had it that it was mere illusion, but then some had it that all was maya, and in the end, arguing philosophy was mostly a waste of time, illusion or no.
Pen sat at a table onboard the starliner, sipping at ginseng tea, watching a couple try to keep a three-year-old girl occupied. It looked to be a full-time job. Pen had wondered about children, whether to take on the responsibility of them, but he had little confidence in his ability to guide a life other than his own. How could he teach when he had yet to discover the purpose of his own existence?
The little girl managed to slip the controls of her parents. She made straight for Pen.
"Why are you all covered up?" she asked. No guile there, just simple curiosity.
How to explain that to a small child?
"Because I'm hiding," Pen said.
"Who are you hiding from?"
"Myself." Saying that spooked him. He hadn't realized how much truth was in that simple statement.
The girl shook her head, disturbing her fine, blond hair. "Won't work," she said. "You can't hide from yourself. You're right there with you."
She's got our number, hasn't she? came Pen's inner voice. You can't run and you can't hide.
The child's mother arrived and dragged the little girl away, murmuring an apology, while carefully appraising Pen's shrouded figure for possible danger to her offspring. The mother could not realize that the child was more dangerous to Pen than he could ever be to her.
One other memorable event happened on that voyage through bent space. Actually, it took place several weeks earlier on a world twenty light-years away, but the news of it only arrived at Pen's ship when it docked for passengers on the way to Koji. Once in realspace, the liner uploaded newscasts and passengers could replay them when they so desired. Pen had been out of touch for a long time, not caring what happened anywhere except on Manus. He sat at a holoproj table and flicked the unit on, to see what the Confed was allowing its subjects to see these days.
The event had been covered in great detail, for the Confed wanted it shown. There must have been a platoon of camera operators working to capture it all.
On the world of Wu, said the voiceover, in the Haradali System, two local factions fought over control of a prime piece of real estate, property used for growing a particular kind of grape that would only flourish in a narrow latitude. The grapes were used in making Timbalee wines, some of the best wines ever devised, according to experts, no matter what vintage you might choose.
Unfortunately during the legal battle, somebody forgot to pay the Confed its triple-tithe tax. Somebody got quite heated about it, somebody essentially told the Confed to go away and leave them alone, this was serious business.
So, the Confed decided, somebody needed a lesson, and it was one of which everyone should be aware.
The recorded images were very sharp. Troopers gathered up the arguing factions, maybe five hundred people who were either directly involved or working for those who were. The soldiers were not gentle in their work. Pen watched a close shot of a man's head being smashed by a carbine's butt, thoughtfully done in slow motion so no viewer could miss the effect of heavy plastic on scalp and skull. Blood sprayed, and the camera was close enough so that the red mist fogged the lens. An artful image, they must have thought.
There were other such scenes. Boots driven into stomachs or groins, elbows into noses, weapons used to batter heads. No one was shot—they were saving them for the grand finale, and needed them alive for that.
Cut to a Confederation Dreadnought hung against the starry pinprick of space. The Fourth Fleet's flagship, the voiceover explained, the Indomitable. Mounting (classified number) banks of (classified) gigawatt laser weaponry. The camera held the shot long enough to show a ten-passenger lighter arc from under the belly of the mothership, to give it scale.
It was a big ship, all right. Bigger than a couple of the smallest wheel worlds.
The camera pushed in on the ship, and faded through it, back to the five hundred people on Wu. The shot was high, from a flitter or thopter, but a zoom showed a remarkable close up. Those who were still able to run did so. Panic flowed from those people like their screams, the sounds of which were produced with clean fidelity despite the camera's distance.
Pen felt his stomach churn. He knew what was coming, even though the announcer tastefully avoided speaking it aloud.
They cut to the Indomitable. The camera held it a beat.
They resumed the crowd, but long. Pen could see they were people. Then, of a moment, they weren't people anymore. The scene was washed out in red, boiling clouds of red, reaching even to the camera so high above.
There was a time-dissolve to a glassy landscape of muddy brown green, glittering under a clear sky and bright sunshine.
Pen recognized it as laserglass, and a big patch of it. The camera pulled back, way back, and added in a scale on the screen to show just how big it was. Two kilometers by almost three. What used to be the center of the wine country in contention. And the tomb for five hundred people.
Pen turned away from the screen. It didn't track for a moment. How could anybody be so—so— insane!
To kill that many people, to destroy that much valuable property, just to make a point? Insanity was too gentle a term. It was screaming madness, foaming and gibbering. It was hammering a tack with a piledriver. It was—was—fucking crazy!
From years past came the memory of Wall Eye, and the day the two of them had watched Confed security smash the face of a man whose only crime had been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And what Wall Eye had said to the boy who called himself Ferret: The lesson's there, boy. Don't fuck with the Confed…
Pen shook his head. That hadn
't changed. Maybe it wouldn't ever change. Something was wrong about that.
On an entire planet whose reputation had come to be intertwined with the supernatural—and one could argue about the natural or magical etiology of various gods until the local sun burned out—the highest concentration of seekers and believers was in Shtotsanto, the Holy City. The place sat inside a ring of mountains, a protected valley accessible primarily by air. For those who didn't mind a two-week hike followed by a climb and descent of a moderately tall mountain, there were foot caravans leaving the port daily. The terrain was mostly high desert along the Shtotsanto Road, the better part of the climb was through year-round snow, and the reward was a greened plateau with mild temperatures and several large freshwater lakes. The town ran to single- or double-story buildings, mostly, and the reason given was that no one wanted to block the sun from his or her neighbor. According to the information Pen had read, the population generally numbered about half a million in the Holy City, but that figure was largely transient.
Many people took the walk, it being considered a good way to calm one's spirit before achieving the Holy City.
Pen took the airbus.
Two weeks of eating dust did not particularly appeal to him, and he doubted that such a hike would do much other than strengthen his legs and give him a few blisters. He was in a hurry. Something was missing in his life—what he wasn't sure of—and he wanted to find it as quickly as possible. He had fair physical control, and a hard-earned humanistic outlook, but he needed more.
It would be his ticket back to Moon, he knew that much.
While he wasn't sure, he felt that what he lacked was the holy fire, the Finger of God, that sense of purpose some of the siblings seemed to have. People in the godlike state always seemed to know precisely what to do, there never seemed to be any doubt for them. And kicking up sand seemed unlikely to be a part of it. Better he should get straight to the city and start studying. Getting to God was a big project.
If a place might be said to feel holy, Shtotsanto did. The local season was either later summer or early fall, and the air was crisp with impending winter and expectation. People smiled at him on the sidewalks, waved and nodded, and seemed to take no notice of his garb. No, that wasn't the problem. The problem was in finding a proper instructor.
The city was an interesting mix of old and new, and laid out, it seemed, for pedestrians. There was no lack of wheeled or air-cushioned vehicle traffic, but a lot more people walked.
It was not as though there was any lack of teachers. Pen found that out when he stopped at a public compucom booth and tapped in a request for information on religious instruction. The holoproj lit and began scrolling names at fastscan speed. He watched for a minute, fascinated, before he stopped the scan and requested a total of the names.
Twelve thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine, the holoproj informed him.
Twelve thousand? Damn! How was he going to come up with the right choice out of that number? There were supposed to be many paths up the mountain, but this was absurd. He might spend years moving from teacher to teacher before he found one who had what he wanted.
He was staring stupidly at the pulsing holoproj when a voice behind him said, "Lost, pilgrim?"
Pen turned. The speaker was a tall black-haired man, gone gray at the temples, who wore crinkly smile lines and a matching grin. He was maybe forty T.S., dressed in loose-weave pale blue orthoskins and dotic boots, and from his carriage, looked to be in good shape.
Pen returned the smile, then realized the other probably could not know he did so under the shroud. "I guess I am," he said. "I'm looking for a teacher and it seems there are more than a few around."
The man laughed. He held his right hand palm forward in greeting. "To be sure," he said. "I've been here awhile. Perhaps I can help. I'm Armahno Vaughn."
Pen regarded the man. There was something familiar about him, but Pen knew he had never seen that face before, he'd remember it. What did he want? Pen felt no fear, not with the Ninety-seven Steps at his call, but this character might be trying to set him up for some kind of con.
After a beat, Pen decided that wasn't likely. His street-senses were rusty, but Vaughn tripped no alarms.
No sense of menace or malice came from the man. This was the Holy City, after all, and people here were more apt to be helpful, weren't they?
"I'm looking for God," Pen said.
Vaughn did not laugh at this. He said, "Yes." He paused for a few seconds, then added, "You're one of the Siblings of the Shroud." It wasn't a question.
"I am."
"A priest."
Pen nodded. "A title. Our order concerns itself more with the redemption of man than the seeking of his Creator. Assuming there is such a thing."
"Doubts are good," Vaughn said. "If a belief can't stand questioning, it isn't apt to be much."
"You know something of these matters?"
Vaughn smiled again, and the smile lines showed that it was something he must have done a great deal of over the years. "Something. I am a teacher, of sorts."
"Would I find your name listed here?" Pen waved at the holoproj.
"Near the end. The listings are alphabetical."
Pen looked at the three-dimensional image floating before him. Well. He had come to learn, and here was a teacher. Coincidence, likely, but he had to start somewhere. And a man who smiled that much either found a lot of humor in life or was spacing with a damped drive. He didn't seem crazy. What the hell.
"Will you teach me?" Pen asked.
"Of course."
As easy as that? Well. Maybe not. But it was a place to begin, wasn't it? It was time something came easy to him, Pen thought. It seemed like everything he had ever learned had been with sweat and blood and emotional pain. Maybe he should search for another teacher, but, to hell with it. He could always do that if this guy didn't work out. And who knew? Maybe this character had some answers.
Pen certainly had enough questions.
Thirty
PEN SAT seiza, his eyes closed, meditating.
The word "easy" might as well be stricken from his vocabulary. Pen thought. And that thought was a mistake—he wasn't supposed to be thinking, he was supposed to be following his breath in meditation—
Vaughn brought the bamboo cane down to lightly touch Pen's shoulder. Ah, shit. Pen leaned forward in a bow, then resumed seiza. It seemed like hours before the strike came. Whack! The sound and force of it jolted Pen. Damn. How does he know when I lose my concentration? He never seems to miss it!
Even with his eyes closed, Pen was aware of Vaughn moving away. The man walked like a ghost, and it was not Pen's ears that gave him Vaughn's location, only that slippery sixth sense he'd developed over the years of training on Earth. Were it not for feeling Vaughn's ki. Pen would never know where the man was. Higher sensory perception, indeed. It seldom worked as it had when Moon was—no, don't think about that.
Zen meditation, the sitting practice of which was sometimes called zazen, was but one more method Vaughn used in his teaching. The system was called Zendu, and it was, as nearly as Pen could tell, a kind of mish-mash of Buddhism and Hinduism, with assorted odds and ends thrown in. Eclectic was the term Vaughn used to describe it, and it was certainly that. Some of it he had heard and dealt with in his training on Earth.
Sure, Pen had studied religions, but that had been academic, had been intellectual. Reading about that goddamned bamboo stick was altogether different than feeling it sting your, trapezius when your monkey brain wandered off through the trees, chittering stupidly. It was not the pain, it was the embarrassment of being found wanting.
The stick touched his other shoulder this time. Pen bowed, and the thwack! came again. Hell of a time concentrating today.
Maybe it was because there was trouble in paradise.
In the months since he'd been studying with Vaughn, the Holy City and Koji in general had been peaceful. There was a kind of quiet, but intense atmosphere that permeated the air
here, an attitude of learning that seeped into everything, filling virtually every act with a kind of optimism and good cheer. It was everywhere—walk into a restaurant, and that man working behind the counter might well hold multiple doctorates in assorted philosophies; the woman sweeping the floor might be wiser than a college full of scholars; the mue repairing the room heater could be a potential saint.
People in the Holy City were seldom what they seemed at first glance. But lately, there had been unrest amongst the teachers and learners. Confed spies lurked about, so the rumors went, and while nothing overt seemed to be happening, the stories had it that the Confederation was up to something on Koji. And if the Confed was up to anything, it certainly meant no good would come of it.
The status quo that was the Confed had altered somewhat over the years. There were always the small repressions, of course, the swaggering petty officials everywhere one looked. The military boot did not stomp down all that often, but when it did, it came down hard. Pen could not forget the splash of laser-glass on Wu.
Meanwhile, here on Koji, Babaji Ananda, one of the shining lights of the local Zendu contingent, a human spiritual lamp who lit the darkness for more than a few followers, had disappeared. True, Babaji sometimes wandered off if not watched, he was less than adept on the physical plane, what with the Light of Truth shining through him the way it did, but he was not a man who could be misplaced for long.
According to those who knew such things, Babaji would be harder to hide than a thunderstorm in the desert. And according to those who claimed the ability to sense psychic power, Babaji was not in the Holy City. Not alive, anyway.
Based on his own mental ability to locate Moon when she was within his range, Pen believed that others could do the same. It would be foolish to deny something that worked simply because one did not know how it worked. One did not need an advanced degree in physics to push a button.
Then again, a holy man was missing—so? It might be unusual, but even here there was some crime.
Maybe the man had been waylaid and stretched out by some hardstick thug for his credit cube, or that expensive pulsestone timepiece his followers had given him as a sign of their devotion. Babaji had a drawer full of expensive trinkets, so Pen had heard. People were sometimes robbed of such items—stranger things had happened. But while one part of Pen was willing to accept that, another part of him believed the stories. The Confed had some nefarious plan working on Koji, and woe to those who dared get in the way. Not that anybody could figure out how Babaji Ananda could get in anybody's way.