by Eric Juneau
The priest nodded. “Sure.” He drew the small knife he had retrieved when he came here as a boy. The blade was dull and nicked and he showed Alix the smooth grain of the wooden handle, how it had three opalescent dots.
“Why did you choose that?” the boy asked.
The priest smiled. “I thought it was pretty.”
They both laughed.
“You come here with every boy, don’t you?” Alix asked.
“Yes, I am the priest of the tribe.”
“But, you don’t go down there, into the dark?”
The priest shook his head.
“But…you could if you wanted?”
The priest nodded. “Only priests and boys on their pilgrimage may.”
Alix looked very serious then. “Could I become a priest of the tribe?”
The priest smiled. “You want to learn of the gods?”
Alix nodded.
The priest had begun his own apprenticeship when he was not much older. He had never had a child, or a wife, and here sat this godly child, motherless and fatherless, but for him. “Good, then I will take you as an acolyte.”
Night was falling and the priest decided that they would stay there that night by the fire. He again remembered the three gods that had come that night thirteen years ago. He wondered if this was why they had chosen to attend. They sat by the fire for a time until the boy spoke again.
“I hear them sometimes,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The gods, I hear their voices.”
The priest studied him across the fire and watched the way his form shifted in the heat. “And what do they say to you, Alix?”
“They don’t speak to me…I just hear them crying out sometimes…sad, maybe.”
The priest smiled. “More likely they weep for us, who are so flawed. Go to sleep, Alix. You are now a man, and tomorrow you begin your next stage of life.”
The priest feigned sleep for a time, watching Alix at the fire studying the black metal mass he had pulled from the great underground piles.
¤
The priest lay on his mat and watched brightness creep into the world through the fabric of his tent. The pain in his joints was worse in the mornings and he had taken to rising late. He was priest in name only now. He had taught Alix all he knew: the blessings for preparation of food, the sacrifices, the rituals that mark death and birth, how to console the grieving, to pacify the angry, to tend the sick, and how to send the dying from their pain. Alix now performed even the most sacred of rites, the pilgrimage into manhood, and this was where the young priest had been the last ten days, but on the eleventh day, the young priest returned to him.
“What of Mikl’s journey?” the old priest asked.
“He will be a warrior. He has taken a garish metal pole as his weapon. We were approached by those from the upper river on our return, but they let us pass in peace,” Alix said.
“Did you counsel him as I counseled you? As you have heard me counsel all else on that journey?”
The young priest paused for a moment, but soon he smiled. “Yes, as you have counseled me, and as your forebears have counseled you.”
Some seed of doubt sprouted in the old priest’s mind. “You journey long with these boys, much longer than it takes to come and go.”
“I have found that the solitude of added days reinforces the lesson.”
The old priest looked at the young man with his dark hair and dark eyes. “There is something you are not telling me.”
A look of anguish crossed the younger man’s eyes. “The voices, priest…”
The priest made a hissing sound. “Come now. When you were a child I could understand, but you are a child no longer.”
“I know what I know, priest.”
“What do you mean?”
The young man brought forth relics from the broken place, thin things that flapped in his hands. “This, priest, they are words, men’s words, as much as any we may say now.”
“No!” The priest reached for him, but the young man pulled away. He felt frantic, awash in fear. “You mustn’t!”
“Because the gods forbid it? I have carried these words with me since that first journey we made. I have come to understand them and to see and learn many more.”
“You must put them back! How could you?”
The young man set the things he carried down at the feet of the priest. He pulled the weapon he carried from his belt and set it down beside them. “I leave these things for you. Return them if you like.”
The priest picked up the young man’s weapon. “This is your gift from the gods and you would forsake it?”
“This is no gift from the gods, priest. They did not bring these things to the lands below the mountain, men brought these things there!” Alix put his hands to his head. “I must go.”
The priest whispered. “Where will you go?”
“They have called to me all my life and I will go to give them answer.”
The priest came forth and grasped him. He looked deep into the young man’s eyes and he feared for him. “Alix, it is not for men to commune with gods. Have you learned nothing?”
The young man looked at him and his mouth dropped open as if to speak, but instead he pulled the priest close to him and whispered. “Pray for me.”
The priest watched him walk out of the tent and he did pray for him then.
¤
The priest had returned to his duties in Alix’s absence, though he lacked the strength to administer as he once did. In the evenings, he would walk to the edge of the village where he could see the path of the dry river and look to the west, and each day that passed that Alix did not return, he prayed for him there in the twilight. He kept the things that Alix had left, his weapon and the artifacts, wrapped in a blanket in his tent. Five years passed.
One evening as he lay on his mat there came shouting from outside and he could see shadows running past. The priest got to his hands and knees and willed himself to his feet. He went outside and into the chill of the evening. All of the men and women of the village had gathered along the lip of the hill that marked their western border and he moved slowly to join them.
“What is happening?” he asked.
A woman named Lorin held her child in one arm and pointed into the sky with the other. A great dark cloud had formed in the sky, but unnatural and angular. Lights sparked there in the darkness and there were many small, black shapes moving upward and into the cloud.
“The gods have abandoned us,” he said.
Coming from the west, he saw a small yellow flame moving toward the village. The priest looked from the storm of light in the sky to the pale yellow dot that advanced on them, but soon the lights in the sky were gone and the light that approached became a torch, and a man held that torch.
“Hello, priest, I have returned.”
¤
The priest stared into the darkness that stood outside his tent and he could see the barren star-scape that swelled above, black as eternity. His arms and legs throbbed with pain, but Alix had made him a tea and sat watching over him.
“Tell me of the gathering of tribes,” he said.
“I have given them your counsel…and my own.”
The priest nodded with some difficulty. “The lessons learned cannot be forgotten. Men lived long on this earth without the presence of the gods and long enough since to learn the folly of their own ways.”
Alix nodded and refilled the priest’s cup. “Yes, priest, drink more. For the pain.”
The priest felt a soothing chill flow out through his body and the tension of his jaw relaxed. “Are all tribes agreed?”
“Yes, I will lead them into the valley, to the shadow of the mountain.”
The priest smiled and felt peace drift through him. He laughed a little and Alix put a hand to his brow. The old man’s eyes opened and closed, showing him halting images of the younger man. In the fold of the young man’s robes, the old man saw loose shee
ts folded and recognized them as the things that he had held in the young man’s absence.
Alix followed the priest’s eyes. “The gods are gone and cannot admonish me, old one. You are all but gone too,” Alix said and smiled.
The old priest felt himself fading away and he looked to the teacup with which Alex had plied him. “Tell me, Alix. Tell me of the city of the gods that dwelt beneath the sea.”
The young man nodded. “I came west unto the very edge of the world, where the land itself crumbled to fine powder and I saw the water stretching out to the horizon. I called out to the gods in their own language and they rose from the gray waves to greet me.”
The priest lay smiling with his eyes closed. Alix continued. “They carried me in a seamless metal cart below the waves and cast a cool light all around them, and in time, we came to a great metal village where the gods made their home.”
“Was it beautiful?” the priest asked.
“Yes, priest.” The young man put a hand on the priest’s shoulder. “They told me of how they fell from heaven, of how they came to be here. I called to the others, the gods that remained in the heavens, to let them know of us, and these…gods here, and they came for them. They came to return the gods to the heavens.”
“The gods were wise to gift you thusly…,” the priest said, but his voice was so faint that Alix had to lean close to hear him.
Alix wiped the old man’s brow. “Goodbye, father.”
The priest still lay smiling. Images came to his mind: the many births and deaths that he had presided over, the wars that had come and gone. He seemed to remember each young man that he had brought to the great valley and the way their eyes had gone wide when they saw the waste laid by the gods upon the unworthiness of man. And he remembered the faces of the gods, perched high atop their long necks, eyeless and still. He reached out once more with his hand, past the firelight that burned in his tent and the face of his student, into the black of night, and he journeyed forth from this place to find the gods once more.
Matthew Lavin is a speculative fiction writer. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two dogs.
THE GHOSTLESS MACHINE
By Austin Hackney
“SO NO DEMONS,” said McFerris, peering at the whirring wheels and clacking cogs; the little puffs of steam coughing up from the pressure valves. “What does it do?”
“It proves my point,” answered Stanislav, the tiny engine’s miniature furnace reflecting in his eyes. “There is no ghost in this machine.”
“Impossible. What animates it if there’s no demon?”
“Pure mechanics. No rubbery-winged little blood-suckers required.”
McFerris straightened up, his face pale. “You’re mad. They’ll kill you for blasphemy.”
“Probably,” smiled Stanislav, wiping oil from his hands onto a greasy rag.
McFerris wasn’t sure if he meant he was probably mad or that it was probable they would kill him. The sound of the slow, chugging engine of a surveillance zeppelin caught his attention. He glanced out, beyond the sooty glass panes of the laboratory window. “I don’t like it,” he said.
Through the yellow smog that hung above the city, he saw the smudgy shadow of the airship leveling with the window, a glimpse of a telescope lens glinting in the pallid light. He closed the shutters, dropping the brass catch into place.
“Surveillance?” said Stanislav.
“They may already know,” said McFerris.
Stanislav lit a naphtha lamp. The aromatic odour of the burning oil enriched the air of the laboratory. Stanislav smiled. The machine was slowing, its polished pistons struggling to make full revolutions. He picked up a smoke canister from the work bench—the sort that were used by airships in distress—and looked at it thoughtfully.
“I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “In any case, I’m going to show them.”
McFerris felt a sudden flood of adrenaline. His hands were shaking. The room swam. He slumped down into a leather chair.
“Deep breaths,” advised Stanislav. “You’ll need to show more mettle than this, my friend. We’re going to unravel the world as they think they know it.”
“You have no right…”
“I have every right!” Stanislav’s eyes were suddenly blazing with fierce light. “I’m a scientist. I’m not interested in what they think people should and shouldn’t know. The facts matter. Reality matters. What do they say? The truth shall set you free? Well, this truth will free us from slavery; to the ruling class, to the Temple; to false ideas, to occultism and superstition…”
“…I meant you have no right to drag me into this. Martyr yourself for science, by all means—but why implicate me?”
“You’re the only one who understands. I know you agree!”
The little machine had stopped moving. There was silence but for the hissing of the naphtha flame and the distant drone of the city’s engines, far below, and the ominous thrum of the surveillance zeppelin.
McFerris sighed. He rubbed his face with his hands. “All right. What do you want me to do?”
“This machine, this engine, works on steam generated from water with burning naphtha as a heat source.”
“As do all machines.”
“But that’s all it has. There’s no spirit chamber, no blood-box, no need for priests to perform demon-enticing rituals. No need for bloodshed or sacrifice. The machine just goes. There is no ghost.”
“Are you suggesting that all machines..?”
But McFerris never finished his question.
A gunshot. Then another. The laboratory door clanged open. Stanislav pulled the trigger on the smoke canister and tossed it into the middle of the room. Suddenly everything was smoke and confusion.
McFerris felt himself dragged to the floor. He heard the thudding of booted feet running over the boards. He was coughing, his eyes sore and weeping from the smoke. Stanislav whispered right in his ear.
“Stay down, take this.”
A small wooden box was shoved into his hand. He felt a weight on his back, straps being tightened over his shoulders.
“What’re you doing?“
Another voice barked an order, “You! Guard the door! You—find a window and open it—get rid of this infernal smoke! Where’s the machine?”
Stanislav again. “You’re ready. Good luck!”
“What the hell do you...?” But this was another question McFerris was not destined to finish.
His confusion clarified during the fall.
The parachute exploded open above him almost before he realised what had happened. As the huge canvas sheet unfolded and caught the air, McFerris felt the leather straps at his shoulders tighten as he was tugged violently upwards. For a fleeting instant he was face-up and in that moment he saw the air service hatch of Stanislav’s laboratory hanging open, still swinging on oiled hinges as the zeppelin came in to dock. Smoke was billowing out from the now-open window. Then he was upright again and headed for Earth with what seemed to him, despite the drag of the parachute, alarming speed. His hands still gripped the wooden box close to his chest.
¤
“Dr. Stanislav Petrowski, the Temple Court of The Inquisition finds you guilty, not only of fiendish heresies but of witchcraft and consorting with devils. You are aware of the punishment for such crimes?”
“Why would you sooner commit murder than accept the truth? Even now, with the machine before your eyes, working without a spirit chamber!”
“I remind you this is a trial and not a debate. We cannot accept this machine. If it can operate, as you claim, without a ghost, independently, there would be no further authority for the Temple. Besides, you must see the dangerousness of this idea. It might start with one small engine, but it would lead to the greatest evil. If there is no spirit, no ghost, no soul, then there can be no spiritual realm and therefore no spiritual corruption; no sin, no need of redemption, no need of sacrifices or priests to perform them. We would see ourselves as
equal, free, independent, mortal machines! No. Such notions would unravel the fabric of our society. It is therefore deemed demonic. It should be clear to you as an educated man that this cannot be.”
“You are deliberately hiding the truth!”
“Take him away! And have his infernal mechanism melted down.”
¤
McFerris had no idea how to guide his descent without letting go of the box Stanislav had entrusted to him. He realised that he was heading for water only moments before he made impact, breaking the surface of the icy, black liquid of The Grand Central Canal. Realising that the parachute could become a death-trap, he struggled, blinded by the dark water and desperately holding his breath, to release the straps without dropping the box. Finally, he managed to unbuckle the harness and wriggle free. He swam, weighed down by his sodden clothes and shoes, towards the surface, his lungs tight and aching. Then he broke through to the world above, opened his eyes, and gulped lungs-full of fetid city air.
As he reached the edge of the canal, he found a rusting ladder that scaled the slimy stone wall. Dragging himself, dripping wet and shivering with cold, onto the esplanade, he struggled to his feet.
He was alive. He had the box. Now what?
He was worried about trying to make his way home. He had no doubts that he had inadvertently become a fugitive and that the box he held close to his sodden and trembling chest would make Pandora’s seem like nothing more threatening than his grandmother’s floral biscuit tin.
Wiping water from his eyes, he looked up—and realised he would never have to make the decision about what to do. He heard the gunshot crack the air, saw a sudden splash of blood on the cobbles, but felt no pain as he crumpled to the floor, oblivion enfolding him.
The box was flung from his arms by the force of the bullet. It smashed on the stone surface of the esplanade, releasing a spring-loaded mechanism and exploding its contents outward, whirring and whizzing like a swarm of clockwork fireflies, into the fading evening light.