by Brian Aldiss
Finally, Yuli’s time in Punishment was completed. He entered a period of meditation before going to work with the Security Police. This branch of the militia had come under his notice while working in the cells, and he found within himself the ghost of a dangerous idea.
After only a few days in Security, Wutra’s worm became ever more active in his mind. His task was to see men beaten and interrogated and to administer a final blessing to them when they died. Grimmer and grimmer he became, until his superiors commended him and gave him cases of his own to handle.
The interrogations were simple, for there were few categories of crime. People cheated or stole or spoke heresy. Or they went to places that were forbidden or plotted revolution—the crime that had been Usilk’s. Some even tried to escape to Wutra’s realm, under the skies. It was now that Yuli realised that a kind of illness gripped the dark world; everyone in authority suspected revolution. The illness bred in the darkness, and accounted for the numerous petty laws that governed life in Pannoval. Including the priesthood, the settlement numbered almost six and three quarter thousand people, every one of whom was forced into a guild or order. Every living, guild, order, dormitory, was infiltrated by spies, who themselves were not trusted, and also had an infiltrated guild of their own. The dark bred distrust, and some of its victims paraded, hangdog, before Brother Yuli.
Although he loathed himself for it, Yuli found he was good at the work. He felt enough sympathy to lower his victim’s guard, enough destructive rage to tear the truth out. Despite himself, he developed a professional’s taste for the job. Only when he felt secure did he have Usilk brought before him.
At the end of each day’s duty, a service was held in the cavern called Lathorn. Attendance was compulsory for the priesthood, optional for any of the militia who wished to attend. The acoustics of Lathorn were excellent: choir and musicians filled the dark air with swelling veins of music. Yuli had recently taken up a musical instrument. He was becoming expert on the fluggel, a bronze instrument no bigger than his hand, which he at first despised, seeing other musicians play enormous peetes, vrachs, baranboims, and double-clows. But the tiny fluggel could turn his breath into a note that flew as high as a childrim, soaring up to the clouded roof of Lathorn above all conspiring melody. With it, Yuli’s spirit also flew, to the traditional strains of “Caparisoned,” “In His Penumbra,” and, his favourite, the richly counterpointed “Oldorando.”
One evening, after service, Yuli left Lathorn with an acquaintance, a shriven fellow priest by the name of Bervin, and they walked together through the tomblike avenues of the Holies, to run their fingers over new carvings even then being created by the three Brothers Kilandar. It chanced that they encountered Father Sifans, also strolling, reciting a litany to himself in a nervous undertone. They greeted each other cordialy. Bervin politely excused himself, so that Yuli and Father Sifans could parade and talk together.
“I don’t enjoy my feelings about my day’s work, Father. I was glad of the service.”
As was his fashion, Sifans responded to this only obliquely.
“I hear marvellous reports of your work, Brother Yuli. You will have to seek further advancement. When you do, I will help you.”
“You are kind, Father. I recall what you told me”—he lowered his voice—“about the Keepers. An organisation for which one can volunteer, you said?”
“No, I said one could only be elected to the Keepers.”
“How could I put my name forward?”
“Akha will aid you when it is necessary.” He sniffed with laughter. “Now you are one of us, I wonder … have you heard a whisper of an order above even the Keepers?”
“No, Father. You know I don’t listen to whispers.”
“Hah, you should. Whispers are a blind man’s sight. But if you are so virtuous, then I will say nothing of the Takers.”
“The Takers? Who are they?”
“No, no, don’t worry, I will say not a word. Why should you bother your head with secret organisations or tales of hidden lakes, free of ice? Such things may be lies, after all. Legends, like Wutra’s worm.”
Yuli laughed. “Very well, Father, you have worked me up to sufficient interest. You can tell me everything.”
Sifans made tsking noises with his thin lips. He slowed his step, and sidled into an alcove.
“Since you force me. Very regrettable … You may remember how the rabble lives in Vakk, its rooms all a huddle, one on top the next, without order. Suppose this mountain range in which Pannoval lives is like Vakk—better, like a body with various interconnected parts, spleen, lungs, vitals, heart. Suppose there are caverns just as large as ours above us and below us. It’s not possible is it?”
“No.”
“I’m saying it is possible. It’s a hypothesis. Let us say that somewhere beyond Twink there exists a waterfall, falling from a cavern above ours. And that waterfall falls to a level below ours, some way below. Water plays where it will. Let us say that it falls into a lake, the waters of which are pure and too warm for ice to form on them… Let us imagine that in that desirable and secure place live the most favoured, the most powerful, the Takers. They take everything of the best, the knowledge and the power, and treasure it for us there, until the day of Akha’s victory.”
“And keep those things from us …”
“What’s that? Fillips, I missed what you said, Brother. Well, it’s just an amusing story I tell you.”
“And does one have to be elected to the Takers?”
The father made little clicking noises with his tongue. “Who could penetrate such privilege, supposing it existed? No, my boy, one would have to be born to it—a number of powerful families, with beautiful women to keep them warm, and perhaps secret ways to come and go, even beyond Akha’s domains… No, it would need—why, it would need a revolution to get near such a hypothetical place.”
He stuck his nose in the air and giggled.
“Father, you tease the poor simple priests below you.”
The old priest’s head went to one side, judicially. “Poor you are, my young friend, and will most like remain so. Simple you are not—and that is why you will always make a flawed priest, as long as you continue. That is why I love you.”
They parted. The priest’s declaration troubled Yuli. Yes, he was a flawed priest, as Sifans said. A music lover, nothing more.
He washed his face in icy water as his thoughts burned. All these hierarchies of priesthoods—if they existed—led only to power. They did not lead to Akha. Faith never explained precisely, with a verbal precision to rival the precision of music, how devotion could move a stone effigy; the words of faith led only to a foggy obscurity called holiness. The rcalisation was as rough as the towel on which he dried his cheeks.
Lying in the dormitory far from sleep, he saw how old Sifans’ life had been stripped from the old man, real love had been starved from him, until he was left only with teasing ghosts of affection. He did not really care—had perhaps ceased to care a while ago—whether those beneath him had faith or not. His hints and riddles expressed a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with his own life.
In sudden fear, Yuli told himself that it would be better to die a man in the wilderness than a dry mouth here in the shadowy safeties of Pannoval. Even if it meant leaving behind his fluggel and the strains of “Oldorando.”
The fear made him sit up, casting off his blanket. Dark winds, the restless inhabitants of the dormitory, blew about his head. He shivered.
With a kind of exultation matching the exultation he had experienced on entering Reek long ago, he whispered aloud, “I don’t believe, I believe nothing.”
Power over others he believed. He saw it in action every day. But that was purely human. Perhaps he had actually ceased to believe in other than human oppression during that ritual in State, when men had allowed a hated phagor to bite the words from young Naab’s throat. Perhaps Naab’s words might still triumph, and the priests reform themselves until their lives held
meaning. Words, priests—they were actual. It was Akha that was nothing.
Into the moving dark be whispered the words, “Akba, you are nothing!”
He did not die, and the winds still rustled in his hair.
He jumped up and ran. Fingers unwinding the wall-scroll, he ran and ran until he was exhausted, and his fingertips raw. He turned back, panting. Power he wanted, not subjection.
The war in his mind was stilled. He returned to his blanket. Tomorrow, he would act. No more priests.
Dozing, he started up once again. He was back on a frozen hillside. His father had left him, taken by the phagors, and he flung his father’s spear contemptuously into a bush. He recalled it, recalled the movement of his arm, the hiss of the spear as it embedded itself among the tattered branches, the knife-sharp air in his lungs.
Why did he suddenly recollect that insignificant detail?
Since he had no powers of self-analysis, the question remained unanswered as he drifted into sleep.
The morrow was the last day of his interrogation of Usilk, interrogations were permitted for only six days consecutively, then the victim was allowed to rest. Rules in this respect were strict, and the militia kept a suspicious eye on the priesthood in all these matters.
Usilk had said nothing useful, and was unresponsive alike to beating and cajolery.
He stood before Yuli, who was seated on an inquisitorial chair carved elaborately from a solid chunk of timber; it served to emphasise the difference between the state of the two men, Yuli outwardly at ease, Usilk half-starved, ragged, shoulders bowed, face wan and without expression.
“We know that you were approached by men who threaten the security of Pannoval. All we wish is their names and then you can go free, back to Vakk”
“I did not know them. It was a word in the crowd.”
Both question and answer had become conventional.
Yuli rose from his chair and walked round the prisoner, giving no sign of his emotions.
“Usilk, listen. I feel no enmity for you. I respect your parents, as I told you. This is our last session together. We shall not meet again, and you will certainly die in this miserable place, for no reason.”
“I have my reasons, monk.”
Yuli was surprised. He had expected no response. He lowered his voice.
“We all have reasons… I will put my life in your hands. I am unfit to be a priest, Usilk. I was born in the white wilderness under the skies far to the north of Pannoval, and to the wilderness I wish to return. I will take you with me, I will help you to escape. That’s true speaking.”
Usilk raised his gaze to Yuli’s. “Scumb off, monk. That trickery won’t work on me.”
“It’s true speaking. How can I prove it? You wish me to blaspheme against the god to whom I made my vows? You think I can say these things lightly? Pannoval has shaped me, yet something in my inner nature makes me rebel against it and its institutions. They bring shelter and content to the multitude, but not to me, not even in the favoured role of priest. Why not, I cannot say, except that it is how I am made…”
He choked back his flow of words.
“I’ll be practical. I can get a spare monk’s cassock for you. When we go from this cell later, I will help you slip into the Holies and we will escape together.”
“Scumble on your tricks.”
Yuli fell into a rage. It was all he could do to stop himself attacking and beating the man. He flew in fury to the instruments hanging on the wall, and lashed at his chair with a whip. He seized the fat lamp that stood on the table and thrust it under Usilles eyes… He hit himself on the chest.
“Why should I lie to you, why betray myself? What do you know, after all? Nothing, nothing worth having. You’re just a thing, snatched up from Vakk, your life without meaning or importance. You have to be tortured and killed, because that is your destiny. Fine, go ahead with it, enjoy feeling your strength die day by day—it’s the price you pay for pride, and for being a cretin. Do what you will, die a thousand times. I’ve had enough. I can’t bear the torment. I’m off. Think of me as you lie in your own scumble—I’ll be out, free, free, under the sky where Akha’s power can’t reach.”
He shouted these words, careless who heard him, blazing before the beaten pallor of Usilk’s face.
“Scumb off, monk.” Just the same sullen phrase he had used all week.
Jumping back a pace, he brought up the whip and struck Usilk with the stock across his broken check. All his force and rage went behind the blow. His glaring gaze saw by the lamp’s uncertain light exactly where on the cheek under the eye and across the bridge of Usilk’s nose the stock struck. He stood with whip half- raised, watching as Usilk’s hands came up towards the injury, how his knees buckled. He swayed and fell to the floor, resting on knees and elbows.
Still clutching the whip, Yuli stepped over the body and quitted the cell.
In his own confusion, he was scarcely aware of the confusion round him. Warders and militia were running here and there in an unexpected manner—the normal progress through the dark veins of the Holies was a funereal walking pace.
A captain came along briskly, holding a flaring torch in one hand and shouting orders.
“You’re one of the priest-interrogators?” he demanded of Yuli.
“What of it?”
“I want all these rooms cleared of prisoners. Get them back to their cells. The injured are going to be put in here. Look sharp.”
“Injured? What injured?”
The captain roared his annoyance. “Are you deaf, Brother? What do you think all the shouting’s been about this last hour? The new borings in Twink have collapsed, and many good men are buried. It’s like a battlefield down there. Now, get moving and get your prisoner back in his cell, fast. I want this corridor cleared in two minutes.”
He moved on, shouting and cursing. He was enjoying the excitement.
Yuli turned back. Usilk still lay crumpled on the floor of the interrogation room. Stooping, he seized him under the shoulders and dragged him into an upright position. Usilk moaned and appeared semiconscious. By levering one of the prisoner’s arms over his shoulder Yuli could persuade him to walk after a fashion. In the corridor, where the captain still roared, other interrogators were removing their victims, hustling excitedly, nobody exactly looking displeased at this interruption to routine.
They headed into the dark like shadows. Now was his chance to disappear, while the excitement was on. And Usilk?
His rage was dying, his guilt reftming. He was aware of wishing to show Usilk that he was sincere in his earlier offer of help.
The decision was made. Instead of heading towards the prison cells, he turned towards his own quarters. A plan grew in his mind. First, he had to revive Usilk, to prepare him for escape. It was useless to think of taking him to the brothers’ dormitory, where they would be discovered; there was a safer place.
Wall-reading, he turned off before the dormitories, propelling Usilk up a winding stair, off which, in a warrenlike arrangement, the chambers of some of the fathers led. The band of carving under his hand kept him informed of where he was, even when the darkness grew so intense that phantasmal crimsons drifted through it like submerged weeds. At Father Sifans’ door, he tapped and entered.
As he had calculated, there was no response. At this time of day, Sifans should be engaged elsewhere. He pulled Usilk in.
He had stood outside this door many times, but had never entered it. He was at a loss. He helped Usilk to sit, leaning with his back against a wall, and groped about for the lamp bracket.
After some blundering against furniture, he found it, and spun the chert wheel attached to the bracket. A spark flew, a tongue of light grew, and he lifted the lamp from its socket and looked about him. Here were all Father Sifans’ worldly goods, few in number. In one corner stood a small altar with a statue of Akha, greasy with handling. There was a place for ablutions. There was a shelf supporting one or two objects, including a musical instrument
, and a mat on the floor. Nothing more. No table or chairs. Lost in shadow was an alcove which Yuli knew without looking would contain a cot where the old father slept.
He moved into action. With water from the basin, piped from the rock, he washed Usilk’s face and tried to revive him. The man drank a little water, puking as he did so. On the shelf in a tin was some doughy barley bread; Yuli fed some to Usilk and ate a chunk himself.
He shook Usilks shoulder gently. “You’ll have to forgive my temper. You provoked it. I’m only a savage at heart, not fit to be a priest. Now you see that I spoke truth—we are going to escape from here. With a rockfall in Twink, it should be easy to get away.”
Usilk merely moaned.
“What do you say? You’re not that bad. You’ll have to move for yourself.”
“You will never trick me, monk.” He looked at Yuli through slitted eyes.
Yuli squatted down beside him. The movement made Usilk flinch away. “Look, we have already committed ourselves. I have committed myself. Try and understand. I’m asking nothing from you, Usilk—I’m just going to help you get out of here. There must be some way to escape through the north gate dressed as monks. I know an old trapper woman called Lorel, not many days journeying north from here, who will allow us shelter while we grow used to the cold.”
“I’m not moving, man.”
Smiting his forehead, Yuli said, “You’ll have to move. We are hiding in a father’s room. We can’t stay here. He’s not a bad old boy, but he’d surely report us if he discovered us.”
“Not so, Brother Yuli. Your not-so-bad old boy is a grave of secrets.”
Jumping up, Yuli turned and stood face to face with Father Sifans, who had emerged quietly from the alcove. He put forward a papery hand in a protective gesture, fearing attack.
“Father …”
The gesture became one of reassurance as Father Sifans blinked at him in the wan light.
“I was resting. I was in Twink when the roof fell in—what a mess! Fortunately, I was not in great danger, but a piece of rock flew and hit my leg. I can advise you that there will be no escape through the north gate; the guard have closed it and declared a state of emergency, just in case the worthy citizens do something unwise.”