“I understand,” I said. “How is it that the children still have any influence at all?”
He performed a strange gesture, touching his fingertips to his forehead and then raising his hand slightly into the air.
“Ilah’y’su,” he said.
“Messengers of god?” I couldn’t quite see what he was getting at.
“They partake of the divine spark,” he said, and I was sure that he chose the words in order to indicate irony. “I have been talking in essentially secular terms. But I am a man of god. We owe nothing...but there is a sense in which we hold the children...valuable? The word does not fit. But in your language it is not quite possible to convey the meaning. A difference in the way of thinking.”
I pondered for a few moments, trying to sort things out.
“You don’t want them here,” I said. “They’re not useful to you. You don’t feel that you owe them anything, on a straightforward commercial level, speaking in secular terms. They’re trying to interfere with the way in which you apply and control the knowledge that Bernhard Verheyden gave you, and you don’t think that they have the right to do it—or even that he had the right to do it. But you won’t move against them openly. You won’t imprison them or murder them or even compel them to leave. For reasons deriving from your religious ethics.”
“That seems to be a fair summary,” agreed Ul’el.
“You’re tied in a knot of your own making,” I observed.
“Y’su made the knot,” he corrected me, gently. “And if human people were caught in a similar situation? Would they not recognize the force of moral dilemmas? Would they not find a gap between what is right and what is convenient? Would they not hesitate?”
“I think so,” I replied. “Ninety-nine men in a hundred would hesitate. We find such knots in our day-to-day lives. There are always men who cut them with swords, but for the most part....”
“We have such men too,” said Ul’el, quietly.
“Yes,” I said, remembering a battle in a tiny forest village, and a tall fighting man armed with a steel blade striking down a woman who was running for shelter. I remembered the burning of homes, and of flesh, and the explanation that they were only forest savages.
“It is important that you understand all this,” said Ul’el. “If you can.”
“The reason you wanted to see me,” I said, carefully, “was to check me out. Either me, or Nieland. What you want from us, ultimately, is that we should take the children off your back...take them back to the colony. You want to know whether we’re in sympathy with that aim.”
“If such a thing were possible,” said Ul’el, as though meditating aloud. “If the ilah’y’su were to decide that their mission was complete. If they were to bid us a fond farewell, and sail away, in the ship named Ilah’y’su...we would be grieved to see them go. But in a way, we might also be happy. It is not easy to be in the presence of the divine king...it is a delicate business, the day-by-day negotiation with the incarnation of Y’su. When it is complicated....
“The knot is not so easily untangled, if you see what I mean.”
“No,” I answered, “the knot is not so easily untangled. If we were in a position to persuade the Verheydens to return to the colony it might be a little easier...but there are knots and knots. We’re in no position to compel them to give up what they think they have here. To be quite honest, I’d be glad to persuade them to give up their sense of mission, because I think that it’s dangerous. But to suppose that the whole situation could be healed by their sailing away...no, that won’t do.”
Ul’el said nothing in reply. He waited for me to go on.
“How do you see the future?” I asked him. “I mean, what kind of future do you envisage for your people, and for this world as a whole?”
“I’m not a fortune-teller,” he answered.
“You know I’m not asking you for a set of predictions,” I replied, quietly. “You must know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Armageddon, if the word means anything to you. Ak’lehr is extending its dominion by conquest. Your armies are marching, and with them your priests. Your ambitions as a race—the ambitions of your god—are very practical ones. Not for you the welfare of the spirit and the afterlife. Y’su’s rewards, like his kings and his messengers, are to be effective here, in the real world.
“You’ll conquer all of Delta. There isn’t anything that can stop you. But what then? When empires extend to their limits there’s no future for them but internal division, conflict, fragmentation. When the time comes, will you accept that? Will you fight against the internal strife and try to build Utopia...or will you take the easier course, the more natural course? Will you attempt to extend your dominion still farther...across the ocean?”
“No one can predict the future,” said Ul’el. “It is in the hands of Y’su.”
“It’s in our hands,” I contradicted him. “Not necessarily yours and mine...though perhaps even that...but in the hands of our respective peoples. We make the future out of the substance of the present. Our children...and what we give to them...are the future. Y’su may be in charge of it all, somewhere and somehow, but we’re the people here—we’re the ones who’ll perform the actions that will create the world to come.”
“That is vanity,” said Ul’el. “Vanity is deadly.”
“It’s not vanity,” I declared stubbornly. “It’s not even pride. It’s not a matter of blasphemously robbing Y’su of his prerogatives. It’s a matter of accepting the responsibility for our own actions. In the sight of Y’su, or any other god, we must be prepared to decide between good and evil...not just the good and evil of the moment, but all the good and evil yet to come. It is not vanity to try to recognize the consequences of our actions today, tomorrow and forever. It is our duty. We may try and fail, but if we do not even try...could you really look your god in the face and say: ‘I took my decisions for the moment. I did not think about the future. I did not even try.’?”
You can’t debate theology with an alien. There’s no way you can make sense. You can’t even debate theology with another human. It’s a subject that doesn’t acknowledge the concept of debate. If I made an impression on Ul’el it would have to be in the area of his secular thinking. I had to appeal to his political persona, and risk its getting tangled by his untranslatable relationship with his deity.
“I’ll tell you how I see the future,” I said. “On Attica’s two continents will grow two nations. They will have little in common...not even a way of thinking or a biological heritage. Even leaving aside the fact that the humans came here from another planet, these two races live in different worlds—continents whose life-systems have evolved separately since their first emergence from the sea. Those two nations, if they insist that their first priorities are purely internal, concerned with their own affairs, their own land, their own wealth, will grow separately, each knowing that the other exists but hardly caring. At some time in the future—not the distant future, in historical terms, but only a few centuries—internal pressures will cause one or other of them to redirect its attentions outward. I don’t know whether the trigger will be population pressure or greed, or simply the need to soothe internal conflicts by creating common enemies, but there will be a trigger and it will be pressed. Between these two nations there will be war. It will be a war that neither side can win, although temporary victories might be achieved. It will be a war that will go on forever and ever, that will never end even if it can be resolved. There are several possible resolutions, but one of them is this: if Earth should find out that one of its colonies is at war, then it will intervene; no matter what the cost. It will not intervene on the side of the humans, but as an independent power committed to restoring peace. Effectively, UN forces will conquer both nations. Both will lose, and become subject to an external power that will be just as alien to the colonists as to you.
“Perhaps you will consider that in all this, right is on your side. Perhaps you will consider tha
t this is your world, that the humans should never have come, and that it is your sacred right to fight until they are forced to depart forever...or to kill you all. I don’t know. I do know that a lot of humans would agree with you. But the knot is tied. The situation is as it is. It matters little who tied the knot and whether they were right to do so.
“As I see the future, there is only one way to avoid this war, and that is to establish peace. I don’t know whether this is possible. Maybe the future is determined—maybe Y’su has it all written down in his book and there’s no way a feeble human or Ore’l mind can change a single word. But if we were to try, what we’d have to do is to bring the two nations together now, to establish links between them, to allow them to get to know one another, to help them to help one another. Bernhard Verheyden may have made a good start, although his motives weren’t quite the motives I’d have chosen for him. If the children have their way, that start could be thrown away by the determination to hate the colony, to compete with it, to demonstrate to it how wrong it was to thwart their father’s ambitions. But if you have your way, things will be no better. You want to get the children out of the way, so that you can get on with your own affairs your own way, using your precious gifts from god but acknowledging no debts in respect thereof.
“Humans tend to think of peace as a passive state—the absence of war. I don’t know whether you think the same way. But peace can’t be perpetuated passively. It has to be constructed. It has to be built and maintained, actively. Starting here. Starting now.”
“There is a possibility,” said Ul’el, in a strangely remote tone, “that you are ilah’y’su.”
That may have been a little test. Either way, I wasn’t having any.
“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m anything but that. I’m no messenger at all. I’m not trying to give orders or make requests. I’m telling you how I see the situation. It’s not a god’s eye view—nothing like it. This isn’t about Y’su at all. It’s about us, and what kind of decision we make, and what...in the end...comes of it.”
I had come to Ul’el with a list of questions—some trivial, some whose importance I couldn’t weigh up. He had short-circuited them all by making me put my whole case so soon and so directly. But all in all it seemed that we had cleared the air. He had wanted to see me, and he had told me why. I had wanted to see him, and I had told him why. There would be other meetings. We both had one hell of a lot to think about.
As I left, my legs still felt weak, and my throat still felt dry. The phantasm of the evil high priest was still haunting the corridors of my mind. There was no way to know whether I could trust Ul’el, or even whether I could say anything to him that would make sense in terms of his ways of thinking.
I returned to my own room in a kind of hypnotic daze, feeling absolutely exhausted.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I opened my door and went straight on into the darkness. I knew there was a light switch somewhere, but I couldn’t be bothered groping for it. On a small table beside the bed was the lantern that had once been the property of a tribe of forest savages. By the light that came through the open door from the corridor I could see it.
After switching it on I turned to go back and shut the door, but I was brought up short by the realization that I was not alone. Sitting in the chair, concealed by its high back from the door and the light filtering through it from the corridor, was Piet Verheyden.
His jaw was tight. The expression in his eyes would probably have nauseated Mariel if she’d been required to read what was behind it.
Paranoids, I remembered, often didn’t sleep too well. They are, as a matter of habit, night birds.
“Where have you been?” he said, in a laryngeal acid whisper.
“Out,” I said, flatly.
It was a mistake. If I’d spoken smoothly and lightly, and answered at some length, I could have set the tone for the conversation. We could have spent the next half hour swapping sarcasms in honeyed tones. But the harshness of my clipped answer constituted a challenge.
“You’ve come here to destroy us,” he said, still in that idiotic whisper. “You think you can take it all away from us. Well, you can’t. It’s ours. We built it...my father and I. No one will take it from us. Not you. Not Ul’el.”
I didn’t know what to say. I could hardly humor him, and I certainly didn’t want to start a long and fierce argument.
“I’m tired,” I said, finally. “I want to go to bed.”
“Then why are you wandering the corridors at this time? You’ve been with Ul’el.”
Whether it was a guess or whether he knew there was no way to tell. It didn’t matter much.
“I did meet him,” I agreed. “He explained his position. I explained mine. If it will reassure you, we didn’t reach any measure of agreement. There is something of a gap between our aims. Is that what you wanted to know?”
He stared at me balefully.
“You don’t realize the situation here,” he said. “You’re a stranger. You must allow us to be your guides. You must take my advice on all matters. We understand the situation. You do not. If you act unwisely....”
The threat was naked in his words.
“I’ll take my chances,” I said. Again, the wrong thing—I was tired and my nerves were set on edge.
“And the girl?” he said. “You don’t realize just how vulnerable you are here. You must let those who understand what is best be your guides and your protectors. Trafficking with Ul’el will bring nothing but trouble.”
I wanted to tell him to get out, but I kept that much of my temper in hand.
Instead, I walked over to his chair and leaned close, supporting myself with a hand on the back.
“Why are you so scared?” I asked, in a low voice. “What’s thrown you into this panic? Not just the general state of affairs, that’s for sure. I meant to ask Ul’el, but I never quite got around to it. Why does this epidemic in the south frighten you so much?”
His face was livid with anger. I’d taken the initiative and was pressuring him. It’s an easy thing to do when you’re dealing with a paranoid...but it’s not always a wise thing.
“The plague is nothing,” he whispered. “It may kill a thousand peasants or a hundred thousand. Herdsmen and dirt farmers. But what they’re saying—in the gutters of Ak’lehr as well as in the south—is that it’s a judgment from god...from their beloved Y’su. They say that my father was a false messenger, a tempter, and that the plague is Y’su’s punishment because the people listened. The rumor was deliberately started as a political attack upon the family. It’s an attempt to discredit and dispossess us. It was started by Ul’el.”
I stepped back, letting the force of his oration bleed some of the tension out of the situation.
“You’re wrong,” I said, after barely a moment to think it out. “However much Ul’el wants to discredit you, he doesn’t want to discredit your father and the knowledge he brought to Ak’lehr—and he certainly doesn’t want to discredit himself and the church for having listened to your father. Rumors like that come up from the bottom, they aren’t started on top. It’s an expression of resentment against the entire political hierarchy...if it had any real power it would be the banner of a revolution. But I don’t believe it has.”
He didn’t take a lot of notice of my objections. That wasn’t the way he saw it—he took it too personally for that. If anything, my little speech only confirmed his determined opinion that I couldn’t understand what was at stake or what was going on here.
He got up from the chair. “I can handle this.” he said. “I’ve handled it before. We’ve always been able to handle Ul’el and his kind. Just remember that I’m in control. I can crush you if I need to. Remember that, too.”
“I will,” I promised, making way for him as he went to the door. “I will.”
He closed the door behind him, very quietly. I couldn’t hear the sound of his footfalls as he went away down the passage.
I sat
down on the bed and pulled off my boots, cursing silently. If Piet had achieved nothing else he had certainly revitalized my sense of our vulnerability here in Ak’lehr. For a while, talking to Ul’el, I had almost reached the illusory sense of being in control, of feeling things yield to my presence and my will. Now, that was gone, and I knew once more how helpless I really was.
Vanity, Ul’el had called my attempt to interfere here—to interfere with nothing less than the course of history. I had denied it. But vanity it was. A vain pursuit, in more than one sense of the word.
I got into bed, and went very rapidly to sleep.
I didn’t get a backache.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I very nearly slept until noon. There was very little noise in the building or outside the window (which looked out on to an inner courtyard) and there was little to disturb my peace and luxury. I could have slept on and on, but I was interrupted by polite knocking at the door.
It was Mariel, already up and about. She seemed to disapprove of my situation. She had, of course, gone to bed rather earlier than I had.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Action,” she replied. “Thought you’d like to know. Charles turned up. Family quarrel brewing.”
I sat up, rubbing my eyes and trying to clear my head. “What sort of quarrel?”
“Charles had trouble getting into the city. Rumor apparently had it that he’d brought the plague back with him. What he seems to have brought is some animals and a few sick men. They’re still outside the walls. Piet is pretty mad.”
I could guess why. If he was worried about rumors concerning the epidemic being a personal statement by Y’su he was going to construe Charles’ action in bringing it to the gates of Ak’lehr as a monumental stroke of stupidity.
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