When he opened his eyes the skinny humans were still chanting, but they were crowded around him again, blocking out his view of the golden-brown monster. Their faces eager, their teeth bared, their hands stretched out like claws, the crowd of starving, chanting humans fell on him.
They stripped off his shorts. He tried to struggle, but they held him down. In his exhaustion he was probably no stronger than anyone of them, and they had no difficulty pinning him; they rolled him over, pulled his hands behind him and tied them there. Then they tied his feet together and pulled his legs back until his feet were almost touching his hands, and bound them to his wrists by a short length of rope. Naked, trussed like an animal ready for the slaughter, Horza was dragged across the hot sand, past a weakly burning fire, then hauled upright and lowered over a short pole stuck into the beach, so that it ran up between his back and his tied limbs. His knees sank into the sand, taking most of his weight. The fire burned in front of him, sending acrid wood-smoke into his eyes, and the awful smell returned; it seemed to come from various pots and bowls spread around the fire. Other fires and collections of pans were littered across the beach.
The huge pile of flesh the man named Mr First had called «prophet» was set down near the fire. Mr First stood at the obese human's side, staring at Horza through deep-set eyes contained within a pale and grubby face. The golden giant on the litter clapped chubby hands together and said, "Stranger, gift of the sea, welcome. I… am the great prophet Fwi-Song."
The vast creature spoke a crude form of Marain. Horza opened his mouth to tell them his name, but Fwi-Song continued. "You have been sent to us in our time of testing, a morsel of human flesh on the tide of nothingness, a harvest-thing plucked from the tasteless wash of life, a sweetmeat to share and be shared in our victory over the poisonous bile of disbelief! You are a sign from Fate, for which we give thanks!" Fwi-Song's huge arms lifted up; rolls of shoulder fat wobbled on either side of the turret-like head, nearly covering the ears. Fwi-Song shouted out in a language Horza didn't know, and the crowd echoed the phrase, chanting it several times.
The fat-smothered arms were lowered again. "You are the salt of the sea, ocean-gift." Fwi-Song's syrupy voice changed back into Marain once more. "You are a sign, a blessing from Fate; you are the one to become many, the single to be shared; yours will be the gaining gift, the blessed beauty of transubstantiation!"
Horza stared, horrified, at the golden giant, unable to think of anything to say. What could you say to people like this? Horza cleared his throat, still hoping to say something, but Fwi-Song went on.
"Be told then, gift of the sea, that we are the Eaters; the Eaters of ashes, the Eaters of filth, the Eaters of sand and tree and grass; the most basic, the most loved, the most real. We have laboured to prepare ourselves for our day of testing, and now that day is gloriously near!" The golden-skinned prophet's voice grew shrill; folds of fat shook as Fwi-Song's arms opened out. "Behold us then, as we await the time of our ascension from this mortal plane, with empty bellies and voided bowels and hungry minds!" Fwi-Song's pudgy hands met in a slap; the fingers interweaved like huge, fattened maggots.
"If I can-" croaked Horza, but the giant was talking to the crowd of grubby people again, the voice bubbling out over the golden sands and the cooking fires and the dull, malnourished people.
Horza shook his head a little and looked out over the expanse of beach to the open-doored shuttle in the distance. The more he looked at the craft, the more certain he became it was a Culture machine.
It was nothing he could pin down, but he grew more certain with every moment spent looking at the machine. He guessed it was a forty- or fifty-seater; just about big enough to take all the people he had seen on the island. It didn't look particularly new or fast, and it didn't look armed at all, but something about the whole way its simple, utilitarian form had been put together spoke of the Culture. If the Culture designed an animal-drawn cart or an automobile, they would still share something in common with the device at the far end of the beach, for all the gulf of time between the epochs each represented. It would have helped if the Culture had used some sort of emblem or logo; but, pointlessly unhelpful and unrealistic to the last, the Culture refused to place its trust in symbols. It maintained that it was what it was and had no need for such outward representation. The Culture was every single individual human and machine in it, not one thing. Just as it could not imprison itself with laws, impoverish itself with money or misguide itself with leaders, so it would not misrepresent itself with signs.
All the same, the Culture did have one set of symbols it was very proud of, and Horza didn't doubt that if the machine he was looking at was a Culture craft, it would have some Marain writing on or in it somewhere.
Was it in some way connected with the mass of flesh still talking to the scrawny humans around the fire? Horza doubted it. Fwi-Song's Marain was shaky and ill tutored. Horza's own grasp of the language was far from perfect, but he knew enough about the tongue to realise Fwi-Song did it some violence when he or she used it. Anyway, the Culture was not in the habit of loaning out its vehicles to religious nutcases. Was it here to evacuate them, then? Lift them to safety when the Culture's high-technology shit hit the rotating fan that was the Vavatch Orbital? With a sinking feeling, Horza realised this was probably the answer. So there was no escape. Either these crazies sacrificed him or did whatever it was they were set on doing to him, or it was a ride into captivity, courtesy of the Culture.
He told himself not to assume the worst. After all, he now looked like Kraiklyn, and it wasn't that likely the Culture's Minds had made all the correct connections between him, the CAT and Kraiklyn. Even the Culture didn't think of everything. But… they probably did know he'd been on The Hand of God 137; they probably did know he'd escaped from it; they probably did know that the CAT was in that volume at the time. (He recalled the statistics Xoralundra had quoted to the Hand's captain; yes, the GCU must have won the battle… He remembered the CAT's rough-running warp motors; probably producing a wake any self-respecting GCU could track from centuries away)… Damn it; he wouldn't put it past them. Maybe they were testing everybody they were picking up from Vavatch. They would know in seconds, from just a single sample cell; a skin flake, a hair; for all he knew he'd been sampled already, a micromissile sent from the nearby shuttle picking up some tiny piece of tissue… He dropped his head, his neck muscles aching with all the others in his battered, bruised, exhausted body.
Stop it, he told himself. Thinking like a failure. Too damn sorry for yourself. Get yourself out of this. Still got your teeth and your nails… and your brain. Just bide your time…
"For lo," Fwi-Song warbled, "the godless ones, the most hated, the despised-by-the-despised, the Atheists, the Anathematics, have sent us this instrument of the Nothingness, the Vacuum, to us…" As the giant said those words Horza looked up and saw Fwi-Song point along the beach to the shuttle. "But we shall not waver in our faith! We shall resist the lure of the Nothingness between the stars where the godless ones, the Anathematised of the Vacuum exist! We shall stay part of what is a part of us! We shall not treat with the great Blasphemy of the Material. We shall stand as the rocks and trees stand — firm, rooted, secure, staunch, unyielding!" Fwi-Song's arms went out again, and the voice bellowed out. The gruff-voiced man with the dirty pale skin shouted something at the seated crowd, and they shouted back. The prophet smiled at Horza from across the fire. Fwi-Song's mouth was a dark hole, with four small fangs protruding when the lips formed a smile. They shone in the sunlight.
"This the way you treat all your guests?" Horza said, trying not to cough until the end of his sentence. He cleared his throat. Fwi-Song's smile vanished.
"Guest you are not, sea-wanton, salt-gift. Prize: ours to keep, mine to use. Bounty from the sea and the sun and the wind, brought to us by Fate. Hee-hee." Fwi-Song's smile returned with a girlish giggle, and one of the huge hands went to cover the pale lips, "Fate recognises its prophet, sends him tasty treat
s! Just when some of my flock were having second thoughts, too! Eh, Mr First?" The turret-head turned to the thin figure of the paler man, standing with arms folded, by the giant's side. Mr First nodded:
"Fate is our gardener, and our wolf. It weeds out the weak to honour the strong. So the prophet has spoken."
"And the word which dies in the mouth lives in the ear," Fwi-Song said, turning the huge head back to look at Horza. At least, Horza thought, now I know it's a male. For whatever that's worth.
"Mighty Prophet," Mr First said. Fwi-Song smiled wider but continued looking at Horza. Mr First went on, "The sea-gift should see the fate that awaits him. Perhaps the treacherous coward Twenty-seventh-"
"Oh, yes!" Fwi-Song clapped his huge hands together and a smile lit up his whole face. For a second Horza thought he saw small white eyes beyond the slits staring at him. "Oh let's, yes! Bring the coward, let us do what must be done."
Mr First spoke in ringing tones to the emaciated humans gathered around the fire. A few stood up and walked off behind Horza, towards the forest. The rest started singing and chanting.
After a few minutes Horza heard a scream, then a series of yells and screams, gradually coming closer. At last the people who had left came back, carrying a short, thick log, much like the one Horza was held by. Swinging on the pole was a young man, screaming, shouting in the language Horza didn't understand, and struggling. Horza saw drops of sweat and saliva fall from the young man's face and spot the sand. The log was sharpened at one end; that point was driven into the sand on the opposite side of the fire from Horza, so that the young man faced the Changer.
"This, my libation from the seas," Fwi-Song said to Horza, pointing at the young man, who was quivering and moaning, his eyes rolling about in their sockets and his lips dribbling, "this is my naughty boy; called Twenty-seventh, since his rebirth. This was one of our respected, much loved sons, one of our anointed, one of our fellow morsels, one of our brotherly taste buds on the great tongue of life." Fwi-Song's voice chortled with laughter as he spoke, as though he knew the absurdity of the part he was playing and couldn't resist hamming it up. "This splinter from our tree, this grain from our beach, this reprobate dared to run towards the seven-times-cursed vehicle of the Vacuum. He spurned the gift of burden with which we honoured him; he chose to abandon us and flee across the sands when the alien enemy passed over us yesterday. He did not trust our salving grace, but turned instead to an instrument of darkness and nothingness, towards the soaking shade of the soulless ones, the Anathematics." Fwi-Song looked at the man, still shaking on the post across the fire from Horza. The prophet's face went stern with reproach. "By the workings of Fate the traitor who ran from our side and put his prophet's life at risk was caught — so that he might learn his sad mistake, and make good his terrible crime." Fwi-Song's arm dropped. The vast head shook.
Mr First shouted to the people round the fire. They faced the young man called Twenty-seventh and chanted. The ghastly smells Horza had sensed earlier came back, making his eyes mist and his nose tingle.
While the people chanted and Fwi-Song watched, Mr First and two of the women followers dug up small sacks from the sand. Out of them they brought some thin lengths of cloth which they proceeded to wrap round their bodies. As Mr First put his vestments on, Horza saw a large, cumbersome-looking projectile pistol, held in a string holster beneath the man's grubby tunic. Horza presumed that was the gun fired at the shuttle the day before, when he and Mipp had overflown the island.
The young man opened his eyes, saw the three people in their cloths and started screaming.
"Hear how the stricken soul cries out for its lesson, pleads for its bounty of regret, its solace of refreshing suffering," Fwi-Song smiled, looking at Horza. "Our child Twenty-seventh knows what awaits him, and while his body, already proved so weak, breaks before the storm, his soul cries out, "Yes! Yes! Mighty Prophet! Succour me! Make me part of you! Give me your strength! Come to me!" Is it not a sweet and uplifting sound?"
Horza looked into the prophet's eyes and said nothing. The young man went on screaming and trying to tear himself away from the stump. Mr First was crouched before him, on his knees, his head bowed, muttering to himself. The two women dressed in the dull cloth were preparing bowls of steaming liquid from the vats and pots around the fire, warming some over the flames. The smells came to Horza, turning his stomach.
Fwi-Song switched to the other language and spoke to the two women. They looked at Horza, then came up to him with the bowls. Horza drew his head away as they shoved the containers under his nose. He wrinkled his face up in disgust at what looked and smelled like fish entrails in a sauce of excrement. The women took the awful stuff away; it left a stink in his nose. He tried breathing through his mouth.
The young man's mouth had been wedged open with blocks of wood, and his choking screams altered in pitch. While Mr First held him, the women ladled the liquids from the bowls into his mouth. The young man spluttered and wailed, choked and tried to spit. He moaned, then threw up.
"Let me show you my armoury, my benefaction," Fwi-Song said to Horza, and reached behind his vast body. He brought back a large bundle of rags, which he startled to unfold. Glittering in the sunlight, metal devices like tiny man-traps were revealed. Fwi-Song put one finger to his lips while he surveyed the collection, then picked up one of the small metal contraptions. He put it into his mouth, fitting both pans over the pins Horza had seen earlier. "Zhare," Fwi-Song said, raising his mouth in a broad smile towards the Changer. "What'oo you shink of zhat?" The artificial teeth sparkled in his mouth; rows of sharp, serrated points. "Or zhese?" Fwi-Song swapped them for another set, full of tiny fangs like needles, then another, with angled teeth like hooks with barbs, then another, with holes set in them. "Goo', eh?" He smiled at Horza, leaving the last pair in. He turned to Mr First. «Wha» you shink, Nishtur Shursht? Ehs? Or…" Fwi-Song took out the set with the holes, put in another set, like long, blade-like spades. "Zheze? A "ink eeg a rar ah nishe. Esh, rert ush zhtart wish eez. Ret's punish zhoze naughty tootsiesh."
Twenty-seventh's voice was becoming hoarse. One of his legs was lifted out in front of him and held by four kneeling men. Fwi-Song was lifted and carried on the liner to just in front of the young man; he bared the blade-teeth, then leaned forward and with a quick; nodding motion, bit off one of Twenty-seventh's toes.
Horza looked away.
In the next half-hour or so of leisurely paced eating, the enormous prophet nibbled at various bits of Twenty-seventh's body, attacking the extremities and the few remaining fat deposits with his various sets of teeth. The young man gained fresh breath with each new site of butchery.
Horza watched and didn't watch, sometimes trying to think himself into a kind of defiance that would let him work out a way to get back at this grotesque distortion of a human being, at other times just wanting the whole awful business to be over and done with. Fwi-Song left his ex-disciple's fingers until last, then used the teeth with the holes in like wire-strippers. " "Ery "asty," he said, wiping his blood-stained face with one gigantic forearm.
Twenty-seventh was cut down, moaning, covered in streaks of blood, and only semi-conscious. He was gagged with a length of rag, then pinned down flat, face up, on the sand, wooden spikes through the palms of his mangled hands and a huge boulder crushing his feet. He started screaming weakly again through the gag when he saw the prophet Fwi-Song on his litter being carried over towards him. Fwi-Song was lowered almost on top of the moaning form, then he struggled with some cords at the side of his litter until a small flap under his great bulk flopped open, over the face of the gagged, blood-spattered human on the sand beneath. The prophet gave a sign, and he was lowered on top of the man, quieting the sound of moaning. The prophet smiled, and settled himself with little movements of his huge body, like a bird nestling down over its eggs. His vast bulk obliterating all trace or shape of the human under him, Fwi-Song hummed to himself while the emaciated crowd looked on, singing very slowly and quietly,
swaying together as they stood. Fwi-Song started to rock backwards and forwards softly, very slowly at first, then faster as sweat appeared in beads on the golden dome of his face. He panted, and made a rough gesture towards the crowd; the two women dressed in the lengths of cloth came forward and started to lick at the trickles of blood which had spilled from the prophet's mouth, over the folds of his chins and down the expanse of his chest and breasts like red milk. Fwi-Song gasped, seemed to sag and stay still for a moment, and then, with a surprisingly fast and fierce motion, clouted both the lapping women across the head with his mighty arms. The women scurried off, rejoining the crowd. Mr First started a louder chant, which the others took up.
At last Fwi-Song ordered himself to be lifted again. The litter bearers hauled his massive frame into the air, to reveal the crushed body of Twenty-seventh, his moaning silenced for ever.
They lifted him out, beheaded the corpse and removed the top of the skull. They ate his brains, and it was only then that Horza threw up.
"And now we are become each other," Fwi-Song intoned solemnly to the youth's hollow head, then threw its bloody bowl over his shoulder into the fire. The rest of the body was taken down to the sea and thrown in.
"Only ceremony and the love of Fate distinguish us from the beasts, o mark of Fate's devotion," Fwi-Song warbled to Horza as the prophet's vast body was cleaned and perfumed by the attendant women. Tied to his post, stuck in the ground, his mouth fouled, Horza breathed carefully and deliberately, and did not try to reply.
Twenty-seventh's body floated slowly out to sea. Fwi-Song was towelled down. The skinny humans sat about listlessly, or tended the awful-smelling liquid in the bubbling vats. Mr First and his two women helpers took off their lengths of cloth, leaving the man in his grimy but whole tunic and the women in their tattered rags. Fwi-Song had his litter placed on the sand in front of Horza.
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