The Left Hand of God

by Paul Hoffman

  As he rolled onto the top, he let out an exhausted grunt of delight. He lay there for five minutes, his arms like deadweights, lifeless except for being agonizingly painful. He daren’t wait any longer. Reaching down, he pulled the unfurled rope up behind him and placed the hook into the largest crevice he could find. Then he fed the rope over the side.

  He hoped it would make a sound when it hit the ground, but there was nothing clear about the noise it made as he jerked it up and down. The rope was half as long again as the wall on the Sanctuary side but, for all he knew, this part of the wall might have been built on the edge of a cliff.

  He looked down into the fathomless dark and paused for a moment. Then with his right hand he felt for the rope and pulled it taut so that the hook was forced to bite into the crevice. With one hand on the wall, the other holding the rope taut, he paused once more as he realized how appalling his situation was. Still, better to go this way than being hanged and fried. And with this consoling thought, he let go of the wall, let the rope take the strain and slipped over the edge.

  With his legs crossed over the rope, Cale let himself down hand over hand. This was the easy part, with his weight doing the work for him. Indeed, he would have felt exultant if it were not for the fact that the rope was untested and might snap or come apart from rubbing against the rough walls—and also the unpleasant thought that it might not be long enough and he could be left dangling a hundred feet from the ground. Even a ten-foot drop onto rocks would break his leg. But what was the point in worrying about it? It was too late now.

  8

  Every few minutes Kleist and Vague Henri would light the candle Cale had stolen from the Lord of Discipline and look at the girl. They had agreed it was best to keep an eye on her every now and again. After all, there were nine candles, so they could afford to be generous. They had seen people go quiet in the way the girl was quiet and with that odd sightless stare, usually in boys who had taken more than a hundred strokes. If they stayed like that for more than a few days, they were taken away and never came back. Those who pulled themselves together often used to start screaming in the middle of the night, weeks or even months later—in Morto’s case it had been years. Then they vanished, too.

  This, they told themselves, was why they kept checking on the girl. If she started screaming, maybe someone would hear.

  Every time they lit the candle, Vague Henri would say to her, “It’s going to be all right.” She did not respond except by shivering every now and again. The third time they lit the candle, Henri remembered something from the very distant past, a phrase that came into his head, something comforting he had once heard and long forgotten. “There, there,” he said. “There, there.”

  But there was another reason they kept lighting the candle besides checking on the girl: they couldn’t stop themselves from looking at her. They had both come into the Sanctuary as seven-year-olds from a life that now seemed as remote as the moon. Vague Henri’s parents had been dead since not long after he was born. Kleist’s parents had sold him for five dollars to the Redeemers, and had been only a little less brutal toward him. They had not seen a girl or a woman since they came through the great gates of the Sanctuary, and all that the Redeemers had told them was that women and girls were the devil’s playground. If, by any chance, they were to see one when they left the Sanctuary for the frontier or the Eastern Breaks, they were immediately to cast their eyes down. “The body of a woman is a sin in itself, crying out to the heavens for vengeance!” There was only one woman who was to be regarded without disgust and alarm: the mother of the Hanged Redeemer who, alone among her sex, was pure. She was the source of compassion, perpetual succor and solace—though what these virtues entailed the boys had no idea, none of these qualities ever having come their way. About what it involved, this business of women being the devil’s playground, the Redeemers were equally vague. As a result, Kleist and Vague Henri were driven to watch the girl by an intense curiosity, mixed with fear and no little awe. Anyone who could get the Redeemers into such ecstasies of loathing and hatred had to be very powerful indeed and, therefore, in ways they could not begin to guess at, worth being afraid of.

  At the moment, shivering and terrified in the candlelight, the girl did not seem like something fearful. She was still, however, fascinating. She was, for one thing, such an extraordinary shape. She was wearing a linen shift of fair quality, much better than anything the boys had ever worn, tied around her waist with a cord.

  Kleist gestured to Vague Henri to move away and bent his head to whisper in his ear.

  “What are those humps on her chest?” he asked.

  Vague Henri, with as much deference as possible, considering he had no knowledge of how to behave toward a woman, held the candle toward her breasts and looked at them thoughtfully.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered at last.

  “She must be fat,” whispered Kleist. “Like that shit bag Vittles.” There were, of course, no fat boys at the Sanctuary. There was barely an ounce between all ten thousand.

  Vague Henri considered this.

  “Vittles is saggy and round. She goes in and out.”

  “Go on, then,” said Kleist.

  Vague Henri thought about this for a moment.

  “No, I think we should leave her alone. I suppose,” he added, “he must have given her a beating.”

  Kleist let out a deep breath as he considered the girl.

  “She doesn’t look like she could take a hiding, not one like the kind Picarbo can hand out.”

  “Used to hand out,” corrected Vague Henri. They both grunted with a strange satisfaction, given that his death had put them in so much danger. “I wonder why he beat her.”

  “Probably,” said Vague Henri, “for being the devil’s playground.”

  Kleist nodded. It seemed plausible.

  “What’s your name?” asked Vague Henri, not for the first time. Again she did not reply.

  “I wonder how long Cale will take,” said Vague Henri.

  “Do you think he really has a plan?”

  “Yes,” said Vague Henri, with a tone of complete certainty. “If he says something, he means it.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re so sure. I wish I was.”

  Then the girl said something, but so softly they couldn’t hear.

  “What did you say?” asked Vague Henri.

  “Riba.” She took a deep breath. “My name is Riba.”

  9

  Climbing down in the deep black, Cale’s two worst fears became real. First, his feet hit the large knot he had made at the end of the rope still leaving him in midair with no idea how far he had left to fall. Second, he could feel that the strain had been too much for the iron hook holding his weight in the cranny at the top of the wall. Even at this distance he could feel it begin to give. “You’re going to fall anyway,” he said to himself, and with one push out with both feet from the rock face, he raised his arms to protect his head and began to fall.

  Fall, that is, if a drop of less than two feet can be described as such. A delighted Cale stood and raised his hands in triumph. Then he pulled out one of the candles he had stolen from the Lord of Discipline and tried to light it with dried moss and a flint. In time he got a flame and lit the candle, but as he held it up to the vast darkness, its light was so feeble he could barely see anything. Then the wind blew it out.

  The dark was absolute, with thick clouds blotting the moon. If he tried walking, he would fall, and even a minor injury that slowed him down in the course ahead would mean death. It was better to wait the two hours or so until dawn. With that decision made, he wrapped his cassock around himself, lay down and went to sleep.

  Nearly two hours later he opened his eyes to find that the dark gray dawn had given him enough light to see by. He looked back at the rope hanging from the walls, now showing the place where he had begun his escape like a huge pointing finger. But there was nothing to be done about it, or about his regret that he was leaving behind s
omething that had taken him eighteen months, and much retching, to make. It looked, although Cale had never seen such a thing, like a two-hundred-foot ponytail. He turned and in the rising light made his way down the rocky, pathless slant of Sanctuary Hill, happy that it might be another hour before they found the body of the Lord of Discipline and, with luck, another two before they came across the rope.

  He had luck on neither count. The body of Redeemer Picarbo had been discovered half an hour before dawn by his servant, whose hysterical screams had the entire Sanctuary, enormous as it was, awake and in ferment within a few minutes. Quickly every dormitory was roused and roll call taken, and it soon became clear that three of the acolytes were missing.

  Pathfinder Brunt, dog ostler and the Redeemer charged with catching the very few acolytes who were foolish enough to escape, was sent immediately to Redeemer Bosco and for the first time in his life was shown into his offices immediately.

  “I want all three of them returned alive, by which I mean you will do everything in your power to do so.”

  “Of course, Lord Militant. I always—”

  “Spare me,” interrupted Bosco. “I’m not asking you to be careful, I’m telling you. Under no circumstances, not at the price of your own life, is Thomas Cale to be harmed. I suppose if Kleist and Henri are killed, then so be it, though I’d prefer them alive as well.”

  “May I ask why Cale’s life is so precious, Lord?”

  “No.”

  “What shall I tell the others? They won’t understand and they’re in a powerful rage.”

  Bosco realized what Brunt was driving at. Holy rage could overcome even the most obedient Redeemer faced with an acolyte who had done something so unthinkably dreadful. He sighed with irritation. “You may indicate that Cale is working on my behalf and has been forced to go with these murderers while attempting to uncover a most terrible conspiracy involving a plot by the Antagonists to murder the Supreme Pontiff.” It was, thought Bosco, pitiful stuff, but good enough for Brunt, who instantly went pale with distress. He was exceptional for his brutality even by the low standards of Redeemer dog ostlers, but the deep protectiveness of Brunt’s feelings for the Pontiff, like that of a child for his mother, would have been plain to anyone.

  Cale’s rope of hair was quickly found, its scent given to the Dogs of Paradise, and then the great doors were rolled open and a hunting party was on its way with Cale less than five miles in front of them. But in its most important respect his plan was a success: it had not occurred to anyone that only one acolyte had made his escape, and so no search of any kind was made inside the Sanctuary. For the moment, Vague Henri, Kleist and the girl were safe. Assuming, of course, that Cale kept his promise.

  Cale had moved another four miles by the time he heard the faint sound of the dogs drifting on the wind. He stopped and listened in the silence. For a moment there was just the cold wind scratching over the sandy rock. Distant though it was, it was clear enough that he was in for trouble, and sooner rather than later. It was a strange, high-pitched noise, not like the usual yelping of pack hounds but a constant squeal of rage that sounded something like a pig having its throat cut with a rusty saw. They were hefty like pigs too, even more bad tempered than a boar and with a set of fangs that looked as though someone had poured a bag of rusty nails into their mouths. The sound died away again as Cale looked to see if there was any sign of the Voynich oasis. Nothing stood out from the endless stretch of crusty, diseased-looking hillocks from which the Scablands got its name. He started running again, now faster than before. There was a long way to go, and with the hounds this close, he knew he would be lucky to make it past midday. Move too slowly and the hounds would have him, too fast and exhaustion would give him up. He shut all this out and listened only to the rhythm of his own breathing.

  “How long have you been here, Riba?”

  For a moment she seemed not to have heard Vague Henri, then she looked at him as if trying to bring him into focus.

  “I’ve been here for five years.” The boys looked at each other in astonishment.

  “But why are you here?” said Kleist.

  “We came here to learn to be brides,” she said. “But they lied. He killed Lena, that man, and he would have killed me. Why?” It was a bewildered appeal. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “We don’t know,” said Kleist. “We don’t know anything about you. We had no idea you existed.”

  “Start from the beginning,” said Vague Henri. “Tell us how you came here, where you’re from.”

  “Take your time,” said Kleist. “We have plenty of it.”

  “He’s coming back for us, isn’t he, that other one?”

  “His name is Cale.”

  “He’s coming back for us.”

  “Yes,” said Vague Henri. “But it might be a long wait.”

  “I don’t want to wait here,” she said, furious. “It’s cold and dark and horrible. I won’t!”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Let me out—now—or I’ll scream.”

  It was not that Kleist had no idea how to treat a member of the opposite sex, it was that he had no idea how to deal with anyone behaving in such an emotional way. Expressing uncontrolled anger usually meant a visit to Ginky’s Field and a three-foot hole. Kleist raised his arm to shut her up, but Henri pulled him back.

  “You have to be quiet,” he told Riba. “Cale will come back and we’ll take you somewhere safe. But if they hear us, then we are dead things. You must understand.”

  She stared at him for a moment, looking as if madness itself were whispering in her ear. Then she nodded her head.

  “Tell us where you came from, and as much as you know about why you’re here.”

  In her great agitation, Riba had stood upright, a tall and shapely girl, if plump. She sat down again and took a deep breath to calm herself.

  “Mother Teresa bought me in the serf market in Memphis when I was ten. She bought Lena as well.”

  “You’re a slave?” said Kleist.

  “No,” said the girl at once, ashamed and indignant. “Mother Teresa told us we were free and we could leave whenever we wanted.”

  Kleist laughed. “Why didn’t you, then?”

  “Because she was kind to us and gave us presents and pampered us like cats, and fed us wonderful food and many rich things and taught us how to be brides and told us that when we were ready we would have a rich knight in shining armor who would love us and take care of us forever.” She stopped, almost breathless, as if what she was saying were actually happening and the horrors of the last day just a dream. That she stopped was just as well, because very little of it made sense to the boys.

  Vague Henri turned to Kleist. “I don’t understand. It’s against the faith to own slaves.”

  “None of this makes sense. Why would the Redeemers buy a girl and do all these things for her and then start to butcher them like—”

  “Be quiet!” Vague Henri looked at the girl, but she was lost in her own world for the moment. Kleist sighed with irritation. Vague Henri pulled him away and lowered his voice. “How would you feel if it was you who had to watch that happening to someone you’d been with for five years?”

  “I’d thank my lucky stars that there was a half-wit around like Cale to rescue me. You need,” he added, “to spend more time worrying about us and less about the girl. What’s she to us or we to her? God knows we all get what’s coming to us, no need to go looking for it.”

  “What’s done is done.”

  “But it isn’t done, is it?”

  As this was true, Vague Henri lapsed into silence for a moment.

  “Why would the Redeemers, of all people,” he said at last in a whisper, “bring someone who was the devil’s playground into the Sanctuary, feed them, care for them, tell them wonderful lies and then cut them into pieces while they were still alive?”

  “Because they’re bastards,” said Kleist sullenly. But he was no fool and the question interested him.
“Why have they increased the numbers of acolytes by five, maybe even ten times as much?” Then he swore and sat down. “Tell me something, Henri.”

  “What?”

  “If we knew the answer—would you feel better or worse?” And with that, he shut up for good.

  Cale was urinating over the edge of one of the Scabland hillocks that had half-collapsed. The screaming yelp of the dogs was close and continuous now. He finished and hoped that the smell would attract them away from his true line for a few minutes. His breathing was labored, despite the rest, his thighs heavy and beginning to drag him down. By his calculations from the map he had found in Redeemer Bosco’s bureau, he should have been at the oasis already. But there was still no sign, just the hillocks and rocks and sand stretching as far as he could see. It was now that he faced the possibility that he had carried with him since the moment he found the map—that it was a trap set for him by the Lord Militant.

  There was no point in pacing himself now; the dogs would be on him in a few minutes. That there had been no letup in their noise meant that they had missed or ignored the smell of his urine. He ran as fast as he could now, although he was too exhausted after four hours to increase his speed by much.

  Now the dogs were baying fit to kill, and Cale was beginning to slow as he knew that he could never outrun them. His breath rasped as if sand were being scraped inside his lungs, and he began to stumble. Then he fell.

  He was on his feet in an instant, but the fall had made him look at his surroundings. Still the same hillocks and rocks, but now the sand had lanky weeds and grass in clumps. Where there was grass, there was water. Immediately there was a surge in the howls of the dogs as if they had been lashed with a nailed whip. Cale raced off in search of the oasis, hoping to God he was heading for it and not just skirting its edge and heading only for more desert and death.