The elder sage pulled him aside in the foyer of the temple academy. Despite the pressing need to catch the train back to his quarters, he would never dream of inconveniencing the elder. He would rather miss the train and walk the whole way; such was his devotion to their ways.
While it was hardly his native tongue, the old man affected the speech pattern of those long dead in the soft sounds of their obscure religious language. “Tell me what you know of this Brotherhood, Jesse.”
The elder used the nickname by which only those in the temple academy knew him. “Sir, I would imagine I know less about it than you. It’s not exactly a secret society, just exceedingly difficult to penetrate. It’s also not a cult, but more like a family, yet few of them share any DNA or cultural heritage. It seems to me the primary barrier to infiltration is the truly odd philosophy they espouse.”
The elder was quick. “Our council has for generations been connoisseurs of human philosophies, going back into the mists of ancient history. Is it so far outside our range of experience?”
Jesse was never sure if the elder was testing him or actually seeking information. Such was the way of things in the Council. “Our ways are easily superior to theirs.” It was a verbal genuflection. “They have latched onto something we found inadequate long ago. But no one in the Council living today has encountered such a philosophy. Reading back in the archives, it seems much more challenging to grasp than some of the dead languages that we study in seeking to understand all human history.”
The elder man’s face offered a hint of mild reproof. “No one questions your devotion to the Council. But you are currently the point man in cracking this puzzle, and I want to know what these people are up to. What is their agenda? Are they a threat, a possible resource, something of both? They clearly possess knowledge and technology we can use, but it seems they are holding out on us. They exchanged some of their technology for policy compromises from the government, yet the government scientists and the military,” with a knowing look at Jesse, “have been unable to fathom the full scope of what they have done. Is their science all that advanced and difficult to understand? There’s no harm in letting them cling to their silly ways, but we cannot afford to let stand any entity that has any leverage at all over the government. Your mission is to identify the fulcrum and remove it.”
“I embrace the mission, sir.” Jesse tilted his head forward just enough to represent a symbolic bowing. “We have two men working even now to infiltrate.”
The sage nodded somewhat impatiently. “No women? Are they so saintly as to resist all temptation to vice?”
“This Brotherhood pretends to hold to some thin slice of our ancient truths. They do not accept the social orthodoxy of gender equality, at least in terms of decision making. We have already encountered their teaching on this, but it’s not the same as the false masculinity we promote among the sheep. It’s not simply reactionary to the female emancipation we also promote to keep them distracted. Rather, it’s something much older, more like shepherding. I believe we may be seeing a revival of things we once thought dead.”
The intensity was undisguised by the soft sounds the elder’s voice made. “This time we cannot afford to let them fester for centuries before we subvert the nature of their identity. We must entangle them quickly. Even at the cost of actually letting them gain a few converts from the institutions we control, we cannot let them remain outside our reach. Discover what binds them together and weaken it. Create avenues of compromise to their core existence. If there is nothing they want, then stir a sense of wanting so we can make them dependent.”
Jesse bowed his head more deeply this time and said nothing.
The elder went on, “As for this supposed advanced technology? We aren’t fools; no genie can be put back into the bottle. But if we cannot find the key, the Tetragrammaton they use to control this, then we may well have to destroy them and let their secret die with them. This is our world, and we will not surrender so much as a gnat’s footprint to anyone.”
Despite the muffling effect of the ritual drapery in the foyer, the soft whispers of the elder sage echoed like an earthquake in Jesse’s mind. The aftershocks continued to rattle him between those few moments he could steal away from his duties to gather with his people in the temple, temblors no one but Jesse felt when he wore his adjutant’s uniform. The elder said he was the steel prow pushing aside the storms that gathered over his people always.