“How fare you upon the moon Enforcement?” asked the Awateh.
How fare I? wondered Altabon Faros. I fare alone and lonely, except for that fanatic Ornil. I fare frightened most of the time. I fare in desperation when I think of Silene and of my children.
“We move toward our goal, Awateh.”
“I was distressed to hear there is a delay,” the voice was kindly. Only long experience with that voice would have led the hearer to shiver at the tone. Such kindliness. Such iron. “I have been put to some trouble over this delay.”
“There is a delay, Awateh.”
“There were to be no more delays.”
Faros swallowed desperately, trying to wet a dry throat. “Alas, Holy One. We do not control everything the men of Authority do or say.”
“Explain,” the prophet demanded. Faros looked up, wondering if the aged man would be able to understand. Evidently so. His eyes were as sharp and perspicacious as Faros had ever seen them. Perhaps the vagueness came and went. Last time Altabon Faros had seen the Awateh, he had seemed barely able to hold up his head. “Explain from the beginning,” demanded the prophet. “As though I knew nothing.”
This was a favorite device of the prophets. Make a man tell the whole story, checking the details each time to see if he left anything out or told it differently or remembered things he shouldn’t.
Faros gathered his thoughts. The true beginning had been two generations before, when a dozen zealous members of the Faithful had cut off their hair and gone secretly out into Ahabar where they had established themselves as well-to-do planters. Planters were anonymous and, for the most part, socially acceptable, whether they had gone to the proper schools or not. Wealthy planters were particularly well-accepted.
The false-planters had raised children who learned to speak and behave as Ahabarians, though when they reached the age of reason they had been sent “away to school.” The school was in Voorstod, in the citadel of the prophets, from which the satisfactory sons returned to raise families of their own and the unsatisfactory sons and the daughters did not return at all. Women fully trained in the total self-effacement required among the Faithful could not be expected to show themselves in the outside world. Second generation wives and mothers were recruited from among Ahabarians.
As Silene Faros had been.
Faros and Ornil were the end result of all this endeavor, two apparent Ahabarians who had obtained positions on Enforcement. Faros and Ornil, both with impeccable records and a generation’s worth of references.
The prophet didn’t want to hear all that, no matter what he said, so Faros began with his own history.
“Ten years ago, I obtained a post on Enforcement after serving in the Ahabarian army for five years following my graduation from the Academy at Fenice.” He kept his voice expressionless. One never knew what might set the Awateh off into one of his rages. “The Faithful of the Cause had already smoothed my way by bribing certain officials in the personnel office of Enforcement, thus assuring I would be accepted and given a suitable command. At first I was too low in rank to have access to the information needed by the Cause. I was promoted as rapidly as it is possible to be promoted, each step upward aided and assured by my brethren. Two years ago, I reached the rank of Overmajor, which is the minimum rank necessary to be admitted to the secret levels of Enforcement.” He ran his tongue over his lips, longing for water. He dared not ask for it.
“It was then your family were brought here, for safekeeping,” purred the prophet.
“Indeed, Holy One.” They hadn’t told him they intended to pick up his wife and his children. Silene and the children had always lived in Ahabar. He had gone there for his holidays. He had never told Silene anything about Voorstod. He wouldn’t have told her anything. She had been safe and happy in Ahabar, on the plantation. She and the children could have been left there, perfectly safely. And instead this old … the Holy One had had them kidnapped and brought here!
“To assure there would be no unnecessary delays,” said the prophet in the same kindly tone, sipping at the goblet in his hand.
Faros, who knew that tone, held his breath. When he could go on, he said, “As soon as I could, I learned the procedure by which the army of Enforcement is mobilized.”
It had taken the better part of a year to learn the exact sequence of events necessary to get the soldiers moving. “First, at least fourteen of the twenty-one Actual Members of the Advisory create an ineradicable record of their intention to mobilize the army. A copy of that record is then carried by the Commander-in-Chief, in his own hands, to Enforcement, where it is verified by the two Subcommanders. The Commander-in-Chief then uses his key …”
“Key?” asked the prophet, as though he didn’t know what Faros meant. He knew exactly. He had been told.
“A device keyed to his living person. The Commander uses this key to open a certain panel on the moon Enforcement. Behind that panel is a control to which the Commander and the two Subcommanders simultaneously speak a command. This command releases the locks upon the army and allows them to be programmed as desired.
“It was clear, Holy One, that many of the details were mere ritual, that if we had the key and the living body of the Commander-in-Chief—regardless of its condition—and a record of the three voices uttering the proper command, nothing more was actually necessary. The command was ‘Open Sesame.’ It had some connotation I do not understand. It was not a phrase any of the three highest ranking officers would use in their daily lives.
“Still, the words were not difficult. The word open was easy to collect from the three officers. I recorded two men and Ornil recorded one. The other word, we had to build up from phonemes, which took longer, but soon we were ready to make the recording.” Faros licked his lips. They had been so close, so very close.
“We had understood your success was imminent.”
“It was, Holy One.”
“But then you sent word of delay. Delay necessitates explanation.” The words were icy, like cold iron.
“The message was ready, telling you of our success, when Subcommander Thees suddenly was removed from his command.”
“Could you not have used the key before he was actually sent away?”
“He was not ‘sent away,’ Holy One. He was at a banquet on Authority when it happened, and he never returned. The Commander was at the same banquet, and so we had no access to him. The password had already been changed from Authority by the time the Commander returned, which was the first we learned of the incident.”
“Incident?”
“It had nothing to do with Thees’s work at Enforcement. He went to a banquet on Authority and said something improper to a young woman. The young woman was the daughter of a Baidee family of some exalted position, and, as even an officer recruited from Ahabar should have known, Baidee do not mix. The young woman’s family demanded his removal.”
“You should have foreseen this difficulty.”
“I abase myself, Holy One.” How in all Satan’s realm was he supposed to have foreseen that a damned Ahabarian would drink too much and make a pass at a Baidee woman!
The prophet snarled. “How long, then?”
“We have already learned the new password. We have already put together those words in the voices of the two men available to us. Mobilization requires three voices, however, and Subcommander Thees’s replacement has not yet been selected. Nothing moves very fast on Authority, and Enforcement is dependent upon Authority for this particular decision.”
As soon as it had happened, Faros had sent word to Voorstod, to this old man, giving every detail. Patience, he had said. A small delay. Patience. This old man already knew what had happened. He had been told!
But Voorstod had long ago learned what passed for patience among the prophets: a rage they barely bothered to suppress. According to the prophets, if a man failed in his mission, he failed because Almighty God was unhappy with him and willed it so. If God were happy with him, he could not fa
il. If he failed, God was unhappy with him, and so were the prophets. It was all very logical.
“I understand,” said the prophet in a lofty and unforgiving tone. “A pity I did not understand earlier that the delay may not have been entirely due to your own dalliance and negligence. I am afraid your family may have suffered somewhat because of your lack of foresight.”
Faros held his breath again.
“No doubt Almighty God has forgiven you,” said the prophet. “No doubt His victory over the false Gods of the unbelievers is imminent. No doubt your destiny is in His hands.”
Faros abased himself. Vagrantly, for no reason, he had a vision of some other man, somewhere, kneeling before some other prophet or some other God, hearing these same words. Somewhere, was there another poor vassal being assured of his destiny? Some servitor of a false God, perhaps? Faros caught his breath and fought down an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh hysterically. Perhaps it was not Almighty God who had allowed him to fail. Perhaps Almighty God had an unknown enemy. Perhaps, somewhere, some other God was unwilling to lie down and die before the feet of the Faithful.
Altabon Faros choked and said nothing. His thoughts were enough to condemn him. “I would like to visit my family,” he murmured at last, when it was clear the prophet had nothing more to say.
The prophet smiled peculiarly and signaled his permission. As Faros took up his robe in the foyer, Halibar Ornil entered. There was to be another inquisition, just checking, to be sure they both told the same story.
“Holy One,” he heard Halibar Ornil say in the adjacent chamber.
The prophet’s voice came fatefully, as Faros went through the door. “Explain this delay. Explain from the beginning, as though I knew nothing …”
The women’s quarters were at the back of the citadel, where it touched the forests of the mountains above Cloud. There were a number of houses set in forest glades, surrounded by high walls and guarded by the Faithful. Faros was taken to one of these, and the tall, solid gate was unlocked for him.
The Gharm woman he had seen last time he had been here was inside, sweeping the walks of the garden. She looked up at him from under her eyelids, pityingly.
“My wife?” he asked.
She pointed down a path toward the pool. When he had gone a little way, he saw Silene and the children, beside the pool where flowers bloomed, very ancient flowers, brought from the gardens of Ire and Iron on Manhome, thousands of years ago. The boy was seven now. He had grown. The little girl was still a baby. Only three. Faros went swiftly toward them. The children saw him and ran away from him, scattering like birds. His wife turned a startled face on him and did not move.
“Silene!” he cried, reaching out his hands.
She looked down, her own hands writhing in her lap.
“Silene!” he cried again, gathering her into his arms. She was stiff, like a carving, all bones, no softness, nothing yielding. Her black hair cascaded halfway down her back, untidily, as though she had not combed it recently. The skin of her face looked rough, untended. The nails of her hands were torn.
“What?” he said. “Why?” He shook her, making her look at him.
She opened her mouth and showed him that she had no tongue.
“The prophet had it cut out,” said the Gharm voice from behind him. “He came here, raging at her, telling her you were not doing your duty. She should have knelt down and kept quiet, but she wasn’t wise enough to do that. She defended you. She told him he should not be angry at you, you were doing your best. At first he threatened to kill the children because she spoke so, but in the end he only had the guards cut out her tongue.”
Silene made a gargling sound, as though she were trying to speak. Tears ran down her face in runnels.
“Next time, if there is more delay, it will be worse for her,” said the Gharm. “Next time it will be her hands, her breasts, her eyes. Or maybe it will be the children’s hands and eyes. The prophet told her that.”
Silene looked at him with terrified eyes and he pulled her close to him. She was not Voorstod. She was Ahabar. The children were not Voorstod, they were Ahabar. In his heart, was he Voorstod? Or Ahabar? Or something else, which had no name?
The Gharm servant gazed into his face and said wonderingly, “They do it to us Gharm all the time. I was surprised when I saw them doing it to you, too.”
THREE
• Queen Wilhulmia of Ahabar was no longer young. Her hair was an aged silver and her eyes a mature gold. The robes of state and the heavy Collar of Ahabar did not dwarf her formidable figure. With her great prowlike jaw under a firm mouth, her sizeable nose, and a wide low brow that sloped back to a wealth of flowing hair, she was, so her people said, every inch a Queen—though it was true she was no longer young.
Wilhulmia said sometimes in fits of depression that her youth and beauty had been spent upon the Voorstod Question. “Wasted,” she said, for there had been no profit or return from all her years of effort, and everyone knew it. She was only the latest in a long line of rulers of Ahabar who had spent more time on the Voorstod problem than on all other issues of government combined. Five hundred years before, when the conflicts and confusions of the colonial period had ended and the people had sat down to create a lasting government under which they could live in peace, all had consented to and welcomed King Jimmy and his parliaments-several—except Voorstod That people had never changed since they had come plunging through their illicit Door into the wastes of the peninsula, dragging the Gharm behind and claiming the land for the prophet. “Ire, Iron, and Voorstod. Death to Ahabar,” had been the cry then and ever since.
Luckily for the Voorstoders, they had arrived on Ahabar during a time when that world had been disunited and unprepared for hostilities. Later, after many Gharm had escaped from the peninsula into Jeramish and points south, spreading their stories of what Voorstod really was, Ahabar had wanted to act but was prevented from doing so by Authority. Ahabar would have solved the problem by invasion and war, but Authority forbade it. Authority regarded the conflict between Voorstod and Ahabar as a “possibly religious matter” and referred the matter to the Religion Advisory, who referred the matter to the Theology Panel, who said, well, maybe slavery and cruelty weren’t religious, but possibly they were.
Let us consider, said Theology Panel: “Is Voorstod a slave state, or is it merely pious?” Everyone knew someone(s) on the Panel had been bribed, though thus far it had been impossible to prove.
Each time Ahabar brought itself to the brink of intervention, Authority insisted upon considering the matter afresh. Voorstod demanded the return of its escaped slaves. Ahabar said no, and threatened to invade. Authority forbade invasion while it considered the matter. Should the escaped Gharm be returned as breakers of contract and apostates, as Voorstod demanded? Or should the Gharm be given sanctuary as common sense and good nature dictated? Where did humanity stop and interference with religion begin? Authority couldn’t decide. From time to time, Authority suggested negotiation.
Elsewhere negotiation might have worked. With other religions, it could have worked. Voorstod’s God, however, was a jealous and vindictive deity who ruled by murder, terrorism, and malediction. How did one negotiate with that? Where other Gods might have allowed representatives to talk to the parliaments-several of Ahabar, the God of Voorstod demanded that past insults be revenged by blowing up the parliaments. Where other Gods might have advocated making life a garden, the Voorstod God promised the garden only after death, preferably violent death. Then might the Faithful lie about on the greensward sucking grapes and fucking virgins, so the prophets promised.
As with other peoples who had focused their lives upon wrongs in the past and heaven in the future, Voorstod made an everlasting hell of the present.
All of which led Queen Wilhulmia to cry from time to time, as she did when told by her counselor that Voorstod had some new demand, “What do they want now?”
Old Lord Multron cleared his throat and prepared to say, for th
e thousandth time, what Voorstod wanted from Ahabar.
“Independence, Your Pacific Sublimity.” He ticked this off on his first finger, holding it up for her to see.
“Forget the Sublimity, Ornice. If we speak of Voorstod, we can forget the Pacific, as well. I am Uriul, whom you have known since childhood. Speak to me.”
“Uri, they want independence.” He waved the admonitory finger, ready for the second point.
“They have independence. We’ve told them ten thousand times we’ll make no effort to rule in Voorstod. We told them that when they squirmed through that damned Door of theirs onto land they had no right to, and we’ve told them ten thousand times since.”
“They want their Gharm returned, as well, Uri. As you well know.” The middle finger marked this demand.
“There, Ornice. You see, you’re doing it, too. Their Gharm, you say, as though you accept ownership.”
He flushed. “One gets in the habit, Sublimity.”
“I don’t. I won’t. I will not say, their Gharm. Is Vlishil Teermot, he who won the Sabarty Prize for poetry, is he one of their Gharm? Is the harpist Stenta Thilion one of their Gharm? Are those horticulturists who have made the valley of the Vhone bloom for the past three generations their Gharm? Shall we round them up and return them to Voorstod to be tortured and executed when their parents and grandparents have been free in Ahabar for five generations or more?”
Ornice merely shook his head at her, as though he were her grandfather. She sighed and fiddled with the Collar of State, thinking it heavier than she liked. “Has your daughter learned anything of interest?”
Ornice looked hastily around himself, laying his finger across his lips. “Her relationship to me is not known, Uri. Lurilile feels I would lose dignity if it were known my daughter is a spy.”