"Huh? Nothing at all. Touch of indigestion, maybe."
"So? Come on, let's go for a walk. The air will do you good."
I let him herd me outside. He said nothing but banalities until we were on the broad terrace surrounding the south turret and free of the danger of eye and ear devices. When we were well away from anyone else he said softly, "Come on. Spill it."
"Shucks, Zeb, I can't burden anybody else with it."
"Why not? What's a friend for?"
"Uh, you'd be shocked."
"I doubt it. The last time I was shocked was when I drew four of a kind to an ace kicker. It restored my faith in miracles and I've been relatively immune ever since. Come on-we'll call this a privileged communication-elder adviser and all that sort of rot."
I let him persuade me. To my surprise Zeb was not shocked to find that I let myself become interested in a holy deaconess. So I told him the whole story and added to it my doubts and troubles, the misgivings that had been growing in me since the day I reported for duty at New Jerusalem.
He nodded casually. "I can see how it would affect you that way, knowing you. See here, you haven't admitted any of this at confession, have you?"
"No," I admitted with embarrassment.
"Then don't. Nurse your own fox. Major Bagby is broad-minded, you wouldn't shock him-but he might find it necessary to pass it on to his superiors. You wouldn't want to face Inquisition even if you were alabaster innocent. In fact, especially since you are innocent-and you are, you know; everybody has impious thoughts at times. But the Inquisitor expects to find sin; if he doesn't find it, he keeps on digging."
At the suggestion that I might be put to the Question my stomach almost turned over. I tried not to show it for Zeb went on calmly, "Johnnie my lad, I admire your piety and your innocence, but I don't envy it. Sometimes too much piety is more of a handicap than too little. You find yourself shocked at the idea that it takes politics as well as psalm singing to run a big country. Now take me; I noticed the same things when I was new here, but I hadn't expected anything different and wasn't shocked."
"But-" I shut up. His remarks sounded painfully like heresy; I changed the subject. "Zeb, what do you suppose it could have been that upset Judith so and caused her to faint the night she served the Prophet?"
"Eh? How should I know?" He glanced at me and looked away.
"Well, I just thought you might. You generally have all the gossip around the Palace."
"Well . . . oh, forget it, old son. It's really not important."
"Then you do know?"
"I didn't say that. Maybe I could make a close guess, but you don't want guesses. So forget it."
I stopped strolling, stepped in front of him and faced him. "Zeb, anything you know about it-or can guess-I want to hear. It's important to me."
"Easy now! You were afraid of shocking me; it could be that I don't want to shock you."
"What do you mean? Tell me!"
"Easy, I said. We're out strolling, remember, without a care in the world, talking about our butterfly collections and wondering if we'll have stewed beef again for dinner tonight."
Still fuming, I let him take me along with him. He went on more quietly, "John, you obviously aren't the type to learn things just by keeping your ear to the ground-and you've not yet studied any of the Inner Mysteries, now have you?"
"You know I haven't. The psych classification officer hasn't cleared me for the course. I don't know why."
"I should have let you read some of the installments while I was boning it. No, that was before you graduated. Too bad, for they explain things in much more delicate language than I know how to use-and justify every bit of it thoroughly, if you care for the dialectics of religious theory. John, what is your notion of the duties of the Virgins?"
"Why, they wait on him, and cook his food, and so forth."
"They surely do. And so forth. This Sister Judith-an innocent little country girl the way you describe her. Pretty devout, do you think?"
I answered somewhat stiffly that her devoutness had first attracted me to her. Perhaps I believed it.
"Well, it could be that she simply became shocked at overhearing a rather worldly and cynical discussion between the Holy One and, oh, say the High Bursar-taxes and tithes and the best way to squeeze them out of the peasants. It might be something like that, although the scribe for such a conference would hardly be a grass-green Virgin on her first service. No, it was almost certainly the 'And so forth.' "
"Huh? I don't follow you."
Zeb sighed. "You really are one of God's innocents, aren't you? Holy Name, I thought you knew and were just too stubbornly straight-laced to admit it. Why, even the Angels carry on with the Virgins at times, after the Prophet is through with them. Not to mention the priests and the deacons. I remember a time when-" He broke off suddenly, catching sight of my face. "Wipe that look off your face! Do you want somebody to notice us?"
I tried to do so, with terrible thoughts jangling around inside my head. Zeb went on quietly, "It's my guess, if it matters that much to you, that your friend Judith still merits the title 'Virgin' in the purely physical sense as well as the spiritual. She might even stay that way, if the Holy One is as angry with her as he probably was. She is probably as dense as you are and failed to understand the symbolic explanations given her-then blew her top when it came to the point where she couldn't fail to understand, so he kicked her out. Small wonder!"
I stopped again, muttering to myself biblical expressions I hardly thought I knew. Zeb stopped, too, and stood looking at me with a smile of cynical tolerance. "Zeb," I said, almost pleading with him, "these are terrible things. Terrible! Don't tell me that you approve?"
"Approve? Man, it's all part of the Plan. I'm sorry you haven't been cleared for higher study. See here, I'll give you a rough briefing. God wastes not. Right?"
"That's sound doctrine."
"God requires nothing of man beyond his strength. Right?"
"Yes, but-"
"Shut up. God commands man to be fruitful. The Prophet Incarnate, being especially holy, is required to be especially fruitful. That's the gist of it; you can pick up the fine points when you study it. In the meantime, if the Prophet can humble himself to the flesh in order to do his plain duty, who are you to raise a ruction? Answer me that."
I could not answer, of course, and we continued our walk in silence. I had to admit the logic of what he had said and that the conclusions were built up from the revealed doctrines. The trouble was that I wanted to eject the conclusions, throw them up as if they had been something poisonous I had swallowed.
Presently I was consoling myself with the thought that Zeb felt sure that Judith had not been harmed. I began to feel better, telling myself that Zeb was right, that it was not my place, most decidedly not my place, to sit in moral judgment on the Holy Prophet Incarnate.
My mind was just getting around to worrying the thought that my relief over Judith arose solely from the fact that I had looked on her sinfully, that there could not possibly be one rule for one holy deaconess, another rule for all the rest, and I was beginning to be unhappy again-when Zeb stopped suddenly. "What was that?"
We hurried to the parapet of the terrace and looked down the wall. The south wall lies close to the city proper. A crowd of fifty or sixty people was charging up the slope that led to the Palace walls. Ahead of them, running with head averted, was a man dressed in a long gabardine. He was headed for the Sanctuary gate.
Zebadiah looked down and answered himself. "That's what the racket is-some of the rabble stoning a pariah. He probably was careless enough to be caught outside the ghetto after five." He stared down and shook his head. "I don't think he is going to make it."
Zeb's prediction was realized at once; a large rock caught the man between the shoulder blades, he stumbled and went down. They were on him at once. He struggled to his knees, was struck by a dozen stones, went down in a heap. He gave a broken high-pitched wail, then drew a fold of the ga
bardine across his dark eyes and strong Roman nose.
A moment later there was nothing to be seen but a pile of rocks and a protruding slippered foot. It jerked and was still.
I turned away, nauseated. Zebadiah caught my expression.
"Why," I said defensively, "do these pariahs persist in their heresy? They seem such harmless fellows otherwise."
He cocked a brow at me. "Perhaps it's not heresy to them. Didn't you see that fellow resign himself to his God?"
"But that is not the true God."
"He must have thought otherwise."
"But they all know better; we've told them often enough."
He smiled in so irritating a fashion that I blurted out, "I don't understand you, Zeb-blessed if I do! Ten minutes ago you were instructing me in correct doctrine; now you seem to be defending heresy. Reconcile that."
He shrugged. "Oh, I can play the Devil's advocate. I made the debate team at the Point, remember? I'll be a famous theologian someday-if the Grand Inquisitor doesn't get me first."
"Well . . . Look-you do think it's right to stone the ungodly? Don't you?"
He changed the subject abruptly. "Did you notice who cast the first stone?" I hadn't and told him so; all I remembered was that it was a man in country clothes, rather than a woman or a child.
"It was Snotty Fassett." Zeb's lip curled.
I recalled Fassett too well; he was two classes senior to me and had made my plebe year something I want to forget. "So that's how it was," I answered slowly. "Zeb, I don't think I could stomach intelligence work."
"Certainly not as an agent provocateur," he agreed. "Still, I suppose the Council needs these incidents occasionally. These rumors about the Cabal and all. . . ."
I caught up this last remark. "Zeb, do you really think there is anything to this Cabal? I can't believe that there is any organized disloyalty to the Prophet."
"Well-there has certainly been some trouble out on the West Coast. Oh, forget it; our job is to keep the watch here."
2
But we were not allowed to forget it; two days later the inner guard was doubled. I did not see how there could be any real danger, as the Palace was as strong a fortress as ever was built, with its lower recesses immune even to fission bombs. Besides that, a person entering the Palace, even from the Temple grounds, would be challenged and identified a dozen times before he reached the Angel on guard outside the Prophet's own quarters. Nevertheless people in high places were getting jumpy; there must be something to it.
But I was delighted to find that I had been assigned as Zebadiah's partner. Standing twice as many hours of guard was almost offset by having him to talk with-for me at least. As for poor Zeb, I banged his ear endlessly through the long night watches, talking about Judith and how unhappy I was with the way things were at New Jerusalem. Finally he turned on me.
"See here, Mr. Dumbjohn," he snapped, reverting to my plebe year designation, "are you in love with her?"
I tried to hedge. I had not yet admitted to myself that my interest was more than in her welfare. He cut me short.
"You do or you don't. Make up your mind. If you do, we'll talk practical matters. If you don't, then shut up about her."
I took a deep breath and took the plunge. "I guess I do, Zeb. It seems impossible and I know it's a sin, but there it is."
"All of that and folly, too. But there is no talking sense to you. Okay, so you are in love with her. What next?"
"Eh?"
"What do you want to do? Marry her?"
I thought about it with such distress that I covered my face with my hands. "Of course I do," I admitted. "But how can I?"
"Precisely. You can't. You can't marry without transferring away from here; her service can't marry at all. Nor is there any way for her to break her vows, since she is already sealed. But if you can face up to bare facts without blushing, there is plenty you can do. You two could be very cozy-if you could get over being such an infernal bluenose."
A week earlier I would not have understood what he was driving at. But now I knew. I could not even really be angry with him at making such a dishonorable and sinful suggestion; he meant well-and some of the tarnish was now in my own soul. I shook my head. "You shouldn't have said that, Zeb. Judith is not that sort of a woman."
"Okay. Then forget it. And her. And shut up about her."
I sighed wearily. "Don't be rough on me, Zeb. This is more than I know how to manage." I glanced up and down, then took a chance and sat down on the parapet. We were not on watch near the Holy One's quarters but at the east wall; our warden, Captain Peter van Eyck, was too fat to get that far oftener than once a watch, so I took a chance. I was bone tired from not having slept much lately.
"Sorry."
"Don t be angry, Zeb. That sort of thing isn't for me and it certainly isn't for Judith-for Sister Judith." I knew what I wanted for us: a little farm, about a hundred and sixty acres, like the one I had been born on. Pigs and chickens and barefooted kids with happy dirty faces and Judith to have her face light up when I came in from the fields and then wipe the perspiration from her face with her apron so that I could kiss her . . . no more connection with the Church and the Prophet than Sunday meeting and tithes.
But it could not be, it could never be. I put it out of my mind. "Zeb," I went on, "just as a matter of curiosity-You have intimated that these things go on all the time. How? We live in a goldfish bowl here. It doesn't seem possible."
He grinned at me so cynically that I wanted to slap him, but his voice had no leer in it. "Well, just for example, take your own case-"
"Out of the question!"
"Just for example, I said. Sister Judith isn't available right now; she is confined to her cell. But-"
"Huh? She's been arrested?" I thought wildly of the Question and what Zeb had said about the inquisitors.
"No, no, no! She isn't even locked in. She's been told to stay there, that's all, with prayer and bread-and-water as company. They are purifying her heart and instructing her in her spiritual duties. When she sees things in their true light, her lot will be drawn again-and this time she won't faint and make an adolescent fool of herself."
I pushed back my first reaction and tried to think about it calmly. "No," I said. "Judith will never do it. Not if she stays in her cell forever."
"So? I wouldn't be too sure. They can be very persuasive. How would you like to be prayed over in relays? But assume that she does see the light, just so that I can finish my story."
"Zeb, how do you know about this?"
"Sheol, man! I've been here going on three years. Do you think I wouldn't be hooked into the grapevine? You were worried about her-and making yourself a tiresome nuisance if I may say so. So I asked the birdies. But to continue. She sees the light, her lot is drawn, she performs her holy service to the Prophet. After that she is called once a week like the rest and her lot is drawn maybe once a month or less. Inside of a year-unless the Prophet finds some very exceptional beauty in her soul-they stop putting her name among the lots entirely. But it isn't necessary to wait that long, although it is more discreet."
"The whole thing is shameful!"
"Really? I imagine King Solomon had to use some such system; he had even more women on his neck than the Holy One has. Thereafter, if you can come to some mutual understanding with the Virgin involved, it is just a case of following well known customs. There is a present to be made to the Eldest Sister, and to be renewed as circumstances dictate. There are some palms to be brushed-I can tell you which ones. And this great pile of masonry has lots of dark back stairs in it. With all customs duly observed, there is no reason why, almost any night I have the watch and you don't, you should not find something warm and cuddly in your bed."
I was about to explode at the calloused way he put it when my mind went off at a tangent. "Zeb-now I know you are telling an untruth. You were just pulling my leg, admit it. There is an eye and an ear somewhere in our room. Why, even if I tried to find them and cut them out,
I'd simply have the security watch banging on the door in three minutes."
"So what? There is an eye and an ear in every room in the place. You ignore them."
I simply let my mouth sag open.
"Ignore them," he went on. "Look, John, a little casual fornication is no threat to the Church-treason and heresy are. It will simply be entered in your dossier and nothing will be said about it-unless they catch you in something really important later, in which case they might use it to hang you instead of preferring the real charges. Old son, they like to have such peccadilloes in the files; it increases security. They are probably uneasy about you; you are too perfect; such men are dangerous. Which is probably why you've never been cleared for higher study."
I tried to straighten out in my mind the implied cross purposes, the wheels within wheels, and gave up. "I just don't get it. Look, Zeb, all this doesn't have anything to do with me . . . or with Judith. But I know what I've got to do. Somehow I've got to get her out of here."
"Hmm . . . a mighty strait gate, old son."
"I've got to."
"Well . . . I'd like to help you. I suppose I could get a message to her," he added doubtfully.
I caught his arm. "Would you, Zeb?"
He sighed. "I wish you would wait. No, that wouldn't help, seeing the romantic notions in your mind. But it is risky now. Plenty risky, seeing that she is under discipline by order of the Prophet. You'd look funny staring down the table of a court-martial board, looking at your own spear."
"I'll risk even that. Or even the Question."
He did not remind me that he himself was taking even more of risk than I was; he simply said, "Very well, what is the message?"
I thought for a moment. It would have to be short. "Tell her that the legate she talked to the night her lot was drawn is worried about her."
"Anything else?"
"Yes! Tell her that I am hers to command!"
It seems flamboyant in recollection. No doubt it was-but it was exactly the way I felt.
At luncheon the next day I found a scrap of paper folded into my napkin. I hurried through the meal and slipped out to read it.