Flesh (20 page)

He did not sleep well that night. He dreamed of Arva entering the booth with those men—ten in all; he had counted them. And though he knew he should love the sinners and loathe the sin, he loathed every one of the ten sinners.

When morning came, he swore that he would not hate the men who came to her today. But even as he swore he knew he could not keep his vow.

That day he counted seven men. By the time the seventh strolled out, he had to retreat to his quarters to keep from running after the man and closing his hands around his throat.

The third night, he prayed for guidance.

Should he leave the temple, look elsewhere for work? If he stayed, he would be indirectly approving of and directly maintaining this abomination. Moreover, he might have the terrible sin of murder on his conscience, the blood of a man on his hands. He did not want that. Yes, he wanted it! But he must not want it, he must not!

And if he left, he would not have done a thing to wipe out the evil; he would have fled like a coward. Moreover, he would not have made Arva realize that she was slapping God in the face by carrying on this loathsome travesty of a religious rite. He wanted to get her out of the temple more than he had wanted anything in his life—even more than he had wanted to be on the
Terra
so he could carry the Word to the ignorant heathen of the other planets.

He had not made a single convert during those eight hundred years. But he had tried. He had done his best; he could not help it if their ears were deaf to the Word, their eyes blind to the light of the Truth.

The next day, he waited until Arva began to walk out of the temple at noon. Then he leaned his brush against the wall and followed her out into the sunshine and the buzz and crash of Deecee street life.

“Lady Arva!” he called. “I must speak with you!”

She stopped. Her face was shadowed by the overhanging hood, but it seemed to him that she looked as if she were deeply ashamed and were suffering. Or did she look that way because he wanted her to?

“May I walk home with you?” he asked.

She was startled. “Why?”

“Because I will go crazy if I do not.”

“I do not know,” she said. “It is true that you are a brother of the Sunhero, so that there should be no loss of dignity in having you walk by my side. On the other hand, you have no totem, and you do the work of the lowest of menials.”

“And who are you, of all people, to talk to me about being lowly!” he snarled. “You, who take on all comers?”

Her eyes widened. “What have I done wrong? How dare you talk to a Linkon in that manner?”

“You are a... a whore!” he shouted, using the English word even though he knew she would not understand.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Prostitute! A woman who sells herself for money!”

“I never heard of anything like that,” she said. “What kind of country do you come from, that a vessel of the Holy Mother would so dishonor herself?”

He tried to calm down. He spoke in a low but quivering voice.

“Arva Linkon, I just want to talk to you. I have something to say that will be the most important thing you have ever heard in your life. Indeed, the only important thing.”

“I don’t know. I think you are a little crazed.”

“I swear that I would not dream of doing you harm!”

“Swear on the sacred name of Columbia?”

“No, I cannot do that. But I will swear by my God that I will not lay a hand on you.”

“God! You worship the god of the Caseylanders?”

“No, not theirs! Mine! The true God!”

“Now I know you are crazy! Otherwise, you would not be talking of this god in this country, and especially not to me. I won’t listen to the foul blasphemy that would pour from your wicked mouth.”

She walked away.

Sarvant took a step after her. Then, realizing that now was not the time to talk to her, and that he was not conducting himself as he would have wished, he turned away. His fists were clenched, and he was grinding his teeth together. He walked like a blind man, several times bumping into people. They swore at him, but he paid no attention.

He went back to the temple and picked up his broom.

Again, he did not sleep well at night. He planned a hundred times how he would talk softly and wisely to Arva. He would show her the errors of her belief in a manner she could not refute. Eventually, she would be his first convert.

Side by side, they would begin the work that would sweep the country clean, as the Primitive Christians had swept ancient Rome.

The following day, however, Arva did not come into the temple. He despaired. Perhaps she would never come back.

Then he realized that that was one of the things he had wanted her to do. Perhaps he was making more progress than he had thought.

But how would he get to see her again?

The morning of the next day, Arva, still clad in the hooded robe of the sterile woman, walked into the temple. She averted her eyes and was silent when he greeted her. After praying at the foot of the caryatid at which she customarily sat, she went to the rear of the temple and began talking earnestly to the bishop.

Sarvant was seized with a fear that she was denouncing him. Was it reasonable to expect that she would keep silent? After all, in her eyes, he was committing blasphemy by even being in this—to her—holy place.

Arva resumed her place at the foot of the caryatid. The bishop beckoned to Sarvant.

He put his broom down and walked to him, his legs weak with anxiety. Was this mission to stop here and now, before he had planted one seed of faith that would grow after he was gone? And if he failed now, then the Word was lost forever, since he was the last of his sect.

“My son,” said the bishop, “up to now the knowledge that you are not as yet a believer has been confined to the hierarchy. You must remember that you were granted a great privilege because you are a brother to the Sunhero. If you had been anybody else, you would have been hanged long ago. But you were given a month to see the error of your ways and to testify to the truth. Your month is not up yet; but I must warn you that you will have to keep your mouth shut about your false belief. Otherwise, the time will be shortened. I am disturbed, since I had hoped that your application to work here meant that you were about to announce your desire to sacrifice to the Mother of Us All.”

“Then Arva told you?”

“Bless her for a truly devout woman, she certainly did! Now, do I have your promise that you will not repeat the incident of the day before?”

“You have it,” Sarvant said. The bishop had not asked him to quit proselytizing. He had just asked him not to repeat the incident. From now on he would be cunning as the dove, wise as the serpent.

Five minutes later, he had forgotten his resolution.

He saw a tall and handsome man, an aristocrat by his bearing and his expensive clothes, approach Arva. She smiled at him, rose, and led him to the booth.

It was the smile that did it.

Never before had she smiled at the men who came to her. Her face had been as expressionless as if cut from marble. Now, seeing the smile, Sarvant felt something well up in him. It spread from his loins, roared through his chest, raced through his throat, cutting off his wind. It filled his skull until it exploded; he could see only blackness before him and could hear nothing.

He did not know how long he had been in that condition, but when he partially regained his senses, he was standing in the office of the priest-physician.

“Bend over, and I’ll massage your prostate and get a specimen,” the priest was saying.

Automatically, Sarvant obeyed. While the priest was examining the slide through a microscope, Sarvant stood like a block of ice. Inside, he was fire. He was filled with a fierce joy he had never known; he knew what he was going to do, but he did not care. At that moment he would have defied any being or Being who tried to stop him.

A few minutes afterward, he strode from the office, Unhesitatingly, he walked up to Arva, who had just returned from the booth and was about to sit down.

“I want you to come with me!” he said in a loud clear voice.

“Where?” she said, and then, seeing the expression on his face, she understood.

“What did you say about me the other day?” she asked scornfully.

“That was not today.”

He seized her hand and began to pull her toward the booth. She did not resist, but when they were in the booth and he had closed the curtain, she said, “Now I know! You have decided to sacrifice to the Goddess!”

She threw off her robe and smiled ecstatically. But she was looking upwards, not at him.

“Great Goddess, I thank You for having allowed me to become the instrument to convert this man to the true faith!”

“No!” said Sarvant hoarsely. “Don’t say that! I do not believe in your idol. It is just—God help me!—I want you! I cannot stand seeing you go into this booth with every man that asks you. Arva, I love you!”

For a moment, she stared at him with horror. Then she stopped and picked up her robe and held it in front of her. “Do you think that I would allow you to defile me by touching me? A pagan! And under this holy roof!”

She turned to walk out. He leaped at her, spun her around. She opened her mouth to scream, and he stuffed the hem of the robe into her mouth. He wrapped the rest of the robe around her head and shoved her backwards so she fell upon the bed and he on top of her.

She writhed and twisted to get from his grip, but he held her with fingers that cut deep into her flesh. Then she tried to hold her knees together. He gave a great flop like a giant fish, coming down hard with his hips; it broke the lock of her legs.

She tried to go backwards, like a snake attempting to crawl on its back, but her head was stopped by the wall behind her. Suddenly, she stopped struggling.

Sarvant moaned and gripped her back with his hands, pressing his face against the robe over her face. He wanted to feel his lips upon hers, but the cloth was doubled where he had shoved it into her mouth; he could feel nothing through the thickness.

There was a spark of sanity, the thought that he had always hated violence and especially rape, and yet he was forcing himself upon this woman he loved. And worse, far worse, she had willingly given herself to at least a hundred men in the last ten days, men who did not care at all about her but merely wanted to spew out their lust upon her. Yet she was resisting him like a virgin martyr of ancient Rome at the mercy of a pagan emperor! It did not make sense; nothing did.

He screamed with the sudden release of eight hundred years.

He did not know that he was screaming. He was absolutely unaware of his surroundings. When the bishop and priest rushed in, and Arva, weeping and sobbing, told her story, he did not comprehend what was happening. Not until the temple was crowded with furious men from the street, and someone appeared with a rope, did he understand what was happening.

Then it was too late.

Too late to try to tell them what had impelled him. Too late even if they could have known what he was talking about. Too late even if they had not knocked him down and beaten him until his teeth were knocked out and his lips too puffed to do anything but mumble.

The bishop tried to intervene, but the mob pushed him to one side and carried Sarvant out into the street. There they dragged him by the legs, his head bumping on the cement, until they came to a square where a gallows stood. This was in the shape of a hideous old goddess, Alba, the Throttler of Men’s Breath. Her iron hands, painted a dead-white, reached out as if clutching for every man that passed.

The rope was thrown over one of her hands and its end tied around the wrist. Men brought a table out from a house and set it beneath the dangling rope. They lifted Sarvant upon it and tied his hands behind his back. Two men held him while a third put a noose around his neck.

There was a moment of silence when the cries of outraged men ceased, and they quit trying to get their hands upon him and tear his blasphemer’s flesh.

Sarvant looked about him. He could not see clearly, since his eyes were puffed up, and blood was running over them from gashes in his scalp. He mumbled something.

“What did you say?” one of the men holding him asked.

Sarvant could not repeat it. He was thinking that he had always wanted to be a martyr. It was a terrible sin, that desire; the sin of pride. But he had desired martyrdom. And he had always pictured himself coming to the end with dignity and with the courage given him by the knowledge that his disciples would carry on and would eventually triumph.

This was not to be. He was to hang like a criminal of the worst sort. Not for preaching the Word, but for rape.

He had not a single convert. He would die unmourned, die practically nameless. His body would be thrown to the hogs. Not that his body mattered; it was the thought that his name and his deed would die, too, that made him want to scream out to the heavens. Somebody, even if just one soul, should carry on.

He thought, No new religion succeeds unless the old religion first becomes weak. And these people believe without a shadow of a doubt to relieve the blinding intensity of conviction. They believe with a strength that the people of my time certainly did not have.

He mumbled again. By now he was standing alone on the table, swaying back and forth but determined that he would not show any fear.

“Too soon,” he said in a language his hearers could not have understood even if he had spoken clearly. “I came back to Earth too soon. I should have waited another eight hundred years, when men might have begun to lose faith and to scoff in secret. Too soon!”

Then the table was dragged out from under him.

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