Running from the Deity (16 page)

“Thoughts, perhaps,” she admitted. “But they were never more than thoughts. Even if we could separate him from his devices, we would still have to find a way to deal with that flying creature of his. And we don’t even know what it can do, except that Flinx said it was poisonous.” Her gaze, like her thoughts, shifted back in the direction of the departed alien. “Perhaps you are right, mate-mine. Let him go freely, in hopes that someday he may come back.”

Ebbanai gestured agreeably. “It is the best course to take. The only course to take, I think. I am glad you concur.”

But in his hearts, her mate knew that once Flinx was gone, it was most unlikely they would ever see the alien again. Unlike her, unlike the majority of his fellow Dwarra, the net-caster had spent too many long nights standing alone in the shallows of the sea, staring up at the stars. He had sometimes tried to count them, but there were too many for him.

Though probably not for someone like the Visitant Flinx, for whom they were the home he was now in a hurry to return to.

The priest Baugarikk was not pleased. In the Sanctuary in central Wullsakaa, he had squatted and brooded for some time now on what ought to be done. The possibilities were many, but whichever was chosen, it could only lead to one outcome.

Acolyte Kredlehken smoothed his swirling, heavily embroidered robes down over his legs. He had attended the High Priest for more than a year and thought he knew him well. But until now, he had never imagined the intensity with which the elder Dwarra could focus his mental energies. That the gods did not respond directly was unsurprising. As he had learned, they tended to make their needs known in ways that were as subtle and mysterious as their origin.

There was nothing subtle or mysterious about the High Priest’s meditations. They stemmed from, and related directly to, the arrival outside Metrel City of an alien being. Though it insisted it was not a god, but only another creature like the Dwarra themselves, more and more simple folk were coming to believe that the creature’s own denials were intended to dissuade them from worship, and to conceal its true nature. By Rakshinn, they would call it a god and honor it as such even as it denied such tribute!

The problem was that while they were doing so, they were paying less and less attention to Rakshinn himself and his Holy Eight. The result was that not only was proper veneration down at the Sanctuary, but so were collections. It was on this, and related matters, that the High Priest Baugarikk had been meditating for so many days.

His superior had been so quiet and introspective for so long that Kredlehken was nearly startled out of his ceremonial slippers when Baugarikk suddenly rose and turned on him.

“Acolyte!”

“Yes, Most Holy One. I am here.” Kredlehken spread both arms and all four forearms wide, inclining his Sensitives toward his superior in a gesture that was both respectful and reverent.

“I know what has to be done.” The High Priest’s eyes were not especially wide, but they were ablaze with assurance. “It was conveyed to me by the minions of Rakshinn himself!”

“Most Revered!” Kredlehken hissed softly. Who could doubt the holiness of the High Priest, who communicated directly with the gods? “What are we to do?”

Placing a pair of left flanges on the acolyte’s shoulder, Baugarikk turned the younger cleric and led him out of the sanctuary. Together, they mounted the steps that led from the subterranean meditation chamber back up into the somber but well-lit hallways of the main temple.

“This creature that has come among us is clearly an abomination. It turns the faithful from the path of righteousness and beguiles them with tricks and subterfuges. In order for all to be returned to the Right Path, the falsity of the being’s reality must be shown to them in a manner that none will be able to deny.”

Kredlehken was gesturing enthusiastically. “Of course, Holy One. And how is this to be done?”

“Rakshinn has told me. At hearts, it is really a simple matter. The people must be shown that the Visitant is not divine, but exactly what it claims to be: a mere mortal like themselves, meddling in and muddling the ways of the world. While it may have access to science more advanced than our own, it is not something to be worshipped. It must be restored to the ranks of the ordinary.”

“By what method is this to be achieved, Holy One?” the acolyte inquired earnestly.

“By the method most direct and incontrovertible. The Visitant must be killed. Only by its death will the people be convinced of its mortality, and that it is not, and never was, a thing to be worshipped—a thing that dared take them away from the Right Path of Rakshinn and the Holy Eight.”

Kredlehken halted beneath a famous mosaic of Toryyin, the Fifth of Eight, and swallowed hard. “Holy One, it is known that the Visitant possesses great powers of healing. It is also whispered that it has at its disposal the means to defend itself from any hostility that might be directed toward its person.”

Baugarikk gestured knowingly. “Of course such things will be whispered. And what is the source of these whisperings? Why, the Visitant itself! If it can convince everyone that it is untouchable, it need not trouble itself with the means to protect itself. It is an old and wise ploy; one apparently known to creatures other than ourselves.”

“The stratagem does not invalidate the original claim,” acolyte Kredlehken was compelled to point out.

“There is one way to find out.” Baugarikk was unrelenting. Once again, he placed a pair of flanges on the younger cleric’s shoulder. “The honor falls to you, Kredlehken, to ascertain the reality of this troublesome visitor. You will be provided with everything necessary to carry out your task. I have been in touch with those who honor and revere Rakshinn in Pakktrine Unified. They have agreed to provide us with whatever aid we may request. Subsequent to the successful completion of this action, I daresay you will find yourself swiftly promoted from the ranks of the acolytes to that of full priest, with all the responsibilities and honors that implies and entails.”

Though nervous, Kredlehken had never been one to shirk his sacred duty—which was just one reason why the High Priest had chosen him for the task. And if the zealous youth was to fail, well, other means could be tried, and what was the loss to the temple of one acolyte, more or less?

“Do not fear,” Baugarikk assured him. “Rakshinn will be with you, and the rest of the Eight, and all the resources that the temple can muster. You go forth only to dispatch a dishonest pretender, not a god. Its death will restore the full faith of the people, and return them to the temple that is their true spiritual home. I know you will not fail.”

“I will not,” Kredlehken exclaimed forcefully. “Rakshinn himself will guide my sword!”

The High Priest looked thoughtful. “Better to use barbolts. Mortal as it is, the truth of the creature’s physical abilities is no rumor. There is no need to engage it at close quarters. Like doctrine, extermination is better carried off when conducted from a distance.”

CHAPTER

11

Ebbanai wished Storra had come with him. Or better still, Flinx and his winged companion. The net-caster had been unable to sleep the previous night for contemplating what he was expected to do this morning. Only a little could go right, while a great many things could go wrong.

Without volunteering to join him, Storra had done her best to bolster his spirits. “You yourself are the one who kept saying this day was inevitable. Now that it’s here, you must have the strength to see it through.”

He gestured emphatically. “Why can’t you see it through with me? Why can’t Flinx?”

Soothing noises bubbled from her mouth. “You know very well why. Flinx must minister to the ills of the last group of supplicants, and one of us must be here to attend to him, and to our home.” She eyed him sternly. “You have been the one who has first dealt with the arrival of every group, Ebbanai. You are practiced at it, you are good at it.”

“I know, I know.” He locked Sensitives with her. As was often the case, her emotions reflected a familiar deep, underlying affection that belied her demanding words. “I will go and do it.” He turned for the doorway. “But if I have not returned by sunfall, you might come and have a look for what’s left of me.”

“Don’t be so negative,” she chided him. “A few words spoken, perhaps a few questions to be answered, and the thing will be done.” She let out a soft whistle of resignation. “All good things must come to an end, I suppose. But you are right, mate-mine. We have done well out of this.”

“Very much so.” I just hope I live to enjoy some of it, he thought to himself as he exited the house.

Maybe he was overreacting. If all went well, it would transpire as Storra had said: a few words, and done. But as he made his way up the slope and down the much-improved dirt path that led toward the main road, his apprehension grew rather than diminished.

The yard was largely empty now. All that remained were the temporary quarters of the final group of supplicants. Flinx would be done with the last of them by tomorrow. Ebbanai found that he would be sorry to see the alien go, and not just because it would mean an end to the highly profitable enterprise he and Storra had put together based on his presence. The strange but benevolent creature had been a part of their lives for a number of eight-days now, and aside from the fortune he had brought their way, the net-caster had grown used to his company. He had learned much from their visitor, knowledge that was unknown to the most venerable scholars. Quite a step up for a simple net-caster.

He glanced skyward. Beyond lay thousands of stars and, if the visitor was to be believed, dozens of races whose achievements and intelligence frequently exceeded those of the Dwarra. Flinx had described many of the wonderful places he had been. But for all his wisdom, and all his travels, Ebbanai did not envy him.

No matter how hard the Visitant tried to project otherwise, Ebbanai could not escape the feeling that his estimable and friendly guest was not happy.

His thoughts and his leather-shod foot-flanges had carried him close to the tollgate that barred the entrance to the homestead. It was a barrier in import only. Anyone who wished to could simply go around it. No one did, because it was widely known that without permission from the landowners, from Storra and himself, they would never get to see the Visitant. What would happen now, when he delivered his announcement?

He would know shortly.

Though it was quite early, a sizable crowd had already gathered and was waiting impatiently for the gatekeeper’s arrival. Bent and twisted elders wrestled for position with anxious young families. Solitary hopefuls whose skin flaps barely had the energy to rise and fall clung to the flanks of the line. Wealthy supplicants fidgeted in their wagons or on their individual mounts, annoyed at having to wait their turn like commoners. Ebbanai had dealt with them all equally. Today would be no different.

Except that it would be for the last time.

The restless buzz and bubbling faded as his appearance was noted and his approach remarked upon. He halted just behind the wooden gate, knowing that any protection it afforded him from the crowd was purely symbolic. There was no point in delaying. When the crowd had quieted enough for those in back to hear, he thrust his Sensitives straight up to indicate he needed their attention.

He’d given considerable thought to just what to say and exactly how to say it. Storra had helped. In the end, both decided it was not the sort of thing one could drag out in hopes of muting the impact. Like butchering a dead and dried-out baryeln, it was a thing best done quick.

“The Visitant cannot see you.” The response he and Storra had expected to this pronouncement was loud objecting, and he had prepared for that. Instead, an eerie silence settled over the throng of would-be supplicants. It was not a good sign. Not knowing what else to do, not having anything else to do, he continued as planned.

“He is leaving,” the net-caster declared, raising his voice slightly despite the hush. Raising both right forearms, he pointed all four flanges skyward. “To return to his home among the stars. He feels that his work here is done.” Improvising, he concluded, “He hopes one day to perhaps return to us to continue the work he has begun.” With that, he turned to leave.

It didn’t work.

The protests began almost immediately, rising rapidly in frequency and volume.

“How can the Visitant leave now, when my family and I have been waiting here for a two-day?”

“What of my infirm son? Who will help him now...?”

“I paid good money to gain this place in line...and for what?”

“See here, net-caster,” exclaimed a tall, thick merchant as he stuck his head out from the depths of his ornate travel wagon, “who are you to tell us what the Visitant will and will not do? I demand to speak to him myself.”

“Yes, yes!” insisted a female poorer in worldly goods but not in determination as she pushed herself to the forefront. “I have come all the way from Derethell Province to seek a cure for my blind nephew, and I will not be denied by such as you!”

“The Visitant, the Visitant!” As the crowd took up the refrain Ebbanai, even in the absence of physical contact with any of their twisting, coiling Sensitives, could see emotions beginning to boil among them as ferociously as one of Storra’s spiced stews.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he yelled. “He’s going home!” he added, raising his voice as much as he could while continuing to back up. “Don’t you think even the Visitant has a right to do that?”

“What does a god need with a home?” someone shouted from the center of the crowd. At any moment, it threatened to turn into an aimless mob. “His home is wherever
he
happens to be.”

“Also,” an increasingly desperate Ebbanai informed them, “he is out of many of the medicines he dispenses, and needs to replenish them and do maintenance on his instruments.”

“Instruments!” The young female was so angry her Sensitives were quivering as if a current were being passed through them. “What does a sanctified one need with instruments?”

From within the flamboyant coach, a well-dressed oldster with wrinkling skin flaps appeared. “All this talk of science is a cover, a mask, for the miracles the Visitant performs! We all know that such things are a fantasy, to mollify the rabble, and that the holy one’s cures are the result of spells and magic.”

Rising from his driving squat, the coach’s tethet wrangler turned angrily on his employer. “Either way, my money is as good as yours, and the Visitant as likely to heal my bad leg as your inconstant bowels!” Louder argument between master and mastered ensued, which culminated in several in the crowd taking up the driver’s side. They started to rock the coach with an eye toward putting it over on its side. On the other side of the vehicle, adults and Nursets with offspring scrambled to get out of the way. Rising shouts of anger were joined by the first screams of panic.

“The Visitant should see to the common folk first!” someone was yelling indignantly.

“I hear he takes those with the most money before any others, no matter how serious their afflictions!” exclaimed another angrily.

Tightly curled flanges formed smooth, fingerless fists. Blows began to fall among disputants, their resentment fueled by the fear that in spite of all their hopes and demands, the net-caster’s words might hold true. None in the throng was ready to accept that they might have come all this way, with hopes so high, for nothing. A loud crash came from the center of the developing mob, where the fancy travel wagon had finally been tipped over. Still yoked to the vehicle, the three in-line tethets that drew it began to kick out with their short but powerful legs. Fresh injuries were added to those the supplicants had brought with them.

Momentarily forgotten, Ebbanai wisely took the moment to turn and run.

Would any of them follow? Given the crowd’s overwhelming need to entreat Flinx, it seemed almost inevitable. For at least some, their desperate need to seek his aid far exceeded their fear of how an angry Visitant might react to their uninvited attention.

Had he handled it badly? Ebbanai thought wildly as he raced back down the dirt track. What else might he have done, what else could he have said? He and Storra had worked out what he would say to the crowd beforehand, and his words had not proven up to the task. A glance backward showed the first supplicants surging around the simple gate. The weight of the mob pushed others forward. Splintering sounds reached him as the gate crumbled beneath their combined weight. As he increased his stride, he could hear individual voices clearly: an unholy mix of prayer, hope, and anger. He had no idea how to cope with such fury.

He wondered if the Visitant would.

Flinx sensed the mob long before he could hear it. He had finished attending to the injured individual who was not only the last patient of the day, but the final Dwarra set to receive medical attention at his hands. Simple folk, the last of them filed out of the baryeln barn chatting contentedly among themselves. As usual, one of his hosts was waiting to escort him back to the house for something to eat. This afternoon, it was Storra.

He had done well here, he convinced himself. Had done good things for deserving people, and damn the Commonwealth’s aged, obscure first-contact policies. With the
Teacher
’s repairs completed, there were only final checks to be run on newly refurbished components. Then he could depart this interesting world and resume his seemingly impossible but committed search for the wandering Tar-Aiym artifact.

Storra was talking to him, murmuring something about having prepared a special meal for his last night among them, when he halted on the open ground halfway between the domed house and the barn. In his mind, all had been peaceful, calm, and at ease—until now. For the first time since he had stepped out onto the surface of Arrawd, the emotional aether accessed by his Talent was genuinely disturbed. For the first time, the general tranquillity he had come to savor every morning when he awoke was unsettled. His Talent sensed anger, resentment, fear, and fury. The serene emotions that usually surrounded him, emanating from Storra and his recent patients and the others who worked at the homestead, were suddenly inundated by a thundercloud of hatred and dread, panic and anxiety.

Most disconcerting of all, he perceived that he was at the center of it all.

Storra’s Sensitives dipped toward him. Her expression reflected concern as she looked from his face into the east and back again. “What is it, Flinx—what’s wrong?”

He did not reply; just kept staring into the distance. Before long, a single figure appeared, running hard in their direction. It plunged down the slope so fast Flinx feared for the runner’s safety. Gasping, Ebbanai pulled up alongside his mate. The glances he cast in Flinx’s direction were revealing, though Flinx did not have to meet them. He already knew what was coming.

Yelling, screaming, praying, fighting among themselves, the mob that had shattered the gate and the protocol it represented crested the low rise and came marching down the hillside in an angry wave of the needy. Heading for the house, they swerved to their right the instant several of their number caught sight of the Visitant standing there. Her confidence shorn in the face of the advancing multitude, Storra joined her mate in taking refuge well behind Flinx.

From his shoulders, Pip launched skyward as the seething crowd slowed. Having gained their destination, none of them knew how to achieve their goal. Desperate for and desiring of his help, they realized they did not know how to force him to provide it. They surged back and forth, from side to side, pushing and shoving as they muttered uncertainly among themselves.

Flinx faced them squarely. His head did not hurt, but his stomach was churning. He was the cause of all this. In doing good, he had raised unreasonable expectations. The more Dwarra he had helped, the more had come seeking his help. They would not be denied. Nor would dozens, perhaps hundreds, of others who were presently making the long trek to the lonely peninsula and its fabled homestead.

He saw clearly now. For every native he had helped, for every injured individual he had healed, there would be a dozen or more he would have no choice but to leave behind untouched. Over time, their disappointment would turn to bitterness. He would depart revered by some, but hated by far more. In his desire to lend a hand, he had miscalculated.

Fool, he reproached himself as he confronted the crowd. Experienced but still youthful. He should have seen it coming. Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex would never have made such a mistake. This is what comes of trying to help those who don’t have the background and maturity to understand the nature and limitations of that help, he thought cynically.

Well, what was done, was done. Come whatever, he was leaving. Leaving to help find a solution to an infinitely greater, more threatening problem. He had done what he could for as many of the locals as he could, only to have misjudged the eventual results.

“Help us,” a crippled female in the forefront of the crowd implored him. Her words were fraught with desperation, but her emotions were seething with anger. He had better
not
leave without helping her. A similar mix of need and rage fueled the feelings of the rest of the crowd.