A Just Farewell (6 page)

The high cleric sighed. “And Sarah, do you
deny taking pleasure from Paul’s tainted creation? Do you deny
breaking your sacred wedding vow to your Maker and taking pleasure
from Paul’s touch?”

The woman sobbed and shook her head.

The high cleric nodded. “Paul and Sarah,
your selfishness has invited the great devil into our tribe at a
time when we must strengthen ourselves to carry our fight against
the unbelievers into the purgatory between our Earth and the
Maker’s heaven. You commit such affronts in a time when we cannot
afford mercy.”

Abraham gasped when the largest of the
clerics surrounding Paul and Sarah withdrew a long, curved knife
from his tunic. He knew immediately how the clerics planned to
punish Paul, and Abraham attempted to turn away. But his brother
Ishmael gripped his shoulders, and his father Rahbin grabbed
Abraham’s chin so that his youngest boy could not turn away his
gaze.

“You will not close you eyes, boy.” Rahbin
whispered. “You will soon turn from a boy into a man, and you can
no longer close your eyes to the Maker’s justice.”

Abraham’s knees trembled. He didn’t struggle
against his brother and father’s grip, knowing such a fight would
be vain, and that such a fight would only guarantee him a beating
once he returned to his family’s underground home. Thoughts surged
through his mind before the cleric plunged the blade into Paul’s
neck. Abraham remembered all the times Paul had waved at him upon
the surface, and Abraham recalled the occasions he had watched
Paul’s hands skillfully clean the animals the village brought to
his shop. Who would take Paul’s place as butcher within the tribe?
How long would the village have to forage throughout the ruins of
the unbelievers’ city to find the foodstuffs to replace the meat
that would be lost without a working butcher shop? What would
happen to Paul and Sarah’s children? Hadn’t one of Paul’s cousins
been among the martyrs who pulled the rockets out of the sky, and
didn’t that association merit that Paul and Sarah receive a little
compassion?

Abraham felt sick the moment the knife
ripped into Paul’s neck. The blood, the gore and the gurgle
shattered some vital piece of Abraham’s soul. He whimpered at the
grizzly sight of the cleric cutting through the butcher’s spine and
sawing that blade through his victim’s neck. He whimpered, but his
brother dug his fingers deeper into Abraham’s shoulder as his
younger brother’s body turned soft. Abraham pulled against his
father’s grasp, but Rahbin’s hands squeezed his boy’s face like a
vice and forced Abraham to stare at the severed, bleeding head the
cleric held high for the crowd’s consideration. Abraham’s heart
screamed to see how the butcher’s open eyes stared at him.

“Praise be to the Maker!” The high cleric
spoke.

“Praise be to the Maker!” The crowd
chanted.

The high cleric didn’t need to explain the
punishment Sarah would pay for the adultery she had committed
against the Maker with Paul. The clerics lifted her from the ground
after she knelt, and wailed, at the butcher’s headless corpse, and
they struck her with their fists until she shambled towards the
edge of the village, her hands lifted to protect her face from the
blows dealt by her captors. The first of the stone struck her the
moment she stepped beyond the unmarked boundaries of her community.
Others immediately followed while the woman’s hands gripped her
dark glasses and pressed them to her face so that none of the rocks
that cut and bruised at her face could reveal the color of her
eyes.

Rahbin lifted a stone from the ground and
placed it in Abraham’s hand.

“Do not shame us, Abraham. You must cast
your stone before that woman perishes. Do not shame us by being a
coward.”

Abraham hardly looked towards the woman, and
his stone sailed wide of Sarah’s face. The effort didn’t satisfy
Rahbin, who lifted another stone from the ground and forced it into
Abraham’s hand.

“That isn’t enough,” Rahbin growled. “You
must strike her, and your throw must be judged to deliver hurt. Do
not cower, boy. The stones we throw cast the great devil from her,
saving her soul and freeing our village from his taint. Do your
duty and cast your stone before the clerics judge you to be a
coward.”

Abraham wanted all of it to end. He wanted
to retreat back beneath the ground, where he could bury his head
into the pillow of his cot, away from the gaze of the bearded
clerics, far from the still open eyes of the butcher’s severed
head. He realized he would be unable to retreat until the men of
the tribe threw the last stones and killed the woman who committed
adultery against their Maker. Abraham realized the woman would die
whether or not he threw a stone, and so he swallowed the sickness
he felt rising from his stomach and cast his stone. Abraham’s stone
struck Sarah’s bloody forehead, and for a moment, the woman’s hands
released their grip upon her dark glasses. Yet Sarah recovered a
piece of strength, and her hands returned to her face to prevent
those glasses from falling off of her eyes just as she collapsed
upon the ground, where stone after stone struck her body to shatter
her bones until her breathing ceased and a broken thing lay upon
the ground where there had moments earlier been a woman.

“Very good, son,” and Rahbin nodded to his
young son. “You will appreciate the Maker’s justice more as you
grow into a man, and you will come to feel honored that our creator
employs you as a tool in its administration.”

Only Abraham didn’t feel the least blessed
that night as he used his pillow to suffocate his sobs. He couldn’t
chase away the image of the cleric’s knife sawing through the
butcher’s neck, nor could he seem to wipe clear all the blood from
his vision. His hand kept gripping a phantom stone, and the weight
of that rock would not fall from his palm no matter how he shook
his hand. He couldn’t fall asleep, and so Abraham sat upright upon
his cot as something moved from within the jacket tossed across his
wooden stool. His favorite burrowing cockroach friend, with its
orange shell dotted with decorative swirls, dropped upon the floor,
where it scurried to the center of the room and lifted its fine
antennae as if waiting for Abraham to give an explanation of the
day’s justice.

“You shouldn’t linger in the light, friend.”
Abraham whispered. “You were in my jacket, and you heard what the
clerics warned, that any creation done without the Maker’s blessing
is a cursed thing. I didn’t pray before I painted you, and so I’m
afraid I turned you into a wicked thing. So scurry back into the
corners and into the shadows before someone finds you in my
chamber. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you, friend, but you must
leave this community before someone squashes you beneath a
boot.”

Abraham watched the bug scurry away at his
command; and though he was certain that any of his cockroaches with
the painted shells would be killed the instant anyone but him
looked upon them, Abraham couldn’t help but hope that his friend
would return. His father and his brother so often reminded him that
he was about to become a man, but Abraham still felt like a little
boy.

And little boys needed friends.

* * * * *

Governor Chen rubbed her eyes, but she
couldn’t dispel the sight of that suffering and gore from her
imagination no matter how dark she turned the cinema’s screen. She
might have forgiven the tribes for their archaic laws had it not
been for the violence, or for the look of satisfaction that crossed
upon the faces that witnessed such a brutal execution. She couldn’t
fathom the worship of any god who asked for such terrible justice.
She would never understand how the savages could believe that any
Maker could bring such pain to his creation. Those of the tribe had
taken such joy in the stoning of a woman whose only crime, as far
as Kelly saw it, was the loving of her husband. If the tribe
delivered such hurts to their own kind, what hurts did the savages
long to deliver to those who live beyond their reach in the
orbiting castles?

Yet that boy had hesitated to throw his
stone. The fine sensors implanted upon that small cockroach had
constructed such a clear view of the scene while the bug hid within
the boy’s jacket. Perhaps there was hope within the child. The bug
had monitored how that child’s heart had raced at the terrible
gore, and Kelly didn’t doubt the boy must’ve been terrified. She
saw how that boy had hesitated to cast the stone. So long as the
clerics’ brimstone interpretation of their faith appalled and
frightened the children, wasn’t there then the hope that Earth and
its savages might be redeemed, hope that the ultimate answer
wouldn’t need to be executed in order to protect the civilization
Kelly’s kind had spent centuries to shape?

Kelly tapped the projector’s controls, and
one of her favorite musicals of sound and color danced upon the
screen. She doubted the songs would thrill her following what she
had watched through the eyes of that bug, but Kelly knew the sight
of that violence would prevent her from catching a moment of rest.
More than ever, she craved to see what the world had long ago
been.

* * * * *

Chapter 6 – Time to be a Man

“Tell me, brother. Did the operation
hurt?”

“You worry too much about pain, Abraham.
Pain is only another color brushed into the Maker’s glorious
creation.”

“But did it hurt?”

Abraham and Ishmael were busy sweeping and
cleaning the floors of their subterranean home before the day’s
sunrise. The orbiting castles long ago forced the tribes’ families
to live beneath the ground, but that didn’t mean they needed to
grovel through the dirt like common bugs. The Maker taught his
people to make the most of whatever surroundings he gifted them,
and so sons of the tribes spent many hours scrubbing the dirt
floors and walls before they applied the lacquers and oils that
would harden their chambers against mildew and moisture. The Maker
also taught that all work, no matter how tedious young boys might
think it to be, demanded care and attention, and so Abraham’s
constant questions exasperated Ishmael.

“Will you concentrate on your work if I tell
you about the procedure?”

Abraham smiled. “I promise to work like
never before if you do.”

“Maker forgive us and keep father from
catching us prattling when we should be working.” Ishmael set down
his brush and took a seat leaning against the wall. “You don’t feel
anything when the clerics put the Maker’s weapon inside of your
body, brother. You feel only a little more than a prick as the
clerics stick a needle attached to a tube into your arm. They ask
you to count to ten, and you fall asleep before you can reach five.
It feels like you sleep for only a minute, but your awake hours
later with the Maker’s weapon placed within your body. Only then
can you can wear one of the capes that announces you are a man, and
a warrior, of the tribe. Only then are you ready to deliver the
Maker’s wrath in his war against the unbelievers.”

“Did it leave a mark?”

Ishmael pulled at his tunic to reveal the
long scar that ran across his abdomen. Abraham held his breath as
he followed the small dots of pink tissue that marked where the
clerics who conducted the operation inserted the needle whose
thread had stitched his brother back together. The scar appeared
pink and tender, though nearly a season had passed since Ishmael
had undergone the surgery. Ishmael approached Abraham and took his
brother’s hand, gently setting Abraham’s fingers upon the knot that
protruded beneath the skin just above the navel that showed the
location of the explosives implanted within his body, ready for a
moment when Ishmael might find himself in a position to deliver a
blow against the unbelievers.

“Does it hurt?” Abraham repeated his
question.

Ishmael chuckled. “There are some mornings
when it is sore, but the discomfort is a minor cost to pay for the
right to wear a cape.”

“Who controls the weapon within your
stomach?”

Ishmael shrugged. “The Maker of course,
brother. The Maker moves through the clerics, as he moves through
us. Whenever my weapon should detonate, I do not doubt the Maker
will be the one who presses the button to deliver me to my
martyrdom.”

A mumble of footsteps and hushed voices
echoed through the subterranean chamber, chasing Abraham and
Ishmael back to scraping their cleaning sponges against the
flooring and walls. Father Rahbin appeared suddenly around a
corner, followed by none other than the high cleric and a pair of
his bearded associates. Ishmael and Abraham furiously moved their
sponges, both of them determined to show the bearded men who
visited their home that they exercised their due diligence in the
completion of the tasks father assigned them. The high cleric never
paid any home a casual visit, for the time he was required to spend
in contemplating the Holy Book rarely afforded him the occasion to
leave his private apartments. Abraham wondered what business
brought the high cleric to his home? Was he or his brother in
jeopardy of facing a punishment like the one delivered to the
butcher and his wife? Did the high cleric come to Abraham’s home to
make him pay for painting cockroach shells in a rainbow of colors
with the dyes he stole from his mother’s loom?

The high cleric smiled softly at trembling
Abraham. “There is no reason to fear me, son. Know that the Maker
walks beside me, and that the Maker brings you good news. We come
to discuss your future.”