The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume Eight (45 page)

It was a miracle that I got out of there. About ten seconds after I burst out through a shattered window into fresh air, the whole prison sort of folded in on itself and subsided into a heap of stones. How come I wasn't squashed by any of the huge slabs of flying rubbish, I simply don't know. All I remember was how hard it was to breathe, because I couldn't stop running, even though my legs were jelly and my lungs stabbed like knives; I ran, dodging falling trees and collapsing buildings, jumping over dead people and people trapped under things, I ran and ran until a particularly violent tremor swept me off my feet and I fell down and no effort on my part could make me get up again. Then, I guess, I went to sleep, or something like that.

I woke up in a weird landscape; masonry trash, blocks of stone, as far as the eye can see; I remember thinking, whatever possessed me to spend the night in a quarry? But then I caught sight of a building I knew; the
Integrity Rewarded
, in Sheep Street, except that Sheep Street wasn't there; just the
Integrity
, taken out of context, floating serenely on a sea of rubble.

I limped over and banged on the door, but it was bolted shut. Pity. I could really have done with a drink (except I had no money, and they don't do credit at the
Integrity.
) I wandered away and just sort of drifted for a while. It was a very long time before I saw anyone, but when I did, it was a patrol of kettlehats. They looked at me and shouted,
You there, stop where you are.
So, naturally, I ran.

T
he great earthquake of AUC 552 was exceptionally violent but extremely localised. It shook down the whole of the Potteries district, so that only a handful of buildings were left standing, but was hardly felt at all in Cornmarket, East Hill or the Grand Crescent. Remarkably, given the scope of the destruction, only about two dozen people were killed, and eight of those were prisoners in the gaol awaiting execution.

I holed up in the
Charity & Austerity
in Pigmarket; a haunt of my youth, where nobody ever asks you anything so long as you have at least ninety trachy. I had considerably more than that, courtesy of some poor dead man whose pocket I picked on my way out of the ruins. I could have afforded enough of the house red to kill a regiment of dragoons, but oddly enough I didn't touch a drop; I had a bowl of soup and half a loaf of grindstone bread, and that was all I wanted. I think I coped really rather well with the realisation – it came up on me like a sunrise – that the earthquake had been for me – an intervention by my God, the Invincible Sun, to get me out of prison and save me from the flames. Well? What other possible explanation can you think of?

I could have been horrified, torn apart by guilt at the thought of the deaths and the damage. Or I could've been really, really, really smug; God loves me so much, He shook down a quarter of the City just for me. I was neither. I accepted what had happened; not my fault, not a victory or a vindication. He knows best, I told myself; if that's what He felt needed to be done, who am I to question?

H
ave you ever been to Eremia? I thought not. If you were thinking of making the trip, take my advice, don't bother. There's nothing there except sand, rocks, murderous heat, biting winds, freezing cold at night. I can only think of one man in the history of the world who wanted to go there, and I have a shrewd suspicion that at the time, he wasn't quite right in the head.

Looking back, I can't understand how I survived. I was out in the desert, just walking. I had nothing, no shoes, not even a water-bottle. On the third, or was it the fourth day, I stumbled across an oasis. I call it that; there was this brown puddle, fringed with tall, thin trees. There was a rock with a sort of ledge, you couldn't call it a cave; under the ledge, I found a dead man. He must've been there for a long time. His skin was brown and hard, like rawhide. His eyes had gone, but his hair was mostly still there; thin, wispy, like the strands of wool you find caught on brambles. He was curled up, asleep. When I moved him, he was as light as a log of rotten wood.

We had many long conversations, the dead man and me. He told me he was a pilgrim, on his way to the celebrated desert oracle at Cocona. He'd gone there to get the answer to a very important question which had subsequently slipped his mind; the answer, though, was,
Yes, but it will not end well.
Looks like they were right, I told him. Well, of course, he said, it's a very reliable oracle.

I did most of the talking. I told him my story; how I'd created God, how He'd outgrown me, moved away from me, how He'd rescued me from prison and fire; but these days He never comes to see me, He doesn't even write – that's how it is, the dead man said, they have lives of their own, what do you expect? Of course, I said, and I know how busy He is, but it'd be nice if He could spare me just five minutes once in a while.

"Here I am," the dead man said. "What can I do for you?"

I looked at Him. "Sorry," I said, "I didn't recognise You there for a minute."

"That's all right," He said.

"Well?" I asked Him. "Are You keeping well? Are You eating properly?"

"I am the Invincible Sun," He said. "I don't eat."

Fair point. At that moment He was everywhere around me, burning, a white heat blazing down from the sky, rising up from the hot sand. "What do You want me to do?" I asked.

"You've done so much," He said.

"That's not an answer."

He had no eyes, but they were filled with pity. "I want you to go to the City," he said. "Give yourself up. Submit to the cruelty and hatred of our enemies. They will put you in prison and they will hang you, and when you die, all the sins of the world will die with you. You don't mind, do you?" He added. "If you'd rather not, I'll understand."

"No, that's fine," I said. "Is there anything You want me to say?"

"Tell them that you were wrong," He said. "Tell them that the miracles were true miracles, that it was I who cured the sick and ended the war, that the scriptures are My holy word, that I saved you from the prison and I sent you back. Tell them everything is true, and everything is good, and that motive is irrelevant, only the outcome matters. It's essential that you tell them, and that they understand. Will you do that for Me?"

"Of course," I said. "Anything else?"

He smiled. "I think that's quite enough to be going on with. I will send others, later, to do the rest."

"It doesn't seem very much," I said. "Go home, give up, tell a few lies, get killed. Are you sure there isn't more I can do to help?"

"Nothing that you're capable of doing," He replied, not unkindly.

"Well, if you're sure," I said. "Can I ask you something?"

"Fire away."

"Why me?"

He smiled. "Why did I choose you as my high priest, out of all the people in all the world?"

"Yes."

"You mean you haven't –" He stopped, grinned, composed His face. "Your name, of course."

"My name?"

"That's right. Eps
eps
. Joke."

I looked Him in the eye. "I don't believe it."

His gaze rested on me like the noonday sun, bright and intolerable, so that I couldn't help remembering Anaximander. "Are you seriously suggesting," He said, "that God has no sense of humour? Now, there's blasphemy."

"But it's not even particularly funny –" I stopped. I was talking to a dessicated corpse. Ah well, I thought.

* * *

L
ater that day, a caravan of salt traders on their way to the coast stopped at the oasis. They were amazed to find anyone there. They said they ought to kill me, for stealing their water, but since I was a lunatic and a holy man, they'd overlook it just this once. I explained that I had to get to the coast as quickly as possible; I have a message from God, I told them. Of course you have, they said.

I didn't feel much like talking on the long walk to the coast, but they wouldn't leave me alone. How did you survive, they asked; how did you manage for food? I told them I had a vague memory of eating beetles, or something of the sort. They laughed and shook their heads; no beetles in the desert, they said. I shrugged. The Invincible Sun must have sent them, I said, so that I wouldn't starve. They gave me an odd look. Your god sent you beetles to live on, they said, that's pathetic. Would it have killed Him to send you sausages and honey-cakes? I thought about that for a moment and said, I think He must have sent the beetles, because clearly there weren't any living there under normal circumstances. I saw no sign that insects had attacked the dead body. What dead body, they said.

T
wo kettlehats were waiting for me at the quay. For some reason, I was in ridiculously high spirits, that end-of-term feeling I hadn't felt since I'd walked out into the sunlight after six days in the Examination Halls, at the end of my last year at the Studium. I waved to the kettlehats as I walked down the gangplank. They looked at me.

"I'm Eps," I said, before they had a chance to open their mouths. "Sorry, Father Deodatus, if that's the name on the warrant. Are you here to arrest me?"

"No talking," they said. "You're with us."

They had one of those closed carriages; a pity, because I'd have liked to look out of the window. It was a bright, sunny day, and the City is always at its best in sunshine; it brings out that deep honey yellow in the stonework, and sparkles on the copper roofs of the temples. I've always admired it; that day, knowing what I did about the Sun, I could understand. It was because He loved the City so much, the buildings and the people looking at them. I was proud of Him for that.

* * *

T
hey must have known well in advance that I was coming, because everything was ready. They'd built the scaffold in the Golden Square, presumably so that the nobility could watch from the windows of their town houses without having to come down and mingle with the common people. For them, the imperial carpenters had built seventeen (I counted them) rows of bleachers, which only goes to show that the moaners are quite wrong and the government can get things done quickly and well if it sets its mind to it. On the outskirts there were the usual mulled wine and hot sausage stalls, quite a few other traders – I noticed a man selling quality imported textiles, and another doing a brisk trade in commemorative pottery figurines. Three squadrons of the Household Cavalry added a touch of that colour and pageantry we've always done so well in the City. I couldn't tell from where I was whether they were charging people for admission, but I'd be surprised if they weren't.

A kettlehat captain in a magnificent gilded breastplate took charge of me and led me through a cordon of dismounted guardsmen to the scaffold steps. I asked him, "Will I have a chance to make a speech?" He shook his head. I was disappointed. I had a message to deliver, after all, and I was surprised to find that no opportunity had been provided. How about a priest, I asked. Shake of the head. But I want to confess my sins, I told him (we were getting closer and closer to the scaffold), I want to tell the people that I've seen the error of my ways and urge them to love and obey the Ecumenical Council. Sorry, he said, and then we were there.

I was starting to panic. I had, after all, been sent there to pass on the word of the Invincible Sun; my death was merely ancillary to that, and there was a terrible risk of missing the point of the exercise. I tried to protest, but the kettlehats proved to be very skilful at moving a person who didn't want to be moved, efficiently and unobtrusively. Mostly it was done by judicious barging and blocking, with firm but gentle pressure from a hand in the small of the back; you have to go where you're nudged, or you lose your balance and fall over. I guess they'd had the practice, but still, I was impressed.

"Gentlemen, be reasonable," I said. We were at the foot of the steps. "A few last words, is that too much to ask? I just want to –"

"Sorry." A knee pressed the back of my knee, and somehow I was standing on the first step. If I'd been ten times stronger and trained from boyhood in the secret arts of the warrior, I don't think there was anything I could've done. I could see the hangman waiting for me at the top of the steps. He had a sort of black bag over his head. This was all wrong. I had to deliver my message, but time was running out. I thought; if He could be bothered to level the Potteries with an earthquake to let me escape the first time, surely He can do something, some little thing, to give me a chance to carry out His explicit instructions. Made no sense. I'd done exactly what I'd been told, so what had gone wrong?

I looked up and there He was, a round white eye in a sea of clear blue, watching, not doing anything. I let them nudge me up the steps, and the hangman grabbed me and put the noose round my neck. "Excuse me," I started to say, but he tightened the knot so I couldn't speak. He trod on my toe, making me step back so I was properly centred on the trapdoor. "Just a –" I croaked, and he pulled the lever.

N
ow then, let's see.

Motivation, we have been taught, doesn't matter. All that counts is the outcome, the end result. Therefore, it didn't matter that my colleagues and I had started the Church as a criminal conspiracy to cheat gullible people out of money. Clear away the nettles and brambles of motive, and underneath them you find a set of circumstances capable of producing the desired result. You find a group of people with a unique combination of talents and abilities – the scientist, the poet, the skilled forger, the scholar and the preacher. Driven by, motivated by, an urgent need of their own, they set about the task of bringing a god to the attention of the public. Consider how many religions, how many gods, show up on our streets in any twelve-month period; scores, hundreds even, and how many of them make it to mainstream acceptance? Quite. But, I dare say, a fair proportion of those religions, those gods, have perfectly viable doctrines, sufficient to serve as the basis for a thoroughly satisfactory Church. The margin, is what I'm trying to say, the edge, the difference between the three hundred failures and the one success, is tiny; but it's real, it's there. It's not just a matter of luck. To succeed, you need the perfectly pitched message, the unforgettably phrased scriptures, the eyecatching iconography, the significant moments indelibly etched on the public consciousness. The trouble with most religions is the people who propound them. They may be charismatic and inspirational, but they're not quite charismatic and inspirational
enough
. Also, they're deficient in those core skills we've just examined. Their scriptures are written in a pedestrian style. They're too new, without the sanctity of ancientness. They're internally inconsistent, or they ask people to believe stuff that ordinary folk can't quite stomach. Their preachers lack that certain indefinable but absolutely indispensable
something
. They are, in other words, amateurs. They lack the professional touch.