The Engineer Reconditioned (33 page)

"What was your punishment?" Tamsin asked.

"Sanity," Sapher replied, and picked up the gun.

Tamsin threw his spear. There was a flash of light and that spear turned to ash. Its blade fell red hot out of the air to clang against the base of the artefact and there set a small fire. For a moment Tamsin thought Sapher had shot his spear out of the air. He had not. The gun was pointed off to one side.

"Too easy," said Sapher, then he put the gun up against his own face and pulled the trigger. Tamsin ran to his brother as he fell to the ground. Sapher lay in the grass gasping in agony. His face was burned down to the bone. He had not waited long enough and there had not been sufficient charge in the gun. Tamsin halted then turned to Ghort.

"Please," was all he said.

Ghort drove his wide-bladed spear into Sapher's chest, and ended it.

All but one of the tigers slid off into the grasses the moment Sapher died. The tiger that remained was the one that had led them to the clearing. How could it have been any other? It watched them while they dug a hole with Ghort's spear and placed Sapher in it. It watched them while they filled it in, then it moved towards them when they were ready to return to the village.

"Is that it now?" said Ghort. "Have you finished?"

The air distorted and emitted a low plangent groan. In place of the tiger now stood the shape of Temron.

"I'm never finished," said the Owner.

Tamsin stepped forward. He held the gun at his side.

"Why are we less than animals to you?" he asked.

The Owner regarded him, eyes changing to red now, face slewing and blurring and changing.

"We have an agreement," he said.

Tamsin fought his anger. He'd just asked the question one might ask of a god. The Owner was not a god. He had to remember that. He glanced aside as Ghort stepped forward.

"I'm ready now," said the big man.

The Owner nodded and gestured for him to come forward. Ghort did so. The Owner reached out and took hold of his pendant, pulling and snapping the chain. Ghort sagged, sank to his knees, then with a sigh he fell over onto his side. Tamsin moved closer. His brother had killed himself because of this ... man. He knew that the Ghort he knew was now dead. He had the gun. It was charged ... But he knew that was wrong. He knew that he didn't understand anywhere near enough.

"He was Ghort — quiet and dependable and distant ... yet he told me he has lived many lives. Who was he?"

With Ghort's pendant clutched in his right hand the Owner carefully studied Tamsin.

"He was a foolish man who served me badly. Now he is a wise man who will serve me well," he said. Tamsin closed his eyes. Quite deliberately he raised the gun then shoved it into his belt pouch. He said,

"You are real and now everything has changed. How can I be at peace? How can I just live the life I have always lived?"

"My answer should be that it is not for me to answer you. But you are somewhat unique, Tamsin. I can give you more if you wish it. Most people don't. Most people lack the imagination to see beyond the simple act of living. Would you serve me, Tamsin?"

"Yes, I would."

"Then first, Tamsin, you must learn wisdom and the patience that is integral to it." Tamsin felt his soul pendant grow hot against his chest, then slowly begin to cool. He pressed the palm of his hand against it and tried not to be frightened of what he knew it meant. As the air around him distorted and the immensity behind reached out to pull him back the Owner spoke again.

"Raise your people up, Tamsin," he said.

Tamsin knew that he would, and that he had more than one lifetime in which to do so.
ABOUT "THE GURNARD"

I have to say this is one of my favorite stories and surprise surprise here I am again having a go at religion, getting wrapped up in a weird planetary ecology involving a nasty parasite, and liberally sprinkling it all with some gratuitous violence. This story was another casualty of Tanjen folding, for Anthony had started his own magazine called
Night Dreams
in which he published the first half of this in

'96. The mag did not last long enough for anyone to see the second half. However, in '98 Graeme Hurry came to the rescue and published the complete story in
Kimota
.

THE GURNARD

Either side of the door to this church of the Fish, two iron-scaled creations gaze down from posts of heather wood. They are representational of Gurnards only in that they are readily identifiable as fish. Church artisans, like the Clergy, have never allowed anything so irrelevant as fact to get in the way of their calling.

On the iron scaling of the door itself, Sirus Beck knocked with the butt of his gun, then holstered the weapon. Whilst waiting impatiently, he gazed out at hills like pregnant seals below the falling box of the moon. Beyond the hills, snow-clad mountains faded into green sky and could be mistaken for cloud. There flowed the Changing Waters. He knew this just as he knew so much else about the Church, for his teachers had driven it into him with a leather strap. It was his conceit that he would have fled this place even without the feel of the strap across his back. At an early age, he had learnt to read, and absorbed much from the church library that the other acolytes had missed. It was his conceit that he had left because he had not been stupid enough to believe, and he had not expected to come back. Returning his attention to the nearby hills, he noted a flock of sheep flowing across the land, and dropped a hand to the butt of his gun before turning at the sound of the view-hatch grating open.

"Yes?" asked the belligerent face beyond the grid of thick wires. Beck recalled that someone had ordered the grid fixed there after a sheep had knocked on the door then ripped off the face of the acolyte who had opened the hatch. This sort of thing often happened.

"I am summoned," said Beck, not trying too hard to hide his irritation.

"Hah!" came the informed reply.

When there was no further reaction, Beck felt the impetus build. It frightened him. If this fool did not let him in on request, he would have to attempt bribery, or scale the lichenous wall, or pick the lock. The only other option would have him throwing himself against the door and clawing at the iron.

"Will you let me in or will you explain to the Wife of Ovens why you turned away a Baptiser?" That brought a frown to the bristly visage and Beck then saw, by the broken teeth and scars, that this man had already run contrary to Church law.

"You know what'll happen if you're lying?"

Beck nodded. Of course he knew. He did not want them to seal him in a drowning jar, but he
had
been summoned. Choice did not come into it, for the voice of the Gurnard had spoken to him on a cellular level and he did not have the knowledge to resist it. Bolts and latches clacked and rattled inside before the door was quickly drawn open. Scarface stood there in stiffened hide armour, a crossbow across his arm, cocked and loaded with a barbed quarrel. With a glance over his shoulder, Beck quickly stepped inside.

The inside of the church was all dank stone across which biolights crept in search of the bladders of blood that were hung to feed them, and as a consequence of that nourishment, the glow of the genfactored creatures was red. The algal life coating the floor in patterns as of frost on a window, was scuffed by the passage of many feet, but still regrowing in places it all but concealed the mosaics. On the ceiling these mosaics were clear behind translucent stone. They depicted strange hoofed animals with woolly pelts, the like of which Beck had never before seen — though their heads were similar to those of sheep. Other just as unlikely herd beasts crowded the ceiling along with birds and fishes, plants, insects. The doctrine of the Church had it that these were creatures of Earth.
And as real
, thought Beck.

"Come with me," said Scarface, and led Beck down corridors he remembered from what he considered the most grey and miserable time of his life. As an orphan he had not been given any choices. As one of the Trindar Becks he had fled before they broke his will. Scarface led him into an area to one side of the entrance hall. He wanted to go straight ahead and down as he was impelled to do, but the pressure wasn't so bad now he was inside the church and he could handle a detour or two. He immediately recognised the door he was brought before. Often he had stood outside it shivering with fear and anger. Scarface knocked and opened the door.

"We have one here who claims he is summoned," Scarface said.

"Sirus Beck," said Morage, looking up from the paperwork on his desk. Beck stepped past scarface into the office and the door was closed behind him. He walked to the desk, pulled out a chair and sat.

"I did not give you leave to sit."

"I don't really care."

Morage glared at him.
He has not changed so much
, thought Beck. After ten years his beard was greyer and his red robes faded, but the man's eyes were still the malicious focus of his face. Morage enjoyed power — enjoyed meting out punishments.

"I could have you beaten and hung from the walls."

"You would do that to a Baptiser?"

Beck tried not to smile. He knew enough about Church structure and doctrine to know that, as a summoned Baptiser, he was the province of the Wife of Ovens only, not the Inquisition of the Church. Should Morage seek to exert authority over him he risked his own drowning jar. Thinking on this, Beck's gaze strayed to the corner of the room where a spherical glass jar a metre in diameter contained the remains of Morage's predecessor. The man was naked, his wrists tied to his ankles, his head lodged between his knees, his skin bluish and his eyes sunken away — the preservative he had been drowned in not being sufficient to prevent all decay. Baptiser or not, it wouldn't do to push Morage too far. Beck stood.

"I think it best I see the Wife," he said.

Morage sat back. "What proof do we have that you are summoned?"
He's starting to play
, though Beck.
I should have been more circumspect
, "You know the proof as well as I."

"Yes, but perhaps before you are brought to the chamber I should hold you for a while. It would be easy for a potential assassin to claim to be summoned ... "

Beck felt a sudden surge of anger and fear. Petty — that was Morage. Beck rested a hand on the butt of his holstered gun and leant across the desk.

"A lot of years have passed, Morage, but I haven't forgotten you," he said. Morage glanced at the gun. He obviously had not seen it until then, and just as obviously the doorman would be in for a beating for not relieving Beck of this weapon. Morage tried to sneer as he waved his hand at Beck.

"Go to the Wife," he said. "I have no time for this." Beck went, the anger and fear slewing away as he was once again on course, and being replaced by faint amusement in that the gun made it even more likely he was an assassin. Even then he could feel the presence of the Gurnard in his emotions. In a moment he was on a main corridor leading into the centre of the church where the Wife of Ovens tended her fires. Already he could feel the increase in warmth and smell from flames of marsh gas. And as he walked the impetus took hold of him, drove him. He was vaguely aware that he was accompanied as the corridor he followed dropped down into the earth by sections of stairway, each marked by decorous drowning jars. At the end of the corridor he entered the huge central chamber, hot from the mouths of the ovens set in the walls. At the centre of this room, on a pedestal of heather wood decorated with sheep skulls, rested a wide glass pot, big enough to bathe in, and containing water the colour of bilge from an iron boat. Beck ran across the crumbling floor and thrust his hand into the pot. Something moved there. Spines entered his fingers and fire travelled up his arm. He vaguely noted two of the Clergy moving quickly forward to prevent him spilling the pot as he pulled away.

"He will have visions," somebody said.

"Of that I have no doubt. The chemistry is complex enough," said someone with an accent he did not know. He looked around as the fire hit his neck and branded the side of his face. The Wife of Ovens stood there in her robes and ceremonial apron. Next to her stood a creature with black skin, white hair, and blue eyes, and the strangest clothing. As he fell, Beck thought that the visions had already begun. On Earth sheep eat grass and gurnards are the most unassuming of fish. In Nuremar, the day before a Baptiser's arrival at the church, a family was massacred by sheep, and in a hundred churches people prostrated themselves before pots of dirty water. Erlin considered these facts, recorded them, and made no comment. In a church of the Fish it was best to make no comments about anything — to remain the detached observer. When first she was shown to her room she thanked her escort and smiled, ignoring the threat of the empty drowning jar in the corner. She was here to observe and to study, not to judge.

"So anyone could be chosen to be a Baptiser?" she asked.

The Wife of Ovens, in her voluminous robes draped with a thousand amulets, and her thick hide ceremonial apron, nodded sagely and smiled her satisfaction. Erlin thought she looked precisely like a female Buddha; hugely fat, bald, and smug.

"Yes child, even you could be chosen."

Erlin turned away for a moment in an attempt to keep her expression serious. Here, the Wife was very old — seventy years solstan. Erlin, being a member of the human Polity and a citizen of Earth, had access to technology of a civilization that now spanned one tenth of the galaxy. She was two hundred and thirty years old and was determined to live forever, barring accidents.

"Yet it would seem," she said, "that no Northerners or island people are chosen." The Wife showed a touch of annoyance. "That is so, but they could be chosen at any time." Erlin nodded, her expression showing nothing but gratitude at having things so clearly explained to her. Of course she could have pushed it. She could have mentioned that in the entire history of this church no-one had been chosen who had not spent some time living in this building, eating the food, drinking the water. The same rule applied to every church of the Fish. Erlin irradiated her food and drink before ingesting it. She had no wish to get religion.