Pandora's Genes (28 page)

Yosh frowned in puzzlement. “A girl? No. Why do you ask?”

“My daughter was traveling with me,” Zach said. “When we encountered trouble, she ran off into the woods.”

“We’ve had patrols in the area for weeks,” said Yosh. “There has been no report of a girl traveling alone.”

“When I’m stronger I must try to find her.”

Yosh didn’t answer for a moment, then abruptly he smiled. “You must be curious about the ritual you witnessed this morning,” he said.

“It was most interesting.”

“It is more than interesting,” said Yosh. “It is nothing less than the beginning of salvation for mankind. And I’m happy that we’ve found you. We seldom get a chance to teach the truth to outsiders.”

“Our sins began many thousands of years ago,” Yosh was explaining earnestly. “When the first scientists chopped down the Tree of Knowledge to build an ark, they created the first Change. Men have been Changing the world ever since – and now we are paying for it.”

“Some of those changes saved thousands of lives and reduced the suffering of millions,” said Zach, exasperated. He had been talking to Yosh for only a few minutes, but it seemed to him that the conversation had gone on for many hours. Through his fatigue he felt a growing horror at everything Yosh had to say.

Yosh was nodding sympathetically. “You have been taught that, as have hundreds of generations. The truth, brother, is that those lives were not meant to be saved. Suffering exists only when we go against God’s law. Men were not meant to live as they did before the Change, in cities with tall buildings, depending on machines and chemicals for life. We are meant to live in nature, as God intended. Every little Change is another step away from God. Only when the last traces of science are gone will He lift His curse and call back the wild deenas.”

“You say all change is evil,” said Zach, knowing even as he spoke that Yosh would not listen. “Yet you use manufactured weapons, and build tents, and eat with pottery implements like people everywhere.”

Yosh didn’t even look annoyed. “We construct nothing,” he said. “We use what God puts in our path. And we only use those things that are helpful to us in spreading the truth. The rest, like the evil books, we destroy. When we have completed our work and science has been defeated, we will not need the other things.”

“If it weren’t for books,” said Zach, “you would not know one thing about the history of mankind.”

“We do not read books.”

“Nevertheless, that is where all your knowledge of the past has come from.”

“I know you can’t help your beliefs,” said Yosh sadly. “But eventually you will see the light. The truth is that all knowledge is within you, as it is within each of us.” Yosh was speaking with such sincerity that Zach almost wished he could believe him. The young Trader sat back and smiled. “Enough talk of religion for now. It is your turn to speak for a while. I’d like you to tell me about the Capital. Is it true, for example, that the men living there are required to shave and to bathe every day?”

Yosh seemed as relaxed as if he and Zach were old friends. He was the only adult Zach had ever met who had no lines at all on his face. In some ways he seemed as artless as a child, but Zach knew there must be shrewdness and ambition behind the simplicity. Of course, he would tell Yosh as little as possible about the Capital. Perhaps the Traders were the harmless cultists they had seemed at first, but Zach was beginning to sense a growing danger – not just to the goals he and Will had worked for, but perhaps to the future of the race itself. He started to speak, but was not sure what to say. He did not know whether lies or the truth would be more harmful. After a moment Yosh spoke again:

“But I can see you’re tired. Never mind. Rest now and we’ll talk another time.” With a reassuring hand on Zach’s shoulder, Yosh rose to his feet and left the tent.

Zach watched him go. Through the tent flap he could see Trader men and women, content and purposeful, building fires, cooking, talking, ending the day like people everywhere in the District. But in his nostrils was still the scent of burning books.

Over the next several days, Zach continued to heal. When he could walk unassisted, he noticed that there were always one or two armed men just outside the tent. Although he had said nothing, Zach knew that Yosh must have saved him for a reason, and that the reason would become clear soon enough.

Meanwhile, Zach continued to witness the Trader services each morning, noting with helpless despair that every day another book was destroyed and lost to mankind forever. And daily he and Yosh continued their talks for an hour or two each afternoon.

Typically, Yosh would stroll into the tent, an open smile on his face, as if he were visiting a sick friend in the neighborhood. He would ask after Zach’s health, then sit and begin talking to him of Trader beliefs.

“My first-father was a minister of the old religion,” Yosh told Zach one day. “Of what is called Christianity. Religion had been the vocation of our family for generations, even before the Change. After the Change, it continued. We lived in a small town high in the western mountains. My father had a flock of ten families who would come to hear him read from a so-called holy book called the Bible. Science is so clever, you see, that it had clothed itself even in religion. Well, my father in his ignorance kept other books too and even raised fowl in a cage he had constructed from the body of a dead machine. We didn’t know any better. We thought it was as good a life as could be expected.

“And then my mother died of the woman sickness. Her time had not even come, the pregnancy scarcely showed. Soon after, my younger brothers and sister all became ill from eating a stew made of new-plants. The child of our nearest neighbors was attacked by a fox-cat that same day, and he and all my brothers and my sister died on the next day, in terrible agony. That night my second-father killed himself by drinking fire-berry poison.

“The day after, my first-father woke me early and made me watch while he destroyed everything inside the cabin. He threw plates and bowls to the floor, he pulled the wicks out of lamps and smashed their bodies against the stone fireplace, he ripped books in half and tore their pages into tiny pieces. He gathered the rubble, and all the manmade things from outside, and piled them in the center of the room. The last thing he put on the pile was the leather covering of his Bible, now torn into strips. He turned to me than and explained what he had done. He told me many of the things I have told you, and made me understand that I must work to undo the evils of the Change, to trade all things made by science for the natural ones provided by God in His love.

“When he had finished speaking, my father took a coal from the fireplace and set the pile of rubble afire. He picked me up and brought me outside the cabin. Then he turned and walked back into it. I will never forget his face. The look of suffering it had always held was gone. He was at peace. He didn’t even cry out.

“I was young at the time, about nine years old. I remember looking into the flames and seeing all those ungodly things being consumed in the clean fire. I knew immediately that God had spoken to me through my father, and that He wanted me to begin my life as a Trader in His service. I have been teaching His truths ever since.”

Zach had no answer. Yosh’s story was not unusual, except for his mystical conversion. The conclusions he had reached would undoubtedly seem reasonable to most of the people of the District.

They sat in silence a moment, then Yosh turned the conversation to Zach. “And you, brother,” he said, “you come from a part of the world where there are many things left from before the Change. Were your fathers too taken in by science?”

“I didn’t grow up in a town,” said Zach. “And I never had even a first-father.”

Yosh raised his eyebrows. “But you have lived in the Capital,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You told us when we first found you that you are one of the Principal’s men. I am very curious about him. We know that he has built an empire on the ruins of a pre-Change city. We know that all the area to the east belongs to him. And we know that most of his people are godless and are made miserable by the wild deenas.”

“As are most men in the world today.”

“But need not be, once they understand the truth. What sort of man is the Principal?”

“A good man,” said Zach. “A dedicated leader.”

“But misled by the devil,” said Yosh. “Of course, I have not visited the District, except just across the border. I don’t know what to expect in the Capital.”

“You’re planning to travel there?”

“Perhaps,” said Yosh. “There is much to see and much to do in this world. Does the Principal guard his streets with soldiers?”

“Some streets,” said Zach. “But truly, I have not been in the Capital for a very long time.”

“Is he planning to extend the borders of the District?”

“I can’t tell you that either. Only the Principal himself knows what his plans are.”

Yosh shook his head and frowned. “I believe you know a great deal more than you are telling. And I wish for your own sake that you would tell me more.”

Zach could not help liking Yosh. In spite of his beliefs, the young Trader leader was intellectually quick and instinctively warm and generous. There was no question that his desire to obliterate all traces of “science” was sincere and based on the highest motives. There was also no question now that Yosh represented a deadly threat to everything that Zach believed in. Daily, Zach was becoming stronger. He knew that he must watch for the right moment to escape and take his knowledge of the Traders to the Principal, no matter the consequences.

Though he was carefully guarded, in some ways Zach felt himself a part of the Trader community. After services and the noontime meal, he and Yosh often sat together in the tent or under a tree, playing chess and talking. Yosh was quite a good chess player, and Zach suspected more than once that the younger man had let him win to save his pride. As they played, Jonna would often sit with them, kneading Yosh’s back with her strong hands, her misshapen face partly hidden by a thin scarf. She seldom had much to say but seemed, as did most women here, content. At moments like this Zach too felt at peace, as if he had known these people all his life.

Beneath the contentment a more practical part of Zach knew that however much Yosh liked him, the Traders had not saved his life for the sake of friendship.

He was not entirely surprised when, after Yosh had gone on an extended trip into the heart of the Trader empire, Galen and two other men took him early one morning into the woods beyond sight or sound of the camp. There they tied him securely in such a way that twisting the ropes put unbearable pressure on the joints of his fingers and wrists.

As soon as Zach saw how the morning would go, he moved his center of consciousness into a quiet place deep within his mind, where he became a remote observer while Galen questioned him closely for several hours, asking the same questions under torture that Yosh had asked him in friendship.

In truth, there was very little Zach could tell them that they did not already know, and nothing that would prove immediately harmful to the Principal. What they wanted was simply confirmation that the Capital was, in fact, a repository of much that remained from the old technology; that there were vast caches of ancient weapons in the Principal’s armory; that there was one great building and several lesser ones, called libraries, all heavily guarded and containing hundreds of thousands of those symbols of pre-Change evil, printed books.

It was only when Galen began questioning Zach about the Garden that he had to think carefully before answering. He was forced to admit that the Garden was indeed inhabited by women, and that they were under the informal protection of the Principal: these facts could be readily ascertained from any of the small number of people living near the border. He denied vigorously, again and again, the rumors that science was practiced in the Garden. Such rumors had understandably been prevalent in the area for years; never before had they assumed such sinister significance. At last Galen gave up, though Zach could tell he was not completely satisfied.

He was able to return to camp on his own feet, though he knew it would be some time before he could use his hands again. Jonna calmly attended to him, first putting a dislocated finger back into place, then setting three broken fingers on his right hand. She splinted each and wrapped them in wet leaves of a sort Zach had not seen, which shrunk as they dried, holding the splints in place. When she had finished, she applied soothing herb compresses to his swollen knuckles and wrists.

“Where did you learn the use of healing herbs?” he asked her while she worked, to distract his own mind.

She looked up, surprised. “It is something the women in my family have always known,” she said.

He hesitated, then spoke again. “You have always seemed to me different from the other Traders. Are you a true believer?”

She shrugged. “What’s important is that they treat me better than anyone did before. My husbands used to make fun of my face and beat me. Yosh says that my face doesn’t matter. He says I have a beautiful soul.”

Zach nodded thoughtfully. Yosh didn’t, in fact, seem to notice that Jonna was different from other women. It must be terrible, he thought, to be a woman scorned in a world where women were a rarity.

I haven’t been with them very long,” she went on. “But Yosh has ordered us to return to the Trader capital. He’s told me I will receive true instruction there.”

“When is this trip to take place?” Zach asked, suddenly alert.

“Tomorrow. Or so Galen tells us. We’ve been packing all day.”

That night Zach lay awake long after everyone else in camp was asleep. His hands and wrists hurt badly, and he was not certain that he would be able to withstand more questioning, if, indeed, Galen didn’t plan simply to kill him in the morning. He had hoped to be able to find out the location of the Trader capital, but saw now that he had already waited too long to make his move.

There was a guard outside his tent, he knew, and an unknown number of sentries at the perimeter of the camp. Raising his voice only as much as necessary, he called out for the guard.