Pandora's Genes (31 page)

Having now steeped himself in Trader theology, Zach had picked out what seemed to be its four basic tenets: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, as long as they share your beliefs. Destroy all learning, science, technology, hygiene, and other practices and artifacts from before the Change. Destroy all people who believe in them and convert the rest. Finally, pray to God daily to kill the wild deenas.

The beliefs made a certain kind of simple sense, and Zach could easily understand their appeal. The only problem was that everything the Traders believed was dead wrong. If they were somehow able to prevail and set back or destroy the few advances that had been made in the Garden and the District, then peace, indeed, would reign on earth, because within another very few generations there would be no more human beings.

Because of his understanding of the beliefs and his ease in repeating them, Billy came to assume that Zach shared their sentiments. He was as proud of his pupil as a mother who has taught her child to speak a complete sentence.

One afternoon while Zach was waiting for Billy, the three iron bolts slid from the door and the door creaked open. Once again Yosh was standing before him.

For a moment Zach blinked to adjust his eyes to the light from the corridor. Something was different about Yosh, something he couldn’t quite isolate, and then he realized: the young leader was clean-shaven, washed, and wearing fresh clothes. He did not look like a Trader.

“Do you like my disguise?” Yosh asked. “I’m off to the Capital. Will I pass for one of your Principal’s loyal subjects?”

Zach felt a chill go through him. “Cleanliness is next to science,” he said, quoting a well-known Trader credo.

Yosh laughed. “You’ve become a true Trader at last,” he said. Then, as if to reassure Zach, he added, “It doesn’t seem to cause illness, though I admit I felt weakened for several hours.”

Zach nodded soberly. “You wouldn’t want to do it very often.”

“Just enough to blend in with the population.”

“Then you go seeking converts?”

Yosh smiled. “We’ve had men there for two years, right under the Principal’s nose. The population is ready for us, Brother Zach. Not all of them are so poisoned with learning as you were.”

Zach was silent a moment, then said, casually, “You’ll have to be very careful. The Principal’s men are everywhere.”

“Some of the Principal’s men are converts. They keep us well informed.”

“I meant,” Zach went on, after he’d digested that last bit of chilling information, “that it’s not easy to know all the ways of the Capital. If I were able to advise you . . .”

Yosh laughed again, then frowned abruptly. “Billy has told me of your remarkable progress, and I have no doubt that you see the truth. But the pull of the devil is strong in you, my friend. You were a scientist many more years than you’ve been a Trader.”

Zach shrugged. He had not expected to be set free so easily.

“Well, I must be off. I wanted to say farewell. I’ll visit you again when I return.”

If you return, Zach thought. Now it was more important than ever to escape. If anyone could identify Trader spies, it was he.

Zach had long since mastered all the basic Trader chants and songs. One morning Billy pressed his face against the barred window, beaming and excited. “I’ve spoken to the First Bishop about you,” he said. “He would like to hear you sing. He has given me permission to teach you the special songs.”

“Special songs?”

“Everything you have learned was made from songs and stories before the Change. We have some new chants and a few songs that were made by Traders. One was even made by Brother Yosh. It is quite wonderful. Listen closely.”

And he began to sing, in his high, wavering voice, the most primitive melody Zach had ever heard – more primitive even than a counting-rhyme from childhood. The words were worse: a garble about the death of scientists atop a pyre of burning books.

Zach easily learned the song, pretending to be impressed. He knew that he could easily write a better song.

And why not? The next day, while pacing his cell and after practicing the new material, he began to make up a song of his own. He realized that to make it convincing he would have to imagine himself in the place of a true believer. He did so, remembering what Yosh had told him about his childhood and the catastrophes that had resulted in the death of his family. As he worked out the melody, he imagined how it would sound accompanied by the feathered lyre. When “The Madness of the Fathers” was as perfect as he could make it, he sang it for Billy. When he had finished, tears were rolling down Billy’s homely cheeks.

“That is beautiful,” he said. “The bishops must hear it.”

In due course the three bishops visited outside Zach’s cell. They looked exactly as Zach had imagined them: dour, elderly men, dressed in the ragged blue robes of the Trader clergy, and each with a remarkably long, tangled, and dirty beard. After introductions had been made, Zach sang his song for them, and two others he had since made up.

The bishops conferred together in whispers, then one approached the window. “This music is godly,” he said. “You must teach us these songs for our services.”

“It would be an honor,” said Zach. He sang the verses again and again while the Bishops repeated and memorized them.

“Who would have thought a scientist could write such beautiful songs?” said the First Bishop before leaving.

“He is no longer a scientist,” said Billy, blushing. “I’ve been working with him for over three years now. He is as much a Trader as you and I.”

“Yes,” said the First Bishop thoughtfully, “the proof is in the songs.”

Zach thanked them humbly, hiding his excitement. His plan was working. He wanted to laugh at the thought of an escape which depended on the attempt to become a holy man in a strange religion.

When Billy came to Zach again he was brimming with excitement. “The Bishops are so pleased with the way I’ve trained you that they’ve picked me to go to the Capital.”

“Congratulations,” said Zach. “When will you be leaving?”

“In the next few weeks, when we receive word from Brother Yosh.”

“I’ll miss you and your instruction,” said Zach, meaning it.

Billy trembled with pleasure, looking more than ever like a scrawny puppy. “I’m happy to have been able to serve you. And I’m grateful to you for the opportunity you’ve given me to convert other scientists.”

“I’ve always thought,” said Zach, “that a convert such as myself would be valuable working in the District. I know the Capital, and I know its ways.”

“Maybe so,” said Billy, “but they’ll never let you out of here. I know that for a fact. Just before Brother Yosh left, he gave strict and irrevocable orders about you. You are never to be harmed, and you are never to leave this cell, ever.”

Zach felt his stomach turn over. “Never?”

“Brother Yosh loves you too much to see you fall into scientific ways again.”

In the end, though, it was Yosh himself who provided Zach with a chance to escape. He did this by dying a martyr on the machines in the Capital, a week after Zach’s conversation with Billy.

Billy brought the news himself, his voice almost unintelligible through his sobs.

Zach was saddened; in spite of everything he felt a strong bond with the strange young Trader leader. But he instantly saw the opportunity which Yosh’s untimely death offered him.

Late into the night, when the torches of all but the watchmen were dark, Zach worked in his cell, creating the most complex and beautiful song he had ever written. He visualized Yosh’s open, gentle face, and put that into the melody; he remembered Yosh’s passionate devotion to what he saw as the truth, and put it into the words. While he was writing the song he felt that he was a Trader. When he had finished, he had written a song at once heartbreaking, evoking the loss of a martyr, and at the same time inspiring, an anthem for the Traders. “The Death of Our Brother” might well become such an anthem, Zach realized, but it couldn’t be helped.

He had Billy send for the bishops at the first opportunity. He sang the song for them and told them, humbly, that he wanted the opportunity to sing it once in front of the assembled congregation of Traders, to memorialize Yosh.

Zach had sung with feeling, and he knew they were moved. Billy began pleading for him: “The memorial will be soon. This is the most fitting tribute. No one else could sing it so well . . .”

Zach saw, through the peephole in his door, that the First Bishop was nodding but still hesitant. “Brother Yosh himself gave orders that this prisoner is never to leave his cell,” he said.

“It was to protect him from being corrupted again by science,” said Billy. “But for the memorial – for an hour or two – under heavy guard, there won’t be any danger.” Billy was stuttering in his earnestness, and Zach felt moved, knowing how difficult it must be for the young preacher to stand up to his bishops. When Billy received no immediate answer, he added, “If Brother Yosh himself could have heard this beautiful song, I’m sure he would have been the first to relax the rules.”

The First Bishop began to pace the corridor. “We’ll see,” he said at last. Inwardly, Zach relaxed. He knew that he had won.

When Billy and the bishops had left, he worked out long and hard, performing exercises and trotting in place until he was covered with sweat and every muscle in his body ached.

He was resting on his straw pallet when he heard the sound of the heavy bolts sliding back. For a moment he thought he had dozed and was dreaming. In all the time he had been here that door had opened only for Yosh. Perhaps they had divined his plan and had come to execute him?

A tall figure stepped inside, the face obscured by a hood. Immediately Zach recognized her: “Jonna!”

“Good afternoon, Brother Zach,” she said. The woman had changed greatly in the years since he had last seen her: she was still ugly, that is, her features were still misshapen, but her face had become peaceful and calm, and now she moved with grace and assurance. Perhaps Yosh had been right: she had a beautiful soul, and had needed only love to let it shine through.

“You seem surprised to see me.”

“I’m astounded.”

“You may have heard that I am priestess in the Trader Church now.”

“Yes, I had heard. I am terribly sorry about Yosh.”

“He was a great man,” she said, her features softening even more. “He showed me what goodness really is. It was because of him that I finally began to believe in the truth. He was of the Church, and it gave him power. It seems to me that power must have been sent from God. I only regret that I was not able to give him a child, to pass on his greatness.”

“I think you gave him much happiness in the time you were together,” said Zach sincerely and with perhaps a trace of envy.

“It’s because of those years that I can go on without him. I’m devoting my life to the Church. To his memory. It’s because of that I’m here.”

Zach nodded.

“You must have wondered why you have not been killed. We have no need for male prisoners. The reason you have been spared is that Yosh loved you. He told me more than once that in a different world you would have been his closest friend.”

“I always felt that too,” said Zach.

“He cared for you too much to let you die a scientist. He knew that you could not help your background – although there are some Traders, I’m afraid a growing number, who feel the best way to convert a scientist is to kill him. Still, Yosh wanted to cleanse your soul, and that is why he had you brought here.”

“That was good of him,” said Zach, oddly moved. Like so many things about the Traders, this too made a kind of cock-eyed sense, and he knew that it had been meant in a loving spirit.

“As his widow, I have some power. Your young preacher has come to me and asked me to persuade the Bishops to let you introduce your song at the memorial service for Yosh. He feels that it would not break the spirit of Yosh’s command to let you out, just the once, under guard, and to return you immediately. I have to agree that it seems right. Before I make a final decision, let me hear this song.”

Feeling self-conscious and not a little dishonest, Zach stood and sang. When he had finished Jonna’s eyes were shining with tears. “It brings him back,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Two days later, Billy came rushing into the corridor, again stuttering in his excitement. On the special holy day set aside in Yosh’s memory, one week from now, Zach would sing his remarkable song in the Trader high services.

Zach’s joy at the news was not faked. This was, then, finally, his chance to escape. His only chance. If he were to fail in this attempt, he knew there would never be another.

A
FTER HE HAD FINISHED HIS
breakfast, there was nothing for Zach to do but wait. By late morning the sound of chanting began in the park outside. He went to the window and saw what appeared to be many dozens of Trader men, women, and children, gathering around the sheltered altar. In another hour or two he would be gone from here or dead. In either case, he would be a free man for the first time in five years.

Once it had been decided that he would sing at the memorial service, Zach had made no further plans. He had not been outdoors in years, and in any case was familiar only with the narrow slice of the town he could see from his window. He would use his wits once he was out, and seize whatever opportunities arose.

He had thought he might be given new clothing to replace his filthy rags, in honor of Yosh, but the Traders valued neatness no more than cleanliness.

The chanting grew louder, and Zach began to pace, not for exercise, but to relieve his tension. He was conscious that once again he was about to betray a trust. He had lied to Billy, whom he genuinely liked, and was perhaps even endangering him; he had lied to Jonna, who had saved his life; and he had written a song that was a tissue of lies. There was truth in the song too, and that was why it was so successful; but all the same it was a betrayal of Yosh, who had spared his life out of love.