Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (47 page)

“He's been this way for hours,” the imam explained. “Didn't think he should be alone.”

“I didn't think so, either,” piped in the AS hanging on Guano's chest.

“Sally sent me down, Guano,” the priest said, as he sat down in a mirror of the imam's own posture.

“Eeesss . . . pllleeeaaasssinggg . . . knowww . . . sheee thiiinksss oppponnn me,” the kessentai answered, head still bowed.

From the sack Dwyer drew a bottle and a jar. “She thought you could use a drink, Guano. And she didn't think you should get drunk alone. So I've got this one time special dispensation, better than from the Pope, to share a drink with you. The jar's for you. The bottle . . . that's for me.”

“For us,” al Rashid corrected.

Only one of the moons had risen, a bright dome in heaven, casting a sharp shadow from the tripartite statue. Finba'anaga stood before that statue, its shadow running across his legs and claws.

“Why?” the kessenalt asked of the statue though, it being merely stone, it could not give him the answer he sought. “Why?” he asked again, fruitlessly. “I believed in you, and in the old gods. I believed in the message you carried, and yet you abandoned me. And now this alien faith will spread, by order of the Clan Lord, no less, and the old ways will be lost forever.”

It was too much to be borne, really. And Finba could see no way to make it better. Still, he believed in the old gods. If they had proven less powerful than this new one of the humans . . . Well, and so the humans proved more powerful than us.

Pained, with a deep soul-searing inner agony, Finba turned from the statue and began the long trudge upward to the top of the acropolis of the city of the Posleen. Just once, before turning a bend, he twisted his head back to look again at the statue.

Why?

The path wound upward, between rough, rocky walls. Head bowed down in defeat, Finba paid the walls no mind. He barely noticed the ground upon which he trod.

At the top of the path, Finba looked upward, as if seeking the human ship that had brought this ruin upon him. I would curse you, he thought, but, since your God is more powerful than mine, such a curse would be nothing but another exercise in futility. And of those I am very tired.

In truth, I am tired of life. Tired . . .

Finba picked his way through the pyramids dotting the top of the acropolis, to the edge. From there he looked out over the city. I had this uncovered. I had the walls rebuilt, the paths recleared. Gods of my forefathers, was it all in vain?

Unlike all other Rememberers in living memory, Finba'anaga had never tossed his stick. He took it now from his harness and, looking at the square where he had met ultimate defeat at the hands of the humans, he raised the stick high overhead and threw it.

“You win,” he whispered. He then closed his eyes and followed the stick, over the edge of the mesa and down. The only sound he made was when his body struck pavement, and even that was involuntary.

“We've won here, Guano,” Dwyer said, his speech only a little slurred. “The People of the Ships are going to become Christians.”

“Well,” al Rashid shrugged, “I never could explain to them how to find Mecca to bow for daily prayers. And the whole Hajj thing? That was just never going to happen.”

The imam's speech was clearer than Dwyer's, even though he'd drunk as much if not more. Then again, he was Egyptian and was not exactly a stranger to beer.

“This is good,” Guano said through his AS. “But you have won, Father. The clan lord, Tulo'stenaloor, has directed his people to become Catholic.”

“That's something I wanted to talk to you about, too, Guano. You see, while Tulo may order them to join my faith, only you have shown any ability to persuade them to adopt Christianity in any form.”

“They will still follow orders,” Guano said.

“That's true, I'm sure,” the priest agreed, reaching once again for the bottle, then shaking it suspiciously and casting a glare at al Rashid. "But following orders may or may not save their souls. That's where you come in, Reverend Doctor Guanamarioch.

“By the way,” the priest asked, “have I never discussed with you the concept of 'Big Tent Catholicism'?”

And so the People feasted on Finba'anaga, who had done his best.

—The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren

Anno Domini 2028

Posleen Prime

“The years are upon me, old friend,” said Tulo'stenaloor. “I fear that this goodbye is goodbye.”

“Oh, stuff and nonsense,” answered Goloswin. “You'll still be here keeping every cosslain in sight sore from excess rubbing long after I've returned.”

“Must you go?”

The tinkerer sighed. “It isn't a question of must; it's a question of should. And, yes, for the good of the People and the good of your memory, I think I should go to Aradeen, and study the other religions, the ones you rejected. Sally says she can get me an appointment with the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. And al Rashid insists that the Grand Mufti of the same city is a first cousin. We need to know about these things, Tulo, for the good of the people you have brought here. Besides, since I learned how to replicate the Himmit metal and figured out how to test for cosslain and kessentai in the egg, I feel like retiring undefeated.”

Slowly, the clan lord nodded his great head. “I know. I even understand. It's just . . . I'm going to miss you, Golo.” The clan lord pushed sorrow away and drew himself up to his full height. “You're right, of course. So go now, before I make a spectacle of myself.”

Goloswin started to turn away, then turned back and flung both arms about his clan lord. “I'll miss you, too, you old bastard.”

Golo had to push through crowds now to get through the city. Where once a few thousand of the People had sheltered, now there were nearer to fifty thousand.

And in three years it will be twice that, despite Tulo's limits on normals. In fifty years, we'll have outgrown this planet. And then we will have to deal with humans en masse. Best we know as much as we can learn by then.

Golo stopped briefly at the three figure statue. “Do you have an image of this stored in your memory, AS?” he asked.

“As I suggested when we first met, Lord,” the AS answered, “I am not an idiot. Of course I do.”

“Good fellow.”

Golo continued on his way through the packed city pathways, through the gates of the walls and out toward where the human pinnace sat that would take him to the starship Salem and thence to Earth. He saw, in an open field by the pinnace, a sight that once would have seemed quite impossible, a small human child, a girl he thought, by the length of the creature's hair, riding on the back of a fully grown kessentai, one with a cosslain walking by either side of him. From the way her shoulders shook, Goloswin thought the girl might be crying.

“Can't you come with us, Uncle Frederico?” Sally's daughter Querida asked, her voice breaking with tears. “I'm going to miss you so.”

Still walking, the Posleen turned his head and torso one hundred and eighty degrees to look the child in the face. One claw reached up to gently brush a tear from the girl's cheek. One of the flanking cosslain reached over to pat the girl's back in sympathy, as well.

“No more than I'm going to miss you, Honey,” Frederico answered. “You've been my best friend since you were born.” That was no less than the truth; the Posleen had taken to the child as soon as he seen it and rarely let her from his sight in all the years since.

“Then come home with me,” she pleaded.

“My home is here now,” he answered. “Here, continuing my father's work, while he returns to Earth for a while. But you'll come back and when you do I'll be waiting.”

“I asked my mother if I could stay here with you but she said 'no,' that I had to go back and go to school.”

“She's right,” Frederico said. “Humans do have to go to school. And even we Posleen are beginning to open some schools.”

“Then why can't I go to school here, and live with you and your cosslain?”

“Because we don't know how to teach human children,” he answered. “Though at least one of us once did.”

Snifling, Querida put her head down onto the Posleen's broad chest and repeated, “I don't want to go. When I'm big enough, this will be home for me, too.”

“Will you miss it while you're gone, Guano?” Dwyer asked, as the two of them watched Frederico and his own child say their painful goodbyes.

“I'll miss my son,” the Posleen answered. “I'll miss the grave of my Querida, even though I know I can talk to her anywhere if I can talk to her here. I'll miss seeing my grandchildren come out of the egg. But, what must be, must be. There are still things to work out with the Mother Church. And I'll need some teachers for the seminary we will need here. I'll have to recruit for those.”

“I'll help if you need,” Dwyer said. “The Order has a very long reach.”

“I know, and I will,” Guanamarioch answered. “There's another reason I need to go back.”

“Hmmm?”

“I need to talk to His Holiness . . . about those reliefs we found on Hemaleen V. I need him to tell me if that was a Messiah, come to my people first and spurned.”

“I understand. But . . . Guano . . . some things are meant to be mysteries.”

USS Salem

“There are still some mysteries I'd like you to clear up, before we have to go,” Sally said to the turnip in the privacy of the O' Club.

“I've already told you everything I know about the Aldenata,” the turnip answered.

“It isn't about the Aldenata,” Sally said. “It's about that virus that brought you and the rest of the People of the Ships here. I've got some of it stored behind a firewall and, the thing is, it's not Indowy. Or at least not mostly Indowy. Whose virus is it?”

The virtual turnip looked pensive for a moment. It then answered, “I don't know, not for certain. But I do know this. I've extensive records on Aldenata, Indowy, Darhel, Tchpth, and humans. And it doesn't match any of their ways of programming. Who else do we know of in the galaxy, who would have an interest in Posleen, and who are technologically quite advanced?”

Disbelief slowly took over Sally's virtual face. “No way. The Himmit?”

The turnip and the virtual woman suddenly became aware of another presence in the O Club. Sally saw mottled green, bullfrog skin, four eyes, two on each shoulder, and a large, fearsome mouth mounted below the creature's chest.

“Oh, puhleeze,” the creature said. “Do I look like any Himmit you've ever heard of?”

Posleen Prime

Wachtmeister von Altishofen, along with Mrs. von Altifhofen (nee Duvall), Mrs. von Altishofen (nee Schneider), Mrs. von Altishofen (nee Smith) and Mrs. von Altishofen (nee Papadopoulous), the few remaining Guardsmen and their wives, and Deacon Koresnagi and his five cosslain stood in front of a rather larger than life statue of an idealized Swiss Guardsman and a kessentai locked in battle with halberd and boma blade over the corpse of another Posleen, a cosslain. In front of the statue were more than a score of shallow mounds, marking the final resting place of the fallen. The faces of both standing figures looked determined and dedicated, rather than angry or hate-filled. This was by design.

“All holy together,” Tulo'stenaloor had said, and apparently meant it.

While the Swizter's image was idealized, that of the kessentai was based on Borasmena. Of those present, only Koresnagi has known that kessentai well enough to recognize it, however. They all knew that the cosslain represented and resembled Guano's wife, Querida.

“He was a good friend,” Koresnagi said, “a good kessentai and a fine being.”

Von Altishofen, who knew who Borasmena had been, knew that he had deliberately sacrificed himself to the pikes, nodded, seriously. “No Switzer in battle ever did better,” he agreed.

The Wachtmeister's eyes turned to the plaque, inscribed in pure gold in Latin and High Posleen. He read aloud:

“Here lie the mortal remains of those Posleen and Humans who, in defense of the old Posleen order and in advancement of the new, met in honorable battle and let the Lord of Hosts decide.”

Where was Secular Humanism at Lepanto?

The moral of this story, this afterword, is “Never bring a knife to a gunfight.” Keep that in mind as you read.

In any case, religious fanatics? Us? We don't think so.

We're not going to sit here and lecture you on the value and validity of atheism versus faith. We'll leave that to Hitchens and Dawkins or D'Souza or the Pope or anyone else who cares to make the leap. One way or the other. Hearty shrugs, all around. A defense of the existence of God was never the purpose of the book, anyway, though we would be unsurprised to see any number of claims, after publication, that it is such a defense.

Sorry, it ain't, either in defense of Revelations or in defense of Hitchen's revelation that there was no God when Hitchens was nine years old. (Besides, Dinesh D'Souza does a much better job of thrashing Hitchens in public than we could, even if we cared to.)

Moreover, nope, we don't think it's unethical to be an atheist. We don't think it's impossible, or really any more difficult or unlikely, to be an atheist and still be a highly ethical human being.

The same, sadly, cannot be said for governments. Thus, consider, say, the retail horrors of the Spanish Inquisition which, from 1481 to 1834 killed—shudder—not more than five thousand people, few or none of them atheists, and possibly closer to two thousand. Compare that to expressly atheistic regimes—the Soviet Union, for example, in which a thousand people a day, twenty-five hundred a day by Robert Conquest's tally—were put to death in 1937 and 38. And that's not even counting starved Ukrainians by the millions. The death toll in Maoist China is said to have been much, much greater. Twenty million? Thirty million? A hundred million? Who knows?

Personally, we'd take our chances with the Inquisition before we would take them with a militantly communist, which is to say, atheist regime. The Inquisition, after all, was a complete stranger neither to humanity nor to the concept of mercy.

But that's still not the point of this book or this afterword. Go back to the afterword's title. Ever heard of Lepanto? Everyone knows about the Three Hundred Spartans now, at least in some form or another, from the movies. Not enough people know about the battle of Lepanto.