A Canticle for Leibowitz

12

Marcus Apollo became certain of war’s imminence the moment he overheard Hannegan’s third wife tell a serving maid that her favorite courtier had returned with his skin intact from a mission to the tents of Mad Bear’s clan. The fact that he had come back alive from the nomad encampment meant that a war was brewing. Purportedly, the emissary’s mission had been to tell the Plains tribes that the civilized states had entered into the Agreement of the Holy Scourge concerning the disputed lands, and would hereafter wreak stern vengeance on the nomadic peoples and bandit groups for any further raiding activities. But no man carried such news to Mad Bear and came back alive. Therefore, Apollo concluded the ultimatum had not been delivered, and Hannegan’s emissary had gone out to the Plains with an ulterior purpose,. And the purpose was all too clear.

Apollo picked his way politely through the small throng of guests, his sharp eyes searching out Brother Claret and trying to attract his glance. Apollo’s tall figure in severe black cassock with a small flash of color at the waist to denote his rank stood out sharply in contrast to the kaleidoscope-whirl of color worn by others in the banquet hall, and he was not long in catching his clerk’s eye and nodding him toward the table of refreshments which was now reduced to a litter of scraps, greasy cups, and a few roast squabs that looked overcooked. Apollo dragged at the dregs of the punch bowl with the ladle, observed a dead roach floating among the spices, and thoughtfully handed the first cup to Brother Claret as the clerk approached.

“Thank you, Messér,” said Claret, not noticing the roach. “You wanted to see me?”

“As soon as the reception’s over. In my quarters. Sarkal came back alive.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve never heard a more ominous ‘oh.’ I take it you understand the interesting implications?”

“Certainly, Messér. It means the Agreement was a fraud on Hannegan’s part, and he intends to use it against—”

“Shhh. Later.” Apollo’s eyes signaled the approach of an audience, and the clerk turned to refill his cup from the punch bowl. His interest became suddenly absorbed there, and he did not look at the lean figure in watered-silk who strode toward them from the entrance. Apollo smiled formally and bowed to the man. Their hand-clasp was brief and noticeably chilly.

“Well, Thon Taddeo,” said the priest, “your presence surprises me. I thought you shunned such festive gatherings. What could be so special about this one to attract such a distinguished scholar?’ He lifted his brows in mock perplexity.

“You’re the attraction, of course,” said the newcomer, matching Apollo’s sarcasm, “and my only reason for attending.”

“I?” He feigned surprise, but the assertion was probably true. The wedding reception of a half-sister was not the sort of thing that would impel Thon Taddeo to bedeck himself in formal finery and leave the cloistered halls of the collegium.

“As a matter of fact, I’ve been looking for you all day. They told me you’d be here. Otherwise—” He looked around the banquet hall and snorted irritably.

The snort cut whatever thread of fascination was tying Brother Claret’s gaze to the punch bowl, and he turned to bow to the thon. “Care for punch, thon Taddeo?” he asked, offering a full cup.

The scholar accepted it with a nod and drained it. “I wanted to ask you a little more about the Leibowitzian documents we discussed,” he said to Marcus Apollo. “I had a letter from a fellow named Kornhoer at the abbey. He assured me they have writings that date back to the last years of the European-American civilization.”

If the fact that he himself had assured the scholar of the same thing several months ago was irritating to Apollo, his expression gave no hint of it. “Yes,” he said. “They’re quite authentic, I’m told.”

“If so, it strikes me as very mysterious that nobody’s heard — but never mind that. Kornhoer listed a number of documents and texts they claim to have and described them. If they exist at all, I’ve got to see them.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. If it’s a hoax, it should be found out, and if it isn’t, the data might well be priceless.”

The monsignor frowned. “I assure you there is no hoax,” he said stiffly.

“The letter contained an invitation to visit the abbey and study the documents. They’ve evidently heard of me.

“Not necessarily,” said Apollo, unable to resist the opportunity. “They aren’t particular about who reads their books, as long as he washes his hands and doesn’t deface their property.”

The scholar glowered. The suggestion that there might exist literate persons who had never heard his name did not please him.

“But there, then!” Apollo went on affably. “You have no problem. Accept their invitation, go to the abbey, study their relics. They’ll make you welcome.”

The scholar huffed irritably at the suggestion. “And travel through the Plains at a time when Mad Bear’s clan is—” Thon Taddeo broke off abruptly.

“You were saying?” Apollo prompted, his face showing an special alertness, although a vein in his temple began to throb as he stared expectantly at Thon Taddeo.

“Only that it’s a long dangerous trip, and I can’t spare six months’ absence from the collegium. I wanted to discuss the possibility of sending a well-armed party of the Mayor’s guardsmen to fetch the documents here for study.”

Apollo choked. He felt a childish impulse to kick the scholar in the shins. “I’m afraid,” he said politely, “that would be quite impossible. But in any case, the matter is outside my sphere, and I’m afraid I can’t be of any help to you.”

“Why not?” Thon Taddeo demanded. “Aren’t you the Vatican’s nuncio to the Court of Hannegan?”

“Precisely. I represent New Rome, not the monastic Orders. The government of an abbey is in the hands of its abbot.”

“But with a little pressure from New Rome…”

The impulse to kick shins surged swiftly. “We’d better discuss it later,” Monsignor Apollo said curtly. “This evening in my study, if you like.” He half turned, and looked back inquiringly as if to say Well?

“I’ll be there,” the scholar said sharply, and marched away.

“Why didn’t you tell him flatly no, then and there?” Claret fumed when they were alone in the embassy suite an hour later. “Transport priceless relics through bandit country in these times?” It’s unthinkable, Messér.”

“Certainly.”

“Then why—”

“Two reasons. First, Thon Taddeo is Hannegan’s kinsman, and influential too. We have to be courteous to Caesar and his kin whether we like him or not. Second, he started to say something about the Mad Bear clan, and then broke off. I think he knows what’s going to happen. I’m not going to engage in espionage, but if he volunteers any information, there’s nothing to prevent our including it in the report you’re about to deliver personally to New Rome.”

“1!” The clerk looked shocked. “To New Rome — ?” But what—”

“Not so loud,” said the nuncio, glancing at the door.

“I’m going to have to send my estimate of this situation to His Holiness, and quickly. But it’s the kind of thing that one doesn’t dare put in writing. If Hannegan’s people intercepted such a dispatch, you and I would probably be found floating face down in the Red River. If Hannegan’s enemies get hold of it, Hannegan would probably feel justified in hanging us publicly as spies. Martyrdom is all very well, but we have a job to do first.”

“And I’m to deliver the report orally at the Vatican?” Brother Claret muttered, apparently not relishing the prospect of crossing hostile country.

“It has to be that way. Thon Taddeo may, just possibly may, give us an excuse for your leaving abruptly for Saint Leibowitz abbey, or New Rome, or both. In case there are any suspicions around the Court. I’ll try to steer it.”

“And the substance of the report I’m to deliver, Messér?”

“That Hannegan’s ambition to unite the continent under one dynasty isn’t so wild a dream as we thought. That the Agreement of the Holy Scourge is probably a fraud by Hannegan, and that be means to use it to get both the empire of Denver and Laredan Nation into conflict with the Plains nomads. If Laredan forces are tied up in a running battle with Mad Bear, it wouldn’t take much encouragement for the State of Chihuahua to attack Laredo from the south. After all, there’s an old enmity there. Hannegan, of course, can then march victoriously to Rio Laredo. With Laredo under his thumb, he can look forward to tackling both Denver and the Mississippi Republic without worrying about a stab in the back from the south.”

“Do you think Hannegan can do it, Messér?”

Marcus Apollo started to answer, then closed his mouth slowly. He walked to the window and stared out at the sunlit city, a sprawling disorderly city built mostly of rubble from another age. A city without orderly patterns of streets. It had grown slowly over an ancient ruin, as perhaps someday another city would grow over the ruin of this one.

“I don’t know,” he answered softly. “In these times, it’s hard to condemn any man for wanting to unite this butchered continent. Even by such means as — but no, I don’t mean that.” He sighed heavily. “In any case, our interests are not the interests of politics. We must forewarn New Rome of what may be coming, because the Church will be affected by it, whatever happens. And forewarned, we may be able to keep out of the squabble.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course not!” the priest said gently.

Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott arrived at Marcus Apollo’s study as early in the day as could be construed as evening, and his manner had noticeably changed since the reception. He managed a cordial smile, and there was nervous eagerness in the way he spoke. This fellow, thought Marcus, is after something be wants rather badly, and he’s even willing to be polite in order to get it. Perhaps the list of ancient writings supplied by the monks at the Leibowitzian abbey had impressed the thon more than he wanted to admit. The nuncio had been prepared for a fencing match, but the scholar’s evident excitement made him too easy a victim, and Apollo relaxed his readiness for verbal dueling.

“This afternoon there was a meeting of the faculty of the collegium,” said Thon Taddeo as soon as they were seated. “We talked about Brother Kornhoer’s letter, and the list of documents.” He paused as if uncertain of an approach. The gray dusklight from the large arched window on his left made his face seem blanched and intense, and his wide gray eyes searched at the priest as if measuring him and making estimates.

“I take it there was skepticism?”

The gray eyes fell momentarily, and lifted quickly. “Shall I be polite?”

“Don’t bother,” Apollo chuckled.

“There was skepticism. ‘Incredulity’ is more nearly the word. My own feeling is that if such papers exist, they are probably forgeries dating back several centuries. I doubt if the present monks at the abbey are trying to perpetrate a hoax. Naturally, they would believe the documents valid.”

“Kind of you to absolve them,” Apollo said sourly.

“I offered to be polite. Shall I?”

“No. Go on.”

The thon slid out of his chair and went to sit in the window. He gazed at the fading yellow patches of cloud in the west and pounded softly on the sill while he spoke.

“The papers. No matter what we may believe of them, the idea that such documents may still exist intact — that there’s even a slightest chance of their existing — is, well, so arousing a thought that we must investigate them immediately:”

“Very well,” said Apollo, a little amused. “They invited you. But tell me: what do you find so arousing about the documents?”

The scholar shot him a quick glance. “Are you acquainted with my work?”

The monsignor hesitated. He was acquainted with it, but admitting the acquaintance might force him to admit to an awareness that Thon Taddeo’s name was being spoken in the same breath with names of natural philosophers dead a thousand years and more, while the thon was scarcely in his thirties. The priest was not eager to admit knowing that this young scientist showed promise of becoming one of those rare outcroppings of human genius that appear only a time or two every century to revolutionize an entire field of thought in one vast sweep. He coughed apologetically.

“I must admit that I haven’t read a good deal of—”

“Never mind.” Pfardentrott waved off the apology. “Most of it is highly abstract, and tedious to the layman. Theories of electrical essence. Planetary motion. Attracting bodies. Matters of that sort. New Kornhoer’s list mentions such names as Laplace, Maxwell, and Einstein — do they mean anything to you?”

“Not much. History mentions them as natural philosophers, doesn’t it? From before the collapse of the last civilization? And I think they’re named in one of the pagan hagiologies, aren’t they?”

The scholar nodded. “And that’s all anyone knows about them, or what they did. Physicists, according to our not-so-reliable historians. Responsible for the rapid rise of the European-American culture, they say. Historians list nothing but trivia. I had nearly forgotten them. But Kornhoer’s descriptions of the old documents they say they have are descriptions of papers that might well be taken from physical science texts of some kind. It’s just impossible!”

“But you have to make certain?”

“We have to make certain. Now that it’s come up, I wish I had never heard of it.”

“Why?”

Thon Taddeo was peering at something in the street below. He beckoned to the priest. “Come here a moment. I’ll show you why.”

Apollo slipped from behind the desk and looked down at the muddy rutted street beyond the wall that encircled the palace and barracks and buildings of the collegium cutting off the mayoral sanctuary from the seething plebeian city. The scholar was pointing at the shadowy figure of a peasant leading a donkey homeward at twilight. The man’s feet were wrapped in sackcloth, and the mud had caked about them so that he seemed scarcely able to lift them. But he trudged ahead in one slogging steep after another, resting half a second between footfalls. He seemed too weary to scrape off the mud.

“He doesn’t ride the donkey,” Than Taddeo stated, “because this morning the donkey was loaded down with corn. It doesn’t occur to him that the packs are empty now. What is good enough for the morning is also good enough for the afternoon.”

“You know him?”

“He passes under my window too. Every morning end evening. Hadn’t you noticed him?”

“A thousand like him.”

“Look. Can you bring yourself to believe that that brute is the lineal descendant of men who supposedly invented machines that flew, who traveled to the moon, harnessed the forces of Nature, built machines that could talk and seemed to think? Can you believe there were such men?”

Apollo was silent.

“Look at him!” the scholar persisted. “No, but it’s too dark now. You can’t see the syphilis outbreak on his neck, the way the bridge of his nose is being eaten away. Paresis. But he was undoubtedly a moron to begin with. Illiterate superstitious, murderous. He diseases his children. For a few coins he would kill them. He will sell them anyway, when they are old enough to be useful. Look at him, and tell me if you see the progeny of a once-mighty civilization? What do you see?”

“The image of Christ,” grated the monsignor, surprised at his own sudden anger. “What did you expect me to see?”

The scholar huffed impatiently. “The incongruity. Men as you can observe them through any window, and men as historians would have us believe men once were. I can’t accept it. How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?”

“Perhaps,” said Apollo, “by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else.” He went to light a tallow lamp, for the twilight was rapidly fading into night. He struck steel and flint until the spark caught and he blew gently at it in the tinder.

“Perhaps,” said Thon Taddeo, “but I doubt it.”

“You reject all history, then, as myth?” A flame edged out from the spark.

“Not ‘reject.’ But it must be questioned. Who wrote your histories?”

“The monastic Orders, of course. During the darkest centuries, there was no one else to record them.” He transferred flame to wick.

“There! You have it. And during the time of the antipopes, how many schismatic Orders were fabricating their own versions of things, and passing off their versions as the work of earlier men? You can’t know, you can’t really know. That there was on this continent a more advanced civilization then we have now — that can’t be denied. You can look at the rubble and the rotted metal and know it. You can dig under a strip of blown sand and find their broken roadways. But where is there evidence of the kind of machines your historians tell us they had in those days? Where are the remains of self-moving carts, of flying machines?”

“Beaten into plowshares and hoes.”

“If they existed.”

“If you doubt it, why bother studying the Leibowitzian documents?”

“Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.”

The nuncio smiled tightly. “And what do you want me to do about it, learned Thon?”

The scholar leaned forward earnestly. “Write to the abbot of this place. Assure him that the documents will be treated with utmost care, and will be returned after we have completely examined them for authenticity and studied their content.”

“Whose assurance do you want me to give him — yours or mine?”

“Hannegan’s, yours, and mine.”

“I can give him only yours and Hannegan’s. I have no troops of my own.”

The scholar reddened.

“Tell me,” the nuncio added hastily, “why — besides bandits — do you insist you must see them here, instead of going to the abbey?”

“The best reason you can give the abbot is that if the documents are authentic, if we have to examine them at the abbey, a confirmation wouldn’t mean much to other secular scholars.”

“You mean your colleagues might think the monks had tricked you into something?”

“Ummm, that might be inferred. But also important, if they’re brought here, they can be examined by everyone in the collegium who’s qualified to form an opinion. And any visiting thons from other principalities can have a look at them too. But we can’t move the entire collegium to the southwest desert for six months.”

“I see your point.”

“Will you send the request to the abbey?”

“Yes.”

Thon Taddeo appeared surprised.

“But it will be your request, not mine. And it’s only fair to tell you that I don’t think Dom Paulo, the abbot, will say yes.”

The thon, however, appeared to be satisfied. When he had gone, the nuncio summoned his clerk.

“You’ll be leaving for New Rome tomorrow,” he told him.

“By way of Leibowitz Abbey?”

“Come back by way of it. The report to New Rome is urgent.”

“Yes, Messér.”

“At the abbey, tell Dom Paulo that Sheba expects Solomon to come to her. Bearing gifts. Then you better cover your ears. When he finishes exploding, hurry back so I can tell Thon Taddeo no.”

13

Time seeps slowly on the desert and there is little change to mark its passage. Two seasons had passed since Dom Paulo had refused the request from across the Plains, but the matter had been settled only a few weeks ago. Or had it been settled at all? Texarkana was obviously unhappy with the results.

The abbot paced along the abbey walls at sundown, his jaw thrust ahead like a whiskery old crag against possible breakers out of the sea of events. His thinning hair fluttered in white pennants on the desert wind, and the wind wrapped his habit bandage-tight about his stooped body, making him look like an emaciated Ezekiel with a strangely round little paunch. He thrust his gnarled hands into his sleeves and glowered occasionally across the desert toward the village of Sanly Bowitts in the distance. The red sunlight threw his pacing shadow across the courtyard, and the monks who encountered it in crossing the grounds glanced up wonderingly at the old man. Their ruler had seemed moody of late, and given to strange forebodings. It was whispered that the time soon was coming when a new abbot would be appointed ruler over the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz. It was whispered that the old man was not well, not well at all. It was whispered that if the abbot heard the whispers, the whisperers should speedily climb over the wall. The abbot had heard, but it pleased him for once not to take note of it. He well knew that the whispers were true.

“Read it to me again,” he said abruptly to the monk who stood motionless near at hand.

The monk’s hood jogged slightly in the abbot’s direction.

“Which one, Domne?” he asked.

“You know which one.”

“Yes, m’Lord.” The monk fumbled in one sleeve. It seemed weighted down with half a bushel of documents and correspondence, but after a moment he found the right one. Affixed to the scroll was the label:

“All right, that’s the one. So read it,” the abbot said impatiently.

“Accedite ad eum…” The monk crossed himself and murmured the customary Blessing of Texts, said before reading or writing almost as punctiliously as the blessing at meals. For the preservation of literacy and learning throughout a black millennium had been the task of the Brothers of Leibowitz, and such small rituals helped keep that task in focus.

Having finished the blessing he held the scroll high against the sunset so that it became a transparency. “‘Iterum oportet apponere tibi crucem ferendam, amice…’“

His voice was faintly singsong as his eyes plucked the words out of a forest of superfluous pen-flourishings. The abbot leaned against the parapet to listen while he watched the buzzards circling over the mesa of Last Resort.

“‘Again it is necessary to set before you a cross to be borne, old friend and shepherd of myopic bookworms,’“ droned the voice of the reader, “‘but perhaps the bearing of the cross will smack of triumph. It appears that Sheba is coming to Solomon after all, though probably to denounce him as a charlatan.

“‘This is to notify you that Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott, D.N.Sc., Sage of Sages, Scholar of Scholars, Fair-Haired Son-out-of-Wedlock of a certain Prince, and God’s Gift to an “Awakening Generation,” has finally made up his mind to pay you a visit, having exhausted all hope of transporting your Memorabilia to this fair realm. He will be arriving about the Feast of the Assumption, if he manages to evade “bandit” groups along the way. He will bring his misgivings and a small party of armed cavalry, courtesy of Hannegan II, whose corpulent person is even now hovering over me as I write, grunting and scowling at these lines, which His Supremacy commanded me to write, and in which His Supremacy expects me to acclaim his cousin, the thon, in the hope that you’ll honor him fittingly. But since His Supremacy’s secretary is in bed with the gout, I shall be no less than candid here:

“‘So first, let me caution you about this person, Thon Taddeo. Treat him with your customary charity, but trust him not. He is a brilliant scholar, but a secular scholar, and a political captive of the State. Here, Hannegan is the State. Furthermore, the thon is rather anti-clerical I think — or perhaps solely anti-monastic. After his embarrassing birth, he was spirited away to a Benedictine monastery, and — but no, ask the courier about that…’ “

The monk glanced up from his reading. The abbot was still watching the buzzards over Last Resort.

“You’ve heard about his childhood, Brother?” Dom Paulo asked.

The monk nodded.

“Read on.”

The reading continued, but the abbot ceased to listen. He knew the letter nearly by heart, but still he felt that there was something Marcus Apollo had been trying to say between the lines that he, Dom Paulo, had not yet managed to understand. Marcus was trying to warn him — but of what? The tone of the letter was mildly flippant, but it seemed full of ominous incongruities which might have been designed to add up to some single dark congruity, if only he could add them right. What danger could there he in letting the secular scholar study at the abbey?

Thon Taddeo himself, according to the courier who had brought the letter, had been educated in the Benedictine monastery where he had been taken as a child to avoid embarrassment to his father’s wife. The thon’s father was Hannegan’s uncle, but his mother was a serving maid. The duchess, legitimate wife of the duke, had never protested the duke’s philandering until this common servant girl bore him the son he had always wanted; then she cried unfair. She had borne him only daughters, and to be bested by a commoner aroused her wrath. She sent the child away, flogged and dismissed the servant, and renewed her grip on the duke. She herself meant to have a manchild out of him to re-establish her honor; she gave him three more girls. The duke waited patiently for fifteen years; when she died in miscarriage (of another girl), he promptly went to the Benedictines to reclaim the boy and make him his heir.

But the young Taddeo of Hannegan-Pfardentrott had become a bitter child. He had grown from infancy to adolescence within sight of the city and the palace where his first cousin was being prepared for the throne; if his family had entirely ignored him, however, he might have matured without coming to resent his status as an outcast. But both his father and the servant girl whose womb had borne him came to visit him with just enough frequency to keep him reminded that he was begotten of human flesh and not of stones, and thus to make him vaguely aware that he was deprived of love to which he was entitled. And then too, Prince Hannegan had come to the same monastery for one year of schooling, had lorded it over his bastard cousin, and had excelled him in all things but keenness of mind. The young Taddeo had hated the prince with a quiet fury, and had set out to outdistance him as far as possible in learning at least. The race had proved a sham, however; the prince left the monastic school the following year, as unlettered as he had come, nor was any further thought given to his education. Meanwhile, his exiled cousin continued the race alone and won high honors; but his victory was hollow, for Hannegan did not care. Thon Taddeo had come to despise the whole Court of Texarkana but, with youthful inconsistency, he had returned willingly to that Court to be legitimized as the father’s son at last, appearing to forgive everyone except the dead duchess who had exiled him and the monks who had cared for him in that exile.

Perhaps he thinks of our cloister as a place of durance vile, thought the abbot. There would be bitter memories, half-memories, and maybe a few imagined memories.

“‘. . . seeds of controversy in the bed of the New Literacy,’“ the reader continued. “‘So take heed, and watch for the symptoms.

“‘But, on the other hand, not only His Supremacy, but the dictates of charity and justice as well, insist that I recommend him to you as a well-meaning man, or at least as an unmalicious child, like most of these educated and gentlemanly pagans (and pagans they will make of themselves, in spite of all). He will behave if you are firm, but be careful, my friend. He has a mind like a loaded musket, and it can go off in any direction. I trust, however, that coping with him for a while will not be too taxing a problem for your ingenuity and hospitality.

“‘Quidam mihi calix nuper expletur, Paule.Precamini ergo Deum facere me fortiorem. Metuo ut hic pereat. Spero te et fratres saepius oraturos esse pro tremescente Marco Apolline.Valete in Christo, amici.

“ ‘Texarkanae datum est Octava Ss Petri et Pauli, Anno Domini termillesimo…’ “

“Let’s see that seal again,” said the abbot.

The monk handed him the scroll. Dom Paulo held it close to his face to peer at blurred lettering impressed at the bottom of the parchment by a badly inked wooden stamp:

OKAYED BY HANNEGAN II, BY GRACE OF GOD MAYOR,

RULER OF TEXARKANA, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH,

AND VAQUERO SUPREME OF THE PLAINS.

HIS MARK: X

“I wonder if His Supremacy had someone read the letter to him later?” worried the abbot.

“If so, m’Lord, would the letter have been sent?”

“I suppose not. But frivolity under Hannegan’s nose just to spite the Mayor’s illiteracy is not like Marcus Apollo, unless be was trying to tell me something between the lines — but couldn’t quite think of a safe way to say it. That last part — about a certain chalice that he’s afraid won’t pass away. It’s clear he’s worried about something, but what? It isn’t like Marcus; it isn’t like him at all.”

Several weeks had passed since the arrival of the letter; during those weeks Dom Paulo had slept badly, had suffered a recurrence of the old gastric trouble, had brooded overmuch on the past as if looking for something that might have been done differently in order to avert the future. What future? he demanded of himself. There seemed no logical reason to expect trouble. The controversy between monks and villagers had all but died. No signs of turmoil came from the herdsman tribes to the north and east. Imperial Denver was not pressing its attempt to levy taxes upon monastic congregations. There were no troops in the vicinity. The oasis was still furnishing water. There seemed no current threat of plague among animals or men. The corn was doing well this year in the irrigated fields. There were signs of progress in the world, and the village of Sanly Bowitts had achieved the fantastic literacy rate of eight per cent — for which the villagers might, but did not, thank the monks of the Leibowitzian Order.

And yet he felt forebodings. Some nameless threat lurked just around the corner of the world for the sun to rise again. The feeling had been gnawing at him, as annoying as a swarm of hungry insects that buzzed about one’s face in the desert sun. There was the sense of the imminent, the remorseless, the mindless; it coiled like a heat-maddened rattler, ready to strike at rolling tumbleweed.

It was a devil with which he was trying to come to grips, the abbot decided, but the devil was quite evasive. The abbot’s devil was rather small, as devils go: only knee-high, but he weighed ten tons and had the strength of five hundred oxen. He was not driven by maliciousness as Dom Paulo imagined him, not nearly as much as he was driven by frenzied compulsion, somewhat after the fashion of a rabid dog. He bit through meat and bone and nail simply because he had damned himself, and damnation created a damnably insatiable appetite. And he was evil merely because he had made a denial of Good, and the denial had become a part of his essence, or a hole therein. Somewhere, Dom Paulo thought, he’s wading through a sea of men and leaving a wake of the maimed.

What nonsense, old man! he chided himself. When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary. Oh there’s the devil, all right, but let’s not credit him with more than his damnable due. Are you that life-weary, old fossil?

But the foreboding lingered.

“Do you suppose the buzzards have eaten old Eleazar yet?” asked a quiet voice at his elbow.

Dom Paulo glanced around with a start in the twilight. The voice belonged to Father Gault, his prior and probable successor. He stood fingering a rose and looking embarrassed for having disturbed the old man’s solitude.

“Eleazar? You mean Benjamin? Why, have you heard something about him lately?”

“Well, no, Father Abbot.” He laughed uneasily. “But you seemed to be looking toward the mesa, and I thought you were wondering about the Old Jew.” He glanced toward the anvil-shaped mountain, silhouetted against the gray patch of sky in the west. “There’s a wisp of smoke up there, so I guess he’s still alive.”

“We shouldn’t have to guess,” Dom Paulo said abruptly. “I’m going to ride over there and pay him a visit.”

“You sound like you’re leaving tonight.” Gault chuckled.

“In a day or two.”

“Better be careful. They say he throws rocks at climbers.”

“I haven’t seen him for five years,” the abbot confessed. “And I’m ashamed that I haven’t. He’s lonely. I’ll go.

“If he’s lonely, why does he insist on living like a hermit?”

“To escape loneliness — in a young world.”

The young priest laughed. “That perhaps makes his kind of sense, Domne, but I don’t quite see it.”

“You will, when you’re my age, or his.”

“I don’t expect to get that old. He lays claim to several thousand years.”

The abbot smiled reminiscently. “And you know, I can’t dispute him either. I met him when I was just a novice, fifty-odd years ago, and I’d swear he looked just as old then as he does now. He must be well over a hundred.”

“Three thousand two hundred and nine, so he says. Sometimes even older. I think he believes it, too. An interesting madness,”

“I’m not so sure he’s mad, Father. Just devious in his sanity. What did you want to see me about?”

“Three small matters. First, how do we get the Poet out of the royal guest rooms — before Thon Taddeo arrives? He’s due here in a few days, and the Poet’s taken root.”

“I’ll handle the Poet-sirrah. What else?”

“Vespers. Will you be in the church?”

“Not until Compline. You take over. What else?”

“Controversy in the basement — over Brother Kornhoer’s experiment.”

“Who and how?”

“Well, the silly gist of it seems to be that Brother Armbruster has the attitude of vespero mundi expectando, while with Brother Kornhoer, it’s the matins of the millennium. Kornhoer moves something to make room for a piece of equipment. Armbruster yells Perdition! Brother Kornhoer yells Progress! and they have at each other again. Then they come fuming to me to settle it. I scold them for losing their tempers. They get sheepish and fawn on each other for ten minutes. Six hours later, the floor shivers from Brother Armbruster’s bellowing Perdition! down in the library. I can settle the blowups, but there seems to be a Basic Issue.”

“A basic breach of conduct, I’d say. What do you want me to do about it? Exclude them from the table?”

“Not yet, but you might warn them.”

“All right, I’ll track it down. Is that all?”

“That’s all, Domne.” He started away, but paused: “Oh, by the way-do you think Brother Kornhoer’s contraption is going to work’?”

“I hope not!” the abbot snorted.

Father Gault appeared surprised. “But, then why let him—”

“Because I was curious at first. The work has caused so much commotion by now, though, that I’m sorry I let him start it.”

“Then why not stop him?”

“Because I’m hoping that he will reduce himself to absurdity without any help from me. If the thing fails, it’ll fail just in time for Thon Taddeo’s arrival; That would be just the proper form of mortification for Brother Kornhoer — to remind him of his vocation, before he begins thinking that he was called to Religion mainly for the purpose of building a generator of electrical essences in the monastery basement.”

“But, Father Abbot, you’ll have to admit that it would be quite an achievement, if successful.”

“I don’t have to admit it,” Dom Paulo told him curtly.

When Gault was gone, the abbot, after a brief debate with himself, decided to handle the problem of the Poet-sirrah! before the problem of perdition-versus-progress. The simplest solution to the problem of the Poet was for the Poet to get out of the royal suite, and preferably out of the abbey, out of the vicinity of the abbey, out of sight, hearing, and mind. But no one could expect a “simplest solution” to get rid of the Poet-sirrah!

The abbot left the wall and crossed the courtyard toward the guesthouse. He moved by feel, for the buildings were monoliths of shadow under the stars, and only a few windows glowed with candlelight. The windows of the royal suite were dark; but the Poet kept odd hours and might well be in.

Inside the building, he groped for the right door, found it, and knocked. There was no immediate answer, but only a faint bleating sound which might or might not have issued from within the suite. He knocked again, then tried the door. It opened.

Faint red light from a charcoal burner softened the darkness; the room reeked of stale food.

“Poet?”

Again the faint bleating, but closer now. He went to the burner, raked up an incandescent coal, and lit a splinter of kindling. He glanced around and shuddered at the litter of the room. It was empty. He transferred the flame to an oil lamp and went to explore the rest of the suite. It would have to be thoroughly scrubbed and fumigated (also, perhaps, exorcised) before Thon Taddeo moved in. He hoped to make the Poet-sirrah! do the scrubbing, but knew the chance was remote.

In the second room, Dom Paulo suddenly felt as if someone were watching him. He paused and looked slowly around.

A single eyeball peered at him from a vase of water on the shelf. The abbot nodded at it familiarly and went on.

In the third room, he met the goat. It was their first meeting.

The goat was standing atop a tall cabinet, munching turnip greens. It looked like a small breed of mountain goat, but it had a bald head that appeared bright blue by lamplight. Undoubtedly a freak by birth.

“Poet?” he inquired, softly, looking straight at the goat and touching his pectoral cross.

“In here,” came a sleepy voice from the fourth room.

Dom Paulo sighed with relief. The goat went on munching greens. Now that had been a hideous thought, indeed.

The Poet lay sprawled across the bed with a bottle of wine within easy reach; he blinked irritably at the light with his one good eye. “I was asleep,” he complained, adjusting his black eyepatch and reaching for the bottle.

“Then wake up. You’re moving out of here immediately. Tonight. Dump your possessions in the hall to let the suite air out. Sleep in the stable boy’s cell downstairs if you must. Then come back in the morning and scrub this place out.”

The Poet looked like a bruised lily for a moment, then made a grab for something under the blankets. He brought out a fist and stared at it thoughtfully. “Who used these quarters last?” he asked.

“Monsignor Longi. Why?”

“I wondered who brought the bedbugs.” The Poet opened his fist, pinched something out of his palm, cracked it between his nails, and flipped it away. “Thon Taddeo can have them. I don’t want them. I’ve been eaten up alive ever since I moved in. I was planning on leaving, but now that you’ve offered me my old cell back, I’ll be happy—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“ — to accept your kind hospitality a little longer. Only until my book is finished, of course.”

“What book? But never mind. Just get your things out of here.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Good. I don’t think I could stand these bugs another night.” The Poet rolled out of bed, but paused for a drink.

“Give me the wine,” the abbot ordered.

“Sure. Have some. It’s a pleasant vintage.”

“Thank you, since you stole it from our cellars. It happens to be sacramental wine. Did that occur to you?”

“It hasn’t been consecrated.”

“I’m surprised you thought of that.” Dom Paulo took the bottle.

“I didn’t steal it anyway. I—”

“Never mind the wine. Where did you steal the goat?”

“I didn’t steal it ,” the Poet complained.

“It just — materialized?”

“It was a gift, Reverendissime.”

“From whom?”

“A dear friend, Domnissime.”

“Whose dear friend?”

“Mine, Sire.”

“Now there’s a paradox. Where, now, did you—”

“Benjamin, Sire.”

A flicker of surprise crossed Dom Paulo’s face. “You stole it from old Benjamin?”

The Poet winced at the word. “Please, not stole.”

“Then what?”

“Benjamin insisted that I take it as a gift after I had composed a sonnet in his honor.”

“The truth!”

The Poet-sirrah! swallowed sheepishly. “I won it from him at mumbly-peg.”

“I see.”

“It’s true! The old wretch nearly cleaned me out, and then refused to allow me credit. I had to stake my glass eye against the goat. But I won everything back.”

“Get the goat out of the abbey.”

“But it’s a marvelous species of goat. The milk is of an unearthly odor and contains essences. In fact it’s responsible for the Old Jew’s longevity.”

“How much of it?”

“All fifty-four hundred and eight years of it.”

“I thought he was only thirty-two hundred and—” Dom Paulo broke off disdainfully. “What were you doing up on Last Resort?”

“Playing mumbly-peg with old Benjamin.”

“I mean—” The abbot steeled himself. “Never mind. Just get yourself moved out. And tomorrow get the goat back to Benjamin.”

“But I won it fairly.”

“We’ll not discuss it. Take the goat to the stable, then. I’ll have it returned to him myself.”

“Why?”

“We have no use for a goat. Neither have you.”

“Ho, ho,” the Poet said archly.

“What did that mean, pray?”

“Thon Taddeo is coming. There’ll be need of a goat before it’s finished. You can be sure of that.” He chuckled smugly to himself.

The abbot turned away in irritation. “Just get out,” he added superfluously, and then went to wrestle with contention in the basement, where the Memorabilia now reposed.

14

The vaulted basement had been dug during the centuries of nomadic infiltration from the north, when the Bayring Horde had overrun most of the Plains and desert, looting and vandalizing all villages that lay in their path. The Memorabilia, the abbey’s small patrimony of knowledge out of the past, had been walled up in underground vaults to protect the priceless writings from both nomads and soi-disant crusaders of the schismatic Orders, founded to fight the hordes, but turned to random pillaging and sectarian strife. Neither the nomads nor the Military Order of San Pancratz would have valued the abbey’s books, but the nomads would have destroyed them for the joy of destruction and the military knights-friars would have burned many of them as “heretical” according to the theology of Vissarion, their Antipope.

Now a Dark Age seemed to be passing. For twelve centuries, a small flame of knowledge had been kept smoldering in the monasteries; only now were their minds ready to be kindled. Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible — that ideas were deathless and truth immortal. But that was true only in the subtlest sense, the abbot thought, and not superficially true at all. There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God’s and not Man’s, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture. For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God. Truth could be crucified; but soon, perhaps, a resurrection.

The Memorabilia was full of ancient words, ancient formulae, ancient reflections of meaning, detached from minds that had died long ago, when a different sort of society had passed into oblivion. There was little of it that could still be understood. Certain papers seemed as meaningless as a Breviary would seem to a shaman of the nomad tribes. Others retained a certain ornamental beauty or an orderliness that hinted of meaning, as a rosary might suggest a necklace to a nomad. The earliest brothers of the Leibowitzian Order had tried to press a sort of Veronica’s Veil to the face of a crucified civilization; it had come away marked with an image of the face of ancient grandeur, but the image was faintly printed, incomplete, and hard to understand. The monks had preserved the image, and now it still survived for the world to inspect and try to interpret if the world wanted to do so. The Memorabilia could not, of itself, generate a revival of ancient science or high civilization, however, for cultures were begotten by the tribes of Man, not by musty tomes; but the books could help, Dom Paulo hoped — the books could point out directions and offer hints to a newly evolving science. It had happened once before, so the Venerable Boedullus had asserted in his De Vestigiis Antecesserum Civitatum.

And this time, thought Dom Paulo, we’ll keep them reminded of who kept the spark burning while the world slept. He paused to look back; for a moment he had imagined that he had heard a frightened bleat from the Poet’s goat.

The clamor from the basement soon blanketed his hearing as he descended the underground stairs toward the source of the turmoil. Someone was hammering steel pins into stone. Sweat mingled with the odor of old books. A feverish bustle of unscholarly activity filled the library. Novices hurried past with tools. Novices stood in groups and studied floor plans. Novices shifted desks and tables and heaved a makeshift machinery, rocking it into place. Confusion by lamplight. Brother Armbruster, the librarian and Rector of the Memorabilia, stood watching it from a remote alcove in the shelves, his arms tightly folded and his face grim. Dom Paulo avoided his accusing gaze.

Brother Kornhoer approached his ruler with a lingering grin of enthusiasms. “Well, Father Abbot, we’ll soon have a light such as no man alive has ever seen.”

“This is not without a certain vanity, Farther,” Paulo replied.

“Vanity, Domne? To put to good use what we’ve learned?”

“I had in mind our haste to put it to use in time to impress a certain visiting scholar. But never mind. Let’s see this engineer’s wizardry.”

They walked toward the makeshift machine. It reminded the abbot of nothing useful, unless one considered engines for torturing prisoners useful. An axle, serving as the shaft, was connected by pulleys and belts to a waist-high turnstile. Four wagon wheels were mounted on the axle a few inches apart. Their thick iron tires were scored with grooves, and the grooves supported countless birds’-nests of copper wire, drawn from coinage at the local smithy in Sanly Bowitts. The wheels were apparently free to spin in mid-air, Dom Paulo noticed, for their tires touched no surface. However, stationary blocks of iron faced the tires, like brakes, with out quite touching them. The blocks too had been wound with innumerable turns of wire—”field coils” as Kornhoer called them. Dom Paulo solemnly shook his head.

“It’ll be the greatest physical improvement at the abbey since we got the printing press a hundred years ago,” Kornhoer ventured proudly.

“Will it work?” Dom Paulo wondered.

“I’ll stake a month’s extra chores on it, m’Lord.”

You’re staking more than that, thought the priest, but suppressed utterance. “Where does the light come out?” he asked, peering at the odd contraption again.

The monk laughed. “Oh, we have a special lamp for that. What you see here is only the ‘dynamo.’ It produces the electrical essence which the lamp will burn.”

Ruefully, Dom Paulo contemplated the amount of space the dynamo was occupying. “This essence,” he murmured, “ — can’t it be extracted from mutton fat, perhaps?”

“No, no — The electrical essence is, well — Do you want me to explain?”

“Better not. Natural science is not my bent. I’ll leave it to you younger heads.” He stepped back quickly to avoid being brained by a timber carried past by a pair of hurrying carpenters. “Tell me,” he said, “if by studying writings from the Leibowitzian age you can learn how to construct this thing, why do you suppose none of our predecessors saw fit to construct it?”

The monk was silent for a moment. “It’s not easy to explain,” he said at last. “Actually, in the writings that survive, there’s no direct information about the construction of a dynamo. Rather, you might say that the information is implicit in a whole collections of fragmentary writings. Partially implicit. And it has to be got out by deduction. But to get it, you also need some theories to work from — theoretical information our predecessors didn’t have.”

“But we do?”

“Well, yes — now that there have been a few men like—” his tone became deeply respectful and he paused before pronouncing the name “ — like Thon Taddeo—”

“Was that a complete sentence?” the abbot asked rather sourly.

“Well, until recently, few philosophers have concerned themselves with new theories in physics. Actually, it was the work of, of Thon Taddeo—” the respectful tone again, Dom Paulo noted, “ — that gave us the necessary working axioms. His work of the Mobility of Electrical Essences, for example, and his Conservation Theorem—”

“He should be pleased, then, to see his work applied. But where is the lamp itself, may I ask? I hope it’s no larger than the dynamo.”

“This is it, Domne,” said the monk, picking up a small object from the table. It seemed to be only a bracket for holding a pair of black rods and a thumbscrew for adjusting their spacing. “These are carbons,” Kornhoer explained.

“The ancients would have called it an ‘arc lamp.’ There was another kind, but we don’t have the materials to make it.”

“Amazing. Where does the light come from?”

“Here.” The monk pointed to the gap between the carbons. “It must be a very tiny flame,” said the abbot.

“Oh, but bright! Brighter, I expect, than a hundred candles.”

“No!”

“You find that impressive?”

“I find it preposterous—” noticing Brother Kornhoer’s sudden hurt expression, the abbot hastily added: “ — to think how we’ve been limping along on beeswax and mutton fat.”

“I have been wondering,” the monk shyly confided, “if the ancients used them on their altars instead of candles.”

“No,” said the abbot. “Definitely, no. I can tell you that. Please dismiss that idea as quickly as possible, and don’t even think of it again.”

“Yes, Father Abbot.”

“Now, where are you going to hang that thing?”

“Well—” Brother Kornhoer paused to stare speculatively around the gloomy basement. “I hadn’t given it any thought. I suppose it should go over the desk where, Thon Taddeo—” (Why does he pause like that whenever he says it, Dom Paulo wondered irritably.) “ — will be working.”

“We’d better ask Brother Armbruster about that,” the abbot decided, and then noticing the monk’s sudden discomfort: “What’s the matter? Have you and Brother Armbruster been—”

Kornhoer’s face twisted apologetically. “Really, Father Abbot, I haven’t lost my temper with him even once. Oh, we’ve had words, but—” He shrugged. “He doesn’t want anything moved. He keeps mumbling about witchcraft and the like. It’s not easy to reason with him. His eyes are half-blind now from reading by dim light — and yet he says it’s Devil’s work we’re up to. I don’t know what to say.”

Dom Paulo frowned slightly as they crossed the room toward the alcove where Brother Armbruster still stood glowering upon the proceedings.

“Well, you’ve got your way now,” the librarian said to Kornhoer as they approached. “When’ll you be putting in a mechanical librarian, Brother?”

“We find hints, Brother, that once there were such things,” the inventor growled. “In descriptions of the Machina analytica, you’ll find references to—”

“Enough, enough,” the abbot interposed; then to the librarian: “Thon Taddeo will need a place to work. What do you suggest?”

Armbruster jerked one thumb toward the Natural Science alcove. “Let him read at the lectern in there like anyone else.”

“What about setting up a study for him here on the open floor, Father Abbot?” Kornhoer suggested in hasty counter-proposal.

“Besides a desk, he’ll need an abacus, a wall slate, and a drawing board. We could partition it off with temporary screens.”

“I thought he was going to need our Leibowitzian references and earliest writings?” the librarian said suspiciously.

“He will.”

“Then he’ll have to walk back and forth a lot if you put him in the middle. The rare volumes are chained, and the chains won’t reach that far.”

“That’s no problem,” said the inventor. “Take off the chains. They look silly anyway. The schismatic cults have all died out or become regional. Nobody’s heard of the Pancratzian Military Order in a hundred years.”

Armbruster reddened angrily. “Oh no you don’t,” be snapped. “The chains stay on.”

“But why?”

“It’s not the book burners now. It’s the villagers we have to worry about. The chains stay on.”

Kornhoer turned to the abbot and spread his bands. “See, m’Lord?,”

“He’s right,” said Dom Paulo. “There’s too much agitation in the village. The town council expropriated our school, don’t forget. Now they’ve got a village library, and they want us to fill its shelves. Preferably with rare volumes, of course. Not only that, we had trouble with thieves last year. Brother Armbruster’s right. The rare volumes stay chained.”

“All right,” Kornhoer sighed. “So he’ll have to work in the alcove.”

“Now, where do we hang your wondrous lamp?”

The monks glanced toward the cubicle. It was one of fourteen identical stalls, sectioned according to subject matter, which faced the central floor. Each alcove had its archway, and from an iron hook imbedded in the keystone of each arch hung a heavy crucifix.

“Well, if he’s going to work in the alcove,” said Kornhoer, “we’ll just have to take the crucifix down and hang it there, temporarily. There’s no other—”

“Heathen!” hissed the librarian. “Pagan! Desecrator!” Armbruster raised trembling hands heavenward. “God help me, lest I tear him apart with these hands! Where will he stop? Take him away, away!” He turned his back on them, his hands still trembling aloft.

Dom Paulo himself had winced slightly at the inventor’s suggestion, but now he frowned sharply at the back of Brother Armbruster’s habit. He had never expected him to feign a meekness that was alien to Armbruster’s nature, but the aged monk’s querulous disposition had grown definitely worse.

“Brother Armbruster, turn around, please.”

The librarian turned.

“Now drop your hands, and speak more calmly when you—”

“But, Father Abbot, you heard what he—”

“Brother Armbruster, you will please get the shelf-ladder and remove that crucifix.”

The color left the librarian’s face. He stared speechless at Dam Paulo.

“This is not a church,” said the abbot. “The placement of images is optional. For the present, you will please take down the crucifix. It’s the only suitable place for the lamp, it seems. Later we may change it. Now I realize this whole thing has disturbed your library, and perhaps your digestion, but we hope it’s in the interests of progress. If it isn’t, then—”

“You’d make Our Lord move over to make room for prog—”

“Brother Armbruster!”

“Why don’t you just hang the witch-light around His neck?”

The abbot’s face went frigid. “I do not force your obedience, Brother. See me in my study after Compline.”

The librarian wilted. “I’ll get the ladder, Father Abbot,” he whispered, and shuffled unsteadily away.

Dom Paulo glanced up at the Christ of the rood in the archway. Do You mind? he wondered.

There was a knot in his stomach. He knew the knot would exact its price of him later. He left the basement before anyone could notice his discomfort. It was not good to let the community see how such trivial unpleasantness could overcome him these days.

The installation was completed the following day, but Dom Paulo remained in his study during the test. Twice he had been forced to warn Brother Armbruster privately, and then to rebuke him publicly during Chapter. And yet he felt more sympathy for the librarian’s stand than he did for Kornhoer’s. He sat slumped at his desk and waited for the news from the basement, feeling small concern for the test’s success or failure. He kept one hand tucked into the front of his habit. He patted his stomach as though trying to calm a hysterical child.

Internal cramping again. It seemed to come whenever unpleasantness threatened, and sometimes went away again when unpleasantness exploded into the open where he could wrestle with it. But now it was not going away.

He was being warned, and he knew it. Whether the warning came from an angel, from a demon, or from his own conscience, it told him to beware of himself and of some reality not yet faced.

What now? he wondered, permitting himself a silent belch and a silent Beg pardon toward the statue of Saint Leibowitz in the shrinelike niche in the corner of his study.

A fly was crawling along Saint Leibowitz’ nose. The eyes of the saint seemed to be looking crosseyed at the fly, urging the abbot to brush it away. The abbot had grown fond of the twenty-sixth century wood carving; its face wore a curious smile of a sort that made it rather unusual as a sacramental image. The smile was turned down at one corner; the eyebrows were pulled low in a faintly dubious frown, although there were laugh-wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. Because of the hangman’s rope over one shoulder, the saint’s expression often seemed puzzling. Possibly it resulted from slight irregularities in the grain of the wood, such irregularities dictating to the carver’s hand as that hand sought to bring out finer details than were possible with such wood. Dom Paulo was not certain whether the image had been growth-sculptured as a living tree before carving or not; sometimes the patient master-carvers of that period had begun with an oak or cedar sapling, and — by spending tedious years at pruning, barking, twisting, and tying living branches into desired positions — had tormented the growing wood into a striking dryad shape, arms folded or raised aloft, before cutting the mature tree for curing and carving. The resulting statue was unusually resistant to splitting or breaking, since most of the lines of the work followed the natural grain.

Dom Paulo often marveled that the wooden Leibowitz had also proved resistant to several centuries of his predecessors — marveled, because of the saint’s most peculiar smile. That little grin will ruin you someday, he warned the image… Surely, the saints must laugh in Heaven; the Psalmist says that God Himself shall chortle, but Abbot Malmeddy must have disapproved — God rest his soul. That solemn ass. How did you get by him, I wonder? You’re not sanctimonious enough for some. That smile — Who do I know that grins that way? I like it, but… Someday, another grim dog will sit in this chair. Cave canem. He’ll replace you with a plaster Leibowitz. Long-suffering. One who doesn’t look crosseyed at flies. Then you’ll be eaten by termites down in the storage room. To survive the Church’s slow sifting of the arts, you have to have a surface that can please a righteous simpleton; and yet you need a depth beneath that surface to please a discerning sage. The sifting is slow, but it gets a turn of the sifter-handle now and then — when some new prelate inspects his episcopal chambers and mutters, “Some of this garbage has got to go.” The sifter was usually full of dulcet pap. When the old pap was ground out, fresh pap was added. But what was not ground out was gold, and it lasted. If a church endured five centuries of priestly bad taste, occasional good taste had, by then, usually stripped away most of the transient tripe, had made it a place of majesty that overawed the would-be prettifiers.

The abbot fanned himself with a fan of buzzard feathers, but the breeze was not cooling. The air from the window was like an oven’s breath off the scorched desert, adding to the discomfort caused him by whatever devil or ruthless angel was fiddling around with his belly. It was the kind of heat that hints of lurking danger from sun-crazed rattlers and brooding thunderstorms over the mountains, or rabid dogs and tempers made vicious by the scorch. It made the cramping worse.

“Please?” he murmured aloud to the saint, meaning a nonverbal prayer for cooler weather, sharper wits, and more insight into his vague sense of something wrong. Maybe it’s that cheese that does it, he thought. Gummy stuff this season, and green. I could dispense myself — and take a more digestible diet.

But no, there we go again. Face it, Paulo: it’s not the food for the belly that does it; it’s the food for the brain. Something up there is not digesting.

“But what?”

The wooden saint gave him no ready answer. Pap. Sifting out chaff. Sometimes his mind worked in snatches. It was better to let it work that way when the cramps came and the world weighed heavily upon him. What did the world weigh? It weighs, but is not weighed. Sometimes its scales are crooked. It weighs life and labor in the balance against silver and gold. That’ll never balance. But fast and ruthless, it keeps on weighing. It spills a lot of life that way, and some times a little gold. And blindfolded, a king comes riding across the desert, with a set of crooked scales, a pair of loaded dice. .And upon the flags emblazoned — Vexilla regis…

“No!” the abbot grunted, suppressing the vision.

But of course! the saint’s wooden smile seemed to insist.

Dom Paulo averted his eyes from the image with a slight shudder. Sometimes he felt that the saint was laughing at him. Do they laugh at us in Heaven? he wondered. Saint Maisie of York herself — remember her, old man — she died of a laughing fit. That’s different. She died laughing at herself.

No, that’s at s not so different either. Ulp! The silent belch again. Tuesday’s Saint Maisie’s feast day, forsooth. Choir laughs reverently at the Alleluia of her Mass. “Alleluia ha ha! Alleluia ho ho!”

“Sancta Maisie, interride pro me.”

And the king was coming to weigh books in the basement with his pair of crooked scales. How “crooked,” Paulo? And what makes you think the Memorabilia is completely free of pap? Even the gifted and Venerable Boedullus once remarked scornfully that about half of it should be called the Inscrutabilia. Treasured fragments of a dead civilization there were indeed — but how much of it has been reduced to gibberish, embellished with olive leaves and cherubims, by forty generations of us monastic ignoramuses, children of dark centuries, many, entrusted by adults with an incomprehensible message, to be memorized and delivered to other adults.

I made him travel all the way from Texarkana through dangerous country, thought Paulo. Now I’m just worrying that what we’ve got may prove worthless to him, that’s all.

But no, that wasn’t all. He glanced at the smiling saint again. And again: Vexilla regis inferni prodeunt… Forth come the banners of the King of Hell, whispered a memory of that perverted line from an ancient commedia. It nagged like an unwanted tune in his thought.

The fist clenched tighter. He dropped the fan and breathed through his teeth. He avoided looking at the saint again. The ruthless angel ambushed him with a hot burst at his corporeal core. He leaned over the desk. That one had felt like a hot wire breaking. His hard breathing swept a clean spot in the film of desert dust on the desktop. The smell of the dust was choking. The room went pink, swarmed with black gnats. I don’t dare belch, might shake something loose — but Holy Saint and Patron I’ve got to. Pain is. Ergo sum. Lord Christ God accept this token.

He belched, tasted salt, let his head fall onto the desk.

Does the chalice have to be now right this very minute Lord or can I wait awhile? But crucifixion is always now. Now ever since before Abraham even is always now. Before Pfardentrott even, now. Always for everybody anyhow is to get nailed on it and then to hang on it and if you drop off they beat you to death with a shovel so do it with dignity old man. If you can belch with dignity you may get to Heaven if you re sorry enough about messing up the rug…He felt very apologetic.

He waited a long time. Some of the gnats died and the room lost its blush but went hazy and gray.

Well, Paulo, are we going to hemorrhage now, or are we just going to fool around about it?

He probed the haze and found the face of the saint again. It was such a small grin — sad, understanding and, something else. Laughing at the hangman? No, laughing for the hangman. Laughing at the Stultus Maximus, at Satan himself. It was the first time he had seen it dearly. In the last chalice, there could be a chuckle of triumph. Haec commixtio…

He was suddenly very sleepy; the saint’s face grayed over, but the abbot continued to grin weakly in response.

Prior Gault found him slumped over the desk shortly before None. Blood showed between his teeth. The young priest quickly felt for a pulse. Dom Paulo awakened at once, straightened in his chair, and, as if still in a dream, he pontificated imperiously: “I tell you, it’s all supremely ridiculous. It’s absolutely idiotic. Nothing could be more absurd,”

“What’s absurd, Domne?”

The abbot shook his head, blinked several times. “What?”

“I’ll get Brother Andrew at once.”

“Oh? That’s absurd. Come back here. What did you want?”

“Nothing, Father Abbot. I’ll be back as soon as I get Brother—”

“Oh, bother the medic! You didn’t come in here for nothing. My door was closed. Close it again, sit down, say what you wanted.”

“The test was successful. Brother Kornhoer’s lamp, Imean.”

“All right, let’s hear about it. Sit down, start talking, tell me all lll about it.” He straightened his habit and blotted his mouth with a bit of linen. He was still dizzy, but the fist in his belly had come unclenched. He could not have cared lass about the prior’s account of the test, but he tried his best to appear attentive. Got to keep him here until I’m awake enough to think. Can’t let him go for the medic — not yet; the news would get out: The old man is finished. Got to decide whether it’s a safe time to be finished or not.

15

Hongan Os was essentially a just and kindly man. When he saw a party of his warriors making sport of the Laredan captives, he paused to watch; but when they tied three Laredans by their ankles between horses and whipped the horses into frenzied flight, Hongan Os decided to intervene. He ordered that the warriors be flogged on the spot, for Hongan Os — Mad Bear — was known to be a merciful chieftain. He had never mistreated a horse.

“Killing captives is woman’s work,” he growled scornfully at the whipped culprits. “Cleanse yourselves lest you be squawmarked, and withdraw from camp until the New Moon, for you are banished twelve days.” And, answering their moans of protest: “Suppose the horses had dragged one of them through camp? The grass-eater chieflings are our guests, and it is known that they are easily frightened by blood. Especially the blood of their own kind. Take heed.”

“But these are grass-eaters from the South,” a warrior objected, gesturing toward the mutilated captives. “Our guests are grass-eaters from the East. Is there not a pact between us real people and the East to make war upon the South.”

“If you speak of it again, your tongue shall be cut out and fed to the dogs!” Mad Bear warned. “Forget that you heard such things.”

“Will the herb-men be among us for many days, O Son of the Mighty?”

“Who can know what the farmer-things plan?” Mad Bear asked crossly. “Their thought is not as our thought. They say that some of their numbers will depart from here to pass on across the Dry Lands — to a place of the grass-eater priests, a place of the dark-robed ones. The others will stay here to talk — but that is not for your ears. Now go, and be ashamed twelve days.”

He turned his back that they might slink away without feeling his gaze pour upon them. Discipline was becoming lax of late. The clans were restless. It had become known among the people of the Plains that he, Hongan Os, had clasped arms across a treaty-fire with a messenger from Texarkana, and that a shaman had clipped hair and fingernails from each of them to make a good-faith doll as a defense against treachery by either party. It was known that an agreement had been made, and any agreement between people and grass-eaters was regarded by the tribes as a cause for shame. Mad Bear had felt the veiled scorn of the younger warriors, but there was no explaining to them until the right time came.

Mad Bear himself was willing to listen to good thought, even if it came from a dog. The thought of grass-eaters was seldom good, but he had been impressed by the messages of the grass-eater king in the east, who had expounded the value of secrecy and deplored the idle boast. If the Laredans learned that the tribes were being armed by Hannegan, the plan would surely fail. Mad Bear had brooded on this thought; it repelled him — for certainly it was more satisfying and more manly to tell an enemy what one intended to do to him before doing it; and yet, the more he brooded on it, the more he saw its wisdom. Either the grass-eater king was a craven coward, or else he was almost as wise as a man: Mad Bear had not decided which — but he judged the thought itself as wise. Secrecy was essential even if it seemed womanly for a time. If Mad Bear’s own people knew that the arms which came to them were gifts from Hannegan, and not really the spoils of border raids, then there would arise the possibility of Laredo’s learning of the scheme from captives caught on raids. It was therefore necessary to let the tribes grumble about the shame of talking peace with the farmers of the east.

But the talk was not of peace. The talk was good, and it promised loot.

A few weeks ago, Mad Bear himself had led a “war party” to the east and had returned with a hundred head of horses, four dozen long rifles, several kegs of black powder, ample shot, and one prisoner. But not even the warriors who had accompanied him knew that the cache of arms had been planted there for him by Hannegan’s men, or that the prisoner was in reality a Texarkanan cavalry officer who would in the future advise Mad Bear about probable Laredan tactics during the fighting to come. All grass-eater thought was shameless, but the officer’s thought could probe that of the grass-eaters to the south. It could not probe that of Hongan Os.

Mad Bear was justifiably proud of himself as a bargainer. He had pledged nothing but to refrain from making war upon Texarkana and to stop stealing cattle from the eastern borders, but only as long as Hannegan furnished him with arms and supplies. The agreement to war against Laredo was an unspoken pledge of the fire, but it fitted Mad Bear’s natural inclinations and there was no need for a formal pact. Alliance with one of his enemies would permit him to deal with one foe at a time, and eventually he might regain the grazing lands that had been encroached upon and settled by the farmer-people during the previous century.

Night had fallen by the time the clans chief rode into camp, and a chill had come over the Plains. His guests from the east sat huddled in their blankets around the council fire with three of the old people while the usual ring of curious children gaped from surrounding shadows and peeped under tent skirts at the strangers. There were twelve strangers in all, but they separated themselves into two distinct parties which had traveled together but apparently cared little for each other’s company. The leader of one party was obviously a madman. While Mad Bear did not object to insanity (indeed, it was prized by his shamans as the most intense of supernatural visitations), he had not known that the farmers likewise regarded madness as a virtue in a leader. But this one spent half of his time digging in the earth down by the dry riverbed and the other half jotting mysteriously in a small book. Obviously a witch, and probably not to be trusted

Mad Bear stopped only long enough to don his ceremonial wolf robes and have a shaman paint the totem mark on his forehead before he joined the group at the fire.

“Be afraid!” an old warrior ceremonially wailed as the clans chief stepped into the firelight. “Be afraid, for the Mighty One walks among his children. Grovel, O clans, for his name is Mad Bear — a name well won, for as a youth he did overcome without weapons a bear run mad, with his naked hands did he strangle her, verily in the Northlands…”

Hongan Os ignored the eulogies and accepted a cup of blood from the old woman who served the council fire. It was fresh from a butchered steer and still warm. He drainedit before turning to nod at the easterners who watched the brief wassail with apparent disquiet..

“Aaaah!” said the clans chief.

“Aaaah!’ replied the three old people, together with one grass-eater who dared to chime in. The people stared at the grass-eater for a moment in disgust.

The insane one tried to cover his companion’s blunder.

“Tell me,” said the madman when the chieftain was seated. “How is it that your people drink no water? Do your gods object?”

“Who knows what the gods drink?” rumbled Mad Bear. “It is said that water is for cattle and farmers, that milk is for children and blood for men. Should it he otherwise?”

The insane one was not insulted. He studied the chief for a moment with searching gray eyes, then nodded at one of his fellows. “That ‘water for the cattle’ explains it,” he said. “The everlasting drought out here. A herdsman people would conserve what little water there is for the animals. I was wondering if they backed it by a religious taboo.”

His companion grimaced and spoke in the Texarkanan tongue. “Water! Ye gods, why can’t we drink water, Thon Taddeo? There’s such a thing as too much conformity!” He spat dryly. “Blood! Blah! It sticks in the throat. Why can’t we have one little sip of—”

“Not until we leave”

“But, Thon—”

*No,” snapped the scholar; then, noticing that the clans people were glowering at them, he spoke to Mad Bear in tongue of the Plains again. “My comrade here was speaking of the manliness and health of your people,” he said. “Perhaps your diet is responsible.”

“Ha!” barked the chief, but then called almost cheerfully to the old woman: “Give that outlander a cup of red.”

Thon Taddeo’s companion shuddered, but made no protest.

“I have, O Chief, a request to make of your greatness,” said the scholar. “Tomorrow we shall continue our journey to the west. If some of your warriors could accompany our party, we would be honored.”

“Why?”

Thon Taddeo paused. “Why — as guides…” He stopped, and suddenly smiled. “No, I’ll be quite truthful. Some of your people disapprove of our presence here. While your hospitality has been—”

Hongan Os threw back his head and roared with laughter. “They are afraid of the lesser clans,” he said to the old ones. “They fear being ambushed as soon as they leave my tents. They eat grass and are afraid of a fight.”

The scholar flushed slightly.

“Fear nothing, outlander!” chortled the clans chief. “Real men shall accompany you.”

Thon Taddeo inclined his head in mock gratitude.

“Tell us,” said Mad Bear, “what is it you go to seek in the western Dry Land? New places for planting fields? I can tell you there are none. Except near a few water holes, nothing grows that even cattle will eat.”

“We seek no new land,” the visitor answered. “We are not all of us farmers, you know. We are going to look for—” He paused. In the nomad speech, there was no way to explain the purpose of the journey to the Abbey of St. Leibowitz “ — for the skills of an ancient sorcery.”

One of the old ones, a shaman, seemed to prick up his ears. “An ancient sorcery in the west? I know of no magicians there. Unless you mean the dark-robed ones?”

“They are the ones.”

“Ha! What magic do they have that’s worth looking after? Their messengers can be captured so easily that it is no real sport — although they do endure torture well. What sorcery can you learn from them?”

“Well, for my part, I agree with you,” said Thon Taddeo. “But it is said that writings, uh, incantations of great power are hoarded at one of their abodes. If it is true, then obviously the dark-robed ones don’t know how to use them, but we hope to master them for ourselves.”

“Will the dark-robes permit you to observe their secrets?”

Thon Taddeo smiled. “I think so. They don’t dare hide them any longer. We could take them, if we had to.”

“A brave saying,” scoffed Mad Bear. “Evidently the farmers are braver among their own kind — although they are meek enough among real people.”

The scholar, who had stomached his fill of the nomad’s insults, chose to retire early.

The soldiers remained at the council fire to discuss with Hongan Os the war that was certain to come; but the war, after all, was none of Thon Taddeo’s affair. The political aspirations of his ignorant cousin were far from his own interest in a revival of learning in a dark world, except when that monarch’s patronage proved useful, as it already had upon several occasions.

16

The old hermit stood at the edge of the mesa and watched the approach of the dust speck across the desert. The hermit munched, muttered words and chuckled silently into the wind. His withered hide was burned the color of old leather by the sun, and his brushy beard was stained yellow about the chin. He wore a basket hat and a loincloth of rough homespun that resembled burlap — his only clothing except for sandals and a goat-skin water bag.

He watched the dust speck until it passed through the village of Sanly Bowitts and departed again by way of the road leading past the mesa.

“Ah!” snorted the hermit, his eyes beginning to burn.

“His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of his peace: he shall sit upon his kingdom.”

Suddenly he went down the arroyo like a cat with three legs, using his staff, bounding from stone to stone and sliding most of the way. The dust from his rapid descent plumed high on the wind and wandered away.

At the foot of the mesa he vanished into the mesquite and settled down to wait. Soon he heard the rider approaching at a lazy trot, and he began slinking toward the road to peer out through the brush. The pony appeared from around the bend, wrapped in a thin dust shroud. The hermit darted into the trail and threw up his arms.

“Olla allay!” he shouted; and as the rider halted, he darted forward to seize the reins and frown anxiously up at the man in the saddle.

His eyes blazed for a moment. “For a Child is born to us, and a Son is given us…” But then the anxious frown melted away into sadness. “It’s not Him!” he grumbled irritably at the sky.

The rider had thrown back his hood and was laughing. The hermit blinked angrily at him for a moment. Recognition dawned.

“Oh,” he grunted. “You! I thought you’d be dead by now. What are you doing out here?”

“I brought back your prodigal, Benjamin,” said Dom Paulo. He tugged at a leash and the blue-headed goat trotted up from behind the pony. It bleated and strained at the rope upon seeing the hermit. “And… I thought I’d pay you a visit.”

“The animal is the Poet’s,” the hermit grunted. “He won it fairly in a game of chance — although he cheated miserably. Take it back to him, and let me counsel you against meddling in worldly swindles that don’t concern you. Good day.” He turned toward the arroyo.

“Wait, Benjamin. Take your goat, or I’ll give it to a peasant. I won’t have it wandering around the abbey and bleating into the church.”

“It’s not a goat,” the hermit said crossly. “It’s the beast which your prophet saw, and it was made for a woman to ride. I suggest you curse it and drive it into the desert. You notice, however, that it divideth the hoof and cheweth the cud.” He started away again.

The abbot’s smile faded. “Benjamin, are you really going back up that hill without even a ‘hello’ for an old friend?”

“Hello,” the Old Jew called back, and marched indignantly on. After a few steps he stopped to glance over his shoulder. “You needn’t look so hurt,” he said. “It’s been five years since you’ve troubled to come this way, ‘old friend.’ Hah!”

“So that’s it!” muttered the abbot. He dismounted and hurried after the Old Jew. “Benjamin, Benjamin, I would have come — I have not been free.”

The hermit stopped. “Well, Paulo, since you’re here…”

Suddenly they laughed and embraced.

“It’s good, you old grump,” said the hermit.

“I a grump?”

“Well, I’m getting cranky too, I guess. The last century has been a trying one for me.”

“I hear you’ve been throwing rocks at the novices who come hereabouts for their Lenten fast in the desert. Can this be true?” He eyed the hermit with mock reproof.

“Only pebbles.”

“Miserable old pretzel!”

“now, now, paulo. one of them once mistook me for a distant relative of mine — name of Leibowitz. He thought I had been sent to deliver him a message — or some of your other scalawags thought so. I don’t want it to happen again, so I throw pebbles at them sometimes. Hah! I’ll not be mistaken for that kinsman again, for he stopped being any kin of mine.”

The priest looked puzzled. “Mistook you for whom? Saint Leibowitz? Now, Benjamin! You’re going too far.”

Benjamin repeated it in a mocking singsong: “Mistook me for a distant relative of mine — name of Leibowitz, so I throw pebbles at them.”

Dom Paulo looked thoroughly perplexed. “Saint Leibowitz has been dead a dozen centuries. How could—” He broke off and peered warily at the old hermit. “Now, Benjamin, let’s don’t start that tale wagging again. You haven’t lived twelve cent—”

“Nonsense!” interrupted the Old Jew. “I didn’t say it happened twelve centuries ago. It was only six centuries ago. Long after your Saint was dead; that’s why it was so preposterous. Of course, your novices were more devout in those days, and more credulous. I think Francis was that one’s name. Poor fellow. I buried him later. Told them in New Rome where to dig for him. That’s how you got his carcass back.”

The abbot gaped at the old man as they walked through the mesquite toward the water hole, leading the horse and the goat. Francis? he wondered. Francis. That could be the Venerable Francis Gerard of Utah, perhaps? — to whom a pilgrim had once revealed the location of the old shelter in the village, so that story went — but that was before the village was there. And about six centuries ago, yes, and — now this old gaffer was claiming to have been that pilgrim? He sometimes wondered where Benjamin had picked up enough knowledge of the abbey’s history to invent such tales. From the Poet, perhaps.

“That was during my earlier career, of course,” the Old Jew went on, “and perhaps such a mistake was understandable.”

“Earlier career?”

“Wanderer.”

“How do you expect me to believe such nonsense?”

“Hmm-hnnn! The Poet believes me.”

“Undoubtedly! The Poet certainly would never believe that the Venerable Francis met a saint. That would be superstition. The Poet would rather believe he met you — six centuries ago. A purely natural explanation, eh?”

Benjamin chuckled wryly. Paulo watched him lower a leaky bark cup into the well, empty it into his water skin, and lower it again for more. The water was cloudy and alive with creeping uncertainties as was the Old Jew’s stream of memory. Or was his memory uncertain? Playing games with us all? wondered the priest. Except for his delusion of being older than Methuselah, old Benjamin Eleazar seemed sane enough, in his own wry way.

“Drink?” the hermit offered, extending the cup.

The abbot suppressed a shudder, but accepted the cup so as not to offend; be drained the murky liquid at a gulp.

“Not very particular, are you?” said Benjamin, watching him critically. “Wouldn’t touch it myself.” He patted the water skin. “For the animals.”

The abbot gagged slightly.

“You’ve changed,” said Benjamin, still watching him.

“You’ve grown pale as cheese and wasted.”

“I’ve been ill.”

“You look ill. Come up in my shack, if the climb won’t tire you out.”

“I’ll be all right. I had a little trouble the other day, and our physician told me to rest. Fah! If an important guest weren’t coming soon, I’d pay no attention. But he’s coming, so I’m resting. It’s quite tiresome.”

Benjamin glanced back at him with a grin as they climbed the arroyo. He waggled his grizzly head. “Riding ten miles across the desert is resting?”

“For me it’s rest. And, I’ve been wanting to see you, Benjamin.”

“What will the villagers say?” the Old Jew asked mockingly.

“They’ll think we’ve become reconciled, and that will spoil both our reputations.”

“Our reputations never have amounted to much in the market place, have they?”

“True,” he admitted but added cryptically: “for the present.”

“Still waiting, Old Jew?”

“Certainly!” the hermit snapped.

The abbot found the climb tiring. Twice they stopped to rest. By the time they reached the tableland, he had become dizzy and was leaning on the spindly hermit for support. A dull fire burned in his chest, warning against further exertion, but there was none of the angry clenching that had come before.

A flock of the blue-headed goat-mutants scattered at the approach of a stranger and fled into straggly mesquite. Oddly, the mesa seemed more verdant than the surrounding desert, although there was no visible supply of moisture.

“This way, Paulo. To my mansion.”

The Old Jew’s hovel proved to be a single room, windowless and stone-walled, its rocks stacked loosely as a fence, with wide chinks through which the wind could blow. The roof was a flimsy patchwork of poles, most of them crooked, covered by a heap of brush, thatch, and goatskins. On a large flat rock, set on a short pillar beside the door, was a sign painted in Hebrew:

The size of the sign, and its apparent attempt to advertise, led Abbot Paulo to grin and ask: “What does it say, Benjamin? Does it attract much trade up here?”

“Hah — what should it say? It says: Tents Mended Here.”

The priest snorted his disbelief.

“All right, doubt me. But if you don’t believe what’s written there, you can’t be expected to believe what’s written on the other side of the sign.”

“Facing the wall?,”

“Obviously facing the wall.”

The pillar was set close to the threshold, so that only a few inches of clearance existed between the flat rock and the wall of the hovel. Paulo stooped low and squinted into the narrow space. It took him a while to make it out, but sure enough there was something written on the back of the rock, in smaller letters:

“Do you ever turn the rock around?”

“Turn it around? You think I’m crazy? In times like these?”

“What does it say back there?”

“Hmmm-hnnnn!” the hermit singsonged, refusing to answer. “But come on in, you who can’t read from the backside.”

“There’s a wall slightly in the way.”

“There always was, wasn’t there?”

The priest sighed. “All right, Benjamin, I know what it was that you were commanded to write “in the entry and on the door” of your house. But only you would think of turning it face down.”

“Face inward,” corrected the hermit. “As long as there are tents to be mended in Israel — but let’s not begin teasing each other until you’ve rested. I’ll get you some milk, and you tell me about this visitor that’s worrying you.

“There’s wine in my bag if you’d like some,” said the abbot, falling with relief onto a mound of skins. “But I’d rather not talk about Thon Taddeo.”

“Oh?That one.”

“You’ve heard of Thon Taddeo? Tell me, how is it you’ve always managed to know everything and everybody without stirring from this hill?”

“One hears, one sees,” the hermit said cryptically.

“Tell me, what do you think of him?,”

“I haven’t see him. But I suppose he will be a pain. A birth-pain, perhaps, but a pain.”

“Birth-pain? You really believe we’re going to have a new Renaissance, as some say?”

“Hmmm-hnnn.”

“Stop smirking mysteriously, Old Jew, and tell me your opinion. You’re bound to have one. You always do. Why is your confidence so hard to get? Aren’t we friends?”

“On some grounds, on some grounds. But we have our differences, you and I.”

“What have our differences got to do with Thon Taddeo and a Renaissance we’d both like to see? Thon Taddeo is a secular scholar, and rather remote from our differences.”

Benjamin shrugged eloquently. “Difference, secular scholars,” he echoed, tossing out the words like discarded apple pits. “I have been called a ‘secular scholar’ at various times by certain people, and sometimes I’ve been staked, stoned, and burned for it.”

“Why, you never—” The priest stopped, frowning sharply. That madness again. Benjamin was peering at him suspiciously, and his smile had gone cold. Now, thought the abbot, he’s looking at me as if I were one of Them — whatever formless “Them” it was that drove him here to solitude. Staked, stoned, and burned? Or did his “I” mean “We” as in “I, my people”?

“Benjamin — I am Paulo. Torquemada is dead. I was born seventy-odd years ago, and pretty soon I’ll die. I have loved you, old man, and when you look at me, I wishyou would see paulo of pecos and no other.”

Benjamin wavered for a moment. His eyes became moist.

“I sometimes — forget—”

“And sometimes you forget that Benjamin is only Benjamin and not all of Israel.”

“Never!” snapped the hermit, eyes blazing again. “For thirty-two centuries, I—” He stopped and closed his mouth tightly.

“Why?” the abbot whispered almost in awe. “Why do you take the burden of a people and its past upon yourself alone?”

The hermit’s eyes flared a brief warning, but he swallowed a throaty sound and lowered his face into his hands. “You fish in dark waters.”

“Forgive me.”

“The burden — it was pressed upon me by others.” He looked up slowly. “Should I refuse to take it?”

The priest sucked in his breath. For a time there was no sound in the shanty but the sound of the wind. There was a touch of divinity in this madness! Dom Paulo thought. The Jewish community was thinly scattered in these times. Benjamin had perhaps outlived his children, or somehow become an outcast. Such an old Israelite might wander for years without encountering others of his people. Perhaps in his loneliness he had acquired the silent conviction that he was the last, the one, the only. And, being the last, he ceased to be Benjamin, becoming Israel. And upon his heart had settled the history of five thousand years, no longer remote, but become as the history of his own lifetime. His “I” was the converse of the imperial “We.”

But I, too, am a member of a oneness, thought Dom Paulo, a part of a congregation and a continuity. Mine, too, have been despised by the world. Yet for me the distinction between self and nation is clear. For you, old friend, it has somehow become obscure. A burden pressed upon you by others? And you accepted it? What must it weigh? What would it weigh for me? He set his shoulders under it and tried to heave, testing the bulk of it: I am a Christian monk and priest, and I am, therefore, accountable before God for the actions and deeds of every monk and priest who has breathed and walked the earth since Christ, as well as for the acts of my own.

He shuddered and began shaking his head.

No, no. It crushed the spine, this burden. It was too much for any man to bear, save Christ alone. To be cursed for a faith was burden enough. To bear the curses was possible, but then — to accept the illogic behind the curses, the illogic which called one to task not only for himself but also for every member of his race or faith, for their actions as well as one’s own? To accept that too? — as Benjamin was trying to do?

No, no.

And yet, Dom Paulo’s own Faith told him that the burden was there, had been there since Adam’s time — and the burden imposed by a fiend crying in mockery, “Man!” at man.

“Man!” — calling each to account for the deeds of all since the beginning; a burden impressed upon every generation before the opening of the womb, the burden of the guilt of original sin. Let the fool dispute it. The same fool with great delight accepted the other inheritance — the inheritance of ancestral glory, virtue, triumph, and dignity which rendered him “courageous and noble by reason of birthright,” without protesting that he personally had done nothing to earn that inheritance beyond being born of the race of Man. The protest was reserved for the inherited burden which rendered him “guilty and outcast by reason of birthright,” and against that verdict he strained to close his ears. The burden, indeed, was hard. His own Faith told him, too, that the burden had been lifted from him by the One whose image hung from a cross above the altars, although the burden’s imprint still was there. The imprint was an easier yoke, compared to the full weight of the original curse. He could not bring himself to say it to the old man, since the old man already knew he believed it. Benjamin was looking for Another. And the last old Hebrew sat alone on a mountain and did penance for Israel and waited for a Messiah, and waited, and waited, and —

“God bless you for a brave fool. Even a wise fool.”

“Hmmm-hnnn! Wise fool!” mimicked the hermit. “But you always did specialize in paradox and mystery, didn’t you, Paulo? If a thing can’t be in contradiction to itself, then it doesn’t oven interest you, does it? You have to find Threeness in Unity, life in death, wisdom in folly. Otherwise it might make too much common sense.”

“To sense the responsibility is wisdom, Benjamin. To think you can carry it alone is folly.”

“Not madness?”

“A little, perhaps. But a brave madness.”

“Then I’ll tell you a small secret. I’ve known all along that I can’t carry it, ever since He called me forth again. But are we talking about the same thing?”

The priest shrugged. “You would call it the burden of being Chosen. I would call it the burden of Original Guilt. In either case, the implied responsibility is the same, although we might tell different versions of it, and disagree violently in words about what we mean in words by something that isn’t really meant in words at all — since it’s something that’s meant in the dead silence of a heart.”

Benjamin chuckled. “Well, I’m glad to hear you admit it, finally, even if all you say is that you’ve never really said anything.”

“Stop cackling, you reprobate.”

“But you’ve always used words so wordily in crafty defense of your Trinity, although He never needed such defense before you got Him from me as a Unity. Eh?”

The priest reddened but said nothing.

“There!” Benjamin yelped, bouncing up and down. “I made you want to argue for once. Ha! But never mind. I use quite a few words myself, but I’m never quite sure He and I mean the same thing either. I suppose you can’t be blamed; it must be more confusing with Three than with One.”

“Blasphemous old cactus! I really wanted your opinion of Thon Taddeo and whatever’s brewing.”

“Why seek the opinion of a poor old anchorite?”

“Because, Benjamin Eleazar bar Joshua, if all these years of waiting for One-Who-Isn’t-Coming haven’t taught you wisdom, at least they’ve made you shrewd.”

The Old Jew closed his eyes, lifted his face ceilingward, and smiled cunningly. “Insult me,” he said in mocking tones, “rail at me, bait me, persecute me — but do you know what I’ll say?”

“You’ll say, “Hmmm-hnnn!’“

“No! I’ll say He’s already here. I caught a glimpse of Him once.”

“What? Who are you talking about? Thon Taddeo?”

“No! Moreover, I do not care to prophesy, unless you tell me what’s really bothering you, Paulo.”

“Well, it all started with Brother Kornhoer’s lamp.”

“Lamp? Oh, yes, the Poet mentioned it. He prophesied it wouldn’t work.”

“The Poet was wrong, as usual. So they tell me. I didn’t watch the trial.”

“It worked then? Splendid. And that started what?”

“Me wondering. How close are we to the brink of something? Or how close to a shore? Electrical essences in the basement. Do you realize how much things have changed in the past two centuries?”

Soon, the priest spoke at length of his fears, while the hermit, mender of tents, listened patiently until the sun had begun to leak through the chinks in the west wall to paint glowing shafts in the dusty air.

“Since the death of the last civilization, the Memorabilia has been our special province, Benjamin. And we’ve kept it. But now? I sense the predicament of the shoemaker who tries to sell shoes in a village of shoemakers.”

The hermit smiled. “It could be done, if he manufactures a special and superior type of shoe.”

“I’m afraid the secular scholars are already beginning to lay claim to such a method.”

“Then go out of the shoemaking business, before you are ruined.”

“A possibility,” the abbot admitted. “It’s unpleasant to think of it however. For twelve centuries, we’ve been one little island in a very dark ocean. Keeping the Memorabilia has been a thankless task, but a hallowed one, we think. It’s only our worldly job, but we’ve always been bookleggers and memorizers, and it’s hard to think that the job’s soon to be finished — soon to become unnecessary. I can’t believe that somehow.”

“So you try to best the other ‘shoemakers’ by building strange contraptions in your basement?”

“I must admit, it looks that way—”

“What will you do next to keep ahead of the seculars? Build a flying machine? Or revive the Machina analytica? Or perhaps step over their heads and resort to metaphysics?”

“You shame me, Old Jew. You know we are monks of Christ first, and such things are for others to do.”

“I wasn’t shaming you. I see nothing inconsistent in monks of Christ building a flying machine, although it would be more like them to build a praying machine.”

“Wretch! I do my Order a disservice by sharing a confidence with you!”

Benjamin smirked. “I have no sympathy for you. The books you stored away may be hoary with age, but they were written by children of the world, and they’ll be taken from you by children of the world, and you had no business meddling with them in the first place.”

“Ah, now you care to prophesy!”

“Not at all. ‘Soon the sun will set’ — is that prophecy? No, it’s merely an assertion of faith in the consistency of events. The children of the world are consistent too — so I say they will soak up everything you can offer, take your job away from you, and then denounce you as a decrepit wreck. Finally, they’ll ignore you entirely. It’s your own fault. The Book I gave you should have been enough for you. Now you’ll just have to take the consequences for your meddling.”

He had spoken flippantly, but his prediction seemed uncomfortably close to Dom Paulo’s fears. The priest’s countenance saddened.

“Pay me no mind,” said the hermit. “I’ll not venture to soothsay before I’ve seen this contraption of yours, or taken a look at this Thon Taddeo — who begins to interest me, by the way. Wait until I’ve examined the entrails of the new era in better detail, if you expect advice from me.”

“Well, you won’t see the lamp because you never come to the abbey.”

“It’s your abominable cooking I object to.”

“And you won’t see Thon Taddeo because he comes from the other direction. If you wait to examine the entrails of an era until after it’s born, it’s too late to prophesy its birth.”

“Nonsense. Probing the womb of the future is bad for the child. I shall wait — and then I shall prophesy that it was born and that it wasn’t what I’m waiting for.”

“What a cheerful outlook! So what are you looking for?”

“Someone who shouted at me once.”

“Shouted?”

“‘Come forth!’ “

“What rot!”

“Hmmm-hnnn! To tell you the truth, I don’t much expect Him to come, but I was told to wait, and—” he shrugged “ — I wait.” After a moment his twinkling eyes narrowed to slits, and he leaned forward with sudden eagerness. “Paulo, bring this Thon Taddeo past the foot of the mesa.”

The abbot recoiled in mock horror. “Accoster of pilgrims! Molester of novices! I shall send you the Poet-sirrah! — and may he descend upon you and rest forever. Bring the thon past your lair! What an outrage.”

Benjamin shrugged again. “Very well. Forget that I asked it. But let’s hope this thon will be on our side, and not with the others this time.”

“Others, Benjamin?”

“Manasses, Cyrus, Nebuchadnezzar, Pharaoh, Caesar, Hannegan the Second — need I go on? Samuel warned us against them, then gave us one. When they have a few wise men shackled nearby to counsel them, they become more dangerous than ever. That’s all the advice I’ll give you.”

“Well, Benjamin, I’ve had enough of you now to last me another five years, so—”

“Insult me, rail at me, bait me-”

“Stop it. I’m leaving, old man. It’s late.”

“So? And how is the ecclesiastical belly fixed for the ride?”

“My stomach — ?” Dom Paulo paused to explore, found himself more comfortable than at any time in recent weeks.

“It’s a mess, of course,” he complained. “How else would it be after listening to you?”

“True-ElShaddai is merciful, but He is also just.”

“Godspeed, old man. After Brother Kornhoer reinvents the flying machine, I’ll send up some novices to drop rocks on you.”

They embraced affectionately. The Old Jew led him to the edge of the mesa. Benjamin stood wrapped in a prayer shawl, its fine fabric contrasting oddly with the rough burlap of his loincloth, while the abbot climbed down to the trail and rode back toward the abbey. Dom Paulo could still see him standing there at sundown, his spindly figure silhouetted against the twilight sky as he bowed and munched a prayer over the desert.

“Memento, Domine Gomnium famulorum tuorum,” the abbot whispered in response, adding: “And may he finally win the Poet’s eyeball at mumbly-peg. Amen.”

17

“I can tell you definitely: There will be war,” said the messenger from New Rome. “All Laredo’s forces are committed to the Plains. Mad Bear has broken camp. There’s a running cavalry battle, nomad style, all over the Plains. But the State of Chihuahua is threatening Laredo from the south. So Hannegan is getting ready to send Texarkana forces to the Rio Grande — to help ‘defend’ the frontier. With the Laredans’ full approval, of course.”

“King Goraldi is a doddering fool!” said Dom Paulo. “Wasn’t he warned against Hannegan’s treachery?”

The messenger smiled. “The Vatican diplomatic service always respects state secrets if we happen to learn them. Lest we be accused of espionage, we are always careful about—”

“Was he warned?” the abbot demanded again.

“Of course. Goraldi said the papal legate was lying to him; he accused the Church of fomenting dissension among the allies of the Holy Scourge, in an attempt to promote the Pope’s temporal power. The idiot even told Hannegan about the legate’s warning.”

Dom Paulo winced and whistled. “So Hannegan did what?”

The messenger hesitated. “I suppose I can tell you: Monsignor Apollo is under arrest. Hannegan ordered his diplomatic files seized. There’s talk in New Rome of placing the whole realm of Texarkana under interdict. Of course, Hannegan has already incurred ipso facto excommunication, but that doesn’t seem to bother many Texarkanans. As you surely know, the population is about eighty per cent cultist anyhow, and the Catholicism of the ruling class has always been a thin veneer.”

“So now Marcus,” the abbot murmured sadly. “And what of Thon Taddeo?”

“I don’t quite see how be expects to get across the Plains without picking up a few musket-ball holes just now. It seems clear why he hadn’t wanted to make the trip. But I know nothing about his progress, Father Abbot.”

Dom Paulo’s flown was pained. “If our refusal to send the material to his university leads to his being killed—”

“Don’t trouble your conscience about that, Father Abbot. Hannegan looks out for his own. I don’t know bow, but I’m sure the thon will get here.”

“The world could ill afford to lose him, I hear. Well — But tell me, why were you sent to report Hannegan’s plans to us? We’re in the empire of Denver, and I can’t see how this region is affected.”

“Ah, but I’ve told you only the beginning. Hannegan hopes to unite the continent eventually. After Laredo’s firmly leashed, he will have broken the encirclement that’s kept him in check. Then the next move will be against Denver.”

“But wouldn’t that involve supply lines across nomad country? It seems impossible.”

“It’s extremely difficult, and that’s what makes the next move certain. The Plains form a natural geographical barrier. If they were depopulated, Hannegan might regard his western frontier as secure as it stands. But the nomads have made it necessary for all states adjoining the Plains to tie up permanent military forces around the nomad territory for containment. The only way to subdue the Plains is to control both fertile strips, to the east and to the west.”

“But even so,” the abbot wondered, “the nomads—”

“Hannegan’s plan for them is devilish. Mad Bear’s warriors can easily cope with Laredo’s cavalry, but what they can’t cope with is a cattle plague. The Plains tribes don’t know it yet, but when Laredo set out to punish the nomads for border raiding, the Laredans drove several hundred head of diseased cattle ahead to mingle with the nomads’ herds. It was Hannegan’s idea. The result will be famine, and then it will be easy to set tribe against tribe. We don’t, of course, know all the details, but the goal is a nomad legion under a puppet chieftain, armed by Texarkana, loyal to Hannegan, ready to sweep west to the mountains. If it comes to pass, this region will get the first breakers.”

“But why? Surely Hannegan doesn’t expect the barbarians to be dependable troops, or capable of holding an empire once they finish mutilating it!”

“No, m’Lord. But the nomad tribes will be disrupted, Denver will be shattered. Then Hannegan can pick up the pieces,”

“To do what with them? It couldn’t be a very rich empire.”

“No, but secure on all flanks. He might then be in a better position to strike east or northeast. Of course, before it comes to that, his plans may collapse. But whether they collapse or not, this region may well be in danger of being overrun in the not-too-distant future. Steps should be taken to secure the abbey within the next few months. I have instructions to discuss with you the problem of keeping the Memorabilia safe.”

Dom Paulo felt the blackness beginning to gather. After twelve centuries, a little hope had come into the world — and then came an illiterate prince to ride roughshod over it with a barbarian horde and…

His fist exploded onto the desktop. “We kept them outside our walls for a thousand years,” he growled, “and we can keep them out for another thousand. This abbey was under siege three times during the Bayring influx, and once again during the Vissarionist schism. We’ll keep the books safe. We’ve kept them that way for quite some time.”

“But there is an added hazard these days, m’Lord.”

“What may that be?”

“A bountiful supply of gunpowder and grapeshot.”

The Feast of the Assumption had come and gone, but still there was no word of the party from Texarkana. Private votive masses for pilgrims and travelers were beginning to be offered by the abbey’s priests. Dom Paulo had ceased taking even a light breakfast, and it was whispered that he was doing penance for having invited the scholar at all, in view of the present danger on the Plains.

The watchtowers remained constantly manned. The abbot himself frequently climbed the wall to peer eastward.

Shortly before Vespers on the Feast of Saint Bernard, a novice reported seeing a thin and distant dust trail, but darkness was coming on, and no one else had been able to make it out. Soon, Compline and the Salve Regina were sung, but still no one appeared at the gates.

“It might have been their advance scout,” suggested Prior Gault.

“It might have been Brother Watchman’s imagination,” countered Dom Paulo.

“But if they’ve camped just ten miles or so down the way—”

“We’d see their fire from the tower. It’s a clear night.”

“Still, Domne, after the moon rises, we could send a rider—”

“Oh, no. That’s a good way to get shot by mistake. If it’s really them, they’ve probably kept their fingers on their triggers for the whole trip, especially at night. It can wait until dawn.”

It was late the following morning when the expected party of horsemen appeared out of the east. From the top of the wall Dom Paulo blinked and squinted across the hot and dry terrain, trying to focus myopic eyes on the distance. Dust from the horses’ hooves was drifting away to the north. The party had stopped for a parley.

“I seem to be seeing twenty or thirty of them,” the abbot complained, rubbing his eyes in annoyance. “Are there really so many?”

“Approximately,” said Gault.

“How will we ever take care of them all?”

“I don’t think we’ll be taking care of the ones with the wolfskins, m’Lord Abbot,” the younger priest said stiffly.

“Wolf skins?”

“Nomads, m’Lord.”

“Man the walls! Close the gates! Let down the shield! Break out the—”

“Wait, they’re not all nomads, Domne.”

“Oh?” Dom Paulo turned to peer again.

The parley was being ended. Men waved; the group split in two. The larger party galloped back toward the east. The remaining horsemen watched briefly, then reined around and trotted toward the abbey.

“Six or seven of them — some in uniform,” the abbot murmured as they drew closer.

“The thon and his party, I’m sure.”

“But with nomads? It’s a good thing I didn’t let you send a rider out last night. What were they doing with nomads?’

“It appeared that they came as guides,” Father Gault said darkly.

“How neighborly of the lion to lie down with the lamb!”

The riders approached the gates. Dom Paulo swallowed dryness. “Well, we’d better go welcome them, Father,” he sighed.

By the time the priests had descended from the wall, the travelers had reined up just outside the courtyard. A horseman detached himself from the others, trotted forward, dismounted, and presented his papers.

“Dom Paulo of Pecos, Abbas?”

The abbot bowed. “Tibi adsum. Welcome in the name of Saint Leibowitz, Thon Taddeo. Welcome in the name of his abbey, in the name of forty generations who’ve waited for you to come. Be at home. We serve you.” The words were heart-felt; the words had been saved for many years while awaiting this moment. Hearing a muttered monosyllable in reply, Dom Paulo looked up slowly.

For a moment his glance locked with the scholar’s. He felt the warmth quickly fade. Those icy eyes-cold and searching gray. Skeptical, hungry, and proud. They studied him as one might study a lifeless curio.

That this moment might be as a bridge across a gulf of twelve centuries, Paulo had fervently prayed — prayed too that through him the last martyred scientist of that earlier age would clasp hands with tomorrow. There was indeed a gulf; that much was plain. The abbot felt suddenly that he belonged not to this age at all, that he had been left stranded somewhere on a sandbar in Time’s river, and that there wasn’t really ever a bridge at all.

“Come,” he said gently. “Brother Visclair will attend to your horses.”

When he had seen the guests installed in their lodgings and had retired to the privacy of his study, the smile on the face of the wooden saint reminded him unaccountably of the smirk of old Benjamin Eleazar, saying, “The children of this world are consistent too.”

18

“‘Now even as in the time of Job,’” Brother Reader began from the refectory lectern:

“When the sons of God came to stand before the Lord, Satan also was present among them.

“And the Lord said to him: ‘Whence comest thou, Satan?’

“And Satan answering said, as of old: ‘I have gone round about the earth, and have walked through it.’

“And the Lord said to him: ‘Hast thou considered that simple and upright prince, my servant Name, hating evil and loving peace?”

“And Satan answering said: ‘Doth Name fear God in vain?

For hast Thou not blessed his land with great wealth and made him mighty among nations? But stretch forth Thy hand a little and decrease what he hath, and let his enemy be strengthened; then see if he blasphemeth Thee not to Thy face.’

“And the Lord said to Satan: “Behold what he hath, and lessen it. See thou to it.’

“And Satan went forth from the presence of God and returned into the world.

“Now the Prince Name was not as Holy Job, for when his land was afflicted with trouble and his people less rich than before, when he saw his enemy become mightier, he grew fearful and ceased to trust in God thinking unto himself: I must strike before the enemy overwhelmeth me without taking his sword in hand.

“ ‘And so it was in those days,’ “ said Brother Reader:

“that the princes of Earth had hardened their hearts against the Law of the Lord, and of their pride there was no end.

And each of them thought within himself that it was better for all to be destroyed than for the will of other princes to prevail over his. For the mighty of the Earth did contend among themselves for supreme power over all; by stealth, treachery, and deceit they did seek to rule, and of war they feared greatly and did tremble; for the Lord God had suffered the wise men of those times to learn the means by which the world itself might be destroyed, and into their hands was given the sword of the Archangel wherewith Lucifer had been cast down, that men and princes might fear God and humble themselves before the Most High. But they were not humbled.

“And Satan spoke unto a certain prince, saying: ‘Fear not to use the sword, for the wise men have deceived you in saying that the world would be destroyed thereby. Listen not to the counsel of weaklings, for they fear you exceedingly, and they serve your enemies by staying your hand against them. Strike, and know that you shall be king over all.’

“And the prince did heed the word of Satan, and he summoned all of the wise men of that realm and called upon them to give him counsel as to the ways in which the enemy might be destroyed without bringing down the wrath upon his own kingdom. But most of the wise men said, ‘Lord, it is not possible, for your enemies also have the sword which we have given you, and the fieriness of it is as the flame of Hell and as the fury of the sun-star from whence it was kindled.’

“ ‘Then thou shalt make me yet another which is yet seven times hotter than Hell itself,’ commanded the prince, whose arrogance had come to surpass that of Pharaoh.

“And many of them said: ‘Nay, Lord, ask not this thing of us; for even the smoke of such a fire, if we were to kindle it for thee, would cause many to perish.’

“Now the prince was angry because of their answer, and he suspected them of betraying him, and he sent his spies among them to tempt them and to challenge them; whereupon the wise men became afraid. Some among them changed their answers, that his wrath be not invoked against them. Three times he asked them, and three times they answered: ‘Nay, Lord, even your own people will perish if you do this thing.’ But one of the magi was like unto Judas Iscariot, and his testimony was crafty, and having betrayed his brothers, he lied to all the people, advising them not to fear the demon Fallout. The prince heeded this false wise man, whose name was Backeneth, and he caused spies to accuse many of the magi before the people. Being afraid, the less wise among the magi counseled the prince according to his pleasure, saying: ‘The weapons may be used, only do not exceed such-and-such a limit, or all will surely perish.’

“And the prince smote the cities of his enemies with the new fire, and for three days and nights did his great catapults and metal birds rain wrath upon them. Over each city a sun appeared and was brighter than the sun of heaven, and immediately that city withered and melted as wax under the torch, and the people thereof did stop in the streets and their skins smoked and they became as fagots thrown on the coals. And when the fury of the sun had faded, the city was in flames; and a great thunder came out of the sky, like the great battering-ram PIK-A-DON, to crush it utterly. Poisonous fumes fell over all the land, and the land was aglow by night with the afterfire and the curse of the afterfire which caused a scurf on the skin and made the hair to fall and the blood to die in the veins.

“And a great stink went up from Earth even unto Heaven. Like unto Sodom and Gomorrah was the Earth and the ruins thereof, ever in the land of that certain prince, for his enemies did not withhold their vengeance, sending fire in turn to engulf his cities as their own. The stink of the carnage was exceedingly offensive to the Lord, Who spoke unto the prince, Name, saying: ‘WHAT BURNT OFFERING IS THIS THAT YOU HAVE PREPARED BEFORE ME? WHAT IS THIS SAVOR THAT ARISES FROM THE PLACE OF HOLOCAUST? HAVE YOU MADE ME A HOLOCAUST OF SHEEP OR GOATS, OR OFFERED A CALF UNTO GOD?’

“But the prince answered him not, and God said: ‘YOU HAVE MADE ME A HOLOCAUST OF MY SONS.’

“And the Lord slew him together with Blackeneth, the betrayer, and there was pestilence in the Earth, and madness was upon mankind, who stoned the wise together with the powerful, those who remained.

“But there was in that time a man whose name was Leibowitz, who, in his youth like the holy Augustine, had loved the wisdom of the world more than the wisdom of God. But now seeing that great knowledge, while good, had not saved the world, he turned in penance to the Lord, crying:”

The abbot rapped sharply on the table and the monk who had been reading the ancient account was immediately silent.

“And that is your only account of it?” asked Thon Taddeo, smiling tightly at the abbot across the study.

“Oh, there are several versions. They differ in minor details. No one is certain which nation launched the first attack — not that it matters any more. The text Brother Reader was just reading was written a few decades after the death of Saint Leibowitz — probably one of the first accounts — after it became safe to write again. The author was a young monk who had not lived through the destruction himself; he got it second hand from Saint Leibowitz’ followers, the original memorizers and bookleggers, and he had a liking for scriptural mimicry. I doubt if a single completely accurate account of the Flame Deluge exists anywhere. Once it started, it was apparently too immense for any one person to see the whole picture.”

“In what land was this prince called Name, and this man Blackeneth?”

Abbot Paulo shook his head. “Not even the author of that account was certain. We’ve pieced enough together since that was written to know that even some of the lesser rulers of that time had got their hands on such weapons before the holocaust came. The situation he described prevailed in more than one nation. Name and Blackeneth were probably Legion.”

“Of course I’ve heard similar legends. It’s obvious that something rather hideous came to pass,” the thon stated; and then abruptly: “But when may I begin to examine — what do you call it?”

“The Memorabilia.”

“Of course.” He sighed and smiled absently at the image of the saint in the corner. “Would tomorrow be too soon?”

“You may begin at once, if you like,” said the abbot. “Feel free to come and go as you please.”

The vaults were dimly filled with candlelight, and only a few dark-robed scholar-monks moved about in the stalls. Brother Armbruster pored gloomily over his records in a puddle of lamplight in his cubbyhole at the foot of the stone stairway, and one lamp burned in the Moral Theology alcove where a robed figure huddled over ancient manuscript. It was after Prime, when most of the community labored at their duties about the abbey, in kitchen, classroom, garden, stable, and office, leaving the library nearly empty until late afternoon and time for lectio devina. This morning, however, the vaults were comparatively crowded.

Three monks stood lounging in the shadows behind the new machine. They kept their hands tucked in their sleeves and watched a fourth monk who stood at the foot of the stairs. The fourth monk gazed patiently up toward a fifth monk who stood on the landing and watched the entrance to the stairway.

Brother Kornhoer had brooded over his apparatus like an anxious parent, but when he could no longer find wires to wiggle and adjustments to make and remake, he retired to the Natural Theology alcove to read and wait. To speak a summary of last-minute instructions to his crew would be permissible, but he chose to maintain the hush, and if any thought of the coming moment as a personal climax crossed his mind as he waited, the monastic inventor’s expression gave no hint of it. Since the abbot himself had not bothered to watch a demonstration of the machine, Brother Kornhoer betrayed no symptoms of expecting applause from any quarter, and he had even overcome his tendency to glance reproachfully at Dom Paulo.

A low hiss from the stairway alerted the basement again, although there had been several earlier false alarms. Clearly no one had informed the illustrious thon that a marvelous invention awaited his inspection in the basement. Clearly, if it had been mentioned to him at all, its importance had been minimized. Obviously, Father Abbot was seeing to it that they all cooled their heels. These were the wordless significances exchanged by glances among them as they waited.

This time the warning hiss had not been in vain. The monk who watched from the head of the stairs turned solemnly and bowed toward the fifth monk on the landing below.

“In principio Deus,” he said softly.

The fifth monk turned and bowed toward the fourth monk at the foot of the stairs. “Caelum et terram creavit,” he murmured in turn.

The fourth monk turned toward the three who lounged behind the machine. “Vacuus autem erat mundus,” he announced.

“Cure tenebris in superficie profundorum,” chorused the group.

“Ortus est Dei Spiritus supra aquas,” called Brother Forbore, returning his book to its shelf with a rattling of chains.

“Gratias Creatori Spiritui,” responded his entire team.

“Dixitque Deus: ‘FIAT LUX,’ “ said the inventor in a tone of command.

The vigil on the stairs descended to take their posts. Four monks manned the treadmill. The fifth monk hovered over the dynamo. The sixth monk climbed the shelf-ladder and took his seat on the top rung, his head bumping the top of the archway. He pulled a mask of smoke-blackened oily parchment over his face to protect his eyes, then felt for the lamp fixture and its thumbscrew, while Brother Kornhoer watched him nervously from below.

“Et lux ergo facta est,” he said when he had found the screw.

“Lucem esse bonam Deus vidit,” the inventor called to the fifth monk.

The fifth monk bent over the dynamo with a candle for one last look at the brush contacts. “Et secrevit lucem a tenebris,” he said at last, continuing the lesson.

“Lucem appellavit ‘diem,’ “ chorused the treadmill team, “et tenebras ‘noctes,’ “ Whereupon they set their shoulders to the turnstile beams.

Axles creaked and groaned. The wagon-wheel dynamo began to spin, its low whir becoming a moan and then a whine as the monks strained and gruntedat the drive-mill. The guardian of the dynamo watched anxiously as the spokes blurred with speed and became a film. “Vespere occaso,” he began, then paused to lick two fingers and touch them to the contacts. A spark snapped.

“Lucifer!” he yelped, leaping back, then finished lamely: “ortus est et primo die.”

“CONTACT!” said Brother Kornhoer, as Dom Paulo, Thon Taddeo and his clerk descended the stairs.

The monk on the ladder struck the arc. A sharp spffft! — and blinding light flooded the vaults with a brilliance that had not been seen in twelve centuries.

The group stopped on the stairs. Thon Taddeo gasped an oath in his native tongue. He retreated a step. The abbot, who had neither witnessed the testing of the device nor credited extravagant claims, blanched and stopped speech in mid-sentence. The clerk froze momentarily in panic and suddenly fled, screaming “Fire!”

The abbot made the sign of the cross. “I had not known!” he whispered.

The scholar, having survived the first shock of the flare, probed the basement with his gaze, noticing the drive-mill, the monks who strained at its beams. His eyes traveled along the wrapped wires, noticed the monk on the ladder, measured the meaning of the wagon-wheel dynamo and the monk who stood waiting, with downcast eyes, at the foot of the stairs.

“Incredible!” he breathed.

The monk at the foot of the stairs bowed in acknowledgment and depreciation. The blue-white glare cast knife-edge shadows in the room, and the candle flames became blurred wisps in the tide of light.

“Bright as a thousand torches,” breathed the scholar. “It must be an ancient-but no! Unthinkable!”

He moved on down the stairs like a man in a trance. He stopped beside Brother Kornhoer and gazed at him curiously for a moment, then stepped onto the basement floor. Touching nothing, asking nothing, peering at everything, he wandered about the machinery, inspecting the dynamo, the wiring, the lamp itself.

“It just doesn’t seem possible, but—”

The abbot recovered his senses and descended the stairs.

“You’re dispensed from silence!” he whispered at Brother Kornhoer. “Talk to him. I’m — a little dazed.”

The monk brightened. “You like it, m’Lord Abbot?”

“Ghastly,” wheezed Dom Paulo.

The inventor’s countenance sagged.

“It’s a shocking way to treat a guest! It frightened the thon’s assistant out of his wits. I’m mortified!”

“Well, it is rather bright.”

“Hellish! Go talk to him while I think of a way to apologize.”

But the scholar had apparently made a judgment on the basis of his observations, for he stalked toward them swiftly. His face seemed strained, and his manner crisp.

“A lamp of electricity,” he said. “How have you managed to keep it hidden for all these centuries! After all these years of trying to arrive at a theory of—” He choked slightly, and seemed to be fighting for self-control, as if he had been the victim of a monstrous practical joke. “Why have you hidden it? Is there some religious significance — And what—” Complete confusion stopped him. He shook his head and looking around as if for an escape.

“You misunderstand,” the abbot said weakly, catching at Bother Kornhoer’s arm. “For the love of God, Brother, explain!”

But there was no balm to soothe an affront to professional pride — then or in any other age.

19

After the unfortunate incident in the basement, the abbot sought by every conceivable means to make amends for that unhappy moment. Thon Taddeo gave no outward sign of rancor, and even offered his hosts an apology for his spontaneous judgment of the incident, after the inventor of the device had given the scholar a detailed account of its recent design and manufacture. But the apology succeeded only in convincing the abbot further that the blunder had been serious. It put the thon in the position of a mountaineer who has scaled an “unconquered” height only to find a rival’s initials carved in the summit rock — and the rival hadn’t told him in advance. It must have been shattering for him, Dom Paulo thought, because of the way it was handled.

If the thon had not insisted (with a firmness perhaps born of embarrassment) that its light was of a superior quality, sufficiently bright even for close scrutiny of brittle and age-worn documents which tended to be indecipherable by candlelight, Dom Paulo would have removed the lamp from the basement immediately. But Thon Taddeo had insisted that he liked it — only to discover, then. that it was necessary to keep at least four novices or postulants continuously employed at cranking the dynamo and adjusting the arc-gap; thereupon, he begged that the lamp be removed — but then it was Paulo’s turn to become insistent that it remain in place.

So it was that the scholar began his researches at the abbey, continuously aware of the three novices who toiled at the drive-mill and the fourth novice who invited glare-blindness atop the ladder to keep the lamp burning and adjusted — a situation which caused the Poet to versify mercilessly concerning the demon Embarrassment and the outrages he perpetrated in the name of penitence or appeasement.

For several days the thon and his assistant studied the library itself, the files, the monastery’s records apart from the Memorabilia — as if by determining the validity of the oyster, they might establish the possibility of the pearl. Brother Kornhoer discovered the thon’s assistant on his knees in the entrance of the refectory, and for a moment he entertained the impression that the fellow was performing some special devotion before the image of Mary above the door, but a rattle of tools put an end to the illusion. The assistant laid a carpenter’s level across the entranceway and measured the concave depression worn in the floor stones by centuries of monastic sandals.

“We’re looking for ways of determining dates,” he told Kornhoer when questioned. “This seemed like a good place to establish a standard for rate of wear, since the traffic’s easy to estimate. Three meals per man per day since the stones were laid.”

Kornhoer could not help being impressed by their thoroughness; the activity mystified him. “The abbey’s architectural records are complete,” he said. “They can tell you exactly when each building and wing was added. Why not save your time?”

The man glanced up innocently. “My master has a saying: ‘Nayol is without speech, and therefore never lies.’ “

“Nayol?”

“One of the Nature gods of the Red River people. He means it figuratively, of course. Objective evidence is the ultimate authority. Recorders may lie, but Nature is incapable of it.” He noticed the monk’s expression and added hastily:

“No canard is implied. It is simply a doctrine of the thon’s that everything must be cross-referenced to the objective.”

“A fascinating notion,” murmured Kornhoer, and bent down to examine the man’s sketch of a cross-section of the floor’s concavity. “Why, it’s shaped like what Brother Majek calls a normal distribution curve. How strange.”

“Not strange. The probability of a footstep deviating from the center-line would tend to follow the normal error function.”

Kornhoer was enthralled. “I’ll call Brother Majek,” he said.

The abbot’s interest in his guests’ inspection of the premises was less esoteric. “Why,” he demanded of Gault, “are they making detailed drawings of our fortifications?”

The prior looked surprised. “I hadn’t heard of it. You mean Thon Taddeo—”

“No. The officers that came with him. They’re going about it quite systematically.”

“How did you find out?”

“The Poet told me.”

“The Poet! Hah!”

“Unfortunately, he was telling the truth this time. He pick-pocketed one of their sketches.”

“You have it?”

“No, I made him return it. But I don’t like it. It’s ominous.”

“I suppose the Poet asked a price for the information?”

“Oddly enough, he didn’t. He took an instant dislike to the thon. He’s gone around muttering to himself ever since they came.”

“The Poet has always muttered.”

“But not in a serious vein.”

“Why do you suppose they’re making the drawings?”

Paulo made a grim month. “Unless we find out otherwise, we’ll assume their interest is recondite and professional. As a walled citadel, the abbey has been a success. It’s never been taken by siege or assault, and perhaps their professional admiration is aroused.”

Father Gault gazed speculatively across the desert toward the east. “Come to think of it; if an army meant to strike west across the plains, they’d probably have to establish a garrison somewhere in this region before marching on Denver.” He thought for a few moments and began to look alarmed. “And here they’d have a fortress ready-made!”

“I’m afraid that’s occurred to them.”

“You think they were sent as spies?”

“No, no! I doubt if Hannegan himself has ever heard of us. But they are here, and they are officers, and they can’t help looking around and getting ideas. And now very likely Hannegan is going to hear about us.”

“What do you intend doing?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Why not talk to Thon Taddeo about it?”

“The officers aren’t his servants. They were only sent as an escort to protect him. What can he do?”

“He’s Hannegan’s kinsman, and he has influence.”

The abbot nodded. “I’ll try to think of a way to approach him on the matter. We’ll watch what’s going on for a while first, though.”

In the days that followed, Thon Taddeo completed his study of the oyster and, apparently satisfied that it was not a disguised clam, focused his attention on the pearl. The task was not simple.

Quantities of facsimile copy were scrutinized. Chains rattled and clanked as the more precious books came down from their shelves. In the case of partially damaged or deteriorated originals, it seemed unwise to trust the facsimile-maker’s interpretation and eyesight. The actual manuscripts dating back to Leibowitzian times which had been sealed in airtight casks and locked in special storage vaults for indefinitely long preservation were then brought out.

The thon’s assistant assembled several pounds of notes. After the fifth day of it, Thon Taddeo’s pace quickened, and his manner reflected the eagerness of a hungry hound catching scent of tasty game.

“Magnificent!” He vacillated between jubilation and amused incredulity. “Fragments from a twentieth century physicist! The equations are even consistent.”

Kornhoer peered over his shoulder. “I’ve seen that,” he said breathlessly. “I could never make heads or tails of it. Is the subject matter important?”

“I’m not sure yet. The mathematics is beautiful, beautiful! Look here — this expression — notice the extremely contracted term. This thing under the radical sign — it looks like the product of two derivatives, but it really represents a whole set of derivatives.”

“How?”

“The indices permute into an expanded expression; otherwise, it couldn’t possibly represent a line integral, as the author says it is. It’s lovely. And see here — this simple-looking expression. The simplicity is deceptive. It obviously represents not one, but a whole system of equations, in a very contracted form. It took me a couple of days to realize that the author was thinking of the relationships — not just of quantities to quantities — but of whole systems to other systems. I don’t yet know all the physical quantities involved, but the sophistication of the mathematics is just-just quietly superb! If it’s a hoax, it’s inspired! If it’s authentic, we may be in unbelievable luck. In either case, it’s magnificent. I must see the earliest possible copy of it. “

Brother Librarian groaned as yet another lead-sealed cask was rolled out of storage for unsealing. Armbruster was not impressed by the fact that the secular scholar, in two days, had unraveled a bit of a puzzle that had been lying around, a complete enigma, for a dozen centuries. To the custodian of the Memorabilia, each unsealing represented another decrease in the probable lifetime of the contents of the cask, and he made no attempt to conceal his disapproval of the entire proceeding. To Brother Librarian, whose task in life was the preservation of books, the principal reason for the existence of books was that they might be preserved perpetually. Usage was secondary, and to be avoided if it threatened longevity.

Thon Taddeo’s enthusiasm for his task waxed stronger as the days passed, and the abbot breathed easier as he watched the thon’s earlier skepticism melt away with each new perusal of some fragmentary pre-Deluge science text. The scholar had not made any clear assertions about the intended scope of his investigation; perhaps, at first, his aim had been vague, but now he went about his work with the crisp precision of a man following a plan. Sensing the dawn of something, Dom Paulo decided to offer the cock a perch for crowing, in ease the bird felt an impulse to announce a coming daybreak.

“The community has been curious about your labors,” he told the scholar. “We’d like to hear about it, if you don’t mind discussing it. Of course we’ve all heard of your theoretical work at your own collegium, but it’s too technical for most of us to understand. Would it be possible for you to tell us something about it in — oh, general terms that non-specialists might understand? The community has been grumping at me because I hadn’t invited you to lecture; but I thought you might prefer to get the feel of the place first. Of course if you’d rather not—”

The thon’s gaze seemed to clamp calipers an the abbot’s cranium and measure it six ways. He smiled doubtfully.

“You’d like me to explain our work in the simplest possible language?”

“Something like that, if it’s possible.”

“That’s just it.” He laughed. “The untrained man reads a paper on natural science and thinks; “Now why couldn’t he explain this in simple language.” He can’t seem to realize that what he tried to read was the simplest possible language — for that subject matter. In fact, a great deal of natural philosophy is simply a process of linguistic simplification — an effort to invent languages in which half a page of equations can express an idea which could not be stated in less than a thousand pages of so-called “simple” language. Do I make myself clear?”

“I think so. Since you do make yourself clear, perhaps you could tell us about that aspect of it, then. Unless the suggestion is premature — as far as your work with the Memorabilia is concerned.”

“Well, no. We now have a fairly clear idea of where we’re going and what we have to work with here. It will still take considerable time to finish of course. The pieces have to be fitted together, and they don’t all belong to the same puzzle. We can’t yet predict what we can glean from it, but we’re fairly sure of what we can’t. I’m happy to say it looks hopeful. I have no objection to explaining the general scope, but—” He repeated the doubtful shrug.

“What bothers yon?”

The thon seemed mildly embarrassed. “Only an uncertainty about my audience. I would not wish to offend anyone’s religious beliefs.”

“But how could you? Isn’t it a matter of natural philosophy? Of physical science?”

“Of course. But many people’s ideas about the world have become colored with religious — well, what I mean is—”

“But if your subject matter is the physical world, how could you possibly offend? Especially this community. We’ve been waiting for a long time to see the world start taking an interest in itself again. At the risk of seeming boastful, I might point out that we have a few rather clever amateurs in natural science right here in the monastery. There’s Brother Majek, and there’s Brother Kornhoer—”

“Kornhoer!” The then glanced up warily at the arc lamp and looked away blinking. “I can’t understand it!”

“The lamp? But surely you—”

“No, no, not the lamp. The lamp’s simple enough, once you got over the shock of seeing it really work. It should work. It would work on paper, assuming various undeterminables and guessing at some unavailable data. But the clean impetuous leap from the vague hypothesis to a working model—” The thon coughed nervously. “It’s Kornhoer himself I don’t understand. That gadget—” he waggled a forefinger at the dynamo “ — is a standing broad-jump across about twenty years of preliminary experimentation, starting with an understanding of the principles. Kornhoer just dispensed with the preliminaries. You believe in miraculous interventions? I don’t, but there you have a real case of it. Wagon wheels!” He laughed. “What could he do if he had a machine shop? I can’t understand what a man like that is doing cooped up in a monastery.”

“Perhaps Brother Kornhoer should explain that to you,” said Dom Paulo, laying to keep an edge of stiffness out of his tone.

“Yes, well—” Thon Taddeo’s visual calipers began measuring the old priest again. “If you really feel that no one would take offense at hearing non-traditional ideas, I would be glad to discuss our work. But some of it may conflict with established preju — uh — established opinion.”

“Good! Then it should be fascinating.”

A time was agreed upon, and Dom Paulo felt relief. The esoteric gulf between Christian monk and secular investigator of Nature would surely be narrowed by a free exchange of ideas, he felt. Kornhoer had already narrowed it slightly, had he not? More communication, not less, was probably the best therapy for easing any tension. And the cloudy veil of doubt and mistrusting hesitancy would be parted, would it not? as soon as the thon saw that his hosts were not quite such unreasonable intellectual reactionaries as the scholar seemed to suspect. Paulo felt some shame for his earlier misgivings. Patience, Lord, with a well-meaning fool, he prayed.

“But you can’t ignore the officers and their sketchbooks,” Gault reminded him.

20

From the lectern in the refectory, the reader was intoning the announcements. Candlelight blanched the faces of the robed, legions who stood motionless behind their stools and waited for the beginning of the evening meal. The reader’s voice echoed hollowly in the high vaulted dining room whose ceiling was lost in brooding shadows above the pools of candle-glow that spotted the wooden tables.

“The Reverend Father Abbot has commanded me to announce,” called the reader, “that the rule of abstinence for today is dispensed at tonight’s meal. We shall have guests, as you may have heard. All religious may partake of tonight’s banquet in honor of Thon Taddeo and his group; you may eat meat. Conversation — if you’ll keep it quiet — will be permitted during the meal.”

Suppressed vocal noises, not unlike strangled cheers, came from the ranks of the novices. The tables were set. Food had not yet made an appearance, but large dining trays replaced the usual mush bowls, kindling appetites with hints of a feast. The familiar milk mugs stayed in the pantry, their places taken for tonight by the best wine cups. Roses were scattered along the boards.

The abbot stopped in the corridor to wait for the reader to finish reading. He glanced at the table set for himself, Father Gault, the honored guest, and his party. Bad arithmetic again in the kitchen, he thought. Eight places had been set. Three officers, the thon and his assistant, and the two priests made seven — unless, in some unlikely case, Father Gault had asked Brother Kornhoer to sit with them. The reader concluded the announcements, and Dom Paulo entered the hall.

“Flectamus genua,” intoned the reader.

The robed legions genuflected with military precision as the abbot blessed his flock.

“Levate.”

The legions arose. Dom Paulo took his place at the special table and glanced back toward the entrance. Gault should be bringing the others. Previously their meals had been served in the guesthouse rather than the refectory, to avoid subjecting them to the austerity of the monks’ own frugal fare.

When the guests came, he looked around for Brother Kornhoer, but the monk was not with them.

“Why the eighth place setting?” he murmured to Father Gault when they had taken their places.

Gault looked blank and shrugged.

The scholar filled the place on the abbot’s right and the others fell in toward the foot of the table, leaving the place on his left empty. He turned to beckon Kornhoer to join them, but the reader began intoning the preface before he could catch the monk’s eye.

“Oremus,” answered the abbot, and the legions bowed.

During the blessing, someone sipped quietly into the seat on the abbot’s left. The abbot frowned but did not look up to identify the culprit during the prayer.

…et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.

“Sedete,” called the reader, and the ranks began seating themselves.

The abbot glanced sharply at the figure on his left.

“Poet!”

The bruised lily bowed extravagantly and smiled. “Good evening, Sires, learned Thon, distinguished hosts,” he orated.

“What are we having tonight? Roast fish and honeycombs in honor of the temporal resurrection that’s upon us? Or have you, m’Lord Abbot, finally cooked the goose of the mayor of the village?”

“I would like to cook—”

“Ha!” quoth the Poet, and turned affably toward the scholar. “Such culinary excellence one enjoys in this place, Thon Taddeo! You should join us more often. I suppose they are feeding you nothing but roast pheasant and unimaginative beef in the guesthouse. A shame! Here one fares better. I do hope Brother Chef has his usual gusto tonight, his inward flame, his enchanted touch. Ah…” The Poet rubbed his hands and smirked hungrily. “Perhaps we shall have his inspired Mock Pork with Maize a la Friar John, eh?”

“It sounds interesting,” said the scholar. “What is it?”

“Greasy armadillo with parched corn, boiled in donkey milk. A regular Sunday special.”

“Poet!” snapped the abbot; then to the thon: “I apologize for his presence. He wasn’t invited.”

The scholar surveyed the Poet with detached amusement.

“M’Lord Hannegan too, keeps several court fools,” he told Paulo. “I’m familiar with the species. You needn’t apologize for him.”

The Poet sprang up from his stool and bowed deeply before the thon. “Allow me instead to apologize for the abbot, Sire!” he cried with feeling.

He held the bow for a moment. They waited for him to finish his foolishness. Instead, he shrugged suddenly, sat down, and speared a smoking fowl from the platter deposited before them by a postulant. He tore off a leg and bit into it with gusto. They watched him with puzzlement.

“I suppose you’re right in not accepting my apology for him,” he said to the thon at last.

The scholar reddened slightly.

“Before I throw you out, worm,” said Gault, “let’s probe the depths of this iniquity.”

The Poet waggled his head and munched thoughtfully.

“It’s pretty deep, all right,” he admitted.

Someday Gault is going to strangle himself on that foot of his, thought Dom Paulo.

But the younger priest was visibly annoyed, and sought to draw the incident out ad absurdum in order to find grounds for quashing the fool. “Apologize at length for your host, Poet,” he commanded. “And explain yourself as you go.”

“Drop it, Father, drop it,” Paulo said hastily.

The Poet smiled graciously at the abbot. “That’s all right, m’Lord,” he said. “I don’t mind apologizing for you in the least. You apologize for me, I apologize for you, and isn’t that a fitting maneuver in charity and good will? Nobody need apologize for himself — which is always so humiliating. Using my system, however, everyone gets apologized for, and nobody has to do his own apologizing.”

Only the officers seemed to find the Poet’s remarks amusing. Apparently the expectation of humor was enough to produce the illusion of humor, and the comedian could elicit laughter with gesture and expression, regardless of what he said. Thon Taddeo wore a dry smirk, but it was the kind of look a man might give a clumsy performance by a trained animal.

“And so,” the Poet was continuing, “if you would but allow me to serve as your humble helper, m’Lord, you would never have to eat your own crow. As your Apologetic Advocate, for example, I might be delegated by you to offer contrition to important guests for the existence of bedbugs. And to bedbugs for the abrupt change of fare.”

The abbot glowered and resisted an impulse to grind the Poet’s bare toe with the heel of his sandal. He kicked the fellow’s ankle, but the fool persisted.

“I would assume all the blame for you, of course,” he said, noisily chewing white meat. “It’s a fine system, one which I was prepared to make available to you too, Most Eminent Scholar. I’m sure you would have found it convenient. I have been given to understand that systems of logic and methodology must be devised and perfected before science advances. And my system of negotiable and transferable apologetics would have been of particular value to you, Thon Taddeo.”

“Would have?”

“Yes. It’s a pity. Somebody stole my blue-headed goat.”

“Blue-headed goat?”

“He had a head as bald as Hannegan’s, Your Brilliance, and blue as the tip of Brother Armbruster’s nose. I meant to make you a present of the animal but some dastard filched him before you came”

The abbot clenched his teeth and held his heel poised over the Poet’s toe. Thon Taddeo was frowning slightly, but he seemed determined to untangle the Poet’s obscure skein of meaning.

“Do we need a blue-headed goat?” he asked his clerk.

“I can see no pressing urgency about it, sir,” said the clerk.

“But the need is obvious!” said the Poet. “They say you are writing equations that will one day remake the world. They say a new light is dawning. If there’s to be light, then somebody will have to be blamed for the darkness that’s past.”

“Ah, thence the goat.” Thon Taddeo glanced at the abbot. “A sickly jest. Is it the best he can do?”

“You’ll notice he’s unemployed. But let us talk of something sensib—”

“No, no, no, no!” objected the poet. “You mistake my meaning, Your Brilliance. The goat is to be enshrined and honored, not blamed! Crown him with the crown Saint Leibowitz sent you, and thank him for the light that’s rising. Then blame Leibowitz, and drive him into the desert. That way you won’t have to wear the second crown. The one with thorns. Responsibility, it’s called.”

The Poet’s hostility had broken out into the open, and he was no longer trying to seem humorous. The thon gazed at him icily. The abbot’s heel wavered again over the Poet’s toe, and again had reluctant mercy on it.

“And when,” said the Poet, “your patron’s army comes to seize this abbey, the goat can be placed in the courtyard and taught to bleat “There’s been nobody here but me, nobody here but me” whenever a stranger comes by.”

One of the officers started up from his stool with an angry grunt, his hand reaching reflexively for his saber. He broke the hilt dear of the scabbard, and six inches of steel glistened a warning at the Poet. The thon seized his wrist and tried to force the blade back in the sheath, but it was like tugging at the arm of a marble statue.

“Ah! A swordsman as well as a draftsman!” taunted the Poet, apparently unafraid of dying. “Your sketches of the abbey’s defenses show such promise of artistic—”

The officer barked an oath and the blade leaped clean of the scabbard. His comrades seized him, however, before he could lunge. An astonished rumble came from the congregation as the startled monks came to their feet. The Poet was still smiling blandly.

“ — artistic growth,” he continued. “I predict that one day your drawing of the underwall tunnels will be hung in a museum of fine—”

A dull chunk! came from under the table. The Poet paused in mid-bite, lowered the wishbone from his mouth, and turned slowly white. He munched, swallowed, and continued to lose color. He gazed abstractly upward.

“You’re grinding it off,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“Through talking?” the abbot asked, and continued to grind.

“I think I have a bone in my throat,” the Poet admitted.

“You wish to be excused?”

“I am afraid I must.”

“A pity. We shall miss you.” Paulo gave the toe one last grind for good measure. “You may go then.”

The Poet exhaled gustily, blotted his mouth, and arose. He drained his wine cup and inverted it in the center of the tray. Something in his manner compelled them to watch him. He pulled down his eyelid with one thumb, bent his head over his cupped palm and pressed. The eyeball popped out into his palm, bringing a choking sound from the Texarkanans who were apparently unaware of the Poet’s artificial orb.

“Watch him carefully,” said the Poet to the glass eye, and then deposited it on the upturned base of his wine cup where it stared balefully at Thon Taddeo. “Good evening, m’Lords,” he said cheerfully to the group, and marched away.

The angry officer muttered a curse and struggled to free himself from the grasp of his comrades.

“Take him back to his quarters and sit on him till he cools off,” the thon told them. “And better see that he doesn’t get a chance at that lunatic.”

“I’m mortified,” he said to the abbot, when the livid guardsman was hauled away. “They aren’t my servants, and I can’t give them orders. But I can promise you he will grovel for this. And if he refuses to apologize and leave immediately, he’ll have to match that hasty sword against mine before noon tomorrow.”

“No bloodshed!” begged the priest. “It was nothing. Let’s all forget it.” His hands were trembling, his countenance gray.

“He will make apology and go,” Thon Taddeo insisted, “or I shall offer to kill him. Don’t worry, he doesn’t dare fight me because if he won, Hannegan would have him impaled on the public stake while they forced his wife to — but never mind that. He’ll grovel and go. Just the same, I’m deeply ashamed that such a thing could have come about.”

“I should have had the Poet thrown out as soon as he showed up. He provoked the whole thing, and I failed to stop it. The provocation was dear.”

“Provocation? By the fanciful lie of a vagrant fool? Josard reacted as if the Poet’s charges were true.”

“Then you don’t know that they are preparing a comprehensive report on the military value of our abbey as a fortress?”

The scholar’s jaw fell. He stared from one priest to the other in apparent unbelief.

“Can this be true?” he asked after a long silence.

The abbot nodded.

“And you’ve permitted us to stay.”

“We keep no secrets. Your companions are welcome to make such a study if they wish. I would not presume to ask why they want the information. The Poet’s assumption, of course, was merest fantasy.”

“Of course,” the thon said weakly, not looking at his host.

“Surely your prince has no aggressive ambitions in this region, as the Poet hinted.”

“Surely not.”

“And even if he did, I’m sure he would have the wisdom at least the wise counselors to lead him — to understand that our abbey’s value as a storehouse of ancient wisdom is many times greater than its value as a citadel.”

The thon caught the note of pleading, the undercurrent of supplication for help, in the priest’s voice, and he seemed to brood on it, picking lightly at his food and saying nothing for a time.

“We’ll speak of this matter again before I return to the collegium,” he promised quietly.

A pall had fallen on the banquet, but it began to lift during the group singing in the courtyard after the meal, and it vanished entirely when the time came for the scholar’s lecture in the Great Hall. Embarrassment seemed at an end, and the group had resumed a surface cordiality.

Dom Paulo led the thon to the lectern; Gault and the don’s clerk followed, joining them on the platform. Applause rang out heartily following the abbot’s introduction of the thon; the hush that followed suggested the silence of a courtroom awaiting a verdict. The scholar was no gifted orator, but the verdict proved satisfying to the monastic throng.

“I have been amazed at what we’ve found here,” he told them. “A few weeks ago I would not have believed, did not believe, that records such as you have in your Memorabilia could still be surviving from the fall of the last mighty civilization. It is still hard to believe, but evidence forces us to adopt the hypothesis that the documents are authentic. Their survival here is incredible enough; but even more fantastic, to me, is the fact that they have gone unnoticed during this century, until now. Lately there have been men capable of appreciating their potential value — and not only myself. What Thon Kaschler might have done with them while he was alive! — even seventy years ago.”

The sea of monks’ faces was alight with smiles upon hearing so favorable a reaction to the Memorabilia from one so gifted as the thon. Paulo wondered why they failed to sense the faint undercurrent of resentment — or was it suspicion? — in the speaker’s tone. “Had I known of these sources ten years ago,” he was saying, “much of my work in optics would have been unnecessary.”Ahha! thought the abbot, so that’s it. Or at least part of it. He’s finding out that some of his discoveries are only rediscoveries, and it leaves a bitter taste. But surely he must know that never during his lifetime can he be more than a recoverer of lost works; however brilliant, he can only do what others before him had done. And so it would be, inevitably, until the world became as highly developed as it had been before the Flame Deluge.

Nevertheless, it was apparent that Thon Taddeo was impressed.

“My time here is limited.” he went on, “From what I have seen, I suspect that it will take twenty specialists several decades to finish milking the Memorabilia for understandable information. Physical science normally proceeds by inductive reasoning tested by experiment; but here the task is deductive. From a few broken bits of general principles, we must attempt to grasp particulars. In some cases, it may prove impossible. For example—” He paused for a moment to produce a packet of notes and thumbed through them briefly. “Here is a quotation which I found buried downstairs. It’s from a four-page fragment of a book which may have been an advanced physics text. A few of you may have seen it.”

“ ‘ — and if the space terms predominate in the expression for the interval between event-points, the interval is said to be space-like, since it is then possible to select a co-ordinate system — belonging to an observer with an admissible velocity — in which the events appear simultaneous, and therefore separated only spatially. If, however, the interval is timelike the events cannot be simultaneous in any co-ordinate system, but there exists a co-ordinate system in which the space terms will vanish entirely, so that the separation between events will be purely temporal, id est, occurring at the same place, but at different times. Now upon examining the extremals of the real interval—” “

He looked up with a whimsical smile. “Has anyone here looked at that reference lately?”

The sea of faces remained blank.

“Anyone ever remember seeing it?”

Kornhoer and two others cautiously lifted their hands.

“Anyone know what it means?”

The hands quickly went down.

The thon chuckled. “It’s followed by a page and a half of mathematics which I won’t try to read, but it treats some of our fundamental concepts as if they weren’t basic at all, but evanescent appearances that change according to one’s point of view. It ends with the word ‘therefore’ but the rest of the page is burned, and the conclusion with it. The reasoning is impeccable, however, and the mathematics quite elegant, so that I can write the conclusion myself. It seems the conclusion of a madman. It began with assumptions, however, which appeared equally mad. Is it a hoax? If it isn’t, what is its place in the whole scheme of the science of the ancients? What precedes it as prerequisite to understanding? What follows, and how can it be tested? Questions I can’t answer. This is only one example of the many enigmas posed by these papers you’ve kept so long. Reasoning which touches experiential reality nowhere is the business of angelologists and theologians, not of physical scientists. And yet such papers as these describe systems which touch our experience nowhere. Were they within the experimental reach of the ancients? Certain references tend to indicate it. One paper refers to elemental transmutation — which we just recently established as theoretically impossible — and then it says ‘experiment proves.’ But how?

“It may take generations to evaluate and understand some of these things. It is unfortunate that they must remain here in this inaccessible place, for it will take a concentrated effort by numerous scholars to make meaning of them. I am sure you realize that your present facilities are inadequate — not to mention ‘inaccessible’ to the rest of the world.”

Seated on the platform behind the speaker, the abbot began to glower, waiting for the worst. Thon Taddeo chose, however, to offer no proposals. But his remarks continued to make clear his feeling that such relics belonged in more competent hands than those of the monks of the Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz, and that the situation as it prevailed was absurd. Perhaps sensing the growing uneasiness in the room, he soon turned to the subject of his immediate studies, which involved a more thorough investigation into the nature of light than had been made previously. Several of the abbey’s treasures were proving to be of much help, and he hoped to devise soon an experimental means for testing his theories. After some discussion of the phenomenon of refraction, he paused, then said apologetically: “I hope none of this offends anybody’s religious beliefs,” and looked around quizzically. Seeing that their faces remained curious and bland, he continued for a time, then invited questions from the congregation.

“Do you mind a question from the platform?” asked the abbot.

“Not at all,” said the scholar, looking a bit doubtful, as if thinking et tu, Brute.

“I was wondering what there is about the refrangible property of light that you thought might be offensive to religion?”

“Well—” The then paused uncomfortably. “Monsignor Apollo, whom you know, grew quite heated on the subject. He said that light could not possibly have been refrangible before the Flood, because the rainbow was supposedly—”

The room burst into roaring laughter, drowning the rest of the remark. By the time the abbot had waved them to silence, Thon Taddeo was beet red, and Dom Paulo had some difficulty in maintaining his own solemn visage.

“Monsignor Apollo is a good man, a good priest, but all men are apt to be incredible asses at times, especially outside their domains. I’m sorry I asked the question.”

“The answer relieves me,” said the scholar. “I seek no quarrels.”

There were no further questions and the thon proceeded to his second topic: the growth and the present activities of his collegium. The picture as he painted it seemed encouraging. The collegium was flooded with applicants who wanted to study at the institute. The collegium was assuming an educational function as well as an investigative one. Interest in natural philosophy and science was on the increase among the literate laity. The institute was being liberally endowed. Symptoms of revival and renaissance.

“I might mention a few of the current researches and investigations being conducted by our people,” he went on.

“Following Bret’s work on the behavior of gases, Thon Viche Mortoin is investigating the possibilities for the artificial production of ice. Thon Friider Halb is seeking a practical means for transmitting messages by electrical variations along a wire—” The list was long, and the monks appeared Impressed. Studios in many fields — medicine, astronomy, geology, mathematics, mechanics — were being undertaken. A few seemed impractical and ill-considered, but most seemed to promise rich rewards in knowledge and practical application. From Jejene’s search for the Universal Nostrum to Bodalk’s reckless assault on orthodox geometries, the collegium’s activities exhibited a healthy hankering to pry open Nature’s private files, locked since mankind had burned its institutional memories and condemned itself to cultural amnesia more than a millennium ago.

“In addition to these studies, Thon Maho Mahh is heading a project which seeks further information about the origin of the human species. Since this is primarily an archeological task, he asked me to search your library for any suggestive material on the subject, after I complete my own study here. However, perhaps I’d better not dwell on this at any length, since it’s tending to cause controversy with the theologicans. But if there are any questions—”

A young monk who was studying for the priesthood stood up and was recognized by the thon.

“Sir, I was wondering if you were acquainted with the suggestions of Saint Augustine on the subject?”

“I am not.”

“A fourth century bishop and philosopher. He suggested that in the beginning, God created all things in their germinal causes, including the physiology of man, and that the germinal causes inseminate, as it were, the formless matter — which then gradually evolved into the more complex shapes, and eventually Man. Has this hypothesis been considered?”

The thon’s smile was condescending, although be did not openly brand the proposal childish. “I’m afraid it has not, but I shall look it up,” he said, in a tone that indicated he would not.

“Thank you,” said the monk, and sat down meekly.

“Perhaps the most daring research of all, however,” continued the sage, “is being conducted by my friend Thon Esser Shon. It is an attempt to synthesize living matter. Then Esser hopes to create living protoplasm, using only six basic ingredients. This work could lead to — yes? You have a question?”

A monk in the third row had risen and was bowing toward the speaker. The abbot leaned forward to peer at him and recognized, with horror, that it was Brother Armbruster, the librarian.

“If you would do an old man the kindness,” croaked the monk, dragging out his words in a plodding monotone. “This Thon Esser Shon — who limits himself to only six basic ingredients — is very interesting. I was wondering — are they permitting him to use both hands?”

“Why, I—” The then paused and frowned.

“And may I also inquire,” Armbruster’s dry voice dragged on, “whether this remarkable feat is to be performed from the sitting, standing, or prone position? Or perhaps on horseback while playing two trumpets?”

The novices snickered audibly. The abbot came quickly to his feet.

“Brother Armbruster, you have been warned. You are excommunicated from the common table until you make satisfaction. You may wait in the Lady Chapel.”

The librarian bowed again and stole quietly out of the hall, his carriage humble, but his eyes triumphant. The abbot murmured apologetically to the scholar, but the thon’s glance was suddenly chilly.

“In conclusion,” he said, “a brief outline of what the world can expect, in my opinion, from the intellectual revolution that’s just beginning.” Eyes burning, he looked around at them, and his voice changed from casual to fervent rhythms.

“Ignorance has been our king. Since the death of empire, he sits unchallenged on the throne of Man. His dynasty is age-old. His right to rule is now considered legitimate. Past sages have affirmed it. They did nothing to unseat him.

“Tomorrow, a new prince shall rule. Men of understanding, men of science shall stand behind his throne, and the universe will come to know his might. His name is Truth. His empire shall encompass the Earth. And the mastery of Man ever the Earth shall be renewed. A century from now, men will fly through the air in mechanical birds. Metal carriages will race along roads of man-made stone. There will be buildings of thirty stories, ships that go under the see, machines to perform all works.

“And how will this come to pass?” He paused and lowered his voice. “In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear. And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world.”

He glanced around, for a soft murmur arose from the community.

“It will be so. We do not willit so.

“But why?

“Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry: But that is how I see it.”

The words brought a new pall over the room. Dom Paulo’s hopes sank, for the prophecy gave form to the scholar’s probable outlook. Thon Taddeo knew the military ambitions of his monarch. He had a choice: to approve of them, to disapprove of them, or to regard them as impersonal phenomena beyond his control like a flood, famine, or whirlwind.

Evidently, then, he accepted them as inevitable — to avoid having to make a moral judgment. Let there be blood, iron and weeping…

How could such a man thus evade his own conscience and disavow his responsibility — and so easily! the abbot stormed to himself.

But then the words came back to him. For in those days, the Lord God had suffered the wise men to know the means by which the world itself might be destroyed…

He also suffered them to know how it might be saved, and, as always, let them choose for themselves. And perhaps they had chosen as Thon Taddeo chooses. To wash their hands before the multitude. Look you to it. Lest they themselves be crucified.

And they had been crucified anyhow. Without dignity. Always for anybody anyhow is to get nailed on it and hang on it and if you drop off they beat…

There was sudden silence. The scholar had stopped talking.

The abbot blinked around the hall. Half the community was staring toward the entrance. At first his eyes could make out nothing.

“What is it?” he whispered to Gault.

“An old man with a beard and shawl,” hissed Gault. “It looks like — No, he wouldn’t—”

Dom Paulo arose and moved to the front of the dais to stare at the faintly defined shape in the shadows. Then he called out to it softly.

“Benjamin?”

The figure stirred. It drew its shawl tighter about spindly shoulders and hobbled slowly into the light. It stopped again, muttering to itself as it looked around the room; then its eyes found the scholar at the lectern.

Leaning on a crooked staff, the old apparition hobbled slowly toward the lectern, never taking its eyes from the man who stood behindit. thon taddeo looked humorously perplexed at first, but when no one stirred or spoke, he seemed to lose color as the decrepit vision came near him The face of the bearded antiquity blazed with hopeful ferocity of some compelling passion that burned more furiously in him than the life principle long since due to depart.

He came close to the lectern, paused. His eyes twitched over the startled speaker. His mouth quivered. He smiled. He reached out one trembling hand toward the scholar. The thon drew back with a snort of revulsion.

The hermit was agile. He vaulted to the dais, dodged the lectern, and seized the scholar’s arm.

“What madness—”

Benjamin kneaded the arm while he stared hopefully into the scholar’s eyes.

His face clouded. The glow died. He dropped the arm. A great keening sigh came from the dry old lungs as hope vanished. The eternally knowing smirk of the Old Jew of the Mountain returned to his face. He turned to the community, spread his hands, shrugged eloquently.

“It’s still not Him,” he told them sourly, then hobbled away.

Afterwards, there was little formality.

21

It was during the tenth week of Thon Taddeo’s visit that the messenger brought the black news. The head of the ruling dynasty of Laredo had demanded that Texarkanan troops be evacuated forthwith from the realm. The King died of poison that night, and a state of war was proclaimed between the states of Laredo and Texarkana. The war would be short-lived. It could with assurance be assumed that the war had ended the day alter it had begun, and that Hannegan now controlled all lands and peoples from the Red River to the Rio Grande.

That much had been expected, but not the accompanying news.

Hannegan II, by Grace of God Mayor, Viceroy of Texarkana, Defender of the Faith, and Vaquero Supreme of the Plains, had, after finding Monsignor Marcus Apollo to be guilty of “treason” and espionage, caused the papal nuncio to he hanged, and then, while still alive to be cut down, drawn, quartered, and flayed, as an example to anyone else who might try to undermine the Mayor’s state. In pieces, the priest’s carcass had been thrown to the dogs.

The messenger hardly needed to add that Texarkana was under absolute interdict by a papal decree which contained certain vague but ominous allusions to Regnans in Excelsis, a sixteenth century bull ordering a monarch deposed. There was no news of Hannegan’s countermeasures, as yet.

On the Plains, the Laredan forces would now have to fight their way back home through the nomad tribes, only to lay down their arms at their own borders, for their nation and their kin were hostage.

“A tragic affair!” said Thon Taddeo, with an apparent degree of sincerity. “Because of my nationality, I offer to leave at once.”

“Why?” Dom Paulo asked. “You don’t approve of Hannegan’s actions, do you?”

The scholar hesitated, then shook his head. He looked around to make certain no one overheard them. “Personally, I condemn them. But in public—” He shrugged. “There is the collegium to think of. If it were only a question of my own neck, well—”

“I understand.”

“May I venture an opinion in confidence?”

“Of course.”

“Then someone ought to warn New Rome against making idle threats. Hannegan’s not above crucifying several dozen Marcus Apollos.”

“Then some new martyrs will attain Heaven; New Rome doesn’t make idle threats.”

The thon sighed. “I supposed that you’d look at it that way, but I renew my offer to leave.”

“Nonsense. Whatever your nationality, your common humanity makes you welcome.”

But a rift had appeared. The scholar kept his own company afterward, seldom conversing with the monks. His relationship with Brother Kornhoer became noticeably formal, although the inventor spent an hour or two each day in servicing and inspecting the dynamo and the lamp, and keeping himself informed concerning the progress of the thon’s work, which was now proceeding with unusual haste. The officers seldom ventured outside the guesthouse.

There were hints of an exodus from the region. Disturbing rumors kept coming from the Plains. In the village of Sanly Bowitts, people began discovering reasons to depart suddenly on pilgrimages or to visit in other lands. Even the beggars and vagrants were getting out of town. As always, the merchants and artisans were faced with the unpleasant choice of abandoning their property to burglars and looters or staying with it to see it looted.

A citizens’ committee headed by the mayor of the village visited the abbey to request sanctuary for the townspeople in the event of invasion. “My final offer,” said the abbot, after several hours of argument, “is this: we will take in all the women, children, invalids, and aged, without question. But as for men capable of bearing arms, we’ll consider each ease individually, and we may turn some of them away.”

“Why?” the mayor demanded.

“What should be obvious, even to you!” Dom Paulo said sharply. “We may come under attack ourselves, but unless we’re directly attacked, we’re going to stay out of it. I’ll not let this place be used by anybody as a garrison from which to launch a counterattack if the only attack is on the village itself. So in case of males able to bear arms, we’ll have to insist on a pledge — to defend the abbey under our orders. And we’ll decide in individual cases whether a pledge is trustworthy or not.”

“It’s unfair!” howled a committeeman. “You’ll discriminate—”

“Only against those who can’t be trusted. What’s the matter? Were you hoping to hide a reserve force here? Well, it won’t be allowed. You’re not going to plant any part of a town militia out here. That’s final.”

Under the circumstances, the committee could not refuse any help offered. There was no further argument. Dom Paulo meant to take in anyone, when the time came, but for the present he meant to forestall plans by the village to involve the abbey in military planning. Later there would be officers from Denver with similar requests; they would be less interested in saving life than in saving their political regime. He intended to give them a similar answer. The abbey had been built as a fortress of faith and knowledge, and he meant to preserve it as such.

The desert began to crawl with wanderers out of the east. Traders, trappers, and herdsmen, in moving west, brought news from the Plains. The cattle plague was sweeping like wildfire among the herds of the nomads; famine seemed imminent. Laredo’s forces had suffered a mutinous cleavage since the fall of the Laredan dynasty. Part of them were returning to their homeland as ordered, while the others set out under a grim vow to march on Texarkana and not stop until they took the head of Hannegan II or died in trying. Weakened by the split, the Laredans were being wiped out gradually by the hit-and-run assaults from Mad Bear’s warriors who were thirsty for vengeance against those who had brought the plague. It was rumored that Hannegan had generously offered to make Mad Bear’s people his protected dependents, if they would swear fealty to “civilized” law, accept his officers into their councils, and embrace the Christian Faith. “Submit or starve” was the choice which fate and Hannegan offered the herdsman peoples. Many would choose to starve before giving allegiance to an agrarian-merchant state. Hongan Os was said to be roaring his defiance southward, eastward, and heavenward; he accomplished the latter by burning one shaman a day to punish the tribal gods for betraying him. He threatened to become a Christian if Christian gods would help slaughter his enemies.

It was during the brief visit of a party of shepherds that the Poet vanished from the abbey. Thon Taddeo was the first to notice the Poet’s absence from the guesthouse and to inquire about the versifying vagrant.

Dom Paulo’s face wrinkled in surprise. “Are you certain he’s moved out?” he asked. “He often spends a few days in the village, or goes over to the mesa for an argument with Benjamin.”

“His belongings are missing,” said the thon “Everything’s gone from his room.”

The abbot made a wry mouth. “When the Poet leaves, that’s a bad sign. By the way, of he’s really missing, then I would advise you to take an immediate inventory of your own belongings.”

The thon looked thoughtful “So that’s where my boots—”

“No doubt.”

“I set them out to be polished. They weren’t returned. That was the same day be tried to batter down my door.”

“Batter down — who the Poet?”

Thon Taddeo chuckled. “I’m afraid I’ve been having a little sport with him. I have his glass eye. You remember the night he left it on the refectory table?”

“Yes.”

“I picked it up.”

The thon opened his pouch, groped in it for a moment, then laid the Poet’s eyeball on the abbot’s desk. “He knew I had it, but I kept denying it. But we’ve had sport with him ever since, even to creating rumors that it was really the long-lost eyeball of the Bayring idol and ought to be returned to the museum. He became quite frantic after a time. Of course I had meant to return it before we go home. Do you suppose he’ll return after we leave?”

“I doubt it,” said the abbot, shuddering slightly as he glanced at the orb. “But I’ll keep it for him, if you like. Although it’s just as probable that he’d turn up in Texarkana looking for it there. He claims it’s a potent talisman.”

“How so?”

Dom Paulo smiled. “He says he can see much better when he’s wearing it.”

“What nonsense!” The thon paused; ever ready, apparently, to give any sort of outlandish premise at least a moment’s consideration, he added: “Isn’t it nonsense — unless filling the empty socket somehow affects the muscles of both sockets. Is that what he claims?”

“He just swears he can’t see as well without it. He claims he has to have it for the perception of ‘true meanings’ — although it gives him blinding headaches when he wears it. But one never knows whether the Poet is speaking fact, fancy, or allegory. If fancy is clever enough, I doubt that the Poet would admit a difference between fancy and fact.”

The thon smiled quizzically. “Outside my door the other day, he yelled that I needed it more than he did. That seems to suggest that he thinks of it as being, in itself, a potent fetish — good for anyone. I wonder why.”

“He said you needed it? Oh ho!”

“What amuses you?”

“I’m sorry. He probably meant it as an insult. I’d better not try to explain the Poet’s insult; it might make me seem a party to them.”

“Not at all. I’m curious.”

The abbot glanced at the image of Saint Leibowitz in the corner of the room. “The Poet used the eyeball as a running joke,” he explained. “When he wanted to make a decision, or to think something over, or to debate a point, he’d put the glass eye in the socket. He’d take it out again when he saw something that displeased him, when he was pretending to overlook something, or when he wanted to play stupid. When he wore it, his manner changed. The brothers began calling it ‘the Poet’s conscience,’ and he went along with the joke. He gave little lectures end demonstrations on the advantages of a removable conscience. He’d pretend some frantic compulsion possessed him — something trivial, usually — like a compulsion aimed at a bottle of wine.

“Wearing his eye, he’d stroke the wine bottle, lick his lips, pant and moan, then jerk his hand away. Finally it would possess him again. He’d grab the bottle, pour about a thimbleful in a cup and gloat over it for a second. But then conscience would fight back, and he’d throw the cup across the room. Soon he’d be leering at the wine bottle again, and start to moan and slobber, but fighting the compulsion anyhow—” the abbot chuckled in spite of himself “ — hideous to watch. Finally, when he became exhausted, he’d pluck out his glass eye. Once the eye was out, he’d suddenly relax. The compulsion stopped being compulsive. Cool and arrogant than, he’d pick up the bottle, look around and laugh. “I’m going to do it anyhow,’ he’d say. Then, while everyone was expecting him to drink it, he’d put on a beatific smile and pour the whole bottle over his own head. The advantage of a removable conscience, you see.”

“So he thinks I need it more than he does.”

Dom Paulo shrugged. “He’s only the Poet-sirrah!”

The scholar puffed a breath of amusement. He prodded at the vitreous spheroid and rolled it across the table with his thumb. Suddenly he laughed. “I rather like that. I think I know who does need it more than the Poet. Perhaps I’ll keep it after all.” He picked it up, tossed it, caught it, and glanced doubtfully at the abbot.

Paulo merely shrugged again.

Thon Taddeo dropped the eye back in his pouch. “He can have it if he ever comes to claim it. But by the way, I meant to tell you: my work is nearly finished here. We’ll be leaving in a very few days.”

“Aren’t you worried about the fighting on the Plains?”

Thon Taddeo frowned at the wall. “We’re to camp at a butte, about a week’s ride to the east from here. A group of, uh — Our escort will meet us there.”

“I do hope,” said the abbot, relishing the polite bit of savagery, “that your escort-group hasn’t reversed its political allegiance since you made the arrangements. It’s getting harder to tell foes from allies these days.”

The thon reddened. “Especially if they come from Texarkana, you mean?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Let’s be frank with each other, Father. I can’t fight the prince who makes my work possible — no matter what I think of his policies or his politics. I appear to support him, superficially, or at least to overlook him — for the sake of the collegium. If he extends his lands, the collegium may incidentally profit. If the collegium prospers, mankind will profit from our work.”

“The ones who survive, perhaps.”

“True-but that’s always true in any event.”

“No, no — Twelve centuries ago, not even the survivors profited. Must we start down that road again?”

Thon Taddeo shrugged. “What can I do about it?” he asked crossly. “Hannegan is prince, not I.”

“But you promise to begin restoring Man’s control over Nature. But who will govern the use of the power to control natural forces? Who will use it? To what end? How will you hold him in check? Such decisions can still be made. But if you and your group don’t make them now, others will soon make them for you. Mankind will profit, you say. By whose sufferance? The sufferance of a prince who signs his letters X? Or do you really believe that your collegium can stay aloof from his ambitions when he begins to find out that you’re valuable to him?”

Dom Paulo had not expected to convince him. But it was with a heavy heart that the abbot noticed the plodding patience with which the thon heard him through; it was the patience of a man listening to an argument which he had long ago refuted to his own satisfaction.

“What you really suggest,” said the scholar, “is that we wait a little while. That we dissolve the collegium, or move it to the desert, and somehow — with no gold and silver of our own — revive an experimental and theoretical science in some slow hard way, and tell nobody. That we save it all up for the day when Man is good and pure and holy and wise.”

“That is not what I meant—”

“That is not what you meant to say, but it is what your saying means. Keep science cloistered, don’t try to apply it, don’t try to do anything about it until men are holy. Well, it won’t work. You’ve been doing it here in this abbey for generations.”

“We haven’t withheld anything.”

“You haven’t withheld it; but you sat on it so quietly, nobody knew it was here, and you did nothing with it.”

Brief anger flared in the old priest’s eyes. “It’s time you met our founder, I think,” he growled, pointing to the wood-carving in the corner. “He was a scientist like yourself before the world went mad and he ran for sanctuary. He founded this Order to save what could be saved of the records of the last civilization. “Saved” from what, and for what? Look where he’s standing — see the kindling? the books? That’s how little the world wanted your science then, and for centuries afterward. So he died for our sake. When they drenched him with fuel oil, legend says he asked them for a cup of it. They thought he mistook it for water, so they laughed and gave him a cup. He blessed it and — some say the oil changed to wine when he blessed it — and then: “Hic est enim calix SanguinisMei ,” and he drank it before they hung him and set him on fire. Shall I read you a list of our martyrs? Shall I name all the battles we have fought to keep these records intact? All the monks blinded in the copyroom? for your sake? Yet you say we did nothing with it, withheld it by silence.”

“Not intentionally,” the scholar said, “but in effect you did-and for the very motives you imply should be mine. If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it.”

“I can see the misunderstanding is basic!” the abbot said gruffly. “To serve God first, or to serve Hannegan first — that’s your choice.”

“I have little choice, then,” answered the thon. “Would you have me work for the Church?” The scorn in his voice was unmistakable.

22

It was Thursday within the Octave of All Saints. In preparation for departure, the thon and his party sorted their notes and records in the basement. He had attracted a small monastic audience, and a spirit of friendliness prevailed as the time to leave drew near. Overhead, the arc lamp still sputtered and glared, filling the ancient library with blue-white harshness while the team of novices pumped wearily at the hand-powered dynamo. The inexperience of the novice who sat atop the ladder to keep the arc gap adjusted caused the light to flicker erratically; he had replaced the previous skilled operator who was at present confined to the infirmary with wet dressings over his eyes.

Thon Taddeo had been answering questions about his work with less reticence than usual, no longer worried, apparently, about such controversial subjects as the refrangible property of light, or the ambitious of Thon Esser Shon.

“Now unless this hypothesis is meaningless,” he was saying, “it must be possible to confirm it in some way by observation. I set up the hypothesis with the help of some new — or rather, some very old-mathematical forms suggested by our study of your Memorabilia. The hypothesis seems to offer a simpler explanation of optical phenomena, but frankly, I could think of no way to test it at first. That’s where your Brother Kornhoer proved a help.” He nodded toward the inventor with a smile and displayed a sketch of a proposed testing device.

‘“What is it?” someone asked after a brief interval of mystification.

“Well — this is a pile of glass plates. A beam of sunlight striking the pile at this angle will be partially reflected, and partially transmitted The reflected part will be polarized. Now we adjust the pile to reflect the beam through this thing, which is Brother Kornhoer’s idea, and let the light fall on this second pile of glass plates. The second pile is set at just the right angle to reflect almost all of the polarized beam, and transmit nearly none of it. Looking through the glass, we’d scarcely see the light. All this has been tried. But now if my hypothesis is correct, closing this switch on Brother Kornhoer’s field coil here should cause a sudden brightening of the transmitted light. If it doesn’t—” he shrugged “ — then we threw out the hypothesis.”

“You might throw out the coil instead,” Brother Kornhoer suggested modestly. “I’m not sure it’ll produce a strong enough field.”

“I am. You have an instinct for these things. I find it much easier to develop an abstract theory than to construct a practical way to test it. But you have a remarkable gift for seeing everything in terms of screws, wires, and lenses, while I’m still thinking abstract symbols.”

“But the abstractions would never occur to me in the first place, Thon Taddeo.”

“We would make a good team, Brother. I wish you would join us at the collegium, at least for a while. Do you think your abbot would grant you leave?”

“I would not presume to guess,” the inventor murmured, suddenly uncomfortable.

Thon Taddeo turned to the others. “I’ve heard mention of ‘brothers on leave.’ Isn’t it true that some members of your community are employed elsewhere temporarily?”

“Only a very few, Thon Taddeo,” said a young priest.

“Formerly, the Order supplied clerks, scribes, and secretaries to the secular clergy, and to both royal and ecclesiastical courts. But that was during the times of most severe hardship and poverty here at the abbey. Brothers working on leave have kept the rest of us from starving at times. But that’s no longer necessary, and it’s seldom done. Of course, we have a few brothers studying in New Rome now, but—”

“That’s it!” said the thon with sudden enthusiasm. “A scholarship at the collegium for you, Brother. I was talking to your abbot, and—”

“Yes?” asked the young priest;

“Well, while we disagree on a few things, I can understand his point of view. I was thinking that an exchange of scholarships might improve relations. There would be a stipend, of course, and I’m sure your abbot could put that to good use.”

Brother Kornhoer inclined his head but said nothing.

“Come now!” The scholar laughed. “You don’t seem pleased by the invitation, Brother.”

“I am flattered, of course. But such matters are not for me to decide.”

“Well, I understand that, of course. But I wouldn’t dream of asking your abbot if the idea displeased you.”

Brother Kornhoer hesitated. “My vocation is to Religion,” be said at last, “that is — to a life of prayer. We think of our work as a kind of prayer too. But that—” he gestured toward his dynamo “-for me seems more like play. However, if Dom Paulo were to send me—”

“You’d reluctantly go,” the scholar finished sourly. “I’m sure I could get the collegium to send your abbot at least a hundred gold hannegans a year while you were with us, too. I—” He paused to look around at their expressions. “Pardon me, did I say something wrong?”

Halfway down the stairs, the abbot paused to survey the group in the basement. Several blank faces were turned toward him. After a few seconds Thon Taddeo noticed the abbot’s presence and nodded pleasantly.

“We were just speaking of you, Father,” he said. “If you heard, perhaps I should explain—”

Dom Paulo shook his head. “That’s not necessary.”

“But I would like to discuss—”

“Can it wait? I’m in a hurry this minute.”

“Certainly,” said the scholar.

“I’ll be back shortly.” He climbed the stairs again. Father Gault was waiting for him in the courtyard.

“Have they heard about it yet, Domne?” the prior asked grimly.

“I didn’t ask, but I’m sure they haven’t,” Dom Paulo answered. “They’re just making silly conversation down there. Something about taking Brother K back to Texarkana with them.”

“Then they haven’t heard, that’s certain.”

“Yes. Now where is he?”

“In the guesthouse, Domne. The medic’s with him He’s delirious.”

“How many of the brothers know he’s here?”

“About four. We were singing None when he came in the gate.”

“Tell those four not to mention it to anyone. Then join our guests in the basement. Just be pleasant, and don’t let them know.”

“But shouldn’t they he told before they leave, Domne?”

“Of course. But let them get ready first. You know it won’t stop them from going back. So to minimize embarrassment, let’s wait until the last minute to tell them. Now, do you have it with you?”

“No, I left it with his papers in the guesthouse.”

“I’ll go see him. Now, warn the brothers, and join our guests.”

“Yes, Dome.”

The abbot hiked toward the guesthouse. As be entered, Brother Pharmacist was just leaving the fugitive’s room.

“Will he live, Brother?”

“I cannot know, Domne. Mistreatment, starvation, exposure, fever — if God wills it—” He shrugged..

“May I speak to him?’

“I’m sure it won’t matter. But he doesn’t make sense.”

The abbot entered the room and softly closed the door behind him.

“Brother Claret?”

“Not again,” gasped the man on the bed. “For the love of God, not again — I’ve told you all I know. I betrayed him. Now just let me — be.”

Dom Paulo looked down with pity on the secretary to late Marcus Apollo. He glanced at the scribe’s hands. There were only festering sores where the fingernails had been.

The abbot shuddered and turned to the small table near the bed. Out of a small collection of papers and personal effects, he quickly found the crudely printed document which the fugitive had brought with him from the east:

HANNEGAN THE MAYOR, by Grace of God: Sovereign of Texarkana, Emperor of Laredo, Defender of the Faith, Doctor of Laws, Clans Chief of the Nomads, and Vaquero Supreme of the Plains, to ALL BISHOPS, PRIESTS, AND PRELATES of the Church throughout Our Rightful Realm, Greetings & TAKE HEED, for it is the LAW, viz & to wit:

(1) Whereas a certain foreign prince, one Benedict XXII, Bishop of New Rome, presuming to assert an authority which is not rightly his over the clergy of this nation, has dared to attempt, first, to place the Texarkanan Church under a sentence of interdict, and, later, to suspend this sentence, thereby creating great confusion and spiritual neglect among all the faithful, We, the only legitimate ruler over the Church in this realm, acting in concord with a council of bishops and clergy, hereby declare to Our loyal people that the aforesaid prince and bishop, Benedict XXII, is a heretic, simoniac, murderer, sodomite, and atheist, unworthy of any recognition by Holy Church in lands of Our kingdom, empire, or protectorate. Who serves him serves not Us.

(2) Be it known, therefore, that both the decree of interdict and the decree suspending it are

hereby QUASHED, ANNULLED, DECLARED VOID AND OF NO CONSEQUENCE, for they were of no original validity…

Dom Paulo glanced at the rest of it only briefly. There was no need to read further. The mayoral TAKE HEED ordered the licensing of the Texarkanan clergy, made the administration of the Sacraments by unlicensed persons a crime under the law, and made an oath of supreme allegiance to the Mayorality a condition for licensing and recognition. It was signed not only with the Mayor’s mark, but also by several “bishops” whose names were unfamiliar to the abbot.

He tossed the document back on the table and sat down beside the bed. The fugitive’s eyes were open, but he only stared at the ceiling and panted.

“Brother Claret?” he asked gently. “Brother…”

In the basement, the scholar’s eyes had come alight with the brash exuberance of one specialist invading the field of another specialist for the sake of straightening out the whole region of confusion. “As a matter of fact, yes!” he said in response to a novice’s question. “I did locate one source here that should, I think, be of interest to Thon Maho. Of course, I’m no historian, but—”

“Thon Maho? Is he the one who’s, uh, trying to correct Genesis?’ Father Gault asked wryly.

“Yes, that’s—” the scholar broke off with a startled glance at Gault.

“That’s all right,” the priest said with a chuckle. “Many of us feel that Genesis is more or less allegorical. What have you found?”

“We located one pre-Diluvian fragment that suggests a very revolutionary concept, as I see it. If I interpret the fragment correctly, Man was not created until shortly before the fall of the last civilization.”

“Wh-a-at? Then where did civilization come from?”

“Not from humanity. It was developed by a preceding race which became extinct during the Diluvium Ignis.”

“But Holy Scripture goes back thousands of years before the Diluvium!”

Thon Taddeo remained meaningfully silent.

“You are proposing,” said Gault, suddenly dismayed, “that we are not the descendants of Adam? not related to historical humanity?”

“Wait! I only offer the conjecture that the pre-Deluge race, which called itself Man, succeeded in creating life. Shortly before the fall of their civilization, they successfully created the ancestors of present humanity — ’after their own image’ — as a servant species.”

“But even if you totally reject Revelation, that’s a completely unnecessary complication under plain common sense!” Gault complained.

The abbot had come quietly down the stairs. He paused on the lower landing and listened incredulously.

“It might seem so,” Thon Taddeo argued, “until you consider how many things it would account for. You know the legends of the Simplification. They all become more meaningful, it seems to me, if one looks at the Simplification as a rebellion by a created servant species against the original creator species, as the fragmentary reference suggests. It would also explain why present-day humanity seems so inferior to the ancients, why our ancestors lapsed into barbarism when their masters were extinct, why—”

“God have mercy on this house!” cried Dom Paulo, striding toward the alcove. “Spare us, Lord — we know not what we did.”

“I should have known,” the scholar muttered to the world at large.

The old priest advanced like a nemesis on his guest. “So we are but creatures of creatures, then, Sir Philosopher? Made by lesser gods than God, and therefore understandably less than perfect — through no fault of ours, of course.”

“It is only conjecture but it would account for much,” the then said stiffly, unwilling to retreat.

“And absolve of much, would it not? Man’s rebellion against his makers was, no doubt, merely justifiable tyrannicide against the infinitely wicked sons of Adam, then.”

“I didn’t say—”

“Show me, Sir Philosopher, this amazing reference!”

Thon Taddeo hastily shuffled through his notes. The light kept flickering as the novices at the drive-mill strained to listen. The scholar’s small audience had been in a state of shock until the abbot’s stormy entrance shattered the numb dismay of the listeners. Monks whispered among themselves; someone dared to laugh.

“Here it is,” Thon Taddeo announced, passing several note pages to Dom Paulo.

The abbot gave him a brief glare and began reading. The silence was awkward. “You found this over in the ‘Unclassified’ section, I believe?” he asked after a few seconds.

“Yes, but—”

The abbot went on reading.

“Well, I suppose I should finish packing,” muttered the scholar, and resumed his sorting of papers. Monks shifted restlessly, as if wishing to slink quietly away. Kornhoer brooded alone.

Satisfied after a few minutes of reading, Dom Paulo handed the notes abruptly to his prior. “Lege!” he commanded gruffly.

“But what—?”

“A fragment of a play, or a dialogue, it seems. I’ve seen it before. It’s something about some people creating some artificial people as slaves. And the slaves revolt against their makers. If Thon Taddeo had read the Venerable Boedullus’De Inanibus, he would have found that one classified as ‘probable fable or allegory.’ But perhaps the thon would care little for the evaluations of the Venerable Boedullus, when he can make his own.”

“But what sort of—”

“Lege!”

Gault moved aside with the notes. Paulo turned toward the scholar again and spoke politely, informatively, emphatically: “ ‘To the image of God He created them: male and female He created them.’ “

“My remarks were only conjecture,” said Thon Taddeo.

“Freedom to speculate is necessary—”

“‘And the Lord God took Man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it. And — ’“

“ — to the advancement of science. If you would have us hampered by blind adherence, unreasoned dogma, then you would prefer—”

“‘God commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good end evil, thou shalt — ’ “

“ — to leave the world in the same black ignorance and superstition that you say your Order has struggled—”

“‘ — not eat For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.”“

“ — against. Nor could we ever overcome famine, disease, or misbirth, or make the world one bit better than it has been for—”

“‘And the serpent said to the woman: God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.’ “

“ — twelve centuries, if every direction of speculation is to he closed off and every new thought denounced—”

“It never was any better, it never will be any better. It will only be richer or poorer, sadder but not wiser, until the very last day.”

The scholar shrugged helplessly. “You see? I knew you would be offended, but you told me — Oh, What’s the use? You have your account of it.”

“The ‘account’ that I was quoting, Sir Philosopher, was not an account of the manner of creation, but an account of the manner of the temptation that led to the Fall. Did that escape you? “And the serpent said to the woman — ’ “

“Yes, yes, but the freedom to speculate is essential—”

“No one has tried to deprive you of that. Nor is anyone offended. But to abuse the intellect for reasons of pride, vanity, or escape from responsibility, is the fruit of that same tree.”

“You question the honor of my motives?” asked the thon, darkening.

“At times I question my own. I accuse you of nothing. But ask yourself this: Why do you take delight in leaping to such a wild conjecture from so fragile a springboard? Why do you wish to discredit the past, even to dehumanizing the last civilization? So that you need not learn from their mistakes? Or can it be that you can’t bear being only a ‘rediscoverer,’ and must feel that you are a “creator’ as well?”

The thon hissed an oath. “These records should be placed in the hands of competent people,” he said angrily. “What irony this is!”

The light sputtered and went out. The failure was not mechanical. The novices at the drive-mill had stopped work.

“Bring candles,” called the abbot.

Candles were brought.

“Come down,” Dom Paulo said to the novice atop the ladder. “And bring that thing with you. Brother Kornhoer? Brother Korn—”

“He stepped into the storeroom a moment ago, Domne.”

“Well, call him.” Dom Paulo turned to the scholar again, handing him the documents which had been found among Brother Claret’s effects. “Read, if you can make it out by candlelight, Sir Philosopher!”

“A mayoral edict?”

“Read it and rejoice in your cherished freedom.”

Brother Kornhoer slipped into the room again. he was carrying the heavy crucifix which had been displaced from the head of the archway to make room for the novel lamp, He handed the cross to Dom Paulo.

“How did you know I wanted this?”

“I just decided it was about time, Domne.” He shrugged.

The old man climbed the ladder and replaced the rood on its iron hook. The corpus glittered with gold by candlelight The abbot turned and called down to his monks.

“Who reads in this alcove henceforth, let him read ad Lumina Christi!”

When he descended the ladder, Thon Taddeo was already cramming the last of his papers into a large case for later sorting. He glanced warily at the priest but said nothing.

“You read the edict?”

The scholar nodded.

“If, by some unlikely chance, you would like political asylum here—”

The scholar shook his head.

“Then may I ask you to clarify your remark about placing our records in competent hands?”

Thou Taddeo lowered his gaze. “It was said in the heat of the moment, Father. I retract it.”

“But you haven’t stopped meaning it. You’ve meant it all along.”

The thon did not deny it.

“Then it would be futile to repeat my plea for your intercession on our behalf — when your officers tell your cousin what a fine military garrison this abbey would make. But for his own sake, tell him that when our altars or the Memorabilia have been threatened, our predecessors did not hesitate to resist with the sword.” He paused. “Will you be leaving today or tomorrow?”

“Today I think would be better,” Thon Taddeo said softly.

“I’ll order provisions made ready.” The abbot turned to go, but paused to add gently: “But when you get back, deliver a message to your colleagues.”

“Of course. Have you written it?”

“No. Just say that anyone who wishes to study here will be welcome, in spite of the poor lighting. Thon Maho, especially. Or Thon Esser Shon with his six ingredients. Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think — as long as they don’t seize the error hungrily because it hasa pleasanter taste. Tell them too, my son, that when the time comes, as it will surely come, that not only priests but philosophers are in need of sanctuary — tell them our walls are thick out here.”

He nodded a dismissal to the novices, then, and trudged up the stairs to be alone in his study. For the Fury was twisting his insides again, and he knew that torture was coming.

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine…Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare…

Maybe it will twist clean loose this time, he thought almost hopefully. He wanted to summon Father Gault to hear his confession, but decided that it would be better to wait until the guests had gone. He stared at the edict again.

A knock at the door soon interrupted his agony.

“Can you come back later?”

“I’m afraid I won’t be here later,” answered a muffled voice from the corridor.

“Oh, Thon Taddeo — come in, then.” Dom Paulo straightened; he took a firm grip on pain, not trying to dismiss it but only to control it as he would an unruly servant.

The scholar entered and placed a folder of papers on the abbot’s desk. “I thought it only proper to leave you these,” he said.

“What do we have here?”

“The sketches of your fortifications. The ones the officers made. I suggest you burn them immediately.”

“Why have you done this?” Dom Paulo breathed. “After our words downstairs—”

“Don’t misunderstand,” Thon Taddeo interrupted. “I would have returned them in any event — as a matter of honor, not to let them take advantage of your hospitality for — but never mind. If I had returned the sketches any sooner, the officers would have had plenty of time and opportunity to draw up another set.”

The abbot arose slowly and reached for the scholar’s hand.

Thon Taddeo hesitated. “I promise no effort on your behalf—”

“I know.”

“ — because I think what you have here should be open to the world.”

“It is, it was, it always will be.”

They shook hands gingerly, but Dom Paulo knew that it was no token of any truce but only of mutual respect between foes. Perhaps it would never be more.

But why must it all be acted again?

The answer was near at hand; there was still the serpent whispering: For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods. The old father of lies was clever at telling half-truths: How shall you “know” good and evil, until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

Dom Paulo summoned the younger priest. It was very nearly time to go. And soon it would be a new year.

That was the year of the unprecedented torrent of rain on the desert, causing seed long dry to burst into bloom.

That was the year that a vestige of civilization came to the nomads of the Plains, and even the people of Laredo began to murmur that it was possibly all for the best. Rome did not agree.

In that year a temporary agreement was formalized and broken between the states of Denver and Texarkana. It was the year that the Old Jew returned to his former vocation of Physician and Wanderer, the year that the monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz buried an abbot and bowed to a new one. There were bright hopes for tomorrow.

It was the year a king came riding out of the east, to subdue the land and own it. It was a year of Men.

23

It was unpleasantly hot beside the sunny that skirted the wooded hillside, and the heat had aggravated the Poet’s thirst. After a long time he dizzily lifted his head from the ground and tried to look around. The melee had ended; things were fairly quiet now, except for the cavalry officer. The buzzards were even gliding down to land.

There were several dead refugees, one dead horse, and the dying cavalry officer who was pinned under the horse. At intervals, the cavalryman awoke and faintly screamed. Now he screamed for Mother, and again he screamed for a priest. At times he awoke to scream for his horse. His screaming quieted the buzzards and further disgruntled the Poet, who was feeling peevish anyhow. He was a very dispirited Poet. He had never expected the world to act in a courteous, seemly, or even sensible manner, and the world had seldom done so; often he had taken heart in the consistency of its rudeness and stupidity. But never before had the world shot the Poet in the abdomen with a musket. This he found not heartening at all.

Even worse, he had not now the stupidity of the world to blame but only his own. The Poet himself had blundered. He had been minding his own business and bothering no one when he noticed the party of refugees galloping toward the hill from the east with a cavalry troop in close pursuit. To avoid the affray, he had hidden himself behind some scrub that grew from the lip of the embankment flanking the trail, a vantage point from which he could have seen the whole spectacle without being seen. It was not the Poet’s fight. He cared nothing whatever for the political and religious tastes of either the refugees or the cavalry troop. If slaughter had been fated, fate could have found no less disinterested a witness than the Poet. Whence, then, the blind impulse?

The impulse had sent him leaping from the embankment to tackle the cavalry officer in the saddle and stab the fellow three times with his own belt-knife before the two of them toppled to the ground. He could not understand why he had done it. Nothing had been accomplished. The officer’s men had shot him down before he ever climbed to his feet. The slaughter of refugees had continued. They had all ridden away then in pursuit of other fugitives, leaving the dead behind.

He could hear his abdomen growl. The futility, alas, of trying to digest a rifle ball. He had done the useless deed, he decided finally, because of the part with the dull saber. If the officer had merely hacked the woman out of the saddle with one clean stroke, and ridden on, the Poet would have overlooked the deed. But to keep hacking and hacking that way —

He refused to think about it again. He thought of water.

“O God — O God—” the officer kept complaining.

“Next time, sharpen your cutlery,” the Poet wheezed.

But there would be no next time.

The Poet could not remember ever fearing death, but he had often suspected Providence of plotting the worst for him as to the manner of his dying when the time came to go. He had expected to rot away, Slowly and not very fragrantly. Some poetic insight had warned him that he would surely die a blubbering leprous lump, cravenly penitential but impenitent. Never had be anticipated anything so blunt and final as a bullet in the stomach, and with not even an audience at hand to hear his dying quips. The last thing they had heard him say when they shot him was: “Oof !” — his testament for posterity. Ooof ! — a memorabile for you, Domnissime.

“Father? Father?” the officer moaned.

After a while the Poet mustered his strength and lifted his head again, blinked dirt out of his eye, and studied the officer for a few seconds. He was certain the officer was the same one he had tackled, even though the fellow by now had turned a chalky shade of green. His bleating for a priest that way began to annoy the Poet. At least three clergymen lay dead among the refugees, and yet the officer was not now being so particular about specifying his denominational persuasions. Maybe I’ll do, the Poet thought.

He began dragging himself slowly toward the cavalryman. The officer saw him coming and groped for a pistol. The Poet paused; he had not expected to be recognized. He prepared to roll for cover. The pistol was wavering in his direction He watched it waver for a moment, then decided to continue his advance. The officer pulled the trigger. The shot went wild by yards, worse luck.

The officer was trying to reload when the Poet took the gun away from him. He seemed delirious, and kept trying to cross himself.

“Go ahead,” the Poet grunted, finding the knife.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—”

“Ego te absolvo, son,” said the Poet, and plunged the knife into his throat.

Afterward, he found the officer’s canteen and drank a little. The water was hot from the sun, but it seemed delicious. He lay with his head pillowed on the officer’s horse and waited for the shadow of the hill to creep over the road. Jesus, how it hurt! That last bit isn’t going to be as easy to explain, he thought; and me without my eyeball too. If there’s really anything to explain. He looked at the dead cavalryman.

“Hot as hell down there, isn’t it’?” he whispered hoarsely.

The cavalrymen was not being informative. The Poet took another drink from the canteen, then another. Suddenly there was a very painful bowel movement. He was quite unhappy about it for a moment or two.

The buzzards strutted, preened, and quarreled over dinner; it was not yet properly cured. They waited a few days for the wolves. There was plenty for all. Finally they ate the Poet.

As always the wild black scavengers of the skies laid their eggs in season and lovingly fed their young. They soared high over prairies and mountains and plains, searching for the fulfillment of that share of life’s destiny which was theirs according to the plan of Nature. Their philosophers demonstrated by unaided reason alone that the Supreme Cathartes aura regnans had created the world especially for buzzards. They worshipped him with hearty appetites for many centuries.

Then, after the generations of the darkness came the generations of the light. And they called it the Year of Our Lord 3781 — a year of His peace, they prayed.