Shining Steel

Chapter Sixteen

“A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth."-Ecclesiastes 7:1

Once they were all out of the gully there was no reason to hurry; John slowed his horse to a walk and turned for a final look at the camouflaged oilcloth. A minor pang ran through him; he was going to miss the place, miserable as most of his stay there had been. It had been his, the first place that ever truly was. Always before, when he was in charge of a place, he had been working for someone else-his father, his uncle, the Elders-someone. They had all betrayed the truth and surrendered to the enemy, though.

He had not; he would carry on fighting even now. He glanced up at the sky, wondering whether the same airship that had picked him up would be the one to destroy the camp. He doubted that the Heaveners had more than a handful of airships. He had wanted to pack up and carry as much as possible, so that it was now just about noon, and the attack was due.

He never even saw what it was that did hit the camp; he glimpsed a quick flicker in the air, gone before he could turn to look at it, and a moment later the gully erupted in flame.

The fire did not last long; within ten minutes it had died down to isolated patches of flame, leaving most of the gully adrift with white ash.

John shook his head. Nothing on Godsworld could fight that kind of weapon; they needed outside help.

He had no illusions about what sort of help he was likely to find; whatever other corporation he could bring in, if he could do it at all, would probably be just as unChristian, just as evil as Bechtel-Rand. He no longer cared. The old Godsworld, where the righteous stood alone and took their strength from the truth, was gone. He knew he could never eradicate the changes the Earthers had brought. Even if they were driven off Godsworld forever, all of them, things had been changed. The protectorate might survive without them; the People of the True Word and Flesh, however, would not. All the relative strengths and military balances that John had known for years had already been thrown off irretrievably. And the trade goods-dyes, fabrics, guns, ammunition-would be around for years, maybe centuries. Beliefs would change; the Apocalypsists could no longer maintain that Earth had been destroyed, and that the starships had been the new arks. Simply the knowledge that Earth was still out there, that people could travel between worlds, would change how people thought. Attempts might well be made to recover the lost arts of Earther technology, even to build new starships.

But that was all conjecture; in fact, the Earthers were not going to abandon Godsworld. All he could hope to do would be to slow, perhaps halt, their spreading contagion. If he drove away or destroyed Bechtel-Rand, another corporation would come-that was one thing Dawes had told him that he did not doubt at all.

Even a delay would be welcome, though. It would give the Godsworlders time to adjust to the changes, time to do what they could to maintain their way of life in the face of Earther encroachments. John also thought that he would prefer that Bechtel-Rand not be the group to profit from the ruin of Godsworld. If someone must, it need not be his personal enemies.

He turned away from the smoldering ashes in the gully and urged his mount to a trot; the way to the Citadel by horse was long and winding.

Beside him rode three of his last handful of men and one of the two women; in these last days the camp had only kept five horses. The rest of the band, left on foot, had scattered in all directions, with arrangements made for meetings and contacts throughout the central part of the Heavener protectorate. The resistance against the Earthers’ encroachment was not done yet.

“What was that?” one of his companions asked.

“What was what?” John replied, startled out of his thoughts.

“That flash that burned the whole camp like that!” The speaker was Thaddeus Blood-of-the-Lamb, one of John's original True Worder soldiers-one who had joined the retreating half and thereby survived the massacre.

“I don't know; it doesn't matter. It's just another Heavener weapon. It's not the steel of the weapons that matters, Thaddeus, it's the steel in the man who uses them."

“That wasn't steel, Captain, that was hellfire,” said David Beloved-of-Jesus, one of the Chosen, on his other side.

“Just steel-a machine, that's all. The Earthers are just men and women, not demons."

“They're both,” David insisted, and John thought better of answering. Just machines, he told himself, designed and built by people. He wondered if his ancestors had made the right decision, abandoning most of Earth's technology.

The image of an ordinary religious war fought with Earther weapons came to him, and he decided quickly that the ancients had chosen wisely.

There were to be no more ordinary religious wars, though; the Heaveners didn't like them. The next war, John hoped, was to be between corporations. He couldn't expect that all the fighting in this new kind of war would be back on Earth; to make it worthwhile for Bechtel-Rand's opponent they would have to be invited to share in the trade on Godsworld. He hoped that if nukes and other such incredible weapons were used that the targets would be chosen very, very carefully.

For a moment his determination to destroy the New Bechtel-Rand Corporation faltered; would it be worth risking the lives of the Godsworlders who would inevitably be caught in the crossfire?

Yes, he answered himself, because only their bodies would die. Saving souls was worth any risk.

The route they followed was a long and winding one; they passed through two small villages and made camp in the wilderness, and only in the early afternoon of the following day did they reach the gates of the Citadel. By the time they arrived John had evolved a plan.

He would not immediately accept the offered job; instead, he would ask that it be held open while he explored possibilities and thought it over at length. He would then try and find another way of contacting another corporation back on Earth, rather than going himself. Corporations did not appear to be all that different from tribes, and as he well knew, any large tribe is likely to harbor spies and traitors, or simply weak-willed individuals whose loyalty and aid could be bought. If he could find those weaklings, spies, or traitors among Bechtel-Rand's people on Godsworld he would be able to contact his proposed ally indirectly.

He would talk to the Earthers, to any and all Earthers he could find, under the guise of considering the job offer-it would be only natural to find out more about his prospective employer, after all. The right questions, carefully asked, should find him what he was looking for. That corporation the guard had mentioned, ITD-that sounded very promising. If he could find no genuine spies, he would just try to hire someone to put him in touch with ITD's leaders. If ITD was bigger than Bechtel-Rand, then it should be able to destroy his enemy.

They were in the market square now. “Where are we going?” Thaddeus asked.

John glanced at him. “I am going to find a room at an inn; you're welcome to accompany me, but you're free to find your own place."

“I have a brother nearby,” said Eleazar Freed-by-the-Truth, “We'll stay with him.” His sister Esther nodded agreement.

“Abihu didn't come with us because he has a wife and two babies to look after,” she said, “but he'll keep us safe."

“That's good, then; stay with him. If you want to find us, check the market around midafternoon; I'll have someone here whenever I can, to keep us all in touch. David?"

“I'll come with you."

“Thaddeus?"

“I will, too."

“Fine. Eleazar, Esther, God be with you; we'll see you again.” He watched as the pair rode away down a side street.

When they were out of sight he prodded his own horse forward again, and his two remaining companions followed. After a moment's indecision they headed for the inn where John had stayed before, the Righteous House.

They reached it without difficulty; John dismounted at the front door, intending to ask what rooms were available before leaving the horses in the stable. When he turned to enter, though, a woman was standing in the doorway. He stared.

“Ms. Humble?” he asked.

“Captain John!” Miriam answered, staring back.

She wore a new dress, John noticed-dark green, of an unfamiliar fabric. She appeared confused and uncertain. Otherwise, she looked much as she had when last he saw her.

He studied her expression and could see no trace of malice. “A pleasure to see you again, Ms. Humble,” he said, forcing a smile. “Allow me to present my companions, Thaddeus Blood-of-the-Lamb and David Beloved-of-Jesus."

She nodded polite acknowledgement. “I thought you were living out on the hills somewhere,” she said.

“We were, but circumstances have changed. If you don't mind, Ms. Humble, we're here to find rooms for ourselves."

“Oh,” she said. She stepped aside; John and Thaddeus entered the inn, leaving David to watch the horses. When John and Thaddeus had passed Miriam turned hesitantly to follow them.

She waited and watched silently as they took two rooms and assured the care of the horses; then, as they turned back toward the door, she said, “I want to talk to you, Captain."

He glanced at her, then back at Thaddeus. “Go on out, Thad, and help David with the horses; I'll meet you at the rooms later."

Thaddeus nodded, looking at Miriam curiously, and obeyed. When he had gone John led the way to a quiet corner table, seated them both, and asked, “What is it? Are you still trying to get me killed?"

“No-at least, I don't think so."

“Don't you know?"

“No, I don't-not any more."

“I reckon maybe you don't, at that; I pretty much expected you to find our camp and come out there to bother me, but you never did. When I found out that the Earthers knew where we were I thought you might have told them, but it wasn't you at all, it was one of their ‘sat-alights'. I thought I'd seen the last of you."

“Well, I didn't expect to see you again, either! I thought you were so stubborn that you'd stay out there all alone after your men all deserted you, and freeze to death by Christmas!"

“I may be that stubborn, but I'm not that stupid. Suicide's a sin-besides, he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day, as the saying goes."

She stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words.

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” he demanded.

“Oh. I don't know how to explain, exactly. I wanted to tell you… no, ask… no, tell you something. About how I feel about you."

“Tell me, then.” He sat back, expecting her to spout either gleeful anticipation of his impending death at the hands of the Heaveners, or a tearful forgiveness.

“I hated you, so very much-you took my home, killed my father, a dozen of your men raped me. I wanted to see you die, slowly.” She paused, looking up at him across the table.

John was uneasy. This was not the raving he had anticipated. He had rarely heard anyone speak so openly and directly. He tried to answer soothingly without lying or distorting the truth. “That's natural enough,” he said. “The Lord said to love your enemies and forgive the wrongs done you, but it's hard-about the hardest thing there is, I guess. I'm sorry about what my men did to you-it's the custom, in war, but that's hard, too. It was a just war, to bring people to Jesus, but I can't fault you for hating it."

“I hated you, though,” she said. “I blamed it all on you. You had led the invaders; I heard an officer say that it was your idea to use Marshside for a base instead of attacking the Chosen directly and I knew you'd given your men permission to pillage the town."

“It wasn't really my idea-one of the Elders…"

“That doesn't matter,” she interrupted. “Let me finish. I hated you, I thought you were an inhuman monster. When you took that splinter away from me so easily I was sure of it, and when you refused to rape me because the Bible says a man should be chaste I thought it was because you weren't human enough to rape a woman. I thought you were a demon. Maybe not really, actually a demon, but not really a man. You were the Enemy. And my enemy's enemy is my friend, so I believed that the Heaveners were honest and good, come to help Godsworld. You understand?"

John nodded, cautiously.

“Then you told me about that woman, Tuesday-you had a reason to hate the Heaveners, after all. And you'd lost your army; you weren't unbeatable, you'd suffered. I was confused by all that, Captain. I wanted to see how much of what you said was true. So I came back here, and got a job at the inn here-I told them I was the widow of one of your men. And I went to the fortress and talked to people there, and I saw some of the records they have, and what you told me about Tuesday was true; I saw the tape of you and her together."

“What?!” John's outburst was involuntary, the result of astonishment and outrage. “What tape?"

“Oh, they tape everything there, pictures and sound-it's almost like watching through a window. Any time anyone moves, anywhere in the Corporate Headquarters, it's carefully recorded and filed away. The machines do it all. I got to know some of the Earthers pretty well in the past few weeks, and one of them let me watch the tapes of you. I watched it all half a dozen times, from different angles. You were raped, just the way I was-and you took it the same way I did, you wanted revenge. You're just human, like me; you're not a monster."

He stared at her for a long moment, unable to reply.

“I just wanted you to know that I know that now. You're just human, and you've been raped and your family killed-the army was your family, wasn't it?-and your home was destroyed, just the way it happened to me. We're even now; I can forgive you, at least partly. I still won't weep if you get killed, Captain, but I don't need to see it. I wanted to tell you that.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “That's all."

“Wait a minute!"

“Yes?"

“It was all recorded?"

“Well, not all-you can be glad of one thing.” A vicious smile suddenly lit her face. “Did you know they can even record what comes over an empathy spike? Tuesday didn't do that, though-what you felt is gone forever. Thank God for the small favors, Captain!” She walked away, her hips swinging in saucy derision.