The Godmakers

Chapter Twenty

“He has arrived, Reverend Abbod,” the priest said. “Bakrish is with him now.”

The Abbod Halmyrach stood at a scribe’s easel, his bare feet on an orange rug that matched his long robe. The room, its windows shuttered against Amel’s glaring sunlight, appeared shadowy and archaic. Dim light came from ancient glowglobes which hovered in the upper corners of the room. There were wood walls and a fireplace with orange coals in it behind the Abbod. His narrow face with its long nose and thin-lipped mouth appeared calm, but the Abbod was acutely aware of his room, of the oily shadows on the wood walls, the scratching of the priest’s sandals on the floor beyond the rug, the faint stirrings of the fire dying in the fireplace.

This priest reporting now, Macrithy, was one of the Abbod’s most trusted observers, but the man’s appearance—long black hair with deep sideburns framing a smoothly rounded face, the dark stovepipe suit and reversed white collar—bothered the Abbod. Macrithy looked too much like an historical illustration from accounts of the Second Inquisition. One did not, however, question religious accouterments which came under the freedoms of the Ecumenical Truce.

“I sensed his arrival,” the Abbod said. He turned back to the easel, writing with pen on paper because it pleased him to keep the ancient ways alive. “There does not seem to be any doubt he is the one.”

Macrithy said: “He has made the three transcendent steps, but there is no certainty he will survive his ordeal and discover you, who summoned him.”

“To discover has many meanings,” the Abbod said. “Have you read my brother’s report?”

“I have read it, Reverend Abbod.”

The Abbod looked up from his writing. “I saw the little green box, you know. I saw it in a vision in the instant before the Shriggar appeared to us. I also saw my brother and felt the transcendent influence on his emotions brought about by that moment. It fascinates me the way the prediction follows so precisely upon the Shriggar’s words. It tracks, as they say.” He returned to his writing.

“Reverend Abbod,” Macrithy said, “The game of war, the city of glass and the time of politics are past. I have studied your account of the god making. It is now time for us to fear the consequences of our daring.”

“And I am afraid,” the Abbod said, not looking up.

“We all are,” Macrithy said.

“But think of it,” the Abbod said, putting a punctuation mark on his writing with a flourishing gesture. “This is our first human! What have we touched in the past—a mountain on Talies, the Speaking Stone of Krinth, the Mouse God on Old Earth, animate and inanimate elements of that ilk. Now, we have our first human god.”

“There’ve been others,” Macrithy said.

“But not of our making!”

“We may regret it,” Macrithy muttered.

“Oh, I already do,” the Abbod said. “But there’s no changing that now, is there?”