The Great Fetish

1

The clerk of the court called: “Hear, hear! On this the fifteenth day of Franklin, in the Year of Descent 1008, the District Court of the District of Skudra, in the Kralate of Vizantia, is now in session. All persons having business with this honorable court draw nigh.”

As Judge Kopitar entered, the clerk added: “All rise and uncover.”

Off came the sheepskin kalpaks, which most of the audience had kept on against the early-morning chill. The small peat fire in the bronze stove did little to lift this chill. Muphrid (Eta Bootis) had not yet risen. Skudra, although but a few degrees from the equator of Kforri, was cool because of its altitude. The doffing of hats revealed rows of broad skulls shaven, except for the single braided tuft, against the invasion of scalp mites. Jaws moved rhythmically, chewing quids of tobacco.

The judge said: “Clerk, lead the court in prayer.”

The clerk rose and intoned: “Hail to the gods! May they preserve and watch over us; may they forgive our shortcomings. Hail to the holy trinity of Yez, Moham, and Bud! May Yustinn, god of law, guide us to just decisions. May Napoin, god of war, give us courage to face our duty. May Kliopat, goddess of love, inspire us with due sympathy towards our erring fellows. May Niuto, god of wisdom, increase our understanding. And may Froit, maker of souls, strengthen our characters to choose the right. O gods, inform us with the wisdom of the Ancient Ones, whom at the time of the Descent you did send from your paradise of Earth to teach us the arts of civilization. And look with favor upon the proceedings of this court. Amen.”

The clerk looked up and said: “You may sit… . You there! Put out that pipe! And no spitting on the floor, either! The dignity of the court must be preserved.”

The judge said: “Good morning, fellow subjects. Clerk, call the first case.”

The clerk said: “The first case is that of the Kralate against Marko Prokopiu of Skudra, twenty-one years old. It is charged that the said Marko Prokopiu did willfully and wrongfully, while employed as a teacher of boys in the public school of Skudra, teach the false and heretical doctrine called Descensionism or Anti-Evolution, namely: that the Earth, instead of being a plane of spiritual existence, from which our souls come and to which they return, is a material place or world like Kforri, and that all men, instead of having evolved under the guidance of the gods from the lower animals of Kforri, came from Earth at the time of the Descent in a flying machine. It is, moreover, charged that the said Marko Prokopiu did not only advance this false doctrine, but did also deny, condemn, and ridicule the true belief, certified by the Holy Syncretic Church of Vizantia and adopted as official by

the Krai’s ministers, to wit: the doctrine of Evolution. How do you plead, Marko Prokopiu?”

Marko Prokopiu, the foster son of the late Milan Prokopiu the smith, stood up. Since the year on Kforri is half again as long as that on Earth, by Terran time Marko would have been thirty-two. He was a little taller than the average but seemed short because of his abnormal breadth and girth. These were conspicuous even among Kforrians, with whom a stocky build with thick legs was general. The gravity of the planet, a third more than that of Mother Earth, had in the fifty-odd generations since the Descent eliminated spindle legs and weak hearts.

So Marko looked more like a blacksmith, which his foster father had been, than a small-town schoolteacher, despite the fact that he was no passionate exerciser. His features were rather thick, coarse, and brutal-looking. The blondness of his scalp lock distinguished him from the dark native-born Vizantians.

Although the elder Prokopius never said where they had obtained Marko, it was supposed in Skudra that he was of Anglonian or Eropian origin. These exotic antecedents had caused the intensely parochial Skudrans to look upon Marko with scorn and suspicion, even after he had grown too big and burly to be openly bullied. This treatment had caused his naturally introverted personality to become even more withdrawn.

Marko looked out over the courtroom. At the back stood the bailiff, Ivan Haliu, leaning on his billhook and wearing the same old helmet, blackened with oxidation, that Milan Prokopiu had hammered out for him years before. Ivan Haliu was looking intently towards the place where Bori Bender sat near Pavlo Arkas. The Benders and the Arkases had a feud on, and one of the two men might try to slay the other. Marko Prokopiu picked out his friends and his foes with his glance. In the front row were his friends: his mother, small and sharp-nosed; his wife, Petronela, big and handsome; and his boarder, Chet Mongamri, the very tall man with the pointed graying Anglonian mustache. It was Mongamri who had persuaded Marko of the truth of Descensionism.

Nearly all the rest were neutral or hostile. There was Vasilio Yovanovi, the father of the pupil whom Marko had thrashed for chasing a fellow pupil with a knife. Although this beating was perfectly legal, as homicide was forbidden to minors, Vasilio Yovanovi had brought the action against Marko. The boy sat beside his father and visibly gloated. No doubt Miltiadu would call him as a witness.

And there in the bush beard and tiara of black wool was Theofrasto Vlora, Metropolitan of the Holy Syncretic Church, who had come up from Stambu to oversee the trial and harken on the prosecution. Even if the five jurors had not included Sokrati Yovanovi, a cousin of Vasilio Yovanovi, there was little chance that they would acquit him under the stern eye of the Metropolitan.

“Not guilty!” said Marko loudly, and sat down.

The judge said: “The prisoner has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutor, state your case.”

Jorgi Miltiadu stood up and began: “Your honor, we expect to prove that the prisoner, contrary to the laws of the Kralate and the regulations of the school board, did willfully and wrongfully …” Here followed a restatement of the charge, going in more detail into Marko’s iniquities. When Miltiadu had finished, the judge said to Marko’s lawyer:

“Counselor, state your case.”

Rigas Lazarevi rose and began: “Your honor, the defense will stipulate that my client did, in fact, teach the doctrines which he is accused—”

“Are you changing your plea to guilty?” cried Jorgi Miltiadu, leaping up like a startled tersor.

“Order,” said Judge Kopitar. “Resume your seat, Master Prosecutor; you shall have your chance.”

“No,” said Rigas Lazarevi. “We adhere to our plea of innocence. It is on another ground altogether that we shall make our defense, namely, that the doctrines in question are true, and that not even the government has the right to compel my client to teach an untruth. For there is a higher law than princes, as our distinguished visitor the Metropolitan”—he nodded towards Theofrasto Vlora, who stared back coldly over his bristling black beard—“would be the first to assert. We shall produce—”

“I object!” cried Jorgi Miltiadu. “My honored colleague’s proceeding is irregular, his arguments are irrelevant, and his implications are subversive. This is neither a churchly synod nor a meeting of the faculty of the University of Thine to decide what is true. For our purposes, truth has been clearly set forth in section forty-two of Decree Number 230, Year of Descent 978, relating to the establishment and maintenance of a public-school system …”

On they went all through the long morning, back and forth, objecting, arguing, and splitting hairs. As the temperature rose, the audience squirmed on their benches and unbuttoned their shaggy sheepskin jackets. One even started to pull off his boots until Ivan Haliu stopped him by tapping his shaven skull with the butt of his billhook.

Although the audience was supposed to stay quiet, it was constantly disturbed by individual spectators pushing out of the pews for a trip to the nearest spittoon or to step outside for a nip of slivic. Others whispered and muttered until Judge Kopitar threatened to clear the courtroom.

The prosecution witnesses assembled by Jorgi Miltiadu, such as the Yovanovi boy, were not called, since the defense admitted the acts to which they were to testify. On the other hand, Miltiadu caused the question of the truth of the Descensionist doctrine to be ruled out as irrelevant, so Rigas Lazarevi never had a chance to show the books he had assembled as exhibits. Privately, Marko was just as glad. Many of these books were of foreign origin, and Marko well knew the Skudrans’ suspicion of intellectual argument and hatred of anything foreign.

By dinnertime, when Muphrid stood almost overhead, all that remained were the summing-up speeches. The court recessed. Marko ate his dinner with the other prisoners: mostly cottage cheese and native Kforrian fungi, with a little mutton. Prisoner, judge, jury, witnesses, attendants, and spectators scattered to eat their dinners likewise and to stretch out for their three-hour siestas.

After siesta, Marko and the rest returned for the final arguments. Jorgi Miltiadu tore into Marko’s foreignness: “… so this—this unspeakable alien not only tried to poison the minds of our youth by false and unholy beliefs. He even went to another outsider, this foreigner”—he pointed at Mongamri, who glared back—“from whom he got the damnable doctrine that all men are, in effect, aliens in their own world. Have you ever heard of anything so un-Vizantian?

“Do not be deceived by the specious arguments of my colleague, that it is the teacher’s duty to follow the truth wherever it leads. Is Marko Prokopiu a god, that he can tell truth when he sees it, when wiser heads than his have been in disagreement? Obviously not. Shall we allow men tainted by alien blood to teach our children that black is white, or that Kforri is flat, or that Muphrid is cold, merely because some quirk of their natures or some insidious foreign influence has led them astray? As well hire the Einstein-worshiping witches of Mnaenn to teach their deadly arts and spells in our schools! Or the black hermits of Afka to teach that they are the chosen people of their god!

“Who shall, then, decide the truth? Why, the government of his serene majesty, Krai Maccimo, which can call upon the keenest minds in the Kralate and upon the divine wisdom of the Holy Three as incarnated in the Syncretic Church …”

On he went, Marko’s heart sank. Rigas Lazarevi, when his turn came, stoutly accused Jorgi Miltiadu of prejudicing the jurors by dragging in the irrelevency of Marko’s birth. But, argue as be might, he could not get around the fact that Marko had broken the law.

When the jury was sent out, the clerk announced: “The next case is that of the Kralate against Mihai Skriabi of Skudra, thirty-four years old. It is charged that the said Mihai Skriabi did, on the eleventh of Ashoka of the present year, ride his paxor down Cankar Street in Skudra while drunk; that he did moreover cause the said paxor to knock down two porch pillars from the house of Konstan Cenopulu the jeweler, causing grievous harm to the house of the said Konstan Cenopulu …”

By the time this case was over, the jurors considering Marko’s case came back with their verdict:

“Guilty.”

The spectators applauded. Marko cringed inwardly. What in the name of Yustinn had he ever done to them? When he got out, he would go far from this bigoted backwoods hamlet with its insensate feuds and its bitter xenophobia. He had been a fool to stay with them as long as he had, under the delusion that it was his duty to enlighten their savage brats.

The judge said: “Marko Prokopiu, I sentence you to imprisonment in the district jail for three years, beginning today, and to pay a fine of one thousand dlars, in default of which you shall spend an extra year in prison.”

At this there was another spattering of applause. There were also a few murmurs of surprise at the severity of the sentence. Marko hoped that some of the spectators at least thought he was being unfairly used.

Marko caught a glimpse of Jorgi Miltiadu shaking hands with the Metropolitan, and then his own friends came up. His wife and his mother wrung his hands. Chet Mongamri said in his Anglonian accent:

“It’s a damnable shame, Marko, but it will be the making of my book. Wait till you read the chapter about your trial!”

Marko gave Mongamri a sharp look. This seemed like an odd attitude, especially as Mongamri had, in a way, put Marko up to teaching Anti-Evolution.

Back in the month of Aristotle (or Ristoli as the Vizantians called it) Mongamri had arrived in Skudra with a mass of notes. He explained that he was an Anglonian who made his living by traveling about the continent and then writing and lecturing on his experiences. He was looking for a place to do a few months’ quiet writing before returning to his home in Lann. As no other family in Skudra would admit a foreigner unless paid a fantastically high rent, Mongamri had naturally ended up in the house of the more tolerant and cosmopolitan Marko Prokopiu.

Many a night, Marko had sat up late with his boarder, discussing the world beyond the Skudran Hills and the ideas that stirred men’s minds in other lands. Marko had come to consider Chet Mongamri his closest friend. This was not saying much, as he had few friends of any kind and no real intimates. Now, evidently, Marko saw that to Mongamri he was at best a chapter in a book.

“Come along, Marko,” said Ivan Haliu, grasping Marko’s elbow.

Marko let himself be led away.