“Hey, Hick, go out and check him for bombs,” Pelloponensis said.
“Watch out for gasoline cans.”
The churchman smiled. “Don’t worry, friend; I’m not covered in explosives.”
“I no afraid,” I said.
“Do you always speak like that? I’ve met several of your kind. They were all brighter than the average human. With such a big head and flexible nasophyrangal cavities, you should be able to speak much more clearly than that.”
“Are we supposed to trust you just because you’re clergy?” Sikorsky asked.
“No, you’re supposed to trust me because I’m powerful,” he intoned.
“Let reward be punishment and punishment be reward.”
• • •
“It was just a blind woman. Are you willing to kill yourself and all your comrades in a war over some girl? She wasn’t even pretty.”
“Pretty means little in a mine and less to a Grog. She was kind to me.”
“Kind. You’re willing to let death loose in this valley again over that?”
“Perhaps if we proved willing to start a war over a single girl, they would give up trying to take them.”
“Would it change matters if you knew she volunteered to go? She chose to sacrifice herself so none of you would be taken. Now the Order is willing to accept you back into the fold, but you’ll have to select one of your number to pay for your crimes. There have been too many deaths for no price to be paid. The troopers and firemen wouldn’t stand for it.
“In the Church, we’re always looking for those who can face the arithmetic. The arithmetic becomes too much for some. Even churchmen with years of schooling and the discipline of constant positive reinforcement. Sometimes their bodies sicken; then their minds go. But perhaps five percent of humans have the necessary steel in their constitution to look at the world and not flinch. I think you aren’t the type to flinch.”
“I’ve never met any of my kind in the uniform of the Church.”
“Oh, you’d have your choice of clothing. Even the Maynes household wouldn’t be able to offer you what we could.
“You’ve no doubt interacted with many of mankind. How many are in any way remarkable? How many are missed by anyone beyond a small circle when they die, whether from natural causes or a more methodical end?”
“Murder with sophistic flourishes,” I said.
“Don’t give me easy answers. You’re clearly intelligent. Why end up as another body on the pile?
“Just as monkeys and lab rats and tissue cultures must die so that we can have healthier bodies, we also need to eliminate the human waste to have a healthier society. You could think of yourself as a powerful white blood cell, searching for the unhealthy and necrotic. What would you like? Food? Females? I can assure you, you’d get the best of everything. We’d like to see you produce others similar to yourself. We find that you nonnatives have a more clinical attitude toward humanity.”
I remember little else of the encounter. I started laughing; I know that. They still thought I must be a strong back with a weak mind, caught up in events beyond my control and looking for an exit. I was still laughing when I returned to the entrance to Number Four.
“What was that about, King?” Pelleponensis asked.
“The shepherds of the Church wanted me as a sheepdog.”
“Hope you peed on his leg, big guy.”
• • •
Two more days passed. The strain of the hopeless, cutoff position would be hard enough on trained soldiers. These ordinary men were cracking. It was one thing to die fighting in a hot rush of emotion, a desperate, mass suicide; quite another to go on day after day being whittled down in ones and twos, living off trickles of water or even morning dew sponged off rocks. With food running out, they wouldn’t even have the strength to lift a sharpened shovel against another attack before long.
Everyone knew it was over. The only question was whether the denouement would be another assault, or a mass surrender that would probably end with all of our bodies in a ditch, waiting for a bulldozer to cover us with slag.
I was determined to chance an escape into open air while I still had strength.
• • •