Gerun, the Heretic. William Maltese
left,” Gerun said aloud, the horror of it well upon him. “Soon not even us two?” Then thought: What is the fear which sparks this purge?
“The lone surviving segment of the Book,” Kalvin answered him, his mentat having once again read even Gerun’s thoughts via the sympathetic wave-lengths that had once connected all Missionaries (and still did). Alas, Gerun’s abilities to mentat-unite with his kin hadn’t had nearly the time to develop as Kalvin’s had. This was why Gerun needed to be told that his last Uncle and Aunt were no longer among the living, while Kalvin had been immediately been tuned to their untimely departures.
“What book?” Gerun wanted to know. Yes, he could hear the old man’s progression now, coming nearer. Anyway, it registered as an old man’s progression. Was it a trick? The world was full of cunning tricksters. If they’d tricked inside the defenses of Uncle Kors and Aunt Maseen, how much more vulnerable a mere boy? Gerun had long suspected his defenses were being fortified from outside. Kalvin supervising Gerun’s welfare from the wings?
“Don’t underestimate your talents for survival,” Kalvin sent, having mentat-overheard. “You saved the day at Chinsore when the water surge broke the containing barriers, and you rode the face of the wave with balance that surprised and confused the secret instigators. And at Ron-ron, what could this old man have done to protect you from the pellets launched from unseen attackers in the hills? You lifted the stieler-sec and dodged so expertly those fiss-tipped missiles that could have ended you with a scratch.”
“Fiss-tipped?”
“They told you no, didn’t they? For whom but Warluck could afford the expense of dipping three-thousand pellets? Did you count them as they whizzed passed? Three-thousand. A tidy sum flushed down the toilet, considering you so skillfully danced the dodge. I hear they scoured the area for the missing, hoping to soak off the bitterment and use it another day. Unfortunately, they have enough for the two of us without it. The Westicks have grown rich on the death of our clan, brewing the lethal doses that Warluck has purchased with cubes of Tilinian. Warluck has financed a grand enemy in the Westicks. Ironic how they’ve used their money to amass munitions to be used in a revolution against him.”
“He risks strengthening the Westicks to kill us?” Gerun asked. Where did Kalvin get his information? It hinted access to data sources not available to Missionaries. He feared again that this wasn’t Kalvin heading in his direction.
“Warluck feels safer in dealing with the Westicks than with We of the Missionary,” Kalvin sent, ignoring any knowledge that Gerun doubted and was readying his C-gun just in case.
“We offered him a bigger threat than the Westicks?” Gerun asked. “How?”
“A question already answered, my boy,” Kalvin chided good-naturedly. “You must better learn to categorize your in-feed of information.”
“The Book?” Gerun ventured.
“Not the Book but a page thereof. Not a complete volume but a portion. Salvaged by Panrun-Ru, The Incinerator, from his own ruling to incinerate. Who can know what prompted him to salvage the part? Perhaps, he suspected the day would come when a successor needed incentive against the flowering of heretics. Assuming we’re the heretics in question.”
“The Book found with Jon Missionary?”
“One and the same,” Kalvin sent. “Would that I had access to but a peek at what powers the Book insinuated is ours. How Warluck seemed—seems—to fear that we should find out. Alas, he has been too clever for us. I only uncovered filtered word of the fragment after the purge was well begun. At the time word reached me, Melin was just dead, and I did grieve for him, letting the rumor slip completely before confirmation came much too late to be of help. So many of us dead because of this old man’s oversight. Any of us to survive? I so old to be of no real threat should I somehow slip through the final net Warluck pulls around us.”
He didn’t look old; Gerun confirmed when his grandfather was suddenly there before him. Not old as Gerun’s parents had waxed suddenly old upon their return from Wistock Cove where, phsi-phsis insisted they’d been exposed to rare tempmentum. That had been too early in the purge for accusations. In retrospect, however.…
“Yes, killed us one by one, two by two; in the case of Mandarin’s family, more brazen yet, wiping out six with a single blow and calling it ignited syphicic gas, having the Power Cor confirm,” Kalvin said. “A million in insurance doled out to surviving Bet? A price well spent in order to smoothly terminate six, especially since Bet would so soon follow. Klyrinstok Disease, was it? Oh, to exhume her body, all our poor dead bodies, and count the variants of fiss poisoning still clinging to the last of our remains!”
“There’s a way to get the Book fragment?” Gerun asked.
“Is there?” Kalvin asked, having mistaken the boy’s question for a statement. He quickly realized his mistake, feeling silly that he’d been so desperate as to think the boy might come upon something Kalvin hadn’t. “Oh, I see, you ask me. I answer, no. Not that I haven’t tried. I’ve even gone to Jursimms.” The last was muted whisper. It wasn’t a confession he made lightly. He could see the boy’s well-deserved disgust. “The Priest was of no help,” he added. “I endangered my soul for a word.”
“Word?” Despite his disgust, Gerun was curious. He’d known no one in his family who’d consulted a Jursimmic Priest. The Jursimms were of a faith that existed even before the Religio-College. Ancient. Old. The womb from which all the gods on Kanran-9 were said to have been born. Except for the god brought by Jon Missionary? “A word?” Gerun repeated. Had the old man really dared the journey into the Labyrinth of Klint? Had he truly paid the fee, participated in the dance, and endangered his soul to the pagans—all for a word?
“And a word we already know, at that,” Kalvin said sadly. “‘You’ll die because of Christian,’ is what the Priest said, smiling all the while, as if knowing I’d come with the clue already etched in my brain. The Jursimms’s face was degenerate from a life of lust and self-indulgence. His stench was so overpowering I almost retched on the spot. ‘More!’ I demanded. ‘I paid the price, and what kind of answer is Christian?’ ‘You have your answer, tricked from me by your masquerade, I might add!’ the Priest accused me. ‘Well, I’ve kept my bargain, despite your deception. Christian is all the answer I have, all the answer you shall have from me.’”
Christian. It was not a new word, as Kalvin had said. Even Gerun had heard it often enough before, although it had never been defined. Nor did it have definition now, unless the Priest had known something he wasn’t saying. It remained one of the infrequent sounds Jon Missionary had uttered in his lifetime. There were more, equally obtuse and cryptic: Moriah, Aaronic, baptism, sacrament, crucifixion, resurrection. Jon Missionary always got a funny cast to his strange blue eyes— (At the time, blue eyes, except for his, were non-existent on Kanran-9; as soon, Kalvin and Gerun terminated, blue eyes would again be non-existent). —and would speak his strange sounds: Amalek, Zelotes, Philemon, Malachi, Mamre.… All jotted down by those who listened, words to form the litany Gerun had committed to memory, the litany that all Jon Missionary’s descendants had at one time committed to memory. Because if the meanings were obscure, even to the brain-damaged man who uttered them, they hinted of wondrous things just beyond the grasp. As if the correct arrangement would form an incantation that would summon forth a whole wealth of secrets to unlock answers to all the unanswered questions. Edom, Edrei, Gennesasret, Egypt, Omer, Ahab. People? Places? Things? Gibberish from an insane man?
Surely, not gibberish! Because there had been times when the words had been fed back to Jon Missionary, one at a time, or in running sequence, and the sparks of recognition had lit within that man’s eyes, and he’d tried to speak more. Tried to speak what?
Nothing Jon Missionary ever said had been translated to anyone’s satisfaction. His was a language—yes, it did have the insinuated structure and intonation and cadence of a language —but it was no language anyone on Kanran-9 had ever heard, or ever came to understand.
It would have helped, of course, if that man could have learned Kanranian, but it somehow stayed