Why shouldst Thou cause a man to put himself to shame by begging aid, when it is in Thy power, O Lord, to vouchsafe him his necessities in an honorable fashion?
- A Kahan, Atereth ha-Zaddikim, Shiprecords
HALI KEPT a careful watch on Waela as the E-clone assistants prepared an obstetrics area within their temporary medical shelter. The cliff shadow covered them, and the confusion of the army departing filled the air with discordant noise: shouts, grunts, the crunching of the cutter's wheels on the sand. She felt a sense of relief as the demons moved off with Panille. He frightened her now. Her soft-voiced poet friend had become the keeper of a terrifying inner fire. He was keeper of the kind of terrible power she had seen at Golgotha.
Heavy as she was with the unborn child, Waela moved with a supple quickness. She was in her natural habitat: Pandora. This place had changed Waela, too. Was that why Panille had mated with her? Hali put down an anguished stab of jealousy.
I am a med-tech. I am a Natali! An unborn child needs me. I want joy!
She tried not to think about what might happen out there on the plain. Thomas had warned her what to expect. Where had he learned about battle? She had been unable to suppress feelings of outrage.
"Those people who will die, how are they different from us?"
She had hurled the question at him as they moved down from the clifftop, steadied by hylighter tendrils, the red streaks of dayside fingering a gray horizon on their right. It had been a nightmare setting: the babble of the army, the muted flutings of hylighters. The great orange bags had floated some people down to the plain, carried equipment, guarded the descent of those who stayed afoot.
Hundreds of people, tons of equipment.
Thomas had not answered her question until she repeated it.
"We have to take over the Redoubt. Ship will destroy us if we don't."
"That makes us no better than them."
"But we will survive."
"Survive as what? Does Ship say anything about that?"
"Ship says, 'When you shall hear of wars and the rumors of wars, be you not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.'"
"That's not Ship! That's the Christian Book of the Dead!"
"But Ship quotes it."
Thomas had looked at her then and she had seen the pain within his eyes. Christian Book of the Dead.
Ship had shown parts of it to her on request, displaying the words within the tiny cubby where Panille once had studied. If Thomas really were a Ceepee, he would know those words. She wondered if Oakes knew them. How strange that no one shipside had responded to her careful questions and probes about the events on the Hill of Skulls.
Thomas had frightened her then as they paused to regain their breath on a little rock platform deep in a fissure.
"Why did Ship show you the crucifixion? Have you ever asked yourself that, Hali Ekel?"
"How do yo.... how do you know abou.... ?"
"Ship tells me things."
"Did Ship tell you wh.... . ?"
"No!"
Thomas set off down the steep trail. She called after him: "Do you know why Ship showed me that?"
He stopped at a gap in the fissure, looked out at the morning light growing on the plain, the glistening brilliance of reflections off the Redoubt's plaz in the distance. She caught up with him.
"Do you know?"
Thomas rounded on her, the pain terrible in his eyes. "If I knew that, I'd know how to WorShip. Did Ship give you no clues?"
"Only that we must learn about holy violence."
He glared at her. "Tell me what you saw there at the crucifixion!"
"I saw a man tortured and killed. It was brutal and awful, but Ship would not let me interfere."
"Holy violence," Thomas muttered.
"The man they killed, he spoke to me. H.... I thought he recognized me. He knew I had come far to see him there. He said I was not hidden from him. He said I should let them know it was done."
"He said what?"
"He said if anyone understood God's will, then I must understand i.... but I don't!" She shook her head, tears close. "I'm just a med-tech, a Natali, and I don't know why Ship showed me that!"
Thomas spoke in a whisper: "That's all the man said?"
"N.... he told the people in the crowd not to weep for him but for their children. And he said something about a green tree."
"If they do these things in a green tree, what will they do in a dry?" Thomas intoned.
"That's it! That's what he said! What did he mean?"
"He mean.... he meant that the powerful grow more deadly in times of adversity - and what they do in the roots can be felt to the ends of the branches - forever."
"Then why have you created this army? Why are you going out there t.... ?"
"Because I must."
Thomas resumed his way down the trail, refusing to respond to her. Others who had chosen to climb down caught up, pressed close. She had no other opportunity to speak to him. They were at the foot of the cliffs soon and she had her own duties while Thomas set off about his war.
Ferry was one of the people Thomas assigned to medical work. She knew what Thomas and Kerro thought about the old man and this prompted her now to kindness toward him. While she worked with Ferry in the rude fabric shelter below the cliffs, she heard Thomas speaking to his army.
"Blessed by Ship, my strength, which teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight."
Was that any way for a Ceepee to talk? She asked this of Ferry while they worked.
"That's the way Oakes talks." The old man seemed resigned to his fate but eager to help her.