Part 1 (2/2)

Although the basket was dutifully lowered when the sentence had expired, no one had ever been known to get back into it. Of course, in a world without seasons or moons, and hence without any but an arbitrary year, long periods of time are not easy to count accurately. The basket could arrive thirty or forty days to one side or the other of the proper date.

But this was only a technicality, however, for if keeping time was difficult in the attic world it was probably impossible in h.e.l.l.

Honath's guards tied the free end of his tether to a branch and settled down around him. One abstractedly pa.s.sed a pine cone to him and he tried to occupy his mind with the business of picking the juicy seeds from it, but somehow they had no flavor.

More captives were being brought in now, while the Spokesman watched with glittering black eyes from his high perch. There was Mathild the Forager, s.h.i.+vering as if with ague, the fur down her left side glistening and spiky, as though she had inadvertently overturned a tank plant on herself. After her was brought Alaskon the Navigator, a middle-aged man only a few years younger than Honath himself; he was tied up next to Honath, where he settled down at once, chewing at a joint of cane with apparent indifference.

Thus far, the gathering had proceeded without more than a few words being spoken, but that ended when the guards tried to bring Seth the Needlesmith from the nets. He could be heard at once, over the entire distance to the glade, alternately chattering and shrieking in a mixture of tones that might mean either fear or fury. Everyone in the glade but Alaskon turned to look, and heads emerged from purses like new b.u.t.terflies from coc.o.o.ns.

A moment later, Seth's guards came over the lip of the glade in a tangled group, now shouting themselves. Somewhere in the middle of the knot Seth's voice became still louder; obviously he was clinging with all five members to any vine or frond he could grasp, and was no sooner pried loose from one than he would leap by main force, backwards if possible, to another. Nevertheless he was being brought inexorably down into the arena, two feet forward, one foot back, three feet forward....

Honath's guards resumed picking their pine-cones. During the disturbance, Honath realized Charl the Reader had been brought in quietly from the same side of the glade. He now sat opposite Alaskon, looking apathetically down at the vine-web, his shoulders hunched forward. He exuded despair; even to look at him made Honath feel a renewed shudder.

From the High Seat, the Spokesman said: ”Honath the Pursemaker, Alaskon the Navigator, Charl the Reader, Seth the Needlesmith Mathild the Forager, you are called to answer to justice.”

”Justice!” Seth shouted, springing free of his captors with a tremendous bound and bringing up with a jerk on the end of his tether. ”This is no justice! I have nothing to do with--”

The guards caught up with him and clamped brown hands firmly over his mouth. The Spokesman watched with amused malice.

”The accusations are three,” the Spokesman said. ”The first, the telling of lies to children. Second, the casting into doubt of the divine order among men. Third, the denial of the Book of Laws. Each of you may speak in order of age. Honath the Pursemaker, your plea may be heard.”

Honath stood up, trembling a little, but feeling a surprisingly renewed surge of his old independence.

”Your charges,” he said, ”all rest upon the denial of the Book of Laws.

I have taught nothing else that is contrary to what we all believe, and called nothing else into doubt. And I deny the charge.”

The Spokesman looked down at him with disbelief. ”Many men and women have said that you do not believe in the Giants, pursemaker,” he said.

”You will not win mercy by piling up more lies.”

”I deny the charge,” Honath insisted. ”I believe in the Book of Laws as a whole, and I believe in the Giants. I have taught only that the Giants were not real in the sense that we are real. I have taught that they were intended as symbols of some higher reality and were not meant to be taken as literal persons.”

”What higher reality is this?” the Spokesman demanded. ”Describe it.”

”You ask me to do something the writers of the Book of Laws themselves couldn't do,” Honath said hotly. ”If they had to embody the reality in symbols rather than writing it down directly, how could a mere pursemaker do better?”

”This doctrine is wind,” the Spokesman said. ”And it is plainly intended to undercut authority and the order established by the Book. Tell me, pursemaker: if men need not fear the Giants, why should they fear the law?”

”Because they are men, and it is to their interest to fear the law. They aren't children, who need some physical Giant sitting over them with a whip to make them behave. Furthermore, Spokesman, this archaic belief _itself_ undermines us. As long as we believe that there are real Giants, and that some day they'll return and resume teaching us, so long will we fail to seek answers to our questions for ourselves. Half of what we know was given to us in the Book, and the other half is supposed to drop to us from the skies if we wait long enough. In the meantime, we vegetate.”

”If a part of the Book be untrue, there can be nothing to prevent that it is all untrue,” the Spokesman said heavily. ”And we will lose even what you call the half of our knowledge--which is actually the whole of it--to those who see with clear eyes.”

Suddenly, Honath lost his temper. ”Lose it, then!” he shouted. ”Let us unlearn everything we know only by rote, go back to the beginning, learn all over again, and _continue_ to learn, from our own experience.

Spokesman, you are an old man, but there are still some of us who haven't forgotten what curiosity means!”

”Quiet!” the Spokesman said. ”We have heard enough. We call on Alaskon the Navigator.”

”Much of the Book is clearly untrue,” Alaskon said flatly, rising. ”As a handbook of small trades it has served us well. As a guide to how the universe is made, it is nonsense, in my opinion; Honath is too kind to it. I've made no secret of what I think, and I still think it.”

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