Part 7 (1/2)

”I don't know. Wake Mapfabvisheen up, but let the good father sleep.

He seems tired after his spiritual labors and doubtless deserves a rest.”

Doused with a bucket of cold water the little Ssa.s.saror staggered to his feet. Seeing Archambaud, he embraced him. ”Ah, Archambaud, old baby-abductor, my sweet goose-bagger, my ears tingle to see you again!”

They did. Red and blue sparks flew off his ear-feathers.

”What is the meaning of this?” sternly interrupted Mapfarity. He pointed at the dirt swept into the corners.

Mapfabvisheen drew himself up to his full dignity, which wasn't much.

”Good Father Jules was making his circuits,” he said. ”You know he travels around the country and hears confession and sings Ma.s.s for us poor egg-stealers who have been unlucky enough to fall into the clutches of some rich and greedy and anti-social Giant who is too stingy to hire servants, but captures them instead, and who won't allow us to leave the premises until our servitude is over....”

”Cut it!” thundered Mapfarity. ”I can't stand around all day, listening to the likes of you. My feet hurt too much. Anyway, you know I've allowed you to go into town every week-end. Why don't you see a priest then?”

Mapfabvisheen said, ”You know very well the closest town is ten kilometers away and it's full of Pantheists. There's not a priest to be found there.”

Rastignac groaned inwardly. Always it was thus. You could never hurry these people or get them to regard anything seriously.

Take the case they were wasting their breath on now. Everybody knew the Church had been outlawed a long time ago because it opposed the use of the Skins and certain other practices that went along with it.

So, no sooner had that been done than the Ssa.s.sarors, anxious to establish their check-and-balance system, had made arrangements through the Minister of Ill-Will to give the Church unofficial legal recognizance.

Then, though the aborigines had belonged to that pantheistical organization known as the Sons of Good And Old Mother Nature, they had all joined the Church of the Terrans. They operated under the theory that the best way to make an inst.i.tution innocuous was for everybody to sign up for it. Never persecute. That makes it thrive.

Much to the Church's chagrin, the theory worked. How can you fight an enemy who insists on joining you and who will also agree to everything you teach him and then still wors.h.i.+p at the other service? Supposedly driven underground, the Church counted almost every Landsman among its supporters from the Kings down.

Every now and then a priest would forget to wear his Skin out-of-doors and be arrested, then released later in an official jail-break. Those who refused to cooperate were forcibly kidnapped, taken to another town and there let loose. Nor did it do the priest any good to proclaim boldly who he was. Everybody pretended not to know he was a fugitive from justice. They insisted on calling him by his official pseudonym.

However, few priests were such martyrs. Generations of Skin-wearing had sapped the ecclesiastical vigor.

The thing that puzzled Rastignac about Father Jules was the sacrament wine. Neither he nor anybody else in L'Bawpfey, as far as he knew, had ever tasted the liquid outside of the ceremony. Indeed, except for certain of the priests, n.o.body even knew how to make wine.

He shook the priest awake, said, ”What's the matter, Father?”

Father Jules burst into tears. ”Ah, my boy, you have caught me in my sin. I am a drunkard.”

Everybody looked blank. ”What does that word _drunkard_ mean?”

”It means a man who's d.a.m.ned enough to fill his Skin with alcohol, my boy, fill it until he's no longer a man but a beast.”

”Alcohol? What is that?”

”The stuff that's in the wine, my boy. You don't know what I'm talking about because the knowledge was long ago forbidden except to us of the cloth. Cloth, he says! Bah! We go around like everybody, naked except for these extradermal monstrosities which reveal rather than conceal, which not only serve us as clothing but as mentors, parents, censors, interpreters, and, yes, even as priests. Where's a bottle that's not empty? I'm thirsty.”

Rastignac stuck to the subject ”Why was the making of this alcohol forbidden?”

”How should I know?” said Father Jules. ”I'm old, but not so ancient that I came with the Six Flying Stars.... Where is that bottle?”

Rastignac was not offended by his crossness. Priests were notorious for being the most ill-tempered, obstreperous, and unstable of men.

They were not at all like the clerics of Earth, whom everybody knew from legend had been sweet-tempered, meek, humble, and obedient to authority. But on L'Bawpfey these men of the Church had reason to be out of sorts. Everybody attended Ma.s.s, paid their t.i.thes, went to confession, and did not fall asleep during sermons. Everybody believed what the priests told them and were as good as it was possible for human beings to be. So, the priests had no real incentive to work, no evil to fight.