Heaven (15 page)

“I do, master.”

“And you understand why?”

His instructor was always asking tricky questions like that. Veenseffer-co-Fropts had a penchant for logical traps. Sam tried
to decide what answer the querist wanted. It was so easy to say something stupid, or to reveal an unacceptably tentative grasp
of doctrine. “Uh . . . because I am but a novice in such matters, master. And”—he glanced at the querist’s face to get a hint
of how well he was answering, but the face was impassive—“And I will benefit from correction by my betters.” No, his instructor
wanted more; those were too obvious. “And . . . I must accept responsibility for the consequences of my actions, however far
in the future they arise.”

The querist gave him a penetrating stare. “Almost. You
will
be
made
to accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions. So those actions must be available for consideration at any
time.”

That was really what Sam had meant when he said he
must
accept responsibility. But it was not his place to argue with his instructor. He nodded. “I stand corrected, master.”

The instructor rose from his stool and began to slide across the chamber. He looked distracted. Then he slithered in a sharp
U-turn and raised his foreparts so that his olfactory organ dangled inches from Sam’s face. He had come to some kind of decision.

“There are two lifesouls, among the many that concern me, that are suitable for your limited knowledge of the art of the healer,
Fourteen Samuel.”

Sam waited.

“One is a Hytth, who has suffered an amputation and has not yet succeeded in coming to terms with her consequent inability
to secure a mate. How would you approach such a client, Fourteen Samuel?”

There was a consensual answer to such soulsickness, and Sam had been reviewing the doctrine only a few days before. “There
are comforting words in the Reevaluation of Saint Joan the Profane,” he said. “An extensive passage on the virtues of enforced
celibacy, linked to the inspiring tale of Saint Joan and the seventy virgins.”

“That is one way. Obvious, easy, but none the worse for that. The other potential client is more difficult. It is a Neanderthal
child. What is the difficulty with Neanderthals?”

“They—well, master, characteristically they lack a sense of the spiritual.”

“Go on.”

“Before the Neanderthal Exodus, when they were Beastmasters, their empathy with animals rendered them insensitive to the signs
of the Lifesoul-Cherisher. Even though those signs are everywhere. To a Neanderthal, a sunset is just a star being occulted
by the horizon of a spinning planet. They see no beauty in it, and experience no sense of awe. Their empathic sense seems
to have subverted their sense of the spiritual, perhaps by taking over the part of their brain that would otherwise attune
them to the marvels of the Lifesoul-Cherisher.”

The querist seemed pleased by this comprehensive answer. “Which has what consequence, Fourteen Samuel?”

“Most Neanderthals are deaf to the gospel of the United Cosmos, master. It is notoriously difficult to overcome their skepticism.
They seem immune to the usual arguments and evidences. And they can be extraordinarily stubborn.”

“Even at the age of seven years?”

“Especially then.”

“So you would prefer to teach a suffering Hytth the story of Saint Joan and the seventy virgins rather than attempt the taxing
task of bringing Dry Leaves Fall Slowly to the truth?”

So that was her name. Sam didn’t hesitate.

“Master, I prefer to accept the challenge, if you deem me worthy. I will attempt to heal the lifesoul of the Neanderthal child.”

“. . . and so the third ornithopt was able to succeed where the others had failed,” said Sam. The Neanderthal girl’s large
golden eyes gazed past his face, over his shoulder, at a patch of wall. She seemed unimpressed by the story he was telling
her, one of his own childhood favorites. A cultural difference? Or was it a peculiarity of the child herself?

He struggled manfully on. “So, Fall, what does the story tell us?”

The girl stared at her feet. “I miss my mother. You have an ugly, flat face. Your nose is too thin. And you must call me ‘Leaves,’
not ‘Fall.’”

Well, that’s me put in my place
, Sam thought.
Her
second
name. Not formal enough to mean that I have any importance to her; not informal enough to accept me as a friend
.

“The story tells us that we can learn from the failures of others and avoid repeating their mistakes. Uh . . . I’m sure you
will be able to return to your mother once we’ve finished talking about what the story really means,” said Sam.

The child’s eyes lifted and met his. “My mother is dead.”

Sam’s heart sank into his boots. Worse, a querist would be watching this, and it would be recorded and go into the permanent
archives. . . . He should have guessed. He should have dug out the information from the archives. Dry Leaves Fall Slowly was
the only Neanderthal he had seen in the Nether Ice Dome. He had assumed that her parents were somewhere around, too—just not
happening to cross his path. It was a reasonable assumption; he had little freedom of movement in the monastery, and he was
sure that he had encountered only a tiny fraction of its denizens.

He felt a complete fool.

“Leaves, I’m terribly sorry,” Sam said. “I didn’t know.”

The child seemed more puzzled than upset. “But you are a priest. Priests know everything. Why did you not know?”

“No, I’m—” Sam stopped. He
was
one of the priesthood now. He was a novice lifesoul-healer. It was taking some getting used to, and the girl’s calm poise
floored him. His face reddened with embarrassment; he felt like bringing an end to the session. But the querist was watching,
and he had to continue. Anyway, it was his role as a servant to get through this poor child’s mental barriers and heal the
trapped, damaged lifesoul. A lifesoul deprived all too early of a mother’s love, and thus in mortal danger.

“What about your father?” he asked gently, dreading the answer.

“He is dead, too.”

Somehow, this information was not a surprise. If her father had been alive, the girl would have said so when she first mentioned
her mother’s death. This time, though, Sam did not apologize.
“Sometimes,”
his instructor had told him,
“it is necessary to wait in silence. Do not feel a need to fill in gaps in the conversation. Any hiatus should be met with
equanimity. It will put pressure on the client to continue talking, and there is a chance that they will reveal something
that would otherwise have stayed hidden.”

He waited. So did the child.

If Fall—Leaves—was feeling the pressure, she showed no sign. Feeling increasingly foolish, he stuck to what he had been taught,
and remained silent.

An awkward pause, which went on too long. Then: “They killed my grenvil, too.”

He wanted to ask who had killed the small, scaly creature that had clearly been the child’s favorite pet. Instead, obeying
his training, he waited, hoping the silence would draw her out. It worked.

“I miss my grenvil. They hurt it. I felt its pain. And I saw what they did. It was horrible. I hate them.” A tear rolled down
one cheek—
eureka!
Finally, a response! “I hate you, too; you are one of them, one of the priests!”

She was shouting now. Spittle ran from her full-lipped mouth. Sam tried to take her hand—touching a client was permitted,
provided it was nonthreatening. She jerked it away as if his own were red hot.

What has this child witnessed?
He could not believe that a servant of Unity would harm a pet. He wondered whether the animal had perhaps been sick and she
had misunderstood an attempt to heal it. Not knowing exactly what had happened, he had to avoid putting his foot in it again.

“It is a bad act to harm an innocent animal,” he finally ventured. “When I was your age, I had a skirrel. I loved it dearly
and would never have allowed anyone to hurt it.”

“Could you have stopped anybody hurting it if they were stronger than you?” the child asked, appearing interested in the conversation
for the first time since it had started. “I could not help my grenvil. They burned it with a blowtorch.” The tears increased
their flow; her whole body was shaking. “They . . . they tied me to a chair. I could do nothing. And if I
could
have tried to help my pet, they would have burned
me
.”

“No!” cried Sam, discovering that his self-control was more brittle than he had thought. “That’s impossible! You must be mistaken!”
Oh, Cherisher help her
. Now he saw the extent of the child’s lifesoul damage in all its spiritual deformity. It was far, far worse than it had first
seemed. Far, far worse than he had feared.

The Neanderthal girl, a child of seven, was lying. And it was a wicked lie. He made a mental note to find out from the querist
just what had really happened to trigger such a malicious accusation. But now he had to put the session back on course. How
could he explain? Ah . . .

“What you tell me was done is contrary to the Memeplex, Leaves. The most important things in the world are tolerance, love,
peace, unity, and harmony among all sentient races.”

The child was unimpressed by the logic. “But a grenvil is only an animal. The Memeplex does not apply to animals.”

“That’s true . . . but although a grenvil is not sentient, Leaves, any harm done to your pet would also be harm done to
you
. There is no way that a true servant of Unity could torture a harmless animal, but even if they could, they would never do
so in front of someone who loved it.”

“Then . . . those priests were not true servants of Unity,” said the child, wiping her streaming eyes on her arm.

“You must have misunderstood what they were doing,” said Sam. “I’m sure of it. I promise you that I will find out the truth,
and reveal it to you when next we meet.”

The girl sniffed and hung her head. “I am a child. I was there when my pet was killed, but I am merely a child, so I count
for nothing.
You
did not even know it had happened. But you are a priest. So . . .
I
must be wrong.”

Sam observed wryly that for a seven-year-old she had a cutting sense of sarcasm. “Leaves, believe me, I will ask my superiors,
and find out the truth, and explain it to you.”

“And will you . . . will you also find out the truth about my . . . my mother? And my father?” she asked, now sobbing openly.
“I do not know how they died, or where, but I know that they did. A priest told me.” The tawny eyes opened wide; the mouth
curled in a snarl. “I saw the priests take my parents away. . . . I think the priests killed them, just like they . . . they
killed my grenvil.”

It was a reasonable enough conclusion, given the girl’s twisted logic. If the priests could torture her pet before her eyes—not
to mention the effect on her empathic sense—they were capable of anything. So, if her parents had disappeared, then of course
a priest had killed them. Probably by a similar method. It was a child’s logic, based on circumstance, not facts. But it was
terribly seductive.

At least he now knew where to start. The session had not, after all, been a dead loss. He would ask permission to consult
the archives and find out what had really happened to the girl’s parents. Perhaps they were still alive but had been sent
elsewhere and she had not been told. Or, if they truly were dead, he could find out how and where and when. And
finally
, he could also see a point of leverage, a way to get inside that ugly-beautiful leonine head of hers.

He would have to find out the truth about the grenvil and convince her that it
was
the truth. Then, by extension, she would be more likely to believe what he told her about her parents. And then the healing
could begin.

Dry Leaves Fall Slowly was going to be a very difficult client. Every time she had opened her mouth, the lies
(call them ‘confusions’; euphemisms sometimes help)
had gotten worse. But she was young, and something terrible had surely happened. He wondered what it had been. His outrage
at her lies disappeared beneath a wave of affection. Fall had lost her parents, so he, Sam, would become a substitute. A poor
substitute, he knew, but better than none.

He had found his true calling.

He reached for her hand again, and this time she did not pull back. He felt terrible, but above all he felt sympathy. And
the child was a Neanderthal, with that spooky sense of empathy that they all seemed to have, and she knew
exactly
how he felt—and responded.

He held her, and her tears renewed. But she clung to him as if he were all that existed in the whole world. And, after a time,
she drifted off into an undisturbed sleep.

Let the querists make of that what they wished
.

As they had done for a hundred thousand generations, the Huphun broodmothers lined up at starset to welcome home their young,
spreading their wings to display their homing symbols in a riot of color. But after the arrival of the aliens, the happy event
inspired only mind-numbing fear.

When will it stop? When?

Each evening, the strangers randomly chose one section of spittle nests, the Huphun equivalent of a city block, and walled
it off from its neighbors using opaque, impenetrable fields of force. Within the protection of the field, they went about
their evil work.

The forcewalls stretched a hundred feet outward from the cliff and stopped. They did not prevent the young from seeing their
mothers, displaying beside the home nest. The walled-off section was open to anything that flew.

As long as it was a returning fledgling. When the first force fields went up, several adult Huphun had flown out into the
canyon to find out what was happening inside the walls. But as they crossed the line of the wall,
something
plucked them from the sky and dashed them against the rocks. By the strange way that the light nearby was bent, forming a
momentary streak like faint, curdled smoke, the Huphun deduced that the aliens were in possession of tractor beams as well
as forcewalls.