by Jerry
Paint fumes, I told myself when I opened my eyes. They’d only just painted my room a couple of days before, and the place reeked of whatever that foul stuff is that they use as a base. Paint fumes and a ticklish conscience, and I’d been talking to the interior designer about mosaics for the ceiling, and there was a long list of beatitudes in the phoney gospel we’d cooked up. Nothing to worry about. Tomorrow night, sleep with the window open and you’ll be fine.
They found it about four feet down, in the trench they were digging to connect the latrine (we may have been men of God but we were practical) to the brook. The first I knew of it was when a crowd started to gather; a silent crowd, which is always the most ominous sort. My first thought was that some poor devil had had an accident, and I hurried over to see if anyone had thought to send for a doctor.
They’d uncovered a box. So far, they’d cleared the dirt away from the lid. It was about three feet by one, and it shone like gold.
It took me about half a second to think; it’s been buried in the ground God knows how long, and it shines like gold. Therefore—
I found that I’d shoved my way to the front of the crowd. Naturally, people made way for the high priest. Some workman looked up at me, as if asking what he should do. “Don’t just stand there,” I yelled at him. “Get it out.”
Once they’d scrabbled away the rest of the dirt, they tried to lift it. Too heavy. I jumped down into the trench, cassock-tails flying. The bloody thing was solid gold. At times like this, there’s a part of my brain that works independently, regardless of context or propriety. It reported; a thousand stamina, and that’s just the box. “Open it,” I said.
There was no lock, and gold hinges don’t seiieze. They swung open the lid.
My first reaction, I’m sorry to have to tell you, was, shit, it’s just old parchment. Then the better part of me thought to inquire as to what sort of document you’d bother burying in an airtight solid gold box. I shoved someone out of the way. They were rolled up, in scrolls. I grabbed one and pulled down. Miraculously, it didn’t tear, disintegrate, come apart in my hands. It was just writing, no pictures, in a script I didn’t recognise.
But I knew a man who knew about this sort of thing. “Where’s Accila?” I called out. Blank faces. Then I remembered. “Father Chrysostomus,” I translated. “Go and find him, now.”
The scrolls—there were nine of them—were in Old Middle Therian, a language that hasn’t been spoken for a thousand years. Only about six people in the world can read it. Fortuitously, Accila was one of them. “It’s some sort of religious text,” he told us, as we gathered in secret session in some storage hut, with the door wedged shut with a pickaxe handle. “I’m a bit rusty, so you’ll have to—”
He went quiet. Not like him at all. We indulged him for about ten seconds, and then Razo said, “Well?”
Accila looked up. He had the strangest look on his face.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said.
Later, when Accila had transcribed and translated all nine scrolls, and we’d all sat down, with the new texts on one hand and the Gospel we’d concocted on the other, we tried to convince ourselves that there were differences, significant ones; some key words were ambiguous, there was a sprinkling of hapax legomena which could mean anything, translation is at best an imprecise science. We were kidding ourselves. To all intents and purposes, the scrolls we’d found in the box and the gospel we’d made up out of our heads were the same.
I had another dream. It wasn’t on the same sumptuous, no-expense-spared scale as the previous one, so maybe my dream budget had all been spent. All it was, I was looking in a mirror and the face I saw there wasn’t mine.
“This is all wrong,” I said.
“Why do you say that?” he said.
“It’s wrong.” He just looked at me. “It’s wrong because you’re not real. I made you up. You aren’t even my imaginary friend, it was deliberate. You’re a forgery.”
He smiled beautifully. “You made me up.”
“Yes. For money. To defraud poor, weak-minded people out of money they couldn’t afford.”
“For money.” He shrugged. “Well, you need to live. And it’s not like you’re indulging in extravagant luxuries. Apart from the vestments, which are badges of office, like a uniform, you dress in simple clothes, you mostly eat bread and cheese, you’ve practically stopped drinking wine, you sleep on a mattress in an attic—”
“Only because I’m too busy.”
“Too busy. Doing my work. You are my good and faithful servant.”
I wanted to hit him. “Cheating people. Deceiving them. And I did make you up. You’re a lie.”
“You made me up.”
“Will you stop repeating everything I say?”
“You made me up,” he said firmly. “Let’s just think about that. You were trying to find a way to feed yourself and your friends when you were poor and hungry, and an idea came into your head.” He smiled. “Where do you think that idea came from?”
“I made you up.” I couldn’t seem to get him to understand. “I invented you as part of a criminal conspiracy.”
He shrugged again. “You gave me life,” he said. “Like Maxentius.”
Good reference. Maxentius was the son of a prostitute, engendered as part of a routine commercial transaction. His military coup overthrew the cruellest tyrant in history, and his welfare reforms led to his reign becoming known as the Golden Age. “If I gave you life, you can’t be God,” I pointed out. “And if you’re not God, you can’t exist in this form. Therefore you don’t exist.”
He shook his head. “If I’m God I can do anything,” he said, “and that includes being born of a fallible human. Besides, it’s not so hard to believe in, is it, that I should choose to come into existence through you. Seeds grow best when they’re planted in rotting shit. No offence,” he added gravely.
“None capable of being taken,” I replied. “But in that case, why me? Why not be made up by a holy man, a true holy man? There’s plenty of those.”
“A holy man wouldn’t stoop to fraud and deceit. Therefore he wouldn’t have made me up, therefore I could never have been made.”
“Ah,” I said, “you’ve contradicted yourself. A moment ago, you could do anything.”
He nodded. “Once I exist, of course I can. Before I existed, I was nothing.”
“Then you can’t be God,” I cried in triumph. “God must be eternal, in existence for ever since the beginning.”
“Must I?” He gave me a mock frown. “I’m God, there’s no must about it. I can do anything I like.”
“Fine,” I said. “Then who created the world?”
“I did. Retrospectively.”
“You can’t—”
“Of course I can. I can do anything. Once I exist.”
“I’d like to wake up now, please.”
“In a moment,” he said. “I’m going to teach you some doctrine. Are you listening carefully?”
“Go on,” I said.
He looked me straight in the eye. “There is no right or wrong,” he said, “there is only good and bad. Starvation is bad; feeding the hungry is good. But it’s not right to feed the hungry, because you might easily do so through vanity, which is bad, or because you want to build up a political power-base in order to launch a coup, which is bad, unless you’re Maxentius, in which case it’s good. Killing someone is wrong, unless you’re Maxentius killing the Emperor Phocas, in which case it’s entirely right. Do you understand?”
“Not really.”
“And you’re supposed to be so bright,” he said. “Very well,” he said. “Let’s try again. Motive is irrelevant. The best things have been done for the worst motives, the worst things have been done for the best motives. Lusaeus the Slaughterer started the Fifth Social War because his people were oppressed by the Empire and he wanted the best for them. But Maxentius started a civil war because his people were oppressed and he wanted the best for them. The Fifth S
ocial War was bad, because two million people died needlessly and countless more were left in hunger and misery. Maxentius’ war was good, because it freed the people and led to the Golden Age. Hunger is bad, freedom is good. Motive is irrelevant.”
“There’s nothing good about greed for money.”
“Tell that to Peregrinus, who discovered the north-east passage to Ceugra, bringing cheap food and full employment to Mezentia. On the other hand, consider Artabazus, who sailed from Perimadeia to the Anoge with a quarter million sacks of grain to feed the famine victims, and carried the plague with him. Outcomes are good or bad. Motive is irrelevant. This,” he added, “is the word of the Lord. It’s not open to debate.”
“You can’t just say—”
“Of course I can. Now wake up and believe.”
The Temple was a great success. We had full congregations every day, tremendous enthusiasm, full offertory-boxes. Three weeks after we held our first Intercessionary Mass for Peace, the Herulians surrendered unconditionally and the war was finally over. We held a special service of thanksgiving; we couldn’t fit them all in the Temple, so we borrowed the Artillery Fields. Almost all the Cabinet attended, along with most of the City nobility and everyone who was anyone from society, commerce and the arts. The take for that service alone was 16,000 stamina.
Winning the war was the last straw, as far as I was concerned. I had to do something. But I didn’t want to rush into it blindly and screw everything up; so I suggested to the others, quite casually at the end of a routine meeting, that it’d save on accountancy time and paperwork if the Church gave me a discretionary budget, so I could pay for everyday maintenance and procurements without having to bother anyone else. Fine, they said, how much do you need? Not quite sure yet, I said; just give me a drawing facility on Number Two account for now, and when I know how it pans out, we can establish a figure.
With unlimited access to Church funds—a licence to embezzle, if you prefer to look at it in those terms—I really got going. I funnelled out money into fake corporations, lost fortunes in imaginary fires and shipwrecks, filtered vast sums through four sets of books, and used it all to feed the war refugees at Blachissa. There were something like a hundred thousand of the poor devils stranded there, fugitives from three major cities burnt down by the enemy during the war, and since their cities no longer existed, they had no governors, therefore there was nobody to petition the government for relief on their behalf, therefore they were nobody’s problem, therefore they were left to starve. I bought grain from the farmers in the Mesoge—when Taraconissa was destroyed they lost their principal market and had no -one to sell to, so they were in pretty dire straits—and employed discharged veterans to cart and distribute the supplies. I made a special effort to ensure that at every stage in the process, I was helping someone who badly needed help. I was so pleased with myself.
There was so much money, of course, that for a long time nobody noticed. It was, though, simply a matter of time. When, sooner or later, my colleagues realised what I was up to, I anticipated harsh words, bitter accusations and a great deal of bad feeling. What I didn’t expect—
“You can’t do this,” I roared.
They looked at me.
“You can’t,” I repeated. “I invented this religion, it was my idea, I created it. I’m the high priest. You can’t excommunicate me.”
“Actually,” Accila said quietly, “we can. It says so in the constitution.”
“What constitution?”
“The one we just made up,” Accila replied. “And submitted to a general synod for ratification, passed unanimously. And it says, the ecumenical council—that’s the four of us—can dismiss the high priest on grounds of heresy or gross moral turpitude. We’re going with heresy as an act of kindness, so we don’t have to go public with the news that you’ve been stealing from the Church. That’s provided you go quietly and don’t make trouble.”
“You can’t adopt a constitution without my agreement.”
“Yes we can,” Accila said. “Retrospectively. Since there is currently no high priest, you having been dismissed, the ecumenical council is us. And we can do anything we like.”
The others just sat there, grim-faced, hiding behind Accila. “I’ll have the lot of you for this,” I shouted. “I’ll expose you. I’ll tell everything. I’m I’ll tell them it’s all a fraud.”
Accila sighed. “Please don’t,” he said. “You’ll just embarrass yourself. After all, nobody’s going to believe you, are they? They’ve seen us curing the sick, they saw the miracle of the reborn sun, they saw us end the war. They’ll just think, here’s a man who lost a power struggle and wants to make trouble. Politics. The people understand about politics. And then,” he added with a sad smile, “we’ll tell them how you defrauded the Church of a quarter of a million stamina. Or we can do it our way. Up to you entirely.”
I was breathing rapidly, and my palms were sweating. “Heresy,” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Razo cleared his throat. “We’ll put out a statement saying that you object to the doctrine of vicarious absolution. The doctrine having been upheld by the ecumenical council, you’re a heretic.”
I blinked. “What,” I demanded, “is the doctrine of—?”
“Vicarious absolution.” Teuta steepled his fingers. “My idea. In exchange for a substantial offering, you can ensure the salvation of someone else’s soul, even if he’s not actually a believer himself. He doesn’t have to know about it, if that’s what you want. For double the money, you can even save someone’s soul against his will. We think it’ll be very popular.”
I tried. I went to the magistrates and swore a complaint, but the chief justice was a believer and threw the case out for lack of evidence. I went to the chief archimandrite of the Fire Temple, who told me that the last thing he wanted to do, in the present circumstances, was pick a fight with a much bigger, richer church. I tried to see the emperor, but the chamberlain wouldn’t even take my money. There are more important things, he said, with a sanctimonious scowl, and sent me away.
I preached in the market-place. The first time, I drew a good crowd. I hadn’t lost my touch. I told them; the Gospel of the Invincible Sun is a fake, written by five poor rich boys to make money. The so-called ancient scrolls dug up in the Temple foundations were fakes, made by a skilled forger with a criminal record for falsifying religious texts. The miracle of the Reborn Sun was no miracle at all; my former colleagues had started with Anaximander, carefully studied the other records, and accurately predicted a natural phenomenon that would have happened anyway. The cure for the mountain fever was just mouldy bread beaten up in garlic juice—a wonderful thing, granted, but no miracle. The other cures could all be explained by the scientifically-documented phenomenon of mass hysteria; it was all there in the Mezentine books, I told them, all we did was read and repeat. The Herulian war was almost over anyway, so we hadn’t ended that. As for the Church, it was nothing more than a mechanism for sucking in unearned wealth, which the five of us had always intended from the start to keep for ourselves.
My second street corner sermon drew about a dozen people, five of whom jeered and threw apples. On the third occasion, I was arrested by the kettlehats for disturbing the peace.
They kept me in for a week, in a dark, tiny cell along with two thieves, a wife-killer and a rapist. I preached to them, expounding the doctrine of right and wrong that I’d been given in my dream. I think the rapist was interested, but on the fourth day the wife-killer, a believer, hit me so hard I passed out, and when I came round, a lot of the evangelical zeal seemed to have faded.
On the seventh day, two kettlehats came and pulled me out of there. I was being transferred, they said, to the ecclesiastical courts. What ecclesiastical courts, I asked.
“They’re new,” Accila explained. He’d come to see me in my cell. “Very new.”
“How new?”
“Actually, we got the whole thing set up in six days. Soon as we
heard you’d been arrested.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“In your honour,” he said grimly. “On account of, there wasn’t really anything in ordinary criminal law we could get you for, apart from disturbing the peace and criminal slander, maybe just possibly incitement to riot. At best, those would get you put away for two years. So, we created an entirely new jurisdiction, just for you. They had to rush an emergency enabling bill through the House; quickest piece of legislation this century, apparently. The emperor signed it yesterday, so it’s now the law. And of course it’s—”
“Let me guess. Retrospective.”
He grinned. “Not much point otherwise.” He sighed, a reasonable man brought to the limits of his patience. “Eps, you bloody fool, why can’t you just drop it and shut your face? You’ve lost, accept it, move on.” He hesitated, then added,; “They’ve authorised me to make you an offer. One million stamina, provided you leave the country and never come back. That’s for old time’s sake, we don’t have to pay you anything. Well? What about it?”
“And if I won’t?”
He looked very sad and grave. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see where you leave us much choice. But for pity’s sake, Eps, you’re a sensible man, there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t sort this out in a reasonable, businesslike fashion. Damn it, we used to be friends.”
I just looked at him. “You’re the ones who had me locked up,” I said. “You threw me out of my own Church. I’m sorry, but I can’t see how it’s my fault.”
He shrugged. “You don’t want money,” he said. “You don’t want a quiet, prosperous life. For crying out loud, Eps, what do you want? A martyr’s crown?”
So they were going to kill me. Oh, I thought. “If the crown fits,” I heard myself say.
“You bloody idiot,” Accila said, and left.
The trial was short and, as I understand, very orderly and efficient. I wasn’t actually there, having been ejected for gross contempt about ten seconds after they put me in the dock. They sent some clerk down to the cells to tell me the verdict. Guilty of blasphemy, twelve counts, fraud and embezzlement, ninety-six counts, other offences, a hundred and four counts. Sentence; : death by fire. I’d pleaded guilty, apparently.
