The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight

by Jonathan Strahan

  Filling the vacancies wasn't a problem. Actually, it was; we were deluged with applicants, ninety-nine per cent of whom we rejected out of hand on the grounds of excessive zeal. The candidates we finally chose were all, in fact, renegade priests from other religions. We wanted men who knew the score and understood the business, and I venture to suggest that we chose well, since of the original ten, eight are still in post and the other two died in harness. As for the part-timers, we went the opposite way and hired the frothing-at-the-mouthest zealots, in the interests of diversity and balance.

  The next phase began with our first purpose-built temple. You'll know it as the Silent Rock, on the corner of Old Guard and Tanneries; we just called it The Temple, fondly believing that it'd be the only one. Note the location. We could have gone further into New Town, in pursuit of the carriage trade, but we decided the frontier between upmarket and the slums was a strategically better choice. Yes, the rich gave more, but there are an awful lot of the poor, and handfuls of trachy soon add up, so we weren't inclined to turn our backs on the devoted unwashed. That was the mistake the Ephraists made, and the Poldarnians. They made it clear they weren't interested in the common people, and where are they now? Nor did we want to go the way of the Blachernicans or the Ranting Friars and get closed down by the government as subversive and antisocial. A middle course, was what we decided on. A universal church, with every man contributing according to his means.

  The explosion in our income since the eclipse meant that we could hire the very best architect. It's an indication of how our luck was running that when we approached Thalles with the commission, he turned round and told us he'd be delighted to do the job for free, as his personal offering to the Invincible Sun. Accila tried to insist on paying him – if you hire them, he said, you can also fire them if needs be, but volunteers can be a real pain to get rid of – but he simply wouldn't hear of it; if we gave him money, he'd simply give it all back in the offertory, so where was the point? You can't argue with that, or at least, we didn't try.

  It was the same story when it came to buying building materials and hiring labour. If it was for the Temple, nobody wanted paying. That didn't stop contributions to the building fund flooding in, although we made no secret of the fact that we were getting all this free stuff. We decided we had to spend some of the Fund or it'd look really bad, so we sent to Perimadeia for gold offertory plate and embroidered vestments. By the time the order was completed and delivered, there was already a small but thriving Church of the Invincible Sun in Perimadeia – what's all this stuff for, the merchants there asked; gosh, that sounds like a good idea, let's worship Him too. The same in Aelia and the Vesani Republic. I'm not making this up. It really was happening that fast. For example; the first we knew about the Church in Scona was when a ship's captain arrived with three hundred stamina in a goatskin bag; offerings from the faithful to the Mother Church. Honestly, we didn't know what to say.

  The night before we broke ground on the Temple foundations, I had a dream. Well, of course you did, I hear you say, what sort of a high priest would you be if you didn't? Indeed; but I did actually have a dream, and unlike most of my dreams, which I forget within a few heartbeats of opening my eyes, this one's stayed with me ever since.

  I was inside the Temple – I recognised it, even though I'd only seen it as straight lines on a sheet of parchment – and it was beautiful. The walls were a kind of dark red marble, and the ceiling was a vast golden mosaic of the ascent of the Invincible Sun, surrounded on all sides by saints, angels, apostles and other glorious beings – I recognised them all, though I couldn't remember all their names. In the chancel a choir was singing (and I remember thinking; that's a point, we ought to get some religious music written, it goes down really well) and the air smelt wonderful; roses and lavender and some deep, rich scent I couldn't identify. I was on my knees, wearing vestments of plain black wool, and I think my feet were bare.

  I remember looking up and meeting the eye of the beautiful golden Sun in the mosaic. I felt no hesitation, no shame; and then he spoke to me;

  "Peace be with you," I think he said. "You are my one true prophet. Go out and do my work."

  And then (in the dream) I remembered; it was all fake, nonsense, garbage; I'd invented the whole thing; it was all lies and deceit, to get money.

  "Blessed are those who believe," he said, "for in my name they will heal the sick and feed the hungry. Blessed are those who show others the golden path to faith, for they shall see me face to face."

  At which point Anaximander, painted over the door to one of the side chapels, muttered, "Thereafter, I became blind," but the Sun didn't seem to have heard him. He raised his right hand in benediction, and said, "Blessed are those who build, for they shall receive the great gift. Blessed are those who make new things, for everything they make shall come from me. Blessed are those who write, for their words shall be my words. Blessed are those who pray, for I shall hear them."

  While he was saying all that, I remember, I was trying to shout – no, no, I'm sorry, it's all pretend – but for some reason my mouth wouldn't open. And then he said, "Blessed are those who lie, for they shall speak the truth." And then I woke up.

  * * *

  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 seize. 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-expensespared 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 Social 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 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 –?"