“Then listen to this,” and she keyed her Gem again.
“Now Reverend, you feel Sesha is the answer to your prayers?”
“Positively. She is so innocent of our ways. I’m sure that after Beulah dies she will be easily drawn in to becoming my wife
in the interests of comforting me.”
“And when shall this occur? The woman still appears ill often; has she been lately? We have not been able to add to her
food or drink.”
“But I have, some, an’ she reports further night illness. Perhaps a whole berry instead of one-quarter; place it in her food sometime this next week.”
“Just one may only cause her to quake, Reverend.”
“Yes, and ill a while after. Whilst being tended for that a larger amount shall be introduced an’ the Kingdom of Heaven will welcome my wife to its gates.”
The looks the crowd turned on Allway and his Monitors were angry, a few openly rebellious. Almost every on duty Tower Guard fell behind Nicodemus, who took a rifle from the least experienced shooter and pointed it in Allway’s direction.
“I think I believe,” Rachel stepped a little more forward. “’Tis more fantastic than anything else, even the clothing,”
“Anyone need more proof that I am not from this world?” Sesha knew from the movements of her first group of True Believers were spreading Her Word; all the women who’d cared for her after arriving had closed ranks, bringing husband and family. Other hands went up despite what had been seen thus far and Sesha didn’t blame them; they were faced with something more life-changing than leaving what the world called Civilization to come here. Maybe more so!
“All right, but first would someone get Dinah in the wheeled chair and tilt her back so she’s mostly lying down? The baby won’t survive if it’s born now and standing will bring the labor back.” She watched as the girl’s husband scooped his wife up while a teen boy ran to the Infirmary and hurried back with the chair. They stood on the edge of the crowd so the pregnant woman could still see the ongoing drama.
“Thank you. Now, watch my bracelet – you’ve all seen it change, right? I want to introduce you to someone.” Not really needing to, Sesha touched the pad while she thought come on up, Shni! Say… 5 micro-units tall? And the Realistic figure of her Gem program lifted up and stood, a five-inch tall quite alien Being standing on her bracelet. He put an arm over his belly and bowed, gallant to all. His tail curled around his thigh and Sesha saw he was ‘clothed’ properly.
Sesha expected a riot of fear and prompt accusations of some horribly sinful nature, but instead got silence. A quick glance at Beulah showed a bit of a twitch to her lips, the others were smiling… ah, they’d been preparing the ready-to-rebel for this new development…
Allway’s and the Monitor’s shouts, though, were what was expected and twice she had to burn a bit of clothing before they grouped again and shut up.
“Hello,” The Gem’s Realistic Program spoke finally. “My name is Shni. I used to be a living person like all of you but I died and my mind lives on in Sesha’s machine… we call it a com-pu-ter,” he walked to the edge of her hand resting on her knee and sat, swinging his legs. “I’m a… picture, now, you might call me a golem, from your legends.” He looked in Nicodemus’s direction and smiled. “Thank you for the tales, Nick, of a man built of the soil and brought to life. I’m now a helper to other people doing specific jobs in this advanced civilization I’m from a world called Venvenagium.” Benjamin came in front of Sesha, his fear from earlier gone.
“Prithee to touch yon man?” he asked in correct vernacular.
“Yes, you may try,” Sesha glanced down and smiled. She watched as his finger reached up to touch – and went right through.
“Wha -?” he gasped, and Gem laughed.
“I’m made out of light,” reaching up, he acted as if touching the boy’s still-extended hand. “Like this you can’t touch me or hurt me any. But I can’t hurt you any, either. I can become solid, if you want,” when the boy nodded his colors brightened. “Touch me now,”
“Ezra! Must come feel this! Patrick, Jack,” and the boys swarmed, fingers stroked Shni’s ruff until Darren moved out further.
“Enough,” he called out. “Sesha, ware!”
All the boys but Ben scattered as Sesha rose. Shni went back to hologram as she pointed the flash tube at the Monitors again. They subsided.
“Sesh,” Shni said and she glanced down. “Ben’s got a grip on the pad. Can I give a quick analysis?”
“What be that?” Ben jerked his hand off.
“I can tell you some things about yourself without you saying a word.” Shni walked to the right point and tapped his foot, “put your finger here again,” Cautious yet eager, Benjamin laid his finger on the smooth spot. After a moment, Shni smiled and nodded.
“You are eight years old,” the child’s eyes widened, “you have three loose teeth and an itch that won’t stop on your right butt cheek. You try not to scratch it but it’s hard not to, and your mom puts ointment on it every day.”
He jerked his finger off again, eyes wide as he nodded vehemently.
“Do you all believe now?” Sesha asked quietly, and all the dissidents shouted “Amen!” at the same time, making her shudder with the again realization of the time and brainwashing beat into these people…
“I have a query,” Titus stepped out, arms crossed, face set in anger. “You came into camp an’ we saw you not, an’ you came back with lies so we would help you? You call us bad?”
“Where were the lies? I didn’t know your language when I arrived. I was hurt when I arrived. I had to find out who you were to see if you would help me, so I did. I needed help, desperately before I would die from my wounds and there was only you. I know this – what I first saw, before you found me was terrible. I was in your camp the day you beat Jeremiah and Anna, and 3 after. I saw you men with your plots and desires to keep these people under slavery until you leave on your journey --” she saw movement out of the corner of her eye as the Monitor she hated worst was trying to sneak up on her to grab her. “Tell Monitor Hosea if he moves again he’ll lose a leg.”
“Thou shalt not speak any more lies,” the Reverend snarled, the Monitor moved, and Sesha spun, lifting the flash tube. She thumbed a tiny orange switch almost all the way over and pushed the trigger button. This time a finger-thick jet of orange/blue light shot out and suddenly the man was on the ground screaming as his leg was cut off by the concentrated flame. Crude, excruciatingly painful – but effective. There was no blood, for the flame cauterized every vein and artery both on his stump and on the piece of leg that thudded onto the ground. Three other Monitors rushed to his rescue and drug him back to their area.
The crowd screamed in horror, lunging back, then fell completely silent.
Sesha spoke again. “I’ll have you know that now the veins will open and he’ll bleed to death,” she pursed her lips and shook her head. “Now, then – “ she put the tube against her hip and turned back towards the Reverend. “You, if you live, will have many crimes to answer for, including that of murder.”
“Of whom?” he asked with a gentle smile on his face. “Thou are the sinner who verily jus’ killed Hosea,” the panic in his breast was horrible, but if he were to salvage any of this situation, he must show no fear. Nay, he must show that this… beast… was the evil one here.
“Hosea is still alive; if he’d been left alone the stump would heal just fine and he’d get around on crutches. But your men moved him before the wound could clot; see the blood over with them? I didn’t kill him, I took his leg off. And as for actual murder with intent, I’m speaking about your mother and father.” To which his face turned pale and he sat down hard on the other end of the whipping platform. “The front cover of your so-called Holy Word hidden in the sanctuary is made of the skin of female breasts and the back cover is the skin of a man’s penis.”
The crowd fell back another step upon hearing that, gasps rising
.
“Approve thyself, wench. There cans’t be any way of knowing that. My beloved congregation,” turning to the people he’d fooled into following him here out of the reach of any other laws or reasons did his best to appeal to that part of their minds, “Is most afeared that sweet Sesha’s mind hath become dribbling an’ deadly-handed for the brush committed on her body. Most likely the blow done to her head hath caused her to be horn-mad; this portance doth bring the truth to our eyes. Prithee, my pack, give assistance to keep the lakin, but gently, that we may make orisons over her an’ give love an’ care till she doth recure or we sing threne o’er her body. ‘Come now, an’ let us reason together, saith the Lord,’ ” it had worked before and Allway had no doubt it would work again. He launched into preaching mode, using the soft voice of heat broken pleading that usually drew the hardest of hearts to understanding his side.
“How our world is, oh my Beloved People! Wist not that there be no such things as the lass shows? We have heard her, as the Scripture sayet, ‘Behold, I waited for your words; I gave ear to your reasons, whilst ye searched out what to say.’ An’ we have, dear ones, so now we must ask the Foundation of our faith as Job did, ‘Teach us what we shall say unto him; for we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness.’ This is what Sweet Sesha has now cast upon us… ‘Hear now my reasoning, and hearken to the pleadings of my lips!’ We know the Intercessor did send us this lovely Lakin for a reason; she be as Jonah who said, ‘I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.’ Lo, she hath come to us from the belly of the whale,”
“Enough,” Sesha said firmly and pulled the tube again and burned a line across the hard packed dirt. “Anyone care to cross it to take me?” she asked. “The proof is easily presentable. Beulah, would you take a few of those you trust and go fetch the tome? It’s in the secret sanctuary you learned about earlier today.” Out of the side of her eyes she saw her friend take another man and woman, and hurry off.
“Didn’t you all ever marvel at how the Preacher suddenly appeared on the steps of the pulpit?” Sesha spread her arms cautiously, not letting on how badly her back hurt now. “Simple camouflage trick – a curtain, dyed carefully to look like the wall with a slit in it. All of you learned that earlier during service when I,” she grinned mischievously, “let it ‘slip.’ He can duck through, stand up fully and you won’t see him until he’s on the second step up to the pulpit. I know, because he took me back there to see his precious book and room. He wants me for wife so badly he’s willing to show his secrets.”
The crowd fell silent now, waiting for the hurrying trio. Very few moved with Sesha holding a strange object that brought out killing fire. It was far worse than the rifles and pistols they bore! Monitor Hosea suddenly started breathing roughly, and before anyone could move, died, a stream of blood bubbling out of his mouth. The crowd fell back yet another step, the Monitors holding him dropped his body and backed up, fanning out.
Beulah and her two companions appeared and ran fast back to the crowd. There the preacher’s wife carefully handed over the book to Sesha, who held it up the same way Allway did.
“I invite someone who is not in the hierarchy of this group to come examine this book. A man and a woman. I’m sure that all of you know the look and feel of this kind of skin.”
Anna, to Sesha’s surprise, and her fiancé stepped forward. She examined the front, then the back and their faces grew grim and sick-looking.
“It is indeed true,” the man said. “It feels and looks like penis skin.”
“The skin on the front has two nipples in the O’s,” Anna acknowledged. “They feel like mine do, only preserved and stitched close together.”
“Let the book go around for others to examine, but only to those who can be trusted,” Beulah instructed. It began its journey to other hands, and the Most Holy Lord Reverend’s face was in anguish. He reached out a moment, then yanked his hand back.
“The world where I come from is much more advanced than yours, you’ve all seen proof of that,” Sesha addressed the crowd even though she kept her eyes on the Most Holy Lord Reverend and his Monitors just in case someone else tried to attack her again. “they can tell who your parents are with a bit of skin, even if you don’t know who the skin came from. You could wipe some saliva off the inside of the cheeks of two other people and take it to the doctors who could tell you if they are your parents or not without you telling. I have this technology on the big ship. When I can get to it, I could tell you if the man and woman whose skin is on this are Allway’s parents. As for other murder charges, how many of your people have died from the beatings? I found two men and a woman several miles away in a ravine; when I described them to Beulah, she knew who they were.”
“T’was Jason, Frederick and Petunia, remember them?” Florence spoke up. “Frederick and Petunia were affianced, Jason lost his finger when a Monitor struck it with a blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil as punishment. After they vanished we all did help in search efforts but was storming and was called off. Monitors said the waves must have swept them away, as the three were fishing off the rocks a mile down the coast. Was just more lies.”
Sesha swung towards the crowd briefly, catching the eyes of a few of them before she turned back. “All who were beaten and died can be added to the list. I know many of you believed when you decided to go with him that this man is – was – led by your god, but would your god want a man who rapes women to be his representative?”
“What do you mean, rape?” Titus, the Second most-trusted Monitor sneered.
“You don’t know what rape is?”
“Oh, we know,” the man’s tone was denigrating. “We’re not sure you do, being from so very far away… could you mean the plant in the mustard family? Or perchance the refuse of grapes when making wine?” Titus’s laugh was the type of loving the cruelty.
“No,” snarled Monitor Thaddeus, “she means plunder or pillaging. She must believe something was taken from her! Who has he raped? Can you prove this statement? The Holy Word says “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled,” which means that a man may lay with his wife. That’s not rape.”
“I’m not Allway’s wife or wife-to-be and he, as you put it, ‘laid’ with me when I wasn’t able to tell him no, for the injuries I’d suffered.” At that, the crowd fell silent again. “After the Leech and her Nourish’s first helped me enough, I began to awaken, but not much. I do remember Allway coming in the room, he insisted on examining me alone and forced Beulah to leave. It was then he raped me. I was unable to tell him no, or fight back for my injuries. He prayed loud and long, told me I would be like David? And some woman he laid with. If Allway was drawing similarities like he’s done with him and your Biblical character named Abram, then this David slept with someone he wasn’t married to?”
“T’would be King David, in the Old Testament. He saw a woman in her bath, found out who she was and lay with her,” Jeremiah was glad to answer. “Bathsheba became with child an’ told David, so he sent her husband Uriah to the war when the man, after reporting of the battle, would not lay with his wife. Uriah was placed at the fore and was killed. Then David took Bathsheba for wife and she had a son.”
“So I am to be modeled after another, then… are these stories linked in any way, this Abram with a wife who couldn’t have children taking someone else and a King who slept with another man’s wife?”
Jeremiah answered again quickly, louder than the others. He wanted the pleasure of bringing Allway down further.
“The stories be not together an’ there be more to it. With the King, God struck the child with an illness an’ he died. David knew t’was God’s judgment against his sin. After he lay with his wife an’ she bare another son who became King after, one of the wisest in the Book. As to Abram, when the concubine,”
“Eh?” this was real,
“Unmarried woman given to the man for an heir… she did hav
e a son. Sarai became jealous an’ had the woman an’ child abandoned with no food nor water in the desert to die. Then Sarai did demand of God and He let her have a son at an advanced age. But God was merciful to Hagar and they were saved. Now those people are the enemy of Abram’s seed an’ hath been warring since then. Dids’t forget thy Scriptures, Reverend?” now he was snide, harsh.
“Peter has been poisoning me with nightshade, slowly, e’en b’fore Sesha did arrive…” Beulah spoke up, her voice trembling. “First one of the young women here was to be his second wife until she did arrive an’ grew lustful, seeing Sesha. I know he did lay with the lass, for after entering I did wash her clean in hopes of preventing childing. The seed was warm; who wast there in that time save my husband? For he would adopt the child an’ she had proven fertile, if not, would try again after I had passed.”
“Peter Allway has taken… raped… me as well.” Another woman stepped out of the crowd. “On my wedding eve… he came to “pray” with me. He said God told him that his must be the first seed in me so I would be blessed. I didn’t want him too but what could I do? His Monitors were right there and they tied my limbs and blindfolded me. They watched as the Reverend covered my mouth with his hand and took me against my will.”
“Me too, when it was my conception time,” another woman stepped forward. “And I don’t know if our daughter is his or my husband’s.”
“And me,” a third woman came forward. That started a small rush and by the time it was done, the majority of women in the city stood in a group with Beulah.
“All of you want to follow a man who twist and break the words of the god you believe in?” Sesha was angry. “Women are not brute beasts to be used and discarded. We are not for sexual use only. Neither do men rule just because they have a penis. Neither do you follow your religious beliefs based on the few verses these men pick out. Where’s the rest of this book? Isn’t there anyone among you who’s read the whole thing?” She paused and Ezra brought her a mug of water. As she drank it she heard conversation around her circulating more questions, more doubts.
Weathering Storms Page 40
