“This, my libation from the seas," Fwi-Song said to Horza, pointing at the young man, who was quivering and moaning, his eyes
rolling
about in their sockets and his lips dribbling, “this is my naughty boy; called Twenty-seventh, since his rebirth.
This was one of our respected,
much loved sons, one of our anointed, one of our fellow morsels, one of our brotherly taste
buds on the great tongue of life." Fwi-Song’s voice
chortled with laughter as he spoke, as though he knew the absurdity of
the part he was playing and couldn’t resist hamming it up. “This splinter
from our tree, this grain from our beach, this reprobate
dared to run toward the seven-times-cursed vehicle of the Vacuum. He spurned the gift
of burden with which we honored him;
he chose to abandon us and flee across the sands when the alien enemy passed over us yesterday. He
did not trust our salving
grace, but turned instead to an instrument of darkness and nothingness, toward the soaking shade of the soulless ones,
the
Anathematics." Fwi-Song looked at the man, still shaking on the post across the fire from Horza. The prophet’s face went stern
with
reproach. “By the workings of Fate the traitor who ran from our side and put his prophet’s life at risk was caught—so
that he might learn his sad
mistake, and make good his terrible crime." Fwi-Song’s arm dropped. The vast head shook.
Mr. First shouted to the people round the fire. They faced the young man called Twenty-seventh and chanted. The ghastly smells
Horza had
sensed earlier came back, making his eyes mist and his nose tingle.
While the people chanted and Fwi-Song watched, Mr. First and two of the women followers dug up small sacks from the sand.
Out of them
they brought some thin lengths of cloth which they proceeded to wrap round their bodies. As Mr. First put his
vestments on, Horza saw a large,
cumbersome-looking projectile pistol, held in a string holster beneath the man’s grubby tunic.
Horza presumed that was the gun fired at the
shuttle the day before, when he and Mipp had overflown the island.
The young man opened his eyes, saw the three people in their cloths and started screaming.
“Hear how the stricken soul cries out for its lesson, pleads for its bounty of regret, its solace of refreshing suffering,"
Fwi-Song smiled,
looking at Horza. “Our child Twenty-seventh knows what awaits him, and while his body, already proved so
weak, breaks before the storm, his
soul cries out, ‘Yes! Yes! Mighty Prophet! Succor me! Make me part of you! Give me your
strength! Come to me!’ Is it not a sweet and uplifting
sound."
Horza looked into the prophet’s eyes and said nothing. The young man went on screaming and trying to tear himself away from
the stump.
Mr. First was crouched before him, on his knees, his head bowed, muttering to himself. The two women dressed in
the dull cloth were preparing
bowls of steaming liquid from the vats and pots around the fire, warming some over the flames.
The smells came to Horza, turning his stomach.
Fwi-Song switched to the other language and spoke to the two women. They looked at Horza, then came up to him with the bowls.
Horza
drew his head away as they shoved the containers under his nose. He wrinkled his face up in disgust at what looked and
smelled like fish
entrails in a sauce of excrement. The women took the awful stuff away; it left a stink in his nose. He tried
breathing through his mouth.
The young man’s mouth had been wedged open with blocks of wood, and his choking screams altered in pitch. While Mr. First
held him, the
women ladled the liquids from the bowls into his mouth. The young man spluttered and wailed, choked and tried
to spit. He moaned, then threw
up.
“Let me show you my armory, my benefaction," Fwi-Song said to Horza, and reached behind his vast body. He brought back a large
bundle
of rags, which he started to unfold. Glittering in the sunlight, metal devices like tiny man-traps were revealed. Fwi-Song
put one finger to his lips
while he surveyed the collection, then picked up one of the small metal contraptions. He put it
into his mouth, fitting both parts over the pins
Horza had seen earlier. “Zhare," Fwi-Song said, raising his mouth in a broad
smile toward the Changer. “What ’oo you shink of zhat." The
artificial teeth sparkled in his mouth; rows of sharp, serrated
points. “Or zhese." Fwi-Song swapped them for another set, full of tiny fangs like
needles, then another, with angled teeth
like hooks with barbs, then another, with holes set in them. “Goo’, eh." He smiled at Horza, leaving the
last pair in. He
turned to Mr. First. “Wha’ you shink, Nishtur Shursht. Ehs. Or…" Fwi-Song took out the set with the holes, put in another
set, like
long, blade-like spades. “Zheze. A ’ink eeg a rar ah nishe. Esh, rert ush zhtart wish eez. Ret’s punish zhoze naughty
tootsiesh."
Twenty-seventh’s voice was becoming hoarse. One of his legs was lifted out in front of him and held by four kneeling men.
Fwi-Song was
lifted and carried on the litter to just in front of the young man; he bared the blade-teeth, then leaned forward
and with a quick, nodding motion,
bit off one of Twenty-seventh’s toes.
Horza looked away.
In the next half-hour or so of leisurely paced eating, the enormous prophet nibbled at various bits of Twenty-seventh’s body,
attacking the
extremities and the few remaining fat deposits with his various sets of teeth. The young man gained fresh breath
with each new site of butchery.
Horza watched and didn’t watch, sometimes trying to think himself into a kind of defiance that would let him work out a way
to get back at
this grotesque distortion of a human being, at other times just wanting the whole awful business to be over
and done with. Fwi-Song left his ex-
disciple’s fingers until last, then used the teeth with the holes in them like wire-strippers.
“’Ery ’asty," he said, wiping his blood-stained face with
one gigantic forearm.
Twenty-seventh was cut down, moaning, covered in streaks of blood, and only semi-conscious. He was gagged with a length of
rag, then
pinned down flat, face up, on the sand, wooden spikes through the palms of his mangled hands and a huge boulder
crushing his feet. He
started screaming weakly again through the gag when he saw the prophet Fwi-Song on his litter being
carried over toward him. Fwi-Song was
lowered almost on top of the moaning form, then he struggled with some cords at the
side of his litter until a small flap under his great bulk
flopped open, over the face of the gagged, blood-spattered human
on the sand beneath. The prophet gave a sign, and he was lowered on top
of the man, quieting the sound of moaning. The prophet
smiled, and settled himself with little movements of his huge body, like a bird nestling
down over its eggs. His vast bulk
obliterating all trace or shape of the human under him, Fwi-Song hummed to himself while the emaciated
crowd looked on, singing
very slowly and quietly, swaying together as they stood. Fwi-Song started to rock backward and forward softly, very
slowly
at first, then faster as sweat appeared in beads on the golden dome of his face. He panted, and made a rough gesture toward
the
crowd; the two women dressed in the lengths of cloth came forward and started to lick at the trickles of blood which had
spilled from the
prophet’s mouth, over the folds of his chins and down the expanse of his chest and breasts like red milk.
Fwi-Song gasped, seemed to sag and
stay still for a moment, and then, with a surprisingly fast and fierce motion, clouted
both the lapping women across the head with his mighty
arms. The women scurried off, rejoining the crowd. Mr. First started
a louder chant, which the others took up.
At last Fwi-Song ordered himself to be lifted again. The litter bearers hauled his massive frame into the air, to reveal the
crushed body of
Twenty-seventh, his moaning silenced forever.
They lifted him out, beheaded the corpse and removed the top of the skull. They ate his brains, and it was only then that
Horza threw up.
“And now we are become each other," Fwi-Song intoned solemnly to the youth’s hollow head, then threw its bloody bowl over
his shoulder
into the fire. The rest of the body was taken down to the sea and thrown in.
“Only ceremony and the love of Fate distinguish us from the beasts, O mark of Fate’s devotion," Fwi-Song warbled to Horza
as the
prophet’s vast body was cleaned and perfumed by the attendant women. Tied to his post, stuck in the ground, his mouth
fouled, Horza breathed
carefully and deliberately, and did not try to reply.
Twenty-seventh’s body floated slowly out to sea. Fwi-Song was toweled down. The skinny humans sat about listlessly, or tended
the awful-
smelling liquid in the bubbling vats. Mr. First and his two women helpers took off their lengths of cloth, leaving
the man in his grimy but whole
tunic and the women in their tattered rags. Fwi-Song had his litter placed on the sand in front
of Horza.