“See, bounty from the waves, harvest from the rolling ocean, my people prepare to break their fast." The prophet swept one

fatwobbling arm

about to indicate the people tending the fires and cauldrons. The smell of rotting food filled the air.

“They eat what others leave, what others will not touch, because they want to be closer to the fabric of Fate. They eat the

bark from the trees

and the grass from the ground and the moss from the rocks; they eat the sand and the leaves and the roots

and the earth; they eat the shells

and the entrails of sea-animals and the carrion of the land and the ocean; they eat their

bodily products and share mine. I am the fount. I am the

well-spring, the taste on their tongues.

“You, bubble of froth on the ocean of life, are a sign. Crop of the ocean, you will come to see, before the time of your unmaking,

that you are

all you have eaten, and that food is merely undigested excrement. This I have seen; this you will see."

One of the attendant women came back from the sea with Fwi-Song’s freshly cleaned sets of teeth. He took them from her and

put them in

the rags somewhere behind him. “All shall fall but we, all go to their deaths, their unmakings. We alone will

be made in our unmaking, brought

into the glory of our ultimate consummation."

The prophet sat smiling at Horza, while around him—as the long afternoon’s shadows drew out across the sands—the emaciated,

ill-

looking people sat down to their foul meals. Horza watched them try to eat. Some did, encouraged by Mr. First, but most

could keep nothing

down. They gasped for breath and gulped at the liquids, but often as not they vomited up what they had

just forced down. Fwi-Song looked on

them sadly, shaking his head.

“You see, even my closest children are not ready yet. We must pray and entreat that they are ready when the time comes, as

it must, in a

few days’ time. We must hope that their bodies’ lack of grasp, of sympathy with all things, will not make them

despised in the eyes and mouth of

God."

You fat bastard. You’re within range, if you only knew. I could blind you from here; spit in your little eyes and maybe

…

But, Horza thought, maybe not. The giant’s eyes were set so deep within the flabby skin of his brows and cheeks that even

the venomous

spittle with which Horza could have hit the golden monster might not find its way to the membranes of the eye.

But it was all Horza could find to

give him solace in his situation. He could spit at the prophet, and that was it. Perhaps

there would come a point when it might make some

difference, but to do it now would be stupid. A blind, enraged Fwi-Song struck

Horza as something to try to avoid even more than a sighted,

tittering one.

Fwi-Song talked on to Horza, never questioning, never really stopping, repeating himself more and more often. He told him

about his

revelations and his past life; as a circus freak, then as a palace pet for some alien satrap on a Megaship, then

as a convert to a fashionable

religion on another Megaship, his revelation occurring there, when he persuaded a few converts

to join him on an island to await the End of All

Things. More followers had arrived when the Culture announced what the fate

of the Vavatch Orbital was going to be. Horza was only half

listening, his mind racing as he tried to think of a way out.

“… We await the end of all things, the last day. We prepare ourselves for our final consummation by mixing the fruits of earth

and sea and

death with our fragile bodies of flesh and blood and bone. You are our sign, our aperitif, our scent. You must

feel honored."

“Mighty Prophet," Horza said, swallowing hard and doing his best to keep his voice calm. Fwi-Song stopped talking, the eyes

narrowing still

further and a frown forming. Horza went on, “I am indeed your sign. I bring you myself; I am the follower…

the disciple numbered Last. I come to

rid you of the machine from the Vacuum." Horza looked over at the Culture shuttle, sitting

with its rear doors open at the far end of the beach. “I

know how to remove this source of temptation. Let me prove to you

my devotion by performing this small service for your great and majestic

self. Then you will know I am your last and most

faithful servant: the one numbered Last, the one come before the unmaking, to… to steel your

followers for the test to come

and remove the Anathematics’ temptation device. I have mixed with the stars and the air and ocean, and I bring

you this message,

this deliverance." Horza stopped there, his throat and lips dry, his eyes running as the highly spiced stench of the Eaters’

food drifted on a light breeze around him. Fwi-Song sat quite still on his litter, looking into Horza’s face with his slit-eyes

narrowed and his

bulbous brows creased.

“Mr. First!" Fwi-Song said, turning to where the pale-skinned man in the tunic was massaging one of the Eaters’ bellies while

the

unfortunate follower lay moaning on the ground. Mr. First rose and came over to the giant prophet, who nodded at Horza

and spoke in the

language the Changer couldn’t understand. Mr. First bowed slightly, then went behind Horza, taking something

from under his tunic as he went

out of the Changer’s field of view. Horza’s heart thudded. He looked desperately back at Fwi-Song.

What had the prophet said. What was Mr.

First going to do. Hands appeared over Horza’s head, gripping something. The Changer

closed his eyes.

A rag was tied tightly over his mouth. It smelled of the foul food. His head was forced back against the stake. Then Mr. First

went back to the

prone, groaning Eater. Horza stared at Fwi-Song, who said:

“There. Now, as I was saying…"

Horza didn’t listen. The fat prophet’s cruel faith was little different from a million others; only the degree of its barbarity

made it unusual in

these supposedly civilized times. Another side effect of the war, maybe; blame the Culture. Fwi-Song talked,

but there was no point in listening.

Horza recalled that the Culture’s attitude to somebody who believed in an omnipotent God was to pity them, and to take no

more notice of

the substance of their faith than one would take of the ramblings of somebody claiming to be Emperor of the

Universe. The nature of the belief

wasn’t totally irrelevant—along with the person’s background and upbringing, it might tell

you something about what had gone wrong with them

—but you didn’t take their views

seriously.

That was the way Horza felt about Fwi-Song. He had to treat him as the maniac he obviously was. The fact that his insanity

was dressed in

religious trappings meant nothing.

No doubt the Culture would disagree, claiming that there was ample common ground between insanity and religious belief, but

then what

else could you expect from the Culture. The Idirans knew better, and Horza, while not agreeing with everything the

Idirans stood for, respected

their beliefs. Their whole way of life, almost their every thought, was illuminated, guided and

governed by their single religion/philosophy: a

belief in order, place and a kind of holy rationality.

They believed in order because they had seen so much of its opposite, first in their own planetary background, taking part

in the

extraordinarilyfierce evolutionary contest on Idir, and then—when they finally entered into the society of their local

stellar cluster—around them,

between and among other species. They had suffered because of that lack of order; they had died

by the millions in stupid, greed-inspired

wars in which they became involved through no fault of their own. They had been

naïve and innocent, over-dependent on others thinking in the

same calm, rational way they always did.

They believed in the destiny of

place.

Certain individuals would always belong in certain places—the high ground, the fertile lands, the

temperate isles—whether

they had been born there or not; and the same applied to tribes, clans and races (and even to species; most of the

ancient

holy texts had proved sufficiently flexible and vague to cope with the discovery that the Idirans were not alone in the universe.

The texts

which had claimed otherwise were promptly ditched, and their authors were first ritually cursed and then thoroughly

forgotten). At its most

mundane, the belief could be expressed as the certainty that there was a place for everything, and

everything ought to be in its place. Once

everything was in its place, God would be happy with the universe, and eternal peace

and joy would replace the current chaos.

The Idirans saw themselves as agents in this great reordering. They were the chosen—at first allowed the peace to understand

what God

desired, and then goaded into action rather than contemplation by the very forces of disorder they gradually understood

they had to fight. God