Masters had been released after he had promised Tu that he would make no more trouble. Carmody, not finding the youth inside, walked out and called him over the wrist radio. No reply.
Still carrying his black bag, the padre hurried into the woods as fast as his short legs would go. He hummed as he passed beneath the mighty branches, called out to the birds overhead, stopped once to bow gravely to a tall heron-like bird with dark purple mask-markings over its eyes, then staggered off laughing and holding his sides when it replied with a call exactly like a plunger withdrawing from a stopped drain, finally sat down beneath a beech to wipe his streaming face with a handkerchief.
"Lord, Lord, there are more things in this universe . . . surely You must have a sense of humour," he said out loud. "But then, I mustn't identify a purely human viewpoint with You and make the anthropomorphic fallacy."
He paused, said in a lower tone as if not wanting Anyone to hear, "Well, why not? Aren't we, in one sense, the focus of creation, the Creator's image? Surely He too likes to feel a need for relief and finds it in laughter. Perhaps His laughter does not come out as mere meaningless noise but is manifested on a highly economical and informative level. Perhaps He tosses off a new galaxy, instead of having a belly-laugh. Or substitutes a chuckle with a prodding of a species up the Jacob's ladder of evolution towards a more human state.
"Or, old-fashioned as it sounds, indulges in the sheer joy of a miracle to show His children that His is not an absolutely orderly clockwork universe. Miracles are the laughter of God. Hmm, not bad. Now, where did I leave my notebook? I knew it. Back in my cabin. That would have made such a splendid line for an article. Well, no matter. I shall probably recall it, and posterity won't die if I don't. But they'll be the poorer, and . . ."
He fell silent as he heard Masters and Lejeune nearby. Rising, he walked towards them, calling out so they wouldn't think he was eavesdropping.
They were facing each other across a tremendous fringe-topped toadstool. Kate had quit talking, but Pete, his face red as his hair, continued angrily as if the priest did not exist. He gestured wildly with one fist, while the other hung by his side clenching a powersaw handle.
"That's final! We're not going back to Wildenwooly. And don't think I'm afraid of your father, 'cause I'm afraid of nobody. Sure, he won't press charges against us. He can afford to be noble-hearted. The Commonwealth will prosecute us for him. Are you so stupid you don't remember that it's the law that the Board of Health must take into custody anyone who's been put on notice as guilty of unhealthy practices? Your father must have sent word on to Ygdrasil by now. We'll be detained as soon as we put foot on it. And you and I will be sent to an institution. We won't even get to go together to the same place. They never send partners-in-misdoing to the same resort. And how do I know that I won't have lost you then? Those rehabilitation homes do things to people, change their outlooks. You might lose your love for me. Probably that would be fine with them. They'd say you were gaining a healthy attitude in getting rid of me."
Kate raised her large violet eyes to his. "Oh, Pete, that would never ever happen. Don't talk such stuff. Besides, Daddy wouldn't report us. He knows I'd be taken away for a long time, and he couldn't stand that. He won't inform the government; he'll send his own men after us."
"Yeah? What about that telegram to the Gull just before we left?"
"Daddy didn't mention the money. We'd have been held for a juvenile misdemeanour only."
"Sure, and then his thugs would have beaten me up and dropped me off in the Twogee Woods. I suppose you'd like that?"
Tears filled Kate's eyes. "Please, Pete, don't. You know I love you more than anybody else in the world."
"Well, maybe you do, maybe you don't. Anyway, you forget that this priest knows about the money, and his duty is to report us."
"Perhaps I am a priest," said Carmody, "but that doesn't automatically classify me as nonhuman. I wouldn't dream of reporting you. Needlenose though I am, I am not a malicious trouble-maker. I'd like to help you out of your predicament, though just now I must confess to a slight inclination to punch you in the nose for the way you are talking to Kate. However, that is neither here nor there. What is important is that I'm under no compulsion to tell the authorities, even though your act was not told to me in confession.
"But I do believe you should follow Kate's advice and go back to her father and confess all and try to come to an agreement. Perhaps he would consent to your marriage if you were to promise him to wait until you had proved yourself capable of supporting Kate happily. And proved that your love for her is based on more than sexual passion. Consider his feelings. He's as much concerned in this as you. More, for he's known her far longer, loved her a greater time."
"Ah, to hell with him and the whole situation!" shouted Pete. He walked off and seated himself under a tree about twenty yards away. Kate wept softly. Carmody offered her a handkerchief, saying, "A trifle sweaty, perhaps, but sanitary with sanctity." He smiled at his own wit with such self-evident enjoyment, mingled with self-mockery, that she could not help smiling back at him. While she dried her tears, she gave him her free hand to hold.
"You are sweet and patient, Kate, and very much in love with a man who is, I'm afraid, afflicted with a hasty and violent temper. Now, tell me true, is not your father much the same? Wasn't that part of the reason you ran away with Pete, to get away from a too-demanding, jealous, hotheaded father? And haven't you found out since that Pete is so much like your father that you have traded one image for its duplicate?"
"You're very perceptive. But I love Pete."
"Nevertheless, you should go home. Pete, if he really loves you, will follow you and try to come to an honest and open contract with your father. After all, you must admit that your taking the money was not right."
"No," she said, beginning to weep again, "it wasn't. I don't want to be a weakling and put the blame on Pete, for I did agree to take the money, even if it was his suggestion. I did so in a weak moment. And ever since, it's been bothering me. Even when I was in the cabin with him and should have been deliriously happy, that money bothered me."
Masters jumped up and strode towards them, the power-saw swinging in his hand. It was a wicked-looking tool, with a wide thin adjustable blade spreading out like a fan from a narrow motorbox. He held the saw like a pistol, his hand around the butt and one finger on the trigger.
"Take your paws off her," he said.
Kate withdrew her hand from Carmody's grip, but she faced the youth defiantly. "He isn't hurting me. He's giving me real warmth and understanding, trying to help."
"I know these old priests. He's taking advantage of you so he can hug and pinch you and . . ."
"Old?" exploded the padre. "Listen, Masters, I'm only forty . . ."
He laughed. "Almost got me going, didn't you?" He turned to Kate. "If we do get off Abatos, go home to your father. I'll be stationed at Breakneck for a while; you may see me as often as you wish, and I'll do my best to help you. And though I foresee some years of martyrdom for you, placed between two fires like Pete and your father, I think you're made of strong stuff."
His eyes twinkling, he added, "Even if you do look fragile and exceedingly beautiful and very huggable and pinchable."
At the moment a deer trotted into the little glade. Rusty red, flecked with tiny white spots edged in black, her large liquid black eyes unafraid, she danced up to them and held out her nose inquiringly towards Kate. She seemed to know that Kate was the only female there.
"Evidently one of those unconditioned to being killed by the beasts of prey," said Carmody. "Come here, my beauty. I do believe that I brought along some sugar for just such an occasion. What shall I call you? Alice? Everybody is mad at this party, but we've no tea."
The girl gave a soft cry of delight and touched the doe's wet black nose. It licked her hand. Pete snorted with disgust.
"You'll be kissing it next."
"Why not?" She put her mouth on its snout.
His face became even redder. Grimacing, he thrust the blade-edge of the saw against the animal's neck, and pressed the trigger. The doe dropped, taking Kate with it, for she had no warning to remove her arms from around its neck. Blood spurted over the saw and Pete's chest and over her arm. The fan-edge of the tool, emitting supersonic waves capable of eating through granite, had sliced a thin plane through the beast's cells.
Masters stared, white-faced now. "I only touched it. I didn't really mean to pull the trigger. I must have nicked its jugular vein. The blood, the blood . . ."
Carmody's face was also pale, and his voice shook.
"Luckily, the doe won't remain dead. But I hope you keep the sight of this blood in your mind the next time you feel anger. It could just as easily be human, you know."
He quit talking to listen. The forest sounds had ceased, overcome by a rush of silence, like the shadow of a cloud. Then, the striding legs and stone eyes of Father.
His voice roared around them as if they were standing beneath a waterfall.
"Anger and death in the air! I feel them when the beasts of prey are hungry. I came quickly, for I knew that these killers were not mine. And I also came for another reason, Carmody, for I have heard from the bishop of your investigations and of your mistaken conclusions and the decision which you forced upon the captain and the bishop. I came to show you how you have deceived yourself about my powers, to teach you humility towards your superiors.'
Masters gave a choked cry, grabbed Kate's hand with his bloodied hand, and began half-running, half-stumbling, dragging her after him. Carmody, though trembling, stood his ground.
"Shut off your sonics. I know how you create awe and panic in my breast."
"You have your device in that bag. Check it. See if there are any radiations from the trees."
Obediently, the man fumbled at the lock of his case, managed after two tries to get it open. He twisted a dial. His eyes grew wide when it had completed its circuit.
"Convinced? There are no sonics at that level, are there? Now—keep one eye on the oscilloscope but the other on me."
Father scooped from the hole of the nearest tree a great handful of the jelly and plastered it over the bloodied area of the doe's neck. "This liquid meat will close up the wound, which is small to begin with, and will rebuild the devastated cells. The jelly sends out probing waves to the surrounding parts of the wound, identifies their structure and hence the structure of the missing or ruptured cells, and begins to fill in. But not unless I direct the procedure. And I can, if necessary, do without the jelly. I do not need it, for my power is good because it comes from God. You should spend ten thousand years with no one to talk to but God. Then you would see that it is impossible for me to do anything but good, that I see to the mystical heart of things, feel its pulse as nearer than that of my body."
He had placed his hand over the glazed eyes. When he withdrew it, the eyes were a liquid shining black again, and the doe's flanks rose and fell. Presently it got on its hoofs, thrust a nose towards Father, was repelled by a raised hand, wheeled, and bounded off.
"Perhaps you would like to call for another Question," roared Father. "I understand that new evidence permits it Had I known that you were filled with such a monkey-like curiosity—and had reasoning powers on a monkey's level—I should have shown you exactly what I am capable of."
The giant strode away. Carmody stared after him. Shaken, he said to himself, "Wrong? Wrong? Have I been lacking in humility, too contemptuous of His Excellency's perceptiveness because he lacked my experience . . . I thought. Have I read too much into his illness, mistaken its foundations?"
He took a deep breath. "Well, if I'm wrong, I will confess it. Publicly, too. But how small this makes me. A pygmy scurrying around the feet of giants, tripping them up in an effort to prove myself larger than they."
He began walking. Absently, he reached up to a branch from which hung large apple-like fruit.
"Hmm. Delicious. This world is an easy one to live in. One need not starve nor fear death. One may grow fat and lazy, be at ease in Zion, enjoy the ecstasy of re-creation. That is what you have wanted with one part of your soul, haven't you? God knows you are fat enough, and if you give others the impression of bursting with energy, you often do so with a great effort. You have to ignore your tiredness, appear bristling with eagerness for work. And your parishioners, yes, and your superiors, too, who should know better, take your labour for granted and never pause to wonder if you, too, are tired or discouraged or doubtful. Here there would be no such thing."
Half-eaten, the apple was discarded for red-brown berries from a bush. Frowning, muttering, he ate them, his eyes always on the retreating shoulders and golden-red roach of Father.
"Yet . . . ?"
After a while, he laughed softly. "It is indeed a paradox, John I. Carmody, that you should be considering again the temptation after having talked Tu and André out of it. And it would be an everlasting lesson—one that you are not, I hope, too unintelligent to profit from—if you talked yourself into changing your mind. Perhaps you have needed this because you have not considered how strong was the bishop's temptation, because you felt a measure—oh, only a tinge, but nevertheless a tinge—of contempt for him because he fell so easily and you resisted so easily.
"Hah, you thought you were so strong, you had so many years of experience packed beneath your belt! It was grease and wind that swelled you out, Carmody. You were pregnant with ignorance and pride. And now you must give birth to humiliation. No, humility, for there is a difference between the two, depending on one's attitude. God give you insight for the latter.
"And admit it, Carmody, admit it. Even in the midst of the shock at seeing the deer killed, you felt a joy because you had an excuse to resurrect the animal and to feel again that ecstasy which you know should be forbidden because it is a drug and does take your mind from the pressing business of your calling. And though you told yourself you weren't going to do it, your voice was feeble, lacking the authority of conviction.
"On the other hand, doesn't God feel ecstasy when He creates, being The Artist? Isn't that part of creating? Shouldn't we feel it, too? But if we do, doesn't that make us think of ourselves as godlike? Still, Father says that he knows from whence he derives his powers. And if he acts aloof, noli me tangere, he could be excused by reason of ten thousand years of solitude. God knows, some of the saints were eccentric enough to have been martyred by the very Church that later canonized them.
"But it's a drug, this resurrection business. If it is, you are correct, the bishop is wrong. Still, alcohol, food, the reading of books, and many other things may become drugs. The craving for them can be controlled, they may be used temperately. Why not the resurrection, once one has got over the first flush of intoxication? Why not, indeed?"
He threw away the berries and tore off a fruit that looked like a banana with a light brown shell instead of soft peelings.
"Hmm. He keeps an excellent cuisine. Tastes like roast beef with gravy and a soupçon of onions. Loaded with protein, I'll bet. No wonder Father may be so massively, even shockingly, male, so virile-looking, yet a strict vegetarian.
"Ah, you talk too much to yourself. A bad habit you picked up on Dante's Joy and never got rid of, even after that night when you were converted. That was a terrible time, Carmody, and only by the grace . . . Well, why don't you shut up, Carmody?"
Suddenly, he dropped behind a bush. Father had come to a large hill which rose from the forest and was bare of trees except for a single giant crowning it. The huge O at the base of its trunk showed its nature, but where the others of its kind were brown-trunked and light-green-leaved, this had a shiny white bark and foliage of so dark a green that it looked black. Around its monstrous white roots, which swelled above the ground, was a crowd of animals. Lionesses, leopardesses, bitch wolves, struthiursines, a huge black cow, a rhino, a scarlet-faced gorilla, a cow-elephant, a moa-like bird capable of gutting an elephant with its beak, a man-sized crested green lizard, and many others. All massed together, moving restlessly but ignoring each other, silent.
When they saw Father, they gave a concerted, muted roar, a belly-deep rumble. Moving aside for him, they formed an aisle through which he walked.
Carmody gasped. What he had mistaken for the exposed roots of the tree were piles of bones, a tumulus of skeletons.
Father halted before them, turned, addressed the beasts in a chanting rhythm in an unknown tongue, gestured, describing large and small wheels that interwove. Then he stooped and began picking up the skulls one by one, kissing them on their grinning teeth, replacing them tenderly. All this while the beasts crouched silently and motionless, as if they understood what he was saying and doing. Perhaps, in a way, they did, for through them, like wind rippling fur, ran a current of anticipation.
The padre, straining his eyes, muttered, "Humanoid skulls. His size too. Did he come here with them, and they died? Or did he murder them? If so, why the ceremony of loving, the caresses?"
Father put down the last grisly article, lifted his hands upwards and out in a sign that took in the skies, then brought them in so they touched his shoulders.
"He's come from the heavens? Or he means he identifies himself with the sky, the whole universe, perhaps? Pantheism? Or what?"
Father shouted so loudly that Carmody almost jumped up from behind the bush and revealed himself. The beasts growled an antiphony. The priest balled his fists and raised his head, glaring fiercely. He seemed to be gripped with anger. He looked like a beast of prey, so much did his snarling face resemble the assembled animals'. They, too, had been seized with fury. The big cats yowled. The pachyderms trumpeted. The cow and bears bellowed. The gorilla beat her chest. The lizard hissed like a steam engine.
Again Father shouted. The spell that held them in restraint was shattered. En masse, the pack hurled itself upon the giant. Without resistance, he went down beneath the heaving sea of hairy backs. Once, a hand was thrust above the screaming melee, making a circular motion as if it were still carrying out the prescribed movement of a ritual. Then it was engulfed in a lioness' mouth, and the spurting stump fell back.
Carmody had been grovelling in the dirt, his fingers hooked into the grass, obviously restraining himself from leaping up to join the slaughter. At the moment he saw Father's hand torn off, he did rise, but his facial expression was different. Fright showed on it, and horror. He ran off into the woods, doubled over so the bush would conceal him from the chance gaze of the animals. Once, he stopped behind a tree, vomited, then raced off again.
Behind him rose the thunder of the blood-crazed killers.