Rimio di Vassur was wondering what the significance was of the sizes of the chamber where he was waiting for the Abbot. He had noticed even from the orbit, the Fortress’ huge walls, appearing as an irregular outline on the Pannonian Field, and he had expected to have been welcomed in a huge chamber, enlightened through the stained-glass windows, with walls covered by frescoes and thousands of candles with a balmy fume rising like a pillar to the gothic arches. He was surprised at that moment. Instead of such a huge chamber, he was staying in a room a little bigger than the dining hall of the imperial ship that had brought him to Earth, with austere furniture and greyish walls, smoked on the corners. Rimio was a warrior with too much experience to deny that he had made, from the beginning, the mistake about which Kasser had warned him. "Don't you try to imagine the Abbey as a monastery like those from the history of the Old Terra. Those people hate the Christians, although they say they guided themselves by Saint Augustine's doctrines".

He had landed on a kind of square. He believed that it was the centre of the Abbey, and he had been welcomed by a delegation of long bearded monks with braided hair, dressed in short frocks and wearing sandals. Their medieval look had been shaded away by the modern arms they showed off from their hips. Rimio had smiled, looking at how they pointed at him, something like the halberds, having a thought of admiration for the one who had invented the monks' uniform. This meant to give them a monastic aspect but also to show everyone that the real power of the Abbey had come from advanced technology. Rimio knew he could have killed them. He felt it consistently, in the same way he was aware of the roughness of the rocks under his feet. He had been waiting for more than half an hour, enough time for a trained man, like Vassur, to realize that his moves were studied through devices hidden inside the walls. A huge and rusty metallic circle, which hung on the ceiling, was also used as a candlestick and, probably, as camouflage for the discreet mechanical eyes which were watching every one of his moves. Vassur smiled subtly and turned his chin imperceptibly over to the door.

He was used to waiting. Also, he was convinced that it was the thing he knew to do best, that it was the supreme lesson he had learned during the three years he had travelled anonymously on the orbit around a world, which the imperial administration called Z. As he was patient, first, his eyes could have seen where no one had ever reached, and than, his mind discerned the real mysteries of that strange world, things that neither Kasser nor Bella VII suspected. Even Vassur’s most hidden ambitions sprang from his belief that waiting is never useless. “Be your own prey! Think like it!” a master in tactics taught him long time ago. But Vassur had never succeeded to think like a victim. He had preferred to change into a plunderer who controlled the mind of his prey, bringing it right where he waited. He was convinced that scrutiny is the essence of hunting and at the same time the most exciting part of it, because it offers the time to discern.

Vassur sensed a secret delight knowing that the virtue of patience was not sufficiently esteemed among the Empire, and he didn’t want to foster it excessively to those around him. He started to tap with his fingers on the table, following the unequal rhythm of an old military song from Alderbaraan. As if his invisible enemies had expected such a sign, the doors from the opposite part of the room opened, letting three men, dressed in brown robes, enter the room. The one in the middle, a man with a bony face, tall with a white and imposing beard, had grey eyes. He leant his hand on a rod, but the way he strained, the palm muscles showed that the stick was a weapon rather than a support. „The Abbot has an assassin’s face”, thought Vassur, suppressing the reflex gesture of putting his hand on his belt. The simple black robe was tight on the waist with a string adorned with golden fringes, the only accessory that the old man had on him.

“I bring our Emperor’s message of peace. Praised be His name and His family!” said Vassur, using the most radical enunciations accepted in the Empire when somebody talked about Bella VII.

“If you say so” the Abbot answered, choosing his words so that they could mean anything. Anywhere else, even on Old Terra, but outside the Abbey, such an answer would have entitled Vassur to execute the Abbot without hesitation.

Vassur remembered the expression on Kasser’s face well when he had told him he was appointed to go to the Abbey. “It is the only place from the known universe where the imperial power can’t help you at all”. He answered cleverly, saying that it was the reason for which he was the right person to go to the Abbey, but the uselessness and the sadness from the Emperor’s fathers’ face followed him all the way to the Earth. That was a sign of bad luck.

“I am sent by his Imperial Highness and I want...

The Abbot cut his word with a brief gesture.

“ His Highness knows we don’t accept ambassadors!”

“ My purpose is not to mediate diplomatic contacts, sir...

“The correct addressing formula is Your Holiness”.

Vassur went away from the table, in order to have much space for moving. His obvious intention made one of the Abbot’s escorts move to come between Vassur and his master.

“Risking to anger you, I must warn you that “Your Holiness” is rather an impersonal enunciation and that, being said by a faithless man like me, could easily get offending accents”.

“So much better! Than, the fellow soldiers will solve the problem faster you represent”.

“Violence is not always the best option, not to mention that it is one of the rudest ways to treat a guest”.

The Abbot had a deep laugh:

“You are a little too insolent for a servant. You had tolerant masters, and this is a sign of incompetence even one more obvious that they dared to send you here. Our young emperor is impetuous...”

“And what is wrong about impetuosity Your Holiness?

“He may lose his most industrious servants for goals about which he should have known he could have never reached”.

Straining every fibre of his being, Vassur said calmly:

“Only God fears his own infinity. People aim at it. My death is not important”.

An esoteric!

“The fact that you know our first dogma and that you know how to twist it to your advantage is nothing but proof of a certain skill. Here, we appreciate the things built on foundations. They are more durable than the skills”.

Vassur knew that the first difficult moment had gone. He knew as well that he had used his only trump card, also the real discussion hadn’t even begun.

“Your Holiness... I won’t let myself in any way, attracted inside the trap of a dispute about which I know I can’t end up as a winner. This is not my intention.”

“I would say, this isn’t even the level of your skills…”

“Thank you, Your Holiness.” Vassur bowed his head and lead his hand to his heart.

A heavy silence fell. Both, Vassur and the Abbot knew that the one who would talk first would be slightly disadvantaged. The Abbot’s beard raised in the rhythm of his heavy breathes.

“ My name is Rimio de Vassur, and I am a quint in the army of His Majesty Bella VIII. These letters will convince you about all my functions.”

Dear God, give me strength to decipher your signs!

“ Also I am sure that I don’t do anything but to repeat things that you already know. I have to appeal to secret codicil of the Eridani Treaty, which establishes the statute of the independent colonies among which the Abbey belongs...”

“ You can’t refer to it,” the Abbot gently shook his head.

“Do you happen to think about denouncing the Treaty?”

“Not at all but to appeal to the clause of historical favour only after four hundred years since the Treaty was signed, is a superficiality that makes me think trustfully about the future of the our Abbey, which is surrounded by such weak enemies. Once I carry out the Emperor’s wish, he won’t have anything to negotiate by virtue of. In fact, this idea of historical favour has been a bad one for the imperial court since the beginning.”

“How’s that?” Vassur wondered.

“To possess a unique resource means for one to fall into a deep dilemma: should he use it to assure himself an advantage or consider its simple existence a mere resource, an infinite one, he should use it wisely. It’s a complicated option. It is like God puts one to choose between a short and holly life and an eternal one, but spent in the desert of fear and immorality. The Augustinian monks learned a long time ago to answer such dilemmas, but they were hunted for their wisdom. Redemption, soldier! This is what you should look for together with your Emperor! Redemption of your God… But your eyes are red from disbelief and hate against those who discovered the way of God and of Saint Augustine. The past brought a hate so old between Abbey and Boszt that no one knows its origin.”

Vassur looked right in the Abbot’s grey eyes.

“This idea, maintained by the Abbey, was of a hostility...”

“Don’t you dare!” The Abbot fulminated, hitting the wooden table with his palm. Vassur didn’t even blink and simulated instead a sign of boredom, straining his left eyebrow.

What have I expected for? He is a quint!

“Our God built the Fortress’ walls, needing strength from the martyrs souls who had sacrificed themselves for the New Saint Augustine doctrines. How many of my brothers happened to find their end against the imperial infantry?!”

“This was more than 400 years ago, before the Eridani Treaty. Bella VII appreciates...”

“Only treason! This is all that the Boszt dynasty has always appreciated!”

Vassur felt the need to diminish somehow the Abbot’s anger, which menaced to make them both lose. Abbot’s adjutants had already shown signs of nervousness. One of them stared somewhere behind Vassur, where he had probably hidden a weapon which could be used from the distance, and the other one nervously moved the ring finger of his left hand. Vassur smiled and inquired himself what would have happened if he had killed all three at that moment. That was one of the options that he had presented to the Emperor, but the finality of such an action would have offered them just an ambiguous advantage. No one would have known that they appealed the historical favour, but also they couldn’t have entered the Abbey for the next few generations. It was a disadvantageous rebate for both parts, as the possibility to take the Abbot’s place was ambiguous in the virtue of the fact that he had defeated him in a fight. Rimio kneeled down and recited the consecrated formula:

“ I appeal to the clause of historical favour from the Eridani Treaty codicil! You have a duty to listen to me!”

The Abbot pointed at Vassur to stop. He needed a moment for self-communion and prayer.

Dear God, enlighten me and decipher for me the ways to serve You as well as I can! The burden of your Spirit tears my worthless palms and slouches my feeble shoulders, oh God. Give me strength now, because I have deciphered the signs! And you, Saint Augustine, teach me how to be a soldier of the Apocalypse and I’ll die with your name on my lips!

“You may talk now, Vassur,” the old man said after a while.

“I want you to receive me as Apprentice inside the Abbey”.

The adjutant from Abbot’s right, the one who was staring behind Vassur, started to laugh first. Encouraged, the other one joined his laughter and sounded like kind of silly neigh.

“You should forgive my fellows, stranger. Your request seems humble to them, just because they are soldiers used with the enemies that look straight at your face. I am peaceful man and therefore concerned that you hide something from me. It’s hard for me to figure your intentions”.

As if he hadn’t listened to him, Vassur asked roughly:

“I want to know the official position of the Abbey as far as what concerns the request of his imperial Majesty!”

Raising his rod like a sceptre, the Abbot said solemnly:

“Before I am to respect our obligations, I must warn you that Apprenticeship is obtained only after a humble and long study of the New Saint Augustine Doctrines. But even this hard work can’t start before the fellow soldiers unravel. You’ll also have to fight one or more of our brothers, because we must know if you are capable of defending us when your turn comes to watch the walls. I couldn’t say which of these tests is more dangerous, because to blaspheme the Father means to be exposed to instantaneous execution of the teacher monk, even if what you say comes from ignorance and not from bad-willingness. You have all the chances not to ever become an Apprentice. You may die before reaching any administrative position that should give you access to some of our secrets. Because this is your final target, isn’t it Vassur?”

The soldier relaxed all the muscles on his face with a gesture he had repeated a thousand times in front of the mirror.

“To be wrong about your target means to be wrong about the way it should be aimed at, Your Holiness… Before you receive me in the Abbey and accept the historical favour, I must tell you I am a quint in his Majesty’s army. This means that I can be both commander-in-chief and soldier. I can be like the fury of a cruiser but also slippery like a spy, and I also know things that others don’t even suspect exist. I have already killed with my bare hands more people than Your Holiness we’ll be able to see in all your life. These are not the things that give me faith in my destiny. The destiny of my soul has become for a long time so clear to me that the separation from the flesh shell is nothing but an insignificant event. I am not afraid to die.”

The Abbot smiled:

“No one prays more diligently than us in the entire Universe. Our incantations will accompany you upon your way to God, where you will be judged for your acts. I accept the historical favour, but with the condition you tell me which your real target is.”

“There is no such statement in the Treaty...”

“And there is not a statement to describe this moment, when we are staying in front of each other, knowing that the life of any of us could end at once, like it has never existed. You are not a doctor trying to find a cure for a disease by reading a medical book. You have to deal with this moment of our history. Tell me what your real intentions are!” The Abbot barked, expecting the quint to draw back.

Vassur hardly swallowed, simulating fear:

Hypocrite and dangerous like a poisonous snake!

“I’ll become Abbot one day! Honestly, I’ll prove that I am the best”

Oh God, the servants of darkness burst out tremendously. Give me strength!

“I agree, Rimio de Vassur, the Abbot talked later. It seems fair to me. The test of fight will take place within an hour, and if you pass it you’ll have your hair cut and you‘ll get the name of Rim. Follow Aloim; he will take you to your cell, where you can collect your thoughts before the test.”

Vassur turned back instantaneously and saw standing behind him a young and chubby monk, a little taller that him but with a baggy flesh like that of the ones used more with reading than handling the weapons.

It was him the Abbot’s adjutant looked at. Who knows how long he has been there?! He could have killed me!

Going out the room, Vassur fixed his eyes over the circular tattoo on the monk’s neck.

He could have killed me!

When the Abbot saw them next to the door, he shouted with a penetrating voice:

“Announce your master that I’ll do anything I can to suppress all your sources of communication!”

Vassur was content to bow his head. In this matter he had a few surprises for the Abbot. He started again to walk calmly and to fix his eyes the monk’s nape. The narrow halls hardly had space for three people.

Clever... They can be blocked anytime… Vassur was thinking when he noticed that a mere wooden table could clog the entire hall. The walls were entirely covered with bass-relieves, which presented particular battle scenes. He saw the Abbot’s figure in one of the bass-relieves, where he was depicted preaching to a crowd behind him.

The nice fathers discovered how the parishioners can become soldiers and than, killers. I think that the art of transforming priests into generals suits me more, smiled Rimio satisfied to himself, keeping this expression until Aloim showed him without speaking that he arrived at his cell. He stepped carefully and sharpened his senses. Everything seemed to be all right:

“We are not assassins, brother Rim!” Aloim said suddenly.

“We’ll see about that. Vassur raised his shoulders, looking curiously at the young man.

Aloim bowed, slightly redefining the limits of politeness and closed the heavy, wooden door. Vassur didn’t give Aloim the satisfaction of hearing the noise of a closing inner lock and sat on the bed. This was a strange gathering of boards, as he had never seen. He felt distrustful because of that thing which seemed to be a mattress. In reality, it was a sack in which, after the ambiguous shadows of smell, seemed to find natural animal hair. Anywhere else in the Empire such an artefact would have cost a fortune.

Vassur understood quickly that there was a reverse side of that charming and rough disposition of monks for terran traditions: the monastery was supplied from a primitive generator of power. That’s why the only apparatus that seemed capable to use the electric power was an incandescent lamp, on the rustic nightstand, which was in an unnatural position, at distance from the bed.

Vassur looked in his bag and took out something that looked very much like an abnnan, a fruit from Centauri. Its smooth and violet crust, semi disc shaped, didn’t let one notice that the fruit was genetically treated in order to be sensitive to any kind of oscillation with which a supervising device could operate. As he had felt, the abnnan remained violet, and that meant that his moves weren’t supervised with any electrical devices. He bit hungrily, trying to hide from his potential watchers his nausea, provoked by abnnans’ taste of raw meat. Naturally, it was very sweet. But from genetic treatment, it had become nasty.

Vassur lied on the bed and started to study the walls. One of the previous occupants of the cell had been a talented artist. On the ceiling, he conceived a bass-relief where a huge creature, with a scaly body, sodomized an armoured knight and crashed near the cut belly of his horse. He didn’t understand what the entire scene meant, but he realized that the numerous details could easily dissimulate an aperture through which he could be spied on.

Driven by a sudden decision, Vassur took out of his bag a classic console for communications and started to write calmly the report to the imperial court. He finished it with a slight ironical enunciation about the monks, because he was convinced that they would intercept his message, without being able to change it. Within a short time after the transmission confirmation, Aloim showed up at the door:

“It’s time for you to fight, stranger. May God be with you!”

“My God is your God too. It’s hard for me to understand your words in another way...”

“You don’t understand… The path of the holiness is still a long way ahead of you. We’ll be fair to you, despite the Prophecy!”

“What do you mean?”

“It is told that the Abbey walls can’t be broken down with anything but a hammer chiselled from their own stones.”

“And what could these words mean, brother?”

“They mean exactly what their alignment suggests.”

“Do you really think I have come here unprepared?”

“ I am not that arrogant, Rim! I know you are a quint...”

“And then, what do you want to tell me?”

“Nothing, brother, my words meant to be a mirror where you could have looked at your face before the fight. And if beside your face, you see the greatness of belief, I am just content.

Before entering in what seemed to be an inner court, guarded by high stonewalls from which balconies of different sizes and styles appeared, Vassur tried to calm down. He didn’t fear the physical confrontation but its consequences. his long and fierce military experience taught him that most of the time, death was not an effect of violence itself, but a consequence of the wrong choice of the way and the moment of using it.

Aloim pushed him firmly inside the court and than he retired quickly. The lock was heavy. Vassur put himself next to the door he had come, in a perfect lotus position. He started waiting.

He had orbited for a few weeks above the Abbey and watched the martial training of the monks. Most of them were below the minimum level required at recruiting for the Imperial Forces. But this could have been a kind of screen for all the indiscrete people from the orbit. The poor monks couldn’t have knocked him down in such a battle, even if they had gathered all against him. Otherwise, the Abbey had never guaranteed its status quo using force, but refusing any future cooperation with an autonomous region, which would have participated to an invasion against the monks.

There was also, of course, the legend that the Abbey had never eliminated all the means through which it could control and eventually destroy the clone populations from the Agrarian Worlds, but there was no proof or anything else to make anyone really believe this thing in the entire history of the Augustinian order.

Despite their fierce reputation, the monks fought indeed only with the barbarian hordes that haunted The Pannonian Field, which many times were also decimated by the imperial forces quartered on Old Terra.

Vassur looked at the balconies. They began to fill with curious monks, wearing grey and brown robes.

Which would be the difference?

He saw a handkerchief falling, somewhere near him.

Clumsiness or challenge?

He watched the fabric. Its flight was natural way, so he ignored it. A subtle murmur and the looks of those around made him understand that in a balcony behind him, the Abbot had appeared. He remained still.

As he had anticipated from the beginning, his opponent appeared in front of him. It was a man whose age was impossible to tell, with a protuberant chin and blue eyes. He was advancing slowly, without rush, sure on himself. He was stepping openly and the muscles of his feet, which appeared from under his short robe, told Vassur more than their owner would have wanted. He had in front of him a warrior of an average level, with fixed ideas in regards to the strokes, probably the lateral ones. The callosities and hypertrophy of some groups of muscles showed that the man also had problems maintaining his balance, during quick sets of moves. In what regarded the scar on the right foot... He would have denied any mission to a man who was once so incompetent to get so badly injured. Considering that he had gathered enough information at a first approximation, the quint raised, first on of his hands, and only after a gym figure of balancing his body, he put his feet down.

“ I am Rimio de Vassur and...”

“You’ll put your life on God’s hands!”

“My life has always been in God’s hands, because my soul is just transient in this world. I have never forgot the true destination of my mortal soul. God ‘s Citadel awaits me!”

A shout of surprise came across the audience.

He knows the dogmas! Who is this man?!

“To steal Saint Augustine’s words, this is simple, stranger! You are not the first who steals a book from our Abbey. Two such thieves...”

“The simple path of arrogance can easily be blocked by a true believer or a skilful soldier, brother”, answered Vassur. “I showed you how we can give up violence and also please our God”.

“Would it be so? Then, why does my entire being cry for violence?”

After shouting these words, the monk jumped in the air, with the foot forward in a clumsy gesture. While he was bending, Vassur succeeded to grab and break the nail of a toe. Although dominated by atrocious pain, the monk didn’t make any grimace.

At least he is a warrior! Or perhaps he is drugged with something!

“Why are you looking for me where I am not?” Vassur asked ironically, using a well-known quote from the New Saint Augustine lectures.

Without words, the monk attacked again, but so deplorably this time that Vassur didn’t even bother to hit back. But, the third time, fearing he would be accused of refusing the fight, Vassur simulated an attack on the right, hesitated for a moment, enough for his opponent to believe that it was a feint and, then, he went on with his move. His punch exploded in the plexus of the monk, who crashed on the fine sand of the yard.

“Is this Your Holiness, a test of pity or is it your way to humiliate me? Your Holiness! I am a quint. Even the idea that I can be beaten in such a fight is an offence for me!”

With his distinctive voice, The Abbot answered from the loggia:

“We’ll send you then, the best of our warriors. As you are a brilliant aspirant, we have to eliminate any ambiguity about your skills...

“Don’t Your Holiness! We’ll start our mission with a burden on both our shoulders. You are an educated man. I don’t think you have any idea about the way we fight.

“Whose shoulders, spy?”

“ I am not a spy Your Holiness. I just want to...”

Vassur hadn’t finished his phrase when four warriors entered the yard and rushed at him simultaneously. Vassur met one of them and used him to reach to the back of the wall. The monk’s body was lying in the sand, with his neck in an unnatural position. The others looked at their fellow and as at a sign, took out from their wide robes, long and curved knives. The first opponent of the quint joined them.

Kindjals. I hate these weapons.

One of the monks spit in Vassur’s direction and then he put his tongue on the blade of the knife. A grain of red blood flowered on the shining metal. Dominated by a cold anger, the quint pulled out as swift as lightning the accun blade, which he had on the dissimulated scabbard under the skin of his left hand. The liquid metal vibrated subsonicly, giving him confidence. Vassur started a large, perfect, round and fluid gesture, penetrating the attacker’s throats with his blade.

The time was suspended. It was just he and his weapon, while his conscience looked at the entire scene from a corner of the arena. The arch described by the accun blade ended back in the scabbard. Not even a human eye had distinguished what happened, as his moves were much too quick.

A silence fell like at the beginning of the world. The heads of the four monks had crashed in the sand, while the body of one of them wandered bewilderingly splashing the walls with blood.

“Your Holiness! Aloim told me you would be fair! What candidate could have passed such a test? This is a murder not a test!”

With a voice heavy of sadness, the Abbot said from his armchair:

“The test is never the same! And no one was admitted in the Abbey, because he had a fight. The real challenge is that of the New Saint Augustine Theses.”

“And, then, why did I have to fight here?”

“Because we realised that you have always thought of your admission here like a battle, and decided to give you what you wanted.”

“Although, you knew I was a quint?!”

“Maybe I wanted to find out what a quint was…

“And what do you think you have found? “ Vassur asked mockingly.

“ An important thing, I am sure now that your emperor wasted the historical favour in vain. You’ll never accomplish your goals! You are too much of a warrior to ever be able ever to fully understand the gentle way of God. You’ll never sit on Saint Augustine’s throne”.

The Abbot hit the loggia’s floor with the sceptre and than said in a deep voice:

“Starting tomorrow, you’ll be baptised Apprentice, with the name of Rim. You’ll be a body of our Abbey, and we guarantee you the same treatment like the others.”

Vassur bowed his head and inquired himself what would have happened if he had let the first monk choose the theological dispute. Maybe than he would have found what a quint was. He was smiling at this fugitive thought when he saw Aloim.

In his narrow quarters, The Abbot was staring at the ceiling.

Dear God, hold my hand when I look in the abyss and give me strength to strike the Antichrist. And let Your Apocalypse give birth to the New World, oh Lord!

 

 

2.

 

Pain can be wisdom because only suffering can make you understand why you, mean and infinitely sinner, were forgiven by Your God, while the one who should have ruled his people for a century, to the promised land went to heaven before the accomplishment of his holly mission. You hit your punches in the sand and if you would dare, you would raise them to the sky to menace, or to beg.

But you won’t do it. You are not strong enough. You are not like the one who could find the way of his people, who could release it from the needs and show the real faith...

What would you do now? The others watch you with pain, but you see hope in their eyes. The thunder which stroke the hill while you were with Ustin, with the Saviour of you people looking for the forgiveness of your God and the way to be followed, was the divine will that raised him to heaven...

“What at hell is this babbling, man?! Crey asked looking angrily to brother Kalator, the messenger of the Abbey.

“This is all that you primitive psychic probe can offer you. If you look into the sixth addenda of our contract, you’ll see that the Supervising Brother of the Seeding recommended the use of a hypnotic probing device...

“And which cost half of the entire program!” the governor Crey said in an appalling tone, breaking his hands. Where shall I get so much money? I killed the one that seemed to be their leader. I listened to those monks who said they knew what they were doing and look what I got! The babblings of an... of an... Apostle! My people are lost!

He talked, looking at the large window out of which a green star could be seen, as if he had asked a divinity existing somewhere among the whitish waters of the Praxtor planet, the last Agrarian World of the autonomous province Sagitarius. If the seeding had failed, he wouldn’t have had another solution but to ask for economic help at the Imperial Court and to take upon himself the consequences of limiting the political independence of the thirty-two states of the province.

“I refuse to accept that I have been fooled in such a stupid way by your terrible Abbey. Do you hear me? This probe must be enough for a simple task as reading the mind of a clone.”

“But there is no fraud, sir. The understanding of an Apostle’s inner monologue requires time, but it isn’t in fact a very complicated thing. One of my assistants will remain here on the orbital station as long as necessary to train you...”

Crey looked the monk hopefully:

“You mean you have a man capable of understanding what that miserable clone says?”

“Of course...”

“Well, where is this man? Bring him to me! Let’s see what he says. Maybe it is already time to make a miracle...”

Stupid! He wants to make miracles quickly! Oh God, how great is Your work and these idiot bureaucrats are not capable enough to see it!

They all look at you now with hope shining in their eyes. They know that Ustin, their saviour, sacrificed himself on the mountain in order for you to find the Path. He rose to meet the Father and to guide you from there.

And now you are a sort of leader. You feel responsible for your fellows who you have known forever, although none of your parents could tell you where your people came from. You are the wandering children of the field, spoiled by the sun and by heavy fruit trees.

You see familiar faces: The quiet Cleet runs after the agile Kluana, the dull Sivas watches again and again, without understanding, the stick he has been rotating for years in his hands. The shy Haela peeps at you like always without understanding too much of everything that happens to her. In fact, everyone looks at you. You feel how they watch you and expect you to point a way, a direction to go, a target for the flow of their time.

Yesterday you contemplated helplessly on how Slos murdered the peace. He stroked the gentle Malduk until he cracked his skull. You stood up fast, but until your mace made justice, the poor Malduk had died. Everyone thought they had a fight, but you knew it wasn’t so, because Ustin, the saviour, had warned you in advanced time: „The life without a goal is a sin and makes the mighty God angry, the master of cold and thunders!” Slos killed because his life had no goal, and you know that you can’t let your people wander infinitely on this unknown field, without expecting anything of life. Ustin has always told you that the goal of every people is to last, for the Redemption of his God. You know you must be wise and lead them, to the light, to offer them a reason to exist.

Haela comes closer and caress you on the chest; her breasts turn you wild, but you don’t have time for love games. Upset because she interrupted your meditation, you hide your emotion and go determined to the top of the mountain. Expecting what? To meet Ustin or, on the contrary, to expose your bare chest to another divine thunder. You climb to the mound with a determination that makes you think, you already have at least a goal.

Crey agitated as if he had discovered an austral asteroid right in the yard of the administrative Palace from Sagitarius.

“Look! He is going back on the hill now! It is time to make a miracle! Let’s give him a revelation, something! Or not! I know! Rather a heavenly vision!

With a short and rude gesture, Kalator pushed him in front of the central console and sat himself in the control post. It was indeed a delicate moment, and the last thing he needed then was the excitement of a non-professional.

He knew that on the approximate place where had stroked the laser ray, which had killed the Saviour, there was now a stone-edged circular spring, which he had examined only two days before. Its shape, perfectly circular, inspired him and he had put a colony of bacteria in the water that produced simple carbohydrates, sugars, by their metabolism. From that moment, the water should have had milky hue and sweet taste. A perfect substitute for a ideal maternal milk, the perfect touch of God’s will.

Laak, the Apostle, was going with determination to the place where his mentor died. His attention had to be drawn over the spring and then, he had to be submitted to the first techniques of suggestion. Kalator quickly touched a few of the consoles’ switches, and a small missile departed from the huge space station that orbited Praxtor.

As long as you have faith, God walks by your side, Ustin used to say before to have departed to heaven, surrounded by that halo of white light. And his faith had been boundless, as on the place of the martyrdom, God made appear a bright fountain, which waters glitters in the night and forms steps to the sky. You see Ustin going up to Your God, and again you feel full of hope. He waves at you with his hands and shows you the fountain. You look at it too. Its waters seem to darken while Ustin’s soul, nestled for only a few moments inside their cup, goes to heaven. But the water isn’t water anymore! God blessed the place where he had summoned to Him the best of you, and changed it into a spring of sweet milk, something that even the rambling Guulun, who had walked over the whole field looking for his ancestors, had never seen.

You are looking at that fountain, and his round form intrigues you. You have always liked the disc of the sun and the round faces of the three Moons and you wondered not only once what would you would have liked to be if it had happened to not be human. And the answer had always been: a circle. A circle is the end and the beginning. It is stable and can’t be turned upside down. It can’t be taken in any way. A circle is the beginning of all the shapes and the wisdom of all the scholars. The circle is always intact, as Ustin was by himself the consciousness of his people, as the circle is an equal and large, shelter for a people that are wandering pointlessly. And especially, in a circle, from whenever you go on a straight line, you pass through a minuscule point, which you also share with everyone that goes from the circle. And no one else should be at the centre of the circle, the place where all the destinies go through, but Ustin, was summoned to heaven. He is now a minuscule point or maybe another circle where God Himself is at the centre. The circle is a good figure...

You sit on the verge of the spring and admire it one more time before falling asleep. And, without knowing why, the last words that Ustin told you come to your mind: We have to help our God to save himself. We have to build him a house, which will also be our fortress ... You didn’t understand then what he meant, but now you feel you are close to the meaning, if your eyelids hadn’t been so heavy.

“Oh, my God, why do you test my patience in such a cruel way? Because of that probe, probably made from orbital trash, he had almost fallen asleep, before I finished the preparation for the insertion of the prophetic dream,” shouted Kalator, hardly breathing because of the excitement.

Crey looked at him, lost, without understanding anything either from the inner monologue of the Apostle or from all that the monk had mumbled at various microphones.

“That’s it! We lost him, didn’t we? We lost him!”

The monk turned to him with a slowness, which he hated because he knew it tormented the small governor, but he couldn’t abstain.

“We didn’t fail because the Abbey is the first tool of New Saint Augustine, The First Man Sitting at the right of the Father. And our holy work can’t be ruined by the insensitiveness of a sinner who doesn’t understand the need...”

“So! Defile me, curse me, and slap me! But then tell me that everything is all right! The lives of five billion of...”

Without trying in any way to dissimulate his scorn, Kalator said:

“With the insertion of the first prophetic dream, my mission is over, and I declare the Seeding a success. More than that, due to reasons I don’t control enough and about which I will consult the Fortunate Abbot Radoslav IX, it seems that on Praxtor we will have one of the quickest developments from the Abbey annals. I ask you to sign for the reception.

Crey looked stupefied at the monk.

“You can’t leave just now! You are strong; you know everything... and you haven’t even done the tour of our solar system... We have an orbital hotel which...

Impassive, Kalator continued, on an equal tone.

“According the contract with the Abbey, you beneficiate our assistance until the birth of the first post-ecclesiastic generation. Till Then, in the first decade, Brother Isidor, who will remain here on the station and will take care of you not to make mistakes, will assure it. Both, Fortunate Radoslav and me will also watch the good functioning of the work.

Crey was still distrustful. He looked at Isidor, and his long face, still showing the traces of youth didn’t inspire him too much trust.

“Great Kalator, maybe, if you stayed for another week, at least until the end of this thing, this prophetic dream, about which you kept on mentioning…” the governor said quickly.

“The proceeding you are talking about is already developing. And if this makes you feel better, you may find out that at this moment, even my presence couldn’t correct a wrong seeding”.

Ustin happens to be again next to you. You feel strange because you know that you are dreaming, but you need to take seriously the words. Ustin talks to you calmly, continuously, about things you couldn’t even imagine. He tells you that your people’s goal will never be reached as long as your fellows wander across the field. He tells you about Constructions and how they are made, about rich fields and about the taming of the big yaki and also about how and when the round fruits of possil should be picked and especially about the tributes you should bring to God at the Temple you will build around the fountain..

Ustin is wise. All these, together with God’s satisfaction, could be a goal for your people, the start of a road, a travel in the long circle of life, which will end where everything has begun, along with God’s redemption and finding the biggest secret of the existence: genesis. Nothing is more important for you than knowing where your people came from.

 

 

3.

 

The dice hesitated for a moment on a fold of the rug and after that, it started to roll. The breathings of the four men had stopped for a long time. The small fragment of bone rolled two more times and then he settled down: six.

“It can’t be! You can’t be so lucky!”

“God looks only at you, Stin! And he never lets you lose!”

The winner, with a dark face and long and black hair, glanced at his fellows with an unmasked satisfaction:

“Brothers, it was not me who invented this game, and it wasn’t me who had the idea to play on this stake. You wanted it and God gave you a sign of His unlimited wisdom, showing you that the sin of gambling and of arrogance are, by themselves, bad things, not to mention when they gather in such a strange challenge.

“Look at you! What great words you use! What happened to you? You win every time and you haven’t refused the stake...

“How could I refuse it, Jeremiah? Why should I refuse it? I won it! Stin wondered looking annoyed in the eyes of the dumpy man, who was trembling, agitating the dice in his hand.

“Yes, but Xentya means so much to me, and I have been so close! We were equal for two times but the third time...”

Stin looked at his friend carefully. A rich sweat that revealed Jeremiah’s excitement bathed his funny body. For a moment Stin thought about giving up the right to be with Xentya that night but he eventuality chased that away from his mind, like a sign of inexplicable weakness.

“But Jeremiah, isn’t God himself the One who says: ”I’ll punish those who deny to interfere and keep the infamous custom of monogamy”?

“He is, Stin”, Jeremiah said, feebly.

“ Isn’t it written in the Book that the first reason which allows a man to have a woman is to win a confrontation with his fellows? You lost Jeremiah. You shouldn’t have played dice!”

“But it is not fair that you win every time! Something like this is impossible!”

“Do you happen to accuse me of cheating?” Stin asked with a voice which thickened suddenly.

“I have just said that it isn’t normal that you win every time. We have bad luck and good luck; sometimes we lose, and sometimes we win. But we don’t win when we play with you.

Stin jumped on his feet and before one of the others could interfere, he had stuck his hands in Jeremiah’s throat and pushed him with his back against a tree trunk.

“Listen to me, you dirt”, Stin whistled through his teeth. No one is guilty for my luck, and less me. We can fight if you want to. You can compete with me at running or lifting weights, and we can test our minds making arithmetic with the wheat grains from the big bushels! I’ll always beat you! I don’t know why I am always better, but it’s not my business to doubt God’s ways!”

Jeremiah crashed in the dust, coughing and rubbing his neck. His face turned blue and looked silly. Someone started to laugh.

Setting his simple cloths in order, Stin looked at the chubby man one more time.

“And even this way! What makes you think that any of the girls wants to be with you, anyway? Who wants to be with a man who never wins?”

As if God himself had arranged Jeremiah’s humiliation, from half-light of a tree, the distinctive silhouette of Xentya detached. She was a tall, blonde girl, with large bosoms, gent le and warm, like the sand from the river shore on a summer day. Stin knew this. He had been with her and they made love until exhaustion. Jeremiah had his reasons too. It had been hard for him too, to separate from Xentya. If it hadn’t been for Mary’s wise advices, maybe he would have fallen into the sin of monogamy.

The Book wasn’t at all too explicit in what regarded this prohibition. He had read the verses ten times, and except a sermon of the New Saint Augustine, he hadn’t found anything new.

It is also true that in his example to the barbarians from the first temple, Augustine stigmatised monogamy as being the worst of the evils that can tempt the human being, a prison from which the unborn children can’t escape. “A man can’t have children with only one woman, as his babies won’t distinguish from one another and won’t serve for God’s Work. Blend your blood and only this way you’ll find the Messiah, our God’s hope for redemption! And the one who will disobey my doctrine may die from the others’ sword!”

Stin hadn’t understood this sermon from the beginning, and realized that to perceive its real meanings, all the patience and skill that Mary had was necessary. The woman had explained to him that, in his infinite wisdom, God had already conceived in his heavenly citadel all the people who would ever be born and also the ones who would become saints, because they would have a virtuous life. But they waited for the right parents, and they couldn’t go down on the earthly citadel unless those that already were on the Earth tried to find out the couple that would be blessed with such a child. From these saints, the archangel who would defend God in his last battle would be chosen, when God would face his last fear, because he would have reached his own infinity.

He had to admit that the rule couldn’t have been applied very thoroughly in their village, where the Plague had made every woman incapable of baring children. But, as Mary had explained to him, their redemption might have come at any minute and the holy priests, the Augustinian brothers, who were wise and worked day and night, could find a cure anytime against the terrible disease which kept them away from the rest of the world. And at that moment, they had to be prepared for the rules of the outer world.

Mary used to say that the holy priests had given to them almost everything and hadn’t asked anything in return but a pious life. Stin realized that all the food and clothes necessary for them to have a normal life cost a community of poor monks like that of the Augustinian Abbey enormously. One day, the Abbot himself, a stately man with a white beard and a cold, greyish look, had stepped up to the tower near the big gate. He had explained to them that they might never be able to go out from their Village until God will enlighten the minds of most educated of the brothers, to discover the cure for the Plague. To reconcile God, they should pray, stay still in their Village and not go too far from the huge air rectifiers that removed the miasma, which poisoned the air of Old Terra.

Stin had heard that the holy priests had gathered children younger than two years of age in the village and had created conditions for them to survive, despite the Plague. He knew that without the Abbey’s support, he and all his people would have died for a long time. By living, they paid anyway the tribute of impossibility to leave the Village...

Xentya took him in her lodge. Before entering, Stin looked at the clear sky and wondered as many times, how it would have been for one to be able to walk free among the stars, to look for adventures among non explored systems and to hope he would be the first man who would meet a creature from another world.

He avoided the Xentya’s reproving look and closed the door. The girl’s body was as he remembered. When his hand met the delicate nipple of her breast, the girl moaned slightly, stretching out her white and long neck. Stin easily touched the place where a vena throbbed with his lip, and the girl moaned again slightly. He tore her cloth out with a single hand and stopped for a moment to admire the girl’s naked body. The feeling that their joining would be forever sterile tormented him because, although, he hadn’t said to anyone, he had always believed that Xentya could be the mother of a saint. The girl’s hands moved more and more daring, they pinched, caressed, scratched, explored. The nail of the Xentya’s ring finger was hardly going down on the spine when Stin heard the noise of the siren, and his soul crouched, anguished by a bad feeling.

“Jeremiah”, Stin whispered gathering the few clothes he had in a hurry and ran at the big gate.

Beyond the fence, two soldiers-monks hardly hold Jeremiah. The dumpy man was struggling and screaming unintelligible words. Stin’s fellows were looking resigned. They knew what was about to follow. Alvin turned with his back, Mateo held a pillar tight from the fence as if he was fighting with someone, and Israel had abandoned his book and was looking at the entire scene with his staring eyes, in which no one could see anything. In the next moment, Xentya reached the fence and probably this was what Jeremiah saw when, having the force of despair, succeeded in knocking down one of the monks. He turned to her.

“I’m dying for you, Xentya!”

But the move was a trap to confuse the second monk, because, after shoutingthis words, Jeremiah turned and hit the remaining guard hard. Stin had seen the short shining of the steel and knew how Jeremiah fought. He wasn’t surprised, seeing the blood flood gushing from the monk’s neck..

Appearing from nowhere, a few meters from Jeremiah, another monk raised a small arbalest. He called the dumpy man, and Jeremiah turned around to meet his death. The arrow penetrated Jeremiah’s eye and went out the nape. He was dead before hitting the ground. Calmly, the monk slowly pushed the body with his foot and then he went away.

Stin had heard the tramping of horses a few minutes before the Abbot stepped up the tower. He expected such an event to have as a consequence another sermon. All the attempts of escaping had the same results: a furious discourse of the Abbot and the reduction of food and wine rations for a while.

This time the Abbot seemed worried. His words didn’t sound too fierce. Stin thought that he understood them as the signs of a profound concern.

“... won’t happen! We assumed a responsibility in front of our God and we put back every lost sheep on the flock. You must understand that we can’t accept that the whole Abbey to be exposed at the Plague. Be patient. Your expectation will end soon...”

“ When, parson, when? A voice could be heard, probably Bogumil’s.

“When our God will decide that the right time has come. Your prayers will be of great help to our fellows who have been making hard efforts for long years to find the cure for your disease.”

“And, until then, we should wait for you to slaughter us as your murderer did with Jeremiah?” Bogumil insisted.

The Abbot looked down at the archer monk.

“Brother Rim is on his second day of guard duty, and he hasn’t learned yet the fact that you are some peaceful villagers and he is used to fighting with soldiers. On the other hand, the orders for him were clear. He mustn’t let you go out at any price. And he mustn’t allow you to contaminate him. He followed the orders...”

“Ah hell’! He is a cold-blooded criminal. Look how he moves and how skilful he is! For God’s sake, did you see his face when he pointed to Jeremiah with the arbalest?”

“It is true the military skills of Rim are superior to those of the brothers and of yours, but let’s not forget that the soul of a monk also rose to heaven, to sit at the right of New Saint Augustine. And also I have to say that Jeremiah disappointed me.”

A mutter of surprise rose from the crowd: “He knows Jeremiah’s name!”

“I know all of you, my children. Better than you can imagine. Because you are the last of God’s Work, our most important mission,” the Abbot said with a thundering voice.

But Stin couldn’t take his eyes from the brother that the Abbot called Rim. He wasn’t an usual monk. His hair had been cut recently, and he had a strange way of staying still. He focused his look and saw how Rim’s face features seemed to be sculptured in stone.

He seems to be on the watch! He looks like an eagle that is on the watch!

Stin decided to keep out of this soldier’s way. He looked among the crowd and met Mary’s preoccupied glance. She was looking for him too. He went to the oak where they used to meet.

Maria hadn’t had Plague. Although her slim body didn’t show it, she was a little older, and she was from the group of women that had been mothers to them during their childhood. She voluntary accepted to be infected only to take care of them. After the children had grown up, many of those women had formed a community at the end of the village and spent most of the time together. Mary was the one that had raised Stin and, from her point of view, her strange parenthood was still going as she said that the role of a mother didn’t end as soon as her child could cut a tree by himself to built a lodge of his own. They used to talk often and Stin appreciated, without knowing exactly why, the doctrines learned from Mary, inquiring from her at the same time the news about the monks. Mary was a kind of ambassador of the fellows among the villagers and gathered all the petitions for the Abbey.

Mary’s hand delayed in Stin’s black and dense hair.

“ Do you feel guilty?”

“I don’t know. Should I?”

The woman stood up and looked to the high summer sky.

“You know that everything happens with a purpose, Stin. God arranged each of us to bring to an end his Work. He knew from the beginning what marks we have to leave through life, and this is why he endowed us differently at birth.”

‘What do you mean?”

“ For example, I was a mother for the others’ children because I couldn’t have my own.”

“ You have never spoken me about what you were before coming here to the Abbey”.

“ I won’t do it. I would anger God with my perdition past.”

Stin frowned slightly, thinking how many times they had this discussion. He had never found anything about Mary’s past. When he was younger, he hoped she was his real mother and that she had sacrificed for him, but he didn’t want to tell him, not to upset the other children. He believed it as, since he had known himself, he felt he was different from his fellows from the village. Even in those moments, Mary behaved differently towards him, but now he knew the she saw in him the child she had never had.

“I don’t feel guilty, you know? Jeremiah got what he looked for. I defeated him in fight...”

“Don’t you think you are a coward? You hide behind your luck, your force and skill/

Stin remained open-mouthed. Mary had talked with a resentment he had never experienced. He knew that she had also raised Jeremiah, but he hadn’t imagined that she had loved him so much, because her love wasn’t obvious at all. Anyway, she had never showed him her feelings about Jeremiah.

“I don’t understand! Jeremiah told me the same thing. I don’t know. What do you want from me! I agree, I’ll lose some games and I’ll...

Mary hit her foot on the ground, stirring up the dust.

“You don’t understand, do you? You don’t want to understand; the woman kept on saying, straightening her black head-kerchief which covered her grey hair and forehead. “Maybe you are right, and I should have talked to you about the Saint Augustine doctrines, about the force and the will to do good, about the destiny that every people must have, about God’s citadel.

“I haven’t heard about all of these!”

“You didn’t indeed. They belong to the Christian Saint Augustine and not to the one where the monks pray.

“ And all this will help me to understand, what do you want from me?”

“ No, Stin, they will help you to assume a thing you already know and because Jeremiah lies now, with his head crushed, in the dust in front of the gate. To be as you are means to also assume responsibilities and not only the opportunity to have every woman you want!”

From the way Stin looked back at her, Mary realized that the young man didn’t understand anything of what they had discussed.

“Oh, God, give me strength and wisdom!” she said going away.

"It is not fair, you know?” Stin shouted behind her. It is not fair that you turn me upside down with words whose meaning I don’t understand and then to go without explaining them to me. I want to obey you because I feel you are right. You have always been right! But you are unfair now!”

Maria stopped and half turned herself.

“ We’ll do this the following way Stin. First, you’ll learn what the poverty means in order to be able to esteem the wealth. Tomorrow you won’t eat anything...

Stin let himself fall down at the roots of the oak.

“Of course, as if this solved something! Jeremiah is dead and I won’t eat... So much to lose! Cossel will stuff tomorrow with my portion, and he will think that God appreciates him particularly!”

 

 

4.

 

Kasser was looking at his son with pity, mistrust and a premonition that had been tormenting him for some months, since Vassur had come from his mission. His son, Amel, gave off a sensation of masculine force, which he had never had and of which he would have known to take advantage in delicate situations from Alderbaraan Treaty or the attempt of attack here at the palace, on Tengys, 30 years ago. But, his reasons of envy stopped at the appearance, because he had arrived to regret more and more often that he had abdicated his throne for his son. Amel proved to be an impulsive monarch, with a leaning to violence on a universal scale.

“Amel, my son, have you called me?”

“I would prefer you call me Bella, father!”

Mentioning the official name, Bella the VII, probably meant to establish the terms of the discussion. Kasser was still a member of the crown council. Although his opinion couldn’t change too much, Bella wasn’t yet in the position of ignoring his old father’s thoughts about the government. Not in front of the others.

The Emperor had a lot of films and papers on the table. But one reigned above all having Vassur’s personal marks.

“Tomorrow at the council we’ll discuss the actions of our quint, who reports to me that he integrated in the guard group of the Abbey and that he already has at least two trends for investigation.”

Kasser let the silence embarrass his son.

“I would like to know your opinion about our plans before our presentation tomorrow in the council board for registering. Your advice is very important to me”

“The hell it is”, Kasser thought, approving silently with his head, stubbornly remaining silent.

Bella waited for a few moments, and then he stood up and started walking nervously across the little cabinet that he used as a working room and from where he had a wonderful view of huge devices that made Klemplant the largest spaceport from the universe, known at the same time as the source of the Emperor’s incontestable power.

“There is only one possible reason for your silence, father”.

“And what would it be, son?”

“The envy of not having the courage to render the zets’ discovery profitable!”

Kasser smiled bitterly. Indeed, he had kept the discovery of zets’ planet secret for more than ten years, because he was afraid of exactly what his son planned to do at that moment. He had killed the two explorers that had presented him the report with his hands. The zets weren’t just the first intelligent race met by humanity but also the key for eradication of the Abbey’ secular domination in the very sensitive field of lucrative religions making. Bella was the 32nd monarch of Boszt dynasty who had to accept the absolute independence of the Abbey inside its own walls, as a consequence of the endless blackmail exerted by the Augustinian monks: independence as an exchange for continuing the Seeding of the Agrarian Worlds.

Z and his creatures could have easily solved the problem, which the Abbey had always represented. Even if he had thought of the supposing implication of the last Abbot in the riots on Tengys, he still must have approved his son’s plan. Nevertheless he felt he should calm Amel down.

“You speak without thinking, when you say such monumental absurdities. You probably forget that to have a fierce appearance is not the same thing like being a real warrior. It is a confusion that might bring you to perdition when you’ll find yourself in complicated circumstances.”

“Tell me then! Teach me! Why do you oppose my attempt of replacing the clone from the Agrarian Worlds with colonies of zets?”

Kasser breathed in and answered, weighing his words carefully. He knew he had one of the few opportunities that remained for him to change the course of history.

“All the old things, my son, have unsuspected resources. And the Abbey is one of the oldest pillars on which the political order that you inherited from me had been built. In the Empire, there are six hundred sixty-four Agrarian Worlds that feed four hundreds thirty five confederations and family domains. What makes you think that the Senate will agree to your plans? I would like to remind you that Kally’s family for example…”

“Why wouldn’t they agree? Everybody knows that the fees demanded by the Abbey for the Seeding of a new Agrarian World have increased three times only in the two last centuries. If we succeed in decipher the way that some viruses for Z are made we would...”

Kasser interrupted his son’s word with a determined gesture:

“You’ll replace a monopoly with another one. Don’t tell me now that. As soon as you stole the monks’ knowledge of making viruses that generate religions, you’ll find a way to command the zets. You’ll rush to share your discoveries with everyone!?”

“Of course not!”

“ And then, what will you propose to the Council? Replacing a mechanism, which has been functioning well for more than thirty-six generations and feeds five hundred billion people spread out over three hundred parseci, with your hypothetical race of aliens, about which no one knows anything?”

Kasser realized he was overreacting. The zets lived in huge colonies, governed by a queen, the only intelligent individual. It seemed that the queen commanded her workers through successive infections and synthesized viruses adequate for her own needs. She could for example infect, selectively, one hundred thousand workers with a virus which could make them not only able to build a gigantic fortification but also it would contain the plans of the construction. Kasser knew that three hundred thousand zets infected with the adequate virus could transform a planet into a granary within only two years. It was obvious that the zets were workers superior to any other community of imported clones of the Abbey that started functioning at the fifth generation, the earliest.

“It isn’t true! Bella protested. Zets are our only hope.!”

Kasser turned his back with a gesture. Even the fact that he was the Emperor’s father couldn’t be an excuse for such behaviour. Bella, amazed, swallowed his words.

“Listen, Amel! I will tell you those things only once, breaking every rule I stated in this Imperial Court. That is why I ask you to listen to me carefully. The Abbey isn’t an adversary you could break down in a lifetime. The monks know about genetic manipulation, about cloning and the making of viruses more than the rest of the Universe will know for the next six hundred years. You can’t just attack such a part of our history. I know the Abbot. He is a man with a lot of resources, a perfect philosopher, a wonderful strategist and one of the most open-minded spirits of our times. Imagine that he will stay and do nothing while you’ll try to take him to the monopoly over the Agrarian Worlds. It’s a childish mistake for which I am ashamed of, because I didn’t think I taught you so badly. Who will benefit from the fight between the main two political forces of our time? If you try to steal to the Abbey, what belonged to it for so long, the monks also could aim for the throne! “

“This is nonsense indeed! Is that nonsense what tormented you all these years?”

“No, Amel! I was afraid to push humanity on the verge of a war about which I think is useless! You are acting superficially. Have you read the Abbey’s dogmas? Do you happen to know that the Augustinian brothers consider themselves followers of a thinker who sustained that the mission of every community was to save his God when the fight of the end of the world would come? Don’t you understand how much violence they could bring...?”

“They are stupid peasants! Vassur can kill all of them...”

“This is what you think now! But you should know that the violence could have many forms, some of them being the worst of my nightmares, the reasons for which I preferred to ignore zets and the possibilities they could offer to us.”

Bella sat down at the table again and looked to be absorbed by the papers.

“This is the point that makes us different father! I believe that the liberation of the origin lands of our ancestors deserves any outbreak of violence!”

Kasser narrowed his eyes. The story of the Bozst dynasty’s origin in Pannonian Field wasn’t new. It seemed that, before going to Old Terra, Boszt’s family had lived somewhere in the Pannonian Field, and the monks had succeeded in making a regressive genealogical tree, studying the mitochondria DNA of many emperors. That proved to be the truth of the legend. The Augustinian brothers’ reasons had remained a mystery forever, the challenging of imperial prides not being an action without dangers. Periodically, in Klemplant reached the power an emperor who wanted to get back the lands of his ancestors, but none of those emperors had appealed directly for actions against the Abbey, although many of them had seriously analysed this possibility.

“Amel my boy, you should know that no scrap of anyone’s bone deserves the waste of such an important resource as the historical favour which we had as an advantage in our relations with the Abbey.”

“This is what you’ll tell the Council tomorrow father?”

Kasser bowed his forehead to the ground.

“No. I have told you this as a father and counsellor. You’ll find out tomorrow my official opinion”

“And it will be detrimental by my actions!”

“Everything is possible. I don’t know anything of what you want yet. If you answer, as you should to my questions, I might go beside you”.

Bella smiled bitterly.

“But, we both know that after what I have told you today, you’ll never agree with my plans”.

Kasser closed the door, letting the young Emperor read for the third time Vassur’s report.

“Your Highness, I won’t keep it a secret that my mission here is the hardest one the Boszt dynasty has ever given to me. I am even afraid that the extensively long period I was conditioned for violence altered my quint abilities. I have already killed some people, five of them in a battle that I initially thought to be a consecration criterion. But it was obviously a test I didn’t pass, a first lesson the Abbot had given to me. They ordered me to carry the bodies of the defeated ones and burry them on a mound, somewhere in the Abbey. Two of those I killed were young lads, and the others had hardly learned the first correct moves from fencing. Their muscles were soft and weren’t formed yet. In our army they probably would have never been recruited. I don’t know what kind of lessons the Abbot wants me to learn from all of this. He might have wanted to show me that I would have never been accepted as an Apprentice in the Abbey if I hadn’t come to ask him the historical favour, but he also might have lost control of the violence.

And especially because the Abbey is not at all the quiet place we imagined in the evenings when we planned our action. The other day I had to kill a miserable man who had escaped from a kind of primitive quarantine where the monks keep a community of almost a thousand people. I have serious reasons to believe that the place is where they have their reservoir of clones, but of course, this is just a supposition. The Abbot praised the ability I had killed the runaway. Before I reached him, I had knocked down a couple of guards. I had come from the funeral of one of them just before starting to write you these lines.

I trustfully wait for news from Your Highness. I end hoping that our communication system won’t be discovered too soon, because I am not very anxious to use my other talents.

Yours,

Rimio de Vassur.”

Bella folded the fine sheet of paper that the operator of the secret com with the Old Terra had brought to him. Interesting times were about to follow, as Ursula always used to say, after she invented a new position in bed; in life one should feel sorry for the things he didn’t do and not for the ones he did.

 

 

5.

 

Aloim was laid on the simple bed in the Abbots’ cellar. He tried from the bottom of his heart not to let himself become dominated by the feeling of fear that he felt coming from the solid man who was reading from the prayer book. Radoslav always used to pray after they had made love. He did this by routine because he knew that Aloim could penetrate the dogmatic wall of apparent meditation and see the fundamentally pagan nature of his most intimate thoughts. Many times he reproved him and beseeched him to pray too. Aloim, sheltered by the Abbot’s cellar, preferred to answer every time that his mind and soul were next to the Abbot’s prayer to God and New Saint Augustine, but he never actually kneeled.

He had inquired himself many times why he stayed in the shadow of the Abbot and especially why he hadn’t taken advantage of the way he could manipulate him. It was probably gratitude. Aloim had been a tormented child. His first memory was that of the chief of a barbarian clan who held him above an ebullient boiler while a woman, probably his mother, was hardly breathing, burying her face deep in his leather pants. That image had always followed him, tormenting him profoundly, because, despite the clear memory, he didn’t know what had happened with his mother and how he had ended wandering the Pannonian Field with that family of not very friendly peasants.

He had discovered his powers at puberty and had thought they were a gift from God. He could instantaneously perceive the feelings that animated those he talked with or those he noticed. Ignorant, he hurried to use the gift to seduce a girl. The disgust he had read in her thoughts when they had made love for the first time made him not want to touch a woman ever again. In time, he became a silent teenager, feared by the others because he used to ask tremendous questions and because he seemed to decipher the most hidden secrets of the human soul. He had never had courage to talk sincerely about his endowment.

They blamed him for evil eye and called him to exorcize some possessed woman, and he made rituals he invented at that moment, having a good time. In reality, Aloim’s powers were not so great. It was impossible for him to suggest someone to make something or to read a mind. The only circumstance when he succeeded penetrating inside the mind of a human was when he went close to someone silently, blocking his attention. He did it this way with a stranger from the Imperial Court. He was so scared when he saw Aloim from behind! He knew that Rim’s mind had been dominated for a short time by the vision of his own death.

He knocked at the gates of the Abbey in a moment of confusion, when he had to kill because his family was about to offer him to a horde of barbarians in exchange for freedom. He had run for a few nights, and he had known that, probably, if the Augustinian monks hadn’t accepted him, he would have died. And the Abbey wouldn’t have become his home without the feeling of irresistible attraction he felt at the Abbot when he had first met him. Mingled with the disgust for women and with the desperation of his running away across the field, that feeling changed him into the convinced homosexual he was at that moment.

At the beginning, the Abbot had endured the phrases with stoicism through which he reproached that he wanted him. He had told him that the Augustinian doctrine neither disavowed homosexuality nor preached the chastity. He told him that his feelings were a God’s himself work. Aloim knew that the Abbey didn’t see him only as a lover but also as a powerful ally for the complicated work of leading the twelve thousands of monks which formed the Augustinian order. He often appealed to his services of strong empathy, offering in exchange all that he had ever wanted: a life only for studying the emotions of those around him. But however, why didn’t he use his powers over the Abbot to accelerate ascension in the monastery hierarchy? He couldn’t give a straight answer, not even for himself. He couldn’t, because the gratitude started to not be a sufficient motivation.

“What are you thinking about Aloim? Do you by chance think about a young clone or maybe worse, about some of those women that came yesterday to work in our laundries?”

“Rade, Rade! To whom are these words useful? You know that I can’t even think that I could belong to someone else... And lately, your mind has been darker and darker. You try to hide your thoughts, and this scares me”.

The Abbot sat on the bed in his turn, making the boards squeak.

“I am afraid, Aloim...”

“I know that. I would be calmer if you could tell me what you are afraid of? What could be so terrible that scares you beyond words? You haven’t met your infinity before your God, have you?”

The Abbot smoothed his long beard, fixing his looks with the joint of two floorboards.

“I was weak in front of you Aloim. You should have received the consecration only after you passed a more rigorous theological exam. Then, you could have understood me. But this way…sometimes I curse myself for not having the power to whip you for heresy. You are not at all a faithful man!”

Aloim laughed.

“Rade, we have had this conversation for thousands of times! Why should I be faithful since you don’t even seem to be among those who still appreciate indeed these weird things about saints and gods? You know as well as I do that you are the leader of the biggest business in the entire universe, which started in the past hiding behind a religious mask, but which doesn’t fit it today, and it is only a shield against the indiscreet eyes. The recruiting system of the brothers is shaking...”

“What do you mean?”

“You accepted Rim...”

“I had to! The Emperor...”

“But what about accepting me?! These things aren’t as severe as before, and you don’t have to be a priest, skilful in dogmas, to realize this. It is enough to look at how the bas-relieves and the paintings on the stained-glass windows have changed during the last two hundred years to understand that our brothers are not at all so religious. And I know these things very well; I don’t have to deduce them. So I ask you then, what for?”

The Abbot looked at the floor during the Aloim’s entire harangue.

“Sometimes a single conscience that is truly religious is enough to spread the real light over the world “.

Aloim put a hand on his old friend’s shoulder.

“It is so! But I think you should be that conscience. Aren’t you a bit too scared to make me believe that the things are going exactly as the New Saint Augustine planed?”

The Abbot knew that Aloim was right and wished to share with someone the burden he had inherited from his fifty-nine forerunners. The young man in front of him wasn’t fit at all for something so painful and, for a moment, he even thought that Rim, who was sent by the Emperor, rudimentary and violent as he was, could be the best person to advise him. He quickly threw away this thought.

“I am afraid of the end, Aloim”, said the Abbot suddenly, surprising his young lover. I am afraid of us getting too close to Armageddon, the battle in which we will have to fight for our Lord”.

Aloim jumped on his feet and started to gesticulate.

“No! Don’t tell me again this stupidity about the fate of every society to transcend its own history to save God! I have never understood this thing, and I have given up trying.”

“You didn’t want to listen...”

“I did listen many times, and I still don’t understand! I can recite to you from First Book if you want me to, verses in which the New Saint Augustine receives the illumination of the way in which he has to develop the thinking of Saint Augustine from Hippo!”

“ And what do those verses say?” the Abbot asked feebly.

“That the battle of the end of the world will take place when Christ will go down to Earth for the second time to beat the Anti Christ and lead humanity to a golden age”.

“Yes, but what could generate all this war?”

“Well, this is the point where I don’t understand! How can God touch his own infinity? How can He be everywhere at the same time and meet someone or something inside of which he isn’t?”

Aloim has his eyes in chains. He is the slave of his gift, and this is why he can’t see. Forgive him God!

The Abbot smiled and made a gesture of reconciliation. In fact, Aloim shouldn’t have been initiated in this last and crucial secret, reserved for the Abbots. The Abbot himself had demonstrated to his forerunner that he understood well when God would have reached his infinity and only after that he was designated as successor to the Abbot. Confirmations of his intuitions gathered by generations of initiated monks had been merely fabulous. He still used to go with a kind of childish fear to the huge library, the place of his first revelations as an Abbot.

It was strange how all the fellows and novices thought that the essence of the Abbey’s secrets was focused around the Alembic of Gods and around its functioning, neglecting the histories. Across the times, the Abbots had to act with extreme determination against some fellows who had been too curious. Although death was the punishment for spying the building where the Alembic was, had always come up with a group of fellows to try to find out more then they should have known. The library was never attacked. After the last incident, the Abbot looked in the archives and saw that the number of the accidents of that kind was increasing. And that thing was a sign that the secular bases of the Abbey were collapsing slowly but surely before he could decide about the things he had to do.

Radoslav had always felt a special character. Named as an Abbot almost didn’t surprise him. But leading the Gods’ armies in Armageddon was a mission in front of which even his faith was shaking as a leaf against the wind.

“My only concern Aloim is that you shouldn’t say such words in other circumstances than those in which we share the same cell”.

“Do not worry Rade!”

“I would like the things to be as you say. But the signs are obvious, and I am afraid that I will deceive the trust that our Lord seemed to invest in me...”

Aloim made two quick steps and took the Abbot’s face in his fine palms:

“What are you afraid of Rade? Let me help you!”

The Abbot gently removed his hands and said feebly:

“Things have happened lately, that prove to me that history changes, and that moment is about to come when the last goal of the Abbey will be realized.”

“And what is this purpose?”

“Nobody can tell you that, Aloim. You have to understand by yourself. Any other path you take, the image you see might not be the real one”.

“You talk nonsense...”

“This can be possible. I am tired. The news today hasn’t been too happy.”

Aloim looked out of the narrowed and latticed window with a view beyond the Abbey. It was dark, and the sky was serene. He was one of those that had brought bad news to the Abbot. That morning he had remained for a few hours in front of the main gate of the Clone Village. He took advantage of the visit of a cantor monk who had recited verses from the second Book, using the amplifying device from the tower. As usual, the clones had gathered, curious to listen what the ones they considered their saviors had to say.

Stin wasn’t among them and because of that Aloim had tried to inquire about the others. There were moments in which he had had to go away so that the wave of fury that had come from the village would not hurt him physically. The clones were obviously furious; there was an instigator among them. The absence of Stin made him suggest that he was the one who instigated the spirits against the penitentiary regime imposed by the monks. Although he couldn’t completely be sure, he told the Abbot his premonitions. He had obtained a vague answer and at that moment he hesitated, continuing the discussion.

He decided he didn’t have too much to lose.

“Why do you think that Stin can’t be the instigator from the Clone Village? Even you told me that he is a special individual, to whom I should draw my attention”.

The Abbot made an annoyed grimace

“I assure you that Stin is on the other side of the barricade. More than that, he will try to find and eliminate the instigator. If there is one...”

“But how can you be so sure?”

“If I explained to you such things, I should refer to a kind of faith you don’t have.”

“Let’s try anyway!”

“You know well that I can’t tell you too much...”

“ One day, this lack of trust will upset me and then I will...”

“You do nothing but understand that I keep some secrets just to protect you. I wouldn’t like you to hang again above an ebullient boiler!”

The Abbot’s words rolled noisily, like a tin can thrown to the floor. Aloim felt a determination in them against which he had learned it wasn’t good to fight. The last confrontation had ended in a month of detention and severe fast inside the hidden cells from under the Library. He still had scars because of the rat’s bites.

“Don’t be offended, Rade! You know well, that my questions have no other purpose but to relieve you from the burden..”

Sometimes I have the feeling that he can also read thoughts not only feelings. Or maybe I am helpless indeed...

Like always, when he wanted to hide the real nature of things, the Abbot referred to an example.

“Aloim! Have you ever wondered where the thinking of Saint Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, meets that of our Abbey founder?”

The young man raised his shoulders.

“You know well that I leave the delight of such theological laces to the most educated people”.

“Well, from the multitude of things that should be said, I remind you the one which should please you, that it is in fact a big secret.”

To the Abbot’s great surprise, the thrill of delight that Aloim felt was very obvious.

Oh, Lord do you test me through this boy?”

Pretending to not have seen a thing, the Abbot went on amused, knowing that Aloim wouldn’t understand too many things anyway.

“What would you say if the Lord knew before which of the souls that arrived on the Earth are fated to redemption?”

Aloim let out a short laugh:

“I would say that being God is very boring!”

“This is an observation which subtlety doesn’t decrease its blasphemous nature. You know that I don’t like you speaking this way!”

“ Forgive me Rade, but I just couldn’t help myself. Now, I am listening to you.”

“Saint Augustine from Hippo thought that God knew before whether we would be saved and which would be the destiny of our soul. Let’s say that, because of reasons I can’t reveal to you, I know that Stin is about to have an exemplary destiny, which should change him into the saint we need for seeding an Agrarian World.”

“This means that you are in a way the God of the Clone Village?”

“Yes. The practical art of creating divinity is our strongest weapon; the pillar that sustains what the Abbey have become.

The Abbot knew that in that point of the discussion, a more intelligent spirit, that of Aloim’s, could reconstitute the most intimate supports of the Abbey’s functioning. But he was calm because he knew the young man well.

“I don’t understand, Rade. You gave me books in which I had read that a leader can get a lot of divine powers over his subjects. The pharaohs from old Egypt were the first who discovered...”

“Yes. But always there is the appliance of the coarse force to control the subjects.’ Life hasn’t arrived anywhere”.

“And is the lie better? The poor clones think they are sick, and this is why they mustn’t leave the village!”

“It is not a lie Aloim. It is an illusion, a divine border meant to make us fulfill our goals...”

Aloim made a ambiguous sign with his hand. Finally, he had to admit to himself that he didn’t care too much about the clones from the village and that the last years had been the best of his entire life. They had been the best years even because of the fact that he had almost forgotten how it was to be hungry. It was useless to upset the Abbot. But he couldn’t help asking:

“However, I don’t understand... If you can’t walk beside God’s path, how will you make the village work as the Augustine bishop, the Christian, foresaw? You have described to me a mechanism without a point of support! “

“Faith, Aloim! Unshakeable faith, that the free will is just an appearance of freedom. I, the God of the Clone Village, believe in Stin. And in this way he is meant to become what I destined him to become ”, the Abbot said quickly, trying hard to repress a feeling of fear about which he knew could be quickly interpreted by Aloim.

“And, you won’t make God angry by taking his place?”

“No. Because, on the one hand I don’t work with human souls but with the copies of some souls which disappeared and because the New Saint Augustine solved this dilemma long time ago. If our redemption doesn’t depend on what we are doing during our life, it means we are free to do anything our common sense makes us to do; inclusively being God for the inferior creatures”.

Aloim looked the Abbot in the eyes without trying to mask the clear intention to find out what he felt.

“It is not true! This is one of your tricks, one of the Abbots’ tricks. I can feel it! You tricked me, although I can’t figure it out now”.

“I knew we would reach here! I have told you from the beginning that my argument appeals the faith, and you will not understand”.

“The hell I won’t! It merely doesn’t work! There must be something else about Stin that makes him so special that you should know from the beginning he would have a special destiny. The fact that he is a clone and you believe in his destiny can’t be enough!”

My God, the signs you give are more and more obvious! Give me strength and help me so that my love for Aloim shouldn’t blind me when the moment to send him to you will come!

 

 

6.

 

“Sire, your request puts me in the situation of improvising and taking the decision based on other criteria rather than the logical ones. First of all, I warn you that, even though the events turn as Your Highness has foreseen, it will be impossible for us to ignore the role of fortune and hazard in their development. My advice is that you should try to avoid the confrontation with Your father, especially that, as an observer delegate of planet Z, I have to remind you that our action could be ruined by many aspects, which, for now are not clear to us. From all of these, two things should be mentioned to you, to decide if you should take them into account in Your Highness’ judgment. The first one refers to the absence of any guarantee that the viruses, which we will succeed to produce will have an effect on the short term and that we will be able to replace the clones from the Agrarian Worlds with zets. As in every field that operates with an unknown scientific innovation, my attempt to learn the Augustinian art of genetic manipulation might not be successful, despite the fact that, as you know, I try to do my best”.

Rim stopped dictating. The monks had taken his communication console, and he had to use a code established with psi operators from the beacon-planet, Kyrall. The Emperor was too busy for a dialogue.

The Zets could represent the optimum solution for replacement of clone populations provided by the Abbey. But Rim doubted that such a huge mission could be accomplished only during a lifetime. When Bella VII had sent him to observe the Z world, he had tried to avoid this. The complicated situation on Sagitarius and the war from the Centauri district could have caused arguments at any time, for which he could have asked the Emperor not to separate one of his five quints. The real reason was in fact the cureless disease of Rajji, the master from whom he had learned everything a quint should know during the tough years of apprenticeship. But his master was the one who pushed him to go, finding out what it was about. He had listened to the order, and Rajji had died while he was away, studying the alien race. The separation from him was the most vivid memory of Rim’s entire life. He had recalled it hundreds of times, while he had wandered alone in the vast fields from Z.

Zets... The creatures seemed to not pay any attention to him after the first attempt to capture him, which had as consequence a few dead among the workers. They were concerned about their own business and from this point of view Rim had to admit he was impressed: they always had something to do and their achievements were at the level of their diligence, although their purpose and utility had been obscure from his human logic many times.

He had wandered almost five days in an improvised craft across a system of channels meant to irrigate a huge surface where the zets cultivated an oily plant from which, in a beehive, they extracted a kind of essence which they enjoyed eating.

The gigantic dimensions of irrigation works were left behind anyway by the greatness of the barrage, which the zets succeeded in embanking a large river, creating a lake of a few million square kilometres. They were excellent workers and only after an attentive observation, one could realize that the six-foot creatures were neither intelligent nor were they fully and totally independent.

For a whole week, Vassur, with his slider, had been around some truly gigantic edifices and two kilometres tall towers without any apparent usefulness. The buildings seemed to have been abandoned, but the engineers who had made them had no equals from the whole Empire. Their resistant structure seemed to consist of fittings entwined with a strange knowledge, in a ternary logic, which he hadn’t met anywhere else.

He had hardly landed on the terrace of the highest tower when he realized that the mountain mass at his right wasn’t natural but a huge pyramid frustum, a kind of unfinished attempt to reconstitute the pyramids of ancient Egypt. On the perfectly flat surface, which covered the construction, Rim also discovered some of strangest signs. Some of them were obviously pictograms meant for some visitors from the sky, but hundreds of hectares were crowded with groups of two or three lines, in a strange alphabet, which the computers of his spaceship couldn’t decipher.

For a human being, what the zets created seemed as strange as their look. They were big creatures having the size of an earthly elephant or rather of an aggran from Sagittarius. The biggest specimens weighed over ten old tones and with all these, they were showing an ability and skilfulness that was surprising for some animals with such a large size.

Zets had six limbs all equipped with a very efficient grabbing system, which was different from a leg to another. One of the limbs, obviously smaller, seemed to be endowed with a special sensibility. Most of the zets covered it with a dried fibre knitting, and Rim had noticed that they used the limb when they need precision. The zets could use two, three or even four members simultaneously in some of most complex works and when they rested, they leant on only two legs, usually on those next to the head area.

On Z, everything had ternary symmetry. Three apparent sexes, three pairs of limbs each of them with three receptors for the light, sound vibrations and smell, oriented to three directions of space... First reports of xenobiologists, launched the hypothesis according to which this three-dimensional conception prevented the zets from forming an available cosmology for themselves and they accepted the idea that one could go infinitely in one direction, without having to move the other two. For the moment, it was the only explanation for their lack of interest in flying and spatial travel. It was a very fragile hypothesis, as long as no one ever had the chance to see the queen and to try to contact her. She was the real deposit of the zets’ intelligence.

Rim needed more than three weeks to see the entrance in first hive.

It was hard for one to believe that some creatures that looked more like an earthly elephant could have so many similarities with the insects. With all these, the reports made by xenobiologists, decades ago, when Z had been visited for the first time, pointed out that the workers, although they had a very well developed nervous system. They were incapable of any lucrative initiative. But they were coordinated in their activity of realizing the huge work of populating on Z, through successive infections with viruses that seemed to carry information with them of what they had to build or do. The commands were given by the queen, a creature, who Vassur hadn’t succeeded in seeing, because he was opposed furiously his attempt to enter into a huge building, where he suspected that the central part of the hive and the queen were. Rim gave up after he had had to retreat inside the slider and use the heavy armament assembled on the body fitting to get rid of those who had surrounded him. More than thirty zets had died then.

The memories on Z were not only about the violence and the isolation imposed by the fact that the planet had to be investigated in secret. One day he found a wide field, full of huge sculptures. There were all kinds of representations, but most of the sculptures represented a heavy and fatty creature, and Rim realized immediately that she was the queen.

After a few weeks, he found a huge bas-relief, which presented the fighting between two queens, assisted by a great number of workers who seemed to not participate in the confrontation. These two discoveries had made him more curious to see the queens but none of his stratagems had brought him inside of one of the buildings. He could have easily killed an entire family and then look for the queen, but he had been afraid to interfere so brutally. He had left with the sensation that no matter how fit the zets were to substitute the Abbey’ clones on the field of the Agrarian World, this action was too risky to be accomplished unless a contact with a queen had been established. But Bella VII had another opinion and had sent him inside the Abbey to study the way in which the viruses could have been manipulated, and he had remembered him he was in the military and had to obey orders. The Emperor hoped to learn how to create complex viruses, like the ones emitted by the queen, in order to infect the zet workers to make them grow crops.

“The second element that is worth your attention is my temporary precarious position inside the Abbey. For the moment, I haven’t even succeeded to be received in the garrison building, although, formally, I am one of the soldier fellows. When I asked them, the Augustinian monks said something about a kind of initiation ritual, which is not the battle I had at my acceptance as a novice. But it seems that, after the representation I gave on the battlefield, none of them wishes to initiate that ritual. I intend to complaint to the Abbot tomorrow. My immediate aim is the night guard, who will allow me to research that community of clones about which I think will represent the beginning but also the end of my investigations.