Страница 25 из 90
The acolytes cowered together in a knot behind me, probably because I'm the biggest, even among the Deaks. I stood just behind the Reverend Castell, trying to glare like him at the people hemming us in, hoping that I might intimidate them into leaving us to our peace.
Insults flew then. They called us Holy Joes and made jest of the harm part of harmony. They denounced our pacifism, mislabeling it apathy and inertia. "You've done nothing to help us, and you've given us nothing but a hard time when we try to enjoy ourselves," they said, in effect. "You Harmonies control things and get first pick of provisions, and then you put us down for taking the little we need to live on, calling it theft instead of simple."
"Peace is ours to offer," Castell answered. "Those activities you label enjoyments are but forms of disharmony. Can you not see the harm you do each other when you intoxicate yourselves and wrestle in lust without regard to increasing humanity? And as for-"
In the back of my mind I knew it was the wrong tack. This crowd needed no sermons on moderation. "Reverend, I see a group of CD Marines across the street, watching. Perhaps if we appealed-"
He interrupted me and commanded the acolytes to begin a song, and so we sang. The crowd, laughing and jostling us, tried to shout us down, but our combined voices cut through the hubbub with chromatic purity.
Even as I sang my gaze sought routes of escape. My heart thudded, and my palms were slick with sweat. And yet, as we sang, the mob began quieting, to listen. Reverend Castell's old magic almost appeared again. For a few seconds we serenaded our tormentors, and that's when Castell, giving us a sign to proceed, shouted, "Acknowledge, then, how the harmony of organized singing defeats the scattered cacophony of lone voices crying in this wilderness of pain."
I doubt if a third of the crowd understood more than half his words, although they rode the crest of our harmonics to echo throughout that section of Castell City.
"You like peace?" someone yelled. "Then maybe you'll like being in pieces." Guffaws erupted at the pitiable jest, like stubborn donkeys braying in self-defeating frustration. It was like being back on the freighter, in transport to Haven, except far worse without the need to hide violence done upon us from the eyes of ship's officers.
A man almost as tall as I, belly flopping, dashed toward Reverend Castell and swung a fist.
The reverend collapsed, clutching his throat.
Stepping over and in, I raised my hands, but the man kicked the fallen man. The kick struck with such force that I felt the impact through the air.
Glancing down, I noticed that the attacker wore miner's boots, which are heavy and often steel-toed. Reverend Castell moaned.
Around us, the crowd laughed and waited.
Kneeling, I helped Reverend Castell to his feet. He stood bent over, clutching his kicked ribs.
That's when the attacker leaned in to deliver a head-butt to Castell's face, which spurted blood and snapped nasal cartilage.
Red tinted my vision, but from within.
Reaching out, I grasped the man's throat and squeezed, trying to crush his larynx even as I twisted my left arm around to snag his rig it ear.
Part of the ear tore off.
As he croaked and coughed I let him bend over, then slammed the heel of my right hand up into his lower jaw.
Teeth shattered. White shards flecked with red spewed from him as he toppled.
Another man came at me, and I whirled away from him, timing it so my elbow would take him in the throat. I missed, but co
He fell as if poleaxed.
I panted now as hard as any human can, sucking in air by the hectare as I sought to control my rage. I kept seeing glimpses of the Rockies, and fragments of my fights at the orphanage. Harmony eluded me. My vision remained tainted by my own unspilled blood.
The crowd of bullies backed away from us now. Some laughed nervously, while others kept up their verbal abuse even as they retreated to their bars and brothels. A few Beads, dressed in rags, kicked and thumped, but their efforts were drowned out by sheer numbers.
When a hand came down upon my left shoulder from behind, I turned to meet that attack as well. My fist flashed upwards.
It stopped millimeters from Reverend Castell's face.
He glared at me as I dropped my arm, but the stare held no terrors for me just then. "How dare you?" he said, voice cracked and whispery from the punch he'd taken. A bruise darkened his throat where his robe hung torn.
"They hurt you," I said.
His face contorted. "You'd so easily discard our precepts. For what? My corporeal safety? It means nothing if my spirit's in discord."
Hanging my head, I begged forgiveness.
Reverend Castell's voice dropped an octave, from baritone to basso profound. "You are no longer attuned to Universal Harmony. Your warlike talk belies cacophonous thinking."
"I strayed," I said, crying. "I lost the melody and wandered, but I'm-"
"Silence. Our hands carry peace, which is ours to offer. Your hands dropped that fragile vessel. You shattered peace, and for what? So your hands could be raised to harm another? Your song has ended."
Nausea swept me to my knees, and after gagging I said, through tears, "Please Reverend." My forehead came down to rest atop his feet, which were bare and cold. Mud smeared my face.
His feet pulled back, and I glanced up. He cried, "This lone voice knows our song, and asks to rejoin our chorus of Harmony. His shouts, although disruptive of our melodies, flew from a good heart and noble intentions. His sour notes are absolved." And, after tossing back his head and laughing loudly, he clapped thrice, then reached down to help me to my feet.
Even as I stood and looked into his eyes I wondered if Reverend Castell had pla
From then on, goading violence from a pacifist would be like poking an overinflated balloon. And the crowd had seen me forgiven, absolved. That meant even lapses of pacifism might be condoned. We'd become unpredictable. Along with the buffer provided by the Beadles, such a reputation went far toward ensuring that we Harmonies would at least have a chance.
I followed Reverend Castell to Havenhold Lake, where we greeted uninvited guests who had come bearing gifts.
Maxwell Cole waited patiently while Marshall Wainright, Assistant to the Director of the CoDominium Bureau of Intelligence, studied his viewscreen. The holo-wall mural displayed a forest scene out of the Pacific Northwest instead of the stark lunar landscape outside. As Cole watched a squirrel run up a large conifer, he mused that he and the squirrel had a lot in common; they were both trying to set something aside for the coming winter.
Cole was a short timer, only three more years and he could put in for retirement. After twenty-seven years in the intelligence service, ten of them with the Navy, he was used up, tired of sticking his fingers in numerous holes in the CDs ever-leaking dyke. Let the younger operatives save the peace; his time was just about up.
Or was it? he wondered, as Assistant Secretary Wainright discreetly coughed.
"Agent Cole, we have a situation developing on an outer world called Haven-a misnomer if there ever was one. It's a newly colonized world by some sect that calls itself the Universal Church of New Harmony. You've read the files."
Cole nodded. The anxiety that had begun to gnaw at his lower stomach, ever since he'd been sent that file, began to grow. Haven, an almost lifeless iceball of a moon, was all the way at the outer edge of the envelope of CD explored space-four Alderson Jumps away from the nearest habitable world. Haven was certainly, this close to retirement, no place he ever wanted to visit.