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Several assured him that they did.
“And will you,” Incus pursued his advantage, “permit us to proceed upon our sacred errand once you have heard them?”
Linsang’s troopers nodded. They were in their teens, and identifiable as troopers only by their slug guns and bandoliers.
Linsang objected. “I need to get it from this soldier, first. Hammerstone? Is that your name, Corporal?”
“Present and accounted for.” Hammerstone’s own slug gun was pointed at the skylands, its butt on his hip.
“Are you for the Ayuntamiento or the calde?”
“The calde, Sergeant.”
“How do you feel about the Ayuntamiento?”
“If the calde or Patera here said not to shoot them, I wouldn’t do it. If it’s up to me, they’re dead meat.”
One of the troopers ventured, “A soldier killed Councillor Potto. That’s what we heard.”
Hammerstone gri
“All right.” Linsang grounded his slug gun. “You can go on to the Prolocutor’s Palace, Patera. Them, too. Only tell us what Pas had to say.”
“I fear not.” Incus shook his head. “You would not accept my sacred word, my son, but insisted that Hammerstone speak for himself. As it chanced, though nothing is mere chance to the immortal gods, but a moment previously he had declared that he comprehends the god’s entire message, while my other companion, Auk, wished a fuller exposition.”
Incus turned to the prophet in question. “Is that not so, Auk? Am I not correct?”
“You got it, Patera. Maybe I’m dumb. There’s not many that said so where I could hear ’em, but maybe I am. Only this is important, and some was about me. I got to be sure I got it straight, so I can do what he wants me to.”
“Would that such stupidity as yours were more widespread. The Chrasmologic Writings assert that the wisdom of the immortal gods is but folly in the ears of mortal men. Persevere in your stupidity, and you will be welcomed to Mainframe.” Incus nodded to the big soldier. “Tell us, Hammerstone, my son, and do not fear that you may blunder or omit a sacred injunction. I shall amend any such i
“I can’t do it as good as you, Patera, but I’ll give it my best shot. Let me get my thinking works going.” For eight or ten seconds, Hammerstone was as immobile as a statue.
“All right, I got it. It was when that bio was bringing up the pig. First the colors came on, right? Then his face. He started off by blessing everybody and said that everybody that was there ’cause they came with Auk — that was everybody but you, Patera — he blessed twice, once for coming and once for following Auk. Have I got that right?”
Incus nodded. “Admirable, Hammerstone, my son.”
“Then he said he was giving us this theophany ’cause his son told him what was coming down in the manteion we were at, only he didn’t say which son it was.”
“Terrible Tartaros,” Auk assured him.
Incus raised an admonitory finger. “He did not so state.”
“Maybe not, but I’d just been talking to him. That’s who it had to be.”
“He said his son’d given Auk his orders, and they were the right ones. He and his son were going to see to it everybody got the word. We’d been thinking about his Plan like it was way off, when it was already time to move out…”
“Continue, my son.”
“I’m sorry, Patera. That’s when he started talking about me, and I get kind of choked up. It was the greatest moment of my life, right? I mean, if I was to make sergeant or anything like that I’d feel pretty good. But this was Pas. I got his drift and later you explained, and it was like I’d been feeling it was, just exactly. Hearing you say it was just about like I was hearing it all over again from him. I’m thinking there’s a war, and all the good people’s on his side. That’s this son—”
“Terrible Tartaros,” Auk put in.
“And the calde and Auk and naturally you are, Patera… And it’s the side I’m on, too. He said how Auk got hurt when he was underground with us and how hard he’d been working for his Plan, and he was sending somebody from Mainframe to help him out.”
“From the Pole, Corporal. That is the term which the god himself preferred to employ. That Mainframe is at the Pole, I freely concede.”
Auk edged nearer. “To help me out? I’m the cull?”
“Yeah, you’re the one, only I’m supposed to help too. He said he was going to decorate you for what you’ve done soon as you do what he wants you to next. Only here’s where Patera said something I got to say too, so it’ll make sense to these other bios. Pas is us chems’ god. He’s the god of all the digital, nuclear-chemical stuff. You got to buy that if you want to see where Pas’s coming from. Isn’t that right, Patera?”
Incus nodded solemnly.
“’Cause Pas told us what Auk’s decoration’s going to be. Anytime he sees anything like me, he’s going to understand it straight off. How it goes together and what it’s supposed to do, and how. Pas means to stick all the data into Auk, ’cause he’ll need it to carry out the Plan.”
Linsang and his troopers stared at Auk openmouthed. Auk endeavored to appear humble.
“That was when he gave me my direct order, and it wasn’t just ’cause I happened to be around. I never thought anything like this would happen to me. I asked Patera about it back at the manteion, and he says if I hadn’t been the one Pas wanted, I wouldn’t have been there, it would’ve been some other tinpot. But it wasn’t. I’m the one. Patera says it was probably ’cause him and me are, you know, like brothers only closer, and he’s a holy augur, and as soon as he said it I knew it was right.
“Pas needs a soldier, so which one? There’s thousands. Why, the augur’s friend, doesn’t that make sense? The friend of the augur Scylla picked to be the new Prolocutor, that’s the one you need. A god don’t have to think about stuff like that, he just knows. He said, talking to me, Auk might have a little trouble at first. You stick with him and help him over the tough spots. You’re a mechanism, help him out and he’ll help you. So here we are, Patera and me both, and we’re trying to help.”
Linsang asked Incus, “Was that all, Patera?”
“All? I should say it was more than enough, my son. But no. It was not. Let us have the remainder, Hammerstone.”
“He said that a while back, forty years, he said, he knew he was going to die—”
“To die?” Linsang was incredulous.
“That’s what he said. He saw it coming, so he sort of took off little pieces of himself and hid them in various bios where they wouldn’t be found. Then he died, and he’s been dead for quite a while.”
Incus cleared his throat. “All of you, and I, similarly, must comprehend the dificulties under which a god seeking to communicate with human kind labors. He can but speak to us in words mere mortals apprehend. Thus by die, the Father of the Gods indicated his own renewal. That noblest of trees, the goldenshower, is sacred to Great Pas. You ca
Linsang and several of his troopers nodded.
“Suppose that a forest of goldenshowers could speak to us. Would it not say, ‘That I, the sacred forest, may remain young and strong, my aged trees must fall, though they have endured for centuries. Let young trees spring up in their places. I, the forest, endure.’ Hammerstone?”
“I’m on it, Patera. He said now when his Plan’s starting to move, he’s putting himself back together. He said right now he was his own ghost, Pas’s ghost, but with more of his pieces getting found, he’ll be Pas again. He wants us to help. Auk in particular, but everybody’s supposed to pitch in. We got to find this one particular bio, Patera Jerboa, ’cause he’s got the piece for Viron. There was maybe five or six hundred bios in the manteion, but after Patera’d explained the whole thing to them, there wasn’t one that knew who this Patera Jerboa was or where we could maybe find him.