Cold Copper Tears

It occurred to me that Bess was barely three months older than Maya. Dean had no trouble picturing Bess married to me.

People seldom see any need to be consistent.

The key word there, though—of course—is "mar­ried."

I said, "Let's forget it. Maya. Tell me what you learned while those people had you." I went to work eating.

Maya sat down. Bess started on her hair again. "There isn't much to tell. They didn't try to entertain or convert me."

"You always pick up more than you think, Maya. Try."

She said, "All right. I got the bright idea I could show you something if I followed those guys. All I showed you was a fat chance to tell me you told me so."

"I told you so."

"Smartass. They grabbed me and dragged me off and kept me in a place they used for a temple. A weird, grungy place they'd made over by painting the walls with ugly pictures."

"I saw it."

"I sat through their religious services. Three times a day I sat through them. Those guys don't do any­thing but work and eat and pray for the end of the world. I think. Mostly they didn't use Karentine in their services."

"They sound like a fun bunch."

Maya snatched a buttered muffin off my plate and smiled brightly. She was moving right in. "Get used to it, Garrett. Yeah. They were fun. Like an abscessed tooth."

I chewed sausage and waited.

"They're really negative, Garrett. In the Doom I know people who are negative, but those guys could give lessons. I mean it. They were praying for the end of the world."

"You're telling me things I didn't know. Keep go­ing."

That was praise enough to light her up. It takes so little sometimes. I had a feeling she'd turn out all right, given encouragement. "Tell me more."

She said, "They call themselves the Sons of Hammon. I think Hammon must have been some kind of prophet, about the same time as Terrell."

Dean said, "He was one of Terrell's original six Companions. And the first to desert him. A bitter part­ing over a woman."

I looked at him in surprise.

He continued, "Later dogma says Hammon betrayed Terrell's hiding place to the Emperor Cedric—if you find him mentioned at all. But in the Apocrypha, written that same century and kept intact in secret since, it's the other way around and Hammon died two years before Terrell was turned in by his own wife. Known to us as Saint Medwa."

"What?" I gave the old man the long look now. He'd never shown much interest in religion or its spe­cial folklore. "What is this? Where'd you get all this? When did you become an expert? I've never heard of this Hammon character and my mother dragged me to church until I was ten."

"Council of Ai, Mr. Garrett. Five Twenty-One, Im­perial Age. Two hundred years before the Great Schism. All the bishops and presters and preators at­tended, along with a host of imperial delegates. In those days every diocese spawned its own heresy. And every heretic was a fanatic. The emperor wanted to end a century of fighting. In Five Eighteen in Costain, in one day of rioting, forty-eight thousand had been killed. The emperor was a confirmed Terrillite and he had the swords. He ordered the Council to expunge the memory of Hammon, so the proto-Church and Or­thodox sects wrote him out of their histories. I know because my father taught me. He was a Cynic semi­narian for three years and a lay deacon all his life."

You never know everything about somebody, do you?

You can't argue with an expert. Besides, the "facts" I'd been taught had never made sense. The histories of Terreh's time, outside the religious community, didn't jibe with what the priests wanted us to believe.

We had been told that Terrell had been martyred for his witnessing to the masses. But the way the secular histories go, the religion business was wide open in those days. Every street corner in the cities and every hamlet in the country had its prophet. They could rave all they wanted. Moreover, Terrell had been a prophet of Hano, who had had more followers then than he does now.

"Then why did Cedric kill him?"

"Because he started in on the imperial household and establishment. He got political. And he didn't have sense enough to shut his mouth when they told him to stick to putting words into the mouth of Hano, who can look out for himself.''

I always figured that. Why would Hano need hench­men down here to knock the heads of unbelievers when he's the Great Head-knocker himself? "So who are these Sons of Hammon?"

"I don't know. I've never heard of them."

Maya said, "They're devil-worshippers, Garrett. They won't even speak their god's name. They just call him the Devastator and beg him to bring on the end of the world."

"Crazies."

"He answers them, Garrett." She started shaking. "That was the bad part. I heard him. Inside my head. He promises them the end of the world before the turn of the century if they carry out his commands faith­fully. Many will die in the struggle but the martyrs will be rewarded. They will be drawn to his bosom in peace and ecstasy forever."