“Thou shall not revere the Awakeners,” says Peasimy. “Thou shall not walk in darkness.”
“What does he mean?” a rugged, doubtful man grumbles lo one of the followers. “What does he mean about walking in darkness?”
“It’s symbolic,” whispers the follower. “At night, when the lanterns are lit, you must walk in the patches of light as though splashing them into the darkness. It’s symbolic of the Light Bearer.”
“What the hell good does it do?” the doubter persists.
“It’s pious,” snarls the other. “The Light Bearer does it. To concentrate her mind on the truth.” So Peasimy has said, and they have had no reason to doubt him. Perhaps. Or maybe what Peasimy said was that the Bearer of Truth had been found in that way. The follower can’t remember. It doesn’t matter.
“Oh.” The other subsides, twitching. None of this sounds like good sense to him, and he wonders what all the fuss has been about.
“Thou shall love the Protector of Man with all thy heart,” Peasimy shouts. “Thou shall keep him safe from lies.”
“That’s what the Light Bearer is going to the Chancery for,” the follower instructs. “To advise Lees Obol of the lies which are done in his name.” The doubter grunts, unconvinced, though in this case the follower has quoted correctly.
“Thou shall give generously to the followers of truth, in order that the world may be enlightened,” Peasimy goes on, ticking the commandments off on his fingers. Sometimes he remembers ten, sometimes more than that. Tonight the crowd is restive, he will only give them ten. “Thou shall not withhold food from those on crusade.” He is hungry, very tired, and his throat is sore from all the shouting. Tomorrow they will go on to a new town, and his voice can rest. He takes a deep breath. “Thou shall not make fuk-fuk.”
An embarrassed titter runs through the Temple, a break of laughter, like light coming suddenly through clouds to astonish those beneath with a benison of gold. “What the hell?” the doubter growls, doubled with laughter. “Baby talk. What the hell!”
“The Mother of Truth commands it,” the follower says through gritted teeth, embarrassed himself by the word Peasimy always uses and weary of having to explain it. “If you want to be really Sorted Out, you don’t do that.”
“Well, if we didn’t do that, there wouldn’t be any of us to be Sorted Out.” The man laughs in genuine amusement. “Where the hell does he think babies come from, pamet pods?”
In which he is closer than he knows to Peasimy’s true belief. The widow Plot had never found it necessary to tell Peasimy other than the pleasant myths of childhood, and Peasimy, who has discovered the facts beneath other myths by following and spying through windows, has never found the facts of this one. He has never seen a baby born. He would not believe the connection between that and the other were he told. Pamra Don, Mother of Truth, has said the strange, frightening act he has so often observed through windows at night is a mistake. It is therefore a perversion. A darkness.
The follower, elderly enough to have forgotten the urgencies of passion and much puffed up by his new position as expositor of truth, defends the revealed word. “There’s a lot more fucking going on than necessary for babies. That’s what the Light Bearer means. The Mother of Truth says we don’t do it, so we don’t do it. Not and be a follower of hers.”
The questioner laughs himself out of the Temple, his healthily libidinous nature rejecting all of it. But in the vast echoing hall, there are others to whom the ideal of abstinence appeals. There are disenchanted wives who can do well without a duty that seems to consist mostly of discomfort, grunting, and sweat. There are husbands who consider it an onerous and sometimes almost impossible performance which seems to be demanded—in pursuance of the procreation laws—too frequently and at inconvenient times. There are young ones, drawn to a life of holiness like moths to a flame, easily willing to give up something they know nothing of. There are spinsters being forced into marriage or pregnancy by the procreation laws, and men being forced into unwanted associations by the same. There are those who resent the Tower saying yes and therefore choose to follow the Bearer saying no. For every lustful lover there is at least one juiceless stick, anxious to have his lack made into virtue. Thus, in the departing footprints of each mocker, a follower rises up, and Peasimy Plot leads them on to the next city west while a trickle of the formerly recruited ones move northward, then west, where Pamra Don has gone. The crusade has steadily been approaching Vobil-dil-go, the township through which Split River runs, the most direct route from Northshore to the Chancery.