I stopped again, muttering to myself biblical expressions I hardly thought I knew. Zeb stopped, too, and stood looking at me with a smile of cynical tolerance. ‘Zeb,’ I said, almost pleading with him, ‘these are terrible things. Terrible! Don’t tell me that you approve?’
‘Approve? Man, it’s all part of the Plan. I’m sorry you haven’t been cleared for higher study. See here, I’ll give you a rough briefing. God wastes not. Right?’
‘That’s sound doctrine.’
‘God requires nothing of man beyond his strength. Right?’
‘Yes, but-‘
‘Shut up. God commands man to be fruitful. The Prophet Incarnate, being especially holy, is required to be especially fruitful. That’s the gist of it; you can pick up the fine points when you study it. In the meantime, if the Prophet can humble himself to the flesh in order to do his plain duty, who are you to raise a ruction? Answer me that.’
I could not answer, of course, and we continued our walk in silence. I had to admit the logic of what he had said and that the conclusions were built up from the revealed doctrines. The trouble was that I wanted to eject the conclusions, throw them up as if they had been something poisonous I had swallowed.
Presently I was consoling myself with the thought that Zeb felt sure that Judith had not been harmed. I began to feel better, telling myself that Zeb was right, that it was not my place, most decidedly not my place, to sit in moral judgment on the Holy Prophet Incarnate.
My mind was just getting round to worrying the thought that my relief over Judith arose solely from the fact that I had looked on her sinfully, that there could not possibly be one rule for one holy deaconess, another rule for all the rest, and I was beginning to be unhappy again-when Zeb stopped suddenly. ‘What was that?’
We hurried to the parapet of the terrace and looked down the wall. The south wall lies close to the city proper. A crowd of fifty or sixty people was charging up the slope that led to the Palace walls. Ahead of them, running with head averted, was a man dressed in a long gabardine. He was headed for the Sanctuary gate.
Zebadiah looked down and answered himself. ‘That’s what the racket is-some of the rabble stoning a pariah. He probably was careless enough to be caught outside the ghetto after five.’ He stared down and shook his head. ‘I don’t think he is going to make it.’
Zeb’s prediction was realized at once, a large rock caught the man between the shoulder blades, he stumbled and went down. They were on him at once. He struggled to his knees, was struck by a dozen stones, went down in a heap. He gave a broken high-pitched wail, then drew a fold of the gabardine across his dark eyes and strong Roman nose.
A moment later there was nothing to be seen but a pile of rocks and a protruding slippered foot. It jerked and was still.
I turned away, nauseated. Zebediah caught my expression.
‘Why,’ I said defensively, ‘do these pariahs persist in their heresy? They seem such harmless fellows otherwise.’
He cocked a brow at me. ‘Perhaps it’s not heresy to them. Didn’t you see that fellow resign himself to his God?’
‘But that is not the true God.’
‘He must have thought otherwise.’
‘But they all know better; we’ve told them often enough.’
He smiled in so irritating a fashion that I blurted out, ‘I don’t understand you, Zeb-blessed if I do! Ten minutes ago you were introducing me in correct doctrine; now you seem to be defending heresy. Reconcile that.’
He shrugged. ‘Oh, I can play the Devil’s advocate. I made the debate team at the Point, remember? I’ll be a famous theologian someday-if the Grand Inquisitor doesn’t get me first.’
‘Well . . . Look-you do think it’s right to stone the ungodly? Don’t you?’
He changed the subject abruptly. ‘Did you notice who cast the first stone?’ I hadn’t and told him so; all I remembered was that it was a man in country clothes, rather than a woman or a child.