‘It was Snotty Fasset.’ Zeb’s lip curled.
I recalled Fassett too well; he was two classes senior to me and had made my plebe year something I want to forget. ‘So that’s how it was,’ I answered slowly. ‘Zeb, I don’t think I could stomach intelligence work.’
‘Certainly not as an agent provocateur,’ he agreed. ‘Still, I suppose the Council needs these incidents occasionally. These rumors about the Cabal and all…’
I caught up this last remark. ‘Zeb, do you really think there is anything to this Cabal? I can’t believe that there is any organized disloyalty to the Prophet.’
‘Well-there has certainly been some trouble out on the West Coast. Oh, forget it; our job is to keep the watch here.’
2
But we were not allowed to forget it; two days later the inner guard was doubled. I did not see how there could be any real danger, as the Palace was as strong a fortress as ever was built, with its lower recesses immune even to fission bombs. Besides that, a person entering the Palace, even from the Temple grounds, would be challenged and identified a dozen times before he reached the Angel on guard outside the Prophet’s own quarters. Nevertheless people in high places were getting jumpy; there must be something to it.
But I was delighted to find that I had been assigned as Zebadiah’s partner. Standing twice as many hours of guard was almost offset by having him to talk with-for me at least. As for poor Zeb, I banged his ear endlessly through the long night watches, talking about Judith and how unhappy I was with the way things were at New Jerusalem. Finally he turned on me.
‘See here, Mr. Dumbjohn,’ he snapped, reverting to my plebe year designation, ‘are you in love with her?’
I tried to hedge. I had not yet admitted to myself that my interest was more than in her welfare. He cut me short.
‘You do or you don’t. Make up your mind. If you do, we’ll talk practical matters. If you don’t, then shut up about her.’
I took a deep breath and took the plunge. ‘I guess I do, Zeb. It seems impossible and I know it’s a sin, but there it is.’
‘All of that and folly, too. But there is no talking sense to you. Okay, so you are in love with her. What next?’
‘Eh?’
‘What do you want to do? Marry her?’
I thought about it with such distress that I covered my face with my hands. ‘Of course I do,’ I admitted. ‘But how can I?’
‘Precisely. You can’t. You can’t marry without transferring away from here; her service can’t marry at all. Nor is there any way for her to break her vows, since she is already sealed. But if you can face up to bare facts without blushing, there is plenty you can do. You two could be very cozy-if you could get over being such an infernal bluenose.’
A week earlier I would not have understood what he was driving at. But now I knew. I could not even really be angry with him at making such a dishonorable and sinful suggestion; he meant well-and some of the tarnish was now in my own soul. I shook my head. ‘You shouldn’t have said that, Zeb. Judith is not that sort of a woman.’
‘Okay. Then forget it. And her. And shut up about her.’
I sighed wearily. ‘Don’t be rough on me, Zeb. This is more than I know how to manage.’ I glanced up and down, then took a chance and sat down on the parapet. We were not on watch near the Holy One’s quarters but at the east wall; our warden, Captain Peter van Eyck, was too fat to get that far oftener than once a watch, so I took a chance. I was bone tired from not having slept much lately.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be angry, Zeb. That sort of thing isn’t for me and it certainly isn’t for Judith-for Sister Judith.’ I knew what I wanted for us: a little farm, about a hundred. and sixty acres, like the one I had been born on. Pigs and chickens and barefooted kids with happy dirty faces and Judith to have her face light up when I came in from the fields and then wipe the perspiration from her face with her apron so that I could kiss her