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either one of us, with what we think of our forebears to be back on Old Earth
right now, and how would those of that time look at us?"
"Whatever they felt and whatever we felt," said Henry, "it would make no
difference in us nor any difference in them. We are as God made us whether we
believe in Him or not."
"He can hardly blame us, then, if we're like our ances-tors," Toni said.
Henry looked at her abruptly.
"God looks at not only what's done, but at the reason for doing it," he said.
"It may be my ancestors knew no better than to do what they did. I do."
Toni merely continued to look at him, as she had been since she last finished
speaking.
"You have been told of my sin," Henry said. "The one I would not tell you of
in the limousine."
"No." Toni shook her head. "Who could tell me? Bleys or Dahno? Neither of them
have."
"Dahno does not know," Henry said. "Bleys does my sons told him, which was
wrong of them; but at that time they knew no better. If Bleys did not tell
you, how do you know?"
"I know only that that pistol of yours is always there under your shoulder,"
said Toni. "The only times I've seen you without it were when we went through
customs here on New Earth and when we went to the CEOs Club. But I've watched
you with it. Do you know you walk differ-ently when you're wearing it? And I
can feel that you carry some sort of unhappiness with it. I couldn't help
thinking it might be connected with the sin you men-tioned."
Henry looked at her for a long moment. She met his gaze candidly.
"I'll tell you, then," said Henry. "When I was young and first went as a
Soldier of God, it was for God I went or I thought it was for God I went. But
I went again and again and I found that it was not just God I went for, but
for something in me that liked the warfare and the fighting. Only ... there is
never any justification for fighting and killing. Justification may be found
here, in this life, among other sinful human beings; but in the life to come "
He broke off suddenly. Then started again.
"So I realized that my soul was at stake. I buried my pistol, nearly twenty
years ago. And it remained buried un-til the day when I came to Bleys."
"Burying the pistol saved you?"
"It was not all, but it was necessary," Henry said. "I had thought I was doing
good with it, but with each time I fought, I fell deeper into Satan's hands."
"But you dug it up again and brought it to Bleys," she said. "You've gone back
to risking your soul again, haven't you?"
"Yes," he said. He did not say anything more for a short moment. "But I can
save Bleys."
"With a pistol, a single pistol?"
"Yes," said Henry. He gazed out over the level ground far below them.
Toni's face paled slowly. "You don't mean you'd use it on him, if you thought
he was going the same way?" she demanded.
Henry turned his head and looked into her eyes. "Yes."
"But you love him," she said. "You love him like a son, you said. How could
you bring yourself to kill him, just because you believed he was taking the
wrong path?"
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Henry had looked away from her as she spoke. Now he looked back, and she saw
his eyes tortured, but as un-yielding as stones in the earth.
'The soul is more than the body," he said. "If it comes
to the choice, I must save his soul if God gives me the courage."
They stood looking at each other for a long moment.
"You can tell him this," Henry said and the words came out painfully. "But I
don't think you're one to do that."
"No," she said. "But I have my own duty. And from this moment, Henry, I'll
always be watching you."
"I know."
Neither said anything for a breath or two. Then, gently, Toni put out her hand
to him; and, after a moment, he took it, as he might have taken the hand of
another Soldier of God who, an old friend, was now fighting on the opposite
side.
Bleys wrenched off his glasses and earphones, suddenly flooded with disgust at
himself for watching and listening to them at a moment like this.
He turned and started out of the building. There was no one else in it, and he
encountered no one as he crossed the small distance to his private shelter. He
pushed his way through the triangular entrance and threw himself down on the
long bed made for him there.
For a little while he lay, looking up at the converging tips of the
needle-heavy branches forming a tight, dark point at last above him. Then he
got up and sat down in a solid wooden chair before the simple four-legged
table provided as a desk for him.
There was a neat stack of paper, a stylus and a folder containing maps of the
camp and the area.
Bleys picked up the stylus, took a piece of untouched paper from the stack and
began to write upon it.
"NOTE " he wrote automatically and, after that, the date and the current hour
and minute. He moved the point of the stylus a little farther down the paper,
hesitated, then began to write.
"I watched today over the spy system set up in the trees that surround our
camp here on New Earth, and found my-self with Toni and Henry. They were
talking.
"I should have thought I should have known the full
reason behind Henry's sudden appearance that day on As-sociation. Of course,
to Henry, the soul must always be more important than the body.
"But how could I have been so blind as not to realize he was taking the need
for such a heartbreaking decision on himself, knowing how he thinks and how he
feels about me "
He dropped the stylus and crumpled the paper into a ball hidden by the
clenched grasp of his long fingers.
After a moment, automatically, Bleys smoothed out the crumpled piece of paper
and looked about for the slot of a phase-shift document destructor.
There was none, of course. Getting to his feet, he stepped to the
floor-mounted heating unit that stabilized the temperature inside the
building. He turned up its ther-mostat, and it came on, projecting a small,
hot wind abruptly through its vent, an aperture not unlike the wider, deeper
slot in a document destructor.
Bleys waited a moment, until the air from the slot in the heating unit burned
the skin of his hand. Then he fed the paper into the vent. The white sheet
disappeared as it went, as if an invisible tongue licked it up. At the last, a
corner of curled ash clung to the lip of the slot as if in de-fiance of the
outrushing air. Then it, too, was gone.
CHAPTER 13
The sound of feet on the two steps up to the entrance of Bleys' office
structure the next day, and the sound of a knock on the slab of wood provided
for that purpose, made Bleys look up from the sheet on which he was draw-ing
what looked like the skeleton of a spiderweb; but which actually was a coded
version of his latest thinking of his future plans, described in terms of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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