Chapter 5 #5
She nodded. “If I want to, I can hear the voices of my – not sure what you’d call them.
Somewhere between colleagues and siblings.
It’s a constant stream of information. Oddly enough, geese and rooks work more or less the same way, and to a lesser extent ants and bees.
Of course, the absolute maximum number of different thoughts a goose brain can process is seven, while I’m like you, my capacity for thinking is infinite.
Mine’s a tad more infinite than yours, but only because I get more intelligent conversation.
Anyway, that’s that side of it, now for the bit you’re interested in.
What do I do? Answer, I do as I’m told. My purpose is to obey orders.
It’s what I do, and I can’t help it. If I get an order, I obey it.
” She grinned. “Which isn’t to say I haven’t got a certain limited degree of latitude when it comes to interpreting orders, but that’s another kettle of turnips entirely.
Actually, I’m encouraged to think on my feet and use my initiative, though if I do that and it doesn’t work, they’ll be down on me like five tons of bricks.
But that’s what I do and who I am. I do as I’m told, no less and no more.
And when I’m not actively obeying an order—” She paused and frowned.
“Then I guess I’m me. And generally they’re fine with that, so long as I’m not too obvious about it. ”
“Only obeying orders,” I said. “I think I may have come across that phrase somewhere before.”
“Quite possibly,” she said. “Also, you may have read that bit in one of Saloninus’ comedies where the watch captain sings a little song about how when criminals aren’t actively breaking the law—”
“When a felon’s not engaged in his employment, or maturing his felonious little plans—”
“His capacity for innocent enjoyment is just as great as any honest man’s, yup, that’s the one.
There’s a really catchy tune to go with it, but of course that was lost centuries ago.
Anyway, that’s me. I don’t spend every moment contriving and executing Evil.
I just do what they tell me to. And mostly that’s just – what’s the word here?
Preparatory work, background, buildup, nuts and bolts, cogs and springs.
You see, the plan’s so incredibly involved and complicated, it calls for millions and millions of tiny little actions and factors, doors opened and doors closed.
One of the most significant contributions I ever made to the cause of Evil was giving a quarter-gulden to a starving woman in an alley in Beloisa.
Thanks to my quarter-gulden, she was able to buy a loaf of bread, so she didn’t starve to death, so she was able to go on to become the great-grandmother of Ogus the Conqueror, who laid waste the First Robur Empire and killed more human beings in his wars than anybody before or since.
Another time I was directly responsible for spreading the White Plague across Echmen because I rescued a sparrow with a broken wing.
The sparrow survived and went on to pick up a flea – you get the idea. ”
I thought about it for maybe three seconds. Then I said, “Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bullshit,” I repeated firmly. “Not that I don’t believe every word you’ve told me. But it’s all bullshit.”
“Right. How, exactly?”
“Well,” I said, “you’ve described yourself as a living creature that can do stuff. By your own admission, it’s all stuff that other animals and birds can do. Fly like a bird, swim like a fish, talk to others of your kind like an ant or a goose.”
“Live in other people’s bodies?”
“The word, I believe, is parasite. An advanced form, but still basically the same. I bet you that if Theopompus’ Biology hadn’t gone up in flames at the sack of Perimadeia, there’d be a whole chapter about you, or creatures like you.
And the rest of it, the Plan, the machinations of evil; bullshit. ”
“You’re really getting your money’s worth out of that word.”
“You think you hear voices in your head,” I said, “telling you to do mundane but irrational things. Give the poor woman a coin. Rescue an injured bird. For some reason, you think that all these trivial acts are part of some mighty destiny. I wouldn’t be surprised if Barsenna explained all that in Concerning Dreams, though of course now we’ll never know.
But it’s undoubtedly some sort of kink or bad place in your mind, like the people who think they’re gods or dogs or the Archdeacon of Schonstark.
But it probably doesn’t matter, so long as you confine yourself to harmless little acts of kindness.
” I looked at her. She was still grinning.
“All bullshit,” I said. “I still have no idea what you are, but one thing I’m absolutely sure of, you’re not what you claim to be. Sorry.”
She glared at me, then fell back into that wonderful grin.
“That’s so sweet,” she said. “It’s so inventively and imaginatively stupid, I think you deserve a reward.
Tell you what, I’ll hum you the tune of ‘The Enterprising Burglar’.
Which hasn’t been heard on the surface of the earth for six hundred years. ”
“I—”
“Shut up. Actually, bearing in mind Svangerd’s singing voice, I’ll whistle it instead.”
It was a very catchy tune. “Proving nothing,” I said. “You probably just made that up.”
“I wish,” she said. “Sadly, it’s not true what they say.”
I know a prompt when I hear one. “What exactly do they say?”
“About the devil having all the best tunes.”
I looked at her. I saw Svangerd, dripping wet under a rain-felted hood, against a background of fog and moorland. Svangerd grinning. Svangerd almost never grins.
“Ah,” I said. “But you’re not the devil.”
I swore a vow of, among other things, chastity.
Needless to say, I swore it by the Invincible Sun, in whom I don’t believe (I think I may have mentioned that already at some point).
Therefore the vow is not binding on me. A vow is just a promise, and you and I and everybody who ever came into this world through a pair of legs breaks promises, now and again, and the cosmos is still here and still more or less functional.
Still, I did swear a vow. I also swore poverty and obedience.
We dealt with poverty a while back, so I won’t repeat myself; obedience – now that would include doing precisely what Mother Tysapherna told me, and wouldn’t be negated by the knowledge that what she wanted me to do was bring her a captive demon.
Monastic vows, I suspect, are as often as not defences you hide behind, rather than gates shut and barred in your face.
Does my vow mean that all my life I’ve been denied the very real and (by all accounts) quite ecstatic pleasures of the flesh?
Or is it more a case of having been let off them?
I was always a great one, a real devil, for getting let off things when I was a young novice.
I was always kidding brother infirmarer into giving me a note saying I was let off morning exercises or compulsory team handball or healthy five-mile runs.
Some of the other novices were actually sorry for me.
As far as they were concerned, exercises and games were the best part of the day, they couldn’t imagine anybody not wanting to hop, skip, jump, run, chase a hard leather ball round a paved yard, get shoulder-charged by their buddies into a stone wall.
You’ve sprained your ankle again? Gee, don’t you get all the rotten luck?
When eventually I fell completely and hopelessly in love, I had the good sense to fall in love with Sister Svangerd.
Svangerd takes her vows very, very seriously.
Also, she has a different perspective on the pleasures of the flesh from most people, having been (involuntarily) in the pleasures-of-the-flesh business for eight years, starting when she was fourteen years old.
Sister Svangerd would never grin at me like that. Or whistle comic opera tunes. Or flirt. Or do the stuff that follows on from flirting. She’d rather have her teeth pulled out and her bones broken.
Now, then. If I was the devil (who doesn’t exist, by the way) and I wanted to torture Sister Svangerd as much as I possibly could, what would I do to her?
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Praying.”
“You’re an atheist.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I thought I’d give it a try. Any luck?”
“No.”
Her horse had gone lame. It had picked up a stone in its hoof. She’d spent the time it took me to say three Glorias and the Creed hooking the stone out. Apparently it hadn’t made any difference. “Please don’t do any more of that,” she said. “I don’t like it.”
“What, prayer? You didn’t even know I was doing it.”
“Actually,” she said, wiping rain out of her eyes with the back of her hand, “I felt sick to my stomach and my head was splitting.”
“Not your head,” I pointed out.
“No, but I felt the pain. Which I don’t usually do when I’m inside a host, but that’s because it’s not my pain, if you follow me. So when something hurts, it must be hurting me.”
Prayers would not, of course, hurt Svangerd, just as fish don’t drown. “You’re just making that up,” I said. “Fine, so your stupid horse is lame. You’ll just have to walk.”
“The hell with that. I’ll have your horse, and you walk.”
Svangerd’s feet, not hers. Svangerd would rather die than complain, but she blisters easily. “Or,” she said, “we could both ride your horse. She doesn’t weigh much.”
“I’ll walk.”
My prayers, surprise surprise, were not answered. And I’m a farm boy, used to walking. “That,” she called out, peering through the fog into a grey, obscure valley, “must be Laugar.”