LITMIR.BIZ

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handy to verify at the time. Even in the present, they appeared only infrequently and then only to exchange goods, as they’d exchanged Jon Missionary, for the much-desired suji-juice. The Xeons, it was said, would sell their mothers (and often did) for suji-juice. Thus, the brain-blank (amateurishly mimicked by Warluck’s disfiguring mind-erase) was devised by them to insure that those sold forever forgot their sellers.

      Jon Missionary had shown symptoms of Xeon brain-blank. On the other hand, he’d remembered his name. And sometimes he would sit back and look as if he were remembering even more. This was a strangeness that confused, because no one ever remembered anything from before a brain-blank. And he would say those wondrous-sounding words that were first recorded by the scribes of Melina-Lu, then by Melina-Lu herself; then by their children; then passed on to their children’s children. It was rumored to be set down within the recordo-writs of the Religio-College that “Melina-Lu did so lust after the body of the half-wit Jon Missionary that she did intercede with her father, Maxlima II, on the idiot’s behalf.” Saving Jon from the same fate (with the exception, it would now seem, of one lone fragment) of his heretical Book.

      Gerun had never seen the live Jon Missionary, only visual-plays of him. Likewise, neither had Kalvin seen him. But they’d heard the stories passed down from generation to generation. They’d heard, repeated, and memorized his magical words. They’d sensed the specialness of him coursing through their veins.

      All these years later, the descendants of Jon Missionary and the Princess Melina-Lu, Kalvin and young Gerun now the last of them, had been marked for death, because of a Book fragment none of them had ever seen.

      The Book had come with Jon through the brain-blank of the Xeons and through his slavery beneath the oppressive yoke of the Mysons. Both Xeons and Mysons were firm respecters of personal talismans and amulets. Had they seen the Book as the man’s personal talisman? If so, Panrun-Ru had seen it as something more threatening, knowing, as he had, more of books than either the Xeons or Mysons combined. The soldiers who’d captured Jon, during an “unofficial” raid on a Mysons’s encampment, had forwarded the stranger and his Book to the Religio-College for interrogation. Where Panrun-Ru had ordered the Book incinerated as a work of heresy. Only to disobey his own directive and save a fragment. A fragment to surface all of these terns later and spark such terror in the heart of Warluck that he’d systematically set about killing off whatever traces of Jon Missionary had been salvaged, within the gene bank of that man’s descendants, by the meddling of a lusting princess.

      And who or what was Christian?

      CHAPTER TWO

      “Had the choice been mine, I would have incinerated the man before the book. Preferably incinerated them both.”

      “It would have forced a power play, my dear Maulaus. One we could ill afford, I might add, after Geulin was named co-conspirator in the assassination attempt. Maxlima II is not alone in thinking more in the Religio College than Geulin had fingers in that dirty pie.”

      “Still—”

      “Besides, the man is a half-wit, obviously a victim of the Xeon brain-blank.”

      “A brain-blank victim who remembers his name?”

      “Who’s to say Jon Missionary is his real name? Who’s to say his other babblings make sense, even to himself?”

      “And if he remembers?”

      “Perhaps we should cross that bridge when we come to it. Until then, the book is out of the way, isn’t it?”

      —Recording 6-2-4IV. Conversation between Panrun-Ru and Maulaus Kif. Date: 6-04-3-2. Time: 6:6:6. Security Clearance: For No One’s Eyes But Mine!

      They’d both been startled by the whir of the seg-unit, paranoid as they were by the organization out to squash them.

      “Obviously not a ferret for us, this time,” Kalvin said, relief in his voice, “or, we would have been earmarked. There was no broadcast sounded.”

      “No,” Gerun agreed. “Another poor foxlic’s hound. The one on us, for the minute, hunting elsewhere.”

      “Well,” Kalvin said with a loud intake of breath, “nothing like a false alarm to hint we may have lingered overly long. I did feel, though, it was important you be made aware of our dire situation. I’ve felt the noose tightening as of late, and I wondered if there’d be much other opportunity to get to you.”

      “My thanks, grandfather.”

      “It would be nice if one of us survived, wouldn’t it?” Kalvin said. “The one of us young enough to multiply and pass on the gene bank Jon Missionary gave us.”

      “You’re not too old,” Gerun insisted, wondering just how old Kalvin really was. Not old enough to remember Jon Missionary, but many terns beyond Gerun’s present count.

      “Children are of better issue when spawned from the young,” Kalvin said. “Remember that whenever you start to get careless. If we’re lucky, my children and yours will both arise to greet beneath the moons at Chisan-Time. If not.…” He shrugged.

      “So, then—” Gerun felt very sad; their parting didn’t bode any quick reunions, even if they and their issue did survive. “—we part as relatives, We of the Missionary, friends, Meeters at the Future Bend. Yes?”

      “Be healthy, Gerun Missionary,” Kalvin said, pulling the boy to him. “Be safe. Be alive. Be fruitful.” He kissed Gerun lightly on the forehead, the boy noting the sparkle of tears in the old man’s pale blue eyes.

      “Where will you go?” Gerun asked. Likewise, he was asking where he, himself, would go. Certainly not back to the City where they could more easily tap him. Now, out of their sensor perception, he was better staying put.

      “Best you not know my plans or my whereabouts,” Kalvin said. “Warluck is clever. Fiss poisoning is uncanny in its distortion of the mentat as it destroys it.”

      Making mind-reads possible. Making tracers possible. This meant Kalvin would be endangered if Gerun knew and was the first of them caught. Likewise, it was obvious that Kalvin had no desire to know Gerun’s plans—what plans? The two were safer, separated. The Missionary gene bank was safer, separated.

      “Go with God!” Gerun told him.

      “Share the ritual before we part?” Kalvin asked. “Although I’ve sampled the Jursimms’s corruption which makes me less than pure.”

      “It would be my pleasure to share the ritual, grandfather,” Gerun said.

      The two dropped to their knees in the darkness, tenting their hands beneath their chins and shutting their eyes. It was a mimicking of Jon Missionary passed down from generation to generation, its meaning unknown. Except it had a magical way of calming a speeding heart, of draining apprehension, of soothing a wearied mind. When Jon Missionary had once been asked why he did it, he’d surprised by saying something almost equivalent to the Kanranian word for god. So, his descendants looked upon the ritual as a meeting of god and man on a common plain. Although a meeting with which of the many Kanran-9 gods, no one really knew. For Jon Missionary had never been that specific. In fact, if there hadn’t been a resulting feeling of “religiousness” found to emanate from the simple ritual, Jon’s utterance might long ago have been cast aside as one more haphazard word with no relevance to the original question.

      Gerun felt the immediate sense of peace the ritual brought with it, especially when shared with another who was as aware of its magic. As he’d often done in the past, he wondered which of the Kanran-9 deities—if any—had come to Jon Missionary and presented him with this particular mode of silent contact. Jursimms, The Fulfillers? No, this was too tame for the rumored rituals of the Labyrinth. Kalvin would have known if this god, in residence, was the same called upon by Jursimmic Priests. Was it Wan Wan-See, The Sick, whose shudders could shake the ground and whose pustules could squirt acid to eat the unlucky? Or Zinlac, Xisl, Persif? Or Jab, Jal, Los? Or, was it none of those? Was it a god once known to Jon Missionary and the Book, and then known to Panrun-Ru who thought to destroy the god

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