A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [103]
He nodded a dismissal to the novices, then, and trudged up the stairs to be alone in his study. For the Fury was twisting his insides again, and he knew that torture was coming.
Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine…Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare…
Maybe it will twist clean loose this time, he thought almost hopefully. He wanted to summon Father Gault to hear his confession, but decided that it would be better to wait until the guests had gone. He stared at the edict again.
A knock at the door soon interrupted his agony.
“Can you come back later?”
“I’m afraid I won’t be here later,” answered a muffled voice from the corridor.
“Oh, Thon Taddeo-come in, then.” Dom Paulo straightened; he took a firm grip on pain, not trying to dismiss it but only to control it as he would an unruly servant.
The scholar entered and placed a folder of papers on the abbot’s desk. “I thought it only proper to leave you these,” he said.
“What do we have here?”
“The sketches of your fortifications. The ones the officers made. I suggest you burn them immediately.”
“Why have you done this?” Dom Paulo breathed. “After our words downstairs-”
“Don’t misunderstand,” Thon Taddeo interrupted. “I would have returned them in any event-as a matter of honor, not to let them take advantage of your hospitality for-but never mind. If I had returned the sketches any sooner, the officers would have had plenty of time and opportunity to draw up another set.”
The abbot arose slowly and reached for the scholar’s hand.
Thon Taddeo hesitated. “I promise no effort on your behalf-”
“I know.”
“-because I think what you have here should be open to the world.”
“It is, it was, it always will be.”
They shook hands gingerly, but Dom Paulo knew that it was no token of any truce but only of mutual respect between foes. Perhaps it would never be more.
But why must it all be acted again?
The answer was near at hand; there was still the serpent whispering: For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods. The old father of lies was clever at telling half-truths: How shall you “know” good and evil, until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.
Dom Paulo summoned the younger priest. It was very nearly time to go. And soon it would be a new year.
That was the year of the unprecedented torrent of rain on the desert, causing seed long dry to burst into bloom.
That was the year that a vestige of civilization came to the nomads of the Plains, and even the people of Laredo began to murmur that it was possibly all for the best. Rome did not agree.
In that year a temporary agreement was formalized and broken between the states of Denver and Texarkana. It was the year that the Old Jew returned to his former vocation of Physician and Wanderer, the year that the monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz buried an abbot and bowed to a new one. There were bright hopes for tomorrow.
It was the year a king came riding out of the east, to subdue the land and own it. It was a year of Men.
23
It was unpleasantly hot beside the sunny that skirted the wooded hillside, and the heat had aggravated the Poet’s thirst. After a long time he dizzily lifted his head from the ground and tried to look around. The melee had ended; things were fairly quiet now, except for the cavalry officer. The buzzards were even gliding down to land.
There were several dead refugees, one dead horse, and the dying cavalry officer who was pinned under the horse.