A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [144]
“Brother,” he whispered, for none but a monk of the Order would have been buried in those crypts.
What did you do for them, Bone? Teach them to read and write? Help them rebuild, give them Christ, help restore a culture? Did you remember to warn them that it could never be Eden? Of course you did. Bless you, Bone, he thought, and traced a cross on its forehead with his thumb. For all your pains, they paid you with an arrow between the eyes. Because there’s more than five tons and eighteen centuries of rock back there. I suppose there’s about two million years of it back there-since the first of Homo inspiratus.
He heard the voice again-the soft echo-voice that had answered him a little while ago. This time it came in a kind of childish singsong: “la la la, la-la-la-”
Although it seemed to be the same voice he had heard in the confessional, surely it could not be Mrs. Grales. Mrs. Grales would have forgiven God and run for home, if she had got out of the chapel in time-and please forgive the reversal, Lord. But he was not even sure that it was a reversal. Listen, Old Bone, should I have told that to Cors?
Listen, my dear Cors, why don’t you forgive God for allowing pain? If He didn’t allow it, human courage, bravery, nobility, and self-sacrifice would all be meaningless things. Besides, you’d be out of a job, Cors.
Maybe that’s what we forgot to mention, Bone. Bombs and tantrums, when the world grew bitter because the world fell somehow short of half-remembered Eden. The bitterness was essentially against God. Listen, Man, you have to give up the bitterness-”be granting shriv’ness to God,” as she’d say-before anything; before love.
But bombs and tantrums. They didn’t forgive.
He slept awhile. It was natural sleep and not that ugly mind-seizing nothingness of the Dark. A rain came, clearing the dust. When he awoke, he was not alone. He lifted his cheek out of the mud and looked at them crossly. Three of them sat on the rubble heap and eyed him with funereal solemnity. He moved, They spread black wings and hissed nervously. He flipped a bit of stone at them. Two of them took wing and climbed to circle, but the third sat there doing a little shuffle-dance and peering at him gravely. A dark and ugly bird, but not like that Other Dark. This one coveted only the body.
“Dinner’s not quite ready, brother bird,” he told it irritably. “You’ll have to wait.”
It would not have many meals to look forward to, he noticed, before the bird itself became a meal for another. Its feathers were singed from the flash, and it kept one eye closed. The bird was soggy with rain, and the abbot guessed that the rain itself was full of death.
“la la la, la-la-la wait wait wait till it dies la…”
The voice came again. Zerchi had feared that it might have been a hallucination. But the bird was hearing it too. It kept peering at something out of Zerchi’s range of vision. At last it hissed raucously and took wing.
“Help!” he shouted weakly.
“help,” parroted the strange voice.
And the two-headed woman wandered into sight around a heap of rubble. She stopped and looked down at Zerchi.
“Thank God! Mrs. Grales! See if you can find Father Lehy-”
“thank god mrs. grales see if you can…”
He blinked away a film of blood, and studied her closely.
“Rachel,” he breathed.
“rachel,” the creature answered.
She knelt there in front of him and settled back on her heels. She watched him with cool green eyes and smiled innocently. The eyes were alert with wonder, curiosity, and-perhaps something else-but she could apparently not see that he was in pain. There was something about her eyes that caused him to notice nothing else for several seconds. But then he noticed that the head of Mrs. Grales slept soundly on the other shoulder while Rachel smiled. It seemed a young shy smile that hoped for friendship.