A Just Farewell (5 page)

“I do.”

“And there are no guarantees?”

“I’m afraid not.”

The general handed the remote control to
Governor Chen and said nothing more before standing and exiting the
cinema to leave Kelly alone in the dark, with the view from a
cockroach’s eyes glowing upon the silver screen upon which she
preferred to watch colorful musicals and situational comedies from
a civilized age lost so long ago. How could the tribes become so
depraved, so savage and barbaric, to deserve such annihilation? How
could their hate burn so hot that an entire world needed to be
sacrificed in order to preserve the potential humanity hoped to
discover in the waiting stars? Did the tribes’ children offer no
hope? Would General Harrison conduct a military coupe if she
refrained from approving the ultimate answer, and would such
rebellion be any less dangerous than the threat posed by the
tribes?

Kelly Chen closed her eyes and wished it
would all vanish. She had never dreamed her skill at growing
tomatoes would ever force her to face the responsibility of such a
decision.

* * * * *

Chapter 5 – Adultery Committed Against the
Maker

“All of you look wonderful. I pray my
painting pleases our Maker.”

Abraham smiled to watch his cockroach
companions scurry along the oval racetrack he traced upon his
chamber’s floor that morning with sugar water. He had painted all
of the bugs’ shells in his patterns of stars, sunbursts and swirls,
and those carapaces glimmered in his underground chamber’s dim
lighting. With each bug sporting a different color and pattern
scheme, Abraham soon chose favorites from his contestants. The
cockroach whose shell he had painted blue and dotted with silver
moons was the quickest of the bunch, but that bug seemed incapable
of following the trail long enough to maintain any lead earned by
its speed. A cockroach with a red shell sporting white diamonds
followed the trail precisely, but that bug moved at a snail’s pace.
The bug with the orange shell that Abraham decorated with black
swirls soon became his favorite, for that cockroach moved with both
precision and speed, so much so that Abraham wondered if that bug
might’ve been especially blessed by the Maker.

Abraham winced when the cleric’s great horn
suddenly shrilled through the subterranean tunnels. The note was
deep and low, and the longer it groaned, the more Abraham thought
the blast of noise rose from the heart of the earth. The racing
cockroaches tensed at the horn’s blare and then scattered for the
corners of shadow, save for the bug with the orange shell decorated
in swirls, who turned to peer towards Abraham.

“Hurry into my palm, friend, before my
brother and father burst into my chamber to see how I’ve wasted
time painting bugs.”

Abraham deposited the burrowing cockroach
into a pocket sewn within his thin jacket and hurried towards his
home’s ladder that led onto the surface. The clerics didn’t blare a
celebratory horn as they had several nights before when the village
men had gathered to witness the rockets exploding in the sky. They
instead blew a low and somber note, one that growled that the
clerics had pressing business regarding their community’s souls,
one that promised the clerics would exercise little patience, or
mercy, in waiting for their tribe to assemble at their tower. The
terrible castles floated high overhead in their regular orbits, and
they remained silent no matter the destruction of their rockets.
All the same, Abraham shuddered to see how a shadow of one of the
enormous castles swallowed his village before joining his father
and brother.

Abraham’s neighbor, Josef, brought his
young, twin daughters, Alexis and Cassandra, onto the surface with
him to answer the cleric’s summoning horn, and he led each of them
by a rope leash he wrapped around each girl’s waist, tugging
harshly at the ropes whenever either of the girls fell behind his
pace or strayed too far from his heels. The girls had only recently
turned seven, and Abraham realized it would not be so long until
Josef could offer his daughters in marriage, not long until those
girls’ faces would receive the first swirls of tattoos that would
eventually expand to cover their faces entirely, not long at all
until their hair would be treated until it turned the same silver
as all the rest of the village women, or until they donned the
dark, black glasses that would conceal the color of their eyes.
Girls too young to undergo any of the ceremonies that would deliver
them into womanhood were still permitted to climb out from their
families’ holes without acquiring special privileges from the
clerics.

Abraham couldn’t determine if it was Alexis
or Cassandra who waved at him, for the twins appeared identical to
his eyes. But he tentatively waved back, and Ishmael immediately
slapped him across the face.

“How dare you brother?” Ishmael hissed.
“You’re lucky Josef didn’t catch you staring at his daughters. He
could petition the clerics to burn out one of your eyes for such a
trespass.”

Abraham mumbled as he rubbed his stinging
cheek. “Why does he bring those daughters onto the surface if he’s
so worried about someone peeking at them?”

Rahbin glared at his youngest son. “Josef’s
motivations are none of your concern, boy. Perhaps his wives suffer
from a sickness that prevents them from watching after his girls,
or perhaps his wives concentrate on working their looms. Or perhaps
Josef wishes to show his girls to a family he wishes to offer them
to in marriage. Do as the Maker teaches, Abraham, and murder your
curiosity before it kills you. Would you wave if Josef pulled goats
with his leashes?”

“I would not.”

“Then you will not wave at his daughters,”
Rahbin retorted.

As if the Maker sent it to show his
pleasure, a breeze whistled across the barren landscape to bring a
little relief from the hot sun, and the wind fluttered life into
the five capes hung upon tall poles set before the clerics’ tower
of scaffolding. The tribesmen who had sacrificed themselves to
bring down the blasphemers’ rockets had left their capes behind
before departing to achieve their glory and heaven. Abraham knew
that the village’s best seamstresses and weavers had slept very
little since that most recent victory against the unbelievers so
that they completed sewing the symbols into those fluttering capes
that told of the great explosions that brought the rockets burning
back to the ground. Those capes would be proud heirlooms for the
martyrs’ families to carry back with them into their subterranean
homes. But the clerics would first let those capes flutter in the
wind so that the harsh sun could deepen and bake the color of the
stitching and fabric into a hue that pleased their divine
creator.

“The Maker is joyous,” Ishmael whispered as
he watched those capes wave in the breeze. “It’s a great victory
indeed when the clerics summon us twice for celebration.”

Rahbin frowned at Ishmael. “Tell him,
Abraham, how we know the clerics haven’t summoned us for
rejoicing.”

“Their horn didn’t sound a note for joy.
They blew a note warning of transgression.”

“Mind you of that, Ishmael, the next time
you think of usurping your father’s duty by striking Abraham,” said
Rahbin. “Abraham pays better attention to the horn than you.”

The horn silenced before all of the
tribesmen arrived at the tower, and those who were tardy stood
apart from the rest to offer themselves to whatever punishment the
clerics felt their tardiness deserved.

The head cleric frowned atop the scaffold.
“We disrespect our Maker when we hesitate to answer his call. Each
of you will spend several hours this afternoon within the sunbox,
where you will sweat out your sin and consider your shortcomings
within the darkness.”

“Praise be to the Maker!” The guilty men
shouted.

The head cleric continued. “I’ve been
wondering who among our tribe remains worthy of the Maker’s kingdom
and glory. Our best men have sacrificed themselves for the Maker’s
glorious creation for so long that I wonder if those of us who are
left are deserving of our God’s graces. Perhaps these capes
fluttering in the wind were worn by the last of our great warriors.
I pray that my doubts are only torments the great devil delivers
me, for more than ever, we must be prepared to devote ourselves to
the Maker. We will soon lift our battle against the blasphemers
into the stars, and we will need all of the creator’s blessing to
reach their high castles.”

The gathering lifted their hands. “Praise be
to the Maker!”

The head cleric nodded. “Oh, my brothers and
sons, the great devil will tempt us like never before. We cannot
become soft. We must harden our souls for the battle awaiting us in
the stars. The unbelievers will know no planet, no moon and no
castle that will hide them from the Maker’s judgment or shield them
from the justice we will administer as our Maker’s tools.

“Understand then why we who grow beards must
summon the tribe to inform our community that the great devil has
infiltrated our homes so shortly after we celebrate a great
victory. The great devil has already brought corruption to our
tribe. One of us has created without the Maker’s breath.”

Abraham’s heart raced, and the men
surrounding him shifted and stared at their boots. The Holy Book
taught that creation itself was the most magical of all the Maker’s
powers. The Maker held the process of creation closest to his
heart, and that the Maker guarded all his breath shaped as sacred.
Thus the tribes created nothing casually. A man crafted neither a
crib nor a coffin without first receiving a cleric’s blessing, and
the most talented of weavers and seamstresses prayed for hours
before sitting at her loom. Each bearded cleric fasted before
picking up his pen to scribe new prayers, and none in the tribe
dared to sing unless he or she was given a sign that the Maker’s
breath filled his or her lungs. The Holy Book taught that every act
of creation, no matter how large or small, was a divine process the
required the Maker’s presence in any soul who strummed an
instrument or stroked a brush. The Maker considered any creation
undertaken without his blessing and permission as the most terrible
of all blasphemies.

Abraham trembled. His cockroach friend
wiggled in his jacket pocket, and Abraham feared he might fidget or
chuckle just as the clerics glowered from atop their scaffolding.
Abraham didn’t dare lift his face, for he felt certain that the
clerics were looking directly at him. He hadn’t prayed to the Maker
before he had painted the shells of his cockroach friends. He had
thought such artistry was below the Maker’s regard. Abraham choked
as he felt his friend crawl to the cusp of his inner pocket. He
didn’t dare reach into his jacket to remove his friend, lest his
guilt of applying color to the creator’s creatures without first
praying for the Maker’s permission become apparent.

Several clerics sporting the short beards
that marked them as the youngest of the religious leaders pushed a
man and woman to the front of the scaffold. The clerics kicked
several times at the man’s legs, and their captor fell face-first
onto the ground as his bound wrists prevented him from bracing for
impact. A woman dressed in the black robes and dark glasses worn by
every woman of the tribe sobbed each time the man fell, and the
clerics dragged her feet across the dirt each time she reached out
to help the fallen man up from the ground. The relief Abraham felt
when he saw it was not his crime that attracted the clerics’
attention shamed him, for his heart ached to watch that man stumble
and that woman sob.

The man stumbled closer to the clerics’
tower, and Abraham recognized him as Paul, the tribe’s butcher.
Abraham had recently accompanied his father on one of Rahbin’s
trips to Pauls’ shop to deliver a goat so that it could be
butchered and dressed for a family meal in celebration of Ishmael’s
passage into manhood. The cool air of Paul’s home, where the
carcasses of so many village animals hung from the earthen ceiling,
had amazed Abraham, and he had thought that Paul must’ve been
especially blessed by the Maker if the divine creator gifted him
with such breezes to flow through his underground shop to help
preserve the animal meat Paul had not yet salted. Thus Abraham felt
puzzled as the clerics shoved Paul and his wife closer to the
tower, for he couldn’t understand why the butcher would offend the
Maker who so blessed his home and his profession.

The head cleric frowned at the man and woman
dragged before him. “Neighbors, it hurts our hearts to have reason
to present Paul and Sarah to you as blasphemers. We have discovered
that Paul writes poetry intended to make love to Sarah, and thus he
commits two terrible affronts to our Maker. Let us remember that
Sarah is wed to the Maker, and that Paul is only a vessel our great
creator possesses whenever he chooses to plant life within Sarah’s
womb. Paul sought none of our clerics’ blessing when he composed
his verse, and so his words express his lust for Sarah rather than
the Maker’s love. Paul’s creation angers the Maker, and his poems
symbolize the adultery Paul and Sarah regularly, and knowingly,
committed against our creator. Paul, do you deny writing such
words?”

One of the young clerics slapped Paul across
the face when the accused didn’t instantly answer. Stunned, the
accused butcher shook his head.