Academic Exercises (57 page)

There was no lock, and gold hinges don’t seize. They swung open the lid.

My first reaction, I’m sorry to have to tell you, was, shit, it’s just old parchment. Then the better part of me thought to inquire as to what sort of document you’d bother burying in an airtight solid gold box. I shoved someone out of the way. They were rolled up, in scrolls. I grabbed one and pulled down. Miraculously, it didn’t tear, disintegrate, come apart in my hands. It was just writing, no pictures, in a script I didn’t recognise.

But I knew a man who knew about this sort of thing. “Where’s Accila?” I called out. Blank faces. Then I remembered. “Father Chrysostomus,” I translated. “Go and find him, now.”

The scrolls—there were nine of them—were in Old Middle Therian, a language that hasn’t been spoken for a thousand years. Only about six people in the world can read it. Fortuitously, Accila was one of them. “It’s some sort of religious text,” he told us, as we gathered in secret session in some storage hut, with the door wedged shut with a pickaxe handle. “I’m a bit rusty, so you’ll have to—”

He went quiet. Not like him at all. We indulged him for about ten seconds, and then Razo said, “Well?”

Accila looked up. He had the strangest look on his face.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

Later, when Accila had transcribed and translated all nine scrolls, and we’d all sat down, with the new texts on one hand and the Gospel we’d concocted on the other, we tried to convince ourselves that there were differences, significant ones; some key words were ambiguous, there was a sprinkling of
hapax legomena
which could mean anything, translation is at best an imprecise science. We were kidding ourselves. To all intents and purposes, the scrolls we’d found in the box and the gospel we’d made up out of our heads were the same.

I had another dream. It wasn’t on the same sumptuous, no-expense-spared scale as the previous one, so maybe my dream budget had all been spent. All it was, I was looking in a mirror and the face I saw there wasn’t mine.

“This is all wrong,” I said.

“Why do you say that?” he said.

“It’s
wrong
.” He just looked at me. “It’s wrong because you’re not real. I made you up. You aren’t even my imaginary friend, it was deliberate. You’re a forgery.”

He smiled beautifully. “You made me up.”

“Yes. For money. To defraud poor, weak-minded people out of money they couldn’t afford.”

“For money.” He shrugged. “Well, you need to live. And it’s not like you’re indulging in extravagant luxuries. Apart from the vestments, which are badges of office, like a uniform, you dress in simple clothes, you mostly eat bread and cheese, you’ve practically stopped drinking wine, you sleep on a mattress in an attic—”

“Only because I’m too busy.”

“Too busy. Doing my work. You are my good and faithful servant.”

I wanted to hit him. “Cheating people. Deceiving them. And I did make you up. You’re a lie.”

“You made me up.”

“Will you stop repeating everything I say?”

“You made me up,” he said firmly. “Let’s just think about that. You were trying to find a way to feed yourself and your friends when you were poor and hungry, and an idea came into your head.” He smiled. “Where do you think that idea came from?”

“I
made you up.
” I couldn’t seem to get him to understand. “I invented you as part of a criminal conspiracy.”

He shrugged again. “You gave me life,” he said. “Like Maxentius.”

Good reference. Maxentius was the son of a prostitute, engendered as part of a routine commercial transaction. His military coup overthrew the cruellest tyrant in history, and his welfare reforms led to his reign becoming known as the Golden Age. “If I gave you life, you can’t be God,” I pointed out. “And if you’re not God, you can’t exist in this form. Therefore you don’t exist.”

He shook his head. “If I’m God I can do anything,” he said, “and that includes being born of a fallible human. Besides, it’s not so hard to believe in, is it, that I should choose to come into existence through you. Seeds grow best when they’re planted in rotting shit. No offence,” he added gravely.

“None capable of being taken,” I replied. “But in that case, why me? Why not be made up by a holy man, a true holy man? There’s plenty of those.”

“A holy man wouldn’t stoop to fraud and deceit. Therefore he wouldn’t have made me up, therefore I could never have been made.”

“Ah,” I said, “you’ve contradicted yourself. A moment ago, you could do anything.”

He nodded. “Once I exist, of course I can. Before I existed, I was nothing.”

“Then you can’t be God,” I cried in triumph. “God must be eternal, in existence for ever since the beginning.”

“Must I?” He gave me a mock frown. “I’m God, there’s no
must
about it. I can do anything I like.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then who created the world?”

“I did. Retrospectively.”

“You can’t—”

“Of course I can. I can do
anything
. Once I exist.”

“I’d like to wake up now, please.”

“In a moment,” he said. “I’m going to teach you some doctrine. Are you listening carefully?”

“Go on,” I said.

He looked me straight in the eye. “There is no right or wrong,” he said, “there is only good and bad. Starvation is bad; feeding the hungry is good. But it’s not right to feed the hungry, because you might easily do so through vanity, which is bad, or because you want to build up a political power-base in order to launch a coup, which is bad, unless you’re Maxentius, in which case it’s good. Killing someone is wrong, unless you’re Maxentius killing the Emperor Phocas, in which case it’s entirely right. Do you understand?”

“Not really.”

“And you’re supposed to be so bright,” he said. “Very well,” he said. “Let’s try again. Motive is irrelevant. The best things have been done for the worst motives, the worst things have been done for the best motives. Lusaeus the Slaughterer started the Fifth Social War because his people were oppressed by the Empire and he wanted the best for them. But Maxentius started a civil war because his people were oppressed and he wanted the best for them. The Fifth Social War was bad, because two million people died needlessly and countless more were left in hunger and misery. Maxentius’ war was good, because it freed the people and led to the Golden Age. Hunger is bad, freedom is good. Motive is irrelevant.”

“There’s nothing good about greed for money.”

“Tell that to Peregrinus, who discovered the north-east passage to Ceugra, bringing cheap food and full employment to Mezentia. On the other hand, consider Artabazus, who sailed from Perimadeia to the Anoge with a quarter million sacks of grain to feed the famine victims, and carried the plague with him. Outcomes are good or bad. Motive is irrelevant. This,” he added, “is the word of the Lord. It’s not open to debate.”

“You can’t just say—”

“Of course I can. Now wake up and believe.”

The Temple was a great success. We had full congregations every day, tremendous enthusiasm, full offertory-boxes. Three weeks after we held our first Intercessionary Mass for Peace, the Herulians surrendered unconditionally and the war was finally over. We held a special service of thanksgiving; we couldn’t fit them all in the Temple, so we borrowed the Artillery Fields. Almost all the Cabinet attended, along with most of the City nobility and every-one who was anyone from society, commerce and the arts. The take for that service alone was 16,000 stamina.

Winning the war was the last straw, as far as I was concerned. I had to do something. But I didn’t want to rush into it blindly and screw everything up; so I suggested to the others, quite casually at the end of a routine meeting, that it’d save on accountancy time and paperwork if the Church gave me a discretionary budget, so I could pay for everyday maintenance and procurements without having to bother anyone else. Fine, they said, how much do you need? Not quite sure yet, I said; just give me a drawing facility on Number Two account for now, and when I know how it pans out, we can establish a figure.

With unlimited access to Church funds—a licence to embezzle, if you prefer to look at it in those terms—I really got going. I funnelled out money into fake corporations, lost fortunes in imaginary fires and shipwrecks, filtered vast sums through four sets of books, and used it all to feed the war refugees at Blachissa. There were something like a hundred thousand of the poor devils stranded there, fugitives from three major cities burnt down by the enemy during the war, and since their cities no longer existed, they had no governors, therefore there was nobody to petition the government for relief on their behalf, therefore they were nobody’s problem, therefore they were left to starve. I bought grain from the farmers in the Mesoge—when Taraconissa was destroyed they lost their principal market and had no one to sell to, so they were in pretty dire straits—and employed discharged veterans to cart and distribute the supplies. I made a special effort to ensure that at every stage in the process, I was helping someone who badly needed help. I was so pleased with myself.

There was so much money, of course, that for a long time nobody noticed. It was, though, simply a matter of time. When, sooner or later, my colleagues realised what I was up to, I anticipated harsh words, bitter accusations and a great deal of bad feeling. What I didn’t expect—

“You can’t do this,” I roared.

They looked at me.

“You can’t,” I repeated. “I invented this religion, it was my idea, I created it. I’m the high priest. You can’t excommunicate me.”

“Actually,” Accila said quietly, “we can. It says so in the constitution.”

“What constitution?”

“The one we just made up,” Accila replied. “And submitted to a general synod for ratification, passed unanimously. And it says, the ecumenical council—that’s the four of us—can dismiss the high priest on grounds of heresy or gross moral turpitude. We’re going with heresy as an act of kindness, so we don’t have to go public with the news that you’ve been stealing from the Church. That’s provided you go quietly and don’t make trouble.”

“You can’t adopt a constitution without my agreement.”