Farmer, Philip Jose - Father Carmody 00.1 Page 3

  “But if I have erred, I have done so through ignorance and through love.”

  When Father John was finished, he led Tandem, who was pale and trembling, up the hill.

  “The house always wins,” said Father John, who was himself a little pale. “That man that you thought was the Croupier was the head priest. The tears you first saw in his eyes were those of joy at making a convert and those you saw later were those of disappointment at losing one. He wanted you to win in this millennia-old ritual-game. If you had, you could have been the first Earthman to be the living representative of their deity, who was sacrificed in that peculiarly painful fashion. And your winnings would have been buried with you, an offering to the god whose living image you became.

  “But, as I said, the house never loses. Later, the head priest would have dug them up and added them to his church’s treasury.”

  “Do you mean that all those signals you were making at the Crou — the priest — were to convince him that I . . . ?”

  “Belonged to the God of the Upright Cross, yes. Not the God of the Horizontal Cross. And I almost had him convinced until he must have thought of free will, too, and gave you the chance of joining his sect. I, as you have commented, am not so backward about interfering.”

  Tandem stopped to light a cigarette. His hand shook, but after a few pufTs, with the smoke drifting by in blue veils, he felt better.

  Squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin, he said, “Look, Father John, if you think that this is going to scare me so I’ll jump in under the shadow of Mother Church’s wings, you’re wrong. So I made a mistake? It was only a half-error, you’ll have to admit, for they were gambling. And anybody could have been fooled. I didn’t need your help, anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, I suppose it was a good thing that you came along. . . . No, it wasn’t. I lost; I couldn’t have won with those four ganging up on me. So what did I have to lose? I had a good time, and I’m out nothing.”

  “You lost your watch.”

  Father John did not seem to have recovered yet from the shadow that had fallen over him since he had led Tandem away from the valley. The tuning fork inside him hummed deep and black.

  “Look, Father,” said Tandem, “let’s drop all these morals and symbols, huh? No comparisons between my watch and my conscience, huh? You can stretch these things all out of proportion, you know.”

  He walked fast around the great curve of the ship so he could leave the priest behind. But as he did so, he stopped. A thought that had been roosting in the shadows suddenly hopped into light. He turned and walked back.

  “Say, Father, what about those four who were left? I’d have sworn they didn’t have enough . . .”

  He stopped. Father John was about 25 yards away, his back turned to him. His shoulders were thrown back a little more than they had been, and there was something in the set of his whole body that showed that the humming fork was beginning to vibrate to a lighter note.

  Tandem perceived that only half-consciously. It was what Father John was doing that seized him and demanded all of his attention.

  The priest was whirling the statuette up into the air and watching it land upon its black legs. Four times, he repeated. Always, the legs dug into the dirt.

  Even from that distance, Tandem could feel the power.