David Weber - Empire from the Ashes

"In fact," he chuckled, "I believe I've a small cask of Sister Yurid's winter ale left, and it strikes me that this might be an appropriate moment to broach it. Don't you think so?"

This time Sandy's eyes actually sparkled. Harriet seemed almost as excited, and Sandy started talking even before the others were all seated.

"People," she said, "we still haven't figured out how Pardal lost its tech base in the first place, but at least we know now why it hasn't built another one! We spent several hours in the Church library night before last, reading the books into memory through the remotes. We didn't have time to do any content scans then, but it turns out one of our finds is a book on Church doctrine and a couple of others are Church histories. For whatever reason, the Church has anathematized technology."

"Wait a minute," Sean said. "I considered that, but it doesn't hold up. Not for forty-five thousand years, anyway."

"Why not?"

"Just think about it for a minute. Let's say that at some point in the past—some pretty long ago point, judging from what's left of the Imperial ruins—the Church did proscribe technology. I can think of a few scenarios which might lead to that, like Harry's original suggestion that they dusted themselves out or whipped up a bio-weapon all their own. Either of those could have killed off most of the techies, and I suppose the destruction could have created an anti-technical revulsion that resulted in a 'religious' anti-tech stance. Certainly something caused them to lose their original alphabet, their original language, science—all of it—and that sounds more like systematic suppression than simple damage to the tech base.

"But having done that, the Church wouldn't even know what technology was by the time it got a few thousand years down the road. How could they prevent it from reemerging in a homegrown variety? Without some term of reference to know what constituted 'high tech,' how could they recognize it to snuff it when it turned up again?"

"Fair enough," Sandy agreed, "but you don't have the full picture. First, they didn't completely lose Universal. We thought they had, but that was before we hit the Church documents. They're written in something called the 'Holy Tongue,' using an alphabet restricted to the priesthood, and for all intents and purposes the Holy Tongue is a corrupted version of Universal.

"Second, the Church is definitely connected to the quarantine system. There are several references in here to 'the Voice of God'; in fact, their whole liturgical year is set up around what has to be the quarantine system's central computer—there are festivals called 'Fire Test,' 'Plot Test,' 'High Fire Test,' and the like. There are also references to something called 'Holy Servitors' that I'd guess are maintenance mechs from the shipyard, since they appear mysteriously to tend the inner shrine. There's no sign these people understand what's really going on, but they seem to recognize that the system's purpose is to protect their world from contamination, though they've turned it into a religious matter. The Voice is part of God's plan to protect them from demons, and it not only 'proves' God's existence but their own rectitude. If they weren't doing what God wants, His Voice would tell them so, right?

"Third, way back whenever, the Church set up a definition of what constitutes acceptable technology. In essence, Pardalians are forbidden anything but muscle, wind, or water power, so they don't have to know what high tech is; they've set up preconditions which preclude its existence.

"There's more to it than that—there's a whole, complicated evaluating procedure called the Test of Mother Church. Bear in mind that we're talking about something written in this debased version of Universal rather than the vulgar tongue, so we can make lots more sense of it. Apparently the Test consists of applying a number of Tenets which consider whether or not any new development violates the power restrictions or requires new tools, new procedures, or new knowledge. If it does, it's right out."

"Hold it." It was Tamman's turn to object. "These people have gunpowder, and that doesn't rely on muscles, wind, or water!"

"No," Harriet agreed, "but Earth certainly had gunpowder before it got beyond waterwheels and windmills, and the Church occasionally— very occasionally—grants dispensations through a system of special Conclaves. It takes a long time to work through, but it means advances aren't entirely impossible. We've found several dispensations scattered over the last six hundred local years—almost a thousand Terran years—and most of them seem to be fairly pragmatic things like kitchen-sink chemistry and pretty darn empirical medicine and agriculture. We're still groping in the dark, but it looks like there've been some 'progressive' periods—which, unfortunately, seem to provoke backlash periods of extreme conservatism. The key thing, though, is that the Church is continually on the lookout to suppress anything that even looks like the scientific method, and without that there's no systematic basis for technological innovation."

"And people put up with it?" Tamman shook his head. "I find that hard to accept."

"That's because of your own cultural baggage," Sandy said. "You come from a technical society and you accept technology as good, or at least inevitable; these people have the opposite orientation. And remember that the Church knows God is on its side; they have proof of it several times a year when the Voice speaks. Not only that," her excited voice turned grimmer, "but their version of the Inquisition has some pretty grisly punishments for anybody who dares to fool around with forbidden knowledge."

"Inquisition?" Sean looked up. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Me neither," Harriet said. "I had to stop after the first little bit, but Sandy and Brashan waded through the whole ghastly thing." She shuddered. "Even the little I read is going to give me nightmares for a week."

"Me, too," Sandy murmured. Her bright eyes were briefly haunted, and she brooded down at the deck for a long, silent moment. Then she shook herself. "Like a lot of intolerant religions, their Inquisition stacks the deck. First, they're only doing it to 'save souls,' including that of the 'heretic' in question, and they've picked up on the theory of the mortification of the flesh to 'expiate' sins. That means they're actually helping the people they murder. Worse, they're never wrong. Their religious law enshrines the use of torture during questioning, which means the accused always confess, even knowing how they'll be put to death, and—" she looked up and met Sean's gaze "—the actual executions are even worse. Pour décourager les autres , I suppose."

"Brrrr." Sean's lips twisted in revulsion. "I suppose any 'church' that packs that kind of whammy probably could keep the peasants in line."

"Especially with the advantage of a whole secret language. They can promote universal literacy in the vulgar tongue and still have most of the advantages of a priestly monopoly on education. And they've got a pretty big carrot to go with their stick. The Church collects a tithe—looks like somewhere around twelve percent—from every soul on the planet. A lot of that loot gets used to build temples, commission religious art, and so forth, but a big chunk is loaned out to secular rulers at something like thirty percent, and another goes into charitable works. You see? They've got their creditor nobles on a string, and the poor look to them for relief when times get bad. Sean, they've got this planet sewed up three ways to Sunday!"

"Damn. And they're the ones sitting on top of the quarantine ground station!" Sean shook his head in disgust.