Тим Пауэрс - Bugs and Known Problems

Laughing, Father Avenir clutched the Bible against the cross over his heart. And yet, he waited. The Great Deceiver was, after all, exactly as his name implied. He waited to feel an exhilaration in the earth itself, a lifting of the weight of evil, a cleansing of this great scarred valley.

Instead, the powerful force that throbbed inside of him remained just as strong—and it came from ahead. It tugged on his soul like a magnet, pulling him along. “I banished you!” he said in a hoarse voice, but he still felt the power, the insistent anger.

A voice resonated in his head, no longer the thunderous male voice of Satan himself, but a female voice that was at once benevolent and deadly, like all the protective mothers in the world speaking in unison. “You banished the part of me that was within yourself, but I am still here.”

The force tugged at him, and Avenir staggered forward between the now-quiescent geysers, walking along the valley floor. “I want to see you, and you need to see me. You have killed your Satan, and I applaud you. But I am not the same.”

The voice was tantalizing, and though he fought it, she seemed to put him in a trance. The aspergillum was empty, and he had no more blessed water… but he had his Bible and he had his cross. Father Avenir stopped resisting.

The smell of brimstone was thinner now and he did not feel as threatened, though the female voice that throbbed from the ground and came from somewhere ahead seemed more powerful than even the hulking Lucifer. This, he realized, was his real opponent. The spirit of this valley of fire demons, the vengeful fury of the arcane lands made manifest.

Up ahead, he saw the flat, circular bowl of a pond, like a shimmering irregular mirror. Exhalations of steam drifted up from the surface of the water, and as he approached, he saw that the waters were absolutely still, not stirred by any wind. This pool was a conduit, the source of the feminine voice, the entity that lived within this large and strange valley.

The waters were scalding hot—he could sense that even as he came closer. The ground was bleak and barren. The small lake itself was dead, yet full of colors as if someone had drowned a rainbow there. Chromatic rings of blue and copper, bright green with tendrils of yellow spread out beneath the surface.

“Come closer,” the voice said. “Look into me, so that I may see you.”

“I will show you the holy cross.” He stood on the shore feeling the heat. He held out his wooden cross and looked down to see his reflection in the perfectly still surface… yet the vision went deeper, changing him to a younger man, then an older man. His appearance shifted in the reflection, transforming from himself to Dosabite, then Cameahwait, then numerous other Natives he had seen, then his beloved priests back in St. Louis who had taught him Latin and the Word. He saw his mother, smiling at him and crying when she’d last seen him at the school in St. Louis… his father, with bleak blue eyes and firm expression when telling Avenir he was leaving him at the school so he could learn not to be a savage, and a beautiful Native woman he’d loved before he realized his calling was to the Church and celibacy. It was a blur of shapes, memories, figures.

“Why do you tempt me?” he cried.

“I remind you, that is all. I need you to understand that I am not evil, merely different… just as you are different from the ways and the beliefs here in the wilderness.”

“I bring my beliefs with me,” Avenir said in defiance. “I was baptized. I am a priest. I bring the word of God.”

“You were baptized in the civilized world, foolish man. Not here.”

A stir of ripples circled the chromatic pool. Steam drifted higher, but Avenir leaned over to peer closer, feeling the pull of the shimmering water, the iridescent colors.

“If you wish to serve in these wild lands, if you are truly a missionary, then you must be baptized here as well.” The heat of the water rippled up, nearly blistering the skin on his face.

“You would kill me,” he said. “You would trick me!”

“I have no need of tricks,” said the pulsing voice of the wild. “I know what I am, and I sense the goodness in you, the passion for truth and eternity.”

The voice echoed in his head and Avenir felt a warm honey drifting through him.

“I find it exhilarating,” the voice said.

“I have my mission. You will not sway me from it.”

“I am trying to help you. You cannot bring your civilized ways out here, and so you must adapt your ways to the spirit of the land. There is evil here, even I know it.” The voice thrummed as if in an undertone of fear. “Before this battle is over, there will be many strange alliances. Are you willing to take the risk, Tatanka? Father Avenir? Will you be strong enough and baptize yourself here as well?”

The priest shivered, despite the pounding heat all around him. “I cannot,” he said. “I will not forsake what I believe.”

“I did not ask that of you,” said the presence. “I asked you only to trust… as you ask the Natives to trust you, to believe your words. Now believe mine.” Her voice echoed louder. He cringed, but he couldn’t press the sound away. “I did not say that I’m a rival of your God, nor that I am the sole creator. I am a powerful part of creation, though, and you cannot deny me."

The colors in the chromatic pool were tantalizing. The water itself seemed perfect, pristine, inviting.

Father Avenir was sore and weary, his hair caked from the smoke, grit, and dust of countless days alone on the trail. “I will need the strength,” he whispered. “I come from the civilized world, but I am part of this one. I don’t ever intend to go back, any more than America can return to the rest of the world.”

Earlier, when he faced the manifestation of Satan, Father Avenir had felt fear, but this was not so simple or clear. This was dread and uncertainty, as well as longing. He was alien here in these arcane territories, and he knew there were things here that he could never explain.

But questions were only doubts until they were answered.

He was like those early apostles going out into the wild tribes. Unless the Bible was wrong—and that was impossible—then in those days, too, spirits and magic had walked the land. Had the Catholic missionaries not told defeated local gods that they were now something else and integrated them into their tales and beliefs? The spirits themselves converted, and a legend of Jupiter became a tale of Saint John, or a story of Diana became the most holy story of Saint Catherine.

Avenir was not a fool. He understood how that had happened, the Catholic belief encircling and purifying the pagan one. But could he accomplish that unless he accepted it and became part of it himself? His mother was Native. He was part of this land already. Surely he could touch the spirits and make them his own.

Before he could change his mind, the priest pulled off the tattered black tunic and set it on the ground beside the edge of the hot pool. He set down the Bible and aspergillum, removed his boots, his buckskin breeches, and stood there naked, alone in the wilderness, just as he had been in his first baptism. The only thing he kept was the wooden cross on the thong around his neck.

The female voice remained silent, but he could feel her presence there. And he looked down at the hot pool, knowing that the water was scalding, almost to the boiling point. It was deadly—yes, it would kill him, just like a martyr being boiled in oil back during the days of the Inquisition.

He would die, and his body would float here, unseen by the Shoshone or any white trappers. His flesh would be boiled off his bones, which would then sink to the bottom. Father Avenir would be forgotten.