Arkady Strugatsky - Hard to Be a God

“You know best, Almighty. Then just make it so that people have all they need, and do not take away from each other that which you gave them.”

“Even this will not benefit people,” Rumata sighed, “for when they get everything for free, without working for it, from my hands, they will forget how to work, lose their zest for life, and will become my pets, whom I will henceforth be forced to feed and clothe for all eternity.”

“Don’t give it all at once!” Budach said fervently. “Give it to them gradually, little by little!”

“People will gradually take what they need themselves.”

Budach gave an awkward laugh. “Yes, I see, it’s not that simple,” he said. “Somehow I’ve never thought about these things before. We seem to have considered everything. Although,” he leaned forward, “here’s another possibility. Make it so that people love work and knowledge more than anything, so that work and knowledge are the only meanings of their existence!”

Yes, that’s another thing we were planning to try, thought Rumata. Mass hypnoinduction, positive remoralization. Hypnoemitters on three equatorial satellites. “I could do this, too,” he said. “But should we deprive mankind of its history? Should we exchange one mankind for another? Would it not be the same thing as wiping mankind off the face of the planet and creating a new mankind in its place?”

Budach, crinkling his brow, pondered silently. Rumata waited. The melancholy sound of creaking wagons sounded outside the window again. Budach said quietly, “Then, Lord, wipe us off the face of the planet and create us anew in a more perfect form… Or, even better, leave us be and let us go our own way.”

“My heart is full of pity,” Rumata said slowly. “I cannot do that.”

And then he saw Kira’s eyes. She was looking at him with horror and hope.

Having put Budach down to sleep before his long journey, Rumata headed to his study. The effects of the sporamin were wearing off; he again felt tired and shattered, his bruises ached, and his rope-mangled wrists were swelling again. I should get some sleep, he thought. I should definitely get some sleep. And I should contact Don Condor. And I should contact the patrol airship, let them report to the Base. And I need to think about what we should do next, and whether we can do anything, and how to act if there’s nothing else to do.

A black-robed monk with his hood pulled low over his eyes was sitting in the study behind the desk, hunching in the chair, hands resting on the high armrests. Clever, thought Rumata. “Who are you?” he asked wearily. “Who let you in?”

“Good afternoon, noble Don Rumata,” the monk said, throwing back his hood.

Rumata shook his head. “Clever!” he said. “Good afternoon, worthy Arata. Why are you here? What happened?”

“Everything is as usual,” said Arata. “The army has dispersed, they are all dividing up the land, no one wants to go south. The duke is rounding up the ones he hasn’t killed yet and will soon hang my peasants upside down along the Estorian tract. Everything is as usual,” he repeated.

“I understand,” Rumata said.

He collapsed onto the couch, put his hands behind his head, and started looking at Arata. Twenty years ago, when Anton was building model weapons and playing William Tell, this man was called Arata the Beautiful, and he was then probably completely different from how he was now.

The magnificent high forehead of Arata the Beautiful didn’t have that ugly purple brand—it got there after the revolt of the Soanian shipwrights, when three thousand naked slave craftsmen, who had been driven to the Soanian shipyards from all parts of the empire and tormented until they had almost lost their instinct of self-preservation, had broken out of the port one stormy night. They rolled through Soan, leaving corpses and fires behind them, and were met in the outlying districts by the imperial infantry, encased in armor.

And of course, Arata the Beautiful had both his eyes. His right eye had popped out of its socket after a heavy strike by a baronial mace when the peasant army, twenty thousand strong, that had been chasing the baronial militias across the metropole collided in an open field with an Imperial Guard regiment five thousand strong and was cut in half with lightning speed, surrounded, and trampled under the spiked hooves of the military camels.

And Arata the Beautiful had probably been as straight as a pillar. He earned the hump and the new nickname after the Villanian War in the Duchy of Uban two seas from here. This was when, after seven years of plague and drought, four hundred thousand living skeletons massacred the noblemen with their pitchforks and poles and laid siege to the Duke of Uban—and the duke, whose weak mind had been sharpened by unbearable terror, pardoned his subjects, lowered the price of alcoholic beverages fivefold, and promised to free them all. And Arata, already seeing that everything was finished, pleaded, demanded, and implored them not to succumb to the deception but was captured by the leaders, who wanted to leave well enough alone, then beaten with iron rods and left for dead in a cesspool.

The massive iron ring on his right wrist, on the other hand, was probably already there when he was still called Beautiful. The ring had been chained to an oar of a pirate galley, but Arata broke the chain, hit Captain Egu the Seducer in the temple with it, commandeered the ship and then the entire pirate armada, and tried to create a free republic on the water. And this undertaking ended as a bloody drunken disgrace, because Arata had been young, didn’t know how to hate, and believed that freedom alone would be enough to turn a slave into a god.

This was a professional rebel, an avenger by divine grace, a figure quite rare in medieval societies. Such pikes are occasionally produced by historical evolution and released into social deep waters, so that the fat carps feeding on the bottom plankton can’t doze… Arata was the only person here for whom Rumata felt neither hatred nor pity, and in his earthling’s dreams—the feverish dreams of a man who had lived for five years surrounded by stench and blood—he often imagined himself as such an Arata, having received the high right to murder the murderers, torture the torturers, and betray the traitors for having passed through all the hells of the universe.

“Sometimes I think,” said Arata, “that we’re all powerless. I’m the eternal rebel leader, and I know that my power comes from my extraordinary survivability. But this power doesn’t change my powerlessness. My victories magically turn into defeats. My friends in battle turn to enemies—the most courageous ones flee, the most loyal ones turn traitor or die. And I have nothing but my bare hands, and I can’t reach the gilded idols behind fortified walls with my bare hands.”

“How did you get to Arkanar?” Rumata asked.

“I sailed with the monks.”

“Have you gone insane? You’re so recognizable.”

“But not in a crowd of monks. Half of the officers of the Order are simpleminded, or maimed like me. Cripples are pleasing to the Lord.” He chuckled, looking Rumata in the face.

“And what do you intend to do?” Rumata asked, lowering his eyes.

“The usual. I know what the Holy Order is; in less than a year, the people of Arkanar will start pouring out of their holes with axes to fight in the street. And I will lead them, so that they fight those they should, instead of each other and everyone around them.”

“Will you need money?” Rumata asked.

“Yes, as usual. And weapons.” He paused, then said silkily, “Don Rumata, do you remember how disappointed I was when I found out who you are? I hate priests, and it was very bitter to me that their false fairy tales turned out to be true. But a poor rebel must draw benefit from whatever circumstances he encounters. The priests say that the gods have lightning. Don Rumata, I really need lightning to break down the fortified walls.”