David Nickle - Eutopia

And on balance, more had gone badly. The Feegers had once had rifles and pistols, but they were only a few and that was long ago; and now, it seemed that the rest of the wide world rattled with iron.

The Oracle had proclaimed that they ought just go ahead, march into the place where the Son had been entrenched, and preach the word to the people there; bring them in line with what the Old Man wished, and set them to work.

“Folk who worship need be learned,” said the Oracle. “Else they praise ignorant, and their God might go astray with ’em.”

And her sisters had nodded, and Missy said: “Can’t suffer one go astray,” and Lily went on: “That’s heresy, ain’t it?” and the Oracle nodded, and bowed her head, and held up the swaddled Infant before her.

No one debated much—one didn’t argue in the presence of the Oracle and her sisters. But Lothar worried; although the scent of her had long washed off, Lothar still could never be far again from her, from the memory of the time with her, when her soft, lake-wrinkled fingers had took hold of him, and drawn him inside. The Old Man spoke through her now, but she was still just a girl—a Feeger—and Lothar would not let her walk into peril blindly.

So it was that when she ordered them to climb the hill, and take the heretics’ homestead for the thing they had done, Lothar had been in the forefront of the raiding party, scouting the town to make sure that no one guarded with rifle, and quietly killing that one who had. He would have wished it had been he who had found the Infant, martyred in a glass jar. But Lothar hung back and made certain that not one of the folk of the ’stead lived, to return one day and take revenge on the Oracle and her brood.

And so it was, that when she ordered them forward to spread the gospel, Lothar nodded—then later, when they crouched in the cold dark by river’s edge, he stole up to a cousin, and told him that he would scout ahead an hour before the rest came, and if there was danger of gunmen, he would whistle a signal so they might all approach more carefully. The cousin grinned at him, and hit him on the back, and told him to go on ahead.

Lothar moved his fingers to his lips now as he watched the men in white mill about the dock. There were a number of them, maybe half as many as all of the Feegers. But they did not carry guns, or even blades and axes like the cousins.

He squinted around the tree-covered bank, and seeing nothing else, lowered his fingers.

They were strangers—but at least they posed no threat.

And so Lothar waited quietly, for his family to catch up.

The song grew over the water as the sheeted men watched and listened. They’d all of them come this morning, even the ones who weren’t watching over their Lord, Mister Juke—even Nowak, who had been resting in a lower ward in the hospital, his shoulder tightly bandaged from the surgery a day before. The call had been building through the early morning, carrying on the scented breeze. A girl’s voice, high and lilting, singing words that though unclear, beckoned—the same way that Mister Juke had beckoned, but with a greater insistence somehow—a sound as insistent as it was insensible.

It grew as the rafts appeared around the river-bend. There were three of them, crowded with folk—tall and beautiful, bearing blades that gleamed in the morning light. The men in sheets raised up their arms in welcome as the rafts drifted closer, and spread out in front of them.

In the middle raft, a girl stepped forward. She wore sheets of her own, her long dark hair tumbling down them. In her arms, she held an Infant. The men gasped at her beauty, and fell to their knees as she opened her mouth and sang to them.

She sang and sang, until she was hoarse—as the music washed over them, some of the men thought: She is singing the same song again and again. It is growing more shrill—it is as though we haven’t heard it properly.

But the thoughts were passing, and not a one spoke of them. The music was too great a thing, and its majesty confounded them; whether they felt joy or rage, it mattered not. They knelt in dumb rapture, uncomprehending, before the greatness of God.

Beside her sister the Oracle, Missy grumbled: “They’re heretics. Kill ’em.”

The Oracle drew a breath. They were heretical, these strange men in sheets—but they were worshipful too; they had been touched by the Son, and they’d felt the touch, and they listened. But the song… they only bathed in it, like water. When the Oracle sang for Feeger, how better it was. Feeger knew the song—they knew who they were—and in the end—they would obey their Oracle.

These folk—they were obstinate. They were…

Lily found the words that the Oracle could not. “They were let be too long,” she said. “They hear your song—some other Oracle’s words.”

“And it’ll send ’em mad,” said Missy—and the Oracle nodded, and hefted her bundle nearer her breast—and she sang again, this time, not to the Heathen in sheets. But to Lothar—and his brothers.

The axes and blades came down in a flurry. They caught the men at the shoulder, the neck; an arm was sheared off, and one of the heretics shrieked, and fell into another blade. The white sheets stained red, and the screaming stopped, as the Feegers stepped away from the steaming circle of the dead.

And that, the Oracle feared, was how things would need go from here. They’d had a false Oracle—they wouldn’t hear her; they thought her foolish, because that other one had poisoned their minds.

“Lothar,” she said, and Lothar came to her. She smiled. He never missed instruction; never asked questions; never disrespected her.

“Find me that false prophet,” she said, “and cut him up the middle.”

“Bergstrom is coming,” said Sam Green to the Harpers. “Ben says he’s carrying a lamp.”

They were all of them in the kitchen by now—Mr. and Mrs. Harper and of course Andrew Waggoner, as well as some of Sam’s men.

“A lamp?” said Andrew. “It’s broad daylight outside.”

Ben, a young man with a short-cropped beard and the beginnings of baldness, looked sheepish as Sam explained: “I’m guessing a lamp.”

“A bright light, Mr. Green,” said Jake. “Can’t say it was a lamp.”

Mr. Harper sighed. “I don’t care if he’s got the God-damned sun in a sack. What’s he doing here at this hour?” Then he straightened, as a thought occurred to him: “D’you suppose he’s an idea where Ruth has got to?”

“Did anyone send word to him?” asked Mrs. Harper.

Garrison Harper looked to Sam, who shook his head: “Not us, sir.”

Ben looked over his shoulder. “Doctor’s here,” he said needlessly, before stepping out the servant’s entrance.

Andrew took another gulp of his tea and sat up straighter on his stool. It was absurd, given everything that Bergstrom had done to him—but he didn’t want to appear dishevelled in front of his peer.

“We are in the kitchen!” shouted Garrison, then turned to Andrew. “I’m sure Dr. Bergstrom will be delighted to know that you’re well, in any case.”

“If he’s sobered up,” said Mrs. Harper, under her breath.

“Hush,” said Garrison again, as the door from the front of the house swung open. It was an instruction that none of them disobeyed.

Andrew gaped.

The doctor had undergone a complete metamorphosis since last they’d met. This morning, he had managed the difficult trick of looking at once cadaverous and bloated. His lips were flushed red as a whore’s painted mouth, and his eyes were shadowed with deep rings. He wore a long coat, into the pockets of which he’d jammed his hands.