Fear that man

Sam despite the fact that he wholly or partially remembered most of them. It was as if he had been told of these things but had never actually seen them. In the seeing lay the wonder. They had gone to the light shows, the toto-experience places. They had seen the parks, the avenues of art. Gnossos knew the city well, that being one of the qualifications of a true poet-to know the beating heart of the metropolis. Or megalopolis? No matter. He explained all things they did not understand, clarified things they thought they knew. It was a marvelous time, save for the constant awareness that another hypnotic trance and order could be on the way, minutes from them, ready to swallow Sam into noisy chaos and use him.
        So it was, in the course of their aimless ramblings, they came upon the Christian. Sam noticed that Hurkos bristled at the sight of the man-not because of this individual, but because of the heedless god that supposedly stood behind him.
        The Christian was old. He was fifty, ancient in a world where all were eternally thirty or younger. He had evidently been a child of a strong Christian family, for he had not even received anti-beard elements; the heavy shadow on his face gave him an eerie, seldom-seen metallic look. His teeth were yellow and chipped. His skin was wrinkled. Across his chest and back hung the halves of a sandwich sign. The front said: GOD IS ASHAMED! When the man saw them coming, he executed a small heel-turn to reveal the letters on the back of the sign: HE SHALL COME AGAIN TO JUDGE!
        “I can’t understand them,” Hurkos said.
        Gnossos smiled a thin smile. “Some day, they will all be gone.”
        “But why are there these people?” Sam asked. “Don’t the medics prevent mental infirmities in babies?”
        “Well,” the poet said, shortening his giant strides to match the smaller steps of his companions, “the original concept of the empire was complete freedom. Mental infirmities were weeded out, true. As a result, the number of religious people dropped over the years. But one cannot limit another man’s beliefs under a system of complete freedom. Religious persons were allowed to practice their beliefs. Though their children might be born as mentally sound as possible, the parents raised them and passed their own superstitions on to their offspring. The number of religious dwindled. But as long as they procreated-and this is a strong part of their faith, these Christians-they would always have children to indoctrinate, to warp. It’s a pity, certainly. But, after all, they are responsible and it is their life and their child. A man can waste what is his if he so choose. I guess.”
        “Know the Word,” the Christian said as they drew abreast of him. He handed Gnossos and Sam pamphlets-yellow paper with red print. They were so wrinkled and tattered that it was evident many people had handed them right back in the past. The short-lived traffic of each pamphlet had worn it severely.
        “I’ll take one too,” Hurkos said, holding his hand out.
        The Christian made no reply. Hurkos asked again.
        “Will you ask this person of tainted blood to cease speaking to me?” the bearded one asked Sam. He was obviously distressed, running his thin, bony hands up and down the edges of the chest sign, toying with little splinters projecting from the edge of the plastic square.
        “Tainted blood?”
        “They don’t like Mues,” Gnossos explained. “They would never speak to one unless they were dying and needed help. Then, it would be God’s will that they spoke.”
        “Why are Mues-tainted?” Sam asked.
        “A Mue is not a creation of God, but the work of man,” the Christian snapped. “A Mue is a violation of God’s holy powers of creation.” His eyes gleamed fanatically.
        “Prejudice,” Gnossos said. “It’s part of the dogma of every religion-sometimes heavily disguised but always there. Do you know the history of your church, old man?”
        The Christian shuffled his feet. He was beginning to feel that it might be best to stay out of an argument with these particular pagans, but his fanatic devotion could not be totally denied. “Of course I do. In the beginning there was-”
        “It doesn’t start that far back.” Gnossos laughed. He licked his lips, anxious to launch into the old man. “It doesn’t start with the darkness and the light and the first seven days. It comes along much later.