"I don't know. Wake Mapfabvisheen up, but let the good father sleep.
He seems tired after his spiritual labors and doubtless deserves a
rest."
Doused with a bucket of cold water the little Ssassaror staggered to
his feet. Seeing Archambaud, he embraced him. "Ah, Archambaud, old
baby-abductor, my sweet goose-bagger, my ears tingle to see you
again!"
They did. Red and blue sparks flew off his ear-feathers.
"What is the meaning of this?" sternly interrupted Mapfarity. He
pointed at the dirt swept into the corners.
Mapfabvisheen drew himself up to his full dignity, which wasn't much.
"Good Father Jules was making his circuits," he said. "You know he
travels around the country and hears confession and sings Mass for us
poor egg-stealers who have been unlucky enough to fall into the
clutches of some rich and greedy and anti-social Giant who is too
stingy to hire servants, but captures them instead, and who won't
allow us to leave the premises until our servitude is over...."
"Cut it!" thundered Mapfarity. "I can't stand around all day,
listening to the likes of you. My feet hurt too much. Anyway, you know
I've allowed you to go into town every week-end. Why don't you see a
priest then?"
Mapfabvisheen said, "You know very well the closest town is ten
kilometers away and it's full of Pantheists. There's not a priest to
be found there."
Rastignac groaned inwardly. Always it was thus. You could never hurry
these people or get them to regard anything seriously.
Take the case they were wasting their breath on now. Everybody knew
the Church had been outlawed a long time ago because it opposed the
use of the Skins and certain other practices that went along with it.
So, no sooner had that been done than the Ssassarors, anxious to
establish their check-and-balance system, had made arrangements
through the Minister of Ill-Will to give the Church unofficial legal
recognizance.
Then, though the aborigines had belonged to that pantheistical
organization known as the Sons of Good And Old Mother Nature, they
had all joined the Church of the Terrans. They operated under the
theory that the best way to make an institution innocuous was for
everybody to sign up for it. Never persecute. That makes it thrive.
* * * * *
Much to the Church's chagrin, the theory worked. How can you fight an
enemy who insists on joining you and who will also agree to everything
you teach him and then still worship at the other service? Supposedly
driven underground, the Church counted almost every Landsman among its
supporters from the Kings down.
Every now and then a priest would forget to wear his Skin out-of-doors
and be arrested, then released later in an official jail-break. Those
who refused to cooperate were forcibly kidnapped, taken to another
town and there let loose. Nor did it do the priest any good to
proclaim boldly who he was. Everybody pretended not to know he was a
fugitive from justice. They insisted on calling him by his official
pseudonym.
However, few priests were such martyrs. Generations of Skin-wearing
had sapped the ecclesiastical vigor.
The thing that puzzled Rastignac about Father Jules was the sacrament
wine. Neither he nor anybody else in L'Bawpfey, as far as he knew, had
ever tasted the liquid outside of the ceremony. Indeed, except for
certain of the priests, nobody even knew how to make wine.