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Aug.18,2010Something up there is not digesting.
The wooden saint gave him no ready answer. Pap. Sifting out chaff. Sometimes his mind worked in
snatches. It was better to let it work that way when the cramps came and the world weighed heavily upon him.
What did the world weigh? It weighs, but is not weighed. Sometimes its scales are crooked. It weighs life and
labor in the balance against silver and gold. That’ll never balance. But fast and ruthless, it keeps on weighing. It
spills a lot of life that way,cheap flyff money, and some times a little gold. And blindfolded, a king comes riding across the desert,
with a set of crooked scales, a pair of loaded dice. .And upon the flags emblazoned?aVexilla regis . . .
“No!” the abbot grunted, suppressing the vision.
But of course! the saint’s wooden smile seemed to insist.
Dom Paulo averted his eyes from the image with a slight shudder. Sometimes be felt that the saint was
laughing at him. Do they laugh at us in Heaven? he wondered. Saint Maisie of York herself?aremember her, old
man?ashe died of a laughing fit. That’s different. She died laughing at herself.
No, that’s at s not so different either. Ulp! The silent belch again. Tuesday’s Saint Maisie’s feast day,
forsooth. Choir laughs reverently at the Alleluia of her Mass. “Alleluia ha ha! Alleluia he ho!”
Sancta Maisie, interride pro me.”
And the king was coming to weigh books in the basement with his pair of crooked scales. How “crooked,”
Paulo? And what makes you think the Memorabilia is completely free of pap? Even the gifted and Venerable
Boedullus once remarked scornfully that about half of it should be called the Inscrutabilia. Treasured fragments
of a dead civilization there were indeed?abut how much of it has been reduced to gibberish, embellished with
olive leaves and cherubims, by forty generations of us monastic ignoramuses,ffxi power leveling, children of dark centuries, many,buy wow gold,
entrusted by adults with an incomprehensible message, to be memorized and delivered to other adults.
I made him travel all the way from Texarkana through dangerous country, thought Paulo. Now I’m just
worrying that what we’ve got may prove worthless to him, that’s all.
But no,forza credits, that wasn’t all. He glanced at the smiling saint again. And again: Vexilla regis inferni prodeunt ….
Forth come the banners of the King of Hell, whispered a memory of that perverted line from an ancient
commedia. It nagged like an unwanted time in his thought.
The fist clenched tighter. He dropped the fan and breathed through his teeth. He avoided looking at the saint
again. The ruthless angel ambushed him with a hot burst at his corporeal core. He leaned over the desk. That one
had felt like a hot wire breaking. His hard breathing swept a clean spot in the film of desert dust on the desktop.
The smell of the dust was choking. The room went pink, swarmed with black gnats. I don’t dare belch, might
shake something loose?abut Holy Saint and Patron I’ve got to. Pain is. Ergo sum. Lord Christ God accept this
token.
He belched, tasted salt, let his head fall onto the desk.
Does the chalice have to be now right this very minute Lord or can I wait awhile? But crucifixion is always
now. Now ever since before Abraham even is always now. Before Pfardentrott even, now. Always for everybody
anyhow is to get nailed on it and then to hang on it and if you drop off they beat you to death with a shovel so do
it with dignity old man. If you can belch with dignity you may get to Heaven if you re sorry enough about
messing up the rug …. He felt very apologetic.
He waited a long time. Some of the gnats died and the room lost its blush but went hazy and gray.
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A fly was crawling along Saint Leibowitz’ nose. The eyes of the saint seemed to be looking crosseyed at the
fly, urging the abbot to brush it away. The abbot had grown fond of the twenty-sixth century wood carving; its
face wore a curious smile of a sort that made it rather unusual as a sacramental image. The smile was turned
down at one comer; the eyebrows were pulled low in a faintly dubious frown, although there were laugh-
wrinkles at the comers of the eyes. Because of the hangman’s rope over one shoulder, the saint’s expression often
seemed puzzling. Possibly it resulted from slight irregularities in the grain of the wood, such irregularities
dictating to the carver’s hand as that hand sought to bring out finer details than were possible with such wood.
Dom Paulo was not certain whether the image had been growth-sculptured as a living tree before carving or not;
sometimes the patient master-carvers of that period had begun with an oak or cedar sapling, and?aby spending
tedious years at pruning, barking, twisting, and tying living branches into desired positions?ahad tormented the
growing wood into a striking dryad shape, arms folded or raised aloft, before cutting the mature tree for curing
and carving. The resulting statue was unusually resistant to splitting or breaking, since most of the lines of the
work followed the natural grain.
Dom Paulo often marveled that the wooden Leibowitz had also proved resistant to several centuries of his
predecessors?amarveled, because of the saint’s most peculiar smile. That little grin will ruin you someday, he
warned the image …. Surely, the saints must laugh in Heaven; the Psalmist says that God Himself shall chortle,
but Abbot Malmeddy must have disapproved?aGod rest his soul. That solemn ass. How did you get by him, I
wonder? You’re not sanctimonious enough for some. That smile?aWho do I know that grins that way? I like it,
but… Someday,world of warcraft gold, another grim dog will sit in this chair. Cave canem. He’ll replace you with a plaster Leibowitz.
Long-suffering. One who doesn’t look crosseyed at flies. Then you’ll be eaten by termites down in the storage
room. To survive the Church’s slow sifting of the arts, you have to have a surface that can please a righteous
simpleton; and yet you need a depth beneath that surface to please a discerning sage. The sifting is slow, but it
gets a turn of the sifter-handle now and then-when some new prelate inspects his episcopal chambers and
mutters, “Some of this garbage has got to go.” The sifter was usually full of dulcet pap. When the old pap was
ground out, fresh pap was added. But what was not ground out was gold, and it lasted. If a church endured five
centuries of priestly bad taste, occasional good taste had, by then, usually stripped away most of the transient
tripe, had made it a place of majesty that overawed the would-be prettifiers.
The abbot fanned himself with a fan of buzzard feathers, but the breeze was not cooling. The air from the
window was like an oven’s breath off the scorched desert, adding to the discomfort caused him by whatever devil
or ruthless angel was fiddling around with his belly. It was the kind of heat that hints of lurking danger from sun-
crazed rattlers and brooding thunderstorms over the mountains, or rabid dogs and tempers made vicious by the
scorch. It made the cramping worse.
“Please?” he murmured aloud to the saint,buy wow gold, meaning a nonverbal prayer for cooler weather,wow power leveling, sharper wits,ffxi power leveling, and
more insight into his vague sense of something wrong. Maybe it’s that cheese that does it, he thought. .Gummy
stuff this season, and green. I could dispense myself?aand take a more digestible diet.
But no, there we go again. Face it, Paulo: it’s not the food for the belly that does it; it’s the food for the brain.
?76 312168 3
Ten times was this simple but painful litany repeated, with Brother Francis yelping his thanks to Heaven for
each scorching lesson in the virtue of humility, as he was expected to do. The abbot paused after the tenth whack.
Brother Francis was on tip-toe and bouncing slightly. Tears squeezed from the corners of clenched eyelids.
“My dear Brother Francis,” said the Abbot Arkos “are you quite sure you saw the old man?”
“certain,” he squeaked,lotr gold, steeling himself for more.
Abbot Arkos glanced clinically at the youth, then walked round his desk and sat down with a grunt. He
glowered for a time at the slip of parchment bearing the letters
“Who do you suppose he could have been?” Abbot Arkos muttered absently.
Brother Francis opened his eyes, causing a brief shed of water.
“Oh, you’ve convinced me,buy rs money, boy, worse luck for you.
Francis said nothing, but prayed silently that the need to convince his sovereign of his veracity would not
often arise. In response to an irritable gesture from the abbot, he lowered his tunic.
“You may sit down,” said the abbot, becoming casual if not genial
Francis moved toward the indicated chair, lowered himself halfway into it, but then winced and stood up
again. “If it’s all the same to the Reverend Father Abbot?a”
“All right, then stand. I won’t keep you long anyhow. You’re to go out and finish your vigil.” He paused,
noticing the novice’s face brighten a little. “Oh no you don’t!” he snapped. “You’re not going back to the same
place. You’ll trade hermitages with Brother Alfred, and not go near those ruins again. Furthermore,ffxi power leveling, I command
you not to discuss the matter with anyone, except your confessor or with me, although, Heaven knows, the
damage is already done. Do you know what you’ve started?”
Brother Francis shook his bead. “Yesterday being Sunday, Reverend Father, we weren’t required to keep
silent,buy lotro gold, and at recreation I just answered the fellows’ questions. I thought?a”
?25 312168 3
“Well, your fellows have cooked up a very cute explanation, dear son. Did you know that it was the Blessed
Leibowitz himself you met out there?”
Francis looked blank for a moment then shook his head again. “Oh, no, m’Lord Abbot. I’m sure it couldn’t
have been. The Blessed Martyr wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Wouldn’t do such-a-what thing?”
“Wouldn’t chase after somebody and try to hit him with a stick that had a nail in one and.”
The abbot wiped his mouth to hide an involuntary smile. He managed to appear thoughtful after a moment.
“Oh, I don’t know about that, now. It was you he was chasing, wasn’t it? Yes, I thought so. You told your fellow
novices about that part too? Yes, eh? Well, you see, they didn’t think that would exclude the possibility of his
being the Beatus. Now I doubt if there are very many people that the Beatus would chase with a stick, but?a” He
broke off, unable to suppress laughter at the expression on the novice’s face. “All right, son-but who do you
suppose he could have been?”
“I thought perhaps be was a pilgrim on his way to visit our shrine, Reverend Father.”
“Benedicamus Domine.”
“Deo? gratias?” asked Francis.
“Come in, my boy, come in!” called an affable voice, which, after some seconds of puzzling, he recognized
with amazement to have been that of his sovereign abbot.
?23 312168 3
“You twist the little knob, my son,” said the same friendly voice after Brother Francis had stood frozen on
the spot for some seconds, with his knuckles still in position for knocking.
“Y-y-yes-” Francis scarcely touched the knob, but it seemed that the accursed door opened anyway; he had
hoped that it would he tightly stuck.
“The Lord Abbot s-s-sent for?ame?” squawked the novice.
Abbot Arkos pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Mmmm?ayes, the Lord Abbot sent for?ayou. Do come in
and shut the door.”
Brother Francis got the door closed and stood shivering In the center of the room. The abbot was toying
with some of the wire-whiskered things from the old toolbox.
“Or perhaps it would be more fitting,” said Abbot Arkos, “If the Reverend Father Abbot were sent for by
you. Now that you have been so favored by Providence and have become so famous,warcraft gold, eh?” He smiled soothingly.
“Heh heh?” Brother Francis laughed inquiringly. “Oh n-n-no,cheap final fantasy gil, m’Lord.”
“You do not dispute that you have won overnight fame? That Providence elected you to discover THIS?a”
he gestured sweepingly at the relics on the desk “?athis ]UNK box, as its previous owner no doubt rightly called
it?”
The novice stammered helplessly, and somehow managed to wind up wearing a grin.
“You are seventeen and plainly an idiot, are you not?”
“That is undoubtedly true, m’Lord Abbot.”
“What excuse do you propose for believing yourself called to Religion?”
“No excuse, Magister meus.”
“Ah? So? Then you feel that you have no vocation to the Order?”
“Oh,cheap rs gold, I do!” the novice gasped.
“But you propose no excuse?”
“None.”
“You little cretin, I am asking your reason. Since you state none, I take it you are prepared to deny that you
met anyone in the desert the other day, that you stumbled on this-this JUNK box with no help, and that what I
have been hearing from others is only-feverish raving?”
“Oh, no, Dom Arkos!”
“Oh, no, what?”
“I cannot deny what I saw with my own eyes,ffxi power leveling, Reverend Father.”
“So, you did meet an angel?aor was it a saint??aor perhaps not yet a saint??aand he showed you where to
temptation?”
Francis reddened. “I?aI tried to catch it. It got away.”
“So, not merely thought?adeed as well. Just that one time?”
“Well-yes, just that.”
“All right, in thought and deed, willfully meaning to eat meat during Lent. Please be as specific as you can
after this. I thought you had examined your conscience properly. Is there anything else?’
“Quite a lot.”
The priest winced. He had several hermitages to visit; it was a long hot ride, and his knees were hurting.
Please get on with it as quickly as you can,” he sighed.
“Impurity, once.”
“Thought, word, or deed?”
“Well, there was this succubus, and she?a”
“Succubus? Oh?anocturnal. You were asleep?”
“Yes, but?a”
“Then why confess it?”
“Because afterwards.”
“Afterwards what? When you woke up?”
“Yes. I kept thinking about her. Kept imagining it all over again.”
“All right, concupiscent thought, deliberately entertained. You’re sorry? Now, what next?”
All this was the usual sort of thing that one kept hearing time after endless time from postulant after
postulant, novice after novice, and it seemed to Father Cheroki that the least Brother Francis could do would be
to bark out his self-accusations one,ffxi power leveling, two, three,final fantasy power leveling, in a neat orderly manner, without all this prodding and
prompting. Francis seemed to find difficulty in formulating whatever he was about to say; the priest waited.
“I think my vocation has come to me, Father, but?a” Francis moistened his cracked lips and stared at a bug
on a rock.
“Oh, has it?” Cheroki’s voice was toneless
“Yes, I think?abut would it be a sin,final fantasy gil, Father, if when I first got it, I thought rather scornfully of the
handwriting? I mean?”
Cheroki blinked. Handwriting? Vocation? What kind of a question was?aHe studied the novice’s serious
expression for a few seconds, then frowned.
“Have you and Brother Alfred been passing notes to each other?” he asked ominously.
“Oh, no, Father!”
“Then whose handwriting are you talking about?”
“The Blessed Leibowitz.”
Cheroki paused to think. Did there,buy rs gold, or did there not, exist in the abbey’s collection of ancient documents, any
manuscript penned personally by the founder of the Order??aan original copy? After a moment’s reflection, he
decided in the affirmative; yes, there were a few scraps of it left, carefully kept under lock and key.
“Are you talking about something that happened back at the abbey? Before you came out here?”
“No, Father. It happened right over there?a” He nodded toward the left. “Three mounds over, near the tall