Tales from Kalgachia - 4
The Hardy Evergreen Monastery was located in the Lieutenancy of Katarsis, perched on a precarious ledge overlooking a valley. At the bottom of that valley was a small river flanked by strips of arable land; the monastery's own farm which, like many others, was forced to cultivate every precious scrap of fertile ground it could find between the mountain ridges to feed the local people. The supply of food to Kalgachia's growing population was one of the more pressing problems of the state - now it had inspired the arrival of a stranger clad in an emerald green robe, picking his way between Hardy Evergreen's fields and up the steep gravel path to the monastery itself.
The monastery's stout pine door was built into a sally port of quarried stone, but before the visitor could even reach its knocker he was assailed by a barking voice from a nearby embrasure:
"Halt! Who goes there!?"
"Oh hello," said the visitor. "I'm from the Directorate of Education and Outreach. Statistics office. I'm here to... well, gather statistics."
"Come back when you've got an appointment!", said the hidden voice.
"But I don't need an appointment," said the visitor. "I have a warrant from the Directorate itself to authorise my entry. Look..." he produced a document covered in official stamps and walked toward to the embrasure to display it.
"Halt!" barked the voice again. "Don't come any closer! Remain where you are!" To emphasise the point, the barrel of a Fischer-Preiss semi-automatic carbine came sliding through the hole.
Some muttering was heard in the darkness of the sally port and the sudden clunk of deadbolts announced the opening of the door. From it emerged three men in hooded sackcloth, all armed. One of them snatched the warrant and began reading it.
"Wait a minute," said one of the other men. "Look at the state of his face. All yellow, like he's gone down with the lurgi."
"Oh it's really nothing," said the visitor. "Just a genetic condition."
The sceptical guard stepped up and rested two forefingers on the visitor's forehead, then jumped back with a jolt. "Genetic like shat!" he cried. "Yer red hot, man! He's runnin' a fever, lads! Gerraway! I bet the focker's contagious!"
The guards retreated several steps and trained their weapons on the visitor. "West Jollycrotch is still under quarantine!" said the younger of the guards. "It's riddled with the lurgi! You escaped from there, didn't you?"
"Not at all!" said the visitor, not daring to move while guns were trained on him. "I didn't even come through that way! And I don't have the lurgi, this is my natural-" he was interrupted by the guard in the sally port racking the bolt on his Fischer-Preiss but found the wit to continue. "Look, I think this is all getting a little out of hand. Do you have a doctor here? He can confirm whether I'm sick or not. If I am, I'll take my leave."
"Aye, we got a doctor," said the lead guard, "but if ya think yer entitled to waste his time ya can think again. Feck off out of here before we blow yer head off! And don't come b-"
"Oh calm down, will you?" called a voice from the door. A man in a tattered tweed jacket was standing there, cradling a black leather holdall. "I heard some commotion about a quarantine breaker. Is this your man?"
"Aye, right enough doc," said the lead guard. "Runnin' a temperature he is, and that ain't no healthy complexion either."
The doctor advanced three paces, squinted at the visitor and sighed, shaking his head at the guards. "You stinking idiots," he said. "He's a Nezeni. Got a drop of the old Deep Singer blood in him. Can't you tell by the eyes? And his skin is naturally bright yellow. If he was ill, it'd turn purple."
"Green actually," said the visitor. "You're thinking of the Stonetree xantochromatic iteration 14C, yes?"
"I was," said the doctor. "Forgive me, I haven't had much experience of your kind since medical school."
"You were close," said the visitor. "I'm a respliced derivative of that iteration. Long story. But I thank you for confirming my good health."
"Why didn't you just tell the guards?" said the doctor. "Just because we're a little out of the way up here doesn't mean we're a pack of bigots. There's no danger in admitting your heritage."
"Your guards didn't exactly give that impression," said the visitor.
"Fair point," said the doctor, turning to the guards. "Do us a favour and piss off back indoors, will you?" He watched the guards shuffle back into the sally port, then shook his head. "You have my apologies on their behalf," he said. "They're Church partisans. We train them for wartime but they think they're a police force around here. Like they'd last five minutes in a real fight. One's diabetic, another's a chronic boozer... they let themselves go to ruin. I have enough cases to work on without avoidable ailments like theirs. If there's one thing I cannot abide in this world, it's an unhealthy lifestyle. There's no excuse for it. None at all." He patted one of his pockets, produced a small silver case and opened it. "Cigarette?"
"Er, no thank you," said the visitor. "But you may be able to help me find the Abbot of this monastery."
"Father Superior?" said the doctor, his face obscured by the flare of a match and a cloud of tobacco smoke. "Oh yes, I can take you to him. He's a jolly fellow, one of the old Shrubby school. He likes visitors."
The modest dimensions of the monastery's walled compound concealed its true size - the greater part of it was located underground, in a series of vaults linked by narrow tunnels. The lowest vault served as a reception to the Abbot's office - and to the relief of the visitor, the Abbot himself lived up to his billing.
"Come, come!" beckoned the old man from his desk, shuffling unsteadily to his feet. "Don't just hang around the door. Take a seat, young man. No no, the leather one. I insist. I keep it just for guests. Brother Spassky, go and fetch some potato spirit for this man will you? His insides will need warming, coming all the way out here." He sat down himself. "Forgive me young man, but it's the best I can serve you at the moment. I'm sure you can appreciate this is hardly vineyard country."
"You're too kind, Father," said the visitor, sinking into the leather armchair with an eerily flatulent squeak. "As is your doctor. And your guards... well, they have a certain character of their own."
The Abbot cackled with laughter as his hooded minion brought in two glasses of the local moonshine and closed the door on the way out. "Very diplomatic of you," he said. "A bunch of lazy jobsworths, those guards. But they're better than nothing. Came from a rough background, a lot of them. If they weren't in the safe company of the brotherhood here, who knows what trouble they'd be causing? They could be raising your roof over at the..." he slid his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and studied the visitor's warrant. "...at the DEO statistics office. Oh dear, you poor thing... how did a Trog like you get an assignment like that?"
The visitor froze, momentarily forgetting to swallow his mouthful of moonshine so its fumes were propelled painfully up his nose by his intense body heat. Membership of the Trogolodyti, the secretive society of underground-dwelling arcanists who wielded a certain quiet influence on affairs of Kalgachi state, was supposed to be a closely guarded secret. How the Abbot had ascertained his was anyone's guess.
"Oh don't look so worried," said the Abbot. "You're not the only ones with eyes to see, you know. At any rate, it's an honour to have you with us, mister..." he looked at the warrant again, "...mister Retchin. Will you be staying long?"
"Not too long," said Retchin. "I'll be surveying the production capability of your monastery's various assets and submitting the data upward. I gather it wasn't too long since the last visit, so you needn't fear a sudden jump in your tithe obligations."
"Most reassuring," said the Abbot. "If I am to be honest, we are operating at the limit of what we can contribute. Of the food we produce, fully half goes to our cannery for processing... and half of that is assigned to the KDF for military rations. Only the other half goes to the DHPW's strategic famine reserve where we can get at it again if the need arises. And the need has almost arisen three times this month. If we were to deny any more food to the parishes and tithe it away we would only have to start claiming it back again. Lots of paperwork for us, for you, for the DHPW, for everyone."
"Quite," said Retchin. "But you need fear nothing from allowing me to report honestly. My office's metrics are getting better all the time. In five years, shortfalls like the one you mention will have been eliminated, barring drought or blight."
"And if the population increases in the meantime?" said the Abbot.
"More people means more farmers," said Retchin. "More farmers means more land farmed. More land farmed means more food."
"As long as Kalgachia doesn't run out of farmable land." The Abbot said with a smile.
"The Perfecti will have thought of a solution by then," said Retchin, averting the Abbot's inquisitive gaze.
"You seem awfully sure of their competence."
"I dare say my sources are better than yours, Father. With all due respect."
"One can only hope so, young man! And rest assured I will hide nothing from you here. I'll have Brother Spassky give you the grand tour. The farms, the cannery, the logging camp, the mine... and I hope you'll accept my invitation to chapel this evening."
"But of course," said Retchin. "I try to keep up with the doctrine of the new church. Truth be told, I was a cleric in the old one."
"One of the Shrub's church, eh? Which watershed?"
"I was never lucky enough to be assigned one. I trained at Shrubseed Seminary as a wandering Dissitor. Preached a little in western Lywall and a little around here, before the Perfecti took over. No mendicancy, you understand... I had means of my own."
"No shame if you didn't," said the Abbot. "I ran a chapel in Toastytop, once upon a time. Until the toast stopped coming... a sad day that was. I joined the throng of refugees and lost my spiritual way, like we all did I suppose. Then I found it again with the Church of Kalgachia. We're always looking to ordain ex-Minarboreal clerics, you know..."
"And I might have fallen in with your flock, if I hadn't fallen into a government job first. But as kind as your offer is, I believe I've found my path already."
"And I dare say you have a decent enough conception of that path, getting in with the Troglodyti and all." The Abbot winked.
"If I were affiliated with that society, I would never be at liberty to admit it," said Retchin.
"Nor would I wish you to," said the Abbot. "I'm sure you didn't come here to be embarrassed. Now... do you wish Brother Spassky to show you around immediately, or will you stay for another glass of the our local elixir?" He tapped his own empty glass, his face ruddy with the alcoholic fluster of expectation.
"Far be it for me to turn down your hospitality, Father," said Retchin. "If you can spare one more glass, I'll gladly stay."
In the event, two glasses had turned into four and the Abbot had enjoyed a pleasant, albeit slightly inebriated conversation with his visitor. Retchin had no family, it transpired - with the exception of his mother, all of his family had been undead and had fallen when the ley lines of lichdom gave out. His mother had been a serpentine Deep Singer, with whom he had lost contact during the collapse of Minarbor's empire. All mention of her seemed to bring Retchin to the edge of tears, expressed as spurts of faint white steam from his boiling eyes. Like many Kalgachis including the Abbot himself, Retchin was pursued by persistent ghosts of his Minarborian past; the Abbot knew better than to stir up such things over a fifth glass of potato spirit, and sent Retchin away with Spassky to survey the monastery instead.
Retchin carried out the survey with a professional efficiency, completing it in time to attend his invitation to evening service at the monastery chapel. He had prayed along with the rest, stayed overnight in the Abbot's guest lodgings and was gone with the dawn. A fine fellow, the Abbot concluded, the sort that one is wiser for having met.
That Retchin may have had more clout than a mere functionary of the Kalgachi statistics office became apparent some days later, when a missive arrived on the Abbot's desk from the Holy Synod of the Church of Kalgachia. It acknowledged and delegated an order made by the Council of Perfecti itself; namely that the Hardy Evergreen Monastery's tithe obligation for food was to be slashed from fifty percent to thirty-three, with ten percent of that saving being reassigned to a tithe of potato spirit and the remainder reserved for the relief of Hardy Evergreen's starving parishes. The next day a party of heavily armed cossacks arrived with a warrant from the Prefects, Kalgachia's internal security service, to arrest every man on the monastery's partisan guard roster. After the guards' apoplectic protests were silenced by a few horse whips to the face, they were led away in shackles and never seen again. Many noted their absence but few lamented it - they were replaced by more polite brothers of the monastery soon enough. And as this bureaucratic whirlwind settled, the Abbot wondered how the political power of the Troglodyte Mr. Retchin - if that was even his real name - could possibly extend to the Council of Perfecti itself.
Unless, of course, he was one of them.
It was rumoured that the Perfecti were not content to run Kalgachia from their remote bunker, that they wandered the land in disguise to gather information and ensure their minions were telling the truth about the state of the nation. If they were to do it, the Abbot concluded, the statistics office would be the ideal front. But for one of the Perfecti to come all the way from Oktavyan to Hardy Evergreen's modest estate? That seemed inconceivable - unless they sought the places they would be least expected.
Added to this was the fact that the Troglodyti's representative on the Council of Perfecti was conferred with its chairmanship, making them Kalgachia's nominal head of state. That particular revelation struck the Abbot as he lay in bed at night, causing a cold sweat to flash over him. Had he met nothing less than his sovereign leader, over a few glasses of moonshine in his office, without even knowing it?
Even now he did not know for sure, and he knew he could never know. The Trogolodyte he had so smugly unmasked had gotten the last laugh, and it would haunt the Abbot to the end of his days.
