.
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The Coming to Rosecove
or
The Demolished Man
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While Bronze was flying north, Emrett began to torture Harry. His Beheeyem did the actual pain-inducing; Emrett simply sat by, asking questions out loud, inwardly admiring his skill. Emrett really cared about pain. The whys behind the screams interested him fully as much as the anguish itself. And whereas the Hood spent his life physically following the hunt, Emrett read and studied anything he could get his hands on dealing with the subject of Distress. There was no illusion that Harry would escape the usual punishments for failure, and letting Bronze Tercano slip through his fingers. Before the bungled operation Emrett had given Harry a manual titled Department of Correction for Incompetent Officers. It was profusely illustrated and Emrett trusted that Harry had not found a dull page in it.
"All right now," Emrett said to Harry, who lay in a great fifth-level cage; "before we begin, I want you to answer me this: have you any complaints about your treatment thus far?"
"None whatever," Harry said, and he was telling the truth.
"You feel fit, then?" Emrett went on.
"I assume my legs are a little stiff from being chained, but other than that, yes."
"I'm fascinated to see what happens tonight," said Emrett. "Which pain will be least endurable? The physical, or the mental anguish of having freedom offered if the truth is told, then telling it and being thought a liar."
"I think the physical," said Harry.
"I think you wrong," said Emrett. "Did you hear that scream a bit earlier in this evening?"
Harry gave an affirmative blink.
"That was a soldier of ours called Linda. My Beheeyem caused the sound." It was a very complex job Beheeyem was doing, but the glowing bulbs on its right hand never for a moment seemed in doubt as to just what to do. "I didn't kill her. Why? Because of her we know that Bronze Tercano has something we want."
"You tortured her, then?" said Harry. "Even when she would tell you willingly?"
"I'm very interested in pain," said Emrett, "as I'm sure you've gathered these past months. In an intellectual way, actually. I've written, of course, for the more learned journals on the subject. Articles mostly. At the present I'm engaged in writing a book. My book. The book, I hope. The definitive work on pain, at least as we know it now. I will call it the Emrett Dialogues."
Harry found the whole thing fascinating.
"You are loyal," said Emrett. "That is why we will not kill you. But you have let a soul slip through your fingers. The howl of sharpened famine for that loss echoes and re-echoes this moment through all the levels of the Kingdom of the Great Djinn down to the very Dark Throne itself. It makes me mad to think of it. He was right in front of you! Next to the curse of the limitations that Arceus has imposed on us the greatest curse is the presence of useless operatives like yourself, and also the failure of our Intelligence Department."
"Limitations?" said Harry. "I thought we were going to succeed."
"Oh, Arceus is a hedonist at heart," said Emrett. "All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are "pleasures for evermore". Ugh! I don't think He has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise in the Miserific Vision. He's vulgar, Harry. He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for us humans to do all day long without His minding in the least: sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it's any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side. Not that that excuses you. I'll settle with you presently. You have always hated me and been insolent when you dared.
"Anyway, I think pain is the most underrated emotion available to us. The Serpent, to my interpretation, was pain. Pain has been with us always, and it always irritates me when people say 'as important as life and death' because the proper phrase, to my mind, should be, 'as important as pain and death.'" Emrett fell silent for a time then, as he began and completed a series of complex adjustments to a dial on the cage. "One of my theories," he said somewhat later, "is that pain involves anticipation. Nothing original, I admit, but I'm going to demonstrate to you what I mean: I will not, underline not, use my full techniques on you this evening. I could. They're ready and tested. But instead I will leave you waiting for the next twenty-four hours, wondering how terrible they really could be."
...
"Well, did you sleep?" said Emrett the next night upon arriving at the cage.
"Quite honestly, no," said Harry. "But I have a question. Why have we not been able to capture Bronze Tercano? We have mem everywhere."
"There is reason to believe that Arceus is protecting him. No more on that. I'm glad you're being honest with me; I'll be honest with you; no more charades between us," said Emrett, putting down a number of notebooks and pens. "I must carefully track your reactions," he explained.
"For science?"
Emrett nodded. "If my experiments are valid, my name will last beyond my body. It's immortality I'm after, to be quite honest. You are thinking that my face is old and tired for a forty-year-old. I am actually around a hundred and twenty years old. You are thinking that I talk of immortality, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. I am. But if I die it will not matter. Can you not understand, Harry, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigor of the organism. Do you die when you cut your fingernails?"
He sent out a Beheeyem. "There are three stages in your reintegration. There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance. It is time for you to enter upon the second stage."
And then Harry's world exploded, because the eyes, the eyes were everywhere, and before, they had punished his body but left his brain, only not the Beheeyem; the Beheeyem reached everywhere: his eyes were not his to control and his ears could not hear a gentle loving whisper and his brain slid away, slid far from love into the deep fault of despair, hit hard, fell again, down through the house of agony into the county of pain. Inside and out, Harry's world was ripping apart and he could do nothing but crack along with it.
Emrett had Beheeyem stop then and he picked up his notebooks. "As you no doubt know, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old. Well, basically, that's all this is, except instead of water, Beheeyem is sucking life; it had just sucked away one year of your life. Tell me now, honestly: how do you feel?"
In humiliation, and suffering, and frustration, and anger, and anguish so great it was dizzying, Harry cried like a baby.
"Interesting," said Emrett.
The torture went on. Men with truncheons came and the cage was opened. All Harry had eyes for were the truncheons in the guard's hand. It might fall anywhere; on the crown, on the tip of the ear, on the upper arm, on the elbow.
The elbow! He had slumped to his knees, almost paralyzed, clasping the stricken elbow with his other hand. Everything had exploded into yellow light. Inconceivable, inconceivable that one blow could cause such pain! The light cleared and he could see the other two looking down at him. The guard was laughing at his contortions. One question at any rate was answered. Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase in pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly at his disabled left arm.
...
With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had started. Later Harry was to realize that all that then happened was merely a preliminary, a routine interrogation to which nearly all patients were subjected. There was a long range of crimes, espionage, sabotage, and the like, to which everyone had to confess as a matter of course. The confession was a formality, though the torture was real. How many times he had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he could not remember. Always there were five or six men in black-and-orange uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, sometimes it was boots.
There were times when he rolled about the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked, unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards continued to beat him but that he could not force himself into losing consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook him that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began, when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes.
There were other times when he started out with the resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him between gasps of pain, and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise, when he said to himself: "I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell them what they want." Sometimes he was beaten till he could hardly stand, then flung like a sack of potatoes on to the stone floor of a cell, left to recuperate for a few hours, and then taken out and beaten again. There were also longer periods of recovery. He remembered them dimly, because they were spent chiefly in sleep or stupor. He remembered a cell with a plank bed, a sort of shelf sticking out from the wall, and a tin wash-basin, and meals of hot soup and bread and sometimes coffee. He remembered a surly barber arriving to scrape his chin and crop his hair, and businesslike, unsympathetic men in white coats feeling his pulse, tapping his reflexes, turning up his eyelids, running harsh fingers over him in search for broken bones, and shooting needles into his arm to make him sleep.
The beatings grew less frequent, and became mainly a threat, a horror to which he could be sent back at any moment when his answers were unsatisfactory. His questioners now were not ruffians in black uniforms but Eclipse intellectuals, little rotund men with quick movements and flashing spectacles, who worked on him in relays over periods that lasted (he thought, he could not be sure) ten or twelve hours at a stretch. These other questioners saw to it that he was in constant slight pain, but it was not chiefly pain that they relied on. They slapped his face, wrung his ears, pulled his hair, made him stand on one leg, refused him leave to urinate, shone glaring lights in his face until his eyes ran with water; but the aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning.
Their real weapon was the merciless questioning that went on and on, hour after hour, tripping him up, laying traps for him, twisting everything that he said, convicting him at every step of lies and self-contradiction until he began weeping as much from shame as from nervous fatigue. Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times in a single session. Most of the time they screamed abuse at him and threatened at every hesitation to deliver him over to the guards again; but sometimes they would suddenly change their tune, call him comrade, appeal to him in the name of the Hood and the Great Djinn, and ask him sorrowfully whether even now he had not enough loyalty to the organization left to make him wish to undo the evil he had done.
When his nerves were in rags after hours of questioning, even this appeal could reduce him to sniveling tears. In the end the nagging voices broke him down more completely than the boots and fists of the guards. He became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed, whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find out what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly, before the bullying started anew. He confessed to the assassination of eminent members, the distribution of seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of the organization's funds, sale of military secrets, sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he had been a spy in the pay of Team Rocket. He confessed that he was a religious believer, an admirer of Arceanism, and a homely man. He confessed that he had murdered his wife, although he knew, and his questioners must have known, that his wife was still alive. He confessed that for years he had been in personal touch with Giovanni and the World Chairman and had been a member of an underground organization which had included almost every human being he had ever known. It was easier to confess everything and implicate everybody. Besides, in a sense it was all true. It was true that he had been the enemy of Team Eclipse by failing, and in the eyes of Team Eclipse there was no distinction between the thought and the deed.
He also knew, from memories of another kind, that there was another man who was being subjected to the same torture but was not breaking, not confessing, not cursing his god and wife. There was a moment when Harry felt as though he tried enough he might roll down that mighty corridor to heaven that the other man was already walking down, full of glorious, golden light, roaring with laughter and defying the Evil Djinn. But even as he knew that a lifting of his finger, an increase of his Willpower would save him, the voices came and broke down his defenses. He looked away from the light.
...
"We have beaten you, Harry," said Emrett. "We have broken you up. You have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the same state. I do not think there can be much pride left in you. You have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you have screamed with pain, you have rolled on the floor in your own blood and vomit. You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?"
Harry was becoming much better. He was again growing fatter and stronger every day, if it is proper to speak of days. This recovery was not at all linear with the events of the next part of this chapter. It had been about a month since the battle at Brimber Volcano, and since then, many things have happened.
He was sitting up at a table with Emrett's arm around his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The mental bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to Emrett like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm around his shoulders. He had the feeling that Emrett was his protector, that fear and pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was Emrett who would save him from it.
Harry, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass of wine was filled up. He was not running or cheering or screaming or crying any longer. He was back in the Eclipse Headquarters, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
He gazed up at the enormous face (so it seemed) of Emrett. Thirty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark veil of the Hood. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two blood-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. His rehabilitation was complete. He had won the victory over himself. He again loved Team Eclipse.
The abolition of the Soul inside Harry was essentially done and beyond undoing. He was melted down into his Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring. There was no more crackling, nothing more for the Dark Powers to crack on; all the rage, egotism, and cruelty only just less robust than a demon's were assimilated. There was no more delicious resistance to devouring for the spiritual predator in Emrett to savor. Like his master above him, Harry was swiftly becoming not really a Man or a Human. He was now the Demolished Man.
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"What friends those two are!" said Bronze. He was referring to Jake and his Monferno. The former was sitting up with his back against the warm train wall, smiling. The Pokemon after walking to and fro with an erected tail and rubbing itself against his belly had finally curled up and gone to sleep between his legs.
Bronze could not go to bed on the train. He wished they would all keep quiet. His anxiety had reached that pitch at which almost every event, however small, threatened to become an irritation. But then, if anyone had been watching his expression, they would have seen the little grimace rapidly smoothed out again. His will had many years of practice behind it.
"When we use the word, Friends, of you two," said he went on, "I doubt we are being merely anthropomorphic. It is difficult to avoid the illusion that they have personalities in the human sense."
"But there's no evidence for it," said Jake. "Pokemon don't behave like humans or any other sort of animals. But they are closer to the lower animals than humans."
"Groudon would not say that. Well, maybe there'd be a desire for warmth; it's away in out of the draught there. And there'd be a sense of security from being near something familiar. And likely enough some obscure transferred sexual impulses."
"Really, Bronze," said Jake with great indignation, "it's a shame for you to say those things about a Pokemon. I'm sure I never did see Charmander, or Electabuzz either, going on and-"
"No, that would be a black sin if that was a conscious thought on Monferno's part. I said transferred. Here, unless our eyes our deceiving us, Pokemon are naturally continent, naturally monogamous. And yet, why is it so strange? Some animals, you knew, have regular breeding seasons; and if nature can perform the miracle of turning the sexual impulse outward at all, why can she not go further and fix it, not morally but instinctively, to a single object?" Bronze even remembered dimly having heard that some terrestrial animals, some of the "lower" animals, were naturally monogamous. Among the Pokemon, anyway, it was obvious that unlimited breeding and promiscuity were as rare as the rarest perversions. At last it dawned upon him that it was not they, but his own species, that were the puzzle. That the Pokemon should have such instincts was mildly surprising; but how came it that the instincts of the Pokemon so closely resembled the unattained ideals of that far divided species Man whose instincts were so deplorably different? What was the history of Man?
"And anyway, it likes the mutual friction of its fur against your clothes as a means of rectifying irritations set up by parasites," said Bronze. "But there is something strange about the reproductive appetites of Pokemon that I have discovered in my research. When a Pokemon is young he has to look for his mate; and then he has to court her; then he begets young; then he rears them; then he remembers all this, and boils it inside him and makes it into the wisdom of the wild. Yet is said that sometimes here and there a cub of certain kindreds at a certain age gets strange twists in him. I have heard of one that wanted to eat dirt but was not made to; there might, perhaps, be somewhere a Pokemon likewise that wanted to have the years of love prolonged into lust. I have not heard of it, but it might be. I have heard of something stranger. There is a story about a male Leavanny who saw things all made two: two suns in the sky, two heads on a neck; and last of all they say that he fell into such a frenzy that he desired two mates. I do not ask you to believe it, but that is the story: that he loved two female Leavanny."
Jake pondered this. "What do I think? It seems pretty clear that we are an evil race. Why the Pokemon escaped that greater falling, I don't know. It's like degrees of corruption. The Pokemon don't deserve judgment because their actions depend on others."
"Deserve?" said Bronze. "I think you are introducing into animal life a distinction that doesn't exist there, and then trying to determine on which side of that distinction the feelings of Monferno fall. You've got to become human before the physical cravings are distinguishable from affections—just as you have to become spiritual before affections are distinguishable from charity. What is going on in the Monferno and the Leavenny in the tale isn't one or other of these two things: it is a single undifferentiated thing in which you can find the germ of what we call friendship and of what we call physical need. But it isn't either at that level. It's a sort of ancient unity."
"I never denied that we like being together," said Jake.
"That's why I don't like these Pokemon rights activists," sighed Bronze. "They half-heartedly try to adopt an attitude to irrational creatures which cannot be constantly maintained. I'll do the justice to say you've never tried. There is an essential falsity in the whole system of Pokemon rights. That's part of the Curse, you know. They're supposed to be treated like animals. The only reason we don't go further with this is because of Arceus's merciful Law. The Pokemon are kept fed and groomed and pampered, while the pigs are kept on farms and killed for bacon. They have no philosophical rationale if they depart from Religion."
"Do you know," said Jake in a low voice, "that's a thing I don't quite understand. Religion? But it's obvious there's something to it. We just met Groudon and he isn't the most welcoming fellow, not welcoming in the way the Pokemon are. They're so eerie, these gods that we happened to come across. I wouldn't go near that part of the world again if I thought there was anything there, not if you paid me a thousand units. But I don't feel like that about Arceus. But He ought to be worse, if you see what I mean."
"He was, once," said Bronze. "You are quite right about the Powers. Angels in general are not good company for men in general, even when they are good angels and good men. It's all in St. Rei Berlitz. But as for Arceus Himself, all that has changed: it was changed by what happened at the Temple of Sinnoh two thousand years ago."
"Well, it is getting near Christmastime," said Jake.
"What's Christmas?"
"It's a name I heard being used for the date of the Incarnation. You would know it as the Hisuian Jubilee."
Bronze's eyes narrowed. "Where did you hear that from?"
Jake believed that Bronze was in disbelief that there could be something that Jake knew and he did not. "Well, it was a large fellow in a mackintosh coat a few months ago. He said to me 'Merry Christmas, boy,' and I asked him what that meant, so he said that it was all about Arceus coming to Earth. Odd man. I never did see him again."
"Christmas!" said Bronze. "A strange word from a strange fellow. But I had my druthers, I would mention the old Coda: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
"What is that supposed to mean? Have I already met the supernatural?"
"Well, the only being that would say Merry Christmas must know of other worlds," said Bronze.
"How could you possibly know that?"
"It's quite simple. Did you know that all the universes are represented in each? There is no power in the Heavens who has not got his representative on this Earth. And there is no world where you could not meet a little fallen partner of our own Dark Lord, our black archon, a kind of other Shadow. That is why there is a physical Rayquaza, a Sky-god, as well as a Heavenly one, and a Kalosi Xerneas as well as a spiritual Lord of Life. It was these Earthly wraiths of the high intelligences that belong to the multiverse which men met in old times when they reported that they had seen the gods. Your 'man', having special knowledge of when Arceus Incarnated, gave you a hint at what that moment was called in realms beyond our universe."
"That assumes that Arceus Incarnated in other universes," said Jake.
"I think that He did," said Bronze. "All at the same time, through all the worlds? Yes, definitely in the viewpoint of time that is accepted among the dwellers of Heaven. But for one realm a thousand years might be like a day, or a day a thousand years. Nothing is certain about this and all is clouded. But Christmas! I wonder if it really means the Incarnation."
"You think too much, Bronze," said Jake.
"I would rather lose all that I love than be banned from free thought. Our enemies are pursuing that exact Ideal. Would you give in to them?"
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When they left the train there was no hotel visible in Lagoona City. Bronze was not keen on going into one so near Rosecove with spies abroad and Eclipse members lurking. But at half-past seven the two were able to find a small, low house that stood amid the hills. They hoped to be able to spend only a little on lodging out of charity. As they approached the pair saw a man resting on a wooden bench which rested at the entrance to this inn.
He seemed both very tall and very strong, almost a giant. His greyish hair and mustache were blown all about his face so that it was hardly visible; and it was only after he had stood up and taken a step forward that Bronze noticed his clothes; the ragged, ill-fitting seaman's coat, baggy trousers, and boots that had lost the toes. The head was very shrunken, though perhaps it looked small than it was because of the contrast of the old skin and the thickness of the unkempt grey mustache and the long and tangled grey hair. The face was weather-beaten in the extreme and the neck, where visible, already lean and scraggy with age. The eyes were narrowly open and the lips wore a very slight smile. The total effect was ambiguous.
"What are you doing here, friend?"
"As you see, boy, I am resting," said the man, "and waiting for evening visitors, such as yourself."
"On that bench?" said Jake.
"Once I had a mattress of dirt for two years," said the man. "Now I have a mattress of wood."
"You have been a soldier?"
"Yes, boy, a soldier. Do you want to go into the inn? Where here? There are always better places in town."
"Because we had little money," said Bronze. "We have only a hundred units for one night."
"Give it to me all the same."
The man took the hundred units. He continued: "You cannot obtain housing in an inn for so small a sum. But have you tried? It is impossible for you to pass the night thus. You are cold and hungry, no doubt. Someone might have given you a lodging out of charity."
"We have knocked on all doors," said Bronze.
"Then why are you here?"
"We were driven away everywhere. They said that League contestants were bad for business."
"I can't imagine why that could be true," said the man. "But you have knocked on all doors but this one, and now I will give you room and board for a night. I am Drake of Hoenn."
"This is Jake of Roria," said Bronze. "I am Bronze of Logaria."
"Logaria? But the deuce, boy, the deuce! A damn fine that empire was, a damn fine empire, but it's long gone by all I've heard. But I already knew what you are called."
"You did?" said Jake with astonishment.
"Yes," said Drake. "You are called my brother in Arceus. Who are you to say otherwise? But come in."
...
They emerged into a great room where the fireplace blazed and wine and bronze sparkled on side-tables and a great rocking-chair occupied the space before the hearth. The dining-room was an oblong apartment, which had a door opening on the street (which you have deduced), and a window opening on the garden. Drake's wife Glacia had evidentially been bust with putting the finishing touches on the dining table. A lamp was burning there.
"Master Drake," said Bronze, "you are good; you do not despise us. You receive us into your house. You light your candles for us. Yet I have not concealed from you that we are unwelcome in other places and that we are unfortunate young men. A hunted man can sometimes grow weary of singleness and long for friendship."
Drake who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Arceus Elyon. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you two, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours."
In the meantime, Madam Glacia had served supper: soup, made with water, oil, bread, and salt; a little bacon, a bit of mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had, of her own accord, added to Drake's ordinary fare a bottle of his old sailor's wine. "To table!" he cried vivaciously. As was his custom when a stranger supped with him, he made the two boys sit on his right. Glacia was on his left.
Drake asked a blessing; then helped the soup himself, according to his custom. The man began to eat with avidity. A moment later he said: "Is it to Rosecove that you are going?"
"We have marked out our road," said Jake. "Travelling is hard. The days are hot and the nights are cold."
"You are going to a good country," said Drake. "During the Terramist War my family was ruined. I took refuge in Rosecove at first, and there I lived for some time by the toil of my hands before coming to Hoenn with Glacia. My will was good. I found plenty to occupy me. One has only to choose. There are paper mills of the highest quality, tanneries, distilleries, oil factories, watch factories on a large scale, steel mills, copper works, and twenty iron foundries at least in the surrounding country."
"What did you do in the war?" said Bronze. "I heard that one member of the Hoenn Elite Four had fought in the Great Campaigns thirty years ago."
"That is a long tale," said Drake. "I do not wish to speak of it here. Let us eat first, and then I will consider it."
...
After bidding his wife good night, Drake took the lantern on the table, handed another to Bronze, and said: "I will conduct you to your room." As might have been observed from what has been said above, the house was so arranged that in order to pass into the guest bedroom, or to get out of it, it was necessary to traverse the hall before Drake's bedroom.
At the moment when he was crossing this apartment, Glacia was putting away the silverware in the cupboard near the head of the bed. This was her last care every evening before she went to bed. Drake installed his guests in the guest room. A fresh white bed had been prepared there. Bronze set the lantern down on a small table.
"Well," said Drake, "may you pass a good night. Tomorrow morning, before you set out, you shall drink a cup of warm milk from our Miltank."
"How do you know that we are not dangerous?" said Bronze. "Would you have us housed so near to your own room? What if we are assassins?"
"Are you?" said Drake. "Then that is the concern of the good God."
Then gravely, and moving his lips like one who is praying or talking to himself, he raised two fingers of his right hand and bestowed his benediction on the boys, who did not bow, and without turning his head or looking behind him, he returned to his bedroom.
As for Jake, he was actually so fatigued that he did not even profit by the nice white sheets. Snuffing out his lantern, he dropped, all dressed as he was, upon the bed, where he immediately fell into a profound sleep. Midnight soon struck. A few minutes later and all were asleep in the little inn.
...
Towards the middle of the night Bronze awoke. A moment later he was in the hall, walking, meditating, contemplating, his heart and soul wholly absorbed in those grand and mysterious things that Arceus shows at night to the eyes that remain open. Drake was sitting in his rocking chair by the fire, which had gone out. There was only an electric lantern alight in the whole of the house. The old man could not sleep.
"You're awake?" sad Drake. "Come and sit, if you won't sleep."
"Tell me about the war," said Bronze. "I have only heard about it from my father, who only served a little while in his twenties and saw no fighting."
"The Terramist Wars!" said Drake. "That's a tale. If you will like, take a seat! I will explain to you the affair of the War. The only campaign I fought in was the Rosecove one. You can imagine it, can't you? Nearly all the trees are here are marked. There is not one that does not have its bullet or artillery shell. The skeletons of the dead are sometimes found in the soil beneath the apple orchards."
The battle of Rosecove: twenty-two years in the past, a little before the Pokedex Holders, a little before the waxing of the Evil Djinn. Drake's brother, killed, Lt. Sarge wounded, conflagration, massacre, carnage, a rivulet formed of Rorian blood, Terramist blood, Kantoian blood mingled in fury, a sea crammed with corpses, the regiment of Unova and the regiment of Kalos destroyed, the Rorian Chairman killed, a cousin of the man cured of arthritis two chapters ago killed, Koga's Ninjas mutilated, a thousand Alolan refugees butchered, twenty Johtorim battalions, besides the forty from Samuel Oak's corps, decimated, a thousand Pokemon vaporized on the atomic level, three thousand men in the hovel of the Rosecove border buildings alone cut down, slashed to pieces, shot, burned, with their throats cut: and all this so that Drake of the Hoenn Elite Four can say to the scion of Logaria: "I will explain to you the affair of the War."
Let us turn back (that is one of the story-teller's rights) and put ourselves once more in the year of the battle of Rosecove City, and even a little earlier than the epoch when the action narrated in this book takes place. If it had not been a sunny day when the Terramists were counting on rain, the fate of Roria would have been different. A few rays of sun, more or less, decided the downfall of the Eastern Rorians. All that Providence required in order to make Rosecove the end of the Terramist rebels was a little more sun, and a bit of open sky instead of a cloud sufficed to make a world crumble.
What were the Terramist Wars? They were caused by the Association, whether they wanted it or no. It was evident that in the parts of Roria east of the Frostveil Mountains that large segments of the human population there despised the advancing Assocation, and all the Rorians that allied with them besides. This meant war, and these confederates who were called Terramists met great success. All of Aredia in the northern deserts was under their sway, and the regions of the polar south for a season. When the war had gone on three years the armies of the rebels met those of the Association in the siege of Rosecove, which supplied the most significant casualties of any battle in modern history.
What these Terramists believed cannot be described by analogy, for there is no president for it within this world. It is not dishonest to call them the fathers of the Eclipse Alliance in their words but not their deeds. There are groups of thought that have not come to be in this realm, this mote of existence in the multiverse, but in others more deeply steeped in depravity, ancient worlds that required the most profound acts of grace to redeem, they did appear, making their short and bloody song before their death. As I write this I find that of all the peoples of the Many Worlds, the German Nazis and the Ardisharians (damn them both) had the methods most similar to the Terramists.
"I came from a poor family in Alola, of the old northern settler stock," began Drake. "I did not learn to read in my childhood. When I reached man's estate, I became a Mudsdale carter in Ula'ula. My mother had died of a fever, which had not been properly attended to. My father, a carter like myself at the time, had been killed by a fall from a Pokemon's back. All that remained with me was a sister older than myself, a widow with three children. I still had a good living earning ten units a day (this was before the inflation of the last decade) and I was able to provide pretty much good living for the others.
"But it was still a sad group enveloped in misery, which was gradually being torn apart. When I was thirty-seven my sister died. The war broke out then, and I had no bread, quite literally. I had no work: the business had closed and under wartime conditions, I could not provide for the young nine-year-old, the youngest of all my sister's children, under my care. My wife was ill. The military was giving out handsome salaries. What was I to do? I enlisted. They sent me south after three weeks of training, and that was how I was present at the battle of Rosecove.
"When you go there tomorrow doubtless some of the things I speak of will be more apparent. There were a hundred thousand of us and the advancing enemy was five times that. Our foes were relying on artillery, because they had more. Their plan of battle was a masterpiece: break through the center of our eastern line, to make a breach in us, cut the defenders in two, to drive the Unovan northern half back to the lighthouse and the hills, and the Rorian southern half to the forests, to make shattered regiments of the Johtorim. They would carry the city arch, seize the city square, and hurl the beleaguered defenders against the Western Sea, where we were allotted to make our last stand on the shore. All of that was contained in the battle, according to their prisoners. Afterwards I would see.
"The forecast for the beginning of the siege was predicted to be cloudy and rainy. The weather had confirmed this. It was pouring so hard that we could see little, and our missiles were inaccurate and vanished into fog. They had Psychic-types and all our radar systems were useless. But then the sun came out, and they saw their weakness: they had few Water-type Pokemon and could not create a rainstorm of their own. We returned fire and this time the blasts were deadly. The front of the enemy advance was broken, and their generals were at loggerheads because the greatest among them had forgotten that the weather might change. This gave us an extra hour to set our defense and many of their rocket launchers were destroyed. The noise was terrible. I stuck cotton balls that I found in a house into my ears.
"If you wish to gain a clear idea of the battle of Rosecove, you have only to place, mentally, on the ground, a capital G. The left curve of the G is the sea, the right limb the road from the city arch to the city square, the open upper hollow is the fence of defended hills from the southern gate to the northern scrubland. I was on the hills when the first great enemy push for the city arch happened. If I ever wanted to be about the size of an ant, it was when I crawled through that hell of shellfire and slid over onto that sunken gun-trench. Our food had run out. Now, boy, I've been scared several times in my life, but when those energy blasts and Pokemon attacks were coming I began to really know what fear was.
"We were able to combat the shells with the few force-fields that we had, but the Psychic attacks were the problem. All we could do was dig into the earth deeply enough so that they would pass over us. None injured me, but the man at my right had his brains leaking out of his ears. The fight was aimed at us but we had no other orders but to hold the hills, so I stayed at my gun and kept firing a shitstorm of bullets. I suppose I thought if I fired enough the battle would go away.
"In the end it did. Everything was so loud and so many on our side were dying all around that I thought we were losing. In fact it was the opposite. The history books say, on their neat little maps of the battle, that the Terramists broke themselves on those hills. A hundred thousand of them fell dead like bowling pins being toppled. The northern wing of their army was destroyed on the hills, and the southern was massacred by the arch. Today skeletons are still found there in the soil. Then they threw all the men that remained to them at us, and the death that occurred then was more of the same. By the end of the day only a few Terramists were alive in the radius of ten miles. The rest had retreated and thought they would break us with more artillery.
"I remember what came next. You've heard it from the old news clippings, if you ever read them. A vast seaborne armada had secretly assembled a sudden blow to the enemy's rear, the Association's white arrow tearing across the tail of the Terramist's black. Lights in the distance, while we looked on from the ruined city's walls. A vast strategic maneuver, with perfect coordination, a hundred thousand prisoners, the complete demoralization of the Terramist war effort, control of the whole of western Roria, the war brought within swift distance of its end, victory, victory, the greatest victory in the history of warfare, victory, victory, victory!
"That was what I was apart of, you know. After we heard the news all of us cheered our ears deaf, if the shells hadn't already done it. We were heroes. The bulwark that saved the world! The rock against which the hordes of the East dashed themselves in vain! It was more than the Terramist army that had perished. It was their idea. We all seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless cadre of protectors, standing as a bastion of strength against the godless foes. Even the leader of the Terramists, despite the doubt that hung about his existence, no longer seemed an enchanter, capable of wrecking the very structure of civilization with his voice. He was now a beaten fool.
"I never fought in a war again. Simply there had been enough of it for me. The cold, the frights, the smell of power, the horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles, the landscape of sheer earth without a blade of grass, the boots worn day and night until they seemed to grow to your feet. Something decided that I would now fight with Pokemon instead of Men. I have heard rumors that I am in the Hoenn Elite Four. It is distant now. I do not know when the next Championship will be. Why do I care what the public thinks about it? They didn't fight in the hills of Rosecove, or the deserts of Aredia, nestling in the wet foxholes in the woodland campaigns. War's a bloody business and the only good thing that came out of it was that I found Arceus."
"How?" said Bronze. "I have heard that wars make men heroes or monsters, but they also seemed to make them believers."
"I was on those hills, you see, and I found, or thought I found, that I was not breathing and concluded that this was death. I felt no fear and certainly no courage. It did not seem to be an occasion for either. All that I thought was 'Here is a man dying. Unmarked be his grave.' Then Arceus spoke to me. You know how you can never quite hear what He's saying, unless you're properly listening? That was what it was like. He said that I was feeling awfully sorry for myself, and that I ought to hear what He had to say if I had any good sense. That would be arrogant if anyone but He said it. The terror of His voice overcame the lesser terror of the war, and I saw that compared to Him I was just a shivering little mouse, or a shivering little man, as I knew it then. I attempted to run away, but He kept on following.
"Within thirty seconds I could no longer bear to get away from Him. He said: 'You are in a war. This is what my greatest warriors are always doing. Thousands of other men are dying around you, so wouldn't it be best to take the Mercy I offer before you die yourself?" I remember that I saw flowing silver water. For the last moment I felt a desire to kill, for vindictiveness against the enemy, a lunatic cold-blooded impulse to kill them and take their women, but by then Arceus was already inside my heart and brain and there was nothing that could be done to stop Him from winning. Then the transformation was complete, and I was an Arcean. Somehow I lived, and here I am with you."
Bronze, before the Plan had been conceived, had entertained the idea of going into the clergy or even becoming a sort of missionary. He had learned of the dangers of fighting witchcraft, atheism, and a few laughable attempts to revive paganism in the past two decades, and the threats of torture and pain and all evils conceivable in some uncivilized areas. He abandoned the missionary field with the excuse of prudence when it was really only delicacy. Even when not contributing anything to the Arcean effort he thrilled at the mention of spiritual warfare and the plans within plans contained therein. There had been a weird kind of fantasy he held, not inaccurate but misplaced, that the job of the priesthood was to engage in heated battles with the demonic powers on the frontiers of the faith, which, when they occurred, were clearly identifiable in their origin and able to be exorcised. Except for a few occurrences out of the norm, the degradation that demons make is actually wearing over in a human's middle-age, when the greyness and shallowness of life sinks in, and the joys of the first conversion grow stale and the brightness of Arceus is dulled.
All this time Bronze had envisioned himself standing before Arceus, a crusader of the Kingdom of Deep Heaven, leading the advance into the hostile barrage of the evil Eclipse Alliance and the apostate Association. He did not know the full designs of the former, yet still he thought that his conflict with them was made by design. What was the conversion of Drake but a refutation of all the glories of war? Charges through wire and mud did not make a saint worth more or create too many martyrs. A martyr in war is less great, he thought, than martyrs in concentration camps. Whether the enemy was Arcean or pagan or nihilistic would mean little in a battle; twenty-year-old boys would still shoot other twenty-year-old boys if their conditioning was good enough, despite the merits of the enemy's religion. They still would do so even if it was Arcean against Arcean. Bloodshed is not favored too much by Arceus when He makes his heroes. What is war, Bronze thought, but the greatest madness of the human race? But here he was in one! Then was he himself a fool?
Bronze seemed to contract. This old trainer had forgotten more about Pokemon battles than he would ever learn. It occurred to him that there was not one time in his life when he was in any sort of deadly mass combat. The veneer he had prepared for himself upon some eventual social ascendancy would be torn off like a harlot's dress if he ever found himself in a real fight. What would he become? Against all odds, a chivalrous knight? Or a being more controlling and insane than he could ever conceive? Men, when faced with the unthinkable, could become tan-armed Rorian lionhearts or yellow-bellied cowards. He hoped it was the former. Did he not do a great deed when facing the Mightyena, even in delirium? But he suspected the latter.
"Sir, I am afraid," said Bronze. "There is a war I am also fighting. Do not laugh! It might turn out to be as bad as yours, even on the physical level. Who knows? You might find yourself fighting in it. But looking ahead, I feel like a man on the point of fainting."
"At least you are honest," said Drake. "At least promise me this: that you will use my words to help you become a better man. Bronze, my brother, you do not belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."
...
How many hours did Bronze speak thus? What did he do after he had gone to bed? But he did not return to the white sheets. Whither did he go? No one but him ever knew. The only thing that seems to be authenticated is that that same night the carrier who served the town bursar at that epoch, and who arrived at Drake's in about three o'clock in the morning, saw, as he traversed the street in which the old man's residence was situated, a boy in the attitude of prayer, kneeling on the pavement in the shadow, in front of the door of Drake of Hoenn.