The Good Book
The shepherds hold their hands. He likes that. Safety. He practises, clasping his hands together as he walks, when he sits, behind his back, in his lap. He grips his thumb, keeps his hand from curling into a fist. Keeps his hands from going to his thigh, where his gun aint. He needs something to hold, he keeps picking up sticks. Wakes in the night to find a branch in his hand, his fingers stroking a make-believe trigger.
So one day the shepherds give him a hoe and a book.
The garden is peaceful, but not quiet. That is good. The humming in his ears makes engine noise always. Birds and crawling things sing and chatter, and the song changes throughout the day. No steady rhythm. Good.
No engines here.
He works hard. Keeps in shape. Learns about the ground and how to make it work for him, with him. He covers the weeds with his old brown coat and they die off quick enough. The uncertainty is confusing. He plants seeds, but they don't all grow into plants. He resists the urge to scrabble through the dirt, retrieve them, recycle them, study them for flaws. It don't work always. He has a pocket full of broken seeds.
For the lab.
There aint a lab. There's a study room, for dissecting text and concepts. It will do. He sits in there with his book after dark when the garden is recharging. He sits on a long bench at a wide table with his book. He hasn't opened it yet.
He directs his energies elsewhere.
He doesn't talk. It's crazy what comes out of his mouth. They aren't his words. Speaking in tongues. Every word meaningless, and his muscles jerk in response to them.
Most of his muscles.
Food. Fresh food and spices and meat and eggs and milk. Such rich bounty here, not right normal. And every one of the shepherds can eat it. There's no rank here.
Eggs are mighty strange things.
He stands in the kitchen, with a saucepan and the cold water running. Boiled eggs swirl under the water. He picks one up, feels it grow warm in his hand. It takes a minute to get burning hot, and he drops back into the cold again quickly. Fascinating. He drifts off, hand in the water, pushing the eggs round, lifting them and feeling the heat grow and ebb.
A shepherd leans over, plucks the eggs from the pan, takes them to the sideboard.
And then the shepherd is on the floor and there's blood and someone far off is shouting, "kan shu kan shu kan shu." It might even be him.
That night, he opens the book.
"I never married".
'On the earth-that-was there was a man who walked with Buddha and spoke to God.'
She was her own woman. He understood that. They didn't believe in marriage. Had no patience for such things as vows. Had other vows more pressing, truth be told.
'The man dreamt of hell and spoke of heaven and lived on the earth that was.'
Her house was not a famous one. Too strict a code for word of mouth. Inner planets, inner planet mostly. They were of the Guild, laterally speaking. She followed a narrower path. She should have stuck to her word and said no more than that.
'This is the story of the man that is on the earth that was, given to us by the great I am to be mortal and live forever, and give us the gift of both.'
They were never married. He didn't owe her anything. Had other vows more pressing. Her eye bled when he applied pressure. Shouldn't have, but he was shaking. It wasn't quick. Could have made it so.
Brain washing. He lathers his memories and scrubs them clean. Takes them line by line and writes over them with Gospel truth.
"I never married".
He takes that gorram book with him everywhere. When the words bubble up or the red screens his eyes, he takes it out. Line by line, he finds faith in the fairytale. Charity takes a week. Judge not, a month.
His plants grow, and he harvests them. The book runs out of words eventually. He writes his new name in the front. He packs. He puts his ident card in his pocket and the dead seeds clatter against it.
He's been out of the world for a while.