Pirates of the Timestream Read Online Free PDF

goes to a priest—called a houngan if male or a mambo if female—to obtain a spirit’s help, whether for beneficent or malign ends. The spirit is appealed to by offerings of food or liquor or, sometimes, a ritually sacrificed animal. This latter aspect contributed to the negative reputation I mentioned earlier, as did the exploitation of Voodoo practices by various dictators in Haiti’s depressing political history to intimidate and control the uneducated populace.”
    “I had the impression,” said Jason carefully, “that it was believed that there was sometimes sacrifice not just of animals but of humans—especially in connection with turning people into zombies.”
    Boyer looked acutely uncomfortable. “There was, at one time, a secret society, the Secte Rouge , sometimes called the Cochon Gris, or ‘Gray Pig,’ that did indeed practice ritual murder—and possibly cannibalism, although this was never proved. As for zombies, I am sorry to say that they did indeed exist.”
    “I beg your pardon?” Jason was sure he must have misunderstood.
    “Oh, not in the sense you’re thinking. Of course people weren’t actually brought back from the grave in an undead state and forced to do a houngan ’s bidding, which was usually brutish manual labor. That was the terrifying illusion—even more terrifying for educated, upper-class Haitians, if you think about it. In reality, zombies were living people controlled by the use of drugs that robbed them of their will. The dictators I spoke of earlier were known to have corrupt houngans zombify political dissidents. But,” he stated firmly, “these were aberrations. True Voodoo is simply a group of religions, eccentrically pagan in modern times but not devoid of ethical content, valuing virtues like generosity and social solidarity and condemning greed and dishonor. And these religions are still practiced today. Their very eclecticism has, I believe, given them a certain resilience.”
    “Yes,” Jason nodded. “Sam Asamoa mentioned something of the sort.” The mainstream religions had not fared well in the early centuries of the scientific revolution, either fraying out into bloodless “social gospel” or curdling up into the doomed rear-guard known as “fundamentalism.” And then the Transhumanist regime had done its fanatical best to stamp out all religion. This, in turn, had sparked a counter-reaction. On today’s Earth, literal belief in religion was virtually nonexistent, but there was more and more formal religious practice as part of the post-Transhumanist rediscovery of human cultural roots. “But I still don’t quite understand the historical connection to the Haitian Revolution.”
    “After the French Revolution in 1789, the Haitians sent representatives to Paris to demand their rights from the National Assembly. But this meant rights only for the free gens de couleur or mulattoes, who included many large landowners who held scores of thousands of black slaves. The real revolution is traditionally held to have been sparked by a Voodoo—specifically Vodou—ceremony in August of 1791 at Bwa Kayiman, in which the loa Ezili Dantor was believed to have possessed a priestess and commanded the blacks to rise up. The situation was complex. The mulattoes had been scornfully rejected by the French, which drove them into the camp of the blacks, but after destroying the plantation system and massacring the whites, they both continued to recognize the nominal authority of France. Indeed, they joined with the French to repel—with the help of yellow fever—a British invasion from Jamaica in 1797. But then Napoleon, who had taken control of France, decided it was beneath him to bargain with black generals. He sent an army to reestablish absolute French rule and restore slavery. That army was decimated by yellow fever just as the British had been, and in 1804 a general named Dessalines declared Haiti independent and himself its ‘Emperor.’”
    “Thank you,