The Last Four Things Read Online Free PDF Page A

including Memphis?’
    â€˜Memphis drew its clout from its military power. We conquered Memphis and destroyed the Materazzi but we did not conquer its empire: that merely collapsed. Each country in that empire has declared itself free and started squabbling with its neighbours about the same things it squabbled about before the Materazzi arrived. Taking Memphis has turned out to be a mixed blessing, and given time it may turn out not to be a blessing at all.’
    â€˜If the Redeemer empire is so much bigger an empire than everyone thinks …’
    â€˜Commonwealth,’ interrupted Bosco.
    â€˜â€¦Â than everyone thinks, why are you stuck in the fight with the Antagonists?’
    â€˜Good. Exactly so.’ Bosco was clearly pleased with this question. ‘The commonwealth of the Redeemers is notonly large but bloated – full of contradictions. Some parts of the commonwealth are slack in their beliefs and so full of blasphemies they’re hardly better than Antagonists. Many extract from us more in subsidies than they pay in taxes. Others are fanatical in their beliefs but always arguing with each other after this or that doctrinal point. There are numerous schisms threatening to become full-grown heresies like Antagonism.’
    â€˜If things are so bad why haven’t the Antagonists defeated you?’
    â€˜Again, well done. They face the same problems. It is not lack of religion that’s destroying mankind, it is mankind that is destroying religion. Such a creature is incompetent to aspire to the likeness of God. God tried but failed. He will try again.’
    â€˜I thought God was perfect,’ said Cale.
    â€˜God is perfect.’
    â€˜Then why has he made such a mess of mankind?’
    â€˜Because he is perfectly generous. God is not some criminal who cheats in his own card game. He wishes to engage with us freely, out of choice. Not even God can make a circle square. God is lonely – he wants mankind to choose obedience, not be frightened into it. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
    â€˜I understand what you’re saying, yes.’
    â€˜Neither I nor the God we both serve need you to agree. You are not a man and you are not a god, you are anger and disappointment made flesh. What you do is what you are. What you think is irrelevant.’
    â€˜And when it’s over?’
    â€˜I have been told in my visions that you will be taken up and set aside in the Island of Avalon, a place flowing withmilk and honey. You will stay there clothed in white samite until a time, if it comes, when God needs you again.’
    After this Cale did not say anything for some time.
    â€˜Tell me about Chartres.’
    â€˜The Sanctuary is the military heart of the faith but that’s why it’s positioned here in the back of beyond – to curtail its shout. Although I have great power, any commander of the Sanctuary who approaches within forty miles of Chartres would be excommunicated by fiat of the Pope. I am permitted there only by his express permission – rarely forthcoming – and never with more than a dozen priests. Even then I haven’t met with him alone since Gant and Parsi sealed him off from the world like a pea in a pod.’
    â€˜I don’t know what that is.’ A pause. ‘Why don’t they kill you?’
    â€˜Straight there as usual. They count me as a rival but one effectively neutralized because all my power is in the army and not in Chartres. Your running away, Cale, advanced matters too quickly.’
    â€˜Or you,’ said Cale, ‘have allowed them to drift.’
    â€˜Not so. Almost since the day you arrived here I have been recruiting three hundred military officers who have accepted that mankind cannot be cured and that you are its solution. They will be here soon. You will train these already considerable men and they will train three hundred more and so on. Within two years you will have