The Last Witness Read Online Free PDF Page B

nodding stupidly at the hired men. Oh, come on, I thought, there’s six of them. “That’s a point,” the old man said.
    “You can’t afford it,” I told him.
    He grinned at me. “Reduced rate for quantity. Or you could be feeling really depressed and sad.”
    Oh, I thought. Sad enough to jump off the Haymarket bridge, and (as the man said) who would miss me? Fair enough. “Tell you what,” I said. “This one’s on the house.”
    The young man grinned. The old man said he wouldn’t hear of it. The labourer is worthy of his hire. So I did all six of them for fifteen angels each.
    Not that it mattered all that much. Forty-eight hours later I was broke again.
    * * *
    The point being; I died in that room. I know I did, because I remember it clear as day.
    I died, but here I am. Explain that, if you can. Simple. I died, and I was born again, just like it says in the Testament. Proof positive. I have difficulty with the faith aspect of it, but the plain facts admit of no other explanation. Blessed are those who have seen and yet have believed.
    * * *
    We call them the Temple trustees and everybody knows who we mean, but their proper name is the Guardians of the Perpetual Fund for the Proliferation of Orthodoxy. They’re serious men, and they own all the best grazing land from the Hog’s Back right out to the Blackwater, as well as half the prime real estate in the Capital and a whole lot of other nice things, all of which came into the possession of the Fund through the bequests and endowments of former Guardians. The income from these assets is divided between the Commissioners of the Fabric, who maintain and improve the Temple buildings throughout the empire, and the Social Fund, which pays for the soup kitchens and the way stations and the diocesan free schools, not to mention the travelling doctors and the Last Chance advocates who defend prisoners on capital charges who haven’t got the money to hire a real lawyer. I seem to remember someone telling me that about a third of the wealth of the empire passes through the trustees’ hands, and that the trustees themselves are chosen from the select few who have the brains to do the job and so much money of their own that they have no possible incentive to steal; in fact, you have to pay an annual fee equivalent to the cost of outfitting and maintaining a regiment in the field in order to belong to the College of Guardians, and there’s a waiting list a mile long. It’s probably quite true. When you’re that rich, money is just a way of keeping score.
    That was the sort of people I was dealing with; rich, powerful men, peers of the gods, the sort who make and alter truth—What is truth? Truth is what you know, if you’re one of them. Truth is what you own. If the whim takes you, you can say, “On the banks of the Blackwater there’s a city constructed entirely of marble.” Actually, no, there isn’t. “Oh, yes, there is. I had it built, last week.” Or: “There never was a war between the Blemyans and the Aram Chantat.” You go to the Temple library to look up the references to refute this idiotic statement, and all the relevant books are missing all the relevant pages. Or: “Who? There’s no such person.” Indeed. Men like gods who can ordain the future, regulate the present, and amend the past—pretty well everything worthwhile that ever happened in history was done by men like that; they built cities, instituted trade and manufacture, fostered the sciences and the arts, and endowed charities.
Let it be so,
they said, and it was so. And, quite rightly, what they paid for, they own: the freeholds, the equity. And us. Without them, we’d be dressed in animal skins and living in caves. I believe in them, the way I believe in the Invincible Sun—which is to say, I acknowledge their existence, and their authority, and their power. Doesn’t mean I have to like them. Or Him, for that matter.
    * * *
    When I was nineteen, not long after I left home, I