Read Online A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller - Free Book Online Page A

perhaps be was a pilgrim on his way to visit our shrine, Reverend Father.”
    “It isn’t a shrine yet, and you’re not to call it that. And anyway he wasn’t, or at least, he didn’t. And he didn’t pass our gates, unless the watch was asleep. And the novice on watch denies being asleep, although he admitted feeling drowsy that day. So what do you suggest?”
    “If the Reverend Father Abbot will forgive me, I’ve been on watch a few times myself.”
    “And?”
    “Well, on a bright day when there’s nothing moving but the buzzards, after a few hours you just start looking up at the buzzards.”
    “Oh you do, do you? When you’re supposed to be watching the trail!”
    “And if you stare at the sky too long, you just kind of blank-out-not really asleep, but, sort of, preoccupied.”
    “So that’s what you do when you’re on watch, do you?” the abbot growled.
    “Not necessarily. I mean, no, Reverend Father, I wouldn’t know it if I had, I don’t think. Brother Je-I mean-a brother I relieved once was like that. He didn’t even know it was time for the watch to change. He was just sitting there in the tower and staring up at the sky with his mouth open. In a daze.”
    “Yes, and the first time you go stupefied that way, along’ll come a heathen war-party out of the Utah country, kill a few gardeners, tear up the irrigating system, spoil our crops, and dump stones in the well before we can start defending ourselves. Why are you looking so-oh, I forgot-you were Utah-born before you ran away, weren’t you? But never mind, you could, just possibly, be right about the watch-how he could have missed seeing the old man, that is. You’re sure he was just an ordinary old man-not anything more? Not an angel? Not a beatus?”
    The novice’s gaze drifted ceilingward in thought, then fell quickly to his rulers face. “Do angels or saints cast shadows?”
    “Yes-I mean no, I mean-how should I know! He did cast a shadow, didn’t he?”
    “Well-it was such a small shadow you could hardly see it.”
    “What!”
    “Because it was almost noon.”
    “Imbecile! I’m not asking you to tell me what he was. I know very well what he was, if you saw him at all.” Abbot Arkos thumped repeatedly on the table for emphasis. “I want to know if you-You!-are sure beyond a doubt that he was just an ordinary old man!”
    This line of questioning was puzzling to Brother Francis. In his own mind, there was no neat straight line separating the Natural from the Supernatural order, but rather, an intermediate twilight zone. There were things that were clearly natural, and there were Things that were clearly supernatural, but between these extremes was a region of confusion (his own)-the preternatural-where things made of mere earth, air, fire, or water tended to behave disturbingly like Things. For Brother Francis, this region included whatever he could see but not understand. And Brother Francis was never “sure beyond a doubt,” as the abbot was asking him to be, that he properly understood much of anything. Thus, by raising the question at all, Abbot Arkos was unwittingly throwing the novice’s pilgrim into the twilight region, into the same perspective as the old man’s first appearance as a legless black strip that wriggled in the midst of a lake of heat illusion on the trail, into the same perspective as he had occupied momentarily when the novice’s world had contracted until it contained nothing but a hand offering him a particle of food. If some creature more-than-human chose to disguise itself as human, how was he to penetrate its disguise, or suspect there was one? If such a creature did not wish to be suspected, would it not remember to cast a shadow, leave footprints, eat bread and cheese? Might it not chew spice-leaf, spit at a lizard, and remember to imitate the reaction of a mortal who forgot to put on his sandals before stepping on hot ground? Francis was not prepared to estimate the intelligence or ingenuity