Prime Commandmentby

by Robert Silverberg

If the strangers had come to World on any night but The Night of No Moon, perhaps the tragedy could have been avoided. Even had the strangers come that night, if they had left their ship in a parking orbit and landed on World by dropshaft it might not have happened.

But the strangers arrived on World on The Night of No Moon, and they came by ship—a fine bright vessel a thousand feet long, with burnished gold walls. And because they were a proud and stiffnecked people, and because the people of World were what they were, and because the god of the strangers was not the God of the World, The Night of No Moon was the prelude to a season of blood.

Down at the Ship, the worshipping was under way when the strangers arrived. The ship sat embedded in the side of the hill, exactly where it had first fallen upon World; open in its side was the hatch through which the people of World had come forth.

The bonfire blazed, casting bright shadows on the corroded, time-stained walls of the Ship. The worshipping was under way. Lyle of the Kwitni knelt in a deep genuflection, forehead inches from the warm rich loam of World, muttering in a hoarse monotone the Book of the Ship. At his side stood the priestess Jeen of McCaig, arms flung wide, head thrown back, as she recited the Litany of the Ship in savage bursts of half-chanted song.

“In the beginning there was the ship—”

“Kwitni was the Captain, McCaig the astrogator,” came the droning antiphonal response of the congregation, all five hundred of the people of World, crouching in the praying-pit surrounding the Ship.

“And Kwitni and McCaig brought the people through the sky to World—”

“And they looked upon World and found it good,” was the response.

“And down through the sky did the people come—”

“Down across the light-years to World.”

“Out of the Ship!”

“Out of the Ship!”

On it went, a long and ornate retelling of the early days of World, when Kwitni and McCaig, with the guidance of the Ship, had brought the original eight-and-thirty safely to ground. During the three hundred years the story had grown; six nights a year there was no moon, and the ceremonial retelling took place. And five hundred and thirteen were the numbers of the people on this Night of No Moon when the strangers came.

Jeen of the McCaig was the first to see them, as she stood before the Ship waiting for the ecstasy to sweep over her and for her feet to begin the worship dance. She was young, and this was only her fourth worship; she waited with some impatience for the frenzy to seize her.

Suddenly a blaze of light appeared in the dark moonless sky. Jeen stared. In her twenty years she had never seen fire in the heavens on The Night of No Moon.

And her sharp eyes saw that the fire was coming closer, that something was dropping through the skies toward them. And a shiver ran down her back, and she felt the coolness of the night winds against her lightly clad body. She heard the people stirring uneasily behind her.

Perhaps it was a miracle, she thought. Perhaps the Ship had sent some divine manifestation. Her heart pounded; her flanks glistened with sweat. The worshipping drew near its climax, and Jeen felt the dance-fever come over her, growing more intense as the strange light approached the ground.

She wriggled belly and buttocks sensuously and began the dance, the dance of worship that concluded the ceremony, while from behind her came the pleasure-sounds of the people as they, too, worshipped the Ship in their own ways. For the commandment of the old lawgiver Lorresson had been, Be happy, my children, and the people of World expressed their joy while the miracle-light plunged rapidly Worldward.

* * *

Eleven miles from the Hill of the Ship, the strange light finally touched ground—not a light at all, but a starship, golden-hulled, a thousand feet long and bearing within itself the eight hundred men and women of the Church of the New Resurrection, who had crossed the gulf of light-years in search of a world where they might practice their religion free from interference and without the distraction of the presence of countless billions of the unholy.

The Blessed Myron Brown was the leader of this flock and the captain of their ship, the New Galilee. Fifth in direct line from the Blessed Leroy Brown himself, Blessed Myron Brown was majestic of bearing and thunderous of voice, and when his words rang out over the ship phones saying, “Here we may rest, here we may live,” the eight hundred members of the Church of the New Resurrection rejoiced in their solemn way, and made ready for the landing.

They were not tractable people. The tenets of their Church were two: that the Messiah had come again on Earth, died again, been reborn, and in his resurrection prophesied that the Millennium was at hand—and, secondly, that He had chosen certain people to lead the way in the forthcoming building of New Jerusalem.

And it was through the mouth of Blessed Leroy Brown that He spoke, in the two thousand nine hundred and seventieth year since His first birth, and the Blessed Leroy Brown did name those of Earth who had been chosen for holiness and salvation. Many of the elect declined the designation, some with kindly thanks, some with scorn. The Blessed Leroy Brown died early, the protomartyr of his Church, but his work went on.

And a hundred years passed and the members of his Church were eight hundred in number, proud God-touched men and women who denounced the sinful ways of the world and revealed that judgment was near. There were martyrs, and the way was a painful one for the Blessed. But they persevered, and they raised money (some of their members had been quite wealthy in their days of sin) and when it became clear that Earth was too steeped in infamy for them to abide existence on it any further, they build their ark, the New Galilee, and crossed the gulf of night to a new world where they might live in peace and happiness and never know the persecution of the mocking ones.

They were a proud and stubborn people, and they kept the ways of God as they knew them. They dressed in gray, for bright colors were sinful, and they covered their bodies but for face and hands, and when a man knew his wife it was for the production of children alone. They made no graven images and they honored the Sabbath, and it was their very great hope that on Beta Andromedae XII they could at last be at peace.

But fifteen minutes after their landing they saw that this was not to be. For, while the women labored to erect camp and the men hunted provisions, the Blessed Enoch Brown, son of the leader Myron, went forth in a helicopter to survey the new planet.

And when he returned from his mission his dour face was deeper than usual with woe, and when he spoke it was in a sepulchral tone.

“The Lord has visited another tribulation upon us, even here in the wilderness.”

“What have you seen?” the Blessed Myron asked.

“The world is peopled!”

“Impossible! We were given every assurance that; this was a virgin world, without colonists, without native life.”

“Nevertheless,” the Blessed Enoch said bitterly, “There are people here. I have seen them. Naked savages who look like Earthpeople—dancing and prancing by the light of a huge bonfire round the rotting hulk of an abandoned spaceship that lies implanted in a hillside.” He scowled. “I flew low over them. Their bodies were virtually bare, and their flesh was oiled, and they leaped wildly and coupled like animals in the open.”

For a moment the Blessed Myron Brown stared bleakly at this son, unable to speak. The blood drained from his lean face. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with anger.

“Even here the Devil pursues us.”

“Who can these people be?”

The Blessed Myron shrugged. “It makes little difference. Perhaps they are descendants of a Terran colonial mission—a ship bound for a more distant world, that crashed here and sent no word to Earth.” He stared heavenward for a moment, at the dark and moonless sky, and muttered a brief prayer. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we will visit these people and speak with them. Now let us build our camp.”

* * *

The morning dawned fresh and clear, the sun rising early and growing warm rapidly, and shortly after morning prayer a picked band of eleven Resurrectionist men made their way through the heavily wooded area that separated their camp from that of the savages. The women of the Church knelt in the clearing and prayed, while the remaining men went about their daily chores.

The Blessed Myron Brown led the party, and with him were his son Enoch and nine others. They strode without speaking through the woods. The Blessed Myron experienced a certain discomfort as the great yellow sun grew higher in the sky and the forest warmed; he was perspiring heavily beneath his thick gray woolen clothes. But this was merely a physical discomfort, and those he could bear with ease.

This other torment, though, that of finding people on this new world—that hurt him. He wanted to see these people with his own eyes, and look upon them.

Near noon the village of the natives came in sight; the Blessed Myron was first to see it. He saw a huddle of crude low huts built around a medium-sized hill, atop which rose the snout of a corroded spaceship that had crashed into the hillside years, perhaps centuries earlier. The Blessed Myron pointed, and they went forward.

And several of the natives advanced from the village to meet them.

There was a girl, young and fair, and a man, and all the man wore was a scanty white cloth around his waist, and all the girl wore was the breechcloth and an additional binding around her breasts. The rest of their bodies—lean, tanned—were bare. The Blessed Myron offered a prayer that he would be kept from sin.

The girl stepped forward and said, “I’m the priestess Jeen of the McCaig. This is Lyle of Kwitni, who is in charge. Who are you?”

“You—you speak English?” the Blessed Myron asked.

“We do. Who are you, and what are you doing on World? Where did you come from? What do you want here?”

The girl was openly impudent; and the sight of her sleek thighs made the muscles tighten along the Blessed Myron’s jaws. Coldly he said, “We have come here from Earth. We will settle here.”

“Earth? Where is that?”

The Blessed Myron smiled knowingly and glanced at his son and at the others. He noticed in some disapproval that Enoch was staring with perhaps too much curiosity at the lithe girl. “Earth is the planet from beyond the sky where you originally came from,” he said. “Long ago—before you declined into savagery.”

“You came from the place we came from?” The girl frowned. “We are not savages, though.”

“You run naked and perform strange ceremonies by night. This is savagery. But all this must change. We will help you regain your stature as Earthmen again; we will show you how to build houses instead of shabby huts. And you must learn to wear clothing again.”

“But surely we need no more clothing than this,” Jeen said in surprise. She reached out and plucked a section of the Blessed Myron’s gray woolen vestments between two of her fingers. “Your clothes are wet with the heat. How can you bear such silly things?”

“Nakedness is sinful,” the Blessed Myron thundered.

Suddenly the man Lyle spoke. “Who are you to tell us these things? Why have you come to World?”

“To worship God freely.”

The pair of natives exchanged looks. Jeen pointed at the half-buried spaceship that gleamed in the noonday sun. “To worship with us?”

“Of course not! You worship a ship, a piece of metal. You have fallen into decadent ways.”

“We worship that which has brought us to World, for it is holy,” Jeen snapped hotly. “And you?”

“We, too, worship That which has brought us to the world. But we shall teach you. We—”

The Blessed Myron stopped. He no longer had an audience. Jeen and Lyle had whirled suddenly and both of them sprinted away, back toward the village.

The churchmen waited for more than half an hour. Finally the Blessed Myron said, “They will not come back. They are afraid of us. Let us return to our settlement and decide what is to be done.”

They heard laughing and giggling coming from above. The Blessed Myron stared upward.

The trees were thick with the naked people; they had stealthily surrounded them. The Blessed Myron saw the impish face of the girl Jeen.

She called down to him: “Go back to your God and leave us alone, silly men! Leave World by tomorrow morning or we’ll kill you!”

Enraged, the Blessed Myron shook his fist at the trees. “You chattering monkeys, we’ll make human beings of you again!”

“And make us wear thick ugly clothes and worship a false god? You’d have to kill us first—if you could!”

“Come,” the Blessed Myron said. “Back to the settlement. We cannot stay here longer.”

* * *

That evening, in the crude church building that had been erected during the day, the elders of the Church of the New Resurrection met in solemn convocation, to discuss the problem of the people of the forest.

“They are obviously descendants of a wrecked colony ship,” said the Blessed Myron. “But they make of sin a virtue. They have become as animals. In time they will merely corrupt us to their ways.”

The Elder Solomon Kane—an ascetic-featured, dour man with the cold, austere mind of a master mathematician or a master theologian—called for the floor. “As I see it, brother, there are three choices facing us: we can return to Earth and apply for a new planet; or we can attempt to convert these people to our ways; or we can destroy them to the last man, woman and child.”

The Blessed Dominic Agnello objected: “Return to Earth is impossible. We have not the fuel.”

“And,” offered the Blessed Myron, “I testify that these creatures are incorrigible and beyond aid. They are none of them among the Blessed. We do not want to inflict slavery upon them, nor can we welcome them into our numbers.”

“The alternative,” said the Blessed Solomon Kane, “is clearly our only path. We must root them out as if they were a noxious pestilence. How great are their numbers?”

“Three or four hundred. Perhaps as many as five hundred, no more. We certainly outnumber them.”

“And we have weapons. We can lay them low like weeds in the field.”

A light appeared in the eyes of the Blessed Myron Brown. “We shall perform an act of purification. We will blot the heathens from our new world. The slate must be fresh, for here we will build the New Jerusalem.”

The Blessed Leonid Markell, a slim mystic with flowing golden hair, smiled gently and said, “We are told, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’ Brother Myron.”

The Blessed Myron whirled on him. “The commandments are given to us, but they need interpretation. Would you say, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’ as the butcher raises his knife over a cow? Would you say—”

“The doctrine refers only to human life,” said the Blessed Leonid softly, “But—”

“I choose to construe it differently,” the Blessed Myron said. His voice was deep and commanding, now; it was the voice of the prophet speaking, of the lawgiver. “Here on this world only those who worship God may be considered human. Fleeing from the bitter scorn of our neighbors, we have come here to build a New Jerusalem in this wilderness—and we must remove every obstacle in our way. The Devil has placed these creatures here, to tempt us with their nakedness and laughter and sinful ways.”

He stared at the rest of them, and no longer were they his equals round the table, but now merely his disciples, as they had been all the long journey through the stars. “Tomorrow is the Sabbath day by our reckoning, and we shall rest. But on the day following we shall go armed to the village of the idolaters, and strike them down. Is that understood by us all?”

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” the Blessed Leonid quoted mildly. But when the time came for the vote, he cast in his lot with the rest, and it was recorded as a unanimous decision. After the day of the Sabbath, the mocking forest people would be eradicated.

* * *

But the people of World had laws of their own, and a religion of their own, and they too held a convocation that evening, speaking long and earnestly round the council fire. The priestess Jeen, garbed only in the red paints of death, danced before them, and when Lyle of the Kwitni called for a decision there were no dissenters.

The long night came to an end, and morning broke over World—and the spies returned from the settlement of the strangers, reporting that the strange god still stood in the clearing, and that his followers showed no signs of obeying the command to depart.

“It is death, then,” cried the priestess. And she led them in a dance round the ship their God, and the knives were sharpened, and she and Lyle led them through the forest, Lyle carrying one of the swords that had hung in the cabin of the Captain McCaig aboard the Ship, and Jeen the other.

The strangers were sleeping when the five hundred of the people of World burst in on their encampment. They woke, gradually, in confusion, as the forest slayers moved among them, slicing throats. Dozens died before anyone knew what was taking place.

Curiously the strangers made no attempt to defend themselves. Jeen saw the great bearded man, he who had commanded her to wear clothes and who had eyed her body so strangely, and he stood in the midst of his fellows, shouting in a mighty voice, “It is the Sabbath! Lift no weapon on the Sabbath! Pray, brothers, pray!”

And the strangers fell to their knees and prayed, and because they prayed to a false god they died. It was hardly yet noon when the killing was done with, and the eight hundred members of the Church of the New Resurrection lay weltering in blood, every one of them dead.

Jeen the priestess said strangely, “They did not fight back. They let us kill them.”

“They said it was the Sabbath,” Lyle of the Kwitni remarked. “But of course it was not the Sabbath—the Sabbath is three days hence.”

Jeen shrugged. “We are well rid of them, anyway. They would have blasphemed against God.”

There was more work to do after the bodies were carried to the sea. Fifty great trees were felled and stripped of their branches, and the naked trunks were set aside while the men of the tribe climbed the cliff and caused the great ship in which the strangers had come to topple to the ground.

Then a roadway was made of the fifty great logs, and the men and women of the people of World pushed strainingly, and the great ship rolled with a groaning sound down the side of the hill, as the logs tumbled beneath it, and finally it went plunging toward the sea and dropped beneath the waves, sending up a mighty cascade of water.

They were all gone, then, the eight hundred intruders and their false god, the ship. And the people of World returned to their village and wearily danced out the praise of their Ship, their God.

They were not bloodthirsty people, and they would have wished to welcome the eight hundred strange ones into their midst. But the strange ones were blasphemers, and so had to be killed, and their god destroyed.

Jeen was happy, for her faith in God was renewed, and she danced gladly round the pitted and rusting Ship. For her God had been true, and the god of the strangers false, and God’s bidding had been done. For it had been written in the Book of the Ship, which old Lorresson the priest recited to the people of World centuries ago in the days of the first McCaig and the first Kwitni, that there were certain commandments by which the people were to live.

And one of these commandments was, Thou Shalt Not Kill, and another was, Remember the Sabbath Day, To Keep It Holy. These the people of World harkened to.

But they were godly people, and the Word was most holy. They had acted in concord with the dictates of Lorresson and McCaig and Kwitni and the Ship itself, their God, when they had slain the intruders and destroyed their ship. For, first of all the commandments they revered, it was written, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me.

Content

Prime Commandmentby
by Robert Silverberg