ubject: The Way of Cross and Dragon (by George R.R. Martin)
From: Haramullah

The Way of Cross and Dragon
By George R.R. Martin

[This is taken without permission from 
 'The Best of OMNI Science Fiction' No. 2.]

Across the stars he fought against heresy.
_______________________________________________________________________

"Heresy," he told me.  The brakish waters of his pool sloshed gently.

"Another one?"  I said wearily.  "There are so many these days."

My Lord Commander was displeased by that comment.  He shifted position
heavily, sending ripples up and down the pool.  One broke over the side,
and a sheet of water slid across the tiles of the receiving chamber.  My
boots were soaked yet again.  I accepted that philosophically.  I had
worn my worst boots, well aware that wet feet are among the inescapable
consequences of paying call on Torgathon Nine-Klariis Tun, elder of the
ka-Thane people, and also Archbishop of Vess,  Most Holy Father of the
Four Vows, Grand Inquisitor of the Order Militant of the Knights of Jesus
Christ, and counselor to His Holiness Pope Daryn XXI of New Rome.

"Be there as many heresies as stars in the sky, each single one is no less
dangerous, Father," the archbishop said solemnly.  "As Knights of Christ,
it is our ordained task to fight them one and all.  And I must add that this
new heresy is particularly foul."

"Yes, my Lord Commander," I replied.  "I did not intend to make light of 
it.  You have my apologies.  The mission to Finnegan was most taxing.  I had
hoped to ask you for a leave of absence from my duties.  I need rest, a time
for thought and restoration."

"Rest?"  The archbishop moved again in his pool, only a slight shift of his
immense bulk, but it was enough to send a fresh sheet of water across the
floor.  His black pupilless eyes blinked at me.  "No, Father, I am afraid
that is out of the question.  Your skills and your experience are vital for
this new mission."  His bass tones seemed to soften somewhat then.  "I have
not had time to go over your reports on Finnegan," he said.  "How did your
work go?"

"Badly," I told him, "though ultimately I think we will prevail.  The Church
is strong on Finnegan.  When our attempts at reconciliation were rebuffed,
I put some standards in the right hands, and we were able to shut down the
heretics' newspaper and broadcasting facilities.  Our friends also made
certain that their legal actions came to nothing."

"That is not *badly*," the archbishop said.  "You won a considerable 
victory for the Lord and the Church."

"There were riots, my Lord Commander," I said.  "More than a hundred
heretics were killed, and a dozen of our own people.  I fear there will
be more violence before the matter is finished.  Our priests are attacked 
if they so much as enter the city where the heresy has taken root.  Their
leaders risk their lives if they leave that city.  I had hoped to avoid
such hatreds, such bloodshed."

"Commendable, but not realistic," said Archbishop Torgathon.  He blinked
at me again, and I remembered that among people of his race blinking is a
sign of impatience.  "The blood of martyrs must sometimes be spilled, and
the blood of heretics as well.  What matters it if a being surrenders his
life, so long as his soul is saved?"

"Indeed," I agreed.  Despite his impatience, Torgathon would lecture me
for another hour if given the chance.  That prospect dismayed me.  The
receiving chamber was not designed for human comfort, and I did not wish
to remain any longer than necessary.  The walls were damp and moldy, the
air hot and humid and thick with the rancid-butter smell characteristic
of the ka-Thane.  My collar was chafing my neck raw, I was sweating
beneath my cassock, my feet were thoroughly soaked, and my stomach was
beginning to churn.

"I pushed ahead to the business at hand.  "You say this new heresy is
unusually foul my Lord Commander?"

"It is," he said.

"Where has it started?"

"On Arion, a world some three weeks distance from Vess.  A human world
entirely.  I cannot understand why you humans are so easily corrupted.
Once a ka-Thane has found the faith, he would scarcely abandon it."

"That is well known," I replied politely.  I did not mention that the
number of ka-Thane to have found the faith was vanishingly small.
They were a slow, ponderous people, and most of their vast millions
showed no interest in learning any ways other than their own, or
following any creed but their own ancient religion.  Torgathon Nine-
Klariis Tun was an anomaly.  He had been among the first converts
almost two centuries ago, when Pope Vidas L had ruled that nonhumans
might serve as clergy.  Given his great life span and the iron certainty
of his belief it is no wonder that Torgathon had risen as far as he had,
despite the fact that fewer than a thousand of his race had followed
him into the Church.  He had at least a century of life remaining to
him.  No doubt he would someday be Torgathon Cardinal Tun, should he
squelch enough heresies.  The times are like that.

"We have little influence on Arion," the archbishop was saying.  His
arms moved as he spoke, four ponderous clubs of mottled green-gray
flesh churning the water, and the dirty white cilia around his breathing
hole trembled with each word.  "A few priests, a few churches, some
believers, but no power to speak of.  The heretics already outnumber
us on this world.  I rely on your intellect, your shrewdness.  Turn this
calamity into an opportunity.  This heresy is so palpable that you can
easily disprove it.  Perhaps some of the deluded will turn to the true
way."

"Certainly," I said.  "And the nature of this heresy?  What must I
disprove?"  It is a sad indication of my own troubled faith to add that
I did not really care.  I have dealt with too many heresies.  Their beliefs
and their questionings echo in my head and trouble my dreams at night.
How can I be sure of my own faith?  The very edict that had admitted
Torgathon into the clergy had caused a half-dozen worlds to repudiate
the Bishop of New Rome, and those who had followed that path would find
a particularly ugly heresy in the massive naked (save for a damp Roman
collar) alien who floated before me and wielded the authority of the
Church in four great webbed hands.  Christianity is the greatest single
human religion, but that means little.  The non-Christians outnumber
us five to one, and there are well over seven-hundred Christian sects,
some almost as large as the One True Interstellar Catholic Church of
Earth and the Thousand Worlds.  Even Daryn XXI, powerful as he is, is
only one of seven to claim the title of Pope.  My own belief was strong
once, but I have moved too long among heretics and nonbelievers and
even my prayers do not make the doubts go away now.  So it was that I
felt no horror - only a sudden intellectual interest - when the arch-
bishop told me the nature of the heresy on Arion.

"They have made a saint," he said, "out of Judas Iscariot."

***

As a senior in the Knights Inquisitor, I command my own starship, which
it pleases me to call *Truth of Christ*.  Before the craft was assigned
to me, it was named the *St. Thomas*, after the apostle, but I did not
feel a saint notorious for doubting was an appropriate patron for a ship
enlisted in the fight against heresy.  I have no duties aboard the *Truth*,
which is crewed by six brothers and sisters of the Order of St. Christopher
the Far-Traveling and captained by a young woman I hired away from a
merchant trader.

I was therefore able to devote the entire three-week voyage from Vess
to Arion to a study of the heretical Bible, a copy of which had been given
to me by the archbishop's administrative assistant.  It was a thick,
heavy, handsome book, bound in dark leather, its pages edged with gold
leaf, with many splendid interior illustrations in full color with
holographic enhancement.  Remarkable work, clearly done by someone
who loved the all-but-forgotten art of bookmaking.  The paintings
reproduced inside - the originals were to be found on Arion, I gathered -
were masterful, if blasphemous, as much high art as the Tammerwens and
RoHallidays that adorn the Great Cathedral of St. John on New Rome.

Inside, the book bore an imprimatur indicating that it had been approved
by Lukyan Judasson, First Scholar of the order of St. Judas Iscariot.

It was called _The Way of Cross and Dragon_.

I read it as the *Truth in Christ* slid between the stars, at first 
taking copious notes to better understand the heresy that I must 
fight, but later simply absorbed by the strange, convoluted,
grotesque story it told.  The words of the text had passion and power
and poetry.

Thus it was that I first encountered the striking figure of St. Judas
Iscariot, a complex, ambitious, contradictory, and altogether
extraordinary human being.

He was born of a whore in the fabled ancient city-state of Babylon
on the same day that the Savior was born in Bethlehem, and he spent
his childhood in the alleys and gutters, selling his own body when
he had to, pimping when he became older.  As a youth he began to
experiment with the dark arts, and before the age of twenty he was
a skilled necromancer.  That was when he became Judas the Dragon-
Tamer, the first and only man to bend to his will the most fearsome
of God's creatures, the great winged fire lizards of Old Earth.  The
book held a marvelous painting of Judas in some great dank cavern,
his eyes aflame as he wielded a glowing lash to keep at bay a
mountainous green-gold dragon.  Beneath his arm is a woven basket,
its lid slightly ajar, and the tiny scaled heads of three dragon
chicks are peering up his sleeve.  That was the first chapter of his
life.

In the second, he was Judas the Conqueror, Judas the Dragon-King,
Judas of Babylon, the Great Usurper.  Astride the greatest of his
dragons, with an iron crown on his head and a sword in his hand, he
made Babylon the capital of the greatest empire Old Earth had ever
known, a realm that stretched from Spain to India.  He reigned from
a dragon throne amid the Hanging Gardens he had caused to be
constructed, and it was there he sat when he tried Jesus of Nazareth,
the trouble-making prophet who had been dragged before him bound
and bleeding.  Judas was not a patient man, and he made Christ bleed
still more before he was through with Him.  And when Jesus would not
answer his questions, Judas - contemptuous - had Him cast back into
the streets.  But first Judas ordered his guards to cut off Christ's
legs.  "Healer," he said, "heal thyself."

Then came the Repentance, the vision in the night, and Judas Iscariot
gave up his crown and his dark arts and his riches, to follow the man
he had crippled.  Despised and taunted by those he had tyrannized,
Judas became the Legs of the Lord, and for a year he carried Jesus on
his back to the far corners of the realm he had once ruled.  When Jesus
did finally heal Himself, then Judas walked by His side, and from that
time forth he was Judas' trusted friend and counselor, the first and
foremost of the Twelve.  Finally, Jesus gave Judas the gift of tongues,
recalled and sanctified the dragons that Judas had sent away, and sent
his disciple forth on a solitary ministry across the oceans, "to spread
My Word where I cannot go."

There came a day when the sun went dark at noon and the ground trembled,
and Judas swung his dragon around on ponderous wings and flew back
across the raging seas.  But when he reached the city of Jerusalem, he
found Christ dead on the cross.

In that moment his faith faltered, and for the next three days the Great
Wrath of Judas was like a storm across the ancient world.  His dragons
razed the Temple in Jerusalem and drove the people from the city and
struck as well at the great seats of power in Rome and Babylon.  And
when he found the others of the Twelve and questioned them and learned
of how the one named Simon-called-Peter had three times betrayed the
Lord, he strangled Peter with his own hands and fed the corpse to his
dragons.  Then he sent those dragons forth to start fires throughout
the world, funeral pyres for Jesus of Nazareth.

So Jesus called back the dragons, and they came, and everywhere the
fires went out.  And from their bellies He called forth Peter and made
him whole again, and gave him dominion over the Church.

Then the dragons died, and so, too, did all dragons everywhere, for
they were the living sigil of the power and the wisdom of Judas Iscariot,
who had sinned greatly.  And He took from Judas the gift of tongues and
the power of healing He had given, and even his eyesight, for Judas had
acted as a man blind (there was a fine painting of the blinded Judas
weeping over the bodies of his dragons).  And He told Judas that for
long ages he would be remembered only as Betrayer, and people would
curse his name, and all that he had been and done would be forgotten.

But then, because Judas had loved Him so, Christ gave him a boon, an
extended life, during which he might travel and think on his sins and
finally come to forgiveness and only then die.

And that was the beginning of the last chapter in the life of Judas
Iscariot, but it was a very long chapter indeed.  Once Dragon-King,
once the friend of Christ, now he became only a blind traveler, 
outcast and friendless, wandering all the cold roads of the earth,
living even when all the cities and the people and things he had known
were dead.  And Peter, the first Pope and ever his enemy, spread far and
wide the tale of how Judas had sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver,
until Judas dared not even use his true name.  For a time he called
himself just Wandering Ju', and afterward many other names.

He lived more than a thousand years, and became a preacher, and a healer,
and a lover of animals, and was hunted and persecuted when the Church
that Peter had founded became bloated and corrupt.  But he had a great
deal of time, and at last he found wisdom and a sense of peace, and
finally Jesus came to hm on a long-postponed deathbed, and they were
reconciled, and Judas wept once again.  And before he died, Christ
promised that He would permit a few to remember who and what Judas had
been, and that with the passage of centuries the news would spread,
until finally Peter's Lie was displaced and forgotten.

Such ws the life of St. Judas Iscariot, as related in _The Way of the Cross
and Dragon_.  His teachings were there as well, and the apocryphal books
that he had allegedly written.

When I had finished the volume, I lent it to Arla-k-Bau, the captain of
the *Truth of Christ*.  Arla was a gaunt, pragmatic woman of no particular
faith, but I valued her opinion.  The others of my crew, the good sisters
and brothers of St. Christopher, would only have echoed the archbishop's
religious horror.

"Interesting," Arla said when she returned the book to me.

I chuckled.  "Is that all?"

She shrugged.  "It makes a nice story.  An easier read than your Bible,
Damien, and more dramatic as well."

"True," I admitted.  "But it's absurd.  An unbelievable tangle of doctrine,
apocrypha, mythology and superstition.  Entertaining, yes, certainly.
Imaginative, even daring.  But ridiculous, don't you think?  How can you
credit dragons?  A legless Christ?  Peter being pieced together after
being devoured by four monsters?"

Arla's grin was taunting.  "Is that any sillier than water changing into
wine, or Christ walking on the waves, or a man living in the belly of a
fish?"  Arla-k-Bau liked to jab at me.  It had been a scandal when I
selected a nonbeliever as my captain, but she was very good at her
job, and I liked her around to keep me sharp.  She had a good mind, Arla
did, and I valued that more than blind obedience.  Perhaps that was a
sin in me.

"There is a difference, " I said.

"Is there?" she snapped back.  Her eyes saw through my masks.  "Ah,
Damien, admit it.  You rather liked this book."

I cleared my throat.  "It piqued my interest," I acknowledged.  I had to
justify myself.  "You know the kind of matter I deal with ordinarily.
Dreary little doctrinal deviations, obscure quibblings on theology
somehow blown all out of purportion, bald-faced political maneuverings
designed to set some ambitious planetary bishop up as a new pope,
or to wring some concession or other from New Rome or Vess.  The war is
endless, but the battles are dull and dirty.  They exhaust me,
spiritually, emotionally, physically.  Afterward I feel drained and
guilty."  I tapped the book's leather cover.  "This is different.  The
heresy must be crushed, of course, but I admit that I am anxious to
meet his Lukyan Judasson."

"The artwork is lovely as well," Arla said, flipping through the pages
of _The Way of Cross and Dragon_ and stopping to study one especially
striking plate, Judas weeping over his dragons, I think.  I smiled to
see that it had affected her as much as me.  Then I frowned.

That was the first inkling I had of the difficulties ahead.

***

So it was that the *Truth of Christ* came to the porcelain city Ammadon
on the world of Arion, where the Order of St. Judas Iscariot kept its
House.

Arion was a pleasant, gentle world, inhabited for these past three
centuries.  Its population was under nine million; Ammadon, the only
real city, was home to two of those millions.  The technological
level was medium high, but chiefly imported.  Arion had little industry
and was not an innovative world, except perhaps artistically.  The arts
were quite important here, flourishing and vital.  Religious freedom
was a basic tenet of the society, but Arion was not a religious world
either, and the majority of the populace lived devoutly secular lives.
The most popular religion was Aestheticism, which hardly counts as a
religion at all.  There were also Taoists, Erikaners, Old True Christers,
and Children of the Dreamer, along with a dozen lesser sects.

And finally there were nine churches of the One True Interstellar
Catholic faith.  There had been twelve.

The three others were now houses of Arion's fastest-growing faith, the
Order of St. Judas Iscariot, which also had a dozen newly built churches
of its own.

The bishop of Arion was a dark, severe man with close-cropped black
hair who was not at all happy to see me.  "Damien Har Veris!" he
exclaimed in some wonder when I called on him at his residence.  "We
have heard of you, of course, but I never thought to meet or host you.
Our numbers are small here -"

"And growing smaller," I said.  "A matter of some concern to my Lord
Commander, Archbishop Torgathon.  Apparently you are less troubled,
Excellency, since you did not see fit to report the activities of this
sect of Judas worshipers."

He looked briefly angry at the rebuke, but quickly he swallowed his
temper.  Even a bishop can fear a Knight Inquisitor.  "We are concerned,
of course," he said.  "We do all we can to combat the heresy.  If you
have advice that will help us, I will be more than glad to listen."

"I am an Inquisitor of the Order Militant of the Knights of Jesus
Christ," I said bluntly.  "I do not give advice, Excellency.  I take
action.  To that end I was sent to Arion, and that is what I shall do.
Now, tell me what you know about this heresy and this First Scholar,
this Lukyan Judasson."

"Of course, Father Damien," the bishop began.  He signalled for a
servant to bring us a tray of wine and cheese, and began to summarize
a short, but explosive, history of the Judas cult.  I listened, polishing
my nails on the crimson lapel of my jacket, until the black paint
gleamed brilliantly, interrupting from time to time with a question.
Before he had half-finished, I was determined to visit this Lukyan
personally.  It seemed the best course of action.

And I had wanted to do it all along.

***

Appearances were important on Arion I gathered, and I deemed it
necessary to impress Lukyan with my self and my station.  I wore my
best boots, sleek dark handmade boots of Roman leather that had
never seen the inside of Torgathon's receiving chamber, and a
severe black suit with deep burgundy lapels and stiff collar.
From around my neck hung a splendid crucifix of pure gold, my
collar pin was the matching golden sword, the sigil of the Knights
Inquisitor.  Brother Denis painted my nails carefully, all black as
ebony, and darkened my eyes as well, and used a fine white powder
on my face.  When I glanced in the mirror, I frightened even myself.
I smiled, but only briefly.  It ruined the effect.

I walked to the House of St. Judas Iscariot.  The trees of Ammadon
were wide and spacious and golden, lined by scarlet trees called
whisperwinds, whose long, drooping tendrils did indeed seem to
whisper secrets to the gentle breeze.  Sister Judith came with me.
She is a small woman, slight of build even in the cowled coveralls
of the Order of St. Christopher.  Her face is meek and kind, her eyes
wide and youthful and innocent.  I find her useful.  Four times now
she has killed those who attempted to assault me.

The House itself was newly built.  Rambling and stately, it rose
from amid gardens of small bright flowers and seas of golden grass,
and the gardens were surrounded by a high wall.  Murals covered both
the outer wall around the property and the exterior of the building
itself.  I recognized a few of them from _The Way of Cross and Dragon_
and stopped briefly to admire them before walking on through the
main gate.  No one tried to stop us.  There were no guards, not even a
receptionist.  Within the walls, men and women strolled languidly
through the flowers, or sat on benches beneath silverwoods and
whisperwinds.

Sister Judith and I paused, then made our way directly to the House
itself.

We had just started up the steps when a man appeared from within; he
stood waiting in the doorway.  He was blond and fat, with a great wiry
beard that framed a slow smile, and he wore a flimsy robe that fell
to his sandaled feet, and on the robe were dragons bearing the
silhouette of a man holding a cross.

When I reached the top of the steps, the man bowed to me.  "Father
Damien Har Veris of the Knights Inquisitor," he said.  His smile
widened.  "I greet you in the name of Jesus, and St. Judas.  I am
Lukyan."

I made a note to myself to find out which of the bishop's staff
was feeding information to the Judas cult, but my composure did
not break.  I have been a Knight Inquisitor for a long, long time.
"Father Lukyan Mo," I said, taking his hand, "I have questions
to ask of you."  I did not smile.

He did.  "I thought you might," he said.

***

Lukyan's office was large but spartan.  Heretics often have a
simplicity that officers of the true Church seem to have lost.
He did have one indulgence, however.

Dominating the wall behind his desk/console was the painting
I had already fallen in love with, the blinded Judas weeping
over his dragons.

Lukyan sat down heavily and motioned me to a second chair.  We
had left Sister Judith outside, in the waiting chamber.  "I prefer
to stand, Father Lukyan," I said, knowing it gave me an advantage.

"Just Lukyan," he said.  "Or Luke, if you prefer.  We have little use
for titles here."

"You are Father Lukyan Mo, born here on Arion, educated in the
seminary on Cathaday,  a former priest of the One True Interstellar
Catholic Church of Earth and the Thousand Worlds," I said.  "I will
address you as befits your station, Father.  I expect you to
reciprocate.  Is that understood?"

"Oh, yes," he said amiably.

"I am empowered to strip you of your right to administer the sacraments,
to order you shunned and excommunicated for this heresy you have
formulated.  On certain worlds I could even order your death."

"But not on Arion," Lukyan said quickly.  "We're very tolerant here.
Besides, we outnumber you."  He smiled.  "As for the rest, well, I don't
perform those sacraments much anyway you know.  Not for years.  I'm
First Scholar now.  A teacher, a thinker.  I show others the way, help
them find the faith.  Excommunicate me if it will make you happy,
Father Damien.  Happiness is what all of us seek."

"You have given up the faith then, Father Lukyan?" I said.  I deposited
my copy of _The Way of Cross and Dragon_ on his desk.  "But I see you
have found a new one."  Now I did smile, but it was all ice, all menace,
all mockery.  "A more ridiculous creed I have yet to encounter.  I
suppose you will tell me that you have spoken to God, that He trusted
you with this new revelation, so that you might clear the good name,
such that it is, of Holy Judas?"

Now Lukyan's smile was very broad indeed.  He picked up the book and
beamed at me.

"Oh, no," he said.  "No, I made it all up."

That stopped me.  "What?"

"I made it all up," he repeated.  He hefted the book fondly.  "I drew on
many sources, of course, especially the Bible, but I do think of 'Cross
and Dragon' mostly as my own work.  It's rather good, don't you agree?
Of course, I could hardly put my name on it, proud as I am of it, but I
did include my imprimatur.  Did you notice that?  It was the closest I
dared come to a by-line."

I was speechless only for a moment.  Then I grimaced.  "You startle
me," I admitted.  "I expected to find an inventive madman, some poor
self-deluded fool firm in his belief that he had spoken to God.  I've
dealt with such fanatics before.  Instead I find a cheerful cynic
who has invented a religion for his own profit.  I think I prefer the
fanatics.  You are beneath contempt, Father Lukyan.  You will burn
in hell for eternity."

"I doubt it," Lukyan said, "but you do mistake me, Father Damien.  I
am no cynic, nor do I profit from my dear St. Judas.  Truthfully, I
lived more comfortably as a priest of your own Church.  I do this
because it is my vocation."

I sat down.  "You confuse me," I said.  "Explain."

"Now I am going to tell you the truth," he said.  He said it in an odd
way, almost as a cant.  "I am a liar," he added.

"You want to confuse me with child's paradoxes," I snapped.

"No, no," he smiled.  "A *Liar*.  With a capital.  It is an organization,
Father Damien.  A religion, you might call it.  A great and powerful
faith.  And I am the smallest part of it."

"I know of no such church," I said.

"Oh, no, you wouldn't.  It's secret.  It has to be.  You can understand
that, can't you?  People don't like being lied to."

"I do not like being lied to," I said.

Lukyan looked wounded.  "I told you this would be the truth, didn't I?
When a Liar says that, you can believe him.  How else could we trust
each other?"

"There are many of you," I said.  I was starting to think that Lukyan
was a madman after all, as fanatic as any heretic, but in a more complex
way.  Here was a heresy within a heresy, but I recognized my duty - to
find the truth of things and set them right.

"Many of us," Lukyan said, smiling.  "You would be surprised, Father
Damien, really you would.  But there are some things I dare not tell
you."

"Tell me what you dare, then."

"Happily," said Lukyan Judasson.  "We Liars, like all other religions,
have several truths we take on faith.  Faith is always required.  There
are some things that cannot be proved.  We believe that life is worth
living.  That is an article of faith.  The purpose of life is to live, 
to resist death, perhaps to defy entropy."

"Go on," I said, growing even more interested despite myself.

"We also believe that happiness is a good, something to be sought after."

"The Church does not oppose happiness," I said dryly.

"I wonder," Lukyan said.  "But let us not quibble.  Whatever the Church's
position on happiness, it does preach belief in an afterlife, in a supreme
being, and a complex moral code."

"True."

"The Liars believe in no afterlife, no God.  We see the universe as it *is*,
Father Damien, and these naked truths are cruel ones.  We who believe in
life, and treasure it, will die.  Afterward there will be nothing, eternal
emptiness, blackness, nonexistence.  In our living there has been no
purpose, no poetry, no meaning.  Nor do our deaths possess these qualities.
When we are gone, the universe will not long remember us, and shortly it
will be as if we had never lived at all.  Our worlds and our universe will
not long outlive us.  Ultimately entropy will consume all, and our puny
efforts cannot stay that awful end.  It will be gone.  It has never been.
It has never mattered.  The universe itself is doomed, transitory, and
certainly it is uncaring."

I slid back in my chair, and a shiver went through me as I listened to
poor Lukyan's dark words.  I found myself fingering my crucifix.
"A bleak philosophy," I said, "as well as a false one.  I have had
that fearful vision myself.  I think all of us do, at some point.  But it
is not so, Father.  My faith sustains me against such nihilism.  Faith is
a shield against despair."

"Oh, I know that, my friend, Knight Inquisitor,"  Lukyan said.  "I'm glad
to see you understand so well.  You are almost one of us already."

I frowned.

"You've touched the heart of it," Lukyan continued.  "The truths, the
great truths - and most of the lesser ones as well - they are unbearable
for most men.  We find our shield in faith.  Your faith, my faith, any faith.
It doesn't matter, so long as we *believe*, really and truly believe,
in whatever lie we cling to."  He fingered the ragged edges of his great
blond beard.  "Our psychs have always told us that believers are the
happy ones, you know.  They may believe in Christ or Buddha or Erika
Stormjones, in reincarnation or immortality or nature, in the power of
love or the platform of a political faction, but it all comes to the same
thing.  They believe.  They are happy.  It is the ones who have seen truth
who despair, and kill themselves.  The truths are so vast, the faiths so
little, so poorly made, so riddled with errors and contradictions.
We see around them and through them, and then we feel the weight of
the darkness on us, and we can no longer be happy."

I am not a slow man.  I knew, by then, where Lukyan Judasson was going.
"Your Liars invent faiths."

He smiled.  "Of all sorts.  Not only religious.  Think of it.  We know truth
for the cruel instrument it is.  Beauty is infinitely preferrable to
truth.  We invent beauty.  Faiths, political movements, high ideals,
belief in love and fellowship.  All of them are lies.  We tell those lies,
and others, endless others.  We improve on history and myth and religion,
make each more beautiful, better, easier to believe in.  Our lies are not
perfect, of course.  The truths are too big.  But perhaps someday we will
find one great lie that all humanity can use.  Until then, a thousand
small lies will do."

"I think I do not care for you Liars very much," I said with a cold, even
fervor.  "My whole life has been a quest for truth."

Lukyan was indulgent.  "Father Damien Har Veris, Knight Inquisitor, you
know better than that.  You are a Liar yourself.  You do good work.  You
ship from world to world and on each you destroy the foolish, the rebels,
the questioners who would bring down the edifice of the vast lie that
you serve."

"If my lie is so admirable," I said, "then why have you abandoned it?"

"A religion must fit its culture and society, work with them, not against
them.  If there is conflict, contradiction, then the lie breaks down, and
the faith falters.  Your Church is good for many worlds, Father, but not
for Arion.  Life is too kind here, and your faith is stern.  Here we love
beauty, and your faith offers too little.  So we have improved it.  We
studied this world for a long time.  We know its psychological profile.
St. Judas will thrive here.  He offers drama, and color, and much beauty -
the aesthetics are admirable.  His is a tragedy with a happy ending, and
Arion dotes on such stories.  And the dragons are a nice touch.  I think
your own Church ought to find a way to work in dragons.  They are
marvelous creatures."

"Mythical," I said.

"Hardly," he replied.  "Look it up."  He grinned at me.  "You see, really,
it all comes back to faith.  Can you really know what happened three
thousand years ago?  You have one Judas.  I have another.  Both of us
have books.  Is yours true?  Can you really believe that?  I have
been admitted only to the first circle of the order of Liars.  So I do
not know all of our secrets, but I know that we are very old.  It would
not surprise me to learn that the gospels were written by men very
much like me.  Perhaps there never was a Judas at all.  Or a Jesus."

"I have faith that that is not so," I said.

"There are a hundred people in this building who have a deep and very
real faith in St. Judas and the Way of Cross and Dragon," Lukyan said.
"Faith is a very good thing.  Do you know that the suicide rate on Arion
has decreased by almost a third since the Order of St. Judas was
founded?"

I remember rising slowly from my chair.  "You are as fanatical as any
heretic I have ever met, Lukyan Judasson," I told him.  "I pity you the
loss of your faith."

Lukyan rose with me.  "Pity yourself, Damien Har Veris," he said.  I have
found a new faith and a new cause, and I am a happy man.  You, my dear
friend, are tortured and miserable."

"*That is a lie!*" I am afraid I screamed.

"Come with me," Lukyan said.  He touched a panel on his wall, and the
great painting of Judas weeping over his dragons slid up out of sight,
and there was a stairway leading down into the ground.  "Follow me,"
he said.

In the cellar was a great glass vat full of pale green fluid, and in it
a *thing* was floating - a thing very like an ancient embryo, aged and
infantile at the same time, naked with a huge head and a tiny atrophied
body.  Tubes ran from its arms and legs and genitals, connecting it to
the machinery which kept it alive.

When Lukyan turned on the lights, it opened its eyes.  They were large
and dark and they looked into my soul.

"This is my colleague," Lukyan said, patting the side of the vat.
"Jon Azure Cross,  a Liar of the fourth circle."

"And a telepath," I said with sick certainty.  I had led pogroms
against telepaths, children mostly, on other worlds.  The Church
teaches that the psionic powers are a trap of Satan's.  They are not
mentioned in the Bible.  I have never felt good about those killings.

"Jon read you the moment you entered the compound," Lukyan said,
"and notified me.  Only a few of us know that he is here.  He helps us
lie most efficiently.  He knows when faith is true and when it is
feigned.  I have an implant in my skull.  Jon can talk to me at all
times.  It was he who initially recruited me into the Liars.  He knew
my faith was hollow.  He felt the depth of my despair."

Then the thing in the tank spoke, its metallic voice coming from a
speaker-grill in the base of the machine that nurtured it.  "*And I
feel yours, Damien Har Veris, empty priest.  Inquisitor, you have
asked too many questions.  You are sick at heart, and tired, and you
do not believe.  Join us, Damien.  You have been a Liar for a long,
long time!*"

For a moment I hesitated, looking deep into myself, wondering what
it was I did believe.  I searched for my faith, the fire that had once
sustained me, the certainty in the teachings of the Church, the
presence of Christ within me.  I found none of it, none.  I was empty
inside, burned out, full of questions and pain.  But as I was about
to answer Jon Azure Cross and the smiling Lukyan Judasson, I found
something else, something I *did* believe in, something I had always
believed in.

Truth.

I believed in truth, even when it hurt.  "He is lost to us," said the
telepath with the mocking name of Cross.

Lukyan's smile faded.  "Oh really?  I had hoped you would be one of
us, Damien.  You seemed ready."

I was suddenly afraid, and I considered sprinting up the stairs to
Sister Judith.  Lukyan had told me so very much, and now I had rejected
them.

The telepath felt my fear.  "*You cannot hurt us, Damien,*" it said.  
"*Go in peace.  Lukyan told you nothing.*"

Lukyan was frowning.  "I hold him a good deal, Jon," he said.

"*Yes.  But can he trust the words of such a Liar as you?*"  The small
misshapen mouth of the thing in the vat twitched in a smile, and its
great eyes closed, and Lukyan Judasson sighed and led me up the
stairs.

***

It was not until some years later that I realized it was Jon Azure
Cross who was lying, and the victim of his lie was Lukyan.  I *could*
hurt them.  I did.

It was almost simple.  The bishop had friends in government and the
media.  With some money in the right places, I made some friends of
my own.  Then I exposed Cross in his cellar, charging that he had used
his psionic powers to tamper with the minds of Lukyan's followers.
My friends were receptive to the charges.  The guardians conducted a
raid, took the telepath Cross into custody, and later tried him.

He was innocent, of course.  My charge was nonsense; human telepaths
can read minds in close proximity, but seldom anything more.  But they
are rare, and much feared, and Cross was hideous enough to make him a
victim of superstition.  In the end, he was acquitted, and he left the
city of Ammadon and perhaps Arion itself, bound for regions unknown.

But it had never been my intention to convict him.  The charge was enough.
The cracks had begun to show in the lie that he and Lukyan had built
together.  Faith is hard to come by, and easy to lose, and the merest
doubt can begin to erode even the strongest foundation of belief.

The bishop and I labored together to sow further doubts.  It was not 
as easy as I might have thought.  The Liars had done their work well.
Ammadon, like most civilized cities, had a great pool of knowledge,
a computer system that linked the schools and universities and
libraries together, and made their combined wisdom available to
any who needed it.

But, when I checked, I soon discovered that the histories of Rome and
Babylon had been subtly reshaped, and there were three listings for
Judas Iscariot - one for the betrayer, one for the saint, and one for the
conqueror-king of Babylon.  His name was also mentioned in connection
with the Hanging Gardens, and there is an entry for a so-called Codex
Judas.

And according to the Ammadon library, dragons became extinct on Old
Earth around the time of Christ.

We purged all of those lies finally, wiped them from the memories of
the computers, though we had to cite authorities on a half-dozen non-
Christian worlds before the librarians and academics would credit that
the differences were anything more than a question of religious
preference.

By then the Order of St. Judas had withered in the glare of exposure.
Lukyan Judasson had grown gaunt and angry, and at least half of his
churches had closed.

The heresy never died completely, of course.  There are always those
who beleive, no matter what.  And so to this day _The Way of Cross and
Dragon_ is read on Arion, in the porcelain city Ammadon, amid murmuring
whisperwinds.

Arla-k-Bau and the *Truth of Christ* carried me back to Vess a year
after my departure, and Archbishop Torgathon finally gave me the
leave of absence I had asked for, before sending me out to fight still
other heresies.  So I had my victory, and the Church continued on much
as before, and the Order of St. Judas Iscariot was thoroughly crushed.
The telepath Jon Azure Cross had been wrong, I thought then.  He had
sadly underestimated the power of a Knight Inquisitor.

Later, though, I remembered his words.

*You cannot hurt us, Damien.*

Us?

The Order of St. Judas?  Or the Liars?

He lied, I think, deliberately knowing I would go forth and destroy the
Way of Cross and Dragon, knowing, too, that I could not touch the Liars,
would not even dare mention them.  How could I?  Who would credit it?
A grand star-spanning conspiracy as old as history?  It reeks of
paranoia, and I had no proof at all.

The telepath lied for Lukyan's benefit so he would let me go.  I am
certain of that now.  Cross risked much to ensnare me.  Failing,
he was willing to sacrifice Lukyan Judasson and his lie, pawns in
some greater game.

So I left, and I carried within me the knowledge that I was empty of
faith, but for a blind faith in truth - truth I could no longer find in
my Church.

***

I grew certain of that in my year of rest, which I spent reading and
studying on Vess and Cathaday and Celia's World.  Finally I returned
to the archbishop's receiving room, and stood again before Torgathon
Nine-Klariis Tun in my very worst pair of boots.  "My Lord Commander,"
I said to him.  "I can accept no further assignments.  I ask that I be
retired from active service."

"For what cause?" Torgathon rumbled, splashing feebly.

"I have lost the faith," I said to him, simply.

He regarded me for a long time, his pupilless eyes blinking.  At last
he said, "Your faith is a matter between you and your confessor.  I care
only about your results.  You have done good work, Damien.  You may not
retire, and we will not allow you to resign."

The truth with set us free.

But freedom is cold, and empty, and frightening, and lies can often be
warm and beautiful.

Last year the Church granted me a new ship.  I named this one *Dragon*.

EOF