God
So I was the new savior.
The settlers here had been waiting for a new one. It wasn't talk snatched out of the air. They spoke as if the waiting had real grounds.
"They even say there was a prophecy that a savior would come, don't they."
"You know your stuff."
And the source of those grounds—
"The savior who came first."
—was the savior's own word.
What in the world was this savior business supposed to be.
Whatever it was, I seemed to have won the man's support. Which meant I would end up on the wrong side of the General. There was no way to tell which of the two it would be more profitable to strengthen, and if that was the case, weighing which of them was more willing to believe in me wasn't a bad judgment.
"I'll untie you now, so don't try anything stupid."
"Your lackeys are staring holes through me. What stupid thing am I going to try?"
The savior undid, with his own hands, the ropes binding the three of us. Elder Heo, who had been sleeping as if the world didn't exist, had no choice but to wake.
"Eh? We back at Headquarters, are we? Where is this—E Block?"
His memory was still clinging on, if only vaguely, so it wasn't the worst of outcomes.
"We're still in Yeongdeungpo."
"What? How long we been squattin' here...?"
"We aren't squatting. We'll be heading back to Headquarters before long."
"That so? Ain't it already been over a year since we come?"
I was curious what that year in the Human Meat Factory had looked like inside Elder Heo's memory, but this was no time to sit around talking.
"For the next few hours, you'll have to do exactly as I ask. That's the only way we get back to Headquarters."
"You mean a mission?"
"Yes. A mission."
"Well then. Nothin' else for it..."
Even so, give him a mission and Elder Heo carried it out sharp as a blade. The only reason he had been able to live at Headquarters in a state of mind like this was that an appraiser's work, at least, he still did properly.
"What's wrong with the appraiser?"
The savior seemed to want a medical answer out of Dr. Myeong. What he got was not scientific.
"He still gets the work done clean, so don't worry. Have a little faith."
"How am I supposed to not worry? If he blurts something sideways and wrecks this, we're finished."
"Don't you think he's got a feel to him, though?"
"A feel?"
"He suits a savior's company. Tremendous ability, and a screw loose somewhere."
"For a doctor, the way you think isn't scientific in the slightest."
"That's prejudice against doctors."
Faith, just as Dr. Myeong said, looked necessary. Elder Heo's condition didn't seem like simple exhaustion.
"Are you very tired right now?"
"Me? Not a chance! Fit as a fiddle!"
His face was dark.
"Postman. About time you understood what a savior is, don't you think?"
"The order's strange. Normally you explain what a thing is, and then you tell someone to do it."
"Nothing to it. A savior is exactly what the word means."
The explanation was short and plain. A savior was a being who saved the settlers—not a religious salvation, but a practical one. When he had first come to the Human Meat Factory, the place had been a step from collapse. The settlers had been living by converting abandoned railgun production lines and turning out all sorts of everyday goods, and the trouble had begun as the machinery aged.
"They didn't have the skill to fix it. Most of the people who first converted the equipment and laid the foundation had already left the settlement."
"Left?"
"People who hated the way of refusing all contact with the outside. And people who were afraid of fighting the government."
"They let them leave alive, at least."
"Who knows. It was before I got here."
What the savior had done was repair the machines. And he had done it, he said, by his own strength alone.
"All of this, by yourself?"
"It was enough."
"You don't look like you've got the stamina."
A savior with a slender frame. It was like looking at myself as a child.
"Because I have a strength that isn't stamina."
He drew the pistol again, and this time set it on the floor. He brought his palm close, and the gun began to come apart on its own—clack, rattle.
This man was a rarer specimen than I'd thought.
This was not the moment to be easily impressed, and yet—
"Whoa..."
Dr. Myeong was poor at hiding what she felt.
"Fabrication-type? First time I've seen one in person."
Elder Heo, by contrast, looked thoroughly unimpressed. It was the inferiority you often saw among people with non-combat Core abilities, showing itself.
Once the disassembly was finished, the pistol assembled itself again, as if time were running backward. The ability to fabricate an object by thought alone. A fabrication-type Core ability was not only rare; its practical value was enormous. Special treatment at Headquarters was a given, and it was a great advantage in gaining entry to the Geofront.
"You've a skilled hand with the ability."
"I'm a savior."
In truth, the fabrication ability itself did not awaken at some viciously low rate of probability. The problem was the talent for handling it. A fabrication-type Core ability only helps the work proceed swiftly and exactly. There was a constraint: the ability expressed itself only within work you could already do yourself. The quality of what it produced was the same. You could make, through the Core, only up to the quality your own hands could produce. In other words, it meant something only if you had been a craftsman to begin with.
You might think you could simply train after gaining the ability and become a craftsman that way, but I had never once seen the order reversed. The curse of the ability, you might call it. Once an easy road appears, training grows lazy. That is the way of things.
"Say."
This had to be him. The craftsman's name engraved on the high-quality body armor the special forces had worn. Or perhaps it was a nickname.
"Tata. Is that you?"
"...Let's talk alone a moment."
So I was right.
The savior led me to a small room in a corner of the temple. From outside it had looked sealed on every side, but once I stepped in, there was a single window looking out. Special glass: the inside could not be seen from without. While the General and I had faced each other, he must have been watching from here.
"Where did you hear the name Tata?"
A sensitive subject, it seemed.
"The name of the recipient on a letter. Hardly some great secret."
"To me?"
"Yes. I have a letter I'm supposed to deliver to you."
"Who sent it?"
"A kid named Gyeongsu."
"That's... who?"
Did he not remember, or did he truly not know the sender?
"My work ends when the letter is delivered, so there's no need to explain anything else."
"So you brought it? There was no letter among the confiscated things."
"That's the problem. I left it behind."
"What do you mean, you left it."
"I'll bring it next time. Anyway, that's where I saw the name. Is it your real one?"
I had never heard of a surname Ta. The sort of name you would hang on a pet in Animal Farm.
"Does it matter whether it's my real name? Fine, you learned the name. How did you know it was me?"
I told him about tearing the body armor apart. The Special Forces Commander, it seemed, had not taken the story that far.
"I thought it was strange... that they'd lost every piece of the armor."
"But the special forces didn't call you savior. They called you Tata, easy as anything."
"That's a privilege. On the condition they stake their lives on the mission, they're granted the station of priest. A position equal to mine."
"If you're a priest, aren't you meant to serve a god? How is that equal?"
"I think there's a misunderstanding. The god isn't me."
Tata looked through the window at the statue of Prometheus.
"Anyway, if I help you, you can be recognized as the new savior. Before that, your performance has to be perfect."
"Anyone watching would think I was desperate to become a savior."
"You'd agree it's a way to get out of here in one piece."
That much was true. But you had to be careful of people who played at being altruistic. Every bit as careful as of the ones who talked about peace.
"If I become the savior, what do you gain?"
"Haven't you more or less caught on?"
"To get ahead in the war of opinion?"
"A war of opinion."
Tata let out a scoff, as if the phrase were ridiculous.
"Hyper-Democracy. You can just think of it as a religion. It even has a god it serves."
I thought his finger was pointing at the statue, but looking closer, it was aimed at the scales in Prometheus's hand. And the eyes with which he regarded that god could not have been less reverent.
"If you hate it, you could just say you hate it."
"Majority rule is an illusion. In practice the General alone casts the votes of a hundred men. There are too many people who raise their hands without a thought, swept along by the mood."
"From what I saw earlier, half of them were against the war. So the other hundred votes—are those yours?"
"If a man actually thinks, opposing is the only sane choice. The idiots who follow the General have all been stirred up. A matter of intelligence, you could say."
I wasn't so sure. What was certain was that the General's side thought exactly the same of the opposition.
"If a new savior appears and stands with me, the General won't be able to make a peep. Explanation enough?"
Honest at last.
"You don't need to show a miracle like mine, fixing every last machine. Passing on word of the Special Forces Commander, bringing a doctor and an appraiser—that alone is savior enough."
"And yet you want one more performance, because it wasn't as astonishing as the miracle you showed."
"Right. It isn't as if they don't know the trick I use is a Core ability. You only have to show them that you have an ability of that kind, too."
Having to display, outright, that I had an ability was not a welcome situation. But perhaps there was no way around it. It seemed obvious that a person with an ability would be well treated, and yet it was not always so. An ability was only an ability. It had to be a necessary one to mean anything. If the machines had been running without a fault, Tata might never have been treated well at all.
It was for this same reason that I had looked on the Old Man's future with doubt.
The reason the Old Man could be valued on the surface was his power to command the earth.
It had not been a might terrible enough to move a mountain or raise a new one, but it had at least been enough to overturn the ground beneath the monsters' feet. The question was whether that power was needed in the Geofront as well. They said there were no monsters there, and no zombies, and that factions did not split apart and fight.
I had not only wondered in silence. I had asked him once, carefully.
"You worry over useless things. In a place as highly developed as the Geofront, the abilities of mere individuals do not matter. When this father of yours goes there, he will never again have cause to use his power."
The Old Man's answer had not resolved my doubt. If an individual's ability did not matter, why take a capable hunter along? And the Old Man, with no cause to use his power—what kind of life was he living now, in that highly developed place?
I'm curious. I just don't want to see that face again.
Whatever the case, I had to focus on the performance now. I needed to prove that I was a useful individual.
This place, after all, was not highly developed.
"You said you needed six Cores?"
Tata gestured, and a lackey brought the Cores in an instant.
"They're my personal property, so use them with an easy mind."
"You know that sentence makes this extremely uncomfortable, right?"
"You said quality didn't matter, so I brought the cheapest ones. Still, I assume you know they aren't cheap. What are you planning to do with them?"
"It's complicated to explain, so just watch in comfort."
I passed simple instructions to Dr. Myeong and Elder Heo as well.
When the promised hour had passed, people came pouring in. Some rumor must have gone around; the inside of the temple was a crush of bodies, easily twice what it had been.
"Postman, ready? Show them properly, one more time, the thing you're good at."
"What, acting?"
"No. Fraud."
That was my specialty, granted.
The General, at a glance, looked full of discontent. He would be thinking Tata had spent the hour talking me around, and he had reason to think so. It was true, besides.
Sure enough, his side moved first to seize the mood.
"We were about to raise our hands earlier and stopped, as I recall. Leave it there, and the vote may as well never have happened."
The vote on whether to acknowledge me as a friend. Did he want it voided?
"Thinking on it, I do wonder what meaning there is in keeping a postman as a friend, but—"
He thought I had already gone over to Tata. Quick, this one. His next move, though, was unexpected.
"Even so, a majority did grant the postman his show of hands, so we ought to see it through, shouldn't we? Isn't that right, Savior?"
The General, proposing they proceed with the vote as planned.
"...Right. We should see it through."
Tata, too, realized that something was going wrong.
So that's why there are more people packed into the temple than before.
The General had brought in additional bodies. During the hour Tata had spent pulling me to his side, the General had been running himself ragged in his own way. Vote like this, and it would go as he wished. Not only would the postman fail to be a friend—the vote that followed might be the one that disposed of me.
Now there really was only one way.
"What's the rush? It was the vote I proposed, so I'd like to add a few words."
"Hyper-Democracy needs no few words. Only the raising of hands. Raise your hands!"
"Raise your hands! Raise your hands!"
"Let's vote!"
A roar loud enough to blow the lid off the temple. Everyone was itching for it.
"The truth is, I spent the hour preparing a new performance."
"A performance...?"
At the word, everyone began to murmur. The General, of course, left no opening.
"Hyper-Democracy needs no performance either!"
That was only the General's opinion.
"A performance? What performance?"
"You weren't here earlier, so you missed it, right? The postman's acting was unbelievable."
"The story was a bigger hit than the acting."
"It was a true story. The truly unbelievable things are always real, aren't they?"
Not so surprising. Watching a performance cost them nothing. They could take in the show, and when the time came to vote, they had only to say he was not a friend.
"I went to the trouble of preparing it. You'll watch once, won't you? What could change just from watching?"
"In Hyper-Democracy—!"
"Why don't we just watch the once?"
"Like the postman says, watching won't change a thing."
"I missed it earlier. I'm curious."
"This seat's mine."
"You're tall even sitting, you bastard. Get to the back."
"Then how about we settle it the Hyper-Democracy way the General loves?"
"You mean decide by a show of hands?"
"Cleaner that way, isn't it."
"...Fine. Then, everyone—"
By the time the General turned to face them, it was already done.
"..."
Every one of them was sitting on the floor, ready to watch.
"Anybody got puffed grain? Bring some over."
"Seat for sale. One bar of soap."
"Well... Watching won't change anything, I suppose. Then let's begin at once. The moment it's over, we vote."
That did it.
"Then, before the performance, an introduction. These two, as father and daughter—"
This time Dr. Myeong and Elder Heo had proper roles.
"Sister Myeong, and Brother Heo. Assistants who will help with this performance."
The two of them bowed with bright smiles, and in the burst of applause Dr. Myeong clenched her teeth and threw her voice through the grin.
"Don'ff call me an affithtant."
"Why do a father and daughter have different surnames?"
"Shh. Don't go digging into someone else's painful family business."
"You could make a whole performance out of that."
"What, a spin-off?"
"Then, Sister, Brother. Please set the Cores down."
The Cores were laid in a single rank directly before me. The preparations were finished.
"These are offerings."
"An offering? What's that."
"The kind of thing you give to a god."
"They say that if you offer a sacrifice, the god grants your wish."
From behind me then, urgent but small, Tata's voice.
"What are you saying! Not a god—a savior!"
What was he on about. I had never said I would become a savior. I had said I would put on a performance. A savior? If I was going to run a con anyway, I would aim higher.
"Then I ask all of you. Do you know how to use a Core?"
"You take us for fools?"
The General, who had disliked the performance from the start, finally cut in.
"You lay a hand on it and think that you will use it."
"And if you lay a foot on it, instead of a hand?"
"You take me for a fool? It must be a hand."
"Sounds as if you're saying that without hands, you can't use one."
"Aha. So this was the bait you'd laid for the question? Unfortunate for you. I know the answer."
Of course. A man who could not rest until he had shown off what he knew.
"If you have no hands, you press your chest to the Core and use it that way. Well? Satisfied?"
The obliging General, answering just as expected. Almost there.
"Is there no way to use one without contact with the body?"
"Ha! You mean to test my knowledge? No such method exists."
"There is absolutely no such method?"
"Obviously. The more I watch, the less this looks like a performance and the more it looks like fraud. You took me for a mark?"
Thank you very much for answering so splendidly.
"It is as the General says. Using a Core without bodily contact is impossible. But—"
I opened both arms a little and extended them forward at the height of my shoulders. Palms spread in solemn display. I closed my eyes the way a sun goes down.
"...What are you saying?"
"I mean that this is different from the way Cores are used in the human world. An offering belongs to the god's domain. So tell me. What do you want of the god?"
"What is that supposed to—"
"In truth, you need not say it. I already know everything."
A raw, metallic taste spread through my mouth. Red light flashed before my eyes.
"What is that?"
"That's impossible..."
I could feel the heat—the force pouring off the Cores laid before me as their light died. My eyes were closed, and still I knew. Every Core had gone dark.
And then it rained.