22 Lame Priest (III)

Word Bearers.

Bearers of True Words.

The Anchorite calmly chewed over the name, unmoved. He stood perfectly straight, draped in the gray ecclesiastical robes worn only by clergy, with prayer beads and a saint's icon hanging from his chest. There was nothing else about him, and his simplicity was astonishing.

Through the airship's porthole, he carefully observed the world they were about to land upon—enormous towering smokestacks, spires that rose into the sky like a forest of needles, and the disorderly, chaotic shantytowns scattered around them.

At that moment, it seemed no different from the millions upon millions of other Hive City worlds. It could even be said that there was no difference at all. Even if two painters were sent out, one dispatched here and the other elsewhere, the Anchorite believed that the paintings they ultimately produced would look like depictions of the same world.

Then why are you here? he thought, questioning himself.

There was no answer.

The airship landed.

A servitor offered him a cane. The Anchorite reached out and took it, then stepped down through the opened hatch—he had stood perfectly straight before, but the moment he began to walk, the truth was exposed. The gait caused by long-term disability was unmistakable. Even if he wished to conceal it, there was no way to do so.

Yet he continued walking, and he walked quickly—unyielding and indifferent, like a damaged monolith.

He declined the local officials' offer to guide him, asking only for a data-slate. Then, alone, he took an elevator from the landing pad directly into the depths of the Hive City.

Along the way, the air changed from the odorless atmosphere that had undergone repeated purification cycles into a rancid, sour stench of mingled decay, little different from poisonous gas. Living in such an environment