apology for his spontaneous judgment of the incident, after the inventor of the device had given the scholar a
detailed account of its recent design and manufacture. But the apology succeeded only in convincing the abbot
further that the blunder had been serious. It put the thon in the position of a mountaineer who has scaled an
“unconquered” height only to find a rival’s initials carved in the summit rock?aand the rival hadn’t told him in
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advance. It must have been shattering for him, Dom Paulo thought, because of the way it was handled.
If the thon had not insisted (with a firmness perhaps born of embarrassment) that its light was of a superior
quality, sufficiently bright even for close scrutiny of brittle and age-worn documents which tended to be
indecipherable by candlelight, Dom Paulo would have removed the lamp from the basement immediately. But
Thon Taddeo had insisted that he liked it?aonly to discover, then. that it was necessary to keep at least four
novices or postulants continuously employed at cranking the dynamo and adjusting the arc-gap; thereupon, he
begged that the lamp be removed?abut then it was Paulo’s turn to become insistent that it remain in place.
So it was that the scholar began his researches at the abbey, continuously aware of the three novices who
toiled at the drive-mill and the fourth novice who invited glare-blindness atop the ladder to keep the lamp
burning and adjusted?aa situation which caused the Poet to versify mercilessly concerning the demon
Embarrassment and the outrages he perpetrated in the name of penitence or appeasement.
For several days the thon and his assistant studied the library itself,wow gold, the files, the monastery’s records apart
from the Memorabilia?aas if by determining the validity of the oyster, they might establish the possibility of the
pearl Brother Kornhoer discovered the thon’s assistant on his knees in the entrance of the refectory, and for a
moment he entertained the impression that the fellow was performing some special devotion before the image of
Mary above the door, but a rattle of tools put an end to the illusion. The assistant laid a carpenter’s level across
the entranceway and measured the concave depression worn in the floor stones by centuries of monastic sandals.
“We’re looking for ways of determining dates,” he told Kornhoer when questioned. “This seemed like a
good place to establish a standard for rate of wear,cheap flyff penya, since the traffic’s easy to estimate. Three meals per man per
day since the stones were laid.”
Kornhoer could not help being impressed by their thoroughness; the activity mystified him. “The abbey’s
architectural records are complete,buy rappelz gold,” he said. “They can tell you exactly when each building and wing was added.
Why not save your time?”
The man glanced up innocently. “My master has a saying: ‘Nayol is without speech,buy runescape gold, and therefore never
lies.’ ”
“Nayol?”
“One of the Nature gods of the Red River people. He means it figuratively, of course. Objective evidence is
the ultimate authority. Recorders may lie, but Nature is incapable of it.” He noticed the monk’s expression and
added hastily:
“No canard is implied. It is simply a doctrine of the thon’s that everything must be cross-referenced to the
objective.”

to kindle it for thee, would cause many to perish.’
“Now the prince was angry because of their answer, and he suspected them of betraying him, and he sent his
spies among them to tempt them and to challenge them; whereupon the wise men became afraid. Some among
them changed their answers, that his wrath be not invoked against them. Three times he asked them, and three
times they answered: ‘Nay, Lord, even your own people will perish if you do this thing.’ But one of the magi was
like unto Judas Iscariot, and his testimony was crafty, and having betrayed his brothers, he lied to all the people,buy runescape gold,
advising them not to fear the demon Fallout. The prince heeded this false wise man, whose name was Backeneth,
and he caused spies to accuse many of the magi before the people. Being afraid, the less wise among the magi
counseled the prince according to his pleasure, saying: ‘The weapons may be used,buy wow gold, only do not exceed such-and-
such a limit, or all will surely perish.’
“And the prince smote the cities of his enemies with the new fire, and for three days and nights did his great
catapults and metal birds rain wrath upon them. Over each city a sun appeared and was brighter than the sun of
heaven, and immediately that city withered and melted as wax under the torch, and the people thereof did stop in
the streets and their skins smoked and they became as fagots thrown on the coals. And when the fury of the sun
had faded,buy flyff penya, the city was in flames; and a great thunder came out of the sky, like the great battering-ram PIK-A-
DON, to crush it utterly. Poisonous fumes fell over all the land, and the land was aglow by night with the
afterfire and the curse of the afterfire which caused a scurf on the skin and made the hair to fall and the blood to
die in the veins.
?92 312168 3
“And a great stink went up from Earth even unto Heaven. Like unto Sodom and Gomorrah was the Earth
and the ruins thereof, ever in the land of that certain prince, for his enemies did not withhold their vengeance,cheap rose zulie,
sending fire in turn to engulf his cities as their own. The stink of the carnage was exceedingly offensive to the
Lord, Who spoke unto the prince, Name, saying: ‘WHAT BURNT OFFERING IS THIS THAT YOU HAVE
PREPARED BEFORE ME? WHAT IS THIS SAVOR THAT ARISES FROM THE PLACE OF
HOLOCAUST? HAVE YOU MADE ME A HOLOCAUST OF SHEEP OR GOATS, OR OFFERED A CALF
UNTO GOD?’
“But the prince answered him not, and God said: ‘YOU HAVE MADE ME A HOLOCAUST OF MY
SONS.’
“And the Lord slew him together with Blackeneth, the betrayer, and there was pestilence in the Earth, and
madness was upon mankind, who stoned the wise together with the powerful, those who remained.
“But there was in that time a man whose name was Leibowitz, who, in his youth like the holy Augustine,
had loved the wisdom of the world more than the wisdom of God. But now seeing that great knowledge, while
good, had not saved the world, he turned in penance to the Lord, crying:”
The abbot rapped sharply on the table and the monk who had been reading the ancient account was
immediately silent.

more devout in those days, and more credulous. I think Francis was that one’s name. Poor fellow. I buried him
later. Told them in New Rome where to dig for him. That’s how you got his carcass back.”
The abbot gaped at the old man as they walked through the mesquite toward the water hole,buy runescape gold, leading the
horse and the goat. Francis?? he wondered. Francis. That could be the Venerable Francis Gerard of Utah,
perhaps??ato whom a pilgrim had once revealed the location of the old shelter in the village, so that story went
?abut that was before the village was there. And about six centuries ago, yes, and?anow this old gaffer was
chiming to have been that pilgrim? He sometimes wondered where Benjamin had picked up enough knowledge
of the abbey’s history to invent such tales. From the Poet, perhaps.
“That was during my earlier career, of course,rs money,” the Old Jew went on,lineage adena, “and perhaps such a mistake was
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understandable.”
“Earlier career?”
“Wanderer.”
“How do you expect me to believe such nonsense?”
“Hmm-hnnn! The Poet believes me.”
“Undoubtedly! The Poet certainly would never believe that the Venerable Francis met a saint. That would
be superstition. The Poet would rather believe he met you?asix centuries ago. A purely natural explanation, eh?”
Benjamin chuckled wryly. Paulo watched him lower a leaky bark cup into the well, empty it into his water
skin,buy lotr gold, and lower it again for more. The water was cloudy and alive with creeping uncertainties as was the Old
Jew’s stream of memory. Or was his memory uncertain? Playing games with us all? wondered the priest. Except
for his delusion of being older than Methuselah, old Benjamin Eleazar seemed sane enough, in his own wry way.
“Drink?” the hermit offered, extending the cup.
The abbot suppressed a shudder, but accepted the cup so as not to offend; be drained the murky liquid at a
gulp.
“Not very particular, are you?” said Benjamin, watching him critically. “Wouldn’t touch it myself.” He
patted the water skin. “For the animals.”
The abbot gagged slightly.
“You’ve changed,” said Benjamin, still watching him.
“You’ve grown pale as cheese and wasted.”
“I’ve been ill.”
“You look ill. Come up in my shack, if the climb won’t tire you out.”
“I’ll be all right. I had a little trouble the other day, and our physician told me to rest. Fah! If an important
guest weren’t coming soon, I’d pay no attention. But he’s coming, so I’m resting. It’s quite tiresome.”
Benjamin glanced back at him with a grin as they climbed the arroyo. He waggled his grizzly head. “Riding
ten miles across the desert is resting?”
“For me it’s rest. And, I’ve been wanting to see you, Benjamin.”

A fly was crawling along Saint Leibowitz’ nose. The eyes of the saint seemed to be looking crosseyed at the
fly,rs gold, urging the abbot to brush it away. The abbot had grown fond of the twenty-sixth century wood carving; its
face wore a curious smile of a sort that made it rather unusual as a sacramental image. The smile was turned
down at one comer; the eyebrows were pulled low in a faintly dubious frown, although there were laugh-
wrinkles at the comers of the eyes. Because of the hangman’s rope over one shoulder, the saint’s expression often
seemed puzzling. Possibly it resulted from slight irregularities in the grain of the wood, such irregularities
dictating to the carver’s hand as that hand sought to bring out finer details than were possible with such wood.
Dom Paulo was not certain whether the image had been growth-sculptured as a living tree before carving or not;
sometimes the patient master-carvers of that period had begun with an oak or cedar sapling, and?aby spending
tedious years at pruning, barking, twisting,buy gaia online gold, and tying living branches into desired positions?ahad tormented the
growing wood into a striking dryad shape, arms folded or raised aloft, before cutting the mature tree for curing
and carving. The resulting statue was unusually resistant to splitting or breaking, since most of the lines of the
work followed the natural grain.
Dom Paulo often marveled that the wooden Leibowitz had also proved resistant to several centuries of his
predecessors?amarveled, because of the saint’s most peculiar smile. That little grin will ruin you someday, he
warned the image …. Surely, the saints must laugh in Heaven; the Psalmist says that God Himself shall chortle,
but Abbot Malmeddy must have disapproved?aGod rest his soul. That solemn ass. How did you get by him, I
wonder? You’re not sanctimonious enough for some. That smile?aWho do I know that grins that way? I like it,
but… Someday, another grim dog will sit in this chair. Cave canem. He’ll replace you with a plaster Leibowitz.
Long-suffering. One who doesn’t look crosseyed at flies. Then you’ll be eaten by termites down in the storage
room. To survive the Church’s slow sifting of the arts, you have to have a surface that can please a righteous
simpleton; and yet you need a depth beneath that surface to please a discerning sage. The sifting is slow, but it
gets a turn of the sifter-handle now and then-when some new prelate inspects his episcopal chambers and
mutters, “Some of this garbage has got to go.” The sifter was usually full of dulcet pap. When the old pap was
ground out, fresh pap was added. But what was not ground out was gold, and it lasted. If a church endured five
centuries of priestly bad taste,warcraft gold, occasional good taste had, by then, usually stripped away most of the transient
tripe, had made it a place of majesty that overawed the would-be prettifiers.
The abbot fanned himself with a fan of buzzard feathers, but the breeze was not cooling. The air from the
window was like an oven’s breath off the scorched desert,buy runescape gold, adding to the discomfort caused him by whatever devil
or ruthless angel was fiddling around with his belly. It was the kind of heat that hints of lurking danger from sun-
crazed rattlers and brooding thunderstorms over the mountains, or rabid dogs and tempers made vicious by the
scorch. It made the cramping worse.
“Please?” he murmured aloud to the saint, meaning a nonverbal prayer for cooler weather, sharper wits, and
more insight into his vague sense of something wrong. Maybe it’s that cheese that does it, he thought. .Gummy
stuff this season, and green. I could dispense myself?aand take a more digestible diet.
But no, there we go again. Face it, Paulo: it’s not the food for the belly that does it; it’s the food for the brain.
?76 312168 3

Kornhoer
?ato remind him of his vocation, before he begins thinking that he was called to Religion mainly for the
purpose of building a generator of electrical essences in the monastery basement.”
“But, Father Abbot,buy runescape gold, you’ll have to admit that it would be quite an achievement, if successful.”
“I don’t have to admit it,” Dom Paulo told him curtly.
When Gault was gone, the abbot, after a brief debate with himself, decided to handle the problem of the
Poet-sirrah! before the problem of perdition-versus-progress. The simplest solution to the problem of the Poet
was for the Poet to get out of the royal suite,dfo gold, and preferably out of the abbey, out of the vicinity of the abbey, out
of sight, hearing, and mind. But no one could expect a “simplest solution” to get rid of the Poet-sirrah!
The abbot left the wall and crossed the courtyard toward the guesthouse. He moved by feel, for the buildings
were monoliths of shadow under the stars, and only a few windows glowed with candlelight. The windows of the
royal suite were dark; but the Poet kept odd hours and might well be in.
Inside the building, he groped for the right door, found it, and knocked. There was no immediate answer, but
?69 312168 3
only a faint bleating sound which might or might not have issued from within the suite. He knocked again, then
tried the door. It opened.
Faint red light from a charcoal burner softened the darkness; the room reeked of stale food.
“Poet?”
Again the faint bleating, but closer now. He went to the burner, raked up an incandescent coal, and lit a
splinter of kindling. He glanced around and shuddered at the litter of the room. It was empty. He transferred the
flame to an oil lamp and went to explore the rest of the suite. It would have to be thoroughly scrubbed and
fumigated (also, perhaps,dofus kamas, exorcised) before Thon Taddeo moved in. He hoped to make the Poet-sirrah! do the
scrubbing, but know the chance was remote.
In the second room, Dom Paulo suddenly felt as if someone were watching him. He paused and looked
slowly around.
A single eyeball peered at him from a vase of water on the shelf. The abbot nodded at it familiarity and went
on.
In the third room, he met the goat. It was their first meeting.
The goat was standing atop a tall cabinet, munching turnip greens. It looked like a small breed of mountain
goat, but it had a bald head that appeared bright blue by lamplight. Undoubtedly a freak by birth.
“Poet?” he inquired, softly,buy rs money, looking straight at the goat and touching his pectoral cross.
“In here,” came a sleepy voice from the fourth room.
Dom Paulo sighed with relief. The goat went on munching greens. Now that had been a hideous thought,
indeed.
The Poet lay sprawled across the bed with a bottle of wine within easy reach; he blinked irritably at the light
with his one good eye. “I was asleep,” he complained, adjusting his black eyepatch and reaching for the bottle.

?27 312168 3
old man, simply because of the part he had played, either by accident or by design of Providence, in the monk’s
stumbling upon the crypt and its relics. The pilgrim was only a minor ingredient,buy runescape gold, as far as Francis was
concerned, in a mandala design at whose center rested a relic of a saint. But his fellow novices had seemed more
interested in the pilgrim than in the relic, and even the abbot had summoned him, not to ask about the box,rs gold, but to
ask about the old man. They had asked him a hundred questions about the pilgrim to which he could reply only:
“I didn’t notice,” or “I wasn’t looking right then,” or “If he said, I don’t remember,” and some of the questions
were a little weird. And so he questioned himself: Should I have noticed? Was I stupid not to watch what he did?
Wasn’t I paying enough attention to what he said? Did I miss something important because I was dazed?
He brooded on it in the darkness while the wolves prowled about his new encampment and filled the nights
with their howling. He caught himself brooding on it during times of the day that were assigned as proper for the
prayers and spiritual exercises of the vocational vigil, and he confessed as much to Prior Cheroki the next time
the priest rode his Sunday circuit. “You shouldn’t let the romantic imaginations of the others bother you; you
have enough trouble with your own,” the priest told him, after chiding him for neglecting the exercises and
prayers. “They don’t think up questions like that on the basis of what might be true; they concoct the questions
on the basis of what might be sensational if it just happened to be true. It’s ridiculous! I can tell you that the
Reverend Father Abbot has ordered the entire novitiate to drop the subject.” After a moment, he unfortunately
added: “There really wasn’t anything about the old man to suggest the supernatural?awas there?” with only the
faintest trace of hopeful wonder in his tone.
Brother Francis wondered too. If there had been a suggestion of the supernatural,runescape power leveling, he had not noticed it. But
then too, judging by the number of questions he had been unable to answer, he had not noticed very much. The
profusion of the questions had made him feel that his failure to observe had been, somehow, culpable. He had
become grateful to the pilgrim upon discovering the shelter. But he had not interpreted events entirely in terms of
his own interests, in accordance with his own longing for some shred of evidence that the dedication of his
lifetime to the labors of the monastery was born not so much of his own will as it was of grace, empowering the
will, but not compelling it, rightly to choose. Perhaps the events had a vaster significance that he had missed,
during the totality of his self-absorption.
What is your opinion of your own execrable vanity?
My execrable vanity is like that of the fabled cat who studied ornithology, m’Lord.
His desire to profess his final and perpetual vows?awas it not akin to the motive of the cat who became an
ornithologist??aso that he might glorify his own ornithophagy, esoterically devouring Penthestes atricapillus but
never eating chickadees. For, as the cat was called by Nature to be an ornithophage, so was Francis called by his
own nature hungrily to devour such knowledge as could be taught in those days, and, because there were no
schools but the monastic schools, he had donned the habit first of a postulant, later of a novice. But to suspect
that God as well as Nature had beckoned him to become a professed monk of the Order?
What else could he do? There was no returning to his homeland,lineage 2 power leveling, the Utah. As a small child, he had been

look?”
“I never said he was?a”
“And this is your excuse for believing yourself to have a true vocation, is it not? That this, this?ashall we
call him a ‘creature’??aspoke to you of finding a voice, and marked a rock with his initials, and told you it was
what you were looking for, and when you looked,silkroad gold, under it?athere THIS was. Eh?”
“Yes, Dom Arkos.”
“What is your opinion of your own execrable vanity?”
“My execrable vanity is unpardonable, m’Lord’n'Teacher.”
“To imagine yourself important enough to be unpardonable is an even vaster vanity,” roared the sovereign
of the abbey.
“M’Lord, I am indeed a worm.”
“Very well, you need only deny the part about the pilgrim. No one else saw such a person, you know. I
understand he was supposed to have been headed in this direction? That he even said he might stop here? That he
?24 312168 3
inquired about the abbey? Yes? And where would he have disappeared to, if he ever existed? No such person
came past here. The brother on duty at that time in the watchtower didn’t see him. Eh? Are you now ready to
admit that you imagined him?”
“If there are not really two marks on that rock where he?athen maybe I might?a”
The abbot dosed his eyes and sighed wearily. “The marks are there?afaintly,” he admitted. “You might have
made them yourself.”
“No, m’Lord.”
“Will you admit that you imagined the old creature?”
“Very well,buy runescape gold, do you know what is going to happen to you now?”
“Yes, Reverend Father”
“Then prepare to take it.”
Trembling, the novice gathered up his habit about his waist and bent over the desk. The abbot withdrew a
stout hickory ruler from the drawer, tested it on his palm, then gave Francis a smart whack with it across the
buttocks.
“Deo gratias!” the novice dutifully responded, gasping slightly.
“Care to change your mind,sro gold, my boy?”
“Reverend Father,cheap star trek online credits, I can’t deny?a”
WHACK!
“Deo gratias!”

temptation?”
Francis reddened. “I?aI tried to catch it. It got away.”
“So, not merely thought?adeed as well. Just that one time?”
“Well-yes, just that.”
“All right, in thought and deed, willfully meaning to eat meat during Lent. Please be as specific as you can
after this. I thought you had examined your conscience properly. Is there anything else?’
“Quite a lot.”
The priest winced. He had several hermitages to visit; it was a long hot ride, and his knees were hurting.
Please get on with it as quickly as you can,” he sighed.
“Impurity, once.”
“Thought, word, or deed?”
“Well, there was this succubus, and she?a”
“Succubus? Oh?anocturnal. You were asleep?”
“Yes,final fantasy xi gil, but?a”
“Then why confess it?”
“Because afterwards.”
“Afterwards what? When you woke up?”
“Yes. I kept thinking about her. Kept imagining it all over again.”
“All right, concupiscent thought, deliberately entertained. You’re sorry? Now,eve isk, what next?”
All this was the usual sort of thing that one kept hearing time after endless time from postulant after
postulant, novice after novice, and it seemed to Father Cheroki that the least Brother Francis could do would be
to bark out his self-accusations one, two, three, in a neat orderly manner,wow power leveling, without all this prodding and
prompting. Francis seemed to find difficulty in formulating whatever he was about to say; the priest waited.
“I think my vocation has come to me, Father, but?a” Francis moistened his cracked lips and stared at a bug
on a rock.
“Oh, has it?” Cheroki’s voice was toneless
“Yes, I think?abut would it be a sin, Father, if when I first got it, I thought rather scornfully of the
handwriting? I mean?”
Cheroki blinked. Handwriting? Vocation? What kind of a question was?aHe studied the novice’s serious
expression for a few seconds, then frowned.
“Have you and Brother Alfred been passing notes to each other?” he asked ominously.
“Oh, no, Father!”
“Then whose handwriting are you talking about?”
“The Blessed Leibowitz.”
Cheroki paused to think. Did there, or did there not, exist in the abbey’s collection of ancient documents, any
manuscript penned personally by the founder of the Order??aan original copy? After a moment’s reflection,buy runescape gold, he
decided in the affirmative; yes, there were a few scraps of it left, carefully kept under lock and key.
“Are you talking about something that happened back at the abbey? Before you came out here?”
“No, Father. It happened right over there?a” He nodded toward the left. “Three mounds over, near the tall

formally declared a saint unless he wrought a few more good solid miracles to underwrite his own beatification,eve isk,
which was not an infallible proclamation,buy runescape gold, as canonization would be, although it permitted the monks of the
Leibowitz Order formally to venerate their founder and patron, outside of the Mass and the Office. The
proportions of the fantasy church dwindled to the size of a wayside shrine; the river of pilgrims shrank to a
trickle. New Rome was busy with other matters, such as the petition for a formal definition on the question of the
Preternatural Gifts of the Holy Virgin, the Dominicans holding that the Immaculate Conception implied not only
indwelling grace,cheap eve isk, but also that the Blessed Mother had had the preternatural powers which were Eve’s before the
Fall; some theologians of other Orders, while admitting this to be pious conjecture, denied that it was necessarily
the case, and contended that a “creature” might be “originally innocent” but not endowed with preternatural gifts.
The Dominicans bowed to this, but contended that the belief had always been implicit in other dogma?asuch as
the Assumption (preternatural immortality) and the Preservation from Actual Sin (implying preternatural
integrity) and still other examples. While attempting to settle this dispute, New Rome had seemingly left the case
for the canonization of Leibowitz to gather dust on the shelf.
Contenting himself with a small shrine of the Beatus and a casual trickle of pilgrims, Brother Francis
drowsed. When he awoke, the fire was reduced to glowing embers. Something seemed amiss. Was he quite
alone? He blinked around at the encompassing darkness.
From beyond the bed of reddish coals, the dark wolf blinked back.
The novice yelped and dived for cover.
The yelp, he decided as he lay trembling within his den of stones and brush,cheap runescape gold, had been only an involuntary
breach of the rule of silence. He lay hugging the metal box and praying that the days of Lent might pass swiftly,
while padded feet scratched about his enclosure.
3
?16 312168 3
“… and then, Father, I almost took the bread and cheese.”
“But you didn’t take it?”
“No.”
“Then there was no sin by deed.”
“But I wanted it so badly, I could taste it.”
“Willfully? Did you deliberately enjoy the fantasy?”
“You tried to get rid of it.”
“Yes.”
“So there was not culpable gluttony of thought either. Why are you confessing this?”
“Because then I lost my temper and splashed him with holy water.”
“You what? Why?”