Chương 119: CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN: WHAT ALARIC SAW

He spent four days in Greyhold. Marcus did not manage what Alaric saw. He offered access — to the clinic, the school, the press, the court records, the pharmaceutical operation — and let Alaric determine what he examined and in what order and for how long. Alaric went to the clinic on the second day. He spent four hours there. Okafor received him as a professional receiving a visitor — not deferential, not defensive, genuinely willing to explain what she was doing and why. She showed him the mortality records.

She showed him the training program that Rue was running. She explained, in terms that were medically precise and theologically neutral, what the operation did and what it did not do. He went to the school on the third day. Father Aldric received him warmly — the two clerics had the comfortable exchange of men who shared a vocation if not a specific form of it. Alaric sat in on one of Danny's sessions, which was, Marcus thought, either an accident or the best possible thing that could have happened.

Danny was teaching a class of fourteen-year-olds the physics of force and motion, using the river's current as a demonstration. He had taken the class to the river bank. He was asking questions rather than delivering content. The students were arguing with each other, which was exactly what the session was designed to produce — the argument being the learning. Alaric stood at the river bank and watched for thirty minutes. On the fourth day, he asked to meet Torres. Marcus arranged it.

Torres and Alaric met in the study — Marcus present but not participating, the host of a conversation between two priests rather than a participant in it. They talked for two hours. Marcus caught fragments — the specific vocabulary of ecclesiastical debate, the precision of theological argument. What he heard was not the conversation he had expected: not Torres defending the march's activities, not Alaric challenging them.

It was a conversation between two men who both held a faith and were trying to understand how that faith related to what they were observing. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. At the end of two hours, Alaric said to Torres: "You believe what you're saying."

"Yes," Torres said.

"I do."

"About the medical operation," Alaric said.

"That the healing of bodies is not separate from the care of souls."

"It has never been separate," Torres said.

"The faith has always held both. The question is which instruments are available for which work." He paused.

"The instruments here are exceptionally effective at the physical work. That effectiveness should not be threatening to those of us who do the spiritual work. It should be welcome." Alaric was quiet. Then he said: "I will tell the bishop what I have found."

"What will you tell him?" Torres said.

"The truth," Alaric said. He looked at Marcus.

"The truth is that the march's activities are not challenges to ecclesiastical authority. They are supplements to capabilities that the Church has not provided in this region. The population has not abandoned faith because they have access to better medicine. They have faith with less fear, which is the kind of faith that the tradition has always said was the better kind." He paused.

"The bishop will not be satisfied with this," he said.

"The bishop has a political interest in finding a challenge. The truth is not politically useful to him." Another pause.

"I am not a political instrument. I am an investigator. The investigation has produced a finding. I will report it." Marcus said: "Thank you." Alaric looked at him.

"Don't thank me for honesty," he said.

"Honesty is the minimum." He left the next morning. Torres stayed another day. At the end of it, he said to Marcus: "You took a risk."

"I know," Marcus said.

"It worked because you were honest with him," Torres said.

"If you had managed the visit — hidden things, controlled what he saw — he would have found the management and concluded that what was being managed was worth finding."

"I know," Marcus said again.

"The only approach that works with someone like Alaric is the approach that would work with us." Torres was quiet for a moment.

"He will come back," he said.

"Not the bishop's instrument. Himself. He's curious about what we're building."

"Good," Marcus said.