Divinity | Page 7

see, however, that the natives still had a
use for them. They dragged the dead creatures into a field of growing
crops, and left them there to rot into fertilizer.
But such incidents as this, he found, were to be rare. For the most part,
the life here was peaceful, and he found himself liking it more and
more. Now, without laughter, he wondered again what his mother
would have thought of him.
She would have been proud. He realized now that she had done her best
for him. And when every one else had given up hope for him, she had
not. Perhaps she had protected him too much--but she had early learned
the need for protection. He could look at her now in a new light. Her
own father had died early in life, and then her husband soon after her
son had been born. She had faced a tough fight, and had thought to
spare him what she herself had gone through. Too bad she hadn't
realized exactly what she was doing. She was bringing him up with the
ability, as the old epigram had it, to resist everything but temptation.
The temptation to steal that petty cash, to put his hands into a drunk's
pocket and lift the man's wallet, to lie to a pretty girl, to slug a helpless
victim--he had resisted none of them. He had resisted nothing until that
day he had poured the jugful of liquor on the ground and smashed the
jug itself.
But could he blame his mother for all that? It had all been his own
fault.
* * * * *
And it would be his own fault if he failed to resist the new temptation
that now reared its pretty head--Aoooya. She had taken to coming to
his hut-shrine for a private little ceremony of her own. You might
almost have thought that she had fallen in love with him as an
individual. He wondered whether she had been impressed by his helmet.
Did she take that to be his actual head? No, of course not. They had
made helmets for themselves, therefore they knew that the thing he

wore was also a helmet. Perhaps they knew more about him than he
thought.
But they continued to worship him, that was the main thing. And
Aoooya brought him, every day, little presents, special flowers and
food delicacies, that argued a personal affection.
This was a danger that he recognized from the beginning. Perhaps a
god might fall in love with a mortal without losing his godliness.
Perhaps. It had happened before. But, however the rest of the tribe
might react to the idea, Bradley had noticed one young man who liked
to stay near the girl, and he knew that this rival wouldn't take kindly to
it at all. He might resent the god's behavior. And what happened when
these people didn't like the way a god behaved? Why, they struck his
head off.
The god might act first, of course. The young man wouldn't stand a
chance against him if he used his gun. In fact, Bradley could blast the
other man unobserved, make him disappear into vapor, without leaving
any traces of how he died. That was murder, but if a god couldn't get
away with murder, what sort of god was he? A pretty poor, cheap sort
indeed. Yes, he could make his own rules.
And he could go on, maintaining his godhood by little murders of that
sort, and other deadly miracles, until they hated him more than they
loved him. That would follow inevitably. And then, when they all hated
him, not even his gun would save him. Then--
"You're a liar," he told himself fiercely. "That isn't the thing you're
afraid of. Your weakness is that you don't have a murderous nature.
You could kill one or two of them and get away with it, and you'd be
able to control yourself and kill no more. That time you hit the man
over the head, you didn't intend to kill him either. You were more
frightened, at first, anyway, by the thought that you might have killed
him, than by the danger of being caught. You were overjoyed when he
lived.
"You hate to kill, that's your trouble. You've had a sense of

responsibility all along, but it never had a chance to develop. Now it's
developed. You feel responsible for these people, for Aoooya and for
the rest of them. That's why you can't take advantage of them. You've
been posing as a rebel all your life, and you're just a respectable,
law-abiding citizen at heart."
He winced at the thought. His own society had never accepted him at
his own valuation. This one took him for a much greater being than