Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

“It’s the future!” I said. “I don’t know!”

“Why is a Temple Prostitute out and in Minris?” asked Iandris.

“We don’t have Temple Prostitutes here,” I said.

“There are two pictures with Temple Prostitutes,” said Yoldasia, “and one with a Love Priest.”

“That’s Narvas,” said Iandris.

Miandri started to say, “There are also three pictures of the Vineyard M...”

“Ah!” said Yoldasia, preventing her daughter from outing Breeze as the magis. “That’s you, Lishrashic, as a teenager with an Astrigis prostitute?”

“My father thought it was time to make a man of me,” said Lishrashic.

“With a beginner schoolgirl?” said Miandri. I think that was the only time I ever really knew her to disapprove of something.

I noticed by this point that the pictures were starting to break down, like they were melting. Not exactly. Some were changing color, some were going blury, some details were disappearing.

“And we have Eleprin with a male prostitute of, I think, Strumeg, in the future,” said Yoldasia.

“In Minris!” said Iandris. “And not in a temple!”

“Eleprin possibly as a street prostitute in the future,” said Yoldasia.

“She’d better not!” said Mum.

“Prostitution is contrary to Winemaker doctrine,” I said.

“I really think the ancient and the Australopithecus are the most way out things,” said Miandri, “and must be totally important. Them and the thing you don’t want me to talk about.”

“And so is Old Magic!” I said pulling my hand away.

It occured to me that I perhaps should have continued going along with this as Ice had told me not to interfere but I was feeling weird.

Briefly there was a flash of a spaceship and Renadamar temple and the pictures vanished.

Everybody knows what Renadamar temple looks like!

OK then!

It’s huge, on top of this hill thing in the harbour. It looks like a crater or amphitheater with this long tower or pole or something leaning from one end across the middle.

Happy now?

I started walking away from them hastily.

“Winemakers are intolerant,” said Miandri, “and Haprihagfen are totally fundamentalists.”

“She needs to get to school anyway,” said Mum.

I hurried along the coridor and let myself into our apartment. Mum and the Benai Haprihagfen were following.

“Are you all right?” asked Breeze.

“That was very disturbing," I said, "but I don’t know why. I think something very bad is going to happen.”

“Can I have a word with Eleprin and Breeze,” said Mum, “girl stuff, without you boys?”

Cloud and Irvis left by the back door.

“What’s all this stuff about prostitution?” asked Mum, seeming very worried.

“I don’t know,” I said, raising my shoulders and holding my arms out. “I was doing stuff in the future.”

“Old Magic is notoriously unreliable,” said Breeze.

“And it’s contrary to Winemaker teaching,” I said. “Lishrashic was with a prostitute when he was a teenager, that’s happened! Whatever I was doing hasn’t! Ask him!”

“I know a lot of men do that sort of thing,” said Mum, sadly, “but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think about him quiet the same way again although I suppose he was just a teenager at the time and his father put him up to it and we don’t know exactly what happened.”

“What exactly is a prostitute?” I asked.

Mum stared at me like I’d, well, told her about you.

“It would help if I knew what a prostitute was,” I said, “why people are so uptight about them, why they’re part of Trulism but are forbidden in Winemakerism and illegal outside temples but the police don’t do anything about the ones at the Mountain Goat.”

“They’re very bad,” said Mum. “They do disgusting things for money.”

“Like toilet cleaning? I sometimes do that for money!”

“Sinful things,” said Breeze. “Like having love affairs. That’s why you looked like a street prostitute by showing all that cleavage.”

“I haven’t done that yet and I’m not sure I’m going to. I don’t even have cleavage! Is Yoldasia a street prostitute as she had an affair with that lawyer?”

“I think you get the picture,” said Mum. “Although I don’t know anything about Yoldasia and a lawyer but you shouldn’t spread rumours. Anyway, what I really wanted to talk to you about was that one of those pictures showed the two of you in the Fortress Park Conservatory with your clothes in disarray.”

“That hasn’t happened yet,” I said.

“It does get hot in there though,” said Breeze, “but I wouldn’t drop my shorts like that and I don’t know what that tube thing was!”

“And what about the Australopithecus?” asked Mum. “It looked as if you were with him Eleprin.”

“Oh, that’s Oldriac,” I said. “He’s OK..”

“He’s not an Australopithecus,” said Breeze. “He’s a human from a hairy race who live somewhere outside the Great Basin. You shouldn’t have bowed down to him.”

“I know but I thought he was a minion.”

“You shouldn’t bow down to minions.”

“I suppose you have a point, I’ll remember that ...”

“What are you mixed up in?” asked Mum.

We stared at her.

“The prostitutes,” she said, “the Old Magic, the man who isn’t really an Australopithecus, the ancient. I’m worried about you!”

“I don’t know anything about the ancient,” I said. “And Yoldasia and Miandri do the Old Magic.”

“What about the woman with the sticking out hair?” asked Breeze.

“I think the funeral’s the most disturbing thing,” I said.

“You’ve made us late for school,” said Breeze.

“Yeah,” said Mum, “I’ll give you a note. I’m going to talk to the Haprihagfen about this. I know they don’t like prostitutes.”

Renisho returned, looking totally urinated and crouched down at our table.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but I’d rather you didn’t use magic around Eleprin.”

“So you’re a magiphobe and have moved right next to a magis Holy Site,” said Mum.

“I don’t know much about magic,” said Renisho, “but apparently that sort’s against Winemaker teaching.”

“The Haprihagfen are rather more fundamentalist than the Grishnarl Winemakers,” said Mum.

“I also don’t like all the stuff about prostitutes,” said Renisho.

“I didn’t anticipate that,” said Mum. “I expected it to show us Eleprin casting the teather spell.”

“She doesn’t use magic,” said Renisho.

“Well it turns out I was wrong about that,” said Mum. “It seems that Eleprin’s connection to Lishrashic is more complicated and involves something that’s going to happen a few years in the future.”

“I told you that she has some weird things in her future,” said Iandris.

“Does this mean I’m going to be stuck in Minris until Eleprin’s dating,” said Lishrashic.

“What’s special about her?” asked Mum.

“Well of course I think she’s special because she’s my daughter,” said Renisho, “but she’s really a very normal girl.”

I totally had a laughing fit at that.

“I’ve never met anybody with so many predestination lines,” said Mum. “She’s going to have a huge effect on the lives of many people. More than most politicians, doctors or magi.”

“Well I’ve no idea why that should be,” said Renisho.

“You recognised some of the people in those pictures,” said Mum, “apart from Eleprin, Lishrashic and the red haired girl.”

“Just people we vaguely know from back in Grishnarl,” said Renisho, totally lying.

“Eleprin will get totally killed walking round Grishnarl dressed like that,” I said.

“This was in the future so perhaps things will change or that wasn’t Grishnarl,” said Mum. “Can you tell me about these people?”

“No!” said Renisho. “That’s information that might get people in trouble with the Nuharas.”

She was totally lying again! Mum didn’t like that. She looked at her notes. “We know that Lishrashic was with that prostitute and we know how he’s connected to the Love Priest. We know how Eleprin is connected with the red haired girl and this hotel, although one of the pictures of her was several years in the future so things may have changed. The rest is pretty much mysterious.”

“Totally the ancient and the Australopithecus,” I said.

“It isn’t an Australopithecus,” said Renisho. “Apparently he’s a human from a race who live outside the Great Basin.”

Mum gave her a strange look and said, “Well I didn’t think there had ever been any Australopithecus on Midbar.”

“He’s something to do with the Haprihagfen,” said Renisho, “they have some funny looking people visiting that Vineyard.”

“That was outside the shrine crypt,” said Lishrashic.