Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

“I know negative numbers,” I said.

We were standing in the Echinocereus field; me, Breeze, Cloud and Irvis. They were showing me round the Vineyard but I was getting upset with Breeze acting like she knew everything. The trouble was that she probably did know everything about the Vineyard. I knew different types of fruit. I didn’t know that the dragon fruit they grew here was different from the ones on the planes because it was too cold for the planes type (Hylocereus) here. I didn’t know different sorts of grapes or that normal grapes and fat grapes were related. They’d shown me secret paths, catwalks through the treetops, trees you could climb to tree houses and ropes you could swing on. Now we were at the highest part of the Vineyard where it was cold and dry and Echinocereus, cactus strawberries, were they only fruit that would grow. Most had low mounds of sausage shaped stems. They weren’t flowering now but Breeze said the flowers were mostly magenta with green stigmas so now they’d look blue with green stigmas as it was blue day. The field also had an ancient-circle in it, with a long stemmed Echinocereus sprawling over it.

I was learning a lot but I still didn’t think I’d discovered the secret. Perhaps it was that the Haprihagfen and their children were all minions. The trouble was, I was supposed to know what to do about the secret and I had no idea what to do about this. Weren’t Holy Sites supposed to have minions?

Breeze was eight years old, a year younger than me. I was the smartest kid in my class back home. It was time I let her know that I was smarter than her, even at the risk of giving away the fact that I was older than I was pretending to be.

“I know exponentials,” said Breeze.

Damn, I didn’t even know what that was! Was that even math! My mind ran through subjects. I decided to avoid religion as I was sure she knew more about Winemakerism than me.

“I know about the second century AC!”

“A lot happened in that century,” said Cloud. “Do you just mean Pax history?”

I gave him a dirty look, this was a contest between me and Breeze. Also I’d learnt all the second century presidents of Pax but I had no idea of the other countries.

“Not as eventful as the first century AC,” said Breeze, “when they were sorting stuff out after the Cataclysm.”

“The next century will be very eventful,” said Cloud, “with the Prophesized Ruination.”

“I’ll have to be ready!” said Breeze. “The Haprihagfen will need a magis.”

Irvis gave her a strange look. I think she was just joking about this, she couldn’t really be a magis, could she?

“How do you know what’s going to happen in the future?” I asked.

“Psychics can foresee the future,” said Breeze, “not everything.”

“It’s subject to paradox avoidance,” said Cloud.

“What?” I asked.

“It avoids paradoxes,” said Cloud, “applies to both prophecy and time travel. That’s why prophecies tend to be hard to understand.”

“How do you become a magis?” I asked.

“You have to be conceived at or near one of the Holy Sites that’s associated with a magis shortly after that site’s last magis died,” said Breeze. “Except for the Wild Magis, where nobody knows what makes you him or her.”

“So I could be a Wild Magis!” I said.

“No,” said Breeze, “the current Wild Magis is three hundred years old. There won’t be a new one until he dies and you’ve already been conceived.”

“No I haven’t!”

Cloud started laughing.

“That’s when your mother gets pregnant with you,” said Breeze, “so you obviously have been.”

Down near the river, where there were lots of Opuntias, Pereskias and fat vines, we came to a strange looking building. There was a sign by it:

Filtration Plant

Dating from before the Cataclysm, possibly from before the Landing, this mysterious building still functions, extracting water from the river and producing water that is devoid of living organisms, toxins, radioisotopes and magic and contains only trace amounts of harmless ions. The mechanism is unknown, as is what happens to the removed impurities, and is thought to be a combination of science and magic. It’s speculated that the Vineyard’s relic is contained in this building. The purified water is used for drinking and irrigation in the Vineyard and Minris town and the surrounding area.

“This has very powerful magic,” said Breeze.

I supposed it had to.

“It provides water for our drip irrigation system as well as drinking water,” said Cloud.

I wondered if this was the secret but as it had an interpretive sign, I suspected that it wasn’t.

Breeze, Cloud and Irvis helped me buy a bike from the toy shop near the bridge. They stressed that it was important to have one with good gears as there were so many hills in Minris.

A few other children came in while we were there are gave us strange looks. The Winemaker children were now dressed like normal Paxian kids, they just wore the old-fashioned costumes when working in the Vineyard.

It was hard work going up hills, even with the gears, but fun coming down. We went to Fortress Park. This park was built around some ancient ruins, generally thought to have been a fortress but nobody really seemed more sure of that than they were what sort of mill the Old Mill had been. There were paths and beds of mostly succulents, many of which were clearly very old and huge.

“There’s lots of magic in these ruins,” said Breeze. “Haprihagfen don’t like them but I don’t know why.”

“Then how did it get ruined?” I asked.

“I don’t think anybody knows,” said Cloud. “Apparently there’s something really nasty here but nobody will explain it to me.”

“Does this make you feel less homesick?” asked Breeze, pointing at the large structure of transparent material, probably geodeserine.

It was clear that there were many leafy plants and photoorganisms inside.

“I don’t come from Bremplar!” I said.

We dismounted and went inside. I’d only been in the Conservatory of Astrigis once. This was puny by comparison. It felt much hotter than outside, yes that was probably because of the humidity. There were lots of leafy plants, some blue photoorganism that jumped around and many stationary ones in different colours. It was less organized than the Conservatory, probably more like a jungle, whereas the Conservatory was based more on a starship’s bioregulation unit.

A couple of other children were inside. They looked at us and hastily ran off in the opposite direction.

“It’s warmer and wetter on the plains,” said Cloud.

“Not this wet!” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything like this on Minris is there? Not naturally. It’s more like a jungle on Earth or some other, wetter, planet.”