Because if you don’t bend you will break; God will teach you, teach you to bend.

He was left alone too long. He messed the bed. That, too, was appropriate! Was a literal symbol of the horror he lived in! Kobinski didn’t come. Nothing human came. They cleaned him, these animals, they gave him food and, when he didn’t eat it, forced it into his mouth. It was vile, vile, like the gall he drank from his own heart.

Argeh came, the “enemy” Kobinski had mentioned. And where was Kobinski when this thing showed up? Nowhere. Argeh smelled Aharon, screamed at him with barks and growls. As much as Aharon wanted to die, it was not at the hands of this horrible creature. Aharon stared at the torch, terrified, wishing the beast away. Argeh left.

Tevach, the mouse-faced servant of Kobinski, was the only thing that wasn’t completely awful. There was something in his eyes, something gentle, that made Aharon look forward, a little, to his visits. And Tevach’s visits were no picnic. He came to work Aharon’s muscles. He pushed and prodded, flipped Aharon around with iron hands in a way that was most undignified. And as much as he wanted to die, overexercise was also not Aharon’s idea of a way to go. On Tevach’s third visit the urge to complain overcame even his depression and Aharon broke his silence.

“You want to kill me?” Aharon said as Tevach pushed his head toward his knees. It didn’t go that way, not even in Earth’s gravity. “You keep this up, and you’ll get your wish.”

Tevach groveled, but a second later he shoved Aharon back on the bed and urged him to do a sit-up. “You must get strong. You must walk. My Lord wishes it.”

“Where is ‘My Lord’? Why hasn’t he come back? Why does he leave me here?”

Tevach only bit his lips nervously, nibbling at them like the mouse he so resembled.

“What does it matter?” Aharon said bitterly. “What does anything matter?”

Tevach dared a glance at Aharon, then looked away. “You are from Mahava. Why sad like Fiori?”

Aharon made a nu face. He didn’t answer.

Tevach grunted. “Work is good for one who is sad.”

“I don’t have any work.”

Tevach pushed his leg up into the air and ordered Aharon to hold it. He did, with a little more energy than he had previously displayed, thinking, If I get strong, at least I can get out of this bed and find myself a decent knife to slit my wrists!

“Work is good,” Tevach said when the leg had been lowered.

“I don’t have any work!”

They did the other leg.

When Tevach had finished, he wiped Aharon’s sweat away with a cool cloth and propped him back on his pillows.

“Is there something I can bring?” he asked, preparing to leave.

Aharon looked at the torch and sighed. He almost didn’t say the words; then he almost did, almost didn’t. Finally, he decided it wasn’t important, one way or the other. What did anything matter anymore?

“Yes, Tevach. Would you ask Kobinski if I could read the manuscript?”

My Lord was so agitated by the Jew’s presence in the House of Divine Ordinance, even unseen, even avoided, as he was avoiding it, that he at last told Tevach to order his carriage. He put on fresh robes and Tevach helped him down the stairs, into the creaky conveyance.

Like everything else in this accursed place, the carriage was not working half the time. Between the pressure of gravity and the rocky ground, very little could be kept mobile for long, including, it seemed, his knee joints. He settled back onto the grass-stuffed pillows, breathing deeply, waiting for the excruciating pain to pass. Tevach, beside him, was full of concern.

My Lord had had many servants over the years, but he’d grown close to only a few. There was Decher, the male he’d promoted to captain of his guard (a smaller and quite separate unit from the Gestapo-like priests that Argeh controlled); Erya, a female who acted as nursemaid and caretaker; and Tevach, his constant companion and leaning post. He had learned much about the Fiore, spent the first ten years here putting together theories about them and this planet. The part of him that put together theories had still been linked in some way to the man who had been in Auschwitz, was separate from the man who now survived here at all costs, the king of Gehenna.

What Decher and Erya and Tevach shared was a spark of curiosity, a leaning toward open-mindedness absent in most of their species. Naturally, they had learned to hide it well. To My Lord they had only appeared a little softer at first. It took him time to decipher why, and then he understood. They were souls on the way back up. If Fiori was a lesson about the dangers of gevorah, they had learned it, had learned the price of restriction, and were rebounding, maybe slowly, but still rebounding, back toward openness, chesed—back toward the center of Jacob’s Ladder. They were more advanced than the Jew in that regard.

The planet as a whole, of course, was not going anywhere.

Tevach, the little mouse, was actually strong as an ox and blessed with a rare abundant family, most of them kept from starvation by Tevach’s wages. He was timid but bright and had shown a penchant for learning that was impressive. But even with all this, he was still a Fiore and there was an unbreachable gulf between them.

“You are upset by the divine messenger, My Lord,” Tevach said, with nervous fawning. “I hope he has not brought bad news?”

My Lord sighed. How could he answer? He shut his eyes as the carriage jolted toward the marketplace.

What would he do with the Jew? In the heat of the moment, he had called him a messenger from Mahava, and no one would expect a messenger to hang around for long. Argeh had seized on Handalman’s unexpected appearance in the assembly: Many years ago we had two such creatures arrive on Fiori; now there is one more. Is this another envoy from the heavens? And My Lord could think of nothing to say except that the stranger had come to deliver a message for him. Argeh had asked, But is not My Lord in contact with Mahava at all times? Naturally, My Lord answered, he knew Mahava’s thoughts as soon as Mahava thought them. But physical objects could not be relayed so easily. (The human brain of Kobinski still offered My Lord some advantage, even if his joints were worthless.)

It had been extreme good fortune that the Jew had papers on him, and such a nice, convincing sheaf of them, too. But good fortune of any kind should never be relied upon on Fiori. Still, the assembly had been impressed—it seemed to improve his shaky position with them. Argeh, on the other hand, had not believed a word.

My Lord had struggled with Argeh for thirty years, since he’d first seen that flattened face in his cell, standing behind the old one’s—Ehlah’s—shoulder. Ehlah had declared My Lord an envoy from Mahava, not because he believed it but because the Fiore had been in one of their typical points of crisis and needed a diversion. My Lord had been set up as that diversion, a new hope—in reality, a puppet icon. Argeh eventually replaced Ehlah as high priest, and he’d been seeking to both use and discredit My Lord ever since. Argeh played the game ruthlessly.

The carriage stopped. Tevach helped him down, taking My Lord’s full weight on his rounded shoulders. My Lord was wracked with pain at every step, but he walked into the House of Cleansing upright. Before him the Fiore groveled; behind him they kissed the stones his feet had touched. He moved past the attendants and those waiting in line for a purgative beating, hiding his limp as best he could.

Down long corridors, down flights of stone stairs, and the pain in his knees was the reason he did not come very often anymore. Screams and wracking sobs greeted his ears, bounced off the stone, also the sounds of whipping, the dull thud of stones and wood on flesh, even—there—the sound of breaking bone. It took a great deal to break Fiore bones, hard as iron rods, condensed by gravity. But the priests were quite skilled and they were artisans besides. Torture was one of the few creative outlets on Gehenna.