Pirates of Vallahar: Chapter 8

Chapter 8
Maimon

         The worship ceremony lasted two and a half excruciating hours. Starleg presided over the singing and preaching and, after an opening prayer, he proceeded to tell the extravagant story of their particular religion to the town gathered in the pews of the temple under the warm light of a beautiful chandelier. Juryrig, Bullseye, and Vixie had to sit up front, much to Juryrig's displeasure. Bullseye listened intently to the sermon, but Juryrig was embarrassingly impatient and inattentive. Vixie too thought the ceremony a long waste of time, but she at least had the courtesy to humor the man who was giving them food and shelter for the night. She enjoyed the music though. The people of Maimon were accomplished musicians, sporting guitars, fiddles, and adept singing voices. Several times she had a strong urge to smack Juryrig in the head as he dozed, but she didn't dare interrupt the pastor. His sermon was about an ancient miracle worker who lived thousands of years before the fall of the old world, and his rise to godhood. It was full of emotional fluff and "feel good" assertions that their 'souls' were in his hands, and that he would forgive them for all their wrongdoing. Vixie hoped Bullseye wasn't susceptible to such pandering to the impressionable.

         After the ceremony they all went back to Starleg's house and the townspeople regaled their guests with their own unique style of music passed down, they said, all the way from the ancient world. It was clear that they were very much related to the mountain folk of old, although their version of the ancient religion was benign and watered down greatly from what it was said the mountain folk practiced so many centuries ago.
         The music, however, was lively and engaging. Juryrig had never heard the like. The guitarists and banjoists were lightning fast and the music seemed to flow out of them live a living force. It was exciting and up tempo, each song with two parts which seemed to repeat throughout the tune. He was struck by the indefinite tonal quality the music seemed to have. One often could not tell if the songs were in a major or a minor key. It was highly enjoyable though, and Vixie was soon up and dancing with several of the locals. Try as he might he could not keep his toes from tapping.
         He lounged on the leather couch in the living room next to a young blonde girl who sang a few ballads with an angelic voice and danced the jigs with an energy that enraptured him. Mrs. Starleg constantly moved between the dining room adjacent to the living room party and the kitchen. The blonde girl occasionally took him by the hand to get him to dance, but Juryrig always politely led her over to Bullseye after a few steps. Despite the silly ceremonies and ignorant superstitions, Juryrig liked these people. Vixie and Bullseye were having a great time, and they could forget about their troubles for a few hours and relax. He was immensely grateful to this old fellow named Starleg.

         After the party, Mrs. Starleg began cleaning up, admonishing Vixie to sit down when she tried to help. Juryrig relaxed in a comfortable lounger in the dining room with a pipe. Bullseye sat down at the dining table across from the old man and began firing off questions about the old man's sermon.
         "So let me get this straight, Mr. Starleg. You people actually believe that skinny guy who was tortured to death under a tree three thousand years ago is still alive and floating around somewhere, waiting for me to ask him to forgive me?" Bullseye asked. Vixie was mortified, but Juryrig just snickered.
         "Of course not," Starleg responded calmly. "That’s silly, isn't it? Who would believe in such nonsense?" He got up and retrieved a dusty book from a nearby shelf and opened it in front of his guests. "What do you see here on these pages? What is your reaction to these letters, these symbols?" Bullseye looked up at Starleg.
         "I can’t read this."
         "So when you look at these symbols, you see... nonsense?"
         "Yeah."
         "But do you really believe that they are nonsense?"
         "No."
         "Why not?"
         "Well, because they represent meaning. I just don't know what."
         "You believe this, even though you don't see it?"
         "Yes, because I know people who can read. They can tell me what it means."
         "Like whom?"
         "Well, Juryrig here, for one." Starleg turned to Juryrig.
         "Juryrig? Are these letters nonsense to you?" Juryrig didn't even bother to look at them.
         "No. And I've read this book before. The letters make sense, it's the ideas they symbolize that's nonsense."
         "But your partner Bullseye sees these symbols as nonsense, not the ideas they represent. Why doesn’t he see the ideas?" Juryrig paused for a long moment. Vixie was surprised to see him shift uncomfortably in his seat.
         "Because he doesn't understand what the symbols mean."
         "Indeed." Juryrig clearly didn't like being on the receiving end of a successful intellectual attack.
         "So you tell me then, Starleg. What do the symbols mean that I don't understand?" The old man returned to his seat.
         "Can you tell Bullseye what the symbols that he doesn't understand mean? Like reading, it takes a long time to learn to decode, assimilate, and understand the symbols of this book, but once you do, it becomes second nature."
         "I’ll bet," Juryrig scoffed. Vixie turned on him.
         "Juryrig!" she scolded.
         "It's quite all right, my lady. I actually rather enjoy it when others speak the truth of what's on their minds, rather than the desires of what's on the minds of others. I find these conversations very enlightening, as I'm sure your friends here do." Bullseye jumped back in.
         "So if all that stuff you talked about in the temple is just symbols, then what exactly is God?"
         "That might help," Juryrig chimed in, sensing the opportunity for an intellectual attack of his own. He'd been down this road a couple of times before. Vixie's heart skipped for just a moment as it always seemed to do whenever she heard Juryrig initiate a philosophical debate with someone else. She wasn't sure if it was fear that he might lose, or that he might win.
         "Could you help us understand exactly what it is you are talking about when you say 'God?'" he asked. "What does this word symbolize? What is God?"
         "It is our belief that God is the creator and therefore Lord of the heavens and the Earth." Starleg responded.
         "I'm not asking what he's done or what his title is. I'm asking what he is. Where is he? How big is he? How did he create the heavens and the Earth? Have you talked to him? Can we talk to him?"
         "I have talked to Him, in fact. And you can too."
         "Really? What does He say?"
         "He helps us to get through difficult situations and encourages us to have faith that things will transpire according to His will, however bleak they may seem."
         "But what does He say, exactly? What does he sound like?"
         "He doesn't speak in words, my friend, He speaks to us spiritually."
         "What does that sound like?"
         "You 'hear' Him with your heart, not with your ears. He tells you the right things to do, and discourages you from the wrong things."
         "But your heart is not a sensory organ. I assume you mean you hear him with that strange part of our brains that we call the conscience."
         "I probably wouldn't describe it that way, but yes, God essentially speaks to you through your conscience."
         "Well then I know exactly what you mean. I 'listen' to my conscience quite often. So I guess I believe in your God, if 'God' is simply your word for your conscience. But I don't see how my conscience could have created the heavens and Earth."
         "But God is not just your conscience. He's so much more than that. He only speaks to you through your conscience."
         "What is he, then? How does he speak through my conscience? And what does God say that is different than what my conscience would say?"
         "Whenever you forgive someone, or show mercy, or do something nice for someone without any thought of reward, God is present in your conscience and speaking to you."
         "So whenever my conscience tells me to behave in socially acceptable ways, that is called 'God.' In that case, I do believe in your God, since my conscience often tells me to behave in socially acceptable ways, and I have seen other people behave in socially acceptable ways. I commend anyone who 'worships' socially acceptable behavior. But this behavior, while certainly responsible for the rise and survival of civilization, doesn't seem able to account for the existence of the heavens and the Earth. After all, socially acceptable behavior can't exist without some kind of a society already there, right?"
         "You're misunderstanding me. God is not just a certain kind of behavior. He encourages certain kinds of behavior, but He exists independently."
         "As what? And where?"
         "God is also not limited to space. He exists everywhere at once."
         "So God exists in the air I breathe and the food I eat?"
         "Sure."
         "And he exists in my mind?"
         "Yes, if you let him."
         "What if I don't let him?"
         "You can turn away from him if you want to, but he will always be there ready to take you back."
         "But how can you turn away from something that exists everywhere? I can't turn away from air. No matter which way I turn, there it is. No matter how far I run, I am still in the presence of air. I can turn away from you, though. If I turn this way, you are no longer in my presence. If I run far away, I will no longer be in your presence. Which of these examples best describes the nature of God?"
         "Think of it this way. You can hold your breath. You are still in the presence of air, but you can choose not to breathe it. You can choose not to acknowledge God, but He will always be there."
         "But in order to choose not to acknowledge something, I must believe that something exists, correct?"
         "...Not necessarily. You can choose not to acknowledge something because you don't believe that it exists. Long, long ago, in the ages before even the ancient times, our ancestors chose not to acknowledge evidence of a heliocentric solar system because they simply did not believe in such a thing."
         "But in order to make the choice not to believe in something, you must know what that something is. You must have experience with it. People knew what a heliocentric solar system was; they just chose not to acknowledge the possibility that our solar system was such a thing. Without understanding what a heliocentric solar system was, they could never have chosen to not believe in it. If you simply have never had any experience of a thing, you can't choose to not acknowledge it. That choice first requires experience of the thing."
         "I'm not sure I'm following you."
         "Would you say that any given infant doesn't believe in God?"
         "Not necessarily. God can speak to anyone, regardless of who they are, where they are, or how old they are."
         "Well what about this then: Would you think that any infants are politically liberal? That they want to ease trade laws and establish a cease-fire with the stags?"
         "No."
         "So then, all infants are conservatives? They're for militia alliances, the strengthening of trade laws, and are against any kind of communication with the stags?"
         "Of course not. They don't have a political opinion. They don't yet have the faculties necessary to understand the notions that these words describe."
         "Why not?"
         "They haven't had the time to acquire the knowledge and experience necessary to be aware of political agendas."
         "So, even though no infant is a liberal, no infant is turning their back on liberal notions either?"
         "I suppose not."
         "Because in order to reject liberal ideas about society, you must first be aware of them."
         "Right."
         "Would you agree that there are people out there who have no knowledge and no experience of what you call God?"
         "No, I don't actually. I think God makes himself known to everyone in some way."
         "He apparently hasn't made himself known to me or to Bullseye, since we still can't understand what you mean when you say God."
         "Well, I'm only human, Juryrig. I can't be expected to explain something as grand and unlimited as God to someone else. Remember, it's like learning to read. I can't teach you in one night."
         "I don’t necessarily expect you too. But the only honest statement I can make at this point is that I have no idea who or what God is. This is an undefined term for me."
         "I can accept that."
         "Then how can I proceed any further? How can I honestly attend your church services in worship? Isn't it stupid to engage in activity that you can't understand? You are unable to provide me with the information I need to have in order to progress. So this means that the knowledge of this 'God' entity is privileged information only accessible to a portion of people. Sort of an 'elite group.'"
         "Now I don't think that follows..."
         "Why not? You have information about a relationship with something that I do not have, but that you claim I could have, and yet I am unable to attain this information from you, through no fault of your own, and am also unable to grasp it by myself."
         "You just aren't ready to receive it."
         "How do I become ready?"
         "That's between you and God."
         "Well then I'm sure you'll agree that your knowledge of God really is privileged information, since if it is between me and God, and I have no idea what God is, I am destined to be ignorant of this information. If in order to communicate with the thing that I depend on for this information, I must first have the information, then aren't I logically screwed? I have no way of communicating with an abstract series of symbols that spell out the word G-O-D. I want to have a concrete concept to which to apply this word, but I seem unable to encompass all the properties of the thing you call God into one logical framework.
         "I feel ready to receive the definition of this word, but if I'm not, maybe you can help me get ready? So far you've been helpful in pointing out many things that God isn't. Perhaps we can start by ironing out exactly what God isn't."
         "I think your problem in understanding is that you're trying to attach limits to the unlimited."
         "God is unlimited?"
         "Yes. That's what I’ve been trying to tell you."
         "Like when you told us He exists everywhere."
         "Exactly."
         "So is God just unlimited in space, or in other things as well?"
         "What do you mean?"
         "Is God unlimited in time?"
         "Oh, yes! God is unlimited in everything. There is nothing He can't do."
         "So you're saying that there is nothing that God is not capable of?"
         "Well, when you put it that way... No there is nothing that God is not capable of, but God is perfectly benevolent. He would never commit an act of evil."
         "So God is limited to Good."
         "You could say that."
         "Then we have found another thing that God isn't. God is not evil, He is not my conscience, and He is not socially acceptable human behavior. What else is God not?"
         "The only thing that God is not is Evil. Everything else is a part of God, but is not the whole thing."
         "So we have access to parts of the whole, but we do not have access to the whole."
         "In a manner of speaking. We have access to all the parts we need access to in order to have a relationship God."
         "That's good news! Can you give me the parts I need?"
         "They are different for everyone."
         "So, you have access to parts that I don't?"
         "The problem is my parts are not necessarily the parts you need. You have access to the parts you need; you just have to put them together."
         "And no one can help me do it?"
         "Correct. But that's a good thing. You need to make the journey on your own. Follow God, not what some human tells you God is. No one can tell you how to get there but you."
         "Where am I going?"
         "That's between you and the man upstairs. We all have our own paths."
         "Well, maybe I'll start my journey by raiding a nearby village and capturing myself a nice harem of slaves?"
         "Do you think that's wise?"
         "I don't know. I have no idea where I'm going. Do you?"
         "I know that selfishly victimizing women and killing innocent people is not the path to having a relationship with God."
         "How? You said my journey was between me and God."
         "But I know where the path of sin leads."
         "Where?"
         "Away from God."
         "And what is wrong with that?"
         "God is the source of all good. Any paths that lead away from Him are the wrong path. They must inherently be evil."
         "Well that's a start. You don't know my path to God, but you do know of some paths that are not my path. If you can't tell me where I should go or how I should get there, you can at least tell me where I shouldn't go and how I should not get there."
         "The path of evil is simply not God's will. If you want to know God's will, don't listen to me, listen to your conscience."
         "If the path of evil is not God's will, then why does the path of evil exist?"
         "What do you mean?"
         "Why are there stags, for instance, if God wants only good things?"
         "Why would you assume that there wouldn't be?"
         "Because if God wants good, and if peace is good, then God wants peace. And if God doesn't want peace, then he wants war, and if he wants war, then he wants evil, which is incompatible with an all good God, and especially with an all good God that can do anything he wants."
         "But if He wants peace, why would you have Him eliminate stags and not humans?"
         "... Alright, forget about stags. Why did that sandstorm kill all of those people out in Ketz last year? Why do so many women miscarry? Why do healthy men who are taking care of a wife and children drop dead at thirty five years of age for no apparent reason, and why won't this damn cut on my hand heal?"
         "You're asking how a benevolent thing with the power to prevent evil can still allow it to exist?"
         "Exactly!"
         "How do you define evil?"
         "Opposite of good."
         "If that is the case, then evil must be undefined without good and vice versa. You cannot have the opposite of something without the existence of said thing. We all understand that there is no black in a universe that can only accommodate white. What you fail to realize is that there is also no white. It may seem obvious to you that there is white in an all white universe only because you who are outside of and not subject to the rules of the all-white universe are aware of what it means for something to be 'non-white.' If the universe can only accommodate white, or in other words, if the universe can only accommodate one value, then value itself cannot actually exist in the universe. Value is defined by difference, by contrasting values, and an all white universe can suffer no variations of color. As odd as it sounds, an all white universe, or an all blue universe, or an all red, green, or purple universe, is really a universe without color. Color can only exist if there is more than one."
         "But what does that have to do with evil?"
         "Evil is a value. Nothing more. We assign it to events and attitudes that make us uncomfortable. Value cannot exist in a vacuum. For value to be present, something other than an empty vacuum, and a mind to compare it with the vacuum, must exist. So then, to apply this to evil, there must be good with which to compare it, and vice versa."
         "...But why couldn't he use his infinite power to take away the bad things and leave the good?"
         "How many parents attempt to take all the bad things out of their children's lives, only to be informed by a temper tantrum of a whole new batch of bad things that they didn't even know about? Taking away things you identify as negatives does not take away the fact that "negative" exists, and with the absence of greater evil, lesser evils become great. With this principle, we can see that an all powerful God could theoretically get infinitely close to eliminating all evil, but that, regardless of his all-encompassing power, can never actually achieve such a state without destroying value all together, and thereby destroying the capability of the value judgment of 'good.'"
         "But you agree that he should be able to eliminate some evil that exists, and my hand is still pretty sore."
         "If you assume that God is only good, then he cannot eliminate ALL evil, he can only get as close to good as he possibly can. And what would a universe with only zero point zero, zero, zero, etc. percent of evil look like? Is it possible that we live in this universe? And more importantly, would someone in such a universe wonder how God could be considered good with the existence of that small percentage of evil?"
         "But if God is by nature all-powerful, then we can assume that He can find a way to get rid of evil without affecting good, even if we can't."
         "How?"
         "I suppose he could have written the rules differently so that this dilemma wouldn't arise. The fact that he chose not to is proof of a contradiction."
         "But aren't what you call both 'writing' and 'rules' defined in a universe with already made rules? We can't take ourselves 'out of the universe' and assume that there are still certain rules at work, or even that there is such a thing as 'ability.' God could no more have 'done it differently' than He could have chosen 'not to do it.' The notion of unlimited power deals with the manipulation of a reality that is already defined. We cannot abandon this reality in favor of another for the sake of argument, because we have no frame of reference. God can't be said to exist 'beyond' reality because there can be no such thing. Beyond reality means imaginary. Every imaginable possibility of the notion of 'outside reality' or 'beyond the universe' involves the manipulation of rules and objects that exist in this reality. God could have made the universe in a different way physically, but he could not have made different rules, simply because our rules of logic and cause and effect are what define the concept of 'rules' in the first place. We can't consider something that cannot be understood in our reality by our own rules."
         "Ah, but all-powerful means he can do anything. When you say that he can't, you are abandoning the notion of God being all-powerful. If He can't make a rock so big that even he can't lift it, then he's not all-powerful, plain and simple."
         "All-powerful means 'able to bring about any state of affairs.' A rock bigger than the biggest object in the universe is not a state of affairs, because it is not by definition a state at all. It is the same as saying that something is A and not-A. This cannot be called a state of affairs. It must be one or the other. Either the rock is the biggest object in the universe, or something else is. What you have is a lack of a state of affairs. A square circle is not a state of affairs. A good universe without evil is not a state of affairs. Can God bring about nothing? Yes, but let's not confuse nothing with something."
         "What do you mean?"
         "When you call nothing 'something,' as you have done in claiming that God should be able to do 'something' that cannot be described in a rational way as being a possible state of affairs, and then when you define omnipotence as the absolute ability to manipulate all things, and then point out that it is not possible for an omnipotent being to manipulate the 'nothing' that you have temporarily defined as 'something,' you equivocate the concrete nature of 'something' and the absence of any nature of 'nothing.' 'Nothing' has no nature. If I manipulate nothing, has any action taken place? If not, is this proof that I am incapable of manipulating something? Does my inability to manipulate 'nothing' comment on my power in any way?
         "A rock too big for God to lift is nothing if God is omnipotent, therefore any attempt to posit a manipulation of this lack of a state of affairs results in failure. There is nothing to manipulate. God cannot logically do it. This is not because the notion of omnipotence is itself flawed, it is because one cannot call A and not-A 'something.' And anything that is not 'something' does not fall under the ability of omnipotence. What this literally means is: NOTHING is beyond the ability of an omnipotent thing. And anything that falls under the definition of 'nothing' is therefore outside the ability of an all-powerful being. The inability for God to make a square circle, a rock too big to lift, and a universe of good without evil, makes the exact same commentary on God's power that my inability to manipulate a total lack of a state of affairs comments on mine."
         "What the hell is a heliocentric solar system?" Bullseye chimed in after a short pause. Juryrig chuckled.
         "I'll just have to take your word on all that shit, Starleg..."
         "No you don't. You're just choosing to."
         "So you're saying that there is a purpose for evil in the grand scheme of things, then. Well, what about evil that has no purpose? What about the child who falls off the ship to her death? You can’t tell me that there would be no good in the world if God prevented that from happening. There are preventable evils. Why doesn't God prevent them?"
         "What if I told you I lived in such a world? Even if I was lying, how would you prove it? Not by pointing out things like stag atrocities or starvation or human misery, because I would not recognize such things as evil. You might call me evil for being so callous, but this would only increase the amount of evil in your world, not mine. While we would witness the same acts and experience the same sensations, one of us would be in a world that was free of evil and one would be in a world that contained evil.
         "On the other hand, what if your whole life was spent in the deepest trenches of a never-ending, constant, bloody battle against the cruelest of stag armies that took the lives of everyone you loved. What if the smoke was so thick that you had never seen sunlight? What if the filth of the battlefield was so profuse that you were constantly covered head to toe and never even saw your own skin? Now assume that suddenly, because He felt sorry for you, God teleported you to 'Candy Land,' where nobody dies and everyone gets to eat sugar treats and sing songs all day without any responsibilities. You suddenly are free of all of that evil you spent your whole life suffering and fighting desperately against. Now, your worries are over. You can rest your head without fear, and you will never again lose any friends to mines or grenades.
         "But now your neighbor Job feels that his life is full of evil because his candy has melted slightly while he was out picking daisies and his girlfriend Susan was singing a song slightly off key. When these things happen to you, you don't call them evil, you call them good. You thank God that He had mercy on you and blessed you with such a wonderful life of positive values. Do you expect Job not to sit in judgment against you because you are so callously ignoring the plainly obvious evil which he suffers that plagues his life and that he fights so desperately against?
         "One of you lives in a world free of evil, and one of you lives in an evil world. Yet you both live in the same place. Why is it that the evil you are aware of, but no longer experience, is true evil, and the evil that Job experiences is actually good? If Job is simply too spoiled by positive values to see that his life is wonderful, could you have been too spoiled to see that your life in the trenches was wonderful? How are you different? Should God rescue Job from the horrors of Candy Land in the same way he rescued you from the hellish battlefield? Where ought He to put Job? In a place that is as better than Candy Land is for him as Candy Land was to you in the trenches? Where does it end? How can it end?
         "It defies our common understanding that, outside of personal subjective choice, evil and good are inseparable manifestations of the same thing. Perhaps when we see that evil, like good, is nothing more or less than a choice we make, and that natural obstructions to this choice in the form of instinct is what we generally describe as evil, we will find that we already live in the very world that we think a God worth our worship should create for us to live in."
         Juryrig looked at Bullseye. The kid seemed about as confused as he was. After a moment, Juryrig turned back to Starleg.
         "Okay, Starleg. You can defend your beliefs really well, but I still see no reason to adopt them for myself. You still can't seem to tell me what it is that you believe. You still can't define God, and I can't begin to entertain a notion that I cannot define. 'God' is like the word 'childhood.' What does it mean? If my religion gets people closer to 'childhood,' do they get to play in the sand all day? Do they get pampered and have all their needs taken care of? Do they get beat up by those bigger than them? Do they beat up those smaller than them? Do they obey without question those who claim authority over them? Do they have to fend for themselves and starve on the streets of some huge city? Childhood is a loaded term that means something different to everyone, and the word 'God' is no different. When we talk about 'God' we are doing little more than screeching at each other like primates. We are not communicating."
         "Maybe, but I suspect that our beliefs are ultimately no different, Juryrig. You just see yours through a veil of youth, knowledge, and action, whereas I see mine through a veil of age, wisdom, and peace..."

*          *          *

         After they had cleaned up, Bullseye retreated to the cot in the guest room and commenced the sleeping off of his huge meal. Juryrig tiredly took off his belt and set it on a nearby hammock as Vixie took off her jacket and flight pants and settled into the one bed. He ran through the earlier argument several times in his mind and couldn't decide who won. He'd done a pretty good job of undercutting the old man's superstitions, yet then the old man proceeded to deftly defend every major attack Juryrig could bring against him. Starleg ought to be a militia commander...
         "How about that crap the old man was trying to lay on us..." Vixie tentatively commented to him as cheerfully as she could. She had never seen Juryrig matched in an argument before, at least not in his adult life, and she felt oddly sorry for him, despite his arrogant attitude towards Starleg's odd-but-benign religion.
         "He sure seems to have it all figured out," Juryrig sighed. "I wish I could say the same." He sat down tiredly on the spare cot. Vixie marveled at how similar intellectual exhaustion on his face was to physical exhaustion. They sat silently for a long moment. Juryrig seemed lost in thought, and Vixie hoped that the old man's speech wouldn't shake her captain's confidence in himself. They were going to need it in the days to come.
         "I hate being grounded in one place when we know the stags are out there hunting for us," she tried.
         "So do I, but we don’t have much of a choice. We can't repair the repulsors in the air."
         "Why do you think the Starlegs are really being so friendly?" she asked. "Offering us enough supplies to get us to Paradise City?" Juryrig got up and paced for a while.
         "Well, it could be that they know of the reward that the stags, or the Death Mark, or both for that matter, are offering for my head, and they're stalling until one or the other gets here..." He looked at her skeptically. "Or it could mean that there's still some good people in the world, whatever silly myths they choose to place their faith in." She looked away. Juryrig couldn't tell if she was ashamed of her suspicions or cynical about the way they were putting themselves in a stranger's hands. Maybe a little of both. He sat down at the foot of her bed. "Look, I don't want to have to trust this guy with our lives, especially now that we know how clever he is, but there's really no alternative. We can't buy supplies until we sell the rifles, and we can't sell the rifles until we find a place that can afford them, and we can't get there without supplies."
         Vixie didn’t even bother suggesting that they lower their asking price.
         "Don't question good luck Vickers," Juryrig continued with a reassuring smile. "This guy seems like he really believes in this religion, and these days true believers in this kind of stuff are usually not dangerous to anyone but those who make the mistake of taking what they have to say seriously." They both glanced over at the snoring Bullseye, refreshingly impervious to anything that didn't have a sharp point or gunpowder stuffed up its sleeve. "Don’t worry..." Juryrig continued. "I'm planning on being a light sleeper tonight." Vixie felt a little better as he started for the door.
         "Where are you going?" she asked.
         "I'm gonna go see how the repairs are coming. I never got a chance to really talk to Galloway's boys. I better at least make sure they know how to handle a deck gun. If they're anything like him... well, we'll cross that gorge when we come to it..." Vixie looked at him with concern. He let his troubled face soften a little, then left the room silently.

         For the first time in their journey, Juryrig had the time to think long and hard about what he was doing as he walked out into the cool night. While he knew that his mind was made up, he found that he shared Vixie's dread of their upcoming run across the wide-open wastelands of Vaspur. Leave it to some old philosopher to shake up his confidence just as he was depending on it to get him to his destination in one piece. Hopping from town to town through the thickly forested Northern Wilds was one thing. Traversing a wasteland like Vaspur with a hold full of rifles was asking for trouble. Their chances of being seen by the relatively heavy traffic moving to and from Paradise City were high, meaning that this wasn't going to be an out-of-the-way back road smuggling operation. He was taking them through the thick of it. The chances of ambush were high, though with all that open space he also had a chance to spot and outrun any pirate trap. But running away from the city was not really an option. All he could do was hope that the Odin was fast enough to get to the city before someone looking to make a quicker buck than he was could alert The Death Mark, or worse, the stags, to intercept him. While few people ever had any dealings with the stags, there were some known left wing maniacs that actually worked with the stags, and Juryrig had certainly known a man or two in his life willing to sell out to the genocidal monsters for the right price. And Juryrig didn’t even know how much they were offering. We can make it, he told himself. Just fly in a straight line 'Rig.

         Madric Galloway stood on the flight deck at the helm of the parked Odin. By the pale light of the half-moon he was carving at a rectangular piece of wood about six inches long with a hunting knife. He was standing next to the control panel situated to the right of the wheel. He set the knife down and held the wooden block up to the light. Satisfied, he pulled the throttle lever on the control panel back to zero and set the block of wood against it, covering the face. He tried to tap it down into the groove but found it was a little too long to fit perfectly. He sighed, pulled the block back out of the slot and pulled a piece of sand paper from his pocket.

         Juryrig saw a few of Galloway's crew working under the keel of the Odin on her repulsors. He learned all of their names and checked their work. They weren't much for conversation, but they seemed competent enough. They told him that Galloway was up on the flight deck, so he headed into the cargo bay. Juryrig decided to climb up through the belly of the Odin instead of using the ladder hung over the side so he could check the engineering deck. He inspected each lift repulsor and the central node carefully from the inside. Looks like we may be getting out of here tomorrow morning after all, he thought hopefully, surprised at his luck. As he left the engineering deck, he did a quick check of the ship's batteries on the gun deck before moving up through the hatch to the main deck.
Juryrig glanced around the top deck in the darkness. He heard a quiet swishing sound from above on the flight deck. "Galloway?" The sound stopped as he ascended the stairs and noticed Galloway by the helm. The man was shoving a block of wood into his back pocket. "What’s going on?" Juryrig asked.
         "Juryrig! Hey! Cold night, huh?" Galloway asked.
         "A little."
         "The kind of night that makes you wanna curl up alongside a fat girl with a pretty face." Juryrig regarded him for a moment with a mixture of contempt and humor.
         "You're an animal Galloway. You have the mind of an animal... What were you doing there?" he motioned towards the throttle.
         "I was just experimenting with an idea I had for a new throttle assembly, but I haven't got all the kinks worked out." He pulled the block of wood back out of his pocket. "This one's been snakin' out on me and I don't think this 'T' lever is a very sturdy design. With a little bit of treated steel we can slap together an unsnakable one." Juryrig walked over and checked out the throttle slider. He also had noticed that it had been sticking lately.
         "Yeah, this thing almost cost me the Odin over the Ubaries," he said, immediately regretting bringing up the Ubaries. "But wait 'till we’re in port in Paradise City. Once we get there we'll have the money and the time to upgrade her all we want, but right now I’m gonna need her flight worthy by sunrise."
         "Oh, she'll definitely be ready by sunrise. She's almost ready now. My boys just have to reconnect the repulsors and we can be outa here."
         "Well... tomorrow's gonna be an early day, so why don't you guys get some sleep and we'll finish her up in five hours or so." Galloway stuck the wooden throttle prototype back into his pocket and yawned.
"Not a problem boss!"