Read Fear that man for Free Online Page B

creation of the Mues, though-”
        “Men usurped the power,” the Christian said.
        “But if God is all-powerful, men could not usurp anything of His. Why, He would crush men who tried-”
        Gnossos put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “It is not for this reason that Christians hate Mues. As I said, they have to feel superior. There are so few people they can look down on anymore; the Mue offers a perfect scapegoat. Because he is often abnormal physically-whether it be a detrimental physical difference or a beautiful, functional difference-they have something to feel superior about. ‘I am not like you,’ they say. ‘I am normal. I am whole.’”
        A crowd had begun to form around the debate. People strained over one another’s shoulders, trying to hear and get a look at the verbal combatants. This seemed to please Gnossos, but it irritated the Christian.
        “And my dear fellow,” Gnossos continued in a friendly tone raised a bit for the benefit of those at the back of the crowd, “do you know who started many of the worst wars in the past three thousand years?”
        “Satan’s forces”
        “No. God, it should be so simple as you say. No, it was Christians, the very people who preached against war. In-”
        The bearded man showed his teeth in what could have been a snarl if he had added sound. “I will not pursue this argument any longer. You are in Satan’s employ.” He moved quickly, pushing at the crowd that had gathered. They hesitated, then parted to let him through. He had, very shortly, been lost in the breast of the night to be suckled by its darkness.
        “You don’t imagine you did any good,” Hurkos said as the crowd around them dispersed and they began walking again. “You don’t imagine you got through that bony structure he calls a head, do you?”
        “No. But I can’t resist trying. He is unreachable by this time. Besides, even if he doubted his faith, he would not allow himself to give that doubt prominence in this thoughts. He has forsaken concrete eternity via the immortality drugs, and now he has nothing to cling to but the hopes of his religion, the promises of his God.”
        “Gives me the shivers,” Sam said.
        “This is all getting much too morbid,” Gnossos said. “Let’s find a hotel and settle down. My feet are killing me, and there is no telling how much running we might have to do to catch Sam if he gets another order.”
        
        Breadloaf finished the last morsels of his sandwich, licked his gums to remove the sticky salad dressing, took a long swallow of hot, black coffee, and leaned back in his chair as if it were a womb he was asking to swallow him. The room was dark, for the thing behind the Shield was not a thing for well-lighted rooms. Its details were brought out too fully in light. Blackness allowed merciful obscurity.
         Cinnabar horsemen riding green stallions exploded across the screen, were gone in a wash of lavender…
        He liked to pick out patterns in the explosions of color, choose and name them as a young boy might do with clouds seen from a green grass-covered hill in summer.
         A dragon’s mouth holding the broken body of an amber… amber… amber knight…
        Alexander Breadloaf III wondered whether his father had sat like this, watching the patterns and trying to make something of them. It was a seeking after order, certainly, that was the purpose of watching them. Had his father sat, his great leonine head bowed in contemplation, his heavy brows run together from the forehead-wrinkling concentration? Had he laced his thick fingers behind his waterfall of white hair and watched-actually studied-the Prisoner of the Shield, as the family had come to speak of it?
        He doubted it. His father had been a man of hard work and strenuous action. He had built his father’s small fortune into a very large fortune, an almost incalculable sum of money. When his engineers accidently