Thanakar was embarrassed to remember, when the colonel turned it over, that he had fought boredom during the discussion by drawing caricatures of various officers, including a savage one of the colonel himself. He had drawn it from memory, for Aspe had not attended any meetings since the battle. Still, it was quite recognizable, the heavy jaw, the hatchet face, the tangled hair.

The colonel studied it and then looked up. “I am an ugly man,” he said. “But you have made me uglier than I am.”

“It’s a skill that I have.”

“I want this skill. What does beauty mean, Captain?”

“I don’t know,” said Thanakar, yawning.

“You must know. I have seen the bishop of Charn. She is beautiful.”

“I suppose she is.”

“Suppose?” cried the colonel harshly. “God damn your suppositions. Listen to me—your religion is a web of lies, but at the heart of it there is some truth. She is beautiful. Beauty in the heart of ugliness. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” answered Thanakar, too tired to be anything but irritated by this kind of conversation.

“Beauty isn’t so important,” he said. “It doesn’t mean so much. A woman can be beautiful and still be bad.”

“Can she? I wish I could believe that. I’m an old man. Listen.” Aspe leaned forward and spat the next words like a curse: “This woman’s face is at the center of my thoughts. My thoughts! Look there.” He pulled out some papers, and Thanakar could see that he had tried his hand at portraiture. They were like a child’s drawings.

“What does it mean, Captain? Could you make a picture of her, and make it look like her, and make it ugly?”

“I suppose I could.”

“I wish I had your skill. If I had your skill, I would march back tonight and hang your priests up by their own chains and burn your city to the ground.”

“The emperor might not approve of that.”

“I am not the emperor’s slave,” said Aspe sulkily.

There was a silence, and Thanakar broke it. “Someone’s sparing you the trouble,” he said. “The city’s on fire.” He yawned. “I want to go now. I’m very tired.”

“Yes. You’ve been saving lives. I think you’re not having much success.”

“Not much.” Thanakar had made a hospital to treat the remnants of the colonel’s corps of antinomials.

Aspe had not once inspected it.

“Yes,” he said. “You don’t surprise me. They have lost the urge to live, haven’t they? Well, they are free to go.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” exclaimed Thanakar bitterly. He had worked hard. But the atheists were dying, even of the slightest wounds. Men, women, children, they lay in bed, their eyes fixed on nothing.