There was a pause. Abu broke it dubiously. “Well . . .”

“Tell me about God,” said the woman’s voice.

Abu sighed and cleared his throat.

“The truth,” demanded the boy fiercely. “No lies. Not even one.”

“I don’t think you know when you’re well off,” muttered Abu.

Then he spoke aloud. He told them about the power of the priests of Charn, how they owned every bird, every fish, every dollar, every stone. He told them about the episcopal factories, and the million-acre slave farms, and the towns of slaves clustered around a single temple, making umbrellas, silk, forks, olive oil, a different product from each town. He told them about the parsons coming to visit newborn children, casting horoscopes, checking for imperfections, listening to them cry. He said, “They believe that when a baby cries, it is saying something. It tells the story of another lifetime. It mourns its sins. And the priest listens, and in a few minutes he has given it a future and a penance. He names it. He engraves its future on its skin: education to such-and-such a level; work; address; permission to marry; name of wife; permission to breed; permissible food; permissible clothes; everything.”

“But you are different,” said a voice.

“Yes. I am a Starbridge.” He told them about the Starbridges, that enormous family from which all priests and rich men came, all generals and kings. “The laws aren’t meant for us; we have our own. And at one time we could be born from any family. But the fourteenth bishop argued that God punished sinners by placing them in poor families, and rewarded the virtuous by making them born rich. It’s a theory called predetermination.”

There was a silence, and then the woman’s voice said, “You’re not telling me what I want to know.

There is a reason for all this. Some kind of . . . love. Tell me about that.”

“It’s the way things are.”

“No. I don’t believe that. There is a man—was—long ago. Someone. A reason why you live like this.”

“We have a story,” said the prince. He told them the travels of the prophet Angkhdt. He described for them the painting on the door of every temple—Angkhdt turning the planets back towards the sun with his bare hands; Angkhdt making an end to winter; Angkhdt bringing the rain.

He told them about Paradise and the nine planets of hell. “This is the first of the nine planets, the most beautiful of all. But there is something here, some smell of failure or decay that ruins everything. Some touch of death that ruins everything.

“And when it sinks from Paradise the soul comes here. And this is just the first of the nine planets. It takes a long time for a man’s flesh to burn away. It’s a chemical process. Am I making sense? It’s a long, long journey back to Paradise. A long journey through the stars. It takes a long time to come to Paradise again with all your human flesh consumed away.”