FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Behesht"

When father died, I cleansed his remains and wrapped them in a sheet, then secured them in a sling I'd fashioned ahead of time. His thirty-five-kilogram corpse strapped to my back, I made the long climb up the dusty steel ladder of the surface access tube. The rungs were cold on the pads of my hands and feet. My efforts, my breath and heartbeat, the chimes and dings as I climbed, all resounded in the narrow confines. Up above, I checked my compass to make sure his head would be facing the holy city, then said prayers and buried him in the sand. There were no animals or people to disturb his remains, which would quickly mummify once the sun rose, but it was our tradition to bury the dead in this way. I thought of smashing the only solar array with the shovel while I was topside. Father's last words were, "Farad, my son, you must leave this place. Get married and, God willing, have children. You should not have stayed so long." I had told him to go to sleep and kissed the top of his head. But in spite of my father's wish, I was tempted to spin out the rest of my days sustained by the hydroponics and insect farms that my great-grandfather had scrabbled together. I thought smashing the solar panels might hasten me along, until I imagined some desperate caravan would come hobbling into town only to find the pump inoperable and the water beyond their reach. So, I left the panels as they were and made my descent, back to the home where I had grown up, where my supplies were already packed. The backpack was heavier than my father had been, but less bulky and therefore easier to handle, so my footsteps should have been light and quick, as a Jerboa's ought to be. But the further I walked, the more some vague unease stirred at the edge of my consciousness. The boulevard had been a quiet place even in my youth, when we had boasted a populace twenty persons strong; now it bordered on silence. As I passed the empty houses and storefronts where once we had played as children, the hairs on my back and ears stood on end, as though thousands of eyes were peering out from the dark and dusty windows on each side. I told myself it was only my imagination, a nervous response to being the only person within a hundred kilometers or more, but I quickened my pace nonetheless. There was only one sound on the streets which did not originate with my person: the hiss of falling sand. It worked its way in through the old ventilation system, covering everything I had ever known. Now the dunes finally encroached on the last of the unburied structures. The sand would swallow everything in the end. Perhaps that was for the best. A short time later and the maw of the underground highway loomed before me, the beam of my flashlight vanishing into its depths. As I steeled myself and stepped over the threshold, tears began to flow. I was the last inhabitant of New Fatimabad, below the ruins of Ardabil, and I was leaving forever... Or so I thought. I ran into the caravan mere hours after my journey started, a handful of individuals whose appearance reflected an assortment of cultures and phenotypes. Their leader, a short man of vole genetic stock, offered that I should join them before he even asked my name. "Peace, my brother," he said. "Come with us, and leave these wretched places behind. Where we are going is far better." When I inquired as to where that might be, he smiled and said a single word: "Behesht." Their destination was nothing less than Heaven itself, the hidden garden which is the reward of believers. We ended up going back into New Fatimabad for water and the food I had been forced to leave behind. What we could not carry, my new half-starved comrades jammed into their mouths until their bellies were distended. While that was going on, I gathered up paper and ink from my father's articles. I had lived my youth in his books and reckoned it was time to try writing one myself. So, after traveling with the caravan and interviewing its members, I have set out to chronicle those stories which best reflect the world in which we find ourselves. It seemed the proper thing to do since we might be among the last people who will ever walk this earth.

The Clergyman

Their leader was a man named Shapur, a vole with a greying coat. He dressed in the simple fashion of desert nomads in times past, a knee-length shirt with a robe over it, and a turban, one wrapped in such a fashion as to expose his rounded ears. He approached me during our meal at the end of my first cycle with the group, there among the ancient vestiges of transports that would never again run on this road, what had once been a major thoroughfare but now aboded dust and silence. "Peace," he said, smiling and taking a seat on the ground before me. His movements were stiff and abrupt, as though taken with a perpetual nervousness. His nose and whiskers wriggled in spastic contractions spaced some four or five seconds apart. "I wanted to welcome you formally to our group." "And upon you, peace. May God reward you," I answered. "I wasn't sure if I would ever meet another person." At that he laughed, and the laughter rang warm and earnest in my ears, such a strange sound as I had not heard in years, since before mother died. "You'll come to know all of us in time, and more people besides, once we get there." He must have read something in my face then, because before I could say anything, he added, "You have doubts. Do you lack faith?" "I have faith in God. I have less faith in men. Do you truly believe we will make it to paradise?" He smiled and said, "Paradise is always just around the corner for the righteous." But of course, I could not be satisfied with that for an answer, so he continued. "Tradition holds that the tomb in the holy city is considered a part of Heaven. You have heard this, no doubt?" I nodded, remaining mute but seeing where this was headed. "Then you must also know that a prayer made there is always answered." "My great-grandfather's father was the last of our line to attempt the pilgrimage," I said. "He spent four years trying to find a tunnel westward that hadn't collapsed, and came home with nothing. So, what do you mean to do, sir? Will you build us a ship? Will you march us overland without environmental suits?" My color must have risen, because his tone took on a conciliatory inflection when next he spoke. "He would have checked the major roads, but could he know of every subway, access tunnel or pipe? Just because he could not find a way doesn't mean the way is lost. We have maps. It will not be easy, but we will get there." The thought sparked a glimmer of hope in my heart, only to be snuffed out by the one that followed it. "But what if the city is gone, what if the sand- " "Brother!" he said, not shouting, but more than a little firm. He shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again his smile had reconstituted. "If God, praise to Him, should so will, surely He could cover even the tops of the mountains. But should we believe His holy places are no more before we have seen it with our own eyes? Think about it for a while." With that, he yawned and excused himself, the irony in his final question gleaming like chrome, but eluding him all the same.

The Newlyweds

Babak and Nadia were rabbits draped head to toe in bright clothes printed with intricate, spiraling vine motifs, such fine stuff as I had only seen before in books, but which must have been common in their oasis for them to put together entire outfits from it. Babak's shemagh had slits cut in it to admit the passage of his lanky ears, which was not uncommon; Nadia kept hers folded back and hidden beneath a scarf. But it was not their ears which most drew attention, but rather Nadia's protruding belly. She noticed my staring and smiled. "God has willed it," was what I said, referring to the kittens she carried. But I couldn't make myself smile. How could she think of bringing a litter into this dead world, to struggle and suffer in privation? "Praise to Him," Babak addended. "Peace. I'm Babak and this is Nadia. Come, sit down." He took my hand and all but pulled me onto the large carpet he'd been spreading out. "We found a little powdered tea," he said. "You must drink with us." I refused five times, and still ended up with tea. We talked for a while on small matters of personal history, our hometowns, our families. It may have been that they sensed my alarm and wanted to put me at ease. Babak and Nadia were from the same oasis, only three-hundred kilometers or so from my own, to the south, which was closer than I had expected. They were cousins. "You're too gracious," I said after he forced a peach candy into my hand. My eyes kept wondering over to Nadia's bulging abdomen, however much I might try to stop them. I had never seen a pregnancy before. "You are wondering," Babak said, changing the subject with a delicate air, "why my wife and I are... baking." "Baking?" "Yes. You know, the sort of baking for which rabbits are so well-known." "Ah! Yes, of course," I stammered. He didn't seem offended at my curiosity, though other men might have been. "When a doe is under stress, the bread..." he paused here to search out a word, "returns. The oven gives you nothing. My Nadia is the first in many years to come so far along. That's why we joined this caravan." "You believe Shapur." I thought of the greying vole, the holy man leading this expedition, with his wary eyes and constant twitching, and did not see how anyone could be convinced by him. But then, I hadn't needed convincing to join; it could have been the same for them. "I don't not believe him," he said, and laughed. "But about that, I have a theory. What if the world isn't ending at all? What if far away from us, who are isolated here in this tunnel system, the world continued on as it had before?" The notion had occurred to me in idle moments over the years. The surface world, all sand and lethal heat in our region, might yet sustain survivors closer to the poles. "Much was lost when the bombs fell," he said, his voice dropped down almost to a whisper. "It may be the case that this entire sector, or parts of it, were written off as a loss. We were cut off. Why would outsiders suffer the cost to excavate a wasteland? They forgot about us, and vice versa." "Then you think we can reach it?" "God willing," he said. "If we can, we will, for the sake of our children." They were a charming couple and I often spoke with them when we encamped. Like her husband, Nadia was most cordial, but she rarely said more than a few words. Babak confided in me during our march one cycle that bandits had attacked her family's caravan and killed her parents when she was only a child. Her eyes, though, were clear and watchful. I sometimes wondered what went on behind them, and what she beheld when she lapsed back into her customary silence, staring off into the dark.

The Beekeeper

Ruzba was an oddity: a chimera with a reptilian phenotype. We shall assume his gender as male for the purposes of this story, but I couldn't be certain. He wore a white thawb, the ankle-length shirt which was not unusual for territories near the western mountains, and a plain white shemagh on his head. I would guess his weight at close to 60 kilos, which was a lot more than I had. He was only a bit taller than me, but stocky and powerful for his size. It was hard not to stare at his eyes, which were huge in proportion to his skull. I think it was the jerboa DNA in me, but I was never entirely comfortable around Ruzba, which was unfair since I know he never willed me any harm. It must have been his teeth, which were not sizeable, but were pointy, like his jaws were lined with stout ivory needles. Or it could have been his eyes. Unlike most geckos, the "leopard" variety possesses functional eyelids. More the pity, then, that Ruzba did not often think to employ them. The vertical pupils made his gaze even more unsettling. None of this was helped by the fact that his fingers ended with brutal hooks: claws like the blade of a jambiya. There were two carts in our caravan, the labor of pulling them was distributed in shifts. But poor Ruzba, Shapur had explained, was, for all the human DNA in him, still too much a reptile for sustained physical activity in the cool temperatures underground. He could not even digest food without the aid of a heater. Whenever we went near a tube accessing the surface, he would always make the effort to go topside and bask, even during the day, which was flirting with death. We all understood, though no one ever mentioned it, that he wouldn't live long if he were to be cut off from surface access, and the batteries on his portable heater were exhausted. But for all his woes, Ruzba would still take a short turn pulling one of the carts, then clamber on top of it to become part of the load. At first I could not understand why we would take the effort to haul him around when he was good for so little. But he was simple in manner, and quiet, bothering no one, and it was the charitable thing to do. And at dinnertime, he doled out a spoonful or two of honey to each of us, which inclined no few of us to favor him. I had been with the caravan two days when we spoke. He had just finished his ephemeral turn hauling supplies, when I stepped in to take his place. He greeted me. "Peace," he said. His mouth opened when he spoke, but his lower jaw didn't bob up and down. It was as if the sounds he made were produced all in his throat, and the mouth was only a channel for them. The words were distinct, but off, as though they were being played from a recording device rather than originating from him. "And upon you, peace. It's good to meet you, brother," I said, forcing myself to be civil. "I hear you were a beekeeper." "Aye," he said, and licked his eye clean. I had begun to pull. The cart was not so bad once you got it going. I didn't begrudge his rest. "You can keep bees underground?" "We bring sunlight down for the plants with fiber-optic line, same as any farm. Used to be a cable factory nearby, we had so much of the stuff we used it as rope. And our bees were specially engineered for that kind of life." "I see." Even then, I had the thought that I would write this story someday, so I had a look around to see if anyone was in earshot, then put the question to him. "Brother," I said, "Do you believe we will get to paradise?" He didn't answer for some time and I began to think he had fallen asleep. "What is paradise?" He asked dreamily, startling me back to attention. "For me, it's a warm, shady place with plenty of water and lots of food to eat. That's all I've ever wanted from life, and it would be so easy for God. It's not too much to ask, is it?"

The Djinn

We came across an abandoned oasis, the sign at the edge proclaimed it "New Doroud." The main transit tunnel we'd been following up to this point had suffered a cave-in some years before, so we were forced into the auxiliaries. When we emerged from one these into a park or public square, our immediate response was to locate the residential area and fan out to scavenge for supplies. Most such localities were picked clean before any of us were even born, but there was always a chance some things might have been hidden or overlooked. It must have been a thriving community at one time. It was by far the biggest city I had ever seen and must have sheltered two-hundred families or more. Judging by the four-centimeters-deep layer of dust on the floor, it was safe to say no one had been through for a long time. As I searched a house, I became aware that my companions had spread out so far that I was quite alone. I held my breath and turned my ears this way and that, but heard only the slow passage of a draft, and the faint hiss of shifting sand. Then I caught movement from the corner of my eye. I was not at first alarmed, but thought it was one of my fellow travelers come looking for me. I called out a greeting, to no reply. "Who's there?" I asked. Nothing. I wanted to convince myself that it was only my imagination, but I was certain of what I saw. I slipped out the back entrance and found myself in an alley. A disused ventilation shaft had dumped sand onto the path to my left, blocking the way. Could they have gone back, taking care to duck under the windows so that I didn't see? But even if that were the case, why should anyone wish to move about in secret like that? A chill ran up my back and every hair on my body stood on end. My hand wandered down to the jambiya on my belt, the blade sang a muted tone as the tip scraped free of its leather sheath. It was the first time I'd ever exposed the knife in a public place, as this was only permitted in our culture by the needs of self-defense. If ever there was a time, I thought, that time had come. "Sir?" I just about jumped out of my skin, but my composure returned at speed. It was a child's voice I had heard, I was certain. Taking care to replace my jambiya, I turned around. There was a chimera child standing in the middle of the road. I say "chimera child" because I could not, still cannot, identify her phenotype. She most resembled a jackal, sleek and fine-boned, but her coat was mottled shades of yellow and brown like the lifeless desert up above, which had once been scrubland, and her ears more resembled those of a ground squirrel, with tufts on the ends. Her tail was long and broad, like that of a skunk. At the time I took her for a hybrid, though of what, I couldn't discern. She was naked and smelled of ash and smoke. "Hi, I'm Atash," she said. "Girl, what are you doing? Put some clothes on!" She ignored that and ran around me, out of the alleyway, into the road. "Let's play! Come get me!" Three seconds in and I already had enough of her. I prayed for patience and walked after her. "Where are your parents?" She went so still that if she had been lying down, I might have thought she died. "They're gone," she said. "Long ago. The others, too. All gone." "Well," I said, almost caught up with her, "I'm with a group. Poor thing, have you no clothes? Come with me and we will give you something." "Where?" she asked. I pointed and we started to walk back together with me looking straight ahead, as much from embarrassment as from a concern to protect her modesty. She asked a few questions about the group, how many people, what sort, our method of transport. I answered her, but she continued uninterestedly, so that I was not sure if she was listening. "You should all stay here," she said. Something in her speech had changed. It wasn't an issue of timbre, but of feeling. It was the same voice, but as though it issued from one who had already been on this world a hundred and more years, all of them weary. "You will never reach your destination." "Ah," I said, unsettled by her change in tack, but still taking her for a child and willing to indulge her little game, "but you don't know our destination." "Of course I do. You mean to go to the holy city and pray for paradise." I stopped and whirled around in surprise. She had vanished. "I'll show you..." she said, her words issuing from everywhere at once, and the world around me began to spin. How can I describe that feeling? It was like I had rollers on my feet, and the earth spun beneath me while I remained fixed in place. I was of a sudden on the surface, the multitude of stars shining down on the endless expanse of desert. "Here is your refuge," she said, her words acidic, taunting, "Blasted ruins buried thirty meters deep." Then the world rolled back over and I was standing in the ghost town, as I had been a moment before. "We are the last of our peoples," she said. "Stay here. You will find only death out there." Folks may berate me for this, but I ran away as fast as I could, and I didn't stop until I found someone. I didn't speak of the incident at first, I was afraid they would think I was crazy. There was talk of setting up camp there, but I wouldn't hear of it. I babbled on until Shapur relented and agreed to set up in the tunnel past the edge of town. A week passed before I shared this story. It made its way around the caravan. Some said I must have dreamt it, others smiled and nodded but I knew they thought I was making it up. I guess I wouldn't have believed me either. I was surprised that Shapur did. I found him sucking on a tube of fifty-year-old nutrient paste near the front of the caravan and poured out the whole story. He listened with a passive face until I was done. "That was a djinn," the vole said, "in a child's form. Even as we were made from clay, so were djinn made from fire. The smoke and ash smell must mean it is near the end of its life. It would seem they are dying out along with us. Pay no mind to the vision it showed you. It was only an illusion meant to bring you to despair." "Might it have been an angel?" He scoffed and we left it at that. At times, I was not sure myself whether it was a dream, but I took care not to stray too far from my companions. I often thought of that girl, djinn or not, dying all alone in the dark, in that immense, inexorable stillness, and I pitied her.

The Highwaymen

We found the first body outside a formidable-looking structure that must have been a bank or government office in times past, which had been hollowed out of the living rock. Such architecture had been easier to produce with the assistance of machinery than it had been back in the days where it was all done by hand, but was still a colossal, labor-intensive sort of project spanning years. As such, there were not many of them. The dryness and cool air had mummified him, this mole, who was shriveled but otherwise intact. He had a pistol in his hand and a wound in the side of his head. Near to his remains we found a shallow pit filled with bones, which were scattered in such a way that we could only discern how many people were involved by counting the skulls, of which there were three. Their teeth suggested they were all moles like their mummified friend. To judge by the holes, they'd been killed each with a shot to the back of the head. Everyone must have noticed, though we did not mention it, that the bones were covered with bite marks, and had been cracked open to extract the marrow. There were bullet-holes in the door of the stone building, which wouldn't open. Circling for an alternate means of entry, we discovered that the windows had been blocked with piles of heavy furniture. We had just about resolved to give up and move on when I decided to throw my shoulder against the door to see if it would give. I am neither large nor strong, so this gesture was symbolic, yet, there was a crack and the door swung open, catching me so unawares that I almost bowled face-first onto the floor with all the excess momentum. The door had been barred with a slab of some composite material which must have been rigid enough for the task when it was new, but had degraded with the years and become brittle. There was another mummy in this first room, this one laying prone with a pistol in its hand. The holes in the back of his shirt left little doubt as to the cause of this fellow's demise. The last of them we found not far from that front area, sitting with his back to the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. He'd been shot three times in the upper torso. Stains on the floor indicated it had happened in the other room, after which he had dragged himself in here to die. He was clutching a pair of bags about the size of pillow-cases, full of canned food. We were excited about that until noting the way the cans had swollen up from bacterial activity inside. Shapur insisted that we give the remains proper burial rites even though he conceded that these men had almost certainly been a family of highway robbers squabbling over the last of their stores. "Murderers? Cannibals? Why should we?" I wasn't angry at the suggestion, but perplexed. "God can forgive any sin if we turn to Him in sincere repentance," he said. "Only He knows what is in the hearts of men, and only He is fit to judge them now. Desperation can drive the best of people to an evil path. No man has the right to say who is or is not worthy of Behesht."

The Nomad

We lucked upon a caravanserai that had a pump in good condition. We believed we might top off our supply of water if only the power might be restored, so we made to locate a surface access to see if anything could be done for the solar panels. While engaged in this, however, the overhead lights sparked to life. There was only one conclusion: that we were not alone in this place. It may have been a group like our own, but then it might also have been persons of less than noble intentions. A moment's talk and we took up a defensive position in the room with the pump, watching the doorway and waiting. Those of us with pistols had them ready. We did not have to wait long before the stranger made her appearance. She entered the room with her head down. Chimera, being based on the human genome, fell within the limits of the human range of sizes, with those of smaller phenotypes tending towards the low end, and those of larger phenotypes tending towards the high end. But these tunnels and buildings had been made by and for chimera derived from slight, burrowing creatures, and this woman was a camel. We weren't in doubt about that, the famous hump, though reduced compared to that of their four-legged counterparts, was in evidence. She was well over two meters tall, the ceiling was just shy of it. When she saw us, she startled and bumped her head, then clasped her hand over her heart. "Peace," the she-camel said. "By God, you scared me!" To say her voice was like a man's would have been wrong. It was far deeper than that, a rumble that was felt as much as heard. She wore a long, white, hooded robe with trousers underneath, all made from some shimmering material I could not identify beyond saying it was no natural fiber that I had ever seen. There was a pistol at her waist but she made no move for it. "Peace, sister," Shapur said. He gave us a look and we holstered our arms. I was not privy to the conversation which followed, as she and Shapur went to speak in another room while I was summoned to assist in getting the pump to run. It was not until later that cycle, when we were encamped and taking our meal, that she came to me and exchanged greetings. Shapur must have sent her for me to interview, but whatever the case, I invited her to share my carpet. "I was surprised to see a camel," I said. "I thought your kind was lost." "My kind shall walk the earth until the final day." There was pride in it, but she could not conceal a twinge of sadness. She knew, as we all did, that day could well be imminent. "Will you be joining us, then?" She shook her head. "With these," she indicated her attire with a hand wave, "and our genetics, we can survive on the surface for days. It is dangerous, but because we can circumvent obstructions in the tunnels, we are able to range far when we scavenge." "Ah." I thought about the civilization that had once graced the overworld, the great cities with buildings that seemed to touch the sky. "You must have seen so much." She shook her head again and smiled. "Only sand, from horizon to horizon. We have been farther than you can imagine, and found nothing." "You keep saying 'we,' do you have a herd?" "Oh, yes," she said, confident. "We were attacked and became separated, but I'm sure I'll catch up with them soon." "And when was that?" She looked up at the ceiling, her lips moving as she performed the calculations. "About ten years ago." "I see." I didn't say what I was thinking, that her fellows were long dead. The both of us were chasing ghosts, and differed only in direction. "And is that why you won't come with us, because you're looking for them?" "No," she said, and laughed. "I already told you, there's nothing out there. You fools are going to get yourselves killed."

The Executioner

Amir the hare stood out from the rest in many ways. He was just over one-hundred and eighty centimeters tall (not counting the ears), by far the tallest in our group. In dressing he was utilitarian, favoring slacks and baggy pullover shirts, eschewing traditional styles. He was the only male in our party who didn't wear any sort of head covering, and the only male to wear his hair long, which was not forbidden, per se, but so far removed from contemporary mores as to be peculiar. But the thing that stood out most of all was that he carried a shamshir. Swords had not been used in war for centuries, so I was curious as to its purpose. But Amir was a hard person to approach: he took his meals alone and always sought the fringes whenever we encamped. It wasn't that he was rude when spoken to, people said, but rather that he preferred his own company. It wasn't until I had been with the caravan two weeks that I got a chance to speak with him in private. It was our sleeping period and I was losing a battle with insomnia, so I decided to see if anyone else was conscious. Living almost all one's life underground bestows a certain awareness; we become accustomed to feeling our way along, seeing with our ears. I found the wall and followed it, not wanting to wake anyone with my lamp. I had the sense that a sleeping bag which had been occupied earlier was now empty, and a moment later I heard the clink of glass on glass and moved towards it. A little while and I could see a glow emanating from a house we'd searched earlier that cycle. I'd always been told that it wasn't right to spy on people, so rather than creep up on whoever this was, I cleared my throat. The light inside the building changed, like someone wearing a lamp had turned their head. Then the light moved towards the doorway and there I met Amir. "Ah," he said, and went back inside. I followed him. Further in, he had pried up a piece of the floor, revealing a crawlspace. That was presumably where he had found all the bottles of liquor he had set up, and from which he was so nonchalantly sipping. My first reaction was to peek behind me to be sure I hadn't been followed, then to ask him a question. "Are you crazy? Shapur will have you whipped if he finds out." He smiled and shook his head, indicating his sword. "Let them try. The one who puts a hand on me surrenders it forever." "They have guns." He shrugged. "I never said they won't shoot me. But you're right, if it pleases them to flog a dead man, they're welcome." That settled, he tipped the bottle in my direction, offering. "No, thanks." "Suit yourself." As he did not appear to mind my presence, and would be more talkative on account of his inebriation, I decided to stick around. I had nothing better to do. "So..." I began, but he never let me get started. "You want to know about my shamshir." It wasn't a question. "Yes. Yes, sir." "I cut people's heads off for a living. Or at least I did. No courts anymore, that means no sentencing. Used to be, folks would catch a robber now and then. Bandits are parasitic, you know, but now there's no one for them to feed on. No host, no parasites." "Oh. How did you get into that..."? I trailed off in thought, trying to find a tactful word, and came up with, "occupation?" He had already said more than I had ever heard him say. The liquor seemed to be doing its work already. "You're born into it," he said. "One of my ancestors was a criminal, probably, who got stuck with it. From then on, his genealogical line became an 'executioner family.' That means we can only marry among other executioner families. How many of those do you think there are? God only knows how we made it this far. It stops here, though. No one for me to marry, executioner family or otherwise." He took another drink and we were content to let the thread of conversation sleep a while. When he continued, he did so with a smile. "The work is not so bad," he said. "The day before, I go to the aggrieved family and beg them to grant clemency. I beg mercy for murderers! If they don't forgive him, then at the beginning of the next cycle I sharpen my sword. It's just like swinging a pick, easiest job in the world." I tried to imagine myself decapitating someone and decided I couldn't do it. By then, I was ready to change the subject. I asked him if he thought we would reach paradise, as I had done with the others, but he seemed not to understand that the talk had moved on. "Well, why shouldn't I?" he asked, ears flat, his tone agitated. "God saw fit to have me born into this position. How, then, am I tainted? I'm just like this sword, an instrument for someone else's use. If the sentence is wrong, then that wrong falls on the authorities. And if a sentence is just, that what sin transpired?" "Brother, I apologize, I didn't mean that. I'm asking if you think we'll ever escape these tunnels, if we'll ever reach the holy city." Now that he understood the question, he settled back into thought, and his bearing softened. Then he laughed and gave me the answer for which I had been looking. "I don't have any idea about that," he said. "But what would you have us do, sit on our hands?"

~ ~ ~

As I write this, the supplies are running low. Shapur pores over his maps and makes promises, but I felt it prudent to commence this project. Two cycles ago, Ruzba went on to his reward. His scales had gone from yellow and black to a greyish brown. We think it was the lack of sun. If you should stumble across this record, I hope you will pray for him, and for us. So now I commit these pages to posterity. With this cool, dry air, they should last for many years. If you read this far, you have my thanks. Please return them to the box you found them in. I had thought to write a warning here urging you to go back, but the fact is, you're going to die either way. You may not reach Behesht, but you definitely won't if you never make the attempt. It's strange, but the more we search, the more certain I become that we will arrive in paradise. We are very close, I think we will find it any time now.