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In our world a religion which Caligula had persecuted spread until it controlled
all of Europe. In Malesco a religion Caligula had encouraged spread instead like
wildfire until it submerged every other faith. It was an extremely practical
religion, originating in Egypt, and it had ruled all Malesco ever since until the
present day.
Its name was Alchemy.
Alchemy had made a Utopia of Malesco and there is nothing worse than a Utopia,
though very few people seem to realize it. Only in Butler's Erewhon and Huxley's
Brave New World is it suggested that the standard Utopia can be a version of hell
itself.
For in most Utopias it's taken as a matter of course that the stability of the
community is the goal of mankind. Private happiness is unimportant, rigid caste
systems are enforced and total paralysis of society is the prime condition without
which the Utopia wouldn't last half an hour.
Maybe Alchemy's coming out of Egypt had some connection with what happened
to Malesco because Egypt for two thousand years was the most rigid "utopia" in
history. Like Egypt, Malesco reached a peak of growth early in its career. And like
Egypt its priesthood got so firm a ,hold upon the government that though all
growth ceased long before, the society continued in a sort of deathless rigor
mortis far beyond the normal life-span of a civilization.
Malesco for the past five hundred years had stood dead still, a society frozen into
stasis and operated solely for the benefit of the priesthood and that of whatever
conqueror briefly seized control. The priests let the tides of rebellion wash over
the country, carry a conqueror to a throne and maintain him there until
somebody else pushed him off but it was the priests who manipulated all the
wires and collected all the benefits.
There was conflict between church and state, of course. But in Malesco the
powers of science were with the church, for Alchemy was based on practical
science. In Malesco, Galileo would have been a priest, not a heretic. Gunpowder
once conquered vast countries. In Malesco, only priests of Alchemy could
possibly have discovered the uses of gunpowder; the only textbooks on chemistry
were in the temples.
As in Egypt, for a long, long time there was no promise of relief even in the
hereafter for the hoi polloi. Only the priests and the kings could expect to survive
and enjoy the benefits of heaven.
About three hundred years ago, while in our world America was being colonized
and Shakespeare was getting drunk at the Mermaid Tavern and Eastern Europe
was falling piece by piece into the hands of the Turks, Malesco had a worldwide
revo-
lution. The priests for the first time found themselves face to face with a real
problem.
Malesco is a smaller world than ours. A lot of it is ocean and a lot more
unexplored wilderness. But on every inhabited continent there were tremendous
waves of terrorism as the common man got mad enough to let himself go. They
weren't very wise or intelligent men because they'd never been allowed to be.
They had no more knowledge of self-control than so many angry children because
they'd never been trusted with self-control. When they ran wild they instituted a
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reign of terror all over Malesco, taking out their anger and frustration on each
other when no priests were handy.
It was just what you'd expect look at the French Revolution and it made a very
ugly blot in Malescan history. The blame was all the priests' and they easily
managed to shift it right back on the revolutionists.
And the priests, as usual, found a clever way to pacify the people and still get
their own way. The same thing happened in Egypt. A profound social revolution
was neatly transferred to the plane of religion and solved there without making a
ripple in the course of real human living. If it hadn't actually happened in Egypt,
you'd find it hard to believe it could happen anywhere outside the pages of
romance.
The priests simply promised the people that if they would be good and go home
they could look forward to seeing Paradise, too, some day after they were dead. It
worked. The Egyptians accepted the Osiris cult without a murmur and went on
building pyramids. The Malescans went right on under the heavy yoke of the
Alchemic priesthood and accepted the promise of New York as their future
Paradise.
At that point in the story I choked over my supper and Coriole had to pound me
on the back. He also showed symptoms of telling me another joke which my
contretemps reminded him of, but I shut him off quickly.
"Go on," I urged. "I want to hear more about Paradise."
Coriole went back to the egg he'd been eating. The blue patterns on the shell gave
it a festive Easter-egg look and apparently the shell was edible too. He was
crunching it between his teeth in a way that gave me gooseflesh.
"You're sure," he inquired, crunching, "that nobody in your
world knows about Malesco? Because from the very first we've known about
Earth. The Split wasn't very sharp at first. The priests, the clairvoyants and
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