Chapter Seven: Questions the Temple Did Not Ask
The next morning the novices attended Comparative Theology.
It was everyone's least favourite lesson.
Not because it was difficult.
Because it required absolute silence.
Magister Voss taught it.
He was older than Kallix-9.
Far older.
Almost nothing remained of his face.
Only one eye.
One cheek.
Part of a forehead.
Everything else had become polished steel.
His voice emerged through layered vox-grilles.
"Ignorance," he said,
"is not innocence."
He wrote a single symbol.
☼
"The Imperial Creed."
Another.
⚙
"The Cult Mechanicus."
Another.
∞
"The Ruinous Powers."
No one moved.
"Question."
His remaining eye found Cael.
"You."
Cael stood.
"What is heresy?"
An easy question.
Several novices relaxed.
Cael answered.
"Deviation from sanctioned truth."
"Insufficient."
"Harmful deviation."
"Insufficient."
"Knowingly harmful deviation."
"Better."
Voss nodded once.
"What if sanctioned truth is incomplete?"
The room froze.
No novice asked that.
Ever.
Cael hadn't intended to.
It simply...
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followed.
Voss watched him.
"Repeat."
"What if sanctioned truth is incomplete?"
No one breathed.
Even Doxa, observing from the rear, became motionless.
Finally—
Voss laughed.
Not loudly.
Not warmly.
A dry mechanical crackle.
"The correct question."
Every novice stared.
Voss continued.
"Heresy is not asking whether knowledge is incomplete."
He tapped the cog symbol.
"The Mechanicus exists because knowledge is incomplete."
Another tap.
"Heresy begins..."
He looked directly at Cael.
"...when certainty outruns evidence."
The words settled over the room.
"The fool believes he already knows."
"The priest searches."
"The heretek concludes."
Voss erased the symbols.
"Remember this."
"The greatest danger to knowledge..."
He paused.
"...is not ignorance."
Another pause.
"It is satisfaction."