At that time, they reached cultural stasis. But as for their religious
beliefs, you've described them quite accurately. A god is only
worshiped as long as the people think him powerful enough to aid and
protect them; when they lose that confidence, he is discarded and the
god of some neighboring people is adopted instead." He turned to
Brannad Klav. "Didn't Stranor report this situation to you when it
first developed?" he asked. "I know he did; he speaks of receiving
shipments of grain by conveyer for temple distribution. Then why
didn't you report it to Paratime Police? That's what we have a
Paratime Police Force for."
"Well, yes, of course, but I had enough confidence in Stranor Sleth to
think that he could handle the situation himself. I didn't know he'd
gone slack--"
"Look, I can't make weather, even if my parishioners think I can,"
Stranor Sleth defended himself. "And I can't make a great military
genius out of a blockhead like Kurchuk. And I can't immunize all the
rabbits on this time-line against tularemia, even if I'd had any
reason to expect a tularemia epidemic, which I hadn't because the
disease is unknown on this sector; this is the only outbreak of it
anybody's ever heard of on any Proto-Aryan time-line."
"No, but I'll tell you what you could have done," Verkan Vall told
him. "When this Kurchuk started to apostatize, you could have gone to
him at the head of a procession of priests, all paratimers and all
armed with energy-weapons, and pointed out his spiritual duty to him,
and if he gave you any back talk, you could have pulled out that
needler and rayed him down and then cried, 'Behold the vengeance of
Yat-Zar upon the wicked king!' I'll bet any sum at any odds that his
successor would have thought twice about going over to Muz-Azin, and
none of these other kings would have even thought once about it.
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