The Pritcher Mass

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Meanwhile, however, the covens had picked up word that the top people in the Citadel organization were returning from around the world, and even from the Mass, to meet at the Citadel building in Chi­cago. An unhappy and fearful male witch slipped outside the sterile areas to bring the news to Chaz, personally.

  "I expected it," Chaz told the man. "They've got the Mass and, as Eileen herself reminded me once, people with paranormal talents and com­puters. They can follow logic-chains well enough to see that I'm going to try something against them. Natu­rally they're getting together to plan strategy."

  "If they know that much," said the witch, "they may know just what we're planning to do. They can be waiting for us."

  "They don't know," Chaz said. "They can't predict correctly without having all relevant facts. And they don't."

  "What don't they know?"

  "Certain things," said Chaz. "For one, that there are immunes among the exiles; and that these immunes owe their lives to paranormal powers they didn’t even suspect they had."

  The witch stared at him.

  "What else don't they know?" he asked at last.

  "Some things," Chaz said. "I'll tell you what your people can do, though. You can pull out of this if you want to. Only, if we lose, the Citadel is going to trace those sup­plies back to help from your covens; and if we win, you won't get the au­thority over the Pritcher Mass you wanted."

  The witch left. But there was no talk from the covens of withdrawing their assistance in the few days that remained.

  The attack on the Citadel had been planned for a Sunday after­noon. At three that afternoon, Chaz, Eileen, Red Rover and a dozen of the Rovers, about half of them im­munes, were waiting in the supply tunnel that connected with the Cita­del building. Chaz was carrying a portable phone to the cable in the tunnel wall; and he had it keyed to show the southern face of the build­ing and the sky over the western sec­tion of the Lower Loop sterile area of Chicago. The view was from the pickup of a public phone booth of a square before the south side of the building, which was listed in the Dis­trict Directory simply as the Embry Tower. It was one of the eighty-story towers raised in that part of Chicago in the 1990's, shortly before the Rot had appeared. It poked its top thirty stories through the upper protective dome over the sterile area like a stick through a bubble; and its outer glass facing reflected the gray clouds overhead with a matching grayness of its own. There were only a few casual pedestrians crossing through the square at the moment. Half a dozen non-uniformed guards could also be seen playing the part of casual idlers, within the transparent walls of the street-level lobby of the tower.

  "There!" said Chaz; and the rest of those with him crowded closer to the small phone screen for a look. A black plume of smoke was rising toward the clouds off to the west be­yond the tops of the area's buildings, in that direction. A second later, the tunnel about them shuddered slightly with a shock wave.

  The scene on the phone screen was suddenly replaced by the picture of a middle-aged, heavy-featured woman wearing a green police uni­form. The sharp warning whistle of the emergency signal sounded. If Chaz' phone had not already been in use, that signal would have activated it.

  "Citizens of the Lower Loop area," said the woman on the screen. "Emergency. I repeat, this is an emergency broadcast under the pol­lution warning system. All citizens of the Lower Loop area, please pay special attention. All citizens of the nineteen sterile areas of the main Chicago District, pay close attention. An as-yet-unexplained explosion has breached the seal in the western ex­tremity of the Lower Loop area. All available pollution-fighting equipment has been called in from all nineteen areas; and a chemical bar­rier is being thrown up while a tem­porary seal is under construction be­hind the exposed area.

  "All citizens are warned to stay where they are, if possible, and pre­serve local sterile conditions. Please, those of you who may have relatives or friends in the area of the ex­plosion, stay away. Repeat, stay away! Crowding the access routes to the area will only increase the dan­ger of polluting the whole Lower Loop. All care will be taken to insure that those not exposed will not be left beyond the temporary seal when it is locked in place. I repeat, do not crowd the area. All care will be taken—"

  The image of the woman in the uniform was suddenly wiped off the screen, to be replaced by a figure of an ordinary gray jumpsuit wearing a flexmask—and it was impossible to tell from the screen whether it was a man or woman. The accompanying voice was similarly disguised by a fil­ter, so that the anonymity of its sex was complete. It was one of the witches, Chaz guessed; but which one, probably even Eileen would never know.

  "Attention, citizens of all Chicago sterile areas," said the figure. "Atten­tion, all Chicago citizens. The ex­plosion just announced by pollution control authorities was not an accident. I repeat, not an accident. The security of the Lower Loop areas has been deliberately breached as a warning to Chicago citizens. All other areas in the main Chicago dis­trict will be similarly breached, and the citizens now in them exposed to the Rot spores, if the members of the criminal organization known as the Citadel, who are now occupying the Embry Tower in the Lower Loop, are not immediately removed from that building and put outside the sterile areas.

  "I repeat. The members of the Citadel now in the Embry Tower must be removed and placed outside the sterile areas. They must be put out at the spot where the Lower Loop was just breached, before sun­set, or the other areas of the main Chicago district will be breached in a similar manner. We, the Committee for the Purification of Chicago, call on all citizens to assist in securing these criminals and seeing that they are put outside.

  "I will repeat again what I have said. The breach of the Lower Loop area was not an accident. Other areas will be breached unless the criminals of the Citadel are removed from the Embry Tower and placed outside by sunset. We, the Com­mittee for the Purification of Chi­cago, call on all citizens to assist in securing these criminals . . ."

  "Let’s go," said Chaz, turning from the phone to the door nearby, leading into the basement of the Em­bry Tower. He fitted a vibration key to the lock plate and the heavy door swung open. Inside, in a small room at the foot of the concrete staircase, were three uniformed guards—all sound asleep in chairs.

  Chaz grinned at Eileen. The ten­sion of the moment already had the body adrenaline singing in his blood.

  "Beautiful, honey," he said. "I had to see it to believe in it—a spell cast through a cased steel door."

  "You ought to know physical bar­riers don't—" Eileen broke off, glanc­ing up the empty stairs. "Chaz!"

  "What's wrong?" He swung about to stare at the harmless-looking stairs.

  "Power," Eileen said, unhappily. "Someone with a terrible lot of power, up there somewhere. Can't you feel it?"

  Chaz tried, felt nothing, reached for help from the Mass, tried again and still felt nothing. He shook his head.

  "You mean somebody knows we're coming?"

  "I . . . don't think so," said Eileen. "But whoever it is, he's the most powerful person I've ever felt."

  "He?"

  "I don't know. It just feels male, somehow . . ."

  Chaz shook his head.

  "Forget it. We can't fiddle around now." He spoke over his shoulder to the rest of them. "Come on."

  He led the way up the staircase. At the fire door of the street-level land­ing, Red Rover snapped to the men just behind him: "Seal that!"

  Several Rovers stopped and began to melt the edges of the door into its heavy metal frame with their hand lasers. Chaz continued up the stairs.

  At each landing, Red Rover left men at work sealing the fire doors. But four landings up, the staircase it­self ended, abruptly and in violation of all fire ordinances. A solid concrete wall barred their way.

  "The elevators," Chaz said.

  He went through the nearby fire door into what seemed to be a fourth-floor landing. There were some doors opening on the landing, all ajar, all showing small, empty of­fices. Th
e elevator tubes were there also, but they were halted, their floating disks hanging frozen in the transparent tubes.

  "Think they expected us, after all?" Red Rover asked.

  "Maybe," said Chaz. "Maybe just an automatic protective reaction switched them off when the emer­gency phone broadcast came on, or the guards down in the lobby found out we were here."

  Below them, from the stairwell, they could hear a crackling noise as the lobby guards, alerted by the heat radiating from the half-melted edges of the sealed fire door at that level, were now trying to cut through the door from their own side. Luckily it was easier to seal a door with a laser than to open it with such a weapon after it was sealed.

  "What then?" Rover said.

  "I thought of something like this," Chaz said. "Eileen's been held in this building before. She's got a memory of the room she was kept in. If she and I can transfer to that room, maybe we can get the elevators going for the rest of you. Give me the recorder and the suit bag."

  He reached out; and the Rover with the portable phone recorder, slung like a satchel from one shoul­der, lifted it off and passed it to him. Chaz slung the strap over his own right shoulder and turned to Eileen. He took the suit bag another Rover passed him and produced a pair of airsuits, handing one to Eileen.

  "What's that for?" Red Rover asked. Chaz did not take time to answer until he and Eileen were both suited up. He watched Eileen close her faceplate, then turned to Rover before sealing his own.

  "I'll try taking her out to the Mass and back in again," he said. "It worked in rehearsal, but then we both knew where we wanted to come back to. If it doesn't work this time, take your Rovers back out and mingle with whatever crowd shows up in the square. Give us five min­utes, then leave. But keep your por­table phone open for any word from me. All right?"

  "Right enough," said Red Rover.

  Chaz reached with his gloved hand for Eileen's. He winked at her through his faceplate, in signal. These particular airsuits had no phones.

  The landing around them blinked out. There was a glimpse of starlight and the Mass platform apparently standing up vertically alongside them to their right, then they were in what looked like an ordinary, con­dominium one-room apartment.

  Chaz looked at Eileen. She was nodding and smiling through her faceplate as she unsealed it so that he could hear her speak. He reached up and unsealed his own.

  As he pulled it open to the room air, a sudden dizziness took him. He opened his mouth to shout a warning at Eileen; but saw her with her own suit unsealed and already falling. A moment of disorientation took him and . . .

  He opened his eyes to find himself out of the airsuit entirely and seated in a chair.

  Eileen was seated in a chair along­side him. They were under the dome of a roof garden—almost certainly on the top floor of the Embry Tower. Facing them were several tables pushed together to make one long surface; and behind this sat a small handful of people, among whom Chaz recognized Waka, Ethrya, and Jai.

  Beside Chaz, Eileen made a small, choking noise. He looked quickly at her, and saw her staring at Jai in ei­ther fascination or terror.

  "You?" she said, in a strangled voice. "You're the one I felt down­stairs?"

  "Yes," said Jai. "And thank you, sister. I take the recognition as a compliment. You seem to have more than an ordinary share of the talent, yourself."

  XIV

  Chaz throttled back the dismay and fury that rose inside him. It was strangely easy to do.

  "You're one of the Citadel crew too, then," he said calmly to Jai, "or maybe you're their head man?"

  "No one in the Citadel is head man," answered Jai. "We're like any other business, an organization. You might compare me to a chairman of the board, if you want to make a comparison. Ethrya, here, would be president of the company, perhaps." The tall man's voice was as gentle as ever. Chaz shook his head a little.

  "What could an outfit like this of­fer someone like you?" he said. "Particularly if you've got the para­normal abilities Eileen says you have."

  "Freedom," said Jai, gently. "Some people find freedom by get­ting well away from others. I find it by being well in control of others." He looked at Chaz almost sadly. "That's always been your one flaw, Chaz. You don't have the drive to control others; but at the same time you refuse to let others have any control over you. That's why I've fi­nally voted against you; even if I was for your coming out to the Mass, originally."

  He glanced to his right at Waka.

  "Not everybody agreed with me about that," he said. "Poor old Alex, here, was caught in the middle."

  "Why take chances?" Ethrya said. "It was a real chance you took when you had Waka qualify him for the Mass. If we'd killed him in the first place the way I said, he wouldn't have been around to cause us even the trouble he's causing us now."

  "Investment theory," said Jai. "The whole theory of investment as­sumes some risk-taking in order to get the chance of making a greater profit. Chaz might have paid off for us very well. Besides, the present sit­uation is under control."

  He looked away from Ethrya, over to one side where a couple of men were setting up two antennae, each about three meters tall, and two meters apart. For a moment they stood there unenergized, like silvery wands; and then a two-dimensional image sprang into being between them. It was a view of the square be­fore the south side of the Tower, apparently picked up by a camera high on the building's side, but tele­scopically enlarged to give close-ups from what seemed to be a few feet above the heads of those in the square.

  Meanwhile, people behind the long table section were changing seats. Ethrya was giving up her chair beside Jai to a heavy-set man in his fifties with a bulldog face; a man who looked vaguely familiar. Chaz stared at him for a moment before it registered on him that he was look­ing at the City Director for the Chi­cago District. Eileen had been right about the Citadel's involvement with government officials.

  Chaz looked back at the scene in the square below. Think, he com­manded himself. The square was be­ginning to fill up with a crowd that was clearly disturbed and unfriendly in its attitude toward the Embry Tower. Chaz glimpsed several of the Rovers he recognized, wearing ordinary jumpsuits, circulating among the crowd and clearly talk­ing its emotions up. He did not, however, recognize Red Rover any­where; and the absence of the im­mune leader brought him a small, unimportant feeling of relief. He remembered Eileen, and looked over at her.

  She was sitting in a chair just like his, not more than three meters from him. She smiled a little palely, as their eyes met. Like him, she was not tied in the chair or restrained in any way; although, looking beyond her, out by the far end of the long table surface he saw a thin young man covering them both with a hand laser.

  Chaz turned his head back to the table.

  "Jai?" he said.

  The tall man broke off a low-voiced conversation with the Chi­cago City Director and a short, white-haired man standing behind them. The white-haired man turned and went off to take a chair several seats down the table to Jai's right. Jai looked at Chaz. Chaz had to think for a second. Then he remembered why he had called the tall man.

  "Eileen," said Chaz. "You don't need her here."

  Jai shook his head.

  "To tell the truth, I'd like to do without her myself," he said. "After all, I'm a witch, too—or was. And hurting any kind of people is a bad practice. It builds up calluses on the sensitivity areas. But in this case we have to make a case against you, Chaz; and we need her for that. A shame—" he glanced at Eileen for a moment. "You really do have an unusual talent, sister."

  "Don't call me sister," said Eileen emotionlessly. "You don't deserve the name of witch, if you ever did. Dark see you, dark blind you, grave take you, curse bind you."

  "I'm sorry," said Jai, very gently indeed. "I understand how you feel. But you ought to know better than to think you can hurt me in any way with the Craft. In all my life I never found anyone who could approach me at its use; much less one able to attac
k me with it."

  He turned back to talking with the mayor. In the screen, the square was now showing itself packed with people; and to the west the dark stain of smoke from fires following the explosion still hung like a dirty finger-smudge on the sky above the city's buildings and transparent domes. It was getting on toward four o'clock, Chaz guessed; and the gray-clouded win­ter day, as it always did at this hour, had become dull-lighted and heavy with a chilling dreariness. Something inside him was telling him that the battle was already lost. Lost and forgotten...

  A bit from a poem floated out of the back of Chaz' attic memory into the front of his mind. What was it from? Oh, yes . . . "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," by John Keats:

  "Ah, what can ail thee, knight at arms,

  Alone and palely loitering?

  The sedge has withered from the lake,

  And no birds sing! . . ."

  And then, the last line:

  ". . . La Belle Dame Sans Merci hath thee in thrall."

  Only it was not La Belle Dame, but Le Beau Jai, that had Eileen and himself in thrall...

  Faintly, from a sound receiver somewhere, he heard a chanting. He looked at the image of the square be­low, and saw the crowd swaying back and forth as one person. Obviously, it was the source of the chanting, which was directed against the Embry Tower; but the receiver was set at such low volume he could not make out what words were being chanted. The sound and swaying stopped then, almost abruptly; and the camera view swung around to look awkwardly down at a narrow angle on the lower front of the build­ing itself. On the lower building-side there was now showing an image of the long table and those seated be­hind it; with the central focus on the face of the Chicago District Director. He began to speak. Someone turned the volume up on the receiver and it echoed his words as they also reached Chaz' ears from directly across the little distance between Chaz and the long table.

  . . . Realize that it is unusual for myself, as District Director, to ad­dress you all over an emergency phone broadcast this way. However, we are presently faced with a situ­ation in which the utmost in self-re­straint and control will be needed from all our citizens. As most of you already know, saboteurs from out­side the sterile areas have succeeded in blowing a hole in the protection of the Lower Loop. As anyone might expect, we neither judge nor condemn these sick-minded exiles from among those who have had to be re­moved from the sterile community for the greater good of all. But for that same greater good, we must now take defensive measures to protect our healthy populace. In order that all Chicago citizens should understand the need for such defensive measures, I have felt it needful to ac­quaint you not only with a plot that has already resulted in one ex­plosion, plus the threat of others that would indeed pose a danger to us all, but also to acquaint you with the chief saboteurs and events leading up to this criminal act."