"Mother, please leave me now." Astarte could scarcely breathe, barely forced the words out. Her mother's touch, her words, the images they conjured twisted inside her; jealousy's poison worked on her.
What if he had? What if this . . . this woman is pregnant? Her mind blurred, her thoughts swirled and eddied among dark places. Perhaps Mother is right. Better this woman should die....
Astarte seemed to hear the voice of the Goddess; the Holy Mother was stern, sad and disappointed.
Don't you remember the vision? The warning?
Realizing what she'd been thinking, Astarte was appalled at the depths to which she had sunk. She struggled upward, until she once again found herself in calm water.
DiLuna was gone. She had seen the fierce jealous anger in her daughter's face, had obviously assumed this was a propitious time to depart.
Astarte, recovering her strength, left the outer temple, and retired to the inner sanctuary, kept sacred to the priests, priestesses, and their acolytes. No one else was permitted to enter this holy chamber—not DiLuna, not Astarte's "bodyguards"—in reality her mother's spies. Here the queen was certain of being alone, here she could meditate undisturbed, for when the High Priestess was in the Holy Sanctuary, no one else was permitted to enter.
The Temple of the Goddess was a vast complex, the center of worship for millions of followers. It was built on the steppes of the sacred mountain. The Goddess had descended these steppes, so it was believed, from heaven, to deliver her children safely into this blessed land.
Astarte knew the truth, as did all her people. It was on these steppes the early space travelers had landed. But her race had always found it easy to blend the harsh, gray colors of fact with the softer, more beautiful shades of mythology.
No one knew quite when the worship of the Goddess began. Various sociologists had written innumerable learned treatises on the subject, but no two ever agreed, and few paid attention to them anyway. The religion's seeds may have been brought from old Earth, and were related to the ancient religions that revered the All-Mother. But it did not take root and flourish in this culture until the strange illness decimated the male population, left the females to struggle in the new world on their own. With their men weakened, debilitated, dying, it was not surprising that the women came to view their deity in a strong female form.
Even now, years after the hormone-based disease had been isolated and conquered, with the male population thriving, the people of Ceres and its surrounding systems retained their ma-triarchal culture and their worship of the Goddess. Men as well as women served Her; the priests practicing their own rites and ceremonies. Young boys as well as young girls were required to give a year of their lives to the Goddess, learning to respect life and the land that gave it, both of which were the Goddess's special province. Women were held in high esteem in the society; the crime of rape was practically unknown.
But there was darkness in the past, arising from the early bad times when society was in chaos, the women fighting among themselves to propagate their race. The few fertile men who survived became valuable commodities, a source of wealth and power to the women who owned them. A wife would share her husband and his seed with other women—for a price.
But if the husband decided to indulge in a little private pleasure on the side—spent without being paid, as the saying went—his wife was entitled to remuneration. The price was often paid in blood, the injured wife having the legal right to kill her rival.
The custom belonged to the history books now. Most people on Ceres would be shocked to hear of the commission of such a barbarous act. But it was a part of their heritage and, knowing and respecting their past as they did, they would most likely (however reluctantly) approve the deed.
DiLuna knew this, and so did Astarte. The realization of how easy it would be to have her rival put out of the way appalled her. That—and the temptation to do so.
She entered the chapel. Several novices, young girls, were placing fresh garlands of flowers and fruit at the feet of the statue of the Goddess. They bowed in awed reverence to the High Priestess. Urged by the duckings and whispered scoldings of their priestess overseer, they blushingly hastened to leave the chapel.
When they were gone, Astarte made the customary offerings at the altar, then knelt at the Goddess's feet. This statue was ancient, the oldest in all of Ceres, dating back to the very beginning of the religion. It portrayed the Goddess in her mothering, nurturing form; the warrior image would come later. The perfume of the freshly cut flowers and the fragrance of the fruit mingled with the sweet smell of incense.
Astarte took time to rearrange one of the garlands. Nervous, childish hands had dropped it in the wrong place. Remembering a time when she had been one of those young girls, remem-bering how she had loved and adored this statue which, to her, had been the only true aspect of the Goddess, Astarte sighed. She had learned a lot since then.
"What am I to do, Blessed Lady?" Astarte prayed aloud. She was not afraid of being overheard here; not even her mother's spies would dare commit such sacrilege. "I could return to my husband. It would mean a bitter argument with my mother. She could not prevent my leaving, but she would certainly make it difficult, keep me here as long as possible.
But going back to Dion now would avail me little. The damage has been done. He would never believe that I was not in on this plot with my mother. He would never trust me, never respect me, and I could not blame him. And if anything were to happen to this woman he loves, he would accuse me. And he would hate me for it—always."
Shivering, Astarte lifted one of the flowers, smoothed its petals. "I see your guiding hand in this, Blessed Lady. I know my mother. She was planning to murder this woman without my knowledge. I would have never discovered her plot if you had not brought me here. I will not fail you, Holy Mother. I will not fail my husband ... or myself."
Rising to her feet, Astarte made a deep reverence to the statue, whose eyes gleamed warm and approving in the flickering altar light. "My way is clear, Holy Mother. Grant me strength."
She left, heading for her own private quarters in the temple complex. Due to the "solar disturbance," Astarte would not be able to communicate with the Glitter Palace, but she guessed it would be possible to transmit messages to other, ordinary places in the galaxy.
On her way to her own private communications center, the queen did, for her, an unusual thing. She stopped to pay homage—with a prayer and a gift of a golden dagger with a jeweled hilt—to the statue of the Warrior Goddess, who reigned over a small, dark chapel of her own.
Chapter Five
The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"
The lone spaceplane flew upon its strange journey, heading deliberately for a part of space in which no life existed. A part of space that was, according to record, uninhabitable, unsuited for the maintenance of human life, one that had never even nurtured alien life.
The spaceplane itself was unprepossessing in appearance, being one of those simple, cheaply but well-made volksrockets valued by traveling salesman, rock-star groupies, and missionaries. This particular spaceplane had obviously, from its religious markings, been used by a missionary of the Order of Adamant in the early, pre-Revolution days. It was unarmed, of course, and was badly in need of exterior maintenance, having been resurrected from a wayside combination space museum and petting zoo.
It had taken seventy-two hours for Sagan to locate the plane, on Omega 11, make necessary repairs, and refit it with the special and complex instruments delivered by courier from Admiral Dixter. Sagan had not slept those seventy-two hours. He was impelled by an urgency that had no tangible source, but was like a nagging tug at his sleeve, a foot tapping impatiently.
I am waiting for you, a voice seemed to say, but I will not wait long.
Sagan had worked in solitude, careful not to attract the attention of Omega's inhabitants. He had put away the clergyman's
habit and vestments, which might have excited comment. Dressed in military fatigues purchased from an army surplus store, he looked like any other aging spacer, who had taken it into his head to build a rocket ship in his garage. Omega 11 was a middle-class suburban planet, circling a much larger more important planet—Omega 12—and its people were not inclined to be overly curious. A group of neighborhood chil-dren, lining up in a vacant lot to watch the volksrocket being towed to the spacesport, had been Sagan's only audience.
He traveled hyperspace to as near Vallombrosa as the Lanes would take him, left them at the same point the explorer Garth Pantha had left them on his journey. Sagan had entered Pantha's old log (part of the courier's delivery from Admiral Dixter) into the spaceplane's computer. It was a voice log, deliberately recorded by Pantha for playback on his own vidshow. Sagan listened to the entire log often; the gravelly voice with the honey drawl became a familiar companion on the long trip, as familiar to him as the notes of Bach's Concerto No. 2 in F, one of the several "Brandenburg Concertos" he had brought to fill the silence that was now so terribly silent.
He listened to Pantha's narrative with the ear of one who not only enjoyed music but who subconsciously analyzed musical cadences and intricate patterns. Hearing the log over and over again, Sagan was interested to note that, at one point in the narrative, Pantha's discourse grated on the ear, as if the conductor and entire orchestra had skipped a measure.
"Computer, analyze voice patterns," Sagan commanded. "Specifically, was this section of the voice log data entered at the same time as the rest of the log?"
The computer's response was negative. The original log entry had been erased and this entry substituted. The splicing had been expertly done. Sagan himself had not noticed it at first. Constant repetition, familiarization with the rhythms and patterns of Pantha's speech, and the Warlord's own finely tuned musical ear had caught the slight discrepancy.
The original log entry concerning Vallombrosa had been altered by Pantha, presumably at a later date. He had entered his initial discovery of Vallombrosa and information concerning it in his log; then he had, for some reason, altered the log.
Sagan sat back in the pilot's chair, leaned his elbows on the armrests, placed his fingertips together, and gazed out over them at tiny specks, like glittering dust, that were as Vallombrosa's suns.
"Why did you alter it? What did you discover that you decided to keep hidden? Or perhaps not completely hidden. Perhaps you gave us a clue. The name. Vallombrosa. Vale of Shades. Valley of Ghosts. You told us that much—a clever little joke for your own private amusement."
He pondered on the problem long, considering this, discarding that. One of the first things he threw out was the information gathered from the unmanned space probes. That information was false, he decided, although how it had been altered, who or what had found the means to tamper with the probes without revealing themselves to the probes was a fascinating problem. At length he gave up trying to solve it and went to bed. He would have answers tomorrow, for he would, by his calculations, be near enough to the planet to take his own readings—unless something decided to tamper with him.
The next day, something did.
His first indication of the strange presence came moments before he would reach the point where his instruments could begin long-range scanning of the planet. He was standing in the small galley, brewing a pot of oolong tea (a luxury he had denied himself during his years at the abbey) when he experienced a most remarkable and unusual sensation.
He felt compressed, as if each bone and muscle in his body were being compacted, as if his limbs were now made of lead, as if every gram of body weight was suddenly equivalent to a kilogram. The sensation passed immediately, almost before his brain could register it, and he might have ignored it except that there was an odd deja vu quality about it, as if it had happened to him before.
At almost precisely the same instant, sensor alarms sounded. He looked swiftly about the interior of the small spaceplane. Movement caught his eye—the breviary lying on his nightstand rose into the air, then fell back down. The book had moved only the barest fraction of a centimeter, but the book had certainly moved.
Forgetting the tea, Sagan advanced to the console, to eagerly examine the instruments, which were not standard equipment on a volksrocket. Whatever had been in his plane was now apparently gone. All instrument readings—from motion detectors to heat sensors—were back to normal. But there had been something on board. It had left its trace. He began to compare the data with the readings taken from the security devices guarding the dwelling place of the late Snaga Ohme.
Sagan studied again Xris's vid report (compliments of Dixter), and he understood why the odd feeling of being compressed had seemed familiar to him. It had happened before— only not to him. He came to that part of Xris's report, played it back.
"Now, that's another strange thing, boss," the cyborg was saying. "The guards didn't see or hear anything, but one of them reported feeling something. About a split second before the alarm went off. She said she felt as if she'd been shoved into a compression chamber. The feeling passed immediately. She shows no physical damage, no chemical alteration. No increase in radiation level, no aftereffects. But notice where she was standing, boss."
According to Dixter's files, the guard had been standing right in the path the "ghosts" had taken to enter the sealed vault. Sagan reran the report, time and again, matched it with his own instrument readings.
Xris: "The first we know we're being invaded, the motion detectors inside the house start registering movement. Like you see there."
Sagan's own motion detectors had picked up movement inside the spaceplane.
Xris: "A drop in barometric pressure—in certain areas only— and a corresponding movement of the air in places where no air should be moving."
Sagan's instruments registered the same.
Xris: "The thing moved too damn fast. It made it safely to the house, slid right through a fortified exterior wall that could withstand a direct hit from a lascannon and not buckle. Nothing stopped it. Nothing even phased it, apparently."
It had passed through the hull of a spaceplane—not a plane intended for combat, admittedly, but one meant to withstand the rigors of space travel.
Xris: ". . . We registered an increase in the radiation level around the vault. Not much. But enough to make us suspicious, especially tracing the path the thing took. We examined the vault's superstructure. There'd been an alteration in the metal itself, a chemical change, enough to generate radioactivity. And only in that one place, directly in line with the path."
Sagan examined the plane's superstructure, the console's, the nightstand on which the breviary rested. An increase in radioactivity.
Xris: "The bomb was moved."
Dixter: "Moved?"
Xris: "Jostled, handled. Not much—a fraction of a fraction of a centimeter before it vanished. But enough to set off the alarm."
And the book had moved. Another man might have doubted his own senses, told himself he was seeing things, but Sagan had no such self-doubts. He had trained himself to be observant, had trained himself to trust those observations once he'd analyzed them. He knew he hadn't been seeing things. Ghostly hands had touched that book. The same ghostly hands that had touched the fake bomb.
The same ghostly hands that had, apparently, touched him. He was beginning to get a faint glimmer of what might have happened to the space probes.
He took his seat in- the pilot's chair. The plane was now within instrument range of the planet. Whatever was going to happen should happen now. He was either going to be permitted to find out the truth ... or he was going to be stopped.
Sagan waited, alert, tense. He was not particularly fearful. Whatever it was, whoever it was, wanted him here. He had, in a sense, received an invitation to this party. But there was always the chance (however slight) that he had miscalculated, misjudged this person, the entire situation. It could be that the Warlord was wanted . .
. wanted out of the way.
And here he was, in an unarmed spaceplane. It didn't even have any shields. Although from what he'd seen (or not seen) of these "ghosts," shields were not likely to offer any protection.
He was well within range. His instruments were picking up and recording data on the planet known as Vallombrosa. Nothing had happened to him. He stood up, roamed about the small plane, returned to the galley. In his preoccupation, he'd let the tea steep too long. It was bitter. He poured it out, started to make another pot. Glancing over at his instruments, studying the preliminary findings, he smiled grimly, nodded.
He was being given the chance to draw aside the curtain, to open the lid on the box. He was being given the chance to see the truth.
Vallombrosa was itself deserted. But there was life, life that was not on the planet. Space stations circled it, huge space stations, each probably capable of housing thousands of people.
A Valley of Ghosts that was really quite lively.
And then Sagan, drinking his tea, noticed the anomaly.
The planet was unusually dense, far denser than it should have been, according to calculations based on its size and composition. The gravitational gradient was also way off. Surface gravity was noticeably higher than that of a planet of compara-ble size. What was more interesting, the gravity was fluctuating wildly. The gravity around a planet such as this should have been relatively even, smooth, with only occasional variations created by the flow of magma beneath the surface. By contrast, the gravity around this planet was erratic, dipping and surging like a storm-tossed sea.
Sagan ran more computations, double-checking his data. He had no doubt. Information on this anomaly was the material Pantha had originally entered in his log.
It was also the information he had deleted. The explorer had lied, deliberately falsified the records. He had made the planet appear ordinary, less than ordinary. He had made no mention of the anomaly.
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