by Hogan, James
anyone attributed any such statement to the accused. Instead we are assured, by
accused and accuser alike, merely of a question's being asked. Since a question
cannot of itself presume its own answer, nothing that may rightfully be judged
as heresy can have been stated."
Some of the Council priests were looking at each other questioningly while
others were muttering among themselves. It sounded as if at least some of them
were seeing the issue in a new perspective. Encouraged and feeling a spark of
genuine hope for the first time, Thirg set down his cap, made a brief gesture of
appeal, and went on, "Further, I would, with the Court's approval, offer not a
third alternative to the two presented in the learned Prosecutor's proof by
logic—for he has assured us that no third possibility exists—but rather the
suggestion that the second alternative may be seen, upon closer inspection, to
divide itself into two subtler variations, namely: Either the world is round, or
the anecdotes of travelers cannot be relied upon. Thus, by offering a manifest
absurdity as one of the possible answers for his students to choose, the
teacher's question is revealed as a cryptic lesson on the reliability of faith
as a guide to truth as opposed to the evidence of the senses, when the two are
found to be in conflict."
Some of the priests were looking impressed, and even Frennelech's expression
seemed to have softened a fraction. Thirg concluded, "My final observation is
that in his capacity as an assistant to the Royal Surveyor, the accused renders
valuable service to His Sup—" Thirg caught a pained look from Frennelech and
emended, "to the nation of Kroaxia, which is of especial importance at a time
such as this, when we are threatened by foreign enemies. If the Lifemaker in His
wisdom has seen fit to send us a competent maker of maps and charts, we would be
well advised, in my humble submission, to think carefully before dispatching His
gift back to Him unused."
With that, Thirg sat down and found that he was shaking. The Council went into
further deliberation, and after much murmuring and head-wagging, Frennelech
quieted the chamber and announced, "The verdict of the Council is that the
accused stands guilty of irresponsibility, irreverence, and impiety to a degree
inexcusable of a common citizen, and criminally indictable for a teacher." He
paused. "The charge of heresy, however, is not substantiated." Lofbayel swayed
on his feet and cried out aloud with relief. Excited murmurs rippled round the
chamber, while Rekashoba turned angrily away and Horazzorgio looked at Thirg
venomously. Frennelech continued, "The Council has accepted a motion for
leniency, and the sentence of this Court is that the accused be fined to the
amount of one-quarter of his possessions; that the accused shall serve two
brights of penance and recantation in a public place; and that the accused be
banned permanently from all practice of teaching, writing of materials for
public distribution, all other means of disseminating ideas, thoughts, or
opinions in public, and all forms of activity associated therewith. The session
is now ended."
"The Court will rise," the Warden ordered. Everyone stood while Frennelech rose
from his seat, turned, and swept from the chamber, followed by two attendants
and the acolyte. After a respectful pause the other Council members filed out in
silent dignity. Lofbayel nodded numbly but managed to send the ghost of a
grateful smile in Thirg's direction as he was led away. Voices and murmurs broke
out all around, and the remaining attendees broke up and began to drift toward
the doors individually or in small groups.
On one side of the chamber Horazzorgio moved closer to Rekashoba, who was
gathering up his documents while he watched Thirg disappear among the figures
crowded outside the doorway. "Who is he?" Rekashoba asked in a low, menacing
voice. "What do you know of him?"
"But little, I fear," Horazzorgio answered. "He lives well away from the city,
at the upper edge of the forest below the mountains. But I have heard talk of
his proclivity for dabbling in Black Arts and sorcery. I will make inquiries."
"Do so," Rekashoba growled. "And have him watched. Get every shred of evidence
you can find against him. We must make certain that all the eloquence in the
world will not save him from the vats when he stands accused before the
Council."
6
KARL ZAMBENDORF HAD BEEN BORN IN THE NORTH AUSTRIAN city of Werfen in 1967 as
Karl Zammerschnigg, the third of a family of three brothers and two sisters
whose father was a hard-working bookkeeper and whose mother, a teacher. At a
comparatively early age he had made the disturbing discovery that his parents,
though honest, intelligent, industrious, and exemplary in the various other
virtues that were supposed to earn just reward, would never be as wealthy as he
thought they deserved, nor would their labors earn any public recognition or
acclaim. He gradually came to perceive this anomaly as simply a part of the
larger conspiracy of systematic self-deception practiced by society in general,
which while dutifully praising knowledge and learning, lavished riches and fame
not on its thinkers, creators, and producers, but on those who helped it to
defend its prejudices and sustain its fantasies. Knowledge, if the truth were
admitted—which was rarely the case—was in fact the enemy; it threatened to
explode the myths upon which the prejudices and the fantasies were based.
He left home at the age of nineteen and teamed up with a Russian defector who
was causing a small stir in Europe by claiming to have been a subject of
top-secret Soviet military experiments in psychic perception. Over the following
few years, which proved educational as well as profitable, young Zammerschnigg
came to recognize fully his own innate talents, and in the process discovered an
irresistible way to thumb his nose at the whole system of stylized rules and
artificial standards by which the drab, the dreary, the gullible, and the
conforming would have had him be like them. The Russian, however, was not
attuned to exploiting the opportunities afforded by commercialized Western
mass-media culture. So Zammerschnigg changed his name and embarked on his own
career with the aid of an influential West German magazine publisher. Within
five years Karl Zambendorf had become a celebrity.
His road to worldwide fame and fortune opened up in Hamburg when he was
introduced to Dr.—of what, was obscure—Osmond Periera from Arizona, a researcher
of the paranormal and a convinced UFOlogist who had written a number of
best-sellers claiming among other things that the roughly circular North Polar
Sea was in fact a gigantic crater caused by the crash of an anti-matter-powered
alien spacecraft; that the area had once been a continent harboring an advanced
human culture ("Polantis," not Atlantis—the legend had been distorted); and that
a polar shift and the climatic upheavals caused by the impact were at the root
of all kinds of ancient myths and legends. Ridicule from the scientific
community had merely reinforced Periera's lifelong ambition to go dow
n in
history as the Sigmund Freud of parapsychology; and after his "discovery" of
Zambendorf, he displayed the fervor and ecstasy of a wandering ascetic who had
at last found his guru. Whatever else his peculiarities, Periera's books had
made money, which meant he possessed the connections necessary to boost
Zambendorf to even higher orbits; accordingly, Zambendorf accepted an invitation
to accompany Periera back to the U.S.A.
The U. S. scientific community remained largely aloof and disinterested, and the
"experts" that Periera produced to vindicate his claims turned out to be from
its more credulous fringes. Zambendorf proceeded to divine information from
tamper-proof sealed envelopes, influence delicate electrical measuring
instruments by pure mind power, alter the decay rates of radioisotopes, read
thoughts, prophesy events, and perform many other wondrous feats which America's
professional dream merchants built into a world sensation. Zambendorf's
confidence grew with every new guffaw as "experts" tumbled in their
tumbril-loads.
He owed his success in no small degree to the loyalty of the odd collection of
individuals who had attached themselves to him over the years. He especially
depended on them for information-gathering, and a characteristic shared by all
the members of his team, despite their various differences, was an instinct for
information likely to be of value in Zambendorf's business and an ability to
acquire it, legally, ethically, and honestly ... or otherwise. Anticipating
future information needs was one of the team's never-ending activities.
The atmosphere by the pool outside Zambendorf's villa overlooking the Pacific
from the hills above Malibu was businesslike despite the setting as he,
Abaquaan, and Thelma discussed the latest status update forwarded from GSEC,
which among other things listed the people nominated so far to accompany the
Mars mission. "We'll need background histories and profiles on as many of those
names as we can get," Zambendorf said, propped on a sun-lounge by a table of
iced drinks and fruits. Thelma, wearing a beach-wrap over a bikini, sat taking
notes beneath a sunshade at another table littered with some of the books on
Mars, the history of planetary exploration, and NASO that she had been immersing
herself in for days. "Make a separate list of the scientists. Clarissa has some
useful contacts at most of the professional institutions—she can take care of
those."
"Okay . . . Okay . . . That's okay . . . And Clarissa to take care of the
scientists. I'll talk to her about it when she gets back tomorrow," Thelma
murmured, checking off the items on her pad. "What about the Europeans?"
"Umm . . ." Zambendorf thought for a few seconds. "You'd better leave them to
Otto and me." He turned his head to look inquiringly at Abaquaan, who was
sitting sideways on another lounge and sipping from a can of beer while he
listened. Abaquaan nodded curtly in reply, seemingly preoccupied with something
else. "Yes, we'll make some calls to Europe," Zambendorf confirmed. "But get
Drew to talk to his newspaper friends about those political people who might be
going. We shouldn't ignore sources like that." He looked at Abaquaan again.
"Does that cover the main points. Otto?"
"Except Massey," Abaquaan replied.
"Ah, yes," Zambendorf agreed breezily. "A fine mess you've got us into, Otto."
Abaquaan rolled his eyes upward in a silent plea for patience and ignored the
gibe. He had first expressed concern when the name Gerold J. Massey, nominated
by NASO as an "Observational Psychologist," appeared on the schedule. It implied
that somebody at NASO had decided things had gone too far and was wheeling up
the siege howitzers. Zambendorf went on, "However, you've got us into similar
fixes before, and we have always pulled through. The first thing we need to do
is make sure he's really there for the reasons you think he is."
Abaquaan threw up his hands. "To make sure? . . . Karl, we know why Massey's
there all right! One, he's a stage conjuror. Two, he's a debunker who takes
contracts against psi-operators. Three, he's worked for NASO before—remember the
headhunters from Long Beach who thought they could sell NASO that psychometric
testing crap? Four, Vernon Price is on the list too, and he works as Massey's
partner—I mean, hell, Karl, how much more do you want? He's going there to plant
a bomb with your name written across it in big letters."
"It sounds highly probable. But let's not make the mistake of overreacting to
speculation as if it were fact. In addition you have to admit: Five, the main
purpose of the mission has to do with psychological research. Six, he is a
psychologist. And seven, NASO has commissioned him to conduct purely scientific
studies before. So the nomination could be perfectly legitimate."
Abaquaan got up and paced over to the poolside to stand staring down at the
water. "What difference does it make?" he asked, turning back after a short
pause. "If you're there and he's there, he's not gonna miss out on the
opportunity anyhow. Whether NASO is officially sending him as a nut-watcher or
unofficially as something else is beside the point—if he can make trouble, he'll
make trouble."
"True, but how much will he be in a position to make?" Zambendorf replied,
waving his cigar. "Will he be acting individually, or will he be actively aided
by people inside NASO and the resources at their disposal? If it's just him and
Price, we could probably afford to take our chances; but if it's them plus NASO,
we'd be well advised to use as much help from GSEC as we can get. You see my
point—we have to know what to prepare for."
Abaquaan crushed the can he was holding and tossed it into a waste-basket.
Thelma leaned back in her chair and looked across at Zambendorf. "True," she
agreed. "But how are we supposed to find that out? NASO's hardly likely to make
a public statement about it."
Zambendorf didn't reply at once, but drew on his cigar and gazed distantly
across the pool. After a while, Abaquaan mused, half to himself, "Do the NASO
people just want to send a psychologist, or are they determined to send Massey?
If we knew the answer to that, it would tell us something. ... In fact it would
tell us a hell of a lot."
Another short silence ensued. Then Thelma said, "Suppose somebody came up with
some good reasons why Massey should be dropped from the mission and replaced by
someone else. ..."
"What reasons?" Abaquaan asked.
Thelma shrugged. "I don't know offhand, but that's a technicality. Since we
couldn't afford to be seen originating a demand like that, it would have to come
from GSEC—they've got enough lawyers and corporate politicians to think of
something."
"Even if they did, can you see NASO dropping Massey if that is what he's there
for?" Abaquaan sounded dubious.
"No, but that's the whole point," Thelma replied. "The way they react might tell
us what we want to know."
Abaquaan looked at Thelma curiously, seemed about to object for a moment, and
then turned his head away again to consider the idea further. A misc
hievous
twinkle had crept into Zambendorf's eyes as he lay back and savored the thought.
"Yes, why not, indeed?" he murmured. "Instead of being passive, we can lob a
little bomb of our own right into the middle of them, maybe ... As Thelma says,
it probably won't blow Massey overboard, but it might singe his beard a bit. So
we have to get the message across to GSEC somehow." Zambendorf took off his
sunglasses and began wiping them while he thought about ways of achieving that.
Thelma stretched out a leg and studied her toes. "One way might be through
Osmond," she suggested after a few seconds. "We could tell him, oh ... that in a
first-time situation like this, it would be advisable to keep disruptive
influences and other unknowns to a minimum until Karl's gained more experience
in the extraterrestrial environment . . . something like that?"
"And he'd persuade Hendridge, who'd take it to the GSEC Board," Abaquaan
completed. He sounded dubious. Zambendorf looked at him, and then over at
Thelma. They all shook their heads. None of them liked it. If the team wanted
its relationship with GSEC to be a partnership and not a dependency, it needed
to dissociate from Hendridge, not shelter behind him.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, it's obvious!" Zambendorf sat up and leaned across to
stub his cigar butt in the ashtray on the table. "We talk to Caspar Lang and
tell him that we both have a problem with Massey, and why. We've already agreed
that Lang's under no delusions concerning the true situation anyway. And if he's
going to Mars as GSEC's senior representative on the mission, then the sooner he
and we can start talking frankly and get to know each other, the better."
Two weeks passed before Walter Conlon received an internal notification through
NASO that GSEC had expressed concern over Massey's nomination for the Meridian!
Sinus mission. Specifically, GSEC was calling attention to Massey's record as a
skeptic and debunker of claims concerning paranormal phenomena, and to the fact
that Karl Zambendorf was accompanying the mission to test abilities of precisely
that nature. Although Massey's capacity was described as that of psychologist,
appointing someone with his known predispositions, GSEC suggested, would be
inviting the risk of his allowing personal interests to take precedence over
