by Hogan, James
pressed the sacred button, and stabbing his finger upward, threw back his head.
"IN THE NAME OF THE LIFEMAKER, I COMMAND THE SKIES—OPEN AND DELIVER THY
WONDERS!"
Every face in the square tilted upward to peer at the heavens. Some of those
present were screaming. Some had collapsed into unconsciousness. The Enlightener
stood poised, waiting, still pointing at the sky. The crowd could see the
irresistible compulsion burning in his eyes, and feel the cosmic force streaming
from his outstretched finger. The moment was crushing, terrifying, overpowering.
They were inextricably a part of it now, and being swept along helplessly in a
flood tide of rising, swirling, passion and emotion. They watched, and waited.
They howled. They shouted.
And then, very suddenly, a silence descended and spread to cover the square from
one side to the other as completely as had the excitement only moments before.
All at once, seemingly, everyone had noticed that nothing was happening. All the
heads tilted back down and looked at each other quizzically. The Enlightener's
image evaporated, and all that was left where he had stood was a foolish-looking
mystic holding a peculiar vegetable in the air. He lowered the vegetable and
jabbed at it frantically, still looking upward with a pleading expression on his
face. He shook his head in disbelief and tried again.
"Well?" a voice asked from somewhere.
"He's just a fake," someone else murmured, sounding disgusted.
"He was lying. Nothing but a fraud."
"He speaks for no Lifemaker."
"Blasphemer!" another voice shouted, sounding angrier now.
"Where art thy angels, O Enlightener?" someone called out mockingly.
"They are walking here like us, for are not all beings equal?" a voice answered,
and another laughed. More laughter began to rise up from all sides. A blob of
thick, black grease flew out of the crowd and squelched on the Enlightener's
cloak. A piece of partly decomposed fuel cell followed, then a lump of organic
goo from one of the stalls, and within seconds the Enlightener was being pelted
down from the platform while the air filled with hoots, boos, and shouts of
derision.
"Here—give this to thy angels!"
"Did Kleippur send thee to make mockery of Kroaxia's soldiers?"
"Carthogian agent! Spy!"
"Why do thy angels not rescue thee?"
"He has seen no angels!"
"I'll believe it when I see our soldiers at the city gates."
"Yes—and proclaiming that the Carthogians are their brothers!"
"Blasphemer! Profaner! Execute him!"
The sound of heavy footsteps crashing in unison came from the rear, and the
crowd parted to make way for a detachment of the Palace Guard, led by a major
wearing the red sash of Frennelech's handpicked household elite. The outer files
fanned out to form a cordon in front of the crowd, and the remainder followed
the major through to where the Enlightener was standing, stained and disheveled
with a stunned expression on his face. "You are under arrest on charges of
blasphemy, heresy, incitement to riot, sedition, and high treason," the major
announced. He turned his head to address the captain at the head of the squad
behind. "Seize him!"
Angry murmurs broke out and rose to a roar as the Enlightener was hustled away,
too bewildered to hear any of the words. At the end of the street that led into
the square from the direction of the Holy Palace, he found himself looking
suddenly into the face of Frennelech, who had been watching from the window of
his carriage. The High Priest shook his head reproachfully. "Tch! Tch! You
really should have given yourself more time to get the hang of it," he said.
"And now we'll have to drop you into an acid vat to prove to everyone that my
Lifemaker is more powerful than your Lifemaker. In some ways it's such a shame
because I do believe you really were sincere. It just goes to show, my
friend—you can't trust every angel that you meet." He nodded to the guard
commander, and the Enlightener was led away.
"I've been thinking," Jaskillion said from the seat next to Frennelech.
The High Priest turned his head away from the window curiously. "Oh, really?
What?"
"Perhaps we're being unduly pessimistic about this whole matter of the Lumians'
disposition. That mystic has clearly been deceived and betrayed. Could not the
Lumians' act of delivering Eskenderom's intended replacement for thee into our
hands in this fashion be meant as a signal to convey their decision? Our
previous conclusion could well have been mistaken."
"What an attractive notion," Frennelech agreed. "We will investigate it further
. . . But first, let us avail ourselves of the opportunity that Eskenderom's
absence presents to ensure a permanent end to all further problems from this
scheme of his. Summon Rekashoba, the Prosecutor, as soon as we get back to the
palace, and let us get rid of this 'Enlightener' now, once and for all, while we
still have the chance to do so without interference."
In the lander parked in the steep-sided valley to the north of Padua city, the
indicator lamp on the Communications Officer's console had stopped signaling.
First it had blinked once; then, after a pause of several seconds, it had
flashed on and off in a frantic burst which had seemed to shriek the desperation
of the robot pressing the transmit button just over two hundred miles away.
After that there had been another pause, then two or three shorter sequences of
flashes. Since then, nothing.
Hank Frazer reached out a hand and flipped a switch to turn off the panel. "I
guess that's about it," he said in a dull voice.
Nobody else said a word. After a long stillness, Zambendorf got up from his seat
and walked slowly into the main cabin.
34
DANIEL LEAHERNEY SPOKE FROM A SCREEN IN THE AFT COMMUNICATIONS cabin of the
surface lander parked at Padua Base, which was located in a bare, ice-covered
valley among the hills east of the city. "I hope I didn't interrupt at an
inconvenient time, Caspar, but we have some good news that I wanted to give you
personally."
"That's okay," Lang said, standing before the console in a helmetless EV suit.
"I was due for a coffee break anyway. What's the news?"
"Latest from the reconnaissance drones over Padua city: Zambendorf's messiah
showed up in the middle of town about two hours ago."
"Two hours ago!"
"Yes—we had a slight communications hitch up here. The message fell down a crack
on its way to me. I called you as soon as I found out."
Lang nodded. "Okay. So ... what happened?"
"He drew a big crowd, but there were no miracles."
"Zambendorf didn't show?"
"Uh-uh."
"And?"
"Flopso—even better than we hoped. The troops arrived and hauled his messiah
away. I guess our main problem just got solved."
Lang was beginning to grin as the full meaning sank in completely. "Yeah . - .
yeah, I guess it just did, Dan. Well, how about that! I guess Zambendorf really
went for the missile story, huh?"
"It sure looks like it. I don't mind telling you now though, Caspar, I t
hought
it was a long shot—but I have to hand it to you: You had every one of them
figured. Maybe we should retire Gerry Massey and make you the psychologist."
"They don't get paid enough," Lang said.
Leaherney grinned briefly, and then his expression became serious again. "So how
are things going with Henry down there?"
"Pretty much as we expected," Lang replied. "He's still sore about what happened
to his invasion, but I don't think we'll have too much trouble straightening
that out now. As I said, a week from now we'll be back on the right track."
"Well, I hope you're right. I'll let you get on, then, I guess. Sorry to drag
you away, but as I said, I just wanted to tell you the news
personally—especially after the delay."
"That's okay, Dan. Thanks for the thought. I'll talk to you later."
Inside the cavern of the Lumian flying vehicle, Eskenderom paced irascibly over
to the huge, opened door, and stopped for a moment to glower out at the other
two vehicles and the temporary Lumian shelters huddled together against a
background of barren hills and stark rock. Then he turned and stamped back to
where Monnorel, the royal counselor, was standing a short distance away from the
table at which General Streyfoch and the three Lumians were sitting on opposite
sides of the talking Lumian plant.
"Our whole army, disarmed and vanquished without a fight . . . babbling nonsense
about being the Carthogians' brothers and returning to Kroaxia?" Eskenderom
fumed. "What kind of bungling oafs of aliens are these? Within two brights of
promising us invincibility, they have succeeded in rendering us impotent beyond
Kleippur's wildest dreams. Are they in league with Carthogia, therefore, or
afflicted with such crass incompetence that the only thing miraculous about them
is that any of their flying constructions should ever leave the ground? Am I
betrayed by deceivers or undone by fools?"
"It would be as much an error to assume a unity of purpose among all Lumians as
among all robeings, it appears," Monnorel replied. "Our army was intercepted by
a rogue band of Lumian criminals, whose actions were not sanctioned by the
Lumian king. They have gone into hiding and are being hunted."
"One tiny band of criminals can confound a whole army? Are these aliens unable
to maintain discipline among their own kind?"
"Perhaps their criminals have access to the same powers as their artisans,"
Monnorel suggested.
Eskenderom snorted, paced away a few steps, and then wheeled back again. "What
of the identity of this so-called miracle-worker that they used?" he demanded.
"Is there news of that?"
"Not as yet," Monnorel confessed. "But it appears he was brought from Carthogia,
where similar events are reported to have taken place among the Waskorians."
"So now the truth begins to emerge," Eskenderom said darkly. "Kroaxia has not
been favored by special considerations as we were led to believe. While one
faction of Lumians brings aid to me, another is supporting Kleippur. What result
can this bring but the destruction of both our realms? Is that the goal of the
strategy which these incomprehensible Lumians are unfolding? If so we should
unite all the nations of Robia against them and at least perish honorably."
"I think not," Monnorel said. "I believe them when they say that what happened
in the Meracasine was as much a surprise to them as it was to us. I say we must
trust them."
"I too," General Streyfoch advised from the table. "We cannot risk being
deprived of Lumian weapons if there is a possibility that Kleippur has acquired
them. We must hope Monnorel is right, and trust the Lumians."
Eskenderom scowled and moved back to the cavern door. He didn't know whom to
believe or what to make of the situation. Kleippur had trusted in the Lumians,
and as soon as they found it expedient, they had deserted him and commenced
dealing with Kroaxia—or so Eskenderom had been told. But now that there could be
no further concealing of the fact that some Lumians had continued to deal with
Carthogia all along, the "official" Lumians were asking him to believe that the
ones talking to Kleippur were nothing more than a band of criminals that nobody
had known about. But the Lumians had eyes everywhere and knew everything. So had
they been merely distracting Eskenderom while their king treated with Kleippur,
and deliberately leading him on into launching the invasion so that his army
could be lured out into the Meracasine and destroyed?
The other possibility that Eskenderom had to consider was that the villain
behind everything was not Kleippur at all, but Frennelech, who, as Eskenderom
knew from his spies, had been meeting secretly and treacherously with Lumians in
the forests west of Pergassos. It would not be to Frennelech's advantage to
allow either Kleippur or Eskenderom to grow too strong by inflicting a crushing
defeat upon the other, and his motives would be compatible both with his
original endorsement of the decision to invade Carthogia—thus sustaining a state
of tension between the two rulers—and with plotting subsequently to make sure
the Kroaxian army was incapacitated to prevent its carrying out the task.
But what could Frennelech have offered the Lumians in return for their
assistance? Presumably only the potential that his office gave him for inducing
the robeing population to tame the forests—which seemed to be the Lumians' only
objective. Surely, however, Eskenderom told himself, it would be the Lumian king
who would want the forests tamed, not these alleged criminals, which again led
him to the conclusion that no band of criminals existed and that the Lumians
aiding his rival—in this case Frennelech—were therefore the Lumian king's
official representatives.
So either way, it seemed to Eskenderom—whether the "Enlightener" was the product
of Lumians working with Kleippur or with Frennelech —the aliens were committed
to getting rid of him. He didn't know why, for he had agreed to everything they
had asked. If he had been put to some test of weakness and failed, the verdict
was unjust, for how could robeings be expected to abide by the intricate rules
of conduct of a remote, incomprehensible, alien world that none of them had ever
seen?
At the makeshift conference table that had been set up in the lander's open
cargo bay, Sharon Beatty, the transmogrifier operator assigned from Leon
Keyhoe's staff, was using the lull to tidy up her computer-file notes of the
proceedings to the point where Lang had excused himself to take a call from
Leaherney inside the ship. During the last couple of hours of Terran-Taloid
exchanges, she had learned that Henry was furious because his army had been
turned around and was returning to Padua instead of invading Genoa, and Giraud
was denying official responsibility and blaming Zambendorf and his people, who
for some reason or other were hiding out down on Titan with a stolen surface
lander.
Sharon had never been sure why Zambendorf should have been included in the
mission, and she found it disturbing that so many seemingly intelligent and
rational people should ha
ve either the time or the inclination to take his
antics seriously. After traveling one billion miles to Saturn in the largest
spacecraft ever built and sharing the excitement of her fellow scientists at the
staggering discoveries on Titan, she had had more interesting things to do than
pay much attention to Gerold Massey's concerns about the sociological
implications of the mission's purpose, or Dave Crookes' attempts to recruit her
as a political activist. She had seen enough of crusades and causes while she
was at college, and wasted too much of her time and energy on them. Now she had
more worthwhile things to attend to. If more people only felt the same way, all
the Zambendorfs would long ago have been put out of business.
"Miami Beach," Seltzman was saying to Giraud on one of the local frequencies.
"Just imagine it, Charles—liquid water, all blue; a real, full-disk, golden sun;
palm trees; and a hundred degrees in the shade, without an EV suit. What would
you give for that?"
"Hmm, it sounds wonderful," Giraud's voice answered. "But if it's all the same
to you, Konrad, I think I'd take Cannes or St. Tropez."
"Aw, okay. Who cares? From this distance it's all the same place anyhow."
"What do you think the Taloids would say to it?"
"Not much. Did you know that some parts of them are made from solid mercury?
They'd melt in your refrigerator back home."
"No, I didn't. Would they really? That's amazing!"
Lang's voice added itself to the conversation suddenly. "Charles, this is
Caspar. I'm inside the forward-bay lock now—be back out there in a few seconds.
Has anything new been happening?"
"No. We decided to take a break too," Giraud answered. "What did Dan want?"
The outer door of the airlock at the front end of the bay slid open, and Lang
emerged. Even in his bulky suit, his step seemed brisk and jubilant as he came
over to the table. At the same time Henry, who had been standing at the cargo
doors, staring out at whatever Taloids saw in the darkness, turned and came back
to rejoin the group. "It's all over with Zambendorf!" Lang announced. "His
messiah was arrested in Padua city about two hours ago. Zambendorf didn't appear
anywhere." He grinned through the faceplate of his helmet. "Maybe something
happened that made him nervous about flying all of a sudden."
