by Fritz Leiber
And now the solidographic Armon Jarles began to grimace at him with cruel cynicism. It must be—could only be—a prolonging of some fleeting expression they had searched out in some moving solidograph of him. But he hated it. He closed his eyes against it.
Swiftly an instrument was adjusted around his head. He felt a moderate, adhesive pressure on his eyelids. They were gently forced open. At regular intervals the instrument imposed upon his eyelids a slow mechanical wink.
"We have no desire to torture you," came Brother Dhomas' voice across a lull in the auditory sensations. "Pain would provide a core round which you could concentrate your personality. We desire to disperse it."
Jarles could still look away from the hated portrait of himself, but that did not keep him from seeing it dimly in the periphery of the retina—laughing, grimacing at him, and always talking.
And then once again repressed thoughts and memories began to slide from the inner darkness. And now they were all of a sort—anti-idealistic. They seemed to be marshaled like an army. The thoughts he clutched at, to use against them, melted away. Until he found the master thought—his belief in freedom and equal sharing, his hatred of all tyranny. And that thought, though its particular form of expression kept changing, did not vanish. It held the others at bay.
Again a lull in the sensory barrage, and Brother Dhomas speaking over it.
"What is idealism? It is distortion. A giving of false values to things which in reality do not possess those values. Personalities differ chiefly in their pattern of values. When the values are largely false, the personality is unstable."
Back then, into the churning inward darkness. Back once again, to the struggle against the forces of anti-idealism. Freedom and equality were right! But why? Why did man deserve them more than any other animal? Because man was a higher form of life? But to be higher only meant to be more complex, and what virtue was there in complexity? Why should all men deserve freedom and equality? Why not just a few? It was wholly arbitrary. The whole concept of deserving was an idealistic fiction. One either had something or hadn't it. One either wanted something or didn't want it. There was no such thing as deserving something.
Frantically Jarles strove to reanimate the concepts in which he had always believed. When this type of reasoning had perplexed him before, he had always sought refuge in anger—in hatred of oppression. But now his emotions were no longer his own. The cleansing flood of anger would not come. And a dry, dead world of facts and forces confronted him.
With an effort he called to mind individual commoners whom he had seen suffer, whom he had sympathized with, whom he had yearned to help. But now they seemed merely grotesque physiological machines. They did not move him.
Like a retreating soldier, then, he dashed from point of cover to point of cover, only to see each protection dissolve as he reached it.
His mother and father. They were heartless beasts who had betrayed him. It would be pleasant to watch them die.
Cousin Deth. He hated Cousin Deth desperately. But why? Cousin Deth was a sensible man, ever obedient to reality, ever solicitous about his own appetites. True, Cousin Deth did not like you. But no one liked you. There was no such thing as disinterested affection. Only hungry self-interest.
The New Witchcraft. Yes, it would be well to be in with them—if they won out. But they were warped with idealism. They wouldn't win out.
Sharlson Naurya. He loved her. That love couldn't be destroyed. It was something he could cling to. Almost he could see her. He loved her. He wanted her. And if she could be persuaded, or forced, to enter the sisterhood, he'd be able to have her.
The Hierarchy. There, at last, was real security. But for some reason he should consider it the wrong sort of security. What was the reason? He couldn't remember.
The Hierarchy. Like some great golden sun it rose in his mind, dazzling him.
Then that golden light become a blinding, searing flame. There was an ear-splitting, deafening roar of sound. As if he had become the center of an explosion that shook the whole cosmos. An explosion that roared down every channel of sensation in his body, ripping his nerves with its awful intensity, destroying him.
Then, utter darkness of all senses.
Then, return from darkness.
He was still in the same room. Still in the same padded chair. Brother Dhomas was still staring at him.
Nothing had changed.
What had Brother Dhomas been going to do? Change his personality? But he hadn't! He was still Brother Jarles. The old fool had failed!
Of course he was Brother Jarles, priest of the First Circle—but he wouldn't stay there long! Let's see, the Fourth Circle was the one to aim at—the circle of promotion. The Third and Fifth were largely blind alleys.
Of course he was Brother Jarles. Faithful servant of the Hierarchy, because any fool knew that was the best way to feather your own nest. Cousin Deth was his friend—that is, Cousin Deth was willing to favor him. And anyone whom Deth favored would go far.
Then came memory, like a blow. Incredulously, painfully, he remembered.
So Brother Dhomas hadn't really failed. His personality had been changed.
Unwillingly, with the acutest shame and embarrassment, he recalled that other, former Armon Jarles.
What an utter—what a contemptible, namby-pamby, sugary fool that other Armon Jarles had been!
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Chapter 11
Brother Chulian was afraid of the man on the bed. He watched him with an almost painful intensity.
True, the man was presumably unconscious, had been since his capture. And so badly injured that an artificial heart was needed to supplement his own. Chulian could watch the blood coursing through the transparent tubes.
Hierarchic medical science was able to accelerate the process of healing to an amazing degree, but not by any stretch of sane possibility could that man move from his couch for many hours.
Still Chulian was afraid of him. For the man was a witch—or should one say warlock? At all events, a potent somebody in the Inner Witchcraft. And Chulian had had too many recent experiences with the powers of the Witchcraft. That abominable couch! He still couldn't sleep decently.
Those powers were outside the bounds of sane possibility.
Of course, the higher priests said they weren't. The majority of the higher priests maintained that those powers were just clever scientific trickery, engineered by an enemy of the Hierarchy. That point of view was being constantly dinned into the lesser priests these days. There were special meetings devoted to the subject. The higher priests promised that the Hierarchy would soon destroy the enemy. It only delayed to study the enemy and perfect preparations. Meanwhile the lesser priests should look on all phantasms with complete skepticism—and turn in detailed reports of them.
How much more helpful, wistfully mused Chulian, if the Hierarchy could announce that the Great God, in his supernatural omnipotence, had decided to smite the hosts of Sathanas. Only there wasn't any Great God. But how comforting it would be if there were!
A priest of the Third Circle came in, examined the man on the bed, took readings from indicators attached to the artificial extension of his circulatory system, and left without speaking to Chulian.
How mean of Cousin Deth to have given him this job!
But what could Brother Chulian do? By gradual stages, quite against his will, he had become a member of the entourage of Cousin Deth. And behind Cousin Deth loomed the awesomely powerful archpriest Goniface. After always having tried to avoid it, Chulian had become enmeshed in Hierarchic politics.
Temperamentally Chulian was with the Moderates. He once had heard the archpriest Frejeris speak, and he had never forgotten the experience. A large handsome man, calm as a statue. He had given Chulian a very comfortable and safe feeling.
Still, Chulian had to admit he didn't find the present policy of the Moderates very satisfying, with its minimizing of the danger represented by the Witchcraft. If they'
d gone through what he had, they wouldn't minimize that danger! The Realists had the right idea there!
There was a faint sound, as if someone were clearing his throat. The man on the bed had opened his eyes, and was watching Chulian.
As consciousness ebbed back into the Black Man, his first thought was one that eddied up on the tide of consciousness from the depths of the subconscious—anxiety for Dickon. Without fresh blood, his little brother could survive for three days at the most.
Anxiously, he thought a message: "Are you there, Dickon?" Then he blanked his mind and waited.
Slowly, on the blank, a reply etched itself.
"Dickon is in the wind tubes. Dickon is very weak. Poor Dickon. But Dickon can see you."
Wind tubes? Ventilators! There must be an outlet in this room.
He thought: "Why can't you come to me?"
Hesitatingly—he could tell that his little brother's brain was dizzy with fatigue poisons—the reply came through.
"Dickon would like to come. He is in the mouth of a wind tube leading into your room. But there is always a priest in the room. It would be wrong for Dickon to take the slightest chance of a priest seeing him. You know that, brother.
"Dickon has been waiting here for a whole day. Poor, poor Dickon. He had a hard time getting here. He lost touch with his brother's mind more than once. Dickon wants you to tell him what to do, brother."
The Black Man thought: "Where is the priest?"
"If you turn a little to the left, you will see him. He is not looking at Dickon's brother now."
Carefully, very carefully, and noiselessly, the Black Man rotated his head until he could see Brother Chulian. The fat priest seemed lost in some worried, mournful meditation.
He thought: "Have you enough energy to move swiftly for a little while, Dickon?"
"Dickon has still a few suppers of fresh blood in his sac. By sitting very quietly, Dickon has husbanded them."
"Good! This priest is an easy one to scare. Without showing yourself, scare him so that he runs out of the room. I will hold his attention while you slip in."
"Afterward may Dickon come to his brother?"
"Yes."
The Black Man cleared his throat. He did not know yet if he could speak. One lung seemed wholly out of commission.
With a start, Brother Chulian looked up at him.
"I am a servant of Sathanas," said the Black Man. He spoke in a feeble, wheezy whisper.
"You are an enemy of the Great God," Chulian finally replied, with a kind of uneasy diplomacy.
The Black Man twisted his numb lips into what he hoped was a wicked smile.
"Who fears the Great God?" he whispered. "The Great God is without authority. He was created by Sathanas in order that men might have hope and so struggle more amusingly against evil and terror and death."
"Nevertheless, you are a prisoner of the Hierarchy," Chulian finally asserted, unconsciously flicking his robe, as if something had lightly touched his thigh.
"Yes," whispered the Black Man ominously. "And I am amazed that you have dared to offer me indignity. Release me at once, or I will do you an injury."
Again Chulian flicked unconsciously at his robe, all his attention momentarily concentrated on the Black Man.
"You can't move from that bed," he said, with an uneasy insistence. "You can't leave this room. And you can't possibly hurt me."
"So?" whispered the Black Man, smiling, for the first smile had seemed to bother Chulian. "Even now I stretch forth invisible hands toward you. Even now they are upon you."
With a squeal, Chulian shot up from the stool.
Chulian rubbed his thigh, staring with a frightened suspiciousness first at the Black Man and then at the stool. Abruptly, as though he knew he would lose his nerve if he hesitated, he picked up the stool and turned it over.
Reassured in one sense, Chulian replaced the stool and seated himself.
Instantly the pinch was repeated.
With a squeal that was now one of terror, Chulian sprang up, crazily waving his arms about to fend off the invisible hands. Darting one last terrified glance at the Black Man, he fled from the room.
The Black Man heard Dickon pattering toward the bed. Over the edge appeared a red-furred paw, the fingers clawed, the palm suctorial. (It was those palms which had enabled Dickon to cling always to the opposite side when Chulian had turned over the stool.)
Slowly and laboriously now, for the familiar had suddenly come to the end of its strength—the Black Man could sense dazed exhaustion via the quality of the vague telepathic impulses—the little creature pulled itself up into view.
It was like a spider monkey, but with a much smaller torso and far skinnier. Downy, reddish fur covered what seemed the merest outline or sketch of an animal—a tracery of pipestem bones and ribbonlike muscles. The incarnation of fragile nimbleness, though at the moment sluggish with exhaustion. The head was more like a lemur's, with large, peering eyes, now filmed and groggy.
A wraithlike, elfish thing.
But for the Black Man, the sight of it woke a pang of deep affection and kinship. He knew why its reddish fur was the same shade as his own hair, why its high-foreheaded, noseless face looked like a caricature of his own.
He knew it, loved it, as his brother. More than his brother. Flesh of his flesh.
He welcomed it as it crept feebly to his side and applied its strange mouth to his skin. And as he felt the suction and faint pricking, and knew it was drawing fresh blood from him and simultaneously discharging vitiated blood into his venous capillaries, he experienced a dreamy gratification.
"Drink deep, little brother," he thought. "This is on the Hierarchy, little brother. They must have transfused a lot of blood into me to maintain that artificial heart. So drink especially deep."
He felt suddenly very sleepy and weak. The discharge of deoxygenated blood from Dickon aggravated his faintness.
As in a dream he sensed Dickon's thought: "Dickon grows strong now, brother. Dickon feels strong enough to take a message to the end of the world, if Dickon's brother desires him to."
Good Dickon.
There were hurrying footsteps outside. But before the Black Man could think the warning thought, Dickon sprang swiftly away and out of sight.
"Dickon returns to the wind tubes, brother. Think out the message you want Dickon to take. Dickon will listen for it."
Through a haze of weariness, the Black Man heard the sneering voice of Cousin Deth inquire, "And just where are the hands that clutched you so irreverently, your reverence? Would you take the trouble to show them to me? Oh, but I was forgetting—you said they were invisible. Are they still pinching you, your reverence? I am all solicitude."
Then Brother Chulian's shrill reply. "I tell you, he touched me! He looked at me, he spoke to me, and then invisibly touched me!"
"How rude of him!" observed the sarcastic voice. "I fear I shall have to give the job of watching him to a less sensitive person. Oh, I believe he touched you invisibly all right. He touched your mind—with suggestion, hypnotism. The witches are very clever with such things."
The voice grew louder, until the Black Man, in his semiconscious daze, realized that Cousin Deth must be looking down at him.
"But I wonder how much his cleverness will count when he is well enough to go to Brother Dhomas."
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Chapter 12
It had been market day in Megatheopolis, and usually on market day the Great Square did not empty until almost curfew. But now the commoners were packing up and hurrying home before sunset. Business had gone halfheartedly. Thought of the coming night had taken the zest out of trading.
There had been an invisible merchant moving among them, who gave away his wares free. His name was Terror.
Who dared go home by twilight and risk meeting one of those great, gray, red-eyed beasts which last night had prowled and snuffed through all the alleyways? Or chance having his way home cut off by such a creeping dar
kness as had driven a patrol of deacons to seek refuge in the dwelling of a commoner? Umder Chohn the Smith, at whose home it had happened, said the deacons had been more frightened than himself.
Everyone had some horror or wonder to tell and whispers had passed more swiftly than trade goods. Several swore they had seen angels—"great winged ones with glowing faces"—indicating that the Great God was at last taking some interest in the trials and tribulations of his creatures. But this reassurance was more than counterbalanced by a set of ugly and disturbing rumors which hinted that the priests themselves were not immune to the general terror.
These latter rumors penetrated everywhere, though whispered with sidewise glances to make sure no priest or deacon was in earshot. How a priest had fled screaming from a service in one of the lesser chapels because something invisible had clutched his throat as he preached. How a group of commoners, returning at night from their work in the fields, had been deserted by the priest who was supposed to escort them and protect them from the forces of evil. How a child had died of the Choking Sickness before dawn, because no Third Circle priest would come from the Sanctuary.
There were other indications that the Hierarchy itself was afraid. For two days now bands of rural priests had been trickling into Megatheopolis. Some said they were come for a religious festival. But others maintained in guarded whispers that they were seeking the protection afforded by the Grand Sanctuary. This was confirmed by the farmers who came to market. The farmers asserted—they were a little more outspoken than townsfolk—that many of the rural sanctuaries were deserted and that work in the fields was coming to a standstill.
Traders come by muleback or cart from the nearer cities said that the minions of Sathanas were at work in those cities, too. They were not a little disconcerted to find Megatheopolis similarly besieged.
Sathanas laughed. Earth shook. And the Great God took no heed.
So it came that an argument circulated with the tales of priestly cowardice.
