Aftermath

by Charles Sheffield

  "You tried it?"

  "In the middle of the night. The guard was asleep on the floor. I'm afraid I trod on him. I guess I'm lucky he didn't shoot me."

  "No. He'd have to get somebody else to shoot you. But if we're villains, why were they playing the Mars music in our honor?"

  "I heard that. I thought I must be dreaming. If they're playing anything, though, it's on orders from Pearl Lazenby. They don't blink in this place without her approval."

  Celine sat on her cot. "If that music was played in all the corridors and tunnels, a lot of her followers will be wondering why."

  "As we are." Jenny sat down next to Celine. "She must have a plan. She wants to use us in some way."

  "Which would mean she intends to keep us, and not let us go."

  "I hope you're wrong." Jenny rubbed at her thigh muscles. "We're weaker than anyone here, and I don't think I could walk a kilometer in this gravity. But I want out. If Pearl Lazenby is running a puppet show, I won't—"

  She broke off, because a woman in her early thirties was coming in through the door. She had a round face, straight black hair cut short, and a kindly expression. She was dressed in a plain gray blouse and pants. Incongruously, she had an automatic pistol stuck in her waistband. A ruddy-faced older man weighing at least three hundred pounds waddled in behind her. Like Eli, his chest and cuffs bore an emblem of scarlet claws. His was more elaborate, a triplet of talons surrounding and clutching the central blue-green globe. On his belt he wore a holster containing a revolver, so ancient that Celine had never seen one like it except in museums.

  "Good morning." The man's wheezy tone, unlike Eli's the night before, was polite and deferential. "My name is Samuel. I understand that you would like the use of a bathroom, and then breakfast."

  "We would."

  "Then you women will go along with Naomi to the bathroom facilities. She will then escort you to breakfast. She is suffering a penance of silence, so please do not try to talk to her." He waved a plump hand, and the woman nodded at Celine and Jenny.

  "You will meet your menfolk later." Samuel's voice became hushed and positively oily. "I noticed someone in meditation in the other room. I assume that he is the one with the powers of prophecy, of special interest to the Eye of God. Naturally, I will respect or even anticipate his wishes in every way possible."

  "Actually, no. That's not him." Celine didn't like being demoted to a second-class citizen, even politely. "The man you saw is Reza. The man you want is Wilmer. That one." She pointed to the untidy heap in the bedclothes as she and Jenny followed Naomi toward the door. "You'll have to wake him up. Good luck with that. He's not at his best in the morning."

  Facilities at the Legion of Argos headquarters looked crude, but they worked fine. Celine had forgotten how good a torrent of hot water could feel, beating down on your head and shoulders under a full Earth gravity. She stayed and wallowed for ten minutes, and came out to find that her clothes had disappeared. They had been replaced with new underwear, shirt, and pants, all white and all just a fraction too big. Her shoes were where she had left them. Jenny was waiting, dressed in an identical outfit. With the silent Naomi leading the way they moved side by side down a long narrow hall to an automated cafeteria, where trays of food were dispensed from a moving belt.

  "Notice something?" While Naomi was picking up her tray, Celine had her first chance for a private word with Jenny. Just because Naomi did not speak did not mean she did not listen—and report.

  "If you're worried about what was in your pockets," Jenny said. "Don't. I grabbed everything before they took our clothes. They say they're just cleaning them."

  "Not that. I mean the people we've seen. No blacks, no Hispanics, no Orientals. I think the Legion of Argos is a whites-only group. You, Wilmer, and Reza certainly qualify. I'm borderline, but Pearl Lazenby's attitude last night suggests I'm acceptable."

  Naomi was approaching. Celine and Jenny settled down to a silent meal.

  Celine had plenty to think about. More and more, she felt certain that the members of the Legion of Argos from the top down were mental cases. Prophecies, penances, holy cleansings, arbitrary murders to settle grievances, ethnic entry requirements, guns everywhere, regimented behavior, visitors who were effectively prisoners—all the signs of a paramilitary religious cult. And added to that, Eli's exultant "there will be no turning back, no quarter given." The cult was approaching a point of no return. The right word from Pearl Lazenby, and the members would move to violent action.

  The Mars expedition had to get out of this underground labyrinth, as fast as possible. And they had to make sure that other people were warned.

  Was she overreacting, worrying too much? If so, she could see no penalty to that. What she could see were practical problems.

  First, where were they? It would do no good to escape to the surface and find you were lost in a wilderness. None of them was in any condition to trek miles over rough terrain. Reza had brought them down, to his best guess, somewhere north of Richmond, Virginia. The big question was their longitude. Were they east or west of the Shenandoah Mountains?

  Second, where would they go if they did escape? Her instinctive answer was Washington. There the Mars expedition was sure to be taken seriously. Anything they said would be given plenty of attention—unless the country had totally disintegrated under the impact of Supernova Alpha, in which case nothing they said or did would make much difference.

  Celine felt a tap on her arm. It was Naomi, pointing to the old-fashioned watch on her wrist and then to Celine's plate. A question. Had she finished eating?

  She nodded. "I'm all done. But I thought that our male companions were going to join us for breakfast."

  Naomi shrugged. It occurred to Celine that the assignment of a mute guide might be quite deliberate. Maybe her mining for information the previous night had not been so subtle as she imagined.

  "Our unctuous friend only told us we'd meet them 'later,' " Jenny volunteered. "He was careful not to say when."

  "Which could mean anything from a minute to a year from now." Celine turned to Naomi. "Unless you are to take us somewhere else, I would like to see more of the Legion of Argos headquarters. It seems fascinating. We arrived last night, very tired, and we were able to take in very little."

  It was worth a try, but Naomi shook her head. She tapped her watch, stood up, and beckoned them to follow. As they replaced their trays before leaving the dining room, Jenny whispered to Celine, "I was no help, was I. You want to get a good look at this place."

  "Sure. If we're to find a way out . . ."

  Naomi was with them again, urging them on, and for the moment Celine could say no more. The Legion member walked between her and Jenny, down another long corridor. There seemed an endless number of them, poorly lit and branching off at regular intervals.

  Suddenly they were in a hurry. Naomi marched faster on a twisting, turning path. It was not the sort of tour that Celine had in mind, and she itched for a map of the whole place. Pearl Lazenby and her disciples surely had them. If they had been digging for twenty years, as Eli said, the whole countryside must be honeycombed. The corridor they were in now looked like an old working mine, drilled through grayish white rock and shored up in places with iron beams. As it narrowed they had to walk in single file, Celine in front and Naomi in the rear.

  The tunnel took a final turn and Celine emerged into an open chamber, hundreds of feet across and with a knobby ceiling of whitish pink far above. The floor was white, uneven, and gritty beneath her feet. The illumination came from standing light fixtures, scattered here and there. She realized that they had entered a natural limestone cavern. A broad platform stood at the far end, with scores of rows of seats facing it.

  Naomi walked past Celine and led the way forward along a central cleared aisle. The platform held a long wooden table and five chairs. Naomi indicated to Celine and Jenny that they were to ascend the dais and take the seats at each end. When they were in position she went to sit in th
e back row of facing seats.

  Jenny looked along the table at Celine. "What now?"

  She spoke softly, but the stone-walled chamber caught her voice, carrying it to the farthest corners and bringing her words echoing back.

  Celine did not dare to answer that if Reza, their best geologist, could get a look at a cavern like this he might be able to make a good guess at their location. It was no longer the danger of Naomi alone overhearing what they said. The room was filling with gray-uniformed people, walking in through half a dozen entrances and quietly taking their seats. Every person in the front rows wore the scarlet talon on cuffs and breast. One woman set up a camera in the central aisle, sighting it on the platform. When she seemed happy with the setting she turned and extended one arm upward. The audience rose and stood waiting.

  To stand or not to stand? Celine knew that Jenny's eye was on her. She decided to remain seated and argue with anyone who didn't seem to like it. To make sure that she would not be influenced by possible gestures from the audience, she leaned back and studied the cavern ceiling.

  It had been modified from its natural form. Broken stubs of stalactites, painstakingly trimmed, stood out from the surface. Looking closely, Celine could see that the ceiling was not the uniform color of its first impression. Thousands of little scarlet talons had been painted on the original white limestone, blending from a distance to create the illusion of a continuous surface of light pink.

  She glanced out at the audience. They were ignoring her, looking past the platform at something behind Celine and Jenny. She heard footsteps, and resisted the urge to turn until a hand touched her shoulder. Then she looked up and saw Wilmer settling into the next seat. Like her, he was outfitted in a clean white uniform. Next to him, in the middle, was Pearl Lazenby, and beyond her Reza was sitting down by Jenny.

  Pearl Lazenby wore a long white sleeveless dress, dotted with the scarlet talons and blue-green globes. She gestured to her followers, and they settled into their seats. She remained standing.

  "I know that many of you are becoming impatient." She began without preamble, in an easy, conversational tone. "How long, you ask, before our role in the holy cleansing, so long awaited, can begin? When I returned among you, the Eye of God promised another portent. Until that time, we could not act. The Eye of God told you that we would receive a message directly from Heaven, brought to us by a human messenger. Most of you probably assumed that I would be the messenger. That is not the case."

  With the filled seats damping the echo, the chamber formed a natural auditorium. Pearl Lazenby's voice carried easily, without amplification, to every part.

  "Eight years ago, the governments of this world conspired to create an abomination. Not content to contaminate God's realm close to Earth with human presence, they decided to invade another sphere. The nations would cooperate in building a ship to carry humans to the planet Mars, where another part of God's creation would be despoiled.

  "And so the Mars expedition was born. Conceived in folly, executed in sacrilege, doomed to failure. Before the expedition was over, even as the Eye of God had prophesied, the hand of the Almighty smote the impious nations. They writhe as I speak in chaos and confusion. The time of the Legion of Argos is close to hand. Yet the Eye of God knew, and foretold, that a final message must be delivered before we can rise in wrath and righteous action."

  Yesterday, Pearl Lazenby had seemed to Celine like a sincere but misguided woman, no different from any of the millions of professed psychics, clairvoyants, and seers scattered around the world. Certainly, she did not seem the person to create and lead a million-strong movement of religious extremists. But yesterday, as Pearl Lazenby had told them, was an unusual day for her as well as them. She was recently returned from judicial sleep, and she had been exhausted.

  Today Celine could hear the difference. She would even say that she could feel it. There was no scientific explanation for the gift that some humans have, to take and hold and move a crowd. But the gift was real. Pearl Lazenby had that power, more than anyone Celine had ever met. It was an electric force, beyond words, reaching out to envelop her audience.

  And the underlying message was very disturbing: anything connected with the Mars expedition is evil. The nations that conceived the expedition are already shattered. Now the four survivors of the expedition are sitting at the table with Pearl Lazenby.

  Were they going to be offered in some barbaric ritual sacrifice? The audience remained silent, but Celine could see violence and vengeance on their faces.

  "The promised messengers have arrived." Pearl Lazenby opened her arms wide, palms down, to take in the others at the table. "They are here with me. These are the four surviving members of the Mars expedition: Celine Tanaka, Wilmer Oldfield, Reza Armani, and Jenny Kopal. But"—she spoke over a rising mutter from the audience—"do not make the mistake of judging them guilty, as the people who promoted and funded the Mars expedition are guilty. These four are brave and innocent victims, dupes of their secret masters. They took great risks, and they have endured great hardships. Their companions and closest friends died.

  "But they have survived, to bring their message direct from Heaven. This is the sign, the message we have awaited. You have been patient, and now our time is close, our tide approaches the flood. Within one week I promise action. Already, the word has gone forth to prepare and to congregate here. The message from Heaven tells that the great space stations, those sacrilegious insults circling and observing for so long above our heads, have been destroyed. The people who operated them are all dead, and we are at last free from intrusive eyes. We pray for their poor damned souls, even as we bless the hand of God that destroyed them. And we welcome into our midst these four messengers from the realm of Heaven. It was surely foreordained that their return to Earth would bring them directly here, to the sanctuary of the Legion of Argos. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to see them unite with our cause. I ask you to express your gratitude and pay tribute to the surviving members of the Mars expedition."

  Every person in the chamber rose to applaud. They stood clapping for many seconds, while Celine sat and stared straight ahead. During the long months of the Mars return she had sometimes imagined a scene where she and her companions were safe home on Earth, basking in a standing ovation. She would never have believed that it might take place on a wounded planet, in a natural cavern far underground, with an applauding audience of religious and racist maniacs.

  Wilmer reached out and tapped her shoulder. He had risen to his feet, and Pearl Lazenby was motioning to Celine to do the same. Jenny was standing, and so was Reza.

  Well, what the hell. It was quite clear that Pearl Lazenby was using their arrival for her own purposes, but adulation beat lynching any day of the week.

  Celine stood up. As the noise in the chamber reached a new crescendo, she confirmed her resolve to get away from the Legion of Argos as soon as possible. If you had to go along with the madness for a while, it was a small price to pay for escape. Just so long as you didn't catch it yourself.

  Celine raised her hand, smiled, and acknowledged the applause of the audience.

  31

  After the audience's long—and perhaps not entirely voluntary—applause for survivors of the Mars expedition, Pearl Lazenby turned to Celine.

  "I'm afraid that I now have practical business to take care of. I have been away for a long time, and certain elements of the Legion of Argos require correction." That had an ominous ring to it, but she went on serenely, "I do not wish to bore you with trivia. So I have made other arrangements, which I hope you will find interesting."

  It was a dismissal, polite but unequivocal. At Pearl Lazenby's signal, four men approached the platform. One was the wheezing Samuel, and the others bore the same triple-talon insignia of senior members of the Legion.

  "Call me David," one of them said to Celine. He looked older than the others, with the tanned skin and steady crow's-footed eyes of a game hunter and marksman. "If you will now
follow me . . ."

  She had expected to be reunited with Wilmer and Reza. Instead she was apparently to be separated from Jenny.

  After a moment of hesitation, Celine went with him. In the business of gathering information, four separate collectors were more efficient than a single group. There had been no opportunity to confer, but on a point so fundamental the other three were unlikely to disagree.

  Unlike Naomi, her new guide was more than willing to talk. "Our leader is sure that you will share our goals," David said as soon as they were away from the others. He fixed Celine in the crosshairs of his gaze. "Of course, you must first be familiar with and understand us. We have one hour available to us. Is there anything particular that you would like to see?"

  It was an educated upper-class voice, dispelling Celine's notion that although Pearl Lazenby might be an exceptional woman, her followers were deluded simpletons. David might have been chosen specifically to convert her, but she must be careful what she said. The gray eyes studying Celine were dangerously intelligent and thoughtful.

  Tell the truth. "Pearl Lazenby is astonishing, but I know almost nothing about the rest of the organization. The Legion of Argos has the reputation of attracting extremists. I would like to be sure that your reputation is undeserved."

  "To counter extreme evil, extreme actions may be necessary. But the best way to demonstrate what our society is like is not to talk, it is to show. As we walk together, I want you to ask yourself: Have you anywhere on Earth—or on Mars, for that matter—seen or heard of a group of people who work so peacefully and cheerfully toward a common goal? Why don't we take a look at one of our schools."

  He smiled at Celine's expression. "Yes, we have children, so of course we must have schools. Old-fashioned, by today's standards. But I have yet to be persuaded that the new methods work better than the old."

  They were walking side by side, steadily but not fast, along one of the many tunnels. He seemed aware of Celine's space-weakened muscles, and he allowed her to set the pace. She took her time and made careful note of their path.