by Jerry
This is what Gath had hoped. But a wind of change was blowing through the settlement that had grown up around his ship. No longer was he the centre of attention and focal point of the village life. He had to grin when he thought of his fall from power, yet there was very little humour in the smile. Serious and attentive Weskers still took turns of duty as Knowledge Collectors, but their stale recording of dry facts was in sharp contrast to the intellectual hurricane that surrounded the priest. Where Gath had made them work for each book and machine, the priest gave freely. Gath had tried to be progressive in his supply of knowledge, treating them as bright but unlettered children. He had wanted them to walk before they could run, to master one step before going on to the next.
Father Mark simply brought them the benefits of Christianity. The only physical work he required was the construction of a church, a place of worship and learning. More Weskers had appeared out of the limitless planetary swamps and within days the roof was up, supported on a framework of poles. Each morning the congregation worked a little while on the walls, then hurried inside to learn the all-promising, all-encompassing, all important facts about the universe.
Gath never told the Weskers what he thought about their new interest, and this was mainly because they had never asked him. Pride or honour stood in the way of his grabbing a willing listener and pouring out his grievances. Perhaps it would have been different if Itin was on Collecting duty, he was the brightest of the lot, but Itin had been rotated the day after the priest had arrived and Gath had not talked to him since.
It was a surprise then, when after seventeen of the trebly-long Wesker days, he found a delegation at his doorstep when he emerged after breakfast. Itin was their spokesman, and his mouth was open slightly. Many of the other Weskers had their mouths open as well, one even appeared to be yawning, clearly revealing the double row of sharp teeth and the purple-black throat. The mouths impressed Gath as to the seriousness of the meeting: this was the one Wesker expression he had learned to recognize. An open mouth indicated some strong emotion; happiness, sadness, anger, he could never be really sure which. The Weskers were normally placid and he had never seen enough open mouths to tell what was causing them. But he was surrounded by them now.
“Will you help us, Gath,” Itin said. “We have a question.”
“I’ll answer any questions you ask,” Gath said, with more than a hint of misgiving. “What is it?”
“Is there a God?”
“What do you mean by ‘God’ ?” Gath asked in turn. What should he tell them? What had been going on in their minds that they should come to him with this question?
“God is our Father in Heaven, who made us all and protects us. Whom we pray to for aid, and if we are Saved will find a place . . .”
“That’s enough,” Gath said. “There is no God.”
All of them had their mouths open now, even Itin, as they looked at Gath and thought about his answer. The rows of pink teeth would have been frightening if he hadn’t known these creatures so well. For one instant he wondered if perhaps they had been already indoctrinated and looked upon him as a heretic, but he brushed the thought away.
“Thank you,” Itin said, and they turned and left.
Though the morning was still cool Gath noticed that he was sweating and he wondered why.
The reaction was not long in coming. Itin returned that same afternoon. “Will you come to the church?” he asked. “Many of the things that we study are difficult to learn, but none as difficult as this. We need your help because we must hear you and Father Mark talk together. This is because he says one thing is true and you say another is true and both cannot be true at the same time. We must find out what is true.”
“I’ll come, or course,” Gath said, trying to hide the sudden feeling of elation. He had done nothing, but the Weskers had come to him anyway. There could still be grounds for hope that they might yet be free.
It was hot inside the church, and Gath was surprised at the number of Weskers who were there, more than he had seen gathered at any one time before. There were many open mouths. Father Mark sat at a table covered with books. He looked unhappy but didn’t say anything when Gath came in. Gath spoke first.
“I hope you realize this is their idea—that they came to me of their own free will and asked me to come here?”
“I know that,” the priest said resignedly, “At times they can be very difficult. But they are learning and want to believe, and that is what is important.”
“Father Mark, Trader Gath, we need your help,” Itin said. “You both know many things that we do not know. You must help us come to religion which is not an easy thing to do.” Gath started to say something, then changed his mind. Itin went on. “We have read the bibles and all the books that Father Mark gave us, and one thing is clear. We have discussed this and we are all agreed. These books are very different from the ones that Trader Gath gave us. In Trader Gath’s books there is the universe which we have not seen, and it goes on without God, for he is mentioned nowhere, we have searched very carefully. In Father Mark’s books He is everywhere and nothing can go without Him. One of these must be right and the other must be wrong. We do not know how this can be, but after we find out which is right then perhaps we will know. If God does not exist . . .”
“Of course He exists, my children,” Father Mark said in a voice of heartfelt intensity. “He is our Father in Heaven who has created us all . . .”
“Who created God?” Itin asked and the murmur ceased and everyone of the Weskers watched Father Mark intensely. He recoiled a bit under the impact of their eyes, then smiled.
“Nothing created God, since he is the Creator. He always was . . .”
“If he always was in existence—why cannot the universe have always been in existence? Without having had a creator?” Itin broke in with a rush or words. The importance of the question was obvious. The priest answered slowly, with infinite patience.
“Have faith, that is all you need. Just believe.”
“How can we believe without proof?”
“Belief needs no proof—if you have faith!”
A babble of voices arose in the room and more of the Wesker mouths were open now as they tried to force their thoughts through the tangled skein of words and separate out the thread of truth.
“Can you tell us, Gath?” Itin asked, and the sound of his voice quieted the hubbub.
“I can tell you to use the scientific method which can examine all things—including itself—and give you answers that can prove the truth or falsity of any statement.”
“That is what we must do,” Itin said, “we had reached the same conclusion.” He held a thick book before him and a ripple of nods ran across the watchers. “We have been studying the bible as Father Mark told us to do, and we have found the answer. God will make a miracle for us, thereby proving that He is watching us. And by this sign we will know Him and go to Him.”
“That is the sin of false pride,” Father Mark said. “God needs no miracles to prove his existence.”
“But we need a miracle!” Itin shouted, and though he wasn’t human there was still the cry for need in his voice. “We have read here of many smaller miracles, loaves, fishes, wine, snakes—many of them, for much smaller reasons. Now all he need do is make a miracle and he will bring us all to him—the wonder of an entire new world worshipping at His throne, as you have told us Father Mark. And you have told us how important this is. We have discussed this and find that there is only one miracle that is best for this kind of thing.”
His boredom and amused interest in the incessant theological wrangling drained from Gath in a single instant. He had not been really thinking or he would have seen where all this was leading. By turning slightly he could see the illustration in the bible where Itin held it open, and knew in advance what picture he would see. He rose slowly from his chair, as if stretching and turned to the priest behind him.
“Get ready!” he whispered. “Get out the back and
get to the ship, I’ll keep them busy here. I don’t think they’ll harm me.
“What do you mean . . .?” Father Mark asked, blinking in surprise.
“Get out you fool!” Gath hissed. “What miracle do you think they mean? What miracle is supposed to have converted the world to Christianity.”
“No!” Father Mark said, “It cannot be. It just cannot be . . .!”
“Get moving!” Gath shouted, dragging the priest from the chair and hurling him towards the rear wall. Father Mark stumbled to a halt, turned back. Gath leaped for him, but it was already too late. The amphibians were small, but there was so many of them. Gath lashed out and his fist struck Itin, hurling him back into the crowd. The others came on as he fought his way towards the priest. He beat at them but it was like struggling against the waves. The furry, musky bodies washed over and engulfed him. He struggled until they tied him, and he still struggled until they beat on his head until he stopped. Then they pulled him outside where he could only lie in the rain and curse and watch.
Of course the Weskers were marvellous craftsmen, and everything had been constructed down to the last detail, following the illustration in the bible. There was the cross, planted firmly in the top of the small hill, the gleaming metal spikes, the hammer. Father Mark had been stripped and draped in a carefully pleated loincloth. They led him out of the church and at the sight of the cross he almost fainted. After that he held his head high and determined to die as he had lived, with faith.
Yet this was hard. It was unbearable even for Gath, who only watched. It is one thing to talk of crucifixion and look at the gently carved bodies in the dim light of prayer. It is another to see a man naked, ropes cutting into his skin where he hangs from a bar of wood. And to see the needle-tipped spike raised and placed against the soft flesh of his palm, to see the hammer come back with the calm deliberation of an artisan’s measured stroke. Then to hear the thick sound of metal penetrating flesh.
Then to hear the screams.
Few are born to be martyrs and Father Mark was not one of them. With the first blows the blood ran from his lips where his clenched teeth met. Then his mouth was wide and his head strained back and the awful guttural horror of his screams sliced through the sussuration of the falling rain. It resounded as a silent echo from the masses of watching Weskers, for whatever emotion opened their mouths was now tearing at their bodies with all its force, and row after row of gaping jaws reflected the crucified priest’s agony.
Mercifully he fainted and the last nail was driven home. Blood ran from the raw wounds, mixed with the rain to drip faintly pink from his feet as the life ran out of him. At this time, somewhere at this time, sobbing and tearing at his own bonds, numbed from the blows on the head, Gath lost consciousness.
He awoke in his own warehouse and it was dark. Someone was cutting away the woven ropes they had bound him with. The rain still dripped and splashed outside.
“Itin,” he said. It could be no one else.
“Yes,” the alien voice whispered back. “The others are all talking in the church. Lin died after you struck his head, and Inon is very sick. There are some that say you should be crucified too, and I think that is what will happen. Or perhaps killed by striking on the head. They have found in the bible where it says . . .”
“I know.” With infinite weariness. “An eye for an eye. You’ll find lots of things like that once you start looking. It’s a wonderful book.” His head ached terribly.
“You must go, you can get to your ship without anyone seeing you. There has been enough killing.” Itin as well, spoke with a newfound weariness.
Gath experimented, pulling himself to his feet. He pressed his head to the rough wall until the nausea stopped. “He’s dead.” He said it as a statement, not a question.
“Yes, some time ago. Or I could not have come away to see you.”
“And buried of course, or they wouldn’t be thinking about starting on me next.”
“And buried!” There was almost a ring of emotion in the alien’s voice, an echo of the dead priest’s. “He is buried and he will rise on High. It is written and that is the way it will happen. Father Mark will be so happy that it has happened like this.” The voice ended in a sound like a human sob, but of course it couldn’t have been that since Itin was alien, and not human at all.
Gath painfully worked his way around the wall towards the door, leaning against the wall so he wouldn’t fall.
“We did the right thing, didn’t we?” Itin asked. There was no answer. “He will rise up, Gath, won’t he rise?”
Gath was at the door and enough light came from the brightly lit church to show his torn and bloody hands clutching at the frame. Itin’s face swam into sight close to his, and Gath felt the delicate, many fingered hands with the sharp nails catch at his clothes.
“He will rise, won’t he Gath?”
“No,” Gath said, “he is going to stay buried right where you put him. Nothing is going to happen because he is dead and he is going to stay dead.”
The rain runnelled through Itin’s fur and his mouth was opened so wide that he seemed to be screaming into the uncaring night. Only with effort could he talk, squeezing out the alien thoughts in an alien language.
“Then we will not be saved? We will not become pure?”
“You were pure,” Gath said, in a voice somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “That’s the horrible ugly dirty part of it. You were pure. Now you are . . .”
“Murderers,” Itin said, and the water ran down from his lowered head and streamed away into the darkness.
1963
FORTRESS SHIP
Fred Saberhagen
Huge as an island, mighty as a squadron of dreadnauahts, old as time, the ship of the aliens was out to destroy them!
The machine was a vast fortress, containing no life, set by its long-dead masters to destroy anything that lived. It and many others like it were the inheritance of Earth from some war fought between unknown interstellar empires, in some time that could hardly be connected with any Earthly calendar.
One such machine could hang over a planet colonized by men and in two days pound the surface into a lifeless cloud of dust and steam, a hundred miles deep. This particular machine had already done just that.
It used no predictable tactics in its dedicated, unconscious war against life. The ancient, unknown gamesmen had built it as a random factor, to be loosed in the enemy’s territory to do what damage it might. Men thought its plan of battle was chosen by the random disintegrations of atoms in a block of some long-lived isotope buried deep inside it, and so was not even in theory predictable by opposing brains, human or electronic.
Men called it a berserker.
Del Murray, sometime computer specialist, had called it other names than that; but right now he was too busy to waste breath, as he moved in staggering lunges around the little cabin of his one-man fighter, plugging in replacement units for equipment damaged by the last near-miss of a berserker missile. An animal resembling a large dog with an ape’s forelegs moved around the cabin too, carrying in its nearly human hands a supply of emergency sealing patches. The cabin air was full of haze. Wherever movement of the haze showed a leak to an unpressurized part of the hull, the dog-ape moved to apply a patch.
“Hello, Foxglove!” the man shouted, hoping that his radio was again in working order.
“Hello, Murray, this is Foxglove,” said a sudden loud voice in the cabin. “How far did you get?”
Del was too weary to show much relief that his communications were open again. “I’ll let you know in a minute. At least it’s stopped shooting at me for a while. Move, Newton.” The alien animal, pet and ally, called an aiyan, moved away from the man’s feet and kept single-mindedly looking for leaks.
After another minute’s work Del could strap his body into the deep-cushioned command chair again, with some-thing like an operational panel before him. That last near-miss had sprayed the whole cabin with fine penetrating splinters.
It was remarkable that man and aiyan had come through unwounded.
His radar working again, Del could say: “I’m about ninety miles out from it, Foxglove. On the opposite side from you.” His present position was the one he had been trying to achieve since the battle had begun.
The two Earth ships and the berserkers were half a light year from the nearest sun. The berserker could not leap out of normal space, toward the defenseless colonies on the planets of that sun, while the two ships stayed close to it. There were only two men aboard Foxglove. They had more machinery working for them than did Del, but both manned ships were mites compared to their opponent.
Del’s radar showed him an ancient ruin of metal, not much smaller in cross section than New Jersey. Men had blown holes in it the size of Manhattan Island, and melted puddles of slag as big as lakes upon its surface.
But the berserker’s power was still enormous. So far no man had fought it and survived. Now, it could squash Del’s little ship like a mosquito; it was wasting its unpredictable subtlety on him. Yet there was a special taste of terror in the very indifference of it. Men could never frighten this enemy, as it frightened them.
Earthmen’s tactics, worked out from bitter experience against other berserkers, called for a simultaneous attack by three ships. Foxglove and Murray made two. A third was supposedly on the way, but still about eight hours distant, moving at C-plus velocity, outside of normal space. Until it arrived, Foxglove and Murray must hold the berserker at bay, while it brooded unguessable schemes.
It might attack either ship at any moment, or it might seek to disengage. It might wait hours for them to make the first move—though it would certainly fight if the men attacked it. It had learned the language of Earth’s spacemen—it might try to talk with them. But always, ultimately it would seek to destroy them and every other living thing it met. That was the basic command given it by the ancient warlords.