“Where are my holy priests, Kurchuk?” Stranor Sleth demanded in to his sleeve-hidden radio. “Let them be brought before me, alive and unharmed, or it shall be better for you had you never been born!”
The six priests of Yat-Zar, it seemed, were already being brought onto the platform by one of Kurchuk’s nobles. This noble, whose name was Yorzuk, knew a miracle when he saw one, and believed in being on the side of the god with the heaviest artillery. As soon as he had seen Yat-Zar coming through the gate without visible means of support, he had hastened to the dungeons with half a dozen of his personal retainers and ordered the release of the six captives. He was now escorting them onto the platform, assuring them that he had always been a faithful servant of Yat-Zar and had been deeply grieved at his sovereign’s apostasy.
“Hear my word, Kurchuk,” Stranor Sleth continued through the loud-speaker in the idol. “You have sinned most vilely against me, and were I a cruel god, your fate would be such as no man has ever before suffered. But I am a merciful god; behold, you may gain forgiveness in my sight. For thirty days, you shall neither eat meat nor drink wine, nor shall you wear gold nor fine raiment, and each day shall you go to my temple and beseech me for my forgiveness. And on the thirty-first day, you shall set out, barefoot and clad in the garb of a slave, and journey to my temple that is in the mountains over above Yoldav, and there will I forgive you, after you have made sacrifice to me. I, Yat-Zar, have spoken!”
The king started to rise, babbling thanks.
“Rise not before me until I have forgiven you!” Yat-Zar thundered. “Creep out of my sight upon your belly, wretch!”
* * * *
The procession back to the temple was made quietly and sedately along an empty roadway. Yat-Zar seemed to be in a kindly humor; the people of Zurb had no intention of giving him any reason to change his mood. The priests of Muz-Azin and their torturers had been flung into the dungeon. Yorzuk, appointed regent for the duration of Kurchuk’s penance, had taken control and was employing Hulgun spearmen and hastily-converted Chuldun archers to restore order and, incidentally, purge a few of his personal enemies and political rivals. The priests, with the three prisoners who had been found carrying First Level weapons among them and Yat-Zar floating triumphantly in front, entered the temple. A few of the devout, who sought admission after them, were told that elaborate and secret rites were being held to cleanse the profaned altar, and sent away.
Verkan Vall and Brannad Klav and Stranor Sleth were in the conveyer chamber, with the Paratime Policemen and the extra priests; along with them were the three prisoners. Verkan Vall pulled off his false beard and turned to face these. He could see that they all recognized him.
“Now,” he began, “you people are in a bad jam. You’ve violated the Paratime Transposition Code, the Commercial Regulation Code, and the First Level Criminal Code, all together. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll start talking.”
“I’m not saying anything till I have legal advice,” the man who had been using the local alias of Labdurg replied. “And if you’re through searching me, I’d like to have my cigarettes and lighter back.”
“Smoke one of mine, for a change,” Verkan Vall told him. “I don’t know what’s in yours beside tobacco.” He offered his case and held a light for the prisoner before lighting his own cigarette. “I’m going to be sure you get back to the First Level alive.”
The former Overseer of the Kingdom of Zurb shrugged. “I’m still not talking,” he said.
“Well, we can get it all out of you by narco-hypnosis, anyhow,” Verkan Vall told him. “Besides, we got that man of yours who was here at the temple when we came in. He’s being given a full treatment, as a presumed outtime native found in possession of First Level weapons. If you talk now it’ll go easier with you.”
The prisoner dropped the cigarette on the floor and tramped it out.
“Anything you cops get out of me, you’ll have to get the hard way,” he said. “I have friends on the First Level who’ll take care of me.”
“I doubt that. They’ll have their hands full taking care of themselves, after this gets out.” Verkan Vall turned to the two in the black robes. “Either of you want to say anything?” When they shook their heads, he nodded to a group of his policemen; they were hustled into the conveyer. “Take them to the First Level terminal and hold them till I come in. I’ll be along with the next conveyer load.”
* * * *
The conveyer flashed and vanished. Brannad Klav stared for a moment at the circle of concrete floor from whence it had disappeared. Then he turned to Verkan Vall.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “Why, those fellows were First Level paratimers. So was that priest, Ghromdur: the one you rayed.”
“Yes, of course. They worked for your rivals, the Fourth Level Mineral Products Syndicate; the outfit that was trying to get your Proto-Aryan Sector fissionables franchise away from you. They operate on this sector already; have the petroleum franchise for the Chuldun country, east of the Caspian Sea. They export to some of these internal-combustion-engine sectors, like Europo-American. You know, most of the wars they’ve been fighting, lately, on the Europo-American Sector have been, at least in part, motivated by rivalry for oil fields. But now that the Europo-Americans have begun to release nuclear energy, fissionables have become more important than oil. In less than a century, it’s predicted that atomic energy will replace all other forms of power. Mineral Products Syndicate wanted to get a good source of supply for uranium, and your Proto-Aryan Sector franchise was worth grabbing.
“I had considered something like this as a possibility when Stranor, here, mentioned that tularemia was normally unknown in Eurasia on this sector. That epidemic must have been started by imported germs. And I knew that Mineral Products has agents at the court of the Chuldun emperor, Chombrog: they have to, to protect their oil wells on his eastern frontiers. I spent most of last night checking up on some stuff by video-transcription from the Paratime Commission’s microfilm library at Dhergabar. I found out, for one thing, that while there is a King Kurchuk of Zurb on every time-line for a hundred para-years on either side of this one, this is the only time-line on which he married a Princess Darith of Chuldun, and it’s the only time-line on which there is any trace of a Chuldun scribe named Labdurg.
“That’s why I went to all the trouble of having that Yat-Zar plated with collapsed nickel. If there were disguised paratimers among the Muz-Azin party at Kurchuk’s court, I expected one of them to try to blast our idol when we brought it into the palace. I was watching Ghromdur and Labdurg in particular; as soon as Ghromdur used his blaster, I needled him. After that, it was easy.”
“Was that why you insisted on sending that automatic viewer on ahead?”
“Yes. There was a chance that they might have planted a bomb in the House of Yat-Zar, here. I knew they’d either do that or let the place entirely alone. I suppose they were so confident of getting away with this that they didn’t want to damage the conveyer or the conveyer chamber. They expected to use them, themselves, after they took over your company’s franchise.”
“Well, what’s going to be done about it by the Commission?” Brannad Klav wanted to know.
“Plenty. The syndicate will probably lose their paratime license; any of its officials who had guilty knowledge of this will be dealt with according to law. You know, this was a pretty nasty business.”
“You’re telling me!” Stranor Sleth exclaimed. “Did you get a look at those whips they were going to use on our people? Pointed iron barbs a quarter-inch long braided into them, all over the lash-ends!”
“Yes. Any punitive action you’re thinking about taking on these priests of Muz-Azin—the natives, I mean—will be ignored on the First Level. And that reminds me: you’d better work out a line of policy, pretty soon.”
“Well, as for the priests and the torturers, I think I’ll tell Yorzuk to have them sold to the Bhunguns, to the east. They’re always in the market for g
alley slaves,” Stranor Sleth said. He turned to Brannad Klav. “And I’ll want six gold crowns made up, as soon as possible. Strictly Hulgun design, with Yat-Zar religious symbolism, very rich and ornate, all slightly different. When I give Kurchuk absolution, I’ll crown him at the altar in the name of Yat-Zar. Then I’ll invite in the other five Hulgun kings, lecture them on their religious duties, make them confess their secret doubts, forgive them, and crown them, too. From then on, they can all style themselves as ruling by the will of Yat-Zar.”
“And from then on, you’ll have all of them eating out of your hand,” Verkan Vall concluded. “You know, this will probably go down in Hulgun history as the Reformation of Ghullam the Holy. I’ve always wondered whether the theory of the divine right of kings was invented by the kings, to establish their authority over the people, or by the priests, to establish their authority over the kings. It works about as well one way as the other.”
“What I can’t understand is this,” Brannad Klav said. “It was entirely because of my respect for the Paratime Code that I kept Stranor Sleth from using Fourth Level weapons and other techniques to control these people with a show of apparent miraculous powers. But this Fourth Level Mineral Products Syndicate was operating in violation of the Paratime Code by invading our franchise area. Why didn’t they fake up a supernatural reign of terror to intimidate these natives?”
“Ha, exactly because they were operating illegally,” Verkan Vall replied. “Suppose they had started using needlers and blasters and antigravity and nuclear-energy around here. The natives would have thought it was the power of Muz-Azin, of course, but what would you have thought? You’d have known, as soon as they tried it, that First Level paratimers were working against you, and you’d have laid the facts before the Commission, and this time-line would have been flooded with Paratime Police. They had to conceal their operations not only from the natives, as you do, but also from us. So they didn’t dare make public use of First Level techniques.
“Of course, when we came marching into the palace with that idol on antigravity, they knew, at once, what was happening. I have an idea that they only tried to blast that idol to create a diversion which would permit them to escape—if they could have got out of the palace, they’d have made their way, in disguise, to the nearest Mineral Products Syndicate conveyer and transposed out of here. I realized that they could best delay us by blasting our idol, and that’s why I had it plated with collapsed nickel. I think that where they made their mistake was in allowing Kurchuk to have those priests arrested, and insisting on sacrificing them to Muz-Azin. If it hadn’t been for that, the Paratime Police wouldn’t have been brought into this, at all.
“Well, Stranor, you’ll want to get back to your temple, and Brannad and I want to get back to the First Level. I’m supposed to take my wife to a banquet in Dhergabar, tonight, and with the fastest strato-rocket, I’ll just barely make it.”
GENESIS (1951)
Aboard the ship, there was neither day nor night; the hours slipped gently by, as vistas of star-gemmed blackness slid across the visiscreens. For the crew, time had some meaning—one watch on duty and two off. But for the thousand-odd colonists, the men and women who were to be the spearhead of migration to a new and friendlier planet, it had none. They slept, and played, worked at such tasks as they could invent, and slept again, while the huge ship followed her plotted trajectory.
Kalvar Dard, the army officer who would lead them in their new home, had as little to do as any of his followers. The ship’s officers had all the responsibility for the voyage, and, for the first time in over five years, he had none at all. He was finding the unaccustomed idleness more wearying than the hectic work of loading the ship before the blastoff from Doorsha. He went over his landing and security plans again, and found no probable emergency unprepared for. Dard wandered about the ship, talking to groups of his colonists, and found morale even better than he had hoped. He spent hours staring into the forward visiscreens, watching the disc of Tareesh, the planet of his destination, grow larger and plainer ahead.
Now, with the voyage almost over, he was in the cargo-hold just aft of the Number Seven bulkhead, with six girls to help him, checking construction material which would be needed immediately after landing. The stuff had all been checked two or three times before, but there was no harm in going over it again. It furnished an occupation to fill in the time; it gave Kalvar Dard an excuse for surrounding himself with half a dozen charming girls, and the girls seemed to enjoy being with him. There was tall blonde Olva, the electromagnetician; pert little Varnis, the machinist’s helper; Kyna, the surgeon’s-aide; dark-haired Analea; Dorita, the accountant; plump little Eldra, the armament technician. At the moment, they were all sitting on or around the desk in the corner of the store-room, going over the inventory when they were not just gabbling.
“Well, how about the rock-drill bitts?” Dorita was asking earnestly, trying to stick to business. “Won’t we need them almost as soon as we’re off?”
“Yes, we’ll have to dig temporary magazines for our explosives, small-arms and artillery ammunition, and storage-pits for our fissionables and radioactives,” Kalvar Dard replied. “We’ll have to have safe places for that stuff ready before it can be unloaded; and if we run into hard rock near the surface, we’ll have to drill holes for blasting-shots.”
“The drilling machinery goes into one of those prefabricated sheds,” Eldra considered. “Will there be room in it for all the bitts, too?”
Kalvar Dard shrugged. “Maybe. If not, we’ll cut poles and build racks for them outside. The bitts are nono-steel; they can be stored in the open.”
“If there are poles to cut,” Olva added.
“I’m not worrying about that,” Kalvar Dard replied. “We have a pretty fair idea of conditions on Tareesh; our astronomers have been making telescopic observations for the past fifteen centuries. There’s a pretty big Arctic ice-cap, but it’s been receding slowly, with a wide belt of what’s believed to be open grassland to the south of it, and a belt of what’s assumed to be evergreen forest south of that. We plan to land somewhere in the northern hemisphere, about the grassland-forest line. And since Tareesh is richer in water that Doorsha, you mustn’t think of grassland in terms of our wire-grass plains, or forests in terms of our brush thickets. The vegetation should be much more luxuriant.”
“If there’s such a large polar ice-cap, the summers ought to be fairly cool, and the winters cold,” Varnis reasoned. “I’d think that would mean fur-bearing animals. Colonel, you’ll have to shoot me something with a nice soft fur; I like furs.”
Kalvar Dard chuckled. “Shoot you nothing, you can shoot your own furs. I’ve seen your carbine and pistol scores,” he began.
* * * *
There was a sudden suck of air, disturbing the papers on the desk. They all turned to see one of the ship’s rocket-boat bays open; a young Air Force lieutenant named Seldar Glav, who would be staying on Tareesh with them to pilot their aircraft, emerged from an open airlock.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been to Tareesh and back in that thing,” Olva greeted him.
Seldar Glav grinned at her. “I could have been, at that; we’re only twenty or thirty planetary calibers away, now. We ought to be entering Tareeshan atmosphere by the middle of the next watch. I was only checking the boats, to make sure they’ll be ready to launch.… Colonel Kalvar, would you mind stepping over here? There’s something I think you should look at, sir.”
Kalvar Dard took one arm from around Analea’s waist and lifted the other from Varnis’ shoulder, sliding off the desk. He followed Glav into the boat-bay; as they went through the airlock, the cheerfulness left the young lieutenant’s face.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of the girls, sir,” he began, “but I’ve been checking boats to make sure we can make a quick getaway. Our meteor-security’s gone out. The detectors are deader then the Fourth Dynasty, and the blasters won’t synchronize.… Did you hear a big thump, abou
t a half an hour ago, Colonel?”
“Yes, I thought the ship’s labor-crew was shifting heavy equipment in the hold aft of us. What was it, a meteor-hit?”
“It was. Just aft of Number Ten bulkhead. A meteor about the size of the nose of that rocket-boat.”
Kalvar Dard whistled softly. “Great Gods of Power! The detectors must be dead, to pass up anything like that.… Why wasn’t a boat-stations call sent out?”
“Captain Vlazil was unwilling to risk starting a panic, sir,” the Air Force officer replied. “Really, I’m exceeding my orders in mentioning it to you, but I thought you should know.…”
Kalvar Dard swore. “It’s a blasted pity Captain Vlazil didn’t try thinking! Gold-braided quarter-wit! Maybe his crew might panic, but my people wouldn’t.… I’m going to call the control-room and have it out with him. By the Ten Gods…!”
* * * *
He ran through the airlock and back into the hold, starting toward the intercom-phone beside the desk. Before he could reach it, there was another heavy jar, rocking the entire ship. He, and Seldar Glav, who had followed him out of the boat-bay, and the six girls, who had risen on hearing their commander’s angry voice, were all tumbled into a heap. Dard surged to his feet, dragging Kyna up along with him; together, they helped the others to rise. The ship was suddenly filled with jangling bells, and the red danger-lights on the ceiling were flashing on and off.
“Attention! Attention!” the voice of some officer in the control-room blared out of the intercom-speaker. “The ship has just been hit by a large meteor! All compartments between bulkheads Twelve and Thirteen are sealed off. All persons between bulkheads Twelve and Thirteen, put on oxygen helmets and plug in at the nearest phone connection. Your air is leaking, and you can’t get out, but if you put on oxygen equipment immediately, you’ll be all right. We’ll get you out as soon as we can, and in any case, we are only a few hours out of Tareeshan atmosphere. All persons in Compartment Twelve, put on.…”
The H. Beam Piper Megapack Page 29