With a puzzled Will beside him, Vincente entered the cathedral once more and hurried down the nave. Rudd had bothered him, complaining of the scarcity of food for the loadbeasts. And then his old legs had rebelled against climbing the hill a second time. Now, when he got back to the still-swinging pendulum, more than an hour had passed since he had first set it in motion. The itiny battlement of sand had been demolished by continuous notches, up to the point where the pendulum’s plane had left it behind altogether. By now that plane had inched clockwise through ten or twelve degrees of arc.
“Will, you’ve helped me in the workshop. Now this is another such case, where you must do precisely what I say.”
“Aye, master.”
“First, keep in mind that you are not to stop or disturb the swinging of the cable here. Understood?”
“Aye.”
“Now I want you to climb; there seem to be ladders and platforms enough for you to go up all the way. I want to learn how this swinging cable is mounted, what holds it at the top. Look at it until you can draw me a sketch, you’re good at that.”
“Aye, I understand, sir.” Will craned his neck unhappily. “It’s a long bit o’ climbing, though.”
“Yes, yes, a coin for you when you’re down. Another when you’ve given me a good sketch. Take your time now and use your eyes. And do not disturb the cable’s swing.”
Derron had made only slight progress towardloosing his hands, when he heard clumsier feet than the berserker’s climbing toward him. Then between the uprights of the ladder Will’s honest face came into view to predictably register shock.
“. . . bandit!” Derron spat, when his hands had been cut free and he could rid himself of the gag. “Must’ve been hiding in here somewhere . . . forced me up here and tied me up.”
Wondering and sympathetic, Will shook his head. “Likely he’d a slit your throat, sir, but didn’t want to do no sacrilege. Think he might still be here about?”
“No, I’m sure he was running away.”
“Long gone, then, by this time.” Will shook his head. “You’d better liven up your limbs, sir, before you starts to climb down. I’m going on up, bit of a job to do for master.”
“Job?”
“Aye.” Will was already climbing again, right into the spire.
Still on all fours, Derron peered over the edge of the platform. Vincento’s ginger-colored hair marked a toy figure more than a hundred feet below. Down there the mysterious moving cable ended in a dot which traced back and forth with sedate regularity . . .
Derron’s muscles locked, and he felt himself near falling. He had suddenly understood what Vincento was looking at, what Vincento had probably been studying all the while the berserker held Derron captive. Its earliest designers on old Earth had called it a Foucault pendulum.
VIII
“Honorable Vincento!”
Vincento looked around in surprise and some annoyance as the young man, Alzay or Valzay or whatever his name was, came hurrying toward him from the foot of the tiny stair by which Will had begun his climb.
Valzay rushed up, babbling some imbecilic story about a bandit, spouting pestiferous wordage that threatened to tangle Vincento’s thoughts.
“Young man, I suggest you give your recitation to the soldiers.” Now, if it was not the cable untwisting, and proved to be not some trick of the mounting above . . . certainly the bones of the cathedral were not creeping counterclockwise . . . but yet his mind strained forward into unknown territory . . .
“I see, Messire Vincento, that you have discovered my little surprise.” Derron saw very clearly how the game was certain to go, perhaps had gone already. But one desperate gamble was still open to him, and he took it.
“Your little surprise?” Vincento’s words became low and measured, while his brows knit as if presaging thunder. “Then it was you who sent that rascally friar to me in the night?”
Derron let the question of the friar pass. “It was I who arranged—this.” He gestured with proprietary pride at the pendulum, and in a few words he sketched the outline of a huge lie. How he had really been here a day before the other refugees, with friends to help him (this lie would not stand investigation, but if Derron’s plan succeeded, Vincento would never want to investigate) install the pendulum—while in his mind Derron visualized the berserker here, catlike, monkeylike, devilish, arranging mounting and cable and weight in order that: “. . . you see before you, Messire Vincento, a firm proof of the rotation of the globe!”
There was a start in the old eyes, but no real surprise; a desperate gamble had been justified, all right. Now Vincento had become a waiting statue, mouth twisted and eyes unblinking.
Derron went on: “Of course I have followed your example, distinguished sir, and that of a number of our contemporaries, in protecting my rightful claim to this discovery while keeping it secret yet a while, for my own advantage in further research. To this end have I sent anagram messages encoding the truth to distinguished persons in several parts of the world.
“Though as I say, sir, I had meant to reserve the secret yet a while, I cannot stand idly by during your present difficulties.”
“A proof of our globe’s rotation, you say.” The tone was blank, suspended.
“Ah, forgive me for not explaining! I had not thought it necessary—you see, the plane of the pendulum does not rotate, it is our globe that rotates beneath it.” Derron hesitated, as if it had just occurred to him that Vincento might be getting just a little slow and senile. Then he spoke on, more slowly and distinctly. “At the poles, this device will trace daily a full circle of three hundred and sixty degrees. At the equator it will appear not to rotate at all.” Mercilessly he poured out in detail his three-and-ahalf-centuries’ advantage of accumulated knowledge. “Between these extremes the rate of rotation is proportional to the latitude; here, it is about ten degrees per hour. And since we are in the northern hemisphere the direction of apparent rotation is clockwise . . .”
Will was shouting at his master from high above: “. . . she be mounted free to turn any way, but there be nothing turning her!” Vincento shouted up: “Come down!”
“. . . bit more study if ’ee wants a sketch . . .”
“Come down!” The thick lips spat it out.
Derron kept the pressure on, switching his emphasis now to remorseless generosity. “. . . my only wish of course now being to help you, sir, to come to your rescue. In bygone years you have accomplished very substantial things, very substantial, and you must not now be cast aside. My lance is at your disposal; I will gladly repeat this demonstration of my discovery for the authorities in the Holy City, so that the world may witness—”
“Enough! I have no need of help!” Vincento’s tone made the last word an obscenity. “You will not—meddle—in—my—affairs. Not in the least degree!”
Before Vincento’s terrible contempt and wrath, Derron found himself physically retreating, even as he realized that he had won his gamble—his wager that the old man’s pride was as monumental as his genius.
Derron stood in silence as Vincento, shrinking once more under his burdens of age and weariness and fear, turned away with a parting look of hatred. Vincento would never use the Foucault proof; he would never believe it. I-t was one direction in which he would nevermore want to investigate; he would force the whole thing from his mind if he could. The smallness and jealousy that were leading him to trial and humiliation existed not only in other men, but in himself.
Derron knew that Vincento at his historical trial would not only recant, he would go beyond what his judges asked or wanted of him and offer to write a new pamphlet, proving that the sun did after all move around the world of men.
My only wish being to help you, sir. Vincento’s figure dwindled to the end of the nave, and at last the door boomed shut behind him.
Now even Vincento could be forgotten for the moment, for real victory and hope were heady things. Getting away ahead of Will’s questions, Derron hurried out
of the cathedral by a side door and skipped down the steep stairs toward the monastery. If the berserker had not also smashed the backup communicator hidden in his staff, he could tell the Modern world of victory.
The enemy had not bothered with anything in his cell. As he came near it, an emergency summons from Operations began to throb in the bone behind his ear.
Brother Saile was puffing, though he was making no effort to hurry along the narrow cattle-path that wound up and down hill through scrubby bushes and thin woods. Instead he hung back and with almost every puff of breath tried to discourage Brother Jovann’s progress. “I thought—to say a few prayers in the village—would have been sufficient. These peasants, as you know—are often foolish. They may have—greatly exaggerated—the depredations of this supposed wolf.”
“Then my own peasant foolishness is not likely to cause any harm,” said Jovann, leading on implacably. They were deep in the wolfs supposed domain; their peasant supplicants and guides had turned back through fear a quarter of a mile earlier.
“I spoke too harshly of them, may the Holy One forgive me.” Saile wheezed to the top of a hill and gathered breath for readier speech on the descent. “Now if this one beast has really caused in a few days all the death and damage they claim for it, or even half so much, it would be utter folly for us to approach it unarmed as we are. It is not that I doubt for an instant the inscrutable wisdom of Providence which can cause a fish to leap for joy after you have released it, nor do I doubt the story I once heard of the gentle little birds listening to your preaching. But a wolf, any wolf, is quite another . . .”
Brother Jovann did not appear to be listening very closely. He had paused briefly to follow with his eyes a train of scavenger-insects which crossed the path and vanished into the brush. Then he went on, more slowly, until a similar train appeared a little further along the trail. There Brother Jovann turned, walking noisily into the brush, leading his companion toward the spot where it seemed the two lines of insects must intersect.
IX
Staff in hand, Derron made the best cross-country time he could, running fifty steps and walking fifty.
“Odegard!” Operations had cried out. “There’s another lifeline just as vital as Vincente’s there with you. Or he was with you. Now he and one of the others have moved out a couple of miles. They’re about to leave the safety zone. You’ll have to protect them. They’ll be at the berserker’s mercy if it’s out there waiting.”
And of course it would be out there, in ambush or pursuit. The attack on Vincento had been in deadly earnest, like the first punch in a good one-two. But it was the second punch that was really intended as the killer. And humanity had left itself wide open.
Running fifty, walking fifty, Derron covered ground steadily along the bearing Operations had given him. He asked: “Just who am I looking for?”
And when they told him, he thought he should have guessed the name, should have been alerted by his first look into that gentle and loving face.
In the midst of the thicket there had been havoc. Days ago it had happened, for the tree branches that had been broken were now dead. And though insects were still busy among the wreckage of bone and gray fur on the ground, there was no longer much left for them to scavenge.
“This was a very big wolf,” said Brother Jovann, bending to pick up a piece of jawbone. The bone had been shattered by some violent blow, but this fragment still contained teeth of impressive size.
“Very big, certainly,” said Brother Saile, though he knew very little about wolves. He did not care to learn more and kept looking around him nervously.
Jovann was musing aloud. “Now, what manner of creature can it be that deals thus with a big male wolf? Even as I in my greed have sometimes dealt with the bones of a little roast fowl . . . but no, these bones have not been gnawed for nourishment. Only broken and broken again, as if by some creature who is even more wantonly savage than a wolf.”
The name of Brother Jovann, saint, symbol of gentleness and love meant something to Modern skeptics as well as believers, to both historians and laymen. Like Vincento, he had become a towering folkfigure, imperfectly understood.
“We’re just catching on to Jovann’s practical importance,” said Time Ops’ voice in Derron’s head. “Historically his lifeline goes on about fifteen years from your point, and all along the way it radiates support to other lines. What has been described as ‘good-turn-a-day stuff.’ These other lines tend to reradiate life support in turn, and the process propagates up through history. Our best judgment now is that the disarmament treaty three hundred years after Jovann’s death will fall through and an international nuclear war will wipe us all out in pre-Modern times if St. Jovann is terminated at your point.”
A girl’s voice came in briskly: “A new report for Colonel Odegard.”
Derron asked: “Lisa?”
She hesitated for just an instant; then, business first. “Colonel—the lifeline that was described to you earlier as having an embryonic appearance is moving out of the safety zone after the other two, at what seems an unaccountably high speed. We can give no explanation. You’re to bear five degrees left, also.”
“Understand.” Derron bore five degrees left, as near as he could judge. “Lisa?”
“Derron, they put me on because I said I’d tend strictly to business.”
“You do that.” He began to run once more, his breath coming in gasps. “I just wish—you were carrying my baby.”
There was a faint, completely feminine sound. But when Lisa’s voice came back intelligibly it was all business again, with more bearings to be given.
From the corner of his eye Brother Saile caught the movement of something coming toward them through the trees and bush; he turned, squinting under the afternoon sun, and with surprise at his own relative calm he saw that their search for a killer wolf had come to an end. Monster instead of wolf, perhaps, but he could not doubt it was the killer, come now to find the searchers.
Silent, poisonous and deadlylooking as a silver wasp, the mansized creature came at a catlike run through the scrub forest. Brother Saile understood that he should now try to lay down his life for his friend, he should shove Brother Jovann back and rush forward himself to distract the thing. And something in Brother Saile wanted to be that heroic, but his belly and his feet had turned to lead and would not let him. He tried at least to shout a warning, but even his throat was paralyzed by fear. At last he did manage to seize Brother Jovann by the arm and point.
“Ah,” said Jovann, coming out of a reverie and turning to see. A score of paces away the monster crouched on its four legs. Peasants glimpsing it might call it wolf. Shreds of gray cloth clung to it, as if it had been dressed and then had wolf-like torn itself out of the garment. Terrible and beautiful at once, it flowed like quicksilver two rapid strides closer to the men and then settled again into a crouching, silent statue.
“In God’s n-name come away!” Brother Saile whispered, through shivering jaws. “It is no natural beast. Come away, Brother Jovann!”
But Jovann only raised his hands and signed the horror with the wedge; he seemed to be blessing it rather than exorcising.
“Brother Wolf,” he said lovingly, “you do indeed look unlike any beast I have ever seen before, and I know not from what worldly parentage you may have sprung. But there is in you the spirit of life; therefore never forget that our Father above has created you, as He has created all other creatures, according to his own plan, so we are all children of the one Father.”
The wolf darted forward and stopped, stepped and stopped, inched and stopped again, in a fading oscillation. In its open mouth Saile thought he saw fangs not only long and sharp, but blurring with vicious motion like the teeth of some incredible saw. At last there came forth a sound, and Saile was reminded simultaneously of ringing swordblades and of human agony.
Jovann dropped to one knee, facing the monster more on a level. He spread his arms as if willing an embrace. The thing bou
nded in a blur of speed toward him, then stopped as if caught by a leash. It was still six or eight paces from the kneeling man. Again it uttered sound; Saile, half-fainting, seemed to hear the creak of the torture rack and the cry of the victim rise together.
Jovann’s voice had nothing to do with fear, but only blended sternness with its love.
“Brother Wolf, you have killed and pillaged like a wanton criminal, and for that you deserve punishment! But accept instead the forgiveness of all the men you have wronged. Come now, here is my hand. In the name of the Holy One, come to me and pledge that from this day on you live in peace with men. Come!”
X
As Derron came up at a staggering, exhausted run, he first heard a murmur of speech and then saw the figure of Brother Saile standing motionless.
Derron then lurched to a halt, raising his staff; but Saile was not looking at him, and Derron knew now that Saile was not the berserker. What Operations had said about the embryonic lifeline and what the berserker had said in the cathedral had at last fitted together to make a wondrous kind of sense. Three steps sideways brought Derron to where he could see what Saile was gaping at.
He was only in time to see the berserker-wolf take the last hesitant step of its advance. To see it raise one metal paw—and with its steel claw-fingers gently touch the kneeling friar’s extended hand.
“So, my guess was right, it had become a living thing,” said Derron. His head rested in Lisa’s lap, and he looked up past her face at the park’s treetops and imitation sun. “And as such, susceptible to St. Jovann’s domination. To his love. There’s no other way to put it.” Lisa stroked his forehead. “Are you eating up the pious legends?”
“Oh, there are rational explanations. The most complex and compact machine the berserkers ever built, shot up through twenty thousand years evolutionary gradient—something like life was bound to happen to it. Or so we say now. And Jovann and some other men have had amazing power over living things.”
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