This Fortress World

by Gunn, James

  The Abbot nodded gravely, unsurprised. "It is often done, I understand; for psychological as well as practical reasons."

  I went on, unheeding. My voice had come alive, but the life was remembered horror through which I groped for words. "They smiled while they did it. How can there be such evil in the world? They smiled, and no one cared, and they cut off her feet."

  "No doubt she had committed some crime."

  "Crime!" I said, lifting my head. "What crime could she have committed?"

  The Abbot sighed. "Many things are considered crimes by the Barons or the Emperor—"

  "What crime," I went on, "could justify such mutilation? They couldn't be sure she was guilty. They hadn't brought her to trial. They hadn't let her speak in her own defense. If they did this now, what will happen to her later?"

  "In the temporal world," the Abbot said sadly, "justice is stern and seldom tempered with mercy. If a man steals, his hand is cut off. Many minor crimes are punishable by death. But it is likely that the girl was accused of treason."

  "The miracles are illusions," I said bitterly, "but these things are real. Pain, hunger, violence, injustice, brutality. Only here in the monastery is there safety and shelter. And I am hiding from the world."

  "That isn't pity," the Abbot said sternly, "that is a perversion, and close to heresy. Stamp it out, my son! Harry it from your mind with the scourge of faith! Here on Brancusi, God has given temporal power to the Barons and the Emperor. He has given them the right to administer justice and look after the physical lives of their subjects. If they are unjust and cruel, we should pity them, not their vassals and villeins, for the rulers are cutting themselves off from God's eternal peace. It is right that we should pity the temporary suffering of the people, but we must never forget that the physical life is more of an illusion than those we create in the Cathedral. Only the death that is life is real and eternal."

  "Yes, Father, but—"

  "As for our purpose in the monastery, it is not a withdrawal from life but a dedication to a better life. You should know that, William! You know our duties, our purpose, our goals." His voice dropped; he sighed. "But I must not be too severe. Your sympathies are too easily stirred. They have led you astray."

  "I shall pray for guidance, Father,"' I said uneasily.

  The Abbot looked down. When he looked up again his expression was unreadable. "You said that she left an offering. What was it?"

  I hesitated. Then, abruptly, "I don't know, Father."

  "You didn't look?"

  "In the excitement, it slipped my mind completely."

  "You are sure you don't have it with you?" the Abbot asked gently.

  I controlled a start. "Yes, Father."

  "Whatever it is, William, it should be turned over to the secular authorities. Its value—if it has any value—is nothing to us. And, from a practical viewpoint, we should never antagonize the temporal powers. We exist in peace, side by side, because our aims do not conflict. Instead they complement each other. Our physical defenses, even our spiritual powers, might not be strong enough to protect us from hostile secular forces. The Church must always look to its future."

  Tolerated, I thought suddenly. "Yet she sacrificed—"

  "She sacrificed nothing," the Abbot broke in sharply. "Whatever she had, it did not belong to her or she would not have been pursued. Her personal suffering was the direct result of her misdeeds. Misdeeds from which she doubtless hoped to gain."

  "Yes, Father," I said reluctantly.

  "But this is not a matter for discussion," the Abbot continued in a milder tone. "It is a matter of Church policy that anything for which the secular authorities have a just claim should be turned over to them as quickly as possible. An object cannot claim sanctuary."

  The Abbot got up slowly. He was a tall man, as tall as I am, and heavier, and his powerful personality enveloped me like a thick cloak.

  "Go and get it," he said firmly. "Bring it to me so that I can return it to its proper owners."

  "Yes, Father," I said meekly. At that moment disobedience was unthinkable. My mind was working as I turned toward the door. I had never lied to anyone before. Why had I lied to the Abbot now? And he knew that I lied. He did not believe me.

  I might win forgiveness even yet, if I gave up the pebble. The pebble was worthless. If it had a meaning, I could never decipher it. With the door half open, I turned, my hand fumbling at the pouch beneath my robe. But the Abbot was disappearing into the inner room; the door was closing behind him.

  I went through the outer doorway and closed the door silently behind me.

  I paced the monastery corridors for hours. If I went back to the Abbot and told him I couldn't find the object the girl left—It was no good. He wouldn't believe me. He would tell me to leave the monastery, and I would have to go. Could I leave, uselessly? Who would I help? How could I live? All I knew about life outside was what I had seen this afternoon.

  I decided to give up the pebble. I decided it several times. Once I got as far as the Abbot's door and stood there with my knuckles upraised. But I could not knock. Oddly, wonderfully, the girl had trusted me. The only thing she had known about me was the miracle I had worked for her, and it had been very little, but it had been enough. Blindly, she had trusted me. How could I betray that trust?

  I didn't want to see anybody. Twice I turned away from monks moving rapidly down the corridor and slipped into another room where I could be alone. It would have been relief to have confided my problem to someone, but after the Abbot there was nobody. Brother John would have been interested in the pebble, but he wouldn't care what happened to it. Father Konek would patiently explain the fallacy of my position. Father Michaelis would have been overcome with horror at the thought of rebellion.

  I lingered in the Archives, but in all that vast accumulation of wisdom there was no answer to a problem like mine. I worked out in the exercise room for a little while, as I did for an hour or so every day. The Fathers said it helped to rid me of the fevers of youth, but there was no help in it now for this fever. The art room held me for half an hour as I listened to my favorite composition in light and sound by a composer long forgotten. But it ended, and before I could find another, a party of monks entered, and I faded down a side corridor.

  At last, tired, discouraged, and without a solution, I started for my cell. Perhaps I could find in prayer and sleep the answer my weary, wakeful mind could not supply. As I neared the familiar doorway, I saw a monk step through it and after him three more.

  I must have mistaken the room, I thought in wild astonishment. But I knew it was no mistake.

  My cowl was pulled up over my head; my face was shadowed. I drew closer. The first monk looked up. My step faltered momentarily as I realized with frozen disbelief that the coarse, gray robe did not clothe a monk or an acolyte.

  Looking at me with hard, bold eyes was the dark-faced man who had waited for a girl outside a cathedral and when she had come out had cut off her feet.

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  Chapter Three

  Betrayed!

  The word exploded in my mind.

  Betrayed to these men who killed and mutilated and…Why? Because I saw—No. There was no reason—but one…The pebble. Resting in the pouch at my waist like a burning coal. I had been foolish to keep it with me.…Someone wanted it badly. They had hired these men—these killers—to get it—or get it back.…

  Betrayed—by whom?

  I thought automatically of the young acolyte. He could have got word outside that the pebble was here, that an acolyte named Dane knew where it was. But—my mind stopped—he could not have let them in. He had to have help, expert help, in lowering the Barrier. He had to have help in getting robes for them and directing them. He couldn't have done it alone.

  That meant—the second shock was worse than the first—an organization. There were men inside the monastery who could be bought like mercenaries, to whom oaths and duties meant nothing. An organization th
at could betray the Church and its defenses into the hands of the secular authorities. But that—God save the Church!—I couldn't do anything about. My predicament was more immediate and more deadly.

  The knot of fake monks stood whispering and undecided outside my door. I could not turn back; that would bring immediate suspicion. There was only one thing to do. I had to go on, hoping they would not stop me, would not see my face, or, seeing it, would not know me. I had to trick these sharp-eyed masters of trickery. The price of failure was my life. My heart beat loudly in my chest; my legs felt liquid. And it was not the thought of the pebble.

  "Dane," said the dark one in a soft voice that was the touch of a cat's paw before the needled claws sprang out, "the acolyte."

  My heart stopped beating—and then began again. It had been a question. They didn't know they were in front of my cell; they couldn't be sure they had found the right one. I turned without hesitation, keeping my face in the shadow of the cowl, and I pointed to the second doorway down the way I had come. Slowly then I turned back and resumed my measured pace.

  My body protested at moving slowly. It would have been ecstasy to run. But I knew instinctively that running or looking back would be fatal. I had a few seconds before they discovered that the cell I had pointed out was bare. I had bought the seconds. I must not waste them. Three cells on that side of mine had been empty for a long time. The old monks who had lived there had died, one by one, and they had never been replaced. I had scarcely known the old men, but the manner of their passing had impressed me. Now, if I could not reach the first side corridor, I would go, not as they had, but young and afraid.

  The corridor was twenty steps away. I had not dared direct them farther; they would have suspected a mistake of four or more. Fifteen. I held my breath. Ten. Perhaps I could make it.

  "Monk!" One of them called from behind but it was not the dark one.

  I walked on deafly. Five steps more. Four. Three. Two.

  "Dane!" came the velvet voice.

  I whirled at the corner. A thin, bright-blue bolt hissed past me, splitting the darkness. I felt my hair stir under the cowl. As I picked up my robe and ran, I heard behind me a dull, smacking, fleshy sound and a muffled curse and the noise of running, stumbling feet.

  The hours I had spent in the exercise room had not been wasted. I blessed them now. In spite of my weariness, I could still run, and the men behind me were hobbled by unfamiliar robes, confused by strange corridors. And I ran.

  A corridor split off; I followed it. At an intersection, I turned again. There was a chance of losing them. The monastery was a maze; it had grown steadily but haphazardly until it covered several blocks. But the slap-slap of shod feet on stone floors followed me steadily wherever I turned. I could not lose them, and they were running better.

  Where could I go? Where could I hide? The killers were inside. The monastery was no longer a sanctuary. And there were traitors here now, who had let the killers in. The Abbot? Even if I gave up the pebble now, I wasn't sure that he could protect me. Would want to. I had lied to him. And there was the promise of the pebble—and the memory of the girl.

  Behind me the feet followed. And followed, while the breath burned harshly into my lungs and the blood pounded into my head and muffled my ears. Two feet, I thought crazily, shuddering. Only two. The girl's feet were following. Only the feet, cut off at the ankles. Come to reclaim the pebble…

  For a mad moment I thought of casting the pebble behind me, like the spaceman in the folk tale, the one in the lifeboat who cast out his child to the relentlessly pursuing beast of space. Then the feet might stop, satisfied, and let me go.

  But the fantasy passed. The feet were once more many and heavy and inexorable.

  Outside? Could I go outside? I shivered. I would be lost outside. In my robe, without money, but most of all—most fatally of all—without knowledge, I would be a man marked and alone. Outside was where the killers lived, the sea of chaos where they could snake through like amphibious mammals, scarcely leaving a wake, while I would flounder in a turmoil of white water until they came for me. Outside I was helpless, their prey to be caught whenever they wished, to be treated as they wished, to be discarded when they had finished with me.

  But here!—oh, God, I had no refuge, no home, no hope. My world had offered me up as a sacrifice to the killers' evil gods. I could see only a gaping mouth with fangs stained red with blood. Damn them! I screamed silently as I raced along the dark corridors with fear pounding behind me. Damn them all! There was no escape; for me there was no sanctuary anywhere, and already I was gasping for breath.

  I scarcely knew where I was. Somewhere to the right was the Archives. To the left was the dining hall. Below was the exercise room. But none of them had a place I could hide for more than a moment, and the feet were close behind me. I could not double back. Ahead of me was the Cathedral. Better to die here than to desecrate the Cathedral with my blood. But—

  The thought made my stride falter. This was my world. It was still my world for a moment. The killers were here in my world, and if I couldn't make use of that I deserved to be cast to them. If I couldn't turn the powers of my world against them, if I couldn't sell myself, at least, for a price that the killers had not planned to pay, let me be taken.

  Ahead was the Cathedral. In its control room were powers they had never dreamed of. I needed a little more lead—

  I broke into a sprint. The pace was impossible for more than a few seconds, but those seconds were priceless. When the blue Portal glowed in front of me, the sounds of pursuit had faded away beneath the noise of my own running feet. A moment's hesitation beside the apparently seamless corridor wall, and a panel slid back. Before it was more than half open, I was through and the panel was closing behind me.

  Breathless, I sprang up the steps. I threw myself into the chair facing the controls, flicked the power switch, fitted the cap to my head, slipped my hands into the gauntlets. The screen grew gray, brightened, flickered, and cleared. The Cathedral was empty as I had known it would be at this hour. Then—one, two, three—all four of the false monks broke through the blue veil of the Portal. And were trapped…

  A wave of madness swept over me. For the first time in my life, I knew power. I felt it pulsing beneath my finger tips, surging through my body, swelling in my mind. Power was mine. Over this small segment of creation I was God. Punishment was mine. Life and death were mine. But first I had to seal off my kingdom.

  The Portal was one-way. They had gone through but they could not go back. The Barrier was another matter; it opened onto the street. The twist of a switch reversed the field. They must not escape!

  They had shed their robes during the chase. They were black shadows in the Cathedral, shadows in snug trousers, shirts, and jackets, fat, ugly, snouted guns in their hands. Three of them searched frantically, bewilderedly, among the kneeling benches for a fugitive who had vanished impossibly. The fourth, the dark one, stood in the middle of the Cathedral, gazing thoughtfully around the smooth walls with a quirk of wry amusement twisting one corner of his mouth.

  Finally the three searchers looked back toward the front of the Cathedral. I was facing them, a tall, hooded figure in a coarse gray robe, awesomely shadowed. One long arm stretched out accusingly.

  Leave the Cathedral! a voice whispered in their minds. Murderous vermin, torturing cowards, slimy killers, scum of the universe! Go! Before I erase your desecration from this temple of holiness.

  The answer was a bright-blue bolt, a scorching flash that seared its way into the wall behind the shadow figure. Another shot and another shattered the darkness of the Cathedral. Formless shadows reeled drunkenly toward the walls and came surging back. But the figure in front of them stood untouched, its arms folded across its chest contemptuously.

  Fools! the soundless voice rumbled. Your guns are useless here. They are toys to frighten children, you men who have sold your souls for money. You have based your lives on the power of these playthings, but here t
hey are nothing. You are weaponless, here in the presence of God!

  And a divine laughter thundered through their minds, a laughter that was more than a little mad.

  Go! Go! Before I repent me of my mercy.

  One of them broke. He turned, fled toward the Barrier, shaking and unnerved. But a tingling warning stopped him short of a fatal plunge. He turned a white face toward the cowled figure at the front of the Cathedral.

  What? You will not go? Then you must stay and face my wrath. For money you have sold yourself. For money you kill and torture and terrify. For a few coins you torment the weak to please the strong. You want money? Take it! Money, money, money, money, money…

  Out of the air coins streamed into being, hurtling showers of metal pieces flung with great force, mysterious missiles aimed at their faces, striking cruel, stunning blows. Before they could throw up their arms for protection, all were bleeding from cuts and one had lost an eye. Cursing defiantly, he stood there, one hand clasped over the bleeding socket until a new shower forced him to seek cover, like the others, behind the kneeling benches.

  Starkly, suddenly, I was sane again. Sane and shaking. Seeing that empty socket and the blood and jelly upon his cheek. I was sane and empty, and I longed for the divine madness that would not return.

  I tried to think. This couldn't last. Just as the madness couldn't last. Even if I could hold off the four in the Cathedral or even—God pity me!—kill them, sooner or later some of the monks would come to investigate. I couldn't use my weapons against them. The end must come.

  One thing I had to make sure of. I had to see that they didn't get the pebble. They wanted it badly. They would search for it endlessly. As long as the pebble was missing, ruthless men could not rest.

  I fished the pebble out and placed it on the control panel in front of me. It winked at me like a crystal eye, all-knowing, mute. My hand crept out toward it. I couldn't bear to part with it. What would I be when the pebble was gone? Nothing. Worse than nothing. I had been nothing before this afternoon, I realized now; from this day on—however short that time might be—I would know it. And yet—