And as he circled around the sun, just two seconds after his death, into his memory burst the foreign, grafted image of the majestic Golden Galley. Condway froze in the middle of his glorious dance of praise and mourning, his heart that was his mind, his body, his thought and will, grew still. Michael Condway the neosatanist died his second death.
Humbly, like a pilgrim, Condway mustered his feelings raging in a whirl that spread for miles around. Humbly, though the hatred he had been learning for years like a catechism blazed on and burnt him. Oh, how he hated Colloni! He hated him for depriving him of the chance to become a devil, for humiliating him for the first time since he'd taken the Oath, humiliating him and getting away with it. He hated Colloni for forcing him to do something which now, as a soul, Condway feared, which he did not want to do. He hated him for making him clean as a devout Christian and not as a worthy worshipper of Satan. Finally, he hated him for the powerlessness of his own hatred.
Filled with this hatred, he threw himself into flight and followed the slippery path to the distant star. He knew when and where to signal his good, and where to show his ill will. He knew and this knowledge of the path was to him as hateful as Colloni himself.
He flew and flew and flew ...
And then he wanted to stop but did not, for the intention had already overtaken that point in space. He lost his sense of time which should however drag very slowly; he sped on, entangled in its retro-progressive loops. And then, or was it before and after, everything ended and only the Golden Galley remained in that strangely familiar natural and ordinary emptiness.
Condway turned and glided along the ship's side. His heart protested, but what is a heart if the whole world is against it? Fear gripped Michael, as powerful and visible as he himself.
Splinters that stretched for miles glistened in the black void, the red sun shone in the distance, far, far away. The silence and turbulence of the void were driving the satanist mad.
Suddenly he detected a movement right next to him. He directed the intention of a glance upwards and saw uncountable rows of enormous oars, moving rhythmically, pushing the ship towards Earth. The stars flashed in the rhythm of the rowing, the sails fluttered, and so did the terrified soul of Michael Condway. Something foreign, alien, reeking with evil, invaded the field of his awareness.
Overpowered, frozen, imprisoned in his second existence Michael was engulfed by Satan. He was engulfed by all that he had desired all his life and what only now revealed to him its true face unspoilt by a good-natured grimace, so different from what he had imagined. The armour cracked under the pressure of evil. In a hundredth of a second, Condway was astounded by Satan's power, he was terrified by his own faith and the real devil. He was astounded and terrified for suddenly, and completely against his will, a voice cried out within him: "Save me, 0 Lord!"
Satan laughed, dragging him first up, onto the deck, then down below, where the oarsmen were. Michael fought to free himself, squirming and writhing, but the will to resist was slowly dying away in him.
Condway was panting with fear in Satan's strengthsapping claws, listening to the drum beating louder and louder, and to the terrifying roar:
"One ... two ... One ... two..."
At the same time Colloni was receiving a mist from Radziwill's messenger, who mumbled something about the sense of duty.
The Blessed One took a good swig from the bottle of vintage Sardway and waved his hand impatiently.
"Enough. Radziwill knows very well I'll come back. You'd better tell me," here he smiled bitterly, "how you're getting on with the Galley."
The messenger was obviously informed of the matter, for he only sighed and cursed.
"Mmm ..." Prodded by Colloni, the messenger did not know how to begin. "Radziwill is dealing with it now. Waste of time ... So far he's found something in the Lodestar's Book of Prophecies. He got stuck at it and for the last few hours hasn't made any progress."
"The Book of Prophecies, you say?" Colloni became interested. "All right. Buzz off."
The Blessed One duly buzzed off.
Somewhat upset, Colloni put away the ancient bottle and floated up, to the library. All the books he had were in the traditional form, which with the years cost him more and more. He walked up to a huge bookcase and took from the shelf a slim, leather-bound volume of the Lodestar's Book of Prophecies. He sat down in a deep antique armchair and began to leaf through the book.
Half an hour later, at 03.40, having come across a certain passage, he jumped to his feet, threw the Prophecies in the corner and rushed to the strat.
In the machine, flying at top speed towards Sydney, he calmed down and through his friendly spirits got in touch with the Brain of the Blessed Legions. When connected, he immediately recalled the file of the trooper who had escaped the strange torpor but who went mad after the encounter with the Golden Galley. And it frightened him even more. Taking the trooper's parameters, he established the personality type and extrapolated it onto the general characteristic of Humanity. The result was staggering: no more than fifty million people had a chance of survival.
... And it shall come to pass that looking up towards the Heaven ye shall see the accursed ship bearing at you from the skies, the Ship of Doom. And ye shall do naught but wait and see the Satan take His due. He shall come through ye mighty Kingdom like a f sherman's net and the few that shall slip through the net's eye shall be scattered in the Wilderness lost and terrified, and shall never find each other ... "
In the headquarters of the Blessed Legions no one was surprised to see Colloni running like a madman, though many were surprised to see his shaking hands and the terror in his eyes. The director of the Special Task Force charged through his department and floated up, onto Radziwill's floor.
"Charles!" he screamed running into the Archangel's office. "Charles ... !"
"What's the matter?" Radziwill was busy doing calculations on the Brain and Colloni's sudden entry, though announced by the spirits, irritated him. Colloni never behaved like this. "What's the matter?"
"What is the matter?" The Blessed One echoed with bitter irony and slumped on one of the hovering armchairs. "The end of the world is nigh, Charles. The end of the world!"
Radziwill shrugged his shoulders.
"Not for everybody. There will be some who will survive."
"How can you be so cool about it?"
"And what do you want me to say? Besides, it's not certain yet."
"Eh?"
"If you read that passage carefully I'm sure you've noticed that the Lodestar also mentions a ship which will probably overtake Satan's ship but will only put the fear of God into people."
"You reckon? And what about those troops?"
"They're human too and may constitute a part of the terror ploy."
"Listen ... I've sent a spirit there, on a mission ..."
"You bloody idiot!"
"No, not my own friendly spirit. The soul of a man who died an hour ago. I told him before he died to find out what's what and return."
"Where on Earth did you find a dying man?"
"I killed him myself."
"Just what could be expected of you."
"He was a neosatanist. I caught him last night in Europe."
Are you sure he'll come back?"
Colloni took out the ring.
"It's a conditional curse. If he doesn't return by 05.58, the penance I put him through will be revoked."
"If it's Satan's ship, he doesn't have a chance in hell."
"Exactly ..." The Blessed One hid his face in his hands. His fingers were trembling though he was trying hard to keep calm. He shook his head, his hair flogging the palms of his hands. He hid his face because it had become white as if he was about to faint. His lips whispered something nervously and tears, which he had forgotten years ago,were filling his eyes.
Radziwill knotted his eyebrows.
"Calm down. The situation is not so tragic."
"Not so tragic?!" Colloni laughed out hysterical
ly.
The Archangel got up and began strolling along the panoramic window. The twilight on the other side was from time to time lit up by passing strats. Their position lights smudged into misty multi-coloured spectra as they sped by. The brightness of the exhaust gases dazzled the eye. The building's power field flashed with small explosions as drivers taking over manual control of their strats charged recklessly, practically rubbing against the air-borne colossus. The security lasers of the nearby cosmoport probed the darkness while some space monster blasted off, cheekily escaping gravitation with its millions of tonnes. The long, caterpillar convoys hurtled past at supersonic speed in the purple chutes of nongravitational tunnels that disappeared along with them. The gigantic air lilies, beautiful in their dignified though alien force of life, drifted below, just above the ground, separating the noisy life from the nature given back to the surface of the planet.
"I do understand," said Radziwill in a low quiet voice. "It's terrible. For thousands of years we build a great empire, billions of people are happy. They want to live. They know they are still threatened by Satan but we protect them against Him. And suddenly ... We are helpless. We cannot prevent what is going to happen. The only survivors are going to be those who lived according to the great Conscience. Perhaps I'm an egoist but we'll survive, so there's no particular reason for despair."
Colloni shook his head, slowly, as if his strength was leaving him. He was shaking all over even though his well known smile was still on his face; it looked frightening.
"We'll survive, will we?" he tried to laugh.
"Well, we have lived according to the Conscience."
Colloni's face stretched in an even bigger smile. He jumped from the armchair, opened his mouth, closed it again, sat down, gave out a soundless giggle, again stood up, threw his head back and down his stubbly cheeks trickled two glistening tears.
Radziwill came up to him and put him in the chair like a doll.
"Sit down," he said in a hard voice. "Sit and wait."
Then he looked at the crucifix hanging above the door and said:
"Maybe you still have a chance."
And so they waited: the motionless Colloni and the gloomy Radziwill stared at the glow of the city. The Golden Galley hurtled towards Earth faster than the fastest craft ever known on Earth. It was taking its harvest from Mald, from Katio, from Jeonast IV, from Batton, from Bed-tan ...
At the stroke of six, the digits on their fingernails changed and the ring lying on the table shattered with a dry crack. By now, souls in the Solar System were leaving their bodies. Caught unawares, they sped through Space - men, women and children ...
Those billions of human souls who thought they were leading good lives, wonderful lives, were now shackled by the power of their evil to the golden oar ... the thoughts, pushing with all their might ... pushing the golden oar ... and pulling the golden oar. . .
There was only the roar of Satan's voice, the sound of the drum, the creaking of the oars ...
"One... Two... One... Two..
And suddenly, Colloni's body slumped on the floor. His glassy, unseeing eyes stared at the brightness spreading above the city, at the great rising sun. The Legions' headquarters filled with screaming and wailing. Someone cried out in terror: "Jesus Christ!"
Radziwill was about to thank God but his lips froze shut, his hands gripped the armrests of the chair, and his soul departed from his body.
July 1989
BARSZCZEWSKI, JAN (179o-1851) - there is very little information about his life; the son of an impoverished yeoman in the eastern provinces of Poland (now Bielorussia), he was educated in a Jesuit college in Polock. He settled in St. Petersburg where he moved in literary circles and where he met Adam Mickiewicz and Taras Szewczenko, the leading Polish and Ukrainian romantic poets. Throughout his life he collected stories, legends and folk songs. The story "The Head Full of Screaming Hair" comes from his most popular work Squire Zawalnia or Bielorussia in Fantastic Stories.
BURSA, ANDRZEJ (1932-57) - poet, writer and playwright; he studied journalism and Slavonic languages at Cracow University and then worked as a reporter on a Cracow paper. He died at the age of 25 of heart disease; his Poems appeared posthumously in 1958, and his collected works Poetry and Prose in 1969. His early death amidst rumours of suicide, together with the tone of disenchantment, cynicism and spiritual desolation of his writing, combined in establishing him as a cult figure of the artist as a rebel. His novel Killing my Aunt, dedicated "To all those who stood terrified before the dead perspective of their youth", is Crime and Punishment taken a step further, where a Raskolnikov figure commits a premeditated but deliberately pointless murder. "The Dragon" is a grotesque story of a reporter who in the middle of the new communist reality accidentally discovers an ancient ritual of human sacrifice involving a live dragon.
DUKAJ,JACEK (1974- ) - writer, literary critic of sciencefiction, one of the most promising talents to have emerged in Polish literature in recent years. He made his debut at the age of 15, while still at school, with the magnificent "Golden Galley" - an astonishing feat of artistic maturity and literary craftsmanship for such a young writer. The story, a futuristic vision of the end of the world ruled by a highly structured, powerful organisation that seems to be KGB, CIA and the Society of Jesus rolled into one, is a doomsday tale constructed with elegant surefootedness, blending elements of science fiction with subtle yet penetrating reflection on the current political situation and the prevailing moral atmosphere. Written in 1989, at the time of Poland's emergence from under the communist rule and the increasing role of the church, "Golden Galley" is not only a reflection on the universal theme of the struggle between Good and Evil, but also a timely satirical commentary on the on-going struggle between the earthly powers for the rule over the human soul. In his later stories Dukaj, fascinated by the moral ambivalence of human aspirations, develops further the satanic theme, especially in "The Prince of Darkness Must Die" and his latest collection Requiem for Satan.
GOMBROWICZ, WITOLD (1904-1969) - one of the greatest, most influential Polish writers of the second half of this century. Born into a wealthy landowning family, he studied law at Warsaw University and later, briefly, philosophy and economics in Paris. He made his debut with a collection of short stories The Memoirs from the Time of Immaturity but it was Ferdydurke, his masterpiece published in 1937, which established him, together with Schulz and Witkacy, as one of the leading writers of the Polish literary avant-garde. The outbreak of the Second World War found him in Argentina where he remained for over twenty years working in almost total obscurity. In 1958 Julliard published the French translation of Ferdydurke which opened the road to recognition in Europe. In 1963 he returned to Europe and settled in France. In 1968 he was a winner of the International Publishers' Prize (Prix Formentor).
GRABINSKI, STEFAN (1887-1936) - the classic of Polish fantastic literature. One of the few serious practitioners of the genre in Poland, Grabinski raised it to a very high artistic standard. After studying classics and Polish literature at Lvov University he worked most of his life as a teacher. He made his debut in 1909 but it was only in 1919 that he was noticed and appreciated both by the critics and the reading public with his third volume of short stories The Demon of Motion. In the following ten years he published another four volumes of short stories, three plays and three novels, all within the fantasy genre. His writing is full of the prevailing intellectual fashions of his day - the paranormal, pathology, the unconscious and theosophy; he was also a serious student of Nietzsche, Bergson and James. His artistic ideal was Edgar Allan Poe but apart from being a master of the short story himself Grabinski was unusual in his systematic treatment of different themes like "motion", "fire" or "passions" around which he built his collections of stories, often by the carefully studied, realistic depiction of a social or professional milieu (i.e. the railway in The Demon of Motion or firemen in The Book of Fire).
HUBERATH, MAREK S. (1954- ) - the pen-name of a scientist
working at the Institute of Physics at the Yagellonian University in Cracow. His disturbing story "You've returned, Sneogg" took the first prize at the Fantastyka's II Literary Awards. "The Greater Punishment" bears all the hallmarks of Huberath's vision and philosophical interest. Both texts speak of extreme situations and take the side of the weak and ill-treated, showing both the angelic and the devilish side of human soul and condition. It is probably the first such distressing vision of Hell in contemporary Polish fantastic literature, with a dramatic addendum to the noisily inconclusive debate on abortion currently taking place in Poland. Huberath writes rarely and reaches for his pen only when he feels he has something to say. Apart from literature he has another dangerous hobby: mountaineering, sometimes with ropes.
IWASZKIEWICZ, JAROSLAW (1894-1980) - novelist, poet, playwright and translator, one of the greatest Polish writers of this century, often described as a Polish Thomas Mann. He was born in Ukraine and educated in Elizavetgorod and Kiev where he studied law and music; after 1918 he settled in the new, independent Poland. He worked as a diplomat and was a member of Skamander, an influential literary group of post-romantic and modernistic writers and poets. A prolific writer, in most of his works he dealt with a theme of individual and artistic alienation, evoked through realistic settings of historically and culturally different contexts. His writing is suffused with eroticism, often with a touch of demonism. One of his best works, "Mother Joanna of the Angels" - a historical novella set in 17th c. Poland - is a subtle, moving psychological study of a priest-exorcist who comes to exorcise a group of convent nuns and, out of love for the Mother Superior, allows the demons to take possession of his soul.
JASIENSKI, BRUNO (1901-1937) - poet, novelist and playwright; born in a provincial town, son of the local doctor, between 1914-1918 Jasienski lived with his family in Moscow, where he attended Polish schools and where he came into contact with the revolutionary literary avantgarde. After his return to Poland in 1918 he studied briefly at Cracow University and became very active in the Polish literary avant-garde. He was one of the originators of Polish futurism, writing influential programmes and manifestos. Persecuted by the police for his communist sympathies, and disappointed with the critical reception of his work, in 1925 Jasienski left Poland for France. There, he became an active member of the French Communist party. In 1929 he was deported from France for dangerous political propaganda (that year he wrote an anti-utopian novel I'm Burning Paris describing the outbreak of the plague during a social revolution in Paris, the idea closely resembling the famous novel by Camus The Plague). Reluctant to return to Poland, Jasienski emigrated to the Soviet Union where he was welcomed as a hero and given high positions in the literary departments of the party and the Soviet Writers' Union. He began to write in Russian ("the language of Lenin" whom he so admired). However, in 1937 he was arrested and died soon after on the way to GULAG. Jasienski's early Polish writing is a characteristic mixture of the sentimental and the decadent, of traditional verse and outrageous, grotesque imagery. His story "The Legs of Isolda Morgan", written in 1923, is a fine example of his own theory of avant-garde prose.
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