by Mick Farren
Menlo grunted. 'Looks like we've been spotted.'
'We're kinda hard to miss.' Reave's mouth twisted.
Figures were spilling out of buildings all over. Some were running toward the far end of town, but one large group, emerging from a big, barnlike building near the ziggurat, was forming into orderly ranks. They wore what looked like green sleeveless tunics and were carrying weapons.
'They've got themselves some sort of militia, damn it.' The figures in green were reinforced by a number of regular townspeople.
'And they're planning to make a fight of it.'
'I don't think they know who they're dealing with.'
There was a dry stone wall, three or four feet high, around the perimeter. The defenders were running toward it, obviously planning to use it as cover from which to hold off the attackers. Reave knew that his own bunch was going to take casualties and that Baptiste's response would probably be the massacre of everyone in the town. He drew one of his two pistols from the holster on his saddle. It was a long-barreled flintlock, lavishly ornamented, a reproduction of an ancient Moorish design. The antiquity, however, was only on the outside. The weapon's operation was deadly state of the art. A subatomic pellet discharged a stream of lethal accelerated ions each time the trigger was pulled. He checked the pistol's charge, then replaced it and ran a check on its twin.
The pitch of the armored car's drive changed. It was revving and picking up speed. Its siren cut in. The captain shouted 'Charge!' and Reave put long roweled spurs to his charger. The advance was a practiced maneuver. The lead riders moved sideways until the whole mounted force was strung out, yelling like banshees, running line abreast while the foot soldiers sprinted behind them.
Despite their bulk, the marma lizards could cover ground at alarming speed. They ran with a high-stepping, roadrunner gait, their long, pointed tails ramrod-stiff behind them and level with the ground. The pounding of their clawed feet shook the earth. The defenders had reached the stone wall. Reave had to give them full credit for courage. It would have been quite understandable if they had fled in the face of the attackers' demented charge. There were flashes of green fire from along the wall's length. They had to be using some kind of crystal-based particle weapon. So they were not that neoprimitive; they were not fighting with bows and boomerangs. A marma was hit. It staggered headfirst into the ground and crashed on its back, crushing its rider. Reeve stuffed the reins of his mount into his mouth to free his hands to use both pistols.
The armored car was raking the wall with a heat ray. Reave could imagine the defenders crouching behind the stones as the roaring washes of flame lashed over their heads. Then there was a blinding flash, and a twenty-foot section of wall vanished into a smoking crater. The armored car had tossed a nukeling. Baptiste was ever the one to crush gnats with a hammer, Reave reflected. It was extremely lucky that Stuff Central had imposed an absolute prohibition on the templates for weapons of real mass destruction, or without a doubt Baptiste would have committed holocaust on a grand scale and his body count would have risen to truly astronomical figures. He would have smashed stars if he had had the means. The limits on his viciousness were strictly a matter of available technology.
The nearest riders converged on the gap in the stone wall. Reave was one of them. Once through the gap, he hauled his charger around to go after the defenders who were still crouching behind the wall. Then he was in among them. Menlo was beside him, hacking with an ancient cavalry saber that he kept honed to a razor edge. Reave found himself in the seemingly timeless chaos of close combat. He was fighting on instinct, and the world was coming at him in vivid, threatening visual flashes. The noise was so dense that it was akin to silence. A burly militiaman in a green jerkin grabbed for his left stirrup, looking to unseat him from the lizard. Without an instant's hesitation, Reave blew the top of the man's head off. At his right, another man was raising a weapon, a smooth blast tube with an ornate polymer stock. Reave fired again and again. Firepower was the raiders' watchword: Just keep firing. His pistol made a continuous high-pitched roar.
The defenders were determined, but they were no match for Baptiste's savages. After a few furious minutes of desperate hand-to-hand fighting, they broke and ran. Most were cut down by pursuing riders. Menlo seemed to be taking a barbarous delight in lopping off the heads of the fleeing defenders. Then he changed his trick. He hung low in his saddle and slashed open a running man's stomach. The man's intestines spilled out and tripped him. The entire column pounded down the main street of the town, pouring indiscriminate fire into the buildings and scattering terrified people before them. The riders shot at anything in their field of fire: men, women, or children. The slaughter was nothing more than a mindless frenzy, and it would probably last through the rest of the day, or longer if they came across a cache of native alcohol. On their tall reptiles, their weapons flashing, the riders must have looked like demons from the pit.
The column wheeled on the square in front of the ziggurat and started back down the street on a second pass. Already three buildings were burning, and there was a definite lack of readily available targets. Some riders had to make do with merely trampling the bodies that were lying in the dust. Then there was a flash of green fire from the roof of a small adobe. Someone was foolhardy enough to still be fighting back. The weapons of half the column came to bear on the spot, and the small flat-roofed structure was quickly reduced to nibble.
After a good deal of aimless milling about, riders started dismounting. Pickets held the mounts while the rest began a methodical house-by-house clearing of the town. Foot soldiers were dispatched into the surrounding fields to hunt down any inhabitants who might be hiding out there. Reave was content to remain in the street and hang on to the reins of his charger along with those of Menlo and another man while they joined in the house-to-house combing for booty and victims. Reave was beginning to feel sickened. As he wrestled with the lizards, which still had their wattles up and were ready to go, Baptiste's armored car rolled to a stop beside him. The driver, Gord, a squat sociopath with hulking shoulders and a blankly brutal frog face, swung down from the armored car and was pulling on the backtanks of a flamethrower. Soon he would be hosing liquid phosphorus into any building that took his fancy.
Although there were regular outbursts of gunfire, the intent was not an immediate, wholesale massacre of the population. Baptiste liked to have a few prisoners to play with. A makeshift pen was set up on the square, and title townspeople who had been unfortunate enough to have been taken alive were forced to squat on the ground, guarded by a dozen foot soldiers. There were raucous shouts from back down the street. Someone had discovered the town brewery.
Up to that point no raider had attempted to enter the ziggurat. Anything that had a connection to metaphysics was reserved for Baptiste himself. He had an intense and all-encompassing hatred of anything to do with the spiritual, an attitude that Reave considered a little incongruous in a man who was so fascinated by death. Baptiste stepped down from the armored car and stood staring at the ziggurat. Reave had to admit that the guy had style. He was short but compensated for it by constant nervous aggression. He was the classic little dictator, and his stance as he looked at the ziggurat was typical. His boots were planted in the dirt in a manner that indicated to the world that he was ready for anything it cared to throw at him. He looked tough and weather-beaten. His long leather coat was dusty and stained. The perennial goggles had left permanent marks on both sides of his jutting nose. With Napoleonic understatement, his only concession to any kind of battlefield dandyism was the flowing aviator scarf and a collection of small gold trinkets on a chain around his neck. He wore a second short flight jacket under the long coat. His hands were clasped determinedly behind his back, but the solid certainty of the stance was betrayed by fingers that were in constant motion.
Baptiste nodded to himself as though he had made some sort of decision. Looking neither left nor right, he started walking toward the ziggurat. He seemed tran
sfixed. A number of men fell in behind him. Reave decided that he would go, too. He wanted to see the inside of the thing on the square. The lizards had calmed down, and he handed the reins to a foot soldier. With his pistols stuck in his belt, he strode after Baptiste.
Only five men actually mounted the steps to the ziggurat: Baptiste himself; Reave; a horseman called Yar Gracka; the Old Metal Monster, one of the originals in Baptiste's army; and I-shiire, who kept his face veiled in the manner of the Nulites. The remainder of Baptiste's followers hung back. Despite their absolute callousness in most things, the nomad raiders had a certain reserve when confronted by the metaphysical. It was not a matter of belief or even fear. In the Damaged World, belief was wholly relative. Metaphysics was something that most of the army did not understand and thus did not care to mess with. They left it to the fanatics like Baptiste and I-shiire the Nulite or to the inquisitive like Reave and the Old Metal Monster.
The flight of stone steps ran straight and very steep almost a third of the way up the structure. The pseudosun was well into the sky, and the day was getting warm. The Old Metal Monster, who weighed some four hundred pounds, was panting and red-faced, sweating into his steel armor. Reave wondered what they would discover at the end of the climb. One could never tell with religion. The shrine might hold some inexplicable piece of technology or a sacrificial altar crusted with the blood of centuries.
The first thing they found was a set of imposing bronze doors, ten feet high and looking as though they weighed several tons each. They were ornamented with coiling serpents and the double helix symbol enclosed by a seven-pointed star. Baptiste pushed back his goggles and pulled off his gauntlets. Without a word, he handed the gloves to Yar Gracka and placed his bare hands flat on the metal, as though he were trying to sense some kind of vibration. It seemed to Reave that Baptiste's behavior was getting stranger and stranger. After a few moments he flexed his arms as though trying to push the doors open. They refused to yield. The other men joined him, applying their shoulders, but still the doors would not move. Baptiste stepped back. He motioned to I-shiire. The Nulite reached under his burnoose and produced a tiny shaped limpet change. Nulites attached great significance to the act of blowing things up. According to their violently relentless faith, any explosion was a symbol of the Primal Birth. The explosion was not to be, however. Just as I-shiire was placing the charge on the hairline division between the two doors, they made a noise like a deep sigh and slowly swung back.
It was dark inside the ziggurat, and for the first few steps the raiders were quite blind. Reave pulled out his pistols. The other men also had weapons in their hands. Gradually their eyes became accustomed to the gloom. There seemed to be a soft radiance coming from above them. It was the first time Reave could remember seeing Baptiste look hesitant. They were in a large square room. A shaft of sunlight came in behind them, as much of an intruder as they were. As far as Reave could tell, the room was a perfect cube. That was the first problem: The room was too big. There was no way the place could be accommodated by the outside dimensions of the structure. It was a physical impossibility. If anything, it should have come to a point that corresponded with the pyramid peak of the ziggurat.
Yar Gracka scanned the room for any lurking threat, 'Shift-space?'
The Old Metal Monster scowled. 'It's a damned reality twist. I hate religions. They always pull shit like this.'
The second problem was the large stone cube that floated in the exact center of the space with no visible means of support. Baptiste slowly paced around it, gazing up with his hands clasped behind his back. In the half-light he had the face of an angry hawk. Hard, crazy eyes were bright above the curved, jutting nose, and thick sensual lips were curled in an expression of total contempt.
'Is this supposed to impress me? Do they think I'm some ignorant native who can be intimidated by party tricks?'
He seemed to take everything about the ziggurat very personally. Reave noticed, though, that Baptiste refrained from actually walking under the floating block of stone. Instead, he shouted furiously into the echoing space.
'So where are you, priests, or whatever you call yourselves?'
He stood and waited, but there was no response of any kind. He interlaced his fingers and flexed his wrists.
'So, priests, you want to play hide-and-seek, do you? I have a much better idea. I'm going outside, and I'm going to hang what's left of your parish, one at a time, until you decide to show yourselves. How do you like that, priests?' He looked at the Old Metal Monster. 'Build a gallows for me, Monster.'
The Old Metal Monster nodded. His expression was grim, but his small pig eyes gleamed at the prospect of a multiple hanging. 'Right away, chief.'
As he turned to walk back through the bronze doors, the burnished surface of his armor was suddenly alive with dancing flashes of purple energy like a plasma discharge or sudden isolated static. Although the flashes did not appear to be causing him any harm, the Old Metal Monster started frantically to try to brush them off as though they were crawling insects.
'Damn this, I'm getting out of here.'
As he stumbled back into the outside light, the flashes vanished as abruptly as they had appeared. The others gathered around him on the steps outside the door.
'Are you all right?'
The Old Metal Monster nodded uncertainly. He looked plenty shaken. 'I guess so.'
'What was that stuff?'
'Some filthy priest trick?'
Baptiste's eyes were hard. 'You all heard what I said in there, so let's get to it.'
A makeshift gallows was hastily erected, and Baptiste personally looked over the prisoners to select the first victim. He picked a thickset man with graying hair who looked to be some kind of town dignitary. As three foot soldiers dragged him out of the depressed mass of surviving townspeople, the man struggled and shouted, begging to be told what he and the other people had ever done to deserve the treatment they were receiving. No answer was forthcoming, and once they had him standing on the tall four-legged stool with the noose around his neck, he seemed to go limp, as though he had resigned himself to death. Baptiste walked forward and, without a word, kicked away the stool. The man dropped less than two feet, and the rope failed to break his neck. He hung twisting and choking with his feet barely inches off the ground. His face slowly turned blue, and a distended tongue protruded from lips that had puffed up to a dark purple.
Baptiste did not even wait for the first man to die before he chose a second sacrifice. This time it was a woman, plump and pink-cheeked, who looked as though she spent her time weeding her vegetable patch or milking her cow. When Baptiste pointed to her, she went white and them exploded into screaming hysteria. She had to be carried to the gallows, and the foot soldiers had trouble getting her to stand on the stool. Her legs seemed incapable of holding her up. The soldiers were about to dispense with the stool and haul her up bodily when a voice came from the top of the ziggurat.
'Stop this madness!'
A single figure had come out of the bronze doors. Baptiste waved to the men who were still trying to string up the choking, shrieking townswoman. 'Wait. Let her down. This looks like our elusive priest.'
The figure was male. It was hard to estimate his age. A fitted bodysuit, spotlessly white, showed that he had a well-developed muscular body, but his face was lined and venerable. A full head of straight white hair that fell to his shoulders was held in place by a thin gold chaplet. Reave suspected that somewhere back up the line the man must have had a longlife treatment. As he walked up to Baptiste and his henchmen, the contrast was scarcely believable. Beside the dirt and scars and stragglingbeards of the raiders, he was dazzling. A couple of soldiers actually took a step back as he came close.
Menlo leaned close to Reave. 'That's what you call an aura.'
Baptiste waited with his hands on his hips. 'So you're the priest of this wretched little town?'
The man in white regarded him calmly. 'I'm not a priest.'
'So what are you?'
'My name is Anaheim, and I'm a metaphysician.'
Baptiste sneered. 'You'll not metaphysic your way out of this, priest.'
'I've already told you that I'm not a priest.'
Baptiste stabbed an angry finger at the ziggurat. 'And what's that thing? Your house? It's a damned temple. You can't lie your way out of that,'
'The structure is an integral part of my work.'
It did not help that Anaheim was over a foot taller than Baptiste. The chief of the raiders puffed out his chest and did everything but stand on tiptoe to be intimidating.
'You've come face to face with Vlad Baptiste, whatever you are. Men call me the Torch, and I am death to all stinking priests.'
Even with the now-still body already hanging on the gallows, Anaheim did not seem at all afraid of Baptiste. All he did was nod, acknowledging what Baptiste had said.
'I can't say that I'm pleased to meet you, Vlad Baptiste. You must be massively insecure to have the need to create such destruction. I can only tell you again that I am not a priest. If anything, I'm a scientist.'
Baptiste's voice was a snake hiss. 'I also hang scientists.'
Metaphysician Anaheim shook his head. 'No, you can't hang me.'
He was not pleading for his life. It was a simple statement of fact. The silence that followed was eerie. Baptiste clearly could not believe what he was hearing.
'I. . can't hang you? I can do anything I like to you. The only limit to what I can do to you is my own imagination!'
Again Anaheim shook his head. 'All you can do to me is force me to do something now that I was planning to leave until later.'
'And what's that?'
'This.' Metaphysician Anaheim closed his eyes.