“Oh."
“Captain, I can see that this has all been a great deal to absorb. I'm going to have my people fly you back to your camp now, and at noon tomorrow we're going to wipe it off the planet, whether you and your people are in it or not. You can go on fighting us, but it won't do you any good, and if any more of our people die, either employees or stockholders, we're going to start removing your people, one way or another. I would much rather you joined us; we aren't the monsters you think us. Very few of us are like Tuesday; I'm sure that you have your own degenerates here on Godsworld, but we don't judge you by them, and we ask that you not judge us by ours. At least think it over, and if you decide to join us, come see me-announce your name in the entrance hall and the machines will bring you here. Just think it over, Captain-that's all.” She rose; John stood in response.
A section of the wall behind her slid aside, revealing gleaming golden walls; before John could see any details, she stepped through and the wall closed again. As she vanished, she called, “Remember, be out by noon!"
Chapter Fifteen
“When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth: but the righteous shall see their fall."-Proverbs 29:16
****
For a moment he was alone in the room; he turned to look it over.
The door he had entered by had opened again, and the two men who had brought him were standing in the room beyond. “Whenever you're ready, Mr. Mercy-of-Christ,” one of them called. “The airship's waiting on the roof."
John took a final glance around, decided that there was no point in lingering, and marched out. His escorts fell in on either side as he stepped into the open door of the moving room.
The conversation with America Dawes was roiling in his head, with first one fact or question bubbling up, then another. As he felt the floor rising beneath him he glanced up automatically, and noticed the glowing ceiling.
“Why are your lights all that awful color, and so bright?” he asked. “Can't you make them any color you like?"
“Of course we can,” one of the guards replied. “That's the color of sunlight back on Earth. Earth has a yellow sun, you know, not a red one like yours. Godsworld seems pretty dim to us."
John noticed how much more respectfully he was handled now than he had been in being brought here, and guessed at the reason-before he had only been an enemy, whereas now he was a prospective member of the People of Heaven. These two were treating him with mild deference-if he accepted the offer of a job he would presumably be their superior, and that deference would be appropriate. He had no intention of working with the People of Heaven, though; if he did accept the offer of a job, it would be to attack them from within. He realized now that his enemy was not Dawes herself, but the people back on Earth who had sent her. He was still not sure exactly what a corporation was, whether a tribe, congregation, or as Dawes had said, merely an overgrown business, but he was sure that it was the New Bechtel-Rand Corporation that was destroying Godsworld, not any individual Earther.
And was Tuesday really not a part of the corporation? He still did not understand what a “stockholder” was, but whatever they were, if Dawes had not lied they were outsiders with special privileges. Had he been unfair in his assessment of the People of Heaven? That would bear some thought; they might not be the degenerates he had thought them. Oh, they were still his bitter enemies, there could be no doubt of that-they had destroyed Godsworld's traditional way of life, reduced the People of the True Word and Flesh to chattels and robbed them of their approaching triumph.
He needed to know more, to understand just exactly what Bechtel-Rand was. Would he have to go to Earth to destroy the corporation, or to drive it permanently off Godsworld? If so, he would probably need to accept the job offer-there was no power on Godsworld that could transport him off the planet other than Bechtel-Rand itself.
He certainly could not stay and fight as he had been fighting. He had no doubt that Dawes meant exactly what she said about destroying the camp, and he had been almost resigned to abandoning it for the winter in any case. Going underground in the towns would be difficult, all the more so now that he was being watched, and he was not sure he cared to attempt it. He had been offered a choice of death or surrender, and as he had always told himself he would, he chose surrender.
He was not, however, willing to give up completely. He would abandon his little band of guerrillas, but not the fight against the corrupting influence of the Earthers. He remembered how he had thought men who refused to acknowledge defeat to be fools, but thrust the thought aside; he had lost a battle, but not the war. He could still fight-if he knew what he was fighting, and how to attack it.
Right now, he had no idea how to find out what he had to know, other than accepting the job. He hesitated at that thought; the prospect of actually going to Earth was simultaneously exciting and terrifying. Earth, hotbed of sin and corruption, heart of temporal evil-but the birthplace of mankind, the world where Jesus had walked! A world where the false god Progress had not been denied, where machines usurped the rights of men-and a world where a thousand green plants grew, instead of the handful on Godsworld.
Only green plants, no red ones-what did they use for nearwood? Was that why the Heaveners paid so much for it?
His two escorts seemed willing to talk; he asked, “What's Earth like?"
The guards smiled at each other. “How am I supposed to answer that?” said the one who had explained about the light. “It's an entire world! And a much more complicated one than yours, I'd say. There are nine billion people, cities, starports, mountains, oceans-what can I say?"
John skipped over the absurd population given as ordinary exaggeration. “I just meant generally-is the sky blue? The soil gray?"
“The sky is blue, but lighter than yours, and the soil comes in different colors. It's a brighter world than yours-more color, as well as the brighter sun. The air is thicker, and there's much more wind; the gravity is a little stronger, so everything's heavier. There are trees-big plants, taller than people."
“I know what trees are-they're in the Bible!"
The guard shrugged. “I've spoken to Godsworlders who didn't know, despite what your holy book says. I don't understand why Godsworld hasn't got any trees, myself. Your ancestors should have brought some."
“They tried, the legends say, but they wouldn't grow here."
“Oh.” The guard nodded. “Could be."
They stepped out on the roof and boarded the airship. When they were seated, John asked, “The people you work for, the corporation-what are they like?"
The talkative guard shrugged again. “Oh, like any other big corporation, I guess-good people and bad ones. I do my job and they pay me."
There were other corporations, then. “Is the New Bechtel-Rand Corporation one of the big ones?"
He nodded. “It sure is."
“The biggest?"
“Oh, I don't think so-not even the biggest developer. ITD's bigger, I think."
“Ahtadi?"
“ITD-stands for Interstellar Trade and Development Corporation."
“Oh.” He thought for a moment. “How big is Bechtel-Rand?"
“Last I heard, they had about a million and a half employees and were earning half a trillion credits a year."
John balked at the numbers. “A million? Do you mean a thousand, ten times a hundred?"
“No, a million-a thousand times a thousand. A one and six zeroes."
“And a trillion?"
“A one and twelve zeroes-a million million."
Resentfully, John said, “If you don't want to tell me, just say so; you don't need to make stupid jokes."
“I'm not joking!” the guard insisted, obviously offended.
“A million and a half people? There aren't that many people on all of Godsworld!"
“Oh, I'm not sure of that; Cheng, what was our census count?"
“I don't remember,” the other guard replied, “Ask Sparky."
“Spa
rky? What's the population of Godsworld?” the guard said, addressing the ceiling.
“No exact count is available, sir, but the current estimate is four million, one hundred thousand,” said the neuter voice of a machine.
“There, you see?” The guard was triumphant.
John subsided without further protest and sat silently for the rest of the brief flight. He had trouble imagining any reason for the Earthers to lie about such details; they could not have known in advance that he would ask the questions he had asked. Therefore, he had to assume that the numbers were reasonably accurate. That meant that if he roused the entire population of Godsworld, including every man, woman and child, he would have the healthy, heavily-armed adults of the complete Bechtel-Rand outnumbered by less than three to one, and would not have enough people to even think of challenging Earth itself. The five hundred Earthers on Godsworld were nothing, merely a figurehead. In any battle, as he was well aware, knowing the enemy's reserves and countering them was as important as defeating the front line troops.
He needed allies; he had to turn the Earthers against each other. He had done it often enough as Armed Guardian, in dealing with small tribes-tempt one into attacking another, then move in and pick up the pieces without any real resistance. The Chosen had probably intended to do the same with the war between the Heaveners and the True Worders, but had never had a chance, since the massacre had been so fast and so complete. Godsworld would never be able to destroy Earth, but, John thought, the corporations might be kept so busy fighting one another that they would have no chance to do Godsworld further damage.
Why had only one corporation come to Godsworld in the first place?
There was still too much he didn't know, and the airship was settling to the ground at the head of the gully. The first dim red light was on the eastern hills, he noticed as he emerged from the craft, and he had to get his men and as much material as possible out of the camp before noon; long-term plans would have to wait.
Before the door of the airship had closed behind him he was running down into camp, shouting the alert, rousing his men.
Chapter Sixteen
“A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth."-Ecclesiastes 7:1
****
Once they were all out of the gully there was no reason to hurry; John slowed his horse to a walk and turned for a final look at the camouflaged oilcloth. A minor pang ran through him; he was going to miss the place, miserable as most of his stay there had been. It had been his, the first place that ever truly was. Always before, when he was in charge of a place, he had been working for someone else-his father, his uncle, the Elders-someone. They had all betrayed the truth and surrendered to the enemy, though.
He had not; he would carry on fighting even now. He glanced up at the sky, wondering whether the same airship that had picked him up would be the one to destroy the camp. He doubted that the Heaveners had more than a handful of airships. He had wanted to pack up and carry as much as possible, so that it was now just about noon, and the attack was due.
He never even saw what it was that did hit the camp; he glimpsed a quick flicker in the air, gone before he could turn to look at it, and a moment later the gully erupted in flame.
The fire did not last long; within ten minutes it had died down to isolated patches of flame, leaving most of the gully adrift with white ash.
John shook his head. Nothing on Godsworld could fight that kind of weapon; they needed outside help.
He had no illusions about what sort of help he was likely to find; whatever other corporation he could bring in, if he could do it at all, would probably be just as unChristian, just as evil as Bechtel-Rand. He no longer cared. The old Godsworld, where the righteous stood alone and took their strength from the truth, was gone. He knew he could never eradicate the changes the Earthers had brought. Even if they were driven off Godsworld forever, all of them, things had been changed. The protectorate might survive without them; the People of the True Word and Flesh, however, would not. All the relative strengths and military balances that John had known for years had already been thrown off irretrievably. And the trade goods-dyes, fabrics, guns, ammunition-would be around for years, maybe centuries. Beliefs would change; the Apocalypsists could no longer maintain that Earth had been destroyed, and that the starships had been the new arks. Simply the knowledge that Earth was still out there, that people could travel between worlds, would change how people thought. Attempts might well be made to recover the lost arts of Earther technology, even to build new starships.
But that was all conjecture; in fact, the Earthers were not going to abandon Godsworld. All he could hope to do would be to slow, perhaps halt, their spreading contagion. If he drove away or destroyed Bechtel-Rand, another corporation would come-that was one thing Dawes had told him that he did not doubt at all.
Even a delay would be welcome, though. It would give the Godsworlders time to adjust to the changes, time to do what they could to maintain their way of life in the face of Earther encroachments. John also thought that he would prefer that Bechtel-Rand not be the group to profit from the ruin of Godsworld. If someone must, it need not be his personal enemies.
He turned away from the smoldering ashes in the gully and urged his mount to a trot; the way to the Citadel by horse was long and winding.
Beside him rode three of his last handful of men and one of the two women; in these last days the camp had only kept five horses. The rest of the band, left on foot, had scattered in all directions, with arrangements made for meetings and contacts throughout the central part of the Heavener protectorate. The resistance against the Earthers’ encroachment was not done yet.
“What was that?” one of his companions asked.
“What was what?” John replied, startled out of his thoughts.
“That flash that burned the whole camp like that!” The speaker was Thaddeus Blood-of-the-Lamb, one of John's original True Worder soldiers-one who had joined the retreating half and thereby survived the massacre.
“I don't know; it doesn't matter. It's just another Heavener weapon. It's not the steel of the weapons that matters, Thaddeus, it's the steel in the man who uses them."
“That wasn't steel, Captain, that was hellfire,” said David Beloved-of-Jesus, one of the Chosen, on his other side.
“Just steel-a machine, that's all. The Earthers are just men and women, not demons."
“They're both,” David insisted, and John thought better of answering. Just machines, he told himself, designed and built by people. He wondered if his ancestors had made the right decision, abandoning most of Earth's technology.
The image of an ordinary religious war fought with Earther weapons came to him, and he decided quickly that the ancients had chosen wisely.
There were to be no more ordinary religious wars, though; the Heaveners didn't like them. The next war, John hoped, was to be between corporations. He couldn't expect that all the fighting in this new kind of war would be back on Earth; to make it worthwhile for Bechtel-Rand's opponent they would have to be invited to share in the trade on Godsworld. He hoped that if nukes and other such incredible weapons were used that the targets would be chosen very, very carefully.
For a moment his determination to destroy the New Bechtel-Rand Corporation faltered; would it be worth risking the lives of the Godsworlders who would inevitably be caught in the crossfire?
Yes, he answered himself, because only their bodies would die. Saving souls was worth any risk.
The route they followed was a long and winding one; they passed through two small villages and made camp in the wilderness, and only in the early afternoon of the following day did they reach the gates of the Citadel. By the time they arrived John had evolved a plan.
He would not immediately accept the offered job; instead, he would ask that it be held open while he explored possibilities and thought it over at length. He would then try and find another way of contacting another corpor
ation back on Earth, rather than going himself. Corporations did not appear to be all that different from tribes, and as he well knew, any large tribe is likely to harbor spies and traitors, or simply weak-willed individuals whose loyalty and aid could be bought. If he could find those weaklings, spies, or traitors among Bechtel-Rand's people on Godsworld he would be able to contact his proposed ally indirectly.
He would talk to the Earthers, to any and all Earthers he could find, under the guise of considering the job offer-it would be only natural to find out more about his prospective employer, after all. The right questions, carefully asked, should find him what he was looking for. That corporation the guard had mentioned, ITD-that sounded very promising. If he could find no genuine spies, he would just try to hire someone to put him in touch with ITD's leaders. If ITD was bigger than Bechtel-Rand, then it should be able to destroy his enemy.
They were in the market square now. “Where are we going?” Thaddeus asked.
John glanced at him. “I am going to find a room at an inn; you're welcome to accompany me, but you're free to find your own place."
“I have a brother nearby,” said Eleazar Freed-by-the-Truth, “We'll stay with him.” His sister Esther nodded agreement.
“Abihu didn't come with us because he has a wife and two babies to look after,” she said, “but he'll keep us safe."
“That's good, then; stay with him. If you want to find us, check the market around midafternoon; I'll have someone here whenever I can, to keep us all in touch. David?"
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