A Maze of Stars

by John Brunner

  She stretched and yawned; she was obviously starting to grow sleepy at last.

  “But how do you know all this?” Usko persisted.

  “My dear boy!”—reproachfully. “Even though you only met my father for a few minutes, you must surely have realized he’s not the kind of person who would have allowed me to visit a foreign planet without studying up on everything we’ve found out about it. I’ve been learning intensively, believe me. I even had to revise my contract with my brain before I started.”

  Usko’s jaw dropped. All the words of that remark made sense, but only if they were taken separately. Combined, they baffled him. He was still struggling when Prara resumed.

  “Where was I… ? Oh, yes. So the priesthood decided it was safest to stop meddling with the Being and pray to be forgiven, and to this day they imagine that’s what enabled people to survive here. In fact, of course, the Being has finally developed a degree of immunity—either that or the infective organism has mutated and lost its virulence.”

  Yet another blinding flash of insight seared Usko.

  “So that’s why it’s stopped retreating! That’s why it still survives at Penitenka! Not the scriptures and the chanting, not the offerings—they have nothing to do with it! Like you said, the Being’s fighting back!”

  Such was his excitement, he spoke more loudly than he intended. From somewhere at the outer edge of the encampment below a drowsy voice complained about the disturbance.

  It was at that moment Lempi made up her mind. She stole away, heading anew toward the abbey.

  “There’s one thing that puzzles everybody on Sumbala,” Prara said around another yawn. “I don’t mean everybody-everybody, but the people who are interested in this kind of thing.”

  “What?” Usko pressed close, whispering again because of the sleeper’s complaint.

  “Well, you know the Ship is supposed to come back every now and then, and if a colony’s in trouble, it’s designed to rescue the survivors and move them to a safer planet—”

  It took that long for Usko to force out, “No, I don’t know! The only stories I ever heard about the Ship were from my nurse when I was scarcely more than a baby.”

  “Suppressed by your precious priesthood, I suppose?”

  “I suppose too … Go on.”

  “Well, that’s what our records indicate, anyhow. And it hasn’t come back. Maybe it wouldn’t have come back to us because we were managing well enough without help, though there’s much argument about that. But we’ve chanced across a world not far from here where it looks as though people are doomed to extinction, and the Ship didn’t come to their rescue. And it didn’t come to yours, either, when as a result of interfering with your Being you were at risk of losing the biological resources your ancestors’ plans were— What’s that racket?”

  Blinking, Usko glanced around. A commotion had broken out before the abbey. Fresh gleamers were being hoisted, swaying back and forth, presumably because people were holding them aloft on poles. There was shouting. He stared, striving to make out details, but saw only that a small crowd was assembling, twenty or thirty strong.

  “Is this a normal part of your Pilgrimage ritual?”

  For a second he didn’t realize Prara had spoken; on the subconscious level he still had not adjusted to the fact that he was talking to someone to whom what he regarded as an integral part of life was unfamiliar.

  Belatedly he said, “No!”

  “I thought not.” Prara scrambled to her feet. “By the look of it, they’re heading this way. And they’re intent on waking up everybody else, aren’t they?”

  Indeed, now there was enough light from the fresh phosfung, Usko could make out that several young monks were dashing among the encamped Households, shouting and rattling sticks, now and then cursing a servant too sluggish in getting out of the way.

  “What do you make of it?” Prara demanded.

  “I—” Usko put a hand to his forehead. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Well, I have! It looks to me as though the faction that regard us as ‘abominable tourists’ must have decided to do something about our blasphemous invasion of their sacred territory!”

  “But—”

  “You have a better explanation? Come up with it in a reasonable hurry, then!” Prara was panting. “They are definitely heading for my father’s dinghy!”

  “Or,” Usko ventured from a dry throat, “us.”

  “Us?” She glanced sidelong in startlement.

  “Maybe because we were holding hands …”

  “Oh, honestly! Is that really such a terrible thing to do?”

  “No, no! It was marvelous! But—well, what would be the point of them heading for your spaceship? They can’t see it, they can’t even touch it. So …”

  “I think,” she said in a suddenly changed voice, “you have a sound point. They definitely look as though they’ve spotted their quarry. And they are heading this way like a flash flood. Come on! Quick!”

  Seizing his hand anew, she dragged him up the slope—and their worst fears were confirmed, for the moment they moved, all the members of the mob caught sight of them and a great howl arose. Here and there a single voice emerged from it, uttering comprehensible words like “foreign blasphemers, unbelievers, heretics!”

  Near the front of the pursuers: a flash of brilliant purple. Exactly the same shade as the gown Lempi had worn this evening to attend the service at the abbey …

  Infinitely terrible forebodings rang in Usko’s mind, but he resisted them. Letting go of Prara, he shouted, “That looks like my sister over there!”

  “What?” Half his height above him on the steepness of the slope, Prara glanced back.

  “Yes! The girl in purple!”

  “So what’s she doing leading a howling mob in our direction? Jealous of her brother because he’s found a partner to spend the night with and she hasn’t?”

  That, like the remark about making a contract with her brain, left Usko gaping-mouthed, being so alien to the mores of Ekatila.

  “Oh, for—!” Prara suddenly smiled. “I’m sorry. I’ve overloaded you, haven’t I? I don’t imagine Daddy will be very pleased, but since I’m stuck with annoying him anyway, I shall simply have to put up with the consequences. Hang on.”

  She lifted her wrist to her mouth and whispered words that Usko failed to catch, then waited for a reply. It came. “They’ll open up for us in two ticks,” she announced.

  Us?

  While Usko was still grappling with the latest of far too many shocks, the idea that he as well as she was about to be admitted to a spaceship, the front rank of the mob—swollen now to eighty or a hundred—came within throwing distance. Bending, they picked up loose stones and hurled them as hard as they could. Luckily, most fell short.

  “Did I say something about yours being a gentle people?” Prara murmured. “Oh, come on! Hurry up—”

  And even as she spoke, another stone arced through the air. It struck her on the right temple just below the hairline. She looked blankly surprised, staggered, and fell. Blood flowed down her cheek, across her chin.

  A scream of joy burst from the mob. By now the valley was in uproar. Pebbles and rocks descended like a hailstorm. Dropping to knees and elbows astride Prara, Usko did his ineffectual best to protect her from worse harm, welcoming the bruising thud of missiles on his back and bottom as just penance for having swallowed priestly lies throughout his twenty years.

  * * *

  THE PELTING OF STONES ENDED, BUT ANOTHER BLOW FOLLOWED—no, that wasn’t a blow. That was a kick. Usko rolled over feebly and tried to sit up. The first thing he saw was his sister’s purple skirt.

  Well, I suppose she would be here among the first. She could always outstrip me, couldn’t she? Though I didn’t imagine she could run so fast in a Pilgrimage gown …

  Fists balled, lips drawn back ferally from her teeth, she looked no longer beautiful but vicious. Around her gathered priests, monks, nuns, some bearing gleamers, the re
st armed (armed!) with whatever they had found to snatch up to serve as cudgels.

  “So we got her, if not you!” Lempi hissed. “The evil-tongued disbeliever out to finish Owdi’s work for him!”

  Usko struggled to rise. Lempi seized a baton from the nearest hand and cracked him on the crown, hard as she could. Crying out, he collapsed again.

  “I told the abbot’s deputy all about you!” she snarled. “How you listened to Owdi—how you wanted not to come on Pilgrimage—how you killed my baplabaska—how you blaspheme against the Being with every breath you draw! Your mere existence is a blasphemy!”

  A small and distant voice in Usko’s head was saying: She’s insane. Your sister Lempi is insane. Why did you fail to realize till now?

  Swinging around, drawing herself up triumphantly to full height and raising aloft the baton she had used to hit her brother, she shrieked, “Kill them! Kill the unbelievers!”

  And for an instant it seemed she was to be obeyed.

  Then, between one heartbeat and the next, the mood of the mob changed. Faces paled, clubs were lowered, some took half a pace back. They were staring not at Lempi now but past her.

  “What are you waiting for?” she screamed. “Cowards, are you? Then I’ll do it myself, even if he is my brother! Are you loyal to the Being, or infidels like Usko? Show yourselves in your true colors—come on, strike!”

  “That,” said a mild but commanding voice that seemed to emanate from everywhere, “is enough.”

  Gasping, Lempi turned around again and now could see what she had had her back to. No longer was the air above the hill clear and dark and sown with stars, as it had seemed to be before. A huge and looming mass rose up from it, taller and wider than a hundred baplabaska. A lighted opening appeared, and figures moved in silhouette.

  Some, most, had not known where the spaceship had set down. Even those who had been told had not imagined its true size. Usko, on his knees and rubbing his sore pate, could not stop his jaw from dropping. And this was only a dinghy, a landing craft for passengers! What must a real starship be like?

  The tension held for a moment. Panic followed. But as shouts of terror rang out and people turned to flee, the calm voice said, “No you don’t.”

  At once it was as though legs and arms were tangled in shopalika. Nothing was to be seen, but it could be felt: a heavy, wearying drag that grew more powerful the harder one struggled. It did not affect Usko, who stared in wonder and forgot his pain.

  Lempi’s face was frozen in a mask of fury.

  I didn’t do this to you, my poor sister. Not Owdi, not anyone. You can’t even blame your genes. We’re armored—even the Sumbalans say so. You chose. You chose …

  A movement beside him. He thought it was Prara rousing, but when he turned his painful head, he found someone from the ship kneeling at her side. A light played on her temple. The wound healed as he watched. Another moment, and she sat up, pulling a face.

  “Whoof! I wonder whether my brain’s going to accept that as covered by our contract! Usko, what about you?”

  Too stunned to answer, Usko sat numbly as the person— whether it was man or woman, or indeed machine, he could not tell—tended his injuries as well. Pain vanished, bruises faded, and he was calm and in possession of himself. He rose to his feet simultaneously with Prara …

  And found, confronting him, Kraka.

  Had it been his own father, he would have known what to expect: a tongue-lashing hurtful as any whip. Instead, gruffly but sympathetically:

  “Weren’t prepared for this, were you, boy? Nothing like it happened at a Pilgrimage before, I’ll wager!”

  Catching his words, one of the young monks cried out hysterically.

  “Never! And it shouldn’t have happened now! It must be because the Being was insulted by the foreign infidels!”

  “Yes! Yes!” Priests and monks and nuns, members of Households, even ragged farmfolk who had joined the mob, shouted agreement. Muscles bulged as they strove to raise their weapons. Finding themselves frustrated, they resorted to their voices, shouting, “Kill them! Kill them!”

  Frightened even though it was plain they could not put their threats into effect, Usko and Prara drew close to her father. He wore an expression of unconcealed contempt.

  “What you do among yourselves,” he stated at last, “is your affair. But you have hurt my daughter, a guest on your planet.”

  “Guest!” It was the hysterical young monk again. “Invader! Intruder! If we don’t stop you infecting our minds with your fraudulent rubbish, next thing you’ll be poisoning the Being itself—wanting to take over our world!”

  A rumble of support. Not only muscles strained but veins on foreheads bulged as those with cudgels sought anew to break their invisible bonds.

  “Praise Lempi, who showed us the truth!” the young monk screamed.

  Stroking his beard, Kraka glanced from Lempi to the monk and back, and back and back again. He seemed to be waiting. For the first time Usko noticed he was wearing not only his belt and wristlet but also something shiny that curved across his head—barely visible among his curly brown hair—and ended in square plates pressing on his temples.

  The waiting ended.

  “I see,” the bearded man murmured … yet his voice was clearly audible to everyone around. “You, monk, regret that when you joined the abbey, you renounced all commerce with women. Something about Lempi at the manic peak of her cycle strikes so deep a chord in your subconscious that when you overheard her denouncing her brother to the deputy abbot, you resolved to perform some kind of service that would make her pay attention to you, a forbidden partner, and lure her away from the available young men with whom she spent last evening flirting instead of listening devoutly to the reading of your scripture. The service you chose to offer was the murder of her brother.”

  “It’s a lie!” moaned the young monk.

  “But you threw the stone that laid my daughter low.”

  The monk’s mouth worked. Not a word emerged.

  For an instant Usko dared to imagine that Kraka had calmed the situation. Given the astonishing power of his computers—he had learned enough about such machines from Prara to realize that they were what he must be relying on for evidence—it did not seem too much to hope for.

  But his optimism was dashed. Someone bellowed, “Shame it didn’t kill her!”

  Someone else: “Let us go and we’ll rip your guts out— stinking heretics, foul infidels!”

  Sickeningly, that second someone, Usko noticed, was a nun, an elderly nun who bore a considerable likeness to his mother.

  Putting her arm around her father’s waist, Prara said nervously, “Daddy, you can’t hold them like this forever.”

  “No, we’ve agreed not to cause harm by our visits, and in a little while their circulation will be impeded … Didn’t I warn you that sooner or later you’d do something no one else would be fool enough to do?”

  She looked up at him with an air of defiance. “Did I?”

  “This, daughter mine, is not a joke.”

  Electric as the air before a thunderstorm, tension crackled between them. At last Prara said meekly, “But to share the truth, you taught me, must be good.”

  Kraka let go a roaring laugh and slapped his thigh.

  “Prara, I love you! I have to! And it’s so! I didn’t find a single falsehood in what you said to your young friend—not within the compass of what we think is true. Well, back in prehistoric times, when folk believed in gods and devils, there used to be a saying, ‘Speak the truth and shame the power of evil.’ And don’t say I’m the one who’s making rude remarks!”

  He turned to Usko, who much to his surprise was finding he could smile again. So many possibilities flowed from the half-comprehended implications of what Prara and her father had been saying that he could almost have looked forward to the rest of his life here on Ekatila … but for the ceaseless growls and curses of the mob at his back.

  “There remains the problem of
what to do-about Lempi,” Kraka said. “Lempi, whose action in trying to turn this assembly of pilgrims into a posse of murderers, to kill her own brother, what is more, strikes an outsider like me as far more blasphemous than voicing honest doubts.”

  “Kill him!” someone shouted, and again was echoed. Kraka let his shoulders slump.

  “Very well. Being a foreigner, I had no intention of interfering with your doings. I did so only because of the hurt inflicted on my daughter. Bear that in mind. It’s no concern of ours on Sumbala how you live and what you choose to believe. When, though, you commit assault on a peaceful visitor, you overstep the limit of civilized behavior.”

  “Shut up! Go away!” was the response.

  “We shall, don’t worry.” Kraka passed his hand across his forehead, almost as though he too had been injured by the rock that knocked his daughter out. “What the heads of your Great Households will have to say in the morning is another matter. But before we release you from constraint and take our leave, there remains the question of Lempi. Neither I nor Prara bear her any grudge—one cannot hate a lunatic. I suggest therefore that the verdict on her fate be left to her intended victim. Usko?”

  Pretematurally calm, feeling incredibly at ease within himself (and guessing why, for during his conversation with Prara she had mentioned nanosurgeons), Usko thought for a while, then smiled again, more broadly.

  “By now it looks as though everybody in this valley has been roused. Among them you’ll find the priest of Household Ishapago. His name is Yekko.”

  The smile became a grin.

  “He’s not unknown at Penitenka. On the way here he was telling me how he attended a conference about the proposal to let Sumbala build a landing grid in the Polar Waste. He was on the losing side in the debate and still has doubts.”

  Pausing, he let that point sink in. Then, shouting:

  “Ask him about my sister! Ask him to repeat what she said during our journey—her insults about the Being, her blasphemy, her claim that it’s incompetent and what we get from it is not worth having! Reverend Yekko is an honest man! He’ll tell you. Then decide!”