"Fortunately," Stavros put in, "Sabium has better sense than Justin here and won't necessarily rush out to try everything he blabs on about."
It always came back to that in the end, Magda thought. Because Sabium had good sense, things ran well on Bilbeis IV. As long as she was here, things would . . . and she looked likely to be here about forever. After so many centuries, Bilbeis IV was unimaginable without her.
* * *
The longer Roupen Hovannis listened to the scientific crew sing paeans to Sabium, the longer his face grew. Paulina Koch would not be grateful when the Hanno came back and filed a report that made the Survey Service look even worse than the Jêng Ho's did. And when Paulina Koch felt ungrateful, bad things had a way of happening. Having caused a good many of them, Hovannis did not relish the prospect of being on the receiving end.
He wondered what the Chairman would do were she here now. Of one thing he was certain: sitting quietly in the Hanno, kilometers away from the action, was not her style. But once she got to Mawsil, what then?
However tempting the notion was, Hovannis decided he could not take out the whole scientific contingent. The affair had already seen too many such tragic but convenient accidents. One more would draw too much notice. Too bad, he thought. Even the supposedly pliable Survey Service group was out of control. Dealing with a reasonably authentic goddess was more than they were prepared to handle.
He wondered if he could arrange things through that chamberlain of Sabium's. That local—what was his name? Bagadat, that was it—plainly feared the Terrans for threatening whatever influence he had gained on his ruler. Reluctantly, Hovannis abandoned the idea. Sabium could read her people the way he read a printout. Knowing that, Bagadat would never even try to set up the job.
That moved Hovannis's thinking one step further down the line. What would Bilbeis IV look like, he wondered, without Sabium? She had lived an enormously long time; not many people back in the Federacy, his gut feeling told him, would be upset or, more to the point, suspicious if she happened to pass away. Down deep, people who hadn't seen her in action could not believe she was what she was.
And if she died, how would the locals take it? Only one image occurred to him: they would act like ants after somebody kicked in their hill. In that chaos, all sorts of interesting and profitable opportunities might arise. At the very least, Bilbeis IV would stop looking so outrageously abnormal.
What had Pierre Bochy said? Hovannis had it on tape somewhere—something to the effect that lots of peoples worshiped immortal goddesses. Only Bilbeis IV really had one, though, and if she suddenly became as legendary as all the rest of them—
That would fix a lot of problems, Hovannis thought. Paulina Koch couldn't have come up with a neater solution. He took out his modified stunner and tucked it into a pocket of his coveralls.
He drew a few odd looks when he checked out a flier in Bilbeis IV disguise but Federacy clothing. The only people who would have asked serious questions, though, were already in detention in Mawsil. None of the technicians and engineers did more than scratch his head when Hovannis skimmed silently off into the night.
* * *
Stavros rolled the wooden die, thumped his thigh with his fist as he saw a four turn up, and took Magda's last man. She said something rude. "That's fifty-five you owe me now." He grinned.
She stared at him. "The hell you say. I was up fifty, not down—you only owe me forty-five now." Putting five a pop on one of the local board games made it more interesting. They'd been playing since Magda had begged a set from a priest not long after they had taken enforced residence at the temple. They'd also, evidently, kept their running totals running in opposite directions.
"Come on, Magda," Stavros protested. "Remember that hot streak I had a couple of nights ago?"
"Sure I do," she retorted. "Without it, you couldn't have afforded to get back to the Federacy. Weren't you bitching that I was going to end up owning your grandmother?"
"You'd be welcome to her; then you could put up with listening to how nothing that's happened to her in the last eighty-odd years has been her fault." Stavros set his jaw. "But you have to win her fair and square. I'm not going to let you cheat me out of her."
Magda started to laugh, then stopped. "Damn it, I'm not cheating." As absurd arguments have a way of doing, this one was turning serious. She took a deep breath. "You really think you're up on me?"
"Yes, I do. In fact, I'll put another fifty on it."
"You're on." Glaring at him, close to being really angry now, she kneaded the transceiver behind her right ear. "I'll show you," she muttered.
"What are you doing?"
"Calling the ship. You get in on this, too, so you can't say I'm diddling with the count. We'll listen to the tapes of our game sessions and figure out who owes whom what."
"That will take hours," he protested.
"Do you have any urgent appointments?" she asked, and he had to chuckle as he denied it. "All right, then." She waited and swore. "God, are they all asleep over there? Where is everybody?"
At that moment, she and Stavros heard a voice in their heads. "Richards here." Magda told the first officer what they wanted. "Can't do it," he said, "not right away, anyhow. Captain Hovannis is out of the ship."
"So?" Magda's voice was dangerously quiet.
"So no traffic from the ship to you people without his authorization. Standing orders. Sorry." He did not sound sorry. He sounded bored. Magda had not had much to do with him aboard the Hanno, but did not think he worried about standing orders, except with regard to how he was going to carry them out. Usually that was a good trait in a first officer. Now it was only frustrating.
"Get him on the comm circuit," Magda said.
"No, wait," Stavros broke in. "Where is he? What's he doing?"
"I don't know," Richards said. Plainly, he had never thought to wonder.
"We're just fooling around here," Magda said, "but what if somebody needed something really important? It's a silly order, Richards. Get me Hovannis and get him now; I'll tell him so myself."
"Very well." There was a pause before Richards came back on the circuit. For the first time, his voice held a trace of uncertainty. "He's not answering."
Magda rolled her eyes, a piece of dramatics unfortunately wasted because the first officer had no vision screen in front of him. "That's good. That's really good. In his absence you're in charge, right? Countermand that stupid piece of nonsense and give us what we need."
She was so intent on what was directly in front of her—and on proving herself right—that she did not worry about anything else. Stavros, more suspicious of Survey Service people generally and of Hovannis in particular, interrupted again. "You didn't answer me, Richards. Where is Hovannis? The flier must have a tracer on it, in case it crashes or something."
"It does," Richards admitted. He went off-circuit again. A couple of minutes later he said, "The machine is grounded a couple of kilometers outside Mawsil. Sorry I took so long; the tracer seems to be inactive, and I had to home on engine emissions. Otherwise, the flier is mechanically sound. Still no response from Captain Hovannis. Odd." From Richards, the word spoke volumes.
"What is he doing?" This time Stavros was talking to himself.
"Coming into Mawsil, sounds like," Magda said. "But why is he sneaking in instead of just coming ahead?" She suddenly cut Richards out of the conversation and gestured for Stavros to do the same. He cut off the first officer in midquestion, as puzzled as Richards was himself.
"What the—" Stavros began.
Magda's frantic gesture reduced him to silence again. She opened the outer door and nodded to the pair of guard-priests outside. "Would one of you please fetch me a slate and a lump of chalk?" The woman of the pair nodded back and ambled away; Sabium had made clear that her guests were to have any reasonable requests met. The little while the guard was gone seemed like forever to Magda.
She shut the door in the guards' bemused faces and scrawled a note to Stavr
os: Hovannis here for no good reason. Why else sneak?
"You're right! You have to be. He—"
Stavros shut up again; Magda was scribbling, Richards can still listen—everything gets recorded. Is he safe?
"I don't think it matters," Stavros said. "If Hovannis is coming here for reasons of his own, this will all be decided before Richards can raise him. And if what he's doing is against the rules, he won't call back to the Hanno to advertise it. Am I right?"
Magda hesitated, then conceded. "Seems reasonable."
"All right, then. The next thing we have to do is think, and think hard. Otherwise we'll go rushing off and maybe give him the opening he needs. My first guess would be that he's after us, or maybe after the whole group here, now that the rest of them know about Sabium, too. It would fit everything the murdering bastards who run the Service have done so far: Fogelman, and Andrea, and the Clark County, and your apartment complex, too."
Magda started to jump up, then stopped. "You're right and you're wrong at the same time. What does the Survey Service need most from Bilbeis IV?"
"A clean bill of health, and they're not likely to get one."
"Too bloody right they're not. But they won't get one from a dead crew of scientists, either. That would probably be one too many coincidences for anyone to swallow, don't you think? The Service can't afford more bad publicity; for once, they have an interest in keeping us healthy."
It was Stavros's turn to consider. "Well, maybe so," he said grudgingly. "All right, then, maybe Hovannis isn't coming here to slaughter us in our beds. He's not on his way to give us a great big kiss, either. He wouldn't have to skulk in to do that. What does that leave?"
"Nothing." Magda did not like the answer. Roupen Hovannis was not coming into Mawsil—or was inside by now, she thought uneasily—for any good purpose; Stavros was dead right there. But she was still sure Hovannis would not, could not, move on them. A decimated Hanno returning to Topanga would look even worse than a damning report. Magda balled her hands into fists. She felt as if her mind were running in a treadmill, a treadmill with no way off.
Then she saw there was one, after all. Stavros must have reached her conclusion at the very moment she did, for they both spoke the same word at the same time: "Sabium!"
They ran for the door together.
XII
Hovannis was sweating and swearing as he neared the city walls of Mawsi. He was also filthy; he had taken a couple of nasty falls walking in the darkness through fields and in a dirt roadway full of holes.
Though he did not realize it, he was lucky the town's gates were open. Most places locked themselves tight after nightfall. Had the eternal goddess not spent so much time in Mawsil, it would have done the same. But pilgrim traffic was beginning to shift away from the Holy City, and Mawsil had opened itself to accommodate the sudden—and profitable—influx.
All the same, the guard yawning in his sentry box cast a dubious eye on Hovannis as he trudged toward the town. "Why aren't you carrying a torch to light your way, fellow?" he called.
The true answer was that Hovannis had not thought of it; he had never had to worry about such things before. "It went out a ways back," he said lamely, adding, "When I fell in the last pothole."
The guard laughed. "A few potholes before that, by the look of you. What are you coming to Mawsil for?"
Despite Hovannis's bedraggled state, the question was strictly pro forma. The guard heard the same answer hundreds of times a day: "To see the goddess, of course." Had Hovannis taken a moment to consider, he would have realized that. But the topmost thing in his mind was that his mission had to stay secret. Not only that, he was offended that this native, this savage, dared question him. Thus his answer came out as a reflex snap: "None of your damned business!"
"No, eh?" The guard was suddenly alert. He hefted his spear. "Come along with me, then. We'll make it my captain's business instead. You keep your distance there, too," he warned as Hovannis took a couple of steps toward him. "By the goddess, I'll stick you if you come any closer."
"I don't need to come any closer." Hovannis twisted the doctored stunner on his belt so it pointed at the local and squeezed the firing stud. He hoped he was close enough for the weapon to work. He was. The guard toppled bonelessly. Hovannis eased him to the ground so his mail shirt would not clatter, checked to make sure he was not breathing, and then, feeling a bit like a primitive warrior himself, sauntered into Mawsil.
He soon decided the best thing anyone could do with the place was bomb it and start over. It stank of sewage and smoke and unwashed people. Hovannis heard scuttlings in the darkness around him. Some were vermin; others, he was sure, were vermin that walked on two legs. He wished his stunner had more range.
The people he could see disturbed him almost as much as the ones he could not. Disease and injury did not leave their mark so openly on civilized worlds. He had never seen a woman with an empty eye socket before; now he spied two in the space of a couple of blocks. Till now, he had never thought himself fastidious. He was finding his standards for comparison had been deficient.
Relief flowed through him as he spotted the mud-brick building—ugly pile, he thought—where Sabium was staying. He gave the stunner an affectionate slap. The sooner this job was done, the sooner he was back aboard the Hanno, the happier he would be.
* * *
"Harm me? Why should he wish to harm me?" Sabium stared at the two—whatever they were—as if they had begun to speak in a foreign language she did not quite understand. She wished they did not wear the seeming of her own people; their true, alien colors would have helped remind her how strange their thoughts were.
"It has to do with the politics of our, uh, homeland," replied the woman called Magda. The goddess sensed she was telling the truth. A wave of sadness swept over Sabium. No matter what she had thought, no matter what she still wished, these were truly no gods after all. Yet their kind had made her immortal. She would have to think long and hard on what that meant.
No time now. The young man with Magda—"Stafros" was the best Sabium could do with his name—said, "This man means more than harm, goddess; I think he will kill you if he can."
Sabium's servants gasped at the blasphemy. The goddess saw that, like his companion, this "Stafros" was speaking the truth as he saw it. As he saw it—there was the rub. She could also tell he hated and feared this "Hofannis." Maybe even he did not know how much that influenced his perceptions, and if he did not, how could she?
A priest came into the chamber and bowed before her. "Goddess, I pray your forgiveness for disturbing you," the woman said, "but outside the temple is one who would have speech with you."
"Yes, I know," Sabium replied calmly.
The priest accepted that with barely a blink; the goddess was the goddess and had her ways. The priest resumed, "A street vagabond, or even a magnate, we should of course have turned away to ask for a regularly scheduled audience, but this man wears the garb described in your Rituals of Search: the trousers and tunic all in one, and all over pockets. He is colored as we are, but—" She eyed the two strangers with Sabium.
"Yes, that matters less than formerly," the goddess agreed. She took a deep breath. "I will see him. Prepare the audience chamber in all ways."
She had to raise her voice to finish. Magda and "Stafros" were trying to interrupt with shouted objections. Her servants stared in open-mouthed horror; no one ever interrupted the goddess. None of her subjects would even have thought to. The strangers might not be divine, but they were very strange. Sabium had thought that before, often enough.
Now it was a nuisance. "Silence," she proclaimed, and was gratified to find that the tone of command worked on the strangers, though more slowly than on her own people.
The priest had already gone to do her bidding. She turned to Bagadat, faithful, fearful Bagadat. "Have these two escorted into the chamber after me. Make sure the escorts are large and powerful. I will not tolerate interference from them."
For some reason, that touched off hysterical laughter in the woman called Magda. Neither she nor Stavros resisted the soldier-priests who took their arms. Bagadat paced along beside them, trying to look strong and stern and not succeeding very well.
Sabium set her hands on the arms of the throne in the audience chamber. They did not feel quite right; she realized they were not worn to conform to her flesh through centuries of use. Neither, sadly, was the seat, and a goddess, she knew instinctively, must not squirm. She sighed instead.
"Fetch in the stranger," she said.
* * *
"Is she crazy? Does she want to die? Does she think we're kidding her?" Stavros said. He had lost track of how often he'd repeated that on the way to the audience chamber and now here inside it as they waited for Hovannis to arrive. His guards must have thought it some kind of prayer.
Magda had her own litany. "Goddam denim coveralls," she muttered over and over, which made little sense even to Stavros. But the Service's field costume had been standard so long that Sabium had seen it on the crew of the Leeuwenhoek . . . and she, above all others, had a special reason to remember it.
Set against that, comfort and practicality did not, for once, count for much. They should never have had the denims aboard the Hanno. Fine time to think of that now, she reflected bitterly, as the priests hustled her into the audience chamber.
Flanked by their keepers, she and Stavros were made to stand to the left of Sabium's throne. "Neither by word nor deed shall they meddle in the judgment of this man, for it is mine alone," the goddess warned their captors. She turned to the Terrans. "Know you shall answer to me if your accusations prove false."
A tide of despair washed over Magda. No matter how long Sabium had lived, she looked to be an innocent, after all. A planetful of people loved her, and she could not conceive of anyone who did not.
"Goddam denim coveralls," Magda said again. It did not help, but nothing else did, either.
* * *
Following the local priest, Roupen Hovannis felt as though he floated upon a rising tide of confidence. Ever since he had knocked over that guard, everything had gone well. He'd more than half expected to be kept cooling his heels till morning. As things were, though, he'd likely be back in his own bed by then.
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