Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

by Jack L. Chalker

  Kokul was only partially mollified, but he sat down.

  “You will call a series of assemblies of all townsmen,” Morah told him. “Groups of 500, in one-hour intervals—and I don’t care if it does disrupt things for a day or two. I will make similar arrangements with the Companies. If I read these Unitites correctly, they would be more intolerant than even we of anyone discovered to be in the cult of the Destroyer. We will bring them into the open. We will let your precious villagers discover just who is who. And then we will stamp out this cult in Bourget.”

  “Just what are you going to do?” I asked him, still trying, and failing, to look directly into those weird eyes.

  “My best troops are even now in the process of sealing off the town by both land and sea,” he told us. “There will be no escape for this band of traitors. Be there for the first assembly tomorrow morning. It will probably be the only one required. I think both of you will find the exercise an educational experience.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  All Hell Breaks Loose

  “Who’s this Yatek Morah, anyway, that he can come in and order us around like this?” Zala wanted to know.

  “Chief of Security, he says, and I know little more except that Tully is scared stiff of him and he comes directly from Aeolia Matuze.”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s got any right doing this. I’ve got half a mind not to show up.”

  I stared at her, wondering a bit at her sudden show of spunk and bravado—or was it? She wasn’t very good at hiding things, and in her eyes I saw a tinge of fear and uncertainty. For a brief moment I wondered if maybe there was more going on here than I realized.

  “You have to go,” I told her. “We all do. Anybody on the list who doesn’t show up when ordered will automatically be branded an enemy of the people, and they can take whatever action they want. Besides, you saw the ships out there?”

  She nodded nervously.

  “I don’t know how many troops he’s got with him, but they’re a nasty bunch and very well trained and efficient—and according to Tully they’re all at least apts.” I paused a moment to let that sink in. “Besides—aren’t you just the least bit curious to see what they’re going to do?”

  “I—I suppose. Well, let’s do it.”

  We left the house together and walked up the road toward the square. Everything was closed today, even the bank, and there was the general feeling of a community under sudden siege. I didn’t like it—the eerie stillness, the tension so thick you could feel it, like cobwebs or dense fog oozing around, despite the fact that this was one of our few bright, rainless days.

  Most of the first group had already gathered in and around the square, which nonetheless looked oddly barren without the vendors and café tables. A small stage had been erected in the center of the square, on the grassy plot where Zala and I had been ceremoniously married only five months before. The four streets leading into the square were all filled with men in the black and gold imperial uniforms of Charon. I was struck by their tough, nasty appearance and by the fact that they were all armed with very ugly-looking rifles of unfamiliar design. I looked around on top of the market buildings and the town hall and saw indications of movement, reflections in the light, everywhere. Morah was taking no chances. I had no idea what those rifles shot or their rate of fire, but I was pretty sure that, in a pinch, this force could probably mow down everyone in the square. Not a comforting thought.

  Zala looked nervously at the troops and gulped, grabbing and squeezing my hand for reassurance. “Park?” “Yeah?”

  “Let’s stay close to Tully in this. At least we’ll have some measure of protection.”

  “Good idea—if we can find him in this mob.” I looked around but the wizard was nowhere to be seen. “Let’s try the town hall. That’ll be where Morah will come from.”

  She nodded, and we made our way through a sea of worried faces; the people were milling around, looking at the troops, but not talking very much. We had almost reached the front door when it opened and Morah and Kokul emerged, flanked by four more troopers. Zala stopped at the sight of the security chief and gave a slight gasp as, for an instant, she saw those strange, terrible eyes. But Morah paid us no notice and, using his troopers.—all four female, I noted, deliberately chosen to thumb his nose at the Unitites—to clear a path, he made his way to the stage. He really didn’t need the troopers—nobody was going to stand in that man’s way.

  Tully followed him to the foot of the stage, but did not climb up on it. I started to go to him, but Zala pulled me back. “No. Let’s stay against the building, near the doorway,” she suggested hopefully. I looked around and could see her point. If any shooting started it was the best exit available and one I knew well. -

  Morah was, if anything, more imposing than ever, standing alone in the center of that platform. I could see his weird eyes survey both the crowd and the positions of his troops. There was an air of tense expectation in the crowd, as if everyone knew that something, something explosive and, perhaps, evil, was about to begin. Even Zala seemed to sense it and feel that way. As for me, hell, I was a member of the party in good standing—I could hardly wait to see how the big boys operated here. Things had been dull for too long.

  Finally, Morah seemed satisfied. I suspected that he was delaying things, letting everybody become as nervous and jumpy as possible, for good, psychological reasons. This was a tenth of the town, including almost all the bigwigs, and they were going to be the example.

  “Citizens of Bourget,” he began, his voice tremendously amplified and echoing off the walls, lending an additional alien quality to his presence. “Thank you for coming. Charon has long valued Bourget and its industrious people who are so valuable to the whole of the planet for their products. We deeply regret these measures, and I, Yatek Morah, Chief of Security, wish to assure those of you who are loyal citizens that you have nothing to fear today. In fact, I am here precisely because there is a threat to your peace and well-being, a threat you did not know existed but one that might consume you should it go unchecked. After today enemies both of Bourget and of Charon will be unmasked, exposed, and dealt with, and we can all feel safer because of it.”

  He paused a moment to let that sink in. I found the softening up very impressive and quite good human psychology. Of course, very soon would come the still-hidden knife, but these were simple people and most of them probably didn’t know that yet.

  “I come today to tell you of treason,” Morah continued. “I come today to tell you of ships falling victim to piracy, treasuries looted, important officials kidnapped and assassinated. It is a scourge that has enveloped our beloved land, although it has not as yet touched Bourget.” Again the dramatic pause. “And, of course, we had to ask ourselves, why not Bourget? Is it not the richest, fattest, and most tempting target for such enemies? And yet we could not bring ourselves to believe that Bourget itself would be a party to such things. Bourget has been good to Charon, and Charon has been good to Bourget. What, then, are we to think of all this?”

  Some rumblings, mumblings, and whispers could be heard in the crowd. I noticed, too, that at least a few people started looking around very uncomfortably, or were edging toward the back of the crowd. Very, very interesting.

  “Obviously,” the security chief continued, “our enemies are in Bourget, of Bourget, but unknown to the loyal and peace-loving people of Bourget. And if such enemies are amongst you, living amongst you, while they perpetrate such monstrous crimes, they are growing stronger, richer, more confident. Eventually, they would have taken over and dominated this community. Today we will end this threat.”

  More rumblings and whisperings, and I noticed the troopers coming to full alert. I was now beginning to get an idea of what Morah had in mind, remembering Garal’s original statement back in orientation that a curse is only good if the victim knows about it Well, anybody in this crowd who was involved in the underground movement sure knew—and had no way out, as a couple of women who
started walking toward one of the streets found out when they were blocked and turned back by the troopers.

  “What is he going to do?” Zala whispered to me.

  “He’s going to cast a spell on the evildoers,” I told her. “At least, I think so.”

  “I am Chief of Security,” Morah reminded them, “and as befits one of my titles and responsibilities, I have great power.” He raised his arms up over his head and began chanting what sounded to me like nonsense syllables—but I’d witnessed such a thing before. “Concentration aids”

  Tully had called them, but the people called them spells.

  Slowly the arms dropped, and those eerie eyes seemed to fill the stage. He stretched out his arms to the crowd, which reacted by nervously pulling back. I noticed that Tully Kokul was viewing the scene with interest but was taking no part in the proceedings.

  Morah stopped his chant and froze in position, pointing both arms at the crowd. “Now and in the presence of you all,” he intoned, “I do hereby curse those who would follow the Destroyer, Lord of Nothingness, and do his bidding. Let their evil traitorous presence be known to all good men and women—now!”

  It was an amazing show. Bright yellow sparks seemed to fly from his fingers and reach out in all directions for the crowd, many of whom screamed or cried out. Many in the crowd really let out yells and raised hands to foreheads. One woman near us let out a screech and turned in fear and shock toward us, whereupon I let out an involuntary gasp. From her forehead protruded two short, stubby, demonic horns.

  “Look at that!” I exclaimed, turning to Zala. “I—” then stopped dead. Zala, looking shocked and scared to death, was feeling her own pair of horns. “Oh, no!. Not you.” She looked at me in mixed fear and bewilderment. “No, I—”

  But the comment was suddenly cut off, and I watched in amazement as an odd, bizarre transformation seemed to take place within her. Her body seemed, to be all in motion as some power reshaped muscle and transformed her into someone else before my very eyes. I thought for a moment it was part of the spell, but a quick glance around showed that it was not Shots rang out, and I saw several people who had rushed for one of the streets near us go down in a hail of gunfire and lie there, writhing and moaning.

  “Get them, honest citizens!” Morah was ordering. “Hold them for us!”

  When I looked back, the woman next to me was only barely recognizable as Zala Embuay. She seemed larger, stronger, and the face, even the eyes, while still hers, seemed to belong to someone else, someone I did not know at all. She looked at me—horns still present—and said in a crisp, low voice, “Get inside the hall—fast! For your own sake!”

  “What the hell?” was all I could manage. Roughly she picked me up as if I were a rag doll and shoved me in the doorway. It didn’t take a genius to realize that, for the first time, I was in the presence of the other, hidden Zala Embuay—but not for long. Before I could say another word she ran into the town hall and was quickly gone. For a moment I debated running after her, but I realized there was little I could do—and few places for her to run, with troops on the roof and, surely, stationed at the side exits as well. So, keeping well inside the doorway, I returned my gaze to the street.

  The massacre was starting on schedule. I estimated thirty or forty people, perhaps, had suddenly sprouted horns—all female as far as I could see. The crowd, pruned, acted as Morah expected, actually jumping on their erstwhile friends and relatives and helping the efficient troops to capture them.

  Suddenly a series of tracerlike blasts shook the square, and there were explosions and concussions everywhere, followed immediately by the steady sounds of something I knew well. Laser pistols! But they weren’t supposed to work on Charon!

  Stun rays were playing down the square, collapsing people into little heaps by the dozens, but not far away, on the rooftops, a deadly gunfight was obviously taking place between the troops and—who? I realized I didn’t know and, from my protective vantage point, I couldn’t really see either.

  Near the stage I saw Tully Kokul’s mouth sag as he watched the scene in total amazement. The rays playing the square seemed to have no effect on him at all, nor did he seem unduly worried.

  On the stage, Morah was shouting instructions to his troops and trying to rally those he could. As with Kokul, nothing happening around him seemed to touch him in the slightest, a state that attested to both men’s extreme powers—and one I, also, would have found especially useful and comforting right about then.

  Suddenly all the shooting stopped. The square itself looked like the scene of a grisly massacre, although I knew from the nature of the rays and from experience on the sonics that most of the people had simply been knocked cold.

  Morah, suddenly aware of the silence, stopped his commands and turned to look at the rooftops.

  “All right, Morah! Stay where you are until we get our people out and no additional measures will be taken,” came a deep, gruff voice. You too, Kokul. We’ve no desire to kill you—but we will.”

  The Wizard of Bourget seemed to smile a bit, then looked up at the security chief. Morah’s face remained impassive as always, but his eyes and manner suggested that he was boiling inside.

  “You dare face down me!” Morah shot back defiantly. “If that’s you, Koril, I welcome the challenge. If not, I have little to fear from the likes of the rest of you!”

  My heart jumped on hearing Koril’s name. Koril! It was really beginning! In fact, I wondered if this wasn’t all pretty well stage-managed to do just that. Maybe Matuze was becoming as bored and impatient as I was to get something moving. Well, they’d sure as hell gotten something moving now …

  After a long pause, heavy-weapons opened up from the rooftops right at Yatek Morah and the stage area. They were prevented from using real devastators since they wanted to keep the unconscious crowd alive, but the amount of ordinance that did open up would atomize anything it hit, and it hit Yatek Morah head on. Tully Kokul moved fast to the side as the entire stage area crackled, burned, turned suddenly white-hot and vanished, leaving a crater two meters deep.

  Yatek Morah was still standing there where the stage had been, about four meters in mid-air. The stuff continued to pour into him, and for a moment he seemed not to notice and certainly not to be worried as he looked this way and that. I realized, however, that it was a frantic series of glances even for so impressive a power. He was holding off all that concentrated firepower by sheer force of will, aided, probably, by some very effective body-worn neutralizers, but they couldn’t withstand that sort of concentrated power very long and he knew it.

  Suddenly he seemed to grow and expand, becoming in an instant a huge, three-headed dragonlike monster rising up, up, out of an invisible cavity in the air just above the smoldering pit. It was a fearsome, terrifying sight as the thing grew and grew until it towered over the entire square and bathed the scene in its shadow. The firing wavered, but then picked up again and, with a defiant howl and hiss from all three heads, the terrible creature shot from sight as fast as a shuttle and quickly disappeared into the sky.

  The firing stopped, leaving only a scene of incredible carnage and a vast, bubbling caldron where once the square had been. Some of the people who had been knocked out by the stun rays had been caught, inevitably, in the firing, but very few—most had drawn back during the excitement.

  I had to admit I was stunned almost beyond thought, and had to call on all my training and experience to put myself back together. Things had happened very fast, and few of them were expected. First Zala—the fact that she was, perhaps had been all along, part of the opposition here and neither told me nor betrayed it in any way. And, of course, there was her transformation into someone quite different almost before my very eyes. Then the tables being turned on Morah, followed by his own incredible transformation into the terrifying three-headed dragon.

  And now? I was acutely aware of how very alone I was at the moment—and how much on the outside of where I wanted to be in. I looked
out into the square and listened carefully. No weapons, no sonics, no rays. It was over, whatever it was. They would come in and take their own out, now marked with the horns, and shift to new and unknown places and bases. Either I got left behind to rot or I got out there and tried to get inside.

  I opened the door and walked cautiously into the street, being careful to keep close to the wall and exercising all my training and experience to make as small and difficult a target as I could for anybody who might get nervous. I admitted to myself that I would have felt much more confident with a laser pistol of my own.

  Still, I had to be out here if only to make my contacts. I wondered where Zala was. If she were in this up to her neck, as it now appeared, she would be very handy—I needed some friend to bridge the gap.

  For a few minutes nothing moved except a couple of the poor devils shot but not killed by the troopers near the street intersection. Obviously the ray hadn’t gotten that far. The troopers themselves were mostly ugly messes, smeared over the nicely whitewashed walls.

  But then, carefully, shapes began moving into the square—or what was left of it—starting with two nasty-looking things that flew down from the rooftops. Strange creatures covered with what appeared to be both fur and feathers of gold and brown. Their batlike wings did not fold into their bodies but instead semi-accordioned on their backs. Their heads were nasty, somewhat birdlike with large eyes and beaks but capable of an almost humanlike expression. They were horrors, and for a moment I feared they were some new kind of Charonese creature come to feed on carrion. But the deliberateness of their moves and their very human manner in going through and checking the unconscious and the dead showed them to be changelings. I was not really surprised at the changeling involvement, but to see two of them that looked like the same creature was more than interesting.

  Huge, clawlike hands gestured beyond my line of sight, and from all four main streets they entered—a nightmarish parade of creatures that had never evolved except in the human mind. Shaggy, apelike things, things that crawled, things on four legs, walkers, hoppers, amphibians—the collection of human horrors seemed endless and terrible, all the more so because you could see in their movements and gestures, and sometimes in their features, the humanity that lay deep within them. But they were not all repulsive—some were quite beautiful and graceful, exotic creatures out of mankind’s myths and- imagination, as well as its nightmares.