The Rim Gods

by A Bertram Chandler

  "A friendly talk!" The Deaconess' voice dripped scorn. "Smoking! Wine-bibbing! You—you gilded popinjay!"

  Smith had picked up the bottle of alcohol, his obvious intention being to empty it into the washbasin. "Hold it!"

  Smith hesitated. Unhurriedly Grimes took the bottle from his hand, restoppered it, put it in the rack over the basin.

  Then the Rector started to bluster. "Sir. I must remind you that you are a guest aboard my ship. A passenger. You are obliged to comply with ship's regulations."

  "Sir," replied Grimes coldly, "I have signed no articles of agreement, and no ticket with the back covered with small print has been issued to me. I am surprised that a shipmaster should have been so neglectful of the essential legalities, and were you in the employ of the company of which I am astronautical superintendent I should find it my duty to reprimand you."

  "Not only a gilded popinjay," observed the Deaconess harshly, "but a space lawyer."

  "Yes, madam, a space lawyer—as any master astronaut should be." He was warming up nicely. "But I must remind you, both of you, that I do have legal standing aboard this vessel. I am here in my capacity as official observer for the Rim Worlds Confederacy. Furthermore, I was called back to active duty in the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve, with the rank of Commodore."

  "Meaningless titles," sneered the Deaconess. "A Commodore without a fleet!"

  "Perhaps, madam. Perhaps. But I must remind you that we are proceeding through Rim Worlds' territorial space. And I must make it plain that any interference with my own personal liberties—and the infliction by yourselves of any harsh punishment on Miss Lane—will mean that Piety will be intercepted and seized by one of our warships." He thought, I hope the bluff isn't called.

  Called it was.

  "And just how, Mr. Commodore Grimes, do you propose to call a warship to your aid?" asked the woman.

  "Easily, Deaconess, easily," said Clarisse Lane. "Have you forgotten that I am a telepath—and a good one? While this ship was on Lorn I made contact with Mr. Mayhew, Senior Psionic Radio Officer of the Rim World Navy. Even though we never met physically we became close friends. He is an old friend and shipmate of the Commodore, and asked me to keep in touch to let him know if Commodore Grimes was in any danger."

  "And you will tell him, of course," said Grimes, "if you are subjected to any harm, or even discomfort."

  "He will know," she said quietly.

  "Yes," agreed Grimes. "He will know."

  He was familiar with telepaths, was Grimes, having commenced his spacefaring career before the Carlotti direction finding and communications systems began to replace the psionic radio officers with its space- and time-twisting beamed radiations. He was familiar with telepaths, and knew how it was with them when, infrequently, one of them found a member of the opposite sex with the same talents attractive. Until this happened—and it rarely did—they would lavish all their affection on the disembodied canine brains that they used as amplifiers.

  Rector Smith was the first to weaken. He muttered, "Very well, Commodore."

  "And is this harlot to go unpunished?" flared the Deaconess.

  "That's right, she is," Grimes told her.

  She glared at him—and Grimes glared back. He regretted deeply that this was not his ship, that he had no authority aboard her.

  "Rector Smith . . ." she appealed.

  "I'm sorry, Deaconess," Smith told her. "But you have heard what these people have told us."

  "And you will allow them to flout your authority?"

  "It is better than causing the success of our mission to be jeopardized." He stiffened. "Furthermore, I order you not to lay hands upon Sister Lane, and not to order any of the other sisters to do so."

  "And I suppose she's to be free to visit this—this vile seducer any time that she sees fit."

  "No," said Smith at last. "No. That I will not sanction. Commodore Grimes claims that I cannot give orders to him, but my authority is still absolute insofar as all other persons aboard this vessel are concerned. Sister Lane will not be ill-treated, but she will be confined to the women's quarters until such time as her services are required."

  "The Presbyter shall hear of this," said the woman.

  "Indeed he shall. I shall be making my own report to him. Meanwhile, he is not, repeat not, to be disturbed." He added, "And those are his orders."

  "Very well, then," snapped the Deaconess. And to Clarisse Lane, "Come."

  "It was a good try, Commodore," said the girl, looking back wistfully at her unfinished drink, her still smoldering cigar. "It was a good try, but it could have been a better one, as far as I'm concerned. Good night."

  It was a good try, thought Grimes. Period. He had gone as far as he could go without undermining the Master's—the Rector's—authority too much. As for the girl, he was sure that she would not, now, be maltreated, and it would do her no harm to revert to the abstemious routine of this aptly named ship.

  "Good night," he said.

  "May I have a word with you, sir?" asked Smith when the two women were gone.

  "Surely. Stick around, Rector. This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard."

  Smith looked, but did not voice, his disapproval of the figure of speech. He shut the door, snapped the lock on. Then, with a penknife taken from his pocket, he made a little adjustment to one of the securing screws of the mirror over the washbasin.

  "Bugged?" asked Grimes interestedly.

  "Of course—as is every compartment in the ship. But there are speakers and screens in only two cabins—my own and the Presbyter's. His Reverence, I know, took sleeping pills before retiring, but he might awaken."

  "I suppose the ladies' showers are bugged, too?" asked Grimes.

  A dull flush covered what little of the Rector's face was not hidden by his beard. He growled. "That, sir, is none of your business."

  "And what, sir, is your business with me?"

  "I feel, Commodore Grimes, that you should know how important that unhappy woman is to the success of our mission; then, perhaps, you will be less inclined, should the opportunity present itself again, to pander to her whims." Smith cleared his throat; then he went on. "This business upsets me, sir. You will know, as you, yourself, were once a shipmaster, how unpleasant it is to have to assert your authority."

  "And talking," said Grimes, who had his telepath moments, "is thirsty work."

  "If you would be so kind, sir," said Smith, after a long moment of hesitation. "I believe that brandy has always been regarded as a medicine."

  Grimes sighed, and mixed fresh drinks. He motioned Smith to the single chair, sat down on the bunk. He thought of shocking the other man with one of the more obscene toasts, but merely said, "Down the hatch." The Rector said, "I needed that."

  "Another, Rector Smith?"

  "No, thank you, sir."

  You want me to twist your arm, you sanctimonious bastard, thought Grimes, but I'm not going to do it. He put the bottle of alcohol and the little case of essences away. "And now," he said, "about Miss Lane. . . ."

  "Yes, Sister Lane. As she has told you, she was one of us. But she backslid, and consorted with the fornicators and wine-bibbers who call themselves the Blossom People. But even this was in accordance with the Divine scheme of things. Whilst consorting with those—those pagans she became accustomed to the use and the abuse—but surely the use is also abuse!—of the psychedelic drugs. Already she possessed considerable psychic powers, but those vile potions enhanced them.

  "You will realize, sir, that it would have been out of the question for any of our own Elect to imperil his immortal soul by tampering with such powerful, unseen and unseeable forces, but—"

  "But," said Grimes, "Clarisse Lane has already demonstrated that she is damned, so you don't mind using her as your cat's-paw."

  "You put it very concisely, sir," agreed Smith.

  "I could say more, but I won't. I just might lose my temper. But go on."

  "Sister Lane is not e
ntirely human. She is descended from that Raul, the Stone Age savage who was brought to Earth from Kinsolving's Planet. Many factors were involved in his appearance. It could be that the very fabric of the Continuum is worn thin, here on the Rim, and that lines of force, or fault lines, intersect at that world. It could be, as the Rhine Institute claimed at the time, that the loneliness and the fear of all the dwellers on the colonized Rim Worlds are somehow focused on Kinsolving. Be that as it may, it happened. And it happened too that, in the fullness of time, this Raul was accepted into the bosom of our Church.

  "Raul, as you may know, was more than a mere telepath. Much more. He was a wizard, one of those who, in his own age, drew animals to the hunters' spears by limning their likenesses on rock."

  Grimes interrupted. "Doesn't the Bible say, somewhere, that thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?"

  "Yes. It is so written. But we did not know of the full extent of Raul's talents when he was admitted into our Fold. We did not know of them until after his death, when his papers came into our possession."

  "But what are you playing at?" demanded Grimes. "Just what you are playing at in our back garden?" He had the bottle out again, and the little phial of cognac-flavored essence, and was mixing two more drinks. He held out one of them, the stronger, to Smith, who absentmindedly took it and raised it to his lips.

  The Rector said, "Sir, I do not approve of your choice of words. Life is not a game. Life, death and the hereafter are not a game. We are not playing. We are working. Is it not written. 'Work, for the night is coming?' And you, sir, and I, as spacemen, know that the night is coming—the inevitable heat death of the Universe. . . ." He gulped more of his drink.

  "You should visit Darsha some time," said Grimes, "and their Tower of Darkness. You should see the huge clock that is the symbol of their God." He added softly, "The clock is running down."

  "Yes, the clock is running down, the sands of time are running out. And there is much to be done, so much to be done. . . ."

  "Such as?"

  "To reestablish the eternal verities. To build a new Sinai, to see the Commandments graven afresh on imperishable stone. And then, perhaps, the heathen, the idolators, will take heed and tremble. And then, surely, the rule of Jehovah will come again, before the End."

  Grimes said reasonably enough, "But you people believe in predestination, don't you? Either we're damned or we aren't, and nothing we do makes any difference."

  "I have learned by bitter experience," Smith told him, "that it is impossible to argue with a heretic—especially one who is foredoomed to eternal damnation. But even you must see that if the Commandments are given anew to Man then we, the Elect, shall be elevated to our rightful place in the Universe."

  "Then God save us all," said Grimes.

  Smith looked at him suspiciously, but went on. "It is perhaps necessary that there should be a sacrifice, and, if that be so, the Lord has already delivered her into our hands. No, sir, do not look at me like that. We shall not kill her, neither by knife nor fire shall we slay her. But, inevitably, she will be the plaything of supernal powers when she, on the planet of her ancestral origin, her inherited talents intensified by drugs, calls to Jehovah, the true God, the God of the Old Testament, to make Himself known again to sinful men."

  There were flecks of white froth on Smith's beard around his lips, a dribble of saliva down the hair on his chin. His eyes were glaring and bloodshot. Grimes thought, in vino veritas. He said, with a gentleness he did not feel, actuated only by self-interest, "Don't you think that you've had enough, Rector? Isn't it time that we both turned in?"

  "Eh, what? When'm ready. But you understand now that you must not interfere. You must not interfere."

  "I understand," said Grimes, thinking, Too much and, not enough. He found a tube of tablets in his suitcase, shook one into the palm of his hand. "Here," he said, offering it. "You'd better take this."

  "Wha's it for?"

  "It'll sweeten the breath and sober you up. It'll be too bad for you if the Presbyter sees the state you're in." And too bad for me, he thought.

  " 'M not drunk."

  "Of course not. Just a little—unsteady."

  "Don't really need . . . But jus' to oblige, y'un-derstan'."

  Smith swallowed the tablet, his Adam's apple working convulsively. Grimes handed him a glass of cold water to wash it down. It acted almost immediately. The bearded man shuddered, then got steadily to his feet. He glared at Grimes, but it was no longer a fanatical glare. "Good night, sir," he snapped.

  "Good night, Rector," Grimes replied.

  When he was alone he thought of playing back the record of the evening's conversations, but thought better of it. For all he knew, Smith might be able to switch the hidden microphone and scanner back on from his own quarters—and the less he knew of the tiny device hidden in the starboard epaulet of his white mess jacket, the better.

  He got out of his clothes and into his bunk, switched off the light; but, unusually for him, his sleep was uneasy and nightmare-ridden. He supposed that it was Clarisse Lane's fault that she played a leading part in most of the dreams.

  * * *

  The voyage wore on, and on, and even as the ever-precessing gyroscopes of the Mannschenn Drive tumbled and receded down the dark infinities, so did the good ship Piety fall through the twisted Continuum. On one hand was the warped convoluted Galactic Lens and ahead, a pulsating spiral of iridescent light against the ultimate darkness, was the Kinsolving sun.

  And this ship, unlike other ships of Grimes's wide experience, was no little man-made oasis of light and warmth in the vast, empty desert of the night. She was cold, cold, and her atmosphere carried always the faint acridity of disinfectant, and men and women talked in grave, low voices and did not mingle, and never was there the merest hint of laughter.

  Clarisse Lane was not being maltreated—Grimes made sure of that—and was even allowed to meet the Commodore for a daily conversation, but always heavily chaperoned. She was the only telepath in the ship, which, while the interstellar drive was in operation, depended entirely upon the Carlotti equipment for deep space communication. But the Rector and the Presbyter did not doubt that she was in constant touch with Mayhew back at Port Forlorn—and Grimes did not doubt it either. She told him much during their meetings—things about which she could not possibly have known if there had not been a continual interchange of signals. Some of this intelligence was confirmed by messages addressed to Grimes and received, in the normal way, by the ship's electronic radio officer.

  So they were obliged to be careful, these Neo-Calvinists. The chosen instrument for their experiment in practical theology was now also an agent for the Rim Worlds Confederacy. "But what does it matter?" Smith said to Grimes on one of the rare occasions that he spoke at length to him. "What does it matter? Perhaps it was ordained this way. Your friend Mayhew will be the witness to the truth, a witness who is not one of us. He will see through her eyes, hear with her ears, feel with every fiber of her being. The Word propagated by ourselves alone would be scoffed at. But there will be credence given it when it is propagated by an unbeliever."

  "If anything happens," said Grimes.

  But he couldn't argue with these people, and they couldn't argue with him. There was just no meeting of minds. He remembered a theory that he had once heard advanced by a ship's doctor. "Long ago," the man had said, "very long ago, there was a mutation. It wasn't a physically obvious one, but as a result of it Homo Sapiens was divided into two separate species: Homo credulens, those capable of blind faith in the unprovable, and Homo incredulens, those who aren't. The vast majority of people are, of course, hybrids."

  Grimes had said, "And I suppose that all the pure Homo incredulens stock is either atheist or agnostic."

  "Not so." The doctor had laughed. "Not so. Agnostic—yes. But don't forget that the atheist, like the theist, makes a definite statement for which he can produce no proof whatsoever."

  An atheist would have been far less unhappy
aboard this ship than a tolerant agnostic like Grimes.

  But even the longest, unhappiest voyage comes to an end. A good planetfall was made—whatever they believed, Piety's people were excellent navigators—and, the Mannschenn Drive switched off, the Inertial Drive ticking over just enough to produce minimal gravitational field, the ship was falling in orbit about the lonely world, the blue and green mottled sphere hanging there against the blackness.

  The old charts—or copies of them—were out, and Grimes was called up to the control room. "Yes," he told Smith, stabbing a finger down on the paper, "that's where the spaceport was. Probably even now the apron's not too overgrown for a safe landing. Captain Spence, when he came down in Epsilon Eridani, reported creepers over everything, but nothing heavy."

  "It is a hundred and fifty standard years since he was here," said Smith. "At least. I would suggest one of the beaches."