The Rim Gods

by A Bertram Chandler

  "What else should I do?" I countered.

  She snarled wordlessly, literally tore the backpack from my shoulders. She opened it, spilled the drab heap of secondhand clothing onto the marble paving. Close by us were children, about twenty in this group, who, until now, had been ignoring us. Her Reverence snatched up a rust black dress, forced it down over the body of a struggling, bewildered little girl. "Can't you help?" she snarled at me. By the time that she got her second victim clothed, the first one was naked again and running to the timekeeper, the priestess, bawling with fright and bewilderment.

  Things started to happen then.

  I was unarmed, of course, with not so much as a stungun on low power. Contrary to so many space stories the toting of firearms by spacemen, merchant spacemen especially, on other people's planets is not encouraged. It didn't take long for two hefty wenches to immobilize me, one on each side of me, both of them holding me tightly. I could do nothing but watch as four men seized Agatha, threw her down to the paving and, despite her frenzied struggles, stripped her. A knife gleamed and I yelled wordlessly—but it was being used as a tool, not a weapon, to slice through cloth and not through skin. Her long body, revealed as the last of underwear was slashed away, was disgustingly pallid. It needn't have been. She could have made use of the UV lamps every time that she had a shower during the passage out, as I had done. She was pallid and she was flabby, physically (at least) far inferior to those who were punishing her for her act of . . . sacrilege. Yes. Sacrilege. They held her there, in the blazing noonday sunlight, while the rags of her clothing were gathered up, and those other rags, those donations of used clothing with which she had tried to clothe the happily naked.

  There was that pile of drab, tattered cloth and there was that big lens, a great burning glass, that was brought to bear upon the rubbish, concentrating upon it the purifying rays of the sun. There was the acrid smoke, and then the first red glimmer of smolder, and then flames, almost invisible in the strong sunlight.

  And all the time Agatha was writhing and screaming, calling out not in Standard English but in the Stagathan language that she had learned. What she was saying I did not know, but it sounded like (and probably was) curses.

  The bonfire died down.

  A man whom I recognized as the leader of the party that had come out to the ship strode up to me. His face was grave.

  "Captain," he said, "take this woman from here. She has insulted our God."

  I said lamely, "She means well."

  He said, "The path of the Mountain We Do Not Name is paved with good intentions."

  My two captors released me.

  The four men holding Agatha Lewis's wrists and ankles let go of her. She stumbled to her feet and stood there in that classic pose, one arm shielding her breasts, the other hand over her pudenda. With a younger, more shapely woman the attitude would have been prettily appealing; with her it was merely ludicrous. Her face was scarlet with humiliation. But it wasn't only her face. And it wasn't only humiliation. It was sunburn.

  * * *

  Kitty said, "When you mentioned the gleam of a knife I thought that you were going to tell us that Bishop Agatha suffered the same sort of martyrdom as Saint Agatha. Her breasts were cut off."

  Grimes said, "I know. I did some checking up. There was so much odd parallelism about the whole business. But my Agatha suffered no worse than severely frizzled nipples. Very painful, I believe. I lent her my shirt for the walk back to the ship but, by that time, it was too late."

  * * *

  So we got ourselves back to the ship (he continued) with Her Reverence in a state of shock. It had all been such a blow to her pride, her prudery, her own kind of piety. The pyschological effects were more severe than the physical ones, painful as those most obviously were. And she had to let me apply the soothing lotions to her body. Oh, she hated me.

  Once she was muffled up in a robe, wincing as every slightest motion brought the fabric into contact with her inflamed breasts, I said, "It is obvious, Your Reverence, that you are not welcome here. I suggest that we get off the planet."

  She said, "We shall do no such thing."

  She wanted her bunk set up then and the privacy screen put in position. I busied myself with various small tasks about the ship, trying not to make too much noise. But I needn't have bothered. I could hear her; the partition was not soundproof. First of all she was sobbing, and then she was praying. It was all very embarrassing, far more so than her nudity had been.

  Late in the afternoon she came out. As well as a long, black robe, she was wearing her wide-brimmed hat and almost opaque dark glasses. She walked slowly to the airlock and then out onto the grassy ground. I followed her. She stood there, staring at the westering sun. Her expression frightened me. Rarely have I seen such naked hate on anybody's face.

  "Your Reverence," I said, "I am still of the opinion that we should leave this world."

  "Are you, an Earthman, frightened of a bunch of naked savages?" she sneered.

  "Naked, perhaps," I said, "but not savages." I pointed almost directly upwards to where one of the big solar-powered airships, on its regular cargo and passenger run, was sailing overhead. "Savages could never have made a thing like that."

  "Savagery and technology," she said, "can coexist. As you should know."

  "But these people are not savages," I insisted.

  "You dare to say that, Captain Grimes, after you witnessed what they did to me, the messenger of God."

  "Of your God. And, anyhow, you asked for it."

  Even from behind her dark glasses her eyes were like twin lasers aimed at me.

  "Enough," she said coldly. "I would remind you, Captain Grimes, that you are still my servant and, through me, of the Almighty. Please prepare to lift ship."

  "Then you are taking my advice?"

  "Of course not. We shall proceed forthwith to the Mountain That Is Not Named."

  Oh, well, if she wanted to do some sight-seeing, I did not object. Tourism would get us into far less trouble (I thought) than attempting to interfere with perfectly innocent and rather beautiful religious rituals. Quite happily I went back into the ship, straight to the control cab, and started to do my sums or, to be more exact, told the pilot-computer to do my sums for me. Little Sister, although a deep-space ship in miniature, was also a pinnace quite capable of flights, short or long, within a planetary atmosphere. She joined me as I was studying the readouts, looking at the chart and the extrapolation of the Great Circle course.

  "Well," she asked.

  "If we lift now we can be at Nameless Mountain by sunrise tomorrow, without busting a gut."

  "There is no need to be vulgar, Captain. But sunrise will be a good time. It will coincide with their dawn service."

  I didn't bother to try to explain to her the concept of longitudinal time differences and, in any case, possibly some town or city was on the same meridian as the volcano—but then, of course, there would be other factors, such as latitude and the sun's declination, to be considered. So I just agreed with her. And then, with the ship buttoned up, I got upstairs.

  It was an uneventful flight. I had the controls on full automatic so there was no need for me to stay in the cab. Too, according to the information at my disposal, there was very little (if any) traffic in Stagatha's night skies. The sun ruled their lives.

  We were both of us back in the control cab as we approached the volcano. She was looking disapprovingly at the mug of coffee from which I was sipping. I hoped sardonically that she had enjoyed the glass of water with which she had started her day. Outside the ship it was getting light, although not as light as it should have been at this hour. We were flying through dense smoke and steam, with visibility less than a couple of meters in any direction. Not that I had any worries. The three-dimensional radar screen was showing a clear picture of what was below, what was ahead. It was not a pretty picture but one not devoid of a certain horrid beauty. Towering, contorted rock pinnacles, evilly bubbling lava pools, spout
ing mud geysers . . . . The ship, still on automatic, swerved to steer around one of these that was hurling great rocks into the air . . . .

  I said, "We're here."

  She said, "We have yet to reach the main crater rim."

  "The main crater rim?" I repeated.

  "You're not afraid, Captain, are you? Didn't you tell me that this ship of yours can take anything that anybody cares to throw at her?"

  "But . . . An active volcano . . . One that seems to be on the verge of blowing its top in a major eruption . . . ."

  "Are you a vulcanologist, Captain?"

  So we stood on, feeling our way through the murk. There was more than volcanic activity among the special effects. Lightning writhed around us, a torrent—flowing upwards or downwards?—of ghastly violet radiance that would have been blinding had it not been for the automatic polarization of the viewports. And ahead was sullen, ruddy glare . . . No, not glare. It was more like a negation of light than normal luminosity. It was the Ultimate Darkness made visible.

  Little Sister maintained a steady course despite the buffeting that she must be getting. And then she was in clear air, the eye of the storm as it were. We could see things visually instead of having to rely upon the radar screens. We were over the vast crater, the lake of dull, liquid fire, the semi-solid, dark glowing crust through cracks in which glared white incandescence. In the center of this lake was a sort of island, a black, truncated cone.

  "Set us down there," she said.

  "Not bloody likely," I said.

  "Set us down there."

  She was standing now and her hand was on my shoulder, gripping it painfully. And . . . And . . . How can I describe it? It was as though some power were flowing from her to me, through me. I fought it. I tried to fight it. And then I tried to rationalize. After all, the metal of which Little Sister was built, an isotope of gold, was virtually guaranteed to be proof against anything. If anything should happen to her I could go to her builders on Electra and demand my money back. (Not that my money had paid for her in the first place.) Joke.

  I had the ship back on manual control. I made a slow approach to the central island, hovered above it. I had been expecting trouble, difficulty in holding the ship where I wanted her, but it was easy. Too easy. Suspiciously easy.

  I let her fall, slowly, slowly, the inertial drive just ticking over. I felt the faint jar, a very faint jar, as she landed on the flat top, the perfectly smooth top of the truncated cone.

  She said, "Open the airlock doors."

  I tried to protest but the words wouldn't come.

  She said, "Open the airlock doors."

  I thought, And so we fill the ship with stinking, sulfurous gases. But the internal atmosphere can soon be purified.

  On the console before me I saw the glowing words as I actuated the switch. INNER DOOR OPEN. OUTER DOOR OPEN.

  She was gone from behind me, back into the main cabin. I got up from my chair, followed her. She was going outside, I realized. She should have asked me for a spacesuit; it would have given her some protection against the heat, against an almost certainly poisonous atmosphere. Some of this was already getting inside the ship, an acridity that made my eyes water, made me sneeze. But it didn't seem to be worrying her.

  She passed through both doors.

  I stood in the little chamber, watching her. She was standing on the heat-smoothed rock, near, too near to the edge of the little plateau. Was the silly bitch going to commit spectacular and painful suicide? But I was reluctant to leave the security—the illusory security?—of my ship to attempt to drag her to safety. No, it wasn't cowardice. Not altogether. I just knew that she knew what she was doing.

  (If I'd known more I should have been justified in going out to give her a push!)

  She stood there, very straight and tall, in black silhouette against the dull glow from the lake of fire. Her form wavered, became indistinct as a dark column of smoke eddied about her. Still she stood there while the smoke thinned, vanished. It was as though it had been absorbed by her body.

  But that was impossible, wasn't it?

  She walked back to the airlock. The skin of her face seemed to be much darker than it had been—but that was not surprising. It seemed to me—but that must have been imagination—that her feet did not touch the surface over which she was walking.

  She said as she approached me, "Take me back to the city."

  I obeyed. No matter what her order had been, no matter how absurd or dangerous, I should have obeyed. When first I had met her I had been conscious of her charisma but had learned to live with it, to distrust it and to despise it. Now neither distrust nor contempt would have been possible.

  We got upstairs.

  No sooner were we on course than the volcano blew up. The blast of it hit us like a blow from something solid. I wasn't able to watch as I was too busy trying to keep the ship under some sort of control as she plunged through the fiery turbulence, through the smoke and the steam and the fiery pulverized dust, through the down-stabbing and up-thrusting lightning bolts.

  And, through it all, she was laughing.

  It was the first time that I had heard her laugh.

  It was an experience that I could well have done without.

  * * *

  "I need some more beer," he said, "to wash the taste of that volcanic dust out of my throat. After all the years I still remember it." She refilled his mug, and then her own. "Did the dust get inside your ship?" she asked. "It got everywhere," he told her. "All over the entire bloody planet."

  * * *

  We set down in that same field where we had made our first landing. According to the chronometer it wanted only an hour to local, apparent noon, but the sky was overcast. The air was chilly. She ordered me to open one of her trunks. In it was a further supply of the cast-off clothing that she had brought from Warrenhome. And there were books. Bibles, I assumed, or the perversion of Holy Writ adopted by Her church. I opened one but was unable, of course, to read the odd, flowing Stagathan characters.

  I filled a backpack with the clothing. While I was so doing she took something else from the trunk. It was a whip; haft and tapering lash were all of three meters long. It was an evil-looking thing.

  We left the ship. She took the lead. I trudged behind. As she passed one of the flowering bushes, its blossoms drab in the dismal gray light, she slashed out with the whip, cracking it expertly, severing stems and twigs, sending tattered petals fluttering to the ground.

  We walked into the city.

  We came to the central square, with the obelisk (but it was casting no shadow), the great gong (but it was now no more than an ugly disk of dull, pitted metal), the celebrants and the worshippers.

  But there was nothing for them to worship. The sky was one, uniform gray with not so much as a diffuse indication of the position of the sun. The people were all, as they had been at that other service, naked but now their nudity was . . . ugly. A thin drizzle was starting to fall, but it was mud rather than ordinary rain, streaking the shivering skins of the miserable people.

  The priest standing by the gong, the man with the striker, was the first to see us. He pointed at us, shouting angrily. He advanced towards us, still shouting, menacing us with his hammer. Behind him others were now shouting, and screaming. They were blaming us for the dense cloud that had hidden their god from sight.

  She stood her ground.

  Suddenly her lash snaked out, whipped itself around the striker and tore it from the priest's hands, sent it clattering to the mud-slimed marble paving. It cracked out again, the tip of it slashing across the man's face, across his eyes. He screamed, and that merciless whip played over his body, drawing blood with every stroke.

  And She was declaiming in a strong, resonant voice, with one foot planted firmly upon the squirming body of the hapless, blinded priest, who had fallen to the ground, laying about her with the whip.

  Even then, at the cost of a few injuries, they could have overpowered her, have taken her
from behind. But the heart was gone from them. Their god had forsaken them. And She . . . She was speaking with the voice of a god. Or was a god speaking through her? She was possessed. The black charisma of her was overpowering. I opened the backpack and began to distribute the cast-off clothing. Hands—the hands of men, women, and children—snatched the drab rags from me eagerly. And there was something odd about it. It seemed as though that backpack were a bottomless bag. It could never have held sufficient clothing to cover the nakedness of a crowd of several thousand people. Sometime later, of course, I worked things out. Converts must have gone back into their homes for the ceremonial black robes that they doffed at the dawn service and resumed at sunset. But, even so . . . How could those robes have assumed the appearance of, say, ill-cut, baggy trousers? Imagination, it must have been. Even though I could not understand what she was saying, I was under the spell of Her voice.