Gather Darkness

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by Fritz Leiber


  Slowly, in step with this titan melody, the reviewing stand which had been raised overnight beside the Cathedral door, began to fill with priests whose scarlet robes were agleam with gold. The nearest commoners could make out the emblazonment on their breasts—a triangle at whose vertex glittered a great jewel—and word was breathlessly whispered back that no less than the Apex Council itself would preside over the Grand Revival. There were few enough commoners who could boast of ever having seen an archpriest. To glimpse the whole Council was like getting a peek at Heaven.

  Wonder began to crowd out surliness. The music quickened. The high doors of the Cathedral swung outward, and there issued forth, four abreast, a procession which incarnated the pomp and power of the Hierarchy. Priests of all circles—magnificent men, handsome as demigods. They circled the space the deacons had kept clear before drawing up in ranks around the reviewing stand.

  And as the priests marched, as the music grew ever more rich and warm and dazzling—as it climbed like the sun to the top of the sky—they seemed to tread under their feet all evil, all darkness, all rebellion, any and everything that presumed to lift its head against the Hierarchy.

  On the reviewing stand, Goniface wrinkled his nostrils and turned to one of the lesser priests standing in attendance behind him.

  "Whence comes that odor?" he inquired.

  There was no longer any disregarding it. Mingled with the cloying sweetness that was diffusing through the Square, came ever stronger and stronger whiffs of a pungent, goaty stench.

  The attendant priest indicated that he would find out. Leaning forward, Goniface glanced thoughtfully at the two priests bearing censers. But he recognized them both. One was a stanch Realist, the other a stern-faced Fanatic.

  He touched a switch on the portable televisor set up in front of him, and there sprang into view the features of the chief technician at Cathedral Control Center.

  "No, your supreme eminence, there is no possibility of the Witchcraft hocussing any of our apparatus," he explained in answer to Goniface's question. "We have a comprehensive warning system set up, which will instantly inform us if force pencils or any similar manipulatory fields are introduced into the Square, and we have countermeasures ready. The telesolidograph shield is, as you know, completely adequate. In short, the Great Square and the Cathedral, and a considerable region around them, are isolated. You can rest assured of that.

  "The odor? Oh, we know about that already. A most unfortunate, though unavoidable accident in the mechanism of one of the odor projectors. It has been rectified."

  As Goniface reprimanded him, he scanned the faces of the other priests in the control center. All loyal Realists, except two of the Fifth Circle physicists. And they were Fanatics. Good.

  "Yes, your supreme eminence," the chief technician assured him in answer to a final question, "we can at an instants notice throw up a repulsor dome over the reviewing stand. And the squadron of angels you desired us to hold in readiness can get into the air almost as quickly."

  Satisfied in the main, Goniface switched off the televisor. True to what the chief technician had told him, the goaty odor had almost faded out, though a few wrinkled noses were to be seen here and there. He would have liked to have Cousin Deth beside him at the moment, but the little deacon couldn't be spared from the witch hunt. Jarles, however, made a fair substitute.

  The march had finished in a great, triumphal burst of sound that seemed to signify the Great God's final and most important act of creation, when, after the catastrophic experiment of the Golden Age, he had brought into being the crowning glory of the Hierarchy.

  The crowd, eager with hours of waiting, but soothed by the parasympathetics, fell easy prey to the revivalistic preachers, whose mightily amplified voices thundered one after another through the Square. Strains of a softer music than the march subtly emphasized the rhythm of the preachers' fervent chanting, while the parasympathetic emanations were artfully varied to increase the effects of their exhortations, with sympathetics occasionally mixed in.

  The emotional resistances of the crowd gave way. Whole sections began to sway from side to side, until the movement had spread through the whole Square, and all the commoners, including those on the rooftops, were swaying like a single organism. And from a hundred thousand throats came a wordless sound that intensified the preachers' rhythmic emphases—a profoundly stirring yet disgusting animal sound midway between a grunt of pleasure and a sob.

  Here and there were symptoms of even more violent emotional release—ecstatic wails, screams, wildly flailing arms, tiny holes in the crowd where someone had dropped to his knees. It would have been easy to throw them all into a state of crazy and utter abandon, but that was not the intention. As it was, deviations to a wilder behavior could make no progress against the general chanting sway, and were quickly re-engulfed in it.

  "Great God, hurl down Sathanas, hurl down the Lord of Evil!" Grunt and sway. "He caught us in snares, but we struggled against them!" Grunt and sway. "He raised terrors by darkness, but we called upon you!" Grunt and sway. "He sent horrors against us, but we clung to our faith!" Grunt and sway. "Send him back to Hell, send him back to his sinners!" Grunt and sway. "Let him root in filth, let him swill with the damned!" Grunt and sway.

  Then, with a thrilling display of mob-mastery, the last and ablest of the preachers stilled the swaying and hushed the sound—not by calming it, but by transforming it into motionless tension, an almost unbearably poignant anticipation.

  All eyes turned toward the preacher, who stood alone on a rostrum in front of the reviewing stand. He dropped to his knees then, and cried out, in a voice vibrant with compassion. "Great God, your people ache for your loving kindness. Long have they gone without the milk of your infinite mercy, the food of your infinite strength. They thirst. They hunger."

  This was no more than literally true. Kept waiting until midafternoon, ceaselessly bombarded by parasympathetics, the crowd was ravenous.

  Turning on his knees, the preacher lifted his hands in supplication to the massive, all-dominating image that formed the upper half of the Cathedral.

  "Great God," he cried, "your people have passed the test! In terror and suffering, they have maintained their faith. They have torn out Sathanas from their hearts. Be good to them, Great God. Tilt for them your horn of plenty. Animate with your divine presence the cold, lifeless stone and let ambrosia drop from your hands and nectar stream from your fingertips. They have hungered long enough, Great God. Give them food and drink!"

  Mentally stupefied and emotionally taut as they were, the crowd realized what must be coming and prepared for it. The older knew from experience, and the younger had been told, what wondrous dainties would soon come spilling down. Wooden bowls and copper pitchers appeared suddenly. Other commoners stretched small sheets between them to catch the miraculous cakes. Tubs and buckets showed up on the rooftops, while a few frantic souls climbed on their neighbors' shoulders and teethered there precariously, holding containers of one sort or another.

  But the majority just stood with heads thrown back, mouths open, and hands upstretched.

  There was a faint shudder of movement in the gigantic image, sudden silence in the Square. Slowly then the vast, awesome face looked down. Slowly the harsh lines softened, to be replaced by an indulgent and benignant smile—like a stern and preoccupied but withal loving father who finally remembers the obedient children crowding around his feet.

  Slowly the gargantuan hands stretched out over the Square in a gesture of titan generosity. Then, from the right hand, ten thousand tiny fountains suddenly sprayed, while from the left cascaded down, blossoming outward like an inverted flower, a rain of crusty flakes and tiny cubes.

  A greedy cry rose from the crowd, as the food and drink began to sprinkle them.

  One second. Two. Three. And then the cry changed abruptly to a strangled spewing, and there swept through the massed ranks of the priests and across the reviewing stand a hideous stench that seemed comp
ounded equally of putrid meat, rancid butter, moldy bread, and embalming fluid.

  As from one giant throat, the crowd gargled, retched and spat. And still the noisome nectar and noxious ambrosia continued irrevocably to fall, drenching them, plastering them. Heads were ducked, hoods pulled up. Those who had spread sheets crowded under them, while a few of those who had held up bowls now inverted them and clapped them on their heads. And still the dreadful stuff rained down, so thickly that the farther side of the Square was murkily obscured.

  Snarls then, and angry cries. First a few, then more. Here and there the fringes of the crowd surged forward against the double line of deacons.

  The preacher on the rostrum rose to the emergency. Stepped-up amplification enabled him to outroar the crowd.

  "The Great God is only testing you!" he bellowed. "Some of you must lack faith! That is why the miracle-food does not taste like ambrosia and nectar!

  "But the Great God is now satisfied of your faith!" he continued, not caring how illogical he sounded so long as he got to his main point, which was, "The Great God will now perform the true miracle! Behold how he rewards you!"

  The stinking rain ceased.

  On the reviewing stand Goniface thundered at the televisor, "Stop that second miracle!"

  From the panel the chief technician stared back blankly at him. He gave no sign that he had heard the order. He seemed stunned, bemused. "But we're isolated," he was repeating dully. "We haven't got a quiver out of any of the warning systems."

  "And someone has turned on the sympathetics!" Goniface continued rapidly. "Attend to it! And stop that second miracle!"

  The chief technician came to life with a jerk and quickly signed to one of his assistants, who almost immediately answered with frantic gestures of impotence.

  For the first moment it seemed that Goniface's fears were groundless. From the Great God's outstretched hands there began to sprinkle a shower of tiny golden coins.

  The forward movement of the crowd checked. Again they looked upward. The ingrained habits of a lifetime were not easily overcome. It was second nature to believe what a priest said. And the descending shower did have a true golden glint.

  But after the first sprinkle, it changed from gold to red—too bright a red. Screams and yells of sudden pain mingled with the renewed snarls as tiny red-hot disks spattered against tender flesh, or were greedily caught out of the air and as quickly hurled away, or chanced to drop inside clothing or were trodden by bare feet.

  With a roar that muffled the cries of pain, the crowd surged ponderously forward in a ragged wave, partly to escape the red-hot shower, which stopped just short of the double line of deacons. But that was not the main reason, for the shower stopped and the forward surging continued, strengthened, and the roar became louder and uglier. Fists were raised. Deacons went down. Here and there the double line bent backward, broke.

  To avoid any chance of such a stupid tragedy as had occurred yesterday at Neodelos, Goniface had forbid the cordon of deacons to carry wrath rods. Now at his rapidly transmitted command, the First and Second Circle priests in front of the reviewing stand marched forward to support the deacons, hurrying in either direction to form a long-enough line, and switching on the repulsor fields of their inviolability as they went, so that their robes puffed out tautly. Across the dissolving line of deacons, the crowd hurled filthily smeared pots and pitchers at the advancing priests, but they rebounded harmlessly from the individual repulsor fields.

  Something was wrong with their halos, though. They were flashing on and off.

  Suddenly there was confusion in their ranks. The first impression was that those in the center had simultaneously hurled themselves at each other and then neglected to break apart. Swiftly others catapulted themselves at the original group and stuck to it. The ends of the hurrying line were jerked suddenly backward, some of the priests falling, yet still skidding along, until all of them were jammed together in one helpless, roughly circular, scarlet clump.

  To Goniface, it was apparent almost immediately that some unaccountable influence had changed their repulsor fields to attractors, with a simultaneous increase in range and power.

  But most of the archpriests could only stare helplessly at the ever-mounting chaos around the reviewing stand. Long habit had taught them to preserve inscrutable expressions, but now their facial masks concealed nothing but empty stupefaction. It was not physical fear that froze them. They felt that the whole materialistic world on which they based their security was going to pieces before their eyes. Physical science, which had been their obedient servant, had suddenly become a toy in the hands of a dark power that could make or break scientific laws at pleasure. Something had scratched out the first principle of their thinking: "There is only the cosmos and the electronic entities that constitute it, without soul or purpose—" and scribbled over it, in broad black strokes, "The whim of Sathanas."

  The high-ranking priests massed around the reviewing stand were in no better shape. They stood there, doing nothing, as the stinking wave of the garbage-drenched crowd surged forward, engulfing the struggling deacons like a row of black pebbles, breaking around the helpless clump of the lower-ranking priests as around a red rock and roaring up the steps of the Cathedral.

  A stone, its momentum almost spent, lobbed into the reviewing stand. It brought no reaction. With three exceptions, the archpriests and their attendants were like scarlet-gowned dolls.

  The three exceptions were Goniface, Jarles and the old Fanatic Sercival.

  Goniface had at last managed to get an order through the minor chaos of Cathedral Control Center. Down over the Cathedral, swerving around the still-forward-bending image of the Great God, swooping a bare few yards above the reviewing stand, dove a squadron of angels—a sight fantastically grotesque, as if a score of flaxen-haired demigods had swan-dived from the cloudless sky.

  They flattened out where the forward edge of the crowd was hurling itself on the ranks of the higher priesthood, and skimmed across the Square—so low that they brained a few unfortunates.

  The attractor field of the clumped lower-ranking priests interfered catastrophically with the course of the center angel. It nosed downward and crashed, crushing priests and commoners alike. It crumpled, revealing its metallic construction. Through a gaping rent there showed the body of its priestly pilot, killed in the crash.

  But the other angels banked sharply upward, just missing the rooftops across the Square, and looped back for another dive.

  There were ghastly screams from those who had felt the mangling force of the downward-directed propulsion jets.

  Insane terror began to replace the insane anger of the crowd. Like some helpless beast, it floundered senselessly. Some in the forward fringe still grappled with the higher-ranking priests. Others, attempting to flee, only added to the confusion of the trapped, milling central mass. All street mouths were hopelessly choked.

  Then, when the angels had momentarily become tiny shapes against the blue of the zenith, there came hurtling from the commoners' section, over the horizon of roofs, six black forms trailing like cuttlefishes a dense, inky smoke behind them. Straight for the Cathedral they came, like bats out of hell. And that hell was their most likely source, was soon apparent, for as they hurled closer well above the mob, they were seen to have misshapen and taloned arms, furry nether limbs rigidly extended, and short black tails. While horned black fiend-faces grew, grew, grew.

  The first went whipping in close circles around the rostrum on which the preacher cowered, wreathing him with black fumes until he was completely obscured.

  The next two banked upward and executed intricate loops around the head, body and arms of the Great God, festooning him inkily. His vast face still wore the original indulgent smile, now imbecile. Then, from the mightiest amplifier of them all, that located behind his own idiot-grinning mouth, the Great God began to bleat thunderously, "Mercy! Mercy, master! Do not hurt me! I will tell everyone the truth! I am the slave of Sathanas
! My priests have lied! The Lord of Evil rules us all"

  The last three devils shot straight at the reviewing stand. White-faced archpriests, at last springing up, stared at them horrifiedly. Then, when they were hardly yards away, there was a cutting-off of sound and a wavering in the scene before the archpriests. In response to Goniface's frantically repeated commands, Cathedral Control Center had finally thrown up the heavy repulsor dome to shield the Apex Council. The three approaching devils careened away wildly.

  In that pocket of sudden silence in the midst of visible chaos, it was startling how clearly the doomful voice of old Sercival rang out. All through the Grand Revival, the lean and aged Fanatic had not spoken a word, only gazed before him with a somber displeasure, occasionally shaking his head and seeming to mutter to himself.

  Now he cried, in a voice that smote like an icy dagger, "Who, I ask, has performed the miracles today? At long last the Great God sickens of our unbelief. He deserts us. He leaves us to Hell's mercy. Prayer alone—and faith absolute—can save us, if it be not too late even for prayer."

  The other archpriests did not look at him, but the impression they gave was that someone was speaking their inmost thoughts. They stood motionless—lonely men communing with terror. Even Goniface's exasperation and contempt were sullied with the faintest trace of the poisoning corruption of doubt and fear.

  But into the hard, watchful eyes of Jarles, standing sideways behind Sercival, there crept a look of incredulous realization. Today was the first time he had ever seen the leader of the Fanatics. Now, for the first time, he heard him speak.

  Memory and the unerring sense of recognition that came with memory, fought with incredulity and conquered. Instantly his new personality made one of those hairline decisions which were its chiefest pride.

  Conscience smote him as he did the deed. Black, agonizing waves of guilt washed through his mind, telling him this was a crime beyond forgiveness, a nefandous action from which the universe turned aside in loathing. Yet he choked down conscience, as a sick man subdues his retching.

 

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