by Fritz Leiber
Apex Council and Web Center Staff co-operated admirably. There was a minimum of friction. Some of the archpriests were serving on the Staff. Tonight Brother Jomald was Chief of Communications and, in Goniface's absence, exercised supreme authority.
There was almost no noise or bustle. This was made possible by an elaborate code of gestures, amounting almost to a language, and the general use of earphones, whisper transmitters, and old-style written messages flashed by televisor.
At either end of the room were grouped large televisor panels, one for each key city.
But it was the huge world map that dominated Web Center and gave it its special character. Projected in glowing colors from the other side of the translucent wall, it seemed almost a live thing. And, indeed, if one closely watched the region of faint shadow covering half the map, one could discern its very slow movement. That region of shadow represented night. Slowly its forward margin crept across ocean and land, engulfing the dots representing Sanctuaries. Slowly its rearward margin withdrew from others. Megatheopolis, at the center of the map, was also at the present moment approximately at the center of the creeping blanket of shadow.
Most of the dots on which the shadow encroached were scarlet. Many of those from which it withdrew were black. The change indicated that those Sanctuaries had stopped communicating, had presumably been deserted or fallen to the Witchcraft.
Fully half the tinier dots, which represented rural Sanctuaries, were black. All of the largest dots were still scarlet.
Goniface studied the map more closely, noting the disposition of the tiny blue-wing symbols representing squadrons of angels, the black batwing symbols that had been improvised to indicate devil constructions, the gray, wolflike diagrams marking regions troubled by enemy solidographs, and all the other meaningful pictorial hieroglyphs of the map.
As he studied it, he frowned. Indubitably the Witchcraft had been making progress—swifter progress. He sensed a better co-ordination of enemy forces, a more unified plan of campaign. They were taking clever advantage of the fact that the Hierarchy lacked sufficient angel squadrons to patrol all key cities.
Tomorrow the ship from Luciferopolis should land, carrying fifty angel squadrons, besides a number of archangels and seraphim, of which there were none here. But that was tomorrow.
He walked to the center of the gallery and took his place, annoyed rather than flattered at the stir created by his arrival. They were all too conscious of him. They should be more completely absorbed in their work.
From the station of the Chief of Communications directly below the World Hierarch's box in the gallery, Brother Jomald started to recount recent developments. But Goniface, having discerned most of them from the map, signed Jomald to wait. He put a question to one of his secretaries.
"I sent for Deth. He should be here."
"We have been unable to contact him. We are checking all likely points."
"The Fourth Circle priest Jarles?" he continued. "I sent for him, too."
"We are checking."
But he had to dismiss the matter from his mind. Now that his return had been noticed, the archpriests and staff members were shunting over to Goniface reports on critical sectors with requests for advice. It kept his secretaries' hands full sorting them out and presenting them to him.
"Mesodelphi invaded by blackness. Shall detach half squadron angels from Archeodelphia to render assistance?"
"Eleusis reports telesolidograph discovered and seized. Do you want details on construction?"
"Hieropolis—atomic batteries failing. Can spare power from elsewhere? Or send trained technicians to supervise repairs?"
"Sixth Circle Faculty of Olympia sends urgent message over private communication channel, warning that Olympia Control Staff is being mentally influenced by Witchcraft. Instructions?"
"Rural Sanctuary 127, East Asian Sector, reports mysterious crash of two angels. Glimpses of vast, batlike form. Shall warn all angels from sector?"
"Relief ship from Luciferopolis contacted. Will arrive approximately dawn, Megatheopolis Time. Shall land at usual port?"
Too many reports. Too many requests for advice. Time and again Goniface made, across the room or into the televisor, the curt palm-upward gesture which signified, "Handle at your own discretion. Use your own judgment." They ought to know better than to ask for advice on such matters. His being World Hierarch made them overanxious for his approval. Even with highly capable men like Jomald it made a difference. They were taking too slavish an attitude toward Goniface and his judgments.
He did reply, however, to the last request.
"Instruct relief ship from Luciferopolis to land openly behind Megatheopolis Sanctuary on Blasted Heath, prepared to give instant assistance."
Was the Hierarchy growing old, Goniface wondered—while another part of his mind was immersed in the business of the moment. Was the priesthood losing its vigor, its stem strength of purpose, its cold joy in rulership? Everywhere he fancied he could detect an undercurrent of laxity, of weakness, of escapism—as if most of his companions were flogged on only by habit and social pressure.
Perversely, it irked him that he no longer sensed jealousy and bitter rivalry in those around him. The Apex Council was not as it had been in the old days, when every archpriest was grasping at prestige and increased authority, and when each session was a brilliant duel of wits. Gone was the keen yet realistic competition for personal power, which had been one of the chief driving forces of the Hierarchy. His chief rival, Frejeris, was out of the picture, as good as dead, and he knew that even the strongest of the Realist leaders besides himself had given up any plans they might have had for supplanting him. They were content to accept him as master. He sat alone on the World Hierarch's throne and no one wanted to push him out of it.
Oddly, it was in his traitorous agent Jarles that Goniface had last sensed a rapacity and driving force akin to his own—though cruder and more naive. He wished Jarles would come. It would give him an obscure exhilaration to know that the cold, treacherous little cockerel was standing beside him, envying him. Perhaps, after the present crisis, Brother Dhomas could fabricate a few more such personalities to supply the animal vitality and ruthless self-interest which the Hierarchy had lost.
Morbid fancies! Ridiculous and suicidal, too, in the present crisis, when discipline and obedience were essential. Yet they kept troubling the under surface of his mind.
He noticed that the booth to his left, the one Sercival had always occupied, was empty, and he impatiently motioned the next archpriest to transfer to it. Bad for morale to have that reminder of the enemy who had so recently been discovered in their midst.
Yet as soon as the archpriest had obeyed his order, he wondered if he ought to have given it. Something in his mind kept wanting to transform the man's thickish face into Sercival's lean, hawklike one. And there was still an empty seat—
What had Sercival—Asmodeus—been after, really? Goniface would have given a great deal to have heard him answer that last question. Why had he wanted Goniface to achieve supreme authority? Had he foreseen the feeling of purposelessness that would trouble Goniface once his personal aims were achieved—the dry rot of slavish obedience that would begin to eat at every other member of the Hierarchy?
Above all, why had Sercival died keeping up a silly pretense of believing in the supernatural? Could he have been a senile dodderer after all? Impossible! The leader of the Witchcraft had proven himself a man of astonishing energy, daring, and resourcefulness. It must be assumed that Sercival had acted as he had in order to maintain the prestige of the Witchcraft, devoting his dying moments to a final effort to shake the skepticism of the Apex Council. But, according to Goniface's experience, dying men didn't do that sort of thing—or at least didn't do it so well.
The man had been so diabolically sincere! "Sathanas, receive… my… spirit," and all that! Was it possible that Sercival had believed his own words, had had reason to believe them? After all, to the truly skeptic
al mind, diabolic forces are just as reasonable building blocks for the cosmos as mindless electrons. No possibility, however seemingly fantastic, should revolt the truly skeptical mind. It all depends on the evidence. The evidence decides everything.
Suppose Sercival had had access to avenues of evidence which are denied most men? Suppose that, under the scientific mummery of the Witchcraft—seemingly identical with the scientific mummery of the Hierarchy—there was really something else? The mummery proved nothing. No reason why diabolic forces shouldn't sometimes make use of mummery to achieve their ends.
These dubious underthoughts were swept from Goniface's mind by the reports coming in from Neodelos. The situation there had reached a crisis. Half the priesthood of Neodelos was incapacitated by panic or by subtler manifestations of fear. Horrible phantoms stalked its corridors. Invisible voices made frightful threats.
Neodelos was the first of the key cities to come to final grips with the Witchcraft. It was also the first city where the countermeasures devised by Goniface would receive a thorough test. All the priests at Web Center, over and above their own work, were conscious of the messages flashing at frequent intervals on the Neodelos televisor at the end of the room. Depending on the import of those messages, their feelings rose and fell.
"Neodelos Control Center calling Web Center. Power Center here reports a disturbance. Two technicians incapacitated. Will ask for details.
"Report by runner—Cathedral Control Center here invaded by manifestations of some sort. Have no description except that manlike shapes accompany phantoms. Technicians have fled.
"Have ordered limited counterattack, in accordance with your instructions. Cannot contact Power Center. Deacons seeking to recharge wrath rods cannot reach armory.
"Power failing. Have switched to reserves. Report by runner—devil constructions landing at Chief Observation Post.
"Still cannot contact Power Center. Uneasiness at Control Center. Three seizures.
"Lights failing. Anticipate general failure of power. Control Center crowded by priests fleeing something in corridor outside.
"Darkness complete. Are working by pocket illuminators. Have ordered general counterattack. Doors of Control Center opening. Gray shapes—"
The Neodelos panel went dead.
The gloom that last message brought to Web Center was something tangible. Goniface could sense a wave of fatalistic resignation. Though operations continued without interruption, there was a certain frantic haste apparent in them—an air of desperation.
"Neodelos Control Center calling Web Center! Counterattacks at Control Center and Power Center successful! Numerous witches slain. Others have retreated. Power Center reports sabotage by witches, but one atomic battery still in order. No word as yet from Cathedral Control Center or Chief Observation Post. Skirmishing continues. Will send further reports as they come in."
At Web Center that message had the effect of a reprieve from a death sentence. It was as if parasympathetics were suddenly flooding the room. The large black dot which represented Neodelos on the world map blinked rapidly back to scarlet.
To a certain extent, Goniface was gratified. His countermeasures were proving satisfactory. They were very simple, being based on one hard fact. So long as the Hierarchy held the principal control points in the important sanctuaries, particularly the power sources, it could not be beaten. Likewise the Witchcraft, no matter how completely it depended on psychological weapons, must eventually attempt to take physical possession of those control points, after having terrorized the defending priests. At that moment the personnel of the Witchcraft became vulnerable to counterattacks or ambuscades by unsuspected secondary defenders, for whom the Witchcraft had no terrors prepared.
The plan seemed to be working at Neodelos.
And yet, looking around him, conning the work-absorbed faces of the priests at Web Center, Goniface had the feeling that something was lacking. Despite their obvious enheartenment at the outcome of the struggle at Neodelos, he had the feeling that deep in their minds was something that was disappointed, something that had wanted Neodelos to fall, something that wanted the whole Hierarchy to fall—a frightened, tired something.
Dimly—again in the under levels of his thinking—Goniface felt that he had just witnessed the last truly great triumph of the Hierarchy.
Everything seemed with them now—complete victory within their grasp—but that made no difference. After a hesitating and inauspicious beginning, the Hierarchy had finally risen to and met the challenge of the Witchcraft—but that made no difference either. Win or lose, the last great moment was past. Hereafter everything would be trifling. The Hierarchy, the most perfect form of government the world had ever known, had entered its old age. Ambitious men might come again, the rivalry for personal power revive. But they would be second-rate ambitions, a second-rate rivalry.
He had seen the last great moment fade, and even about that there had been something desperate and spasmodic, something that became unreal as soon as it was over, like the last rush of a dying carnivore or the last full exertion of physical strength a man makes before he becomes reconciled to old age and a thrifty husbanding of resources.
Irresistibly—though still in the under-levels of his thinking—Goniface was driven to a realization of the parallelism between his own career and the recent destiny of the Hierarchy. For his own career had surely been a spasmodic and desperate thing. And now, looking back, it began to seem fantastically unreal. A wretched boy, son of a Fallen Sister and a priest, forced to take his mother's family name of Knowles, forever barred from the Hierarchy, most despised of the despised. Knowles Satrick—a seeming weakling, who shut himself up from the world as much as a commoner's child could, hating with a terrible hate his family and especially the mother who had betrayed him by the very act of bringing him into the world, but getting only their contempt in return. Yet in that miserable boy had burned an ambition and a resentment so tremendous that they had worked like destiny. Again and again he had murdered to cover up his past, but they had been no ordinary crimes—it was rather as if fate itself had mixed the poison or wielded the knife. For his ambition had held true. Becoming a Hierarchic novice at Megatheopolis, he had climbed with phenomenal rapidity up the complacent ranks, from First to Second Circle, from Second to Fourth, from Fourth to Seventh, and thence to the Council. And with every upward step his flaming resentment and ambition had been eased a little, though in no way diminished.
That was not the way a man rose to power in a healthy, vigorous state. It was rather like the fulfillment of some dark prophecy, like the stealthy, fatalistic march of an assassin.
And now that he had reached the top, now that he had created a single peak for himself where none had existed before—the World Hierarchship—he still felt the undiminished impulse to climb upward; yet, where the next rung of the ladder should be, was only emptiness. He looked down and there were none who grasped upward at him, no ambitious successors to struggle with. Even the Witchcraft was being beaten.
Inevitably—still in that under level of thought, which was rising now to challenge his surface thoughts—Goniface was being turned back on himself, he was being driven back toward his own beginnings, as if to complete some mysterious circle. Irresistibly, his memories began to trend backward in time toward the carefully blotted-out period of his youth. He thought of the spiteful, irresponsible, grandiosely dreaming creature who had been his mother. Of his doltish half brother— But most of all of his younger sister Geryl. She had been the only one of them who had at all resembled him—in purposefulness and a certain somberness of character. And she might very well be alive—it had been a very convincing resemblance he had noted in the solidograph of the witch Sharlson Naurya. He gained a certain obscure satisfaction from thinking that she might miraculously have escaped from his murder trap and have devoted her life to accomplishing his downfall—the same sort of satisfaction he got from Jarles' jealousy and envy.
Knowles Satrick. Knowles Sat
rick. The name was repeating itself in his mind like a voice out of time's abyss. Come back, Knowles Satrick. You've gone as far as you can. Come back. Complete the cycle.
There was something very real about that voice. And something hypnotic about the name itself, like a winking point of light in utter darkness. It seemed to print itself on his mind in archaic black letters, over and over again. With a confused start, like a dozing man, he realized that his chief secretary was speaking to him.
"Sanctuary Control Center here desires to contact you. There are two separate communications. I believe you will want to attend to them personally. Shall I put them on your televisors?"
Goniface nodded. The familiar face of the Sanctuary Control Chief flashed into view. He looked grim, shaken.
"We have contacted Cousin Deth. His body was discovered at the subsidiary prison. The face had been burned away, but identification is certain. Some of the guards there had also been slain by wrath ray. The rest were paralyzed. The cells are empty. There is no sign of the prisoners."
For a moment Goniface felt only a kind of weariness, as if he had known about this long before. Deth's gone, Knowles Satrick, the voice seemed to say. The little deacon will smile no more on your enemies. But that's all right, he served his purpose. You don't need his help any more. You've got where you wanted and you can't go any further. It only remains to come back, Knowles Satrick. To come back.
The voice had the strangest effect, as if it were pulling at him, as if it were drawing him off in some undetermined direction—pehaps back across time. With an effort he half roused himself. So the prisoners had escaped from the Sanctuary? That would account for the better-co-ordi-nated plan of attack the Witchcraft had shown this last hour. They had got back a part of their leadership. But what did it matter? The Hierarchy was winning out at Neodelos. They were beating the Witchcraft despite its improved leadership.