They had settled on a street behind the temple as the best site of operations; it was usually unfrequented at night, for this had formerly been Penwyr’s busy commercial quarter, and all the nearby stores were empty and neglected except one which had been turned into a comfortable residence for the temple staff. The curfew patrols, Tharl had assured them, were negligent in this area, for few people would risk going out under the priests’ very noses.
They reached it without trouble, and walked along the far side opposite the temple wall, on which the slogans glared luminously for the benefit of—of whom? Any priest who might glance out, Spartak decided with a curl of his lip.
As nearly as he could tell, he had come to a point opposite the end of the screen inside the temple. He beckoned to his companions to assemble the equipment. Metal stands clinked on the hard-frozen snow as they set down their burdens, and he fumbled with numb fingers to make connections between the power supply and the detectors themselves.
Tiorin headed towards one end of the street, Vix and Vineta towards the other, to keep wary watch. Eunora could do that equally well from where Spartak stood; besides, her tiny hands were deft at the awkward work of organizing the equipment, and she did not have to be given spoken orders.
It was the eeriest task he had ever undertaken. His chief and burning hope was that Belizuek’s powers did not extend to the perception of the various probe frequencies he planned to employ.
He coupled in the last device and silently handed the long flex attached to it to Eunora, who dashed across the street and clamped its terminal to the wall of the temple.
That automatically reported the structure-phase of the wall to the other instruments; so guided, they could look through it almost as easily as through glass. Heart pounding, Spartak adjusted the controls and bent to peer at the tiny self-illuminated dials and screens before him.
The range was excessive. He was getting a trace which could only be the nearer side of the concealing screen—irregular metal, probably in mesh or link form. He turned a knob with stiff fingers, and began to get suggestions of something less commonplace.
A mass of complex organics—not quite protoplasmic, but similar. That fitted. He set another knob for the characteristic vibration-modes of oxygen, and read off the data from a quivering needle against an arbitrary scale.
Low oxygen pressure. Very low. But a good deal of carbon dioxide, and nitrogen and a blend of inert gasses. Right! He began to look for the walls which must enclose this humanly unbreathable atmosphere, and almost at once found the traces which defined it.
Beside him, Eunora was fascinated by the vast amount of information the instruments afforded through a featureless wall; every new conclusion he drew brought a gasp of excitement from her.
“It fits, doesn’t it?” he whispered, daring to make the sound which after all was no louder than the chinking and scraping that had accompanied the setting up of their gear.
She gave an enthusiastic nod.
Yes, Spartak thought. Enclosed in a special atmosphere—organic, but not giving the same traces as a creature from one of our planets—a Thanis bull, say, which would have comparable mass and dimensions.…I wonder if I can get any of the internal structure!
Eunora’s teeth threatened to chatter from the cold; she clamped them firmly shut to avoid distracting him.
Two traces came up on the panel—similar, but not identical. An internal reflection, offering a clue to the details he was after? He checked again, and started. No: it was the same trace from two different points in space. In other words, the thing beyond the wall had moved.
I am right! Jubilantly he recognized the final confirmation of his suspicions. Eunora could not repress a chuckle as he hastily continued his examination.
And that was why she failed to give him warning.
The first he knew of their discovery was when lights bloomed like suns all down the front of the building occupied by the temple staff, and a door opened to disgorge about a dozen frantic men. Spartak jerked upright, heart seeming to stop its beating.
The horrified Eunora let out a stifled cry of dismay.
“There they are!” a voice yelled, and feet hammered the icy ground.
The equipment would just have to be abandoned—there was nothing else for it. Spartak snatched Eunora into his arms and fled towards the end of the street at which Vix and Vineta had been standing guard. There was no sign of Tiorin; handlamps had been brought out by the emerging priests, and their dazzling glare concealed the far end of the street.
Nonetheless, he also must have been spotted. Two of the new arrivals were dashing in that direction while the rest came on.
“Spartak!” Vix hissed. He had drawn the concealed sidearm Tigrid Zen had provided, and was hiding in an embrasure that had once been the entry to a store. “Go around the corner and turn left—I’ll give them something to think about and then we’ll make off to the right. Split them up!”
“Where’s Vineta?” Spartak gasped.
“Right here!” the girl replied from the shadow behind Vix. “I’m staying with Vix, so don’t argue!”
Spartak hadn’t thought of arguing. He ignored the remark. “Vix, try and destroy the equipment! Maybe they won’t learn just how much I now know!”
“You got what you wanted?” Vix was peering towards the brilliant lights, sighting along the barrel of his gun.
“Practically everything!”
At that instant a bolt seared along the street; why it had been so long delayed, Spartak could only guess—presumably the priests hadn’t expected to need weapons when they were alerted. Who had done the alerting was one of the many matters to be left over for later. He ducked reflexively as splinters of stone flew from the spot where the bolt struck.
“See you later at Tharl’s!” he whispered, and dived around the corner with Eunora. Behind him, Vix coolly took aim at the abandoned equipment, and fired his first bolt in reply to the priests’.
This district was laid out in conventional grid pattern, so that when Spartak came to the next intersection he could glance back and see clearly the end of the street near the temple. The light there was almost blinding by contrast with the general darkness, but he made out two figures ducking away in the opposite direction from that which he had taken.
Eunora had hidden her face against his chest, satisfied to perceive everything through his eyes.
Vix had obviously kept his promise to give the pursuers something to think about. It was long moments before anyone followed him and Vineta around the corner. The first person to do so was an armed man who fired one random shot; Vix let off another in reply, and provoked a scream, through whether it was of fear or pain Spartak could not tell. Then he ran on again, overtaking Vineta easily, and came to the intersection corresponding to the one at which Spartak himself had paused.
It was foolish, he told himself, not to make himself as scarce as time allowed, but something held him magnet-fashion; later, he decided it was a true premonition.
Vineta stumbled on the icy street. One of the pursuers loosed a bolt at her; it struck within arm’s length of her, and she went sprawling. Spartak gasped, and felt Eunora tense against him till she felt like a wooden doll.
From his inadequate cover Vix darted forward, gun in one hand, the other outstretched to seize Vineta and drag her to safety. He fired twice, so that the pursuers held back, and by main force got the girl on her feet, her arm around his shoulder so she could use him as a crutch.
It was a brave thing to do, a good thing to do, but so foolhardy Spartak winced. For with the weight of the injured girl delaying him, they caught him up at the end of the street and he went down under a mob of yelling priests.
Sick at heart, but driven by cold logic to the decision that he could do nothing more practical than ensure that he at least got away, whether or not Tiorin did so, he ducked around the corner and made his way unchallenged into dark and empty streets. It was so unfair that he should get away; why not Vix, the br
ave fool?
“What shall I do?” he whispered to the stars. “On my own, what shall I do?”
And neither the stars nor the sobbing Eunora offered an answer.
XX
FOR THE last half mile of their trip back to Tharl’s home Eunora stumbled along beside him. She no longer had difficulty keeping up with the man’s longer strides; he had brought himself to the verge of exhaustion.
“Is Tiorin here ahead of us?” he demanded as they came in sight of their goal.
She shook her head. “No one is there but Tharl, and he’s in a terrible state of anxiety. He’s wondering all the time whether he was right to reveal himself to you.”
“But he’s dependable?” Spartak insisted.
“I’m not so sure as I was,” Eunora muttered. “Fear has been working on him ever since we left.”
Spartak glanced at her, and for the first time in their headlong flight noticed that she was clutching something to her with both hands. He didn’t have to ask what it was; he recognized it in the same moment that she realized telepathically he was wondering about it. His medical case, which he had brought away from the ship and assumed to have been left on the street with the rest of the abandoned equipment.
“I was holding the handle while you were working,” she explained shyly. “And when you picked me up I clung on to it.”
“Well, it’s something,” Spartak sighed. “Go and tap on Tharl’s window, will you, and get him to let us in?”
It was painfully clear from Tharl’s face that fear had indeed been giving him second thoughts since their departure. He hastened to shut the door as they came in, and demanded at once why they were alone.
Spartak told him with crude brevity, and Tharl literally wrung his hands.
“Then you must make off at once!” he exclaimed. “They’ll search the whole town, house by house, and if they find you here it’ll be all up with me, and you as well. You say you have a ship—you must go back there at once and leave Asconel for somewhere safe—”
“I’m not leaving,” Spartak grunted, dropping into a chair. “Not until Tiorin gets here.”
“But if he’s been taken too—”
“If he’s been taken too, there’s no chance of my reaching our ship—they’ll pry the location of it out of my brothers’ minds.”
“Your—your brothers?” echoed Tharl uncertainly.
What point in keeping the secret any longer? If Bucyon’s men had both Vix and Vineta, and possibly Tiorin as well, no disguise could conceal their identity for long. He said wearily, “I’m Spartak, Hodat’s half-brother, and the others were Vix and Tiorin.”
Tharl’s eyes grew round with wonder. “Forgive me!” he babbled. “I didn’t know, I didn’t guess!”
“You weren’t supposed to,” Spartak told him curtly, and leaned back, closing his eyes. “Eunora, you can warn us of approaching search parties, can’t you?”
“I was supposed to warn you of danger down at the temple,” the girl answered, eyes filling with tears again. “And I failed. I’m—I’m terribly sorry, but I was so fascinated—”
“You’re forgiven,” Spartak interrupted. “Just don’t do it again.”
“Excuse my asking,” Tharl ventured, “but how can she—?”
“Warn us? She can, I promise you. She’s a mutant.”
“A mutant!” Millennia of Imperial prejudice sprang up in Tharl’s mind, and he looked terrified.
“Stop it,” Spartak ordered angrily. “She’s of human stock, and that’s more than you can say of Belizuek.”
Curiosity and alarm struggled in Tharl’s mind; the former won. “Did you find out what he is?” he demanded.
“I think so. He’s a living creature, presumably capable of being killed; he requires to be housed in an air-tight compartment in which the oxygen is far below our normal air; he’s very large, and I suspect he’s effectively larger than any creature we’ve ever had to deal with before. And he’s intelligent.
“But he is also insane.”
Tharl turned that over and finally shook his head.
“What he is, in fact,” Spartak amplified, “is the last survivor—in our galaxy at least—of the race from whom we inherited our starships.”
Tharl stiffened. Spartak foresaw the objection he was about to voice, and went on crossly, “Oh, don’t give me that nonsense about an insult to human achievement! The idea that we built our own is a piece of Imperial propaganda. I’ve studied ten years on Annanworld, and I’m satisfied that we went out from our original system—wherever that was—and found a cache of starships left by a previous race. We converted them to our own use and spread through the galaxy, finding more of them wherever we went, but no other trace of their builders. Not that it matters, really, except that it gives us a set of parameters to define Belizuek.”
He ticked off points on his fingers. “Low oxygen. We have vague records to indicate that our predecessors were oxygen-breathers, as we are, but that they literally used up the resources of their own planets and went elsewhere before they needed to colonize the ones we eventually took over. Telepathic control of another species. This had been proposed as the ultimate in the domestication of animals. It fits. A view of the galaxy—and that’s perhaps the most important thing of all!” He jerked upright in his chair.
“You’ve seen the picture of the galaxy which accompanies the ‘proof’ during the temple services? Of course you have; it’s a key element and must be received by everyone. Didn’t you notice that it’s an Argian map that it’s based on?”
Tharl could only mumble his answer.
“I tell you it is. Because it shows the Big Dark, and the Big Dark is a recent phenomenon; it’s anomalous, so it’s been carefully studied, and it’s only some ten to twelve thousand years old. And at its present size … well, I’m convinced that Belizuek has only seen human representations of the galaxy. That’s the clincher for me.
“I said he was insane. Why else would he have been left behind when the rest of his species took off for—for wherever? Why else should he descend to this petty shift of domesticating human beings, to move him from star-system to star-system? I got it direct, down in the temple. Conceit! Illimitable megalomaniac craving for power! And he couldn’t get it from his own species, because when he tried he was made an outcast and abandoned on—well, somewhere, presumably on Brinze where Bucyon and the rest came up against him. It’s going to be a very interesting story when it’s told: how he overcame his first victims, how he plotted to spread through the galaxy again …”
“He?” The word was almost a squeak from Tharl.
“I know what you’re trying to say,” Spartak nodded. “If there’s a living creature in every temple of Belizuek, why not speak of ‘they’? This is the final evidence I have for his insanity.
“Equipped with the kind of knowledge and techniques which the Empire enjoyed at the height of its power, it was estimated that a man could breed his kind from his own germ-plasm, artificially, to repopulate an abandoned planet. I have no doubt that Belizuek could do the same if he wished. But he doesn’t wish. He’s afraid of competition. The part of him which is in the Penwyr temple is a second self, not a bred descendant, an offspring. Ten thousand years ago, before we spread through the galaxy, it was open and empty before him! And it took him that, long to make up his mind that he could trust himself on one single other planet besides Brinze! I say he’s insane.”
“I see!” Eunora breathed. “That’s why I had the impression that he was so large in time and space!”
“Exactly. With a vast number of identical selves, he’s consequently telepathic between all of them. The Imperial policy of kicking mutants out to the rim has prevented much study being done on the subject, but it’s known that identity of receptor and transmitter is essential.”
Eunora blinked, but Spartak shot her some wordless qualifications that satisfied her. Not so Tharl.
“Then how does he communicate with us? We’re different!”
/> “Do you think he eats the sacrifices he’s given?” Spartak said with monumental disgust. “Never. He uses them as a biological amplifier till their brains are burned out, to provide a link between himself and his audience.”
Tharl felt for a chair and lowered himself into it without looking. “And you worked all this out since you arrived? Within the space of a day?”
“I—” Spartak checked. He stared at Eunora, who was giggling.
“You?” he said incredulously.
“Not really,” she countered. “It took your knowledge to solve the problem. But all day since we were in the temple I’ve been asking questions of your subconscious to find out why I felt as I did during the ceremony, and I guess that sort of—well, brought things to your attention.”
Spartak felt sweat prickle on his forehead. “What you’re going to be like when you grow up, I just don’t know! And if we’ve been deporting people like you to the rim ever since the foundation of the Empire, what can be going on out there?”
Still, that was irrelevant. He glared at Tharl. “Well, now you know what became of your wife and son; now you know the nature of the beast we’re up against. What are you going to do—order me to leave here and hide like a criminal, or help me further?”
“I don’t see what I can do!” Tharl said helplessly. “If your brothers have been captured, it’ll be known who they are, and—”
Spartak cut him short. “Are you in touch with any centers of resistance on Gard Island? I think you said the main temple, the original one on the planet, was there.”
“Yes-yes, that’s right, but … No, I know of no resistance movement there. It’s become Bucyon’s private preserve.”
“You know the city itself, perhaps?”
“Oh yes. When your brother Vix celebrated the completion of his campaign, he honored me by including me in a party to stand honor guard and general security duty at the Warden’s palace.”
“In that case, we should make for Gard,” Spartak said. “In any case we should make for Gard, is what I mean! I can think of nothing else to try except a direct attack on the original Belizuek that was brought to Asconel. A simple, breach in the air-tight container should be enough.”