“Well it did, you know,” said Africa in a kindly voice. “It’s just that it didn’t need to change us much. Most of us were already fairly peaceable people, fairly kind, decent to our families and friends. Mostly what it changed was our response to surprise and fear, I think. In my experience, and from what I’ve read in learning management, most of human nastiness comes out of shock or fear.”
“I was afraid,” said Saturday. “In Voorstod. I was out of my head with fear sometimes.”
“We were separated from Birribat,” Jep mused. “And there was something real to be afraid of.”
“The Gods don’t interfere with real fear,” nodded Africa. “Not when there’s a reason. You get a malfunctioning harvester after you, the Gods won’t stop your running.”
“Interesting,” said Theor Close, the Phansuri engineer. “A panic suppressant that can distinguish between real and imagined fears?” He felt the whole matter could be explained in terms of chemistry, if the proper Phansuri researchers could only come to Hobbs Land and investigate.
Zilia shook her head. “You’re saying the prophets were afraid?”
Saturday nodded. “Were. Are. Of everything.”
Sam said, “I’ve been reading …” His voice trailed away.
No one said anything, waiting.
“I’ve been reading about Manhome. About the retributive religions, the surviving ones. They all came from a pastoral background. In primitive times, everything out there in the dark was a predator. One had to guard against everything that threatened the flock, had to kill it if possible. At night, the flock had to be sequestered, put in the fold and guarded. The shepherd had to stand guard, sleepless, night after night. Many of these societies had a taboo against dogs, so they had no guard dogs. They had to be their own dogs, always alert. The shepherd had to be afraid of everything …”
Africa said, “I imagine wives and children were thought of much as he thought of his vlishes or dermots …”
“Sheep,” said Sam. “Back at that time it was sheep.”
“Sheep, then. The sheep were property, the wives were property, the children were property, and they had to be guarded. Because they were a pastoral people, they didn’t have secure caves or houses. They had fragile tents. They didn’t have secure lands; they migrated, on foot. They were probably afraid all the time, of everything. They would have been very alert, I suppose. Very nervous.”
“Over time, I suppose,” said Jep, “only the people survived who were very alert and perpetually frightened, and thus very irritable and quick to attack. Perhaps it became a racial characteristic.”
“Reinforced by the religion,” Sam went on, staring into his plate. “It explains why violence and war went on under the name of religion for so long. Fear and hatred were simply racial characteristics of the people who had that religion—those religions. It’s a logical explanation, though I have no idea whether it’s true or not.”
Zilia said, “The prophets couldn’t … couldn’t change, was that it?”
Jep said, “It has to be genetic. I think the God could pacify any merely environmental influence. Either Sam’s right, and these people were the descendents of a race which selected for fear and apprehension, or maybe every now and then there are people born in the human race who are hardwired for hatred. They can induce some others to go along, followers, people who’ve had bad rearing or traumatic childhoods …”
“Like me,” said Zilia, without rancor, suddenly seeing the point.
“Well, yes. Like you used to be. As I say, these followers may go along as long as the leader is influencing them, but they can change. The selected ones or the mutants can’t. Something inside them won’t let them trust anything or anyone. They have to fear. They have to attack.”
Emun Theckles, who had been listening to this with close attention, made a sudden, revulsive motion.
“What’s the trouble?” his brother asked.
“I was thinking of Enforcement,” Emun said. “The soldiers of Enforcement are programmed that way. They trust no one, believe no one. They, too, are hardwired to hate.”
Theor Close raised his eyebrows at Betrun Jun. China leaned toward the Phansuris and whispered, “Emun worked on Enforcement for forty years. He was a maintenance engineer for the army.”
“If they trust no one,” asked Dern, “how can you deal with them?”
“They’re programmed to ask questions,” said Emun. “When they ask questions, you’d better have the answers they’ve been programmed to accept, that’s all.”
“True,” murmured Theor Close. “You read a catechism of attitudes and opinions into the Enforcement soldiers, then they will seek that set of attitudes and opinions. Any living thing not manifesting that set, dies.”
“Enforcement would kill a poultry-bird because it didn’t recite the proper formulae?” Sam barked in unamused laughter.
“Unless it was programmed to ignore poultry-birds,” Betrun Jun agreed. “Mostly, the Enforcement machines are programmed to ignore all living creatures except those fitting a certain pattern. Manlike, for example. Or like some alien people.”
“Let’s quit talking about it,” said Zilia. “It’s over. The Voorstoders were the only tribal religionists in the System. The Gharmgods are now all over Ahabar. Phansure never did have that kind of religion. And the prophets are safely away from us all, on Ninfadel.”
“They have a Door,” said Sam in a bleak, uninterested voice.
Everyone looked at him, wondering if he had gone mad.
“What do you mean,” asked China at last.
“They had a Door, the one they came through into Voorstod. It was in the courtyard of the citadel. When I went up there and we buried Maire … Maire’s body, I saw that it was gone. I didn’t remember it until just now. They must have taken it with them.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?” asked Dern Blass, unbelieving.
“I didn’t remember it until just now.”
Again Emun made the revulsive gesture. “Bad,” he said. “People like that shouldn’t have Doors of their own.”
Spiggy said, “So they could … go through it from Ninfadel and come out … where?”
“I don’t know where,” said Emun. “Maybe anywhere.”
Theor Close raised his eyebrows into his hair. “What did this Door look like?”
Sam described it. Jep and Saturday added a few words.
“You have reason to be concerned,” the engineer said, casting his colleague a doubtful and worried look. “Doors of that type have not been made for civilian use for millennia. They operate one way only. They need no other end in order to function. They may be set, approximately, for any destination.”
“Where would the prophets go?” asked Africa Wilm. “To Thyker, perhaps. To the Baidee.”
“The Baidee are free thinkers,” remarked Dern. “They would not put up with the prophets’ claim to know the only holy truth. It’s unlikely the prophets would go to Thyker, but we don’t know where else they might go. Perhaps just Out, away. Let us hope so. Whatever they intend to do, we must tell the people on Ahabar, immediately.”
• Howdabeen Churry counted on youthful zealotry and a few ancient weapons to carry out his plans regarding Hobbs Land. A year before, one of his minions had been digging into old military records and had found mention of certain devices that had been ordered from Phansuri armorers and stored in the desert at the time of the Great Invasion. The minion had found no record indicating they had been disturbed since. When The Arm of the Prophetess had made a foray into the desert and uncovered one of the repositories, it had found the armament as described, much of it still in its original shipping cases.
Among other interesting devices was a thing called a Paired Combat Door, one of which was always keyed to the other, while the other could be keyed onto any existing Door within System range. The two interconnected Doors could be assembled quickly and taken apart as quickly. They would allow an invasion force to set up one Door at the
ir home base, invade through an existing planetary Door, blow up that Door, and set about hostilities while carrying an escape route with them.
Even when quite new, the Combat Door had come without a guarantee. Nothing that complex, designed to be set up that quickly, could be guaranteed—so the disclaimer attached to the device stated, estimating a fifteen percent chance of failure during any sustained period of use. Churry chose not to mention this to his troops. He merely punched up the manuals for assembly and disassembly, uttered a perfunctory prayer to the Overmind, in whose service he was engaged, and suggested daily drills until proficiency was attained.
In a remote desert region of Thyker, both Doors were tested by being assembled and interlocked, and successfully transmitting men and materiel from point A to point B and back again. Everyone arrived intact at both places. Howdabeen Churry permitted himself a small sigh of relief. Losses at such an early stage of the exercise would have been difficult to explain away.
When the troops disbanded, with instructions to arrive early in the morning for the actual invasion, Churry sat with Mordy Trust over glasses of oasis wine and the charts of Hobbs Land which Shan Damzel had given to Churry in Chowdari.
“We go into the Central Management area,” said Mordy Trust, reviewing the plan for one last time. “We blow the Doors behind us as we come in, to prevent Hobbs Land from sending any messages out. The flier park is nearby. We take twelve fliers from the park. One team goes to each settlement and destroys any God they find there, the twelfth team stays in CM and destroys the God there, if they’ve got one, then everybody goes to this point here,” and she pointed out a place north of CM, halfway between Settlements Ten and Five, which had been computed to be the minimum aggregate distance from all settlements. “There the twelfth team will have set up the return Door. Everybody returns through that Door except the pilots, who take the fliers out on the plain about here,” she pointed, “leave them there, and return to the Combat Door together in one flier. We de-bond that one flier with the de-bond rifle we found in the old armory, then we return to Thyker through the Door, which we have concealed as well as we can. We will have destroyed only the Gods plus one flier, and we will have left nothing behind us except one Door, which they probably won’t find and which they can’t use for anything if they do find, because it’s permanently keyed to the one here.”
Churry nodded his agreement. “After returning here,” Churry concluded, “we disassemble this Door, leaving Hobbs Land without communication for the near future but otherwise essentially unharmed. Our Door, the one we leave there will be well hidden, and later we can sneak back and see what’s happening.”
Mordy nodded. “They’ll be effectively cut off. It’ll take a long time before anyone finds out what happened. By the time it is generally known what did happen, we will have put phase two into action, our propaganda campaign concerning the danger posed by the Hobbs Land Gods. By the time people realize we have killed something that could have taken them over, they will be very glad we did and ready to assist us in doing the same on Ahabar.”
Every member of the Arm was sure of this. Churry himself was sure of it. Churry had computed the time it would take to get another Door built on Phansure and shipped to Hobbs Land. He felt the farm world would be effectively cut off for at least half a lifeyear, plenty of time to confirm the danger posed by the Gods. Everyone would be glad, when they finally found out.
“We can go there anytime we want to,” he mentioned to Mordy Trust. “To collect evidence.”
“Provided they don’t find our Door.” She considered this the weak point in the plan.
“It’s in a broken area where no one ever goes, according to Shan Damzel. They’re unlikely to find it.”
“When we do the raid, they’ll see us flying toward it, or away from it.”
“That’s why we’re using their own fliers. They won’t know who’s inside them. They’re used to seeing their own fliers going back and forth. No one will pay any attention.”
“And then?” she had asked.
“Well, Mordy, we see what happens. The purpose of leaving a Door hidden there is so we can see what’s happening. If these people have been swallowed up and changed, that offers a threat to the rest of us. Shan Damzel is sure they have been and it does, and so am I.” Churry had said this often during training. Though he did not realize it, he had portrayed the Hobbs Landians as monsters, possessed by terrible things. He hadn’t meant that, but it is what his followers had heard, more or less.
“It won’t be necessary to kill anybody,” Mordy said flatly, reaffirming what she’d been told.
“Of course not, Mordy. They’re farmers on Hobbs Land. They won’t put up any fight. They see a fully armed Baidee coming through a Door, they’ll turn tail and run.”
He had often said this also during training. He had visualized the scene frequently, himself at the head of an intrepid band making the strike, finding out what needed to be known with no nonsense about it. There had been many such raids, many such decisive actions in the history of the Baidee. Since he did not know what was in his followers’ minds, he did not see the fundamental dichotomy in his vision. Farmers would run, but farmers would be harmless. Monsters wouldn’t be harmless, and monsters probably wouldn’t run.
Churry had visions of medals and glory, after the fact. System would approve and admire, after the fact. So he assured himself, right up to the moment his hundred and twenty fully armed and equipped Baidee troops stamped their booted feet upon the sands of Thyker, readying themselves to go through the Combat Door into Hobbs Land.
• • •
• Tandle Wobster was the first to see the Baidee invaders. She was also the first to die. She happened to be in the vicinity of the Doors, on her way back from the flier park, when the first Baidee came through. Seeing the weapons, she panicked and ran for the Security building. The young trooper shot her in the back to keep her, he said later, from setting off the alarm. Actually, he didn’t think of anything when he shot her except that this was one of the possessed, possibly a monster. He’d been taught to shoot at anything moving, and he did.
Hearing the weapon, the security people, all three of them on duty, came out to see what had happened, and the same trooper, seeing weapons in their hands, fired again. More monsters, he told himself, without realizing it. One of the security people got off a lucky shot with a stunner and paralyzed the trooper’s right arm. All three of the security people were dead before they hit the ground.
Churry came through in the next bunch, took one look at the bodies, made a thin-lipped grimace, sent the offending trooper back through the Door, and ran for the flier park. Others at CM, alerted by the firing, had peeked out, had seen what was happening, and the more foolhardy among them had found weapons of sorts—power tools or something they could use as clubs—and tried to defend CM. Two troopers dropped, shot through the heads by fasteners fired from the guns used to put sponge panels together. One of the Hobbs Land tool wielders was killed, the other escaped.
Meantime, a clerk in the personnel department got to the main network stage outside Dern’s office and sprayed a warning to all the settlements that CM was being invaded. The clerk did not know enough to key the audible warning, which meant that the warning light blinked unobserved in most of the settlement administrative offices. It was lunchtime, and no one was there. In Settlements One and Ten, however, people were present, the audible alarms were set off, and both defensive and offensive tactics were hastily planned.
The invading force was unopposed as it took twelve fliers, disabling but not destroying all others in the park. Eleven of them set off for the settlements. The twelfth, which contained the linking Door and was commanded by Mordy Trust, lifted only briefly, then set down again outside the temple of Horgy Endure. The God Horgy was dragged out of the temple by grunting Baidee. Churry had decided not to destroy the temples. He didn’t want to appear wantonly destructive, and the temples themselves weren’t implicated in th
e possible swallowing Shan was afraid of. Once outside, the God was laid on an incinerant pad, another was thrown over the top, and the assemblage was ignited.
Five people came running out of the management area, brandishing one thing or another and screaming at the Baidee to leave the God alone. Mordy Trust started to tell the troopers to ignore them and get into the flier, but she was too late. None of the intensive drills in which the Baidee had engaged had focused on withholding reaction or minimizing damage. Every drill had had as its purpose shortening reaction time to any observable threat. The troopers saw threat and reacted with deadly force. The five Hobbs Landers went down in a flurry of broken bone and spattered blood before Mordy could get her mouth open. Several of the missiles used, which were lethal at great distances, went on down into the management area and killed other persons who were merely standing there, watching. One of the missiles hit a fuel store in a repair building and set it on fire. The fumes of the fuel were lethal. One hundred CM staff members died from inhalation of poison before the confused, grieved fire-squad got the flames out.
Mordy didn’t stay to see the God burn. She had decided that things were already out of hand. Praying that the damage in Central Management had been the only damage done, she got her troopers into the flier and set off for the meeting point. Her group had yet to find an appropriate hiding place and set up the linking Door.
Meantime, in settlement after settlement, the Baidee troops encountered what they interpreted as resistance or threat by monsters, with the same unthinking responses they had shown at CM. Some settlers moved to defend their temples and were killed. A few troopers were killed by hidden defenders. Despite the carnage, each of the Gods was pulled from its temple and burned. In one settlement, the God was defended by children, though the troopers did not realize until they had killed them that they were children, some of them not more than eleven lifeyears old. The God in that settlement had been less solid than in the others, more crumbly. When they threw it down upon the mat, it broke into fragments, dirtying their uniforms with the fine, black dust.