“And so it may be,” the other repeated, patting the air with his hands as though to calm the other down.
Mugal Pye thumped the table in time with his words, “The eschatos, when we stride among the worlds, with the sword in one hand and the whip in the other. When we bring the worlds to their knees. When the unbelievers cry woe and the heathen gnash their teeth, for lo, Almighty God comes as a pillar of storm.” His eyes were wide and staring. In the dark narrow room the light seemed to flicker and pale, as though some fatal and hideous presence had reached into it, shadowing the light even as it stroked their hearts into flame. Mugal’s voice became a chant, “Eschatos: when rivers run with blood, when the bodies of apostates are piled into mountains, when the space between worlds stinks of death!”
“And so it may yet be,” agreed the old man, caught up in Mugal’s drunken reverie. He nodded in time, as he joined the chant, the two voices rising in unison: “They do not know their death awaits them all. They do not know it comes from us. Yet it comes.”
Flandry gulped in air, making a tiny orgasmic sound, a grunt of pure pleasure, as though something had touched him intimately. When he had been a boy, the telling of apocalypse had been accompanied by such touching so that he might always associate the words with pleasure. His chin was wet, and he dabbed at it impatiently.
In the hallway, just outside their vision, the Gharm slave who had been cleaning the stairs heard the crooning and huddled against the wall. At times like these it was not wise to draw attention to oneself. He put his head down and thought, silently, of a snake.
The Gharm often thought of Voorstod so. Like the snake, Voorstod could lie in full sight and look like something else. Like the snake, it could secrete a poison for which there was no antidote. Like the snake, it did not care what it bit, and it could kill before the victim quite realized it had been touched.
The room where the men sat throbbed like a heart clenched tight in a fist. Gradually, the chant faded. The men’s eyes lost their ecstatic opacity and saw the world once more.
“So, if apocalypse dawns tomorrow as we’ve been told it will, what need have we of sons?” Mugal Pye demanded harshly.
“There’s been a delay,” gasped the older man, gulping air through his engorged throat.
“What delay?”
“Somethin’ happened on Enforcement. Somethin’ that wasn’t planned for. Our agents there failed in their duty, so it’s said. The Prophet was white with fury, but when he got control of himself a little, he said he felt we must plan for another generation, just in case. If the end comes soon, there’s plenty of us to do the job, but if we must go on longer than that. …” Preu Flandry’s voice trailed away to angry silence.
Mugal whined, “But the end was to come soon! Practically tomorrow, that’s the word I had. We stood upon the doorstep of the end! I’ve been savoring it, Flandry. Since I was a mere boy.”
“Well, and so have I, but there’s this postponement for some reason or other. What’s certain is, if we must go on longer, we’ll need another generation to do it.”
“Well, then, what’s this nonsense about Sam Girat’s wife? We’ve Armageddon to bring upon the System, and here we are, talking of one silly woman!”
The old man sighed windily, wiping his chin again. “I’ve only told you half. Because there’s so few women left in Voorstod, the hot-bloods have been followin’ their lechery out into Ahabar, out among the Abolitionists in Jeramish, where they’ve been takin’ women by force. And if that goes on, it won’t be long before Ahabar mobilizes the army.”
Mugal Pye shrugged and sneered. “So? That means less than nothing. Authority won’t let ‘em act.”
“Oh, we’ve paid the Theology Panel enough to assure they never give an answer on the slavery question, but rapin’ and abductin’ is another question entirely!”
“They won’t consider that a religious matter, eh?”
Preu scowled at this levity. “Not likely, no. And the army of Ahabar is nothin’ to make light of. Though the Queen hasn’t struck at us over the Gharm, the prophets think it likely she will strike at us over a few hundred rapes in Jeramish, and the one thing the prophets do not want, not so close to the end, is an army of occupation!”
Mugal went to the cupboard and found himself a bottle and brought it back to the table, together with two glasses. He poured and drank deeply, considering this.
“You’ve told me nothing yet to say why we’d want Maire Manone brought back! She’s an old woman by now! Past childbearing. And it’s not likely you want her to preach abstinence to the hot-bloods.”
The white-haired man snorted. “Mugal Pye, I gave you credit for more imagination than that! We need her for propaganda! We must do somethin’ to keep the women here and bring others back, some voice to rally them. And what woman was listened to in all Voorstod more than Maire Manone?”
“Propaganda, you say? No more than that?”
“A symbol, so say the prophets. What I say ten times is true, as we well know, but the thing has to be believable! The prophets have told us a symbol is needed. Someone whose voice will be heard, a woman to make the business seem real. Who better than she who was called the Voice of Voorstod? The Sweet Singer of Scaery?”
“Only propaganda!”
“Ostensible, at least, though it’s likely there’ll be recruitin’ done as well. If we’re accused, we can say, ‘A girl kidnapped? Nonsense. The maiden saw Maire Ma-none singing and she came of her own free will.’ ”
Mugal Pye shook his head, considering how far from apocalypse it seemed, this fiddling about with abduction. How small a thing. How insignificant and unworthy. He pursed his mouth, as though to spit, then thought better of it. The true Faithful did unquestioningly as the prophets commanded, and if this had been commanded. …
“That’s why we wanted to see how Phaed might stand on the matter,” said Preu. “He’s her husband still, after all.”
“But you’re not telling him about this.”
“Not yet. Not until we’re closer.”
“And how do you intend to bring her back?”
“We’ll give her good reason to come.”
“You’re not thinkin’ Phaed will go get her, are you?”
“We’ve not quite settled on that yet, Mugal Pye. She must seem to come of her own free will, and we must think up a way to be sure she’ll do that.”
“I’d be careful how you talk to Phaed about this business. She’s his wife, after all. He may still have feelings there.”
“Well surely,” murmured Preu Flandry. “Which is why we had you soundin’ him out, Pye, to see where he’d stand. When it comes to sacrifices, all of us have to make them, all of us.”
“Oh, yes, all of us,” agreed Mugal Pye. “For we will have our reward. For there is nothing to stand against us. Nothing in all the worlds to oppose us.” And he smiled again, his tongue-bitten angry smile, while the skull smiled from its niche in the wall and the Gharm slave crept away from the hallway, wondering if there was anyplace the Gharm might go to escape the holocaust which Voorstod would certainly bring very soon upon all the worlds, wondering if there was anyone, anywhere, who could stop the horror that was surely coming.
• Beside the ruined temple north of Settlement One, shallow in the soil lay Birribat Shum. Shallow he lay, with fragments of roots and crumbs of leaves on his eyes, with particles of sand between his toes, with the small creatures of the soil at work upon his hands where skin gave up its chemistry cell by cell. In the soil lay Birribat Shum, shallow in the soil, with the sunwarm earth over him and the shaded depths below, moisture rising beside him and in him, gasses bubbling up into the porous dirt, a daily percolation as sun rose and hung above at noon and set. In the soil lay Birribat Shum when night came and the earth cooled and all things sank down, as though snuggling more deeply into the bed of earth, only to rise and percolate once more with the dawn. In the soil lay Birribat Shum, and the soil ate him.
In his clothes the small invad
ers made a home, legged and legless, the ones too small to see, the ones too small to hear, the invisible ones, the unheard ones, creeping along the seams, settling in the wrinkle of a rotting shirt to multiply their legions, to nibble on the soaked fiber, to carry bits and pieces out into the surrounding earth, the troops of dissolution, the army of decay, gathering in ever greater numbers.
The soil above—unmounded over the grave, as though no one had cared to make it visible—sank gradually as Birribat Shum was disassembled, leaving a basin, a shallow declivity where water accumulated and filtered slowly downward when the sun returned and the earth warmed, a declivity where Samasnier Girat sometimes lay, late at night, talking to his friend, unaware of who or what lay beneath him.
On the skin of Birribat Shum, in the tatters of his clothes, on the edges of his shoes, in the sodden felt of his hair, in the cavities of his eyes lay dust from the temple of Bondru Dharm, dust which came suddenly at the moment the God disappeared, dark and fine as pigment ground in a mortar, feathery light. A breath could have dissipated it, but there was no breath here below the soil, where Birribat lay.
The dust brooded wetly in the manifold womb of the earth, brooded and soaked and changed. Individual particles swelled and replicated themselves, and again, and yet again. From a single grain, a filament came, thinner than hair, white as the light of stars; palely gleaming, it snouted its way between infinitesimal grains of sand, among microscopic remnants of flesh, stretching outward through the rags of clothing into the earth beyond. First one, then two, then fifty, then five thousand, then an uncountable number, until the body that was Birribat Shum was thickly furred with fragile fibers, wrapped with them, penetrated by them, eaten and used up until nothing remained but the hard bones around which the threads gathered more thickly still, weaving themselves into a solid, cottony mass, a tough cylindrical mattress of compacted fiber, its edges thinning and fading undetectably into the surrounding soil. There the fibers continued to grow outward in a gauzy circle, now diving under the nearest ruined temple, now encircling it, now moving on toward the settlement, toward its houses and shops, its equipment stores, its fields and meadows, where people were.
Where the felted mattress of fiber lay, something was slowly created. A cell grew there, a seed, a scion, a nucleus, something quite tiny, something that grew a little with each warming, day by day.
Beneath the soil lay Birribat Shum: what was left of him; what he had become.
TWO
• After receiving their orientation from Horgy Endure, Theor Close and Betrun Jun took themselves to the vehicle park, checked out a flier, and—during the brief but boring flight to Settlement One—told one another their original impression of Hobbs Land had been wholly substantiated. The world was uniformly dull. The two engineers came from volcano-lit Phansure, ocean-girt Phansure, cosmopolitan Phansure, with its ten thousand cities and clustered billions of mostly very clever persons. All Phansuris knew their world was the most beautiful and only civilized world in System, perhaps in Galaxy, and Betrun and Theor were unreservedly Phansuri.
They were not chauvinists, however. They told themselves that Hobbs Land was probably quite nice, just underendowed to start with and pitifully underdeveloped. Each assured the other they should be kind to Sam Girat, poor fellow, having to live in such a place.
Sam, meantime, gave himself similar assurances. Since Mysore Hobbs II was always sending batches of Phansuri engineers and designers to the Belt worlds to improve this or that, playing host was something Sam did fairly frequently. Before welcoming such visitors, Sam always reminded himself of what his upper-school teacher had said about Phansure, sneering just a little. Too many people, she had said. Like a swarm, she had said. Hardly any forests, almost no animals, and everyone living in each others’ armpits. When the various Phansuri visitors introduced themselves to Sam with their flourishes and politenesses, as Phansuri were wont to do, Sam was always very kind.
With both sides trying so hard, their mutual greetings were protracted and exceedingly warm, and only when the rituals were over did Theor Close and Betrun Jun refer to the problems Sam had listed in anticipation of their visit. After a brief discussion, the three of them went down to the heavy equipment barn, where they looked first at a blackened launcher.
“We didn’t design this,” said Theor Close with distaste.
“I know,” said Sam patiently. “If you’d designed it, we wouldn’t have the problem.” Phansuris were all geniuses. Everyone knew that. They didn’t need to rub it in.
Theor preened. “What’s the problem?”
“A settler got burned, on the face and neck. He was too close to the thing, and the back blast off that fire shield got him.”
“What do you use if for?” asked Betrun Jun.
“Certain trace elements in the soil get used up and we need to restore them. The quantities are so minuscule, it’s not economical to try to mix them evenly into the bulk fertilizers, so we wait for the wind to be right, then we go way, way upwind of the settlement, and use this launcher to kick an explosive cannister up about two miles. The mix is very fine, the dust gets wind-spread over hundreds of square miles and it drifts down for days. It’s primitive and untidy, but it’s effective and efficient.”
“The launcher needs a blast control chamber,” said Betrun Jun. “A torus-shaped ring at the base.” He sketched rapidly, holding out the result. “With baffles.”
Sam snorted. “It’s funny-looking. Like a doughnut with a pipe through it.”
“Well, whatever it looks like, the blast will buffet around in the ring shaped chamber without getting loose to burn anybody. This one is easy, and we’ll see to it at once. How many do you need?”
“Eleven, one for each settlement, plus a few spares.”
Jun added the eleven settlements to his list of Hobbs Land facilities, which already included the mines, the fertilizer plant, and Central Management.
“What’s next.”
Sam ticked off the second item. “There’s something faulty in the fuel feed on that 1701 cultivator over there. We had a driver sick from gozon fumes.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Just the driver. He was kind of woozy and angry, that’s all.”
“You’re lucky,” said Theor Close. “We had an operator on Pedaria get a good whiff of gozon and kill three people before they finally stopped him.”
“Funny the chemists can’t come up with something safer,” said Sam.
“They have. It just isn’t as efficient. With the proper safeguards, gozon is all right.” Theor Close took a protective mask from his tool kit, put it on, then opened the pod hatch on the 1701 and drew out the pod. “Where shall I put this?”
Sam looked around and indicated a bare work bench standing to one side.
Theor laid the pod upon it, then returned to the pod hatch. “If you’ve got fumes, likely the problem is in the seal-valve unit. That was the problem on Pedaria. We’re redesigning the whole assembly, and you’ll have these replaced very soon.”
“And until then?”
“Until then, we’ll fix this one.” Theor inserted himself into the hatch and mumbled to himself. Then he came out, with an audible pop, and said to Betrun Jun, “Will you look at it? There’s got to be a flaw in the sphincter-gasket, but I can’t find it.”
A settler drove into the barn on a small multipurpose tractor towing a spray unit behind it.
Betrun inserted himself into the hatch. After a time, he said, “You can’t find one because there isn’t one.” His voice reverberated in the closed space, before he popped out, like a ferf out of a hole. “Are you sure this is the unit, Sam?”
“This is the one,” said Sam, firmly, checking the number painted on the hatch against the one on his list.
The man at the door began to back the tractor.
Jun took another look and popped out again. “The flaw has to be in the fuel pod itself. Where did you put it?”
Sam turned, seeing the pod and the ben
ch and the tractor all in one terrible vision, the sprayer hitting the table, the table falling, the faulty pod going over with it, and the cloud of violet mist that erupted from it, catching the tractor driver in its midst.
“God,” whispered Theor Close, jerking open his tool kit and finding another mask. He shoved it at Sam, who took it almost without thinking. Sam’s eyes were fixed on the driver, who had gone completely blank-faced, like a manikin. Then, slowly, the blankness was replaced, first with craftiness, then with rage. The driver looked around and saw the three of them. He began, slowly, to get down from the tractor.
“He’ll kill us if he gets a chance,” said Betrun Jun, almost calmly. “Us or anything else he can find.”
The man picked up a steel brace bar from the floor and came toward them. He was a very large man, Theor thought. A very large man, moving with the inexorability of a robot.
“Hever,” said Sam. “Give me the bar.”
“He won’t hear you,” whispered Close. “He can’t. He’s all shut in on himself.”
“Hever,” said Sam again. “Give me the bar. Give it to me.” He moved away from the others, drawing the driver’s eyes after him, his feet dancing slowly to one side, so the driver would not lose sight of him.
“Is there an antidote,” asked Sam, almost conversationally.
“No,” said Close. “Not here.”
“Do you have something that will put him out?” asked Sam.
“No,” said Close. “Not with me.”
“What the hell good are you?” asked Sam, still dancing. “There’s an emergency medical kit on the wall over there. That red thing. You’ll find a full kit of painkillers, in slap ampules. You think you could get your hands on those?”
“You have a weapon on your belt,” Jun pointed out. “You’ve got a plate cutter.”
“You have some particular reason for wanting Hever dead?” Sam asked, his voice conveying slight astonishment. “Or maimed? He will come out of this, won’t he?”
“Eventually,” said Close, from a dry throat as he watched Jun backing toward the medical kit. “I’m just not sure painkillers will put him out. Those fumes he breathed make the victims three or four times as strong and quick as usual.”