Up on the platform Bleys looked down at them all.
"Pay attention to me, my friends," he said softly to the prisoners. "Look at me."
They looked, Hal with the rest of them. He saw Bleys' lean, aristocratic face and pleasant brown eyes. Then, as he looked at them, those eyes began to expand until they would entirely fill his field of vision.
Reflexively, out of his training under Walter the InTeacher, he took a step back within his own mind, putting what he saw at arm's length—and all at once it was as if he was aware of things on two levels. There was the level on which he stood with the other prisoners, held by Ahrens like animals transfixed by a bright light in darkness; and there was the level in which he was aware of the assault that was being made on his free will by what was hidden behind that bright light, and on which he struggled to resist it.
He thought of rock. In his mind he formed the image of a mountainside, cut and carved into an altar on which an eternal light burned. Rock and light… untouchable, eternal.
"I must apologize to you, my friends and brothers," Bleys was saying gently to all of them. "Mistakenly, you've been made to suffer; and that shouldn't be. But it was a natural mistake and small mistakes of your own have contributed to it. Examine your conscience. Is there one of you here who isn't aware of things you know you shouldn't have done…"
Like mist, the beginnings of rain blew upon the light and the altar. But the light continued to burn, and the rock was unchanged. Bleys' voice continued; and the rain thickened, blowing more fiercely upon the rock and the light. On the mountainside the day darkened, but the light burned on through the darkness, showing the rock still there, still unmarked and unmoved…
Bleys was softly showing all of them the way to a worthier and happier life, a way that trusted in what he was telling them. All that they needed to do was to acknowledge the errors of their past and let themselves be guided in the proper path for their future. His words made a warm and friendly shelter away from all storm, its door open and waiting for all of them. But, sadly, Hal must remain behind; alone, out on the mountainside in the icy and violent rain, clinging to the rock so that the wind could not blow him away; and with only the pure but heatless light burning in the darkness to comfort him.
Gradually, he became aware that the wind had ceased growing stronger, that the rain which had been falling ever heavier was now only steady, that the darkness could grow no darker—and that he, the rock and the light were still there, still together. A warmth of a new sort kindled itself inside him and grew until it shouted in triumph. He felt a strength within him that he had never felt before, and with that strength, he stepped back, merging once more the two levels, so that he looked out nakedly through his own eyes again at Bleys Ahrens.
Bleys had finished talking and was stepping down from the platform, headed out of the room. All the prisoners turned to watch him go as if he walked out of the room holding one string to which all of them were attached.
"If you'll come this way, brothers," said one of the guards.
They were led, by this single guard only, down more corridors and into a room with desks, where they were handed back their papers.
Chapter Fifteen
Apparently, they were free to go. They were ushered out of the building and Hal found himself walking down the street with Jason at his side. He looked at the other man and saw him smiling and animated.
"Howard!" Jason said. "Isn't this wonderful? We've got to find the others and tell them about this great man. They'll have to see him for themselves."
Hal looked closely into Jason's eyes.
"What is it, brother?" said Jason. "Is something wrong?"
"No," said Hal. "But maybe we should sit down somewhere and make some plans. Is there any place around here where we can talk, away from people?"
Jason looked around. They were in what appeared to Hal to be a semi-industrial section. It seemed about mid-morning, and the rain that had been falling when they had landed the day before was now holding off, although the sky was dark and promised more precipitation.
"This early…" Jason hesitated. "There's a small eating place with booths in its back room; and this time of day, the back room ought to be completely empty, anyway."
"Let's go," said Hal.
The eating place did indeed turn out to be small. It was hardly the sort of establishment that Hal would have found himself turning into if he had simply wanted a meal; but its front room held only about six customers at the square tables there and the back room, as Jason had predicted, was empty. They took a booth far back in a corner and ordered coffee.
"What plans did you have in mind to make, Howard?" asked Jason, when the coffee had been brought.
Hal tasted the contents of his cup and set the cup down again on the table between them. Coffee—or rather some imitation of it—was to be found on all the inhabited worlds. But its taste varied widely between any two worlds, and was often markedly different in two widely distant parts of the same world. Hal had spent three years getting used to Coby coffee. He would have to start all over again with Harmony coffee.
"Have you seen this?" he asked, in turn.
From a pocket he brought out a small gold nugget encased in a cube of glass. It was the first piece of pocket gold he had found in the Yow Dee Mine; and, following a Coby custom, he had bought it back from the mine owners and had it encased in transparent plastic, to carry about as a good-luck piece. His fellow team-members would have thought him strange if he had not. Now, for the first time, he had a use for it.
Jason bent over the cube.
"Is that real gold?" he asked, with the fascination of anyone not of either Coby or Earth.
"Yes," said Hal. "See the color…"
He reached out across the table and took the back of Jason's neck gently and precisely between the tips of his thumb and middle finger. The skin beneath his fingertips jumped at his touch, then relaxed as he put soft pressure on the nerve endings below it.
"Easy," he said, "just watch the piece of gold… Jason, I want you to rest for a bit. Just close your eyes and lean back against the back of the booth and sleep for a couple of minutes. Then you can open your eyes and listen. I've got something to tell you."
Obediently, Jason closed his eyes and leaned back, resting his head against the hard, dark-dyed wooden panel that was the back of the booth. Hal took his hand from the other's neck and Jason stayed as he was, breathing easily and deeply for about a hundred and fifty heartbeats. Then he opened his eyes, stared at Hal as if puzzled for a second, and then smiled.
"You were going to tell me something," he said.
"Yes," said Hal. "And you're going to listen to me all the way through and then not say anything until you've thought about what I've just told you. Aren't you?"
"Yes, Howard," said Jason.
"Good. Now listen closely," Hal paused. He had never done anything like this before; and there was a danger, in Jason's present unnaturally receptive state, that some words Hal used might have a larger effect than he had intended them to have. "Because I want you to understand something. Right now you think you're acting normally and doing exactly what you'd ordinarily want to do. But actually, that's not the case. The fact is, a very powerful person has made you an attractive choice on a level where it's very hard for you to refuse him, a choice to let your conscience go to sleep and leave all moral decisions up to someone else. Because you were approached on that particular level, you've no way of judging whether this was a wise decision to make, or not. Do you follow me so far? Nod your head if you do."
Jason nodded. He was concentrating just hard enough to bring a small frown line into being between his eyebrows. But otherwise his face was still relaxed and happy.
"Essentially what you've just been told," Hal said, "is that the man who spoke to you, or people designated by him, will decide not only what's right for you, but what you'll choose to do; and you've agreed that this would be a good thing. Because of that, you've now joined those
who've already made that agreement with him; those who were until an hour ago your enemies, in that they were trying to destroy the faith you've held to all your life…"
The slight frown was deepening between Jason's brows and the happiness on his face was being replaced by a strained expression. Hal talked on; and when at last he stopped, Jason was huddled on the other seat, turned as far away from Hal as the close confines of the booth would allow, with his face hidden in his hands.
Hal sat, feeling miserable himself, because the other man was, and tried to drink his coffee. The silence between them continued, until finally Jason heaved a long, shivering sigh and dropped his hands. He turned a face to Hal that looked as if it had not slept for two nights.
"Oh, God!" he said.
Hal looked back at him, but did not try to say anything.
"I'm unclean," said Jason. "Unclean!"
"Nonsense," said Hal. Jason's eyes jumped to his face; and Hal made himself grin at the other. "What's that I seem to remember hearing when I was young—and you must remember hearing—about the sin of pride? What makes you feel you're special in having knuckled under to the persuasion of someone like that?"
"I lacked faith!" said Jason. "I turned and loved that spawn of Belial who spoke to us."
"We all lack faith to some extent," Hal said. "There are probably some men and women so strong in their faith that he wouldn't have been able to touch them. I had a teacher once… but the point is, that everyone else in that room gave in to him, just as you did."
"You didn't!"
"I've had special training," said Hal. "That's what I was telling you just now, remember? What that man did, he succeeded in doing because he's also had special training. Believe me, someone without training would have had to have been a very remarkable person to resist him. But for someone with training, it was… relatively easy."
Jason drew another deep, ragged breath.
"Then I'm ashamed for another reason," he said bleakly.
"Why?" Hal stared at him.
"Because I thought you were a spy, planted on me by the dogs of the Belial-spawn, when they decided to hold me captive. When we heard Howard Immanuelson had died of a lung disease in a Holding Station on Coby, we all assumed his papers had been lost. The thought that someone else of the faith could find them and use them—and his doing it would be so secret that someone like myself wouldn't know—that was stretching coincidence beyond belief. And you were so quick to pick up the finger speech. So I was going to pretend I was taken in by you. I was going to bring you with me to some place where the other brothers and sisters of the Children of God's Just Wrath could question you; and find out why you were sent and what you knew about us."
He stared burningly at Hal.
"And then you, just now, brought me back from Hell—from where I could never have come back without you. There was no need for you to do that if you had been one of the enemy, one of the Accursed. How could I have doubted that you were of the faith?"
"Quite easily," said Hal. "As far as bringing you back from Hell, all I did was hurry up the process a little. The kind of persuasion that was used on you only takes permanently with people who basically agree with the persuader to begin with. With those who don't, his type of mind-changing gets eaten away gradually by the natural feelings of the individual until over time it wears thin and breaks down. Since you're someone opposed enough to fight him, the only way he could stop you permanently would be to kill you."
"Why didn't he then?" said Jason. "Why didn't he kill all of us?"
"Because it's to his advantage to pretend that he only opens people's eyes to the right way to live," said Hal, hearing an echo of Walter the InTeacher in the words even as he said them. He had not consciously stopped to think the matter out, but Jason's question had evoked the obvious answer. "Even his convinced followers feel safer if that particular man is always right, always merciful. What he did with us, there, wasn't because we were important, but because the two men with him on the platform were important—to him. There're really only a handful of what you call the Belial-spawn, compared to the trillions of people on the fourteen worlds. Those like him don't have the time, even if they felt like it, to control everyone personally. So, whenever possible they use the same sort of social mechanisms that've been used down the centuries when a few people wanted to command many."
Jason sat watching him for a long moment.
"Who are you, Howard?" he asked at last.
"I'm sorry." Hal hesitated. "I can't tell you that. But I should tell you you've no obligation to call me brother. I'm afraid I lied to you. I'm not of the faith as you call it. I've got nothing to do with whatever organization you and those with you belong to. But I really am running from those like the man we're talking about."
"Then you're a brother," said Jason, simply. He picked up his own cup of cold coffee and drank deeply from it. "We—those the Accursed call the Children—are of every sect and every possible interpretation of the Idea of God. Your difference from the rest of us isn't any greater than our differences from each other. But I'm glad you told me this; because I'll have to tell the others about you when we reach them."
"Can we reach them?" asked Hal.
"There's no problem in that," said Jason. "I'll make contact in town here with someone who'll know where the closest band of Warriors is, right now; and we'll join them. Out in the countryside, we of the faith still control. Oh, they chase us, but they can't do more than keep us on the move. It's only here, in the cities, that the Belial-spawn and their minions rule."
He slid to the end of the booth and stood up.
"Come along," he said.
Out in the coldly damp air of the street, they located a callbox and coded for an autocab. In succession, changing cabs each time, they visited a clothing store, a library and a gymnasium, without Jason recognizing anyone he trusted enough to ask for help. Their fourth try brought them to a small vehicle custom-repair garage in the northern outskirts of Citadel.
The garage itself was a dome-like temporary structure perched in an open field on the city's edge; out where residences gave way to small personal farm-plots rented by city dwellers on an annual basis. It occupied an open stretch of stony ground that was its own best demonstration of why it had not been put to personal farming the way the land around it had. Inside the barely-heated dome, the air of which was thick with the faintly banana-like smell of a local tree oil used for lubrication, hanging like an invisible mist over the half-dismantled engines of several surface vehicles, they found a single occupant—a square, short, leathery man in his sixties, engaged in reassembling the rear support fan of an all-terrain fourplace cruiser.
"Hilary!" said Jason, as they reached him.
"Jase—" said the worker, barely glancing up at them. "When did you get back?"
"Yesterday," said Jason. "The Accursed put us up overnight in their special hotel. This is Howard Immanuelson. Not of the faith, but one of our allies. From Coby."
"Coby?" Hilary glanced up once more at Hal. "What did you do on Coby?"
"I was a miner," said Hal.
Hilary reached for a cleansing rag, wiped his hands, turned about and offered one of them to Hal.
"Long?" he asked.
"Three years."
Hilary nodded.
"I like people who know how to work," he said. "You two on the run?"
"No," said Jason. "They turned us loose. But we need to get out into the country. Who's close right now?"
Hilary looked down at his hands and wiped them once more on his rag, then threw it into a wastebin.
"Rukh Tamani," he said. "She and her people're passing through, on their way to something. You know Rukh?"
"I know of her," said Jason. "She's a sword of the Lord."
"You might connect up with them. Want me to give you a map?"
"Please," said Jason. "And if you can supply us—"
"Clothes and gear, that's all," said Hilary. "Weapons are getting too risky."
/> "Can you take us close to her, at all?"
"Oh, I can get you fairly well in." Hilary looked at Hal. "Jase's no problem. But anything I'll be able to give you in the way of clothes is going to fit pretty tight."
"Let's try what you've got," said Jason.
Hilary led them to a partitioned-off corner of his dome. The door they went through let them into a storeroom piled to the ceiling with a jumble of containers and goods of all kinds. Hilary threaded his way among the stacks to a pile of what seemed to be mainly clothing and camping gear, and started pulling out items.
Twenty minutes later, he had them both outfitted with heavy bush clothing including both shoulder and belt packs and camping equipment. As Hilary had predicted, Hal's shirt, jacket and undershirt were tight in the shoulders and short in the sleeves. Otherwise, everything that he had given Hal fitted well enough. The one particular blessing turned out to be the fact that there were bush boots available of the proper length for Hal's feet. They were a little too wide, but extra socks and insoles took care of that.
"Now," Hilary said when the outfitting was complete. "When did you eat last?"
Hunger returned to Hal's consciousness like a body blow. Unconsciously, once it had become obvious in the cell that there was no hope of food soon, he had blocked out his need for it—strongly enough that he had even sat in the coffee place with Jason and not thought of food, when he could have had it for the ordering. As it was, Jason answered before he did.
"We didn't. Not since we got off the ship."
"Then I better feed you, hadn't I?" grunted Hilary. He led them out of the storeroom and into another corner of the dome that had a cot, sink, foodkeeper and cooking equipment.
He fed them an enormous meal, mainly of fried vegetables, local mutton and bread, washed down with quantities of a flat, semi-sweet beer, far removed in flavor from the native Earth product. The heavy intake of food operated on Hal like a sedative; and he reacted, once they had all piled into a battered six-place bush van, by stretching out and falling asleep.