As they went on, their progress slowed, almost as if the man controlling the vehicle had lost his way. Now, they began to see more pedestrians, all in a hurry, nearly all going in the same general direction the ambulance was following. At last, Hal's dead-seeming body was beginning to respond, although it still felt as though it weighed several times its normal amount. He faced the fact that, far from being in danger of recovering too soon, he had underestimated his exhaustion and the effort it would need to lift himself from the attractive state of near-unconsciousness. Elementally, his body was desperate for the rest it felt it needed to survive; and it was resisting being forced back to a higher level of energy-expenditure.
In his concern to get himself back to a state in which, if necessary, he could stand and walk, Hal all but forgot the vehicle around him and the streets through which it was passing. He was barely aware that they were proceeding more and more cautiously; and that more and more often the ambulance halted briefly. Slowly, his stubborn body was returning to life; and at last he was beginning to have confidence that he could raise and move it for a short distance, at least. He lay under the blankets, clenching and unclenching his hands, flexing his arms and legs, shrugging his shoulders and making every movement that was possible without unduly risking the danger of attracting the attention of the two men up front.
He was all but completely occupied with these exercises when the ambulance slowed suddenly enough to slide him forward on his stretcher, then abruptly revved up its blowers for a second before throttling all the way back to idle. The vehicle halted.
Hal stopped exercising and looked out through the window glass beside him.
The ambulance was surrounded by people, a still-gathering crowd not yet so tightly packed that those in it could not move without other bodies moving out of their way. Clearly, it had just become impossible for the vehicle to continue forward; and glancing back the way they had come, Hal saw more people filling in behind them. It was already impossible to turn around and go back.
They were in a large square that was rapidly becoming jammed with people, having apparently just emerged from one of the streets feeding the square. The faces of those around the truck, glancing in at the pair of Militiamen, were not friendly. Hal could now smell more strongly the stink of emotion from the two. He pulled his head back to look forward as far as was possible. Less than thirty meters in front of them, with a solid stand of human bodies in the way, was the entrance to another street that would have led them beyond the square. Clearly, the driver had gambled that he could get across to it before the crowd barred his path completely—and the driver had lost.
The ambulance was trapped like a mastodon in a tarpit. It would remain that way, unless the driver chose to simply bulldoze a way through the people in their path; and that sort of action would clearly be a suicidal thing to try, judging from the scowling faces glancing at the Militia uniforms. With an explosive inhalation somewhere between a sigh and a grunt, the driver cut the blowers entirely and let the vehicle settle to the pavement. The Militiaman beside him was muttering into the vehicle's phone unit.
"Stay put!" crackled an answering voice from the interior speaker unit of the vehicle. "Don't do anything. Don't attract any attention. Just sit it out and act like you're enjoying it."
Silence fell inside the cab. The two Militiamen sat, pretending to be engaged in conversation and refusing to meet the dark stares of those who glanced in at them. Looking again out the window glass beside him, Hal saw that their attempted route had been across one corner of the square. They were grounded broadside onto the open space of its middle; and, without having to move, he had an excellent view of the central area where the crowd was thickest.
It had pressed in tightly there about a pedestal supporting a stark brownish cross of granite, that towered at least three stories into the air. From where Hal lay on the stretcher, looking out through the moisture-streaked side window of the ambulance, the upper part of the cross seemed to loom impossibly high over them all, giving the illusion of floating against the dark, swag-bellied rainclouds overhead. The figure of a man in a business suit was beginning to climb down from the pedestal, having just finished a speech that Hal had been minimally conscious of hearing from repeaters worn or carried by those in the crowd close around the ambulance.
Applause began, and sounded for a few moments as the business-suited man climbed off the pedestal. After a second another man, this one wearing the familiar bush clothes Hal had seen around him through the past weeks, began to climb up. The ascending man reached the top of the pedestal, took a grip on the upright shaft of the cross to steady himself on the narrow footing, and began to speak. His voice came clearly to Hal's ears; plainly he was wearing a broadcaster which the repeaters were picking up, but from this distance Hal could not see it anywhere visible on his clothing or body. All around the ambulance, the tiny, black repeaters pinned openly to lapels or defiantly held up overhead threw his words out over the listening crowd. They penetrated the walls of the trapped vehicle.
"Brothers and sisters in God—"
Hal's attention woke to a new alertness. The voice he was hearing was the voice of Jason Rowe; and now that he had identified Jason, he recognized the square-shouldered, spare figure standing as he had been used to see it stand.
"—In a moment the one who will speak to you will be Captain Rukh Tamani, who planned the complete blockage of the Core Tap shaft accomplished by her Command, yesterday—who not only planned it; but gathered, with her Command, the materials out of which the necessary explosive was assembled; and trekked those materials halfway across the continent under threat of attack by Militia at all times, and under actual pursuit and attack much of the time. Brothers and sisters in the Lord, we have as of yesterday testified to the fact that our Faith in God remains whole and able to strike at those very points where the Belial-spawn consider themselves strongest. As it was yesterday, so shall it continue to be until the Others and their dogs no longer harry our worlds and our people. Brothers, and sisters, here is Rukh Tamani now, Captain of the Command that sabotaged the Core Tap and shut down the spaceship outfitting station—and my Captain, as well!"
A roar built up from the crowd and continued as Jason descended from the pedestal. Then there was a moment in which the cross stood still and alone in the midst of them and the roar slowly died away. Then it began again as a slim figure in dark bush clothes began to climb into view.
It was Rukh—it could be no one else. She climbed up on the pedestal and paused, holding one arm around the vertical shaft of the towering granite cross. It lifted high above her, its polished surface gleaming dully with moisture.
For a moment she stood there, looking like a black wand in the gray light. Gradually, the sounds from the square died away like the sound of surf when a heavy curtain is drawn across an open window. The crowd was silent.
She spoke, and the repeaters carried by people in the square picked up her words and threw them audibly over the heads of everyone there.
"Awake, drunkards, and weep!"
It was, Hal recognized, a quotation from the Old Testament of the Bible, from the first chapter of Joel. Her clear voice reached even through the walls of the ambulance to Hal's ears, like a sharp needle prodding him in his efforts to regain full conscious control of his body.
"All you who drink wine, lament," she went on:
"—For that new wine has been dashed from your lips.
"For a nation has invaded my country,
mighty and innumerable;
its teeth are the teeth of lions,
it has the fangs of a lioness.
It has laid waste my vines
and torn my fig trees to pieces;
it has stripped them clean and cut them down,
their branches have turned white.
"Mourn like a virgin wearing sackcloth
for her young man betrothed to her.
Oblation and libation have vanished
from the house
of Yahweh
the priests, the ministers of Yahweh,
are in mourning.
Wasted lie the fields,
the fallow is in mourning.
For the corn has been laid waste,
the wine fails,
the fresh oil dries up."
She stopped; and after the clear cadence of her voice, the silence seemed to ring in their ears. She spoke again, slowly.
"When did we come to fear death?" She turned her head, looking at all those about her. "For you, I see, fear death."
The silence of the crowd continued. It was as if they had no power to make a sound, almost no power to breathe, until she should finish with them. Hal struggled against the reluctance of his body to return to life.
"Today—" her voice reached him again through the glass window in the ambulance—"you crowd the streets. Today the Militia does not come opt to disperse you. Right now you are willing, in your hundreds, to take up weapons and march against the Belial-spawn and Antichrist."
She paused, watching them all.
"But tomorrow—" her voice continued—"you will think better of it. You will not say you will not march; but you will find a thousand reasons to question the time and manner of marching, and so never leave Ahruma at all.
"When did you come to fear death? There is no death to fear. Our forefathers knew this, when they came from Earth. Why do you fail to know it now?"
The crowd neither moved nor made a sound.
"They knew, as we should know," her voice went on, "that it does not matter if our bodies die, as long as the People of God continue. For then all are saved, and will live forever."
Hal got his legs moving, and stirred them quietly on his stretcher, to get the blood moving in them. They made a small rustling sound between the stretcher surface and the covering blankets. But the two Militiamen in the bucket seats up front in the ambulance paid no attention. They were as caught up in Rukh's speaking as the crowd outside.
"There is a man," went on Rukh; and the repeaters in the crowd flung her words against the concrete fronts of the buildings facing the square on all four sides, "who has been in this city before today and will be here again, who is called by some the Great Teacher."
She paused.
"He is a teacher of lies—Antichrist incarnate. But he envies us our immortality—yours and mine, sisters and brothers—for he is only mortal and knows he will die. He can be killed.
"For God alone is independently immortal. He would exist, even if Mankind did not; and because we are part of God, you and I, we are immortal also. But Antichrist, who comes among us now for our last great testing, has no hope of long life except in Mankind. Only if we accept him, and his like, can they hope to live.
"But because Mankind is of God, though the Enemy may slay our bodies he cannot touch our souls unless we give them freely to him. If we do, we are lost, indeed.
"But if we do not; then, though we may seem to suffer death, we will live eternally—not only in the Lord but in those who come after us, who will because of us continue to know our God.
"For only if we betray him by giving up the power to choose Him for ourselves, can we lose immortality. If we will not be dogs of Antichrist, we shall be part of our children's children's children—who, because of our faith and our labors, will still belong to our God, our Faith and, therefore, to us, forever. If the race continues free, none of us shall ever die."
She paused; and for the first time, there was a sighing, no more noticeable than a vagrant wisp of breeze, that travelled across the surface of the crowd and died against the buildings surrounding.
"There are those—" when she went on, her voice had changed slightly—"who say, 'But what if we should all be killed by those who follow Antichrist?' And the answer to that is, 'they cannot.' For there would then be not enough to serve the Belial-spawn as they wish to be served. But even if it was possible for our enemies to kill all who are steadfast in the Faith, that killing would be useless to them. For even in their slaves the seeds of Faith would still lie dormant, awaiting only the proper hour and the voice of God, to flower once more."
She paused and once more took a slow survey of the square.
"So, pick up your courage," she said. "These who oppose us can only destroy bodies, not souls. Come, join me in putting off our fear of death; which is, after all, only like a child's fear of the dark, and testify for the Lord, praising Him and thanking Him that it is to us, to our generation, that this great and glorious moment has been given. For there is no reward like the reward of those who fight for Him; knowing that they cannot lose because He cannot be defeated."
She stopped.
"Now," she said. "Testify with me, my sisters and brothers in the Lord. Let us sing together that God may hear us."
She let go of the upright of the cross and stood there balanced upon the narrow upper edge of the pedestal top. Standing so, she began, herself, to sing. Her voice came clearly and joyfully from the repeaters, making the dark hymn Hal had heard led by Child in the house of Amjak into a paean of triumph.
"Soldier, ask not, now or ever,
Where to war your banners go.
Anarch's legions all surround us.
Strike! and do not count the blow …"
The crowd was singing with one voice. Up in the front of the vehicle, the two Militiamen were silent, but they sat crouched in their seats as if they, too, had been captured by the music. Hal, who had also been caught up in the power and sweep of Rukh's speech, woke suddenly to the fact that he was letting his chance to escape slip through his fingers.
As quietly as he could, he pushed the blankets off him to the window side of the stretcher, swung his legs out over empty air and let himself slip quietly off the stretcher surface until he was standing on his feet.
Up front, the two Militiamen stared out through the side window next to the driver's left elbow, blind and deaf to anything taking place behind them.
Hal swayed a little on his feet. His balance was unsure, and the effort of keeping himself erect was a large one; but he felt a tremendous surge of happiness at being able to stand by himself. He moved as softly as he could to the door in the back end of the ambulance, through which he had been carried in. One step. Two. Three… he reached the door.
He put his hand on the rounded, cold, metal bar of its latch lever, ready to push it down; and glanced back over his shoulder at the front of the vehicle. The two Militiamen still sat in profile to him, unnoticing.
He turned to the door again, and pushed down on the lever. It resisted him as if it had been set in concrete. For a moment he thought his weakness was to blame and he threw all his weight upon it to force it down. But it held.
Then his mind cleared. He looked more closely at the latch and saw that it was locked by a horizontal sliding bar that needed to be drawn before the lever could swing down. He took the knob of the bar gingerly in his fingers and pulled. It held as if stuck. He pulled harder. It held for a second more; and then with a rasp and a clang that seemed to echo like a beaten alarm through the ambulance, it sprang back. He seized the lever.
"Stop!" said a tight-throated voice from the front of the ambulance. "You push that handle down and I'll shoot!"
Still holding the lever, he looked again over his shoulder. The faces of both Militiamen were watching him above the upper edges of their bucket-seat backs; and, down between the seats, its slim, wire-coiled barrel projecting through, was one of the stubby hideout-models of a void pistol. It was aimed squarely at him, held low by the driver so that his body and that of the man beside him would shield it from the eyes of any of the crowd who might happen to look in.
"This doesn't make any noise," said the driver. "Go back to your stretcher and get back up on it."
Hal stared at them and the shadow of the structure in his mind seemed to fall between him and the two of them.
"No," he said. "If I fall out of here dead, you two won't live five minutes."
He pushed the lever
down, leaning against the door. The latch released. The door swung half-open under his weight before it was stopped by the body of someone standing in the way; and Hal fell into the opening, which was too narrow for his body to pass but let him get his head outside.
"Help, brothers!" he croaked. "Help! The Militia've got me."
He had been braced instinctively for the silent blow of the charge from the void pistol against his back. But nothing happened. He was aware of startled faces turning toward him; then suddenly the door gave fully and he fell through the opening.
He would have tumbled to the pavement, if hands had not caught him and held him upright.
"Help…" he said again, weakly, feeling the last of the small spurt of strength he had been able to summon up draining from him in the sudden relief of still being alive. "They've had me in their cells…"
A fainting spell misted his vision for a few seconds. When it cleared, he became distantly aware of being half-pulled, half-lifted, forward for a little space; then lifted again by many hands to the head-height of the crowd. Dimly, he realized he was being passed along by an unending succession of hands above the heads of the multitude—and, at the same moment, became crazily aware that here and there about the square there were the figures of other casualties of the. tight-packed gathering—men, women, and even some children, being passed toward the outskirts of the crowd by the same means.
In his present exhausted, slightly confused state, it was a curious sensation, rather like floating across strangely uneven ground, while receiving innumerable pats on the back; and, strangely, it brought back the dream he had had of starting out on foot, alone, across a plain to a Tower seen far off in its distance. He was conscious mainly of a naked feeling from the cold, wet air cooling him through the thin shirt and trousers that were all his captors had left him to wear in his cell. After a while the number of hands beneath him became less; and, a few moments later, he was let down into an upright position with his feet on the pavement of one of the streets leading into the square.