Why the fire? That was the crucifixion spot. They burned teries and Talents in the pit on the far side of the fortress. What was going on?
A trooper shouted to him as he ran up.
“Where have you been? All villagers are to report to the gate when they hear the gong. You should know that by now. Get up there and learn a lesson!”
Dalt made no reply as he hurried on. He noted that the civilians were keeping to the rear of the circle of spectators, most with averted eyes. The front ranks were taken up by troopers, cheering, laughing, and drinking as they watched the burning body affixed to the cross.
He suspended all emotion as he pushed his way to the front to confirm his worst fears. No facial features remained on that charred corpse. But none was needed. The barrel chest, the shape of the head and legs...unmistakable.
Jon, the tery, the man, was dead.
Dalt heard the soldiers’ voices around him as if from a great distance.
“–hear he could have killed the captain but didn't –”
“–and she says he had Ghentren up in the air by the throat and just let him go –”
“–like they say, teries are stupid. Could have killed him clean and got out the same’s he came in but didn't. Deserve to burn, all of ’em –”
“–oughtta crucify them more often –”
“–Yeah. Better'n just running ’em through and then burning ’em –”
Dalt felt his control begin to slip. He feared he might fly into an uncontrollable rage, might grab his blaster and start burning holes in these savages. But he did not touch his blaster. He left it hidden in his belt as an icy calm slipped over him.
He quietly turned away and strode toward the forest.
He felt dead inside. Everything had gone wrong on this accursed planet and this was the final blow. He had grown to love Jon and now he was dead, horribly dead. If only...
If only! There was a long string of if-onlies trailing through his mind, starting with the Teratols and their perversity, on through the CSS’s refusal to authorize a protectorate, up to and including his own attempts to discourage Jon from trying to settle his score with Ghentren.
If only he had tried a little harder, maybe he could have convinced him not to go...if only he hadn't tried so hard, maybe Jon wouldn't have hesitated at the crucial moment, maybe he'd have dispatched that captain and been back in a few minutes’ time. Or perhaps he would have hesitated anyway because of the innate nobility that made him Jon. Dalt didn't know.
One thing he did know, however, was that Jon would still be alive if a protectorate had been set up. The CSS was at fault there. Always hesitating, always stepping back, always mincing around...rotten hands-off policy. Well, he was through with a hands-off policy as of this moment. Those scum back there liked fire, did they? Well, then they'd see some fire, more than they'd ever –
“You're to stay by the gate until you're dismissed!” said a torch-carrying trooper stationed back from the crowd.
He started to move forward to block Dalt's path, then retreated. Perhaps there was something in the way Dalt held himself, something in the way he moved; perhaps the torch light allowed him a glimpse of Dalt's white, tight-lipped face. Whatever it was, the lone sentry decided to let this one pass without an argument.
Not too much further along, Dalt came upon a staring, motionless figure, standing in the darkness, transfixed by the flames.
“Rab!” Dalt shook his shoulder roughly. “Rab, are you all right?”
Rab blinked twice, then staggered. For a heartbeat or two, he didn't seem to know where he was. Then he recognized Dalt.
“Tlad! I saw it all! It was horrible! They're all monsters in that fortress! What they did to Jon...I never dreamed anyone could–”
Dalt put a hand over his mouth to silence him. When he spoke, his voice was cold and flat.
“I know. We've got to tell the rest of the Talents.”
“They already know. I made a conduit of myself and transmitted everything back to them. They saw it all through me. They are all witnesses.”
“Adriel?”
Rab glanced back at the dancing flames outside Mekk's gate.
“Komak will tell her. Tonight I was glad she was without the Talent. We've lost a good friend, Tlad – another life Mekk will answer for some day. But for now, what do we do?”
“We split up. You go to your people in the forest and stay there. No one is to venture near the fortress until morning. No one!”
Rab looked at him questioningly, but before he could speak, Dalt hurried on.
“Remember what I told you a while back when you asked me how to fight a myth?”
Rab's brow furrowed momentarily, then he nodded. “Another myth, you said – a bigger and better one.”
“Right. And the new one starts here. Tonight. It will concern a rough-looking creature everyone persecuted because he was called a tery. But he was really a man. It will tell how he tried to live in peace as a man. And how one day he was captured and died horribly at the hands of his persecutors. You spread the word about that, Rab. And tell the world what happened to those who killed him.”
“But nothing happened to them.”
“Not yet.”
Rab stared uncomprehendingly at the man he knew as Tlad.
“Don't worry, Rab. I'm not mad. Not quite. But something is going to happen tonight, and I don't want it passed off as a natural catastrophe. I want people to remember tonight and know that it happened for a reason.”
“What…what's going to happen?”
Dalt's face was a mask. “Something I'm going to have to live with the rest of my life.”
As Dalt turned and trotted toward the trees, Rab called after him.
“I won't be seeing you again, will I?”
Dalt didn't reply.
28
DALT BROUGHT HIS SHIP to a silent hover over Mekk's fortress. Except for a few sputtering torches, all was dark below. Perhaps a few embers glowed around the base of the cross that held the tery's charred remains, but Dalt could not see them from where he was. The villagers had returned to their frightened hovels far down at the base of the hill. All was quiet.
He pointed up the nose of his slender craft and aimed his ion drive tubes at the fortress. He had to do this now. If he gave himself enough time to think, if he allowed himself to weigh the risks of firing an ion drive within a planet's atmosphere, he would abandon the whole idea. But Dalt was not thinking now. He was doing.
He realized that during the course of the rest of his life he would analyze and reanalyze the reasons for what he was about to do. Eventually he knew he would conclude that it all hinged upon the uniqueness of Jon the tery. If anyone else in his group of contacts on the planet had been immolated outside Mekk's fortress, he would have grieved, cursed, ground his teeth with the rest of them, and continued the mission.
But Jon's death had unhinged Dalt. He’d found something very special in that rough beast who was a man; something clean, free, and innocent; a certain incorruptible sanity singular and precious in his experience. And now it was gone – lost to Dalt and the rest of humanity forever.
Gone...
But he would see that it was not forgotten. Jon deserved better than to have his ashes scattered to the wind. He deserved a more permanent memorial, an enduring tombstone. And he would have it.
A long blast from the tubes that drove his craft through peristellar space would prove disastrous here in an oxygen-laden atmosphere; the Leason crystal lining would crack and Dalt and his craft would become a tiny, short-lived sun.
But a short blast...
A short blast would obviate the need for a protectorate; a short blast would also obviate the need for a CS operative. The net effect would be the same as the bomb he had wanted Jon to plant in the cache: Mekk and his fortress gone, his soldiers and the True Shape priesthood gone; gone too the cache of Shaper relics along with all the poor mad creatures in the Hole. All gone.
But Dalt knew h
e wouldn't be leaving pure destruction below. He would be creating, too.
Creating a myth.
All with one short blast.
As he reached his fingertip toward the sensor that would activate the drive, Dalt mentally began composing his letter of resignation from the Cultural Survey Service
Epilogue
“...With the image of the immolation seared upon their minds, the Talents, led by the Apostle Rab, spread the word: That God had chosen to send his messenger in the form of what was then considered a nonhuman. God did this to show us that teries were men, too, and that we are all brothers.”
“Amazing!” Father Pirella said as he followed Mantha toward the place called God's-Touch. “Our ‘messenger’ did the same – he came as a member of a persecuted race.”
“And was he killed like ours?”
“Very much so.”
“And did God show his wrath then?”
“Wrath? No. God showed his love by forgiving them all.”
Mantha considered this briefly. “Perhaps God had less patience with Overlord Mekk. Or perhaps he loved our messenger more.”
He pushed aside a branch to reveal a barren expanse. They stood on a gentle rise. Before them lay God's-Touch – a kilometer-wide expanse of green glass. Whatever had once occupied this spot had been melted and fused by a blast of what must have been almost unimaginable heat.
“God left no doubt as to his feelings in this matter. He laid his finger upon Overlord Mekk's fortress and since that day no one has ever persecuted a tery.”
HEALER – I
Heal Thyself
PROLOGUE
DR. ROND WATCHED the surging crowd outside the hospital gates. Waving, pushing, shoving, shouting people, all trying to get into the hospital. Most of them wanted just a glimpse of The Healer but a good number wanted to touch him – or better yet, be touched by him – in hopes of being cured of one malady or another. Often they were cured. Dr. Rond shook his head in wonder at the placebo power that surrounded this man.
The extra security forces necessitated by the presence of The Healer within the hospital had initially given him second thoughts about the wisdom of inviting him here. But after seeing the wonders he had achieved with the resident victims of the horrors, he congratulated himself on the decision.
He turned his back to the window and looked across the room. The Healer was at work on another horrors victim, a middle-aged male this time.
Quite a figure, this man called The Healer. A flamestone slung at his throat, yellow-gold skin on his left hand, and atop the clutter of his dark brown hair, a patch of snowy white.
He was sitting opposite the patient, hands resting on the man’s knees, head bowed as if dozing. Sweat broke out on his brow and his eyelids twitched. The tableau persisted for some minutes, then was shattered by a groan from the patient as he suddenly lurched to his feet and looked around.
"Wh… where am I?"
Attendants glided from the corners and, with gentle support and reassuring words, led him away. Dr. Rond watched him go. More-conventional modes of therapy could now be used to rehabilitate him completely. But The Healer had made the all-important initial breakthrough: A man who had been totally unable to react to external stimuli for seven standard years was now asking where he was.
Dr. Rond shook his head again, this time in admiration, and returned his attention to The Healer, who was slumped in his chair.
What a burden to have such a gift, he thought. It seems to be taking its toll. On a number of occasions he had noticed The Healer’s habit of muttering to himself. Perhaps The Healer was himself psychologically deranged. Perhaps there lay the key to his unique talent. Between patients he seemed to withdraw completely, muttering now and again and gazing at a fixed point in space. At this moment, The Healer’s thoughts seemed to be hundreds of years and hundreds of millions of kilometers away.
Age 36
The Healer was a striking, extraordinary man whose identity was possibly the best-kept secret in human history. To this date, after hundreds of thousands of research hours by countless scholars, it remains an enigma. There can be no doubt that he led a double existence much like that of the romantic fictional heroes of yore. Considering the hysterical adulation that came to focus on him, an alter ego was an absolute necessity if he was to have any privacy at all.
For some inexplicable reason, however, the concept of a double identity became subject to mythification and evolved into one of the prime canons of The Healer liturgy: that this man had two minds, two distinct areas of consciousness, and was thereby able to perform his miraculous cures.
This, of course, is preposterous.
from The Healer: Man & Myth
by Emmerz Fent
I
THE ORBITAL SURVEY had indicated this clearing as the probable site of the crash, but long-range observation had turned up no signs of wreckage. Steven Dalt was doing no better at close range. Something had landed here with tremendous impact not too long ago: There was a deep furrow, a few of the trees were charred, and the grass had not yet been able to fully cover the earth-scar. So far, so good. But where was the wreckage? He had made a careful search of the trees around the clearing and there was nothing of interest there. It was obvious now that there would be no quick, easy solution to the problem, as he had originally hoped, so he started the half-kilometer trek back to his concealed shuttlecraft.
Topping a leafy rise, he heard a shout off to his left and turned to see a small party of mounted colonists, Tependians by their garb. The oddity of the sight struck him. They were well inside the Duchy of Bendelema, and that shouldn’t be: Bendelema and Tependia had been at war for generations. Dalt shrugged and started walking again. He’d been away for years and it was very possible that something could have happened in that time to soften relations between the two duchies. Change was the rule on a splinter world.
One of the colonists pointed an unwieldy apparatus at Dalt and something went thip past his head. Dalt went into a crouch and ran to his right. There had been at least one change since his departure: Someone had reinvented the crossbow.
The hooves of the Tependian mounts thudded in pursuit as he raced down the slope into a dank, twilit grotto, and Dalt redoubled his speed as he realized how simple it would be for his pursuers to surround and trap him in this sunken area. He had to gain the high ground on the other side before he was encircled. Halfway up the far slope, he was halted by the sound of hooves ahead of him. They had succeeded in cutting him off.
Dalt turned and made his way carefully down the slope. If he could just keep out of sight, they might think he had escaped the ring they had thrown around the grotto. Then, when it got dark –
A bolt smashed against a stone by his foot
"There he is!" someone cried, and Dalt was on the run again.
He began to weigh the situation in his mind. If he kept on running, they were bound to keep on shooting at him, and one of them just might put a bolt through him. If he stopped running, he might have a chance. They might let him off with his life. Then he remembered that he was dressed in serf’s clothing and serfs who ran from anyone in uniform were usually put to the sword. Dalt kept running.
Another bolt flashed by, this one ripping some bark off a nearby tree. They were closing in – they were obviously experienced at this sort of work – and it wouldn’t be long before Dalt was trapped at the lowest point of the grotto, with nowhere else to go.
Then he saw the cave mouth, a wide, low arch of darkness just above him on the slope. It was about a meter and a half high at its central point. With a shower of crossbow bolts raining around him, Dalt quickly ducked inside.
Not much of a cave. In the dark and dampness Dalt soon found that it rapidly narrowed to a tunnel too slender for his shoulders to pass. There was nothing else for him to do but stay as far back as possible and hope for the best… which wasn’t much no matter how he looked at it. If his pursuers didn’t feel like co
ming in to drag him out, they could just sit back and fill the cave with bolts. Sooner or later one would have to strike him. Dalt peered out the opening to see which it would be.
But his five pursuers were doing nothing. They sat astride their mounts and stared dumbly at the cave mouth. One of the party unstrung his crossbow and began to strap it to his back. Dalt had no time to wonder at their behavior, for in that instant he realized he had made a fatal error. He was in a cave on Kwashi, and there was hardly a cave on Kwashi that didn’t house a colony of alarets.
He jumped into a crouch and sprinted for the outside. He’d gladly take his chances against crossbows rather than alarets any day. But a warm furry oval fell from the cave ceiling and landed on his head as he began to move. As his ears roared and his vision turned orange and green and yellow, Steven Dalt screamed in agony and fell to the cave floor.
Hearing that scream, the five Tependian scouts shook their heads and turned and rode away.
He awoke in the dark, cold and alone… and alive. That last part surprised him when he remembered his situation, and he lost no time in crawling out of the cave and into the clean air under the open stars. Hesitantly, he reached up and peeled from his scalp the shrunken, desiccated remains of one dead alaret. He marveled at the thing in his hand. Nowhere in the history of Kwashi, neither in the records of its long-extinct native race nor in the memory of anyone in its degenerated splinter colony, had there ever been mention of someone surviving the attack of an alaret.
The original splinter colonists had found artifacts of an ancient native race soon after their arrival. The culture had reached preindustrial levels before it was unaccountably wiped out; a natural cataclysm of some sort was given the blame. But among the artifacts were found some samples of symbolic writing, and one of these samples – evidently aimed at the children of the race – strongly warned against entering any cave. It seemed that a creature described as the killing-thing-on-the-ceilings-of-caves would attack anything that entered. The writing warned: "Of every thousand struck down, nine hundred and ninety-nine will die."