COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 348
I glanced around nervously at the thronging priests. They were all dressed alike here except that some didn't wear the outer robes and others were bareheaded. Even in my alarm I noticed the surprisingly atypical haircuts of Malesco.
One priest had a ruff of red hair rising up like a rooster's comb, another had the front of his head shaved and long ringlets hanging down the back. A third had a shaved parting down the center, more than an inch wide. They looked funny to me then, but if Dio raised the alarm before I got to the door they'd probably cease to look funny and become wholly frightening.
I was six steps from the door. I was one step from the door. I stepped out under it onto the lighted steps. I couldn't help glancing back as I hurried down into the darkness. Dio's glance had flicked away from me as he lifted a hand and nodded casually to a passing priest. As I turned I saw his eyes come back to me, and he stroked his jaw in an affectionate way.
I kept going, heading toward the open archway ahead. I was feeling foolish again in the uncertain letdown. Was there any danger, after all? Had Falvi known what he was talking about? Certainly Coriole, whoever he was, seemed to take my danger seriously. If I could find Falvi and follow him to Coriole, maybe I could find out the truth.
Beyond the arch was a formal garden, stretched out into a park that ended at a high wall. But from the threshold itself a paved road ran straight to another gate in the wall, and a line had formed there. I hurried in that direction, trying to accustom my eyes to the night.
Just at the gate was a splash of light from one of the overhead metal cups. I saw a priest standing casually behind a tall crystal vase as high as his waist. As the line moved forward and each priest came abreast of the vase he tossed a coin into it. The cashier seemed too bored to pay much attention to his job though he kept one steady eye on the vase.
I joined the line, looking back. Through the open arch leading into the great hall I could see the moving throngs, but I couldn't see Dio now. That didn't mean anything. I felt very very anxious to get on the other side of the temple wall. What I would do there I didn't know yet but ...
There were a dozen priests ahead of me, moving forward slowly. I heard the clink of coins. How much should I contribute? Why had Dio given me the—grain? Most of all, who was he? How much did he know and what was his game?
Someone pushed me roughly from behind. I started to swing around and one of the flaps of my headdress swung across my face so that I was momentarily blinded. In that second of darkness. I heard Falvi's familiar voice say, "Keep moving, will you?"
I turned my head back again toward the front, faster than I'd turned it toward Falvi. He was standing right behind me. I hurriedly moved forward, closing the gap between me and the next priest. I heard Falvi's feet scuffle behind me.
Fine—wonderful! Of course it was a lucky break that I hadn't lost Falvi after all, that I could still depend on him to lead me to Lorna. But my back felt singularly unprotected. I could feel rings being drawn concentrically on the back of my robe, with a bull's-eye just in the center, where a knife would be most effective. Inevitably I was moving closer to the splash of light by the cashier.
There were six priests ahead of me ... five ... four. I looked rigidly ahead, the coins clutched in my hot little palm. Automatically, I noted the size and shape of the "grain" being tossed into the vase. Automatically, I opened my hand and selected a coin that seemed identical. Then there were two men ahead of me ... one ... nobody at all.
I bent my head forward, so that the flaps fell forward too, and hoped my profile wouldn't be visible to Falvi. I dropped a coin in the vase. The cashier glanced at me sharply, ran his eyes down toward my legs—my shoes and trousers!
"Wait a bit!" he said, meeting my eyes again. "You're out of uniform." That wasn't his exact phrase, but the meaning was identical.
And then Falvi yelled in my ear,
"Blast it, Vesto, keep your nose clean! I'm in a hurry! Step it up, step it up."
He shoved me through the gate and as I hastily moved to one side, I heard a violent altercation begin between Vesto and Falvi. It ended in a perfect scream of rage from Falvi, and the next thing I knew he was through the gate too and hurrying into the shadows.
Vesto appeared briefly and swore after him. I moved away in the opposite direction. When Vesto retreated I circled and began to trail Falvi, being doubly careful till we were both past the huge brightly lit open square that faced the temple.
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Chapter VI
IT'S no more difficult than a Chicago man suddenly finding himself in Bombay, or Lhasa, or Moscow, dressed in the appropriate local costume. But the boy from State Street has seen newsreels of those places, he's read about them and he knows there are French and English in Bombay. And, anyway, there's not much basic difference between a rickshaw and a Dynaflow.
All the same he'll get a queer picture of Bombay, just as I did of this Malescan city. One reason was that I was afraid to try anything new that might unmask me by revealing my ignorance. A Martian might follow the crowds down a B.M.T. subway entrance and he'd get along fine till he ran up against the coin-operated turnstile. Then he'd start frantically wondering what peculiar ritual was required.
He might figure out how the change booths worked; but unless he had some U.S. currency, he'd be sunk. Even if he spoke English there'd still be trouble, since nobody in one of those New York subway change booths has ever been known to speak in human tongues,
I certainly couldn't make much of the coins Dio had loaned me. I took them out and examined them as I went along. They all bore Roman numerals—I, II, V, XX—as well as puzzling symbols like those I had seen on the doors in the Temple. But none was of a recent enough mintage for me to make out details. They all had ornamental curlicues on the edges, like our own milled edges, so I guessed that Malesco had its coin shavers too.
Malesco—oh, it was a rose-red city, all right. But some of the walls had graffiti scrawled on them—words my uncle hadn't listed in his vocabulary, though it was easy to figure some of them out—and the streets weren't especially clean.
The city wasn't crowded, though. I didn't see any throngs except once. A gang of people had got a man in gray coveralls backed up against a building and were yelling at him. That should have been my cue to spring to the victim's aid. He should have been the prince of some neighboring country and have been suitably grateful for my help.
But when an air-car swooped down and grounded gently not far away, I hastily joined the crowd and yelled with them. Men in uniform were getting out of the air-car, which was built like a chariot, ornately decorated with scrolls and gilded curlicues.
The police dragged their victim away and, from what I overheard, I decided the "prince" was a pickpocket who'd been caught. So that was all right.
Falvi seemed to know where he was going. I never lost sight of that hurrying figure with its flapping headdress. I had a sense of immediate urgency for I remembered Dio very clearly. He knew who I was. Or did he?
I didn't form a complete picture of the city as I trailed Falvi. All I got were flashes, like the way a moving light slipped along one of the overhead causeways, the luminous jewelry some of the people wore, men and women both, and a flutter of confetti that blew past me down the street. One coil wrapped itself around my neck and as I pulled it free I saw lettering on the paper. COME TO THE BATH OF THE DIVINE WATER, it said in Malescan.
Well, that was what I meant to do if I could find the place.
A few aspects of the city stood out even above my preoccupation: one was the curious attitude of the populace toward the priests. The first time a man stepped off the sidewalk into the gutter and bowed to me, with a touch of masochistic abasement in the gesture, I almost stopped in my tracks.
My first thought was that he'd seen through my disguise and was staging some elaborate joke before he hit me over the head and dragged me back to my doom. Then I saw he meant it. But what was expected of me in response I had no idea.
I looked ahead at Falvi. All I could see was the top of his head bobbing along in a straight hasty course. If this were happening to me, maybe it was happening to him too and he seemed to pay no attention. I took a chance and stalked haughtily by the bowing man. I didn't dare look back to see what his reaction was. Nothing happened, so that was all right too. And luckily not every person I passed felt quite that pious.
But they did get out of my way with respectful glances. I began after a while to check on the expression they turned on me, trying to figure out what was going on. Most of them looked just respectful—stupid and awed. Some glowered but stood aside. Some gave me looks of sheer hatred.
Now and then somebody would all but throw himself at my feet in the same abject deference the first man had shown. Maybe it was consciousness of sin. Maybe these men had some guilt on their minds they thought I could read in their faces and were showing penitence by groveling in the gutter when I passed.
I didn't like it, and I didn't like the idea of a priesthood that would encourage such an attitude, but, after all, Malesco wasn't my responsibility. All I wanted was to get out of it, and take Lorna with me if I could find her.
I can't begin to tell you all the mystifying things I saw in that quick walk through the streets of Malesco. It wasn't like our cities. If it wasn't a place out of the Arabian Nights, neither was it the equivalent of New York and Chicago. There were shops, but their displays were mostly hidden and what I could see was arranged in ways that didn't make sense to me.
There were vehicles in the streets, but they didn't make much sense either beyond the fact that they moved, carried passengers and seemed to obey traffic laws of a sort. Once in a while I saw moving lights in the sky and remembered the aircraft I'd already encountered.
There were no newspapers. You'd be surprised how you can miss commonplace things like that. Until you do miss them you don't realize what a big part newspapers play in normal city life. There was no litter of torn printed pages in the gutter, no noisy newsboys yelling on corners, no stands of magazines and dailies, nobody with a folded paper under his arm.
But what I did see every few blocks, which as I later learned was the equivalent, was a long rack against buildings which held on slanting shelves rows of big looseleaf paper volumes about the size of the average tabloid. Each rack had several people reading with their elbows on the shelf, turning the pages.
You paid a penny and read your daily news right out in public. I wished for time to stop and see what was new in Malesco myself, but Falvi was moving fast ahead of me. There was no time to do more than steal a glance as I passed the stands, earning a look of resentment from the penny collector when I did so.
If I had known my rights as a priest I could simply have put one of the volumes under my arm and walked off and nobody would have dared to complain. But I didn't know that and I hadn't time then anyhow.
I went on after Falvi.
Strange things continued to happen all around me. I was getting used to the looks of awe, hatred or abject deference on the faces I passed. But I had a lot of other things to get used to, too. For instance, a voice suddenly and urgently whispered in my ear, "Listen!"
I halted where I was. I looked around over my shoulder, but there was no one near me. The only suspicious sight was a man in the priestly robe and headdress across the street, hurrying in the same direction that I was. But he was too far away to be the—
"Listen!" the whisper came again. "It's important! Your life may depend on it!"
For a second I dithered like a skeleton hung on wires. There just wasn't anyone near enough to me to whisper in my ear. And the whisper had a strange fading quality like a voice on the radio when you play with the dial.
"This is the secret," said the voice, brightening. "Drink Elixir, the refreshing tonic that makes you live longer." Then it broke into song. "Elixir, Elixir, Mother Ceres' fixer," it caroled and changed to a conspiratorial whisper again. "Listen! Listen! It's important—"
I cursed quietly and took up the trail again. Falvi was just turning a corner. I walked faster, occasionally running into a gust of auditory advertising that seemed to blow invisibly past me like confetti streamers. My first glimpse of Malesco, with the glamorous rose-red city gleaming in the sunset, hadn't prepared me for the uses of publicity as practiced there.
I rounded the corner and there was Falvi, safely ahead. He hadn't once looked back. He was hurrying along the curving street, moving from dimness to brightness as light from shop windows irregularly shone on him.
I remembered what I'd seen when I'd looked around a moment ago. I'd seen a priest on the opposite side of the street. It meant nothing, of course, but I couldn't help glancing around again. And there, turning the corner, was Dio.
He was dodging a group of adolescents walking arm in arm across half the sidewalk and he didn't seem to see me looking back at him. He didn't seem to see the adolescents either except as objects to be avoided. I had a clear view of his face through the pedestrians, and I saw with unpleasant clarity the fierce anticipatory joy he was not even trying to conceal.
I spun back again, remembering Falvi, wondering how much of that anticipating triumph applied to Falvi and how much to me. The thin priest was just vanishing around a corner ahead and I hurried after him, feeling those concentric rings making a target of my back again. I knew Dio was behind me and I knew he meant me anything but good.
Yet what could I do about it? I couldn't lose him without losing Falvi and my only hope of reaching a potential friend. And yet I was leading Dio straight to Coriole. I couldn't get to Coriole at all unless I led Dio, too.
And from what I'd overheard I suspected Coriole's safety depended on secrecy. Coriole discovered might be Coriole liquidated for all I knew. What good would he be to me liquidated? There didn't seem any way out of the noose I was running my neck into.
So we all trudged on through the rose-red city in our little game of follow-the-leader. Meanwhile, I was busily turning over schemes for thwarting Dio, by-passing Falvi and joining forces with Coriole.
The smart thing would have been to warn Falvi about our mutual follower. No doubt he would have some resource at his fingertips for dealing with spies. I could catch up with him easily. I could tap him on the shoulder and say:
"Listen! It's important! Drink Elix—" No, that was something else entirely. I felt a little drunk. I was not made of the indestructible stuff of heroes. Already I was getting tired, my head ached and I was wondering where my next meal would come from. If I warned Falvi of our mutual follower, he could fix Dio easily enough. But first he'd fix me. So the two of us diligently led Dio directly toward Coriole.
After about three turns, Falvi hit a broad thoroughfare that led straight to a familiar sight. Now I could see a sign glowing in colored lights ahead of us that said BATH OF THE DIVINE WATERS, in crawling Malescan letters and I knew I couldn't miss the place. You could see the Divine Water for miles. It was that huge globe of fiery liquid movement I had first glimpsed from my apartment—the rose-red globe that had formed a background for Lorna's fall into another world.
Lorna, I thought, Lorna Maxwell. It had to be Lorna I had got myself into Malesco to find—not a beautiful princess dripping with jewels. Not a lovely heiress from an old titled family whose life hung on my dashing accomplishments with sword and pistol. No, I was here to find Lorna Maxwell. It confirmed still further my uneasy suspicion that I was not the hero of this drama.
We were halfway down the thoroughfare to the Baths when a minor miracle happened. A chord of music sounded from nowhere, almost inaudible at first and then swelling upon the air until every other sound of the city was temporarily drowned out. Everybody stopped dead still in the streets. Everybody looked up.
I looked up, too, in time to see an expanding circle of light dawn like a ghostly sun upon a cloud straight overhead. It was full dark by now and there was no moon. But the sky was full of stars, though I could see only the brightest of them because the city's illumination drowned out all the rest.
I was a little startled to see the Dipper, practically the only constellation I know. Things hadn't changed as much as I'd thought if the stars were still in their familiar places over Malesco.
Then a face began to take shape in the luminous sun that glowed upon the cloud. An enormous sigh breathed up from the city, almost inaudible, a breath from every man and woman of all these thousands around me in the streets. The face grew clearer. It took on familiar features.
Another few seconds and Lorna Maxwell was smiling down at me from the clouds, a vast luminous Lorna idealized like the poster I'd seen on the side of a building. She looked lovely. She looked tender and sweet. Her smile was exquisite. She just couldn't be Lorna Maxwell.
The smile faded slowly. This was no poster, it was a reflection on the cloud of the woman herself, whoever she was. The vast, shining blue eyes, each as large as a good-sized swimming pool, beamed softly down upon Malesco. The music fell silent and the lovely lips on the cloud parted. Lorna's voice spoke to the breathless city.
