COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 353
I thought of that pickpocket on the street. The average hero would have bounded to his defense without waiting to get the facts straight. Before I meddled with Malescan affairs it seemed to me I had better find out exactly what I was doing.
I told myself flatly, "Eddie, let's not get romantic about this. Uncle Jim's case was entirely different. For one thing he was a born adventurer. For another he had a wife and son in Malesco to fight for.
"No," I went on, "not me. It's not my battle."
Then I poured myself a cup of the cold stuff that had once been hot tea. It had dregs in it. I sat there looking at the patterns they made in the cup, stirring them around and trying to keep my own future from taking permanent shape just yet.
The door clicked. Coriole stuck his head in, wreathed in floating fog. He looked worried.
"I've got to go and check up on this Dio business," he said. "Maybe the fool did kill him. You'll be all right for half an hour." It wasn't a question, it was a statement.
"Think so?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. I've got a man watching this door. I really have as a matter of fact. I know it sounds like a bluff, but it isn't."
"Just what do you think I can do for you as long as you keep a rope around my neck, Coriole?" I demanded.
"Oh, I have lots of plans," he assured me cheerfully. "You're going to help me get rid of the Hierarch."
"Sure, sure," I said. "That ought to be easy."
"As a matter of fact," he repeated, "it won't be too hard the way I've got it figured. Our boys couldn't do it, but you're from Paradise. You could get to him. We've got his successor all picked out too—one of us. A lot of the priests are with us, you know. Once the Hierarch's out of the way we'd have a good chance if we worked fast. Oh, you'll help us all right."
"I think you're crazy," I said. "No."
"Of course you will. Cheer up, it won't be as hard as you think. The people are with us. You just sit tight here and watch the pretty pictures. I'll be back for you in half an hour. Remember, there's a man with a gun outside, so do as you're told." The word he used for "gun" was a Malescan word naturally and it didn't mean revolver. But the intent was obvious.
"Good-by," I said, and turned my back to him. He chuckled and the door clicked. I sat there and stared at the blank screen.
After a while I got up and squatted in front of the panel, feeling around under it the way Coriole had done. There were smooth pegs underneath, fastening it to the wall. One of them was loose. I worked at it and in a minute it fell off into my hand.
I could get the tips of my fingers under the panel and I gave it a tentative pull. It came soundlessly away from the wall and I had to grab to keep it from falling. I laid it on the table as Coriole had done and squatted there, peering into the thing's innards, wondering just why I was doing this.
"Maybe there's something to be said for the priesthood," I thought. "I'd sort of like to hear their side before I take any permanent steps either way. There's never been an argument yet where all the right was on one side. It seems to me I've been brought up on the theory that when a people has an oppressive government it's the government they really want after all.
"By and large, they keep it because they want it." I thought that over and added, "The majority anyhow." Then I said to myself, "Cut out the hedging, Burton, and see what you can make of this gadget."
Actually, it wasn't so hard, even without the secret knowledge Falvi had imparted to his boss conspirator. But being familiar with the "miracle" of electricity, I handled the Malescan version of a television set with due caution.
I'm no expert, but I've had to pick up the rudiments of hook-ups at one-night stands backstage in the days when I was working with semi-amateur groups. And I know a little about video, Earth version. Malescan-style video might be different, but I soon realized it wasn't too different to understand.
Pretty soon I discovered that Coriole hadn't known what he was doing. Obviously he'd gone through his routine by rote, without knowing the reasons. Television occupies a channel 6,000 kilocycles wide against radio's 10 kilocycles and there's just so much space on the normal band. Back in New York—Paradise, that is—I knew we were getting around this by shifting video to a higher band in the spectrum, and doing it with adapters.
This set had such an adapter. It was what Coriole had rewired, and I went through the same motions more cautiously, automatically changing the frequencies on which the set would receive. I went farther than Coriole. His method had missed a whole band of upper frequencies.
It seemed almost too easy, but when I thought about it I saw it wasn't, given the Malescan mentality. Malesco was a religious society—Earth's is a mechanistic society. Malescans were conditioned to skip a link in process because they didn't know it was an important link. They believed in the priesthood as we believe in machines.
I'd be the last man to contend that we don't miss a few important links in our own thinking, of course. How many people on Earth have a real sense of process? How many can visualize and evaluate the process that goes into the making of a loaf of bread, for example? Or know the use of the iconoscope with its mosaic light cells, the real miracle of video?
I switched the screen on again and as before that businesslike fast light-up occurred, with no rigmarole of Alchemic A's or background music. I had no idea how to get what I wanted on the thing or even a very clear notion of what it was I wanted.
But I twirled a dial experimentally at random and found myself apparently sailing over a range of mountains studded here and there with shimmers of lights that were probably villages. It was night. I could see the stars in their familiar patterns and, far off at the edge of the sky, a glow that looked like a city. The one I was in? Probably—maybe there was only one city in this world. Was Malesco the city, the country, the world? One or all? I never knew.
I turned the dial again and the picture snapped off like a light and instantly flickered into a focus on a mountain village. I seemed to be looking down the main street of the little town, lighted by overhead incandescents that filtered through the trees lining the street.
It looked like a pleasant small-town street back home except that the parked cars were missing, and the adolescents strolling two by two wore strange garments and clustered around a corner building that was not a drugstore but—perhaps—a temple. I couldn't see clearly, but I thought I caught a glimpse through the shadows of the leaves that looked like red and yellow lions and shining salamanders painted on the walls.
I tried the dial again and was at some club meeting of middle-aged Malescan women who seemed to be reading poetry to each other. I visited a theatre where a version of Medea was being staged and it startled me very much until I realized that Euripides belonged to a period of the past which we and the Malescans held in common.
It wasn't until much later that Rufus Agricola edged out Claudius and the two worlds split apart. I wondered briefly what had really happened at that point of cleavage. In Caligula's time there were portents in the sky, weren't there? It must have released quite a lot of energy, that cosmic schism in space-time.
There seemed to be practically nowhere in Malesco—city, state or world—which this video screen couldn't picture with the right dialing. I sat there, feeling like a spider at the center of an endless web reaching out over a world—by coaxial cable or relay towers or some version of miracle we don't use ourselves—and spying on every dweller here.
The priests were missing no bets. The wonder was that they hadn't caught Coriole already—unless they hadn't cared to. Could that be it? Was he not as important as he thought, not as dangerous? Or were the Alchemists wise enough to permit latitude for the blowing off of steam?
For ten minutes or so I swooped and soared over Malesco, my vision riding the air-waves of an alien world, moving in vast curves above the heads of unsuspecting people whom I would never see or know. I tuned in briefly on a vision of New York, and had again that disorienting feeling of being in two places at once, the surge of homesickness as I sat in an alien room on an alien world and looked right down on the familiar streets of my own neighborhood.
It was when I was trying to find in my fumbling way what kind of screen the New York scene was projected on that I ran into my fatal error.
New York without warning went suddenly blank in a blinding dazzle of blue-white light. The brilliance centered in the lower right-hand quarter of the screen and seemed to spread from a minor sun which had come into unexpected being about two feet from my face.
The light was so strong I couldn't look at it, so curiously compelling that I couldn't look away. I sat there paralyzed for a moment, feeling jagged lightning flashes of pain zigzag through my head, helpless to turn my eyes away.
Then the sun blinked out and I slapped both hands to my eyes and squeezed my forehead to keep it from splitting in two. Bright orange after-images swam like amoebas inside my lids. When the pain subsided a little I began to be able to hear again and I realized that somebody had been asking me the same question over and over, with increasingly angry intonations.
"What are you doing here?" a man was demanding. "Give me the code word before I—"
I blinked tearfully at the screen. Through streaming eyes I saw a somewhat unshaven face between the flaps of the priestly headdress, small squinting eyes boring into mine and, chest-high between us, gripped in a hairy fist, a glass cylinder about the size of a pint milk bottle, glowing and fading rather angrily like a large irritated firefly.
I started to say, "Don't shoot!" and something told me my voice would quaver when I did it, for I was scared and I didn't even feel called upon to hide it, in that first moment. However impossible it may seem that a man at the other end of a video hookup could shoot and kill me through the relay system, I'd just had convincing proof that he could certainly do me grave harm. Maybe that thing would kill, at that.
I wiped my eyes on a corner of the blue towel and put on as haughty a look as I could manage with the tears still streaming from my stinging lids. I didn't know what I was going to say but I knew I'd better say it fast. The priest had caught me at something I had no business to meddle with, and he'd probably feel perfectly justified in using the fullest power of his milk bottle to punish me unless I spoke first—and fast.
It was time for Allan Quartermain or possibly John Carter to take over. I drew a deep breath and told myself I was a hero. In a hero's loud decisive bullying voice I said sharply, "Drop that, you fool!"
The priest's bristly jaw fell slightly. There is this to say about wearing nothing but a towel: manners make the man when his clothes are missing. If I'd been wearing a peasant's outfit or a clerk's apron I wouldn't have got away with this.
But for all the priest knew I might be a visiting High Priest from the other side of the world. Certainly the fact that he'd caught me monkeying with the top-secret video band, known only to the inner circles of the priesthood, would indicate that I might be important.
He didn't drop his pint bottle, but he lowered it a little and blinked at me in a puzzled way.
"Let's have that code word," he said, somewhat more politely. "You've got no business on this band."
A rapid summary of thoughts scampered through my head. I knew now why I had been dabbling at random in the private television relay of Malesco's rulers. In a half-aware sort of way I'd been hunting an excuse for the priesthood, so I could let myself confide in them. Naturally Coriole would paint them dead black to me. He wanted my help.
I could join Coriole, overthrow the Hierarch if we were lucky, risk my neck a hundred times over and finally win the right to take Lorna back to Earth and resume my job in peace. Or I could quietly walk back to the Temple I'd recently left, report to the Hierarch and the chances were he'd be only too glad to get rid of me by sending me back where I came from, along with Lorna.
Since he'd probably not read Burroughs or Haggard he wouldn't realize that all High Priests are supposed to be wicked from preference and spend all their time persecuting the hero and heroine. Primarily the Hierarch was simply a businessman, an executive administering a very complex organization. It would be a waste motion, really, to do anything to me but send me back, especially since—unless Coriole lied—he meant to send Lorna back anyhow.
And yet there was a nagging indecision in my mind, like a mouse chewing at the foundation of all this logical construction I'd reared. Was it a moral conditioning I'd got from reading too many melodramas? Or did I really owe Coriole and the people of Malesco something?
The priest with the pint bottle settled the whole question for me.
"There's a squad on the way to pick you up," he said briskly, evidently having reached a decision while I was arguing with myself. "Be there in ten minutes. Don't try to get away or I'll burn you to a crisp."
My first feeling was relief. That was that, then. The decision had been made for me. But a few seconds of further thought told me I couldn't take this quietly. I'd got the upper hand over the priest simply by bullying, but it was a precarious hold, I'd lose it if I allowed the police to drag me off to a precinct station and work me over trying to find out my secret.
I gave the screen a brisk tap that made the priest blur.
"Fool!" I said in my best bullying manner. "I'm from New York!" I gave him the A-sign with fingers and thumbs and grinned arrogantly, trying to show I didn't believe in the sanctity of Paradise.
"Switch me to the Hierarch," I commanded while he was still staggering from the impact of my wisdom and cynicism. It had a real effect, too. His jaw dropped again and he did three double-takes in a row. He was obviously not certain whether to blast me where I stood for sacrilege or kowtow to a visitant from Hierarchical circles if not from Paradise itself.
I got away with it. This priest wasn't sure enough of himself to switch me straight to the top, but he'd had enough trying to deal with me on his own and he put me through to five or six successively higher officials, each of whom wavered between bewilderment and rage at my attitude.
Finally, unlikely as it seems, an obsequious face took shape in the screen, murmured a few warning platitudes about the great audience I was about to be vouchsafed and, with a good deal of throat-clearing and harrumphing, the Hierarch himself looked me in the eye.
Seen this closely he looked less like Santa Claus and more like a juggernaut than I'd expected from my long-view glimpse. It shows how far astray you can go when you try to judge a new world by old-world analogies. I was still a little dazed by my success in putting across such a colossal bluff on such feeble evidence. The only explanation must be the very low level of Malescan self-confidence in sub-ecclesiastical circles. The common man, in other words, must be something of a worm. Back home I'd never have got away with it. Here nobody seriously doubted that I could back up my grandiose claims.
So, looking this fat man firmly in the eye, I told him the simple truth. And I wasn't obsequious about it. I know that in conversation with the mighty you're supposed to let them speak first and introduce all the topics, but it didn't seem to me that this man would be made easier to deal with by polite methods.
"You're the Hierarch, are you?" I said in my loud bullying voice. "I hope nobody's listening—this is private." But I didn't wait for him to cover his connections. That was his lookout, not mine. I went right on.
"I'm from New York," I said. "The girl Clia came through as Lorna Maxwell. She came from my chambers in Manhattan. I've got something important to tell you about your organization, but I'll save it until I'm with you. I understand there's a squad on the way to pick me up here now. If you're wise you'll see they act as my escort, not my captors. That's all. What do you say?"
The Hierarch was a clever man. He didn't gape or blink like the others. Neither did he puff up with outrage. He just stood there, looking at me reflectively out of his small eyes rimmed with fat. Then he blew out his cheeks and spoke in a rich rather thick voice.
"Very interesting. Very interesting, indeed. I'll give the proper orders."
Then he sank his chin into three sub-chins and looked at me stolidly. I had no idea what he was thinking. He was a remarkable character, this man. Fat, yes, but not obese—obesity changes when it's dynamic, and he was dynamic in exactly the same degree a bulldozer is.
He had the same absolute confidence. I had the impression that, like a bulldozer, if he actually found himself facing an obstacle, he'd pause, back off and roll ponderously forward again and again, until the barrier was smashed and ground under.
He wasn't going to be easy to fool. I couldn't even tell if I'd impressed him. Those small thoughtful eyes might be looking right through mine into the chaotic indecision of my brain. I wondered if they were. I wondered so much that for an instant I felt my own confidence oozing away, which showed me how dangerous the Hierarch was. I took a deep breath, reminded myself of John Carter and Allan Quartermain again and began thinking rapidly.
"Look here," I said, keeping my voice at its loud confident level, "I've got my reasons for wanting to reach you quietly. I want to walk out of here without being noticed. Tell your men to knock quietly and then step back and let me come out without attracting attention. It's foggy here. They can do it without starting a commotion. Have you got that?"
