Collected Fiction, page 689
It was then, with the sudden motion, that I felt a draft around my ears and realized I had somehow lost my headdress in my wild scramble across the street. In the same moment I realized that my hair was cut in a very unecclesiastical fashion and that, as I squatted there, my priestly robe had come apart to reveal very exotic—for Malesco—trousers and shoes and Argyle socks. I saw the man take all this in.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Are you a priest?”
“No,” I told him. “Why?”
Note that I’d have said I was if there seemed any chance to get away with the masquerade. But my other-worldly garments were a bad giveaway and I didn’t want to get into any arguments. I wondered briefly where my escort was and if they felt this was all part of my mysterious plan. I hoped so.
“Because,” the middle-aged man said, “I thought I saw you just make a fire. With a machine! Is that little thing a machine? Will you show me how it works?”
Without considering the consequences I obliged him by blowing out the flame and igniting it again with a spin of the wheel that threw out brief sparks. The man leaned closer and sniffed excitedly at the reek of lighter-fluid.
“Miracle-juice!” he said. “I knew it! I’ve smelled the same holy smell in the air around the pumping stations. How does it work? Would you explain to me how it works?”
“The flint strikes a spark—” I began cautiously and then paused. A second man was peering over the first man’s shoulder and two more had paused on both sides, looking down with incongruous excitement at the lighter as I extinguished and kindled the flame anew to illustrate my simple lecture.
That was all it took.
Nobody could have imagined the hunger for process which must have been consuming these people, unsuspected for an unguessably long time. It was function and the process of function that entranced them.
In New York a man casually working a miracle on a street-corner wouldn’t attract any more of a crowd than I attracted at the corner of Hierarch Highway and Goldsmith Lane in Malesco by operating a simple mechanism in sight of the public. Miracles they were used to. Machines were the real miracle to them.
“Show me how it works!” a shrill voice demanded excitedly at my elbow. “The little wheel turns—why? What happens then? What makes it turn?”
“Let me see!” another voice broke in. “Look out, I want to—”
“The little wheel turns,” somebody was explaining importantly back in the crowd. “Then it makes sparks. Then the miracle-juice catches fire and the man makes a real flame jump up right out of his hand!”
“It’s a machine!” I heard voices declaring several heads away in the rapidly-gathering crowd. “A machine! The man knows how to make it work! Look here, it’s like this, the little wheel turns and—”
“Sacrilege!” somebody whispered. “Treason! Let me out of here!”
But the angry mutters which greeted this reaction must have made the prudent speaker shut up, for no more was heard from him though it did seem to me that I caught murmurs of fear now and then as an undertone to the general rising babble. Most of it had to do with the little wheel turning and the miracle-juice and everyone seemed to be explaining to everyone else exactly how the machine worked.
I stood up and flipped the lighter shut. I dropped it into my pocket.
“All right, that’s enough,” I said in my loud bullying hero’s voice. “Stand back there and let me by. That’s enough, I said!”
Rather timidly the crowd parted. These people had been conditioned to obedience for countless generations and the voice of authority made their reflexes work. But the light of excitement on their faces was not so easily quenched. I looked nervously around, trying to spot my escort, but they were still obeying orders and I saw no one I knew.
CHAPTER XII
On to the Temple
THERE seemed nothing to do but go on. I ordered the submissive crowd out of my way again and strode forward, the robe swirling irritatingly away from my trousered legs. The colors in my Argyle socks seemed to fascinate every eye. I was as exotically garbed as if I wore velvet and brocade on a New York street.
The crowd seemed helpless before the double charm of my socks and my astounding knowledge of mechanics. I heard awed murmurs about the little wheel sparking as I pushed through the fringe of my admirers and went hastily on toward the Temple.
It should have ended there. Probably it would have nine times out of ten. But this was the tenth time. I went about fifteen feet, then glanced uneasily back—and they were following me. Timidly, respectfully, but determined as so many pet dogs that have no intention whatever of going home, no matter how often you shout at them.
For a moment or two I did shout. I waved them back and told them sternly to leave me alone, to go back about their business. They looked at me, scared but stubborn. What had become of my escort I had no idea. Maybe they too were among this irresistibly fascinated throng. Maybe they were watching from the sidelines. Anyhow, they did nothing to help.
I kept at it until I began to feel too much like a man trying to send his dog home to keep my face straight. There was nothing to do but turn away and ignore them, which I did. Like a pied piper in Argyle socks I stalked down the Malescan street, hearing the rising murmur behind me as more and more curious bystanders joined my following throng. The saga of the little wheel was on every tongue. The sparks it shot out acquired fresh fame with every step I took.
Then it got worse. I heard someone say distinctly, “He’s leading us to the Temple. He’s going to teach us all how to make fire jump out of the little wheel.”
I whirled angrily. Whoever had spoken was silent now. The eyes of my followers met mine eagerly. And what could I do? Shouts hadn’t moved them. Denials wouldn’t either. This was sheer determined wishful thinking. It was already bigger than I was and growing every minute. The starvation of the human mind, denied process, was a thing I couldn’t cope with.
Suddenly I felt sorry for them. And I was aware of a quick, increasing respect. For all they knew the squads of the Temple guard might swoop down at any moment and arrest them all. And yet they followed, hypnotized by the glimpse they’d had of a machine openly used in the street, where every eye could see and every mind understand how it worked.
So I went on. The rumors spread. They caught up with me and began to run ahead and they were fantastic. I was going to teach all Malesco how every miracle in the city was performed. I was going to overthrow the Hierarch and administer the Alchemic Mysteries myself.
No, I was hand in glove with the Hierarch and leading them all to their doom. This latter rumor had no effect whatever. Curiosity was stronger now than fear and anyhow this crowd was getting too big to punish. Each man took courage from the number of his neighbors.
By the time I reached the great square in front of the Temple the murmuring of my followers had swelled into a low insistent roar. Nobody was shouting. Nobody was really talking loudly. But the combined voices had their own volume, and there was irresistible excitement in it.
I saw the astonished faces of priests looking out of the gate and peering over the painted walls. There were faces at every window on this side of the Temple and in the houses we passed women and children peered out with timid exultation and men came from every doorway to join our throng.
I crossed the big flood-lighted square slowly, in spite of myself feeling very important. Common sense told me that I had done nothing very superlative after all but the awed admiration of the crowd was insidious. It came to me irresistibly how much more I knew than they did, how deeply they admired me for my wisdom—also, perhaps, far my socks.
I expect I strutted a little. It isn’t every man who inspires thousands of people to follow him, helpless to resist as the children who followed the pied piper, hypnotized by his ability to spin a small wheel and strike sparks with it. It isn’t every man who—
SUDDENLY it came to me what I was doing. I stopped dead still for a second. I was a hero! I was indubitably leading a vast crowd of inspired followers, obedient to my every whim. I was advancing on the stronghold of the wicked High Priest who held the beautiful heroine captive in his toils.
I was on my way to rescue Lorna and force the Hierarch to send us back to Earth and it was my own skill and knowledge that had made this possible, my own prowess with a flint and steel. Good heavens, it had happened after all!
“Quatermain, move over!” I murmured to myself and crossed the rest of the square at a rapid stride. I felt imposingly tall. I thrust my elbows out to make my cloak billow in the wind. It was a perfect set-up. All I lacked was the long, glittering sword.
True, the cigarette lighter had proved more potent as a weapon but it lacked a certain something so far as dash went. Still, you can’t have everything. What I did have was far more than I had ever expected, even in my wildest dreams.
I came to the flight of steps leading up to the entrance gate. As I set my foot on the lowest step, a man in a grey tunic and cloak emerged from the crowd just behind me. Another man in the same uniform appeared suddenly on my other side. Two more followed them and two after that. Five in all—one squad, Malescan version. Why they deemed it wise at this particular point to take off their cloaks of invisibility I didn’t know.
“Where were you?” I demanded of the nearest, remembering his face in the fog at my door, back there in the Divine Baths. “What happened?”
“Nothing, sir. We followed our orders. We escorted you here.”
I looked at him in silence. No reasoning processes naturally. He might well explain in effect, “I seen my duty and I done it,” and that was that. If he’d dispersed the crowd as any rational policeman should have done when it first showed signs of getting out of control—
But by now I was very glad he hadn’t. He might have explanations to make to the Hierarch but I was well satisfied.
I knew what I was going to say to the Hierarch. Now I had force behind my arguments. I was going back to Earth in style with a send-off suitable to heroes.
Unfortunately for my self-esteem I paused at the top of the steps to look back and bid farewell to my faithful followers.
There they seethed in their thousands. It’s hard to estimate numbers at night in such volume. They filled most of the square in front of the Temple.
They stood solidly together, not wavering, not melting away in the back even though the priests were eyeing them sternly from every window. I had one final moment of egocentric pride in which I must have looked rather like Mussolini making chests from his balcony.
Then I caught a familiar eye in the front ranks of the crowd. Coriole was grinning up at me cheerfully. Beside him was the bald head of the man who had slipped the message to me and started this whole mass movement. And then my ego deflated suddenly and I realized what was behind this demonstration.
It hadn’t been wholly spontaneous, I felt perfectly sure. It wasn’t wholly for the inspiration of my wisdom that they’d gathered to follow me. Coriole’s hand showed plainly in this—Coriole, who had certainly had training in the handling of mobs.
It seemed to me now that, as I glanced around the upturned faces, I could spot here and there the sober eyes of the men and women who had helped fan the flame I lighted. Most of the people were still drunk with the unwonted excitement of the mob but there were quiet faces too and I assigned them, rightly or wrongly, to Coriole’s people.
So he had outwitted me. He’d used me as a tool to rouse the rabble, taking advantage of as small an incident as the cigarette-lighter flurry to call half the city, apparently, to a mustering before the Temple. And what happened now was up to him.
Or was it up to me?
He was searching my face with sober interest, the smile gone. I met his gaze without expression. How could I tell what I was going to do? I gave him a nod and turned away. The squad of my guards closed in around me. The gate opened. I could see priests milling excitedly inside as I stepped forward.
Coriole’s voice stopped me. Thin and small in the unechoing vastness of the square it soared above the low rumble of the crowd. He was shouting a single word but it was a rabble-rouser. It was the most dangerous word a man could shout in Malescan streets.
“Jimmerton!” Coriole yelled. “Jimmerton!”
The sound rolled back like an echo through the crowd. You could hear it rising and taking shape on every tongue, so that at first it was a soft dangerous babble of mingling syllables, then a coherent mutter, finally a roar.
“Jimmerton, Jimmerton, Jimmerton!”
The sound filled the square and echoed, from the Temple walls. The crowd rocked with it. Someone had given them a voice at last, an articulate word to speak that would express all they needed to express in a single name. They put all they had into it.
“Jimmerton, Jimmerton!”
I SAW Coriole nudge the bald man, who jumped out briskly and ran up the steps a little way, then turned and waved his arms at the swaying crowd. Everybody within hearing must have known exactly what that shouted name meant, every connotation of it. But the bald man put it into explicit words.
“Don’t let it happen again, men!” he cried in a shrill voice to the throng. “Remember Jimmerton! If the Hierarch gets this man too we’ll never see him again!” His voice was thin and it broke on the higher notes. It didn’t carry, though I could, see the cords stand out on his neck as he tried. But he didn’t need any mechanical amplifier to project his words.
The front ranks of the crowd caught them up and tossed them back and out until every listener in the square must have heard what he said. With embellishments and additions, if I knew that crowd—though perhaps it had been Coriole’s men who spread some of the wilder rumors about me.
“Don’t let it happen again!” my would-be benefactor shouted squeakily but valiantly. “Don’t let them do it! Remember Jimmerton! Remember—”
The responding roar drowned him out. They were frighteningly agreed on the single subject of my future. The Hierarch was not to have me.
It didn’t suit me at all. I was touched and impressed by this display of courage in the very face of the Temple, though I had acquired enough sense in the past few minutes to realize it was no personal tribute they were paying me. I was a symbol, not a man. I was Function. I was Process. I was all the maturity and adulthood they had been denied for nearly two thousand years.
They thought I was.
But it was more of a burden than I could carry for them. This rousing moment in the night was all very well, but what could it lead to? How could I help them? I couldn’t. If Coriole thought he was rescuing me from my enemies he would have to think again.
I lifted both arms dramatically at the top of the steps. The crowd milled with excitement and silence fell across it section by section, the farthest growing quiet last of all. The bald-headed man turned to look up at me, his mouth a little open in anticipation. I cleared my throat. My voice usually carries well enough, in a theatre but it sounded thin and flat in the tremendous roofless space of the square.
“Let me go in,” I shouted. “I must talk to the Hierarch. I must follow my own plans. Let me go—but wait.”
Coriole, who had been watching me too with the most painful attention, suddenly jumped to the lowest step and shouted as loudly as he could, “Yes, let him go—and wait! He knows his duty. He speaks for us all. But remember Jimmerton! Be sure he comes out again! Wait until he comes! All of you! Remember Jimmerton—and wait!”
“Wait!” the crowd roared, with a volume that made the steps tremble under us. “Wait! Remember Jimmerton!”
I raised my arms again. “Give me an hour,” I said. “I’ll come back to you in an hour. Will you wait?”
The responding thunder of their voices had the volume of a summer storm. They would wait. They remembered Jimmerton once more, in a tremendous reverberant shout and settled down into noisy milling quiet to keep their promise.
CHAPTER XIII
The Deal
THE priests were scared. I went in JL through the gate with my escort, receiving awed and angry stares from every eye, hearing the sibilance of the whispers that ran before and after me all the way. Everyone was bewildered. Nobody seemed to understand exactly what had happened.
There must have been rumors about my unorthodox tampering with the top-secret video band because I’d talked to too many people on my way to contact with the Hierarch to keep that experience quiet. And then the utterly unexpected, apparently, spontaneous springing up of the crowd—it looked like military genius on my part.
I wondered what would happen to the crowd. I wondered even more poignantly what would happen to me. I had a powerful weapon now, but I could so easily fumble it. I didn’t know how the Hierarch usually dealt with crowds. Judging by what I’d seen and heard it should be easy for him to work a miracle and wipe out the entire mob down there in the square. I wasn’t sure why he hadn’t.
We crossed the big hall swarming with gaping priests, all of them looking at me but obviously stretching an ear apiece toward the dull noises of the waiting crowd. We came to the shaft down which I had so nearly dashed myself to pieces.
We stepped into empty air—the thing went down indefinitely to gloomy depths underground—and rose like cherubs up the shaft. I may as well say now that I never did learn how that levitation trick worked.
None of us spoke a word. We soared the full height of the shaft and stepped neatly out in unison on a platform on the top floor. There was a broad hall before us painted with salamanders in gold. At the end of it was a purple curtain looped back over double doors. A little mob of priests, their headflaps agitated, hung around these doors, talking in whispers and rolling their eyes unhappily as they saw us come.
