God of Tarot (4 page)

“Yet some needs are stronger than others,” the Reverend murmured, her eyes lifting to meet his again, her face dead serious. What could she mean by that? “It is Hell I am sending you to, Brother.”

Brother Paul did not smile. He had never heard language like this from her! Of course she was not swearing; she would never do that. When she said Hell, the capitalization was audible, as it was for the Tarot; she meant the abode of the Devil. “Figurative, I trust?”

“Literal, Paul. And the returning will be harder than the going.”

“It would be. Especially if it is necessary to die first.” Was he being cute, implying that he might return to life, like Jesus? He had not meant to!

She did not smile. “No. Like Dante, you will be a living visitor. Perhaps you will see Heaven too.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for that.” This time he was completely serious. Heaven awed him more than Hell did. This had to be a really extraordinary thing she was describing!

The Reverend shook her head nervously, so that for an instant the lobe of one ear showed, like a bit of forbidden anatomy. “I am caught between the pillars of right and wrong, and I cannot tell them apart.” She turned away from him; he had not realized that her chair could swivel. “Paul, I am required to present this to you as a prospective mission—but speaking as a Sister, as a friend, I must urge you to decline. It is not merely that it would sadden me never to see you again—though I do fear this, for no tangible reason—it is that this mission is a horror. A horror!”

“Now I am intrigued,” Brother Paul said, his own apprehensions fading as hers increased. “May I learn more?”

“As much as we know,” she said. “We have been asked to send our best qualified representative to Planet Tarot to ascertain the validity of its deity. A strong man, not too old, not too firmly committed to a single ideology, with a good mind and a fine sense of objectivity. You would seem to be that man.”

Brother Paul ignored the compliment, knowing it was not intended as such. “Planet Tarot?”

“As you know, Earth has colonized something like a thousand habitable worlds in the current matter transport program. One of these is named Tarot, and there is a problem there.”

“Hell, you said. I understood they did not send colonists to inclement habitats. If this planet is so hellish—”

“I did not say hellish, Paul. I said literal Hell. And the road to—”

“Oh, I see. It looked habitable, in the preliminary survey.”

“Their surveyors must be overextended. How they managed to approve this particular planet—!” The Reverend Mother made a gesture of bafflement. “Its very name—”

“Yes, I am curious about that too. Most of the names are publicity-minded. ‘Conquest,’ ‘Meadowland,’ ‘Zephyr’—how did they hit upon a name like Tarot’?”

“It seems a member of the survey party had a Tarot deck along. And while he waited at the base camp for his fellows to return, he dealt himself a divination hand. And—” She paused.

“And something happened.”

“It certainly did. He—the card—the illustration on one of his cards took form. In three-dimensional animation.”

Brother Paul’s interest intensified. He had Had experience with both sleight-of-hand and hallucinatory phenomena. “Had he been drinking an intoxicant?”

She shook her head. “They claim not. No alcohol, no drugs, no mushrooms or glue or extract of lettuce. That was why he happened to be entertaining himself with cards. And the other members of the party saw the animation.”

“No hallucination, then. But possibly a practical joke?”

“No. No joke.”

“Which card was it?”

“The Ten of Swords.”

Brother Paul refrained from whistling, contenting himself with a grave nod. “Signifying ruin! Was it a literal image?”

“It was. Ten tall swords piercing a corpse. All quite solid.”

“That should have shaken up the party!”

“It certainly did. They pulled out the swords and turned over the body. It was a man, but none they recognized. No one was missing from their crew. They buried him, saved the swords, and wrote up a report”

“Tangible evidence. That was smart.”

“Not so smart. When they arrived on Earth, the objects they claimed were swords were merely so many slivers of stone, like stalactites from a cave. A second party, sent to verify the situation, dug up the body— and found only the carcass of a native animal.”

“Mass hallucination?” Brother Paul suggested. “They killed an animal and thought it was a man? Because of fatigue and guilt—or because its configuration resembled that particular card? Stalactites
are
a bit like swords.”

“That was the official conclusion.” She paused, then girded herself to continue. “The second party brought Tarot cards and played many games, this time in the line of business, but there was no duplication of the effect. Apparently the first crew had been overworked and short on sleep, while the second was fresh. So they named the planet Tarot and approved it for colonization.”

“Just like that?” Brother Paul inquired, raising an eyebrow.

“Just like that,” the Reverend Mother said wryly, forgetting herself so far as to raise her own eyebrow in response. “They had a quota of planets to survey, and could not afford to waste time, as they put it, ‘wild ghost chasing.’”

“How much is lost through haste!” Brother Paul remarked. But he felt a growing excitement and gratitude that this mystery had come to pass. Wild ghosts? He certainly would like to see one!

“Colonization proceeded in normal fashion,” she continued. “One million human beings were shipped in the course of forty days, assigned to initial campsites with wilderness reduction equipment, and left to fend for themselves. Only the monthly coordination shuttle maintained contact. Colonization is,” she commented with a disapproving frown, “somewhat of a sink-or-swim situation.”

“Without doubt,” Brother Paul agreed. “Yet the great majority of emigrants have been happy to risk it—and most seem to be swimming.”

“Yes.” She shrugged. “It is not the way I would have chosen—but the decision was hardly mine to make. At any rate, the colonists settled—and then the fun began.”

“More Tarot animations?”

“No, not specifically. These animations were of Heaven—and of Hell. I mean the storybook Pearly Gates, with angels flying by, and harpists sitting on clouds. Or the other extreme—fiery caves with red, fork-tailed devils with pitchforks.”

“Evidently literal renditions of religious notions,” Brother Paul said. “Many believers have very material views of the immaterial.”

“They do. There seems to be an unusual concentration of schismatic religions in this colony world. But these were rather substantial projections.” She pulled out a drawer in her desk and brought forth several photographs. “Skeptics arranged to take pictures— and we have them here.” She spread them out.

He studied the pictures with amazement. “There was no, ah, trick photography? They certainly look authentic!”

“No trick photography. There is more: the colonists organized a planetary orchestra—in any random sampling of a million people, you’ll find many skills—and they practiced many semiclassical pieces. One day they were doing the tone poem by Saint-Saëns,
‘Danse macabre
,’ and—”

“Oh, no! Not the dancing skeletons!”

“The same. The entire orchestra panicked, and two musicians died in the stampede. In fact, I believe the orchestra was disbanded after that, and never reorganized. But when cooler heads investigated, they found no trace of the walking skeletons.”

“I begin to see,” Brother Paul said, feeling an unholy anticipation of challenge. “Planet Tarot is haunted.”

“That is one way of putting it,” she agreed. “We view it more seriously.” She waited until his face assumed the proper expression of seriousness. “Most haunts don’t lend themselves well to motion-picture photography.” She brought a reel from the drawer.

Brother Paul did a double-take. “Motion-picture film of the skeletons?”

“That’s right. It seems a colonist was filming the concert. He thought the skeletons were part of the show—until the stampede began.”

“This I would like to see!”

“You shall.” The Reverend set up a little projector, lit its lensed lamp, and cranked the handle. The picture flickered on the wall across from her desk.

It was, indeed, the dance of death. At first there were only the musicians, playing their crude, locally fashioned violins; then the skeletons pranced onstage, moving in time to the music. There was no sound, of course; a lamp-and-hand-crank projector was not capable of that. But Brother Paul could see the breathing of the players, the motions of their hands on the instruments, and the gestures of the conductor; the beat was clear.

One skeleton passed close to the camera, its gaunt, white ribcage momentarily blotting out the orchestra. Brother Paul peered closely, trying to ascertain what manner of articulation those bones possessed; it was hardly credible that they could move without muscle, sinew, or wires. Yet they did.

Then the scramble began; the picture veered crazily and clicked off.

“I understood there was a one-kilogram limit on personal possessions for emigrants,” Brother Paul commented. “How did a sophisticated device like a motion-picture camera get there?”

“They can make them very small these days,” the Reverend said. “Actually, two emigrants shared their mass allotment in this case, and three others in the family collaborated by taking fragments of a matching projector that could be run by hand. Like this one.” She patted it. “They yielded to need rather than philosophy; nevertheless, they were ingenious. Now we know how fortunate that was. No one on Earth would have believed their story otherwise. This film is evidence that cannot be ignored;
something
is happening on Planet Tarot, something extraordinary. The authorities want to know what.”

“But why should they come to us?” Brother Paul asked. “I should think they would send scientists with sophisticated equipment.”

She moved one hand in an unconscious
“be patient”
gesture. “They did. But the effect seems to be intermittent.”

Intermittency—the scourge of repairmen and psychic investigators! How was it possible to understand something that operated only in the absence of the investigator? “Meaning the experts found nothing?” he asked.

“Correct But they also interviewed the colonists and assembled a catalogue of episodes. They discovered that the manifestations were confined to certain times and certain places—usually. And they occurred only in the presence of believers.”

“This has a familiar ring,” Brother Paul said. “The believer experiences; the nonbeliever doesn’t. It is the way with faith.” He remembered his own discussion with the boys and girls of the village class; his belief had been stronger than their disbelief.

“Precisely. Except that the skeptics of the colony were able to witness a few of the phenomena. Whereupon they became believers.”

As Saul of Tarsus had witnessed the grandeur of God on the road to Damascus, and become Christian. As the village youths had witnessed the power of martial arts. “Believers in what?”

“In whatever they saw. There may have been skeptics when the
“danse macabre”
recital began, but there were none at the end, because the skeletons were tangible. But there were other manifestations. In one case it was God—or at least a burning bush that spoke quite clearly, claiming to be God.”

Presumptuous bush! “Sounds like a case for the priests, rabbis, or holy men.”

“They were the next to investigate. They proceeded directly to the haunted regions.” She stopped, and Brother Paul did not prompt her with another question. She stared at the desk for some time, as though probing every fissure in its rough grain, and finally resumed. “It was a disaster. Two resigned from their ministries, two had to be incarcerated as mentally incompetent, and two died. It seems they experienced more Hell than Heaven. That is how the job filtered down to us.”

“Those apparitions actually
killed
. Took human life? No stampede or other physical cause?”

“Those apparitions, or whatever it was those people experienced, actually did destroy minds and take human life.” She faced Brother Paul squarely, and her concern for him made her almost radiant. He knew she would turn the same expression on a wounded rattlesnake or a torn manuscript; that was what made her so lovely. “Now you know what I fear. Are you ready to go to Hell?”

Ready? He was eager! “It sounds fascinating. But what exactly would be my mission there? To exorcise the Devil of Tarot?”

“No. I fear that would be beyond your powers, or mine, or any of our Order.” She smiled very briefly. “The holy men who failed were prominent, devout men, thorough scholars, whose faith in their religions was tested and true. I find it strange that they should have suffered so greatly, while the large majority of the colonists, who represent a random sampling of Earth, have had few such problems.”

Brother Paul nodded. “Perhaps not so strange. It may be that training and belief are liabilities in that situation.”

“Perhaps. It is true that those who feel most strongly about religion obtain the strongest response from Planet Tarot. Those whose primary concern is to feed their faces—do just that.”

As luck would have it, a strong waft of the aroma of Brother Peter’s hot bread passed through the room, making Brother Paul’s mouth water. “Are you suggesting that my concern is to feed my face?” he asked with a smile. Now that the nature of the mission had been clarified, his tension was gone.

“You know better than that, Paul! But you are not a divinity specialist. Your background is broader, touching many aspects of the human state. More than the experience of most people. You know the meaning of prayer—and of pipefitting. Of divination—and gambling.”

“Those are apt parallels.”

“Thank you. You are aware of things that are beyond my imagination.” Brother Paul fervently hoped so; had she any inkling of the mishmash of notions that coursed through his brain, she would be shocked. He was reminded of a childhood game his friends had played, called Heaven or Hell. One boy and one girl were selected by lot to enter a dark closet. For one minute he had either to kiss her (Heaven) or hit her (Hell). Once Brother Paul had dreamed of taking the Reverend into such a closet, and he had awakened in a cold sweat, horrified. The very memory was appalling, now. Until that memory was gone, he would not be fit material for advancement within the Holy Order of Vision.