The Altar at Asconel (8 page)

C
AUTIOUS AS
a wild beast sniffing at bait in a suspected trap, they circled the mining world of Gwo. It was a lake-planet and not an ocean-planet; in other words, its land surface rather than its water surface was continuous. Although it had a CO
₂
-water ecology, it had never been permanently settled in the days when men first blasted through the galaxy—with a vast number of more Earthlike planets to choose from, they could let places such as Gwo alone.

It wasn’t short of water, however. The atmosphere was sponge-saturated, and every least hillock was a watershed.
The effect over eons of time had been to turn uplands into bare, rounded rocks, and fill all the valleys with deep layers of rich sediment supporting the typical drab vegetation. It was from these sediments that the half-dozen nearby human worlds had drawn their raw materials.

Had.
Spartak reflected on the chilling implications of that word as the echo of Vix’s exclamation died in the still air of the control room.

“It seems to be dead.…”

“It can’t be,” Tiorin objected. “They might have had to cut back their mining, but to abandon it completely—”

“It’s been ten years,” Spartak broke in. “Asconel was the most stable of the planets hereabouts, and think what’s happened to it now. Revolution, civil war, plague—a dozen things might have put a stop to luxuries like mining another system. Vix, do we have no clue at all to the location of Tigrid Zen’s resistance hideout?”

“You’d expect it to be based on Asconel’s old holdings here,” Vix grunted. “Except that if it was, Bucyon could too easily locate it and wipe it out.”

“Maybe he did,” Tiorin muttered.

“Maybe.” Vix reached towards the communicator switches. “We’ll just have to risk a call, I guess.”

“Hold it,” Spartak rapped.

“What else can we do?” Tiorin glanced at him. “Agreed, we may run ourselves into a Bucyon ambush, but we could spend a lifetime hunting through the mist and drizzle here.”

“I have a better idea,” Spartak said. “Let me bring Eunora up and ask if she can help us.”

She came willingly, her hand in Spartak’s like father and daughter. He had never hoped that there would be such rapid progress in gaining her friendship and trust, but he had overlooked the fact that since she could see into his mind she could examine her personality as in a mirror, using his knowledge of psychology to afford an insight into her thinking. With incredible speed she had discovered why she nurtured blind hatred against ordinary people and why she had been senselessly persecuted; then, borrowing from Spartak’s calm assessment of human inadequacy, she had
seen how to rise above mere resentment and achieve a sort of pity.

Even Vix had been impressed by the result. Now, as she came into the cabin, he gave her a smile of welcome.

“Yes, I can tell you where you’ll find your friends,” she said. “Over there!”

She pointed. “It’s a long way—half around the planet. But there are a lot of people, perhaps as many as a hundred.”

“A hundred!” Tiorin was appalled. “If that’s all he’s managed to gather together out of the nine hundred millions on Asconel, what are we hoping to do?”

“More,” Spartak said briefly. “Vix, let’s go there.”

When they broke through the cover of cloud and hovered “amid ceaseless rain, the drops trickling down the viewports, they found themselves above a heavily wooded valley. No human habitation was in evidence, and Vix jumped to one of his typical conclusions.

“Eunora’s wrong. There isn’t anybody here.”

“Yes, there is,” the girl replied stubbornly. “Hiding!”

“Hiding where?”

“Go down lower and you’ll see.”

Reluctantly Vix complied. Shortly, Tiorin let out an exclamation. “Those—those aren’t natural trees! Look, they’re on nets suspended above ground level.”

“Identify yourselves or we’ll shoot you down!”

The voice blasted from the communicator, making them jump. In earnest of the threat, a bolt of energy sizzled up from a concealed gun emplacement, leaving a streak of white steam to mark its path through the dripping sky.

Tiorin leapt to the communicator. “Vix of Asconel’s ship!” he shouted. “Spartak of Asconel and Tiorin of Asconel are aboard! We’re looking for Tigrid Zen!”

A moment of blank disbelief. Then: “Would you say that again?”—in the meekest possible tone. And lower, as if to someone beside the speaker: “Go tell the general at once!”

A gap opened in the camouflage of fake vegetation. “Come down slowly,” the distant voice instructed. “We have our weapons trained on you, so don’t make a careless move.”

“Eunora,” Spartak murmured, “can you convince them that we are who we are?”

“I’ll try,” the mutant girl agreed doubtfully, and closed her eyes.

Abruptly, the communicator sounded again. “All right, we’re satisfied. Welcome! Welcome!”

Tiorin cocked an eyebrow at Vix, who had overheard Spartak’s soft request to Eunora, and the redhead shrugged and set the ship down.

The relief of finding that there really was a nucleus of anti-Bucyon forces here was soon tempered with dismay, however. As Eunora had said, the total amounted to some hundred persons, ill-clad and half-starved, the proud possessors of two small spaceships which had formerly belonged to the Asconel navy and had been snatched from Bucyon’s grip after his own fleet attacked Asconel. One ship was here; the other had been sent on a mission to try and raise help among neighboring systems—at latest reports, without success, for everywhere the tale was the same, and the withdrawal of Imperial authority had left those systems with problems of their own.

Tigrid Zen himself, who came to embrace his former commander Vix with tears in his eyes, had aged twenty years, not ten, since Hodat’s accession. His hair was vanished from his head, and his long moustache was grizzled. His uniform was dirty and there were holes in his boots. None of his followers were in much better plight.

But he made the newcomers as welcome as he could, treating them to a meal in the mountainside cave which served as his headquarters, and from him they heard the sorry tale of Asconel’s capitulation at first hand.

“It was terrible,” he muttered. “At first, you see, it didn’t seem too bad. This woman Lydis—granted, she followed some ridiculous cult or other, we thought, but there was some compensation in Hodat’s obsession with her. Twice she enabled us to frustrate a plot against him—though now I’m not sure she didn’t inspire the plots herself, to gain his confidence. Her, or this loathsome cripple Shry that she brought in as—well, her chaplain, I guess you’d say.

“We owe it to Grydnik that we weren’t completely duped.”
He nodded at the former port controller of the main Asconel spaceport, a shrunken man who had once been fat, but since his exile on Gwo had become a body cased in the loose bag of his own skin. “He challenged the easy admission of all these people from Brinze, saying there were too many greedy priests among them and no one who could offer the hard work and technical skills we needed. But Hodat grew deaf to our pleading. First he ordered the erection of this temple, then he imposed the taxes to establish sister centers of Belizuek in every large town, and finally—well, I’m sure you know. He was murdered, and in the resulting confusion Bucyon’s fleet came from space and overwhelmed our defenses. The priests and other immigrants from Brinze proved to be a well-trained underground movement, which paralyzed our defenses and our communications. Now we are as you see: a hopeless band of loyalists stranded in exile.”

“Tell me about Bucyon,” Vix said softly, “and this woman Lydis.”

“Bucyon—he’s a big man, with swarthy skin and a bright brown beard. They say he’s a strong personality, dazzling to those who come in contact with him. But he keeps aloof.” He gestured to an aide standing by. “We have pictures of him and Lydis. Bring them.”

“And Shry,” Spartak said. “In what way is he a cripple?”

“Hunchbacked. As though some monstrous growth covered him from neck to waist, bulging out obscenely. Ah, here are the pictures. You’ll find them everywhere on Asconel now, venerated like idols by the stupid citizens!”

He slammed them down on the table. Vix, who had requested information about Bucyon and Lydis, studied them with care, lingering longest on the portrait of the woman.

“She’s very beautiful,” he said.

Spartak nodded. Although the picture showed her in long black robes, with a veil over her fair hair, her face was of a perfection to tempt the King of Argus.

“This I swear,” Vix said between his teeth. “One day I shall enjoy that woman. I shall take her, and throw her down, and…” His hands curled into claws.

Tiorin broke the ensuing silence. “And what is it like on Asconel now? You have contact with people there—I hope.”

“A certain amount. Bucyon has grown contemptuous of our opposition, and we contrive to get our ship through for a landing every now and again, to land spies or put fresh heart—such as we can—into the very few who harbor loyal memories of Hodat. But as to present conditions there, why, you should ask our latest recruit Metchel.” He indicated a stocky man who stood a little apart from the others present. “We brought him away at our last landing. He was scheduled to be sacrificed to Belizuek, and wasn’t duped as so many are. Can you credit that?” Tigrid Zen added bitterly. “Our people, offering up their lives!”

There was a hiss of indrawn breath from the brothers.

“Conditions on Asconel,” Metchel shrugged. “Well … Look around you, and imagine this expanded to the whole planet. Everywhere despair, poverty, plough-land gone to weed, fishing boats rotting at the quay, commerce reduced to the passage of tax payments in order to support the burden of the fat and greedy priesthood. But nobody cares—the entire populace is deluded into thinking that they don’t matter anymore; only Belizuek and his followers count. It’s true that people willingly offer up their lives in sacrifice at every temple.”

“How is the sacrifice conducted?” Spartak rapped.

“I don’t know. No one sees but the priests, and they don’t talk.”

“And what’s Belizuek?”

Metchel shook his head again. “The priests say ‘he’. In every temple, behind a screen, there’s a sanctum for him. Daily one must go and bow to him, sing a song in his praise, and hear an exhortation by the priest in charge, which usually boils down to this: that we are dirt under his feet, our only purpose is to serve him, and he has existed as long as the galaxy. Incredible as it may seem, this convinces people; they go to their miserable work and dirty homes and starvation meals and comfort themselves with what the priest said.”

Metchel’s face twisted, and he added violently, “I hope to go back soon. I can go to another town, perhaps, and work to overthrow Bucyon.”

Gloom descended on the listeners. Painted thus, the task before them seemed impossible. Spartak put his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands.

Beside him, Eunora plucked at his sleeve. He shook her hand away with impatience, but she insisted, and he wearily bent his head close to hear her whisper.

What she said shook him to the core.

“Metchel is lying,” came her faint clear breathy message. “He’s an agent sworn to Bucyon, and when he goes back he plans to tell where this place lies so that it can be wiped out by Bucyon’s fleet.”

“Are you sure?” Spartak’s head whirled with suspicions:
Is she trying to ingratiate herself? Are we to be deceived?

“If you don’t believe me,” Eunora said in pique, “you only have to use on him the drug you used on Korisu. And I tell you it’d be a waste. If I can’t tell when someone’s lying, who can?”

C
ENTURIES OF
despair seemed to settle their weight on the shoulders of Tigrid Zen as he listened to the flood of hatred and abuse Metchel poured out, lying on the crude wooden bed to which they had bound him. They were in a secondary cave of the system in which he had established his hideout, the only light the yellow glow of an almost expired hand-lamp.

“What made you suspect he was lying?” he asked Spartak.

The bearded man hesitated. “Does it matter?” he countered finally, deciding it was better not to reveal Eunora’s talent for” fear there might be superstitious alarm at her presence on Gwo. “You’ve heard what came out when we unlocked the doors of his mind.”

His eyes shifted to the medical case alongside the bed. He had spent a great deal of his most useful drug on Eunora aboard ship, on Korisu and now on Metchel. But he didn’t feel it was, as Eunora maintained, a waste to have acted as he did. Granted, the mutant girl could see into the traitor’s mind, but apart from wishing to establish that
she was telling the truth, he had suspected there might be things in Metchel’s memory Eunora could not understand well enough to describe to a third party. And he was convinced he was right.

“What are we going to do?” Vix muttered from the dim recesses of the cave. It was the third or fourth time he had asked the same question.

“I don’t know,” Tigrid Zen sighed. “To think that a spy for Bucyon could fool us so easily—come right here to our secret headquarters and worm his way into my confidence—oh, it makes me ashamed! I’m growing old, sirs. I’m turning into a senile fool.”

Tiorin clapped him comfortingly on the back, but didn’t voice any denial. Instead, he said, “What worries me is that this suggests some of your underground contacts on Asconel have been infiltrated by Bucyon’s men. By what miracle does he gain this blind obedience? I’ll swear that Metchel told the truth—why, haven’t we heard him repeat much the same under this drug of Spartak’s?—when he described the shocking way poverty and ruin have overtaken our once-prosperous people. Yet he doesn’t
care.
For him, Bucyon is a superman, Shry is the voice of a divine oracle, and Belizuek is a being so superior to humanity that his service excuses the worst of insults to human dignity!”

“What is Belizuek?” Spartak said softly.

“There was a pause. Tiorin said at length, “Go on, Spartak. You have something in mind.”

“Yes.” Wearily Spartak rubbed his forehead. “Vix had a vague plan originally which consisted of landing on Asconel in secret, preferably having raised forces elsewhere to aid the loyalists when they rebelled against the usurper, and rely on his—our—prestige as Hodat’s legal successors to foment an uprising. But this assumed we were coping with an ordinary tyrant: a dictator such as any world might throw up from the chaos of post-Imperial decline, against whom the forces of unpopularity would already be at work. Correct, Vix?”

Vix nodded. “I had it in mind to land in the northern islands. I imagined I would still enjoy some support there.”

Tigrid Zen grunted. “I had that same idea. That was my first tactic when Bucyon came. But though it’s true
we’ve been maintaining contacts with home through our former friends in that area, I’m no longer sure whether I was right to trust them or whether Bucyon has subverted everybody and now laughs at me.”

Spartak leaned forward, elbows on knees, and shot a sidelong glance at the prone figure of Metchel, now breathing heavily in a stupor induced by the drug he had been given.

“Neither Metchel, nor Korisu, nor the man who came to try and kill you, Tiorin, would have knuckled under to any ordinary dictator. Our traditions of good government, loyalty to the legal Warden, and public justice would have ensured that a mere usurping tyrant met the full force of a popular revolt—if not instantly, then within a year or two of his seizing power. Clearly, Bucyon is no ordinary tyrant. What has he to make him different from anyone else?”

“The woman Lydis?” Vix hazarded. “Allegedly she can read minds.”

“That, yes,” Spartak nodded. “But far more important, he has Belizuek. A figment of the imagination, a mere cult-object? I think not.”

“What, then?” Tiorin snapped. “A mutant of human stock?”

“Again, I think not. Remember, we’ve heard from Metchel how Belizuek is present in every temple in every town on Asconel, and here under the drug he’s further informed us that Belizuek is said to be present everywhere on Brinze—wherever that world may lie.”

“Something—artificial perhaps?” Tiorin suggested. “A mechanical device which subdues the hostile thoughts of the people who come within range?”

“That’s a possibility I hadn’t considered,” Spartak conceded. “And it would explain a good deal.”

“Can’t we milk something further from Metchel?” Vix exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “He can’t really be so ignorant about this deity he follows as he pretends!”

“But he is. I’m satisfied on that score.” Spartak spread his hands. “Only the priests know what Belizuek is. Logically, since Belizuek is what we have to fight and not just a man called Bucyon, we must go to Asconel and—well, I guess kidnap a priest to interrogate him in the same way.”

“And then?” Tiorin countered.

“Who knows? But until we have positive information, we’re wasting our time.”

“To go to Asconel would be foolhardy,” Tigrid Zen said. “Sirs, until I’ve had a chance to determine which of our contacts Bucyon has subverted, I can offer you no help at home, name no one you could look to for shelter and protection—”

“Careful,” Spartak cut in. “You’re falling into a trap in which Bucyon would like to see us all caught, if I’m not mistaken. Consider: he’s been in power on Asconel for some time, yet Metchel must presumably be the first traitor he’s infiltrated into your loyalist underground at home—if not, he’d have located this base and wiped you out already. If Belizuek were all-powerful, the process of conversion to his cause would be sudden and complete. I think it’s not; I think it affects many people—most people—quickly, but there remain a certain number who are capable of resistance. As time passes, they grow fewer and fewer.” He sketched a rising curve in the air with his finger. “But I’d estimate one full generation as the time required for absolute planet-wide submission.”

“It’s a comforting thought, anyway,” Tiorin said. “Look, though, Spartak! If Belizuek is the key factor, why should we not simply raise a few ships—possibly hire them from the fighting order with which Vix has been serving—and bombard all his temples from space?”

“What payment will you offer?” Spartak said glacially. “The right to sack Asconel for three days afterwards? And if you’re to take the Warden’s chair, what chance do you think you’ll have of ruling a people who’ve been blasted at random, by the million, maybe? They’re happy under Bucyon, remember! If they weren’t, they’d have rebelled of their own accord. And you won’t simply take out the temples from space—that order of accuracy is beyond our powers. Whole towns would probably be razed by such a bombardment.”

“Ground infiltration and sabotage,” Vix said, half to himself. “Blow up or burn the temples.”

“That still leaves the problem of reconciling the people to what we’ve done,” Spartak pointed out. “No, I say we’re
wasting our breath until we know what Belizuek is and how he—it—they—dominates the citizens.”

“So we go to Asconel,” Vix shrugged. “Excellent. About time. Swallow your misgivings, Tigrid Zen, and tell us how good are our chances of making a landing undetected.”

“Fair,” the grizzled man muttered. “Among the things which Bucyon has let go to rack and ruin is the space-side detection system. He has a large fleet, now including the remnants of our own which surrendered, but it seldom flies space. My guess is it won’t fly again till the time comes to spread the plague to some other miserable world.”

“I know a place in the northern islands which I marked once as a good secret landing-ground,” Vix offered. “I had it in mind to sneak forces around behind the rebels, but I never had to use it.”

“Once landed, though, what then?” Tiorin said. “We’re not likely to have been forgotten in ten years. You, Vix, least of all. Spartak, just possibly … Yes?” to Spartak.

“We have a means of telling our friends from our enemies,” Spartak said significantly. “One which Vix considers unreliable, but which I have now some confidence in since it served to unmask Metchel here.”

Tigrid Zen looked from once face to another but refrained from asking any questions.

“That helps a little,” granted Tiorin. “At least we can determine whom we turn to for food, shelter, information.… But I still say we’ll be recognized.”

“I thought of that back on Annanworld,” Spartak murmured. “We shall have disguises our own brother Hodat would not penetrate. I’ve given some thought too to the problem of how we might travel. I’ll have to interrogate Metchel more fully on some of the details, but we all have skills we could employ on any world struck down by poverty. I might pass as a doctor of medicine, for instance. Vineta is a musician—at least, she plays some instrument or other. Tiorin, do you still sing the songs you used to shock me with?”

Tiorin, startled, said, “Am I to be a minstrel—a clown, perhaps?”

“Please! Unbecoming to your dignity or not, we’re going
to have to pose as people who can convincingly travel around, unsettled on any one town, and with the iron grip Bucyon has taken on the planet there must be very few people traveling for pleasure any longer. Trudging the road in search of work and food, yes. If you compare the situation which obtained on—oh, never mind. Just take my word that I’ve studied the pattern of social dislocation which evolves when a formerly wealthy planet decays in a single generation to a place of poverty.”

He didn’t wait to hear further objections, but turned to Metchel again, reaching his hand out for his medical case.

“There’s just one trouble. As soon as I’d mentioned the possibility of my posing as a doctor, I realized that the sick are probably now exhorted to offer themselves to Belizuek. So a doctor may not—”

“You’re wrong,” Tigrid Zen said heavily, stirring his stiff aging body as though shifting a heavy load. “That’s perhaps one of the most dreadful things of all. Belizuek refuses the sick, taking only the healthy and strong. And they go to him. They offer themselves willingly. Galaxy, what can
we
offer that will withstand a force like that?”

Tiorin gave a sudden bitter laugh. “I think we’re all insane,” he muttered. “What are we doing? Setting out to reconquer a planet taken by a usurper who can bend its people to his will like twigs off a tree! And how are we to do it? By going home as tramps and mendicants, too poor to keep ourselves, let alone hire a space fleet to attack Bucyon’s ! And what forces have we? A hundred sick and starving wretches, huddling from the eternal rain on this forsaken ball of mud!”

Metchel, forgotten on his crude bed, moaned and whimpered. The drug must be losing its grip, Spartak realized; when he recovered and remembered that he had betrayed the secret of his mission, only his bonds would keep him from following Korisu’s example.

Deliberately Spartak turned his back on his brothers, opening his medical case again.

“If that’s how you feel,” said over his shoulder to Tiorin, “do as you wish. Go hunt mercenary forces—blast Belizuek’s temples from space! But for me … if I have no other resources than my own body and mind, that’s what I’ll use.
Vix has taken a vow on himself, to cast Lydis down in the mud and enjoy her. I’ll take one also: to unmask Belizuek, whatever he or it or they may be.”

There was a brief silence. Then Tiorin said, “And I. I’ll unseat Bucyon from the Warden’s chair, or die in the attempt.”

Stiffly, slowly, Tigrid Zen got down on his knees and kissed the rightful Warden’s hand.