The Altar at Asconel (9 page)

N
OW THAT
the time of their homecoming was finally upon them, they were overtaken by a sense of estrangement which was irrationally reinforced by the disguises Spartak had prepared. He had some confidence in his beard and the passage of ten years to change him; nonetheless, he had altered his haircolor to blond, Tiorin’s and Vix’s both to jet-black, worked delicately over the line of chin and eyebrow and nose with soft inert substances injected below the skin, till the resemblance between all three of them and Hodat’s brothers was reduced to a similarity of stature and gait.

That would have to suffice. Would
have
to.

But the physical illusion combined with a feeling that each was retreating into a universe of private thought where the others could not follow, and in a desperate attempt to retain their newly re-found kinship even Vix—warily supervising the controls, ever alert for the signal which would indicate that Tigrid Zen was over-optimistic and Bucyon’s forces indeed watched the space around Asconel for intruders—was driven to speak at random for the sake of breaking the tension.

“It’s winter down there,” he muttered. “I’d forgotten. That makes things difficult.”

“We’ll have to get some warmer clothing,” Spartak agreed, “especially for Eunora, who has nothing.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that so much,” Vix shrugged. “If there’s snow on the ground, it’ll be much harder to land unseen—and impossible to get away from where we do set down without leaving tracks.”

Tiorin made to speak, hesitated, finally gave a bitter
laugh. “I was just about to ask where we should buy our clothing and whether it would be safe to show our Imperial currency. But it suddenly struck me that if we’re to trust Metchel’s descriptions we’ll be lucky to find anyone with clothing to sell even in a town.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating?” Vix said.

“I doubt if he is,” Spartak put in. “The entire planet will be shockingly changed, Vix. Production, distribution, communications—all reduced to the bare minimum needed to support Belizuek’s domination. Rags will have become precious, and to throw away a crust of bread will be unthinkable. Typically, it’ll be safe enough to show Imperial currency, and what’s more it’ll buy incredible quantities of anything that’s for sale, but our own money will have become effectively worthless.”

“Then how can people live?” Vix demanded savagely.

Vineta spoke up from the corner of the control room in which she huddled with Eunora; being close to her own childhood, she had established a sort of shy intimacy with the mutant girl. “Vix, you’ve seen how it is on worlds we’ve traveled to with your order. They live like beasts, ready to fight for a morsel of food, neglecting everything but the sheer necessity of staying alive.”

“I guess so,” Vix sighed. “But I can’t transfer what I’ve seen on worlds like Batyra Dap to my own beloved Asconel.”

His fingers curled like claws, as if he had Bucyon’s throat between them.

Spartak said hastily, “We’re agreed at least on what we do at first, aren’t we? We land as Vix recommends on the southerly tip of the island which the town of Penwyr stands on. There’s a concealed site for the ship; the people stood loyal to our father while Vix was putting down the rebels; there’s a temple at Penwyr, the only one on the island; and it’s—well, if not easy, at any rate possible to get to Penwyr on foot, so that we run the least risk of being reported and attracting the attention of the priesthood. Once arrived, we go directly to the temple and try to find out what Belizuek is behind these screens which always hide him. If we must, we’ll kidnap a priest and interrogate him back at the ship. Meantime, Eunora will tell us which of
the people we meet still harbor the seeds of resistance to Belizuek, and we’ll sound out those we feel we can trust to guide our long-term planning.”

“Can we just walk into the temple?” Tiorin asked. “I know Metchel told us everyone had to go there daily—”

“It’s not quite like that,” Spartak corrected. “Every morning there’s a ceremony to honor Belizuek, but not all the citizens are required to do daily homage. In towns they are expected to go to the temple one day out of three; in the country, one day in six. But it seems not to be looked on as a duty; it’s one of the great events in lives which have become uniformly drab and depressing. Accordingly, the temples are open all day, from dawn to dusk, so that people with particularly fervent adoration for Belizuek can go and prostrate themselves.”

“What do they do at these sacrifices?” Vineta put in.

“Metchel said that every twenty or thirty days there’s a special ceremony at which the volunteers are decked with flowers and walk behind the temple screen to the sound of joyful music.” Spartak’s face darkened. “What becomes of them, nobody knows except the priests. But they are never seen alive again.”

“Are they seen dead, then?” Vix growled. “Served as the main dish at a banquet, maybe?”

Tiorin exclaimed in disgust.

“What time of day will it be when we set down?” Spartak asked.

“Around sunrise. If we make haste, we can reach Penwyr just in time for the morning ceremony at the temple.” Vix scanned his control panel closely, and gave a nod. “I think Tigrid Zen was right—we can go to land without being challenged. Here’s hoping!”

He put the ship into the landing trajectory.

The lock door slid aside. Beyond lay a bleak, forbidding landscape: gray rocks, contrarily shadowed with the whiteness of drifted snow, skewered with the trunks of leafless trees of which the very crowns were just catching the first rays of dawn. There was no sound except the distant noise of the sea gnashing its teeth. The air was bitterly cold.

But it wasn’t the sudden chill which made Spartak shiver
and brought the tears stinging to his eyes. It was the sum of all his childhood memories.

Asconel! Mother of us all, that you should be brutally raped and betrayed!

His emotion choked him, and by the long silence he knew his brothers were equally overcome.

It was astonishing, therefore, that the first voice to disturb the cold morning was Eunora’s. Scarcely louder than a whisper, it said: “Forgive me, all of you. If I could have seen the love you have for your home, I’d not have frightened you by threatening to make you—make you …”

She could not finish, but they all knew what she meant, and they gave her frosty smiles in acceptance of her apology. Vix, gathering himself quickest of the three men, crossed to her and put his arm around her tiny shoulders.

“You’ve had no reason to love any world, child! Maybe you’ll find a reason here. It’s a sad and lonely thing to have no home.”

The mutant girl nodded, and two tears shone brightly on her pallid cheeks.

“We must move,” Tiorin said practically. “Vix, you’ll need to inactivate the ship, fit alarms and booby traps—”

“It’s as easy as turning a switch,” Vix cut in. “The owners who had my ship before were all suspicious people, and I’ll wager when we close her up no one but ourselves will be able to get within arm’s length of the hull. In any case, no one comes to this part of the island. No hunting, no fishing worth the name—no reason for visitors.”

He patted his chest making sure he had the concealed sidearm which—apart from good wishes—was about all Tigrid Zen had been able to offer from his resources on Gwo to speed their mission, and led the way down the ladder to the ground.

They picked a route to leave the fewest possible tracks, going first by rocky slopes from which the snow had blown away, then by a road which had been used since the last fall, where there were already plenty of footmarks. It all seemed very straightforward, and Spartak might have relaxed, but for realizing that Eunora was freezing cold; once they got out of the sheltered depression in which they had landed, a wind came off the sea keen as a knife. He
had given her his old brown robe from Annanworld, but even kilted up to her tiny size it was still a garment meant for a subtropical climate, and the wind sliced through its wide loose weave.

The chattering of her teeth drummed a menacing accompaniment to the rhythm of his steps.

They had walked the better part of an hour when there was a sharp exclamation from Vix, leading the way because he had visited the island before. The others hurried to see what he had found, and saw that he had halted opposite a form half-buried by snow in the meager shelter of a bush.

“He’s dead,” he said slowly, and the others, shocked, saw what at first their minds had denied. This was indeed a man—very old, for his beard was not white only with frost—who must have sat down to rest here while trudging the road, and never got up again.

Spartak exhaled sharply, his breath wreathing in the icy air. “Well, he has no further use for what little he possessed,” he grunted, and began without more ado to strip the clothing from the corpse. Tiorin made to object, and he gave him a glare. “If you’re going to be squeamish, perhaps you’d rather strip yourself and lend the clothes to Eunora?”

When he’d finished she was so grotesque in the miscellaneous rags he had supplied that Vix looked doubtful. “Can we really go into Penwyr with her dressed like that?”

“You’re fond of betting,” Spartak answered. “I’ll bet that most of the people we meet will be worse clad yet.”

With a last surge of energy he put the fragile corpse out of sight in a bank of snow beyond the bush where it had rested, and they tramped on.

His estimate of the condition of people in Penwyr was correct. They began to encounter the citizens on the road just before entering the town: this was a day for folk from outlying farms to attend the temple ceremony, that was plain, and they were gathering on foot and in wheezing old groundcars fueled with woodgas generators. None of them offered to speak to Spartak and his companions, which suited them well.

Two things appalled Spartak especially: first, the numbers on foot—for Asconel had been among the few worlds
retaining nuclear-powered transport after the withdrawal of Imperial support—and second, the looks of near ecstasy on all the faces. Even the children, some of whom one would have expected to be sullen and fractious, were uniformly cheerful as they clung to their parents’ hands.

In the town, placards depicting Bucyon and Lydis were everywhere, mostly on the fronts of stores long closed for lack of goods to sell. Several people in the now large crowd heading for the temple paused to kiss the pictures.

Wary, eyes taking in every detail around, they let themselves be carried along until they were in sight of the temple itself. Originally it must have been the island’s agricultural produce mart, a low-roofed building several hundred feet square. Now it was decked with Bucyon’s picture and many crude slogans. The crowd paused as it entered the street on which the temple stood and joined with other streams of people from elsewhere in the town, giving Spartak time to read some of the gaudy exhortations: WE ARE BORN AND WE DIE, BUT BELIZUEK GOES ON FOREVER! BEFORE THE GALAXY BELIZUEK WAS! MANKIND ARE ANIMALS BUT BELIZUEK IS AN IMPENETRABLE MYSTERY!

Spartak tried to keep the grim look of hatred from his face as he shuffled his feet to warm them on the frozen ground. When he felt a nudge, he thought at first it was Eunora huddling close to him for shelter against the cold wind, but it was Tiorin who had pressed up in order to whisper.

“Spartak, you’ve noticed the—the
joy
with which all these people are going to the temple?”

Spartak nodded.

“It terrifies me,” Tiorin breathed. “Spartak, what makes us think that we can resist Belizuek ourselves? How do we know that we’re not walking into his jaws by coming to his temple? How do we know when we come out we won’t be his willing slaves for the rest of our lives?”

T
HE ECHO
of Tiorin’s depressing suggestion made Spartak’s head ring like a gong as they were carried willy-nilly forward in the crowd. It was far too late now to change their minds about entering the temple; the people pressed on every side, eager to get out of the cold and into the steamy warmth of the building. He wished achingly that Eunora could speak directly to his mind, telling him what she Was picking up from those around, but she could not, and after Tiorin’s brief whisper there were too many other people too close for any more private conversation.

Wondering what was going on inside the mutant girl’s head, Spartak used the advantage his over-average height gave to peer around and seek clues—if there were any—to the grip Belizuek exerted on his disciples. None offered themselves. He saw, heard and smelt a horde of dirty, hungry wretches, who seemed to find their plight perfectly natural and, indeed, enjoyable.

Drug addiction.
The concept thrust itself out of a corner of memory, and at once he realized it was apposite. He had only rarely seen victims of an uncontrollable addiction, but they bore the same stamp as the people surrounding him: an expression of single-minded urgency indicating that every other need had been subordinated to the craving for their dope.

He began to make guesses, putting himself into the place of any of millions of people here, who had failed to admit the necessity for starting over from their own resources when the Empire withdrew its economic and military support. To such a person it might easily seem that human vanity had been met with nemesis; after thousands of years of Imperial domination, the idea of Asconel making its own way would be literally inconceivable. And since the Empire was identified with human aspirations, what more logical conclusion than that man was unworthy of the mastership?

From there it was a short enough step to believing that the purpose of the universe was incomprehensible to human
beings, and that some higher order of intelligence was entitled to the adulation formerly accorded to the Warden of Asconel and through him to the Imperial court on Argus.

He shook his head. It was only half an explanation. It accounted neatly enough for the existence of a gap in people’s world-structure into which Bucyon and Shry were able to fit Belizuek, but it didn’t match the traditions of independence and free thought which Asconel had cherished. The story went that as recently as when taxes were imposed to finance the building of temples in all the main towns, the citizens grumbled and at least threatened resistance. Once the temples were built and people went to them, this change followed like a landslide.
Ergo
Tiorin was right in his underlying assumption.

They were coming to the door now. Spartak felt his nape tingle as he sought for any intrusion on his mind, any process comparable to conditioning which might turn him too into a loyal disciple of the greedy deity. But it was useless; he could not tell.

Clutching Eunora’s tiny hand as fiercely as she ordinarily clung to him, trying to keep within arm’s reach of his brothers, he was forced into the temple.

There was nothing remarkable about it, barring three comparatively minor but unexpected discoveries. First, there were no seats; the people were supposed to pack in shoulder to shoulder and stand during the ceremony. Second, the interior walls were decorated with prized personal possessions—paintings, sculptures, tapestries and objects in precious metal—described on small attached plaques as voluntary donations by adorers of Belizuek. And third, the screen at the far end, behind which Belizuek was allegedly concealed, was not what he had envisaged—some curtain of force akin to the defensive field of a starship—but just a screen of woven metal links on a frame adorned with gems.

More than likely, it would carry a killing charge, but he could not see the point at which it joined the floor to determine if it was insulated from the ground.

He got his first sight of the priests now: wearing robes not unlike those affected by his own order on Annanworld, but in various colors, black, white, green and gold, they stood watching the congregation assemble. Was there any
clue to their origin in their physique? He searched every cranny of his memory, and was driven to the conclusion that they might as easily have been born on Asconel as any other world of the galaxy, so thoroughly had the traffic of the Empire mixed all the existing human stocks.

The eyes of one priest seemed to dwell on him, and he had to repress a start of alarm. Glancing around, he decided that there was nothing to mark them out as unusual—many of the men were taller than himself, many of the children were smaller and younger than Eunora. If the priest was curious, he would only be so because he did not immediately recognize them. It would therefore be wise to slip away after the ceremony, delaying their return to the empty temple until some later hour of the day when perhaps the curious priest would not be around.

The last of the crowd from the street jammed in through the doors; the doors closed; there was an air of expectancy. All at once, a note of music sounded apparently from no-where, and the assembly broke into a fervent chant of praise for Belizuek.

Equilocal sonar generation,
Spartak glossed. He wondered if it was used for any special reason—surely people here would be too sophisticated to be impressed by technical trickery? But he had no time to follow that up at once; he was more concerned with the fact that neither he nor his companions knew this hymn the others were so loudly singing.

Moving his mouth in some sort of imitation of the rest, he saw that nobody near them was likely to notice; all eyes were riveted on the screen behind which was Belizuek.

A possible reason for the unison singing came to him: to inspire a sense of unity, welding the crowd together and making it more susceptible to the priests’ appeals. But so far he couldn’t detect any more advanced methods of working on the people’s minds—no hypnotically rhythmic lighting effects, no air-borne drugs.…Of course, they might be too subtle for even an aware victim to notice.

The chanting ended. A priest came out before the screen and turned his back on the congregation. There was a pause. He bowed, and everyone bowed with him—Spartak and his companions fractionally late.

Again? No. Once apparently sufficed.

The priest turned, the people hanging on every movement, and began to address them in ringing tones. His theme was exactly the same as what Spartak had heard first from Vix, then from Korisu and most recently from Metchel: that Belizuek was a superior being, that men could have no higher purpose than his service, and that this desire should supersede all personal ambitions.

After a while Spartak let his attention wander. So far, he’d seen and heard nothing to account for the blind obedience of once-rational persons. He was jolted back to awareness with boundless amazement when a yell went up from the body of the hall.

“Proof!” someone shouted. And another voice, a woman’s: “Proof!”

The priest, unperturbed, continued on his former subject. The voices resumed, now swelling, until the discourse could hardly be made out, and Spartak wondered if he ought to join in himself for fear of exciting notice if he remained silent. He was on the point of doing so when the priest raised a hand.

The shouting stopped as if a switch had been turned.

“Proof you want,” the priest intoned. “And proof you shall have!” He turned to face the screen again, and raised his other hand to the same level as the first before bowing more deeply than before.

“Belizuek! We who are less than the dust beseech a revelation of your majesty!”

And Spartak learned the answers to all his questions.

At first, it was merely as though the temple had grown larger, the walls receding into a misty distance and beginning to glow. With a shock, a sense of perspective overtook him. Those walls were the very bounds of the universe, and the faint glow was the light of stars—countless in number, inconceivably far away.

Then there was a pause which had the still quality of eternity. Nothing moved, nothing changed.

Seeping in, then, like water oozing through a porous rock, came a sense of presence. Personality. Consciousness.

And power!

Somewhere in this monstrous emptiness, perhaps as far off as the dim stars, perhaps further, a being had come into existence to the reach of whose mind the gap between galaxies was no more than a single stride. As though drawn by a magnet, Spartak’s dissociated awareness began the eon-long plunge through nowhere to find it and pay his homage.

Out of the misty blur of stars a form took shape: a lens. The lens of this familiar galaxy. Chance glimpses occurred of well-known features: the Big Dark, which some freak of stellar drift had notched like a sawcut into the galactic rim, a hundred light years wide; the pattern of globular clusters nicknamed the Eyes of Argus for the multitude and brilliance of them. By now, the other galaxies filling the plenum had dwindled to their customary status of bright blobs on the black curtain of infinity.

But the presence knew them. The presence was aware of everything, from the least bacterium to the pattern of those vanishing galaxies; had sounded and plumbed the furthest void, had weighed and measured the nucleons of the atom. It “said” so, and what petty human could contradict such a declaration?

For it knew all human history, and felt contempt—such contempt as made any man wriggle with embarrassment and wish to vanish through the ground—for these squabbling, greedy, half-intelligent creatures which had stolen the techniques and artifacts of their greater predecessors and claimed the conquest of the galaxy. To what end? To the downfall of their vaunted Empire, and the return of the species on tens of thousands of worlds to a state no better than the mud-grubbing life of beasts!

Even when it was over, the vision still filled his head and dazzled his eyes. He was passive among the crowd that forced its way from the temple, letting himself be pushed back on to the street. His questions had been answered, and in a way he had not expected; the shock had dazed him.

Someone tried to claim his attention. He shook his head and went on thinking about what he had learned. The person—Tiorin, possibly—gave up in annoyance and turned to
someone else: Eunora. He wasn’t interested in what was being said; all that concerned him was in his memory.

It was much later that he realized he was being escorted along a street floored with dirty snow, his companions beside him. He was shivering, having failed to fasten his clothing about him when he left the hot overcrowded temple. Ahead, someone was walking fast with occasional backward glances that suggested anxiety.

“Where are we going?” he forced out.

“You’re with us again?” Tiorin came eagerly to his side. “I was afraid you’d been overtaken by the same thing as these unfortunate wretches.”

“Hm? Oh! Oh, yes. I guess I was.” The reference drove him back inside himself, his eyes unfocusing and his feet stumbling occasionally on the unlevel rock-hard snow.

“The man ahead,” Tiorin explained, thinking Spartak was still listening. “Vix recognized him from the campaign he fought here—says he was a loyal and brave soldier. And Eunora got close enough to tell that he’s still trying to resist Bucyon, only goes to the temple because he’d risk exposure if he didn’t. We plan to follow until we get him alone and can approach him openly.”

But Spartak was lost again in the depths between the galaxies, playing over in his mind the vision he had had of supernal power, monstrous intelligence, and indescribable conceit.