“BROTHER JARLES has begun to harangue the crowd in the Great Square, your resplendent arch-priestship.”
“Good! Send the reports in to me at the Apex Council as soon as he is finished.”
Brother Goniface, priest of the Seventh Circle, archpriest, chief voice of the Realists in the Apex Council, smiled-but the smile was not apparent in the pale, lionlike mask of his face. He had touched off a bomb that would blast the Apex Council out of its complacency-both the Moderates, with their flabby compromises, and his own Realists, with their mulish conservatism. His dangerous little experiment was running now and couldn’t very well be stopped. Let Brother Frejeris and the rest of the Moderates yelp as much as they wanted to-afterwards. For afterwards everything would be neatly rounded off. Brother Jarles would be dead, frizzled by the Great God’s wrath-an instructive example for the commoners and any other dissatisfied young priests. And Goniface would be able to explain at leisure to the Apex Council just how much vital information had been gained by study of the artificial crisis he had fomented. Only at times like this did a man really live! To have power was good. To use it dangerously was better.
But to use it in fighting an enemy perhaps as strong as yourself was best of all. He adjusted his gold-worked scarlet robe, commanded the great doors to open, and strode into the Council Chamber.
At the far end of the vast, pearly room, on an extensive dais, was a long table, with every seat behind it occupied by a gorgeously robed archpriest-every seat save one. Goniface relished that long walk the length of the Council Chamber, with all the rest of them already in place. He liked to know that they were watching him every step of the way, hoping he would stumble slightly or scuff the floor, just once. Liked to think how they would spring on him like famished cats if they had the slightest inkling of the secret of his past, that darkest of dark jests. Liked to know it, and then forget it!
For that long walk across the Council Chamber under those critical eyes gave Goniface something that no other archpriest seemed quite to understand. Something that he would not have allowed excitement over a dozen Jarleses to rob him of. An opportunity to drink in, at its richest and most tense, the power and glory of the Hierarchy-stablest government the world had ever known. The only government fully worth a strong man’s effort to maintain and to dominate it. Built on a thousand lies-like all governments, thought Goniface-yet perfectly adapted to solve the intricate problems of human society. And so constituted, by virtue of its rigid social stratification, that the more a member of the priestly elite struggled for power in it, the more closely did he identify himself with the aims and welfare of that elite.
At times like these Brother Goniface became a visionary. He could look through the soaring, softly pearl-gray walls of the Council Chamber, and watch the busy, efficient working of the Sanctuary-sense its uninterrupted hum of intellectual and executive activity, its subtle pleasures. Then outward, past the limits of the Sanctuary, across the checkerboard of neatly tilled fields, around the curve of the earth, to the gleaming walls of other sanctuaries-the rural ones simple and modest hermitages, the urban ones each with its cathedral and Almighty Automaton brooding over a great square. And still farther than that, across blue oceans, to other continents and gorgeous tropical islands. And everywhere to see in vision and sense with a pleasure beyond pleasure the workings of the scarlet robe-from the lamaseries clinging unshakably to the titan Himalaya, to the snug stations buried deep in Antarctica. Everywhere the sanctuaries, webbing the whole world, like the ganglia of some globular marine organism, floating in the sea of space. And then even beyond that-to heaven itself!
After he had walked a little more than halfway, his imagination began its return journey. And now it followed the lines of the social pyramid, or cone. First the broad base of commoners-that necessary, bestial, almost mindless substratum. Then a thin layer of deacons-insulation. Then the novices and rank and file of the first two circles of the priesthood, accounting for more than seven-eighths of the scarlet robes. Then, the cone swiftly narrowing, the various higher circles, each with its special domain of interest and endeavor, until the small Seventh Circle of major executives was reached.
And, on top of all, the archpriests and the Apex Council.
And, whether or not they knew it, whether or not they unconsciously feared or desired it, himself on top of that!
He slipped into his seat and asked, although he knew the answer, “What business today?”
“That, so please your arch-priestships,” came the well-modulated voice of a Second Circle clerk, “which you have asked me to refer to as the Matter of the Frightened Priests.”
Goniface sensed a reaction of annoyance ripple along the Council Table. This was one of those fantastic matters that refused to adjust themselves to established procedures, and were, therefore, exceedingly vexing to conservative mentalities. For two days running the Apex Council had postponed dealing with it.
“What do you say, Brothers?” he proposed in easy, casual tones. “Shall we have all our country relations in together? Shame them by making them listen to each others’ childish-seeming tales?”
“That is hardly in accord with the best psychological practices,” observed Brother Frejeris, his voice like the middle notes of an organ for beauty and strength. “We then encourage mass hysteria.”
Goniface nodded politely, remarking, “You dignify their condition, Brother, with a high-sounding term,” and again looked up and down the table, questioningly.
“Have them in together,” urged Goniface’s fellow Realist Jomald. “Else we’ll be here all night.”
Goniface glanced toward the senior member, lean Brother Sercival, whose white hair, shaven perhaps yesterday, still gave a silvery tint to his parchment skull.
“Together!” voted Brother Sercival through thin lips, ever stingy with words, the old Fanatic!
At that there was general agreement.
“A trifle of no importance,” murmured Brother Frejeris, waving the matter aside with a sculpturesque white hand.
“I merely sought to avoid a situation which may prove confusing to those of you who are not trained psychologists.”
A clerk transmitted the necessary orders.
As they waited, Brother Frejeris glanced down into his lap. “I am informed,” he said, very casually, “that there is a disturbance in the Great Square.”
Goniface did not look at him.
“If it is of any consequence,” he remarked smoothly, “our servant Cousin Deth will inform us.”
“Your servant, Brother,” Frejeris corrected, with equal smoothness. Goniface made no reply.
A score of priests were ushered in through the side door. Superficially they seemed identical with the priests of the Megatheopolis Sanctuary, but to the members of the Apex Council, their every mannerism and gesture, the way they wore their robes and the precise cut of those robes, spelled “country.”
They stood before the council table, an abashed and very much impressed clump of men. Their numbers merely emphasized the lustrous gray vastness of the Council Chamber.
“Your reverend arch-priestships,” began a gnarly fellow, who seemed to have absorbed something of the earthiness of the endless tilled fields, without working in them. “I know what I’m going to say must seem very unreal here at Megatheopolis,” he continued haltingly, his eyes tracing upward the vaulting of the walls until it was lost in the misty ceiling, “-here at Megatheopolis, where you can turn night into day if you want to. It’s different where we come from, where night edges up and clamps down, and you feel the silence creep in from the fields and grab the town-“
“No atmosphere, man! The story!” interjected Frejeris.
“Story!” snapped Sercival.
“Well, it’s… it’s wolves,” the gnarly fellow said, with almost a touch of defiance. “I know there aren’t any such things, except in the old books. But at night, we see them. Gray, smoky ones, colored like these walls, big as horses, with red eyes. They come loping, packs of them, like banks of mist, over the fields, and come skulking into town, circling around the sanctuary. And whenever a pair of us must go out at night, they follow. The Finger of Wrath can’t hurt them-or the Rod! They just back away from the light it makes and skulk in the shadows. I tell you, your reverences, our commoners are crazy with fear, and the novices are almost as bad. And then, at night, in the cells, something squats on our chests!”
“I know!” interrupted another country priest excitedly. “Cold furry things that twitch at the clothes and softly feel your face. And they squat there, light as down, while you don’t know whether you’re waking or dreaming, and they nuzzle you and chatter at you in their thin high voices, saying things you hardly dare repeat. But when the light’s on, or when you try to clutch at them, they’re never there. Yet you can feel them as they touch you and squat on you. Cold, skinny things, covered with a fine fur or hair-human hair!”
A third country priest, a sallow, high-foreheaded fellow with the look of a schoolmaster, had grown yet more pale at this last recital. “That’s exactly how it felt!” he cried out nervously, his eyes fixed on something far away. “Brother Galjwin and I had gone to search the house of a commoner whom we suspected of having concealed a portion of his weavings, on which tithes were due the Hierarchy. They were a bad lot, the daughter the worst-a shameless hussy! But I was on to their tricks, and pretty soon I spotted a loose board in the wall. I pulled it out, and stuck my arm through and felt around behind. That red-haired hussy was grinning at me in the nastiest, most disrespectful way. I felt a roll of cloth with a heavy nap, and reached in farther, so I could get my fingers around it and pull it out. And then it came alive! It moved. It wriggled! Cold, furry, but human feeling, just like he said-though the space back there wasn’t four inches wide! We had that inside wall torn down, and we watched the crack all the while. Nothing came out. But we found nothing. We gave the household an extra stint of weaving, as penance. We found witch-marks on the daughter, got a special dispensation, and had her sent to the mines with the men.
“One thing I’ll never forget. When I jerked my hand out, there were two tiny hairs caught in the jag of a nail-two tiny hairs of the same angry copper shade as the girl’s!
“And now, when I sleep badly, I keep feeling the thing.
Thin spidery arms against my palm-wriggling!”
And now all tongues were unloosed, and there was a frightened babble. One voice, louder than the rest, exclaimed, “They say it’s those things that make the witchmarks!”
A gorgeously robed archpriest laughed melodiously, contemptuously. But there was something a little hollow about the laughter.
Brother Frejeris smiled and arched his eyebrows eloquently, as if to say, “Mass hysteria. I warned you.”
“I said it would all seem very unreal here at Megatheopolis,” asserted the first rural speaker, apologetically, yet still with a shade of stubborn defiance. “But there was a Fifth Circle priest sent down to investigate when we made our first reports. He saw what we saw. He didn’t say anything. Next day he went away. If he found out anything, we haven’t heard about it.”
“We expect the Hierarchy to protect us!”
“We want to know what the Hierarchy’s going to do!”
“They say,” broke in the fellow who had mentioned witchmarks, “that there’s a Black Apex, just as there’s an Apex Council, so please your reverences! And a Black Hierarchy, organized as we are, but serving Sathanas, Lord of Evil!”
“Yes,” echoed the first speaker, the gnarly one. “And I want to know this! What if our centuries of pretending that there’s a real god have somehow-I don’t know how-awakened a real devil?
What then?”
Goniface sat up and spoke into the shiver that followed those words. His voice lacked Frejeris’ music, but it had its own stony compellingness.
“Silence! Or you will wake a real devil. The devil of our wrath!”
He looked up and down the table. “What to do with these fools?” he asked lightly.
“Whip them!” snapped Sercival, lean jaw like a trap, small eyes glittering in their leathery sockets. “Whip them! For being such cowards in the face of the wiles and threats of Sathanas!”
The country priests stirred uneasily. Frejeris rolled his eyes upward, as if such a statement were almost unbearably barbarous. But Goniface nodded politely, though not indicating agreement. He casually wondered to what degree old Sercival and the other Fanatics actually believed in the real existence of the Great God and his eternal adversary, Sathanas, Lord of Evil. Largely a pose, of course, but there was probably a substratum of genuineness. Not stemming from the ignorant superstitions of the commoners-those were wiped out in the First and Second Circle, or else a priest got no further-but from a kind of self-hypnosis induced by years of contemplating the stupendous powers of the Hierarchy, until those powers actually took on a supernatural tinge. Luckily, Fanatics were very rare-hardly worth calling a party. Only one on the Apex Council, and he only became one in his senility. Even at that, the old fool might some day prove useful. He was grim and bloody-minded enough, and would serve as a convenient scapegoat if it were ever necessary to employ extreme violence. The Fanatic Party, for that matter, was useful in counterbalancing the more numerous minority of Moderates, leaving Goniface’s Realists in almost complete control.
But these poor country priests were not Fanatics. Far from it. If they had even a shadow of belief in the Great God-in any god-they wouldn’t be so frightened. Goniface rose to reprimand them. But there was an interruption. The high doors at the other end of the Chamber opened. A priest darted in. Goniface recognized one of Frejeris’ Moderates. The newcomer’s progress toward the Council Table was nothing stately. He was almost running. Goniface waited coolly.
The newcomer, breathing a little hard from the unaccustomed exertion, handed something to Frejeris which the latter quickly scanned.
Frejeris rose and spoke to Goniface directly, for the whole table to hear.
“I am informed that a First Circle priest is blaspheming the Hierarchy before a large crowd in the Great Square. Your servant Cousin Deth has taken charge and forbids interference. I demand you instantly explain to the Council what this madness means!”
“Who fosters mass hysteria now, Brother?” Goniface countered quickly. “Your information is incomplete. Shall I explain a subtle stratagem before those who would not understand it?” He indicated the country priests. “Or shall I finish the business before the Council?”
And before the Council had recovered from its first surprise, he was talking.
“Priests of the rural sanctuaries: You have said that your stories would seem unreal here. That is untrue. For the unreal is not, at Megatheopolis or anywhere else in the cosmos.
“The supernatural is unreal, and therefore is not.
“Have you forgotten the basic truth you learned in the First Circle? That there is only the cosmos and the electronic entities that constitute it, without soul or purpose, save so far as neuronic minds impose purpose upon it?
“No, your stories refer to real entities-if only to the imagery of your neuronic minds.
“There are many real entities which the Finger of Wrath cannot burn. I mention only solidographs, and remind you of the shadowiness of the wolves and other creatures you claim to fear. As for mental imagery, you cannot burn that except by turning the Finger of Wrath against your own skulls.
“One of you mentioned the Witchcraft. Has that one forgotten that the Witchcraft is our fosterling?
“I should not be telling you this. You should be telling it to your novices!
“Has the Hierarchy ever failed you? Yet now do you want the Hierarchy to drop all other business and, with much outward fuss and flourishing, attend only to you, because you are frightened-not hurt, merely frightened?
“How do you know that all this is not a test, imposed upon you by us, to determine your courage and resourcefulness? If it is a test, think how pitifully, thus far, you have failed!
“It may be a test.
“It may also be that some alien agency is striking at the Hierarchy, perhaps under cover of our fosterling the Witchcraft. And that we are holding our hand, to draw them out and learn all, before we strike in return. For the Hierarchy never strikes twice.
“If that is the case, elementary strategy forbids your being told anything, for fear of scaring off the enemy.
“This much I will tell you. The Hierarchy knew of the disturbances in your region long before you did. And it has concerned itself deeply with them.
“That is all you need to know. And you should have known it without asking!”
With cold gratification, Goniface noted that the last traces of panic had quite evaporated. The country priests stood straighter now, looked more like men. Still frightened-but only of their superiors. As they should be.
“Priests of the rural sanctuaries, you have grievously failed the Hierarchy. Our reports show that, since the beginning of the disturbances-or the test-in your region, you have done little but cry to the Hierarchy for help. It has been suggested that you be whipped. I am inclined to agree. Except that I believe you have enough iron in you not to fail again.
“The Hierarchy grips the globed earth like a hand. Will it be your eternal disgrace to be remembered as the ones who sought to loosen, infinitesimally, one fingertip? I say ‘sought’ advisedly, because we watch over you more closely than you think, and stand ever ready if even the least of you should fail.
“Not to fail, is your affair!
“Go back to your sanctuaries.
“Do what you should have done long ago.
“Call upon your courage and resourcefulness.
“Fear is a weapon-for you to use, not for others to use against you.
“You have been trained in its use.
“Use it!
“And as for Sathanas, also our fosterling, our Lord of Evil, our black counterpart to our Great God”-he stole an ironic sidewise glance at Sercival, to see how the old Fanatic was taking this- “use him, too. Whip him from your towns if that seems expedient. But never, never again, stoop so low-low even as commoners!-as to believe in him!”
It was then-just as Goniface could see that the country priests had taken fire from his words and were beginning to burn with a desire to redeem themselves-that the laughter came. The walls of the Council Chamber were thick and proof against ordinary sound, yet still it came-evilly mirthful, uncanny peals.
It seemed to laugh at the Hierarchy-and at anyone who dared decree what is and what is not. The country priests paled and edged closer together. The haughty faces of the archpriests more or less successfully masked shock, apprehension, and a furious thinking as to what that noise might be and what it might portend. Frejeris looked suddenly at Goniface. Old Sercival began to tremble with what seemed a queer sort of fear and a queerer satisfaction. But it was in Goniface’s ears that the laughter thundered most shakingly and dismayingly. Thoughts flickered like wildfire across his mind.
But all the while he imperturbably fought to hold the eyes of the country priests, to oppose the influence of that unnerving laughter. And he succeeded, although the eyes grew wide with doubt.
The laughter echoed off, shudderingly.
“Your audience is at an end,” Goniface declared harshly. “Leave us!”
The country priests hurried off. It was only the swishing of their robes, but it sounded as if they were already whispering.
Old Sercival rose up like some ancient prophet, hand shakily extended toward Goniface. “That was the laughter of Sathanas! It is a judgment of the Great God upon you and the whole Hierarchy for centuries of hypocrisy and pretense! The Great God looses against the world his black dog Sathanas!”
And he sank back into his seat, trembling.
The Council shifted restlessly. Someone tittered contemptuously. Goniface felt throbbing through him the same strange, intoxicating pulsation he had felt years ago when the secret of his past had been within a hairbreadth of discovery. A fat little priest pressed through the tail end of the country delegation as it left the Chamber, and fairly scampered toward Goniface.
Goniface stopped him. “Make your report to the assembled Apex Council, Brother Chulian!”
The fat little priest’s cherubic mouth gaped like that of a fish. “The likeness of great hands cupped round Brother Jarles and carried him off! Sathanas spoke!”
“Your report!” Goniface commanded harshly. “The rest we can hear from others better able to tell it.”
The fat little priest dodged back as if water had been thrown in his face. He seemed for the first time to realize the presence of the Council. His piping voice grew subservient, his words terse.
“As instructed, I provoked the First Circle priest Brother Jarles to anger. I did this by ordering the Commoner Sharlson Naurya, whom Brother Jarles still regards emotionally, to serve in the Sanctuary. She, a well-known recalcitrant, with abnormal fear of the sanctuaries, refused. I then accused her of witchcraft, squeezing her shoulder to produce a witchmark. Brother Jarles struck me. We were both inviolable at the time. I was knocked down. Then I-“
“-your report ends, Brother Chulian,” Goniface finished for him. Across the ensuing silence Brother Frejeris’ voice rang more musically than before. “If all we are to hear consists of such rash and mischievous madness as this-aimed directly against the stability of the Hierarchy-I will not need to ask for Brother Goniface’s excommunication. Every archpriest will ask it for me.”
“You will hear all,” Goniface told him. “Hearing, you will understand.”
But he could tell that his words fell flat. Even in the faces of his own Realists he could discern suspicion and distrust. Brother Jomald gave him a look as if to say, “The party disclaims all responsibility in this matter. You must handle it yourself-if you can.”
The fat little priest seemed to want to say more. His cherubic mouth twitched anxiously. Goniface nodded to him.
“May I make an addition to my report, your reverence?”
“If it concerns your part in the action.” “It does, your resplendency. And it puzzles me. When I tore Sharlson Naurya’s smock to expose the witchmark, there were three such marks where I am sure my thumb and forefinger alone had rested.”
Goniface could have kissed the fat little priest. But his voice was faraway and musing as he replied. “And to think, Brother Chulian, that you might even now be a priest of the Third Circle, if you only had joined the virtue of deduction to the virtue of observation.” He shook his head regretfully. “Well, I will give you a chance to redeem yourself. After all, it was a most peculiar coincidence. Take another priest, now that you no longer have your partner Jarles, and arrest-the witch!”
The fat little priest goggled at him. “What witch, your dread resplendency?”
“Sharlson Naurya. And you had best be quick about it if you hope to catch her.”
Realization dawned in Brother Chulian’s babyblue eyes. He goggled for a moment longer. Then he spun around and scurried for the door.
But this time he had to stand aside for others. A meager spindly man in the black robe of a deacon strode with brassy self-assurance into the Council Chamber, followed by several priests bearing oddly shaped rolls and canisters.
He planted himself before the Council Table with his entourage of priests. He was a paragon of sallow ugliness, with bulging forehead and jutting ears like three-quarter saucers. Nevertheless, the inscrutable mask he preserved was a painstaking copy of that which confined the coldly handsome features of Goniface. He seemed to enjoy the animosity which greeted his appearance, as if he were well aware that though his birth prevented him from ever entering the priesthood, he was nevertheless more feared than many an archpriest.
“And what has your servant Cousin Deth to tell us?” demanded one of the Moderates-not Frejeris.
The sallow man bowed low. “Your awful, august, exalted unimpeachabilities,” he began with acid fawning. “I need make no verbal report. These unprejudiced witnesses will report for me.” He indicated the rolls and canisters. “A moving solidograph of all that transpired in the Great Square. A transcription of each word spoken by Brother Jarles, and, synchronized with both, a visigraphic record of the major neuro-emotional waves emitted by the crowd during his harangue. A graphic analysis, made at Cathedral Control Center, of the apparent physical nature of the shell which closed around Brother Jarles and carried him off. A transcription of the words and laughter that came at the end. With the usual supplements.” And he bowed again, so low that his black sleeves swept the floor.
“We care not for your pretty pictures!” cried the same Moderate who had spoken before, face red with anger. “We want your story of what finally happened, Deacon!”
Goniface noted that Frejeris was unsuccessfully signing the man to keep quiet and not waste their advantage in petty outbursts. Cousin Deth, quite unabashed, looked inquiringly at Goniface, who nodded to him.
“All went as planned, as the records show,” Deth began, the ghost of a cynical smile playing around his slitlike mouth. “At the end a mottled sphere, suggestive of hands, cupped around the priest. It sustained for an appreciable time the full power of the Great God’s wrath. We were able to study it. Then it shot off, escaping us by a hair breadth. For we had angels held in readiness to pursue, as you commanded.” And he bowed toward Goniface, with oat mockery. “We know the quarter in which it vanished, and a search is now in progress.”
Instantly Goniface rose, motioning Deth to approach the table and prepare the records for viewing.
Now was the proper moment, felt Goniface. Deth’s words had angered all of them, but the Moderates most, while the Realists had been impressed in spite of themselves. He addressed the Council.
“Archpriests of Earth, it had been said: ‘As Megatheopolis goes, so goes the planet.’ But to turn that aphorism to practical use, we must know in what direction Megatheopolis is going before it goes!
“No government that calls itself realistic can neglect to answer that question.
“What archpriest here, saving perhaps you, Brother Sercival, believed that an enemy would openly strike at Megatheopolis itself?
“I did not so believe. But I wanted to find out. That was one of the reasons for the experiment in the Great Square.
“Brothers, you have the answer. Sathanas came.
“No longer can we deny that our fosterling, the Witchcraft, conceals an enemy-an enemy daring and dangerous.
“No longer can we deny that, within the debased Witchcraft which we tolerate, there is another Witchcraft, which seeks to use the weapon of fear, not only against commoners, but against priests. There is reason to believe that the members of this Inner Witchcraft may be identified by certain marks on their bodies. They show themselves cunning and resourceful.
“No longer can we dismiss as some trifling case of mass hysteria the Matter of the Frightened Priests. To give them courage, I told them it might be merely a test we had imposed upon them. But all of you know that three of our Fifth Circle scientists have admitted themselves baffled by those manifestations in the rural sanctuaries.”
Goniface paused. The Moderates seemed angrier than ever. Plain talk of danger always angered them. But the Realists were listening. The look in Brother Jomald’s face had become one of grudging admiration.
“To return to the question: ‘How goes Megatheopolis?’
“Brothers, there is only one way to find out. Only one way to discover the true temper of the commoners. The closest observation of them in their normal round of life is insufficient. So are psychological tests. The one sure way, the only sure way, is to foment a sizable minor crisis and study it intensively.”
The angriest Moderate started to get up. Frejeris forestalled him-with a certain unhappiness, as if he realized that they could no longer defeat Goniface by a straightforward attack.
“One does not fight fire by throwing oil on it,” he began.
“One does!” Goniface countered. “Oil is more penetrating than water. There is a kind of hidden, smoldering fire which only oil can reach and which lacks sufficient oxygen to ignite the oil. Such a fire, Brothers, smolders in the hearts of our commoners. And the force operating against us from under cover of the witchcraft is another such fire, hidden but dangerous.
“To discover the secret temper of our commoners, to provide them with the instructive example of a priest blasted for blasphemy-or, in lieu of that, as actually happened, to lure the enemy into the open-I fomented a crisis.
“And now, archpriests of Megatheopolis, I give you a faithful recording of that crisis, for your contemplation and study, with a view to preventing the truly serious ones to come.
“After you have seen it, excommunicate me, if you still want to.”
While Goniface spoke, Cousin Deth’s assistants had worked a change in the seemingly fleckless surface of the Council table. A circular depression about six feet across had appeared in the center. To one side were grouped smaller depressions, and certain slots had become apparent. The rolls and canisters had all disappeared-been inserted in the appropriate orifices. Deth had touched a control and, while Goniface had been speaking, the pearly Council Chamber had slowly darkened, through an imperceptible series of grays. Now came utter blackness. With the suddenness of creation a miniature scene sprang into being in the center of the table. Only an occasional mistiness, and a slight blurring when many figures were grouped together, testified that it was only a projection-a focusing of the patterns recorded on multiple tapes whirling noiselessly.
Pygmy figures in home-woven drab, scarlet-robed dolls of priests, tiny horses, carts, and wares, all complete-a sizable portion of the Great Square, without the surrounding architecture. Only now, instead of the Great God, the archpriests of the Apex Council brooded over it. Up from the smaller depressions rose stubby columns of light-yellow, green, blue, violet-fluctuating slightly but incessantly in height and saturation of color-indicative of the massed changes in the major neuro-emotional responses of the crowd. There rose the hum and babble of pygmy voices, the clatter of tiny hoofs, the squeak of wooden wheels.
The scene in the Great Square was repeating itself.
Cousin Deth thrust his now-giant arm into the moving solidograph, momentarily intensifying, then shattering the illusion. His fingers negligently poked at and into two tiny red-robed figures.
“Jarles and Chulian,” he explained. “In a few moments we’ll give you their voices in full intensity.”
Goniface leaned back with satisfaction. He was studying the expressions on the faces of the peering archpriests-eerily lit masks seeming to hang against the distanceless blackness beyond the table. But now and then he looked at the solidograph.
It was at the moment of the first accusation of witchcraft-the violet column concerned with fear, repulsion, and similar emotions had jumped abruptly and gone wan-that he chanced to note her face.
Almost, he jerked forward and grabbed at it.
But he caught himself in time and only leaned forward idly, as if it were his momentary fancy to take a closer look.
It couldn’t be.
But there it was. That little coldly purposeful face, more perfect than any cameo, with its dark, finespun doll’s hair. Not identically the same, of course, as the one printed in his memory. But if you allowed for the years and the maturing the years would have brought-
Geryl. Knowles Geryl.
But Chulian had referred to her by another name-
Sharlson Naurya.
A long-locked door in Goniface’s mind groaned and reverberated, straining against the hinges with a formless pressure from the other side.
He looked across the table toward the yellowish caricature that was Deth’s face in the darkness, caught the beady black eyes. Deth melted backward, was gone. Goniface stood up quietly and walked behind the chairs, as though he were tired of sitting. Then he moved away from the table.
He sensed Deth’s presence beside him, caught the thin, bony wrist in his hand, and whispered very faintly into Deth’s ear:
“The woman I sent Chulian to arrest. Sharlson Naurya. Find her. Take her from Chulian if he has her. But find her. Make her my secret prisoner.”
And then, like an afterthought. “Unharmed, mind you, at least until I have seen and spoken with her.”
In the darkness Cousin Deth smiled crookedly.