IN the pearly gray chamber of the Apex Council Goniface watched Brother Frejeris rise to accuse him, The Moderate’s voice had a silky note. “Do I rightly understand your purpose in having your servant Cousin Deth bring those instruments here?”
With a wave of his hand, he indicated an arrangement of gleaming apparatus before the Council table. A chair, with attachments for confining the sitter, was a chief feature. Engaged in testing the apparatus was a group of Fourth Circle technicians, under the direction of Cousin Deth. Goniface nodded.
“Torture!” Frejeris enunciated the word with indignation. “Have we become barbarians, as threatened in the Golden Age, that we stoop to such brutality?”
The idea of brutality actually shocks him, thought Goniface amusedly. I wonder what name he has for the toil we exact of the commoners, and the penances we impose on them?
Frejeris continued, “Our Brother Goniface all of a sudden informs us that his agents have apprehended a group of individuals who, he tells us, are dangerous to the Hierarchy. His agents have done this without the knowledge or consent of the Apex Council, in direct violation of all procedures. Now he tells us that these private captives of his are members of the New Witchcraft. On top of all that, disregarding the scientific methods we have at hand for extracting truth, he proposes that they be questioned under physical torture and-again secretly-makes arrangements for it. Why, I ask the Council, this reversion to barbarism?
“I will tell you why,” Frejeris continued after a dramatic pause. His magnificent voice deepened in timbre and grew more vibrant. “And in so doing I will reveal Goniface as a ruthless upstart, seeking to seize absolute power. I will show you that he has organized a hierarchy within the Hierarchy, a clique of deacons and priests loyal only to himself. I will prove to you that he is taking advantage of this matter of the Witchcraft and exaggerating the danger it represents, in order to foment a worldwide crisis and seize power in defiance of precedent, with the excuse that he does it to save the Hierarchy!”
With a sweeping glance up and down the table, Frejeris prepared to launch into a detailed accusation.
He never began it. The archpriest Jomald, bellwether of the Realists, rose and said simply, as if it were a very ordinary matter, “The archpriest Frejeris has placed the Hierarchy in grave danger by obstructing and delaying action against the Witchcraft. If left free to his own devices, he will continue to do so. His motives are highly suspect. I ask for his immediate excommunication for the space of a year. I further ask that the matter be brought at once to a vote.”
Frejeris glared at him with a cold and supercilious disdain, as if outraged merely by the unprecedented discourtesy of the interruption.
“I second that!” lean Brother Sercival snapped unexpectedly, from where he sat beside Goniface.
Even the old Fanatic plays along with us, thought Goniface. And still Frejeris stood there uncomprehending, as if waiting for the rude interruptions to come to an end, so he could get on with his oration. He was a magnificently stately man. His own Moderates understood what was happening before he did. Ominously for him, they looked more frightened than indignant.
“Are there any objections to bringing the matter to a vote?” asked Jomald. His voice was like the rap of a gavel.
Very slowly, very hesitatingly, one of the Moderates started to rise to his feet, glancing uneasily up and down the table. What he saw there caused him to change his mind. He sank back, avoiding Frejeris’ eyes.
Only then did Frejeris understand. To his credit, it did not break his calm. His large, handsome face lost nothing of its statuesque quality.
One after another, clenched fists were laid on the gleaming table. Frejeris glanced haughtily at the archpriests who thus voted against him, but more with the air of a man who rebukes discourtesy than that of a priest facing excommunication.
At the end, not one hand had been laid palm downward to indicate a negative vote, and only two Moderates had abstained-and they looked acutely uncomfortable.
“Execute the sentence!” cried Jomald to the group of Fourth Circle technicians. Several archpriests betrayed surprise, only now realizing how closely everything had been planned.
But still Frejeris preserved his calm. The Moderates to either side of him shrank away, but he did not flinch. Like a marble statue he stood there.
And like a marble statue he was toppled down. Invisible emanations played upon him, establishing blocks in his sensory nerves. The optical nerves were the first to be affected. Gropingly, he raised his hands to his blinded eyes, but before they could reach them, his tactual sense was gone. Equilibrium went with the rest. He swayed forward and fell heavily across the table-a table he could no longer feel.
More helpless than a baby he sprawled there, an insensate ruin, excommunicated from the universe as well as from the Hierarchy, shut off from all sensory contact, doomed for a year to the private hell of his own thoughts-a year that would be an eternity, for there would be in it no way to measure time.
And even as lesser priests were stepping forward to remove the fallen leader, Brother Jomald spoke again.
“I further ask that power to use all our resources against the common enemy be vested in the archpriest Goniface, that he be declared World Hierarch, until the Witchcraft is no longer a menace to us. During this period the Apex Council will function as his chief advisory board.”
That motion, too, was passed without a single dissenting vote. Even old Sercival, who might have been expected to cling grimly to independence, went with the rest. Goniface, who had not spoken a word all this time, made no comment. He simply rose and said: “Bring in our prisoners. Let the questioning begin.”
This brought an unanticipated objection from the Fanatic Sercival. His parchment face was the incarnation of zealous hatred.
“I beg you, your supreme eminence, let us have no traffic of any sort with the agents of Sathanas! If you certify that they are witches, let them instantly be slain!
They are too foul a blemish on creation to let exist.
“I voted to give you supreme power,” continued Sercival, “because I consider you a strong man, willing and able to fight ruthlessly against the Lord of Evil. No quarter to his witches, I say!”
“I have heard you,” Goniface told Sercival coolly. “You will not find me sparing the enemy. But it is necessary to question them.”
Reluctantly Sercival sat down. “I still say they should be slain,” he muttered doggedly. But attention shifted away from him to the captured witches being escorted into the Chamber under a heavy guard of deacons. With feigned casualness the archpriests made the most of their first opportunity to study the enemy face to face.
The first impression was reassuring. The prisoners were all dressed alike in coarsewoven, scanty tunics. And they actually seemed dirty! Moreover, the fact that they did not struggle at all or resist in any way the ungentle and unnecessary shoving and jerking to which the deacons subjected them, had the appearance of servility. There could be nothing to fear from such a ragamuffin crew as these! Why, they looked like a road gang-except that most of them were women. A few of the women seemed moderately pretty-might even be rather fetching if decently groomed and clothed in the appealing garb of the sisterhood. But as they were now, these supposedly potent enemies resembled nothing so much as a crew of the humblest menials. The second impression was not so reassuring. The individual faces were obviously more sensitive and intelligent than those of the average run of commoners. What had passed at first glance for oafishness became on closer inspection a brooding thoughtfulness. And there was a subtle air of solidarity, of mutual loyalty, about them, so that they seemed to stand firmly together as a group-and this impression was only heightened by their garb. Likewise, it became apparent that they did not so much submit frightenedly to the rough handling they were getting, as ignore it because their minds were concentrated on other matters.
That impression of brooding thoughtfulness was the most intangibly disturbing. One got the feeling that they were communing with powers outside the Council Chamber. On the whole, however, it was the first impression that predominated. The other was only a lurking afterthought.
With a toss of his dwarfishly large head, Cousin Deth signed to a Second Circle clerk to begin the proceedings. From the very instant that Goniface had been granted dictatorial powers, the little deacon had dropped the mask from his features, so that all his emotions registered there in naked ugliness. His bold glances toward the Apex Council said more plainly than words, “I am the second man in the Hierarchy now.”
From the luminous face of a reading-tape projector, the clerk recited to the prisoners a brief indictment that was also a conviction.
“You have been apprehended while conspiring against the Hierarchy, under the guise and pretense of witchcraft. If any one of you will stand forward now and make a full confession of guilt, holding back nothing, that one will be spared the torture.”
Abruptly one of the women began to tremble and shake spasmodically, her head thrown sharply back, her eyes closed. Swiftly her movements became more violent. Her neck muscles stood out sharply, and her knees were bent as if she were bracing herself with a great effort. It was as if something invisible were shaking her. Suddenly she fell down and frothed at the mouth like an epileptic.
“Lord, protect us!” she screamed, writhing convulsively on the floor. “Sathanas, aid thy servants!”
A vast wolfish shape materialized from the misty gray of the walls at the other end of the Chamber. Its eyes were like two sooty hearths filled with dying embers. Toward the Council table it stalked, big as a house, the very incarnation of skulking, slavering destruction. The archpriests had risen. Several of them could not conceal their emotions. The lesser priests also shrank back involuntarily.
“Dissolve it!” Goniface called sharply to Cousin Deth. Then he rose, too. “The thing is only a telesolidographic projection-as all of you must realize!” The last phrase was directed bitingly at his fellow archpriests. Almost he wished Frejeris were still among them. The pompous Moderate at least knew how to put up a front.
Partially reassured, the archpriests noted that there was indeed a certain transparency to the advancing monster, so you could dimly see through it to the wall beyond; and it was a ghostly slaver that dripped in ropes from the gigantic jaws. Moreover, the great paws with their foot-long nails seemed sometimes to step a little above the floor and sometimes a little below. Then Deth’s technicians got the range of it and it began swiftly to melt away. Whole sections of the body disappeared instantaneously, leaving only a few remnants which their instruments had not caught at the first focusing. True, there was something hellishly suggestive, almost worse than the original, about those remnants-an ear tuft here, a paw there, a patch of dirty fur coarser than grass, and the smoky hellhole of an eye. But in the main the results were very helpful to priestly morale.
“There was, of course, no need to dissolve it,” said Goniface coldly. “I merely wished to demonstrate conclusively its solidographic nature. Our Fourth Circle brethren were able to dissipate it with the recently invented polyfrequency neutralizer. The thing was purely photonic in nature and yielded quickly to an application of the principle of interference. All phantasms employed by the so-called New Witchcraft are of a similar sort. To put a complete stop to them, it will only be necessary to discover and destroy the hidden projectors-merely a matter of time, even without the information that will soon be at our disposal.” He glanced significantly at the group of witches.
“We could with the greatest ease insulate this chamber-or the whole Sanctuary-from such projections. But there is no need. Our research scientists are sure that it is impossible to transmit physically injurious frequencies and intensities. Should we insulate the Sanctuary, it would give the false impression that we are afraid.” His next words were very definite. “I command every priest and deacon here to take no notice whatever of any projections directed into this chamber.”
And he sat down-instantly to become aware of a slight sultriness and of the fact that everything in the Chamber had turned bright-red and become exceedingly foggy and indistinct. Disobeying the command they had just been given, most of the archpriests sprang up and crowded to either end of the table, away from Goniface. For where their World Hierarch had been sitting, there.now sat a huge red devil, whose shaggy red legs seemed poked through the table itself, and whose great horned head swung from side to side, grinning down at them with fiendish mirth. Coiled up monkeylike over his shoulder was a thick red tail ending in a vicious barb. In the interior of the redness, the figure of Goniface could be made out hazily, like an insect embedded in cloudy amber.
He stood up and for a moment his head emerged from the redness. Then the devil stood up, too. There was a commotion among the witches. They had dropped to their knees and many of them were calling out adoringly, “Master! Master!”
Old Sercival raised a shaky hand. His glittering eyes rolled confusedly. He seemed not so much frightened as indignant.
“What does this mean?” he cried. “Have we voted for Sathanas himself?”
Deth’s technicians also disobeyed the command. Swinging their projector around, they stripped the solidographic projection from Goniface. First his head emerged, then the rest of his body. He looked very grim.
But even as that happened, there came a startled cry from the deacons. An inky cloud of darkness had suddenly engulfed the kneeling witches, billowing ever wider, threatening to fill the whole chamber. From the cloud emerged deacon guards, hands stretched ahead of them, hastily groping their way.
“Wrath rods!” called Goniface, even as the black cloud lapped dangerously close to the technicians and their instruments. “Swing them into the darkness at waist level. If it doesn’t dissipate, keep going all the way through. No neutralizer can counteract their energy!”
Beams of violet flame spattered against the gray walls of the Chamber, swinging in toward the darkness. The cloud seemed to make a last despairing effort, thrusting out an inky pseudopod toward the door of the chamber. But the wrath rays touched it, cut into it. Abruptly the cloud vanished and the wrath rays halted.
“If any further solidographic projections are introduced into the Chamber, witches will be slain!” Goniface announced harshly. “For every such projection, five witches!”
“Are you not going to slay them all, immediately?” demanded old Sercival. “I only now heard you order that they be slain with rods of wrath, as I advised from the first.”
“It was merely a device on my part, your reverence,” Goniface answered curtly. “These are worldly matters which it is doubtless difficult for your saintly nature to comprehend!”
At this rebuke, Sercival subsided, though muttering and shaking his head. It was apparent that several other archpriests would have been relieved to see the Fanatic’s advice followed.
“Begin the questioning!” ordered Goniface.
Two deacons singled out one of the witches and led her toward the chair by which Cousin Deth was standing. She was a fair young woman, but very frailly built for a commoner. Her skin had a waxy quality and her features were peaked.
She went quietly until they reached the chair. Then she struggled like a wild animal, biting and scratching. But as soon as she had been secured, this spasm left her. The clerk read out: “Mewdon Chemmy-for that, although you deny it, is the name by which you have been identified-it is my duty to advise you to answer all questions truthfully and satisfactorily. Otherwise you will put us to the unpleasant necessity of influencing you to make an answer. Past cultures have used all manner of devices to induce pain-the rack, the wheel, the boot, the dental drill and a host of others. But the Hierarchy is merciful and is not pleased by mutilation. Therefore its priests have devised a means of producing all the same sensations of those varied tortures by direct stimulation of the nerves that transmit the sensation of pain. Thus the same results are achieved without any injury to the bodily organism, save it come through shock or convulsion. There is this further advantage-the torture need not be interrupted for fear that injury to the tissues will result in death.”
The clerk sat down.
Leisurely Cousin Deth walked forward a few paces, then suddenly turned on the witch.
“What is your name?” he asked.
There was a pause. Then, faintly, the voice of the witch, “The servants of Sathanas are nameless.”
Cousin Deth laughed. It was unpleasant to think that he had been repressing such laughter for many years. He said,
“You have been identified as Mewdon Chemmy, commoner of the Eleventh Ward, trained in the coloring of pottery, wife of Mewdon Rijard. Do you deny this?”
No answer.
“Very well, Mewdon Chemmy. You are accused of conspiring to overthrow the Hierarchy.”
“Your clerk said more than that.” The voice was faint, but very clear. “He said that I-all of us-already stood convicted.”
“True, Mewdon Chemmy. But if your answers are satisfactory, it will save you pain. Precisely in what ways have you conspired against the Hierarchy?”
“I have followed the instructions of Sathanas.”
Deth laughed. “What instructions?”
“To make myself a vehicle for his supernatural volitions.
To practice the lore taught me. To curse and cast spells. To vex and torment those whom Sathanas points out to me.”
For a third time Cousin Deth made the sound that passed with him for laughter. “It may be that you are accustomed to use a nonsensical jargon to describe your activities. Understand, then, that it does not interest us. We want only material facts. What scientific procedures have you been taught?”
“I know nothing of such procedures. Being omnipotent, Sathanas has no need of them.”
Deth looked up from her to his chief technician. “Are you ready?” he asked. The priest nodded. A thick metallic canopy had been moved forward behind the chair. It fitted around the witch’s head like a cowl. Curving flanges followed the lines of her body. Deth looked again at the witch. “Thus far, in view of your tenderness and sex, we have been lenient with you, Mewdon Chemmy. That leniency will be cut short if you persist in childish evasions. Understand once and for all, we will waste no further time listening to meaningless babbling of Sathanas and other supernatural unrealities. I hardly need remind you that you are not dealing with credulous commoners.”
There was a stir at the Council Table. Such blunt, unsubtle talk was highly irregular. Old Sercival muttered indignantly. Several archpriests glanced questioningly at Goniface, but failed to catch his eye.
“However, Mewdon Chemmy, you still have a chance,”
Deth continued. “If you will give us the material facts, and if they are subsequently verified, we will deal mercifully with you.”
The witch’s face, shadowed by the metal hood, looked small as a child’s, pale as a ghost’s.
“How can you deal mercifully with me? You have admitted that the Hierarchy has no faith in the Great God. Could you loose me to tell that to commoners? Could you take the slightest risk of any of us revealing your shams?”
Deth triumphantly whipped his reply at her. “Now we are getting somewhere! At last you admit that all is scientific mummery?”
The silence in the Council Chamber was such that her whisper was plainly audible.
“Not so. For more than a century Sathanas has let you believe that, in order that your downfall may be the more complete and your torment the more tantalizing. Sathanas is! He rules supreme in the hell you call the cosmos!”
There was a stir at the Council Table. Goniface ignored it. He motioned to Deth.
“Mewdon Chemmy, we want facts!” cried the deacon harshly. “First, who is your real leader?”
“Sathanas.”
“Evasive babble! Let the pain enter the fingers of the left hand.”
With the words came an increase in the tension pervading the gray chamber. Rods of wrath were lifted warningly against the witches. But, eyes closed, they seemed to be repeating inaudible prayers to their dark divinity.
Then, from the metal shroud, came the faint sound of air sucked suddenly between teeth and tongue.
But Goniface, World Hierarch, did not hear it, although he was listening intently. For, at the same instant, he felt that the fingers of his left hand, hanging at his side, had been dipped in molten metal.
With a sudden and supreme effort of will he checked the impulse to jerk his hand upward, to writhe and cry out. With a continuation of the effort that was only less than the first effort itself, he glanced up and down the table. If he had made a betraying movement, none of the archpriests had noticed it.
“Mewdon Chemmy, who is your real leader?”
“Sathanas. Sathanas.” Rapid, breathy whispers.
Goniface let his glance slip downward. There was nothing unnatural about his hand, except the white knuckles and taut tendons. Slowly he moved it until it rested on the table. The searing pain was unabated.
“Let the pain creep into the wrist. Who, leaving aside the one you call Sathanas, is your leader?”
“He is- Give me strength, Sathanas!” A whimpering gasp. “He is Asmodeus!”
To Goniface, it was as if he had drawn on a red-hot gauntlet.
“Who is Asmodeus?”
“Sathanas, aid me! He is King of the Demons.”
“Into the arm! Who is Asmodeus?”
“King… of the Demons.”
“We know that Asmodeus is a man. What is his real name?”
“King-“ A choked scream. “May Sathanas burn you forever! I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Then Asmodeus is a man?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t know! Sathanas, burn them as they burn your servant!”
Goniface felt beads of sweat pricking his forehead, as the invisible incandescence lapped higher, and higher still.
He must think. Think!
“Mewdon Chemmy, who is Asmodeus? What is his name?”
“Don’t know… don’t know!”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“Yes. No! Yes! Mewdon Chemmy, Sathanas! Your faithful servant.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. A blackness! A blackness… and a voice.”
The beads of sweat were trickling down Goniface’s forehead in nervous little rushes. Only a little longer and the witch would break. And this impossible pain must have a source. Think!
“Very well, Mewdon Chemmy. We will leave Asmodeus for the moment. Where in Megatheopolis are the headquarters of the Witchcraft?”
“I don’t- where you captured us.”
“That was only a meeting place. You know I don’t mean that. Where are the real headquarters?”
“I don’t- there are none.”
“A lie! You know something, for you twice started to conceal it. Where are the real headquarters? Where is the scientific armament kept?”
“In the- there is no such armament. Sathanas does not need-“
“Into the shoulder!”
Agony groping upward, scalding. Think! Think! A commotion of some sort at the far end of the chamber. The high doors opening. And from the kneeling witches, a low, murmuring supplication, rhythmic, intense, like the beat of a muffled drum. “Sathanas, aid us. Sathanas, aid us.”
“Mewdon Chemmy, where are the headquarters? You are in the Great Square. You are going to the headquarters. You are walking toward a street. You are entering it. What street is it?”
“Of the Wea- No! No!” A whimpering scream.
“You are walking along the Street of the Weavers, Mewdon Chemmy. You smell wool. You hear the sound of the shuttle. You are walking. Now you are no longer in the Street of the Weavers. You have turned. Where?”
“No! No! It’s Mewdon Chemmy calling you, Sathanas!”
A group of priests were hurrying from the great door toward the council table, their scarlet robes flapping. Slowly, effortfully, Goniface rose, his left arm rigid at his side, the left shoulder stooped, as if he lifted a great weight.
“From the shoulder then-“
“Stop questioning!” ordered Goniface loudly, and with such a strained, mechanical enunciation that all stared at him.
Deth waited a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and motioned to the technicians. Relief came to Goniface with dizzying suddenness. An invisible torrent of ice water took his breath away. The whole chamber seemed to rock, and he gripped the table to keep from staggering.
“What is the matter?” he asked the newcomers, the laboriousness fading from his enunciation as he spoke. “Only the most urgent reason could justify your interruption.”
“The commoners are marching on the Sanctuary!” cried one. “They have left their work. All attempts to halt them have failed. Two deacons opened up with wrath rods in the Street of the Smithies, but were overwhelmed and torn to pieces. A priest of the First Circle who ordered them back was captured and mistreated. He is still in their power. Already they fill the Great Square. They demand to know why we do not smite down Sathanas and end the reign of terror. They cry, ‘What about the Witchcraft? What about the Witchcraft?’
They shout down any priest who seeks to reason with them.”
An alarmed murmuring flurried along the Council Table. Goniface heard an archpriest mutter,
“Warblasts! Sweep the Square!” He recognized one of the newcomers as being from Web Center and bid him speak.
“News of similar rioting is pouring in from half Earth’s cities. It looks like prearrangement. A mob broke into the Sanctuary of Neodelos. They were driven out, leaving many dead behind. From everywhere come pleas for instructions.”
Goniface spoke rapidly. “Unship the parasympathetics in the Cathedral and play them on the Square. By amplifier, proclaim tomorrow a holiday and announce that a Grand Revival will be held. There will be solemn supplications to the Great God, miracles will occur, and the Great God will vouchsafe a sure and infallible sign of the coming victory over Sathanas.”
To the priest from Web Center: “Relay the same instructions to all sanctuaries. Tell them to use all available parasympathetics, including the hand models in the confessional booths. If the crowds do not disperse after the announcement, deluge them with music. In no event must force be employed! If any sanctuary is mobbed, I will count it as a black mark against the incumbent priesthood. Instruct Neodelos, on pain of general excommunication, to hold solemn funeral for all slain commoners and convey home their bodies with the greatest pomp. Contact all sanctuaries, even those not asking instructions, and ascertain conditions. Inform them that detailed instructions for conducting the Grand Revival will be on their way by nightfall, Megatheopolis time. In two hours return me here a complete survey of the general situation.”
To a clerk: “Fetch me the records of all previous Grand Revivals, including moving solidographs of the last two.”
To another clerk: “Summon the Sixth Circle Faculty of Social Control. The Apex Council desires their advice. Send to the crypts and ask Brother Dhomas to attend me at his earliest convenience.”
To a third: “Inform the Fifth Circle Faculty of Physicists that a telesolidograph shield must be set up around the Great Square. All technical resources are placed at their command. They may requisition any and all apparatus. But the shield must be complete by dawn tomorrow.” To a fourth:
“Make further effort to contact the ship bringing reinforcements from Luciferopolis. If successful, inform it to make full speed.”
To Cousin Deth: “Return our prisoners to their cells. Confine them individually. Each must be watched continuously by at least two guards, and the guards watched in turn. Be prepared for the most fantastic attempts at rescue you can conceive. I hold you solely responsible.
“There will be a private session of the Apex Council.
Clear the Chamber!”
“Can you still intend not to slay the witches, your supreme eminence?” There was a fierce, though quavering note in the harsh voice of old Sercival. “The testimony of that wicked woman proved conclusively that they are agents of Sathanas. It is dangerous and foolhardy-and an offense against the Great God-to let them live longer.”
“It is essential that we obtain information from them,” Goniface answered sharply. “I only interrupted the questioning because there are weightier matters at hand. We must plan the Grand Revival.”
Sercival shook his head. A mad-or prophetic-glint seemed to enter his hawklike eyes. “It were better that we fall on our knees and ask pardon of the Great God for our long years of unbelief, and beg his mercy. Else I see darkness loom before us and doom for all!”
There was grim finality in Goniface’s reply. Your reverence’s mind is tired and confused. But I shall excommunicate the next priest who talks of failure or implies that there is any supernatural reality in Sathanas.”
From the witches departing under their doubled guards came a monotonous, murmurous chanting, faint yet seeming to fill the whole chamber.
“Thanks be to Sathanas. Thanks be to Sathanas. Thanks be to Sathanas.”