look at that big flat-topped guy between the two thinner ones. See which one I
mean?”
“I see it,” Abaquaan said, looking at his own screen. “Flares primed for
proximity bursts at five-zero and five-zero meters; belly light activated;
vertical optical scan selected and routed to pilot’s screen one.”
The flyer slowed to hover motionless in the gloom, and a few seconds later two
brilliant white lights blossomed a short distance below it revealing the squat
hilltop that its radar fingers had probed invisibly. The summit was reasonably
smooth, free of cracks and fissures, and uncluttered by boulders or loose
debris. The searchlight came on to pick out a landing spot and hold it in steady
illumination, and then the flyer began to sink slowly downward once more to
complete the final few hundred feet of its descent.
“What manner of omen is this?” Groork whispered fearfully to himself as he sat
petrified, staring up at two radiant orbs of purest violet that had appeared in
the sky above the mountaintop moments after the voices had gone quiet. “By the
Lifemaker!” he gasped. A flying creature, similar to the one he had seen over
Xerxeon but glowing with blinding light, and much larger, was floating over the
mountain, above the orbs. It was sinking slowly toward the ground, balanced on a
column of violet radiance. The orbs were descending steadily too, all the time
keeping ahead of the creature as if to clear its way—harbingers of light sent on
before the heavenly beast to conduct it from its sacred realm beyond the sky.
The creature descended out of sight, and shortly afterward a halo of violet
light appeared and continued to glow softly among the rocks at the summit.
What did it mean? Was it a sign for Groork to ascend the mountain or a warning
for him to turn back? Would he risk being smitten for presumptuous arrogance if
he went forward, or smitten for self-serving disobedience and cowardice if he
went back? For a fleeting moment he wished his brother Thirg were present;
blasphemer or not, Thirg’s unholy methods of argument could prove useful in
situations like this. And then Groork remembered the message he had been given
at the time of his being commanded to leave Xerxeon: Soon he would be told of
the path that it was the Lifemaker’s will for him to follow. The ways of the
Lifemaker were sometimes mysterious and devious, but they were never misleading
or capricious.
So now, it seemed, the moment had come.
With a mixture of wonder, trepidation, and excitement rising within him at every
step, Groork urged his mount off” the trail he had been following and began to
pick his way upward. When the smoother terrain gave way to steeper ice crags and
broken rock, he dismounted near some mountain scrub growing by a stream,
tethered his animal to a bar of a conduit-support trellis beside a clump of
tubing winders, and climbed on foot toward the mystical light beckoning to him
from the summit.
“So what does Gerry think he can do about it?” Zambendorf asked. Vernon Price
shrugged in his seat across the cabin. “He’s not sure yet. What can you do? Try
and get the message across to as many Taloids as you can about what’s behind it
all and why, maybe… Then perhaps enough of them will wise up sufficiently to
throw out the leaders who’d go along with Giraud’s deal. In a word, you educate
them, I guess.”
Zambendorf shook his head. “It’s no good, Vernon. It won’t work.”
Price shuffled his feet awkwardly, as if deep down he already knew that. “How
come?” he asked anyway.
“Because the Taloids are too much like people—they believe what they want to
believe and close their eyes to what they don’t want to believe. They need to
think the world is the way they’d like it to be because having to face up to the
reality that it isn’t would be too uncomfortable. So they carry on pretending
because it makes them feel better.”
Price frowned for a second. “I’m not sure I see the connection.” <> “When you
look around at the leaders people follow and take orders from unquestioningly,