Jason nodded. He was concentrating just hard enough to bring a small frown line into being between his eyebrows. But otherwise his face was still relaxed and happy.
“Essentially what you’ve just been told,” Hal said, “is that Nigel Bias, or people designated by him, will decide not only what’s right for you, but what you’ll want to do; and you’ve agreed that this would be a good thing. Because of that, you’ve now joined those who’ve already made that agreement with him; those who were until an hour ago your enemies, in that they were trying to destroy the faith you’ve held to all your life …”
The slight frown was deepening between Jason’s brows and the happiness on his face was being replaced by a strained expression. Hal talked on; and when at last he stopped, Jason was huddled on the other seat, turned as far away from Hal as the close confines of the booth would allow, with his face hidden in his hands.
Hal sat, feeling miserable himself, and tried to drink his coffee. The silence between them continued, until finally Jason heaved a long, shivering sigh and dropped his hands. He turned a face to Hal that looked as if it had not slept for two nights.
“Oh, God!” he said.
Hal looked back at him, but did not try to say anything.
“I’m unclean,” said Jason. “Unclean!”
“Nonsense,” said Hal. Jason’s eyes jumped to his face; and Hal made himself grin at the other. “What was that I seem to remember hearing when I was
young—and you must’ve remembered hearing, too— about the sin of pride? What makes you feel you’re particularly evil in having knuckled under to the persuasion of Nigel Bias?”
“I lacked faith!” said Jason.
“We all lack faith to some extent,” Hal said. “There are probably some men and women so strong in their faith that Bias wouldn’t have been able to touch them. I had a teacher once . . . but the point is, everyone else in that room gave in to him, the same way you did.”
“You didn’t.”
“I’ve had special training,” said Hal. “That’s what I was telling you just now, remember? What Nigel Bias did, he succeeded in doing because he’s also had special training. Believe me, someone without training would have had to have been a very remarkable person to resist him. But for someone with training, it was . . . relatively easy.”
Jason drew another deep, ragged breath.
“Then I’m ashamed for another reason,” he said bleakly.
“Why?” Hal stared at him.
“Because I thought you were a spy, planted on me by the Accursed of God, when they decided to hold me captive. When we heard Howard Immanuelson had died of a lung disease in a holding station on Coby, we all assumed his papers had been lost. The thought that someone else of the faith could find them and use them —and his doing it would be so secret that someone like myself wouldn’t know—that was stretching coincidence beyond belief. And you were so quick to pick up the finger speech. So I was going to pretend I was taken in by you. I was going to bring you with me to some place where the other brothers and sisters of the faith could question you and find out why you were
sent and what you knew about us.”
He stared burningly at Hal.
“And then you, just now, brought me back from Hell—from where I could never have come back without you. There was no need for you to do that if you had been one of the enemy, one of the Accursed. How could I have doubted that you were of the faith?”
“Quite easily,” said Hal. “As far as bringing you back from Hell, all I did was hurry up the process a little. The kind of persuasion Nigel Bias was using only takes permanently with people who basically agree with him to begin with. With those who don’t, his type of mind-changing gets eaten away by the natural feelings of the individual until it wears thin and breaks down. Since you were someone opposed enough to him to fight him, the only way he could stop you permanently would be to kill you.”
“Why didn’t he then?” said Jason. “Why didn’t he kill all of us?”
“Because it’s to his advantage to pretend that he only opens people’s eyes to the right way to live,” said Hal, hearing an echo of Walter the Inteacher in the words even as he said them. He had not consciously stopped to think the matter out, but Jason’s question had automatically evoked the obvious answer. “Even his convinced followers feel safer if he is always right, always merciful. What he did with us, there, wasn’t because we were important, but because the two men with him on the platform were important—to him. There’re really only a handful of what you call the Belial-spawn, compared to the trillions of people on the fourteen worlds. Those like Nigel don’t have the time, even if they felt like it, to control everyone personally. So, whenever possible they use the same sort of social mechanisms that’ve been used down the cen-
turies when a few people wanted to command many.”
Jason sat watching him.
“Who are you, Howard?” he asked.
“I’m sorry.” Hal hesitated. “I can’t tell you that. But I should tell you you’ve no obligation to call me brother. I’m afraid I lied to you. I’m not of the faith, as you call it. I’ve got nothing to do with whatever organization you and those with you belong to. But I am at war with Nigel Bias and his kind.”
“Then you’re a brother,” said Jason, simply. He picked up his own cold coffee cup and drank deeply from it. “We—those the Accursed call the Children— are of every sect and every possible interpretation of the Idea of God. Your difference from the rest of us isn’t any greater than our differences from each other. But I’m glad you told me this, because I’ll have to tell the others about you when we reach them.”
“Can we reach them?” asked Hal.
“There’s no problem about that,” said Jason. “I’ll make contact in town here with someone who’ll know where the closest band of warriors is, right now; and we’ll join them. Out in the countryside we of the faith still control. Oh, they chase us, but they can’t do more than keep us on the move. It’s only here, in the cities, that the Belial-spawn and their minions rule.”
He slid to the end of the booth and stood up.
“Come along,” he said.
Out in the coldly damp air of the street, they located a callbox and coded for an autocab. In succession, they visited a clothing store, a library and a gymnasium, without Jason’s recognizing anyone he trusted enough to ask for help. Their fourth try brought them to a small vehicle custom-repair garage in the northern outskirts of Citadel.
The garage itself was a dome-like temporary struc-
ture perched in an open field out where residences gave way to small personal farm-plots rented by city dwellers on an annual basis. It occupied an open stretch of stony ground that was its own best demonstration of why it had not been put to personal farming the way the land around it had. Inside the barely-heated dome, the air of which was thick with the faintly banana-like smell of a local tree oil used for lubrication hanging like an invisible mist over the half-dismantled engines of several surface vehicles, they found a single occupant—a square, short, leathery man in his sixties, engaged in reassembling the rear support fan of an all-terrain fourplace cruiser.
“Hilary!” said Jason, as they reached him.
“Jase—“ said the worker, barely glancing up at them. “When did you get back?”
“Yesterday,” said Jason. “The Accursed put us up overnight in their special hotel. This is Howard Immanuelson. Not of the faith, but one of our allies. From Coby.”
“Coby?” Hilary glanced up once more at Hal. “What did you do on Coby?”
“I was a miner,” said Hal.
Hilary reached for a cleansing rag, wiped his hands, turned about and offered one of them to Hal.
“Long?” he asked.
“Three years.”
Hilary nodded.
“I like people who know how to work,” he said. “You two on the run?”
“No,” said Jason. “They turned us loose. But we need to get out into the country. Who’s close right now?”
Hilary looked down at his hands and wiped them once more on his cloth, then threw the cloth in a
wastebin.
“Rukh Tamani,” he said. “She and her people’re passing through, on their way to something. You know Rukh?”
“I know of her,” said Jason. “She’s a sword of the Lord.”
“You might connect up with them. Want me to give you a map?”
“Please,” said Jason. “And if you can supply us—“