That embarrassed the captain, who changed the subject. “What about Krisha? Is she all right?”
“She’s had a rough time. She’s been hypnoed, gone through telepathic interrogation, the works. They’ve tried everything they have here to shake her, and they’ve failed. She has, in fact, impressed everyone except Mother Ming, who remains convinced that your priestess was reprogrammed by the Mycohl and sent back to destroy the faith. Ming is convinced, by the way, that you will not be granted audience.”
“She set the rules and made a formal charge on the record. She has no choice.”
“Yes, assuming your case actually gets to a Holy Angel. Once you two are off this ship you’re entirely in Church hands.”
“I have to trust that, having come this far, we will not be denied at this late date. When she made me a full member of the Inquisition I could hardly believe my ears. Nothing short of divine intervention could have given us such an opening.”
“I hope. you are right, Captain. I am much more comfortable going to war against demons than against the Mycohl, knowing the horrible price that would exact, and I relish civil war even less.”
“Well, I think the Mycohl will hold off. They’re scared, too. And at some point in the past they stopped worshiping devils and started worshiping themselves. I don’t like them; their empire is a taste, a pale imitation, of what Quintara rule would be. But I trust them to save their own necks. You are a good man, Commander. Avoid those black regions and obey your conscience and your beliefs. After this, someone else might have to be the most dangerous man in the Mizlaplan.”
Krisha looked as bad as she had in the Quintara city— drawn, thin, hollow-eyed, and somewhat battered—but her spirit was strong, and, characteristic of her, she was more concerned with him than with herself.
“Captain, you cannot do this!” she told him, her voice hoarse and rasping, a shadow of itself.
“It’s all right,” he responded. “Your life or mine means nothing in this. Only the goal matters.”
He hated Ming for what she’d done to Krisha, but he had some satisfaction in the fact that her worst efforts had not brolcen his priestess, and that the Holy Angel had commanded an audience with them. He was not surprised, once the word got through. To refuse him would be the same as saying to the ship and clergy that Holy Law was false; it had probably tied the Angel’s staff in knots trying to figure out a way to refuse, but ultimately they’d been forced to propose it, thus placing the Angel himself in the same position.
Now they descended to a peaceful, green world very similar to the one upon which all this had started three months—a lifetime—ago. Curiously, he felt no apprehension, just a sense of unreality, as if this were somehow all a dream.
“It was different with McCray,” Krisha whispered hoarsely. “He had to do it to save his soul. But you, Captain—they will destroy your mind as well as emasculate your body. Your wisdom already exceeds most of my teachers’, and you should be married, have many fine children.”
He had thought once about becoming a priest, actually, but he hadn’t wanted to pay the price, and the Mizlaplan needed nulls independent in thought and action more than it needed priests. How turns the Wheel of Life, he thought, still feeling distant from reality.
It was not a Terran world, although it had resembled one from the air. It was a thun world, peopled by purple lizard-like centauroids with recessed beak-like mouths in their chests. He wasn’t sure he’d ever run into any before, but he was unlikely to get to know them now. He had vainly hoped for a Terran world, or at least one of a half-dozen others, where he might have been able to get a cigar. If there was ever an excuse for smoking a cigar and sipping the best wines, this just had to be it.
The huge granite Temple, however, with its multiple onion domes and reddish-brown rock facing, made him forget anything else. How many times had he gone past one of these, or stared at them and wondered what was inside? Only priests went inside these temples, though, and if you weren’t one when you went in, you were when you came out.
The chief steward, resplendent in his bright, shiny golden robes and vestments, was a Minter, a creature with tentacles where the face should be and eyes on stalks growing from behind. Like many races, it needed a translator to pick up the t-band and translate it into standard speech, which made it sound like it was somewhat hollow and mechanical.
“The staff will take them and prepare them for their audienzzz,” the steward told Ming.
“I shall assist,” the Holy Mother responded. “I have some extra preparations I feel are necessary for the candidate.” She meant Chin.
“You shall wait here,” the steward responded. “You may uszz the prayer room if you wish.”
“I protest! I must aid in his preparation. As sector director of the Inquisition I—”
The steward cut her off. “Shut up!” he said curtly.
She was startled. “What?”
“Where do you think you are? Perhapzz you should review your vowzz,” the steward suggested. “Start with the onezz on obedienzz.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. She bowed low, turned, and left them, but with an angry, almost defiant stomping motion.
“Perhapzz she is no longer up to that job,” the steward said, really to himself, although the translator gave mutter-ings equal weight with statements. Gun Roh Chin repressed a smile and stood impassive, as did Krisha.
“Come,” said the steward, and led them back into the labyrinthine building that seemed so much larger inside than out. Not like the crystals of the stations, but impressively so nonetheless.
They put him through the usual, running him through everything from a germicidal shower to a scented bath, cropping his hair close, all that. Finally, they brought him to an anteroom where Krisha also waited, scented and with hair cut about as close as his. She still looked tired and drawn, and the bruises were coming in clearly, but she’d come too far to surrender now.
“Nervous?” she asked him, her voice much better. They must have given her something to help,
“Yes,” he admitted. All his life he’d seen the great gray statues of the Holy Angels and been taught of their presence on world after world, but he had never really expected to see one in the flesh. Of course, he’d never expected to encounter a Mycohl master, either. At least not encounter one—better to part as comrades than as occupied territory.
Up to now he’d always wondered if he was immune even from the powers of an Angel. Now he knew at least he was immune from the powers of devils, and impenetrable to Tobrush as well.
The statues were always idealized, of course, but they were so damned ugly. He hoped he could keep a reverential posture.
After what seemed like an eternity, the great door opened and the steward emerged. “Krisha the Holy Mendoro,” he said. “His Eminence grants you audience.” Chin started to
get up as well, but the steward stopped him. “Not you yet. Just her.”
He didn’t like it, but it was their turf—her turf, too, he had to remember. She bowed, made the sign of the upward triangle, and followed the steward in. The door shut with a sound that echoed down the hallways and sounded like the clap of doom.
A few silent and nail-biting minutes later, the door opened again and the steward emerged, but shut the door behind him. “Wait,” he told the captain. “You will be called.” He then left and went down the hall and out of sight.
The silence dragged on and he began to feel very nervous and very antsy. He wanted to get it over with. Besides, if this dragged on much longer he was going to need a toilet.
Finally the door opened, and Krisha emerged. For a moment he was happy to see her, but then he stopped. There was something very odd about her, something very different. She moved almost like a—a puppet, hollow-eyed, somewhat jerky in her motions.
“Enter,” she said in a tone that sent chills down his spine.
He got up, said prayers not only to the gods but to his ancient ancestors, and followed her in. The door shut again with an ominous sound.
It was incredibly hot and humid inside the thing, and the atmosphere seemed thick with a mixture that made him slightly giddy. The place was filled with strange and exotic plants and beautiful alien flowers of a sort he’d never seen. In a way, it was almost a jungle, with the rush of water somewhere, and only the ceiling and special lights reminded him that it was indeed inside a building.
And in the center of it all, on a raised dais that might have been solid gold, sitting on an ornate, jewel-encrusted throne, was a Holy Angel, its skin not dull granite gray but harvest gold, a magnificent hue. And it was still ugly as sin.
The Angel was more head than anything else; a great squared head filled with deep golden wrinkles and folds of skin, with five short, spindly tentacles coining from the top of its head. There were five eyes as well, all blazing crimson, on short stalks coming out of its forehead; its nose was nothing but a single hole in the center, and below, an enormous mouth was fed by nasty-looking mandibles with sharp, plant-like points. The body for the great head was incredibly small, the limbs withered and merely vestigial remains of what had first evolved in that homeland that bred them. Clearly the creature was incapable of moving on its own, possibly even of feeding itself. It didn’t have to. Long ago it had developed the overpowering means to make any enemy, any predator, into its worshipful, adoring slave.
Krisha, one of those, walked back up near the throne, turned, and faced the captain. For his part, he stopped, bowed as low as he could, and remained that way.
He felt that same slight nausea and dizziness that he’d felt among the Quintara and in the crystal cave, but nothing more. Clearly nulls were the most dangerous people in the Mizlaplan.
“Stand erect, Gun Roh Chin,” Krisha ordered in that same eerie voice, and he did so, realizing at that moment that the Angel, clearly incapable of the kind of speech a Terran could understand, was operating, both telepathically and hypnotically, through Krisha. For all practical purposes right now, Krisha, rather than the creature on the throne, was the Angel.
“I have read in the entire contents of my priestess’s mind,” Krisha/Angel said. “What can you add to this?”
He took a deep breath. “My Lord, the contamination spreads freely again. Our people and lands are infected. The Enemy of Light has created the conditions for his escape and made good on it. What held him back was the ancient sign that can only be properly made and properly unmade by Mizlaplan, Mycohl, and Exchange. I know the sign, and who must make it, but not how it is made nor how to use it upon the Enemy of Light. I have prayed that those of the Highest Race, who fought and won so long ago, may hold the key.”
“I have heard your report to the Examiners,” Krisha/Angel responded. “I wish further explanation of your theories on this sign and on the rest.”
While he never lost sight of where he was and just who he was talking to, nothing pleased Gun Roh Chin more than to explain his deductions and his theories. To anyone, even an Angel.
Finally, Krisha/Angel said, “That is sufficient. I, however, do not possess the data to correlate further action. I must meditate and commune with a council of my kind. We were, of course, aware of the contamination. That was expected when reports of a discovery of Quintara within the Exchange was intercepted. What is new and not expected nor anticipated was the release of the Four Princes and their master. I do, however, find the possibility of a Divine hand in this matter. In the meantime, your knowledge and service to the Mizlaplan is more than sufficient. You know more than most of my-priests and think more clearly. I will consult and gain guidance and wisdom. Upon the absorption of the mind of my faithful servant Krisha, I find no heresy but instead a remarkable record of loyalty and service. Henceforth she shall bear the title of Sainted, and she shall answer only to me. Further, I do not believe that the two of you should be separated again. She shall complete your ordination and be your spiritual leader. You are dismissed.”
He managed to bow low, turn, and exit by himself, but he almost collapsed when he got to the foyer.
He never remembered much of it, but the next few days were a bizarre series of single images and drummed-in phrases as he went through a battery of torture-room techniques. Unable to receive direct programming by the Angel, his mind was still open to the equivalent in technical skills.
The odd thing was, when he woke up with a slight headache and realized that it was over, he didn’t feel much different. He wondered if his point of view had been changed, but he clearly remembered everything, and he meant everything, and he didn’t feel any regrets he hadn’t felt before. Worse, he still loved Krisha, he still wanted a cigar, and he still thought that the Holy Angels were amongst the ugliest creatures in all of Creation. He had a sudden thought, reached down, and was both amazed, and relieved, to discover that he was still all there.
Krisha came into the room. She looked positively radiant; much of her color was back and that dull, hollowed look and exhaustion seemed totally gone. More, she wore a rust-gold robe like the steward’s, only it looked a lot better on her, and a large ring on her hand that had the sacred triangle pointing away from her made of gold set against precious gems.
“Hello,” she greeted him, and took his hand and squeezed it. “How do you feel?”
“Incredibly normal, except for a headache,” he said honestly. “What happened? Did they change their mind?”
“No. You’re a priest, Gunny.” She’d never called him that before, always “Captain,” and he found he liked it. “Gun Roh the Holy Chin. There’s a little bit of ritual left but it’s just that.”