Jimmy McCray returned the nod. “It appears that we have a long walk yet, Captain. Perhaps it’s time we compared some of our notes.”
The bridge was chilly; they hadn’t expected that, and it added to their discomfort. It was a walk of several kilometers down to the floating city of lights, and they hoped it might be warmer there.
It was thought best to keep Kalia and Manya separate, and the Mycohl weren’t too social anyway. It was Chin who suggested that Kalia take the lead, with Josef and Tobrush in back of her, acting as a sort of buffer; then came Jimmy and the captain, with Modra, Krisha, Molly, and Manya at the rear.
Krisha was somewhat taken aback when she polled Modra’s thoughts and feelings and discovered that, in a way, the independent Exchange woman actually envied the -; priestess. To Modra, who believed she’d made such a mess of her own personal life, it seemed idyllic that Krisha was in a position to use her intelligence and authority without the complications of the physical. To Modra, the clerical position seemed an enviable barrier, where you could help people and reach your own potential without complicating or ruining yours or another’s life; to Krisha, it was a duty that prevented happiness. Modra might have chosen wrongly, but she always had choices and what happened was entirely due to her own decisions. Modra at this point was afraid of choices; Krisha really hadn’t faced a choice since she was sixteen years old.
In truth, each had an unrealistic and idealized view of the other’s situation, but the irony wasn’t lost on Krisha. Both of us want to swap places, she thought with a wry smile.
When they reached the mid-point on the spiral bridge, all of them automatically stopped. This was the place that most had met the demon prince in their visions, and they half expected him to still be here, but there was nothing. Modra, however, looked down at the next level, even though she knew it was foolish, almost as if she expected to see Tris and Hama and the Durquist standing there.
Krisha caught the thought. “They were illusions,” she assured Modra. “The demons are very good at illusions, at picking from your mind just what you think you want and offering it to you, and also picking from your mind that which frightens you the most and threatening you with it.”
“You’re the priestess and you don’t believe that the demons get the souls of the dead?”
It was a very strange feeling for Modra. They were speaking vastly different languages, yet, with the telepathic link, and the time when they had been in such close proximity in the maze, each could understand the other.
“If you’re asking if I believe in the possibility of damnation, the answer is yes. If you’re asking if I believe that this is truly Hell and that the Quintara are supernatural in the theological sense, I’d have to say no. It really seems to me now that the demons, because of their natures, got mixed up with pure theology somewhere in the distant past—maybe deliberately so. They play their part well and seem to enjoy doing it, but what are we seeing, really? A race with incredibly strong multiple talents, that’s all. Talents they got by being in, or in close proximity to, the other plane, just as interstellar travel did it for some of our ancestors and probably still is doing it. What have we really seen, though? Telepathy, empathy, and, like your ghosts, hypno abilities, much more powerful than ours but still recognizable.”
“And prognostication,” Modra added. “The demon said that one would die before entering the city. And another would die there, too.”
“I’m not sure that’s prognostication. They know us pretty
well by now. From his personality and nature, it wouldn’t be a stretch to bet pretty heavily that Morok would attempt to fly over the maze. Nor do you need to be an expert telepathic psychologist to know that Manya and Kalia can’t be kept apart forever. To say it will come to a head in the city is something I would feel comfortable predicting as well. There doesn’t seem to be anyplace else to go.”
Modra shivered. “It’s bad enough being so—exposed, like this, without it also getting colder.”
“Yes, I know,” Krisha agreed. “On the other hand, it makes it far less likely that anyone would try anything with us.”
Although Krisha, like the other born telepaths, had reverted to blocking her own thoughts, there was no question in anyone’s mind who she was referring to.
<Do not flatter yourself,> Josef snapped curtly.
In truth, unable to block his thoughts, Josef had been feeling somewhat lustful toward them, but, to Krisha’s surprise and relief, the Mycohl officer also had far more of a sense of personal honor, at least in this situation, than they would have suspected in anyone raised in a system where ruthlessness was necessary to rise to any leadership position. Still, the two women had no illusions of what treatment they might get were they in Josef’s own element.
In fact, it was increasingly difficult for Krisha to reconcile Josef with what she had been taught: that unrestrained natural hypnos, particularly of the Mycohl, were in fact demonically possessed. Instead, stripping away the brutish and cynical veneer, and imagining that Josef had been raised in a different system, it was not impossible to think that Josef might even have been likable, or at least worthy of respect.
They had come a long way in a fairly short time, and were now approaching the city itself. It was no less beautiful looking close up than from afar, although infinitely more confusing, as most cities are. “No windows,” Gun Roh Chin commented. “Eh?” Jimmy McCray turned to him, puzzled.
“There are no windows in any of the buildings, some of which are thirty or more stories high. No sharp comers, either—everything’s rounded a bit. It is an interesting design and layout; certainly the best use of that plasticine material they use on everything we’ve encountered to date. How many people would you say a city of that size once supported?”
Jimmy shrugged. “I couldn’t guess. I never was much good at that sort of thing. Certainly it’s bigger than it looked from afar. Still and all, with the tall buildings and such, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a half million or more.”
“A good enough guess. Yet that Quintara prince told one of you, I believe, that there were two hundred million Quintara. Even allowing for many more repositories like the one I think we all passed through, that’s a lot of demons unaccounted for. I wonder, too, how they got around in there. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of a transit system, moving walkways, or anything else.”
Jimmy snapped his fingers. “Yes! I’d almost forgotten! Something the purple prince told Modra about there being two hundred million ‘in this sector.’ I don’t want the implications of that last comment—two hundred million of these babes is more than enough. But that figure … of course! The two hundred thousand thousand demon warriors! And the four angels—the demon princes! It all fits!”
The others, hearing him, all stopped and turned to him, puzzled. “What are you going on about, Jimmy?” Modra asked him.
“Revelations nine. Oh, yes—Christian. None of the rest of you would have heard of it. Let’s see how good my memory is. …
” ‘It spoke to the sixth angel which had the trumpet and said, “Let loose the four angels that are in chains at the great river Euphrates”; and the four angels were released to destroy a third of mankind. And the number of the troops of their cavalry were two hundred million.'”
“What’s that you quoted, McCray?” Gun Roh Chin asked him.
“A passage from a holy book of what was once one of the great Terran religions, now pretty well relegated to a few obscure worlds and subcultures like mine. It is a prophetic, mystical book telling in symbols and mysticism of how God was to end the world. It’s been reinterpreted into meaninglessness after we went interstellar, or relegated to the quaint and apocryphal, by most surviving branches of the Church at this point, but there it is. Demons are supposedly fallen angels—angels who rebelled—and that prince said that it was rebellion they were after.”
<Ethnocentrism,> Tobrush commented dryly. <Every race and culture that develops a religion has it. The largest religion on my ancestral world said the Julki were the center and foremost parts of creation, and that we’d inherit the universe if we didn’t fall into slavery and sell our souls to bipedal creatures. Come to think of it, 1 shouldn’t even be in this company. >
“Hold it, Jimmy!” Modra put in. “Are you saying that some obscure book from some ancient Terran religion has anything to do with this? It’s coincidence.”
“Is it, now?” he mused. “The Tigris and Euphrates were two rivers that came together in a region on Mother Earth, and became the cradle for the first civilizations.”
“Some of them,” Gun Roh Chin reminded him.
Jimmy shrugged. “Be that as it may, it’s where three of the great religions that swept through much of Mother Earth began in common roots—and, not coincidentally, the three that have nearly identical demon mythologies. Suppose, just suppose, down there, buried in the silt and muck of the river bottom, is a Quintara station. Suppose Saint John the Divine, the fellow who wrote that, was sensitive—some sort of undeveloped talent. He, himself, said he got it all from very realistic visions while hidden away in exile on an isolated island, praying and fasting.”
The captain nodded. “I think you might just have something there, although it’s a flimsy thread to hang it all on. He would be a man suffering for his faith and so deeply rooted in it, and he would also be a man of his times, so he’d interpret and guide what he saw according to those lights.”
Modra wasn’t nearly as much a believer. “First ancient poets, then visions from even more ancient fanatics from outdated religions. McCray, where do you get all this stuff?”
“Because I was a priest of that ancient and outdated religion,” he replied. “Still am, according to their lights, although excommunicated, my soul damned to Hell, and forbidden to receive or deliver the sacraments. At least one son of New Erin from each large family was to be a priest, and at least one daughter a nun.”
“You were a whatT
“He said he was a priest of a false god,” Manya snapped. “And now he is made to suffer for it!”
<Manya!> Krisha shot back. <Were we not taught to respect the priests of all native races?>
“Well, as to who’s true and false, it’s getting harder to tell,” Jimmy replied. “So far, some of my side interests in my study of the faith have proven pretty handy here. So much so, I’m beginnin’ to doubt my lack of faith as much as I once doubted my faith. If there are four demon princes locked away somewhere down there, I’m going to have a mighty hard time.”
<Should I respect Mycohlian sacrificial rites?>
“I am not certain that one connects on a theological sense with the other,” the captain noted, oblivious to the side debate he couldn’t hear. “However, I think your knowledge might be more valuable than it appeared.”
<You needn’t worry, you old bitch!> Kalia shot back. <No god would ever want you as a sacrifice!>
Modra looked first at Krisha, and then over at Josef, and no telepathy or talents of any kind were required for the message.
<Stop this now!> Josef sent as strongly as he could. <Or the rest of us will throw you both over the bridge wall here and you can fall and call each other names for all eternity !>
Jimmy heard it as well and decided it was time to break the tension. “Well, I’m freezing just standing here,” he said. “The sooner we get down there and maybe inside someplace warm, I hope, the better.”
They started on again, and Modra slipped back a little to talk to Jimmy one-on-one, as she still preferred to do.
“You were really a priest? Like those two and Morok?”
“Something like them,” he admitted, “yes. The Irish was Old Order, too, perhaps the last surviving rite of that type. Celibacy, no women priests, even an Office of the Inquisition, although it was mostly to ensure the purity of the faith on the home world.”
“No women? But I thought you said something about women priests.”
“No, those are nuns. All the same limits, but they’re a rung below, forbidden to actually give the sacraments.”
“Why’d you leave it?”
He sighed. “Partly it was their fault. I got over-educated. It gets very hard to keep the Old Order faith after you’ve seen other worlds, other races, and studied other religions. In our case, a strict adherence to the Old Order was a part of preserving our culture.”
“There were other branches, then, who were looser?”
“Elsewhere in the Exchange, yes. But I was young and ambitious and on the fast track, and while I could have left to go to a liberal parish and lived as a simple parish priest, if you wanted the bishop’s track to a leadership position, you’d have to go into a monastic order there and keep the old restrictions.”
“And you kept them?”
“For quite a while, yes. I was a damned good priest. And, because I was also a damned good telepath, I learned how to seal off bits and pieces of my mind and activities. Still, since priests confessed their sins daily to superiors, and the confessors were always talents, there was no way to hide things forever. Every once in a great while you’d get a hypno who’d really clean you out. Still, they were so busy they didn’t have time to go deep, and I got to keep some of my dirty little secrets. Most particularly, the fact that I’d fallen head over heels for Sister Mary Brigit, a nun and local nurse for whom I was confessor. She hadn’t wanted to be a nun any more than I wanted to be a priest, but the pressures family and Church can put on you when you’re young are enormous. We’d meet and spend a lot of time together, go on picnics or long drives in the country, but we never touched each other, as much as we wanted to.
I was the only telepath around, and she was an empath who could hide it from other empaths, but it was a real strain. She finally couldn’t stand it, and asked for release from her vows, even though a nun who quits is regarded socially on my old home, sweet home, as a harlot and whore even if she’s perfectly prim and proper. The plan was, if she could, then I would, too, and we’d work enough to scrape up enough money to leave and find a place somewhere in the Exchange where it wouldn’t matter what we’d been.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, it’s allowed, in some exceptional circumstances, but it’s not really allowed in the Old Order. They told her they had to send her off for a time so they could determine that it was a real special case and all that, and, of course, to change her surroundings—make sure she really wanted to do it. The place proved to be the sort set up to change people’s minds. Brainwashing is the old term for it. All the staff were fanatics, all hypnos, telepaths, and strong broadcast empaths, together with all the psychochemistry we’d not dreamed existed in our rural little parish, all determined to save her soul. They took a hundred days—a hundred days in which I heard nothing of her, and I was beginning to feel I’d never see her again when she returned. Or, at least, her sweet body did. She no longer had any physical desires for any living man; she didn’t even think men were particularly attractive or interesting and couldn’t figure out why she ever had. The Lord was the only man in her life now, and He was quite enough for her. When she looked at me she saw only the priest, not the man. I thought she’d been hypnoed or something, or that it would wear off. I waited it out almost a year before I realized it was permanent. At first I was crushed, then I got scared. If they could do that to her, they could do it to me, and she doubtlessly told them about me. Otherwise, why send her back to me at all? She wasn’t just an example—she was a warning.”