CHAPTER TEN
Ardmore was awakened by the off duty pararadio operator shaking him vigorously. “Major Ardmore! Major! Wake up!”
“Unnh…M-m-m-m…Wassa matter?”
“Wake up — the Citadel is calling you — urgently!”
“What time is it?”
“About eight. Hurry, sir!”
He was reasonably wide awake by the time he reached the phone. Thomas was there, on the other end, and started to talk as soon as he saw Ardmore. “A new development, Chief — and a bad one. The PanAsian police are rounding up every member of our congregations — systematically.”
“H-m-m-m — it was an obvious next move, I guess. How far along are they?”
“I don’t know. I called you when the first report came in; they are coming in steadily now from all over the country.”
“Well, I reckon we had better get busy.” It was one thing for a priest, armed and protected, to risk arrest; these people were absolutely helpless.
“Chief — you remember what they did after the first uprising? This looks bad, Chief — I’m scared!”
Ardmore understood Thomas’ fear; he felt it himself. But he did not permit his expression to show it.
“Take it easy, old son,” he said in a gentle voice.
“Nothing has happened to our people yet and I don’t think we’ll let anything happen.”
“But, Chief, what are you going to do about it? There aren’t enough of us to stop them before they kill a lot of people.”
“Not enough to do it directly, perhaps, but there is a way. You stick to collecting data and warn everybody not to go off half-cocked. I’ll call you back in about fifteen minutes.” He flipped the disconnect switch before Thomas could answer.
It required some thought. If he could equip each man with a staff, it would be simple. The shielding effect from a staff could theoretically protect a man against almost anything; except, perhaps, an A-bomb or the infiltration of poison gas. But the construction and repair department had been hard pushed to provide enough staffs to equip each new priest; one for each man was out of the question, since they lacked factory mass production. Anyhow, he needed them now — this morning.
A priest could extend his shield to include any given area or number of people, but in great extension the field became so tenuous that a well-thrown snowball would break through it. Nuts!
He realized suddenly that he was thinking of the problem in direct terms again, in spite of his conscious knowledge that such an approach was futile. What he wanted was psychological jiu-jitsu — some way to turn their own strength against them. Misdirection — that was the idea!
Whatever it was they expected him to do, don’t do it! Do something else.
But what else? When he thought he had found an answer to that question he called Thomas to the screen. “Jeff,” he said at once, “give me Circuit A.”
He spoke for some minutes to his priests, slowly and in detail, and emphasizing certain points. “Any questions?” he then asked, and spent several more minutes in dealing with such as they were relayed in from the diocese stations.
Ardmore and the local priest left the temple together. The priest attempted to persuade him to stay behind, but he brushed the objections aside. The priest was right; he knew in his heart that he should not take personal risks that could be avoided, but it was a luxury to be out from under Jeff Thomas’ restraining influence.
“How do you plan to find out where they have taken our people?” asked the priest. He was a former real-estate operator named Ward, a man of considerable native intelligence. Ardmore liked him.
“Well, what would you do if I weren’t along?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I would walk into a police station and try to scare the information out of the flatface in charge.”
“That’s sound enough. Where is one?”
The central police station of the PanAsian police lay in the shadow of the palace, between eight and nine blocks to the south. They encountered many PanAsians en route, but were not interfered with. The Asiatics seemed dumbfounded to see two priests of Mota striding along in apparent unconcern. Even those garbed as police appeared uncertain what to do, as if their instructions had not covered the circumstance.