Flinging aside her chopper, she fled towards the control-house, her mind failing again as she exhausted her ultimate resources. Suddenly there was a dull roaring noise, and a brilliant flare, and heat ravaged her mantle and dreadful overpressure strained her tubules.
She slumped forward to seek what shelter was offered by a dip in the ground, welcoming her agony.
For one who had been a double traitor, it felt like just and proper punishment.
X
Piece by painful piece Chybee reconstructed her knowledge of the world. While being carried to a healing-house she heard a voice say, “She cut loose just enough of the bladders to create a fire-break. Naturally it’s a setback, but it’ll only mean a couple of moonlongs’ extra work.”
Later, while her burns were being tended: “A lot of the poor fools inhaled flame, or leaked to death because their tubules ruptured, or ulcerations on their mantles burst. But of course the updraft swept away the mutual reinforcement of their pheromones. Once they realized what a state they’d been reduced to, the survivors scattered, begging for help. Apparently they’re ashamed of what they tried to do. It doesn’t square with the perfect morality of these imaginary other worlds of theirs. So there’s hope for them yet—or a good proportion, at any rate.”
Chybee wanted to ask about their dream-leader, but for a long tune she lacked the necessary energy to squeeze air past the edge of her mantle. By the time she could talk again, she found she was in the presence of distinguished well-wishers: Ugant, Wam, Glig, Airm, Hyge…
“What about Aglabec?” she husked. As one, they exuded anger and disappointment. At length Ugant replied.
“He’s found a score of witnesses to certify that you came to him pleading for enlightenment, and that what he subjected you to was no more than the normal course of instruction all his disciples willingly undergo.”
“It’s a he!” Chybee burst out, struggling to raise herself from the mosh-padded crotch she rested in.
“Sure it is,” Glig the biologist said soothingly. “So are all the fables he’s spun to entrap his dupes. But he defeated himself after a fashion. The ‘medicine’ he provided to disguise your exudates when you returned to the test site has been known to us for scores of years; it’s based on the juice of the plant whose leaves I gave you. His version, though, doesn’t only suppress one’s own pheromones and protect against the effect of others’. It eventually breaks down the barrier between imagination and direct perception. No one can survive long after that stage sets in, and he’s been using the stuff for years. Very probably he was already insane when he called out his followers to attack the test site—”
“He must have been,” Airm put in. “Even though the shot was almost ready, his disciples weren’t. If he’d waited a little longer, their madness might have been contagious!”
She ended with a shrug of relief.
“Insane or not, he mustn’t be allowed to get away with what he did!” Chybee cried.
“Somehow I don’t believe he will,” said Wam with a mysterious air. “And I’ve come back specially from Hulgrapuk to witness the event that ought to prove his downfall.”
“It’s expected to occur not next dark, but the dark after that,” Ugant said, rising. “By then you should be well enough to leave here. I’ll send my scudder to collect you at sundown and bring you to my place. I rather think you’re going to enjoy the show we have for you.”
Turning to leave, she added, “By the way, you do know how grateful we all are, don’t you?”
“And not just us,” Airm confirmed. “The whole of Slah is in your debt, for giving us an excuse to clear out the pestilential lair of the psychoplanetarists. We’ve been flushing it with clean air for days now, and by the time we’re done there won’t be a trace of that alluring stench.”
“But if Aglabec is still free—” Chybee said, confused.
“It isn’t going to make the slightest difference.”
At the crest of Ugant’s home was an open bower where a good-quality telescope was mounted. Thither, on a balmy night under a sky clear but for stars and the normal complement of meteors, they conveyed Chybee, weak, perhaps scarred for life, but in possession of her wits again.