They stood by the airlock; him, Beychae, the Osom Emananish’s captain, and four suited figures with guns. The suited men wore visored helmets, their pale brown faces visible inside, foreheads marked with a blue circle. The circles actually seemed to glow, he thought, and he wondered if they were there because of some generous religious principle, to help snipers.
‘Yes, Mr Zakalwe,’ the captain said. He was a rotund little man with a shaved head. He smiled. ‘They want you, not Mr Beychae.’
He looked at the four armed men. ‘What are they up to?’ he asked Beychae.
‘I have no idea,’ Beychae admitted.
He waved his hands out, appealing to the four men. ‘Why do you want me?’
‘Please come with us, sir,’ one of the suited men said, via a suit speaker, in what was obviously not his first language.
‘”Please”?’ he said. ‘You mean I have a choice?’
The man looked uncomfortable in his suit. He talked for a while without any noise coming from the speaker, then said, ‘Sir Zakalwe, is very important you come. You must. Is very important.’
He shook his head. ‘I must,’ he repeated seemingly to himself. He turned to the captain. ‘Captain, sir; could I have my earring back, please?’
‘No,’ the captain said, with a beatific grin. ‘Now, get off my ship.’
The craft was cramped and very low tech and the air was warm and smelled of electrics. They gave him an old suit to put on and he was shown to a couch, and belted in. It was a bad sign when they made you put a suit on inside a ship. The troopers who’d taken him from the clipper sat behind him. The three-man crew – also suited up – seemed suspiciously busy, and he had the disquieting impression that the manual controls in front of them were not just for emergencies.
The craft re-entered the atmosphere spectacularly; buffeted, creaking, surrounded by gas glowing bright (seen through, he realised with a gut-wrenching shock, windows; crystal or glass, not screens), and with a gradually increasing howl. The air got even warmer. Flashing lights, hurried chatter between the crew, and some hurried movements and more excited talk, did not make him feel any happier. The glow disappeared and the sky turned from violet to blue; the buffeting returned.
They swept into the night, and plunged into cloud. The flashing lights all over the control panels looked even more worrying in darkness.
It was a rolling landing on some sort of runway, in a thunderstorm. The four troopers who’d boarded the Osom Emananish cheered weakly from behind him as the landing gear – wheels, he supposed – touched down. The craft trundled on for a worryingly long time, slewing twice.
When they finally rolled to a stop, the three crewmen all sat back slumped in their seats, arms dangling over the edges, silent and staring out into the rain-filled night.
He undid the belts, took off the helmet. The troopers opened the interior airlock.
When they opened the outer door, it was to reveal rain and lights and trucks and tanks and some low buildings in the background, and a couple of hundred people, some in military uniforms, some in long robes, rain-slicked, some trying to hold umbrellas over others; all seemed to have the circular marks on their foreheads. A group of a dozen or so, all old, robed, white haired, faces spattered with rain, walked to the bottom of the steps that led from the craft to the ground.
‘Please, sir,’ one of the troopers held out a hand to indicate they should descend. The white-haired men in the robes gathered in an arrowhead formation at the foot of the steps.
He stepped out, stood on the little platform before the stairs. The rain battered into one side of his head.
A great shout went up, and the dozen old men at the foot of the steps each bowed their head and went down on one knee, into the puddles on the dark and wind-whipped runway. A blast of blue light ripped the blackness beyond the low buildings, its flickering brilliance momentarily illuminating hills and mountains in the distance. The assembled people started to chant. It took him a few moments to work out what it was, then realised they were yelling, ‘Za-kal-we! Za-kal-we!’
‘Oh oh,’ he said to himself. Thunder bellowed in the hills.
‘Yeah… could you just run that past me again?’
‘Messiah…’
‘I really wish you wouldn’t use that word.’
‘Oh! Oh, well, Sir Zakalwe; what do you wish?’
‘Ah… how about,’ he gestured with his hands. ‘Mister?’
‘Sir Zakalwe, sir; you are pre-ordained! You have been beseen!’ The high priest, sitting across the railway carriage, clenched his hands.
‘”Be-seen”?’
‘Indeed! You are our salvation; our divine recompense! You have been sent!’
‘Sent,’ he repeated, still trying to come to terms with what had happened to him.
They’d switched the floodlights off shortly after he’d set foot on the ground. The priests enveloped him, took him, many arms round his shoulders, from the concrete apron to an armoured truck; the lights went out on the runway and they were left with the slit-light from the truck and tank-lights; cones made fans by blinkers clipped over the lights. He was bustled away down a track to a railway station where they transferred to a shuttered carriage that clattered into the night.
There were no windows.
‘Why yes! Our faith has a tradition of finding outside influences, because they are always greater.’ The high priest – Napoerea, he’d said his name was – made a bowing motion. ‘And what can be greater than the man who was ComMil?’
ComMil; he had to dredge his memory for that one. ComMil; that was what he had been, according to the Cluster’s media; director of military operations when he and Tsoldrin Beychae had been involved in the whole crazy dance the last time. Beychae had been ComPol, in charge of politics (ah, these fine divisions!).
‘ComMil…’ He nodded, not really much the wiser. ‘And you think I can help you?’
‘Sir Zakalwe!’ the high priest said, shifting down from his seat to kneel on the floor again. ‘You are what we believe in!’
He sat back in the upholstered cushions. ‘May I ask why?’
‘Sir; your deeds are legend! Forever since the last unpleasantness! Our Guider, before he died, prophesied that our salvation would come from “beyond the skies”, and your name was one of those mentioned; so coming to us in our hour of need, you must be our salvation!’
‘I see,’ he said, seeing nothing. ‘Well, we’ll see what we can do.’
‘Messiah!’
The train drew up in a station somewhere; they were escorted from it to an elevator, then to a suite of rooms that he was told looked out over the city beneath but it was all in black-out. The internal screens were closed. The rooms themselves were quite opulent. He inspected them.
‘Yes. Very nice. Thank you.’
‘And here are your boys,’ the high priest said, sweeping aside a curtain in the bedroom to reveal a languorously displayed half-dozen or so young men lying on a very large bed.
‘Well… I, uh… Thank you,’ he said, nodding to the high priest. He smiled at the boys, who all smiled back.
He lay awake in the ceremonial bed in the palace, hands behind his neck. After a while, in the darkness, there was a distinct ‘pop’, and in a disappearing blue sphere of light there was a tiny machine about the size of a human thumb.
‘Zakalwe?’
‘Hi, Sma.’
‘Listen…’
‘No. You listen; I would really like to know what the fuck is going on here.’
‘Zakalwe,’ Sma said, through the scout missile. ‘It’s complicated, but…’
‘But I’m in here with a gang of homosexual priests who think I’m going to solve all their military problems.’
‘Cheradenine,’ Sma said, in her winning voice. ‘These people have successfully incorporated a belief in your martial prowess into their religion; how can you deny them?’
‘Believe me; it would be easy.’
‘Like it or not, Cheradenine, you’ve become a legend to these people. They think you can do things.’
‘So what am I supposed to do?’
‘Guide them. Be their General.’
‘That’s what they expect me to be, I think. But what should I really do?’
‘Just that,’ Sma’s voice said. ‘Lead them. Meanwhile Beychae’s in the Station; Murssay Station. That counts as neutral territory for now, and he’s making the right noises. Don’t you see, Zakalwe?’ Sma’s voice sounded tense, exultant. ‘We’ve got them! Beychae’s doing just what we wanted, and all you have to do is…’
‘What?’
‘… Just be yourself; operate for these guys!’
He shook his head. ‘Sma; spell it out for me. What am I supposed to do?’
He heard Sma sigh. ‘Win their war, Zakalwe. We’re putting our weight behind the forces you’re working with. Maybe if they can win this, and Beychae gets behind the winning side here, we can – perhaps – swing the Cluster.’ He heard her take another deep breath. ‘Zakalwe; we need this. To a degree, our hands are tied, but we need you to make the whole thing settle out. Win their war for them, and we might just be able to get it all together. Seriously.’