Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II (37 page)

"Find out what he wants," Boule replied loudly. "And give it to him. Sacrifices, propitiation—"

The archaeologist shook his head. "Not sacrifices, necessarily. Propitiation, if we can deduce enough of his innate qualities to make it possible. But that will be very difficult, considering the alien quality of his former worshippers, the very little data and time we have available for deductions—Hello! Speak of the devil, and you do get data!"

Above their heads, in the exact center of the room, a violet cloud had appeared. Luxuriously, it formed itself into the familiar figure of Priipiirii—masculine version.

Invisible fear dripped through their airtight suits and drenched their skins.

Lutzman rose, his eyes narrowed. "Why do you suppose he shows himself? Because we all admit belief in him now? Because he wants to gloat over our helplessness? Because he's vain? He doesn't seem interested in making any overt move—all he can do, hanging up there like that, is confuse the issue. He's a very damn puzzling god."

"He wants worshippers, he wants sacrifices," Boule insisted. "All of the dying-god cults on Earth follow that pattern. It
must
be the same on Mars. Changing from sex to sex—I read somewhere that was a manifestation of what they call a dying-god. Right, Punnello?"

"No. Occasionally there is a hint of hermaphroditism or feminization in some of the dying gods Earth has known in the past. But not all four forms at once. Not even on Mars—"

"What's to prevent us from no longer believing in him?" Hartwick wanted to know. "Then he and his powers no longer exist."

"With all these statues and pictures around you? Hah! That's like that game—'don't think of a white horse!' No, we have to work out the component parts of his nature. This race engaged in both sex and agriculture in a very offhand—or offclaw—way, so he couldn't be a regenerative deity. Now, can anyone say what's
really
intellectual?"

No answer. They stared up at the carelessly undulating horror.

"I want to examine his solidity," Lutzman observed suddenly and slipped his kazoo from its holster. Boule and Hartwick both leaped at him—a moment tardily.

The tiny rocket shell whizzed through the hovering monster and exploded against the domed ceiling. A crack appeared in the highly polished stone, was wiped abruptly clean again as Priipiirii shot over toward it. He raced around the inner room as if inspecting it for further damage. Finding none, he resumed his position.

Hartwick had reached Lutzman first and plucked his weapon away with a muscled grab. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Boule jerk to a stop and level his kazoo at the specialist in Martian biology.

He swung back again fast, desperately. Boule pressed the firing stud and threw himself aside. The rocket hissed past Hartwick; an immense gong seemed to ring in their headphones as Lutzman exploded before he could scream.

The guide tottered past Boule, sickeningly off balance. He knew the gun was centered on his back, that momentum was carrying him too fast in the heavy suit to permit him to turn and fire first. And there were three more rockets in the kazoo's chamber...

He cursed all unstable photographers and the dim-witted archaeological foundations that permitted them to go on such highly charged expeditions without adequate psychological probing. He heard the sibilant exhalation of a shell, and his body tried to hold itself together against the moment when it would be ripped apart.

Then there was the explosion—and he was still alive.

Hartwick turned slowly. There were clean bits of metal and ugly shreds of flesh all over the room. Outside of the twisting, somehow exultant Priipiirii, he and Punnello were alone.

The archaeologist sheathed the kazoo with which he had killed Boule before he could fire at Hartwick. "Sacrifice," he mumbled distractedly. "He was trying to sacrifice you as well as Lutzman for having blasphemed. The fool! I tried to tell him Terrestrial standards of divinity didn't apply. He was so desperate of his own life, so anxious to placate—Imagine trying to propitiate a god with the subtle origins of Priipiirii by a hideously blunt sacrifice!"

"Blunt or no, that little rumpus sure cut down our strength. By any other name, they're still sacrifices—and from the look of that crayfish, I'd say he was enjoying them. Thanks for the shot, doc."

Punnello nodded and grimaced at the crustacean god, who was now writhing in unmistakable ecstasy. "Evil, evil. Yet it's obvious there's no direct malice involved. With his powers—consider the ease with which he patched the hole in the ceiling—he could undoubtedly dispose of us in unnumbered horrific ways. Somehow or other, we
are
giving him the kind of worship he wants—how? The god of the most advanced and most decadent of the mind-stretching Martians—from what we've deciphered in the other tombs, we know that his people were both detested and immensely respected. But what is he?"

Hartwick frowned. "Look, I've been wondering. All those pictures of him we saw as we came down, the ones you said made us believe in him. Couldn't they have been put there just for that purpose?"

"No. Much more likely, they were meant to help the creatures who worshipped him, by giving them clues as what to expect. It just occurred to me: this god or super-Martian, who was created out of the united aspirations and interests of a race, probably destroyed it. There is every indication that he is highly egocentric; the other temples hinted at his destructiveness. They didn't discuss
him
, however; almost as if they were too close to worship themselves."

The guide nodded and pulled a long stick of chalk from his flank canister. "Save it. I don't think you could work out his nature if you stood on your head and walked around on your ears. Who knows what in space those brainy crayfish considered holy? And if we did figure it out, how much chance would we have of giving him what he wants? No, let it ride. I said I had one last idea as to how to crack this joint—let's try it."

Gently, Punnello smiled at the chalk. "Oh, that. No, I'm afraid it won't work. If he can rearrange the maze, if he can repair holes we make in the stone with our rocket shells—"

He walked slowly to the four idols sitting about their involved game. "Somehow, I'm positive that this is the answer. Why all four manifestations of Priipiirii playing saea against each other? Why an altar which is nothing more than a problem in saea? If we can solve the problem, now, it might loosen something essential in the god's powers. There had to be a reason for this stone game."

"Listen, doc," Hartwick urged. "I've seen too many archaeologists talking through the top of their heads because they tried to learn saea. And this problem they set up here is bound to be ultimate stuff. Give it the go-by, and come with me."

Punnello hadn't heard. He was standing before the board, studying the carved pieces carefully. From time to time, he made motions with a metal-covered hand.

—|—

Hartwick shrugged and strode into the cable-littered tunnel. He bent over and made a cross on the floor every ten steps. "If my oxygen holds out, I should make it," he pondered. "No more circle-walking."

After he had gone a hundred feet, he gave up and wandered aimlessly: Chalk cross-marks had appeared on the floor ahead, in every tunnel...

When he arrived in the spheroid room again, he walked directly to Punnello's gesticulating figure. He froze when he saw the archaeologist's contorted face, now screaming at the four red idols, now raised in anguish to the god floating in his carnate purple. He understood the muted gibberings he had been hearing in the headset for the past fifteen minutes—and had dismissed as Punnello's necessary self-communion over the saea problem.

Punnello stood before the immutable saea problem—and was mad.

The guide clenched his fist fiercely, then sighed and opened his fingers wearily. There was nothing to strike, nothing to grip, nothing...

He dropped to the floor and spread himself on his back. The moment he lay down, Priipiirii left the insane archaeologist to undulate over him.

"What
are
you?" he wondered, noticing the first faint foulness in his oxygen supply. "What do you want? Why do you tear us down this way, when we've done nothing to you? You aren't the kind of god who would punish for desecration of his temple?"

As if in reply, the deity went through all of his sexual forms, ending up as masculine once more. Hartwick watched, cursing.

His sanity began to slip into the narrow chasm of the problem. He got a grip on it by reverting to practical approaches. Lutzman had taken a shot at it. Perhaps—

His oxygen already was dangerously low.

He shot at it several times. Useless. Weapons were useless here. Lutzman shouldn't have tried. If Lutzman hadn't been killed, he might have been able to work out the god's desires from crustacean psychology.

An angle! His mind, fogged by the poisons his respiratory system was inhaling in lieu of air, groped desperately. What—what would be a highly intellectualized crustacean viewpoint? Not really crustacean, though—Martian biology was so different that bioareology was the name of the science here—Lutzman, now, Lutzman might have...

Desperate struggling through the night that was coming down over his brain. It was such torment to breathe—to think—crustacean—that was it—all he had to do was work out something peculiarly crustacean—

Priipiirii replied again. This time, he became a fish, a mammoth, a Martian polar beetle, in turn. Then himself again.

Hartwick's mind, Hartwick's life, slipped out too fast for him to hold on. Faster—

Above him, the god watched the approaching extinction of his last worshipper—which meant his own extinction, too—with courteous delight. Faster and more ecstatic grew his squirmings over the two dying lunatics in the temple of a dead and decadent race. So sweet to receive again obeisance from insanity!

For was not Priipiirii most gloriously and intricately the God of Puzzles?

So there I was. Set. The war was over, and the moment the
Sunstroke
landed on Earth, I would hand my prisoners over to some official of the War Crimes Tribunal and be a full-fledged civilian again. I would be free to drink the wine, sing the song, and—well, you know what I mean—all set.

The communicator on the beautiful pastel ceiling showed the mileage remaining—two million. Why, that was a hop, a skip, and a burp! It had been a fairly pleasant trip—the
Sunstroke
was a private luxury yacht requisitioned for the needs of the Terran Navy in bringing my peculiar charges to justice. I hoped I'd be able to afford a vessel like her someday. When I had been a civilian for a long, long—

My eyes drooped shut. Jimmie Trokee would be waking me in four hours to take over the watch on the prisoners. And I'd have to be super sharp. I dozed.

"Mr. Butler!" I twitched up to a squat. Captain Scott's huge head was glaring from the communicator. "Report to the bridge on the double. On the double, Mr. Butler!" He faded rosily.

I tilted the bed, got out, and dressed. Five years in the service and you develop certain reflexes toward orders. It was only after I'd walked through the doorap that I remembered to stop and curse.

"What does that spacehound mean by talking to me like that? I'm Army, not Navy. Not even that, I was discharged before we took off. And my only responsibility is to and for the prisoners. I've got to make a couple of fine distinctions for the old boy."

All the same, I started for the bridge. But not before I walked to the end of the corridor to see how our Martians were getting along.

Jimmie Trokee, my junior, was lounging against the doorap of the combination prison-stateroom. He dropped the cigarette quickly and ground it out.

"Sorry, Hank. But honestly, everything's under control. Rafferty and Goldfarb stopped their chess game so I could get a smoke. They won't miss a trick."

"Sure," I said. "I do the same thing, myself. Your lungs get awful dry in that joint. How are our friends feeling? Still taking baths?"

He grinned. "Didangul took five during my watch. His two pals spelled him in the pool. Only a Martian could loll in the water like that with a probable death sentence hanging over his scaly head!" His face tightened. "But when they aren't bathing, they fool around with that converter and whistle at each other."

"I know, I don't like it either. But the white-haired boys at headquarters cleared their request for the gadget. Said they couldn't possibly make anything dangerous with one that size. It's all part of this coddle-them-before-you-kill-them idea. The condemned Martians surrounded a hearty supper."

"Yeah. I don't get it. When I think of what Didangul did to the boys of the Fifteenth Army. Of course, they can't spit a weapon out of the converter. All they've been getting is tiny hunks of neutronium that not even the three of them can lift. Yet—"

"Mr. Butler," a communicator shrilled down the hall, "Captain Scott says if you aren't on the bridge in two minutes, he'll send a detail to drag you up by the short hairs."

Jimmie got angry. "Who does he think he is? You don't take orders from that guy. He's Navy!"

"He's the captain of the ship," I reminded him. "You know, power of life and death in empty space. I better get going."

"Well, don't take any guff from him," Jimmie called after me. He waved his hand at the doorap and walked through.

I adjusted my tunic before walking through the heavy panel leading to the bridge, and straightened the Eagle over Saturn on my chest. The first PX our occupation forces had established on Mars was stale out of civvies; I was wearing my uniform home. And Scott was death on sloppy uniforms.

Then I caressed the panel and started through. Whop! I massaged my nose and blasted the Terran Navy from heck to brunch. Why they had to remove a perfectly good doorap and substitute an old-fashioned hingie, just because of naval tradition—

I felt around for the doorknob and walked in, still aching in the olfactory. Nobody so much as batted a wink of sympathy at me. Everyone but Cummings the quartermaster was clustered around one of the five great visiscreens in the bridge. I sighed.