Reformation (9 page)

“
Why do I
see regret in your eyes when talking about the successful spread of Christianity across Europe?” Dr. Holmes asked of his patient.  Hastelloy was always confident and composed, so this moment of vulnerability was completely out of character.  Jeffrey knew this was likely his only chance to reach the heart of Hastelloy’s issues before his brother arrived to hopelessly complicate matters, so he chose to press on the sore spot.

Silence lingered between the office walls for several seconds before Hastelloy reluctantly admitted, “Tomal was right to protest my plans.  He was more
in tune with the basic impulses of mankind than the rest of us, and I should have listened to him.”

Hastelloy leaned forward
to bring his elbows to rest upon his thighs with his clasped hands tucked beneath his chin.  His whole body began vibrating with anger directed inward until he sprung forward with his hands and planted an index finger down on the coffee table between them.  Dr. Holmes instinctively flinched backward, but realized the gesture was made to accentuate a point rather than pose a danger. 

The patient’s watering eyes pleaded with him to understand,
“You see, it wasn’t me trying to hold him down.  That’s not why I dismissed Tomal’s notion.  He was a brilliant man with worthwhile ideas, but ever since the incident with Cleopatra he saw Alpha conspiracies everywhere.  This time seemed no different except it was not only Goron, but human nature that worked against me.”

“How so?
” Jeffrey probed. 

“Tomal
understood first hand that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Hastelloy answered.  “I created an entity with limitless power.  The church knew no borders, and its leaders were obeyed by the poor, the rich, and even the nobility and royalty without question because in their minds the church held the keys to their eternal salvation.”

“T
hat absolute power was placed in the hands of one man, the Pope,” Dr. Holmes added, “And that power corrupted?”

“
Not just Popes.  Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests and Friars,” Hastelloy recited down the church hierarchy.  “In hindsight, the fact that any clergy during the Middle Ages managed to do good, let alone most of them, given how much power they held is truly a tribute to the good nature of mankind.  Still, enough let the power corrupt them, even without Goron serving as the proverbial devil sitting on their shoulders to whisper evil deeds in their ears. I have little proof, but I must speculate that Goron certainly had a hand in a lot of the misdeeds of that era.”

“I’d think meddling with
the church elite would make Goron’s relic rather easy to locate,” Jeffrey pondered.  “Wouldn’t he just go straight to the top, corrupt the Pope and let it ripple down from there?  Couldn’t you just raid the Vatican like you did the Temple of Vesta back in Rome?”

Hastelloy
managed to piece his composure back together and sat back in his chair again to answer. “Goron was far too clever to do something that predictable.  A formless entity does not avoid my crew’s tireless searching for fifteen hundred years by hiding in obvious places with the most likely people.”

“Occa
sionally it was the Pope, other times it was a lowly priest or even a peasant girl in France who prompted a revolution,” Hastelloy instructed.  “Usually he liked to hover somewhere in between.  Goron operated wherever he found the optimal mixture of influence, protection, and corruptible personalities.”

“Joan of Arc?
” Dr. Holmes asked for confirmation of the French peasant girl’s identity.  Hastelloy obliged with a slight nod which drew a laugh.  “Guess I should have seen that one coming.  So that’s it?  The degradation of mankind into the doldrums of medieval times was all because of the Church, which you promoted as a solution to the anarchy you saw coming with the fall of Rome?”

“If
bringing down Rome and corrupting church leaders would have been Goron’s only disruption, then things would have worked out fine.  Unfortunately, his ruthless nature had far more damaging activities in mind that plunged mankind into a dark age it was powerless to resist despite our best efforts.”

“I’m all ears,” Jeffrey said while turning his notepad back
to the current page.

**********

Goron felt the unmistakably pompous presence of Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach approaching.  The man was obsessed to the point of madness with expanding his wealth, power and influence.  It was an amusing contradiction for Goron to observe a religious figure, supposedly charged with the divine care of others, greedily scooping up everything within reach.  All the while his esteemed title provided the freedom to condemn those who got in his way to die in the name of organized religion.

The man’s thoroughly selfish nature was revolting, but also extremely useful to Goron.  Like a carrot hanging
from a string prompting a mule forward, Goron dangled the prospect of riches and power in front of the Archbishop to easily move him to serve Goron’s interests.

Archbishop Leonhard
shuffled into the hidden chapel Goron ordered built to house his relic.  The modest sized chamber was constructed in the heart of a fortress and had only one well disguised point of entry.  What the meager chapel lacked in size it made up for in opulence.  A hand carved oak door, marble tiled floor and a richly ornamented star vaulted ceiling gave the chamber the proper feel to house Goron’s divine presence.

“How kind of you to visit the guiding light behind your prosperity Herr
Keutschach,” Goron declared in the native German.  He felt right at home speaking the local tongue considering he had a heavy hand in crafting the language and its harsh separation of words and phrasing to mimic that of his beloved Alpha language.

The Archbishop visibly cringed upon
not hearing the title he so coveted precede his name.  One of the few sources of amusement for Goron these days was tormenting the simple man in such ways and this occasion was no exception. 

“Tending to your flo
ck in your physical absence my Lord is most time consuming,” Leonhard offered while descending to his knees before Goron’s stone alter. 

Who does this man think he’s fooling
? Goron thought, but let it slide.  “I have determined the fortifications of this castle are still inadequate.”

Archbishop Leonhard looked up in confusion.  “This fortress is perched on
a perilously steep hillside my Lord.  What’s more, I just finished constructing an outer ring of walls and towers.  I respectfully submit the devil himself could not penetrate these walls, let alone mere mortals.”

“You will construct another ring of walls and run a rail line down the cliff face to the
Nonnberg Abbey below,” Goron went on as though the Archbishop had not spoken at all.  “This will provide a means to easily resupply the fortress and an escape route during times of siege.”

“More walls?”
Leonhard asked in disbelief.  “As it is, this proposed rail line will have to pass through four sets of stone walls to reach the abbey.  You propose I add a fifth?”

“I propose nothing, I demand it,” Goron corrected and allowed his flame to flood the room in a deep crimson hue.  “To maintain th
e power and influence you wield you must, above all else, retain control over the salt mines of Salzburg immediately down the hillside from this fortress.”

“But the expense,” the Archbishop protested from his knees.

“It is a necessity that is more than covered by the annual income of the salt mines these improvements are meant to safeguard.”

In an uncharacteristic display of actually having a backbone, the Archbishop protested further.  “Why do we need such protection from your dedicated followers?”

“Because I gave mankind the gift of free will which leaves them susceptible to the devils that I told you about.  The ones who cannot die,” Goron said as a reminder.

Leonhard offered one last protest, “In my entire lifetime I have never felt their evil draw near.”

“When did I instruct Noah to build his ark?” Goron rhetorically asked.  “Before the flood, not after; now do as you are told.”

Without another word
, the Archbishop rose to his feet, bowed at the waist and left the chapel.  A deep thud from the heavy oak door shutting let Goron know he had his privacy once more and the oppressive loneliness of his solitude returned.  Manipulating the local inhabitants to do his bidding provided some measure of amusement, but the simpletons made it entirely too easy to be even remotely satisfying.

Elohim’s
relic, despite his many faults, had at least provided a shared consciousness that allowed Goron to practice fortifying his mental defenses, and hone his ability to pierce the barriers of others.  Now as the two planets drew closer once more, Goron could only hope his mental defenses and weapons were still sharp enough to dominate the Mars collective.

Goron further lamented the loss of Elohim because his former engineer was a pa
ssable sounding board to run plans past for a second opinion.  His input was usually worthless, but there were enough occasions of genius for him to be useful.  That all ended a thousand years ago when his adversary’s masterful strategic vision managed to penetrate Elohim’s robust defenses and extinguish his existence.

Shortly thereafter
, the pesky little Novi captain nearly got his hands on Goron’s relic.  A lot of advanced planning and even a little luck were all that saved him.  Goron had no intentions of pressing his luck any farther.  The fortress overlooking Salzburg would be made impenetrable, no matter the cost.

A flicker of chaos graced the edges of Goron’s mind.  A hundred thousand minds, each with thoughts and ambitions of their own, shined in like a horseman
carrying a lantern approaching at night from a forest.  The illumination was there one moment, then shrouded once more by the ever shifting leaf covered branches.  The intermittent contact gave Goron ample time to practice his mental discipline.  That way when the collective consciousness was fully present without interruption, Goron was in complete command of the situation.

The first moments of sustained contact were always the most taxing.  E
ach life force was busy probing for signs of weakness in the newcomer.  An outsider who’s leadership only showed up for a few weeks every seven hundred days.

Making the task even more difficult was Kuanti.  The frustrating twerp of unremarkable ability or intellect had somehow managed to set himself up as the revered
Founding Leader of the Mars colony.  Every life force in the collective naturally gravitated toward him for leadership and wresting that control away grew more and more difficult with every passing year.

Goron immediately went on the offensive once continuous contact was established. 
“Report.”

That single word was all Goron needed. 
Kuanti’s naked annoyance at the not so subtle leadership challenge opened the barriers of the simpleton’s mind for Goron to get what he needed.  Goron instantly knew the situation, the successes, and more importantly the failures on which to scrutinize.  The fool was so busy fretting over his leadership vulnerability that his open mind provided the very ammunition Goron needed to undermine that leadership; quite a useful paradox.

“Our last twelve solid fuel rocket launches have all been successful.  We have perfected a habitable environment that can be maintained in outer space.  What’s more, our launch vehicles are powerful enough now to leave orbit to reach
the third planet,” Kuanti confidently reported.

Goron already knew it was not all roses
over there and was not about to let Kuanti only detail the successes.  “What about the fusion reactor?  All this progress toward solid fuel rocketry is nice for a backup plan, but the flight time of several years between planets is unacceptable.  That is too much to ask even the most disciplined of our Alpha warriors to endure.”

“Computer models gave us a proof of concept on our design.  Construction will commence once enough
building materials have been refined.”

“Well
, that’s something I suppose,” Goron stated with underwhelming conviction to avoid giving the compliment any undue weight.  “That leaves me fending for myself for at least another century.  All the while our Novi friends make impressive inroads at repairing the disruptions that I’ve caused.  The unifying force behind humanity’s technological and cultural advancement is slowly getting pieced back together.”

“It is a race against time,” Goron went on.  “If they advance
these natives enough to construct a transmission device to reach Novus they win.  If we get your physical forces from Mars to Earth and destroy the jamming signal that disrupts your communicator, we win.  It’s that simple.”

“The advantage is ours,” Kuanti jumped in.  “The Novi
don’t know about our colony, and they are bound by the noninterference mandate of their directive.  Our victory is inevitable, no matter how competent the Novi captain may be.”

“You have fewer than
fifty thousand Alpha in the colony working on technology to reach Earth.”