Tower of Zanid (16 page)

Another whisper shushed the complainant, and the head hierarch began to speak.

The beginning of the service was not very different from those of some of the major Terran religions: prayers in Varastou; hymns, announcements, and so on. Fallon fidgeted, shifted his feet, and tried not to scratch. During the silences the little whimpering moans of the forest-female were heard. The hierarchs bowed to each other and to the statue, and handed symbolic objects back and forth.

Finally the chief hierarch ascended the pulpit again. The congregation became very quiet, so that Fallon felt that the climax was not far off.

The hierarch began in modern Balhibou: “Listen, my children, to the story of the god Yesht where he became a man. And watch, as we act out this tale, that you shall always be reminded of these sad events and shall carry the image of them engraven upon your liver.

“It was on the banks of the
Zigros
River
that the god Yesht first came in unto and took possession of the body of the boy Kharaj as the latter played and sported with his companions. And when the spirit of Yesht had taken possession of the body of Kharaj, the body spoke thus: ‘O my playfellows, harken and obey. For I am no longer a boy, but a god, and I bring you word of the will of the gods…’”

During this narrative, the other hierarchs went through a pantomime illustrating the acts of Yesht-Kharaj. When the high-priest told how one of the boys had refused to accept the word of Yesht and mocked Kharaj, and the latter had pointed a finger at him and he fell dead, a gaudily clad priest fell down with a convincing thump.

The pantomime proceeded through the intimate details of the youth of Kharaj, with the unwilling assistance of the captive, who then played the role of the god as his gruesome death by torture was related. The eyes of the Krishnans—priest and layman alike—glistened at the spectacle. Fallon had to avert his, and beside him he heard Slavic mutterings from Fredro.

Anthony Fallon was not a man of high character. But though he had been responsible for a certain amount of death and destruction on his own account in the course of his adventures, he was not wantonly cruel. He liked Krishnans on the whole —except for this sadistic streak which, though usually kept out of sight, came to the surface in such manifestations as this torture-sermon.

Now, though he tried to retain his attitude of cynical detachment, Fallon found himself grinding his teeth and driving his nails into his palms. He would cheerfully have blown up the Safq and everybody in it, as the obnoxious Wagner had suggested. Had Mjipa’s missing Earthmen ended up on this bloody slab, too? Fallon, who did not much like the Bakhites either, had long discounted ‘their accusations against the Yeshtites, attributing them to mere commercial rivalry. But now it transpired that the priests of Bakh had known whereof they spoke.

“Steady,” he whispered to Fredro. “We’re supposed to enjoy this.”

The high priest called for another hymn, during which a collection was taken up. Then after prayers and benedictions the high priest came down from his pulpit and led the priests, chanting, down the aisle along the route that they had entered. When Fallon and Fredro, marching with the sacerdotal procession, passed back into the robing-hall, Fallon heard the general scurry of feet as the congregation departed out the main entrance, where the clink of coin told that another collection was being taken up. Watching the authentic priests, Fallon tossed his cape on the counter and strolled off with Fredro, still shaken by what he had witnessed.

The unexplained noises now came to Fallon’s ears again more “clearly, since there was no more singing and haranguing to drown them out. The other priests were either standing about in groups and talking, or drifting off about their own affairs. Fallon jerked his head toward the corridor that ran around the outer wall of the building.

Fallon and Fredro walked along this curving hallway. Above the level of the doorways on the left ran a series of inscriptions, at the sight of which Fredro became excited.

“Maybe in pre-Kalwm languages,” he whispered. “Some of those I can decipher. Must stop to copy…”

“Not tonight you shan’t 1” hissed Fallon. “Can’t you imagine what these blokes would think if they saw you doing that? If they caught us, they’d use us at the next Full Rite.”

Some of the doors to the left were open, revealing the interiors of miscellaneous chambers used for storing records and transacting sacerdotal business. From one door came the smell of cookery.

Fallon could discern as he walked that the walls of the structure were of enormous thickness, so that the passages and rooms were more like burrows in a solid mass than compartments separated by partitions.

Nobody had yet stopped or spoken to the Earthmen as they rounded the gentle curve of the hall to the stair that Fallon was looking for. The noises came more loudly here. The stair took up only half the corridor; priests went up and down it.

Fallon walked briskly up the stair to the next level. This proved to be that on which the hierarchy had its living and sleeping quarters. The Earthmen snooped briefly about. In a recreation-room Fallon recognized the high priest, his gorgeous vestments replaced by a plain black robe, sitting in an armchair, smoking a big cigar and reading the sporting page of the
Rashm
. The mysterious noises seemed fainter on this storey.

Fallon led Fredro back down the stairs and started along the corridor again. Underneath the upgoing stair was the entrance to another stairway going down. At least so Fallon inferred, though he could not see through the massive iron door that closed the aperture. In front of this door stood a Krishnan in the uniform of a Civic Guard of Zanid; he held a halberd.

And Anthony Fallon recognized Girej, the Yeshtite whom he had arrested for brawling two nights previously.

For three seconds, Fallon stared at the armed Krishnan. Then the gambler’s instinct that had brought him such signal successes—and shattering failures—in the past prompted him to go up to the guard and say, “Hello there, Girej.”

“Hail, reverend sir,” said Girej with a questioning note in his voice.

Fallon raised his head so that his face was visible under the cowl. “I’ve come to collect on your promise.”

Girej peered at Fallon’s face and rubbed his chin. “I—I should know you, sir. Your face is familiar; I’ll swear by the virility of Yesht that I’ve seen you, but…”

“Remember the Earthman who saved you from being run through by the Krishnan Scientist?”

“Oh! You mean you’re really
not.
..”

“Exactly. You won’t give us away, will you?”

The guard looked troubled. “But how—what—this is sacrilege, sirs! ‘Twould mean my…”

“Oh, come on! You don’t mind playing a bit of a joke on those pompous hierarchs, do you?”

“A jest? In the holy temple?”

“Certainly. I’ve made a bet of a thousand karda that I could get into and out of the crypt of the Safq with a whole skin. Naturally I shall need some corroboration that I’ve done so— so there’s one-tenth of that in it for you in return for your testifying that you saw me here.”

“But…”

“But what? I’m not asking you to do anything irreligious. I’m not even offering you a bribe. Merely an honest fee for telling the truth when asked. What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, good my sirs…” began Girej.

“And have you never wished to prick the pretensions of these conceited hierarchs? Even if Yesht is a great god, those who serve him are merely human like the rest of us, aren’t they?”

“So I ween…”

“And didn’t you promise me help when I needed it?”

This went on for some time; but few, Terran or Krishnan, could long resist Fallon’s importunities when he chose to turn on the charm.

At last, when Fallon had raised the ante to a quarter of his winnings, the bewildered Girej gave in, saying, “ ’Tis now near the end of the fourteenth hour, my masters. See that you return ere the end of the fifteenth, for at that time my watch does end. If you do not, you must needs wait until
noon
of the morrow, when I come on again.”

“You stand ten-hour watches?” said Fallon, cocking a sympathetic eyebrow. As Krishnans divided their long day into twenty hours beginning at dawn (or, more accurately, halfway -from
midnight
to
noon
) this would mean a watch of considerably more than twelve Terran hours.

“Nay,” said Girej. “I have the night trick but once in five nights, trading back and forth with my mates. Tomorrow I’m on from the sixth through the tenth.”

“We’ll watch it,” said Fallon.

The Krishnan leaned his halberd against the wall to open the door. This door, like many on Krishna, had a crude locking-mechanism consisting of a sliding bolt on both sides, and a large keyhole above each bolt, by means of which this bolt could be worked by a key thrust through from the other side. The bolt on the near side was in the home position, while that on the far side was withdrawn, and a large key stood idle in the keyhole giving access to the latter bolt.

Girej grasped the handle of the near bolt and snapped it -back, then pulled on the fixed iron doorhandle. The door opened with a faint groan.

Fallon and Fredro slipped through. The door clanged shut behind them.

Fallon noticed that the mysterious sound now came much more loudly, as from a source just out of sight. He identified these sounds as those of a metal-works. He led his companion down the long dim-lit flight of stairs into the crypt, wondering if he would ever succeed in getting out.

Fredro mumbled, “What if he gives us away to priests?”

“I should like the answer to that one, too,” said Fallon. “Luck’s been with us so far.”

“Maybe I should not have insisted on coming. Is bad place.”

“A fine time to change your so-called mind! Straighten up and walk as if you owned the place, and we may get away with it.” Fallon coughed as he got a lungful of the smoky atmosphere.

At the bottom of the stairs a passage of low-ceilinged, rough-hewn rock ran straight ahead, with openings on both sides into a congeries of chambers whence came the growing clangor. Besides the yellow glow of the oil-lamps in their wall-brackets, the labyrinth was fitfully lit by scarlet beams from forges and furnaces, the crisscrossing red rays giving an effect like that of a suburb of Hell.

Krishnans—mostly tailed Koloftuma of both sexes—moved through the murk, naked save for leather aprons, trundling carts of materials, carrying tools and buckets of water, and otherwise exerting themselves. Supervisors walked about.

Here and there stood an armed Krishnan in the gear of one of Kir’s royal guard. Civic guards had replaced them only in the less sensitive posts. They shot keen looks at Fallon and Fredro, but did not stop them.

As the Earthmen walked down the corridor, a plan transpired out of the confusion about them. On the right were rooms in which iron ore was smelted down into pigs. These pigs were wheeled across a corridor to other rooms in which they were remelted and cast into smaller bars, which were turned over to smiths. The smith hammered the bars out into flat strips, beat them into rolls around iron mandrels, finally welded them into tubes.

As the Earthmen passed room after room, it became obvious what this establishment was up to. Fallon guessed the truth before they came to the chamber in which the parts were assembled. “Muskets!” he murmured. “Smoothbore muskets!”

He stopped at a rack, wherein a dozen or so of the firearms stood, and picked one out.

“How to shoot?” asked Fredro. “I see no trigger or lock.”

“Here’s a firing-pan. I suppose you could touch it off with a cigar-lighter. I knew this would happen sooner or later! It just missed happening when I tried to smuggle in machine-guns. The I. C. will never put this cat back in the bag!”

Fredro said: “Do you think some Earthmen did this, having —ah—having got around hypnotic treatment, or that Krishnans invented them independently?”

Fallon shrugged and replaced the musket. “Heavy damned things. I don’t know, but—I say, I think I can find out!”

They were standing in the assembly-room, where a couple of workmen were fitting carved wooden stocks to the. barrels. On the other side of the room three Krishnans were conversing about some production problem: two men with the look of overseers, and one small elderly Krishnan with bushy jade-pale hair and a long gown of foreign cut.

Fallon strolled over toward these three, timing his approach to arrive just as the two foremen went their ways. He touched the sleeve of the long-haired one. “Well, Master Sainian,” he said. “How did you get involved in this?”

The elderly Krishnan turned toward Fallon. “Aye reverend sir? You queried me?”

Fallon remembered that Sainian was a little hard of hearing, and it would not do to shout private business at him in public. “To your private chamber, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, aye. Hither, sirs.”

The senior Krishnan led them through the tangle of rooms and passages to a section devoted to sleeping-accommodations: dormitories for the workers, crudely furnished with heaps of straw now occupied by snoring and odorous Koloftuma of the off shift—and individual rooms for officials.

Sainian led the Earthmen into one of the latter, furnished austerely but not uncomfortably. While there was no art or grace to this cubicle, a comfortable bed and armchair, a heap of books, and a plentiful supply pf cigars and falat-wine were in evidence.

Fallon introduced the two savants in languages that each understood, then said to Fredro, “You won’t be able to follow our conversation much, anyway. So if you don’t mind, stand outside the door until we’re finished, will you? Warn us if anybody starts to come in.”

Fredro groused but went. Fallon closed the door and pushed back his hood, saying, “Know me now, eh?”

“Nay, sir, that I do not… but stay! Are you verily a Krishnan or a Terran? You look like one of the latter disguised as the former…”

“You’re getting close. Remember Hershid, four years ago?”

“By the superagency of the universe!” cried Sainian. “You’re that Earthman, Antane bad-Fain, sometime Dour of Zamba!”