Balshazzar's Serpent

IV: OPPOSITION FROM THE UNDERWORLD

Eve still hadn’t been able to determine just where Alon had vanished, or how, but she was suddenly conscious that she was on a flat area far from any sort of real cover with someone rushing towards her who would not be happy to see her there. The pale yellow camouflage on her robe was fine if she were in the wheat fields or even hidden by the maize, but it kind of stood out on the broad, hard dirt and rock surface. The only practical cover were some low bushes along the irrigation canal, but they weren’t much help since if Gregnar followed Alon’s lead he’d run right down through the ditch and would again be certain to see her. Hoping that the big man wouldn’t expect anybody to be here and, if he suspected he was being observed, he would think only of being followed, she ran as fast as she could as far away from the canal as possible, and, when she felt time had run out, she simply flattened herself on the ground facing the canal.

It was just in time. Gregnar burst from the cornfield about twenty meters from where she lay flat, but she saw immediately that she needn’t have worried. The big man was in a real hurry and didn’t even look around, instead jumping right into the irrigation ditch and running along it, his head comically bobbing up and down as he trotted grimly forward until, at probably the same point that Alon had vanished, there was a crackling sound and then no more bouncing head.

John emerged from almost the same spot Gregnar had in the cornfield and stared. From his angle he’d been able to see the big man run straight along the ditch, and apparently vanish.

Eve got up, quickly brushed the dust off, and made straight for her companion. “You thought I was kidding,” she commented.

Actually, he’d thought that the rookie out for her first real assignment had simply overreacted, but this—this was something very different.

“Security,” he called, mentally opening the comm link.

“OD here. Yes?” It was that damned fool Cordish again.

“Robey here. We have two local men now who have been followed as they went well away from others. I just witnessed one of them go along a canal and suddenly vanish from sight.”

“You probably just couldn’t see him any more because of the angle,” Cordish snapped. “Don’t bother me with this! The Boss is out and roaming around right now and he’s brought his bicycle. Worse, he’s mumbling about borrowing and riding a crindin. Just what we need. Now, if there’s nothing else—”

“I don’t mean I lost sight of him,” Robey responded. “I mean to report that he went through some sort of force field barrier or gate and dematerialized as far as we could see. Toloway had reported another man doing the same earlier.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! These people have nowhere near that sort of technology, and, besides, if they did it would have registered here.”

Robey had just had about enough of the arrogant bastard. “I am recording this for later inquiry,” he told Cordish icily. “I have now reported an anomaly and potential threat to us, the ship, and most particularly to the Doc and our mission. If you choose not to act on it, it is entirely on your head and on your responsibility alone. Is that understood, Brother Cordish?”

It was a risky thing to do, but Robey felt that his first responsibility was to the whole, not to his superiors. He knew that Cordish’s standing orders were to notify the Doc immediately of any problems, particularly of a security nature, and to also act to contain the problem until a decision could come down from on high. Cordish now understood that his neck was the one in the noose; if this developed into anything nasty then the Gates of Hell would be preferable to the Doc’s wrath. On the other hand, if it was trivial, Robey had just made an enemy who would never forget.

Robey was understandably nervous at the latter possibility, but he resented even more that he’d had to go to this length just to get the incompetent son of a bitch to do his job. If Cordish didn’t like taking risks and making decisions, he should never have accepted the job.

“Very well,” Cordish sighed at last, sounding none too pleased. “I’m sending a small tech crew with scanners over to your location. Keep out of sight of the locals until they arrive, and if any of the ones you’ve been following show up, let them leave, hopefully without being aware of you, and remain where you are. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Yeah, right. Will do,” Robey responded. He prayed to himself that this really would be nothing, but there was no way in the world that any kind of high tech system like he’d witnessed should be here, particularly in the hands of these people, and most particularly without being detected.

Neither of the native men reappeared by the time the tech crew showed up, each riding a well-worn but serviceable mag scooter. As with Cordish, they couldn’t believe that this could be anything important and they already had their hands full with routine stuff, but, like Robey, they knew they had to be sure.

The team was a senior technician named Corby and two assistants, Erin and Ruth. Corby was a tall, gangly skeleton of a man, with one of those long faces with a permanently dour, hang-dog expression. He had the biggest hands and longest fingers Eve ever remembered seeing on a human being, but those fingers were so dextrous that they could do things only micromachines were thought to accomplish.

“Girls, I want both monitor cover and security cover on both sides. Ruth, you over there; Erin, you on this side a few meters back of Ruth’s position. Got it?”

They both nodded and picked up small hand-held devices from the scooter’s saddlebags. Corby had a longer device with a complex readout screen in the base and a whole set of lights above. From the base, extending a good half a meter, was a long, smooth gun-metal-gray rod with a pale yellow tip.

Eve looked at the team and was impressed with how professionally they went into action. These people knew their business.

“Is there anything you know of this kind that wouldn’t show up on our sensors?” she asked Corby.

“Oh, hundreds of things. Most likely, though, would be a security barrier. Wouldn’t be much of a security system if it showed up on scans and pointed burglars right to it, would it? Might be a pain if the thing’s on full with total body DNA recognition, so I’m prayin’ it’s off when somebody’s inside. That’s the norm.”

“If it’s on, could you still get in?” John asked him.

“Oh, sure,” Corby responded casually, still tweaking his probe, “but might take a while if it’s in good order and we ain’t got a while.” He twisted the probe and had some problems getting it to rotate to just where he wanted it. “Ungh! Either I’m gettin’ old or this thing is. Okay now, though. You two stay back here on either side and provide backup.”

“Backup?” Robey repeated. “You mean…?”

“I mean backup. If they got a security vault this sophisticated then there’s no tellin’ what they keep in it, is there? God’s welcome to call me home any time, but the devil, now, he gets a fight.”

And, with that, he stepped down into the irrigation canal and began walking steadily along it, his frame tall enough that even somebody viewing him walking in at a right angle could see his shoulders. He held the probe in both hands to steady it and walked slowly but deliberately forward, looking mostly straight ahead but glancing down from time to time to check that the footprints of his predecessors were still clearly visible in the soft mud.

The display lights kept dancing around, apparently guiding him or telling him something in a specialist’s code, and the readout screen fed him more data, but he never stopped or wavered.

He walked straight into the barrier and it almost knocked him down. The probe, of course, touched it first, but it also acted as a conductor of some sort allowing energy to flow back to the handle base and then to the holder of same. The shock wasn’t serious, but it was unexpected because he’d gotten no readout at all that anything was coming up.

“Brother, are you hurt?” Ruth called.

“Only my dignity, and maybe the seat of my pants,” Corby grumbled, getting back to his feet. “Well, so much for the unlocked door theory. Here—somebody give me a hand up! We’re going to see how far this thing goes.”

Robey was the largest of the waiting agents and ran along the bank, past Erin, and gave the big, gaunt man the lift he needed to be pulled from the fairly deep ditch.

He was now filthy, covered with mud, but he looked more angry than embarrassed. “You women! Come on up here! Young man, you go on further on this side with Erin, and, young woman, you go along the other side with Ruth. Keep even on either side of the ditch. I’m going to make some adjustments. If anybody comes out of there, just freeze. They may not even know we’re here or look back. If they do, then do whatever you must.”

“That’s the best instructions I’ve had in a long while,” Robey commented. “ ‘Do whatever you must.’ I like that.”

Corby paid no attention, adjusting his probe and then making a number of passes over the spot where he’d been shocked, only from the upper bank. “Got’cha!” he muttered to himself, smiling grimly. “Won’t shock me again like that. Huh!”

“What is it?” Robey asked him.

“It’s only three meters deep and it stops about twenty-point-three centimeters above the canal. Damned clever. When they need to irrigate it just runs right underneath. And that’s their first line of defense, too. Got idiots like me standing in the wet grounding ourselves when we run into it.”

Erin wasn’t impressed. “You mean they’re both squeezed into something about the size of a private bathroom? Sounds more kinky than threatening.”

“No, I doubt if that’s the case. The odds are it turns and goes into the bank and under. Second line of defense. A bit of a maze.” Corby sighed. “Let’s see if I’m lucky enough to at least be on the side that matters.”

He began slowly passing the probe over the dry, hard-packed dirt and smooth rock in a broad sweep. “Nope. Not my day,” he sighed, and looked over at the opposite bank. “I have no particular desire to jump back down into that muck or go back and walk around,” he told them. “Ruth! Catch and do a sweep!”

With that, he threw the probe across to his assistant who caught it rather nimbly. Within a few minutes, Ruth was doing much the same as he but over on her side, and coming up with the same results.

“Sorry, Brother Corby, but there’s nothing registering here, either!”

“Got to be!” he snapped, not so much at her as at the problem itself.

“You mean they really are in a three-meter-square box we can’t see?” John asked him.

Corby brushed off the comment, too busy working the problem. The large hands waved in the air as he mentally worked out various theories. Finally, he called, “Ruth! Throw the thing back here! Got a theory to test before they pop back out!” She started to just throw it, but he yelled, “No! Wait! Not across the damned thing! Back here!”

He walked a few meters beyond where he’d worked out the “vault” or entrance or whatever to be, and then she threw him the probe and he caught it. Now the display started to flash as if defective, and they understood that Corby and his computerized probe were very much mentally intertwined at that moment. Finally, he nodded. “Got to be. Okay, people, let’s see if we can crack this safe!”

He sent Erin back to bring him some more devices from the saddlebags and, incidentally, to hide the scooters in the corn. She then brought back a number of small cubes, no more than eight centimeters square, which he proceeded to put all around the invisible vault. Then he drew them even farther back, and close to the rim of the ditch on either side.

“Now what?” John asked.

“Now we wait, damn their eyes! I got other things to do!”

Eve, on the other side, just shook her head. “I never believed anything was truly invisible or could be. How is this possible?”

“It’s not invisible, not in that sense,” Ruth told her. “It’s just projecting a false and very convincing picture of what you’d expect to see there. If you saw a visible vault there but found that you could pass your hand through it, you wouldn’t think that odd, would you?”

“Of course not. A hologram.”

“Exactly. Well, same principle, only it’s not the vault that’s the hologram, it’s the area around it. Nonreflective, probably gives the signature of whatever we’re seeing to any probes. The only time it might be detected would be when it opens, but that’s for a very brief time and the energy involved would be so slight that you’d have to know where to look to detect it.”

“But—where are the two men? Certainly not inside there.”

“We’ll find out when we get in,” she said matter of factly. “Providing, of course, we don’t blow it.”

Eve was fascinated at the very idea of a vault. They didn’t have such things in her area of The Mountain, nor would anyone need them. You’d have to have something of your own worth stealing. Only Doc and the security staff and the Ordained would have anything like that, and it wouldn’t be something of this sort.

But how did these people get such a thing? And what did they own that had to be protected?

“The people farming here—they would have to know that this was here, wouldn’t they?” Robey asked Corby.

The tall man nodded. “Sure. That’s one reason why this is barren here. But they built it where they did so that it wouldn’t accidentally be in the way of harvest wagons, big animals, that sort of thing. It isn’t that unusual for even some of these lost and reverted folk to have remnants of the technology they brought here, or even to keep it hidden from us. The question is, what are they hiding and why do they think it’s so important that they’d risk us finding it? If you’re going to pretend to be a primitive, be one. Don’t keep sneaking off and checking to see if the crown jewels are still there. It’s like being so fearful of a pickpocket in a group that your hand keeps going to the pocket where you carry your valuables, thereby pointing out just where they are to every thief in creation. They aren’t just hiding something from us here. Who cares if they do? No, they’re up to something, and I’m afraid it’s the devil’s work.”

There was some noise from the front of the invisible vault or entrance and on both sides the professionals hissed, “Down and quiet! They might not even see us! Let them get well clear!”

They barely had time to do this before there was a crackling and first Gregnar, then Alon appeared, walking back up the irrigation ditch. If either was concerned that they left the door unlocked they didn’t show it, but each of them was carrying a heavy looking case full of what nobody else yet knew. Still, they didn’t even give a glance backward, and might not have seen all that company anyway. Robey in particular noted with admiration that Corby’s professional eye had placed them where the same illusion that masked the vault helped mask them from anyone exiting into the cornfield.

There was a danger if either went along the path and looked back, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. When they reached the field, they said something to one another but neither gave more than a furtive glance around and then both men walked off in opposite directions, each carrying their new load.

“Give them a few minutes,” Corby said quietly. “If they’re any good at all and spotted us, they’ll double back. I want to make sure they’re well away.”

It was a nervous five minutes, but then Corby decided that either the coast was clear or it no longer mattered. Getting up, he took his probe and pointed it at the unseen chamber, this time picking up whatever those small cubes had recorded.

“Got ’em! Not a problem, like I said,” Corby exclaimed with satisfaction. “Fairly simple locking mechanism at that. We’ll have no trouble playing it back. Robey, Toloway, come with me. Ruth, Erin, you cover for us. Anybody shows up, you know what to do.”

Both women reached into the folds of their robes and showed impulse rifles. “Yes, Brother. We know what to do.”

“Then let’s find out what they’re up to, shall we?” With that, he walked forward of the mysterious vault area and jumped back down into the muddy ditch. Steeling himself, Robey followed and managed not to fall on his face in the mud; Corby more gently lifted Eve down.

Corby then waved his probe to cover the whole area, invisible or not, and nodded to himself. “Step up, children, and watch that first step,” he warned, then stepped back a couple of steps, almost knocking Robey over, and jumped forward and up. There was a crackling sound and he vanished.

The other two just stood there a moment, uncertain. Then Corby stuck his head out so that it floated ghostly in what seemed to be midair and called, “Well, come on! Or I’m going in without you!”

Eve shrugged, went to the edge, as it were, and allowed two long, large, ghostly hands to pull her in. Robey shrugged and, with a single hand up, managed to get into what turned out to be a spartan cube okay, although he bumped his knee and knew he’d have a bruise there if nothing else.

It was a very plain box, as it were, with no obvious way in or out. Dimly but adequately lit by a kind of phosphorescent glow emanating from the walls and ceiling, it felt more like a cargo container than anything else.

“This is what it’s all about?” Eve managed, disappointed to say the least. “What were those two doing in here all that time?”

Corby gave a slight smile to both of them. “You haven’t figured it out yet? Well, I’ll show you, then.” He walked over to the back wall and they now saw that there was a touch switch embedded in it about one meter from the floor. Corby touched it, and there was the sound of something engaging front and back, a kind of solid chunk! chunk! Then the cube began to vibrate.

“It’s a lift!” Eve exclaimed, amazed. “But it’s above the canal! How can we go down?”

“Well, at a guess, I’d say those two sounds were blockers coming down on both sides so that if there was any water in the ditch it would be restrained on both sides,” Corby responded. “Once they’re in place, it is likely that the base goes down and then swings away to allow access to the shaft. The reverse will happen when it goes back up. Some mud will fall into the bottom of the shaft, but I suspect there’s a cleaner or drainage mechanism down there to keep it from building up too high. Ah! Not too deep! We appear to be here!”

There was a shudder and then a total absence of vibration, and now the forward entrance winked out, revealing a damp, rocky chamber lit much like the car. Corby walked out into it, and the other two followed.

It appeared to have been developed out of a natural cavern left by eroding underground drainage over eons of time. The shaft and entryway were artificial, but the cavern itself was quite natural, much like those found in limestone and similar sedimentary rock regions on world after world. Lighting appeared to be permanent and chemical; there didn’t seem to be any controls or power source, but half globes had been attached to the cave walls every few meters allowing for adequate vision.

“It would be interesting to see just what the other branches hold,” Corby commented, “but this is certainly sufficient. I can see where the most recent traffic has gone—muddy traces—and they go into that branch there. Let us see.”

Robey looked around at the eerie but impressive installation. “Now, who built this? And why? Certainly this is beyond these people!”

“Probably, but it isn’t beyond their ancestors, the ones who came here and put up that temporary capital and landing area we first went to,” Eve pointed out. “They were here with a lot of technological support for a number of years before things began to fail.”

“Good deduction. I am impressed,” Corby commented. “This, and perhaps others over the inhabited parts of the continent, was certainly done at that time, and, I would suspect, they wound up abandoning the tech center because they needed to grow food and they couldn’t repair or adequately maintain their high tech base. They knew what they were doing, though. Development here was probably very quick. Somebody brought the original settlers here and left, since there’s no sign of a ship or wreckage. They then had to move fast with what they had just to survive. These are, perhaps, stores of things from the old days that may be useful in an emergency, or it might—oh, my!”

He stopped suddenly as they came into a larger chamber, and they followed and then did the same, astonished at what they saw.

“Weapons,” Robey muttered. “Every kind imaginable.”

Stacked in cases, and displayed on a wall that keyed the crate numbers to the displays, were very high tech weapons indeed. No planet killers, but every kind of hand weapon from guided projectile to disruptors, small cannon, small and medium laser and phaser weapons, even surface-to-air smart missiles.

“You could fight one heck of a war with this stuff,” Robey noted, looking at display after display. “I don’t recognize a lot of them, but it’s pretty clear what they do. Some are high military stuff, I’d say.”

Eve was looking at some of the crates. “Yeah, and they’ve got enough power packs here to probably use all of them, at least for a kind of last ditch Armageddon.”

They stood there in silence for a moment, then Corby said, “Armageddon might not be a bad term here. Those two have been removing cases one at a time, and I must assume it’s been at least once a day since we decided to land. The next question is, is that because they don’t trust us and they’re preparing a defense just in case? Or is this something far more sinister?”

“The Festival Services!” Eve gasped. “They start tonight!”

Corby nodded. “I think we need some more active security agents down here, and some arms experts as well. So long as my blockers remain in place they’ll think that anybody coming in or out of the lift will be one of the authorized pair and admit them, so I’m not worried about access.” He looked at his watch. “What I am concerned about is that we’re going to be very vulnerable during that service, and it starts in less than seven hours.”

The Doctor was not amused.

“You mean that this was reported hours ago and I’m just now learning about it?” he thundered. “Satan rides with every mission we undertake, and he’s never more effective than when working on and through those I trust the most. We’re going to have a major talk, all of us, and after that a purge, when this is all over with,” he added ominously.

When he was angry like this, there was an inner part of his soul that seemed to come to the fore, particularly in the eyes, and send chills through anyone who was in his presence. This dangerous streak subsided, though, almost as soon as it showed up, as the leader of the True Church Universal switched to pragmatic mode. There were questions to answer, decisions to be made, actions to be taken before recriminations could even be thought of. Still, before turning to what they would do, he said, rather softly, “I want that idiot Cordish relieved of all duties. Put him on swab detail until I can deal with him.”

“Yes, sir,” an aide said crisply, and turned to give the orders to the ship above.

“And, Harry?”

“Sir?” the aide stopped and turned back towards him.

“Give the OD to Martin and put overall security control for the moment in the hands of Cromwell in Tactical Security. I want Sinai on full alert, understand? If they can materialize an arsenal, then they can also materialize combat ships. Remember Hanunka’s Planet? This could be another trap like that. We’ve had a break by the grace of God and some young people who know how to do things right, so I don’t want us caught with our pants down.”

“Yes, sir. Tactical wants to know if the service remains on.”

“Hell’s bells! Of course it remains on! That’s what we’re here for! And I want everybody fully covered, but no weapons in sight, understand? If they think in terms of priests and nuns and kindly missionaries, I want them to keep that image in their minds. I’ll be fine on stage. You just do your jobs in the crowd.”

It was always tough to get these things together and operating smoothly no matter how self-contained they were and how many times before they’d done it, but knowing that some in the crowd might well have been armed and ready to pull something nasty made it all the tougher.

At least unless they made some kind of suicidal charge from the darkness they would be limited to small arms. Dressed as these people were, it wouldn’t be hard to conceal a hand weapon but it would be damned near impossible to hide something big, particularly when the visitors were providing all the goodies and the people had to bring only themselves.

The service began with some jazzy religious songs and upbeat, fast tempo hymns as the people arrived from villages as far as forty kilometers away. Others, they knew, were gathering in big tents near their own villages up to five hundred kilometers from this point to watch everything on big screens. Except for not being able to see the band and preacher live, they had the same good food, treats, Bibles and hymnals as anyone there and, in fact, even those villagers at the Olivet sight had a better view on the giant overhead screens than they did of the far-off stage.

It was clear to the staff that if these people hadn’t seen a religious tent meeting before, they had a very good idea of what one was supposed to be, and so it was as disconcerting to them as it would be to a more technological culture when the Doctor came out and began. No prayers, no shouted “Amens!” none of the usual emotive stuff you’d expect with a revival. The boss just started talking, and that was, as usual, enough, once they had the language and dialect filters down as good as they did here.

There are some people who define the old Greek word charisma, and Doctor Karl Woodward was certainly one of them. The term meant “unmerited favor,” but that never really did it, either. It was just that when Karl Woodward started speaking and you could understand him, you’d sit there and listen to him even if he was reading the technical manual on how to repair a gravity toilet.

“My friends,” he was saying, in that deep, mellow voice that could go straight to your soul, “since I’ve arrived here everyone’s been asking me and my people, ‘What do you want?’ Well, tonight I’m here to tell you, and it won’t be what you expect. What I want is for you to listen to me and consider my words. Take the Bibles, those of you who can read them, and check me out if you think I misspeak. For example, we don’t pray at our services, or have big prayer groups. Our Lord said that people who do that are showing off for other people and that their reward is that other people admire how holy and pious they are. But God doesn’t really hear those prayers, because they aren’t really directed at Him but rather at the audience. So we don’t do that. You want to talk to God, you go into some private place, off by yourself, and you talk to Him. You can pray, you can simply speak, do it any way you want, but do it in private. The Bible says do it in a closet, but we’re not that literal. At any rate, we decided long ago that if you’re going to believe in something, believe it and act on it, don’t use it to show off. Still, we are here to bring you the good news of salvation through grace. We’ll give you the truth, and the reasons why we believe it. We want you to listen. Those whom God wants to hear will do so. The rest of you will drift away. Our job is only to bring it to you. All we want is a few nights to present the case. After that, it’s up to you.”

It was the usual start to what would evolve into a stem-winding one-man performance, but with that sort of beginning it was notable that they were still sitting there, still listening.

Eve, John, and the rest knew that because their eyes weren’t on the Doctor nor were their thoughts on what he said. They had plenty of time to learn at his feet, and to study what he said, because, believing it the truth, it never varied.

Instead, their eyes and thoughts were on the security channel and on looking for anything and anyone out of the ordinary.

Like men with guns.

I wish I knew what those men had taken out of that arsenal, John and many others thought as they studied the crowd. Some of those missiles could kill an awful lot of people and damage even their sophisticated defenses. God might protect His people from harm, but He did a much better job if you were wearing a bullet-proof suit, and He was known to kill hordes of His own chosen people just to make a point. As the Doctor was telling the crowd right at that point, “God didn’t create us to have somebody to serve, He created us to serve Him. If you don’t like that, tough.”

It was not a message that always went down well, particularly with a poor populace, but it sure put pragmatism at the heart of the actions of those who followed these beliefs. None of the Arms of Gideon nor Tactical spread through the place thought that he or she was immune from harm just because they were on the side of the angels.

As Eve walked slowly down one aisle and up the other, she couldn’t help but note how many of these people were checking the Doctor out when he threw out these unconventional notions along with chapters and verses. There was an exceptionally high literacy rate among these folks for simple cut-off farmers.

You could always sense, though, when the Word was getting through, and she felt that there was a fairly high percentage of people here who were really listening and nodding and muttering “That’s right!” Not everybody, of course, but a fair number. Of course, they hadn’t yet gotten to the hard part—of what God wanted of them—but that would be for later nights.

From a security standpoint, it meant that this wasn’t an armed populace sitting there waiting for a chance to open up on their visitors. They were interested, or skeptical, or bored, but they weren’t tense. Whatever Gregnar and his crew had in mind, they didn’t include the village as a whole in their plans.

Speaking of which, Gregnar, Alon, and Krag were nowhere to be seen in this crowd, although, of course, they might well be simply swallowed up by it.

“Faith!” the Doctor was thundering. “Faith doesn’t mean singing hymns and looking holy! Faith is an action, it’s putting yourself at risk for God’s sake! God doesn’t expect us to be like Him or become like Him—that’s been tried since Adam and Eve way back when and look how badly that went! He’s had to destroy most of humanity several times, and may have done in about half of it again if we think the worst of the Great Silence. Try as we might, we’re gonna fail! It’s not imitation that God wants, it’s trust! Faith is trust! Look at me! I’m as much a sinner as anybody, but I trust the Lord and hang my body on His promises. I had nothing when I started—an itinerant preacher, living hand to mouth, bumming rides and meals from town to town, world to world, not a cent to my name. Now look at all this! Because I trusted Him, God decided that I was one to do His work out here. And here I am, the latest in a line of reformers trying to reach the unreachable and bring God back into the lives of people long forgotten by the rest of humanity. And when we bring the message to you all, then the Silence will be broken, and we who accept and believe will be taken in the wink of an eye to a new Earth and a new Jerusalem!”

He had been going for an hour and a quarter, and nobody could read a large audience from beyond the stage lights like Doc Woodward. He was winding up and leaving them wanting more, and when he was done these people would walk home or ride home on their animals or be taken home by Mission personnel and they’d be scattered too widely to pull anything.

And then it was over, and the old preacher got a lot of applause, and that was that. Eve and John met near the back, and he gave her a shrug. “Not tonight, looks like,” he said.

“I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed,” she told him. “If they’re not going to attack us during a service, and they aren’t staking us out, then what’s all this about?”

“We’ve got almost a week left,” he reminded her. “And, well, maybe they just haven’t had enough time to get all the weaponry out they need. Don’t be so bloodthirsty. You still might get what you wish for, and worse.”