Balshazzar's Serpent

VIII: IS THE DEVIL A GENTLEMAN?

The note was in a scraggly hand, clearly the work of someone who wrote down very few things and those mostly for his own use.

“Dear Doctor Woodward,” it began, misspelling his name and getting him irritated right from the start by so doing. “I am Captain Morgudan Sapenza, once of the proud ship Amandal, now, as you know, half sunk in the great lake, but still master of her crew and systems. I am sorry to have had to do this, but after all this time we have become desperate and feel we have nothing to lose. This is a backward planet, but we have some comforts of civilization below and we have many modern tools of our trade. We must talk, but your own ships and company can easily do me great harm and then where am I? So, you will have to come to where the messenger here will lead you. It is not far and you have my word that no harm will come to you nor will you be touched. You may bring a fully armed bodyguard to insure this. I will wait for you with a way for us to speak. If you do not come, I will leave at least one of our guests from your company there by two hours before sundown today, or rather I will leave the body and you shall see how this person died. The next time it will be two. Then four an hour after that. And so on. I am sorry, but it is the only way I know of to insist that you come. Until then, I remain, very sincerely, Captain Morgudan Sapenza.

“P.S. Nice move, but I have no kids.”

Woodward shook with rage, and he looked ready to kill the small villager who’d brought the note. Cromwell carefully retrieved the message and handed it to a technician. “Any clues and analysis, Sister—and move on it!”

The aide took the sheet with gloved hand and dashed off to the lab.

“And where are we supposed to meet this—this creature?” Karl Woodward thundered at the messenger.

“Please, sir! I’m just a villager. Not one of them! I even dunno what the thing says. I never learned to read, which is why he took me, I guess. If we don’t do what they tell us, our families—gone! You got to understand!”

Woodward seemed to soften for a second, but only for that brief flash. He had only the word of this little man that the messenger wasn’t really a certain captain himself, or the chief torturer. The Father of Lies was the greatest actor in all creation.

“I didn’t ask you to throw yourself on your knife,” the Doctor reminded him. “I asked where this meeting was to be held.”

“Just over that knob, in the crindin pasture,” the little man told him. “The exact spot I’d have to show you.”

“Near one of their tunnel entrances, I assume?”

“Oh, yes, sir. There’s about a dozen around here, and one inside the village barn. They don’t use this one much, though.”

“What is your name?” Woodward asked the little man.

“They call me Ziggee, sir,” he replied. “Kind of a play on a silly name.”

“All right, Ziggee, you can show us your neutrality by going over to Brother Cromwell there and, on the map he has of this area, drawing or pointing to just where all these entrances are. And if we ever find out that you left out just one, then you will be treated as an accomplice and dealt with. Understand?”

The little man nodded nervously. “Y-yes, sir.”

The Archangel up above studied a close-up of the area and reported, just to the Doctor, “Looks fairly flat, some dirt mounds and, sir, a lot of, well, crindin fertilizer if you know what I mean. No energy scan, but we’ll nail it the moment it opens. Depending on where he stops, call it twenty or thirty meters of fairly flat field.”

“Can you cover it all?”

“Yes, sir! We could shoot gnats from this altitude at an area that clear and defined!”

“Well, I don’t want you to shoot gnats, but you might be called on to shoot everybody who’s not us. Full stun from above at the first sign of problems. If you have to, shoot us, too. We’ll wake up. Just make sure nobody else can wake up sooner. Brother Cromwell will be with me as bodyguard, and in full armor. I assume we can leave him standing.”

“Sir, in that armor, he can take a heavy shot from us.”

“Oh—and one more thing,” Woodward added, as loud as he could.

“Sir?”

“If our native guide pulls anything at all, even tries to run or hide, smite him, level one, no permission required. You got that?”

The little man looked up from the map. “Hey! Wait a minute, Doc! What’s this smitin’ stuff?”

Cromwell towered over him and grinned. “Basically, my son, you will either share our fate or they will burn you to a crisp if I don’t do it first. Got that?”

“Y-yes, sir,” Ziggee responded miserably.

It took them less than an hour to prepare. Cromwell had his recharged suit ready for him, its crosses blazoned, and Woodward, while looking normal, used his large bulk to disguise some lightweight sophisticated body armor. It wouldn’t really handle a head shot, but it had come in handy elsewhere before. He also put on his black frock “preacher’s coat,” which had loose sleeves fitted with smart laser pistols. Once on, all he needed to do was mentally command them to deploy and he would be shooting with both hands.

And, just before Cromwell sealed his suit, the two of them went back into Woodward’s quarters and took a communion together, imploring God to be with them and the captives.

They were just emerging when a young male member of the Arm rushed in. He seemed nervous and a bit awed at the sight of both leaders so close up, but it didn’t stop him.

“Sir? Doctor Woodward?”

“Yes, boy?”

“John Robey, sir! They took my partner and almost got me, but I got in here just in the nick of time. I’ve been going crazy, sir, praying that I could be a part of the recovery.”

Karl Woodward smiled and put his big arm on the young man. “You will, lad, you will. But not in this business today. I simply have no role for you in this.”

“But, sir! We were assigned to this very village. We were the advance team for right here, and I’ve been living here, with and among these people, for weeks now. I know the land and who’s who. For example, I know that this little man’s no member of this village. I’ve never seen him before.”

Woodward’s busy eyebrows went up. “Indeed! Is that so? Hmm… What about this crindin pasture?”

“It’s fairly flat, that’s true, but if there’s any caves underneath they have to be pretty deep. Crindins alone can weigh over eight hundred kilos and when they’re done for the night they pretty well wander over that area. Most of this is soft limestone, but that area was picked as the pasture because it’s more like a granite extrusion or table. If he takes you there, they won’t be popping up out of the ground.”

Cromwell and Woodward exchanged glances. “Maybe we should take him, Karl,” the security chief said.

“Could be. Can’t hurt. All right, son. Not even Tom here can watch me, that weasel, and all our backs at the same time. Keep your pistol armed and in your robe sleeve pocket, and keep it aimed at our shifty little friend in there. Got that?”

“Yes sir! Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me, son, until it’s over,” Woodward cautioned him. “Usually, when you face down the devil, it hurts like hell even when you win.”

Cromwell looked at the old man and sighed. “I wish you weren’t going at all. I know how these kind of people think. Take out the head and they’ll be able to take over the body.”

“Our body was hung on a tree twenty-two hundred years ago and He screwed ’em up good by coming back,” the Doctor responded firmly. “If I don’t walk out there, where’s my demonstration of faith?”

“But only one person came back from the dead,” Cromwell noted. “And I don’t think there’s anything in the promises that an exception will be made for you or me.”

Karl Woodward smiled. “If I die, I’ll just find out the answers to all my questions and the counters to all my doubts and fears that much sooner. I’ve already lived seven times the length He did; half of me is regenerated or regrown, the other half should be. But I didn’t found this ministry. I came along when Doctor Chernyn was called to the Lord. And if God needs somebody else to carry on after me, He’ll provide him. No, Tom. You don’t run from the devil; that’s playing his game. If I never taught anybody anything else I sure should have emphasized that. You go out, face him nose to nose, and when he’s not looking you twist his balls.” He reached down, put on a floppy old hat, then searched around and found a cigar.

“I’ve stayed off these since they regrew half my heart,” he said nostalgically, “but I’ve kept ’em fresh. Now’s as good a time as any to have one.” He fumbled in a drawer, found an old hand-carved container and from it took out a battered old cigar lighter. He lit the cigar, puffed on it to make it catch full, and leaned back, his expression almost as if he were witnessing the Second Coming. Then he suddenly bounded into action.

“All right, people! Go get that little snake and let’s go spit at the devil!”

Cromwell’s armor was an intimidating sight, and the malleable “shell” that formed around him and protected him also could take on some qualities at his very thoughts. It was shining now in the sun, gleaming silver, and it was impressive.

John Robey had on the crimson robe of a security officer. He liked the look, even though he was, of course, as vulnerable as ever in the thing. It took years to learn how to mentally merge with those combat suits, and probably many more to learn how to use them properly. He would have liked its protection, but not unless, like Cromwell, it was second nature and second skin. Instead, he watched Doc Woodward, and he was impressed. He’d never seen the old man so up, so seemingly confident and almost eager for some kind of action. He was taking this whole thing seriously, but, somehow, you got the feeling that the old boy was enjoying this, at least on some level.

As Ziggee led them up towards the village and then to the left of the great barn, Cromwell was already in full sensor mode and on a scrambled tactical frequency he was certain nobody but his people could pick up.

“Top floor barn, facing the pasture,” Cromwell ordered. “I think it’s a good spot for a sniper.”

“What shall I do if he’s up there, sir?” Alpha’s voice responded.

“Oh, terminate anybody who has a weapon. If they have any gear, though, try and keep that intact. Keep it quiet.”

They were in the pasture now, and Ziggee was looking around as if searching for some kind of marker. Either that, Robey thought, or he was afraid of stepping in crindin dung. It didn’t smell all that bad out here, but there was a lot of it.

Woodward sensed that the little weasel wasn’t too sure of himself. The Doctor glanced at his watch and noted that it was pretty much on the nose when the meeting was supposed to take place.

“Apostles, this is Archangel,” came a general frequency call to all of them. “I’ve picked up activity about twenty meters to your right. I’m also reading hostile powered weapons in the barn and in the last house facing the pasture.”

“Got it,” Alpha responded. “Delta and I will take the barn, Gamma the house, Epsilon will hold between as backup. Move!”

Ziggee finally stopped in the middle of the field and scratched his head, then turned back to the trio. “Honest, sir, this is about the place. They was supposed to put a marker here, but I don’t see it.”

“I hate it when demons aren’t punctual,” the Doctor growled, “but we’ll wait a little bit. Who knows? There may be surprises in store.”

Almost on cue there was the curious and unique sound of an energy pistol firing on full power, and suddenly from the small lift door at the top of the barn something pitched forward and fell the nearly fourteen meters to the ground.

“One down,” Alpha reported. “One running like all the demons of Hell was chasing him. Shall we pursue?”

“Negative. Anybody who runs like that doesn’t need encouragement. You two stay up there and cover us instead. Epsilon move to back up the house entry.”

Since Cromwell was in his suit and on a high security frequency, he alone could speak back and forth without anyone else hearing. On the other hand, Ziggee was beginning to look back at the body that seemed to be still smouldering on the ground and the little man didn’t look too good at all.

A second set of three sharp electronic blasts came from the house. Within seconds, it seemed to catch fire, with smoke coming from the small back window.

“Two more down,” Epsilon reported. “I don’t think we can put this thing out on our own, though.”

“If it doesn’t look likely to spread, let it burn,” Cromwell told them. “If it does, allow the villagers to put it out.”

Woodward looked at the silvery suit of armor quizzically. “Tom?”

“Nothing, sir. Uninvited guests are taken care of, and we may have a midday cook fire over there.”

“Hey!” Ziggee yelled, a real nervous wreck at this point. “You ain’t supposed to do that!”

“Neither were you,” Woodward responded, still enjoying his cigar, now already about half smoked. “Now, your Captain what’s his name can come on out in the open like us, fully armed, and bring his best soldier with his best equipment. Then we’ll be even. But snipers taking beads on us from hidden places—that will never do.”

“I—” Ziggee started to respond, but he suddenly stopped and just stared, apparently taken as off guard as the three from the ship.

“Doctor Woodward, so nice of you to come,” said a woman’s voice. They all turned and saw Eve, naked as the day she was born and still showing the bruises of her bonds and captivity, standing there woodenly.

“Eve!” Robey shouted. “It’s me, John!”

Woodward put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “That’s not your Eve, although she’s certainly dressed like it.”

“You are correct, sir,” said the figure. “I am Captain Sapenza. I am using this body for several obvious reasons, including the ones you just so ably demonstrated. They were not amateurs, either, that your people took.”

“Neither are mine,” responded the Doctor.

“Eve” laughed, but it was a hollow, wooden laugh, like the voice, without body language to reinforce it.

“In addition to the safety this method affords me,” Sapenza through Eve continued, “it also demonstrates that I am not without resources myself, even if I do not have anything on the scale of yours. I wish to demonstrate that we are not merely talking potential death of your people here.”

Cromwell was inaudible to the rest, but not to Archangel above. “Archangel, is this a broadcast or is she truly possessed by something?” This was new to him and he didn’t like it.

“If it’s a broadcast I do not have a way to find the frequency or method of transmission,” the controller in orbit above them reported. “Either this captain is inside the body or he’s got some method we know nothing about.”

Woodward sighed. “Well, I am impressed, I admit, although the shame she must feel is not reciprocated by looking at a very attractive if mishandled and maltreated female form. Possession of even the most holy isn’t unknown to us in history, but only her body is in danger, not her soul.”

“Her soul, if there is such a thing, is as much in my possession as her body,” the Captain responded. “Conditioning, hopelessness, trauma—all that can, in the hands of experts, be simple to do. We’ve had a lot of practice with just some of these dumb peasants. You don’t need gimmicks, technology, any of that. You just need a damp cell, some chains, a bare light, and a feeling of total and complete impotence, and to stop them when they go through the possible suicide phase. Anybody can be broken, Doctor. Anybody. Even you if I had you, or, for that matter, me if you had me and went that route. And when you break, you’re damned. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

“You are under the control of and in the power of creatures you do not even believe exist,” Woodward told him. “And, to them, you’re just another tool, just as this poor girl is to you.”

“Well, then, you’ll just have to deal, tool to tool, as it were, won’t you?” Sapenza came back.

“All right, then, what’s your proposition? It’s hot out here and uncomfortable to boot.”

“Direct and to the point. Too bad, really. I enjoy drawing things out.”

“Then let’s do this sitting comfortably in air conditioning and with decent drinks,” the Doctor retorted.

Sapenza laughed. “I really do enjoy dealing with you, Doctor. Very well, let’s be at it. We want off this rock. Our ship’s disabled and beyond our ability to fix, but your people might know how to do it. If not, they know where to go to surreptitiously get the parts. I want a working ship again, Doctor. I want off this dirt ball. I’ll give your people the codes and anything they need to gain full access to the ship. It’s underwater, but I know you can get to it, and if necessary lift it. Some of my staff and your staff will work together. We’ve already done a major damage assessment, and it’s not that huge a job—if you have the parts and equipment to do the fix. As it is, for us, it’s impossible.”

“And for the eighty-seven that you captured I am supposed to do all this?”

There was a pause, and then Sapenza, through Eve, said, “No, Doctor. The eighty-seven captives are to keep your people from coming down here and tearing through our underworld. You can raise hell with us down here but you can’t save them by doing that, and after all these years we have nothing at all to lose.”

“And if I just leave them?”

“You’d really do that? Leave this pretty girl to all the folks down here who want to have some fun with her?”

“There are times when you have to make hard decisions in doing the Lord’s work. I’m not your typical Bible thumper, Sapenza. In fact, I’m not an evangelist in the traditional sense at all. I come, I teach, I see if it takes. If it does I leave some to plant and nurture. If it doesn’t, I curse the world and all its people and move on. That is my job. If I leave them here, God will treat them as martyrs. He will take them to His bosom when their time comes no matter what you make of their physical flesh here. But you, and your people, will still be here and still be stuck, and your very existence will be entirely in our hands. Either we can find the Navy, or whoever you were in a battle with and are still hiding from all this time later, or whatever, or we can blow the controls on the genhole as we leave and you’ll be marooned here forever. Which would you prefer?”

Sapenza sounded genuinely shocked. “You would really do that to so many of your own young people?”

“As opposed to what? Selling our souls? I would have to pray a lot over the decision, but I suspect I could still sleep.”

“Well, Doc, that does make it a little easier on me, though, doesn’t it? What happens to them is your fault, your choice. And, as I said, they are only to insure that you don’t come down here. They are not my hostages in this matter.”

“No? Then what else do we have to talk about, Captain?”

“You. When we first crashed here, we removed some of the heavy weapons and concealed them in an effective defensive grid. They’re good weapons, many of a kind rarely seen even in the old days, and they have their own internal power packs. Fusion and directed antimatter steam, for example. Your soldier boy there can probably tell you what those things can do.”

“What are you threatening, Sapenza? To shoot down my ship in orbit?”

Sapenza gave another pause, although it was unclear if it was for effect or if he was really nervous or just thinking furiously. Finally he said, “No, I’m not sure we have the juice for that, and definitely not the space combat computers. Even a lucky hit would probably be diluted enough to bounce off your shields. These weapons weren’t really designed as surface weapons. But they can take on more limited targets, and they power on in seconds. They can take on a stationary or nearly stationary object very well, even of some great size, and concentrate enough to go through the best shields in that scenario. And I think we could knock down your ersatz lifeboats, your shuttle craft, with disposable weapons, since the shuttles really don’t have any effective energy shielding.”

“He’s talking about Olivet,” John Robey gasped. “Sir, he’s got the ground ship targeted!”

In his head, Cromwell, on the secure band, hissed, “Shut up you idiot! Just play along and don’t panic!”

Robey felt properly chastened, but he couldn’t quite figure out why he was being called on the carpet for that kind of outburst. They were trapped, weren’t they?

Weren’t they?

The Doctor thought for a moment, then said, “All right, tell you what. Send me your experts on your ship with the codes and I’ll have maintenance and engineering take a look at it. I assume I can bring a few people down and shoot a few back up to their labs?”

“Of course. But no one from your present ship goes up, including you, and nobody comes down to this area. You have one shuttle. That should be sufficient to get anyone you need over to the lake in plenty of time, and back as well. We’ll be watching.”

“I’m sure you will,” Woodward told him. “So, shall we meet here again tomorrow, same time, same place, and compare notes?”

There was a pause, then, “Yes, that will be sufficient.”

“In the meantime, you will treat my people as your prisoners, not as your property!” the Doctor snapped. “I see what you’ve done to this girl even before you worked your evil on controlling her actions. You will find a cave with one entrance you can guard or close off, you will give them sufficient food and water, and you can post guards to keep them from getting out. If you can’t do that much, then I swear to God that I will blow up your ship, my ship, I don’t care, and no matter what happens you will never be able to turn a back on any of us. Understood?”

The Captain wasn’t used to this kind of attitude, but after counting ten to keep his own temper in check, he then chuckled and replied, “All right. We’ll try it. But if any of them make a break for it or cause any harm to my people, they will pay and it will be on your head, not mine.”

“If you can’t do your part of the job, then send them back!” Woodward said acidly.

Eve turned and woodenly walked off into the field, oblivious of what was lying on the ground, and reached a point about ten meters from them. She then took one more step and seemed to fall into a deep hole. Robey, unable to restrain himself, ran to the spot, only to be unable to find it even though it was so close.

“It’s a rock door, boy!” Woodward called to him. “Relax. I think we are on the way to resolving this.”

Cromwell seemed much more relieved, and, after doing a fresh check for bugging devices in the Doctor’s offices, he seemed almost relaxed. Robey was anything but, with the image of the tortured and manipulated puppetlike Eve fresh in his mind and, he knew, likely to haunt his nightmares.

The Doctor was a bit angrier inside, an anger that bubbled up from time to time, but he, too, seemed more confident.

“At least we know he can’t control most of the hostages,” Cromwell commented. “I’m sure you noticed that.”

Woodward sat back in his big chair and nodded. “Yes, when he began to object to a normal incarceration, it was pretty clear that whatever he did to the girl has severe limits. We’re not going to have to fight some sort of zombie army.”

Robey just shook his head. “Sir, what’s the difference? I mean, if he can target us here in Olivet and he can shoot down the shuttles, then he has us hostage, too.”

“Not at all,” Cromwell told him. “In fact, until now I wasn’t certain of just how much relative power and equipment he might have. Now I know. It’s why he keeps our people. Deep down, even he suspects that we’re in no true danger here. If it wasn’t for them, we could just curse this place and go.”

“Then why deal with him? Wouldn’t they be just as well off passing over to the Lord as being like—like that?”

“We’re going to try and save them all, or as many as we can, son. That I promise,” Woodward assured him. “Right now, we’re going to play along a bit. Rather interesting that they held out the old Three Kings canard here but never mentioned it out there. I wonder if our pirate captain realizes just what a miserable spot he’s in?”

Robey respected these two men, and if they didn’t seem worried then he saw no reason to stew on their behalf, but he realized that eighty-seven lives were still at stake, maybe a few more on their side. “So what do we do now?”

“We pray, as always, and trust to the Lord,” Karl Woodward told him seriously. “And, later on, our engineers and technicians will go with their engineers and technicians, and maybe by midnight we’ll know just what kind of weapons they had on that ship, which ones they removed, and just what their targeting and energy capabilities are. By morning we should know more about that ship and have its schematics analyzed than the original crew probably knew. And by the end of our meeting tomorrow we should have access to their underground information, particularly if we can reclaim your woman friend. I can’t guarantee we can free her from whatever infernal device they’re using on her, but I do think that we may well be able to listen in on them.”

“And then,” added Thomas Cromwell, “the Lord will enable His terrible swift sword.”

It was difficult to say if Eve was any better or worse than the day before, or even if she could feel such things, but at least the old pirate captain was learning. This time she had her old robe on, and it even looked like somebody had cleaned it. It didn’t take away from the woodenness of her actions, but it did seem to give her a little dignity.

Woodward, Cromwell, Robey, and several others had spent the entire night in the strangest gathering Robey could ever have imagined, a kind of combination prayer meeting, strategy session and technical argument with experts up on Sinai. He was out of his depth from the start and he knew it, so he mostly tried to concentrate on prayer and, as they kept urging him, getting some sleep. He couldn’t do much of either one, though. They had all those comrades, including the outgoing and intelligent Eve made little more than a robot, and they had weapons from an interstellar combination warship and freighter mounted in a defensive ring so that they could blast anything trying to land that they didn’t like—and, of course, anything taking off as well. It seemed like a standoff, and that meant exactly that. The Doctor would never make a serious deal with these evil people, nor could anybody trust them in the first place even if you tried. And they could blow Olivet to hell, or Heaven, or wherever, leaving those on the ground stranded as much as the locals here and those up above helpless to do more than take a measure of revenge.

But if you looked at Woodward, you’d swear that there wasn’t much to worry about. Robey began to wonder if being almost two hundred years old wasn’t pushing the envelope on the mind. They could repair, regenerate, or grow new almost any part of the body these days, but just because you could replace brain cells didn’t mean that you operated like you did in your twenties, or thought as quickly and clearly. Science had moved the bar on longevity and quality of life by a great amount, but there was still a bar there.

Cromwell, somewhat the heir apparent, was different. There was no question the man was a true believer, a fanatic, and in top physical and mental form for taking on all comers. But his own dark and violent side was in some ways as scary as that pirate’s, and there was also some of the same “the end justifies any means” attitude to his actions and beliefs. Everybody at least knew about Karl Woodward, once considered one of humanity’s smartest human beings, a genius in any field that interested him, professor, lecturer, researcher, who, after the Great Silence, one day announced that he had deduced through research and logic the truth of Christianity and embarked on his new crusade, alienating just about every one of his old intellectual colleagues who thought he’d gone over that fine line between genius and madness and also alienating just about all of traditional Christianity by rejecting most of it as “corrupt and stupid.”

Woodward was also convinced that the Great Silence was at the heart of current day religion; that in fact humanity was in the “post Apocalypse period” on Earth and that was why they’d been cut off. Not being on Earth, not being there for the Second Coming, they had denied themselves a part in it. Now the rest of humanity was in a desperate war between those evil forces not involved in the matters of Earth and those other celestial civilizations who were waiting for them.

Robey had been born and raised to believe that, as had the other young people of The Mountain and its mission. Now, though, he was beginning to wonder if maybe Woodward wasn’t as divinely inspired as he seemed. It was very easy to believe within the ship’s society and within a traditional missionary frame. It was getting a lot harder, with real evil beneath them and around them holding real guns.

Now, out in the sun once more, facing his former partner under the control of that evil, he felt no sense of holy mission, none of God’s presence, only a kind of hollow and hopeless sense of inevitable doom. Even his one instruction from Cromwell, his one job, as it were, in whatever they were plotting, was conditional and not exactly something that he thought would do any good.

“Well, what do you think?” Captain Sapenza asked them. “What do your people tell you?”

“Your engines are shot. Your bubble’s cracked clean through,” Cromwell told him. “There’s no repair for that kind of thing. You have to replace the entire aft engine system, and there’s little chance of finding one of those in good shape that would fit your system these days. The only thing salvageable is your freighter module, but that was never intended to land intact like that. There’s no way to get it back up. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“We—suspected it, but without the kind of diagnostic equipment and experts you had, and the scanners, we didn’t know for sure. Well, that leaves us with Plan B.”

“Which is?” Woodward prompted.

“You’ll have to take us all with you.”

Woodward laughed. “Oh, really? And why should we do that? We’ve already established that you do not have sufficient hostage incentive for that.”

“I will kill them, or worse,” Sapenza warned him.

“I’m sure you will. People have been doing that to Christians for a very long time, and, unfortunately, in an abominable twisting of belief on its head, so-called Christians have been doing it to others. Still, we have a word for it—‘martyr.’ Those who break and voluntarily go with you lose their souls. Good riddance. Those who don’t and die for it will find themselves welcomed at the new temple in Jerusalem and become written as saints in our newest testament. Or, to put it another way, you blew it, Captain Sapenza. You have nothing to offer. Rot in Hell.”

Sapenza surprised him by responding, “Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it. If you’re right, and Earth’s Last Trump already blew, then both of us missed it, Doctor. Not just me, but you, too. Look around, Doctor. This dirt ball is the kind of place you get when you think you got the One True Faith and you follow that one with the real truth blindly down any road and right into the sun to be consumed! That is your history, too. You don’t think old Mother Tymm didn’t believe it just as much as you believe your position? From my perspective, the only difference between you and your followers and she and her followers is that yours haven’t yet been led into their own circle of Hell yet. But when you do, when you do, then don’t take me along with you. If you’re going to Hell anyway, Doctor, you should have a really good time before you get there.”

The Captain’s words seemed to be having a serious effect on Woodward, who stood there, grim-faced, for the first time looking very old and not as cocksure of himself and all his views. For Robey it was even more devastating, putting into words what had been gnawing at his soul since the hostages had been taken.

“What exactly are you proposing, Sapenza?” Woodward asked in a hollow tone.

“Mutual mistrust and cooperation on that basis. I have a hundred and sixteen people here, plus your eighty-seven. We wire ourselves and those hostages together and we come aboard your ship over there as a group. Put us in one of the big rooms you have there—the thing’s designed as a traveling cathedral, after all. You seal us in there. We’ll have a floating dead man switch between us. Anything like a gas or energy attack, anything sudden, we all blow up. Or, we come aboard, and you feed us and take us out of here.”

“To where, exactly, do we take you?”

“It’s been a long time. I don’t know what’s still going where. If we can get to a place where we can get a replacement ship, fine. That’s good enough. At least some kind of civilization where I can bargain what I have.”

“And what do you think you can bargain for the likes of a ship? Even if we took you in this fashion and there was no double cross, we can’t take your cargo, your booty, whatever.”

“Don’t be stupid, Woodward. You were supposed to be a bright guy. With a diminishing supply of ships and repairs there’s little material that can be traded for anything big these days, although we’ll try and deal the salvage on my poor ship there. But I wasn’t kidding about having something of incalculable value. Knowledge that is worth more than anybody can pay for it.”

“You’re not going to come up with that Three Kings nonsense again,” Cromwell put in.

“Oh, but that’s exactly what I’ve got, sir. I’ve got the Three Kings. I’ve got their location, their general descriptions, full navigational information, requirements to force through to them, and some sampling that indicates that they at least partially live up to their reputation. You see, we found dear, sainted Mother Tymm’s vessel. She had the information. Where she got it from, I don’t know. I don’t think she’d ever been there, but she sure knew somebody who had. The data modules were scouting reports from a Vaticanus class scout. And, there were—samples. All the stuff the old legends never gave, but otherwise totally consistent with them.”

“How do you know she didn’t just create these out of her visions?” Cromwell asked him. “If she could astronavigate, it wouldn’t be that outrageous.”

Eve reached into her robe pocket and pulled out an egg-shaped object about the size of a child’s fist. She stretched out an arm straight in front of her, offering it to them. When neither of the older men moved, Robey stepped forward and took it from her, then stepped back.

It was smooth, smoother than glass, smoother than just about anything he could remember. It was also slightly warm; not hot, but certainly above body temperature, and it didn’t seem to be warm because it was next to anything. The colors of the thing were spectacular, a kind of crimson wash against a pale yellow; but although he could not catch it doing anything, the mixture seemed to move, so that you couldn’t quite find the same pattern or design if you looked away and then looked back at it.

John Robey stared hard into the egg-shaped thing and, somehow, half inside the thing, half inside his head, a shape, a picture of some sort, seemed to form and then sharpen into realistic three-dimensional clarity. He saw it, cried out, and almost dropped the thing. Cromwell moved quickly and caught it, then looked at it quizzically.

“What was it, son? What did you see?” the security man asked him.

“I—I saw her. Eve. She was—screaming. In agony. It was—horrible.”

Cromwell looked at it, turned it over in his hand, and shook his head. “Weird,” he muttered. “Doctor?”

Woodward took the thing, examined it, and nodded. “It’s just as the old stories say. There’s supposed to be some of these on Vaticanus, but of course a lot of the physical evidence was suppressed. There was always the hope that they could find the place again while convincing everybody else it was just a legend.”

He stared into it as Robey had, and for him, too, a vision coalesced, although clearly not the same one the younger man had seen. He looked at it, seemingly transfixed, fascinated by its image which seemed revealed to him alone.

Suddenly, he broke away, as if awakening from a trance. “What did you do to get this, Sapenza? Murder the crew?”

“Nothing of the sort! She’d been dead and so had the small crew of that ship for a century and a half before we lucked onto her, and that was only because we’d just had a professional disagreement, let’s say, with a former partner over some financial matters and then discovered he had bigger guns than we did even though we had a faster ship. We went through gate after gate at top speed, so scrambled even we didn’t know or care where we were going. We gave ’em the slip somewhere in the system, and came out an old gate and almost crashed into the wreck. Who knows how long it was there, or how many other ships might have gone past without even noticing it? Sheer luck, or chance. We did a salvage and strip, and the first thing we did, of course, was retrace its course to see if the colony was worth a look. As you can see, it wasn’t, but that last shot we’d taken and the stress of all that gating at speed caused the bubble to burst. We’ve been stuck here ever since. The Curse of Mother Tymm, you might call it. What with all the informational stuff, the Three Kings artifacts, and the Reverend Mother’s own personal possessions we were able to convince the yokels that we were the guardians until the dear Mother returned. She won’t, of course. Not in this life. Besides, she’d be almost four hundred anyway. A bit old for anybody’s taste.”

“Why did she die? And why did she leave the colony here?” Cromwell asked.

“I can tell you that there’s no gate at the Kings. It’s a free wormhole and its got a lot of energy. You’d need shields ten times stronger than what that old bucket of hers had. I think they tried it, but they found out in time that if they went through they’d wind up as the galaxy’s smallest neutron star. So they dropped here, figuring it would support the colony for years until she could get what she needed to go through, and she left. The thing must have been half torn to pieces by the first attempt. It was imploded. Ugly. But, at least, intact for all that. If it had exploded we’d never have figured out what it was.”

And there was the whole story. It rang true, felt true, sounded true. And it had one particularly problematical side effect.

Maybe these soulless and evil people really did know the way to the Three Kings.

“There’s no way we could take them under those conditions he laid out,” Cromwell noted on the secure channel. “We’d wind up killing all of us, and destroying the full Mountain as well. I say we go with our original plan. Then we’ll see what sort of bargain can be struck at the point of our weapons!”

Woodward continued to finger the egg for a few moments, then he sighed and seemed to nod to himself. After a moment, he took out another cigar from his pocket and lit it. As he puffed, he stepped back a bit from the others.

“Okay, boy, this is it! On my count, it’s shoot and run! Three… two… one…” And then, shouted loudly, “Now!”