Spock Messiah

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Behold… Afterbliss!”

The Messiah’s cry rang through the square and the eyes of the crowd followed the pointing arm of the black-robed man. The new star rose, a shimmering pearl of white that climbed swiftly up the vault of the heavens, moving across the sky toward Andros.

“Behold the work of the gods, a dwelling place of everlasting delight for those who follow their will and their chosen Messiah. Death in battle is no longer death, but a gateway to eternal life. The swords of the ungodly may pierce our bodies and spill our blood on the dry ground, but with each rising of our heavenly home, the gods shall lift our dead to their reward. And for those who resist the divine will”—the Messiah’s voice growled his message of warning again—”another place has been prepared, a place of burning and eternal torment!”

As the new star moved on its downward course, dropping to the western horizon, the torch-bearing hillmen who ringed the wagon began a barking chant, continuing through the minutes the star was visible.

“Death! Death to unbelievers! Death to the Messiah’s enemies!”

Scattered voices in the crowd began to pick it up, and the Messiah himself joined in, cracking out the staccato words.

“Death! Death! Death!”

Raw, demonic power seemed to pour from the black-robed man, and more and more voices from the crowd began to join in. Feet began to stomp on the paving stones of the plaza, a thrumming, echoing sound. Shoulders began to sway.

Kirk found himself caught up in tidal currents of building emotion that threatened to swirl him out of control. Bit by bit, his will began to ebb, surrendering to that hammering, hypnotic voice.

He dug his nails into his palms, hoping to use pain as a defense against the web of madness being woven by the Messiah’s siren call. The urge to join, to become one with the chanting, howling crowd, mounted to irresistibility.

He fought for control of his body as it tried to stamp and jerk in cadence with the rest of the puppets, whose movements were orchestrated by the wildly waving arms of the black-robed magician. In spite of the chill of the evening, sweat dripped from Kirk’s contorted face. His healer’s wand slipped unnoticed from writhing fingers and fell to the ground.

“Jim!” a voice called, seemingly from a great distance. A hand gripped his forearm in a vise-like grasp. He tried to shake it off, but it only clamped down harder. Kirk grunted in pain, pain which broke through the oratory-induced trance.

“Jim! Snap out of it. Spock’s miracle—that was the Enterprise! It had to be.”

Kirk gave a dazed shake of his head, trying to cast off the grip of the emotional spell projected by the chanting figure on the roof of the wagon.

“Somehow he’s forced Sulu to change orbit; she can’t be more than a hundred and fifty kilometers up,” McCoy hissed into his ear. “Get the wand; you’ve got to stop that madman before it’s too late. Another few minutes of this, and he’ll have everyone under his control.”

Sudden anger blossomed in Kirk, clearing his head. His ship, a pawn in the Messiah’s mad game! Aware that he had dropped the wand, Kirk bent and snatched it up. With shaking hands, he pointed it toward the capering figure on the van and pressed the firing stud.

“Death! Death to un—”

In mid-word, the Messiah slapped his hands to his chest, staggered a step, then pitched over the edge of the van like a giant, broken-winged crow.

A shocked gasp rose from the crowd. Hillmen dropped their torches and leaped to his rescue. Their reaching arms caught him, lowering the Messiah gently to the ground.

With the snapping of the hypnotic spell that had held them in thrall, voices of protest began to rise here and there as the personal implications of the Messiah’s revolutionary pronouncement began to sink in. Somewhat belatedly, Kaseme’s men remembered why they were there and broke out in a chorus of hooting jeers. The Messiah’s followers began to shout back.

Shoving began, and in moments the square was filled with cursing, struggling knots of Kyrosians, some trying to escape, others plunging into the melee.

“Come on, Bones,” Kirk muttered. The two officers began to shove their way into the seething mass, heading for the black van. Units of the provost guard came trotting out of several side streets in disciplined formations. The squads broke up, and the guards, truncheons swinging, charged into the mob.

Hillmen milled in the center of the square, clustering defensively around their fallen leader.

“Make way,” Kirk shouted authoritatively. “Make way so we may help the Messiah!”

The two burst upon the ring of hillmen and met only snarls of distrust. Dirks and swords, hidden under robes until then, gleamed wickedly in the torchlight.

“Put down those weapons,” Kirk snapped. “We’re here to help him, not to harm him.”

The clansmen glanced at each other in a moment of indecision. Finally, at a guttural command from a hillman who knelt by the Messiah’s head, the blades were lowered. Kirk moved forward, knelt by the Messiah, and placed his ear against the robe-covered chest.

In a voice easily heard by those who clustered around, McCoy asked, “Is he dead?”

Kirk glanced up and shook his head. “Not yet, but he will be soon unless we get him to a place of healing.” He rose to his feet.

“Your Messiah is dying. We cannot help him here. He must be taken to our clinic at once.”

The other stared at him, and also rose to his feet.

“No,” he said obdurately, “we will take him to the hills. The gods will not let him die.”

“Who are you to know their will?” Kirk snapped. “His breath is failing. In minutes he’ll be dead.”

He scanned the hooded figures who pressed close around until he spotted a couple of quick head nods that identified Enterprise crewmen in bill disguise. He beckoned to them.

“You and you. Pick up your master. Gently, now.”

Kirk led them to the rear of the van, unlatched the doors, and swung them open.

“Inside,” he said, his voice commanding. “There’s no time to lose.”

As the Messiah was laid gently on the floor of the wagon, a little whimpering sound came from its dark interior. Kirk peered into the darkness and could vaguely make out a hooded figure curled on a blanket in a fetal position.

“Bones, it’s Chag Gara,” he whispered to the doctor. “We’ve got them both. Let’s get them out of here fast.”

The two officers jumped out of the wagon, and Kirk slammed the doors shut. He and McCoy went quickly around the side of the black van and clambered into the front seat.

“Hillmen!” Kirk shouted. “Open a way through the crowd. Hurry!”

There was a quick stir as disguised crew members formed a wedge in front of the van. They pushed forward and through the screaming, rioting crowd.

Kirk grabbed the reins and flapped them to get the neelots into motion. As the van lumbered forward, torch-bearing hillmen trotted along its flanks, knives and swords exposed again, ready to defend their leader. From his high vantage point, Kirk could see that his plan was working well.

Some of Kaseme’s men were joyfully smashing rock-like fists into the faces of some of the hillmen scattered through the crowd. Others of the half-drunken irregulars fought fiercely with clubs and swords, while still more seized opportunity and paused occasionally to lift the purses of unconscious townspeople.

The provost guards added to the confusion as they milled through the crowd, clubbing to the ground any masked figure they came upon.

“Looks like we made it, Bones,” Kirk muttered, as the van emerged from the seething ocean of chaos in the plaza into the relative quiet of the narrow lane that led to the clinic’s compound. It lay to the left, in the middle of the lane, and as they approached it, the doors of the courtyard gate began to swing open.

“Chalk one up for our side,” Kirk said. “In a couple of hours, Spock will be back to normal, and the Enterprise will be warping out of here.”

The advance guard of the disguised Enterprise men turned as it reached the now open gate. As Kirk pulled back on the reins to slow down the neelots, there was a creaking noise behind them and McCoy twisted in his seat, glancing back.

“Jim!” he shouted. “Watch out! It’s—”

His voice ended in a gasp as a black-robed arm shot out and, wielding a club, clipped McCoy on the temple. He slumped forward, unconscious.

Kirk spun around, fumbling to get his wand in position to fire a dart into the black-robed figure who had just emerged from the trapdoor in the roof of the van. The Messiah’s club swung toward Kirk, but he dodged like a cat, arcing his arm around, aiming at his snarling antagonist.

He fired… and missed. A sudden, slashing blow of the figure’s club smashed into his right shoulder with brutal force. The wand dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers.

Surrounded by a haze of blinding red pain, Kirk fumbled with his left hand on the floor of the driver’s box to recover the wand. Before he could locate it, powerful arms gripped him tightly and lifted him high.

He felt himself hurled to the cobbled street below.

He lay half stunned for a moment, struggling to regain his breath and balance. He rolled weakly onto all fours as a stentorian voice rumbled above him.

“Demons!” the voice shouted. “Demons in disguise who seek my life: Kill them!”

His useless arm dangling at his side, Kirk staggered to his feet and looked wildly up at the shouting figure giving orders to his hooded followers in the street.

“The drug…” Kirk muttered half to himself as he stumbled toward the van, “… he threw it off. Bones…”

As screaming hillmen, their blades making a deadly fence, crowded close to the van to defend their Messiah, Kirk lurched toward it, a haze of pain filming his vision.

He slipped through the ranks of the fighting hillmen and, reaching up with his good arm, grabbed the unconscious doctor by one foot. As he tried to drag the surgeon to safety, the van gave a sudden lurch forward. The frightened neelots screamed and reared, sparks and chips of stone flying from their hammering hooves.

Kirk was tossed backward. His head slammed against the van, and blinding explosions of pain ripped through his skull. He collapsed onto his knees.

He struggled to rise, but fell sprawling onto his back. Paralyzed by pain, he blinked up helplessly at the hooded hillmen who closed in like vultures.

Then the tide of red crested, leaving blackness in its wake.