The Godmakers

Chapter Twenty-Six

The night air carried a chill nip, making Orne thankful for the thickness of his toga. Bakrish had led him to a large park area enclosed within the religious warren. Birds cooed from trees in the deeper shadows. The place smelled of new-mown grass.

There were no artificial lights in the immediate area, but Bakrish followed a rough path as though he could see it and Orne followed the dim outline of the priest’s robe. Ahead of them, a hill stood outlined against stars. Up the hill marched a snaketrack of moving lights.

Orne’s injured arm still ached, but an energy tablet had walled off his weariness.

Bakrish spoke over his shoulder: “The lights are carried by students and each is accompanied by a priest. Each student has a two-meter pole with a lighted box atop it. The box has four translucent sides, each of a different color, as you can see—red, blue, yellow and green.”

Orne watched the lights flickering like phosphorescent insects on the dark hill. “What’s the reason for all this?”

“They demonstrate piety.”

“Why the four colors?”

“Ahhh, red for the blood you dedicate, blue for truth, yellow for the richness of religious experience, and green for the growth of life.”

“How does marching up a mountain show piety?”

“Because they do it!” Bakrish picked up the pace, deserted the path to cross a stretch of lawn. Orne stumbled, hurried to catch up. He wondered again why he allowed himself to follow this ordeal.

Because it might lead him to the Abbod? Because Stetson had ordered him to carry out this assignment? Because of his oath to the I-A? None of these reasons seemed adequate. He felt trapped on a narrow track which he might leave as easily as Bakrish had left the pathway behind them.

The priest stopped at a narrow open gate through a stone wall and Orne grew aware that a line of silent people was passing through the gateway. Hands reached out from the line to take long poles from a rack beside the gateway. Lights bloomed into existence beyond the wall. He smelled human perspiration, heard the shuffling of feet, the swish of robes. An occasional cough sounded, but there was no conversation.

Bakrish took a pole from the track, twisted the base. Light glowed from a box at the top of the pole. The box was turned red side toward the procession through the gate. It cast a ruddy glow on the people—student and priest, student and priest, eyes downcast, expressions sober and intense.

“Here.” Bakrish thrust the pole into Orne’s hands.

It felt oily smooth to Orne. He wanted to ask what he was supposed to do with it besides carry it… if anything, but the silence of the procession daunted him. He felt silly holding the thing. What were they really doing here? And why were they waiting now? Bakrish took his arm, whispered: “Here’s the end of the procession. Fall in behind; I will follow you. Carry your light high.”

Someone in the line said: “Shhhhh!”

Orne picked out a dim figure at the end of the procession, stepped into line. Immediately, warning prescience sapped his energy. He stumbled, faltered.

Bakrish whispered: “Keep up! Keep up!”

Orne recovered his stride, but still felt the klaxon emptiness in his vitals. His light cast a dull-green reflection off the priest ahead.

A murmurous rhythm began to sound from the procession far ahead, growing louder as it passed down the line, riding over the shuffling and slither of robes, drowning out the chitter of insects in tall grass beside their path. It was a wordless sound: “Ahhh-ah-huh! Ahhh-ah-huh!”

The way grew steeper, twisting back upon itself, a meandering line up the hill—bobbing lights, dim shapes, chant, root stumbles in the path, pebbles, slippery places, cold air.

Bakrish whispered at Orne’s ear: “You’re not chanting!”

The sense of danger, his own feelings of being out of place, combined to fill Orne with rebellion. He whispered back: “I’m not in good voice tonight!”

Ahhh-ah-huh!

What utter nonsense. He felt like throwing the light down the hill and striding off into the night.

The line and chanting stopped so abruptly Orne almost collided with the priest ahead of him. Orne stumbled, regained his balance, straightened his pole to keep from hitting someone. People were bunching up all around him, moving off the trail.

He followed, breaking a way through a low thicket. There was a shallow amphitheater beyond the thicket, a stone stupa within it about twice the height of a man. Priests began separating from the students, who formed a semicircle flowing down to the stupa. Their lights bounced multicolored reflections off the stones.

Where was Bakrish? Orne looked around, realized he had been separated from Bakrish. What was he supposed to do here? How could this show piety? A bearded priest came from behind the stupa, stood in front of it. He wore a black robe, a three-cornered red hat. His eyes glistened in the light. The students grew silent.

Orne, standing in the outer ring, wondered how this could be part of an ordeal. What were they going to do?

The red-hatted priest spread his arms wide, lowered them. He spoke in a resonant bass voice: “You stand before the shrine of Purity and the Law. These are the two inseparables in all true belief. Purity and Law! Here is the key to the Great Mystery which leads on to paradise.”

Orne felt the tension of his warning prescience and, now, the impact of an enormously swelling psi force. This psi was different, somehow, from what he had experienced before. It beat like a metronome with the cadence of the bearded priest’s words, blossoming and amplifying as the passion of his speech increased.

Orne focused on the words: “…the immortal goodness and purity of all great prophets! The breath of eternity given for our salvation! Conceived in purity, born in purity, their thoughts ever bathed in purity! Untouched by base nature in all of their aspects, they show us the way!”

With a shock of realization, Orne recognized that this psi force around him now arose not from some machine, but from a mingling of emotions arising out of the massed listeners. He sensed the emotional content, subtle harmonics on the overriding psi field. The bearded priest played his audience like a musician playing his instrument.

“Have faith in the eternal truth of this divine dogma!” the priest shouted.

Incense wafted across Orne’s nostrils. A hidden voder began emitting low organ notes, a melody full of rumbling and sonorous passages which came up behind the priest’s voice, but never drowned it.

Orne saw a graveman circling the massed

audience to the right, priests there waving censers. Blue smoke wafted over the listeners in ghostly curls. A bell tinkled in abrupt cadence as the priest paused. It rang seven times.

Like a man hypnotized, Orne absorbed the whole scene, thinking: Massed emotions act like a psi force! What is this power? The priest at the stupa raised both arms, fists clenched, shouted: “Eternal paradise to all true believers! Eternal damnation to all unbelievers!” His voice lowered: “You, who seek the eternal truth, fall to your knees and beg for enlightenment. Pray for the veil to be lifted from your eyes. Pray for the purity, which brings holy understanding. Pray for salvation. Pray for the All-One to cast his benediction upon you.”

A shuffling whisper of robes came from the students as they sank to their knees around Orne. But Orne remained standing, his whole being caught up in discovery: Massed emotions produce a psi force!

He felt elevated, cleansed, standing on the brink of a great revelation. He wanted to call out to Bakrish, to shout his discovery.

Angry muttering flowed through the kneeling students, catching Orne’s attention only in part. Glares of protest were directed at him. The muttering grew louder. Prescient awareness roared within Orne. He came out of his reverie to recognize the danger all around him.

At the far corner of the kneeling crowd a student lifted an arm, pointed at Orne. “What about him? He’s a student! Why isn’t he kneeling with the rest of us?”

Orne cast searching glances all around. Where was Bakrish? Someone tugged at Orne’s robe, urging him to kneel, but Orne backed off. The trail was right behind him through the thicket.

Someone in the massed students screamed: “Unbeliever!”

Orne felt the force of it like a psi net hurled across him, dimming his awareness, blocking reason.

Others began taking up the word in a mindless chant: “Unbeliever! Unbeliever! Unbeliever!…”

Orne inched his way backward through the thicket, fear sharp within him. The tension of the crowd was a tangible thing, a fuse that smoked and sizzled its way toward a massive explosion.

The bearded priest glared up at Orne, the dark face contorted in the kaleidoscopic gleams of the students’ torches. The amphitheater suddenly was a nightmare scene to Orne, a demoniac place, and he realized he still carried his own torch like a waving beacon. Its light revealed the trail beside him leading off into blackness.

Abruptly, the priest at the stupa raised his voice to an insane scream: “Bring me the head of that blasphemer!”

Orne hurled his light like a spear as the students jumped to their feet with a roar. He whirled, fled along the trail hearing the thunder and shouts of pursuit.

As his eyes adjusted to starlight, Orne discerned the trail, a black line on black. He discarded caution, ran all out. A ragged yell lifted into the night from his pursuers.

The trail curved to the left and a blotch of deeper blackness loomed at the turn. Woods? Branches whipped his face.

The trail dipped, twisted to the right, then left. He tripped on a root, almost fell.

His robe caught on a bush and he lost seconds releasing it. The mob was a roaring, waving pack of lights almost upon him. Orne plunged off the trail downhill to his right and parallel to a line of trees. Bushes snagged his robe. He fumbled with the belt, left the robe behind.

Someone above him shouted: “I hear him! Down there!”

The pursuers came to a plunging stop, held silence for a heartbeat. Orne’s crashing flight dominated all other sounds.

“There he goes! Down that way!”

They were after him. He heard them breaking through the brush and trees, the curses and shouts. “Here’s his robe! I’ve got his robe!”

“Get his head!” someone screamed. “Tear his head off him!”

Orne ducked a limb, scrambled and slid down a hill, plunged across the trail and tore his way through a thicket. He felt cold and exposed in only sandals and the light shorts he had worn beneath the robe. Branches clawed at his skin. He heard the mob, a human avalanche on the hill above him—curses, tearing sounds, thumps.

Lights waved. Robed figures leaped through the night.

Again, Orne found a trail. It went downhill to his right. He turned onto it, gasping, stumbling. His legs ached. A tight band held his chest. His side ached. The trail plunged him into deeper darkness and he lost the trail. He glanced up to see trees against the stars.

The mob raised a confused clamor behind him.

Orne stopped, leaned against a tree to listen.

“Part of you go that way!” someone shouted. “The rest of you follow me!”

Orne drew in wracking breaths, gasping. Hunted like an animal because he’d momentarily abandoned caution! He recalled Bakrish’s words: “Caution is the brother of fear…”

Almost directly above Orne and no more than fifty meters away, someone shouted: “Do you hear him?”

Off to the left, an answering voice yelled: “No!”

Orne pushed himself away from the tree, crept down the hill, working his way cautiously, feeling each step. He heard someone running above him, footsteps thumping away to the right. The sound faded. Confused shouts, then silence and then more shouts came from the middle distance on the hill off to the left. These, too, faded.

Sometimes crawling, always testing each step, Orne melted his way through the darkness beneath the trees. Once, he lay flat to allow five running figures to pass below him. When they were gone, he slipped down the hill and across another loop in the trail. The wound on his arm throbbed and he saw that he had lost the bandage.

The pain reminded him of the itching sensation he had experienced while strapped in Bakrish’s chair. It had been like the itching experienced when a wound healed—but before the wound.

Orne felt that he had encountered another clue to Amel, but its meaning eluded him. He fell into a fluid rhythm of flight—under the bushes, avoid leaves, dart through the darkest places where trees blotted out the stars. But the trees thinned out, bushes came farther apart.

He felt lawn underfoot, realized he had come down to the last slopes leading into the park area. Dim lights glowed from windows to his right. There was a wall. Orne crouched, hugged himself to still his shivering.

Bakrish had said the Abbod Halmyrach was nearby.

As he thought of the Abbod, Orne felt the vacant gnawing within him ease momentarily, then throb stronger. What did that mean? he wondered. Safe… but not safe? He experienced a driving desire to find the Abbod, to wring the truth from the recognized leader of all Amel.

Why bother with the lower echelons? Where was Bakrish when I needed him? Is this the way a field agent of the I-A operates? Orne felt he had been freed from a dream. Dogma and ceremony! What empty nonsense!

A wolfish grin came over Orne’s face. He thought: I declare myself a graduate of this ordeal! It’s over. I’ve passed the tests!

Footsteps on a path sounded to his left. Orne slid behind a tree, peered around it. Through the thin starlight filtered by scattered trees he saw a priest in white moving along a path which would take him directly in front of the concealing tree. Orne flattened himself against the trunk, waited. Birds whirred and rustled in the branches overhead.

The fragrance of night-blooming flowers crossed his nostrils. The footsteps came closer, passed.

Orne slipped from behind the tree. Four running steps on the soft grass beside the trail, one hand out and around the priest’s neck—pressure on a nerve. The priest gasped once, relaxed, slumped in Orne’s arms.