Lost Dorsai

THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA: AN EXCERPT

The story up to this point:

Hal Mayne, an orphan found in a small, otherwise empty interstellar ship drifting near Earth orbit, is raised on Earth by three tutors, who are his guardians: one Dorsai, one Exotic, and one Friendly.

When he is fifteen years old his guardians are murdered by the Others, the ambitious and charismatic crossbreeds of the Splinter Cultures, who are rapidly gaining control of human societies throughout all the inhabited worlds. The historical time is approximately 100 years after the time of Dorsai! and Soldier, Ask Not.

Such a contingency had been foreseen by the tutors. Hal, grown, will be the natural opponent of the crossbreeds, but until grown he is no match for them. He flees, first to Coby, the mining world where he spends nearly two years, until he is located there by the Others - although the Others still do not realize his potential. Still, their second in command, Nigel Bias, has become interested enough to want to see Hal face to face.

Hal escapes from Coby and lands on Harmony, under the alias of a dead Friendly known as Howard Immanuelson. Recalcitrants are opposing the Others and their controlled governments on both Harmony and Association. As Immanuelson, Hal is befriended by a recalcitrant named Jason Rowe, whom Hal meets in the detention center where both Jason and he are being held by the local authorities under the suspicion of their being what Jason actually is.

THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA:

An Excerpt

The cell door clashed open, waking them. Instinctively, Hal Mayne was on his feet by the time the guard came through the open door and he saw out of the corner of his eye that Jason Rowe was also.

"All right," said the guard. He was thin and tall - though not as tall as Hal - with a starved angry face. "Outside!"

They obeyed. Hal's tall body was still numb from sleep, but his mind, triggered into immediate overdrive, was whirring. He avoided looking at Jason in the interests of keeping up the pretense that they had not talked and still did not know each other, and he noticed that Jason avoided looking at him. Once in the corridor they were herded back the way Hal remembered being brought in.

"Where are we going?" Jason asked.

"Silence!" said the guard softly, without looking at him and without changing the expression of his gaunt, set features, "or I will hang thee by thy wrists for an hour or so after this is over, apostate whelp."

Jason said no more. His thin face was expression less. His slight frame was held erect. They were moved along down several corridors, up a freight lift shaft, to what was again very obviously the office section of this establishment. Their guard brought them to join a gathering of what seemed to be twenty or more prisoners like themselves, waiting outside the open doors of a room with a raised platform at one end, a desk upon it and an open space before it. The flag of the United Sects, a white cross on a black field, hung from a flagpole set upright on the stage.

Their guard left them with the other prisoners and stepped a few steps aside to stand with the five other guards present. They stood, guards and prisoners alike, and time went by.

Finally, there was the sound of footwear on polished corridor floor, echoing around the bend in the further corridor, and three figures turned the corner and came into sight. Hal's breath caught in his chest. Two were men in ordinary business suits - almost certainly local officials. But the man between them, tall above them, was Nigel Bias.

Nigel ran his glance over all the prisoners as he approached; and his eye paused for a second on Hal, but not for longer than might have been expected from the fact that Hal was noticeably the tallest of the group. Nigel came on and turned into the doorway, shaking his head at the two men accompanying him as he did so.

"Foolish," he was saying to them as he passed within arm's length of Hal, "Foolish, foolish! Did you think I was the sort to be impressed by what you could sweep off the streets, that I was to be amused like some primitive ruler by state executions or public torture-spectacles? This sort of thing only wastes energy. I'll show you how to do things. Bring them in here."

The guards were already moving in response before one of the men with Nigel turned and gestured at the prisoners. Hal and the others were herded into the room and lined up in three ranks facing the platform on which the two men now stood behind the desk and Nigel himself half-sat, half-lounged, with his weight on the further edge of that piece of furniture. To even this casual pose he lent an impression of elegant authority.

The sick coldness had returned to the pit of Hal's stomach with Nigel's appearance; and now that feeling was growing, spreading all through him. Sheltered and protected as he had been all his life, he had grown up without ever knowing the kind of fear that com presses the chest and takes the strength from the limbs. Then, all at once, he had encountered death and that kind of fear for the first time, all in one moment; and now the reflex set up by that moment had been triggered by a second encounter of the tall, commanding figure on the platform before him

He was not afraid of the Friendly authorities who were holding him captive. His mind recognized the fact that they were only human, and he had deeply absorbed the principle that for any problem involving human interaction there should be a practical solution. But the sight of Nigel faced him with something that had destroyed the very pillars of his universe. He felt the paralysis of his fear staining all through him; and the rational part of him recognized that once it had taken him over completely he would throw himself upon the fate that would follow Nigel's identification of him - just to get it over with.

He reached for help, and the ghosts of three old men came out of his memory in response.

"He is no more than a weed that flourishes for a single summer's day, this man you face," said the harsh voice of Obadiah in his mind. "No more than the rain on the mountainside, blowing for a moment past the rock. God is that rock, and eternal. The rain passes and is as if it never was. Hold to the rock and ignore the rain."

"He can do nothing," said the soft voice of Walter Inteacher, "that I've not shown you at one time or an other. He is only a user of skills developed by other men and women, many of whom could use them far better than he. Remember that no one's mind and body are ever more than human. Forget the fact that he is older and more experienced than you; concentrate only on a true image of what he is, and what his limits are."

"Fear is only another weapon," said Malachi, "no more dangerous in itself than a sharpened blade is. Treat it as you would any weapon. When it approaches, turn yourself to let it pass you by, then take and control the hand that guides it at you. The weapon without the hand is only one more thing - in a universe full of things."

Up on the platform Nigel looked at them all.

"Pay attention to me, my friends," he said softly. "Look at me."

They looked, Hal with the rest of them. He saw Nigel's lean, aristocratic face and pleasant brown eyes. Then, as he looked at them, those eyes began to expand until they would entirely fill his field of vision.

Reflexively, out of his training under Walter the In-teacher, he took a step back within his own mind, put ting what he saw at arm's length - and all at once it was as if he was aware of things on two levels. There was the level on which he stood with the other prisoners, held by Nigel like animals transfixed by a bright light in darkness; and there was the level in which he was aware of the assault that was being made on his free will by what was hidden behind that bright light, and on which he struggled to resist it.

He thought of rock. In his mind he formed the image of a mountainside, cut and carved into an altar on which an eternal light burned. Rock and light... un touchable, eternal.

"I must apologize to you, my friends and brothers,"

Nigel was saying gently to all of them. "Mistakenly, you've been made to suffer; and that shouldn't be. But it was a natural mistake and small mistakes of your own have contributed to it. Examine your conscience. Is there one of you here who isn't aware of things you know you shouldn't have done..."

Like mist, the beginnings of rain blew upon the light and the altar. But the light continued to burn, and the rock was unchanged. Nigel's voice continued; and the rain thickened, blowing more fiercely upon the rock and the light. On the mountainside the day darkened, but the light burned on through the darkness, showing the rock still there, still unmarked and unmoved...

Nigel was softly showing them all the way to a worthier and happier life, a way that trusted in what he was telling them. All that they needed to do was to acknowledge the errors of their past and let themselves be guided in the proper path in the future. His words made a warm and friendly shelter away from all storm, its door open and waiting for all of them. But, sadly, Hal must remain behind, alone, out on the mountainside in the icy and violent rain, clinging to the rock so that the wind would not blow him away; with only the pure but heatless light burning in the darkness to comfort him.

Slowly, he became aware that the increasing wind had ceased growing stronger, that the rain which had been falling ever heavier was now steady, that the darkness could grow no darker - and he, the rock and the light were still there, still together. A warmth of a new sort kindled itself inside him and grew until it shouted in triumph. He felt a strength within him that he had never felt before, and with that strength, he stepped back, merging once more the two levels, so that he looked out nakedly through his own eyes again at Nigel.

Nigel had finished talking and was stepping down from the platform, headed out of the room. All the prisoners turned to watch him go as if he walked out of the room holding one string to which all of them were attached.

"If you'll come this way, brothers," said one of the guards.

They were led, by this single guard only, down more corridors and into a room with desks, where they were

handed back their papers.

* * *

Apparently, they were free to go. They were ushered out of the building and Hal found himself walking down the street with Jason at his side. He looked at the other man and saw him smiling and animated.

"Howard! " Jason said. "Isn't this wonderful? We've got to find the others and tell them about this great man. They'll have to see him for themselves."

Hal looked closely into Jason's eyes.

"What is it, brother?" said Jason. "Is something wrong?"

"No," said Hal. "But maybe we should sit down somewhere and make some plans. Is there any place around here where we can talk, away from people?"

Jason looked around. They were in what appeared to Hal to be a semi-industrial section. It was mid-morning, and the rain that had been falling when they had landed the day before was now holding off, al though the sky was dark and promised more precipitation.

"This early..."Jason hesitated. "There's a small eating place with booths in its back room, and this time of day the back room ought to be completely empty."

"Let's go," said Hal.

The eating place turned out to be small indeed. It was hardly the sort of establishment that Hal would have found himself turning into if he had simply wanted a meal, but its front room held only one group of four and one or two customers at the square tables there; and the back room, as Jason had predicted, was empty. They took a booth in a corner and ordered coffee.

"What plans did you have in mind to make, Howard?" asked Jason, when the coffee had been brought.

Hal tasted what was in his cup, and set the cup down again. Coffee - or rather some imitation of it - was to be found on all the inhabited worlds. But its taste varied largely on any two worlds, and was often markedly different in widely distant parts of the same world. Hal had spent three years getting used to Coby coffee. He would have to start all over again with Harmony coffee.

"Have you seen this?" he asked, in turn.

From a pocket he brought out a small gold nugget encased in a cube of glass. It was the first piece of pocket gold he had found in the Yow Dee Mine; and, following a Coby custom, he had bought it back from the mine owners and had it encased in glass, to carry about as a good-luck piece. His fellow team-members would have thought him strange if he had not. Now, for the first time, he had a use for it.

Jason bent over the cube.

"Is that real gold?" he asked, with the fascination of anyone not of either Coby or Earth.

"Yes," said Hal. "See the color..."

He reached out across the table and took the back of Jason's neck gently and precisely between the tips of

his thumb and middle finger. The skin beneath his fingertips jumped at his touch, then relaxed as he put soft pressure on the nerve endings below it.

"Easy," he said, "just watch the piece of gold... Jason, I want you to rest for a bit. Just close your eyes and lean back against the back of the booth and sleep for a couple of minutes. Then you can open your eyes and listen. I've got something to tell you."

With an obedience a little too ready to be natural, Jason closed his eyes and leaned back, resting his head against the hard, dark-dyed wooden panel that was the back of the booth. Hal took his hand from the other's neck and Jason stayed as he was, breathing easily and deeply for about a hundred and fifty heart beats. Then he opened his eyes and stared at Hal as if puzzled for a second. He smiled.

"You were going to tell me something," he said.

"Yes," said Hal. "And you're going to listen to me all the way through and then not say anything until you've thought about what I've just told you. Aren't you?"

"Yes, Howard," said Jason.

"Good. Now listen closely." Hal paused. He had never done anything like this before; and there was a danger, in Jason's present unnaturally receptive state, that some words Hal used might have a larger effect than he had intended it to have. "Because I want you to understand something. Right now you think you're acting normally and doing exactly what you'd ordinarily want to do. But actually, that's not the case. The fact is, a very powerful individual's made you an attractive offer on a level where it's hard for you to refuse him, a choice to let your conscience go to sleep and leave all moral decisions up to someone else. Be cause you were approached on that particular level, you've no way of judging whether this was a wise decision to make, or not. Do you follow me so far? Nod your head if you do."

Jason nodded. He was concentrating just hard enough to bring a small frown line into being between his eyebrows. But otherwise his face was still relaxed and happy.

"Essentially what you've just been told," Hal said, "is that Nigel Bias, or people designated by him, will decide not only what's right for you, but what you'll want to do; and you've agreed that this would be a good thing. Because of that, you've now joined those who've already made that agreement with him; those who were until an hour ago your enemies, in that they were trying to destroy the faith you've held to all your life..."

The slight frown was deepening between Jason's brows and the happiness on his face was being re placed by a strained expression. Hal talked on; and when at last he stopped, Jason was huddled on the other seat, turned as far away from Hal as the close confines of the booth would allow, with his face hidden in his hands.

Hal sat, feeling miserable himself, and tried to drink his coffee. The silence between them continued, until finally Jason heaved a long, shivering sigh and dropped his hands. He turned a face to Hal that looked as if it had not slept for two nights.

"Oh, God!" he said.

Hal looked back at him, but did not try to say any thing.

"I'm unclean," said Jason. "Unclean!"

"Nonsense," said Hal. Jason's eyes jumped to his face; and Hal made himself grin at the other. "What was that I seem to remember hearing when I was

young - and you must've remembered hearing, too - about the sin of pride? What makes you feel you're particularly evil in having knuckled under to the per suasion of Nigel Bias?"

"I lacked faith!" said Jason.

"We all lack faith to some extent," Hal said. "There are probably some men and women so strong in their faith that Bias wouldn't have been able to touch them. I had a teacher once... but the point is, everyone else in that room gave in to him, the same way you did."

"You didn't."

"I've had special training," said Hal. "That's what I was telling you just now, remember? What Nigel Bias did, he succeeded in doing because he's also had special training. Believe me, someone without training would have had to have been a very remarkable person to resist him. But for someone with training, it was... relatively easy."

Jason drew another deep, ragged breath.

"Then I'm ashamed for another reason," he said bleakly.

"Why?" Hal stared at him.

"Because I thought you were a spy, planted on me by the Accursed of God, when they decided to hold me captive. When we heard Howard Immanuelson had died of a lung disease in a holding station on Coby, we all assumed his papers had been lost. The thought that someone else of the faith could find them and use them - and his doing it would be so secret that someone like myself wouldn't know - that was stretching coincidence beyond belief. And you were so quick to pick up the finger speech. So I was going to pretend I was taken in by you. I was going to bring you with me to some place where the other brothers and sisters of the faith could question you and find out why you were sent and what you knew about us."

He stared burningly at Hal.

"And then you, just now, brought me back from Hell - from where I could never have come back with out you. There was no need for you to do that if you had been one of the enemy, one of the Accursed. How could I have doubted that you were of the faith?"

"Quite easily," said Hal. "As far as bringing you back from Hell, all I did was hurry up the process a little. The kind of persuasion Nigel Bias was using only takes permanently with people who basically agree with him to begin with. With those who don't, his type of mind-changing gets eaten away by the natural feelings of the individual until it wears thin and breaks down. Since you were someone opposed enough to him to fight him, the only way he could stop you permanently would be to kill you."

"Why didn't he then?" said Jason. "Why didn't he kill all of us?"

"Because it's to his advantage to pretend that he only opens people's eyes to the right way to live," said Hal, hearing an echo of Walter the Inteacher in the words even as he said them. He had not consciously stopped to think the matter out, but Jason's question had automatically evoked the obvious answer. "Even his convinced followers feel safer if he is always right, always merciful. What he did with us, there, wasn't because we were important, but because the two men with him on the platform were important - to him. There're really only a handful of what you call the Belial-spawn, compared to the trillions of people on the fourteen worlds. Those like Nigel don't have the time, even if they felt like it, to control everyone person ally. So, whenever possible they use the same sort of social mechanisms that've been used down the centuries when a few people wanted to command many."

Jason sat watching him.

"Who are you, Howard?" he asked.

"I'm sorry." Hal hesitated. "I can't tell you that. But I should tell you you've no obligation to call me brother. I'm afraid I lied to you. I'm not of the faith, as you call it. I've got nothing to do with whatever organization you and those with you belong to. But I am at war with Nigel Bias and his kind."

"Then you're a brother," said Jason, simply. He picked up his own cold coffee cup and drank deeply from it. "We - those the Accursed call the Children - are of every sect and every possible interpretation of the Idea of God. Your difference from the rest of us isn't any greater than our differences from each other. But I'm glad you told me this, because I'll have to tell the others about you when we reach them."

"Can we reach them?" asked Hal.

"There's no problem about that," said Jason. "I'll make contact in town here with someone who'll know where the closest band of warriors is, right now; and we'll join them. Out in the countryside we of the faith still control. Oh, they chase us, but they can't do more than keep us on the move. It's only here, in the cities, that the Belial-spawn and their minions rule."

He slid to the end of the booth and stood up.

"Come along," he said.

Out in the coldly damp air of the street, they located a callbox and coded for an autocab. In succession, they visited a clothing store, a library and a gymnasium, without Jason's recognizing anyone he trusted enough to ask for help. Their fourth try brought them to a small vehicle custom-repair garage in the northern outskirts of Citadel.

The garage itself was a dome-like temporary structure perched in an open field out where residences gave way to small personal farm-plots rented by city dwellers on an annual basis. It occupied an open stretch of stony ground that was its own best demonstration of why it had not been put to personal farming the way the land around it had. Inside the barely-heated dome, the air of which was thick with the faintly banana-like smell of a local tree oil used for lubrication hanging like an invisible mist over the half-dismantled engines of several surface vehicles, they found a single occupant - a square, short, leathery man in his sixties, engaged in reassembling the rear support fan of an all-terrain fourplace cruiser.

"Hilary!" said Jason, as they reached him.

"Jase - " said the worker, barely glancing up at them. "When did you get back?"

"Yesterday," said Jason. "The Accursed put us up overnight in their special hotel. This is Howard Immanuelson. Not of the faith, but one of our allies. From Coby."

"Coby?" Hilary glanced up once more at Hal. "What did you do on Coby?"

"I was a miner," said Hal.

Hilary reached for a cleansing rag, wiped his hands, turned about and offered one of them to Hal.

"Long?" he asked.

"Three years."

Hilary nodded.

"I like people who know how to work," he said. "You two on the run?"

"No," said Jason. "They turned us loose. But we need to get out into the country. Who's close right now?"

Hilary looked down at his hands and wiped them once more on his cloth, then threw the cloth in a wastebin.

"Rukh Tamani," he said. "She and her people're passing through, on their way to something. You know Rukh?"

"I know of her," said Jason. "She's a sword of the Lord."

"You might connect up with them. Want me to give you a map?"

"Please," said Jason. "And if you can supply us - "

"Clothes and gear, that's all," said Hilary. "Weapons are getting too risky."

"Can you take us close to her, at all?"

"Oh, I can get you fairly well in." Hilary looked again at Hal. "Anything I'll be able to give you in the way of clothes is going to fit pretty tight."

"Let's try what you've got," said Jason.

Hilary led them to a partitioned-off corner of his dome. The door they went through let them into a storeroom piled to the ceiling with a jumble of containers and goods of all kinds. Hilary threaded his way among the stacks to a pile of what seemed to be mainly clothing and camping gear, and started pulling out items.

Twenty minutes later, he had them both outfitted with heavy bush clothing including both shoulder and belt packs and camping equipment. As Hilary had predicted, Hal's shirt, jacket and undershirt were tight in the shoulders and short in the sleeves. Otherwise, everything that he had given Hal fitted well enough. The one particular blessing turned out to be the fact that there were bush boots available of the proper length for Hal's feet. They were a little too wide, but extra socks and insoles took care of that.

"Now," Hilary said when the outfitting was complete. "When did you eat last?"

Hunger returned to Hal's consciousness like a body blow. Unconsciously, once it had become obvious in the cell that there was no hope of food soon, he had blocked out his need for it - strongly enough that he had even sat in the coffee place with Jason and not thought of food, when he could have had it for the ordering. As it was, Jason answered before he did.

"We didn't. Not since we got off the ship."

"Then I better feed you, hadn't I?" grunted Hilary. He led them out of the storeroom and into another corner of the dome that had a cot, sink, foodkeeper and cooking equipment.

He fed them an enormous meal, mainly of fried vegetables, local mutton and bread, washed down with quantities of a flat, semi-sweet root beer, apparently made from a variform of the native Earth product. The heavy intake of food operated on Hal like a sedative. Once they had all piled into a battered six-place bush van, he stretched out and fell asleep.

He woke to a rhythmic sound that was the slashing of branch tips against the sides of the van. Looking out the windows on either side, he saw that they were proceeding down a forest track so narrow that the bushes on either side barely allowed the van to pass. Jason and Hilary were in mid-conversation in the front seat of the van.

"... Of course it won't stop them!" Hilary was saying. "But if there's anything at all the Belial-spawn are even a little sensitive to, it's public opinion. If Rukh and her people can take care of the core shaft tap, it'll be a choice for them of starving Hope, Valley-vale, and the other local cities, or shifting the ship out fitting to the core tap center on South Promise. It'll save them trouble to shift. It's a temporary spoke in their wheel, that's all; but what more can we ask?"

"We can ask to win," said Jason.

"God allowed the spawn to gain control in our cities," said Hilary. "In His time, He will release us from them. Until then, our job is to testify for Him by doing all we can to resist them."

Jason sighed.

"Hilary," he said. "Sometimes I forget you're just like the other old folk when it comes to anything that looks like an act of God's will."

"You haven't lived long enough yet," Hilary said. "To you, everything seems to turn on what's happened in your own few years. Get older and look around the fourteen worlds, and you'll see that the time of Judgement's not that far off. Our race is old and sick in sin. On every world, things are falling into disorder and decay, and the coming among us of these mixed breeds who'd make everyone else into their personal cattle is only one more sign of the approach of Judgement."

"I can't take that attitude," said Jason, shaking his head. "We wouldn't be capable of hope, if hope had no meaning."

"It's got meaning," said Hilary, "in a practical sense. Forcing the spawn to change their plans to an other core tap delays them; and who's to know but that very delay may be part of the battle plan of the Lord, as he girds his loins to fight this last and greatest fight?"

The noise of the branches hitting the sides and windows of the van ceased suddenly. They had emerged into an open area overgrown only by tall, straight-limbed conifers - variforms of some Earthly stock - spaced about upon uneven, rocky ground that had hardly any covering beyond patches of green moss and brown, dead needles fallen from the trees. The sun, for the first time Hal had seen it since he had arrived on Harmony, was breaking through a high-lying mass of white and black clouds, wind-torn here and there to show occasional patches of startling blue and brilliant light. The ground-level breeze blew strongly against the van; and for the first time Hal became aware that their way was uphill. With that recognition, the realization came that the plant life and the terrain indicated a considerably higher altitude than that of Citadel.

Hal sat up on the seat.

"You alive back there?" said Hilary.

"Yes," answered Hal.

"We'll be there in a few minutes, Howard," said Jason. "Let me talk to Rukh about you, first. It'll be her decision as to whether you're allowed to join her group, or not. If she won't have you, I'll come back with you, too; and we'll stay together until Hilary can find a group that'll have us both."

"You'll be on your own, if I have to take you back," said Hilary. "I can't afford to keep you around my place for fear of attracting attention."

"We know that," said Jason.

The van went up and over a rise of the terrain, and nosed down abruptly into a valley-like depression that was like a knife-cut in the slope. Some ten or twenty meters below was the bed of the valley, with a small stream running through it; the stream itself was hardly visible because of the thick cluster of small trees that grew about its moisture. The van slid down the slope of the valley wall on the air-cushion of its fans, plunged in among the trees, and came to a halt at a short distance from the near edge of the stream. From above, Hal had seen nothing of people or shelters, but suddenly they were in the midst of a small encampment.

He took it in at one glance. It was a picture that was to stay in his mind afterwards. Brightly touched by a moment of the sunlight breaking through the ragged clouds overhead, he saw a number of collapsible shelters like beehives the height of a grown man, their olive-colored side panels and tops further camouflaged by tree branches fastened about them. Two men were standing in the stream, apparently washing clothes. A woman approaching middle age, in a black, leather-like jacket, was just coming out of the trees to the left of the van. On a rock in the center of the clearing sat a gray-haired man with a cone rifle half torn down for cleaning its parts, lying on a cloth he had spread across his knees. Facing him, and turning now to face the van, was a tall, slim, dark young woman in a somber green bush jacket, its large number of square pockets bulging with their contents. Below the bush jacket, she wore heavy bush pants tucked into the tops of short boots. A gunbelt and sidearm were hooked tightly about her narrow waist, the black holster holding the sidearm with its weather flap clipped firmly down

She wore nothing on her head. Her black hair was cut short about her ears, and her face was narrow and perfect below a wide brow and brilliant, dark eyes. In that single, arrested moment, the repressed poet in Hal woke, and he thought that she was like the dark blade of a sword in the sunlight. Then his attention was jerked from her. In a series of flashing motions the disassembled parts of the cone rifle in the hands of the gray-haired man were thrown back together, ending with the hard slap of a new tube of cones into the magazine slot below the barrel. The man was almost as swift as Hal had seen Malachi be in similar demonstrations. The movements of this man did not have the smooth, unitary flow of Malachi's - but he was almost as fast.

"All right," said the woman in the bush jacket. "It's Hilary."

The hands of the gray-haired man relaxed on the now-ready weapon; but the weapon itself still lay on the cloth over his knees, pointing in the general direction of Hal and the other two. Hilary got out of the van. Jason and Hal did the same.

"I brought you a couple of recruits," said Hilary, as coolly as if the man on the rock was holding a stick of candy. He started to walk forward and Jason moved after him. Hal followed.

"This is Jason Rowe," said Hilary. "Maybe you know him. The other's not of the faith, but a friend. He's Howard Immanuelson, a miner from Coby."

By the time he had finished saying this he was within a meter and a half of the woman and the man with Jason and Hal a step behind. Hilary stopped. The woman glanced at Jason, nodded briefly, then turned her brilliant gaze on Hal.

"Immanuelson?" she said. "I'm Rukh Tamani. This is my sergeant, James Child-of-God."

Hal found it hard to look away from her, but he turned his gaze on the face of the gray-haired man. He found himself looking into a rectangular, raw-boned set of features, clothed in skin gone leathery some years since from sun and weather. Lines radiated from the corners of the eyes of James Child-of-God; deeper lines had carved themselves in long curves about the corners of his mouth, from nose to chin, and the pale blue eyes he fastened on Hal were like the muzzles of cone rifles.

"If not of the faith," he said to them all now, in a dry, penetrating tenor voice, "he hath no right here among us."