The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Thirteen

Hal sat in the jitney taking him down from orbit around Harmony to the city of Citadel. Curiously, in this moment of stepping into a totally new world, it was not his three years on Coby that were beginning to lose reality in his mind, it was the four days of interstellar space travel, with the frequent psychic shocks of the phase shifts that had brought him here. The trip had had the feel of unreality to it; and now he found it also difficult to think of the Friendly World to which he was rapidly descending as real; although he knew it would be so, for him, soon enough.

Something else was filling his mind and driving out anything else but the years just passed on Coby. For the first time in his life, on the trip from there to here, he had come to a stark understanding of why his three tutors had insisted that he go to the mines and work, instead of hiding on one of the Younger Worlds. Their reason had not been merely a matter of shielding him from the eyes of the Others until he was old enough to protect himself. No, the important factor in their decision had lain in what they had said about his need to grow up, to learn about people before he ventured forth to face his enemies.

Only now, after three years on the mining world, he could realize that he had been - up until the moment of the deaths of Obadiah, Malachi and Walter the InTeacher - a hothouse plant. He had been raised as an unusual boy, by unusual people. He had had no real, day-to-day experience or understanding of ordinary men and women; those who were the root stock of the race itself - those from among whom the unusual people like himself were occasionally produced, simply to be taken and used by the historic pressures of their time. Until Coby, such ordinary people had been as unknown to him as if they had been creatures from the furthest stars. Their goals had never been his goals, their sorrows his sorrows, their natures his nature. His lack of understanding of these differences had been an unacceptable defect; because now it came home to him, unsparingly, that it was these, not the gifted ones like himself and those who had brought him up, whom he would be fighting for in the years ahead.

It had been necessary that he begin by realizing his place among such ordinary people, that he learn to understand and feel with and for them, before he could be of any use to the race as a whole. For they were the race. In the mines he had come face to face with this. He had discovered it in Tonina, in John Heikkila, in Sost - in all of them. He had found unremarkable people there he could care about, and who cared about him - regardless of his abilities. People who, in the end, had made his escape possible when alone, with all his special talents, he would have failed.

The remembrance of that escape now made his eyes burn with regret that he had never told Sost, at least, how much the old man had come to mean to him. The manner of their leave taking had been almost casual. They had driven Sost's truck out to the ship he was now in, ostensibly to deliver a large but lightly sealed package, with Hal seated beside Sost and dressed in the gray coveralls of a freight handler. Together, they had carried the package in through the ship's loading entrance to the number one hold and been met there by the Chief Purser, who had evidently been expecting them.

At his direction Hal had taken off the coveralls, dropped them in a refuse container, and taken leave of Sost. He had followed the Chief to a portside cabin, been ushered in, and left with directions not to leave the cabin until after the first phase shift. He had obeyed; and, in fact, had stayed close to his cabin through the first third of the trip. The solitary hours had offered an opportunity for him to practice casting himself mentally into the persona of a tithe-payer of the Revealed Church Reborn.

He had the role model of Obadiah to draw on. Growing up with his three tutors, he had come, instinctively, to imitate each of them. To be like Obadiah, he had only to imagine himself as Obadiah - but the trick down on the surface of Harmony would be to carry that bit of imagination in his mind so constantly that even under moments of stress he would not slip out of character.

He also practiced on the one fellow-passenger who seemed to have any inclination to talk with him beyond the barest exchange of civilities; and this passenger proceeded to open his eyes to an unsuspected danger. The other was an Exotic named Amid, a small, erect old man with - for an Exotic - a remarkably wrinkled face. Amid was returning from Ceta where he had been as an Outbond, teaching the history of the Splinter Cultures at the University of Ceta, in the city of the same name as that of the planet and the University.

Like most Exotics, he was as at ease with everyone as the other Friendlies and Harmony-bound passengers were stiff and suspicious. He was also, like many teachers, in love with his subject; and Hal found him full of fascinating historical anecdotes out of the history of Harmony and Association that he would not have thought anyone but one of the native-born Friendlies could have known, and then only if they were from the area or district of the world with which the anecdote dealt.

"Faith," said Amid to him, the third day out of Coby, "in its large sense, is more than just the capacity to believe. What it is, is the concept of a personal identity with a specific, incontrovertible version of reality. True faith is untouchable. By definition anything that attacks it is not only false but doomed to be exposed as such. Which is why we have martyrs. The ultimate that can be offered against any true faith-holder to force him to change his beliefs is a threat to destroy him utterly, to cancel out his universe, leaving only nothingness. But for the true faith-holder, even this threat fails, since he, and that in which he has faith, are one; and, by definition, that in which he has faith is indestructible."

"But why can't someone who merely believes be just as immune to having his personal universe destroyed?" Hal had asked.

"Because merely believing - if you want to define the word separately - implies something to believe in - that is, something apart from the believer. In other words, we have two things in partnership, the believer and his belief. A partnership can be dissolved. Partners can be divorced. But, as I just pointed out, the faith-holder is his faith. He and it make, not two, but a single thing. Since he and it are one, there's no way to take it from him. That makes him a very powerful opponent. In fact, it makes him an unconquerable opponent; since even death can't touch him in his most important part."

"Yes," said Hal, remembering Obadiah.

"That difference," said Amid, "between the mere believer and the true faith-holder, is the one thing that has to bet grasped, if the peoples of this Culture are to be understood. Paradoxically, it's the hardest distinction for the non-Friendly to grasp - just as the intimate parallel commitments of the Exotic and the Dorsai are also the hardest things for people not of those cultures to understand. In the case of each culture, it's a case of an ordinary human capability - for faith, for courage, or for insight - raised to a near-instinctive level of response."

Remembering that conversation, now, as the jitney approached the landing area, Hal made an effort to apply the distinction Amid had been talking about to what he knew of the Friendly character. It was not easy, because all he really knew about what made a Friendly a Friendly had been absorbed directly into his unconscious by observing Obadiah as he had been growing up. In short he knew, without having to think, what Obadiah would do in almost any situation, once he had been confronted with it, but he had little conscious understanding of why Obadiah would do just that. Hal was, in fact, in a position very like that of someone who could operate a piece of machinery but had no idea of why or how it worked.

As the jitney touched down, he made a mental note to at least not let himself be lulled into complacency by the fact that the people here might seem at first to take him easily for one of themselves. He would have to make a conscious effort to observe and study those around him, in spite of whatever ability he already had to play the role he had adopted. Otherwise, he could end up making a wrong move without ever knowing he had made it; and the results from that wrong move might result in tripping him up without warning.

The passengers left the jitney and found themselves in a closed tunnel that led for some distance before delivering them into a series of rooms where they were sorted out according to the type of personal papers they were carrying. As someone with Harmony papers Hal was channeled with a couple of dozen other Friendlies into the last room to be reached. Within were a number of desks with Immigration Service officials seated at them.

Hal was a little out of position to be first at the table nearest him. Just ahead of him was a slight, slim, dark-skinned young man. There was a hush-zone around each desk, and Hal stood at such an angle to both his fellow traveller and the official that lip-reading was difficult, so there was no way for him to find out in advance any of the questions he might be asked.

Finally, the man ahead of him was directed onward to a fenced enclosure made of two-meter-high wire mesh and containing physical, straight-backed chairs, watched over by a stocky, middle-aged enlisted man in a black Militia uniform. The dark young man took a chair there, and Hal was beckoned forward to the desk with the official.

"Papers?" said the official, as Hal sat down.

Hal produced them and the official read through them.

"How long has it been since you were on Harmony?" he asked.

Hal took it as a good sign that the other had not addressed him in the canting speech of the ultra-fanatics among the Friendlies. It might indicate that the official was one of the more reasonable sort. In any case, he had his answer ready, having studied the papers he was carrying.

"Four and a half standard years, more or less."

The official shuffled the papers together and handed them back to him.

"Wait over there," he said, nodding to the enclosure.

Hal took the papers, slowly. No one else of the native Friendlies except the dark-skinned young man had been sent to wait. The rest, from other desks, were all being directed ahead, through a further doorway and out of the room.

"May I ask why?" he said, standing up.

"Anyone off-planet more than three years is checked."

Hal felt grimness as he walked over toward the enclosure. He should have thought of this. Sost should have thought of this. No, it was unfair to blame Sost, who would have had no way of knowing that a special effort should have been made to get Friendly papers that were less than three years off the individual's home world. Naturally, the chances of the papers Jennison dealt in being out of date were likely to be greater rather than lesser.

He took a seat across the enclosure from the dark-skinned man, under the watchful eye of the policeman. It seemed to him that the glance of the dark-skinned man met his own eyes strangely for a fraction of a second; then they were watching nothing, again. It would have been easy to believe that the other man had never glanced at him at all, but one of Hal's earliest teachings by Malachi had been in the art of observation. Now, in his mind Hal replayed the last few minutes of what he had just seen, and his memory produced, beyond argument, the brief moment in which the other's eyes had met his.

It was something that could mean nothing - or a great deal. Hal sat back on the stiff, upright chair and let his body relax. Time went by - more than a standard hour. At the end of that period the room was empty of his fellow travellers, except for those in the enclosure; and there were now five of these, including himself. The other three were unremarkable-looking individuals, obviously Friendlies, all of them at least twenty years older than Hal and the dark-skinned man.

"All of you now," said the policeman, nasally. "Come. This way."

They were taken out of the enclosure and the room they had been in, down another short corridor to an underground garage and a waiting bus. The bus hissed up on its fans and they slid out through the garage, emerging into the nighttime streets of Citadel. It was raining, and the rain streaked the windows of the bus, blurring the gray shapes of the building fronts they passed under the sparse yellow glow of the street lighting. They drove for a little under half an hour, then entered another interior garage, down below the street level.

From the bus in the garage, they were taken upstairs into what seemed at first sight to be an office building. Their papers were taken from them; and there was another long wait on straight chairs in an outer office, with trips to the water tap in one wall and to the rest room, under the eye of their police guard, as the only distractions. Then, one by one, they were called into interior offices that had only a single desk and a single interviewer behind it. Once more, Hal saw the dark-skinned young man called before him.

When Hal's turn came, he found himself sitting down at the side of a desk, facing a small, balding man with an egg-shaped face, unblinking eyes and an almost lipless mouth. The gray man picked up papers that Hal recognized as his from the desk, and read through them with a speed that made Hal suspect the other of being already familiar with their contents. He laid the papers back down and looked at Hal from a bureaucratic distance.

"Your name?"

"Howard Beloved Immanuelson

"You're a communicant of the Revealed Church Reborn, born into that Church twenty-three point four standard years ago, in the hamlet of Enterprise?"

"Yes," said Hal.

"Your father and mother were both communicants of that Church?"

"Yes."

"You remain a communicant in good standing of that Church?"

"I am," said Hal, "by the grace of the Lord."

"You have just returned from four years of work off-planet as a semantic interpreter, having been employed by various of the unchurched…"

The questioning continued, covering the facts of Howard Immanuelson's life as set forth in the papers Hal had been carrying. Once these had been exhausted, the interviewer pushed the papers from him and stared at Hal with his unchanging eyes.

"Do you keep regular times of prayer?" he asked.

Hal had been expecting this sort of question.

"As far as I can," he said. "Travelling about as I do among those who do lack the Word, it isn't always easy to keep regular hours of prayer."

"Ease," said the interviewer, "is not the way of the Lord."

"I know," said Hal. "I know as you do that the fact that regular hours of prayer are difficult to keep is no excuse for laxity. So I've become used to inward communication at my usual times of literal prayer."

The gray man's upper lip seemed to curl a little, but it was so thin Hal could not be sure.

"How many daily are your times of prayer - when it's convenient for you to pray, that is?"

Hal thought swiftly. He did not know the sectarian rules of the Revealed Church Reborn. But if it was a church in the North Oldcontinent region where Enterprise was located, then it was probably in the so-called "Old" Tradition, rather than the New. In any case, as the saying went, each Friendly was a sect on his own.

"Seven."

"Seven?" The interviewer kept his tone level and his face expressionless, but Hal suddenly suspected he was talking to one of those who held to the New Tradition, and believed that more than four times of formal prayer a day were arrogant and ostentatious.

"Matins and lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline," said Hal.

He saw the hint of an unmistakable sourness on the face of the man before him as he reeled off the Latin names. It was a risk to do something like this deliberately; but he would be out of character if he did not clash with almost any other Friendly on details of religious dogma or observance. At the same time he did not want to goad anyone like this strongly enough to give the other a personal reason to make the conditions and results of this interview more harsh than they might otherwise be.

"Yes," said the interviewer, harshly. "But for all those gaudy names you pray secretly, like a coward. Perhaps you belong to that anathema, that new cult among our sinful youth, that professes to believe that prayer is unnecessary if you only live with God and His purposes in mind. There's a great Teacher just arrived here among us who could show you the error of that way…"

The tone of his voice was rising. He broke off abruptly and wiped his lips with a folded white handkerchief.

"Did you have much contact with other churched individuals during your years among the ungodly?" he asked, in a more controlled voice.

"By nature of my work," said Hal, "I had little contact with anyone from the Promised Worlds. My associations, of necessity, were with those people of the planets on which I was working."

"But you met and knew some from Harmony or Association?"

"A few," said Hal. "I don't think I can even remember the names of any."

"Indeed? Perhaps you might remember more than names. Do you recall meeting any of those who style themselves the Children of Wrath, or the Children of God's Wrath?"

"On occasion - " Hal began, but the interviewer broke in.

"I'm not referring merely to those who live in knowledge of, and sometimes admit, that they are deservedly forgotten of God. I'm talking of those who have taken this impious name to themselves as an organization counter to God's churches and God's commandments."

Hal shook his head.

"No," he said. "No, I've never even heard of them."

"Strange," the thin upper lip curled visibly this time, "that so widely traveled a person should be so ignorant of the scourge being visited upon the world of his birth. In all those four years, none of those from Harmony or Association that you met ever mentioned the Children of Wrath?"

"No," said Hal.

"Satan has your tongue, I see." The interviewer pressed one of a bank of studs on his desktop. "Perhaps after you think it over, you may come to a better memory. You can go, now."

Hal got up and reached for his papers, but the gray man opened a drawer of his desk and swept them in. Hal turned to leave, but discovered when he got to the door that that was as far as the freedom of his permission was extended. He was taken in charge by an armed and uniformed police guard and taken elsewhere in the building.

The two of them went down several floors and through a number of corridors to what now began to strongly resemble a jail rather than an office building. Past a couple of heavy, locked doors they came to a desk behind which another police guard sat; and here all pretence that this was anything but a jail ended. Hal had the personal possessions he was carrying taken from him, he was searched for anything he had not admitted carrying, then taken on by the guard behind the desk, down several more corridors and to a final, heavy metal door that was plainly locked and unlocked only from the outside.

"Could I get something to eat?" said Hal as the guard opened this door and motioned inside. "I haven't had anything since I landed - "

"Tomorrow's meal comes tomorrow," said the guard. "Inside!"

Hal obeyed, hearing the door crash shut and locked behind him.

The place into which he had been put was a large room or cell, with narrow benches attached to its bare concrete walls. The floor was also bare concrete with an unscreened latrine consisting of a stool, a urinal and a washstand occupying one blank corner. There was nothing else of note in the cell, except a double window with its sill two meters above the floor, in the wall opposite the door, and one fellow-prisoner.