The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Thirty-seven

Sitting exactly as he was, a great sense of accomplishment and relief came over him, like a runner who has raced some incredible distance and won. Still thinking of what he must do, not only to escape with his present understanding but afterward, he fell into a doze, as his worn-out body took advantage of the fact that the fever had now broken and his breathing was slightly easier; and the doze, still without a change of position, became deep and exhausted sleep.

He woke from an apparently dreamless sleep to find that without waking he had slid down into a position flat on his back on the bed and pulled the thin blanket up over him. He struggled up again into a sitting position. The effort brought on a coughing spasm which produced more yellow-green phlegm, but the coughing did not hurt so much; and he found, after the first breathlessness from the effort was over, that he seemed to be more successful at getting air into his lungs now than he had been for some hours; although he was still a long way from normal. About him, the silent cell still showed no change.

His first and most desperate need was to empty his bladder. He threw back the blanket and discovered he had barely strength to get to his feet facing the stool. Finished, he fell back on to the bed and lay for a moment, while he collected enough energy to turn, crawl across and raise himself on his knees beside the washstand on the bed's other side. He drank, this time, at last, deeply from its tap, stopping to catch his breath and then drinking again, reveling in again being able to swallow more than a few mouthfuls. Finally, with moisture at least partially restored in him, he sat back against the wall at the head of the bed and put himself to the labor and pain of coming fully awake.

Asleep, he had for a short while forgotten the struggle to breathe; and now for a little while he had attention only for that, and his general weakness and discomfort. But gradually, as he woke more fully, his mind began to gain something of its normal ascendancy over his body; and all that he had thought his way through to, in the long hours just past, came back. The urgency in him reawoke. Even before he remembered fully why it was so, he remembered that he must get out of here.

Under the stimulant of that necessity, he began to come back to a normal state of alertness; and his struggle to breathe eased even further, until it was almost possible to ignore it. He coughed and raised a certain amount of phlegm, but the effort ate brutally into his slim supply of strength. He gave up trying to clear his lungs and sat back once more against the wall of his cell. Remembering his chronometer, he looked at it. It showed 10:32 a.m.

His first concern now that he was fully awake was to check the structure of understanding he had built before sleep kidnapped him. But it was still all there, only waiting for deeper examination to give up its details. He was free to devote his attention to getting out of the hands of those who held him.

It was obvious that the situation was one in which it was not practical for him to escape in any physical, literal sense. His only real chance was to persuade his jailers to take him out of the cell. As a last resort, if they would not, he could ask to speak to Bleys; and tell the tall man that he had agreed to think over the possibility that he might be one of the Others.

But it was absolutely a last resort, not because it might not get him out of the cell, or because of any physical danger inherent in it, but because face-to-face contact with Bleys at any time was perilous. Bleys was not only an Other, but - unless matters had changed among his kind - second-in-command of their organization. He was not the kind of individual whom someone possibly ten years younger could confidently expect to delude.

Leaning back against the wall, Hal shut his eyes and let his mind focus down on the question of escape, until everything else was shut out but the edge of his physical misery, niggling on the horizon of his consciousness, and the massive shape of the structure he had conceived, standing mountainous in the background of his thoughts and throwing its shadow over everything.

All together, the physical discomfort, the situation and his new understanding, gave birth to a plan. He opened his eyes after a time, got up from the bed and took two unsteady steps into the center of the room. For a long moment he merely stood there, feeling upon him in his imagination the attentive eyes of the invisible watcher keeping his cell under surveillance.

Then he opened his mouth and screamed - screamed as impressively as he could with the hoarse throat and miserly breath that were all he had to scream with - and collapsed on the floor of his cell.

He had let himself fall as gravity took him; but he had also relaxed in falling, so that the impact upon the bare concrete floor was not as painful as it might have been. Once down, he lay absolutely motionless, and set about doing a number of things to himself internally that either Walter or Malachi had at different times taught him to do.

As individual exercises, most of these were not difficult; and they tended to reinforce each other in the effect he needed. Slowing his respiration was in any case part of the techniques for slowing his heart rate and lowering his blood pressure. These latter two, in turn, helped him achieve the more difficult task of decreasing his body temperature. Taken all together, they decreased his oxygen need, thereby easing the task of breathing with his secretion-choked lungs; and gave him the plausible appearance of having passed into a deep unconsciousness. At the same time the state they helped him achieve made it possible for him to endure without moving the long wait that he expected - and was not disappointed in having - before those watching him finally became convinced enough to send a guard to his cell to see if something had indeed happened to him.

In the end, he lay where he had fallen for over three hours. A small part of his mind kept automatic track of the passage of that time, but the greater part had withdrawn into a state of near-trance; so that he was very close to being honestly in the condition in which he was pretending to be. When his guards finally did reach the point of checking on him, he was only peripherally aware of what was happening. He lay, hearing as if from another room, as the first guard to come into the cell and examine him relayed his conclusions over the surveillance microphones; and after some consultation at the other end, a decision was made to get him to a hospital.

There had been a certain delay, the small, barely interested, watchdog part of his mind noted, resulting from the fact that Barbage was not on duty and his inferiors fretted, caught between their fear of the lean captain's displeasure if they did anything unjustified for the prisoner and their awe and fear of Bleys' reaction if anything happened to Hal. In the end, as Hal had gambled it would - even if Barbage himself had been present - their respect for Bleys' orders left him no choice but to get Hal to someone medically knowledgeable as soon as possible.

It seemed that there had also been another reason for their hesitation, having to do with conditions outside the building; but what this was, Hal could not quite make out. In any case, he eventually found himself being lifted onto a stretcher and carried out of the cell and along corridors to a motorized cart. This took him - now buried under a pile of blankets - for some distance until they passed finally through a tall pair of doors into cold, damp air. He was lifted off the motorized cart onto another stretcher, which was then carried into some sort of vehicle and suspended there, in a rack against one of the vehicle's sides.

A door slammed, metallically. There was a momentary pause, then blowers came to life and the vehicle took off.

Heavily depressed as his body now was, it resisted his efforts to wake it. The resistance was not active but inert, of the same sort that makes an unconscious man harder to lift than a conscious one. The near-trance in which he had put himself had shut out all the pains and struggles of the last few days; and his present comfort drew him the way a drug draws its addict.

It was only by remembering the structure of understanding that he had finally put together in his mind, and its importance, that he was able to rouse himself to push back the torpor he had created. But once he managed to lift the effect slightly, his work became easier. He felt a touch of relief, momentarily. He did not want to bring his body all the way back to normality too soon, in case he should find himself in competent medical hands before he had a chance to take advantage of being out of his prison. There was too much danger of being turned around and sent directly back to his cell.

On the other hand, he needed to be alert enough to take advantage of an opportunity to escape if one should come up. He went back to rousing himself with his original urgency, therefore, toward the point where he believed he would be able to get to his feet and move if he had to; but he could feel that his pulse remained in the forties and his systolic blood pressure was probably still only in the nineties; and his original concern returned. His body was lagging in its response to his efforts to wake it.

With all this, however, he was still becoming once more able to pay attention to what was going on around him, although his emotional reactions to what he saw and heard remained sluggish. He saw that he was alone in the back of what was obviously a military ambulance capable of transporting at least a dozen stretchers hung three-deep along its two sidewalls. A couple of enlisted Militiamen were occupying the bucket seats before the controls up front in the open cab area.

A band of windows ran along each side of the vehicle in the stretcher area; and beside him as he lay on a top-level stretcher the upper edge of the window glass was just below the point of his shoulder. He lay on his back. By turning his head only a little, he could get a good view of the streets along which they were passing. Although it would be early afternoon by this time, no one was to be seen in the streets; and the small shop fronts he passed were closed tight, their display windows opaqued.

It was a dull, wet afternoon. It was not raining now; but the street surface, walkways and building fronts glistened with moisture. He caught only an occasional glimpse of a corner of the sky between far-off building tops when the ambulance passed through the intersection of a cross-street; but it seemed uniformly heavy and gray with a thick cloud cover. After a little while, he did indeed see one pedestrian who turned his head sharply at the approach of the ambulance and ducked up an alley between two shops.

There was tension in the cab of the vehicle. Now that his senses, at least, were working normally, his woodswise nose could catch in the still, enclosed air of the ambulance, the faint harsh stink of men perspiring under emotional stress. They were also directing the vehicle oddly, travelling only a few blocks in a straight line, pausing at occasional intersections for no visible reason, then turning abruptly to go over several blocks to the right or left before returning to their original direction of travel, as furtive in their movements as the first foot traveller he had seen.

As they went on, their progress slowed, almost as if the man controlling the vehicle had lost his way. Now, they began to see more pedestrians, all in a hurry, nearly all going in the same general direction the ambulance was following. At last, Hal's dead-seeming body was beginning to respond, although it still felt as though it weighed several times its normal amount. He faced the fact that, far from being in danger of recovering too soon, he had underestimated his exhaustion and the effort it would need to lift himself from the attractive state of near-unconsciousness. Elementally, his body was desperate for the rest it felt it needed to survive; and it was resisting being forced back to a higher level of energy-expenditure.

In his concern to get himself back to a state in which, if necessary, he could stand and walk, Hal all but forgot the vehicle around him and the streets through which it was passing. He was barely aware that they were proceeding more and more cautiously; and that more and more often the ambulance halted briefly. Slowly, his stubborn body was returning to life; and at last he was beginning to have confidence that he could raise and move it for a short distance, at least. He lay under the blankets, clenching and unclenching his hands, flexing his arms and legs, shrugging his shoulders and making every movement that was possible without unduly risking the danger of attracting the attention of the two men up front.

He was all but completely occupied with these exercises when the ambulance slowed suddenly enough to slide him forward on his stretcher, then abruptly revved up its blowers for a second before throttling all the way back to idle. The vehicle halted.

Hal stopped exercising and looked out through the window glass beside him.

The ambulance was surrounded by people, a still-gathering crowd not yet so tightly packed that those in it could not move without other bodies moving out of their way. Clearly, it had just become impossible for the vehicle to continue forward; and glancing back the way they had come, Hal saw more people filling in behind them. It was already impossible to turn around and go back.

They were in a large square that was rapidly becoming jammed with people, having apparently just emerged from one of the streets feeding the square. The faces of those around the truck, glancing in at the pair of Militiamen, were not friendly. Hal could now smell more strongly the stink of emotion from the two. He pulled his head back to look forward as far as was possible. Less than thirty meters in front of them, with a solid stand of human bodies in the way, was the entrance to another street that would have led them beyond the square. Clearly, the driver had gambled that he could get across to it before the crowd barred his path completely - and the driver had lost.

The ambulance was trapped like a mastodon in a tarpit. It would remain that way, unless the driver chose to simply bulldoze a way through the people in their path; and that sort of action would clearly be a suicidal thing to try, judging from the scowling faces glancing at the Militia uniforms. With an explosive inhalation somewhere between a sigh and a grunt, the driver cut the blowers entirely and let the vehicle settle to the pavement. The Militiaman beside him was muttering into the vehicle's phone unit.

"Stay put!" crackled an answering voice from the interior speaker unit of the vehicle. "Don't do anything. Don't attract any attention. Just sit it out and act like you're enjoying it."

Silence fell inside the cab. The two Militiamen sat, pretending to be engaged in conversation and refusing to meet the dark stares of those who glanced in at them. Looking again out the window glass beside him, Hal saw that their attempted route had been across one corner of the square. They were grounded broadside onto the open space of its middle; and, without having to move, he had an excellent view of the central area where the crowd was thickest.

It had pressed in tightly there about a pedestal supporting a stark brownish cross of granite, that towered at least three stories into the air. From where Hal lay on the stretcher, looking out through the moisture-streaked side window of the ambulance, the upper part of the cross seemed to loom impossibly high over them all, giving the illusion of floating against the dark, swag-bellied rainclouds overhead. The figure of a man in a business suit was beginning to climb down from the pedestal, having just finished a speech that Hal had been minimally conscious of hearing from repeaters worn or carried by those in the crowd close around the ambulance.

Applause began, and sounded for a few moments as the business-suited man climbed off the pedestal. After a second another man, this one wearing the familiar bush clothes Hal had seen around him through the past weeks, began to climb up. The ascending man reached the top of the pedestal, took a grip on the upright shaft of the cross to steady himself on the narrow footing, and began to speak. His voice came clearly to Hal's ears; plainly he was wearing a broadcaster which the repeaters were picking up, but from this distance Hal could not see it anywhere visible on his clothing or body. All around the ambulance, the tiny, black repeaters pinned openly to lapels or defiantly held up overhead threw his words out over the listening crowd. They penetrated the walls of the trapped vehicle.

"Brothers and sisters in God - "

Hal's attention woke to a new alertness. The voice he was hearing was the voice of Jason Rowe; and now that he had identified Jason, he recognized the square-shouldered, spare figure standing as he had been used to see it stand.

" - In a moment the one who will speak to you will be Captain Rukh Tamani, who planned the complete blockage of the Core Tap shaft accomplished by her Command, yesterday - who not only planned it; but gathered, with her Command, the materials out of which the necessary explosive was assembled; and trekked those materials halfway across the continent under threat of attack by Militia at all times, and under actual pursuit and attack much of the time. Brothers and sisters in the Lord, we have as of yesterday testified to the fact that our Faith in God remains whole and able to strike at those very points where the Belial-spawn consider themselves strongest. As it was yesterday, so shall it continue to be until the Others and their dogs no longer harry our worlds and our people. Brothers, and sisters, here is Rukh Tamani now, Captain of the Command that sabotaged the Core Tap and shut down the spaceship outfitting station - and my Captain, as well!"

A roar built up from the crowd and continued as Jason descended from the pedestal. Then there was a moment in which the cross stood still and alone in the midst of them and the roar slowly died away. Then it began again as a slim figure in dark bush clothes began to climb into view.

It was Rukh - it could be no one else. She climbed up on the pedestal and paused, holding one arm around the vertical shaft of the towering granite cross. It lifted high above her, its polished surface gleaming dully with moisture.

For a moment she stood there, looking like a black wand in the gray light. Gradually, the sounds from the square died away like the sound of surf when a heavy curtain is drawn across an open window. The crowd was silent.

She spoke, and the repeaters carried by people in the square picked up her words and threw them audibly over the heads of everyone there.

"Awake, drunkards, and weep!"

It was, Hal recognized, a quotation from the Old Testament of the Bible, from the first chapter of Joel. Her clear voice reached even through the walls of the ambulance to Hal's ears, like a sharp needle prodding him in his efforts to regain full conscious control of his body.

"All you who drink wine, lament," she went on:

" - For that new wine has been dashed from your lips.

"For a nation has invaded my country,

mighty and innumerable;

its teeth are the teeth of lions,

it has the fangs of a lioness.

It has laid waste my vines

and torn my fig trees to pieces;

it has stripped them clean and cut them down,

their branches have turned white.

"Mourn like a virgin wearing sackcloth

for her young man betrothed to her.

Oblation and libation have vanished

from the house of Yahweh

the priests, the ministers of Yahweh,

are in mourning.

Wasted lie the fields,

the fallow is in mourning.

For the corn has been laid waste,

the wine fails,

the fresh oil dries up."

She stopped; and after the clear cadence of her voice, the silence seemed to ring in their ears. She spoke again, slowly.

"When did we come to fear death?" She turned her head, looking at all those about her. "For you, I see, fear death."

The silence of the crowd continued. It was as if they had no power to make a sound, almost no power to breathe, until she should finish with them. Hal struggled against the reluctance of his body to return to life.

"Today - " her voice reached him again through the glass window in the ambulance - "you crowd the streets. Today the Militia does not come opt to disperse you. Right now you are willing, in your hundreds, to take up weapons and march against the Belial-spawn and Antichrist."

She paused, watching them all.

"But tomorrow - " her voice continued - "you will think better of it. You will not say you will not march; but you will find a thousand reasons to question the time and manner of marching, and so never leave Ahruma at all.

"When did you come to fear death? There is no death to fear. Our forefathers knew this, when they came from Earth. Why do you fail to know it now?"

The crowd neither moved nor made a sound.

"They knew, as we should know," her voice went on, "that it does not matter if our bodies die, as long as the People of God continue. For then all are saved, and will live forever."

Hal got his legs moving, and stirred them quietly on his stretcher, to get the blood moving in them. They made a small rustling sound between the stretcher surface and the covering blankets. But the two Militiamen in the bucket seats up front in the ambulance paid no attention. They were as caught up in Rukh's speaking as the crowd outside.

"There is a man," went on Rukh; and the repeaters in the crowd flung her words against the concrete fronts of the buildings facing the square on all four sides, "who has been in this city before today and will be here again, who is called by some the Great Teacher."

She paused.

"He is a teacher of lies - Antichrist incarnate. But he envies us our immortality - yours and mine, sisters and brothers - for he is only mortal and knows he will die. He can be killed.

"For God alone is independently immortal. He would exist, even if Mankind did not; and because we are part of God, you and I, we are immortal also. But Antichrist, who comes among us now for our last great testing, has no hope of long life except in Mankind. Only if we accept him, and his like, can they hope to live.

"But because Mankind is of God, though the Enemy may slay our bodies he cannot touch our souls unless we give them freely to him. If we do, we are lost, indeed.

"But if we do not; then, though we may seem to suffer death, we will live eternally - not only in the Lord but in those who come after us, who will because of us continue to know our God.

"For only if we betray him by giving up the power to choose Him for ourselves, can we lose immortality. If we will not be dogs of Antichrist, we shall be part of our children's children's children - who, because of our faith and our labors, will still belong to our God, our Faith and, therefore, to us, forever. If the race continues free, none of us shall ever die."

She paused; and for the first time, there was a sighing, no more noticeable than a vagrant wisp of breeze, that travelled across the surface of the crowd and died against the buildings surrounding.

"There are those - " when she went on, her voice had changed slightly - "who say, 'But what if we should all be killed by those who follow Antichrist?' And the answer to that is, 'they cannot.' For there would then be not enough to serve the Belial-spawn as they wish to be served. But even if it was possible for our enemies to kill all who are steadfast in the Faith, that killing would be useless to them. For even in their slaves the seeds of Faith would still lie dormant, awaiting only the proper hour and the voice of God, to flower once more."

She paused and once more took a slow survey of the square.

"So, pick up your courage," she said. "These who oppose us can only destroy bodies, not souls. Come, join me in putting off our fear of death; which is, after all, only like a child's fear of the dark, and testify for the Lord, praising Him and thanking Him that it is to us, to our generation, that this great and glorious moment has been given. For there is no reward like the reward of those who fight for Him; knowing that they cannot lose because He cannot be defeated."

She stopped.

"Now," she said. "Testify with me, my sisters and brothers in the Lord. Let us sing together that God may hear us."

She let go of the upright of the cross and stood there balanced upon the narrow upper edge of the pedestal top. Standing so, she began, herself, to sing. Her voice came clearly and joyfully from the repeaters, making the dark hymn Hal had heard led by Child in the house of Amjak into a paean of triumph.

"Soldier, ask not, now or ever,

Where to war your banners go.

Anarch's legions all surround us.

Strike! and do not count the blow …"

The crowd was singing with one voice. Up in the front of the vehicle, the two Militiamen were silent, but they sat crouched in their seats as if they, too, had been captured by the music. Hal, who had also been caught up in the power and sweep of Rukh's speech, woke suddenly to the fact that he was letting his chance to escape slip through his fingers.

As quietly as he could, he pushed the blankets off him to the window side of the stretcher, swung his legs out over empty air and let himself slip quietly off the stretcher surface until he was standing on his feet.

Up front, the two Militiamen stared out through the side window next to the driver's left elbow, blind and deaf to anything taking place behind them.

Hal swayed a little on his feet. His balance was unsure, and the effort of keeping himself erect was a large one; but he felt a tremendous surge of happiness at being able to stand by himself. He moved as softly as he could to the door in the back end of the ambulance, through which he had been carried in. One step. Two. Three… he reached the door.

He put his hand on the rounded, cold, metal bar of its latch lever, ready to push it down; and glanced back over his shoulder at the front of the vehicle. The two Militiamen still sat in profile to him, unnoticing.

He turned to the door again, and pushed down on the lever. It resisted him as if it had been set in concrete. For a moment he thought his weakness was to blame and he threw all his weight upon it to force it down. But it held.

Then his mind cleared. He looked more closely at the latch and saw that it was locked by a horizontal sliding bar that needed to be drawn before the lever could swing down. He took the knob of the bar gingerly in his fingers and pulled. It held as if stuck. He pulled harder. It held for a second more; and then with a rasp and a clang that seemed to echo like a beaten alarm through the ambulance, it sprang back. He seized the lever.

"Stop!" said a tight-throated voice from the front of the ambulance. "You push that handle down and I'll shoot!"

Still holding the lever, he looked again over his shoulder. The faces of both Militiamen were watching him above the upper edges of their bucket-seat backs; and, down between the seats, its slim, wire-coiled barrel projecting through, was one of the stubby hideout-models of a void pistol. It was aimed squarely at him, held low by the driver so that his body and that of the man beside him would shield it from the eyes of any of the crowd who might happen to look in.

"This doesn't make any noise," said the driver. "Go back to your stretcher and get back up on it."

Hal stared at them and the shadow of the structure in his mind seemed to fall between him and the two of them.

"No," he said. "If I fall out of here dead, you two won't live five minutes."

He pushed the lever down, leaning against the door. The latch released. The door swung half-open under his weight before it was stopped by the body of someone standing in the way; and Hal fell into the opening, which was too narrow for his body to pass but let him get his head outside.

"Help, brothers!" he croaked. "Help! The Militia've got me."

He had been braced instinctively for the silent blow of the charge from the void pistol against his back. But nothing happened. He was aware of startled faces turning toward him; then suddenly the door gave fully and he fell through the opening.

He would have tumbled to the pavement, if hands had not caught him and held him upright.

"Help…" he said again, weakly, feeling the last of the small spurt of strength he had been able to summon up draining from him in the sudden relief of still being alive. "They've had me in their cells…"

A fainting spell misted his vision for a few seconds. When it cleared, he became distantly aware of being half-pulled, half-lifted, forward for a little space; then lifted again by many hands to the head-height of the crowd. Dimly, he realized he was being passed along by an unending succession of hands above the heads of the multitude - and, at the same moment, became crazily aware that here and there about the square there were the figures of other casualties of the. tight-packed gathering - men, women, and even some children, being passed toward the outskirts of the crowd by the same means.

In his present exhausted, slightly confused state, it was a curious sensation, rather like floating across strangely uneven ground, while receiving innumerable pats on the back; and, strangely, it brought back the dream he had had of starting out on foot, alone, across a plain to a Tower seen far off in its distance. He was conscious mainly of a naked feeling from the cold, wet air cooling him through the thin shirt and trousers that were all his captors had left him to wear in his cell. After a while the number of hands beneath him became less; and, a few moments later, he was let down into an upright position with his feet on the pavement of one of the streets leading into the square.

"Hang on," said a man's voice in his ear.

There were two of them, one on either side of him. He had an arm over the shoulders of each, and they each had an arm about his waist. They half-carried, half-walked him forward through a lesser thickness of people for a little distance, and then abruptly brought him back into warmth, for which he was grateful.

They had helped him up a ramp into the body of a large truck that seemed to have been fitted up as a first aid station.

"Put him there," said a woman with a stethoscope hanging from her neck, who was working over someone on a cot. Her elbow indicated an empty cot behind her.

Gently, the two men carrying Hal put him down on the cot.

"See if anyone outside knows him," said the woman briefly. "And shut the door as you go out."

The two went. Hal lay basking in the warmth and the growing joy of being free. After a while, the medician with the stethoscope came over to him,

"How do you feel?" she asked, putting her fingers on his wrist at the pulse-point.

"Just weak," said Hal. "I wasn't in the crowd. I just got away from a Militia ambulance. They were taking me to the hospital."

"Why?" said the woman, reaching for a thermometer.

"I had a bad cold. A chest cold, that went into bronchitis, or something like that."

"Are you asthmatic?"

"No." Hal coughed thickly, looked around for something to spit into, and found a white tray held under his nose. He spat; and the sensor-end of the thermometer was tucked beneath his tongue for a moment, then was withdrawn.

"No fever now," said the woman. "But you're still wheezing. You're not moving air well."

"Yes," said Hal. "The last few days. I had a pretty high fever, I think, but it broke early this morning.''

"Roll up your sleeve," she said, producing a pressure gun and thumbing an ampoule into it. His fingers fumbled clumsily with the fastening of his sleeve cuff, and she laid the gun aside to pull loose the cuff closure and push the sleeve up. He watched the nose of the pressure gun pressed against his upper arm, felt the coolness of a drug being discharged into the muscle, and himself rolled his sleeve down and fastened it once more.

"Drink this," said the woman, now holding a disposable cup to his lips. "Drink it all."

He swallowed something that tasted like weak lemonade. Less than a minute later a blissful miracle took place, as his lungs opened up, and shortly thereafter he became busy coughing up large amounts of the secretions that had clogged his constricted air passages.

The door to the truck by which he had been brought in opened and closed again.

" - Of course I know him," a voice was saying as it approached him. "He's Howard Immanuelson, one of the Warriors in Rukh's Command."

Hal looked and saw the round, determined face of one of Gustav Mohler's grandsons from the Mohler-Beni farm, coming toward him with a man behind him who might have been one of those who had carried Hal in earlier.

"Are you all right, sir?" the grandson asked. Hal had never known his name. "Is there someplace I can take you to? I drove in earlier this week in one of our trucks, and I can bring it around in a moment. You needn't worry, sir. We're all faithful people of God, here!"

A blush stained his skin on the last words. Hal appreciated for the first time that the urging of the truck driver with the accordion that Hal be put off from the Command, that evening at the Mohler-Beni farm, might have been a source of embarrassment to their host and his family.

"I don't doubt it," he said.

"He can't go like that," said the medician sharply, from another stretcher at which she was working, "unless you want him back down with pneumonia, again. He needs some outdoor clothing. Somebody out there ought to be able to spare a jacket or a coat for a Warrior of God."

The man who had come in with the grandson ducked back out of the truck.

"Don't worry, sir," said Mohler's grandson, "there's lots of people who'll be glad to give you a coat. Maybe I'd better go get the truck and bring it here so you don't have so far to walk to it."

He went out, leaving Hal to wonder if someone out there would actually be willing to give away an outer garment and expose himself or herself to the temperature Hal had just felt, at the request of someone else who was probably a stranger.

However, the man came back before Mohler's grandson had a chance to return; and his arms were filled with half a dozen coats and jackets. Left to himself, Hal would have taken any one and been grateful for it; but the medician took charge and picked out a jacket with a fleece lining that wrapped him with almost living warmth.

"Thank whoever gave it, for me," said Hal, to the man who had brought it.

"Sir, he's already thanked," said the man, "and proud that a member of Rukh's Command would wear a garment of his."

He left with the rejected coats. A moment later, Mohler's grandson came in and helped Hal out to a light truck that was now standing in the street beside the first aid truck, surrounded by a considerable crowd that broke into applause as Hal came out, his elbow steadied by the young man.

Hal waved and smiled at the crowd, let himself be helped into the other truck, and sat back exhaustedly in his seat as the grandson lifted the vehicle on its blowers and the crowd made a lane before it to let it move off.

"Where to, sir?" asked the grandson.

"To - I'm sorry, I don't know your name," said Hal.

"Mercy Mohler," said the other, solemnly.

"Well, thank you, Mercy," said Hal. "I appreciate your identifying me; and believe me when I say I appreciate this ride."

"It's nothing," said Mercy, and blushed again. "Where to?"

Hal had put his memory to work to turn up the address he had written on the mailing envelope containing his papers. Nothing that he wanted to remember was ever forgotten; but sometimes it required a certain amount of mental searching to turn it up. At the last minute, he changed slightly what his memory had given him. There was no need to advertise the fact he was going to the Exotic Consulate.

"Forty-three French Galley Place," he said. "Do you know where that is? Because all I have is the address."

"I'll ask," said Mercy.

He stopped the truck, lowered the window at his shoulder and put his head out to speak to those in the crowd immediately outside. After a second, he brought his head back in, put up the window and restarted the truck.

"French Galley's right off John Knox Avenue, below the First Church," he said. "I know where that is. We'll be there in ten minutes."

But it took closer to twenty minutes than ten, before French Galley Place was found. It turned out to be a circle of very large, comfortable three-storey houses; and, seeing the flags displayed on various of the doorsteps, Hal realized that the Place itself was evidently a favorite location in Ahruma for off-world Consulates. So much for hiding the fact that he had been heading for a diplomatic destination. A somewhat puzzled Mercy dropped him off before a relatively smaller, brown establishment between what were obviously the Venus and New Earth Consulates.

"Thanks," said Hal, climbing out. "I can't thank you enough. No thanks, I can manage fine by myself. Let me see you safely on your way now - and say hello for me to your grandfather and the rest of your family when you get home."

"It's been my pleasure - and an honor, sir," said Mercy; and put the window up between them, before waving and driving off.

Hal waved back and watched the truck continue around the traffic circle on which the houses of the Place were built, and disappear between the trees on either side of the entrance into Knox Avenue. He breathed out, heavily. Merely being polite had drained his small supply of strength.

He turned, and walked slowly and unsteadily around the circle to sixty-seven French Galley Place, four doors away. The walk in from the gate was a short one, but the six steps leading up to the front door were like a small mountain to climb. He reached the top at last, however, and pressed the annunciator button. There was a wait that stretched out to several minutes. He was about to signal the annunciator again when its grille spoke to him.

"Yes?" said a voice from within.

"My name is Howard Immanuelson," he said, wearily leaning against the doorframe. "A few days ago I sent some papers - "

The door before him opened. A figure hardly shorter than his own, in a saffron-colored robe but with a full-fleshed, round and ageless face stood framed in the relative darkness of the interior.

"Of course, Hal Mayne," said a soft, baritone voice. "Amid asked us to do whatever we could for you; and said that you'd be along shortly. Come in, come in."