The Sinners of Erspia

TEN Homecoming

Histrina’s heart was in her mouth as they sailed through the air over her home world. Her mind was in confusion. She could remember doing violent things, even killing people, but it was as if somebody else had done them. She could not, now, understand what had made her behave in that way.

She was nervous of coming home. She was extremely nervous of facing the priest and confessing her sins. But she was also eager to see her family again. She felt as though she had been away for years, though in reality it was only days.

After a while she spotted a landmark: a range of high hills known as the Thespan Mounts. Laedo had noticed that similar formations dotted all the Erspia worlds. He surmised that Klystar had put them there as windbreaks; part of a pattern of climatic variation.

They passed over the smashed and still-smoking remains of villages. Once they saw a column of men, some mounted, some on foot, dragging themselves towards an unknown destination. The men gawped upwards as the projector station passed over, momentarily pausing from their incessant quarrels and fights. Their once gaudy apparel was bedraggled and torn.

Histrina became more and more frightened as she saw the burned and deserted villages. When Courhart came in sight she shrieked.

It was the same as everywhere else. The roofs of the few unburnt cottages had been stoved in. But unlike in many of the other villages, there were still some people about, stumbling among the ruins.

And what gave her some faint cause for hope, the chapel still stood.

Knuckles in her mouth, she sat staring at the screen. Guided by Laedo, the station descended and set down outside the village.

He turned to her, and said gently, “I told you there might be bad news, Histrina.”

Histrina gave a bird-like cry and ran from the control room along the corridor leading to the hatch.

Before Laedo could gather his wits she had pulled the lever to open it and was hurrying down the stairway even as it unfolded. She went racing towards the ruined village.

What a terrible sight! Blackened walls, desolation, smashed furniture thrown out into the streets. Histrina looked wildly about her for some sign of life. She spotted a ragged boy sitting on a wall, head hanging.

She ran up to him. He raised a smudged, tear-stained face. Even in his wretched condition she recognised him.

“Tippy!”

In place of a greeting, the youngster gave her an evil leer.

Then his face collapsed and he began to weep in snivelling sobs.

Her home! Histrina left the boy and ran until she came to the cottage where she had been raised.

It had been burned like the others.

Disconsolately she wandered through the charred, once cosy rooms. Where were her parents? Where was her younger sister Questra? There was no sign of them.

The sound of footsteps brought her to the door. Ragged, bearded, weaponed men stood grinning at her.

From their colourful clothing she knew they were of Hoggora’s camp; but they seemed to have forgotten to take care of their appearance. It was as if they were too sunk in depravity to care. Indeed they seemed exhausted.

“What a choice morsel,” said one teasingly. He grinned, showing white teeth. “How about it, lads?”

Another spoke sullenly. “Hoggora says the young ones are to be taken to the chapel, for the Father.”

“Oh, for the Father.” The first speaker shrugged, and turned away. “Take her, then.”

The Father! Perhaps he could tell her if her family was safe! Unresistingly Histrina allowed herself to be grabbed by the wrist and led away. At the entrance porch to the chapel, she was yanked roughly within.

It was as she remembered. The coolness, the sense of calm, the slanting sunlight penetrating the dimness.

But something was wrong. Instead of the aroma of incense, there was the smell of blood.

“More sport for you, Father,” said the warrior who had brought her here. “We found her in one of the cottages.”

He departed. Histrina directed her gaze down the length of the chapel.

The priest of the Good God, Father Gromund whom she had known all her life, was standing by the alter. As usual he was dressed in his brocaded robe with the golden sunburst on the front. But his hair was matted and tangled, and the robe itself was stained and dirtied.

Dirtied. With dried blood.

Father Gromund turned to meet her gaze. His eyes widened in recognition.

“Histrina! My dear young Histrina! I have you at last!” he made an impatient gesture into the shadows. “

Bring her here!”

Father Gromund’s tonsured acolyte crept forward into the sunlight. Whereas before his young face had been soft, doe-eyed, almost effeminate, now it was grim and determined. He quickened his pace, strode to Histrina and grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Come.”

Dragging her the length of the nave, he thrust her at the priest and disappeared once more into the darkness.

Then Histrina’s bewilderment began in earnest. Before she knew what was happening Father Gromund had picked her up and had lain her back on the altar. Expertly he fastened thongs to her wrists and ankles. These were fixed to the altar in some way. She was helpless, lying face up, arms and legs drawn down to the floor.

“Father! What are you doing?”

“What I have always wanted to do, my child.” Father Gromund’s voice was unctuous and gloating. “Oh, to have been entrusted with the morals of so many sweet young things, to have heard every intimate confession, to have known every dirty thought—and finally!”

He ripped open her lower garments and worked his fingers enthusiastically in her sexual cleft.

“You are a priest of Ormazd!” she protested hysterically.

“Ormazd has deserted this world, child. Ahriman triumphs, and I am his priest now. It is so much more fun, after all! I have enjoyed your mother, and your sister, and now, sweetest of all, there is you, dear desirable Histrina. Do you wish to see your sister? Look over there. See what is in store for you.”

Histrina turned her head to follow his pointing finger. There, lying in shadow before the pews, was the naked body of her sister Questra. It bore countless ugly wounds and gashes. Questra had been beheaded, the head laid carefully beside the severed neck. Even in death her faced grimaced with indescribable suffering.

And nearby, on a low table, were the instruments which had been used on her. Knives, gimlets, a large axe. All were encrusted with blood.

In sheer grief, Histrina shrieked. The priest leaned over her, bringing his face close to hers. His eyes were shining. “I do not expect you to understand, my dear,” he said, looking into her horrified, staring eyes. “It takes one of education, such as I. You see, in obedience to Ormazd we had to repress so much.

Everything had to be dammed up. Now the dam has burst, releasing a madness of lechery and torture.”

With the last words he drew himself erect, lifting his face and raising his hands in the air, his voice wavering on the edge of sanity like a bird attempting to soar beyond the atmosphere. Then he regarded her again.

“Let it begin!”

He pulled up his robe. His penis was a ramrod in his hand. Guiding it to her vagina, he thrust it home.

Then he was bucking against her, lips drawn back, grunting and growling.

And Histrina sobbed and sobbed.

Standing on the platform atop the steps of the station, Laedo soon lost sight of Histrina among the ruined cottages. He sighed with frustration. A fair number of armed men roamed the village.

He set off after her, but had not reached the first row of houses when a party of nearly a dozen warriors emerged to charge at him, waving swords and shouting incoherently. One hurled a spear which narrowly missed him. He drew his gun and got off a couple of shots, aiming at his attackers’ legs and bringing one of them down.

He could probably have killed all dozen if he chose—but could he kill all of Hoggora’s men in the village?

And what would be happening to Histrina meanwhile? He retreated back to the station and pulled the steps up after him.

There was another, different weapon. A weapon of pure goodness.

Seated before the console in the control room, he lifted the lid of the sturdy box bolted to the board.

Within was the lever with which he had switched off the Ormazdian beam.

Laedo seized the lever in his right hand, and pushed. The lever clunked to ON.

He energised the engine with a trickle of power. The station rose a hundred feet in the air. Nudging the directional knobs, he pointed the projector tube at the ground. Then he steered it to hover over the village.

Nothing on the console told him whether the beam was actually working. The projector could have been damaged when the station made its crash landing on Erspia-2. But assuming that it was, then Courhart was now receiving, at full intensity, a beam strength initially designed to spread out and cover the entire planetoid.

Offhand, he was unable to calculate what the spread would be at only a hundred feet. To make sure he criss-crossed the village, hoping to invade all the dwellings below with concentrated waves of pure goodness.

Arrows and slingshot stones rattled against the underside of the station. Laedo bit his lip. Perhaps the beam was defunct after all. He considered setting the station down on the village and crushing what was left of the buildings here and there, cowing the occupiers by sheer bulk and force.

Then, through the viewscreen, he saw men drop their weapons and fall to their knees. Their hands were clasped together, their faces raised, their mouths working in anguished prayer.

He was seeing human beings turn from evil to good by the application of a piece of technology.

It would be easy to be cynical. Maybe Klystar was right.

He wondered how Histrina was getting on.

Father Gromund had raped her, had urinated all over her, had hit her full in the face with his fist, and now was selecting an instrument with which, just as an hors d’oeuvre , to cut off her right breast.

He let her see the knife, turning it so that the filtered sunlight gleamed on the blade, singing to it in a soft crooning voice, enjoying the look of stark terror on her bruised and bloody face.

Then the beam hit. His mind became full of confusion. The knife fell from his fingers and rang on the floor.

Histrina felt it too. It was like a pure white light shining through her brain, washing away every wicked thought, bringing back the innocence of her childhood. Her upbringing came back to her in full flood.

Feelings of benevolence filled her. Looking at the triumph of evil that surrounded her, she felt even greater horror, suffused with pity.

Father Gromund, too, was looking about him in stupefaction. His eyes boggled in disbelief as he beheld the mutilated corpse of poor Questra, realizing that he himself had been the jubilant perpetrator of her gruesome death. He threw himself at Histrina’s bonds, freeing her and helping her to her feet.

He fell to his knees.

“My child, my child! What have I done? Oh, Ormazd!”

Snatching up the knife, he offered it to her handle first.

“Take your revenge on me! Plunge the knife into my heart!”

Histrina took it from him, but flung it aside. She too fell to her knees. “What have I done, Father? I have killed people! I have soiled my virtue! And I don’t know why!”

Sobbing together, clutching one another, they both called piteously on Ormazd for forgiveness.

Histrina wore a simple white dress reaching to her ankles. A white flower was in her hair. On her face was a permanent look of sorrow.

She was looking down on Erspia-1 through the viewscreen. At first, when Laedo came for her, she had wanted to stay in Courhart. True, most of the people she had grown up with were dead, including her immediate family, but it was her home.

Laedo had dissuaded her. He felt it his duty to take her to Harkio, for treatment from his personal mentalist. Besides, she had been through enough, and life was going to be uncertain on Erspia-1 from now on.

He had done the best he could. He had taken the station up into space, choosing a midway elevation where the effects of the Ormazd beam would still be somewhat stronger than from its original height, and he had criss-crossed the planetoid, just as he had the village of Courhart, making sure that its influence would reach everywhere.

Then, when he judged the Ahrimanic influence had been counterbalanced, he had switched the beam off for good. The people of Erspia-1 were now free from artificial mental influence. They could work out their own attitudes, find their own consciences.

If there was such a thing as conscience.

Even then, it would take some time.

When he made his report to the authorities, they would feel it their duty to send help to the twelve Erspia worlds. That would present problems, quite apart from the considerable expense. He did not know, for instance how assistance could be rendered to the genetically altered fairies and gnomes of the split planetoid.

But there would be a pay-back, in the acquisition of Klystar technology, particularly the thought beams.

Which could, of course, be used for either good or ill, but mostly for ill. Perhaps the technique would be banned, buried, deemed too dangerous to human freedom.

“Are we going to Harkio now?” Histrina asked.

Laedo shook his heed. “Not straight away. I don’t trust this heap of cobbled-together junk to get us there. We’re going back to my cargo ship. I’m going to see if I can make a transductor.”

Good and bad. That was the difference.

Laedo took his eyes off the human nest that was the Erspian worldlet. He thought of the great swirling Milky Way galaxy, fermenting with life.

“Ants,” he muttered. “He called us ants.”

Ants. But there was a difference, after all. Klystar had drawn on human religious ideas in designing the two thought projectors. But he himself had no preference between the two, either for Ormazd or for Ahriman. No choice between good and evil—for him, neither existed. He was pure intellect, pure curiosity, an ethical nullity, oblivious of the impact his actions had on others.

Which in human terms, was one way of defining a psychopath.

An entire cosmic generation of sentient beings had arisen blind to the drama of Ormazd and Ahriman.

Man could choose between them. Of course, it remained true what Klystar had said. Human consciousness was feeble and deluded, ludicrously prone to being swayed by persuasion, when compared with the shining, unassailable consciousness of Klystar.

But unlike Klystar’s, mankind’s evolution was not yet over.

Still mulling over the conundrum, Laedo steered the projector station back towards Erspia-5.