A staff and strategy meeting presided over by Woodward himself was held deep into the night following the successful launch of the Mission Classes, as he liked to refer to them.
"We can't afford this kind of distraction," he grumbled. "We've got the Lord's work to do, and I sensed we made some real headway tonight. That means we're going to have to get to the bottom of these people's origins and secrets whether they want to talk to us or not."
Thomas Cromwell, chief of Tactical Security, was first to speak. "The problem is, we can't infiltrate them because they've basically kept to these small village groups where everybody knows everybody. And while everybody's civil and friendly enough, at least so far, they volunteer virtually no information. We've gotten more from hostile crowds than from this one. And there are no records, no depictions of their arrival, no legends that they've allowed us to hear, nothing. Even the kids don't talk."
The big preacher nodded. "It's not so much a closed society as a socially libertarian one. Everybody minds their own business, period. From what I've been able to tell from all the reports, while there are leader types there appears to be no civil authority, either on a village or larger level. Zip. And they have a brisk and well-organized trading system that brings things here and elsewhere that are needed in a smoothly functioning barter system, but nobody runs it. Nor is there any apparent crime, hence, no police. Governments began in ancient times because people got scared. Scared of the gods, scared of marauding tribes, scared of other countries. They organized collectively to mass their defenses, and, if that wasn't enough, they basically wound up selling their freedom to the meanest, nastiest group of killers around who got absolute power in a bargain that said these killers would protect the people from all outside sources of harm. Tribal chieftains, allied with priests and shamans, with their warriors evolved into princes and then kings and emperors, dictators and ruling bodies. The odd thing is, I sense real fear running through these people, but not what it is they are afraid of. And I see no evidence that fear, unlike all other times in history, has led to a breakdown in the simple village assignments based on work. It's bizarre."
They were silent for a moment, trying to figure out where to go, and Eve, who was a little scared herself just to be in this kind of company, nonetheless felt she had to put herself into the deliberations. "Excuse me, sir? Sirs?"
"Yes, child? What is it?" the white-bearded leader asked.
"They are hiding all this from us, and it's worldwide and deliberate. I can prove it."
"Go on."
"Those people who came tonight—they were reading their Bibles. They were following along."
"Yes?"
"Sir, there aren't any books! There aren't any records, computers, you name it. All those people could read our Bibles, but they have nothing at all to read of their own!"
"Well, I'll be damned!" muttered Woodward, thunderstruck at how he could define exactly how many angels were on the heads of pins and yet miss something that obvious. "Have you seen any sign of schools? Of where they learn to read?"
"No, sir. Not even the most primitive slate drawing boards or gathering halls. Children are basically baby-sat until they're big, and then, starting as young as seven or eight, they go off into the fields and help with the work or they do work under grown-up supervision in the villages."
They considered that. "Just how long do you think these people have been here?" Woodward asked them.
"Centuries. At least a century, maybe a century and a half, anyway," John Robey replied. "We had a careful examination of the original site, we dated the defense computers coming in at older than that, and none of the arsenal seems to date past the Great Silence. Besides, sir, this continent is quite well developed. You can't do that overnight."
"No, you can't," the Doctor agreed. "Still, there's something phoney here. I sometimes think it's too bad we aren't old order Roman Catholics. They know obedience to authority as well as anybody and, more importantly, once we had a few of these folks in confessionals we'd get the story." He sat back and sighed. "Well, unless you have anything else, we'll just have to keep thinking about this and hope we get another break. Anybody come back for more weapons?"
"No, sir," Cromwell told him. "And that has us a little worried. If they have that much firepower and they don't keep coming back to get more, it suggests they now have all that they require for whatever it is they're planning."
"Any idea how much they took out?" the bearded man asked. "Can we deduce it?"
"No, sir. Not from the way it's stacked and distributed, and the cave floor is much too scuffed up. Worse, I'm worried that with our mag scooters and small transports we've managed to give them the means they didn't have to distribute those weapons far and wide. Suppose they suddenly just decide to kill all the Arms of Gideon in their areas?"
"It would be ugly," Doc Woodward agreed. "Still, I don't think that's the problem. What would it get them? We still have this ship with potential unknown to them sitting here, and we have a more imposing presence above with a population and weaponry we've not allowed them to know the size of."
"Unless they think that, being people of God, we wouldn't retaliate," Cromwell suggested.
"Hmmm . . . Maybe I should preach a little tomorrow night on who Gideon was and what the three hundred did, eh?"
"It couldn't hurt," Cromwell replied. "Still, it would make the additional point if, say, we began wearing conspicuous sidearms."
"No! Never! Not in an environment where we're only guessing at a threat and have people listening and interested! How can I teach them to practice faith when such a move would clearly show us doing the opposite? No, not unless we are actually under threat will a single weapon be shown or produced. But I want a solid aerial grid survey of this entire continent using our best equipment, understand?"
"What are we looking for?" Cromwell asked him.
"Anything that shows up that just doesn't fit. And let's get it started as soon as possible! In the meantime, we proceed as if everything is normal."
* * *
The survey began methodically, meter by square meter, from cameras in orbit guided by computers. The one problem even with the smartest computers, though, was that they were at their worst when told to look for "anything unusual." Even though this planet was inhabited by people whose ancestry was definitely Earth, it was another world, and not enough was known about it to give anyone, human or machine, enough information to really know when something was "normal" or "abnormal."
Still, as things went on as usual down below, and people went out in the fields to manage crops while others processed the harvest and still others cooked or looked after the kids, a few things did turn up, not close to the original landing site or the close-in villages but farther away, along the shores of some of the great internal lakes to the south and west of Mount Olivet's landing site. The computers dutifully flagged the anthropologists, geologists, and other experts aboard the orbiting Mount Sinai.
"The remnants of older villages," chief anthropologist Morgan noted. "Not abandoned or overworked. They look to be definitely destroyed, probably by fire."
"There's an exceptionally fertile area right in along the lakeshore, too, very near those ruins," a geographer named Salkind put in. "And yet it's not worked. Nobody is living within ten kilometers of these ruins. Interesting. And just as fascinating, there's an exceptional amount of commercial-grade ore and some abnormal radiation readings in that area of the lake as well. I think we ought to send over a small expert away team and see what that's about."
"I agree," Morgan responded. "Why not you and me, and some military and forensic types?"
"Oh, I'd like nothing better," Salkind assured her. "I've been anxious to walk upon a real planet again after so long. I missed the last one, you know. Not much for me to do when all they're trying to do is capture or shoot us. At least, over there, there won't be any of the locals to even object."
The Doctor okayed the expedition on the condition that they take some experienced armed security with them. He was very uneasy about the secrets of these people and he didn't want any more ugly scenes just in case they misread things—as they had done more than once before.
The small team came down with full gear including waterproof probes that were smart enough to just let loose. Although none aboard the Mountain had ever seen a real fish, that's what the devices were called. Trained and obedient fish at that.
While others went to take forensic samples and to carefully examine the burnt-out ruins nearby, others set up the land-based part of the fish remotes. They used a flat panel rather than a hologram for most of this, as it was better in filtering out distortion in the water; if need be, they could plug into the board and connect directly with the fish and "fly" it for more detailed and true three-dimensional studies.
The lake was deep, dropping off from a narrow shelf to almost six meters in just a few steps and quickly plunging down to a dark and irregular bottom that at its deepest point was at least one hundred and twenty meters. The irregularity of the bottom seemed to be natural; either this was a system of huge caverns that had collapsed after being too weakened by erosion to support the upper rock floor or there were ancient volcanic flows down there. Evidence suggested the former, although at more than a hundred and thirty-four kilometers across at this point it must have been one hell of a collapse if that truly were its origin.
It was much too dark in the lake to use ordinary lights; the fish switched to sonar as their main guides and kept a wide spectrum sweep on all available frequencies for the rest. If you could see something visibly, they'd transmit it to the land-based screen; if not, they would interpolate it as a visual scene.
At about seven hundred meters out, they came upon The Object. It was about twenty meters down, although the depth around it at that point showed over a hundred meters, suggesting it was massive.
Little visible could be seen, but the outline translated from the sonar suggested a broad, smooth, metallic surface with no obvious opening. Laser probes showed it to be smooth, with no lake growths or sediment attaching itself to the thing. Whatever it was, it was pretty much the same as when it went in.
"A hundred meters tall, half a kilometer long. No wonder it's all collapsed around there," the technician commented.
Thomas Cromwell studied the shape and orientation on the screen, chin in palm, then said, "Well, there's their ship. A ragtag Noah's ark, I'd suspect. It's an old model, one of a half dozen or so that come to mind. It's relatively small, too, but definitely interstellar. I'd say a converted corvette. Surplus military, probably cobbled together from junkyards or rebuilt from an abandoned Navy vessel. There's no sign of an energy leakage anywhere?"
"No, sir. Nothing."
"Then she's almost certainly cold. Even with all that armor there'd be something. I don't think it's hidden there or placed there deliberately. You don't come in and plunk yourself that deep in water, known or unknown, by choice. I think they crashed there." He sighed. "Well, at least now I think I can deduce some of the mystery here. If we had more people, more equipment, and more time we could go in, locate and pull the record modules and see what the log says about her, but I don't think it's practical at this point. It's possible they were removed anyway. Certainly they got the guns out, and who knows what else?"
"These people have acted like they're hiding some great secret," John Robey noted. "They've acted that way from the start. You think maybe they or their ancestors came in that thing, and that after they set things up they either discovered that the ship was too damaged to ever fly again or they just wanted it hidden where you'd have to be really curious to look for it?"
"No, I doubt that," Cromwell replied. "That's not the ship that brought most of these people here, along with the seed, initial two-year food supplies, prefab headquarters center, even crindin. You might stuff it all in, but it would be tight. No, this ship's more recent. From what we've found, probably a gunrunner to some of the independent worlds out there all paranoid about one another. I think it got chased here."
"You mean—?"
"That, Brother John, is a raider. Sleek, fast, probably modified with all the latest getaway gear and armed with enough weaponry to take on a small fleet, although not a Navy cruiser or its equivalent. I think if we cover the whole surface of the thing we'll find signs of a scrap, and a nasty one at that. They came up against something that was bigger and meaner than they were, or somebody just got in a lucky shot, something like that. Ambushed, most likely, when they were preparing to enter a genhole. They got in, managed some kind of maneuvers—I suspect that their captain was very good indeed—and somehow popped up here, off the charts. They were probably as surprised as we were to find an agricultural colony here. And, most likely, pretty pissed off at that, too. Can you imagine pirates suddenly having to become farmers?"
Robey thought about Gregnar, Krag, and Alon and compared them to the others. "I'm not sure they did—that is, until we showed up. Then they had to play farmer, at least long enough to lull us into a sense of, well, an odd cultural direction but nothing bizarre. But I didn't get the sense of the people in general being scared, and you have to figure these guys would become petty tyrants pretty easy."
"There's a fine line between fear and resignation at a situation you can do nothing about but cope," Cromwell noted. "They're pretty good at it, though. They had only a week or so to get everything ready, and they couldn't have planted all this and built all this in that time. I suspect we're seeing how the original settlers here lived, and mostly still do live. The question is where the raider crew survivors really live, and where the intermediary things we know must be here, from some kind of educational system to records, from books to computer learning systems, must be."
"This whole continent is underlain with caverns," Robey pointed out. "It's an interesting analogy for our own business, if you think of it. The power and the evil are below; the good but meek are above. The thing is, if you're right, what now?"
"What indeed?" Cromwell echoed. While it would be morally impossible not to intercede if, say, they found masses of people being tortured and killed, that kind of thing, this was much more insidious. To act in this circumstance would bring on a lot more death and destruction of the innocents than not acting, and nobody looked beaten or starved. In fact, they didn't even look all that unhappy, although looks could be as deceiving as these marooned pirates.
"Cromwell to Sister Morgan. Have anything yet?"
"More than enough," Ruth Morgan reported back. "Whatever happened here was deliberate. The place was leveled, the land in the immediate region was scorched, and we think that we've found signs of a mass grave. There's also a cemetery here but it's separate, and they even ran a disruptor over the markers."
"You heard our discussion over their ship?"
"Yes. At least these bastards can't get off. That's the best I can say about them."
Cromwell's bushy black eyebrows went up. "Tell me, everybody—put yourselves in the place of these pirates. After living here, in what is still certain to be primitive conditions by anybody's standpoint, for years, perhaps decades, what would be the one thing central in your mind? Or, at least, one of two things?"
That one was easy. "Getting out of here," John answered for all of them. "Without being discovered by the guys who chased you here first, of course."
"Exactly. And who's showed up with the only interstellar capable craft since they crashed?"
"Yeah, that's obvious. But what kind of thing do they think they can pull? I doubt if they realize that we all have implanted comm links, let alone the level of experts and expertise we do. And they might have every reason to think we turn the other cheek in all respects."
"Perhaps," Cromwell responded. "Still, desperation is a major motivator. They might well think that they only have one chance in a hundred, but that the alternative is possibly zero chances in a hundred if they let us leave. No, they'll try it. That's what the arsenal tapping's been about. And while they might underestimate us, they'll be prepared for a fight. The locals might even help them, just to be rid of them. We're certainly planting God's seed here, but, as always, not in everybody. Not by a long shot."
"When do you think they'll strike, then?" Albert Salkind put in, sounding worried. Geographers were good at charting running battles, but not all that good at actually fighting them.
"The next-to-last night, I suspect," Cromwell told them. "When they're apt to think we're complacent, taking security for granted because it's been so peaceful, and with us mostly intent on reinforcing the gospel. They know that Olivet will be relocating far away after the Sunday services, so that gives us one, two, oh, three days. Saturday. They'll make their move at some point on Saturday, and they will be extremely dangerous. They have only one real chance at this, and that means they will be as ruthless as possible. I think it's time we had a war council with the Doc."
* * *
Eve and John walked across the village square and out towards the distant but quite visible Mount Olivet. The sun was getting low in the sky, and soon the farmers would be coming in, the village communal kitchen would be serving a high fat, high caloric meal for them to work off the next day, and then some would head off for Olivet.
Most, of course, would not. After a few evenings the novelty had worn off, even though Doc Woodward seldom repeated anything even while always staying on message. If you didn't keep them interested you wouldn't keep them for the serious teaching.
Eve hadn't known John before this assignment; there were three hundred in the Arm of Gideon and the newer members tended to spend all their time in education and training and didn't really mix socially with the experienced officers. Still, she felt a sense of personal pride that she'd been accepted as an equal member of the team, even by the Doctor and his specialists, and certainly by John, who'd backed her up when everyone else was dismissing her suspicions as newbie paranoia. She didn't feel that the pride was ungodly or impermissible; this was simply an affirmation by others that she'd done her job.
It wasn't easy being a member of the Arm; you had to study enough theology to answer any question a new convert might come up and ask, and to minister to those who needed one-on-one treatment, but you also had to know a lot of general knowledge and be proficient in the skills of an investigator and first-contact specialist while also knowing all the technology that was at your disposal.
You didn't get much sleep even on the long interstellar voyages; you were always busy, always learning, always honing skills as best you could.
The most ironic thing was that few remained active in the Arm for very long, save the senior officers who had a particular feel for it and strong leadership abilities. Many just couldn't take the grind and dropped out and became security personnel or mission planners; some became specialists, experts in a particular field like Ruth Morgan's anthropology or Albert Salkind's geography. Some became ministers, both lay and ordained, to the large flock aboard the ship, while still others, often those who'd become couples while on assignments, wound up as missionaries, staying behind to grow what the Doctor planted.
Eve wasn't sure what she would eventually do. She loved this sort of thing, as she'd always thought she would, but she did not look forward to the next prolonged period of ship travel, of endless periods in artificial ship's time just doing the same things over and over again. And she knew that the day would be coming when that would be her fate, perhaps for years if she didn't become one of the dropouts. These settlers could be covered continent wide in just a few more weeks; there weren't all that many on this planet, after all.
The funny thing was, she thought she could remain here as a missionary if it was like it appeared to be, with these ramshackle farms and communal villages and smelly animals and smellier kids. There didn't seem to be any real threats to humans here, the insects and bacteria were just off enough that they didn't have much effect on humans, and with some medical equipment and training and a couple of medtechs this place would be one where you could settle down and possibly even live a long and productive life.
But it wasn't as it appeared. There was a second layer here, down beneath the surface, with guns and shielded vaults and endless caverns. She would have to see these people as they really were and this life as it really was before she could decide on anything about this place. Somewhere, among these seemingly happy and hard-working farmers were men and probably women who had destroyed those villages and all who lived within them, and done so merely to prevent anyone telling what they saw or interfering with the unloading of contraband and the technology to rule.
They were out here now, waiting to act, to do something, and many weren't even very shy about it. Gregnar had trimmed his long hair and bushy mustache and looked almost presentable as he sat there telling dirty stories to folks who were then going to march off and see if God was with them, and he seemed quite loose and friendly.
There was no good way to spy on everybody every minute, and the natives' loose-fitting cotton clothing could conceal almost as much as the Arm's robes actually did conceal. Still, it appeared that, if they really were going to do anything, they would be doing it with very small weapons. That wasn't totally reassuring; small weapons could do less damage, it was true, but they could kill a lot of folks within a reasonable range.
There had to be far more raider survivors than these three, but these three were the only ones they could be certain of, so they were closely watched. Eve had Gregnar simply because the big man had shown an eye for the ladies but also seemed to underestimate them. John took Alon, who seemed relaxed but was not as outgoing as Gregnar, and an Arm supervisor named Matthew Seldon, a long-time member of Doctor Woodward's inner circle and clearly the boss's man on this end, took Krag, who was acting the somewhat withdrawn loner. That didn't seem to have any real meaning, either, since Krag was usually that way.
In fact, the only thing really unusual about any of the three men's behavior this night was that they generally were inseparable after work, the best of buddies. Now, suddenly, each of them sat with his own group (or, in Krag's case, off by himself) and gave little attention to the other two. It wasn't much to go on, but Eve in particular felt that it was enough to say that they were certainly up to something.
I just wish we knew how many others here are their kind, and how many more of them will be at the lecture, she thought to herself. In several weeks of living among these people, not a single one had cracked or leaked any information that couldn't be clearly observed.
And now it was dark, save for the torches in the village and the bright light of the Olivet on the horizon. None of the three seemed in any hurry, but, finally, Gregnar finished his last ale and seemed to give a knowing glance to the other two—or was it just the watchers' imaginations? He banged down the heavy wooden mug and then got up and started to walk out of the village, towards the distant shining lights. Eve followed, trying to be as nonchalant as she could and also look like she was just going in the same direction. John watched her with a wry smile on his face, noting to himself that she wouldn't fool anybody. It didn't matter; these guys certainly knew that they were being shadowed if indeed they were grounded raiders from that crashed ship.
Heck, it might even deter them from action, and, Security felt certain, if they didn't act tonight it was unlikely that they would be able to act tomorrow. That was as good as prevention or active intervention.
Alon moved off next, never once glancing at John or any other robed people in the area, confident and secure. He walked into the darkness, and, after a few minutes, John followed, looking as relaxed as his mark. He wasn't that worried about losing his man in the darkness; like the other two, and most of the other Arm members down there, he was wearing tiny computer-controlled infrared contact lenses that allowed him pretty good night vision when he needed it.
He wasn't on the road ten minutes when Alon proved that he was more than a hick farmer and much the pro. The native suddenly darted off into tall grain almost like he was sneaking back to the cache, and John, losing sight of him for a moment, wandered over in that direction, thereby revealing himself.
Robey no sooner got into the tall wheat, though, when he suddenly felt something dark and wet. "Hey!" he yelled out, startled.
"Oops! Sorry! Didn't think anybody was lurking in here," Alon responded in an obviously pleased, almost smug tone.
The big man had sent a message to his shadow, and in the most primitive and smelly of ways.
Pulling his pants back up, Alon marched quickly out of the grain and rejoined the crowd heading towards the service.
Doctor Woodward at times could be as much the virtuoso of cussing as he could be the voice of the living God, but Robey mentally was trying to outdo the old boy, although much of it was self-directed. Don't underestimate these bastards, he warned himself.
He began even more to wish that he knew just what sort of weapons they'd removed from that underground arsenal.
"Umph! I'm about halfway to the ship and people keep bumping into me and stepping on me," Seldon reported through the intercom. Since the system was actually implanted, it was nearly impervious to interruption; even people standing right next to you could hear nothing. To the Arms, though, it was as clear as day.
Still, it wasn't telepathy. You had to speak, at least softly. "You're lucky," John whispered back. "I just got peed on and that s.o.b. has the bladder of ten men!"
"I'm getting kind of roughed up and pushed around here, too," Eve reported. "And they don't seem to be running into each other."
Soon other Arms randomly distributed through the three hundred and sixty degrees that could be used to approach Olivet started reporting their own jostling and shoving, and several were tripped up.
Eve saw a bunch of young women talking and giggling among themselves as they approached her, then essentially engulfed her. She was pushed, shoved, and started to say something when she felt a slight tingling and an enormous numbing rush inside her body. Then things went very dark.
One by one, Arms stationed outside of the main lighting area throughout the meeting seemed to meet the same fate. It was so fast, and so innocuous when it happened, that there wasn't a word on the intercom that anything untoward was happening.
Martin Luther Grady, the Guardian Angel up in the security seat on Sinai in stationary orbit above them was not quick to sense anything untoward, but he did begin to note a lessening of traffic. Not the sounds of the crowds and the excitement of the occasion, but the agent traffic. There were also a couple of times when somebody seemed about to say something and then got cut off.
"Rose, get me biotelemetry on a random sampling of Arm personnel below," he ordered, frowning. There was just something . . .
"Nobody missing," Rose reported, "but—huh! Now that's weird! A whole bunch of them have virtually the same ritual breathing and relaxed state, almost like they were asleep!"
"Or unconscious!" Grady opened the full channel. "They are making their move! A number of our people are down in the darkness! Repeat, they are knocking you out, probably by injection!" He turned back to Rose. "How many so far?"
"Twenty. . . . No, twenty-two. Oops! There goes another one!"
"Break out of the crowd, drop surveillance!" Grady ordered. Lord! How many have we got down there? Sweet Jesus! A hundred and four! "How many now?"
"Thirty-seven!" Rose reported.
"They're in among the crowds!" Seldon reported. "We're up to our armpits in people going to the teaching! There's no way we can—what? Ouch! Watch—"
"Thirty-eight," Rose said needlessly.
"Head for the lights! Fast as you can! Nobody illuminated is being taken!" Grady told them. "Run! They're pushing you, push them!"
"Fifty-three," Rose reported.
Grady sighed. "Get me Doctor Woodward on the secure line," he told her. "And give me a full infrared screen of the area. I want tracings of anybody, awake or asleep, that's going anywhere but towards the teaching. Understand? I want the location of every single sleeper!" He turned and flipped a switch. "Tactical, assemble full military SWAT now. They have taken massive hostages!"
| Title: | Balshazzar's Serpent |
| Author: | Jack L. Chalker |
| ISBN: | 0-671-57880-4 |
| Copyright: | © 2000 by Jack L. Chalker |
| Publisher: | Baen Books |