"You don't live on a floodplain if you don't have to," Randi Queson noted, talking as much to herself as to the others. "I wonder why they leave better pickings up north and come down here? It certainly must be something they do at broader intervals; it wouldn't make any sense to do this except once in a great while, maybe as a ritual, maybe as simply a gathering of a clan that's otherwise spread out."
"Well, you're the anthropologist," Nagel said. "Me, I have a hard time spelling it. But if that's the old preacher's ship, and it's sure looking big enough to be a whole damned cathedral, then maybe it's Christmas or something."
"Well, maybe they can tell us," An Li commented. "We're in heavy air and going in close. Cap, can you turn the live shot on from the probe?"
"A few more seconds," the captain responded. "Nothing to see yet. Ah! There! Well, at least they're human and they're not quite Adam and Eve."
"Sure they are," Queson breathed. "Just after the Fall."
It was quite an assembly of bodies they saw, all weathered and darkened by exposure. There seemed to be a mixture of philosophies on how to deal with the primitive conditions as well; men and women either tended to have very long hair, the men beards as well, or they shaved their heads. There didn't seem to be anybody obvious with a middle-ground point of view.
None of them, save the youngest children, were naked, although the women tended to be bare-breasted, with a few exceptions for some sort of halter top, and just about all had their private parts concealed at least in a basic fashion, primarily by vines worn tightly at the hips with some kind of leaves or short woven grasses draped over the front and sometimes back and held there in some way. All were barefoot.
They were roughly equally divided by sex, although there might have been a few more women than men per plot of ground, and they seemed to represent all ages. None appeared particularly chubby, but likewise none looked to be starving, either. The thin ones were naturally thin, the more full-figured types seemed to be, well, filled out a bit more, that was all.
But they did have possessions. Clearly somebody had figured out how to make cloth by hand out of a cottonlike plant, and others had found dyes, for there were blankets, even homemade tent shelters made with the blankets and gathered and trimmed sticks so the little ones, and anybody else who felt he or she needed some shelter, could get it. There were also gourds that clearly carried water or other drinks.
"I doubt if they go back long enough to have evolved to this social and technological level," Randi commented. "From what I can see, these are people who are forced to primitivism and know it, not people who are necessarily primitives."
"Could be," An Li agreed. "Catch the Elders there."
What she referred to were a number of men, perhaps a few dozen within the range of the camera, who seemed markedly different from the others. They had manes of gray or even snow-white hair, flowing beards, and carried long walking sticks, possibly staves of office. They were also the only ones who wore full-body clothing, a robe made of what seemed a lighter-grade cloth than the blanket material that hung on their bodies, with a hole cut in the center for the head and two other holes for the arms. They were all dyed a kind of pink-orange color, which made them very easy to spot in the mobs.
"Buddhist monks who fell off the wagon?" Sark asked cynically.
"The Kingdom of Prester John," Randi Queson said, ignoring the snide jokes. "An ancient legend of a European-style kingdom far off in the Himalayan Mountains, the source of Buddhism, but yet Christians. It's just what I'd expect a Karl Woodward to come up with."
"We'll take your word for it," Lucky Cross responded dryly. In point of fact, Queson was probably the only one there who knew what the term "European" meant, let alone the details and legends, but she was right about one thing.
Karl Woodward would have known, and it was very much the sort of thing he might come up with.
"We've been noticed," the captain pointed out.
The probe wasn't very large, designed more for carrying information and perhaps a soil sample than anything else, but it was certainly larger than anything native to Balshazzar, and very, very odd looking.
The kids had seen it first, then started shouting and pointing at it, and this caused the adults and ultimately the pink-robed elders to pay attention as well.
"It's showtime," An Li said. "Enable probe speaker mode."
"Enabled," the captain reported.
An Li took a deep breath, then said, in a calm, measured tone, "Hello, people of Balshazzar. We are the exploration ship Stanley in orbit around your world. If you still have any functioning communications devices on your ship, please have someone who knows how to use them do so. We will wait. If you do not, please indicate this when I say the word `over' and we will drop one to you. Over!"
There was a hushed silence as the probe again became a receiver. Even the kids had suddenly fallen silent, and save for the cries of some of the infants there was a nearly dead silence.
"You think maybe they don't understand us?" An Li asked.
Queson shook her head "no." "It's just shock. They didn't expect this. Wait a little bit."
Finally, one of the elders with flowing white hair and beard, looking, save for the saffron-colored robe like some Biblical patriarch, came forward and clearly meant to address them.
"We must wait for the Doctor before we can enter the Cathedral," he said in the kind of tones you might expect from some ancient epic. "Only he may enter, then we follow."
"Jesus! You don't suppose old Doc Woodward's still alive down there, do you?" Lucky Cross exclaimed. "He'd be like three hundred years old or something!"
An Li shrugged. "Enable speaker."
"Enabled."
"Can you tell me when your leader will be here? Are we talking days, weeks, or whenever? Over," she asked the old man. Then, to the captain, "Receive mode."
" . . . will come when the faithful have all gathered here," the elder said, the first couple of words being cut off before the mode could be reversed. "It is his decision alone when after that to come."
"Speaker. Sorry, sir, but we can not wait on another calendar. I realize that your people aren't used to clocks and schedules anymore, but we are. We need information, and we will provide what we can to tend to your people's needs, but we can not wait around indefinitely. Can't you or someone already in the gathering speak to these issues? Over."
" . . . is not a democracy but an assemblage of God under the loving but firm discipline of the teacher," the old man came back. "It is not for us to decide what only he can decide."
Suddenly, from within a grove a few hundred meters from the hovering probe and the old elder, came a figure much like the elders in the flowing white hair and beard—but this one was clearly different. His staff was also thicker, almost machined, and topped with some kind of design, and his robe was not saffron pink but a dirty gray. People made way for him deferentially as he approached the other, and even the elder, turning and seeing the approaching figure, bowed slightly and moved away.
"Could that be Doc Woodward?" Cross wondered.
"Somehow I don't think so. That man doesn't walk like a preacher, he walks like a cop or a naval officer," An Li noted.
The figure was really imposing; the gray man radiated a power, confidence, and strength that even came through the viewing screen. This was somebody to be feared, but who said by his very posture and look that he himself feared nothing.
"I am the Chief of Security for the Congregation of the Faithful," he said in a voice that fit the image perfectly: strong, sharp, cutting right through you. "Drop me your communicator. I can get inside, but getting that old junk up and operating would take a while after all this time."
An Li saw no reason to doubt him. She positioned the probe just above the gray man and opened the small, iris-like hatch and tilted the ball slightly. The communicator fell out, and the man caught it and examined it.
"Still surplus," he commented, as much to himself as to them. "I gather the Great Silence is still—silent?" He punched the controls like a man who knew the equipment perfectly. "This better?"
"For us, yes," An Li told him.
"You are here but your ship is still functional?"
"Yes. We used a cybernetic pilot. It seems to be the only way to do it right."
"Damn! We should have thought of that! The Doctor, however, doesn't feel comfortable with cyberships. He tends to think that one of the things that doesn't get moved is a soul."
"Could be," An Li told him. "I've never seen anybody's soul so I can't comment on whether the captain has one or not—or me, either, for that matter. But I sure didn't sell it, so if I had one it's still here someplace."
"Most people do not sell their souls," the gray man told her, taking the comment seriously. "Most people give theirs away, and far too cheaply. And you are . . . ?"
"An Li, Exec of the Stanley. Other than the captain, I have a ship-to-surface and surface-craft pilot, Gail Cross; a chief engineer, Jerry Nagel; a technician, Olon Sark; and a cultural anthropologist and sometimes geologist and lots of other things as well, Dr. Randi Queson."
"My name is Cromwell. How did you find the route to this place, if I may ask?"
"You are Dr. Woodward's colony?"
"You might call it that, yes."
"Well, that's how. The Doctor consulted with an old colleague and gave him the key to finding the Kings, knowing the man would never violate the trust nor come himself. Well, that colleague died, and someone with too much money bought the effects, including that, and then went looking for people dumb enough to see if it was real. Here we are."
"You are an exploration ship?"
"No, actually, we're all salvagers. Just not this trip. Salvagers were the only ones crazy enough to take this job. And desperate enough."
Cromwell thought about it. "I see. Well, first and foremost, you must not land here."
"Is there a problem? Or aren't we welcome?"
"You are as welcome as anyone, but if you come down you will not get back off. This is not a natural place. It looks like Heaven, but it is not. Cain went to the lands east of Eden and began human civilization. This is more or less west of Eden. All our basic needs are here, but there are no heavy metals nor other major components that would allow us industry. In other words, we're pretty well stuck like this, and so is everybody else who lands. Limbo, we sometimes call it, or Eden with the snake already in charge. I have your communicator. Try and retrieve your probe. Go ahead, try it."
An Li looked at the others, who pretty much shrugged, so she said, "Cap, bring the probe back."
"Retrieving," the captain responded. The probe lifted off rather normally, quickly reducing the people below to dots and then to nothing as it got high and encountered a cloud layer.
"That must be a hell of a cloud layer," Cross commented.
But it wasn't. "The probe ascent has slowed to almost stationary," the captain told them. "I have it at full power and I appear to have full control, but it simply will not rise any more."
She took a horizontal approach, but every time she tried to increase altitude above the six-thousand-meter mark, it stuck.
"Dump your samples, see if that will work," Cross suggested.
"Did that already. Something is exerting a specific gravitational or magnetic or whatever kind of force on the probe. It kicks on at six thousand, it kicks off at any point below it. I believe we have experienced the man's demonstration. I am returning the probe to its old position so we can see them again easily."
An Li didn't wait. "All right, we're impressed."
"So were we," the gray man responded. "And so was everyone else who landed on this world. You can come here, you can live here, within its limits, you can do what you like, but nothing, once down, rises again. We tried to track it, assuming it was some sort of beam or directional ray, but our instruments showed nothing. Perhaps yours . . . ?"
"Nothing here either," the captain told them. "I have no idea how or from where it's being applied."
"I take it, then, we should attempt no landing here considering this situation?"
"I would not advise it, although there are advantages to living here. For example, I not only should be dead of old age here, I in fact was killed here when we first landed. And yet, here I am."
"Are you saying that you're immortal? That you rose from the dead?" Randi Queson was more of a believer than Jerry Nagel, but not to this degree.
"Oh, not really. You just don't age at the same rate here as you do off this planet. I have no idea if it is a natural phenomenon or something connected to the same force or forces that prevent anything from leaving—if, indeed, they are artificial forces and not just some other natural phenomenon we haven't any way to measure as yet. Your guess is as good as mine. At least it appears that we have no problems communicating outside the atmosphere, although we've been unable to communicate with any of the other moons."
"You've tried?"
"Yes, we did everything you'd think of all those years ago when we finally wound up here. And, before us, several nonhuman groups as stuck as we are tried as well. We have only limited contact to this day with most of them—I don't believe anyone ever really realizes what the term `alien' really means until you face it—but one set, the Meskok, we've had excellent relations with from the beginning. I am by no means convinced that they are any less alien than the others, and physiologically they are bizarre, but they are also directional telepaths, meaning they don't read minds in the mass but can convey thoughts and receive directed thoughts when speaking to specific people. They are very good at it. They seem, mentally, just like us, and they are quite sly and yet knowledgeable about us because they can get things from our minds. Whether they are simply adapted to being great interspecies communicators or are truly good poker players can't be known, since we, obviously, can't read their thoughts beyond what they use for conversation. They are also excellent at adapting to even the most alien biology. It was one of them who brought me back to life within minutes of my being shot and killed so long ago, not far from this spot. They've been essential to us as basic medical resources, since, like most people in our age, even our doctors don't know how to fix a hangnail without a computer surgery."
"And what do they get from you?"
"Diversions. A new group for study. They are fascinated by how different races of beings come to be, and how they come up both in invention and cultures. We were the first humans of sufficient numbers for their study. They know it probably won't mean much, considering they're trapped here as much as we, but it gives them something to do. I suspect your anthropologist could sympathize. This group is more or less in the same business."
"Are any there?" Randi asked him. "I should like to speak to one."
"Not possible. I could bring one over, but you'd need a translator, and it would be awkward considering how they communicate. There is no way for them to broadcast over any of our communicators, nor for you to receive and comprehend any of theirs."
"What did you say your name was?" the anthropologist asked, disappointed but realizing the impracticality of using audio channels to speak to a telepath.
"Thomas Cromwell," he responded crisply, some of the old military snap suddenly back in his voice and stance.
"Got him on the list of Woodward's people from the archives," the captain said to them, but not for broadcast. "That's not his real name. Said to have been a spit-and-polish naval admiral with a totally ruthless outlook on orders and duty. He is said to have been responsible for the death of whole inhabited planets during that period. Then, something happened. Nobody knew what, but it was profound. He resigned, joined Woodward as security chief, and became dedicated to Woodward and Woodward's view of the Christian godhead. A very mysterious character and still considered very dangerous when he served Woodward's flying mission."
"So what was his real name? Is it somebody so infamous we'd have heard of it?" Queson asked.
"Possibly. Probably. But we don't know it. This material is gathered anecdotally and indirectly. I'm sure intelligence and military groups know it, but it's as if he were wiped out of the public and general private records. A man powerful enough to get that kind of official cover is somebody who can unbury every secret body of everyone in power this side of the Silence. A man they're so scared of they didn't even dare kill him."
"Maybe they were right," Sark noted. "I mean, according to him, he was shot dead and even that didn't stop him."
Nagel turned and looked at the big man. "You really believe that story?"
"Cromwell's got a dozen or so aliens within a couple of hundred meters of him right now," An Li noted, pointing to the signatures. "We haven't even picked them up on camera; he's been living with them for decades. How many aliens have you ever met, Jerry? Spacefaring aliens. Technological aliens. Who knows what they can do? Hell, we could probably have brought him back if the shot was just so."
"Yeah, provided he was shot in the hospital, right in the casualty ward," Cross noted. "Still, there's no reason not to believe him. Funny, too. Haven't heard a goddamn religious term yet!"
Queson thought about that, and opened the channel. "Mr. Cromwell, what about your and Doctor Woodward's theology? Has encountering all these other races and points of view changed things?"
"Only in amplification," the gray man responded. "Nothing changes. Most people never read or gave any thought to religion; it's the one complex field where everybody is a self-styled expert even though they've done not the most basic study of it, not any more than the twisted and vile traditions they grew up with or the wrong-headed visions they were taught by those same ones. And when God throws a fast one at them, or kills their innocent loved one, something like that, they lose what little faith they had and curse God or ignore Him. The Doctor was one of the few who studied religion the way he studied physics, and drew his own conclusions."
"Yeah? And what does he say to somebody when their kid dies even though that person prayed to God to let the kid live?" Nagel asked.
An Li rolled her eyes and hoped she could head off any theological arguments here.
"The question to ask isn't why God didn't cure the child, but why God should cure the child," Cromwell responded. "You see, God's our boss. We work for Him, and we're stuck with whatever He demands of us. What did we do that makes us deserve special attention? He's not a magic genie granting wishes, He's not Daddy in the Deep Universe, He's God. It's not a popular vision, but that's why our Bible says that so few people will ever make it to Heaven. God knows this isn't it. We didn't have much choice or time to explore, you see. We were in bad trouble and had to land, knowing we almost certainly would be stuck, unable to take off on our own. The Doctor picked this one for the same reason any of us would, and he was fooled. He has never forgiven himself for it."
"Well, it still looks a lot nicer than the other two," An Li put in, thankful to be able to steer the talk away from theology, even though she could see Nagel just primed to go off on some angry rant.
"Yes, it does, but it's the easy way. You don't have to work here. There is food everywhere, and water, and fruit for juices, and you can even ferment things. There are no natural predators, virtually no biting things, and the climate runs from extremely hot to very warm. The other races who crashed here are not hostile, just stuck like us. It's quite boring, you see. Kind of a sweet Hell, which is why we think of it as Limbo. You can't build much, you can't do much for posterity, you can't look to the future because the future's most likely to be the same as the present. And, as I demonstrated, even using someone else's ship, we aren't going anywhere. Here, at the crash site, is the only repository of human knowledge, the only source of human and theological writings, the only place where you can learn anything and at least keep some things alive. We can't stay here, though—the place floods every couple of years and we have to come and dig the old ship out—yet the seals are good enough to protect the knowledge inside and the energy cells, with some solar help, can go for a very long time. So we gather at set times, and we learn from the Doctor and from those he's trained, and we pray together and keep our faith and our identity. But we can't do much else."
"And your ship's unmovable? Even short distances?" Cross asked him.
Cromwell nodded. "It suffered major damage to the drives. Only God's will got us down in one piece, but we're stuck here."
"And you and the Doctor still think you'd have been better off on either of the other moons?" Queson asked him, fascinated.
"The Doctor certainly does, although we can't know if we'd be as stuck there as here. Do you?"
"We only surveyed Kaspar, the cold one, and we attempted no landing. Crashed alien craft on the surface, though, so it doesn't bode well," Cross told him.
"Yes, perhaps. Perhaps not. You are the first ship to seem to manage a safe passage, at least so far, so you may learn and return. If and when you do, please contact us before leaving. We have a list. I don't know how we'd pay you, but perhaps someone would."
"A list? Of amenities?"
"Not exactly. Recordings, books, plays, all sorts of things like that. Learning and study machines. This is a noncelibate monastery of sorts. We need material."
"Our boss was born without a heart, so we can't promise anything, but we'll certainly take the list," Randi assured him. "In the meantime, there is nothing down there that is of any value in the Three Kings legendary traditions?"
"No. Not that we've ever seen. A wealth of aliens, with their own technology and such, but nothing native."
"What about Melchior?" Nagel asked, having calmed down and getting back to business. "Any of your aliens know anything about it?"
"I suspect you may be able to get down and back," Cromwell told him. "At least one of the races here stopped there first and managed it. That was why they were so easily suckered into landing here. I know through exchanges of information that the legendary Magi gems come from there, but where and how I can't say. That's certainly worth your trip, though, if you can get them and get back."
This was interesting. "Any sign of any habitation there, like here?"
"There is habitation on all three worlds," Cromwell told them. "We have seen the evidence from here when the other two rise in the night sky. Moving lights, huge but regular vegetation areas, that kind of thing. Melchior is often hidden by its smoky atmosphere and volcanic activity, but you can definitely see evidence of what seems to be artificial things using simple optical scopes from here. Be cautious, though. It's got to be a greenhouse down there, hotter than you can imagine with all that volcanism, and we've seen huge patches through those clouds where the very continents seemed to break into irregular jagged islands floating on bright lava cracks. You don't see much, but we've had a lot of time and, as I've said, nothing much else to do."
An Li sighed. "Okay. Well, look, that's our next stop. We'll try and locate you via the communicator when we leave and drop by if at all possible. Maybe we'll meet your Doctor then."
"Maybe you will. I think you certainly should. He'd like you, and I think you'd like him."
"With all your gathering, I'm surprised he isn't already there to greet all of you," Queson put in.
Cromwell laughed, something he clearly didn't do much of. "No, he would be here, but he has something to finish first, and that always comes first."
"A religious period? Some kind of solitary wilderness preparation of prayer and fasting?"
"Oh, my, no! He went to a small Meskok village to negotiate for some superb sparkling wine they get from one of the other less approachable races, and I believe he got sucked into a poker tournament there. Texas hold 'em, I believe it is. For a full cask, of course . . ."
"He was putting us on, you know," Jerry Nagel commented as they prepared to leave orbit. In the back of all their minds was whether or not they'd be able to break orbit, but it wasn't something any of them wanted to dwell on until or unless it happened.
"What do you mean, putting us on?" Randi Queson asked him. "According to the records, if that indeed was Thomas Cromwell of the Woodward expedition he was not known for having any sense of humor whatsoever."
"Nevertheless, he made his joke. Think about it. These—what'cha callit— Meskoks were telepaths, right?"
"So he said."
"And poker is based on cards and on your ability to convince opponents that your hidden hand can beat theirs, whether or not it could."
"Yes, I—oh! I see! How could you play cards with telepaths? Fascinating. Either Woodward's discovered a solution to that problem or, you are correct, Cromwell was pulling our leg. The odds are he was doing the latter, but if a man who's not known for his sense of humor does that, he's got an ulterior motive. He also was a lot gabbier than the files say he should have been."
"I wouldn't put too much stake in that last thing," An Li commented. "I mean, he's been a very long time between conversations with folks from the outside."
"True. Funny, though, that aside from commenting on how our technology wasn't any better than he remembered from way in the past, he asked no questions at all about things back in his home region. Not even whether or not they'd been missed," Nagel noted. "Yeah, they're hiding something, that's for sure."
"You think they were doing that bit with the probe to keep us from coming down and finding out their secrets?" An Li asked him.
"Could be. Probably not them, but maybe their alien friends. We didn't see any of them, but we do know they're there because of the energy signatures, and we had indications of their downed ships as well. I don't know. That's Woodward's survivors, though. I'm pretty sure of that. And I really do think they got stuck there. What they're hiding, what they found, and what they might be working on under those pink dresses and white beards, well, you got me, at least for now. As to whether or not they or the aliens or some mysterious force was doing it with the probe, who knows? The solution there is a lot more pragmatic. Something was doing it. It was for real. It means that if we did choose to find out what's below there, what they're hiding, then we'd probably be stuck there anyway. We can still take some more looks later on, though. Let's see how many probes we have left when we finish up here. If it's any at all, I'd like to take a real close look at some of the other parts of that planet."
The captain broke into the conversation. "You will all be relieved to know that we have just pulled out of orbit around Balshazzar and are now heading for Melchior. Unless, of course, you have second thoughts on that."
"Huh? Why should we?" Nagel asked her.
"Because that's where your Cromwell sent us, the man you just decided was lying through his teeth. Magi gems all over, he said. That's a good lure for saying to us all, `Don't look here any further, go over to Melchior. The riches are all over the place there.' "
"Well, they invited us back before we left," Sark pointed out.
"Yeah. To pick up their grocery list. Please send milk, bread, and toilet paper. And maybe some dyes that aren't a shade of pink," Lucky Cross said. "That also gives them time to get together and decide what the hell they want to do about us when we do come back. I don't like it."
Randi Queson sighed. "Maybe we should drop Eyegor off on the way out. It could get great footage of alien civilizations and technologies to beam up to us or other ships when we return."
"That is not my primary mission," the robot said, repeating its favorite phrase. "If I cannot leave once down, I cannot fulfill my entire mission, as I will not be able to be on this ship when it leaves. My footage means nothing if it does not get back."
"Yeah, well, I'm not sure whoever runs things around here wants detailed directions, pictures, and a road map to get back," An Li pointed out. "The record isn't very good on that score."
"We got to keep that in mind at all times," Lucky Cross said firmly. "Nobody's ever gotten back, and no ship's even gotten back with all its data. We're not even halfway yet—we don't have nothin' to cash in to pay the bills and make us rich and famous. And that last third, getting back whole, could be the roughest part of the deal."