Collected fiction, p.692
Collected Fiction, page 692
There was a low rumbling along the walls. I looked up. So did everybody else. And this time a single deep breath of protest seemed to sweep the whole hall, from side to packed side. For above us, between the painted animals on the walls, were regularly spaced Golden A’s. There was an ominous glow dawning behind them.
I recognized it with a shudder. It was the same glow I had last seen in the bottle-shaped weapons of the priests. My eyes ached in quick retrospect as I thought of the blinding sunburst of heat and brilliance those weapons could emit.
But those had been of milk-bottle size. These were six feet across. The golden A’s were simply ornamental scrollwork across the mouths of so many cannon embedded in the wall. The Hierarch was taking no chances with this dangerous crowd. One simultaneous glare from those glowing mouths above us would crisp every human in the hall to cinders.
I hoped—not at all like a hero—that the priests had some way to shut off the dais from those blasts if and when the time Came to unleash them.
Still there was no demonstration from the crowd. They weren’t intimidated. They weren’t even angry on the surface. But they were waiting. The thousands of lifted faces I could see had a grim set look and I could feel in the air that indefinable tension of determination and hard controlled patience. Every eye was on me.
My speech was short. I’d learned it easily enough. The notes were on a little glass and gold table before me. I went over the opening lines in a quick mental gabble, waiting for my cue.
“People of Malesco—gabble gabble—great Alchemist in Paradise is impatient with your sinful curiosity—gabble gabble-sent me to warn you—gabble-gabble—as punishment for your wilful misconduct—gabble-gabble—returning to Paradise and taking Clia back with me out of the contaminating—gabble-gabble—”
There it was, the deep hooting of those great, curled horns. A breathless hush fell upon the crowd. I knew I’d never have such an audience again. They were with me to a man. They loved me in Malesco. Well, it ought to be over in ten minutes.
“It’s not your battle, Eddie,” I assured myself, waiting for the horns to stop echoing. “You’re just an actor. You’ve played villains before. This is a quick walk-on and then curtain. In ten minutes you’ll be home in New York and these people can fight it out among themselves.”
The echoes stopped. I took a deep breath and started talking. My voice was a little shaky at first but I got it under control after the first words. The public address system here was working fine. They could hear me, I saw, even in the back rows.
I got past “Great Alchemist in Paradise” and swung into it, putting paternal reproof into the lines, trying to sink myself in the character I was playing so I wouldn’t have to think. I hadn’t written this play. It wasn’t my battle. It wasn’t my battle. It wasn’t—
It wasn’t going over.
There was no doubt about that. The muttering from the back of the house began to rise before I’d got more than two lines into my speech. I spread my arms and put more volume into my voice, ad-libbing a little to make time for the mutter to subside.
It worked—for a moment—and I went on with increasingly cold feet. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t like my lines or the part I was playing and it seemed to me the Hierarch had made a terrible mistake in his handling of the crowd.
It’s simple psychology. You can’t take something away from people when they prize it very highly and not give them anything in return. These men and women had come here charged with a tremendous potential for action and it wasn’t going to work if we just said, “Run along home now like good children.”
I had misjudged the Hierarch. He knew what he was doing.
The second time the muttering from below rose to a roar that threatened t® drown out my speech I felt a stirring at my elbow. I stepped back a pace, drawing out a syllable long enough to give me time to glance back.
CHAPTER XVI
It Is My Fight
IT WAS Lorna.
She came forward with a graceful, gliding step she certainly hadn’t known in New York. She spread her arms and the silver sleeves caught the light and glowed like fire. She spoke in a cooing emotional croon that filled the hall without effort.
“You are angry,” she cooed at them, in the purest Malescan. “You have reason to be angry. Someone has cheated you of your rights!” Silvery indignation sounded in her voice now. I was baffled for an instant at the command she had over the language and her lines. Lorna wasn’t up to ad-libbing.
Then I realized the Hierarch had been preparing for this all along. I hadn’t been the only one who spent the last half hour studying my lines. Lorna had been coached too for just this occasion.
The crowd was dead silent, waiting, puzzled. I was puzzled too. But in the instant before Lorna went on I saw understanding light up one face below me in the crowd. Coriole’s eyes met mine in a sudden blaze of anger and hatred. He knew what was coming. And then, of course, I did too.
It had been the Hierarch’s plan from the start. But he hadn’t told me. He must have known how far he could push, me along the way he meant me to go. I’d agreed to make this fairly harmless little speech. But he suspected I wouldn’t do what Lorna was now doing for me.
“A man who deserves your righteous anger!” Lorna cried throatily. “He and his men have worked like serpents underground to make trouble between you and your loving priesthood. He is jealous of your destiny. You will go on through virtuous lives to reincarnation in Paradise.
“But he will never reach New York and now he tries to trick you too out of your birthright—Paradise! People of Malesco—I give you that man, to punish as you choose!” The silver-draped arm swung dramatically and pointed straight down before her.
“Coriole!” she shrilled. “Coriole!”
Instantly from picked spots in the crowd a well-disciplined claque took up the shout. The Hierarch hadn’t forgotten a thing. His stooges were planted all through the room and they had strong voices.
“Coriole!” they yelled with well-assumed rage, “Coriole tricked us! Grab him! Grab Coriole! Don’t let him get away!”
The crowd boiled furiously, wild with indecision. Above them the golden A’s, glowed more and more ominously as the power stepped up behind them, waiting to be released.
“Get Coriole!” some feeble voices began to cry tentatively, as suggestibles in the crowd swung toward the people who made the most noise. “Get him—get Coriole!”
The. thing hung in a perfect balance for one of those timeless moments. It needed a push one way or the other and for that instant nobody seemed capable of pushing. Time was on the side of the Hierarch.
When you have an organized group acting under strict orders it’s simply a matter of time until they swing the crowd their way by pure volume of noise. And Coriole for some reason was caught flatfooted.
Either he’d relied too heavily on me or the unexpected size of the crowd had given him false confidence. But it was partly the size of the crowd that trapped him now. He was hemmed in so tightly he couldn’t run even if he wanted to. I saw his mouth open and shut and the veins in his neck swell as he shouted something—perhaps the names of his friends—but the noise was too loud and nobody could “hear him.
There’s always a large percentage of mindless fools in any mob, ready to yell whatever the next guy is yelling. The Hierarch’s boys were making headway. Probably a good many of these people had never heard of Coriole but that didn’t stop them from yapping for his blood.
I stood there on the dais and dithered like my cousin in the crowd. “It isn’t your fight, it isn’t your fight,” I kept telling myself futilely. “This is the people against their government and there isn’t a thing you can do about It. Don’t meddle. Keep your mouth shut and you’ll come out on top. Keep your mouth shut!”
Here on the dais a separate crisis seemed in progress. The roaring mob below us and the jammed square outside and the shouting and yelling which by infection was sweeping back out of the Temple and along the packed streets. But it might have been happening on the other side of the world so far as it outwardly seemed to affect the priests.
THE Hierarch sat motionless on his gold-crusted throne. Lorna, having spoken her piece, had sidled up to me and was whispering urgently, “Did you keep any cigarettes, Eddie?”
I didn’t answer her. I was watching the priests. They weren’t as good at hiding their emotions as the Hierarch was. A lot of ambivalence seemed to be in progress in the massed priesthood in the wings. The men wound up in the curled horns each had a deep breath drawn, ready to blast away at a word from the Hierarch.
They never took their eyes from his face. I knew there were hidden priests at the controls of the sunburst weapons glowing ready in the walls, and they must be watching the boss too, each with a finger poised above the switch of whatever activated those heat-rays.
It seemed to me the priests were alarmed somewhat out of proportion to reason. I saw they were winning. All they had to do was wait. Already the roar of “Get Coriole!” could be heard clearly from several sides and it was gaining with every second.
Then I caught Dio’s eye and for an instant everything else went blank and silent around me, so urgent was the look on his face. But I didn’t know what the look meant. He seemed to be hanging eagerly on my next motion, my next word. He seemed to attach tremendous importance to what I did next.
There was the same avid anticipation on his face which I’d seen in our first meeting when he waited joyfully for me to give myself away. Was that what he expected now? Was he afraid I’d try to swerve the anger of the mob from Coriole to the priests? Did he think I could do it? If he did, maybe he was right. Maybe, if I could just think of the right word, Coriole might still have a chance. But did I want to meddle that much?
I’d gone through a lot to get right where I was now, on the threshold of return to New York. In a few moments Coriole would be submerged by the angry mob, all its energy diverted against the man who’s roused it. And the ceremony would go on as planned.
Dio was reaching into his robe. I saw him fumble for something, never taking his eyes from my face. Then he had it. He pulled it out, keeping his hands closed over something small.
He was smiling rather wolfishly now, the bright avid intentness stronger than ever on his face. He reminded me irresistibly of those weapons glowing in the walls. There was the same leashed blaze, the same menace held barely in check.
Still nailing me with that brilliant unswerving stare, he drew his arm back a little and snapped something shiny through the air straight at me.
It seemed to me it hung there between us for years and years. My mind ran in little circles, yelping hysterically. “Is it a bomb?” my mind demanded. “Shall I catch it? Shall I dodge it? What is it? What’s eating him? What shall I do?”
But my body acted with calm independence of the frantic mind. Automatically both of my hands reached out and the object smacked neatly into them.
It was a small, flat, square. The feel of it made a picture take shape in my mind before I even looked. Another of those white wafers with gold writing on it. A message from Dio?
I opened my hands slightly and looked down. It wasn’t a wafer. There was no writing on it.
Dio had tossed me my cigarette lighter.
YOU wouldn’t believe what a short time all this really took. Coriole was still looking around wildly for his men. The mob was still milling indecisively. The leather-lunged stooges in the congregation were still bellowing incendiary phrases at the tops of their voices. But the tide was already on the turn.
The priests, I thought, had won. Not tangibly yet but definitely. This was one of those important moments in Malescan history when a touch would swing the balance one way or the other and the touch had been applied. It was swinging ponderously toward the Hierarch’s side.
And the moment was perhaps as great a point of division as that earlier moment in Roman history when the two worlds had split apart in probability. Everything hung in the balance.
I held the cigarette lighter stupidly in my hands, blinking at it. What did Dio mean? Was he on the side of the priests or the side of the rebels?
“Neither,” I told myself rapidly. “Dio’s on Dio’s side and nobody else’s. He’s for the winners.”
But he’d given me the means to swing the course of history away from his own men. What did it mean? Obviously, only one thing.
Dio thought the rebels were the likelier winners. He wanted in on the stronger side. And that meant the priests were a lot weaker than they looked. Somehow, somewhere, they were covering up with a colossal bluff. Dio knew. And he expected me to—to what?
My mind was still telling me, “Don’t meddle! It isn’t your battle!” but again my body calmly went its own way. Without the slightest mental processes to guide me I kicked over the gold and glass table beside me on the dais and swung both arms up over my head at full length.
The pages of my speech fluttered unnoticed from the table to the floor. But the noise of the overturned table was a quicker and higher sound than the bellowing of the mob. It caught eyes in the front ranks.
I flicked the lighter with one thumb, praying fervently that it wouldn’t choose this moment to balk.
There was a strange breathless pause in the shouting down below. Then I heard the sigh that swept like a soft breeze through the room and I knew the flame had caught.
Miraculously, little by little but marvelously fast, the uproar died away. Out in the square the crowd was still yelling but there was a hush in the painted room. I could hear silence sweeping backward through the streets as the noise had swept a minute or two before.
I stood there like Liberty holding the torch of freedom aloft, and I didn’t feel as silly as I might have. I was Liberty in that moment and it was the torch of freedom—if things went right.
I held the dramatic pose until I was sure every eye had focused on that one small flame, that one-candle-power torch that contained more power than all the Hierarch’s weapons. I knew that while I held it the priests wouldn’t dare touch me. But what was I going to do next? I couldn’t stand forever in this melodramatic attitude.
It was my hour. I couldn’t do the wrong thing, I snapped the lighter shut, swung my lifted arm back, and hurled the glittering square of metal out over the heads of the crowd.
It turned twice in the air, catching light on its shining sides, and then dropped gently out of sight among the craning heads. There was silence for a moment. Then the crowd seethed around the spot where it had fallen and a shrill voice cried, “I got it! I got it!”
Everybody looked. Even the Hierarch leaned forward on his throne. We all saw the meager little half-bald man in the mob who had caught the torch I threw.
He looked like a middle-aged clerk. He wore a shabby tunic and his hair needed cutting, what there was of it. But he held the lighter up in his cupped palms like a holy relic and his insignificant little face was transfigured with rapture.
That was the point at which the Hierarch lost his head. He was a clever man but he didn’t know everything—and one of the things he didn’t know was how to deal with a problem like this, with people getting so riotously out of hand so fast, with everything depending on his decisions from minute to minute, and no past experience to guide him.
This had never happened before. All he had to go by was a time when something a little like it had happened—Jimmerton’s coming. The priesthood had triumphed over Jimmerton by fast direct high-pressure methods. The Hierarch tried that now. It would never do to let that dangerous cigarette lighter float about the city, passing from hand to hand and igniting rebellion in all who saw it.
“Bring me the sacred relic,” he shouted, making majestic gestures. “That is a relic from Paradise—too holy for human hands! Bring it to me!”
I caught a venomous glance from his small enigmatic eyes but he had no time to waste on me just now. He was rising with great pomp, surging forward across the platform. His outspread arms brushed Lorna and me aside.
“Bring we the relic!” he shouted, making his voice so rich and deep that even above the clamor of the crowd people heard it and heads turned.
ESPECIALLY his claque planted among the audience heard it. When the command made itself understood I could instantly spot the undercover agents down below. Little eddies of the throng seethed around each as they began to surge toward the spot where the man with the lighter stood.
But they weren’t the only ones who heard the orders. All within earshot caught the words and the deep spontaneous growl of anger that rose in the wake of the command must have told the Hierarch instantly he’d made a mistake. He’d started something he couldn’t finish without bringing up some heavy artillery—very heavy. Maybe nothing he had was strong enough to silence that angry growling as it grew and spread and strengthened.
The mob was like a single organism now. A word dropped into it spread in eddying rings out and out until it was lost among the vanishing throngs in the streets. An idea, a promise of success or a threat of defeat, seemed to spread in the same way. A few words spoken from the dais ran like magic through the listening crowds and eddied out there among the packed avenues almost quicker than the eye could follow the spreading tumult it made.
One or two of the Hierarch’s strong-arm squad had reached the little man with the lighter by now. The others were floundering closer but against increasing opposition. The people around each of them were resisting. Knots of angry men and women came into being all about every one of the forward-surging stooges.
The mob was turning into a single organism and the organism encysted these germs of disease in its midst, isolated them, built up the anger and the strength necessary to control them exactly as a living body surrounds and overwhelms dangerous intruders within itself.
