PRIVATE SALLAKAR OF THE KROAXIAN INFANTRY INHALED deeply from the effort of climbing the rise and coughed as his coolant system switched over to reverse-flow to eject the intake of dust raised by the foot soldiers ahead of him. Mumbling profanities and curses at the dust, the desert, the army, and the seemingly endless distance to Carthogia, he moved to one side and stopped to look back at the long column of infantry and cavalry regiments, fireball throwers, war chariots, and supply wagons snaking its way back and out of sight among the rounded dunes and low scarps of the Meracasine. It was going to be the real thing this time, he reflected glumly. He had tangled before with the Carthogians in border skirmishes, and the experience hadn’t left him restless with impatience and wild with enthusiasm to meet them again. Oh yes, the officers had sounded very confident, as usual, and been full of assurances that the new weapons would make short work of the Carthogians; but Sallakar had heard too much of that kind of talk before. It was easy to tell everyone not to worry when you knew you’d have a fast mount underneath you to get you out of trouble if it all went wrong. Oh, yes indeed, it was fine for them to talk. But—according to the barracks gossip, anyway—the cavalry captain, Horazzorgio, hadn’t been doing so much talking since he’d chased after a Carthogian undercover unit and come back minus his whole company, and an arm and an eye to boot. Oh no! Now that didn’t sound like opposition likely to allow itself be made short work of.
He moved a hand to feel the cold, hard lines of the newly introduced projectile hurler that was slung across his back—the product, so he and the others had been told, of many twelve-brights of labor carried out in secret by some of the best artisans and craftsmen in Kroaxia. Oh yes, it was a nice-looking piece of workmanship, and yes, it had seemed effective enough in the hurriedly improvised training sessions that they had been rushed through, with everything left until the last minute as usual—probably for security reasons—but what did that prove? Only that somebody had discovered how to make better weapons. The Carthogians had good artisans too. If the Kroaxians could do it, why couldn’t the Carthogians? No reason at all. In fact, from what Sallakar had seen in the past, the Carthogians were more than likely to have done it first. And that would be something the officers wouldn’t tell us about, he thought to himself. Oh no, they’d never tell the troops about something like that.
“Sallakar, what the ‘ell d’yer think yer a-doin’ of? ‘Avin’ a nice nap there, are yer?” the voice of Sergeant Bergolod bellowed from farther back down the line. “Get fell back in.”
“Go fornicate with yourself,” Sallakar muttered as he hitched his pack into a more comfortable position and rejoined the column at a gap next to Moxeff.
“You must find your delight in serving extra watch-duty, Sallakar,” Moxeff murmured. “Is it the tranquillity of contemplating the desert in solitude at early bright that attracts you so? And to think, I had no idea you were of such poetic disposition.”
“A plague of rusts and poxes upon this desert!” Sallakar spat. “Thrice have I crossed it now, and each time its breadth doubles.”
“More likely the quality of thy temper halves.”
“Your constitution is unaffected by this heat, no doubt,” Sallakar said.
“Pleasantly dry and refreshing after Kroaxia’s debilitatingly humid air,” Moxeff agreed.
“Zounds! Your own admission disqualifies the sole excuse left you for your insufferable temperament.”
“You should save such peevishness to vent upon the Carthogians,” Moxeff advised.
“In truth I do believe you welcome combat as you relish the desert heat. And do you thrive also on breathing this carborundum powder, and conserving one bucket of methane per bright to top up your solutions and wash off the grime extruded from your joints?”
“Ah, as always you bitch too much, Sallakar.”
“And the likes of you bitch not enough. Would any bondslave tolerate abuse such as this? Oh no! But it is I who bitch too much. Oh yes! Do you have no desire to assert your freeman’s rights?”
“Must I remind you that the army is our law, Sallakar? Who ever heard of foot soldiers demanding rights?”
“And why not?” Sallakar asked. “In Carthogia, so ‘tis said, authority is conferred by majority agreement among the citizens, and owes naught to any force of arms nor nobility of birth—a most commendable precedent. Why not, then, I say, in the army also?”
“You’re kidding!”
“Not so. This matter has occupied my thoughts now for many brights. We will form ourselves a union, Moxeff, to match rank with collective strength, and bargain our services and loyalty only in return for fair and reasonable conditions that shall be contractually underwritten. To fight, we would require favorable numerical odds of two-to-one or better, at least moderately clement weather, and a minimum-compensation guarantee against worthless plunder. Rest periods would be fixed at mid- and quarter-bright, one bright in every six declared combat-free, and a peace-tax levied from the populace to maintain our remuneration in times of unemployment.”
“Oh, that the foot soldier’s life should bring such bliss! And have you the intention of reading this, thy proclamation, to our King, Eskenderom, and his Court personally? Well, may good luck go with you, Sallakar. Doubtless we shall all speak of you with fondest sentiments and remembrances.”
“Shame on you who can speak thus contemptibly without embarrassment. Would you partake your share of the betterments we might secure? Oh yes—unquestionably! But to pledge in return your share of allegiance to our cause? Oh no—unthinkable! Is it not...” Sallakar stopped speaking and turned his head away to look as a commotion broke out somewhere up ahead. A moment later the column halted. “What the fom—“
“The desert heaves!” Moxeff exclaimed.
“Is’t a storm?” someone ahead shouted.
“No storm appears thus,” another cried.
“Is this some Carthogian trickery?”
“The ground ahead boils! It is on fire!”
“And around us also—we are trapped!”
A wall of smoke and flame had erupted across the line of march and was climbing higher by the second to blot out the sky ahead, while above, on the overlooking slopes to left and right, curtains of shimmering violet light had appeared, hemming in the front of the column. “I AM THE ENLIGHTENER, WHOM THE LIFEMAKER HAS SENT AMONG YOU,” a voice boomed, seemingly from everywhere at once, and echoing among the surrounding hills. “SOLDIERS OF KROAXIA, LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS, FOR HE HATH COMMANDED, ‘THOU SHALT NOT KILL.’”
“Deploy for ambush! Scatter the column!” a mounted officer shouted as he galloped back down the line. “Infantry under cover. Cavalry to the flanks. Close up the wagons.”
“A Company to those rocks. B Company, string out along the gully. C Company, follow me,” Sergeant Bergolod called out. Officers in front and in the rear began to shout orders, and in moments the column had disintegrated into bodies running in all directions. Sallakar found himself crouched with Moxeff and a couple of others behind some rocks. He peered up over the rock and saw that figures dressed in white had appeared amid the wall of swirling radiance higher up—elusive, dancing, etheric figures, apparently devoid of physical substance. They seemed to be approaching, down the slope.
A soldier nearby raised his hurler loosely to his shoulder and fired, knocking himself over backward with the recoil. A ragged volley came from another group behind, and in seconds firing had broken out all along the column. Gripped by the fear that had seized everyone, Sallakar sighted at a pair of white-robed figures, held the hurler hard and firm against his shoulder as he had been taught, and squeezed the finger-lever. The hurler juddered...but had no effect, even though Sallakar was aiming straight at the advancing figures. He swept the weapon desperately from side to side and up and down to cover every inch of them, but they kept on coming.
Inside the flyer hovering just at the edge of the smoke clouds boiling upward from the napalm tanks and explosives planted ahead of the Taloids, Zambendorf was watching the scene in close-up. It was as well that they had allowed for the possibility of the Paduans’ panicking, he reflected, and decided not to expose any of the Taloids on their own side prematurely. Stretching away from the lurid glow immediately below the flyer, two streaks of whiteness flickered eerily where recorded Taloid images were being projected onto internally illuminated smokescreens from lanterns concealed several hours earlier on the rock-strewn slopes overlooking the obvious route through the valley. “Let’s see if we can put a stop to that shooting,” he said to Clarissa.
“Plan C?” she said.
“Yes—a low-level bomb run at those ice crags, accompanied by some pyrotechnics.”
In the copilot’s seat, Abaquaan prepared to repeat another recording of a pretransmogrified message from Moses over the flyer’s bullhorns, suitably modified for high frequency, and from the ultrasonic amplifiers positioned to command the area.
“Ayee!” One of the soldiers dropped his weapon and stood up, pointing in terror at the sky above the wall of fire. “A dragon descends! We have brought the Lifemaker’s wrath down upon us!” A sleek, slender-limbed creature, unlike any that Sallakar had ever seen before, was swooping down at them. Instinctively he turned and aimed his hurler upward in its direction, then realized the futility of that and lowered it again.
“We are doomed,” Moxeff moaned next to him. Several nearby infantry robeings dropped their weapons and began running blindly back the way they had come. Then a series of brilliant lights and clouds of violet radiance blossomed overhead, and simultaneously more lights streaked down from the dragon and destroyed a formation of rock outcrops and large boulders in a fury of deafening concussions. Sallakar cringed and covered his ears...but he was still alive.
“DESIST, SOLDIERS,” the voice that had called itself Enlightener thundered again from above. “THE COMMANDMENT IS, ‘THOU SHALT NOT KILL’!”
And then a much larger dragon emerged from the fiery wall before them, flying slowly and majestically right above their heads with fire blasting from beneath it. “Angels!” Moxeff gasped, straightening up and pointing. “Angels are descending from the skies!”
“See how they shine!” another soldier shouted. “Truly this is a time of miracles.” On every side, soldiers were running from cover and standing with their faces raised to watch. Some had thrown away their weapons already and were clasping their hands together, and some had fallen to their knees. Even the officers were sitting motionless, awed and cowed by what was happening. Above, more heavenly figures, each borne on white, frilly wings, were floating serenely downward behind the dragon.
“PREPARE TO MEET THE ENLIGHTENER,” the Voice boomed. “I COME TO THEE IN PEACE, BRINGING GOODWILL TO ALL ROBEINGS.”
Inside the cargo bay of the NASO surface lander making a low pass at just above stalling speed, Joe Fellburg checked Moses’ harness one last time, gave a satisfied nod, and motioned the Taloid to the edge of the deck by the open loading-doors. Moses leaned forward a fraction and peered down apprehensively. “Tell him he’ll be okay if he makes sure to jump hard and clear, and counts five before he pulls the ring,” Fellburg shouted to West, who was standing by them, holding the transmogrifier. “And look at the others who’ve just jumped—they’re doing fine.” West spoke into the microphone, verified the interpretation that appeared on the screen, and the machine passed the message on to Moses. Moses nodded trustingly,
“Great stuff, guy,” Fellburg said. He stooped to ignite the fireworks lying on the floor and attached to Moses’ pack by wires long enough to ensure they would hang a safe distance below him, then stood up again, stepped back a pace, and patted the top of the robot’s head. “Geronimo!” he yelled as the assemblage of sputtering flares and white-robed robot launched itself out into space. A searchlight from the flyer, which was circling nearby, picked out the figure as its parachute opened and it began to descend slowly through Titan’s dense atmosphere.
A gasp of wonder went up from the soldiers as at last the Master appeared, descending in a luminous halo and bathed in a beam of heavenly brilliance. Sallakar didn’t know what to believe, but in his own mind he had already come to a profound realization of immense theological significance: Rejecting the Enlightener’s creed would mean having to fight the Carthogians; conversion to it, however, would not. “Hallelujah!” he shouted, throwing his weapon aside and climbing up on the rock to stand with both arms extended. “I am saved! This sinner has seen the light! Hail to thee, Enlightener!”
Most of the Kroaxian army, it seemed, was only just behind him in reaching the same conclusion. All along the column, figures were standing up, coming out from cover, and throwing their weapons to the ground. The air rang with hundreds of voices rejoicing:
“I see the light! I see the light!”
“The Enlightener cometh!”
“Praise the Enlightener!”
“We are saved! We are saved!”
“No more killing! No more war!”
“All are my brothers. I shall not kill!”
For many hours the Enlightener preached great words of love and wisdom from a hilltop to the soldiers assembled on the slopes below. When he had finished, they abandoned their weapons in the desert and turned back to return to Kroaxia. The Enlightener was lifted again into the sky to be borne ahead by the angels. He promised he would await his converts at the city of Pergassos, where they would join him to begin together the founding of the new world.
“It’s amazing! I simply don’t believe this,” Massey said to Zambendorf over the link from the Orion as the departing flyer climbed higher and transmitted a view of the shambles that had been the Paduan army.
“Just the last phase left now, Gerry,” Zambendorf told him confidently. “Next stop—Padua. We’ve rehearsed the cast, tested all the props, perfected our technique, and everything works just fine. What could possibly go wrong?”
An hour later, a military reconnaissance aircraft flew over the deserts between Padua and Genoa, and sent a series of views up to the Orion showing the entire Paduan army streaming back the way it had come. Caspar Lang was given the report shortly after receiving confirmation that a surface lander had disappeared on a routine descent to Padua. No signal had been received from any of the ship’s automatic fault-monitoring devices, and the crew had been highly rated for reliability and stability; the NASO experts who investigated were unanimous in concluding that the vessel had been hijacked.
Lang arranged with the military commander at Padua base for James Bond, the spy employed by the Paduan king, Henry, to be airlifted ahead of the retreating army in order to intercept it and learn what had happened. Afterward, Bond rode off into the hills to a rendezvous with the Terrans and was flown back to Padua Base to make his report.
The news was that the planned Paduan invasion of Genoa was off. The entire Paduan army was out of its officers’ control and was returning home to build a new society after encountering a messiah in the desert who had converted all of them to a new religion of tolerance and nonviolence. The messiah had descended from the sky accompanied by flying dragons, winged angels, heavenly voices, and all kinds of miracle-workings.
Lang’s suspicions were immediately aroused. “Check Zambendorf out,” he instructed his chief administrative assistant. “He’s been too quiet for too long. I want to know where he is, and every move he’s made in the last forty-eight hours.”
Neither Zambendorf nor practically anyone on his team were anywhere to be found.
“You were supposed to have been keeping him busy and under observation at all times!” Lang screamed at a white-faced Osmond Periera in the Globe I executive offices fifteen minutes after Lang received the news. “Well, he isn’t anywhere in the ship; he’s not down at Genoa Base, and nobody’s seen him for two days. Where is he?”
“I, er, I thought he was with Malcom Wade,” Periera replied shakily. “But apparently Wade thought he was with me. I can’t imagine how the mix-up was possible. Thelma seems to have garbled all our instructions somehow...but then, she is only the secretary. I’m afraid we must have overestimated her abilities.”
“And I’m damn sure I overestimated yours!” Lang seethed. “Never mind all those excuses—just find him, understand? I want him found!”
A half hour later, Periera was confronting Thelma in the team’s quarters in Globe II. “I’m sorry if we confused you, but it has now become imperative that the situation be resolved as speedily as possible. We have to know where he is. Now listen to me very carefully, Thelma, and concentrate hard on what I’m saying. Now, do-you-know-where-Karl-is?”
Thelma stared back at him wide-eyed. “On Earth, I think.”
“Oh, come now, that’s quite absurd. Please try to be sensible. How could he have gone back to Earth?”
“He teleports there,” Thelma’s face was deadly serious, and her eyes burned earnestly. “Didn’t you know? He’s been working at it for months now.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Really.”
Periera looked at her uncertainly. “Really? You’re not joking?”
“Now, would I joke about something as serious as that—especially to you, Osmond?”
So Periera reported back to Lang that he was pretty sure Zambendorf had mastered teleportation and returned to Earth.
When Lang blew up, Periera decided it was because business executives were unimaginative, inflexible, and didn’t understand science.