DANIEL LEAHERNEY SPOKE FROM A SCREEN IN THE AFT COMMUNICATIONS cabin of the surface lander parked at Padua Base, which was located in a bare, ice-covered valley among the hills east of the city. “I hope I didn’t interrupt at an inconvenient time, Caspar, but we have some good news that I wanted to give you personally.”
“That’s okay,” Lang said, standing before the console in a helmetless EV suit. “I was due for a coffee break anyway. What’s the news?”
“Latest from the reconnaissance drones over Padua city: Zambendorf’s messiah showed up in the middle of town about two hours ago.”
“Two hours ago!”
“Yes—we had a slight communications hitch up here. The message fell down a crack on its way to me. I called you as soon as I found out.”
Lang nodded. “Okay. So...what happened?”
“He drew a big crowd, but there were no miracles.”
“Zambendorf didn’t show?”
“Uh-uh.”
“And?”
“Flopso—even better than we hoped. The troops arrived and hauled his messiah away. I guess our main problem just got solved.”
Lang was beginning to grin as the full meaning sank in completely. “Yeah—yeah, I guess it just did, Dan. Well, how about that! I guess Zambendorf really went for the missile story, huh?”
“It sure looks like it. I don’t mind telling you now though, Caspar, I thought it was a long shot—but I have to hand it to you: You had every one of them figured. Maybe we should retire Gerry Massey and make you the psychologist.”
“They don’t get paid enough,” Lang said.
Leaherney grinned briefly, and then his expression became serious again. “So how are things going with Henry down there?”
“Pretty much as we expected,” Lang replied. “He’s still sore about what happened to his invasion, but I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble straightening that out now. As I said, a week from now we’ll be back on the right track.”
“Well, I hope you’re right. I’ll let you get on, then, I guess. Sorry to drag you away, but as I said, I just wanted to tell you the news personally—especially after the delay.”
“That’s okay, Dan. Thanks for the thought. I’ll talk to you later.”
Inside the cavern of the Lumian flying vehicle, Eskenderom paced irascibly over to the huge, opened door, and stopped for a moment to glower out at the other two vehicles and the temporary Lumian shelters huddled together against a background of barren hills and stark rock. Then he turned and stamped back to where Monnorel, the royal counselor, was standing a short distance away from the table at which General Streyfoch and the three Lumians were sitting on opposite sides of the talking Lumian plant.
“Our whole army, disarmed and vanquished without a fight...babbling nonsense about being the Carthogians’ brothers and returning to Kroaxia?” Eskenderom fumed. “What kind of bungling oafs of aliens are these? Within two brights of promising us invincibility, they have succeeded in rendering us impotent beyond Kleippur’s wildest dreams. Are they in league with Carthogia, therefore, or afflicted with such crass incompetence that the only thing miraculous about them is that any of their flying constructions should ever leave the ground? Am I betrayed by deceivers or undone by fools?”
“It would be as much an error to assume a unity of purpose among all Lumians as among all robeings, it appears,” Monnorel replied. “Our army was intercepted by a rogue band of Lumian criminals, whose actions were not sanctioned by the Lumian king. They have gone into hiding and are being hunted.”
“One tiny band of criminals can confound a whole army? Are these aliens unable to maintain discipline among their own kind?”
“Perhaps their criminals have access to the same powers as their artisans,” Monnorel suggested.
Eskenderom snorted, paced away a few steps, and then wheeled back again. “What of the identity of this so-called miracle-worker that they used?” he demanded. “Is there news of that?”
“Not as yet,” Monnorel confessed. “But it appears he was brought from Carthogia, where similar events are reported to have taken place among the Waskorians.”
“So now the truth begins to emerge,” Eskenderom said darkly. “Kroaxia has not been favored by special considerations as we were led to believe. While one faction of Lumians brings aid to me, another is supporting Kleippur. What result can this bring but the destruction of both our realms? Is that the goal of the strategy which these incomprehensible Lumians are unfolding? If so we should unite all the nations of Robia against them and at least perish honorably.”
“I think not,” Monnorel said. “I believe them when they say that what happened in the Meracasine was as much a surprise to them as it was to us. I say we must trust them.”
“I too,” General Streyfoch advised from the table. “We cannot risk being deprived of Lumian weapons if there is a possibility that Kleippur has acquired them. We must hope Monnorel is right, and trust the Lumians.”
Eskenderom scowled and moved back to the cavern door. He didn’t know whom to believe or what to make of the situation. Kleippur had trusted in the Lumians, and as soon as they found it expedient, they had deserted him and commenced dealing with Kroaxia—or so Eskenderom had been told. But now that there could be no further concealing of the fact that some Lumians had continued to deal with Carthogia all along, the “official” Lumians were asking him to believe that the ones talking to Kleippur were nothing more than a band of criminals that nobody had known about. But the Lumians had eyes everywhere and knew everything. So had they been merely distracting Eskenderom while their king treated with Kleippur, and deliberately leading him on into launching the invasion so that his army could be lured out into the Meracasine and destroyed?
The other possibility that Eskenderom had to consider was that the villain behind everything was not Kleippur at all, but Frennelech, who, as Eskenderom knew from his spies, had been meeting secretly and treacherously with Lumians in the forests west of Pergassos. It would not be to Frennelech’s advantage to allow either Kleippur or Eskenderom to grow too strong by inflicting a crushing defeat upon the other, and his motives would be compatible both with his original endorsement of the decision to invade Carthogia—thus sustaining a state of tension between the two rulers—and with plotting subsequently to make sure the Kroaxian army was incapacitated to prevent its carrying out the task.
But what could Frennelech have offered the Lumians in return for their assistance? Presumably only the potential that his office gave him for inducing the robeing population to tame the forests—which seemed to be the Lumians’ only objective. Surely, however, Eskenderom told himself, it would be the Lumian king who would want the forests tamed, not these alleged criminals, which again led him to the conclusion that no band of criminals existed and that the Lumians aiding his rival—in this case Frennelech—were therefore the Lumian king’s official representatives.
So either way, it seemed to Eskenderom—whether the “Enlightener” was the product of Lumians working with Kleippur or with Frennelech—the aliens were committed to getting rid of him. He didn’t know why, for he had agreed to everything they had asked. If he had been put to some test of weakness and failed, the verdict was unjust, for how could robeings be expected to abide by the intricate rules of conduct of a remote, incomprehensible, alien world that none of them had ever seen?
At the makeshift conference table that had been set up in the lander’s open cargo bay, Sharon Beatty, the transmogrifier operator assigned from Leon Keyhoe’s staff, was using the lull to tidy up her computer-file notes of the proceedings to the point where Lang had excused himself to take a call from Leaherney inside the ship. During the last couple of hours of Terran-Taloid exchanges, she had learned that Henry was furious because his army had been turned around and was returning to Padua instead of invading Genoa, and Giraud was denying official responsibility and blaming Zambendorf and his people, who for some reason or other were hiding out down on Titan with a stolen surface lander.
Sharon had never been sure why Zambendorf should have been included in the mission, and she found it disturbing that so many seemingly intelligent and rational people should have either the time or the inclination to take his antics seriously. After traveling one billion miles to Saturn in the largest spacecraft ever built and sharing the excitement of her fellow scientists at the staggering discoveries on Titan, she had had more interesting things to do than pay much attention to Gerold Massey’s concerns about the sociological implications of the mission’s purpose, or Dave Crookes’ attempts to recruit her as a political activist. She had seen enough of crusades and causes while she was at college, and wasted too much of her time and energy on them. Now she had more worthwhile things to attend to. If more people only felt the same way, all the Zambendorfs would long ago have been put out of business.
“Miami Beach,” Seltzman was saying to Giraud on one of the local frequencies. “Just imagine it, Charles—liquid water, all blue; a real, full-disk, golden sun; palm trees; and a hundred degrees in the shade, without an EV suit. What would you give for that?”
“Hmm, it sounds wonderful,” Giraud’s voice answered. “But if it’s all the same to you, Konrad, I think I’d take Cannes or St. Tropez.”
“Aw, okay. Who cares? From this distance it’s all the same place anyhow.”
“What do you think the Taloids would say to it?”
“Not much. Did you know that some parts of them are made from solid mercury? They’d melt in your refrigerator back home.”
“No, I didn’t. Would they really? That’s amazing!”
Lang’s voice added itself to the conversation suddenly. “Charles, this is Caspar. I’m inside the forward-bay lock now—be back out there in a few seconds. Has anything new been happening?”
“No. We decided to take a break too,” Giraud answered. “What did Dan want?”
The outer door of the airlock at the front end of the bay slid open, and Lang emerged. Even in his bulky suit, his step seemed brisk and jubilant as he came over to the table. At the same time Henry, who had been standing at the cargo doors, staring out at whatever Taloids saw in the darkness, turned and came back to rejoin the group. “It’s all over with Zambendorf!” Lang announced. “His messiah was arrested in Padua city about two hours ago. Zambendorf didn’t appear anywhere.” He grinned through the faceplate of his helmet. “Maybe something happened that made him nervous about flying all of a sudden.”
“Well, that’s just great, Caspar!” Seltzman said enthusiastically. “So you really did have it all figured, huh.”
“Congratulations.” Giraud sounded pleased. “Zambendorf bought the story, then.”
“Looks like it,” Lang agreed, lowering himself ponderously back onto the seat he had been occupying earlier. “So let’s give Henry and the others the news. It should make things a lot easier all round.”
“Ready to go again, Sharon?” Giraud asked, looking at her through his faceplate.
“Ready.” She nodded and cleared the screen of the transmogrifier. Lang’s news had obviously signified something to the others that was lost on her. Perhaps that was why she had been assigned this duty stint. If so, big deal.
“Can we resume, please?” Giraud said, switching his speech channel into the transmogrifier’s input channel. Sharon verified the interpretation on her screen, and the machine produced its Taloid equivalent at the correct pitch and speed. The Taloids took up their previous positions opposite, with Henry in the middle; Giraud nodded at Lang to commence.
“My apologies for having to leave,” Lang said. “I was called because we have received important news.” He paused while Sharon monitored the conversion of his phrases into Taloid substitutions. Machiavelli, who seemed to be Henry’s principal adviser at all the talks, indicated with a gesture that the Taloids had understood. Lang continued, “The pretender whom you seek has been found. We have delivered him to your city and placed him in the hands of your authorities to be dealt with by Taloid law.” He paused again while Sharon restructured his words into shorter sentences. “Our criminals have not yet been located. When they are found, they will be taken to our city above the sky and dealt with by Terran law. So Taloid justice will have taken its course, and Terran justice will have taken its course. We trust that this action will be accepted as proof of our good faith.”
“They have found him!” Streyfoch exclaimed as he listened to the Lumian plant’s strangled utterances. “They have found the Enlightener, who tricked our soldiers.”
“We shall see a public execution before this bright is through,” Eskenderom promised grimly.
“He was handed over fairly and without protest to our own authorities,” Mormorel observed. He looked at Eskenderom. “Perchance we have judged these aliens hastily, for deeds such as they have described would constitute a most unusual form of treachery.”
A new light of hope had come into Eskenderom’s eyes suddenly. If the Lumian king had handed the imposter over in Pergassos, then perhaps the rout of the Kroaxian army had been the work of Lumian criminals after all. If so, had they been working in league with Frennclech or with Kleippur?
“What manner of reception was this imposter accorded at the city?” Eskenderom asked. In his absence, the policy would have been decided by Frennelech. Mormorel pressed the button to activate the Lumian plant, and repeated the question. After a brief exchange of queries and answers, the plant responded that as far as the Lumian eyes in the sky bad been able to ascertain, the imposter had been arrested. “Then does this not tell us that our culprit cannot be Prennelech?” Eskenderom said to Mormorel. “He would hardly welcome his own agent thus.”
Mormorel considered the proposition dubiously for a few seconds. “An agent who has passed forever beyond the point of further usefulness,” he pointed out. “Readily expendable, perhaps, if such a sacrifice would establish Frennelech’s blamelessness in Kroaxia’s eyes?”
“Hmm.” Eskenderom sounded disappointed. “Observation of this impostor’s treatment will therefore tell us nothing of Frennelech’s complicity or otherwise,” he concluded.
“Not necessarily,” Mormorel agreed.
Eskenderom scowled to himself, and then slammed his open hand down on the table angrily. “Then by the Lifemaker I will have this Enlightener’s head boiled in acid! Let both Frennelech and Kleippur read the warning, whichever of them was behind him...and anyone else who might be contemplating a compact with Lumian criminals to overthrow the Kroaxian Crown.”
“Attention please. Colonel Wallis here for Ambassador Giraud,” a voice said inside the Terrans’ helmets.
“Yes, Colonel?” Giraud acknowledged.
“Number three perimeter guardpost has intercepted a mounted Taloid who indicates that he is known to the visitors. Our records show him listed as James Bond. Request identity confirmation and your further instructions, sir.”
“One second, Colonel,” Giraud said. Then, “Konrad, did you get that? Pass the message to Machiavelli, would you?”
Seltzman talked to the transmogrifier, and the transmogrifier talked to the Taloids. Colonel Wallis sent a view of the new arrival through to a communications screen on one of the portable compacks beside the transmogrifier, and Henry verified that the Taloid was known and friendly. Giraud authorized Wallis to let Bond pass.
A few minutes later, Skerilliane was escorted into the cavern by two Lumian soldiers. He looked as if he had ridden hard all the way from Pergassos, where, he informed Eskenderom and the others, the Enlightener had shown himself and been arrested by Frennelech’s Palace Guards.
“We know as much already from the Lumians,” Eskenderom said. “But who is he? Can you tell us that?”
“Indeed, Majesty, for he is no stranger to the city,” Skerilhane replied. “None other than thy chosen one Groork, the brother of Thirg, who departed Kroaxia to serve the Dark Master’s worldly lieutenant, thine enemy Kleippur.”
“Him?” Eskenderom roared, leaping to his feet. “The hearer that I offered to install in Frennelech’s palace?...He has come back from Carthogia as Kleippur’s henchman? He is the one who directed Lumian sorcery down upon my army?”
“The same, Majesty,” Skerilliane replied.
Eskenderom kicked aside the chair upon which he had been sitting and strode to the far wall and back again, all the time pounding his fist into his palm with rage and shouting. “The traitor! The deceiver! Is this the gratitude I am shown? Is this how I am rewarded for my generosity? Arghhh! The swamp-guzzler! Corruption and corrosion upon him! May the Reduction Furnace take him! I’ll slow-melt his casing and leach his eyes! I’ll hang him from high-voltage trees in the forest! I’ll boil him in acid! Mormorel, find the servants and have them bring our horses at once. Indeed there will be a spectacle for the citizens of Pergassos to enjoy before this bright is through!”
“Frennelech has already proclaimed a public execution to take place one-twelfth of a bright from now,” Skerilliane said.
“Then for once he and I have no quarrel,” Eskenderom declared. “Let us repair at once, full haste to Pergassos, for this shall be entertainment that I would not wish to miss.”
Giraud stared in astonishment at Henry’s reaction to whatever Bond had said. Machiavelli and Caesar stood up, and Machiavelli went over to the doors and began waving toward where the rest of Henry’s party were waiting with the mounts in one of the nearby ground-vehicle sheds. “What in hell’s going on?” Lang demanded.
“It looks to me as if they’re taking off,” Seltzman said bemusedly. “I guess the meeting just adjourned.”
“Sharon, find out what’s happening,” Giraud instructed.
Somehow Sharon managed to sustain a dialogue of sorts while the Taloids paced back and forth gesticulating wildly at one another, while mechanical steeds and more Taloids appeared outside the loading doors and Henry continued to show all the signs of throwing a fit. “They’re going back to Padua,” she said at last, shaking her head dazedly. “Something about a public execution that Henry doesn’t want to miss.”
“Execution of whom?” Seltzman asked.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s the messiah.”
“Can we let that happen?” Giraud said, looking uneasily at Lang.
Lang’s expression was stony behind his faceplate. “It’s their business and their customs. Who are we to interfere?”
There was a short pause. “Are you sure you’re not really aiming at Zambendorf?” Giraud asked uneasily.
“I’ve given you my decision,” Lang said,
Konrad Seltzman met Giraud’s eye for a split second, then shifted his gaze to Sharon. “Did they say exactly when?” he asked her.
Sharon glanced at the computer’s conversion of the Taloid time measurement that had been mentioned. “About twenty hours from now.”