Part 8 (1/2)
Half a minute liter the altar area of the cathedral lit up, gave off an amazing sound, and exploded into a flour-like dust-which towered up over the plaza and came down all over everybody.
In the melee the Siggies withdrew to the far side of the plaza and formed a circle. It was shortly discovered that they were now protected by some kind of force-s.h.i.+eld, presumably generated by a large box which they always carried with them. Defense R&D had identified it as a musical amplifier.
While we were digesting this, news came that the East Hemisphere Siggie group had pulled an almost identical stunt, resulting in the obliteration of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto.
The fact that the Cignian s.h.i.+p's auxiliary flyers were both out on what was described as routine maintenance tests had up to now escaped notice. After a pause, it became apparent where they were flying to. Harry's evaluation sources had been quite right; they were slow. It took the one on our side over six hours to make the seven thousand air miles from Quebec to the little group in the plaza at Sao Paulo. En route, one of our more enterprising neighbors discovered that it too was now protected by an unknown form of s.h.i.+elding. As it made its weary Mach I way home with the West Hemisphere Siggies inside, our Air Force confirmed this the expensive way.
Somewhere along the line the main s.h.i.+p had englobed itself too, with eight Terran technical people aboard.
”Well, I guess we know what the generators are for now,” I remarked next morning, roaming restlessly around Harry's office.
”An interesting tactical problem,” I mused. ”What can you do with a measly few old badly guided fusion bombs-provided you can carry them anywhere you want in perfect safety?”
Harry slammed his papers down hard and inhaled and, exhaled explosively. Just as he inhaled again his phone rang.
”Huh? Who? Get him down here. We've got to get him down here! What? All right, I'll go through your d.a.m.n channels-” He banged the phone down.
”Max. They opened the s.h.i.+p long enough to turn loose our techs. S'serrrop came out with them.
He's been hurt. Get the chief to get him.”
It was Tillie who got him, but how she did it I don't know because our chief, like everybody else, was caught up in the runaway oscillation over the Siggie atrocities.
The media caught on a bit slow and generated more confusion than anything else at first. By nextday, when the Siggies had leisurely vaporized Milan Cathedral and the BaHai Temple in Chicago, the newscasters. .h.i.t stride. From there on-you'll remember-it was just one bewildered yell of outrage. The Moslem world held aloof until Friday, when the Blue Mosque of Ahmed at Istanbul went up in flour. For all that first week no one was killed or even badly hurt.
Except S'serrrop.
We met his stretcher at Andrews Air Base. He seemed glad to see Harry.
”I trite,” he shrilled feebly. ”I trite explait-” He thrashed a bit, under the blankets. What we could see of his hide was deep yellow, but we couldn't see much. They had treated him to an acid ma.s.sage.
Our medicos couldn't do much for the alien biology beyond the obvious topical applications. Like a burned human, he was in toxemia.
That was the morning the Cygnians started their broadcasts. It was now clear why they had been so eager to learn our languages, but even so, you'll recall that the first messages were more stimulating than enlightening. Our shop had the advantage of an early copy of the eight technicians' reports. The Cygnians had given them an intensive briefing before they let them go.
”Delusions of nonpersecution... Harry, I'm sorry.”
He was head-in-hands, down.
”When you look at the history of the early Christian missionaries, say in Polynesia, or Africa-”
”d.a.m.nation, Max, do you think you're the only one who's read history? It was just that-my fault-I saw the gestalt the wrong way. From their point of view, we're the heathen. You don't need to rub it in. They never even bothered to try to understand-”
”How many missionaries ever tried to understand the native religions? They just threw down the idols, burned the ju-jus, destroyed the temples... unspeakable savage rites, I believe was the standard phrase.”
”Only S'serrrop. He tried.”
”Yes, he tried. He's a believer too, of course, but liberal. What it adds up to, Harry, is a bunch of dedicated, primitive fundamentalists who bought themselves a boat and set out to bring the word to the heathen. With atomics.”
”Missionaries with fissionaries,” squeaked Mrs. Peabody, and shut up abruptly.
”I blame myself-”
”Don't, Harry. What could a Bushman make of a gun until he'd seen it fired? He'd have put it down as a clumsy kind of club. We'd never seen a generator used to throw a standing energic whatsis.”
”But how can they hope to succeed?” Tillie asked. ”It's so crazy! To make the whole population of Earth wors.h.i.+p the Great Pupa? We aren't even the same kind of animal. It's insane.”
”What do you think the Holy Family looked like to a polygamous culture where a man's father was his mother's brother? No. Insane or not, conversion by the sword can work. What's our price for saving St. Peter's, or Westminster, or Santa Sophia, for starters? Or the Kremlin? Friends, don't be too sure.
You'll be attending Great Pupa services in Carter Barron Amphitheatre in the near future, I promise you.”
”What about you?” snapped Tillie.
”Purification,” Harry was muttering. ”Fire.”
His eyes were pale and clear, like a Weimeraner's.
”The early Christians survived, Max: Underground, in the catacombs. In the days of the martyrs.
From persecution will come rebirth.”
I refrained from asking him to name a few aboriginal religions which had survived the Society of Jesus. I had something else to worry about.
”Can S'serrrop talk at all, Tillie? It's urgent.”Well, you recall what went on then, the public convulsions, the predictable and pathetic brave responses we made to the Cygnian's simple ultimatum. I guess what riled people the most was the level of their pitch. They had apparently tagged us as Stone Age Stanley.
”You can see the Great Pupa is the true G.o.d, because our weapons are stronger than yours. Your false G.o.ds cannot protect themselves, or you.” Right off page one of a nineteenth-century missionary handbook.
The part about them ending our local strife in universal brotherhood as children of the Great Pupa wasn't so bad, although I don't think people went for the idea of themselves as larvae. But when they got into the higher doctrinal mysteries-and what they proposed to do about our s.e.x and mating customs, they being biologically rather different...
It was while they were explaining that aspect that the British CinC up in Quebec laid our biggest nuclear egg neatly on the Cygnian s.h.i.+p. The broadcast stopped. Two days later when things settled down, the s.h.i.+p was still sitting there englobed with debris. After awhile, a new type of transmission came out of the force-sh.e.l.l, and every piece of metal several kilometers beyond the blast-hole went to vapor.
Then the religious broadcasts resumed. The Great Pupa was indeed a strong G.o.d.
Over everybody's protests, I tried to get S'serrrop to locate and decipher any Cygnian text he could find on my photos of George's missile.
”What in h.e.l.l do you expect to prove, Max? Even if there's a Cygnian text, so what? We know the story now.”
”Do we? I thought you said you'd read history.”
But S'serrrop was nearly blind, and terribly weak. He did appear to recognize the photos.
”Too bad!” he whispered again. ”Kchch! Too bad-”
”Leave him alone, Max.”
”Wait! S'serrrop-Tillie, ask him this: are there others? More like him? Coming here?”
We couldn't get his answer, but as you know, we were not left long in doubt.
Since this is just the inside story we'll skip the history-makers, the steady attrition of our religious monuments (don't think Chartres didn't rock me)-the efforts of the Vatican, Israel and the International Council of Churches of Christ to negotiate some kind of coexistence for the West at least-the day the Siggies, by an understandable theological error, took out the New York Stock Exchange-the United Arab kamikazi attempt-the successful a.s.sault on two isolated Siggies in Chili-the Sino-Soviet proposal-you know all that. The inside story isn't much, here: sixteen long go-arounds between me and our chief, ending in stalemate. And then the second Cygnian s.h.i.+p arrived.