An hour before sunset, André and Carmody ran out of the woods. They were in a hurry because of the tremendous uproar that had aroused the forest for miles around. Men were yelling, and a woman was screaming, and something was growling loudly. They arrived just in time to see the end. Two enormous beasts, bipedal heavily-tailed creatures with bearish heads, were racing after Kate Lejeune and Pete Masters. Kate and Pete were running hand in hand, he pulling her so fast that she seemed to fly through the air with every step. In his other hand he carried his powersaw. Neither had a sono-gun with which to defend themselves, although Captain Tu had ordered that no one be without the weapon. A moment later it was seen that the gun would have made no difference, for several crewmen who had been standing by the ship had turned their sonos against the beasts. Undeterred by the panicking effects of the beams, the monsters sprang after the couple and caught them half-way across the meadow.
Though unarmed, André and Carmody ran at the things, their fists clenched. Pete turned in his captor's grasp and struck it across the muzzle with the sharp edge of his saw. Kate screamed loudly then fainted. Suddenly, the two were lying in the grass, for the animals had dropped them and were walking almost leisurely towards the woods. That neither the sonos nor the priests had scared them off was evident. They brushed by the latter without noticing them, and if the former had affected their nervous systems at all, they gave no signs.
Carmody looked once at the young woman and yelled, "Doctor Blake! Get Blake at once!"
Like a genie summoned by the mention of his name, Blake was there with his little black kit. He at once called for a stretcher; Kate, moaning and rolling her head from side to side, was carried into the ship's hospital. Pete raged until Blake ordered him out of the room.
"I'll get a gun and kill those beasts. I'll track them down if it takes me a week. Or a year! I'll trap them and . . ."
Carmody pushed him out of the room and into the lounge, where he made the youth sit down. With a shaking hand, he lit two cigarettes.
"It would do you no good to kill them," he said. "They'd be up and around in a few days. Besides, they're just animals who were obeying their master's commands."
He puffed on his cigarette while with one hand he snapped his glow-wire lighter shut and put it back in his pocket.
"I'm just as shaken up as you. Recent events have been too fast and too inexplicable for my nervous system to take them in stride. But I wouldn't worry about Kate being hurt, if I were you. I know she looked pretty bad, but I'm sure she'll be all right and in a very short time, too."
"You blind optimistic ass!" shouted Pete. "You saw what happened to her!"
"She's suffering from hysterics, not from any physical effects of her miscarriage," replied Carmody calmly. "I'll bet that in a few minutes, when Blake has her calmed down with a sedative, she'll walk out of the hospital in as good a condition as she was in this morning. I know she will. You see, son, I've had a talk with a being who is not God but who convinces you that he is the nearest equivalent."
Pete became slack-jawed "What? What're you talking about?"
"I know I sound as if I were talking nonsense. But I've met the owner of Abatos. Or rather he has talked to me, and what he has shown the bishop and me is, to understate, staggering. There are a hundred things we'll have to let you and everybody else know in due time. Meanwhile, I can give you an idea of his powers. They range in terrible spectrum from such petty, but amazing, deeds as curing my toothache with a mere laying on of hands, to bringing dead bones back to life and reclothing them with flesh. I have seen the dead arise and go forth. Though, I must admit, probably to be eaten again."
Frowning, he added, "The bishop and I were permitted to perform—or should I say commit?—a resurrection ourselves. The sensation is not indescribable, but I prefer not to say anything about it at present."
Pete rose with clenched fits, his cigarette shredding under the pressure.
"You must be crazy."
"That would be nice if I were, for I'd be relieved of an awful responsibility. And if the choice were mine, I'd take incurable insanity. But I'm not to get off so easily."
Suddenly, Father John lost his calmness; he looked as if he were going to break into many pieces. He buried his face in his hands, while Pete stared, stunned. Then the priest as abruptly lowered his hands and presented once again the sharp-nosed, round and smiling features the world knew so well.
"Fortunately, the ultimate decision will not be mine but His Excellency's. And though it is cowardly to be glad because I may pass the buck on to him, I must confess that I will be glad. His is the power in this case, and though power has its glory, it also has its burdens and griefs. I wouldn't want to be in the bishop's shoes at this moment."
Pete didn't hear the priest's last words. He was gazing at the hospital door, just opening. Kate stepped out, a little pale but walking steadily. Pete ran to her; they folded each other in their arms; then she was crying.
"Are you all right, boney?" Pete kept saying over and over.
"Oh, I feel fine," she replied, still weeping. "I don't understand why, but I do. I'm suddenly healed. There's nothing wrong down there. It was as if a hand passed over me, and strength flowed out of it, and all was well with my body."
Blake, who had appeared behind her, nodded in agreement.
"Oh, Pete," sobbed Kate, "I'm all right, but I lost our baby! And I know it was because we stole that money from Daddy. It was our punishment. It was bad enough running away, though we had to do that because we loved each other. But we should never have taken that money!"
"Hush, honey, you're talking too much. Let's go to our cabin where you can rest."
Gently he directed her out of the lounge while he glared defiantly at Carmody.
"Oh, Pete," she wailed, "all that money, and now we're on a planet where it's absolutely no good at all. Only a burden."
"You talk too much, baby," said Pete, a roughness replacing the gentleness in his voice. They disappeared down the corridor. Carmody said nothing. Eyes downcast, he, too, walked to his cabin and shut the door behind him.
A half hour later, he came out and asked for Captain Tu. Told that Tu was outside, he left the Gull and found an attentive group at the edge of the meadow on the other side of the ship. Mrs. Recka and the first mate were the centre of attraction.
"We were sitting under one of those big jelly trees and passing the bottle back and forth and talking of this and that," said Givens. "Mostly about what we'd do if we found out we were stranded here for the rest of our lives."
Somebody snickered. Givens flushed but continued evenly.
"Suddenly, Mrs. Recka and I became very sick. We vomited violently and broke out into a cold sweat. By the time we'd emptied our stomachs, we were sure the whisky had been poisoned. We thought we'd die in the woods, perhaps never to be found, for we were quite a distance from the ship and in a rather secluded spot.
"But as suddenly as it had come, the illness went away. We felt completely happy and healthy. The only difference was, we both were absolutely certain that we'd never again want to touch a drop of whisky."
"Or any other alcoholic drink," added Mrs. Recka, shuddering.
Those who knew of her weakness gazed curiously and somewhat doubtfully at her. Carmody tapped the captain's elbow and drew him off to one side.
"Is the radio and other electronic equipment working by now?" he asked.
"They resumed operation about the time you two showed up. But the translator still refuses to budge. I was worried when you failed to report through your wrist radios. For all I knew, some beast of prey had killed you, or you'd fallen into the lake and drowned. I organized a search party, but we'd not gone half a mile before we noticed the needles on our ship-finders whirling like mad. So we returned. I didn't want to be lost in the woods, for my primary duty is to the ship, of course. And I couldn't send out a copter crew, for the copters simply refused to run. They're working all right now, though. What do you think of all this?"
"Oh, I know who is doing this. And why."
"For God's sake, man, who?"
"I don't know if it is for God's sake or not. . . ." Carmody glanced at his watch. "Come with me. There is someone you must meet."
"Where are we going?"
"Just follow me. He wants a few words with you because you are the captain, and your decision will have to be given also. Moreover, I want you to know just what we are up against."
"Who is he? A native of Abatos?"
"Not exactly, though he has lived here longer than any native creature of this planet."
Tu adjusted the angle of his cap and brushed dust flakes from his uniform. He strode through the corridors of the noisy jungle as if the trees were on parade and he were inspecting them.
"If he has been here longer than ten thousand years," said the captain, unconsciously stressing the personal pronoun as Carmody did, "then he must have arrived long before English and its descendant tongue, Lingo, were spoken, when the Aryan speech was still only the property of a savage tribe in Europe. How can we talk with him? Telepathy?"
"No. He learned Lingo from the survivor of the crash of the Hoyle, the only ship he ever permitted to get through."
"And where is this man?" asked Tu, annoyedly glancing at a choir of howling monkeys on an overhead branch.
"No man. A woman, a medical officer. After a year here, she committed suicide. Built a funeral pyre and burned herself to death. There was nothing left of her but ashes."
"Why?"
"I imagine because total cremation was the only way she could put herself beyond his reach. Because otherwise he might have placed her bones in a jelly tree and brought her back to life."
Tu halted. "My mind understands you, but my sense of belief is numb. Why did she kill herself when, if you are not mistaken, she had eternal life before her or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof?"
"He—Father—says that she could not endure the thought of living forever on Abatos with him as her only human, or humanoid, companion. I know how she felt. It would be like sharing the world with only God to talk to. Her sense of inferiority and her loneliness must have been overwhelming."
Carmody stopped suddenly and became lost in thought, his head cocked to one side, his left eyelid drooping.
"Hmm. That's strange. He said that we, too, could have his powers, become like him. Why didn't he teach her? Was it because he didn't want to share? Come to think of it, he's made no offer of dividing his dominions. Only wants substitution. Hmm. All or none. Either he or . . . or what?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" barked Captain Tu irritatedly.
"You may be right at that," said Carmody absently. "Look, there's a jelly tree. What do you say we do a little poking and prying, heh? It's true that he forbade any needlenosing on the part of us extra-Abatosians; it's true that this may be another garden of Eden and that I, a too true son of Adam, alas, may be re-enacting another fall from grace, may be driven out with flaming swords—though I wouldn't mind being expelled back to some familiar planet—may even be blasted with lightning for blaspheming against the local deity. Nevertheless, I think a little delving into the contents of that cavity may be as profitable as any dentist's work. What do you say, Captain? The consequences could be rather disastrous."
"If you mean am I afraid, all I can say is that you know better than that," growled Tu. "I'll let no priest get ahead of me in guts. Go ahead. I'll back you up all the way."
"Ah," said Carmody, walking briskly up to the foot of the enormous redwood, "ah, but you've not seen and talked to the Father of Abatos. It's not a matter of backing me up, for there's little you could do if we should be discovered. It's a matter of giving me moral courage, of shaming me with your presence so that I won't run like a rabbit if he should catch me red-handed."
With one hand he took a small vial out of his pocket and with the other a flashlight, whose beam he pointed into the dark O. Tu looked over his shoulder.
"It quivers, almost as if it were alive," said the captain in a low voice.
"It emits a faint humming, too. If you put your hand lightly on its surface, you can feel the vibration."
"What are those whitish things embedded in it? Bones?"
"Yes, the hollow goes rather deep, doesn't it? Must be below the surface of the ground. See that dark mass in one corner? An antelope of some sort, I'd say. Looks to me as if the flesh were being built up in layers from the inside out; the outer muscles and skin aren't re-created yet."
The priest scooped out a sample of the jelly, capped the vial, and put it back in his pocket. He did not rise but kept playing his beam over the hollow.
"This stuff really makes a Geiger counter dance. Not only that, it radiates electromagnetic waves. I think that radio waves from this jelly damped out our wrist speakers and sonos and played havoc with our ship-finders. Hey, wait a minute! Notice those very minute white threads that run through the whole mass. Nerve-like, aren't they?"
Before Carmody could protest, Tu stooped and dipped out a handful of the quivering gelatinous mass. "Do you know where I've seen something like this before? This stuff reminds me of the protein transistors we used in the translator."
Carmody frowned: "Aren't they the only living parts of the machine? Seems to me I read that the translator wont rotate the ship through perpendicular space unless these transistors are used."
"Mechanical transistors could be used," corrected Tu. "But they would occupy a space as large as the spaceship itself. Protein transistors take up very little area; you could carry the Gull's on your back. Actually, that part of the translator is not only a series of transistors but a memory bank. Its function is to `remember' normal space. It has to retain a simulacrum of real or `horizontal' space as distinguished from perpendicular. While one end of the translator is `flopping us over', as the phrase goes, the protein end is reconstructing an image of what the space at our destination looks like, down to the last electron. Sounds very much like sympathetic magic, doesn't it? Build an effigy, and shortly you establish an affinity between reality and counterfeit."
"What happened to the protein banks?"
"Nothing that we could tell. They functioned normally."
"Perhaps the currents aren't getting through. Did the engineer check the synapses or just take a reading on the biostatic charge of the whole? The charge could be normal, you know, yet any transmission could be locked."
"That's the engineer's province. I wouldn't dream of questioning his work, any more than he would mine."
Carmody rose. "I'd like to talk to the engineer. I've a layman's theory, but like most amateurs I may be overly enthusiastic because of my ignorance. If you don't care, I'd rather not discuss it now. Especially here, where the forest may have ears, and . . ."
Though the captain had not even opened his mouth, the priest had raised his finger for silence in a characteristic gesture. Suddenly, it was apparent that he did have his silence, for there was not a sound in the woods except the faint soughing of the wind through the leaves.
"He is around," whispered Carmody. "Throw that jelly back in, and we'll get away from this tree."
Tu raised his hand to do so. At that moment a rifle shot cracked nearby. Both men jumped. "My God, what fool's doing that?" cried Tu. He said something else, but his voice was lost in the bedlam that broke out through the woods, the shrieks of birds, the howling of monkeys, the trumpetings, neighings, and roarings of thousands of other animals. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped, almost as if by signal. Silence fell. Then, a single cry. A man's.
"It's Masters," groaned Carmody.
There was a rumble, as of some large beast growling deep in its chest. One of the leopard-like creatures with the round ears and grey tufts on its legs padded out from the brush. It held Pete Masters' dangling body between its jaws as easily as a cat holds a mouse. Paying no attention to the two men, it ran past them to the foot of an oak, where it stopped and laid the youth down before another intruder.
Father stood motionless as stone, one nailless hand resting upon his long red-gold beard, his deeply sunken eyes downcast, intent on the figure on the grass. He did not move until Pete, released from his paralysis, writhed in a passion of abjectness and called out for mercy. Then he stooped and touched the youth briefly on the back of his head. Pete leaped to his feet and, holding his head and screaming as if in pain, ran away through the trees. The leopardess remained couchant, blinking slowly like a fat and lazy housecat.
Father spoke to her. While he stalked off into the woods, she turned her green eyes upon the two men. Neither felt like testing her competence as a guard.
Father stopped under a tree overgrown with vines from which hung fat heavy pods like white hairless coconuts. Though the lowest was twelve feet high, he had no difficulty in reaching up and squeezing it in his hand. It cracked open with a loud report, and water shot from the crushed shell. Tu and Carmody paled; the captain muttered, "I'd rather tackle that big cat than him."
The giant wheeled, and, washing his hands with the water, strode towards them. "Would you like to crush coconuts in one hand too, Captain?" he thundered. "That is nothing. I can show you how you may also do that. I can tear that young beech tree out of the ground by the roots, I can speak a word to Zeda here, and she will heel like a dog. That is nothing. I can teach you the power. I can hear your whisper even at a distance of a hundred yards, as you realize by now. And I could catch you within ten seconds, even if you had a head start and I were sitting down. That is nothing. I can tell instantly where any of my daughters are on the face of Abatos, what state of health they are in, and when they've died. That is nothing. You can do the same, provided you become like that priest there. You could even raise my dead, if you had the will to be like Father John. I may take your hand and show you how you could bring life again to the dead body, though I do not care to touch you."
"For God's sake, say no," breathed Carmody. "It's enough that the bishop and I should have been exposed to that temptation."
Father laughed. Tu grabbed hold of Carmody's hand. He could not have answered the giant if he had wished, for his mouth opened and closed like a fish's out of water, and his eyeballs popped.
"There's something about his voice that turns the bowels to water and loosens the knees," said the priest, then fell silent. Father stood above them, wiping his hands on his beard. Aside from that magnificent growth and a towering roach on his head, he was absolutely bald. His pale red skin was unblemished, glowing with perfect blood beneath the thin surface. His high-bridged nose was septumless, but the one nostril was a flaring Gothic one. Red teeth glistened in his mouth; a blue-veined tongue shot out for a moment like a flame; then the black-red lips writhed and closed. All this was strange but not enough to make these star-travelled men uncomfortable. The voice and the eyes stunned them, the thunder that seemed to shake their bones so they rattled, and the black eyes starred with silver splinters. Stone come to flesh.
"Don't worry, Carmody. I will not show Tu how to raise the dead. Unlike you and André, he'd not be able to do it, anyhow. Neither would any of the others, for I've studied them, and I know. But I have need of you, Tu. I will tell you why, and when I have told you, you will see there is nothing else for you to do. I will convince you by reason, not by force, for I hate violence, and indeed am required by the nature of my being not to use it. Unless an emergency demands it."
Father talked. An hour later, he stopped. Without waiting for either of them to say a word, even if they'd been capable, he turned and strode away, the leopardess a respectable distance behind his heels. Presently, the normal calls of the wood animals began. The two men shook themselves and silently walked back to the ship. At the meadow's edge, Carmody said, "There's only one thing to do. Call a Council of the Question of Jairus. Fortunately, you fill the bill for the kind of layman required as moderator. I'll ask the bishop's permission, but I'm sure he'll agree it's the only thing to do. We can't contact our superiors and refer a decision to their judgment. The responsibility rests on us."
"It's a terrible burden," said the captain.
At the ship they asked about the bishop, to be told he had walked away into the forest only a short time before. The wrist radios were working, but no answer came from André. Alarmed, the two decided to go back into the forest to search for him. They followed the path to the lake, while Tu checked every now and then through his radio with a copter circling overhead. They'd reported the bishop was not by the lakeshore, but Carmody thought he might be on his way to it or perhaps was just sitting some place and meditating.
About a mile from the Gull they found him lying at the foot of an exceptionally tall jelly tree. Tu halted suddenly.
"He's having an attack, Father."
Carmody turned away and sat down on the grass, his back to the bishop. He lit a cigarette but dropped it and crushed it beneath his heel.
"I forgot he doesn't want us to smoke in the woods. Not for fear of fire. He doesn't like the odour of tobacco."
Tu stood by the priest, his gaze clinging to the writhing figure beneath the tree. "Aren't you going to help him? He'll chew off his tongue or dislocate a bone."
Carmody hunched his shoulders and shook his head. "You forget that he cured our ills to demonstrate his powers. My rotten tooth, Mrs. Recka's alcoholism. His Excellency's seizures."
"But, but . . . '
"His Excellency has entered into this so-called attack voluntarily and is in no danger of breaking bones or lacerating his tongue. I wish that were all there were to it. Then I'd know what to do. Meanwhile, I suggest you do the decent thing and turn your back, too. I didn't care for this the first time I witnessed it; I still don't."
"Maybe you won't help, but I sure as hell am going to," said Tu. He took a step, halted, sucking in his breath.
Carmody turned to look, then rose. "It's all right. Don't be alarmed."
The bishop had given a final violent spasm, a thrusting of the pelvis that raised his arched body completely off the ground. At the same time he gave a loud racking sob. When he fell back, he crumpled into silence and motionlessness.
But it was not towards him but towards the hollow in the tree that Tu stared. Out of it was crawling a great white snake with black triangular markings on its back. Its head was large as a watermelon; its eyes glittered glassy green; its scales dripped with white-threaded jelly.
"My God," said Tu, "isn't there any end to it? It keeps coming and coming. Must be forty or fifty feet long.'
His hand went to the sono-gun in his pocket. Carmody restrained him with another shake of his head.
"That snake intends no harm. On the contrary, if I understand these animals, it knows dimly that it has been given life again and feels a sense of gratitude. Perhaps he made them aware that he resurrects them so that he may warm himself in their automatic worship. But, of course, he would never stand for what that beast is doing. He, if you've not noticed, can't endure to touch his secondhand progeny. Did you perceive that after he had touched Masters, he washed his hands with coconut water? Flowers and trees are the only things he handles."
The snake had thrust its head above the bishop's and was touching his face with its flickering tongue. André groaned and opened his eyes. Seeing the reptile, he shuddered with fear, then grew still and allowed it to caress him. After determining that it meant him no harm, he stroked it back.
"Well, if the bishop should take over from Father, he at least will give these animals what they have always wanted and have not got from him, a tenderness and affection. His Excellency does not hate these females. Not yet."
In a louder voice, he added, "I hope to God that such a thing does not come to pass."
Hissing with alarm, the snake slid off into the grass. André sat up, shook his head as if to clear it, rose to greet them. His face had lost the softness it had held while he was caressing the serpent. It was stern, and his voice was challenging.
"Do you think it is right to come spying upon me?"
"Your pardon, Your Excellency, we were not spying. We were looking for you because we have decided that the situation demands a Council of the Question of Jairus."
Tu added, "We were concerned because Your Excellency seemed to be having another attack."
"Was I? Was I? But I thought that he had done away . . . I mean . . ."
Sadly, Carmody nodded, "He has. I wonder if Your Excellency, would forgive me if I gave an opinion. I think that you were not having an epileptoid seizure coincidentally with sparking the snake with its new life. Your seeming attack was only a mock-up of your former illness.
"I see you don't understand. Let me put it this way. The doctor on Wildenwooly had thought that your sickness was psychosomatic in origin and had ordered you to Ygdrasil where a more competent man could treat it. Before you left, you told me that he thought that your symptoms were symbolic behaviour and pointed the way to the seat of your malady, a suppressed . . ."
"I think you should stop there," said the bishop coldly.
"I had intended to go no further."
They began walking back to the ship. The two priests dropped behind the captain, who strode along with his eyes fixed straight ahead of him.
The bishop said, hesitantly, "You too experienced the glory—perhaps perilous, but nevertheless a glory—of bringing the dead back to life. I watched you, as you did me. You were not unmoved. True, you did not fall to the ground and become semi-conscious. But you trembled and moaned in the grip of ecstasy."
He cast his eyes to the ground, then, as if ashamed of his hesitancy, raised them to glare unflinchingly.
"Before your conversion, you were very much a man of this world. Tell me, John, is not this fathering something like being with a woman?"
Carmody looked to one side.
"I want neither your pity nor your revulsion," said André. "Just the truth."
Carmody sighed deeply.
"Yes, the two experiences are very similar. But the fathering is even more intimate because, once entered upon, there is no control at all, absolutely no withdrawal from the intimacy; your whole being, mind and body, are fused and focused upon the event. The feeling of oneness—so much desired in the other and so often lacking—is inescapable here. You feel as if you were the recreator and the recreated. Afterwards, you have a part of the animal in you—as you well know—because there is a little spark in your brain that is a piece of its life, and when the spark moves you know that the animal you raised is moving. And when it dims you know it is sleeping, and when it flares you know it is in panic or some other intense emotion. And when the spark dies, you know the beast has died too.
"Father's brain is a constellation of such sparks, of billions of stars that image brightly their owner's vitality. He knows where every individual unit of life is on this planet, he knows when it is gone, and when he does, he waits until the bones have been refleshed, and then he fathers forth . . ."
"He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him!" André burst out.
Startled, Carmody raised his eyes. "Hopkins, I think, would be distressed to hear you quoting his lines in this context. I think perhaps he might retort with a passage from another of his poems.
"Man's spirit will be fleshbound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen."
"Your quote supports mine. His bones risen. What more do you need?"
"But uncumbered. What is the penalty for this ecstasy? This world is beautiful, yes, is it not sterile, dead-ended? Well, never mind that now. I wished to remind Your Excellency that this power and glory come from a sense of union and control over brutes. The world is his bed, but who would lie forever in it? And why does he now wish to leave it, if it is so desirable? For good? Or for evil?"