Walpurgis III
by
Mike Resnick

Table of Contents

Walpurgis III
Mike Resnick

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 1992 by Mike Resnick

A Baen Books Ebook
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com

ISBN 10: 0-4463-6320-0
ISBN 13: 978-0-4463-6320-4

First ebook release, January 2008

Electronic version by WebWrights

For Carol, as always

and to Barry Malzberg,
the most maligned and misunderstood writer of his
generation, and—not surprisingly—the finest.

Prologue

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil."
—Shakespeare

"Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor."
—Emerson

"Our greatest evils flow from within ourselves."
—Rousseau

They were all wrong.

"There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish; to bewail it senseless."
—Maugham

He came close.

"Evil is its own Justification. It therefore renders meaningless even such questions as power, pleasure, and profit."
—Conrad Bland

He knew. But of course, he would.

He killed eleven million men in the death camps of Pilor IX during the brief reign of the mad Emperor Justacious.

He killed seventeen million men on Boriga II in a manner that made the gas ovens of ancient Earth and its Reich seem compassionate.

He killed five million women and children on New Rhodesia.

He killed three thousand seventeen men on Cambria III, each in a different way.

He invented torture devices that even Spica VI, which was in revolt against the Republic, would not use.

No photograph, holograph, or videodisc of him was known to exist. He had never been fingerprinted. There was no voice or retina identification pattern on him in any computer. He had no bank account on any world, no financial or property holdings that anyone had been able to trace. His planet of origin was unknown. Many men had served him; all but seven were dead, and none of those seven had ever seen him.

He was a fugitive.

His name was Conrad Bland and he was, for the moment, safe.

Chapter 1

"If you kill one man, you are an assassin.
If you kill millions, you are a conqueror.
If you kill everyone, you are a god."

—Conrad Bland

Orestes Mela walked past the snakes and scorpions, past the elephants and lemurs, past the eight-legged Rigelian herbivores and the bloblike Vegan carnivores and the armored Spican omnivores, marveling that they had all managed to adapt to the hothouse climate of Serengeti, the zoo world of the Terrazane Sector. He began to wipe the sweat from his pudgy face, then decided that he didn't want to call even more attention to the small briefcase that was chained to his wrist, and stopped in midmotion.

He checked his handout map, pinpointed the aviary some six miles away, and flagged down a robotic cart. Serengeti wasn't that fascinating, and there was no sense arriving at his destination too winded to talk.

The cart left him off a few minutes later, and he produced a token that gained him access to the screen-covered path that wound its way through the sanctuary. He walked along it for almost a mile, wondering why they kept the birds of different worlds separated and trying to get used to the odor.

Finally he came to a circular area filled with benches and tables and an automated refreshment stand. Three men and a woman sat at various tables, and an ancient uniformed attendant was painfully picking up rubbish from a number of deserted benches.

Mela surveyed the four. Two of the men were too young, and the woman seemed too frail, though she was a possibility. But the other man seemed to fill the bill: a huge, towering man with hard gray eyes and a deep scar on his left cheek. A gust of hot wind caught the man's empty paper cup and sent it flying off the table, but he caught it before it could land, moving with a fluid animal grace.

Well, thought Mela, at least he looks the part.

Mela waited, uncertain of how to initiate his approach, and a moment later the huge man stood up, stretched like some savage jungle cat, and strode off. Puzzled, Mela thought of walking after him, but chose to remain seated. The two young men left about five minutes later, and a moment after that the woman followed them.

The grizzled attendant approached him.

"Do you mind if I sit down for a moment, sir?" he said in a voice weak with age. "It's hot, thirsty work, cleaning up after the tourists."

"I'd prefer you sat elsewhere," said Mela irritably. "I'm waiting for someone."

"Not any longer," said the attendant, pulling up a chair.

Mela peered at the ancient face.

"Jericho?" he asked at last.

The attendant nodded.

"Well, I'll be damned!" exclaimed Mela.

"Shall we proceed?" said Jericho, and his voice was no longer that of an old man.

"Right here?" asked Mela, frowning.

"We won't be interrupted," said Jericho. "I've seen to that."

Mela shrugged.

"Is there any reason why you picked this particular world for our meeting?" he asked, lifting his briefcase to the table and punching out a fourteen-digit combination on its computer lock.

'I've never been to Serengeti before."

"Odd," commented Mela. "It seems like an ideal, place for you to keep your hand in, so to speak. I understand they sell hunting licenses in certain areas."

"I never kill for pleasure, Mr. Mela," said Jericho emotionlessly.

"Well, to business," said Mela, withdrawing a number of packets. "This," he said, holding up a thick package of discs, "is what he's done. And this," he added, holding up a single disc, "contains everything we know about him. We filled only about two minutes' worth of it. In point of fact, we don't even know, after eighteen years, if he is a him. After all, Conrad Bland is only a name; doubtless he has others."

"Doubtless," said Jericho noncommittally.

"You'll want to go through these, of course," said Mela, sliding the large package across the table. "I've arranged a temporary security clearance for you, so you can take them with you and study them carefully."

"Keep them," said Jericho.

"Keep them?" repeated Mela Incredulously. "But they contain all the details of New Rhodesia, all the pertinent information about Boriga and Quantos and Pilor and—"

"What Conrad Bland did on Boriga and the other worlds is of no concern to me."

"Don't you want to know the nature of the man you'll be facing?" insisted Mela, finally mopping away some of the sweat that streamed down his face.

"I never draw moral judgments," replied Jericho, "It's enough that yon want him dead and that you've agreed to pay my fee. I am merely an executioner."

"More to the point, you are a professional assassin who has been commissioned to terminate a man that the Republic can't extradite," said Mela, twitching his nostrils as the avian odors assailed them. "And I might mention in passing that we know even less about you than we do about him."

"You know that I'm on your side, Mr. Mela. That ought to be sufficient."

"I hate to think how many of us you may have killed over the years," said Mela bitterly. "I find the whole concept of hiring a killer to exterminate another killer distasteful in the extreme."

"And yet here you are doing just that," noted Jericho.

"It's not a matter of choice. I have my orders. By the way, Jericho isn't your real name, is it?"

"Does it make a difference?"

"Not really," said Mela. "But I suspect that it's a code name or an alias or something, just as I suspect you're a much younger man than you presently appear to be."

Jericho stared calmly at him and made no reply.

Mela met his gaze for a long moment, then shook his head. "Damn it!" he said. "I was expecting someone who looked more like a killer!"

"What does a killer look like?" inquired Jericho mildly.

"You blend right in with the scenery!" continued Mela, wondering why he felt so outraged. "Normal height, normal weight, no speech patterns. You're probably the penultimate Average Man under all that makeup."

"I strongly suggest that you stop worrying about my appearance," said Jericho. "You will never see me again after this meeting is over."

"I'll at least have to know what you intend to look like and what identity you expect to be using so our people can be forewarned."

"That won't be necessary."

"The entire planet is under military quarantine," Mela pointed out. "How will you get there?"

"The same way I got here," said Jericho. "Which leads me to another point, Mr. Mela. There are seventeen Republic ships in orbit around Serengeti and some three hundred operatives on the planet itself. Obviously they are not here for your protection, and just as obviously they are not here to defend the planet from any real or imagined attack. I must therefore assume that they are here to scrutinize me and gather such information as may prove useful should you wish to arrest or eliminate me at the conclusion of our transaction. I must warn you that should any member of the Republic make any such effort to invade my privacy at any time in the future I will consider it to be a breach of good faith and will feel free to call the entire affair off without returning your down payment—which I trust you remembered to bring with you."

Mela nodded, withdrew a small titanium container from his briefcase, and handed it to Jericho, who opened it, spilled a number of precious gemstones onto his hand, nodded, and replaced them in the container.

"Don't you want to examine them more closely?" asked Mela irritably.

"No," said Jericho. "I've no intention of beginning my assignment until they have been appraised and converted into currency."

"How long will that take?" demanded Mela, raising his voice to be heard over the screeching of the birds.

"Less time than you suppose," replied Jericho. "And now to business. There are certain things I need to know about Bland."

"I thought you didn't want our information," said Mela petulantly.

"The wholesale slaughter of planetary populations is a matter of complete indifference to me," said Jericho, his gaze leaving Mela's round, sweating face to follow the flight of a hawk as it swooped down to snare a sparrow amid much squawking and fluttering of wings. "But it stands to reason that the Republic wouldn't seek my services unless and until they had lost a number of their own operatives. How many men have tried to assassinate Conrad Bland, and how did they fail?"

"We have sent twenty-three men after him, fifteen on their own and four two-man teams," admitted Mela. "None of them has been heard from again."

"Who were they?" asked Jericho.

"The best men the Republic had," said Mela. "Including Rinehart Guntermann."

"Your people should have known better than to send a used-up old warhorse after someone like Bland."

"I beg your pardon!" snapped Mela, struggling to control his temper. "It so happens that Guntermann was the hero of the Battle of Canphor VII!"

"Which he fought from the flagship of an impenetrable fleet," said Jericho dryly. "Apples and oranges, Mr. Mela; if Bland was where the Navy could get at him, you wouldn't have sought me out and I wouldn't have allowed you to find me."

"Allowed me?" repeated Mela as a hot breeze blew over him, again making him unpleasantly aware of the myriad of pungent odors that surrounded him.

"Of course," Said Jericho. "I watched you make awkward and blundering attempts for almost a year, displaying considerably more obstinacy than skill. It was your very persistence, the frantic nature of your efforts, that convinced me you had to be after Conrad Bland."

"You expected us to come to you about Bland?"

"Sooner or later," said Jericho.

"And you look forward to the challenge?"

"Not at all," answered Jericho. "I look forward to the reward, which is commensurate to the challenge."

"Twenty-three decent and honorable men went after him with no thought of reward," said Mela bitterly.

"Little good it did them," responded Jericho emotionlessly. "By the way, were they all killed on Bland's current world?"

"No," said Mela. "He's been running from us for almost five years. We made our first attempt on Lodin, two more on Bareimus II, another on Belsanidor, three on Nimbus VIII, and the rest on other planets along the way."

"I'll want dossiers on all twenty-three operatives," said Jericho. "I want to know their skills, their specialties, and their previous accomplishments in similar situations, if any."

"It's all in there," said Mela, gesturing toward the thick packet, which Jericho now reached for and took.

"Don't look so angry, Mr. Mela," said Jericho. "Your down payment is nonrefundable. Regardless of your feelings toward me, it is in both of our best interests that I accomplish my mission."

"I am here because I was ordered to come," said Mela coldly. "I will cooperate with you in every way possible. But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Fair enough," said Jericho, tossing a few tidbits of food and garbage through the protective fence to a bird that was patiently watching them from the other side. "And now perhaps you'd better tell me something about the planet."

"It's called Walpurgis," said Mela. "Walpurgis III, actually."

"So you informed, me," commented Jericho. "I couldn't find it on my star charts. Is it newly settled?"

"Within the past century or so. You'll find it listed as Zeta Tau III."

"Walpurgis," repeated Jericho. "An interesting name."

"It's an interesting world," said Mela. "A psychologist could have a field day with it."

"In what way?" asked Jericho, and Mela sensed that though there was no change in his expression he had suddenly become more attentive.

"During the Great Opening," began the Republic man, "every damned special interest you can think of laid claim to a planet or two. General Combine got four, United Silicon picked up a pair, even the Jesus Pures got a little world of their own."

"Jesus Pures?" inquired Jericho.

"Church of the Purity of Jesus Christ," explained Mela. "There were so many worlds that even the fringe groups started staking claims."

"And what particular fringe group does Walpurgis represent?" asked Jericho.

"Witchcraft," said Mela.

"You're kidding!" said Jericho, smiling for the first time.

"I wish I were," replied Mela, raising his voice again as another flock of birds began screeching.

"But witchcraft doesn't work."

"Neither does believing in the purity of Jesus Christ," said Mela. "The fact remains that a number of covens and Satanic cults staked a claim to Walpurgis, the claim was allowed, and they settled the planet."

"All right, they believe in witchcraft," said Jericho. "How does this cause a problem?"

"Because Conrad Bland fled to Walpurgis and claimed sanctuary." Mela wiped his face again. "My God, it's humid here!"

"I still don't see the problem," said Jericho. "It's a Republic world, isn't it?"

"It's not that simple," said Mela. "These people worship evil, if not in practice then at least in principle. They have a civil government, but in point of fact they're ruled by a theocracy, and the theocracy won't give him up. And after the problem we had on Radillex IV, we're not about to go in after him in force."

Jericho nodded thoughtfully. Radillex IV had given sanctuary to two escaped convicts, the Republic had demanded their return, the planet had refused, the Navy had moved in, and when the dust cleared three million Radillexians were dead and the Republic had a brand-new government. Their successors remained more than a little sensitive about showing their muscle to any colony planet, especially when there were so many alien worlds in real or imagined need of subjugation.

"So we clamped an embargo on Walpurgis and placed it under quarantine," continued Mela, "which probably didn't do a hell of a lot of good, since they never had any commerce with the rest of the Republic anyway."

"And you're sure he's still there?" said Jericho.

"We've got that world sealed up so tight nothing can get in or out," said Mela. "He's there, all right. In fact, we've had some recent secret communications with the civil government concerning him."

"And?"

"They've begged us—literally begged us—to terminate him."

"Did they give any reason?" asked Jericho.

Mela shook his head.

"I'll need histories, guidebooks, and anything else you can give me concerning Walpurgis," said Jericho at last.

"We don't have a damned thing," said Mela.

"Not even a map?"

'Topographical, yes; roads and cities, no," said Mela. "You must understand: the founders viewed themselves as an oppressed minority, and they cut themselves off totally from the rest of the Republic. Both immigration and emigration have been severely restricted throughout their history. They have no commerce with any other world of the Republic—or with any alien world, for that matter. They willingly pay the higher taxes that result from refusing conscription. They allow no video transmissions in or out. Hell, they don't even honor the credit; instead they've got some archaic mixture of dollars, pounds, yen, and rubles."

"I see," said Jericho. "Have you any operatives there at the moment?"

"One, if he's still alive," replied Mela. "A man named Ibo Ubusuku."

"Where is he stationed and how can I contact him if the need arises?"

"We've heard from him only once," said Mela. "He's in a city called Amaymon in the southern hemisphere, and he can be contacted through a coded classified advertisement which is on one of your discs. He hasn't broken radio silence since his initial message, since the Republic isn't very popular on Walpurgis these days."

"Is there anything else I should know?" asked Jericho.

"Probably," said Mela. "Unfortunately, no one in the government is in a position to give it to you."

"Then," said Jericho, rising to his feet, "I think we can consider our meeting concluded. Please make no attempt to follow me."

"One last thing," said Mela. "I am empowered to authorize the purchase of any weapon you feel you may need."

"I'm sure I can find what I need on the planet," said Jericho.

"But our weaponry is much more sophisticated!" protested Mela.

"Mr. Mela," said Jericho slowly, as if weighing each word, "this may come as a surprise to you, possibly even a disappointment, but there are many men and women who are better shots than I am, just as there are many others who are more proficient in hand-to-hand combat. You are not hiring a marksman or a brawler. You are hiring an executioner. I'll get what I need on the planet."

A huge scarlet eagle floated effortlessly down toward the ground, then screeched and pounced on a small mammal. Mela turned momentarily to see the cause of the commotion. When he turned back, the man who called himself Jericho was gone.

Chapter 2

"Murder is merely a passion, but slaughter is an art."

—Conrad Bland

It was not, at first glance, all that odd a world.

Jericho had prepared for it as best he could. The physical portion was easy, consisting of simply adjusting the ship's systems to give him the feel of the lighter gravity and somewhat higher oxygen content of Walpurgis, so that he could maneuver on the planet without giving himself away through a sudden unexpected show of strength or agility, or by the slow intoxication that occasionally overtook a body unused to the enriched atmosphere.

He spent three weeks reading everything he could find on the various cults and covens of Earth prior to their departure for Walpurgis III 123 years ago—but since societies were living, evolving things, he had the feeling that his information would be, for the most part, outdated and archaic.

When his preparations were complete, he proceeded to the next stage of his plan. Replacement ships were continually joining the cordon of Republic vessels blockading Walpurgis, and one of those ships, within three days of taking up its position, found its orbit decaying and had to set down on the planet for minor repairs. No member of the crew had been aware of Jericho's presence on board the ship; none knew that the malfunction was carefully calculated to allow them to land in the southern hemisphere; no one saw him leave the ship shortly after nightfall.

A major city lay adjacent to the spaceport, and using the cover of night he made a quick but expert tour of the nearest shopping center. Once he had determined from examining various window displays that the local clothing bore no symbols of rank, class, or occupation, he methodically looted four haberdasheries, taking a shirt from one, pants from another, an outer jacket from a third, and shoes, socks, and cash from a fourth. Though he was certain that no one had seen him leave the spaceport, he also changed his appearance from that of a pudgy blond man in his early thirties to a somewhat slimmer man of about fifty. Since he couldn't be sure of the local hair styles—store mannequins were frequently out of date—he decided that it would be best to give himself a sparse, thinning head of hair, receding in the front, balding at the back, light brown on top and gray at the sides. He decided against a mustache or beard, but gave himself an impressive scar extending from his upper lip to his jaw, just in case he needed an excuse for his bare face.

Feeling himself to be relatively safe from immediate detection, he took a second, slower tour of the area, trying to get the feel of the place, and walking toward what he took to be the center of the city. There were a number of stores specializing in this world's equivalent of religious tokens and charms, and a few more herb shops and palmists and phrenologists than he would expect to see in a normal Republic city of comparable size. Many of the shops selling what he considered to be "normal" goods—clothing, groceries, hardware, and the like—had cabalistic designs painted or etched on their windows, and almost all of them had small charms and amulets in among their merchandise. None of them, however, were advertising cut-rate surefire curse removals or virgins for sacrifice, and this disturbed him. It would be far easier to infiltrate a society so new that it still belligerently exhibited and commercialized the signs of its beliefs than to pass unnoticed in a society where those beliefs were so commonly held that the tokens became unimportant.

Suddenly he heard voices off to his left, and he quickly ducked into a recessed doorway. A moment later a number of bare-breasted women, dressed uniformly in shoulder-length gloves and thigh-high boots made of rubber, walked past him, moaning and chanting what seemed to be a prayer, though the language was unfamiliar. Two of them carried a small litter between them, and on it sprawled the body of a dead cat which had evidently been crushed by some type of vehicle.

That it was a funeral procession for a familiar, in the form of a cat, seemed obvious. As for the clothing of the mourners, he could make no sense of it—or of its failure to attract any masculine attention.

He walked another block, then again ducked out of sight as two hooded figures, clad totally in black, approached him in the company of three men wearing what he took to be standard business suits. They seemed to be having a vigorous but good-natured discussion about some sporting event or other, but he couldn't catch the details. None of them seemed to be aware of the incongruity of their outfits.

He continued walking, observing and making mental notes about the city. It was starting to show its age in places, despite the obvious care taken by its sanitation department. The streets were devoid of dirt and litter, the smooth sidewalks glistened as if they had been polished, trash atomizers were on every corner—but here and there were the signs of deterioration: level upon level of patchwork placed over pothole-prone sections of the street, a building in need of sandblasting, a small shop between two large office buildings obviously being allowed to run down so that it could be condemned and replaced by still another steel-and-glass tower of enterprise.

As he walked along he passed a number of churches, most of them mock-Gothic in architectural style, each with goats grazing on its lawn. He thought he heard screams and moans coming from one of them, and he actually did see a few nude bodies doing a frantic dance through the window of another, but he had no intention of inspecting them more closely until he knew more about the customs of the planet. One rather small church, perched at the top of a slight incline, actually had a circle of fire around its doorway, through which the congregants presumably had to leap in order to pay homage to their particular god or demon.

He realized that he was still a couple of miles from the heart of the city, and he reached it just before dawn. When the businesses began opening a few hours after sunrise, he decided to buy a local newspaper. He passed five vending machines, ascertained to his relief that he was indeed in Amaymon, and not wishing to draw attention to himself by inserting the wrong coin, sought out a human-operated newsstand, preferring an excessive amount of change to the possibility of underpaying from ignorance.

He stopped next at a seedy-looking restaurant, had some coffee and an odd-tasting roll, and decided that finding lodgings was his next order of business. He avoided the larger hotels, since he didn't know what kind of identification or credit information they would require. He would have much preferred a rented room in a private home, but he was too unfamiliar with the city and felt that the sight of a strange man wandering through a residential area was far more likely to draw unwanted attention than he would receive if he remained in the business section. He walked a few blocks until the surroundings grew a bit more squalid, then entered the lobby of a particularly dismal-looking hotel, the type which in most societies would have rented its rooms by the hour rather than the night.

"Name?" said the bored desk clerk.

Jericho looked around to make sure the lobby was empty.

"Conrad Bland," he said, watching for a reaction.

"Don't tell me, feller," said the clerk, shoving a book toward him without any hint of recognition. "Write it down here."

Jericho picked up a pen and scribbled the name so badly that a score of handwriting experts could spend days trying to decipher it without success.

"Any luggage?" asked the clerk.

"Just what I'm wearing."

"Right," said the clerk, unsurprised. He handed Jericho a small slip of paper with the room combination written on it. "Do you belong to the Cult of the Messenger or the Church of Baal?"

Jericho shook his head.

"Okay. If you belong to any other cult or sect requiring the sacrifice of living animals, you must inform the management and a stipend will be appended to your bill. You don't look like you've got any candles with you, but if you decide to go out and get some, we allow cold candles only. No hots. Got it?"

"Got it," replied Jericho. "Where's my room?"

"I'm not through yet," said the clerk irritably. "Any charms attached to the walls in a manner that the management considers permanent will become the property of the hotel. Any ritual weapons found in your room by the maids will become the property of the hotel. No visitors of either sex are allowed after midnight. And we demand a week's rent in advance."

"What if I don't stay a week?" said Jericho, certain that this reaction was expected of him.

"Then you apply for a refund," said the clerk.

"I don't like it," grumbled Jericho.

"No one pulled you in off the street," said the clerk. "You don't like it, all you got to do is turn around and walk out."

Jericho glared at the man for a long minute. "How much?" he asked at last.

The clerk smiled. It was the grin of a man who played this scene out several times every day and knew both ends of the dialogue by rote. "Seventy sterlings," he said, holding out a huge hand.

Jericho turned his back and pulled out a handful of bills, checking the denominations and handing the proper amount over to the clerk. He allowed the clerk a long look at his bankroll.

"That's a fair-sized wad you got there," commented the clerk, staring intently at him. "Nice new clothes, too."

"I got lucky," replied Jericho, again watching for a reaction.

"If it starts burning a hole in your pocket, I might know a couple of interesting places to spend it," said the clerk. "For a small consideration, of course."

"Perhaps later," said Jericho. "How about my room?"

"Three-ten," said the clerk. "Up three flights and down the corridor. The lift is broken; you'll have to take the stairs."

Jericho nodded. A quick glance at the elevator convinced him that it had been in a state of disrepair for months, probably years, and he walked over to a concrete staircase. A moment later he had reached his room, punched out the combination on the computer lock, and entered.

It was a dingy, barren room, pentagonal, as he suspected all of them were. It possessed a narrow bed with a stain on the spread, a much abused dresser, one chair, and a nightstand. He pulled out the top drawer of the dresser, hoping for a phone book, but found only a throwaway pack of tarot cards and a cheaply bound copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, an ancient grimoire dating back to the days when Man was still Earthbound. There was no phone, no video set, no radio, nothing that he could possibly use to gain a further working knowledge of the world. The bathroom contained a small chemical commode and dryshower of the type used on spaceships, but he couldn't tell if water was especially hard to come by or if the hotel was simply too cheap to pipe it in.

Having examined the premises thoroughly, he returned to the bed, sat down on the edge of it, and began reading the newspaper he had purchased. It was thin, too thin to service a major city, which implied that most of the news was disseminated through newstapes and discs or by means of video transmissions. It also meant that he would get only major news stories rather than the local color he was after.

The lead story concerned the economy, which was growing a little too erratically to suit those who controlled it. Also on the front page was an editorial which managed to castigate the Republic thoroughly for eleven paragraphs without ever once mentioning Conrad Bland. The third page made brief mention that the Brotherhood of Night and the Cult of the Messenger had both closed their branches in the city of Tifereth, and a quick check of the financial page showed that the Tifereth commodities market had ceased trading almost a month ago, ostensibly because of a major decline in volume.

Possibly the city had fallen on hard financial times. Possibly it was due to Bland. He couldn't tell based on such minimal information, but he put a visit to Tifereth on his list of priorities.

The clerk and the news story had both mentioned a number of cults, and, on a hunch, he turned to the advertisements listing the local churches. It was as he had feared. There was no one religion whose tenets he could quickly assimilate. Rather, there were such sects as the Cult of the Messenger, the Church of the Inferno, the Daughters of Delight, the Church of Baal, the Order of the Golem, the Sisterhood of Sin, the Church of Satan, and literally dozens more, almost as many splinter groups as Christianity had possessed in its heyday.

He sighed. There was more to this world than met the eye. Intermixed with ads for furniture and clothing and real estate were occasional ads selling protection against both good and evil forces, ads for amulets, for voodoo dolls and love potions and immortality elixirs.

When he had finished with the advertisements and notices, and had thus obtained a reasonable approximation of the value of his money, he went through the paper thoroughly to see if his thefts had been reported, though he suspected it had been printed too early to cover them. He was correct, but in the process of looking for the stories he made another discovery: not a single crime had been written up. He couldn't believe that a city of Amaymon's size, which he estimated to be well over a quarter of a million, could go through an entire day without its share of murders, robberies, and rapes, especially on a world that had a religious passion for such things. This implied one of two things: either the news was being carefully managed, or else the concept of crime had undergone an almost unbelievable metamorphosis on Walpurgis.

He suspected the former. No matter how much lip service Walpurgis paid to the concept of evil, no society could ignore felonies without falling into anarchy; and while he could only guess at the framework of this society, anarchy was the one thing he had seen no trace of.

Still, censored news could work to his advantage. If Bland was entrenched solidly enough to make the civil government ask for help in eliminating him, there was no way that Jericho was going to be able to march into his headquarters, wherever they might be, and simply gun the man down. Bland would have layer upon layer of protection, or else he wouldn't have survived long enough to get to Walpurgis. Which in turn meant that Jericho would have to approach Bland indirectly. He didn't know how long he could hide his presence, and it was at least comforting to know that in all likelihood the government would make no more mention of his actions than he himself would.

Having learned everything he could from the paper, he cast it aside, stretched out on the bed, and went to sleep.

It was just after sunset when he arose. He showered, shaved, put on his identity, and went out of the hotel for dinner. He chose a restaurant frequented by people who were dressed like himself and spent some time studying the menu. After he had eaten he again walked through the city, listening to snatches of conversation, and then went to a Tri-Fi cinema. If he had hoped to learn something about Walpurgis he was disappointed, for it was a conventional love story during which the audience laughed hysterically every time the heroine made some sacrifice to Beelzebub. He gathered that it fell into the realm of lighthearted historical romance, but be didn't dare ask anyone.

He spent the next hour checking into three more hotels, signing names he had memorized from the Tri-Fi's credits at each. He returned to his original hotel and emerged ten minutes later as a middle-aged and semi-obese man with close-cropped red hair. In this guise he visited two bars about a mile from the hotel, got himself thrown out of both for unruly conduct, and then lumbered into an all-night restaurant, ostensibly for black coffee. When he left half an hour later he had a steak knife tucked under his belt.

Then, because he had to learn more about the police and their efficacy, he went hunting. Two blocks from the restaurant he spotted his prey, a mild-looking man in his late fifties, who was walking along the sidewalk alone and unconcerned.

Jericho fell into step behind him like some awful jungle animal that had marked its dinner. He didn't hurry, never seemed to increase his pace, often appeared to be traveling in a different direction on the deserted streets; but slowly, inch by inch, he narrowed the gap between them with a dreadful patience. Within ten minutes they were eighty feet apart, then forty, then twenty—and then, with the swiftness and surety of a cobra, he struck.

The man never made a sound, never felt a stab of pain, never even knew his throat had been slit. He was dead almost before he hit the pavement.

And Jericho, like some besmocked technician who has added a dangerous element to a solution in a laboratory, settled back to observe what happened next.

Chapter 3

"No matter how heinous a deed you contemplate, the operative question is not Is It Evil, but rather Is It Possible?"
—Conrad Bland

John Sable stood at the pentagonal obsidian table in the corner of his office, genuflected before the statuette of Cali, lit an oddly shaped red candle, and murmured a brief prayer to Azazel over it. This was followed by two more candles, with prayers to Asmodeus and Ahriman. He then held his amulet up to the baphomet that hung on the wall above the table, made a Sign of Five in the air, and walked over to his desk. He sat down, leaned back with a sigh, and once again promised himself that he really would make more of an effort to wake up early enough to go through his morning invocation at home.

After a moment he pressed an intercom button.

"Any word on that body yet?"

"Yes," came the reply. "Parnell Burnam, age fifty-seven. Lived at 834 on the Avenue of Despair. He was a welder by trade."

"Sect?" demanded Sable.

"Cult of the Messenger."

"Shit!" muttered Sable. He hit another button. "Get me Benito Vertucci on the vidphone." He waited a moment for the connection to be made, then turned and faced the camera that was positioned to the side of his chair. "Vertucci, this is John Sable."

"I know who you are," said the tall, black-hooded figure in stentorian tones.

"I thought we had an agreement," said Sable harshly.

"What do you mean?" asked Vertucci.

"Two ritual murders a year," said Sable, trying to control his anger, "That was the deal."

"We have committed only two this year," was the reply. "Both were registered with your department."

"Then explain Parnell Burnam to me!"

"The name is unfamiliar," said Vertucci.

"He happens to be a member of your cult!" snapped Sable. "At least, he was until he got his throat slashed last night. Murder happens to be a capital crime, even in Amaymon. We agreed to close our eyes to two killings a year apiece from your group and the Church of Baal, provided you kept it within your own sects. But you've crossed the line on this one, and I'm going to nail you for it."

"The Cult of the Messenger does not mutilate necks, ritually or otherwise," said Vertucci. "I am as anxious to see the murderer brought to justice as you are, Detective Sable. You must believe me about this."

"Are you willing to face the truthtell machine?" demanded Sable.

"I am."

"I'll have the dose turned up to lethal."

"Satan is with me," said Vertucci serenely. "Send one of your operatives by for me at your convenience."

"One hour," promised Sable, breaking the connection.

He hit another intercom button. "Have someone bring Benito Vertucci in for questioning, and find out if there's ever any variation of the standard procedure for a Messenger ritual killing. Oh—and tell Langston Davies that I want to see him."

He pulled out a cigar, was about to light it, realized that he would have to offer one to Davies, and put it back in his pocket with a wry smile as he realized that even the Chief of Detectives was starting to feel the pinch of inflation.

Davies entered his office a moment later, a tall cadaverous man in his mid-thirties who had been attempting to cultivate a beard with only moderate success.

"You sent for me?" he asked, pulling up a chair.

"You've been on the Burnam thing all morning, haven't you?" asked Sable.

Davies nodded. "Looks open-and-shut to me. The guy was a Messenger."

"What if I told you Benito Vertucci is coming in to face the truthtell machine?"

"He's bluffing," answered Davies firmly.

"I don't think so," said Sable. "I've got someone checking on it right now, but I think we're going to find that it wasn't a ritual killing."

"It's got to be. The man had three thousand yen in his pocket and one hell of a gold amulet around his neck. It sure as blazes wasn't a robbery."

"Lovers' quarrel?" suggested Sable.

"Not hardly," said Davies with a chuckle. "The guy lived alone, and according to his medical file he's been impotent for the better part of twenty years."

"Couldn't that produce a frustrated lover?" inquired Sable mildly.

"I'll check it out, but I think you're reaching," said Davies. "By the way, you wouldn't happen to have one of those wonderful cigars of yours lying around, would you?"

Sable smiled ironically and withdrew a pair, handing one to Davies and lighting the other himself. "Did Burnam have any problems at work?" he asked at last.

"I doubt it," said Davies. "The guy inherited a bundle a few years back. Gave most of it to the Cult of the Messenger, but he kept enough to live very comfortably. He'd refused a couple of promotions in his machine shop because he liked what he was doing, and I don't imagine letting people skip over you in seniority is apt to produce too many enemies."

"What was he doing last night?"

"Getting killed."

"Before that," Sable said irritably.

"I don't know," said Davies. "He lived alone, ate most of his meals out. Probably he was at some bar or watching a Tri-Fi. Or he could have been with the cult. They deny it, of course, but that's how I see it. They slit his throat for some reason or other and then dumped him downtown."

Sable shook his head slowly. "I've got a gut feeling that says the Messengers didn't do it. We get our share of murders in this town, but usually they're ritual killings or else very obvious crimes of passion or profit. This one smells different. It feels wrong."

"It's a pity you gave up voodoo when you married Siboyan," said Davies. "I understand they've got a ceremony that's really great for ferreting out criminals."

"You understand wrong," said Sable. "Voodoo's like any other religion; long on comfort and short on results."

"So you keep telling me," said Davies with a smile. "Yet it remains one of the most popular sects."

"Almost every black man starts out in voodoo," replied Sable. "Most of us leave it sooner or later. It's a little too barbaric for my tastes. And now perhaps we'd better get back to the subject at hand, equally barbaric though it may be."

"To tell the truth, it wasn't all that brutal a killing," said Davies. "It was quick, clean, efficient. I doubt that Burnam knew what happened to him."

"You'd better check the local bars and restaurants and see if anyone was getting out of hand last night," said Sable. "I'll handle the Messengers, but I don't think they're going to be able to help us on this one."

"Anything else?" asked Davies.

"Yes," said Sable. "See if the Church of Baal has any grievances against the Messengers. Maybe Burnam's murder was just a warning to them, though I doubt it."

Davies left the office, and Sable leaned back, folded his hands behind his head, and savored the aroma of his cigar.

It was puzzling. He knew he was sending Davies on a wild-goose chase, though of course he had to explore every possibility. But if Burnam was the Church of Baal's calling card they had forgotten to sign it, and he couldn't believe they were that careless. There was an order to the universe, a surplus of motives rather than a lack of them, and he knew if he proceeded methodically and vigorously he would come upon the motive for this murder sooner or later, and then everything would fall into place. In fact, he reflected wryly, that was his job in a nutshell: preventing the chaos of the human psyche from spilling over into the structured order of daily life. Still, it could have been worse; at least he lived on a world where the normal aggressions and hatreds of the race were channeled into spiritual outlets rather than suppressed to the point where they began popping up all over the landscape, and for that he was grateful.

His reverie was broken by a call from Siboyan, who informed him that their younger son had contracted a mild case of the flu and asked him to bring home some asafetida and vervain from the herbalist and to buy some more ceremonial candles when he had the time. He dutifully jotted down her requests, added a note to pick up a toy for the boy, and then explained that he had to get back to work.

He waited for Vertucci in the truthtell room, got the negative responses he had expected, and released him.

More information kept crossing his desk all morning and afternoon. The murder weapon had not been found. The Church of Baal didn't have any arguments with anyone. The Cult of the Messenger's ritual murders were always performed by a knife thrust through the heart while the victim lay on an altar. There were no fingerprints on the body. Burnam had eaten at the Roost, an inexpensive restaurant in the center of town, but his whereabouts for the next three hours were unknown. A fat redheaded man that no one could identify had been thrown out of a couple of bars, seemingly in too intoxicated a condition to hold a knife, let alone wield it like an expert, thought that would bear some looking into. Burnam was the most popular man at his place of work, without an enemy in the world. Burnam had not been seen in the company of a woman for almost two decades, nor could any homosexual contacts be uncovered. Burnam's rent was paid for three months in advance, and the bulk of his money was drawing interest in a local bank.

Yet there had to be a motive. Sable knew that this wasn't the work of a madman or some fanatic in a state of drug-induced or religious frenzy; it was much too cold-blooded and efficient for that.

He half wished that he himself had been a little less efficient in the past. That way, at least, there might be other unsolved murders to link this one to, other killers still prowling the streets of Amaymon. But there weren't. He had been Chief of Detectives for seven years, and his record was perfect: forty-three murders, forty-three arrests, forty-three convictions. There was nothing in the past to which he could tie this killing.

Sable lit another cigar—his fourth of the day, he noted guiltily—and concentrated on the facts before him.

All right. It wasn't the Cult of the Messenger. It wasn't the Church of Baal. It wasn't a lover of either sex. It wasn't a thief. It wasn't this. It wasn't that.

Then who could it be?

Sable lowered his head in thought, then sat bolt-upright.

Bland?

Sable considered the notion for a moment, then rejected it. Bland was still in Tifereth, and besides, they were on his side. More, they were the only people in the whole Republic who were on his side. He'd know better than to turn on them.

All right. If not Bland, then who?

And if it wasn't tied to the past, could it perhaps be tied to something else?

He started blankly at the baphomet on his wall, considering all the possibilities.

Then, suddenly, John Sable began to get very excited. He had a totally wild notion, a longshot among longshots, but deep down in his gut, where such judgments were weighed and made, it felt right.

Chapter 4

"Suffering serves no useful purpose, but it does delight the eye."
—Conrad Bland

Jericho returned to each of his four rented rooms after the killing, disturbing the covers and making enough of a mess in the bathrooms so it would appear that they were actually being used. Then he went out, looted two more stores, and moved into the Talisman, a middle-class hotel. He slept until sunrise, breakfasted, purchased a better grade of clothing, disposed of the clothes he had stolen, and spent most of the morning and early afternoon watching the video set in his room. He concentrated on soap operas, hoping to glean more about the customs and habits of Walpurgis.

What he saw confused him. There were differences between Walpurgan society and the rest of the Republic worlds, but the differences were very subtle. He was not surprised to discover that an expression of "Gezundheit!" when someone sneezed was looked upon as an insult or a curse, since these people had no desire to wish devils out of their bodies. But try as he might, he couldn't understand why a prayer to Belial was a source of amusement while the same prayer offered to Baal was supposed to draw tears from the audience, or why a woman would submit to sexual ravishment at the hands of one black-cloaked figure and would take offense when another merely tried to hold her hand.

There was, for example, a Cult of Cthulu, a demon that he knew from his research to be a totally fictitious creation, but as far as he could tell no one worshiped or even mentioned Lucifuge Rofocale, who was supposed to be the commander of the armies of Hell. Some of the actresses dressed like an adolescent boy's kinkiest fantasy, replete with rubber, leather, whips, and spurs, while others covered themselves from head to toe, and he was simply unable to pinpoint any correlation between their behavior and their dress modes.

It was after watching a half-dozen video shows that he knew he would have to seek out Ibo Ubusuku, the Republic's undercover operative, and get a thorough backgrounding on the society that he was going to have to infiltrate. He hadn't wanted to make his presence known to anyone, not even a Republic agent, but he simply had too many areas of ignorance, too many wrong manners and habits to begin approaching Bland yet.

He checked the hour and decided that it was time to see how the police were progressing. He had given them all morning to come to the conclusion that they weren't dealing with any normal, run-of-the-mill murder. He had already given them a timetable: If they weren't looking for an obese redheaded drunkard by nightfall and searching through his four cheap motel rooms by late the following afternoon, they wouldn't pose much of a problem to him in the future. And if they ran ahead of schedule, well, it was best to know now what trouble they could cause him later.

Keeping the guise of a blond man in his mid-thirties, which he had assumed after the murder and had decided upon as his primary persona during his stay in Amaymon, he went out and began walking the mile or so to the first of the two taverns he had visited the previous night

He had gone only three blocks when he was accosted by a scarlet-robed man who carried a pile of leaflets and wore a distinctive jeweled amulet.

"Excuse me, citizen," said the man, "but can I offer you one of these?"

He waved a leaflet under Jericho's nose.

"Why not?" said Jericho with a smile, taking it from his hand.

"What's your position on Conrad Bland?" continued the man.

"I haven't any," said Jericho.

"But you've heard of him?"

"Vaguely, in passing."

"Our position—and the position of all the churches—is that Bland is the savior of Walpurgis," said the man passionately. "It's all spelled out in the leaflet."

"Who does Walpurgis need saving from?" asked Jericho.

"From the Republic. You know that they've demanded his extradition and that we've refused?"

"I don't read the papers," said Jericho.

"You won't find it in the papers," said the man. "The government—the civil government—isn't happy about it at all. They wanted to turn him over to the Republic, but the Council of Sects put enough pressure on them so they had to back down."

"Then what's the problem?"

"They've clamped down on the news media. Hell, a third of the people don't even know Bland's on Walpurgis, and those who do are like you, meaning no offense. We may someday have to go to war over Bland, so we're trying to educate the lay public about him."

"Then I'd better take this home and read it," said Jericho.

"That's all we ask," said the man, spying another pedestrian and heading off to give him a leaflet.

Jericho took a quick look at the handout. It told him nothing new about Bland; indeed, it was nothing but an impassioned tract praising him as the personification of evil, and neglecting to mention those deeds which might have supported the argument.

But while it told him nothing about Bland, it told him quite a bit about the political situation on Walpurgis. The theocracy wasn't as all-powerful as Mela had led him to believe, or else it wouldn't be trying to win the public over to its side by force of argument The civil government still held most of the reins of power, certainly they controlled the media, and they represented a real obstacle to the theocracy on this particular issue. But the most interesting finding of all was that the man in the street was not likely to be a devout advocate of saving or protecting Bland. Indeed, a lot of men in the street didn't even know who Bland was, which was borne out by the ignorance of the desk clerk at the first hotel he had visited.

He tossed the leaflet into the next garbage atomizer he came to, then continued on to the tavern. Nothing much was happening there, no police were visible, most of the evening crowd hasn't gotten off work yet, so he ordered a local brand of beer and nursed it slowly, his eyes riveted to the mirror above the bar, watching every movement on the street.

An hour passed, then another. Jericho was undisturbed; he had spent most of his professional life waiting in one manner or another, and he was used to it.

It was late afternoon now, and the streets began to get a little more congested with both people and vehicles. And then a tall thin man with a sparse beard entered the tavern.

The man walked up to the bartender and began conversing in low tones. The bartender listened attentively, shrugged once, then nodded. The man said something further, and the bartender shook his head vigorously.

Finally the man broke off the conversation and walked to the middle of the room.

"Excuse me," he said in a loud voice, holding up a small golden emblem for any interested bystanders to see. "I am Langston Davies, assistant to Chief of Detectives Sable, and I'm looking for a heavyset man with red or brown hair who was in here last night. Does anyone recall seeing him?"

There was general murmuring of negatives. Jericho considered speaking up and laying another false trail, but decided against it. Sooner or later they would realize they had been lied to, and since only one person would have any reason for lying, he would have revealed his ability to move into and out of identities at will.

"He would have been very drank,'' continued Davies, looking hopefully around the room. "He either came here from the Devil's Den or else went there directly after leaving this place. We've posted a reward for any information that anyone may have."

"How big a reward?" asked a woman who was sitting alone at a table.

That depends on how useful the information is," said Davies. "I'll leave my card here in case anyone decides to get in touch with me."

There was no response, and Davies paused for a moment and then left.

Jericho checked the clock on the wall.

Right on schedule. Davies would check the Devil's Den and the restaurant before dark. Possibly he'd find someone who had actually seen him; probably he wouldn't. Midafternoon habitués of bars and coffee shops usually weren't around at midnight.

Davies would report back, and they'd realize that hunting for witnesses was a dead end. By early evening they'd be staking out all the hotels in the area, and by midmorning at the latest they'd realize they were following a cold trail. Then would come the methodical checking of every recently rented hotel room and a search of those rooms. They'd find his four rooms by late afternoon tomorrow.

Par for the course. Efficient but uninspired. Jericho allowed himself the luxury of a tiny, unseen smile.

He paid his tab and walked out the door, almost bumping into Davies, who was gesticulating wildly and arguing with what was obviously a colleague.

"But what in blazes does he want us to do?" Davies was demanding.

"I don't know," came the reply, "but he says we're wasting our time, that there isn't any fat guy."

"And he doesn't want to start checking out the hotels?" insisted Davies.

Jericho wanted to listen further, but even dropping something on the ground and pausing to pick it up might be too obvious. So, frustrated, he continued walking.

He didn't know who the "he" was that the two detectives were referring to. Probably this Chief Sable. But whoever it was, he'd caught on a little too quickly for comfort.

He made his round of the four rooms again, making each look lived in, then returned to his headquarters hotel and took out the disc containing the information on Ubusuku.

What he learned wasn't all that encouraging. Ibo Ubusuku had been a minor functionary in the diplomatic corps who had accepted the assignment on Walpurgis merely to jump up a couple of notches in his job rating and pay scale. He was a tall black man of Zulu heritage with an excellent academic background but no training in espionage, undercover work, or covert operations of any kind—nor, for that matter, was there anything in his record to imply that he knew the first thing about cults and covens. He had applied to the Walpurgis Immigration Bureau, had been one of only twenty secular applicants accepted during the past two years, and had reported back to his superiors only once.

The gist of that report, short and simple, was that he had seen no trace and heard no mention of Conrad Bland, and that any operative who wished to get in touch with him could take out an ad in the classified section of the Amaymon newspaper stating that he wished to purchase a Red Letter facsimile edition of the Compendium Maleficarum in the original Latin. Ubusuku would reply to the advertiser's box number and a meeting could be arranged.

Jericho put the disc away and considered his situation. Someone had already seen through his disguise, and without doing the necessary legwork. It was not unreasonable to suppose that that same man would be waiting for him to make contact with an operative who was already in place. He couldn't know that the operative was Ubusuku; or, if he did, Ubusuku would already be in custody and beyond Jericho's reach.

Jericho had to proceed on the supposition that Ubusuku was at large and free from suspicion. Now, if his adversary didn't know how to waylay the incoming messages at Ubusuku's end, it made sense to try to stop them at their source. The police couldn't very well tap every vidphone in the city, but Jericho had already checked and discovered that Ubusuku had either no vidphone at all or an unlisted one. This Sable didn't figure to be a fool; he'd know he was starting off a couple of steps behind, and wouldn't waste his time with vidphones and the mails. He'd proceed on the assumption that Jericho was in the dark about Ubusuku's whereabouts, just as Jericho had to assume that Ubusuku's whereabouts didn't include a jail or an interrogation camp.

Jericho lay back on his bed, staring at the somewhat inexpert rendering of a Black Mass on the ceiling, and tried to extrapolate Sable's next move. The detective would keep a watchful eye on all means of public contact, of course, and that would include personal ads. There was nothing in the message to arouse suspicion, but now that Sable had figured out that he could alter his appearance, any stranger placing an ad would be suspect.

Still, he couldn't proceed any further without some kind of backgrounding, so he hit upon a compromise: He would place an ad, but not the one that would trigger a response from Ubusuku. If it sparked no official interest, he would place another within the next day or two.

He stood before the mirror, giving himself a head of thick, bushy gray hair. When this was done he inserted lifts into his shoes. The end result was to add the illusion of between two and three inches to his height. He didn't know if it would help much, since they were looking for a faceless chameleon, but there was at least an outside chance they'd be looking for a somewhat shorter man, and he hadn't gotten this far by not being thorough and cautious.

His new disguise in place, he walked six blocks to the paper's local office, inserted a personal notice to the effect that he was searching for a blond woman he had met at a party two weeks ago, paid for the ad in cash, gave the address of a hotel across the street that he could observe from his window, and returned to his own room. He shaved, showered, took a brief nap, and reclaimed his standard identity.

Then he pulled a chair up near the window, sat down, and kept a watchful eye on the nearby hotel. And as he waited for any sign of discovery, he put himself in Sable's shoes and tried to figure out what he would do next.

Chapter 5

"The screams of the dying can be sweeter music than any symphony."
—Conrad Bland

Try as he would, Sable could never get used to the outward manifestations of affluence. He sat uncomfortably now, leaning back on a leather vibrochair, wondering if he dared to light up a cigar and certain that if he did his host would immediately offer him a far more expensive one. His gaze swept the massive room, passing over a number of jeweled artifacts and beautifully wrought oils, coming to rest on a solid gold statue of a winged Lucifer who seemed to be laughing at some very private joke.

"Well, John, what'll it be?" asked Pierre Veshinsky, tall, distinguished, immaculately dressed, the very picture of a Walpurgan aristocrat "A little liquor, a happy pill, or perhaps something a little more exotic?"

"Just coffee," said Sable.

That's not like you at all," said Veshinsky with a smile. "What's happened to that voracious Sable thirst?"

"Oh, it's still around," said Sable, returning his smile. "But I'm here on business this time."

"Oh?" Veshinsky raised his eyebrows. "You know I'm always glad to see you at my home, John—but if this, is business, shouldn't you have gone through my office?"

"I tried, but they gave me the runaround."

"I'll have to speak to them about that," said Veshinsky calmly.

"They've got a lot of company. No one in the government seems to want to return my calls, and since I've known you for the better part of fifteen years, I thought I'd better have a little talk with you."

"I'm happy to oblige. What seems to be the trouble, John?"

"I have reason to believe that the Republic has placed an operative on Walpurgis with the intention of assassinating Conrad Bland."

Sable expected Veshinsky to make the Sign of the Horns, or utter a curse, or do something. But the tall man merely sipped his drink as if they were doing nothing more than discussing the weather.

"Why did you seek me out?" asked Veshinsky at last.

"You're a member of the City Council," said Sable, wondering at the lack of a reaction.

"What has one to do with the other?" asked Veshinsky.

"My department is having a difficult time getting necessary documents on this case," said Sable. "Files, records, all manner of things. No one is exactly denying us priority, but they're dragging their feet, and I don't think I've got much more than forty-eight hours to nail this killer."

"Just out of curiosity, John," said Veshinsky, picking up a Satanic idol and fingering it absently, "what makes you so sure you've got an assassin on your hands?"

"We had a killing downtown the night before last"

"Oh? Who was killed?"

"The name isn't important. What is important is that the killing was a very efficient, very professional job, and we were unable to find any motive for it."

"And from this you deduce the presence of a Republic assassin?" Veshinsky laughed. He set the idol down, walked across the thick carpet to the bar, and poured himself a refill.

Sable shook his head. "No. From that we could only deduce that we had a very skilled killer in our midst. But when our standard procedures couldn't turn up any clues we expanded our investigation, and found out that a Republic ship had set down at the spaceport for repairs the night before the murder."

"If you'll permit me to say so, John," said Veshinsky, returning to his chair and carefully setting his glass on an onyx coaster atop an altar-shaped end table, "that is an awfully tenuous chain of logic. If I were you I'd forget the whole thing before I made a public fool of myself."

"There's more," said Sable, trying to control his temper.

"I should hope so," said Veshinsky mockingly. "John, take a little advice from an old friend and give it up. Even if you're right, Conrad Bland is thousands of miles away. He's not your concern."

"No, but Parnell Burnam is."

"Who's that?"

"The dead man. This assassin has committed a murder in Amaymon, and it happens to be my job to solve crimes that occur in Amaymon. Since he could have put his ship down in half a dozen other places on the pretext of needing repairs, I can only assume that he has a contact here. I figure he'll make that contact in the next two days, and if we haven't nailed him by then, he'll be gone."

"What are you doing about him right now?" asked Veshinsky, staring at Sable from beneath half-lowered eyelids.

"I've posted watches on all offworlders who have settled in Amaymon during the past two years. If I had a little more manpower, I'd extend it to all immigrants for the past five or ten years, but I don't."

"What if your supposed killer's contact is a native of Walpurgis?"

"Then we're out of luck."

"I think you're out of luck in any event. You've given me no reason why you should assume Burnam's killer is a Republic assassin."

"Oh, I have a reason, all right. Yesterday afternoon he tried to place a personal advertisement in the paper. Probably it was a code of some sort to apprise his contact of his arrival."

"Why should you think so?" asked Veshinsky, returning to the bar for yet another drink.

"Because he gave his address as the Hotel Hanover."

"So?"

The Hanover is a hotel for women only!" said Sable, his dark eyes shining fiercely. "Our assassin didn't know that. He'd obviously observed the place, seen men entering the restaurant and bar, or going up to visit the residents in their rooms, but he hadn't actually been there himself. More to the point, the hotel is owned by the Sisterhood of Sin. He didn't recognize their talisman, didn't know what it stood for. Only an offworlder would commit a blunder like that. When the hotel got a pair of vidphone calls asking for the phony name he had used, the desk clerk contacted us. Our killer has made his first blunder."

"Oh, come now, John," scoffed Veshinsky. "How do you know that it wasn't just a prank?"

"I don't know anything," explained Sable patiently. "I am simply making an educated guess. If I waited for hard information on a man like this, he'd have completed his mission and left the planet before I had a single verifiable fact on him."

"All right, John," said Veshinsky, his face suddenly hard. "Let me ask you a few simple questions, all right?"

"Go ahead."

"Have you found any connection between Parnell Burnam and Conrad Bland?"

"No."

"Have you any tangible proof that anyone got off the Republic ship?"

Sable shook his head. "No."

"Have you any reason to believe that any immigrants are working for the Republic?"

"Only the presence of the assassin."

"If there's an assassin," corrected Veshinsky. "Have you any proof that other departments are dragging their feet on this?"

"Hard proof? No."

"Then allow me to suggest that perhaps what you need is not a manhunt but a vacation," said Veshinsky. "If I were you, I wouldn't jeopardize my health by remaining on the job one minute longer than I had to."

"It's out of the question," said Sable firmly. "We've got an assassin on our hands, and he's not going to wait around Amaymon until we're ready to trap him. He's going to make his contact, and then he'll be off to Tifereth."

"If not a vacation, then perhaps a medical leave of absence," said Veshinsky. "I'll see to it that you don't lose any pay."

"Why don't you spend a little less time worrying about me and a little more worrying about Bland?" said Sable. "Despite the fact that I seem unable to convince you, there is an assassin in Amaymon, and Bland has got to be his target."

"Ah, John," sighed Veshinsky, "subtlety was never your strong suit, was it? You have convinced me that what you said is true; I only wish I could do the same."

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you think of my house, John?" said Veshinsky.

"Why?"

"Just answer the question."

"It's a very nice house."

'It's more than a very nice house. It's a palace. It has seventeen rooms, video-cinema tie-ins in each room, fireplaces and bars almost beyond counting, thick white carpeting, objects of art that you couldn't afford if they multiplied your salary by a factor of ten. I have four butlers, two maids, a robot housekeeper, two manservants, a doctor on twenty-four-hour call. I have—"

"I know what you have," interrupted Sable. "What's the point?"

"The point, my friend John, is that I didn't acquire all of this by sticking my nose in where it didn't belong."

"Let me get this straight, Pietre," said Sable. "Are you bribing me not to get involved in this thing?"

"Nothing of the sort, John," answered Veshinsky. "A man has been murdered. You are Chief of Detectives. It is certainly your job to try to solve it."

"But my job ends three thousand miles south of Tifereth, is that it?" persisted Sable.

"I never said that, John," said Veshinsky. "Though, of course, it's quite true."

"Are you seriously telling me that the government knows that someone's out to kill Conrad Bland and they won't lift a finger to stop him?"

"I am telling you no such thing."

"But you would if you were free to," said Sable.

"Nonsense."

"Then I presume that I can depend upon you to facilitate my job?"

"I'll do what I can," said Veshinsky. He reached behind the bar and pulled out a large box. Opening it, he handed six carefully wrapped cigars to Sable.

"Take these with you. I think you'll enjoy them."

"I really shouldn't," said Sable, but he reached out and took them anyway.

"Aren't you going to have one now?" asked Veshinsky as Sable put the cigars into a lapel pocket.

"These are too good to smoke while I'm working. I'll have one a night. And thanks."

"My pleasure. I'll walk you to the door."

"I can find my way out," said Sable. "Goodbye, Pietre."

"Goodbye, John," replied Veshinsky. He touched a button behind the bar and surrounded himself with quadraphonic holograms of his favorite symphony orchestra.

Sable left Veshinsky's home, signaled to his driver to pick him up, and was back in his office twenty minutes later, wondering why the government didn't seem concerned about the threat to Bland, but indeed seemed to welcome it. He spent a little while thinking about that, finally shook his head as if to rid himself of the problem by a physical action, and summoned Davies and six other members of his staff, two men and four women.

"How did things go with Veshinsky?" asked one of the women when all were seated.

"Not very well," replied Sable. "How about our offworld travelers?"

He had wanted to interview the five Amaymon businessmen who had recently been to other planets for the simple reason that while the assassin was a stranger to Walpurgan customs, neither Sable nor anyone on his staff had ever been off the planet and thus couldn't begin to know precisely how their customs differed from those of the other Republic worlds. He was hoping someone would be able to tell him how to differentiate between eccentric behavior and wrong behavior.

"They're making lists," replied Davies sardonically. "What else are experts good for?"

"Any word when they'll be ready to talk to us?"

"Nope. I also get the distinct impression that certain powers in the government would prefer that we didn't rush them."

"It's an impression I share," said Sable. He surveyed his seven senior staff members for a long moment. "All right," he announced at last. "I'm no expert, but I have a feeling that if we wait for our bona fide authorities to help us out we're all going to die of old age. So let me lay out some broad general guidelines for you to pass on to the people working under your supervision.

"First," he continued, "forget about language. There are already a number of accents on Walpurgis, and everyone in the Republic uses the same base tongue. If our killer knows the name of a distant city, and he must by now, all he has to do is say he comes from there.

"Second, forget about physical descriptions. He's a chameleon, and you can bet that by the time you think you know what he looks like, he's already discarded that identity."

"So what do we look for?" asked another of the women.

"Little things," replied Sable. "Things he hasn't had a chance to learn yet. Don't watch for huge blunders, because he isn't going to make any."

"Give us a for-instance," she persisted.

"All right. If he's as thorough as I think, he'll make sure his hotel maid sees burnt-out candles and offerings to the demon of his choice. I think we should look for a room where the candles are placed in a strange configuration, or where he offered, say, fruit to Belial. I think we should look for a man who is ignorant of the letter of our customs, but not of the customs themselves. For example, we know that a man who makes the Sign of Five will never make the Sign of the Horns or the Sign of Satan, but he probably doesn't know it yet, and he won't know it until he makes a mistake and someone notices. He can also be expected to have a little trouble with our symbols at first: he may very well deduce that a man wearing the Talisman of Saturn over his left breast is a member of the Order of the Golem but he may never know that the same token worn over the right breast makes the wearer a warlock in the Church of the Inferno. If you see him on the street wearing the talisman you may not know that he's blundered, but sooner or later he's going to walk into the wrong church or make the wrong sign and someone will know."

"It makes finding a needle in a haystack look easy by comparison," said one of the men.

The whole trick is to approach the problem at the proper angle," said Sable. "Look directly at a godsnake in a patch of silverweeds for an hour and you might never see him; blink once and cock your head and there he is, big as a mountain. We've got to get used to blinking—and we've got to get used to it soon. With every minute that passes his education continues—and the obvious corollary is that the more he learns about us, the less likely we are to learn anything about him."

"Not to sound defeatist," said the other man, "but this doesn't sound very hopeful. Maybe a massive dose of publicity, even public panic, might prod this guy out into the open."

Sable shook his head. "Not this man. One thing he's not going to do is lose his composure."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because the Republic hasn't sent in an amateur. We're dealing with a man to whom this is strictly routine. He does it all the time, knows all the tricks of the trade, probably feels right at home hiding out in a crowd. He came in absolutely cold, and he's managed to maintain at least two identities and pull off a murder right under our noses. He's made only one mistake, and it was a very minor one." Sable looked around the room grimly. "Just how many more mistakes do you think a man like this is going to make?"

He received no answer, nor had he expected one, and a moment later his staff filed silently out of his office.

Think it'll do any good?" asked Davies, who stayed behind.

"Who knows?" shrugged Sable. "But we've got to do something. I'm open to alternatives."

"I wish I had one," admitted Davies.

They sat in silence for perhaps five minutes. Then his secretary put through a vidphone call from Pietre Veshinsky.

"Hello, John."

"Hello," replied Sable. "I hadn't expected yon to get back to me so soon."

"There wasn't much sense waiting," said Veshinsky. "I made a few calls, spoke to a few people, and didn't see any sense procrastinating."

"Can you help us?"

"No, John, I can't."

"Can anyone?"

"That's an awkward question, John."

"It's an awkward situation, Pietre. The man's a hired killer. He's already murdered a citizen of Amaymon. I can't just sit on my hands."

"I know that, John."

"Can I expect out-and-out physical or legal hindrance if I catch him?"

"I doubt it."

"You doubt it?" demanded Sable. "You mean to say that there's a chance of it?"

"No, John. Let me word that more definitely: No one will hinder you in any way."

"They just won't help me, is that it?"

"In essence."

"Well, fuck them, Pietre!" snapped Sable. "I don't know the first damned thing about Bland, but I know my job and you can tell your friends I'm going to do it!"

He broke the connection and started stalking around his office, feeling constricted by the walls, the ceiling, the government, his clothing, everything.

"Well said," said Davies.

"Don't be an ass, Langston," snapped Sable.

"Huh?"

"'I know my job!'" he repeated mockingly. "Damn it, Lang, right now my job consists of sitting around waiting until he kills someone else!"

He walked over to the window and looked out onto the winding streets of Amaymon, cursing under his breath and wondering if the killer was even now within his field of vision—or, if not, where he was and what he was doing.

Chapter 6

"Evil has no friends, and therefore need not concern itself with loyalty."
—Conrad Bland

Ibo Ubusuku stepped off the lift, walked down the corridor to his apartment, and punched out the combination to his lock. As the door opened he tossed his red satin cape onto an ebon clothespole that had been carved to resemble an enormous phallus. Then he walked through the foyer to the kitchen, deposited two canisters of liquor he had purchased on the way home from work onto a counter, poured himself a tall drink from one, dialed a pair of ice cubes from his freezer unit, and went to his study with the intention of doing a little reading. When he got there he found a blond man of nondescript features sitting at his desk, staring emotionlessly at him.

"Who the hell are you and what do you think you're doing here?" demanded Ubusuku.

"I thought perhaps you'd like to purchase a Red Letter facsimile edition of the Compendium Maleficarum in the original Latin," said Jericho.

Ubusuku threw back his head and laughed. "You scared me half to death! Why didn't you contact me through the newspaper?"

"I ran a test ad yesterday afternoon to see if there would be any reaction."

"And they spotted it?" said Ubusuku. "Well, so much for my great idea about covert contact."

"Nobody spotted anything that I know of," said Jericho.

"Maybe I'm missing something, but if the ad went through, why didn't you follow it up with the real one?"

"Instinct," replied Jericho. "Nothing I could put my finger on. But something told me not to try it again, and I didn't make it this far by not listening to my instincts."

"How did you find me, then?" asked Ubusuku, offering Jericho his drink, which he refused.

"It wasn't that difficult. I knew there had to be a list of resident aliens somewhere in the city, and it stood to reason that the post office would possess it. So I broke in there last night, found your address, and came here."

"You broke into the post office?" repeated Ubusuku with a smile.

"Sneaked in is perhaps a better way of describing it," said Jericho. "Everything is as it was, nothing was taken, no trace of my presence was left. The video monitors will show anyone who checks them out that no one entered or left after hours."

"And you just strolled over to my apartment and made yourself at home?"

"It wasn't quite that simple," said Jericho. "I had to make sure that no one saw me enter, and that's quite a little lock you've got on your door. It took me almost ten minutes to break the code."

"Ten minutes!" exclaimed Ubusuku. "Do you know how much I paid for that damned lock?"

"I wouldn't worry about it," said Jericho impassively. "I doubt that anyone else on this planet could break in here except by force."

"Well, you're here and you're safe and sound and that's all that counts," said Ubusuku, trying to put the ease with which Jericho had gotten there out of his mind. "I've been waiting for the Republic to send someone down here for almost a year. I think you'll enjoy. Amaymon. It's got a beautiful climate and the people are—"

"I didn't come here to enjoy myself," said Jericho.

"Sorry." Ubusuku grinned. "But I've got to warn you to get rid of all your preconceptions about witchcraft and devil worship. They simply don't apply."

"Oh?"

"I thought the same as everyone else when I arrived," said Ubusuku, his enthusiasm growing. "I thought there'd be people ripping babies open by the light of the full moon and all that kind of shit. But it's not like that at all. I took a good hard look at what these people were doing and what they had, and by God—or by Lucifer, I suppose I should say—I converted!"

"I noticed the trappings," said Jericho, looking about the room, which was littered with Satanic artifacts. "This is the first private dwelling I've been in since I got here. Is it typical?"

"Not for everyone," said Ubusuku, adding with a touch of pride. "Just for my cult."

He put his glass down and started walking around the room, pointing out the various things that made it unique to him. "See this baphomet, now? All of them have goat's heads, but the beard makes it the property of the Order of the Golem. And this big round thing over here that looks like an oversized talisman? It's the Seal of Solomon, which is the seal of my cult."

"And all the pornographic paintings on the walls—are they religious symbols too?" asked Jericho with a smile.

"Absolutely!" said Ubusuku. "My cult is a little more hedonistic than most, which is really saying something for a Walpurgis cult. We're very conscious of the need for pleasure, so we surround ourselves with enchantments, so to speak. Old Nellie here," he said, giving a fond pat to the posterior of a shapely young woman who was copulating with three man-sized toads at once, "is my favorite. She was painted by a fellow who lives in the building, if you'd like to meet him—but no, of course you wouldn't. Excuse me for running off at the mouth. What's your mission here and how can I help you accomplish it?"

"I'm afraid its nature is confidential."

"It's got to have something to do with Conrad Bland, right?" said Ubusuku with a smile.

"Why should you think so?"

"Oh, come on!" Ubusuku laughed. "What else could the Republic be interested in on this planet? My guess is that you're here to kidnap him or kill him—not that I personally give a damn, mind you."

"Why not?" asked Jericho, fingering a sacrificial dagger graven with images of toads, snakes, and lizards.

"What's he to me?" said Ubusuku. "The man's a goddamned butcher, isn't he? That's got nothing to do with Satanism."

"Isn't Satan supposed to be a butcher?" asked Jericho mildly.

"No!" exclaimed Ubusuku. "You see, that's where your preconceptions lead you astray! We believe in pleasure, in indulgence, in gratification. Oh, we're opposed to turning the other cheek and a lot of that lily-white crap, but we're a religion that's based on satisfaction of the senses, not termination of them."

"From what I understand, Bland gets his satisfaction from terminating other people's senses," commented Jericho dryly.

"That's why I don't give a damn what happens to him!" said Ubusuku, seemingly unaware of the faulty logic behind his statement.

Jericho decided to let it pass. He was not, after all, here to engage in a theological debate.

"Getting back to your offer," he said at last, "you can help me by giving me some background on the society."

"History or religion?" asked Ubusuku.

"Neither, at least in an academic sense. But I'm going to have to pass for a native, and I've got to know enough about it so that I don't make any mistakes that will identify me."

"How long have you got?"

"I'm not sure," replied Jericho, wondering how close Sable was to guessing the truth. "Maybe a day, possibly two."

"It can't be done," said Ubusuku. "Oh, I could tell you what the major sects are, and how they differ in their beliefs, and what constitutes a major social blunder, and how we got to be this way . . . but I can't pass you off as a Walpurgan in two days."

"I adapt very quickly."

"No one adapts that quickly," said Ubusuku. "It took me months, and I had nothing else to do with my time except learn how to fit in. It's tricky, because it's so much like any other world of the Republic. We eat the same food, we use the same transportation, we live in the same buildings, we pay for products with currency. But on a deeper, subtler level, it's as different as a society can be."

"For example?"

"For example, I say a Regie Satanis instead of an Our Father. I don't use credits unless I'm dealing with another Republic world. I buy steaks and bread and wine, but I also buy bat wings and dead spiders. I'll walk under a ladder, but I make the Sign of the Horns whenever I hear a clap of thunder. But I speak the same language as you do, I put my clothes on the same way, I can't imagine that my sexual techniques are a hell of a lot different. Do you begin to see the problem?"

"Let me approach it another way," said Jericho. "Does everyone make the Sign of the Horns at the sound of thunder?"

"Of course not," said Ubusuku. "The Daughters of Delight do, but the Brotherhood of Night makes the Sign of Five, and I doubt that the other sects do anything much except get in out of the rain or open their umbrellas."

"Good!" said Jericho. "You've made everything a lot simpler."

"I have?"

Jericho nodded. "Now I don't have to learn every gesture and symbol around. What I need from you is a list of those symbols, reactions, beliefs, whatever, that everyone displays, no matter what their sect is."

"I can do that," said Ubusuku. "I will do that. But it won't be enough."

"Why not?"

"Because if you don't practice some form of religion you're going to stick out like a sore thumb. Look: spaceflight is cheap, worlds are cheap, and Walpurgis is on its fifth or sixth generation. Anyone who didn't believe in Satanism or witchcraft to some greater or lesser degree didn't emigrate to Walpurgis to begin with, and of course the children have been brought up with their religious principles intact for more than a century. We don't have any Christian or Buddhist underground here. Why would we, with tens of thousands of planets for the asking, and the motive power to get there affordable to just about everyone? You don't have to be a Golemite or a Messenger or an Infernal, but you've got to be something." He lit a cigar, offered one to Jericho, who refused, and began using various portions of an obscene little statue as an ashtray.

"I see."

"I could school you on the Order of the Golem," offered Ubusuku, trying unsuccessfully to hide his eagerness.

"I think not," said Jericho. "After all," he lied, "if I should be captured during the course of my mission, I wouldn't want anything about my manner or my trappings to lead them to you."

"You've got a point there," said Ubusuku. "Well, at the risk of sounding like a salesman, what sort of religion are you looking for?"

"A popular one," said Jericho. "One of the largest."

"Funny," came the reply. "I would have thought you'd have preferred one of the tiny ones."

"It's easier to get lost in a big crowd than a little one," said Jericho. "And I want a religion where the layman carries no symbols or tokens around with him, where he just goes to the rituals, mumbles a few words, and goes home."

"Well," said Ubusuku, nodding, "I suppose you'll want to become a member of the Church of Satan. Voodoo's almost as big, but most of them are black and you'd be too obvious."

"If voodoo appeals to blacks, how come you didn't join?" asked Jericho.

"And spout a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and say the Lord's Prayer backward and all that crap?" said. Ubusuku with a grimace. "No, thanks! Even if I didn't agree with their principles, I would have joined the Order of the Golem just for the sex alone! Let me tell you, friend, you can lose twenty pounds the first month before you convince yourself it's not all a dream and everything will still be there tomorrow."

Jericho remained silent.

"Well, suppose I dial us up a little dinner and we'll get to work?" said Ubusuku. "I'll also see if I can get us into a Satanic service tonight In the meantime, my home is your home, although I realize that I'm offering it to you somewhat after the fact."

"Does that include your library?"

"Absolutely," said Ubusuku, rising and walking toward the kitchen.

"Do you have any maps in your study?" asked Jericho.

"Top left-hand drawer of my desk!" called Ubusuku from the kitchen.

Jericho knew where the maps were, of course; he had had about two hours to go over every inch of Ubusuku's apartment before he returned home, and the maps were the first thing he had sought out. However, to make a suitable impression on his unsuspecting host, he pulled out the map of Amaymon and spread it on the desk.

He then pulled out a somewhat less detailed map of the entire planet—the map he needed. If the police hadn't figured out who he was yet, they soon would; and they'd probably warn Bland to be on the lookout for a Republic assassin coming from Amaymon, which was almost three thousand miles south and a bit east of Tifereth.

He had already decided against the two most obvious and direct routes before Ubusuku arrived home, and now he began searching for alternatives. Finally he found what he had been looking for: a little town some two hundred miles north and east of Tifereth. It was called Malkuth, and had a population of about fifty thousand. He decided that his best bet was to approach Malkuth from the north, assimilate himself into the population if possible, and go south to Tifereth from Malkuth. If Bland didn't have an army he would at least have an enormous security force, and if they conscripted from beyond Tifereth itself, Malkuth seemed one of the likelier principalities. Possibly he could even manage to get himself drafted into Bland's forces; it was worth a try.

He studied the map further. Walpurgis was relatively newly settled, and the population wasn't going to be able to cover its adopted world with a network of cities and villages and hamlets for quite a few centuries yet. In fact, the mere existence of almost one hundred cities spread across the planet was unusual in itself; most colony worlds started with one or two central villages which radiated outward and evolved into hugely diverse cities in a matter of a few decades but left most of the planetary surface untouched. Probably Walpurgis had developed as it had because the sects found each other's beliefs inimical, but he made a mental note to check on it.

He spent a few minutes committing the vital portions of the map to memory, then folded it neatly and replaced it in Ubusuku's desk. He felt no need to remove his fingerprints; he had had none for fifteen years.

Then, rising, he walked through the apartment, scanning the titles of the books and tapes that cluttered the shelves. Most of them were either treatises on chlorine-world entomology or else works of pornography, which he took to be his host's academic and nonacademic fields of interest and expertise.

He went next into Ubusuku's bedroom, which was filled almost to overflowing with paintings and statues and holograms of demons and women locked in various perverted forms of sexual congress. He paid them scant attention and walked quickly to the mounds of books and journals that were piled carelessly on the floor. He hadn't had time to get to them before, and he was hoping they might include some local publications. To his disappointment, most of them were scholarly journals relating to insects.

He returned to the study just before Ubusuku came in with a huge smile on his face.

"I know it sounds corny as all hell," he said, "but how would you like deviled eggs?"

"They'll be fine," said Jericho. "And after dinner, perhaps you can recommend a couple of books or magazines that might help me."

"We'll discuss the universal customs and superstitions while we eat," said Ubusuku, "but you won't have any time for reading after we're through with dinner."

"Oh?"

"I've got a friend who's a member of the Church of Satan. He's been trying to convert me for months, and he agreed to get us into a Black Mass tonight."

"Good," said Jericho, following Ubusuku from the kitchen to the dining room.

"We'll be having some steak with our eggs," said Ubusuku, placing a pair of plates on the table and seating himself. "Which brings up the first of many points we've got to cover: There aren't many food taboos on Walpurgis, but the ones we have are pretty broad-based."

"Such as?"

"Such as never eating goat or any goat product."

"Why not?"

"The goat is one of our sacred symbols. It crosses just about all religious lines."

"Then why would anyone offer it on a menu?" asked Jericho, cutting into his steak.

"Because we've got about two million of them on the planet," said Ubusuku. "And some of the restaurants will serve goat meat or goat milk for the whites."

"What are whites?"

"White witches," said Ubusuku. "There aren't a lot of them, but there are enough in every city so that a few restaurants will cater to them."

"How does a white witch differ from any other one?"

"They believe in using magic for good," said Ubusuku.

"Seems kind of unrewarding on a world like Walpurgis," commented Jericho.

"It is," agreed Ubusuku. "Which leads me to another taboo: Don't wear white."

"I've noticed that hardly anyone does."

"There's a reason for it," explained Ubusuku. "Black is the holy color of most of the sects. White will identify you as a white witch, and there are so few of them that one of them will probably spot you as an impostor. Also, you'll run into trouble if you try to get into any place that's forbidden to them."

"Such as?"

"It's too involved to go into. Just make sure you don't wear white."

Jericho nodded. "Can a man be a white witch?"

"Certainly. Of course, we'd call such a man a white warlock, but it comes to the same thing. The witches aren't too thrilled with them, though; they've got enough troubles without them. Women have a rather ambiguous position on Walpurgis."

"In what way?"

"Politically they're equal to men in every respect, just as they are in the rest of the Republic. But our religions require them to practice various forms of enchantment. Most of these enchantments are ritualistic, but some of them are sexual, and this creates some conflicts. A number of women have risen to positions of enormous power: there's the Magdalene Jezebel, who's the head of the Daughters of Delight, and even the Cult of the Messenger has a High Priestess. But all in all, most of the religions are holdovers from the days when women were objects of lust and desire, and some of them have trouble balancing their positions in the church with the economic and political power they possess outside of it. It's a bad situation, and it's going to boil over one of these days. I hope I'll be peacefully dead and buried before it happens."

"How are women treated by men?" asked Jericho.

"I just told you."

"I mean on the streets."

"Ah!" said Ubusuku, his face lighting up. "Well, as I've said, they are political equals, and of course we believe in the principle of selfishness, so don't go opening doors for them, or tipping your hat, or treating them any differently than you'd treat a man. Chivalry is a Republic custom. And, on the subject of the Republic, try not to say anything civil about it. There's been a worldwide hate campaign going ever since the Republic tried to get Walpurgis to extradite Bland. And if you know any Republic slang, I'd advise you to forget it until you leave the planet. We've had so little contact with the other worlds that any slang that's cropped up in the past few years would be pretty easy to spot"

"What else?" said Jericho, finishing his steak and starting on the deviled eggs.

"Offhand, I wouldn't shake hands with anyone if I were you," said Ubusuku. "Rudeness is not the social stigma here that it is elsewhere, and there are so damned many secret handshakes that you'll never know which one you're getting or how to respond to it. Oh yes, and you'd better have a secret name."

"A secret name?"

"Everyone has one. Again, it's an almost universal trait among cultists. And it's best to be prepared—if you try to join a church, they may ask for yours. My own," he said with a touch of pride, "is Ehlis."

"Then I think I'll take Judas," said Jericho with a secret smile.

"That's not a demon," Ubusuku pointed out.

"I feel a certain kinship to him nonetheless," said Jericho.

"Whatever you want," said his host with a shrug. "And you'd better have a home town."

"What's wrong with Amaymon?"

"It's the biggest city on the planet, and most people have been here at one time or another. I think you'd be better off choosing a smaller city that almost no one goes to so you'll be less likely to be tripped up if someone questions you about it."

"Can you suggest one?"

"Well," said Ubusuku, "there's a tiny little town called Tannis about five hundred miles west of us. I know they've got a Church of Satan there, and I've only met three people from it in a year. Also, if anyone questions you closely, you can lie about it, which you can't do about Amaymon."

"Why should that be?"

"Amaymon was the first city on the planet, but a lot of the cults didn't like the religious freedom and tolerance Amaymon was forced to display as the home of maybe seventy sects. So they started their own outposts, which over the years have grown into cities. Most of them are on the River Styx, since barge traffic is still the cheapest way to ship goods between cities, but a lot of them are closed to outsiders once you get past their docking facilities. Since Amaymon has the only spaceport capable of handling the really big ships, it has always had more of a mix of religions."

"Have you been to any of the other cities?" asked Jericho.

"Why should I?" asked Ubusuku. "I like it here just fine. And besides, some of those other places take their religion a little too seriously."

"I thought you were serious about yours," commented Jericho.

"I'm serious about fucking a lot of women and having a good time for myself," said Ubusuku. "Some of those cities pay more than lip service to evil, let me tell you. I don't think Bland wound up in Tifereth by accident; it was a pretty strange place long before he got there. But to get back to some of the things you'll have to watch for, I'd strongly suggest that you never mention God, or Allah, or Jehovah, or whatever name He goes by in your culture, in conversation or even when cursing." He smiled. "We tend not to mention the enemy here. Also, don't whistle."

"Why not?"

"Many of the sects have secret identifying whistles, just as they have secret handshakes and passwords. Whistle the wrong thing and you might find yourself in a hell of a lot of trouble."

"I notice that you use 'hell' and 'damn' frequently in your speech," said Jericho. "Is that usual?"

"Except among the whites," said Ubusuku. "And while I'm thinking of it, some people will make the Sign of the Horns or the Sign of Five the way Christians make the Sign of the Cross. Your church doesn't have any such sign, so don't go trying to emulate it when you see someone else make it."

"Anything else I should know about the Church of Satan?"

"Just that your talisman is a goat's head inside a five-pointed star, which in turn is inside a circle. You'll see it a lot around Amaymon."

"I've seen a lot of talismans," said Jericho.

"Well, avoid the others. Most of the sects own various bars and restaurants and businesses, and when they display their talisman it's like hanging up a sign that says 'For Members Only.' You can get in a lot of trouble if you disregard it."

"You wouldn't happen to have a book on the local customs, would you?" asked Jericho.

"I've got a little giveaway pamphlet that they handed to me when I arrived," said Ubusuku. "And it's probably only valid in Amaymon."

"I'd like to take a quick look at it before we leave for the church."

"No problem," said Ubusuku. "I'll show it to you after dinner."

"Good," said Jericho, shifting carefully in his chair so as not to dislodge the sacrificial dagger he had taped to his leg.

Chapter 7

"I would never make a pact with Satan. I need no underlings."
—Conrad Bland

The Church of Satan, brand-new and glistening in the moonlight, was a huge Romanesque building with Moorish undertones. It was set back almost two hundred feet from the street, and was encircled by a black wrought-iron fence topped by razor-sharp spikes. Discordant electronic music emanated from within, and the exterior was illuminated by smoky red lights.

Ubusuku and Jericho stopped a few yards short of the gates, and while Jericho stood where he was and observed the people who were entering the church, Ubusuku walked up to one of the hooded men guarding the entrance and whispered a few brief words. The guard nodded, went off for a moment, and returned with a small caped man whose only distinguishing feature was a thick shock of unruly gray hair.

"I didn't really think you were going to make it!" he exclaimed, grabbing Ubusuku by the shoulders and giving him an affectionate hug. "And where is your friend?"

Ubusuku led him over to Jericho. "This is Gaston Leroux," he said, gesturing toward the little man, "and this is my friend—"

"Orestes Mela," interrupted Jericho, stepping forward but not extending his hand.

"Well, I'm pleased to meet you, very pleased indeed," said Leroux with a cordial smile. "We'll have time to get acquainted later, but the service is due to begin any minute now."

"Big crowd?" asked Ubusuku as Leroux led the way up the stone walk to the doors of the church.

"For a weeknight," said Leroux with a shrug. "We've been drawing so well on weekends that we've had to hold two masses an evening."

"I don't think I'd have the energy for two Golem services an evening," laughed Ubusuku.

"My friend the lecher," said Leroux to Jericho with a huge wink.

"I was always a lecher," said Ubusuku. "But on Walpurgis I've found a religion that condones it. However, I'm willing to be shown the error of my ways—but I warn you, it's not going to be easy."

"The way of Lord Lucifer rarely is," said Leroux. "But we'll give it our best shot, and at least you're willing to listen. We'll sit in the back so I'll be able to explain what's going on without disturbing the priests." He looked at them for a moment. "Matter of fact, we'll have to sit in the back, in the Laymen's Gallery. Neither of you is wearing a ritual cape."

They passed through an ornate foyer, and he turned left, leading them into and out of a short series of dark corridors, finally emerging at a row of cushioned seats about fifty yards away from an onyx altar. Frescos of debauchery and bloodless torture dominated the walls and ceiling, illuminated by literally thousands of oddly shaped ritual candles. On the wall behind the altar hung a gold-and-black Church of Satan talisman, which Jericho estimated to be a good forty feet in diameter.

Dozens of speakers throughout the church amplified the music, which Jericho found atonal but compelling, possessed of an insistent primal rhythm and punctuated by screams and moans, both passionate and pained, which might or might not have been human in origin.

The arm of every seat had a small orifice for inserting a candle, and Leroux produced one for each of them. As Jericho lit and positioned his candle, Leroux explained that these candles differed from those of the other sects in that they were made from human rather than animal fat, all graciously willed to the Church of Satan by its membership. Ubusuku looked somewhat distressed, but Jericho showed no reaction and continued observing the scene around him.

In the front three rows were a number of men and women whose bare arms suggested that they were wearing little, if anything, beneath their cloaks. After that came perhaps twenty-five rows of men and women—mostly men—dressed much as Leroux was. There was a gap of six more rows, and then came the Laymen's Gallery, which this evening possessed only about thirty men and women, most of them seated singly and in pairs, and none so close that Leroux would bother them with his whispering.

Then, as his gaze moved back to the altar, a tall man appeared beside it. He was dressed all in black, and wore a black cowl possessing a pair of horns that were meant to appear ominous but that Jericho thought looked rather foolish.

"That's Dennison, our Major Priest," whispered Leroux. "Rumor has it that he's going to be elevated to High Priest of Amaymon within the next year or two."

Dennison waited until the audience was perfectly still, then withdrew a wand from his cape and touched five points in the air before him.

From somewhere a gong rang out, and the priest spoke:

"I reign over thee, saith the Lord of the Flies, in power exalted above and below."

"Follow the audience," whispered Leroux, and Jericho moved his lips as the congregants murmured, "Regie Satanis!"

"Behold, crieth Satan," chanted Dennison, "I am a circle on whose hands stand the Twelve Kingdoms. Six are the seats of living breath, the rest are as sharp as sickles, or the horns of death."

"Regie Satanis," intoned the audience.

This continued for another five minutes, at which time the priest touched his five imaginary points with his wand again, and cried out "Shemhamforash!" and the audience responded with the same word.

"It's our most holy invocation of Satan," whispered Leroux. "What's occurred so far is standard for our services. Now we'll get a sermon of some sort, which I hope won't be too boring, and then we'll get on to the mass itself."

Jericho nodded and looked back to Dennison.

"My parishioners!" cried the priest, to the accompaniment of another gong. "I must speak to you now about the man who may be the Awaited One."

"Oh, shit!" whispered Leroux. "Not again!"

"I speak of he who has come to be called the Dark Messiah," said Dennison. "He who has single-handedly staved off the forces of the dread Republic. He who represents the pinnacle of all we cherish and worship. He who has called upon the sects of Walpurgis to help him. Can we, dare we, refuse aid to this man?"

"Great Lucifer, but I wish he'd find some other subject!" whispered Leroux.

"Conrad Bland is the embodiment of Satan, the spirit made flesh!" cried Dennison. "Yet even as I speak to you, Republic ships of war encircle our planet, threatening instant retribution if our people do not comply with their demands. Will we do so?"

"No!" screamed the audience.

"No indeed!" echoed Dennison. "For just as the church must not impose its will upon the state"—Ubusuku and Leroux both chuckled at that—"so the state must not dictate to the church. And the sects of Walpurgis will not relinquish this savior of the believers in Satan!"

"Savior my ass!" snorted Leroux under his breath.

"What do you mean?" asked Jericho pleasantly, as Dennison droned on.

"I haven't been to Tifereth myself, you understand," whispered Leroux, "but I've got a friend who has, and he says Bland has turned the whole damned city into a charnel house."

"You don't say!"

Leroux nodded. "I guess there's corpses lying everywhere, and the torturing has gotten so out of hand that even the Messengers have left the place. This Bland has gone on a killing spree that's already wiped out half the town."

"It makes it rather difficult to worship evil," said Jericho Wryly.

"Bland's not evil!" said Leroux hotly. "He's crazy! He's got nothing to do with my religion. What the hell does he know about pleasure or contemplation or—"

"Lower your voice," whispered Jericho, noticing that they were attracting some attention.

"Sorry," said Leroux. "But I get sick and tired of hearing about that madman." He turned back to Dennison, a scowl on his face.

"Beware the Republic!" the priest was saying. "Even from their vast distance they can still distort, they can still influence, they can still subvert. I tell you that Conrad Bland is nothing less than Satan unchained. Satan made flesh!"

Dennison parroted the clergy's line for another fifteen minutes, and the gong sounded again.

"Well, at least that's over!" sighed Leroux. "Have you ever attended a Black Mass at a Church of Satan before, Orestes?"

Jericho shook his head.

"Well, no matter what my friend Ibo may have told you, it's a very symbolic ceremony with a reason for everything that occurs. Laymen don't participate, but if you'll note the people in the first three rows, they'll be joining in later."

A young woman got up from her chair in the first row, walked up to the altar, unfastened her cloak, let it fall to the ground, and turned once around to show the congregants that she was entirely nude. She then lay on her back on the onyx altar.

"The purpose of the Black Mass is to invert the traditional Roman Catholic mass," whispered Leroux. "I've heard that some churches to the north of Amaymon take it so seriously as to actually sacrifice babies or virgins, but this is mostly a ritual with us. The girl represents an altar, which is about as blasphemous to Christianity as an altar could be."

A black-hooded priest came up and placed a black candle in the girl's left hand.

"The candle is ostensibly made of the fat of unbaptized babies," commented Leroux, "though of course it isn't. Still, it's the symbol that's important."

A bare-breasted woman wearing a parody of a traditional nun's habit walked up to the altar, deposited a small bowl on the girl's belly, and stood behind her, holding a cross upside down.

"More blasphemy," explained Leroux. "The nun is holding the cross in an inverted position, and the bowl is supposed to contain the blood of a prostitute. Since there are no prostitutes on Walpurgis, we use the blood of a sacrificial goat."

Jericho wanted to know how they managed to sacrifice an animal they held sacred, but decided against asking.

A caped priest, not Dennison, approached the altar, holding a small object on a tray.

"That's a black-stained turnip he's got on the tray," whispered Leroux. "He'll rub it against the girl's labia and then use it to draw a pentagram around both of them."

"Any particular reason why?" asked Ubusuku.

"I suppose it's the most blasphemous thing he could use for the purpose," said Leroux with a shrug. "Now he'll start speaking in Latin. It's a dead tongue, but what he's doing is chanting Christian prayers and psalms backward, with various obscenities thrown in to confuse any angels who happen to recognize certain key words."

"This symbolically conjures Satan?" asked Jericho.

Leroux nodded. "He's almost done with the Latin. Now he'll speak in a language we can understand."

The priest accepted a cat-o'-nine-tails from the mock nun and gently began passing it over the nude girl's body.

"I suppose I needn't point it out," said Leroux, "but he is symbolically flaying the shit out of her."

"Before the mighty and ineffable Prince of Darkness, and in the presence of all the dread demons of the Pit," intoned the priest, "I renounce all past allegiances, I proclaim that Satan rules the universe, and I ratify and renew my promise to recognize and honor Him in all things, without reservation, desiring in return His manifold assistance in the successful completion of my endeavors and the fulfillment of my desires."

The priest then took a bite of the turnip and sipped the goat's blood, after which a second bare-breasted nun picked both up and began passing through the first three rows of the audience with them.

"Ave, Satanis!" cried the priest, and the church echoed with the repetition of the words.

Then a man, totally nude except for a goat's-head mask, raced out and leaped into the pentagram.

"Satan?" asked Jericho dryly.

Leroux nodded without taking his eyes off the proceedings.

The Satan-priest took the whip from the priest and cracked it two or three times. Then he brought it down hard once on the nude girl, who shrieked but didn't move. Throwing it aside, he went through a number of gestures and antics that made no sense at all to Jericho and that Leroux didn't bother to explain. Finally he drew the girl toward him and began rhythmically thrusting his erect penis into her as the congregation began chanting "Ave, Satanis!" with each movement of his pelvis. At last the girl shrieked again and wrapped her legs around him. He lifted her off the onyx altar and they completed their orgasms as he whirled her around the border of the pentagram. When they were through he put her back on the altar, turned her onto her belly, did a few obscene things with an unlit candle, and disappeared into the darkened recesses of the church.

"That's it?" asked Jericho.

"It's just beginning!" said Leroux, sweat streaming down his excited face. "Now all the participants will enact much the same thing for the rest of the congregation."

Jericho watched, remembering details and certain phrases in case he ever needed them, while Ubusuku and Leroux joined the rest of the congregants in chanting "Ave, Satanis!" at the appropriate times.

When the last exhausted participants had returned to their seats, Dennison reappeared, gave a final curse/blessing in Enochian, the official Satanic language, and the congregation got up to leave.

"Well, what did you think?" asked Leroux excitedly, as he walked out the door with Jericho and Ubusuku.

"I saw a bunch of men fucking a bunch of women," said Ubusuku.

"No, Ibo!" said Leroux. "What you saw was a symbolic invocation of Satan, and a total inversion of the Roman Catholic mass for demoniac purposes. It's a shunning of Good for Evil, a casting off of the beliefs that held men in thrall for ages. Do you understand?"

"Of course I understand." Ubusuku grinned. "A bunch of men fucked a bunch of women."

"You're hopeless!" said Leroux with mock anger. "How about you, Orestes? Did you like what you saw?"

"Hey, I liked it just fine!" protested Ubusuku with a laugh.

"It was interesting," said Jericho. "I'd like to come again for a different ceremony."

"I'd be glad to have you as my guest," said Leroux. "Possibly you'd like to take instruction in the Church of Satan?"

"Possibly," said Jericho.

"Well, then the evening wasn't a total loss," said Leroux. "See, Ibo, who needs you? I've got me a convert, and I'll bet the police aren't even interested in him."

"What are you talking about?" said Ubusuku.

"Oh, Sable's office," said Leroux offhandedly. "They called this afternoon to ask some questions about you. I told them you were a solid citizen and a credit to the community. They certainly hassle immigrants with red tape, don't they?"

"They certainly do," said Ubusuku, his eyes clouded with worry.

"Exactly what kind of questions did they ask?" said Jericho softly.

"Oh, nothing in particular," said Leroux. "Just the typical sort of inane bureaucratic stuff you'd expect"

"I see," said Jericho.

"Well, who's for a drink?" said Leroux. "I'm buying."

"Fine," said Jericho. "I know a little bar not too far from here."

"Lead the way," said Leroux, and Jericho started off, turning left at the corner and moving farther and farther from any major thoroughfares.

"I'm really glad you came," said Leroux as they walked down the empty avenues. "The Black Mass isn't one of our major ceremonies, but it's flashy, if you know what I mean."

"It looks just like a Golem orgy," said Ubusuku.

"It's not the same thing at all," said Leroux. "You do it for pleasure, we do it to defile everything that Christian religions stand for. It represents a travesty and a perversion of God and goodness and all that self-denying crap. We have our orgies, too, but they're not like this. If this wasn't so steeped in religious significance very few of the women would be willing to participate as the altar; it's too degrading. But they do, because they understand what it means, even if a Golemite like you snickers."

He went on praising his church and explaining some of the more obscure blasphemies that they had witnessed for another ten minutes, then suddenly came to a stop. "Are you sure that bar's near here?" he asked Jericho. "This looks awfully residential to me."

"Just another block or so," said Jericho. "By the way, did anyone drop a token or a talisman on the street?"

"Of course not," said Leroux. "Why?"

"Because I see something shining by the curb there."

Leroux leaned over to get a closer look, and Jericho brought the edge of his hand down hard on the back of the little man's neck. There was a loud cracking sound, and Leroux collapsed lifeless to the pavement.

"You didn't have to do that!" raged Ubusuku.

"Keep your voice down," said Jericho softly.

"He was my friend!"

"He was a connection. He could have led them to me through you. Better to be done with him here and now."

"What about me?" demanded Ubusuku.

"What about you?" said Jericho.

"I'm a link to you too—and the police have probably got my apartment staked out."

"I know," said Jericho.

"You've got me into a mess of trouble! What do you intend to do about it?"

"I've given the matter serious thought," said Jericho.

He reached down to his leg and unwrapped the tape.

Chapter 8

"The aftermath of carnage is a pleasant time for reflection."
—Conrad Bland

Jericho reached his hotel two hours later, taking a complex route to make sure he wasn't being followed. He had already decided that his blond identity was finished, as was his need to remain in Amaymon. It was time to start drawing closer to Bland.

He took the lift to his floor, punched out the combination on his lock, and entered the room. A young woman, no more than twenty years old and dressed all in white, sat on his bed.

"Hello, Jericho," she said. "You've been a naughty boy."

Chapter 9

"The prime advantage Evil has in its battle with Good is that its opponents always assume it must ultimately be irrational."

—Conrad Bland

John Sable turned on his bedlamp, reached out to activate his vidphone, and mumbled a groggy "What's up?"

"Officer Belasco, sir," said the earnest young man whose picture appeared on the screen. "You said you wanted us to call you if anything unusual happened."

"Yes," said Sable, trying to focus his eyes. "What time is it?"

"Three o'clock. There have been two murders, sir," said Belasco. "One of them was Ibo Ubusuku."

"Who's that?"

"An offworlder."

"And the other?" asked Sable, shaking the cobwebs from his brain.

"Gaston Leroux, sir. A friend of Ubusuku's. We spoke to him yesterday afternoon."

"How were they killed?"

"Ubusuku was stabbed to death. One thrust, from his abdomen to his breastbone. Leroux seems to have had his neck broken. We found them lying about fifty feet apart."

"How long have they been dead?"

"Less than an hour, according to the medic."

"I'm on my way to the office," said Sable. "Have Davies there, and take the bodies to the forensic lab. I want to see them before you ship them to the morgue."

He broke the connection, decided that he didn't have time to shower or shave, and dressed himself in less than a minute. He stooped over the bed, kissed his sleeping wife, left a message on the home computer that he didn't know whether he'd be home for dinner, and arrived at headquarters ten minutes later.

Davies was waiting for him, and they went down to the forensic laboratory, where the two bodies were stretched out on metal tables.

"Good professional job," Sable muttered as he examined Ubusuku's wound. He walked over and looked at Leroux, then turned the body onto its stomach and examined the back of its neck. "One blow. Very neat."

"Looks like our man," said Davies.

"Was there ever any doubt?" said Sable, leaving the lab and walking down the long corridor to his office. He stopped in the outer receiving room just long enough to ask a secretary to bring him some coffee, then went inside, where he found Belasco waiting for him, absently studying the numerous citations and commendations hanging on the wall.

"I don't suppose anyone's turned up any clues yet?" he asked, plopping down onto his vinyl chair.

"No, sir," said Belasco. "We've still got a team out there searching the area, but nothing's turned up so far."

"Where did you find them?" asked Sable.

"The 4700 block of the Street of Avarice."

"What the hell were they doing there?"

"Two eyewitnesses said that Leroux had two guests for a service at a nearby Church of Satan," said Belasco. "One of them fits Ubusuku's description."

"And the other?" asked Sable, clasping his hands behind his head and staring at his little statue of Cali.

"Hard to say, sir," said Belasco. "One of them thinks he was a blond man in his late twenties, perhaps six feet tall. The other remembers him as a man with light brown hair, maybe forty years old, about five feet nine."

"It doesn't matter anyway," said Sable with a sigh. "He's not going to use that identity again." He turned to Davies. "Well, that's it, Langston. There's no reason for him to stay in Amaymon now. He's killed the only contact he's got, and the only man who could place him with that contact."

"We've got other offworlders here," said Davies. "Can we be sure this was his only contact?"

"I think so," replied Sable. "If he had more, he wouldn't frighten them off by killing Ubusuku so quickly."

"So what do we do now?" asked Davies.

"Lock up the city," said Sable. "Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. We watch for Satanists, but he's bright enough not to appear as one yet. We close the airports and the train terminals and the river, and we blockade all the roads, and then we'll also call ahead to warn Conrad Bland, because personally I think we're just going through the motions. Closing down the city probably isn't going to keep this man in it one minute longer than he wants to be kept. Still, I don't know what else we can do. Let's set everything in motion, because if we wait until morning there's an excellent chance he'll be gone."

"Right," said Davies, walking to the door.

"And Langston," Sable called after him.

"Yes?"

"Just because I don't think it's going to work is no reason to do a half-assed job. Everyone works overtime until we've caught him or we know he's flown the coop. Give me an hour to make some calls and you can start borrowing men from other departments as well."

Davies nodded and left the room.

"Well, Officer Belasco," said Sable, lighting a cigar as soon as Davies was out of sight, "how do you reconstruct the killings?"

"I wouldn't exactly say the man is taunting us, sir," began Belasco, "but he sure as hell isn't worried about us. He could have set it up to look like they'd killed each other, but he didn't; after all, a man with a broken neck isn't going to stab his attacker, and a man with the kind of knife wound I saw wasn't going to break another man's neck and then walk fifty feet away to die. And if he wanted to hide the fact that they were killed by the same man, all he had to do was move one of the corpses a couple of blocks away. After all, he killed them by different methods; it might have taken us a couple of days to link the murders."

"Very perceptive reasoning, Officer Belasco," said Sable. "Go on."

"Well, as I see it, he probably killed the man with the broken neck first"

"Why?"

"Because why kill a man with your bare hands when you've already shown him that you've got a knife?"

"Makes sense," agreed Sable. "I don't suppose we've found the knife yet?"

Belasco shook his head. "From the size of the wounds, it looks like he used a ceremonial dagger of some sort. Not like the little steak knife he used on the last one, if indeed it's the same killer."

"It's the same killer, all right," said Sable. "You've done a commendable job, officer. I've got a few calls to make now. Why don't you see if you can help Davies, and keep me informed if the squad turns up anything at all at the scene of the crime."

Belasco left the room just as the coffee arrived. Sable took a long swallow, sighed, and started calling other department heads, soliciting aid. Within an hour he was able to present Davies with a gift of six hundred more men to help cordon off the city.

He waited until six o'clock, then punched an intercom button.

"Yes?" said a secretary.

"Get me Tifereth on the vidphone. I want to speak to Conrad Bland. If he's sleeping, have someone wake him up."

A moment later the secretary reported that Bland accepted no personal calls, and that the Tifereth exchange wouldn't give out his number.

"Well, get me somebody up there!" snapped Sable.

"Who?"

"I don't know! Try Bland's chief of security."

"I'll do what I can."

About ten minutes later he was connected to a middle-aged man wearing a plain gray military uniform. The man stared into the camera at his end of the line without speaking.

"This is John Sable, Chief of Detectives in Amaymon. Who am I speaking to?"

"Jacob Bromberg."

"You have access to Conrad Bland?" inquired Sable.

"When necessary," said Bromberg.

"Good! I have reason to believe that a Republic assassin has been hired to liquidate Bland. He's in Amaymon now, but I suspect we're not going to be able to contain him much longer."

"So?"

"What do you mean, so? I'm telling you that someone is out to assassinate your leader!"

"He'll have to get in line," said Bromberg with a smile.

"I assure you this isn't a joke!" said Sable hotly. "This man is a highly skilled professional, and he's been here long enough to start assimilating some of our customs. We'll help you in any way we can, but I cannot overstate the seriousness of the situation."

"We appreciate your warning," said Bromberg, "but I assure you that it is unnecessary. No one is going to murder My Lord Bland."

"Will you at least tell him?" demanded Sable, glaring at the screen.

"If I get around to it," said Bromberg, breaking the connection.

Sable cursed under his breath, then rummaged through his desk, pulled out his personal vidphone directory, and placed a call to Casper Wallenbach, his counterpart in Tifereth.

"Yes?" said Wallenbach, who was obviously an early riser, for he was seated at what appeared to be a breakfast table.

"Detective Wallenbach? This is John Sable, from Amaymon."

"Mr. Sable," said Wallenbach with a smile. "How good to see you again. What can I do for you?"

"I've got a little problem that I hope you can help me with," said Sable.

"Just name it," said Wallenbach. "My department owes you a couple of favors."

"There's a Republic assassin currently at large in the city of Amaymon. We've cordoned off the city, but I don't know how long we can keep him here."

"I'd be happy to loan you reinforcements," said Wallenbach, "but my staff is almost depleted at present."

"That's not it," said Sable. "If we can contain him we won't need any help, but if not, he's going to be headed up your way. I think he's after Conrad Bland. I called Bland's chief of security, a fellow named Bromberg, but I don't think he took me seriously, so I thought I'd better let you know what's up."

"An assassin, you say?"

Sable nodded.

"Good at his trade?"

"He's had us running in circles for three days. He kills very efficiently, and he can change identities quicker than I can change clothes."

"Very interesting," said Wallenbach, gazing thoughtfully into space.

"I'll let you know as soon as I think he's gotten out," said Sable. "I really don't give us much chance of detaining him for long."

"Yes, Mr. Sable," said Wallenbach distractedly. "You do that."

"Will you need any help?"

"Oh, I doubt it," said Wallenbach, the trace of a smile playing about his thick lips. "I think we'll know exactly how to handle the situation."

What the hell is going on here? thought Sable. Bland's security chief thinks it' s a joke, and the Chief of Detectives acts like he couldn't care less.

"Fine," he said aloud. "I'll keep in touch."

"I'll be here," said Wallenbach. He reached out and broke the connection, leaving Sable to wonder why the possible assassination of the Dark Messiah of Walpurgis didn't seem to upset anyone in Tifereth.

Chapter 10

"If I were told that I had but one hour to live, the first thing I would do would be to kill the man who told me."
—Conrad Bland

"Who are you?" demanded Jericho softly, locking the door behind him.

The girl in white smiled up at him from the bed. "Believe it or not, I'm a friend."

"Not," said Jericho. He crossed the room, closed his window, and turned up the volume on the video.

"Before you kill me," said the girl, obviously unworried, "I should tell you that if you go to Malkuth, as you now plan to do, you'll be killed there."

Jericho stared at her for a long moment. "You've just bought yourself three minutes," he said at last, sitting down on a hard-backed metal chair. "Let's hear what you have to say."

"As I mentioned, going to Malkuth would be a mistake."

"Am I going to Malkuth?"

"Oh yes, Jericho."

"What makes you think my name is Jericho?"

"Actually it isn't," said the girl, smiling again. "It's merely the name you've chosen to use."

"To use for what?"

"For the assassination of Conrad Bland."

"I've never heard of anyone named Conrad Bland," said Jericho. "Why should I wish to kill him?"

"Don't be coy, Jericho. You've already killed Parnell Burnam, Gaston Leroux, and Ibo Ubusuku."

"Who are they?" asked Jericho, his expression never changing.

The girl sighed. "If we can't be honest and straightforward with one another I don't see how I'm going to be able to help you. You killed Leroux and Ubusuku only two hours ago."

Jericho stared at her again for another long minute, then walked across the room and positioned himself in front of the door.

"All right," he said at last. "You haven't told me anything that Sable's department doesn't know or can't find out. I can only assume that you are a member of that department. Perhaps you'd like to tell me why I should let you live?"

"You're a very difficult man to talk to," said the girl, looking mildly amused. "What if I were to tell you that, under a different name, you assassinated Gustav Gagenbach on Sirius V some twelve years ago?"

"I'd say you were guessing," said Jericho. "Or does Sable plan to pin every unsolved murder in the galaxy on me?"

The girl shook her head. "I guess I'll have to be as forthright as I wish you to be." She paused for a moment, then delivered her bombshell. "I know that you killed Benson Rallings on Belore VII."

Jericho almost allowed his surprise to break through his emotionless mask. That had been one of his earliest commissions: Belore VII was an uninhabited mining world, Rallings' body had been completely disposed of, and his employer had died of natural causes before he could report the success of his mission. No one except Jericho knew that a murder had been committed.

"Ah," said the girl, smiling again. "You almost look impressed."

"I am," he said. "How did you find out about that?"

"There are no secrets from the White Lucy."

"You're the White Lucy?"

"Oh, no," said the girl. "I merely serve her. My name is Colas."

"Who or what is she?"

"You'll find out very soon," promised Colas. "She wants to meet you."

"Why should I want to meet her?"

"Because you cannot enter Tifereth without her help," said Colas. "And if you do not enter Tifereth, you cannot kill Conrad Bland."

"Everyone else on this world seems to worship him as some kind of god," said Jericho. "Why do you and this White Lucy want him dead?"

"Because he is the living embodiment of evil," said Colas passionately, "and as such his continued existence is intolerable."

"Do all the white witches on Walpurgis feel that way?" asked Jericho.

"I have no idea," said Colas, shrugging her narrow shoulders. "The White Lucy and her acolytes are a cloistered sect. We have no contact with the white witches. They claim, of course, to work for good rather than for evil, but those are just words. Concepts of good and evil can get very confused on Walpurgis, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Do all the members of your sect have the power to read my mind?" asked Jericho.

"No," said Colas. "However, I don't have to be a mind reader to know what you're thinking, and I must warn you that if you kill me the White Lucy will reveal you to the authorities no matter where you may hide."

"Why hasn't she already done so?" asked Jericho. "It seems to me that if I was this Sable character, the White Lucy would be the first person I'd seek out for information."

"First of all," said Colas, "he doesn't know where to look for her."

"Bad answer," said Jericho. "I'm sure he could find her if he wanted."

"And in the second place, he doesn't know that the White Lucy possesses this power."

"It's a hard thing to keep hidden if she spends her time helping destroy anyone she considers evil," commented Jericho.

"She has never helped anyone before," said Colas. "Good and evil are merely abstract concepts—or at least they were until Conrad Bland came along. We don't care who kills who as long as we are left alone."

"Then why all the fuss about Bland?"

"Because if he remains alive, he will kill every other living thing on Walpurgis," replied Colas. "His philosophy is repugnant to us, to be sure, but no more so than many others that abound on this planet. The difference is that he has the will and the power to put his beliefs into practice."

"I appreciate your concern," said Jericho at last. "But I work alone."

"If you continue to do so, you will also die alone," said Colas with certainty.

"I'll take my chances," said Jericho.

"You will meet with the White Lucy, or you will surely die in Malkuth," said Colas with conviction. "She knew where you were, she knew the combination to your room, she knew what you had done in the past, she knew who you had killed this evening, she knew your plans for approaching Bland, and throughout she has maintained her silence as a show of good faith. She empowered me to reveal some of her power to you, which is also a show of good faith, since only a handful of people know of it."

"I appreciate that," said Jericho.

"Then appreciate this: At any time since your arrival she could have revealed your whereabouts to John Sable, and she did not. She is on your side, Jericho, and she says that you cannot enter Tifereth without her. Is it not in your best interest to meet with her?"

"I'll consider it," he said after some thought.

"Good," said Colas. "About one hundred miles north and west of Amaymon there is a newly constructed bridge across the Styx. Be there tomorrow at sunset and you will be taken to her."

"By you?"

"Probably not," replied Colas. "John Sable has already found the bodies of the two men you killed tonight, and all means of egress from the city have been closed. I may not be able to leave."

"But you expect me to be one hundred miles away by tomorrow afternoon?" asked Jericho with the hint of a smile.

"The White Lucy says that you will not need our help to escape from Amaymon. I would accompany you, but she says that you have things to do that I can't be any part of."

"When did she say that?"

"Just now, as we were speaking," Colas answered calmly.

He stepped aside as she walked to the door and punched out the combination on the lock with swift, sure fingers. The door swung inward, and a moment later she was gone. Jericho considered following her, but decided not to chance discovery while he was still in the guise of the blond man who had been seen at the Church of Satan.

He stood before a mirror, working quickly but carefully, and a few minutes later he had become a balding, slightly paunchy man whose age could have been anywhere from forty to sixty. A change of clothes made him look a little more prosperous, and very flat shoes took about an inch off his height.

He inspected himself carefully, could find no trace of the blond man who would never again be seen, and went out into the cool, dry Amaymon night for the last time, his makeup kit tucked inside his shirt.

The sun would not rise for another two hours, and the streets were almost deserted. This made his task more difficult, but not impossible. He walked, with seeming aimlessness, along the empty avenues of the city until at last he found what he had been looking for.

A pedestrian.

He didn't have time to stalk this one the way he had his first victim. Rather, he turned into an alleyway, raced the length of the block, and positioned himself just out of sight around the corner. When the pedestrian came into view Jericho leaped out, dealt him one swift blow to the neck, and stepped nimbly aside as the body hit the pavement.

He walked almost a mile before he found a second victim, tottering home alone from some tavern. The same procedure brought the same result, and he began walking back toward the center of town.

The next pedestrian he saw was a woman, but he decided to avoid her. He didn't want the police to think this was the work of a sex killer.

He found his third victim almost within the shadow of the Devil's Den, one of the bars he had visited before killing Parnell Burnam. This one he stabbed, leaving Ubusuku's dagger beneath the corpse.

Then he waited for sunrise. When it came, he positioned himself in the lobby of a small office building in the heart of the city. Six uniformed policemen passed in front of the building before he spotted the one he wanted, a slender dark-haired man of approximately his height and weight. He walked out the front door of the building and fell into step behind the policeman, never nearer than fifty feet, never farther than half a block. Within a few minutes the policeman had stopped at a small coffee shop, and Jericho did the same. He sat down next to him, managed to spill a little coffee on his sleeve, and apologized profusely. When the policeman went to the lavatory to clean his hands and dab the sleeve with water, Jericho followed him.

Three minutes later Jericho, dressed as an officer of the Amaymon metropolitan police force, emerged from the washroom, looked around, found a small storage room half filled with canned goods, and a moment later had transferred the naked corpse of the policeman there. His own clothes were dumped into a small disposal unit in the washroom.

He picked up both tabs from the counter, paid for them on his way out, and took a local bus to the end of the line. From there it was only a half-mile walk to the edge of the city, when he found a number of policemen manning an efficient-looking roadblock.

He joined them, turned back a trio of pedestrians in the next half hour, and observed the police as they explained the situation to inbound vehicles before turning them away.

Thereafter he lingered on the far side of the roadblock, and took his turn sending irate drivers on their way. When an intercity bus pulled up just after ten o'clock, it was Jericho who walked out to tell the driver that he could not enter Amaymon. The driver protested, other policemen walked over to press home their point, and finally, amid much muttering and dire warnings about what his company would do to the officials of Amaymon, the driver turned his large, lumbering bus around and went back the way he had come, leaving behind one less uniformed policeman than had been there to meet him.

Chapter 11

"Confusion and Chaos are the handmaidens of Evil."
—Conrad Bland

"We just found a third one," said Langston Davies, stepping into Sable's office.

"Same killer?" asked Sable.

"Neck's broken," said Davies. "Looks like a single blow with the edge of the hand."

"Any prints on that knife yet?"

Davies shook his head. "It doesn't seem to have been wiped clean, but there are no prints. The lab says there are some impressions, but he must have been wearing gloves, or maybe he's had his prints surgically removed."

"Figures," said Sable. He glared at his baphomet, which seemed to be laughing at him. "Dammit, Lang! Something's very wrong here, and I can't put my finger on it!"

"What's wrong is five corpses in one night," said Davies, pulling up a chair.

"No, that's not it," said Sable. "Sooner or later he figured to kill Ubusuku, and it stands to reason that he'd kill Leroux too, since he could obviously identify him. That made sense. But why these next three?"

"We don't know anything about the latest victim," Davies pointed out. "It might be another offworlder."

Sable shook his head. "I'm not a betting man, but I'll wager a week's pay that he was just as innocuous as the last two. I just wish I knew what the three of them had in common. I figured once our assassin killed Ubusuku he'd be on his way to Tifereth. Could I have been wrong? Is there something right here in Amaymon that he's after?"

Davies offered a silent shrug, and Sable, still muttering to himself, stood up and began pacing around his office.

"Why did he leave the dagger?" he said at last. "And why did he kill them so neatly? He's not a stupid man, Langston; you think he'd change his method now that we know what to look for."

"Bragging?" asked Davies. "Taunting us?"

"He's a professional," said Sable. "And professionals don't take risks. They don't brag about what they've done; they hide it." He flung himself back into his chair. "I just don't understand it! I mean, so what if he didn't leave any fingerprints? He had to know we'd trace that dagger to Ubusuku—why leave it at all?"

A small computer on Sable's desk suddenly came to life.

"Data on the latest one," said Davies, walking over to read it. "Name, Hector Block. Age, thirty-seven. Profession, grocery store manager. Address, Ninth Circle—it's a local hotel owned by the Brotherhood of Night. Never been off the planet, no contact with any known offworlder. Cause of death: broken neck."

"A nobody," muttered Sable. "Another damned nobody! What the hell is the connection?"

"Maybe he recognized him," offered Davies without much enthusiasm.

"And ran a mile away from the nearest murder?" scoffed Sable. "No chance. He never knew what hit him, never felt he had any reason to fear for his life. We'll check it out, but I'll bet none of the three even knew the other two."

He started pacing again, absently withdrawing a cigar and lighting it up. "Well, at least we know he's still in Amaymon."

"But we don't know if he's completed his mission or not," said Davies.

"True," admitted Sable. "Still, we can't just sit on our hands and do nothing. We've got to turn up some kind of clue or lead before this guy goes back to work." He shook his head in wonderment. "Six killings in what—fifty-four hours? We've got to stop him!"

Sable spent the next two hours personally visiting the scenes of the previous evening's murders and examining the victims. Then, just before noon, he returned to his office to await further developments and try to reason things out.

It just didn't add up. If the assassin was after Bland, he had nothing to gain by remaining in Amaymon after his contact had been eliminated; more, he had every reason to leave, since he was less apt to give himself away through some blunder while on the move than ensconced in a city where the police were hunting for him, however futilely. On the other hand, if his objective was in Amaymon, why had he alerted Sable to his presence by killing Parnell Burnam? There was something very wrong, but try as he would Sable couldn't put his finger on it.

And then, just after noon, Davies burst into his office.

"We found another one!" he exclaimed breathlessly.

"Same as the others?" asked Sable.

"Uh-uh. This one was Vladimir Kosminov."

"Our Vladimir Kosminov? From the burglary detail?"

Davies nodded. "We found him in a storeroom in the back of a restaurant. Or, more properly, we were called in when the owner found him."

"How was he killed?" demanded Sable.

"A broken neck," said Davies. "One blow, just like the others. One thing is different, though: He may have been sexually assaulted."

"What makes you think so?"

"Because he was stark naked."

"Oh, shit!" snapped Sable. "We've lost him!"

"Lost who? What are you talking about?"

"The killer, the killer!" snarled Sable. "He's gone! Call off the roadblocks."

"What do you mean?" asked Davies, genuinely puzzled.

"Kosminov," said Sable, slumping back in his chair, totally exhausted. "He was the missing piece. Now it all makes sense."

"Not to me it doesn't," said Davies.

"Think, Langston," said Sable. "Why did he kill three men who couldn't have had anything to do with him? Why didn't he try to disguise his method? Shit, we even asked the right questions and still couldn't come up with the answer!"

"I still can't," said Davies.

"Use your brain, Langston," said Sable. "He knew we'd try to shut down the city once he killed Ubusuku. He knew we'd keep an eye on every escape route, because he had no reason to stay. So what did he do? Killed the first three people he could find, to make us think he still had business here. Those three men were sucker bait, and we fell for it! It bought him almost half a day's head start. The important killing, the one that counted, was Kosminov. He probably walked right out of Amaymon three hours ago dressed as a cop!"

"Then let's send out an APB."

"Great Lucifer!" Sable laughed bitterly. "You don't think he's still wearing Kosminov's uniform, do you? All he needed was a means of getting past our roadblock and a couple of hours' head start. He knew we'd find Kosminov before the day was out, but it didn't matter to him. He just needed enough time to sneak out. Who the hell can know what he looks like by now? How can you put out an all-points bulletin on the whole damned planet?" He threw an ashtray against the wall, spraying glass in all directions. "Damn! I can't believe it! We knew everything we had to know and he still slipped through our fingers!"

Davies waited until his superior's rage had diminished somewhat, then broached a question: "What's our next step?"

"There's nothing we can do," said Sable bitterly. "He's gone. He's out of our jurisdiction. All I can do is get back to Wallenbach and Bland's security chief and try to convince them that this guy plays for keeps."

"Is there anything you want me to do?" asked Davies.

"No," said Sable with a sigh. "You've been up all night too. Go on home and get some rest."

Left alone in his office, Sable sat back and glared out his window for a long time. Then, remembering somewhat belatedly that a new day had dawned some hours back, he genuflected to Cali, lit his ceremonial candles, and murmured his prayers to Azazel, Asmodeus, and Ahriman. He held his amulet up to the light, made a half-hearted Sign of Five in the air, and returned to his desk.

A moment later he had Casper Wallenbach on the vidphone.

"Mr. Sable," said Wallenbach. "I hadn't expected to hear from you again so soon."

"He's on his way," said Sable bluntly.

"The assassin?"

Sable nodded. "I wish I had better news."

"That's all right," said Wallenbach. "We'll know how to deal with him if he gets this far."

"He's killed five more men," said Sable. "I don't mean to disparage your department, but I just don't think you know what kind of man you're going to be up against."

"Suppose you tell me."

Sable spent the next twenty minutes covering what had happened during the past three days. When he had finished, Wallenbach looked down and straightened some papers on his desk.

"Well, I thank you for your thorough briefing, Mr. Sable," he said. "And I'm sure that with this added knowledge we'll soon bring this criminal to justice."

"Don't underestimate him," persisted Sable, feeling terribly frustrated.

"I wouldn't dream of it," said Wallenbach. "And now, if you've nothing further to add, I really must start passing the word to my staff."

Sable shrugged, broke the connection, and stared, perplexed, at the blank screen. He didn't look forward to making the next call, but given Wallenbach's attitude, he saw no way around it.

"Yes?" said Jacob Bromberg.

"This is John Sable from Amaymon. We spoke yesterday."

"I know who you are," said Bromberg.

"I'm calling to say that the assassin has made his way out of Amaymon and is undoubtedly on his way to Tifereth."

"What do you expect me to do about it?" said Bromberg with a dry laugh.

"Dammit!" yelled Sable. "What's the matter with everybody up there? I'm telling you that the most skilled killer I have ever come across in my career is on his way to Tifereth to assassinate Conrad Bland! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"It means that he's going to be one very sorry killer when he gets here," said Bromberg, smiling.

"Look—let me speak to Bland, just for five minutes," said Sable, trying to control his temper. "Someone in Tifereth had better start taking this seriously!"

"Oh, I take it seriously," said Bromberg, suppressing another smile. "What do you want me to do—shit in my pants because another nut wants to kill My Lord Bland?"

"You just don't understand!" said Sable, wishing there were some nearby object that he could hit or kick. "This man is no nut! He's an efficient, highly skilled professional!"

"Mr. Sable!" said a strange, high-pitched voice that seemed to crackle with electricity.

"Who's that?" demanded Sable.

"This is Conrad Bland," said the voice. "I have been monitoring your conversation. I thank you for your concern. Now please leave us alone."

"Just give me a few minutes to convince you of the seriousness of the situation, sir," said Sable.

"I fully understand the situation," said Bland. "A very formidable killer is coming to Tifereth to assassinate me. If he gets this far, which I doubt, he will learn that I am not wholly without resources myself."

"This man is different," said Sable.

"They are all different," said Bland. "And yet I am still alive, and they are dead."

"At least let me prepare your security forces for what they will be facing," said Sable. "I could fly up to Tifereth and spend a couple of days with them."

"That's out of the question, Mr. Sable. You are not welcome in Tifereth."

"But—"

"Mr. Sable, customs differ from city to city on Walpurgis, but there is one that remains constant: churches are sacrosanct, and what occurs within their confines is of no concern to the outside world."

"What does that have to do with what we're discussing?" asked Sable.

"Mr. Sable," said Bland, his voice rising in pitch and intensity, "Tifereth is my church. Keep out!"

An unseen hand broke the connection.

Chapter 12

"There is a certain poetic beauty in destroying that which you love."
—Conrad Bland

Jericho got off the bus twenty miles south of Amaymon. A few minutes later he managed to flag down a southbound truck. He dispatched the driver with bloodless efficiency, appropriated his clothes, and placed the corpse in the back of the truck. He then cut over the median strip and proceeded north, giving Amaymon a reasonably wide berth and picking up a highway that roughly paralleled the River Styx. When he was within seven miles of the appointed meeting place he waited until there were no other vehicles in sight, then drove the truck into the water, jumping clear at the last instant. Even though it vanished beneath the surface he had no doubt that it would be found in the next day or two; the river wasn't all that deep, and it would probably impede barge traffic. But a day or two was all the head start that he needed, especially now that he was beyond Sable's jurisdiction and free to choose a new identity.

It took him a little more than an hour to walk through the gathering darkness to the new bridge, and he arrived just as the planet's two small moons were producing a beautiful counterpoint to the last stages of the sunset. A few minutes later a woman dressed all in white approached him.

"Jericho?"

He nodded.

"Follow me, please." She turned on her heel without waiting for an acknowledgment or acquiescence.

He fell into step behind her and they walked, unspeaking, along the riverbank for a little more than a mile. Then she led him up a relatively steep incline to the top of a rocky bluff overlooking the Styx, and he found himself facing a large concrete building. Night had fallen, and the interior of the building was aglow with artificial light.

The woman entered, gestured him to follow her, and led him down a long corridor. He looked for some symbols or tokens to indicate which sect the White Lucy belonged to, but the whitewashed walls and ceilings were devoid of any religious artifacts or ornamentation. They passed a number of rooms, each sparsely and austerely furnished, then stopped before a heavy wooden door. The woman paused for a moment, then nodded her head and opened it, and Jericho quickly stepped through the doorway. Seated on a wooden chair, her arms resting on its arms as if they were too feeble to move, was a very old woman. A teenaged girl sat at her feet. Both were dressed in white.

"Come in. Sit down," said the old woman in a stronger voice than he had expected. He looked around, found a chair in the shadows by the window, and walked over to it. The woman who had acted as his guide left the room, closing the door behind her.

Jericho sat down and looked at the old woman. Her hair was long and gray, done up in a bun atop her head, and her face was so wrinkled that he couldn't begin to guess her age.

She turned her face to him and he saw that her eyes were covered by thin white membranes.

"You're the White Lucy?" he asked.

"I am," she said. "You may leave us now, Dorcas." The girl at her feet stood up and left the room. "A nice girl, Dorcas, but I don't need her now that you're here."

"I don't understand," said Jericho.

"Your eyes," she said. "I need someone's eyes to see through."

"You're seeing what I'm seeing?"

"Oh, yes," said the White Lucy. "I almost wish I wasn't, though. I used to be a very pretty woman."

"I'm sure you were."

"About a century ago," she continued. "I am one hundred and twenty-eight years old. Can you believe that?"

"I have no reason to doubt you," he said.

"Of course you don't," she said. "And you couldn't hide it if you did. You have a curiously flat mind, Jericho; I don't think I've ever found one quite like it."

"Oh?"

"Indeed. Most people would be very apprehensive about meeting with a woman who can read their innermost thoughts. You seem not to care at all. A very curious mind: no hills or valleys at all. No passions, no hates, no fears, no lusts. Just flat and businesslike. I think the reason you accept my age without question is not that I am telling you the truth, but that it makes no difference to you whether I am or not. Such a clean, uncluttered mind! It might be interesting to shock it out of its straight lines and carefully measured angles, just to see how it reacts. I could, you know."

"I don't doubt it," said Jericho. "Since you're inside my head already, why are we speaking?"

The White Lucy chuckled. "Because you're not a telepath. I can read your thoughts, but you can't read mine. That's why I sent for you: so that we could speak face to face. Though if you'd like to look out the window, I would enjoy that: I like to see the stars."

"All right," said Jericho, turning his gaze to the night sky. "You sent for me. I'm here. Now what can you do for me?"

"To begin with, I can warn you not to go to Malkuth," said the White Lucy.

"Why?"

"Because Conrad Bland has scheduled every last man, woman, and child in Malkuth for extermination. Within a week nothing will be left alive there, and even you, with all your skills, would not be able to escape the city or its destruction."

"Interesting," remarked Jericho. "What has Bland got against Malkuth?"

"Nothing."

"But—"

"Ah!" exclaimed the old woman. "So that's what your mind looks like when it's puzzled! Such curious patterns! I wish you could see it."

"Why does Bland want to destroy Malkuth?" repeated Jericho.

"Because he is an evil man."

"That's no answer," said Jericho. He slowly, deliberately, closed his eyes.

"What happened?" said the White Lucy, suddenly confused. "Ah! Now I see. Isn't that a little juvenile, Jericho, cutting off a poor weak old lady's vision?"

"There's nothing poor or weak about you," said Jericho coldly. "I just thought I'd bring you back to the subject at hand: Why should Bland want to destroy Malkuth?"

"Because it is his nature to destroy things," said the White Lucy.

"You're saying he's some kind of madman?"

"No!" snapped the old woman. "Conrad Bland is totally rational, as rational and as much in control of himself as you are. I don't know if the concept of good is embodied anywhere in this universe. I only know that there is evil and there is everything else, and that the evil resides within Conrad Bland."

"You make it sound rather mystical," said Jericho.

"And now your mind is saying that you've wasted a trip, and that I'm nothing but a demented old religious fanatic after all," said the White Lucy. "But your mind hasn't been where mine has been. I tell you truthfully that left to his own devices Conrad Bland will destroy every living thing on this planet."

"That doesn't make any sense. Walpurgis is the only planet in the Republic that was willing to grant him sanctuary."

"He will not do this because it makes sense," said the White Lucy, "but because it is his nature. No alternative to destroying Walpurgis has ever occurred to him. No alternative ever will." She paused. "Why do I see confusion in your mind?"

"You've convinced me of your sincerity," he said with a sardonic smile. "But since you can read my mind, you knew exactly what to say to convince me. However, it makes no difference. I personally couldn't care less why you want Bland dead. I want to know how you think you can help me, and why you think I can't kill him alone."

"You need our help because you have made a serious blunder," said the White Lucy, shifting slightly on her chair.

"The newspaper ad?" he asked.

"A minor thing," she said. "No, your blunder was killing Parnell Burnam."

"Who was he?"

"The first of your victims."

"I had to find out what—"

"I know your reasons," she interrupted. "But it got John Sable involved, and he turned out to be a lot smarter than you thought. Even then I didn't interfere, but now he's told Bland everything he knows, and I couldn't put off our meeting any longer."

"Why?" said Jericho. "Bland doesn't know who he's looking for any more than Sable did. I won't be using any of my Amaymon identities again."

"Bland knows exactly who he's looking for," said the White Lucy, scuffing the floor with her right foot. "Oh, he may not be able to pinpoint you the way I could, but he knows a Republic assassin is on his way to Tifereth. Today alone he has killed more than seven hundred people who were traveling within a two-hundred-mile radius of Tifereth. Tomorrow he will kill more. He will surround himself with death and desolation, and will kill any living thing that approaches him."

"Then I fail to see how you can help get me into Tifereth," said Jericho.

"Amazing!" said the White Lucy.

"What is?"

"The fact that he's killing all these innocent people doesn't mean a thing to you, does it?"

"A professional in my line of work can't afford to be emotional."

"Even after all I've told you, you have no more concern for Bland than if he were an insect. You don't especially care whether he lives or dies, except as it affects the remainder of your fee."

"What difference do my motives make to you as long as I kill him?" said Jericho. "Every minute I waste here is another minute he has to prepare his defenses. I appreciate the fact that you want him dead. I appreciate the fact that you can read his mind. I appreciate the fact that you can also read the minds of his security forces. But I fail to see how that can help me if he's mowing down everything that approaches the city. Besides, you can't send your thoughts to me once I leave here, even if you learn something useful."

"Oh yes I can," she said. "I have receiving stations posted all over Walpurgis."

"Your white witches?"

"My people—and we're not white witches. We practice no magic or devil worship. We are merely women with a gift."

"Why do you wear white?" he asked.

"Protective coloration. You, of all people, should understand that."

"And you've got people like yourself all over the world?" he continued.

"Not exactly like myself. Most of them can only receive. A few can send. Only I can do both."

"It strikes me that you're a pretty dangerous person in your own right," said Jericho, getting up from his chair and stretching.

"Don't be foolish," she said. "Why would I keep your identity and whereabouts a secret from the police and expose my own powers to you if I weren't on your side?"

"I don't know," admitted Jericho, walking around the room and staring idly at various smudges on the wall. "I wish I did."

"You're a very untrusting man," said the White Lucy. "Your mind has been conditioned that way. I am telling you the truth, but, to borrow your own words, what difference does it make? We both want Bland killed, and I have offered you my help."

He stared at her long and hard, trying to scrutinize her withered face, and simultaneously he became very aware of the fact that she was probably digging around inside his head, seeking weak spots, points of least resistance that would allow her to convince him to accept her aid. Suddenly, as he tried to make his mind a blank, a series of grotesquely erotic images shot across it. Embarrassed, he tried to expunge them, and found that the harder he tried the more they persisted.

"Very good, Jericho," said the White Lucy with a smile. "That's usually the initial reaction I get when someone finds out I am reading his mind. I would call this a delayed reaction. . . . Oh! That's a new one!"

He fidgeted uncomfortably. Finally he dredged up a picture of the body of Benson Rallings in its death throes. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. He concentrated on it.

"Ah, you learn quickly. If it will ease your discomfort, I will withdraw from your mind."

He felt no different, and wasn't sure he could trust her. He drew a mental picture of how he might disembowel her, then watched her for a reaction. There was none.

"All right," he said at last, still not sure she had kept her word but seeing no alternative to believing her, at least for the moment. "How can your people help?"

"I have arranged to put you aboard a freighter that will be coming up the Styx tomorrow morning before daylight," said the White Lucy. "Dorcas will accompany you."

"No," he said firmly. "I work alone."

"I know you do," she said. "Now please let me finish. Dorcas will accompany you until such time as I feel that remaining on the river is no longer safe. She will then be instructed to return home, and you will go ashore and make your way north to Tifereth. In most of the cities of Walpurgis my people function as fortune-tellers and palmists. Since they can have me read a customer's mind and tell them what they need to know, we are naturally a little more successful than our competitors, and hence we make enough money to support ourselves. I have women stationed in most of the cities between here and Tifereth. They will be able to tell you of any new developments, of the disposition of Bland's forces, of any further attempts being made to determine who and where you are. They will know which cities are still safe, which of your disguises have been penetrated."

"There are a lot of fortune-tellers around," said Jericho. "How will I know which ones are yours?"

"They'll be wearing white."

"So do white witches."

"But white witches don't tell fortunes," said the White Lucy.

"Have you any people in Tifereth itself?" he asked.

"I did. They're dead now."

"Why? Did Bland figure out who they were?"

"No."

"Then why did he kill them?" persisted Jericho.

"Because it is his nature to kill everything," said the White Lucy.

"He enjoys it?"

"No more or less than you enjoy breathing," she said.

"I don't understand."

"It is the nature of evil to do evil things. You kill by choice and by calculation. He kills from compulsion. You find a certain beauty, a sense of symmetry, in a well-planned hunt and an efficiently performed execution. He finds no beauty or symmetry or satisfaction in taking life, because he has never considered, and will never consider, not taking it. You are polar opposites, you and he. You kill because you can, and he kills because he must. I find a certain irony in considering that you will be the instrument of his destruction, or he of yours."

"He of mine?" repeated Jericho. "What are you talking about?"

"I can direct you to him," said the White Lucy. "I can help you past his defenses. But I cannot strike the death blow. Only you can do that."

"Are you implying that I won't be able to?"

"Oh, you have the capacity to kill," she said. "There can hardly be any doubt about that can there? And of course we pray that you succeed, because if you fail, Walpurgis is going to become one enormous funeral pyre. But Conrad Bland is unlike any man you have ever faced before. He is a man to whom destruction is just another natural function. You were trained to murder, but he was born to it."

She paused, turning her sightless, covered eyes to him. "He is the very essence of evil, while in your mind I can find no trace of evil at all. I can only hope that this does not give him an insurmountable advantage."

"This is getting a little too metaphysical for me," said Jericho. "He's flesh and blood like any other man, and he can be killed like any other man. I'll start for Tifereth in the morning."

"True," said the White Lucy. "Metaphysics has no part in this business. I shall leave my final question unasked."

He displayed no interest whatsoever, but a thousand silent voices from across the planet nudged her, urged her to state the question, and so, relenting, she did:

If he has the power to kill the ultimate Evil, then is he not an even greater threat himself?

Chapter 13

"There is a difference between refusing a helping hand and dismembering it. I would never refuse one."
—Conrad Bland

Jericho and Dorcas stood at the railing of the ship, watching the water rush past them as the sun began rising in the east. Suddenly he turned to her.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well what?" said the girl.

"I was wondering how many miles it is to Tifereth if I manage to stay on the river," he said. "I thought you could read minds."

"No," replied Dorcas.

"Then I'm confused," he said. "What use are you going to be if you can't get messages from the White Lucy?"

"That's an entirely different matter," she said.

"Oh? How?"

"Let's get some breakfast and I'll explain it to you while we eat," said Dorcas, leading the way to the ship's galley.

They found themselves alone, the small crew having eaten earlier. Dorcas had eggs, cereal, and toast, while Jericho stuck to soybean products.

"It's not that I wouldn't like the taste of what you're eating," he said when she queried him about it. "It's just that not every world had the foresight or the money to import colonies of farm animals from Earth, but just about all of them managed to bring along some soybeans. You've lived your entire life on Walpurgis; I've been on perhaps two hundred worlds, each with different home-grown food. My system had trouble adapting to the constant changes after a while, so I stick to soybean creations whenever I can. They taste pretty much the same—a little blander, perhaps—and I don't get sick from them."

"I find it hard to imagine such a successful killer having a bellyache!" laughed Dorcas.

"I don't have them," he pointed out. "It's one of the things that makes me successful: attention to detail. And I believe you were going to explain another detail to me now?"

"Yes," she said, swallowing a mouthful of cereal and washing it down with a glass of milk. "What you must understand is that we're not superhuman beings. We're just people with a gift. A very limited gift. I'm a receiver, not a reader. I can receive thoughts sent by the White Lucy or one of the other senders, of which there are about two thousand. But I cannot read your thoughts, or the thoughts of anyone who doesn't have the capacity to send them. Only the White Lucy can do that"

"How many of you are there?" asked Jericho.

"In the galaxy? I have no idea."

"No. On Walpurgis."

"About six thousand, so far," said Dorcas, starting on her eggs. "The White Lucy has gathered us together from her excursions all through the Republic. Of course, she hasn't made any lately; the last one was more than five years ago."

"I'm surprised she can make it from one room to the next," remarked Jericho, "let alone travel between planets."

"She's a strong woman, the White Lucy. Stronger than you suspect. She's forced herself to live this long while she's tried to find a successor."

"To herself?"

Dorcas nodded, waiting a moment to speak until she had swallowed her food. "We're all just partial telepaths, all except her. She'll stay alive until we find another one with her powers."

"She's well over a century old," said Jericho. "What makes her think that there will ever be another one like her?"

"She's already found one," said Dorcas. "A woman on Gamma Epsilon IV. But she was insane."

"And that's the only one?"

"Yes. But the existence of one implies the existence of others. That's where most of our senders are—on other worlds trying to find a true telepath. And in the process they recruit more partials for Walpurgis."

"Recruit?" asked Jericho. "You make it sound like a military operation."

She giggled.

"Have I said something funny?" he asked.

"Comparing us to an army," she said. "I find that funny. Haven't you figured out why we've banded together?"

"Suppose you tell me."

"We're lonely!"

"Why?" said Jericho with a smile. "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

"Not if they all live in the dark," replied Dorcas. "Growing up in a normal society is like, oh, I don't know—like turning on your radio and finding that no one in the world can broadcast a signal."

"Why Walpurgis?"

"Why have we all come here? Because the White Lucy is here."

"And why is she here? She doesn't believe in all this supernatural hocus-pocus."

"But they believe in us," said Dorcas. "This is an isolationist society, which means that except for you we don't have any busybodies from the Republic nosing around. And it's composed of some pretty strange beliefs and customs, which makes it very tolerant of the odd talent. They leave us alone and let us earn a living while we try to find out how to reproduce our gift."

"Reproduce it? How?"

"I don't know. Here, I'll let the White Lucy tell you." She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked back up at him. "To begin with, it's sex-linked, since only women have even a partial power. And it's probably recessive, but we can't be sure if it's a simple or complex recessive, because we have no way of testing male carriers. I'm just repeating what she told me; does it make sense to you?"

"Some," said Jericho. "It seems to me that your best bet would have been to breed the hell out of your White Lucy."

Dorcas closed her eyes again for a few seconds. "She's sterile. So is the one on Gamma Epsilon IV. The White Lucy thinks that anyone with her abilities will be sterile, but she doesn't know why."

"I'm not the person to ask," said Jericho. "Maybe you'd better ask the White Lucy if Bland has tightened his defenses since last night."

"She says that he hasn't, that they're not defenses in the normal sense of the word so that he has no need of tightening them."

"What does she mean?"

"That he's killing anyone within his radius, regardless of whether he has reason to suspect them or not."

"Including his own men?"

"When he feels like it," said Dorcas.

"Interesting," said Jericho, pursing his lips. He fell silent for the remainder of the meal, then spent the rest of the day on deck, watching the barren landscape as the ship continued at a steady rate.

It was a strange world—nothing he hadn't been led to expect from the map he'd seen in Ubusuku's apartment, but strange nonetheless. Every few hours they'd come to a city or town, but in between was nothing: no suburbs, no exurbs, no country estates. There were a few farms, and these he questioned Dorcas about.

"Most of them are cooperatives, owned by city dwellers," she told him. "Most Walpurgans don't like country life."

"Who works them?" he asked, wondering if farmers were relatively free from Bland's scrutiny.

"Robots."

"Nonsense," he said. "No one uses robots these days."

"Walpurgis does."

Another anomaly. Men had given up on robots when it turned out that enforced leisure was not all that it was cracked up to be. They weren't outlawed, merely shunned. And yet since Walpurgis, thanks to its isolation from the Republic's community of worlds, was an essentially agrarian society, here robots formed the basis of a planetary economy.

"Have they any human supervisors?" he asked aloud.

"Very few," said Dorcas. "They're pretty sophisticated machines."

"They wouldn't be humanoid in structure, would they?"

She shook her head. "Why would anyone want a human structure to work a farm? They're harvesters and threshers and combines, all with functional brains. The White Lucy says that it was a nice idea, though."

"Thank her for me," Jericho replied ironically.

Three more days passed without incident, and Jericho, for lack of anything better to do, furthered his education concerning the ways of Walpurgan society. It was easier than he had anticipated, since the White Lucy was one of the original settlers—one of only three still alive, in fact—and was able to shed some historical light on many of the customs which mystified him.

The trick, he learned, was not to assume that anything he had discovered in Amaymon necessarily applied to any other city. Amaymon was a thriving river city, a melting pot of Walpurgan culture, and a debarkation point for visitors. Its rituals were more symbolic than substantive, and while the people paid lip service to all religions, they believed deeply in none of them.

Most of the other cities were different. They did more than mouth platitudes about evil and devil worship and black magic: they practiced them, sometimes to the point of anarchy. The White Lucy assured him that as he drew closer to Tifereth he would see sights that would shock even his flat, passionless mind. There would be torture rituals, not like the ones Bland seemed compelled to conduct, but rather born of a fervent religious belief; there would be ceremonies that had evolved from grotesque rites back on ancient Earth; there would be perversions—not just sexual—that existed nowhere else in the galaxy. The White Lucy would help him sort out one city's customs from another's, but since he would frequently be unattended by her receivers, she was already teaching him the basics of protective coloration on this world.

She related scores of small details to him, details of the type Ubusuku could only hint at, that would help him protect his identity and his life. And always, overriding everything else, was the constant reminder not to underestimate the sincerity and the conviction of these people. The concept of live and let live might apply to the White Lucy and the rest of the outside world—but in their own cities one obeyed their rules, both legal and religious, or one suffered the consequences, none of which were likely to be very pleasant.

On the morning of the fifth day, when they were a little more than halfway to Tifereth, Dorcas looked up at Jericho suddenly during breakfast.

"It's time," she said softly.

"The White Lucy?" he asked.

Dorcas nodded. "She says we'll reach a blockade within the next three hours."

"Should we chance it?" he asked, though he had already made up his mind to go ashore.

"No. The crew will be tortured, and sooner or later one of them will admit to having taken us on board just north of Amaymon. Once that happens you will never escape alive."

"What about the ship?"

The captain is one of the few outsiders who knows of the White Lucy's abilities. When I tell him to turn around and head back to Amaymon, he will do so without question."

"I see," said Jericho. "Well, there's no sense calling attention to myself by taking a rowboat. I think I'd better swim. Wait for ten minutes after I've made it to shore, then speak to the captain."

"All right," said Dorcas.

"What's the nearest town?"

"Kether. It's about eighteen miles north, along the river."

"Don't let the ship get that far before you turn it around. I don't want any connection between me, the ship, and Kether."

"I understand."

He went to his cabin, gathered together those few things he felt he would need, put them into a waterproof bag, and went back on deck.

"I hope this Kether is one of the cities where the White Lucy has a contact," he said.

"It is," Dorcas assured him. "A fortune-teller named Cybele. You can find her shop at the Plaza of Forras, a shopping center in the heart of the city."

"All right," he said, throwing a leg over the railing. "Remember: ten minutes."

Without another word he dove into the cold murky water of the Styx and vanished beneath the surface.

Chapter 14

"Once you have set yourself a goal, why should a little thing like slaughter deter you?"
—Conrad Bland

Once he was ashore and out of sight of the ship, Jericho shed his wet clothing and donned a workingman's outfit he had placed in the watertight bag. Then he went to work, giving himself a large scar on his right cheekbone and another, somewhat smaller one, above his left eye. Within a few minutes his eyebrows were bushier, his complexion more sallow, his hairline in a distinctive widow's peak, his age somewhere between thirty-five and fifty.

He began walking toward Kether, keeping away from the few roads he saw, and pausing when he was perhaps ten miles from the city to brush the dust from his shoes and clothes. He then sought out a major thoroughfare, waited unseen beside it until a truck from one of the nearby farms went by, and flung himself at the back of it. His fingers closed on the wooden panels that kept the produce from spilling out the sides, and shortly thereafter he entered Kether, crouched in the back of the truck. He took the opportunity to put a pair of apples in his pockets; he disliked them intensely, but at least he wouldn't have to waste any time in a restaurant until well past nightfall.

Jericho waited for the truck to turn onto an almost-empty street, then jumped off. He landed lightly, made sure he hadn't drawn any undue notice, and quickly began walking in the opposite direction.

After he had proceeded for three short blocks, he came to a large intersection. He crossed the street, paused leisurely for a moment as if trying to remember something, turned left, and repeated the process until he wound up where he had started. As best he could tell no one was following him.

Still unconvinced, he went two more blocks, then walked between two buildings, found himself in an alley, and stood motionless, hidden by shadows, for almost ten minutes. No one came after him, and he then returned to the street, confident that if anyone had been tracking him they would now be waiting for him to emerge one block over.

Jericho had never seen a map of Kether, but it didn't take much imagination to piece together an idea of the city's layout from what little he had seen of it. It seemed to be laid out in a pattern of concentric circles—he supposed there would be nine of them, if only for religious reasons—with a number of major boulevards that would intersect at its center. Since he didn't know exactly how far from the center of the city he was, he couldn't be sure how many boulevards formed the spokes of the wheel, but he guessed at either eight or twelve, since Dorcas had told him that Kether was not a large city, housing something less than 100,000 people.

The architecture was quite different from Amaymon's. It owned no debt whatsoever to Gothic churches or Victorian haunted houses. Kether was all steel and glass and angles, and as he began walking toward the heart of the city he saw why: All of the buildings were solar-powered, which made a great deal of sense, since Kether, like most of the other cities on Walpurgis, was quite isolated from its neighbors and probably couldn't have afforded the money for a fusion plant when it had been settled. As the city grew and spread over the landscape, the city fathers had probably seen no reason to erect a plant when all the houses and businesses were already being powered by sunlight.

He wanted to buy a newspaper, the quickest way he knew of learning about a city, but he decided against it since he didn't know what currency was in popular use in Kether. As he passed through a small commercial area he paused for a moment to look at a video display in a store window, but they were showing the endless soap operas that seemed so popular on Walpurgis and from which he could learn nothing further; indeed, some exterior scenes convinced him that they weren't even set in Kether.

He passed a crippled beggar, reclining legless in a handmade cart, hat in hands, and took a quick look at the hat, hoping to get a handle on the local currency. It didn't help much: the beggar was having a poor morning, and he couldn't identify the few coins in the hat without drawing undue attention to himself.

As he continued walking, he saw a large crowd gathered on the street about two blocks ahead of him. His first inclination was to turn up a side street and avoid them, but then he decided that he might learn a little more about the city by listening to snatches of conversation and picking a few pockets. As he drew nearer, he heard the screams and shrieks of a child emanating from the center of the crowd.

Suddenly he heard a gong, and, looking up, he saw enough Satanic designs on the building next to the crowd to convince him that it was a church. He reached the outskirts of the mass of humanity, lifted two wallets in a matter of seconds, then realized that he was standing in a rather ragged line.

He didn't know where the line led or what was expected of him, but he decided that he was less likely to expose himself by doing what everyone ahead of him did rather than attempting to leave. In a few minutes he was able to see clearly what was going on.

A black-robed priest and priestess, both hooded, stood before the door of the church on a large pentagonal platform that was raised about six inches off the ground. Before them was an obsidian altar, and strapped onto the altar was a nude boy whose age Jericho estimated to be between ten and twelve. Each citizen in line, as he or she reached the altar, took a knife from the priestess and pressed it into the boy's belly, while the priest intoned a chant which Jericho couldn't understand, in a tongue which he guessed was either Latin or Enochian.

At first he thought he had stumbled onto a ritual killing, but as he moved up in line he realized that if that were the case the boy should long since have been dead. He was ignorant of Satanism, but killing was his business, and he knew that not one man in fifty was capable of inflicting an abdominal wound designed to maim but not kill.

As he moved closer still, the nature of what he was seeing was finally made clear to him. The boy had various cabalistic signs drawn on his chest and stomach with black paint and the congregation—as he now took it to be—was painfully tattooing the design onto him by means of the dagger. It was probably some painful but normal rite of passage into manhood, since no one seemed very surprised or upset by the boy's cries.

When only two people remained in line ahead of him, he concentrated on their actions. Each pressed the blade to his lips, murmured some words that he couldn't quite make out, and traced the pattern for perhaps an inch. Now he saw that as the dagger was returned to the priestess, the priest quickly rubbed some sort of salve over the freshly lacerated flesh.

Finally it was his turn. Jericho stepped out onto the five-sided platform, took the dagger from the priestess, murmured something so softly no one could hear it, and added another inch of mutilation to the boy's belly. Then he returned the blade, stepped off the platform, and continued on his way to the center of Kether.

He had gone two blocks when a firm hand gripped his shoulder. He turned and found himself looking into the cold blue eyes of a tall, well-dressed, balding man.

"Nice show you put on there," said the man.

"What do you mean?" replied Jericho.

"The Ceremony of Belphegor," said the man. "You even fooled the priest."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you'd better come with me," said the man.

He grabbed Jericho's left arm. Jericho resisted for a moment, checking the street to make sure no one was within thirty or forty yards. Then he reached forward with his right hand, stabbing the man's eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Startled, the man released his grip and threw back his head, exposing his throat. Jericho caught his Adams's apple with the edge of his hand once as he stood that way, again as he was falling. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Jericho looked around, saw a number of people beginning to whisper and point, and raced into a building. He found a back exit, hit it at full speed, ran down an alley for almost two hundred yards, then entered the back entrance of another building. He found a service lift, took it to the fifth floor, and picked the lock of the first door he came to. It was a small apartment, and he quickly found a closet filled with a man's clothes. He removed his outfit, appropriated a cheap suit and shirt, and was on the verge of leaving when he heard a toilet flush. He waited outside the bathroom, killed the man quickly and painlessly when he emerged, and took a few extra minutes to give himself a new face and a head of short, curly, black hair.

Then he walked down the hallway to the tenant's lift, descended to the main floor, and walked out into the street. He heard the sirens of the police vehicles a quarter mile away, but no one hindered or even noticed him as he continued toward the heart of the city.

At last he reached it, a huge circular plaza perhaps a half mile in diameter, housing the tallest office buildings in the city, though none of them approached the larger buildings of Amaymon in size. He walked the perimeter of the circle until he came to a huge shopping complex. There was a statue of a man with a long beard sitting astride a horse and holding a spear in his right hand. A plaque told him that this was a representation of Forras, also known as Forcas or Furcas, a Knight of Satan and the Grand President of Hell, who commanded twenty-nine legions of demons in the defense of the Infernal Empire.

He paused for a moment, as if admiring the artistry of the sculptor, then began walking in and out of various shops and stores, finally stopping at a sign advertising Madame Cybele's.

He looked around, found a flight of stairs leading to a dingy little basement room, and followed them down. As he entered a cat hissed and scuttled into the shadows, and a tall dark-haired woman dressed all in white approached him.

"Please be seated," she said, pointing to a chair beside a small ivory table.

He did as she told him, and she joined him a moment later, placing a crystal ball between them."

"What do you wish to know from Madame Cybele?" she asked.

"You're the fortune-teller," he said. "You tell me. Start with my name."

She stared into the crystal ball.

"I don't know your name, but the White, Lucy says that you are to be called Jericho. She also says that you are in more trouble than you realize."

"I've taken care of it."

"You have not. The first man you killed was one of Bland's agents."

"How did he spot me?"

"You handed back the dagger hilt first."

"Damn!" he muttered. "As little a thing as that!"

She nodded. "The priestess was too intent upon the boy's agony to notice at the time, but the White Lucy says that when she concentrates upon it she will remember, and then Conrad Bland will know not just that there is a killer loose in Kether, but that the killer is unfamiliar with our customs. From this he will deduce that it is the same killer John Sable has warned him about."

"Then I guess I'd better be going. How much time does the White Lucy think I've got?"

"A few hours. No more."

"That fast?"

"You were seen killing him. They may not connect it with your second murder, but they don't have to. Someone will remember that both of you were at the Ceremony at Belphegor. They will question the priest and priestess, and they will then know why he accosted you and why you had to kill him. It will not take long."

"How far away is the next town on the road to Tifereth?"

"Almost two hundred miles," replied Cybele.

"And who is my contact there?"

"You have none."

"I thought the White Lucy had agents in all the cities," said Jericho.

"She did. This one is dead."

Jericho nodded. "I see."

"I doubt that," said Cybele. "But if you make it to Yesod, you will see."

"Yesod? That's the name of the city?"

"Yes."

"Ask the White Lucy what my chances are of getting to Yesod in a stolen vehicle."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "She says that even trucks are not allowed on the roads north of here, that nothing may travel between cities except authorized vehicles."

He shrugged. Then I guess I'll have to borrow a police car, won't I?"

He stood up and left the shop.

Chapter 15

"Satan lost his war. Only a fool would pay homage to him."
—Conrad Bland

"Mr. Bromberg, this is John Sable again."

"Dammit, Sable!" snapped Bromberg, glaring into the camera at his end of the vidphone. "This is the fourth time in five days!"

"Just routine," said Sable, striving to control his temper. "Has he turned up yet?"

"I keep telling you: If he does show up we are quite competent to handle matters without your assistance."

"And I keep telling you," said Sable, "that he's wanted for six murders in Amaymon. If you capture him, we want him back."

"I know," said Bromberg. "Now why don't you just leave me the hell alone and I'll let you know when we've got him."

"Goodbye, Mr. Bromberg." Sable sighed. "I'll be checking in with you again tomorrow."

"Don't bother!" snapped Bromberg.

"It's my job," said Sable, and broke the connection.

He checked the clock on his wall, above and to the left of the baphomet, and was amazed to find out that it was only midafternoon. He lit a cigar, his second of the day, or maybe his third—he'd given up counting them since the second and third murders—and leaned back in his chair.

Theoretically it wasn't his problem any longer. The killer was gone from Amaymon, was completely beyond his legal jurisdiction, and no one seemed to want his help. Also, his superiors were still dragging their feet He had gone to them, urging them to make contact with Bland's headquarters at a higher level than he could reach and offer any assistance that Bland's security men might need—but so far, to the best of his knowledge, neither side had moved off dead center. Bland didn't want help, and the civil authorities seemed quite content not to offer it

It was puzzling. He had no intense personal interest in Bland; in fact, based on their one brief conversation, he didn't like him at all. But almost half the population of Amaymon revered the man. Even his wife, Siboyan, had been lighting candles and offering symbolic sacrifices for his safety. Why did no one in authority, either here or in Tifereth, show any concern?

Even discounting the presence of a Republic assassin, there was a lot more to this business than met the eye. This didn't trouble him, or even seem especially unusual: after all, his job was unraveling mysteries. But he had pulled every string he possessed and he was still in the dark—and that bothered him.

Finally he sat up in his chair and pushed an intercom button.

"Yes?" said his secretary.

"I'm going home," he announced.

"Will you want any vidcalls transferred to you?"

"No."

"Under any circumstances?"

"Not unless they come from Conrad Bland himself," he said with a chuckle.

He locked his desk, put on his lightweight jacket, and left the office. He decided not to take his usual bus home; instead he walked the three miles, poring over those few facts he knew and trying to guess at the many he didn't know.

As he walked, the neighborhood began changing, first from commercial to residential, then from apartment buildings to homes. He walked past the black houses of the Messengers, the reds of the Brotherhood of Night, the violets of the Daughters of Delight, even an occasional white house owned by one of the white witches. At last he turned onto his own street, which was a little poorer and a little smaller, but well kept up. His own house was brick, and he had resisted Siboyan's urgings to paint it the black and gold of the Cult of Cali. Possibly it was because he had changed religions when he married her, possibly there was some other reason he couldn't yet fathom, but he had no desire to make public his beliefs; and besides, with three young children he had better ways to spend his money.

"Hi!" said Siboyan as he walked in the door. "You're home early, aren't you?"

That's a hell of a greeting," he said. "If it bothers you I can go back to the office."

She brushed a wisp of blond hair back off her forehead. "Don't be silly," she said, walking up to him and kissing him on the cheek. "I'm just surprised to see you, that's all."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you getting pressure over the killings?"

"No," he said, frowning. "Not even a little."

"Curious," she commented.

"Isn't it?"

"Will you be wanting dinner soon?"

"Not for a couple of hours," he replied. "I think I'll go out back."

He changed into a pair of coveralls and a heavy shirt, then went to the back yard to work in his garden. He had begun it some six years ago, a little vegetable patch to help stretch his paycheck; but over the years he had become obsessed with it, to the point where it now covered almost the entire yard. He enjoyed the regularity of it, the predictable patterns of growth. There were no unknown motives lurking in this garden, no forces working at cross purposes, no threats to life or limb or logic. It was a pleasant way to spend a few hours at the end of each day, anticipating something new and beautiful rather than reconstructing something old and terrible, forming the patterns rather than hunting for them. He had added flowers to the vegetables, then some of the hardier exotic plants. Working here relaxed him, cleared his mind, renewed his spirit—except that today it did none of these.

He spent two hours there among his growing things, tending to them and trying unsuccessfully to make his mind relax. Then Siboyan sent the two boys out to tell him that dinner would be ready in half an hour and that he'd better wash up. He wrestled with them for a few minutes, listened to them complain about school and church, promised to help fix a broken toy after dinner, then went into the bathroom and showered, emerging a few minutes later in pajamas and a robe.

He shaved with a straight razor—the Cult of Cali insisted, for reasons he still did not comprehend—and joined Siboyan and his sons and daughter in the dining room, noticing yet another stain on the red flocked wallpaper which he himself had hung the previous spring to save the cost of a craftsman, and which the children seemed determined to deface a little more with each passing day. He made his obeisance to the small statue of Cali atop the buffet, an onyx queen of demons wearing a necklace of tiny golden skulls, took his seat at the head of the table, and led the family in a brief prayer to Azazel.

Dinner was composed of soybean products, as usual. Inflation and three growing children limited them to very infrequent meals of real meat, though the kids hardly noticed the difference, and even Sable had difficulty telling one from the other on occasion. Afterward the boys went off to do home-work, and his daughter, who never procrastinated on school assignments and always had them done before dinner, posted herself in front of the video.

Sable and Siboyan remained at the table, sipping a little wine and talking about the events of the day. She shared his frustration at not being able to impress Bland with the seriousness of the situation and the skills of the assassin, though Sable wondered if her feelings weren't caused more by her reverence for Bland than her sympathy for his own position. Not that it mattered—he wasn't out for sympathy, just for answers that no one seemed able to supply.

She recognized his restlessness and suggested going out to a cinema, but he begged off, claiming he was too tired. It didn't ring true—he just didn't want to waste the money when he knew he wouldn't be concentrating on the entertainment—but she didn't press the issue, and finally he went down to his cellar workshop to try to fix the broken toy. He had just about gotten it repaired when Siboyan walked to the top of the stairs and called down to him:

"John—vidphone!"

"I told her not to forward any calls!" he called back, reluctant to set aside the toy when he was so near to having it done.

"I think you'd better come," said Siboyan. Something in her voice made him put the toy down and run up the stairs.

He picked up the extension in the kitchen, activating both the camera and the screen.

"Sable here."

"Mr. Sable," said a high-pitched voice, "this is Conrad Bland."

"Hold on a minute, Mr. Bland," he said. "There's something wrong with my screen. I'm not getting any picture."

"I'm not transmitting one," said Bland. "I am unfortunately not in the vicinity of a vidphone. My voice is being carried to one on an intercom system."

"What can I do for you?" said Sable.

"You are a very difficult man to reach," continued Bland, ignoring his question. "My chief of security informs me that you will speak to no one except myself."

"Not so," said Sable. "But when I'm at home, my time is my own. That's neither here nor there; you obviously have something important enough to merit contacting me yourself. What is it?"

"Direct and to the point," said Bland with a chuckle. "I like that, Mr. Sable. Yes, I have something important to tell you: We have captured your Republic assassin."

"You're sure?"

"I do not make mistakes, Mr. Sable," said Bland coldly.

"Well, I'm very glad I was able to warn you in time," said Sable. "Is he still alive?"

"Alive and well," replied Bland. "He is currently incarcerated in Tifereth, though we apprehended him a good deal south of here."

"I appreciate your letting me know. I suppose the next step is for us to extradite him."

"My own sentiments precisely," said Bland.

"I'll file the papers first thing in the morning."

"That won't be necessary," said Bland. "I am the only government here in Tifereth. I give him to you freely."

"That's somewhat irregular," said Sable. "But to quote an old proverb, I don't believe in looking a gift horse in the mouth. How would you like to arrange the transfer?"

"I think it would be best if you came to Tifereth," said Bland. "My work here makes it impossible for me to get away."

"You needn't deliver him personally," said Sable.

"I realize that. Nevertheless, I think it would be best for all parties concerned if you came to Tifereth."

"If you wish," said Sable with a shrug. "I'll fly up there tomorrow morning."

"I'll send my personal plane for you," said Bland. "Can you be ready to leave in, shall we say, six hours?"

"You needn't go to all that trouble," said Sable. "I'm a qualified pilot and I have access to a departmental plane."

"Mr. Sable, you force me to be blunter than I would wish," said Bland. "I cannot guarantee your safety unless you come in my own plane."

"Oh?" said Sable, frowning.

"The local airport in six hours," said Bland. "Be there."

The connection was broken.

Sable turned to Siboyan, who had been listening to the entire conversation with a rapturous expression on her face.

"Well?" he said. "What do you think?"

"About what?" she asked him.

"Weren't you listening?" he said.

"Of course. They've caught the killer."

"I'm talking about the rest of it," he said patiently. "What's going on up there that they're shooting down airplanes?"

"What difference does it make to us?" she replied. "All you have to do is go up as his guest and bring your prisoner back."

"Something's wrong," he said, shaking his head. "Something's still very wrong."

"I don't see what," said Siboyan. "He's sending his own private airplane, he's offering to cooperate with you, he's turning over the man the Republic sent here to kill him. If it was me I wouldn't do that: I'd see that he died very slowly and very painfully for even attempting to assassinate a man like Conrad Bland."

"The law applies even to your new hero," he said with a sardonic smile. "Murder takes precedence over attempted murder. Our assassin will have to stand trial in Amaymon."

"How soon do you have to leave?" she asked.

"Almost immediately," Sable answered. "Bland may not care about his extradition forms, but I care about doing it right at this end. I'll have to stop by the office and see what's needed, and since Enoch Toomey down in Legal won't be around I'll probably have to call him in to help me. I've never extradited a killer before."

"So much for our quiet evening at home," she said with a rueful smile.

"Cheer up. There'll be others."

He went into the bedroom to change. He decided not to pack a suitcase, since he planned to be in Tifereth only long enough to take charge of the prisoner, but he did put one change of clothes into an overnight bag in case they were grounded because of bad flying weather.

He stopped by the front door on his way out and took Siboyan in his arms.

"See you soon," he said.

"I've never been to Tifereth," she said. "Bring back something unusual."

"I will," he promised.

Chapter 16

"I have never denied that Truth has a value. The fool pays homage to it; the wise man twists it to his own advantage."
—Conrad Bland

Sable slept through most of the uneventful flight, waking as the plane banked steeply just prior to landing. He looked out the window as they touched ground, and discovered that rather than landing at the Tifereth airport the pilot had brought the plane down on a private strip.

Jacob Bromberg was standing at the end of the runway, and came up to greet him as he walked down a ramp that a pair of mechanics had wheeled up to the hatch door.

"Welcome to Tifereth, Mr. Sable," said Bromberg, though he seemed indisposed to extend his hand. "Did you have a pleasant flight?"

"I really couldn't say," responded Sable with a smile. "I was asleep most of the way." He looked around him at the barren plain surrounding the strip. "By the way, where are we?"

"This is My Lord Bland's private airfield, about eight miles north of the city. If you'll follow me, I'll drive you into town."

"Fine," said Sable, hefting his overnight case and falling into step behind Bromberg. The air was damp and heavy, with a stale smell to it that he couldn't immediately identify.

Bromberg led him to an open military vehicle, relatively new and highly polished, which sported some insignia Sable hadn't seen before.

"Please put your bag in the back, Mr. Sable."

Sable did as he was told, then climbed into the passenger's seat and lit a cigar, the last of the handful Veshinsky had given him a few days earlier.

"How did you catch him?" he asked after Bromberg had turned on the ignition.

"I really couldn't say, Mr. Sable," said Bromberg, taking a hard left and turning onto the main road to Tifereth. "I had nothing to do with it."

"Who is he?"

Bromberg shrugged. "I have no idea."

"Has he said anything yet?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Then, at the risk of sounding impertinent, how do you know you have the right man?"

"Oh, we've got the right man, all right," said Bromberg with a smile. "My Lord Bland doesn't make mistakes."

"What does he look like under all the disguises?"

"I personally haven't seen him, Mr. Sable," replied Bromberg. "Anything I told you would be hearsay."

Sable fell silent. He puffed on his cigar, allowed the flavor of the tobacco to permeate his mouth, then blew out a thin stream of white smoke.

Bromberg obviously knew nothing at all about the assassin, and he was Bland's chief of security. That was curious in itself. And the fact that they had caught the killer so quickly and easily was even more curious. It was possible that they had the right man, of course, but the more he thought about it the more he doubted it. Well, when he got him back to Amaymon he'd hook him up to the truthtell machine and then he'd know for sure. Or possibly Wallenbach had a truthtell machine right here in Tifereth, which might save a lot of trouble and a possible suit for false arrest He made a mental note to check with Wallenbach on that before he left with the prisoner.

Tifereth began to loom large before them, and although it was midday he got the impression that the city was somehow dark and filled with lengthening shadows. Probably it was just the way he was looking at it, or the angle of the sun against some of the steepled buildings, but it was a curious sight nonetheless.

And then, as they entered the city, the stench reached his nostrils. It smelled of decaying, rotting matter, and at first he thought it was uncollected garbage, but then he saw the source: bodies, some of them newly dead, some rank and fetid, littered the streets and sidewalks, singly and in groups, naked and clothed, some lying in pools of congealing blood, some with a single bullet hole or laser burn in them.

"What the hell is going on here?" demanded Sable, stunned by the extent of the carnage.

"We had a little insurrection a few days ago," said Bromberg calmly. "My Lord Bland decided to leave the bodies on display as a warning to others who may object to the rule of law."

"A few days ago?" repeated Sable. "Some of those bodies look as if they're still warm."

"You must be mistaken, Mr. Sable," replied Bromberg.

After they had gone six blocks into the city the bodies became more numerous, and Sable could swear he saw two of them, an old man and a very young girl, still twitching.

"Stop the car!" he demanded.

"Why?" asked Bromberg.

"A couple of those people are still alive!"

"They couldn't be," said Bromberg. "The insurrection was put down almost a week ago."

"Let me out!"

"I really can't," said Bromberg, hitting the accelerator. "We're already late."

The scores of corpses became thousands as they neared the center of the city, and Sable saw that those buildings which weren't burned out or blown apart were locked and shuttered. Not a living soul walked the streets of Tifereth. Not a dog or a cat lurked in the shadows. Even the vermin seemed to have taken up residence elsewhere. The only living things in the area were the thick clouds of flies that swarmed over and around the bodies, lighting here and there, then rushing off to land on an even more decayed piece of flesh.

"Some insurrection!" snorted Sable, feeling the need to break the deathly silence.

"Indeed it was, Mr. Sable," replied Bromberg.

"How many of your own forces were killed?"

"None."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me."

"We're a very efficient unit, Mr. Sable," said Bromberg.

"So I see," replied Sable. "What I don't see is a single weapon on any of the corpses."

"We've confiscated them," said Bromberg with a smile. "No sense leaving them around for more revolutionaries."

"Very incisive reasoning."

"Thank you, sir."

"Now if you're all through bullshitting, why don't you tell me what's really happening here?"

"I just told you, Mr. Sable."

"Forget it," said Sable. "I'll talk to Bland."

That would be best, sir," said Bromberg.

They drove for another two miles, the carnage around them unchanging, then pulled into a parking lot in the basement of a hotel.

"Bland lives here?" asked Sable as the vehicle screeched to a halt.

"No," said Bromberg. "But he's in conference at the moment. He's arranged for you to have a suite of rooms. You'll be sent for shortly."

"Why don't I just wait outside his conference room?" said Sable uneasily.

"I do not question My Lord Bland's orders," said Bromberg, getting out of the vehicle and taking the overnight bag in his hand. Sable followed him, a glass door slid back, and they walked to a lift. It let them off on the top floor—the thirteenth—and Bromberg led him to a door at the end of the hall. He punched out the combination, the door opened inward, and Bromberg and Sable entered a truly luxurious penthouse suite. There was an enormous and expensively furnished sitting room, complete with fireplace and well-stocked bar, that had a view of the central city. To the right was another, smaller sitting room, to the left a bedroom with a pneumatic mattress that could have accommodated ten people, and beyond that a marble bathroom with a sauna.

"The accommodations are satisfactory?" asked Bromberg.

"They're fine. How long will I be here?"

"Not very. My Lord Bland will send for you shortly. In the meantime, enjoy your stay in Tifereth. I can guarantee that you won't be disturbed. You're the hotel's only tenant"

"What happened to the others?"

"Oh, that's a long story, Mr. Sable," said Bromberg. "Perhaps we'll discuss it over dinner."

"I was rather hoping to leave town before then," said Sable.

"Then some other time, perhaps."

"By the way, I don't happen to see a vidphone anywhere around here. Is there one?"

"Whom do you wish to communicate with?"

"I want to call my wife and tell her I've arrived safely."

"It's been taken care of."

"And I want to speak to Caspar Wallenbach."

"I'm afraid that's quite impossible," said Bromberg. "He died last night."

"How?"

"Heart attack, I believe," said Bromberg. "And now, if you've no further questions. . ."

"I've got plenty of them," said Sable.

"Then I suggest you ask My Lord Bland," said Bromberg with a smile. He walked to the door, punched the combination, and left.

Sable walked over to the door, tried it, and wasn't surprised to discover that it wouldn't open without a combination. He then checked the huge picture windows in the sitting room. There was no way to open them, and he didn't see any sense shattering them and trying to climb down over the sheer side of a thirteen-story building.

He began inspecting the suite more closely, feeling very much like a caged animal. There were no religious artifacts of any kind, no reading material, no video or radio sets. All the closets were empty, the cabinets and dresser drawers were barren, even the chest above the vanity in the bathroom was vacant.

He checked the bar, found a corkscrew, and spent the next twenty minutes futilely trying to pry open the door to the outer corridor. He toyed with breaking a bottle and keeping a sliver of glass for a weapon should he need it, but rejected the notion: he was more likely to inadvertently slash himself with a concealed piece of jagged glass than do injury to anyone else.

So, instead of breaking a bottle of liquor, he opened one and poured himself a drink. He downed it in a single swallow, tried the door again without much hope, then stripped off his clothes and took a shower. While he was drying himself off Bromberg entered the suite, found him in the midst of getting dressed, and announced that Bland had sent for him.

"So I'm really going to get to see him?"

"Of course."

"I was beginning to feel like a prisoner."

"These are security precautions, nothing more. There are certain elements still at large that unfortunately make Tifereth less safe than we desire."

"Did the same elements give Wallenbach his heart attack?" asked Sable caustically.

"I really couldn't say."

"I know," said Sable. "You were elsewhere at the time and you don't know anything about it"

"Right" Bromberg grinned. "Are you ready?"

"Should I leave my bag here or take it along?" asked Sable.

"Oh, I think you might as well take it with you. After all, if you're fogged in, you can always bring it back here, can't you?"

Sable grunted, picked up the bag, and followed Bromberg to the lift. When they reached the basement parking lot he was once again very conscious of the stench of death, but he made no comment and quickly took his seat.

They drove for just under a mile, passing row upon row of armed guards during the final few blocks, and stopped before the gates of a large building, which Sable took to be a Church of Baal from which all sectarian symbols had been removed. Bromberg uttered a password, a guard opened the gate, and they proceeded up a long driveway, stopping at a covered portico.

"Here we are," said Bromberg, getting out of the vehicle. "Let me carry your bag."

"Fine," replied Sable, following the Security Chief to the entrance. They walked through two huge wooden doors, both of which had scenes of depravity and degradation carved into them by the hand of a strange but masterful artist who obviously had a morbid fascination with his subject matter. A moment later they found themselves in an enormous lobby with polished red floors and walls, and armed guards posted every five feet Bromberg nodded to one of them, who immediately left his post, walked down a long corridor, and returned a few minutes later. He made a slight gesture, and Bromberg took Sable by the arm.

"He'll see you now," he whispered, leading Sable down the corridor. When they reached the end of it they came to a heavy iron door, and Sable knew Bland must be behind it He and Bromberg waited for a team of men to laboriously pull it open. Then they entered the room together.

Sable had to fight back the urge to vomit on the spot The smell of decaying flesh was superseded by the pungent odor of blood, the salty, sickly scent of gallon upon gallon of blood.

Men and women, all nude, hung from the rafters that crisscrossed the huge domed ceiling, some held in place by meathooks, some tied by the thumbs, the toes, the genitals. Others were crucified to the walls. Still more cluttered the floor. Some were dead; most were alive but in no condition to move or even to scream in agony.

Sable stared dumbly at the scene before him. Slowly he became aware of an insistent tugging on his arm, and he finally let Bromberg lead him past the dying and the dead, toward the center of the auditorium. He felt as if he were sleepwalking, as if this had to be a nightmare. Then a woman, her face and body no longer covered by skin, reached out and grabbed at his leg, and he realized that this was really happening, that the hideous scenes on the doors of the church now had a counterpart in life.

At the far end of the auditorium, sitting on a plain wooden chair, was a small, slender, golden-haired man, clad immaculately in white. As Sable forced himself to approach him, he saw that the man's face was cherubic and unblemished, his fingers lean and delicate, his hair carefully groomed, his features almost feminine.

"Mr. Sable," he said in a high-pitched voice when Sable was within fifteen feet of him. "How nice of you to come."

"You're Conrad Bland?" said Sable, fighting the urge to run from the auditorium and never look back.

"In the flesh!" said Bland with a smile.

"What's going on here?" Sable asked weakly.

"Nothing that need concern you," said Bland. "But I am delighted to see you. I was very much wondering what you'd look like."

Sable looked dully around him. "What sort of butchery is this?"

"The sort I like," said Bland easily. "In time you may come to enjoy it yourself. You have figured out, of course, that we have not captured your assassin?"

"Of course," repeated Sable without inflection. "Why did you send for me?"

"Curiosity," said Bland with a laugh. "I wanted to see what kind of man would try to extradite a butcher from a slaughterhouse."

"I didn't know . . ." said Sable, his voice trailing off again, trying to keep his attention focused on Bland but unable to stop himself from looking at the quivering meat around him. "Nobody knew . . ."

"They will know, never fear," said Bland. "Without exception, they will all know."

"What happens to me now?"

"Why, you will remain in Tifereth as my honored guest," said Bland. "You fascinate me, Mr. Sable. You really do."

"Why?"

"Because you are the first man, other than my mercenaries, who ever felt compelled to protect or prolong my existence."

"It was my duty," said Sable dully.

"So much the better. You are a man of honor, a man of duty and decency. In short, you are the Enemy. You are the embodiment of what I must destroy. I must study you well, Mr. Sable. Indeed I must"

"Suppose I don't want to stay here?" asked Sable, once again forcing his eyes away from the horror that surrounded him and focusing on Bland's face.

"Suppose away." Bland laughed. "You will remain here as my guest nonetheless."

"For how long?"

"Until you cease to amuse me."

"And then what?"

"I should think, Mr. Sable, that the answer to that would be obvious," said Bland.

Chapter 17

"If blood were green, then green would be my favorite color."
—Conrad Bland

Jericho kept off the streets of Kether until nightfall. Then, just before midnight, he took up a vigil near a small all-night restaurant on the outskirts of town. Before long a police vehicle pulled up and two officers emerged. When they came out of the restaurant half an hour later he was waiting for them. There was a brief, bloodless, silent scuffle which attracted no attention from the other patrons, and a few moments later, after loading their bodies into the trunk and appropriating their hand weapons, he was driving along the almost-deserted highway from Kether to Yesod.

He gave some thought to bypassing Yesod entirely and driving on to Netsah, the next major city on the road to Tifereth, but he decided that the failure of the dead officers to report in to their headquarters would have aroused suspicion by then. The three hours it would take him to reach Yesod was about all the time he felt he could buy in this particular vehicle.

He was within fifteen miles of Yesod and could see the lights of the city twinkling in the distance when an unmarked car going toward Kether crossed over the median strip and began following him. A moment later a siren sounded, a light on the car's dashboard began flashing, and Jericho decided that he'd better pull over to the shoulder. Both cars came to a stop simultaneously, and three men immediately emerged from the unmarked vehicle and began approaching Jericho's car.

"Out," said one of the men.

Jericho emerged from his vehicle into the humid night

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"We'll ask the questions, if you don't mind," said the man. "What's your business in Yesod?"

"I'm a detective from Kether," said Jericho. "Officer Parnell Burnam. I'm on police business."

"What police business?'

"If you'll show me your credentials, I'll be happy to tell you," said Jericho.

The man pulled out a wallet and displayed a plastic card.

"No, good," said Jericho. "Being from a private security force from Tifereth doesn't give you the right to stop and question me."

"Jason," said the man to one of his companions, "put in a call to Kether and see if they've got a Parnell Burnam on their force. Call in the license plate, too."

"No sense going to all that trouble," said Jericho hastily. "Actually, I was supposed to be here a few hours ago. I stopped for a couple of drinks just outside Kether and kind of lost track of the time."

"That's your problem."

"Look," he persisted desperately. "You're going to get me in all kinds of trouble if they find out that I'm just now getting to Yesod. Let me just show you my ID and get out of here."

"Let's see it," said the man noncommittally.

Jericho fumbled nervously inside his jacket as if searching for his ID card, then calmly pulled out one of the hand weapons he had taken from the dead policemen and fired it at point-blank range. The man died without a sound, and an instant later his two companions also lay lifeless upon the highway.

Jericho turned to the police car, fired a burst into the radio, then searched the three corpses until he found the keys to the unmarked car. He pulled the bodies off the road just as a light drizzle began to fall, got in the car, and a few minutes later drove into Yesod.

Yesod was a compact little town of perhaps 100,000 people, an architectural hodgepodge of Victorian and Gothic buildings, of spires and steeples and cobblestone streets, all brand spanking new and all aspiring to look centuries old. He was a mile into the city when the radio on his dash panel began buzzing. Since he didn't know the car's call letters or passwords, he ignored it, and in less than another mile two police cars, sirens screaming, were hot on his heels.

He increased his speed on the wet street and began weaving through the sparse traffic, tires screeching as he turned every few blocks. But it didn't help, for now five cars were chasing him, waking the whole area with the ear-splitting sound of their sirens and the blinding flash of their lights. He knew they were in radio contact with each other, and that he'd be blocked off in another two minutes at most

He peeled into an alley, slowed down slightly, opened the door, grabbed his makeup bag, and jumped out, rolling into the shadows as he hit the ground. He was on his feet instantly, standing stock-still until a trio of police cars raced by him. He heard his car crash a few hundred feet up the alley, then raced between two Victorian houses and made his way to the sidewalk before anyone had emerged from the houses to see what had occurred.

He quickly untucked and unbuttoned his shirt and walked rapidly up to the end of the street, turning right for half a block and then turning again into the alley. A number of other men and women who had heard the crash were also approaching the site of the wreck, most of them in their nightclothes, some with umbrellas. He waited until he got within view of the police, then began buttoning his shirt back up.

Two of the cars had left the scene before he joined the little semicircle of onlookers, and he knew they were searching for the missing driver. One of the officers who had remained with the car asked the bystanders if they had seen anyone fleeing from the scene of the wreck, and dispersed them a few minutes later when no one was able to provide any information. Most of them hurried home to get out of the rain.

Jericho turned back the way he had come and walked away at a leisurely pace. Police cars were still patrolling the area, and he knew he would have to get off the streets shortly, before he attracted their attention. He spotted what seemed to be a church a few blocks up ahead and he headed toward it, planning to wait out the remainder of the morning there until the manhunt moved elsewhere.

When he arrived he saw that the symbols on the door and the portico were identical to the Church of Satan he had attended with Ubusuku back in Amaymon, and as he entered he looked about for some sign directing him to the Laymen's Gallery. There wasn't any.

He then opened a door that led to the main auditorium of file church. A man at the head of the aisle handed him a cheaply fashioned cloak and hood, both bearing Satanic and cabalistic designs, and he realized that there were no laymen in Yesod's Church of Satan.

The church was almost empty, and he sat atone in the back, his head lowered as if in prayer. He estimated that it would be dawn in another hour, and he decided to remain inside the church until early afternoon.

From time to time a man or woman would enter the church, approach the onyx altar, make some form of obeisance, and then take a seat in one of the pews. No priests were present, and the only staff member he could see was the one whose sole duty seemed to be the dispersal and retrieval of cloaks and hoods.

He remained where he was for more than an hour. Then, as the church got a little more crowded, he rose and walked to the back of the aisle, returning the cloak and hood and seeking out a restroom. He quickly altered his identity, then sat, fully clothed, in a toilet stall for another hour. When he reemerged he found a new man on duty, took a new cloak and hood, discovered that the church was more crowded and that most of the people were seated at the front, and joined them.

The number of congregants continued to increase, and by noon the church was almost entirely filled. Finally, at what he assumed to be high noon, a gong was struck and a black-hooded priest strode out to the altar.

"We will recite the Eighteenth Enochian Key," he announced, and began chanting in a language that was totally unfamiliar to Jericho but which the other congregants repeated unhesitatingly.

When they were done the gong was struck again, and the priest raised his hand for silence.

"O thou mighty light and burning flame of comfort, that unveilest the glory of Satan to the center of the Earth," he intoned, "be thou a window of comfort unto me. Move, therefore, and appear! Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the same, the true worshiper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!"

The congregation responded with a number of heartfelt cries of "Hail Satan!" and "Regie Satanis!" and then fell silent again.

"My brethren," continued the priest, removing his hood, "I had a sermon prepared for today. I shall not give that sermon. We have more important things to do." He paused for effect, then thundered out his next sentence. "An assassin hired by the Republic to kill the Dark Messiah is in Yesod at this very minute!"

There was a stunned silence.

"He must be stopped!" cried the priest "He must not be allowed to reach Conrad Bland. It is said that he is a master of disguise. Therefore, you must disbelieve your neighbor, doubt your spouse, scrutinize your children. Shoot first and question later. It is far better that a thousand innocent men and women die than that this man be allowed to leave Yesod! If you hesitate, if you pause, you are no Satanist and you do not belong in this church!"

The people began shifting uneasily, scrutinizing those seated next to them.

"We must ask for help, for strength, for guidance!" cried the priest. "We must offer a Sacrifice of Supplication!" He looked out at his suddenly intense audience. "Who will stand among the chosen?"

Five young men, an old man, and a middle-aged woman stood up immediately. Three other women and another man rose a few seconds later.

"Excellent!" said the priest. "Let it never be said that the membership of our church lacked zeal!" He pointed to one of the young men, who approached the altar while the others sat back down.

"You shall sit at Lord Lucifer's left hand this day," said the priest, and the young man, wild-eyed and with a fanatical glow on his face, nodded vigorously.

"And who will strike the blow?" cried the priest. This time everyone but Jericho rose to his feet, and Jericho stood up a moment later.

The priest pointed to an elderly woman in the third row, who quickly approached him.

"With this hallowed blade shall you present Lord Lucifer with our supplication," he said, handing her an ornate dagger.

The young man took off his clothes and stood, hands clasped behind him, facing the audience.

"The congregation will join me in the Chant of Supplication," said the priest.

He began intoning another chant, and as the congregation joined in, the woman pulled her cloak tightly about her, completely covering her dress. Then she touched five imaginary points in the air with the dagger, placed it next to the young man's abdomen, and pushed it inward and upward. He screamed, gurgled, spit up a mouthful of blood, but remained standing.

"Satan smiles upon us!" cried the priest "For the more suffering Lord Lucifer enjoys, the more power shall he return to us for our efforts. Regie Satanis!"

The young man suddenly fell to his knees and stared glassily at the priest, who ignored him.

"Hear me, Lord Lucifer!" cried the priest "Heed our supplication, embrace our sacrifice! Make keen our eyes, make powerful our arms, bless our quest, and destroy our enemies!"

The young man fell on his face, twitched a few times, and then lay still.

The ceremony went on for another hour, turning into a grimmer, more sordid version of the Black Mass Jericho had witnessed in Amaymon.

This time the living altar was a fifteen-year-old girl who was carried to the front of the congregation, where she was stripped naked, strapped to the onyx altar, and sodomized by the priest and three of the congregants. When this was over she lay motionless except for the rapid rising and falling of her breasts, while black candles were affixed to her hands by means of dripping wax.

A bare-breasted nun appeared, urinated in a bowl, and placed the bowl on the girl's belly. After a few more chants, the three men and the priest drank from it.

The priest then took a whip from the nun and began whipping the girl and the three men, intoning still more chants with each stroke. A moment later a nude man in a goat's-head mask leaped into a pentagram which had been drawn with a black turnip dipped in the urine, took the whip from the priest, flayed the girl in earnest, and began a series of grotesque contortions which seemed to consist primarily of pelvic thrusts. The girl was sodomized again as the congregation chanted "Ave Satanis!" with each thrust. He then took an unlit candle, inserted it first into her vagina and then into her anus, and, finally withdrawing it, raced off into the darkness surrounding the pentagram.

The Satan-figure's departure seemed to signal the onset of an orgy among the entire congregation, and Jerico found himself forced to follow suit. He stripped himself naked, was handed a whip, followed the other members up to the altar, and tried to ignore the pain as his neighbors lashed out indiscriminately with their own whips. He found a reasonably attractive girl who was momentarily unencumbered by a partner and pulled her to the floor. He was about to have normal sex with her—as normal as was possible under these circumstances, anyway—when he looked about him and saw that normal sexual relations were definitely not the order of the day. He quickly turned the girl onto her belly and sodomized her, while she screamed Enochian chants at the top of her lungs.

More whips lashed him as he was withdrawing from her, and he found that his participation was far from finished. During the next half hour, with a variety of partners of both sexes, he found himself being expected to perform acts of degradation he hadn't believed existed outside of the twisted imaginations of some of the Republic's grosser pornographers. But since the alternative was the exposure of his identity, he undertook the task as coldly and efficiently as he undertook the more usual task of murder.

When he was beginning to wonder just how much more of this he could take (or, to be more accurate, how much more of it he could administer), the gong rang again and the congregants, with scarcely a glance at their momentary partners, walked back to their seats, physically and emotionally spent. They took a few minutes getting dressed, catching their breath, tending to minor abrasions, and otherwise composing themselves, then joined the priest in another twenty minutes of prayers and chants. Finally the priest exhorted them one last time to catch the assassin, after which he left the auditorium. A black-hooded woman carrying a medical kit approached the girl who had been the living altar and began ministering to her, two minor priests picked up the corpse of the young sacrifice and carried it off, and the people started filing out Jericho quickly worked his way into the midst of the crowd, handing back his cloak and hood on the way out.

Most of the congregants walked to a nearby parking lot, and Jericho lagged behind. When the last of them had driven off he inspected the few remaining empty cars, selected one that worked by computer-lock ignition rather than keys, quickly broke the code, and drove out of the lot He went north through the center of town, never moving out of the slowest lane of traffic, then veered to the west when he had passed out of the commercial and industrial areas.

After a few minutes he spotted a brightly labeled Air Parcel truck making a pickup. He slowed down and began discretely following it. The truck made several more stops, but he knew that it would eventually wind up at Yesod's airport, as indeed it did just after nightfall.

Jericho parked a goodly distance away from the air-freight terminal, walked unseen to the truck, waited until the driver climbed into the back to begin unloading his merchandise, and then dispatched him quickly and bloodlessly. He appropriated his uniform and identification card, then made his face up to resemble the driver's ID photo. He picked up a pair of small packages, locked the driver's body in the back of the truck, and walked into the freight dispatcher's office, his credentials pinned to a breast pocket. While waiting in line behind a number of other couriers he got a look at the flight schedule that was posted on the wall, and saw that a plane was leaving for Hod in the next half hour.

This was better than he had hoped for. Netsah was only two hundred miles north of Yesod, but Hod was within three hundred miles of Tifereth itself. If he could get on the plane, he could bypass Netsah and four other cities. He stepped out the door, changed the addresses on the tow parcels to read "Hod," then waited fifteen minutes and reentered the building. The line was gone and he walked straight up to the dispatcher.

"What have you got for me today?" asked the dispatcher pleasantly.

"Some priority stuff for Hod," he replied matter-of-factly.

"I don't know," said the dispatcher. "The plane is loaded up and is due to take off in just a few minutes."

"Look, I don't know what the hell is in these packages, but if they don't get to Hod tonight I could lose my job. Isn't there anything you can do?"

"They're that important?" said the dispatcher, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

Jericho nodded.

"All right," said the dispatcher. "I'll radio the pilot and tell him to open up a hatch and wait for you. Drive it out to Runway Seven."

Jericho thanked him profusely, went out to the truck, and drove to within forty yards of the plane that was gunning its engines on the runway marked "7." He got out of the cab, waved to the pilot, and tossed the packages and his makeup bag into the cargo hold.

"Are you clear?" called the pilot.

"All clear!" shouted Jericho above the drone of the engines.

He waited until the pilot hit the button that slowly closed the hatch door, then leaped upward and pulled himself into the hold just before the door slammed shut

He would have preferred to kill the pilot rather than chance discovery at the other end, but while he could pilot a spaceship he was totally ignorant of the workings of planetary airplanes.

A moment later he was airborne, heading for the distant city of Hod and wondering if the White Lucy's contact there was still alive.

Chapter 18

"Torture, like the violin, is merely an instrument. Only in the hands of a master does it become an art form."
—Conrad Bland

Sable had spent an almost sleepless night in a small room in a turret of the church. Though not as luxurious as the hotel where he had been temporarily incarcerated, it provided for all of his needs—except freedom. The door was made of steel, the combination lock could be punched only from the outside, and two burly men stood guard, one on each side of the door. Such minimal sleep as he had been able to achieve had been broken by the screams and moans of the dying and the overpowering stench of the dead.

About an hour after sunlight began flooding into his room through a barred window, his door was unlocked and he was escorted down a winding staircase past scores of tortured bodies, some living, some recently dead, and out a side door.

He was then led down a flagstone path, and found his eyes tearing from the bright sunlight. A number of birds flew overhead, attracted by the smell of the rotting bodies, and he found himself idly wondering if any of them ever made it inside the church.

After walking for perhaps two hundred feet, they reached a small, heavily guarded rectory, and Sable was roughly ushered inside. Bland was waiting for him, seated in a large library which he had filled with books and tapes from all parts of the Republic. An octaphonic sound system played the bittersweet strains of some symphony that sounded vaguely familiar but which Sable couldn't identify.

"Good morning, Mr. Sable," said Bland pleasantly. "I trust you slept well?"

"As well as could be expected," replied Sable, looking around the room. Along with the books and tapes there were numerous paintings and statuettes, though none of them was even mildly Satanic in nature. There seemed to be no mementos of any kind representing Bland's bloody career.

"Have a seat," said Bland, gesturing toward a wing-backed chair opposite him. "I apologize for the inelegance of my domicile, but one must accept certain inconveniences from time to time."

"But one needn't like them," said Sable coldly.

"Come, come, Mr. Sable. You're not being very friendly or amusing, and we mustn't forget that your sole purpose for being here is to amuse me."

"Or humor you."

"You think I'm crazy?" Bland laughed. "Well, why not? It helps to have the enemy underestimate me. But let me tell you this, Mr. Sable: When I was twelve years old I was taken to a psychiatrist after my mother found me vivisecting our family pets. I am perhaps the only man of your acquaintance who has a certificate stating categorically that I am not insane." He laughed uproariously at that.

"Your psychiatrist had an interesting notion of innocent childish pranks," said Sable, watching Bland for a reaction and surprised when he got nothing more violent than a smile.

"Well, I'm sure if he were alive he would appreciate that. I killed him when I was thirteen." Sable decided it would be safer not to comment again, but Bland, vastly enjoying the sight of the detective struggling with his urge to detect, prodded him on. "Aren't you curious to know why I killed him?"

"Only if you wish to tell me."

"I knew that a great destiny, a magnificent destiny, lay before me. I didn't know what it was, but even at that early age I knew that I didn't want anyone around who would be able to identify me or supply any information about me to my enemies. To that same end, I killed both of my parents, but except for that and a few other isolated instances, I had a rather normal adolescence. But enough about me, Mr. Sable. Tell me about yourself."

"For instance?" asked Sable, his eyes scanning the various windows and doorways.

"For instance, why in the world would anyone—and especially a moral man like yourself—wish to protect my life? And I strongly suggest that you stop looking for a means of escape. You would find your life much less pleasant, and of far shorter duration, if you actually made it out of this house before I released you."

Sable sighed and waited for the tension to flow out of his muscles. Bland might be a madman, but he wasn't a stupid madman, and he hadn't lived this long by being careless. He took him at his word that escape was out of the question.

"I'm a police officer, sworn to uphold the law. When I discovered that the Republic was out to assassinate a man to whom my government had given asylum, I felt it was my duty to prevent it."

"And would you do the same thing now that you've been to Tifereth?" asked Bland pleasantly.

Sable stared at him, took a deep breath, and answered the question. "I would no longer lift a finger to protect you."

"Oh?" said Bland, amused. "Do you know how many innocent men and women your assassin has murdered since he's been on Walpurgis?"

"Six."

"You've been out of touch, Mr. Sable. The count is up to at least fourteen, and possibly as many as twenty."

"You haven't caught him yet?"

"We will soon."

"Where is he?"

"Somewhere between Kether and Tifereth. Probably in Yesod."

"He's gotten that far?" said Sable, surprised.

"He's a highly skilled killer. But of course he hasn't gotten close enough to be a real irritant yet. When that time comes—and it's coming soon—he will be stopped. But tell me, Mr. Sable, why you no longer wish to hinder a paid professional assassin, a killer who has been strewing the countryside with innocent victims."

"Are you expressing moral outrage at someone killing off innocent people?"

"He is poaching on my territory!" cried Bland, his eyes blazing fiercely. Suddenly his face contorted into the semblance of a smile again. "Forgive me. I happen to feel deeply about my prerogatives, and occasionally I express myself too strongly."

An intercom buzzed on the wall, and Bland walked over to it.

"Yes?"

"Sir," said a voice that sounded like Bromberg's, "there's no question about it: he's escaped from Yesod."

"I rather thought he might," said Bland calmly. "How long will it take him to reach Netsah?"

"Three hours, maybe four."

"Wait five hours and then destroy it."

"The whole city?"

Bland didn't even deign to answer, but merely switched off the intercom.

"So much for your assassin," he said. "May I offer you a drink, Mr. Sable?"

Sable shook his head.

"As you wish," said Bland with a shrug. He returned to his chair. "You look distressed, Mr. Sable. Is it the destruction of Netsah?"

"You're killing thousands of innocent people," said Sable, trying to control his fury.

"They're only people," said Bland. "Sooner or later they would die anyway. Some people, such as yourself, amuse and entertain me. Some, such as your much-heralded assassin, challenge me. But I must truthfully admit that I care for none of you." He gestured to his books and tapes. "The best of Man, all that is worthwhile, is there. The rest is just meat."

"Like your parents?" said Sable coldly.

"Mr. Sable, you strike me to the quick. In point of fact, I am quite ashamed of killing my parents."

"Then why did you do it?"

"Let me rephrase that," amended Bland. "I do not regret their deaths, but rather the nature of their deaths. I behaved like some slinking night-stalking carnivore—or," he added with a smile, "like some Republic assassin. They were the two people whose suffering I would have most enjoyed, and I dispatched them quickly, secretly, leaving no traces. They never knew what happened to them, and consequently I never fully savored the thrill of their death agonies. I have become much more skilled in recent years, but alas, one can murder one's parents only once."

Sable tried to disguise his disgust and horror, and felt it would be unsafe to make any comment.

"You look distressed, Mr. Sable. There is no need to be. It is my nature to do certain things; it is my strength that I do them well. I destroy things because the only alternative is not to destroy them, and I find that unpalatable. Tell me truthfully: Have you never had the desire to kill your parents, or your wife, or your children?"

"Of course I have," replied Sable. "But it's just an animal impulse. It can be overcome."

"Ah, but what if a man chooses not to overcome it? What if, instead, he learns to direct it? What might that man not do, given intellect and drive and opportunity?"

"One of the things he might not do is convince me that he's right."

"Wonderful!" cried Bland, clapping his hands together in delight. "I knew you would prove amusing. How shall I reward you? Ah, I have it! You may ask me anything you wish, with no fear of repercussion, for the next five minutes. Surely you have stockpiled a number of questions?"

"Let's start with a simple one," said Sable, not at all sure the wrong questions would be free of repercussions. "What is your goal—to conquer Walpurgis?"

Bland laughed and shook his head.

"What, then—the whole Republic?"

"My dear Mr. Sable, how you misjudge me in your ignorance! I have no wish to conquer anything. I have neither the desire nor the capacity to rule over an empire."

"Then why all this slaughter?"

"You must not confuse wars of conquest with wars of destruction."

He walked to a window and opened it, and Sable could hear the muffled shrieks and screams of Bland's victims coming from the church.

"Do you hear that?" said Bland, his eyes aglow. "That is the symphony I love the best, Mr. Sable."

And, along with the sound, came a hot breeze bringing the stench, the smell of rotting, decaying flesh, of blood, of vermin, of death. Sable was sickened by it, and simultaneously amazed that he had grown moderately accustomed to it during the night. He began to understand how some of Bland's guards could lose their objectivity and come to love their work; it was only when you stepped out of the charnel house and then reentered it that you began to realize the full extent of what was happening.

"Why did you come to Walpurgis in the first place?" asked Sable, covering his nose and mouth with a handkerchief until Bland reluctantly closed the window and returned to his chair with a regretful sigh.

"This is a world that worships Satan," said Bland at last. "I was born to come here, and this planet was born to have me. We were made for each other. It has been a perfect marriage, and it will remain so—until I kill the bride, that is." Sable, still fighting the urge to vomit, said nothing, and after a moment Bland continued. "To be painfully honest, Satanism and devil worship is, if anything, even sillier than theism, but if the planet's belief in it can be used to my advantage, I have no strenuous objections to it. Never forget: It was your clergy, your moral leaders, who first offered me sanctuary. And now they think to ingratiate themselves with me by proclaiming me their Dark Messiah." He laughed. "What need has Satan for servants?"

"You have them," Sable pointed out. "Bromberg and the rest."

"And before I am done, I shall kill them. I would expect no less of Satan, nor should your clergy." He glanced at his timepiece. "Ah, but I see I shall have to terminate our little discussion, Mr. Sable. There are certain functions about to begin next door that I simply cannot avoid. Perhaps you would like to watch?"

"I'd prefer not to."

"So be it," said Bland, rising. "After I leave, you will be escorted back to your quarters. You may order anything you wish from our rather limited menu, and of course my library is at your disposal. In the meantime, I'd suggest that you prepare a list of those members of your civil government who are opposed to me and might be persuaded to pay a little visit to you during your stay here in Tifereth."

Sable was about to object, but Bland silenced him with a raised finger. "Have you ever heard of Cambria III, Mr. Sable?"

"No."

"I had the opportunity to spend almost a year there, after I was forced to flee from New Rhodesia. It was not a totally wasted period of time, since I had certain theories I wanted to put to the test. I killed three thousand men on Cambria—three thousand seventeen, to be accurate. Each of them firmly stated that there were certain things he would never do, secrets he would never reveal, vows he would never break. Each of them, without exception, did those things, revealed those secrets, broke those vows. They were strong men, Mr. Sable; far stronger than you—nor were they weakened by religion or a sense of duty. You might consider that, Mr. Sable, before we have our next little chat."

Chapter 19

"Evil admits of no alternatives."
—Conrad Bland

The south end of Hod wasn't Just a meat shop; it was a barbecue shop.

Jericho had no trouble sneaking off the plane and leaving the airport. His problem was making sense out of what remained of Hod.

Once a teeming city of 200,000, filled with tall angular buildings and bustling thoroughfares, its population had been cut in half, its structures burned and bombed, its streets destroyed. He was certain that Bland couldn't have been expecting him here this soon; it had to be the result of some morbid, bloody whim on Bland's part, nothing more.

The streets—such portions of them as remained intact—were littered with garbage and glass and burned-out wrecks of vehicles of all shapes and sizes. And in among all the other useless rubble on the streets were the bodies: some shot, some slashed, some charred beyond recognition, all of them dead.

Jericho had gone less than half a mile from the airport when he realized that a whole and healthy man would attract more attention than just about anything else in Hod. He walked into the blackened skeleton of a small home and went to work, emerging a few minutes later with burn marks all over his body, his left arm in a bloody sling, his clothes tattered and bloodstained, and a severe limp. Then, with a properly glassy-eyed expression on his face, he began trudging through the ruins.

To his surprise, he passed some other people who were in even, worse condition that he himself appeared to be. The sick, the wounded, and the maimed paid him no notice, and there was no one else around to question his identity. From time to time he could hear the explosive sounds of projectile weapons in the distance, but since the city had been slaughtered rather than occupied he couldn't imagine who the shots were being directed at.

He limped on, unhindered, for the better part of four miles, taking in the carnage. There had been massive firebombing, but the pilots who had dropped the bombs had hardly shown pinpoint accuracy. Certain sections of the city had been hit three and four times, others—though not many of them—had been totally missed. But even in those relatively destruction-free areas his battered appearance seemed to be the rule rather than the exception and he drew no unwarranted attention.

He didn't know where to begin looking for his contact, but it stood to reason that if she was still alive she would have to be in a section of the city that the firebombs had missed. He toured the largest such area with no success, spent the night with a number of lost butchered souls in the lobby of a burned-out hotel, and proceeded to a different unscathed area the next morning.

The sound of gunfire became more frequent, and twice it was so near that he instinctively hurled himself to the ground. No one was around to see the agility he had displayed on either occasion.

And, at noontime, he found it: a locked palmistry shop with a photograph of a white-clad woman in the window and an "Out of Business" sign pasted on the door. He waited until a few walking wounded had moved out of sight, then quickly jimmied the door and entered a small anteroom. Tense and alert, he walked to the back of the room, pushed aside some beaded curtains, and stepped into the main room.

A middle-aged woman sat by a window, staring dully into the alley.

"We're closed," she said tonelessly, without looking at him.

"Not anymore," he replied, taking a seat.

She turned and scrutinized him. "You want a hospital, if there are any left; not a seer."

"Suppose you let me be the judge of that," replied Jericho, idly fingering a pack of tarot cards that lay on a pentagonal end table next to him. "The White Lucy thinks I need a seer."

"Jericho?" she said hesitantly, staring at him in morbid fascination.

He nodded.

"What happened to you?" she said at last.

"Nothing."

"But you're all—" She stopped herself short. "But of course: what could be less conspicuous in a slaughterhouse than one of the cattle?"

"Why didn't the White Lucy tell you what disguise I'd be wearing?" he asked, only now taking his arm out of the sling and stretching it. "I would have thought she'd be following my progress every step of the way."

"She's very ill," said the woman.

"What happened to her?"

"Stroke, old age, who can say? She's kept in sporadic contact, but most of her thoughts have been irrational and rambling. I suspect she's dying."

"Has she managed to tell you anything useful in her moments of lucidity?"

"Yes. The only city between here and Tifereth where you'll have even a minimal chance of survival is Binah."

"Binah," he repeated. "That's only about eighty miles from Tifereth, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"By the way, what's the reason for all the gunfire I've been hearing?"

"You are," said the woman.

"Me?"

"Bland figured out sometime yesterday afternoon that you had bypassed Netsah and were on your way to Hod. He had his men announce that if you weren't killed in Hod, he'd be back to destroy what's left of it. So far they've killed about fifty people in the hope that one of them was you."

"He'll be back anyway," said Jericho.

"Of course he will. Hod was bombed almost two weeks ago, before he even knew of your existence. He bombed Hod because it pleased him, and he'll be back for the same reason."

"How many men has he got stationed here?"

"No more than two thousand."

"And how do they travel between here and Binah?"

"Let me ask the White Lucy," she said, closing her eyes and frowning. She looked up at him a moment later. "It's no use. She's practically deranged. Nothing she's sending makes any sense."

"All right," said Jericho. "Perhaps you can tell me a couple of things without having to call upon the White Lucy."

"I can try."

"First of all, why do these people put up with this? Why don't they either mount an attack on Tifereth or get the hell out of here?"

"You must understand: They worship Conrad Bland. He is their Dark Messiah, and in their eyes he can do no wrong. If he thinks that Hod must be obliterated and its population wiped out, then he must be correct. These are not the half-hearted devil worshipers you encountered in Amaymon or even Kether. They are true Satanists, with all that implies. They believe in the power and the might of evil, they revere deception and humiliation and degradation, they dwell in sin and corruption and wouldn't have it any other way. They freely administer death to each other, they have no fear of dying, and they are fully prepared to start serving Lucifer in the pits of Hell."

"That's ridiculous. Nobody wants to die. Even the martyrs of old Earth, given the choice, would have preferred to change their societies without dying."

"True," she answered. "But their religious beliefs didn't glorify death and suffering."

"They glorified Jesus, who was tortured on a cross," Jericho pointed out.

"That's because he suffered for them. No one suffers for Satanists."

"It's crazy."

"Could Conrad Bland have accomplished so much on a sane world?" was her answer.

He shrugged. "That takes care of my next question. I assume that even here, even after what's taken place, there is no underground that I can work through."

"None."

"And if this is what Hod is like now," he said, glancing out the window at the broken buildings in the distance, "I don't imagine I'll have a contact in Binah."

"Yes you will, if she's still alive," said the woman. "Her name is Celia."

He considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "It's not worth the risk, not if the White Lucy is demented."

"As I said, she does have moments of rationality. It may not be worth the risk not to make contact with Celia."

"I'll take it under advisement," said Jericho noncommittally. "One last question: Is any kind of nonmilitary traffic at all moving between Hod and Binah?"

"Not to my knowledge. It's possible, of course, but I doubt it"

"Well, I guess that's everything," he said, rising and inserting his arm back into the sling. "Will you be safe here?"

"I'll be much safer here than you will be where you're going," responded the woman.

He forced a friendly smile to his lips, then limped out through the anteroom and into the street.

He continued walking through the city, eyes and ears and nose alert, his brain editing out the misery and the suffering, hunting for a means of egress from Hod. Finally, in midafternoon, he passed by a pair of troop transport trucks, both under heavy guard. He hobbled along the street, seeming to pay no attention to them, and kept walking until he was out of sight. Then he doubled back.

He entered the charred remains of a nearby office building, waited inside it until nightfall, and then went back out. The gunfire had increased somewhat in frequency, for it was much easier to mistake a friend or neighbor for a Republic agent in the darkness than in daylight, but none of it was coming from his immediate vicinity.

Finally he approached the trucks again, hiding as close as he dared in the shadows of some still-intact buildings, and waiting. Eventually one of the guards—there were six that he could see, and probably a couple of others hidden from view by the trucks—walked off in his direction, obviously on his way to a bathroom or a restaurant. Jericho backed away, waited for the man to pass him, then struck him a powerful blow on the back of the neck and another to the Adam's apple. He carried the lifeless body into the nearest building, immediately appropriated the man's clothes, and a few minutes later had assumed his face and identity as well.

A quick search of the man's few papers told him that he was Jacinto Vargas and that he made his home in Netsah, but Jericho could find nothing to tell him where the transports were going.

He considered returning to the trucks, for Vargas's continued absence would soon draw attention, but he decided against it: the last thing he needed was to find himself driving south. So he waited, out of sight, until members of Bland's forces began wending their way to the trucks in groups of two and three and four.

Finally a lone uniformed man approached, and Jericho dragged him into the shadows, throwing him onto his back and pressing a knife against the side of his neck.

"Where are those trucks going?" he whispered.

"Binah!" stammered the man, his entire body trembling.

"Where else?"

"Just Binah! I swear it!"

Jericho killed him without using the knife. The Vargas identity, though he'd had it for only an hour, was too dangerous to use now, and he didn't want any signs of blood on his next uniform. He quickly traded clothes with his victim, approximated his facial features as best he could under the circumstances, found that his name was Daniel Manning, and transferred Manning's identity papers to his own person. He toyed with leaving Vargas's papers on Manning's corpse in an effort to confuse whoever finally found the body but decided that they might come in handy in Binah, and stuffed them into a back pocket.

Throughout his journey he had always been able to keep his makeup kit with him, either in a small bag, a wrapped package, or else stuffed inside his shirt, but he knew that any packages or bulges would draw too much attention on the troop truck. Therefore, he withdrew a single tube of facial putty, another of black hair dye, and a small packet of facial rouge that could suggest a different complexion, and regretfully left the rest of the contents behind.

A moment later he approached the trucks, and shortly thereafter he was huddled in the back of one of them, next to the tailgate, his head slumped on his chest, feigning sleep and rubbing shoulders with Bland's troops while the trucks raced through the humid night air to distant Binah.

Chapter 20

"Of course all men have souls. Otherwise I might just as well waste my time killing animals."
—Conrad Bland

It was still dark when the troop trucks reached Binah some five minutes apart.

Jericho, sitting by the tailgate, knew that his disguise could never stand the scrutiny of Manning's friends in the daylight, and as the truck slowed down and made a sharp left turn he leaped out He doubted that any of the sleeping soldiers were even aware that he was no longer among them, but he took no chances and was running at right angles to the truck the second his feet hit the ground. When he had gone a quarter of a mile, weaving in and out of buildings, he ducked into a doorway and paused for breath. There were no sounds of pursuit.

He remained where he was for another hour, emerging only after the sun began rising. Then he got his first good look at the city.

Whatever he had expected, Binah wasn't it.

First of all, it was relatively free from destruction. There were a certain number of bodies littering the streets, or hanging by hooks from lampposts, but the uniformly low buildings were intact, the streets weren't pockmarked by bomb craters, and the electricity seemed to be working.

Second, despite the corpses, he saw none of the walking wounded that had seemed endemic to Hod. Evidently in Binah you were either personally marked for destruction or you were not, and those people he saw on the streets seemed quite happy and healthy.

Almost all of the men wore black or red cloaks decorated with the insignia of their sects, and most of them were armed with both knives and hand weapons.

The women, for the most part, were dressed in the same kink-and-leather he had seen during his first night in Amaymon, when he had stumbled onto the cat's funeral procession. Bare breasts and backs and buttocks were on display almost everywhere, regardless of the shape and age of the women, and Jericho found himself wishing that ninety percent of them would don some more clothing, if only for aesthetic reasons. He also idly wondered what they wore during the frigid Walpurgan winters.

A few soldiers appeared on the street, and he noticed that none of the citizens seemed to draw back from them. They were not cheered as conquering heroes, to be sure, but they were accepted with no discernible resentment.

He didn't know if any of the soldiers were from Manning's unit, and he had no wish to call attention to himself by searching for Celia's establishment in his current outfit. Therefore, he turned into an alley, standing motionless with a terrible patience, waiting for a lone male to wander by. Within twenty minutes he had his victim, and a minute later he was wearing a red cloak over his military uniform. Then, feeling more secure, he stepped back onto the sidewalk.

Binah was a small city, extending no more than a mile in each direction from its core, and Jericho had hopes of finding his contact before noon. As it turned out, he didn't come to her place of business until late afternoon, and even then he almost missed it until he realized that protective coloration also had to be adaptive, and that the medium standing by the window wearing nothing but a white corset and boots was the woman he was searching for.

The building was a moderately new structure made of brick and some hardwood he couldn't identify, and her suite was half a flight up from the ground level. He climbed the stairs and knocked twice on a door that proclaimed in small gold lettering that she was Madame Celia, Medium and Phrenologist.

"Good afternoon," she said, opening the door and leading him past a pair of tufted leather love seats to a large chrome-and-leather chair. "Won't you please be seated?"

"Thank you."

"And how may I serve you?" she said, sitting across from him on a matching chair, totally oblivious to any effect her naked breasts and exposed thighs might be having upon him.

"I wish to make contact with someone," said Jericho.

"What is the name of the departed?"

"The White Lucy."

"You're Jericho?"

He nodded. "Is she still alive?"

"Just barely," said Celia sadly. "Even when she's awake she's almost never cogent anymore. I just hope we can keep together after she's gone; she was the glue that bonded us."

"Then she had no message for me?" said Jericho.

"Just one. I received it a few hours ago."

"What was it?"

"She still doesn't know if you will succeed in your mission," said Celia. "But if you do, you must not kill John Sable."

"Sable's in Tifereth?" asked Jericho, surprised.

"Yes. You will not be able to escape without his help."

"How will he help me?"

"The White Lucy says he'll know what to do."

"That's all?"

She nodded.

"Did she have any suggestions concerning how I'm to get to Tifereth?" asked Jericho.

"No," answered Celia. "She's very weak, and rarely rational. I think it took almost all of her remaining strength to transmit that message to me."

"I see," said Jericho. He stood up and walked to an antique full-length mirror that hung on the wall between various charts of human heads and hands. He studied himself for a moment, then turned back to her.

"Can you tell me what kind of garb I'm wearing?"

"Your robe and insignia proclaim you to be a warlock in the Church of the Inferno."

"And you?" he asked, staring at her barely concealed body.

"I am dressed as a Daughter of Delight," she replied. "It is by far the major sect among the women of Binah."

"I've been going out of my way not to stare. Is that correct?"

She laughed. "Do you have any idea how uncomfortable whalebone and stays and garter belts can be? Of course you're supposed to admire us. Our mode of dress is for enchantment, not practicality."

"I've passed about two dozen Daughters of Delight Would my lack of reaction have drawn any attention?"

"I doubt it," said Celia. "After all, a native of Binah sees us every day, and could be expected to be preoccupied from time to time. No, I think you're safe."

"Good. Can a member of the Church of the Inferno go to Tifereth without being stopped?"

"Not a chance. Only Bland's security men can get into or out of Tifereth."

"Have I a contact in Tifereth?"

"No. I'm the last. Once you leave Binah you're on your own."

"Have you got anything further to tell me? I don't like staying in one place too long."

"No. That's everything."

"Then thank you for your help," he said. "And allow me to say that I greatly admire your dress code."

"Thank you," she said unselfconsciously. "And good luck."

He was walking toward the door when a sudden movement in the street caught his attention. He looked out the window for a moment, then turned back to Celia.

"There are two soldiers headed straight for this building. Do they have any business here?"

"None that I know of," she replied.

"How many other stores and offices are there in the building?"

"Five."

"Then there's probably nothing to worry about," he said. "Just the same, I think I'd better hide until they're gone. Have you got another room?"

"Just a bathroom," she said, pointing toward a door.

"That'll do fine," he replied, walking into it and leaving the door cracked open.

He had been there for no more than a minute when the front door opened and the two soldiers—one tall, one medium height, both lean and well muscled—strode into Celia's suite.

"You are Madame Celia?" demanded the tall soldier.

"Yes."

"You were born on the planet Beta Tau VIII, otherwise known as Greenveldt?"

"Why?" she asked, frightened.

"If you do not respond to the question, I must assume your answer is affirmative."

"Yes, I was born on Greenveldt."

"You will come with us, please."

"What is this all about?"

"My Lord Bland has issued orders that all offworlders be transferred to Tifereth for questioning."

Suddenly the blood drained from her face and her entire body tensed. "But I know nothing of use to Conrad Bland."

"That is no concern of ours," said the soldier. "Let's go."

"No," she said. "Please!"

The taller soldier shrugged and nodded to his companion. Then the two of them walked over and grabbed Celia roughly by her arms.

"Jericho! Help!" she cried.

Jericho stepped out of the bathroom and calmly shot each soldier in turn. As they slumped to the floor he knelt down and began rummaging through his nearer victim's uniform.

"Go through the other one's pockets," he said. "If they were taking you to Bland they've got to have some kind of pass or permit to get out of Binah and into Tifereth."

Celia did as she was told, and a moment later each of them were holding small cards signed by Bromberg.

"This will get me in," said Jericho. "But these passes are only valid for soldiers. They don't seem to have any extradition papers with them."

"Then you'll have to leave me behind," said Celia, visibly relieved.

"I can't," he replied. "Someone must have sent them here. Sooner or later more soldiers will show up looking for them."

"Then I'll leave."

"It won't do any good," he said, shaking his head. "You can't get out of Binah without a pass. It won't take them long to find you, and when they do I'm sure they have ways of making you talk."

"I'd never tell them anything about you!"

"Yes you would. You called out my name a moment ago when you merely thought that they might hurt you. I can't allow you to fall into their hands." He stared at her for a long moment. "I'm sorry," he said regretfully.

He pointed his weapon at her and fired.

He spent a few minutes rearranging the bodies, trying to make it look as if she had been killed defending herself from the soldiers. Then he removed his robe, folded it neatly, went out into the street, and threw it into a trash atomizer.

He found a car that worked by computer code, appropriated it, showed his pass at the edge of the city, and was soon driving across the flat arid plains toward Tifereth.

Chapter 21

"Why should anyone wish to wind up in Hell, except to take charge of it?"
—Conrad Bland

Sable paced off the boundaries of his room for perhaps the thousandth time: twelve feet by ten, with a sink and a toilet in one corner. The room was no longer under guard; the door was no longer locked. After their conversation two days ago, Bland had given him run of the church.

The problem was that he didn't want the run of it. The only place free from the sight of torture and unendurable agony was this room, so he remained here, refusing to set foot outside of it until Bland commanded his presence once again.

The room had been stripped of all religious artifacts, as had the rest of the church. A photograph of Bland, taken at night on some distant planet, hung above the bed, and Sable hadn't quite mustered the courage to remove it. There was a small bookcase, filled with magazines containing short articles Bland had written over the years for various fringe groups and extremist political factions. Sable had read them for lack of anything better to do with his time, and decided that Bland had had his tongue tucked firmly in his cheek as he discussed his philosophic principles, which usually were in full agreement with the sponsoring group.

Finally, tired of pacing and in no mood to read any more of Bland's tracts, he sat down on a small wooden chair, put his feet up on the side of the bed, clasped his hands behind his head, leaned back, and thought of home. He hoped Siboyan was keeping the boys out of his garden and remembering to water it, and he made a mental note to naturalize some more daffodils in the front yard if he ever managed to get out of Tifereth alive. He thought his daughter had a birthday coming up, but when he tried to remember the date he found to his chagrin that he couldn't. He could picture her now, studying in her room before dinner, writing pedantic essays with the dignity only a nine-year-old schoolgirl who is out to impress her teacher can muster, and planning what video shows to watch after dinner. Later Siboyan would give the two boys their nightly lecture about getting their homework done on time and send them shuffling and grousing to their room (where they would lock the door, make properly studious noises, and probably engage in a hot game of cards).

He had taken them all—even Siboyan—for granted for years now. If he came out of this alive, he would never do so again. The more he thought of his family the more he physically ached to be with them, to wrestle with the boys and let his daughter explain some obscure scientific or legalistic principle to him, to fall asleep with his arms around Siboyan and his head on her small breasts which looked so firm but felt so soft.

If he got out of this alive.

If . . .

Suddenly his door opened and a tall redheaded woman, wearing the costume of the Daughters of Delight, entered the room.

Sable studied her with a practiced eye. She had been quite lovely once, and she was attractive still, but he could see the tiny scars where silicon forms had been inserted into her breasts, and the too-smooth skin around her eyes was a dead giveaway of a recent facelift. Her hair was a little too red to be natural, her lips were too bright, and even her nipples showed touches of body rouge. He put her age at fifty, though from a distance of thirty-five feet she could have passed for half that.

She stood before him, aware of his gaze, and stared right back at him, unblinking.

"So you're John Sable," she said at last Her voice was low, and with a discernible effort she made it sound almost husky.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am the Magdalene Jezebel."

"The High Priestess?"

"The High Priestess emeritus," she corrected him with a smile that somehow made her face look harsher. "The Magdalene Hecate is the High Priestess of the Daughters of Delight these days."

She walked over to the bed and sat down on it absently testing the springs. "It's very uncomfortable," she announced at last.

He shrugged.

"Believe me, Mr. Sable—beds are my specialty, and this is much too lumpy."

"Possibly you can get me a better one," he said.

"I'll speak to My Lord Bland about it."

"I assume you are not a prisoner here," he said dryly.

"That's correct."

"Why did you come to my room?"

"Just curiosity," said the Magdalene Jezebel. "My Lord Bland seems quite taken with you, so I wanted to meet you for myself."

"And is your curiosity satisfied now?"

"Not even a little bit. For instance, I notice that you wear the amulet of the Cult of Cali. I had rather expected you to be a practitioner of voodoo."

"Why does everyone assume that all black men must necessarily believe in voodoo?" he said irritably. "You go around chopping chickens' heads off and singing Gregorian chants backward and see how you like it."

"I'm sorry if I offended you," she said easily. "Besides, personal beliefs don't really make much difference now that Conrad Bland has arrived."

"Speaking of Bland, do you know what he plans to do with me?"

"He's grown very fond of you for some reason. He truly doesn't want to kill you."

"So he's kidnapped me as a companion?" said Sable with a bitter smile.

"Not a companion," said the Magdalene Jezebel, unconsciously shifting her body to present it to best advantage. "More like a mascot. You amuse him. You make him laugh. As long as you continue to captivate him, he'll treat you in much the same way that you would treat a pet." She held up a hand as he opened his mouth to speak. "It's not as demeaning as it sounds, Mr. Sable. After all, there are alternatives."

"I've seen them."

"He does have certain eccentricities," she said uneasily. "But one must look beyond that."

"At all the other corpses?" he replied with a harsh laugh.

"You don't understand!"

"I understand perfectly. He's out to kill every last man, woman, and child on Walpurgis, and when he's done with that he'll probably start in on the animals."

"It's not the way you make it sound at all! He is the Dark Messiah!"

"He's the Butcher of Boriga II!" said Sable hotly. "All he knows how to do is kill!"

"You're wrong!" she shouted at him, her eyes blazing. "He has to eradicate the old order before replacing it with his own!"

"There won't be anything left alive to join his new order!"

"There will! He has gathered about him a few of us, those who were farsighted enough to understand what he is doing, to form the nucleus of the new age that he will bring about. I was the High Priestess of the Daughters of Delight, Mr. Sable. I had power and respect and wealth. Why do you think I gave it all up to come to Tifereth?"

"I couldn't even hazard a guess," he said with dry irony.

"Because I saw the power he wielded, the might he displayed. I realized that all of the rest of us were just dabblers on the surface of things. Why worship Satan when Conrad Bland walked among us, the devil made flesh?"

"In other words, you wanted to get in on the ground floor," he said with a cold, hard smile.

"Why deny it? He is the most potent force in the universe. Why not flock to his banner? Why do you suppose the Messengers disbanded in Tifereth? Because they saw that the Master had arrived, and they had no further justification for their existence. He will create a new world, a new Republic, and we who had the foresight to serve him from the first will help to preside over it."

"Can't you see that he's going to kill every last one of you, followers as well as foes?" said Sable with just a touch of pity in his voice. "Don't you know yet what he is?"

"He is the living embodiment of the power and the might of Lord Lucifer."

"And that is what you worship and serve—his might and power?"

"Yes."

"What if this Republic assassin gets through and kills Bland? Will you then worship him as an even greater killer?"

"He won't," she said decisively.

"But if he does," persisted Sable.

"He won't!" she repeated. "He'll be stopped before he leaves Binah."

"He's reached Binah?" said Sable, startled. "He's actually gotten that close?"

She looked uncomfortable. "My Lord Bland made a statement to that effect this morning."

"Then you'd better give some serious consideration to my question," said Sable. "It may not be academic too much longer."

"He will be stopped in Binah!"

"I thought I could stop him in Amaymon, when he knew nothing of our customs," Sable pointed out. "And Bland has wiped out a couple of cities trying to stop him."

"He would have destroyed those cities anyway," she said uneasily.

"I know. That's why I hope the assassin succeeds."

"I find this entire subject distasteful."

"So do I," agreed Sable with an ironic smile. "What else do you wish to discuss?"

"Nothing. But perhaps I will bring you My Lord Bland's writings."

"I've read them," he said, gesturing toward the stack of magazines.

"Those were written for political expediency," she said, nodding toward the magazines contemptuously. "He is currently at work on a massive tome that codifies his entire personal philosophy."

"Who will be left alive to read it?"

"You're a very difficult man to talk to, Mr. Sable," she said irritably. "I can't understand why My Lord Bland has let you live!"

"I amuse him," said Sable wryly.

"Well, you don't amuse me!"

"On the other hand, you've satisfied your curiosity," he noted with a smile.

"Not entirely," she said, studying him carefully. "Perhaps I should go to bed with you. Possibly you have certain qualities that aren't immediately apparent."

"Doesn't it seem a little contradictory—speaking of pleasure in a place like this?"

"Where better than a place like this?" she countered, starting to remove her clothing.

"I don't know exactly how to tell you this, Magdalene Jezebel," he said, "but I am a married man. I have made a pledge of fidelity to my wife."

"Of course—the Cult of Cali," she said contemptuously. "Now my curiosity is assuaged, Mr. Sable." She got to her feet "You haven't a single thought or trait that I consider admirable or amusing."

"I'm sorry you should feel that way."

"After I speak to My Lord Bland, you may be even sorrier," she promised.

She gave him one last scornful look and left his room.

Chapter 22

"The triumph of Evil is as inevitable as the changing of the seasons."
—Conrad Bland

Jericho pulled off the road halfway between Binah and Tifereth. Then, because he suspected that he would have to do some shooting at greater than point-blank range on the way to Bland's headquarters, he picked up half a dozen small rocks, lined them up at six-inch intervals on a low-hanging tree limb, stepped back about fifty feet, took aim, and tested the accuracy of his projectile pistol.

The first bullet lodged itself in the branch a good four inches below and to the left of where he was aiming, and he made a minute adjustment to the pistol's sights. He then fired three shots in quick succession, shattering the three rocks he was aiming at into dust.

The stolen car contained a laser pistol, and he now returned to the vehicle, pulled it out, and went through the same procedure until he was satisfied that it was as accurate as he could make it.

He didn't bother with his knife. It was not only his favorite weapon, but also his weapon of last resort, and he would never think of throwing it at a potential victim and thereby losing possession of it.

Then, because he had no intention of reaching Tifereth before dark, be hoisted the car up on a jack and pretended to be working on a tire just in case any passing vehicles spotted him and wondered what he was doing on the roadside.

As it happened, no traffic came by from either direction, and in the fading moments of sunset he put the jack away, got back into the car, and headed north to Tifereth. He passed the remains of three tiny hamlets, which were now nothing more than blackened ruins, and within half an hour he had reached Bland's first line of defense around the city. He presented his pass, waited calmly while it was checked through a portable computer, and received permission to proceed.

He was stopped twice more, questioned perfunctorily both times, and again allowed to continue.

A final check was made at the city line, and it was far more thorough than the others. His face—on which he had used the last of his makeup—was compared to his credentials, his pass was sent through a computer again, his car was searched for hidden passengers, and his projectile pistol was checked out against its registration number. The laser weapon was confiscated when he was unable to prove ownership of it.

He was detained for almost an hour at this final outer checkpoint, but eventually he was allowed to pass, and Jericho, with just the smallest trickle of sweat starting to roll down his face in the humid night air, drove slowly and inexorably into Tifereth.

Chapter 23

"Neither mercy nor regret exist in the lexicon of Evil."
—Conrad Bland

"Satan has kept the Republic's churches in business for eons," said Bland. "It is time to redress the balance."

Sable had been summoned from his room just before midnight. Bland had slept until noon, as he frequently did, and was just now getting around to having dinner. He had wanted companionship, and insisted that Sable join him.

The detective was escorted down to the main floor of the church, and into a large room that had once served as an initiation room where novices learned the sacred Rites of Baal, but which Bland had turned into a dining room.

A broad, polished table some thirty feet long dominated the room. The walls were covered with photographs and holographs of Bland, and with small plaques displaying what he believed to be his more incisive observations. Bland, surrounded by four armed guards, sat at the head of the table, and Sable was directed to a chair at the other end. He had been offered food, but the stench was stronger down here and his appetite, never strong since his arrival in Tifereth, vanished completely. Bland seemed to enjoy the odor, or at least not to mind it; at any rate, noted Sable, it certainly hadn't affected the obvious relish with which he wolfed down his dinner.

"What's the matter, Mr. Sable?" asked Bland between mouthfuls. "Have you no opinion on the matter?"

"You know my opinion," said Sable coldly.

"Well said, Mr. Sable!" laughed Bland. "Such diplomacy! You delight me, you truly do! Like all men of good intentions, you even now believe in manners, and gentleness, and turning the other cheek." He paused and laughed again. "Of course, you realize that these are also the very qualities that farmers breed for in their sheep."

"You can't murder a sheep."

"Don't judge me so harshly, Mr. Sable," said Bland. "If there is a God, then He has passed a death sentence on every human being from the moment of conception. I am but a talented amateur."

A soldier walked into the room, approached Bland, and whispered something in his ear. Bland frowned, then issued some orders in a voice too low for Sable to hear. The soldier saluted and left.

"I must compliment the Republic," said Bland. "Their killer has made it to within a mile of us."

"Did you capture him?" asked Sable.

"We will momentarily. We have him surrounded. But he got a lot closer than I expected him to. I think I shall have to inspect my defenses tomorrow morning." He shot Sable a cherubic smile. "But enough of such sordid matters. The reason I have invited you to join me, Mr. Sable, is that we are to be entertained by the Magdalene Jezebel after dinner is over."

They heard the sound of gunshots in the distance.

"Well, that's that," said Bland. "It saves me the trouble of deciding whether to kill him or hire him. You look disappointed, Mr. Sable; don't be. Nothing can kill me, and this saves you from the possibility of being hit by a stray bullet or laser beam. Would you care for some pie?"

"No, thank you."

"Be a little generous, Mr. Sable," said Bland. "I don't offer to share my possessions—even my meals—with many people."

Sable shook his head, and Bland shrugged.

"Well, if that's your final decision, I suppose I shouldn't be too upset. It means there will be more for me."

He began gobbling his pie, then suddenly stopped.

"Damn!" he said irritably, picking up a napkin and dabbing at a small stain on his white jacket. "I do many things efficiently, but I simply cannot get through a meal without spilling something." He dipped the napkin in a glass of water, then began rubbing the stain more vigorously.

Sable heard two more bursts of gunfire, this time noticeably closer. A moment later another soldier rushed into the room.

"Well?" demanded Bland, looking up from his jacket.

"He got away, sir," said the soldier, shifting his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.

"How?"

"We haven't been able to get a report, sir. I think he destroyed their radio."

"Get out!" screamed Bland. "Get out and don't come back until he's dead!"

The soldier needed no second invitation to remove himself from the presence of his enraged leader. Bland glared at the door for a long moment after he had left, then returned to his pie. He toyed with it for a few seconds, then flung it off the table with a sweep of his hand. The plate shattered into a hundred tiny pieces.

"Damn damn damn!" he shouted. "Who does this fool think he is, marching into Tifereth as if I were just some ordinary man he could kill at will? This is Conrad Bland he's after!" His voice became a high whining shriek. "What's the matter with your government, Mr. Sable? First they offer me sanctuary and now they won't lift a finger to stop this murderer!"

Sable sighed. "If you haven't figured it out by this late date, I don't see how I'm going to be able to explain it to you."

Bland's face contorted in fury for a moment—and then, suddenly, as if nothing had happened, he stood up with a pleasant smile on his lips.

"Please excuse my little show of temper, Mr. Sable, It's really not like me at all. Anyway, as long as dinner seems to be over, I think it's time for a little entertainment."

He motioned to Sable and two of his guards to join him, and walked to a door at the back of the room. It led to a dimly lit corridor, which they followed for perhaps two hundred feet, emerging at last into a small room that had once been a private chapel. A number of cushioned seats were still bolted to the tile floor, but the altar had been removed, replaced by a large rectangular structure which had a curtain draped over it.

Bland seated himself in the first pew and gestured to Sable to do likewise. Sable saw a number of electric cables leading from the covered structure to a small panel which one of the guards now brought to Bland.

"Let's have a little music," said Bland, and a moment later a bizarre symphony was piped into the chapel through the intercom system.

Bland nodded to the guards, who pulled the curtains away, revealing a large tank of water. Inside the tank, dressed in the jewels and leather of her order, was the Magdalene Jezebel, her hands and feet loosely tied to support poles along the sides of the tank. It took Sable almost a fun minute to realize that she was entirely submerged and no longer breathing. Her hair floated behind and above her, moving gently as it was carried to and fro by tiny currents in the water.

"Why did you kill her?"

"She came to me this afternoon and told me to destroy you," said Bland. "Ultimately I will do so; I may even do so tonight But no one gives orders to Conrad Bland. No one!"

He pressed a button on his panel and Sable heard the hum of electricity. An instant later the Magdalene Jezebel's body jerked ferociously as the charge reached the water.

"You see, Mr. Sable," said Bland with a chuckle, "one need not be alive to be an entertainer."

For the next twenty minutes, as the music built to a discordant crescendo and Bland matched it note for note on his control panel, Sable watched the Magdalene Jezebel's dance of death with horrified fascination.

Finally it was over, and Bland, suddenly uninterested, ordered his guards to replace the curtains.

"I think I'll try it with a living woman next time," he said confidentially. "Of course, only the first few steps will be different, but even that could prove interesting, don't you think?"

Sable, still stunned by what he had seen, made no answer.

"Come, come, Mr. Sable," said Bland. "Surely you have seen less pleasant sights in your official capacity. And waste no sympathy on our Daughter of Delight. She had a purpose, and she served it admirably."

"Her purpose was to entertain you like this?" demanded Sable.

"No," said Bland. "Her purpose was to die."

"For no reason at all."

"Precisely," said Bland with a smile. "Consider my position, Mr. Sable. If I treat the innocent like this, think how the guilty will fear me."

"You're mad!"

"It pleases my enemies to think so." Bland laughed. "It also weakens them." More gunshots rang out, still closer to the church. "All but one, anyway," he added, concern momentarily clouding his face.

"They haven't caught him yet," said Sable, amazed. "He's still out there!"

"We shall catch him, never fear," said Bland harshly. "That I promise you, Mr. Sable."

"You promised me that three days ago," said Sable.

"You seem to be confused in your loyalties," said Bland, smiling. "In case you've forgotten, you came to Tifereth to protect me."

Sable snorted contemptuously.

"Are you telling me, Mr. Sable, that if your assassin walks through the door this minute that you won't sacrifice your life to save me?"

"If he enters the room right now, I'll strew his path with flowers!" snapped Sable.

"Poor deluded man," said Bland with a sigh. "You still haven't learned that I'm invincible. What he does with those fools in the street is one thing; what he does here is another. I assure you that this building is impregnable."

"We'll see," said Sable with more conviction than he felt.

"This whole conversation is probably academic," said Bland. "I haven't heard any more gunfire." He turned to one of the guards. "Find out if we killed him yet."

The guard left the chapel, and Bland played idly with his control panel, though he could no longer see the Magdalene Jezebel's spasmodic contortions.

"You are ceasing to amuse me, Mr. Sable," he said at last. "I hope you haven't outlived your entertainment value."

Sable made no reply.

"Come, come, Mr. Sable," continued Bland. "I am surrounded by fools and cowards and sycophants. I should hate to see our relationship come to an end."

"What do you want me to do to amuse you—an underwater juggling act?" said Sable, glaring at him.

"That's more like it, Mr. Sable!" said Bland with a chuckle. "That's the kind of spirit I like to see, that wonderful sense of humor while staring into the very maw of death!"

A moment later the guard returned to the room and Bland got to his feet and walked over to speak to him. They conversed in low whispers for a few seconds, then Bland pulled a small pistol out of his belt and shot him between the eyes.

"There's a lesson in this," he said, turning to the other guard, who hadn't moved. "Never bring me bad news twice in one day."

"What happened?" asked Sable.

"All of our communications lines are down," said Bland, frowning.

Sable laughed.

"What's so funny?" snapped Bland.

"You still don't understand what's happening, do you?"

"I told you: our communication lines are dead. It's a technical failure, nothing more."

"Your communication lines aren't dead," said Sable. "But your communicators are."

"Nonsense! I've got five thousand men out there!"

"And one lone man has got you surrounded!" Sable laughed.

"Don't laugh at me!" screamed Bland. He lowered his head in thought for a moment, then looked up. "Come along, Mr. Sable. I see that it's time to take an active hand in this."

"You'll never stop him," said Sable, more confidently this time.

"Yes I will!" snapped Bland, walking to the door. "But don't think I will forget that you laughed at me. For the next few hours I shall direct my every effort toward destroying this upstart who thinks he can attack Conrad Bland with impunity. But the instant I have finished with him, Mr. Sable, I shall turn my attentions to you—and I promise you that it won't be a pleasant experience."

Chapter 24

"One need not hate what one kills."
—Conrad Bland

"One need not hate what one kills."
—Jericho

Bland led Sable and his bodyguard to the main auditorium, picking up another five guards along the way. There were somewhat fewer bodies than the first time Sable had been there, which implied that despite his many protestations to the contrary, Bland had been too preoccupied with the assassin's progress during the past few days to pay much attention to this most terrible of rooms.

"How many of the troops within the church grounds have communications units?" Bland asked.

"About a dozen, sir," responded one of the guards.

"Good. Get a radio in here and set up a command post. I want to keep in constant touch with them—and woe betide any officer who doesn't respond immediately when I try to establish contact with him."

The soldier saluted, sent out for a radio, and got to work cordoning off a section of the room.

Sable looked around him, and reflected ironically that proximity to Bland had changed his viewpoint more than he had expected. The carnage within the room, the skinless bodies, the corpses and near-corpses suspended from the rafters on meathooks, all filled him with moral outrage—but the numbing sense of shock was gone, the urge to vomit was minimal, the need to escape from the room was prompted solely by self-preservation. The wholesale nature of Bland's brand of torture and slaughter had deadened something deep within him, and he resented that almost as much as he resented the mindless brutality and suffering that surrounded him. Possibly it was his capacity to empathize that was gone, possibly it was something else—but whatever it was, he hoped that he hadn't lost it forever. Always supposing, he added with a wry mental footnote, that he came out of this mess alive, a prospect which seemed less and less likely as time wore on.

Bland had appropriated two more handguns from his guards and was checking them over carefully, making sure they were loaded and in proper working order. Finally satisfied, he tucked them into his pockets and began pacing around the room, kicking any writhing bodies that happened to be in his path.

Finally he turned to Sable.

"Who is he, Mr. Sable?"

"I don't know," replied Sable with a shrug.

"He must have a name, a face, an identity," persisted Bland.

"I don't know his name, and he's used up more faces and identities than you've got corpses in this room."

"How can he still be alive?" said Bland, his voice shrill and whining again. "Why haven't we captured or killed him yet?"

He walked over to the command post, which had just been activated, and began checking with his officers by radio. No one had seen any trace of the assassin; the church was still secure.

"Do you want us to send some men outside to see if he's been taken yet, sir?" asked one of the officers.

"Yes," said Bland, then quickly changed his mind. "No! No one leaves the church until he's dead!" He began pacing furiously, ranting into the microphone. "If I find that anyone has left his post, I'll make what goes on in this room seem like a picnic! I cannot and will not tolerate disloyalty! Satan help anyone who goes over to the other side, for I certainly will not!"

"The other side?" replied the officer, his voice crackling with static as it came over the radio. "I understood that it was just one man."

"Shut up!" screamed Bland. "Count your men! Count them right now! I want to know they're all where they're supposed to be!"

"But—"

"Count them!" shrieked Bland.

There was a brief silence on the radio, then the voice spoke again: "They're all here and in position, sir."

"Good!" snapped Bland. Then his eyes narrowed. "What's the password?"

"Password?" repeated the voice. "This network was just established within the last five minutes. No one has given us a password."

"Who are you?" demanded Bland.

"Marcus Cooper, sir."

Bland grunted and turned off the radio.

"You see, Mr. Sable?" he said, suddenly smiling again. "Still secure. Your assassin has gotten as close as he's going to get I am not a man who is noted for my compassion, but I must confess to feeling sorry for him. It was a noble effort, and one he can well be proud of during the few short minutes of life that remain to him."

Suddenly oblivious to the situation that had so captured his attention for the past half hour, he began wandering through the room, admiring his handiwork. Even in their dismal condition his victims recognized him, and tried to draw back as he walked among them. He continued his tour, smiling at the living and the dead, giving them affectionate pats on backs and shoulders much as a proud general might do to the members of a crack unit.

Sable merely stared at him, finding his behavior more fascinating and terrifying than anything that had yet been done to the poor souls in the room.

Then, suddenly, came the sound of gunfire again.

Bland raced to the radio and picked up the microphone.

"What's going on out there?" he yelled.

"He's somewhere on the church grounds, sir!" said Marcus Cooper's voice. "He's disguised as one of our soldiers, and we've got so many men out here that it's impossible to spot him!"

"Kill them all!" ordered Bland.

"But sir—"

"You heard me," repeated Bland, calmer now. "Kill every last soldier."

"But sir, I can't just—"

There was another sound of gunfire, and the radio went dead.

Bland tried his eleven other communications officers; only seven responded, and there was obvious confusion and chaos everywhere. He ordered each of them to open fire on any thing that was alive and moving.

"Sir," said one of Bland's bodyguards, "I'm sure it's only a matter of minutes until they kill him. However, just to be on the safe side, perhaps we should move to the chapel or one of the smaller rooms. They would be much easier to defend."

"No," said Bland firmly.

"But—"

"I like it here," said Bland, giving a fond pat to the buttocks of a dead man who was suspended from the ceiling a few feet away. "I feel at home here. Here is where I shall remain."

"I can appreciate that, sir, but—"

Bland pulled a pistol out of his pocket and killed the guard with a single shot.

"Does anyone else care to dispute my orders?" he inquired mildly.

Nobody did, and he turned to Sable.

"Well, it may cost me my army to get him, Mr. Sable," he said, "but I've lost armies before. I shall soon raise another."

"If you live long enough," said Sable meaningfully.

"First him, then you!" snapped Bland.

"You're not going to stop him!" said Sable with a triumphant smile. "He's within a hundred yards of you right now!"

"And he'll get no closer!" yelled Bland.

"He's probably gotten closer just since we've been speaking," said Sable. "How does it feel, to know that your death is inexorably approaching and there is nothing you can do to stop it?"

"An excellent question, Mr. Sable," said Bland, fingering his pistol lovingly. "Consider it carefully, and then give me your answer."

"Isn't it ironic," continued Sable, still smiling viciously, "that Conrad Bland, supposedly the greatest killer of them all, will be brought down neither by age or disease nor revolution, but by an even greater killer?"

"Be quiet," said Bland ominously.

"I think it's proper and fitting that you should die in this room, where you have killed so many others."

"My patience is not endless, Mr. Sable," said Bland, raising the pistol and pointing it at his chest "I think I would stop speaking right now if I were you."

Sable closed his mouth and glared at Bland defiantly.

Bland smiled back at him for a moment, then went back to his radio. This time only three officers replied.

Suddenly Bland turned almost white.

"The doors!" he screamed. "Why are the doors not locked?"

The five guards raced to the dozen doors that led to the auditorium and began bolting them, as a number of soldiers raced past in the corridor, guns drawn. As the last door was locked, another burst of gunfire rang out no more than sixty feet away.

"I told you he would not reach this room, Mr. Sable," said Bland.

"You told me he wouldn't reach Kether and Hod and Binah," Sable pointed out with a contemptuous laugh.

"Blights upon the map," scoffed Bland. "I would have destroyed them anyway."

"I know," said Sable.

Bland returned to the radio. "Did you get him?" he demanded.

"We're not sure, sir," said a hoarse voice. "There are so many dead bodies out here it's going to take hours to sort them out, but if he was in any of the corridors in the last couple of minutes he'd be among them."

"Well, that's that!" said Bland, smiling and rubbing his delicate hands together.

Sable said nothing.

"What's the matter, Mr. Sable?" gloated Bland. "Have you no congratulations for my heroic forces, no plaudits for their leader? Surely you are more generous than that!"

"If you're so sure he's dead, open the doors and dismiss your guards," replied Sable.

"All in good time," said Bland. "But before I do, I have some other business to conclude, as you may recall." He paused, waiting for a reaction from Sable, but there was no change in the detective's expression. "I offer you one last chance to amuse me, Mr. Sable. Surely your life is precious enough for you to make the effort. Say something that strikes my fancy, and possibly I may let you live until tomorrow."

"I'm not at my wittiest during bloodbaths."

"A little cynicism, a modicum of defiance, a soupçon of wit," said Bland with a small chuckle. "I'm going to give you an eighty on that one, Mr. Sable. Passing, but just barely."

"Thank you," said Sable caustically.

"Think nothing of it," replied Bland. "Think, rather, of your next witticism."

Sable sighed and glanced around the room, struck by the utter insanity of trying to amuse a madman in the middle of a madhouse—and suddenly he had the feeling that something was different. He couldn't immediately put his finger on it, but there was something. . . .

And then he knew.

Where there should have been five uniformed soldiers guarding the bolted doors to the corridors, there were six. He lowered his eyes and turned his head away, not wanting Bland to see him staring. But Bland was wandering among his beloved bodies again, stroking dead and dying limbs, offering cheerful chatter to men and women who were beyond hearing anything ever again, and Sable dared another quick look.

Three . . . four . . . five . . . six!

Yes, he was right: the man was here, now, in this room!

But why didn't the others know he was among them? Couldn't they count?

Finally he understood. The six men were stationed all around the room, guarding the various doors, and none of them could see all five of the others. Only he and Bland, standing in the middle of the auditorium, were in position to count all six guards, and Bland was too obsessed with his victims to notice.

Then what was the assassin waiting for? Why didn't he pull out his weapon and shoot Bland down like the mad dog that he was?

And then he remembered: This was no impassioned revolutionary, no mythic avenger out to eradicate a monster from the face of the planet This was a hired killer—an even more efficient killer than Bland—who had absolutely no intention of sacrificing his life for anyone or anything. There were five other armed men in the room besides Bland; he wouldn't make a move until he had dispatched them or somehow negated their effectiveness.

Bland continued walking and talking, and the tension within Sable grew so great that he felt he would have to scream to give it an outlet before it tore him apart But somehow he managed to maintain an outward appearance of calm, and after a few minutes Bland approached him again.

"I have heard no more shots, Mr. Sable," noted Bland. "The man is dead. There's no question of it any longer."

"If you say so," replied Sable, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.

"I do. And now we come to a problem of somewhat lesser import, but one which we must address anyway: What are we to do with you, Mr. Sable?"

And, for the first time all evening, Sable was scared. When the assassin was just a shadowy figure working his way through the city, when there was absolutely no hope of rescue, he had been resigned to his own death. But to come this close to remaining alive, only to die mere minutes ahead of Bland—he felt more than terrified; he felt cheated. Yet he knew that the assassin wouldn't lift a finger to help him. His job, after all, was killing people, not saving them.

"Well, Mr. Sable," said Bland, his face aglow with anticipation, "I am waiting. Surely you have some opinion on the matter, some input you wish to offer?"

Sable glared at him, his knees weak, his hands starting to tremble, but said nothing.

"Guard!" shouted Bland, and all six men turned to him. "I have the feeling that Mr. Sable is just a trifle warm. Two of you come over and strip off his clothing while I give some serious thought as to how we may take his mind off his present discomfort."

Two of the guards began approaching Sable, who looked desperately beyond them at the other four. Now! he wanted to scream. Now, while you're all within each other's field of vision! Now, before they start counting! The four guards remained motionless for the longest twenty seconds of Sable's life. Then one of them, who had been holding his handgun casually as he leaned against a door with his arms crossed, turned ever so slightly, and an instant later the grim silence of the auditorium was broken by three quick explosions. The three other guards who had remained at their posts crumpled to the floor.

The two remaining guards, who had almost reached Sable, were dead before they could turn around to determine the source of the gunshots.

"Don't touch it, Mr. Bland!" said Jericho coldly as Bland's hand inched down toward his pocket.

"Who are you?" demanded Bland.

"Stand aside, Mr. Sable," said Jericho.

Sable backed away, almost tripping over a dead guard in the process.

Bland's eyes narrowed. "All right," he said, his voice suddenly cool and unperturbed. "Someone has hired you to kill me. Whatever they gave you, I'll give you more not to."

"What have you got that I could possibly want?" replied Jericho.

"Half my kingdom," said Bland, making a grand gesture with his arm.

"What use have I for twenty-eight lifeless planets?"

"Money, then," said Bland. "More money than you ever dreamed existed! Dollars, rubles, yen, credits, pounds—name your currency. A million, a billion, even a trillion; it makes no difference to me. Think of what a billion credits can buy! Think of the power that accrues to the possessor of a trillion yen! Name your price!"

Kill him! Sable wanted to scream. Don't listen to him! Do what you came here to do! But he didn't dare make a sound or a gesture that might take the assassin's attention from Bland, and so he stood motionless and silent, waiting with a dull certainty for Bland to find the chink in the killer's armor.

"I did name a price," said Jericho softly. "And it has been paid. That's why I'm here."

"We're alike, you and I," said Bland, visibly struggling to retain his composure. "We kill things. We revel in death, we grow drunk through destruction. Join me, become my general—no, my partner, my equal partner—and I'll give you such opportunities to kill and slaughter as you never imagined existed!"

"I take no pleasure in killing," said Jericho.

"Women, then!" cried Bland. "Women of every color, every persuasion, every talent, yours for the asking!"

Jericho allowed a smile to cross his lips. "On this world, Mr. Bland? I'm afraid that's not much of an offer."

"Then," said Bland, a look of triumph on his face, "if I can't make you rich, or powerful, or passionate, I will make you me."

Jericho cocked an eyebrow, but made no reply.

"There are no photographs or holograms of me on record anywhere, no fingerprints or retinagrams. Except for my followers in Tifereth, no one in the entire galaxy who has ever seen me is now alive. Let me live and we will trade our identities, our very essences. Think of it! Let me escape, let me leave and never return, and you can remain here and become Conrad Bland!"

Sable stared, tense and unblinking, at the assassin. For the first time he thought he detected some interest, a willingness to weigh the possibilities, a slight wavering of purpose.

"An interesting offer," said Jericho at last. "In fact, your only interesting offer. But every profession has its code of honor; mine requires me to fulfill a contract once I've accepted a commission."

"You can't do this to me!" shrieked Bland, his voice a screechy falsetto. "I'm Conrad Bland!"

Jericho pointed his pistol at Bland and casually took aim.

"No!" roared Bland. "You can't do this! My work is just beginning! I must destroy Walpurgis, and then Earth and Deluros and—" Bland's hand darted toward his pocket as he ranted.

Jericho fired his weapon, and Conrad Bland's head was splattered all over the room.

"Thank God!" said Sable softly.

"I thought you didn't believe in God, Mr. Sable," said Jericho, putting his weapon back into its holster and walking over to inspect Bland's corpse.

"Thank God and thank Satan," said Sable, "but mostly, thank you."

"It's not necessary," said Jericho. "I'm being well paid for this."

"I thought I was a dead man," said Sable, realizing that he sounded silly but unable to stop talking.

"Not a chance," said Jericho with a smile. "I was never going to let you die."

"I don't understand," said Sable.

"You're going to get me out of this cesspool."

"How?" asked Sable, confused.

"I haven't the slightest idea," admitted Jericho. "But I've been told on excellent authority that you would be my ticket out of here."

"Who told you?"

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to reveal that just now." Jericho turned Bland's corpse over with a foot. "Damn!"

"What's the matter?" asked Sable, again feeling foolish at being unable to keep from asking questions, but so busy luxuriating in the simple fact of still being alive that he didn't care how he appeared to Jericho.

"His clothes are all bloodstained."

"So?"

"So I can't masquerade as Bland to help get us out." Jericho sighed. "It wouldn't work anyway. I haven't got my kit any longer, and his hair's the wrong color. I'm afraid it's up to you, Mr. Sable."

"I don't know what to do," said Sable, silently berating himself for sounding so stupid.

"Then you'd better start thinking of something quick," said Jericho. "We're not going to be alone too much longer."

"How many men are out there?"

"A few thousand less than there were before," said Jericho grimly. "But enough."

"You killed that many?"

"I killed very few," said Jericho with an amused smile. "Mostly, they killed each other. And now, while you're busy considering our position, there's one more thing I must do."

He walked over to one of the dead guards, the one who had accompanied Bland and Sable from the chapel, and removed a laser weapon from his belt Then he began walking through the room, methodically firing a beam into each of the broken and twisted bodies. When he returned a few minutes later, he and Sable were the only living entities in the auditorium.

"I can understand why you wanted to put them out of their misery," Sable said harshly. "But not all of them were beyond saving."

"I know that."

"What do you mean?" demanded Sable, a sudden chill creeping up his spine.

"We will be much safer without witnesses, Mr. Sable," said Jericho. "Especially those who are not beyond saving."

Suddenly Sable began to wonder if he hadn't been better off with Conrad Bland.

Chapter 25

"Emotions clutter up the mental landscape."
—Jericho

"Why can't we just try to sneak out the same way you got in?" asked Sable.

"Because we're surrounded," said Jericho patiently, without any hint of tension in his voice. They were standing at the center of the auditorium, and as they spoke Jericho kept a watchful eye on the various doors. "It was easy to pass as one of Bland's soldiers while I was in their midst, but this is a different situation. The second they spot Bland's body they'll know who I am, regardless of my uniform."

His obvious calm bothered Sable. Jericho had just killed a man half the planet worshiped, he was surrounded in a hostile city on a hostile world, he found himself in a tightly constricting time frame, he lacked any weaponry more effective than projectile and laser pistols—and yet he seemed totally unperturbed.

More than that, he seemed formidable.

"Well, there's no sense making it too easy for them," announced Jericho. "Give me a hand, Mr. Sable."

Jericho walked to the nearest of the dead guards and began undressing him. Sable got the idea immediately, and within two minutes five more laser-scorched naked bodies were added to the pile of Bland's hapless victims, completely indistinguishable from the rest.

They then removed Bland's clothing and, at Jericho's insistence, hung his corpse on an empty meathook.

"But why?" asked Sable.

"People tend to look down rather than up," said Jericho, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand as he returned to Sable's side. He then aimed his laser weapon at Bland's corpse and obliterated everything above the neck. "That ought to make him a little harder to identify."

Sable stared at him and shook his head, amazed. This was just business to Jericho, nothing more. He was simply attending to necessary details now, much as a grocery clerk would carefully lay out his produce for its best effect.

"All right, Mr. Sable," said Jericho. "Let's start figuring out how to get out of here. Obviously I can't disguise myself as Bland. And, just as obviously, I can't pretend to be one of the guards."

"I still don't see why not."

"Because then I wouldn't have had to let you live," said Jericho dispassionately. "No, the answer lies in your presence here. You're the cipher." He paused. "What are you doing here in the first place? Why aren't you in Amaymon?"

And suddenly Sable knew how they were getting out.

He searched his pockets and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. They had never returned his overnight bag, so he hadn't had an opportunity to change clothes or to pack the paper away.

"What's that?" asked Jericho.

"An order empowering me to extradite you to Amaymon," said Sable.

"For what crime?" asked Jericho, suddenly interested.

"The murder of Parnell Burnam."

"Good! Then we don't have to represent me as Bland's potential assassin."

"What do you mean—potential?"

"You don't think we can get out of here if they know Bland is dead, do you?" asked Jericho with an ironic smile.

"I don't—" began Sable. Then his eyes fell on the radio. "You're crazy. It'll never work!"

"I heard enough of his voice to mimic the tone," said Jericho. "You're going to have to give me a little help with the way he structured his sentences."

"They won't buy it!"

"You would be amazed at what men under pressure will buy, Mr. Sable," said Jericho calmly. "They are dying like flies beyond this room and they don't even know who the enemy is. They will be easier to direct than you might think." He paused. "Did anyone besides Bland know that I killed Parnell Burnam?"

"His security chief—a man named Bromberg."

"Do you know his first name? Has he a military rank?"

Sable shrugged.

"Very well," said Jericho. "We'll just have to make do with Bromberg. In the pile of clothing were a number of pens and at least two notebooks, Mr. Sable. I want you to write down—precisely as Bland would express it—a message to the effect that he has captured the assassin and is tending to him personally, whatever that may imply. If he would be explicit, you must be. Then I want him to summon Bromberg to this room, and arrange for an armed squad to show up in about five minutes to escort you and your prisoner to his personal plane, which will fly us to Amaymon. I'm bound to get questions, so I want you to fill up a separate page with some rather terse remarks I can make to establish my authority and their inability to challenge or even question my commands."

"All right," said Sable, going off to a pile of clothes and emerging a moment later with pen and notebook. "But even if it does work, we're going to look awfully lonely when Bromberg shows up and doesn't see anyone else."

"There are hundreds of people in this room," said Jericho. "It'll take him a few seconds to figure out that only two of them are alive."

Sable wrote up the speech, and then Jericho switched on the radio, picked up the microphone, and began reading in Bland's high-pitched voice, matching the whining inflections so perfectly that he almost fooled Sable, who was watching him with both awe and a growing sense of alarm. It wasn't so much that Jericho seemed on the verge of accomplishing the impossible, but rather that he was accomplishing it so easily.

Bromberg knocked on one of the doors a moment later, and Sable let him in, immediately closing the door behind him. He was less than ten feet into the room when Jericho shot him down with the laser pistol.

"We've got to work fast!" Jericho told Sable, tossing his laser pistol and his knife across the room and starting to strip the Security Chief. Sable joined in and a moment later they had added the nude body to Bland's grisly collection. Then they buried all the clothing under a pile of bodies.

Jericho tossed Sable a set of handcuffs he had removed from Bromberg's pocket. "Put these on me," he instructed the detective. "It's got to look legitimate. Then unlock the doors, take the projectile gun out of my belt, and point it at me."

Sable did so, and held the pose no more than ten seconds before a squad of six men entered the room.

"Where is My Lord Bland?" demanded the leader, as Conrad Bland's legs swung gently to and fro not three feet from his head.

"Gone," said Sable with a shrug. "The crisis is over."

The man looked suspiciously about the room, then turned back to Sable.

"My Lord Bland mentioned extradition papers. May I see them?"

Sable turned them over to him. The man read them carefully, then returned them.

"All right," he said. "Follow me."

Jericho went along meekly, and Sable, still expecting the world to cave in around his head, fell into step behind him. They carefully threaded their way through the mounds of dead flesh in the corridor, then went outside and walked to an open vehicle parked between a number of burned-out cars and tanks.

They were driven through the still, dead streets of Tifereth, sirens screaming, for almost half an hour before reaching Bland's private airfield just north of the city. Then Sable, his gun still trained on Jericho, walked up a portable stairway into the luxuriously appointed cabin, fighting the urge to look back and see if the highway was filled with vehicles racing to stop the plane after the discovery of Bland's body.

But nothing happened, and a moment later the plane taxied to the end of the runway, gathered speed, took off toward the northwest, banked hard to the left, and headed south for Amaymon.

Sable looked out his window as they passed over Tifereth. From overhead it looked just like any other city, except for a marked absence of traffic. An observer would never know, he reflected, that the ultimate butcher had just been brought down by the ultimate executioner.

Chapter 26

"To show compassion for a killer is an insult to his victims."
—Jericho

"To show compassion for a killer is an insult to his victims."
—John Sable

The cabin was lined with a white fur carpet made of the pelts of some rare type of arctic animal. The furniture, all heavy and handcrafted and covered with coal-black brocaded satin, consisted of two chairs and an enormous couch. A table next to the couch opened up into a small bar at the touch of a button.

"You can take the handcuffs off me now," said Jericho, sitting comfortably on one of the chairs and holding his hands out toward Sable.

"No I can't," said Sable, seated on the couch. He kept his pistol trained on Jericho and briefly clutched at the arm of the conch with his free hand as the plane hit a momentary patch of turbulence.

"Why not?" asked Jericho, his face impassive.

"Because the first thing you would do is kill me," explained Sable. "Now that we're out of Tifereth you don't need me anymore, and I already know your views on leaving witnesses behind."

"If it makes you more comfortable, leave them on me," said Jericho with a shrug. "I trust you'll remove them when we land in Amaymon."

"I haven't decided yet," said Sable.

"May I point out that I saved your life in Tifereth, Mr. Sable?"

"I know."

"Well, then?"

Sable sighed deeply. "I'm not like you. You think on your feet, you act decisively; you never seem to have any doubts. I don't function like that. I have to build a case slowly and carefully, examine each piece of evidence, put it all into some kind of order before I can come to a conclusion."

"And what particular case are you working on now?" asked Jericho wryly.

"You," replied Sable, his expression troubled.

"What right do you have to judge me, Mr. Sable?"

"I saw you next to Conrad Bland," said Sable. "No one but me has the necessary background to judge you."

"You seem distressed."

"I am," admitted Sable. "You killed Bland, which had to be done; and you saved my life, for which I'm grateful—but I don't know if you can be allowed to live."

"Surely you are not comparing me to Bland," said Jericho with a smile.

"No, I'm not. You're much more dangerous than he was."

"Don't be silly, Mr. Sable."

"I'm being as honest as I can be," said Sable. "If the positions were reversed, could Bland have killed you?"

"I have no idea."

"Don't be coy with me!" snapped Sable. "Do you think we're playing some kind of goddamned game here?"

"All right, Mr. Sable," said Jericho slowly. "Under no circumstance could Conrad Bland ever have killed me."

"I know that."

"There is not, however, any valid basis for comparing us," said Jericho.

"Of course there is," replied Sable. "Both of you have killed profligately."

"But for different reasons."

"He killed from compulsion, you kill from calculation. I have to decide before we land in Amaymon which motivation is the more evil."

"Had I not chosen to kill Bland, he would have destroyed the entire planet."

"He had no choice," said Sable. "To him there was no discernible alternative. How many people did you kill on the way to Tifereth?"

"Twenty-one."

"Why?"

"It was necessary."

"Why did you kill Ibo Ubusuku?"

"He knew my mission—or, if he didn't know, he would shortly have guessed." There was no sign of regret or remorse on Jericho's face.

"So what?" said Sable. "He worked for the Republic. He was on your side."

"No one is on my side," said Jericho coldly.

"You considered letting him live?"

"Of course," replied Jericho. "As you yourself pointed out, I am not a compulsive killer."

"But you killed him anyway."

"It was necessary."

"And Gaston Leroux?"

"Another link."

"But he only saw you in disguise. He didn't know your name, he didn't even know how to find you."

"His life was unimportant compared to my objective."

"What would have happened if you had let him live?" persisted Sable.

"Probably nothing," admitted Jericho.

"Then why did you kill him?"

"I don't deal in probabilities, Mr. Sable, but in certainties."

"He was a human being!"

"Bland was slaughtering tens of thousands of human beings," Jericho pointed out.

"I know. Did you care about them?"

"About who?" asked Jericho, genuinely puzzled.

"Bland's victims."

"What difference does that make? I stopped him before he could kill any more."

"But it does make a difference. Why did you kill Bland?"

"I don't understand your question."

"You heard me: Why did you kill Conrad Bland?"

"It was my job. I accepted the commission."

Sable sighed again and spent the next few minutes staring out the window, considering what he had heard and what he had seen, comparing and contrasting, building his little pyramid of facts and judgments, and finally weighing his inevitable conclusion against the absolute necessity of Bland's extermination.

At last he tore his gaze from the terrain that was racing by far below him, straightened his posture, and looked directly into Jericho's expressionless eyes.

"You're reached your decision," said Jericho impassively.

"I have."

"And?"

"As of this moment." said Sable, "you are under arrest for the murder of Parnell Burnam."

And, almost two thousand miles away, the White Lucy smiled, closed her eyes, and died.

Chapter 27

"God and Satan are in their cages; all's right with the world."
—John Sable

Sable stood between Pietre Veshinsky and Orestes Mela in a small cemetery on the outskirts of Amaymon and watched a plain casket being lowered into the ground.

Events had moved rapidly during the past four days. Justice, always swift on Walpurgis, had raced forward as if Satan himself were breathing down its neck. Within two hours after his return to the city, Jericho had been tried in a small courtroom with no jury, no reporters, and no court stenographer in attendance; even Sable had been barred from the proceedings.

He had been found guilty, condemned to death, and taken to a maximum-security cell, where he killed two guards and got as far as a service stairwell before he was apprehended and returned to confinement. While Jericho's escape attempt was occurring, numerous dignitaries from both the government and the clergy were conferring behind locked doors. Their meeting broke up in the early evening and the sentence was carried out before midnight.

Jericho's burial was delayed until Mela, representing the Republic, arrived three days later. He had requested, and was given, measurements and photographs of the body.

And now Sable stood, ignoring the light drizzle that was starting to fall, and watched the grave being filled in with dirt and rubble.

"No headstone?" asked Veshinsky.

"We never knew his name," replied Sable.

"His code name was Jericho," said Mela, drawing his Jacket more tightly about him, "but no one knows who he really was."

"Well," said Veshinsky, "the important thing is that he completed his mission."

"I quite agree," said Mela. "That was the Republic's main concern—and of course we regard the apprehension and execution of Jericho as an extra bonus."

"I wonder how he got so far without being stopped?" mused Veshinsky.

"Who?" asked Sable.

"Bland, of course."

"Who knows?" said Mela. "Anyway, the main thing is that he's dead."

"True," agreed Veshinsky. "We've even established a national day of mourning for him." He chuckled ironically.

"For that monster?" said Mela. "What will happen when the public finds out what really took place in Tifereth?"

"They won't," said Veshinsky.

"Sooner or later they've got to!" persisted Mela.

"Who will tell them, Mr. Mela?" asked Veshinsky dryly. "Will you, who commissioned his death? Will the government, who begged you to send Jericho after him? Will the clergy, who demanded that we give him sanctuary and then lost control of him? No, the only man who might have told them was Jericho, and he's dead now."

"What about the press?"

"We control the press," answered Veshinsky with a smile. "It is in everyone's best interest to believe that Bland was a martyr, just as it is in all of our best interests that the assassin has been brought before the bar of justice and made to pay the penalty for his heinous deed. Isn't that right, John?"

"Yes, Pietre," said Sable. "That's right." Even if, he added mentally, it's right for the wrong reason.

The rain began coming down in earnest, and the three men left the unmarked grave and returned to the parking lot. Veshinsky suggested that Sable's driver take Mela to the spaceport while he and Sable rode in his limousine.

"I just want you to know, John," said Veshinsky as his chauffeur steered the huge car along the slick streets, "that we're all very proud of you. You've got quite a bright future ahead of you."

"Thank you," said Sable.

"There will be a raise and a promotion, of course, and just between you and me, I understand that the City Council is also cooking up a little ceremony to honor you."

"I'm very appreciative."

"You certainly don't sound it, John," said Veshinsky, concern showing on his face. "You haven't been yourself since you got back."

"It takes a little time to adjust to things after Tifereth."

Veshinsky rubbed the mist from his window and watched the rain as it hit the street.

"What was it like?" he asked at last.

"You've seen the carvings on the Church of the Messenger?" replied Sable, and Veshinsky nodded. "This was worse."

"I see," said Veshinsky soberly. "Mela had been to New Rhodesia just after Bland escaped. He told me about it in some detail."

"Whatever he saw, it couldn't have been as bad as Tifereth."

Sable shuddered and turned up his collar as if for warmth.

Veshinsky paused for a moment.

"How's Siboyan?"

"Fine."

"How did she react to the news of Bland's death?"

"Like most of the others," Sable said quietly. "She's sorry I wasn't able to save him."

"You haven't told her about him yet?"

"I don't discuss my cases outside the office."

Veshinsky smiled. "That's a very wise policy, John." He lit a cigar and offered one to Sable, who refused it. "I've got a couple of tickets for the fight next week. Care to come along?"

"Thanks for the invitation, Pietre, but I think I've seen enough bloodshed to last me for quite some time."

The limousine turned onto Sable's street.

"There's one thing that's been puzzling me," said Veshinsky. "If Bland was everything you and Mela say, why didn't you let Jericho go?"

Sable stared long and hard at his old friend, and wondered if he could explain it to him; indeed, if he could ever explain it to anyone. Finally he shrugged.

"He broke the law."

Veshinsky looked at the end of his cigar for a long moment. "If that's the way you want it, John. The subject is closed." The limousine came to a stop in front of Sable's house. "I'll be seeing you. And don't look so glum—you're a hero!"

Sable waved to him as the huge car pulled away, then entered the house. The children were still at school and Siboyan was off shopping. Even the cat seemed to have disappeared.

He walked slowly from room to room, wondering if he would ever get the stench of Tifereth out of his system. As he passed the statue of Cali he toyed with taking it down and putting it away in a closet, as he had done with the statue and baphomet in his office, then decided against it.

Siboyan still believed, and the kids believed as deeply as kids were able to. If they ever came face to face with their own Tifereths—and he hoped they never did—they'd put the statue away quickly enough. In the meantime, it was just plaster and paint; it represented nothing more to him than he cared to have it represent.

He walked to the bedroom and slowly got into his gardening clothes. The rain had stopped, the sun was starting to break through the clouds, and he had work to do. The garden, like his life, was in a state of temporary disrepair; he would have to tend to both, each in its turn.

At least, he thought with a sigh, the weeds had been eradicated from his life. He had survived the dark and the cold of the night. It would take some time, but he would flourish and grow again.

He turned his attention to the garden.

About the Author

MIKE RESNICK was born in Chicago in 1942, attended the University of Chicago (where, in the process of researching his first adventure novel, he earned three letters on the fencing team and was nationally ranked for a brief period), and married his wife, Carol, in 1961. They have one daughter, Laura.

From the time he was 22, Mike has made his living as a professional writer. He and Carol have also been very active at science fiction conventions, where Mike is a frequent speaker and Carol's stunning costumes have swept numerous awards at masquerade competitions.

Mike and Carol were among the leading breeders and exhibitors of show collies during the 1970s, a hobby which led them to move to Cincinnati and purchase a boarding and grooming kennel.

Mike has received several awards for his short stories and an award for a nonfiction book for teenagers. His first love, though, remains science fiction, and his excellent science fiction novels, The Soul Eater and Birthright: The Book of Man, are also available in Signet editions.

THE END

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Walpurgis III

Table of Contents

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
About the Author