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RACES HIGH AND LOW

“THE CORRUPTION IS NOT AS DENSE AS ALONG the Exchange border,” Gun Roh Chin noticed, looking at his screens.

“Yes, but the fact that it is here at all is not a pleasant omen,” Krisha replied worriedly. “Can you avoid it?”

They were in a small Mycohlian courier craft with civilian registry and ID which had been waiting for them near the border. There had been no tears, even though they were breaking apart the group of survivors who had withstood the worst anyone had been expected to take in millennia. They were enemies who had been forced to become allies, a microcosm of what they now hoped would happen on a larger scale, but, for now, they were going home.

“I’ll do my best,” he promised. “I may have to run this thing up close to maximum speed to beat the stuff closing in on us, but I think I can make it. The big problem will be, if we come through that fast from this direction and in this ship, will they ask questions or blow us out of space?”

“That would be an ugly welcome home,” she agreed. “Shouldn’t we try and contact them?”

“Too risky at this point. Hyperspace communication goes through this plane. I bet it looks solid as a rock to those things and would draw them like children to candy. No, they’re life, of some sort, but they’re pretty dumb beasts. Let’s not call them.”

He saw an opening, took it, and gunned the engines wide open. The masses on either side sensed the oncoming ship, or, most likely, the energy blister around it, and began closing, but he’d timed it just right. He had to swerve suddenly to avoid a third, smaller, mass beyond that had been obscured by the first two, but then he felt in the clear. When he saw that they weren’t going to attempt a futile chase, he opened up the communications channel to the Mizlaplanian military frequencies.

“Reserve Commander Gun Roh Chin incoming in Mycohl craft, unarmed,” he reported. “One passenger, Krisha the Holy Mendoro, telepath. Request rendezvous with either a major military craft or Holy Arm as quickly as possible.”

For a while there was no reply, then, suddenly, a voice asked, “You’re a what with a who?

He repeated the call, slowly this time.

“If you’re who you say you are, what are you doing in a ship of those devil-worshipers?”

“We are the lone survivors of a Holy Arm,” he explained. “The rest we must report to the highest authority.”

Another, very different voice broke in, obviously using a translator. “This is Admiralty Security. We will send you course, heading, and speed. Keep to them precisely. Any deviation and we will blow you up. Proceed on that course until you see a beacon and halt there. Someone will meet you and take you off. You have e-suits?”

“Yes, but not exactly regulation.” The captain smiled wryly, wondering what sort of confusion would result when two people got out of a Mycohl ship wearing Exchange blue.


“There it is!” Krisha cried. She seemed almost unable to believe that she was really home, back in the Mizlaplan once more. Chin, too, felt a certain wonder at that. None of them had ever really expected to survive this long.

“I’m at full stop at your beacon,” he reported. “Now get us out of here!”

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Under even normal conditions they would have been treated with extreme suspicion; under the kind of war buildup they’d been witnessing, he was amazed at their gentility.

They were scanned, probed, and everything else, and finally a shuttle of familiar design appeared and approached them, then docked. They locked down their suits and he depressurized the cabin, then he went over and opened the airlock. Two gold-suited figures looked back at them from perhaps five meters away. One took a small pack and fired a line to them, which snaked across. Krisha caught it and secured it to the hatch rail, and then, one at a time, they made their way across.

The two Mizlaplanians proved to be Mesoks, the fierce, huge race that did a lot of the risky work for the Mizlaplan. One of their number lay dead back in that passage to Hell.

“You’re about the most confused people we have ever seen,” one of the soldiers commented. “Mizlaplanians in Exchange suits in a Mycohl ship. I’d almost give up my next leave to hear your story!”

The other was less jolly. “As soon as we repressurize, both of you will strip to your skins and stand away from the suits,” he ordered. “No funny business. He is a hypno and I am a null.”

A hypno! “Are you of Holy Orders, then?” Krisha demanded to know.

“I am Kadok the Holy Lamak,” the hypno replied. “I am Chief of Security for this sector.”

Although that hardly made him a bishop or father of the Church, it meant he was on the same level as herself and ordained, and that meant he had a perfect right to put her under if he felt like it.

The lights came up to full, indicating normal pressure. “Now, over there. A complete strip,” Kadok ordered. “When you are done, kick the suits over to the sergeant.”

They did as instructed. By now, nudity seemed almost normal.

The suits were bundled, boxed, sealed, and then jettisoned, although they would remain within close proximity to the Mycohl courier craft. Both would be picked up by military teams and gone over with a microscope before they’d be allowed near anything valuable.

“Sit!” the security officer instructed. “Facing me!”

They did as instructed, and Gun Ron Chin looked directly in the Mesok’s huge, menacing red eyes and smiled. “It is wasted on me, Holy One. I’m as null as they come.”

Krisha tried to scan the hypno’s surface thoughts to see what was going to happen next, but he had quite a good meditative blocking scheme. He would go far in the Church. Still, he made no further effort to hypno either of them, and didn’t even engage in much conversation.

They docked first with a cruiser, where they were marched off and through an elaborate decontamination procedure. At the end, Krisha was given a green robe of the standard Order and Gun Roh Chin got into the first pair of pants and shirt he’d worn in ages. It actually felt funny, the shoes in particular. Then they were taken to separate cabins, small and locked from the outside as well as being guarded, where each took the opportunity to freshen up.

The wait dragged on, and eventually the captain decided to go to sleep. Oddly, it was the soundest sleep he could remember having in recent memory. In fact, it took a physical shaking to wake him up.

The Mesok let him throw some water in his face, then he went out and down the corridor until they reached a larger room. The soldier knocked, there was a muffled reply, and the door was opened for him and he stepped through.

He found himself facing three officers, all, to his surprise, Terrans. One was a very dark man with broad features and curly snow-white hair who wore the rust-gold uniform of the navy and the insignia of a commander. The second was a younger man of Chin’s own stock, Han Chinese most certainly, wearing medical whites. The third was a tiny but exotically pretty young woman who looked little more than a girl, but who wore a green robe with golden trim. Some sort of mixed Asian stock, but it worked. Not for the first time did he wonder why all the really gorgeous ones turned out to be clergy. And not just clergy. She must have been far older than she looked to have attained the rank of elder bishop, a rank different from but equal to his old and now lost friend Morok.

She was certainly the highest-ranking Terran of any profession that he’d seen outside of a Terran world.

“Captain, I am Commander Agaguwak,” said the dark military man. “This is Doctor Chu, and we are honored by the presence of Her Eminence Ming the Holy Kwo.”

He gave a mild seated bow to each in turn but said nothing.

“We have verified that you are who you say you are,” the commander continued, “and that is remarkable in itself considering the files Her Eminence brought with her. You must appreciate, Captain, that you vanished into enemy territory over nine weeks ago and your ship and crew were turned over to us by the Exchange two weeks ago with a story that you’d all vanished on this remote frontier world, along with Mycohl and Exchange personnel. Your sudden reappearance, let alone the manner of it, is causing a considerable stir.”

“Nine weeks,” Chin repeated. “It seems like a lifetime.”

The commander cleared his throat. “Do you just want to tell us what happened? In your own words? This is being recorded, of course.”

“Of course,” he responded. “I will do what I can.” And, with that, he did—after a while, oblivious to the fact that he was, perhaps, giving too much detail for them. He spared little, not even Krisha’s own horrors, since, after all, they were going to read all this out of her mind anyway and he was just being used to corroborate her story which, of course, had to sound like total insanity to them. The fact that she believed it was beside the point.

When he finished, they took a short break, and he was able to get a drink of water. When they regrouped, it was Her Eminence who started it off.

“You realize, of course, that you both are heretics,” she said calmly.

“Holy One, my views before and after have barely altered and were always known to the Inquisition,” he pointed out. “In spite of that I was a member of and participant in an Arm. As to the truly heretical portions, I was not able to witness them, being null, nor was Sister Mendoro due to shock after a particularly vicious attack by an evil force that is most un-heretical and, I assure you, very, very real. We merely report them as part of the record, with, I might personally add, the conviction that the Mycohlian and Exchange personnel reported what they truly believed. McCray’s subsequent actions, I believe, confirm that.”

“Do you think they actually spoke with the gods?” she pressed.

“I believe that they think they did,” he responded carefully. “I don’t think that their minds, any of their minds, even the Mycohl master’s, had the ability to actually see and perceive anything on that plane. It would be like one born blind attempting to interpret something purely in terms of color, lighting, and shading. Their minds gave shapes to things that have no shapes as we understand them, and voices with normal qualities to things that have no need of that sense.”

“And the Mycohlian claim that we are the spawn of demons with their help?” she asked sharply.

“Having seen firsthand how we are such vessels of corruption, and knowing that we cannot save ourselves but must rely on others, most particularly the Church and its Holy Angels, I find it at least credible, as depressing as it is to me.”

“You are a dangerous man, Captain,” she responded coldly. “Morok fought many battles to protect you because you beguiled him into believing you were serving the Holy Church, but you left your protector to the demons. I, for one, find it most telling that the purest and best of an Arm was destroyed while only you and a priestess on the edge of falling into your evil ways come out—whole!”

His eyebrows went up. “Am I being debriefed or am I on trial? If I am on trial, where is my interlocutor? I believe I have rights as a citizen and a military officer.”

The commander sighed. “Captain, none of this happened in civil time nor during any period of service. You were at the time a member of an Arm of the Holy Inquisition. In that regard, jurisdiction is assumed by the Church, not by civil or military authority. I am here merely as a witness.”

He stared at them all in disbelief. “This is unprecedented!” he objected. “Never before to my knowledge has a civilian, even one ordered into the service of an Arm, been subject to Church discipline. Has the Mizlaplan changed in nine weeks? Have the Lawgiver’s Books, which have stood for thousands of years, been suddenly altered?”

They made no reply, none of them, and he stared at each in turn. They’re scared of something, he realized suddenly. They’re terrified. “Something has happened, hasn’t it?” he asked at last. “Something horrible. If the law is to be so twisted against me, I believe I have a right to know what it is.”

“Captain—” the commander began, but the priestess silenced him. “Enough!”

The military man finally lost his temper, even in the face of one so high. “Holy Mother, I will not be silent! This man is right! And if exception is made for him, then the Law crumbles, and we become no better than the rest!”

“Your impertinence risks more than your career. Commander,” she warned. “You are dangerously close to joining him!”

“Then so be it! I know to whom this record will go. I am content to let those higher than you judge my soul. If military code were to be in place or not at the whim of every officer, this ship would soon come apart, this fleet rendered inoperable. I have no authority to stop you from taking this man, but if I am here merely as window dressing rather than as an honest observer and officer, then I commit a greater sin by allowing it! I will speak!

She was furious, but she had enough control to keep it under. Finally she said, “Very well, make your pretty little speeches and tell him what you will. It will make no difference.”

Chin hoped the inference wasn’t lost on the commander. Records could be doctored before they were sent. On his ship, however, records could also be kept, copied, and stored in more than one place.

The commander seemed like the kind who knew the ropes pretty well. The kind of man the Mizlaplan could ill afford to discard before a possible war.

“This is what we have come to, Captain, in the short time you were missing,” the officer said to him. “Such a scene as we just had would have been unthinkable only ten days ago. The great balance is coming apart at a speed that frightens all of us who truly believe in this system. In eleven different parish zones clergy have seized control of all civil government and suspended all rights. Ad hoc Inquisitions have been formed producing rule by terror without cause. As much as ten percent of the navy is in open mutiny, killing their clerics and going wild. Some crossed the border in suicidal raids on Mycohl ships and worlds bringing us to the brink of war. In response, the Inquisition has arrested and subjected to brutal mind control many of our top officers, even those intensely loyal, and key commercial, diplomatic, and scientific leaders as well. People who love their Church are becoming terrified of it, and the word cannot be suppressed.”

Gun Roh Chin heard this, and even though he understood he was appalled. Not here. Not the Mizlaplan. “Spacers,” he said.

“Huh? What’s that?”

“Spacers first. The navy going right through this stuff. It enters, corrupts, releases the worst. The Inquisition flies from point to point. I saw what they can do to even one who is ordained. Our core is solid. It was meant to be. But they don’t need to rot our core. If we don’t have faith in each other, and trust, and mutual respect of clergy and lay people, that faith cracks.” He stood and stared at the tiny priestess. “You say I am to be treated as a priest, under religious laws. Very well. Under religious law the Inquisition cannot investigate itself. I demand an immediate hearing before the only one qualified to judge a member of the Inquisition charged with heresy. I demand judgment by a Holy Angel!”

The blood drained from her face. “How dare you! No layman may have Audience!”

He hadn’t been around Manya off and on all those years without learning something. “Very well. There is no civil law. There is no military law. If there is only Holy Law, then I must be given that right! If you refuse me, under Holy Law, I may be accused of heresy but you stand committing a heretical act on the record and in the presence of witnesses! Or do you abolish religious law as well? If religious law is abolished, then it is you who have surrendered to Hell, not I, for if we do not have that we have nothing at all!” He turned back to the commander. “How did she get here anyway? Was any hyperspace travel involved, sir?”

The commander, too, was shaken. “I cannot go that far, but I can go at least to your legal argument. Holy Mother, I’m sorry, but by your own definitions you have surrendered jurisdiction over this man.”

“And the priestess, too,” Chin reminded him.

The commander cleared his throat again. “Yes, yes, that is true. Holy Mother?”

Gun Roh Chin had never seen anybody that simultaneously furious and confused. Finally she resolved the logic loop as much as she was able. “Very well. Doctor, what do you say?”

The doctor, who’d been totally impassive through this, now spoke. “I would say, Holiness, that this man is both the sanest and the most dangerous man I have ever met.”

She gave up. “All right, then, Captain, I shall transmit your claim and demand to the office of the Most Holy Angel of this sector. If the Most Sacred commands it, you will have your audience. That, of course, would produce a de facto ordainment. A voluntary one at that. And then, as a null, you will be remanded to the Inquisition for requisite surgery and psychochemical conditioning. And that happens to be my particular office.”

They led him back to his quarters, but in about half an hour the door opened and he was surprised, and pleased, to see the commander enter.

“I hope this is a visit rather than you joining me,” Gun Roh Chin said dryly.

“Oh, don’t worry so much about that,” Agaguwak assured him. “I was acting under full authority from the bridge and even our clerical personnel were supportive. My job was to listen to your account and act according to what I believed was right at the end of it. A lot of us are like you, Captain. They don’t like what is going on and they don’t know what to do about it. Everybody’s scared, Captain. We’d have no hesitancy to go full into battle against a Mycohlian fleet, but this strikes at the heart of all we would be fighting for. Most of us have families, too.”

Chin nodded. “I understand.”

“You’ll appreciate, though, that I went as far as any of us could back there. There’s always been a lot of anti-Terran sentiment. You know that. We are the largest single racial group in the Mizlaplan, yet we’re one percent of the highest levels of the Church, there are no Terran admirals, no Terrans on fleet staff, and Terrans are only a minuscule percentage of the leadership anywhere.”

“That I was fully aware of. It is why I chose a civil career rather than a military one. At least there I could command my own ship.”

“Yes. Then you can understand the effect on many On High when a Stargin, a Mesok, and a Gnoll are sent off with two Terrans and only the two Terrans return. Return with an account that says that, with one understandable exception, all of the others who returned to their homelands were Terrans, too. A lot of the disturbances here have begun on Terran worlds and on Terran-controlled vessels. It’s not exclusively our race, but we seem to stand out. That’s why they sent Holy Mother Ming. They knew she was a rigid, inflexible fanatic—that’s why she’s risen to that rank—and so there could be no claims of racism when she would be judge, jury, and executioner. You turned the tables on her pretty neatly, but she’s a bad enemy. It seems to me that you bought some time but little else.”

Gun Roh Chin sighed. “Commander, I’ll be honest with you. I expected to be dead weeks ago. I am still amazed that I am here at all. I am here because I have one job, one task left to perform. The Holy Angels must be convinced. We must avoid a war that would not only destroy us but would place us, our families, and our descendants unto the end of time under the ultimate evil. The Holy Angels have so insulated themselves from our society that all of their information and viewpoints are filtered through a layer of Mother Mings. Under ordinary circumstances, they wouldn’t even send a report on us to them. The only hope I had was that the ordination binds all priests to Higher Law. I had thought—hoped is a better word—that Krisha would be sufficient. As a telepath, and a priestess, they could read everything out and know it was true. Now it appears that I will have to make a full commitment. I won’t pretend it does not matter to me, but I am a walking dead man anyway, each day being one I stole from the Quintara. If it takes my mind or my life or anything else, it doesn’t matter, so long as the Holy Angels get the direct and uncolored information.”

The commander nodded. “I can see now why you have survived, and why you are in this position. Few would have that kind of courage and dedication.”

That embarrassed the captain, who changed the subject. “What about Krisha? Is she all right?”

“She’s had a rough time. She’s been hypnoed, gone through telepathic interrogation, the works. They’ve tried everything they have here to shake her, and they’ve failed. She has, in fact, impressed everyone except Mother Ming, who remains convinced that your priestess was reprogrammed by the Mycohl and sent back to destroy the faith. Ming is convinced, by the way, that you will not be granted audience.”

“She set the rules and made a formal charge on the record. She has no choice.”

“Yes, assuming your case actually gets to a Holy Angel. Once you two are off this ship you’re entirely in Church hands.”

“I have to trust that, having come this far, we will not be denied at this late date. When she made me a full member of the Inquisition I could hardly believe my ears. Nothing short of divine intervention could have given us such an opening.”

“I hope you are right, Captain. I am much more comfortable going to war against demons than against the Mycohl, knowing the horrible price that would exact, and I relish civil war even less.”

“Well, I think the Mycohl will hold off. They’re scared, too. And at some point in the past they stopped worshiping devils and started worshiping themselves. I don’t like them; their empire is a taste, a pale imitation, of what Quintara rule would be. But I trust them to save their own necks. You are a good man, Commander. Avoid those black regions and obey your conscience and your beliefs. After this, someone else might have to be the most dangerous man in the Mizlaplan.”


Krisha looked as bad as she had in the Quintara city—drawn, thin, hollow-eyed, and somewhat battered—but her spirit was strong, and, characteristic of her, she was more concerned with him than with herself.

“Captain, you cannot do this!” she told him, her voice hoarse and rasping, a shadow of itself.

“It’s all right,” he responded. “Your life or mine means nothing in this. Only the goal matters.”

He hated Ming for what she’d done to Krisha, but he had some satisfaction in the fact that her worst efforts had not broken his priestess, and that the Holy Angel had commanded an audience with them. He was not surprised, once the word got through. To refuse him would be the same as saying to the ship and clergy that Holy Law was false; it had probably tied the Angel’s staff in knots trying to figure out a way to refuse, but ultimately they’d been forced to propose it, thus placing the Angel himself in the same position.

Now they descended to a peaceful, green world very similar to the one upon which all this had started three months—a lifetime—ago. Curiously, he felt no apprehension, just a sense of unreality, as if this were somehow all a dream.

“It was different with McCray,” Krisha whispered hoarsely. “He had to do it to save his soul. But you, Captain—they will destroy your mind as well as emasculate your body. Your wisdom already exceeds most of my teachers’, and you should be married, have many fine children.”

He had thought once about becoming a priest, actually, but he hadn’t wanted to pay the price, and the Mizlaplan needed nulls independent in thought and action more than it needed priests. How turns the Wheel of Life, he thought, still feeling distant from reality.

It was not a Terran world, although it had resembled one from the air. It was a Thun world, peopled by purple lizard-like centauroids with recessed beak-like mouths in their chests. He wasn’t sure he’d ever run into any before, but he was unlikely to get to know them now. He had vainly hoped for a Terran world, or at least one of a half-dozen others, where he might have been able to get a cigar. If there was ever an excuse for smoking a cigar and sipping the best wines, this just had to be it.

The huge granite Temple, however, with its multiple onion domes and reddish-brown rock facing, made him forget anything else. How many times had he gone past one of these, or stared at them and wondered what was inside? Only priests went inside these temples, though, and if you weren’t one when you went in, you were when you came out.

The chief steward, resplendent in his bright, shiny golden robes and vestments, was a Minter, a creature with tentacles where the face should be and eyes on stalks growing from behind. Like many races, it needed a translator to pick up the t-band and translate it into standard speech, which made it sound like it was somewhat hollow and mechanical.

“The staff will take them and prepare them for their audienzzz,” the steward told Ming.

“I shall assist,” the Holy Mother responded. “I have some extra preparations I feel are necessary for the candidate.” She meant Chin.

“You shall wait here,” the steward responded. “You may uszz the prayer room if you wish.

“I protest! I must aid in his preparation. As sector director of the Inquisition I—”

The steward cut her off. “Shut up!” he said curtly.

She was startled. “What?”

Where do you think you are? Perhapzz you should review your vowzz,” the steward suggested. “Start with the onezz on obedienzz.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. She bowed low, turned, and left them, but with an angry, almost defiant stomping motion.

Perhapzz she is no longer up to that job,” the steward said, really to himself, although the translator gave mutterings equal weight with statements. Gun Roh Chin repressed a smile and stood impassive, as did Krisha.

“Come,” said the steward, and led them back into the labyrinthine building that seemed so much larger inside than out. Not like the crystals of the stations, but impressively so nonetheless.

They put him through the usual, running him through everything from a germicidal shower to a scented bath, cropping his hair close, all that. Finally, they brought him to an anteroom where Krisha also waited, scented and with hair cut about as close as his. She still looked tired and drawn, and the bruises were coming in clearly, but she’d come too far to surrender now.

“Nervous?” she asked him, her voice much better. They must have given her something to help,

“Yes,” he admitted. All his life he’d seen the great gray statues of the Holy Angels and been taught of their presence on world after world, but he had never really expected to see one in the flesh. Of course, he’d never expected to encounter a Mycohl master, either. At least not encounter one—better to part as comrades than as occupied territory.

Up to now he’d always wondered if he was immune even from the powers of an Angel. Now he knew at least he was immune from the powers of devils, and impenetrable to Tobrush as well.

The statues were always idealized, of course, but they were so damned ugly. He hoped he could keep a reverential posture.

After what seemed like an eternity, the great door opened and the steward emerged. “Krisha the Holy Mendoro,” he said. “His Eminence grants you audience.” Chin started to get up as well, but the steward stopped him. “Not you yet. Just her.

He didn’t like it, but it was their turf—her turf, too, he had to remember. She bowed, made the sign of the upward triangle, and followed the steward in. The door shut with a sound that echoed down the hallways and sounded like the clap of doom.

A few silent and nail-biting minutes later, the door opened again and the steward emerged, but shut the door behind him. “Wait,” he told the captain. “You will be called.” He then left and went down the hall and out of sight.

The silence dragged on and he began to feel very nervous and very antsy. He wanted to get it over with. Besides, if this dragged on much longer he was going to need a toilet.

Finally the door opened, and Krisha emerged. For a moment he was happy to see her, but then he stopped. There was something very odd about her, something very different. She moved almost like a—a puppet, hollow-eyed, somewhat jerky in her motions.

“Enter,” she said in a tone that sent chills down his spine.

He got up, said prayers not only to the gods but to his ancient ancestors, and followed her in. The door shut again with an ominous sound.

It was incredibly hot and humid inside the thing, and the atmosphere seemed thick with a mixture that made him slightly giddy. The place was filled with strange and exotic plants and beautiful alien flowers of a sort he’d never seen. In a way, it was almost a jungle, with the rush of water somewhere, and only the ceiling and special lights reminded him that it was indeed inside a building.

And in the center of it all, on a raised dais that might have been solid gold, sitting on an ornate, jewel-encrusted throne, was a Holy Angel, its skin not dull granite gray but harvest gold, a magnificent hue. And it was still ugly as sin.

The Angel was more head than anything else; a great squared head filled with deep golden wrinkles and folds of skin, with five short, spindly tentacles coming from the top of its head. There were five eyes as well, all blazing crimson, on short stalks coming out of its forehead; its nose was nothing but a single hole in the center, and below, an enormous mouth was fed by nasty-looking mandibles with sharp, plant-like points. The body for the great head was incredibly small, the limbs withered and merely vestigial remains of what had first evolved in that homeland that bred them. Clearly the creature was incapable of moving on its own, possibly even of feeding itself. It didn’t have to. Long ago it had developed the overpowering means to make any enemy, any predator, into its worshipful, adoring slave.

Krisha, one of those, walked back up near the throne, turned, and faced the captain. For his part, he stopped, bowed as low as he could, and remained that way.

He felt that same slight nausea and dizziness that he’d felt among the Quintara and in the crystal cave, but nothing more. Clearly nulls were the most dangerous people in the Mizlaplan.

“Stand erect, Gun Roh Chin,” Krisha ordered in that same eerie voice, and he did so, realizing at that moment that the Angel, clearly incapable of the kind of speech a Terran could understand, was operating, both telepathically and hypnotically, through Krisha. For all practical purposes right now, Krisha, rather than the creature on the throne, was the Angel.

“I have read in the entire contents of my priestess’s mind,” Krisha/Angel said. “What can you add to this?”

He took a deep breath. “My Lord, the contamination spreads freely again. Our people and lands are infected. The Enemy of Light has created the conditions for his escape and made good on it. What held him back was the ancient sign that can only be properly made and properly unmade by Mizlaplan, Mycohl, and Exchange. I know the sign, and who must make it, but not how it is made nor how to use it upon the Enemy of Light. I have prayed that those of the Highest Race, who fought and won so long ago, may hold the key.”

“I have heard your report to the Examiners,” Krisha/Angel responded. “I wish further explanation of your theories on this sign and on the rest.”

While he never lost sight of where he was and just who he was talking to, nothing pleased Gun Roh Chin more than to explain his deductions and his theories. To anyone, even an Angel.

Finally, Krisha/Angel said, “That is sufficient. I, however, do not possess the data to correlate further action. I must meditate and commune with a council of my kind. We were, of course, aware of the contamination. That was expected when reports of a discovery of Quintara within the Exchange was intercepted. What is new and not expected nor anticipated was the release of the Four Princes and their master. I do, however, find the possibility of a Divine hand in this matter. In the meantime, your knowledge and service to the Mizlaplan is more than sufficient. You know more than most of my priests and think more clearly. I will consult and gain guidance and wisdom. Upon the absorption of the mind of my faithful servant Krisha, I find no heresy but instead a remarkable record of loyalty and service. Henceforth she shall bear the title of Sainted, and she shall answer only to me. Further, I do not believe that the two of you should be separated again. She shall complete your ordination and be your spiritual leader. You are dismissed.”

He managed to bow low, turn, and exit by himself, but he almost collapsed when he got to the foyer.


He never remembered much of it, but the next few days were a bizarre series of single images and drummed-in phrases as he went through a battery of torture-room techniques. Unable to receive direct programming by the Angel, his mind was still open to the equivalent in technical skills.

The odd thing was, when he woke up with a slight headache and realized that it was over, he didn’t feel much different. He wondered if his point of view had been changed, but he clearly remembered everything, and he meant everything, and he didn’t feel any regrets he hadn’t felt before. Worse, he still loved Krisha, he still wanted a cigar, and he still thought that the Holy Angels were amongst the ugliest creatures in all of Creation. He had a sudden thought, reached down, and was both amazed, and relieved, to discover that he was still all there.

Krisha came into the room. She looked positively radiant; much of her color was back and that dull, hollowed look and exhaustion seemed totally gone. More, she wore a rust-gold robe like the steward’s, only it looked a lot better on her, and a large ring on her hand that had the sacred triangle pointing away from her made of gold set against precious gems.

“Hello,” she greeted him, and took his hand and squeezed it. “How do you feel?”

“Incredibly normal, except for a headache,” he said honestly. “What happened? Did they change their mind?”

“No. You’re a priest, Gunny.” She’d never called him that before, always “Captain,” and he found he liked it. “Gun Roh the Holy Chin. There’s a little bit of ritual left but it’s just that.”

“Sounds awkward,” he responded. “If I’m not a captain any more, ‘Gunny’ is just fine. I have to tell you, though, that I don’t feel like a priest. I feel like an old reprobate freighter captain out of a job.”

“Well, there wasn’t as far to go with you as with most people,” she noted. “And I was instructed that nothing should change you in any way that would impair the way you work or think or do things. Things would have been quite different, horrible, if you hadn’t beaten that terrible Ming at her own game, though.”

“I had a lot of practice with her sort with Manya, among others. But you—what do I even call you now? I’ve never met a Saint before.”

You call me Krisha,” she told him firmly. “I may never get used to others calling me ‘Most High’ and ‘Sainted Mother.’ It’s embarrassing, but I guess I’ll get used to it, but I don’t want to hear you ever say it. I want somebody around who’ll treat me as a normal person. Even if I am the boss and don’t you forget it!” she added playfully.

“No, Ma’am,” he responded with a grin. 

“I’ve discovered I have a lot of influence around here, too.” She reached into a pocket sewn into the inner folds of her robe. “No Terran has ever worn the gold, so they had to make some specially for me and I got to design in a few things, like a pocket,” she told him, pulling out three large cigars.

His eyes widened. “Where’d you get those?

“A freighter docked here and when I found he was a Terran captain I sent word. They said he knew you. Zha Chu, I think the name was.”

“Oh, yes! Chunky fellow. Got to be as wide as he is tall. Haven’t seen him in years.”

“Now, don’t you smoke in here! And not around me, either! I never could stand the smell of those things. You do it outside or in private.”

“Aye, aye, skipper,” he shot back. “But are priests supposed to have vices? I thought we weren’t supposed to sin.”

“Well, it’s not a socially approved practice, but I had the lord chamberlain look it up and nowhere is it a sin.”

Krisha was quite pleased with herself, and quite relieved. The capt—Gunny—was very much his old self, yet he was a priest and would keep his vows. What had been done was very subtle, and mostly on the subconscious level. They had taken his love for her and turned it into a sense of commitment, a marriage, rock solid, firm, unshakable. He would never again be tempted by other women, nor betray her in any way. It simply would never occur to him. Unlike a conventional Mizlaplanian marriage, though, it was he who was subordinate to her. He might debate with her, try and change her mind, but it would never occur to him to disobey her any more than she would ever disobey her masters, the Holy Angels. Her sole reason for existence, all her heart and soul, was to serve them, to obey their every wish and command. All the great blessings she now had, had come as gifts from them, and were they to take them all away, even Gunny, she would obey and serve them just as fervently, nor would she dream of asking them for anything.

“What is the situation outside?” he asked her, oblivious of any changes within her.

“Bad. Getting worse. The High Ones have something akin to the mind-link among themselves; they can commune even across vast distances. They’ve been communing for some time. Normal communications are spotty. A great deal of effort has had to be expended in keeping the Inquisition in line. Holy Angels are commanding whole Arms and staffs to audiences, and finding much corruption within them. What is within can be expelled, but often at great cost to the infected individual. Our own greatest contribution seems to be in awakening in the Most High how isolated they have become. Some have now mind-linked and possessed the bodies of priests and gone out among the Church and the people and seen firsthand what is happening.”

That is heartening. Anything from the other empires?”

“The Mycohl appears to be fragmenting, and they are such a violent people that the stories are hideous. Cults of ancient demon worship with full sacrifices are springing up everywhere. Some are impossible to believe, such as the one in which a loyal Lord brought his forces to bear on a rebellious planet and who, along with all his troops, was turned into one of those pitiful drol slaves by a warrior sorceress.”

He thought about that. “Sounds like Kalia. And drols are made as well as born. They have a whole preprogrammed technology of nanomachines that can reprogram every cell in the body. That’s how they deal with some political enemies and make examples. The drols are such simple creatures there are probably only two programs, male and female. If they had the programs, and could bring enough of that filth through to blanket an army not having those programs, it wouldn’t be unthinkable. The kind of power that would take, though, would be beyond any mere Quintara.” He suddenly sat up in bed. “That’s it! He’s there!

She frowned. “Who? Who is there?”

“The Enemy of Light, the Engineer of Evil! With the Mycohl’s vestigial religions and rituals from the time they were on his side, it’s the place where he’d most likely to be able to concentrate and widen his opening. It is Kalia! I know it! He’s using her to widen his way through, and with her hatred of the Mycohl hierarchy she’s having a wonderful time!” He suddenly stopped short. “Oh, my! That’s where Tobrush and Josef went. I certainly hope they didn’t get too close. A Mycohl master might be a match for a Quintara, but not him.

“Well, the channels to the Mycohl remain open, even though there have been some bloody clashes,” she told him. “As for the Exchange, without which nothing is probably possible—we’ve heard nothing at all. If Tobrush and Josef were corrupted or killed, they’d have the Exchange people, too. What if Modra and Jimmy didn’t make it? Where does that leave us?”

“As dead and beyond hope as Manya, Morok, and Savin, I’m afraid.” He sighed. “Is there a green robe for me anywhere? I might as well get used to it, and I think it’s time I smoked a cigar.”


Modra was in the can and Grysta was fast asleep.

Jimmy did a wide scan over the border region yet another time, then sat back and examined the result. It looked like a solid black wall, and bitter experience had shown them that the wall wasn’t thin, either. Once in a while, pieces of the stuff would break off and start accelerating away at some speed, not toward them but into the Mycohl, but there was so much of it there that the missing mass didn’t seem to make a dent in it.

He sat back and shook his head. They’d traveled an extra three days along the border hoping that there would be a sign of some break in it, but, so far, nothing at all.

He shifted a bit in the e-suit and his thoughts shifted to more personal things. It still felt very—odd—particularly when he shifted. He hadn’t been aware of how omnipresent the—thing—had been until it wasn’t there any more. The medilab under Tobrush’s direction had done a superb job; there were no aftereffects, no pain, nothing. That, of course, was one of the reasons it felt even more bizarre. The Mycohliah knew nothing of human anatomy and trusted the computer; he’d taken everything, rerouting the urinary outlet to just beyond the anus. Jimmy had to wonder what kind of injury program that had been supposed to treat. There was nothing there, not even a scar.

He still had mixed feelings inside. On the one hand he felt real sorrow, along with ego problems about whether or not he was still in any way a man. It was going to be damned hard to adjust to, mentally. Yet, on the other hand, he felt a tremendous sense of relief as well, as if some intolerable burden, some burning insanity, within him had also been excised. He hated it, he inwardly grieved about it, but he also believed that it was the best decision he’d made. Later, perhaps, if they survived all this, if the Engineer was defeated and the Quintara put down, he might well have horrible second thoughts about it, but not now. They could grow anything, of course, if they had a skin sample and your genetic code, but he put that from his mind completely. He had burned his bridge and he would stick to it no matter what.

The Quintara then had nothing left to tempt him with. Life? They could have that, if he could take them with him. Not romance and sex, certainly, and while they might offer to restore, he was resolved on that. Immortality? He was not absolutely sure, but he believed that anyone who could hear the thoughts of a subatomic particle in a universe wouldn’t let him down.

Modra came out of the toilet and sank back into her chair.

“Sick again?” he asked her.

“Nauseous. Same as yesterday. I put on a space-sickness patch but it didn’t seem to help. Well, if it’s like yesterday, it’ll go away in a while. Anything?”

“No breaks, but more of it is definitely being transferred inward. The Mycohl is obvious fertile ground for them, and they don’t give a fig about the people. They want to wipe out the masters. If what we heard about the Mizlaplan has any truth to it, I expect that the Exchange is also pretty messy. Hell, they could take over whole planets in the Exchange and nobody’d notice. I think, though, they just want to stir things up to a war. The Exchange and the Mizzies takin’ on their old mutual ugliness the Mycohl while they eat at the center of the Mycohl Empire and ensure that they can’t mount a credible defense. They fear the Mycohl the most because they can both travel and hide. I bet that somewhere, right now, in some lab, probably in the Exchange but maybe also over with the Mizzies, some scientists have suddenly been struck with brilliance and have developed absolute tests for detecting a Mycohl-inhabited body.”

She looked at him. “You really think so?”

“That’s what I’d do. You think His Nibs couldn’t come up with one? Put that together with the fact that the race that bred or created or whatever the Mycohl has got to know the location of that mother world, the breeding and the library world, and you have a pretty good recipe for eventual genocide. In any event, there’ll be no getting all three together once the donnybrook begins.”

She sat back in the chair and it felt better.

<Tobrush! Josef!>

<We are here.>

<Three days and no break! What are we to do?>

<If you feel that there is no alternative, use the star charts, plot a course for least likely interception, and cross over sublight. If you are detected, surrender. You are not without considerable power.>

That was a point.

<What if we just try and make a run straight through it at top speed?>

<Inadvisable. You do not know what it might do to you, and it probably has your templates, a sort of wanted poster. Even if you manage to go through and expel it, it might well betray your position and, through the link, ours as well. The concentration here in the Qaamil is unbelievable. We dared not bring the ship within even five light-years of the nearest body, and more arrives to expand it almost every time we look. Josef has been in and out of a number of areas and it looks ugly indeed down there.>

<If there’s so much, how did he get in?>

<Come! Come! A region overrun by the Quintara? Do you realize how many wide-open pentagrams there are in a cluster of thirteen solar systems? You don’t even need a destination; the Quintara want quick ins and outs. Not very good for mobility, but excellent for quick glimpses of a thousand places. Access his mind if you like, to see what we mean.>

Quick glimpses was right, but the scenes that flashed by, in many cases no more than snapshots, were still startling.

The remnants of human sacrifices and other bizarre and stomach-turning rituals, great idols, burning braziers of incense and fiery substances, faces that looked like the living dead, visions of depravity and worse.

<What about that report of a whole corps of soldiers being turned into drols with some kind of magic spell?>

<Confirmed. They wanted publicity on that one, for obvious reasons. They were apparently lulled by their high-tech combat suits and relay teams and got themselves lured into a gigantic pentagram many kilometers wide. Once in, it was closed, and sufficient interdimensional energy was available and bled to work “magic,” as it were.>

<Then nobody’s safe!>

<If they could do that on a true mass scale, I doubt if they’d be consolidating and organizing. Every time they do something on that grand a scale they lose some of the mass—permanently. With hundreds of light-years at best, three empires, four hundred races, ninety trillion people, I don’t think they can manage it, not to mention the problems of a pentagram that large. But they can well afford a few grandiose object lessons like this, and a considerable number of individual demonstrations as needed. Note that, although it would have been a simple thing to wipe out the orbital command ship and short out its systems as those first ones did back on the original frontier world with the science ship, they chose to allow the command ship to withdraw with all recordings intact. That recording will do more to influence highly placed people and military types that they are dealing with godlike power here than a hundred such actual attacks. Already many hives, including an impressive number well away from any current action or immediate threat, have been discovered trying to deal with the Quintara—and the Quintara are more than willing to deal.>

<Fausts, like I said long ago,> Jimmy noted. <You can’t use superior technology or anything else and cover ninety trillion. But if they think you got the power to turn men and women of many races into a uniform set of ugly little drol slaves, then you’ve got the power to grant them good things as well. As you said, they’ve got very grave limitations no matter what they can do, and once they’re operating in this universe they’ve got to contend with laws of physics, energy, mass, ratios and relationships, and our mathematics. Besides, what good are a few thousand more drols to them? But whole systems, whole societies, joining willingly for pay, worshiping them and playing their games—now, that’s a prize!>

Modra had kept one eye on the screens just in case a fast maneuver was called for beyond the automatic system’s abilities to cope, and now she suddenly saw something so unbelievable she wasn’t sure she saw it. She sat up, nausea forgotten, and looked at it closely.

<Jimmy! A section just broke away and it’s clear!>

Jimmy sat up and stared at the screens. There was a clear space opening up. You could see a distant star right through it.

<We’re going to take it! Wish us luck!>

<Have caution! They will detect and close on you! Make certain you have enough room! A parsec at least!>

Jimmy took over manual control and brought the ship around. The opening was still there and appeared, if anything, to be widening a bit. He snapped down the command helmet and the computer estimated the top speed at which the blackness could move and the distance between. It was just a bit better than even odds that they could make it clear, but there wasn’t a question in either of their minds.

Not, at least, until they were committed beyond the point of no return. Suddenly the stuff did seem to gather and started to rapidly close, as if forming two sides of a fog-like wall that were rapidly coming together.

<We’re not going to make it!> Modra thought, bracing herself, as they passed through. The wall closed behind them, and Jimmy had to steer around some odd puffs that appeared in the backfield, but they were through!

“Where to?” he asked her, feeling suddenly higher than a kite.

“Home!” she told him. “The capital, if it’s not bathed in blackness. Back to settle our affairs and to see if there are any replies to our little bombshell message.”

“We’ll have some explainin’ to do.”

“Jimmy! This won’t be the frontier or the navy! That’s the Exchange! We’ll be returning”—she took on a mock-serious tone—“back from the clutches of the evil Mycohl in a stolen spaceship! We’re even bringing in salvage!

“You may be right,” he told her, “but I’m not so sure we won’t have a welcome party of cymols and security.”

“If they’re there for the right reasons, all the better,” she told him. “If they’re there for the wrong reasons, we know how to handle them.”

“Perhaps,” he replied, “but don’t get too cocky or too power drunk. There’s a reason they held on to power over all those worlds for so long, you know. And now the devil is everywhere.”


It took several more days to reach the world that was the heart of the Exchange, the world everyone just called the capital. During the trip they dodged a few stray puffs of random material and had to do some fancy talking to explain to mostly commercial shipping why they had Mycohl registry, but nobody called out the military on them. Either they were complacent here, far from the frontier, or they were surprisingly vulnerable.

There were some units of the blackness in and around the capital, but isolated and easy to avoid. Jimmy guessed that they were monitoring things rather than trying anything nasty.

“Courier of Mycohl registry, identify,” came the ground call.

“Salvage under license 34B787KL-6-12-1,” Modra responded. “Licensed exploiter Stryke, Modra, Widowmaker Corporation, along with licensed exploiters McCray, James Francis, and McCray, Molly, same affiliation, sole occupants. No weapons or other contraband aboard. Request permission land at spaceport salvage.”

Their hearts both skipped a beat during the pause, but then the response came, “Scan confirms, licenses check. Turn your com over to landing control.”

“Hey! What’s that about Molly McCray?” Grysta snapped from the back.

Jimmy half turned to look at her. In one sense, although he knew it was sinful to think that way, it gave him some satisfaction that his, er, operation had given her a shattering of her own dreams as she had shattered his all those years.

“If you are Grysta, you are dead meat,” he told her. “If you are Molly, you are a citizen, wife of a citizen, and joint claimant on the bank account. And don’t you ever forget that—Molly. If you do, the best you can hope for is to be broke and expelled, a one-of-a-kind of your race.”

“Shit,” she pouted. “It ain’t fair!”

“You sound like me with a Morgh on my back. You can have a divorce any old time, and half of all the assets. My Church doesn’t believe in divorce, but an annulment would send you back to the entertainment district, the property of some promoters.”

“Jeez, Jimmy! I wouldn’t know where to go or what to do on my own down there!”

“Well, the one time you were on your own you certainly screwed things up,” he agreed.

He turned and looked at the status screens and viewplate. “Well,” he said, “they’re bringin’ us in at the right spot. Let’s just hope we don’t have a nasty welcoming committee down there composed of dead folks with crystal brains.”



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