Lloyd Biggle Jr. - The World Menders

The priests made no move to quiet the uproar. They conferred with each other, one of them spoke with the kru, and then they led Farrari down the ramp. With a word of command they turned Farrari over to priests of less exalted rank, who led him through a pressing throng of nobility that gaped rudely at Farrari and attempted to touch him as he passed. The doors swung open for them, and they left the hall, marched briskly along a branch corridor, climbed a ramp, and entered a long, narrow room.

“What d’ya know!” Farrari breathed. “The art school!”

Circular openings in the wall looked down onto the assembly Farrari had just left, and at each of them several artists, all clothed in a form of priestly dress, were sketching—some with chalk on smooth slabs of stone, some on polished wood, some on cloth.

Attendants brought in the table, the stones and the sword, and Farrari found himself posed with the sword upraised while the artists circled him and studied his features. Either he was about to become immortalized on a new tapestry or relief for the temple, or what passed for a constabulary in Scorv wanted his portrait for its files. He could not decide which he would resent most.

Finally a very young priest came for Farrari and led him back to the lower floor. Another young priest greeted him with a smile, opened a door for him, placed folded garments in his hands, and withdrew with another smile and a half-bow.

The door closed. Farrari tossed the garments aside and hurried to the wide window slit. There were a few passersby in the square and several ranks of foot and cavalry soldiers positioned near the temple. The drop to the ground would be an easy one, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that to be seen climbing out of a window of the Life Temple must excite comment if not action—and the soldiers looked disconcertingly ready for action. He turned away reluctantly and examined the room.

It was furnished with a rough table with a bench, and a pallet on a stone slab. An empty niche in the wall probably had contained the old kru’s portrait and would contain that of the new kru when the artists caught up with the demand. On the table was an oil lamp complete with floating wick. The room would be bitter cold in winter—it had an unusually large window slit and no source of heat.

Obviously it was a priest’s living quarters, and whether or not the priesthood believed in their dogma, they were not luxuriating in it. “I suppose it’s the honor of the thing,” Farrari mused.

Then he examined the garments and found to his consternation that at some point during the day’s ceremonies he’d joined the priesthood himself. The robes were different from any he’d seen, but they contained the black borders that appeared on every priest’s costume.

He dropped them onto the pallet and returned to the window slit, and a short time later he had the good fortune to see, from an unfavorable angle, the exit of the kru and the nobility. He also noted that the soldiers accompanied the kru, which interested him much more.

The day waned, dusk came, and finally darkness. Farrari waited tensely, alert for the sound of his door opening, and the moment it seemed dark enough he went out of the window. He moved quickly to the side of the square and then edged along the square’s high stone wall to the exit; but the exit was not guarded. The buildings were already shuttered, and the streets were deserted. He forced himself to walk with measured pace, retracing their route of the morning, and he did not feel secure until he had made his way down the encircling road from the hilltop. He approached the bakery from the rear, opened the door, and entered.

All of them were there: Borgley and his wife, Gayne and his wife, the apprentices, two men Farrari had not met. They were working furiously. Farrari looked at the baskets already filled and realized with a twitch of conscience that they’d started early so they could have the night to do something about rescuing him.

All of them stared, except Borgley. He glanced at Farrari, turned to an apprentice, and snapped, “Get a cloak for him. Take him to the rendezvous point. Fast.”

The apprentice darted away. Borgley said to Farrari, “How’d you get away?”

“Through a window,” Farrari said.

“You weren’t guarded?”

Farrari shook his head.

“Why’d they grab you?”

“Because of the cake. It’s a long story and I don’t understand it myself, but—”

“All right. Tell it at headquarters. The important thing right now is to get you away from Scary.”

The apprentice returned with two cloaks, draped one about Farrari, and donned the other himself. Borgley said, “Get going. I’ll have a platform sent if one is available. Otherwise I’ll send Haral after you with grilz, and you’ll have to take him to the mill.”

They walked a short distance along the crumbling road, struck off across a sandy waste, and abruptly skidded down the side of a shallow depression. After what seemed an interminable wait a plat form settled beside them with Jorrul himself at the controls. Farrari clambered aboard, whispered his thanks to the apprentice’, and they took off. Jorrul said nothing at all until they reached the underground room at the mill. Coordinator Paul was there, and several of the base specialists, but Jorrul gave Farrari no time for amenities.

“Tell us what happened,” he said. “Everything.”

They listened, they questioned him, they sent off urgent messages to base and to various agents, and through it all Peter Jorrul sat silently, a deepening anger twisting his face.

Finally he thumped the table and said bitterly, “A once-in-a-millennium opportunity. Wasted—like that.” He thumped the table again.

Coordinator Paul remarked mildly, “I’d say, rather, that Farrari came through a sticky situation in very good shape. He was lucky, but he helped himself considerably. Many of our own trainees would have been scared witless. Farrari—do CS trainees by chance study dramatics?”

Farrari grinned. “Not by chance. By deliberate, malicious intent! The only way to understand the art of the drama is by acting, or seeing it acted. I took part in at least one performance a week for four years.”

“That must be the explanation; 178—that’s our krolc who got into the temple for the ceremonies—says your performance was magnificent, and he hadn’t the slightest notion you were IPR until the flap about your disappearance shook the Life Temple to its ample foundations. In retrospect he thinks you were a little too good. A bungling baker’s apprentice should have been nervous.”

“I was nervous!” Farrari protested.

“It didn’t show. No one thought about it at the time, including 178, but every priest in Scory is thinking about it now. That, and the fact that you never spoke to anyone.”

“I didn’t dare try,” Farrari said. “Anyway, I didn’t have to. They repeated everything they said to me, and eventually I could make out a word or two and guess the rest. But I still don’t understand that silly ceremony with the cake and why they suddenly decided to make a priest of me.”

“The kru’s priest,” Jorrul said, his bitterness still intense. “Think of the potentialities! And it had to happen to Farrari. Any other agent—”

“No.” The coordinator shook his head firmly. “It wouldn’t have happened to any other agent, and it shouldn’t have happened to him.” He turned to Farrari. “Even in such a marvelously efficient organization as IPR there are occasional goofs. Or had you noticed?” Farrari thought it best not to answer. “Borgley took you to Scorv,” the coordinator went on, “and about the time you arrived there Borgley was called back. He told his assistant to look after you, but, in his rush to put things in order so he could leave, he neglected to tell him why you needed looking after. All Gayne Prolynn knew about you was that you were some kind of super expert on Scorvif: you knew the kru was dead before anyone else did, you knew the relief had been removed from the Life Temple, and when you asked to speak with the coordinator everyone jumped. He naturally assumed that you could handle a simple role like that of the baker’s apprentice with a little coaching, and by taking you with him he was able to leave an experienced person at the bakery. He hadn’t an inkling that you’d had no IPR training and weren’t even fluent in Rasczian.”