Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

In fact, the only thing really unusual about any of the three men’s behavior this night was that they generally were inseparable after work, the best of buddies. Now, suddenly, each of them sat with his own group (or, in Krag’s case, off by himself) and gave little attention to the other two. It wasn’t much to go on, but Eve in particular felt that it was enough to say that they were certainly up to something.

I just wish we knew how many others here are their kind, and how many more of them will be at the lecture , she thought to herself. In several weeks of living among these people, not a single one had cracked or leaked any information that couldn’t be clearly observed.

And now it was dark, save for the torches in the village and the bright light of the Olivet on the horizon. None of the three seemed in any hurry, but, finally, Gregnar finished his last ale and seemed to give a knowing glance to the other two—or was it just the watchers’ imaginations? He banged down the heavy wooden mug and then got up and started to walk out of the village, towards the distant shining lights. Eve followed, trying to be as nonchalant as she could and also look like she was just going in the same direction. John watched her with a wry smile on his face, noting to himself that she wouldn’t fool anybody. It didn’t matter; these guys certainly knew that they were being shadowed if indeed they were grounded raiders from that crashed ship.

Heck, it might even deter them from action, and, Security felt certain, if they didn’t act tonight it was unlikely that they would be able to act tomorrow. That was as good as prevention or active intervention.

Alon moved off next, never once glancing at John or any other robed people in the area, confident and secure. He walked into the darkness, and, after a few minutes, John followed, looking as relaxed as his mark. He wasn’t that worried about losing his man in the darkness; like the other two, and most of the other Arm members down there, he was wearing tiny computer-controlled infrared contact lenses that allowed him pretty good night vision when he needed it.

He wasn’t on the road ten minutes when Alon proved that he was more than a hick farmer and much the pro. The native suddenly darted off into tall grain almost like he was sneaking back to the cache, and John, losing sight of him for a moment, wandered over in that direction, thereby revealing himself.

Robey no sooner got into the tall wheat, though, when he suddenly felt something dark and wet. “Hey!” he yelled out, startled.

“Oops! Sorry! Didn’t think anybody was lurking in here,” Alon responded in an obviously pleased, almost smug tone.

The big man had sent a message to his shadow, and in the most primitive and smelly of ways.

Pulling his pants back up, Alon marched quickly out of the grain and rejoined the crowd heading towards the service.

Doctor Woodward at times could be as much the virtuoso of cussing as he could be the voice of the living God, but Robey mentally was trying to outdo the old boy, although much of it was self-directed. Don’t underestimate these bastards , he warned himself.

He began even more to wish that he knew just what sort of weapons they’d removed from that underground arsenal.

“Umph! I’m about halfway to the ship and people keep bumping into me and stepping on me,” Seldon reported through the intercom. Since the system was actually implanted, it was nearly impervious to interruption; even people standing right next to you could hear nothing. To the Arms, though, it was as clear as day.

Still, it wasn’t telepathy. You had to speak, at least softly. “You’re lucky,” John whispered back. “I just got peed on and that s.o.b. has the bladder of ten men!”

“I’m getting kind of roughed up and pushed around here, too,” Eve reported. “And they don’t seem to be running into each other.”

Soon other Arms randomly distributed through the three hundred and sixty degrees that could be used to approach Olivet started reporting their own jostling and shoving, and several were tripped up.

Eve saw a bunch of young women talking and giggling among themselves as they approached her, then essentially engulfed her. She was pushed, shoved, and started to say something when she felt a slight tingling and an enormous numbing rush inside her body. Then things went very dark.

One by one, Arms stationed outside of the main lighting area throughout the meeting seemed to meet the same fate. It was so fast, and so innocuous when it happened, that there wasn’t a word on the intercom that anything untoward was happening.

Martin Luther Grady, the Guardian Angel up in the security seat on Sinai in stationary orbit above them was not quick to sense anything untoward, but he did begin to note a lessening of traffic. Not the sounds of the crowds and the excitement of the occasion, but the agent traffic. There were also a couple of times when somebody seemed about to say something and then got cut off.

“Rose, get me biotelemetry on a random sampling of Arm personnel below,” he ordered, frowning. There was just something…

“Nobody missing,” Rose reported, “but— huh! Now that’s weird! A whole bunch of them have virtually the same ritual breathing and relaxed state, almost like they were asleep! ”

“Or unconscious!” Grady opened the full channel. “They are making their move! A number of our people are down in the darkness! Repeat, they are knocking you out, probably by injection!” He turned back to Rose. “How many so far?”

“Twenty… No, twenty-two. Oops! There goes another one!”

“Break out of the crowd, drop surveillance!” Grady ordered. Lord! How many have we got down there? Sweet Jesus! A hundred and four! “ How many now?”

“Thirty-seven!” Rose reported.

“They’re in among the crowds!” Seldon reported. “We’re up to our armpits in people going to the teaching! There’s no way we can— what? Ouch! Watch— ”

“Thirty-eight,” Rose said needlessly.

“Head for the lights! Fast as you can! Nobody illuminated is being taken!” Grady told them. “ Run! They’re pushing you, push them!”

“Fifty-three,” Rose reported.

Grady sighed. “Get me Doctor Woodward on the secure line,” he told her. “And give me a full infrared screen of the area. I want tracings of anybody, awake or asleep, that’s going anywhere but towards the teaching. Understand? I want the location of every single sleeper!” He turned and flipped a switch. “Tactical, assemble full military SWAT now. They have taken massive hostages!”

“I can’t believe the whole population’s in on it,” Woodward told his staff over the intercom when apprised of what had been happening. “We have a full house plus tonight, and even in some of the remote villages where they’re set up to watch on screen we’ve got people sitting there waiting for me to start even when it’s clear that somebody’s nabbed most of our people there.”

“True, but that’s the one advantage they have over us,” Grady responded. “We don’t know who they are in the crowds so long as they look like and act like everybody else.”

“What about the infrared taps?”

“No good. Well, we’ve got some, but they don’t last long. That area must be honeycombed with disguised cave openings. No real problem, I don’t think. We’re trying to trace them through the intercom links, which, of course, stay open, but like the arsenal caves the inside’s heavy with magnetite and similar minerals that really scramble direct transmissions. We have a SWAT team ready to go down in. Once they’re down there, they should be able to pick up the comm links fairly easily. What are your instructions?”