Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

“But what makes you certain that they really know where the Three Kings are any more than we do?” Woodward pressed. “These people are in the grips of the Father of Lies.”

“We know, but Mother Tymm did not lie, and her prophecies came true. Something these people had, something real and physical, convinced those who made the bargain that this knowledge was there, and after that, since it was impractical to show it to everyone, there was and is a measure of faith involved. You spoke on just such a topic.”

“Physical proof? You’ve not seen this proof, though, or know what it might be if it really exists?”

“No, but we have Mother’s prophecies, in her own hand. We believe in them. They have always been the true guide.”

This was a rough one. Christians certainly weren’t the only members of a belief system that acted in faith, and the old Biblical axiom was that the test of a prophet was that his—or her—prophecies came true.

“I’d like to see and read the writings of this Mother Tymm,” he told them. “But, for now, I have a more immediate problem. Where are my people being held?”

“Honestly, sir, we don’t know,” the chief spokeswoman assured him. “We are not allowed in most of the cave complex, save the parts that are part of their bargain with us. The caves run forever, almost. Hundreds and hundreds of kilometers. And they have some slow but steady transport down there that can carry loads. Now and then they treat us to tropical fruits of a kind that we know some of the farthest villages can grow but which no one here has ever seen because they spoil long before they can get here by crindin wagons. They do not grow them below, so they must get them from those same villages, yet they are always just ripe. If they can cover that distance, and underground, in that short a time, then your people can be anywhere at all.”

Woodward sat back and sighed. Much of the history and background was now out in the open, but nothing else had changed. One shoe was on the pirates’ foot, the other was waiting for the scoundrels’ to drop. If they went into the caves in full combat armor following the ferrets then people would die, some of the combat gear might even be lost due to clashes with who knew what sort of weapons, and, in the end, you could only find hostages dead using the brute force method.

They still had to continue to drill holes in likely areas and send the ferrets in and hope they got lucky. Until then, they would have to wait for the bastards on the other side to make a move.

“Sir?” the chief spokeswoman for the group called out.

“Yes?”

“Our children—what about the children?”

“Nothing has changed, at least not yet,” he reminded them. “What happens to the children depends entirely on what this spawn of Hell hiding appropriately below decides to do next.”

He suspected that they wouldn’t have long to wait, and he was right.

The note was in a scraggly hand, clearly the work of someone who wrote down very few things and those mostly for his own use.

“Dear Doctor Woodward,” it began, misspelling his name and getting him irritated right from the start by so doing. “I am Captain Morgudan Sapenza, once of the proud ship Amandal , now, as you know, half sunk in the great lake, but still master of her crew and systems. I am sorry to have had to do this, but after all this time we have become desperate and feel we have nothing to lose. This is a backward planet, but we have some comforts of civilization below and we have many modern tools of our trade. We must talk, but your own ships and company can easily do me great harm and then where am I? So, you will have to come to where the messenger here will lead you. It is not far and you have my word that no harm will come to you nor will you be touched. You may bring a fully armed bodyguard to insure this. I will wait for you with a way for us to speak. If you do not come, I will leave at least one of our guests from your company there by two hours before sundown today, or rather I will leave the body and you shall see how this person died. The next time it will be two. Then four an hour after that. And so on. I am sorry, but it is the only way I know of to insist that you come. Until then, I remain, very sincerely, Captain Morgudan Sapenza.

“P.S. Nice move, but I have no kids.”

Woodward shook with rage, and he looked ready to kill the small villager who’d brought the note. Cromwell carefully retrieved the message and handed it to a technician. “Any clues and analysis, Sister—and move on it!”

The aide took the sheet with gloved hand and dashed off to the lab.

“And where are we supposed to meet this—this creature? ” Karl Woodward thundered at the messenger.

“Please, sir! I’m just a villager. Not one of them! I even dunno what the thing says. I never learned to read, which is why he took me, I guess. If we don’t do what they tell us, our families—gone! You got to understand!”

Woodward seemed to soften for a second, but only for that brief flash. He had only the word of this little man that the messenger wasn’t really a certain captain himself, or the chief torturer. The Father of Lies was the greatest actor in all creation.

“I didn’t ask you to throw yourself on your knife,” the Doctor reminded him. “I asked where this meeting was to be held.”

“Just over that knob, in the crindin pasture,” the little man told him. “The exact spot I’d have to show you.”

“Near one of their tunnel entrances, I assume?”

“Oh, yes, sir. There’s about a dozen around here, and one inside the village barn. They don’t use this one much, though.”

“What is your name?” Woodward asked the little man.

“They call me Ziggee, sir,” he replied. “Kind of a play on a silly name.”

“All right, Ziggee, you can show us your neutrality by going over to Brother Cromwell there and, on the map he has of this area, drawing or pointing to just where all these entrances are. And if we ever find out that you left out just one , then you will be treated as an accomplice and dealt with. Understand?”

The little man nodded nervously. “Y-yes, sir.”

The Archangel up above studied a close-up of the area and reported, just to the Doctor, “Looks fairly flat, some dirt mounds and, sir, a lot of, well, crindin fertilizer if you know what I mean. No energy scan, but we’ll nail it the moment it opens. Depending on where he stops, call it twenty or thirty meters of fairly flat field.”

“Can you cover it all?”

“Yes, sir! We could shoot gnats from this altitude at an area that clear and defined!”

“Well, I don’t want you to shoot gnats, but you might be called on to shoot everybody who’s not us. Full stun from above at the first sign of problems. If you have to, shoot us, too. We’ll wake up. Just make sure nobody else can wake up sooner. Brother Cromwell will be with me as bodyguard, and in full armor. I assume we can leave him standing.”

“Sir, in that armor, he can take a heavy shot from us.”

“Oh—and one more thing,” Woodward added, as loud as he could.

“Sir?”

“If our native guide pulls anything at all, even tries to run or hide, smite him, level one, no permission required. You got that?”

The little man looked up from the map. “Hey! Wait a minute, Doc! What’s this smitin’ stuff?”

Cromwell towered over him and grinned. “Basically, my son, you will either share our fate or they will burn you to a crisp if I don’t do it first. Got that?”

“Y-yes, sir,” Ziggee responded miserably.

It took them less than an hour to prepare. Cromwell had his recharged suit ready for him, its crosses blazoned, and Woodward, while looking normal, used his large bulk to disguise some lightweight sophisticated body armor. It wouldn’t really handle a head shot, but it had come in handy elsewhere before. He also put on his black frock “preacher’s coat,” which had loose sleeves fitted with smart laser pistols. Once on, all he needed to do was mentally command them to deploy and he would be shooting with both hands.