Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

Woodward was also convinced that the Great Silence was at the heart of current day religion; that in fact humanity was in the “post Apocalypse period” on Earth and that was why they’d been cut off. Not being on Earth, not being there for the Second Coming, they had denied themselves a part in it. Now the rest of humanity was in a desperate war between those evil forces not involved in the matters of Earth and those other celestial civilizations who were waiting for them.

Robey had been born and raised to believe that, as had the other young people of The Mountain and its mission. Now, though, he was beginning to wonder if maybe Woodward wasn’t as divinely inspired as he seemed. It was very easy to believe within the ship’s society and within a traditional missionary frame. It was getting a lot harder, with real evil beneath them and around them holding real guns.

Now, out in the sun once more, facing his former partner under the control of that evil, he felt no sense of holy mission, none of God’s presence, only a kind of hollow and hopeless sense of inevitable doom. Even his one instruction from Cromwell, his one job, as it were, in whatever they were plotting, was conditional and not exactly something that he thought would do any good.

“Well, what do you think?” Captain Sapenza asked them. “What do your people tell you?”

“Your engines are shot. Your bubble’s cracked clean through,” Cromwell told him. “There’s no repair for that kind of thing. You have to replace the entire aft engine system, and there’s little chance of finding one of those in good shape that would fit your system these days. The only thing salvageable is your freighter module, but that was never intended to land intact like that. There’s no way to get it back up. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“We— suspected it, but without the kind of diagnostic equipment and experts you had, and the scanners, we didn’t know for sure. Well, that leaves us with Plan B.”

“Which is?” Woodward prompted.

“You’ll have to take us all with you.”

Woodward laughed. “Oh, really? And why should we do that? We’ve already established that you do not have sufficient hostage incentive for that.”

“I will kill them, or worse,” Sapenza warned him.

“I’m sure you will. People have been doing that to Christians for a very long time, and, unfortunately, in an abominable twisting of belief on its head, so-called Christians have been doing it to others. Still, we have a word for it—‘martyr.’ Those who break and voluntarily go with you lose their souls. Good riddance. Those who don’t and die for it will find themselves welcomed at the new temple in Jerusalem and become written as saints in our newest testament. Or, to put it another way, you blew it, Captain Sapenza. You have nothing to offer. Rot in Hell.”

Sapenza surprised him by responding, “Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it. If you’re right, and Earth’s Last Trump already blew, then both of us missed it, Doctor. Not just me, but you, too. Look around, Doctor. This dirt ball is the kind of place you get when you think you got the One True Faith and you follow that one with the real truth blindly down any road and right into the sun to be consumed! That is your history, too. You don’t think old Mother Tymm didn’t believe it just as much as you believe your position? From my perspective, the only difference between you and your followers and she and her followers is that yours haven’t yet been led into their own circle of Hell yet. But when you do, when you do, then don’t take me along with you. If you’re going to Hell anyway, Doctor, you should have a really good time before you get there.”

The Captain’s words seemed to be having a serious effect on Woodward, who stood there, grim-faced, for the first time looking very old and not as cocksure of himself and all his views. For Robey it was even more devastating, putting into words what had been gnawing at his soul since the hostages had been taken.

“What exactly are you proposing, Sapenza?” Woodward asked in a hollow tone.

“Mutual mistrust and cooperation on that basis. I have a hundred and sixteen people here, plus your eighty-seven. We wire ourselves and those hostages together and we come aboard your ship over there as a group. Put us in one of the big rooms you have there—the thing’s designed as a traveling cathedral, after all. You seal us in there. We’ll have a floating dead man switch between us. Anything like a gas or energy attack, anything sudden, we all blow up. Or, we come aboard, and you feed us and take us out of here.”

“To where, exactly, do we take you?”

“It’s been a long time. I don’t know what’s still going where. If we can get to a place where we can get a replacement ship, fine. That’s good enough. At least some kind of civilization where I can bargain what I have.”

“And what do you think you can bargain for the likes of a ship? Even if we took you in this fashion and there was no double cross, we can’t take your cargo, your booty, whatever.”

“Don’t be stupid, Woodward. You were supposed to be a bright guy. With a diminishing supply of ships and repairs there’s little material that can be traded for anything big these days, although we’ll try and deal the salvage on my poor ship there. But I wasn’t kidding about having something of incalculable value. Knowledge that is worth more than anybody can pay for it.”

“You’re not going to come up with that Three Kings nonsense again,” Cromwell put in.

“Oh, but that’s exactly what I’ve got, sir. I’ve got the Three Kings. I’ve got their location, their general descriptions, full navigational information, requirements to force through to them, and some sampling that indicates that they at least partially live up to their reputation. You see, we found dear, sainted Mother Tymm’s vessel. She had the information. Where she got it from, I don’t know. I don’t think she’d ever been there, but she sure knew somebody who had. The data modules were scouting reports from a Vaticanus class scout. And, there were—samples. All the stuff the old legends never gave, but otherwise totally consistent with them.”

“How do you know she didn’t just create these out of her visions?” Cromwell asked him. “If she could astronavigate, it wouldn’t be that outrageous.”

Eve reached into her robe pocket and pulled out an egg-shaped object about the size of a child’s fist. She stretched out an arm straight in front of her, offering it to them. When neither of the older men moved, Robey stepped forward and took it from her, then stepped back.

It was smooth, smoother than glass, smoother than just about anything he could remember. It was also slightly warm; not hot, but certainly above body temperature, and it didn’t seem to be warm because it was next to anything. The colors of the thing were spectacular, a kind of crimson wash against a pale yellow; but although he could not catch it doing anything, the mixture seemed to move, so that you couldn’t quite find the same pattern or design if you looked away and then looked back at it.

John Robey stared hard into the egg-shaped thing and, somehow, half inside the thing, half inside his head, a shape, a picture of some sort, seemed to form and then sharpen into realistic three-dimensional clarity. He saw it, cried out, and almost dropped the thing. Cromwell moved quickly and caught it, then looked at it quizzically.

“What was it, son? What did you see?” the security man asked him.

“I—I saw her . Eve. She was—screaming. In agony. It was— horrible .”

Cromwell looked at it, turned it over in his hand, and shook his head. “Weird,” he muttered. “Doctor?”