Jack Chalker - Melchior's Fire

“Well, you’re the anthropologist,” Nagel said. “Me, I have a hard time spelling it. But if that’s the old preacher’s ship, and it’s sure looking big enough to be a whole damned cathedral, then maybe it’s Christmas or something.”

“Well, maybe they can tell us, ” An Li commented. “We’re in heavy air and going in close. Cap, can you turn the live shot on from the probe?”

“A few more seconds,” the captain responded. “Nothing to see yet. Ah! There! Well, at least they’re human and they’re not quite Adam and Eve.”

“Sure they are,” Queson breathed. “Just after the Fall.”

It was quite an assembly of bodies they saw, all weathered and darkened by exposure. There seemed to be a mixture of philosophies on how to deal with the primitive conditions as well; men and women either tended to have very long hair, the men beards as well, or they shaved their heads. There didn’t seem to be anybody obvious with a middle-ground point of view.

None of them, save the youngest children, were naked, although the women tended to be bare-breasted, with a few exceptions for some sort of halter top, and just about all had their private parts concealed at least in a basic fashion, primarily by vines worn tightly at the hips with some kind of leaves or short woven grasses draped over the front and sometimes back and held there in some way. All were barefoot.

They were roughly equally divided by sex, although there might have been a few more women than men per plot of ground, and they seemed to represent all ages. None appeared particularly chubby, but likewise none looked to be starving, either. The thin ones were naturally thin, the more full-figured types seemed to be, well, filled out a bit more, that was all.

But they did have possessions. Clearly somebody had figured out how to make cloth by hand out of a cottonlike plant, and others had found dyes, for there were blankets, even homemade tent shelters made with the blankets and gathered and trimmed sticks so the little ones, and anybody else who felt he or she needed some shelter, could get it. There were also gourds that clearly carried water or other drinks.

“I doubt if they go back long enough to have evolved to this social and technological level,” Randi commented. “From what I can see, these are people who are forced to primitivism and know it, not people who are necessarily primitives.”

“Could be,” An Li agreed. “Catch the Elders there.”

What she referred to were a number of men, perhaps a few dozen within the range of the camera, who seemed markedly different from the others. They had manes of gray or even snow-white hair, flowing beards, and carried long walking sticks, possibly staves of office. They were also the only ones who wore full-body clothing, a robe made of what seemed a lighter-grade cloth than the blanket material that hung on their bodies, with a hole cut in the center for the head and two other holes for the arms. They were all dyed a kind of pink-orange color, which made them very easy to spot in the mobs.

“Buddhist monks who fell off the wagon?” Sark asked cynically.

“The Kingdom of Prester John,” Randi Queson said, ignoring the snide jokes. “An ancient legend of a European-style kingdom far off in the Himalayan Mountains, the source of Buddhism, but yet Christians. It’s just what I’d expect a Karl Woodward to come up with.”

“We’ll take your word for it,” Lucky Cross responded dryly. In point of fact, Queson was probably the only one there who knew what the term “European” meant, let alone the details and legends, but she was right about one thing.

Karl Woodward would have known, and it was very much the sort of thing he might come up with.

“We’ve been noticed,” the captain pointed out.

The probe wasn’t very large, designed more for carrying information and perhaps a soil sample than anything else, but it was certainly larger than anything native to Balshazzar, and very, very odd looking.

The kids had seen it first, then started shouting and pointing at it, and this caused the adults and ultimately the pink-robed elders to pay attention as well.

“It’s showtime,” An Li said. “Enable probe speaker mode.”

“Enabled,” the captain reported.

An Li took a deep breath, then said, in a calm, measured tone, “Hello, people of Balshazzar. We are the exploration ship Stanley in orbit around your world. If you still have any functioning communications devices on your ship, please have someone who knows how to use them do so. We will wait. If you do not, please indicate this when I say the word ‘over’ and we will drop one to you. Over! ”

There was a hushed silence as the probe again became a receiver. Even the kids had suddenly fallen silent, and save for the cries of some of the infants there was a nearly dead silence.

“You think maybe they don’t understand us?” An Li asked.

Queson shook her head “no.” “It’s just shock. They didn’t expect this. Wait a little bit.”

Finally, one of the elders with flowing white hair and beard, looking, save for the saffron-colored robe like some Biblical patriarch, came forward and clearly meant to address them.

“We must wait for the Doctor before we can enter the Cathedral,” he said in the kind of tones you might expect from some ancient epic. “Only he may enter, then we follow.”

“Jesus! You don’t suppose old Doc Woodward’s still alive down there, do you?” Lucky Cross exclaimed. “He’d be like three hundred years old or something!”

An Li shrugged. “Enable speaker.”

“Enabled.”

“Can you tell me when your leader will be here? Are we talking days, weeks, or whenever? Over,” she asked the old man. Then, to the captain, “Receive mode.”

“… will come when the faithful have all gathered here,” the elder said, the first couple of words being cut off before the mode could be reversed. “It is his decision alone when after that to come.”

“Speaker. Sorry, sir, but we can not wait on another calendar. I realize that your people aren’t used to clocks and schedules anymore, but we are. We need information, and we will provide what we can to tend to your people’s needs, but we can not wait around indefinitely. Can’t you or someone already in the gathering speak to these issues? Over.”

“… is not a democracy but an assemblage of God under the loving but firm discipline of the teacher,” the old man came back. “It is not for us to decide what only he can decide.”

Suddenly, from within a grove a few hundred meters from the hovering probe and the old elder, came a figure much like the elders in the flowing white hair and beard—but this one was clearly different. His staff was also thicker, almost machined, and topped with some kind of design, and his robe was not saffron pink but a dirty gray. People made way for him deferentially as he approached the other, and even the elder, turning and seeing the approaching figure, bowed slightly and moved away.

“Could that be Doc Woodward?” Cross wondered.

“Somehow I don’t think so. That man doesn’t walk like a preacher, he walks like a cop or a naval officer,” An Li noted.

The figure was really imposing; the gray man radiated a power, confidence, and strength that even came through the viewing screen. This was somebody to be feared, but who said by his very posture and look that he himself feared nothing.

“I am the Chief of Security for the Congregation of the Faithful,” he said in a voice that fit the image perfectly: strong, sharp, cutting right through you. “Drop me your communicator. I can get inside, but getting that old junk up and operating would take a while after all this time.”