Гарри Гаррисон - Stainless Steel Visions

"GET MOVING!" Garth shouted, dragging the priest from the chair and hurling him toward the rear wall. Father Mark stumbled to a halt, turned back. Garth leaped for him, but it was already too late. The amphibians were small, but there were so many of them. Garth lashed out and his fist struck Itin, hurling him back into the crowd. The others came on as he fought his way toward the priest. He beat at them but it was like struggling against the waves. The furry, musky bodies washed over and engulfed him. He struggled until they tied him, and he still struggled until they beat on his head until he stopped. Then they pulled him outside, where he could only lie in the rain and curse and watch.

Of course the Weskers were marvelous craftsmen and everything had been constructed down to the last detail following the illustration in the Bible. There was, the cross, planted firmly in the top of the small hill, the gleaming metal spikes, the hammer. Father Mark had been stripped and draped in a carefully pleated loincloth. They led him out of the church, and at the sight of the cross he almost fainted. After that he held his head high and determined to die as he had lived, with faith.

Yet this was hard. It was unbearable even for Garth, who only watched. It is one thing to talk of crucifixion and look at the gently carved bodies in the dim light of prayer. It is an-other to see a man naked, ropes cutting into his skin where he hangs from a bar of wood. And to see the needle-tipped spike raised and placed against the soft flesh of his palm, to see the hammer come back with the calm deliberation of an artisan's measured stroke. Then to hear the thick sound of metal penetrating flesh.

Then to hear the screams.

Few are born to be martyrs and Father Mark was not one of them. With the first blows the blood ran from his lips where his clenched teeth met. Then his mouth was wide and his heart strained back and the awful guttural horror of his screams sliced through the susurration of the falling rain. It resounded as a silent echo from the masses of watching Weskers, for whatever emotion opened their mouths was now tearing their bodies with all its force, and row after row of gaping jaws reflected the crucified priest's agony.

Mercifully he fainted, and the last nails were driven home. Blood ran from the raw wounds, mixed with the rain to drip faintly pink from his feet as the life ran out of him. At this time, somewhere at this time, sobbing and tearing at his own bonds, numbed from the blows on the head, Garth lost consciousness.

He awoke in his own warehouse, and it was dark. Someone was cutting away the woven ropes they had bound him with. The rain still dripped and splashed outside.

"Itin, " he said. It could be no one else.

"Yes, " the alien voice whispered back. "The others are talking in the church. Lin died after you struck his head, and Inon is very sick. There are some that say you should be crucified too, and I think that is what will happen. Or perhaps killed by striking on the head. They have found in the Bible where it says… "

"I know. " With infinite weariness. "An eye for an eye. You'll find lots of things like that once you start looking. "

"You must go, you can get to your ship without anyone seeing you. There has been enough killing. " Itin as well spoke with a newfound weariness.

Garth experimented, pulling himself to his feet. He pressed his head to the rough wall until the nausea stopped.

"He's dead. " He said it as a statement, not a question.

"Yes, some time ago. Or I could not have come away to see you. "

"And buried, of course, or they wouldn't be thinking about starting on me next. "

"And buried!" There was almost a ring of emotion in the alien's voice, an echo of the dead priest's. "He is buried and he will rise on High. It is written and that is the way it will happen. Father Mark will be so happy that it has happened like this. " The voice ended in a sound like a human sob, but of course it couldn't have been that since Itin was alien, and not human at all. Garth painfully worked his way around the wall toward the door, leaning against the wall so he wouldn't fall.

"We did the right thing, didn't we?" Itin asked. There was no answer. "He will rise up, Garth, won't he rise?"

Garth was at the door and enough light came from the brightly lit church to show his torn and bloody hands clutching at the frame. Itin's face swam into sight close to his, and Garth felt the delicate, many-fingered hands with the sharp nails catch at his clothes.

"He will rise, won't he, Garth?"

"No, " Garth said, "he is going to stay buried right where you put him. Nothing is going to happen because he is dead and he is going to stay dead. "

The rain runneled through Itin's fur and his mouth was opened so wide that he seemed to be screaming into the uncaring night. Only with effort could he talk, squeezing out the alien thoughts in an alien language.

"Then we will not be saved? We will not become pure?"

"You were pure, " Garth said, in a voice somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "That's the horrible ugly dirty part of it. You were pure. Now you are… "

"Murderers, " Itin said, and the water ran down from his lowered head and streamed away into the darkness.

Because there were few adults in the crowd, and Colonel "Biff" Hawton stood over six feet tall, he could see every detail of the demonstration. The children— and most of the parents — gaped in wide-eyed wonder. Biff Hawton was too sophisticated to be awed. He stayed on because he wanted to find out what the trick was that made the gadget work.

"It's all explained right here in your instruction book, " the demonstrator said, holding up a garishly printed booklet opened to a four-color diagram. "You all know how magnets pick up things and I bet you even know that the Earth itself is one great big magnet — that's why compasses always point north. Well… the Atomic Wonder Space Wave Tapper hangs on to those space waves. Invisibly all about us, and even going right through us, are the magnetic waves of the Earth. The Atomic Wonder rides these waves just the way a ship rides the waves in the ocean. Now watch…. "

Every eye was on him as he put the gaudy model rocket ship on top of the table and stepped back. It was made of stamped metal and seemed as incapable of flying as a can of ham— which it very much resembled. Neither wings, propellers, nor jets broke through the painted surface. It rested on three rubber wheels. Emerging out through the bottom was a double strand of thin insulated wire. This white wire ran across the top of the black table and terminated in a control box in the demonstrator's hand. An indicator light, a switch, and a knob appeared to be the only controls.

"I turn on the power switch, sending a surge of current to the wave receptors, " he said. The switch clicked and the light blinked on and off with a steady pulse. Then the man began slowly to turn the knob. "A careful touch on the wave generator is necessary as we are dealing with the powers of the whole world here…. "

A concerted ahhh swept through the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper shivered a bit, then rose slowly into the air. The demonstrator stepped back and the toy rose higher and higher, bobbing gently on the invisible waves of magnetic force that supported it. Ever so slowly the power was reduced and it settled back to the table.

"Only seventeen dollars and ninety-five cents, " the young man said, putting a large price sign on the table. "For the complete set of the Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper control box, battery, and instruction book…. "

At the appearance of the price card the crowd broke up noisily and the children rushed away toward the operating model trains. The demonstrator's words were lost in their noisy passage, and after a moment he sank into a gloomy silence. He put the control box down, yawned, and sat on the edge of the table. Colonel Hawton was the only one left after the crowd had moved on.