The Earth Gods Are Coming (7 page)

He looked up, knowing the dance portended world-shaking events, momentarily expecting to see a long dark shape materialize from nowhere.

The Terrans, although not dancing, were joining in the chanting, as they might join in responses. Inglis was calling on the visitants to return, to lead all the faithful below to the promised wonders and delights of the Four Caves.

The dancing frenzy of the Pogosan lacked the stunning impact it had possessed before, but that was natural and to be expected.
They
were not here, in person, to lead the revels.

But they would come.

Shouting with the rest, quite conscious of what he was doing, Inglis gave vent to his inmost feelings.

"Come again," they were chanting. "Come again, oh Evil Ones, to thy faithful flock beneath."

-

"The Evil Ones!" Admiral Gus Rattigan said. "That's a foolish name for them, if you like!"

Dick Myrtle looked across the long room at his chief. "Why so, Gus?"

"Gives them too much power. It's a bogey name, means far more than it says. They are aliens, coming from some godforsaken planetary system somewhere out in the Galaxy, shooting up our ships and generally creating mayhem. There's nothing we can't handle in that situation, pressed though we are." He put a hand to the jewel in his ear. "We ought to have heard from Baylis by now," he said fretfully.

"Perhaps Admiral Baylis' task force hasn't found that latest contact," Myrtle said smoothly.

"Well, he ought to have done. We've lost twenty peaceful traders out there in a month. Something's doing it. It can't all be mice."

A little silence ensued in this wide, workmanlike room in the heart of the CDB building. Since the aliens had begun their open attacks upon Solarian shipping in the starlanes, the space navy had been stretched beyond its capacity. The CDB as a separate service had placed all its available ships at the navy's disposal. Men were racing out into the great deeps, ready to fight to protect their Solar Commonwealth of Suns. The struggle was likely to be prolonged.

One small planet like Earth, even with the addition of her friends out in that small segment of the Galaxy so far opened up to terrestrial occupation, was far too small, far too weak, to explore, chart, even to think of colonizing every planet there was or might be.

So many millions of stars and so many millions of planets. No single small planet could hope to cope with astronomical numbers like that. So the Dissemination Project had been thought up. And now the very danger against which it had been devised was here and now, compelling, urgent, deadly.

Both Rattigan and Myrtle knew that their son's sons would not see the end of it.

It was a depressing prospect.

One answer—the only long-term effective answer—had been to step up the CDB Dissemination Project, and many more thousands of Prophets were on their way to as yet undiscovered planets.

Rattigan raised his head from his work again. "If only Baylis would report it!" He stood up and began to pace.

Myrtle looked at him with sympathy and remained silent.

"Finding their home planet is vital. All the contacts with ships that have been reported must give us a lead. Baylis must find them! It's not like it was when we sent your pal Roy Inglis out. Then it was a pretty forlorn gesture. Now we have the chances and we have the ships there. We
must
find them!"

"Yes," Myrtle agreed. "Times have changed since Roy went out." He shook his head. "That was a ... a pity."

Rattigan grunted something. Then he said, "Yes, a great pity and a great waste. Roy was a fine man. A fine career there gone phut." He knuckled his back. "Except that that wife of his had him hog-tied. She was no real daughter of old Jack CWB. No, sir!"

"I hear the divorce went through."

"If Roy ever got to hear of it, after the first shock, he'd be delighted. That I'd be willing to bet on. He was never cut out for a desk job, at least, not yet." He paced energetically for a few moments. "Nor am I, confound it!"

"Production of Prophet capsules is running low ..." Myrtle began tactfully.

But Rattigan's mind ran on the same groove. "And," he was saying practically, "we could do with
Swallow
now."

The intercom took their attention, and the rating said, "Cyrus Fodor on the screen for you, sir."

Rattigan said, "What does he want now?" Then, recovering himself, he told the rating to put the Minister for Defense on the screen. Rattigan was not savoring the coming conversation at all.

Cyrus came straight to the point. "Hullo, Gus," he said. His stern, deep-set eyes and photogenic features made no impression on Rattigan. He knew that this man was clever, ruthless and a go-getter. Cyrus went on, "I wanted to discuss with you the present affairs and state of CDB-"

"Certainly, Cyrus. What, in particular had you in mind?"

"The upward trend of your recruiting figures, your shipping, your supply requisitions and the state of the navy."

Rattigan had it spotted now. He said, "The Navy Secretary has agreed the division of appropriations, Cyrus—"

"It's not just a question of appropriation figures anymore, Gus. It's a question of what the Commonwealth can stand.

We need every man and every ship to stem this invasion of our part of the Galaxy. No one likes or wants war. We haven't had a war for a long time. But now it's here we will do as our ancestors did; buckle down to it and win."

"Agreed. And the CDB is contributing a large measure—"

"I don't think so, Gus."

Rattigan held himself in check. He said, "If you could explain your point of view, Cyrus, I might be able to understand what you're talking about."

"It's simple. We cannot both increase the scope of the CDB and at the same time increase the navy and marines. One or the other has to go."

Off screen Dick Myrtle was looking at Cyrus with open-mouthed disbelief.

Rattigan said reasonably, "The CDB has been engaged on the work of Dissemination for a long time now, Cyrus. We've been covering all the solar systems in a scheduled pattern outwards from the Sun. A very great deal of money, material and effort has gone into the program, which was thought of and initiated by men who knew what they were talking about. The plan has been approved by every Solarian government since. I see no reason to suppose that the validity of that thinking is nullified now."

"The situation has changed."

"Of course it's changed! The situation we now have is more or less the situation we thought might obtain a thousand or more years in the future. But the crisis is on us now!"

"And because of that we must adapt our thinking."

"You are suggesting, I suppose," Rattigan said heavily, "that because there was an initial flaw in the thinking, and that the crisis, instead of being comfortably in the future as was predicted, is with us today, that the whole train of logic was incorrect? That one miscalculation condemns the whole?"

Cyrus Fodor said simply, "Yes, Gus. Those are my thoughts."

"Well, I tell you that you are wrong. The CDB is the greatest weapon we of Earth have against the alien enemies at our throats. We can hold their attacks off with the navy we have. When we find their home system, we can go over to the attack—"

"But not with the navy we now have, Gus. We need the men and ships and supplies you are taking for the CDB."

"But that is the short sighted policy. There are bound to be other aliens behind these attacking us. What happens when they start interfering with us?"

"We must fight the Evil Ones with all we have now."

"But the CDB—"

"The CDB," said the Minister of Defense, "remains for me an unconvincing weapon. For a start you have no proof that it is even doing the job for which it was created."

Rattigan could not but admit that truth.

"But there can be proof—"

"Until you present me with unanswerable facts that prove that the CDB and the Prophet dropping will pay the dividends you claim, I remain unconvinced."

"Very well," Rattigan said. "We'll send a ship to a planet and find out."

"But that would ruin—" Myrtle butted in, aghast.

"What is one planet among so many," Cyrus said. He was tired and irritable. "We need allies now, not at some remote time in the future."

"I'm not convinced on that one," Rattigan said. "I still think the Commonwealth can handle these aliens now. Then, when the greater danger arises in the future, as it will, we shall be ready and prepared."

"You give me your proof, Gus, and I'll go along with you.

As it is, I am recommending the government that we cut down drastically on CDB appropriations." The screen went dead.

"The narrowminded bellwhether!" exploded Rattigan. "Of all the dimwitted, muddleheaded, obtuse politicians—"

"We have to find that proof, Gus," Myrtle said soberly. "If we don't, the project will stop. There will be no more Prophets dropped on new planets. None at all."

-

That first meeting with another Pogosan city was repeated three times in the ensuing weeks. The floating city on which Inglis and his crew were living happily and with high expectations of spreading the Word on this world made steady progress towards the east. Each fresh city saw a delightful repetition of the events that had occurred on the first meeting. The word of the Four Caves and of the longed for return of the Evil Ones gradually making its way around this planet. Soon, Inglis hoped, news of the Evil Ones would be spread over all the surface so that all the Pogosan might joy in the revelations and join in the ritual dances.

After that, he brooded, eyeing the piled radio parts, after that, they would have to see about spreading the Word to other planets. After all, the glorious news of the coming of the Evil Ones could not be confined to one small planet when there were so many in the Galaxy in need of the Word.

The Pogosan were not a warlike race. They caught fish for food; but there was always a reluctance in the way they killed their catch that told volumes of their mental processes. They had no weapons designed for fighting one with another. Quarrels broke out on the floating city as was to be expected; but mostly these were settled by much argument and tail gesticulation. When, if everything else failed, and the disputants came to blows, they used their heavy tails to belabour one another until the weaker at last succumbed and gave in.

Allied with this, in the Terrans' viewpoint, was the significant absence of painted eyes on the bows of the nimble sailing ships. There was a great deal of rich and decorative ornament, brilliant colors, intricate carving and many gaudy lanterns. But there were no eyes on the bows to let the ships see their way through the dangers of the deep and the spirits of the waters. There had always been eyes on Terran ships, Inglis remembered, no matter what the culture, from the Greek triremes to the Chinese junks.

The Pogosan were a materialistic people. With all the frenzied acceptance and enjoyment of the great news brought by the Evil Ones consuming them, it had been natural for the Terrans to overlook this simple facet of Pogosan existence. But it did mean that the Pogosan, when at last they realized that there were forces and spirits outside their own bodies and understanding, accepted the news with fervor. They hourly expected the return of the visitants with more news of the Four Caves and the long-awaited and eagerly expected invitations to join the Evil Ones with their misty-eyed ancients on the great journey to the Four Caves.

Just what the return and the journey might be, Inglis did not know, and he and M'Banga and Gerda spent long hours wrangling amicably. Ranee joined their company, and, surprisingly, Hannah, too, entered the conversation and brought her own practical wisdom and matter-of-fact outlook to bear. She claimed that all the Evil Ones meant was that they would return in their spaceship at some time in the future and bring the blessings of a scientific and technical society to these happy-go-lucky primitive people, sailing their floating cities forever around the seas and lakes of their world.

M'Banga wasn't so sure. He felt that there was more to it than that. He had, he said, experienced a positive aura of a promise of the Four Caves in return for work. When Gerda rallied him, enquiring with her deceptive politeness, what work he thought the Pogosan could perform for a great stellar empire, M'Banga could bring nothing in evidence. But he stuck to his viewpoint.

Sammy and Linda were seldom seen outside the official times prescribed for meals, shipwork and household duties. Toni was seldom seen outside the water. She was a lithe golden sprite, sporting every spare moment from the vast platform of timber floating at the stern of the city, a quick laughing sliver of potential dynamite.

The thing they all shared in common was the passionate desire to spread word of the Evil Ones, to girdle this planet with vast armadas of sailing cities all bearing the great news, and then to patch up the subetheric radio and call in help to go on spreading the Word.

"According to my calculations," Inglis told Gerda one morning of silver light and salt breeze that slatted canvas and tumbled the component parts of the city in a glittering array, "we ought to fetch up against the area we photographed. As to Commander Varese—"

"I hope he's safe," Gerda said with feeling. She still drew her green head covering across her hair, but the rest of her green rank patches and scraps of clothing revealed more of her than they hid. "And that man who caused it all, Abdul something, I wonder if he's safe, too."

"I fail to understand what he wanted to come down here at all for," Inglis said, staring out across the forest of masts and yards and sails. "He could have done more work by using his brains where he was."

Gerda said forcefully, "He could have helped by staying on whatever spaceship it was he descended from."

"That's true." Inglis began to feel indignant. "What did he want to land at all for, anyway? Think of the chances he had, out there on a spaceship, of going from planet to planet, spreading the Word, as we are trying to do down here from city to city."

"Yes," Gerda said, wrinkling her nose. "Although ... although I've an odd memory that he didn't land voluntarily, as we did. Wasn't there some accident or other?"

"Accident?" Inglis paused to think. "I can't quite recall all the details," he said at last, brusquely. "But they're not important."

Gerda nodded, laughing. "Well, that's so anyway!"

The lookouts hailed, high and excitedly. The news spread. Another city had been sighted. A city that was bearing up towards them, tacking against the wind. That meant, Inglis knew, that something of great importance had happened aboard the approaching city. An unwieldy mass like the floating cities sailed before the wind unless absolutely compelled to do otherwise. He began to feel some of that excitement in him. Perhaps .Commander Varese had brought his ship down to the very city now approaching?

The Terrans moved across the connecting gangways, swaying up and down in the rolling surge of the sea, headed out to the outermost line of ships and houseboats. Here the bulwarks were covered by the craning backs of Pogosan and the Terrans had need of their height to be able to look across the silky heads, out over the sparkling sea, to the other city covering the horizon.

"Big," Gerda said, pulling her head scarf against the wind. "Bigger than our city."

"A great new city for conversion," M'Banga said with immense satisfaction.

The city approaching had trimmed sails, their white and colored material fluting upwards and down again like the magical shift of a great flock of birds, motivated by that mysterious force that can turn every bird as one. The bellowing conch shell trumpets boomed. Pogosan called. The cities approached, the strip of bright water narrowing between them. The day was clear limpid transparency, and the light splintered from wave tops and every scrap of metal, showing it up, denoting the very real reliance of the Pogosan upon wood for their building.

Fenders scraped, touched, rebounded and then came together again to cling. Ropes flung across smacked down on scrubbed decks. Pogosan tailed onto the ropes, drawing the cities together. Everyone yielded a little as the gentle shock of collision rippled through the floating units of the cities.

Inglis stared hard at the stranger city. Each time this had happened before on the wide seas he had not worried over Varese; but now. there was a strong chance that the Commander had made planetfall on this city, and would be there now, waiting for the rest of his crew; unknowingly, worrying over what had happened to them, thinking himself marooned for ever on this planet, unaware that they were bringing the radio parts that in conjunction with his own radio would build to make the set that would call rescue.

"What a shock Varese will get when he sees us!" he said.

"If he's in that city, Roy. You sound very confident."

"I am. If not this city, then the next—"

But there was no need to wait. A water-dripping sprite heaved over the rail, waving wildly excited hands at them. Toni pushed through the chattering Pogosan, her slender body bronzed and already filling out. She whipped hair out of her eyes. "They're there!" she shouted. "The Commander and the crew—and the whaler is there, floating all tied up in the middle of the city!"

"Now praise the Evil Ones!" said Inglis.

The inevitable delays were a source of infuriating frustration. But the formalities must be observed. The central raft between the cities, the carpeted approach, the official procession with the bannerman carrying the greenly growing branch from the sacred tree, and the assembly of all the nobles had to be carried through just so and with due ceremony. Inglis and the Terrans were waiting long before the admiral arrived, peering all about for sight of Varese.

They could see
Swallow's
whaler. The little spaceship, designed for short interplanetary journeys, snuggled down between the tall sailing ships like a streamlined fish among a crowd of lobsters. They waved and shouted, but evoked no reply. Presently the admirals advanced, showing their front teeth in genial Pogosan smiles, and the ceremony began.

"Where is Varese?" Inglis was wondering. As a scarlet banner noble he stood a little way apart from the green banner nobles. But he could see Gerda and M'Banga sharing their worried looks between him and the whaler. Perhaps the whaler had been picked up by these stranger Pogosan. Perhaps they had found it, floating empty? Perhaps Varese and all the crew were dead?

Inglis didn't like that thought and thrust it from him for later worry after the ceremony. The admiral was now winding up the courtesies. Any minute now he would begin to tell the new Pogosan city of the wonders of the Four Caves and the promised return of the Evil Ones. The importance of that banished thought of Varese from Inglis' mind.

All around Inglis the Pogosan were fidgeting and shifting, limbering up for the dance. Inglis heard the stranger admiral begin a new incident of his city's rovings, and a strong and impatient feeling swept over him. Hurry it up! News of the Word could not wait!

The admiral was saying, "This' strange ship which we have here was found with beings unknown to us aboard. However, I see that your strangers are similar to them." Inglis pricked up his ears, half his mind coming back from the desire for the dance to what the admiral was saying. "They have gone off in a squadron to bring one of their number who was before them, and I expect to see their sails tomorrow."

Inglis understood then. Varese had borrowed some ships from the Pogosan—the Thinkers of the Sea would find that a perfectly natural action—and had gone to find Abd al-Malik ibn-Zobeir. Tomorrow. By tomorrow, then they would know that they were not marooned on this planet. By tomorrow Varese could help with the communications men under his command to reconstruct the radios, and, tomorrow ... tomorrow Varese could be told the great news, news of the Word and of the promise of the Four Caves given by the Evil Ones.

Tomorrow was going to be a big day.

-