The colonists originally helped them transfer their huge cargo, only to discover that once the newcomers decided to put it down in the extensive caverns and allow nothing of their technology to show, they also didn’t want anyone knowing just exactly how they’d set it up or just where they’d put it, so they massacred all the colonists who’d helped them, and everyone else in the district surrounding the lakeshore near the crash site. Then they irradiated the ground for kilometers around so that nothing, absolutely nothing, could be grown there, and thus there would be no more villages in the area.
And then, oddly, they struck a deal with the colonists who did not see or know of this at the time. They were hiding out, all things below ground, and there most of them would live and do whatever they wanted as well. They wanted to be as sure as they could be that any newcomers to Foundation would see only the original colonists. Some of them would also work with the locals, but more in the nature of advisors than fellow farmers. “Efficiency experts,” their leader called them.
They would harm no more villagers—everybody knew that their “tragic mistake” on landing was a lie, but the colonists could hardly do much about it and pragmatism was the best course—but would consume some of the food and drink as a “fee.” In return for that “fee,” they would train and allow the use of the complex learning system they had along with its practical library, which allowed much of the network of irrigation among other things to be improved and developed and which, also, gave their children an education and practical skills, and they would handle the one area most needed by the colonists: medical and pharmaceutical skills and goods. They also established a far more efficient and motorized underground trade route system so that foods that normally could never reach, say, the nearby village, would now be readily available and some could even be stored. Refrigeration units, power units, and the like from the ship were established underground for that purpose.
They mostly lived in this region because there were only a few hundred of them and because in this area the strata and oddities in the magnetic fields and other things the women didn’t understand made it possible for them to hide from the most sophisticated scanners.
But the thing that had brought everybody up short and made the alliance a willing one after some early roughness was the reason why they had been in a fight, and what they had that everyone else wanted.
A little piece of knowledge. Something stolen, most likely, but something among the most valuable snippets of knowledge in the entire known galaxy if truth be told.
Mother Tymm had prophesied from the start that even Foundation was but a way stop, a stepping stone. That the true Naturalists would actually meld with the forces of nature, the deities of the Garden, and that their children and grandchildren would walk and live in perfect harmony with nature and the natural and supernatural upon the world of Paradise among the Three Kings. And she’d further prophesied that this would come about from the Tree of Evil imparting to the Knowledge of Good, and that Darkness would take the Seeders to the Light.
“Are you telling me that this pirate leader claims to have the location of the Three Kings?” Karl Woodward responded, incredulous. Cromwell and some of the others behind him were beyond that and almost into derision. Every charlatan anybody ever met claimed to know the location of the Three Kings, and every cult and nut group and even some perfectly normal, natural, and straightforward political and religious groups always seemed to fall for it.
“And because of this prophecy you think that these men and women of darkness are the ones that are here to take you to the Three Kings?” the Doctor asked them.
They nodded. “And that is why we live with them and do as they say and protect them as they do what they must. We are sorry that it was you, but whoever it was becomes part of the prophecy, don’t you see? And they have kept their word to us for a very long time now.”
“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.
VIII: IS THE DEVIL A GENTLEMAN?
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.