“I had not known you were disloyal,” the king said. “Your thoughts are obvious to one who has grown up at court.”
“I am loyal, Sire,” Dougal protested. “Loyal to Prince Samual’s World, Haven, the dynasty, and you.”
“In that order.”
“Yes, Sire. In that order.” He stood, a small man in plain kilts, unarmed, his rabbit features almost comical, but the room was filled with menace. “Majesty, Sir Giles, there is nothing I will not do to keep this world free! We will not be ruled by outlanders! Prince Samual’s World has been our home for centuries, and what claim has. Sparta or Earth itself to rule us?” He visibly fought for control of himself.
“The secret, Sir Giles?” Dougal’s voice rose. “It is simple enough, so simple that a careless word will doom our great plan.” He smiled wryly. “And I needn’t shout it, eh?” He sat again, and lowered his voice. “There is a building on Makassar, a building which the locals believe to be no more than a temple. But inside it is an old library…”
Sir Giles listened with growing horror. It was obvious that neither Dougal nor the king appreciated the magnitude of the problem they had set themselves. When the policeman had finished talking, Sir Giles poured a drink and thought furiously. How could he tell them?
Simple enough. He couldn’t.
“There. Now do you understand? Will you aid us?” King David asked anxiously.
“Sire, your cause is noble and just,” Sir Giles said. “And certainly the knowledge that your expedition may bring back to us could change our world. But—” He paused, and felt Dougal’s cold stare. “There is more to building a spacecraft than knowledge,” Giles said. “You will grant that I know more of our technical capabilities than you. And I do not think that even with detailed plans we will be able to build a ship.”
“We can try,” Dougal said.
“And this is where all the money has gone.”
“Much of it went to finance the expedition,” Dougal said. “The rest is being invested in expansion of the Haven shipyards, and in establishing a secret military base in the Corliss Grant Hills. We have sent many young scholars there. Always there have been legends of communications without telegraph wires … and already we can do that. The devices are crude, but they work. In the shipyards we are studying metal working, ostensibly to build metal craft that will travel under the sea — but if we can make them water-tight we can make them air-tight as well, to withstand the aether of space. Sir Giles, we are doing all we can—”
And worth doing, too, Sir Giles thought. But not for the reasons you think. There is no possibility of a spaceship. Yet, if I say so, they will kill me. The guardsmen and Dougal’s secret policemen would cooperate on that. There is only one way I will leave this lodge alive.
He rose and went to the desk. “This is my resignation,” he said. He took it and threw it into the fire. “I will help you. But you will forgive me if I am not certain that you will succeed—”
“None of us are,” Dougal said. “We cannot even be certain that MacKinnie will return. But without him there is no hope at all.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BATAV
The harbor at Batav was lined with stone steps leading to the waterfront, and patrolled by great warships flying the Temple flags and banners, saffron-robed acolytes standing in the bows to challenge newcomers. The harbor entrance was closed by a massive chain stretching between huge rafts at the ends of a log boom.
Loholo explained to the guard boats that they were from Jikar, but at MacKinnie’s orders did not tell them the ship was commanded by men from the stars. One of the patrol boats escorted them past the chain. Subao moved slowly, sails furled, the crew working the sweeps. The bottom was visible below the ship, and gangs of men stood in water to their waists to scoop out mud from the main channel.
“Convicts,” Loholo said. “You don’t want to run afoul of the priesthood here. But they do keep the harbor open. Finest harbor on Makassar.”
They were shown to a gray stone dock, a niche cut into the harbor sea wall and lined with log rafts so that the ship could be tied up without concern for the enormous tides on Makassar. Nearby another crew of convicts strained at pumps to force silt into barges. Another barge had been filled and was headed out to sea.
“The Temple priests run everything here,” Loholo said after they made Subao fast to the raft. “There’ll be one of their junior deacons along in a while to make you an offer on your trade goods. You’ll do best to stall him until you find what the local merchants will pay for part of the cargo, but you’ll have to sell some of it to Their Holinesses. If you don’t, we’ll never leave this harbor.”
MacKinnie stood on the quarterdeck of Subao and watched the traffic along the harbor street in front of him. In contrast to Jikar, there was activity, but not as much as Nathan would have expected for a large city like Batav. There were not many ships moving about in the harbor, either. Draymen unloaded a cargo vessel four rafts down from Subao, but the intervening slips were empty, and there was another large space before the next ship.
High above the harbor stood a chalk-white building, flying the banners of the Temple, great red and blue crosses on a field of black, with a stylized portrayal of the Temple itself at the fly. The old Imperial Library had been built of native granite, and had formed a part of the Vice-regal Palace. Gargoyles and cherubim were carved in stately rows around its cornice, while Corinthian columns held the four porticos at the cardinal compass points. MacKinnie had seen nothing like it on Prince Samual’s World, and found the massive strength of the building impressive despite its ugliness.
“That’s the Temple,” Brett said quietly. He was standing on the opposite corner of the quarterdeck from MacKinnie, with Kleinst and Longway eagerly asking him about the city. “God Himself built it before the Fall, when we were all star men here, and He put all wisdom and knowledge in it. But the men of Makassar were proud, and said that since they had all knowledge, they didn’t need God. In wrath, He struck at the Temple — see, you can see on the side there where part of it was rebuilt. But before He could destroy it, the priests reminded Him of His promises to our people, and He spared the Temple, but took from us the knowledge of how to use the great wisdom in the Temple. Only the priests know, and they don’t know how to translate the words of the angels when they can make them speak at all.”
Brett sniffed loudly. “That’s what the Temple priests will tell you. There was a time when they had believers in every city, and their deacons and acolytes controlled whole duchies and kingdoms. In most places, the true Christians like those in Jikar were a little band forced to hold meetings in secret. But now the Temple people don’t control much more than Batav, and it’s their followers in other cities who meet in secret and fear for their lives. All that happened in two men’s lives, or so I am told.”
“But what would have caused such a rapid transformation of the religious values of a whole society?” Longway asked with interest. “My observation has been that such changes take a long time unless they come with technological changes. We experienced a comparable collapse of the established church on Prince Samual’s World, but gunpowder and discipline and money were more at the root of it than anything else.”
“Star man, I don’t know,” Brett answered. “But strange things have happened to us for many years. The summers are shorter, and the winters colder, and the plainsmen move to the coasts and attack the cities because there is less and less to feed them and their herds in the plains. The people say that God has turned His face from Makassar.”