"Today - " her voice reached him again through the glass window in the ambulance - "you crowd the streets. Today the Militia does not come opt to disperse you. Right now you are willing, in your hundreds, to take up weapons and march against the Belial-spawn and Antichrist."
She paused, watching them all.
"But tomorrow - " her voice continued - "you will think better of it. You will not say you will not march; but you will find a thousand reasons to question the time and manner of marching, and so never leave Ahruma at all.
"When did you come to fear death? There is no death to fear. Our forefathers knew this, when they came from Earth. Why do you fail to know it now?"
The crowd neither moved nor made a sound.
"They knew, as we should know," her voice went on, "that it does not matter if our bodies die, as long as the People of God continue. For then all are saved, and will live forever."
Hal got his legs moving, and stirred them quietly on his stretcher, to get the blood moving in them. They made a small rustling sound between the stretcher surface and the covering blankets. But the two Militiamen in the bucket seats up front in the ambulance paid no attention. They were as caught up in Rukh's speaking as the crowd outside.
"There is a man," went on Rukh; and the repeaters in the crowd flung her words against the concrete fronts of the buildings facing the square on all four sides, "who has been in this city before today and will be here again, who is called by some the Great Teacher."
She paused.
"He is a teacher of lies - Antichrist incarnate. But he envies us our immortality - yours and mine, sisters and brothers - for he is only mortal and knows he will die. He can be killed.
"For God alone is independently immortal. He would exist, even if Mankind did not; and because we are part of God, you and I, we are immortal also. But Antichrist, who comes among us now for our last great testing, has no hope of long life except in Mankind. Only if we accept him, and his like, can they hope to live.
"But because Mankind is of God, though the Enemy may slay our bodies he cannot touch our souls unless we give them freely to him. If we do, we are lost, indeed.
"But if we do not; then, though we may seem to suffer death, we will live eternally - not only in the Lord but in those who come after us, who will because of us continue to know our God.
"For only if we betray him by giving up the power to choose Him for ourselves, can we lose immortality. If we will not be dogs of Antichrist, we shall be part of our children's children's children - who, because of our faith and our labors, will still belong to our God, our Faith and, therefore, to us, forever. If the race continues free, none of us shall ever die."
She paused; and for the first time, there was a sighing, no more noticeable than a vagrant wisp of breeze, that travelled across the surface of the crowd and died against the buildings surrounding.
"There are those - " when she went on, her voice had changed slightly - "who say, 'But what if we should all be killed by those who follow Antichrist?' And the answer to that is, 'they cannot.' For there would then be not enough to serve the Belial-spawn as they wish to be served. But even if it was possible for our enemies to kill all who are steadfast in the Faith, that killing would be useless to them. For even in their slaves the seeds of Faith would still lie dormant, awaiting only the proper hour and the voice of God, to flower once more."
She paused and once more took a slow survey of the square.
"So, pick up your courage," she said. "These who oppose us can only destroy bodies, not souls. Come, join me in putting off our fear of death; which is, after all, only like a child's fear of the dark, and testify for the Lord, praising Him and thanking Him that it is to us, to our generation, that this great and glorious moment has been given. For there is no reward like the reward of those who fight for Him; knowing that they cannot lose because He cannot be defeated."
She stopped.
"Now," she said. "Testify with me, my sisters and brothers in the Lord. Let us sing together that God may hear us."
She let go of the upright of the cross and stood there balanced upon the narrow upper edge of the pedestal top. Standing so, she began, herself, to sing. Her voice came clearly and joyfully from the repeaters, making the dark hymn Hal had heard led by Child in the house of Amjak into a paean of triumph.
"Soldier, ask not, now or ever,
Where to war your banners go.
Anarch's legions all surround us.
Strike! and do not count the blow …"
The crowd was singing with one voice. Up in the front of the vehicle, the two Militiamen were silent, but they sat crouched in their seats as if they, too, had been captured by the music. Hal, who had also been caught up in the power and sweep of Rukh's speech, woke suddenly to the fact that he was letting his chance to escape slip through his fingers.
As quietly as he could, he pushed the blankets off him to the window side of the stretcher, swung his legs out over empty air and let himself slip quietly off the stretcher surface until he was standing on his feet.
Up front, the two Militiamen stared out through the side window next to the driver's left elbow, blind and deaf to anything taking place behind them.
Hal swayed a little on his feet. His balance was unsure, and the effort of keeping himself erect was a large one; but he felt a tremendous surge of happiness at being able to stand by himself. He moved as softly as he could to the door in the back end of the ambulance, through which he had been carried in. One step. Two. Three… he reached the door.
He put his hand on the rounded, cold, metal bar of its latch lever, ready to push it down; and glanced back over his shoulder at the front of the vehicle. The two Militiamen still sat in profile to him, unnoticing.
He turned to the door again, and pushed down on the lever. It resisted him as if it had been set in concrete. For a moment he thought his weakness was to blame and he threw all his weight upon it to force it down. But it held.
Then his mind cleared. He looked more closely at the latch and saw that it was locked by a horizontal sliding bar that needed to be drawn before the lever could swing down. He took the knob of the bar gingerly in his fingers and pulled. It held as if stuck. He pulled harder. It held for a second more; and then with a rasp and a clang that seemed to echo like a beaten alarm through the ambulance, it sprang back. He seized the lever.
"Stop!" said a tight-throated voice from the front of the ambulance. "You push that handle down and I'll shoot!"
Still holding the lever, he looked again over his shoulder. The faces of both Militiamen were watching him above the upper edges of their bucket-seat backs; and, down between the seats, its slim, wire-coiled barrel projecting through, was one of the stubby hideout-models of a void pistol. It was aimed squarely at him, held low by the driver so that his body and that of the man beside him would shield it from the eyes of any of the crowd who might happen to look in.
"This doesn't make any noise," said the driver. "Go back to your stretcher and get back up on it."
Hal stared at them and the shadow of the structure in his mind seemed to fall between him and the two of them.
"No," he said. "If I fall out of here dead, you two won't live five minutes."
He pushed the lever down, leaning against the door. The latch released. The door swung half-open under his weight before it was stopped by the body of someone standing in the way; and Hal fell into the opening, which was too narrow for his body to pass but let him get his head outside.
"Help, brothers!" he croaked. "Help! The Militia've got me."
He had been braced instinctively for the silent blow of the charge from the void pistol against his back. But nothing happened. He was aware of startled faces turning toward him; then suddenly the door gave fully and he fell through the opening.