"I lacked faith!" said Jason. "I turned and loved that spawn of Belial who spoke to us."
"We all lack faith to some extent," Hal said. "There are probably some men and women so strong in their faith that he wouldn't have been able to touch them. I had a teacher once… but the point is, that everyone else in that room gave in to him, just as you did."
"You didn't!"
"I've had special training," said Hal. "That's what I was telling you just now, remember? What that man did, he succeeded in doing because he's also had special training. Believe me, someone without training would have had to have been a very remarkable person to resist him. But for someone with training, it was… relatively easy."
Jason drew another deep, ragged breath.
"Then I'm ashamed for another reason," he said bleakly.
"Why?" Hal stared at him.
"Because I thought you were a spy, planted on me by the dogs of the Belial-spawn, when they decided to hold me captive. When we heard Howard Immanuelson had died of a lung disease in a Holding Station on Coby, we all assumed his papers had been lost. The thought that someone else of the faith could find them and use them - and his doing it would be so secret that someone like myself wouldn't know - that was stretching coincidence beyond belief. And you were so quick to pick up the finger speech. So I was going to pretend I was taken in by you. I was going to bring you with me to some place where the other brothers and sisters of the Children of God's Just Wrath could question you; and find out why you were sent and what you knew about us."
He stared burningly at Hal.
"And then you, just now, brought me back from Hell - from where I could never have come back without you. There was no need for you to do that if you had been one of the enemy, one of the Accursed. How could I have doubted that you were of the faith?"
"Quite easily," said Hal. "As far as bringing you back from Hell, all I did was hurry up the process a little. The kind of persuasion that was used on you only takes permanently with people who basically agree with the persuader to begin with. With those who don't, his type of mind-changing gets eaten away gradually by the natural feelings of the individual until over time it wears thin and breaks down. Since you're someone opposed enough to fight him, the only way he could stop you permanently would be to kill you."
"Why didn't he then?" said Jason. "Why didn't he kill all of us?"
"Because it's to his advantage to pretend that he only opens people's eyes to the right way to live," said Hal, hearing an echo of Walter the InTeacher in the words even as he said them. He had not consciously stopped to think the matter out, but Jason's question had evoked the obvious answer. "Even his convinced followers feel safer if that particular man is always right, always merciful. What he did with us, there, wasn't because we were important, but because the two men with him on the platform were important - to him. There're really only a handful of what you call the Belial-spawn, compared to the trillions of people on the fourteen worlds. Those like him don't have the time, even if they felt like it, to control everyone personally. So, whenever possible they use the same sort of social mechanisms that've been used down the centuries when a few people wanted to command many."
Jason sat watching him for a long moment.
"Who are you, Howard?" he asked at last.
"I'm sorry." Hal hesitated. "I can't tell you that. But I should tell you you've no obligation to call me brother. I'm afraid I lied to you. I'm not of the faith as you call it. I've got nothing to do with whatever organization you and those with you belong to. But I really am running from those like the man we're talking about."
"Then you're a brother," said Jason, simply. He picked up his own cup of cold coffee and drank deeply from it. "We - those the Accursed call the Children - are of every sect and every possible interpretation of the Idea of God. Your difference from the rest of us isn't any greater than our differences from each other. But I'm glad you told me this; because I'll have to tell the others about you when we reach them."
"Can we reach them?" asked Hal.
"There's no problem in that," said Jason. "I'll make contact in town here with someone who'll know where the closest band of Warriors is, right now; and we'll join them. Out in the countryside, we of the faith still control. Oh, they chase us, but they can't do more than keep us on the move. It's only here, in the cities, that the Belial-spawn and their minions rule."
He slid to the end of the booth and stood up.
"Come along," he said.
Out in the coldly damp air of the street, they located a callbox and coded for an autocab. In succession, changing cabs each time, they visited a clothing store, a library and a gymnasium, without Jason recognizing anyone he trusted enough to ask for help. Their fourth try brought them to a small vehicle custom-repair garage in the northern outskirts of Citadel.
The garage itself was a dome-like temporary structure perched in an open field on the city's edge; out where residences gave way to small personal farm-plots rented by city dwellers on an annual basis. It occupied an open stretch of stony ground that was its own best demonstration of why it had not been put to personal farming the way the land around it had. Inside the barely-heated dome, the air of which was thick with the faintly banana-like smell of a local tree oil used for lubrication, hanging like an invisible mist over the half-dismantled engines of several surface vehicles, they found a single occupant - a square, short, leathery man in his sixties, engaged in reassembling the rear support fan of an all-terrain fourplace cruiser.
"Hilary!" said Jason, as they reached him.
"Jase - " said the worker, barely glancing up at them. "When did you get back?"
"Yesterday," said Jason. "The Accursed put us up overnight in their special hotel. This is Howard Immanuelson. Not of the faith, but one of our allies. From Coby."
"Coby?" Hilary glanced up once more at Hal. "What did you do on Coby?"
"I was a miner," said Hal.
Hilary reached for a cleansing rag, wiped his hands, turned about and offered one of them to Hal.
"Long?" he asked.
"Three years."
Hilary nodded.
"I like people who know how to work," he said. "You two on the run?"
"No," said Jason. "They turned us loose. But we need to get out into the country. Who's close right now?"
Hilary looked down at his hands and wiped them once more on his rag, then threw it into a wastebin.
"Rukh Tamani," he said. "She and her people're passing through, on their way to something. You know Rukh?"
"I know of her," said Jason. "She's a sword of the Lord."
"You might connect up with them. Want me to give you a map?"
"Please," said Jason. "And if you can supply us - "
"Clothes and gear, that's all," said Hilary. "Weapons are getting too risky."
"Can you take us close to her, at all?"
"Oh, I can get you fairly well in." Hilary looked at Hal. "Jase's no problem. But anything I'll be able to give you in the way of clothes is going to fit pretty tight."
"Let's try what you've got," said Jason.
Hilary led them to a partitioned-off corner of his dome. The door they went through let them into a storeroom piled to the ceiling with a jumble of containers and goods of all kinds. Hilary threaded his way among the stacks to a pile of what seemed to be mainly clothing and camping gear, and started pulling out items.
Twenty minutes later, he had them both outfitted with heavy bush clothing including both shoulder and belt packs and camping equipment. As Hilary had predicted, Hal's shirt, jacket and undershirt were tight in the shoulders and short in the sleeves. Otherwise, everything that he had given Hal fitted well enough. The one particular blessing turned out to be the fact that there were bush boots available of the proper length for Hal's feet. They were a little too wide, but extra socks and insoles took care of that.