"Lanier, Sterling E - Hiero 01 - Hiero's Journey UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lanier Sterling E)

ThanksЧhelp (us)ЧdangerЧbad, he sent. He had noticed that each time, the exchange grew easier. He now could talk to the animal almost as easily as he could to his roommate Per Malaro at the Abbey college, who was also his frater and bondmate, closer mentally than anyone else in the world. The
THE SIGN OF THE FISHHOOK 23
exchange was on the same level of intelligence too, not the way he talked to the big morse, whose answers were simple and contained no abstract concepts at all.
Now the bear responded. He felt a flick of the long tongue on his own nose and knew it for a greeting. Also, he sensed a wave of shyness, or some emotion akin to it, and with it a carefully buried element of humor. Gorm was amused.
(Almost) killed usЧbad thingЧsaw it (felt it) watching us, so I went away before it (caught) meЧmade me (not alive) slayЧnot move. Then: came backЧbile behindЧslop (break) bad thingЧthink at us. Good (luck?) The bear paused, his mind not readable.
Why, why have you helped me? Hiero asked bluntly. What do you want? There was another pause. Behind his back, the man heard Klootz snuffling in search of some dainty, perhaps a mushroom growing on a fallen log. Finally, the young bear answered, his thoughts perfectly clear, but untrainedЧas if he knew what he wanted to say but not as yet very well how to say it. Finally:
(To) go with youЧsee new thingsЧnew landsЧsee what you see, learn what you learn.
Hiero sat back, nonplussed. Could Gorm have guessed his mission? It seemed impossible. Yet he had told no one and his coming was secret.
Do you know what I seek, where I go? the man shot back, fascinated by the new mind he was meeting.
No, the bear replied coolly. But you (will) tell. Tel! now. Perhaps (there will) be no time later.
The priest considered. He was under a vow to say nothing of his mission. But the vow was not absolute but confidential, merely for common secrecy's sake, not because it was holy, or even a secret in itself. He could, at his own judgment, seek any aid he wanted. He made a decision and once more leaned forward.
The two figures lay, head to head, in outward silence. The great morse bull kept watch, nose and ears winnowing the night air for news, near and far, while those he guarded conversed, each learning many things under the dark of the firs.
IN THE BEGINNING
ARE LOSING- HlERO. SLOWLY BUT SURELY. WE ARE
losing." The Father Abbot's brown-robed form paced his underground study chamber as he spoke, thin arms locked behind his back. "Faith alone is not enough. Never was, for that matter. Again and again in recent years, we have become conscious of a will, or group of wills, working with the utmost secrecy and deliberation against us. The human-seeming things which tried to invade Abbey Central and almost succeeded are only a small part of the problem, though of great importance. But there is much, much more, which the Council in its wisdom has kept from the people. No agent of the newsletters has, or will, hear a word of it." He paused, and his lined, dark face with its pointed, white beard and drooping mustaches softened into a grin. "None of us have even told our wives." In an instant he was serious again, and picking up a piece of white chalk, strode over to a slate blackboard. The Most Reverend Kulase Demero had begun a most successful career as a teacher of the young, and old habits die hard.
."Look here," he said crisply as he began to write. "A large convoy two years ago was ambushed well north of the Inland Sea, on the main road from Otwah. Ten loads of old-time laboratory instruments taken and some found destroyed later. Those instruments came from an undamaged pre-Death site on the Eastern Ocean and, we think, were experimental matter involving advanced weaponry of which we now know nothing.
25
26 HIERO'S JOURNEY
We'll call that item number one." He continued, glancing over at intervals to see that Hiero. seated at a long table facing him, was paying due attention, just as he had done with a thousand pupils in the past.
"Two, we sent a complete regiment of soldiers, under a good sub-abbot, twenty priests, a construction crew as good as any we had, and full supplies for all for six months, to start a new fishery-based Abbey up on the Huzon Gulf, to the far Northeast, in the cold woods. You have heard of that. I imagine, as it was too big to keep quiet. Despite all precautions, continuous mental communication with our own Comm chambers at Abbey Central and at other Abbeys, the whole force, roughly eleven hundred picked men and women, vanished utterly. Our only warning was a total and sudden lapse of communication. A Rover team found the site deserted and most of the remaining supplies being plundered by wild animals a half month later. There were vague traces of some element of the Unclean, but nothing you could put your finger on. Eleven hundred of our best! This was and is a terrible blow. So I say, we'll call that number two." He paused and looked at Hiero. "Any comment?"
"Not yet. Father," Hiero said placidly. Those who did not know him sometimes thought him phlegmatic, but the abbot had watched his man for years and knew better. He grunted and turned back to his blackboard.
"That was about eighteen months ago. Next, which I'll call number three, was the affair of the ship. Damned few members of the Council know about that, so I'll assume you don't. About two months after we lost the Abbey colony, which would have become Abbey Saint Joan," and another look of pain crossed his face, "a great ship was reported to us by certain trusted persons on the Beesee coast to the west, well to the north of Vank and the great Dead Zone there, in a nest of rocky, wooded islands called the Bellas. These people are not Metz, but older still, in factЧ"
"In fact, purebred Inyans," Hiero agreed. "And there are quite a few of them scattered about here and there, but they live in small hunting groups and won't come in and amalgamate. Some are good people, others trade with the Unclean and maybe worse. Now let's stop the baby stuff. Father. I'm not a first-year student, you know."
IN THE BEGINNING 27
For a second, the Father Abbot looked perfectly furious, then he laughed.
"Sorry, but I'm so used to explaining things in this manner to the average village councilman or even some of my more elevated colleagues on the Grand Council that it gets to be a habit. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, the ship.
"This ship, a big, odd-looking one, much bigger than any fishing boat we have, was reported wrecked on one of the outer islands of the Bella group. And there were people aboard from somewhere else, probably the other side of the Pacific! The ship was breaking up on the rocks, and the weather was bad. Our Inyan friends tried to get the people, who were yellow-skinned, just as the records say the East Pacific people should be, and just as the few rare fisherman who get wrecked here are, off in their small boats. We were already sending a cavalry squadron from the east, at Abbey St. Mark, as fast as we could. There are fairly good roads to that part of the coast.
"Well, when our people got there, nothing was left. The wreck was utterly gone, not a trace of it left. Three small Inyan camps on the coast, gathered for the salmon fishing, were gone too, with only a few traces that they had been there. But we found an old man in the woods, or he found us, an ancient cripple who had been taking a sweat bath and thus had been missed when the attack came. A horde of Leemutes, some sort of Hairy Howlers, I gather, had appeared from out of the 'water. They were riding great animals which looked something like the really big seals we see once in a while on that coast. They stormed the shore camps, killing everything that moved and hurJing the dead and all their possessions into the sea. The old man did not know what had happened to the ship, which he had only heard of and not seen, but it must have met the same treatment. Who knows what new knowledge from the Lost Years we missed that time? Are you beginning to see a pattern?"
"! think so," Hiero answered. "We are being physically penned in, you feel, but more than that, we are being blocked off from knowledge, especially any knowledge which might prove dangerous to the Unclean, to the Leemutes. And the plan is concerted, is organized, so that when we do hear of any new knowledge, it is instantly snatched from our grasp."
"Exactly," the abbot said. "That's exactly what I think. And so do others. But there's more yet. Listen a moment.
28 HIERO's JOURNEY
"A year ago, twenty of our best young scientists, men and women both, who were working on problems of mental control, in a number of new and fascinating aspects, decided to have a joint meeting. They came here to Sask City from all over the Republic. Parment wasn't in session, but the Abbey Council, as the Upper House, was, and we received word of the meeting, and our permanent scientific subcommittee knew all about it, of course. A routine Abbey guard, two men for the doors, was provided. Now one of the two, a sharp fellow, thought he counted twenty-one scholars going in one morning, after the group had been meeting for several days.
"If it were not for himЧ! Even as it was, things were bad enough. The guardsman looked through a window in time to see the twenty killing one another, in total silence, by strangling, bludgeoning, pocket knives, whatever was handy. He burst in yelling and broke the compulsion. There were six dead and eight more badly wounded. As you might expect, those with the strongest mental powers of will were the least injured. We could prove that from their school records." The abbot sighed. He had ceased his pacing and now sat on a bench opposite Hiero.
"The scholars remembered little. They too had the vague feeling that another person was present at some point, but they could not describe him, or it. The guard at the back door had been conscious of nothing at all. But to us, what must have happened is clear. It should be to you. Is it?"
"A mind of great power, I suppose," the younger man said. "One of the legendary dark adepts of the Unclean I've heard rumored. Is it, or they, really something besides a fairy tale?"
"I fear so," the abbot said. "Look, you understand the mental powers as well as any young man of the Metz. To accomplish this very daring stroke, aimed, mark you, at our freshest brains, our own greatest asset and greatest danger to any foe, a mind of extraordinary power, as you say, had to be close. Had to be physically close, that is, to the persons under the compulsion. There can be no doubt that the lad on guard (who by the way is now getting advanced training) had a good mind and indeed retained the memory of seeing an extra person enter. Once inside, while simultaneously holding an invisibility spell upon their minds, the creature worked on tiny, everyday resentments until they were built into murderous compulsions to
IN THE BEGINNING 29
kill. But diere's another implication you may have missed as well."
"The silence." Hiero smiled. "No, I got that."
"Good boy," his superior said. "You do have brains, Hiero, under that lazy mask. Yes, the silence. What a mind! To compel them, twenty good minds, to slay one another in total silence! Noise would have spoiled the plan, so they had to be silent. 1 don't think there are four men in the Republic who could perform that feat."
"And you're one of them, of course," Hiero said. "Is there more, or do we now get down to specifics involving me personally?"
"You knew about the two who almost got into our inner files and research centers at Abbey Central," his superior said. "We may call them case number four, I suppose. What they were is beyond our present knowledge. If they were actually human men, men how was it possible for their very flesh and bone to dissolve into the substance of an amoeba? The Unclean is overreaching us, Hiero.
"There are many other cases of interest if they are considered as part of the whole thing. Small parties of trained explorers, men like yourself, ambushed or worse, vanished, in areas where no one should have known they had gone. Messengers with matters of unusual importance for the Eastern League at Otwah, or perhaps from them to us, also vanished, causing delays of up to a year on matters of common concern. And so on. It all adds up to one thing; a web, Hiero, a deadly, tightening web, is being drawn in upon us, even as we sit and wait to find out what is going so wrong!" The lean old man fixed his keen eyes on Hiero. "I still haven't heard any very searching questions from my prize pupil. But I need them: we all do. Hiero, you can't be mentally lazy any longer. You've been doing work any journeyman priest-exorcist could do, mixed with a lot of forest running and plain loafing. Your scores at Abbey Central, and you know it, were some of the highest ever achieved. And you're not even trying! Now listen to me. Per Desteen. I am addressing you as both your Godly and your temporal superior, and I want your attention at its peak! Those of us on the Council who know about you have been giving you rope for years, for two reasons. One was the hope that you would develop responsibility by yourself, always the best way, of course. The
JO HlERO'S JOURNEY
other reason, mainly advanced by me, young man, was so that you could get experience in many areas. Well, the time for idling is now, this minute, officially over. Am I plain? Now, sir, let's have some intelligent questioning, because I have a lot more to say."
Black eyes snapping with anger, Hiero was now sitting upright, glaring at his friend and mentor, any pretense of being bored gone forever. "So that's what you think of me, is it?" he grated. "A sort of chartered ne'er-do-well and good fellow. That's not fair, Most Reverend Father, and you know it!"
Abbot Demero simply sat looking at him, his wise eyes sympathetic, but not yielding, and Hiero felt his anger ebb away. There was truth, a good deal of it, in the charges, and being an essentially honest man, he could not deny it.
"I apologize for anger and impudence, Father Abbot," he said heavily. "I suppose I'm not really much of a priest, or a soldier either, for that matter. What can I do for the Council?"
"A good question, Hiero," the Abbot said briskly,"but not really the one I wanted, because it comes last, or ought to, and I want more thoughts from you first. Look now, my friend, what are your conclusions about what I have told you? I mean strengths, weaknesses, reliability, for that matter, plausibility, and above allЧsolutions, remedies. Let's hear your own ideas
now.