Danger, Religion! Part 4

Then the effect overcame me.

Blackness. Blankness.

And-I was sprawling on a crowded night-club floor with three half-naked dancers shrieking their heads off in fright! I was back home!

They threw me out of the club without bothering to ask questions. Just as well! One thing I could not have told them: I could not remember the cla.s.sifica-tion number of the matrix from which I had escaped.

There was no going back there, except by accident Rastell's world was lost among a myriad of others in the multidimensional universe.

This fortunate bit of ignorance saved me from a severe moral problem. Supposing we could have got-ten back to Rastell's world, had we in fact any right to intervene on behalf of the slaves? Should we culti-vate someone else's garden? In any one world, there's enough trouble in circulation without looking for it in others. Or so I explained the situation to Candida.

She pulled her moral face at me. Recovering from the influenza she had contracted at Noordoostburg-op-Langedijk, her pallor made her moral face even more moral than usual.

1 am well enough to attend evensong in St. Giles today, Sheridan," she said. "And I suggest you come with me. After your unholy adventures in that benighted matrix, you are plainly in need of absolu-tion in this one."

At that time, I believed that she meant merely that the lolling of Mark in self-defense lay upon my con-science; and since it did, I meekly bowed to her suggestion.

I spent the day resting up. In the evening, as dusk settled over our festering old city, and before Royal and Turton could return home from work, Candida and I slipped down into the crowded streets and made our way up the hill to the grand old Gothic pile of Edinburgh's cathedral.

Resourceful little Candida led me by a shortcut down a slope between blank damp-stained walls. It was so narrow, we could not walk side by side; I went after her, noticing anew how slight was this strong-willed little fey sister-in-law. Footsteps sound-ed behind us-someone was catching up to us-a hand grasped my shoulder. I spun about, instinctively raising my fists, and stared into a strong square face with intense dark eyes. When I had last seen that face, it had quailed before death in fear, but there was no fear in it now.

"Captain Apostolic Rastell!"

"I am Captain Apostolic no longer," he said. "I am a man on the run-as you are!" He gave me a hard scrutinizing look as I pressed back against the wall.

Candida had stopped and was examining him haughtily.

"So this is one of your friends from that disgraceful matrix, Sherry.... Well, aren't you going to introduce me to him?"

With Candida, one always remembered one's man-ners. Only when I had performed hurried introduc-tions did I ask Rastell, "What do you mean "by saying I am. on the run? I am safe and in my proper matrix! I never thought to see you again! You are the fugitive here!"

"You are a fugitive as much as I!" He clutched my arm. 'Is there somewhere that we can talk?"

"There is nowhere," Candida declared. "We are on our way to divine service. You may join us if you care to-and from what I hear of the goings-on in your dimension, youshould care to, for the sake of your soul. After service, you can talk to Sheridan."

"As safe there as anywhere, I suppose," Rastell said, half to himself.

After the service, it was Candida who pointed out that the cathedral itself was the best place in which to talk. Perhaps she had no wish for Royal's interfer-ence at that stage. But Rastell was convinced by the swarms of anonymous worshipers, and by the great darkness that towered up through the somber and fretted interior-a darkness which the meager light-ing could do no more than punctuate.

Persuaded by this general obscurity, if not by my sister-in-law, Rastell led us from the side chapel into the Moray aisle. Lurking under Moray's monument, he said, addressing us both, "Insurrection is now rife in my home matrix! No, not the subs, poor craven things-it's the extra-matricials we brought in who are causing the trouble. And you began that trouble, Sheridan Meacher!"

"I'm delighted to hear that things are going so well!"

"Things are going badly with you, never think oth-erwise! Both church police and Matrix Corps are al-ready on your track, combing the nearest matrices. They are determined that you shall die for your part in the insurrection."

"Why do you come to warn me, Rastell? We are no friends!"

"Church knows, that is the truth. Yet you spared my life, Meacher. And I too am on the run. I was lucky to escape. They will have my blood for what they call my inefficiency-so I also have to get away from them."

I looked up bewildered, my eye catching the horri-ble stained-gla.s.s window representing Moray being murdered and John Knox grimly reading his funeral oration, to which the fading daylight lent stark em-phasis. To be food for a similar oration was as yet far from my desire.

"Why have you bothered to come and inform Sher-ry of all this, Mr. Rastell?" Candida asked.

He turned to her. "Because he is the only person I know outside my own matrix-because we must co-operate if we are to escape death."

"And how do you propose to do that?"

"Why, we must flee together to another matrix, one far from our own probability line, and lie low there for a few months-longer if necessary-until they grow tired of searching for us."

"I see," said Candida, in a tone that could have frozen John Knox. "From that, I deduce that you have near at hand one of these extra-matricial portals and that you intend to whisk my brother-in-law away through it."

"Correct, madam."

"You will do no such thing! We are a small but devoted family. I will not have Sherry disappear into matrices even more perverted than ours. He has got himself into enough unholy trouble already."

"He is in danger here."

"He would be in danger there." They stared at each other in the waning light. I did not know what to say.

Finally, Candida said, "There is a solution. I shall come with you. Through the portal."

"Madam!"

"Both of you are weak in the faith. I shall accompa-ny you and see that you do not fall into sin. Lead on, Mr. Rastell!"

Rastell had left his portal in a seamy room in a lodginghouse not far from the church. He a.s.sembled it as Candida and I stood by. I tried to argue her out of her decision as Rastell prepared the nicomiotine in-jections, but she was adamant "You have already made clear your somewhat lax att.i.tude to other matrices, Sherry. "There's enough trouble in circulation in our world without going look-ing for it in others.' That's what you said. I disagree.

Christ's teaching shows that we are morally responsi-ble for everyone. If they are human and have souls to lose, then the people in other matrices are as we are, whether they happen to live in another dimension or not."

"But they have their own standards! Our moral obligation is to not judge them by our moral stand-ards."

"Ourmoral standards? They are not ours, but come from On High. We merely follow them; and we must see that others follow them. The standards exist in their own right, whether acknowledged or not, just as G.o.d does."

The Meacher family enjoys such arguments and takes them up at a moment's notice, like embroidery.

Rastell had brought out a small black notebook and was looking up cla.s.sification numbers.

"Then we will escape to a matrix far from this, where no G.o.d has ever been acknowledged on Earth," he said. There must have been irony in his voice, but Candida said eagerly, "There is such a matrix? Then indeed we can be of some positive good there!" She clapped her hands.

Rastell put her through the portal first. I went next. He came last, and I saw he materialized carrying the portal, like a circus clown who jumps through his own hoop. But I had no time to ponder this minor wonder of science, for Candida was already involved in a flaming row with an inhabitant of our new matrix!

The matrix or the inhabitant? Which to start with? The inhabitant-I had better not refer to him as a Scot-claimed all of Candida's attention, and so it was on him I looked first, and he shall be first de-scribed.

He was an undersized specimen, of brutal demean-or, with coa.r.s.e hair that I suspected covered all his barrel-body under its coa.r.s.e clothing. Evidently, he had grasped Candida as soon as she materialized. He was chattering at her in a language I could not un-derstand-and getting the worst of the battle, for she was clouting him with the heavy shopping bag she had carried to church. Even as I ran to tackle her a.s.sailant, he broke away.

Just for a moment, he bent and made a gesture of such animal obscenity that Candida shrieked in indig-nation. Then he made off downhill fast, running flat-footedly along the paved street.

I say street-track would be a better word. For this Edinburgh-our fair Auld Reekie-hardly resembled in any way except the characteristic lie of the land the city of my or Rastell's dimension. The houses appeared to be merely senseless acc.u.mulations of stones and branches of trees. The street, as I say, was a mere track between these shacks and was piled with refuse and human droppings. Where, in our matrix, St. Giles had stood, was a rough building, almost like a crude parody of a church, with a sort of spire that on closer inspection proved to be the apex of a dead fir tree.

All this I could see because here it was happily still only midafternoon, and I resolved that we should be gone by dusk. Whatever had befallen the miserable inhabitants of Earth here, I saw no reason why we should inflict their lot on ourselves.

"So this is what a world is like without belief in the Lord!" exclaimed Candida. "The heathens! They look and act like G.o.dless ones! Yes, the devil rules here. Be off!"

This last was directed at a group of capering loons who had collected to see the fun. They jumped up and down with glee, cackled, turned cartwheels, mimicked our actions.

I turned to Rastell. "They're a pack of apes! Noth-ing but a pack of apes! What sort of trick is this?

You've shot us into a kind of prehistoric matrix, haven't you?"

"No, it is no trick. This is a matrix exactly contem-porary with ours. Only the human race has taken a different path."

"Away from G.o.d!" said Candida. "If only I could speak their language!"

A piece of filth hit her on the shoulder. Our specta-tors-perhaps angered by the dullness of our per-formance-had started to throw things. I grasped Candida around the shoulders and urged her away. The spectators bunched fingers at both ends of their long lipless mouths and whistled in derision-wonderful, long, whooping, spiky, swooping, whistles; wish I could do it! With Rastell following, we hurried between two of the fetid shacks, nearly tripping over droves of little hairy black pigs as we went.

And there Edinburgh ended, in mud and wretched fields. What I knew as Cowgate was unkempt agricul-tural land. And it was being worked! Two groups were at work, engaged in some sort of plowing oper-ation. Above the plow itself sat, in each case, an ape overseer on a perch, which he grasped with his feet while wielding a crude thong whip over the backs bent before him. In one group, these backs were many: puny little monkey backs, where a dozen simi-an captives sought to drag the plow through the stony ground. In the other group, the back was but one: a broad black back, as some immense creature like an overgrown gorilla tugged at the shafts that moved the furrowing blade.

The magnificent horror of the scene got through to me at once. Only later did I see its significance and guess that this was a form of agriculture involving the use of captives of other tribes. The little figures toiled below tatty gray and fawn clouds bringing rain.

We had not long to look, for a straggle of weird shapes was progressing from behind the shacks toward us. Rastell held out a warning hand.

"No point in running. They will not hurt us."

"Who was going to run?" Candida asked indignant-ly. "We must learn their language and set to work converting them to Christianity. Nothing else can lift them from this animal state."

"I don't believe they have language as we know it," Rastell said.

The people approaching were long-legged and gro-tesque. Everything was so strange there that only when they had surrounded us did I realize that they went on stilts. There were six of them. All wore a kind of uniform. Since I was frantically trying to relate everything in that matrix to something in ours, I mistook the uniform for black leather, such as the young toughs of my Edinburgh wear; later I came to the firm conclusion that it must be the skin of their adversaries, the gorilla-people.

The people-no, let's say the ape-people, for so they were-the ape-people were using stilts about three feet high, which they manipulated very cleverly with their feet, leaving their hands free. When one reached out for my shoulder, I put up my hand sharply, and he at once was down to the ground and, swinging his stilt as a weapon without changing "hands," dealt me a considerable blow in the ribs- and in a twinkling had resumed his stilt walk.

"They won't attack you if you don't scare them!" Rastell said.

"How can you be sure?" Candida asked.

"Because they are not hostile like human beings, only suspicious like apes."

"Well, I'm both!"

But we allowed ourselves to be herded along docilely enough, for the stilt-walkers achieved what was evidently their aim, cowing us by overtopping us. The august effect was spoiled only by their chatter- at which I saw Candida frowning concentratedly, as if trying to distinguish words.

The stilt-walkers herded us up to the large shack that stood like a mockery where our fine Gothic cathedral was in the home matrix. Four of them took up positions by the entrance. The other two pushed us in, jumping deftly down from their stilts as they got inside.

Although dim, the interior was fairly large, as it had need to be, for a whole family of ape-people was here. With a dim memory of monkey behavior, I thought I could distinguish several old males squat-ting in the background, as well as more active fe-males, who moved about in coa.r.s.e frocks of garish yellow which did not cover their posteriors. There were also children swarming here, though taking care to keep away from-I marveled that they had such an amenity!-a small fire burning to one side in a hollowed rock. The smells that a.s.sailed us were rich and strange.

Almost above our heads hung a trapeze. Sitting negligently on it, chewing a carrot, was a hefty young male. His black uniform was decorated with bright feathers, while around his ankles, I saw, he had two dangerous-looking spurs tied. He was glaring at us.

The stilt-walkers beside us had fallen to the floor and were groveling and uttering low moans.

"This is the boss," I said.

"We'd better kneel, just to show we're friendly," Rastell said. "Once we're accepted-no trouble."

"Quite right! If we are to teach him humility, we must be prepared to humble ourselves," Candida said.

She looked at me severely. "Kneel, Sherry!" Thus, I believe, the kindly woman saved my face; I could obey her.

But as we were all going down, the boss above spat a piece of carrot which caught Rastell in the eye.

He was up in an instant, forgetting discretion.

"You baboon!" he called, shaking his fist It was immediately grasped. Before I could even leap up, the brute on the trapeze had swung Rastell right up, effortlessly, until for a moment their two faces were almost. touching. There was a flash of canine teeth, we heard a cry, Rastell was tumbling unsupported to the ground. He sprawled. I saw his ear was bleeding. It had been torn by the boss's teeth.

The boss himself, snarling and spitting, landed lightly a few paces away, and was now advancing on Rastell, swinging his arms, leaping up and down, chattering. The children had all scattered back to their mothers, who huddled nervously together, say-ing nothing.

There was going to be a fight Jumping up, I grabbed at one of the stilts lying by a prostrate guard. They were at once upon me. I swung the stick hard, striking them madly, but the gorilla hide protected them and they bore me down. I was flattened ignominiously, and the stilt twisted from my grip. They held me down, face pressed into the filthy ground, waiting like trained dogs for word from the master.

Their master was still circling Rastell. Rastell had picked himself up and was looking hopelessly around for a weapon. His ear was scattering blood. I saw that two old males had lumbered up from the back and held Candida, clumsily but not viciously. The females in the corner were whooping and leaping.

Then there was silence and the tableau held. The boss was about to spring, to throw himself, teeth and spurs, on Rastell, when the latter moved.

He bent down, almost into a crouch, touching the ground with his elbows, and smacked his lips. His body was presented sideways to the boss. The stance made him resemble an ape. The boss advanced and hesitated-we were all tense-and then jumped to the rear of Rastell. Momentarily, he seized him around the ribs and clouted him, and then he broke free. Rastell stood up.

All tension had disappeared. Candida and I were allowed to stand free. We brushed ourselves down; Rastell mopped his face and his ear. The children and the female ape-people began running and chat-tering again. As for the boss, he had lost interest in us. Whooping to the guards, he sprang onto his trapeze again. In a moment, we three human beings were led into the open again.

The stilt-walkers hustled us along to the end of the street and there, with gestures and calls, plainly said good-bye. I shook Rastell's hand. "You were quick-witted in there- You adopted ape-behavior and so probably saved us all from being killed."

"It was disgusting to see you kowtow to an animal,'' Candida said.

Laughing, Rastell said, "Aren't they our superiors in many ways? They have no interspecies fighting or killing, as men have. I merely observed their tribal customs."

"Our superiors, Mr. Rastell? Those G.o.dless beasts? No wonder they have not advanced from the ape if they have never found religion!"

"We cap discuss that point at our leisure later, Mrs. Meacher," Rastell said coldly. Turning to me he added, "Now we've got a short walk."

A little herd of idlers had gathered and was run-ning about us, whistling, calling, and mocking. They all dropped away as we set off from the village. I put my arm around Candida's shoulder to encourage her.

The afternoon was growing very drab; rain threat-ened; and we were far from home. It was clear that we had pa.s.sed some sort of inspection in the crude village and were now allowed to go free in this primi-tive world; clear, too, that Rastell knew what he was about; yet both Candida and I were reluctant to ask him questions.

As we walked westward, following a track leading beneath the rocky outcrop on which-in any sane matrix-sat Edinburgh Castle, I was thinking hard: Rastell was not to be trusted. The episode with that Mithras-lover, Mark Claud Gale, had warned me against alliances where unknown factors were in-volved.

Rastell's objectives were not mine, however he tried to make it look that way; and I clearly under-stood that the time when our objectives were to be revealed as opposed was approaching. Rastell was taking us for no afternoon stroll. We were purposeful-ly going somewhere. And I could guess, at least in outline, the sort of place it would be.

I had no weapon. Rastell had a sidearm. He had not used it on the leader of the ape-people. So there was an arrangement of some sort with the ape-people. Rastell was familiar with this matrix.

No. I was guessing. No proof; it could merely be my fears prompting me. And if my fears were un-founded, then I needed to cooperate with this man. He could be the only man in the whole matrix ...

but I doubted that.