At the far end of the canyon, they came up to the monstrous spool on which the mighty hawser was wound, its huge gears connecting it to the capstan where the Dove’s sailors trudged around a well-worn track in company with three huge beasts with flapping ears. When the Dove had anchored, the hawser was loosed and the great roller turned freely while the current carried the cable-end float downstream.
The Dove set sail once more, leaving the beasts and their keepers behind. Gentle hills took the place of rocky walls and beyond them rolling prairies stretched to the limit of sight. North of the river the fires of an encampment lit many bright tents against a shadowed carpet of meadows.
“For the women of Thrasis, no doubt,” Jory said to Curvis. “And for the Murrey of Derbeck. When they arrive.”
“Who put them there? Who built them?”
“Well, Curvis, the encampment wasn’t here when I left, and I didn’t see it built. No doubt we shall find out soon enough.”
“Where are we going?”
“Noplace,” she said.
“Who’s there?” he asked angrily.
She shook her head wearily. “Let it come as a surprise to you, Curvis. As it did, once upon a time, to Asner and me.”
He was not interested in a surprise. He was not interested in anything that was happening. He wanted to be wherever Danivon was.
She turned away from him without a word. It was obvious he was staying on the Dove merely because there was nowhere else to go.
12
In Derbeck the god Chimi-ahm killed twenty or so of the Houm and amused himself thereafter by dancing upon their bones. The Houm had neglected an esoteric detail in their reverence to the Great Lord.
In Enarae two ganger tribes staged a pitched battle in the Hall of Final Equity, which ended several days later with all the gangers, the entire executive staff of the Hall, and numerous bystanders either dead or about to die. The battle had been over a question of precedence between Guntoter and a new goddess called Magna Mater.
In Choire several singers died of exhaustion following a three-day marathon hymn of praise for Most Gracious Lady Thob, who had lately acquired an insatiable thirst for adulation.
On one of the Seldom Isles, a formerly pastoral tribe howled and drummed lengthily before sacrificing one of their more likely virgins to the Gods of the Golden Faces, who had recently manifested themselves at the back of a shallow cavern along the shore.
In Tolerance, the Enforcer Lodge went into emergency session, adjourning after a lengthy meeting to send the Master with a delegation to the Provost.
From the mezzanine of the Great Rotunda, Boarmus saw them coming. Everyone saw them coming, not that there were all that many people sitting around looking. Most people spent their time hiding these days, and who could blame them? Of those few present, however, no one missed the marching feet, the nodding plumes, the grim expressions. The only surprising thing about it, Boarmus thought, was that they had waited so long.
“Master,” he greeted the leader of the group, somewhat drunkenly. He’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to drown his too intimate knowledge of what was going on.
“Provost, sir.” The Master looked at his boots, trying to find a diplomatic way of saying it and finding none.
“We’ve just been having an emergency meeting. It’s clear we can’t go on like this. We’re being chewed up and spit out! We’ve got Enforcers going out on routine missions getting maimed, murdered, disappeared! We’ve got whole provinces on the brink of breakdown! What in the name of all Enforcement is going on?”
“I’ve been hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you,” whispered Boarmus, looking furtively around him.
“Tell us what? Tell us the world is falling apart?”
“I’ve been hoping it would settle down.”
“What would settle down?”
Boarmus sighed. “What’s happened is, we’ve got a god … gods.”
“The Hobbs Land Gods,” cried the Master, going into a defensive half crouch, as though to repel any attack of creeping divinity.
“No, no,” whispered Boarmus. “Far from it.” He looked around again, wondering what was watching him, what was listening. Well, the hell with it. They could hardly expect discretion at this stage of their game. Not as obtrusive as they’d become. He leaned forward and in a rapid narrative, punctuated by tears, chest heavings, and futile poundings of the table with a pudgy fist, he told the story beginning with Brannigan Galaxity, back in the long ago.
“So,” he concluded, “we’ve got these … these … gods, who used to be professors at Brannigan, using us for playthings. And we don’t know what to do….” Which was an understatement. The entire Council Supervisory, what was left of it, was as baffled, frustrated, and frightened as Boarmus himself.
“You’re aware there are several provinces where the death rate now far exceeds the birth rate?” the Master asked.
Boarmus nodded hopelessly.
“You’re aware that over in Morlub the suicide rate is so high the place will probably be totally depopulated within a few days?”
Boarmus nodded again. “I follow the monitors,” he murmured. “The ones that are left. It’s happening everywhere.” Greatly daring, he’d checked Files and found historic examples for everything that was happening, including mass suicide at the behest of religious leaders. Remarkably, there were a few provinces where sweetness and jollity prevailed, almost as though the Gods had decided to try a controlled experiment. Pain here. Pleasure there. See what’s most satisfactory. So far, they’d come down heavily on the side of pain.
“Is there some way I can keep my Enforcers from getting killed?” the Master persisted. “What would you suggest?”
Boarmus licked his lips. “Propitiate them.”
“And how in hell do we do that?”
“I don’t know. Processions, maybe? Sacrifices? Rituals of some kind or other.”
“And
