The prophet fought down a scream of rage and asked, “When may we go?”
“Now,” said the Commander, gesturing at the Door. “Men through first. Then we’ll ask each woman if she wants to go, any who say no can stay here. Same with the children over ten.”
“That’s unfair!” shouted the prophet, barely controlling himself. “You could keep our women, our families.”
“Why would we want them?” asked the Commander coldly. “We do not consider your people civilized. We believe you to be barbarians who have chosen the most primitive and bestial elements of human nature and codified them into a cult. If you do not like the terms, you can go back to Cloud.”
Sweat started out on the prophet’s face. He trembled with fury as he completed his assigned speech. “We prefer not to return. The devil is loose in Cloud. Jinni stalking in the streets. It is no longer an appropriate place for us.”
“Then forward,” suggested the Commander, almost gently, sensing an end to whatever had been rehearsed. It had been rehearsed. He was sure of it.
The prophet returned to the others of his group. After a pause, they straggled away from their flocks and families and went to the Door and through it. Soldiers gathered around to help the long-haired men herd the animals through.
“There,” growled Sam from the door of the building in which he sat with the children. “Oh, there.”
The others followed his glare, looked where he was looking, saw only the backs of the Faithful, going toward the Door with the animals before them.
“There,” growled Sam again. “And now he’s gone. Phaed. Not now. No. But the time will come, Phaed.”
Then the men were gone. The women went next, one by one, and the children. Only two of the younger women chose to stay on Ahabar. One of them had no tongue, but she screamed and threw off her veils, falling to her knees at the Commander’s feet to clutch at his knees. Her children were with her.
Most of the older women never looked up or removed the veils from their faces. “Do you want to go with your husband.” A nod in response, soundless.
After a time the last had gone and the Door was turned off.
Saturday came out of the building to stare at the pale oval of dying fire. “So much hate,” she said. “So much pain, removed, as though it had never been. I can’t believe it.”
“Will that be all of them?” the Commander asked.
Sam shook his head. “I was told there were some of the Faithful back in the hills. I imagine they’ll either kill themselves or come out. If you can, you might leave the Door set up for a few days.”
“I’m certainly not going to run the risk of having to set it up again,” snorted the Commander, signaling the Doormen who had supervised the departure to lock the controls. For the protection of everyone involved, the transfer had been one-way.
“Where are they being settled?” asked Saturday. “Where did the Queen decide to send them?”
The Commander smiled, a thin-lipped smile which, just for an instant, looked very much like the smile of the prophets. “We have sent them to the kind of place they asked for. A habitable place, appropriate for agriculture. It’s underpopulated. It even has a native race for them to enslave if they wish.”
“To enslave?” Saturday was appalled. “Where?”
The Commander pointed straight up, where the moons of Ahabar were in conjunction.
“We’ve given them the highlands of Ninfadel,” he said.
• When Howdabeen Churry received Shan’s request for an immediate secret meeting, he responded with polite alacrity and considerable curiosity. He had received Shan’s previous message; he had learned of the Four Questions. He had planned to act on the basis of those things alone. However, more information would not be amiss. What had his disciple, Shan, found on Hobbs Land that The Arm of the Prophetess should be cognizant of?
They met in Chowdari. Shan, in a tight but determined voice, went into somewhat lengthy autobiographical detail before getting to the point, which was, he said, that he felt personally threatened by the Hobbs Land Gods.
“Volsa goes on and on at me about their being completely beneficent, if they’re anything at all, but it seems to me something could appear to be beneficent, for its own purposes, couldn’t it?”
“You mean as a kind of lure?” Churry’s steely eyes turned silver in concentration. “Bait?”
“Precisely. Presumably the fish thinks the fly is beneficial, too, until he feels the hook. It is my opinion that the Hobbs Landers simply haven’t felt the hook yet.”
“What makes you think these so-called Gods are inimical?”
“In the first place, I don’t think it’s ‘Gods,’ ” said Shan. “I’m sure it’s all one thing, or was, originally. There was one there when they settled the planet. It died leaving a seed or something from which the new one came. All the settlements have built these little temples, as though waiting for one of their own to sprout. There’s even one at Central Management. They may have clones of their own by now, for all I know.”
“But you said inimical?” prodded Churry.
“Oh, well, one doesn’t know, does one?” he said with tightly controlled sarcasm. “There are three possibilities, I suppose. It could be beneficial. It could be neutral. It could be inimical. What are the chances of one alternative over another? There are more creatures that eat other creatures than there are creatures who don’t.” He shamed himself by giggling, hysterically.
Churry gave him a look like a lash. “Control yourself, Damzel. You’re not making sense. You’ve said it’s some kind of vegetable. Existing only on Hobbs Land.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? So long as it’s only Hobbs Land, one might afford to wait and see. But if it got off Hobbs Land …”
“You think it will?”
“I believe it has.”
Churry leaned
