“Well, yes. Like you used to be. As I say, these followers may go along as long as the leader is influencing them, but they can change. The selected ones or the mutants can’t. Something inside them won’t let them trust anything or anyone. They have to fear. They have to attack.”
Emun Theckles, who had been listening to this with close attention, made a sudden, revulsive motion.
“What’s the trouble?” his brother asked.
“I was thinking of Enforcement,” Emun said. “The soldiers of Enforcement are programmed that way. They trust no one, believe no one. They, too, are hardwired to hate.”
Theor Close raised his eyebrows at Betrun Jun. China leaned toward the Phansuris and whispered, “Emun worked on Enforcement for forty years. He was a maintenance engineer for the army.”
“If they trust no one,” asked Dern, “how can you deal with them?”
“They’re programmed to ask questions,” said Emun. “When they ask questions, you’d better have the answers they’ve been programmed to accept, that’s all.”
“True,” murmured Theor Close. “You read a catechism of attitudes and opinions into the Enforcement soldiers, then they will seek that set of attitudes and opinions. Any living thing not manifesting that set, dies.”
“Enforcement would kill a poultry-bird because it didn’t recite the proper formulae?” Sam barked in unamused laughter.
“Unless it was programmed to ignore poultry-birds,” Betrun Jun agreed. “Mostly, the Enforcement machines are programmed to ignore all living creatures except those fitting a certain pattern. Manlike, for example. Or like some alien people.”
“Let’s quit talking about it,” said Zilia. “It’s over. The Voorstoders were the only tribal religionists in the System. The Gharmgods are now all over Ahabar. Phansure never did have that kind of religion. And the prophets are safely away from us all, on Ninfadel.”
“They have a Door,” said Sam in a bleak, uninterested voice.
Everyone looked at him, wondering if he had gone mad.
“What do you mean,” asked China at last.
“They had a Door, the one they came through into Voorstod. It was in the courtyard of the citadel. When I went up there and we buried Maire … Maire’s body, I saw that it was gone. I didn’t remember it until just now. They must have taken it with them.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?” asked Dern Blass, unbelieving.
“I didn’t remember it until just now.”
Again Emun made the revulsive gesture. “Bad,” he said. “People like that shouldn’t have Doors of their own.”
Spiggy said, “So they could … go through it from Ninfadel and come out … where?”
“I don’t know where,” said Emun. “Maybe anywhere.”
Theor Close raised his eyebrows into his hair. “What did this Door look like?”
Sam described it. Jep and Saturday added a few words.
“You have reason to be concerned,” the engineer said, casting his colleague a doubtful and worried look. “Doors of that type have not been made for civilian use for millennia. They operate one way only. They need no other end in order to function. They may be set, approximately, for any destination.”
“Where would the prophets go?” asked Africa Wilm. “To Thyker, perhaps. To the Baidee.”
“The Baidee are free thinkers,” remarked Dern. “They would not put up with the prophets’ claim to know the only holy truth. It’s unlikely the prophets would go to Thyker, but we don’t know where else they might go. Perhaps just Out, away. Let us hope so. Whatever they intend to do, we must tell the people on Ahabar, immediately.”
• Howdabeen Churry counted on youthful zealotry and a few ancient weapons to carry out his plans regarding Hobbs Land. A year before, one of his minions had been digging into old military records and had found mention of certain devices that had been ordered from Phansuri armorers and stored in the desert at the time of the Great Invasion. The minion had found no record indicating they had been disturbed since. When The Arm of the Prophetess had made a foray into the desert and uncovered one of the repositories, it had found the armament as described, much of it still in its original shipping cases.
Among other interesting devices was a thing called a Paired Combat Door, one of which was always keyed to the other, while the other could be keyed onto any existing Door within System range. The two interconnected Doors could be assembled quickly and taken apart as quickly. They would allow an invasion force to set up one Door at their home base, invade through an existing planetary Door, blow up that Door, and set about hostilities while carrying an escape route with them.
Even when quite new, the Combat Door had come without a guarantee. Nothing that complex, designed to be set up that quickly, could be guaranteed—so the disclaimer attached to the device stated, estimating a fifteen percent chance of failure during any sustained period of use. Churry chose not to mention this to his troops. He merely punched up the manuals for assembly and disassembly, uttered a perfunctory prayer to the Overmind, in whose service he was engaged, and suggested daily drills until proficiency was attained.
In a remote desert region of Thyker, both Doors were tested by being assembled and interlocked, and successfully transmitting men and materiel from point A to point B and back again. Everyone arrived intact at both places. Howdabeen Churry permitted himself a small sigh of relief. Losses at such an early stage of the exercise would have been difficult to explain away.
When the troops disbanded, with instructions to arrive early in the morning for the actual invasion, Churry sat with Mordy Trust over glasses of oasis wine and the charts of Hobbs Land which Shan Damzel had given to Churry in Chowdari.
“We go into the Central Management area,” said Mordy Trust, reviewing the plan for one last time. “We blow the Doors behind us as we come in, to prevent Hobbs Land from sending any messages out. The flier park is nearby. We take twelve fliers from the park. One team goes to each settlement and destroys any God they
