The entire Arm had been found out, the name of one leading to the name of another, as such conspiracies do. Baidee were not accustomed to actually telling lies, that is, saying things they knew to be untrue. Most of them had simply swallowed their pride, admitted their guilt, and asked how long it would take to expiate.
Since Shan Damzel, while admitting to having provoked the entire incident and having had guilty knowledge of it, had not done any killing or raiding or taken part in the plans, he was sentenced to the same duty, but to a shorter term. Shan’s siblings were swift to declare their own judgment before Shan was taken away.
“People dead because of you,” said Bombi, sounding more annoyed than grieved. “Children dead because of you, shot down in their innocent blood. The whole family is whispering to one another, wondering if you have gone beyond the bounds.”
“Churry never said anything about killing anybody,” said Shan for the twentieth time. “He was going to go in and kill the things, and then we were going to see what happened.”
“Let us suppose the same thing happened here,” snarled Bombi. “Suppose the prophetess came back to Thyker, and suppose someone from Hobbs Land just happened by and shot her head off, what do you think would happen?”
“The prophetess is … was a human being.”
“So were those hundreds of people you killed.”
“I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Just as good as.”
Mixed with his dreams of the Porsa, Shan began to have dreams of mutilated bodies, broken faces, shattered children running from him, screaming. He thought he might rather be dead.
Phansure agreed to complete a Door in record time. The parts, including extras to allow for possible transport losses, were to be transshipped via Thyker to Hobbs Land, where Theor Close and Betrun Jun would set it up and put it to work. By that time, people would be notably thinner on Thyker, and the convict crew could look forward to little sympathy upon their return. If they ever returned. Except for Shan Damzel, the Baidee had been sentenced to a very long stay on Hobbs Land, where they were to load the Door by physical labor, using no machines, until everyone on Hobbs Land agreed that reparations were complete.
Jebedo Quillow, uncle to Willum R., said it would be a cold day on Collus before he would consider reparations complete. Dern Blass, still grieving over Tandle, thought the same. They were not alone among those who were determined that The Arm of the Prophetess would wither with age down to its last finger before it left Hobbs Land again.
The prisoners came through the Combat Door just eight days, Thyker, after the raid. What passed for justice on Thyker had always been admirably swift. All but three of them arrived quite safely. One of the three arrived inside out, and the other two did not arrive. This upsetting occurrence led to the disclosures that the Combat Door was not totally reliable and that Howdabeen Churry had known it all along.
Howdabeen Churry wondered then, and later, whether a death sentence would not, in the last analysis, have been more merciful.
• The same day the prisoners arrived, Emun Theckles came hesitantly into Sam Girat’s office at Settlement One to remind Sam of what he had said about the Door.
“Which Door?” asked Sam, who was thinking joylessly about other things.
“The one the Voorstoders have. You and Dern Blass were going to let somebody know about it, before the Baidee raided us. Then I suppose you forgot. At least, I haven’t heard any more about it.”
“I forgot,” Sam admitted, counting up the days that had passed. Six or seven. Everyone had been very busy.
“Who needs to know?” asked Emun.
Sam rubbed his head wearily. “Actually, Queen Wilhulmia should probably be informed first. Though I suppose Authority should be told, as well.”
“I’m going to worry about that until it’s done,” said Emun in his quavery, slightly fussy manner. “From what you said, up there on the escarpment, those prophets were dead set against you. You and Jep and Saturday. If I were you, I wouldn’t like the idea of somebody who hated me having a Door that could set him down on my front porch.”
Sam thought this was hyperbole. “Theor Close did say something about that, didn’t he.”
“That Door’s probably one of the real old ones, the kind people used to use to go Out. The kind the army still uses.”
Sam stared at the old man, wondering if he’d heard correctly. “The kind the army uses?”
“Enforcement wouldn’t be much good if it was limited to going through existing Doors, would it? Sure, the public Doors always have a Door at the other end. Either fixed-destination or varying-destination Doors always use a Door at the other end because that’s the safest way, the way least likely to disrupt. That’s the way the Baidee Door was, too. But military style Doors, Enforcement Doors, you can tune them. You know the settings for the nearest Doors, if any, to where you want to go, and you can tune the military Door to be so far north or south, or east or west, or up or down of one that’s already there. If you know the planetary diameter, that is, and have the right tables for that planet, showing the curvature at the proper longitude.
“Or, if the planetary body is listed, you look up the approximate settings in the Galactic Ephemera and have a computer figure the absolute time and send a three-dimensional beacon array through and see which ones send a signal back. Or you send a soldier scouting array through, and any soldier coming out on a surface sends a back pulse describing where he is and what he can see, and you tune from there. There’s five whole aisles of scouts on
