Blasphemy (part 12)
The levitating skimmer raced down the highway, two guards at my side. The trip had taken us to another part of the stylish city, past sunny tree-lined boulevards, elegant homes, and bustling shops.
They vanished behind us, a transition as abrupt as the one that had dropped Vortex and me out of hyperspace. The road continued, but there was nothing on either side of us except a flat, barren plain. Even on this pleasant day, the ground looked sere and uninviting. There were a few plants - small, stunted invaders scattered across the emptiness.
I turned to look behind us; the city ended in a straight line, as if there was a force field preventing it from expanding further. The break was sharp enough that it seemed almost as if the shadows of the buildings themselves did not dare to stretch into the empty space.
The road ended in a wide paved expanse twenty kilometers from the end of the city. The skimmer, unpiloted, pulled right to the end of the parking area and settled to the ground, its comforting hum of motion dissolving into an ominous stillness.
One of my guards opened the door and stepped out.
"If you please," she asked, pleasantly, gesturing for me to get out of the skimmer as she unstrapped her energy weapon from her belt. Her partner, on the other side of the vehicle, was also taking out her gun.
"Eighteen" I whispered, taking my time sliding across the comfortable seating to the door.
"I'm already at Distress Potential Protocol Twenty." Vortex replied. "Do you wish to downgrade? I am preparing for liftoff."
I looked to the guard, who'd stepped behind the skimmer. She was putting the weapons into a storage trunk.
"Down to Seventeen, Vortex," I whispered. The second guard closed the trunk hood as the first looked in to see if I was coming.
"Did you say something, Captain Gale?" she asked.
"A simple prayer," I replied, as Vortex acknowledged the status change in my ear. I wasn't surprised she'd escalated the Distress Protocol. She could be such a worrier at times.
"That is good," the guard replied, "for this is a holy place. Now, if you will follow us."
Other skimmers were arriving in waves, each pulling into the next available place. Laasko of all sizes and shapes emerged from the vehicles, dressed in finery of every hue and shade of red.
The guard led me to a wide boulevard flanked by two rows of monolithic stones, equally spaced, each carved with the symbols of Joos-tow. The mottled roadway was formed from fitted stones, carved and carefully placed. The ancient surface was worn smooth, flattened by the erosion of a billion footfalls. I could see other boulevards, one on either side of me, converging somewhere up ahead.
There was a rustling around me. It wasn't the air, which hung still and anticipatory, the sky holding its breath. It was the combined whispers from the crowds walking behind me.
I came to the end of the roadway and gasped. I was staring down into a perfectly smooth, precisely circular crater a little less than three kilometers across, scooped out of a plain of dark-veined pinkish granite. Hundreds of boulevards spaced around the rim of the bowl ended at the lip, each at the end of a long series of steps. These gently sloping stairways were wide aisles leading past thousands of rings of stone benches all the way down to the base. The benches, all part of the same stone as the crater, were a slightly darker color, a faded carmine. At the bottom of this giant arena was a perfect flat circle of the deepest, purest red crystal I've ever seen. There wasn't a single scratch in it, not a sign of wear. The entire stadium was surrounded by glossy obsidian pillars, thin, twisted and stark. From the air it probably looked like a giant bloody target, with me being led towards the middle.
Laasko were filling the crater from every entrance. They surged down the stairways. Crimson and scarlet spread rapidly into the benches, flowing into the empty seats like corpuscles in the circulatory system of a living entity.
When I reached the bottom, there was a priest waiting for me. Clad in immaculate incandescent cherry red satins, his dark eyes gave him an almost malevolent look.
"You are in a unique position," he said gently, his friendly baritone a contradiction to his appearance. "Joos-tow waved a hand to create this holy place more than nine thousand yearcycles past. You are the first who is not Laasko to enter."
"I am honored." I looked up. People continued to pour in, a sea of scarlet slowly filling from the bottom, in orderly and unnatural near-silence.
"Impressive, is it not?"
"Yes. How many Laasko will be here?" He looked at me in amusement, as if it was a silly question.
"All of them," he said matter-of-factly, "directly or by the information net." He wasn't kidding.
I looked down, considering my options carefully. The crystal at the bottom caught my eye. It was a single ruby, a hundred meters across, smooth and gently shimmering in the sunlight. I had to admit that Joos-tow was a pretty fair architect. It wouldn't be my first choice of color scheme, but I wasn't going to say that.
"Come join me," the priest said, moving to a seat on the first circle of benches.
"What is going to happen?" I asked. The priest just smiled. It was clear he wasn't going to say anything.
"Twenty."
"Twenty?" he asked. I smiled back at him, not saying another word.
"Twenty." Vortex replied. "Preparing for liftoff." If they were going to make an example of me, if they were all going to be here, then I wanted Vortex nearby.
Before long, we were joined by the High Priestess and more than four hundred others, many I recognized from the first day. The High Priestess sat next to me.
I'd had a chance to get a pretty good idea of their culture. This was clearly an occasion never before matched in their history. The leaders of the church were dressed in their finest, with all the trappings of their religious offices. I'm talking more jewelry than the entire Goshan Royal Court and more holy symbols than the entire Bishopric of the New Stigmata Cluster.
The High Priestess looked at a timepiece. She smiled at me, and then stepped to the center of the circle. Stretching her hands into the air, she began to chant.
"As it was in the beginning..." The words echoed around the crater, amplified perfectly by all the Laasko. "...so shall it be today." She pointed towards the sun. "As it is today..." Her arms shifted towards the sunset horizon. "...so shall it be tomorrow, and in all the days that follow..." Her arms shot straight up, stiff and unwavering, yet still wholly natural, hands reaching upwards to grasp the sky. The High Priestess started to turn slowly, rotating to face each section of the arena. "We ask in the presence of Joos-tow, for the wisdom of Joos-tow, and the knowledge of Joos-tow."
There was complete silence when she had finished. The High Priestess returned to her place next to me, reaching out her hand. The priest on my other side offered his hand as well. I looked around. Everyone was joining hands, in every row that I could see. Since they didn't seem to be intent on dragging me to the center to make an obvious spectacle, I took their hands and completed the circle. There was a tingle of electricity as I did, and the Priestess was clearly trembling.
"Maggie," Vortex whispered, "I am in the air. There was no response from their air traffic controller, nor were there any orders to stop. You should also know that I am not detecting any air traffic at all, in any of the volume I can monitor."
The High Priestess turned to me, interrupting Vortex. She placed my hand into the hand of the priestess that had been standing next to her.
"Do not be afraid," she said quietly, a waver in her voice. "Please stay in the circle, no matter what happens." She put her hand on the priestess' shoulder. "Karr All will guide you, should it be necessary."
"You are in good hands," added the priest on my other side. There's an entire chapter in the First Contact Protocol dedicated to that phrase, and Vortex had recited it to me as a reminder more than once before.
"I am on station," Vortex said, on cue, "three minutes out." That was all part of the protocol. I also knew that she would cut that time down to ninety seconds or so if she was really worried.
"Wait," I said. That was meant for Vortex, but the Laasko didn't know that.
"Questions later," Karr All said, as someone else handed the High Priestess a two meter wooden staff, tipped with a golden metallic symbol of Joos-tow. The staff was smooth, a pale ash with whorls of darker gray swirling about the length.
The High Priestess took two steps away from the inner circle, which closed up. Her back was to me. A shiver ran through her as she planted the tip of the staff firmly on the ground. I could hear the contact it made, even if I couldn't see it.
"Joos-tow," she called out.
"Joos-tow." She snapped the staff off the ground, thrusting it into the air. There was no hesitation or question in her movements, practiced, crisp, like the most disciplined of martial artists.
"Joos-tow." The staff spun through the air until it was held parallel to the ground over her head.
"Joos-tow" she called out, and so did everyone else in the entire crater except for me. I admit that I jumped at the sheer unexpected intensity, volume, and clarity. I've been to big-time football, soccer, and nimth games before, and no one ever gets the chant in unison. There are always some stragglers. Every organized chant I'd ever heard before had sounded more like a breaking wave of white noise than whatever it was they'd been trying to chant.
Not the Laasko. Their voices were clear and intense, calling out 'Joos-tow' like it had never been called before. In perfect timing, they continued, a new 'Joos-tow' every thirty seconds.
"Maggie?" Vortex was still whispering, but there was a new urgency in her voice. "I'm sensing something anomalous. Stand by." What else was I going to do? The Laasko were continuing their chant, with the timed precision of an atomic clock. I just hoped it wasn't something stupid, like a volley of missiles at Vortex.
"Vortex?" I whispered at the next chant, knowing that she'd be able to discriminate my voice in all the noise.
"There are unusual electromagnetic and gravitic emanations, somewhere in your immediate vicinity. It does not match any known phenomena in my databases."
I could see what she was sensing. We could all see it. In the exact center of the crater, just off of the floor of this immense coliseum, a small star was forming. From a tiny white sphere of unimaginable brilliance, beams of light shot out in every direction. The High Priestess, standing between most of the light and me, looked like she was wreathed in an intense halo. The ruby at the base of the inner circle started to glow with its own light.
When I thought they were going to sacrifice me, it never occurred to me that they might take themselves in the process. As the light grew more and more intense, I realized that there was a real chance that the ruby could start to lase. We could all go up in the biggest flash of coherent light on this side of the galaxy. It would be just the kind of crazy theological stunt that a race faced with a contradiction of their basic faiths might pull, if they had the technology of the Laasko.
"Extraction," I yelled, not worrying whether the Laasko could hear me. Vortex hadn't waited. I could see her racing towards me, her engines flaring, diving towards the center of the crater.
The star erupted. The chanting stopped.
"I can't move, despite full thrust," Vortex cried. "All systems report normal. Sensor readings make no sense. Maggie?" There was panic in her voice.
"Still here." I couldn't see, having stared into a nova. There were too many glowing afterimages, slowly fading. I couldn't tell if the lustrous rosy glow in front of me was real or just the imagination of my overstimulated optic nerves. One of the actinic sparks still dancing in my vision seemed frozen just above the rim of the crater, probably the incandescent thrust of Vortex's straining engines.
"I am still trying to reach you, although I cannot get closer than fifteen hundred meters on any of the vectors I have tried. I detect only two Laasko in the target landing zone. The anomalous emanations are subsiding."
I squinted, trying to figure out who had joined the High Priestess inside the inner circle.
"Captain Gale?" It was the High Priestess, her voice trying to remain calm, but failing. The priestess and priest let go of my hands uncertainly, breaking the circle.
"Vortex?" I whispered. I didn't want to be in the middle without her.
"No success."
"Keep trying." I've always held that there's no sense trying to avoid the inevitable. I blinked to clear my eyes one last time, then walked from my place, to the side of the High Priestess. I blinked again when I saw the being standing in front of her.
"Joos-tow?" The High Priestess looked uncertain, almost surprised that her ritual had worked. The other faces that I could see, as my vision returned, seemed just as stunned and confused.
Joos-tow was radiant, a crimson aura of energy bands still fading about it. Joos-tow was exactly as the paintings had shown, clearly humanoid like the Laasko - but somehow more human in person. It was both male and female in nature, yet gender seemed irrelevant. It appeared totally calm, exuding the confidence of something that could devastate the planet with its merest whim. In the distance, the clouds were gathering, the wind picked up, and there was a rumble of thunder, although that might have been Vortex.
"I am here, as I am always here," Joos-tow said simply, in a matter-of-fact tone. Its voice was more nasal than I expected. Too many vids of great booming-voiced deities, I suppose.
"Do not fear, my child," Joos-tow continued, definitely a bit nasal. The High Priestess swallowed once, her cheeks slightly reddened.
"What would you ask of me, before the gathered host of the Laasko?" The High Priestess still couldn't speak, although I could see her composure returning. She wasn't the kind of person who would be off-balance for very long in any situation, even when facing her deity.
"It has been so very long." Joos-tow turned to look up at the rings of seated Laasko. "It is clear that you have done exceedingly well, following the precepts that I laid down for you so many millennia ago. Your leadership, and that of those who have gone before, is to be commended, my child."
"Thank you," she replied politely, smiling through gritted teeth. I could tell that being called "child" didn't sit well with the High Priestess. Joos-tow didn't seem to notice her discomfort; it didn't seem to matter to it. That seemed to annoy the High Priestess even more.
"Joos-tow?" She'd found her voice, the self-confident one honed by years of control over an entire planet.
"Yes, my child?"
"I have not been a child for many years now." Her voice was playful and friendly, carefully modulated by political practice, yet the meaning was clear. Joos-tow laughed, even as the Priestess held her breath. She had guts and a pretty good poker face, but this was a god that had leveled cities before.
"I suppose not," it replied, smiling serenely. Joos-tow stepped closer to her. It reached out to run fingers across one of the symbols of her office, a thick golden pendant that hung between her breasts.
She stepped back, clearly unnerved at the casual intrusion into her personal space. I suppose that it was years of conditioning at work, with practice at keeping everyone just a little at bay. I'd seen it in a lot of rulers.
"Maggie?" It was Vortex.
"Shhh." I whispered, or tried to. The sudden silence between Joos-tow and the High Priestess was there for me to fill. Both of them turned to me.
"High Priestess." Joos-tow made the remark a question, just by inflection. "This Laasko stands before me, in the holiest of places, yet does not wear the blessed colors." Great. I happen to like green, and the color schemes of the gods are not spelled out in the First Contact Handbook.
The High Priestess took a step in my direction, putting herself between me and Joos-tow.
"I see." Joos-tow said, without embellishment. It sounded condescending to me. "If you will not explain this, I must ask again. What would you ask of me, before the gathered host of the Laasko?"
The High Priestess paused for a moment, steeling herself. It was clear that she was making an important personal decision.
"I would like to make a formal introduction," she replied sternly. I began to suspect that her personal decision might not be in my best interest. She turned towards me. "If you would join me." I stepped next to her, wondering where she was going to go.
"Captain Gale, allow me to introduce Joos-tow, the God of the Laasko. Joos-tow is the Bringer of Truths to the Laasko, and holds truth and the search for knowledge as the most fundamental precept of existence."
Joos-tow nodded.
"Well said, High Priestess." Joos-tow nodded to me, and then extended its hand. I bowed back, using the second form of the Submissive Acceptance of a Power Greater Than That of the Coterie, adding an extra open palmed Gesture of Acquiescence.
"How do you explain her, Joos-tow?" the High Priestess demanded, her voice full of strength and indignant passion. There was a gasp from the others in the stadium. I straightened up, my bow incomplete. Joos-tow was surprised as well. I'd never shaken the hand of a god before, and if the High Priestess kept that tone, I might never get the chance. That personal decision she'd made must have had something to do with suicide. "Captain Gale is not of the Laasko, but of a civilization that travels the stars."
Joos-tow had been about to take my hand and say something, until that 'not of the Laasko' sank into its consciousness.
"How do you explain this?" the High Priestess insisted, not letting Joos-tow respond. There was fire and righteousness growing in her voice. "Captain Gale is not a Laasko. She brings with her a mathematics of hyperspace that contradicts yours. She arrives in a ship filled with mechanisms that we could not imagine, let alone simulate. Look into the sky behind you and you will see that very ship, which appears to have a sentience of its own. Captain Gale and her ship is proof that your commandment is wrong. Your identification of her as one of us is wrong."
Joos-tow was uncomfortable. The High Priestess wasn't a supplicant begging for a tidbit of wisdom. She was an angry leader of a people demanding to know why they had been lied to. She was an Imperial Prosecutor with an inescapable case, inevitably damning in every point of logic. She was bringing the real truth to the Bringer of Truth.
I was also feeling uncomfortable, remembering the painting with the sea of lava. I knew that the First Contact Handbook didn't have any guidelines for meeting a god. I was also quite sure that being confrontational and demanding was not the approach that the First Contact Review Board would suggest, no matter how insulting or condescending the attitude of the god.
I was beginning to wonder if I should try to silence the High Priestess in front of her god, but that didn't seem like a very good idea. Religions have a long history of eliminating those who threaten the theocratic elite, just as they have a long history of eliminating evidence that proves their dogma is flawed.
"Answer us, Joos-tow," she ordered. "Why should the Laasko continue to believe in a deity that has prevented its people from joining the rest of the civilizations of the galaxy?"
Joos-tow was about to say something, but the High Priestess waved her hand, silencing it.
"What other sections of your writings are wrong?" she demanded. The aura around Joos-tow dimmed into embers as I waited for the High Priestess to sink into a pool of lava, turn into a tortured pillar of iron, or any one of the other damnations I'd seen or heard about in my earlier sight-seeing.
There was nothing but silence. The sky had darkened, and clouds had filled the sky. A chilled gust of wind caught me and I shivered. If Joos-tow was going to strike the High Priestess down, lightning would be an easy option to use.
"Eight hundred meters." Vortex's words surprised me. She had gotten closer somehow. I could see her, behind Joos-tow. The way her engines were firing, she should have been doing close to escape velocity.
"Answer me, Joos-tow!"
Joos-tow looked at me, and then at Vortex, and then out to the sky. The wind just died. What had been a gathering storm stopped in its tracks. The crater was utterly silent.
Something landed between the three of us, thrown from the seats. It wasn't clear who the target had been. The rumble of Vortex's engines echoed weakly, breaking the silence. A small silvered symbol of Joos-tow skittered past the High Priestess' feet, bouncing across the ruby floor. There was more rumbling, and it wasn't just Vortex. The Laasko had broken their silence, an ominous growl made more threatening by an undercurrent of whispered hiss. Another religious medal flew from the seats, striking Joos-tow on the shoulder. The sound grew, an angry, chaotic, guttural call, tinged with wails of disbelief and betrayal.
It's hard to imagine a god cringing, but Joos-tow did, just before vanishing. Vortex shot through the sky, capable of moving once again. She blasted into the distance, her taxed engines blazing plasma. Thunder rolled over the crater as she cracked through the sound barrier before she could compensate.
"Stand by," she said, relief in her voice.
The High Priestess looked stunned. Most of the Laasko I could see seemed in a state of shock. There were more than a few on their feet, pushing their way past the stunned faithful. Chaotic knots of red swarmed on the stairways. Most were trying to leave. A few were trying to get closer to the center, to hurl their religious icons in our general direction.
Vortex set down in the circle, her gangplank extending down even before she was on the ground. I decided that it was time to leave, and quickly. More Laasko were stirring, a slowly building buzz of angry, agitated voices.
"Captain Gale?" I was halfway up the ramp when the High Priestess spoke. "Joos-tow is gone." Her voice had lost its fire. She sounded tired. "My people will see the stars now. We have you to thank."
I wasn't sure how grateful some of them would be when they realized that I was responsible for the loss of their deity. A symbol of Joos-tow, delicately golden, trailing a heavier chain bounced off my shin. Something else metallic clattered on the ramp. More of the Laasko had worked their way to the bottom of the circle, to point at me and shake their fists. There are some humanoid languages that are universal. They were not grateful at all.
"You are welcome, but I think it best if I leave. Good luck to you, High Priestess."
"I think you are right," she replied. "Go with..." She stopped herself from an ingrained habit. "Go with joy and fortune, and my best wishes for your safe return to your home."
Within an hour, we were well into the outer reaches of the Laasko system. I wanted to be out of the range of their spaceships, just to give us time to think. It also gave us time to run the system diagnostics three different ways before we even considered actually firing up the hyperdrive engines. Everything looked normal, just as they had when we'd arrived here. It was hard to tell who was more surprised when we melted back into the familiar pastels of hyperspace on the very first try, the engines functioning as designed.