Jason sat watching him.
"Who are you, Howard?" he asked.
"I'm sorry." Hal hesitated. "I can't tell you that. But I should tell you you've no obligation to call me brother. I'm afraid I lied to you. I'm not of the faith, as you call it. I've got nothing to do with whatever organization you and those with you belong to. But I am at war with Nigel Bias and his kind."
"Then you're a brother," said Jason, simply. He picked up his own cold coffee cup and drank deeply from it. "We - those the Accursed call the Children - are of every sect and every possible interpretation of the Idea of God. Your difference from the rest of us isn't any greater than our differences from each other. But I'm glad you told me this, because I'll have to tell the others about you when we reach them."
"Can we reach them?" asked Hal.
"There's no problem about that," said Jason. "I'll make contact in town here with someone who'll know where the closest band of warriors is, right now; and we'll join them. Out in the countryside we of the faith still control. Oh, they chase us, but they can't do more than keep us on the move. It's only here, in the cities, that the Belial-spawn and their minions rule."
He slid to the end of the booth and stood up.
"Come along," he said.
Out in the coldly damp air of the street, they located a callbox and coded for an autocab. In succession, they visited a clothing store, a library and a gymnasium, without Jason's recognizing anyone he trusted enough to ask for help. Their fourth try brought them to a small vehicle custom-repair garage in the northern outskirts of Citadel.
The garage itself was a dome-like temporary structure perched in an open field out where residences gave way to small personal farm-plots rented by city dwellers on an annual basis. It occupied an open stretch of stony ground that was its own best demonstration of why it had not been put to personal farming the way the land around it had. Inside the barely-heated dome, the air of which was thick with the faintly banana-like smell of a local tree oil used for lubrication hanging like an invisible mist over the half-dismantled engines of several surface vehicles, they found a single occupant - a square, short, leathery man in his sixties, engaged in reassembling the rear support fan of an all-terrain fourplace cruiser.
"Hilary!" said Jason, as they reached him.
"Jase - " said the worker, barely glancing up at them. "When did you get back?"
"Yesterday," said Jason. "The Accursed put us up overnight in their special hotel. This is Howard Immanuelson. Not of the faith, but one of our allies. From Coby."
"Coby?" Hilary glanced up once more at Hal. "What did you do on Coby?"
"I was a miner," said Hal.
Hilary reached for a cleansing rag, wiped his hands, turned about and offered one of them to Hal.
"Long?" he asked.
"Three years."
Hilary nodded.
"I like people who know how to work," he said. "You two on the run?"
"No," said Jason. "They turned us loose. But we need to get out into the country. Who's close right now?"
Hilary looked down at his hands and wiped them once more on his cloth, then threw the cloth in a wastebin.
"Rukh Tamani," he said. "She and her people're passing through, on their way to something. You know Rukh?"
"I know of her," said Jason. "She's a sword of the Lord."
"You might connect up with them. Want me to give you a map?"
"Please," said Jason. "And if you can supply us - "
"Clothes and gear, that's all," said Hilary. "Weapons are getting too risky."
"Can you take us close to her, at all?"
"Oh, I can get you fairly well in." Hilary looked again at Hal. "Anything I'll be able to give you in the way of clothes is going to fit pretty tight."
"Let's try what you've got," said Jason.
Hilary led them to a partitioned-off corner of his dome. The door they went through let them into a storeroom piled to the ceiling with a jumble of containers and goods of all kinds. Hilary threaded his way among the stacks to a pile of what seemed to be mainly clothing and camping gear, and started pulling out items.
Twenty minutes later, he had them both outfitted with heavy bush clothing including both shoulder and belt packs and camping equipment. As Hilary had predicted, Hal's shirt, jacket and undershirt were tight in the shoulders and short in the sleeves. Otherwise, everything that he had given Hal fitted well enough. The one particular blessing turned out to be the fact that there were bush boots available of the proper length for Hal's feet. They were a little too wide, but extra socks and insoles took care of that.
"Now," Hilary said when the outfitting was complete. "When did you eat last?"
Hunger returned to Hal's consciousness like a body blow. Unconsciously, once it had become obvious in the cell that there was no hope of food soon, he had blocked out his need for it - strongly enough that he had even sat in the coffee place with Jason and not thought of food, when he could have had it for the ordering. As it was, Jason answered before he did.
"We didn't. Not since we got off the ship."
"Then I better feed you, hadn't I?" grunted Hilary. He led them out of the storeroom and into another corner of the dome that had a cot, sink, foodkeeper and cooking equipment.
He fed them an enormous meal, mainly of fried vegetables, local mutton and bread, washed down with quantities of a flat, semi-sweet root beer, apparently made from a variform of the native Earth product. The heavy intake of food operated on Hal like a sedative. Once they had all piled into a battered six-place bush van, he stretched out and fell asleep.
He woke to a rhythmic sound that was the slashing of branch tips against the sides of the van. Looking out the windows on either side, he saw that they were proceeding down a forest track so narrow that the bushes on either side barely allowed the van to pass. Jason and Hilary were in mid-conversation in the front seat of the van.
"... Of course it won't stop them!" Hilary was saying. "But if there's anything at all the Belial-spawn are even a little sensitive to, it's public opinion. If Rukh and her people can take care of the core shaft tap, it'll be a choice for them of starving Hope, Valley-vale, and the other local cities, or shifting the ship out fitting to the core tap center on South Promise. It'll save them trouble to shift. It's a temporary spoke in their wheel, that's all; but what more can we ask?"
"We can ask to win," said Jason.
"God allowed the spawn to gain control in our cities," said Hilary. "In His time, He will release us from them. Until then, our job is to testify for Him by doing all we can to resist them."
Jason sighed.
"Hilary," he said. "Sometimes I forget you're just like the other old folk when it comes to anything that looks like an act of God's will."
"You haven't lived long enough yet," Hilary said. "To you, everything seems to turn on what's happened in your own few years. Get older and look around the fourteen worlds, and you'll see that the time of Judgement's not that far off. Our race is old and sick in sin. On every world, things are falling into disorder and decay, and the coming among us of these mixed breeds who'd make everyone else into their personal cattle is only one more sign of the approach of Judgement."
"I can't take that attitude," said Jason, shaking his head. "We wouldn't be capable of hope, if hope had no meaning."
"It's got meaning," said Hilary, "in a practical sense. Forcing the spawn to change their plans to an other core tap delays them; and who's to know but that very delay may be part of the battle plan of the Lord, as he girds his loins to fight this last and greatest fight?"
The noise of the branches hitting the sides and windows of the van ceased suddenly. They had emerged into an open area overgrown only by tall, straight-limbed conifers - variforms of some Earthly stock - spaced about upon uneven, rocky ground that had hardly any covering beyond patches of green moss and brown, dead needles fallen from the trees. The sun, for the first time Hal had seen it since he had arrived on Harmony, was breaking through a high-lying mass of white and black clouds, wind-torn here and there to show occasional patches of startling blue and brilliant light. The ground-level breeze blew strongly against the van; and for the first time Hal became aware that their way was uphill. With that recognition, the realization came that the plant life and the terrain indicated a considerably higher altitude than that of Citadel.