When he had broached the subject of Amel, his affairs had moved abruptly and with a mysterious fluidity in that direction. Psi detection and amplification equipment had been brought to him and concealed within his flesh. No one had remarked on the disappearance of the transceiver from his neck, and he had not asked to have it replaced.
A technician from the Psi Branch of I-A had been found to train Orne in the use of the new equipment, how to select out the first sharp signals of primary psi detection, how to focus on discrete elements of this new spectrum.
Orders had been cut, signed by Stetson and Spencer—even by Scottie Bullone—although Orne had been made aware that such orders were a mere formality.
It had been a busy time—meeting his new responsibilities of political selection, preparing for his wedding to Diana, learning the inner workings of the I-A which he had known before only through their surface currents, coming to grips with a new and peculiar kind of fear which arose from his psi awareness.
As he stood on the landing ramp above Amel’s spaceport, Orne recalled that fear clearly. He shuddered. Amel crawled with skin-creeping sensations. Weird urges flickered through his mind like flashes of heat lightning. One second, he wanted to grunt like a wallowing kiriffa; the next instant he felt laughter welling in him while simultaneously a sob tore at his throat.
He thought: They warned me it would be bad at first.
Psi training did not ease the fear; it only made him more aware. Without the training, his mind might have confused the discrete sensations, combined them into a blend of awe-fear—perfectly logical emotions for an acolyte disembarking on the priest planet.
All around him now was holy ground, sanctuary for all the religions of the known universe (and, some said, for all of the religions in the unknown universe).
Orne forced his attention onto the inner focus as he had been taught to do. Slowly, the crushing awareness dimmed to background annoyance. He drew in a deep breath of the hot, dry air. It was vaguely unsatisfying as though lacking an essential element to which his lungs were accustomed.
Still holding tightly to the rail, he waited to make certain the ghost urges had been subdued. Who knew what one of those compelling sensations might thrust upon him? The glistening inner surface of the opened port beside him reflected his image, distorting it slightly in a way that accepted his differences from the slender norm. The reflected image gave him the appearance of a demigod reincarnated from Amel’s ancient past: square and solid with corded neck muscles. A faint scar marked the brow line of his closely cropped red hair. Other tiny scars on his bulldog face were visible because he knew where to look. His memory told him of more scars on his heavy body, but he felt completely recovered from Sheleb—although he knew Sheleb had not recovered from him. There was a humorous observation in the I-A that senior field agents could be detected by the number of scars and medical patches they carried. No one had ever made a similar observation about the numerous worlds where the I-A had interceded.
He wondered if Amel would require that treatment, or if the I-A could intercede here. Neither question had a certain answer.
Orne studied the scene around him, still waiting out the psi control. The transport’s ramp commanded a sweeping view—a patchwork of towers, belfries, steeples, monoliths, domes, ziggurats, pagodas, stupas, minarets, dagobas… They cluttered a flat plain that stretched to a horizon dancing in the heat waves. Golden sunlight danced off bright primary colors and weathered pastels: buildings in tile and stone, tricrete and plasteel and the synthetics of a thousand thousand civilizations.
The yellow sun, Dubhe, stood at the meridian in a cloudless blue sky. It hammered through Orne’s toga with oppressive warmth. The toga was a pale aqua and he resented the fact that he could wear no other garment here. The color marked him as a student and he did not feel that he was here to study in the classic sense. But that had been a requirement of admission to Amel. The weight of the garment held perspiration to his body.
One step away along the ramp the escalfield hummed softly, ready to drop him into the bustle at the foot of the transport. Priests and passengers were engaged in a ceremony down there—initiation of new students. Orne didn’t know if he would have to undergo such a rite. The portmaster’s agent had told him to take his own time in disembarking.
What were they doing down there? He could hear a throbbing drumchant and a singsong keening almost hidden under the machinery clatter of the port.
As he listened, Orne experienced an abrupt sensation of dread at the unknown which awaited him in the narrow, twisted streets and jumbled buildings of the religious warren. Stories that leaked out of Amel carried such hints of forbidden mystery and power that Orne knew his emotions were tainted. This dread, however, he knew well. It had begun on Marak.
He had been seated in ordinary surroundings at his desk in his bachelor officer quarters. His eyes had been directed without focus at the parklike landscape outside his window—the I-A university grounds. Marak’s green sun, low in the afternoon quadrant, had seemed distant and cold. Amel had seemed just as distant—a place to go after his wedding and honeymoon. He had a permanent assignment to the I-A’s antiwar college as a lecturer on “Exotic Clues to War.”
Abruptly, he had turned away from his desk to frown at the stiffly regulation room. Something in it had gone awry and he couldn’t focus on quite what it was. Everything seemed so much in the expected pattern: the gray walls, the sharp angles of the bunk, the white bedcover with its blue I-A monogram of crossed sword and stylus, the hard chair backed against the foot of the bunk leaving a three centimeter clearance for the gray flatness of a closet door. Everything regulation and in its place.
But he could not put down the premonition that something here had changed… and dangerously.
Into that probing awareness, the hall door had banged open and Stetson had entered. The section chief wore his usual patched blue fatigues. His only badge of rank, golden I-A emblems on collar and uniform cap, appeared faintly corroded. Orne, wondering when the emblems had last seen polish, pushed that thought out of his mind. Stetson reserved all of his polish for his mind.
Behind Stetson like a pet on an invisible leash rolled a mechanocart piled high with cramtapes, microrecords and even some primitive books in stelaperm bindings. The cart trundled itself into the room, its wheels rumbling as it cleared the slideseal at the doorway.
Orne had focused on the cart, knowing it immediately as the object of his dread. He got to his feet, stared hard at Stetson. “What’s this, Stet?”
Stetson pulled the chair from the foot of the bunk, sailed his cap onto the blanket.
His dark hair straggled in an uncombed muss. His eyelids drooped. He said: “You’ve had enough assignments to know the trappings when you see them.”
“Don’t I have any say in that anymore?” Orne asked.
“Well, now, things may’ve changed a bit and then again, maybe they haven’t,” Stetson said. “Besides, this concerns something you say you want.”
“I’m getting married in three weeks,” Orne said.
“Your wedding has been postponed,” Stetson said. He held up a placating hand as Orne’s face darkened. “Wait a bit. Postponed, nothing more.”
“On whose orders?” Orne demanded.
“Well, now, Diana agreed to leave this morning on an assignment which the High Commissioner arranged for us.”
“We were having dinner tonight!” Orne said, outraged.