“We've seen nothing more,” said the abbot.
Things had changed in München. The monastery had changed too. If it had looked a little like a fortress before, it looked more like one now. There were new bars on the main gate, and small gaps in the courtyard walls had been repaired with stone.
The lower parts of the windows had stones piled about them, too, and in the tower I could see watchers, presumably armed. Repair work was still going on, with human workers as well as machines. Another strange, archaic spectacle: It seemed indecent to watch humans at this type of labor. I knew the monks did a lot by hand, but these workers were new to me.
“Possible novices,” said the abbot, when I remarked on this. “We've had a burst of applicants recently. We'll see how they like tending a concrete mix for a while.”
“It looks very… quaint.”
“Suddenly new machines aren't available. Anyway,” he went on, “we've seen nothing more, either there”—he pointed to the slope of parkland and the swamp beyond—“or there.”
He pointed to the sky. Another orange column was rising from the München spaceport. Another ship lifting some cargo to the Serpent Swarmers or the Meteor Guard. I didn't know the details any longer. There were new faces on the Defense Council and I was being sidelined, though I was still being given statements to make for broadcasting. In any event, even for people at my level there had been a blackout of real news for more than a month.
And every night now there seemed to be unusual numbers of meteors, even by Wunderland standards, and other strange lights moving in the sky. No one was quite sure when this had started, but many had remarked upon it.
More importantly, while the Spaceport had never seemed busier, all passenger space traffic to Tiamat and the Serpent Swarm, and all other scientific and commercial flights, had stopped. That had caused a lot of anger, and possible reasons, all of them highly discreditable to one or all factions of the ruling powers, formed a staple of the new industry of streetcorner and public-square oratory.
Security was getting tighter, and political disorders, I had heard, were getting worse. There were rumors of rioting.
“You know what we may be up against?” I asked him.
“I think so, Nils. We're not flatlanders.”
“No, we're not flatlanders. We don't live on a tamed world and we're used to dealing with dangerous beasts. Our farmers still have guns. But if we're right, these dangerous beasts have gravity control and spaceships that make inertialess turns. They have beams and bomb-missiles. It's rather a different order of things.”
“I know.”
“Then why bother with this? Strengthening your walls won't hold them off. With the wrong wind, the radiation from one fusion point detonated over München, not even aimed here, could obliterate you.”
“If they want to destroy this world, there's not a lot we can do about it. But why should they? And as for the walls, I might say that if they settle for something less than total destruction, we still have our fellow humans to worry about, as always.”
“Yes,” I said. “That's been brought home to me rather clearly lately.”
“Paranoia is not only believing in nonexistent enemies. It's more commonly believing your enemies are more organized and efficient than they actually can be.”
“At the moment, I'm wondering who our enemies actually are.”
“And wondering what your place in it all is, I suspect.”
“Yes. I was put on the Defense Committee when it was formed but I know no more about defense than any of the others.”
“But probably no less than any of the others either.”
“I don't know that van Roberts and von Diderachs see things quicker or slower than I do. What has a biologist got to do with defense, anyway? Oh, I might think of some weapons to use against an alien enemy—biological weapons, I mean, I've read a little about them lately, but I have precisely one hair to work on.”
“I thought you were getting data from Earth.”
I hadn't known he knew about that. But I realized he must have many sources of information.
“It's stopped. Or at least, I've had nothing lately.”
“Ours, too. Some time back.”
So they weren't as determinedly medieval as they let on. That linked up with something else in my subconscious, but I could not pursue it at that moment. It filed itself away somewhere. He went on:
“We're staying, of course. It's human to want to run, but it seems our vows must have meaning after all. When I've spoken of the people of Wunderland as our flock, you know I've meant it more than half in jest—an amusing archaism from the pastoral days when the Church had a more definite mission and when human beings could really be thought of in terms of sheep needing a shepherd. But it's a poor shepherd who deserts his flock and runs when the first real wolf appears.”
“A wolf?”
“Know that I've also asked myself: 'What if it's more than a wolf? This might be a tiger.' It might also be a poor shepherd who commits suicide. If that's what staying means.”
“And I remember a verse,” I told him.
“Who said that?”
“An old poet called Kipling. It was meant as a war epitaph. It was in one of the old books I've been reading lately.”
“I've not heard of him.”
“ARM didn't like him. He'd just about disappeared from public libraries before the first slowboat lifted. But he was one of the craft, it seems. Our lodge has a small library of its own… Reading!… I feel useless. I make my contribution to the committee—try to say something, but when I do I feel it's a waste of time. Too many cooks spoiling the broth. There's nothing special I can contribute. If I were an engineer, I'd be far more use. Speed matters, and I might be able to enhance human reflexes with biological engineering, but the point is academic. To do anything meaningful in that direction would take years and resources I don't have.”
“I'll have to say I'm glad of that. The Church doesn't approve of BE, for humans most of all. And yet things seem to be happening. I've never heard so many ships taking off. And there are new factories.”
“They are happening with little help from me.”
“Think carefully. Act honorably. And pray. That's all I can tell you.”
Chapter 8
“Can you destroy your work?” I asked Dimity. I could imagine how any other scientist might have reacted to that question. She took it calmly, a little sadly. She understood the implications before I finished asking it.
“I haven't published yet. I can burn the papers. I can clear the computers' memories. I can't forget it. But it's far from finished. Years. And what I've got is only part of it.”
“And we are more years from building such engines?”
“Oh, yes. If we diverted every scientist and engineer we have away from the defense effort, still years before the first proper experiments. And we would need deep-space ships.”
“That's what I thought. We'll never get the resources now.”
“I know.”
“And now I think I know the best thing I can do for Wunderland. We've got to hide you. The caves will do for the time being.”
“I'd like to play my part. Do something more active.”
“I think we'll be active in good time. Right now, you are frankly too dangerous. I think it's time to go. And there's no one we're directly responsible for.”
Dimity was an orphan, thanks to the misprogramming of an air-car's memory for altitude a couple of years previously, and an only child. I was in a similar situation and for the first time in my life I was grateful for it.
We got up. Many shops were shuttered, and one or two burned, the detritus of the previous two nights' riots. There were few people on the streets, apart from the new armored and heavily armed police.