He was as puzzled as they were. He would gladly have confessed the most heinous of sins; in fact, several times during the long interrogation he did confess, simply to have it over with, but the espers read his motives plainly and laughed his confessions to scorn. Somehow, he knew, he had fallen into the hands of the enemies of the Brotherhood and had concluded a pact with them, a pact which he had fulfilled. But he had no inner knowledge of any of that. Whole segments of his memory were gone, and that was terrifying to him.
Mondschein knew that he was finished. They would not let him remain at Santa Fe, naturally. His dream of being on hand when immortality was achieved now was ended. They would cast him out with flaming swords, and he would wither and grow old, cursing his lost opportunity. That is, if they did not kill him outright or work some subtle form of slow destruction on him.
A light December snow was falling on the day that Supervisor Kirby came to tell him his fate.
“You can go, Mondschein,” the tall man said somberly.
“Go? Where?”
“Wherever you like. Your case has been decided. You’re guilty, but there’s reasonable doubt of your volition. You’re being expelled from the Brotherhood, but otherwise no action will be taken against you.”
“Does that mean I’m expelled from the church as a communicant, too?”
“Not necessarily. That’s up to you. If you want to come to wor-ship, we won’t deny our comfort to you,” Kirby said. “But there’s no possibility of your holding a position within the church. You’ve been tampered with, and we can’t take further chances with you. I’m sorry, Mondschein.”
Mondschein was sorry, too, but relieved, as well. They would not take revenge on him. He would lose nothing but his chance at life everlasting—and perhaps he would even retain that, just as any other common worshiper did.
He had forfeited, of course, his chance to rise in the Vorster hierarchy. But there was another hierarchy, too, Mondschein thought, where a man might move more swiftly.
The Brotherhood took him to the city of Santa Fe proper, gave him some money, and turned him loose. Mondschein headed immediately for the nearest chapel of the Transcendent Harmony, which turned out to be in Albuquerque, twenty minutes away.
“We’ve been expecting you,” a Harmonist in flowing green robes told him. “I’ve got instructions to contact my superiors the moment you show up.”
Mondachein was not surprised at that. Nor was he greatly astonished to be told, a short while later, that he was to leave by quickboat for Rome right away. The Harmonists would pay his expenses, he was informed.
A slim woman with surgically-altered eyellds met him at the station in Rome. She did not look familiar to him, but she smiled at him as though they were old friends. She conveyed him to a house on the Via Flaminia, a few dozen miles north of Rome, where a squat, sallow-faced Harmonist Brother with a bulbous nose awaited him.
“Welcome,” the Harmonist said. “Do you remember me?”
“No, I—yes. Yes!”
Recollection flooded back, dizzying him, staggering him. There had been three heretics in the room that other time, not just one, and they had given him wine and promised him a place in the Harmonist hierarchy, arid he had agreed to let himself be smuggled into Santa Fe, a soldier in the great crusade, a warrior of light, a Harmonist spy.
“You did very well, Mondschein,” the heretic said unctuously. “We didn’t think you’d be caught so fast, but we weren’t sure of all their detection methods. We could only guard against the espers, and we did a fair enough job of that. At any rate, the information you provided was extremely useful.”
“And you’ll keep your end of the bargain? I’m to get a tenth-level job?”
“Of course. You didn’t think we’d cheat you, did you? You’ll have a three-month indoctrination course so you can attain in-sight into our movement. Then you’ll assume your new duties in our organization. Which would you prefer, Mondschein—Mars or Venus?”
“Mars or Venus? I don’t follow you.”
“We’re going to attach you to our missionary division. You’ll be leaving Earth by next summer, to carry on our work in one of the colonies. You’re free to choose the one you prefer.”
Mondachein was aghast. He had never bargained for this. Selling out to these heretics, only to get shipped off to an alien world and likely martyrdom—no, he had never expected anything like that
Faust didn’t expect his troubles, either, Mondschein thought coldly.
He said, “What kind of trick is this? You’ve got no right to ask me to become a missionary!”
“We offered you a tenth-level job,” the Harmonist said quietly. “The option of choosing the division it would be remained with us.”
Mondschein was silent. There was a fierce throbbing in his skull. The face of the Harmonist seemed to blur and waver. He was free to leave—to step out the door and merge into the multitudes. To become nothing. Or he could submit and be—what? Anything. Anything.
Dead in six weeks, as likely as not.
“I’ll take it,” he said. “Venus. I’ll go to Venus.” His words sounded like a cage clanging shut.
The Harmonist nodded. “I thought you would,” he said. He turned to leave, then paused and stared curiously at Mondschein. “Did you really think you could name your own position—spy?”
Three
Where the Changed Ones Go
2135
one
The Venusian boy danced nimbly around the patch of Trouble Fungus behind the chapel, avoiding the gray-green killer with practiced ease. He hop-skipped past the rubbery bole of the Limblime Tree and approached the serried row of jagged nameless stalks that lined the back garden. The boy grinned at them, and they parted for him as obligingly as the Red Sea had yielded to Moses some time earlier.
“Here I am,” he said to Nicholas Martell.
“I didn’t think you’d be back,” the Vorster missionary said.
The boy—Elwhit—looked mischievous. “Brother Christopher said I couldn’t come back. That’s why I’m here. Tell me about the Blue Fire. Can you really make atoms give light?”
“Come inside,” Martell said.
The boy represented his first triumph since coming to Venus, and a small triumph it was, so far. But Martell did not object to that. A step was a step. There was a planet to win here. A universe to win, perhaps.
Inside the chapel the boy hung back, suddenly shy. He was no more than ten, Martell guessed. Was it just wickedness that had made him come here? Or was he a spy from the chapel of heretics down the road? No matter. Martell would treat him as a potential convert. He activated the altar, and the Blue Fire welled into the small room, colors dancing against the boards of the groined wooden ceiling. Power surged from the cobalt cube, and the harmless, dramatic radiations wrung a gasp of awe from Elwhit.
“The fire is symbolic,” Martell murmured. “There’s an underlying oneness in the universe—the common building blocks, do you see? Do you know what atomic particles are? Protons, electrons, neutrons? The things everything’s made up of?”
“I can touch them,” Elwhit said. “I can push them around.”
“Will you show me how?” Martell was remembering the way the boy had parted those knifeblade-sharp plants In back. A glance, a mental shove, and they had yielded. These Venusians could teleport—he was sure of it. “How do you push things?” Martell asked.
But the boy shrugged the question aside, “Tell me more about the Blue Fire,” he said.
“Have you read the book I gave you? The one by Vorst? That tells you all you need to know.”