"Please, sir," one of the troopers held out a hand to indicate they should descend. The white-haired men in the robes gathered in an arrowhead formation at the foot of the steps.
He stepped out, stood on the little platform before the stairs. The rain battered into one side of his head.
A great shout went up, and the dozen old men at the foot of the steps each bowed their head and went down on one knee, into the puddles on the dark and wind-whipped runway. A blast of blue light ripped the blackness beyond the low buildings, its flickering brilliance momentarily illuminating hills and mountains in the distance. The assembled people started to chant. It took him a few moments to work out what it was, then realised they were yelling, "Za-kal-we! Za-kal-we!"
"Oh oh," he said to himself. Thunder bellowed in the hills.
"Yeah… could you just run that past me again?"
"Messiah…"
"I really wish you wouldn't use that word."
"Oh! Oh, well, Sir Zakalwe; what do you wish?"
"Ah… how about," he gestured with his hands. "Mister?"
"Sir Zakalwe, sir; you are pre-ordained! You have been beseen!" The high priest, sitting across the railway carriage, clenched his hands.
""Be-seen"?"
"Indeed! You are our salvation; our divine recompense! You have been sent!"
"Sent," he repeated, still trying to come to terms with what had happened to him.
They'd switched the floodlights off shortly after he'd set foot on the ground. The priests enveloped him, took him, many arms round his shoulders, from the concrete apron to an armoured truck; the lights went out on the runway and they were left with the slit-light from the truck and tank-lights; cones made fans by blinkers clipped over the lights. He was bustled away down a track to a railway station where they transferred to a shuttered carriage that clattered into the night.
There were no windows.
"Why yes! Our faith has a tradition of finding outside influences, because they are always greater." The high priest — Napoerea, he'd said his name was — made a bowing motion. "And what can be greater than the man who was ComMil?"
ComMil; he had to dredge his memory for that one. ComMil; that was what he had been, according to the Cluster's media; director of military operations when he and Tsoldrin Beychae had been involved in the whole crazy dance the last time. Beychae had been ComPol, in charge of politics (ah, these fine divisions!).
"ComMil…" He nodded, not really much the wiser. "And you think I can help you?"
"Sir Zakalwe!" the high priest said, shifting down from his seat to kneel on the floor again. "You are what we believe in!"
He sat back in the upholstered cushions. "May I ask why?"
"Sir; your deeds are legend! Forever since the last unpleasantness! Our Guider, before he died, prophesied that our salvation would come from " beyond the skies", and your name was one of those mentioned; so coming to us in our hour of need, you must be our salvation!"
"I see," he said, seeing nothing. "Well, we'll see what we can do."
"Messiah!"
The train drew up in a station somewhere; they were escorted from it to an elevator, then to a suite of rooms that he was told looked out over the city beneath but it was all in black-out. The internal screens were closed. The rooms themselves were quite opulent. He inspected them.
"Yes. Very nice. Thank you."
"And here are your boys," the high priest said, sweeping aside a curtain in the bedroom to reveal a languorously displayed half-dozen or so young men lying on a very large bed.
"Well… I, uh… Thank you," he said, nodding to the high priest. He smiled at the boys, who all smiled back.
He lay awake in the ceremonial bed in the palace, hands behind his neck. After a while, in the darkness, there was a distinct "pop', and in a disappearing blue sphere of light there was a tiny machine about the size of a human thumb.
"Zakalwe?"
"Hi, Sma."
"Listen…"
"No. You listen; I would really like to know what the fuck is going on here."
"Zakalwe," Sma said, through the scout missile. "It's complicated, but…"
"But I'm in here with a gang of homosexual priests who think I'm going to solve all their military problems."
"Cheradenine," Sma said, in her winning voice. "These people have successfully incorporated a belief in your martial prowess into their religion; how can you deny them?"
"Believe me; it would be easy."
"Like it or not, Cheradenine, you've become a legend to these people. They think you can do things."
"So what am I supposed to do?"
"Guide them. Be their General."
"That's what they expect me to be, I think. But what should I really do?"
"Just that," Sma's voice said. "Lead them. Meanwhile Beychae's in the Station; Murssay Station. That counts as neutral territory for now, and he's making the right noises. Don't you see, Zakalwe?" Sma's voice sounded tense, exultant. "We've got them! Beychae's doing just what we wanted, and all you have to do is…"
"What?"
"… Just be yourself; operate for these guys!"
He shook his head. "Sma; spell it out for me. What am I supposed to do?"
He heard Sma sigh. "Win their war, Zakalwe. We're putting our weight behind the forces you're working with. Maybe if they can win this, and Beychae gets behind the winning side here, we can — perhaps — swing the Cluster." He heard her take another deep breath. "Zakalwe; we need this. To a degree, our hands are tied, but we need you to make the whole thing settle out. Win their war for them, and we might just be able to get it all together. Seriously."
"Fine, seriously," he said to the scout missile. "But I've already had a quick look at their maps, and these guys are in deep shit. If they're going to win this war they're going to need a real miracle."
"Just try, Cheradenine. Please."
"Do I get any help?"
"Um… how do you mean?"
"Intelligence, Sma; if you could keep an eye on what the enemy's —»
"Ah, no, Cheradenine, I'm sorry we can't."
"What?" he said loudly, sitting up in the bed.
"I'm sorry, Zakalwe; really I am, but we've had to agree to that. This is a really delicate deal here, and we're having to keep strictly out of it. This missile shouldn't even be here; and it'll have to leave soon."
"So I'm on my own?"
"I'm sorry," Sma said.
" You'resorry!" he said, collapsing back dramatically on the bed.
No soldiering, he recalled Sma saying, some time ago now. "No fucking soldiering," he muttered to himself as he gathered his hair at the nape of his neck and pulled the little hide band over it. It was dawn; he patted the pony-tail and looked out through thick, distorting glass to the mist-shrouded city, just starting to wake to the dawn-rouged mountain peaks and the blue-glowing skies above. He looked with distaste at the over-ornamented long robes the priests expected him to wear, then reluctantly put them on.
The Hegemonarchy and its opponents, the Glaseen Empire, had been fighting, on and off, for control of their modestly-sized sub-continent for six hundred years before the rest of the Cluster came calling in its strange floating sky-ships, a century ago. They'd been backward even then, compared to the other societies on Murssay, which were decades ahead in technology, and — arguably — several centuries ahead morally and politically. Before they'd been contacted, the natives had the crossbow and the muzzle-loading cannon. Now, a century later, they had tanks. Lots of tanks. Tanks and artillery and trucks and a few very inefficient aircraft. Each side also had one prestige system, partially bought from but mostly just donated by some of the Cluster's more advanced societies. The Hegemonarchy had its single sixth- or seventh-hand spacecraft; the Empire had a clutch of missiles which were generally reckoned to be inoperable, and probably were politically unusable anyway because they were supposed to be nuclear-tipped. Public opinion in the Cluster could tolerate the technologically enhanced continuation of a pointless war so long as men, women and children died in relatively small, regular batches, but the thought of a million or so being incinerated at once, nuked in a city, was not to be tolerated.