convoy was intended to establish three more—set up in a number of rather different habitats.
The seeding was done from the air, the viruses being laid out along long lines radiating like spokes from the circular metal wall which was the base of the plexus. The “electronic bats” which dispersed the viruses also carried cameras to assist in observation, but small ground-cars were also made available to the observers. This group was headed by Gregor Zuvara, who had become an expert on the Underworld by virtue of having spent a few more days there than most of those called in to assist him.
As the miniature city grew, Zuvara was forced to make ever-more-plaintive complaints about the inadequacy of his labor force. As soon as the news concerning the attack on Germont’s force and the several deaths among his personnel was made public, the number of volunteers for work in the Underworld fell rapidly.
Within a matter of days it became obvious both above and below that some form of conscription would have to become effective. The subjugation of the individuals in the society of the Euchronian Millennium to necessity, as defined by the Hegemony of the Movement, became absolute. The clock had been turned right back. For the second time, the Euchronian Movement demanded total loyalty in order that the world might be saved, not for the present generation, but for generations to come.
Almost everyone expected this mobilization of Euchronia’s manpower to go quite smoothly. This, after all, was the principle on which the world had been made. It had worked once—it had to work again. But Zuvara found his recruits resentful and discontent. The Euchronian spirit—the determination and selflessness that had built a world on the roof of a ruined Earth—was lacking.
Slowly, Zuvara realized that everything had changed. The Euchronian ideal was not enough. Not this time. Something within society had shattered.
While he watched the blight he had brought spreading throughout the world, stripping the vast marshland of everything living, reducing all plant tissue to a sort of protoplasmic tar, Zuvara could not help thinking: “We are destroying the world. The whole world. We are doing this to ourselves. Everything will die. There will be nothing left.”
He told himself over and over that this was merely a nightmare, but he could not rid himself of it.
9.
Chemec the cripple had left Shairn with Camlak because the way his mind worked left him little option but to follow his leader. Camlak had been Old Man of Stalhelm—virtually all that was left of Stalhelm. He had been all that was left of Chemec’s life.
Now Camlak was gone, and there was virtually nothing left of Chemec’s existence. Nothing but his cunning and his failing strength, and his meager identity: Chemec the crab, Chemec the bent-leg. But Chemec hardly felt a sense of loss. Certainly he did not grieve for Camlak. Chemec took life as it came, and accepted events as they happened. He lived neither in his memories nor in his hopes, but stayed always within the moment of the ephemeral present, carried along by the current of life. It was the way of his kind, and Chemec was very much one of his kind. More so than Camlak or Nita, or even Old Man Yami.
It was because of what he was rather than in spite of it that Chemec became a prophet. He had never been a man at odds with his soul. He coexisted with the Gray Soul inside his mind, in the simplest possible way. It was there, he let it be. He had never tried to be a psychic parasite with regard to his Gray Soul, nor had he attempted any kind of exchange. At Communion, he merely looked his Soul in the face. Nothing more. It was perfect commensalism—Chemec and the Soul shared the body and the mind, and neither troubled the other.
And because of this, when the Soul began placing motives in his mind, Chemec did not realize what was happening. He accepted the motives as his own, and he obeyed their commands as if they came from his own self.
He needed the motives. With Camlak gone, he had nothing left to him but to drift back into Shairn, to find a new community or to live alone, existing until he died. The motives made something of him. They repaired the aspect of function in his life. They made him a man again, whereas he might otherwise have contented himself as a rat.
From the Swithering Waste he went southwest, and came to the townships of northern Shairn: to Isthomi and Escar, to Rocoral and Zeid. In each town, he persuaded the priests to look into their soul-space, and he caused Communions to be called. At the Communions, he preached, and because of the Gray Souls his words were heard and engraved into the minds of his hearers.
All had heard Camlak’s scream and knew intuitively that something of moment had happened at that moment. They were ready to hear—and so were the Gray Souls.
Chemec warned of the coming of the men from Heaven—of the impending destruction of the world. This was prophecy. He described things which he had seen, and things which were yet to be seen. What he said was true.
He did no more than this—his function was to spread the word, and no more. His function was to alert the Children of the Voice in Shairn. Others took his warnings beyond Shairn, into other parts of the world. While Chemec prepared for the uniting of a nation, others made way for the uniting of a race.
And in all parts of the world, while the warning was carried, the priesthood of the Children of the Voice, in rapport with their Gray Souls, attempted to decide and define what role the Children of the Voice were to play in the coming climax of their world.
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