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enemy would openly strike at Megatheopolis itself?
I did not so believe. But I wanted to find out. That was one of the reasons
for the experiment in the Great Square.
Brothers, you have the answer. Sathanas came.
No longer can we deny that our fosterling, the Witchcraft, conceals an
enemy an enemy daring and dangerous.
No longer can we deny that, within the debased Witchcraft which we tolerate,
there is another
Witchcraft, which seeks to use the weapon of fear, not only against commoners,
but against priests.
There is reason to believe that the members of this Inner Witchcraft may be
identified by certain marks on their bodies. They show themselves cunning and
resourceful.
No longer can we dismiss as some trifling case of mass hysteria the Matter of
the Frightened
Priests. To give them courage, I told them it might be merely a test we had
imposed upon them. But all of you know that three of our Fifth Circle
scientists have admitted themselves baffled by those manifestations in the
rural sanctuaries.
Goniface paused. The Moderates seemed angrier than ever. Plain talk of danger
always angered them. But the Realists were listening. The look in Brother
Jomald s face had become one of grudging admiration.
To return to the question: How goes Megatheopolis?
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Brothers, there is only one way to find out. Only one way to discover the
true temper of the commoners. The closest observation of them in their normal
round of life is insufficient. So are psychological tests. The one sure way,
the only sure way, is to foment a sizable minor crisis and study it
intensively.
The angriest Moderate started to get up. Frejeris forestalled him with a
certain unhappiness, as if he realized that they could no longer defeat
Goniface by a straightforward attack.
One does not fight fire by throwing oil on it, he began.
One does! Goniface countered. Oil is more penetrating than water. There is
a kind of hidden, smoldering fire which only oil can reach and which lacks
sufficient oxygen to ignite the oil. Such a fire, Brothers, smolders in the
hearts of our commoners. And the force operating against us from under cover
of the witchcraft is another such fire, hidden but dangerous.
To discover the secret temper of our commoners, to provide them with the
instructive example of a priest blasted for blasphemy or, in lieu of that, as
actually happened, to lure the enemy into the open I fomented a crisis.
And now, archpriests of Megatheopolis, I give you a faithful recording of
that crisis, for your contemplation and study, with a view to preventing the
truly serious ones to come.
After you have seen it, excommunicate me, if you still want to.
While Goniface spoke, Cousin Deth s assistants had worked a change in the
seemingly fleckless surface of the Council table. A circular depression about
six feet across had appeared in the center.
To one side were grouped smaller depressions, and certain slots had become
apparent. The rolls and canisters had all disappeared been inserted in the
appropriate orifices.
Deth had touched a control and, while Goniface had been speaking, the pearly
Council Chamber had slowly darkened, through an imperceptible series of grays.
Now came utter blackness.
With the suddenness of creation a miniature scene sprang into being in the
center of the table.
Only an occasional mistiness, and a slight blurring when many figures were
grouped together, testified that it was only a projection a focusing of the
patterns recorded on multiple tapes whirling noiselessly.
Pygmy figures in home-woven drab, scarlet-robed dolls of priests, tiny horses,
carts, and wares, all complete a sizable portion of the Great Square, without
the surrounding architecture.
Only now, instead of the Great God, the archpriests of the Apex Council
brooded over it.
Up from the smaller depressions rose stubby columns of light yellow, green,
blue, violet
fluctuating slightly but incessantly in height and saturation of
color indicative of the massed changes in the major neuro-emotional responses
of the crowd.
There rose the hum and babble of pygmy voices, the clatter of tiny hoofs, the
squeak of wooden wheels.
The scene in the Great Square was repeating itself.
Cousin Deth thrust his now-giant arm into the moving solidograph, momentarily
intensifying, then shattering the illusion. His fingers negligently poked at
and into two tiny red-robed figures.
Jarles and Chulian, he explained. In a few moments we ll give you their
voices in full intensity.
Goniface leaned back with satisfaction. He was studying the expressions on the
faces of the peering archpriests eerily lit masks seeming to hang against the
distanceless blackness beyond the table. But now and then he looked at the
solidograph.
It was at the moment of the first accusation of witchcraft the violet column
concerned with fear, repulsion, and similar emotions had jumped abruptly and
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gone wan that he chanced to note her face.
Almost, he jerked forward and grabbed at it.
But he caught himself in time and only leaned forward idly, as if it were his
momentary fancy to take a closer look.
It couldn t be.
But there it was. That little coldly purposeful face, more perfect than any
cameo, with its dark, finespun doll s hair. Not identically the same, of
course, as the one printed in his memory. But if you allowed for the years and
the maturing the years would have brought
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