Sixth Column (18 page)

"No, it would take me an hour to disassemble it and take out the

suppressor circuit for the white-man band of frequencies. And I'm not sure I

could get it back together right. Give me that straight razor of yours and get

out."

Howe got the razor and came back. He did not hand it over. "You ever

butchered a hog?" he inquired.

"No."

"Then I know more about how to do it." Stooping, he lifted Johnson's

chin. The man breathed heavily and grunted. Howe made one quick slash

and the man's throat was cut. He dropped the head, stood up and stared at

the spreading red stream. He spat in it, then stepped to the wash stand and

cleaned his razor.

Jeff said, "I guess I spoke too hastily, Alec."

Alec did not look up. "No," he said slowly, "not a bit too hastily. I guess it

takes some time to get used to the notion of war."

"Yeah, I guess so. Well, let's dispose of this thing."

Despite a very short night Jeff Thomas was up unusually early as he

wanted to report to Ardmore before the morning service. Ardmore listened

carefully to the account, then said, "I'll send Scheer down to install a shield

on the basement door. Some such rig will be standard for ail temple

installations from now on. How about Howe? Do you want to send him

back?"

"No," Thomas decided, "I think he's over the hump now. He's squeamish

by nature, but he's got plenty of moral courage. Damn it, boss, we've got to

trust somebody."

"Are you willing to turn the temple over to him?"

"Well . . . yes, I am-now. Why?"

"Because I want you to move on to Salt Lake City practically at once. I

lay awake most of the night thinking over what you told me yesterday. You

stirred me up, Jeff; I had been getting fat and sloppy in my thinking. How

many potential recruits have you got now?"

"Thirteen, now that Johnson is out of it. Not all of them candidates for

`priesthood,' of course."

"I want you to send them all here, at once."

"But, boss, I haven't examined them."

"I'm making a radical revision in procedure. We'll cut out examination

under drugs except at the Citadel. You haven't the facilities to do it gracefully.

I'm assigning Brooks to it; he will do all of it from now on and I will pass on

the ones who get by his elimination. From now on the `priests' will have the

prime duty of locating likely candidates and sending them in to the mother

temple."

Thomas thought about it. "How about characters like Johnson? We sure

don't want his type penetrating into the Citadel."

"I've anticipated that-and that's why the examinations will be held here. A

candidate will be doped before he goes to bed, but he won't know it. He will

be given a hypo, roused, and examined during the night. If he passes, well

and good. If he doesn't then he never will know he has been examined under

drugs but he will be allowed to think that he has passed. "

"That's the beauty of it. He will be accepted into the service of the great

god Mota, sworn in as a lay brother-and then we will work the tail off him!

He'll sleep in a bare cell, scrub floors, eat poor food and damn little of it, and

spend hours each day on his knees at his devotions. He'll be regimented so

thoroughly that he will never have a chance to suspect that there is anything

under this mountain but country rock. When he's got his bellyful, he will be

sorrowfully allowed to give up his vows, then he can trot back and tell his

Masters anything he jolly well pleases."

Thomas looked pleased. "It sounds swell, Major. It sounds like fun-and it

sounds as if it would work."

"I think it will and it will turn their agents to our advantage. After the war

is over we'll round them up and shoot 'em-the actual spies, I mean, not the

soft heads. But that's a sideshow; let's talk about the candidates that pass. I

want recruits and I want them fast. I want several hundred right away. Out of

that several hundred I want to get at least sixty satisfactory candidates for

`priesthood'; I want to train them simultaneously and send them all out into

the field at once. You've thoroughly sold me on the dangers of waiting, Jeff; I

want to penetrate every major PanAsian center at the same time. You've

convinced me that this is our only chance to pull off this masquerade."

Thomas whistled. "You don't want much, do you, loss?"

"It can be done. Here is the new doctrine for recruiting. Turn on your

recorder."

"It's on."

"Good. Send in only such candidates as have lost immediate members

of their families as a result of the PanAsian invasion, or have other

superficial, prima facie evidences that they are likely to be loyal under stress.

Eliminate obviously unstable persons but leave any other psychological

elimination to the staff at the Citadel. Send in candidates from the following

categories only: for the `priesthood'-salesmen, advertising men, publicity

men, newspapermen, preachers, politicians, psychologists, carnival pitch

men or talkers, personnel managers, psychiatrists, trial lawyers, theatrical

managers; for work not in contact with the public nor the enemy-skilled metal

workers of all sorts, electronics technicians, jewelers, watchmakers, skilled

precision workers in any engineering art, cooks, stenographers, laboratory

technicians, physicists, seamstresses. Any of the latter group may be

female."

"No female priests?"

"What do you think?"

"I'm against it. These babies rate women as zero or even minus. I don't

think a female `priest' could possibly operate in contact with them."

"I feel the same way. Now, can Alec take over the recruiting under this

doctrine?"

"Hmm . . . boss, I hate, to throw him on his own just yet."

"He wouldn't make a slip and give us away, would he?"

"No, but he might not get much in the way of results, either."

"Well, you'll just have to push him in, sink or swim. From here on we

force the moves, Jeff. Turn the temple over to Alec and report here. You and

Scheer will leave for Salt Lake City at once, publicly. Buy another car and

use the driver you have now. Alec can recruit another driver. I want Scheer

back here in forty-eight hours and I want your first recruits headed this way a

couple of days thereafter. Two weeks from now I'll send someone out to

relieve you, either Graham or Brooks-"

"Huh? Neither one of them has the temperament for it."

"They can pinch hit after you've broken the ground. We'll relieve the one

I send as soon as possible with the proper type. You'll come back here and

start a school for `priests'-or, rather, continue it and improve it. I'm starting it

now, with the people at hand. That's your job; I don't expect to send you into

the field again, except possibly as a trouble shooter."

Thomas sighed. "I sure talked myself into a job, didn't I?"

"You did indeed. Get moving."

"Just a minute. Why Salt Lake City?"

"Because I think it's a good spot for recruiting. Those Mormons are

shrewd, practical people and I don't think you'll find a traitor among them. If

you work at it, I think you can convince their Elders that the great god Mota is

a good thing to have around and no menace to their own faith. We haven't

made half enough use of the legitimate churches; they should be the

backbone of the movement. Take the Mormons-they run to lay missionaries;

if you work it right you can recruit a number of them with such experience,

courageous, used to organizing in hostile territory, good talkers, smart. Get

it?"

"I get you. Well, I'll sure try."

"You can do it. As soon as possible we'll send someone to relieve Alec

and let him try his hand alone in Cheyenne. It's not a big place; if he flops it

won't matter too much. But I'm betting he can take Cheyenne. Now you go

take Salt Lake City."

CHAPTER EIGHT

Denver, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco.

Kansas City, Chicago, Little Rock. New Orleans, Detroit, Jersey City.

Riverside, Five Points, Butler, Hackettstown, Natick, Long Beach, Yuma,

Fresno, Amarillo, Grants, Parktown, Bremerton, Coronado, Worcester,

Wickenberg, Santa Ana, Vicksburg, LaSalle, Morganfield, Blaisville, Barstow,

Wallkyll, Boise, Yakima, St. Augustine, Walla Walla, Abilene, Chattahoochee,

Leeds, Laramie, Globe, South Norwalk, Corpus Christi.

"Peace be unto you! Peace, it's wonderful! Come, all you sick and heavy

laden! Come! Bring your troubles to .the temple of the Lord Mota. Enter the

sanctuary where the Masters dare not follow. Hold up your heads as white

men, for `The Disciple is Coming!'

"Your baby daughter is dying from typhoid? Bring her in! Bring her in! Let

the golden rays of Tamar make her well again. Your job is gone and you face

the labor camps? Come in! Come in! Sleep on the benches and eat at the

table that is never bare. There will be work aplenty for you to do; you can be

a pilgrim and carry the word to others. You need only profit by instruction.

"Who pays for it all? Why, Lord love you, man, gold is the gift of Mota!

Hurry! `The Disciple is coming!' "

They poured in. At first they came through curiosity, because this new

and startling and cockeyed religion was a welcome diversion from painful and

monotonous facts of their slavelike existences. Ardmore's instinctive belief in

flamboyant advertising justified itself in results; a more conventional, a more

dignified cult would never have received the "house" that this one did.

Having come to be entertained, they came back for other reasons. Free

food, and no questions asked who minded singing a few innocuous hymns

when they could stay for supper? Why, those priests could afford to buy

luxuries that Americans rarely saw on their own tables, butter, oranges, good

lean meat, paying for them at the Imperial storehouses with hard gold coin

that brought smiles to the faces of the Asiatic bursars.

Besides that, the local priest was always good for a touch if a man was

really hard up for the necessary. Why be fussy about creeds? Here was a

church that did not ask a man to subscribe to its creeds; you could come and

enjoy all the benefits and never be asked to give up your old -time religion-or

even be asked if you had a religion. Sure, the priests and their acolytes

appeared to take their god-with-six-attributes pretty seriously, but what of it?

That was their business. Haven't we always believed in religious freedom?

Besides, you had to admit they did good work.

Take Tamar, Lady of Mercy, now-maybe there was something to it. If

you've seen a child choking to death with diphtheria, and seen it put to sleep

by the server of Shaam, then washed in the golden rays of Tamar, and then

seen it walk out an hour later, perfectly sound and whole, you begin to

wonder. With half the doctors dead, with the army and a lot of the rest sent to

concentration camps, anyone who could cure disease had to be taken

seriously. What if it did look like superstitious mumbo jumbo? Aren't we a

practical people? It's results that count.

But cutting more deeply than the material advantages, were the

psychological benefits. The temple of Mota was a place -where a man could

hold up his head and not be afraid, something he could not do even in his

own home. "Haven't you heard? Why, they say that no flatface has ever set

foot in one of their temples, even to inspect. They can't even get in by

disguising themselves as white men; something knocks them out cold, right

at the door. Personally, I think those apes are scared to death of Mota. I don't

know what it is they've got, but you can breathe easy in the temple. Come

along with me-you'll see!"

The Rev. Dr. David Wood called on his friend the equally reverend

Father Doyle. The older man let him in himself. "Come in, David, come in," he

greeted him. "You're a pleasant sight. It's been too many days since I've seen

you." He brought him into his little study and sat him down and offered

tobacco. Wood refused it in a preoccupied manner.

Their conversation drifted in a desultory way from one unimportant

subject to another. Doyle could see that Wood had something on his mind,

but the old priest was accustomed to being patient. When it became evident

that the younger man could not, or would not, open the subject, he steered

him to it. "You seem like a man with something preying on his mind, David.

Should I ask what it is?"

David Wood took the plunge. "Father, what do you think of this outfit that

call themselves the priests of Mota?"

"Think of it? What should I think of it?"

"Don't evade me, Francis. Doesn't it matter to you when a heathen

heresy sets up in business right under your nose?"

"Well, now, it seems to me that you have raised some points for

discussion there, David. just what is a heathen religion?"

Wood snorted. "You know what I mean! False gods! Robes, and bizarre

temple, and-mummeries!"

Doyle smiled gently. "You were about to say `papist mummeries,' were

you not, David? No, I can't say that I am greatly concerned over odd

paraphernalia. But as to the definition of the word `heathen' -from a strict