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38: Audience
Balesso turned with a nasty grin and said: "You were very clever, Priest, but not clever enough. I know you and Tuttle had something going to undermine me, but he won't realize I'm on to him before I get my clutches on his piece of the Temporale. For now, though, I have a special circus planned for you." The usual pair of armed soldiers herded me into the royal city. Balesso strode toward a waiting throng of media reporters whom his operatives had gathered near the river.
He addressed the media: "My friends and fellow citizens! I wish to announce today that we have captured an important agent of the late king." My heart sank as I saw the gleeful grin on Voreill's baby face at the lies and calumnies he and Balesso had concocted to illegally seize power. Lord of the Lies! I thought, bitterly staring at those two, and my mouth must have hung open. Voreill giggled silently with delight at my shock.
Balesso strutted before the audio and video pickups. "My friends and fellow citizens! I have here the renegade priest Farr, who conspired to murder the late Holy Mother. He was arrested immediately after her assassination, but released through the agencies of two priestesses who were acting as the Holy Mother's bodyguards but were in on the plot. Together, these three murderers escaped through supernatural means and journeyed through the lands of the accursed. I, Duke Balesso, who once suffered as a wanderer among the Tribes, know the ways of the foreign devils. I know the threat to your security and the holiness of our Divine Mars. Those two wicked priestesses are now dead and in hell where they belong. Here now we have the priest Farr, who has offered a written confession." He waved aloft a handful of papers or transfers I had never seen before. "Farr made a deal to seek leniency in a court of law. He begged us to consider giving him a life sentence rather than death. We shall appeal this to the Holy Mother and to the Great Court, and if it is their judgment that he should live, then I will agree to that. If it is their judgment that he should die, then I will honor that judgment also." His supporters, most notably Voreill, clapped delightedly as Balesso launched into the next part of his tirade of lies. "Imagine, a priest of Divine Mars, and two chaste priestesses." The crowd around him laughed at the grotesque face he made, implying there had been any unchaste behavior between myself and the two women. "Imagine the outrage and anger of the Gods and in particular Divine Mars. They can no longer offend anyone." Laughter and clapping greeted his continuing speech, and I knew it didn't matter what I said or did—it would be used against me. If I protested my innocence, the mob would hate me all the more. If I turned my back in anger, they would rise to tear me apart, and Balesso would probably permit it. Or maybe not—it would be an opportunity for him to show himself as a restorer of order. As I thought about it, it became clear to me that he must now do exactly that. There was disorder in the cities and domes. Tribers were massing in the lowlands to protest the disappearance of oxygen-bearing god stones, and the evaporation of lake and ocean waters.
Balesso made one mistake. I saw Voreill lunge forward to stop it, but it was too late. A woman of the media stepped forth and thrust a microphone in my face. "Priest Farr, have you anything to say?"
I said: "Yes, I do. Not only am I innocent, but under the law I must be tried by the Temple. I demand that Duke Balesso turn me over immediately to the Temple police, and I beg an audience with the Holy Mother. This will be necessary for the good of Mars and all its citizens."
The mob howled and threw things. Rocks and dirt rattled around us. Balesso stood with his fists at sides and glowered around. When he looked to Voreill for help, the latter shrugged with a pained expression to suggest 'You brought this on yourself—mouth before brains, as usual.' That fit the image of Balesso as a person who could not tie his shoes without consulting Voreill or another of his mercenary advisors.
Balesso had prepositioned people from the palace and the basilica on hand to assist in his charade, so the negotiations that took place were prompt. We had to withdraw into a courtyard of the palace to escape the objects being thrown by the mob, and I could hear them shouting at the guards and rattling the steel bars at the outer gate. The media people had come along, so there was no escaping the public carrying out of the events I had set in motion. Within four hours I was being ferried across the river in a steel boat. I was hungry, tired, and thirsty. They had me chained at the waist and ankles, so that I had to hobble painfully. The Temple police, luckily, were sticklers for proper procedure. Balesso's police gave me a few clouts on the head and jerks of the chain before turning me over to the Holy City's officers.
I had an uncomfortable but safe stay in a religious prison overnight. I was able to bathe, eat, drink, and sleep. In the morning, I was taken to see first one key official, then another, and finally met with the Holy Mother in a private audience chamber.
The brown-robed Temple police brought me in, and I fell to my knees in my chains. The Holy Mother signaled for them to leave us alone. In my condition, I could not have harmed her if I wished. The light in here was stark, almost black and white, coming from a single thin slit of window. Except for her throne in the center of the black marble floor, and several rows of church pews, the room was devoid of furniture. There were a few wall niches with statues and offerings, as well as a few paintings in marble frames on the plain marble walls. The air smelled faintly of incense from a nearby chapel, mixed with fresh air from a newly mowed park outside. The Holy Mother was younger than I had expected, and almost attractive in a severe, under-sexed way. She wore a voluminous black silk robe that puffed out in all directions in carefully pleated folds, so that only her fore arms, and face were visible. She wore a nunnish black coif with starchy white wimple-wings on her head and down her cheeks, to cover her neck and shoulders. She sat on a plain brown wooden throne about 15 feet off the ground, so that I had to crane my neck to see her staring down at me.
I was surprised to see that she smiled. "Rise, Priest Farr."
I did as I was told. My chains clattered noisily on the cold stone floor.
"We are of the opinion that you know more than Duke Balesso has communicated to our faithful today."
"Holy Mother, that is true."
"We are of the opinion that Duke Balesso has an agenda that involves sweeping reforms for our divine planet."
"That is also true, Holy Mother."
She folded her hands in her lap, tiny care-worn hands. "Then tell Us the truth, Priest Farr. You did not have a hand in the death of our Late Holy Mother, or did you?"
I hung my head. "No, Holy Mother. I tried to warn her, but it was too late. The two priestesses were loyal bodyguards, and they arrested me at first, but determined I was innocent."
"What of the matter of the late Timony Eastgarden?"
"He was a childhood friend and cousin, as I recently learned from my grandfather, the abbot. Timony somehow became aware of the plot of Duke Balesso against His Majesty the King, and also against the Holy Mother."
"You can speak freely with Us, Farr, because We are the key to your survival if We can save you."
"Oh Holy Mother!" I said, falling to my knees in gratitude. I held my hands over my face and nearly sobbed, thinking of how desperate my situation had become and how desperate that of my beloved Mars.
"Farr, We must speak frankly with you, as you must speak frankly with Us. We know that there are accusations against Our Person, to the effect that We conspired against the Holy Mother Gina-Paulina XXIII. We swear to you here and now, on all that is divine, that these accusations have no foundation in fact. Neither We nor Our late cousin King Lee Upholder XIII, had anything to do with our Late Holy Mother's assassination. We freely admit—in the privacy of this audience—that in the intrigues that followed, the Upholder clan manipulated the system to place Us on the throne in the Holy City. Other priestesses could have served well, but the consensus was that We, with our understanding of courtly intrigues—to put it bluntly—would serve well toward a stable and secure Mars blessed by the Divine Gods. Is that fair enough?"
I was shaking with emotion. "Holy Mother, I am touched to the heart of my soul by Your Holiness' honesty and trust. I place all my faith in Your Holiness and pledge to support Your Holiness in whatever you ask of me, for the sake of Divine Mars and the Sacred Gods."
"We are pleased, Priest Farr. What made you think so cleverly and suddenly to call upon Our intervention? You know that the liturgical and canonical laws are very intricate and can be manipulated in any direction, and the law you called upon is not really clear on the books." She slowly rubbed her hands, absently, as if they were cold.
"Holy Mother," I said, "it occurred to me in a flash of insight that you could not have had anything to do with the Late Holy Mother's death. Had that been the case, it would have been the work of His Late Majesty King Lee Upholder, and he would not have found himself in a position where Balesso's mobs tore him and his family apart. I saw then the schemes of Voreill and Balesso, which could only go in one direction."
"And that would be, child?"
"Holy Mother, I realized that, despite whatever convenience put Your Holiness on the Throne of Divine Mars, at the pleasure of Your Holiness' late cousin—forgive me my audacity for speaking this way—"
"—No, no, child, this is the right moment for clarity, insight, and courage—"
"—I immediately grasped the threat to Your Holiness' person, Holy Mother. That has to be the next step. Balesso is setting me up on phony charges of murdering the Late Holy Mother, in order to support the Upholder clan and Your Holiness. By convicting me, he convicts Your Holiness, who would be sent into exile or killed."
"Correct," the Holy Mother said firmly. "We have made the same inductions."
"Thank you," I said. Had she not been in such immediate and dreadful danger, I would have felt very warm and secure at that moment. "I assume the Temple officials present at the return of Duke Balesso were not the ones he planted, but ones Your Holiness ordered to appear."
"Yes, child." She smiled and this time it seemed she was rubbing her hands together. "We had the chauffeur replaced, and he drove my disloyal officials to the wrong part of town and left them on a pretense of car trouble. Meanwhile, I sent a group of loyal Upholder senior priests to meet Balesso's group. They would have ordered your detention to Our court, but you seized the day brilliantly—as brilliantly as one would expect from the future head of the Eastgarden clan."
"Thank you."
"We will reward your loyalty greatly, Farr Eastgarden. To arrive at that opportunity, however, you and We must plan a sound strategy. Do you have any suggestions?"
"I do, Holy Mother." I explained to her all that had happened, and what I knew about the Laars. It was hard on her to learn the truth about Erdith, and she had tears rolling down her cheeks. At one point I stopped because she was indeed sobbing. "Holy Mother, shall I bring water or a hankie...?"
"No, child. We are crying at the sadness of it all. The fate of the original humans. Not the changes that must be made to Temple doctrine, which can be summed up in Clarifications, Change Orders, and other official documents. It is the faith of the people that matters, and that cannot be shaken by natural fact. You understand that the supernatural and the natural complement each other. Neither can cancel the other, but the natural, which is subject to the human senses, can be verified and used to correct and illumine holy understanding and faith. We are saddened at the darkness that has gripped our source world, and we wish for goodness to occur there."
"It is possible that we can repopulate and colonize Earth from Mars," I suggested boldly. "I know of the means to travel there." It would take a bit of time to explain the Temporale to her, and in the meantime, Voreill was without a doubt concocting the next scheme to nail into Balesso's sociopathic, narcissistic little brain.
"Capital idea, child. First Our loyal followers must militate successfully against the plotters."
"Maybe there is a way to do this, Holy Mother."
She leaned forward hungrily, and for the first time I saw her desperation. She was a graceful and strong woman, but she felt the cold, foul breath of her murderer on the back of her neck—so to speak—and anyone would start reaching out for straws to grasp.
"We use the media against them, Holy Mother. They are masters of lying to the world. We can trump them with the truth. I think I have a considerable tool we can use."
"Oh?" She descended from the throne and walked agitatedly about as I spoke. She was a small woman physically, but a sharp one, and a brave one.
"Holy Mother, Tuttle and I found an artifact..."
And so I related to her the rest of my story, including how Balesso killed the sleeping Laars and thereby had the City of En unfreeze the Anomaly. I guessed that the recently vanquished Faraos who had ruled Earth for five centuries might have been descendants of the enemies of the eons-ago Laars, and had sought to keep the Anomaly frozen. They couldn't destroy it, because of the freeze, but they could hide the key that Tuttle and I had found. What was important now was not the empty tomb that had come forward in time with the dust of the Laars in it, but the smallish artifact Tuttle and I had found nearby. "It was the key to a new Mars," I said. "They had left it outside their tomb for technical reasons unknown to us today. They were going to wake up from their long sleep and reclaim the world for themselves, since humans had not evolved yet in those days, and the Earth was populated by the predecessors of giant reptiles that didn't even exist yet."
I thought for a moment of the City of En, and its agents, and hoped that Jandy Tuttle and the rest were well, and I realized that they were either going to help me now, or abandon me as they had shown their potential for doing. Either way, I had a strong hunch that I was either dead wrong in what I was about to suggest, or else I had the jackpot of all time in my clutches.
"You want to go public then, in the media—"
"—Yes, Holy Mother, global, all in one shot, one big gamble—"
"—which, if it doesn't pan out, leaves you with your death sentence from Balesso, because We will not be able to protect you further, and it leaves Us facing certain exile or even death."
"That is correct, Holy Mother."
She walked up and down, thinking through the many considerations that must have run through her mind. Finally, she stopped. "Very well, Farr. We see no other choice but to follow through. It will be quite a gamble." She grinned. "The Upholder clan have not gone soft, Farr Eastgarden. We are a tough bunch."
I stopped short of congratulating her on the predatory prowess of her family, remembering the death and destruction the Upholders had rained on my own family. I pictured Timony dead, Sudie with her tongue cut out, Sam Gorepoint driven from his family—all the brutality that went into gaining and keeping world power.
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