Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein
“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, boss?”
“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
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 standpoint of theology I am forced to consider any sect that does not admit authority of the Vicar on Earth—”
“Don’t play with me, man! I’m in no mood for it.”
“I am not playing with you, David. I was about to add that in spite of the strict logic of theology, God in His mercy and infinite wisdom will find some way to let even one like yourself into the Holy City. Now as for these priests of Mota, I have not searched their creed for flaws, but it seems to me that they are doing useful work; work that I have not been able to accomplish.”
“That is exactly what worries me, Francis. There was a woman in my congregation who was suffering from an incurable cancer. I knew of cases like hers that had apparently been helped by…by those charlatans! What was I to do? I prayed and found no answer.”
“What did you do?”
“In a moment of weakness I sent her to them.”
“Well?”
“They cured her.”
“Then I wouldn’t worry about it too much. God has more vessels than you and me.”
“Wait a moment. She came back to my church just once. Then she went away again. She entered the sanctuary, if you can call it that, that they have set up for women. She’s gone, lost entirely to those idolaters! It has tortured me, Francis. What does it avail to heal her mortal body if it jeopardizes her soul?”
“Was she a good woman?”
“One of the best.”
“Then I think God will look out for her soul, without your assistance, or mine. Besides, David,” he continued, refilling his pipe, “those so-called priests—They are not above seeking your help, or mine, in spiritual matters. They don’t perform weddings, you know. If you should wish to use their buildings, I am sure you would find it easy—”
“I can’t imagine it!”
“Perhaps, perhaps, but I found a listening device concealed in my confessional—” The priest’s mouth became momentarily a thin angry line. “Since then I’ve been borrowing a corner of the temple to listen to anything which might possibly be of interest to our Asiatic masters.”
“Francis, you haven’t!” Then, more moderately, “Does your bishop know of this?”
“Well, now, the bishop is a very busy man—”
“Really, Francis—”
“Now, now—I did write him a letter, explaining the situation as clearly as possible. One of these days I will find someone who is traveling in that direction and can carry it to him. I dislike to turn church business over to a public translator; it might be garbled.”
“Then you haven’t told him?”
“Didn’t I just say that I had written him a letter? God has seen that letter; it won’t harm the bishop to wait to read it.”
It was nearly two months later that David Wood was sworn into the Secret Service of the United States Army. He was only mildly surprised when he found that his old friend, Father Doyle, was able to exchange recognition signals with him.
It grew and it grew. Organization—and communication—underneath each gaudy temple, shielded from any possible detection by orthodox science, operators stood watch and watch, heel and toe, at the pararadio equipment operating in one band of additional spectra—operators who never saw the light of day, who never saw anyone but the priest of their own temple; men marked as missing in the fields of the Asiatic warlords; men who accepted their arduous routine philosophically as the necessary exigency of war. Their morale was high, they were free men again, free and fighting, and they looked forward to the day when their efforts would free all men, from coast to coast.
Back in the Citadel women in headphones neatly typed everything that the pararadio operators had to report; typed it, classified it, condensed it, cross-indexed it. Twice a day the communication watch officer laid a brief of the preceding twelve hours on Major Ardmore’s desk. Constantly throughout the day dispatches directed to Ardmore himself poured in from a dozen and a half dioceses and piled up on his desk. In addition to these myriad sheets of flimsy paper, each requiring his personal attention, reports piled up from the laboratories, for Calhoun now had enough assistants to fill every one of those ghost crowded rooms and he worked them sixteen hours a day.
The personnel office crowded more reports on him, temperament classifications, requests for authorization, notifications that this department or that required such and such additional personnel; would the recruiting service kindly locate them? Personnel—there was a headache! How many men can keep a secret? There were three major divisions of personnel, inf
These latter were sworn to secrecy, commissioned in the United States army, and allowed to know the real significance of the entire set-up. But even they were not trusted with the underlying secret, the scientific principles behind the miracles they performed. They were drilled in the use of the apparatus entrusted to them, drilled with care, with meticulous care, in order that they might handle their deadly symbols of office without error. But, save for the rare sorties of the original seven, no person having knowledge of the Ledbetter effect and its corollaries ever left the Citadel.
Candidates for priesthood were sent in as pilgrims from temples everywhere to the Mother Temple near Denver. There they sojourned in the monastery, located underground on a level between the temple building and the Citadel. There they were subjected to every test of temperament that could be devised. Those who failed were sent back to their local temples to serve as lay brothers, no wiser than when they had left home.
Those who passed, those who survived tests intended to make them angry, to make them loquacious, to strain their loyalty, to crack their nerve, were interviewed by Ardmore in his persona as High Priest of Mota, Lord of All. Over half of them he turned down for no reason at all, hunch alone, some vague uneasiness that. this was not the man.
In spite of these precautions he never once commissioned a new officer and sent him forth to preach without a deep misgiving that here perhaps was the weak link that would bring ruin to them all.
The strain was getting him. It was too much responsibility for one man, too many details, too many decisions. He found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the matter at hand, hard to make even simple decisions. He became uncertain of himself and correspondingly irritable. His mood infected those in contact with him and spread throughout the organization.