Part 2 (1/2)

”No hallucination, then. But possibly a practical joke?”

”No. No joke.”

”Which card was it?”

”The Ten of Swords.”

Brother Paul refrained from whistling, contenting himself with a grave nod.

”Signifying ruin! Was it a literal image?”

”It was. Ten tall swords piercing a corpse. All quite solid.”

”That should have shaken up the party!”

”It certainly did. They pulled out the swords and turned over the body. It was a man, but none they recognized. No one was missing from their crew. They buried him, saved the swords, and wrote up a report”

”Tangible evidence. That was smart.”

”Not so smart. When they arrived on Earth, the objects they claimed were swords were merely so many slivers of stone, like stalact.i.tes from a cave. A second party, sent to verify the situation, dug up the body- and found only the carca.s.s of a native animal.”

”Ma.s.s hallucination?” Brother Paul suggested. ”They killed an animal and thought it was a man? Because of fatigue and guilt-or because its configuration resembled that particular card? Stalact.i.tes are a bit like swords.”

”That was the official conclusion.” She paused, then girded herself to continue.

”The second party brought Tarot cards and played many games, this time in the line of business, but there was no duplication of the effect. Apparently the first crew had been overworked and short on sleep, while the second was fresh.

So they named the planet Tarot and approved it for colonization.”

”Just like that?” Brother Paul inquired, raising an eyebrow.

”Just like that,” the Reverend Mother said wryly, forgetting herself so far as to raise her own eyebrow in response. ”They had a quota of planets to survey, and could not afford to waste time, as they put it, 'wild ghost chasing.'”

”How much is lost through haste!” Brother Paul remarked. But he felt a growing excitement and grat.i.tude that this mystery had come to pa.s.s. Wild ghosts? He certainly would like to see one!

”Colonization proceeded in normal fas.h.i.+on,” she continued. ”One million human beings were s.h.i.+pped in the course of forty days, a.s.signed to initial campsites with wilderness reduction equipment, and left to fend for themselves. Only the monthly coordination shuttle maintained contact. Colonization is,” she commented with a disapproving frown, ”somewhat of a sink-or-swim situation.”

”Without doubt,” Brother Paul agreed. ”Yet the great majority of emigrants have been happy to risk it-and most seem to be swimming.”

”Yes.” She shrugged. ”It is not the way I would have chosen-but the decision was hardly mine to make. At any rate, the colonists settled-and then the fun began.”

”More Tarot animations?”

”No, not specifically. These animations were of Heaven-and of h.e.l.l. I mean the storybook Pearly Gates, with angels flying by, and harpists sitting on clouds.

Or the other extreme-fiery caves with red, fork-tailed devils with pitchforks.”

”Evidently literal renditions of religious notions,” Brother Paul said. ”Many believers have very material views of the immaterial.”

”They do. There seems to be an unusual concentration of schismatic religions in this colony world. But these were rather substantial projections.” She pulled out a drawer in her desk and brought forth several photographs. ”Skeptics arranged to take pictures- and we have them here.” She spread them out.

He studied the pictures with amazement. ”There was no, ah, trick photography?

They certainly look authentic!”

”No trick photography. There is more: the colonists organized a planetary orchestra-in any random sampling of a million people, you'll find many skills-and they practiced many semicla.s.sical pieces. One day they were doing the tone poem by Saint-Saens, 'Danse macabre,' and-”

”Oh, no! Not the dancing skeletons!”

”The same. The entire orchestra panicked, and two musicians died in the stampede. In fact, I believe the orchestra was disbanded after that, and never reorganized. But when cooler heads investigated, they found no trace of the walking skeletons.”

”I begin to see,” Brother Paul said, feeling an unholy antic.i.p.ation of challenge. ”Planet Tarot is haunted.”

”That is one way of putting it,” she agreed. ”We view it more seriously.” She waited until his face a.s.sumed the proper expression of seriousness. ”Most haunts don't lend themselves well to motion-picture photography.” She brought a reel from the drawer.

Brother Paul did a double-take. ”Motion-picture film of the skeletons?”

”That's right. It seems a colonist was filming the concert. He thought the skeletons were part of the show-until the stampede began.”

”This I would like to see!”

”You shall.” The Reverend set up a little projector, lit its lensed lamp, and cranked the handle. The picture flickered on the wall across from her desk.

It was, indeed, the dance of death. At first there were only the musicians, playing their crude, locally fas.h.i.+oned violins; then the skeletons pranced onstage, moving in time to the music. There was no sound, of course; a lamp-and-hand-crank projector was not capable of that. But Brother Paul could see the breathing of the players, the motions of their hands on the instruments, and the gestures of the conductor; the beat was clear.

One skeleton pa.s.sed close to the camera, its gaunt, white ribcage momentarily blotting out the orchestra. Brother Paul peered closely, trying to ascertain what manner of articulation those bones possessed; it was hardly credible that they could move without muscle, sinew, or wires. Yet they did.

Then the scramble began; the picture veered crazily and clicked off.

”I understood there was a one-kilogram limit on personal possessions for emigrants,” Brother Paul commented. ”How did a sophisticated device like a motion-picture camera get there?”

”They can make them very small these days,” the Reverend said. ”Actually, two emigrants shared their ma.s.s allotment in this case, and three others in the family collaborated by taking fragments of a matching projector that could be run by hand. Like this one.” She patted it. ”They yielded to need rather than philosophy; nevertheless, they were ingenious. Now we know how fortunate that was. No one on Earth would have believed their story otherwise. This film is evidence that cannot be ignored; something is happening on Planet Tarot, something extraordinary. The authorities want to know what.”

”But why should they come to us?” Brother Paul asked. ”I should think they would send scientists with sophisticated equipment.”

She moved one hand in an unconscious ”be patient” gesture. ”They did. But the effect seems to be intermittent.”

Intermittency-the scourge of repairmen and psychic investigators! How was it possible to understand something that operated only in the absence of the investigator? ”Meaning the experts found nothing?” he asked.

”Correct But they also interviewed the colonists and a.s.sembled a catalogue of episodes. They discovered that the manifestations were confined to certain times and certain places-usually. And they occurred only in the presence of believers.”

”This has a familiar ring,” Brother Paul said. ”The believer experiences; the nonbeliever doesn't. It is the way with faith.” He remembered his own discussion with the boys and girls of the village cla.s.s; his belief had been stronger than their disbelief.

”Precisely. Except that the skeptics of the colony were able to witness a few of the phenomena. Whereupon they became believers.”

As Saul of Tarsus had witnessed the grandeur of G.o.d on the road to Damascus, and become Christian. As the village youths had witnessed the power of martial arts.

”Believers in what?”