"So? Here is the God—our Man-God who was gone?" It was Bohr's ironic, guttural voice. Atwood had no chance to jump away. Bohr, with a ponderous pounce, gripped him with the power of a machine. Bohr and a dozen of his roistering men were here.

"Our Man-God is late for the ceremony," Bohr was leering. They were shoving Atwood forward, along a village street crowded with jabbering Marlans, across an edge of the village toward an open space, like a public square. The mound-dwellings bounded it on one side, and the barrage was on the other. The square was thronged with Marlans, standing in jabbering groups, gazing toward the center where three platforms were erected. Two were side by side, and one faced them. The two were empty. On the other a single Marlan sat in a great cradle. The Ruler-Selah. His ponderous fat body was round with flesh. In the cradle he squatted like a huge toad.

Bohr's grip never for an instant had relaxed on Atwood. "I am to be made a God now?" Atwood murmured.

"Yes. The Selah has decided." Surely that was leering irony in Bohr's heavy voice. Where was Ah-li? Then, as Atwood's captors shoved him toward the larger and higher of the two empty platforms, Atwood saw the girl. Slowly she was crossing the square. Ah-li, robed now in a long flowing, bluish grass garment with a garland of flowers around her head. The Goddess Ah-li. The Marlans, awed, bowed before her as she advanced, mounted the smaller platform and stood with her arms outstretched. The reflected glow of the barrage painted her face. Apprehension was there. And then she saw Atwood. Relief swept her; and then an exaltation. The recognition of a Man-God, with her to guide these people.

Then Atwood, tense and alert, stood on the other platform, facing the ruler. He was some twenty feet from the girl, and five feet or so above her.

"The Man-God is here," Bohr proclaimed in English. And then he seemed to be repeating it in the Marlan language.

The crowd was bowing now with foreheads to the ground. The Selah spoke in a piping, cracked voice; and with a gesture ordered Bohr from the platform.

Alone, Atwood faced the Ruler and the prostrate throng. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Ah-li standing stiffly erect, with arms outstretched as though in benediction. And as the Selah now was intoning some ritual, Atwood drew himself up and lifted his arms.

But tensely, alertly he was watching. 

 Prev. P 19/22 next