THE GUEST RITES

By ROBERT SILVERBERG

Illustrated by GIUNTA

Carthule was not the Earthman's god, but Carthule protected him while he was a guest in the temple—even if he tore the temple down!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Infinity, February 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It was time for the after-meal meditation. Marik, First Priest of Carthule, finished his frugal meal and went outside to sit in the mid-day breeze and watch the sands blowing gently over the bare flat plains. The problem of the Revelation occupied his reveries: why had Carthule, in His infinite wisdom, waited so long to reveal to His people that they were not alone in the universe?

Marik looked up at the glowing dot behind the gray wall of the sky. That, he knew, was the Sun. And there were other planets, some inhabited, some not. Carthule was not alone; He was one of nine. And His people had never suspected the truth until the flaming ships of the third planet—Earth, was it?—had broken through the skies, and the small white people had told them of the other worlds.

The problem was one which the greatest theologians of the time—in whose number Marik, without pride, deemed himself—had discussed at great length, never coming to a solution. Marik and Polla San, of the neighboring temple, had finally concluded that Carthule moved in ways too complex for His mortal people to understand.

Marik lowered his gaze from the sky and looked out across the dry expanse of desert. He could make out, dimly, Polla San's temple far across the sands. Polla San was due to visit him shortly, he recalled. Or was it the other way around? Marik frowned; he was getting old, and soon would have to relinquish his duties to one of the younger acolytes and spend his remaining decades sitting dreaming in the afternoon.

Calmly Marik settled into the semi-somnolence of the after-meal meditation, fixing his gaze on the far-off temple of Polla San but turning his vision inward. The sand blew in widening circles, until it seemed to Marik that there was a small, dark figure wandering out in the desert. Sleepily he watched the circlings of the small figure as it pursued a crazy path through the desert.

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