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loop circling his right wrist hangs the heavy graystone hammer. So you're the
one! Upstart they all question.
Your pardon? asks Martel.
Say they question. Fear what you may become. Nonsense. All of it. Thor fears
none of it. Nor you. Nor what you become. Do you challenge the hammer and
might? Martel steps back.
Thor? The so-called god himself? This barbarian rumbling gutturals?
The hammer swings and is released skyward. A blaze of lightning follows,
slashes into the suddenly dark sky.
Doubt not Thor! Unbeliever! The voice bellows like thunder.
Martel steps back another step, still faxing the entire incredible scene.
'That'll do. Teach them all, rumbles the old warrior, and Martel can sense
the age in the god, even though the figure and the voice are those of a man in
his prime.
The hammer screams back to the upraised arm, and yet another lightning bolt
flares.
Martel retreats another step, aware his hands are damp, but still recording.
He stumbles, looks down to keep from letting the unit overbalance him, and
when he looks up, Thor is gone. The red rock lanes are again deserted.
Martel brings the fax unit to bear on the temple, zooms in the focus, and
discovers that the doors which were open are now barred.
No one stops him on his way back to the flitter, which is as he left it.
Untouched.
Martel is still shaking his head as he pilots the light craft back toward
Sybernal, toward the CastCenter, hoping the scenes with the thunder-god are
indeed in the cube.
A small part of his mind hopes they are not, for if they are, he will use
them. Must use them.
XVIII
Martel tenses.
The quartered image stands out in front of the single flat wall of the
CastCenter lounge four separate scenes, and each with its own message.
On the upper left graze a flock of sunrams, their fleeces glittering with
lights of their own. On the upper right stretch long rows of golden vines,
leaves half covering the ripening grapes. On the lower left extends a
grass-choked pavement. Finally, on the lower right, an aerial shot of a
black-walled, black-laned community.
The music wells up, subsides. A selection from Winds of Summer.
The postulant communities of Aurore, as they present themselves to visitors,
and to the universe. . . postulants to gods who are real, and who demonstrate
their powers on an everyday basis.
Now .. . a first-time-ever look at the worshipers of the living gods of
Aurore. . .
The four images fade into one the sunspire of the temple of Apollo, which
fades into the white marble of the Ethene temple, which fades into an aerial
shot of the black flame in the black square of the Taurist community, and then
to the closed and hammer-barred front view of the Thoradian mission under
sullen clouds. Not a bad intro, Martel, says Marta Farell. Gates Devero nods
Page 40
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
in agreement, while Hollie makes no statement or gesture.
Martel realizes his palms are damp, rubs them on his trousers as the cube
continues running through the apparently innocuous activities of the
Apollonite community, and then through a similar routine in the Ethene
community.
Good shot of his expression ... really wrapped up in what he's doing.
What's he playing for? Martel picks up the thought from Marta.
Oohhh. . . the eyes on that sunram. . .
Lot of contentment showing. . .
. . . nice view of the reflection off the marwood chest. . . Martel
swallows, waiting for the transition from the light of the Ethenes to the
aerial shots of the Thoradian mission. Apollo! . . . so deserted. . . old. .
.
The cut from the desolation focuses down a grass-choked lane and into the
blacksmith shop, with the bearded barbarians pounding, pounding out blades,
the metal glowing, the heat welling out.
. . . looks like a Darian view of Hades. . . Don't like where this is going.
That thought came from Marta Farell.
From the focus on the blades the view shifts to the blank, concentrating faces
of the smiths, oblivious to the watchers, robotic in their duties, and then
cuts back away to the grassy pavement and what Martel had seen as he had
walked through the nearly deserted community, ending up before the temple, its
rough doors gaping.
The god Thor looms in the center of the scene, as if he had appeared from
nowhere. Doubt not Thor!
The fifth time through, Martel still marvels a bit at the swing of the
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