The Totems of Abydos

CHAPTER 28





“It is permissible for me to enter here?” asked Brenner.

“Please!” said one of the Pons.

“Please!” said another, gesturing with the torch.

Brenner stood at the door to the temple, that reached from within the palisade of the Pons. In his hands, he gripped a long, pointed stick. It was the nearest thing to a weapon he could find.

“You are sure it is within?” asked Brenner.

“Yes,” said one of the Pons.

How terrified they are, how frightened, thought Brenner.

Brenner looked at the makeshift spear, the pointed stick he held. If the thing was indeed within, somehow, what good would the stick be?

So he was a champion to Pons, he thought, towering above them, many of them coming only to his waist.

What would it be doing in this place, wondered Brenner.

Did they hold it within, with torches?

“Kill,” said one of the Pons.

Of course, it must be killed, thought Brenner. It has tasted flesh.

He sobbed.

But how could he kill it? He did not have the rifle. And if he had had it, he was not even certain of its operation. Insert the charge in the wrong fashion, and it could blow up in his hands, taking him, and the roof of the temple with him. Too, he was not certain as to how to free the rifle. Certainly its freeing would not be obvious; it would be subtle, at least; it was probably designed with the idea of slipping undetected through customs. Too, he did not know the sequence which prepared the rifle for firing. There must, too, be a safety mechanism. Rodriguez had handled such things. Brenner had not even wanted to know anything, really, about the rifle. It was a sort of thing against which he had been conditioned. This put him, of course, and others like him, at the mercy of those to whom such devices were familiar. But, in any event, he did not have the rifle.

He had, of course, tried to communicate with the Pons pertaining to the shiny tube, the putative optical instrument, even attempting to suggest its latent capacities, but they had, apparently, understood nothing. It was not a pointed stick, not a sharp-edged scarp. How could one explain a rifle to a people unfamiliar with the bow? Would it not be easier to explain fire to a fish? And those with him seemed to know nothing, even about a shiny tube.

And so Brenner, with a pointed stick, with fear, and rage, and desperation, guided by the Pons clustered about him, with their wailing, and torches, had come to the door of the temple.

Several Pons, others from the village, who, it seemed, had been waiting, swung open the doors of the temple.

Brenner could see light within, that of other torches.

He then entered the temple, Pons behind him, those who had come to fetch him in the forest, with torches, those who had opened the doors, and others, too, from the village.