Night of Light

“Get away from me, Bakeling,” Carmody said. He felt anger rising like mercury in a heat wave.”Back away, and try to act like a man of God!”

He paused, then could hold his anger no longer.”Don’t push me! I’m warning you!”

“Ah, you banty rooster, you believe your own reputation for being a dangerous man! You’re too little for me to even spit on! And not good enough for me to spit on, either!”

The woman who had denounced Gideon spoke out again. “What kind of a priest are you? Taking up sides against your own religion, your own people?”

Carmody attempted to calm himself. In a lower voice, he said,”I am trying to do the Christian thing, trying to keep you people from acting with hate. Remember: Love thy enemy.”

The woman screamed,”Next you’ll be telling us to turn our other cheek and invite that filth to di

“Out of my way, Carmody!” the huge priest bellowed. “I’m going to make Gideon recant if I have to wring his neck!”

“This isn’t the way to do it!” Carmody said.

“The hell it isn’t!” Bakeling shouted, and he swung at Carmody. As the little priest ducked under the ponderous fist, the anger and frustration that had been burning in him since A

A single roar welled from the crowd. They surged forward, drove Carmody back by the wall of their bodies, and pressed him against the screaming and yelling Boontists. Police whistles blew. Several fists struck Carmody, and he lost consciousness.

When he opened his eyes, his head, jaw, ribs, and shoulders hurt. He was being administered to by a policeman in the white-and-black uniform and cone-shaped hat of the Springboard city force. Before Carmody could say anything, he was jerked upright and carried along by two big men toward the lobby and outdoors. Here several paddy wagons were waiting for him and for the other rioters who had not been swift enough or had been too injured to run.

However, he was given special treatment. While most of the others were forced into the wagons, he was urged ungently into the back seat of a patrol car. A lieutenant sat on one side of him. On the other was Father Bakeling, a handkerchief pressed to his nose.

“Now see what you’ve done, you troublemaker!” Bakeling mumbled. “You started a riot, and you’ve disgraced your Church and your vicarship!”

“I?”

Carmody looked startled, then he started to laugh but quit when his ribs wrenched a groan from him. “Are we going to be booked?” he said to the lieutenant.

“Father Bakeling is pressing charges against you.” He handed the priest a wristphone. “You are entitled to one call to your lawyer.”

Carmody ignored him and spoke to Bakeling, “If I’m delayed so long I miss getting a ship to Kareen, you’ll have to answer to the highest authority for it. And I mean the highest.”

Bakeling dabbed at his nose with his handkerchief and growled, “Don’t threaten me, Carmody. Remember, I know you for what you are, a lying little trickster.”

“I’ll make a call after all,” Carmody said. He took the phone. “What’s the anticode?”

The lieutenant told him the numbers, and Carmody repeated them. The gray half- moon on the upper half of the 5.08-centimeter disc became luminous.

“What’s Bishop Emzaba’s number?”

Bakeling started; the lieutenant’s eyes blinked. Bakeling said, “I won’t tell you.”

“All right, lieutenant, you tell me.”

The policeman sighed, but he pulled a little book from his beltbag and leafed through it. “606.”

Carmody spoke the number, and a second later the face of a young priest appeared on the tiny screen. Carmody rotated the movable upper part of the disc, and the face seemed to spring out of the screen and to hang, much enlarged, sixteen centimeters in front of the disc.

“Father Carmody of Wildenwooly speaking. I must speak to the bishop. At once. It’s an emergency.”

The face thi

“One not entirely my own fault, Your Lordship,” Carmody said. “As a matter of fact, I was merely trying to effect some Christian action, not to mention Christian charity. But I failed. And here I am, on my way to the police station, about to be charged and booked.”

“I heard about the action at the spaceport and about your being involved,” Embaza said. “I’ve already started some action of my own. It may not be Christian, but it’s a matter of utmost necessity.”

Carmody turned the phone so that the bishop could see Bakeling.

Emzaba’s scowl deepened. “Bakeling! Is it true you were fighting with another priest? And that you were leading a mob of your own parishioners against the Boontist converts?”

Bakeling stuttered for a moment, then said, “I was merely trying to make Father Gideon and his people see the error of their ways, Your Lordship! But this, this Needlenose here, stood up for them! He actually attacked me, a brother priest, a member of his own order, to protect the Boontist heretics!”

“Is that true?” Embaza said. “Carmody, turn the phone so I can see your face!”

Carmody twisted the phone and said, “It’s a long story, Your Lordship, and it would take a long time to separate the various threads of truth from those of passion. But I don’t have time to explain. I must be on my way to Kareen! Immediately! I am on a mission of the gravest importance, authorized by the Holy Father himself!”

Embaza said, “Yes, I know. A courier came yesterday to inform me I must help to speed you on your way, no matter how unreasonable or strange the demands you might make. I understand something of your mission, and I am prepared to aid you. But, Carmody, a brawl! You should realize more than anybody how necessary it is that you get involved in nothing which will delay you!”

“I do, and I’m sorry. But here I am. Now, how do I get back to the port in time to catch the White Mule before it takes off? Or do I?”

Embaza asked to speak to the lieutenant. Carmody swiveled the phone so that the policeman and bishop could talk face to face. The lieutenant listed the charges that were to be made against Carmody. At these, the bishop frowned so fiercely that he looked like one of the ebony idols fashioned by his ancestors in the long ago.

“I’ll speak to you again, lieutenant. Or someone will,” Embaza said.

His face dissolved, but the ghost of his anger hung in the air. Bakeling shifted, uneasily, glancing sideways now and then at Carmody. “If you get out of this, you slimy little rat, and I’m unjustly placed in the wrong... if I have to suffer because of you... so help me, I’ll—“

“You’ll what?” Carmody said. “Refuse to learn your lesson and go charging off like a bull in rut and batter your thick head against the wall again?”

“You’re filthy, Carmody, a reproach to your sacred office.”

“Strong situations demand strong language,” Carmody said. “But didn’t you know that the bishop would be very angry with you because you were making martyrs of the Boontists? That is the one thing the Church does not want to do, and that was the one thing you were doing.”

“I was acting by the dictates of my conscience,” Bakeling said stiffly.