"Bring the rebel!" Once more it was the voice of His Benevolence, purring now, silky, filled with anticipatory pleasure. But Guerlan needed no one to bring him before the dreaded presence. He walked calm and erect to what he sensed would be his death. He knew that from this soulless being he could expect no justice—nothing but death. But there was to be a surprise in store for him. His Benevolence was an adept at ringing the changes of torture on a human soul, and this was a magnificent occasion. "We have heard you disapprove of us?" His Benevolence's voice was light, cheerful, there was no hint of danger in the silky tones. But Guerlan knew. That partly developed extra-sensory perception that was a part of his heritage was prenaturally alert now. He was not fooled.
"I expressed a misunderstanding, Your Benevolence," Guerlan bowed and slowly took off his mask. Above the wide-spaced deep-green eyes, flashing like tourmalines, a tiny tattooed six-pointed star seemed to tremble with the pulsing of a vein.
"You see, Bejamel? I told you that 'Perceptives' would never do, yet you so persuasively sold me the idea of how useful they could be if their extra-sensory perceptive powers were developed." He sighed. "It's that genius of yours for intrigue.... But it has failed. We can allow no dissidents to enter the mysteries of the inner circle, Bejamel!"
"I kneel before your Benevolence," Bejamel's gargoyle features were painfully contorted as he tried to grovel. "In my zeal for service to your Magnificence, I have failed, but there's always the Blessed Sleep for this blasphemer, O Symbol of Charity!" He finished ominously and pondered what a jewel of a victim he would make.
But His Benevolence gave Bejamel a look of such cold, devastating evil, that he should dare to offer a solution, that the cadaverous Minister of Justice seemed to shrink, pale and desperate, against the wall of scientists who watched avidly the miseen scène.
"No mercy, no finesse." His Benevolence again was wearing the mask of merciful forgiveness. "No Bejamel—not the Chamber of Blessed Sleep, just ..." and he held up two fingers weighted with jewels. Then he turned to Guerlan.
"My son!" Guerlan flinched. "Having been offered the sacred honor of entering the Inner Circle, you failed to understand your first test of the lesser mysteries ... all this ... this pitiful show of human frailty and weakness, this odious travesty on the sins of the flesh, was staged to test you. And you." A world of sadness seemed to darken His Benevolence's voice, "and you condemned us! Instead of seeing it as a mere test, and valuing it for what it was worth, you believed that we were such monsters of hypocrisy as to entertain such lives." He wagged his head from side to side in inexpressible disappointment and grief. "I would pardon you from the depths of my heart, but The Law is inexorable—I can but soften the harshness of your retribution.
"And so, my son," he held up two fingers again, "you not only are barred from entering the sacred inner circle, but are demoted from scientist of the first, to that of the second order. There is one plastic center where a problem has not been solved. Achieve its solution and you will be promoted to your original place, and perhaps ... perhaps as you grow older, you may again be considered for the priceless boon, the blessed destiny you have lost tonight."
A brooding sadness mantled the obese face, lending it dignity and a transitory greatness. The soft echoes of the august voice ceased, and Guerlan found himself being led by members of the Inner Circle Guard back to the atomo-plane that had brought him here from Plastica. He was too dazed to think, a vast, anguished feeling of defeat and shame filled his mind, the words of His Benevolence whom he had dared to doubt, were etched in acid in his brain. But, deep in the recesses of his consciousness, something mocking, something not quite articulate, struggled to plant in his chaotic thoughts, the swiftly growing seeds of doubt.