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my head off with a flick of the wrist.
I couldn't do a thing except keep my face immobile and try not to irritate these
giants into going any farther. I could only maintain dignity by being strong and
silent. So I dropped my arms straight from the elbow, where the rope held them
to my sides. I motioned the gaping Lorna away and regarded the Hierarch with a
calm, heroic gaze.
He was permitting himself a slight smug twitch of the lips as he looked at me.
"Search him," he said briefly.
A swarm of priests defended on me from some region I could not see because my
back was toward the door. I felt hands slapping cautiously all over me, searching
for the unfamiliar pockets of my exotic tweeds. They were thorough.
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On the hideous golden desk beside the Hierarch a little heap of my belongings
grew like magic. Every item was regarded with deep suspicion and handled with
extreme care, particularly the cigarette lighter with which I had kindled that
Promethean fire on the street corner.
Finally I stood there with all my pockets hanging wrong-side-out and no further
possessions on my person -anywhere. I saw the Hierarch regarding Lorna with
quiet satisfaction. Suddenly, I realized why he'd waited until she came before he
cracked down on me. He wanted her to observe his power. Nobody was going to
bluff the Hierarch, not even a visitant from Paradise, and he wanted the other
visitant to know it.
"Now," the Hierarch said comfortably, "we can talk." He moved with ponderous
deliberation around the desk and sat down, stirring the pile of small change from
my pocket with a forefinger. He looked at me with his impassive all-knowing
stare.
"You have come here," he said to me coldly, "without invitation. You cause a great
deal of trouble out of motives I'm not really interested in. I know as much about
you as I need to know. Things in Malesco were going along very smoothly until
you came, and I intend you to leave them just as smooth before you go."
I looked at him hopefully. So I was to go, was I? Where? I didn't ask.
"I know the method of your coming," he went on complacently. "Falvi will be
properly disciplined for tampering with the Earth-Gates and for failing to report
your arrival. It was Falvi, wasn't it?"
I maintained my look of impassive heroic calm.
"All right," the Hierarch said. "You were seen to emerge from a room you could
not have entered except by the Earth-Gates a moment after Falvi had left it. You
were assisted down a shaft which was obviously unfamiliar to you.
"You followed Falvi to the Baths. There you spent some
while in conference with a notorious rabble-rouser. When detected tampering
with a Holy Screen you were able to impress certain of my people with your
threats and I allowed you a certain latitude just to see what your plans were."
He interlaced his thick fingers and looked at them with modest pride. "The
wisdom of my policy," he went on in a fat voice, "is now clear."
I doubted that. He was probably saying it to impress his audience, but there was
still a crowd outside waiting for me and he couldn't argue it away. I believed I'd
really succeeded in the major part of my bluff. He'd let me get away with so much
because he was really baffled.
I knew more than I ought to know and he couldn't be sure where my knowledge
stopped. Certainly it had been a mistake to let the crowd move on the Temple.
He'd have dispersed them long ago if he dared. I was arguing myself into fresh
confidence. I thought I'd better speak before it could wane again.
"The wisdom of your policy," I said with heavy irony, "will tell you to send Lorna
and me back to New York before that hour the crowd gave you is over. They won't
want to see any ropes on me either. An hour isn't very long for everything that's
got to be done, is it? Time's getting short."
He frowned plumply at me. He hated to make any concessions. It occurred to me
then that he was suffering from a form of hubris, something I dimly remembered
defined in Plato's Lows. The sin against proportion had been committed here and
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the Hierarchs of Malesco wielded powers too big for their souls.
So they suffered congenitally, I suspected, from hubris, which is misbehavior
through pride. This man before me would, of course, have been somewhat more
than human if he hadn't developed a certain amount of that sin, since he ruled a
world. The office he occupied was two thousand years old and creaking with an
overload of accumulated grandeur.
Undoubtedly he was making the other classic mistake of confusing himself with
his office. He arrogated to himself personally all the glory that belonged to the
office of Hierarch. He was, in a word, vainglorious. Orgulous is the expressive
medieval word for it.
He scowled at me blackly. It went hard with him to have to back down even by
implication. But there was that crowd
outside which he hadn't dealt with yet. I could almost see him remembering it. So
he snipped his fingers again reluctantly.
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