The Altar at Asconel Read Online Free Page B

entered the enormous hall with sufficient lack of the proper ceremony to draw a reproving glare from the Head Librarian, Brother Carl, in his high pulpit overlooking the entire array of more than five hundred low-walled cubicles. But he barely noticed that; he was concerned only to spot a vacant cubicle on the master plan-board and make his way to it as quickly as possible.
    There was a place unoccupied at Aisle II, Rank Five. He almost broke into a run as he approached it. Without bothering to close the door behind him he dropped into the single chair and punched a rapid succession of buttons on the panel which formed the only other feature of the tiny booth. One finger poised to stab the PRESENTATION button, he hesitated; then he decided it was best to have a permanent record, and run the risk of the knowledgeable library computers swamping him with a flood of literature. He punched for a print-out instead of spoken or screened data.
    Then he took a deep breath. “Brinze,” he said. “Planet, presumed habitable, location unknown.”
    He waited in a mood of grim expectancy. It was all very well for Port Controller Grydnik, out on Asconel—which was, after all, rather an isolated world—to state that Brinze didn’t exist because there was no Imperial record of it. But the records on Annanworld weren’t so parochial.
    The library disgorged a small plain card, no larger than the palm of his hand, from the slot at the base of the panel. Dismayed, Spartak picked it up and read it. It ran:
    “BRINZE, planet presumed habitable, location unknown. No data. Request verify basis for question.”
    He tore the card across and threw it away. “Belizuek,” he said. “Religious cult or feature of cult.”
    The answering card was slightly larger, but not much. On it were the words: “BELIZUEK, title and object of veneration of religious cult introduced to former Imperial space at ASCONEL (q.v.) approximately four years ago. No data on origins. No data on ritual. Unconfirmed reports of human sacrifice posted as IMPROBABLE.”
    “Bucyon,” Spartak said. “Personal name. Lydis, personal name.” Deliberately he refrained from cross-referencing to Asconel. The fact that the library contained information even as meager as what it had given him on this mysterious Belizuek cult had taken him aback; he had imagined that in his ten-year research for his projected history of his home planet he had exhausted every single reference in the entire store.
    “BUCYON,” the third card said. “Present Warden of Asconel. LYDIS, present consort of Bucyon. Unconfirmed reports of usurpation by violence posted as—”
    He didn’t bother to see under what delicate category the memory of the library had entered those reports. He crumpled the card and tossed it aside in fury.
    “I’m an idiot,” he growled. “All kinds of an idiot!”
    This material the library was supplying to him was nothing more than the siftings of the story Vix himself had just told in the refectory anteroom. Brother Ulwyn, in the gatehouse, must have informed the library as a matter of routine that a visitor from Asconel by way of who-knows-where had arrived, and the library, finding it lacked recent news of that planet, had automatically eavesdropped on this much traveled stranger. Techniques like these—some of them scarcely ever used—had been partially responsible for making Annanworld into the most notable of all the Empire’s information centers.
    For some minutes after that, he just sat. He had hoped to present a whole stack of data about Brinze and Belizuek to Vix, as some sort of justification for having hidden away in this placid backwater—Vix’s gibe was half-true, he had to admit. And it turned out there was nothing in the library but the same rumors, now rendered third-hand.
    Wearily, he wondered whether his ostensible reason for compiling a history of Asconel was sound. Was there going to be a renaissance of galactic civilization, based this time on