Temple Trouble

Temple Trouble, by Henry Beam Piper

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Title: Temple Trouble
Author: Henry Beam Piper
Illustrator: Rogers
Release Date: July 18, 2006 [EBook #18861]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction, April, 1951. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was
renewed.
[Illustration]
TEMPLE TROUBLE

BY H. BEAM PIPER
* * * * *

Miracles to order was a fine way for the paratimers to get mining concessions--but Nature
can sometimes pull counter-miracles. And so can men, for that matter....

Illustrated by Rogers
Through a haze of incense and altar smoke, Yat-Zar looked down from his golden throne
at the end of the dusky, many-pillared temple. Yat-Zar was an idol, of gigantic size and
extraordinarily good workmanship; he had three eyes, made of turquoises as big as
doorknobs, and six arms. In his three right hands, from top to bottom, he held a sword
with a flame-shaped blade, a jeweled object of vaguely phallic appearance, and, by the
ears, a rabbit. In his left hands were a bronze torch with burnished copper flames, a big
goblet, and a pair of scales with an egg in one pan balanced against a skull in the other.
He had a long bifurcate beard made of gold wire, feet like a bird's, and other rather
startling anatomical features. His throne was set upon a stone plinth about twenty feet
high, into the front of which a doorway opened; behind him was a wooden screen,
elaborately gilded and painted.
Directly in front of the idol, Ghullam the high priest knelt on a big blue and gold cushion.
He wore a gold-fringed robe of dark blue, and a tall conical gold miter, and a bright blue
false beard, forked like the idol's golden one: he was intoning a prayer, and holding up, in
both hands, for divine inspection and approval, a long curved knife. Behind him, about
thirty feel away, stood a square stone altar, around which four of the lesser priests, in
light blue robes with less gold fringe and dark-blue false beards, were busy with the
preliminaries to the sacrifice. At considerable distance, about halfway down the length of
the temple, some two hundred worshipers--a few substantial citizens in gold-fringed
tunics, artisans in tunics without gold fringe, soldiers in mail hauberks and plain steel
caps, one officer in ornately gilded armor, a number of peasants in nondescript smocks,
and women of all classes--were beginning to prostrate themselves on the stone floor.
Ghullam rose to his feet, bowing deeply to Yat-Zar and holding the knife extended in
front of him, and backed away toward the altar. As he did, one of the lesser priests
reached into a fringed and embroidered sack and pulled out a live rabbit, a big one,
obviously of domestic breed, holding it by the ears while one of his fellows took it by the
hind legs. A third priest caught up a silver pitcher, while the fourth fanned the altar fire
with a sheet-silver fan. As they began chanting antiphonally, Ghullam turned and quickly
whipped the edge of his knife across the rabbit's throat. The priest with the pitcher
stepped in to catch the blood, and when the rabbit was bled, it was laid on the fire.
Ghullam and his four assistants all shouted together, and the congregation shouted in
response.
The high priest waited as long as was decently necessary and then, holding the knife in
front of him, stepped around the prayer-cushion and went through the door under the idol
into the Holy of Holies. A boy in novice's white robes met him and took the knife,
carrying it reverently to a fountain for washing. Eight or ten under-priests, sitting at a
long table, rose and bowed, then sat down again and resumed their eating and drinking.
At another table, a half-dozen upper priests nodded to him in casual greeting.

Crossing the room, Ghullam went to the Triple Veil in front of the House of Yat-Zar,
where only the highest of the priesthood might go, and parted the curtains, passing
through, until he came to the great gilded door. Here he fumbled under his robe and
produced a small object like a mechanical pencil, inserting the pointed end in a tiny hole
in the