God of Tarot Read Online Free PDF

said, feeling an unholy anticipation of challenge. “Planet Tarot is haunted.”
    “That is one way of putting it,” she agreed. “We view it more seriously.” She waited until his face assumed the proper expression of seriousness. “Most haunts don’t lend themselves well to motion-picture photography.” She brought a reel from the drawer.
    Brother Paul did a double-take. “Motion-picture film of the skeletons?”
    “That’s right. It seems a colonist was filming the concert. He thought the skeletons were part of the show—until the stampede began.”
    “This I would like to see!”
    “You shall.” The Reverend set up a little projector, lit its lensed lamp, and cranked the handle. The picture flickered on the wall across from her desk.
    It was, indeed, the dance of death. At first there were only the musicians, playing their crude, locally fashioned violins; then the skeletons pranced onstage, moving in time to the music. There was no sound, of course; a lamp-and-hand-crank projector was not capable of that. But Brother Paul could see the breathing of the players, the motions of their hands on the instruments, and the gestures of the conductor; the beat was clear.
    One skeleton passed close to the camera, its gaunt, white ribcage momentarily blotting out the orchestra. Brother Paul peered closely, trying to ascertain what manner of articulation those bones possessed; it was hardly credible that they could move without muscle, sinew, or wires. Yet they did.
    Then the scramble began; the picture veered crazily and clicked off.
    “I understood there was a one-kilogram limit on personal possessions for emigrants,” Brother Paul commented. “How did a sophisticated device like a motion-picture camera get there?”
    “They can make them very small these days,” the Reverend said. “Actually, two emigrants shared their mass allotment in this case, and three others in the family collaborated by taking fragments of a matching projector that could be run by hand. Like this one.” She patted it. “They yielded to need rather than philosophy; nevertheless, they were ingenious. Now we know how fortunate that was. No one on Earth would have believed their story otherwise. This film is evidence that cannot be ignored; something is happening on Planet Tarot, something extraordinary. The authorities want to know what.”
    “But why should they come to us?” Brother Paul asked. “I should think they would send scientists with sophisticated equipment.”
    She moved one hand in an unconscious “be patient” gesture. “They did. But the effect seems to be intermittent.”
    Intermittency—the scourge of repairmen and psychic investigators! How was it possible to understand something that operated only in the absence of the investigator? “Meaning the experts found nothing?” he asked.
    “Correct But they also interviewed the colonists and assembled a catalogue of episodes. They discovered that the manifestations were confined to certain times and certain places—usually. And they occurred only in the presence of believers.”
    “This has a familiar ring,” Brother Paul said. “The believer experiences; the nonbeliever doesn’t. It is the way with faith.” He remembered his own discussion with the boys and girls of the village class; his belief had been stronger than their disbelief.
    “Precisely. Except that the skeptics of the colony were able to witness a few of the phenomena. Whereupon they became believers.”
    As Saul of Tarsus had witnessed the grandeur of God on the road to Damascus, and become Christian. As the village youths had witnessed the power of martial arts. “Believers in what?”
    “In whatever they saw. There may have been skeptics when the “danse macabre” recital began, but there were none at the end, because the skeletons were tangible. But there were other manifestations. In one case it was God—or at least a burning bush that spoke quite clearly, claiming to be