The Book of Philip Jose Farmer Part 14

"We'll see about that when we get to camp," he said.

"I'm not telling lies," she said. "I'm just speculating, as any Christian should.

Remember, the Serpent is very cunning and full of guile. What better way to fight those who believe in G.o.d than to pose as Christ returned?"

Kelvin did not like the path down which his mind was walking. There should be no more uncertainties; all should be hard and final. Things were not what he had thought they would be. Not that he was reproaching G.o.d even in his thoughts. But things just had not worked out as he had a.s.sumed they would. And his a.s.sumptions had been based on a lifetime of reading the Scriptures.

"Were you one of those martyred by the Beast?" he said. Dana Webster had started walking again. She did not stop to reply but slowed down so that he was only a step behind and a step to one side of her.

"Do you mean, was I one of those whose heads were rayed off and who was then resurrected? No, I wasn't, though I could easily claim to be one and no one could prove that I was lying. Most of my brothers and sisters were killed, but I was lucky. I got away to a hideout up on Mount Skiddaw, in c.u.mberland. The Beast's search parties were getting close to my cave when the meteorites fell and the quakes started and everything was literally torn to shreds."

"G.o.d's intervention," he said. "Without His help, we would all have perished."

"Somebody's intervention."

"What do you mean by somebody?"

"Extraterrestrials," she said. "Beings from a planet of some far-off star. Beings far advanced beyond man -- in science, at least."

The ideas from her were coming too fast. "Could Extraterrestrials resurrect the dead?" he said.

"I don't know why not," she said. "Scientists have said that we would be able to do it in a hundred years or so, maybe sooner. Of course, that would require some means of recording the total molecular makeup and electromagnetic radiation patterns of an individual. That would someday be possible, according to the scientists. And then, using the recordings, the dead person could be duplicated with an energy-matter converter. This was also theoretically possible."

"But the person would be duplicated, not resurrected," he said. "He would not be the same person!"

"No, but he would think he was."

"What good would that do?"

"How do I know what superbeings have in their superminds? Do you know what's being planned for you by G.o.d?"

He was becoming very angry, and he did not wish to be so. He said, "I think we'd better stop talking and save our strength."

"For that matter," she said, "what sense is there in two resurrections or in having a millennium? Why lock up Satan for a thousand years and then release him to lead the heathens against the Christians again, only to lock him up again and then hold the final judgment?"

He did not answer, and she said nothing more for a long time. After an hour, they came down out of the jumbled and shattered hills, and Kelvin saw the white horse eating some long brown gra.s.s growing from between tiny cracks in the rocks.

They approached slowly while Kelvin called out softly to him. The animal trotted off, however, when Kelvin was only forty feet away from him. He aimed his rifle at it; he could not let this much meat get away now on the slim chance that he might catch it later on.

Dana Webster said, "Don't shoot it! I'll get him!" She called out loudly. The horse wheeled, snorting, and ran up to her and nuzzled her. She patted it and smiled at Kelvin. "I have a feeling for animals," she said. "Rather, there's a good feeling between me and them. An ESP of some sort, sympathetic vibrations, call it what you will."

"Beauty and the beast."

She quit smiling. "The Beast?"

"I didn't mean that. But your power over animals. . ."

"Don't tell me you believe in witchcraft? Good G.o.d! And I'm not swearing when I say that. Don't you believe in love? He feels it. And I feel such a traitor getting him back, because he'll probably be eaten."

An hour later, they led the horse, worn-out from carrying the two humans, into camp near the sea. The sentinels had challenged them, and Kelvin had given the proper countersigns. They pa.s.sed them and entered a depression on a jagged but low hill. All around them was the mouth-watering odor of frying fish. The four men who had put out into the red-tinged waters, in the small, lightweight, collapsible boat had been fortunate. Or blessed by G.o.d. They had not expected to catch anything at all, because the fish life had been frighteningly depleted. When St. John had predicted that a third of the seas would be destroyed, he had underestimated. Rather, underpredicted.

Dana Webster pointed at the thirteen large fish frying in the dural pans over the fires. She said, "Does that mean we won't have to slaughter the horse?"

"Not now, anyway," he said.

"I'm so glad."

Kelvin was glad, too, but he was not impressed by her love for it. He had known too many butchers of children who were very much concerned about humane treatment for dogs and cats.

The men and women waiting for them were lean and dark with the sun and wind and were ridged, as if they were pieces of mahogany carved by windblown sand.

They shone with something of a great strength derived from certainty. They had been through the persecutions and the cataclysms and the battles against the slaves of the Beast after the Beast's power had been broken by the cataclysms. "Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of G.o.d and of Christ and they shall reign with him a thousand years."

However, Kelvin thought, the statement that the second death will have no power over them apparently meant that those who had resisted the Beast for love of G.o.d would not be judged again. But they could die, and those who died would not return to the Earth until the thousand years had pa.s.sed. And then they would rise with the other dead in their new bodies and witness the final judgment. It was then that those faithful who had died before the time of the Beast would be given new bodies and the others would go to whatever fate awaited them. The Alpha and Omega, the final kingdom, would come.

All this had gone into the shaping of their bodies and the expression of face and eye. They were saints now, and nothing could ever change that. But saints could be hungry and thirsty and get very tired and become discouraged. And they would kill if they must.

There were no children here nor had any of the party seen anyone under seven during their journey across the continent and the seas. Their time would come at the end of the millennium.

"What do we have here?" Anna Silvich said.

Anna was a tall gray-eyed blonde who would have been beautiful under softer conditions. Now her flesh was pared away so that the bones seemed very near and the white skin was dark and cracked. Despite this, Kelvin had felt very attracted to her.

He intended to ask her to be his wife after they reached the beloved city. He could have married her before this, if she would have him, since any of the party could conduct the ceremony. They were all priests now. But he did not want to do anything that would take his mind off the most important object: getting to the beloved city.

"We have here one who claims she is a Christian," Kelvin said.

Anna took a pencil-shaped plastic object from her s.h.i.+rt-pocket, pointed it at Dana Webster's forehead, and slid a section of the object forward.

"See?" Webster said. "I don't have the mark of the Beast."

Anna stepped forward and seized the woman's hair and pulled her head down.

Kelvin started to protest against the unnecessary roughness, but he decided not to. He would see how Webster reacted; perhaps she might get angry enough to trip herself up. Anna released the woman's hair and said, "No scars there. But that doesn't mean anything. If I had a microscope or even a magnifying gla.s.s. . ."

Dana Webster said nothing but looked scornful. If she were upset or angry about her treatment, however, she did not allow it to interfere with her appet.i.te. She ate the fish and the biscuits and canned peaches. The latter two items had been found in the ruins of a house by Sherborn, a little man who had a nose for buried or concealed food.

Kelvin had given the prayer of thankfulness before they ate, but he felt he should say more afterward. "G.o.d has been good and given us enough today to restore our strength. We can face tomorrow with the certain knowledge that He will provide more. It's evident from today's catch that there are still fish in the Mediterranean.

There must be enough to keep us fed until we get to the beloved city."

Dana Webster, he noticed, said amen to that just as the others did. That could mean nothing except that she was playing her role of Christian, if she was indeed playing. She could be sincere. On the other hand, there were her remarks while they were traveling campward. He asked her what she had meant by Extraterrestrials.She looked around at the dark faces with their protruding cheekbones and hollow cheeks and the darkly rimmed but fire-bright eyes. "I should have kept these doubts -- or, rather, speculations -- to myself," she said. "I should've waited until we got to the beloved city. Then everything would be straightened out. One way or another. Of course, by then it might be too late for us. I hate to say anything about this because you'll think I'm a heathen. But I have a mind, and I must speak it. Isn't that the Christian way?"

"We're not slaves of the Beast, if that's what you mean," Anna said. "We won't kill somebody because they differ somewhat from us on certain theological matters.

Of course, we won't listen to blasphemy. But then you won't blaspheme if you're a Christian."

"It's easy to see you don't like me, Anna Silvich," Webster said. "Of course, that doesn't mean you're not a Christian. You can love mankind but dislike a particular person for one or another reason. Even if she is a fellow believer. Still, that doesn't mean that you're excused from examining yourself and finding out why you can't love me."

Anna said, with only a slight quaver of anger, "Yes, I don't like you. There is something about you. . . some. . . odor. . ."

"Of brimstone, I suppose?" Dana Webster said.

"G.o.d forgive me if I'm wrong," Anna said. "But you know what we've all been through. The betrayals, the spies, the prisons, seeing our children and mates tortured and then beheaded, our supposed friends turning their backs on us or turning us in, the terrible, terrible things done to us. But you know this, whether you're what you say you are or a Judas. However, you are right in reproaching me for one thing. I shouldn't say you stink of the devil unless I really have proof. But. . ."

"But you have said so and therefore you've stained me in everybody's thoughts," Dana said. "Couldn't you have waited until you were certain, instead of maliciously, and most unchristianly, stigmatizing me?"

"Somehow, we've strayed from the original question," Kelvin said. "What do you mean, Dana, by Extraterrestrials?"

She looked around at the faces in the firelight and then at the shadows outside as if there were things in the shadows. "I know you won't even want to consider what I'm going to speculate about. You're too tired in body and mind, too numb with the horrors of the persecution and the cataclysms and the battles that followed, to think about one more battle, or series of battles. But do I have to remind you that men have been looking for the apocalypse for two thousand years? And that mere have been many times when men claimed that it was not only at hand but had actually begun?

"There have been times when men who spoke with authority, or seeming authority, proclaimed that the end of the world was at hand. But they were all mistaken, deceived by themselves or by the Enemy. Which may be the same. I mean, the Enemy may be the enemy within ourselves, not an ent.i.ty, a unique person with an objective existence outside of us. The point is, what if we're being fooled again? Not self-deceived, as in the past, but deceived by an outside agency? By Extraterrestrials who are using weapons against Earth, weapons which far surpa.s.s ours? And now we're being asked to gather at the so-called beloved city, asked to come in and surrender. Why? Perhaps we're to form the basis of the future slave population for these beings?"

There was a long silence afterward. Anna Silvich broke it by crying, "You have convicted yourself, woman! You are trying to put doubts into our hearts, to destroy our faith! You are a heathen!"

Kelvin held his hands up for silence, and, when that did not work, shouted at Anna and the others to shut up. When the uproar had died, he said, "What evidence do you have that your Extraterrestrials exist, Dana?"

"Exactly the same evidence you have that this is the beginning of the millennium," she said. "The difference is my interpretation. Try to look at the situation, and our theories, objectively. And remember that the Antichrist fooled many, probably including some right here, when he claimed to be Christ. He has been exposed and, supposedly, defeated for all time. Or, at least until the final battle a thousand years from now. But think. Could it be Satan himself who was trying his final trick on us? Or could it be that Extraterrestrials who knew of the longing of the faithful for the millennium have caused this pseudomillennium to occur? And. . ."

"Or perhaps it is Satan who is using the Extraterrestrials?" Anna said scornfully.

"It could be," Dana Webster said.

"Just a minute," Kelvin said. "I can't for the life of me, the soul of me, I should say, imagine why these Extraterrestrials should bring the faithful back to life? What reason could they have to do that?"

"Have you seen any of the resurrected?" Dana Webster said. "Is there anybody in this group who has seen one of them? Or, perhaps, some among you were killed and then brought back to life?"

Kelvin said, "It's true that no one here was restored to life. But it is not true that none of us have seen a resurrected person. I myself talked with a man who had been killed for his faith, though he was given the chance to deny G.o.d and become a slave of the Beast after seeing his wife and children raped and tortured and then beheaded. But he refused and so he was roasted over the fire and his head cut off. But he awoke at the bottom of the grave which had been opened for him, and he crawled out and was with a number of others who had been brought back to life. His wife and children were not among them, but he was sure that he would find them. I had no reason to doubt him, since I had known him from childhood."

"What do you think of that, Webster?" Anna said.

"But you did not see him killed, nor did you see him resurrected, isn't that right?" Webster said. "How do you know that he did not in actuality deny G.o.d and become a slave of the Beast? How do you know that his story about his resurrection was not a lie, that he wasn't lying so he could pa.s.s himself off as a Christian, since he had fallen among Christians? Indeed, it would be wise of the Enemy, whether Satan or Extraterrestrial, to send out spies with these lying stories so they could deceive the Christians."

Kelvin had to admit to himself that he had no proof of his friend's story and that what Webster postulated could be true. But he did not think that she was right.

Some things had to be taken on faith. On the other hand, the Antichrist had fooled many, including himself at first. He gestured impatiently and said, "All this talk!

We'll take you with us to the city and, when we get there, we'll find out the truth about everything."

"Why take her along?" Anna said. "She's convicted herself out of her own mouth with her lies, and she'll be an extra mouth to feed. . ."

"Anna!" Kelvin said. "That's not loving. . ."

"The time has come and gone for loving your enemies!" Anna said. "The new times are here; there is no room for tolerance of heathens. And we can't take her along, because she'll be lying to us with her tales of Extraterrestrials and other subtleties designed to make us fall into error! And we haven't anyone to ask what we should do with her. We have to make up our own minds and act on our decision, hard though it may seem."Dana Webster gave a little start. Even by the firelight, she could be seen to pale. She pointed past Anna and said, quietly but with a tremor in her voice, "Why don't you ask him what to do?"

They spun around, their hands going for their weapons. But the tall man in white robes and with short hair as white as newly washed wool had his hands high up in the air so they could see he was unarmed. He was smiling; his teeth were very white in the firelight, and his eyes were s.h.i.+ning with the reflected light. The eyes of no human being shone like those; they were like a lion's. Nor could any human being have crept by the sentinels and appeared so suddenly. The breeze, which Kelvin had suddenly felt just before Webster had spoken, must have been the air displaced by the emergence of this man. . . person. . . from nowhere. Kelvin felt his skin grow cold over his scalp and the back of his neck. He was scared, yet he was glad. At last someone to tell them what was happening and what they must do had come.

The man slowly lowered his hands. He was very handsome and very clean and had a beautiful well-proportioned body, quite in contrast to the ragged, dirty, scruffy bunch, scarred and skinny and stinking. The man slowly opened his robes so that they could see that he had no concealed weapons beneath them. They could also see that he was s.e.xless. And, now that Kelvin was coming out of the shock of the sudden appearance, he saw that he was a misnomer. The being's features were effeminate.

But the total impression the being gave was more masculine than feminine, and so Kelvin continued to think of the person as he.

He said, "You may call me Jones. I'll take up only a few minutes of your time."

Kelvin recognized the deep rich voice. It was the same voice that came to them from time to time, over their transistor receivers. It was the voice that had told the faithful all over the world to start out for the beloved city. It had also told a little about what was expected from the faithful when they did get to the beloved city. Only one thing was clear. The new citizens would have much hard work to do for a long, long time.

"We would be honored, and very happy, if you would stay for more than a few minutes. . . Mr. Jones," Kelvin said. "We have many questions. We also have a crucial problem here."

The angel looked at Dana Webster, but he did not lose his smile. "I don't know what your problem is with her, but I'm sure you'll do the right thing," he said. "As for your questions, most of them will have to wait. I'm busy just now. We have a thousand years to get ready for, and that will pa.s.s quickly enough for those who will live through it."

It was difficult to get up enough courage to argue with an angel, but Kelvin had not survived because of lack of courage. He said, "Why do we have to get to the beloved city on our own? We've suffered enough, I would think, and several of our party have been killed by heathens or in accidents. That doesn't seem to jibe with what we read in St. John the Divine. . ."

Jones raised a long slim hand on the back of which were many white woolly hairs. He said, still smiling, "I don't know the answer to that, any more than I know why there is a first death and then a second death or why all the heathens weren't killed or why they will flourish and propagate once more. Some of whom, by the way, will be your children and grandchildren to the two hundred and fiftieth generation, to your sorrow, though not to your everlasting sorrow. Don't ask me why. I know more than you, but I don't know everything. I am content to wait until the obscurities and ambiguities and seeming paradoxes are straightened out. And you will have to wait.

Unless you are killed, of course, and spared the thousand years of struggle.""We are as subject as ever to the whims of chance!" Kelvin said. "I thought. .

"You thought you'd have everything programmed, everything certain and easy," Jones said. "Well, G.o.d has always dealt with this world on a statistical basis, excepting certain people and events. And, generally speaking, He will continue to do so until the second death. Then, my friend, He will deal with every bit of matter in this world, and the souls that inhabit certain material forms, on a specific and individual basis. And that will be the difference between the world as it has been, and the new, unfluctuating, and unchanging world as it will be after the second death. Not that He is not aware of every atom now and what it is doing. But in the unchanging time to come, He will have His hand upon all matter and all souls, and nothing will evolve or change. You might say that, up to now, and until the thousand years are over, He has respected Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty." Jones looked at each intently, still smiling, and then said, "Actually, I'm here in my office -- one of many -- of requisitioner. I'm taking your horse, which is needed at the city."

"Why don't you just create some horses and leave this one with us?" Anna said. "We need it for food."

"There's other food to be had," Jones said. "This horse is destined to be the father of many hundreds of thousands. As far as I know, the only new creations will be after the second death, when you fortunate ones will be given new bodies.

Something like the one I'm using."

That answered one question. There would be no s.e.x in the new Earth and the new Heaven. And why should there be? There would be no more babies, and the ecstasy of beholding G.o.d's face would far transcend any fleshly delights. Despite this, Kelvin felt a panic. He would be castrated. Then he told himself that he would have to get over that reaction. There would be compensations which would make the loss of his s.e.x seem trivial and, perhaps, a cause for rejoicing. Nor would he be any less a man, that is, a human being.

Anna said, loudly, "There is one thing you should know so you can report it to your superiors, even if you won't do anything about it here!"

Jones raised his woolly white eyebrows and said, "Superiors? I have only two, and I won't have to report to them. They know what's going on at every second."

Anna was checked, but she rallied after a moment's silence. She said, "Forgive me if I'm presuming. But you should know that this woman here claims that all this, that is, the events of the past four years, have been caused by Extraterrestrials! She says we're being fooled! It's all a trick of things from outer s.p.a.ce or whatever they come from! What do you say to that?"

Jones smiled and said, "Well, angels are Extraterrestrial beings, though not all Extraterrestrials are angels. As I said, it's your problem. You're grown up now, though still, of course, children of G.o.d. I go now. G.o.d bless you." Jones mounted the horse and rode out of sight down a defile. Kelvin climbed up onto the shoulder of a high hill to watch him ride out. He heard the bang, like a large balloon exploding, as the air rushed in to fill the vacuum left by a suddenly unoccupied s.p.a.ce.

After five minutes, he climbed back down.

"If he wanted the horse, why didn't he just take it?" Anna said. "Surely he could have done it without leaving the city."

"Perhaps teleportation requires that the teleporter has to be physically present to do the work." Dana said.

"Teleportation?" Anna said. "That was an angel, you fool. Angels don't have to resort to teleportation."

"Teleportation is only a term used to describe a phenomenon," Dana said. "It's the same whether it's brought about by an angel or an Extraterrestrial."

"And you're a heathen," Anna said. That angel must think we're a fine bunch of featherbrains if we can't see what's so obvious. He was laughing at us because we were so stupid."

"He could have been laughing because I told you the truth and you wouldn't believe it," Dana Webster said.