The Book of Feasts & Seasons (13 page)

It must be noted that St. Ignatius Church was the oldest Roman Catholic Church in North America. It was built on the site of the Indian hut that had been used as a place of worship before that. It walls were two feet thick of brick, pierced by handsomely-build arched windows of stained glass in leaden frames. The images portrayed the victorious battles of Chitomachon the Tayac, or Emperor, of the Piscataway against various rival tribes, and his baptism at the hands of Father White, who healed him of a malady forty sorcerers could not cure. There was a wooden belfry on top, directly above the entrance. This entrance was a white double door of wood set between two stained glass windows, and an old pattern of fish-scale shingles covering the roof. The church contained relics from the Ark and Dove, which were the two ships bringing the first settlers to the St Mary's County in 1633.

The lunar brightness of the night departed when the eerie lens-shaped machine hanging silently in the sky dwindled to a speck among the clouds and vanished. The vestibule of the church was black. Tyler blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Dim light came in through the trap door leading to the bell overhead. There were narrow stairs leading up to the right and left, presumably to an upper gallery. The double doors before him were opened merely a crack, but there was no light beyond except reflections shed from the thick windows of the unearthly light, brighter than moonlight, enflaming the clouds outside.

“Hillbilly, we are so hosed,” muttered Hynkel.

“I thought you had my back,” hissed Tyler. “You are so stupid for a college boy. We're not AWOL. I was told to investigate. This is investigating!”

“You are one hosed hillbilly and I am hosed for listening to you! You said the brig would be worth it, cause we'd be in the history books. More famous than Neal Armstrong for going to the Moon and more famous than Buzz Aldrin on YouTube for punching that jerk who said he didn't go.”

“First, I am from an island, not from a hill. Smith Island. So I am an island-billy, college boy. Second, I'll be famous for the first contact between man and spaceman. You'll be famous for being the biggest jerkbone in history.”

“Let's get back–I'll tell the Captain you kidnapped me. No, I can't say that. Everyone knows you are a complete pussy and I could beat the living snot out of your stupid face any day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

“Tell him I seduced you with sweet promises of oral sex, freakshow, and you are so in touch with your sensitive side that you succumbed to the temptation…”

There was a noise behind the half-closed door leading into the dark interior.

“My children, are these the words, is this the spirit, in which you wish to let our fine military forces be represented to emissaries from heaven?”

Hynkel straightened in shock. “It's God! He heard us! We're going to Hell!”

But Tyler pushed the leaf of the door open. There was a flicker of red at the far end of the nave, no farther off than thirty feet, as a tall dark figure struck a match. Little could be seen save the gleam of his eyes as he bent and lit a candle, and the glint from the glass eyes of the statue of St. Joseph and St. Mary placed to either side of the altar. He was dressed in a black jacket with a stiff white collar at his throat, a priest's collar. He was clean-shaven. His hair was snowy white, and gleamed like flame above his dark garb. On his nose perched eyeglasses with half-circles for lenses, and over these his eyes pierced them, mild and sad but, oddly, also filled with mirth, like a joy without cause.

The old man said to Hynkel, “The Lord is merciful, my son. Slow to anger and swift to bless. You might yet escape.”

Tyler said, “Pardon me, sir. Are you from the spaceship up there?”

“No, I am from Lexington Park.”

“What?” said Tyler.

“From the Immaculate Heart of Mary. My name is Father Nicodemus. Nicodemus John Jude Rossignol. I work with Father Schad. The men from space, or at least the one I saw, are smaller than us.” He put his hand out at waist height, palm down, as if he were about the pat a child on the head.

The two aviators stepped into the church. Even in the gloom, and despite its small dimensions, this was a white, well-kept, well-adorned and solemn place. There were three rows of boxed pews of the kind only seen in pre-Revolutionary Era churches, one midmost and one to either side. Two aisles led to the altar on a raised dais.

Overhead, the ceiling was curved like the inside of a barrel on its side, elaborately frescoed in shade of blue cream and reddish brown. A balcony upheld by fluted columns ran around two sides and the rear wall of the tall, rectangular room. Behind the altar at the front of the room, loomed held a huge crucifix in a frame like an old family portrait above the mantle of a fireplace. There was wooden rail forming a half circle about the altar. The old priest was carefully inserting the candle he just lit into an otherwise empty rack placed on the side facing the statue of St Mary, which occupied the upper right half of the rear wall.

“His eyes were like the eyes of beasts without any white in them,” said the Father, “And his skin was gray like fine leather. A lipless mouths and two slits for nostrils. No noses. And don't ask me how they smell, because the one—I named him Brendan, because he had traveled so far—actually had a smell like the sky before a thunderstorm. An ozone smell.”

Tyler said, “And what are you doing here?”

“Ah…” he opened his mouth and tilted back his head slightly, so that the half moons of his eyeglasses caught the images of the two pilots. “But you have not introduced yourselves.”

“I'm Lieutenant Tyler from HS8. This is here is Lieutenant Hynkel.” He sighed, because that did not sound right, so he added. “We are on an official Navy investigation of extraterrestrial-related activities.”

Hynkel said, “You can call me Andy, and him Joe, Padre. We're from the base.”

“So I assumed,” said the old man, with a genial smile and a nod. “We all wear a distinctive uniform, do we not?”

“And what are you doing here?” asked Tyler.

“Ah. I am a priest. Priests are found in chapels just as sailors are found on Navy bases, yes?” He pointed at his white collar. “You did not think 'father' was my first name, eh? That would be an awkward name, particularly for a man in my vocation. Father Father, I'd be called. Not unlike that Major in
Catch 22
. Major Major Major. I don't suppose you've ever read that…it's quite funny. Can't think of the author's name. Hold on. It will come to me.”

“No, I mean, what are you doing here? This place has been closed since, I am not sure, before my grandpappy's time. It closed up during World War Two.”

The Father said, “Once a year, for Maryland Day, we hold a solemn mass. I had come by this evening to see to some things, hanging robes in the vestry, bringing the vessels, when the State Troopers closed Route 5 on account of an alien spaceship heading here. My choice was to sleep here or try hiking my way to the College, three miles up the way.”

Hynkel said, “Why did they come here?”

Father Nicodemus snapped his fingers and smiled. “Heller!”

Hynkel flinched. “What is heller? The aliens came here for a heller? You mean healer?”

“No, Joseph Heller wrote
Catch 22
. No, Brendan came here to be baptized.”

“You are kidding me, Padre!” said Hynkel. “Sorry, but these creature came from another planet! Like Mars, or some place like that. The newspapers say they might be out to kill us.”

Father Nicodemus said mildly, “I also read in the paper where it said the new Pope would permit priestesses and sodomite marriages. They are really not reliable, you know, newspapers.”

“They came all that way—zillions of miles—so you could sprinkle some water on his head?”

“Well, yes. Brendan said he wanted to be baptized. It was the first thing he said,” Father Nicodemus nodded toward the waist-high pale stone post near to the doors where the two young men stood. The top of the post was a stone basin in which a few drops of water could be seen. “The baptistery was empty, but I had a bottle of Desani, so I used that. Well, heh, actually the first first thing he said was to ask to be taken to my leader, which I thought was kind of funny, you know. Like it was from an old movie or something. I wonder if they studied what forms in which to show themselves to us from our radio and television broadcasts. I suppose I am lucky he did not manifest looking like a Klingon, or Mork from Ork. Do either of you remember those, uh, shows? No, I suppose not. It's probably for the best.”

Tyler said, “Please, Father, what happened with the alien dude? This is Earth's first contact with Outer Space! Are they friendly?”

“Well, let me see,” Nicodemus blinked several times. “I assumed he was not interested in meeting Cardinal Wuerl of Archdiocese of Washington. So I said my leader was in heaven, but also in my heart, and in the most holy sacrament of the altar, and I explained a little about that. And then he told me he wanted to be baptized. But Brendan is not from Mars. He is from Eta Aquilae.”

“What?”

Father Nicodemus shook his head sadly. “The star from which they come. He said our name for it was Eta Aquilae, or Bazak. It star erupted long ago. Apparently it is a changeable sort of star.”

“A variable star,” said Tyler.

“Ah, you have studied science, perhaps?”

“No, Father, but I did watch a lot of Star Trek.”

“Then you do know Klingons! Well, their variable star put out a very great deal of radiation around about 1,400 BC, and they are one thousand four hundred light years away, so the light reached our world at the beginning of the First Century. Some people think it was a nova, and others thought it was a conjunction of planets or perhaps a comet. But, no, it was a variable star undergoing a particular bright disturbance. Brendan told me it was a punishment from someone he called 'the Designers'. So either some stars are artificial things, created by alien intelligences, or Brendan simply has some very odd beliefs. Because of the disaster, their world was abandoned, and they cannot live on the surface of the new and virgin world set aside for them, not until they have given birth—helped another to give birth—to a new world. I don't know what that means, but that is what he said. Until then, they are nomads all living on ships or something he called 'great islands' in space. He said they departed around AD 600, as we reckon time. They've spent the intervening years in transit, but apparently less time passed for them as they were traveling at speeds near to the speed of light.

“He and I talked some more, I heard his confession—it seems there really are no new sins, not even in space—and then I baptized him and gave him his name. And he did the same for me. Well, not precisely the same, but something similar, at any rate. We said our farewells, and then he returned to his ship, although not the same way he came in.”

Tyler said, “But no one saw anyone leave the ship. We were all around it.”

“He dematerialized his old body aboard ship, and created one out of thin air here in the Church. That released a great deal of energy, and I am afraid the radiation harmed me rather severely; he really should have been more careful. It also blew out the lights, which is why it is dark in here. When he left, he did not need the machine he used. I understand it is an ideal machine.”

“But did he say why he came?” pressed Tyler. “Was it just to talk?”

Hynkel said very softly, “We are so screwed, hillbilly! Famous, you said! The Padre here is going to be the one doing all the talk shows, not us. All we are going to get is the brig, and doing PT in full kit.”

The Father must have had supernaturally acute hearing, because despite being twenty or thirty feet away, he said, “Oh, I do not think it would be wise for me to appear on television, or anywhere in public. I am not photogenic. And anything I say that reflects on the Church I must first clear with my bishop. Especially if it might reflect poorly on the Church.”

Hynkel said, “Did you get a picture of this alien, Father? Any evidence we can show our superiors? You said he looked like a small gray child.”

Tyler said, “I am sorry, Father. It is not that we doubt you, but–” And then he stopped, because he realized he did doubt everything he'd been told, very much, in fact.

The alien vessel was directly overhead, that much was true. But had the vessel crossed hundreds of light years from a star in the constellation Aquila merely to talk to an absent-minded old priest from Saint Mary's County, Maryland? It seemed unlikely, to put it mildly.

The Father said, “Yes, he looked like hairless child with enormous eyes. No, I did not think to take any pictures. I am sure there is a feature on my phone that does that, but I have not gotten around to reading the owner's manual, I'm afraid. I don't think that was his real body, the little gray shape. He told me he had assumed our form so he could withstand our air and gravity. They are trying to look like us, but failing, which is why they look so inhuman. On their long-lost home world they looked like sea creatures, jellyfish or Portuguese Man-o'-War or something of the sort, and their atmosphere was methane and ethane and ammonia ice under immense pressure. They don't see because their atmosphere is opaque, but their whole mantle acts as an eardrum. He showed me a sort of picture. And aboard ship they look more like eggs covered over on every surface with eyes. It seems they don't need feet in zero gravity.”

But Tyler said, “Sir, how do they work the yoke? I mean, if they are eggs with no arms to work the controls–”

The Father said, “They have an ideal machine which can adjust the degree to which a thing reaches its perfect form. And being ideal, the machine reacts to ideas. It's like a genii's lamp, except one that reads your mind.”

Hynkel said, “What can this mindreading machine actually do?”

“Everything has an ideal form that exists only as an abstract concept,” said Father Nicodemus in the unconsciously condescending tone of someone who has spent too many years lecturing children. “By adjusting the degree to which a bit of matter participates or partakes in one concept as opposed to another, the matter can be changed from one type to another. The machine is ideal because you never need any other tools than this one.”