The Book of Feasts & Seasons (16 page)

Nicodemus smiled, and his smile increased his light tenfold, so that even Tyler, despite his newly perfected eyes, could not look at him.

Nicodemus pursed his lips so that the other man, blinking, could look at him again.

“I must go back, Lieutenant,” said the priest. “Whether they torture me or not, kill me or not, I must speak to as many as will listen to me, and tell them of the trials to come. More than one ideal machine was placed on Earth, or near Earth. One is at the North Pole, and one is on the Moon, and one on Mars. And so on. Each one has a greater range and more power than the previous.”

“And these stupid aliens, what did you call them? Are these couch potatoes setting up all these machines so that we will find them and use them to destroy ourselves?”

“Accouchers. Brendan took the word from my mind. It is French. It means a midwife, an obstetrician. They will help the new world be born once this world is destroyed by the folly of men. He joined my Church, by baptism, and I washed him clean of sin and I joined his order, when he healed me and gave me this ideal and indestructible body. So I must return to Earth and carry out his mission. Otherwise their exile will not end.”

“The mission to destroy mankind? What kind of mission is that for a man of the cloth!”

“No, Lieutenant, this mission is right up my alley. You see, there is one and only one person on this whole world who their instruments have detected is evolved enough and advanced enough to be trusted with the ideal machine, and to use it with benevolence and wisdom.”

“You?”

“Good, heavens, no! I am likely to forget where I put it, or to hand it to the first random stranger who walks by. I have already failed the test. I was too trusting. You must understand, since I have heard such dreadful things, things that would curl your hair–it is a natural temptation. I thought I knew how bad men get. I just did not believe—I mean, he seemed like such a nice young man, and in uniform, disciplined, patriotic—he did not commit murder the first time someone handed him a gun, did he? So I thought, you know, that one of you might pass the test!”

“Live and learn, I guess.”

“I am just a foolish old country priest after all, with duties noe harder than cleaning up the museum, and look! I managed to wreck it. And as for you, you decided to bury your one talent rather than invest it, and so you have failed also.”

“So who is this one perfect man?”

“She is twelve years old, and lives in Canton, China.”

“Twelve?”

“Yes, now. I will find her and tell her the mission once she is a reasonable age, say, thirty or thirty five. She is not sinless, for then all power under heaven and earth would be open to her, but she is higher than we are, and she will not misuse this power, which seems to be too much for people like me. Her name is Xue Yi-Yi. I am not sure what Xue means, but yi means happy. I must learn her language too. As soon as I find someone safe to read minds with.”

“You are a mindreader now? No, you are saying it is like the Mind Meld on
Star Trek
.”

“No,
Star Wars
. I am sure the Dark Father read Luke's mind at some point. In any case, no it is not like any show. It is more like marriage.”

“I don't understand.”

“Reading minds, or mingling minds, is not safe to do to a stranger. If he smokes, I will have an overwhelming urge to smoke, even if I have never touched tobacco in my life; and I will be sexually attracted to his wife, and he will pick up my bad habits–he might even believe in a God he's never heard of, even if he is an inhuman being with no emotions in common with mammalian forms of life.”

“And you might pick up his alien way of thinking, and start believing in his mission. It is because of that alien you believe this nonsense? A twelve year old Cantonese girl going to save the world? This one perfect girl?”

The priest said, “Lieutenant, you and I are standing in midair a mile above the earth at midnight, and neither one of us is cold or hyperventilating. Tell me again what is likely and unlikely in this world! I see and perform the miracle of transubstantiation every day. Compared to what Paul and Peter saw, this is nothing. Don't be so easily convinced there are no marvels in this world.”

“A world you and Shu-Yi are going to save against its will?”

“Of course not. The world cannot be saved against its will. I suggest you go north. You know the snow and cold will not harm you. When you get within range of the intermediate ideal machine, you will see it, because the surface of objects no longer deceive your eyes. You should be able to merge with the machine enough to have certain wishes granted, including some means or other of moving it to your Playboy mansion you wished for. And you will have control of matter and energy, and so should be able to hide, evade or fend off the police, or whoever comes to interrupt your grindingly boring orgies. Life in California, I hear, is pleasant, at least inside the armored enclaves.”

“You have got to be kidding! The ideal machine did not actually make a mansion full of centerfolds for me, did it?”

“No, because that is not what you wished for. You asked for an invitation. But yes, I am kidding you. The ideal machine can make animals, but not people, and so I don't think, from the way you worded the wish, you received anything other than a forged visitor's pass. Look in your pockets. If it is not there, check your mailbox in a few days.”

“But I was just talking! I didn't know the damned thing was turned on!”

“So the glowing and whistling feelings it produced in your brain were not a clue? I see.”

“I am not really going to commit suicide, am I?”

“Haven't you been listening, my son? The machine cannot make women love you, or change anyone's mind or free will. It can forge documents and destroy atomic weapons, and, under expert control, it can even draw plasma from a star and obliterate a planet. But a planet is a small and temporary thing. You, and I, and every soul ever created by the word and love of heaven, we are eternal and infinite beings.”

“But if your body is a superman body like mine, then nothing can kill us!”

“Unless my martyrdom turns out to be the swiftest way to spread the news that the woman of the prophecy will save the remnant. When she is old enough, events will bring Yi-Yi to her machine you've kept, and she will have the range necessary to reach the moon.”

“Reach the–you mean I could have wished for a starship? And I wished for a goddam whorehouse instead! Jesus fuc–I mean, uh, come on!”

“Well, the Accoucher could not travel here faster than light, and they also needed a ship. I do not think even your ideal body could carry you to the moon. You will have to be more free of sin. Only then will you know true levity, the lightness of the angels. She, of course, if she is to fulfill her mission, will be able to create the star vessels needed to preserve us from the deluge of fire.”

“So you are going off to your death, and I am going on a wild goose chase and then wait two decades for some Chinese woman to find me–is she going to be wearing a white carnation or something? How will I know what to do?”

“Events will turn out as planned, if we do our part.”

“Planned by who? By the aliens? By their Designers who made their star systems? By God?”

“A playwright can craft a story in which a mastermind makes a scheme and carries it out, but it is the playwright who knows the end of the tale before he even puts pen to paper. Come! It is time. Now descend and place me somewhere when the press or the military can find me. And you, you have business up North. How it will turn out with you and your mansion, I don't know, but I doubt you will give up the pleasure of flying for the pleasures of the flesh. Not now that you know the consequences.”

“And what if this is all an accident, Father? Would a real God have blown up a whole solar system just to give a lightshow to a bunch of wandering kings a thousand years later? What if what happened tonight didn't just burn your body, but your brain too? You touched an alien mind, Father! Are you crazy? Am I crazy?”

The priest merely shrugged. “If this was all an accident, a coincidence, then there is no design, is there? Before we return to Earth, and before you set off for the endless snows of the North, let us go up, and you shall tell me if you see any evidence of a grand design.”

Up they rose, higher into the night sky, until the world was but a sullen disk of gloom below, and the lights of the cities of men were bright little stars.

They rose to the edge of the atmosphere, and he found he could rise no farther. The deadly emptiness of space was at hand, but the light from the priest warmed and protected him.

With his new and heightened senses, Tyler could hear the stars in choir singing, and the stream of the Milky Way like a basso profundo section solemn with deep joy in the background.

He heard the stern voice of Arcturus, and the winged song of the Pleiades, but he no longer heard the voice of doubt in his head, not then or ever again.

The Feast of Pentecost

The animals gathered, one by one, outside the final city of Man, furtive, curious, and afraid.

All was dark. In the west was a blood-red sunset, and in the east a blood-red moonrise of a waning moon. No lamps shined in the towers and minarets, and all the widows of the palaces, mansions, and fanes were empty as the eyes of skulls. All about the walls of the city were the fields and houses that were empty and still, and all the gates and doors lay open.

Above the fortresses and barracks, black pillars upheld statues of golden eagles, beaks open, unmoving and still. Above the coliseum and circus, where athletes strove and acrobats danced and slaves fought and criminals were fed alive to wild beasts for the diversion of the crowds, and the noise of screams and cries rose up like incense toward heaven, statues of heroes and demigods stood on white pillars, glaring blindly down.

Within other walls were gardens whose trees were naked in the wind, and the silence was broken only by the rustle of the carpet of fallen leaves wallowing along the marble paths and pleasances.

Above the boulevards and paved squares where merchants once bought and sold ivory and incense and purple and gold, or costly fabrics of silks from the east, or ambergris from the seas beyond the Fortunate Isles, and auction houses adorned and painted stood where singing birds and dancing girls were sold to the highest bidder or given to the haughtiest peer. And here were gambling houses where princes and nobles once used gems as counters for cities and walled towns, and the fate of nations might depend upon the turn of a card. And there were pleasure houses where harlots plied their trade, and houses of healing where physicians explained which venereal disease had no cures and arranged for painless suicides, and houses of morticians where disease-raddled bodies were burnt in private, without any ceremony that might attract attention and be bad for business.

And higher on the high hill in the center of the city were the libraries of the learned and the palaces of the emperors adored as gods. But no history was read in the halls of learning and no laws were debated in the halls of power.

Not far outside the city was a mountain that had been cut in two, crown to root, by some great supernatural force. On the slopes of the dark mountain, in a dell overgrown and wild, two dark creatures met, peering cautiously toward the empty city. A black wolf addressed a black raven sitting in a thorn-bush. “What is the news, eater of carrion? Did you fly over the city and spy out where the corpses are?”

The black raven shrugged indifferently. “I thought it unwise to intrude. What of you, bold corsair against the sheepfolds of men? Man has always feared your kind. Did you not creep into the unwatched and unguarded gates? Surely you were not afraid!”

The wolf was embarrassed and turned away. “Surely I am not a fool,” he growled.

“Who, then, will go into the city?” asked the raven.

“Long ago, Man seduced our cousin the Hound to serve him, and to betray us. The Sons of the Hound are friends of Man, and can pass into the city to discover what has become of Adam’s sons and Enoch’s grandsons. I smell one of my cousins nearby. If Man is truly vanished from the bosom of the Earth, then the old covenant is broken and he and I may speak.”

The raven with a croak and a flutter of wings rose into the air. “Surely Hound will know.”

But it proved not so. When Raven and Wolf came to where Hound and Horse and the slow and solemn Bull were all exchanging whispered eulogies and reminiscences, and put their question to him, the Hound shrugged philosophically. “I cannot tell you what has become of Man, nor what these great lightning-flares and thunders and voices mean. All I can say is that I no longer smell his scent on the air, nor smell the smoke of his bright servant, fire. For the first time since the hour when the prince of the air, Prometheus, taught Cain how to build a sacrificial fire, and taught Tubalcain how to light a forge, there has been the smell of smoke or smokestack somewhere in the world, be it campfire or holocaust or steel mills roaring with glorious flame. Now there is no sign of fire anywhere the rumor of the eight winds carries to me.”

The wolf said, “You are friendly to Man. Go there! If he should still be alive, he will pet and fondle you, and feed you soup bones and slivers of meat.”

The hound shook his shaggy head. “It would be disobedience. I cannot go where Man forbids me go.”

Wolf snarled, “And if he is vanished forever? How long will you obey his NO DOGS ALLOWED signs?”

Hound said, “If my master has gone forever, then will I obey his word forever, and never will I enter the city. The First Hound was the first beast ever to be given a name by Adam, the First Man, and that honor we have never forgotten.”

A sharp laugh came from the bushes nearby. It was Fox, with his bright, cunning eyes and his black fur. “And for your loyalty, yours was the first tribe expelled from Eden with him, O Hound!”

“He needed the company,” said Hound simply.

Horse, who had been talking softly with Hound before Wolf walked up, now reared on his hind legs and shook his great black mane. It was a fearsome sight. “My ancestors ate nothing of the knowledge of good and evil. For what cause do my noble people wither and perish? But we were the second to depart the golden garden. The serpent promised us the glory of war, and a chance to use our strength, to run against the enemy with flying manes and foaming mouths, so that even the sons of men would be terrified by our might. We were promised that we would win names of renown, as no other beast would win, Bucephelous and Grane and Traveler. We were told that our pedigrees would be counted as if they were the lineages of kings! So it was for a season. We pulled the noble chariot, not the humble plow. Our ancient pedigrees were consumed by a man named Napoleon, and our daily work taken away by a man named Ford. The serpent told us the truth, but somehow he used that truth to tell a lie. I cannot understand it.”