The Day After Judgement (10 page)

The near desertion of the city, at least by comparison with the jam which would have been its natural state by this time of
year, gave Father Domenico a small advantage. Instead of having to take refuge in a third-class hotel, clamorous twenty-four
hours a day with groups of Germans and Americans being processed by the coachload like raw potatoes being convented into neatly
packaged crisps, he was able without opposition to find himself apartments in the Patriarch’s Palace itself. Such dusty sumptuousness
did not at all suit him, but he had come to see the Pope, as the deputy of an ancient, still honoured monastic order; and
the Patriarch, after confessing him and hearing the nature of his errand, had deemed it fitting that he be appropriately housed
while he waited.

There was no way of telling how long the wait might be. The Pope had died with Rome; what remained of the College of Cardinals – those
of them that had been able to reach Venke at all – was shut in the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci, attempting to elect a new
one. It was said that the office of the Grand Inqisitor, directly next door, held a special guest, but of this rumour the
Patriarch seemed to know no more than the next man. In the meantime, he issued to Father Domenico a special dispensation to
conduct Masses and hear confessions in small churches off the Grand Canal, and to preach there and even in the streets if he
wished. Technically, Father Domenico had no patent to do any of these things, since he was a monk rather than a priest, but
the Patriarch, like everyone else now, was short on manpower.

On the trip northward from Monte Albano, Father Domenico had seen many more signs of suffering, and of out-right demoniac
malignancy, than were visible on the surface of this uglily beautiful city; but it was nevertheless a difficult, almost sinister
place m which to attempt to minister to the people, let alone to preach a theology of hope. The Venetians had never been more
than formally and outwardly allegiant to the Church from at least their second treaty with Islam in the mid-fifteenth century.
The highest pinnacle of their ethics was that of dealing fairly with each other, and since there was at the same time no sweeter
music to Venetian ears than the scream of outrage from the outsider who had discovered too late that he had been cheated,
this left them little that they felt they ought to say in the confessional. Most of them seemed to regard the now obvious
downfall of almost all of human civilization as a plot to divent the tourist trade to some other town
– probably Istanbul, which they still referred to as Constantinople.

As for hope, they had none. In this they were not alone. Throughout his journey, Father Domenico had found nothing but terror
and misery, and a haunted populace which could not but conclude that everything the Church had taught them for nearly two
thousand years had been lies. How could he tell them that, considering the real situation as he knew it to be, the suffering
and the evil with which they were afflicted were rather less than he had expected to find? How then could he tell them further
that he saw small but mysteriously increasing signs of mitigation of the demons’ rule? In these, fighting all the way against
confounding hope with wishful thinking, he believed only reluctantly himself.

Yet hope somehow found its way forward. On an oppressive afternoon while he was trying to preach to a group of young thugs,
most of them too surly and indifferent even to jeer, before the little Church of Sta. Maria dei Miracoli, his audience was
suddenly galvanized by a series of distant whistles. The whistles, as Father Domenico knew well enough, had been until only
recently the signals of the young wolves of Venice, to report the spotting of some escortless English schoolmarm, pony-tailed
Bennington art student or gaggle of Swedish girls. There were no such prey about now, but nevertheless, the piazzetta emptied
within a minute.

Bewildered and of course apprehensive, Father Domenico followed, and soon found the streets almost as crowded as of old with
people making for St Mark’s. A rumour had gone around that a puff of white smoke had been seen over the Palazzo Ducale. This
was highly unlikely, since – what with the fear of another fire which constantly haunted the palace – there was no stove in
it anywhere in which to burn ballots; nevertheless, the expectation of a new Pope had run through the city like fire itself.
By the time Father Domenico reached the vast square opposite the basilica (for after all, he too had come in search of a Pope)
it was so crowded as to scarcely leave standing room for the pigeons.

If there was indeed to be any announcement, it would have to come Venetian style from the top of the Giant’s Staircase of
Antonio Rizzo; the repetitive arches of the first-floor loggia offered no single balcony on which a Pope might appear. Father
Domenico pressed forward into the great internal courtyard towards the staircase, at first saying,
‘Prego, prego,’
and then
‘Scusate, scusate mi’
, to no effect whatsoever and finally with considerable judicious but hard monkish use of elbows and knees.

Over the tense rumbling of the crowd there sounded suddenly an antiphonal braying of many trumpets – something of Gabrielli’s,
no doubt – and at the same Father Domenico found himself jammed immovably against the coping of the cannon-founder’s well,
which had long since been scavenged clean of the tourists’ coins. By luck it was not a bad position; from here he had quite
a clear view up the staircase and between the towering statues of Mars and Neptune. The great doors had already been opened,
and the cardinals in their scarlet finery were ranked on either side of the portico. Between them and a little forward stood
two pages, one of them holding a red cushion upon which stood something tall and glittering.

Amidst the fanfare, an immensely heavy tolling began to boom: La Trottiera, the bell which had once summoned the members of
the Grand Council to mount their horses and ride over the wooden bridges to a meeting. The combination of bell and trumpets
was sokmnly beautiful, and under it the crowd fell quickly silent. Yet the difference from the Roman ritual was disturbing,
and there was something else wrong about it, too. What was that thing on the cushion? It certainly could not be the tiara;
was it the golden horn of the doges?

The music and the tolling stopped. Into the pigeon-cooing silence, a cardinal cried in Latin:

‘We have a Pope,
Sumraus Antistitum Antistes!
And it is his will that he be called Juvenember LXIX!’

The unencumbered page now stepped forward. He called in the vernacular:

‘Here is your Pope, and we know it will please you.’

From the shadow of the great doors there stepped forth into the sunlight between the statues, bowing his head to accept the
golden horn, his face white and mild as milk, the special
guest of the office of the Grand Inquisitor: a comely old man with a goshawk on his wrist, whom Father Domenico had first
and last seen on Black Easter, released from the Pit by Theron Ware – the demon A
GARESS

There was an enormous shout from the crowd, and then the trumpets and the bell resumed, now joined by all the rest of the
bells in the city,, and by many drums, and the firing of cannon. Choking with horror, Father Domenico fled as best he could.

The festival went on all week, climaxed by bull dancing in the Cretan style in the courtyard of the Palazzo, and by fireworks
at night while Father Domenico prayed. This event was definitive. The Antichrist had arrived, however belatedly, and therefore
God still lived. Father Domenico could do no more good in Italy; he must now go to Dis, into Hell-Mouth itself, and challenge
Satan to grant His continuing existence. Nor would it be enough for Father Domenico to aspire to be the Antisatan. If necessary
– most terrifying of all thoughts – he must now expose himself to the temptation and the election, by no Earthly college,
of becoming the vicar of Christ whose duty it would be to harrow this Earthly Hell.

Yet how to get there? He was isolated on an isthmus of mud, and he had no Earthly resources whatsoever. Just possibly, some
rite of white magic might serve to carry him, although he could remember none that seemed applicable; but that would involve
returning to Monte Albano, and in any event, he felt instinctively that no magic of any kind would be appropriate now.

In this extremity, he bethought him of certain legends and attested miracles of the early saints, some of whom in their exaltation
were said to have been lifted long distances through the air. Beyond question, he was not a saint; but if his forth-coming
role was to be as he suspected, some similar help might be vouchsafed him. He tried to keep his mind turned away from the
obvious and most exalted example of all, and equally to avoid thinking about the doubt-inducing fate of Simon Magus – a razor’s
edge which not even his Dominican training made less than nearly impossible to negotiate.

Nevertheless, his shoulders squared, his face set, Father Domenico walked resolutely towards the water.

10

Even after the complete failure of air power in Vietnam to pound one half of a tenth-rate power into submission, General McKnight
remained a believer in its supremacy; but he was not such a fool as to do without ground support, knowing very well the elementary
rule that territory must be occupied as well as devastated, or even the most decisive victory will come unstuck. By the day
– or rather, the night – for which the attack was scheduled, he had moved three armoured divisions through the Panamint range,
and had two more distributed through the Grapevine, Funeral and Black mountains, which also bristled with rocket emplacements.
This was by no means either as big or as well divided a force as he should have liked to have used, especially on the east,
but since it was all the country had left to offer him, he had to make it do.

His battle plan was divided into three phases. Remembering that the test bomb had blown some thousands of enemy troops literally
sky high for what was tactically speaking quite a long period of time, he intended to begin with a serial bombardment of Dis
with as many of his remaining nuclear weapons as he could use up just short of making the surrounding territory radiologically
lethal to his own men. These warheads might not do the city or the demons any damage – a proposition which he still regarded
with some incredulity – but if they would again disorganize the enemy and keep him from reforming that would be no mean advantage
in itself.

Phase Two was designed to take advantage of the fact that the battleground from his point of view was all downhill, the devils
with stunning disregard of elementary strategy having located their fortress at the lowest point in the valley, on the site
of what had previously been Badwater, which was actually two hundred and eighty-two feet below sea level. When the nuclear
bombardment ended, it would be succeeded immediately by a continued hammering with conventional explosives, by artillery,
missiles and planes. These would include phosphorus bombs, again probably harmless to devils,
but which would in any event produce immense clouds of dense white smoke, which might impair visibility for the enemy; his
own troops could see through it handily enough by radar, and would always be able to see the main target through the infra-red
telescope or ‘sniperscope’, since even under normal conditions it was always obligingly kept red hot. Under cover of this
bombardment. McKnight planned a rush of armour upon the city, spearheaded by halftrack-mounted laser projectors. It was McKnight’s
theory, supported neither by his civilian advisers nor by the computer, that the thermonuclear fireball had failed to vaporize
the iron walls because its heat had been too generalized and diffuse, and that the concentrated heat of four or five or a
dozen laser beams, all focused on one spot, might punch its way through like a rapier going through cheese. This onslaught
was to be aimed directly at the gates of course these would be better defended than any other part of the perimeter, but a
significant number of the defenders might still be flapping wildly around in the air amidst the smoke, and in any event, when
one is trying to breach a wall, it is only common sense to begin at a point which
already
has a hole in it.

If such a breach was actually effected, an attempt would be made to enlarge it with land torpedoes, particularly burrowing
ones of the Hess type which would have been started on their way at the beginning of Phase One. These had never seen use before
in actual combat and were supposed to be graveyard secret – though with profusion of spies and traitors with which America
had been swarming, in McKnight’s view, before all this had begun, he doubted that the secret had been very well kept. (After
all, if even Baines …) He was curious also about the actual effectiveness of another secret, the product of an almost incestuous
union of chemistry and nucleonics called TDX, a compound as unstable as TNT, which was made of gravity-polarized atoms. McKnight
had only the vaguest idea of what this jargon was supposed to signify, but what he did know was its action; TDX was supposed;
to have the property of exploding in a flat plane, instead of expanding evenly in all directions like any Christian explosive.

Were the gate forced, the bombardment would stop and
Phase Three would follow. This would be an infantry assault, supported by individually airborne troops in their rocket-powered
flying harness, and supplemented by an attempted paratroop landing inside the city. If on the other hand the gate did not
go down, there would be a most unwelcome Phase Four – a general, and hopefully orderly retreat.

The whole operation could be watched both safely and conveniently from the SAC’s Command Room under Denver, and as the name
implied, directed in the same way; there was a multitude of television screens, some of which were at the individual command
consoles provided for each participating general. The whole complex closely resembled the now extinct Space Center at Houston,
which had in fact been modelled after it; technically, space flight and modem warfare are almost identical operations from
the command point of view. At the front of this cavern and quite dominating it was a master screen of Cinerama proportions;
at its rear was something very like a sponsor’s booth, giving McKnight and his guests an overview of the whole, as well as
access to a bank of small screens on which he could call into being any individual detail of the action that was within access
of a camera.