The Divine Invasion (13 page)

He started visibly. The agent regarded him.

"At Bethesda," he said, "they want to study her disease."

"Research?"

''It's a microorganism."

"You said it isn't contagious."

The neutral voice said, "Not at this stage."

"Not at this stage," he said aloud.

"Are they afraid of plague?" the Immigration agent said abruptly.

Herb Asher nodded.

"Go back to your seat." The agent, irritably, waved him away. "This is out of my jurisdiction. You have a pink form, form 368? Properly filled out and signed by a doctor?"

"Yes." It was true.

"Are either you or the older man with you infected?"

The voice inside his head said, "Only Bethesda can determine that." He had, suddenly, a vivid inner glimpse of the person whose voice he heard; he saw in his own mind a visage, female, a placid but strong face. A metal mask had been pushed back from that visage, exposing wise, impassive eyes; a beautiful classic face, like Athena; he was staggered with astonishment. This could not be Yahweh. This was a woman. But like no woman he had ever seen. He did not know her. He did not understand who this was. Her voice was not Yah's voice, and this could not be Yah's visage. He did not could not be Yah's visage. He did not know what to make of it. He was perplexed beyond the telling of it. Who had taken on the task of advising him?

"Only Bethesda can determine that," he managed to say.

The Immigration agent paused uncertainly. His exterior harshness had evaporated.

The female voice whispered again, and this time, in his mind, he saw her lips move. "Time is of the essence.

"Time is of the essence," Herb Asher said. His voice grated in his own ears.

"Shouldn't you be quarantined? You probably shouldn't be with other people. Those other passengers—We should have you on a special ship. It can be arranged. It might be better … we could get her there faster."

"OK," he said. Reasonably.

"I'll put in a call," the Immigration agent said. "What's the name of this microorganism? It's a virus?"

"The nerve sheathing—"

"Never mind. Go back to your seat. Look." The Immigration agent followed after him. "I don't know whose idea it was to send you on a commercial carrier, but I'm getting you off of it right now. There are strict statutes that haven't been observed, here. Bethesda is expecting you? Do you want me to put in a call ahead, or is that all taken care of?"

"She is registered with them already." This was so. The arrangements had been made.

"This is really nuts," the Immigration agent said, "to put you on a public carrier. They should have known better back at Fomalhaut."

"CY3O-CY3OB," Herb Asher said.

"Whatever. I don't want any part of this. A mistake of this kind—" The Immigration agent cursed. "Some dumb fool back at Fomalhaut probably figured it'd save the taxpayers a few bucks—Take your seat and I'll see that you're notified when your ship is ready. It should—Christ."

Herb Asher, shaking, returned to his seat.

Elias eyed him. Rybys lay with her eyes shut; she was oblivious to what was happening.

"Let me ask you a question," Herb said to Elias. "Have you ever tasted Laphroaig Scotch?"

"No," Elias said, puzzled.

"It is the finest of all Scotches," Herb said. "Ten years old, very expensive. The distillery opened in 1815. They use traditional copper stills. It requires two distillations—"

"What went on in there?" Elias said.

"Just let me finish. Laphroaig is Gaelic for 'the beautiful hollow by the broad bay.' It's distilled on Islay in the Western Isles of Scotland. Malted barley—they dry it in a kiln over a peat fire, a genuine peat fire. It's the only Scotch made that way now. The peat can only be found on the island of Islay. Maturation takes place in oak casks. It's incredible Scotch. It's the finest liquor in the world. It's—" He broke off.

An Immigration agent came over to them. "Your ship is here, Mr. Asher. Come with me. Can your wife walk? You want some help?"

"Already?" He was dumbfounded. And then he realized that the ship had been there all this time. Immigration was routinely prepared to deal with emergency situations. Especially of this kind. Or rather, what they supposed this situation to be.

"Who wears a metal mask?" Herb said to Elias as he drew the blanket from Rybys. "Pushed back up over her hair. And has a straight nose, a very strong nose—well, let it go. Give me a hand." Together, he and Elias got Rybys to her feet. The Immigration agent watched sympathetically.

"I don't know," Elias said.

"There is someone else," Herb said as they moved Rybys step by step up the aisle.

"I'm going to throw up," Rybys said weakly.

"Just hang on," Herb Asher said. "We're almost there."

Big Noodle notified Cardinal Fulton Statler Harms and the Procurator Maximus, and then, to all the heads of states in the world it printed out the following mystifying statement:

ON THE STANDARD OF FIFTY THEY SHALL WRITE: FINISHED IS THE STAND OF THE FROWARD THROUGH THE MIGHTY ACTS OF GOD, TOGETHER WITH THE NAMES OF THE COMMANDERS OF THE FIFTY AND OF ITS TENS. WHEN THEY GO OUT TO BATTLE, THEY SHALL WRITE UPON THEIR WPSOX TO FORM A COMPLETE FRONT. THE LINE IS TO CONSIST OF A THOUSAND MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN EACH FRONT LINE IS TO BE SEVEN SEVEN SEVEN DEEP, ONE MAN STANDING BEHIND THE OTHER STOP REPEAT ALL OF THEM ARE TO HOLD SHIELDS OF POLISHED BRONZE REPEAT BRONZE RESEMBLING MIRRORS THESE SHIELDS

The statement ended there. Technicians swarmed over the A.I. system in a matter of minutes.

Their verdict: the A.I. system would have to be shut down for a time. Something basic had gone wrong with it. The last coherent information it had processed was the message that the pregnant woman Rybys Rommey-Asher, her husband, Herbert Asher, and their companion, Elias Tate, had been cleared by Immigration at Ring III and had been transferred from a commercial axial carrier to a government-owned speedship, whose destination was Washington, D.C.

Standing at his no longer pulsing terminal, Cardinal Harms thought, A mistake has been made. Immigration was supposed to intercept them, not facilitate their flight. It doesn't make any sense. And now we've lost our primary data-processing entity, on which we are totally dependent.

He rang up the procurator maximus, and was told by an underling that the procurator had gone to bed.

The son of a bitch, Harms said to himself. The idiot. We have one more station at which to intercept them: Immigration proper, at Washington, D.C. And if they got this far—My good God, he thought. The monster is using its paranormal powers!

Once more he called the procurator maximus. "Is Galina available?" he said, but he knew it was hopeless. Bulkowsky had given up. Going to bed at this point amounted to that.

"Mrs. Bulkowsky?" the S.L. official said, incredulous. "Of course not."

"Your general staff? One of your marshals?"

"The procurator will return your call," the S.L. functionary informed him; obviously they had orders from Bulkowsky not to disturb him.

Christ! Harms said to himself as he slammed down the phone mechanism. The screen faded.

Something has gone wrong, Harms realized. They should not have gotten this far
and Big Noodle knew it
. The A.I. system had literally gone insane. That was not a technical breakdown, he realized; that was a psychotic fugue. Big Noodle understood something but could not communicate it. Or had the A.I. system in fact communicated it? What, Harms asked himself, was that gibberish?

He contacted the highest order of computers remaining, the one at Cal Tech. After transmitting the puzzling material to it he gave instructions that the material be identified.

The Cal Tech computer identified it five minutes later.

QUMRAN SCROLL THE WAR OF THE SONS OF LIGHT AND THE SONS OF DARKNESS." SOURCE: JEWISH ASCETIC SECT ESSENES

Strange, Harms thought. He knew of the Essenes. Many theologians had speculated that Jesus was an Essene, and certainly there was evidence that John the Baptist was an Essene. The sect had anticipated an early end to the world, with the Battle of Armageddon taking place within the first century, C.E. The sect had shown strong Zoroastrian influences.

He reflected, John the Baptist. Stipulated by Christ to have been Elijah returned, as promised by Jehovah in Malachi:

Look, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will reconcile fathers to sons and sons to fathers, lest I come and put the land under a ban to destroy it.

The final verse of the Old Testament: there the Old Testament ended and the New Testament began.

Armageddon, he pondered. The final battle between the Sons of Darkness and the Sons of Light. Between Jehovah and—what had the Essenes called the evil power? Belial. That was it. That was their term for Satan. Belial would lead the Sons of Darkness; Jehovah would lead the Sons of Light. This would be the seventh battle.

There will be six battles, three of which the Sons of Light will win and three of which the Sons of Darkness will win. Leaving Belial in power. But then Jehovah himself takes command in what amounts to a tie breaker.

The monster in her womb is Belial, Cardinal Harms realized. He has returned to overthrow us. To overthrow Jehovah, whom we serve.

The Divine Power itself is now in jeopardy, he declared; he felt great wrath.

It seemed to the cardinal, at this point, that meditation and prayer were called for. And a strategy by which the invaders would be destroyed when they reached Washington, D.C.

If only Big Noodle had not broken down!

Glumly, he made his way to his private chapel.

T
he procurator said, "We will wreck their ship. There is no particular problem. An accident will take place; the three of them—four, if you include the fetus—will be killed." To him it seemed simple.

At his end of the line Cardinal Harms said, "They will evade it. Don't ask me how." His gloom had not departed.

"You have jurisdiction in Washington, D.C.," the procurator said. "Order their ship destroyed;
order it now
."

"Now" was eight hours later. Eight precious hours during which the procurator had peacefully slept. Cardinal Harms glared at his co-ruler. Or, he thought suddenly, had Bulkowsky been struggling to find a solution? Perhaps he had not slept at all. This solution sounded like Galina's. They had conferred, the two of them; they worked as a team.

"What a stale solution," he said. "Your typical answer, to dispatch a warhead."

"Mrs. Bulkowsky likes it," the procurator said.

"I dare say. The two of you sat up all night working
that
out?"

"We did not sit up. I slept soundly, although Galina had strange dreams. There's one she told me that—well, I think it worth relating. Do you want to hear Galina's dream? I'd like your Opinion about it, since it seems to have religious overtones."

"Shoot," Harms said.

"A huge white fish lies in the ocean. Near the surface, as a whale does. It is a friendly fish. It swims toward us; I mean, toward Galina. There is a series of canals with locks. The great white fish makes its way into the canal system with extreme difficulty. Finally it is caught, away from the ocean, near the people watching. It has done this on purpose; it wants to offer itself to the people as food. A metal saw is produced, one of those two-man band saws that lumberjacks use to cut down trees. Galina said that the teeth on the saw were dreadful. People began to saw slices of flesh from the great fish, who is still alive. They saw slice after slice of the living flesh of the great white fish that is so friendly. In the dream Galina thinks, 'This is wrong. We are injuring the fish too much.'" Bulkowsky paused. "Well? What do you say?"

"The fish is Christ," Cardinal Harms said, "who offers his flesh to man so that man may have eternal life."

"That's all very well, but it was unfair to the fish. She said it was a wrong thing to do. Even though the fish offered itself. Its pain was too much. Oh yes; in the dream she thought, 'We must find another kind of food, which doesn't cause the great fish suffering.' And then there were some blurred episodes where she was looking in a refrigerator; she saw a pitcher of water, a pitcher wrapped in straw or reeds or something … and a cube of pink food like a cube of butter. Words were written on the wrapper but she couldn't read them. The refrigerator was the common property of some kind of small settlement of people, off in a remote area. What happened, the way it worked, was that this pitcher of water and this pink cube belonged to the whole colony and you only ate the food and drank the water when you realized you were approaching your moment of death."

"What did drinking the water—"

"Then you came back later. Reborn."

Harms said, "That is the host under the two species. The consecrated wine and wafer. The blood and body of our Lord. The food of eternal life. 'This is my body. Take—'"

"The settlement seemed to exist at another time entirely. A long time ago. As in antiquity."

"Interesting," Harms said, "but we still have our problem to face, what to do about the monster baby."

"As I said," the procurator said, "we will arrange an accident. Their ship won't reach Washington, D.C. When, precisely, does it arrive? How much time do we have?"

"Just a moment." Harms pressed keys on the board of a small computer terminal. "Christ!" he said.

"What's the matter? It only takes seconds to dispatch a small missile. You have them in that area.

Harms said, "Their ship has landed. While you slept. They are already being processed by Immigration at Washington, D.C."

"It is normal to sleep," the procurator said.

"The monster made you sleep."

"I've been sleeping all my life!" Angrily, the procurator added, "I am here at this resort for rest; my health is bad."

"I wonder," Harms said.

"Notify Immigration, at once, to hold them. Do it
now
."