The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (222 page)

“Those staged rallies, where everyone worships Carpathia.”

“I know. They’re disgusting. They refer to him as ‘Your Worship’ and the like.”

“It’s worse than that, Tsion,” she said. “Have you seen the clips where the children are brought to him? I mean, we all know there’s not a child among them as old as three years, but they’re paraded before him in their little GC outfits, saluting over their hearts with every step, singing praise songs to him. It’s awful!”

Tsion agreed. Day care workers and parents dressed the kids alike, and cute little boys and girls brought flowers and were taught to bow and wave and salute and sing to Carpathia. “Did you see the worst of it?” he asked.

Chloe nodded miserably. “The prayer, you mean?”

“That’s what I mean. I was afraid of lightning.”

Tsion shuddered, remembering the knockoff of the Lord’s Prayer taught to groups of children barely old enough to speak. It had begun, “Our Father in New Babylon, Carpathia be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done. . . .” Tsion had been so disgusted that he turned it off. Chloe, apparently, had watched the whole debacle.

“I’ve been studying,” she said.

“Good,” Tsion said. “I hope so. We can never know enough—”

“Not the way you think,” she said. “I’ve been studying death.”

Tsion narrowed his eyes. “I’m listening.”

“I will not allow myself or my baby to fall into the hands of the enemy.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying just what you’re afraid I’m saying, Tsion.”

“Have you told Cameron?”

“You promised you would keep my confidence!”

“And I will. I am asking, have
you
told him your plans?”

“I have no plans. I’m just studying.”

“But you will soon have a plan, because it is clear you have made up your mind. You said, ‘I will not . . . ,’ and that evidences a course of action. You’re saying that if we should be found out, if the GC should capture us—”

“I will not allow Kenny or me to fall into their hands.”

“And how will you ensure this?”

“I would rather we were dead.”

“You would kill yourself.”

“I would. And I would commit infanticide.”

She said this with such chilling conviction that Tsion hesitated, praying silently for wisdom. “Is this a sign of faith, or lack of faith?” he said finally.

“I don’t know, but I can’t imagine God would want me or my baby in that situation.”

“You think he wants you in
this
situation? He is not willing that any should perish. He would that you would have been ready to go the first time. He—”

“I know, Tsion. I know, all right? I’m just saying—”

“Forgive me for interrupting, but I know what you are saying. I just do not believe you are being honest with yourself.”

“I couldn’t be
more
honest! I would kill myself and commit inf—”

“There you go again.”

“What?”

“Buffering your conviction with easy words. You’re no better than the abortionists who refer to their unborn babies as embryos or fetuses or pregnancies so they can ‘eliminate’ them or ‘terminate’ them rather than kill them.”

“What? I said I would com—”

“Yes, that’s what you said. You didn’t say what you mean. Tell me.”

“I told you, Tsion! Why are you doing this?”

“Tell me, Chloe. Tell me what you are going to do to—” He hesitated, not wanting to alert Kenny they were talking about him. “Tell me what you’re going to do to this little one, because obviously, you have to do it to him first if it’s going to get done. Because if you kill yourself, none of the rest of us will do this job for you.”

“I told you what I would do to him.”

“Say it in plain words.”

“That I will kill him before I let the GC have him? I will.”

“Will what?”

“Kill him.”

“Put it in a sentence.”

“I will. I will . . . kill . . . my own baby.”

“Baby!” Kenny exulted, running to her. She reached for him, sobbing.

Quietly, Tsion said, “How will you do this?”

“That’s what I’m studying,” she managed over Kenny’s shoulders. He hugged her tight and scampered away.

“And then you will kill yourself, why?”

“Because I cannot live without him.”

“Then it follows that Cameron would be justified in killing himself.”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “The world needs him.”

“The world needs you, Chloe. Think of the co-op, the international—”

“I can’t think anymore,” she said. “I want done with this! I want it over! I don’t know what we were thinking, bringing a child into this world. . . .”

“That child has brought so much joy to this house—” Tsion began.

“—that I could not do him the disservice of letting him fall into GC hands.”

Tsion sat back, glancing at the TV. “So the GC comes, you kill the baby, kill yourself, Cameron and your father kill themselves . . . when does it end?”

“They wouldn’t. They couldn’t.”

“You can’t. And you won’t.”

“I thought I could talk to you, Tsion.”

“You expected what, that I would condone this?”

“That you would be sympathetic, at least.”

“I am that, at the very least,” he said. “Neither do I want to live without you and the little one. You know what comes next.”

“Oh, Tsion, you would not deprive your global church of yourself.”

He sat back and put his hands on his knees. “Yet you would deprive
me
of
your
self. You must not care for me as much as I care for you, or as much as I thought you did.”

Chloe sighed and looked to the ceiling. “You’re not helping,” she said in mock exasperation.

“I’m trying,” he said.

“I know. And I appreciate it.”

Tsion asked her to pray with him for their loved ones. She knelt on the floor next to the couch, holding his hand, and soon after they began, Tsion peeked at a sound and saw Kenny kneeling next to his mother, hands folded, fingers entwined, eyes closed.

David found Guy Blod more outrageous and flamboyant in person. He showed up with a small entourage of similarly huffy and put-out men in their late thirties. Despite their differences in nationality, they could have been quints from the way they dressed and acted. David offered only Guy a chair across from his desk.

“This is what you call hospitality?” Guy said. “There are six of us, hello.”

“My apologies,” David said. “I was under the impression it was the responsibility of the
guest
to inform the
host
when uninvited people were coming.”

Guy waved him off, and his sycophants glumly stood behind him with arms crossed. “The Supreme Commander has commissioned me to do a sort of bronzy iron thingie of Nicolae. And I have to do it fast, so can you get me the materials?”

They were interrupted by an urgent knock on the door. A woman in her late sixties, blue-haired, short, and stocky, poked her head in. “Miss Ivins,” David said. “May I help you?”

“Excuse me,” Guy said, “but we’re in conference here.”

David stood. “It’s all right, Miss Ivins. You know Guy.”

“Of course,” she said, nodding sadly.

“And Guy, you know Vivian is—”

“Yes, the potentate’s only living relative. I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am, but we—”

“How may I help you, ma’am?” David said.

“I’m looking for crowd control volunteers,” she said. “The masses are already showing up from all over the world, and—”

“It’s after midnight!” Guy said. “Don’t they know the funeral isn’t for at least two days? What are we supposed to do with them all?”

“Commander Fortunato is asking for any personnel below director level to—”

“That leaves me out, Vivian!” Guy said. “And Hayseed here too, unfortunately.”

“How about your assistants, Guy?” David suggested.

“I need every last one of them for this project! Viv, surely you don’t expect—”

“I’m aware of your assignment, Guy,” Viv Ivins said, but she pronounced his name in the Western style, and he quickly corrected her. She ignored him. “I’m on assignment too. If either of you gentlemen could spread the word among your people, the administration would be grateful.”

David returned to his seat and tapped out the notice to be broadcast to his workers’ E-mail addresses as Miss Ivins backed out and shut the door.

“Aren’t we efficient?” Guy said.

“We try,” David said.

“I know what her assignment is,” Guy said. “Have you heard?”

“I have enough trouble keeping up with my own.”

David had acted uninterested enough that Guy turned to his own people and whispered, “That regional numbering thing.” David was dying of curiosity but unwilling to admit it. Guy spun in his chair to face David. “Now, where were we?”

“I was about to check my catalog file for bronze and iron thingie suppliers, and you were going to be a bit more specific.”

“OK, I’m gonna need a computer program that allows me to figure out how to do this. I’m going to be supplied by the coroner with a life-size cast of Carpathia’s body—how ghastly—and I need to quadruple that in size. That means four times.”

“Yeah, I recall arithmetic, Guy.”

“I’m just trying to help. Truce?”

“Truce?”

“Start over, no hassles?”

“Whatever, Guy.”

“Be nice.”

“I’m trying.”

“Anyhoo, I wanna make this like twenty-four-foot replica of Carpathia out of pretty much bronze, I think, but I want it to come out in a sort of ebony finish with a texture of iron. Ebony is black.”

“I remember crayons too, Guy.”

“Sor-
ry,
David! You don’t want
any
help!”

“I’m going to need it if I’m to find you this material quickly. What do you think you need and how fast do you need it?”

Guy leaned forward. “Now we’re getting somewhere. I want the thing to be hollow with about a quarter-inch to three-eighths-inch shell, but it has to be strong enough and balanced enough to stand straight without support, just like Nicolae would if he were that tall.”

David shrugged. “So you make him to scale and cheat on the shoes if you have to, since an inanimate object won’t make the unconscious balancing maneuvers to stay standing.”

“Shoes!?”

“What, your statue will be barefoot?”

Guy giggled and shared the mirth with his clones. “Oh, David,” he said, lifting his feet and spinning in his chair. “My statue will be
au naturel.
”

David made a face. “Please tell me you’re joking!”

“Not on your life. Did you think the mortician was going to make a body cast of him in his suit?”

“Why not?”

Guy fluttered the air with his fingers and said, “Forget it, forget it, you wouldn’t understand. You obviously have some hang-up about the human form and can’t appreciate the beauty. You just—”

“Guy, I’m assuming this statue is to maintain a prominent place within the palace—”

“Within the palace? Dear boy! This will be THE
objet d’art
of history, my
pièce de résistance.
It shall stand in the palace courtyard not thirty feet from where the potentate lies in state.”

“So the whole world will see it.”

“In all its glory.”

“And it’s
your
masterpiece.”

Guy nodded, appearing unable to contain his glee.

“So if I took a picture of something and then traced it, I could be an artist too?”

Guy looked disgusted. “You’re about as far from an artist as I am from—”

“But what of this reproduction of a dead man’s bare body is your work?”

“Are you just insulting me, or is that a sincere question?”

“Call it sincere. I really want to know.”

“The concept! I
conceived
it, David! I will supervise the construction. I will do the finish work on the face, leaving the eyes hollow. I was asked to create a huge statue to represent the greatest man who ever lived, and this came to me as if from God himself.”

“You’re on speaking terms with God?”

“It’s just an expression, Hayseed. It’s from my muse. Who can explain it? It’s what I blame my genius on, the one thing that keeps me from unbearable ego. Can you imagine how embarrassing it is to be lauded for everything your hands create? I mean, I’m not complaining, but the attention becomes overwhelming. The muse is my foil. I am as overwhelmed at my gift—the gift from the muse, you see—as anyone else. I enjoy it as the masses do.”

“You do.”

“Yes, I do. And I can’t wait to get to this one. I’m assuming I would have access to the GC foundry, as we won’t have time to have this done off-site.”

David shut one eye. “The foundry is on three shifts, seven days a week. We could have this more cheaply done in Asia, where—”

“Help me stay civil here, David, as it is clearly my fault for not clarifying. Supreme Commander Fortunato—who, in case you couldn’t figure this out on your own, will likely be the new potentate once Carpathia is entombed—wants this monument in place no later than at dawn Sunday.”

Guy stared at David, as if to let that sink in. It almost didn’t. David looked at his watch. It was crowding 1:00 a.m. Saturday, Carpathia Standard Time. “I don’t see it,” he said, “but I don’t imagine you can be dissuaded.”