The Best Of Lester Del Rey Part 21

They were safer together than separated, particularly since Smithton was with them. Amos leaned back against the kitchen wall to catch his breath. His heart seemed to have a ring of needled pain around it, and his throat was so dry that he had to fight desperately against gagging. There was water here, but he couldn't risk rummaging across the room to the sink.

He was praying for strength, less for himself than for the others. Long since, he had resigned himself to die. If G.o.d willed his death, he was ready; all he had were dead and probably mutilated, and he had succeeded only in dragging those who tried to help him into mortal danger. He was old, and his body was already treading its way to death. He could live for probably twenty more years, but aside from his work, there was nothing to live for-and even in that, he had been only a mediocre failure. But he was still responsible for Doc Miller, and even for Smithton now.

He squeezed his eyes together and squinted around the doorway. There was some light in the hall that led toward the altar, but he could see no one, and there were drapes that gave a shadow from which they could spy the rest of their way. He moved to it softly, and felt the others come up behind him.

.He bent forward, parting the drapes a trifle. They were perhaps twenty feet in front of the altar, on the right side. He spotted the wreckage that had once stood as an altar. Then he frowned as he saw evidence of earth piled up into a mound of odd shape.

He threw the cloth back farther, surprised at the curiosity in him, as he had been surprised repeatedly by the changes taking place hi himself.

There were two elaborately robed priests kneeling in the center of the chapel. But his eye barely noticed them before it was attracted to what stood in front of the new altar.

A box of wood rested on an earthenware platform. On it were four marks, which his eyes recognized as unfamiliar, but which his mind twisted into a sequencefrom no alphabet he had learned; yet in them was .always more than they were.

And above the box was a veil, behind which Something shone brightly without light.

In his mind, a surge of power pulsed, making something that might almost have been words through his thoughts.

"I AM THAT i AM, who brought those out of bondage from Egypt and who wrote upon the wall before Bel-shazzar, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, as it shall be writ large upon the Earth, from this day forth. For I have said unto the seed of Mikhtchah, thou art my chosen people and I shall exalt thee above all the races under the heavens!"

5.

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.

Revelation 13:7, 10 THE BOOK OF THE CHRISTIANS.

The seed of Mikhtchah. The seed that was the aliens ...

There was no time and ah1 time, then. Amos felt his heart stop, but the blood pounded through his arteries with a vigor it had lacked for decades. He felt Ruth's hand in his, stirring with returning life, and knew she had never existed. Beside him, he saw Doc Miller's hair turn snow white., arid knew that it was so, though there was no way he could see Doc from his position.

He felt the wrath of the Presence rest upon him, weighing his every thought from his birth to his certain death, where he ceased completely and went on forever, and yet he knew that the Light behind the veil was unaware of him, but was receptive only to the two Mikht-chah priests who knelt unaware.

All of that was with but a portion of his mind so small that he could not locate it, though his total mind encompa.s.sed all time and s.p.a.ce, and that which was neither; yet each part of his perceptions occupied all of his mind that had been or ever could be, save only the present, which somehow was a concept not yet solved by the One before him.

He saw a strange man on a low mountain, receiving tablets of stone that weighed only a pennyweight, engraved with a script that all could read. And he knew the man, but refused to believe it, since the garments were not those of his mental image, and the clean-cut face fitted better with the strange Egyptian headpiece than with the language being spoken.

Amos saw every prayer of his life tabulated. But nowhere was there the mantle of divine warmth which he had felt as a boy and had almost felt again the morning before. And there was a stirring of unease at his thought, mixed with wrath; yet while the thought was in his mind, nothing could touch him.

Yet each of those things was untrue, because he could find no understanding of that which was true.

It ended as abruptly as it had begun, either a microsecond or a million subjective years after. It left him numbed, but newly alive. And it left him dead as no man had ever been hopelessly dead before.

He knew only that before him was the Lord G.o.d Almighty, who had made a covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and with their seed; and that mankind had been rejected, while G.o.d now was on the side of the enemies of Abraham's seed, and all the nations of earth.

Even that was too much for a human mind no longer in touch with the Presence, and only a shadow of it remained.

Beside him, Amos heard Doc Miller begin breathing again, brus.h.i.+ng the white hair back from his forehead wonderingly as he muttered a single word. "G.o.d!"

One of the Mikhtchah priests looked up, his eyes turning about; there was a glazed look on his face, but it was leaving.Then Smithton screamed! His open mouth poured out a steady, unwavering screaming, while his lungs panted in and out. His eyes opened, staring horribly. Like a wooden doll on strings, the man stood up and walked forward.

He avoided the draperies and headed for the Light behind the veil. Abruptly, the Light was gone, but Smithton walked toward it as steadily as before. He stopped before the falling veil, and the scream cut off sharply.

Doc had jerked silently to his feet, tugging Amos up behind him. The minister lifted himself, but he knew there was no place to go. It was up to the will of G.o.d now. ... Or ...

Smithton turned on one heel precisely. His face was rigid and without expression, yet completely mad. He walked mechanically forward toward the two priests. They sprawled aside at the last second, holding two obviously human- made automatics, but making no effort to use them. Smithton walked on toward the open door at the front of the church.

He reached the steps, with the two priests staring after him. His feet lifted from the first step to the second and then he was on the sidewalk.

The two priests fired!

Smithton jerked, halted, and suddenly cried out in a voice of normal, rational agony. His legs kicked frantically under him and he ducked out of the sight of the doorway, his faltering steps sounding farther and farther away. He was dead-the Mikhtchah marksmans.h.i.+p had been as good as it seemed always to be-but still moving, though slower and slower, as if some extra charge of life were draining out like a battery running down.

The priests exchanged quick glances and then darted after him, crying out as they dashed around the door into the night. Abruptly^ a single head and hand appeared again, to snap a shot at the draperies from which Smith-ton had come.

Amos forced himself to stand still, while his imagination supplied the jolt of lead in his stomach. The bullet hit the draperies, and something else.

The priest hesitated, and was gone again.

Amos broke into a run across the chapel and into the hall at the other side of the altar. He heard the faint sound of Doc's feet behind him.

The trap door was still there, unintentionally concealed under carpeting. He forced it up and dropped through it into the four-foot depth of the incompleted bas.e.m.e.nt, making room for Doc. They crouched together as he lowered the trap and began feeling his way through the blackness toward the other end of the bas.e.m.e.nt. It had been five years since he had been down there, and then only once for a quick inspection of the work of the boys who had dug the tunnel.

He thought he had missed it at first, and began groping for the small entrance. It might have caved in, for that matter. Then, two feet away, his hand found the hole and he drew Doc after him.

It was cramped, and bits of dirt had fallen in places and had to be dug out of the way. Part of the distance was on their stomachs. They found the bricked-up wall ahead of them and began digging around it with then-bare hands. It took another ten minutes, while distant sounds of wild yelling from the Mikhtchah reached them faintly. They broke through at last with bleeding hands, not bothering to check for aliens near. They reached a safer distance in the woods, caught their breaths, and went on.

The biggest danger lay in the drainage trench, which was low in several places. But luck was with them, and these spots lay in shadow.

Then the little Republican River lay in front of them, and there was a flatbottom boat nearby.

Moments later they were floating down the stream, resting their aching lungs, while the boat needed only a trifling guidance. It was still night, with only the light from the moon, and there was little danger of pursuit by the alien planes. Amos could just see Doc's face as the man fumbled for a cigarette.He lighted it and exhaled deeply. "All right, Amos- you were right, and G.o.d exists. But d.a.m.n it, I don't feel any better for knowing that. I can't see how G.o.d helps me-nor even how He's doing the Mikhtchah much good. What do they get out of it, beyond a few miracles with the weather? They're just doing G.o.d's dirty work."

"They get the Earth, I suppose-if they want it," Amos said doubtfully. He wasn't sure they did. Nor could he see how the other aliens tied into the scheme; if he had known the answers, they were gone now. "Doc, you're still an atheist, though you now know G.o.d is."

The plump man chuckled bitterly. "Fm afraid you're right. But at least I'm myself. You can't be, Amos. You've spent your whole life on the gamble that G.o.d is right and that you must serve Him-when the only way you could serve was to help mankind. What do you do now? G.o.d is automatically right-but everything you've ever believed makes Him completely wrong, and you can only serve Him by betraying your people. What kind of ethics will work for you now?"

Amos shook his head wearily, hiding his face in his hands. The same problem had been fighting its way through his own thoughts. His first reaction had been to acknowledge his allegiance to G.o.d without question; sixty years of conditioned thought lay behind that. Yet now he could not accept such a decision. As a man, he could not bow to what he believed completely evil, and the Mikhtchah were evil by every definition he knew.

Could he tell people the facts, and take away what faith they had hi any purpose in life? Could he go over to the enemy, who didn't even want him except for their feeding experiments? Or could he encourage people to fight, with the old words that G.o.d was with them- when he knew the words were false?

Yet their resistance might doom them to eternal h.e.l.lfire for opposing G.o.d.

It hit him then that he could remember nothing clearly about the case of a hereafter-either for or against it. Wtrat iappened to a people when G.o.d deserted them? Were they only deserted in their physical form, and still free to win their spiritual salvation? Or were they completely lost? Did they cease to have souls that could survive? Or were those souls automatically consigned to h.e.l.l, however n.o.ble they might be?

No question had been answered for him. He knew that G.o.d existed, but he had known that before. He knew nothing now beyond that. He did not even know when G.o.d had placed the Mikhtchah before humanity. It seemed unlikely that it was as recent as his own youth. Otherwise, how could he account for the strange spiritual glow he had felt as an evangelist?

"There's only one rational answer," he said at last. "It doesn't make any difference what I decide! I'm only one man."

"So was Columbus when he swore the world was round. And he didn't have the look on his face you've had since we saw G.o.d, Amos! I know.now what the Bible means when it says Moses' face shone after he came down from the mountain, until he had to cover it with a veil. If I'm right, there's little help for mankind if you decide wrong!"

Doc tossed the cigarette over the side and lit another, and Amos was shocked to see that the man's hands were shaking. The doctor shrugged, and his tone fell back to normal. "I wish we knew more. You've always thought almost exclusively in terms of the Old Testament and a few s.n.a.t.c.hes of Revelation- like a lot of men who became evangelists. I've never really thought about G.o.d- I couldn't accept Him, so I dismissed Hun. Maybe that's why we got the view of Hun we did. I wish I knew where Jesus fits in, for instance. There's too much missing. Too many imponderables and hiatuses. We have only two facts, and we can't understand either. There is a manifestation of G.o.d which has touched both Mikhtchah and mankind; and He has stated now that He plans to wipe out mankind. We'll have to stick to that."

Amos made one more attempt to deny the problem that was facing him. "Suppose G.o.d is only testing man again, as He did so often before?""Testing?" Doc rolled the word on his tongue, and seemed to spit it out. The strange white hair seemed to make him older, and the absence of mockery in his voice left him almost a stranger. "Amos, the Hebrews worked like the devil to get Canaan; after forty years of wandering around a few square miles, G.o.d suddenly told them this was the land-and then they had to take it by the same methods men have always used to conquer a country. The miracles didn't really decide anything. They got out of Babylon because the old prophets were slaving night and day to hold them together as one people, and because they managed to sweat it out until they finally got a break. In our own time, they've done the same things to get Israel, and with no miracles! It seems to me G.o.d always took it away, but they had to get it back by themselves. I don't think much of that kind of a test in this case."

Amos could feel all his values slipping and spinning. He realized that he was holding himself together only because of Doc; otherwise, his mind would have reached for madness, like any intelligence forced to solve the insoluble. He could no longer comprehend himself, let alone G.o.d. And the feeling crept into his thoughts that G.o.d couldn't wholly understand him, either.

"Can a creation defy anything great enough to create it, Doc? And should it, if it can?"

"Most kids have to," Doc said. He shook his head. "It's your problem. All I can do is point a few things out. And maybe it won't matter, at that. We're still a long ways inside Mikhtchah territory, and it's getting along toward daylight."

The boat drifted on, while Amos tried to straighten out his thoughts and grew more deeply tangled hi a web of confusion. What could any man who wors.h.i.+pped G.o.d devoutly do if he found his G.o.d was opposed to all else he had ever believed to be good?

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A version of Rant's categorical imperative crept into his mind; somebody had once quoted it to him- probably Do

"We're being followed!" Doc whispered suddenly. He pointed back, and Amos could see a famt light s.h.i.+ning around a curve in the stream. "Look-there's a building over there. When the boat touches shallow water, run for it!"

He bent to the oars, and a moment later they touched bottom and were over the side, sending the boat back into the current. The building was a hundred feet back from the bank, and they scrambled madly toward it. Even in the faint moonlight, they could see that the building was a wreck, long since abandoned.

Doc went in through one of the broken windows, dragging Amos behind him.

Through a c.h.i.n.k in a wall they could see another boat heading down the stream, lighted by a torch and carrying two Mikhtchah. One rowed, while the other sat in the prow with a gun, staring ahead. They rowed on past.

"We'll have to hole up here," Doc decided. "It'll be light in half an hour.

Maybe they won't think of searching a ruin like this."

They found rickety steps, and stretched out on the bare floor of a huge upstairs closet. Amos groaned as he tried to find a position in which he could get some rest. Then, surprisingly, he was asleep.

He woke once with traces of daylight coming into the closet, to hear sounds of heavy gunfire not far away. He was just drifting back to sleep when hail began cracking furiously down on the roof. When it pa.s.sed, the gunfire was stilled.

Doc woke him when it was turning dark. There was nothing to eat, and Amos' stomach was sick with hunger. His body ached in every joint, and walking was pure torture. Doc glanced up at the stars, seemedto decide on a course, and struck out. He was wheezing and groaning in a way that indicated he shared Amos' feelings.

But he found enough energy to begin the discussion again. "I keep wondering what Smithton saw, Amos. It wasn't what we saw. And what about the legends of war in heaven? Wasn't there a big battle there once, in which Lucifer almost won? Maybe Lucifer simply stands for some other race G.o.d cast off?"

"Lucifer was Satan, the spirit of evil. He tried to take over G.o.d's domain."

"Mmm. I've read somewhere that we have only the account of the victor, which is apt to be pretty biased history. How do we know the real issues? Or the true outcome? At least he thought ,he had a chance, and he apparently knew what he was fighting."

The effort of walking made speech difficult. Amos shrugged, and let the conversation die. But his own mind ground on.

If G.o.d was all-powerful and all-knowing, why had He let them spy upon Him? Or was He still all-powerful over a race He had dismissed? Could it make any difference to G.o.d what man might try to do, now that He had condemned him? Was the Presence they had seen the whole of G.o.d-or only one manifestation of Him?

His legs moved on woodenly, numbed to fatigue and slow from hunger, while his head churned with his basic problem. Where was his duty now? With G.o.d or against Him?

They found food in a deserted house, and began preparing it by the hooded light of a lantern while they listened to the news from a small battery radio that had been left behind. It was a hopeless account of alien landings and human retreats, yet given without the tone of despair they should have expected. They were halfway through the meal before they discovered the reason.

"Flas.h.!.+" the radio announced. "Word has just come through from the Denver area. Our second atomic missile has exploded successfully! The alien base has been wiped out, and every alien s.h.i.+p is ruined. It is now clear that the trouble with the earlier bombs we a.s.sembled lay in the detonating mechanism. This is being investigated, while more volunteers are being trained to replace this undependable part of the bomb.

Both missiles carrying suicide bombers have succeeded. Captive aliens of both races are being questioned in Denver now, but the same religious fanaticism found in Portland seems to make communication difficult."

It went back to reporting alien landings, while Doc and Amos stared at each other. It was too much to absorb at once-the official admission of two races, the fact that bombs had been a.s.sembled and tried, and the casual acceptance of suicide missions. It was as if G.o.d could control weather and machines, but not the will of determined men. Free will or ...

Amos groped in his mind, trying to dig out something that might tie in the success of human suicide bombers, where automatic machinery was miraculously stalled, together with the reaction of G.o.d to his own thoughts of the glow he had felt in his early days. Something about men ...

"They can be beaten!" Doc said in a harsh whisper.

Amos sighed as they began to get up to continue the impossible trek. "Maybe.

We know G.o.d was at Clyde. Can we be sure He was at the other places to stop the bombs by His miracles?"

They slogged on through the night, cutting across country in the dim moonlight, where every footstep was twice as hard. Amos turned it over, trying to use the new information for whatever decision he must reach. If men could overcome those opposed to them, even for a time . . .

It brought him no closer to an answer.

The beginnings of dawn found them in a woods. Doc managed to heave Amos up a tree, where he could survey the surrounding terrain. There was a house beyond the edge of the woods, but it would take dangerous minutes to reach it. They debated, and then headed on.They were just emerging from the woods when the sound of an alien plane began its stuttering shriek. Doc turned and headed back to where Amos was, behind him. Then he stopped. "Too late! He's seen something. Gotta have a target!"

His arms swept out, shoving Amos violently back under the nearest tree. He swung and began racing across the clearing, his fat legs pumping furiously as he covered the ground in straining leaps. Amos tried to lift himself from where he had fallen, but it was too late.

There was the drumming of gunfire and the earth erupted around Doc. He lurched and dropped, to twitch and lie still.

The plane swept over, while Amos disentangled himself from a root. It was gone as he broke free. Doc had given it a target, and the pilot was satisfied, apparently.

He was still alive as Amos dropped beside him. Two of the shots had hit, but he managed to grin as he lifted himself on one elbow. It was only a matter of minutes, however, and there was no help possible. Amos found one of Doc's cigarettes and lighted it with fumbling hands.

"Thanks," Doc wheezed after taking a heavy drag on it. He started to cough, but suppressed it, his face twisting in agony. His words came in an irregular rhythm, but he held his voice level. "I guess I'm going to h.e.l.l, Amos, since I never did repent-if there is a h.e.l.l! And I hope there is! I hope it's filled with the soul of every poor d.a.m.ned human being who died in less than perfect grace. Because I'm going to find some way-"

He straightened suddenly, coughing and fighting for breath. Then he found one final source of strength and met Amos' eyes, a trace of his old cynical smile on his face.

"-some way to urge Lucifer to join us!" he finished. He dropped back, letting all the fight go out of his body. A few seconds later, he was dead.

,r;'H . 6 - . . . Thou shalt have no other peoples before me. . . . Thou shalt make unto them no covenant against me. . . . Thou shalt not foreswear thyself to them, nor serve them . . . for I am a jealous people ...

Exultations 12:2-4 THE BOOK OF MAN.

Amos lay through the day in the house to which he had dragged Doc's body. He did not even look for food. For the first time in his life since his mother had died when he was five, he had no s.h.i.+eld against his grief. There was no hard core of acceptance that it was G.o.d's_. will to hide his loss at Doc's death. And with the realization of that, all the other losses. .h.i.t at him as if they had been no older than the death of Doc.

He sat with his grief and his newly sharpened hatred, staring toward Clyde.

Once, during the day, he slept. He awakened to a sense of a tremendous sound and shaking of the earth, but all was quiet when he finally became conscious.