by Jerry
“You said ‘it,’ ” the general said. “Just what——”
“For the love of God, don’t ask me to explain! It’s just behind the mission buildings.” Major Rawson tapped the sergeant’s shoulder, “Can you drive O.K., Sam?”
The man jerked his head and started the motor. The jeep moved.
The general had impressions of buildings, of brown boys working in a banana grove, and native girls flapping along in such clothes as missionaries consider moral. Then they entered a colonnade of tree trunks which upheld the jungle canopy.
He was afraid in some new way. He must not show it. He concentrated on seeming not to concentrate.
The jeep stopped. Panting slightly, Rawson stepped out, pushed aside the fronds of a large fern tree and hurried along a leafy tunnel. “Little glade up here. That’s where the casualty dropped.”
“Who found—it?”
“The missionary’s youngest boy. Kid named Ted. His dad too. The padre—or whatever the Devoted Brethren call ’em.”
The glade appeared—a clear pool of water bordered by terrestrial orchids. A man lay in their way, face down, his clerical collar unbuttoned, his arms extended, hands clasped, breath issuing in hoarse groans.
From maps, memoranda, somewhere, the general remembered the man’s name. “You mean Reverend Simms is the victim?” he asked in amazement.
“No,” said Rawson; “up ahead.” He led the general around the bole of a jacaranda tree. “There.”
For a speechless minute the general stood still. On the ground, almost at his feet, in the full sunshine, lay the casualty.
“Agnostic,” the general had been called by many; “mystic,” by more; “Natural philosopher,” by devoted chaplains who had served with him. But he was not a man of orthodox religion.
What lay on the fringe of purple flowers was recognizable. He could not, would not, identify it aloud.
Behind him, the major, the lieutenant and the sergeant were waiting shakily for him to name it. Near them, prostrate on the earth, was the missionary—who had already named it and commenced to worship.
It was motionless. The beautiful human face slept in death; the alabastrine body was relaxed in death; the unimaginable eyes were closed and the immense white wings were folded. It was an angel.
The general could bring himself to say, in a soft voice, only, “It looks like one.”
The three faces behind him were distracted. “It’s an angel,” Rawson said in a frantic tone. “And everything we’ve done, and thought, and believed is nuts! Science is nuts! Who knows, now, what the next move will be?”
The sergeant had knelt and was crossing himself. A babble of repentance issued from his lips—as if he were at Confessional. Seeing the general’s eyes on him, he interrupted himself to murmur, “I was brought up Catholic.” Then, turning back to the figure, with the utmost fright, he crossed himself and went on in a compulsive listing of his sad misdemeanors.
The lieutenant, a buck-toothed young man, was now laughing in a morbid way. A way that was the sure prelude to hysteria.
“Shut up!” the general said; then strode to the figure among the flowers and reached down for its pulse.
At that, Reverend Simms made a sound near to a scream and leaped to his feet. His garments were stained with the black humus in which he had lain; his clerical collar flapped loosely at his neck.
“Don’t you even touch it! Heretic! You are not fit to be here! You—and your martial kind—your scientists! Do you not yet see what you have done? Your last infernal bomb has shot down Gabriel, angel of the Lord! This is the end of the world!” His voice tore his throat. “And you are responsible! You are the destroyers!”
The general could not say but that every word the missionary had spoken was true. The beautiful being might indeed be Gabriel. Certainly it was an unearthly creature. The general felt a tendency, if not to panic, at least to take seriously the idea that he was now dreaming or had gone mad. Human hysteria, however, was a known field, and one with which he was equipped to deal.
He spoke sharply, authoritatively, somehow keeping his thoughts a few syllables ahead of his ringing voice, “Reverend Simms, I am a soldier in charge here. If your surmise is correct, God will be my judge. But you have not examined this pathetic victim. That is neither human nor Christian. Suppose it is only hurt, and needs medical attention? What sort of Samaritans would we be, then, to let it perish here in the heat? You may also be mistaken, and that would be a greater cruelty. Suppose it is not what you so logically assume? Suppose it merely happens to be a creature like ourselves, from some real but different planet—thrown, say, from its space-voyaging vehicle by the violence of the morning test?”
The thought, rushing into the general’s mind from nowhere, encouraged him. He was at that time willing to concede the likelihood that he stood in the presence of a miracle—and a miracle of the most horrifying sort, since the angel was seemingly dead. But to deal with men, with their minds, and even his own thought process, he needed a less appalling possibility to set alongside apparent fact. If he were to accept the miracle, he would be obliged first to alter his own deep and hard-won faith, along with its corollaries—and that would mean a change in the general’s very personality. It would take pain, and time. Meanwhile there were men to deal with—men in mortal frenzy.
The missionary heard him vaguely, caught the suggestion that the general might doubt the being on the ground to be Gabriel, and burst into grotesque, astounding laughter. He rushed from the glade.
After his antic departure, the general said grimly, “That man has about lost his mind! A stupid way to behave, if what he believes is the case!” Then, in drill-sergeant tones, he barked, “Sergeant! Take a leg . . . Lieutenant, the other . . . Rawson, help me here.”
He took gentle hold. The flesh, if it was flesh, felt cool, but not yet cold. When he lifted, the shoulder turned easily; it was less heavy than he had expected. The other men, slowly, dubiously, took stations and drew nerving breaths.
“See to it, men,” the general ordered—as if it were mere routine and likely to be overlooked by second-rate soldiers—“that those wings don’t drag on the ground! Let’s go!”
He could observe and think a little more analytically as they carried the being toward the jeep. The single garment worn by the angel was snow-white and exquisitely pleated. The back and shoulder muscles were obviously of great power, and constructed to beat the great wings. They were, he gathered, operational wings, not vestigial. Perhaps the creature came from a small planet where gravity was so slight that these wings sufficed for flying about. That was at least thinkable.
A different theory which he entertained briefly—because he was a soldier—seemed impossible on close scrutiny. The creature they carried from the glade was not a fake—not some biological device of the enemy fabricated to startle the Free World. What they were carrying could not have been man-made, unless the Reds had moved centuries ahead of everyone else in the science of biology. This was no hybrid. The angel had lived, grown, moved its wings and been of one substance.
It filled the back seat of the jeep. The general said, “I’ll drive . . . Lieutenant . . . sergeant, meet me at the field . . . Raw, you get HQ again on a Z line and have them send a helicopter. Two extra passengers for the trip out, tell them. Have General Budford fly in now, if possible. Give no information except that these suggestions are from me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then black out all communications from this island.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If the Devoted Brethren Mission won’t shut its radio off, see that it stops working.”
The major nodded, waited a moment, and walked down the jungle track in haunted obedience.
“I’ll drive it,” the general repeated.
He felt long and carefully for a pulse. Nothing. The body was growing rigid. He started the jeep. Once he glanced back at his incredible companion. The face was perfectly serene; the lurching of the vehicle, f
or all his care in driving, had parted the lips.
He reached the shade at the edge of the playing field where the jeep had first been parked. He cut the motor. The school compound had been empty of persons when he passed this time. There had been no one on the road; not even any children. Presently the mission bell began to toll slowly. Reverend Simms, he thought, would be holding services. That probably explained the absence of people, the hush in the heat of midday, the jade quietude.
He pulled out a cigarette, hesitated to smoke it. He wondered if there were any further steps which he should take. For his own sake, he again carefully examined the angel, and he was certain afterward only that it was like nothing earthly, that it could be an angel and that it had died, without any external trace of the cause. Concussion, doubtless.
He went over his rationalizations. If men with wings like this did exist on some small, remote planet; if any of them had visited Earth in rocket ships in antiquity, it would explain a great deal about what he had thitherto called “superstitious” beliefs. Fiery chariots, old prophets being taken to heaven by angels, and much else.
If the Russians had “made” it and dropped it to confuse the Free World, then it was all over; they were already too far ahead scientifically.
He lighted the cigarette. Deep in the banyans, behind the screens of thick, aerial roots and oval leaves, a twig snapped. His head swung fearfully. He half expected another form—winged, clothed in light—to step forth and demand the body of its fallen colleague.
A boy emerged—a boy of about nine, sun-tanned, big-eyed and muscular in the stringy way of boys. He wore only a T-shirt and shorts; both bore marks of his green progress through the jungle.
“You have it,” he said. Not accusatively. Not even very emotionally. “Where’s father?”
“Are you——”
“I’m Ted Simms.” The brown gaze was suddenly excited. “And you’re a general!”
The man nodded. “General Scott.” He smiled. “You’ve seen”—he moved his head gently toward the rear seat—“my passenger before?”
“I saw him fall. I was there, getting Aunt Cora a bunch of flowers.”
The general remained casual, in tone of voice, “Tell me about it.”
“Can I sit in the jeep? I never rode in one yet.”
“Sure.”
The boy climbed in, looked intently at the angel, and sat beside the general. He sighed. “Sure is handsome, an angel,” said the boy. “I was just up there at the spring, picking flowers, because Aunt Cora likes flowers quite a lot, and she was mad because I didn’t do my arithmetic well. We had seen the old test shot, earlier, and we’re sick and tired of them, anyhow! They scare the natives and make them go back to their old, heathen customs. Well, I heard this whizzing up in the air, and down it came, wings out, trying to fly, but only spiraling, sort of. Like a bird with an arrow through it. You’ve seen that kind of wobbly flying?”
“Yes.”
“It came down. It stood there a second and then it sat.”
“Sat?” The general’s lips felt dry. He licked them. “Did it—see you?”
“See me? I was right beside it.”
The boy hesitated and the general was on the dubious verge of prodding when the larklike voice continued, “It sat there crying for a while.”
“Crying!”
“Of course. The H-bomb must of hurt it something awful. It was crying. You could hear it sobbing and trying to get its breath even before it touched the ground. It cried, and then it looked at me and it stopped crying and it smiled. It had a real wonderful smile when it smiled.”
The boy paused. He had begun to look with fascination at the dashboard instruments.
“Then what?” the general murmured.
“Can I switch on the lights?” He responded eagerly to the nod and talked as he switched the lights, tried the horn. “Then not much. It smiled and I didn’t know what to do. I never saw an angel before. Father says he knows people who have, though. So I said, ‘Hello,’ and it said, ‘Hello,’ and it said, after a minute or so, ‘I was a little too late,’ and tears got in its eyes again and it leaned back and kind of tucked in its wings and, after a while, it died.”
“You mean the—angel—spoke to you—in English?”
“Don’t they know all languages?” the boy asked, smiling.
“I couldn’t say,” the general replied. “I suppose they do.”
He framed another question, and heard a sharp “Look out!” There was a thwack in the foliage. Feet ran. A man grunted. He threw himself in front of the boy.
Reverend Simms had crept from the banyan, carrying a shotgun, intent, undoubtedly, on preventing the removal of the unearthly being from his island. The lieutenant and sergeant, rounding a turn in the road, had seen him, thrown a stone to divert him, and rushed him. There was almost no scuffle.
The general jumped down from the jeep, took the gun, looked into the missionary’s eyes and saw no sanity there—just fury and bafflement.
“You’ve had a terrible shock, dominie,” he said, putting the gun in the front of the jeep. “We all have. But this is a thing for the whole world, if it’s what you believe it to be. Not just for here and now and you. We shall have to take it away and ascertain——”
“Ye of little faith!” the missionary intoned.
The general pitied the man and suddenly envied him; it was comforting to be so sure about anything.
Comforting. But was such comfort valid or was it specious? He looked toward the jeep. Who could doubt now?
He could. It was his way of being—to doubt at first. It was also his duty, as he saw duty.
Rawson, looking old and deathly ill, came down the cart track in the green shadows. But he had regained something of his manner. “All set, Marc. No word will leave here. Plane’s on the way; General Budford’s flying in himself. Old Bloodshed said it better be Z priority.” The major eyed the white, folded wings. “I judge he’ll be satisfied.”
General Scott grinned slightly. “Have a cigarette, Raw.” He sat beside the praying missionary with some hope of trying to bring the man’s mind from dread and ecstasy back to the human problems—the awesome, unpredictable human enigmas—which would be involved by this “casualty.”
One thing was sure. The people who had felt for years that man didn’t yet know enough to experiment with the elemental forces of Nature were going to feel entirely justified when this story rocked the planet.
If, the general thought on with a sudden, icy feeling, it wasn’t labeled Top Secret and concealed forever.
That could be. The possibility appalled him. He looked up angrily at the hot sky. No bomb effects were visible here; only the clouds’ cyclorama toiling across the blue firmament. Plenty of Top Secrets up there still, he thought.
The President of the United States was awakened after a conference. When they told him, he reached for his dressing gown, started to get up and then sat on the edge of his bed. “Say that again.”
They said it again.
The President’s white hair was awry, his eyes had the sleep-hung look of a man in need of more rest. His brain, however, came wide awake.
“Let me have that in the right sequence. The Bugaboo test brought down, on Tempest Island, above Salandra Strait, an angel—or something that looked human and had wings, anyhow. Who’s outside and who brought that over?”
His aide, Smith, said, “Weatherby, Colton and Dwane.”
The Secretary of State. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
“Sure of communications? Could be a terrific propaganda gag. The Reds could monkey with our wave lengths——” The President gestured, put on the dressing gown.
“Quadruple-checked. Budford talked on the scrambler. Also Marc Scott, who made the first investigation of the—er—casualty.” Smith’s peaceful, professorish face was composed, still, but his eyes were wrong.
“Good men.”
“None better. Ad
miral Stanforth sent independent verification. Green, of AEC, reported in on Navy and Air Force channels. Captain Wilmot, ranking Navy chaplain out there, swore it was a genuine angel. It must be—something, Mr. President! Something all right!”
“Where is it now?”
“On the way, naturally. Scott put it aboard a B-111. Due in here by three o’clock. Coffee waiting in the office.”
“I’ll go out, Clem. Get the rest of the Cabinet up and here. The rest of the JCS. Get Ames at CIA. This thing has got to stay absolutely restricted till we know more.”
“Of course.”
“Scott with it?”
“Budford.” Smith smiled. “Ranked Scott. Some mission, hunh? An angel. Imagine!”
“All my life I’ve been a God-fearing man,” the President replied. “But I can’t imagine. We’ll wait till it’s here.” He started toward the door where other men waited tensely. He paused. “Whatever it is, it’s the end to—what has been, these last fifteen years. And that’s a good thing.” The President smiled.
It was, perhaps, the longest morning in the history of the capital. Arrangements had been made for the transportation of the cargo secretly but swiftly from the airfield to the White House. A select but celebrated group of men had been chosen to examine the cargo. They kept flying in to Washington and arriving in limousines all morning. But they did not know why they had been summoned. Reporters could not reach a single Cabinet member. No one available at State or the Pentagon, at AEC or CIA could give any information at all. So there were merely conjectures, which led to rumors:
Something had gone wrong with an H-bomb.
The President had been assassinated.
Russia had sent an ultimatum.
Hitler had reappeared.
Toward the end of that morning, a call came which the President took in person. About thirty men watched his face, and all of them became afraid.
When he hung up he said unsteadily, “Gentlemen, the B-111 flying it in is overdue at San Francisco and presumed down at sea. All agencies have commenced a search. I have asked, meantime, that those officers and scientists who saw, examined or had any contact with the—strange being be flown here immediately. Unless they find the plane and recover what it carried, that’s all we can do.”
