A Ruby Beam of Light

by Tom DeMarco

  The heat got more respect than the country’s leadership. During an earlier meeting, Gallant had had a contingent of marines stationed on the lawn to assure that no one took up a position under the windows to listen. And halfway through the meeting, he’d noticed that the guards were headed up over the embankment for a dip in the river. Discipline was shot.

  He turned to face the group, the ten most powerful men in America, what a joke. The idea of powerful men being bathed in sweat was too sad even to be funny. Tolliver looked like he’d just come in out of the rain. Even General Simpson was distinctly wilted in his tans. Gallant himself had on a grey silk suit, crisp white shirt and pale silver and red paisley tie. He didn’t sweat. He ignored the heat and his body took its direction from his mind. All those years of preaching in the sweltering churches of Virginia and North Carolina had given him an unalterable look of cool, no matter what the temperature. The others just looked damp and miserable.

  The long cafeteria table they had set up near the window had places for more than ten. The gaps around the table, Gallant reflected bitterly, represented the four men who were missing from the meeting, the President, Secretary Murdoch, General Buxtehude and Lamar Armitage. Each of the absences was a thorn in his side. The President, most of all, should be in attendance at every single meeting that Gallant called. All that would be required of him would be to sit quietly and nod agreement. It wasn’t as though he’d be expected to think or anything. The man was a nitwit. But the least he could do was provide a symbol of authentic authority to quiet the muttering about Gallant’s assumption of power. The President however, saw things differently. Since the perplexing events of May 16th, he had refused to set foot outside the White House or to take any part in the workings of government. He had time for nothing but his painting. At this very moment, no doubt, he was standing at his easel in the Oval Office bay window, stripped to the waist, dabbling away at some muddy vision of trees and flowers and butterflies.

  At least the President was willing to sign whatever Gallant shoved under his nose. He never even read what he was signing. And he had obediently gone on the radio, using a battery powered transmitter set up in the White house by the Signal Corps. He’d explained to the American people that the ignition problems they were experiencing were caused by an atmospheric disturbance due to sunspots. Things would be put back to rights shortly, and in the meantime, everybody should cooperate with their local authorities. The President also suggested that Americans enjoy the vacation, perhaps profiting from the unexpected leisure to read a book, or to do a little painting.

  Gallant now gave the nod to Taylor Hodge, who began to report on progress in food transport, local police effectiveness and efforts to get an ancient steam locomotive running on the C&O track. Hodge’s voice was a perfect monotone. As he droned on, Gallant’s thoughts wandered back to his woes. Bill Murdoch was dead. Hard to believe that he would be missed much, but Gallant had to admit the Secretary’s ponderous support would have helped. Murdoch had been at the Pentagon when the launch signal was issued. According to the others present, he was simply popping with excitement, almost glee. At the moment of commit, he leapt to his feet, shoving one fist skyward, like a black militant, and shouted “YaHoo!” He held the pose for a moment, then looked down surprisedly at his crotch where a widening spot of wet was suddenly evident. He looked up, bewildered. His last spoken word was “Oops.” Then he toppled over. The doctor said he was probably dead before he hit the floor.

  Gordon Buxtehude had deserted. There was no kinder way to put it. He got cold feet at the thought that they had opted for nuclear exchange and been thwarted. He had no idea what had caused the failure of their weapon systems and he didn’t care. He had told General Simpson that pushing The Button one time was enough for any man, so he was retiring. He was going off to his farm in West Virginia to spend some time with his grandchildren. That was the last they’d seen of him.

  Finally there was the matter of Professor Lamar Armitage. The telephone system had continued to function on battery backup for nearly a day after the general power failure. Rupert Paule had gotten Armitage on the phone the next morning and told him to get his ass down to Washington immediately. So the old duffer had biked down. He’d arrived in time for the meeting in Senator Collier’s office that night. Gallant had been present for that meeting. He’d asked Armitage to cut the crap about “fundamental re-examination of basic physical principles” and to tell them who it was that had fucked up their attack. Who was responsible for the world-wide blackout? Armitage had had a ready answer. There had been an article published in Science only a year before, he said, and the author of that article was clearly on to something that could explain what had happened. In his view, the author was the only person in a position to discover the ignition inhibiting effect and build a machine to implement it. The machine somehow altered the ignition characteristic of combustible materials everywhere. He’d started in to explain that it wasn’t the fuel that had been changed, but the flow of time itself. But Gallant stopped him again. “Who wrote the article?” he’d demanded. And Armitage had answered, “Homer Layton.”

  Gallant winced to think of that despised name. He had always known Layton was an enemy; now he knew him to be The Enemy. It was Layton and his infernal science that had brought civilization (and the civilized conduct of war) to its present decrepit state. And it would take science to right that wrong. Armitage was their scientist, so the burden of countering Layton’s fiendish machine fell squarely on his shoulders. Armitage should have been at work this very minute, inventing his own machine, something that would make the engines hum again, empower their weapons and let them get on with their mission. But incredibly, Armitage had flown the coop. After the meeting, he had listened vaguely to the orders that Gallant had issued. He’d shrugged and then ambled out of the building. According to the marine guard on duty, he’d last been seen wobbling off on his bicycle across the Theodore Roosevelt bridge south.

  At least the identity of the villain was known. Even now, twenty one days after the onset of the blackout, Gallant surprised himself at the ferocity of his hatred for Layton. He could feel the bile rising up in him, just to think of the man. The catalogue of his sins was virtually endless: Radicals and Communists who should be dead today were alive and well because of the intervention of Homer Layton. The Nation of Our Savior, which would have been proclaimed weeks ago, was instead reduced to the table of sweating bumblers in front of him. And their beautiful Shield, that personal triumph of diplomacy, chicanery and artful bookkeeping, had never even been used. The greatest force of arms ever assembled in history was reduced to an impotent pile of junk. And all of it, all the frustration, the thwarting of his plans, was due to one man, one ugly, greasy old man, probably not even an American (weren’t all these physicists foreigners of one sort or another?), Homer Layton. He conjured up the now familiar features of his tormentor. It made him sick. How he detested that face. A soft strangled sound escaped his lips.

  Taylor Hodge stopped in mid-sentence to stare with open mouth at Gallant. “Huh?” he said.

  Gallant slammed his fist down on the table. “What, just tell me What in blue hell are you mumbling about now? And what has it got to do with anything important?"

  “Um, I was mumbling, that is, I was telling you about the power generator. The water-powered generator that the Army Engineers are setting out now in the river.” He gestured toward the window.

  Just below them at the river’s edge, Gallant could see a sad little group of shirtless soldiers in dories, beginning to construct a log barrage across the Potomac. They appeared to be lashing the logs together with bits of line. There was a platform mounted part way out the barrage and what looked like an electric generator on top of it with lines leading back toward land.

  “And how much power is that puny generator going to supply us? If I could ask that.”

  “Uh,” Hodge looked down at his notes. “I think sixty watts.”

  “Oh, sixty w
atts,” Gallant spat it back at him. “That’s just wonderful! Think what we can do with sixty watts, Gentlemen. We could have a bulb. That’s it, a bulb, one. Or we could plug in our electric toothbrushes, or maybe even a phonograph. Oh, no, excuse me, not a phonograph. That would be too much. Maybe next year.” He could barely contain himself.

  “Well, sixty watts is just the first unit. They think they can string up to ten of them across the river. So we will have six hundred…”

  “Six hundred watts! We’re going to run the government on six hundred watts?! Six hundred watts is barely enough for a…for a…”

  “For an electric guitar,” Hodge suggested.

  “We are not going to have any godless electric guitar plugged into our generator!” Gallant was nearly purple.

  “No, of course not,” said Hodge.

  With an effort, Gallant regained at least part of his composure. Then he proceeded in even, though not entirely unemotional tones: “Gentlemen. I do not want to hear anything more about generators. I don’t want to hear about human brigades pushing wagons of grain along I-95. I don’t want to hear even one more word about sewage. I want all those problems to be dealt with and made to go away without ever being mentioned in this room again. Have I made myself understood?” He glared around the table, daring to be questioned. Gustafson, Tolliver, Paule, Courtenay, and the others, each one held his gaze for a moment and then broke off to stare downward. He gave each one a chance to oppose him and none did.

  “Good. And now what I do want to hear about, in fact the only subject that I will allow to be discussed is…WAR.” There was a long moment of silence.

  “I want to hear plans for the use of force, of deadly and determined force to capture this man Layton and bring him to justice. Or to kill him.” In spite of his resolve, his voice cracked slightly on the word ‘kill.’ Gallant paused for a sip of water. His eyes were burning above the cup, scanning again around the group for signs of weakness.

  By the time he put the cup down, he was in control again. The tension in his facial muscles was forcibly relaxed; the familiar smile was pasted back in its position. He lowered his voice to the level of a personal confidence. They leaned forward for his words.

  “My friends. The sabotage of our modern technological world is not just a personal setback for me. As you gentlemen know, I have had many personal setbacks and I have accepted them gladly. If the Lord sees fit to correct, to humble his servant, the servant knows enough to bow and acquiesce, and then to try again to find the true path. God knows I have done that again and again. No, what happened on the 16th of May was not a setback for Nolan Gallant. It was a personal setback for our Lord, Jesus Christ.” He paused just long enough for the frightening implication of those words to sink in. “In the past, we have comforted ourselves to think that whatever happened, it happened because that was God’s will. And that has always been true. But what happened here three weeks ago was not God’s will. It was precisely and exactly the opposite of God’s will.

  “The gift of fire has been stolen from mankind. But what is fire? You know in your heart of hearts that it is the essence of God himself, a continuing symbol of His presence on earth. The bible records no less than twenty one hundred and eleven references to fire. There are more than nine hundred references to flame. And now the fire and flame are gone. Does that leave you any doubt of the meaning of what has happened? Can even the most cynical disbeliever among you fail to understand? For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire. Deuteronomy: 4,24. And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him as a flame of fire. Exodus: 3,2. His eyes were as a flame of fire. Book of Revelation: 1,14. Fire IS the Lord. The absence of fire is the absence of His presence. You know it is true. For those of us who live in this dismal fireless, godless world, perhaps the most terrifying message of all is to be found in the book of Ezekiel, the twenty-first chapter, verses 47 and 48: The flaming fire shall not be quenched…and all flesh shall see that I the lord have kindled it: it shall not be quenched. And now…it has been quenched.” His voice had dropped away to a whisper.

  “We cannot make fire. We can’t light a match, we can’t fire a gun. We can’t even make the spark of God’s presence ignite in the chambers of our internal combustion engines to do His good work. And that is not the way it is supposed to be!”

  Sadly, Gallant told them the awful truth, explaining as he would to witless children who had missed what should have been evident: “The one who has set himself in direct opposition to God’s plan is not just an elderly professor of science. That is only his disguise. He appears to us as an old man, a harmless shuffling scholar. But we know better. We know who he is. We have ‘reckoned the number of the Beast’ as the Bible foresaw. For it is nothing less than the Beast that confronts us, the Antichrist.” At his right side, he saw Captain Courtenay flinch at the word. “Homer Layton is the Antichrist.” Courtenay flinched again.

  “And now that you know this truth, you know what is expected of you. Gentlemen, we are at war. But is in not just a war, it is not just an encounter between legions of men. It is the Final War, as described to us in the Revelation to John. It is the war of the holy against the unholy, man against the Beast. This is our Jihad.”

  Gallant moved the focus of his dreadful gaze slowly to the right, settling finally on Rupert Paule, the man who had sat face to face with Layton only a few short weeks ago. Paule suppressed a shiver. The implication of his failure was clear to all. He had treated with the Beast, even aided it to make its escape. He had a lot to make up for.

  Gallant put the question to him, “Where is Homer Layton?”

  “Yes. Well, he’s gone from where he was.”

  “We know that.”

  “We have Burlingame in Ft. Lauderdale. As you know, he sailed down in one of the Naval Academy vessels with a crew of midshipmen. And he’s been in contact via StratCom radio. He says that Layton is gone.”

  “We know that.”

  “He says that they stole sailboats, dozens of them and sailed east. There were witnesses. They told Burlingame that Layton appeared to have mustered a considerable force, perhaps hundreds. They were…traitors.”

  “Yes. Where did they go?”

  “East.”

  “To where?”

  “Um, the Bahamas?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “That would make it too easy for us, you see. There are only a few dozen small islands in the Bahamas with water. We would be all over them like flies on shit. And they know it. They know we’re coming. So they have gone someplace bigger, someplace where they can hide. It’s a place, by the way, where there are a lot of resources, food and the like, and nobody to contest them for it. Nothing but dead people.”

  “Cuba.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so.”

  Gallant managed not to sneer. Fat chance that any of this lot was capable of figuring out what had happened, much less what ought to be done about it. He sighed and went on explaining, patiently:

  “The island of Cuba is more than 700 miles long. It has a land area of more than forty thousand square miles. They think they’re safe there, because it would be a gargantuan task for us to locate one small colony of people hidden in such an enormous area. And they know we are crippled by their infernal machine; we have no guns, no planes, no armored fleets of heavy weaponry. But they’re not safe, not at all.” He smiled up at them. First it was just a smile, and then positively a grin. “I have a plan,” he said.

  19

  PATHWAY TO HEAVEN

  Loren checked out the sixth of the new Persistent Effectors by applying the leads of the battery to its electromagnet. The little assembly swung around on its axis, seeking out magnetic north. Once locked in, it began to glow softly near its center, as the others had. He disconnected the leads. The glow continued without interruption. He looked up to see a dozen faces, watching intently. Mrs. Hopkins was distinctly pale.

  “It doesn’t have any additional effect,” Loren sai
d. “They’re just for backup. If someone were to smash the first one, or even bump against it by mistake, then we need backup units to keep the field injected. Otherwise we might not even notice. But they would. So we need backups for safety. Just a safety measure—they don’t increase the Effect in any way.” He spoke directly to Mrs. Hopkins.

  “Yes,” she said. “You told us that. It’s just that the result of turning on the first one was such a surprise. You can hardly blame us for being just the littlest bit apprehensive about the others…”

  Loren put the final unit on the bench beside the others. For the moment, all their eggs were in this one basket, but that would soon be remedied. He looked down the beach to the rickety wooden pier where two of the sloops were being readied to set out. Two Effectors would be carried on each one. The third pair would be carried directly up into the hills by Jared Williams and Kelly.

  D.D. Pease began closing the boxes and placing each unit in its own padded bag. Pease had constructed the six wooden cases required to house the six new Effectors. The cases were as pretty and as lovingly made as the original. He had found a plane, a hand saw and a rotary hand drill in the village, together with such other materials as he needed. The entire task had taken him only a day, plus time for the varnish to dry. Loren picked up the first two knapsacks and handed them, one each, to Candace and Edward. There was a hush from the group.