Not the End of the World

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Yes, yes. And think how scared the Muslims are themselves of their Allah,’ Luther said, the thought a revelation. ‘Church and state are practically one in a lot of Middle East places. No abortions, no tolerance of homosexuality or blasphemy or obscenity. That’s the law, and they’re afraid of the law because it’s the law of God. People in America are respectful of the law, but they aren’t afraid of it, and that’s because it’s just the law of men, not the law of God.’

  ‘If folks were scared of God, if folks were scared of upsetting Christians,’ Corby continued, ‘it wouldn’t be so hard for God’s message to get through to people, and there’d be so much less sin, so many more souls saved. God must know that, Reverend, don’t you think? He must know how hard it is for us to make His word heard.

  ‘God could have killed me or disabled me that day if He wanted to stop me, but He only hurt me on one side, my left, and I’m right-handed. Now, if I’d succeeded in blowing up the clinic, I’d have achieved nothing. There’d be a new clinic there soon enough, and the babies that were scheduled to be murdered in Pocoima would be taken to a death-clinic someplace else. Lives would have been lost but not saved. So this is the real burden, Reverend. This is what keeps me awake at night: what if God was trying to tell me I was going down the wrong road, but that my journey itself was right?’

  Corby shook his head, a look of real anguish etched on the lines of his ravaged face. And then he said it:

  ‘We know God sacrificed His only son to redeem us from sin. Wouldn’t He tolerate the loss of a few more lives if it would save millions of souls?’

  Luther gasped.

  It was, as he conceded to Corby, one heck of a question.

  ‘That’s why I had to talk to you, Reverend. See, I’ve struggled with it so long but I knew I could never understand God’s will like you do, and as you can appreciate, it’s not the sort of question you can take a chance on getting wrong.’

  ‘No, it sure isn’t,’ Luther stated sternly. ‘Not when there’s God’s wrath to reckon with. I can’t answer it for you, Daniel, not right now, not without a lot of careful thought and prayer. It seems on the surface the simple answer would be that Thou Shalt Not Kill, end of story, but that’s a little too easy, isn’t it? That’s not answering the question, that’s running away from it. That’s the answer most people would come to, and I’m sure that’s okay with God, because not all His children are strong enough to wrestle with such a beast. But you and I are strong, and He’d expect us not to run away. God tells us Thou Shalt Not Kill, and yet we go to war in His name. God loves peace, and yet sometimes we have to kill to bring peace: we had to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the greater carnage that was WW2.

  ‘So if it was in our powers to make America see the light – to save America’s soul – but at the expense of some American lives, would it be right just to walk away? Would we be honouring the Fifth Commandment, or hiding behind it?’

  To lose earthly lives for the sake of immortal souls. One heck of a question indeed.

  He said he couldn’t answer it for Corby, but he had answered it for himself as soon as it left Corby’s lips. Truth was, his late, lamented uncle had answered it many years ago: ‘Sometimes there’s more at stake than the life that would be taken,’ he’d said.

  It wasn’t a question, it was a doorway, and all of God’s creation looked a whole lot different from the other side of it.

  He knew God wanted him to be President. There was no vehicle upon this earth that could convey so many souls to the light, no greater device to spread God’s Word and impose His will. God had been grooming and preparing him for it all his life.

  Before ‘92 he thought the preparation had begun with his second start in life in the hands of his dear uncle, but he later came to understand that the trials of Bobby Baker had been part of God’s training for him too. They had taught him what courage it required to stand alone, to be different, to uphold your belief in Him in the face of doubt and ridicule. They had also taught him that he had the strength to recover from pain, humiliation and defeat, plus the knowledge that God rewards faith with second chances.

  He could see now why it hadn’t worked out in ‘92, and it wasn’t to do with the mistakes in his campaign or being outflanked by his opponents or any of that crap; those were merely the details. The truth was, he hadn’t won because God hadn’t wanted him to, and every aspect of his failure had a part to play in preparing him for succeeding when God did. God didn’t want him to be President in 1992 because that simply wasn’t the right time – Luther should have seen that. And God had knocked him down too low to recover in time for ‘96, so He didn’t want him to be President then either. He wanted him to be President in the year 2000, the first new President of the new millennium, so that he could lead America out of the dark, sinful days of the Twentieth Century to a new dawn of true Christianity.

  America simply wasn’t afraid of God any more – that was the essence of the problem. Not everyone, obviously: America had the greatest population of practising Christians on the planet. But there had been a polarisation between the faithful and the godless, and it seemed the word of the godless held sway when it came to making laws, shaping attitudes and defining what was acceptable in society. God’s will didn’t come into it. The Lord didn’t have a powerful enough lobby.

  The sinners didn’t accept that they were sinning because they feared no retribution: not from the law, and certainly not from the Lord. Even AIDS had taught them nothing. They didn’t see that it was a God-given, illustrative lesson in the wages of sin: cause and effect, action and consequence. Instead they just treated it as an obstacle to be gotten around with ‘safe sex’, then went milking sympathy for this ‘tragic affliction’. Even more insulting, they used it as an excuse to bury the country in an avalanche of condoms; something that used to be hidden under the pharmacist’s shelf was now lesson one in science class.

  There were people who called themselves atheists, but Luther knew there was no one who really – deep down – didn’t believe, didn’t know the truth. These atheists could kid themselves if it made them feel all hip and intellectual, but that was because they weren’t scared of God’s anger at denying Him. There wasn’t much talk of atheists in the Bible, because that was an age when God’s work was closer at hand. Even the sinners didn’t deny God’s existence back then because they could see His might: in works of wonder, in miracles, and most importantly, in acts of wrath.

  Luther knew that despite its sins, despite losing its way, America was savable. In fact, it was crying out to be saved. Deep down, people wanted to believe, wanted to know that there were answers and greater mysteries beyond the mundanity of this life. And as the century drew to an end, they were trying to find those answers, those mysteries, in any ridiculous thing except God. They were prepared to believe in aliens, in flying saucers, the Bermuda triangle, Roswell. They were gobbling up the most outrageous conspiracy theories about everything from Kennedy to Princess Diana, and convincing themselves that Elvis goddamn Presley was still walking the earth someplace. They wanted to believe. They wanted to know that there was something more; they had merely forgotten what that something more really was, distracted by a hint of the unearthly in all kinds of dubious phenomena.

  What they needed was an act of God.

  He knew that it was not for God to prove Himself to man; it was for man to have faith in God. God would not act, would not perform before man in order to get his attention. But that was why He was calling upon Luther, His servant.

  God did not need to act. Man only needed to believe that He had.

  An act of God, and not some kind of wondrous work either, but a long-provoked act of rage: punishment for the guilty and a warning to those who were spared.

  Luther had been in a hotel suite in New Orleans after giving the keynote speech at a True Love Waits fundraising gala. He found himself awake in the small hours, unable to get back to sleep, and inevitably started channel-surfing. It must have been the
Discovery Channel or something like that. A documentary about ‘the greatest – and least famous – natural disaster of all time’.

  Some time around 1470 BC there had been a volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean, on the island of Thera, estimated to have been four times as powerful as Krakatoa. And just like on that occasion, for all its fire and fury, it wasn’t the volcano that had done the real damage. The seismic waves that followed the eruption in Krakatoa killed 37,000 people. ‘What followed in Thera,’ the presenter said, ‘was almost beyond imagination.’

  It was an incredible story. The waves caused by this eruption struck every coastline for a radius of about three hundred miles, all around the eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, North Africa, and were responsible for many of the great flood legends of pre-history. ‘Given the lack of communication between most of these places and the variations in each culture’s chronology, different flood legends and myths developed independently of one another, but all in fact depicted the local experience of the same event. For instance, the flood of Deucalion in Greek legend was that caused by the destruction of Thera, but perhaps the most famous legend to have roots in this disaster is the story of Atlantis. The Minoan civilisation on Crete . . .’

  Luther watched, fascinated. The show went into all kinds of detail about the extent of the catastrophe, but the phrase that stuck in his mind, the phrase that came hurtling out at him with a force as if borne on one of those waves, was that ‘the devastating physical impact of this incident must have been paralleled by its impact on religious beliefs’.

  No kidding. Talk about wrath of the gods; it was a safe bet there weren’t many atheists swimming around the debris the day after that.

  And so it came to pass that a plan was born.

  A flood, Luther thought: what could be more Biblical? There was the niggling problem that, according to scripture, God told Noah He would send no more floods, but on the other hand, the human race hadn’t done much to honour Noah’s side of the deal either.

  So what was the difference between an act of God and a natural disaster? Quite simply: intention.

  Throughout history there had been floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, famines and droughts, and always a retrospective claim of the events having been divine retribution. But it impressed no-one to identify the hand of God after the fact. That was why AIDS had changed nothing. The sodomites were afraid of the big stick, but still refused to see that it was God who was wielding it.

  However, if you predicted what God was about to do, who to and why – and then God delivered . . .

  How had he put it? A long-provoked act of rage: punishment for the guilty and a warning to those who were spared. What would be a terrible flood, water to cleanse the earth of impurity. Who would be the godless, amoral, sin-ridden damned of Los Angeles, source of the filth-tide that was polluting America. Why needed no elaboration.

  What did need elaboration was how one created a massive seismic wave off the coast of southern California, but there was an old adage that stated where there was a wilt there was a way. So if it was God’s will, then by God there would be a way.

  A night in the desert. A clandestine rendezvous. A proposal. A deal.

  Liskey laid down what he wanted Luther to deliver once he was President, Luther what Liskey would need to deliver to make that happen. The alloy of their bond was forged in the flames of mutually assured destruction: once the plan was set in motion, neither could betray the other without undoing himself. Liskey told him that if Luther could front the money, he could acquire the hardware. He had the knowledge and the contacts, and since the collapse of Communism, there were places in the former Soviet bloc where it was easier to get hold of nuclear warheads than it was to get hold of a decent car. If Luther had the will, Liskey had the way.

  And by sweet Jesus Luther had the will.

  He knew well that there would be much death, much suffering, and could but imagine how heavily it would ever after weigh upon him. Many would die in the flood as that was the role God had chosen for them; if they were innocent then surely they would receive their reward. Had He chosen such a role for Luther, he would have happily accepted it, for Luther knew that what stood to be won was far greater than what would have to be lost, as God Himself reasoned when He gave up His only son. However, God had chosen a special role for him; he had to be strong and accept the burden. He could not ask God to let this chalice pass his lips.

  When the flood waters abated, America would be listening hard to God’s word once again, and listening especially carefully to the man who was speaking it, the man who knew God’s will. The next Presidential election campaign would be a very different story. He wouldn’t have to play the politicians at their own game: they’d have to play him at his, and they wouldn’t stand a chance. Truth would be the highest suit once again, not fashionable opinion or political correctness. The words of the scripture would be his ace, not a joker. And there sure as hell wouldn’t be any smartassed wise-cracking from the galleries: we’d soon see how many TV pundits still thought Christianity was a laughing matter after their atheist predecessors got swept away. The clamour of filth would be silenced. The movie business would be paralysed, production brought to a standstill, and no one would be under any doubt about its role in provoking the catastrophe. No matter what could be salvaged of its material remains, Hollywood would not be allowed to rebuild itself, and neither would film-making in the rest of the US be spared.

  The days of film as a courier of disease and decay would be gone, and the people responsible would not be allowed behind a camera again, no matter what penitence they laid claim to. The movies and TV shows of the next century would be vehicles for exemplifying the pure morality of a new Christian age. And a very great deal of them would be made at Luther’s own Bleachfield studios.

  It was not going to be a simple matter of detonating a nuclear bomb under the ocean. As France’s South Pacific undersea tests had demonstrated, doing that only got you a big splash and a whole load of radioactive fish. At both Thera and Krakatoa, the opening of vast caldera sucked in billions of gallons of water, the sea sweeping in to fill the holes where landmasses had previously been. This surge created its own imbalance as the waters overfilled the depressions, and the countersurge back outwards was the force behind the waves.

  The principal cause of seismic waves was crustal plate movement, the resultant earthquake forcing part of the seabed up or down. Undersea landslides – or turbidity currents – were another cause. Put simply, it wasn’t about moving water, but moving ground. Luther therefore needed to know two things: first, what level of sub-aquatic disturbance would be required to trigger a wave of the magnitude he had in mind; and second, where that disturbance might most effectively be wreaked. It was around then that he became a generous (if admittedly disingenuous) patron of ocean-geological research, and found the scientists he funded to be most helpful.

  Sandra Biscane’s 3D-modelling programs demonstrated precisely what kind of sub-oceanic site Luther should be looking to plant his explosives in; then Mitchell Kramer went about finding one that met all the relevant criteria. The CalORI project was also beneficial to the credibility of his prediction, so that he could claim to have seen God’s preparatory handiwork writ large in the information the research vessel Gazes Also was bringing to light.

  None of the scientists had any idea what they were really doing for him, but this was not a time for playing the percentages, so unfortunately they had to be added to the weight on his conscience necessary for the success of his divine mission. Biscane was neutralised as soon as Luther had what he needed. The CalORI team was allowed to continue its work for a while after it delivered, in case a better site was located and because Liskey had pointed out the advantages of a disappearance at sea rather than several conspicuously coincidental deaths back on land.

  In the mean time a deal was set up in the Ukraine to purchase three ex-Soviet CHIB-class nuclear warheads, removed from vehicle-mounted tactical missiles, yielding
a combined payload of 180 kilotons. Luther knew he could trust Liskey as long as their fates were bound together, but he wasn’t about to put any unnecessary temptation in the man’s way. Having shelled out the required millions for the bombs and organised their transport back to US waters, he wasn’t going to risk the Militia assassinating him and running off to have their own fun, especially as the intended means of planting the nukes - the Stella Maris – could just as easily be employed to bring them ashore on to US soil. Therefore, Liskey took possession of the warheads and supervised their transport aboard Luther’s private yacht, the Light of the World, but only after the Ukrainians received the second half of the agreed cash-transfer. The first half resulted in delivery – direct to Luther’s Kiev hotel room – of an encoded detonation device without which the warheads would not go off.

  As well as detonators, Luther was also – and more ostensibly – in town to purchase religious artefacts: three statues that were relics of the region’s early Christian history, thought lost but once again discovered in the aftermath of Communism’s collapse. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit had been featured on a recent CFC documentary on the great Christian statuary of the world. The show ultimately lamented how little of it, despite the ebb and flow of time’s tides, had ended up in America, which was now the world’s most overtly Christian country. Luther St John was, as CFC viewers knew, in the Ukraine on a mission to begin redressing the balance.

  Archaeologists and religious historians would have found less significance in the three statues than was suggested by the documentary’s gravitous content, as they had in fact been made in Arizona. The footage of them after their ‘discovery’ in a disused Kiev churchyard was shot in one of Luther’s own Bleachfield back lots where his Christian Family Entertainment division produced dramas for CFC. After that they were taken aboard Luther’s yacht, bound for the Ukraine, and transported to their point of ‘purchase’, which was filmed for later CFC transmission using locally hired actors.