God Game

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Then the rock—it was at least ten feet high—began to vibrate ever so slightly, tilting back and forth in easy, gentle movements. Hardly enough to loosen it.

  Just enough, as it turned out. The rock started to lurch crudely, as if it were eager to begin its wild run down the rollercoaster mountainside. Then with a mighty roar it tore loose from its precipice and rumbled down the first ravine, a freight train picking up speed.

  DELETE CARDINAL’S PAVILION, I told the 286.

  ATTEMPTING TO EXECUTE.

  The great rock tumbled down the ravines and valleys like a bowling ball rolling down a staircase, changing direction at the last moment just as the thick line on Larry’s map said it should. How about that!

  ATTEMPTING TO EXECUTE.

  It ripped through the forest, a tornado of violent destruction. Everyone in the land stopped in their tracks and looked up, astonished by the deafening roar.

  Larry, Curly, and Moe cheered themselves enthusiastically.

  The rock raced by the altar on which Lenrau was bound and headed straight for the Cardinal’s tent. I was cheering as loudly as the Stooges.

  At the last moment it careened away harmlessly, rushed across the meadow, and buried itself in a small pond. A giant sheet of spray rose at the edges of the pond, which now had a large island in its center. The spray quickly fell back into the water and on the beach around the pond. Just as quickly my hopes fell.

  EXECUTION FAILED.

  I know, dummy.

  The Cardinal’s agents spread the word that his miraculous escape was a sign of favor from the Lord Our God. He was winning all the tricks.

  Later in the day, for an hour and a half, there was a sign of hope. G’Ranne, obedient as always to my slightest request and with her usual brilliant organizational energies, created a troop of warriors from both sides. They rode into the meadow on their big chariots, drawn by the speedy white horses, like a group of horsemen riding out of the Apocalypse. There were not enough of them to break through the guard around the Duke, but they could kill a lot of priests and hold the rest at bay.

  The Cardinal approached them with his hand raised in a sign of truce.

  “No useful purpose,” he said in his melodious voice, “in shedding blood. We can negotiate a compromise.”

  “The Duke must be freed,” G’Ranne insisted. “That is not negotiable.”

  “Let us dialogue on it in peace. We will lay down our arms. You lay down yours. You are men and women of honor; so are we.”

  DON’T BELIEVE THEM! I pleaded. DON’T DO IT, YOU STUPID BITCH!

  Well, she did it anyway.

  “Idiot!” I shouted, rising to my feet and whacking the 286. Such is our rage against the first infidelity of those who have been most faithful.

  The picture on my Zenith screen flickered but did not go out. I kind of wished it had.

  No one was listening to me, not even the passionately loyal and not-enough-loved ice woman.

  The warriors were a bloodthirsty lot, but they had a code of honor which meant you kept your word when you gave it. Poor naïfs. Not familiar with the stylo curiae.

  They accepted the truce. They set aside their sword and spears, and so did the priests around the altar. Then another band swarmed in from behind and quickly overcame the astonished warriors and bound them. G’Ranne wept tears of bitter self-reproach. “I should have listened to you,” she said over and over.

  Too late now, idiot.

  “There will be many offerings tonight and in the nights to come,” the Cardinal said piously. “We will honor God with the offerings of the bodies of his enemies.”

  Some of his crowd started messing around with G’Ranne and the few other women warriors who had been taken prisoners.

  The Cardinal held up his hand. “We must wait till the offering is complete. The Duchess must not hear of this little matter beforehand. Take them away.”

  God, however, was on the side of the prisoners. For what that was worth just now. Because the current occupant of Nathan’s God Game was not running on all cylinders.

  15

  The Feast of the Four Moons

  CREATE HUGE RAINSTORM, I told the 286, hoping that there was finally enough moisture somewhere in the world.

  EXECUTING.

  Well, it didn’t say no.

  HURRY UP, I insisted.

  TIME REQUIRED.

  HOW MUCH TIME REQUIRED? I snapped back stubbornly.

  CANNOT ESTIMATE.

  On the horizon of my screen, a cloud appeared, then another. Like a storm over Lake Michigan.

  Later in the day, the clergy found Malvau and N’Rasia, who were packing up after their night of fun and games. Both of them fought like wild animals. Three of the priests finally immobilized ’Vau while another one beat him unconscious. ’Rasia dove into the lake and swam underwater beyond their reach.

  “She is unimportant,” said the leader of the squad. “Do not bother with her.”

  You may live to regret that decision, I thought. But what could one, admittedly attractive, grandmother do against a whole civilization gone mad?

  Back in the meadow, glaring balefully at the mob of peasants, the ilel stood guard at the altar like a widow at an Irish wake. For much of the afternoon it was a standoff; they were too frightened to risk the supernatural furies at her disposal, and she did not waver either from the glare of the sunlight or from the threatening calls from the crowd. The sun was soon partially covered by a thin haze as clouds began to build up behind the high mountains on the sunset side of the country, giant, foreboding thunderheads. The mob pointed at the clouds and shouted enthusiastically. The gods, they seemed to think, would reward them with rain soon after the offering was finished.

  You are in for a big surprise, guys, if this God has anything to say about it.

  I was now totally converted to a God of fury and wrath. I would zap them all if I had to, even if I didn’t have to, just for the pure hell of it. Their malice called to heaven, that is to me, for vengeance.

  I’d delete the lot of them.

  It grew darker as the afternoon continued, a tornado sky, the kind which when I was a boy made me wonder whether the end of the world was at hand. I thought about that. Before I was finished, the end of their world might be at hand. Obliterate the whole miserable lot of them.

  A squad of the chaingang-fugitive clergy showed up and ringed the platform and its fierce little guardian. She pointed a warning finger at them and they stumbled back a few paces but kept their circle tight. When I did my zapping, anyone who laid a finger on her would be the first to go.

  In the distance a few idle, tentative shreds of lightning danced along the top of the tallest mountain. A shiver ran through the mob. You’d better be scared, guys, you haven’t seen anything yet. Wait till I work havoc among the cedar trees, if you have any cedar trees in this miserable world.

  As I was expecting, the Cardinal and the Troll showed up with a splendidly uniformed guard of priests in maroon and white. A coup was taking place. After they had disposed of Lenrau, B’Mella and her unborn child would be disposed of quietly, and the clergy would set up their own neat profitable little Ayatollah theocracy from which the Lord Our God, who apparently didn’t require priests in this world, would be properly excluded.

  Well, you’re all in for a little surprise. Mess with me, will you? Just wait till my storm gets up a proper head of steam.

  If either Lenrau or B’Mella were functioning properly, they would have seen this coup coming and headed it off, but they were both tied up in knots with their foolish emotional problems. The only barrier now was the brave little teenager, pointing her finger of doom at the Cardinal.

  And an unarmed middle-aged woman, soaking wet, somewhere in the forest.

  The baddies had too much invested in their coup to be slowed down by such a frail and weaponless obstacle as Ranora. The Cardinal gave an order. A squad of his thugs, as nervous as cops around a cornered hijacker, crept up the stairs to the top of the plat
form and grabbed her. She did not come quietly. Standing her ground, she kicked the first one in the groin, hacked at the neck of the second, and then went down under an avalanche of sweating, grunting, punching hoods. A cry of shrill terror raced through the mob. What happens to those guilty of sacrilege?

  MASSIVE LIGHTNING, I told my 286.

  Four or five streaks of nasty blue light cut across the black sky. Mess with my messenger, will they?

  The spectacular display saved poor Ranora for the time being. She would have been raped and murdered on the spot if the priests themselves had not been quite so superstitious. The Cardinal looked like he was about to order her death, and then hesitated. I’m sure that the rumbling thunder didn’t scare him. But he did not want to push his men too far yet. Kill the Duke, then the Duchess, then cut the throat of this obnoxious little brat. Still kicking and screaming, she was carried off to the maroon pavilion of the high priest. Her cloak was dragged off Lenrau’s silent, motionless body; it didn’t matter anymore; there was not enough sun to burn him.

  I called on the machine for more donner and blitzen, just to warn them that I didn’t want her hurt in that pavilion.

  There was enough electricity in the air by the time it grew dark for me to unleash a good sized storm; however, I wanted the biggest downpour in their meteorological history, if they had such a history. Now I was thinking coolly and clearly, improving every minute at the God Game (the Other Person already had an eternity of practice). No more hasty and ineffective uses of power.

  Timing, I figured, was of the essence of being God, especially since you had more of it than anyone else. I accessed the Cardinal’s pavilion to make certain that no one was hurting my teenager. They had her gagged and strapped down and her shift was in tatters, but no one was taking the risk of coming too close to her. As long as she was in no immediate danger, I would prolong my intervention till the last possible moment when everyone was on site and my storm had built up a maximum head of steam; I also wanted to give B’Mella a chance to redeem herself. If Ranora was at risk, however, all bets were off. She was the only one in the whole place I still liked. She had prior claim on my power. Maybe like all the others she was a product of my own preconsciousness, but she was part of the preconscious which produced my favorite people.

  The evening dragged on into night, lightning slicing across the sky, thunder rumbling threateningly, the priests and the increasing masses of people chanting antiphonally in the archaic language which had been used at the wedding, reminding me of the Latin office for the dead in Gregorian chant.

  Finally the Duchess appeared, along with Linco, Malvau, G’Ranne, and Kaila, all bound, and Ranora bound and gagged. The Cardinal was planning to wipe out all his enemies at one fell swoop. The mobs of people who were now jammed into the plain were intoxicated with drink and the self-hypnotic chants. Kill everyone now and begin a new era.

  My heart sank when I saw B’Mella. She looked sick, exhausted, depressed, and spaced out. Someone had slipped her a mickey. Perhaps she thought that at the last minute she could turn away the destructiveness of her revenge. Now they had taken the power of choice away from her. She had sown the winds of vengeance and had been deprived of the power to stop the whirlwinds from reaping that vengeance for her. One of the thugs half pushed, half helped her up the stairs to where her husband’s bound body lay, seemingly unconscious, on its rough altar of sacrifice.

  In the old fantasy stories it’s the girl who is saved from sacrifice at the last minute. Reverse scenario, except the woman had been drugged, first by her own pernicious hatred and now by some mind-bending narcotic.

  SAVE DUKE, I typed in after pressing her function key.

  She stirred listlessly, as though she heard but was not interested or could not comprehend.

  OK. We do plan B.

  BEGIN BIG STORM, I ordered the PC.

  ERROR, ERROR, it replied.

  NATURE ERROR?

  DOWNPOUR ORDERED NOT READY.

  HOW SOON?

  CANNOT ESTIMATE.

  OK, Captain Kirk, what now?

  I had cut it too closely. God or not, I could not produce a downpour before the elements were ready, lots of noise and light, yes, but these only confirmed the priests’ version of things: as soon as you kill the Duke, there will be rain. I was playing the Cardinal’s game.

  His eyes calculating shrewdly, he studied the sky. He would not cut it too fine. Kill off the Duke and maybe some of the others for good measure and then wait till the storm, my storm, began.

  He gave a signal. The choir of priests sang more rapidly, their psalmody rising to a shrill frenzy. The crowds responded hysterically, shaking their hand lamps so that the whole plain glittered as if it were being crisscrossed by hordes of giant, inebriated fireflies.

  I pushed all my function keys, SAVE DUKE, and held down the REPEAT button. No dice, save for some savage squeals from Ranora.

  Clever and evil men were not only frustrating God’s plans, they were twisting them to their own purposes. So what would the Other Person do now?

  B’Mella seemed to try to concentrate, to focus her eyes, to comprehend what was happening, and gave up in a mixture of resignation and despair.

  It’s all your fault, you evil little bitch. Wait till I have a chance to settle with you.

  Already I had built my own judgment seat.

  The Cardinal gave another signal. The beat of the singing rose now to hysterical frenzy, demanding a climax of destruction. Drums began to roll, drowning out the thunder. He drew a long dagger from his belt and held it high over Lenrau’s body. The Troll unsheathed a big, heavy sword and lifted it into the air like a toothpick.

  I pushed the DUCHESS key in desperation. SAVE DUKE.

  I finally got through to her and once more played into the hands of the bad guys.

  She was too sick, too groggy, and too confused to act rationally. Awkwardly, like a woman in a dream, she staggered to her husband’s side and threw herself protectively over his body. A loud gasp of horror swept from one end of the plain to the other. The Cardinal grinned cheerfully and nodded his head, the singing and the drumbeating soared to a crescendo of intolerable intensity, a ruler scratching a cosmic blackboard. Their weapons rose to the highest possible point over the two bodies.

  Think of something quick.

  ZAP PRIESTS, I assaulted my keyboard with frantic fingers.

  WHICH PRIESTS?

  DELETE CARDINAL KROL.

  I DO NOT KNOW CARDINAL KROL.

  Lucky you.

  The singing stopped. In the deadly silence the weapons started their downward arc.

  DELETE CARDINAL, TROLL.

  EXECUTING.

  It seemed like two-thirds of eternity, but it must have been only a millisecond. The first thunderbolt began way up at the top of the highest and most distant mountain and, with the speed of light, roared in an unerring line straight towards the altar, like the old Burlington Zephyr silver train racing through Lisle at 5:30. It exploded around the altar just as two weapons seemed to strike. Giant blue sparks, a thousand el cars’ third rails, leaped in every direction. Thunder roared like an erupting volcano over the plain, echoing and reechoing and then reechoing again against the mountains. Long before the echoes stopped, another bolt of lightning crackled against the base of the altar. And another. And another.

  Between the blinding explosions, I saw that the Cardinal and his hideous troll were not present anymore. Where they had been standing, there was nothing at all.

  DELETE EXECUTED.

  Mess with the Lord Our God, will you?

  CEASE FIRE, I demanded.

  The thunder kept rolling back and forth between the mountain ranges, and the crowd was screaming as if it expected the earth to swallow them up—which might just be the next trick if it were needed. On the altar, prostrate still and probably scared stiff, were the two causes of all this mess, still, it seemed, present and probably alive.

  Then something completely unpredictable happe
ned. Instead of fleeing in panic, the goon squad of priests at the foot of the altar surged up the steps.

  ZAP ALL PRIESTS, I ordered.

  ZAP TEMPORARILY EXHAUSTED. EXECUTING RAIN.

  Did it ever execute rain!

  It seemed that someone (me of course, who else?) had upturned a bottomless bucket and poured all the water in the world on the meadow and its inhabitants. Need a bit of rain for your crops, do you? You can count on the Lord Your God.

  The first batch of goons were swept away from the altar platform by the downpour, but they quickly regrouped and with grim care began to climb it again.

  Now what do you do? These guys aren’t supposed to be heroes.

  Ever hear of the bravery which comes from despair?

  I noticed that the poor little ilel, a soaking wet doll, was still struggling with her bonds.

  RELEASE RANORA.

  From out of the crowd, a hooded figure appeared and, so deftly that no one noticed, slit the ropes binding the ilel. N’Rasia had her major role at last.

  With instant reflexes, like a halfback who sees daylight, Ranora scampered up the slippery steps, each one now a minor waterfall, grabbed the Cardinal’s charred dagger, pushed B’Mella unceremoniously off her husband, and cut the Duke’s ropes.

  SAVE DUCHESS, ILEL, I told the Duke.

  He burst off the altar like a berserker, swept up the Troll’s mammoth blade with a mighty sweep of what must have been cramped and aching arms, and sent the first wave of the goons tumbling down the slippery steps. Lightning burst across the sky, creating blue reflections against his wet and glistening body. He swung again and the thunder pounded behind him. Dubiously the crowd of clerical goons pondered another charge. The Cardinal’s dagger held truculently between both her hands, the Duchess rose up next to him.

  Anyone want to fight?

  Water was streaming down his battered but still solid, muscular body, and his face was shining with the glow of battle light. The lightning, thunder, and swirling winds seemed to be background for the resurrection of his masculine warrior power. The band of goons formed up a few yards away from him, preparing for another charge.