by James Gunn
“I want to thank you for the freedom you have offered me to look around and to talk to people,” he said. The reporter was a “he"; that was important.
“We have nothing to hide,” she said.
“So it would seem,” the reporter said. He was not particularly young nor was he particularly virile or good looking. He was short and bespectacled and balding and casually dressed, though without the chic of those who dressed casually as part of the face they presented to the world, or the defiance of those who deliberately violated decorum. He was simply dowdy. But he was a man.
“This place is unbelievable,” the reporter said. His name was Dan, but Shepherd determinedly thought of him by his profession; it was like naming kittens: Personalize them and you couldn't let them go. “The world outside is falling apart, and here everything seems normal. Better than normal."
Shepherd nodded from behind Isaiah's desk. She still thought of it as his desk. It was built to his scale, not hers, and she looked like a child playing in her father's office.
“I'd like to set down roots here myself,” the reporter said wistfully, and then added quickly, “but I know that's not possible. The only thing—"
“Yes?"
“I've spoken to Janet. When I leave I'd like to take her with me."
“She's welcome to go, of course. Any of my flock can leave at any time. But what makes you think Janet wants to go with you?"
“She's different from the rest of you."
“She's about to give birth."
“That, too, and I'd like to provide a home for her and her baby. That's a laugh, isn't it?” He didn't look as if he felt like laughing. “Janet is sensitive and vulnerable and—I don't know."
“Skeptical,” Shepherd supplied.
“Yeah,” the reporter said. “She's got a mind, you know? She asks questions. Wants answers. Kind of like me."
“We'll have to see what Janet wants,” Shepherd said calmly, although she realized that Sam might be the serpent she had admitted into her little Eden. Men always ruined things.
“One other thing,” the reporter said. “I think you killed Isaiah."
Shepherd's television appearances had opened with a long shot of the valley in all its sunlit splendor and peaceful beauty, focusing in slowly on the barn and a small, black stick figure standing on the peak of its shingled roof. As the camera got closer the figure resolved into a person, and then into a woman, and then into Barbara Shepherd herself. When she almost filled the entire screen, Shepherd went into her Olympic routine, using the rooftree as if it were a balance beam, and ended with a backward flip.
The scene dissolved into Shepherd seated on the edge of Isaiah's desk, looking into the camera. “That was foolish,” she said. “As foolish as the time and effort I put into the Olympic competitions so many years ago. But I was risking my life to make a point: without faith life is meaningless. We can see in the world around us evidence of that inescapable truth. People are dying not because of the violence around them but because they lack faith. They live in terror of the future. But those who have faith find meaning in everything they do; they live unafraid, confident that whatever happens they are saved, not dreading but anticipating Judgment Day and the Rapture."
It had not been a performance. She had had enough of those, on stage and in front of cameras. For this she had learned no lines. She had said whatever came into her mind, put there she knew not how. She had not heard the voice of God, as Isaiah had said he had, but she had felt the words welling out of her, and they were good words, wise words, comforting words. Not threats but promises. Promises from the heart. She hoped they were the words of God, but they were, beyond a doubt, the words of a daughter of God.
Afterwards she had felt emptied of whatever had been poured into the vessel she believed herself to be. As an antidote to her own feeling of satisfaction, she always turned on the living room television set to a news channel for an injection of reality. Sometimes one of the other women joined her, but most of them had cut all ties with the rest of the world. Janet, to whom she had become oddly attached, joined her frequently, however, and they listened in silence to accounts of turmoil and desperation.
The crazies in the big cities were still stalking the dark city streets like the living dead. By day they turned back into ordinary people. The transformation was more frightening than the zombie performance. Crime, particularly violent crime, was on a parabolic curve like the ascent of the space shuttle. The shuttles still flew, although they were patched and shabby; serious space travel was awaiting the arrival of the air-to-space plane. Meanwhile citizens looked up enviously at the rocketships thrusting themselves into the clean, cold void. They were tied to their homes and possessions, stocking weapons and barring windows and doors against the depredations of those who stole for drugs and killed for pleasure, while accidents multiplied on the streets and trash accumulated on the curbs. Civilization was dying in its own wastes.
The Earth itself seemed to be trying to rid itself of the pests that were destroying their own environment, and the environment of every other living thing along with them. News of new volcanic eruptions came almost every day. Sunsets were spectacular, but dust in the upper atmosphere created hot spots and cold spots in strange places, and too much rain and snow in some regions of the world and too little in others. Tornadoes and hurricanes exceeded all previous records. Forecasters had virtually given up predicting anything beyond the next 24 hours.
Earthquakes shook the planet's crust like a child's rattle. Forest fires raged beyond control. Floods ravaged villages in China and India and Bangladesh, and cities in North and South America, while Europe and Africa suffered from the worst drouth in the century. Millions died but world population continued its inexorable increase toward the Malthusian limits of starvation, plague, and war.
The heavens themselves seemed to be conspiring against the upstarts who had dared to consider themselves the masters of time and space. The sun broke out in spots like a child with chickenpox. Scientists talked about solar flares. New comets had been spotted, some as bright as Halley's, and at least one of them was estimated to pass within half a million miles of Earth. It could be seen clearly now without the aid of a telescope. Shooting stars were more frequent than during the August Perseids, and astronomers speculated that this might imply the possibility of more massive asteroid strikes. Meanwhile, the sensational elements of the press were running articles about the possible arrival of hard radiation from a nearby supernova, death hurtling inexorably Earthward whose first warning would be its arrival. Running second among unseen assassins was the possible arrival of a massive black hole ejected from the center of the galaxy.
When Shepherd could take no more, she had turned off the set and sat staring at the gray square reflecting her reality, the room and herself and, often, Janet.
“So,” she had said, “harbingers and portents."
“Like contractions,” Janet had said, “only some of them are false."
“That's true. We won't know until it happens. The universe is pregnant with the end of things, and these signs tell us that the time is near."
“I know I should rejoice in the fulfillment of apocalypse,” Janet had said. “The way you tell us. I am not a believer the way you are, but I can't help but be sad for my baby, who may have only a few days to live if you and the others are right."
Shepherd had smiled at Janet and reached out to pat her hand. “This world is only preparation for the next. Imagine being translated to that life after death without the opportunity to sin or to grieve."
“With all its pain and grief, I wouldn't want to have missed out on it.” Janet's dark, pregnancy-swollen face had looked remote and thoughtful.
“Nor I,” Shepherd had said, “but that's because we have nothing to compare it with—only our anticipations of the Afterlife. Anyway, your baby may be the Messiah who will lead us into the Promised Land. After all, this will be a virgin birth."
They had looked at each o
ther and laughed, and afterwards they had settled down to discuss the details of the next week's schedule. Then it was Shepherd who had looked thoughtful, as if planning for the week of Christmas to New Year's had exposed concerns she had tried to bury.
“Sometimes lately you seem far away,” Janet had said.
“I'm sorry,” Shepherd had said, looking responsive.
“No, tell me. You know all my troubles."
“Your troubles are my troubles,” Shepherd had said.
“And the other way around. Let me help."
“If only you could,” Shepherd had said. “I've agreed to allow a reporter to do a story on our little group. He'll be here—"
“He?” Janet had echoed.
“—tomorrow and stay a few days. Talk to him. Show him whatever he wants to see. Let him talk to whoever he wants."
“But why?” Janet had asked. “He'll lie about us, make us look like silly fools."
“Maybe,” Shepherd had said. “Maybe not. Call it my hair shirt. I'm sorry if it gives you problems. Sometimes I get these self-destructive urges."
“Even now?"
“Less now than before. Maybe this is the last one. Maybe there won't be time for any more."
“That's it, isn't it?” Janet had said. “The time. Like mine, yours is growing short."
“You're right,” Shepherd had admitted. “Time has its finger between my legs, and I feel the tension growing. I may not belong here. Like Paul before his mission to carry the gospel to the Gentiles. You don't need me—"
“Oh, we do!"
“—and somewhere else there may be Gentiles who need to hear the truth, to whom I might make a difference."
“Your place is here,” Janet had said firmly.
“I had a vision once,” Shepherd had said, “but it didn't last. It was just a moment of revelation, and I have been searching for it ever since. I thought I had found it here, but I was wrong."
“We were all fooled by Isaiah,” Janet had said. It was the first time she had admitted that Isaiah was not a saint, as if she was willing to sacrifice her last illusions to Shepherd's need. Or her own.
“I wish,” Shepherd had said, “I heard God speaking to me, telling me what to do, like Isaiah."
“Isaiah was lying about that, too.” Now that she had taken the first step, Janet had been willing to go all the way.
“I don't think so. I think he did hear voices, but it may just have been the other side of his brain. I wish it were true. I wish I had the certainty I had just for a few seconds. But maybe it, too, was just a message from the other side of my brain. I wish I didn't have to guess."
“What?"
Shepherd had shrugged. “Who the Gentiles are."
And then Christmas had come upon them, with its celebrations and feasts and exchange of simple gifts, and it had all been fulfilling in a way that rose up in Shepherd's chest with almost unbearable yearning, like the memory of Christmas when you were young and life was simple and you got the one thing in the world you really wanted and saw from the expression on your parents’ faces that you had made for them exactly what they wanted, and you were so happy you thought you would die. Even with Dan present with his automatic little camera and his almost invisible recorder.
Shepherd felt a sense of relief that the subject was out in the open. She was more concerned about what the little man had said about Janet leaving. “I realize that your paper specializes in rumors and gossip and outrageous lies. Maybe that's why I responded to your request after turning down so many others. I guess I wanted to expose our way of life to the worst scrutiny I could imagine."
“Now, wait a minute,” the reporter said. “We're both in the entertainment business, you and I."
“I suppose you'd think that,” Shepherd said. “The difference between us is that I believe in what I'm doing."
“And I don't?"
“Not in the truth. Just in the entertainment. Anyway, you know we have resources, we can afford the best lawyers, and we will if necessary."
The reporter got up nervously and leaned over the desk. “But it wouldn't do your image any good to have it dragged through the courts. Why don't you tell me what really happened? Maybe I can slant it your way, make it sound, say, justified."
“The more we are persecuted, the stronger we get,” Shepherd said. “'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’ is the ninth commandment, and The Book of Common Prayer speaks of ‘our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers.’”
Shepherd's calm more than her words shook the reporter beyond speech. “In any case,” she continued, “if the world ends in less than a week, where will you be then? With another sin on your conscience and nowhere to publish it."
“Janet—” he muttered.
But just then a knock on the door preceded an urgent voice saying, “Barbara, come quick. Janet has gone into labor."
The reporter had followed her down the hall to the room that had been prepared for Janet's delivery, but Shepherd stopped him outside the door. “This is our baby. You can talk to Janet afterwards if you wish, print whatever lies you wish, but this is our business, and you will stay here or I will have you ejected."
The reporter stopped where he was told, as if frightened by the intensity of Shepherd's concern. Shepherd slipped through the doorway and went quickly to Janet's side. Janet already was focused on the process happening inside her abdomen, but she recognized Shepherd's presence by a squeeze of her hand. And then the ancient ceremony of renewal progressed quickly, far too quickly for the doctor to arrive, and Janet's reluctant womb expelled its nine-month burden into the waiting hands of the middle-aged women who drew it forth, and it was a boy, squalling but soon quieted when the umbilical cord was tied off and severed and the infant was washed and wrapped in a baby blanket and placed in the arms of his mother.
“You look like Mary,” Shepherd said, smoothing Janet's hair off her forehead.
“Every new mother looks like Mary,” Janet said. “But you were right. He was born on Christmas. Do you think—?"
“Nothing is certain, but everything is possible. Treat him as if he were and perhaps he will be."
“Life will never be the same."
“Never,” Shepherd said, smiling. And then, more seriously, “The reporter wants you to go with him when he leaves."
“Him.” Janet dismissed the notion with a weary movement of her head. “Just because I talked to him. He's an unhappy person."
“He's a man.” They both laughed. “I'm glad you're staying,” Shepherd continued. “That makes easier what I've got to do."
Janet looked up, alarmed, forgetting even the baby in her arms. “What's that?"
“I've discovered who the Gentiles are.” Shepherd pulled a square card from the pocket of her skirt. She put it in Janet's hand. “It's an invitation to the Twenty-First Century Conference in New York, and what they call ‘the end-of-the-world ball.’”
“You can't leave us,” Janet said.
“You will get along just fine. I'm leaving my flock in your charge, Janet. I've had my vision. I'm setting off for Rome."
“We'll die."
“I've had a vision about that, too. You will be strong, Janet. You have your baby, and the women will gather around, and on New Year's Eve you will assemble here to end the millennium and maybe, I think surely, usher in the true kingdom of God. I will think of you and wish I could be with you, but we will all meet again."
“I'm afraid,” Janet said, clutching her baby until it squealed in protest.
Barbara took back the invitation and patted Janet's hand, took one last wistful look at the baby, and turned toward the door and whatever fate awaited her in New York. Her vision had told her the meaning of the millennium—it was not catastrophe that had driven the world to the brink of its own destruction but the fear of catastrophe.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
December 31, 2000
The End-of-the-World Ball
9 p.m. William Landis stepped o
ut of the express elevator that had transported him, like a redeemed sinner, from the lobby of the World Trade Center to the bar and restaurant at the peak of this manmade mountain, this towering skyscraper, this one-hundred-and-ten-story monument to international networking and the power of commerce. As the year 1000 had reached its end, believers had gathered on mountain tops to await the Second Coming; one thousand years later, skeptics had built their own mountain and assembled at its summit to celebrate a moment consecrated in their forgotten faith.
For this occasion the entire top floor of the World Trade Center had been taken over by the Twenty-First Corporation for its end-of-the-millennium celebration. The tables had been removed to form a ballroom and the main bar was supplemented with smaller tables around the periphery. Between the bars were buffet tables laden with food that featured a wide variety of cuisines prepared by Manhattan's most famous chefs. On the periphery of the room wide windows during the day had offered views of a winter storm over New Jersey, clouds over Coney Island, smog over midtown, ships in the harbor, and helicopters flying below. Tonight the sky was clear, and the stars shone down in all their awesome splendor.
This evening everything was free. The occasion must be costing the Twenty-First Corporation a fortune, Landis thought, not only for the food and drink but for the rent of this prime location on the restaurant's most profitable evening of the year. The public relations benefits could not possibly be worth the costs. Landis made a mental note to add to his final chapter, when he got back to his hotel room and his portable computer, a paragraph or two about potlatch and the earning of status by ostentatious gifts and entertainment. Or maybe the richest corporation in the world knew something he didn't know and was spending its resources in a final “you can't take it with you” gesture.
Just outside the elevator doors stood a Gothic arch carved from ice. It dripped, but the drips were caught by clear plastic and led to reservoirs at either side. On the arch had been engraved, as if in marble, and the letters outlined in black to make them readable, “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate."
