Once, in the day-watch, he told them. Bronski said, 'I think, Richard, that you conversion was not complete. You still haven't accepted with a whole heart what your mouth has acknowledged.'
'Don't say that,' Orme said. 'Of course, I believe that he is the Messiah, the true Jesus Christ. How could any man who's seen what I've seen believe otherwise?'
'Allow me to remind you of the parable Jesus once told about Lazarus and the rich man,' Bronski said. 'Remember? The rich man feasted while Lazarus, the beggar, lay at his gate. Lazarus was covered with ulcers which the dogs licked. And the rich man would not even bother to cleanse and feed the beggar. He ignored him. Then both died, and the beggar went to heaven and the rich man to the flames of Hell. So the rich man appealed to Abraham for succour but was told it was impossible to get him out of Hell or even to bring him water to cool his burning tongue. Then the rich man asked that Lazarus be sent to his five brothers to warn them that they too might go to Hell if they did not mend their ways. But Abraham said, "If they won't heed Moses and the Prophets, they won't be convinced if someone should rise from the dead." That applies to you also. You have seen far more than a man raised from the dead, yet you still have doubts.'
'But you don't?'
'No. Perhaps you should go to Jesus and tell him you're troubled. I'm sure that he could settle your doubts.'
Orme thought about this. Then, having summoned up his courage, he sent word through Azzur ben-Asa, the Messiah's chief secretary, that he would like an audience. Azzur replied that the Messiah was available to no one at this time.
'He will be residing with his Father for three days.'
For a moment, Orme didn't understand this. Then he said, 'Oh, you mean he is in the ship's nuclear reactor?'
'That is one way of putting it,' ben-Asa said.
Orme thanked him and turned off the intercom. There it was, that which was at the basis of his misgivings. How could any man, even Jesus Christ, go into an atomic furnace and come out unaffected? More significant, why should he?
If only Jesus had not told him that story about the energy-being. That story and the others were supposed to be speculations, made up on the moment to show Orme what absurd rationalisations could be created by unbelievers. Jesus had seemed to be having a good time doing it. He was not the always-serious person that a reader of the Gospels might take him for. But could he, under the guise of fantasy, have been telling Orme the truth? Was he playing cat to Orme's mouse and enjoying it? Or was he just testing the depth of his disciple's convictions?
His thoughts returned to the reactor. Jesus retired there and also to the deadly furnace inside the globe that acted as the sun for the Martian cavern. If he was indeed only a man, could he survive for more than a microsecond in it? No, he couldn't. But the Martians regarded him as both a man like themselves and more than a man. He could perform miracles and not just by hearsay. They were awed by his ability to live within that reactor, but they thought it was natural. Nothing was unnatural to the Son of Man who was also God's adopted Son. And what more natural than that Jesus should go into a place where no other man could enter and talk to God? Did Jesus ever see God? Not according to the Martians, who quoted the Old Testament. 'No one has ever seen God.' That is, no living person.
But - oh, damn him for telling it! - there was the story of the energy-being. Was Jesus indeed in that atomic Holy of Holies with the Presence? Or was he restoring his strength, eating, as it were, the raging radiations?
On that day, Orme prayed three times with the others. When he'd gone to his bunk and the breathing of his two companions assured him they were sleeping, he climbed out. Getting down upon his knees, he prayed in a very low voice that he be shown the light.
'Oh, God, let me know the truth! I am in despair, in a hell of uncertainty. Cleanse me of this. Let my soul be firm, unshakeable, riveted with the truth. I beseech you, Father. Amen.'
He could hear nothing except the wind of Shirazi's and Bronski's breaths, see nothing but the darkness. He got back into the bunk and lay there for a long while before he fell into troubled sleep.
In his dream someone was telling him that Jesus had warned against three types of people: the man who loved to display his piety in public, the faultfinder, and the false prophet.
'Now, which is he?' the deep voice said.
'Who is he?' Orme said.
'You know,' the voice said.
'But... I don't know,' Orme said, and he groaned. Then, as the voice did not speak, 'The false prophet?'
'You have said it.'
Orme came up out of the deep, and as he swam just below the surface of wakefulness, he felt that familiar, and now somehow comforting, awareness that someone was standing by his bed. He opened his eyes. A man was standing by him, a man who shed a bright light. He wore a black robe, and his hair and beard were reddish. His face was aquiline and very handsome, though his eyes looked as if he had suffered much.
Orme did not try to rise. He lay on his back with his head turned towards the man, his heart beating hard, his hands clutching the sheets. This man looked as he had imagined Jesus Christ did; even in his fright he thought that he resembled the conventional pictures of Jesus hung on the walls of his parents' house.
The glowing man held up a hand and made a sign as if to bless him. Then he glided backward, and as he did so, the light began to fade. It was gone and with it the figure.
The whole event had taken perhaps ten seconds.
He thought that that man was not the Jesus whom he had first seen coming from the sun in the cavern. This was the man who had come to his bedside from time to time, the true Jesus Christ. He had been watching over him. And now, in his disciple's crisis of despair, he had appeared to him. The light had come, that light which shone from him. No words had been needed; his presence was enough.
Or it should have been. In previous ages the beholder of such a vision would have accepted it literally. The figure would have been what it seemed to be. There was no other explanation. But he was born in a less naive, more knowledgeable time. Could this shining figure be just one of those phenomena that occasionally happened to people when they were in a half-awake, half- asleep state? Orme had never experienced such things before, but he had read about them. He had known a man who sometimes experienced these visions. His friend had said that the things scared him, they seemed to truly exist, and he would swear that he had been wide awake when he saw them. But he admitted that he may just have thought he was fully conscious and that the phenomena were probably exteriorisations, projected subjectivities of his unconscious.
Orme, thinking of this, had to admit-that the figure he'd seen might be the same. After all, he was an engineer, he'd had rigorous scientific training, and he should choose the most probable explanation. Use Occam's razor. Let it cut no matter what the pain.
However, it did not matter whether or not the true Jesus had appeared. What had manifested itself was what he believed. 'I am the Way.' That vision was the gate through which he saw to the deepest part of his mind. Or, to be old- fashioned but nevertheless just as valid, to the deeps of his soul.
Assured by this revelation, he should have been able to go to sleep. But there were other problems to consider. And so, while his bunkmates slept, he considered what he should do and what he was able to do. As always, the difference was great.
23
Halfway to Earth, the fleet began decelerating. But when the ships took up orbit around the planet, the crews did not find themselves in free fall. Gravicle generators maintained a field equivalent to that of Mars within each vessel.
The Maranatha went into a stationary orbit just above Jerusalem. Two ships took circumpolar orbits in opposite paths. Two others went into equatorial orbits. The sixth angled over Earth at forth-five degrees to the equatorial line. The seventh, the giant Zara, prowled around the planet at a distance of 200,000 miles, changing its line of travel every other day.
No attention was paid to the communications and weather-survey s
atellites nor to the two space-colony satellites. But the 'space junk', pieces of satellites and the complete ones in decaying orbits, were disintegrated by the Zara. This cleaning up did two things. It made sure that no manmade falling objects would strike the surface and perhaps kill people. And it impressed Earth mightily with the power of the Zara.
The day after this event, Jesus himself asked for permission to land the Maranatha in a field outside Jerusalem. It was denied, though very politely and with many excuses. The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, was still hotly debating whether Jesus should be allowed to land as the political head of the Martian nation or as the Messiah. Since Jesus insisted that he was the Messiah, and the political head of the state was the Chief Judge, a Krsh named Eliakim ben- Yoktan, the issue seemed unsolvable. In fact, the Knesset was putting off its decision as long as possible. Israel was being torn apart, brother against brother, father against son. A tiny superorthodox group, so reactionary that it still refused to recognise Israel as a state because it was not religious enough, flatly rejected Jesus as the Messiah. The orthodox were divided, some ecstatic because the Messiah had finally come, others raging that he was not a true Jew, let alone the descendant of David called the Anointed. A large part of the population was agnostic or atheist or of the reformed branch of Judaism. Many unpractitioners of the faith, though calling themselves Jews, had been swept away and now were as devout as the most orthodox of the orthodox and calling loudly for the government to allow Jesus to come down and so begin the messianic era.
The whole nation was paralysed; business and the mundane duties of daily living were ignored as much as possible. The citizens were glued before their TV sets or arguing with relatives, neighbours, strangers in the streets. The air burned and quivered with quotations from the Prophets and the Talmud, each being used both to contradict and to prove.
Equalling the turmoil in Israel was that in all other nations. Despite great efforts in the communist countries to suppress the details of Jesus's messages, they had failed. Through underground channels and the radio, the news had got to the populaces, though often in distorted form. The socialist democracies had also tried, though not nearly as vigorously, to censor part of the news. There were even citizens' groups that demanded that the messages be heavily restricted, especially excluding all religious content.
In Rome the Pope appeared on TV and denounced the Messiah as the Antichrist. The Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church repeated the accusation an hour later. The Archbishop of Canterbury stated that the Church of England would at this time neither confirm nor deny the status of the claimant. More study of the messages and comparison of them with the theology derived from the Scriptures would have to be done. This was simply putting off the inevitable. Even the layman with a cursory knowledge of the Bible (which included most church members) could see at once that there was no reconciling most of the teachings of the Anglican Church with the claims of the Martian.
The Baptist churches, Southern and otherwise, had officially rejected this Jesus. But their constituents were divided, and already splinter movements had formed with various names.
The official heads of the Hindus, Moslems, and Buddhists had scorned Jesus. But, again, their flocks were divided. Everywhere, there were bitter words often followed by violence. Mass demonstrations, riots, and a revolution in Uganda, had occurred.
On the third day of the fleet's orbiting, the radios and TVs of the world were taken over. No matter what the channel, the broadcast from the communications room in the Maranatha came through. When some governments turned off the electrical power so that their citizens could not hear, the sets continued to operate. This threw the officials into a panic. How could the Martians do this? And if they could do this, what else could they do?
All nations protested, of course, but Jesus replied that it was necessary and for the good of the people.
For twenty-four hours the Maranatha sent down a stream of programmes. These consisted of histories of the Krsh before coming to Earth, films of the Terrestrials of 50 AD, the taking of the captives from Earth, the preachings of Matthias and their effect upon the captives and the Krsh, the conversions, the first appearance of Jesus, and many sections dealing both with Martian life and Jesus's place in this. Also transmitted, in case they had been suppressed the first time, were the programmes in which the Marsnauts had participated.
The various governments protested angrily and many made veiled threats. But no atomic-bomb-tipped missiles were sent up against the ships.
In the final programme, an hour and a half long, Jesus himself proclaimed that the Martians could cure any disease and prevent any recurrence. All disease would be wiped out forever. These included mental diseases of a genetic or metabolic origin, and old age.
Also, if the governments would permit, two hundred small machines would be landed at various spots. From these would flow 'manna'. This would be a soft white substance which contained all the elements needed for healthy nutrition and was quite tasty. The manna would flow from each machine at the rate of one hundred cubic feet per hour. It could be transported to the hungry of Earth, of whom there were many, and be given at no cost - at this time - to the recipients.
Orme was shocked when he heard this. Until Jesus had spoken of it, he'd had no inkling that there was such a thing. When he'd recovered somewhat from his emotional upset, he was able to see the implications of this. If the governments refused to transport the food, they would have serious riots on their hands. In any event, the slaughter during suppression would be enormous.
'Do not make excuses about lack of transportation or the expense involved!' Jesus said. 'And do not try to make a profit from the manna or withhold it from those in disfavour with your governments! Woe to the man or woman who is responsible for this wickedness and to the one who carries out the orders of the person above him! Woe to all who do this! They shall suffer!'
More protests about interfering with the rights of the sovereign states. No reply to the protests.
Jesus then announced what seemed to his audience to be the ultimate, the climax. That was that physical immortality could be and would be theirs. The only requisite for receiving this was that the recipient must be a believer in the true religion and in himself as the Messiah.
'But I promise woe to the hypocrites who say they believe only to gain this gift of life! They will be found out, and they will be cast into the outer darkness!'
When he threatened, he lost the expression of kindness and in his wrath the light of promised hell shone from his eyes. 'I say, woe to you, you vipers! You cannot hope to deceive me long! You will be found out!
'The Father has given you all the good things of life, and you have made them bad! The Father gives, but He does not give for nothing! Nothing is free! You must give to get!'
Orme, sitting in his cabin and watching the TV, could imagine what the effect of promised physical immortality would have on the viewers. Of course, many had heard this before, since some governments had allowed this to be known when the previous programmes were transmitted to them. But the majority belonged to states which had suppressed this news.
At this point, the viewer on Earth might have expected that this would be the end of the programme. What else could be offered? It was then that Jesus told them of the hopes for the resurrection of all the dead. He did not promise that this could be achieved within a hundred years or two. But it was a certainty.
That does it, Orme thought. Everybody will be rushing to sign up. They'll do anything to get immortality. Most of them, anyway. The New World, the Kingdom of Heaven, the reign of the Messiah, has begun. It may take some time before it's established, but it's started, and nothing can stop it.
Can't they see that the devil would make the same promises? Only... this man can deliver. But the devil could probably deliver also. And the devil would think of himself as a good man. Who that is evil believes that he is? All think of themselves as good. No doubt Hitler and Stalin and Mao, Napoleon and Alexand
er the Great and Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun and Nebuchadnezzar, all thought of themselves as being on the side of good.
The only difference between them and Jesus is that Jesus can do good. But it's an insidious good that will lead directly but subtly to subtle evil.
Nothing could stop him. Unless... but how could he, one man, do anything?
The next day, the Zara performed a deed that, in the minds of most, could only be a good one. All over Earth, all the missiles and cannons with atomic warheads and all cannons with atomic shells were melted. Again, the radio and TV stations were overridden, and the news was sent from the Maranatha.
'Surely,' Jesus said, 'this will cause great rejoicing among all but those who hate men and love war. I would have done an evil thing if I had melted only the missiles of some nations and not of others. But I am impartial, and I do not choose sides, saying this one is evil and that good. Vipers, spawn of wicked generations, you are all guilty! Repent, therefore, and praise the Lord with all your hearts because He has seen fit to guard you against yourselves!'
There were protests, of course, but these got no reply.
Again, Jesus requested permission to land outside Jerusalem. Again, this was refused. The Knesset could not make up its mind, and the state of Israel had proclaimed a curfew. The police and soldiers were patrolling the streets to enforce the regulation. Nor was it the only nation in a state of martial emergency.
The fourth day, the morning sky over the near East became blood-red. Then the sun grew dim and almost entirely black for several hours. And the moon turned as red as blood.
Bronski, watching this on TV, said, 'The Zara is doing that, of course. Can you imagine the power that takes or the means to control and direct that power? Surely, the Lord of our fathers is with us!'
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