"Let's just say that Uncle Ira has a lot of faith in your ability to wreak havoc in the right direction."
I shook my head. "I'm too exhausted to be thrilled."
"Come on, let's go to bed."
"Okay."
"Uh-uh. This time you're going to have to move." She got up and pulled me to my feet. She began pulling off my clothes. I began unbuttoning hers. "Do you want the nightgown tonight?" she asked, half-impishly. "Or should I just wrap myself in a flag again?"
"I think I'd much prefer just getting in bed next to you and holding you close until I fall asleep-if you don't mind?"
"That sounds like heaven. I don't mind at all."
We turned out the lights and climbed into bed and tried to fit ourselves together as comfortably as we could. "One of us has too many elbows," she muttered.
"Sorry. You've got more soft places than I do."
"Here, put your head on this soft place. See if that works."
"Mmm. This is a good place. It gives me a good view of the other good place." I eased my head just a little bit forward and began kissing the other good place. For a while, I sucked happily, even pretending a little bit that I was safe in my mommy's arms again and everything was going to be all right in the morning. Lizard stroked my head and sighed.
After a while, though, I stopped. "What's the matter?" she asked.
I shook my head. "All those children in the nest-in that corral. I can't get them out of my head. What the worms did to them. What they were turning into. Libbits and bunnydogs." I could feel the tears rolling out of my eyes. "Lizard, I want to save all the babies in the world. I don't want any more babies to die."
She stroked my hair. "I know, sweetheart. I know."
"I had a little girl once-actually, I still do. She survived, you know. Holly. But she's-I don't know." My words came out slowly. "I tried calling. They told me it would be better if I stayed away. She screams at the sound of my name. I betrayed her. She was afraid of the dark and I locked her in a closet. I did it to save her life, but-" I held on to Lizard tightly. "She was the sweetest little girl and she was getting better. I was doing good. But now she's-I don't know. They won't tell me. They nullified my adoption. I have no legal rights anymore.''
"Uncle Ira could-"
"No." I lay there in silence, listening to the roar of my own thoughts. Finally, I tried to explain. "It's all the hurting. I don't want to hurt anybody, but it seems that no matter what I do, it's always the innocents who die. And it always looks like it's my fault. I mean, it always looks like it to me. I can't stand this anymore. I want to stop hurting so much."
"We all do."
"No. I want to stop hurting everybody else. I want to do good things. I want people to like me. And I want to stop feeling ineffectual."
"I like you," she said. "And you know something else?"
"What?"
"You're not ineffectual at all. You just don't know how powerful you are."
"Powerful?"
"Well, yes-" I could hear the smile in her voice. "I mean, think about it-even when you screw up, half a million worms die and a mandala disappears. And all it cost was a little electricity. You didn't even have to use nuclear weapons. Now, is that power or is that power?"
I had to laugh. Just a little one. After a bit, I said, "Listen, sweetheart, I want something from you."
She waited patiently.
"I talked to Siegel and Lopez. They're willing too."
"Go on," she said. She stopped stroking my hair.
"Japura. I know we've changed our plans, but-listen, once we drop the probes, if we see children in a corral, I don't care, I want to mount a rescue mission."
She didn't answer for a long time. At last, she sighed and said, "I can't make any promises."
"I can't leave any more children in a worm camp."
"I can't let you risk your life anymore. I need you too much. The war effort needs you."
"I promise I won't take any stupid chances-"
She held me close. "I know you won't. I won't let you." And then she added, "Please, Jim, let's wait and see what we find in Japura."
The tension in her voice was unmistakable. She was terrified for me. Not half as terrified as I was myself. But some things you have to do. You just have to.
On their own world, the gastropedes are probably nocturnal creatures. The problem with this designation is that the conditions on Earth are apparently so different from those obtained on Chton that a complete adaptation seems to be impossible.
We do know that the gastropedes are most active under conditions of reduced sunlight: late afternoon, twilight, evening, and moonlit nights. Current evidence suggests that they prefer dusk and twilight hours in particular, but this is not to be taken as the final word on the subject.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 59
Wild Willie
"Organized religion is for the symbol-minded. A holy war is a clash of symbols. No idle worshiping aloud."
-SOLOMON SHORT
Instead of heading straight for Japura, we turned south.
The new plan was to keep the airship away from the mandala. It was too distracting a presence-the Heisenberg effect-and we didn't want to risk another nightmare like Coari.
As much as we bated the worms, now more than ever, we needed to remind ourselves that the mandate of this mission was not destruction, but knowledge. The most powerful weapon we would ever have against the Chtorran infestation would be our thorough understanding of the deadly red ecology.
We needed to observe the ordinary workings of life in a mandala settlement. Now we knew that we couldn't simply park ourselves in a Chtorran sky; these creatures were too observant, too aware. And, when they gathered in groups, their collective intelligence-as well as their collective horror-seemed magnified.
The new plan was to anchor fifty klicks south and drop all our probes by flyer. This would seriously limit the number of units we could plant. We were still trying to decide if it was safe to risk a dark flyover on a moonless night to drop the bulk of the monitors. My only concern was the possibility of human beings living in the mandala. If we could get them out…
On the other hand, did I really want to save the lives of human beings who were willing to live with worms?
The parents, no. But the children deserved a chance.
And then I thought about the pictures from Coari.
I wondered if the children were even human anymore.
But then again… were any of the rest of us all that human? Who knew? Who was to judge? And by what standards?
I knew one thing-I was in serious need of a spiritual recharge. The events of the past two days had left me twitching. The events of the past ten days had devastated me. The events of the past six years had destroyed my innocence.
I found myself wandering the corridors of the Bosch, up and down from one floor to the next-all the way aft to Lieutenant Siegel's no-longer-secret operations bay, all the way forward to the observation lounge in the nose of the aircraft. Now that the Brazilians were effectively out of the loop, we had a much different sense of purpose.
Somehow, I ended up in one of the airship's twelve theaters. It was linked via satellite to the Global Network. There was always something playing here, if not live, then via taped replay. I wandered in and sat down without even looking to see what program, what channel, what network. I just found a seat in the dark and stared unconsciously forward.
During the Training, Foreman had said, "There are no accidents. You get exactly what you set out to get." He must have been right. I set out looking for spiritual guidance, but what I got instead was Wild Bill Aycock.
"Wild Bill" Aycock was the most ferocious, fire-slinging, hell and damnation, fear-of-God, rabble-rousin' orator since ol' Dan'l Webster wrassled the devil two falls out of three for custody of hell. His face filled the huge screen, giving me an unappetizingly close view of the craggy terrain of "Wild Willie's" mountainou
s features. Some people thought he was handsome. I didn't see it myself. On this screen, I thought his pores were too large.
"People ask me-" he was saying, in that familiar seductive rasp of his, "-how can I believe in God when the Earth is being eaten alive? How can I have faith? What is there to have faith in?" With both hands he grabbed hold of the music stand that he used to hold his notes and leaned intensely forward, leaning so far toward the camera that he seemed like a giant grotesque balloon expanding into the room. I sat back in my seat. Stereoscopy has its disadvantages.
"Y'know-" Preacher Aycock said, abruptly conversational and straightening up just a little. "I can understand the reasons for their doubt. Yes, I can.
"You turn on the television or you pick up a newspaper, and all that you find are the endless stories of death and dying and despair. We wallow in the dreadful news, all the sickening and disease, the hellacious purple plants, the ravenous red worms. Day after day, we are assaulted by the devil's own host of malformed and malicious mites and miseries tormenting our spirits. The pictures are endless, and how can anyone think anything but the darkest of thoughts?
"Where's God, you say? How can God allow this? Can these unholy creatures possibly be the work of the same God who created the whispering beauty of the towering redwoods, or the awesome majesty of the great leviathans of the deep? Could the same God who created the intricacies of the honeybee and the inspirational labors of the common ant also be so deranged as to create such pestilence and foulness that despoils the planet now?
"You know, friends, I've talked about God's great plan since the first day I began this ministry. Yes, I have. And I have never lost faith that God does indeed have a plan.
"But-let me tell you-I'm also humble enough to know that the architecture of God's great plan is far beyond my simple ability to understand. The scale of God's great plan is far beyond the ability of any mere human being to grasp. And the details are so far beyond our comprehension that it's the height of vanity even to make assumptions.
"At best-at very best-all that any of us can ever be is just a tiny little cog on a tiny little wheel somewhere in God's great machine; but even that should be enough, even for the most ambitious of us. We should sink to our knees in awe and gratefulness for even being allowed to know that such an awesome plan exists.
"Now I know there's a paradox here. How can we serve God's plan if we cannot understand it? How can we serve? That, my friend-is where your faith comes in. Yes, that's where your faith is wanted and needed and absolutely demanded. Oh, yes.
"Now, I also know that the science boys have all kinds of four-dollar words for what's happening here. Fancy explanations that are so exquisitely written and voiced that they're just about impossible for the average person-you and me-to understand. Sometimes it seems that the science boys are almost as impossible to understand as God. But I'll put my faith in God, because I know he knows what he's doing."
Wild Willie paused to take a drink of water. I wondered if he'd been trained by Foreman. You never knew. He looked around at his audience and gave them his three-million-dollar grin; his craggy-faced, Roman-nosed, rugged-cheeked, chin-augmented, tooth-capped, colored-contact-lensed, hair-implanted, digitally enhanced grin. The man looked like Abraham Lincoln-only better. In his own magnificent way. I suppose, he was gorgeous. I had heard once that during his heyday before the plagues, he used to receive over a hundred marriage proposals a week.
"Now, I would not presume to speak for God," he continued. "No, I would not. There are some mistakes that I will not make-and presuming on the Good Lord's prerogatives is one of them.
"Oh, I admit that I am sometimes a vain and arrogant man. You've heard the jokes about my nose and my hair and my eyes. In my younger days, I listened to the TV advisors who told me I could serve my ministry best if I looked my best. I made a mistake. I listened and I stopped loving myself like the Good Lord wanted me to-but I know better now. I know that the mere flesh and clay that we clothe our spirits in has nothing to do with the true beauty of the inner soul; and in fact, the curse of physical beauty is that it distracts us from seeing the real person within, whether that person is truly good or truly evil. Physical beauty is not the evidence of spiritual beauty. I know that now. Unfortunately, I cannot undo this mistake and I have to live with it. I see it every morning when I look in the mirror, the evidence that one terrible day, I actually lost faith in God's great plan for me.
"But I want you to know that I regained my faith and my strength. You know the story, I don't have to repeat'it. You know how I dropped to my knees and begged for forgiveness and how in the peace that followed I understood that my job was to confess the truth to you, so that you would know the lesson that I had to learn the hard way. And now I stand up here every week and acknowledge that I wear on my face the proof that a man can lose his faith and find it again. So yes, there's hope for you too.
"Yes," he smiled gracefully. "A man can be just as vain and as silly as a woman. Sillier perhaps. I have made mistakes, many of them. Oh yes, I'm just a poor sinner, just like you. I get trapped by the same human feelings as you do, the same lustful urges and selfish desires, the same thoughts of greed and gluttony and malicious vengefulness. We all have those thoughts. They're part of being human.
"But the other part of being human, the joy of being human is knowing that God's love gives you the strength to resist succumbing to the devil's temptations. I remind myself of that every day, every sun-blessed morning and every star-kissed night. Washed in God's love, I find the strength to continue doing his work, yes I do.
"But I'm getting off my track here." He held up his notes and grinned, as if to show that he'd let himself get carried away for the moment. "I just wanted to say that yes, I have been vain-but I will never be so vain as to presume to speak for God or tell you what his great plan is. No, I would not. That would be a presumption of his holy prerogative so audacious and impudent as to be deserving only of your contempt and disgust. Yes, there are some vanities too ambitious even for a vain and arrogant sinner like me. And if I get angry at myself for the possibility of this vanity, can you imagine how furious I become when I see other people shamelessly indulging in this profane disgrace? No, I don't think you can imagine just how enraged I truly am today. I'll tell you.
"I saw something in the newspaper last week that left me so angry, so filled with rage and disgust and sheer dismay at the willfulness and despicableness of some human beings that I haven't been able to sleep a wink since I saw it. No, I haven't. I have tossed and turned in despair that these lies are being presented to you as scientific fact. This blasphemy is being presented as uncontested truth. Yes, it is. Here, let me show you, right here on the front page of the Los Angeles Times Sunday Science Supplement. The science boys are saying that the processes that created life here on Earth are the same processes that created the hellacious creatures that are now devouring our beloved home. And I've got to tell you, that just isn't true. I don't care how many four-dollar words they throw at me. I don't care what machines and screens and tests and statistics they pile up, ream upon ream upon ream, I just don't care; they'll never convince me that these creatures, these hideous red-and-purple demons, and all the stinging things and the crawling things and the flying things without number-and all the grinning little pink, furry imps that follow in their wake-no, they'll never convince me that these are the work of the same God who created you and me. No, they are not. I know it, as certainly as I am standing here with my heart pumping hot red American blood through my veins. These creatures, whatever they are, whatever they pretend to be, whatever they might seem to be-they are not the work of God.
"They are not the work of our great father and they are not part of his great plan.
"But you ask me-and you should-'But Willie, what's your proof? How can you refute all this scientific evidence? How can you be so certain that these creatures are not God's work?'
"I can be certain. And so can you. Look at the colors of these cre
atures. Look at them. Unholy crimson. Passionate scarlet. Disturbing purple. Sickly pink. Hurtful orange. These are not God's colors. These creatures proudly wear the colors of Satan. Oh, they've fooled the science boys well, but they haven't fooled me. The devil is vain, even vainer than me. He couldn't resist the temptation. His creatures trumpet their true allegiance for the whole world to see!
"That's how I know." He nodded with certainty, repeating himself in doom-laden tones. "That's how I know."
"Oh, yes-the devil has done his work well. All the death, the despair, the dying-that's the real evidence that this devastation is the devil's mischief. Do you honestly believe in your heart of hearts that a just and loving God would create such hellspawn to devour his children? Do you honestly think that the God who created you and your world would spitefully destroy his most beautiful planet?
"No, these are not God's creatures. And if they are not God's creatures, then the true author of them must be he who waits below, the terrible dark lord of the flies. He girds for battle even now. This is the foretaste of Armageddon, and these minions are the heralds of hell! Right now, this moment, even as I speak to you, Satan is gathering his troops for the last and bloodiest war for dominion over heaven. And upon his victory, each and every one of us poor damned sinners will be plunged from God's good green Earth into the torments of the most despicable pits of eternal fire and damnation that lie below. These beasts are the devil's handiwork. Look upon them and despair, for yourselves, for your families, for your children unto the last generation."
Wild Willie stopped then, seemingly exhausted by the impact of his own revelation. He grabbed hold of his music stand again and slumped over it as if exhausted; he stood that way for a long dramatic moment. Then, finally, he shook his head, and his wild black mane of hair floated out around his skull like a Chtorran fluffball opening itself up in the first cold winds of spring. Slowly, slowly, he raised his eyes to glower out at his audience.
"Where then is God?" he asked. "Why does he let this happen? Why does he allow this accursed plague to sweep so pitilessly across the tender face of our sweet mother Earth? Where is God? That is the question!" Wild Bill Aycock waited while his audience considered the import of his words. Without ever taking his eyes away from his target, he nodded his head ever so gently, and asked, "Yes, think about it. Where is God?
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