“Look, Chaim,” said Malloy with an effort toward patience. “Doctrine or no doctrine, there just plain aren’t any such beings. Not in this solar system anyway. And if you’re going to go interstellar on me, I’d just as soon read the men’s microcomics.”
“Interplanetary travel existed only in such literature once. But of course if you’d rather play chess . . .”
“My specialty,” said the man once known to sports writers as Mule Malloy, “was running interference. Against you I need somebody to run interference for.”
“Let us take the sixteenth psalm of David, which you call the fifteenth, having decided, for reasons known only to your God and mine, that psalms nine and ten are one. There is a phrase in there which, if you’ll forgive me, I’ll quote in Latin; your Saint Jerome is often more satisfactory than any English translator. Benedicam Dominum, qui tribuit mihi intellectum.”
“Blessed be the Lord, who schools me, ” murmured Malloy, in the standard Knox translation.
“But according to Saint Jerome: I shall bless the Lord, who bestows on me—just how should one render intellectum?—not merely intellect, but perception, comprehension . . . what Hamlet means when he says of man: In apprehension how like a god!”
Words change their meanings.
Apprehensively, one man reported to his captain. The captain first swore, then scoffed, then listened to the story again. Finally he said, “I’m sending a full squad back with you to the place where—maybe—you saw this thing. If it’s for real, these mother-dighting bug-eyed monsters are going to curse the day they ever set a Goddamned tentacle on Mars.” The man decided it was no use trying to explain that the worst of it was it wasn’t bug-eyed; any kind of eyes in any kind of head would have been something. And they weren’t even quite tentacles either . . .
Apprehensively, too, the other man made his report. The captain scoffed first and then swore, including some select remarks on underhatched characters who knew all about a planet because they’d been there once. Finally he said, “We’ll see if a squad of real observers can find any trace of your egg-eating limbless monsters; and if we find them, they’re going to be God-damned sorry they were ever hatched.” It was no use, the man decided, trying to explain that it wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been limbless, like in the picture tapes; but just four limbs . . .
“What is a man?” Rabbi Acosta repeated, and Mule Malloy wondered why his subconscious synapses had not earlier produced the obvious appropriate answer.
“Man, ”he recited, “is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of God. ”
“From that echo of childish singsong, Mule, I judge that is a correct catechism response. Surely the catechism must follow it up with some question about that likeness? Can it be a likeness in”—his hand swept up and down over his own body with a graceful gesture of contempt—“this body?”
“This likeness to God is chiefly in the soul. ”
“Aha!” The Sephardic sparkle was brighter than ever.
The words went on, the centers of speech following the synaptic patterns engraved in parochial school as the needle followed the grooves of an antique record.
“All creatures bear some resemblance to God inasmuch as they exist. Plants and animals resemble Him insofar as they have life . . .”
“I can hardly deny so profound a statement.”
“. . . but none of these creatures is made to the image and likeness of God. Plants and animals do not have a rational soul, such as man has, by which they might know and love God. ”
“As do all good hnaus. Go on; I am not sure that our own scholars have stated it so well. Mule, you are invaluable!”
Malloy found himself catching a little of Acosta’s excitement. He had known these words all his life; he had recited them the Lord knows how many times. But he was not sure that he had ever listened to them before. And he wondered for a moment how often even his Jesuit professors, in their profound consideration of the xn’s of theology, had ever paused to reconsider these childhood ABC’s.
“How is the soul like God? ” He asked himself the next catechistic question, and answered, “The soul is like God because it is a spirit having understanding and free will and is destined . . .”
“Reverend gentlemen!” The reverence was in the words only. The interrupting voice of Captain Dietrich Fassbander differed little in tone from his normal address to a buck private of the Martian Legion.
Mule Malloy said, “Hi, Captain.” He felt half relieved, half disappointed, as if he had been interrupted while unwrapping a present whose outlines he was just beginning to glimpse. Rabbi Acosta smiled wryly and said nothing.
“So this is how you spend your time? No Martian natives, so you practice by trying to convert each other, is that it?”
Acosta made a light gesture which might have been polite acknowledgment of what the captain evidently considered a joke. “The Martian day is so tedious we have been driven to talking shop. Your interruption is welcome. Since you so rarely seek out our company, I take it you bring some news. Is it, God grant, that the rotation rocket is arriving a week early?”
“No, damn it,” Fassbander grunted. (He seemed to take a certain pride, Malloy had observed, in carefully not tempering his language for the ears of clergymen.) “Then I’d have a German detachment instead of your Israelis, and I’d know where I stood. I suppose it’s all very advisable politically for every state in the UW to contribute a detachment in rotation; but I’d sooner either have my regular legion garrison doubled, or two German detachments regularly rotating. That time I had the pride of Pakistan here . . . Damn it, you new states haven’t had time to develop a military tradition!”
“Father Malloy,” the rabbi asked gently, “are you acquainted with the sixth book of what you term the Old Testament?”
“Thought you fellows were tired of talking shop,” Fassbander objected.
“Rabbi Acosta refers to the Book of Joshua, Captain. And I’m afraid, God help us, that there isn’t a state or a tribe that hasn’t a tradition of war. Even your Prussian ancestors might have learned a trick or two from the campaigns of Joshua—or for that matter, from the Cattle Raid on Cooley, when the Hound of Cullen beat off the armies of Queen Maeve. And I’ve often thought, too, that it’d do your strategists no harm to spend a season or two at quarterback, if they had the wind. Did you know that Eisenhower played football, and against Jim Thorpe once at that? And . . .”
“But I don’t imagine,” Acosta interposed, “that you came here to talk shop either, Captain?”
“Yes,” said Captain Fassbander, sharply and unexpectedly. “My shop and, damn it, yours. Never thought I’d see the day when I . . .” He broke off and tried another approach. “I mean, of course, a chaplain is part of an army. You’re both army officers, technically speaking, one of the Martian Legion, one in the Israeli forces; but it’s highly unusual to ask a man of the cloth to . . .”
“To praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, as the folk legend has it? There are precedents among my people, and among Father Malloy’s as well, though rather different ideas are attributed to the founder of his church. What is it, Captain? Or wait, I know: We are besieged by alien invaders and Mars needs every able-bodied man to defend her sacred sands. Is that it?”
“Well . . . God damn it . . .” Captain Fassbander’s cheeks grew purple. “. . . YES!” he exploded.
The situation was so hackneyed in 3V and microcomics that it was less a matter of explaining it than of making it seem real. Dietrich Fassbander’s powers of exposition were not great, but his sincerity was evident and in itself convincing.
“Didn’t believe it myself at first,” he admitted. “But he was right. Our patrol ran into a patrol of. . . of them. There was a skirmish; we lost two men but killed one of the things. Their small arms use explosive propulsion of metal much like ours; God knows what they might have in that ship to counter our A-warheads. But we’ve got to put up a fight for Mars; and t
hat’s where you come in.”
The two priests looked at him wordlessly, Acosta with a faint air of puzzled withdrawal, Malloy almost as if he expected the captain to start diagraming the play on a blackboard.
“You especially, Rabbi. I’m not worried about your boys, Father. We’ve got a Catholic chaplain on this rotation because this bunch of legionnaires is largely Poles and Irish-Americans. They’ll fight all right, and we’ll expect you to say a field Mass beforehand, and that’s about all. Oh, and that fool gunner Olszewski has some idea he’d like his A-cannon sprinkled with holy water; I guess you can handle that without any trouble.
“But your Israelis are a different problem, Acosta. They don’t know the meaning of discipline—not what we call discipline in the legion; and Mars doesn’t mean to them what it does to a legionnaire. And besides a lot of them have got a . . . hell, guess I shouldn’t call it superstition, but a kind of . . . well, reverence—awe, you might say—about you, Rabbi. They say you’re a miracle-worker.”
“He is,” said Mule Malloy simply. “He saved my life.”
He could still feel that extraordinary invisible power (a “force-field,” one of the technicians later called it, as he cursed the shots that had destroyed the machine past all analysis) which had bound him helpless there in that narrow pass, too far from the dome for rescue by any patrol. It was his first week on Mars, and he had hiked too long, enjoying the easy strides of low gravity and alternately meditating on the versatility of the Creator of planets and on that Year Day long ago when he had blocked out the most famous of All-American line-backers to bring about the most impressive of Rose Bowl upsets. Sibiryakov’s touchdown made the headlines; but he and Sibiryakov knew why that touchdown happened, and he felt his own inner warmth . . . and was that sinful pride or just self-recognition? And then he was held as no line had ever held him and the hours passed and no one on Mars could know where he was and when the patrol arrived they said, “The Israeli chaplain sent us.” And later Chaim Acosta, laconic for the first and only time, said simply, “I knew where you were. It happens to me sometimes.”
Now Acosta shrugged and his graceful hands waved deprecation. “Scientifically speaking, Captain, I believe that I have, on occasion, a certain amount of extrasensory perception and conceivably a touch of some of the other psi faculties. The Rhinists at Tel Aviv are quite interested in me; but my faculties too often refuse to perform on laboratory command. But ‘miracle-working’ is a strong word. Remind me to tell you some time the story of the guaranteed genuine miracle-working rabbi from Lwow.”
“Call it miracles, call it ESP, you’ve got something, Acosta . . .”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned Joshua,” the rabbi smiled. “Surely you aren’t suggesting that I try a miracle to win your battle for you?”
“Hell with that,” snorted Fassbander. “It’s your men. They’ve got it fixed in their minds that you’re a . . . a saint. No, you Jews don’t have saints, do you?”
“A nice question in semantics,” Chaim Acosta observed quietly.
“Well, a prophet. Whatever you people call it. And we’ve got to make men out of your boys. Stiffen their backbones, send ’em in there knowing they’re going to win.”
“Are they?” Acosta asked flatly.
“God knows. But they sure as hell won’t if they don’t think so. So it’s up to you.”
“What is?”
“They may pull a sneak attack on us, but I don’t think so. Way I see it, they’re as surprised and puzzled as we are; and they need time to think the situation over. We’ll attack before dawn tomorrow; and to make sure your Israelis go in there with fighting spirit, you’re going to curse them.”
“Curse my men?”
“PotztausendSapperment noch einmal! ’’Captain Fassbander’s English was flawless, but not adequate to such a situation as this. “Curse them!‘We . . . the things, the aliens, the invaders, whatever the urverdammt bloody hell you want to call them!”
He could have used far stronger language without offending either chaplain. Both had suddenly realized that he was perfectly serious.
“A formal curse, Captain?” Chaim Acosta asked. “Anathema maranatha? Perhaps Father Malloy would lend me bell, book, and candle?”
Mule Malloy looked uncomfortable. “You read about such things, Captain,” he admitted. “They were done, a long time ago . . .”
“There’s nothing in your religion against it, is there, Acosta?”
‘There is . . . precedent,” the rabbi confessed softly.
“Then it’s an order, from your superior officer. I’ll leave the mechanics up to you. You know how it’s done. If you need anything . . . what kind of bell?”
“I’m afraid that was meant as a joke, Captain.”
“Well, these things are no joke. And you’ll curse them tomorrow morning before all your men.”
“I shall pray,” said Rabbi Chaim Acosta, “for guidance . . .” But the captain was already gone. He turned to his fellow priest. “Mule, you’ll pray for me too?” The normally agile hands hung limp at his side.
Mule Malloy nodded. He groped for his rosary as Acosta silently left the room.
Now entertain conjecture of a time when two infinitesimal forces of men—one half-forgotten outpost garrison, one small scouting fleet—spend the night in readying themselves against the unknown, in preparing to meet on the morrow to determine, perhaps, the course of centuries for a galaxy.
Two men are feeding sample range-finding problems into the computer.
“That God-damned Fassbander,” says one. “I heard him talking to our commander. ‘You and your men who have never understood the meaning of discipline . . . !’ ”
“Prussians,” the other grunts. He has an Irish face and an American accent. “Think they own the earth. When we get through here, let’s dump all the Prussians into Texas and let ’em fight it out. Then we can call the state Kilkenny.”
“What did you get on that last?. . . Check. Fassbander’s ‘discipline’ is for peace— spit-and-polish to look pretty here in our sandy pink nowhere. What’s the pay-off? Fassbander’s great-grandfathers were losing two world wars while mine were creating a new nation out of nothing. Ask the Arabs if have no discipline. Ask the British . . .”
“Ah, the British. Now my great-grandfather was in the IRA . . .”
Two men are integrating the electrodes of the wave-hurler.
“It isn’t bad enough we get drafted for this expedition to nowhere; we have to have an egg-eating Nangurian in command.”
“And a Tryldian scout to bring the first report. What’s your reading there? . . . Check.”
“ ‘A Tryldian to tell a lie and a Nangurian to force it into truth,’ ” the first quotes.
“Now, brothers,” says the man adjusting the microvernier on the telelens, “the Goodman assures us these monsters are true. We must unite in love for each other, even Tryldians and Nangurians, and wipe them out. The Goodman has promised us his blessing before battle . . .”
“The Goodman,” says the first, “can eat the egg he was hatched from.”
“The rabbi,” says a man checking the oxyhelms, “can take his blessing and shove it up Fassbander. I’m no Jew in his sense. I’m a sensible, rational atheist who happens to be an Israeli.”
“And I,” says his companion, “am a Romanian who believes in the God of my fathers and therefore gives allegiance to His state of Israel. What is a Jew who denies the God of Moses? To call him still a Jew is to think like Fassbander.”
“They’ve got an edge on us,” says the first. “ They can breathe here. These oxyhelms run out in three hours. What do we do then? Rely on the rabbi’s blessing?”
“I said the God of my fathers, and yet my great-grandfather thought as you do and still fought to make Israel live anew. It was his son who, like so many others, learned that he must return to Jerusalem in spirit as well as body.”
“Sure, we had the Great Revival of orthodox religion. So what did it ge
t us? Troops that need a rabbi’s blessing before a commander’s orders.”
“Many men have died from orders. How many from blessings?”
“I fear that few die well who die in battle . . .” the man reads in Valkram’s great epic of the siege of Tolnishri.
“. . . for how [the man is reading of the eve of Agincourt in his micro-Shakespeare] can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?”
“. . . and if these do not die well [so Valkram wrote] how grievously must their bad deaths be charged against the Goodman who blesses them into battle . . .”
“And why not?” Chaim Acosta flicked the question away with a wave of his long fingers.
The bleep (even Acosta was not so linguistically formal as to call it a bubble jeep) bounced along over the sand toward the rise which overlooked the invaders’ ship. Mule Malloy handled the wheel with solid efficiency and said nothing.
“I did pray for guidance last night,” the rabbi asserted, almost as if in self-defense. “I . . . I had some strange thoughts for a while; but they make very little sense this morning. After all, I am an officer in the army. I do have a certain obligation to my superior officer and to my men. And when I became a rabbi, a teacher, I was specifically ordained to decide questions of law and ritual. Surely this case falls within that authority of mine.”
Abruptly the bleep stopped.
“What’s the matter, Mule?”
“Nothing . . . Wanted to rest my eyes a minute . . . Why did you become ordained, Chaim?”
“Why did you? Which of us understands all the infinite factors of heredity and environment which lead us to such a choice? Or even, if you will, to such a being chosen? Twenty years ago it seemed the only road I could possibly take; now . . . We’d better get going, Mule.”
The Compleat Boucher Page 46
