“An astonishing event has occurred,” I went on. “A good many ingenious theories have been proposed to account for it—as, for example, that the Earth was brought to a halt through the workings of an extrasensory telekinetic force generated by the simultaneous concentration of the entire world population. We have also heard the astrological explanations—that the planets or the stars were lined up in a certain once-in-a-universe’s-lifetime way to bring about such a result. And there have been the arguments, some of them coming from quite surprising places, in favor of the notion that the June 6 event was the doing of malevolent creatures from outer space. The telekinesis hypothesis has a certain superficial plausibility, marred only by the fact that experimenters in the past have never been able to detect even an iota of telekinetic ability in any human being or combination of human beings. Perhaps a simultaneous worldwide effort might generate forces not to be found in any unit smaller than the total human population, but such reasoning requires an undesirable multiplication of hypotheses. I believe that most of you here agree with me that the other explanations of the June 6 event beg one critical question: Why did the slowing of the Earth occur so promptly, in seemingly direct response to Thomas the Proclaimer’s campaign of global prayer? Can we believe that a unique alignment of astrological forces just happened to occur the day after that hour of prayer? Can we believe that the extragalactic fiends just happened to meddle with the Earth’s rotation on that particular day? The element of coincidence necessary to sustain these and other arguments is fatal to them, I think.
“What are we left with, then? Only with the explanation that the Lord Almighty, heeding mankind’s entreaties, performed a miracle so that we should be confirmed in our faith in Him.
“So I conclude. So do many of you. But does it necessarily follow that mankind’s sorry religious history, with all its holy wars, its absurd dogmas, its childish rituals, its fastings and flagellations, is thereby justified? Because you and you and you and I were bowled over on June 6, blasted out of our skepticism by an event that has no rational explanation, should we therefore rush to the churches and synagogues and mosques and enroll immediately in the orthodoxy of our choice? I think not. I submit that our attitudes of skepticism and rationalism were properly held, although our aim was misplaced. In scorning the showy, trivial trappings of organized faith, in walking past the churches where our neighbors devoutly knelt, we erred by turning away also from the matter that underlay their faith: the existence of a supreme being whose divine plan guides the universe. The spinning of prayer wheels and the mumbling of credos seemed so inane to us that, in our revulsion for such things, we were led to deny all notions of a higher order, of a teleological universe, and we embraced the concept of a wholly random cosmos. And then the Earth stood still for a day and a night.
“How did it happen? We admit it was God’s doing, you and I, amazed though we are to find ourselves saying so. We have been hammered into a posture of belief by that inexplicable event. But what do we mean by ‘God’? Who is He? An old man with long white whiskers? Where is He to be found? Somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter? Is He a supernatural being, or merely an extraterrestrial one? Does He too acknowledge a superior authority? And so on, an infinity of new questions. We have no valid knowledge of His nature, though now we have certain knowledge of His existence.
“Very well. A tremendous opportunity now exists for us the discerning few, for us who are in the habit of intellectual activity. All about us we see a world in frenzy. The Apocalyptists swoon with joy over the approaching catastrophe, the glossolaliacs chatter in maniac glee, the heads of entrenched churchly hierarchies are aghast at the possibility that the Millennium may really be at hand; everything is in flux, everything is new and strange. New cults spring up. Old creeds dissolve. And this is our moment. Let us step in and replace credulity and superstition with reason. An end to cults; an end to theology; an end to blind faith. Let it be our goal to relate the events of that awesome day to some principle of reason, and develop a useful, dynamic, rational movement of rebirth and revival—not a religion per se but rather a cluster of belief, based on the concept that a divine plan exists, that we live under the authority of a supreme or at least superior being, and that we must strive to come to some kind of rational relationship with this being.
“We’ve already had the moral strength to admit that our old intuitive skepticism was an error. Now let us provide an attractive alternate for those of us who still find ritualistic orthodoxy unpalatable, but who fear a total collapse into apocalyptic disarray if no steps are taken to strengthen mankind’s spiritual insight. Let us create, if we can, a purely secular movement, a nonreligious religion, which offers the hope of establishing a meaningful dialogue between Us and Him. Let us make plans. Let us find powerful symbols with which we may sway the undecided and the confused. Let us march forth as crusaders in a dramatic effort to rescue humanity from unreason and desperation.”
And so forth. I think it was a pretty eloquent speech, especially coming from someone who isn’t in the habit of delivering orations. A transcript of it got into the local paper the next day and was reprinted all over. My “us the discerning few” line drew a lot of attention, and spawned an instant label for our previously unnamed movement. We became known as the Discerners. Once we had a name, our status was different. We weren’t simply a group of concerned citizens any longer. Now we constituted a cult—a skeptical, rational, antisuperstitious cult, true, but nevertheless a cult, a sect, the newest facet of the world’s furiously proliferating latter-day craziness.
Eight
An Expectation of Awaiters
I know it hasn’t been fashionable to believe in God these last twenty thirty forty years people haven’t been keeping His path much but I always did even when I was a little boy I believed truly and I loved Him and I wanted to go to church all the time even in the middle of the week I’d say to Mother let’s go to church I genuinely enjoyed kneeling and praying and feeling Him near me but she’d say no Davey you’ve got to wait till Sunday for that it’s only Wednesday now. So as they say I’m no stranger to His ways and of course when they called for that day of prayer I prayed with all my heart that he might give us a Sign but even so I’m no fool I mean I don’t accept everything on a silver platter I ask questions I have doubts I test things and probe a little I’m not one of your ordinary country bumpkins that takes everything on faith. In a way I suppose I could be said to belong to the discerning few although I don’t want any of you to get the idea I’m a Discerner oh no I have no sympathy whatever with that atheistic bunch. Anyway we all prayed and the Sign came and my first reaction was joy I don’t mind telling you I wept for joy when the sun stood still feeling that all the faith of a lifetime had been confirmed and the godless had better shiver in their boots but then a day or so later I began to think about it and I asked myself how do we know that the Sign really came from God? How can we be sure that the being we have invoked is really on our side I asked myself and of course I had no good answer to that. For all I knew we had conjured up Satan the Accursed and what we imagined was a miracle was really a trick out of the depths of hell designed to lead us all to perdition. Here are these Discerners telling us that they repent their atheism because they know now that God is real and God is with us but how naive they are they aren’t even allowing for the possibility that the Sign is a snare and a delusion I tell you we can’t be sure the thing is we absolutely can’t be sure. The Sign might have been from God or from the Devil and we don’t know we won’t know until we receive a second Sign which I await which I believe will be coming quite soon. And what will that second Sign tell us? I maintain that that has not yet been decided on high it may be a Sign announcing our utter damnation or it may be a Sign welcoming us to the Earthly Paradise and we must await it humbly and prayerfully my friends we must pray and purify ourselves and prepare for the worst as well as for the best. I like to think that in a short while God Himself will present Himself to us n
ot in any indirect way like stopping the sun but rather in a direct manifestation either as God the Father or as God the Son and we will all be saved but this will come about only if we remain righteous. If we succumb to error and evil we will bring it to pass that the Devil’s advent will descend on us for as Thomas has said himself our destiny is in our hands as well as in His and I believe the first Sign was only the start of a process that will be decided for good or for evil in the days just ahead. Therefore I Davey Strafford call upon you my friends to keep the way of the faith for we must not waver in our hope that He Who Comes will be lovingly inclined toward us and I say that this is our time of supreme test and if we fail it we may discover that it is Satan who shows up to claim our souls. I say once more we cannot interpret the first Sign we can only have faith that it is truly from God and we must pray that this is so while we await the ultimate verdict of heaven therefore we have obtained the rental of a vacant grocery store on Coshocton Avenue which we have renamed the First Church of the Awaiters of Redemption and we will pray round the clock there are seventeen of us now and we will pray in three-hour shifts five of us at a time in rotation the numbers increasing as our expected rapid growth takes place I trust you will come to us and swell our voices for we must pray we’ve got to there’s no other hope now just pray a lot in order that He Who Comes may be benevolent and I ask you to keep praying and have a trusting heart in this our time of waiting.
Nine
A Crying of Proclaimers
Kraft enters the room as Thomas puts down the telephone. “Who were you talking to?” Kraft asks.
“Gifford the Discerner, calling from Boston.”
“Why are you answering the phone yourself?”
“There was no one else here.”
“There were three apostles in the outer office who could have handled the call, Thomas.”
Thomas shrugs. “They would have had to refer it to me eventually. So I answered. What’s wrong with that?”
“You’ve got to maintain distance between yourself and ordinary daily routines. You’ve got to stay up there on your pedestal and not go around answering telephones.”
“I’ll try, Saul,” says Thomas heavily.
“What did Gifford want?”
“He’d like to merge his group and ours.”
Kraft’s eyes flash. “To merge? To merge? What are we, some sort of manufacturing company? We’re a movement. A spiritual force. To talk mergers is nonsense.”
“He means that we should start working together, Saul. He says we should join forces because we’re both on the side of sanity.”
“Exactly what is that supposed to mean?”
“That we’re both anti-Apocalyptist. That we’re both working to preserve society instead of to bury it.”
“An oversimplification,” Kraft says. “We deal in faith and he deals in equations. We believe in a Divine Being and he believes in the sanctity of reason. Where’s the meeting point?”
“The Cincinnati and Chicago fires are our meeting point, Saul. The Apocalyptists are going crazy. And now these Awaiters too, these spokesmen for Satan—no. We have to act. If I put myself at Gifford’s disposal—”
“At his disposal?”
“He wants a statement from me backing the spirit if not the substance of the Discerner philosophy. He thinks it’ll serve to calm things a little.”
“He wants to co-opt you for his own purposes.”
“For the purposes of mankind, Saul.”
Kraft laughs harshly. “How naive you can be, Thomas! Where’s your sense? You can’t make an alliance with atheists. You can’t let them turn you into a ventriloquist’s dummy who—”
“They believe in God just as much as—”
“You have power, Thomas. It’s in your voice, it’s in your eyes. They have none. They’re just a bunch of professors. They want to borrow your power and make use of it to serve their own ends. They don’t want you, Thomas, they want your charisma. I forbid this alliance.”
Thomas is trembling. He towers over Kraft, but his entire body quivers and Kraft remains steady. Thomas says, “I’m so tired, Saul.”
“Tired?”
“The uproar. The rioting. The fires. I’m carrying too big a burden. Gifford can help me. With planning, with ideas. That’s a clever bunch, those people.”
“I can give you all the help you need.”
“No, Saul! What have you been telling me all along? That prayer is sufficient unto every occasion! Faith! Faith! Faith! Faith moves mountains! Well? You were right, yes, you channeled your faith through me and I spoke to the people and we got ourselves a miracle, but what now? What have we really accomplished? Everything’s falling apart, and we need strong souls to build and rebuild, and you aren’t offering anything new. You—”
“The Lord will provide for—”
“Will He? Will He, Saul? How many thousands dead already, since June 6? How much property damage? Government paralyzed. Transportation breaking down. New cults. New prophets. Here’s Gifford saying, Let’s join hands, Thomas, let’s try to work together, and you tell me—”
“I forbid this,” Kraft says.
“It’s all agreed. Gifford’s going to take the first plane west, and—”
“I’ll call him. He mustn’t come. If he does I won’t let him see you. I’ll notify the apostles to bar him.”
“No, Saul.”
“We don’t need him. We’ll be ruined if we let him near you.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s godless and our movement’s strength proceeds from the Lord!” Kraft shouts. “Thomas, what’s happened to you? Where’s your fire? Where’s your zeal? Where’s my old swaggering Thomas who talked back to God? Belch, Thomas. Spit on the floor, scratch your belly, curse a little. I’ll get you some wine. It shocks me to see you sniveling like this. Telling me how tired you are, how scared.”
“I don’t feel like swaggering much these days, Saul.”
“Damn you, swagger anyway! The whole world is watching you! Here, listen—I’ll rough out a new speech for you that you’ll deliver on full hookup tomorrow night. We’ll outflank Gifford and his bunch. We’ll co-opt him. What you’ll do, Thomas, is call for a new act of faith, some kind of mass demonstration, something symbolic and powerful, something to turn people away from despair and destruction. We’ll follow the Discerner line plus our own element of faith. You’ll denounce all the false new cults and urge everyone to—to—let me think—to make a pilgrimage of some kind?—a coming together—a mass baptism, that’s it, a march to the sea, everybody bathing in God’s own sea, washing away doubt and sin. Right? A rededication to faith.” Kraft’s face is red. His forehead gleams. Thomas scowls at him. Kraft goes on, “Stop pulling those long faces. You’ll do it and it’ll work. It’ll pull people back from the abyss of Apocalypticism. Positive goals, that’s our approach. Thomas the Proclaimer cries out that we must work together under God. Yes? Yes. We’ll get this thing under control in ten days, I promise you. Now go have yourself a drink. Relax. I’ve got to call Gifford, and then I’ll start blocking in your new appeal. Go on. And stop looking so glum, Thomas! We hold a mighty power in our hands. We’re wielding the sword of the Lord. You want to turn all that over to Gifford’s crowd? Go. Go. Get some rest, Thomas.”
Ten
A Prostration of Propitiators
ALL PARISH CHAIRMEN PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE. The Reverend August Hammacher to his dearly beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, members of the Authentic Church of the Doctrine of Propitiation, this message from Central Shrine: greetings and blessings. Be you hereby advised that we have notified Elder Davey Strafford of the First Church of the Awaiters of Redemption that as of this date we no longer consider ourselves in communion with his church, on grounds of irremediable doctrinal differences. It is now forbidden for members of the Authentic Church to participate in the Awaiter rite or to have any sacramental contact with the instrumentalities of the Awaiter creed, although we shall continue to r
emember the Awaiters in our prayers and to strive for their salvation as if they were our own people.
The schism between ourselves and the Awaiters, which has been in the making for more than a week, arises from a fundamental disagreement over the nature of the Sign. It is of course our belief, greatly strengthened by the violent events of recent days, that the Author of the Sign was Satan and that the Sign foretells a coming realignment in heaven, the probable beneficiaries of which are to be the Diabolical Forces. In expectation of the imminent establishment of the Dark Powers on Earth, we therefore direct our most humble homage to Satan the Second Incarnation of Christ, hoping that when He comes among us He will take cognizance of our obeisance and spare us from the ultimate holocaust.
Now the Awaiters hold what is essentially an agnostic position, saying that we cannot know whether the Sign proceeds from God or from Satan, and that pending further revelation we must continue to pray as before to the Father and the Son, so that perhaps through our devotions we may stave off the advent of Satan entirely. There is one point of superficial kinship between their ideas and ours, which is an unwillingness to share the confidence of Thomas the Proclaimer on the one hand, and the Discerners on the other, that the Sign is God’s work. But it may be seen that a basic conflict of doctrine exists between ourselves and the Awaiters, for they refuse to comprehend our teachings concerning the potential benevolence of Satan, and cling to an attitude that may be deemed dangerously offensive by Him. Unwilling to commit themselves finally to one side or the other, they hope to steer a cautious middle course, not realizing that when the Dark One comes He will chastise all those who failed to accept the proper meaning of the revelation of June 6. We have hoped to sway the Awaiters to our position, but their attitude has grown increasingly abusive as we have exposed their doctrinal inconsistencies, and now we have no option but to pronounce excommunication upon them. For what does Revelation say? “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” We cannot risk being tainted by these lukewarm Awaiters who will not bow the knee to the Dark One, though they admit the possibility (but not the inevitability) of His Advent.
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume 3: Something Wild Is Loose: 1969-72 Page 25
