by Ken Hansen
Isa responded, “You have said that.”
Tomadus sighed and the Light again blitzed through his brain…
…Kadir’s image on the monitor in front of Huxley was soon replaced by a shot of the Vatican, focused on St. Peter’s Basilica. Superimposed in the corner of the picture, a digital clock was counting down—now less than 29 minutes remaining. A second monitor to the right began showing a close up view of a warhead mounted to a large device that appeared to be some type of small single-stage rocket. The same numbers counted down in its lower-left corner. To the left, another monitor clicked on and showed a view of the Washington monument. While it also contained a superimposed digital countdown clock, this one lagged thirty seconds behind.
To its left, a third monitor showed the top of the Infernum with the other nuclear warhead and another rocket assembly, again with a countdown clock synchronized to the monument clock. The warhead and small rocket assembly were disguised as a part of the radar, satellite dish and arch assemblies at the top of the yacht, so they would not be visible as anything nefarious from the shore or a passing boat. Hell, he had been on the boat itself and had not seen them.
He had one last chance, and he was going to take it. Huxley still had not found the pull. Could it be directly behind him? He lifted his feet up, tucked his legs and twisted backward until he was hanging upside down with his hips above. Now looking at the wall behind him, he saw the red fire alarm pull staring back at him. He tried to kick at it with his feet, but they would not reach. His shoulders ached, but he managed to right himself, kick off his shoes and slide his right foot over by the rope on the floor. In a few moments, the coil was beneath his body. When he pulled the rope with both feet, the metal clasp at one end appeared. He grabbed the rope a few feet above the clasp with his two feet, lifted them up and twisted backward again. Hanging upside down from the chains and facing the back wall, he gradually swung the rope with his feet, trying to catch the pull with the metal clasp. The clasp struck the pull on the second try, but the pull remained in place.
Something began sliding out of his left pocket. When the crucifix fell toward his eyes, he opened his mouth and just caught the chain in his teeth as the crucifix smashed the underside of his nose. He sighed. Though he was conscious, an image and voice returned. He saw the man in white robes mouth, “Tell her.” But he had told her. Now she would despise him forever. He could see Pardus kissing her. He shook his head. No. God help me!
Sonatina spoke into the air phone as calmly as she could, but her words were getting nowhere. “Damn it, I tell you Washington will be ashes in a few minutes. You must believe me. Evacuate the President, Congress, the whole city!”
“Tell me again the source of your information.”
“Huxley, Chris Huxley. He works for you. He said in a text that Washington and Rome would be nuked in—God, it will be less than 15 minutes now.”
“We cannot divulge our employees’ names Ms.…”
“D’Amare, Sonatina D’Amare.”
“Ms. D’Amare. But if he were our agent, don’t you think he would have told us instead of you? What is your relationship to Christian Huxley?”
“My God, you are wasting time. He is my boyfriend. Look. I don’t know why. Maybe that was the only message he could get out. I don’t know.”
“Is there something you are not telling us?”
She bit her lower lip hard and suppressed her tears. “I…I…can’t.”
“You can’t what?”
Sonatina burst out crying. “It can’t be true. It can’t.”
“Ms. D’Amare, if you are right, there is little time. What can’t be true?”
She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. “He didn’t call you because he is the one setting off the nukes. He wanted to warn me to leave Rome, but I had already left. But it can’t be true!”
Tomadus saw the guard’s movement at the far edge of his peripheral vision. He tensed, turned his head and poked the point tighter into the First Consul’s neck. “Tell him to move to the Front, where I can see him.”
“You heard him,” said the First Consul. “Nothing stupid.”
When the guard moved back toward the stage, Tomadus saw he had no weapons. Still, he needed to maintain a perimeter. “Governor, I am waiting, but I will soon run out of patience.”
“Your arms tiring, Tomadus? How long can you hang on? Just release me.”
“You’ll soon be dead if they don’t take Isa down. I can wait that long.” But he fought the strain and exhaustion of the last two days. He knew he was forgetting something. What was it? The rapidity of the visions had shaken him. He struggled to stay in his own world. Focus! The adrenaline kept him going, but his shoulders tired. He pulled the First Consul even closer just before the Light flashed again…
…Huxley grunted under the strain of his tired shoulder muscles. The chains were slowly pulling his arms from their sockets. He stared at the alarm pull again and refocused on the rope. Calm. Be calm. His heartbeat slowed. After a few more tries, he realized he needed to hit the wall above the pull and let it slide down to have any chance of linking the clasp with the top of the pull. Several attempts later, the clasp finally hung on the pull. When he yanked the rope, the clasp slid to the side, the pull still in place, laughing at him in defiance. After repeating the process a few times, the clasp hung on the pull again. This time, when he gradually applied downward pressure on the rope, the alarm pull shifted down.
The siren sounded in the cabin, but that was not his purpose. It would be far too long before a passing boat might hear it and stop to make any difference. An instant later, water began shooting out of the sprinkler system into the cabin and onto the console. If he could just get the thing to short out, it might stop the warhead from shooting off. Maybe it would stop both warheads.
He righted himself and watched the water cascade down while the crucifix hung from his lips. As the water splashed on the console, the panel began to spark. He looked at the countdown clock—only 4:55 left. He looked back at the console. It was still lit up. A few more sparks came and went, but when he looked again at the monitors and saw the clocks still counting down, he gasped. The crucifix fell from his mouth to the floor and sunk beneath the rising water. He hung his head, closed his eyes, and saw his mother on her death bed, handing him the crucifix. She said nothing, for her mind was gone. But her expression. He saw it now and understood it for the first time. He felt it deep: I go with God and so shall you. He looked up and cried out, “I am damned for all time.”
He thought again of Sonatina and the dream and words Jesus mouthed to him. Tell her. He had told her. He had pushed the button and told her. There had to be more. Would the thing still work? Had Pardus forgot? He reached up and spoke into the device, but he could see the phone remained black. His words would never reach Sonatina.
What could he tell her anyway? The truth. Tell her the truth. Huxley closed his eyes and sighed. “I heard the voices. Could she hear me?” He began chanting in his thoughts, “Sonatina, I am not Pardus. Pardus and Kadir are one. Pardus and Kadir are one. Sonatina, Kadir and Pardus are one.” He fell back on his chains, totally spent.
“God,” he said, “if you are there, hear me now. Tell her. Tell her I am not Pardus. Tell her Pardus and Kadir are one. Sonatina, Pardus and Kadir are one…”
…Tomadus tried to shake off the Light, but it still seared through his eyes. He repeated the words from his vision: “Sonatina! Sonatina, I am not Pardus. Pardus and Kadir are one. Pardus and Kadir are one.” The Light released Tomadus’s brain. He exhaled hard and stared at Khansensius. “Pardus, Kadir and the First Consul are one.”
Isa smiled slightly as the First Consul Khansensius tried to jerk away, but Tomadus held him tight, pressing the letter opener hard against his throat. The First Consul sneered and said lowly, “You speak nonsense, you fool. They will never understand your point. Nonsense. It will never work.”
Tomadus’s muscles tightened. “First Consul, consider the p
oint at your throat for a moment. Are you sure you do not care to give some direction to the Governor and his men here?”
Sonatina stared ahead, her puffy red eyes now masking the dark circles under them. When her phone pinged, she saw the message from Colonel Zaugg: “Evacuating the Vatican. Pope is away. Homeland now agrees. God, I hope you are wrong.” She exhaled and put her head against the window. God, please let me be wrong.
No way she could sleep, yet she felt her head spinning slowly toward the irrational, toward the world of dreams. Let them come… She was that woman in her simple outfit, surrounded by men in robes as they stared at what appeared to be a television screen depicting a passion play. No, that wasn’t quite it. She could see a nearly naked man hanging in pain on a device. It was the man in the white robes—this Jesus who talked to her and Chris in their dreams. He was not on a cross but on a wooden inverted triangle. An officious man dressed in a red robe with purple fringes stood before a microphone near him. Off-screen, another male voice yelled her name, “Sonatina!” She knew that voice. It was Chris! No, not quite, but she knew that voice from her other dreams. “Sonatina, I am not Pardus. Pardus and Kadir are one. Pardus and Kadir are one. Pardus, Kadir and the First Consul are one!”
Sonatina awoke with a start. Her eyes narrowed. “Kadir,” she said. “Chris’s friend, the Ambassador. But who is the First Consul?” She bit her lip again, her eyes squeezed tight to hold back the river. “God save you, Chris. Dear Lord, please save him. My God, save us all.”
Chapter 99
“You think you’ve won?” the First Consul asked. He was glaring, but not at Tomadus. He spit in the direction of Isa.
Isa was too close to death to respond. He hung nearly limp on the triangulum, his eyes focused only on Tomadus. Tomadus stared back, amazed. But he knew he had forgotten something. What was it again?
The First Consul wiggled, but Tomadus hung tighter, the point of his opener nearly opening the First Consul’s jugular. He gurgled. “You want me to give directions to them, Tomadus? I can barely speak. Loosen your grip.” Tomadus pulled back the opener, but only a touch. “Thank you.”
Tomadus had hoped that would end it, and in that, he was not disappointed. But the standoff ended differently than he imagined. The First Consul turned his head quickly to the side, causing blood to trickle down his throat. Just before the First Consul spoke again, Tomadus remembered. The other guard at the door. The guard with the ancient, ceremonial spear.
“Kill him,” said the First Consul.
Tomadus began to turn, but it was too late. Tomadus’s eyes bulged as fluid rushed through his mouth. Had his lung just exploded through his chest? He looked down and saw the point of the guard’s spear protruding out of the front of his left rib cage. He toppled face forward onto the floor, the shaft of the spear sticking out of his back like a fence post anchored in the ground.
His head was turned sideways, so he could still see Isa suffering on the triangulum. Looking straight down at Tomadus, Isa struggled to say, “Today…you will…be with me…in paradise.” He saw the Governor signal to the technicians to turn a knob and Isa’s body trembled with pain, but he screamed no more.
Tomadus lay motionless, gurgling blood out of his mouth. Who was this man who would say such things while suffering intolerable pain? Who was this being who would forgive the very man responsible for his own torture and death? Who was this man who despite all of this would still take him with him to paradise? He has given everything for me. He has believed in me. Can I now believe in him?
Laying on the floor away from the stage, he heard a door slam and a technician yell from the back of the theater, “First Consul!”
“Not now!” the First Consul responded.
“But First Consul, you must know!” yelled the technician.
“What is it?”
“The broadcast—it was not delayed. He must have done something to the broadcast computer. This whole thing has been broadcast live worldwide!”
“Shut it down, now!” the First Consul yelled.
“I’ve tried. I can’t. He revised the security protocol. It will take another ten minutes at least.”
“Then pull the damn plug on the machine!”
But it was too late. Isa looked up to the ceiling and exhaled, “It is finished,” and bowing his head, he handed over his spirit.
Huxley flashed back to his discussion with the old priest when he had asked, “What if God gives up on us?” The priest had responded with a jest: “Then God help us all!” That is all that I ask, dear God. Do not give up on us. Do not give up on me. God, help us all!
He looked at the monitor showing the Vatican: the clock had ticked down to 0:55. He closed his eyes and saw Sonatina flicking her hair that way she always did when lost in thought. You were brilliant, Sonatina. I should have listened to you. I should have trusted you, but I confused good and evil. God help us!
A moment later he heard a loud crackling from the control console, and it went dark. No lights, no instrument readings, no sounds, no displays. Nothing. Had he done it?
He looked up at the monitors and saw the countdown continuing. Damn it all to hell! As the clock counted down from :05, he saw the rocket ignite in Rome. The warhead was headed just a thousand or so feet above the ground—just high enough to spread the blast throughout the city. Huxley screamed, “Damn you, Pardus!” and kicked his legs forward out of control. The tip of his foot connected with one of the monitors and tore out some of the connections to the other monitors. All of the screens went blank. He kicked again and more equipment fell. Could that have stopped this?
Huxley heard a loud bang above him; a portion of the cabin ceiling flipped down, revealing the blue sky of the Heavens above. The deck of the ship rumbled for a few seconds as flames shot to the sides. He saw the small rocket launch above the Infernum, the hellish Ship of Fate, on its way to a thousand feet or so above the District of Columbia.
“Oh God, Oh God, please forgive me!” he screamed.
He wanted to close his tear-filled eyes, but they remained open, taunting him. A moment later, his eyes saw a flash of light so brilliant that they were instantly blinded—just a moment before his body and everything around him turned to ash…
…A light began to glow and Tomadus saw the rocket shooting upward into the night sky. A hot-white light flashed across the eyes of the investigator as the power of the sun was unleashed on the other world. The light did not blind him but permeated everything—glowing, piercing, searing a hole in his consciousness and eventually washing the entire scene in a yellow-white hue. But this light was neither new nor unusual to him: it was the Light of Our Yesterdays.
He blinked a few times, and the glow dissipated slightly but still filled most of his vision. It no longer touched the periphery but encircled Isa. No longer the beam of destruction, it had become the light of rebirth. Could the others see this aura cover Isa’s limp body? No, he could hear most of them still scrambling to end the broadcast. But he could see the three officials on the stage—the Governor, the Grand Imam and the Abh Beyth Diyn—and though they all looked right at Isa, they saw nothing but death.
As he lay there, his blood slowly draining onto the theater floor, Tomadus and the creature within became one. For the first time he could recall, he smiled with a feeling of true contentment. When his eyes shut for the last time, he searched for and felt the warmth of Isa deep in his heart, deep in his soul. He knew. He finally knew.
The next day, a predictable headline ran nearly the full length of the front page of the New York Times: “Democracy and God Dead: Washington and Rome Destroyed.” The subtitle was nearly as large, but few understood the nature of its untruth: “Martial Law Declared After Rogue Homeland Security Agent Nukes Capital Cities.”
Published much later, Liber Vitae was filled with many truths, truths that Jochi would never doubt unto her Earthly death. But she knew one sentence was false. It had to be. She had heard, and she had understood. But when Simeon would not
relent, the Ten followed his lead. And so the official publication included the lie nonetheless:
“Then Tomadus, lamenting his betrayal as he watched Isa suffer on the triangulum, stabbed himself through the chest and died.”
– Liber Vitae—Di. 27:3
Not long after his death, Isa stood smiling above him, waiting for his answer.
“I am ready,” he said. He reached out his arm to Isa.
Isa laughed and grabbed Tomadus’s arm and pulled him onto the boat. “Then come with me, for where I am going you may now follow. We shall set sail to that beautiful land across the sea.”
Appendix A
Detailed Excerpts from: “Plinius’s Condensed Study Guide for the Advanced Technologist Exam:
History Since the Founding of the First Romanus Empire”1
Year(s)
Region(s)
Development
649 BH
(726 AUC)2
Roma
Augustus Caesar (Octavian) proclaimed First Emperor of Roma.
579 BH
(823 AUC)
Palestinian Province
Removal of Jews from Jerusalem following defeat of Jewish Zealots at Masada.
502 BH
(888 AUC)
Palestinian Province
Death of the “Messiah” Simon bar Kokeba, the leader of a Jewish insurrection, at the hands of Iulius Severus, general of the Romanus army. Kokeba is the only man ever proclaimed as the Messiah by a prominent rabbi.
307 BH
(1077 AUC)
Romanus Empire
After a series of civil wars, Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus (Magni Constantini) consolidates power in the Romanus Empire.
