Chapter 12

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and swore by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . that there should be time no longer.

—Revelation

 

Commander David Noas made record time through the morning streets of McAllen, Texas, pushing his new Thoroughbred past the red line on every straightaway. He arrived at Sanhedrin Chambers on the outskirts of town with a state cop on his tail. A wave of the commander’s hand and a grim-faced, red-eyed sergeant at the guard shack took care of the frustrated cop, whose blasphemy was only outdone by his profanity.

Probably a Catholic, Noas thought.

The commander gritted his teeth. Even the gate sergeant had been crying. This show of emotion among his troops meant they were vulnerable, and Commander Noas did not like being vulnerable. Besides the Costa Brava disaster, two communities of the faithful had been wiped out during the night right here in the states.

Vengeance is Mine, he thought. I am the instrument of the Lord.

He activated the back entrance to Sanhedrin Chambers. With the Master and a couple of thousand dead, this would be no simple strategy meeting of Special Operations. The Master had made the process clear: “Within twenty-four hours of my death, the Sanhedrin will meet immediately and remain in session, under bread-and-water fast, until they unanimously choose a successor.”

Contacting the entire Sanhedrin during the most important Sabbath of the year had already wasted time that the Children of Eden could ill afford.

Commander Noas hoped that the selection would be inspired, and swift. If this was the first shot fired in a new war, he didn’t want to be distracted by political posturing among the leadership.

Brothers of the Sanhedrin disembarked the shuttle terminal and shuffled towards Chambers. Shock, disbelief, anger, grief—contorted their faces. His own scar tissue made a suitable mask.

Innocents outnumbered big shots two to one, and lumbered behind toting briefcases and luggage. The only women in attendance were Innocents, Down syndrome workers, and these did not offend the Lord by their presence before the tabernacle because they were not truly human.

At thirty-three years old, Commander Noas was the same age as Jesus when he died, the same age as his own father. David Noas had seen his father and his father’s people burned to death in the name of justice when he was eleven, not far from this very spot. He would have died with the rest, except his mother threw him out of a second-story window headfirst onto the sizzling turret of an advancing tank. The pain came later. He remembered the hiss of his face seared tight to hot metal, and the smell of burning meat. If he hadn’t been a vegetarian before, he would have become one then.

Brother Calvin Casey, who broadcast The Eden Hour, took him in, trained and educated him, then organized the Jesus Rangers so that the security arm of his church would always be separate from the women and children. Never again would any enemy put Christian wives and children to the stake.

Never again, he thought, with self-contempt, until now. During my own command.

Brother Casey organized the Christian Economic Confederation—a delicate marriage of international businesses and ecologists that soon became the Children of Eden. Calvin Casey was the founder, Master and Prophet of the Children of Eden, the only family of David Noas. Protection of this family included Casey’s “Jesus Is Lord Gas Station and Mini-Market” chain, the Godwire interactive network and the ViraVax research centers. In the end, the commander had failed the Master himself in his hour of need.

There was no love lost between the Children of Eden and the Catholic idolators. Costa Brava was a lesson, indeed. A Gardener president did not mean a Gardener population.

And now, the Master dead in a Catholic country!

No matter what the Sanhedrin said, the commander vowed to have heads on platters for this. And he would serve them up to the Pope himself.

Manus and Hubbard of Special Ops arrived by Flicker. The commander signaled them to wait for him in the Ready Room. They could sift intelligence while he debated policy with the rest of the Sanhedrin. No one approached him to chat, as he liked it.

The interior of Sanhedrin Chambers should have been left stark and soaring, suitably undistracting to councils of war. As it was, the Children of Eden had forgone the practical in favor of their passion for gardening. The structure rose to nearly thirty meters above the commander’s head, but the proliferation of plants, trees and vines dropped the effective ceiling to under three meters, another security headache. As if for emphasis, Noas had to duck his head several times to avoid one flowering thing or another while walking to his place at the table.

Commander Noas watched the surviving eleven of the Twelve and their entourage of pages, secretaries and advisors as they stumbled through the daze of their grief to their places in Chambers. Some of the Innocents, the ones the prideful young missionaries called “retreads,” reflected the tension and cried, too, as they set out the ritual bowls, towels, bread and pitchers of water.

As Commander of the Jesus Rangers and overseer of the northwest region, Noas sat to the right of the Master at the traditional crescent table. The Master’s chair was empty, draped in black cloth. These eleven remaining members of the Twelve represented the most powerful communities of North and South America. The Children of Eden organized the Godwire Matrix, wealthy communities operating in concert to control worldwide transportation, petroleum, water, vaccinations and basic foodstuffs.

“He who controls the religion and the water supply controls all,” the Master had said.

He didn’t have to mention food, since ViraVax already tailored Artificial Viral Agents to influence crop production for better or worse—depending upon the farmer’s religious preference.

The commander’s southwest region was a particularly fruitful community, their precious water challenged mainly by the Mormons from the west and the Muslims to the north. Holding these rights required old-fashioned soldiering, and warriors made Noas a lot more comfortable than Artificial Viral Agents.

Pages, secretaries and the special advisors called Disciples sat at another table inside the crescent, facing the Twelve. Each of these Disciples apprenticed to a particular member of the Twelve. The commander’s own apprentice, Peter Bonyon, studied a desktop display of the ViraVax site and entered a flurry of notes into his Sidekick. Freckles stood out like buckshot on his ultrapale hands and face.

One apprentice would ascend to the Twelve before the night was over, just as one of the Twelve would be named Master. The commander knew, without doubt, that he would not be the one. His value lay out of the limelight, in the darker alleyways of God’s plan and men’s souls. In the great movie of the world, the Master must always wear a white hat. David Noas was the voice that is always at the white hat’s ear, the sword always at his side, hungry for Babylonian blood.

Except this time, he thought, when it counted

He shook off the self-whipping. In all likelihood, had he gone down with the Master he would have died with him, like the rest. The commander had made valuable inroads in the fight against the infidels, the heathens, the idolators—and the Master recognized him for that, praising him publicly and often.

“Subcontract and Subvert” had been the Noas plan. He hired out units of his Jesus Rangers to any acceptable military force fighting a holy war.

“Choose the Christian side and fight the others,” he’d told the Master. “Learn everything there is to learn about the Christians who hire you. You have said yourself that we will fight them later, during the Days of Fire. We must know their weakness. If they are in a spending mood, let them spend on us.”

That was ten years ago. Now, even the United States government hired the Jesus Rangers for contract jobs and U.N. missions. In Latin America and Canada, they fought Catholics. They fought Muslims, Jews and assorted heathen in Africa and the Middle East; Catholics again in England, Ireland and Scotland; Sikhs in India and Canada; in China they got their butts burned by the breath of the godless dragon. That was an expensive and painful lesson in patience.

Then, at the commander’s suggestion, the feds hired the Jesus Rangers as a Gang Turf Assault Force, specializing in taking the urban war into the homes of the enemy. The strategy was time-honored: identify a gang that they could work with, support that gang to destroy the rest until, in theory, it all boils down to the feds and one last gang per neighborhood. Commander Noas had finished negotiations with the Justice Department on that very lucrative contract just yesterday, and had been looking forward to presenting the good news to the Master.

“Bowl and water.”

The thick-tongued voice snapped Noas back to the present. A female Innocent in a sky-blue service suit clunked the ritual vessels down on the table.

“Towel.”

She was reciting to herself more than she was speaking to him. She folded the white hand towel neatly beside his bowl. Her cheeks and nose were blotchy and a little swollen.

Could it be that even the Innocents grieve for the Master?

“You’ve been crying,” Noas asked her. “What’s the matter?”

“Brother Lee, he mad. Brother Lee scare me when he mad.”

The commander patted the girl’s shoulder.

“Brother Lee’s mad because the Master died and he couldn’t stop it,” he explained.

“I don’t want nobody to die. I cry.”

They don’t grieve for the Master, they grieve for us! And we harvest their organs like just another crop!

“If you get your chores done, then that’s one thing he won’t have to worry about,” he said. “What do you have next? Bread and water?”

She nodded and stroked his hand.

“Bread and water,” she said.

“You go fetch them now,” the commander said. “Everything will be all right.”

He saw Sergeant Tekel enter the Acolyte’s door. Beyond the Disciples sat the forty-eight Acolytes of the Diaspora. Many of these seats were empty, and one of these was also draped with black cloth. The indicator on his tabletop told Commander Noas that the missing man was Miguel Alonso, the representative from Costa Brava.

Noas nodded a greeting to Tekel, who pointed towards the Ready Room and shrugged. The commander nodded, and held up an index finger for “first thing.”

Except for the persistent sounds of weeping, the customary ritual foot-washing proceeded in silence even as tabletop displays unreeled the Godwire news and the fragments of graphic footage from Milwaukee, Tennessee, and Costa Brava. Commander Noas took the bowl and cloth from Sebastian Ferguson, laid a perfunctory swipe over Ferguson’s shoes before passing the items along.

Someone activated the peel-and-peek system throughout Chambers, and a dozen giant images of Major Ezra Hodge stared out at him from the flat screens around the walls. Hodge held no rank in the Jesus Rangers. He was a U.S. Army major in the Defense Intelligence Agency, stationed in the Confederation of Costa Brava, and one of the church’s most valuable operatives.

He can ferret out information, all right, the commander thought, but he has no idea what to do with it.

Hodge was clearly uncomfortable, blotting his sweat and waiting on-screen for the seating and foot-washing to end. Some of the Acolytes still took the time to remove their shoes and perform the ritual properly. The commander redirected console output to his Sidekick for his personal analysis later.

Major Hodge’s chubby face was pale except for his red-rimmed eyes and the red chafing around his nostrils. The major’s eyes were sunken, haunted, and he hunched over his pickup like a crone. The plant life in Chambers drowned out his tremulous voice beyond the first three rows, but pickups simultaneously translated and transmitted his speech to every console in the chamber.

“Brethren,” Hodge began, “I am grieved to announce that here, in Costa Brava, the Master is dead and the Apocalypse is at hand.”

“It was the Catholics!” a voice shouted from the back. “It’s time we sent them all to Satan!”

An angry babble supported this judgment. Commander Noas noted that the original shout came from James Kane, a Disciple with well-known aspirations but little substance. A lift of his eyebrow towards Apprentice Bonyon, and a nod of recognition. The commander soon would know more of the recent movements and associations of Brother James Kane.

Hodge had enough stage presence to let them shout and pound their fists before raising his hand for silence.

“They will wed their filthy bridegroom soon enough,” Hodge promised, his pudgy nose in high twitch, his double chin quivering over his tight, sweaty collar.

Who put you on the high horse, Hodge?

“Our entire ViraVax facility, which has fed the world’s hunger and vanquished its diseases, was wiped out last night when the Catholics sabotaged our dam in Costa Brava. This very dam had been doomed to obsolescence by our recent patent for Sunspots, presented to this body not quite one month ago. One man, Colonel Rico Toledo, engineered this holocaust. He murdered the Master and hundreds more with full support of the papist conspiracy, here in Costa Brava and in the United States.”

Here the huge screens rolled footage of the wall of mud that smothered ViraVax, filmed in the light of a dozen flares from an Agency Dragonfly. Ten kilometers of a lush tropical valley were scoured to stone. The valley floor was a sea of mud embedded with human debris—clothing, tools, farm machinery, twisted shards of metal buildings. But the one image that Noas had steeled himself against did not appear.

No bodies!

Commander Noas enhanced the image on his console and sat back in surprise.

Where are the bodies?

There had been no time to remove them, and the commander was one of the few who knew how many hundreds of souls lived on and under that site.

Not counting the Innocents, of course.

The Innocents, the Down’s syndrome workers, were not human by a technicality. But they occupied bodies, very valuable bodies, and not one of those two thousand bodies on his roster was visible.

They must have sealed off, he thought. They’re buttoned up in there, and either Hodge doesn’t know it or he’s throwing out a smoke screen.

More than anything, this was what Commander Noas wanted to believe. If either possibility was true, then the Master may be alive. The commander had to admit another line of thought.

What if something got loose with the Master there? he wondered. What if the dam was our own cover for a contamination incident?

Contamination would mean, at minimum, a six-month shutdown for inspections, which might lead to further delays. But his real worry centered on the uncomfortable visibility of this vital facility when their camouflage had been working so well.

If the problem was only sabotage and the dam, then shutdown time would be cut from six months to the month that it might take to dig them out of there. Some value could be gleaned from exposing the Catholic terrorists. ViraVax out of commission for six months, however, meant that some very important Children of Eden would not get their prepaid replacement organs. It meant that the Catholic, the Mormon and the infidel farmers squeezed in two growing seasons where they should have none—a delicate reversal that could offer hope to the hopeless.

With hope comes resistance.

And with resistance came the Jesus Rangers, and the inevitable casualties among his troops. David Noas would gladly sacrifice a dozen dams if it meant keeping ViraVax on-line.

Through his Sidekick Noas requested copies of any ViraVax transmissions from the weeks immediately prior to the incident, as well as aerial footage of the dam. The commander turned back to Hodge’s soporific non-briefing.

“This is the time that we must act,” Hodge said. “We must become the terrible swift sword of our own deliverance, and we must strike down the forces that murdered our Master and laid waste his holy work. Our flaming sword must smite the faithless vermin and these godless idolators from the face of the earth. The Garden of Eden is at hand, and the fruits thereof shall be plucked by the faithful. Are you faithful?”

The entire chamber shook with a resounding “Yes!”

“Shall we take back the Garden from those who defiled it?”

“Yes!”

Commander Noas did not like this turn of events. Security was already on yellow alert, no other incidents had been reported and so far, no media. The deaths of the Vice-President and the President’s husband occupied the secular press completely.

A sudden rush of Gardeners to arms in the wake of the Master’s death would guarantee total confusion among their own people. If their blood-lust outraced their selection of a leader, then the life’s work of thousands of people would be for nothing.

Coupled with a contamination situation in Costa Brava, the Children of Eden would be fragmented, paralyzed and hunted down as anathema all over the globe. This was not what David Noas had worked towards his whole life. This was not what the Master wanted. If Hodge knew contamination to be a fact, then he was way out of line by not disclosing it here.

Noas keyed the command channel on his Sidekick and whispered, “Shut that idiot down!”

The first order of business was selection of a new Master, and it would be that Master who would give the orders. The danger, if any, was confined to Costa Brava, and it was the commander’s job to see that it stayed there. Hodge usurped the Master’s role and, with no explanation or by-your-leave, took command of the Sanhedrin under the pretext of delivering information. The Children of Eden had never suffered the death of a Master before, and Hodge, who did not even rate a seat in Chambers, was taking full advantage of the vulnerability of this tragic moment.

As any rising young shark might.

And why this sudden blood-lust from Hodge the Hedgehog? Sending the faithful willy-nilly into the streets was pouring gasoline on the fire. They needed to reaffirm their unity and, possibly, tap their reserves. Besides, orders to the faithful were not the place of someone like Hodge, who rated neither rank nor a seat in Chambers.

Hodge’s image froze on the dozen wall-screens.

The Commander addressed Hodge in a calm, reasoned voice.

“This briefing is appropriate to Special Ops, Mr. Hodge. You will be transferred to the Ready Room where you can complete your report to Sergeant Tekel and Apprentice Bonyon. Our immediate duty is clear: we must select a Master who will consider your data and act accordingly.”

The commander immediately switched his Sidekick back to command channel and whispered to Bonyon, “Was the dam a cover for a contamination? If so, what’s our risk up here?”

The hubbub in Chambers indicated plenty of approval of Hodge’s plan from both Disciples and Acolytes.

“Very well, Commander,” Hodge said.

His nose rose when he spoke, and the commander detected the slightest sniff of annoyance that would not be lost in transmission to the others.

“Our people must not let this heinous act go unpunished. . . .”

“Mr. Hodge!” The commander’s voice boomed across the sound system and startled the Sanhedrin members. “You are out of line! I’ll speak to you privately. Switch to command channel.”

The commander stood to address the Sanhedrin and quieted the heated arguments in Chambers with a lift of his hand. He rubbed the throbbing burn scar on his forehead and sighed.

“We must see to some practical matters before getting on with our duty. First, upgrade to red alert to secure the gas station chain, refineries, power stations, reservoirs and communications systems. No mere units on these assignments! Go to communications on our satlinks, command channels only. Reserves, report to your units. All merc and gang teams, stand by for assault assignments. The new Master will decide whether we’ll hibernate or not, and whether we have a fight on our hands. Hodge, scramble your transmission to the Ready Room now!”

Commander Noas snatched a loaf of ritual bread and a pitcher of water from the table, turned on his heel and left Chambers. When he opened the Ready Room door, the commander saw that Hodge continued his amateur theatrics on the peel. Hodge put on his martyr face for a couple of beats, then addressed the chamber.

“We, the faithful, await your selection of the new Master. Go with God.”

Hodge left them with a last glimpse of the destruction in Costa Brava before he blanked their screens—destruction that included a downed Mongoose upstream from the dam.

What do you want, Hodge? Noas wondered. Where were you when that little dam blew?