CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE MINISTER’S LAMENT

Ministers who spoke of God as if

they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject.

—Henry David Thoreau

Alex Smith, 27 December, Mars Year i

Marin County, California, Planet Earth

The Martians then retreated back across the Bay to their major base at Richmond. Had they just pushed on immediately towards San Francisco, there would have been nothing to stop their advance south of San Rafael other than a few scattered tanks and half-tracks. Most of our forces had been knocked out already, apparently including the military headquarters at Fairfax.

But the aliens seemed in no hurry to redeploy. If anything marks the Martian invasion of Earth, it was their slow but steady plodding as they moved from one place to another. “One small step for Mars, one giant step for Marskind!”

Spaceships were landing in North America every few hours, adding to the alien forces. And not just on the West Coast, either: I heard later that capsules had fallen near Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Grand Forks, British Columbia; Chinook, Montana; Wichita, Kansas; Craig, Missouri, and many other locations, mostly west of the Mississippi. No one knows why these towns were picked, or whether the targeting was random.

Meanwhile, our military command was now fully aware of the power and potency of the enemy, and worked furiously to target the new landing sites. A few of these were actually destroyed, I later understood; but any that managed to assemble a fighting-machine quickly became invulnerable. Every minute counted when countering the Martian threat.

In the Bay Area fresh troops and equipment were airlifted to the San Joaquin Valley, since Sacramento and the big cities had already been compromised. The Air Force tried bombing several of the alien landing pits with Stealth aircraft, but they weren’t stealthy enough, apparently, at least after their first run. One 500-pounder did manage to cripple a Martian tripod, which was, however, soon rebuilt; but all of the other jets that approached the pits thereafter were shot out of the sky before they could even come within range. The buggers learned very quickly indeed.

A similar pattern was repeated when the military tried deploying cruise missiles: the first one was effective, the others almost wholly ineffective. The aliens seemed able to communicate almost instantaneously—as we now know, their ability was telepathic in nature.

The digging-machines began clearing away all of the vegetation surrounding their pits, preventing anyone from approaching closer than about three-quarters of a mile. As our forces began employing larger, more effective weaponry, the aliens became more attentive to even minor incursions by our soldiers.

Gradually, the enemy was consolidating its operations into strategically-placed campsites, abandoning the smaller ones once they’d been stripped of anything useful. The sites were chosen to dominate and control all activity in a particular region. The great striders then began systematically destroying communications facilities, power plants, major transmission lines, bridges, and anything else that might link or aid our security services.

I became separated from Mayer and the others during the battle, and so as evening approached, I had to decide what to do next. The way south still seemed open to me, although for how long, I had no idea. Our bicycles were gone, probably grabbed by refugees, many of whom were still milling about in the late afternoon sun. I decided to head to San Francisco. I was curious as to what was happening in that great city by the Bay. Since I had no transportation, I walked.

Parts of San Rafael were burning fiercely, but as I headed south through the lower reaches of town, I gradually passed out of the damaged area. Most of the stores had been ransacked by looters, but I did manage to find some bottled water at a service station, along with a few chocolate bars and crackers and stale sandwiches. I wolfed down the food and drank a bottle of water. I rigged a makeshift pack from rags to carry additional provisions, and loaded the sack with as much as I could tote. I was parched enough that the water was quickly consumed.

The refugees diminished rapidly as I moved south. Apparently, everyone thought that San Francisco was a danger area, and had headed west towards the coast. I encountered one or two strays here and there, and a little brown dog who was so skittish that he wouldn’t come anywhere near me; I threw him a cookie, which he gobbled down immediately before running off in the other direction. I have no idea what became of him—or of so many others that I encountered on my journey.

I walked for hours as the sun drifted ever lower in the sky. I was almost on my last legs by sunset. Every time I stopped, though, my fears would get the better of me, and soon I would get up and resume my plodding course southwards. At last I was able to spy the Golden Gate Bridge shining in the distance, although I couldn’t tell how far away it was.

Suddenly and without warning I was violently ill, vomiting most of my dinner onto the grass by the road; one of the sandwiches must have gone bad. I suppose this was around four; I’m not really sure—it was late afternoon. I lay down in a garden to rest. I seem to recall talking to myself during that last interval, something about Becky and the Martians. I was very thirsty, having drunk all of my water.

I was angry with my wife all of a sudden. I don’t really know why. Perhaps it was my worrying about what’d happened to her in Sonoma, combined with my desire to see her safe again. I hated the fact that I had to cope with this godawful burden on top of everything else. It was totally unfair to her, of course, but that’s the way I felt—and I’m trying to relate what happened to me with as much honesty as possible.

I don’t remember exactly what came next. I was just so damned tired. At some point I became aware of a figure standing in front of me: someone in a soot-smudged, short-sleeved shirt with white collar, his pinched face staring down at me in concern. Framing him was the splendor of a mackerel sky, rows and rows of orange and pink clouds streaking the horizon, illuminated by the brilliant sunset.

I sat up and groaned.

“Water?” I managed to gasp.

He shook his head “no.”

“You’ve been asking me that ever since I found you,” the minister said.

As soon as he spoke I realized that “he” was actually a “she.” The closely-cropped hair and the narrow, gaunt body had initially thrown me off.

For a moment we were silent, taking stock of each other. I’m sure that she found me a strange sight indeed, with my filthy pants and shirt, and my face and shoulders blackened by the ever-present smoke. The minister had a weak chin, short, black hair, and large, pale brown eyes staring vacantly at me. She spoke again, her gaze turning to the sky.

“What does it all mean?” she asked.

“Who are you?”

“The Reverend Lesley,” she said—I didn’t know then whether “Lesley” was a first or last name—“St. Gandalf’s was my church.”

I just stared. What could I say? God had nothing to offer me.

She extended her thin white hand and then spoke almost a complaint. I had no sense that her words were addressed to me:

“Why did it happen? What have I done? This morning I conducted the service as usual, asking God to save our town and preserve our church. This afternoon the Martians came, saw, and conquered; and then—and then—it was Sodom and Gomorrah again! All my work undone. All my work thrown back at me. What did I do to deserve this? What kind of devils are these Martians?”

“Where are we?” I asked, trying to clear my throat. I was so parched that it was hard for me to speak.

“Corte Madera, I think,” she said. “Or maybe Mill Valley, I’m not really sure.”

She sat down beside me, gripping her knees very tightly, and then turned to look at me again. For a moment she just stared silently at my face.

“The agent of God came walking through the city streets, its hand of death pointed right at St. Gandalf’s,” she said, “and suddenly—fire, brimstone, and destruction!”

She waved her hands again.

“All my work—my Sunday school, my preaching, my building of a congregation—it’s gone. Why is God punishing me? Everything that I had that was good is dead; everything that was truly fine is finished. Oh, that beautiful place of worship—it’s demolished! My life has been swept away from me! Why? Why? Why?”

She began ranting then.

“‘The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever’!” she said, standing up and gesturing at the horizon, her face contorted in disgust.

I was finally beginning to understand. Her tragedy—she was obviously a refugee from the destruction of San Rafael—had driven her to the brink of insanity. She was suffering from massive psychological shock and trauma. Her world, her hold on reality, had been so firmly displaced by events that it was irretrievable.

“How far are we from Mill Valley?” I said matter-of-factly, trying to restore the conversation to some semblance of normalcy.

“But what are we to do?” she said, completely ignoring my question. “Who are these creatures of Satan everywhere around us? Has the Earth been given over to them?”

“Ma’am. Are we very far from Mill Valley?”

“Only this morning I officiated at an early celebration of the….”

“Yes, Reverend,” I said quietly, “but you have to look after yourself now. You can always rebuild your church, but you must conserve your strength. While there’s life, there’s hope. God hath spared you for a reason.”

“Hope?” She looked over at me with her large brown eyes. They reminded me of a cocker spaniel’s.

“Yes,” I said. “Hope! Hope that we’ll survive this invasion! Hope that we’ll begin life anew. Hope that we’ll live rather than die!”

I told her that our military would soon rally and the Martians would be defeated. Those of us who survived would have to pick up our shovels and begin reconstructing our lives. She listened to me very intently, but as I rambled on, her attention gradually faded, and she looked again at the distant, declining sun, which had now reached the horizon. (I often had the same problem with my history and philosophy students!)

“It’s the beginning of the end,” she finally said, interrupting my most learnèd discourse and thoroughly irritating me in the process. How dare she! “The great and terrible day of the Lord, when all men shall be called to account, when men shall call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide them, yes, hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne on high, when the great Judge shall levy out the fines and punishments for all our sins! ‘Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death’….”

I ceased reasoning with this woman. There wasn’t any point. I struggled to my feet, put my hands on her shoulders, and shook her hard to get her attention.

“Come on, wake up, Lesley!” I said. “I know you’re scared! So are the rest of us. Quit your whining. What good’s religion if it fails the weight of tragedy? Think of all the earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes. Think of the lives that have been lost. Do you believe God’s given San Rafael a pass? He’s not an insurance agent, you know.”

For a time she just sat there blankly, her face an unreadable mask.

“They’re invulnerable,” she said. “They’re pitiless. They care nothing for man. They’re either the agents of God or the tools of the Devil. But which? It doth make a difference.”

“Look, Reverend,” I said, “you haven’t seen nearly as much fighting as I have. I’ve watched them demolish our military. But I also saw one of the alien machines destroyed this afternoon, and it was your church, Lesley, that destroyed it. Isn’t that the act of a just God?”

“Destroyed?” she said. “Yes, of course, it was, wasn’t it? But how can one of God’s agents be destroyed by God?”

“Who the hell knows?” I was losing patience. “Nonetheless, I saw it happen, and so did you. I have no doubt that our forces will prevail. We just had the misfortune to wind up in the middle of things, and to see much of what we cared about damaged. But we survived, both of us, and that has to mean something. It has to mean something, Lesley! We’ve both been given a second chance.”

“Yes, a second chance,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right, of course. A second chance to make things right again. But how do we rebuild? How do we start over?

“What’s that light up there?” she asked abruptly, pointing at the eastern sky.

I looked where it was darkest on the horizon. I could see a thin white line etching its way towards us.

“Must be one of our missiles,” I said. “It’s our boys at work!”

But even as we watched, the tip of the candle suddenly flared brightly and then vanished into the ebon background.

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but that flicker tells me that our men are still trying to push back the storm. Something will work, Reverend, of that I have no doubt. But we’ve got to move. The Martians will be coming this way before much longer.”

She sprang to her feet and gestured towards the distant north.

“Listen!” she said.

From beyond the low hills came the dull resonance, the understated booming, of dim, distant guns, followed by a remote, even weird crying sound, the alien wail of the Martians. Then everything went still again.

It was dark now. A lone bird began singing from a nearly tree. What it was doing here at this time of the year I had no idea: probably a refugee like us. High above us in the sky a crescent moon hung faintly pale against the encroaching dark. Smoke from San Rafael still permeated our clothing.

“We should find some shelter for the night,” I said. “A place that’s safe and warm.”

But as things actually happened, we chose wrongly—and part of that wrongness was undoubtedly choosing each other.