The Book of Feasts & Seasons

  Tyler looked at Hynkel and addressed him slowly, “Andy, listen to me. You look like you've been baked in the microwave. I can see your cells exploded. There is damage in the marrow of your bones. That machine…”

  Hynkel shook his head slowly. “I don't feel any pain. You're trying to trick me. You cannot see my bones. That's absurd.”

  “You don't feel any pain because your nerves are damaged. Endorphins are kicking in. I can see your glands working overtime.”

  Hynkel said, “You think I've gone crazy with power. No, I'm not selfish like you. I am doing what must be done. I am doing what the world needs, what all mankind needs. In one second, I stopped the World War that everyone has been terrified of since 1950!”

  “And now the Red Army outnumbers us by ten to one,” said Tyler.

  “Then I will wish them all dead. Not just the army, everyone in China. That will solve the overpopulation problem, too. I am not a bad man, Tyler. I'm just strong enough to do what is necessary, whatever is necessary.”

  Hynkel looked down, evidently noticing for the first time that the little glowing spark was nowhere to be seen.

  Tyler said, “It's gone, man. It's over. Look, you've saved everyone like you said. They have radiation burn units at Bethesda. We got to get you somewhere. Back over the field to the airstrip. Let's go.”

  Hynkel was staring down between his feet. “No, I have to find it. The Red Army. I have to kill the Chinese.”

  “No, you can do that tomorrow, or whenever. Now we should–”

  But Hynkel was not listening. More of his hair had fallen out, and the discoloration of the flesh of his face was clearly visible. “You remember that time I had to ditch into the sea? It was thirty hours before they found me and fished me out. I spent all that time, through the cold of the night and the heat of the day, just bobbing up and down, getting weaker and weaker, with nothing around me by a gray expanse of saltwater. I might have died. I realized it then. I realized what death is. There is no afterlife, no coming back. There is no evidence of a man ever coming back from the dead.”

  The old priest chuckled, “Of all the places to say such a thing, you say that here, in this house?”

  Hynkel did not hear him. “That means you must never miss a chance. Never let anything escape your grasp. Not pleasure, not power, not anything you can get. It means that if you want to die in bed surrounded by friends and family, you have to use what you got to trample the little guy, the weak guy, the old lady, the old widow with no heart and no hope, just step on her face with a boot over and over and over. That is how you climb up the pyramid. Every step, you step on someone's face. And when someone thinks he's better than you, some damned holier-than-thou charlatan, this is what you do to them!”

  He stooped, picked up the gun with his left hand, raised it, aimed at the priest and fired three rounds, two to the chest and one in the head.

  Tyler blinked and then was standing between Hynkel and Nicodemus. He felt two of the bullets strike his body, but they did not harm him. Too late, he remembered how the tree behind him had still been hit. He turned.

  Father Nicodemus was standing with his head thrown back and his arms out, and he was glowing. His hair was standing up, and light poured out of his skin, growing brighter than summer sunlight, brighter than lightning, and finally too bright for the human eye to see or the human brain to comprehend.

  Tyler remembered what the Father had said. The alien had materialized in the church here, and that released radiation which harmed the priest. The alien must have used the ideal machine to cure him. By changing his body and making it more like an ideal human body.

  In terror, Hynkel threw his gun down, put his hands before his eyes, and turned to stagger toward the church doors, seeking an exit, seeking an escape.

  Tyler said, “Andy, wait! I know what happened! I wished for a perfect body, so I cannot be hurt. I am a superman! You can be, too! Just pick up the sparkly and wish it! It will save your stupid life, you jerk! Where did you drop it?”

  Hynkel didn't stop. He blindly pushed the door open and ran out across the small churchyard and into the street. The police sedans were only a few yards away, and they slammed on their brakes when he appeared on the road, caught in their headlights. Hynkel pointed back toward the church and croaked and shouted.

  Tyler, who was still in the church, said, “Why doesn't he wish himself well?”

  But the Father from behind him said, “I told you the limits of the ideal machine. It can only change one material into another. But Lieutenant Hynkel commanded the machine to kill every scientist who knew how to build nuclear weapons.”

  Tyler noticed that the Father was not bother to move his lips to talk. Under his sheath of dazzling light, he looked neither old nor young, but his face grew ever more distinct, ever more Nicodemus-like with each second. Nor did the priest appear to need to breathe either.

  Outside, the government agents, without identifying themselves or showing any warrant, were handcuffing the burnt and dying man and putting a black bag over his head. Some had taken up shotguns or rifles from the truck of the lead car, others grenade launchers loaded with tear gas grenades. Still more, not waiting, were closing in on the church with their sidearms drawn.

  Tyler said, “So no scientists died when he wished that?”

  “Are men nothing but matter?” said the young-old ageless form of light. “Are they merely atoms arranged in a certain pattern, a machine moved only by outside forces or inside programming, a meat machine. Is that what you are? Just matter? If he had worded it differently, asking for fire from heaven to strike their bodies, or the earth to gape and swallow their bodies, or a raging whirlwind to snatch up the houses where they stood and throw them into the sea, that would have worked, and their bodies would have been destroyed.”

  The priest smiled sadly, and shook his head. “From the images Brendan put into my head when we shared souls, I saw that his people tried to find ways to destroy other planets within the Eta Aquilae system protected by enemy ideal machines by drawing plasma from their sun and pulling it across space in some sort of vast magnetic hollow tube or streamer, and dropping an infinitely destructive column of solid substance from the stellar depth directly on enemy worlds and moons. That was why the Designers ignited their sun.”

  “I thought you said it was the Star of Bethlehem.”

  “The Designers whatever they are, evidently can kill two birds with one stone, or a thousand. Nothing that has happened tonight is a coincidence.”

  “So these Designers are what? Angels? Gods? Mad scientists?”

  “I don't know. He had no picture in his mind to share. But I know there are many things in heaven and earth between Man and God, layers and levels of creatures that would seem like gods to us, but are less than ants when compared to the humblest angel of the Lord of Hosts.”

  “So they built their machines to self-destruct when given an order to destroy?”

  “Not exactly. You need an ideal machine to make an ideal machine, and no one knows where the first one came from. Brendan thought his people did not make the first one. In any case, when Lt. Hynkel wished for death, he wished living souls into nonbeing, without first knowing what their being was. To know thing, any thing, you must first know its ideal form.”

  “So where is the ideal machine now?”

  “It destroyed itself attempting to carry out an impossible order. It is built that way, built that way as a test. The Accouchers put the human race on trial, seeing how long it would be before we used the machine that could have solved all of our worldly problem and created a worldly paradise to kill each other instead. I must say, I was expecting the government to use the machine for many years, turning straw into gold or sand into sandwiches, before someone gave into the temptation to use it to destroy a city full of living souls. For years! But this was, what? Perhaps fifteen minutes? It appears our race is moronic.”

  “It is a stupid test. Why did you hand it over to us?”

&nbs
p; “Why did you throw it away?”

  “The aliens gave it to you! You could have kept it and done good deeds with it!”

  “Good deeds such as, for example, obeying the secular authorities God has placed over us? I don't suppose you've ever read what St Paul has to say on the subject. Disobedience is not a thing Christians are supposed to do, except when the rulers command us to break divine laws. But it is perfectly reasonable for the Head of State to demand something as dangerous as an atomic warhead be taken into public care, is it not? Does he not have the right under eminent domain, or under the taxation clause, or under the general duty to see to the public welfare, to seize any ideal machine we find or are given.”

  “So you are going to give yourself up to the secret police?” Because Tyler could see the armed men were now quite close to the little brick church, and peering doubtfully at the flood of outrageous light blazing from the colored windows.

  “Yes, if they arrest me.”

  Tyler said, “But what if they don't find you?” And he reached into the blaze of light to take the ageless figure's arm, and as quickly as he had risen to his feet, as quickly as he had leaped in the way of the bullets, the two of them now stood motionless in midair, not falling, in the night sky fifteen miles away, with stormy clouds far below them like the wrinkled black blanket, and the stars all around him.

  Nicodemus smiled, and his smile increased his light tenfold, so that even Tyler, despite his newly perfected eyes, could not look at him.

  Nicodemus pursed his lips so that the other man, blinking, could look at him again.

  “I must go back, Lieutenant,” said the priest. “Whether they torture me or not, kill me or not, I must speak to as many as will listen to me, and tell them of the trials to come. More than one ideal machine was placed on Earth, or near Earth. One is at the North Pole, and one is on the Moon, and one on Mars. And so on. Each one has a greater range and more power than the previous.”

  “And these stupid aliens, what did you call them? Are these couch potatoes setting up all these machines so that we will find them and use them to destroy ourselves?”

  “Accouchers. Brendan took the word from my mind. It is French. It means a midwife, an obstetrician. They will help the new world be born once this world is destroyed by the folly of men. He joined my Church, by baptism, and I washed him clean of sin and I joined his order, when he healed me and gave me this ideal and indestructible body. So I must return to Earth and carry out his mission. Otherwise their exile will not end.”

  “The mission to destroy mankind? What kind of mission is that for a man of the cloth!”

  “No, Lieutenant, this mission is right up my alley. You see, there is one and only one person on this whole world who their instruments have detected is evolved enough and advanced enough to be trusted with the ideal machine, and to use it with benevolence and wisdom.”

  “You?”

  “Good, heavens, no! I am likely to forget where I put it, or to hand it to the first random stranger who walks by. I have already failed the test. I was too trusting. You must understand, since I have heard such dreadful things, things that would curl your hair–it is a natural temptation. I thought I knew how bad men get. I just did not believe—I mean, he seemed like such a nice young man, and in uniform, disciplined, patriotic—he did not commit murder the first time someone handed him a gun, did he? So I thought, you know, that one of you might pass the test!”

  “Live and learn, I guess.”

  “I am just a foolish old country priest after all, with duties noe harder than cleaning up the museum, and look! I managed to wreck it. And as for you, you decided to bury your one talent rather than invest it, and so you have failed also.”

  “So who is this one perfect man?”

  “She is twelve years old, and lives in Canton, China.”

  “Twelve?”

  “Yes, now. I will find her and tell her the mission once she is a reasonable age, say, thirty or thirty five. She is not sinless, for then all power under heaven and earth would be open to her, but she is higher than we are, and she will not misuse this power, which seems to be too much for people like me. Her name is Xue Yi-Yi. I am not sure what Xue means, but yi means happy. I must learn her language too. As soon as I find someone safe to read minds with.”

  “You are a mindreader now? No, you are saying it is like the Mind Meld on Star Trek.”

  “No, Star Wars. I am sure the Dark Father read Luke's mind at some point. In any case, no it is not like any show. It is more like marriage.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “Reading minds, or mingling minds, is not safe to do to a stranger. If he smokes, I will have an overwhelming urge to smoke, even if I have never touched tobacco in my life; and I will be sexually attracted to his wife, and he will pick up my bad habits–he might even believe in a God he's never heard of, even if he is an inhuman being with no emotions in common with mammalian forms of life.”

  “And you might pick up his alien way of thinking, and start believing in his mission. It is because of that alien you believe this nonsense? A twelve year old Cantonese girl going to save the world? This one perfect girl?”

  The priest said, “Lieutenant, you and I are standing in midair a mile above the earth at midnight, and neither one of us is cold or hyperventilating. Tell me again what is likely and unlikely in this world! I see and perform the miracle of transubstantiation every day. Compared to what Paul and Peter saw, this is nothing. Don't be so easily convinced there are no marvels in this world.”

  “A world you and Shu-Yi are going to save against its will?”

  “Of course not. The world cannot be saved against its will. I suggest you go north. You know the snow and cold will not harm you. When you get within range of the intermediate ideal machine, you will see it, because the surface of objects no longer deceive your eyes. You should be able to merge with the machine enough to have certain wishes granted, including some means or other of moving it to your Playboy mansion you wished for. And you will have control of matter and energy, and so should be able to hide, evade or fend off the police, or whoever comes to interrupt your grindingly boring orgies. Life in California, I hear, is pleasant, at least inside the armored enclaves.”

  “You have got to be kidding! The ideal machine did not actually make a mansion full of centerfolds for me, did it?”

  “No, because that is not what you wished for. You asked for an invitation. But yes, I am kidding you. The ideal machine can make animals, but not people, and so I don't think, from the way you worded the wish, you received anything other than a forged visitor's pass. Look in your pockets. If it is not there, check your mailbox in a few days.”

  “But I was just talking! I didn't know the damned thing was turned on!”

  “So the glowing and whistling feelings it produced in your brain were not a clue? I see.”

  “I am not really going to commit suicide, am I?”

  “Haven't you been listening, my son? The machine cannot make women love you, or change anyone's mind or free will. It can forge documents and destroy atomic weapons, and, under expert control, it can even draw plasma from a star and obliterate a planet. But a planet is a small and temporary thing. You, and I, and every soul ever created by the word and love of heaven, we are eternal and infinite beings.”

  “But if your body is a superman body like mine, then nothing can kill us!”

  “Unless my martyrdom turns out to be the swiftest way to spread the news that the woman of the prophecy will save the remnant. When she is old enough, events will bring Yi-Yi to her machine you've kept, and she will have the range necessary to reach the moon.”

  “Reach the–you mean I could have wished for a starship? And I wished for a goddam whorehouse instead! Jesus fuc–I mean, uh, come on!”

  “Well, the Accoucher could not travel here faster than light, and they also needed a ship. I do not think even your ideal body could carry you to the moon. You will have to be more free of sin. On
ly then will you know true levity, the lightness of the angels. She, of course, if she is to fulfill her mission, will be able to create the star vessels needed to preserve us from the deluge of fire.”

  “So you are going off to your death, and I am going on a wild goose chase and then wait two decades for some Chinese woman to find me–is she going to be wearing a white carnation or something? How will I know what to do?”

  “Events will turn out as planned, if we do our part.”

  “Planned by who? By the aliens? By their Designers who made their star systems? By God?”

  “A playwright can craft a story in which a mastermind makes a scheme and carries it out, but it is the playwright who knows the end of the tale before he even puts pen to paper. Come! It is time. Now descend and place me somewhere when the press or the military can find me. And you, you have business up North. How it will turn out with you and your mansion, I don't know, but I doubt you will give up the pleasure of flying for the pleasures of the flesh. Not now that you know the consequences.”

  “And what if this is all an accident, Father? Would a real God have blown up a whole solar system just to give a lightshow to a bunch of wandering kings a thousand years later? What if what happened tonight didn't just burn your body, but your brain too? You touched an alien mind, Father! Are you crazy? Am I crazy?”

  The priest merely shrugged. “If this was all an accident, a coincidence, then there is no design, is there? Before we return to Earth, and before you set off for the endless snows of the North, let us go up, and you shall tell me if you see any evidence of a grand design.”

  Up they rose, higher into the night sky, until the world was but a sullen disk of gloom below, and the lights of the cities of men were bright little stars.

  They rose to the edge of the atmosphere, and he found he could rise no farther. The deadly emptiness of space was at hand, but the light from the priest warmed and protected him.