The Divine Invasion

He reflected, John the Baptist. Stipulated by Christ to have been Elijah returned, as promised by Jehovah in Malachi:

  Look, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will reconcile fathers to sons and sons to fathers, lest I come and put the land under a ban to destroy it.

  The final verse of the Old Testament: there the Old Testament ended and the New Testament began.

  Armageddon, he pondered. The final battle between the Sons of Darkness and the Sons of Light. Between Jehovah and-what had the Essenes called the evil power? Belial. That was it. That was their term for Satan. Belial would lead the Sons of Darkness; Jehovah would lead the Sons of Light. This would be the seventh battle.

  There will be six battles, three of which the Sons of Light will win and three of which the Sons of Darkness will win. Leaving Belial in power. But then Jehovah himself takes command in what amounts to a tie breaker.

  The monster in her womb is Belial, Cardinal Harms realized. He has returned to overthrow us. To overthrow Jehovah, whom we serve.

  The Divine Power itself is now in jeopardy, he declared; he felt great wrath.

  It seemed to the cardinal, at this point, that meditation and prayer were called for. And a strategy by which the invaders would be destroyed when they reached Washington, D.C.

  If only Big Noodle had not broken down!

  Glumly, he made his way to his private chapel.

  CHAPTER 9

  The procurator said, "We will wreck their ship. There is no particular problem. An accident will take place; the three of them-four, if you include the fetus-will be killed." To him it seemed simple.

  At his end of the line Cardinal Harms said, "They will evade it. Don't ask me how." His gloom had not departed.

  "You have jurisdiction in Washington, D.C.," the procurator said. "Order their ship destroyed; order it now."

  "Now" was eight hours later. Eight precious hours during which the procurator had peacefully slept. Cardinal Harms glared at his co-ruler. Or, he thought suddenly, had Bulkowsky been struggling to find a solution? Perhaps he had not slept at all. This solution sounded like Galina's. They had conferred, the two of them; they worked as a team.

  "What a stale solution," he said. "Your typical answer, to dispatch a warhead."

  "Mrs. Bulkowsky likes it," the procurator said.

  "I dare say. The two of you sat up all night working that out?"

  "We did not sit up. I slept soundly, although Galina had strange dreams. There's one she told me that-well, I think it worth relating. Do you want to hear Galina's dream? I'd like your Opinion about it, since it seems to have religious overtones."

  "Shoot," Harms said.

  "A huge white fish lies in the ocean. Near the surface, as a whale does. It is a friendly fish. It swims toward us; I mean, toward Galina. There is a series of canals with locks. The great white fish makes its way into the canal system with extreme difficulty. Finally it is caught, away from the ocean, near the people watching. It has done this on purpose; it wants to offer itself to the people as food. A metal saw is produced, one of those two-man band saws that lumberjacks use to cut down trees. Galina said that the teeth on the saw were dreadful. People began to saw slices of flesh from the great fish, who is still alive. They saw slice after slice of the living flesh of the great white fish that is so friendly. In the dream Galina thinks, 'This is wrong. We are injuring the fish too much.'" Bulkowsky paused. "Well? What do you say?"

  "The fish is Christ," Cardinal Harms said, "who offers his flesh to man so that man may have eternal life."

  "That's all very well, but it was unfair to the fish. She said it was a wrong thing to do. Even though the fish offered itself. Its pain was too much. Oh yes; in the dream she thought, 'We must find another kind of food, which doesn't cause the great fish suffering.' And then there were some blurred episodes where she was looking in a refrigerator; she saw a pitcher of water, a pitcher wrapped in straw or reeds or something . . . and a cube of pink food like a cube of butter. Words were written on the wrapper but she couldn't read them. The refrigerator was the common property of some kind of small settlement of people, off in a remote area. What happened, the way it worked, was that this pitcher of water and this pink cube belonged to the whole colony and you only ate the food and drank the water when you realized you were approaching your moment of death."

  "What did drinking the water-"

  "Then you came back later. Reborn."

  Harms said, "That is the host under the two species. The consecrated wine and wafer. The blood and body of our Lord. The food of eternal life. 'This is my body. Take-'"

  "The settlement seemed to exist at another time entirely. A long time ago. As in antiquity."

  "Interesting," Harms said, "but we still have our problem to face, what to do about the monster baby."

  "As I said," the procurator said, "we will arrange an accident. Their ship won't reach Washington, D.C. When, precisely, does it arrive? How much time do we have?"

  "Just a moment." Harms pressed keys on the board of a small computer terminal. "Christ!" he said.

  "What's the matter? It only takes seconds to dispatch a small missile. You have them in that area."

  Harms said, "Their ship has landed. While you slept. They are already being processed by Immigration at Washington, D.C."

  "It is normal to sleep," the procurator said.

  "The monster made you sleep."

  "I've been sleeping all my life!" Angrily, the procurator added, "I am here at this resort for rest; my health is bad."

  "I wonder," Harms said.

  "Notify Immigration, at once, to hold them. Do it now."

  Harms rang off, and contacted Immigration. I will take that woman, that Rybys Rommey-Asher, and break her neck, he said to himself. I will chop her into little pieces, and her fetus along with her. I will chop up all of them and feed them to the animals at the zoo.

  Surprised, he asked himself; Did I think that? The ferocity of his ratiocination amazed him. I really hate them, he realized. I am furious. I am furious with Bulkowsky for logging eight full hours of sleep in the midst of this crisis; if I had the power I would chop him up, too.

  When he had the director of Washington, D.C. Immigration on the line he asked first of all if the woman Rybys Rommey-Asher, her husband and Elias Tate were still there.

  "I'll check, your Eminence," the bureau chief said. A pause, a very long pause. Harms counted off the seconds, cursing and praying by turns. Then the director returned. "We are still processing them."

  "Hold them. Don't let them go for any reason whatsoever. The woman is pregnant. Inform her-do you know who I'm talking about? Rybys Rommey-Asher--inform her that there will be a mandatory abortion of the fetus. Have your people make up any excuse they want."

  "Do you actually want an abortion performed on her? Or is this a pretext-"

  "I want abortion induced within the next hour," Harms said. "A saline abortion. I want the fetus killed. I'm going to take you into our confidence. I have been conferring with the procurator maximus; this is global policy. The fetus is a freak. A radiation sport. Possibly even the monster offspring of interspecies symbiosis. Do you understand?"

  "Oh," the Immigration director said. "Interspecies symbiosis. Yes. We'll kill it with localized heat. Inject radioactive dye directly into it through the abdominal wall. I'll tell one of our doctors-"

  "Tell him to abort her or tell him to kill it inside her," Harms said, "but kill it and kill it now."

  "I'll need a signature," the Immigration director said. "I can't do this without authorization."

  "Transmit the forms." He sighed.

  From his terminal pages oozed; he took hold of them, found the lines where his signature was required, signed and fed the pages back into the fone terminal.

  As he sat in the Immigration lounge with Rybys, Herb Asher wondered where Elias Tate had gone. Elias had excused himself to go to the men's room, but he had not returned.

  "Whe
n can I lie down?" Rybys murmured.

  "Soon," he said. "They're putting us right through." He did not amplify because undoubtedly the lounge was bugged.

  "Where's Elias?" she said.

  "He'll be back."

  An Immigration official, not in uniform but wearing a badge, approached them. "Where is the third member of your party?" He consulted his clipboard. "Elias Tate."

  "In the men's room," Herb Asher said. "Could you please process this woman? You can see how sick she is."

  "We want a medical examination made on her," the Immigration official said dispassionately. "We require a medical determination before we can put you through."

  "It's been done already! By her own doctor originally and then by-"

  "This is standard procedure," the official said.

  "That doesn't matter," Herb Asher said. "It's cruel and it's useless."

  "The doctor will be with you shortly," the official said, "and while she's being examined by him you will be interrogated. To save you time. We won't interrogate her, at least not very extensively. I'm aware of her grave medical condition."

  "My God," Herb said, "you can see it!"

  The official departed, but returned almost at once, his face grim. "Tate isn't in the men's room."

  "Then I don't know where he is."

  "They may have processed him. Put him through." The official hurried off, speaking into a hand-held intercom unit.

  I guess Elias got away, Herb Asher thought.

  "Come in here," a voice said. It was a woman doctor, in a white smock. Young, wearing glasses, her hair tied back in a bun, she briskly escorted Herb Asher and his wife down a short sterile-looking and sterile-smelling corridor into an examination room. "Lie down, Mrs. Asher," the doctor said, helping Rybys to an examination table.

  "Rommey-Asher," Rybys said as she got up painfully onto the table. "Can you give me an I-V anti-emetic? And soon? I mean soon. I mean now."

  "In view of your wife's illness," the doctor said to Herb Asher as she seated herself at her desk, "why wasn't her pregnancy terminated?"

  "We've been through all this," he said savagely.

  "We may still require her to abort. We do not wish a deformed infant born; it's against public policy."

  Staring at the doctor in fear, Herb said, "But she's six months into her pregnancy!"

  "We have it down as five months," the doctor said. "Well within the legal period."

  "You can't do it without her consent," Herb said; his fear became wild.

  "The decision," the doctor told him, "is no longer yours to make, now that you have returned to Earth. A medical board will study the matter."

  It was obvious to Herb Asher that there would be a mandatory abortion. He knew what the board would decide-had decided.

  In the corner of the room a piped-in music source gave forth the odious background noise of soupy strings. The same sound, he realized, that he had heard off and on at his dome. But now the music changed, and he realized that a popular number of the Fox's was coming up. As the doctor sat filling out medical forms the Fox's voice could distantly be heard. It gave him comfort.

  Come again!

  Sweet love doth now invite

  Thy graces, that refrain

  To do me due delight.

  The lady doctor's lips moved reflexively in synchronization with the Fox's familiar Dowland song.

  All at once Herb Asher became aware that the voice from the speaker only resembled the Fox's. The voice was no longer singing; it was speaking.

  The faint voice said distinctly:

  There will be no abortion. There will be a birth.

  At her desk the doctor seemed unaware of the transition. Yah has cooked the audio signal, Herb Asher realized. As he watched he saw the doctor pause, pen lifted from the page before her.

  Subliminal, he said to himself as he watched the doctor hesi- tate. The woman still imagines she is hearing a familiar song. Familiar lyrics. She is in a kind of spell. As if hypnotized.

  The song resumed.

  "We can't abort her legally if she's six months along," the doctor said hesitantly. "Mr. Asher, there must be an error. We have her down as five. Five months into her pregnancy. But if you say six, then-"

  "Examine her if you want," Herb Asher said. "It's at least six. Make your own determination."

  "I-" The doctor rubbed her forehead, wincing; she shut her eyes and grimaced, as in pain. "I see no reason to-" She broke off, as if unable to remember what she intended to say. "I see no reason," she resumed after a moment, "to dispute this." She pressed a button on her desk intercom.

  The door opened and a uniformed Immigration official stood there. A moment later he was joined by a uniformed Customs agent.

  "The matter is settled," the doctor said to the Immigration official. "We can't force her to abort; she's too far along."

  The Immigration official gazed down at her fixedly.

  "It's the law," the doctor said.

  "Mr. Asher," the Customs agent said, "let me ask you something. In your wife's declaration prepared for Customs clearance she lists two phylacteries. What is a phylactery?"

  "I don't know," Herb Asher said.

  "Aren't you Jewish?" the Customs agent said. "Every Jew knows what a phylactery is. Your wife, then, is Jewish and you are not?"

  "Well," Herb Asher said, "she is C.I.C. but-" He paused. He sensed himself moving step by step into a trap. It was patently impossible that a husband would not know his wife's religion. They are getting into an area I do not want to discuss, he said to himself. "I'm a Christian," he said, then. "Although I was raised Scientific Legate. I belonged to the Party's Youth Corps. But now-"

  "But Mrs. Asher is Jewish. Hence the phylacteries. You've never seen her put them on? One goes on the head; one goes on the left arm. They're small square leathern boxes containing sections of Hebrew scripture. It strikes me as odd that you don't know anything about this. How long have you known each other?"

  "A long time," Herb Asher said.

  "Is she really your wife?" the Immigration official said. "If she is six months along in her pregnancy-" He consulted with some of the documents lying on the doctor's desk. "She was pregnant when you married her. Are you the father of the child?'

  "Of course." he said.

  "What blood type are you? Well, I have it here." The Immigration official began going through the filled-out legal and medical forms. "It's somewhere."

  The fone on the desk rang; the lady doctor picked it up and identified herself. "For you." She handed the receiver to the Immigration official.

  The Immigration official, raptly attentive, listened in silence; then, putting his hand over the audio sender, he said irritably to Herb Asher, "The blood type checks out. You two are cleared. But we want to talk to Tate, the older man who-" He broke off and again listened to his fone.

  "You can call a cab from the payfone in the lounge," the Customs agent said.

  "We're free to go?" Herb Asher said.

  The Customs agent nodded.

  "Something is wrong," the doctor said; again she had removed her glasses and sat rubbing her eyes.

  "There's this other matter," the Customs agent said to her, and bent down to present her with a stack of documents.

  "Do you know where Tate is?" the Immigration official called after Herb Asher as he and Rybys made their way from the examination room.

  "No, I don't," Herb said, and found himself in the corridor; supporting Rybys he walked step by step back down the corridor to the lounge. "Sit down," he said to her, depositing her in a heap on a couch. Several waiting people gazed at them dully. "I'll fone. I'll be right back. Do you have any change? I need a five-dollar piece." "Christ," Rybys murmured. "No. I don't have." "We got through," he said to her in a low voice. "OK!" she said angrily. "I'll fone for a cab." Going through his pockets, searching for a five-dollar piece, he felt elated. Yah had intervened, distantly and feebly, but it had been enough.

  ----------------------------
----

  Ten minutes later they and their luggage were aboard a Yellow flycab, rising up from the Washington, D.C. spaceport, heading in the direction of Bethesda-Chevy Chase.

  "Where the hell is Elias?" Rybys managed to say.

  "He drew their attention," Herb said. "He diverted them. Away from us."

  "Great," she said. "So now he could be anywhere."

  All at once a large commercial flycar came hurtling toward them at reckless speed.

  The robot driver of the cab cried out in dismay. And then the massive flycar sideswiped them; it happened in an instant. Violent waves of concussion hurled the cab in a downward spiral; Herb Asher clutched his wife against him-buildings bloomed into hugeness, and he knew, he knew absolutely and utterly, what had happened. The bastards, he thought in pain; he hurt physically; he ached from the realization. Warning beepers in the cab had gone off-

  Yah's protection wasn't enough, he realized as the cab spun lower and lower like a falling, withered leaf.

  It's too weak. Too weak here.

  The cab struck the edge of a high-rise building.

  Darkness came and Herb Asher knew no more.

  --------------------

  He lay in a hospital bed, wired up and tubed up to countless devices like a cyborg entity.

  "Mr. Asher?" a voice was saying, a male voice. "Mr. Asher, can you hear me?"

  He tried to nod but could not.

  "You have suffered serious internal damage," the male voice said. "I am Dr. Pope. You've been unconscious for five days. Surgery was performed on you but your ruptured spleen had to be removed. That's only a part of it. You are going to be put into cryonic suspension until replacement organs- Can you hear me?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "-Until replacement organs, available from donors, can be procured. The waiting list isn't very long; you should be in suspension for only a few weeks. How long, specifically-"

  "My wife."

  "Your wife is dead. She lost brain function for too long a time. We had to rule out cryonic suspension for her. It wouldn't have been of any use."

  "The baby."

  "The fetus is alive," Dr. Pope said. "Your wife's uncle, Mr. Tate, has arrived and has taken legal responsibility. We've removed the fetus from her body and placed it in a synthowomb. According to all our tests it was not damaged by the trauma, which is something of a miracle."

  Grimly, Herb Asher thought, Exactly.

  "Your wife asked that he be called Emmanuel," Dr. Pope said.

  "I know."

  As he lost consciousness Herb Asher said to himself, Yah's plans have not been completely wrecked. Yah has not been defeated entirely. There is still hope.

  But not very much.

  "Belial," he whispered.

  "Pardon me?" Dr. Pope leaned close to hear. "Belial? Is that someone you want us to contact? Someone who should know?"

  Herb Asher said, "He knows."

  --------------

  The chief prelate of the Christian-Islamic Church said to the procurator maximus of the Scientific Legate, "Something went wrong. They got past Immigration."

  "Where did they go? They have to have gone somewhere."