The Book of Feasts & Seasons (15 page)

Despite Hynkel's gasping screams, Tyler could hear every word Father Nicodemus spoke with diamond-clear crispness. The church no longer seemed dark and dim, even though the one candle and little spark Hynkel clutched had not grown any brighter.

Hynkel caught his breath, and shouted out profanely. “—! —!You are not taking this back. I don't want it for myself! I don't! But someone has to save the world!”

He pointed the gun still clenched in his blackened, burnt, and still-sizzling hand at Tyler, then at the priest, then back at Tyler.

“You should not use the name of the Lord in vain, my son,” said the priest calmly, as if unaware of the danger.

“Stay back!” shouted Hynkel. “Let me show you what a man with an education does when he has absolute power! I wish every nuclear warhead, H-bomb and A-bomb, anywhere on the planet Earth was dissolved into nothing.”

The skin of his face and chest was marred with little white spots that rapidly grew into blisters. His hair was falling out.

Tyler said, “I guess that is not such a bad wish, I mean–”

Hynkel interrupted him, shouting, “And that all the plans and diagrams for how to make them, no matter where they are, or how encrypted or encoded, was erased, so no one can make any more!”

Tyler said, “That is enough good work for one day, Andy. Just give the little firefly back to the Father, okay?”

Father Nicodemus said mildly, “Brendan was kind enough to repair the damage to me by idealizing— if that is the word—by perfecting and glorifying the body which he had damaged. And he repaired the wreckage he made of the church, so I saw the ideal machine does not make things out of nothing. It draws on its surroundings for raw materials.”

“No!” Hynkel shouted, “I won't give it back. You will see! I can turn the world into a paradise now that I have the power to do it! The power! Infinite power!”

Tyler said, “Whoa. That don't sound good…”

Father Nicodemus said, “Not infinite. The ideal machine has its limits.”

“No one will build any more nuclear weapons,” Hynkel declared, “Every scientist and engineer and anyone else who knows how to build an atomic bomb will vanish into nothing! I want them dead! Every last one of them! And I want–”

Tyler leaped toward Hynkel. Once more, he moved much more quickly than he could have imagined, as quickly as the bright spot shed by a flashlight can move from one wall to another with the flip of a wrist. He grabbed Hynkel's left wrist with both hands and twisted it around behind his back. He must have twisted with more force that he knew, because he heard the bone snap.

But perhaps he did not have the fighting spirit he needed, because when he broke his co-pilot's arm, the shock made his grip grow weak. Hynkel, however, had it, for a man with a broken arm, if he is brave enough and drunk on adrenaline, and sufficiently filled with the fury of battle, can fight without feeling. Hynkel spun around and clubbed Tyler across the face with his gun hand. Hynkel could not pull the trigger with his burned right finger, so he raised his left hand, took the weapon awkwardly in both hands, then fired the gun.

The impact of the bullet striking him made Tyler feel as if he had been hit in the face with a baseball bat. He was thrown backwards, but quickly recovered his balance, and he did not feel any pain whatsoever. Hynkel had stumbled back. The recoil of the pistol was more than his wounded hand could hold, and he had dropped his weapon, which was lying between his feet. Hynkel was clutching his right hand in this left, and his eyes glistened with tears of pain, but he did not cry out again.

There was no sign of the little spark anywhere. Whether it had gone out, or where it had fallen, none of them knew.

In astonishment, Tyler brought his hands to his face. He felt no blood, no bullet hole, nothing. His face was perfect. If anything, he felt healthier than normal. He was filled with a strength swelling like a symphony, and the tips of his fingers as well as the flesh of his face seemed to be more sensitive than before.

Tyler looked directly behind him at the bullet hole which had shattered one of the stained glass windows. He could see forty yards away, where there was a bullet hole in the bark of a tree, and, when he peered closely at the lump of lead, he was sure it was the nine millimeter slug from the gun.

Tyler noticed that he could also see the sedans approaching down Point Lookout Road. Four plainclothes officers, part of the private military of the National Security Agency, were in each car, and each man in his shoulder holster was carrying a SIG Sauer P228 9mm sidearm.

He also saw, even further away, in the Armory in Building 430 near the eastern gate of the base, the locker where Hynkel's piece had been stored was crumpled like a tin can, or a sunken submarine, as if removing the weapon had removed so much mass from the middle of the metal box that the walls imploded. Whatever the ideal machine was, it was not forgiving like the friendly blue genii in the cartoon. It carried out its orders without thought, without hesitation, without mercy.

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?”

“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.