by Adam Roberts
I saw why so many people were giving up and leaving. This was old-school boring. Still, new people kept filtering in. And I was pleased to see my old friend after so many years. ‘Get off,’ I called. ‘Boo!’
He ignored this heckle; and the woman standing next to me jabbed me with her elbow.
‘Now the book John wrote,’ Preacherman announced, ‘is three kinds of book in one: it is a letter, which makes it epistolary writing; and it is a history of its own time, the early Christian Church and the decline of the Roman Empire. And it is a prophetic book about the end of the world. It is three books in one because God is three in one! Not a trilogy of different books, but one book with three equal natures! Now, ladies and gentlemen, I could tell you fascinating things about the epistolary nature of this book – about letters in the ancient world, about the Revelation of Saint John as the embodiment of communication, about the cement of community. Or I could tell you fascinating things about early Church, and the history of Rome. But I won’t!’
‘Hooray! Bravo!’ I called. Again, Preacherman ignored me; and once again the woman elbowed me in the side. ‘You don’t like it when I’m negative,’ I hissed at her. ‘You don’t like it when I’m positive.’
She glared at me. ‘I’m trying to listen,’ she said. Her accent sounded Eastern European.
‘No,’ Preacherman declared ringingly. ‘I am going to talk to you today about the prophecy of this book. The Revelation of Saint John uses the word prophecy twenty-one times! No other biblical book uses that word so often.’
‘He’s going to say,’ I whispered to the woman, ‘that the internet is the sign of the beast. That www is actually 666.’ But she had had enough of me. She turned her back, and wove her way through the crowd to a different place, where she could listen without me bugging her.
‘The prophecy is about the end times – the end of the world. That’s a bad thing, the world ending, because it means suffering for ordinary people, for good people, like you and me. But it’s a good thing too, because it means that Christ is returning to the world.’ Somewhere at the back of the crowd a watery cheer went up: maybe three or four people calling out yay! So there were some actual enthusiasts present; the crowd wasn’t wholly composed of bored Reading flâneurs. ‘And when he comes again it will be to rule a just earth, a perfect world, and the people who deserve it will live there. Do you deserve it? I can’t tell you! You have to pray, and wait for God to speak to you. Pray hard! And if you pray and he doesn’t – pray harder.’
‘Pray Hard With A Vengeance!’ I yelled. ‘A Good Day To Pray Hard !’ This, though, was a wasted snipe, because Preacherman, without looking over to me, took it at face value, smiling and nodding. More people in the crowd sang out heartfelt amens.
‘How can you know it’s the end times?’ Preacherman asked. ‘It’s an important question, though, because lots of people have been too hasty, and announced the end times. They looked around themselves in 1000, or 1815, or 1940 and said: yes, this fits everything the Book of Revelation says. They were wrong. Maybe I am too! What’s different about these days, that makes me think they are the end days? I’ll tell you: bêtes.’
He had their attention now.
‘Revelation is a book of sevens, of seven revelations. It’s in four parts, the Book of Revelation, but each of the four consists of seven visions.’
‘Twenty-eight,’ I yelled, enthusiastically. The man behind me, mistaking the piety of my intervention, added a fervent ‘Amen!’
‘Addresses to the Seven Churches!’ Preacherman was saying. ‘The prophecy of the Seven Seals! Of the Seven Trumpets! Seven Bowls! There are seven plagues, seven words to Bablyon – and Babylon, that’s us; that’s now! Seven angels. Seven is a holy number! And what is the real sign of the end times, in the isla angelica, the angel island – that’s us too! The beast, the beast, the beast, the beast!’
The crowd was murmuring now.
‘There are four Great Bêtes,’ said Preacherman. ‘And they are all aspects of the one bête, the talking beast, Satan himself. The first is the Dragon, who arises everywhere and nowhere, and is Satan. Satan was once an angel, but is now nothing – a devil, an animal, though a canny animal with the power of speech and the ability to persuade. He has been with us a long time. The second bête is more recent – the bête of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns – a leopard beast, or a big cat. Revelation 13:1–5. This bête is granted power and authority for forty-two months. Then there is the beast of the earth – a Lamb. A monstrous talking lamb, the parodic perversion of the Lamb of God.’
I confess this gave me a small jolt. Only a small one, though. My hand went to my pocket. There was the handkerchief, wrapped into a knot; its bulge. I patted it. ‘You hear this, buster?’ I muttered. ‘He’s talking about you.’
‘Though he looks like a Lamb, this bête speaks like a dragon. He speaks words of war! He leads his kind against humankind! He directs people to make a false image, a robot, an idol and he breathes life into it! What is this false life, this false consciousness? We can tell it by its number: the number of the bête, 666. The Hebrew letter for 6 is a double-ewe. Three double-ewes, people! How else did the bêtes cook up this blasphemous eidolon of true consciousness – but via the internet? What else can this mean but that the artificial imitation of consciousness in the so-called canny beasts is a trick of the Dragon – of the devil himself? This terrible creature looks like a Lamb but speaks poison! These bêtes seem to be thinking, speaking creatures; but only human beings possess God-given souls. Only we can die to be born again in the bosom of Christ!’
‘Butleran Jihad!’ I called; but I confess without much volume; and people dotted around the crowed were chiming in with less sarcastic responses: It’s true; praise God; amen.
‘The Lamb is the third bête to have dominion over us. Revelation 14:17–20 speaks of the rising of the global ocean levels, just as global warming has caused. 16:8 talks about the rise in global temperatures. In 16:13 the Dragon opens his great bestial mouth and unclean spirits pour out – bêtes, my friends; bêtes in their myriad unholy forms. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. False prophets! Armageddon is almost upon us, the last battle. And when we see the fourth bête, we will know it has begun.’
‘Who is it?’ somebody yelled out. ‘Is it here?’
Preacherman grinned at this. ‘I’ll tell you, friends. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. The fourth great bête is called the great harlot who sits on many waters: Babylon the Great. Bablyon! How well chosen a name – Babel, where the languages of humankind were confused. That confusion has now spread to the animal kingdom. These babbling bêtes are the council officers of Babylon!’
People all around me were calling out.
‘Four portions to this book, like the four seasons. The summer of Christ’s first coming; the autumn of humanity’s falling away; the winter of the last days – but after that, my friends! After that! Christ will come again, and he will cast the bêtes into a fiery lake and chain them back inside Satan’s maw. He will usher in the rule of the saints!’
‘Southampton!’ I called out. But the noise of the crowd was now so loud as to drown me out. They were cheering. Preacherman raised his arms over his head, but awkwardly, like Nixon. It didn’t come naturally to him (I knew him, after all). Then he was clambering down off his crate, and people were bustling around him. I adjudged this to be my moment, and burlied through. ‘Jazon,’ I yelled, and grasped his hand.
He stared right in my face without recognition, and for a long moment I thought he was going to say he didn’t know me. But then his sherry-coloured face broke into a huge grin. ‘Graham! Mate! Long time no see!’
People were jostling him, patting his back. It was noisy. ‘That was some sermon,’ I yelled, beaming at him. ‘End times, man! End
times.’
He face morphed into sober and serious. ‘Every word is true, Gray.’ But then he grinned again. ‘But where have you been, man? Years! Years since we last hung out. Man, you lost weight.’
‘I’m thinking of marketing it as a new diet. The F-Plan. F in this case is for forest.’
‘It’s not like you had much weight to lose to begin with, man. And that beard!’
We agreed to go find a place to have a drink and a catch up. It was not easy extricating ourselves from the crowd; but by the time we had pushed our way through all the eager fans and crazy exegetes to get to the edge of the crowd a new speaker had clambered onto the box, and the attention of the crowd was refocusing itself.
We found our way to a pub. The bouncer looked like he was going to refuse me entry, until Preacherman flashed an official-looking ID and he backed off. Inside was heavy with Victoriana: red and maroon upholstery, dark brown wood panelling, swag-bellied curtains swept back by brass hooks fitted into the wall. I had touched no alcohol since my experience with the whisky, when I had had my last conversation with the Lamb; and felt no urge to repeat that level of drunkenness. But I figured a pint wouldn’t hurt, and Jazon was buying. Indeed, I felt a queer twist in my chest as he ordered: part pleasure at seeing him again, part the kid-like glee at holding a secret. He had just been telling the crowd about how the Lamb was a devil specifically foreseen by the Bible. And I – literally – had that same Lamb in my pocket.
We took a seat; and I used the glass to tip my moustache with a line of white foam. ‘You give these outdoor sermons a lot?’ I asked.
‘Every day,’ he confirmed smugly. ‘Twice on Sunday. Good crowd today, I thought; but I’ve seen better. Though, did you hear that one guy? Heckling me? Heckling a preacher in the middle of his preaching!’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He was standing quite close to me, actually.’
‘What a wanker!’
‘Such a wanker,’ I agreed, eyeing at my beer.
‘God is not heckled,’ said Preacherman severely. ‘He yelled get off, the moron! Like it was a TV talent show!’
‘Idiot,’ I agreed.
‘God is not a TV talent show. The parable of the talents is not about X-Factor. God does not judge. Well.’ Preach sucked his teeth for a moment. ‘Well, he does judge, obviously. But not after that manner.’
‘So,’ I said, ready to change the subject. ‘That’s a handy thing, that ID of yours. Useful.’
‘It’s,’ he replied, ever unable to resist a little boasting, ‘a councilman’s badge.’
‘So that’s good, is it?’
‘Course! The council run things. A certain amount of oversight from London of course, but increasingly Reading is its own citystate. Once the wall’s up fully then— Look, I’m surprised you don’t know this. You not living here, I take it?’
‘Been away,’ I said. We sat, with our beers in front of us, and said nothing for a while; as men out drinking together like to do. Eventually I said: ‘When I was last here it wasn’t like this.’
‘Things change,’ said Preacherman, sagely. He thought about this for a while. Then he said: ‘You can’t step in the same river twice.’ Then: ‘Nothing remains the same. Everything flows.’
‘If everything flows,’ I said, ‘then how can you even tell the river from the rest of the landscape?’
Jazon pondered this profound philosophical question. He opened his mouth to answer it, and then shut his mouth again. Eventually he said: ‘So what you been up to?’
I took a second slurp of beer. ‘I met a woman,’ I said. ‘Fell in love.’
‘Great news,’ said grinning Preacherman, and he clinked his pint glass against mine.
‘Then she died. Cancer.’
‘Sad news,’ said scowling Preacherman, and he directed a withering look at his own pint glass, as if it had betrayed him by chiming so musically against mine.
We sat in silence for a long time. ‘So,’ I said eventually. ‘You’re actually on the council?’
‘It’s war, man. Things aren’t too bad down here, but up north— Area denial, man! Area denial!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘FGR5s!’
I took another sip. ‘No notion what those letters stand for.’
‘Planes, dude. Fighter jets – overflying the countryside, bombing runs. When I was a kid, you know, I used to think that they were called bombing runs because it looks like the planes have the shits, you know? All those plop-plops tumbling out the back as they overfly?’
‘I don’t think that’s why they’re called bombing runs, Jase,’ I told him.
‘No, of course not. But it’s serious, man! White phosphor, animal carcasses charred and burning across a wide,’ he stumbled. ‘Wide, you know. Swathe. Do I mean swathe?’
‘I think you mean swathe,’ I said.
‘Swathe,’ he said, trying the word out in his mouth. ‘Swathe.’ He obviously liked it. ‘Sway-athe.’ A deep glug, and the suds were sliding down the inside of an empty glass. ‘You want another?’
‘I’m going to pace myself,’ I told him.
He toddled off to the bar, and returned with a second pint for himself. ‘Thirsty work, preaching,’ he told me, and drank a quarter-pint in one go. Then he said: ‘There’s a BA Major General stopping with us at the moment.’
‘Didn’t know British Airways went in for ranks like that,’ I said.
Preacherman stared at me. Then he said, ‘British Army.’ He peered at me again, trying to ascertain if I had been joking or not. ‘Nice guy, actually. Nice chap. Name of Tat Hetheridge. Not sure what Tat is short for. If it is short for anything. He doesn’t actually have a division with him; it’s more a question of military coordination. Is why he’s here. So he has a courtesy seat.’
‘I’m not following.’
‘On the council,’ Jazon said. ‘The thing is, Tat was telling me: the troops love it. The problem, according to him, is that when you go into combat against other human beings, you have to – you know. The problem is you have to kill human beings.’
‘I would have thought that was rather the point.’
‘Ah, but fighting bêtes is different, you see. The troops get markedly less PTSD’d by gunning down cows and dogs. They still get a bit PSTD’d. Some of them. But not nearly so much. He said – Tat, I mean – that the smell plays a large part. I hadn’t realized that, but apparently odour is a bit of a morale problem on the modern battlefield. You scorch down the enemy with your modern weapons, and a lot of them burn, and there’s this stench of burning human flesh, which is apparently really unsettling and disturbing. But fighting the bêtes? Burn them up and it just smells like a barbecue. So that’s much less likely to send your squaddie off to the company psych officer.’
‘I’d never thought of it like that before,’ I said truthfully.
‘So, yeah, the council has wartime powers. Cabinet ordinance 755. We don’t have the aggressive marital bêtes down here, not like they have up north, but we’re readying ourselves.’
‘Marital?’ I queried.
He looked at me. ‘Martial,’ he agreed. ‘Always get those two confused. Anyway, we’re building the wall. But a lot of what the council has to do is keep up civilian morale. That’s why I’m on the panel. There is a Bishop of Reading, but he has boils.’
‘How very biblical.’
‘No laughing matter. He has them so he can’t sit down. Painful. He’s had to go to a special clinic in London.’
‘And you’re his stand-in? I thought you were Church of Christ the Carnivore?’
‘Of England, mate,’ said Preacherman, puffing his chest out. ‘Of England. That meat-gobbling cult was a dead end. Anyway, and not to boast, but I’ve a following. Here in the town, I mean. You saw the crowd at my sermon, just now. They love me.’
‘Apart from that one heckler.’
‘That male organ of generation.’ Preacherman nodded. ‘But there’s plenty of people in this town agree with me. The bêtes
are signs of the incipient apocalypse.’ I think he said incipient. It wasn’t a very Jazon word, and the second pint had rubbed the sharper edges of his pronunciation, but I think that’s what he said.
I took a deep breath. Preacherman was, I suppose, my oldest friend; or at least, the oldest still to be my friend. I had older ones, of course; but not many, and most of those went the other way with my divorce. Nonetheless, I was apprehensive about what I was about to say to him. As is my way, when my soul is touched in howsoever small a manner with fear, I became wrathful.
‘It’s all bollocks, you know,’ I said, a quantum of spiteful anger flushing through me. ‘The end times. It’s always the end times, and yet the sun always comes up tomorrow. That you can prophecy the future gubbins, is just a Sphinx trick for the masses.’
‘Is not,’ he said, staring into his pint. ‘It’s real. It’s true.’
‘The thing about the Egyptian Sphinx,’ I went on, ‘is that it was an animal. It used to devour those who couldn’t answer its riddle. It was the world’s first talking beast – Mama Bête.’
‘What about the snake in Eden, eh?’ Preacherman retorted. ‘That predates any of your gypsy nonsense.’
‘Jaze,’ I said.
‘Sss,’ he hissed. I thought for a moment he was carrying on his point about the Edenic serpent by performing hissing impression of the creature. But then I saw his eyes, and realized. I corrected myself immediately, and gulped back my annoyance. Because, after all, I needed him.
‘Jason,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Jase. On. Look, I need your help.’
He glowered at me. ‘With an s,’ he said, and took another slug of beer. ‘Jason.’
‘I’m serious, mate,’ I pressed him. ‘This is important. When have I ever asked you for a favour before? I won’t ever again, either. This once, this only.’