Godsent

by Richard Burton

  Tefflon was wearing a running suit. He had an MP5 player strapped to his arm. He looked exactly as if he’d happened by on his afternoon jog and then decided to stick around and see what all the excitement was about. He talked to no one, and no one talked to him. It was uncanny the way that people’s gazes seemed to just glide off him, how he wandered through the crowd as if surrounded by an invisible force field that pushed people away so gently they didn’t even realize they’d been pushed. Papa Jim had to admit the guy’s name, for all its adolescent melodrama, was well chosen.

  That MP5 player, of course, wasn’t really an MP5 player at all. It was a disguised sonic grenade, a defensive weapon that had demonstrated its worth countless times in the Middle East and here in the homeland. When activated, the small grenade released a burst of high-pitched sound that shorted out the nervous system of anyone within ten yards, incapacitating them for up to fifteen minutes. U.S. troops and munchies used the grenades as a quick and humane method of crowd control. The plan called for Tefflon to wait until the press conference was underway, then to scream out Allah akhbar—Arabic for “God is great”—and activate the grenade. Papa Jim wanted the attack to be blamed on homegrown Muslim terrorists; it would garner more sympathy for Ethan, even from those Christians who might find his claims upsetting, and it would reinforce the idea among the public that the enemy might strike anywhere, at any time, a fact which, in Papa Jim’s opinion, they could not be reminded of too often, as this was one government that derived from the fear, more than from the consent, of the governed.

  Once the grenade went off, incapacitating those nearest to Tefflon and sowing panic through the rest of the crowd, Denny and his squad of munchies would converge on Ethan and Lisa and snatch them away. Later, Papa Jim would meet privately with Ethan. A lot would depend on that meeting. If only Kate hadn’t given him the slip! Her presence there would be invaluable. Still, it wasn’t too late. He had agents searching for her. Perhaps he would find her in time. And if not, he would make do without her.

  But first things first, Papa Jim thought as he sipped from the tumbler of whiskey. It won’t do to get ahead of yourself . . .

  He would have given a lot to know what was going on behind the placid exterior of that house. The curtains were drawn on every window, and there was no sign that the place was even occupied, other than the steadily growing crowd outside. The usual devices employed by Homeland Security for eavesdropping purposes had proved useless; it was, Denny had reported, as if some kind of nullifying field were surrounding the house, shielding it from even the most sophisticated electronic snooping.

  A podium had been erected at the edge of the front stoop, bristling with microphones. Papa Jim wondered who had done it. One of the networks, perhaps. Or maybe the podium and its array of microphones had spontaneously appeared, called into being by the sovereign needs of the media. It sometimes seemed to Papa Jim that reality itself conformed to those needs by some law of physics the scientists had yet to discover.

  Just then, the front door opened, and Papa Jim, feeling adrenaline surge through his body, unmuted the volume of the TV and sat forward in his chair with such alacrity that he knocked over the glass of whisky on the nearby table. He ignored the spill.

  “ . . . coming out now!” gushed the voice of the offscreen newscaster in breathless excitement as a wordless sound went up from the crowd like the simultaneous indrawing of many breaths.

  Meanwhile, in Papa Jim’s cranium, Denny’s tiny fly-voice buzzed. He’s coming out now!

  “I don’t need a damn play-by-play,” Papa Jim snapped.

  Understood, from Denny, who would keep quiet now until and unless he had something of real significance to say. One thing about Denny: He knew when to shut up. It was a valuable talent, Papa Jim thought, one all too lacking in Washington, D.C. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

  To Papa Jim’s surprise, it wasn’t Ethan who emerged from the house. It was a young man of approximately Ethan’s age but much bigger, with the heavyset yet muscular build of a football player and eyes that darted nervously from side to side even as he strode resolutely to the podium. Papa Jim recognized him from the background information he’d hurriedly pulled together in the last twelve hours as Peter Wiggan, Ethan’s best friend. But many in the crowd obviously took him for Ethan, because as soon as he appeared, a massive roar went up, which then fractured into caterwauling voices shouting out separate statements and questions.

  “Are you Jesus come again?”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Save us!”

  The young man, Peter, raised his hands to shush the crowd. “I’m not Ethan!” he shouted, his words amplified by the microphones. “Please be quiet!” Finally, when no one seemed to heed him, he bellowed, “SHUT UP!”

  The words thundered over the crowd as if from on high. A shocked silence descended. Peter cleared his throat and began to speak.

  “Hi. I’m Peter Wiggan. I’m a friend of Ethan’s—that’s the guy you’re all here to see. He’ll be out in a minute, and he’ll answer all your questions, or at least do his best to answer them. But I came out here first because I wanted to get a few things straight. First of all, you can think whatever you like, but Ethan deserves to be listened to politely. We believe in politeness here in Olathe, and we also believe in sticking up for our friends, so if anybody has any ideas about shouting Ethan down or anything like that, you might as well just clear out now, because folks in this town won’t stand for it. That’s not a threat or anything. Just the truth. We look out for our own. The next thing is, please try to listen with an open mind. I mean, I’m pretty sure Jesus never held a press conference, but I bet he would have if he’d been around today instead of two thousand years ago! All Jesus had to get his message out was word of mouth. That’s why he traveled around all the time preaching. It wasn’t just because the Romans were after him. It was the fastest way to get his message out there. Ethan’s just doing the same thing. Okay, last but not least, you’re probably wondering what kind of guy Ethan is, if he’s somebody you can trust. Absolutely, yes. I’ve known him since we were kids. In fact, I used to beat him up on a regular basis.”

  At this, a current of startled laughter swept through the crowd.

  Peter nodded, grinning sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s true. I beat up the Son of God! And he wasn’t the only one, either. I was a bully. A real jerk. I’m not proud of it. I wanted to mention it just so nobody here thinks I’m some kind of goody-two-shoes. I’m not. But I’m not the lousy person I was back then, either, and the main reason I’m not is Ethan. He showed me that it was possible to live a different kind of life. A better life. Really, when you come right down to it, is that anything to get upset over? Who the heck doesn’t want to live a better life? That’s what this country’s about, right? I mean, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be fighting for? So anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. Thanks for listening.”

  The crowd began murmuring again as Peter stepped away from the podium with a glance back over his shoulder. Papa Jim made a mental note to have the kid’s family investigated for loyalty; some of those comments were a little worrisome.

  Then Ethan stepped out the front door, followed closely by Lisa, who was holding his hand, and all thought of investigations vanished from Papa Jim’s mind. The crowd became as hushed as it had after Peter had shouted for everyone to shut up, only this time the silence seemed to arise naturally, without a word from Ethan. His presence alone was sufficient to quell the murmuring; he seemed surrounded by an aura of . . . well, Papa Jim hated to use the word, but the only one that came to mind was “holiness.” Even the talking heads on CNN had dropped their prattling voices to hushed and reverent whisperings, as though they were covering the final putt of a playoff at the Masters. Papa Jim tuned them out completely.

  That’s him, he thought proudly. My great-grandson.

  The Son of God.

  It even said so at the top of the TV screen. Although, there, a question mark had been added
: The son of God?

  Papa Jim smiled in the privacy of his office. How many guys could make a boast like that about their progeny? Not too damn many. It was a good feeling.

  There was nothing at first glance that marked Ethan immediately as extraordinary. He was tall, but not unusually so, and fit, but no athlete like his friend Peter. He was handsome enough, with his mother’s high cheekbones, but no one would have mistaken him for a rock star. Yet when the camera zoomed in on his face, his gold-flecked brown eyes seemed to radiate a quiet wisdom and authority that made it difficult for Papa Jim to look away. Those eyes seemed to be gazing directly into his own, as if from the other side of a window. They were disconcerting yet also mesmerizing, seeming almost to glow with an inner light. They were the kind of eyes that inspired voters with trust. The eyes of a leader people would follow through the gates of hell itself.

  Denny’s voice crackled in his ears. Tefflon is in position. Everything is go.

  Ethan, meanwhile, stepped up to the podium, where he stood flanked by Peter and Lisa. He raised one hand in an awkward wave. “Hi, everybody,” he said, and at those words it was as if a dam had collapsed. Suddenly the crowd found its voice, or rather voices, and a flood of shouted questions and comments erupted, each one drowning out the others. Ethan drew back slightly at the onslaught, looking all at once like a scared young kid, and glanced to Lisa as if for reassurance. She gave him a brave smile.

  Seeing that only confirmed Papa Jim’s judgment that Lisa had been turned. Not to the Congregation, but to Ethan. Her loyalty to him now outweighed her loyalty to Conversatio . . . and, by extension, to Papa Jim. Sooner or later, he knew, he was going to have to deal with that problem, but in a way that would not alienate Ethan—that would, in fact, make him more dependent upon Papa Jim. He was confident an answer would come to him. Answers always did.

  Ethan raised his hands for silence and, once again to Papa Jim’s vast surprise, got it. It was uncanny the control the young man had over an audience that was by no means uniformly well disposed toward him, an audience of which a sizable portion was made up of reporters, who were well disposed toward no one except themselves.

  But they quieted at his gesture, all of them.

  Even the talking heads fell silent.

  Papa Jim was not easily impressed, but this boy had managed to do it before he had even said a word.

  Then, in the pristine silence, Ethan began to speak. He spoke softly and without haste, yet also without hesitation. It was as if his words perfectly fit the silence. As if that silence had been shaped purposefully to receive and contain them, like a chalice that is not truly itself until it is filled with wine. Papa Jim had never experienced anything like it. Once his speechwriters got on the job, there would be no stopping this boy. He was tempted to give Denny the signal to launch the operation now, but he was too curious to hear what Ethan had to say.

  “First, thanks for coming out this afternoon. And thanks, Ms. Rodriguez, for making sure everybody got my invitation.” He nodded at Rita Rodriguez, who stood prominently in the front of the crowd, in an area roped off for members of the press. She smiled back as Ethan went on. “I’m going to do my best to answer all your questions, but first I’d like to talk for a moment about who I am and why I’m here, if that’s okay.”

  He paused, and apparently it was okay, because no one said a word. The camera panned the crowd, and every face was upturned toward Ethan in rapt concentration. Papa Jim saw that many members of the audience were recording Ethan on video cameras and cell phones. The sense of history in the making gave him goose bumps.

  “You’ve met my friend Pete, who by the way snuck out here while my mom and I were busy talking about what I should say. But I guess he didn’t do such a bad job of an introduction at that.” He gave Peter a smile, and Peter nodded stiffly in return, rigid with stage fright, a frozen grin on his face, as if only now taking note of all the cameras. Then Ethan turned to Lisa. “This is my mom, Lisa. You may have heard that I, well, raised her from the dead.” He paused for a second, then another. “It’s true. I did. But after all, she raised me first, so it was the least I could do.”

  At this, a ripple of laughter coursed through the crowd. It seemed to Papa Jim’s ear that there was something almost grateful about that laughter, as if Ethan had somehow convinced these people already that he wasn’t their enemy, wasn’t someone to attack or make fun of, but someone who was with them, one off them. As if they were all in this together.

  It’s a miracle, Papa Jim thought. A bloody miracle.

  But of course it wasn’t.

  Not yet.

  “I’m Ethan Brown,” he went on. “I healed those people at Olathe Medical last night, and I’m sure you’re wondering why. The truth is, it happened pretty much by accident. See, I’d only just remembered who I am and why I’m here. As you can probably imagine, it came as a bit of a shock, to say the least. And then, on top of it all, my mom got in this terrible car accident and died. So I was pretty upset. I wasn’t thinking too clearly. I knew I wanted to bring her back, but it was the first time I’d ever done anything like that. Even Jesus started with something easy, turning water to wine. He left the harder stuff until later, until he had more practice. But I went straight to the advanced course. And I guess you could say I misjudged. I not only brought my mom back, I healed everybody else in the hospital.

  “Like I said, it was an accident, but I’m not sorry it happened. How could I regret saving somebody’s life? At the same time, though, I can’t just snap my fingers and heal every sick person in the world. I can’t bring everybody back from the dead. I thought it was important to tell you that up front, so people don’t get the idea that I’m here to do magic tricks or something. You shouldn’t have those kinds of expectations about me. Jesus didn’t heal everybody in the world, did He? Sure, He performed miracles, but that wasn’t the reason God sent Him to Earth.

  “Actually, that’s another thing I wanted to clear up. I told Ms. Rodriguez that I was the Son of God, or one of them. The Bible mentions two sons: the Son of God and the Son of man. Jesus was the Son of God. I’m the second Son, the Son of man. Jesus knew all about me. He said, ‘Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.’ Just like John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, Jesus prepared the way for me. Now I’m here. Why?

  “As I told Ms. Rodriguez, to shake things up. ‘The Son of Man shall send forth his angels,’ said Jesus, ‘and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity.’ And He also said: ‘For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.’”

  At this, Papa Jim noticed some angry mutterings, isolated for now but perhaps not for much longer.

  He’s losing them . . .

  Again, he thought of signaling Denny to launch the operation, but again he held back. He had to see what was going to happen. How Ethan handled himself.

  Suddenly one voice was raised from amid the crowd. Papa Jim couldn’t see from where, exactly, but it rang out loud and clear, a man’s voice, rough with indignation. “You call yourself greater than Our Lord Jesus Christ?”

  Ethan didn’t hesitate in replying. “Is the younger brother greater than the older? The younger brother looks up to the older brother, and the older brother looks out for the younger brother. Between two such brothers there is no rivalry, only respect, admiration, and love. For they are both sons of the same father. Jesus had His work to do, and I have mine. ‘For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost.’

  “My brother was called the Good Shepherd, but it was also said of Him, and He said it Himself many times, that He came not just with a shepherd’s crook but with a sword. Yet He never carried a weapon, not even a knife, and the one time a sword was raised in His defense, by Peter, Jesus told him to put it down, and then He healed the wound that Peter had inflicted, on one of the Roman soldiers sent to arre
st Him. So what did He mean by saying that He had come with a sword? Just this: His tongue was a sword, and His words were the cuts and thrusts and parries of that sword. His message pierced and cut and brought pain to those who heard and heeded it, because it’s never easy to take that first step toward God, which is a step away from so much of your life, so much that you thought was important and necessary but really isn’t. And for those who didn’t hear, didn’t heed, the pain was even worse, because it would be endless: the pain of separation from God, the pain of eternity in hell. That was the sword of Jesus, the Son of God. But what about the Son of man? Look at me.” And here Ethan spread his arms wide. “Do you see a sword? A gun? Any weapon at all?” He let his arms fall back to his sides. “I’m not my brother. God didn’t send Jesus back; this isn’t the Second Coming, even though I’m the second Son. I’m not here to walk the same path that Jesus walked. And my message isn’t the same, either. This isn’t a do-over. It’s not a repeat or a remake! Did Jesus preach the continuation of the laws and commandments set down by Moses? Or did he bring a new testament, a new understanding? Now it’s time for a newer testament. It’s time for the next step in God’s plan. Because God’s plan isn’t a dead thing. It’s not meant to lay over us like a heavy shroud, holding us down, blinding us to the wonders and mysteries of the world. It’s alive, and like all living things, it grows and changes. It evolves. I’m what you might call the next stage in that evolution. And in the weeks and months to come, I hope we can have a conversation about what that means. Starting right now.” He paused, momentarily losing his composure. He seemed to be fighting back tears. Then he wiped his eyes and smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I guess this is an emotional moment for me. Now, I promised Ms. Rodriguez the first question.”