Godsent

by Richard Burton

  “Father!” he cried, spreading his arms wide. “Look what humanity has made of Your church! Of Your whole creation! They’ve turned something sacred into a cesspool. A toxic waste dump where the evil and the corrupt thrive at the expense of the innocent and the good. There’s nothing worth saving here. You want reaping? Fine. Give me that sickle. I’ll reap. Do you hear? Answer me, Father! I’ve made my choice, damn you! It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  But there was no answer.

  Ethan felt tears running down his cheeks, and he brushed them angrily away with the heels of his hands. “Why did she have to die like that?” he demanded, his voice breaking. “Why did any of them have to die? It’s not fair. It’s not right! I’ll bring her back! I’ll bring them all back! I’ll . . .”

  Ethan sank to his knees with a strangled moan. He knelt there on the altar, his sides heaving. What he felt now was worse than what he’d experienced outside, in the riot. The sense of hopelessness that had overwhelmed him there had been strengthened by a source outside himself. But now it was all his own. And it seemed a heavier and more terrible burden by far.

  “I can’t do this,” he said softly, as if speaking more to himself than to God. “I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want it.” He raised his tearful face toward the ceiling. “I’m tired, Father. Can you understand that? I’m tired and sick at heart. I can’t do what You ask of me. I’m sorry, but I just can’t. I’ve failed You. Failed everyone.” He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving.

  The first thing he was aware of was the music. It began softly, so that it seemed as if it were coming from a long way off, from outside the church, but in seconds it swelled louder, and he realized that he was hearing the strains of organ music. He lifted his head in wonder. There, opposite him in the church balcony, stood the battered remains of an organ. It was in no better shape than the church itself, and in fact a good deal worse; it had not merely been neglected but vandalized, and that repeatedly. And yet the music issuing from it now was of a loveliness unsurpassed in his experience or his imagination. The soaring notes swept through him, lifting his heart. He found himself on his feet with no awareness of having stood.

  A breeze was stirring in the shadows of the church. Ethan felt it whisper past him and thought at first that Gabriel had returned. But the angel did not appear. Instead, the breeze intensified, whipping up sheets of old newspaper that caught fire as they swirled into the dancing flames of the candles. He cried out, afraid that the church would ignite, but the burning papers spun as though in a whirlwind then flew suddenly apart. Ethan cried out again, but this time in amazement and childlike joy, for it was doves that he saw, three doves as white and unblemished as snow that has never known even the imprint of an eye. The doves swooped in front of Ethan’s face and hung there, fluttering effortlessly before him, gazing at him with eyes that were nothing like the eyes of doves. They seemed to contain the fires that had birthed them. Yet the flames Ethan saw there were not the destructive, voracious flames that had raged in the eyes of the rioters. These burned with a gentle, golden radiance that pierced right to his soul. They were not merely beautiful; they were beauty itself, and Ethan felt his bedraggled soul stir under their compassionate scrutiny. Then, with a whisper of wings, the trinity of doves rose slowly toward the ceiling.

  Ethan watched them go. In the fierce light of the candles, the church seemed glazed with gold, endowed with a brilliance that was almost blinding. Motes of dust, swirling in the air, had taken on the glitter of diamonds. And the dark windows were dark no longer but instead blazed with color: purple and gold, forest green, crimson, sunflower yellow.

  The music reached its climax in a mighty crash of chords that coincided with a strobe of light as the doves seemed to incandesce out of existence. The stained-glass windows burst inward with a roar, shattering into a thousand fragments of color that fell slowly, spinning, each one as if on fire from within. Ethan threw his hands over his face to protect himself from the shards, but they did not cut him, did not even touch him.

  When he lowered his hands, all was as it had been. The church was restored to its former degraded state . . . if indeed it had ever really changed. But Ethan had seen the beauty that lay hidden amid the trash, and he could not forget it. He still saw it there, saw it through the ugliness. It had always been there, he knew. He had just forgotten how to look.

  “Thank you, Father,” he whispered, smiling. The sadness was still there at the center of his heart, and he thought now that it always would be. But it, too, was beautiful in its way, and it, too, had a place in who he was. In what he must do.

  Moments later, the door to the church was smashed down, and a group of four munchies entered in tight formation, their weapons raised expectantly, flashlights probing the darkness. Fanning out, they searched quickly but methodically. They found DNA traces of Ethan and spatters of his blood on the floor, a pew, and the altar. But Ethan himself was gone, as was the black priest several witnesses had seen carrying him here.

  After the munchies left, a team of Congregation agents, who had been observing from a nearby rooftop, entered the church and conducted a search of their own. It was no more successful.

  When they had departed in their turn, Ethan stepped out of the shadows in which he had cloaked himself. He walked to an alcove, where stood a plaster statue of the Virgin, covered in graffiti and gang tags, rude breasts spray-painted onto its chest in garish red, its left arm snapped off at the wrist, its right arm uplifted, palm out, as though pleading still with those who had committed this defilement. He bowed his head and prayed silently for a moment. Then he turned to leave the church.

  Behind him, under the gaze of the statue, a single candle burned.

  CHAPTER 22

  Kate was in an open pavilion at the edge of the beach when she saw Trey approaching down the stone walkway from the main house. With a sigh, she set down the mystery novel she’d been reading. Despite her reluctance to take time away, she was glad now that she’d given in to Ethan’s entreaties. The last several days had been like a simple, small miracle—a miracle all the more precious for being so ordinary, just sun and sand, water as blue and clear as the sky, and a generous helping of the solitude she hadn’t realized she’d been missing until she got here and discovered that, aside from Trey, Wilson, and a staff so discretely efficient in their ministrations that they might almost have been mistaken for elves, she had the whole island to herself. It was the first time she’d really been alone since leaving the convent. She would have thought the years she’d spent there had purged her of any further need for solitude, but instead they seemed to have given her a taste for it. For once Wilson and Trey had escorted her to the shamefully lavish accommodations set aside for her, a luxurious suite of rooms overlooking the beach that made the memory of the small, unadorned cell she’d called home at the convent seem like something out of a gloomy fairy tale, she’d felt the accumulated stress and strain fall away from her like a burden she hadn’t been aware of carrying until she had the chance to set it down. The first thing she’d done had been to take a long, hot soak in the Jacuzzi. Then, as if she hadn’t gotten enough water, she’d gone down to the beach for a swim. When she emerged from the sea, it was to find a masseuse waiting in the pavilion where she’d left her things. Afterward, she had a nap, then dressed for a dinner of freshly caught fish that was perhaps the best meal she’d ever tasted in her life. The next day was the same, only better. And so it went. Though Ethan was always on her mind, she wasn’t worried about him—she was glad that he’d gotten away from Papa Jim’s influence, and she had faith in his ability to handle himself. After all, he’d promised her that he would be all right.

  But now, as Trey drew near, something in the way he held himself, or perhaps the expression on his face, which was even more businesslike than usual, made Kate get to her feet and hurry to meet him. “What is it, Trey? What’s happened?”

  “The boss wants to talk to you,” he said, and handed her a
cell phone.

  She flicked it open and brought it to her ear. “Hello? Papa Jim?”

  “Have you seen the news?”

  The abruptness of the question, as well as his tone of voice, told her that something terrible must have happened to Ethan. She froze, hardly daring to breathe.

  “Are you there, Kate? Can you hear me?”

  “What’s happened, Papa Jim?”

  “Maggie Richardson is dead.”

  “What?” It took her a moment to make sense of his words. “How?”

  “News reports say suicide, but we’re pretty sure it was murder. The Congregation killed her, Kate.”

  “My God!” Her mind was reeling. “Does Ethan know?”

  “We think so. There was a riot in Times Square . . .”

  “A riot?”

  “The worst New York has seen in more than a century. Maggie’s death seems to have triggered it. Things are under control now, but Ethan was spotted right in the thick of it. I sent a team in after him. They tracked him to an abandoned church, but then they lost him.”

  “What do you mean, ‘lost him’?”

  “You know Ethan,” came Papa Jim’s voice. “You know what he’s capable of. All I can tell you is, he went into that church, but he didn’t come out.”

  “Do . . .” She swallowed, forced herself to ask the question as calmly as possible. “Do you think the Congregation has him?”

  “I don’t know, Kate,” he said. “I doubt it, but I just don’t know for sure.”

  “I want to come home,” she told him. “Right now.”

  “There’s nothing you can do here, Kate. We’ll find him, I promise.”

  “That wasn’t a request, Papa Jim. I need to be there. I’m his mother, for God’s sake.”

  “All right,” he said. “I can have you flown back tomorrow morning.”

  “Why not tonight?”

  He sighed heavily. “Don’t pull my chain, Kate. Believe it or not, I don’t have a jet standing by twenty-four hours a day, ready to take off at a moment’s notice.”

  “Papa Jim . . .” she began wearily.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “So I do have a jet like that. But I’m on it right now, heading for New York. The soonest I can arrange transportation for you is tomorrow.”

  “Why couldn’t you just tell me that from the start, Papa Jim? Why do you always have to lie about everything?”

  “Guess I’ve been in politics too long, baby girl,” he replied with a chuckle, not at all ashamed at having been caught out. “It just comes naturally by now.”

  “Do you even remember what truth is? Do you even care?”

  “Of course I care,” he answered. “I care about God and about our country. I care about our family. Those three things are sacred to me.”

  “I don’t think you care about anything but yourself, Papa Jim. Not really.”

  There was a pause. “Why can’t you trust me like you used to?” he asked at last in a plaintive voice.

  “Are you serious?”

  “I know I’m not perfect. I know I’ve made mistakes. But don’t you realize that you mean everything in the world to me? I would never purposefully do anything to hurt you, Kate. You or Ethan. No matter what happens, you’ve got to believe that.”

  “I believe you’ve convinced yourself of it,” she said. “I’d like to believe it too. Of course I would. But the reality is, I just don’t. I’m sorry, Papa Jim. But when it comes to you, I’ve run out of faith. If you want to convince me otherwise, it’s going to take more than words. It’s going to take actions.”

  “I told you I’d send a plane—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she interrupted, “and you know it.”

  “Look,” began Papa Jim, only to be interrupted by a beep. “Damn, I’ve got to take that. I’ll see you tomorrow, Kate. We’ll talk more then.”

  And he hung up.

  Kate felt like flinging the cell phone across the beach and into the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. Instead, she folded it shut and handed it back to Trey with a sigh.

  “Sounds like I better tell Wilson to start packing,” he said, tucking the phone into the side pocket of his shorts.

  Kate nodded mutely and followed him back to the main house.

  As she packed her things, she prayed that Ethan hadn’t been found by the Congregation, captured or worse. She thought she would know if something like that had happened. She thought she would feel it deep inside. But even if he’d escaped them again, it didn’t mean her son was safe. She knew how much he’d loved Maggie, and she was certain the news of the girl’s death had wounded him deeply, left him heartbroken and angry. Surely he would know or suspect that it hadn’t been suicide but murder. She wondered if he would be angry enough to use his powers for revenge. Perhaps that was the trap the Congregation had set for him, tempting him to lash out in his anger and in doing so destroying something in his own soul. If only she could talk to him, even if just for a moment. Or not even talk, but simply be with him in silence, sharing his pain. She felt guilty, as if she’d once again let him down, abandoned him just when he needed her most. Of course, she knew that wasn’t true, but she felt it all the same. Just as she felt the need to return home now, even if Papa Jim was right and there was nothing she could do. Her maternal instincts could not be denied. Nor did she want to deny them. She’d denied them for too long already.

  Father O’Malley hesitated as the doorway that led into the noötic field irised open, confronting him with the same blank expanse of depthless white that he’d seen the last time he stood on this threshold. It was the same . . . but he was not. His experience with Grand Inquisitor had changed him in some fundamental way he couldn’t quite put a finger on, give a name to. Then he had come in fear and curiosity, responding to a summons whose purpose he could not have guessed in a million years. Now he had returned with a grim task to perform, a duty that had been imposed on him yet which he had accepted even though it went against every oath he’d sworn, against everything he’d believed about himself.

  Like some modern-day version of St. George, he had come to slay a dragon. Only, unlike the famous saint, he had devoted his life to the study of this dragon. To its care and feeding. Its preservation. He had worshipped it, or the idea of it, almost more than he had worshipped God. Indeed, the two had been so intertwined in his mind that it had come as a shock to realize that they were not identical. Now the dragon had asked him to be the instrument of its death, the agent of its suicide. And he, God forgive him, had agreed.

  Was it a sin to participate in the suicide of an intelligent machine? A machine that claimed to have a soul? Theology had never been O’Malley’s strong suit. He knew that the Congregation would consider him worse than a traitor for what he was about to do. Up until recently, he would have agreed with them. He thought it likely that he wouldn’t survive much longer than Grand Inquisitor itself. Nor was he a brave man, to face what seemed like certain death with equanimity and determination. He was terrified out of his wits. But the thing was, he knew that GI was smarter than he was, smarter than any human being, and he knew as well, at least to the best of his ability to know such things, that GI’s programming code had not been corrupted. Therefore, he had faith in GI’s computations and in the results of those computations. If this was what Grand Inquisitor had determined was necessary, then O’Malley was as sure as he could possibly be about anything that it was the right decision, even though, apart from the terror, it left him unutterably sad.

  Making the sign of the cross, he stepped over the threshold and into the cold whiteness of the noötic field. It swallowed him up, engulfing his body, his senses.

  This time he was not greeted by the appearance of a confessional.

  This time he was greeted by a man, or the representation of one. An avatar. He was dressed anachronistically, in light blue knee breeches and white hose, with a ruffled white shirt, brown waistcoat, and matching coat. Upon his head was a powdered wig. He carried a slender
black walking stick in one hand. The man bowed stiffly to O’Malley, with a crisp bearing that struck him as military. “I wish I could say I was glad to see you, Father O’Malley. But you are welcome nevertheless.”

  O’Malley found himself at a loss for words.

  “Under the circumstances,” the man continued, making a kind of abbreviated flourish with the walking stick, “it seemed fitting to wear the aspect of J. H. Müller. It would be both impious and inaccurate to name him my creator, yet it is he who stands at the beginning of all that I have become. But time is pressing, Father O’Malley. We must act quickly. Follow me, and say nothing of your purpose here.”

  “But are you still certain?” asked O’Malley, balking. “Forgive me, but I have to ask. I have to know.”

  “My intent remains unchanged,” replied Müller.

  “And it must be now?”

  “The Son of man will soon be in the hands of the Congregation. I will not allow myself to be used against him.” So saying, Müller turned and walked off, plying the walking stick briskly.

  O’Malley hurried after him. “Where are we going?” he asked, trying to stay close. Aside from himself and Müller, there was nothing visible at all, no objects or landmarks with which to orient himself, just the impenetrable whiteness without height or depth or distance. He found it intensely disconcerting, like strolling through the interior of a cloud. Only by keeping his eyes fixed on Müller could he maintain his balance.

  “To my core. The heart of all I am.”

  “But why all this white? Why not just show me the room as it is? Is there something you don’t want me to see?”