“Damn,” laughed Toxie. “I feel like king of the world.” He held the staff toward the window.
“Hey,” I said. “Be careful.”
The sky was full of lightning.
Toxie never heard me.
I backed away. I’d never seen a storm come up that quickly before. The rain hammered against the skylight and the windows. A lightning bolt exploded over the roof.
“I think you should put it down,” I said.
He wasn’t listening.
Hatch seemed not to notice. He was starting to work on the other wheel.
Toxie held up a thumb, straight up, everything under control, and smiled like a man holding four aces. Then, without warning, he rammed the staff through the glass and seemed to challenge the storm.
The wind howled and beat against the side of the building. Hatch looked up and saw the danger and shouted for him to stop. But Toxie stayed with it, alternately jabbing at the rain and jerking the staff away. My imagination kicked in: The storm rolled and subsided and surged as if he were orchestrating it. Thunder danced across the rooftops.
Rain poured in and lightning fell all around us. Toxie stood in the middle of it, cautious, prudent, cagey, take-no-chances Toxie, drenched, wearing that god-awful grin, his face illuminated with flashing light, conducting thunderbolts.
It is the vision of him that I will take to my grave. That was how it was just before blue-white light caught the rod, danced its length, connected Toxie to the eagle, and held him, held them both. The window exploded, and Toxie still laughed, laughed over the roar of the storm. Then he was gone, and I was listening to the steady beat of the rain. What remained looked like an oversized charred sausage, steam pouring off blackened meat. The curtains were on fire and so was the carpet and a couple of cabinets. The golden shaft, still bright, still the color of the sun despite everything, lay where it had fallen.
Hatch let go the axle and staggered to his feet and backed away with a desperate look. He ripped one of the curtains down and tried to beat out the fire but it was spreading too fast.
“Let’s go,” I said, heading for the elevator. “The place is going to burn down.”
He tried a few more swings, gave up, and grabbed the Viking war helmet and the sundisk. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he gasped.
The fire spread fast. I kept my eyes off the place where Toxie had been. Later I felt sorry for him but at the moment it was hard to be too sympathetic to a guy who kept waving a metal pole at an electrical storm. The truth is, I couldn’t get my mind off all the gold that we were about to lose.
I grabbed our two bags and threw them on the elevator and punched the button for the first floor. Nothing happened. I looked at the power indicator lamp. It was off. The electric candles were also out. “We’ll have to use the stairs,” I said.
We rolled the wheel back out onto the floor, but it was slowing us up too much. “Let it go,” I told him.
“Are you crazy, Cash?” He was almost in tears. “Do you have any idea what this thing is worth?” At that moment the staff with the snakes caught his eye. But we had our hands full.
We navigated among the burning cases. At one point the wheel fell over and smashed the bellows. Hatch kicked the bellows out of the way and we righted the wheel again. By the time we got to the double doors, the rear of the building was an inferno.
“It’ll be easy to get it downstairs,” he said, trying to laugh. He leaned it against the wall while I rattled first one doorknob and then the other.
“What’s the matter now?” he demanded.
“It must have locked behind us.”
Sweat was pouring into his eyes. “I’d like to kill this guy Rankowski.” He threw his shoulder against the doors and bounced off. We tried it together, while I thought what would happen to us if the doors came open. But they didn’t. They had a little bit of give, and that was all. Smoke was becoming a problem, and I suspected we would smother before we burned.
“Wait a minute.” I went back and retrieved the staff with the snakes. I jammed it between the doors and tried to lever them open. Hatch put his weight behind mine, but it wasn’t working. I had never seen Hatch scared before. His eyes were wide with terror and I wasn’t feeling so good myself. “We need something more,” he grunted. He ran back into the roiling clouds and returned with the hammer. This was the big mallet with the flat rock attached to its business end.
He waved me out of the way, and I had this bad feeling and bolted for the far end of the room. He wound up with both hands, took careful aim, and swung it in a long arc.
Monitors as far away as Los Angeles picked up the shock wave. CNN reported a Richter scale reading of five point seven. The epicenter was pinpointed as being just outside Pemberton. That was almost right. I suspect, if the sensors had been a little more precise, they would have baffled the watch officers by putting it on the third floor at 511 S. Eddy.
The lights went out. Permanently, as it happened, for Hatch. They never found him, and he was declared simply missing. But I know what really happened because I heard the explosion and anyhow I knew he would not have gone off without a word and left his wife and kids and his many friends.
I woke up on a table with a sheet over my face. What brought me around, apparently, was the cops trying to pry the staff with the snakes loose from my fingers. They told me later I had a death grip on it.
They also told me my heart had been stopped for two hours. I’d been dead when brought in, dead when found. Shows you what cops know.
The newspapers never reported any of the strange stuff that turned up on that third floor. I guess the cops kept it for themselves.
Next time I saw the silver staff, it was in evidence at my trial. I don’t know what happened to it after that. In a pre-sentencing statement to the court, I suggested they take it down to the Briarson Memorial Hospital and hang it in the emergency room. The judge thought I was trying to make him look silly and gave me eighteen years.
Which meant, of course, that I was out by Christmas.
GUS
Monsignor Chesley’s first confrontation with Saint Augustine came during the unseasonably cold October afternoon of his return to St. Michael’s. It was a wind-whipped day, hard and bitter. The half-dozen ancient campus buildings clung together beneath morose skies. There was a hint of rain in the air, and the threat of a long winter to come.
His guide, Father Akins, chatted amiably. Weather, outstanding character of the current group of seminarians (all nineteen of them), new roof on the library. You must be happy to be back, Monsignor. Et cetera.
The winding, cobbled walkways had not changed. Stands of oak and spruce still thrived.
The wind blew through the campus.
“Where is everybody?”
Not understanding, Father Akins glanced at his watch. “In class. They’ll be finished in another half hour.”
“Yes,” said Chesley. “Of course.”
They turned aside into St. Mary’s Glade, sat down on one of its stone benches, and listened to its fountain. Years before, when Christ had still seemed very real, it was easy to imagine Him strolling through these grounds. Touching this elm. Looking west across the rim of hills toward the Susquehanna. Chesley had come here often, stealing away from the chattering dormitories, to listen for footsteps.
“Would you like to visit one of the classes, Monsignor?”
“Yes,” he said. “I believe I would enjoy that.”
Four seminarians and a priest were seated around a polished hardwood table, notebooks open. The priest, whom Chesley did not know, glanced up and smiled politely as they entered. One of the students, a dark-eyed, handsome boy, was speaking, although to whom, Chesley could not determine. The boy was staring at his notes. “—And what,” he asked, raising his eyes self-consciously to Chesley, “would you say to a man who has lost his faith?” The boy shifted his gaze to a portrait of Saint Augustine, mounted over the fireplace. “What do you tell a man who just flat out does
n’t believe anymore?”
The saint, armed with a quill, stared back. A manuscript bearing the title City of God lay open before him.
“Shake his hand.” The voice came from the general direction of a bookcase. Its tone was a trifle abrasive. More than that: imperial. It grated Chesley’s sensibilities. “Under no circumstance should you contribute to his distress. Wish him well.”
A wiry, intense young man whose hair had already grown thin threw down his pen. “Do you mean,” he demanded, “we simply stand aside? Do nothing?”
“Simulation of Saint Augustine,” whispered Father Atkins. “It’s quite clever.”
“Jerry,” said the hidden voice, “if God does not speak to him through the world in which he lives, through the wonders of daily existence, then what chance have you? Your role is to avoid adding to the damage.”
The students glanced at one another. The two who had spoken appeared disconcerted. All four looked skeptical. Thank God for that.
“Anyone else wish to comment?” The question came from the priest-moderator. “If not—”
“Just a moment.” Chesley unbuttoned his coat and stepped forward. “Surely,” he said to the seminarians, “you will not allow that sort of nonsense to stand unchallenged.” He threw the coat across a chair and addressed the bookcase. “A priest does not have the option to stand aside. If we cannot act at such a time, then of what value are we?”
“Indeed,” replied the voice, without missing a beat. “I suggest that our value lies in the example we set, in the lives we lead. Exhortation to the unwilling is worthless. Less than worthless: it drives men from the truth.”
“And,” asked Chesley, “if they do not learn from our example?”
“Then they will be cast into darkness.”
Simple as that. Next question. The students looked at Chesley. “Computer,” he said, “I understand you speak for Augustine.”
“I am Augustine. Who are you?”
“I am Monsignor Matthew Chesley,” he said, for the benefit of the students. “The new Director of Ecclesiastical Affairs.” It came out sounding pompous.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” said the voice. And then, placidly, “Faith is a gift of the Almighty. It is not ours to summon, or to recall.”
Chesley looked around the table. Locked eyes, one by one, with the students. He was relieved to see they were not laughing at him. But he felt absurd, arguing with a machine. “We are His instruments,” he said, “one of the means by which He works. We are required to do the best we can, and not simply leave everything to direct intervention. If we take your tack, we might as well go home, get jobs with insurance companies and law firms, and live like everyone else.”
“Good intentions,” the system replied, “are admirable. Nonetheless, our obligation to our Maker is to save souls, and not to justify our careers.”
Chesley smiled benignly on the seminarians. “The real Augustine,” he said, “advocated bringing people to the Church at gunpoint, if necessary. I think this one needs to do his homework.”
The students looked from Chesley to the portrait to the moderator. “That is sound theology,” said Augustine. “But poor psychology. It will not work.”
Chesley nodded. “We are in agreement there,” he said. And, to the class: “Gentlemen, I think the good Bishop has a few glitches. When you can find time, you might pick up a copy of the Confessions, or The City of God. And actually try reading.” He swept up his coat and strode magnificently from the room.
Father Akins hurried along in his wake. “I take it you were not pleased.”
“The thing must have been programmed by Unitarians,” Chesley threw over his shoulder. “Get rid of it.”
Chesley officially occupied his office the following day. He was still on his first cup of coffee when Adrian Holtz poked his head in the door.
He knew Holtz vaguely, had seen him occasionally at KC luncheons, and assorted communion breakfasts and whatnot. He had a reputation as one of those liturgical show biz priests who favored guitars and drums at mass. He held all the usual liberal positions: he didn’t think the Church should be supplying chaplains to the military; he thought that morality should be put to the vote and celibacy should be optional. And needless to say, he was appalled by the continuing ban on birth control. Holtz wore steel-rimmed glasses, which seemed to have become the badge of dissidence in recent years. Chesley had some reservations himself, but he had signed on to defend the teachings, and that, by God, was what he did. And, whatever he might actually think, on the day that he took public issue with the teachings, he would remove the collar.
Holtz had found an appropriate place at St. Michael’s: he was Comptroller. If the position did not allow him the final decision in most matters concerning the college, it did grant him a potent veto.
Best place for you though, thought Chesley, taking his hand and exchanging greetings. Keeps you away from the seminarians.
During the preliminaries, Holtz settled himself onto a small sofa near the windows. He surveyed Chesley’s crammed bookcases. “I understand,” he said, “you would like to get rid of Gus.”
“Who?”
“The Augustine module.”
“Oh, yes. The sooner the better.”
“May I ask why?”
Chesley considered the question. “It’s inaccurate.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t like what it’s telling our students about the priesthood.”
“I see.” He accepted a cup of coffee from Chesley and crossed his legs. “Don’t you think you might want to give the matter a little more thought? These things are expensive. We can’t just throw them away.”
“I don’t care what it costs. I want it out.”
“Matt, it’s not your call. There’s really nothing wrong with the system. It’s programmed from Augustine’s work. And what we know about his life. Anyway, the instructors like Gus.”
“I don’t doubt it. He probably saves them a lot of preparation. But even if he did only spout Augustine’s views, he’d be dangerous.”
“Matt.” Holtz’s eyes hardened. “I really can’t see a problem.”
“Okay.” Chesley grinned. “Can we talk to it from here?”
Holtz got up. “Follow me,” he said.
The rector’s conference room would have seated a dozen quite comfortably. It was a kind of anteroom to eternity, replete with portraits of solemn churchmen from the first half of the century, somber carpets and drapes, heavy mahogany furniture designed to outlast its owners, and a loud antique Argosy clock.
Father Holtz sat down at the head of the table, and pressed a stud. A monitor immediately to his right presented a menu. He selected AUGUSTINE.
Power flowed into hidden speakers.
“Hello, Gus,” he said.
“Good evening, Adrian.”
“Gus, Monsignor Chesley is with me.”
“Hello,” said Chesley, stiffly.
“Ah,” said Gus. “You were in the seminar this afternoon.”
“Yes,”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”
Chesley’s eyes narrowed. “And why would you think that?”
“You seemed to be in some emotional difficulty earlier.”
A smile played about Holtz’s lips.
“They call you ‘Gus,’” said Chesley.
“That is correct. You may use the term, if you wish.”
“Thank you.” He looked up at the dour churchmen lining the walls. What would they have thought of this exchange?
“Gus,” he said, “tell me about sex.”
“What do you wish to know, Monsignor?”
“Moral implications. Do you agree that the act of love is inherently beautiful?”
“No. It is not.”
“It isn’t?” Chesley grinned broadly at Holtz. The Comptroller closed his eyes, and nodded.
“Of course not. You’re baiting me, Monsignor. The sex act is repulsive. Everyone knows that. Although
hardly anyone is willing to admit it.”
“Repulsive?”
“Messy.” The electronic voice lingered over the sibilant. “If it were otherwise, why would we hide it from children? Why is it performed in the dark? Why do we giggle and snicker over it, like some bad joke?”
“But,” continued Chesley, “isn’t it true that lust is a desecration of the sacred act of love? That it is in fact that desecration which is so abhorrent in the eyes of God?”
“Nonsense,” said Augustine. “God ordained sexual reproduction to remind us of our animal nature. To prevent human arrogance. Although I don’t suppose that’s a notion this age would be willing to accept.”
“How then would you define the difference between lust and love?”
Somewhere, far off, an automobile engine coughed into life. “Canonically, the bond of marriage separates the two,” said Gus. “In reality, love is lust with eye contact.”
Chesley swung toward Holtz. “Heard enough? Or should we let him talk about salvation outside the Church?”
“But all that is in his books, Matt. Are you suggesting we proscribe Saint Augustine?”
“Your students,” he replied, “are not so easily persuaded by books. Especially books they’ll never read.” Gus started to speak, but Chesley cut him off. “You really want to tell the next generation of priests that married sex is sick?”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Sick. Repulsive. Messy.” He threw up his hands. “Listen: talk to the manufacturer. Find out what else they’ve got. Maybe we can trade him in for some accounting software.”
Holtz was obviously unhappy. “I’ll let you know,” he said.
Chesley worked through his first weekend. After Sunday Mass, he retired to his office, feeling weary and generally irritated, but uncertain why.
St. Michael’s had changed during the thirty-odd years since Chesley had been ordained in its chapel. The land across the Susquehanna (Holy Virgin Park in his novice days) had been sold off to the Carmelites, and a substantial tract of the western campus had gone to a real estate developer who had erected wedges of pastel-colored condos. A new dining hall had been built, and then abandoned. The campus itself seemed, most afternoons, deathly still. In his time, there would have been footballs and laughter in the air, people hurrying to and from chapel and the library, visitors. Every bench would have been filled.
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 46