by John Dalmas
Now they stood on the firing step, waiting. Behind him, wilderness stretched all the way to the Ice Sea. He'd seen it on a monitor, while riding down in the shuttle; a view he'd never imagined when he'd lived on this world. In front of him was a broad field, way bigger than any he'd seen before on New Jerusalem. Green with some crop he didn't recognize-something the Wyzhnyny had brought with them. About knee-high just now.
The Wyzhnyny didn't farm the way his people had, who needed lots of woods for each farm. In the older settled districts the rule was at least one acre of woods for every three or four acres of field and pasture, depending on fertility. Enough to grow back, each year, all the wood you cut that year. Trees needed for building-logs, and for splitting out planks, roof shakes, and everything else needed. But especially for firewood, to take you through the long winters-a pile the size of the house. And logs and poles for fence rails. His dad had said about 8,000 rails for forty acres, plus replacements.
Esau didn't doubt the number. He'd sawed and chopped and split enough just in his own few years. But the Wyzhnyny had cleared away the farm woodlots. Didn't need them, apparently. Seemed they liked open ground best.
Ordinarily, Esau preferred to meet trouble at least halfway, but it was a mile or so across to the next good cover. It was hilly over there-maybe sinkhole country-not suited for farming. They'd been told it was where the Wyzhnyny would attack from. He sure as heck wouldn't want to cross a half mile of open ground with people shooting at him.
What he and his folks were waiting for was a whole new level of trouble. And a chance to learn what they were up against before they went charging into something. Even after Pastor Luneburger's World, where they'd trained and trained, supposedly doing everything they'd do here. Done it by day and by night, in heat and in cold, hungry, wet, and sleepless.
But two main things were different: on Luneburger's they hadn't killed anyone, and nobody'd tried to kill them.
Excepting Moses Wheeler, who'd murdered poor Spieler-shot him from behind-and the miserable dog turds back on Terra that'd sabotaged batches of stuff. Grenade detonators, power slugs… and parasails, particularly Isaiah Vernon's. "Sabotage." It'd been a new word to Esau. Sergeant Hawkins said it was supposed to be done with now. Things got inspected in the making, the packing, and the shipping, and the "saboteurs"-the people to blame-got caught and put in jail.
Now the getting ready was over. Somewhere off across that field was a whole army of Wyzhnyny, wanting to kill all the human beings they could. Including himself. They'd already disappeared the seventy percent of the human beings that chose to stay. They'd included just about all the older folks, and most of the younger with families of children.
And not satisfied with killing everyone, they'd knocked down and burnt every building, their foundation stones cracked and scattered. Or so the army said.
When he'd been a child, Speaker Motley had taught them the Testaments. And one thing he'd stressed was that the Lord God claimed all vengeance for himself alone. Which doesn't leave much for us, Esau told himself. But it seemed to him the Lord wouldn't hold it against him for feeling satisfaction whenever his blaster cut down a Wyzhnyny. And he intended to cut down a lot of them.
***
Standing beside her husband, Jael Wesley thought not of killing but of dying. Not morbidly or fearfully though. In his Contemplations on the Testaments, Elder Hofer had described Heaven as a place of perfect justice and grace and love. In the lowest realm of Heaven-what some called Purgatory-angels helped the newly dead confront the wrongs they'd done, and those done to them. Helped them learn to truly forgive, themselves as well as others, with complete responsibility and love, till they became angels themselves. Then they moved higher, learning from more experienced angels of the splendors of Heaven's higher realms, growing in godliness, readying themselves to join the archangels.
She'd never been able to envision what it would be like, but it seemed fitting, and she had no doubt it was true. Some did doubt. She'd had it in strictest confidence from a girlhood friend who'd doubted. Miriam had stayed behind during the evacuation, and was almost surely long-since murdered. Doubt had been a burden to Miriam, but Jael was sure her friend was in Heaven. Knew it without question. Miriam had always treated people with love, except sometimes her wretched brother, who bedemoned her whenever the notion took him. He'd be dead now too, unless he left in one of the evacuation ships.
It'll be interesting to die, Jael thought. But she was in no hurry. A person was born to live their life as best they could. Live it through, and die when it came time. She smiled. Her time was not yet. She and Esau were supposed to have children, bring them up in love, send them on their way with joy, and see her grandchildren through their childhood. Being a man, Esau had the advantage there. On New Jerusalem, pregnancy and childbirth taxed a woman sorely, and not many lived to see their grandchildren grow up. She would though; loving and spoiling them. She felt sure of it.
***
Isaiah Vernon waited in the forest shade. The day was warm, and the breeze that rustled the leaves overhead didn't visit down among the trunks. Sitting in the shade meant his cooling system didn't have to work hard.
They'd arrived near the end of the season known as "greening," when the new growth was burgeoning, and thunder showers were most frequent. We're lucky the weather was good when the marine squadrons were doing their work, he told himself. The rumor was, today would be the day the Wyzhnyny would attack. Then he'd learn what war was really like, and whether they-organics, bots, the army-were as good as they needed to be.
Probably more than anyone in the division, it seemed to him, he had a perspective on being killed. Been tested, proved, and come through cleanly, to be reprieved almost after the fact.
He looked back to their first months in training. The prospect of killing had begun troubling him sorely. He'd known the stories of Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus and others who'd won victories for the Lord. Fighting, killing, being killed. Without them, the worship of Jehovah probably would have died out, and the Hebrews as a people might easily have disappeared, ceased to exist. Then there'd have been no Jesus. But at least some of those Hebrew heroes had been harsh ruthless men, lacking the love that Jesus came to teach. Strange men to serve the Lord. And what of the sixth commandment? "Thou shalt not kill!"
Some said that didn't apply to the Wyzhnyny; that they had no souls. Isaiah didn't believe that for a minute. Except for the number of limbs, they were too much like human beings. Like the Assyrians and Romans-human beings who didn't know Jesus.
He could have asked his questions of Speaker Spieler, but it had seemed to him the speaker would only tell him what he already knew, resolving nothing.
One hazy autumn evening at Camp Stenders, he'd taken his misgivings to Sergeant Hawkins, who'd told them to let him know if they had problems. The Sikh would have a non-Christian perspective, but Isaiah couldn't doubt his Christian compassion. And it seemed to him that what Hawkins had to say might fit with the teaching of the Lamb of God.
He could remember that evening clearly and in detail. It wasn't so far back, if you didn't count the time in stasis on the way to New Jerusalem, but it seemed longer than it was. That was before his body'd been killed-before he'd wakened in a bot body. There'd been a knee-high railing protecting the little patch of lawn in front of the orderly room. He and Sergeant Hawkins had sat down on it in the thickening dusk, and he'd described his problem.
After he'd finished, he'd waited. Sergeant Hawkins had sat gazing northwestward, where the dark gray sky was smudged with the last dusky red of sunset. Had sat there for perhaps a minute without talking. When finally he spoke, it was quietly. "Yeah, I can see how that might trouble you. Try this out for fit. The human species has all kinds of people, right?"
"Yessir."
"Some of them are pretty good people, but don't have much tolerance for those who openly disagree with them. They might be good friends-even fiercely loyal friends-but they're intolerant. Do you know p
eople like that?"
Isaiah had smiled. "It sounds like my older brother. Father was at wit's end sometimes, when Peter got in fights. Started fights! All in the service of what he thought of as right. Peter must have averaged a fight a week. I don't think Father had ever been in a fight in his life."
He hadn't been in one himself, he realized. Not even close. He'd never thought about that before.
"So your father was more-Christlike than your brother?"
Isaiah chuckled ruefully. "I'd say so. Yes."
"So if the Lord was going to choose one of them to fight a battle… "
"But the Lord doesn't need someone to fight for him! He's God! He can do whatever he pleases." Even as he said it though, Isaiah realized how many Bible stories-Old Testament stories-told of God sending men to fight his battles.
"True, as far as it goes," Hawkins replied. "But I'm thirty-one years old, and I haven't seen much evidence of God taking direct personal action in human conflicts. Looking back at history, I can name a number of powerful rulers-let alone other people-who did terrible things over many years. In the twentieth century alone there were two rulers each of whom executed millions of people, or starved them to death. And caused the deaths of millions more in what came to be called the Hitler War. If God was inclined to act personally, surely he'd have stopped them. Sent down a bolt of lightning to fry them, or just not let them choose to do such things.
"Instead, one of them, named Hitler, decided he wanted to conquer the other one, named Stalin. So he invaded Stalin's country, the biggest country on Terra. And Stalin gradually wore him down. It was a worldwide war, with most nations involved on one side or the other, but Hitler couldn't have been stopped if it hadn't been for Stalin, who was probably as evil as he was."
Hawkins paused, pursing his lips thoughtfully. It seemed to Isaiah his sergeant wasn't really sorting his thoughts. More like he was figuring how to put them.
"So I don't think God acts directly," the sergeant said at last. "I think he lets humans of good will work things out the best they can. At least that's what Gopal Singh taught. In the case of Hitler and Stalin, there were two other powerful rulers, named Churchill and Roosevelt, who helped Stalin when he most needed it. Even though they both knew and feared Stalin, too. But stopping Hitler seemed more urgent."
The names had meant nothing to Isaiah. Terran history hadn't been taught on New Jerusalem, only some of the lessons learned from it. He wondered if Elder Hofer had learned some of them from the Hitler War. He must have known about it; he'd lived back in the 21st and 22nd centuries. Back before ever his people emigrated.
Sergeant Hawkins had grinned at him then. "I got carried away talking," he said. "What was your question again?"
"Uh… about killing. It feels like a sin to me, war or not, and I'm supposed to do a lot of it when we get back to New Jerusalem." He'd paused. "And I'm not sure I can do it."
"Umm. As a child, did you ever do anything wrong?"
"Yes I did, but mostly in my mind. I got angry more often than anyone suspected. A time or two I even cursed. Within the privacy of my mind, I even did acts of violence and lust. But never in physical action, except the sin of Onan, and even in my mind probably not as much as lots of folks. I believe I was born with a softness of spirit."
Again the sergeant had chuckled. "In Sikh schools we're taught that Jesus of Nazareth said `You must be born again' to see the kingdom of God. In the Gopal Singh Dispensation, we believe that people really are born again. Again and again, mostly not recalling our earlier lives. Born again to live in all kinds of circumstances, good and bad. Male and female. Sometimes doing really cruel things, and gradually developing a sense of responsibility for them. Until in time we learn not to do them anymore. Except in extreme situations, like some wars." He grinned at Isaiah. "It's my impression that you're an old experienced soul, who just now happens to be wearing a young body."
Isaiah's thoughts returned to the now, and he looked down at his new body. His bot body: large, hard, and fearfully strong. If he were inclined to violence, it would be a terrible body. But maybe violence was all right, in the service of God.
That wasn't what Sergeant Hawkins had been leading up to though, because he'd gone on speaking. "There are souls of all ages," he'd said. "All a part of the One, some call it the Tao, others the All-Soul. You say God. And mostly, I suspect-mostly it's younger souls who take up the sword, for good or bad. During the Hitler War, I suspect the generals on both sides were mostly souls who'd lived enough lives to feel sure of themselves, but not enough to be seriously troubled by killing. Bad men and good men, but none of them Christlike."
Isaiah had frowned thoughtfully. "Jesus got mad once," he said. "Violent. He shouted at the money changers in the temple, tipped their tables over and ran them out."
"Well then," the sergeant had said, "you've answered your question yourself, haven't you?"
He'd nodded, but not very confidently. It had seemed-still seemed-there was more to it than that. "I guess I pretty much have," he'd answered.
Hawkins had laughed, a friendly, sympathetic sound. "We're human beings. Strictly speaking, there's not too much we can be entirely sure of. Not even those of us who feel absolutely sure. But the One doesn't hate us or punish us for making mistakes. We do what seems right to us, make our mistakes as many times as necessary, and learn from them."
The sergeant had gotten up then. "I guess we've looked at your question about as well as we can right now," he'd said. "Sooner or later we'll get it solved, maybe on New Jerusalem, or maybe between lives."
They'd separated then, Isaiah going to the hut. He'd told Sergeant Hawkins things he couldn't have dreamed of telling anyone before. When he'd been eleven New Jerusalem years old, his father had taken him aside and spoke to him about the sin of Onan, and told him that in God's eyes it was a very small transgression, when done privately. As if to set his mind at ease. But he'd never expected to tell anyone about it; surely not till he had a son of his own.
Maybe the sergeant didn't know what the sin of Onan was; probably he didn't. But even if he did, it had seemed to Isaiah the sergeant wouldn't think ill of him for it.
He remained a little uncomfortable with what his sergeant had said about living a whole string of lives though. It seemed-heretical. But Jesus had said, "You must be born again." It seemed there was more than one way of taking that. And in a way, it kind of fitted with some of the things Elder Hofer had taught. Though he didn't think Elder Hofer would much like the idea.
During the months since then, it seemed to Isaiah that somehow or other that conversation had defanged the issue of killing Wyzhnyny, because it no longer really troubled him. He still wondered now and then-maybe feeling a little discomfort-but it didn't plague him now.
A sudden booming snagged his attention. Artillery fire. The surveillance buoys had reported that the Wyzhnyny had quite a bit of artillery left, here and there. Probably hidden from the Dragons. The army didn't much use artillery, unless you counted field mortars and tanks. Mostly it depended on aerial attack to deliver destruction behind hills and the like. He wondered if War House was going to regret that.
Then his lieutenant's voice spoke in his sensorium. "Load up, men. Time to get your feet wet."
To Isaiah, the command produced a sensation like he'd felt when they'd loaded on the floater for their first parachute jump: a sinking feeling in the belly, even though he didn't have a belly any longer. As his long metallic legs strode up the ramp of an APF, he heard the artillery's followup sound: the crashing of shells much nearer than the guns that fired them.
Lord God, he prayed silently, let me do what is right in your eyes.
***
When the booming reached Esau Wesley, he knew what to expect. Actually he knew and he didn't. Live fire exercises, with the rush of rounds passing overhead, and buried explosives simulating shell bursts, had given them a notion of it, but they weren't the same thing. He realized that before the first rounds struck. Stepping do
wn from the firing step, he crouched in the bottom of the foxhole, Jael beside him. This is it! he thought. The games are over! The thunder of howitzers told him-that and Jael's wide eyes, and Captain Mulvaney's calm voice in his ears.
Then the shells arrived, the noise indescribable. Many exploded in the treetops. Wood and shell fragments whirred and whistled, thudded and slapped. Dirt flew, hissing. The couple ducked under their little roof. The ground shook, and now Esau was glad for all the tough woody roots; they helped keep their foxhole from caving in on them. Jael's eyes were no longer wide. They squinted, perhaps against flying dirt, perhaps in response to the noise, the violence.
He read her lips. "Blessed Jesus," she murmured, then said nothing more. The shells kept arriving, roaring. After the first salvo, they arrived more irregularly. Along the line, the sound was a steady roar, but the nearer explosions were sometimes overlapping, sometimes single. Esau spit dirt. Heard a scream. A tree crashed down. "Medic!" someone cried. Captain Mulvaney's voice spoke in his ear, in his skull: "Listen up, B Company. They're sending out armor-tanks and APCs. Stay down, ready on my command. Blastermen, fix bayonets."
As squad leader, Esau was no longer its slammerman. He slipped his bayonet over the studs of his blaster barrel and clamped it firmly. Then, unable to resist, he stepped out and popped a peek over the berm. What he saw riveted his attention. The tanks, those still coming, were already halfway across, riding their AG cushions, their antipersonnel slammer pulses invisible in the sunlight. Other tanks had stopped, more or less askew. He saw one take a heavy trasher pulse and hit the ground skidding, plowing dirt. No one emerged from it. Close behind came the APCs. He became aware of Jael tugging at him, and ducked down again, staring at her. "Good lord!" he said. "What a sight!"