The officer looks unconvinced. She says, “If he’s harassing you, tell your husband to get rid of him.”
I say, “My husband died.”
The informant exclaims, “What?”
I nod. “On a Friday afternoon, in an unnecessary police action.”
The peace officer shifts her weight.
“He did it to save me,” I tell the informant.
The informant hesitates before speaking, but then understanding dawns on him. “He sounds like a great guy.”
I’m in dangerous territory, a peace officer at my elbow, but I have to grasp the opportunity God’s given me. Perhaps this is how I surrender my life after all. “He’d have done it to save you, too.”
The informant stares at the ground. “I doubt it. It sounds like he’d be too good to ever talk to me.”
“I knew he was too good for me too. But he called one day, and I answered.” My voice softens. “He had this way of making you good enough.”
The peace officer snatches the bag from the informant and yanks open the zipper, then dumps out everything I’ve packed: the food, the fresh socks, the book. Yes, a book, its worn jacket proclaiming Perfect Uniformity Of Our Minds. Every citizen has at least one edition, courtesy of the government. Half the patients I care for clutch their copy as they die. She shoves everything back in, then barks at the informant, “Get out of here.”
He hefts his bag and leaves. The peace officer stares him down until he reaches the main road.
When she turns back to me, I say, “Thank you for looking out for me. I know it’s not an easy job, especially when people fear you, but it’s important work.”
She could have arrested us both if she’d opened the book and found the jacket wrapped around a copy of An Introduction To The Devout Life. Instead of condemning me, she says, “Well, be careful. Feed that type and you never get rid of them.”
No, and neither does God.
Sister Faustina is having difficulty adjusting after her final vows. I know it happens sometimes, but when we cross paths, she’s unsettled. “Maybe I made a mistake,” she tells me in a supply room. She’s restless. She doesn’t want to hide. She clutches my hand and says, “Reese, I’m not being careful. It’s not like me. I’ve stayed underground for years, so why now?”
I say, “Stay with me,” and I bring her to hear Bishop Shaller say Mass. His Excellency is going to be released this afternoon, so I won’t receive Communion for a while. Although there’s a network of priests living underground, they’re difficult to reach, so receiving the Eucharist daily has been like venturing into the sunlight after weeks of rain.
Faustina slips out of the hospital room while I finish the Bishop’s discharge paperwork. “I’m worried about her. There shouldn’t be this difficult an adjustment to final vows.” As I hand him the clipboard, I remember her gripping my hand during Patterning. I’m going away. “I wonder if her Pattern didn’t take.”
Bishop Shaller says, “Just keep praying for her,” and he signs his paperwork.
I push his wheelchair to the entrance, per regulations, and then he gets out of the chair and walks out the front door. Again per regulations. The hospital has designed so many routines to protect itself from accusations, but then again, those routines have helped us hide for years. Whenever I appear to be doing something strange, no one concludes I’m hiding my illegal beliefs but rather that I’m following regulations in their best interests not to know, and they already have too many of their own. By the grace of God I can juggle them all; can perfectly fulfill the hospital’s requirements so they will leave me alone to follow God’s.
In the cafeteria, I take a seat near an Urgent Care orderly whose nametag reads Kell but who is actually a seminarian named Michael who, for obvious reasons, had not been Patterned on his namesake. “Long shift?”
He looks exhausted. “This is the first time I’ve sat down in twenty-three hours.”
I bow my head as if sad for him, but I’m saying grace over the bowl of oatmeal and protein powder. I’ve been fasting for my informant for two reasons, the less obvious reason being that I can’t feed him with food I’ve already eaten, and therefore the cafeteria lunch seems more than appetizing. Thank you, Jesus, for protein.
When I look up, I say, “I need you to think about something.” Code for prayer. He nods. “There’s a new nurse who just joined us. She went to the Faustina school, and she’s very unsettled.”
He pauses. “Faustina school?”
I nod. His confusion remains, and he continues, “I didn’t think anyone from this part of the world could go to Faustina.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“No source material.” He leans closer so he can speak lower. “From Faustina, it’s all stone or metal. ”
The trade in relics is its own system of caves and tunnels, one I’ve never delved because the contacts are so very in the crosshairs. I can drop a slip of paper into an incinerator or count off a rosary on my fingers, but dealers carry their condemnation on their persons. My informant could accuse anyone of Christian beliefs, but imagine if I carried a theca with the gloves of Saint Padre Pio. Anyone who knows a dealer doesn’t even whisper that she knows.
It’s possible someone has a wooden rosary of Saint Faustina and Kell hasn’t heard about it. It’s also possible that someone unscrupulous only said he had it. The devil tempts us all, and who knows what currency he’d use against someone in that line of work? I just rejoice God never called me to it.
On the other hand, Bishop Shaller needs to know there’s a question as to his pattern-piece’s authenticity. So I peck my way through the computer system and obtain authorization for a follow-up nurse visit in seven days. An electronic summons goes out, and Bishop Shaller’s employer confirms an appointment. He’ll come to me.
Every day I tuck a sandwich and a snack in a plastic bag beneath the flowers at my fence. I wrap the fruit in a piece of paper. A clever person might notice the papers have writing on them, and a reading person might notice the writings tell the story of a special man with a special mission. Every day, the food disappears from the plastic bag, but the previous day’s page has returned, flattened where it was creased.
I continue praying with Sister Faustina, but the Divine Mercy chaplet holds no more joy for her. She’s restless. She’s been reprimanded for speaking back to a doctor. The longer we work together, the more I find myself convinced she didn’t take her sponsor’s pattern, whether through failure of the method or failure of the medium. She and I are folding bandages in a stock room when I say to her, “Do you regret your vows?”
She says, “I’ve never wanted anything else, and I still don’t. But this hiding, it’s wearing on me.”
I say, “What do you want to do?”
She crumples a bandage in her fist. “I want to fight.”
“That’s not what your role model would do.”
Her eyes gleam. “No, and I chose her for that. As a child, I got into so many fights, but everyone told me to be like her, gentle even when people acted so nasty. I thought her pattern would help me be more accepting. But now, it feels just like when I was a kid.”
I lower my voice. “What if the pattern was faulty?”
She shakes her head. “Then God let the Church destroy me, and I have to accept that.”
Cold inside, I clutch her hand. “Tina, no. That’s not right.”
She says, “It’s surrender.”
I say, “That’s not surrender. God made you the way you are, not to be destroyed.”
She walks away. I spend the next half-hour changing the dressing on a patient’s infected wound while the sick woman screams at me that I’m killing her and the one in the next bed complains endlessly of the stench. She is Christ, wounded and filled with the pus of humanity’s collective infection. I am Christ to her, maybe the only Christ who will ever touch her without flinching.
And at my fence, I imagine Christ again, starving in both body and soul, stealing an apple from th
e shelter of the corner post and devouring snippets of the Gospel on shreds of paper that smudge in the endless drizzle.
Seven days. My informant keeps taking his apples. My Sister settles down to her routine and abides by her improvement plan. My Bishop arrives for his appointment, and I escort him to a treatment room, fill in his chart, listen to his lungs. I murmur, “The pattern piece of Faustina may not be legit,” and I fill him in.
He makes no reply. I say, “We need to stop using it.”
“On the contrary.” He hands me the box with the bead. “You have another candidate tonight. He’s to take the same Pattern.”
I say, “It’s illegitimate. It’s done harm to Tina.”
He shakes his head. “It’s real.” And when I wait, he says, “You are under obedience not to sabotage the Patterning. You must go through with it.”
I look at the box, wondering whose spirit I hold in my gloved hands.
He says, “We don’t need another Faustina or another Gemma Galgani. Look around you. It’s time for boldness and authority. We could have fire and uprising, so why waste our saints on hidden lives? ”
Hidden lives. Tears spring to my eyes. “The Holy Spirit knows what we need. The Holy Spirit will send us the right saints for our time.”
He says, “The Holy Spirit sent us Patterns, and it’s up to us to use His gifts. We don’t need more victim souls right now, more counselors and recluses.”
“How do you know what we do need? Won’t the Church just stagnate?” I clutch the box until it hurts my hand. “Who could have predicted a Saint Francis? Who could have designed a Teresa of Avila? We never knew we needed them until they appeared, and then God sent them, and it was right. But to design them—to override our own souls—”
“It’s not an override. You told Tina that yourself. It’s a boost.” Then he pats me on the shoulder. “Don’t let this injure your pride. We can pray the Holy Spirit sends us the souls we need, or we can use His gifts to ensure we have them. You’re under obedience, and right now, we need more of Oscar Romero.”
That’s who I’m holding in my hand. A martyr Archbishop and a galvanizer of the people, and now Tina’s guiding light.
I am under obedience. I am not allowed to sabotage the Pattern, but when Sister Faustina brings down our new candidate, I make sure she sees and recognizes the bead. Our new candidate is a middle-aged man with bags under his eyes and a permanent limp. I say, “Our Bishop has left instructions to change your Pattern.”
Faustina says, “Whose is that?”
As Miri starts up the ultrasound machine, I tell her. Her eyes darken, but she says nothing, and I don’t disturb her during the process because I know she’s praying. She’s not praying for mercy. Now that she’s stopped fighting herself, she’s praying against injustice.
The rain begins to let up. I may never see the sun again, though, because at home, four police cars and a riot van idle before my house. They must think they’re coming for a dangerous criminal rather than a Christian. May God have mercy on my informant. Myself I surrender, but not him, not until he finds You.
Four peace officers meet me on the sidewalk, and a fifth shoves my informant before me. “Do you recognize this man?”
He’s just as threadbare as before, his jacket soaked and a pocket half torn off. “I do.”
The peace officer who previously came to my door says, “We know you’ve been giving him things.”
I gesture to his threadbare appearance. “I’ve been leaving him food. He was starving.”
She holds out a slip of paper. “We found this on him. Was this yours?”
I see on the page a handful of words from Luke. You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky; why can’t you interpret the present time Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?
The informant snarls, “I told you, I was going to plant it on her and turn her in for the money!”
The peace officers pull him back with a jerk.
I look at him. “So you’re an informant who can’t turn in any real Christians?”
“Pathetic, huh?” It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile.
I smile in return. “That’s why I was leaving food for you.”
He glares at the officer’s hand gripping his arm. “And no matter what happens, I’m glad you did.”
The rain drips off the state-issued tree shading my front steps. One of the officers says, “I say we arrest them both and let the magistrate sort it out.”
They conference by their vehicles, leaving me and my informant with the rain dripping on us both. Using my thumb and the rain, I trace a cross on his forehead. I murmur, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
His eyes widen. Relief.
The peace officer returns. “We’re going to search your house,” she says, but then my informant bolts between the houses and across the next street, and the officers shout even as one of them wrenches me by the arm.
The pain brings tears to my eyes, but I’m not running. I’m praying. I’m praying for a hungry man who’s been fed, praying that God gives him the dexterity to outrun a radio signal. They can search my house, and I know they will. They’ve searched before and have found nothing. More important right now is that they never find him.
They don’t find him. They don’t find anything in my house, but they spend the next week tailing me everywhere. Tina keeps advocating for her patients. I keep cleaning wounds and folding bandages. The Bishop does his work at the dock by day and at night with the people. And one morning, as I take the bus to work, I find an abandoned building spray-painted in red: I have come to set the Earth on fire.
I have no doubt the Holy Spirit sent my informant to do just that, a fire we never predicted and never would have made for ourselves. How I wish it were already ablaze.
AMAZON GAMBIT
By
Vox Day
What happens when a military unit formed for PR reasons is given an actual combat mission?
Lieutenant Colonel Max Kruger stood at attention and saluted as General Markham, SUBCONCOM, debarked from the flyer with the ease of a man four decades younger and strode across the landing pad towards him.
“At ease, Colonel,” the general ordered. “Good to see you. Now, come with me, we’ve got a lot to discuss before the press conference.”
The general had four centims on him and was walking quickly, so Kruger had to lengthen his stride in order to keep up with the taller man.
“The Grkese signed the contract?”
“They did indeed,” the general confirmed. “And the Duke himself selected you as the contract CO, Max.”
“Honored,” Kruger murmured, as expected. And it was true, he did feel honored, although he wasn’t exactly surprised. Of the various officers in the Rhysalani Armed Forces qualified to command low-tech forces, he not only possessed the best record with regards to successfully completed contracts, but he had beaten Col. Thompson, his closest rival, rather soundly at the Duke’s Command Challenge last year. “I presume it will be 3rd Battalion?”
The 3rd Battalion of the Ducal Marines specialized in low-tech combat, particularly combat below TL10. Kruger had served with them on two previous deployments, both of which had taken place on Dom Sevru. The men of 3rd Battalion were trained to be able to fight with everything from swords and shields to plasma cannon and sub-atomic armor.
“No,” the general replied, to his surprise, as they entered the elevator that would bring them down to the heart of the airbase command center. “The Lord General suggested that this would be the ideal opportunity to show the subsector what the 11th Special Battalion can do. And the Duke concurred.”
Kruger couldn’t hide his astonishment. Or his dismay. He looked at his superior in disbelief, and while he saw everything from amusement to sympathy in the older man’s eyes, he detected no sign at all that his leg was being pulled.
“Dear God, you’re not joking!”
Kruger didn’t trust himself to speak. The first five or six responses that sprang to mind would have earned him at least a reprimand, if not a court-martial. The next three, if uttered openly by an officer of the Armed Forces, technically amounted to lèse-nobilité and would theoretically merit a firing squad. So he said nothing.
The general grinned nonchalantly and raised an eyebrow. He knew damn well what Kruger was thinking. “He’s not wrong, Max. Their negotiators were so impressed that they paid triple our usual rate. Half up front.”
“They did? Why the Hell would they do that?”
“Well, as I understand the sales pitch, our highly trained female soldiers have proven to be much better communicators than their male counterparts, and as a result they are considerably less inclined to needlessly break things and kill people. In this particular case, the estimated savings in infrastructure damage when taking and occupying the primary objective alone is expected to more than make up for the increased cost of the contract.”
“Assuming we can complete it. What’s the tech level again?”
“Seven.”
This time, Kruger couldn’t restrain an oath. The general raised an eyebrow, then slapped Kruger on his oak-leafed shoulders as they approached a door with a pair of Duke’s Marines on either side.
“Try to keep it clean for the cameras, Max. If you don’t know what to say, just smile and declare that you’ve got every confidence in the troops. Do your best to sell it. God knows we’ve all had to tell a few humdingers in our day. Your record speaks for itself, so let it do the talking. Now, you’ve got an hour to review the contract and meet with the battalion’s officers before the press conference, so I suggest you hop to it.”
“Yessir,” Kruger said morosely. “Any chance I can get out of this, General?”
Forbidden Thoughts Page 22