Upon This Rock

by David Marusek

  “Praise Him,” everyone said.

  “Praise His holy name.”

  “Praise His holy name.”

  “Now this is what we’re gonna do. We plan on spending the next seven years locked in this chill, damp sanctuary. Though we can learn to live with the chill and the damp, we’ll never survive the demons. That’s why we got to chase them out now and lock the gate against them. And the way we do that is by anointing all the chamber entrances. Now the demons might put up a fight, so I want everyone to hold hands and think of Elder Brother Jesus as we go.”

  The children walked hand in hand behind Poppy up the length of the tunnel, up the ramps to the highest level. They sang hymns as they went, and when they came to the cistern chamber, they filed in and stood on the rocky ledge overlooking the still, black pool.

  “This is our fountain of waters,” Poppy proclaimed. “It will slake our thirst, help prepare our meals, and cleanse our home and bodies. Say amen.”

  “Amen.”

  “With the power given all believers by the one true Father God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, I command all devils to leave at once.” He raised his voice. “I cast thee out! I cast out thee demons and all unclean spirits! Begone! Say amen.”

  “Amen.”

  “Now where is that bottle of oil?”

  Deut handed him the pint bottle of extra-virgin, cold-pressed, Italian olive oil. He spilled a little of it on his fingers and dribbled it over the cistern chamber threshold.

  They proceeded from chamber to chamber on all three levels, naming the purpose of each space, casting out unclean spirits, and anointing the entrances to seal them.

  When they got to the powder room on the first level, Poppy pulled out his keyring and opened the heavy door. He shined a light on the shelf where he’d left the golden marble. It was still there, sitting in the Mason jar of spring water. He took the jar down from the shelf and showed it to the children, who pressed forward to see. “This little ball is what the angel left behind when he fetched the trumpet.”

  Deut said, “What is it, lord?”

  “It’s a fallen star, I think, but I’m not sure which one.” Poppy sniffed the water in the jar. It didn’t smell bad, so he dipped his fingers in and brought them to his lips. The water tasted fine, not bitter at all. That ruled out the Third Angel and the star called Wormwood. He plucked the marble from the water and held it out for all to see. “Or maybe it’s the key to the bottomless pit of Hell. I still have to pray on it.”

  Deut’s eyes grew wide. “Can I hold it?”

  “I don’t know, can you? It’s heavy.” He dropped it into her hand and let her pass it around to the others. It was too heavy for See-Saw, and Nummy was too afraid to touch it.

  Poppy placed the marble on a shelf by itself before closing and padlocking the door.

  “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I take dominion over any evil spirit tied to the heavenly orb, whatever it is. Begone devils and demons. I cast thee out! Say amen.”

  “Amen.”

  They continued to the entrance, casting out spirits as they went. When Poppy anointed the fortified gate itself, they were done, and they walked down the tailings slide in silence. The little ones were spent, and Deut carried Nummy on her hip. They could hear the rest of the family singing a hymn as they approached the house.

  Together, they cleansed the big house of evil spirits from one end to the other. They paid special attention to the places where they prepared their food and where they lay their heads. Poppy anointed every exterior door and window so that they were safe and secure. They praised their Savior and sat down to dinner.

  “IS THE TRUMPET still there?” Ginger whispered. The girls’ bunkroom was asleep, and Ginger crouched on the cold floor next to Deut’s bed.

  “No, I told you; the angel already took it,” Deut whispered back, yawning.

  “Did you see the angel?”

  “No, but I saw what he left behind. It looked like a little golden robin’s egg.” When Ginger didn’t ask anything more, Deut went on, “I wish Poppy let you come. I know how hard all of this must be to accept without seeing any of it. But it’s real. You have to believe me.”

  “I do believe you, but I’m not so sure about your dad. This anointing the house tonight just because he broke his phone? Lots of people break their phones.”

  “You misunderstood him. Poppy didn’t break it.”

  “You really think Satan broke his phone?”

  “There was no one else there.”

  “So he says.”

  Deut propped herself up on her elbow. “Are you calling my father a liar?”

  “No, Deut. Believe me, I’m not. But I’m not willing to just take his word for it that an angel left him a little golden robin’s egg or that demons are interested in smart phones. I need a little more than his word to go on.”

  “Do you think maybe if . . .” She left the thought unfinished.

  “If what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No offense, but do you think that if you wasn’t so contrary and started showing him the respect he’s due, maybe he’d take you along next time, and then you’d see for yourself?”

  Contrary? Was standing up for herself being contrary?

  WS10 1.0

  ELZAPHAN AND NUMBERS were at it again. This time Sue caught them in the act. Elzaphan was nursing, and Numbers was trying to push him off their mother.

  “Stop that!” Sue shouted. “Numbers! That’s not allowed.”

  Deut and Ginger hurried out of the kitchen. “What’s going on?” Deut said.

  “I’ve got it,” Sue replied. “It’s just the Numster acting out again.”

  “Nummy, come here. I have some soup in the kitchen for you.”

  “No!” the little boy screamed. “I don’t want soup! I hate soup!”

  “Oh, come look,” Sue said, leaning over Mama P. “This isn’t good.”

  Deut strode across the room. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Mama P’s tits are red and raw. And look, the left one is bleeding.”

  Deut stopped in her tracks and looked away. “Oh,” she said. “Is it bad? What should we do?”

  “Not so bad. Bring me something to clean them with, and some balm and a band-aid.”

  Deut went off to fetch what was needed, and Ginger joined Sue at the lawn lounger. “Come, Elzie,” she said. “Let’s give your mama a little break.”

  “No!” the little prince shouted, imitating his brother. He tried to glom back on to the injured breast. Sue lifted him off and set him on the floor next to Numbers.

  “Listen to me, both of you,” Sue said in a stern voice. “No teeth. You hurt your mommy with your sharp little teeth. Do you hear me?”

  Shock at such treatment was written across their greedy little faces.

  “Go with Auntie Ginger and have some soup in the kitchen. Both of you. Now! March!” She spun them around and gave them each a little swat on the bottom to get them moving. Ginger took their hands and led them away, bawling. When she returned to the common room, Sue was attending to Mama P’s breast while Deut stood next to her not watching.

  “I’ve read the Good Book twice,” Sue was saying, “from Genesis to Revelations, and I can tell you honestly, there’s nothing like that anywhere in it. A verse like that I think I’d remember.”

  “Nevertheless,” Deut insisted, “it’s there.”

  “What?” Ginger said.

  Sue replied, “They seem to believe that there’s a biblical edict that you’re not allowed to wean a kid completely until they turn three. I never heard of such a thing. Have you?”

  Ginger said, “No, but breastfeeding was a sort of natural birth control in the olden times. It helped them to space out their kids. I never saw it in the Bible though.”

  “Natural birth control?” Sue snorted. “We see how well that works.”

  Her comment stung, though Deut wasn’t sure why.r />
  “Anyway,” Ginger went on, “I’m afraid I have to agree with Sue on this one. There are some crazy dietary rules in the Old Testament, but I never saw such a verse about how long you have to breastfeed either.”

  “And yet it exists,” Deut said.

  Sue threw up her hands. “How would you know that?” She snapped. “Your father keeps the only Bible in the house locked up on his belt, and from what I can tell, you can’t read anyway.”

  Deut flushed with shame. She looked at Ginger in horror, swiveled around, and strode from the room. Ginger began to follow her, but Sue said, “Hmmm.”

  “What?”

  Sue had pulled up Mama P’s long skirt and was sniffing her crotch area. “Smells like a funk factory down here. Help me turn her on her side.”

  The two women turned the older one, and Ginger said, “What are you looking for?”

  “Here, see it? Her tailbone is inflamed. I’m surprised she doesn’t have full-blown bedsores by now.”

  “Oh,” Ginger said, leaning over to see.

  “What say you and me take Mama P out to the bathhouse today and give her a real bath, hmmm?”

  WS11 1.0

  ON MONDAY EVENING after work, Jace was installing the wood stove he had purchased from Kelly Cobweal to replace his old Preway oil-drip. It was a smart move if for no other reason than the outrageous cost of heating oil (over $10/gal by the time you got it over the footbridge) and the easy availability of firewood.

  The stove was an old Blaze King, a model from the 1980s, manufactured before the EPA started rating wood stoves for PM2.5 pollution. Inefficient but reliable.

  The end of December was probably not the ideal time to swap out a heating source while you were using it, considering how fast the house could freeze at forty below, but it was doable if you had all your ducks in a row. It was during the preparation phase, before he turned off the Preway, when the two stoves were sitting side by side in his living room when Jace first flashed on the idea of keeping both stoves in service. Why not? All it would take would be an elbow joint and a Tee to hook the Blaze King into the Preway stack. The stack was new; his cousin and he had replaced the original stovepipe with brand new six-inch metalbestos.

  Jace figured he could set the oil stove regulator to its lowest drip rate. This would keep some minimal heat on in the house even when he was away for hours at a time. Also, on those nights when the temperature dipped below fifty below (–46 C), both stoves in action could actually prevent his thin-skinned house from freezing.

  While Jace worked on the stove, he listened to streaming radio on his phone, NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His usually flawless internet connection had a case of the hiccups that evening. The link kept breaking and rebuffering until the distraction was so annoying he shut it off. The news stories were mostly about Sandy Hook anyway, and how much of that could you listen to?

  Later, when he quit for the night and logged into Facebook on his iPad, the connection was slower than a dial-up modem, so slow that his profile page never even managed to load completely. After a frustrating half hour, he logged off and wondered what he should do until it was time for bed.

  Before that moment, Jace hadn’t given much thought to how it must have been to spend an entire winter in McHardy in the days before the internet. What would you do with yourself? What did the pioneers do? Play cribbage? Even cribbage needed a second player.

  Jace did have about five hundred books on his iPad, along with about a dozen of his favorite movies. But how many times could you watch The Matrix? Really?

  He decided to conserve his batteries and shut off both phone and tablet. With the ranger office closed and the power plant shuttered, he would have to come up with an alternate means of charging them.

  Fortunately, for tonight at least, he had a reliable backup entertainment system — a carton of old paperbacks he’d borrowed from the Sulzers. It was pretty amazing, but not surprising, how many moldy old books you could find in remote Alaska towns like McHardy. Most of Sulzer’s were paperback Westerns, sci-fi, forgotten bestsellers, and literary classics, many lacking covers, that dated back to the 1960s and 70s. Their pages were yellow and their glue binding brittle. Everyone in town older than fifty seemed to have a carton or two of them tucked away in an attic or shed, and people were happy to lend, borrow, or trade.

  Jace reached into Sulzer’s stash and pulled one out at random. It was called Computer War by someone named Mack Reynolds and was published in 1967. Instinctively, he reached for the iPad to check out the author on Wikipedia and was brought up short — battery life, wonky internet. He’d have to look it up later.

  Anyway, Computer War not only had its original cover, it had two. The back cover was printed upside down and seemed to be for an entirely different book — Death is a Dream by E. C. Tubb. A printing error? Apparently not, for each half of the book contained a separate short novel, upside down from each other, that met in the middle. Not an error, then, but a marketing gimmick. How clever they were back in the pre-Amazon days.

  E. C. Tubb was a more familiar name to Jace; he had died not long ago at the age of ninety, and NPR had done an obit on him that Jace remembered listening to. One of the original paperback hacks, Tubb had more than one hundred forty novels to his credit and probably ten million short stories.

  Jace flipped the dual book over several times trying to decide which story to read. Some unidentifiable brown liquid in the uncertain past had soaked through the center of the book from page 97 on the Computer side to page 134 on the Death side, and one book corner bore the tooth marks of an inquisitive rodent. All of which showed that pre-digital books could be interesting in and of themselves.

  He went with the Computer War side and jumped in:

  Tilly Trice looked up at his entrance into her shop. She winked perkily and blew him a kiss, but didn’t get up from her work.

  She was, he told himself all over again, the most unlikely young woman a powerful and wealthy governmental head could ever expect to make himself a fool over. She was tiny. Her figure could hardly have been less, being that of a teen-age boy, rather than one of the current TriDi sex symbols. Her face was pert rather than pretty, not to speak of beautiful . . . .

  Powerful and wealthy governmental head? Uh-huh. The figure of a teen-age boy? Hmmm. As to making oneself a fool over an unlikely woman, the hero of this book and Jace Kuliak were on the same brown-stained page. Jace’s own mismatched sweetheart had a very feminine figure, but what future was there in falling in love with a Jesus freak? Even if she fell for him too, would she be willing to leave the family madrasah? Who knew? Maybe she would. Maybe she was dying to be rescued from the family cult and was only waiting for someone like him to come along and steal her away. Not that that would be ideal. He didn’t want a woman who needed to be rescued. He wanted a self-assured, empowered, independent partner. A modern girl, in other words. Not someone who prostrated herself before an imaginary sky god and believed that evolution was “only a theory.” Why was he so hung up on her? What was wrong with him (besides the fact that he chose to live in a place inhabited by more porcupines than girls)? Was it just the power of infatuation? Those eyes, those hips, that smile — that had blinded him? If he could just spend even one afternoon with her, his bubble would burst, and he would be cured. He was sure of it. Love was so frackin’ strange.

  After reading the entire halfling book by lamplight, Jace went to bed. He wasn’t the least bit sleepy, but he didn’t have anything else to do. [see So He Masturbated]

  An Angel Falls from Heaven

  AF1 1.0

  THE NEXT DAY, the internet and phone service were still spotty. Ranger Masterson told Jace that he’d already called it in — after several disconnects — and talked to an IT guy at Valley Communications in Valdez. “They’re working on it. The whole Copper Valley is affected. Someone’s sucking up all the bandwidth, but they can’t pin down who, or how. A phantom IP of some sort.”

  Though browsing at the rang
er office was next to impossible, Jace did receive his email, including a letter from NASA. It was in response to an inquiry he’d made when he was trying to find satellite imagery of the snow circle. In his inquiry, Jace had been careful to sound as non-delusional as possible, but apparently he used the wrong keywords and triggered a canned response intended for the wingnut crowd.

  Dear Space Enthusiast:

  Thank you for your recent post regarding doomsday prophecies currently circulating on the internet. Like you, many people have contacted our agency to ask if there is any scientific basis to the rumor that the world will end later this month.

  We hasten to assure you there is no factual basis in science for such a rumor and that our planet will still be around for the coming New Year.

  The source of much of the latest round of doomsday anxiety can be attributed to a misunderstanding of Maya mythology.

  The Maya was a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished over an extensive region of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize from the second millennium BC to the sixteenth-century Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Mayas were noted for their art, architecture, fully developed written language, and remarkably accurate calendar. This calendar was used not only for the mundane task of tracking day-to-day affairs but to explain Maya mythological concepts and history. And it is the misinterpretation of this calendar, specifically the Maya Long Count Calendar, that underlies many doomsday scenarios.

  According to the Maya Long Count Calendar, a “world age” is 5,126 years long and is divided into thirteen b’ak’tuns, each lasting 394 years. The current world age is nearing its end. In fact, it ends later this month on what our calendar (the Gregorian calendar) labels as December 21, 2012, the winter solstice.

  It’s important to keep in mind that the end of a world age is not the same thing as the end of the world itself. No Maya, Aztec, or other Mesoamerican tradition or prophecy suggested any global upheavals on this date, let alone total global destruction. It was simply a marker where one age ended and a new one began. In that sense, you could think of December 21 as similar to December 31, New Year’s Eve, and celebrate it accordingly with fireworks and champagne.