Upon This Rock

by David Marusek

  They both glanced at it lying on the table.

  “Where should I hide it?”

  “You cannot hide it from spirits, holy or evil. We can see its light from great distances. You need only hide it from the Antichrist.”

  “Then I’ll lock it up in the armory.”

  “Nay. Obama’s men will surely search out your weapons. The armory is one place they are certain to find.”

  “Then where?”

  “I see a tunnel two levels above us that leads to a deep, subterranean lake. Drop it in the lake. It’ll be safe there.”

  “In the cistern?” Poppy shook his head. “Not there, angel.”

  “It’s a formidable hiding place.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Calling All Angels

  CA1 1.0

  “HUBBLE TROUBLE” WAS the headline. Jace wondered why news editors were so fond of rhyming or punning headlines. Was it compensation for their failure at real writing?

  He browsed the rest of the page. “Obama addresses Sandy Hook Massacre.” That was the tragedy that Masterson had been so upset over.

  Internet service was still dial-up-modem slow. Jace couldn’t stream content, but he was able to use a news aggregator, as long as there were no embedded videos or tons of photos.

  Jace’s food supply was on his mind. Before Caldecott Lodge manager Elmer Gonzales had departed for points south, Jace had struck a deal to purchase the lodge’s leftover canned and bottled goods, a mixed case of booze, coffee, teas, and condiments. It was a win-win because the lodge had no freeze-free storage, and it saved Jace a supply run to Anchorage. Elmer also leased him the lodge’s sole snowmobile for the winter, since Jace would lose access to the park service’s machine.

  Heating fuel. Installing the wood stove had taken the pressure off his fuel supply. What remained in the 300-gallon (1136 l) tank behind the house would probably stretch till spring. But now he had to start cutting and hauling firewood. So he would need a chainsaw, splitting maul, chimney brush, and whatnot.

  Early this morning, the aging, beloved Hubble Space telescope went offline. Engineers at the White Sands, NM, ground station managed to bring it back an hour later, but, according to a spokesperson, the telescope stopped responding to operational instructions from ground control at that time.

  Meanwhile, Hubble did continue to transmit data via tracking and relay satellites. Officials at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD, where Hubble data is translated and disseminated, said the telescope appeared trained on a portion of space located in the galactic south, or below the plane of the Milky Way galaxy in which the Earth resides.

  Chief scientist Malcolm R. Peabody at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, has speculated on whether the soon-to-be-retired instrument was the target of terrestrial cyberattack or the victim of the harsh conditions of space. “A micrometeoroid might have taken out its attitudinal controls,” he told reporters. “On the other hand, a cyberattack would take sophisticated knowledge of the Hubble systems to pull off. And for what purpose?”

  Whatever the cause of Hubble’s troubles, with the end of the space shuttle program, NASA is unable to launch a repair mission, even if such a mission was deemed practical. The James Webb Space Telescope is slated to replace the Hubble later in this decade, at which time NASA plans to send up an unmanned spacecraft to assist Hubble in reentry for a safe and final crash landing in the Pacific Ocean.

  In the meantime, ground-and-space-based telescopes will attempt to take up the slack during Hubble’s absence.

  The story caught Jace’s attention because it was the first curious space-related news story since his own curious adventure. Though he failed to see how the two things could be related.

  CA2 1.0

  POPPY HAD JUST the spot in mind to fire off the angel’s flare, a wooded ravine on the other side of the Mizina about seven miles from home. It was close enough but off the mail plane’s flight path.

  Today was the twenty-first day of Twelfthmonth, winter solstice, the longest night of the year. A half moon hung in a cloudless sky. The temperature had dropped again to minus thirty (–34 C). Poppy was in the lead, breaking trail with their new Arctic Cat Bearcat. Adam and Hosea followed on the old Polaris and Yamaha. Poppy carried the angel’s golden pea in a small, leather poke so that he wouldn’t lose it.

  After they crossed the frozen Mizina, they climbed the bluff on the other side and threaded their way through a dark forest. After several miles they came to a long, broad ravine and descended to its bottom where Poppy stopped.

  “Better leave them idling,” Adam shouted. He and Hosea stomped their feet and swung their arms to get their blood moving.

  “See somewhere you like, lord?” Hosea said. He untied the shovel he had brought along.

  “It don’t matter,” Poppy replied. “Just dig till you hit dirt.”

  Hosea dug in the snow under a large spruce until the shovel struck the frozen ground. Poppy opened the poke and spilled the pea into the hole.

  “Now what?” Adam said. “We leave?”

  “Not yet. I want to see what happens.”

  “But you said the angel said —”

  “Don’t argue with me, boy. I know what the angel said. Go, sit on your sno-gos if you want, but I’m going to watch.”

  Adam looked at Hosea, and Hosea shrugged. While they waited, the Northern Lights came out and waved like a milky green banner in the starry sky. They passed around a thermos of tomato soup that Deut had packed for them.

  “Anything happening, lord?” Adam said. His father ignored the question.

  Hosea asked Adam, “Did the angel say how long this would take?”

  “No. She just said to hightail it outta here as soon as we dropped it.”

  “Go!” Poppy shouted. “Go home, you cowards. I’m tired of listening to you.” That shut the complainers up, but it was cold, and Poppy’s toes were already numb. He prayed to Father God to let whatever was supposed to happen with the pea happen already, but still they waited.

  It was Poppy’s habit to never let logic interfere with the tenets of his faith, but something about this whole exercise in the snowy woods refused to sit right in his mind. That is, if Father God was omniscient, which He was, and routinely heard Poppy’s and everybody else’s silent prayers day and night, which He did, then why did the angel need to send up any kind of flare to alert Heaven? Couldn’t Father God simply tell the angels where Martha and the key to the pit were located? For that matter, how could the key or anything else become lost to Father God? And if Father God was all powerful, why was there any need for a final battle at all? It would be more of a massacre than a legit battle, wouldn’t it? Did it mean that sin was more powerful than Father God? Was Satan an actual contender to the throne? Poppy became lost in his thoughts and stopped paying attention to the hole in the snow.

  Hosea, the one blessed with exceptional hearing, cocked his head and said, “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Adam said.

  “That noise, like a crackling sound. Like when you pour soda pop into a glass full of ice.”

  Neither Poppy nor Adam heard anything. Poppy shined his flashlight all around inside the snow hole. The heavy pea wasn’t visible, but there didn’t seem to be anything happening down there.

  Hosea said, “Turn off the engines and you’ll hear it.”

  Adam said, “No thanks. Leave ’em running.”

  “It’s getting louder. Don’t you hear it?”

  Poppy said, “You’re just listening to your belly, son. Either shut up or go home.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  Adam said, “Why don’t we all go home, lord? We can come back in the morning to see if anything happened.”

  After some thought, Poppy agreed. “Maybe you’re right. If it’s a flare they can see in Heaven, we should be able to see it from the house.”

  They returned to their machines. Hosea’s was the one in the rear, the old Yamaha Enticer, a
nd when the big man sat on it, the snow under it slumped, and Hosea and his ride dropped about a foot. Hosea tried to drive out of the little dip, but his engine died. It restarted with one pull on the cord, but it lacked the power to move forward. Meanwhile, the other riders disappeared up the trail.

  The sizzling sound had grown loud enough to drown out the engine noise, and fear gripped Hosea’s mind. I need some help here, Lord, he prayed. All around him the trees started to rattle and shed the snow load in their branches. They leaned this way and that, and a large one near him came crashing to the ground.

  That got the boy’s attention. Hosea climbed halfway off the seat and pushed with one foot while gunning the engine. His boot sank into icy slush, but he managed to advance a few feet. Another couple of pushes and he was free. More trees were falling, one of them right across his path. He had to detour around it, and the machine bogged down in the loose snow. He was able to regain the trail, but even at full throttle the engine labored without accelerating. And then it just quit moving at all.

  The icy slush had frozen on the rails, he figured, and was preventing the track from sliding along it. So he climbed off, lifted the seat, and dug out the tool kit. He put his ample weight against the machine and tipped it over, intending to chip the ice away with a screwdriver. All around him, trees were reeling drunkenly, and large patches of snow on the ground slumped into pools of sizzling slush.

  To Hosea’s surprise and incomprehension, there was no ice buildup fouling the undercarriage of his sno-go. There wasn’t much of a track left either. All the lugs and studs were missing — gone — and the metal links and bolts were stretched and misshapen. He poked at them with his screwdriver. Case-hardened steel was as pliable as warm taffy. Amazing.

  A tree crashed several yards away and whipped him with its branches. He jumped back in alarm. More trees were falling all around, so he abandoned the machine and began to jog up the trail.

  Hosea had never been much of a jogger, and jogging in snow took more effort than he could maintain. He huffed and puffed and ran for his life.

  Through the grace of Father God, Hosea managed to pull ahead of the sizzling snow. He didn’t stop until his lungs gave out. He paused only long enough to catch his breath before resuming his flight. When he began to believe that he might make it to safety, one of his boots came off.

  They were pac boots, the kind that laced up to mid-shin. Not the sort of boot to fall off on its own. It lay in the snow, and Hosea resisted the impulse to pick it up. He shined a light on it and was horrified to see that it too was melting. Both the rubber sole and leather upper were in pieces. And the felt inner liner was splayed open like the pelt of a small animal. It was the boot that had been immersed in the slush while he was pushing the sno-go.

  Hosea abandoned the boot and continued on. In no time at all, his entire foot went numb, but he didn’t dare stop until an ugly thought crossed his mind — what about his stocking? If whatever was in the slushy water was able to dissolve metal, rubber, cowhide, and felt, what chance did a cotton sock have against it? And what about his foot? It was so numb it might be melting away at that very instant and he wouldn’t even know. So he stopped long enough to lift his leg and inspect his foot with the flashlight. The grey stocking had a red toe and heel, and it looked intact. But he wasn’t taking any chances, and he pulled it off and tossed it into the trees. It hadn’t been doing him much good anyway because his foot below the ankle was a solid block of wood.

  Hosea hobbled on.

  A HEADLIGHT BOUNCED on the trail ahead. Adam had doubled back to check on him. He made a U-turn and stopped next to him.

  “Where’s your machine? What happened to your foot?”

  “Not now,” Hosea said, hopping on the seat behind him. “Go! Go! Go!”

  “But your foot.”

  Hosea reached around his brother’s waist and twisted the throttle. The machine lurched forward, and Adam grabbed the handlebars to control it. They raced up the trail. Or labored up the trail. The old Polaris was a gutsy machine with three cylinders, but any sno-go labored under Hosea’s weight. With both of them on it, the engine whined in protest.

  After about a mile, Adam stopped and hopped off the seat. He helped Hosea to stand up long enough to get to the storage compartment. He knelt in the snow and placed his brother’s foot on his lap. The skin was yellow and waxy-looking. Adam opened a foil blanket and wrapped it around the foot. Then he shucked off his heavy parka to remove his down vest. He wrapped the vest around his brother’s foil-covered foot and fastened it with duct tape.

  “What happened?” he said as he placed Hosea’s bundled foot on the running board. “Where’s your machine? Where’s your boot?”

  “Melted. Gone.”

  “Say again?”

  POPPY STOOD AT the ridgeline and watched the ravine below through binoculars. Something was happening down there. Not a whole lot, but something. Sparkling blue lines crisscrossed the ravine from one ridge top to the other. Other lines, red and orange ones, stretched from the ground up to a central pole that was located above where he’d dropped the angel’s pea. Something was happening there, but what?

  A single sno-go was climbing the ridge, coughing and misfiring, and when it drew near he saw that both boys were riding it.

  Adam pulled behind the Bearcat and killed the engine.

  “What’s that I smell?” Poppy said as he continued to watch the ravine.

  “Rubber belt, lord,” Adam said. “We’re too heavy for it. We need to use your machine.”

  “Where’s the other?”

  “On the trail. Hosea says it melted and fell apart. Same with his boot. I gotta get him home quick, or he could lose some toes.” Adam helped Hosea transfer himself to the new sno-go. “All right if we borrow the Cat, lord?”

  “No, it’s not all right. I’m riding it. Ride your own.”

  “I don’t think this one will go much further with two of us on it.”

  “You should’a thought about that sooner.”

  “His foot is frozen, lord. He could lose it.”

  Finally, Poppy lowered the binoculars and looked at his son’s wrapped-up foot. “What’s wrong with your foot, boy?”

  “It’s frozen, lord.”

  “Where’s your boot?”

  “Melted, lord.”

  Poppy turned back to the ravine. The bright, colorful threads were surmounting the ridge lines and spilling over into neighboring ravines. The ones closest to them looked to be about a mile away.

  “What’s happening down there?” he asked the boys.

  “I don’t know, lord,” Hosea said. “All the trees started to rattle, and then they fell over. The snow is melting, and so is everything else.”

  “What do you mean ‘melting’?”

  “Melting, lord, like hot wax.”

  Poppy didn’t want to be left alone out there with a crippled sno-go, but neither was he ready to leave. Adam was probably right, though: he needed the new machine to make it home with Hosea. Hosea was just too fat. He’d been fat ever since he was a baby, and no amount of praying, fasting, or dieting had made any lasting difference. It was a puzzle Poppy had never been able to solve. None of his other children were fat. Obesity didn’t run in his family, or in Mama P’s. It must be the boy’s own doing, a character flaw or a cross to bear.

  “Sit opposite each other. Adam, put your brother’s naked foot on you belly against your naked skin under all your clothes. Warm it up with your body heat. Understand?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  AFTER AN HOUR or so, the expansion of the threads had stopped, and the number of blue ones had multiplied exponentially. The central pole — in his mind he called it a pillar — was so interconnected with them that it appeared to be a solid object.

  Behind Poppy, the Polaris suspension squeaked as his boys shivered. They had pulled the two sno-gos side by side. Adam had complained fiercely when he received his brother’s ice-cold foot against his stomach. Much later, Hosea had ga
sped and moaned as feeling returned to his foot. Now the boys were silent, except for the squeaking.

  Binoculars were no longer necessary. An irregularly shaped circle of lights stretched out beneath them, and the central pillar had risen two or three hundred feet (60 – 90 m) into the night sky.

  “How much longer, lord?” Adam said.

  The question wasn’t worthy of an answer. How should he know how much longer it would take?

  So Adam asked another question. “What are we going to do with Ginger? We can’t keep her locked up forever. What do we do when it’s time for her to go home?”

  Poppy said, “We can chase the demons out of her, but we can’t change her stubborn heart. She’s no good to us or Proverbs. When this is over, we’ll send her back to Wallis. We’re better off without her.”

  “Won’t she tell the Troopers about what we done to her?”

  “Let her. We’ll be in the keep by then, and they’ll have plenty of other death and general anarchy to deal with without coming out here to bother us.”

  HOSEA COCKED HIS ear in the direction of the lake of lights. “It’s changing,” he said.

  Poppy said, “I can hear it.”

  The sizzling sound had become a distant drone. Now it acquired a beat, an oscillating pulse, maybe one beat per second.

  Soon the tangled threads themselves began to pulsate. Beads of light seemed to run along their length from ground to pillar. The pillar brightened a little. All the reds and greens were gone. It was all blue.

  Then — nothing. The threads all went dark, and the blue pillar gradually faded to black. Whatever was supposed to happen had happened. Or not.

  Hosea said, “That’s it?”

  Adam said, “Did it work?”

  Poppy had no answers for them.

  CA3 1.0