Prayers to Broken Stones (13 page)

The results, as one would expect, included a typically brilliant, subtle, and haunting piece by Willis, a powerful and seriously disturbing story in Steve Tem’s inimitable style, my own offering reprinted here, and a clever framing
tale by Ed Bryant that somehow managed to tie these disparate efforts together. But Cynthia Felice had to bow out due to other pressing demands, and the result was a trio of tales so unrelievably dark that the reader would probably ask Santa for a razor blade or cyanide capsule that year.

The distant publisher of this comic book catalogue was said to have suffered instant seizure upon reading the first fiction to grace his pages, began spinning and bouncing off walls like a Linda Blair doll, and reportedly didn’t respond to Thorazine until well after New Year’s.

The truth is, I’d indulged myself in the story to the point of including a few in-jokes, one at the expense of my book publisher and another gently poking an editor I actually thought very highly of.
What the heck,
I thought,
who’s gonna read a comic catalogue?

It seems everybody did. And if that wasn’t enough, the trio of tales was soon sold to
Asimov’s SF Magazine
where it served to darken the
next
Christmas for a host of people. And if
that
wasn’t enough, Bryant had sent copies out as Christmas gifts to everyone he knew—which just happens to be everyone in the publishing industry and probably everyone in Known Space.

It wasn’t long before I had the reputation as The Man Who Sacrificed Christmas with a Survival Knife. Compared to Simmons, the Grinch and Scrooge were Santa’s helpful elves.

It doesn’t help that I assure everyone who will listen that Christmas is my second-favorite holiday (after Halloween, of course), or that every Christmas Eve my wife Karen and I accompany our small daughter up to a nearby snow-covered hillside to watch for Santa’s sleigh, or that I once played Billy the Orphan who was really the disguised Christ Child in our fifth-grade operetta, or that …

No, I didn’t think it would help.

Meanwhile, ponder this: when the Big Mistake finally happens and some computer pushes its own button, uncorking the Ultimate Detergent and putting us all through the Rinse and Burn cycle, when the accumulated weaponry of forty years of stockpiling gets launched just to scratch someone’s itch to see if it will work, when the
mushroom clouds have withered and the nuclear winter has grayed to nuclear spring … well, ask yourself: Self, what institution in the U.S. of A. has the infrastructure to withstand such a boot in the anthill? Who has the relay satellites already warmed up and plugged into our homes and communities, just waiting to carry the Leader’s voice whispering in the nuclear night? Who has the followers in the millions … followers who already show the precise blend of fanaticism, obedience, and joyous aggression necessary to carry on with the Program while the rest of us are digging Uncle Charlie out of the rubble?

Got the answer yet?

Move over, Walter F. Miller.

Oh, yes—one final footnote for future biographers and bibliographers: the more discerning among you may note that in this story and in
all
of my stories and novels that include money-grubbing, venial, dishonest and otherwise fake TV ministers, the center of their web is invariably Dothan, Alabama. Now some of you may ask, “What terrible trauma, what dark, unrecorded and possibly unprintable incident occurred in Dothan, Alabama, to cast such an indelible blot on the escutcheon of this fine southern community?”

Well, you’ll never hear the answer from me.

Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob brought the Word to the New Yorkers on the eve of Christmas Eve, paddling his long dugout canoe east up the Forty-second Street Confluence and then north, against the tide, up Fifth Avenue, past the point where the roof of the Public Library glowed greenly under the surface of the darkening waters. It was a cold but peaceful evening. The sunset was red and beautiful—as all sunsets had been for the two-and-a-half decades since the Big Mistake of ’98—and cooking fires had been lit on the many tiers and tops of shattered towers rising from the dark sea like the burned-out cypress stumps Brother remembered from the swamps of his childhood.

Brother paddled carefully, aware of the difficulty of handling the long canoe and even more aware of the precious cargo he had brought so far through so much. Behind him, nestled across the thwarts like some great cooking pot, lay the Sacred Dish, it’s God’s Ear raised to the burning sky as if already poised to catch the fist emanations from the Holy Beamer that Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob had left in Dothan, Alabama, fourteen months earlier. Set behind the Sacred Dish, crated and cradled,
was the Holy Tube, and behind it, wrapped in clear plastic, sat the Lord’s Bike. The Coleman generator was set near the bow, partially blocking Brother’s vision but balancing the weight of the cargo of sacred relics astern.

Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob paddled north past the trellised remnants of Rockefeller Center and the ragged spire of St. Patricks. There were dozens of occupied towers in this section of Rimwall Bay, hundreds of fires twinkling on the vined and rusted ruins above him, but Brother ignored them and paddled purposefully northward to 666 Fifth Avenue.

The building still stood—at least thirty-five floors of it, twenty-eight still above the water line—and Brother let the long dugout drift near the base of it. He stood—balancing carefully and shifting the weight of the Heckler and Koch HK 91 Semi-Automatic Christian Survival Network Assault Rifle across his back—raising his arms high, hands empty. Shadowed figures looked down from gaps in dark glass. Somewhere a baby cried and was hushed.

“I bring you glad tidings of Christ’s Resurrection!” shouted Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob. His voice echoed off water and steel. “Good News of your coming Salvation from tribulations and woe!”

There was a silence and then a voice called down. “Who do you seek?”

“I seek the eldest Clan. That with the strongest totem so that I may bring gifts and the Word of the Lord from the True Church of Christ Assuaged.”

The echoes lasted several seconds and the silence longer. Then a woman’s voice from higher up called, “That be our Red Bantam Clan. Be welcome, stranger, and know that we already have the word of God here. Join us. Share our fire and preparations for the Holy Day.”

Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob nodded and moved the canoe in to tie up to a rusted girder. The Holy Spirit had not yet spoken to him. He did not know how the Way would be prepared. He did know that within forty-eight hours they would be ready to murder him or to worship him. He would allow neither.

All through the day of Christmas Eve they worked to raise the gift of the Sacred Dish to the rooftop. The stairwells were too small and the elevator shafts too cluttered with rope ladders, pulleys, lift baskets, and vines. Brother supervised the arrangement of block and tackle to raise the Dish the two-hundred-fifty feet to the top of the building. The three flights of stairs above the occupied twenty-fifth floor were perilous even for the cliffdwellers of the Red Bantam Clan. Brother had insisted that they improve the way up the cluttered staircase. “We will be coming up here often once the Holy Beamer connects you with the Word,” he said. “And so will be other Clans of the Rimwall Trading League. The way must be cleared so that the youngest and the eldest of these can easily make the climb.”

Old McCarty, the wrinkled matriarch of the Red Bantam Clan, had shrugged and directed a group of women to carry out repairs in the stairwell while the men raised the Sacred Dish.

By the time the sunset streaked the heavens red, all was in place: the Sacred Dish was firmly affixed atop the highest section of rooftop, the God’s Ear was aimed as carefully as Brother’s skills and his rusty sextant would allow, the Formica altar was set in place below the Dish, and cables ran down to the Clan’s Common Room on the twenty-fifth floor. The generator was in place there and the strongest Clan Hunters had been appointed to take turns on the Lord’s Bike for the sunrise services.

Tara, the elf-faced five-year-old, tugged at Brother’s coat as he was setting away his plastic buckets. “It’s almost dark,” she said. “Will you come with us to see the tree and open presents?”

“Yes,” said Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob. He glanced at the red-dyed bantam tattoo on the back of the child’s hand. “And I will give the sermon.”

The room was very large, the walls were coated with soot from cooking fires, and the rotted carpets had been covered with rush mats. The seventeen members of the Red Bantam Clan gathered around the Holy Tube and the
small aluminum Christmas tree near the hearth. Candles glowed. A child’s paper star decorated the top of the tree. Brother looked at the small scattering of crudely wrapped presents under the tree and closed his eyes.

Old McCarty cleared her throat. The tiny bantam tattoo on her forehead glowed redly in the candlelight. “Beloved Clan,” she said, “it is our custom to give thanks to God on this most sacred of nights, and then to open the presents that Santa has brought. But this year our Brother from the Dothan True Church has arrived …” She paused, swallowed as if tasting something bitter, and finished. “Who will now tell us of tomorrow’s celebration and read from the Word of God.”

Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob moved into the open area in front of the tree and set his HK 91 against the table, within easy reach. He took his worn CSN Bible from his pack and set it on top of the Holy Tube. “Brothers and Sisters in Christ,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, when the sun rises and the Way is purified, the Holy Beamer will cast its light into darkness, and once again you will hear the Word and become part of the True Church of Jesus Christ Assuaged. My trip here has not been an easy one. The Enemy was active. Five of my Brothers in Christ died so that I might arrive here.” Brother stopped and looked at the faces in front of him. Old McCarty was frowning, the men were staring with interest or indifference, and many of the women and children were looking at him with an awe bordering on reverence.

“The time of Tribulations has come upon us and been long and heavy,” Brother said at last. “But from this chosen place, the True Word—as spoken by Our Savior through the Eight Evangelists—will be heard again and will spread throughout the land.” He paused again and looked at the faces lit by candlelight. Some of the children’s gazes were drifting to the presents.

“Listen to what is written,” Brother said and opened the Bible. “Revelation 13: 16, 17—‘And he causes all, small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save that he has the MARK, or
the name of the beast, or the numbers of a man: and his number is six hundred, threescore and six.’ ”

There was a slight stirring in the crowd. Brother turned the page and read aloud again without once glancing down at the text. “ ‘Revelation 14:9–11,’ ” he said. “ ‘If any many worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torments ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they rest no day on night, who worship the beast and image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.’ ”