Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (13 page)

Suddenly Sally Consolador was sitting beneath the spreading pawpaw tree in Senator Maxim’s garden, where she’d come to read her Bible. Dreams of sitting in that bath had been occurring more frequently since she had come to Earth but this was the first time one had come during the day, while she was still awake and fully conscious. She shook her head and closed her Bible. She could prepare for tomorrow’s Holiness Camp later. She arose and began threading her way down the garden trail in the direction of the villa. An idea was beginning to form in her mind about what the visions really meant. Sally gently fingered the engraved invitation. “Looks like I ain’t invited,” she pouted. “Fancy invite,” she mused. The invitation was engraved on heavy, cream-colored paper and read: “The President of the Confederation of Human Worlds cordially invites the Reverend Jimmy Jasper to a private reception . . .”

“Mighty fine, mighty fine,” Sally muttered, turning the card over.

Jimmy stood before the mirror, carefully examining his appearance. “It is an affair of state,” he said solemnly, “and it means that the Word has at last reached the highest levels of Satan’s regime. My preaching has finally had the desired effect, and you, Sally, have played your part.” He turned and smiled at his consort. “How do I look?”

“Like John the Baptist come out of the desert into Herod’s palace. Beware Phasaelis’s treachery.”

Jimmy was wearing a plain, high-collar tunic, intentionally frayed at the elbows and sleeves as if it had long ago seen its better days. His hair, streaked with gray like his scraggly beard, hung down the back of his neck and over the collar of his tunic.

“I am Moses, come to warn Pharaoh of dire consequences if he does not comply with God’s commandments,” he reminded Sally sternly.

Jimmy did not like the comparison to John the Baptist, betrayed by Herod’s wife, Phasaelis, and beheaded. He was beginning to wonder if Satan at last had reached his consort and driven out the Holy Spirit. Had she turned into a weak vessel, he wondered. Her jealousy at not being invited to visit the president was disturbing, not in keeping with his holy mission. It smacked of cynicism, defeatism, in fact. Instead, she should be delighted that his evangelism had so impressed the president of the Confederation that she had requested a private meeting. No, Sally’s potential backsliding could mean serious trouble

for his crusade. Often before, he reflected, those who had received the Word had not kept it. Satan was a wily devil who delighted in the corruption of saints and sinners alike. He would have to keep an eye on Sally.

“Sally, are you having those dreams again?” he asked suddenly.

“Yup, just had one out back, in the garden.”

“Satan’s wiles are powerful, Sally. He often comes to us in our dreams—”

“Wasn’t dreamin’ this time, Jimmy.”

“—in our dreams, Sally, when we are most susceptible to his temptations.”

“Well,” she said, “I ’spect I will just have to amuse myself in the garden until you get back from”—she tossed the invitation on the bed—“this invite.”

Jimmy stepped forward quickly and retrieved the invitation.

“You can amuse yourself by getting ready for the Holiness Camp scheduled to begin tomorrow,” he replied sharply.

“But Senator Maxim’s gardens are so wonderful.” Sally smiled archly, glancing sideways at Jimmy. Senator Luke Maxim of the Kingdom delegation to the Congress of Human Worlds, an early convert to Jimmy’s preaching, had given the pair the full run of his country estate, including its formal gardens, which were then in full bloom, and Jimmy had made the villa his headquarters for the duration of his stay on Earth. Is she teasing me? Jimmy wondered. A prophet, he reflected, can tolerate anything—torture, persecution (the more of that the better!), disputatious disbelief—but a prophet cannot tolerate laughter. “Well, Sally, gardens can be a dangerous place. Ask Adam.”

Sally stretched luxuriously and opened her robe wide.

“Don’t I look like Eve?” she said with a wicked grin. Jimmy punched the egress button on the door console and as it hissed open turned back toward Sally. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve finished. Meanwhile, get ready for the—”

“The apple trees hang heavy with their fruit,” Sally said, laughing and letting the robe fall to the floor.

“Stay out of the goddamned garden!” he shouted as he stomped angrily out of the room. Office of the President, Confederation of Human Worlds, Fargo, Earth

“Madam President.” Jimmy Jasper took Chang-Sturdevant’s hand and brushed his lips softly over it. His hand in hers was hard, firm, warm. “I am so very pleased you invited me here today,” he murmured.

“Very nice of you to come, Reverend Jasper.”

“Call me Jimmy, Madam President, please do. I never went to divinity school, none of that scholarly stuff for me; just like Jesus Himself and His Disciples, I received my license to preach directly from God,” he said, smiling. “All that education,” he said, shaking his head, “it only confuses. A great poet once wrote:

‘Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door where in I went.’ ”

Chang-Sturdevant recognized the quatrain immediately and was surprised that Jasper knew it too. There was a sharp wit behind the man’s folksy puritanical facade. “Well, Jimmy, please.” Chang-Sturdevant gestured toward some easy chairs and they seated themselves. It was not lost on Jimmy that she did not offer to let him call her Cynthia. She noticed Jimmy’s trousers were wearing thin at the knees. “Refreshments?”

“Springwater, please, Madam President, if you have it. I take neither spiritous liquors”—he nodded disdainfully at the wet bar in a corner—“nor tobacco products. Our bodies, Madam

President, are temples of the Lord who has created the souls that inhabit them and we shall not corrupt them by consuming harmful substances. ‘Garbage in, garbage out,’ as they say.” He smiled briefly.

“Well, I happen to like my ‘garbage,’ Mr. Jasper. Will I go to hell because of that?”

“Yes, but not because of anything you drink or smoke.”

“I’m going to hell?”

“Yes, Madam President, you are. You shall sink straight down, like a stone in a lake of brimstone. You shall burn and suffer there forever, writhing and screaming horribly. You shall roast like an overstuffed sausage on a barbie, your flesh splitting and oozing for all eternity. White-hot iron rods will be inserted into your anus and sear their way into your innards with a horrible intensity and burning. You shall turn slowly on a spit as devils puncture your flesh with red-hot pitchforks and horrid monsters constantly gnaw and rip at your palpitating flesh, consuming your tortured body, which will never be consumed, never diminish through the feasting but always be the same and always feed their insatiable appetites. You shall scream terribly and beg forgiveness but it shall never be granted, never.”

He sipped primly at his water and smiled. “But that does not have to be, Madam President.”

Chang-Sturdevant regarded her guest with revulsion and fascination. His rugged face was strikingly handsome; his huge hands, scarred and veined from heavy manual labor, held the large glass of water as if it were a thimble. His voice, although he was not now speaking with the same volume and power he used when preaching, was deep, laden with conviction, and its timbre penetrated straight through her body. But it was Jimmy Jasper’s eyes that held her attention. They were the brightest blue she had ever seen and they virtually shimmered with conviction. She could hardly avoid staring into them. “You . . . you are as impressive in the flesh as on a vid screen, Mr. Jasper. How—”

Jasper held up his hand. “It is not me that impresses people, Madam President; it is the Holy Sprit that resides within me.”

“How do you know all this about hell and its tortures?” She winced visibly at the thought of white-hot spits and all that. How could the man in one breath quote Omar Khayyam and in the next talk so lovingly of the tortures of hell?

Jasper smiled gently. “I have been told, Madam President, by God Almighty Himself. But you can find out by reading the Scriptures. Read Psalms, Isaiah, but particularly, Madam President, beware of what Our Lord saith in Mark 9:47, ‘And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire.’ ” He leaned forward and placed his hand gently on Chang-Sturdevant’s knee. “You must pluck out an eye, Madam President, and it is my mission to help you do that.”

Jasper smiled. He fixed Chang-Sturdevant’s eyes with his own. Staring into those brilliant blue orbs, she felt she could not break away from this man. His hand resting on her knee seemed to be throbbing with power. With great effort, she closed her eyes and then looked away. The spell broken, he removed his hand, sat back in his chair, and sipped at his water. Chang-Sturdevant almost sighed with relief. “That is a mighty big sacrifice, Mr. Jasper, to pluck out your own eye,” she said, smiling weakly.

“Oh, call me Jimmy, please.” He chuckled. “Our Lord did not mean that literally, Madam President. He meant only that to enter the kingdom of God one has to make huge sacrifices.”

“What’s my sacrifice, then, Mr. Jasper?”

Jimmy smiled before he answered. Then: “Get rid of those around who refuse to shake off the clutches of Satan. I mean your minister of war in particular, who is known to be close to you.” He nodded his head. Chang-Sturdevant thought, How in hell does he know that? Jasper saw the expression that crossed her face at that statement and smiled knowingly. “Call off this war against the Angels of the Lord, Madam President!” he continued. “Let them come among you and purge your souls of the Devil and expel from this land Satan and his demons!

Let the Millennium begin! Welcome the messengers of Christ and accept His blessings and salvation!”

Afraid to look directly into those eyes, Chang-Sturdevant stared at the wet bar for a long moment before answering. Yes, she badly needed a drink! “You are talking about the Skinks, Mr. Jasper.”

“As you call them, Madam President; as you call them, as Satan has made you call them. But I have been to the kingdom of God and I know the true nature of these entities, and they are here to bring you peace and salvation.”

“There are people in my government, Mr. Jasper, who are saying words to that effect. Senator Maxim, for one, who I understand is your host. But we have seen those creatures, Mr. Jasper. They have murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people! My soldiers and Marines have fought them and beaten them back. All these victims, these fighters, they cannot all have been deceived. How could God have chosen this way to save us? We aren’t Sodom! We aren’t Gomorrah! I am not Lot’s wife, Mr. Jasper, you can be damned sure of that,” she said, looking directly into Jimmy Jasper’s eyes. She blinked. Nothing happened.

“Have you yourself ever seen one of these entities, Madam President?” Jasper asked quietly.

“Well, no.”

“I have. I have seen them closer up than any of your soldiers. I know what they are, Madam President; you don’t. None of your people do either. I am offering you and your people salvation. I know I won’t, but all of you may perish despite my best efforts to save you. If that happens it’s the will of God.” He shrugged. “I can only try, using my puny intellect and insubstantial powers to make you see the Truth. But only you, Madam President, can make that glorious covenant with God; only you can accept the Holy Spirit. It was in fact the Holy Spirit that inspired you to ask me here today, I know it. I know it is not too late! There is hope! But”—he set his glass on the table—“I must leave now.” He got to his feet. “Thank you for inviting me here, Madam President, and may God bless you and keep you and show you the Way.” He bowed and walked to the door. Chang-Sturdevant stood, her hand halfway extended, an expression of bewilderment on her face as Jimmy left the room. The officer in charge of Jasper’s escort stuck his head in the door and looked questioningly at the president. She nodded weakly; the interview was over. “Whew!” she muttered and walked on shaky legs to the bar. She poured herself a generous shot of Scotch, which she drank neat in one swift gulp. She poured another immediately but sipped at it slowly as she made her way back to her chair. She looked at her hand. It was still shaking. Jasper’s visit had brought back to Chang-Sturdevant with sharp poignancy memories of her own childhood. The Changs had converted to Christianity generations before Cynthia had been born, converted to a fundamentalist Protestant sect in fact. At every meal in the Chang household, grace was pronounced by Cynthia’s father, and he led the family in Bible readings before bedtime every night; attendance at Bible school and church every Sunday was required. The Bible was the King James Version. In their religious beliefs, the Changs were throwbacks to an earlier time. Cynthia’s mother swore that the Catholic Church was engaged in a clandestine plot to destroy Protestantism and take over the world. When the local Catholic church, St. Boniface, rang its bells for vespers, Cynthia asked her mother, “Momma, it’s only seven o’clock, so why are the bells striking thirteen times?” “Hush, daughter,”

her mother always answered in a whisper, a faint twinkle in her eye, “their clocks are set on Vatican time!”

But the denomination the Changs belonged to did not practice infant baptism. According to their beliefs, a person had to be old enough to understand what baptism meant before a minister could perform the rite. By the time Cynthia was old enough to understand, she knew that she did not believe in it, and her parents never pressed her about taking the plunge (they believed in full immersion). Her husband, Jakob Sturdevant, was a rationalist, and before their marriage was ended by his early death, Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant had come to realize that she too was an avowed rationalist.

But hellfire, the wiles of Satan, the Holy Ghost, salvation, and Jimmy Jasper had brought all that back to her, so President Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant sat for a long time, thinking about what Jimmy Jasper had told her. The Home of Attorney General Huygens Long, Fargo

“What we have here is another goddamned Rasputin!” Huygens Long muttered over his cooling coffee.