The Acolyte (17 page)

Normalcy—or the curious status quo we had come to equate with normalcy—was restored in New Bethlehem.

Toads dropped. Bombings stopped.

Toads fell from the sky. Civil strife ended. The citizenry was properly penitent. The Prophet’s word and rule of the Republic was once again unquestioned.

There remained, however, the ticklish chore of disposing of the toads. As with a great many inspired if feckless plans, it had been designed to achieve instant impact with precious little attention paid to the aftermath.

In this case, ton upon ton of putrefying toad meat.

The frogs were scooped up, scraped off, hosed away, disentangled from whatever organic matter they’d knit with, and disposed of in heavy-duty sacks dispersed free of charge. Sanitation crews compacted and burned them at the Jewtown incineration plant.

Despite a city-wide cleanup effort, the smell lingered. Amphibians exuded sundry slimes and ichors that, regardless how much hosing or scrubbing was done, impregnated whatever surface they splattered across. The city experienced an unseasonable hot spell a week after the drop; the air was nearly unbreathable.

Death toll: 1,438 Followers. Nobody of importance, although a Deputy Deacon was killed when a toad crashed through his skylight while he was enjoying a bubble bath—an excessive and vaguely feminine luxury that, it was whispered in rectory chambers, had been the cause of his freakish demise.

My apartment was repaired. I bade farewell to the Harbinger Harbour and moved back in with my bird and frog.

I’d never had pets. Ours was a society where animals were commonly viewed in terms of sacrificial value. But these ones had bucked the odds. I felt compelled to make their remaining days enjoyable.

They made fine companions. They had no opinions of their own, or not that they could express. I liked that. I set the bird’s cage and the frog’s aquarium in front of the window before leaving so they could soak in the sunlight.

That was life for a while. Me. The bird. The frog.

It wasn’t much. It was . . . it was just nice.

During the apartment repairs some mistrustful soul had bugged my telephone: the telltale
tica
-
tica
overlapping the dial tone told me so. Couldn’t say I was surprised: the Manger bombing would make me an object of casual suspicion the rest of my career.

As I contemplated the irony of bugging a phone that rarely rang, Doc Newbarr called.

“It’s about those tests you wanted me to run—”

I cut him off. “Nice night, isn’t it? Meet me for a walk?”

We convened at an all-night bakery. I sprung for coffees and a bag of sweet rolls.

Newbarr said, “Why the cloak and dagger?” When I explained he nodded and said, “Never going to live that down, son.”

We huddled in the doorway of a condemned apartment complex. He handed me a printout: the component breakdown of Hallelujah Energy Boost.

“Most of it’s worthless,” he said. “That’s to say, nothing about Hallelujah Energy Boost is beneficial to the human body. Sugar and corn starch, mostly. Empty calories. Trace amounts of vermin feces . . . sadly, that’s the most nutritious part. Finding the one outstanding ingredient required a bit of guesswork. I saw the way your partner Garvey slurps the stuff down. He’s not the only one—half the stationhouse is hooked. I scanned for addictive substances in powder form. Codeine. No. Methadone. No. Cocaine. Nope. Heroin. Nada. Then I tried this little beauty.”

He pointed out a chemical string: C10H15N.

Doc said, “Methamphetamine.”

“Garvey’s hooked on this garbage,” I said. “He’ll be okay?”

“So long as the supply continues. I consulted an old pharmaceutical guide; my guess is it’s a derivation of Desoxyn, once administered to patients suffering from extreme obesity.”

“And if the supply runs short?”

“He’ll be clawing the walls along with everyone else in the precinct.”

“You think The Prophet’s ever taken a slug of it?”

Doc smiled sadly. “You figure Hitler popped his head in a gas chamber just to check if it worked?

My body
healed over time. Hollis’s cattle prod left dime-sized scars all over my torso. I carried a lot of them—scars. Never did get a fake tooth to replace the one he’d knocked out, either: I didn’t mind the way the gap made me look. A little hardened.

A month went by. The citizenry of New Bethlehem settled into complacency. Things went back to the way they were—the way they’d always been.

Until one day they weren’t.

School Bus

Mount Galilee elementary school gymnasium. Five hundred school kids sat on the polished hardwood floor, eyes oriented on the stage. On one wall, a mural depicted the crucifixion of Jesus on the mount of Golgotha. On the other: a humorous mural portraying Charles Darwin, his features rendered in simian fashion, locked in a cage with a bunch of gorillas.

I stood backstage while the headliner worked the crowd. The Rappin’ Disciple was his name. He wore a rhinestone-bedazzled robe, long mane of hair, a big four-finger ring like a knuckle-duster in the shape of a Cross.

“What is it we all want?” The Rappin’ Disciple’s arms went punch-punch. “We want to live
authentic lives
! We got to find redemption! And let me tell you, gang, even at your ages, you’ve sinned. Oh, yes!”

Punch-punch went The Rappin’ Disciple’s robed arms.

“You eat too many sugary snacks—and that’s a
sin
, my young brothers and sisters; the sin of
gluttony
! You loaf inside when God’s shining His sunlight all over the world, playing your video games”—The Rappin’ Disciple pronounced video as
videar
—“and it’s my duty to tell you, that’s the sin of
sloth
!”

His voice grew fatherly: “But hey, that’s fine, that’s fine as cherry wine in moderation. Because I was once like you, boys and girls: a
sinner
. I used to stay up all night staring bug-eyed at the TV until I was thinking more of Mario than I was of Mary Magdalene! But now I love my God and my Prophet more than ever—and love is
obedience
, little Followers and Follower-ettes!”

He broke into a rap song. Strutting around, arms going punchy-punch-punch, rhinestones flashing. I gave him points for rhyming “frankincense” with “abstinence.” When he ceded the stage, I stepped behind the dais and cleared my throat.

“Prophet’s blessings, everyone.”

Five hundred well-trained mouths replied, “From the Lord’s lips to his.”

I was here as part of a Republic-sponsored community outreach initiative whose aim was to warn children about potential Faith Code infractions happening in their own households. The program worked in partnership with the Ministry of Eugenics and Social Stratification, a two-pronged attack to weed out seditious traitors and preach the dangers of cross-pollination with mongrel races.

On a folding table sat an array of banned artifacts. The teachers and children
oohed
and
aahed
as I’d produced them.

I picked up a yarmulke and asked, “Does anyone know what this is called?”

Scanning the assembly, I saw coffee-skinned kids, twenty or so Asians, even a few red Indians. Ghetto children were permitted to attend Republic schools—education being the first step to eradicating bastard faiths.

I spotted a girl in the front whose nametag read
Alona Cohen
.

“Alona, have your parents or grandparents ever worn the yarmulke?”

“My grandparents are dead,” she squeaked.

I picked up a menorah. “How about lighting candles in this?”

Alona tucked her chin to her chest and shook her head vigorously. “We don’t have those in our house. They’re bad things.”

“Look at me when I’m speaking, please.”

She lifted her head obediently.

“Now, Alona dear,” I said, “you would tell me if you’d seen these items before, wouldn’t you?”

She sniffed. “Uh-huh.”

“You do understand your duty to the Republic, don’t you? What is it, Alona?”

“Te . . . te . . . te . . .” Alona blubbered before choking up.

“It’s okay, Alona,” I said, softening, unwilling to reduce her to tears.

The principal rallied the assembly with, “Come on, guys, what do we do when we see a faith crime being committed?”

“
TELL!
” the assembly chorused.

“That’s right,” I said. “Tell a fellow Follower. Call the anonymous heathen tip line. Or you’re welcome to come down to my office and tell
me
, okay?”

The kids were elated at this personal invite. Imagine walking into Acolyte headquarters with a hot tip! Most of these boys probably daydreamed about becoming Acolytes.

“Remember, the people committing these crimes are sick. They may not seem sick, but they’re very sick up here.” I tapped my skull. “If someone was sick and could be cured, you’d want to help them, wouldn’t you? That’s all we do: take them away and fix them. Once they’re fixed, they come home. Good as new.” A confiding wink. “Better.”

The presentation continued. I showed off a Scientologist’s E-meter. I produced copies of the Koran, the Gita, and the Torah, all of which I set fire to in a trash can. I torched a copy of Darwin’s evolutionary chart, which had been soaked in creosote to help it burn more cinematically.

“Any questions?”

Only one hand went up.

“Yes, you. Speak.”

The boy didn’t look particularly well. His skin was the colour of pot roast forgotten in the back of a fridge; balls of sweat ran down his neck, soaking into his parochial vest.

“You were here last year,” he said. “A few weeks after, I found one of the books you talked about in my Dad’s closet. You said people could be sick and not show it and my Dad sure seemed that way—he wasn’t talking to me or Mom much. He was calling in sick to work a lot.”

The boy tapped his forehead, just as I’d done.

“But maybe he was sick up here. So I phoned the tip line. They came and took Dad away.”

“That was the right thing to do,” I said.

“You said he’d be cured,” he said. “But they brought him home in a wheelchair and his hair had gone all white and he couldn’t speak anymore. He just sat by the window and watched the snow. One night Mom shook him and shook him and she was screaming so loud that our neighbour made a call and they took Dad
and
Mom away.”

Had we been in private, just the boy and I, perhaps I’d’ve spoken about my own mother: not to allay his guilt at an act he could’ve felt tricked into doing—tricked into by
me
—but only so he’d know he was not alone. But to say so here and now, publicly, in my role as an ambassador of the Republic?—I couldn’t.

“Do you believe The Prophet would let that happen unless your parents deserved it?”

The boy shifted on his rump and winced. “It was just a
book
.”

A shocked gasp rippled through the assembly. I raised my hand for silence.

“Just a book? By that argument, son, the serpent in the Garden was only a serpent. A book is never just a book. Do you think we can simply allow people to go around reading whatever they choose? There is no God but God, and The Prophet is his mouthpiece.”