Reborn

10

As Bill strode the fifty yards or so to the front gate, he began to make out the messages on the signs. There were quotations from scripture about the Antichrist and Armageddon and the end of the world. Others were original, and he found these the most disturbing:

A MAN WITH NO SOUL IS A HOME FOR THE DEVIL! and GET THEE OUT, DEMON! and the worst, JAMES STEVENS—ANTICHRIST!

Bill would have found them laughable were it not for the fact that they were talking about his friend. He had caught the hunted look in Jim's eyes a while ago, the look of a man who felt like a freak, who wasn't completely sure to whom he could turn or trust. Harassment by a bunch of religious nut cases might push him over the edge.

They were just getting their picket line organized when they spotted him. He heard cries of "Look! There's a priest!" and "A priest! A priest!"

When he reached the open gate, a slim, pale young man stepped forward to meet him.

"What's the meaning of this?" Bill asked, straining to appear calm and concerned.

"Have you been sent here to exorcise him, Father?" the man said.

"What in God's name are you talking about?"

"In God's name, yes, very apt, very apt. I'm Martin Spano. The Spirit has sent us here to expose this abomination for who he is."

"And just who do you think he is?"

"Why, the Antichrist, of course."

He seemed shocked that Bill did not know. Bill felt his control begin to slip.

"That's ridiculous! Where did you get such an idea?"

"He's a clone, Father! A group of cells taken from one man and grown into the shape of another in a blasphemous attempt to play God! But he is not a man! He is a mere cutting! He is born not of man and woman, and as such he has no soul. He is a tool of Satan, an avenue for the Antichrist to enter into this world!"

Bill was impressed with the force of the man's conviction and momentarily taken aback by the outré logic of his words. If you bought all that Revelations mumbo jumbo, you could probably be convinced that this fellow was on to something here.

"I assure you," Bill said in his loudest voice, addressing the crowd as well as their young leader, "that you have nothing to fear from Mr. Stevens. I've known him most of my life, and he is not—I repeat, not—the Antichrist!"

This seemed to slow the crowd, but not as much as Bill would have liked. A couple of them lowered their signs, but the rest stood and waited.

Their leader was taking no chances, however. He turned to them and held up his arms.

"Wait a minute!" he cried. "lust wait!" Then he turned back to Bill. "What is your name, Father?"

"Father William Ryan."

"Of what order, may I ask?"

"The Society of Jesus."

"Ah!" he said, his face lighting as if he had just had a revelation. "A Jesuit! One of the intellectuals of the Church! One of those modern priestly rationalists who would put the human mind above faith! A follower of the Black Pope!"

"That's not true at all!" Bill said. "You're making—"

"Obviously the Spirit has bypassed your unreceptive heart and settled in ours! We have been called, and it is our mission to spread the word of Truth about this man so that no matter where he goes he will be shunned and cast out by the faithful, and his words of sedition against Jesus Christ and his Church will fall on deaf ears! But the Evil One obviously has your ear already, so we will not listen to you!"

A woman beside Spano suddenly dropped her sign and raised her hands. She began babbling in an alien-sounding tongue that resembled nothing Bill had ever heard before.

"Do you hear?" Spano cried. "Even now the Spirit is with us, telling us not to be swayed by this fallen priest! We stay to spread the warning about the Antichrist within! Let us join hands and pray!"

As they clustered together, grasping hands and saying the Our Father, Bill realized there was no way he could reason with this bunch. Their Pentecostal fervor frightened him. No telling what they would do if they got onto the grounds. So while they were praying, he stepped over to the iron gate and swung it across the driveway. As the gate struck the stop on the brick column to his left, the lock clanked closed automatically.

Spano glared at him as he looked up from their prayer.

"You can't lock out the word of God, Father Ryan!"

"I know," Bill said pointedly. "But I haven't heard any of it here."

Restless and uneasy, he stood and watched the group as it murmured its prayers, remembering someone's comment about the intelligence of a crowd being inversely proportional to its size. He hoped no one did anything stupid. At least the gate barred them from the grounds. That gave him a little comfort. Since reason seemed a useless tool here, Bill turned his back on them and returned to the house.