A Season for Slaughter

Chapter 59 Wild Willie

Instead of heading straight for Japura, we turned south.

The new plan was to keep the airship away from the mandala. It was too distracting a presence-the Heisenberg effect-and we didn't want to risk another nightmare like Coari.

As much as we bated the worms, now more than ever, we needed to remind ourselves that the mandate of this mission was not destruction, but knowledge. The most powerful weapon we would ever have against the Chtorran infestation would be our thorough understanding of the deadly red ecology.

We needed to observe the ordinary workings of life in a mandala settlement. Now we knew that we couldn't simply park ourselves in a Chtorran sky; these creatures were too observant, too aware. And, when they gathered in groups, their collective intelligence-as well as their collective horror-seemed magnified.

The new plan was to anchor fifty klicks south and drop all our probes by flyer. This would seriously limit the number of units we could plant. We were still trying to decide if it was safe to risk a dark flyover on a moonless night to drop the bulk of the monitors. My only concern was the possibility of human beings living in the mandala. If we could get them out…

On the other hand, did I really want to save the lives of human beings who were willing to live with worms?

The parents, no. But the children deserved a chance.

And then I thought about the pictures from Coari.

I wondered if the children were even human anymore.

But then again… were any of the rest of us all that human? Who knew? Who was to judge? And by what standards?

I knew one thing-I was in serious need of a spiritual recharge. The events of the past two days had left me twitching. The events of the past ten days had devastated me. The events of the past six years had destroyed my innocence.

I found myself wandering the corridors of the Bosch, up and down from one floor to the next-all the way aft to Lieutenant Siegel's no-longer-secret operations bay, all the way forward to the observation lounge in the nose of the aircraft. Now that the Brazilians were effectively out of the loop, we had a much different sense of purpose.

Somehow, I ended up in one of the airship's twelve theaters. It was linked via satellite to the Global Network. There was always something playing here, if not live, then via taped replay. I wandered in and sat down without even looking to see what program, what channel, what network. I just found a seat in the dark and stared unconsciously forward.

During the Training, Foreman had said, "There are no accidents. You get exactly what you set out to get." He must have been right. I set out looking for spiritual guidance, but what I got instead was Wild Bill Aycock.

"Wild Bill" Aycock was the most ferocious, fire-slinging, hell and damnation, fear-of-God, rabble-rousin' orator since ol' Dan'l Webster wrassled the devil two falls out of three for custody of hell. His face filled the huge screen, giving me an unappetizingly close view of the craggy terrain of "Wild Willie's" mountainous features. Some people thought he was handsome. I didn't see it myself. On this screen, I thought his pores were too large.

"People ask me-" he was saying, in that familiar seductive rasp of his, "-how can I believe in God when the Earth is being eaten alive? How can I have faith? What is there to have faith in?" With both hands he grabbed hold of the music stand that he used to hold his notes and leaned intensely forward, leaning so far toward the camera that he seemed like a giant grotesque balloon expanding into the room. I sat back in my seat. Stereoscopy has its disadvantages.

"Y'know-" Preacher Aycock said, abruptly conversational and straightening up just a little. "I can understand the reasons for their doubt. Yes, I can.

"You turn on the television or you pick up a newspaper, and all that you find are the endless stories of death and dying and despair. We wallow in the dreadful news, all the sickening and disease, the hellacious purple plants, the ravenous red worms. Day after day, we are assaulted by the devil's own host of malformed and malicious mites and miseries tormenting our spirits. The pictures are endless, and how can anyone think anything but the darkest of thoughts?

"Where's God, you say? How can God allow this? Can these unholy creatures possibly be the work of the same God who created the whispering beauty of the towering redwoods, or the awesome majesty of the great leviathans of the deep? Could the same God who created the intricacies of the honeybee and the inspirational labors of the common ant also be so deranged as to create such pestilence and foulness that despoils the planet now?

"You know, friends, I've talked about God's great plan since the first day I began this ministry. Yes, I have. And I have never lost faith that God does indeed have a plan.

"But-let me tell you-I'm also humble enough to know that the architecture of God's great plan is far beyond my simple ability to understand. The scale of God's great plan is far beyond the ability of any mere human being to grasp. And the details are so far beyond our comprehension that it's the height of vanity even to make assumptions.

"At best-at very best-all that any of us can ever be is just a tiny little cog on a tiny little wheel somewhere in God's great machine; but even that should be enough, even for the most ambitious of us. We should sink to our knees in awe and gratefulness for even being allowed to know that such an awesome plan exists.

"Now I know there's a paradox here. How can we serve God's plan if we cannot understand it? How can we serve? That, my friend-is where your faith comes in. Yes, that's where your faith is wanted and needed and absolutely demanded. Oh, yes.

"Now, I also know that the science boys have all kinds of four-dollar words for what's happening here. Fancy explanations that are so exquisitely written and voiced that they're just about impossible for the average person-you and me-to understand. Sometimes it seems that the science boys are almost as impossible to understand as God. But I'll put my faith in God, because I know he knows what he's doing."

Wild Willie paused to take a drink of water. I wondered if he'd been trained by Foreman. You never knew. He looked around at his audience and gave them his three-million-dollar grin; his craggy-faced, Roman-nosed, rugged-cheeked, chin-augmented, tooth-capped, colored-contact-lensed, hair-implanted, digitally enhanced grin. The man looked like Abraham Lincoln-only better. In his own magnificent way. I suppose, he was gorgeous. I had heard once that during his heyday before the plagues, he used to receive over a hundred marriage proposals a week.

"Now, I would not presume to speak for God," he continued. "No, I would not. There are some mistakes that I will not make-and presuming on the Good Lord's prerogatives is one of them.

"Oh, I admit that I am sometimes a vain and arrogant man. You've heard the jokes about my nose and my hair and my eyes. In my younger days, I listened to the TV advisors who told me I could serve my ministry best if I looked my best. I made a mistake. I listened and I stopped loving myself like the Good Lord wanted me to-but I know better now. I know that the mere flesh and clay that we clothe our spirits in has nothing to do with the true beauty of the inner soul; and in fact, the curse of physical beauty is that it distracts us from seeing the real person within, whether that person is truly good or truly evil. Physical beauty is not the evidence of spiritual beauty. I know that now. Unfortunately, I cannot undo this mistake and I have to live with it. I see it every morning when I look in the mirror, the evidence that one terrible day, I actually lost faith in God's great plan for me.

"But I want you to know that I regained my faith and my strength. You know the story, I don't have to repeat'it. You know how I dropped to my knees and begged for forgiveness and how in the peace that followed I understood that my job was to confess the truth to you, so that you would know the lesson that I had to learn the hard way. And now I stand up here every week and acknowledge that I wear on my face the proof that a man can lose his faith and find it again. So yes, there's hope for you too.

"Yes," he smiled gracefully. "A man can be just as vain and as silly as a woman. Sillier perhaps. I have made mistakes, many of them. Oh yes, I'm just a poor sinner, just like you. I get trapped by the same human feelings as you do, the same lustful urges and selfish desires, the same thoughts of greed and gluttony and malicious vengefulness. We all have those thoughts. They're part of being human.

"But the other part of being human, the joy of being human is knowing that God's love gives you the strength to resist succumbing to the devil's temptations. I remind myself of that every day, every sun-blessed morning and every star-kissed night. Washed in God's love, I find the strength to continue doing his work, yes I do.

"But I'm getting off my track here." He held up his notes and grinned, as if to show that he'd let himself get carried away for the moment. "I just wanted to say that yes, I have been vain-but I will never be so vain as to presume to speak for God or tell you what his great plan is. No, I would not. That would be a presumption of his holy prerogative so audacious and impudent as to be deserving only of your contempt and disgust. Yes, there are some vanities too ambitious even for a vain and arrogant sinner like me. And if I get angry at myself for the possibility of this vanity, can you imagine how furious I become when I see other people shamelessly indulging in this profane disgrace? No, I don't think you can imagine just how enraged I truly am today. I'll tell you.

"I saw something in the newspaper last week that left me so angry, so filled with rage and disgust and sheer dismay at the willfulness and despicableness of some human beings that I haven't been able to sleep a wink since I saw it. No, I haven't. I have tossed and turned in despair that these lies are being presented to you as scientific fact. This blasphemy is being presented as uncontested truth. Yes, it is. Here, let me show you, right here on the front page of the Los Angeles Times Sunday Science Supplement. The science boys are saying that the processes that created life here on Earth are the same processes that created the hellacious creatures that are now devouring our beloved home. And I've got to tell you, that just isn't true. I don't care how many four-dollar words they throw at me. I don't care what machines and screens and tests and statistics they pile up, ream upon ream upon ream, I just don't care; they'll never convince me that these creatures, these hideous red-and-purple demons, and all the stinging things and the crawling things and the flying things without number-and all the grinning little pink, furry imps that follow in their wake-no, they'll never convince me that these are the work of the same God who created you and me. No, they are not. I know it, as certainly as I am standing here with my heart pumping hot red American blood through my veins. These creatures, whatever they are, whatever they pretend to be, whatever they might seem to be-they are not the work of God.

"They are not the work of our great father and they are not part of his great plan.

"But you ask me-and you should-'But Willie, what's your proof? How can you refute all this scientific evidence? How can you be so certain that these creatures are not God's work?'

"I can be certain. And so can you. Look at the colors of these creatures. Look at them. Unholy crimson. Passionate scarlet. Disturbing purple. Sickly pink. Hurtful orange. These are not God's colors. These creatures proudly wear the colors of Satan. Oh, they've fooled the science boys well, but they haven't fooled me. The devil is vain, even vainer than me. He couldn't resist the temptation. His creatures trumpet their true allegiance for the whole world to see!

"That's how I know." He nodded with certainty, repeating himself in doom-laden tones. "That's how I know."

"Oh, yes-the devil has done his work well. All the death, the despair, the dying-that's the real evidence that this devastation is the devil's mischief. Do you honestly believe in your heart of hearts that a just and loving God would create such hellspawn to devour his children? Do you honestly think that the God who created you and your world would spitefully destroy his most beautiful planet?

"No, these are not God's creatures. And if they are not God's creatures, then the true author of them must be he who waits below, the terrible dark lord of the flies. He girds for battle even now. This is the foretaste of Armageddon, and these minions are the heralds of hell! Right now, this moment, even as I speak to you, Satan is gathering his troops for the last and bloodiest war for dominion over heaven. And upon his victory, each and every one of us poor damned sinners will be plunged from God's good green Earth into the torments of the most despicable pits of eternal fire and damnation that lie below. These beasts are the devil's handiwork. Look upon them and despair, for yourselves, for your families, for your children unto the last generation."

Wild Willie stopped then, seemingly exhausted by the impact of his own revelation. He grabbed hold of his music stand again and slumped over it as if exhausted; he stood that way for a long dramatic moment. Then, finally, he shook his head, and his wild black mane of hair floated out around his skull like a Chtorran fluffball opening itself up in the first cold winds of spring. Slowly, slowly, he raised his eyes to glower out at his audience.

"Where then is God?" he asked. "Why does he let this happen? Why does he allow this accursed plague to sweep so pitilessly across the tender face of our sweet mother Earth? Where is God? That is the question!" Wild Bill Aycock waited while his audience considered the import of his words. Without ever taking his eyes away from his target, he nodded his head ever so gently, and asked, "Yes, think about it. Where is God?

"I will tell you," he began again, "what it means to be a New Christian. I will tell you again and again and again-and then you will understand where is God." He took a deep breath and intoned, "We are the children of God. But more than that, we are the particles of God. We are the living breathing pieces through which the quality of God expresses itself on Earth.

"There is no hierarchy of priests and bishops and cardinals and popes standing between you and God. There is you and there is God. You are as connected to God as every other living thing born. on this planet is connected to God.

"Your responsibility-your choice-is whether or not you will acknowledge that relationship, and whether you will live up to your purpose as one of God's most precious tools. This is the message that Christ tried to teach us. This is the message that Rome didn't want to hear. This is the message that the Rome of any age never wants to hear."

Leaning intensely forward once again, he lowered his voice "God is everywhere-if there were a place where God were not in evidence, if there were a place in the universe from which God had withdrawn his holy spirit, that place would bear the shame and the name of hell.

"So where is God? Has he withdrawn from this Earth? No, he has not-but his children have withdrawn from their relationship with God!

"Do you want to know where God is? Look to yourself. Look to your deeds. Look into your own hearts and souls and see how you have failed in your responsibilities. Any place where God does not exist is hell, and if God no longer manifests himself in you, then you are in hell and God is there with you! Yes, God is in hell. God is in Satan's own domain of punishment because we, all of us, have lost our faith in ourselves, our purpose, our planet-our own greatness! And God is in hell!"

Wild Willie, aka Wee Willie, aka Wonderful Willie, aka Weeping Willie, aka Wanton Willie, aka Wild Bill Aycock, pointed out of the screen at me and at every other viewer. "Fall to your knees right now and beg his forgiveness, " he commanded. "God is the ultimate source of all redemption. Stop turning your back on the last hope of humanity. This is your responsibility! Fall to your knees and let the tears flow from your eyes. Beg his forgiveness. Rededicate your life to all that is good and clean and holy and come back to his loving embrace. Redeem yourself and redeem the God that expresses himself through all of us. Now is the time of our last hope." Wild Bill Aycock stepped out from behind the podium and fell to his own knees, the tears already streaming from his eyes. "Join me now in this prayer, in this holy declaration. Let us cast out the mischievous demons of doubt and despair. Let us cast out the libertine urges of our desperate souls. Let us be reborn in a new spirit of holiness. Let us rediscover our strength together. Pray with me now!"

I sat there stunned-at the front of the theater, people I knew, people I recognized, were falling to their knees in front of the swollen, goblin-like, grotesque countenance of the man. Even more terrifying, I wanted to join them. I wanted to believe too. I almost rose from my chair-but I held myself back, so caught up was I in my doubt and disbelief and despair.

"Dear God, this is your humble and obedient servant," Aycock said. "I have sinned. I have lost my faith, and my strength has ,failed me. My flesh has become like water, and my bones are as dust. My eyes no longer see your blessed countenance or your bountiful mercy. I have failed thee, and I am mightily offended at mine own weakness. I would pluck out my own eyes, I would cut off my own arm, I would cast myself out. I hate my sins, and I hate myself for my weakness. I am without hope because I have failed thee.

"Dear Father, I have seen the cost of my sins. I have seen the terrible deadly price that all of us have had to pay-all the dying, all the dreadful deaths and diseases and despair. I have seen my proud cities cast into ruin and my fields blighted with famine. I have seen my children wither and die.

"But all of that is as dust on the wind, my Lord, compared to the terrible wounds that I have inflicted on you. I have betrayed you, my Lord. I have betrayed the covenant that stood between us. My sins are written in your blood, my Lord. I deserve nothing but contempt.

"But, O my Lord, my dear God in hell, I pray to you now, knowing that the fountain of your love is endless, that the wellsprings of your compassion are bountiful and infinite, that you ask only that we come to you with open hearts, so that we may be filled with your love wherever we go and that we may do your work wherever it is wanted and needed.

"Dear Lord-look into my heart and see that my sorrow is sincere. See that my repentance is complete and let me be washed free of hatefulness and vengeance and despair. Please, Lord, I am on my knees before you, begging-please forgive me my failings and let me once more go out into the world with clean hands and a joyful heart.

"Let me renew my efforts on your behalf. Let me be a particle of healing and growth on your planet. Let me do good wherever I walk. Let me sow the seeds of plentiful riches for all who seek them. Dear Lord, renew my soul so that I may do the work of heaven. Let me pick up my staff and go out into your fields again, once more ready to be a part of your great plan and to do my part of your blessed work.

"Dear Lord, please grant me the smallest particle of your infinite strength and wisdom. Renew unto me and all around me the cleansing waters of your infinite love; wash me in its cooling draughts and let me quench my thirst at the fountain of your forgiveness and let me feed my soul at the table of your blessings. Dear Lord, look at my brothers and sisters and see that we are all ready for your renewal now. Let us be one with you again so that we can cast out the monsters that even now besiege us in the holy temple of your Earth. Dear Lord, we join you in the hell that we created. Dear Lord…"

The tears were streaming down his cheeks and mine; but at least Willie knew why he was crying. I was crying in confusion and terror.

Willie didn't know the worst of it. I had looked down into hell and seen what was happening to the rest of God's children. Somehow, I found my way out past all those who were wailing on the floor in front of the screen.

"Hot Seat," April 3rd broadcast: (cont'd)

ROBISON:… Okay, so you think it's working. Well, what about me and Dorothy Chin and all the others? What happens when one of us doesn't want to be in this circle of yours? What are you going to do with us? Kill us? Kick us out? What?

FOREMAN: You're having trouble with this, aren't you, John? You can't separate the idea from the person who speaks it. This isn't a circle of people. It's an environment of ideas, and all people are part of that environment.

ROBISON: Oh, booshwah! You keep saying you want alignment on a larger purpose. Well, we saw how Stalin and Hitler created alignment in their countries. They had to kill anyone who disagreed with them. How far are you prepared to go in search of your alignment? Are you going to build concentration camps to hold all the people who don't align with you? All this gingerbread-language is just another wheelbarrow load of west coast psychobabble, another way for left-wing elitists like you to argue for totalitarianism. You're still talking about shutting down every American's God-given right to disagree-

FOREMAN: (interrupting) Shut up, you blithering idiot. It's my turn to talk now. I'm your guest, not your prisoner! Or didn't they teach manners at that fancy eastern school you got kicked out of? You asked me a question-and I'm going to answer you.

The truth is, you're terribly afraid that somebody is going to treat you as badly as you treat others. That's why you don't dare let anyone disagree with you on your own show. You're practicing the very totalitarianism you claim to despise. If I tried that, you'd call me the worst kind of hypocrite.

FOREMAN: (continuing after commercial)… I'm going to tell you something that disturbs me mightily. I lie awake nights worrying about it. It's old news, but it hasn't lost its power to disturb: "The first casualty when war comes is truth." Hiram Johnson said that to the United States Senate in 1917.

This is not your dilemma alone. It worries all of us, most especially the President. One of the questions she keeps asking is, "How do we unite ourselves to fight this war without giving up the most precious things in ourselves and our system of government that we want to preserve?" The question comes up over and over and over again, in almost every late-night brainstorming session at the White House. The President calls us the Colloquium on Applied Philosophy, but we're really just a roomful of old fossils looking at the problem of how a government can wield its authority as justly as possible, particularly in a time of global crisis.

ROBISON: Right. And you still insist that there's no secret group and no secret plan?

FOREMAN: There's no secret group and there's no secret plan. The videolog of every single session is publicly available on the Administration Service Net.

We're not secret and we have no authority. All we do is make recommendations to the President, because she has asked us for our advice.

ROBISON: And what about the rights of the people? Don't we get a voice? What about democracy? What about the right to disagree?

FOREMAN: That's what we're doing here, John. Disagreeing. Our system is based on the premise that the government is accountable to the people. Some people have interpreted that to mean that the people have the right to disagree with the government-but that's an inaccurate way to say it, and ultimately it's an inaccurate way to think about it, because it ennobles disagreement for the sake of disagreement. Disagreement is not in itself inherently virtuous.

ROBISON: Well, how about disagreement in the service of truth?

FOREMAN: That's the justification that's used for all disagreement-that it's in the service of truth. Let me share something with you, we were looking at the whole question of disagreement, and we had one of those insights that transforms the whole discussion. Are you ready for this? We only disagree about what we don't know.

ROBISON: Huh?

FOREMAN: I'll say it again. We only disagree about what we don't know. It's a time bomb. You have to live with it for a while before you fully get it. But it's really very simple: when two parties disagree, whatever the disagreement is about, it indicates that one or the other or both of the parties involved do not have complete information. People don't argue about the color of the sky or if rocks are hard or water is wet. They already know that. People don't argue about what they know. They argue about what they don't know, and what they believe. Belief isn't knowledge. Belief is a conviction without truth behind it. A belief is something you think to be true or want to be true, but you haven't proved it yet. Knowledge doesn't need to be argued. It can be demonstrated. It can be proved. Belief can't be. Do you get the distinction… ?