I Sing the Body Electric (37 page)

They were slowing to a dead stop.

Doug saw Neva kicking and fiddling at the gas and the starter. But most of all he heard the small boy say, in the new and permanent silence:

“Have either of you ever wondered—”

The boy took a breath and finished:

“—if there is such a thing as genetic evil in the world?”

“S
it down, young man,” said the Official.

“Thanks.” The young man sat.

“I've been hearing rumors about you,” the Official said pleasantly. “Oh, nothing much. Your nervousness. Your not getting on so well. Several months now I've heard about you, and I thought I'd call you in. Thought maybe you'd like your job changed. Like to go overseas, work in some other War Area? Desk job killing you off, like to get right in on the old fight?”

“I don't think so,” said the young sergeant.

“What
do
you want?”

The sergeant shrugged and looked at his hands. “To live in peace. To learn that during the night, somehow, the guns of the world had rusted, the bacteria had turned sterile in their bomb casings, the tanks had sunk like prehistoric monsters into roads suddenly made tar pits. That's what I'd like.”

“That's what we'd all like, of course,” said the Official. “Now stop all that idealistic chatter and tell me where you'd like to be sent. You have your choice—the Western or the Northern War Zone.” The Official tapped a pink map on his desk.

But the sergeant was talking at his hands, turning them over, looking at the fingers: “What would you officers do, what would we men do, what would the
world
do if we all woke tomorrow with the guns in flaking ruin?”

The Official saw that he would have to deal carefully with the sergeant. He smiled quietly. “That's an interesting question. I like to talk about such theories, and my answer is that there'd be mass panic. Each nation would think itself the only unarmed nation in the world, and would blame its enemies for the disaster. There'd be waves of suicide, stocks collapsing, a million tragedies.”

“But
after
that,” the sergeant said. “After they realized it was true
that every nation was disarmed and there was nothing more to fear, if we were all clean to start over fresh and new, what then?”

“They'd rearm as swiftly as possible.”

“What if they could be stopped?”

“Then they'd beat each other with their fists. If it got down to that. Huge armies of men with boxing gloves of steel spikes would gather at the national borders. And if you took the gloves away they'd use their fingernails and feet. And if you cut their legs off they'd
spit
on each other. And if you cut off their tongues and stopped their mouths with corks they'd fill the atmosphere so full of hate that mosquitoes would drop to the ground and birds would fall dead from telephone wires.”

“Then you don't think it would do any good?” the sergeant said.

“Certainly not. It'd be like ripping the carapace off a turtle. Civilization would gasp and die from the shock.”

The young man shook his head. “Or are you lying to yourself and me because you've a nice comfortable job?”

“Let's call it ninety percent cynicism, ten percent rationalizing the situation. Go put your Rust away and forget about it.”

The sergeant jerked his head up. “How'd you know I
had
it?” he said.

“Had what?”

“The Rust, of course.”

“What're you talking about?”

“I
can
do it, you know. I could start the Rust tonight if I wanted to.”

The Official laughed. “You can't be serious.”

“I am. I've been meaning to come talk to you. I'm glad you called me in. I've worked on this invention for a long time. It's been a dream of mine. It has to do with the structure of certain atoms. If you study them you find that the arrangement of atoms in steel armor is such-and-such an arrangement. I was looking for an imbalance factor. I majored in physics and metallurgy, you know. It came to me, there's a Rust factor in the air all the time. Water vapor. I had to find a way to give steel a ‘nervous breakdown.' Then the water vapor everywhere in the world would take over. Not on all metal, of course. Our civilization is built on steel, I wouldn't want to destroy most buildings. I'd just eliminate guns and shells, tanks, planes, battleships. I can set the machine to work on copper and brass and aluminum, too, if necessary. I'd just walk by all of those weapons and just being near them I'd make them fall away.”

The Official was bending over his desk, staring at the sergeant. “May I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever thought you were Christ?”

“I can't say that I have. But I have considered that God was good to me to let me find what I was looking for, if that's what you mean.”

The Official reached into his breast pocket and drew out an expensive ball-point pen capped with a rifle shell. He flourished the pen and started filling in a form. “I want you to take this to Dr. Mathews this afternoon, for a complete checkup. Not that I expect anything really bad, understand. But don't you feel you
should
see a doctor?”

“You think I'm lying about my machine,” said the sergeant. “I'm not. It's so small it can be hidden in this cigarette package. The effect of it extends for nine hundred miles. I could tour this country in a few days, with the machine set to a certain type of steel. The other nations couldn't take advantage of us because I'd rust their weapons as they approach us. Then I'd fly to Europe. By this time next month the world would be free of war forever. I don't know how I found this invention. It's impossible. Just as impossible as the atom bomb. I've waited a month now, trying to think it over. I worried about what would happen if I did rip off the carapace, as you say. But now I've just about decided. My talk with you has helped clarify things. Nobody thought an airplane would ever fly, nobody thought an atom would ever explode, and nobody thinks that there can ever be Peace, but there
will
be.”

“Take that paper over to Dr. Mathews, will you?” said the Official hastily.

The sergeant got up. “You're not going to assign me to any new Zone then?”

“Not right away, no. I've changed my mind. We'll let Mathews decide.”

“I've decided then,” said the young man. “I'm leaving the Post within the next few minutes. I've a pass. Thank you very much for giving me your valuable time, sir.”

“Now look here, Sergeant, don't take things so seriously. You don't have to leave. Nobody's going to hurt you.”

“That's right. Because nobody would believe me. Good-bye, sir.” The sergeant opened the office door and stepped out.

The door shut and the Official was alone. He stood for a moment looking at the door. He sighed. He rubbed his hands over his face. The phone rang. He answered it abstractedly.

“Oh,
hello
, Doctor. I was just going to call you.” A pause. “Yes, I was going to send him over to you. Look, is it all right for that young man to be wandering about? It
is
all right? If you say so, Doctor. Probably needs a rest, a good long one. Poor boy has a delusion of rather an interesting sort. Yes, yes. It's a shame. But that's what a Sixteen-Year War can do to you, I suppose.”

The phone voice buzzed in reply.

The Official listened and nodded. “I'll make a note on that. Just a second.” He reached for his ball-point pen. “Hold on a moment. Always mislaying things.” He patted his pocket. “Had my pen here a moment ago. Wait.” He put down the phone and searched his desk, pulling out drawers. He checked his blouse pocket again. He stopped moving. Then his hands twitched slowly into his pocket and probed down. He poked his thumb and forefinger deep and brought out a pinch of something.

He sprinkled it on his desk blotter: a small filtering powder of yellow-red rust.

He sat staring at it for a moment. Then he picked up the phone. “Mathews,” he said, “get off the line, quick.” There was a click of someone hanging up and then he dialed another call. “Hello, Guard Station, listen, there's a man coming past you any minute now, you know him, name of Sergeant Hollis, stop him, shoot him down, kill him if necessary, don't ask any questions, kill the son of a bitch, you heard me, this is the Official talking! Yes, kill him, you hear!”

“But, sir,” said a bewildered voice on the other end of the line. “I can't, I just
can't
....”

“What do you mean you can't, God damn it!”

“Because…” The voice faded away. You could hear the guard breathing into the phone a mile away.

The Official shook the phone. “Listen to me, listen, get your gun ready!”

“I can't shoot anyone,” said the guard.

The Official sank back in his chair. He sat blinking for half a minute, gasping.

Out there even now—he didn't have to look, no one had to tell him—the hangars were dusting down in soft red rust, and the airplanes were blowing away on a brown-rust wind into nothingness, and the tanks were sinking, sinking slowly into the hot asphalt roads, like dinosaurs (isn't that what the man had said?) sinking into primordial tar pits. Trucks were blowing away into ocher puffs of smoke, their drivers dumped by the road, with only the tires left running on the highways.

“Sir…” said the guard, who was seeing all this, far away. “Oh, God…”

“Listen, listen!” screamed the Official. “Go after him, get him, with your hands, choke him, with your fists, beat him, use your feet, kick his ribs in, kick him to death, do anything, but get that man. I'll be right out!” He hung up the phone.

By instinct he jerked open the bottom desk drawer to get his service pistol. A pile of brown rust filled the new leather holster. He swore and leaped up.

On the way out of the office he grabbed a chair. It's wood, he thought.
Good old-fashioned wood, good old-fashioned maple. He hurled it against the wall twice, and it broke. Then he seized one of the legs, clenched it hard in his fist, his face bursting red, the breath snorting in his nostrils, his mouth wide. He struck the palm of his hand with the leg of the chair, testing it. “All right, God damn it, come on!” he cried.

He rushed out, yelling, and slammed the door.

“W
e all have that special dream when we are young,” said Bishop Kelly.

The others at the table murmured, nodded.

“There is no Christian boy,” the Bishop continued, “who does not some night wonder: am I Him? Is this the Second Coming at long last, and am I It? What, what, oh, what, dear God, if I
were
Jesus? How grand!”

The Priests, the Ministers, and the one lonely Rabbi laughed gently, remembering things from their own childhoods, their own wild dreams, and being great fools.

“I suppose,” said the young Priest, Father Niven, “that Jewish boys imagine themselves Moses?”

“No, no, my dear friend,” said Rabbi Nittler. “The Messiah! The
Messiah!
”

More quiet laughter, from all.

“Of course,” said Father Niven out of his fresh pink-and-cream face, “how stupid of me. Christ
wasn't
the Messiah, was he? And your people are still waiting for Him to arrive. Strange. Oh, the ambiguities.”

“And nothing more ambiguous than this.” Bishop Kelly rose to escort them all out onto a terrace which had a view of the Martian hills, the ancient Martian towns, the old highways, the rivers of dust, and Earth, sixty million miles away, shining with a clear light in this alien sky.

“Did we ever in our wildest dreams,” said the Reverend Smith, “imagine that one day each of us would have a Baptist Church, a St. Mary's Chapel, a Mount Sinai Synagogue here, here on Mars?”

The answer was no, no, softly, from them all.

Their quiet was interrupted by another voice which moved among them. Father Niven, as they stood at the balustrade, had tuned his transistor radio to check the hour. News was being broadcast from the small new American-Martian wilderness colony below. They listened:

“—rumored near the town. This is the first Martian reported in our community this year. Citizens are urged to respect any such visitor. If—”

Father Niven shut the news off.

“Our elusive congregation,” sighed the Reverend Smith. “I must confess, I came to Mars not only to work with Christians, but hoping to invite
one
Martian to Sunday supper, to learn of his theologies,
his
needs.”

“We are still too new to them,” said Father Lipscomb. “In another year or so I think they will understand we're not buffalo hunters in search of pelts. Still, it
is
hard to keep one's curiosity in hand. After all, our
Mariner
photographs indicated no life whatsoever here. Yet life there is, very mysterious and half-resembling the human.”

“Half, Your Eminence?” The Rabbi mused over his coffee. “I feel they are even more human than ourselves. They have
let
us come in. They have hidden in the hills, coming among us only on occasion, we guess, disguised as Earthmen—”

“Do you really believe they have telepathic powers, then, and hypnotic abilities which allow them to walk in our towns, fooling us with masks and visions, and none of us the wiser?”

“I do so believe.”

“Then this,” said the Bishop, handing around brandies and crème-de-menthes, “is a true evening of frustrations. Martians who will not reveal themselves so as to be Saved by Us the Enlightened—”

Many smiles at this.

“—and Second Comings of Christ delayed for several thousand years. How long must we wait, O Lord?”

“As for myself,” said young Father Niven, “I never wished to
be
Christ, the Second Coming. I just always wanted, with all my heart, to
meet
Him. Ever since I was eight I have thought on that. It might well be the first reason I became a priest.”

“To have the inside track just in case He ever
did
arrive again?” suggested the Rabbi, kindly.

The young Priest grinned and nodded. The others felt the urge to reach and touch him, for he had touched some vague small sweet nerve in each. They felt immensely gentle.

“With your permission, Rabbi, gentlemen,” said Bishop Kelly, raising his glass. “To the First Coming of the Messiah, or the Second Coming of Christ. May they be more than some ancient, some foolish dreams.”

They drank and were quiet.

The Bishop blew his nose and wiped his eyes.

The rest of the evening was like many another for the Priests, the Reverends, and the Rabbi. They fell to playing cards and arguing St. Thomas
Aquinas, but failed under the onslaught of Rabbi Nittler's educated logic. They named him Jesuit, drank nightcaps, and listened to the late radio news:

“—it is feared this Martian may feel trapped in our community. Anyone meeting him should turn away, so as to let the Martian pass. Curiosity seems his motive. No cause for alarm. That concludes our—”

While heading for the door, the Priests, Ministers, and Rabbi discussed translations they had made into various tongues from Old and New Testaments. It was then that young Father Niven surprised them:

“Did you know I was once asked to write a screenplay on the Gospels? They needed an
ending
for their film!”

“Surely,” protested the Bishop, “there's only
one
ending to Christ's life?”

“But, Your Holiness, the Four Gospels tell it with four variations. I compared. I grew excited. Why? Because I rediscovered something I had almost forgotten. The Last Supper isn't really the Last Supper!”

“Dear me, what is it then?”

“Why, Your Holiness, the first of several, sir. The first of several! After the Crucifixion and Burial of Christ, did not Simon-called-Peter, with the Disciples, fish the Sea of Galilee?”

“They did.”

“And their nets were filled with a miracle of fish?”

“They were.”

“And seeing on the shore of Galilee a pale light, did they not land and approach what seemed a bed of white-hot coals on which fresh-caught fish were baking?”

“Yes, ah, yes,” said the Reverend Smith.

“And there beyond the glow of the soft charcoal fire, did they not sense a Spirit Presence and call out to it?”

“They did.”

“Getting no answer, did not Simon-called-Peter whisper again, ‘Who is there?' And the unrecognized Ghost upon the shore of Galilee put out its hand into the firelight, and in the palm of that hand, did they not see the mark where the nail had gone in, the stigmata that would never heal?

“They would have fled, but the Ghost spoke and said, ‘Take of these fish and feed thy brethren.' And Simon-called-Peter took the fish that baked upon the white-hot coals and fed the Disciples. And Christ's frail Ghost then said, ‘Take of my word and tell it among the nations of all the world and preach therein forgiveness of sin.'

“And then Christ left them. And, in my screenplay, I had Him walk along the shore of Galilee toward the horizon. And when anyone walks toward the horizon, he seems to ascend, yes? For all land rises at a
distance. And He walked on along the shore until He was just a small mote, far away. And then they could see Him no more.

“And as the sun rose upon the ancient world, all His thousand footprints that lay along the shore blew away in the dawn winds and were as nothing.

“And the Disciples left the ashes of that bed of coals to scatter in sparks, and with the taste of Real and Final and True Last Supper upon their mouths, went away. And in my screenplay, I had my
CAMERA
drift high above to watch the Disciples move some north, some south, some to the east, to tell the world what Needed to Be Told about One Man. And their footprints, circling in all directions, like the spokes of an immense wheel, blew away out of the sand in the winds of morn. And it was a new day.
THE END
.”

The young Priest stood in the center of his friends, cheeks fired with color, eyes shut. Suddenly he opened his eyes, as if remembering where he was:

“Sorry.”

“For what?” cried the Bishop, brushing his eyelids with the back of his hand, blinking rapidly. “For making me weep twice in one night? What, self-conscious in the presence of your own love for Christ? Why, you have given the Word back to me,
me!
who has known the Word for what seems a thousand years! You have freshened my soul, oh good young man with the heart of a boy. The eating of fish on Galilee's shore
is
the True Last Supper. Bravo. You deserve to meet Him. The Second Coming, it's only fair, must be for you!”

“I am unworthy!” said Father Niven.

“So are we all! But if a trade of souls were possible, I'd loan mine out on this instant to borrow yours fresh from the laundry. Another toast, gentlemen? To Father Niven! And then, good night, it's late, good night.”

The toast was drunk and all departed; the Rabbi and the Ministers down the hill to their holy places, leaving the Priests to stand a last moment at their door looking out at Mars, this strange world, and a cold wind blowing.

Midnight came and then one and two, and at three in the cold deep morning of Mars, Father Niven stirred. Candles flickered in soft whispers. Leaves fluttered against his window.

Suddenly he sat up in bed, half-startled by a dream of mob-cries and pursuits. He listened.

Far away, below, he heard the shutting of an outside door.

Throwing on a robe, Father Niven went down the dim rectory stairs
and through the church where a dozen candles here or there kept their own pools of light.

He made the rounds of all the doors, thinking: Silly, why lock churches? What is there to steal? But still he prowled the sleeping night…

…and found the front door of the church unlocked, and softly being pushed in by the wind.

Shivering, he shut the door.

Soft running footsteps.

He spun about.

The church lay empty. The candle flames leaned now this way, now that in their shrines. There was only the ancient smell of wax and incense burning, stuffs left over from all the marketplaces of time and history; other suns, and other noons.

In the midst of glancing at the crucifix above the main altar, he froze.

There was a sound of a single drop of water falling in the night.

Slowly he turned to look at the baptistery in the back of the church.

There were no candles there, yet—

A pale light shone from that small recess where stood the baptismal font.

“Bishop Kelly?” he called, softly.

Walking slowly up the aisle, he grew very cold, and stopped because—

Another drop of water had fallen, hit, dissolved away.

It was like a faucet dripping somewhere. But there were no faucets. Only the baptismal font itself, into which, drop by drop, a slow liquid was falling, with three heartbeats between each sound.

At some secret level, Father Niven's heart told itself something and raced, then slowed and almost stopped. He broke into a wild perspiration. He found himself unable to move, but move he must, one foot after the other, until he reached the arched doorway of the baptistery.

There was indeed a pale light within the darkness of the small place.

No, not a light. A shape. A figure.

The figure stood behind and beyond the baptismal font. The sound of falling water had stopped.

His tongue locked in his mouth, his eyes flexed wide in a kind of madness, Father Niven felt himself struck blind. Then vision returned, and he dared cry out:

“Who!”

A single word, which echoed back from all around the church, which made candle flames flutter in reverberation, which stirred the dust of incense, which frightened his own heart with its swift return in saying: Who!

The only light within the baptistery came from the pale garments of
the figure that stood there facing him. And this light was enough to show him an incredible thing.

As Father Niven watched, the figure moved. It put a pale hand out upon the baptistery air.

The hand hung there as if not wanting to, a separate thing from the Ghost beyond, as if it were seized and pulled forward, resisting, by Father Niven's dreadful and fascinated stare to reveal what lay in the center of its open white palm.

There was fixed a jagged hole, a cincture from which, slowly, one by one, blood was dripping, falling away down and slowly down, into the baptismal font.

The drops of blood struck the holy water, colored it, and dissolved in slow ripples.

The hand remained for a stunned moment there before the Priest's now-blind, now-seeing eyes.

As if struck a terrible blow, the Priest collapsed to his knees with an outgasped cry, half of despair, half of revelation, one hand over his eyes, the other fending off the vision.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it
can't!
”

It was as if some dreadful physician of dentistry had come upon him without narcotic and with one seizure entire-extracted his soul, bloodied raw, out of his body. He felt himself prized, his life yanked forth, and the roots, O God, were…
deep!

“No, no, no, no!”

But, yes.

Between the lacings of his fingers, he looked again.

And the Man was there.

And the dreadful bleeding palm quivered dripping upon the baptistery air.

“Enough!”

The palm pulled back, vanished. The Ghost stood waiting.

And the face of the Spirit was good and familiar. Those strange beautiful deep and incisive eyes were as he knew they always must be. There was the gentleness of the mouth, and the paleness framed by the flowing locks of hair and beard. The Man was robed in the simplicity of garments worn upon the shores and in the wilderness near Galilee.

The Priest, by a great effort of will, prevented his tears from spilling over, stopped up his agony of surprise, doubt, shock, these clumsy things which rioted within and threatened to break forth. He trembled.

And then saw that the Figure, the Spirit, the Man, the Ghost, Whatever, was trembling, too.

No, thought the Priest, He can't be! Afraid? Afraid of…
me?