The Judas Rose (4 page)

The Second Coming was indeed at hand, the angel had said. But “at hand” meant something quite different to God than it did to man, and there was still time for a great work that had not yet even been begun. There was still time—time before Armageddon, time before Christ came trailing clouds of glory to gather in His beloved children in the last rapture—there was still time for the new holy work of carrying the Good News out to all
other
worlds. Countless billions of souls beyond this little Earth, the
angel said to him, were still condemned to outer darkness because they had not accepted the Good News; there was time, the angel said, to
save
those souls, as many of them as would hear the message and believe and come forward to join the ranks of the blessed! Mankind ought to have started this great work long before, the angel had thundered, making Heykus tremble; but they had persisted instead in the folly of little toy wars on their nursery planet, squandering all their substance on meaningless nonsense instead of moving on to do the holy work that was God's plan.

And thus God had decided in His infinite mercy to intervene, lest man destroy himself and with that destruction condemn most of the universe to everlasting damnation. The means would be provided for men to travel easily to all the outermost limits of space, that they might carry the Good News, and gather in souls for the glory of God, before the Last Days.

“You, Heykus,” the angel had said, “shall serve as the chosen instrument of the Heavenly Father. Go forth from this place! Set aside your small and foolish goals, for you are meant for greater things. Find your place among the halls of government, where the plans are made and carried out for adding world upon world to the Universal Congregation.”

The angel had gone on to tell him just exactly how he was expected to accomplish this task, so that Heykus had never for one instant had to doubt that the jobs would be given to him, or the promotions awarded, or the projects funded. It was not
his
plan he was carrying out, it was Almighty God's, and what were the whims of a few bureaucrats beside the plans of the Almighty?

The angel had not mentioned the Soviet Union, oddly enough. Heykus did not feel free to call that an oversight—his God did not make mistakes—but he had many times wished that the Lord had seen fit to instruct him in greater detail as to how he was to deal with the USSR. Competing religions were not so serious a challenge; Heykus felt certain that in the fullness of time the battalions of missionaries traveling out to the other worlds would find ways to convince Buddhists and Muslims and Taoists and Free Animists and Shintoists and all the motley rest to change their course and accept the Christ and be born again. Even the religions of Aliens, whatever they might be like, he had no doubt would fall before the soldiers of Christ, if time allowed the missionaries to reach them and if the barriers of language could be overcome. But once the USSR took a planet, the problems
were
serious. The Christian missionaries were refused entry to those worlds, flatly refused; all attempts to send in the Good
News in no matter what medium were stamped out swiftly and relentlessly by censorship at every portal. So that any world, large or small, once claimed by the Soviet Union, was a world seemingly lost to the Almighty . . . what the status of Soviet Christians might be, there was no way of knowing.

For Heykus, the United States and its allies were in a desperate race against the Soviet Union for the staking out of this galaxy and, should it please God to grant them time, all the galaxies beyond. At any moment,
the limits of that time
might be reached, the trumpet might sound, and every soul in the vastness of space not yet reached by the missionaries would be lost for all eternity; this made every planet or asteroid or smallest moon where the cross was raised and Christ's banners flew a beachhead against Hell, an occasion for rejoicing in Heaven, and an occasion for screams of frustration and impotent rage from Satan and all his legions.

“Hear me, Heykus Joshua Clete!” the angel had said again at the very last, when Heykus had been so weak with terror and awe that he had been fighting not to lose consciousness where he knelt on the hard plastic dormitory floor. “Listen well! You will do as you are bid, for you are chosen, and this is your sacred mission! But you will tell no one what you have seen and heard this night! You will guard this as the most holy of secrets, Heykus Joshua Clete, for so long as you shall live!” And then it had gone as suddenly as it had come, and he
had
lost consciousness, not coming to himself until the sun was already beginning to rise over the roof of the building across the courtyard. He had gone shuddering and trembling to bathe himself and change his sweat-drenched clothing, and even to take some nourishment . . . he had not been able to remember when he had last eaten. And everywhere he went that day, the message had roared and surged through him till it seemed to him that people roundabout ought to have been able to hear the pounding of it in his blood.

Heykus had been the Lord's agent all his days, and had kept his secret just as he had been told, although there had been times when it had been a burden of loneliness almost too heavy to bear. He had gloried in every world won for his Lord, and mourned over every world lost to the Antichrist, and kept his own counsel. And he had waited. Waited, and lately begun to wonder. Who had been appointed to carry on the work when he was gone? Or was it up to the missionaries to continue, with no one at the helm? Was there to be no one who would take his place? He kept reminding himself that if there
was
a successor that man, too, would have been sworn to secrecy, so that the fact
that Heykus did not know who or where he was meant nothing at all. Still, it seemed to him that he had earned the right to know. That the two of them, he and his successor, sharing their miraculous secret, should have been able to exchange knowing glances over a prayer breakfast some morning.

He kept close watch, hoping. Like Samuel, in the temple. Hoping that before he died he would have reason, as Samuel had had reason, to feel that he could depart in peace.

CHAPTER 2

“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children . . .”

(
Genesis
3:16)

It was already day when the woman's labor began, and the nuns were grateful for that. Not that it would be unusual for the screams of a laboring woman to be heard by night from the Convent of Saint Gertrude of the Lambs; any woman pregnant and in disgrace might be sent here by her outraged family, and those screams were as much a part of the convent sounds as the tolling of bells. But what they attracted under usual circumstances were the attentions of a priest, hurrying to be present in case there should be a need for last rites. Which was absurd; no convent of the Sisters Of Genesis had lost a mother in childbirth in more than fifty years. But you could not tell a priest that he was superfluous and a nuisance as well. Ordinarily, the Fathers were given to believe that their attentions were welcome.

This time, however, the nuns were deeply thankful that the sounds of daily life both inside the convent and on the grounds outside would mask the woman's cries. They had taken her down to an old cellar storage room, a full week before the baby was due, and they were reasonably certain that nothing could be heard upstairs. For extra insurance they had set the choir to rehearsing Easter madrigals in the corridor most nearly overhead. If it had been the middle of the night they could not have done that, and they saw the combination of fortuitous circumstances as a mark of the Virgin's favor and offered their devout thanks. Once this was over, and they were less busy, they would elaborate
those thanks in the chapel. But not now. Right now, they were occupied with the laboring woman.

The problem was that nothing about this situation was ordinary. The mother was not their usual guest. She wasn't even Catholic, much less the usual terrified and frantic specimen; she was a daughter of the Lines, utterly without religion so far as they could determine (although their discreet inquiries had established that the linguists of her Household usually attended the United Reformed Baptist Church), and she was possessed of an uncanny calm entirely suitable to her godless condition. They resented being in this awkward position, but their vows had not allowed them the option—when she appeared on their doorstep one winter midnight—of ordering her back to her own home or to the charity hospitals or simply closing the door in her wicked face. The Sisters Of Genesis were consecrated to the needs of unmarried pregnant women, women adulterously pregnant in circumstances that made them fear discovery, and so on. Nowhere in their vows was it specified that they might pick and choose among those who asked for their help. Still . . . this seemed to all of them to be exceptionally trying.

“Don't we have to tell the Fathers?” Sister Carapace had asked, clearly distressed at the irregularity.

“No. We do not.”

“I don't understand. Surely we
must
tell them!”

“And why ‘must' we?” Sister Antonia had demanded, hands on hips and arms akimbo. “Where in our instructions for the succor of these women does it state that we must tell the priests where they come from, Sister Carapace?”

“But a woman of the
Lines!
” the younger nun had protested. “The priests would want to know!”

There were times when the others wondered how Carapace had managed to last out the long extra novitiate for the Sisters Of Genesis. She would have been far better suited to more routine duties; she was excessively emotional, and had an irritating tendency to faint when she was needed most. The Sisters Of Gensis were expected to be an elite group, selected for their unusual qualifications from among the nuns in every convent of the Order. In the case of Sister Carapace, a serious error of judgment had clearly been made somewhere along the way. Now what were they going to say to the fool woman? Sister Antonia knew that the same question was in the minds of everyone present; what she did not know was the
answer
to the question.

Resorting to the most primitive tactics available to her, for want of anything better, she pinned Sister Carapace down with
questions fired like springdarts. “Has any one of the Fathers ever ordered you to come tell him the origin of each and every woman tended by the Sisters Of Genesis?”

“No, Sister.”

“Have you ever been given that instruction by a Mother Superior? Or a Mistress of Novices? Or even by a senior nun?”

“No, Sister.”

“Have you ever
read
such an instruction anywhere, Sister Carapace? Or heard it read aloud? Or heard it mentioned in passing?”

“No, Sister Antonia,” said Sister Carapace. “But still—”

“You have simply taken it upon yourself to make it up!” The accusation snapped like a whip, and the younger nun flinched and clutched ridiculously at her throat. “
You
, Sister Carapace, in
your
wisdom, have decided to make a modification in our instructions, based upon your personal perceptions and preferences!
Is that correct?
”

Accused outright of the sin of subjectivity, right out loud and before everyone, Carapace had gone white and trembling and refused to say anything more about it, and Antonia had been sorry that she had to stoop to such bullying. In spite of her pity, however, she had gone on to rub salt in the wounds, because it was her duty.

“Sister Carapace,” she had said, the words stern and cold, even their tone a rebuke, “you will give me your word,
now
, on the Blessed Virgin, that you will not speak of this young mother, nor of her origins, nor of her condition, nor of anything else about her whatsoever, without first receiving permission from me or from Mother to do so.
Not even in the confessional
, Sister Carapace.”

That had sufficed; the ethical problems it presented had distracted Sister Carapace from her determination to tell everything she knew and much she only suspected, and she had in time come to the end of her drivel and given her word. While Sister Antonia shouldered yet one more sin and was grateful that the Blessed Virgin, being a mother herself, would understand and intercede for her.

The priests would want to know, indeed! They certainly would. And if they had known that a linguist woman was under this roof and pregnant, and here without the knowledge of any male relative, what would they have done? It turned Sister Antonia's stomach just to think of the meetings they would have held, the planning and scheming and wrangling over strategy, the brazen attempts to decide what best use could be made of this tidbit of power to further the ends of Mother Church. Sometimes, disobedient
though it might be, Sister Antonia wondered at the extraordinary patience of the Lord, Who tolerated such antics among men who were allegedly models of holiness. Instead of striking them all deaf and dumb, or afflicting them with salutary cases of boils resistant to all current antibiotics, as seemed appropriate to
her
. She had absolutely no intention of abandoning the woman in her care, be she godless linguist or no godless linguist (Sister Antonia would never have used or even thought the coarse word “Lingoe”), to the strange proclivities of the priests. They would have seen her as a pawn, to be put into play in their struggle against the Protestants, or against the government, or against whoever happened to be in this week's most prominent opponent; Sister Antonia saw her as a body and soul in her charge. She would do right by the woman. And that meant seeing her through to term, caring for her through labor and its aftermath, and accepting responsibility for the infant she would leave behind to be raised there at the convent. That done, Antonia could send the creature packing, and give her an extensive piece of her mind as she left, and she was looking forward to it. Until then, she would do the very best she could to nurture and to protect her.