The impromptu command center of the once United States shivered under the assault of the elements. The Secretary of the American Interior watched the video feeds from the NuUN forces in the middle east: the weather there in sharp contrast to what the the northeastern area of the country was forced to endure. The entire military presence of the country was overseas. Admittedly, it wasn't as impressive as it once was, after the downsizing of the post cold war era and the Messiah's Pax Judea. The Secretary was left with nothing but local police forces and the Solidarity Corps to run the country.
Faceless functionaries in olive drab ran the communications equipment. The sub-vocal hum of their conversations into their throat mikes was nearly drowned by the drum of rain and hail on the roof of the trailer, one of many clustered around a small town's city hall. The Secretary was still miffed at having to withdraw from Washington, but the rising sea levels had made the lowlands uninhabitable. The video tanks showed little windows of brilliant sunshine, hot sand. The climate changes of the past decade had melted most of the ice caps, and brought almost constant rain and storm to the northeast of the American continent, but the Arabian peninsula was as dry as ever. The various media talking heads were reporting their specialities, and the Messiah was holding forth from the NuUN podium in Geneva. Views flickered back and forth according to various priorities, as the computers listened for key words.
"Looks like something from MTV, doesn't it?" The Secretary nudged his assistant. The tall, horse faced individual sniffed.
"I wouldn't know, sir; before my time."
"Take my word for it." The images in the video tanks dissolved simultaneously for a moment in a burst of sunspot-induced static, and then resumed their individualized flickering. The Secretary tugged on his gray-streaked pony tail in annoyance. Maybe the Greenies were right; the whole environment was going to hell. Three major earthquakes last month alone. The Gaian Church insisted that the earth-mother was going to shrug man off the crust like a dog shaking fleas. The image briefly amused him. "Mother nature is a bitch," he murmured, too low for his assistant to hear. The man was a fervent Gaiaist, but the Secretary believed in little except his own wits. His position as Secretary of the American Interior, all that was left of the old Presidency, was a gift from the Messiah Himself. The Secretary had headed up the media group that had helped manage the Messiah's rise to power almost a decade ago. Getting the American people to demand that the NuUN accept responsibility for their governance had been his greatest coup.
A neighboring trailer held domestic input from the regional Solidarity Centers. The Secretary spent little time in there; the news was uniformly bad. The birthrate was approaching zero. An aging population produced less and less each year, but a sufficiently powerful man could live like a king no matter what the GNP. The microprocessors in the regional IRS Centers saw to that. Except for a diminishing number of holdouts, which the Solidarity squads were kept busy tracking down, the entire population was tied into the computers that watched their every economic move, and took the Messiah's tithe at the slightest twitch. The Secretary got a tithe of the tithe, directly to an offshore bank.
But the well was running dry. The cities were literally falling apart. The expertise and the will to repair the infrastructure drained away as key people were hired to develop the Messiah's grandiose projects in Babylon. The Americans' woes were reflected in almost every other political entity in the world, save the Israelis. They now controlled most of the oil reserves, thanks to the treaties the Messiah had made between them and their neighbors. The pressure was building, but so far Israel had resisted paying their share of the bill.
The Secretary's pocket phone buzzed. At least the computerized switching system still worked well. The little screen on the back showed Hunter's call code. The Secretary headed for his office.
Hurrying down a covered walkway, past uniformed Marines in rain gear, he reflected on the loss of the great marble buildings, the underground subways and conveyor belts. There hadn't been the money or the time to replace them, and none of the neighboring states had wanted the honor (and expense) of housing the federal government. No matter, he had plans for something greater and grander, when the coffers of the Jews were opened.
His office was large, and lavishly appointed, though with no outside windows, since they were almost impossible to secure from eavesdroppers. He activated the locks and screens, and a large video tank came to snowy life across from his desk, clearing as the scramblers reached sync. Hunter was the code name for his best operative in the Internal Regulatory Service. He could sniff out a scofflaw holdout at ten paces in a crowded bus terminal, and collar him with minimal fuss, though he didn't mind using a taser or flechette gun. After all, holdouts were without civil rights, since they refused the Solidarity chip implants. If they had no property to confiscate, they were useful as grunt labor, or at last or least, for the organ banks.
"Nice to hear from you Hunter, it's been a while. You're looking... well, ah..." The Secretary's normal urbanity deserted him. Hunter was six foot six in height, and normally wore his three hundred pounds like a jungle cat. The individual that looked out of the tank at the Secretary had skin with a grayish cast instead of its original deep mahogany, and hung loosely under his neck.
"I know, I'm not looking too good. It's the big A. The hold-off's aren't working anymore, and I went active a couple of months ago." Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome had become as common as herpes, and everyone who could afford it took the suppressors that were supposed to keep the virus dormant.
"I'm sorry to hear that, my friend. Where are you now?" The room behind Hunter was nondescript, institutional, with bare white walls and fluorescents which were not kind to the sick man's complexion. The infobox icon in the corner of the tank display was blank, except for time and date, which was unusual; the security software normally backtracked incoming calls and displayed phone numbers, addresses, even names of the registered owners of the equipment.
"I'm at LRI. In the Deep Hole; I've volunteered for the Lazarus project." The Life Research Institute was a publicly known medical research facility. The Deep Hole, as its name implied, was a classified lab complex buried far beneath the surface. AIDS research was stuck where it had been for the last twenty years, despite hopeful press releases. The Lazarus project was developing suspended animation technology as a last resort for those with the money and power to postpone what seemed to be inevitable.
The Secretary was silent for a moment or two. "If it works, there's no one who deserves it more. Are they really that close?"
"They've showed me rats and chimps who have gone under and come back. They seem okay, and I just don't have the time to be choosy. I'm more concerned with the security while I'm under. The engineering looks good, and I've been spending my sick leave tweaking the software until it's damn near as paranoid as I am. The power supply is nuclear, and there's a whole lot of survival gear packed in nitrogen. Looks like you guys still have a long, cold winter in your scenarios."
"The Secretary chuckled. "You know how government is; a pack rat crossed with a dinosaur. It wouldn't do to have our best minds on ice down there with no way to defrost them. Therefore the earthquake-proof construction."
"Nice to know I'll be in such good company. They need your authorization for me to go under; I'm flashing the form to your computer."
The Secretary's desktop lit up, and he typed in his code and laid his thumb on the scanner. "Done. When does it happen?"
"Within the hour. Wish me luck."
"Luck, Hunter." The Secretary cleared the screen, and sat for a while listening to the rain drum on the roof. Hunter was in the high country of Colorado, but infinitely further from seeing the sun than he was.
His reverie was disturbed by the pinging of his video tank's call tone. He looked up in annoyance, but found himself face to image with the Expression of Humanity, the avatar of the Higher Force, the Messiah of Man himself.
"Sir! This is indeed an honor!" The Secretary could see the crow quill lines in the corner of the eyes, unobscured by video makeup, but the power in their gaze was undiminished. His one-time client was slumped comfortably in the rich leather of his private office chair, but the Secretary felt himself gripped once again by the undeniable charisma of the man.
"Do you remember Argus, old friend?"
The Secretary's mind raced, caught off guard by the question. "Argus was the shepherd that watched the Titans' flocks, if I remember my Greek mythology."
"I was speaking of a more contemporary reference. You remember that the original had a hundred eyes? Well, back a couple of decades, a program called Argus was begun; very low key, very informal. The program was begun because evidence was accumulating that an asteroid had struck the earth back during the Jurassic."
A light went on in the back of the Secretary's mind. "Ah! It was a world wide network of telescopes on the lookout for another dinosaur killer. I thought that had been shut down long ago."
"Full marks, except that Argus is still watching. Let me give you a series of images that have been brought to my attention. The changes in detail are from the larger telescopes that were brought on line. The technicians have combined, enhanced them and looped the sequence."
The tank image dissolved into a square of starry darkness. A fuzzy disk of light appeared, swam closer, gained definition and rings. Saturn, then. They were using the refitted Hubbell. Saturn swam past, and the lens focused on one of the moons. Generated characters identified it as Rhea, diameter 1100 miles., 327,800 miles. from Saturn. From the upper left, a luminous cube appeared, shining like a window thrown open on summer in a dark room. At first, the Secretary thought it was a video effect, like the generated characters. It tracked over and down, overtaking Rhea, and appeared to pass behind the satellite, which became a black disk occluding most of the square. A chill spread down the secretary's spine. He knew enough science to realize that such a perfect shape, that size, couldn't be formed naturally.
"When..." He whispered from a suddenly dry throat, seeing the stars as motes in an ocean, through which something vast hunted.
"This sequence came in three hours ago. The technicians are still studying the trajectory, and they say it won't be known for weeks."
The Secretary looked at the Messiah with new eyes. The casual posture now read as a defensive crouch, one that the Secretary hadn't seen since before the political days, and a hotter flame burned behind the expressive eyes.
"We've been sending on every wavelength, and getting nothing at all back. We need a united front on this planet, to meet whatever it might be. I am the supreme ruler, the highest expression of Evolution on our world. It is only fitting that I should be here to meet these visitors. My will must come to pass!"
The Secretary bowed before the man who had, in fact, united the political and sacred entities of the globe, whatever his origins. "What is your desire, sir?"
"This... artifact will visit us before the new year. We need to close ranks, to face it without concern of a knife in the back."
"But sir, I thought that the trajectory was not known yet?"
The Messiah's hand slammed down on the table, sending papers flying. "This word comes from my inner counselors! I have no need of mere technicians!"
"My apologies; I didn't realize you had... higher knowledge of this." he kept his face carefully neutral. He couldn't deny that at times the Messiah had seemed to be in possession of inexplicable information. And in the Messiah's presence, one became aware of... voices, almost. It felt like a vague pressure that relented only when one agreed to what the Messiah demanded. If he had not been the one in charge of that department, the Secretary might have suspected the use of subsonics and subliminals.
The Messiah subsided, regaining his former poise. "The Jews are the sticking point, always they have been. They will not bow, so they must be destroyed."
The Secretary once again felt a chill. "But to move against them will destroy what we now have!"
The Messiah smiled, a frost of teeth in a tanned face. "Not if they move first, and against their oldest ally. It will show the world their faithlessness, and everyone will demand their extermination."
The Secretary floundered. "What are you telling me?"
The answer was spoken with utmost kindness. "Nuclears are on their way, targeted at various sites in the States. The world will think that they are Israeli. Goodbye, old friend."
The Secretary had no family, only a mistress in a neighboring suburb. He did have his personal guard, and a Harrier KargoKestrel on twenty four hour alert much closer than that suburb. He was in the shadow of the Blue Ridge mountains when the sky over the drowned city of Washington went white.
Three months later, he was huddled under a barn roof with nineteen other refugees. Two of them were the remaining members of his personal guard, though the three of them looked no better than any of the other ragged people. One of the older men was fiddling with a bread boarded video receiver connected to a tattered satellite dish that had been installed by the farm's original owner, now long gone, by the look of the charred ruins of the house. Communications were still up, at least internationally. The rest of the world was ignoring the situation in the old US, though it was rather like ignoring a corpse in your living room. Over the weeks, a picture of the state of the Secretary's old jurisdiction had built up. The supposed Israeli first strike had triggered various potshots from other countries with old grudges. Even now, autons roamed the skies, keeping the living hiding under anything with a scrap of roof. Cities that had survived the bombings became deathtraps as the food ran out. Whole states had gone silent, and rumors of biologicals abounded. The now Ex-Secretary stayed to the rear of the group and kept his mouth shut, to avoid jogging the memory of any of his former constituency who might have seen one of his vid appearances.
He had been heading for Deep Hole when the electromagnetic pulse from the air bursts had fried the Harrier's instrumentation. They never got as far as the Mississippi. He had lost one of his guard in the crash, another when they were jumped for their survival gear by a Solidarity squad which respected his position enough that they didn't kill him. Finally, he and his two remaining retainers had joined up with their present companions; they pretended not to know each other too well, and generally sat apart from one another. The refugees were mostly rural folk displaced by the country's economy even before the disasters struck. The Secretary had been introduced to campfire cookery and the joys of rabbit stew. They all took turns looking for autons, and listening to a portable radio for news.
So far, the information services had said nothing about any unusual goings on out beyond the moon's orbit. Once he had caught a snatch of the Messiah on shortwave orating about heaven coming to earth. The Secretary wondered if he was going to use whatever it was as another special effects prop. But the ragged individual in charge of the radio had tuned on past the speech. There was little love for the Messiah among the refugees, a high percentage of which were holdouts. There hadn't been time to determine if the reference was specific, or just a general figure of speech.
It was also difficult to determine the time; the sky was obscured by a smoky haze when it was not cloudy or downright stormy. The ground twitched uneasily from time to time (the Secretary thought of the canine simile). Whether the earthquakes were caused by the bombings or what they thought might have been an asteroid strike, was a matter for debate by the refugees. The Secretary kept his own counsel and slept near the barn door with one eye on the ancient beams.
The individual working on the video grunted with satisfaction. The screen of the portable set glowed like an electronic campfire in the dimness of the barn. Events had been reaching some sort of crisis in the Eurasian Sector, and the Messiah had been promising an official pronouncement. The Secretary suspected that the effect on Israel of the destruction of the US had been overestimated, but it had united the surrounding nations in a show of force designed to intimidate the Jews. Even China had sent a massive army overland and were waiting on the eastern side of the Euphrates valley, though India was none too happy about the visitors. News copters sent footage of their immense encampments, spreading over the rolling hillsides like a gray glacier. The Messiah came on, the transparent icon in the lower right proclaiming that this was live. Rolling phrases thundered, impressive even with the poor sound quality. The group leaned toward the screen, fascinated despite themselves. The Secretary, inured by long exposure, tuned out most of the speech.
"...They have resisted the voice of reason, the voice of Man, the voice of the Entity that has raised our species from the primordial ooze. They stand in the way of Evolution. They must be swept away! This city, a thorn in the side of rational man for millennia will be razed!" The Secretary snapped upright. If the Messiah pulled this off... he began calculating his chances for reinstatement, or if it was even advisable to attempt contact. His one-time protegé might consider his survival evidence of failure, and he tolerated failure in no one, least of all himself.
The camera pulled back from its tight shot of the Messiah. He stood on a stepped pyramidal stage of gleaming white, brilliantly illuminated against a pitch black sky. Evidently he was making his appearance from the Babylon complex; the Secretary recognized the set. There was a computer console on a slender wand beside the podium to which the Messiah turned, ready to type in the Go code. There was a dramatic pause, perhaps to give the Israelis one last chance to capitulate. Over the Messiah's shoulder, beyond the banks of arc lights, a glow appeared at the horizon, as if the moon was rising. Instead, a bar of light appeared, driving before it the shadows of distant hills. It expanded upward into a huge square of radiance and broke free of the earth. The cameraman forgot his assigned shot and followed the phenomena. As the camera adjusted to the light level, it showed tiny sparks that did not die, racing away in all directions. The cameraman remembered himself and focused back on the Messiah, showing a shocking transformation. The normally urbane, controlled features were a twisted mask across which fear and rage wrestled. The Secretary suspected that both the 'mere technicians', and the inner counselors had been wrong about trajectories. Rage won. He lurched to the console and punched out the sequence, then turned and shook both fists at the looming wall of light, which was growing swiftly nearer and larger. Screams from the assembled dignitaries drowned out whatever words the Messiah was shouting. The camera panned across the crowd. Panicked soldiers were firing wildly, though shreds of cirrus cloud visible across the object's face betrayed its range. Out on the perimeter, a stack of trailer-mounted ground to air missiles ripped loose with a concussive snarl, sending a twisted rope of exhaust gasses striking like a snake into the night, with no more effect than the rifle bullets.
The light continued to brighten; the broad Mesopotamian plain was brought to premature day, but the sky remained black. The object almost filled the camera's field of view. It began to rotate, revealing its shape as an immense cube, still throwing off brilliant points of light. Colors fled over the new surface like fire within an opal. The colors began to coalesce into a series of shapes. The Secretary felt the hair rise once again at the back of his neck. The shapes seemed to be forming a humanoid face the size of a continent, growing clearer by the moment.
The view changed to a different camera, one situated behind the Messiah, below the stage. His figure was silhouteted dramatically. A wind began to blow, rising swiftly until his ceremonial robes crackled like flags, and he had to crouch to avoid being blown off the stage. As the image on the surface of the heavenly object gained definition, the light swiftly rose in intensity. The Messiah dropped to his knees and raised his arms to protect his eyes. Above him, the image opened its mouth as if to speak, and tendrils of smoke sprang up from the Messiah's clothing and hair. Next instant, the video feed went dead.
There was a moment of shocked silence, and then the refugees began to argue about what they had seen. Some insisted that it was all a computer graphic morphing trick, some were brandishing small black books that the Secretary had recognized as the discredited Christian scriptures. On few faces did the Secretary detect a glimmer of satisfaction at the evident demise of the Messiah of Man. Even the most ardent anti-government holdout was looking a little pale.
The sound of weeping drew everyone's attention. It was Phillips. The man was the youngest of his retainers, and intensely loyal. The Secretary had watched him rise through the Solidarity corps, and had a hand in his training. Phillips was thin and dark haired, unlike the other guard, Ross, who was sandy haired and of moderate build, like the Secretary himself. Phillips was all the way on the other side of the room; Ross and the Secretary happened to be seated on a couple of bales of hay with their backs to the door.
"No, no nonono," Phillips voice was a rising moan. He stared over at the Secretary as if for reassurance, his eyes wide and all pupil, like a deer's. "What was that, sir? It-they- it killed..."
The Secretary turned away, trying to ignore him, his mind racing. Heads were starting to turn their way.
"Ross! He's going to say something stupid in a minute!" He hissed. "I want you to take him out!"
"But sir!" Ross's eyes were wide, but to his credit, he didn't look directly at his superior, preserving their anonymity. Phillips continued to wail.
"Do it, soldier! You know what these yokels would do to you if they knew you were Solidarity?" He moved slightly back from the guard, out of his line of fire.
Ross pulled a nine millimeter out of a boot holster and leveled it at Phillips. People screamed and scrambled out of the way as the gun crashed twice. Phillips was slammed back against the barn wall, hung there a moment, his eyes round as an owl's.
"But Mr. Secretary," he protested, in a child's voice. His legs gave way, and he slid down the weathered boards on a smear of bright blood.
Ross stood, warily covering the other refugees with the pistol as they cowered. Suddenly, he straightened, a puzzled look on his broad face, and pitched forward to the trampled straw. Revealed behind him was the Secretary, holding a bloody survival knife, with a frightened look on his face.
"He, he would have killed us all," he quavered. He threw the knife away as if sickened, and bent down to check for a non-existent pulse. He rolled the body over, reached inside the corpse's jacket, and brought out a slim ID wallet. The more courageous refugees crowded around as he opened it.
"It's the AMSec, all right," said the man who set up the video. "You bagged yourself a big'un. What's your name, buddy?"
"You can call me Thomas," said the ex-secretary, and, smiling, offered his hand to be shaken.
A chiming began in the recesses of the barn. Heads turned to the noise, an old kerosene lantern's glass chimney rattling. Bits of hay began to waft down from the rafters. A scramble for the doors began as people began to feel the ground shudder. The earthquake grew in intensity, and the barn began to come apart as the last few reached the outside. A couple was struck by a falling beam, and disappeared under a pile of siding and crashing rusty roofing. The rest made it to open ground, but their legs were knocked out from under them and they were literally bounced into the air, bruised and battered by the rocky soil. The satellite dish toppled, the ruins of the farmhouse slumped into their cellar, and the forest on the hills above them flailed as the turf rippled like a shaken rug. Their ears were assaulted by the sound of shattering branches and groaning rock strata. The shaking went on for several minutes, subsiding and returning several times. When it finally passed, they all lay stunned and bleeding.
As the ringing in his ears faded, the Secretary/Thomas heard the moans of the injured, the wailing of the two babies in the group. Overlaid on this was a powerful rush of wind. He opened his eyes to discover blue sky through the shredding overcast. This only made their situation more precarious. The high flying auton control would pick up their motion or infrared signature, directing remotes firing hypersonic flechettes from solar powered railguns. The drones could be knocked down, but there was a seemingly inexhaustible supply of them. He imagined a ruined city with an automated factory, chewing up the scorched steel for more drones and flechettes.
A twinkle high up in the murk brought screams and people trying to run on shaky legs. But it wasn't the insectile swoop and buzz of autons that followed. Instead a single ship arrowed straight down to ground on the hillside, halting its downward plunge so swiftly that it appeared to materialize above the grass. It was of no configuration that Thomas recognized: a series of connected spheres; no visible wings or exhaust ports, its surface a polished reflective gold. They stared at their reflections in the hull. One of the central spheres opened, an oval section tilting downward to form a ramp. Revealed were two tall figures.
"Fear not! Stay, and listen!" The voice rang out, and those who were fleeing for the woods halted. Thomas felt as if a warm blanket had fallen over his shoulders, and came to stand with the rest of the refugees. A moment later, he jerked as if he had almost fallen asleep. Compulsion! Something in the tone or frequency had reached right past their consciousness and pulled their strings like marionettes.
"We are a rescue ship from the City of God!" The speaker seemed to be the shorter of the two beings, though both were taller and more massive than anyone he had ever seen. He felt that they could hold a basketball like a grapefruit. They were clothed in loose white garments belted at their waists with a wide, complicated band of gold. Their feet were bare, but glistened as if coated with gold. Their faces appeared human, but the bone structure was unusual; it was no racial type that he knew, and yet looked very precisely formed instead of a blend of types. The speaker scanned the crowd, while his companion kept his gaze sweeping the heavens. He got the feeling that their eyes saw more than the visual spectrum.
"The reign of the Evil One is overthrown, and his servant and puppet, the false messiah, is dead. The Son of the Most High God has returned to take possession of what he has Created!" The speaker paused, to let them digest this. Thomas looked around, found a few others doing the same. Many had fallen to their knees, tears streaking the dirt on their faces, but for decades, the concept of 'God' had been a quaint antique, replaced by an undemanding 'Supreme Entity' or 'Higher Force' that had the decency to stay on the astral plane. If God was going into politics, Thomas wondered who his press secretary was going to be.
"In a few hours, the City of God shall pass overhead and sweep the weapons of the enemy from the sky. The earthquake you have just endured was a prelude to what is to come. We can take you to a place of safety; the lands around the blessed city of Jerusalem shall be sheltered from the forces that will be unleashed. You will be able to rebuild your lives there. We will force no one to go, but there is no time for arguments. We will treat your injuries and sicknesses with the Tree of Healing. All of you may partake, whether you go or stay, for the earth is now the Lord's and you are his subjects." Thomas bridled inwardly at the arrogance, but said nothing. He had named the two beings Big and Bigger. Big now gestured, and the side of another section of the ship opened, spilling brilliant light from an ovoid compartment. Within was a silver barked tree with a thick crown of foliage.
There was a moment of silence, and a feeble thumping became audible, coming from the ruins of the barn. Bigger now moved, stepping swiftly down the ramp, the crowd parting around him. He strode toward the pile of wood and metal, and as he reached it, the tangled mass screeched and flung itself up and aside like a wave parts for a swimmer. Bigger bent down and picked up a body. Bile rose in Thomas' throat until he saw it was neither Phillips nor Ross, but a red haired woman, one of the couple who had been caught in the collapse. He laid her at the foot of the ramp. She was now unconscious, bleeding heavily from a scalp wound, and one leg was twisted grotesquely. She had suffered from a cough in the weeks prior, and her breathing was now labored and bubbly.
"This one still lives, but the others' spirits have fled beyond my sensing, to judgment, or to join us in the City." Thomas would wonder about those words later, but now he was distracted, watching Bigger reach into the compartment and pluck several plump, quarter-sized leaves from a branch. He crushed them between his fingers and placed them in the woman's mouth. Thomas saw her throat move, and then she shuddered and stopped breathing.
"Too late," he said, and started to turn away. Someone grabbed his shoulder, drawing him back to the scene.
"Oh, maaan," another said, in a strangled voice.
Slowly, deeply, the woman's chest moved. Color began to return to her cheeks, gone gray with shock. He saw the scalp wound close, becoming a fading pink line. The being's hands moved to her leg, ripping aside the heavy denim like wet tissue. Thomas saw a flash of white bone, and the huge hands made a slow pass down the limb, straightening, pulling, molding the flesh. The bone end disappeared beneath the skin like a bit of melting ice, leaving a little bruising, which gradually dispersed. Thomas felt a tightness in his chest, and remembered to breath.
"She will sleep for a while, now," said Bigger. "Her body must complete what the Tree has begun."
After the red-haired woman's miraculous healing, there was a rush to get in line for the leaves. Thomas kept his usual low profile, using his time at the end of the line to evaluate the effects. Cuts and bruises disappeared, even bent spines straightened. Aside from smiles at the absence of pain, though, personalities seemed unchanged. It was with only mild apprehension that he would find himself somehow controlled from within that Thomas accepted the bright green oval. A mild, elusive citrusy sweetness, a tingling that began in his mouth and spread through the rest of him, leaving behind a feeling of well-being that dazed him. He felt as if he could turn handsprings, and almost began to try. The air seemed to double in oxygen, and the colors and sounds became brighter and clearer.
Suddenly, something went spang!spang! from the golden ship, and a pine somehow still standing after the quake folded in half with a chainsaw noise. The group displayed reflexes honed in weeks of flight, and dropped and rolled. Thomas saw Big and Bigger standing over the still sleeping woman as a line in the ground exploded under the lash of hypersonic metal splinters. The sound of the unmanned aircraft was just now reaching them as it made its usual low-level pass. Evidently the auton was designating the beings as the largest target in the area. The next instant, the air was full of flechettes- literally full: they hung motionless as if embedded in a glass wall around the two figures, and dropped to the ground in a little row. The two never actually seemed to do anything, but the drone exploded and fell into the trees, and far, far overhead, something flared into vapor.
When loading began, Thomas was amazed to find that some were unwilling to leave. The old electronics expert, no longer looking quite so old, and several others stood in a tight knot.
"We're grateful and all for what you've done," he said nervously to the Visitors. "But we've been fending for ourselves for years now, and I can't see starting over again, if there's any other way. We love this country and aim to pick up the pieces, if it's okay with you."
The white robed giant smiled sadly. "You have chosen a difficult path. But it is your choice. My brothers and sisters will travel this land in the future, to watch over you and your children. You need only ask for aid, and they will do what is lawful. For now, the Tree of Healing will keep you well and speed your recovery. Perhaps we shall even meet again."
"Uh, I hope so, your honor. My name is Jack Mims."
"And mine was James the Less, a long time ago. Think of us as elder brothers. Keep to the high ground, Jack Mims; when the City passes there will be storms, as well as more earthquakes."
Thomas was standing at the top of the ramp, watching Mims' group filing off into the afternoon. Their rescuers had disappeared into the recesses of the ship; he presumed they were busy with liftoff A rumbling came from the east, whether thunder or the beginning of another quake it was impossible to tell. The man stopped and cupped his hands to his mouth.
"Hey, Thomas, how 'bout joinin' us?"
He shook his head. "Pioneering's not my style. I'm scared of bears." Actually, The City of God and its godlike inhabitants scared him more than any grizzly. But there had to be a weakness he could exploit, and the only way to find it was to get as close to the puzzle as he could. The Deep Hole installation, provided it survived the quakes, would have to wait. The ramp came up, and the opening closed without a seam. The world as he had known it disappeared from sight.