“A farmers’ fable!”
“Perhaps. But some are willing to tell it under oath. How many souls has an old lady with an extra head — a head that ‘just grew’? Things like that cause ulcers in high places, my son. Now, what was it you noticed? Why were you staring at her and trying to pinch my arm off like that?”
The monk was slow to answer. “It smiled at me,” he said at last.
“What smiled?”
“Her extra, uh — Rachel. She smiled. I thought she was going to wake up.”
The abbot stopped him in the refectory’s entranceway and peered at him curiously.
“She smiled,” the monk repeated very earnestly.
“You imagined it.”
“Yes, m’Lord.”
“Then look like you imagined it.”
Brother Joshua tried. “I can’t,” he admitted.
The abbot dropped the old woman’s coins in the poor box. “Let’s go on inside,” he said.
The new refectory was functional, chromium befixtured, acoustically tailored, and germicidally illuminated. Gone were the smoke-blackened stones, the tallow lamps, the wooden bowls and cellar-ripened cheeses. Except for the cruciform seating arrangement and a rank of images along one wall, the place resembled an industrial lunchroom. Its atmosphere had changed, as had the atmosphere of the entire abbey. After ages of striving to preserve remnants of culture from a civilization long dead, the monks had watched the rise of a new and mightier civilization. The old tasks had been completed; new ones were found. The past was venerated and exhibited in glass cases, but it was no longer the present. The Order conformed to the times, to an age of uranium and steel and flaring rocketry, amid the growl of heavy industry and the high thin whine of star drive converters. The Order conformed — at least in superficial ways.
“Accedite ad eum,” the Reader intoned.
The robed legions stood restlessly at their places during the reading. No food had yet appeared. The tables were bare of dishes. Supper had been deferred. The organism, the community whose cells were men, whose life had flowed through seventy generations, seemed tense tonight, seemed to sense a note amiss tonight, seemed aware, through the connaturality of its membership, of what had been told to only a few. The organism lived as a body, worshiped and worked as a body, and at times seemed dimly conscious as a mind that infused its members and whispered to itself and to Another in the lingua prima, baby tongue of the species. Perhaps the tension was increased as much by faint snort-growl of practice rocketry from the distant anti-missile missile range as by the unexpected postponement of the meal. The abbot rapped for silence, then gestured his prior, Father Lehy toward the lectern. The prior looked pained for a moment before speaking.
“We all regret the necessity,” he said at last, “of sometimes disturbing the quiet of contemplative life with news from the outside world. But we must remember too that we are here to pray for the world and its salvation, as for our own. Especially now, the world could use some praying for.” He paused to glance at Zerchi.
The abbot nodded.
“Lucifer is fallen,” said the priest, and stopped. He stood there looking down at the lectern as if suddenly struck dumb.
Zerchi arose. “That is Brother Joshua’s inference, by the way,” he interposed. “The Regency Council of the Atlantic Confederacy has said nothing to speak of. The dynasty has issued no statements. We know little more than we knew yesterday, except that The World Court is meeting in emergency session, and that the Defense Interior people are moving fast. There is a defense alert, and we’ll be affected, but don’t be disturbed. Father — ?”
“Thank you, Dome,” said the prior, seeming to regain his voice as Dom Zerchi was seated again. “Now, Reverend Father Abbot asked me to make the following announcements:
“First, for the next three days we shall sing the Little Office of Our Lady before Matins, asking her intercession for peace.
“Second, general instructions for civil defense in the event of a space-strike or missile-attack alert are available on the table by the entrance. Everybody take one. If you’ve read it, read it again.
“Third, in the event that an attack warning is sounded, the following brothers are to report immediately to Old Abbey courtyard for special instructions. If no attack warning comes, the same brothers will report there anyway day after tomorrow morning right after Matins and Lauds. Names — Brothers Joshua, Christopher, Augustin, James, Samuel—”
The monks listened with quiet tension, betraying no emotion. There were twenty-seven names in all, but no novices were among them. Some were eminent scholars, there were a janitor and a cook as well. At first hearing, one might assume that the names had been drawn from a box. By the time Father Lehy had finished the list, some of the brothers were eying each other curiously.
“And this same group will report to the dispensary for a complete physical examination tomorrow after Prime,” the prior finished. He turned to look questioningly at Dom Zerchi.
“Domne?”
“Yes, just one thing,” said the abbot, approaching the lectern. “Brothers, let us not assume that there is going to be war. Let’s remind ourselves that Lucifer has been with us — this time — for nearly two centuries. And was dropped only twice, in sizes smaller than megaton. We all know what could happen, if there’s war. The genetic festering is still with us from the last time Man tried to eradicate himself. Back then, in the Saint Leibowitz’ time, maybe they didn’t know what would happen. Or perhaps they did know, but could not quite believe it until they tried it — like a child who knows what a loaded pistol is supposed to do, but who never pulled a trigger before. They had not yet seen a billion corpses. They had not seen the still-born, the monstrous, the dehumanized, the blind. They had not yet seen the madness and the murder and the blotting out of reason. Then they did it, and then they saw it.
“Now — now the princes, the presidents, the praesidiums, now they know — with dead certainty. They can know it by the children they beget and send to asylums for the deformed; They know it, and they’ve kept the peace. Not Christ’s peace, certainly, but peace, until lately — with only two warlike incidents in as many centuries. Now they have the bitter certainty. My sons, they cannot do it again. Only a race of madmen could do it again—”
He stopped speaking. Someone was smiling,. It was only a small smile, but in the midst of a sea of grave faces it stood out like a dead fly in a bowl of cream. Dom Zerchi frowned. The old man kept on smiling wryly. He sat at the “beggar’s table” with three other transient tramps — an old fellow with a brushy beard, stained yellow about the chin. As a jacket, he wore a burlap bag with armholes. He continued to smile at Zerchi. He looked old as a rain-worn crag, and a suitable candidate for a Maundy laving. Zerchi wondered if he were about to stand up and make an announcement to his hosts — or blow a ramshorn at them, perhaps? — but that was only an illusion generated by the smile. He quickly dismissed the feeling that he had seen the old man before, somewhere. He concluded his remarks.
On his way back to his place, he paused. The beggar nodded pleasantly at his host. Zerchi came nearer.
“Who are you, if I may ask. Have I seen you somewhere before?”
“What?”
“Latzar shemi,” the beggar repeated.
“I don’t quite—”
“Call me Lazarus, then,” said the old one, and chuckled.
Dom Zerchi shook his head and moved on. Lazarus? There was, in the region, an old wives’ tale to the effect that — but what a shoddy sort of myth that was. Raised up by Christ but still not a Christian, they said. And yet he could not escape the feeling that he had seen the old man somewhere.