“But you do believe in God?”
“I told you so, didn’t I? Not that you had any business asking me.”
“Then you must believe in other things?”
“Of course I do! I believe that a man has an obligation to be merciful to the weak—. . . patient with the stupid . . . generous with the poor. I think he is obliged to lay down his life for his brothers, should it be required of him. But I don’t propose to prove any of those things; they are beyond proof. And I don’t demand that you believe as I do.”
I let out my breath. “I’m satisfied, Zeb.”
Instead of looking pleased he answered, “That’s mighty kind of you, brother, mighty kind! Sorry—I shouldn’t be sarcastic. But I had no intention of asking for your approval. You goaded me-accidentally, I’m sure—into discussing matters that I never intend to discuss.” He stopped to light up another of those stinking cigarettes and went on more quietly. “John, I suppose that I am, in my own cantankerous way, a very narrow man myself. I believe very strongly in freedom of religion-but I think that that freedom is best expressed as freedom to keep quiet. From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit.”
“Huh?”
“Not every case—I’ve known the good and the humble and the devout. But how about the man who claims to know what the Great Architect is thinking? The man who claims to be privy to His Inner Plans? It strikes me as sacrilegious conceit of the worst sort-this character probably has never been any closer to His Trestle Board than you or I. But it makes him feel good to claim to be on chummy terms with the Almighty, it builds his ego, and lets him lay down the law to you and me. Pfui! Along comes a knothead with a loud voice, an I.Q. around 90, hair in his ears, dirty underwear, and a lot of ambition. He’s too lazy to be a farmer, too stupid to be an engineer, too unreliable to be a banker-but, brother, can he pray! After a while he has gathered around him other knotheads who don’t have his vivid imagination and self-assurance but like the idea of having a direct line of Omnipotence. Then this character is no longer Nehemiah Scudder but the First Prophet”
I was going along with him, feeling shocked but rather pleasantly so, until he named the First Prophet. Perhaps my own spiritual state at that time could have been described as that of a “primitive” follower of the First Prophet-that is to say, I had decided that the Prophet Incarnate was the devil himself and that all of his works were bad, but that belief did not affect the basics of the faith I had learned from my mother. The thing to do was to purge and reform the Church, not to destroy it. I mention this because my own case paralleled a very serious military problem that was to develop later.
I found that Zeb was studying my face. “did I get you on the raw again, Old fellow? I didn’t mean to.”
“Not at all,” I answered stiffly, and went on to explain that, in my opinion, the sinfulness of the present gang of devils that had taken over the Church in no way invalidated the true faith. “After all, no matter what you think nor how much you may like to show off your cynicism, the doctrines are a matter of logical necessity. The Prophet Incarnate and his cohorts can pervert them, but they can’t destroy them—and it doesn’t matter whether the real Prophet had dirty underwear or not.”
Zeb sighed as if he were very tired. “Johnnie, I certainly did not intend to get into an argument about religion with you. I’m not the aggressive type—you know that. I had to be pushed into the Cabal.” He paused. “You say the doctrines are a matter of logic?”
“You’ve explained the logic to me yourself. It’s a perfect consistent structure.”
“So it is. Johnnie, the nice thing about citing God as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove. It’s just a matter of selecting the proper postulates, then insisting that your postulates are “inspired". Then no one can possibly prove that you are wrong.”
“You are asserting that the First Prophet was not inspired?”
“I am asserting nothing. For all you know, 1 am the First Prophet, come back to kick out the defilers of my temple.”
“Don’t be—I was all wound up to kick it around further when there came a knock at Zeb’s door. I stopped and he called out, “Come in!”
It was Sister Magdalene.
She nodded at Zeb, smiled sweetly at my open-mouthed surprise and said, “Hello, John Lyle. Welcome.” It was the first time I had ever seen her other than in the robes of a holy deaconess. She seemed awfully pretty and much younger.
“Sister Magdalene!”
“No. Staff Sergeant Andrews. “Maggie", to my friends.”
“But what happened? Why are you here?”
“Right at the moment I’m here because I heard at dinner that you had arrived. When I didn’t find you in your own quarters I concluded that you would be with Zeb. As for the rest, I couldn’t go back, any more than you or Zeb—and our hideout back in New Jerusalem was getting overcrowded, so they transferred me.”
“Well, it’s good to see you!”
“It’s good to see you, John.” She patted me on the cheek and smiled again. Then she climbed on Zeb’s bed and squatted tailor-fashion, showing a rather immodest amount of limb in the process. Zeb lit another cigarette and handed it to her; she accepted it, drew smoke deep into her lungs, and let it go as if she had been smoking all her life.
I had never seen a woman smoke—never. I could see Zeb watching me, confound him!—and I most carefully ignored it. Instead I grinned and said, “This is a wonderful reunion! If only—”
“I know,” agreed Maggie. “If only Judith were here. Have you heard from her yet, John?”
“Heard from her? How could I?”
“That’s right, you couldn’t—not yet. But you can write to her now.”
“Huh? How?”
“I don’t know the code number off hand, but you can drop it at my desk—I’m in G-2. Don’t bother to seal it; all personal mail has to be censored and paraphrased. I wrote to her last week but I haven’t had an answer yet.”
I thought about excusing myself at once and writing a letter, but I didn’t. It was wonderful to be with both of them and I didn’t want to cut the evening short. I decided to write before I went to bed-while realizing, with surprise, that I had been so much on the go that, so far as I could remember, I hadn’t even had time to think about Judith since . . . well, since Denver, at least.
But I did not get to write to her even later that night. It was past eleven o’clock and Maggie was saying something about reveille coming early when an orderly showed up: “The Commanding General’s compliments and will Legate Lyle see him at once, sir.”
I gave my hair a quick brush with Zeb’s gear and hurried away, while wishing mightily that I had something fit to report in, rather than a civilian suit much the worse for wear.
The inner sanctum was deserted and dark except for a light that I could see in the far inner office-even Mr. Giles was not at his desk. I found my way in, knocked on the door frame, stepped inside, clicked my heels and saluted. “Legate Lyle reports to the Commanding General as ordered, sir.”
An elderly man seated at a big desk with his back to me turned and looked up, and I got another surprise. “Ah, yes, John Lyle,” he said gently. He got up and came toward me, with his hand out. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
It was Colonel Huxley, head of the Department of Applied Miracles when I was a cadet—and almost my only friend among the officers at that time. Many was the Sunday afternoon that I had relaxed in his quarters, my stock unhooked, free for the moment from the pressure of discipline.
I took his hand. “Colonel—I mean “General", sir . I thought you were dead!”
“Dead colonel into live general, eh! No, Lyle, though I was listed as dead when I went underground. They usually do that when an officer disappears; it looks better. You’re dead, too-did you know?”
“Uh, no, I didn’t, sir. Not that it matters. This is wonderful, sir!”
“Good.”
“But—I mean, how did you ever-well—” I shut up.