Of the twenty thousand men, only four were not in uniform. Jesus wore his sky-blue robe, and the Earthmen were dressed in their IASA uniforms. The Messiah had thought that it would not be good for them to appear to be part of the Martian space navy.
'You are with us and of us and so beloved by us. But the people of Earth may regard you as traitors. It is better that you appear first as converts only. You will be of the Kingdom of the Presence and hence His soldiers. But the Sons of Darkness will be filled with suspicion, fear, and trembling. They must not identify you as one of us. You must still be Terrestrials, not Martians. Thus, you will be a bridge between us, a means of communication and reassurance. Later, you can wear the garments of the Sons of Light.
'The Kingdom of the Presence cannot be brought about by force. We do not go to destroy and slay. We will effect the rule of the Messiah by example, by love, by gifts. Of course, there may be war, but we will not be the first to attack.
'You see,' he said, smiling, 'this man whom you call Saint John the Revelator, the writer of the Apocalypse, was a poet. He cast the coming of the Messiah in vivid imagery, in hyperbole, in blazing symbols. And he based his visions upon the supernatural. But the establishment of the Messiah and the
Kingdom of the Presence and the laying of the foundations of the New Jerusalem will not come about as he said. The sky may be rolled up like a scroll, and the four horsemen may ride, and the seven-headed beast burst from the sea, but these things will not happen except symbolically.
'Much of the conquest will come about because of science and technology. This will cause what you call cultural shock. For instance, we will announce, and it will be true, that just recently our scientists have gone beyond ensuring a long delay of old age. We can now tell the peoples of Earth that we can give them immortality. Barring, of course, homicide, accident and suicide.'
Orme gasped. Then he said, 'Master, is that true? No, forgive me, I don't doubt you. It is se staggering.'
Bronski said, 'But if very few die, there soon will be no room on Earth for children.'
Hfathon, who was standing nearby said in a low voice, 'Do not bother the Messiah with obvious matters.'
Jesus, however, said, 'I did not say that only a few will die. There will be plenty of room in the beginning. Afterward, when the Earth has been filled again, provisions will be made for the children.'
Orme felt sick. There would be war, the most terrible that mankind had ever suffered. Or did Jesus's words hold another meaning which only time would reveal?
'It does not matter,' Jesus said. 'In eternity, five hundred years are as long, and as short, as a million. Our plan takes time. How much does not matter. We can be as patient as a loving mother with her troublesome children. In time everybody who deserves to be resurrected will be. Our scientists are convinced that we will someday be able to raise the dead. The recordings of things past and gone exist in the substratum of the universe. Or, to put it another way, in the body of the Creator. The scientists refer to it as the ether, a concept which I understand your scientists reject. But they are, in this respect, as ignorant as the wise men of ancient Earth were of other matters.
'In time, the dead will be raised. Five hundred years, a thousand, what does it matter to those who sleep?'
'Master,' Orme said, 'will this, too, be revealed to the people of Earth?'
'You will see. Ponder this. All things are done by the Merciful One, but He often uses men as his hands. This applies to the rising of the dead as well as to the restoration of the Kingdom of the Messiah.'
Jesus turned away then to speak to a group of officers. Orme, feeling slightly stunned, walked away. Bronski said something, but it could not have been urgent since he spoke softly and did not repeat it. Though Orme had already said farewell to Gulthilo, he walked across the vast space until he came to a metal fence. Behind this stood the families of the crews and near a gate was his wife. She had been told the day before that she was pregnant. This news had caused both joy and dismay, since he had to leave the next day and there was no telling when he would return. Even if she had not been with child, she could not have accompanied him. No women were on the ships since there might be war. Later, if all went well, women would be sent to Earth as teachers and administrators. But she would not be going even then because she had a child to raise.
Gulthilo, seeing him, smiled, though not as bravely as when they had parted an hour ago. 'What's wrong, Richard?'
'Nothing, except that I'm overwhelmed. I just heard that the scientists have announced that they expect to raise the dead some day.'
She put a hand through the wide mesh and took his. 'That's nothing to be surprised about. Jesus has always said that it will come about, and so we've expected it. I didn't know that the scientists, who've been working on it for a thousand years, had discovered something substantial. They must be confident that they can actually do this. Otherwise, the Messiah would not have told you that it was so. Probably, the news will be announced on TV soon. It'll be an occasion for great rejoicing. Perhaps a new annual festival will be established.'
'Give me another kiss,' he said, and he put his lips against hers, the wires pressing against his flesh. The contact with her flesh reassured him, gave him the sense that this world had not suddenly become misty, immaterial, far away. It was as solid and warm again as her body and the entity in her womb.
'May the Creator be with you,' she said softly. 'I will also assuredly be with you. And you will return before the baby is born. If it is at all possible, you will be with me then. The Law ensures that, and the Messiah is merciful.'
'Until then, my love,' he said, and he walked away. But he was not as certain as she. Only One knew what reception the Sons of Light would get from the Sons of Darkness.
22
Among the many things Orme hadn't understood was how a spacefleet could set forth without a long training of its personnel. He was told that simulation-training had been going on for the last fifty years in anticipation of this day. Thus, when the ships were built there were skilled crews to run them.
The personnel had fasted and prayed. Those who had from one cause or another become ritually unclean had been cleansed. All was ready.
The upper-level cube was cleared of people, and the entrances were blocked by massive metal doors. At one end of the hollow, from the ceiling, the bottom of a Brobdingnagian plug, a monolith of granite, slowly descended. Though it was a quarter of a mile high and half a mile in diameter, and though it had no visible attachments, it came down as lightly as a toy balloon slowly losing its air, and entered a cavity prepared for it.
First, the flagship, the Maranatha (Aramaic for 'Our Master, come!'), rose through the exit. One by one the others followed. Last was the giant hemispherical Zara, or 'seed', and when it was a quarter of a mile above the surface, it stopped. In ten minutes the top of the monolith had replugged the hole.
Then, from one of the globe-tipped cylinders sticking from the Zara, an orange ray shot forth, and the rock about the plug and the plug melted together.
No surveyor satellite from Earth would record and transmit this event. The two presently operating had been shut off by the Martians. And since it was night on this side of Mars, by the time the spot came into range of Earth's delicate instruments, it would have been cooled off. When the Zara returned, it would disintegrate the thin crust of lava so that the plug could move down again.