The cloud continued to ascend straight up into the sky, now carrying its cargo of the bubble ground effect car as well as its passenger. At fifteen thousand feet it turned west, and it was tracked on radar all the way to Mount Laurel where it was lost from sight as it landed gently.
Obie had had his miracle. Few on Earth now doubted that he had been in touch with the Star Child, as he had claimed, and few of the people who had seen the miraculous cloud sent by God to do Obie’s bidding doubted that he was in truth the Voice of God.
Chapter Nineteen
THE Star Child made no actual personal appearances, although they had been promised. The Star Child had gone around the bend.
Winifred was the only person he recognized, and only sporadically. When he did know her, he was a child again, back in New York, looking to her for protection. Obie swore for twenty-four hours at this development, blaming it all on Winifred and Robbie Mueller, but occasionally letting some of the abuse boil over to include Merton.
“You and that goddamned cloud!’” he said over and over, gradually tapering off so that he said it no more than five or six times a day after the initial shock.
Winifred said, after her first interview with Johnny, “He has had a hallucination at one time or another. It isn’t at all clear. In the vision a man descended from heaven and lifted him up and took him away with him. He thought that was happening when the cloud was lowered….”
And Johnny? Miserable, sniffling, spied up, put upon, mistreated, captive? He blossomed.
Johnny was happy finally. The tall silver man was as kind as he had known he would be. The world that he now lived in was heaven with music always in the air, and perfumed breezes, and food that was the nectar that the books had hinted at. Sometimes he talked for hours at a stretch with the silver man, who was his father, and it was how he had dreamed it would be. There was love and warmth and humor and respect for him. His father listened to him intently when he talked. Sometimes he could hear others clamoring at the doors, but his father refused to allow them to enter, so they didn’t intrude. Only Dr. Harvey was admitted once in a while. Not often. Even she was an intruder now.
“Can you cure him?” Obie demanded. “I thought you could fix any kind of a breakdown.”
Mueller nodded. “We can cure him,” he said. “But it takes time. We don’t know about our drugs with the alien chemistry….”
“He isn’t an alien, yon fool! He’s human. Like you, like me.”
Mueller looked confused, then disbelieving. “Mr. Cox,” he said, “I can appreciate your impatience, but it won’t do you or him any good to pretend that he is human. I believe that human forces have driven him to this schism, but that he is human…”
“Get out! Get out!” Obie tore at his beard in distraction and was calmed by Dee Dee’s hand on his arm. “What are we going to do, Dee Dee? He’s gone nuts and we can’t find Blake. My kid… crazy, the other bastard missing…. Why does this have to happen to me? All my plans…”
“Obie, cut the crap!” Dee Dee said. “stop your bawling. You have to put Winifred in charge of the kid. She can pull him out of it if anyone can….”
“That bitch!”
“You bet that bitch. She’s a good doctor, and she knows all about this. All about it, Obie. Maybe even more than you know.”
Obie calmed down and looked at Dee Dee with new interest. “Why do you say that?”
“Figure it out, Obie. She was with Matt Daniels from the start, probably knew about the switch from the beginning. She worked her way into the U.N. so she could watch the kid, maybe even protected him. She’s the one who might be able to draw Blake back to us, or Derek. I think we’ll find that the Daniels’ family and Dr. Harvey will end up being our biggest allies in the end.”
Merton came in then and said, “Obie, this isn’t the time for you to go soft, too. You have speeches lined up for the next six months that will be the most important of your life. Now, damn it, leave this to the doctors, and you take care of that end.”
“You think it’s safe to go ahead?” Billy asked. He had followed Merton into the room.
“Sure. There’s a lot of talk and there’s bound to be more, but they aren’t going to do anything. The kid’s here, he’s happy, patents are flowing out, miracles… Who’s going to start anything now? Remember that the people, those great glorious masses of people are on our side, on the side of the Star Child. They won’t let anyone start anything now.”
Billy puffed and panted. He looked frightened. “France has mobilized,” he said. “They’ve ordered all our people to report to public buildings by noon tomorrow. They’re locking them up….”
“So? England has come over to our side. You lose one, you gain one. This country won’t permit that kind of nonsense. No U.S. government is going to move against a religion. Don’t forget that, Billyboy. We’re on the side of the angels.” He turned to Obie and said, “You know all that. You’re disappointed right now. We all are. But we got a plan. The worst thing you could do now is soften up, back down.”
So Obie made his speeches, or preached his sermons, as you will.
“And God spake unto me. And God said, ‘I will send down my cloud and remove the stranger from the hands of the non-believers and deliver him to you.’” Obie’s face glowed with the remembered rapture of that moment when the world had witnessed the power of God, Who could order the clouds at will. “And there will be those of evil who will speak with lying tongues and offer up reasons and explanations of this thing that I ill cause to happen. They must be smitten, their lies must be stilled. From Psalm 109: Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise; For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause…. Set Thou a wicked man over him; and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of desolate places.” Obie paused there, then went on in a strong whispering voice that sent chills through those in the rows and rows of seats, lighted only by the flickering tapers. “‘The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of His wrath. He shall judge among the heathen, He shall fill the places with the dead bodies; He shall wound the heads over many countries.’ He shall wound the heads over many countries!” This was shouted in a voice of thunder. “The leaders shall fall, never to rise again. The heathen shall fall, never to rise again. The house of the Lord shall be put in order. And the Voice spoke to me and said, ‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.’ And I looked and beheld a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. ‘For the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ The time is ripe. The harvest waits. Armaggedon is now!”
Obie spoke in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and then was threatened by a mob that overran the MM’s who surrounded him in his public appearances. The mob was made up of middle-class, middle-aged people for the most part, but sprinkled with youths. “Anti-Christ!” they screamed. “Satan!” An MM rocket-boosted hovercraft appeared over them spraying them with gas, and the panic that had been there already was increased geometrically. The hallucinogenic gas was illegal, of course, and it turned the mob of seven hundred thousand maddened citizens into a mob of that many schizophrenics. When the dead, of fright, heart attacks, suicides, assaults, etc., were counted the total came to 1,074. The MM’s were accused of the gas attack, which they didn’t deny, but no arrests were made. Although sixteen of the dead were policemen, authority continued to avoid, trembling, a direct confrontation with religion. Obie’s tour was not slowed by even one day.