With a rod of iron a par.., p.36
With a Rod of Iron: A Parable, page 36
“I called the local television station,” he said. “And I gave a call to the L.A. Times.”
“Are they coming?”
“Yep.”
“I’m surprised. I wouldn’t think they’d lend much credence to an alien invasion story.”
“Well, I didn’t tell them we had aliens.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“I didn’t lie, though!” He paused. “I just told them we had a press conference to announce an important new expansion of our business.”
Loran grinned. “And since Lambert’s becoming an important supplier of jobs, not to mention a fast-expanding and very popular new form of transportation, that was more than enough to attract them, huh?”
“Precisely.”
“I’m glad you’re on our side.”
He chuckled. “I can’t wait to see their faces.”
He didn’t have to wait long. About half an hour later, the reporter from the Times showed up; she arrived by the alternate translocator at the far end of the plant grounds, since the primary translocator was occupied. That gave Loran time to talk to the young woman and begin to break the news to her gently. Her name was Marsha.
“You’re new at this line of work, aren’t you?” asked Loran.
“I graduated from SC nearly two years ago.”
“Journalism major?”
“No, history.”
“Why’d you choose to go into journalism?”
“It’s why I majored in history!” Marsha’s eyes wandered the room. “I knew how to write—a natural talent, you might say. But the news business needs people that know more than just the business of news reporting and gathering. History gives background and context to current problems.”
“Must be hard to find interesting things to do stories on, anymore.”
Marsha frowned, slightly. “It’s true that we don’t have wars or natural disasters or things like that, but you’d be amazed how much there is to cover that’s still interesting. Politics, for instance. Even with Jesus in Jerusalem, to a large extent the nations of the world have been left to go their own ways; the United Nations has, of course, become increasingly important, but national governments still have their own agendas. There’s a lot of conflict in the world, a lot of back room deals, a lot of corruption, and enlightened and unenlightened self-interest. A lot has changed, but a lot remains the same. Human nature, converted or not, is still human nature.”
“There are exceptions—”
“Well, of course. The Resurrected and the Raptured are different—and come the end of the millennium that’s what the rest of us have to look forward to. In the meantime, we get to struggle along—uncomfortably, sometimes—but at least we know we won’t die or get sick.” She shrugged. “I wish, sometimes, that it was over with. I get so frustrated with my...um…my human failings.”
“I can understand that.”
“But for you it’s only a memory.”
Loran raised an eyebrow.
“It’s only obvious. Raptured or Resurrected people have a certain undefinable something that makes them stand out. Maybe it’s a confidence, or maybe it’s just the utter lack of guile.” She shrugged again, an easy and natural movement that seemed common to her. “So what is it that Lambert’s going to be showing off today?”
Loran’s mind did a couple of flips, but came up with a quick response. “We’ve got a link to the stars,” she said.
“That’s the nature of the technology—but...from your previously published information, it’ll be another four years before you’ll be ready to launch your first star probe—since NASA still doesn’t seem interested in participating—”
“An unexpected breakthrough has changed our schedule.” Loran grinned.
“Well that sounds exciting.”
By then, they had reached the lobby; Loran held the door open for the reporter, commenting as she did so. “I must warn you, what you’re about to see may shock you. Certainly it will startle you.”
“I’m pretty unflappable—” The last word died in her mouth. The aliens, now numbering well over a dozen, were setting up some sort of boxes around the room. They jabbered incessantly among themselves; Morvan had dispersed the crowd of workers that had been watching the proceedings, leaving only him and Joe in the roomful of aliens.
“Have they been outside yet?” queried Loran, approaching Morvan. Marsha was in tow.
“I don’t know that they’ve noticed the comings and goings. They seem pretty intense on what they’re about. Hard to distract them—haven’t really tried, you know. Don’t want to anger them.” Morvan looked like a giant, surrounded by the odd little people.
“Just got a call from the front gate,” said Joe. “Channel Five should be getting here any minute.”
Marsha was gaping stupidly at the aliens. The tape recorder hanging at her side was still off; her camera remained looped around her neck.
“Don’t you think you should be taking some pictures?” suggested Loran, whispering into Marsha’s ear.
“Huh? Oh yeah!” Marsha whipped into motion. The camera clicked and whirred as she snapped off a dozen photos in as many seconds. She flicked on the microphone and spoke the day’s time and date, along with location; then she asked her first questions. To Loran’s surprise, they were about her name, age, and some details about her background. Marsha went on and did the same with Joe and Morvan.
Finally, she turned back to Morvan and began drilling him.
“Who are these...um…creatures?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“They’re not human!”
“Obviously.”
“Do you know what star, where—”
“I know as much as you do. We’ve got a translation program running over there, recording everything that the little guys say; but it’ll be days, maybe weeks or months before there’s enough data to begin reconstructing their language. If they only expressed some interest in wanting to communicate, it could go a lot faster—but thus far, they haven’t paid much attention to anyone. They’ve just been busy with those—I guess they’re instruments.” He pointed at the array of odd devices. “I’ve tried talking to them—so’s Joe and so did several other employees before I chased them back to their desks. We’ve still got work to do, you know.”
The television crew finally made its appearance. Their smug looks vanished as they got a picture of what was going on around them; then the questions started all over again. Marsha quickly concluded her interview with Morvan, then turned her attention back to Loran, as the television crew began focusing on them.
“Who have you told about this?” asked Marsha.
“No one, really. We didn’t tell you what was really going down—and we gave the television station the same information we gave you.”
“Why didn’t you call one of the network affiliates?”
“Because they’re sensationalistic and disreputable. At least Channel Five’s accurate and tells things like they are. More than that, they do have links with CNN. Besides, the other stations will find out, I’m sure.” She paused. “But I think it’s nice they’re getting an exclusive—television exclusive. Morvan has certain ideas about what news media he likes. He likes the Times, and he likes channel five. The rest of them can just catch up.”
Marsha nodded. “But I mean like the government, or NASA or maybe a university?”
“Morvan was talking about calling UCLA—there’s a professor there he knows, a biologist—I guess he had classes with him when he was a student. I don’t know if he actually called him or not—”
As if on cue, the door opened and another stranger entered the room. Dressed in scruffy shirt and tie, his beard was unkempt and his hair looked a month too long. He had a grin on his face, and he was lugging a notebook computer, a video camera and a still camera, not to mention a briefcase. He staggered forward under the load, but made no call for help. He didn’t seem startled by the aliens.
“That’s probably the professor, now.”
Marsha turned and looked. “I don’t know him.”
“You said you went to USC.”
“I’ve covered some stories at UCLA—I don’t recall I ever did anything in their biology department, though...” Another pause. “It’s a big school though. Even if I’d gone, I probably wouldn’t know him; there’s over a thousand faculty members, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
Marsha shrugged, then left Loran and approached the professor. Loran followed, not having anything better to do—or rather, choosing not to do it. The work piled on her desk could sit there a day longer.
“Professor,” asked Marsha. “What do you know about these creatures?”
“They appear to be short.” His voice was gruff, on the lower end of the tone scale. He looked the woman up one side and down the other. “How would I know anything about them when I just got here? Do they pay you to ask such ridiculous questions? Or do they know you ask them?”
Marsha froze, almost like she had been hit; after a quick breath, she managed to contain herself and went on. “Tell me about yourself,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“A question worth answering. I’m George Knight.”
“And you’re a professor at UCLA?”
“Yes. You already know about me?”
“Just what I’ve been told.” She glanced at Loran.
George looked at Loran for the first time and for the first time he actually smiled. “I don’t believe I know you at all. How would you know about me?”
“Morvan mentioned he called you.”
“He was such a good student. I tried to convince him to major in biology instead of physics, but would he listen? No.” He grinned. “Of course had he listened to me, we might not have this wonderful opportunity.” He tilted his head. “You’d have to be Loran, then, right? Morvan mentioned you were his Vice President.” He paused. “He never mentioned how attractive you were.”
“Morvan’s married.”
“Yes, and so he’s not supposed to notice such things.” George shrugged. “I was married, too, but I couldn’t ever not notice it.” He paused. “Maybe that’s why I’m not married any more. Ex-wife lives in Toledo. Thankfully, she’s remarried so I don’t have to worry about alimony.” He chuckled. “Haven’t remarried, though. Got too old and too busy.”
Marsha butted back into the conversation. “How long have you been teaching?”
George found a chair and a table and plopped his computer on top of it. “Oh, nearly forty years now. UCLA had a mandatory retirement age of 65, which I passed a couple of years ago, but thankfully with the coming of Christ they rescinded that policy—”
“How has the coming of Jesus affected your profession?”
“I just told you.”
“I mean, your outlook on—”
“I never was an atheist, if that’s what you’re getting at. So it hasn’t affected me at all. So far as I’ve heard, the standard models are still in effect—he hasn’t forbidden them or even commented on them. And when people asked about it, he just smiled and pointed back to the scientists, saying, “That’s why I made you curious. Figure it out yourself.” George paused. “Healthy attitude. He knows better than some of the idiots in the media that human beings thrive on struggle and the unknown. Can you imagine how boring, how unbearable it would be to be to know everything at once, without having to work for it?” He shook his head. “We’ve got all eternity. We’ll find out for ourselves eventually. And I suspect there will always be new stuff to find. Why would it be any other way? The universe is a big place and he made it for us to find out about. That’ll take us forever, I figure. I’ll never be bored, never run out of new things to do, to think, to explore.” His computer finished its booting process and an opening menu stared back at him.
“So you don’t see a conflict between science and God?”
“Don’t see why there should be. God made the universe, didn’t he? Whatever truth we learn, it’s a truth God made. Where’s the conflict in that?” He shook his head. “People can be so stupid sometimes, you know? I never understood, even before Jesus came, how there could be a conflict between religion and science. It was just two different approaches to the same things.”
He turned on his video camera, now perched on its tripod, and pointed it at the aliens. “This is really exciting, you know,” he commented. “Morvan’s got a translator running, doesn’t he?”
Loran nodded and pointed.
“Good—saved me having to lug the one from the linguistics department—assuming they’d ever have loaned it to me.” He paused. “You know, I should have gotten someone from there to come over.” He hit himself on the head, then reached into his briefcase and pulled out a cell phone. “I’d better call. They’d kill for this, you know? Better call what’s-his-face in Astronomy, too...and Betty in psychology would want in, too...dang it, why’d I have to get stuck with this?” He sighed, and began dialing numbers.
Loran watched and listened, and realized that the world was about to undergo a second major transformation.
Chapter Seventeen
“What are you going to do with yourself, now, Sergei?” The question came traipsing across the table and leapt into his lap, where it curled up and went to sleep.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Jordi was staring at him through his large brown eyes; last week they had still been red rimmed and antique; today, they looked clear; in just seven days, his skin had tightened and there could be no doubt that he had black roots in his white hair.
“I’m going to go to the university,” Jordi announced proudly. “I never had the opportunity when I was young, like you; my father needed me to work in his shop, and I could see no need for anything more than being able to read the Koran.”
“Not something you’ll be wanting to do much anymore.”
“No.” Jordi was silent for a few moments, long enough that Sergei had time to drain his tiny cup of cardamom-laced coffee and snap his fingers at the boy for a refill.
“Why don’t you return to the university? I’m sure they’ve kept your job open. Maybe I could have you as a teacher.”
“I’ve already set it up.” Sergei paused. “But I’m still not sure I want to go back into teaching.”
“What else would you do with your PhD? Work on a farm? Own a coffee shop?”
“I could.” Sergei frowned. “I’ve thought it might be nice to own a coffee shop—but not like this: like the kind I’ve heard about in Europe, with plush leather seats and racks of newspapers and books—”
“An intellectual’s hangout?”
“Something like that.” He looked down into the fresh cup the boy had brought.
“This place has been the hole for revolutionaries and rebels—isn’t that the same thing? I remember in the dark days, before we got our own country, how we would plot here against the Zionist oppressor and dream of the day when we would have our own land and they would have nothing.”
“That dream backfired, too.”
“Isn’t that the way with dreams? More often our nightmares come true than our dreams.” He eyed the crowd. On a Thursday night, with the beginning of the weekend, the place was packed. Groups of men crowded around the half-dozen tiny tables, laughing or talking earnestly or playing a game of cribbage. The haze of tobacco smoke huddled about the rafters, and the aroma of coffee and fried meats filled his nostrils. The light was low and flickering, the fire in the fireplace and the oil lamps on each table provided most of the illumination. It wasn’t that they didn’t have electricity, but there was something to be said for tradition and the “atmosphere” of an ancient majlis.
“To change,” said Jordi lifting his cup.
“Yes,” responded Sergei, and drained his again in a gulp.
* * *
The University of Nablus had been established by the Arab inhabitants of Palestine a hundred years before the first Jewish Zionists began their invasion. Not that there hadn’t already been a group of Jews living in Palestine—there had, ever since the Romans had leveled Jerusalem, in fact. But they had never numbered more than ten thousand, and through all the years they had kept to themselves and never been a nuisance, content to hide away in ghettos with their noses in their sacred books, moaning their dark prayers in their dingy cubbyholes or bouncing in front of the stones of Solomon’s ancient edifice.
But no more; now, the University of Nablus was itself a hideaway, a hole in the wall—a group of three ramshackle buildings stacked from the local limestone on maybe two acres of land. Ancient olive trees shaded the campus, closed in on either side by a shop selling coffee and a shop claiming to clean laundry. Across the street, a bookseller and another restaurant rounded off the neighborhood.
Sergei climbed the stone steps into the administration building, pausing at the top to glance around, remembering the last time he had stood there. Flushed with excitement, he had anticipated the war to end all wars with the Zionists; they were destined to win this time: they had the backing of the world community at last, and the Zionists were hated above all others. No one said anything nice about them, except maybe in America, and even there, so he had heard, they were badmouthing them at last. Jerusalem was going to be liberated, and he was going to help lead the way as a volunteer for the holy cause.
The old dean, Abdul ibn Muomar had sat across the desk from him and congratulated him on his opportunity, fuming that he was too old and too weak to join himself, and muttering about youth being wasted on the young.
What a difference a year made.
The halls were silent, except for his footsteps echoing against the wood floors and high, plastered ceilings. He came to the door, a black number painted on the bubbled blue glass. He knocked, and the door rattled in its frame.
“Come in!” The voice told him nothing.
Abdul no longer seemed so old and run down. He looked up from a stack of papers.
“Sergei! You took care of that poor widow?”
Sergei nodded as he sat down.
