Chapter 10
My hosannas have been forged in a crucible of doubt.
—Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky
The air pad on which Alex lay was uncomfortable, and he had not slept well. Awake for only a few moments, he heard the low voices of women as the encampment began to awaken.
He sat up, and through a mesh window he saw a large black bird fly by, flapping its wings laboriously. Fatigue saturated his bones and muscles, and the side of his neck ached where his mother had hit him with the gun barrel. How he loathed that woman!
He heard the ever-present guards talking outside his tent, saying Dixie Lou Jackson had published the Holy Women’s Bible on the Internet two days ago.
He poked his head out, saw Deborah Marvel jog into camp and head for her own tent. Deborah always tried to stay in shape. She seemed like an interesting woman to Alex, and quite unlike his own mother. Still, she was supportive of Dixie Lou on the council, to the point where his mother considered her a close friend. Alex wondered about Deborah’s motives, though, and suspected she was doing it for her own career advancement. Or survival.
Seeing two rosy faced guards by his tent, he asked, “It’s published? The new gospels of the she-apostles? I didn’t know the book was ready.”
“Neither did we,” the shorter of the pair, a redhead, said.
“Your mother is up early this morning and in a good mood,” the other said, a tall brunette who had been flirtatious to Alex. “She received confirmation of the transmission, and feedback from people who’ve seen the e-book version on the worldwide web—a lot more positive response than she ever expected.”
Alex smiled, but with a hard edge to it. His eyes narrowed to slits. “My mother is in a good mood, actually cheerful? I don’t know if I can get used to that.”
“It does sound unusual,” the redheaded guard said.
“I’ll tell you this,” Alex said. “Even when she’s in a good mood, she’s dangerous. I once saw her shoot a guard in the back of the head. Had a uniform on just like yours.”
“Don’t kid with us,” the taller guard said, grinning. She stared at him with large blue eyes.
But the other guard wasn’t smiling. She backed up, nudged her companion. They went a distance away, spoke in low tones while looking over at Alex.
He didn’t care what they were saying, wasn’t afraid of his mother.
Suddenly a big commotion broke loose in the camp, as matrons and translators ran around, screaming that the she-apostles were gone—all except for Martha of Galilee.
At first, Alex worried about the children. Then he smiled to himself, and thought, Lori must have saved them. I don’t know how, but she saved them!
The guards and other women searched carefully, scouring the camp and aircraft, running out into the desert and looking for tracks. They found no sign of them, and this pleased Alex immensely. It only left one child in the custody of his demented mother.
* * *
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Acting Minister Tertullian said as he stared through wire-rimmed eyeglasses at a computer screen. His hair was uncombed. A dark stubble of beard covered his narrow face. Beside him stood Vice Minister Kylee Branson. They were in the reception area outside Tertullian’s office, where Branson had been summoned in the middle of the night.
Tertullian had briefly scanned the contents before Branson’s arrival. Now the Acting Minister made a voice command, and the dedication page of the Holy Women’s Bible appeared, a tribute to Amy Angkor-Billings, whom he had personally dispatched to the realms of hell. Below that were the words, “The ancients speak.” His heart was racing.
The ensuing pages were an introduction, and as Tertullian read them he felt his face heat up. Gospels of the reincarnated she-apostles of Jesus? Blasphemy! The She-God? He recalled the single sheet of paper he’d seen, a purported “gospel” of the Apostle Mary Magdalene. Using a search command he found it again:
Glory be to She-God Almighty, Creator and Destroyer.
Her power shall last forever.
Turning to another heretical “gospel,” he placed a fingertip against a touch-box on the screen. A baby appeared, dressed in a tiny black robe, with a golden sword-cross dangling from her neck—the reviled symbol of the UWW. A caption identified the child as a “she-apostle,” and she spoke gibberish that was supposedly ancient Aramaic. A translator explained her words:
Jesus said to the women who were his close companions,
“Go now and spread the holy word. Tell women everywhere
they are no longer to be treated as inferior, that they are equal
to men in all respects and shall lead great nations.”
Tertullian felt like smashing the computer screen. Slowly his gaze turned to meet the fearful eyes of Branson.
“This is all your fault, you know,” Tertullian said. “As Vice Minister of Doctrine & Faith, you should have been on top of this situation. You should have prevented the release of this book!”
“I uh—I don’t think that’s fair to—” Branson’s voice cracked, and in the face of criticism he couldn’t form a sentence.
Hot blood pumped through Tertullian’s veins. Angry sweat poured down his brow, stinging his eyes and fogging his wire-rimmed glasses. Blinking, he wiped the glasses, then fumbled with the computer, searching pages for publication information, for the location from which they had transmitted this. Nothing was obvious; the devious UWW women were still in hiding, making trouble from one of their devil-holes. Still, he would put his computer experts to work on it, to see if the blasphemers had overlooked something—a tiny detail that would betray their location.
“We are faced with a great challenge,” Branson said, solemnly.
Tertullian sneered at the remark. He directed a number of insults in response, then said, “Find out what that kid was really saying, assuming it’s really the Aramaic spoken in biblical times. I want the translation checked.”
“Yes, Acting Minister.”
“This is a UWW trick. I know it. I just don’t know how they’re pulling it off, how they’re getting babies to do that. A computer animation trick?”
“We’ll find out sir.”
“Get on the fraud angle right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’d better do it fast,” Styx said. “A lot of damage is being done.”
Branson bowed and departed. As Tertullian hurried into his office, he feared that the damage was irreversible.