It was not a message that always went down well, particularly with a poor populace, but it sure put pragmatism at the heart of the actions of those who followed these beliefs. None of the Arms of Gideon nor Tactical spread through the place thought that he or she was immune from harm just because they were on the side of the angels.
As Eve walked slowly down one aisle and up the other, she couldn’t help but note how many of these people were checking the Doctor out when he threw out these unconventional notions along with chapters and verses. There was an exceptionally high literacy rate among these folks for simple cut-off farmers.
You could always sense, though, when the Word was getting through, and she felt that there was a fairly high percentage of people here who were really listening and nodding and muttering “That’s right!” Not everybody, of course, but a fair number. Of course, they hadn’t yet gotten to the hard part—of what God wanted of them—but that would be for later nights.
From a security standpoint, it meant that this wasn’t an armed populace sitting there waiting for a chance to open up on their visitors. They were interested, or skeptical, or bored, but they weren’t tense. Whatever Gregnar and his crew had in mind, they didn’t include the village as a whole in their plans.
Speaking of which, Gregnar, Alon, and Krag were nowhere to be seen in this crowd, although, of course, they might well be simply swallowed up by it.
“Faith!” the Doctor was thundering. “Faith doesn’t mean singing hymns and looking holy! Faith is an action, it’s putting yourself at risk for God’s sake! God doesn’t expect us to be like Him or become like Him—that’s been tried since Adam and Eve way back when and look how badly that went! He’s had to destroy most of humanity several times, and may have done in about half of it again if we think the worst of the Great Silence. Try as we might, we’re gonna fail! It’s not imitation that God wants, it’s trust! Faith is trust! Look at me! I’m as much a sinner as anybody, but I trust the Lord and hang my body on His promises. I had nothing when I started—an itinerant preacher, living hand to mouth, bumming rides and meals from town to town, world to world, not a cent to my name. Now look at all this! Because I trusted Him, God decided that I was one to do His work out here. And here I am, the latest in a line of reformers trying to reach the unreachable and bring God back into the lives of people long forgotten by the rest of humanity. And when we bring the message to you all, then the Silence will be broken, and we who accept and believe will be taken in the wink of an eye to a new Earth and a new Jerusalem!”
He had been going for an hour and a quarter, and nobody could read a large audience from beyond the stage lights like Doc Woodward. He was winding up and leaving them wanting more, and when he was done these people would walk home or ride home on their animals or be taken home by Mission personnel and they’d be scattered too widely to pull anything.
And then it was over, and the old preacher got a lot of applause, and that was that. Eve and John met near the back, and he gave her a shrug. “Not tonight, looks like,” he said.
“I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed,” she told him. “If they’re not going to attack us during a service, and they aren’t staking us out, then what’s all this about?”
“We’ve got almost a week left,” he reminded her. “And, well, maybe they just haven’t had enough time to get all the weaponry out they need. Don’t be so bloodthirsty. You still might get what you wish for, and worse.”
V: THE DESPERATE & THE DEAD
A staff and strategy meeting presided over by Woodward himself was held deep into the night following the successful launch of the Mission Classes, as he liked to refer to them.
“We can’t afford this kind of distraction,” he grumbled. “We’ve got the Lord’s work to do, and I sensed we made some real headway tonight. That means we’re going to have to get to the bottom of these people’s origins and secrets whether they want to talk to us or not.”
Thomas Cromwell, chief of Tactical Security, was first to speak. “The problem is, we can’t infiltrate them because they’ve basically kept to these small village groups where everybody knows everybody. And while everybody’s civil and friendly enough, at least so far, they volunteer virtually no information. We’ve gotten more from hostile crowds than from this one. And there are no records, no depictions of their arrival, no legends that they’ve allowed us to hear, nothing. Even the kids don’t talk.”
The big preacher nodded. “It’s not so much a closed society as a socially libertarian one. Everybody minds their own business, period. From what I’ve been able to tell from all the reports, while there are leader types there appears to be no civil authority, either on a village or larger level. Zip. And they have a brisk and well-organized trading system that brings things here and elsewhere that are needed in a smoothly functioning barter system, but nobody runs it. Nor is there any apparent crime, hence, no police. Governments began in ancient times because people got scared. Scared of the gods, scared of marauding tribes, scared of other countries. They organized collectively to mass their defenses, and, if that wasn’t enough, they basically wound up selling their freedom to the meanest, nastiest group of killers around who got absolute power in a bargain that said these killers would protect the people from all outside sources of harm. Tribal chieftains, allied with priests and shamans, with their warriors evolved into princes and then kings and emperors, dictators and ruling bodies. The odd thing is, I sense real fear running through these people, but not what it is they are afraid of. And I see no evidence that fear, unlike all other times in history, has led to a breakdown in the simple village assignments based on work. It’s bizarre.”
They were silent for a moment, trying to figure out where to go, and Eve, who was a little scared herself just to be in this kind of company, nonetheless felt she had to put herself into the deliberations. “Excuse me, sir? Sirs?”
“Yes, child? What is it?” the white-bearded leader asked.
“They are hiding all this from us, and it’s worldwide and deliberate. I can prove it.”
“Go on.”
“Those people who came tonight—they were reading their Bibles. They were following along.”
“Yes?”
“Sir, there aren’t any books! There aren’t any records, computers, you name it. All those people could read our Bibles, but they have nothing at all to read of their own!”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” muttered Woodward, thunderstruck at how he could define exactly how many angels were on the heads of pins and yet miss something that obvious. “Have you seen any sign of schools? Of where they learn to read?”
“No, sir. Not even the most primitive slate drawing boards or gathering halls. Children are basically baby-sat until they’re big, and then, starting as young as seven or eight, they go off into the fields and help with the work or they do work under grown-up supervision in the villages.”
They considered that. “Just how long do you think these people have been here?” Woodward asked them.
“Centuries. At least a century, maybe a century and a half, anyway,” John Robey replied. “We had a careful examination of the original site, we dated the defense computers coming in at older than that, and none of the arsenal seems to date past the Great Silence. Besides, sir, this continent is quite well developed. You can’t do that overnight.”