“All right,” he sighed, “now that we understand each other, here’s the first choice in the rest of your life. We have food here. It’ll be served by women, not men, so relax on that score, but don’t take any of them for granted, either. One at a time, your gags will be lifted and you will get drink and food. If you say anything, and I mean anything, all that will stop, and you’ll not get any more. Understand? No more water, even. But don’t worry, it won’t last long. You’ll become an early example. Or, you can relax and wait. This could be over in a day or two, one way or the other. Just also keep in mind that none of you and your people, and we’ve got almost a hundred of you in various locations, will survive unless we get what we want.”
And, with that, he walked out.
If he’d intended to frighten them, it only took a look in the eyes of the others to show that he succeeded. Eve suspected her own eyes looked much the same. It wasn’t just the threats—those they already took for granted—but the coldly pragmatic way he warned them that got them. To him, torture, kidnap, murder, were all just business, and he almost certainly lost no sleep whatsoever over them.
He was certainly as good as his word in delivering what he promised. He hadn’t been out of the cavern a minute when three women entered. They looked hard and tough, but so did just about everybody on the surface, so there was nothing obvious to set them apart from the villagers. That was the insidious part of this. You couldn’t tell one from the other, if, in fact, there was something to tell. The two different populations had been deduced primarily from the size of the crashed spaceship and the subtle differences in genetic makeup of the majority of villagers versus the nonmatching polyglot of the few others. But who really knew?
One thing was for sure: the short, slender, long-haired woman in the patterned cotton dress had a pretty mean-looking pistol that wasn’t of a familiar type to Eve, at least.
A second woman was unarmed but had a medical sensor in her hand and passed it completely over the first captive woman, then checked the readings. “This one’s okay, but she’ll have some problems walking or doing anything complex for a while. They all will, most likely.”
“Not our problem. Okay, Miga. Take off the gag, give her a drink, then feed her. You kneeling, you remember what happens if you say just one word, understand? One word!”
The frightened woman nodded, and the third member of the trio removed the gag and allowed the captive a number of deep breaths. Then a jar was lifted in front of her, containing a large gravity straw, and the woman drank, first hesitantly, then, after a few coughs and some spitting out of liquid which the experienced woman administering the drink was ready for, eagerly and in gulps.
After that, the drink was removed even though the woman clearly wanted more, and a kind of homemade granola and honey bar was hand fed to her. She was allowed one intermediate and one ending drink, and then the gag was replaced and it was on to the next woman.
“Faith!” the one with the gun sneered at all of them. “Easy to spout about until it’s live or die time or worse, isn’t it?”
The comment stung them all far more than the chains and restraints. It was far easier to assume that you would die for your faith, or suffer any affliction for it, until you were faced with the choice. Most of the apostles had been brutally tortured and murdered in the end, or executed at least, but they all did have the advantage that they had seen the dead and risen Christ. She began to realize that, for all the teaching and training, “evil” was a word long out of fashion and used mostly to cover the scope of a crime. Nobody really believed in evil anymore; they believed in “wrong” and “bad” and “psychotic.”
I have the honor by the grace of God to be the first of my generation to face true evil, she thought. And I don’t know if I have the guts for it. Please, God! Tell me what You want me to do?
The same thoughts had to be going through the others here, and the others in other caves around the region if the leader’s claim of a hundred captured was true.
I will not deny Him, she resolved, even if death is the end. But denial wasn’t the demand or the claim; it was rather to simply go along and not make waves. Was it enough to refuse to do something that they weren’t asking her to do anyway?
One by one, the process done with the first woman was repeated with the others, often with pauses while someone went out to get the jug or stash of granola-style bars refilled, and, during the whole of it, not one of them, not even Eve, had done anything at all save what they’d been told to do.
When the feeding was done and the three underground women were gone, Eve felt a blackness, a hole in her soul, where confidence had once stood. The fact that none of the others had done anything, nor could they claim to later, having done nothing in this public exhibition, made it somewhat worse, but God would know. God would also forgive, but not forever. This was but the beginning of their trials, and at some point she would either have to demonstrate her faith or watch it shatter.
Even so, she wondered now if anybody among the captured had actually made any gesture of resistance, however futile.
Cromwell didn’t even consider taking the pair of would-be assassins in for a nice questioning. He had the team take them not up to Sinai, since that would be the last place he’d want any of these people, even as prisoners, until he knew them a lot better, but rather to Olivet, still on the ground, still brightly lit although, this long after the service, pretty well deserted. The guard was there, well lit and monitored from inside and from above, to insure that nobody else was going to be snatched, but that was about it. The shields around the ship were certainly more than adequate for the rest; if they weren’t, then the attackers would have seized the ship and its leader instead of random acolytes in the dark.
Now the male captive was in the infirmary, hooked up to a bank of medical monitors and being intravenously fed a very efficient blend of drugs that made him friendly, happy, and otherwise not thinking very much.
“Hello,” said a friendly sounding deep male voice.
The man opened his eyes and saw the huge form and bearded face of Karl Woodward, looking not stern or angry but rather fatherly. The man’s lips formed a childlike grin.
“Hi,” he responded.
“Are we friends?” the doctor asked him.
“Yes, sure. Friends…”
The deep tones suddenly sounded wounded, hurt. “Then why did you try and harm and kill my children? Why did you take my children away? Is that what friends do to other friends?”
There was a sudden sorrow in the man’s expression now, almost like he wanted to cry. “Didn’t wanna do it. It was—orders. Just orders. Nothin’ personal, friend. We don’t wanna hurt nobody, see?”
“Then why did you take my children?”
“Nothin’ personal,” the man repeated, drooling a bit. “See, ’cause we gotta get outa here. Got the big one. Know where the treasure of treasures is. But we can’t get to it. Stuck here, eatin’ grass and drinkin’ sheep dip beer. Cap said you wouldn’t take us. No room. So we make room…”
“Cap? Who’s Cap? Did he give the orders?”
“Yeah, sure. Cap always gives the orders. That’s what cap’ns do.”