“Glory be to the Bomb and to the Holy Fallout—As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.”
“Amen,” the congregation spoke as one.
Brent had a bad taste in his mouth. His ears ached with the awful, ridiculous, puling blasphemy of it all. Behind him, the four guards, their faces radiant and inspired, were singing with brilliant sincerity. The fat man, Caspay, Albina and the Negro were showing nothing of the revulsion that beat through Brent’s brain like a prairie fire. Only he and Nova, of all the souls in that damned cathedral, were remote and out of place and out of time. Their rags may have been covered at last with decent robes, but nothing had changed. Brent was still frightened and repulsed by all that he saw and heard.
The multitude of Amens fell away to a whisper. And still the Bomb gleamed down from its religious base. The main lights of the cathedral had all dimmed, leaving only the Bomb spotlit above the altar where no eye could miss it. Brent pulled his eyes away; the dread in his stomach was as tangible as a cancer in its most advanced stage.
Somewhere, the unseen organist struck a note.
From the prie-dieu, the kneeling Mendez’s voice rose once more:
“Almighty and everlasting Bomb, who came down among us to make Heaven under Earth, lighten our darkness. O instrument of God—Grant us Thy peace.”
The organ bleated a series of low, muted chords. All of them climactic, beseeching, uplifting, followed by a final hosannah.
Mendez stood up, back to the congregation, his purple robes a blazing field of color. He raised adoring arms to the Bomb suspended above him. His voice reached up, as if to touch it. To caress it with syllables, words.
The choir’s multiple voice rose in song:
“Almighty Bomb—who destroyed Devils—to create Angels! Behold His glory!”
Mendez chimed in with the choir:
“Behold the truth that abides in us, His handicraft!”
The choir stilled and Mendez’s chant rose on a single note of prayer and supplication:
“Reveal that truth unto that Maker!”
And now, incredibly, exaltedly, Albina, the fat man, Caspay and the Negro and all the leaders of this ghastly mass stood up as a body and chanted in a synchronized blend of many voices: “I reveal my Inmost Self unto my God!”
Brent blinked.
As if he had been struck between the eyes.
Nova shrank against him, mewing like a terrified kitten.
The topmost totem of unreality in this world of unrealities had been reached. Once more the universe had reeled and the mind boggled at what the eyes saw—had to believe—had to accept as Truth.
All about them, the leaders were unveiling. Albina, the Negro, Caspay, the fat man—everyone. Unmasking, as it were. Pulling and tugging at their heads and faces—taking off rubberized, plasticized masks which had concealed their inmost selves, their true appearance. Now Brent and the girl could see in all its blasphemous, unmatchable horror the true depths that their nightmare had bought for them when it set them down in this terrible city of lost souls.
Under each mask, each face now revealed to the awful light of the cathedral was a mockery of nature. A countenance repeated endlessly like some hideous joke at a costume party. A face devoid of all hair, all skin, all color and warmth. Centuries of postnuclear mutation had evolved all these faces into skinless horrors. Repulsively red and blue and pink, exposing all the ganglia of facial veins, arteries, tendons and muscles. As stripped and visible as any anatomical specimens in a medical class. The leaders, including the mighty Mendez, were totally horrible, totally and unbelievably hideous.
Brent and Nova held onto each other, shuddering.
Mendez exhorted:
“Reveal that truth unto that Maker!”
The choir and the congregation sung back their song of homage:
“I reveal my Inmost Self unto my God!”
The congregation now unveiled. The rubbery masks made slithering, uncanny sounds in the stillness of the dark cathedral.
The parody of Life and Nature gleamed from a hundred bodies. Brent dared not look too long. His brain was splitting apart again.
And then all the voices raised around him and the girl as the hidden organ swelled into a final exaltation to the devotees of the Bomb Everlasting. Proud and happy voices rose in a tremendous paean of glory: “All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small . . .”
Caspay smiled in a brotherly fashion at the Negro and then favored Brent with an extension of that smile. But Brent could not in all conscience smile back at that hideous travesty of a human face. He averted his eyes, holding onto Nova’s shaking hand.
“All things wise and wonderful,” the congregation sang with deep, fervent voices.
The hooded purple head of Mendez turned up to the Bomb again, the spotlit Bomb which looked down on everything. “The good Bomb made us all,” the congregation chanted. Some three hundred mutant singers blended into an intermezzo between stanzas of the song:
“He gave us eyes to see with, and lips that we might tell How great the Bomb Almighty, who has made all things well. Amen.”
During this last Amen, Brent saw Albina jerk her weird face at him. The great beauty was a thing of the past. Brent read her message without hearing any words. Unspoken words.
“We can’t,” he said. “We aren’t wearing masks.”
She scowled. But Mendez was speaking the Benediction now:
“May the blessing of the Bomb Almighty and the fellowship of the Holy Fallout descend on us all, this night, and for evermore.”
Once again he pressed a button on the bejeweled panel board. The emerald one. Even as the congregation’s Amen died away to a whisper, the spotlight slowly dimmed. The Bomb disappeared into darkness. Fins and all. It was as if it didn’t even exist. Had never existed.
Brent kept, his arms around Nova. Poor, mute Nova. A waif for all time.
About them, the horrible mutants they had known as the fat man, Caspay, Albina and the Negro, leered hideously. Colors rippled, eddied.
The cathedral throbbed with horror. And the great Unknown.
And Mendez’s chants hung in the dim nave, swirling about the high, vaulted reaches of the cathedral. Echoes of Hell and the Pit on all sides. Brent hung onto the little courage left in him.
He had to.
Or there would be no way out.
None at all.
Whatever God’s Hell and Damnation was, this had to be it.
For the first time in his life, he had been able to pinpoint the spot. Give it a location.
The Forbidden Zone was Hades, Incorporated.
And this great cathedral was its Limbo.
11.
“TAY-LOR!”
The Corridor of Busts, gleaming with its stone gallery honoring the Mendez Dynasty, glimmered like a museum in Brent’s eyes. He had been disrobed following the incredible scene in the cathedral so that now he was once more in his familiar rags. Caspay and the Negro were escorting him to some unknown destination. Or fate. Mercifully they had replaced their masks so that their marble faces of beauty were once again intact. Brent wasn’t sure he could have borne gazing too long into those skinless, horrendous travesties of the human face. Caspay was smiling, as usual; knowing the man as he now did, Brent knew it meant nothing very good.
“I trust our simple ceremony convinced you of our peaceable intentions,” Caspay murmured in his bland way.
“I found it informative,” Brent said guardedly.