“’The work of Hammerfall is not finished,’” said Hugo. “’God never intended to make an end of mankind. It is God’s intent that civilization be destroyed, so that man can live again as God intended. In the sweat of his brow he shall eat his bread. No longer shall he pollute the earth and the sea and the air with the garbage of an industrial civilization that leads him further and further from God’s way. Certain of us were spared to finish the work done by the Hammer of God.’
“And these who were spared for that work are the Angels of the Lord. They can do no wrong. Murder and cannibalism are something they do when they must, and it doesn’t stain their souls. Armitage urged us to join the Angels.
“Now a couple of hundred people were waving machine guns and shotguns and cleavers and butcher knives, and this one girl was waving a fork, I swear it, the kind of twopronged fork that comes with a carving set — and all that was pretty convincing. But Armitage was convincing. Mr. Christopher, you’ve heard him, he can be damned convincing.” Christopher was silent.
“And the others were shouting ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Amen,’ and by God there was Jerry out there, waving a hatchet and shouting with the rest of them! Jerry had bought it, all of it, I could see it in his eyes. He looked at me like he’d never met me before, like I hadn’t let him live on my place for months.”
The Senator looked up from his thronelike chair. He’d been listening with half-closed eyes. Now he said, “Just a minute, Hugo. Didn’t you found the Shire with just this in mind? Natural living, everything organic and self-sufficient, no dominance games and no pollution. Wasn’t that just what you were after? Because it sounds like this Armitage wants the same things.”
The suggestion startled Hugo Beck. “Oh, no, sir. No. I just about had enough of that before Hammerfall, and afterward… Senator, we’d never realized just how much modern stuff we had. Hey, we had two microwave ovens! And that goddam windmill never made enough electricity to keep batteries charged, much less run the microwaves, and after the Hamner hit, it blew over in the hurricane! We tried growing the garden with no sprays, just organic fertilizer, and it wasn’t humans that ate most of that crop, it was bugs! After that I wanted to spray, but we didn’t, and every damned day somebody had to sit there in the dirt picking bugs off the lettuces. And we had the truck, and a rototiller, and a power mower. We had a hi-fi and Galadriel’s record collection and strobe lights and electric guitars. We had a dishwasher and a clothes dryer, and we hung the clothes out to dry because it saved gas. Oh, sure, we washed clothes by hand sometimes, too, but there was always some special occasion when we didn’t want to bother.
“And aspirin, and needles and pins, and a sewing machine, and a big cast-iron stove made in Maine for God’s sake…”
“I take it you did not agree with Armitage, then,” Senator Jellison said.
“No. But I kept my mouth shut and watched Jerry. He seemed important, and I figured if he could join up and get his own hatchet, so could I. Cheryl and I talked about it, in whispers, because they didn’t put up with any of us interrupting Armitage, and we agreed, we’d join up. I mean, what choice did we have? So we joined. As a matter of fact, all of us joined. That time. Two backed down later, at the last—”
It seemed that Hugo’s throat closed on him. His haunted gaze roamed about the room and found no sympathy. All in a rush he said, “First we have to kill the ones who won’t join. We’d have been given knives for that, I think, but I don’t know because everybody joined. Then we’d stew them. That we did, because four prisoners were dead from gunshot wounds. A rabbity little guy told us we couldn’t use two of them because they didn’t look healthy enough. Only the healthy ones! I talked to him later, and…” Hugo blinked.
“Never mind. There were two big stewpots. We had to do the butchering. Cheryl kept getting sick. I had to help her. They gave us knives, and we cut those people up, and this rabbity doctor inspected everything before it went into the pot. I saw one woman pick up a butcher knife and stand there looking at this… bottom half of a dead man, and then she threw up, and then she ran at a guard and they shot her and the rabbity man looked her over and then we butchered her, too.
“And all the time the… stew… was cooking, Armitage kept preaching. He could go for hours without stopping. All the Angels said that was a miraculous sign, that a man his age could preach without getting tired. He kept shouting that nothing was forbidden to the Angels of the Lord, that our sins were forgiven, and then it was time, and we ate and one guy got through the butchering all right, but he couldn’t eat, and they made us hold him down and cut his throat.”
Hugo ran out of breath, and the room was silent.
“And you ate,” Senator Jellison said.
“I ate.”
“You didn’t really think you could stay here after that?” George Christopher spoke almost in kindness.
Harry was looking at the women. Eileen was composed, but Harry had not seen her eyes meet Hugo’s, not once. But the Soviet kosmonaut was staring at him in naked horror. Harry remembered the way his sister had stared at an enormous spider crawling in the bathtub she had been about to fill. The woman’s eyes were wide, and she seemed to be forcing herself back in her chair. She couldn’t turn away.
“Now, notice! The typical capitalist shows certain predictable tendencies under stress, of which murder and cannibalism—”
Harry hoped to God nobody looked his way. Nobody else was fighting an urge to laugh. And if it had been Harry up there in front of the table, Harry would have been under the table.
“No. Not really,” said Hugo, “not here, not anywhere. That’s their power. Once you’ve eaten human meat, where can you go? You’re one of them then, with the crazy preacher to tell you it’s all right. You’re an Angel of the Lord. You can do no wrong, except if you run, and then you’re an apostate.” His voice dropped and became toneless. “It’s their power, and it works. Cheryl wouldn’t leave with me. She was going to turn me in. She was, she really was. So I killed her. It was the only way I could get out, and I killed her, and… and I wish I hadn’t had to, but what could I do?”
“How long were you with them?” Al Hardy said.
“About three weeks. We had another war, and we got more prisoners. It went the same as before, only now I was outside the wire carrying a pistol and shouting hallelujah. We moved north again, toward Mr. Wilson’s place, and when I saw Harry I didn’t dare speak to him. But when they let him go—”
“They let you go?” Senator Jellison said.
“Yes, sir. But they took my truck,” Harry said. “I have a message for you, from the Angels of the Lord. That’s why they let me go. When they caught me I told them I was your mailman, that I was under your protection, and I showed them that letter you wrote. They laughed, but then Jerry Owen said—”
“Owen again,” Christopher said. “I knew we should have killed him.”
“No, sir, I don’t think you should have,” Harry said. “If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t be here.”
“So Owen is one of the leaders,” Al Hardy said.
Harry shrugged. “They listen to him. But he doesn’t give any orders, or at least I never saw him give any. But he said I’d be the perfect one to bring you a message, and I’ve got it here. I’d got a couple of miles along the road when Hugo caught up to me, and after he told me what it was like back there I thought you ought to hear that before you read the letter they sent.”
“Yes. You’ve done well, Harry,” Jellison said. “Well, George? It was on your orders that Beck was expelled.”
Christopher looked stunned by all that he’d heard. “Twenty-four hours? Let him stay overnight, and give him three meals fit for a man to eat.”
“I think we ought to read that message before we decide anything,” AI Hardy said. “And there’s a lot more information we need. Hugo, what’s their strength? You said a thousand. How good is that estimate?”