of things inside her head, could see the damage, and his fingers flew to her head and pushed and his mind went into her brain and dislodged the splinters and all the time he was crying and cursing and people stood by gaping and making sounds and he was not even aware of them because he felt the power and pushed and probed with his mind until the splinters were pushed out and the intricate gray matter grew back into its little whorls and cells and the bone rejoined bone and the break-split closed and the blood stopped and Caster opened her eyes and said, «Luke!» Then he was leaning over her, putting his face near the gutter to vomit bile and acid, because his stomach was full of it and she was looking up at him in wonder and the people were silent, awed. Then the storm broke about him. «Did you see?» «He healed her?» «Dead if I ever saw one. Head split open.» «Healed!» «Healed!» «He healed her.» «Heal me!» A babble of voices, grunts as people pushed, fought to be near him, cried out, begged. «Help me, brother. Heal me, brother Heal! Heal! Heal!» Caster, with her hand on her head, bringing it away bloody Looking at Luke with wonder in her eyes. «I saw the landship—» «Help me, brother. Heal. Help. Help. Heal—» «You did it, Luke,» Caster was saying, as Luke sat up weakly, wiping his mouth. The realization hit Luke. He laughed through tears, his voice rising toward hysteria. «Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Lord Oh, God, thank you.» And a new sound in the babble of the gathering crowd, an awed outrush of wind from diseased lungs, a low, awe-stricken gasp and, looking up, his face ecstatic, Luke saw his sign. An angel it was, a female angel with blazing red hair and a diaphanous, long garment which clung and revealed without being vulgar because she was sent from God, lowering, moving, looking down, descending from the cloud of smog and the crowd falling back and Luke on his knees beside Caster, his hands clasped, saying, «Thank you sweet Jesus.» And the angel, his angel, sent from God, coming lower and lower and then her feet touching and no words, just a look at Luke and a beckoning gesture. Trembling, Luke arose. She beckoned. He took two tremulous steps forward and she reached out in impatience and her hand on his arm was soft and yet like fire filled with the power of God and then Luke was crying and praying because below him he could see them, the people, and Caster, standing now, holding up her arms, her lips moving, but Luke couldn't hear as she cried out, «Luke, Luke.» And ever swifter, rising. Angel-borne, her hand on his arm. Like the time he was in the Brotherfuzz atmoflyer and seeing the city below and this time there was no atmoflyer, only a solidity under his feet and the feeling of being enclosed, and down below the Brotherfuzz vehicles moving in and before he was so high he could no longer tell one
from another, the little ants on the streets, the Brotherfuzz seizing Caster and him saying, «We've got to help her. Don't you see, we've got to help her.» But the angel was silent, looking past him, looking up, her beautiful face expressionless. «Please, please help her.» And God opened up his heavens and sent down a ship which opened for them, taking them in. CHAPTER ELEVEN Brother Kyle Murrel, President of the Republic by the grace of God and
a long wait for his father to die, stalked into Colonel Ed Baxley's study with a scowl on his face. His long robe swished with his powerful strides. His cleric's cap was low on his forehead at a somewhat rakish angle. Baxley, trim in a white uniform much like that worn by his cadets at University One, stood. «Brother President,» he acknowledged. Murrel, without
waiting for an invitation, sat in the chair facing Baxley's desk, his long legs outthrust. «You read the report?» «I read it,» Baxley said. «Then you realize the urgency involved.» «Urgency?» Baxley was fingering the thick sheaf of papers stamped TOP SECRET—EYES ONLY. «Yes, dammit,» Murrel said. «Something's going on, colonel. We've got to move before it goes any further.» «The measures you've suggested seem rather drastic to me,» Baxley said. «Drastic?» Murrel leaped to his feet and began to pace. «Drastic? Let's review the situation, colonel. We've known for years that there is a scientific underground. Yet we've never been able to find it. We keep getting vague reports, hints, smatterings of information which, when checked out, lead us nowhere. Then there is a series of events. First, the Nebulous disaster. Our last foothold in space, for what it was worth, destroyed. At first we didn't suspect. We accepted it as an accident. But then a ragged Apprentice Brother, formerly one of your students—» «For a short while, Brother,» Baxley said. He'd been briefed thoroughly on the incident. «—heals a fatal wound with some sort of instant medicine. Still we see nothing which indicates a connected conspiracy. Yesterday, however, a preacher whose description fits exactly with that of the principal in the first instant-medicine incident perpetrates another feat of instant, miraculous medicine on a woman whose head was crushed by a motor vehicle—» «A police cruiser, to be exact,» Baxley said drily. «—and then is spirited from under the very nose of the police by a woman dressed in a nightgown who came down from the sky without any apparent vehicle.» «That is the part that sounds somewhat fanciful to me,» Baxley said. «Substantiated by hundreds of witnesses, among whom were half a dozen experienced police officers,» Murrel said, still pacing. «You've not proven that it was one and the same man,» Baxley said. «No, but the coincidence is worth noting, isn't it? Two impossible feats of curing performed by a thin, lank-haired young preacher hardly seem disconnected. Moreover, if the feats were performed by two different men, this is even more indication that they have developed something of which we have no knowledge.» Murrel ran his hand under his cap, replaced it, sat down. «That's why, colonel, that the Cabinet and I feel it's time to make a move.» «But to put the entire country under martial law'?» Baxley smiled. «Isn't that overreaction?» «There is one thing that you may not know,» Murrel said, looking at Baxley through narrowed eyes. «I said that we had accepted the Nebulous accident theory.» «Yes.» Baxley said. «It was no accident, my dear colonel.» «Yes?» Baxley said. His face was expressionless. «Government scientists ran some routine checks on some of the space