Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

It was always tough to get these things together and operating smoothly no matter how self-contained they were and how many times before they’d done it, but knowing that some in the crowd might well have been armed and ready to pull something nasty made it all the tougher.

At least unless they made some kind of suicidal charge from the darkness they would be limited to small arms. Dressed as these people were, it wouldn’t be hard to conceal a hand weapon but it would be damned near impossible to hide something big, particularly when the visitors were providing all the goodies and the people had to bring only themselves.

The service began with some jazzy religious songs and upbeat, fast tempo hymns as the people arrived from villages as far as forty kilometers away. Others, they knew, were gathering in big tents near their own villages up to five hundred kilometers from this point to watch everything on big screens. Except for not being able to see the band and preacher live, they had the same good food, treats, Bibles and hymnals as anyone there and, in fact, even those villagers at the Olivet sight had a better view on the giant overhead screens than they did of the far-off stage.

It was clear to the staff that if these people hadn’t seen a religious tent meeting before, they had a very good idea of what one was supposed to be, and so it was as disconcerting to them as it would be to a more technological culture when the Doctor came out and began. No prayers, no shouted “Amens!” none of the usual emotive stuff you’d expect with a revival. The boss just started talking, and that was, as usual, enough, once they had the language and dialect filters down as good as they did here.

There are some people who define the old Greek word charisma , and Doctor Karl Woodward was certainly one of them. The term meant “unmerited favor,” but that never really did it, either. It was just that when Karl Woodward started speaking and you could understand him, you’d sit there and listen to him even if he was reading the technical manual on how to repair a gravity toilet.

“My friends,” he was saying, in that deep, mellow voice that could go straight to your soul, “since I’ve arrived here everyone’s been asking me and my people, ‘What do you want?’ Well, tonight I’m here to tell you, and it won’t be what you expect. What I want is for you to listen to me and consider my words. Take the Bibles, those of you who can read them, and check me out if you think I misspeak. For example, we don’t pray at our services, or have big prayer groups. Our Lord said that people who do that are showing off for other people and that their reward is that other people admire how holy and pious they are. But God doesn’t really hear those prayers, because they aren’t really directed at Him but rather at the audience. So we don’t do that. You want to talk to God, you go into some private place, off by yourself, and you talk to Him. You can pray, you can simply speak, do it any way you want, but do it in private. The Bible says do it in a closet, but we’re not that literal. At any rate, we decided long ago that if you’re going to believe in something, believe it and act on it, don’t use it to show off. Still, we are here to bring you the good news of salvation through grace. We’ll give you the truth, and the reasons why we believe it. We want you to listen. Those whom God wants to hear will do so. The rest of you will drift away. Our job is only to bring it to you. All we want is a few nights to present the case. After that, it’s up to you.”

It was the usual start to what would evolve into a stem-winding one-man performance, but with that sort of beginning it was notable that they were still sitting there, still listening.

Eve, John, and the rest knew that because their eyes weren’t on the Doctor nor were their thoughts on what he said. They had plenty of time to learn at his feet, and to study what he said, because, believing it the truth, it never varied.

Instead, their eyes and thoughts were on the security channel and on looking for anything and anyone out of the ordinary.

Like men with guns.

I wish I knew what those men had taken out of that arsenal , John and many others thought as they studied the crowd. Some of those missiles could kill an awful lot of people and damage even their sophisticated defenses. God might protect His people from harm, but He did a much better job if you were wearing a bullet-proof suit, and He was known to kill hordes of His own chosen people just to make a point. As the Doctor was telling the crowd right at that point, “God didn’t create us to have somebody to serve, He created us to serve Him. If you don’t like that, tough.”

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.