George Chesbro: The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

"Master?! Tell us what's happened! What have you done?!"

"My name is Garth," my brother said in a low, even tone which nonetheless echoed throughout the hall as it was amplified through the loudspeakers, " and it always has been. I'm not anybody's master, and I never was. I've been very sick as a result of being poisoned. Certain people took advantage of me-and you-for their own purposes. They used me to manipulate you."

That was not exactly what his audience had come to hear from Garth, and angry shouts erupted all over the hall.

"You were supposed to announce that you were the son of God! The Messiah!"

"That's not true; I've told you from the beginning that it was nonsense to think I was some sort of messiah, and I never planned any announcement. I've been held a prisoner for the past week by the same people who've been manipulating you and me. All of us were brought here so that we could be killed. Now, thanks to my brother, that isn't going to happen. Try to understand that I'm very proud to be my parents' son, not God's. I am what I am; just Garth Frederickson."

More shouts of anger and confusion arose from around the hall.

"Blasphemer! You've brought the wrath of God down on us! We've been tricked and this is God's punishment!"

It was clearly beginning to look like an argument my brother couldn't possibly win, and I motioned rather urgently for him to get down off the stage. He ignored me.

"Stay calm! You deserve to be told the truth, and that's what I'm telling you. During the months we've worked together, you've shown to yourselves and to the world how good you are-how good people can be. It's you people who've done the work that needs to be done, not God. God doesn't feed hungry people; other people do. You don't need gods, or the sons or daughters of gods, to show you what's right. Your reward has been the good feeling you've had in your hearts about yourselves, and about other people. Continue to do what you've been doing, and you'll continue to feel good about yourselves. Do it with or without God, as you please, but you have to do it now without me. You don't need either of us."

"Garth!" I shouted. "Stop your Goddamn preaching and get off that stage! They don't want to hear it!"

"You betrayed us!" a woman screamed from somewhere right behind me. "You tricked us! You took our money, wasted our time, and now you've killed a lot of us! Satan!"

"I felt I owed you the truth!''

A jagged chair leg sailed through the air, bounced off the lectern less than a foot from Garth's head. It ricocheted into the darkness at the back of the stage, impaled itself in a huge piece of equipment in a bank of electronic gear. Sparks flew, and there was the chilling crackle of unleashed electricity.

Suddenly it seemed that everyone was shouting in either rage or panic. Fistfights broke out, and more pieces of chairs flew through the air. Garth stayed where he was, pleading for calm, shouting into a microphone that had gone dead. Still holding the child with my left arm, I reached up for Veil's with my right hand, and he hauled me to my feet.

"Garth!" I screamed. "Get the hell off that stage! Get out of there!"

It seemed that chairs were flying everywhere, bouncing off the lectern and stage all around Garth. I cringed, clutched the little girl close to me, and watched in horror as electrical power cables that had been strung along the underside of the balcony were torn away and broken; more sparks flew. A fire had begun to blaze around the electrical equipment at the back of the stage; blue-white electrical fire flickered over the wires, dancing on bare metal. Two loudspeakers suspended from the balcony suddenly exploded.

"Garth, come on!! This place is going to blow!!"

He couldn't have heard me in the din, and I was being rapidly swept away from the stage by an inexorable tide of milling, churning bodies-but Garth's eyes suddenly met mine. Desperately, I motioned with my free hand toward the sparking wires, then up at the glass dome and the girders. He nodded, again tried to shout into the dead microphone just as a man emerged from the flame-streaked darkness behind him and smashed a chair across his back, driving him to his knees. The microphone flew through the air with its sudden feedback sounding like an electrical scream of protest.

"Garth!"

Now people had begun to surge onto the stage from all directions. Garth shook his head to clear it, took a series of deep breaths, then abruptly stood up. Almost absently picking a thick, bloody, wood sliver out of his shoulder, he leaped down off the stage and walked straight toward me. Most people parted as he strode forward, and the others he pushed aside. I was trying to scream warnings to the people around me, but no one would listen. I looked up, saw translucent blue fire dancing along the support girder at the farthest end of the hall.

And then Garth was beside me. He scooped both the child and me up in his arms, and then both he and Veil began to push toward the closest exit, fifteen years to our left. We were only a few feet away when the electricity reached the slabs of C-5. There was a deafening explosion, and it felt like a steel fist struck me from behind, knocking me from Garth's arms, throwing us all to the ground. Chunks of steel, slivers of glass and wood whistled through the air over our heads. I struggled to drape my body over the little girl's, and then something struck me in the head and I passed out.

I couldn't have been out for more than a few minutes, because I was suddenly aware of hands clutching at the child and me, pulling us from the rubble, placing us on stretchers. Desperately, I looked around for Garth-and found him lying on a stretcher next to me; he was conscious, staring back at me. We reached out, touched each other's hand. Then our stretchers were raised and we were carried away through a nether world filled with the scream of sirens and swirling smoke.

Somebody shoved a television camera in my face, and I swiped at it and turned away in disgust. As I did so, I caught sight of something that filled me with renewed horror and tore a strangled cry from my throat.

Harry August was lying on a stretcher on the ground, clutching at his face as attendants struggled to strap him in. Blood oozed through his fingers.

Mercifully, I passed out again.

The memories associated with the Christmas Eve carnage, like the memories of Valhalla, remained-as they would always remain. But, with the passage of time, the nightmares ceased, and we were whole again, in mind and spirit as well as in body.

There had been no way to prove that the K.G.B. had been responsible for the bathhouse explosion that had killed dozens of people, and injured hundreds of others. Even if there had been proof, it was doubtful that it would have been presented; as Mr. Lippitt had correctly predicted, the government of the United States had not shown any great urgency to get out the truth about what had happened, for fear that the resulting publicity would damage relations between the two countries. The Soviet premier had delivered a personal, oral apology to President Kevin Shannon for the "deplorable, unauthorized acts of an insane Soviet citizen," and as far as Kevin Shannon was concerned that was the end of the matter. That was fine with Garth and me-and with Veil, who'd had a tad more than passing experience with government debacles and hastily arranged cover-ups. What the leaders of these two great powers of the twentieth century did to, or with, each other was of little interest to the three of us; in the short run, it at least seemed to mean that the Soviets owed us one. Despite the savage lessons of Siegmund Loge and the Valhalla Project, Garth and I had refused to give up hope-and one of our hopes was that humankind had a future; we also hoped that whatever new, dominating nation-states arose in that future would show considerably more wisdom, and considerably less insanity, in their stewardship of our planet and its peoples.