David Nickle - Eutopia

“Jason?”

Jason looked around. Ruth stood trembling, at the door of the storeroom. Her eyes were dark, and she looked thinner in the lamplight. He went to her, deliberately blocking the view of Germaine Frost’s body, and took her in his arms.

She looked up at him.

“What was Sam Green doing here?” she asked.

The cathedral growled and hummed and came alive, as the Heavens dried up.

Inside its belly, acolytes stoked saw-scrap and wood shavings by the shovelful into the boiler; a plume of white smoke drifted from the high stack and across the town, where others crouched—their faces pressed into the mud of the road, or bent down as they clutched their chickens and pigs and bushels of apples—a proper offering to the God who now dwelt inside.

At the cathedral’s gate, the Oracle waited.

She let Lily lead the song; she was uneasy, as she surveyed the crowd of new worshippers as she sniffed at the bundle in her arms and hung back under the shadow of the roof. There were a lot of folk there—more than she’d seen before, and she wasn’t sure she liked all of them in such a great number. Were it up to her, she’d send the men-folk out to do a cull—whittle these families down to manageable sizes, feed the carcasses to the Son, like they already were with the false priests—that stinking old man, who’d climbed up a mountain and thought he’d be an Oracle because of it.

A false oracle.

The Oracle stood under an overhang of roof, at the back of a wide platform overlooking the square. Rainwater dribbled off the roof in front of her, like a waterfall. Lily let that water course over her as she sang, and the multitude sang too. They were supplicant, all right. But the Oracle felt a twang of doubt. It was one thing to sing and holler and tell kin—tell Feegers—that they needed to get off their behinds, take up their axes and bows and clubs, and take their Word on a crusade. Another entirely to tell these folk, who only now felt the touch of the Son on them.

Would they follow her? Would it be enough, to speak some words at them and take them along, down the river to the towns of the heathen folk—would they travel with their sticks and axes and bows and guns? Just because the Feeger Oracle said?

She clutched the infant to her breast, let its drying flesh, its needle teeth tease her.

It would be easier, she thought, if she had another—not a false one, but a real Oracle. He might help—keep these folk alive, and strong behind her. Travelling south, with the young… .

“Where,” she said aloud, “is Missy?”

Lily shrugged, and Lothar—who’d been attending near the gate—got to his feet.

“I go look on her?” he asked, and the Oracle smiled on him. “You go fetch her,” she said, and touched her cousin’s brow. “Fetch me that nigger too, if Missy think he’s right for it.”

He bobbed to and fro, and smiled broad, and climbed down into the crowd.

Lily stopped singing and looked at her.

“You think the black man is one?”

“Mayhap.” If Missy didn’t come with some word—then the Oracle would have to preach it herself. Would it be a fair enough sermon for the Son, who had settled up in the rafters of the cathedral, waiting for His due?

She held the Infant tighter, and watched the crowd—and after a moment, she smiled.

“Mayhap,” she said, as she looked to the crowd, and saw the dark, familiar face among so many pale. “Mayhap.”

Andrew Waggoner mounted the stone steps of the cathedral. Ahead were great gilded doors, filigreed with sunbeams. Beyond those: the Dauphin waited for him.

Andrew was glad. Dimly, he recalled a time when he’d turned away, and he might have thought the Dauphin would not welcome him… that he had spurned Him. This would be enough to cast Andrew down, among the bones of those he’d failed.

If only Andrew had let the Dauphin guide his shaking physician’s hand—how much suffering might he have prevented? How much less misery might he have caused?

“Don’t cry, Doctor.” Annie Rowe stood on the steps to the Cathedral with him, her face glowing in its light. “Christ’ll save you.”

“I’m already saved, Annie,” said Andrew. He didn’t know whether he’d say Christ was saving him, exactly. But Andrew had been saved some time ago—on the mountainside he’d wandered alone, full of doubt and anger, befuddled by the hill witch’s narcotics. He’d come to him, the Being, the Dauphin— the Juke , he thought—and Andrew had turned away, but it hadn’t mattered.

Once touched by the Divine, Andrew carried the spark.

If Annie saw that as Christ… well, all right. The one thing he’d learned about the Juke—the Dauphin —was that he lit that spark differently in every soul.

Now, he bore that spark home. To this great cathedral, swimming with angels, surrounded by a multitude. As he reached the top, one took his hand.

“I’m Lily,” said the Angel, and Andrew looked at her again, and sure enough, it was Lily.

“How about that,” he said, and walked across the platform—the dais—to the Oracle, who stood waiting for him. She smiled radiantly.

“You,” said the Oracle. “You are one. An Oracle too. Yes?”

“I am.”

“You stopped asking questions.”

“I have.”

“Will you speak?”

“I will.”

She unfolded her arms, and indicated where Andrew had been. “Tell them,” she said, her arm sweeping over the crowd of the wretched, lost souls of Eliada. “Tell them how to worship right.”

The last drops of rainfall steamed off Sam Green’s bent back. Jason could just see it from the front doors of the hospital: Green had made it a good way down the roadway to Eliada. His shirt was badly singed, and the flesh of his right hand, which clutched the jar, was slick, an awful mix of bright red and black.

“You see,” said Ruth, who stood beside him, “it is Sam Green. Not your father. Your father’s dead.”

“I see that now,” said Jason. He held Ruth’s hand, and looked at her. The flesh of her brow was slick too, even though she hadn’t yet stood in the rain. That might be fever, maybe exertion, maybe just all that time kept in that hot, airless room. With Sam Green gone, carrying the Cave Germ, there was less need to keep her there, and when she’d insisted on coming with him to follow, Jason couldn’t make an argument otherwise.

Jason squeezed Ruth’s hand, and let it drop. “Hush,” he whispered, and ran down the steps. It wasn’t a long distance, and until he was just a step away, Jason thought he might have gotten the jump on the Pinkerton.

But in that instant, Sam Green spun around, his free hand clenched in a fist.

“Jason!” cried Ruth.

“It ain’t your business anymore, boy,” said Green.

And then Jason was on his back in the mud. His jaw felt like it might never close properly again.

Green stood over him. In the light of day, it was sure clear that Jason’s father hadn’t come up from Hell; but Green looked like he hadn’t been anywhere too different. Half his face was red and peeling, and bloody meat hung in tatters from his right cheekbone. His hair was patched on his scalp. What flesh was intact was sooty and black. He winced as he reached to his belt and drew his revolver. He aimed it at Jason with a steady hand.

Jason kept steady too—steady as his ma would have, as she had…

“You’re aiming to let the germ out—ain’t you?” asked Jason.

“It’s the only way.”

“You know what it does, and you’re still goin’ to do that?”

Green narrowed his eyes. “I know,” he said, and gestured over his shoulder with his head. “I know what they do. The Jukes. I’ve seen it, Jason. You have too. They take men’s souls away. Take them away.”