Servant of the Bones

23

A huge mob surrounded the Temple of the Mind. I came down into it invisible, amid the cameras and the radio people and understood that Gregory Belkin was to appear to make a momentous statement at six p.m. or before and that he knew the identity of his enemies and the enemies of the Temple. He intended to name his terrorist enemies and try to prevent their new plan of destruction.

The crowd spilled out, blocking Fifth Avenue, and many of the Minders, virtually pushed away by the press, were in the park praying.

I went up and into the building and found Gregory seated in a huge room with five men, amid the big electric maps and numerous monitors, and he was hard at work going over the final directions. The room itself was soundproof, and before I made myself visible I saw that no camera monitored the room itself. All monitors revealed the outside, and the walls in the rooms didn’t have ears either.

As I descended, Gregory spoke:

“Nothing will happen until two hours after I’m declared officially dead—” he said, and these words immediately galvanized me.

I appeared in my full Babylonian robes of blue velvet and gold, and my long hair and beard, and I snatched him up from the chair.

The men raced at me, and I threw them back. Through another door came a small group of heavily armed soldiers. Someone fired a gun. Gregory shouted no. No. This little cadre of ruthless guards surrounded me with powerful modern guns, the kind that fix you in a beam of light before they shoot you. All these men had the look of killers.

As for those who had been gathered at the table, they were the milder sort, though equally as serious, that included the Mastermind Doctor, and they reeked of resentment and suspicion and absolute desperation that I had interrupted them.

“No, be calm,” said Gregory. “This is inevitable and this will not stop us. This is an angel sent from God to help us.”

“Is that so?” I said. “What have you done with your brother? If you don’t talk the truth to me, I’ll tear you limb from limb and all these men will die with you. That’s the only alternative you give me. What is this about your official death? Talk now, or I will destroy.”

Gregory sighed and then he told the other men to go. “Everything will go as planned; only this angel needs to know the scope of his power,” he said. “Go on, man your desks in the building and see that my brother is comfortable and not afraid. Everything will be glorious. We are in the time of miracles. This creature you see here is a miracle from God. Say nothing to anyone.”

The men at the table left with amazing speed, but the soldiers took a little more firm persuading from him that he knew what he was doing.

I flung him back down in his chair.

“You lying monster,” I said. “How could you tell the world I killed your wife and your daughter? Tell me now where Nathan is, tell me now what you mean to do.”

I scanned the monitors all along the tops of the walls. They covered entryways, the lobby, elevators that were not in operation. I could see nothing but empty space in most. And guards passing.

The maps were dazzling and filled with pulsing neon colors, countries done in scarlet and yellow and rivers drawn in light like lightning. But there was no time to admire these things.

“Haven’t you guessed it, clever spirit?” he said. He smiled up at me. “How glad I am to see you. What took you so long? I need you, and time is running out.”

“I know you’re going to do something with your brother,” I said, “put him in your place to be killed, so that you can rise from the dead! That much is easy to figure and six is the hour you’ve marked for it. Six or before, what does that mean? I want your brother now, safe and in my arms to be taken back to his people.”

“No, you don’t, Azriel,” he said with great reasonableness, his confidence flaring up in him like an unquenchable fire. “Sit down and let me tell you what is to happen. You cannot imagine the beauty of it, and Nathan will suffer no pain. He is sedated and hardly knows what will happen to him.”

“I’m sure he is!” I said with great contempt, and a memory came back to me of people giving me something to drink, and saying, “You will not suffer.” They were painting gold on my skin.

“If you kill me,” Gregory said, “you will change nothing. The plan goes into operation after my death. If you want me to die before six o’clock then you will simply move up the time of the Last Days. Everything is set into motion. Only I can stop it. You’d be a fool to kill me.” He gestured for me to sit down.

“This room is soundproof, it has no security monitor,” he said. “What we say here is private, utterly. And I want your attention and your sympathy.”

“The soldiers?”

“I pressed a button, here under the table. They won’t come in again, but what I tell you must be secret, secret from all the world. You must be one of us when we leave this room. We have to leave it together.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“No. You lack vision, Spirit, you always have. You’ve spent too many centuries a slave. Now, only in my time, have you known your full strength. Admit it. The doctors found living seed in my wife. You’ve lost your glaze-eyed confused look, Spirit. My wife taught you how to be a man?”

I said nothing. But I did have a strong sense of something—that I couldn’t simply solve this by chopping him up like the Gordian knot.

“Right you are!” he said. “Sit down, and listen to me.” I took the first chair to his left.

He picked up a small multi-buttoned remote control device. I placed my hand on it.

“It controls the monitors, nothing more. Most are security. Only two have film in them. Look directly up there, over the central map.”

At once two of the screens began to fill with still shots—frozen for about two seconds each—of people who were starving, or the dead, battlefields, bombed-out buildings, trash heaps. I recognized that these photos were a steady panorama from all over the world. I could see the Mayan temples in one picture of gathered villagers. In another I saw ruins I knew to be in Cambodia.

He watched these almost serenely, as if he’d forgotten my presence or took me utterly for granted.

“Assure me nothing will happen to Nathan,” I said, “as we talk.”

“I assure you,” he said. “Nothing will happen, until six o’clock and even then it depends on my signal. But I should let you know, angelic one, you have no bargaining power.”

“Oh?”

As he turned and smiled graciously at me, he was now preening and full of happiness.

“I’ve waited so long for this to come,” he said, “and to think that you arrived in the midst of it. I do think God sent you as an answer to the sacrifice of Esther. I myself didn’t see the symmetry of it or the genius until later. I offered up Esther, whom I loved, truly loved, and you came through the break from the Heavens.” He seemed perfectly sincere.

“I have not been in Heaven,” I said. “Where is Nathan?”

“First,” he said, “let us think intelligently. If you should lose your angelic temper and kill me, you’ll only trigger the plan automatically. If you destroy this building you’ll trigger the plan automatically. If you want any chance of understanding, acceptance, or modification, you need me. And hear me out.”

“All right,” I said. “But you do plan to kill Nathan at six o’clock. You admit it. And you could do it before. That’s why you put him in the hospital under your name, to create DNA evidence and dental evidence to identify Nathan as you, so that your death would be certified, didn’t you?”

He didn’t seem at all happy to hear this much figuring.

“That’s a crude version of what I accomplished,” he said. “But look, the world is at stake, Azriel, the world itself. Dear God, you must be my Divine Witness.”

“Don’t get romantic, Gregory, tell me the plan. Somewhere else you have DNA documents that will be used to cleverly replace Nathan’s set, and these documents will confirm you when you have risen. You have many people involved in erasing and moving data.”

“I’m beginning to love your intelligence,” he said. “Now really use it. This is for the world itself! It’s for that that we do what we do. And you cannot prevent what will happen, and you must keep it in your mind that when the Last Days come, and they will begin sometime before midnight this night, you will need me. You will need me desperately, just as everyone alive and meant to live will need me. Otherwise only disaster can follow upon disaster.”

“Okay, what is this Last Days? What’s to happen? You’re going to have him assassinated. Then what? Appear to rise from the dead?”

“In three days,” he said. “Isn’t that the way the other Messiah did it?” He was cooler.

Three days. Blurry horrid images filled with—lions, a loathsome swarm of bees, dancing. I shivered and fought it off. I saw the cross of Christ. I saw the risen Christ in paintings old and new. I heard Christian words in Greek and Latin.

“I’m eager to have you understand this,” he said. “You know, it’s occurred to me several times that you are the only one who will fully appreciate this.”

“And why’s that?”

“Azriel, nobody else alive has my courage. No one. It takes courage to kill. You know it does. You know time and the world, and have probably witnessed war, starvation, injustice. But first, allow me to caution you. If you don’t hear me out, if you decide that my death is appropriate and that you don’t care what happens to the world, there’s the question of the Bones.”

“Yes?”

“They are in a kiln in this building, and a word from me will roast them and melt them into running liquid. Oh, and I should tell you the results of our tests on them, shouldn’t I?”

“If you want to waste the time. I’d rather hear about the Last Days.”

“Don’t you want to know what’s inside your bones?”

“I know. My bones.”

He shook his head and smiled. “No more,” he said. “The human bone is almost entirely devoured by the metals in which it was encased. There is very little if anything left. Which means I think that as soon as the metal is heated it will easily incinerate and obliterate any trace of the human remaining.”

“That’s what it means to you?” I smiled. “How amusing. Your test results have an entirely different meaning for me. Did you find enough there to do your DNA magic?”

He shook his head. “There’s almost nothing left.”

“That’s good news. But go on.”

He studied me most intensely. He reached out to take my hand, which I more or less allowed. All his charm was in play now, and his eyes had the depth of greatness, and the sincerity of greatness. Very alluring. Rachel had warned me of this.

But I loathed him. For Esther and Nathan alone, as if all the world didn’t matter, or as if to mourn them was to mourn all injustice.

“Azriel, this is a dream of unparalleled greatness. It has harshness in it and death, but so did the conquests of Alexander. So did the conquests of Constantine. You know they did. You know the land of Egypt lived in peace for two thousand years because of harshness and the willingness to kill. You know or remember those long times of peace. The Peace of Alexander, and after him the Pax Romana.”

“Tell me the plan.”

He pointed to the big map on the wall, the map of the world that was filled with pinpoints of light. The pinpoints were red and blue mostly, though some were yellow. They were in stark contrast to the lights of the map, but I saw now much drawing and marking on the map. Much detail.

“Those are my headquarters throughout the world,” he said. “Those are my Temples, my so-called resorts, my so-called business offices. Airports. Islands.”

“God, why does ambition come to such a man?” I said. “Think of the good you could do, you blithering moral idiot!”

He laughed sincerely and like a child. “But that’s just it, my tactless and impulsive one, I am a moral genius.” He pointed to the maps:

“They are ready within two hours of confirmation of my death to destroy two-thirds of the world’s population completely. Now, before you object, let me explain that this will be done by a filovirus perfected here by us which is already in place in those various temples. Don’t interrupt.”

He raised his hand and went on.

“It is a virus which kills within five minutes or less; it is airborne only as long as its host breathes, which is no more than five minutes; its first immediate action is to fog the brain and to fill the victim with a feeling of peace and ecstasy.”

He smiled gently, his eyes glazed suddenly, as though he were listening to grand and majestic music.

“No one will suffer, Azriel, at least not more than a few moments. Oh, it is such perfection compared to the hideous, bumbling stupidity of Hitler when he bludgeoned, shot, and tormented the Jews. What a crude, cruel monster he was. A digger of graves, a ragman, a fiend who tinkered with the gold in the mouths of his millions of victims.” He shrugged. “Ah, maybe it simply wasn’t the time. We didn’t have the technology.”

He resumed:

“The virus will be dropped along with a lethal gas that tends to dissipate within four hours. These combined should kill everything living and human in the area. My planes and helicopters are ready worldwide to perform the annihilations.

They will go over and over the territories involved until all people in them are exterminated.

“Foot battalions have been organized in some densely populated cities, like Baghdad and Cairo and Calcutta. They will insert the gas and the virus into large buildings through their air systems. Some of these people are themselves willing to die. Others will wear protective clothing.”

“Good God, how many cities, countries, people, are you talking about?”

“Most of the world, Azriel. I told you. Two-thirds of the world’s population. Think of it as an inevitable plague, if you will, a plague which comes in angelic form, to clear the planet of the debris as other plagues have done in the past. Do you know what the Black Death did to Europe?”

“How could I not?” I thought of Samuel and the burning houses of Strasbourg.

“What you don’t know is that Europe would be a desert now were it not for that plague. You don’t know how many died in the flu epidemic early in our century. You don’t know that AIDS was meant. You don’t know that it takes courage to learn from nature and rise above it, rather than simply tamper with it, and make chaos out of it as you destroy it.”

“What countries of the world; you speak of Asia?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Definitely. Asia, the Orient, all of those people will be wiped off the face of the earth. All of northern Russia. Only some of eastern Russia will be saved, and even on that score I haven’t entirely made up my mind. There will be no more Japan.”

He didn’t want to stop for breath, he went right on, excited now. I could swear that a light emanated from him.

“You haven’t been here long enough to know the logic of it. First and foremost, everything in populated areas on the African continent will be wiped out. Think of it. Emptying Africa. Villages have been targeted, all areas where men and women live. The only animals who will survive are those which are far from populated areas. It’s brilliant. You see, the filovirus won’t affect most animals anyway, and the gas will dissipate soon enough for most animals to survive it. Oh, it’s very complex. It has stages. But everything has been done to avoid panic or pain or knowledge among those who are dying. They will not suffer, no, they will not endure the absolute agony of our parents and others in the German camps. That was hideous, beastly.”

I didn’t dare interrupt him. But, Jonathan, you can imagine my feelings at this moment. Panic rose in me, but something harder overcame it: a determination that this madness was not going to happen! Absolutely not going to happen! I kept a mask of a face:

“You truly have an immense vision, Gregory.”

“Every living person in India and Pakistan will be wiped out,” he continued with rapturous enthusiasm. “In fact, almost every living person in Nepal, too, and up into the mountains. Of course Israel will be destroyed because Palestine has to be destroyed, and Iraq and Iran. In fact, all of that world will go—the Armenians, the Turks…the Greeks, the Balkans, where the war goes on, Saudi Arabia, Yemen…”

“The Third World, as you call it,” I said. “The poor world. That’s what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the world that is fatally diseased, always at war, courting famine, and dragging us all down with it. The great unsalvageable world—the world that Alexander couldn’t save, or Rome, or Constantine, or the President of this country, or the United Nations, or all the weak fumbling liberal kindhearted peacemakers of today who do nothing but preside over massacres!”

He sighed.

“Yes,” he said, “the disease ridden, the uncontrollable, and the unredeemable. It’s absolutely essential. They will all die. By midnight tonight most will be dead. But the Temples are ready for a renewed gas attack on all areas again tomorrow. Our vans, our planes, our helicopters—all are disguised as medical vehicles. Our people are clothed as medical people. Anyone seeing them will think they are trying to help. People will come to them for help and shelter, and they will kill these people without torturing them or frightening them. It’s going to work brilliantly. We have worked out our estimates. All of Cairo will be dead in two hours. Calcutta will take longer.” He looked sad as he continued:

“The third day will be the worst, because we have to hunt down those who might have somehow survived and it will be difficult. People will know fear. But it will be brief. There may be bullets used then, even bombs, but we hope not. We envision a beautiful and silent world by the end of the third day.”

His hand fell warm and firm on mine, his eyes glowed.

“Imagine it, Azriel, all of the African continent still and quiet, the beautiful pyramids of Egypt standing in silence, the smog and filth of Cairo settled down like so much sand. Imagine Zaire with no more epidemics and secret filoviruses brewing to destroy the world. Imagine the starving put to sleep in silence. Imagine the great rain forests allowed once again to grow, the dense jungle blooming without intrusion, the wild animals of the interior allowed to multiply as God planned for them to do.

“Oh, Azriel, my dream is as great as Yahweh’s dream when he told Noah to build the ark. I have even sheltered critical species. Very talented geniuses and scientists have already been lured here for a convention so that they might be saved as their people die. This, my country, is my ark. But the rest must die. There is absolutely no other beautiful or elegant or merciful way out of our present state.”

“Israel must die, you would do this to your own people?”

“Have to, no way around it. Besides…We must reclaim the Holy Places in peace and stillness. But don’t you see, many Jews here will survive. Everyone in the United States and Canada will survive. No one in this country will be hurt at all.

“The attacks in this hemisphere will wipe out only the southern lands—all of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. All those islands peaceful again and beautiful, where the poinsettia can bloom a deep red, and the palms can blow in the wind.

“But everything that is in our country and Canada will survive. The filovirus dies quickly. We’ve perfected our formula out of all three strains of Ebola and some we’ve found ourselves. The gas dissipates. I told you. It breaks down utterly. You don’t know the lengths we’ve gone to to perfect our formula so that horses and cattle will be immune. You don’t know how we have worked to make this merciful.”

He sighed, with a little shake of his head, then said:

“There will be spot exterminations of villages in the Amazon jungle—yes, that will happen—but in general the wildlife will rebound. It won’t be hurt by these clever poisons. Azriel, do you realize the geniuses I have working for me, men who worked in government germ-warfare programs for years, men who know things you and I know nothing of?”

“And Europe?” I asked. “You will kill Asia Minor? You will kill the Balkan countries. What will you do with Europe?”

“That is our biggest problem strategically. Because we must wipe out the Germans, we must do that on account of what they did with Hitler to the Jews. The Germans have to die. They have to. All of them. Absolutely.

“But we want to spare all other European countries. Except Spain. I just don’t like Spain, and Spain has had too much Moslem influence. But the extermination in Germany will be very stealthy, involve more foot workers than anyplace else, and there may be some unavoidable casualties among the French and the English, especially those traveling in Germany at the time.”

He stood up and he walked to the map. “It’s all prepared. It’s all in place. The final chemicals have been shipped. What remains here in the building can be used to attack anyone who enters the building. There are areas that can be sealed off where police and authorities can be gassed.

“You realize of course,” he said, “that from most of these condemned areas, we will be the only broadcast that the United States receives. We will have the advantage in describing this gentle plague. We have written our poetry, which is worthy to be remembered, like the story of the battles of Darius carved in rock.”

He pointed to the various monitors whose cameras remained fixed on corridors or empty rooms or elevators. “All killing traps. We are a fortress here.

“On the third day,” he said, “as the United States weeps in confusion for the rest of the world, while secretly sighing in relief to be rid of it, I will rise from the Dead, and I will tell what I have seen of these deaths everywhere, and that this plague was inevitable and the will of God. All the members of my Temple are prepared to take positions of leadership.”

“Do they know it’s a hoax!” I demanded. “Your own idiot followers? Do they know it’s Nathan, an identical twin, who will be killed?”

He smiled patiently at me, his back to the map, his arms folded.

“You tricked him into the hospital to acquire the DNA you need to verify your own death,” I said. “How many know about the fraud? How many are there involved in exchanging the DNA records at the key moments in order to verify your resurrection?”

“Enough key people know. Of course the great mass of my followers don’t know. They know who I am, and when I appear they will know it’s Gregory. I take the responsibility for this on my own shoulders. I take the guilt of the murder of the world, and the burden of a new myth of my journey to hell and back. I am the new Messiah. I am the anointed one. And my secret things are mine, as Yahweh’s secrets were His.”

He took the time to calm himself. His eyes were wet with emotion. “You’re beautiful, Azriel. I need you. You’ve been sent to be at my side. You’ve been sent.”

“Get on with this plan. Who knows what?” I demanded.

“Only a few in this location know that the death and the resurrection are a trick. Isn’t that how it probably happened the first time?”

“The first time,” I whispered. “And what was the first time? Was it Calvary? Is that what you think?”

“Even the people distributing the gas throughout India do not really know what it will do. Only those in charge know. There are levels of knowledge. Mine is a world of zealots willing to die for me, don’t you see, die for me and for a new world. Now listen to what I say. Listen!

“Imagine the relief when people realize what has taken place. I mean it. Think of the relief in the minds of all intelligent Americans and Europeans, all Westerners, or whatever you want to call us.”

He sat down again and leaned towards me. “Azriel, people will be overjoyed when the Great Death has passed. They will be overjoyed! Only the West with all its resources will remain, that’s all. All the poverty, the disease, the tribal war, gone. Gone from the earth. A new beginning.

“We, the Temple of the Mind, will take control. We outnumber those in Washington who might at first resist us. We will have no problem in other places. We know what has happened. We have the knowledge. We will go on the airwaves describing that the will of God has been done, and that the earth is now at peace, and free of millions who covered it like termites and parasites.”

“And you think the President of this country is going to take your hand for this?”

“Well, we’ll probably have to kill him. But at least we’ll give him a chance. At the moment he is an extremely brilliant man and rather beautiful. But our Temple people in Washington are ready. There are three thousand of them within blocks of the White House, and the nearby Pentagon. I presume you know these are our important buildings. We can gas everyone in those buildings. If necessary the entire population of Washington can be gassed. I’ve agonized over this. I believe that we should not do this to our own people.”

“How merciful.”

“Just wise. We want the government to realize it has been spared by the prophet Gregory at the will of the Lord to help rebuild a new and bountiful world order. At least, we want to give the President and our congressmen time to visualize these empty continents where the lilies of the field can bloom again in all their glory.”

He implored me with his eyes. He was truly moved. When he trembled it wasn’t fear, but a great anticipation.

“Don’t you see, my friend?” he asked. “This is what everybody wants. When a man turns on television at night and sees the war in the Balkans, it fills him with despair. Well, there won’t be any more war. Bosnians and Serbs alike will be dead.

“Imagine never having to worry again about the naked millions, the hunger, the floods, the disasters in India. All gone. All of those beautiful cities and temples lying virgin and ready to be reawakened. No one wants to hear any more about petty genocide in Iraq, or street riots in Tel Aviv, or massacres in Cambodia. We’re all sick of watching the Third World struggle, while we remain impotent, castrated by our superiority and refined values.

“Everyone wants this!

“It is what Alexander would do! It is what Constantine would do! No one has the means, the guts, the wisdom, or the courage to do it but me! I alone will do this. I alone will do it! I will strike as the Pharaoh struck when he rode down on those who invaded the Valley of the Nile.”

I said nothing. A clock was ticking in my brain, a clock. Six or before. What time was it now?

“You’ve got to consider it,” he continued. “You’ve got to carefully consider it. Imagine the jungles of Indochina and those beautiful ruins, with all the warlike people gone! Imagine the majesty of a city like Berlin. Imagine its resources. In fact Germany will be filled with resources. And those the Germans hurt in the World War will be so happy that Germany is gone!

“All these people have brought this on themselves! I was born to do this, you’re proof of it.”

“How can you be so sure of that?” I asked. “Doesn’t my presence make you pause even an instant!”

“No. Not when I picture the world after the Last Days. The Paradise. Imagine the quiet sweet earth, growing with grass again, and only those of the West preserved to reinvent, and to save, to rebuild nations without ever letting the chaos of the past redevelop. America will colonize these peaceful and beautiful worlds. Under my leadership. If the government helps, that will be good. We need the help. If not, we take over the government.”

“And the people in this country, you think they will let you do this?”

“Trust me, they will be very happy once it has sunk in, once they know all that is gone, once they know we are living in a world filled again with natural resources, and abundant land, and beautiful monuments, and fertile and magnificent places to be colonized. Even our Afro-Americans will be delighted that they don’t have to worry any more about Africa. American members of all our minority populations will be saved. No people or race exists that does not have a colony in America. This country is the Ark! Cooperate! They’ll worship us. They’ll worship the risen Messiah, and then his Hasid roots can be known, and it will all be written down; it will become the great turning point in history.”

I let him go on: he was truly in his own grip now, nothing could have shut him up, this was his aria.

“Azriel, if you only knew how much we have tried to help these poor nations. If you only knew the conditions in Baghdad and Israel. If you only knew the impossible state of things.

“The first half of this century, we saw fascist madmen like Hitler and Mussolini, and Franco and Stalin. We saw their crude methods fail and pitch Europe into agony.

“Now there are no more such men in the West. There isn’t a single leader in the West capable of the clarity of Franco.

“One must go to ragged poor places like Baghdad to find little dictators, like Saddam Hussein, or to the Balkans to find those who would fight to the death. Even Russia itself has no great Stalin, no Lenin, no Peter the Great.”

“And you saw these men as great?” I asked. “You see them as great?”

“No, they were evil. They did harm, and by the way, they annihilated millions. Don’t think for a minute Stalin didn’t kill as many people as Hitler. They killed and they killed and they killed. But it was crude, sadistic, ugly, primitive. I don’t count them as great.

“Now the West is led by people who are caught in the trap of their own conscience and benevolence. They know they should bomb Iraq and Iran off the map, but nobody has the guts to do it! Everybody knows Africa is a breeding place for plagues that can kill the world. No one has the guts to annihilate the population.”

“And here, what of the poor and the ragged here?”

“We are the Ark, I told you. In the New World, our small population of unredeemables will be given a new chance. Or executed. It won’t be a problem. It’s nothing. It’s a gnat in the face, our problems here.

“That’s the beauty of it. America, New York itself, contains people of all races. They can begin the new world order with us. If some do rebel, out of sentiment for their lost lands, we kill them. But we have gone against no race, no tribe, and will in this safe haven protect the remnants of all peoples.

“And remember our campaign through television is extensive. It’s all worked out. As the horrible deaths are reported, we will control the news from those areas completely. The President and his Army will be helpless. There will be no overseas connections or allies. Only the Temple of the Mind of God.”

“And during these Last Days,” I said, “people here will be in a panic that they too are going to be exterminated. All America will be in panic and fear of this plague.”

“Exactly, then they will discover that they are blessed. And I have come back from the Dead and have brought with me a vision of a New World. They will learn that God’s will decreed these things, that God chose the Temple as His instrument, but I have been among the Dead! Believe me, when this thing is over, the Temple of the Mind of God will be the only worldwide institution left in existence, and resistance to us will be simple to block. We have it all planned, we have our leaders, we have our stations, we have everything in order.

“Nathan has to die in my place at six o’clock, and if I die before that, if anything happens to me, if I give a signal, the world extermination process will begin automatically. And I have a thousand ways of giving that signal.”

“Like, name one, for instance?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What if I simply kill you now and save Nathan and reveal the plot.”

“You can’t. Don’t you realize there are soldiers at all the doors? And the Bones, remember, I’ve told them, if you begin to fight us, they are to cremate the Bones. That will end your existence.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“What can you do? You can’t stop all these people world-wide, you can’t even betray this building into the hands of the enemy. We have it under control perfectly. Don’t you see? You can only be in one place at one time, spirit or not, and your abilities are limited. When Rachel committed suicide right behind your back you didn’t even know it.”

“And you think I’m just going to let you do this,” I said. “You think I won’t try to stop you. You think I will be a party to this horror? You count yourself among the wrong leaders. Cyrus rose to power by tolerance of the religions in his Persian empire. Alexander brought Hellenism to Asia, he married Asian to Greek. The Pax Romana was a time of tolerance. Don’t you see, you filth, you take your place with the destroyers!”

I couldn’t hold my temper. He looked hurt, deeply hurt but more than that, disappointed and sad, a man committed.

“You take your place with Attila the Hun,” I said. “You take your place with Tamerlane, who built walls out of the live bodies of the conquered. You do indeed take your place with the Black Death and with Ebola and with AIDS. You are destruction!”

He shook his hands. He put them up to his face.

“Azriel, try to comprehend the beauty of this. The scope. It is what the world needs, and the only thing that can save the world. Nations have always been annihilated to make way for other nations. The Indians of America were wiped out so that this great nation could rise. Must I remind you what Yahweh told Joshua and Saul and David? To annihilate their enemies to the last man, woman, and child.

“Don’t you see, Azriel, this takes brilliance and courage. Unbelievable courage. And I have it. I have it and the means and I can see it through. I can endure the condemnations, the outcries. I have the vision!”

He stood up again, and went to the map as if musing.

“You know, once it’s begun, perhaps then you’ll see.”

“It isn’t going to begin!” I declared. I stood up.

There was a little star at the very center of the map. I saw it too late. White, the Star of David or the Star of Magicians. It had had much significance down through the years. He stared at it lovingly.

Too late, I realized that he had pressed it! It was a button. He had triggered something!

“What have you done?” I demanded.

“Merely sent Nathan to his death. He’s groomed and ready. He’ll be assassinated in front of the building within five minutes. That starts the worldwide countdown of two hours. You have that time to learn from me, and pray you do, and become my helper.”

I stood up, dumbfounded.

“My God!” I declared in prayer and utter horror.

“Well, what are you going to do? Stay here? Kill me? Try to save Nathan? Nathan is going down in the elevator now. Look at that monitor. You see it?”

I did. High up in a far corner I saw a blurry picture of Nathan, the true identical clone of Gregory now, his beard and locks shorn, held up by those who stood next to him. He wore Gregory’s clothes. I could even see the slight bulge of Gregory’s personal gun in the coat pocket. To my horror I realized that the front elevator doors were opening. To my horror I realized that the figures were moving towards the front doors of the Temple, towards the crowd.

“You can’t do anything, Azriel. You came back to life to be my messenger. If you kill me now you kill the one man who might be persuaded to stop this a little later on. I won’t of course, but you’ll make it a fait accompli, as we say, if you kill me. You need me. You know you do. You need me badly.”

In desperation, I gave a cry for the iron to come to me that I needed. I held two nails in my hands. I kicked him back against the map, then threw him against the wall, lest the map be full of triggers and buttons.

I drove the nails through his hands. He winced but he didn’t cry out.

“You fool!” he said. He shut his eyes as if savoring the pain. Then became enraged.

“Well, you wanted to be the Messiah, didn’t you?” I said.

He cursed and snarled, writhing, hands nailed to the wall.

On the monitor I saw the figure of “Gregory,” Nathan in disguise, stepping out into the crowd.

I dissolved and moved myself to that spot with all my power, invisible.

But even as I did, I heard the rifle shots. I heard the hail of bullets that descended upon the innocent Nathan. I heard the screams rising from the street.