Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart Read online

  I well understand the plague that is intolerance (there is an unblinking mea culpa on behalf of my church and its beleaguered history), how it spreads in opposition to itself and so creates ever greater polarization, breeding escalation like a wild-fire (forgive the mixed metaphor, will you?).

  Yet now, to see it all ended, and in such an unexpected fashion! We have received an ethereal slap to the face and the shock is yet to wear off.

  And now, these tales of the Greys! Pray it serves to unify our species. Pray it offers a singular light on the depredations of which we are all capable, human and alien both, and so gives us pause, as we consider, with sober humility, the cruel truth of evil. Because—and let us be truthful here—nothing the Greys did exceeds what we have done to each other.

  I see in the news the terrible confusion of your country’s citizens. The belligerent parsing of populations, white supremacists on this side of the street, POC’s on the other; Christians in this enclave, Muslims in the next, the gang mentality infecting every neighborhood no matter how poor or how affluent. All now reduced to glares across the barricades, to shouts that ‘you’re not welcome here!’ I see schism breeding on schism and to where do I turn in hopes of salvation?

  Alas, not my Lord and Savior, but to an unknown entity in the sky overhead, hiding in plain sight.

  Pray for me, my friend, to the God we share. I am lost in this wilderness.

  Yours Faithfully

  Joakim

  Joakim, old friend,

  Look not to our unknown benefactor for salvation. This is humanity’s war upon itself and the only salvation possible must be found in the eyes of our brother, our sister, our neighbor. Do find the courage, my beloved friend, to meet that gaze.

  Affectionately yours

  Ira

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Will it be corporations or nations that take the lead in humanity’s expansion into space? Does it even matter? Both would be proceeding on the same presumption of control, and there’s a problem with that and more than a few SF writers have tackled it. Distance and time. Unless we can effect instantaneous travel, the likelihood of maintaining corporate or national sovereignty even within our own solar system, is highly improbable. Expansion into space for our species means rethinking the paradigm.”

  SAMANTHA AUGUST

  The Miracle Building was situated on what had once been flat scrubland a mile or so to the southwest of Zomba Cathedral, in a place where exposed arsenic deposits had discouraged development. The city of Zomba had once been a capital and it remained an administrative center, as well as being home to Malawi’s only university.

  Since independence there had been a host of dubious rulers, authoritarian and often corrupt, but the current president of the country had inherited the position following the sudden but not suspicious death of his predecessor, and thus far had proved himself mostly sincere if somewhat inconsequential.

  While the military remained relatively dominant due to hard feelings with neighboring countries, Casper Brunt had not had any occasion to conduct business in Malawi. A large barracks flanked Zomba to the west, while a second barracks was situated in the city itself, and the soldiers were out in force—not to assert belligerence or intimidation but as crowd control, organizing the tens of thousands pouring down through the city’s streets.

  He was used to the ubiquitous crowded markets and snarled merchant districts of African towns and cities, but nothing like this. It had been his ambition to beat the mass migration coming down from the north. But he had failed at that. Abdul Irani was now the most powerful imam in all Islam. Sunni, Shi’ite, the old divisions and feuds had miraculously been reduced to little more than a proverbial cold shoulder—and it now seemed that even that was breaking down. Banners of the Laughing Imam waved and rippled above the throng moving slowly in the street beneath the balcony where Casper stood.

  The hotel he’d found a room in was packed with journalists, many of them from Europe or the Americas, all gathered to witness this phenomenon, and all struggling to make sense of the unexpected, possibly incomprehensible revolution occurring in Islam. The theories and analyses were coming fast and furious in the hotel bar, and Casper had listened in on more than one exhortation, quietly amused to hear all the rationalizations and explanations for what appeared to be a wholly spiritual transformation.

  That said, given Islam’s notorious reputation for ultra-conservatism, it wasn’t surprising to find all these agnostics and atheists (he’d yet to meet a journalist who believed in any higher power) at a complete loss to understand what was going on.

  Casper himself had no idea. Even stranger, how had this alien building project become the focus for the Laughing Imam’s pilgrimage? At the various appointed hours, the call to prayers came and all forward progress on the roads, streets, and alleys came to a halt. Rugs and wicker mats were rolled out, figures knelt, and all eyes turned toward Mecca far to the North. In these moments, Casper could see that not everyone in these seething crowds was Muslim. Just most of them.

  Ordinarily, this would have been a human and environmental disaster. There were too many people and the resources and infrastructure to accommodate them were insufficient. The enormous camps now forming just south of the city, surrounding the alien complex, would have become cesspits of disease, crime, and corruption as the usual international crowd of do-gooders rolled in with cash and useless second-hand sweaters. There’d be drugs, human trafficking, and the influx of weapons—it had always been a source of amusement to Casper that so much aid money ended up paying for the guns and ammo he sold to various bandits, mercenaries, and thugs who preyed on the very people those do-gooders were sent in to help.

  Well, it didn’t seem amusing any more. He’d lost more than just a steady income with the arrival of ET. His predatory edge was gone. That defensive shrug of the mind pushing away the softer feelings. He’d stopped feeding on the misery of others, and now even the memory of its flavor tasted sour on his tongue.

  In any case, there was no logical point to taking this journey any further. He’d spent his career skirting makeshift camps, like a fly circling yet one more of humanity’s open wounds. He’d kept his distance, his sunglasses blunting the searing fire of suffering children, corpses in the ditches, kids smoking melting plastic and passing out to then be raped through the night by old men. In some ways, he had rationalized his way around the worst of it. Weapons meant fighting back, after all.

  As one of the journalists had muttered the previous night in the bar, they were now in a world of frustrated perverts, serial killers, and religious fanatics all dressed up in semtex with nowhere to go. Was it any wonder suicides had overtaken cancer as the primary cause of premature deaths?

  Nothing was more elusive than faith. Casper found he could hold to the same detached distance when considering it—selling guns or selling God both promised gifts of power, after all, and whispers of salvation rolled from Casper’s tongue as easily as they did from any priest’s. Take this and be free, my friend. And when the deal was done, it was time to move on.

  Still, how had this conservative religion stunned the world with its transformation, so unexpected, so seemingly contradictory? What was the Laughing Imam’s message? Jihad was dead. Even the ancient past’s legacy of grand ruins couldn’t be bulldozed into oblivion any more. At the same time, the deadly drones had ceased their slaughter of the guilty and the innocent. Even Russian-backed regimes now floundered toothless and irrelevant, squatting in rubble of their own making as the dust slowly cleared.

  So what promise now awaited the faithful? Where among the holy words of Allah was there room for godless extraterrestrials? Or, for that matter, massive alien building projects?

  Yet something held Casper here, something beyond logic. Somehow, it wasn’t enough to just look at pictures of that damned complex looming beyond the cathedral. In the end, he had to see it for himself, which meant pushing his way through the mob. A year ago and that would have been impossi
ble, too dangerous by far for some red-faced Aussie. Now it simply promised to be inconvenient and tedious, probably exhausting.

  He was gearing himself up for it. So far, however, the timing seemed off.

  Casper turned from the balcony and went back into his room. Collecting up his Italian sport jacket he exited the room and went downstairs.

  The bar was deep in the fug of bars the world over, where no one could get falling down drunk anymore, no matter how much booze they swallowed. Depressed over the loss of abject self-destruction, they compensated with cigarettes, but even those damned things probably no longer killed anybody. He wondered at this odd aspect of a muzzled psyche—all these long-term investments in suicide no longer marching so steadily into the Great Dark. Misery had nowhere left to turn.

  He saw the AP guy holding forth at his usual table, a veteran of all the worst humanity was capable of, a man who’d mastered the subtle drunk’s veil of sobriety in front of cameras and at the keyboard. But now his eyes were clear, and in them Casper had seen something shaky and fragile—nothing too obvious, but as a salesman Casper had acquired talents when it came to reading tell-tales no matter how well hidden. No, Simon Wensforth was a troubled man.

  To the journalist’s right sat a BBC correspondent, slouched in wrinkled clothes and wearing a ratty tweed against the feeble air-conditioning. Casper wasn’t sure if he’d heard the man’s name the night before, as he was in the habit of mumbling. Some sort of camera-man was perched on Simon’s other side. The chair opposite was being vacated even as Casper approached, and he caught the eye of Viviana Castellano as she turned.

  “Tag, you’re it,” she muttered.

  “I’m just here for the entertainment,” he replied.

  She paused opposite him and tilted her head. “It was something shady, wasn’t it? What you used to do. You’re sure as shit not one of us.”

  He shrugged. “No, I’m not, and does it matter?”

  “You look like a man who used to have dead eyes,” Viviana observed.

  “Ouch.”

  She patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t sweat it. The dead have risen.”

  “That explains why I feel like a child again.”

  She pointed at him. “Quick. I like that.”

  After she’d sidled past him, Casper moved to the chair opposite Simon. He settled down without being invited. His Kuche Kuche pale lager arrived at about the same time, one of the perks of being a regular.

  “Ah, the Mysterious Stranger returns,” Simon drawled above his glass of whisky. “Finally composed your no-doubt devastating explanation for what’s going on outside? You’ve had three nights to distill our collective wisdom, after all. More than enough for any mortal.”

  “Well, I think I know why the Imam is laughing.”

  “Oh, do tell.”

  “He’s been listening in on you and everyone else trying to figure him out.”

  “That’s a lofty perch you’re on there, sir.”

  Casper shrugged, took a swig on his beer.

  The cameraman had loaded a new battery into his Canon and now turned its lens on Casper.

  “I’d rather you didn’t, mate.”

  The man lowered the camera. “Touchy,” he said.

  “Don’t want to be stealing his soul, Johnny-boy,” Wensforth pointed out. “Might be construed as an assault and the battery will suddenly die yet again.”

  Now that was interesting. Casper glanced at the cameraman. “Your battery keeps dying?”

  “Maybe. When someone resents being shot,” Johnny said, placing the lens-cap on and setting the camera down on a dry-spot on the table.

  “And if they’re not looking but only might resent it?”

  Johnny grunted. “Good question.”

  “That would be a mighty impressive level of omniscience,” Simon Wensforth observed. “Should test it out, Johnny-boy. The limits to our leash and all that.” He paused to study the whisky in his glass, and then knocked it back. “Flavor and bite but nothing of the slow burn.” He set the glass down and met Casper’s eyes. “I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a month ago. Fourth stage. Given three months. My signature gravel voice courtesy of Glenfiddich and Silk Cut. I planned on working until the grisly end, a sack of wrinkled skin wrapped round immortality. Cancer cells are immortal, right?” His smile was a challenge.

  “You seem to be holding out well,” Casper said.

  Simon nodded. “All the lumps are gone. So too that old heartburn which wasn’t. Now I’m on my last notch in my belt, dammit.” He waved the glass. “Consider well, Man of Mystery, our collective evasion of the consequences to our careless, care-free lives. ET is no God, unless justice was only ever a human conceit.” The waiter appeared with a fresh glass, collecting up the empty one. Simon smiled down at it. “Now, Paradise has come down to earth, and what are we to make of that?”

  The tweed-clad journalist slowly straightened, his watery eyes fixing on Simon. “The West has been grinding Islam under its heel for a long time,” he said. “A civilization and a culture beaten into exhaustion, now past its prime and longing for a return to some nostalgic past looking nothing like the real one. Science, literacy, architecture, art, mathematics, tolerance—Islam once led the world in these things. That’s the real past. Not this paranoid, benighted plunge into dogma and ignorance and violence. All those fingers pointing back a thousand years—the Laughing Imam gave them all a nudge, from ignorance into enlightenment. Suddenly, the future wasn’t the false past. Wasn’t an endless succession of cultural, political, and economic defeat at the hands of the Infidel. No, now the future is going to be the rebirth of Islam’s Grand Age. Islam’s civilized glory. Faith not as a weapon, but as an anchor in the storm to come, in the storm now upon us.” He lifted into view his right hand, in which he held a recorder. His thumb clicked it off and he stood. “That’s my piece, Simon. Suck it and weep.”

  “If I was a tequila man, I’d do just that,” Wensforth retorted, rolling his eyes at Casper. “This is how our Beeb Man-in-Africa does it. Writes it all out in his head, chews on it for days, then spits it out.” Simon raised his glass to the Beeb man. “Cheers. Now post, Robbie, and good luck to you.”

  The BBC journalist shuffled off.

  His chair remained vacant for scarcely a heartbeat, as Viviana Castellano returned in a flourish of perfume-scented air. She held her own glass of something which she tilted toward Simon. “Fuck cancer and the habits it came in on.”

  Wensforth returned the gesture and drank down a satisfied mouthful. “Fuck Dengue and Yellow fever, fuck malaria, fuck schisto—schisto-oh whatever the fuck it’s called. Fuck AIDS, fuck congenital herpes—fuck all the ways of mortality plaguing all humankind. Who stamps the visa applications for Venus anyway, that’s what I want to know.”

  “Oh shit,” Viviana suddenly said. “Those complexes out there looking like administration or, God help us, processing centers—you think, Simon? Cattle-cars for that other brave new world?”

  “Islamic exodus? Getting us off their backs once and for all? The Goddess of Love in a hijab?” He puffed out his florid cheeks and then slowly released a breath. “As good an answer as any other. But then, how does this heal all the wounds? How does this do anything but guarantee an unholy clash of worlds in the future? How can we talk to each other from different planets, given that we can barely do so here on Earth?”

  “Marching on a promise never given,” Casper said.

  Viviana’s brows lifted. “Oh, I like that. I’m stealing it. Unless, of course, ET phoned Abdul Irani. Or maybe that’s just what he’s selling.”

  “If you want to be cynical about it,” Casper said.

  “Cynical journalists?” Simon Wensforth asked. “Tut tut, don’t be silly.”

  “You mean like ‘wet fish’.”

  “Precisely. Utter nonsense. But let’s not forget, these mysterious sites are cropping up the world over. No singular call to Allah’s faithful. Besides, that mob out there has its share o
f Christians and pagans and whatnot. And there may still be something to the rumor that the authorities in Zanzibar quietly asked Irani to leave.”

  “Well, that’s all anyone can do these days.”

  Viviana squinted at Casper. “Did I hear some bitterness there, Steve?”

  Simon frowned. “Steve? That’s his name?”

  “It’s the name I’m giving him,” Viviana replied. “Slippery Steve. Silent Stan. Depends on today’s persona.”

  Casper smiled across at her. She’d be a handful to be sure, if this was flirting—and he was about halfway certain that it was indeed flirting. But then, maybe a handful was what he needed. Smart, no-bullshit, an American-Italian with a fiery temper (he surmised), bored and bummed out in Zomba. Still smiling at the challenging edge to her gaze, he said, “I’m not aware of changing persona on a daily basis. Weekly, maybe, but that came with the job. Of course, I’m now unemployed.”

  “I’d have pegged you for a merc if you were in better shape,” she said, stirring her drink with its pink straw. “But I’m guessing the heaviest thing you ever tote around is your wallet.”

  “I’m not unfit.”

  “Didn’t say you were.”

  Simon sighed loudly and began pushing himself up from his chair. “Good grief,” he said in a wheeze. “Time for our daily constitutional butt-slap. See you all in six hours, come rain or shine.”

  Johnny the cameraman rose at the same time.

  Casper watched the two men head off for their room, though most of his attention was on Wensforth rather than his lanky boyfriend. He wondered what a last-minute miracle did to a man expecting to die and die badly.

  As if she’d read his thoughts, Viviana said, “Thought he was at the book’s end. Only to find out there’s a sequel. Not yet written. I expect he’ll dump Johnny after this assignment.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”