"I want to thank you all for taking time to be here tonight," said the man at the podium. He was a brown-haired, unremarkable, fit-looking man nobody could recall seeing before. He wore a denim jacket and jeans and a western shirt and boots. He stood on the small stage at one end of the basement Fellowship Hall of Nidaros Church, a maroon curtain at his back. The hall was crowded with people sitting on folding chairs farmers with seed company caps and laced-up boots, and a few of the fairly young and fairly old of various other callings. Mostly men. They listened politely, because this was church, but they fidgeted.
"Of course," the man continued, "it shouldn't be any hardship to gather in the House of the Lord. But we all know that to many people it seems to be. And that's why I believe that all of you are good people, Christian people, the kind of folks who'll understand the importance of what I've got to say.
"I think you all know what this meeting's about. You all have some idea of the danger that faces us, of the craziness that's breaking out in your community, and of some of the reasons why it's happening here."
"Communists!" someone whispered, but his neighbors shushed him.
"I want you to listen to a tape recording," the man on stage said, "just so you'll know I'm not spreading stories."
He pulled a cassette player from behind the podium and pushed a button.
"...the price Earth demands.
"And growing up under their fist, we are all made little. Lost is the beauty, lost is the terror, of the true earth, of life.
"Come back with me, children! Do not fear the night, do not fear the fire, do not fear the blood. All these are Woman, all these are the Goddess your mother and your lover." (Someone gasped.)
"Will you follow me?"
"Yes."
"Can you touch the Night?"
"Yes!"
"Can you embrace the Fire?"
"YES!"
"Can you drink the Blood?"
'YES!"
"THEN BRING THE GOAT!"
The man snapped the cassette player off.
He leaned forward across the podium. "That recording was not made in Africa, my friends. It was not made in Haiti or South America, or California or any other heathen place. That recording was made not five miles from this very spot, at a place you know well.
"This abomination this ritual of blood and sacrifice, was performed on our own American soil, under the protection of what some people call freedom of religion. An animal was slaughtered, my friends, to appease the Devil himself. Depraved and degraded acts followed, with which I will not offend your ears.
"Now you may say to me, 'Friend, how do you know this to be true? Where did you get this tape; how do you know it's genuine?'
"And friends, that's a very good question. You're intelligent people, fair-minded people. You don't want to take rash action without some kind of proof. That's why I'm going to introduce you to somebody. Somebody I'm sure you never expected to see in this place.
"May I introduce Solar Bull, the former leader and High Priest of the Way of the Old Wisdom!"
As the crowd buzzed, Solar Bull stepped from behind the curtain. His face was haggard and the light in his eyes was like a dying cigarette next to a spilled gas can.
"I have been in Hell," he said. "I have been a criminal, a drug dealer and a pimp and a murderer. I started a religion for money, then came to almost believe it myself. But I never understood the supernatural forces I played with, or the power of Hell, until I met a man you all know of...."
Laura came to the gate to vouch for Rory, and the guards let him in.
"I had to come and talk to you," he told her when they had moved down the driveway a few yards. "You've got to get away from here tonight."
Laura looked at him but didn't seem to hear him. "Hamster," she said. "I had my purse when I got to the bus station, but... but... I lost it someplace. All my money was in it, and my ID."
"What are you talking about?"
She seemed to focus then. "Rory. I'm glad you came. I've been thinking about you a lot."
"I've been thinking too. You all right?"
"Sure. No problem. Everybody's a little weird tonight, that's all. We had a great ceremony last night, and nobody got much sleep. And the wind, too. And the comet. Crazy times don't you feel it? A natural high."
"We've got to talk."
"Yeah. We'll go back up to the observatory."
"I don't think that's such a good place."
"It's the best place, Hamster Rory. Believe me, things'll seem clearer there! I promise I won't try to make love to you. Not if you don't want me to. I swear it by the Brisinga Necklace!"
"The what?"
"Something Sigfod Oski told us about. Please come."
She looked child-like in the flat glare of the yard-light, and the wind blew her tangled hair against her face. Rory said yes. There was time.
She led him up to the platform. At the top she stood with her back to him, her windbreaker blowing tight against her, looking off towards the west, where the clouds were moving in. The moon was full and Cerafsky burned brighter than the stars.
"There's a cold wind from Canada," she said. "Some people say it'll snow tonight."
"Could happen."
"It won't last though."
"I hope not. I'm not ready for winter."
She turned to face him. The flat light was at work up here, too, and the wind pushed her curls around, and Rory felt the wanting again, remembered how smooth her skin was.
"Are you ready for me, Hamster?"
"How how do you mean?" He found he had moved closer. He stepped back.
"Could you handle it if I said I was in love with you?"
He looked at the clouds. He said, "I've been thinking a lot about the other night, Laura. I'd be a liar to say I didn't enjoy it, but it wasn't right. I'm not like that anymore.
"You don't believe what I believe, but you understand about believing about doing what's right, not just what you want to do.
"We're too far apart, Laura. I believe in Jesus and you believe in whatever you believe here. One of us would have to change and I'm sorry, it's not going to be me.
"Can I tell you what Jesus means to me, Laura?" He looked down and found her much closer, gazing at him, her hands behind her back.
"It's OK, Hamster," she said softly. "It'll make it easier this way."
"Easier?"
"Do you hear the wind, Hamster? The wind has her own song, and only her children can hear it."
"It's just a noise to me."
"Like you say, when you believe you have to do what you believe, even if it isn't what you want.
"Sigfod Oski says you have to give the thing you love most to the gods."
She brought a hunter's knife out from behind her back.
An old street instinct made Rory swerve as she rushed at him. Her momentum took her past him over the parapet, and she sprawled on the edge for a moment, scrabbling for a handhold with her empty hand.
Rory reached for her. She went over, but he caught her left wrist, his elbow nearly popping as it took her weight, and the parapet hit him hard in the chest, tight under his armpit.
He reached down with his free hand. "Hold on, Zippy," he said. There was a concrete foundation down below, and it looked like a long, long fall from the top.
Laura swung her knife up and stabbed the arm that held her.
"The Way of the Old Wisdom was a lie, a fraud and a scam," Solar Bull told the crowd. "I made it up out of tail ends of old anthropology books with a sprinkling of New Age. But it wasn't bad as phony religions go. It wasn't the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ, which our good brother here has shared with me since, but it was a good, decent human religion with a lot of the golden rule and live-and-let live.
"But that's not what Sigfod Oski is teaching there now. I've told you what he did the other night, and I've told you what he told me in private.
"He has power, but it's power straight out of Hell. When I left the farm last night, I was pursued by things I never dreamed of in my worst nightmares. I have cuts and scrapes all over my body. I was more scared than I thought a man could be and live through it, until, by God's mercy, I ran into my good brother here, who showed me the truth. Thank God there's mercy for even a sinner like me."
Voices said Amen.
"But out at that farm, Satan's in control. Evil from the deepest pits of Hell has burst forth in Troll Valley. For your own sakes for your children's sakes for the sake of everything good you've got to do something about it. And you've got to do it soon."
Solar Bull left the podium and sat down in a folding chair. The crowd buzzed. The brown-haired man took center stage again.
He spoke in solemn, measured tones. "There are times," he said, "when a hard lot falls on God's people. Our call, our commission from the Lord, is to live in peace. We are called to bear all kinds of abuse and violence; to submit; to love our enemies and pray for them.
"But what about a threat to our children? What about a threat to our neighbors, to our country? Can we sit by do we dare to sit by and let foul wickedness destroy everything? Will we allow blood sacrifice, and pagan immorality, and worship of devils to exist side by side with our churches, our homes, our schools? Does freedom of religion extend to that? Will we allow America to be dragged back to a dark age of savagery when people live in fear of devils, and place whatever they love, including their children, on the altar to appease them?
"NO! I tell you no!"
The audience chorused "NO!"
"NO! Today Christians in America are being stripped of our freedom of religion! Should we extend it to devil-worshippers? Tolerance is not for those who would destroy the soul! There is a time when the Christian must take up the sword, and that time is now!"
Somebody in the audience was standing up, shouting, "Amen, amen!" Others began to stand too, saying one thing and another, not listening to each other but mostly agreeing. Stoney Berge moved around toward the back of the crowd.
That was when Harry Gunderson, whose entrance no one seemed to have noticed, swung up the three steps to the stage. Out of habit, the audience quietened as he limped to the podium. The brown-haired man moved aside for him, arms crossed, one eyebrow cocked.
"As our guest has said," Harry began, "there are times in history when the Church comes under special Satanic attack.
"Think of it as a battle, friends. The Church on one side, the forces of Hell on the other. Satan has determined to attack, to carry part of the line, capture territory. Tell me, what does he do first?"
"He brings in witches!" someone yelled.
"That's right, he brings in witches! And why? Because witches are so easy to spot! Because our sentries can see them far off, and smell their fires and hear their loud music! Now think, my friends what does it mean when your enemy parades his loudest, most colorful, garish battalion before your eyes? Why would he do that? Why would he want to attract your attention?"
There was mumbling, but no one answered aloud.
"I'll tell you why! It's a diversion! He wants you looking at those terrible witches, and talking about those terrible witches, and torturing and burning those terrible witches, so he can attack you somewhere else! Some really important part of the line, like Charity, or Justice. And you won't be prepared for that attack, and he'll hit you with disguised, camouflaged troops much more dangerous, much harder to spot, and stronger far.
"Don't be fooled by a diversion! If these people mutilate animals, get evidence let the law do its job. As for human sacrifice, there are laws against that too, and do you really think people would be foolish enough to try it? Would you be in their place?"
From the side of the stage, the brown-haired man said, "And when one of our children is kidnapped, will you comfort the family, Reverend?"
The crowd applauded. Cries of "Amen!" and "That's telling him!" rose.
"You think you're fighting human sacrifice?" Harry roared. "If you go out there with weapons, you're serving the devil of human sacrifice! You become heathens yourselves, killing because you're afraid of the dark!"
Shouts drowned him out.
Martell stood with his arms folded over his stomach. He wanted to be sick. He had always run from situations like this, and the air was full of lies. Yet Harry Gunderson was his friend... he had a responsibility....
He straightened and went up the stairs as up a scaffold. Harry still stood at the podium, trying to be heard. Martell put his hand on his shoulder. Harry glanced at him, then stepped aside.
Martell stood and looked at the yelling faces. Sometimes, when he faced a rowdy class, his silent stare had quieted the students. Surprisingly, it worked now. As he looked at the audience he noticed Stoney talking in low tones with a middle-aged woman he didn't know.
When the people were hushed he said, "I teach at Christiania. Before that I taught at the University. I sometimes used to debate people, and I used to defend Christianity, or at least Christian civilization. Until one day a very capable cynic cut me into little pieces in public.
"His main point went like this: If Christianity teaches love, and makes people nobler and better, then why have so many Christians burned and tortured heretics, and Jews, and witches? Why did the Church do so little to prevent what happened in Hitler's Germany? One picture of a child at Auschwitz, one description of the torture of a witch in Medieval France, weighs more in the mind than a thousand acts of charity.
"Friends, I beg you, don't bring another shame on the name of Christ! Don't give the scoffers more ammunition! The people of Salem, Massachusetts repented of the witch trials when it was all over, but it was too late for the ones they hanged, and it was too late to save their good names. They'll always be remembered for one thing."
Someone stood up and yelled, "Who are you to tell us about Christianity? You're one of those college teachers! You don't even believe in Jesus!"
"YES I DO!" Martell found himself shouting back. No one was more surprised at the thing than he. He glanced to the side and saw Harry staring at him.
"Yes I do," he repeated. "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I think I have for some time."
He was so shocked at the discovery that he forgot the people shouting at him for a moment.
The brown-haired man spoke from where he stood. "This is very touching," he said. "I know we all praise the Lord for you. But I think you and the pastor are missing the point. The killing has started already. Or it will soon. A child is missing."
"LIE!" shouted Martell before he had time to think.
Shouting, the audience seemed to flow up at him. Hands clutched his ankles.
"WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS, IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT TRIBULATION?"
The voice was Stoney's, from one side of the crowd. He had plugged a microphone into the speaker system. The crowd seemed to stop for a beat.
"I don't know," said the brown-haired man, taken aback by the loud voice.
"Well what do you think?" asked Stoney.
"It may be it's hard to say "
"It can't be the Great Tribulation," cried Maxine Ohlrogge, from the other side of the room. "The Great Tribulation doesn't start until after the Rapture!"
"No!" yelled somebody else. "The Rapture comes first! When you look at the Book of Revelation from a Dispensational perspective "
"No, no, no!" shouted a woman. "The Rapture comes mid-Trib!"
Then the fighting began. Martell couldn't see who threw the first punch, but he moved back from the podium, and felt Stoney's hand on his arm. The custodian pulled him, and Harry, out a side door and up the stairs to the utility room, where Maxie joined them a few moments later.
"Did I do well?" she asked.
"Like gangbusters," said Stoney.
"That was rather a cynical trick," said Harry, adjusting his coat without effect.
"I figured the way everybody's been goin' nuts lately, it wouldn't be hard to turn the herd."
"But why? I would have thought what that man said was right up your alley."
"Not when it gets popular," said Stoney, without a trace of irony in his voice.
"It's getting loud in there," said Martell. "What if they start hurting each other?"
"Got it covered," said Stoney. He opened a control panel and flipped a switch.
"What did that do?" Harry asked.
"Turned on the sprinklers in the basement."
"What?"
"It'll cool 'em off. Then they'll go home to get dry. Once they've been out in the wind, all wet, most of 'em won't be itchin' to go out again tonight."
"Do you realize what the Women's Group will say when they see their basement water-damaged and the piano ruined?" asked Harry.
"They'll say thank God the sprinkler system kept the fire from spreadin', an' I won't tell 'em different, because in a way that's what happened."
"Don't expect me to support you in that."
"Doesn't matter. This is my work. You've got your own work to do. Better get to it before they start comin' up."
Harry turned to Martell. "He's right," he said. "We've got to go out to the W.O.W. farm and warn those kids. Some of these people won't be stopped by a shower. We'll take my car. Be careful, Stoney."
They went up to the foyer and outside. Martell looked up at the sky. Cerafsky shone at the edge of a mass of clouds surging out of the northwest. He needed no word from it now. "Sigfod Oski will be there," he said. Nothing remained but a Noble Death.
"Come on," said Harry.
Deputy Stokke entered the Sheriff's office sweating a bit. He wasn't called over to Faribault very often, and he prayed he wasn't going to be told the department would be cutting back. He needed the overtime.
Sheriff Heikenen was a stocky, square-faced woman with short gray hair and a smoker's voice. She asked him to sit down, which he did, balancing his Smokey Bear hat on his knee.
The sheriff wasn't much for small talk. "McAfee tells me you've got problems with the Dangerous Sectarians List."
Stokke's mouth went dry. He'd never been good with words, and he didn't want to have to figure out how to explain his feelings on this subject.
"Well, do you have a problem?"
"I I guess it seems a little... unAmerican to me."
The sheriff leaned back in her padded chair. "How do you mean?" She lit a Camel.
"I don't know it seems like the sort of thing we'd be getting in trouble for if we did it with any other groups."
"You think you know the law better than the Supreme Court?"
"No."
"You a religionist yourself?"
"No, but I was raised in the church..."
"What church?"
"Nidaros Lutheran in Epsom."
"They're NAPC, aren't they? North American Protestant?"
"Yeah."
"Well, no problem then. The NAPC supports the DRA all the way. They're a legal registered religious group."
"Yeah, but we're supposed to like write up people who hold Bible studies in their homes. My grandmother used to have Bible studies in her home. It would be like like writing up my grandmother."
"Would you have a problem with that?"
"With what?"
"Writing a report on your grandmother."
Minna Gunderson awoke, instantaneously alert. Some noise must have roused her, but these wakings happened more and more as she grew older, and she knew it was useless to try to sleep again. She set her cushion on the floor and knelt on it, using the time productively.
It may have been a half an hour later she had lost track of time when she heard a pounding on the door downstairs. She pulled on a robe and went to answer it.
She found Maxine Ohlrogge weeping on the doorstep. "They hit him!" Maxey sobbed. "They hit him and kicked him while he lay on the ground!"
"Calm down, Maxie! What are you talking about? Come in."
"Those people at the church! Well, not all of them most of the ones I know just wanted to go home and take a hot bath I think, and I'm sure they would have, but then the others came, and I don't know who they were, and I think it's just a shame "
"Maxie, what happened?"
Maxie took a deep breath. "They were holding a secret meeting at the church, but the pastor stopped it, or rather Stoney turned on the sprinklers, but then these men came I don't know who they were but they had cars and vans, and they just started organizing everyone and pushing them into the cars, and when Stoney tried to stop them they started beating him up. I left him lying on the grass. He told me you had to call and warn them!"
"Whom should I call, Maxie?"
"The old Tysness place what do they call it W.O.W, of course! The pastor and that professor are on their way out there, but these people from the meeting are heading out there now to attack those young people! Stoney says you've got to call and warn them that there's no more time! And I've got to get back and drive Stoney to the hospital his head's bleeding."
"All right," said Minna, understanding enough. "I'll call. You see to Stoney."
Mrs. Ohlrogge hurried out and Minna went to the phone.
She dialed directory assistance and asked for an Epsom number, the Way of the Old Wisdom.
"There is no listing for the name you requested," said the recorded voice.