Empire 1: Humiliation Page 5

but there's a few other things about Mel you might like to know . . ."

  "All right, we'll sit with the team tonight." Michael threw up his hands in mock surrender. They laughed and headed for the service.

 

 

  Three

 

  The meeting shed had filled before their arrival. Carl led them to his team and showed them which pews they usually sat in. Most of the men had families, so they took several rows. A few seats were left on the outer aisle.

  "Preacher Edwards is speaking tonight, so we'll only sing one song," Carl said. "Do either of you own a songbook? I noticed that you don't sing."

  "The truth is," explained Randolph, "we don't know these hymns."

  "Oh?"

  "It's not that we don't sing in church," continued Michael, "but this isn't the worship service we're used to. We're more familiar with traditional hymns of worship such as 'O Sacred Head Now Wounded' or 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.' Also, it's a little difficult to stay on pitch without an organ."

  "A piano would make it easier to keep on pitch," agreed Carl. "Beginning next Sunday we'll have a brass group and the music will get a bit more lively."

  "Everybody stand and sing 'I Will Follow Him.'" The short songleader, like many of the campground's personnel, carried several extra pounds. His clear voice could be heard over the thousands singing in the audience. Though he had led the singing all week, tonight his step was lighter and his voice brighter than any time Michael or Randolph had seen him. After four stanzas, he sat, drenched in the cool July evening.

  A gangly man with a protruding, crooked nose and curly blond hair followed the songleader with prayer. His crisp, brief prayer electrified the audience. The songleader returned to the middle platform and -- even in his official capacity as a recorder, Randolph couldn't have come up with a better way to express it-- thundered an offering. Preacher Edwards stood and walked very deliberately to the thin pulpit.

  Jonathan Edwards wasn't a polished Sanctuary pastor. Lacking Michael's natural charisma, he wore the same dusty suit he had worn on Monday. Though he knew his topic well and presented it forcefully, he displayed a lack of general education. He thoroughly captivated the people around them.

  "I've listen to Jonathan Edwards my entire life and I can't remember ever hearing the same sermon twice," whispered Carl Blount.

  "You have heard several different men preach this week," Jonathan Edwards said. "Few of you have listened to what they said. Listening is difficult. It is hard. It requires discipline. Mental discipline. This world is undisciplined and it hammers at you, breaking down whatever discipline you have.

  "We are no different from anyone else alive now or anyone else who has ever lived. Discipline has never been popular. Actually, most of you showed more discipline just coming here this week than the average person will ever have. But just coming is not enough.

  "And just listening is not enough. The few who are doing more than just hearing, the few who are truly listening: are these messages changing you life? For every listener can grow, mature, become molded into the image of Jesus Christ."

  He stopped, placed both hands on the empty pulpit and looked at the audience as a father to a grown son.

  "If you haven't listened all week, this isn't a message for you. I don't care how far you came or why, but you wasted your time. You're not maturing because you're resisting the Spirit of God. You need to examine yourself to see if you are a child of God. You don't know the voice of the Shepherd as He speaks to you. Your feet will slip in due time. You are a sinner whose soul is in the hands of an omnipotent God. And to you He is an angry God.

  "By the grace of God, very few of you are in this lost condition. Many more of you need to return to what you have lost. A sinning saint is still a sinner, and God will deal with that sinner as a sinner. Are you under that judgment?

  "But Christ on occasion took his most intimate disciples aside to teach them what he could not teach the general populace. Listen tonight, as a friend of God."

 

  "But are you certain? We will lose more than a few contacts over this."

  Alexander nodded. He was the youngest of the five men in the room and more than his life depended on being right.

  "We've lost six craft and two dozen men monitoring the Palace. The Council's not playing marbles. If we lose any more we'll have a civil war on our hands."

  Alexander looked at his father. Baron Rabshakeh had said nothing during the three-hour meeting. He looked even thinner than Alexander remembered him. The baron looked at his son. He settled back in the straight-backed chair, palms against the table.

  Alexander reached under the massive black stone table. He drained the clear vial as the other men watched him. He didn't appear nervous.

  "We know every ship, every craft, every message that left the Palace since they brought the prince there."

  "At the cost of six craft and two dozen men," said Baron Ishmael, the man responsible for the Palace surveillance. That was his particular area of treason among a room full of traitors.

  "And we thank you for your intelligence," Alexander continued. "Because of this sacrifice, we know every person on every ship that left the Palace since last Sunday. Except one craft. The Prince isn't on the Palace now, so he had to be on that one small shuttlecraft to Earth. We must get him soon."

  "You are asking us to risk everything -- and I mean everything -- on a possibility," Baron Tobiah commented.

  "We have no other possibilities," returned Alexander. "To do nothing will certainly mean we lose everything."

  "I call the question," said Baron Ishmael, "and I vote to ignore that shuttlecraft to Earth."

  "I agree," Baron Tobiah said.

  Alexander almost broke the glass vial in his hand. "Baron Clampton?"

  "Alexander's right."

  A tie vote. They all looked at Baron Rabshakeh.

  "Suppose you are right, son," he said. "Suppose the prince is on Earth at or near these coordinates and we are successful in contacting him. We must pick up his landing signal and follow it in. That requires a spacecraft faster than the Imperial shuttlecraft. We do not have such a craft."

  "Excuse me, father, but we have the Discovery."

  Baron Rabshakeh pressed the tips of his fingers together, looking at them disinterestedly. "And you have a family." He looked a long time at some of the papers on the table in front of him. "These coordinates put the prince in the Occidental Empire. The use of nuclear engines inside the Van Allen radiation belts is an act of war. But war with Earth is our goal, is it not?" No one answered. "How would you get the Discovery?"

  Alexander looked hard at his father. "You have been forced to commit enough treasonous acts by our weak government. The Discovery is my problem."

  "Who will man it?"

  "There is no need to involve anyone else."

  Baron Rabshakeh looked at the tips of his fingers. "We are over-committed. The Council is calling our hand. We must play the only card we have."

 

  "Good afternoon. Do you mind if I sit with you?" said a voice, as feminine as honey is sweet. They turned to see the pretty brunette from the bookseller's table.

  "Sure," both Michael and Randolph answered in unison.

  "Thank you," she said, and sat down between them.

  Neither man could concentrate on the service. The enigma between them didn't speak another word until the final amen. She stood as the service broke up and turned to Randolph. "So you're Melinda's bad men. Would the bad men mind if a young woman went with them on their afternoon walk?"

  "Well," Randolph reddened slightly, "we've been playing on Carl's team ..."

  "But we've missed our walks in the woods." Michael grinned. The three of them left the meeting shed opposite the ball fields.

  "So what is it that you two've done?" she asked. Her hair fell loosely about her face and shoulders, accenting her petite features. Her plain white blouse, straight navy skirt, scarf and matching shoes con
trasted sharply with the laughter of her eyes.

  "How do you know we've done anything but come to a camp meeting?" Michael answered.

  "Melinda calls you two her 'bad men.'" She tossed an acorn.

  Michael answered, "Just because a child thinks ..."

  "And Carl thinks ..." She was smiling.

  "And Carl thinks that we're some kind of hoodlums or something ..." Michael continued.

  "Not to change the subject, but do you have a name?" Randolph asked.

  "Yes," she answered, obviously enjoying herself. "It's Aidan. And before you ask your next question, I am a bit, as my father puts it, forward."

  They crested a rise and continued away from the campgrounds. Aidan looked around, but continued walking.

  "I know something else about you. You have rich friends."

  Michael laughed. "Not around here we don't."

  Aidan opened her purse and removed a shiny black cube with a number of protruding electrical contacts. The hard, cold resin was less than 10 centimeters square.

  "A woman I've never seen before stopped by the table this morning and told me to give this to Michael." She handed it to him.

  He studied it quizzically. "I don't know what this is. Is that all she did -- hand you this cube?"

  "No, she also left a very strange message. She was very insistent that I tell no one else, and that I not let anyone else know about this. She wouldn't even let me write it down. Here is your secret message." Aidan's eyes twinkled. "Cube deactivated, preprogrammed. Eleven fifty-nine standard. Alexander."

  Michael stopped at the top of next rise and looked very carefully about for several minutes. "How far from anyone